MARTLEY THICKET (1)
Urquhart was a man of explosive action and had great reserve of strength. He was moved by flashes of insight, and was capable of long-sustained flights of vehement effort; but his will-power was nourished entirely by those moments of intense prevision, which showed him a course, and all the stages of it. The mistakes he made, and they were many and grievous, were mostly due to overshooting his mark, sometimes to underrating it. In the headlong and not too scrupulous adventure he was now upon, both defects were leagued against him.
When he first saw Lucy at her dinner-party, he said to himself, "That"s a sweet woman. I shall fall in love with her." To say as much was proof that he had already done so; but it was the sudden conviction of it which inspired him, filled him with effervescent nonsense and made him the best of company, for a dinner-party.
Throughout it, at his wildest and most irresponsible, his fancy and imagination were at work upon her. He read her to the soul, or thought so.
Chance, and Lancelot, gave him the chart of the terrain. The switch at the drawing-room door gave him his plan. The opportunity came, and he dared to take it. He marked the effect upon her. It was exactly what he had foreseen. He saw her eyes humid upon Macartney, her hand at rest on his arm. Jesuitry palliated what threatened to seem monstrous, even to him. "G.o.d bless her, I drive her to her man. What"s the harm in that?"
So he went on--once more, and yet again; and in the meantime by daylight and by more honest ways he gained her confidence and her liking. He saw no end to the affair so prosperously begun, and didn"t trouble about one. All he cared about just now were two courtships--the vicarious in the dark, and the avowed of the daylight.
He intended to go on. He was full of it--in the midst of his other pa.s.sions of the hour, such as this of the air. He was certain of his direction, as certain as he had ever been. But now his mistakes and miscalculations began. He had mistaken his Lucy, and his Macartney too.
What he didn"t know about Macartney, Lucy did know; what he didn"t know about Lucy was that she had found out James. James as Eros wouldn"t do, chiefly because such conduct on James"s part would have been incredible. Urquhart didn"t know it would be incredible, nor did he know that she did.
One other thing he didn"t know, which was that Lucy was half his own before she started for Martley. She, in fact, didn"t know it either.
She had been his from the moment when she had asked him to keep out of the air, and he had declined.
All this is necessary matter, because in the light of it his next deliberated move in his game was a bad mistake.
On the night before she was expected at Martley, being there himself, he wrote her a letter to this effect:
"Dear Mrs. Macartney: To my dismay and concern I find that I can"t be here to receive you, nor indeed until you are on the point to go away. I shall try hard for Sunday, which will give me one day with you--better to me than a thousand elsewhere.
Vera will be my curate. Nothing will be omitted which will show you how much Martley owes you, or how much I am, present or absent, yours,
"J. U."
That letter he gave to Vera Nugent to deliver to Lucy. Vera wanted to know what it was all about.
"It"s to say that I can"t be here," he said. "That is the fact, unfortunately."
"Why, my dear Jimmy, I thought you adored her. Isn"t the poor lady the very latest?"
"My dear girl, I do adore her. Leave it at that. It"s an excellent reason for not being here: the best. But I"m going up with a star, which is another reason. And I hope to be here on Sunday, which is the most I can afford myself. Really, that"s all. But you like her, you say; or you should."
"I do like her. She"s not very talkative--to me; but listens well.
Considine will like her. Listeners are rare with him, poor dear. But you move me. I didn"t know you were so far gone."
"Never mind how far I am gone, provided that I go," said Urquhart.
"Oh, at this rate, I will hasten you. I can"t be bothered with a _cause celebre_. But what am I to tell the lady? You must be practical, my fine man."
"Tell her that I was sent for in a hurry. Hint at the air if you think proper. I think I have said all that is necessary in the note."
The Macartneys were expected to lunch. Urquhart left his house at noon, driving himself in a motor. He disappeared in the forest, but didn"t go very far.
James heard of his host"s defection with impa.s.sivity and a glance of his eyegla.s.s. "Wonder what Jimmy has shied off for?" he said to Lucy through the dressing-room door. "Aeroplaning or royalty, do you think?
The ----s may have sent for him. I know he knows them. But it"s characteristic. He makes a fuss about you, so that you think you"re his life or death; and then you find out--not at all! You simply don"t exist--that"s all. What do you think?"
"I don"t think that we don"t exist," she said. "I think that something important has happened."
"Oh, well," said James, "one had got into the way of thinking that one was important oneself. D----d cool, I call it."
There had been a moment when Lucy knew anger; but that had soon pa.s.sed. She knew that she was bitterly disappointed, and found a rueful kind of happiness in discovering how bitterly. She had reached the stage where complete happiness seems to be rooted in self-surrender. In a curious kind of way the more she suffered the more surely she could pinch herself on the chin and say, "My dear, you are caught." There was comfort in this--and Martley itself, house, gardens, woodlands, the lake, the vistas of the purple wolds of forest country, all contributed to her enchaining. Luncheon pa.s.sed off well under Vera Nugent"s vivacious brown eyes, which could not penetrate the gentle mask of Lucy"s manner. Nugent the husband was a sleepy, good-humoured giant; Lord Considine, whose beard was too long, and jacket-sleeves much too short--as were his trousers--"his so-called trousers," as James put it in his scorn--talked fiercely about birds"-nests and engaged Lucy for the whole afternoon. This was not allowed him by his sister-in-law, who had other more sociable plans, but the good man had his pleasure of a docile listener after tea, took her for a great walk in the woods, and exhibited nearly all his treasures, though, as he said, she should have been there six weeks earlier. Alas, if she had been, she would have had a more open mind to give to the birds and their affairs.
After dinner, when they were on the terrace under the stars, he returned to his subject. There were nightingales, it seemed. What did Mrs. Macartney say to that? It appeared that six miles away the nightingale was an unknown fowl. Here, of course, they were legionaries. You might hear six at a time: two triangles of them. Did she know that they sang in triangles? She did not. Very well, then: what did she say? What about shoes--a cloak--a shawl? All these things could be brought. Lucy said that she would fetch them for herself, and went upstairs--shallow, broad stairs of black oak, very much admired by the experts. But of them and their excellence she had no thought.
She did not care to let her thoughts up to the surface just then.
Adventure beckoned her.
When she returned Nugent had withdrawn himself to the smoking-room, and James was talking to Vera Nugent about people one knew. Neither of them was for nightingales. "You are very foolhardy," James said. "I can"t help you with nightingales." Lord Considine, in a black Spanish cloak, with the staff of a pilgrim to Compostella, offered his arm.
"We"ll go first to the oak Spinney," he said. "It"s rather spongy, I"m afraid, but who minds a little cold water?" Vera a.s.sured him that she did for one, and James added that he was rather rheumatic. "Come along, Mrs. Macartney," said the lord. "These people make me sorry for them." So they went down the steps and dipped into the velvet night.
It was barely dark skirting the lake. You could almost see the rings made by rising trout, and there was enough of you visible at least to send the waterfowl scuttering from the reeds. Beyond that again, you could descry the pale ribbon of the footpath, and guess at the exuberant ma.s.ses of the peony bushes, their heavy flowers, when they were white, still smouldering with the last of the sunset"s fire. But once in the woods you had to feel your way, and the silence of it all, like the darkness, was thick, had a quality which you discovered only by the soft close touch of it upon your cheeks and eyes. It seemed to clog the ears, and made breathing a deeper exercise. The further in they went the greater the guesswork of the going. Lord Considine went in front, to keep the branches from her face.
Upon that rich, heavy silence the first birds" song stole like a sense of tears: the low, tentative, pensive note which seems like the welling of a vein. Lucy stayed and breathlessly listened. The doubtfulness, the strain of longing in it chimed with her own mood, which was one, perhaps, of pa.s.sive wonderment. She waited, as one who is to receive; she was not committed, but she was prepared: everything was to come. The note was held, it waxed, it called, and then broke, as it were, into a fountain of crystal melody. Thereafter it purred of peace, it floated and stopped short as if content. But out of the dark another took up the song, and further off another, provoking our first musician to a new stave. Lucy, with parted lips, held her heart. Love was in this place, overshadowing her; her sightless eyes were wide, waiting upon it; and it came. She heard a step in the thicket; she stayed without motion, will or thought. _Expectans expectavit._ She was in the strange arms, and the strange kisses were on her parted lips.
She knew not, nor cared, how long this rapture held. She got, and she gave. James, or another, this was Eros who had her now. She heard, "Oh, Lucy, oh, my love, my love," and she thought to have answered, "You have me--what shall I do?" But she had no reply to her question, and seemed to have no desire unsatisfied.
Lord Considine"s voice calling, "I say, shall we go on--or do you think you had better go in?" sounded a very homely note. Her Eros still held her, even as she answered, "Perhaps we had better turn back now. I could stop out forever on such a night. It has been more beautiful than I can say." Approval of the sentiment expressed was stamped upon her. For a moment of wild surrender she clung as she kissed; then she was gently relinquished, and the lord was at hand.
"There"s nothing quite like it, is there?" he said. "I"ve heard astounding orchestras of birds in South America; but nothing at all like this--which, moreover, seems to me at its best in England. In Granada, up there in the Wellington elms, they absolutely--mind, mind, here"s a briar-root--they shout at you. There"s a brazen hardihood about them. In Athens, too, in the King"s Garden, it is a kind of clamour of sound--like an Arab wedding. No, no, I say that we are unrivalled for nightingales." The enthusiastic man galloped on, and Lucy, throbbing in the dark, was grateful to him.
The lights of the house recalled her to the world. Presently, up the slope, she saw Vera Nugent, at the piano, turning to say something to somebody. It was James, rather bored in an arm-chair. James liked neither the society of women nor the notes of a piano. But he liked still less for such things to be known of him. His own social standard may perhaps be put thus: he liked to appear bored without boring his companions. On the whole he flattered himself that, high as it was, he nearly always reached it.
"Where"s my beautiful young brother?" said Lord Considine, plunging in upon them. "Asleep, I"ll take my oath. My dear Vera, you are too easy with him. The man is getting mountainous. You two little know what you"ve missed--hey, Mrs. Macartney?" He was obviously overheated, but completely at ease with himself.
"What do you say we have missed?" Vera asked of James, and he now, on his feet, said bravely, "For myself, a nasty chill." A chill--out there!
Lucy was asked, Did she like it all, and boldly owned, All. "The dark is like an eiderdown bed. Impossible to imagine anything softer." She rubbed her eyes. "It has made me dreadfully sleepy," she said. "I think, if you won"t be horrified--" Vera said that she should go up with her. James stooped to her cheek, Lord Considine bowed over her hand.
In Lucy"s room the pair had a long talk, all of which I don"t pretend to report. It began with, "I"m so glad that you take to poor Considine. You are so very much his sort of woman. He"s a dear, simple creature, far too good for most of us--and a Nugent freak, I a.s.sure you. They"ve never known the like in the County of Cork.... I like him immensely, but of course he"s too remote for the like of me. No small talk, you know, and I"m aburst with it. I talk while I"m thinking, and he when he _has_ thought. You understand that kind, evidently. I suppose your clever husband is like that. Not that I don"t get on with _him_. We did excellently--I think he knew everybody that I could think of, and I everybody he chose to mention. But Jimmy likes Considine, you know.... By the way, it was very disgraceful of Jimmy, but not so disgraceful as you might think. In its way it"s a compliment. He thinks so much of you--Oh, I may as well tell you the shocking truth. He ran away. What a moth in the drawing-room ought to do, but never can, Jimmy, not at all a moth, quite suddenly did. My dear Mrs. Macartney, Jimmy ran away from you. Flying! I doubt it profoundly. Wrestling, I fancy, fighting beasts at Ephesus. You have doubtless discovered how enthusiastic Jimmy is. Most attractive, no doubt, but sometimes embarra.s.sing. As once, when we were in Naples--in the funicolare, halfway up Vesuvius--Jimmy sees a party at the other end of the carriage: mother, daughter, two pig-tailed children, _and_ a governess--quite a pretty gel. Jimmy was enormously struck with this governess. He could see nothing else, and n.o.body else either, least of all me, of course. He muttered and rolled his eyes about--his chin jutted like the bow of a destroyer. Presently he couldn"t stand it. He marched across the carriage and took off his hat with a bow--my dear, to the governess, poor gel! "I beg your pardon," says he, "but I have to tell you something. I think you are the most beautiful person I ever saw in my life, and take pride in saying so." Wasn"t it awful? I didn"t dare look at them--but it seemed all right afterwards. I suppose she told her people that of course he was mad. So he is, in a way; but it"s quite nice madness. I won"t say that Jimmy never goes too far--but n.o.body could be nicer about it afterwards than Jimmy--no one. He"s awfully sorry, and contrite, and all that. Most people like him amazingly. I suppose he"s told you about our father? He loves all the stories there are about him ..." and so on. Vera Nugent was a great talker.
Lucy at her prayers, Lucy in her bed, had large gaps in the sequence of her thoughts. Safety lay only with Lancelot. She could centre herself in him. Lancelot it was who with forceful small fingers, and half-shy, half-sly eyes, finally closed down hers, with a "Go to sleep, you tired mamma."
CHAPTER XIII
MARTLEY THICKET (2)
The day that succeeded was prelude to the night, sufficient to show Lucy her way into that s.p.a.cious unknown. By her own desire she pa.s.sed it quietly, and had leisure to review and to forecast.
She put it to herself, roughly, thus. I may guess, but I don"t know, who loves me so. It cannot continue--it shall stop this very night.
But this one night I must go to him, if only to say that it can never be again. And it won"t be again; I am sure of that. However he may take it, whatever he may be driven to, he will do what I say must be.