"These things do when you take them out and look at them," Mabel said.
"Like sham jewellery. They are all right in their cases. The velvet lining does so much. But although you may be disgusted with James"s handling of your private affairs, you are not disgusted with--the other?"
"No, I suppose not. I really don"t know. He is the most understanding man in the world, and I would trust him through everything. I don"t think he could tell me an untruth. Not one that mattered, anyhow. I could see him go away from me for a year, for two, and not hear a word from him, and yet be sure that he would come back, and be the same, and know me to be the same. I feel so safe with him, so proud of his liking me, so settled in life--I never felt settled before--like being in a nest. He makes everything I love or like seem more beautiful and precious--Lancelot, oh, I am much prouder of Lancelot than I used to be. He has shown me things in Lancelot which I never saw. He has made the being Lancelot"s mother seem a more important, a finer thing. I don"t know how to say it, but he has simply enhanced everything--as you say, like a velvet lining to a jewel. All this is true--and something in me calls for him, and urges me to go to him. But now--but yet--all this hateful jealousy--this playing off one man against another--Francis Lingen! As if I ever had a minute"s thought of Francis Lingen--oh, it"s really disgusting. I didn"t think any one in our world could be like that. It spots me--I want to be clean. I"d much rather be miserable than feel dirty."
Here she stopped, on the edge of tears, which a sudden access of anger dried up. She began again, more querulously. "It"s his fault, of course. It was outrageous what he did. I"m angry with him because I can"t be angry with myself--for not being angry. How could I be angry?
Oh, Mabel, if it had been James after all! But of course it wasn"t, and couldn"t be; and I should be angry with him if I wasn"t so awfully sorry for him."
Mabel stared. "Sorry for James!"
"Yes, naturally. He"s awfully simple, you know, and really rather proud of me in his way. I see him looking at me sometimes, wondering what he"s done. It"s pathetic. But that"s not the point. The point is that I can"t get out."
"Do you want to get out?" Mabel asked.
"Yes, I do in a way. It has to be--and the sooner the better. And whether I do or not, I don"t like to feel that I can"t. n.o.body likes to be tied."
"Then n.o.body should be married," said Mabel, who had listened to these outbursts of speech, and pauses which had been really to find words rather than breath, with staring and hard-rimmed eyes. She had a gift of logic, and could be pitiless. "What it comes to, you know," she said, "is that you want to have your fun in private. We all do, I suppose; but that can"t come off in nine cases out of ten. Especially with a man like James, who is as sharp as a razor, and just as edgy.
The moment anybody peers at you you show a tarnish, and get put off.
It doesn"t look to me as if you thought so highly of--the other as you think you do. After all, if you come to that, the paraphernalia of a wedding is pretty horrid; one feels awfully like a heifer at the Cattle Show. At least, I did. The complacency of the bridegroom is pretty repulsive. You feel like a really fine article. But one lives it down, if one means it."
Lucy told her to go, or as good as told her. Sisters may be plain with each other. She wasn"t able to answer her, though she felt that an answer there was.
What she had said was partly true. Lucy was a romantic without knowing it. So had Psyche been, and the fatal lamp should have told her so.
The G.o.d removed himself. Thus she felt it to be. He seemed just outside the door, and a word, a look, would recall him to his dark beauty of presence. That he was beautiful so she knew too well, that he was unbeautiful in the glare of day she felt rather than knew. The fault, she suspected, lay in her, who could not see him in the light without the blemish of circ.u.mstance--not his, but circ.u.mstance, in whose evil shade he must seem smirched. What could she do with her faulty vision, but send him away? Was that not less dishonourable than to bid him remain and dwindle as she looked at him? What a kink in her affairs, when she must be cruel to her love, not because she loved him less, but rather that she might love him more!
But the spirit of adventure grew upon her in spite of herself, the sense of something in the wind, of the morning bringing one nearer to a great day. It pervaded the house; Crewdson got in the way of saying, "When we are abroad, we shall find that useful, ma"am"; or "Mr.
Macartney will be asking for that in Norway." As for James, it had changed his spots, if not his nature. James bought marvellous climbing boots, binoculars, compa.s.ses of dodgy contrivance, sandwich-cases, drinking-flasks, a knowing hat. He read about Norway, studied a dictionary, and ended by talking about it, and all to do with it, without any pragmatism. Lucy found out how he relied upon Urquhart and sometimes forgot that he was jealous of him. Jealous he was, but not without hope. For one thing, he liked a fight, with a good man. Lingen caught the epidemic, and ceased to think or talk about himself. He had heard of carpets to be had, of bold pattern and primary colouring; he had heard of bridal crowns of silver-gilt worthy of any collector"s cabinet. He also bought boots and tried his elegant leg in a flame-coloured sock. And to crown the rocking edifice, Lancelot came home in a kind of still ecstasy which only uttered itself in convulsions of the limbs, and sudden and ear-piercing whistles through the fingers. From him above all she gained a.s.surance. "Oh, Mr.
Urquhart, he"ll put all that straight, I bet you--in two ticks!..."
and once it was, "I say, Mamma, I wonder where you and I would be without Mr. Urquhart." James heard him, and saw Lucy catch her breath.
Not very pleasant.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SHIVERING FIT
They were to start on the 8th of August, and it was now the 5th.
Packing had begun, and Crewdson, as usual, was troublesome. He had the habit of appearing before Lucy and presenting some small deficiency as a final cause of ruin and defeat. "I can"t find any of the Brown Polish, ma"am. I don"t know what Mr. Macartney will do without it."
This, or something like it, had become a cla.s.sic in the family. It had always been part of the fun of going away. But this year Lucy was fretted by it. She supposed herself run down and whipped herself to work. She found herself, too, lingering about the house, with an affection for the familiar aspect of corners, vistas, tricks of light and shadow, which she had never thought to possess. She felt extremely unwilling to leave it all. It was safety, it was friendliness; it asked no effort of her. To turn away from its l.u.s.trous and ordered elegance and face the unknown gave her a pain in the heart. It was odd to feel homesick before she had left home; but that was the sum of it. She was homesick. Urquhart was very much in her mind; a letter of his was in her writing-table drawer, under lock and key; but Urquhart seemed part of a vague menace now, while James, though he did his unconscious utmost to defeat himself, got his share of the sunset glow upon the house. Fanciful, nervous, weary of it all as she was, she devoted herself to her duties; and then, on this fifth of August, in the afternoon, she had a waking vision, perfectly distinct, and so vivid that, disembodied and apart, she could see herself enacting it.
It was followed by a shivering fit and depression; but that must tell its own tale.
The vision occurred while she was on her knees, busied beside a trunk, turning over garments of lace and fine linen and pale blue ribbons which a maid, in the same fair att.i.tude, was bestowing as she received them. Lancelot was out for the afternoon with Crewdson and a friend.
They had gone to the Zoological Gardens, and would not be back till late. She had the house to herself; it was cool and shadowed from the sun. The Square, m.u.f.fled in the heat, gave no disturbing sounds.
Looking up suddenly, for no apparent reason, she saw herself with Jimmy Urquhart in a great empty, stony place, and felt the dry wind which blew upon them both. All but her own face was visible; of that she saw nothing but the sharp outline of her cheek, which was very white. She saw herself holding her hat, bending sideways to the gale; she saw her skirt cling about her legs, and flack to get free.
She wondered why she didn"t hold it down. The wind was a hot one; she felt that it was so. It made her head ache, and burned her cheek-bone.
Urquhart was quite visible. He looked into the teeth of the wind, frowning and fretful. Why didn"t she say something to him? She had a conviction that it was useless. "There"s nothing to say, nothing to say." That rang in her head, like a church bell. "Nothing to say, nothing to say." A sense of desolation and total loss oppressed her.
She had no hope. The vacancy, the silence, the enormous dry emptiness about her seemed to shut out all her landmarks. Why didn"t she think of Lancelot? She wondered why, but realised that Lancelot meant nothing out there. She saw herself turn about. She cried out, "James!
James!" started up with a sense of being caught, and saw the maid"s face of scare. She was awake in a moment. "What is it, ma"am? What is it?"
Lucy had recovered her faculties: "Nothing, Emily; it"s nothing. I was giddy." But she was shivering and couldn"t go on. "I think I"ll lie down for a minute," she said, and asked for the aspirin. She took two tabloids and a sip of water, was covered up and left to herself. Emily tiptoed away, full of interest in the affair.
The shivering fit lasted the better part of an hour. Lucy crouched and suffered, open-eyed but without any consciousness. Something had happened, was happening still; a storm was raging overhead; she lay quaking and waited for it to pa.s.s. She fell asleep, slept profoundly, and awoke slowly to a sense of things. She had no doubt of what lay immediately before her. Disrelish of the Norwegian expedition was now a reasonable thing. Either it must be given up, or the disaster reckoned with. _Advienne que pourra._ But in either case she must "have it out" with James. What did that mean? Jimmy Urquhart would be thrown over. He would go--and she would not. She lay, picturing rather than reasoning; saw him superbly capable, directing everything. She felt a pride in him, and in herself for discovering how fine he was.
His fineness, indeed, was a thing shared. She felt a sinking of the heart to know that she could not be there. But the mere thought of that sickened her. Out of the question.
She must "have it out" with James. That might be rather dreadful; it might take her where she must refuse to go--but on the whole, she didn"t think it need. The certainty that she couldn"t go to Norway, that James must be made to see it, was a moral b.u.t.tress. Timidity of James would not prevail against it. Besides that, deeply within herself, lay the conviction that James was kind if you took him the right way. He was irritable, and very annoying when he was sarcastic; but he was good at heart. And it was odd, she thought, that directly she got into an awkward place with a flirtation, her first impulse was to go to James to get her out. In her dream she had called to him, though Urquhart had been there. Why was that?
She was thinking now like a child, which indeed she was where such matters were concerned. She was not really contrite for what she had done, neither regretted that she had done it, nor that it was done with. She wanted to discharge her bosom of perilous stuff. James would forgive her. He must not know, of course, what he was forgiving; but--yes, he would forgive her.
At six or thereabouts, listening for it, she heard the motor bring James home; she heard his latch-key, and the shutting of the door behind him. Her heart beat high, but she did not falter. He was reading a letter in the hall when she came downstairs; he was very much aware of her, but pretended not to be. She stood on the bottom stair looking at him with wide and fixed eyes; but he would not look up. He was not just then in a mood either to make advances or to receive them. His grievance was heavy upon him.
"James," said Lucy, "I"ve been listening for you."
"Too good," said he, and went on with his letter.
"I wanted to tell you that I don"t think--that I don"t much want to go to Norway."
Then he did look up, keenly, with a drawn appearance about his mouth, showing his teeth. "Eh?" he said. "Oh, absurd." He occupied himself with his letter, folding it for its envelope, while she watched him with a pale intensity which ought to have told him, and perhaps did tell him, what she was suffering.
"I don"t think you should call me absurd," she said. "I was never very certain of it."
"But, my dearest child, you made me certain, at any rate," he told her. "You made everybody certain. So much so that I have the tickets in my pocket at this moment."
"I"m very sorry. I could pay for mine, of course--and I"m sure Vera would look after Lancelot. I wouldn"t disappoint him for the world."
"What are you going to tell Urquhart?" said James. Her eyes paled.
"I believe that he would take it very simply," she said. James plunged his hands into his pockets. He thought that they were on the edge of the gulf.
"Look here, Lucy," he said; "hadn"t you better tell me something more about this? Perhaps you will come into the library for a few minutes."
He led the way without waiting for her, and she stood quaking where she was.
She was making matters worse: she saw that now. Naturally she couldn"t tell James the real state of the case, because that would involve her in history. James would have to understand that he had been believed to have wooed her when he had done nothing of the kind. That was a thing which nothing in the world would bring her to reveal to him. And if she left that out and confined herself to her own feelings for Urquhart--how was all that to be explained? Was it fair to herself, or to Urquhart, to isolate the flowering of an affair unless you could show the germinating of it? Certainly it wasn"t fair to herself--as for Urquhart, it may be that he didn"t deserve any generous treatment.
She knew that there was no defence for him, though plenty of excuse--possibly. No--she must go through with the Norway business.
Meantime James was waiting for her.
She stood by the library table while James, back to the fireplace, lifted his head and watched her through cigar-smoke. He had no mercy for her at this moment. Suspicions thronged his darkened mind. But nothing of her rueful beauty escaped him. The flush of sleep was upon her, and her eyes were full of trouble.
"It isn"t that I have any reason which would appeal to you," she told him. She faltered her tale. "I think I have been foolish--I know that I"m very tired and worried; but--I have had presentiments."
James clicked his tongue, which he need not have done--as he knew very well. But he had not often been arbiter of late.
"My child," he said, "really--" and annoyed her.