Lucy smiled faintly. d.i.c.k, recovering his good-humour, came at once to the rescue.
"You"re overmodest, Alec. If you weren"t, you might be a great man. Now, I make a point of telling my friends that I"m indispensable, and they take me at my word."
"You are a leaven of flippancy in the heavy dough of British righteousness," smiled Alec.
"It is true that the wise man only takes the unimportant quite seriously."
"For it is obvious that one needs more brains to do nothing with elegance than to be a cabinet minister," said Alec.
"You pay me a great compliment, Alec," cried d.i.c.k. "You repeat to my very face one of my favourite observations."
Julia looked at him steadily.
"Haven"t I heard you say that only the impossible is worth doing?"
"Good heavens," he cried. "I must have been quoting the headings of a copy-book."
Lucy felt that she must say something. She had been watching Alec, and her heart was nearly breaking. She turned to d.i.c.k.
"Are you going down to Southampton?" she asked.
"I am, indeed," he answered. "I shall hide my face on Alec"s shoulder and weep salt tears. It will be most affecting, because in moments of emotion I always burst into epigram."
Alec sprang to his feet. There was a bitterness in his face which was in odd contrast with d.i.c.k"s light words.
"I loathe all solemn leave-takings," he said. "I prefer to part from people with a nod or a smile, whether I"m going for ever or for a day to Brighton."
"I"ve always a.s.sured you that you"re a monster of inhumanity," said Mrs.
Lomas, laughing difficultly.
He turned to her with a grim smile.
"d.i.c.k has been imploring me for twenty years to take life flippantly. I have learnt at last that things are only grave if you take them gravely, and that is desperately stupid. It"s so hard to be serious without being absurd. That is the chief power of women, that life and death for them are merely occasions for a change of costume, marriage a creation in white, and the worship of G.o.d an opportunity for a Paris bonnet."
Julia saw that he was determined to keep the conversation on a level of amiable persiflage, and with her lively sense of the ridiculous she could hardly repress a smile at the heaviness of his hand. Through all that he said pierced the bitterness of his heart, and his every word was contradicted by the vehemence of his tortured voice. She was determined, too, that the interview which she had brought about, uncomfortable as it had been to all of them, should not be brought to nothing; characteristically she went straight to the point. She stood up.
"I"m sure you two have things to say to one another that you would like to say alone."
She saw Alec"s eyes grow darker as he saw himself cornered, but she was implacable.
"I have some letters to send off by the American mail, and I want d.i.c.k to look over them to see that I"ve spelt _honour_ with a u and _traveller_ with a double l."
Neither Alec nor Lucy answered, and the determined little woman took her husband firmly away. When they were left alone, neither spoke for a while.
"I"ve just realised that you didn"t know I was coming to-day," said Lucy at last. "I had no idea that you were being entrapped. I would never have consented to that."
"I"m very glad to have an opportunity of saying good-bye to you," he answered.
He preserved the conversational manner of polite society, and it seemed to Lucy that she would never have the strength to get beyond.
"I"m so glad that d.i.c.k and Julia are happily married. They"re very much in love with one another."
"I should have thought love was the worst possible foundation for marriage," he answered. "Love creates illusions, and marriage destroys them. True lovers should never marry."
Again silence fell upon them, and again Lucy broke it.
"You"re going away to-morrow?"
"I am."
She looked at him, but he would not meet her eyes. He went over to the window and looked out upon the busy street.
"Are you very glad to go?"
"You can"t think what a joy it is to look upon London for the last time.
I long for the infinite surface of the clean and comfortable sea."
Lucy gave a stifled sob. Alec started a little, but he did not move. He still looked down upon the stream of cabs and "buses, lit by the misty autumn sun.
"Is there no one you regret to leave, Alec?"
It tore his heart that she should use his name. To hear her say it had always been like a caress, and the word on her lips brought back once more the whole agony of his distress; but he would not allow his emotion to be seen. He turned round and faced her gravely. Now, for the first time, he did not hesitate to look at her. And while he spoke the words he set himself to speak, he noticed the exquisite oval of her face, her charming, soft hair, and her unhappy eyes.
"You see, d.i.c.k is married, and so I"m much best out of the way. When a man takes a wife, his bachelor friends are wise to depart from his life, gracefully, before he shows them that he needs their company no longer."
"And besides d.i.c.k?"
"I have few friends and no relations. I can"t flatter myself that anyone will be much distressed at my departure."
"You must have no heart at all," she said, in a low, hoa.r.s.e voice.
He clenched his teeth. He was bitterly angry with Julia because she had exposed him to this unspeakable torture.
"If I had I certainly should not bring it to the _Carlton Hotel_. That sentimental organ would be surely out of place in such a neighbourhood."
Lucy sprang to her feet.
"Oh, why do you treat me as if we were strangers? How can you be so cruel?"
"Flippancy is often the only refuge from an uncomfortable position," he answered gravely. "We should really be much wiser merely to discuss the weather."
"Are you angry because I came?"
"That would be very ungracious on my part. Perhaps it wasn"t quite necessary that we should meet again."
"You"ve been acting all the time I"ve been here. Do you think I didn"t see it was unreal, when you talked with such cynical indifference? I know you well enough to tell when you"re hiding your real self behind a mask."
"If that is so, the inference is obvious that I wish my real self to be hidden."