"Yes," Lucia repeated; "I have been working."
There was silence. I hoped I had recalled to her thoughts the great canvas that stood complete in her studio. For myself, I knew that the keenest touch of pleasure that stirred my frame now was held in the ever-present thought that this day saw the birth of my work in Paris.
Not for worlds would I have hinted this to Lucia. To have breathed a word that a.s.signed even a part of my pleasure at the moment to anything but the possession of herself was the last thing that I would have done.
Every pleasure is kin to every other, and they each tend to enhance and strengthen another, so that in reality this inner pleasure of my thoughts that reverted constantly to the Paris publishers was no enemy, not even a rival, but rather a coadjutor of the pa.s.sionate, personal pleasure in the woman beside me. The brain already intoxicated with one pleasant emotion lends itself more, not less, readily to another, just as a brutal lover inflames his love with wine. In precisely the same way, my pa.s.sion for Lucia was inflamed by the wine of gratified ambition. All the same, I said nothing touching on the book for fear lest she should misunderstand me, nor hinted--that which I felt myself--that this scene put back ten years, when I was full of vague ambitions and unaccomplished plans, would not have possessed the zest it had for me now.
Man, unfortunately, is not the desirer of one thing at a time, but of many things, and the gratification of a single desire is not enough to content him. If a person is both hungry and thirsty, you cannot satisfy him, however kindly you may supply him with bread. Another line of thought that ran side by side with this in my brain, as I watched the shadow pa.s.s over the girl"s face as she thought of her ten lost years, was, that had we had these sensations at fifteen and twenty they would certainly not have out-lasted us till now! But this also I would not say. The pa.s.sing of our pa.s.sions, however we may recognise it as philosophers, is not pleasant to us as lovers.
"Oh! there is our house, I believe!" said Lucia, suddenly, as we neared the station.
"Yes; you can just see it from the line, I know," I answered, looking through the window. "What a glorious evening!"
All before our eyes lay in the still, liquid golden light, and through the burnished haze that seemed to slope obliquely between us and it we saw the square white house, lying a little blow the level of the line, and all but hidden behind a delicate, intricate profusion of light green foliage. Behind it rose a rolling slope, clothed half-way up with a copse of young larch trees, whose slender stems sent long shadows down the whole length of its side, falling across the sun-baked, waving, brown-and-yellow gra.s.ses, and the red cows, lying lower down the slope, drowsy, as all else seemed in the mellow sunlight.
At the side of the house stretched a lawn, shaded-in from the carriage drive by a fringe of larch and spruce, and on this lawn, innocent of tennis-courts and similar abominations, were planted here and there single trees. It had been the fancy of the owner that not one of these on the lawn should be indigenous, and almost every country out of Europe was represented by one lovely forest denizen.
The crytomera, the cedar of j.a.pan, raised its delicate rosy crest here under the blue of an English sky; a young Turkish cypress shot like a dart from the ground and threw its narrow shadow straight as a spear across the emerald turf; and farther on a small squat tree, from China, unfurled smooth, glossy, polished leaves of lightest green, and thick-lipped succulent scarlet flowers, indolently to the kiss of the British sun. We caught a pa.s.sing glimpse of it, and Lucia drew in her breath softly, with pleasure.
"How lovely! What a pretty house, Victor!" she said.
"Yes; I know it is supposed to be a very charming place."
"And don"t you think so, too?" she asked, turning to me, and the side light from the window caught the curly hair under the velvet hat brim and turned it into gold.
"I haven"t got a very keen artistic eye, Lucia, I think. Certainly not for houses," I answered, laughing, and looking straight into those eyes of lapis lazuli and then away. "But I adore this one, as it is going to give me the happiest hours in my life!"
And I met her eyes. A slow flush mounted into Lucia"s face, and then she seemed to tear her gaze from mine with difficulty and turned to the window, so that I could not see her face; her ear, however, betrayed her all the same, for the painful blush reached even there, and flooded its white, pink-tinted porcelain with scarlet.
A second after, the train was at a standstill, drawn up at the platform of the station. It was very quiet, and even the train coming in hardly seemed to disturb the sleepy stillness that hung over the strips of asphalt, the beds of hollyhocks and lilac bushes against the whitewashed walls, where the rural fancy of the stationmaster had gone so far as to range a row of straw bee-hives.
There were few pa.s.sengers by the train, and little luggage except our own. The single porter, the stationmaster, some workmen, and a few market women, with white ap.r.o.ns and baskets of eggs on their arms, stared wonderingly at Lucia as she stood with the golden sunlight pouring down upon her light hair and brilliant face, and the glory of Parisian fashion embodied in her dress.
My friend"s carriage had come to meet the train, and I left her for a moment to speak to the footman about our luggage. As I walked back up the platform she was standing three-quarter ways towards me, the att.i.tude which displays best that most alluring line in a woman"s figure, the line from under the arms to the waist.
In Lucia it was specially striking, not straight, but like the back of a Z, a sharp, smooth slope to the low waist, and formed a perfect harmony with the two curves of the hips, and the long fall of the skirt beneath. All my frame--every limb and muscle--quickened with keen pleasure as my eye met the familiar lines, as yet familiar to one sense only, and then followed the inevitable, involuntary rush of exultant remembrance of my absolute possession now.
I let it come and flood my brain with a half-drunken satisfaction, and the phrase formed itself on my lips, "Well, hang it, my to-morrow has come at last!" As I came up to her I saw her eyes were fixed upon me with a searching gaze. I thanked heaven Lucia was not one of the horrible, modern women, if indeed they exist outside a lady"s novel, who are always a.n.a.lysing you and your emotions, and testing the depth of your inferiority to themselves. I believed she was only studying and weighing my outer appearance, of which I was far more confident than of the inner personality. So I met the blue, soft-shaded eyes in the flare of the sunlight without embarra.s.sment, and smiled back into them as I joined her.
"Well, darling, now come," I said; "I think I have made that idiot understand your hand-bag is not to be shaken!"
Lucia pushed a little pale gloved hand through my arm, impetuously, and said, as we turned to follow the decline of the platform towards the carriage,--
"Victor! you are so good-looking!"
I laughed. I was right, then. She had only been thinking of the exterior. What a comfort! A few steps had brought us to the carriage door, and the servant was holding it open. I waited to answer her till we had started, but when she had got in, and I had followed, she threw herself back on the cushions and put one hand on my shoulder, and before I could speak she went on in a low voice,--
"Yes! It is very charming now, of course; but all the same you have nearly killed me!"
The words were spoken with such a bitter, tremulous vehemence, that I turned and looked at her in startled silence. Her eyes still pa.s.sed keenly backwards and forwards over my face.
"Oh, yes! if you knew one-tenth of what I have suffered this last year!
how I have coveted--longed. It doesn"t matter what I say to you now, does it! Oh, I am so glad that all this terrible repression and restraint is done away with, and that we are free to do and say what we like! I am so glad I am your wife at last!"
The trembling, excited accents, springing straight from her thoughts, and poured into my ear from her warm, parting lips, stirred my own tolerably well-governed feelings to a painful intensity, and I felt only too sharply that I, at any rate, had not done with self-restraint.
I said nothing. I was rendered dumb by the riot within me, but I pushed my arm round her waist and drew her against me.
The violence and want of tenderness in the action pleased her, perhaps, being a woman. The waist yielded gladly, and the whole form sank against me with relaxed and satisfied pleasure.
We neither of us spoke again until the carriage drew up between the bright green of the larches, stabbed through with long shafts of light, and before the shallow steps and open windows of the house. On each side of the steps stood, not cla.s.sic urns to remind one irresistibly of graveyards, but honest, bright, terracotta, human-looking flower-pots, from which rose or trailed the loveliest plants a skilful gardener could wrest from September. A white peac.o.c.k paced majestically across the red gravel towards the larches, and underneath these, swinging exuberantly on suspended perches, with the strips and bars of sunlight flashing on their glittering feathers, chattered together nearly a dozen Oriental parrots.
Lucia looked at the scene with an artist"s quick eye, and I heard an instinctive murmur about its making a pretty sketch.
I told her she would be otherwise occupied now than in making sketches, and we both laughed as we pa.s.sed up the steps together.
In the hall hovered, like two evil shadows, her maid and my valet, lying in wait for us to remind us of clothes and the serious duties of life. I saw Lucia carried off from me with despairing eyes, knowing it would be ages before I saw her again.
It did not take me long to get into another suit, and then I returned to the dining-room, and roamed about from end to end, too restless to sit down to glance at the papers that lay on the different tables, or even to light up a cigar. I walked about aimlessly, longing for the woman"s presence beside me again.
It was a very large room--two, properly, knocked into one--with a window looking to the front and the carriage-drive, and another at the side, opening, with French gla.s.s doors, on to the low stone terrace which overlooked the lawn.
Through these I wandered at last on to the terrace, and rested my arms on the low bal.u.s.trade, looking with unseeing eyes across the lawn, with its tropical trees standing motionless in the golden haze. Everything around me was very still, and a peculiar strained calm seemed to be upon me also--the calm of an intense desire, hushed and expectant, in all the blood.
A swift, hurried step came on to the terrace, and I turned instantly.
The light fell all over her, the living incarnation of my long drawn out hopes and dreams. She had changed her dress to a light dinner-silk.
The bodice was modest--I mean by that, it was un.o.btrusive--very. Excess of nervous excitement, the wealth of evening sunlight, and her fashion of dressing made her dazzling to look upon, and I stood for a second in silence.
She misunderstood my pause and glance, and a rush of hot colour came into her face, and the tears suddenly started to her eyes.
"You don"t like my dress," she exclaimed. "I told Celine she was cutting it too low!"
A step forward and I had her in my arms. Ah! what were dreams to the keen, sharp delight of feeling her there--alive, and in the flesh--throbbing and pulsating against me? I declared the dress was perfect, that I would not have the bodice half an inch higher for anything, that she looked adorable, and so on, until she was comforted.
The tears pa.s.sed into laughter, and the flush died away; but she trembled against me distressingly, and her lips quivered nervously.
I held her to me, but she seemed to flutter uncertainly in my clasp, just as a bird flutters wildly without aim at the limit of its tethering cord, and when I released her she sank into the wire chair at our side with a look of exhaustion stamped on the soft, delicate face.
I saw that it would require all my tact and care to make this evening a success, and I determined that it should be one for her. Standing there beside her, looking down on her light head, I made a rough, mental examination of my thoughts. I seized those that had anything of self in them, rolled them hastily together, and thrust them into an obscure corner of my brain out of hearing, to leave the better part of my love for her free to guide me.
I drew a chair close to her and sat down, letting my arm rest along the top rail of hers, behind the soft head, which, after a minute, sank gently back upon it with a movement of tired relief. We neither spoke, and the perfect, sunny calm of the evening air, the silence, and the physical rest seemed to soothe her. When the servant came on to the terrace to announce the dinner, she had recovered, and her arm on mine was warm and firm.
As soon as we had finished dinner, she rose restlessly from the table and looked at me with a hesitating air. I smiled back at her, but it hurt me inwardly this want of confidence, this lack of familiarity she seemed to have. This sort of hesitation before she made the simplest request, the start and flush when I spoke suddenly to her, this timidity of me now, hurt and puzzled me. I, who had taught my dog implicit trust, seemed to have missed the way with the woman.
I remembered Paris: my own harshness to her there came back upon me like a blow. The indelible impression of my hardness had been given then, and she dreaded it now. She had been conquered then; her will and desire had been broken down to mine; she had been forced to yield and to suffer; she had appealed to me and found me inflexible, relentless; and now I had the fruits of my victory. The woman I loved, though she might love me, feared me instinctively, as the once well-beaten dog ever afterwards fears its master.
To me, who hated victory, who loathed subduing others, and the price they bring of fear and shrinking, the realisation of her feeling towards me was like a sudden physical pain. I got up from the table feeling my face grow white with sharp distress. I hardly knew at the moment how to express my thoughts; besides, I knew words would be of no avail. An impression given is a scar upon the mind like a scar upon the flesh. She fixed her eyes on my face with a sort of apprehension in them, that was extremely bitter to me.
"What were you going to say, dearest?" I said, merely, with a faint smile; "go on."
"Oh, nothing much!" she said, hastily, flushing and paling almost in the same moment; "only I feel so restless. Come and show me all the rest of the house, will you?"