LUCY.
_Who is Silvia? What is she,
That all our swains commend her?_
TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
There was no mistaking the situation. At one of the red-legged tables
sat Fred, his arms spread out before him, his face hidden in his arms;
while Lucy, with a troubled face, stood near, struggling between her
genuine compunction and an irrepressible desire to laugh.
It was Sunday morning; the rest of the household were at church, and the
two young people had had the studio to themselves without fear of
disturbance; a circumstance of which the unfortunate Fred had hastened
to avail himself, thereby rushing on his fate.
They had now reached that stage of the proceedings when the rejected
suitor, finding entreaty of no avail, has recourse to manifestations of
despair and reproach.
"You shouldn't have encouraged a fellow all these years," came hoarsely
from between the arms and face of the prostrate swain.
"'All these years!' how can you be so silly, Fred?" cried Lucy, with
some asperity. "Why, I shall be accused next of encouraging little Jack
Oakley, because I bowled his hoop round Regent's Park for him last
week."
Lucy did not mean to be unkind; but the really unexpected avowal from
her old playmate had made her nervous; a refusal to treat it seriously
seemed to her the best course to pursue. But her last words, as might
have been supposed, were too much for poor Fred. Up he sprang, "a
wounded thing with a rancorous cry"--
"There is another fellow!"
Back started Lucy, as if she had been shot. The hot blood surged up into
her face, the tears rose to her eyes.
"What has that to do with it?" she cried, stung suddenly to cruelty;
"what has that to do with it, when, if you were the only man in the
world, I would not marry you?"
Fred, hurt and shocked by this unexpected attack from gentle Lucy,
gathered himself up with something more like dignity than he had
displayed in the course of the interview.
"Oh, very well," he said, taking up his hat; "perhaps one of these days
you will be sorry for what you have done. I'm not much, I know, but you
won't find many people to care for you as I would have cared." His voice
broke suddenly, and he made his way rather blindly to the door.
Lucy was trembling all over, and as pale as, a moment ago, she had been
red. She wanted to say something, as she watched him fumbling unsteadily
with the door-handle; but her lips refused to frame the words.
Without lifting his head he passed into the little passage. Lucy heard
his retreating footsteps, then her eye fell on a roll of newspapers at
her feet. She picked them up hastily.
"Fred," she cried, "you have forgotten these."
But he vouchsafed no answer, and in another moment she heard the outer
door shut.
She stood a moment with the ridiculous bundle in her hand--_Tit-Bits_
and a pink, crushed copy of _The Sporting Times_--then something between
a laugh and a sob rose in her throat, the papers fell to the ground, and
sinking on her knees by the table, she buried her face in her hands and
burst into bitter weeping.
Gertrude, coming in from church some ten minutes later, found her sister
thus prostrate.
The sight unnerved her from its very unusualness; bending over Lucy she
whispered, "Am I to go away?"
"No, stop here."
Gertrude locked the door, then came and knelt by her sister.
"Oh, poor Fred, and I was so horrid to him," wept the penitent.
"Ah, I was afraid it would come."
Gertrude stroked the prone, smooth head; she feared that the thought of
some one else besides Fred lay at the bottom of all this disturbance.
She was very anxious for Lucy in these days; very anxious and very
helpless. There was only one person, she knew too well, who could
restore to Lucy her old sweet serenity, and he, alas, made no sign.
What was she to think? One thing was clear enough; the old pleasant
relationship between themselves and Frank was at an end; if renewed at
all, it must be renewed on a different basis. A disturbing element, an
element of self-consciousness had crept into it; the delicate charm, the
first bloom of simplicity, had departed for ever.
It was now the middle of July, and for the last week or two they had
seen scarcely anything of Jermyn, beyond the glimpses of him as he
lounged up the street, with his sombrero crushed over his eyes, all the
impetuosity gone from his gait.
That he distinctly avoided them, there could be little doubt. Though he
was to be seen looking across at the house wistfully enough, he made no
attempt to see them, and his greetings when they chanced to meet were of
the most formal nature.
The change in his conduct had been so marked and sudden, that it was
impossible that it should escape observation. Fanny, with an air of
superior knowledge, gave it out as her belief that Mr. Jermyn was in
love; Phyllis held to the opinion that he had been fired with the idea
of a big picture, and was undergoing the throes of artistic conception;
Gertrude said lightly, that she supposed he was out of sorts and
disinclined for society; while Lucy held her peace, and indulged in many
inward sophistries to convince herself that her own unusual restlessness
and languor had nothing to do with their neighbour's disaffection.
It was these carefully woven self-deceptions that had been so rudely
scattered by Fred's words; and Lucy, kneeling by the scarlet table, had
for the first time looked her fate in the face, and diagnosed her own
complaint.
"Lucy," said Gertrude, after a pause, "bathe your eyes and come for a
walk in the Park; there is time before lunch."
Lucy rose, drying her wet face with her handkerchief.
"Let me look at you," cried Gertrude. "What is the charm? Where does it
lie? Why are these sort of things always happening to you?"
"Oh," answered Lucy, with an attempt at a smile, "I am a convenient,
middling sort of person, that is all. Not uncomfortably clever like you,
or uncomfortably pretty like Phyllis."
The two girls set off up the hot dusty street, with its Sunday odour of
bad tobacco. Regent's Park wore its most unattractive garb; a dead
monotony of July verdure assailed the eye; a verdure, moreover,
impregnated and coated with the dust and soot of the city. The girls
felt listless and dispirited, and conscious that their walk was turning
out a failure.
As they passed through Clarence Gate, on their way back, Frank darted
past them with something of his normal activity, lifting his hat with
something like the old smile.
"He might have stopped," said Lucy, pale to the lips, and suddenly
abandoning all pretence of concealment of her feelings.
"No doubt he is in a hurry;" answered Gertrude, lamely. "I daresay he is
going to lunch in Sussex Place. Lord Watergate's Sunday luncheon parties
are quite celebrated."
The day dragged on. The weather was sultry and every one felt depressed.
Fanny was spending the day with relations of her future husband's; but
the three girls had no engagements and lounged away the afternoon rather
dismally at home.
All were relieved when Fanny and Mr. Marsh came in at supper-time, and
they seated themselves at the table with alacrity. They had not
proceeded far with the meal, when footsteps, unexpected but familiar,
were heard ascending the staircase; then some one knocked, and before
there was time to reply, the door was thrown open to admit Frank Jermyn.
He looked curiously unlike himself as he advanced and shook hands amid
an uncomfortable silence that everybody desired to break. His face was
pale, and no longer moody, but tense and eager, with shining eyes and
dilated nostrils.
"You will stay to supper, Mr. Jermyn?" said Gertrude, at last, in her
most neutral tones.
"Yes, please." Frank drew a chair to the table like a person in a dream.
"You are quite a stranger," cried arch, unconscious Fan, indicating with
head and spoon the dish from which she proposed to serve him.
Frank nodded acceptance of the proffered fare, but ignored her remark.
Silence fell again upon the party, broken by murmurs from the enamoured
Edward, and the ostentatious clatter of knives and forks on the part of
people who were not eating. Every one, except the plighted lovers, felt
that there was electricity in the air.
At last Frank dropped his fork, abandoning, once for all, the pretence
of supper.
"Miss Lucy," he cried across the table to her, "I have a piece of news."
She looked up, pale, with steady eyes, questioning him.
"I am going abroad to-morrow."
"Oh, where are you going?" cried Fanny, vaguely mystified.
"I am going to Africa."
He did not move his eyes from Lucy as he spoke; her head had drooped
over her plate. "They are sending me out as special from _The Woodcut_,
in the place of poor Leadpoint, who has died of fever. I heard the first
of it last night, and this morning it was finally settled. It makes,"
cried Frank, "an immense difference in my prospects."
Edward Marsh, who objected to Frank as a spoilt puppy, always expecting
other people to be interested in his affairs, asked the young man
bluntly the value of his appointment. But he met with no reply; for
Frank, his face alight, had sprung to his feet, pushing back his chair.
"Lucy, Lucy," he cried in a low voice, "won't you come and speak to me?"
Lucy rose like one mesmerised; took, with a presence of mind at which
she afterwards laughed, the key of the studio from its nail, and
followed Frank from the room, amidst the stupefaction of the rest of the
party.
It was a sufficiently simple explanation which took place, some minutes
later, in the very room where, a few hours before, poor Fred had
received his dismissal.
"But why," said Lucy, presently, "have you been so unkind for the last
fortnight?"
"Ah, Lucy," answered Frank; "you women so often misjudge us, and think
that it is you alone who suffer, when the pain is on both sides. When it
dawned upon me how things stood with you and me--dear girl, you told me
more than you knew yourself--I reflected what a poor devil I was, with
not the ghost of a prospect. (I have been down on my luck lately,
Lucy.) And I saw, at the same time, how it was with Devonshire; I
thought, he is a good fellow, let him have his chance, it may be best in
the end----"
"Oh, Frank, Frank, what did you think of me? If these are men's
arguments I am glad that I am a woman," cried Lucy, clinging to the
strong young hand.
"Well, so am I, for that matter," answered Frank; and then, of course,
though I do not uphold her conduct in this respect, Lucy told him
briefly of Fred Devonshire's offer and her own refusal.
It was late before these two happy people returned to the sitting-room,
to receive congratulations on the event, which, by this time, it was
unnecessary to impart.
Fanny wondered aloud why she had not thought of such a thing before; and
felt, perhaps, that her own _rechauffe_ love affair was quite thrown
into the shade. Phyllis smiled and made airy jests, submitting her soft
cheek gracefully to a brotherly kiss.
Edward Marsh looked on mystified and rather shocked, and Gertrude
remained in the background, with a heart too full for speech, till the
lovers made their way to her, demanding her congratulations.
"Don't think me too unworthy," said Frank, in all humility.
"I am glad," she said.
Glancing up and seeing the two young faces, aglow with the light of
their happiness, she looked back with a wistful amusement on her own
doubts and fears of the past weeks.
As she did so, the beautiful, familiar words flashed across her
consciousness--
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
* * * * *
Late that night, when the guests had departed and the rest of the
household was asleep, Gertrude heard Lucy moving about in the room
below, and, throwing on her dressing-gown, went down stairs. She found
her sister risen from the table, where she had been writing a letter by
the lamp-light.
"Aren't you coming to bed, Lucy? Remember, you have to be up very
early."
The shadow of the coming separation, which at first had only seemed to
give a more exquisite quality to her happiness, lay on Lucy. She was
pale, and her steadfast eyes looked out with the old calm, but with a
new intensity, from her face.
"Read this," she said, "it seemed only fair."
Stooping over the table, Gertrude read--
"DEAR FRED,--I am engaged to Frank Jermyn, who goes abroad
to-morrow. I am sorry if I seemed unkind, but I was grieved and
shocked by what you said to me. Very soon, when you have quite
forgiven me, you will come and see us all, will you not?
Acknowledge that you made a mistake, and never cease to regard me
as your friend.--L. L."
Gertrude thought: "Then I shall not have to tell Conny, after all."
[Illustration: Decoration]
[Illustration: Decoration]