so swiftly slip through an alley and be hushed at once with a lovely
tranquillity, no sound reaching you but the cry of the flower-man,
the distant honk of a taxicab, the bells of St. James's Church, the
distant boom of Westminster. All the shops in these streets round
Hortons seemed to her romantic fancy to be coloured a rich old walnut.
And against this background there was every kind of treasure--prints
of coaches stuck deep in snowdrifts, of huntsmen leaping over hedges,
of fishermen wading deep in tranquil rivers, of Oxford colleges and
Westminster Abbey--all these, printed in deep old rich colours, blue
and red and orange, colours so deep and rich that they seemed to sink
far down into the page. There were also the jewels and china and
boxes--old Toby jugs and delicate cups and saucers, and amber-bead
necklaces, and Chinese gods, and cabinets of rich red lacquer. She had
a permanent picture of these treasures in the old dark shops, and
from the house's bachelors, young and old, plain and handsome, but
all beautifully dressed, stepping in and out, going, she supposed,
to their clubs and dinners and games, carrying with them everywhere
that atmosphere of expensive cigars and perfectly-pressed clothes and
innumerable baths.
She gathered all this in the first day or two of her stay, and it was
as delightful and personal to her, as though she herself had been God,
and had created it all.
Hortons, in its own turn, was delighted with _her_. It had never seen
anything so fresh and charming in all its long life. It had often
received beautiful women into its capacious heart, and it had known
some very handsome men, but Lucy was lovely. Mr. Nix, who could be on
occasions a poet, said of her that she made him think of "strawberries
and junket and his own self at twenty." He did not say this to Mrs. Nix.
To Lucy, the only thing that was wrong with Hortons was her aunt. She
disliked Mrs. Comstock from the very first moment. She did not like
the way that she was over-dressed, the way that she talked without
looking at you, the way that she spoke so crossly to her maid, the way
that she loved her food, the way that she at once implied that it was
wonderfully fortunate for Lucy to have her to come to.
She discovered at once that her aunt was on the side of her parents
with regard to Mr. Simon Laud. Mrs. Comstock's opinion was that Lucy
might consider herself very fortunate to have been selected by so good
a man, that she must do her best to deserve her good fortune, because
girls nowadays don't find it easy to pick up men. Men know too much!
"To pick up men!" What a horrible phrase! And Lucy had not picked up
Simon Laud. She had been picked up--really against her will. Lucy then
discovered that her Aunt Harriet--that is, Mrs. Comstock--had invited
her to London for this month in order to have a companion. She had a
paid companion--Miss Flagstaff--but that unfortunate woman had at last
been allowed a holiday. Here was a whole month, then, and what was
poor Mrs. Comstock to do? Why, of course, there was that niece up in
Yorkshire. The very thing. She would do admirably.
Lucy found that her first duty was to read every morning the society
papers. There was the _Tatler_ with Eve's letter. There was the _Queen_
and the _Lady's Pictorial_, and several other smaller ones. These
papers appeared once a week, and it was Lucy's duty to see that they
stretched out, two hours every morning, from Saturday to Saturday.
Aunt Harriet had society at her fingers' ends, and the swiftly
succeeding marriages of Miss Elizabeth Asquith, Miss Violet Keppel,
and Lady Diana Manners just about this time gave her a great deal to
do. She had a scrap-book into which she pasted photographs and society
clippings. She labelled this "Our leaders," and Lucy's morning labours
were firmly linked to this scrap-book. Once she pasted an impressionist
portrait of Miss Keppel upside-down into the book, and saw for a full
five minutes what Aunt Harriet was like when she was really angry.
"I'd better go back to Hawkesworth!" Lucy cried, more defiant than she
would ever have suspected she could be. However, this was not at all
what Aunt Harriet wanted; Lucy was making herself extremely useful.
Lucy did not want it either. So peace was made. One result of this
snipping up of society was that Lucy began to be strangely conscious of
the world that was beating up around her.
A strange, queer, confused, dramatic world! For positively the first
time she was aware of some of the things that the war had done, of
what it had meant to many people, of the chasms that it had made in
relationships, the ruins in homes, and also of the heroisms that it had
emphasised--and, beyond all these individual things, she had a sense of
a new world rising painfully and slowly from the chaos of the old--but
rising! Yes, even through these ridiculous papers of her aunt's, she
could feel the first stirrings, the first trumpetings to battle, voices
sounding, only a little distance from her, wonderful new messages of
hope and ambition.
This affected her; she began to wonder how she could, through all these
four years of war, have stayed so quietly in her remote Hawkesworth.
She began to despise herself because she had stayed.
This excitement developed quickly into the same kind of premonition
that she had had before leaving Hawkesworth. Something was about
to happen to her! What would it be? She awoke every morning with a
strange, burning excitement in her throat, a confused, thick beating of
the heart.
Meanwhile, her month was drawing to its close, the days speeding on
through a glittering pageant of wonderful May weather, when the town
sparkled and quivered like a heap of quartz.
Simon Laud wrote that he was coming up to London to fetch her, to take
her back with him to Hawkesworth--"that he could not wait any longer
without seeing his pet."
When Lucy read those words she was strangely tranquillised. She did not
know what it was that, during these days, she had been wanting. What so
strangely had she been expecting? Whom?...
Her inexperience cried out to Simon Laud to come and defend her. She
had a time of true terror, frightened by Aunt Harriet, by London, by
strikes and wars and turbulences, above all, by her own self, and by
the discontents and longings and desires to which some influence seemed
to be urging her.
She wrote her first loving letter to Simon. She told him that she
hoped that they would be married very soon, and that indeed he was to
come and fetch her. It would be lovely to go back to Hawkesworth with
him. And when she had posted her letter, she sat on her bed in her
little room in Hortons with her face in her hands and cried bitterly,
desperately--why, she did not know. Mrs. Comstock saw that she had
been crying, and was moved by the child-like simplicity and innocence
of "poor stupid Lucy," as she called her to herself. She was moved to
unusual generosity, and suggested that they should go that night to a
symphony concert at the Queen's Hall--"Although they are going to play
Brahms, which I can't say that I approve of, because he was surely a
German, if anyone ever was, and haven't we got plenty of good music of
our own, I wonder? Anyway, you needn't listen to the Brahms, Lucy, if
you don't want to. You won't understand him, anyway. I expect he's one
of the most difficult of the composers, although he _is_ dead."
Lucy paid small attention. She had been out only twice with her aunt in
the evening during her London stay, once to a lecture on "Y.M.C.A. Work
at the Front," and once to a musical play, _Monsieur Beaucaire_. She
had liked the lecture, but she had adored _Beaucaire_, and she thought
that perhaps the Queen's Hall would be something of the same kind.
She had never in all her life been to a "Symphony Concert."
Aunt Harriet, armour-plated with jewellery, made an exciting contrast
with Lucy, whose blazing red-gold hair, large, rather puzzled eyes, and
plain white dress, needed exotic surroundings to emphasise their true
colour.
"You look very pretty, dear," said Aunt Harriet, who had made
that evening a little money on the Stock Exchange, and was happy
accordingly, "and quite excited, just as though you were expecting to
see your Simon."
"I wish he could have arrived to-night instead of to-morrow," said Lucy.
But did she? As they drove through the streets scattered with
star-dust, watched by a crimson moon, she sighed with that strange
confusion of happiness and unhappiness that seemed always to be hers
now. What was going to happen? Who was coming?... Only Simon?
She felt a return of her earlier breathless excitement as they pushed
their way through the crowd in the lobby. "Stalls this way....
Downstairs to the stalls." "To your right, madam. Second on your
right!" "Tickets, please ... tickets, please!"
Mrs. Comstock was a redoubtable general on these occasions, and pushed
people aside with her sharp elbows, and flashed indignant glances with
her fine eyes, and spread back her shoulders, and sparkled her rings....
Lucy wished that her aunt would not figure so prominently. She had
perhaps never before disliked her so thoroughly as she did to-night.
Then, out of the confusion and noise, there came peace. They were
settling down into their seats, and on every side of them were space
and light and colour, and a whispering murmur like the distant echo
of the sea on Scarborough beach. Lucy was suddenly happy. Her eyes
sparkled, her heart beat high. She looked about her and was pleasantly
stirred by the size of the building. "Not so large as the Albert Hall,"
she had heard someone say. Why, then, how truly enormous the Albert
Hall must be--and she thought suddenly, with a little kindly contempt,
of Simon, and how very small he would seem placed in the middle of the
stalls all by himself.
The musicians began to file into their seats; the lights turned up; the
strangest discordances, like the voices of spirits in a lost world,
filled the air; everywhere clumps of empty seats vanished ... people,
people from the ceiling to the floor.... A little man stepped forward,
stood upon his platform, bowed to the applause, held with uplifted
baton a moment's silence, then released upon the air the accustomed
harmonies of _Ruy Blas_.
To Lucy, who knew so little of life, that flooding melody of sound was
the loveliest discovery. She sat back very straight, eyes staring,
drinking it in, forgetting at once the lighted hall, her aunt,
everything. Only Simon Laud persisted with her. It seemed as though
to-night his figure refused to leave her.
He did not--oh! how instantly she knew it--fit in at all with the
music. It was as though he were trying to draw her away from it, trying
to persuade her that she did not really like it. He was interfering
with her happiness, buzzing at her ear like an insect. She shook her
head as though to drive this something away, and, even as she did so,
she was aware that something else was happening to her.
Someone was looking at her. She felt a truly desperate impatience at
this second interruption. Someone was trying to force her to turn her
head--yes, to the right. She was looking straight in front of her,
down to where the hard, thick back of the little conductor seemed
to centralise into itself, and again to distribute all the separate
streams of the music. Lucy was staring at that back as though her
maintaining her connection with it was her only link with the music.
How tiresome that she should not be allowed to concentrate on her
happiness! She violently dismissed the shadowy Simon; but he was
there, just behind her left shoulder. Then, with another effort of
will, she forced away from her that attraction on the right. She
_would_ not look! In all probability, it was imagination. She had known
in Hawkesworth, in church, at the Penny Readings, that sensation that
people were staring at her; simply her self-consciousness. She drove
it off; it came closer to her. It was as though a voice were saying in
her ear: "You _shall_ look to the right.... You _shall_ look to the
right...."
"I won't!... I won't!" she replied, setting her teeth. Then, to her
own pain and distress, she began to blush. She had always detested her
inevitable blushing, despised herself for her weakness; she could not
fight it; it was stronger than she. Surely all the hall was looking at
her. She felt as though soon she would be forced to run away and hide
in the comforting darkness of the street.
The music ceased; the little man was bowing; the tension was lifted;
everywhere a buzz of talk rose, as though everyone for the last ten
minutes had been hidden beneath a glass cover that was suddenly raised.
Late comers, with anxious glances, peered about for their seats. Lucy
turned around.
She saw at once that indeed it was true that someone had been staring
at her. Someone was staring at her now. She stared in return. She knew
that she should not. Her mother had always taught her that to stare at
a stranger was almost the worst thing that you could do. Nevertheless,
Lucy glanced. She could not help herself. He was looking at her as
though he knew her. When she looked in her turn the start that he
gave, the way that a half-smile hovered about his lips, was almost an
acknowledgment of recognition. And had she not known him before? He
seemed so familiar to her--and yet, of course, he could not be. The
conviction that she had been staring suddenly overwhelmed her with
shame, and she turned away. But now he was impressed upon her brain
as though she were looking at a picture of him--his large, rather
ugly, but extremely good-humoured face, his fair, rather untidy hair,
his fair eyebrows, his short, closely-clipped moustache, his black
dinner-jacket, and black bow tie--above all, that charming, doubtful,
half-questioning smile.
But why, if they had never met before, did he stare like that? Why did
...?
The applause had broken out again. A tall man holding a violin was
bowing. The Brahms violin concerto began.
She sat there in a puzzled and bewildered state. What had happened to
her? Who had come to her, lifting her, it seemed, out of her own body,
transforming her into some other creature? Was she feeling this merely
because a man had stared at her? She felt, as she sat there, the blush
still tingling in her cheeks, as though some precious part of her that
had left her many years ago had now suddenly returned to her.
She was Lucy Moon, the whole, complete Lucy Moon, for the first time....
The first movement of the symphony ended. She looked at once to her
right. His eyes were resting on her. She smiled.
How could she? Did she not know, had she not been told ever since
she could remember, that the most terrible thing that a girl could
do was to smile at a stranger? But he was _not_ a stranger. She knew
everything about him. She knew, although she had never heard him speak,
just what the tone of his voice would be, rough, a little Scotch, and
north country mixed ... not many words; he would be shy and would
stammer a little. At the end of the second movement she smiled again.
He smiled back and raised his eyebrows in a laughing question.
At the end of the symphony the air crackled with applause. The
violinist returned again and again, bowing. He seemed so small, and his
magnificent evening dress did not suit him. Evening dress, did not suit
Simon either. The applause died away. The orchestra disappeared through
the back of the hall.
"So hot," said Aunt Comstock, whom, until now, Lucy had utterly
forgotten. "A breath of air outside...."
They went into the passage. People were walking up and down. They
halted beside a swaying door. Mrs. Comstock stood there, her purple
bosom heaving up and down. "No air.... Can't think why they don't...."
Her fine eyes flashed. She had seen Mrs. Norris. Are not those things
arranged by God? Mrs. Norris, whom she had not seen for so many months.
Are not these things arranged by God? Lucy's friend was at her elbow.
He was as she had known that he would be; kind-eyed, clumsy perhaps,
his voice rough and hesitating.... He was alone. He stood turned a
little away from her, and she, as though she had been practising these
arts all her life, looked at the pea-green Mrs. Norris, and the pearls
that danced on her bony neck. The voices crept towards one another. No
one would have known that Lucy's mouth moved at all.
"Can't we get away somewhere?"
"I'm with my aunt."
"I _must_ see you."
"Yes."
"I _must_."
"I'm with my----"
"I know."
"Perhaps at the end----"
"No, give me somewhere to write to."
"It's----"
Aunt Comstock's voice came sailing like a pirate's ship.
"Amy, this is my niece, Lucy."
"How do you do? Are you enjoying London, dear?"
He was gone. Oh, he was _gone_! And no address.
She could have slain those two women, one so fat, and one so
thin--willingly, stabbed them. Perhaps she would lose him now.
They returned. "Something of Bizet's. He was French, Lucy. French or a
Spaniard.... Fancy Amy Norris--lost her looks, poor dear. Ah! I shall
like this. Better than that German."
Lucy heard no more music. Her heart beat in her throat, choking it.
Life had rushed towards her and filled her, or was it that she had
entered into life? She did not know. She only felt intensely proud,
like a queen entering her capital for the first time.... The concert
was over. Her aunt was a long time putting on her cloak; people stood
in their way, stupid, heavy, idiotic people. When they came into the
hall he was not there.... Yes ... he was close to them. For a moment,
in the thick crowd, he caught her hand. At the touch of his fingers,
rough and strong, upon hers, she seemed to soar above the crowd and to
look down upon them all with scornful happiness. He said something that
she could not catch, and then Aunt Comstock had hatefully enveloped
her. They were in a taxi, and all the world that had been roaring
around her was suddenly hushed. They reached Hortons. Lucy drank her
hot milk. Her aunt said:
"I do hope you enjoyed your concert, darling.... The Bizet was best."
She had undressed, and was lying on her bed, flat on her back, staring
up at the white ceiling, upon whose surface circles, flung from the
lights beyond the window, ran and quivered. She watched the circles,
but she was not thinking at all. She seemed to be lapped about by a sea
of warm happiness. She floated on this; she neither slept nor thought.
Early in the morning she sank into dreamless slumber.
She came down to breakfast tired with happy weariness. She found Simon
Laud waiting for her. She stared at him at first as though she had
never seen him before. He was not looking his best. He explained that
he had caught the night train at York. He was afraid that he had not
shaved nor washed, but that Mrs. Comstock had kindly said: "Have your
breakfast first ... with us. Lucy has just been longing for you."
Lucy took all this in at last. She saw the bright little room with the
sun pouring in, the breakfast things with the silver tea-pot and the
porridge, and Aunt Comstock in her pink tea-gown. She saw these things,
and then Simon Laud took a step towards her.
"Dear Lucy!" he said. That step showed her that there was no time to be
lost. Simon Laud must never touch her again. Never!
"Simon, I wasn't expecting you. But it's just as well, really. It will
get it over more quickly. I must tell you at once that I can't marry
you!"
Her first feeling after her little speech, which seemed in a strange
way not to have been made by herself at all, was that it was a great
shame to say such a thing to him when he was looking so dirty and so
unwashed. She broke out with a little cry:
"Oh, Simon, I'm sorry!"
"Lucy!" she heard Aunt Comstock exclaim.
Mr. Laud had no words. He looked truly pitiful as his long, rather
dirty fingers sought the tablecloth. Then he laughed.
"Why, Lucy, dear," he said. "What _do_ you mean?"
"I mean just what I've said," she answered. "We mustn't marry. It
would be wicked, because I don't love you. I knew from the first that
I didn't, but I had had no experience. I thought you must all know
better. I don't love you, and I never, never will."
"Lucy!" Aunt Comstock had risen. Lucy had the odd feeling that her
aunt had known that this moment would come, and had been waiting with
eager anticipation for it. "Do you know what you've said? But you
_can't_ know. You're out of your mind, you wicked girl. Here's Mr. Laud
come all the way from Yorkshire, by night too, just to be with you for
a day or two, and you receive him like this. Why, it was only last
night that you told me that you wished he would come--and now! You must
be out of your mind!"
"I'm not out of my mind," said Lucy, "and I'm sure Simon wouldn't wish
me to marry him if I didn't love him."
"Did she really say that last night, Mrs. Comstock?" said Mr. Laud.
"Indeed she did."
"Only last night?"
"Only last night."
"Ah well, then," he heaved a sigh of relief, "it's all right! I
surprised her this morning. I was too sudden. I frightened you, Lucy
darling. Have some breakfast, and you'll feel quite differently."
"She'd _better_ feel differently," said Mrs. Comstock, now trembling
with happy temper. "I don't know what she's said this mad thing for,
I'm sure, Mr. Laud, considering how she's been talking about you and
wanting you all this month; but a little consideration will soon teach
her."
"Do you know, Lucy, what they say of girls who try to behave as you're
behaving? Do you know the name the world has for what you're doing?
Have you thought for a moment of your father and mother, and what
they'll say?"
"No, I haven't," said Lucy. "But no thinking will make any difference.
Nothing will."
Nevertheless, there did flash through her mind then a picture of what
would happen at Hawkesworth. She had not thought of Hawkesworth; she
saw now the straggling street, the church, the high downs; she saw the
people who had known her since she was a baby, she saw her parents and
relations. Yes, there would be a bad time to go through. And for what?
Because for a moment a man whom she did not know, a man whom she would
never see again, had taken her hand in his! Perhaps she _was_ mad. She
did not know. She only knew that she would never marry Simon Laud.
"Oh, Simon, I'm so sorry! I know I'm behaving very badly. But it's
better to behave like that now than for us to be unhappy always."
He smiled at her with confidence.
"It's quite all right, Lucy, dear. I understand perfectly. You'll feel
quite differently very soon. I surprised you. I shouldn't have done it,
but I was so anxious to see you--a lover's privilege."
"Now," he ended with that happy optimistic air that he had developed so
happily in the pulpit, "let us all have breakfast, shall we?"
Lucy shook her head, and then turned and went back to her room.
A strange day followed. She sat there until luncheon, alone, hearing
the soft buzz of the traffic below her window, interrupted once by the
maid, who, after her permission had been given, moved softly about
the room, setting it to rights. It was not quite true, that she was
thinking during that time--it could scarcely be called thought--it
was rather that a succession of pictures passed before her brain--her
parents in every attitude of alarm and remonstrance and command, the
village and its gossips, long long imprisonment beneath those high
downs, and finally her parents again. How strange it was that last
night's little incident should have illuminated everything in her life,
and nothing more surely than her father and mother! How queer that a
strange young man, with whom in all her life she had exchanged only one
or two words, should have told her more of her own people than all her
living with them could!
She faced her people for the first time--she knew them to be hard,
narrow, provincial, selfish, intolerant. She loved them just as she had
done before, because with those other qualities, they were also tender,
compassionate, loving, unselfish.
But she saw now quite clearly what living with them would be.
She intended to ruin the peace and prosperity of her future life
because she had met a stranger (for a second) whom she would never see
again! That was the truth.... She accepted it without a tremor.
It was also true that that stranger, by meeting her, had made her live
for the first time.