XIV

Marriage, Lucy found, was different from what she had supposed; Everard

was different; everything was different. For one thing she was always

sleepy. For another she was never alone. She hadn't realised how

completely she would never be alone, or, if alone, not sure for one

minute to the other of going on being alone. Always in her life there

had been intervals during which she recuperated in solitude from any

strain; now there were none. Always there had been places she could go

to and rest in quietly, safe from interruption; now there were none. The

very sight of their room at the hotels they stayed at, with Wemyss's

suitcases and clothes piled on the chairs, and the table covered with

his brushes and shaving things, for he wouldn't have a dressing-room,

being too natural and wholesome, he explained, to want anything separate

from his own woman--the very sight of this room fatigued her. After a

day of churches, pictures and restaurants--he was a most conscientious

sightseer, besides being greatly interested in his meals--to come back

to this room wasn't rest but further fatigue. Wemyss, who was never

tired and slept wonderfully--it was the soundness of his sleep that kept

her awake, because she wasn't used to hearing sound sleep so

close--would fling himself into the one easy-chair and pull her on to

his knee, and having kissed her a great many times he would ruffle her

hair, and then when it was all on ends like a boy's coming out of a

bath, look at her with the pride of possession and say, 'There's a wife

for a respectable British business man to have! Mrs. Wemyss, aren't you

ashamed of yourself?' And then there would be more kissing,--jovial,

gluttonous kisses, that made her skin rough and chapped.

'Baby,' she would say, feebly struggling, and smiling a little wearily.

Yes, he was a baby, a dear, high-spirited baby, but a baby now at very

close quarters and one that went on all the time. You couldn't put him

in a cot and give him a bottle and say, 'There now,' and then sit down

quietly to a little sewing; you didn't have Sundays out; you were never,

day or night, an instant off duty. Lucy couldn't count the number of

times a day she had to answer the question, 'Who's my own little wife?'

At first she answered it with laughing ecstasy, running into his

outstretched arms, but very soon that fatal sleepiness set in and

remained with her for the whole of her honeymoon, and she really felt

too tired sometimes to get the ecstasy she quickly got to know was

expected of her into her voice. She loved him, she was indeed his own

little wife, but constantly to answer this and questions like it

satisfactorily was a great exertion. Yet if there was a shadow of

hesitation before she answered, a hair's-breadth of delay owing to her

thoughts having momentarily wandered, Wemyss was upset, and she had to

spend quite a long time reassuring him with the fondest whispers and

caresses. Her thoughts mustn't wander, she had discovered; her thoughts

were to be his as well as all the rest of her. Was ever a girl so much

loved? she asked herself, astonished and proud; but, on the other hand,

she was dreadfully sleepy.

Any thinking she did had to be done at night, when she lay awake because

of the immense emphasis with which Wemyss slept, and she hadn't been

married a week before she was reflecting what a bad arrangement it was,

the way ecstasy seemed to have no staying power. Also it oughtn't to

begin, she considered, at its topmost height and accordingly not be able

to move except downwards. If one could only start modestly in marriage

with very little of it and work steadily upwards, taking one's time,

knowing there was more and more to come, it would be much better she

thought. No doubt it would go on longer if one slept better and hadn't,

consequently, got headaches. Everard's ecstasy went on. Perhaps by

ecstasy she really meant high spirits, and Everard was beside himself

with high spirits.

Wemyss was indeed the typical bridegroom of the Psalms, issuing forth

rejoicing from his chamber. Lucy wished she could issue forth from it

rejoicing too. She was vexed with herself for being so stupidly sleepy,

for not being able to get used to the noise beside her at night and go

to sleep as naturally as she did in Eaton Terrace, in spite of the horns

of taxis. It wasn't fair to Everard, she felt, not to find a wife in the

morning matching him in spirits. Perhaps, however, this was a condition

peculiar to honeymoons, and marriage, once the honeymoon was over, would

be a more tranquil state. Things would settle down when they were back

in England, to a different, more separated life in which there would be

time to rest, time to think; time to remember, while he was away at his

office, how deeply she loved him. And surely she would learn to sleep;

and once she slept properly she would be able to answer his loving

questions throughout the day with more real _élan_.

But,--there in England waiting for her, inevitable, no longer to be put

off or avoided, was The Willows. Whenever her thoughts reached that

house they gave a little jump and tried to slink away. She was ashamed

of herself, it was ridiculous, and Everard's attitude was plainly the

sensible one, and if he could adopt it surely she, who hadn't gone

through that terrible afternoon last July, could; yet she failed to see

herself in The Willows, she failed altogether to imagine it. How, for

instance, was she going to sit on that terrace,--'We always have tea in

fine weather on the terrace,' Wemyss had casually remarked, apparently

quite untouched by the least memory--how was she going to have tea on

the very flags perhaps where.... Her thoughts slunk away; but not before

one of them had sent a curdling whisper through her mind, '_The tea

would taste of blood_.'

Well, this was sleeplessness. She never in her life had had that sort of

absurd thought. It was just that she didn't sleep, and so her brain was

relaxed and let the reins of her thinking go slack. The day her father

died, it's true, when it began to be evening and she was afraid of the

night alone with him in his mysterious indifference, she had begun

thinking absurdly, but Everard had come and saved her. He could save her

from this too if she could tell him; only she couldn't tell him. How

could she spoil his joy in his home? It was the thing he loved next best

to her.

As the honeymoon went on and Wemyss's ecstasies a little subsided, as he

began to tire of so many trains--after Paris they did the châteaux

country--and hotels and waiters and taxis and restaurants, and the

cooking which he had at first enjoyed now only increased his longing at

every meal for a plain English steak and boiled potatoes, he talked more

and more of The Willows. With almost the same eagerness as that which

had so much enchanted and moved her before their marriage when he talked

of their wedding day, he now talked of The Willows and the day when he

would show it to her. He counted the days now to that day. The 4th of

April; his birthday; on that happy day he would lead his little wife

into the home he loved. How could she, when he talked like that, do

anything but pretend enthusiasm and looking forward? He had apparently

entirely forgotten what she had told him about her reluctance to go

there at Christmas. She was astonished that, when the first bliss of

being married to her had worn off and his thoughts were free for this

other thing he so much loved, his home, he didn't approach it with more

care for what he must know was her feeling about it. She was still more

astonished when she realised that he had entirely forgotten her feeling

about it. It would be, she felt, impossible to shadow his happiness at

the prospect of showing her his home by any reminder of her reluctance.

Besides, she was certainly going to have to live at The Willows, so what

was the use of talking?

'I suppose,' she did say hesitatingly one day when he was describing it

to her for the hundredth time, for it was his habit to describe the same

thing often, 'you've changed your room----?'

They were sitting at the moment, resting after the climb up, on one of

the terraces of the Château of Amboise, with a view across the Loire of

an immense horizon, and Wemyss had been comparing it, to its

disadvantage, when he recovered his breath, with the view from his

bedroom window at The Willows. It wasn't very nice weather, and they

both were cold and tired, and it was still only eleven o'clock in the

morning.

'Change my room? What room?' he asked.

'Your--the room you and--the room you slept in.'

'My bedroom? I should think not. It's the best room in the house. Why do

you think I've changed it?' And he looked at her with a surprised face.

'Oh, I don't know,' said Lucy, taking refuge in stroking his hand. 'I

only thought----'

An inkling of what was in her mind penetrated into his, and his voice

went grave.

'You mustn't think,' he said. 'You mustn't be morbid. Now Lucy, I can't

have that. It will spoil everything if you let yourself be morbid. And

you promised me before our marriage you wouldn't be. Have you

forgotten?'

He turned to her and took her face in both his hands and searched her

eyes with his own very solemn ones, while the woman who was conducting

them over the castle went to the low parapet, and stood with her back to

them studying the view and yawning.

'Oh, Everard--of course I haven't forgotten. I've not forgotten anything

I promised you, and never will. But--have I got to go into that bedroom

too?'

He was really astonished. 'Have you got to go into that bedroom too?' he

repeated, staring at the face enclosed in his two big hands. It looked

extraordinarily pretty like that, like a small flower in its delicate

whiteness next to his discoloured, middle-aged hands, and her mouth

since her marriage seemed to have become an even more vivid red than it

used to be, and her eyes were young enough to be made more beautiful

instead of less by the languor of want of sleep. 'Well, I should think

so. Aren't you my wife?'

'Yes,' said Lucy. 'But----'

'Now, Lucy, I'll have no buts,' he said, with his most serious air,

kissing her on the cheek, she had discovered that just that kind of kiss

was a rebuke. 'Those buts of yours butt in----'

He stopped, struck by what he had said.

'I think that was rather amusing--don't you?' he asked, suddenly

smiling.

'Oh yes--very,' said Lucy eagerly, smiling too, delighted that he should

switch off from solemnity.

He kissed her again,--this time a real kiss, on her funny, charming

mouth.

'I suppose you'll admit,' he said, laughing and squeezing up her face

into a quaint crumpled shape, 'that either you're my wife or not my

wife, and that if you're my wife----'

'Oh, I'm _that_ all right,' laughed Lucy.

'Then you share my room. None of these damned new-fangled notions for

me, young woman.'

'Oh, but I didn't mean----'

'What? Another but?' he exclaimed, pouncing down on to her mouth and

stopping it with an enormous kiss.

'_Monsieur et Madame se refroidiront_,' said the woman, turning round

and drawing her shawl closer over her chest as a gust of chilly wind

swept over the terrace.

They were honeymooners, poor creatures, and therefore one had patience;

but even honeymooners oughtn't to wish to embrace in a cold wind on an

exposed terrace of a château round which they were being conducted by a

woman who was in a hurry to return to the preparation of her Sunday

dinner. For such purposes hotels were provided, and the shelter of a

comfortable warm room. She had supposed them to be _père et fille_ when

first she admitted them, but was soon aware of their real relationship.

'_Il doit être bien riche_,' had been her conclusion.

'Come along, come along,' said Wemyss, getting up quickly, for he too

felt the gust of cold wind. 'Let's finish the château or we'll be late

for lunch. I wish they hadn't preserved so many of these places--one

would have been quite enough to show us the sort of thing.'

'But we needn't go and look at them all,' said Lucy.

'Oh yes we must. We've arranged to.'

'But Everard----' began Lucy, following after him as he followed after

the conductress, who had a way of darting out of sight round corners.

'This woman's like a lizard,' panted Wemyss, arriving round a corner

only to see her disappear through an arch. 'Won't we be happy when it's

time to go back to England and not have to see any more sights.'

'But why don't we go back now, if you feel like it?' asked Lucy,

trotting after him as he on his big legs pursued the retreating

conductress, and anxious to show him, by eagerness to go sooner to The

Willows than was arranged, that she wasn't being morbid.

'Why, you know we can't leave before the 3rd of April,' said Wemyss,

over his shoulder. 'It's all settled.'

'But can't it be unsettled?'

'What, and upset all the plans, and arrive home before my birthday?' He

stopped and turned round to stare at her. 'Really, my dear----' he said.

She had discovered that my dear was a term of rebuke.

'Oh yes--of course,' she said hastily, 'I forgot about your birthday.'

At that Wemyss stared at her harder than ever; incredulously, in fact.

Forgot about his birthday? _Lucy_ had forgotten? If it had been Vera,

now--but Lucy? He was deeply hurt. He was so much hurt that he stood

quite still, and the conductress was obliged, on discovering that she

was no longer being followed, to wait once more for the honeymooners;

which she did, clutching her shawl round her abundant French chest and

shivering.

What had she said, Lucy hurriedly asked herself, nipping over her last

words in her mind, for she had learned by now what he looked like when

he was hurt. Oh yes,--the birthday. How stupid of her. But it was

because birthdays in her family were so unimportant, and nobody had

minded whether they were remembered or not.

'I didn't mean that,' she said earnestly, laying her hand on his breast.

'Of course I hadn't forgotten anything so precious. It only had--well,

you know what even the most wonderful things do sometimes--it--it had

escaped my memory.'

'Lucy! Escaped your memory? The day to which you owe your husband?'

Wemyss said this with such an exaggerated solemnity, such an immense

pomposity, that she thought he was in fun and hadn't really minded about

the birthday at all; and, eager to meet every mood of his, she laughed.

Relieved, she was so unfortunate as to laugh merrily.

To her consternation, after a moment's further stare he turned his back

on her without a word and walked on.

Then she realised what she had done, that she had laughed--oh, how

dreadful!--in the wrong place, and she ran after him and put her arm

through his, and tried to lay her cheek against his sleeve, which was

difficult because of the way their paces didn't match and also because

he took no notice of her, and said, 'Baby--baby--were his dear feelings

hurt, then?' and coaxed him.

But he wouldn't be coaxed. She had wounded him too deeply,--laughing, he

said to himself, at what was to him the most sacred thing in life, the

fact that he was her husband, that she was his wife.

'Oh, Everard,' she murmured at last, withdrawing her arm, giving up,

'don't spoil our day.'

Spoil their day? He? That finished it.

He didn't speak to her again till night. Then, in bed, after she had

cried bitterly for a long while, because she couldn't make out what

really had happened, and she loved him so much, and wouldn't hurt him

for the world, and was heart-broken because she had, and anyhow was

tired out, he at last turned to her and took her to his arms again and

forgave her.

'I can't live,' sobbed Lucy, 'I can't live--if you don't go on loving

me--if we don't understand----'

'My little Love,' said Wemyss, melted by the way her small body was

shaking in his arms, and rather frightened, too, at the excess of her

woe. 'My little Love don't. You mustn't. Your Everard loves you, and you

mustn't give way like this. You'll be ill. Think how miserable you'd

make him then.'

And in the dark he kissed away her tears, and held her close till her

sobbing quieted down; and presently, held close like that, his kisses

shutting her smarting eyes, she now the baby comforted and reassured,

and he the soothing nurse, she fell asleep, and for the first time since

her marriage slept all night.