He got over it, however. There was a particularly well-made soufflé, and
this helped. Also Lucy kept on looking at him very tenderly, and it was
the first time she had sat at his table in his beloved home, realising
the dreams of months that she should sit just there with him, his little
bobbed-haired Love, and gradually therefore he recovered and smiled at
her again.
But what power she had to hurt him, thought Wemyss; it was so great
because his love for her was so great. She should be very careful how
she wielded it. Her Everard was made very sensitive by his love.
He gazed at her solemnly, thinking this, while the plates were being
changed.
'What is it, Everard?' Lucy asked anxiously.
'I'm only thinking that I love you,' he said, laying his hand on hers.
She flushed with pleasure, and her face grew instantly happy. 'My
Everard,' she murmured, gazing back at him, forgetful in her pleasure of
the parlourmaid. How dear he was. How silly she was to be so much
distressed when he was offended. At the core he was so sound and simple.
At the core he was utterly her own dear lover. The rest was mere
incident, merest indifferent detail.
'We'll have coffee in the library,' he said to the parlourmaid, getting
up when he had finished his lunch and walking to the door. 'Come along,
little Love,' he called over his shoulder.
The library....
'Can't we--don't we--have coffee in the hall?' asked Lucy, getting up
slowly.
'No,' said Wemyss, who had paused before an enlarged photograph that
hung on the wall between the two windows, enlarged to life size.
He examined it a moment, and then drew his finger obliquely across the
glass from top to bottom. It then became evident that the picture needed
dusting.
'Look,' he said to the parlourmaid, pointing.
The parlourmaid looked.
'I notice you don't say anything,' he said to her after a silence in
which she continued to look, and Lucy, taken aback again, stood
uncertain by the chair she had got up from. 'I don't wonder. There's
nothing you can possibly say to excuse such carelessness.'
'Lizzie----' began the parlourmaid.
'Don't put it on to Lizzie.'
The parlourmaid ceased putting it on to Lizzie and was dumb.
'Come along, little Love,' said Wemyss, turning to Lucy and holding out
his hand. 'It makes one pretty sick, doesn't it, to see that not even
one's own father gets dusted.'
'Is that your father?' asked Lucy, hurrying to his side and offering no
opinion about dusting.
It could have been no one else's. It was Wemyss grown very enormous,
Wemyss grown very old, Wemyss displeased. The photograph had been so
arranged that wherever you moved to in the room Wemyss's father watched
you doing it. He had been watching Lucy from between those two windows
all through her first lunch, and must, flashed through Lucy's brain,
have watched Vera like that all through her last one.
'How long has he been there?' she asked, looking up into Wemyss's
father's displeased eyes which looked straight back into hers.
'Been there?' repeated Wemyss, drawing her away for he wanted his
coffee. 'How can I remember? Ever since I've lived here, I should think.
He died five years ago. He was a wonderful old man, nearly ninety. He
used to stay here a lot.'
Opposite this picture hung another, next to the door that led into the
hall,--also a photograph enlarged to life-size. Lucy had noticed neither
of these pictures when she came in, because the light from the windows
was in her eyes. Now, turning to go out through the door led by Wemyss,
she was faced by this one.
It was Vera. She knew at once; and if she hadn't she would have known
the next minute, because he told her.
'Vera,' he said, in a matter-of-fact tone, as it were introducing them.
'Vera,' repeated Lucy under her breath; and she and Vera--for this
photograph too followed one about with its eye--stared at each other.
It must have been taken about twelve years earlier, judging from the
clothes. She was standing, and in a day dress that yet had a train to it
trailing on the carpet, and loose, floppy sleeves and a high collar. She
looked very tall, and had long thin fingers. Her dark hair was drawn up
from her ears and piled on the top of her head. Her face was thin and
seemed to be chiefly eyes,--very big dark eyes that stared out of the
absurd picture in a kind of astonishment, and her mouth had a little
twist in it as though she were trying not to laugh.
Lucy looked at her without moving. So this was Vera. Of course. She had
known, though she had never constructed any image of her in her mind,
had carefully avoided doing it, that she would be like that. Only older;
the sort of Vera she must have been at forty when she died,--not
attractive like that, not a young woman. To Lucy at twenty-two, forty
seemed very old; at least, if you were a woman. In regard to men, since
she had fallen in love with some one of forty-five who was certainly the
youngest thing she had ever come across, she had rearranged her ideas of
age, but she still thought forty very old for a woman. Vera had been
thin and tall and dark in her idea of her, just as this Vera was thin
and tall and dark; but thin bonily, tall stoopingly, and her dark hair
was turning grey. In her idea of her, too, she was absent-minded and not
very intelligent; indeed, she was rather troublesomely unintelligent,
doing obstinate, foolish things, and at last doing that fatal,
obstinate, foolish thing which so dreadfully ended her. This Vera was
certainly intelligent. You couldn't have eyes like that and be a fool.
And the expression of her mouth,--what had she been trying not to laugh
at that day? Did she know she was going to be enlarged and hang for
years in the bleak dining-room facing her father-in-law, each of them
eyeing the other from their walls, while three times a day the originals
sat down beneath their own pictures at the long table and ate? Perhaps
she laughed, thought Lucy, because else she might have cried; only that
would have been silly, and she couldn't have been silly,--not with those
eyes, not with those straight, fine eyebrows. But would she, herself,
presently be photographed too and enlarged and hung there? There was
room next to Vera, room for just one more before the sideboard began.
How very odd it would be if she were hung up next to Vera, and every day
three times as she went out of the room was faced by Everard's wives.
And how quaint to watch one's clothes as the years went by leaving off
being pretty and growing more absurd. Really for such purposes one ought
to be just wrapped round in a shroud. Fashion didn't touch shrouds; they
always stayed the same. Besides, how suitable, thought Lucy, gazing into
her dead predecessor's eyes; one would only be taking time by the
forelock....
'Come along.' said Wemyss, drawing her away, 'I want my coffee. Don't
you think it's a good idea,' he went on, as he led her down the hall to
the library door, 'to have life-sized photographs instead of those
idiotic portraits that are never the least like people?'
'Oh, a _very_ good idea,' said Lucy mechanically, bracing herself for
the library. There was only one room in the house she dreaded going into
more than the library, and that was the sitting-room on the top
floor,--her sitting-room and Vera's.
'Next week we'll go to a photographer's in London and have my little
girl done,' said Wemyss, pushing open the library door, 'and then I'll
have her exactly as God made her, without some artist idiot or other
coming butting-in with his idea of her. God's idea of her is good enough
for me. They won't have to enlarge much,' he laughed, 'to get _you_
life-size, you midge. Vera was five foot ten. Now isn't this a fine
room? Look--there's the river. Isn't it jolly being so close to it? Come
round here--don't knock against my writing-table, now. Look--there's
only the towpath between the river and the garden. Lord, what a beastly
day. It might just as easily have been a beautiful spring day and us
having our coffee out on the terrace. Don't you think this is a
beautiful look-out,--so typically English with the beautiful green lawn
and the bit of lush grass along the towpath, and the river. There's no
river like it in the world, is there, little Love. Say you think it's
the most beautiful river in the world'--he hugged her close--'say you
think it's a hundred times better than that beastly French one we got so
sick of with all those châteaux.'
'Oh, a _hundred_ times better,' said Lucy.
They were standing at the window, with his arm round her shoulder. There
was just room for them between it and the writing-table. Outside was the
flagged terrace, and then a very green lawn with worms and blackbirds on
it and a flagged path down the middle leading to a little iron gate.
There was no willow hedge along the river end of the square garden, so
as not to interrupt the view,--only the iron railings and wire-netting.
Terra-cotta vases, which later on would be a blaze of geraniums, Wemyss
explained, stood at intervals on each side of the path. The river,
swollen and brown, slid past Wemyss's frontage very quickly that day,
for there had been much rain. The clouds scudding across the sky before
the wind were not in such a hurry but that every now and then they let
loose a violent gust of rain, soaking the flags of the terrace again just
as the wind had begun to dry them up. How could he stand there, she
thought, holding her tight so that she couldn't get away, making her
look out at the very place on those flags not two yards off....
But the next minute she thought how right he really was, how absolutely
the only way this was to do the thing. Perfect simplicity was the one
way to meet this situation successfully; and she herself was so far from
simplicity that here she was shrinking, not able to bear to look,
wanting only to hide her face,--oh, he was wonderful, and she was the
most ridiculous of fools.
She pressed very close to him, and put up her face to his, shutting her
eyes, for so she shut out the desolating garden with its foreground of
murderous flags.
'What is it, little Love?' asked Wemyss.
'Kiss me,' she said; and he laughed and kissed her, but hastily, because
he wanted her to go on admiring the view.
She still, however, held up her face. 'Kiss my eyes,' she whispered,
keeping them shut. 'They're tired----'
He laughed again, but with a slight impatience, and kissed her eyes; and
then, suddenly struck by her little blind face so close to his, the
strong light from the big window showing all its delicate curves and
delicious softnesses, his Lucy's face, his own little wife's, he kissed
her really, as she loved him to kiss her, becoming absorbed only in his
love.
'Oh, I love you, love you----' murmured Lucy, clinging to him, making
secret vows of sensibleness, of wholesomeness, of a determined,
unfailing future simplicity.
'Aren't we happy,' he said, pausing in his kisses to gaze down at what
was now his face, for was it not much more his than hers? Of course it
was his. She never saw it, except when she specially went to look, but
he saw it all the time; she only had duties in regard to it, but he was
on the higher plane of only having joys. She washed it, but he kissed
it. And he kissed it when he liked and as much as ever he liked. 'Isn't
it wonderful being married,' he said, gazing down at this delightful
thing that was his very own for ever.
'Oh--wonderful!' murmured Lucy, opening her eyes and gazing into his.
Her face broke into a charming smile. 'You have the dearest eyes,' she
said, putting up her finger and gently tracing his eyebrows with it.
Wemyss's eyes, full at that moment of love and pride, were certainly
dear eyes, but a noise at the other end of the room made Lucy jump so in
his arms, gave her apparently such a fright, that when he turned his
head to see who it was daring to interrupt them, daring to startle his
little girl like that, and beheld the parlourmaid, his eyes weren't dear
at all but very angry.
The parlourmaid had come in with the coffee; and seeing the two
interlaced figures against the light of the big window had pulled up
short, uncertain what to do. This pulling up had jerked a spoon off its
saucer onto the floor with a loud rattle because of the floor not having
a carpet on it and being of polished oak, and it was this noise that
made Lucy jump so excessively that her jump actually made Wemyss jump
too.
In the parlourmaid's untrained phraseology there had been a good deal of
billing and cooing during luncheon, and even in the hall before luncheon
there were examples of it, but what she found going on in the library
was enough to make anybody stop dead and upset things,--it was such, she
said afterwards in the kitchen, that if she didn't know for a fact that
they were really married she wouldn't have believed it. Married people
in the parlourmaid's experience didn't behave like that. What affection
there was was exhibited before, and not after, marriage. And she went on
to describe the way in which Wemyss--thus briefly and irreverently did
they talk of their master in the kitchen--had flown at her for having
come into the library. 'After telling me to,' she said. 'After saying,
"We'll 'ave coffee in the library."' And they all agreed, as they had
often before agreed, that if it weren't that he was in London half the
time they wouldn't stay in the place five minutes.
Meanwhile Wemyss and Lucy were sitting side by side in two enormous
chairs facing the unlit library fire drinking their coffee. The fire was
only lit in the evenings, explained Wemyss, after the 1st of April; the
weather ought to be warm enough by then to do without fires in the
daytime, and if it wasn't it was its own look-out.
'Why did you jump so?' he asked. 'You gave me such a start. I couldn't
think what was the matter.'
'I don't know,' said Lucy, faintly flushing. 'Perhaps'--she smiled at
him over the arm of the enormous chair in which she almost totally
disappeared--'because the maid caught us.'
'Caught us?'
'Being so particularly affectionate.'
'I like that,' said Wemyss. 'Fancy feeling guilty because you're being
affectionate to your own husband.'
'Oh, well,' laughed Lucy, 'don't forget I haven't had him long.'
'You're such a complicated little thing. I shall have to take you
seriously in hand and teach you to be natural. I can't have you having
all sorts of finicking ideas about not doing this and not doing the
other before servants. Servants don't matter. I never consider them.'
'I wish you had considered the poor parlourmaid,' said Lucy, seeing that
he was in an unoffended frame of mind. 'Why did you give her such a
dreadful scolding?'
'Why? Because she made you jump so. You couldn't have jumped more if you
had thought it was a ghost. I won't have your flesh being made to
creep.'
'But it crept much worse when I heard the things you said to her.'
'Nonsense. These people have to be kept in order. What did the woman
mean by coming in like that?'
'Why, you told her to bring us coffee.'
'But I didn't tell her to make an infernal noise by dropping spoons all
over the place.'
'That was because she got just as great a fright when she saw us as I
did when I heard her.'
'I don't care what she got. Her business is not to drop things. That's
what I pay her for. But look here--don't you go thinking such a lot of
tangled-up things and arguing. Do, for goodness sake, try and be
simple.'
'I feel _very_ simple,' said Lucy, smiling and putting out her hand to
him, for his face was clouding. 'Do you know, Everard, I believe what's
the matter with me is that I'm _too_ simple.'
Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting to being hurt. 'You
simple! You're the most complicated----'
'No I'm not. I've got the untutored mind and uncontrolled emotions of a
savage. That's really why I jumped.'
'Lord,' laughed Wemyss, 'listen to her how she talks. Anybody might
think she was clever, saying such big long words, if they didn't know
she was just her Everard's own little wife. Come here, my little
savage--come and sit on your husband's knee and tell him all about it.'
He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went into them and he rocked
her and said, 'There, there--was it a little untutored savage then----'
But she didn't tell him all about it, first because by now she knew that
to tell him all about anything was asking for trouble, and second
because he didn't really want to know. Everard, she was beginning to
realise with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was not merely
incurious as to other people's ideas and opinions, he definitely
preferred to be unconscious of them.
This was a great contrast to the restless curiosity and interest of her
father and his friends, to their insatiable hunger for discussion, for
argument; and it much surprised Lucy. Discussion was the very salt of
life for them,--a tireless exploration of each other's ideas, a clashing
of them together, and out of that clashing the creation of fresh ones.
To Everard, Lucy was beginning to perceive, discussion merely meant
contradiction, and he disliked contradiction, he disliked even
difference of opinion. 'There's only one way of looking at a thing, and
that's the right way,' as he said, 'so what's the good of such a lot of
talk?'
The right way was his way; and though he seemed by his direct,
unswerving methods to succeed in living mentally in a great calm, and
though after the fevers of her father's set this was to her immensely
restful, was it really a good thing? Didn't it cut one off from growth?
Didn't it shut one in an isolation? Wasn't it, frankly, rather like
death? Besides, she had doubts as to whether it were true that there was
only one way of looking at a thing, and couldn't quite believe that his
way was invariably the right way. But what did it matter after all,
thought Lucy, snuggled up on his knee with one arm round his neck,
compared to the great, glorious fact of their love? That at least was
indisputable and splendid. As to the rest, truth would go on being truth
whether Everard saw it or not; and if she were not going to be able to
talk over things with him she could anyhow kiss him, and how sweet that
was, thought Lucy. They understood each other perfectly when they
kissed. What, indeed, when such sweet means of communion existed, was
the good of a lot of talk?
'I believe you're asleep' said Wemyss, looking down at the face on his
breast.
'Sound,' said Lucy, smiling, her eyes shut.
'My baby.'
'My Everard.'