XVIII

But this only lasted as long as his pipe lasted. When that was finished

he put her off his knee, and said he was now ready to gratify her

impatience and show her everything; they would go over the house first,

and then the garden and outbuildings.

No woman was ever less impatient than Lucy. However, she pulled her hat

straight and tried to seem all readiness and expectancy. She wished the

wind wouldn't howl so. What an extraordinary dreary place the library

was. Well, any place would be dreary at half-past two o'clock on such an

afternoon, without a fire and with the rain beating against the window,

and that dreadful terrace just outside.

Wemyss stooped to knock out the ashes of his pipe on the bars of the

empty grate, and Lucy carefully kept her head turned away from the

window and the terrace towards the other end of the room. The other end

was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and the books, in

neat rows and uniform editions, were packed so tightly in the shelves

that no one but an unusually determined reader would have the energy to

wrench one out. Reading was evidently not encouraged, for not only were

the books shut in behind glass doors, but the doors were kept locked and

the key hung on Wemyss's watch-chain. Lucy discovered this when Wemyss,

putting his pipe in his pocket, took her by the arm and walked her down

the room to admire the shelves. One of the volumes caught her eye, and

she tried to open the glass door to take it out and look at it. 'Why,'

she said surprised, 'it's locked.'

'Of course,' said Wemyss.

'Why but then nobody can get at them.'

'Precisely.'

'But----'

'People are so untrustworthy about books. I took pains to arrange mine

myself, and they're all in first-class-bindings and I don't want them

taken out and left lying anywhere by Tom, Dick, and Harry. If any one

wants to read they can come and ask me. Then I know exactly what is

taken, and can see that it is put back.' And he held up the key on his

watch-chain.

'But doesn't that rather discourage people?' asked Lucy, who was

accustomed to the most careless familiarity in intercourse with books,

to books loose everywhere, books overflowing out of their shelves, books

in every room, instantly accessible books, friendly books, books used to

being read aloud, with their hospitable pages falling open at a touch.

'All the better,' said Wemyss. '_I_ don't want anybody to read my books.'

Lucy laughed, though she was dismayed inside. 'Oh Everard--' she said,

'not even me?'

'You? You're different. You're my own little girl. Whenever you want to,

all you've got to do is to come and say, "Everard, your Lucy wants to

read," and I'll unlock the bookcase.'

'But--I shall be afraid I may be disturbing you.'

'People who love each other can't ever disturb each other.'

'That's true,' said Lucy.

'And they shouldn't ever be afraid of it.'

'I suppose they shouldn't,' said Lucy.

'So be simple, and when you want a thing just say so.' Lucy said she

would, and promised with many kisses to be simple, but she couldn't help

privately thinking it a difficult way of getting at a book.

'Macaulay, Dickens, Scott, Thackeray, British Poets, English Men of

Letters, _Encyclopædia Britannica_--I think there's about everything,'

said Wemyss, going over the gilt names on the backs of the volumes with

much satisfaction as he stood holding her in front of them. 'Whiteley's

did it for me. I said I had room for so and so many of such and such

sizes of the best modern writers in good bindings. I think they did it

very well, don't you little Love?'

'_Very_ well,' said Lucy, eyeing the shelves doubtfully.

She was of those who don't like the feel of prize books in their hands,

and all Wemyss's books might have been presented as prizes to deserving

schoolboys. They were handsome; their edges--she couldn't see them, but

she was sure--were marbled. They wouldn't open easily, and one's thumbs

would have to do a lot of tiring holding while one's eyes tried to peep

at the words tucked away towards the central crease. These were books

with which one took no liberties. She couldn't imagine idly turning

their pages in some lazy position out on the grass. Besides, their pages

wouldn't be idly turned; they would be, she was sure, obstinate with

expensiveness, stiff with the leather and gold of their covers.

Lucy stared at them, thinking all this so as not to think other things.

What she wanted to shut out was the wind sobbing up and down that

terrace behind her, and the consciousness of the fierce intermittent

squalls of rain beating on its flags, and the certainty that

upstairs.... Had Everard _no_ imagination, she thought, with a sudden

flare of rebellion, that he should expect her to use and to like using

the very sitting-room where Vera----

With a quick shiver she grabbed at her thoughts and caught them just in

time.

'Do you like Macaulay?' she asked, lingering in front of the bookcase,

for he was beginning to move her off towards the door.

'I haven't read him,' said Wemyss, still moving her.

'Which of all these do you like best?' she asked, holding back.

'Oh, I don't know,' said Wemyss, pausing a moment, pleased by her

evident interest in his books. 'I haven't much time for reading, you

must remember. I'm a busy man. By the time I've finished my day's work,

I'm not inclined for much more than the evening paper and a game of

bridge.'

'But what will you do with me, who don't play bridge?'

'Lord, you don't suppose I shall want to play bridge now that I've got

you?' he said. 'All I shall want is just to sit and look at you.'

She turned red with swift pleasure, and laughed, and hugged the arm that

was thrust through hers leading her to the door. How much she adored

him; when he said dear, absurd, simple things like that, how much she

adored him!

'Come upstairs now and take off your hat,' said Wemyss. 'I want to see

what my bobbed hair looks like in my home. Besides, aren't you dying to

see our bedroom?'

'Dying,' said Lucy, going up the oak staircase with a stout, determined

heart.

The bedroom was over the library, and was the same size and with the

same kind of window. Where the bookcase stood in the room below, stood

the bed: a double, or even a treble, bed, so very big was it, facing the

window past which Vera--it was no use, she couldn't get away from

Vera--having slept her appointed number of nights, fell and was

finished. But she wasn't finished. If only she had slipped away out of

memory, out of imagination, thought Lucy ... but she hadn't, she

hadn't--and this was her room, and that intelligent-eyed thin thing had

slept in it for years and years, and for years and years the

looking-glass had reflected her while she had dressed and undressed,

dressed and undressed before it--regularly, day after day, year after

year--oh, what a trouble--and her thin long hands had piled up her

hair--Lucy could see her sitting there piling it on the top of her small

head--sitting at the dressing-table in the window past which she was at

last to drop like a stone--horribly--ignominiously--all anyhow--and

everything in the room had been hers, every single thing in it had been

Vera's, including Ev----

Lucy made a violent lunge after her thoughts and strangled them.

Meanwhile Wemyss had shut the door and was standing looking at her

without moving.

'Well?' he said.

She turned to him nervously, her eyes still wide with the ridiculous

things she had been thinking.

'Well?' he said again.

She supposed he meant her to praise the room, so she hastily began,

saying what a good view there must be on a fine day, and how very

comfortable it was, such a nice big looking-glass--she loved a big

looking-glass--and such a nice sofa--she loved a nice sofa--and what a

very big bed--and what a lovely carpet----

'Well?' was all Wemyss said when her words came to an end.

'What is it, Everard?'

'I'm waiting,' he said.

'Waiting?'

'For my kiss.'

She ran to him.

'Yes,' he said, when she had kissed him, looking down at her solemnly,

'_I_ don't forget these things. _I_ don't forget that this is the first

time my own wife and I have stood together in our very own bedroom.'

'But Everard I didn't forget--I only----'

She cast about for something to say, her arms still round his neck, for

the last thing she could have told him was what she had been

thinking--oh, how he would have scolded her for being morbid, and oh,

how right he would have been!--and she ended by saying as lamely and as

unfortunately as she had said it in the château of Amboise--'I only

didn't remember.'

Luckily this time his attention had already wandered away from her.

'Isn't it a jolly room?' he said. 'Who's got far and away the best

bedroom in Strorley? And who's got a sitting-room all for herself, just

as jolly? And who spoils his little woman?'

Before she could answer, he loosened her hands from his neck and said,

'Come and look at yourself in the glass. Come and see how small you are

compared to the other things in the room.' And with his arms round her

shoulders he led her to the dressing-table.

'The other things?' laughed Lucy; but like a flame the thought was

leaping in her brain, 'Now what shall I do if when I look into this I

don't see myself but Vera? It's _accustomed_ to Vera....'

'Why, she's shutting her eyes. Open them, little Love,' said Wemyss,

standing with her before the glass and seeing in it that though he held

her in front of it she wasn't looking at the picture of wedded love he

and she made, but had got her eyes tight shut.

With his free hand he took off her hat and threw it on to the sofa; then

he laid his head on hers and said, 'Now look.'

Lucy obeyed; and when she saw the sweet picture in the glass the face of

the girl looking at her broke into its funny, charming smile, for

Everard at that moment was at his dearest, Everard boyishly loving her,

with his good-looking, unlined face so close to hers and his proud eyes

gazing at her. He and she seemed to set each other off; they were

becoming to each other.

Smiling at him in the glass, a smile tremulous with tenderness, she put

up her hand and stroked his face. 'Do you know who you've married?' she

asked, addressing the man in the glass.

'Yes,' said Wemyss, addressing the girl in the glass.

'No you don't,' she said. 'But I'll tell you. You've married the

completest of fools.'

'Now what has the little thing got into its head this time?' he said,

kissing her hair, and watching himself doing it.

'Everard, you must help me,' she murmured, holding his face tenderly

against hers. 'Please, my beloved, help me, teach me----'

'That, Mrs. Wemyss, is a very proper attitude in a wife,' he said. And

the four people laughed at each other, the two Lucys a little

quiveringly.

'Now come and I'll introduce you to your sitting-room,' he said,

disengaging himself. 'We'll have tea up there. The view is really

magnificent.'