I was late for luncheon, very late. My mother had left the dining-room
when I got home, but I found her and she readily agreed to leave the
letters she was writing and to sit beside me while I ate. It was not, as
I discovered, sympathy for my exhaustion and hunger which induced her to
do this. She was full of curiosity.
“Well,” she said, as I helped myself to some cold pie, “what was it?”
“It was Lalage,” I said. “You guessed that before I started.”
There was a short pause during which I ate some of the cold pie and
found out that it was made, partly at least, of veal. Then my mother
asked another question:
“Has she hit on anything unexpected?”
“Quite. She wants Thormanby to insist on the Archdeacon marrying Miss
Battersby.”
Even my mother was startled. She gave utterance to an exclamation. If she
had been a man she would have sworn. I soothed her.
“It’s not really a bad scheme,” I said, “when you get over the first
shock. The Archdeacon, it appears, is bound to marry.”
“Why?”
“Timothy says so or seems to say so. Perhaps he didn’t really. What is
the proper, regularly received interpretation of that text which says
that a bishop is to be the husband of one wife?”
“There are several.”
“The Archdeacon is sure to know them, I suppose.”
“Oh, yes. He’s certain to know them.”
“He’ll want them all this afternoon. Lalage is going to him with that
text drawn in her hand. She’s also taking Miss Battersby, a wedding
ring, a cake, and a white satin dress. I’m speaking figuratively of
course.”
“I hope so. But however figurative your way of putting it may be, I’m
afraid that the Archdeacon won’t be pleased.”
“So I told Lalage. But she’s quite certain that he will. I should say
myself that he’d dislike it several degrees more than he did the simony.
I often think it’s a pity the Archdeacon hasn’t any sense of humour.”
“No sense of humour would enable him to see that joke.”
“Thormanby,” I said, “has been employed all morning in writing letters
and appealing telegrams to Miss Pettigrew; but even if she comes it
will be too late.”
“I hope Miss Battersby hasn’t been told.”
“Not by Lalage. She felt that there would be a certain want of delicacy
about mentioning the subject to her before the Archdeacon had spoken.”
My mother sighed.
“I’m very fond of Lalage,” she said, “but I sometimes wish she was----”
“That’s just what Miss Battersby was saying this morning. I quite agree
with you both that life would be simpler if she was, but of course she
isn’t.”
“What Lalage wants is some steadying influence.”
“Miss Pettigrew,” I said, “suggested marriage and babies. I don’t think
she mentioned the number of babies, but several would be required.”
My mother looked at me in much the same curious way that Miss Pettigrew
did on the afternoon when she and Canon Beresford visited me in
Ballygore. I felt the same unpleasant sense of embarrassment. I finished
my glass of claret hurriedly, and without waiting for coffee, which
would probably have been cold, left the room.
I went about the house and made a collection of the articles I was
likely to want during the afternoon. I got a hammock chair with a leg
rest, four cushions, a pipe, a tin of tobacco, three boxes of matches,
and a novel called “Sword Play.” With these in my arms I staggered
across the garden and made for the nook to which I had been looking
forward all day. A greenhouse which is not sacrificed to flowers is
a very pleasant place at certain seasons of the year. In Spring, for
instance, when the sun is shining, I am tempted to go out of doors. But
in Spring there are cold winds which drive me in again. In a greenhouse
the sun is available and the winds are excluded. If the heating
apparatus is out of order, as it fortunately was in the case of my
greenhouse, the temperature is warm without stuffiness. I shut the door,
pulled a tree fern in a heavy pot out of my way, and then found out by
experiment which of the angles of all at which a hammock chair can be
set is the most comfortable. Then I placed my four cushions just where
I like them, one under my head, one to give support to the small of my
back, one under my knees, and one beside my left elbow. I lit my pipe
and put the three boxes of matches in different places, so that when I
lost one I should, while searching for it, be pretty sure of coming on
another.
I opened my novel. It was about a gentleman of title who in his day
was the best swordsman in Europe. He loved a scornful lady with great
devotion. I read a hundred pages with dwindling attention and at last
found that I had failed to be excited by the story of a prolonged duel
fought on the brink of a precipice under the shadow of an ancient castle
from the battlements of which the scornful lady was looking down. I was
vexed with myself, for I ought to have enjoyed the scene. I turned back
and read the whole chapter through a second time. Again I somehow missed
the emotion of it. My mind kept wandering from the lunging figures
on the edge of the cliff to a vision of Lalage in a dark green dress
speeding along the road on her bicycle.
I laid down the novel and set myself the pleasant task of constructing
imaginary interviews between Lalage and the Archdeacon. As a rule I
enjoy the meanderings of my own imagination, and in this particular
case I had provided it with material to work on much more likely to be
entertaining than the gambols of the expert swordsman or the scorn of
the lady above him. But my imagination failed me. It pictured Lalage
well enough. But the Archdeacon, for some reason, would not take
shape. I tried again and again with no better success. The image of the
Archdeacon got fainter and fainter, until I could no longer visualize
even his apron.
At some time, perhaps an hour after I had settled down, I went to sleep.
I cannot fix, or make any attempt at fixing, the exact moment at which
the conscious effort of my imagination passed into the unconscious
romance building of dream. But I know that the Archdeacon totally
disappeared, while Lalage, a pleasantly stimulating personality, haunted
me. I may have slept for an hour, perhaps for an hour and a half.
Looking back on the afternoon, and arranging its chronology to fit
between two fixed points of time, I am certain that I did not sleep for
more than an hour and a half. It was a few minutes after two o’clock
when I sat down to luncheon. I am sure of this, because my mother’s eyes
sought the clock on the chimney piece when we entered the dining-room
together and mine followed them. It was half-past five when I saw her
again in the drawing-room. I am equally sure of this because she kissed
me three times rather effusively and I was obliged to look at my watch
to hide my embarrassment. Between two o’clock and half-past five I
lunched, smoked, read, slept, and played a part in certain other events.
This makes it tolerably certain that I did not sleep for more than an
hour and a half.
I was wakened by a most violent opening of the greenhouse door and a
tempestuous rustling of the fronds of the tree fern which I had moved.
Then Lalage burst upon me. My first impulse was to struggle out of my
chair and offer it to her. She made a motion of excited refusal and I
sank back again. I noticed, while she stood before me, that her face
was unusually flushed. It seemed to me that she was passing through what
McMeekin used to describe as a nerve storm. I leaped to the conclusion
that the Archdeacon had not taken kindly to the idea of a marriage with
Miss Battersby.
“How did it go off?” I asked.
“Where’s your mother?” said Lalage.
“She’s not here. You ought to know better than to expect her to be
here. Is she the sort of person who’d waste an afternoon in a disused
greenhouse? She’s probably doing something useful. Did you ask if she
was covering pots of marmalade?”
“I’ve searched everywhere.”
“Never mind. She’s certain to turn up for tea.”
Lalage stamped her foot.
“I want her at once,” she said. “I want to talk to her.”
“I’m a very poor substitute for my mother, of course; but if you can’t
find her----”
“I’ve something to tell her,” said Lalage; “something that I simply must
tell to somebody.”
“I shall be delighted to listen.”
Lalage hesitated. She was drumming with her fingers on the edge of an
empty flower pot as if she were playing a very rapid fantasia on the
piano. This seemed to me a further symptom of nerve storm. I encouraged
her to speak, as tactfully as I could.
“Has Miss Battersby,” I asked, “rebelled against her destiny?”
Lalage’s face suddenly puckered up in a very curious way. I should have
supposed that she was on the verge of tears if there existed any record
of her ever having shed tears. But no one, not even her most intimate
friend ever heard of her crying; so I came to the conclusion that she
wanted to laugh. I felt uneasy, for Lalage usually laughs without any
preliminary puckerings of her face.
“Perhaps,” I said, “you’re thinking of the Archdeacon.”
“I am,” said Lalage.
She spoke with a kind of gulp which in the case of Hilda would certainly
have been a premonitory symptom of tears.
“Did he make himself particularly disagreeable?”
Greatly to my relief Lalage laughed. It was an excited, unnatural laugh;
and it was not very far from crying. Still it was a laugh.
“No,” she said. “He made himself particularly agreeable, too agreeable;
at least he tried to.”
Then she laughed again and this time the laughing did her good. She
became calmer and sat down on the edge of an iron water tank which stood
in the corner of the greenhouse. I warned her of the danger of falling
in backward. I also offered her one of my cushions to put on the edge
of the tank, which looked to me hard. She laughed in reply. My cigarette
case was, very fortunately, in my pocket. I fished it out and asked her
if she would like to smoke. She took a cigarette and lit it. I could see
that it helped to calm her still further.
“Go on with your story,” I said.
“Where was I?”
She spoke quite naturally. The laughter and the cigarette, between them,
had saved her from the attack which for some time was threatening.
“You hadn’t actually begun,” I said. “You had only mentioned that the
Archdeacon was, or tried to be, unusually, even excessively, agreeable.”
“He was writing letters in his study,” said Lalage, “when I knocked at
the door and walked in on him. I apologized at once for interrupting
him.”
“You were quite right to do that.”
“He said he didn’t mind a bit; in fact, liked it. Then he looked like a
sheep. You know the sort of way a sheep looks?”
“Woolly?”
“Yes, frightfully, and worse. If I’d had a single grain of sense I
should have bolted at once. Anybody might have known what was coming.”
“I shouldn’t. In fact, even now that I know something came, I can’t
guess what it was.”
“Instead of bolting I brought out that text of Selby-Harrison’s. He took
it like a lamb.”
“Woolly again, only a softer kind of wool.”
“No,” said Lalage, “just meekly; though of course he went on being
woolly.”
“There are several authorized interpretations of that text. My mother
told me so this afternoon. I suppose the Archdeacon trotted them all out
one by one?”
“No. I told you he took it like a lamb. Why won’t you try to
understand?”
“Anyhow,” I said, “his demeanour was most encouraging to you. I suppose
you suggested Miss Battersby to him at once?”
“No, I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
Lalage hesitated again. She was not speaking with her usual fluency. I
tried to help her out.
“Something in the glare of his eyes stopped you,” I said. “I have always
heard that the human eye possesses remarkable power.”
“There was something in his eye,” said Lalage, “but not that.”
“It stopped you though, whatever it was.”
“No, it didn’t. I wish it had. I might have cleared out at once if it
had.”
“If it wasn’t a glare, what was it? I can’t imagine a better opportunity
for mentioning Miss Battersby.”
“He didn’t give me time.”
“Do you mean to say he pushed you out of the room?”
“No.”
“Did he swear? I once heard of an Archdeacon swearing under great
provocation.”
“No.”
“I can’t guess any more, Lalage. I really can’t. You’ll have to tell me
what it was.”
“He said he’d get married with pleasure.”
“But not to Miss Battersby. I’m beginning to see now. Who is the
fortunate lady?”
“Me,” said Lalage.
“Good heavens, Lalage! You don’t mean to say you’re going to marry the
Archdeacon?”
“You’re as bad as he was,” said Lalage angrily. “I won’t have such
horrid things said to me. I don’t see why I should be insulted by every
one I meet. I wish I hadn’t told you. I ought not to have told you. I
ought to have gone on looking for your mother until I found her.”
I was immensely, unreasonably relieved. The idea of Lalage marrying the
Archdeacon had been a severe shock to me.
“The Archdeacon’s proposal----” I said. “By the way, you couldn’t
possibly have been mistaken about it, could you? He really did?”
Lalage blushed hotly.
“He did,” she said, “really.”
“That just shows,” I said, “what a tremendous impression you made on him
with Selby-Harrison’s text.”
“It wasn’t the text at all. He said it had been the dearest wish of his
heart for years. Can you imagine anything more silly?”
“I see now,” I said, “why he always took such an interest in everything
you did and went out of his way to try to keep you from getting into
mischief. I think better of the Archdeacon than I ever did before.”
“He’s a horrid old beast.’”
“You can’t altogether blame him, though.”
“I can.”
“You oughtn’t to, for you don’t know----”
“I do know.”
“No, you don’t. Not what I mean.”
“What do you mean? I don’t believe you mean anything.”
“You don’t know the temptation.”
Lalage stared at me.
“I’ve often felt it myself,” I said.
Lalage still stared. She was usually quick witted, but on this occasion
she seemed to me to be positively dull. I suppose that the nerve storm
through which she had passed had temporarily paralyzed the gray matter
of her brain. I made an effort to explain myself.
“You must surely realize,” I said, “that the Archdeacon isn’t the only
man in the world who would like--any man would--in fact every man must,
unless he’s married already, and in that case he’s extremely sorry he
can’t. I certainly do.”
Lalage grew gradually more and more crimson in the face while I spoke.
At my last words she started violently, and for an instant I thought she
was going to fall into the tank.
“Do be careful,” I said. “I don’t want to have to dive in after you and
drag you, in a state of suspended animation, to the shore.”
Lalage recovered both her balance and her self-possession.
“Don’t you?” she said, with a peculiar smile.
“No, I don’t.”
“I should have thought,” she said, “that any man would. According to you
every man must, unless he is married already, and then he’d be extremely
sorry that he couldn’t.”
“In that sense of the words,” I said, “of course I do. Please fall in.”
“I daresay that the words don’t really mean what they seem to mean,”
said Lalage. “Lots of those words don’t. I must look them out in the
original Greek.”
After this our conversation became greatly confused. It had been
slightly confused before. The reference to the original Greek completed
the process. It seems to me, looking back on it now, that we sat there,
Lalage on the edge of the water tank, I in my hammock chair, and flung
illusive phrases and half finished sentences at each other, getting hot
by turns, and sometimes both together. At last Lalage left me, quite as
abruptly as she had come. I did not know what to make of the situation.
There had been nothing but conversation between us. I always understood
that under certain circumstances there is more than conversation,
sometimes a great deal more. I picked up “Sword Play,” which lay on the
ground beside me. It was the only authority to hand at the moment. I
turned to the last chapter and found that the fencing professor and
the haughty lady had not stopped short at conversation. When the lady
finally unbent she did so in a very thorough way and things had passed
between her and the gentleman which it made me hotter than ever to read
about. I had not stirred from my chair nor Lalage from the edge of the
tank while we talked. I was greatly perplexed. It was quite plain the
history of the swordsman and his lady was not the only one which made
me sure of this--that my love-making had not run the normal course. In
every single record of such doings which I had ever read a stage had
been reached at which the feelings of the performers had been expressed
in action rather than in words. Lalage and I had not got beyond words,
therefore I doubted whether I had really been love-making. I had
certainly got no definite statement from Lalage. She had not murmured
anything in low, sweet tones; nor had she allowed her head to droop
forward upon my breast in a manner eloquent of complete surrender. I was
far from blaming her for this omission. My hammock chair was adjusted
at such an angle that unless she had actually stood on her head I do not
see how she could have laid it against my breast, and if she had done
that her attitude would have been far from eloquent, besides being most
uncomfortable for me. Still the fact remained that I had not got by
word or attitude any clear indication from Lalage that my love-making,
supposing that I had been love-making, was agreeable to her.
Nor could I flatter myself that Lalage was any better off than I was. I
had fully intended to make myself quite clear. The Archdeacon’s example
had nerved me. I distinctly remembered the sensation of determining that
this one crisis at least should be brought to a definite issue, but I
was not at all sure that I had succeeded. The gentleman of title whose
exploits filled the three hundred pages of “Sword Play” said: “I love
you and have always loved you more than life”; and though he spoke in
a voice which was hoarse with passion, his meaning must have been
perfectly plain. I had not said, nor could I imagine that I ever should
say, anything half so heroic. Had I said anything at all or was Lalage
as perplexed as I was? This question troubled me, unnecessarily; for, as
it turned out afterward, Lalage was not at all perplexed.