The Climber/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X
Maud had scarcely gone when her husband came in. Most opportunely as he entered she had just taken up a volume of the Kelmscott Chaucer, and was reading it. The action had not been entirely spontaneous; she expected him to be back very soon, and it would certainly please him to see her already using his gift to her. Lucia never neglected the small change of kindness and pleasure-giving, just as she never forgot to tip a porter. She just smiled and nodded at him as he entered, and went on reading; it would please him better to see her absorbed in the book than that she should pay any attention to him. He paused behind her chair a moment, saw what she was reading, and passed on very complacently to the tea-table.
Then Lucia roused herself.
"Yes, dear, I'll come and give you tea in a moment," she said; "but, oh, Edgar, I must just read you a line. Listen—
"'Whan Zephiras eek with his swetë breathe
Enspired hath in every holte and heethe
The tender croppës and the yongë sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfë coura ironne
And smalë fowlës maken melodie,
That slepen alle the night with open eye.'
Oh, is not spring there? Do you see the daffodils? There, I will give you tea. I won't neglect you for the daffodils. Ring, darling, will you? This tea has been standing, and I will not permit you to drink tepid tannin."
He laid his hand on her head a moment.
"Yes, I see my daffodils," he said.
He rang the bell and came back to her.
"What magic there is in words," he said. "Words always seem to me to have a music and a colour of their own as melodious as a symphony, as vivid as a Giorgione. It isn't only what they mean; it is the words themselves. Let me cap your Chaucer—
"'Der Winter floh, und Lenz ist Da.'"
"And you have cooped yourself up all afternoon?" he asked.
"I haven't stirred. I expected Maud, you see, and then I had my new friends." And she nodded and just kissed her hand to the regiment of the Kelmscott Press.
"Oh, and it is too exciting about Maud," she said. "She told me that it was to be announced to-morrow, and that I might tell you now. She's engaged. Guess? No, don't guess, because you might guess right, and then I should be deprived of the pleasure of telling you. Charlie Lindsay, my scarcely-seen cousin."
"Ah, lucky fellow!" said Edgar. "I am delighted though; Miss Eddis will be exactly the wife for him. Charlie is too much of the disinterested critic with regard to life, instead of being an actor in it. She will make a man of him instead of letting him remain a Skimpole all his life. I like Charlie very much, but he is a little Skimpolian."
"Oh, but I hope Maud won't entirely cure him," she said. "Skimpoles aren't common; I think they should be preserved. It is rather nice that there should be a few people with no sense of duty or responsibility. They make one feel young."
Edgar did not in the least agree with this.
"We will discuss that," he said (and instantly Lucia felt as if she never wanted to hear the word Skimpole again), "though I do not think you could really justify what you say, dear. By the way, a curious coincidence. The first man I saw to-day at the club was Charlie, and being afraid I might not see anyone else, I asked him to dine to-night to fill your vacant place. He had another engagement, and though I urged him not to throw it over when I heard that, he really insisted on coming. He said the other engagement was a nightmare, and he proposed to have a sharp attack of influenza, especially as he is going out of town to-morrow for a few days. It was a little annoying, for at that moment Gerald Plympton came in, whom I would far rather have secured for you if possible."
"Oh, Edgar," said she, "I am glad you didn't. He would have had to sit next me, and he is heavy—heavy. He has a greater sense of responsibility than anyone I know."
Edgar considered this.
"I think that is why I like him," he said. "He spends the whole day in his office, and personally reads every paragraph that is to come out in the Daily Review."
"I should expect that," said Lucia incisively. "I know now why it is so unreadable. It reeks of responsibility."
"You are rather down on a sense of responsibility to-day," he remarked.
"Yes; I think it is the fault of Chaucer. I like the 'smalë fowlës maken melodie' better. They are so improvident and irresponsible. Sometimes, do you know, sometimes I wish you had been a labourer, with eighteen shillings a week. Then on Friday evening we would have gone to the Queen's Hall with the last two shillings, and have had nothing to eat till you got your wages on Saturday. Oh, Edgar, it is delightful to be rich, but I wonder sometimes whether it would not be more exquisite to be poor. To do things we can't really afford! I think one would value them more. If you just manage to get something, you like it better than if you get it quite easily."
Lucia had gone too far; she had roused what she did not intend to rouse.
"How often have I wished that!" he said. "I wish I had been a breaker of stones on the road opposite Fair View. You and I would have been together now, just the same. And we could have denied ourselves for the sake of what we loved. You would have whistled the 'Unfinished' to me again. You whistled it from an upper window when I called on the day of our cricket-match. So it has become not Schubert only, but you and Schubert."
Lucia laughed.
"After all, Schubert began," she said. "You might call it Schubert and me, not me and Schubert."
"But he left it unfinished until you came," said Edgar.
He felt what he said; it was a lover's speech, but he could not help being neat over it.
Lover and killer of romance! Lucia hardly knew in which character she found him most difficult to respond to. Sometimes he killed external romance, when she believed it was just on the point of becoming luminous to her; sometimes, as now, he suddenly hoisted the flag of internal romance, and she had to be the wind to make it wave. And there was not a breath of air in all her welkin. She had, so she pictured it to herself, to go swarming up the flagstaff, and with her hand pull out the flag, and hold it extended, so that he might think it was waving. Never yet had she failed to do that; her arm might ache, she might be busy with other things, but she never failed to agitate the flag. That was clearly her business; it was her part of the bargain. But she wondered sometimes, and wondered now, how long she would have to go on doing this, for how many years more he would continue hoisting the flag for her to wave. In course of time she supposed he would cease to be her "swain," as his favourite Elizabethans phrased it, and she looked forward to the more prosaic years with more than equanimity. Just now, too, the whole impression made on her by Maud caused her to be both envious and impatient of romance. Maud was haloed with it; it shone from her. And Lucia, though she had never authentically felt it, recognized its authenticity in others. It was so common, too; it was a thousand pities she had missed it. The people who changed hats knew what it was, the couples who moored punts underneath the trees of Cliveden knew it; it was only she who had to contrive to appear to know it. Others had not to think; they just did as they felt inclined, changed hats or what not, and that was somehow the genuine thing. Even Edgar's invariable neatness did not blind her to the fact that he, too, was genuine. Though it was no beacon flaring from the windy mountain-top, like that which led Siegfried to Brunnhilde, that burned in him, it was the authentic fire, though burning, so to speak, in a neat grate with polished fireirons, and a small broom to sweep the hearth with.
Lucia, a little impatient, a little envious, failed to wave the flag for the first time.
"Oh, my dear," she said, "your compliments are charming, but are they quite, quite sincere? If you said I wrote for you a third verse of 'Her golden hair was hanging down her back," I could understand, but when you tell me that I have finished the 'Unfinished' for you, you strain me a little."
She saw his face fall, she saw a pained surprise come into his eyes, and instantly repented of her impatience. It was always a pity to disappoint people, unless to fulfil their expectations implied an exertion disproportionate to the pleasure you gave, and she instantly attempted to remedy her mistake. She sat down by him and took up his hand.
"It is so strange, so incredible to me, to think that I, this foolish flippant I, can be that to you," she said. "Sometimes I can't believe it, because it makes me out to be such a wonderful person. I am sure I disappoint you sometimes, and to finish the 'Unfinished' for you would imply that I was never disappointing."
"You could only disappoint me by doubting my love for you," he said.
That would have been enough; unfortunately, he completed the sentiment.
"Or by making it possible for me to doubt yours," he added.
That was tiresome; Lucia had to think very rapidly and very intently before she replied. Then she withdrew her hand.
"Edgar!" she said, with an excellent suspicion of tremolo.
He softened a little, but he still felt that his reply had been just.
"But, my darling, what was it you said to me? That you could not imagine being more to me than the third verse of some dreadful vulgar song. What am I to gather from that? Surely that you believe that my love for you is not the wonderful thing it is. You make out that the very foundations of our life are unsound."
Anxious as she was to close this rift without delay, she could not help mentally criticizing what he said. It was like him—oh, so like him!—to say "a dreadful vulgar song." He had to put that in. Then she attacked the main question with extreme adroitness.
"I imply nothing of the sort," she said, speaking quickly. "I have told you already what I meant. I never doubted your love for me. It is left for you to do that, if you choose. I only wondered—as I told you—how it can be possible that I should inspire it."
She could not have done better than to seem deeply hurt. That appealed not only to his love, but to his manhood. So she forgave him, and promised that the thing should pass out of her memory, and be as if it had never been. It had not been he who had spoken.
But for him now, as well as for her, a cloud had risen on the horizon. Just for the moment, in this renewed sunshine, it was invisible, but it was there, and some day it would quite certainly appear again. Just now he could with all sincerity accept his wife's explanation of what had so wounded him, for, indeed, it was admirably reasonable. But that which she had explained so well had gone deeper than her explanation of it. She had but smeared paint over the rift. But he did not know that now.
Lucia never did things by halves, and since she had promised to expunge the incident altogether, it was part of the fulfilment of her bargain that she should be in the highest and most exuberant spirits at their little dinner that night; and she came downstairs prepared both to enjoy herself and show Edgar that her forgiveness included that higher power of forgiveness which is to forget.
"Oh, it is easy to forgive," she had said to him once; "it only requires a sort of cow-like meekness to do that; but the forgiveness that counts forgets as well, and to forget an injury does not mean that you have a bad memory, but that by an effort you turn the thought of it out of your mind. It will come back, and you will have to do it again, until it sees that your mind is no place for it. So remember, whenever I injure you, I expect to be forgiven like that."
It was this that she was quite prepared to do now, for even an hour only after the occurrence she believed, though without conscious self-persuasion, that she had something to forgive. She forgot also, with swift and astonishing completeness, the amazing cheapness of her own share in it all, her feigned reproaches to him, her half-choking justification of herself. All that she remembered (and regretted) was the moment when she had been betrayed into candour and frankness. She must guard against that happening again. For that, in order to insure the success and happiness of her marriage, for his sake no less than for her own, was the wisest and most sensible way to behave. He had married her, it is true, under the slight misapprehension that she loved him, and for two years she had, with the exercise of a little tact and thoughtfulness, kept that illusion undeniably alive. It would be, so to speak, grown-up murder to kill it now; if she had meant to kill it, it would have been better to have committed infanticide, and have done so immediately after her marriage. To be frank with him now could only lead to unhappiness and misery for him and great awkwardness and discomfort, even shame, for herself. Frankness was the refuge of the tactless, thought Lucia, as her maid clasped her pearl collar round her tall white neck; they blurted out unpleasant truths because they had not the finesse requisite to play a delicate part. Honesty was the best policy only of those who were not politicians.
Charlie Lindsay, a thing not rare with him, was the last to arrive. To-night he was a notable last, and made a somewhat talkative entrance, with the butler close on his back to say that dinner was ready.
"I am so sorry," he said to Lucia, "but I thought Edgar said half-past eight."
Here his eye fell on the clock.
"That won't do," he said. "It would make me a quarter of an hour early, instead of being a quarter of an hour late. Tiresome as it is to be late, it is better than being early."
He broke out into a perfectly natural, boyish laugh, as he shook hands.
"I will try to think of another excuse, if you wish," he said.
Lucia laughed too; there was something extraordinarily attractive in his complete lack of shame.
"Yes, please, I want another excuse," she said. "Try to do better, won't you? Will you take in Mrs. Alderson and deposit yourself between her and me? You know her?"
"Yes, rather. I am in luck."
Lucia devoted herself at first to her right-hand neighbour and talked Strauss with him. Fay Alderson and Lindsay on her other side appeared both to be talking at once, with shouts of laughter, and it was only a sense of duty that kept her from joining them.
"Nine bars of orchestra," said Lord Heron impressively, "and into those nine bars he has put all the odour of the East. It has been a hot day, and the air is full of the fatigue of its hours. Then the curtain goes up on the courtyard of Herod's palace. There is the green tank behind, the young Syrian and the page of Herodias are talking together. The short tragic phrases fall drop by bitter drop like blood, hot and corrosive."
"How wonderful!" said Lucia absently, for from the other side came the most enchanting fragments.
"So she put the peacock in the cupboard, don't you remember?" said Fay Alderson; and Charlie's laugh showed that he did.
Elsewhere, too, round the table everyone seemed to be full of laughter, all except Edgar, who was saying something about the photographic instantaneousness of Japanese art to Lady Heron, who did not know a picture from a statue. But for some reason, which Lucia did not yet grasp, being still new to London, Lady Heron "mattered." She was a tall, handsome, grey-headed woman, who had both a past and a present. She had not in the least lived her past down; she took it about with her still, like a dachshund. Lucia meant to study her very carefully: nothing in the art of living should be overlooked. Then she recollected she had spoken absently, and turned eagerly to her neighbour again.
"I adore Strauss," she said, "if it were only for the fact that he makes Wagner sound so melodious. Then somebody will come who will make Strauss sound the sort of music that you can carry away with you. I never heard of anyone yet in whose head Strauss 'ran.' Fancy having Strauss running in your head. I must get Edgar to take me to hear Salome."
Lord Heron shook his head.
"No, go alone," he said. "It is almost always a mistake to hear music with other people, just as it is a mistake to see pictures that are new to you with other people. You want to find out first of all what you think of them, not how they strike other people. You couldn't read a book with somebody else reading over your shoulder."
"Ah, no; but because you would want to turn over before he had finished, or be afraid that he would want to turn over before you had."
"It is just the same with music or art," said he; "somebody points a thing out to you before you have really come to it, or else hasn't got to the point where you have got to. It is just like the turning over of pages."
Certain moments in her months of travel with Edgar occurred to her. It had been just as Lord Heron had said: he was often at points which she had already traversed, or to which she had not yet come. She could not help alluding, though distantly, to this.
"Ah, that is interesting and true," she said. "If two people are both genuinely interested in something, they can easily get on each other's nerves, in spite of their interest in the subject, and their—their affection for each other. You would say that was because their minds did not keep the same time."
"No minds do," he said, "in matters of art. For two people to attempt to see any new and complex work of art together, and expect to keep in harmony themselves, is a thing as impossible as it would be for two people to play a duet together if the music was written in one time for the bass and in another for the treble. As you say, they will also get on each other's nerves, and each will say that the other is not keeping time."
Again Lucia's private thoughts were reflected in her speech.
"But cannot one of them play so loud that he does not hear what the treble is doing?" she asked. "He will be unconscious of her music, and just thump his own, and say 'How glorious!' when he has got to the end of the piece."
Lord Heron liked this; he was heavy of body, and inclined, when left alone, to be pompous in mind. But he appreciated agility in others.
"Yes, that may happen," he said, "but the treble will probably refuse to be thumped out of existence for ever. She will play a few pieces with him, and then—go and play pieces with somebody else."
Lucia still pursued her private theme.
"But the bass may go farther," she said. "He may kiss her hand at the end and say, 'How wonderfully you played that! How you inspire me!' All the time it has only been his own music that he really heard."
He laughed.
"Then she ought never to have consented to play duets with him at all," he said.
At that moment the compass-needle of conversation swerved. Beginning at the other end of his table, Edgar suddenly spoke to his left-hand neighbour about Japanese art, and the direction of talk altered. Fay Alderson turned to the left, and Lucia turned to the left also.
"I love seeing an excuse discomfited," she said to Charlie Lindsay. "You surely ought to have looked at the clock before you said you thought dinner was at half-past eight."
"I looked at you first," he said.
Conversation had blossomed again.
"Maud's friend," he added quietly.
"Yes, she was here to-day. She told me, you know. I congratulate you most sincerely. Yes, I am her friend. She is adorable, is she not? Nobody knows it so well—anyhow better than I. Oh, this isn't dinner-talk. Do let us talk about Maud afterwards. At present, who put the peacock in the cupboard? No, on the whole, don't tell me; priceless fragments can be marred by their context."
"I want to talk about Maud," said Charlie.
"Then you mustn't. I hear you threw over another engagement to come here. I thought that was charming of you."
"Edgar is a dreadful gossip," said Charlie. "I recommend you never to tell him anything private. Do you know, I was staying with him when he went to Brixham to pay calls, and found you alone?"
"And told you?"
"How could I know otherwise?" he asked.
"Oh, do be indiscreet, Mr. Lindsay," she said, "and tell me what he said when he came back. It's about me, you know; all women want to know what others say of them."
Lucia looked at him a moment, mischief dancing in her eyes, which found something that answered it. How boyish he looked; how young she felt! That was the Skimpole effect.
"Did he do me justice?" she asked. "Do give me handles against him; I never can get any of my own finding. He is always up to the mark. But do tell me he said something unappreciative."
No young man dislikes being treated intimately by a woman, even if he is just engaged to another. Charlie did not dislike it in the least.
"No, he was tremendously appreciative," he said. "I got rather bored with you, in fact. But I thought you probably wore spectacles."
Lucia did not say "Why?" She thought it over for a moment, then gave a great burst of laughter.
"Oh, I see perfectly," she said. "I quite understand your thinking that. I must really wear them whenever I meet you; it was so right of you to think that. There was Schubert's 'Unfinished' on the piano, he told you that?"
"He did."
"And Omar Khayyàm on the sofa?"
"So he told me."
"And—and what vulgar people would call antimacassars on the sofa?"
Charlie shook his head.
"No, he never told me that," he said.
"That was dear of him. Because they were there. Do go on. I quite see about the spectacles. What else did you think? Oh, be honest; there is nothing so little likely to be found out. Tell me with detail what you thought I should be like."
Charlie gave a great guffaw of laughter.
"Remember I am not insulting you," he said. "I'm only damning myself. I thought you would have spectacles, as I said. I thought you would have large kind hands. I thought you would have an intellectual expression."
"I have," she exclaimed.
"Yes, no doubt, but that isn't the first impression when one sees you. Is it?"
"I hope not," said Lucia. "I'm sure an intellectual expression is delightful, yet I hope not."
"Why?"
Lucia refused ice, and put both her elbows on the table.
"Because Maud hasn't got an intellectual expression," she said.
"No, thank God!" he said.
"Ah! why that?" she asked.
"Clearly because, as she is quite perfect as she is, and has not got an intellectual expression, I thank God she hasn't, since any alteration must be for the worse!"
"Oh, but that is not very nice for her," said Lucia. "It eans that any change in her implies deterioration."
Charlie laughed.
"That's what comes of being perfect," he said.
There was something final about this: he seemed rather to sum up what they had said instead of leaving an opening for further developments in the conversation. She took his hint as instinctively as he had given it.
"You must bring her down to Brayton in the autumn," she said. "We are going to be there from October straight on for ever and ever. Do you know, I can't imagine you and Edgar alone. What do you talk about?"
"His character, chiefly," said Charlie.
"Ah! he would like that," said Lucia. "I mean he loves discussions."
Charlie filled his mouth very full, so as to avoid an immediate reply. He was shaking with internal laughter, for the first part of Lucia's speech had been so obviously genuine and unpremeditated; the second sentence so gloriously lame. Then, unfortunately, their eyes met; by a superhuman effort Charlie swallowed half a peach, and they both laughed.
"But he does love discussion," said Lucia.
"I know. So do I. Don't you?"
This was rather adroit.
"Yes, I like it, with limitations. But I don't think it's really the most enjoyable form of conversation."
"What is, then?"
"Ridiculous conversation—conversation which you can't remember afterwards, and only know that nobody listened and everybody laughed."
"Ah! let us have lots of that at Brayton," he said.
Lucia suddenly gave a little exclamation of annoyance. Cigarettes had been handed round almost during dessert, and she, without thinking, had taken one. Edgar knew she smoked in private, but he held very strong and marvellously old-fashioned views, so it seemed to Lucia, about women smoking in public. This was one of the things in which she gave way to him without a murmur; it mattered very little to her, and for some reason which she could not understand he disliked it. But for the moment she had entirely forgotten, till, looking up, she saw his eyes fixed on her in distinct disapproval. The disapproval she tacitly resented, but she was annoyed with herself at her own forgetfulness, and instantly quenched the burning end of her cigarette in her finger-bowl, and gave him a little glance of deprecating apology across the table. But Charlie had heard her exclamation, and followed the little drama with comprehension.
"I'm sure he has discussed that with you," he said.
Lucia collected eyes, and rose.
"I love prejudices," she said; "it is they that make people individual. People's dislikes are always more characteristic joi them than their likes."
"Their likes? The likes of them?" he asked.
Lucia laughed at the futility of this.
"Ah! keep that for Brayton," she said.
Their guests showed no tendency to wish to go on anywhere, and the prohibition to leave before half-past eleven was universally construed as a permission to stop till twelve. There was a little music, and a couple of bridge-tables had been put out, but Edgar noted with satisfaction that, though Lucia had twice called attention to these, nobody had played.
"It is too pathetic that most people cannot get through an evening without sitting down to win each other's money," he had said to Lucia once. "Do let our house be known as one where anybody is, of course, perfectly at liberty to play cards, but where nobody does."
This was immediately after their return to town this year, as they were driving home from a house where Edgar had been compelled to make up a table, and had lost twenty pounds with remarkable rapidity. Lucia felt dreadfully inclined to ask him whether the idea was that the richness of tone in their house was supposed to be the deterrent, but wisely refrained.
"Oh, I quite agree," she said. "It shows an uneasy consciousness of one's lack of ideas to sit down to bridge immediately after dinner. People like playing largely because it prohibits conversation, and prevents their barren minds being exposed."
"Then let us never have a card-table put out when we entertain," he said. "Coming fresh to London, we have to experiment rather, to make trial of hosts of people, but that will sift them."
There was something priceless about this, but she replied quite gravely.
"Ah! let us go one better," she said; "let us have bridge-tables under our guests' very noses, and see how much more attractive they find conversation."
She had forgotten about this, as a matter of fact, but Edgar had not, and when he came upstairs again after seeing the last guest off to-night, he pointed to the tables.
"You were right, darling," he said. "Nobody wanted to play. Nobody does, except when he is bored. I noticed also that, though carriages were announced at half-past eleven, there wasn't a move made till after twelve."
Lucia was a little sleepy.
"I think it went off all right," she said. "I don't think people found it tiresome. Oh, Edgar, I am sorry about that cigarette. I was interested; I quite forgot."
He made a great concession.
"I am inclined to relax my prohibition," he said. "I noticed Lady Heron smoked, and I talked to her about it. I said I did not wish you to smoke in public."
Lucia resented this; she was quite willing to indulge any foolish prejudices of her husband, provided they did not seriously inconvenience her, but she rebelled against the tone that alluded to them as a prohibition to her.
"I don't think you should have done that," she said. "It makes one out a child, as if I should not do as I chose."
That would not do; that was a mistake. She instantly covered it up.
"Darling, it makes you such a Bluebeard," she said; "and you are not. But as the prohibition is relaxed, we needn't say any more about it. Oh, Edgar, I thought Charlie Lindsay was delightful! What nice relations you have got. He is so quick, too, so intelligent. He gives a staccato note."
Edgar stiffened slightly. Charlie had been a little flippant in the hall on the subject of the widening effect of foreign travel. He had told him that his mind must be as broad as it was long after all that voyaging. Also he had an allusion to make to Lucia's last speech.
"One moment," he said, "and then we will talk about Charlie. I think you said, 'As if I should not do as I choose.' Do you imply that you would not be guided by me and my experience in such matters?"
Lucia felt a sudden exasperation at this. But she checked it admirably.
"My dear, my own experience of women smoking is necessarily greater than yours, owing to my sex. The whole matter is infinitesimal, though; it is not worth discussing. Besides, I neatly and immediately covered that up by saying that you made yourself out a Bluebeard. I crossed the other out—erased it."
Edgar paused with his finger up, a trick he had in discussion, showing he had something to say.
"Ah, I put my finger on a weak spot in your argument. You say that, owing to your sex, you have a greater experience of women smoking. A quibble, my darling, a palpable quibble. We are talking of the impression produced on the world by women smoking in public, not on the inhalation of tobacco-smoke."
"My dear, you shall have it just your own way," said Lucia, "especially since the prohibition is relaxed. I repeat that I thought Charlie Lindsay delightful. We shall, I hope, see a good deal of him. That will naturally be so, will it not, as he marries my greatest friend?"
Edgar contemplated the very shiny toes of his evening shoes for a moment in silence.
"Perfect frankness is the foundation of success and happiness and harmony, is it not?" he observed. "So I will be perfectly frank."
"That means you have some objection to make, I suppose," said Lucia.
"Why do you anticipate that?" he asked.
"Simply because nobody calls attention to the advisability of frankness when his views coincide with another person's."
"Well, to a certain extent you are right. I wonder, anyhow, that you think so highly of Charlie. My experience of him, you will allow, is greater than yours, and while confessing that at first I found charm in what you call his quickness, his intelligence, I find in him now—especially after our two delightful years of travel—a superficiality and a flippancy that you also, I feel sure, will soon perceive. Frankly, then, Lucia, I do not think of him as one of our habitués, one of our more intimate circle. I hasten to add, however, that I see that it is possible, even probable, that Miss Eddis will do much towards making him more cultivated, more earnest. Shall we for the present dismiss the subject? We are not likely to quarrel over it."
"Especially if we dismiss it," said Lucia. "But with your own admirable frankness, I would just like to add that though your experience of him may be—is—greater than mine, it does not follow that your judgment is more correct. Also I have asked him and Maud to lunch to-morrow. I hope you don't mind."
"Ah, my dear Lucia, how can you think me so infinitesimal?" he said, laughing. "And now let us talk for a moment of a subject far closer to us, and dearer to us both. My darling, you are splendid—you are superb! The chorus of admiration of you from our guests when I saw them off! And the loudest voice in the chorus was Lady Heron's. She was immensely struck by you. Some little phrase of yours—what was it?—ah, yes, about people being only the society-wraiths of their real selves at balls and big parties, took her fancy immensely. She said that we—she was kind enough to say 'we,' but it was mere politeness; she meant you—that we must inaugurate an intellectual regeneration in London."
Lucia looked up quickly
"Did she really say that?" she asked. "What a darling!"
"Indeed she did. I had quite a long talk with her downstairs. Another phrase of hers—'London hates bluestockings, but adores fine minds.' She noticed, too, that nobody played bridge, and said that alone was an intellectual triumph."
Lucia laughed.
"She seems to have been laying it on pretty thick," she remarked.
"Ah, the repeated word always loses its lightness. You would not have said so if you had heard her."
Lucia laughed again.
"It is a good thing I did not," she said, "or I should have been puffed up. Now, dearest, I must really go to bed. I have an enormous day to-morrow, and there are at least two balls I must go to in the evening."
She paused a moment in front of him, fingering the stud in his shirt. Though the evening had been so successful, and though he was clearly pleased with her, there had been certain moments in the day the memory of which she wanted to expunge completely from his mind. There had been that little passage before dinner; there had been just a shade of friction about her smoking, and about Charlie in this last talk.
"I am so pleased," she said; "and I have had a beautiful birthday. And I am most pleased of all that I have pleased you. I always want that most, dear. And if ever you think me tiresome, or wilful, try to remember that that is the surface only, and deep, deep down There, you will get conceited, too. Don't sit up too late."
"I am coming upstairs immediately," he said.