The Climber/Chapter 14

by Edward Frederic Benson

CHAPTER XIV

It was a warm, still night early in May, and the electric light over the cabstand at the end of the Square cast on to the pavement and dusty surface of the dry roadway the elbowed and angular shadows of the still leafless plane-trees in unwavering lines, as if they were made of some dark marble cunningly inlaid into a grey ground. The dry seed-balls of last year still hung there, and the air was only just sufficient to stir them, so that they oscillated gently to and fro, swinging from side to side in the light breeze that was not strong enough to agitate the twigs and branches that bore them. But in other respects, apart from the merely atmospheric, two houses at least had evening parties going on, and at the end of the Square opposite the cabstand there was a dance, and rows of carriages and motors were employed in endless procession in unloading their occupants opposite the strip of red carpet that ran across from the curbstone of the pavement to the step of the house. The drawing-room window of No. 36, next door to the fortunate house with the carriages and the red carpet, was open, and in the window-seat sat two women. The talk had been intimate; it would be intimate again; but for the moment Lucia took it to the surface.

"Yes, it was just in this place," she said, "and just on such an evening, four years ago, it must be, that we sat and talked, Maud. And the Lewisohns were giving a dance next door, as they are to-night, and though it was heavenly to talk to you, I wished I knew the Lewisohns, and that they would ask me to their dances. And now that woman has left cards on me three times this year, and I have returned mine punctually next day. Here we go, up—up—up. That's me. And to-morrow I go down—down—down. What a bore it is! Of course it's delightful to be going to have a baby—at least everyone tells me so—but why couldn't it happen in February or March? As it is, I have to spend these precious weeks in the country. Edgar really is too absurd. He makes—positively makes—me go down to Brayton three weeks before anything can possibly happen at all, because he says that if I stopped here I should go flying about and do things that are bad for me. He thinks more about the baby than me. I told him so yesterday, and he was hurt. So I kissed him, and said I didn't mean it. Oh, what a liar I am!"

Maud gave a long sigh.

"Oh, Lucia, how can you say such things?" she asked. "Fancy minding about going down to Brayton. Why, I would go and live at Clapham Junction for a month if it would give my baby an ounce more health, an ounce of better chance. What a strange romance it all is!"

"You and me, do you mean?" asked Lucia.

"Yes. We've always gone parallel, haven't we? Up at Girton first of all; then we fell in love—at least I did a little and you a great deal—with the same man. And now, within a few weeks of each other, less perhaps, we shall give our husbands our first-born child. I do want a boy so much. Do all mothers, do you think?"

"I imagine so," said Lucia. "Fancy what a nuisance a girl would be in eighteen years! How my daughter will hate me, if it is a daughter! Because I shall still be going to balls, and giving them, and making everybody run after me, and I shall be so jealous of her, because she's younger. Oh, I'm not nice, I know that. But it's me, thank God. If she falls in love with some very attractive young man, I know I shall cut her out, and take him for a devoted slave, Number whatever it happens to be."

"Oh, Lucia, don't talk such nonsense!" said Maud.

"Maud, you're a darling!" said Lucia. "And it's dear of you always to tell me I am talking nonsense just when I am saying the things that are most essentially myself. They are very sensible; they are not nonsense. And, as I said before, I'm not filled with rapture at the thought of having a child. I'm not I'm not! And think of all the waste of time that will never come again. How much nicer if one was a hen, and just laid an egg, and got another hen to sit on it, or put it in a Turkish bath, incubator—whatever they call it. I do think it would be an advantage. And I suppose you say that's nonsense too."

Maud laughed.

"I don't think there is any need," she said. "Oh, I remember so well when we sat here, you and I, four years ago, you talked the most awful nonsense. You were just making the most tremendous discoveries——"

"I always am," put in Lucia.

"But they were more tremendous than usual that night. You discovered that you didn't like men, and that you didn't want to marry, but that you wouldn't mind having some nice old man to be kind to you and kiss you. Immediately after which you fell head over ears in love with Edgar. My gracious! how you have changed since then, and how I have!"

Lucia at that moment did not want to talk exclusively about herself. Maud's remark that immediately afterwards she had fallen in love with Edgar was one that had better be let go by.

"I don't think you have changed in the least," she said. " You are just what you always were—kind and quiet and wise."

Maud gave a little sigh, half closing her eyes a moment as the head-lights of a motor coming up the road outside flared into them.

"But I feel absolutely different," she said. "I should not know myself for the same person. I look back on myself then as—as a girl lying fast asleep, not even dreaming."

"Ah, that may be," said Lucia; "all girls are asleep, I think. Then somebody comes and pinches them, and they awake. But they are the same girls. I was asleep, too, but I used to dream a good deal. And when I woke up my dream came true."

Lucia paused a moment; she felt a certain undertone going on in her mind, some submerged current of regret, of disappointment. This was very unusual to her; she had not generally either leisure or inclination for such thoughts.

"But I'm not sure that the dreams were not even more vivid than the reality," she said, "and they certainly had that fiery, absorbing quality which is characteristic of dreams. Dreaming, you have no before or after; it is a series of burning moments. But reality—there is so much repetition about it. The burning moment burns itself out, and you have to clear up the ashes. In dreams there are no ashes. Dear me, I seldom think of disagreeable things! I wonder if I have eaten anything that has disagreed with me."

"I don't think so," said Maud. "Do go on. I'm disagreeing with every word you say."

"That's a comfort. Whenever people agree with me it is probably because I have said something hopelessly commonplace. Indeed, what I'm saying now is. Surely the anticipation of a pleasant thing is keener than its fulfilment. One enjoys the moment the lights go down at 'Tristan' before the overture more than the thing itself. Tread softly—what idiot said that?—tread softly, because you tread on my dreams! Such nonsense! Dreams are more durable than oilcloth. Tread softly, because you tread on the facts of life, would be a far more sensible; command. The facts of life are the things that go into holes, that crack and let you through into ice-cold water. Dreams bear all right; life doesn't."

Lucia laughed softly.

"Decidedly I must have eaten something to disagree with me," she said; "but I'm getting rid of it emotionally, aren't I? Oh, I'm not at loggerheads with life; I'm only at little loggerheads with myself. Years ago I planned to get everything. Well, in a sense I have got everything. I meant to climb out of that wayside ditch at Brixham, to rise out like the larva of a dragonfly, to spread my wings, to climb, to soar. And, indeed, I've got everything I can think of. I am at the top, you know; it is no use denying it. And it isn't a mere smart top; we think, we work, we are tremendously alive. But what next? Oh, Maud, I must think of something next. I've got to go much higher than this. But this, to be exact, is what I am afraid of I am afraid that wherever you get to appears to be dead level. I really must take out my spyglass and find another mountain-peak. Now you say you disagree—disagree."

"But easily, eagerly," she said. "Don't you see, Lucia, you are only dissatisfied with quite the minor things of life. That I can understand is possible, though I don't realize it yet. But when love is yours, when, to crown it, you and I are going to bear children to the men we love, how is it possible not to be far more than content, not to be divinely unsatisfied? That happiness, that divine uncontent, it seems to me, must always rise from height to height. There is no top to it; it joins straight on to the infinite."

Lucia laughed with a sudden harshness of sound.

"Ah, mine does not," she said. "There is a considerable gap."

She rose quickly, giving herself a little shake.

"And I am using all these words to express what can be expressed in half a dozen," she said. "It's a little fit of the blues that I've got. Really, one makes much ado about nothing; that is the worst of having a mind that insists on working. 'Arry and 'Arriet—the mental ones—never wonder and guess about things. If they feel depressed, they say they've got the hump, and leave it at that. I leave it at that, and change the subject with startling suddenness. Where's Chubby? I really came here to see him, and not you, and he isn't here. Do you allow him to stop out just as late as he chooses? I shouldn't. Chubby has a charm that might lead him and others into temptations."

Maud got up and followed Lucia into the room.

"Yes, I let him stop out just as late as he chooses," she said. "Fancy not doing so!"

Lucia was walking up and down the room in a fit of restlessness. Here she stopped for a moment, looking rather keenly at her friend; then she dropped her eyes and continued her pacing.

"Oh, I've caught it from Edgar!" she said. "He always quarter-decks if he has anything on his mind. But as long as you catch your husband's tricks it's all right, isn't it? Chubby: yes. Oh, Maud, what shipwrecks men can make of women's lives. What brutes men are! And the train of thought that suggests this seems to be Chubby. Poor Chubby! Do tell him that the mention of his name instantly made me think of domestic shipwreck."

A great serene smile spread over Maud's face.

"Yes, I certainly will," she said. "That's the kind of childish joke that amuses Chubby and me. But again I disagree with you. Nobody can make shipwreck of your life. If a man behaves disgustingly, and you don't love him, it is no shipwreck; you are sorry; it is very sad—but, after all, you don't love him. And if—if the man you loved behaved like that, I don't see that even that, Lucia, could touch your love. Love is so much bigger than anything a person can do."

Maud paused a moment, lit by her own phrase.

"Yes, just that," she said. "Deeds, actions cannot touch it. At least, so I think and believe. God forbid it should ever be tested."

Lucia had stopped again when Maud said "Nobody can make shipwreck of your life." And as Maud went on she stood there very still. It seemed that she almost stopped breathing, for the gold sequins that were sewn in an Oriental pattern on to the bodice of her gown no longer twinkled and scintillated, as with the stir of her rising and falling bosom the light caught now one and now another. She had come here from the Opera, and wore many jewels; but they, too, both the tiara on her head and the three rows of diamonds round her neck, were still also. The lights in the stones winked and shifted no longer; they blazed steadily. Then, though she still stood without movement of foot, some tremor must have held and shaken her, for the lights were a galaxy of shifting colour. Then she moved, and moved quickly to where Maud stood.

"Ah, that is big, that is fine!" she said. "God grant it may never, as you say, be put to proof. I must go, Maud. It is late. Chubby would be an utter brute if he did not love you. Tell him so, also, from me."

Then she completely shook off that which had caused her moment of absolute stillness, and had broken it again with that sudden tremor.

"And another coincidence," she said. "Again I go down into the country to-morrow, just as I did four years ago, when we talked here. But that is the end of the chain. Otherwise I should have to go up to my bedroom and have my hair brushed out by you, which wouldn't do, as I imagine that room is Chubby's dressing-room. Oh, and in an expansive moment, a week ago, I asked Aunt Cathie to come and stay at Brayton for the momentous days. The old darling is rather lonely, I think, since Aunt Elizabeth's death. Edgar suggested it. I hope it will be a greater success than the occasion on which he last suggested Aunt Cathie should stay with us."

Maud winced.

"Oh, don't!" she said; "it was so dreadful and so hopeless."

Lucia looked at her with a sort of soft reproach. At least, there was the identical expression in her eyes which is generally attributed to soft reproach.

"You still think it was partly my fault, you know," she said. "How could I help Mouse and Harry talking about her? It must have been that. I had been charming to her. Well, I shall be again. Good-night, dearest."

Maud went out with Lucia on to the landing at the top of the stairs. Something, perhaps, of Lucia's blues had infected her, for, though not naturally imaginative, she was very conscious, as she stood there, watching the shining graceful figure of the friend she loved stepping downstairs, of a deep dim uneasiness, not exactly anxiety, not exactly fear, but of the fiery quality which Lucia had said was characteristic of dreams. Step by step she descended; then, just before the stair-rail hid her, she looked up and back.

"It wasn't my fault, darling," she said. "Good-night."

Maud stood there a moment after Lucia had passed out of sight. Then she heard the opening of the door, and Lucia's voice spoke. She could not hear the words; probably she said good-night to the footman, for she was always charming with servants. Certainly a man's voice answered her, also indistinguishable. Then the motor throbbed and whirred outside, and then came the thud of the front door.

It was already late, but she felt no desire for sleep, and went back into the window-seat where she had sat with Lucia. Some faint fragrance, some reminiscence of Lucia, still lingered there—a fallen petal, perhaps, of flowers she had worn, though it scarcely needed that to send her thoughts homing back to her. Somehow, when Lucia was with her, she was incapable of coming to conclusions about her; all judgment, all possible criticism, all appreciation even, was dazzled by her presence. If Lucia gave vent, as she sometimes did, to an abominable sentiment, Maud quite honestly labelled it as nonsense. But now, as sometimes before, when Lucia had gone, she could look at her as through a smoked glass, and regard steadily what was uncriticizable when she was there.

A hundred times during this last year Maud had checked herself from doing this, but now and then Lucia so puzzled her that it was necessary to sit down and think, after she had gone, what she meant. One of the things, for instance, which she had thought about before to-night was that disastrous visit, and more disastrous disappearance, of Aunt Cathie from Brayton. Maud could be convinced on this point: she knew that if Lucia had been really glad to see her, Aunt Cathie would have been blissfully happy—absurd, perhaps, because it was the old darling's nature to be absurd—but happy. Whatever she might or might not have overheard—it was known that Mouse and Harry had discussed her on that wet afternoon, and the door into the drawing-room from the library had inexplicably opened and shut—Aunt Cathie would never have fled the house, had she felt that her hostess welcomed her, was glad to have her there. In self-justification, Lucia pointed out that she had sat with her the evening before in her room, had said not a word to her on the subject of the puce dress, had warned her ever so gently on the subject of "Salome," but Maud's instinct still shook its head to those arguments.

And (this question about Aunt Cathie was an affair of detail, though the detail was consistent with the main idea) Lucia seemed to Maud to have coarsened somehow during this last year or two. She had become hard, she had lost compassion, she had grown tolerant of—even curious about—things that were not worth study, or, if studied, only merited intolerance—were only worth knowing in order to condemn them without qualification. It was not so long ago that they had had what to Maud was a rather agitating talk on the subject. Lucia had railed, with some bitterness, about the double law, the law that allowed a man so much licence and a woman so little. She had been advocate on behalf of greater indulgence for the woman. She spoke theoretically, of course, but her scheme of justice was that of completer liberty. In the eye of the law, no less than in the conventional judgment of society, a man might do really what he pleased, so long as he was not cruel to his wife, and paid her certain attentions; while a woman was a chattel, a dog led by a string, a bond-slave. It was from the social verdict particularly that Lucia rebelled; the legal one did not matter so much, for, so she said, if you are fool enough to be detected, you must suffer for your folly. But a man, socially speaking, could play about as he chose, and be socially untarnished, whereas a woman could never play at all.

About this Maud's verdict was that Lucia talked nonsense; the trouble was that she talked so much nonsense, and always said that it was when she was essentially herself that the charge of nonsense was brought against her, in mitigation, no doubt, of what should have been her sentence, but mistakenly. She had said it so often that Maud wondered whether there was some truth in it. But she could not bear to think that Lucia meant all she said. It had always been her way to say more than she meant; she felt intensely; she felt subtly, too, and announced with banner and trumpets the opening of some tiny little cul-de-sac that led nowhere, and was not meant for human passage, as if it had been some regal thoroughfare—a royal road for all mankind to traverse.

Maud went back over what she had said to-night. Her baby that was coming—what ludicrous things she had said about that! By her own account she was almost sorry that this was to be; she could in any case weigh the disadvantage of having a baby in June with the greater convenience of lying by in February or March. It was like—it was like grumbling that you had received a bad halfpenny in your change for a sixpence, when a cheque of a million pounds, certainly negotiable, had been just given you. How could she weigh this infinitesimal thing in scales where the infinite was piled?

Madge, too; she talked of men making shipwreck of the lives of women, instancing her. But what had been the truth of that story? Had not Madge for years consoled herself for the lack of that which she did not trouble to look for at home? Was it not notorious that Madge—— And yet Lucia talked of there being one social law for the man, another for the woman! Of course Madge was Lucia's greatest friend; she was right, immensely right, to ignore all that was said about her, and sympathize only with her in the public crash that had resounded through London. But was Lucia so utterly ignorant, so utterly innocent, as to know what everybody really knew about Madge?

Yet—here again the remembrance of Lucia dazzled her—it was glorious of Lucia to utterly shut her ears to it all. She had said it did not concern her: she had had a really serious disagreement with Edgar on tke subject. She had refused to hear things that were dropped from the garret into the gutter, even though they fell on the heads, not of those who sat in the gutter, but were leaning out of the choicest windows on the first floor. Oh, it was a fine attitude; but—but was it an attitude?

Maud's thoughts had rather run away with her, and when thoughts run away with their owner, he often does not quite realize how far they have borne him. But here she looked round, so to speak, and saw a very unfamiliar landscape, a spot from which Lucia was banished. If these thoughts were true, she could have no abiding-place here in Maud's heart, and that was inconceivable. It was inconceivable, not only because Maud could not imagine it happening, but because from the quality of the love she bore Lucia she knew that her friend could not, in the immutable nature of things, be cut off from her. Whatever Lucia thought, she must think it in Maud's heart. That was what love meant: it implied the negation of a separate existence.

How lucky she was! Many, how many, passed through life separate from all their fellows—all those who have never got into the heart of the world; who, though they may have married, happily, even, have never penetrated to the gospel of unity with another; who have always known, always wondered, at the moments of isolation that they sometimes experience! She was luckier; at this moment she could throw away all her criticism of Lucia, deep-felt though it had been, and go deeper yet. She had but wondered, and criticized with her mind; her love lay unvexed still, unperturbed, imperturbable.

She was luckier still; though it seemed that there could be nothing better to be desired or to be had than her love for Lucia, there was something better which she both desired and had. And she got up, moved by some tremor of an inner life within her. It was her life that faintly stirred; it was Charlie's also.

The clock on the stairs chimed twice, surely a mistake. But the mistake was endorsed by another clock in the room. How late he was, and how right to be late if he chose! For her, anyhow, it was bedtime. She welcomed that. It implied the awakening to another day—a day nearer.

Maud must have sat thinking for close on an hour, for it was scarcely past one when Lucia went downstairs. Her motor, which had brought her from the Opera, was waiting; the front door had already been opened, and she was just stepping into the porch when she met a man on the doorstep, who was coming in.

"Oh, Chubby," she said, "see me home. I go away to-morrow."

"I'll see you anywhere," said Chubby.

The motor whirred and buzzed, and the front door of the house was shut again with a soft thud. The windows of the car were shut. Lucia put the one next her down.

"Air, air," she said. "I want air. There isn't enough air. I should have made lots more if I had had the making of the whole thing. Oh, Charlie, she is a pearl—a pearl. Do—do be worthy of her."

Lucia felt immensely exalted at that moment. She felt it was a fine thing to say, a loyal thing to say, one that should certainly rouse his best feelings, his sense of duty, his love for his wife—his realization, if all was told, of her own nobility. The fact that fifteen seconds ago she had asked him to see her home did not trouble her in the least. It was a perfectly natural thing to do. Had Maud been on the doorstep, she would have added her vote; she would certainly have wished Charlie to go. But she had not said originally, when she met him on the doorstep, "She is a pearl, Charlie; good-night." She had asked him to see her home, and said it en route. She knew the distinction herself, but she cut it; she refused to recognize it.

"Yes, she is a pearl," said Charlie; "I have always known it. And—and it was that, was it not, that made our intimacy? We made friends through her——" The motor checked at a comer, bubbled to itself, and licked its lips again.

"Oh, my God!" said he.

Lucia's heart suddenly leaped within her. Her own side of the affair she knew thoroughly, but till this moment she had never really known what it meant to him. They had been intimate, in a purely innocent sense, being brought often and much together, each conjecturing in the other something of the nameless positive, the nameless complement, that all men and women seek. Whether he had actually found it or not she did not know. But when he said, "Oh, my God!" she knew. What would be the practical outcome she did not think; she knew nothing except that his interjection meant that he had found. There was the world of regret, of duty, of affection, that yelped behind it; but the true cry, tragic though it was, rose up through it. And even in this moment, which she knew to be supreme in its sensual sort, she could not be honest. Yet she could still mend matters; she could still say, since they pulled up at this moment at Prince's Gate, "Thanks so much, Charlie, for your escort; they will take you back, of course. Good-night."

Instead, she went a step farther. She said: "Oh, come in for ten minutes. The motor will wait and take you back."

That, the motor waiting, was her semblance of an anchor. She did not mean to drift; the chauffeur would be waiting.

She was on the near side of the car, and paused on the pavement for him to follow. He followed, but for a step only.

"I think I'll go back at once," he said hoarsely; "I shall be keeping Maud up."

Lucia turned round. The lights stirred again in her necklace and her tiara; they winked in the sequins, and they blazed in her eyes. He had resisted; therefore she would fight that resistance. It was not tolerable that he should resist her. Besides, she knew well in what spirit his resistance was made—the spirit of loyalty to Maud, fighting desperately. That fed her vanity, and ministered to her insatiable desire of conquest. And even in the same moment as she knew that, she told herself, so amazing was her capacity for self-deception, that his resistance was insulting to herself. Surely with the wife of his cousin, with the greatest friend of his own wife, such scruples were as absurd as they were unjustifiable. It might be loyalty to his wife, for fear of some far-distant incredible conclusion, that prompted resistance, but that same resistance was not loyal to Lucia.

"Oh, as you please," she said. "But we go into the country to-morrow, and shan't be back for ages. You might just talk to Edgar and me for five minutes."

Now, Charlie believed that Edgar had left town that morning. He deliberately chose to forget that. He must indeed be mistaken after what Lucia had said. He leaped at it.

"Ah, yes. I want to see Edgar," he said.

Lucia smiled at him.

"You are too humiliating," she said. "You will come in to see Edgar, but not to see me. However, come in on any terms. Yes, wait, please," she added to the chauffeur. "Mr. Lindsay will drive back in ten minutes."

She was radiant: she had won; and as he came into the hall she looked at him, just shaking her head at him.

"You silly boy," she said, "I wanted you just to keep me company while I ate one mouthful of supper, and you make all this fuss. Go into the dining-room, and—and talk to Edgar. I will follow you in a moment. I must just look at these telegrams. I never come home without finding telegrams."

The room was empty, but a small table was laid for two, and a servant was just bringing in a tray of supper. Lucia hated letting herself into a dark house, and having to fumble for lights and food, and a couple of weary footmen had always to be up at whatever hour she returned. Then Charlie heard a peal of laughter from the hall, and Lucia entered, waving a telegram.

"Chubby, it's too funny," she said. "You will think me such a liar! But whom do you suppose this telegram is from? It's from Edgar. He's down at Brayton. He went to-day. I quite forgot. Don't you believe me? Look—there are places for two."

Charlie pulled himself together; he knew, poor soul! far too well how hopelessly he had fallen in love with Lucia, but it would be doing her a monstrous injustice to suppose that she had any suspicion of it. Had she known she would never have asked him to come in like this, except in the belief that Edgar was there. She had spent all the evening, too, with his wife. She could not know. Yet words she had said, phrases she had used, came back to him. Only this evening she had told him what a pearl Maud was; that he must be worthy of her. To his secret sense that had so tremendous a meaning that it seemed incredible that to Lucia it should mean only just that which it said, that it should but bear its obvious significance. But to doubt that was to doubt her, and for the present, anyhow, he laid it all aside.

"Well, his place will do nicely for me instead," he said. "Otherwise, if he had been here, I should have insisted on another being laid. And you're really off to-morrow? London will be dull, you know."

"Oh, I do hope it will," said she. "I hate going away from a place and feeling that everybody gets on excellently without me. I am glad you will be dull. Mouse said she would be dull, too, which is satisfactory. Oh, 'Tristan' was quite splendid tonight. How big it all is! And how very small most people look—small and mean like kitchen-maids, when they are making love to each other in real life. The sight of Mouse to-night flirting quite abominably with Wolfstein suggested these reflections. And Mouse is bigger than most people in these respects. She didn't go to the back of the box or hide behind the curtain, but sat right in the middle at the front, in a blaze of light, just opposite the royal box."

"Publish a small manual," said Charlie: "'The Child's Primer of Flirting.' It would have a great success. You must tell me how to make love on a big scale."

"Oh, it's the singing," said Lucia. "I feel sure it's the singing—that, anyhow, in conjunction with publicity. We must all learn to sing, and put notices in the paper—'Count Wolfstein will court'—what a beautiful word—'will court the Duchess of Wiltshire from half-past six to a quarter-past seven on Thursday next, by the Achilles statue. The Queen's Hall band will accompany her Grace.' Did you sing to Maud? Edgar never sang to me."

It was by well-calculated design that Lucia was flippant and bubbling with nonsense. She saw that Charlie was excited—shocked, perhaps—at the knowledge that he was in love with her, which had this evening only fully burst upon him, and the situation required delicate handling. It required also that she should not detain him long, should soon dismiss him. Yet she felt very unwilling to do so; he was delightful in this new character, silent rather, and shy, but extraordinarily attractive. For more than a year now they had been the greatest of friends; he was so quick, so ready with laughter, so boisterously high-spirited. But to-night all that was changed. She knew why, and she found the change adorable. How good-looking he was, too! Really Maud was a very lucky person.

Lucia went up to bed immediately after he had gone. All evening up till that moment of meeting Charlie on the steps of Maud's house, she had been rather oppressed with the sense of the futility and repetition incident to life; but now all that was dismissed. For the last six months she had wondered what was to be the outcome of this very close friendship between Charlie and herself, and of late she had been inclined to class it among the futile repetitions. But to-night, in a single moment, all that had been changed; he would never look at her again with the frank eyes of an admiring comrade. He would look at her either not at all, or with the mute glance of love. She felt sure she was right about it; there was no mistaking it. And—it had happened just as she had meant.

She had dismissed her maid, for she wanted to think this out, and she could only do that in solitude. She was not in love with him, but she had led him on—led him on, putting forth all her power to charm, to intoxicate; and she had accomplished her plan. What did she mean to do next? Was she merely a flirt, one of those wretched, poisonous butterflies which four years ago she had so sincerely condemned in a talk she had had with Maud? Yes, she had condemned them then, but she was not so sure that she condemned them now. It was—it was such fun making the strong man bow himself just with a touch of her slender fingers. It was an exercise of power, an assertion of one's own individuality, which was the supreme pleasure in life. Perhaps she was just a flirt, then. Certainly she was not in love with him. But he had been intensely attractive to-night in his silence, his forced speech, his sudden shyness with her.

Then a sudden wave of repulsion at herself swept over her. She had done a hideous thing to-night, and for a moment she knew it was hideous. If only she had been in love with him, there might have been some excuse for her; it would, anyhow, have been under the stress of temptation that she had acted thus. But there was no such palliation for her. She had done it in cold blood, because she liked to exercise her power over men. And the very fact that it was Maud's husband to whom she had done this had, she knew, added a certain piquancy to it. It was a supremely devilish piece of work.

Yet even then she was not quite sure that, had fulfilment of a wish been granted her, she would have wished it undone, for she would then have to go back to the rather jaded appreciation of life that had of late been growing upon her—life with its repetitions that were becoming monotonous, even though it was a remarkably brilliant thing that was being repeated. And though what she had done was devilish, it was very interesting. There would be developments of some kind now; nothing, especially when a summit had been attained, stayed crystallized. What they should be she could not conjecture. She was not in love with him—at least she thought not.

So, consoled by these interesting reflections, she went to bed.

Lucia had mentioned to Maud the fact that Aunt Cathie was going to stay with her at Brayton; what she had omitted to mention either to her or to her husband was the real reason why she wanted her there. This was simply in order that she might not be alone with Edgar. His power of boring and irritating her had taken immense strides lately, and with the wisdom and forethought that characterized almost everything that Lucia did, she was sensible of avoiding a long period of solitude shared only by him. Lucia was well aware that solitude and retirement did not suit her, and now more especially she knew how irksome she would find it to leave London and the season at its midmost, and bury herself in the country, while every day brought nearer to her an event that she dreaded. That was the truth of it: since it had to be, she faced it with perfect calmness and courage; but Maud's happiness over a similar anticipation—a happiness that was beyond all speech (even if she had been good at expression)—was as inexplicable to her as a language of which she did not know the rudiments. Woman though she was, it seemed as if the very elements of maternity had been denied her; she had nothing whatever in her, except the physical power to bear a child, out of that huge passion that makes, after all, the essential difference between the sexes. She had less sense of motherhood—in anticipation, at all events—than has the natural child that nurses its doll, and pretends it is her child. All she knew was that a physical trial, more or less severe, was in front of her, and when that was over, if all went well, there would be a child the more in the world. The fact that it would be hers meant nothing to her.

And before this brilliant consummation was attained, there were to be weeks of quietness down at Brayton, while she was missing all that she most loved in life. Futile though she might find its repetitions, she infinitely preferred those repetitions to those undesired weeks in the country. Edgar had said the country would look charming; well, Piccadilly looked charming too, and she found a better music at the Opera, or even in the clip-clop of horses' hoofs over the wooden pavements, than in the song of birds. She envied the birds, though; they could lay eggs.

Edgar welcomed her at the door. She had motored down from town, and at once began to be tiresome, directing the chauffeur to bring the car quite up to the step, so that she might get out more easily. He offered her his arm, too, up the flight that led to the front door, behind which, gleaming in the light of the setting sun, Lucia saw the spectacles of Aunt Cathie.

"My darling, and you have made the journey without fatigue, I hope," said Edgar. "Not got chilly with the car open? I wish you had shut it. And I have had the punt repaired; you can float about on the lake, as you used to like to do."

This was worse than Lucia had expected. He had a bedsid manner already. But for her own sake she meant to make best of things.

"Ah, that is charming of you," she said. "And Aunt Cathie has arrived. Do let us have tea at once—I am so hungry. Ah, dear Aunt Cathie, how nice to see you!"

Lucia congratulated herself anew that she had thought of this tender, charming plan of getting Aunt Cathie to stay with them. She was so lonely in Brixham—and Edgar would have been quite dreadful if she was alone with him. Even now he was distinc trying; his eye sparkled when she said she was hungry.

"Oh, dearest, have an egg with your tea!" he said, "They will boil one in a minute."

"Then it would be quite raw," said Lucia. "Dear Edgar, do—do pull yourself together. What's the matter? Pour out tea, Aunt Cathie, will you? It's quite like the Brixham tea-parties when Edgar used to motor over and stop to dinner."

Aunt Cathie's face made a sudden odd contraction. Instantly Lucia remembered. There had been four at these tea-parties. But why why make a face months afterwards, when it was only by indirect reference that the spectacle of the tea-parties was recalled? Besides, Lucia felt sure that Aunt Cathie had been much happier really after her sister's death than she had been for at least a year before. Elizabeth had always been querulous and tiresome; she had in her last illness, which was also her first, become unspeakable. Lucia had gone to see her once—no, twice—and she had complained, complained, complained the whole time, blaming Lucia for giving her an attack of hay-fever, for playing lawn-tennis before the alternate Tuesdays, for marrying, for giving parties when she should have been sitting with her aunt. And she had been just the same with Cathie. Yet now, months after her death, Aunt Cathie "made a face"—that was the only way to express it—because Lucia said that having tea this afternoon reminded her of having tea at Brixham, whereas Aunt Elizabeth had been there then, and was not here now. She began to wish she had not asked Aunt Cathie, but then, looking at the solicitous face of her husband opposite, she came to the conclusion that she had chosen the lesser of two evils.

Then, having already told Edgar to pull himself together, Lucia began to perceive that she wanted pulling together herself. If she was going to look out for annoyances, she would, without any difficulty, find quite sufficient to make these weeks intolerable. To do that would be inflicting additional punishment on herself, and surely she had quite enough to bear already. It was much wiser to see the ridiculous, the humorous aspect of things, if that could be discovered. Everything had its humorous aspect to the diligent inquirer, and Lucia determined that no effort on her part should be lacking in the search for it.

As always, honest effort had its reward, and after dinner she found much more amusement in observing Edgar showing Aunt Cathie those immense tomes of foreign travel, copiously illustrated with photographs, than she had often found at the play. She herself was reading, or rather dipping into, a new book, which had the reputation of being both witty and improper, but she dipped more and more rarely as this matchless demonstration proceeded.

"Yes, from there we went to Palestine," said Edgar, "and travelled right through it. See, Lucia put on the title-page of the section, 'From Dan even to Beersheba.' We often thought over that text."

Lucia had a little silent spasm of laughter. That had been a fine and subtle idea of hers. But surely it was difficult to think over the text "From Dan even to Beersheba." You sat down to think it over; what thoughts came?

Edgar proceeded.

"And then, you see, I gummed in a little piece from one of the cedars of Lebanon. Lucia dearest, we do not disturb you, do we? Do you remember the afternoon on Mount Carmel?"

"Oh, well," said Lucia; "it was a glorious day, and we had tea there."

"Fancy!" said Aunt Cathie. "How vivid it all makes it! Fancy having tea on Mount Carmel! 'The hour of the evening sacrifice'—I remember my father once preaching on that text."

The expedition went on to Egypt, and, on seeing an immense photograph of the Great Pyramid, and hearing the date of it, Aunt Cathie most justly observed how it took one back. The Pharaoh of the oppression took one far forward from that, and yet even he was quite at the beginning of the Bible. Explorers had not found any statue of Moses? No? Well, it was hardly to be expected. And the travellers left for Greece.

Aunt Cathie had always particularly wanted to see Greece; she could not say why, unless it was Lord Byron, and Lucia again quivered with inward laughter at the idea of Aunt Cathie and Lord Byron as travelling companions. Oh, how right she had been to get Aunt Cathie to come here! She could picture to herself with great vividness how deplorable she would have found the evening if she had been alone with Edgar. But it was a rich entertainment to observe the two: he delighted to pour out funds of information, historical, geographical, and artistic; she understanding some quite negligible fraction of what he was saying, but ejaculating at intervals, "Dear, how interesting! I had no idea Pericles was as long ago as that. And to think that all these beautiful temples were put up to heathen deities! And you really had lunch on the Areopagus, perhaps on the very place where St. Paul preached; I'm sure I couldn't have eaten a morsel."

All this Lucia drank in with secret glee. But there was very little kindliness or tenderness in her appreciation of it. She saw only the ridiculous side of it, that Aunt Cathie showed this strange but perfectly genuine interest in photographs of places she had never seen and accounts of people whom she had never heard of. But the pathos of it, the humanity of it, in that she, already stumbling in the mists of the grey years, should still be so interested in lives and places so distant from her, so alien to her, quite passed Lucia by. Yet for a moment she envied her aunt, who could feel real pleasure and interest in this dreary recital, so that for many evenings to come, when she sat by her solitary fireside at Fair View, she would try to place this evening among her pleasant reminiscences, and again try to disentangle the Egyptian Thebes from the Thebes in Greece, and place Epaminondas in his native country. That Lucia envied—the power of taking pleasure in infinitesimal things like this. Why should Aunt Cathie have that gift, and not she? Fancy being able to like looking at photographs! If so mean a form of entertainment pleased her, she felt she would be happier than the length of summer days.

Another thing, too, she envied. Aunt Cathie was so much gentler, so much less abrupt and brusque than she used to be. The passage of the years, like the hours of summer suns, seemed to have mellowed her. And Lucia was conscious that no such mellowing was taking place in herself; she knew herself to be harder than she used to be, less indulgent of people who were tiresome, less easily pleased.

And then she remembered that new interest which had come into her life yesterday. She was sure that Charlie loved her. What a dreadful situation! And how intensely interesting!