The Climber/Chapter 15

by Edward Frederic Benson

CHAPTER XV

Parliament sat late this year, and, owing to the impious and almost profane attacks that were being made on the House of Lords by the infamous Liberal party, Edgar had felt that it was his duty to stand by his order and be in his place every day in the gilded chamber. Since this was an affair of duty, it followed that Lucia's arguments on the other side of the question were powerless to move him.

"I really think it is rather hard on me," she said. "I missed three-quarters of the season in order to carry out successfully my duty in giving you a son and heir, and as soon as my duties are over, it seems that I have to sit and hold your hand while you do yours. Can't you, can't you pair with one of these newly-elected peers, whom nobody ever heard of? I'm sure you could find out the name of one of them, if you made inquiries in the proper quarters."

Edgar threw back his head with a great shout of laughter. For the last six weeks, since the birth of his son, he had been a different man. Though maternity appealed so little to the mother, paternity seemed a tremendous thing to him. "In fact, he takes the entire credit," Lucia had once remarked to Mouse. And with this great ambition gratified, his spirits had been almost boisterous.

"Ah, capital, capital!" he said. "You cut so neatly, my darling, a conversational surgeon. But pairing—no, no. One must be in one's place. Dearest, I regret the necessity; nothing would please me more than to start to-morrow, all alone with you and baby, and go on and on in the yacht for ever. You priceless one!"

This was not exactly what Lucia meant.

"I don't ask you to come on for ever," she said. "I only want you to come to Cowes. Oh, Edgar, I have been so good. And I can't entertain alone; I don't really feel up to it. I think you might come."

Edgar became solemn.

"A wave of Socialism and Radicalism is sweeping over the country," he said. "It must be actively resisted, not passively. As you so neatly said, as far as voting goes, if I found out the name of one of these new peers, and paired, the result would be identical. But there is more at stake than that. We, the old landowners, the territorial magnates, represent more than some very worthy gentleman whose name at present is unfortunately unknown to us, though very likely we use his soap."

"Then do you want me to broil in London all August, because you sit in the House of Lords for ten minutes on three afternoons in the week?"

He shook his head at her

"There is a Whiggish smack about that," he said. "I protest; I must protest. But as for your broiling in London all August, I never contemplated that. Go up to Scotland if you like; pay some visits. Take the yacht, or go to Brayton. That is what I personally should like you to do. I could then get down on Friday, and see my—my goddess and my child."

Lucia thought this over.

"I should like Cowes best," she said. "But Cowes is a little formidable if I am entertaining alone. But perhaps if I could get a few people to come and vegetate with me at Brayton, we might be a not unhappy cabbage-patch."

This idea had been put into practical form, and at the end of July, after a fortnight in town, Lucia moved down to Brayton again. She had secured some half-dozen people to save her, as she said, from dry-rot, and among these were Charlie and Maud and their child. Mouse was there also, Harry was there, and one or two others; but before she had been at Brayton a week it seemed to Lucia that everybody else had become of infinitesimal importance, had retired to the vanishing point, except Maud and Charlie. On Fridays Edgar appeared, and took up a large part of the horizon again, but he vanished also on Monday morning. And with him, it must be added, vanished all thought of him until on Friday afternoon he reappeared again, having motored down from London a shade under the speed limit, so as to be quite on the safe side. And he always caused the horn to be blown at any cross-road, whether the driver could see it was clear or not. He never took risks. And at the thought Lucia drew a long breath, quickly, impatiently. He never took small risks; that was what she believed him to mean. He could see small risks, and provide against them. But he never appeared to see big risks. He could not see beyond his nose, or beyond the next corner. Little as she wished him to, it was yet a cause of irritation to her that he did not.

People had come and gone from Brayton during this month of August. People had also come and gone, and come back. Mouse was among these; she had given her husband leave to wander where he liked, provided that she might wander where she liked, and she had been at Brayton during the first week in August, had gone away for the second, and had just come back for another ten days before she went up to Scotland to make open house for September. Lady Heron had been in and out also; Harry had appeared from time to time, and disappeared and appeared again. A succession of people came for a Saturday till Monday, or from a Monday till Saturday, since to all those who were anchored in town till Parliament broke up Brayton was a perfect godsend. But two—three guests remained there without moving—Maud, Charlie, and their baby.

Little as maternity had proved to mean to Lucia, these weeks showed her with the significance of the writing on the wall what it might have meant, showed her, perhaps, what it should have meant. The truth came to her in ironical flashes, so to speak. The flash lit up the scene of what might have been. It never lit up the whole scene; it lit it up in sections, but before long she was able to piece the fragmentary illumination together, and form a fair idea of the whole. Sometimes such fragments seemed like unlocalized pieces of a puzzle, but even they gradually settled down into their places. She tried them in various ways before they all seemed to fit, but a little ingenuity soon made homes for them all.

One day, for instance, she was floating about on the lake with Maud. The punt had nosed its way into a Saragossa sea of water-lilies, and it was really impossible to proceed. So Lucia laid the dripping pole lengthwise on the boat, and sat down by Maud.

"We're anchored," she said, "as regards further progress. I shall sit down and rest, and then we'll go back."

Maud edged to the side of the boat to give Lucia room.

"I wonder if you ever do rest," she said. "You are so like—like something, the Flying Dutchman, if you will, that has to go on and on. But you like going on and on," she added; "you are not driven by a curse, but by blessings."

Lucia felt the simile, in so far as it was concerned only with going on and on, to be admirably applicable.

"Ah, we all want new things—new things," she said. "When we know a thing we cease to care for it. 'The glory of going on!' Who says that? St. Paul, I should think. But you seem to find such rapture in the satisfaction of standing still. Oh yes, darling, you are a cow; I think we settled that long ago. Do give me the recipe. How to be a cow! I wish I knew. Maud, I could shake you sometimes with pure irritation at your content. If you only were a fool, I shouldn't mind, for I should say that you were contented because you were a fool. Oh, talk and tell me."

Maud raised herself a little on her elbow.

"But how could I not be content?" she said. "I can't wish for more than I have got. Perhaps I have no imagination. Very likely that is so. But God seems to me to have a wonderful imagination. I think He has imagined His very best for me."

Lucia again felt slightly impatient.

"Oh, I don't dispute it," said she; "but that isn't enough. One has to have something in oneself in order to appreciate one's happiness. In the courts of heaven that may be all done for one, but in the meantime we are here in a punt on a lake in the county of Hampshire. Try to be less celestial. Tell me why I, who have so much more than you—I have really, darling; I am much cleverer and richer and more répandue—tell me why I want, while you have got. Talk about things by their names."

Maud sat up.

"Well, Charlie is my husband," she said, "and he has given me, or I have given him, a child. I have friends, and a friend who is sitting by me."

Lucia tapped the side of the punt with a tattoo of fingers.

"But what then?" she said. "What next? More children, I suppose, and more friends. Oh, it is repetition! I know what friends mean, I know what a child means. Is that all? My God! is that all?"

Then, with her quick instinct, she divined that Maud was hurt.

"I have a friend sitting by me, too," she said, "but I don't want another. That is sufficient. For nobody will ever be to me what you have been and are. Oh, Maud, you are good; I expect that's it. If you lived in a cottage on fifteen shillings a week and Charlie tied bootlaces below his knee and went out to dig potatoes, and called you his 'missus,' I believe you would be happy. It's your temperament to be happy. My temperament is to want to be happy. Go on, please; tell me about your life. Tell me what makes you happy, and—and I shall order some. Be domestic. Say what Charlie is, and what you are, and what Philippine is. Be philosophical, if you like—yes, do be philosophical, and explain the principles of domestic happiness."

"For me or Charlie?" asked Maud.

"Both," said Lucia, and settled herself to listen.

Maud drew a long breath.

"Oh, it's so hard to explain," she said, "but it is so clear to me. Let's take Charlie first. Well, here he is, Lucia, and he and I have been here close on three weeks; and Charlie said last night that he proposed to stop till you turned him out. Doesn't that mean content? The darling doesn't know what it is that makes him so content. But it's Philippino and me. It is really. He says he doesn't want to go to Scotland, he wants to stop here, and catch one fish in the morning and none in the afternoon, and play halfpenny bridge, and—and do nothing. Ah, isn't that enough to make me content? It sounds quite common, doesn't it? for I suppose it is just love that makes me content. Yet you've got it, and you still want. How queer! It makes Charlie content, too."

That was a flashlight; there was a large area illuminated then. At one moment she felt that it was impossible that Maud should not see what his content signified, at the next she felt that it was impossible that Maud should.

A more searching flashlight, a light that pierced through the very flesh, was bull's-eyed upon her half an hour afterwards. They backed out of the clump of lilies, went alongside the wooden landing-stage, and strolled up to the house for lunch. On the terrace walk were two perambulators, being wheeled parallel the one to the other. Maud's nurse pushed one, but the other, containing Lucia's baby, had just one long strong hand on it, while the other saluted them as they came up from the lake.

"All else has failed," shouted Charlie, "and I'm being apprenticed for the post of nurse."

He had taken the perambulator from the hands of Lucia's nurse, and she was walking a little behind, with giggles and glances at the other, and an occasional, "Lor, Mr. Lindsay!" at Charlie's preposterous conversation. The two baby-carriages were axle to axle, and just as Lucia and Maud got on to the race, Lucia's baby, with a gurgle of delight, stretched out a plump dimpled hand toward the man who pushed his carriage.

Then came the flashlight. Lucia looked at Maud's baby, and there shot into her mind the knowledge that it was Charlie's; Charlie looked at the dimpled hand of Lucia's child, and remembered that it was hers. Then the eyes of a father and a mother met, and Lucia knew that into her mind had come the thought, "If he was the father of my child, I should understand."

And what she would understand was that which shone in Maud's eyes and smiled in her mouth as she looked at her child, which was Charlie's.

She knew then what she had missed. But Edgar's child and hers put out dimpled fingers towards the man who pushed it. She knew again, and more distinctly, what she had missed. But the thought of stale and endless repetitions left her; the flashlight hinted at something new, something she had seen and observed, but never yet experienced.

Late that evening, after dinner, they all went out on to the terrace. There were some dozen people in the house, and it was by accident, as far as Lucia was concerned, that the man who let himself down from the seat on the terrace wall just as she came out, last of her guests, arm in arm with Maud, was Maud's husband.

She put her disengaged hand into his arm, and all three stood there together, she in the middle between Lucia and Charlie.

"And so here we are, all three," she said; "but for the moment it is going to be all two—you and Lucia. Blessed Philippino has been crying, and I must go up and see what is the matter. Don't come up, Chubby. I shall be down again soon."

Maud went back through the drawing-room, where the servants were beginning to put out card-tables, leaving the other two on the terrace. The rest of the party, all intimate, had strolled on a little ahead, and the noise of their talking and laughing came in gradual diminuendo. But they would be back in a few minutes, for bridge, now that Edgar was not here to keep up the tone of conversation, was the vague order for the evening. They would be alone for only the briefest space. Then Lucia spoke

"Maud is altogether wrapped up in Philippino," she said. "She doesn't ever give a thought to you now, Chubby. I should take steps about wifely desertion if I were you. Edgar is just as bad. He comes down from Saturday to Monday only, as you see. What a heavenly night! Where has everybody gone? We seem to be left friendless and alone, you and I."

Lucia knew what she was doing. Though she spoke with her light, quick voice, she was aware that her words would have a double edge for him. Then she heard a sudden little creak from his shirt, as if he had drawn a breath rapidly.

"Yes, quite alone," he said. "Maud upstairs, the deserted wife and the deserted husband here, and the rest of them——"

She laughed.

"What a discreet pause!" she said. "So discreet that you really must go on. What are the rest of them doing?"

"Oh, making love, I suppose," he said impatiently in a voice that Lucia hardly knew. There was revolt in it, rebellion and—envy.

The light from the open windows of the drawing-room shone out very clearly on to them, illuminating his figure, as he stood there, tall, eager-eyed, unconscious of himself, but very vividly conscious of her. And Lucia knew that she was playing with fire, knew also that she was running the usual risk of those who do such things. But she told herself that she had not been in the least burned yet; the fire was only delightfully warm. And she took a couple of steps out of the square of illumination into the dusk, drawing him with her.

"And why not?" said she. "Surely everybody who is at all alive is making love all the time to something or somebody, to an idea if not to a person. The moment you cease to be in love you cease to live. And the worst of it is that you have to go on living just the same."

"Yes, that is damnably bad," he said.

There was a sudden fierceness about this which enchanted her. The heart of the man had suddenly leapt into light, and Lucia wanted but little intuition to guess from that how fierce a struggle was going on within him. It was dramatic; it was one of the wonderful ironies of life that things should happen like this. If it had been anyone else, the husband of a stranger, of an acquaintance, it would be the stale old triangle over again. But about this there was something biting; the scene was luridly lit.

That flashed in and out of her brain in a second, and it was left filled with the reality of what was happening, not with tha sense of its artistic interest. And it was more than the mere reality of it that made her raise her eyes to him, that drew her a step nearer him, that made her mouth tremble for a moment; it was the exquisiteness of that which suddenly flamed within her, the surprise and wonder of it. She thought no more of Maud; not even in the most remote cells of her brain did the memory of her friend linger; she thought not even of herself; she thought only of him. It was as if a great warm wind, full of the odour of the flowers above which it had passed, full of their colour even, had swept into the passionless calm chamber of her soul, filling it, vivifying it, making it sing. At that moment she knew she was in love with him.

"Ah, do you find it damnably bad—too?" she asked.

Never had that final little monosyllable been charged with a message so significant. It shouted, it trumpeted its unmistakable meaning to him. But, to do him justice, he made one desperate effort to stifle it.

"No, no; it's dreadful; it is abominable," he said. "I—I had better go away. Maud, your friend. Philippine——"

Again, as when Lucia walked across the pathway leading to the cricket-field, it was in her power to choose. Her tongue waited its orders from her brain; it would do as it was told; it would say certain words or certain other words. But short as had been her struggle then, it was shorter now; indeed, it was no struggle. All her life she had lived for her own amusement, her own greed of pleasure, and at the moment of crisis it was not to be expected that she would decide in a way that opposed and contradicted the whole trend of the million thoughts and impulses that had gone to make up the history of her grasping days. Never in all her life had she been unselfish or loyal, even when the cost of such dealing was light; it was not humanly possible that now, when the cost was heavier than any that had yet been demanded, she should act in a manner that was so unnatural to her.

But—here the calculating, scheming part of her brain spoke to her again—she saw that the impulse that made him speak like that was strong. The struggle that in her was non-existent was desperate for him, and while one word from her to encourage his loyalty, to help him in these sore straits, would have ended the matter, the wrong word to encourage the other side might end it too. That which he longed for and struggled to reject might revolt and disgust him into loyalty. She had to appear to be torn by the same firm forces that were rending him. She, who was so immeasurably the stronger of the two, had also to appeal to him, womanlike.

Again she drew a step nearer him, and laid her hand on his arm. "Yes, dear, it is dreadful," she said. "But the situation has made itself; we haven't made it. We must—we must be sensible, and try to look at it calmly, now it has come, not lose our heads. For instance, if you went away to-morrow, what would Maud think? Only to-day she was saying to me how happy you were here. That is not to be thought of. Besides, Charlie, I ask you to stop for my sake. I—I don't know what I should do if you went away just now. I might do something mad. And what conceivable harm can come if you stop? Besides, now that things are—as they are, we must think what to do, not act rashly, not—oh, Charlie, Charlie, it is dreadful, but it is wonderful. I never knew till now, never, never."

It was done. At that moment the essential Rubicon was passed. He had known perfectly well that the only possible thing for him to do, if he intended to be an honest man, was to leave at once, on any excuse, or on no excuse. He knew also that the situation was one about which any argument, any weighing of the possible advantages of this course or of that, was futile. No amount of reason plunged into the scale ought to affect the balance by a featherweight. And he yielded (and knew it) not to the reasons she gave, but to her. The reasons were specious enough to appeal to common sense, and he told himself that it was to these he yielded. But he knew it was not so; he yielded to his own desire and to hers.

"Yes, yes, I see," he said. "We must think over it, talk over it, see what is wisest. Lucia——"

She raised her face toward him in a manner that admitted no misinterpretation, and he kissed her.

They stood apart and in silence a little; then voices laughter from the dark came a little nearer.

"Come," she said quickly, "we must come and meet them. We must be quite natural. Oh, Charlie, how easy! I am so gloriously happy. Just say you are happy too."

She had won; she had broken down the main defence. For the moment she had banished Maud from his mind as utterly as she had banished her from her own.

"No, not happy," he said. "Not that."

It was little more than an hour afterwards that Lucia alone in her bedroom, and, having dismissed her maid, she once more, as on a night at Brixham she had lit all the candles she could find, turned on every light, controlled by a whole board of switches, that the room held. Ordinarily, even for purposes of reading, it was sufficient to light the row of concealed lamps that lay out of sight behind the heavy cornice of the ceiling; those she lit now; she lit the single lamps that illuminated the half-dozen pictures on the walls; she lit the lights by the bed, the lights on her dressing-table, the lights on the table where she wrote. Above the washstand another blazed; two more blazed by the chimneypiece; above her sofa there blazed yet another; and on each side of the pier-glass was one. And the sun, the central illumination, was herself, beautiful as she had never been before, triumphant as never before she had been, less content than ever, and for that reason immeasurably happy.

For she loved; she had never known that before, and the splendour of it made the galaxy of stars burn dim. She knew what it was to be loved; well, she knew the symptoms and stress of passion in another, but never until now had she herself burned with that noble fever. For months now she knew that she had been sickening for it; it was that, she felt sure (and she was right), that had made the whole world and her success therein seem stale and without worth; and now, like some swift and prodigious plague, it had fired all her blood. To be loved had meant so little to her; now she understood why, and it was because she, the essential she, had had no part in it. She had but yielded herself, and that no more than physically, to alien transports, but now the memory of them even was kindled within her, since in the light of the dazzling knowledge she could guess what it all meant. She knew now—a thing that had been unintelligible to her before—how her presence, her proximity, affected Edgar; how her word, her smile, her touch, held promise for him of the ineffable. She knew how she had finished for him according to what had seemed to her at the time mere idle babble, the symphony of Schubert; she knew why he looked at her with burning eyes; why, when he proposed to her first on the empty beach at Littlestone, she had been momentarily frightened at what seemed to her a savage thing. Yes, savage it was—she understood that now—savage and incomparable. All else was tame in comparison with it.

For the time—for this hour, at any rate—the consciousness that she loved, and was loved in return, was sufficient. Even though this great illumination lit the past passages of her life for her, so that she knew and saw all she had missed, she did not just now look forward to all that the future might mean. Life at last had opened its ultimate doors; her imagination no longer dropped back, as it had done so often of late, because it could invent nothing further than the endless repetition of what she had already achieved; it dropped back now because it was dazzled with all that was laid open before it, at all that was undoubtedly hers. And if at the moment when she had chosen, when she had hesitated as to whether she should let friendship, loyalty, all those bourgeois virtues, be a feather of weight in the turning of the scale, and had found they weighed not even that, it seemed now that the very existence of such motives helped but to kindle the fever with which she burned. At this moment it was the very fact that Maud was her friend, that Maud was the sweetest, kindest soul in the world, that heaped fuel on this conflagration of herself. That Edgar loved her was but another faggot, that she had a child by him enkindled it, and that now in the house was Maud's child, Charlie's child——

That was fresh material, different material. Till that came into her mind she had but thought of Maud as a nonentity, though a thing to be burned, to be used as fuel. But at this she took a different view. Maud, in her thought, became an enemy, one who had got possessed of what should have belonged to Lucia. She had dared to love that possession, she had dared to use it. Lucia was not jealous of her—the time for jealousy was past; jealousy had dropped dead the moment she had just beckoned to Charlie out there on the terrace after dinner; it was absurd to be jealous of one who no more than imagined she had a treasure in her keeping. Yet she was the nominal possessor of that treasure, and for that reason Lucia hated her. Hate, at least, was in her heart, but she covered it up. She let it lie there; it did not matter. It was so unimportant compared to that which really concerned her. All else was unimportant likewise, though again she felt a certain vague hostility when she thought of her child. For it was Edgar's.

The hostility was not quite over yet, and she wanted to be done with such emotions. But the next subject was of graver import, for it was Edgar. It was no trouble to forgive Maud for what she had done in defrauding herself, the rightful owner by the titledeed of love, of Charlie, especially since now her pilfering—for so it was—had proved so abortive, but it was a different matter with Edgar. He had acquiesced in Lucia's cheating herself, had made her suppose that love held nothing beyond this parody of married life which she had shared with him. For three years he had led her to think that this was all, that love was no more than these stale satisfactions. She had believed him, too; that made his crime, not her credulity, the greater. And what had he done for her in comparison with what she had done for him? She had given him a child; she had given him the position he was powerless to win for himself, as a centre of all that was most intelligent in this stupid life; she had given him the realization of his utmost ideal of love. And to her now that was like the cracking of an empty eggshell, for there was not meat within. And in return for all that she had done for him, he seemed to have done so little. Once he had said that he wished he had been a stone-breaker opposite Fair View, for if that stone-breaker had been he, they would have been man and wife. In the light of the new knowledge, Lucia wished she had married a stone-breaker, provided only that she loved him. At the moment she would have sacrificed all she had won, all she had striven for, to be the wife of the man she loved. She would cook the dinner, she would darn the stockings, provided only that—that she could suckle his child. She had never known what that meant, though she had done it. She had done it in somnambulism, as it were. But Maud knew, and again she hated Maud because Maud had what she had missed.

And the irony of it! What a superb farce, as remote from reasonable reality as was the life she had led at Fair View. For the moment she felt that destiny must be playing some trick with her, making her dance like a marionette on wires of her own imagination. And then she knew that the truth was the direct opposite of what that image conveyed; she knew that all the rest of her life up till now had been the dance of a marionette, of a wooden jointed toy. She had danced to tunes that had no melody and no rhythm. She had listened to a music that had no heart behind it; she had grinned in answer to smiles that she did not understand, had given tender and soulless replies to whispered words that meant nothing to her. But now she was awake and understood. All that had been tuneless and senseless was made melodious and intelligible; instead of masks she saw the faces beneath, and a meaning leaped like a lightning flash into those ardours which had seemed so abortive, and the thought of which now grew suddenly insupportable.

The tingling ecstasy which had possessed her slowly subsided at the thought of this; she wanted the blaze of the electric light no longer, and she moved swiftly across to the door, and put out the whole of the illumination she had made half an hour before, so that the room was left in darkness, but for the faint remote light that filtered in through the window from the starlit sky. Outside the winds were still, and the moon, not yet risen, made dove-colour in the east. To the south an amber-coloured light showed where lay the hollow in which Brixham nestled, and just above it, though low on the horizon, was a layer of thunder-cloud, from which every now and then there winked a flash of very distant lightning. But the storm was far away, no faintest rumble of thunder was audible. Here, too, from the house itself, no sound disturbed her vigil; the lights in the drawing-room below, which, when she came into her room had thrown their oblong of illumination far out over the terrace, had been put out, though it was still nearly an hour before midnight. And, parenthetically, she wondered why everybody else had gone so early to bed; probably the men had not. Very likely they had moved to the smoking-room. Charlie, at least, always sat up late.

Yes, insupportable. Knowing now what love meant, it seemed to her that she had been acting some dreadful parody all these years, acting it like a child, without knowledge of what it was that was being travestied and degraded. Base enough, from all standards of loyalty and friendship, as had been her acceptance, her wooing of the love of her friend's husband, it did not seem so base as the acceptance of the love that was legitimately hers. And at that moment had Charlie come in, and simply told her to come away with him, it is probable that she would have cast all considerations aside with scarcely more effort than it had cost her to cast the thought of Maud aside, and would have gone. For the sake of this love, base and treacherous though it was, she would have done a desperate thing, which, though Heaven knows it would not have made it one whit more justifiable, would at least have had some of the spirit of sacrifice in it.

But morning brought cooler counsel, infinitely more sensible, infinitely less fine, for it was only for a little while in the first wonder of love that she was capable even of such fineness as is necessary to run away with a friend's husband. For a little while last night she had forgotten that she lived in the world, a charming place, but in which it was not possible to live, if you chose to do these splendid and romantic things. That which appeared insupportable the night before would have still to be tolerated; it was still just as necessary as ever to make her husband believe that the love he lavished on her was returned. He must never suspect—we are following Lucia into the profundity of her shallowness—he must never suspect that she failed to find all he found in their marriage; still less, of course, must he suspect that she had found what he was powerless to give her. And soberly and literally it was true that in this resolve she was able to detect a sort of heroism. She would not wreck his life, she would not wreck Maud's, by acting up to what she called the finest instincts of her nature. What she did not add was that she was unprepared to wreck her own life by so emphatic an assertion of the paramount claim of love.

Already she felt as if it was a fine thing to do this, and though she very seldom cried, her eyes grew dim at the thought of her ] own heroism.

But she did not renounce the love that had thus suddenly dawned on her. It would be wicked—to herself she used that identical word—to crush all that was finest in her nature. Self-deception, it may be hoped, touched bottom there, and her self-deception was triumphant.

It is hard to follow the working of so superficial and trivial a soul. A hero, though most of us are cast in no heroic mould, is easy to understand; he casts all but the worthiest aside, and follows that. Nor would it be difficult to follow the frankly worthless, those who have never the slightest impulse towards a level that is higher than their normal one. Nor, till now, was it difficult to follow the uniform selfishness of our poor climber. But at this moment the puzzling and the inevitable thing happened; love, the finest impulse she had ever known, drove her, by force of these years of self-seeking, into the meanest course that she had yet pursued. She did not, in justice to her, plan an intrigue, but for the sake of love she planned to deceive those who best loved and trusted her, in order that she should not be compelled to sacrifice anything. Of the love that recognizes the stern validity of a moral code she was, of course, hopelessly incapable; of the love that will reck nothing of the moral code, defy convention, stamp on friendship, repudiate obligations, she had been capable, though only for a moment. What she was completely capable of was a projected course of careful deceit, in order—though she made no plans—to give love a chance. She did not put it so brutally to herself; indeed, so brutal a statement of the real state of her mind never occurred to her. She said only that she would not wreck the lives of others. And even that to her microscopic soul appeared an immensity. She deliberately, because she was so self-sacrificing, saddled herself with no end of difficulties and obstacles. And at this moment, when she was meanest, she appeared to herself to be more heroic than she had ever been before.

Above all, then, it was important to be careful, to make the insupportable appear the desirable, to make treachery robe itself in the garb of loyalty and friendship. On the whole, after a cup of tea, she felt up to it. Madge was coming down to-day, too. Madge knew so much; Lucia would try to learn about these things.

Her bath was waiting for her next door, and she got out of bed to go to it. She always took her bath dead-cold, whether summer blazed or winter froze, for there was nothing so sane, so invigorating as that cool plunge. Sometimes on hot mornings she would stand by her bath, delaying the delightful moment, and looking at the wavering reflection of herself in the water, and this she did to-day. The window of her bathroom was wide open, and the warm breeze that entered was exquisite to the skin. Edgar always had a hot bath in the morning, even in Egypt, in obedience to medical suggestion. That was so characteristic of him—so warm, so comfortable. He had taken to a hot bath after an attack of lumbago some years before; during the few days in which he was incapable of movement he had read the greater part of Plato's "Republic." And, with a sudden little laugh, partly of derision, partly of impatience, she stepped into the long white bath.

She almost sang to herself in the briskness and rejuvenation of the moment. How good her sponge smelled, with the reminiscence of the salt still in it! How good was the rough towel, and the glow it brought! How delicious the cold marble floor of the bathroom! And how warm she was! how vigorous! how competent! Indeed, it was little wonder that Edgar loved her; it was little wonder that she too loved. She was made to love and to be loved, this young, vital, exquisite thing.

It was necessary, of course, to have a long, sensible talk with Charlie, since it was for that reason (among others) that she had made him stop here, instead of following his notion that he had better go away. No doubt the night would have brought better counsel to him, as it had to her, and he would see that they must be calm and sensible, and—just see what happened. It was always necessary to wait on events; circumstances might occur—circumstances might occur …

And then the whole falseness, the unreality of such imaginings, burst upon her. There were no circumstances or events to wait upon; it was no good to make sensible plans, to be calm and judicious. She was in love, and he loved her. Other people, no doubt, would have to be deceived, but where was the use of attempting to deceive herself over the central fact of the situation? The one absolute necessity for the time, indeed, was that both Edgar and Maud should be deceived. Otherwise—here Lucia's reflections were completely characteristic—their lives would be wrecked. And with this convincing and comfortable piece of hypocrisy she went down to breakfast.

The day passed without any opportunity for a conversation, sensible or otherwise, with Charlie, for he had a golfing engagement which took him away directly after breakfast. She had, indeed, but a couple of words with him, and that quite in public, when he said to her across the table:

"It's too hot for golf; Lucia, do be clever and invent an excuse for me, so that I needn't go."

Her eyes met his, and she read that which underlay the commonplace inquiry. She shook her head.

"Never," she exclaimed. "You must always keep little engagements. Big engagements are another question. But little trivial engagements are sacred. It's like taking care of the pence, and leaving the pounds to take care of themselves."

Her answer was trivial too, but it was not difficult for him to read into it the significance she meant it to bear. And quick as lightning the love-glance shot from eye to eye.

Edgar sent a telegram that morning to say he would be able to get down earlier than usual, and Lucia, in the spirit of keeping little engagements—though, indeed, she had made none in this particular—drove down to Brixham to meet him, as his train did not stop at Brayton, and was on the platform when it got in.

He flushed with pleasure seeing her.

"But this is too delightful," he said. "Have you been shopping in Brixham, dear?"

Lucia smiled charmingly at him.

"Indeed I have not," she said. "I came in simply to meet you. Does that seem to you such strange conduct?"

"It is perfectly charming conduct, anyhow," said he. "And I bring you good news."

"Oh, what? No, I can't guess. Tell me quickly."

"The House is going to rise, after all, next week. I shall, indeed, have to go up only on Tuesday. Then I am free."

It was perhaps a good thing that Lucia did not try to guess; she would never have thought of that as being good news. But she simulated a suitable enchantment.

"And we must make our plans for the autumn," he said. "The reports from the moors are dreadfully bad; there will be next to no shooting. What shall we do? Shall we stop quietly here? Or shall we go on the yacht? We have never yet been north in it. You would like to see the Norwegian fiords, would you not?"

"Ah, you are too good to me," said she. "You are always thinking of what I should like. Let us anyhow stay on here a little. It has been the greatest success. Nobody wants to go, and Charlie has announced that he isn't going unless turned out. Then in November I should really rather like a few weeks in London. I'm sure I could make quite a gay little informal season. You see, I missed a good deal of the summer."

"And the Infanto?" said Edgar. "Surely the country is better for a baby."

"Oh yes, we would leave the Infanto here," said Lucia.

This somehow rather took away the pleasure Edgar had felt when he found that Lucia had come in simply to meet his train. He had often felt that their child was not to Lucia even that which it was to him; the fact of being a father was greater to him than was the far more tremendous affair of motherhood to her. But Lucia, who had spoken thoughtlessly and genuinely, saw her mistake before his silence had become long.

"You see, the Infanto would not have to come on the yacht with us, if we adopted your plan," she said, with excellent common sense; "and, indeed"—this was a bright idea—"I should not like to be cut off from news of him, as we should be if we made a cruise. Oh, he is getting too adorable. He hates ugly things already; he is your true child, dear. He can't bear nurse, and he adores the nursery-maid, who is charmingly pretty. Oh, the Infanto is beginning early; there are many signs that he will flutter the dovecotes. I do hope he will; I should like my son to break every eligible heart in London."

This was not a strictly moral sentiment, but it served to interrupt Edgar's rather serious train of thought.

"So that he will be a true child of yours, too," he said.

Lucia always appreciated any tribute to her charms, whoever offered it.

"Oh, Edgar, don't flirt with me," she said. "I fluttered one—what is the masculine for dovecot? And was not that sufficient? And here we are at the dovecot I allude to," she added, rather neatly, as they passed through the lodge gates.

But his responsible mind went back to what she had said before.

"You talk the most delicious nonsense, my darling," he said, "and you talk it so well that it seems as if you meant it for sense. For instance, when you said you hoped he would break every eligible heart. True, I replied in the same daffing strain. How excellent some of these Scotch words are, though that, curiously enough, is a Saxon root! But to stop daffing, what a responsibility is ours, what a sweet and serious responsibility!"

Edgar was looking straight out in front of him, and Lucia made the Archdeacon face all to herself. She knew there was more to come; when Edgar's periods began like that they were not soon overpast. Often before to-day she, who had the most excellent memory, would repeat them to Charlie, and being excellent in mimicry also, she often made him speechless with appreciative laughter. But now she could never again laugh with him at these pomposities; she could not even laugh herself. They were among the insupportable things which must continue to be tolerated.

Edgar cleared his throat; he had made an admirable speech in the House only yesterday, but he felt more deeply on this subject than on the question of small holdings.

"I have sometimes wondered, my Lucia," he said, "if you ever really see the responsibility which our love has entailed. Nothing affects a man's subsequent life more than do the earliest impressions of his childhood, and as soon as the boy begins to receive conscious impressions from outside, it will become our sacred duty to see that those impressions are all noble, all fine. Beauty, not only physical, natural beauty, but moral beauty, must surround him. Harsh temper must never come near him, nor meanness, nor falsity. How our horizons have extended since that wonderful day in June when our child was born to us! How tremendous have the issues of our love for each other become! We must often talk of these things, for they fill my thoughts continually. Indeed, I have planned a little dialogue, which I have begun to write, called 'The Child.' The two speakers, of course, are the father and mother, both of the class to which we belong, the class that, however much Socialists rave, creates the nation. They just sit and talk, as evening falls, over the future of their child, which so largely depends on their upbringing of it. The dialogue should begin lightly, as our dialogue began just now, and deepen till it strikes roots to the very heart of things. We shall be able to show that we, at least, realize our responsibilities. For the England of thirty years onward will be the England that we parents of to-day make it. You must help me, dear, with the writing of this. Give me the quick, vivid touches that you can so perfectly supply, and it should have an enormous circulation. The proceeds I would give to some home."

This was the best that Lucia had ever heard. She felt she must tell somebody—Madge, perhaps, who was coming that evening, and in the company of Madge even Charlie might be allowed to hear it. But there was more yet. She could not make the Archdeacon face again, for Edgar turned and looked at her.

"Well, blithe spirit?" he said.

That was inimitable, but it was also almost insupportable. She had to summon her scattered forces.

"It is too interesting," she said. "You plan it magically. Oh, Edgar, shut yourself up all afternoon, and begin. Or have you begun?"

"Ah, not without your help," he said. "You must tell me all that a mother feels; you can tell me that. And that must be instinct, underlying all the mother's part of the dialogue. I don't think the idea has ever been tried before."

They had arrived at the house.

"Never, as far as I am aware," said Lucia. And the deadliness of it all closed in round her. She was incapable of the humorous view at that moment; the tragic reality swallowed up all else.

Evening brought a few more people, coming to stay from the Friday till the Monday, but all that had hitherto stimulated Lucia seemed to have failed her. It appeared of little consequence who came and who did not; the coming and going was of the stale old order. It was so easy now to set a party going, to make all her guests enjoy themselves; a little leaning on the table with her elbows, a little shouted talk to right and left, with a cheap epigram or two thrown in, did all that. She—and her reputation for saying brilliant things was not entirely undeserved—had now only to say that Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony was a deplorable performance to find someone else who would back up this or any other preposterous criticism; she had only to say that Sargent painted hands more wonderfully than hands were ever painted yet to make a focus of eager talk, in which Edgar joined from the other end of the table. She herself had just been painted by that artist, and she had before now likened the presentment of her hands to bunches of bananas. But it answered just as well to say that his chirography was inimitable. Edgar liked critical conversation and discussion, and she wanted to please him in little things, and in particular she wanted him to be content, at ease. But what she said signified nothing. Nothing signified except that young merry face of the man who sat two or three places away. He, too, was doing the right thing—talking eagerly, nonsensically. Occasionally she caught a sentence of his, he occasionally caught one of hers, and each listened only to the other.

"Hands—yes, hands," she was saying; "and people say 'Only hands.' Why, hands are the first things one judges by in one's estimate of a person. Eyes, mouth, face are really much less characteristic."

At the same moment Charlie finished some ridiculous remarks.

"So if you don't draw the line somewhere, where are you to draw the line?" he asked dramatically.

Then their eyes met, and for one second each was conscious of nothing except the other. Everything else reeled into nothingness; only one thing was real. She had seen nothing of him all day, had but interchanged one word with him at breakfast. She leaned forward.

"Charlie, you deserter," she said, "I haven't set eyes on you. But you appear content with life, so I suppose you won at golf. That makes a man more fatuously cheerful than anything else."

"Cheerful I am," he said; "fatuous I object to. Anybody would. Am I fatuous?" he asked Mouse.

Edgar looked about him with an air of pleased proprietorship. His guests, the conversation, the general air of the evening, were all very much to his taste. And it seemed to him that there was a new splendour in his wife's face to-night, a radiance that outshone herself. He could not quite catch what she said to Charlie, nor did he hear Charlie's answer, but he, too, was kindled beyond his wont. And then the moment afterwards each of them shot a quick, stealthy glance at him. He scarcely knew that he noticed it; it was only afterwards that he remembered having done so.

The barbarous English custom, or so Lucia called it, of men remaining in the dining-room to drink wine after dinner, did not prevail in her house, and she had but just got into the drawing-room when Charlie strolled up to her. She welcomed him with a smile.

"Well, deserter?" she said.

"But I have come back," he said, "voluntarily. Am I to be punished?"

"Yes," she said, "you are condemned to take a little stroll with me. Will you?"

Then quite suddenly she heard that her own voice was trembling and barely audible. Edgar was standing close, and he looked at her.

"Is it wise to go out?" he said. "Have you not a little hoarseness to-night?"

"Oh, grandmamma, grandmamma!" said she. "Come out, Chubby. I love walking in the dusk. One never quite knows what is going to happen. Something may jump out upon you from the bushes."

As so often before, she took Charlie's arm, and talking and laughing, they went out into the night. Though more often than not, as last night, many of the party strolled out of doors after dinner, it so happened that now nobody followed Lucia and her companion. It had been oppressively hot all day, and with sunset a bank of clouds had begun to rise out of the south, and had spread over the whole sky, so that but little light filtered through. It was just possible to see the grey glimmer of the garden walk and distinguish it from the darker hue of the grass; it was possible, but scarcely more than that, to distinguish the black outline of the trees against the sky. And as they stepped out of the light into the hot thick darkness, it was as if they had stepped into another world altogether, where there was no one but themselves. All thought of Edgar, of Maud, all remembrance of other things faded; all that had any significance was out here in the darkness.

"We must not stop out long," said Lucia, as they stepped from the terrace on to the path; "Edgar will wonder."

Then the darkness enfolded them, and Edgar's wonder troubled her no more. And neither of them spoke again, they who were so ready with quick speech. In absolute silence they went gently up the walk past the long, lighted house, past the rose-garden on the left, from which there came the heavy fragrance of sleeping flowers, past the lake with its islands of water-lilies, up to the gate at the end which gave on to the fields. Surely there was some excitement abroad that night, the presage of thunder perhaps in the air, for by the gate the cattle were standing huddled together, when they should have been asleep, and stirring uneasily. Both of them noticed that, yet still neither spoke. It was senseless to speak of trivial things, and there was no need, no cause, to speak of anything (for there was only one) which was not trivial. And in the silence and in their speechlessness and proximity the spell worked, growing every moment mightier, the divine and infamous spell that bound them—divine, because love cannot be other than that; infamous, because it implied treachery and deceit to all that to both of them should have been most sacred.

Mightily it worked, and yet no word passed, no hint even of a word, and no caress. Once Lucia gave a great long whisper of a sigh, and to answer it she felt his arm tremble. Yet, though nothing was said, every moment the sequel grew toward inevitability. Force that was potent established itself in hearts that were but too willing to grant that it was inevitable. He, it is true, had struggled to some extent, had known, anyhow, an impulse that was not wholly base. But no such thing had dwelt for even the shortest moment in Lucia's heart.

They stood there at the end of the walk for a few seconds, hearing rather than seeing the agitation and movement of the cattle, and then, as by one will that went through them both, they turned and walked back towards the house. Still no word passed between them; for him the light pressure of her hand on his arm meant more than could be said; for her the sense of the arm beneath his coat was sufficient. It was he; she could not get closer to him by speech.

Again by silent consent they stopped just outside the oblong of light cast through the open French window of the drawing-room on to the path.

"Ah, it has been divine, Charlie," said she. "But—but we must talk about it. It can't go on like this. I can bear it."

"I can't bear it," said he.

Swiftly she drew his head down to hers.

"We must go in," she said.

Edgar was sitting in a chair close to the window as they stepped into the light. For one second, as a farewell to that long silence of love, they looked at each other. Then Lucia saw him, saw, too, that he was looking at them, and her face utterly changed, became like herself again. But what he had seen was the face of a woman he felt he had never seen before.

"Ah, it is hot—hot!" she said. "Charlie and I are exhausted. The sky has come down to the earth. Something is going to burst; I feel it must burst!"

Suddenly the huge still blackness outside was resolved into a great sheet of flame. For a moment flower-beds, trees, grass, the lake, the great downs, were presented with more than the vividness of noonday. Simultaneously the thunder cracked and bellowed with an appalling reverberation.

For a moment Lucia held her hands before her eyes, dazzled and blinded by that hellish glare; then she ran into the drawing-room.

"Ah, I am frightened!" she cried. "It has been so still, so silent!"