CHAPTER X

AT A WORLD'S EDGE

It was after that queer look, after her too conscious blush that she

began to envisage the state of her affairs. She was going to Martley

Thicket for Whitsuntide; it was an old engagement, comparatively old,

that is; she did want to go, and now she knew that she did. Well, how

much did she want to go? Ought she to want it? What had happened?

Questions thronged her when once she had opened a window. What did it

matter to her whether Urquhart qualified as an aviator or not? What

had made her ask him not to do it? How had she allowed him to say

"Assume that you like me"? The short dialogue stared at her in red

letters upon the dark. "Assume that you like me--" "You may assume

it." "I do." She read the packed little sentences over and over, and

studied herself with care. No, honestly, nothing jarred. There was no

harm; she didn't feel any tarnish upon her. And yet--she was looking

forward to Martley Thicket with a livelier blood than she had felt

since Easter when James had kissed her in the shrouded garden. A

livelier blood? Hazarding the looking-glass, she thought that she

could detect a livelier iris too. What had happened? Well, of course,

the answer to that question was involved in another: how much was she

to assume? How much did Urquhart like her? She hoped, against

conviction, that she might have answered these questions before she

met him again--which would probably be at Martley. Just now, stoutly

bearing her disapproval, he was doubtless at Byfleet or elsewhere

risking his neck. She answered a question possibly arising out of this

by a shrewd smile. "Of course I don't disapprove. He knows that. I

shiver; but I know he's perfectly right. He may be sure." The meeting

at Martley would, at the very least, be extremely interesting. She

left it there for the moment.

But having once begun to pay attention to such matters as these, she

pursued her researches--in and out of season. It was a busy time of

year, and James always laid great stress on what he called "the duties

of her station." She must edge up crowded stairways behind him, stand

at his side in hot and humming rooms where the head spun with the

effort not to hear what other people were saying--so much more

important, always, than what your partner was. James's height and

eyeglass seemed to give him an impartial air at these dreadful

ceremonies. Behind his glass disk he could afford to be impertinent.

And he was certainly rude enough to be an Under-Secretary. Without

that shining buckler of the soul he would have been simply nobody;

with it, he was a demi-god. Here then, under the very shadow of his

immortality, Lucy pursued her researches. What of the romantic,

hidden, eponymous James? Where did he stand now in her regard?

Since Easter at Wycross, James had not been her veiled Eros, but the

possibilities were all there. He was not a garden god, by any means,

nor a genius of the Spring. January and Onslow Square had not frozen

his currents; February and the Opera House had heightened his passion.

At any moment he might resume his devotional habit--even here in

Carlton House Terrace. And what then? Well--and this was odd--this

ought to have produced a state of tension very trying to the nerves;

and, well--it hadn't. That's all. At that very party in Carlton House

Terrace, with a band braying under the stairs, and a fat lord

shouting in her ear, her secret soul was trembling on a brink. She was

finding out to her half-rueful dismay--it was only half--that she was

prepared to be touched, prepared to be greatly impressed, but not

prepared to be thrilled as she had been, if James should kiss her

again. She was prepared, in fact, to present--as statesmen do when

they write to their sovereign--her grateful, humble duty--and no more.

In vain the band brayed, in vain Lord J----, crimson by her ear,

roared about the weather in the West of Ireland, Lucy's soul was

peering over the edge of her old world into the stretches of a misty

new one.

This was bad enough, and occupied her through busy nights and days;

but there was more disturbing matter to come, stirred up to cloud her

mind by Mabel's unwonted discretion. Mabel had been more than

discreet. She had been frightened. Pushing out into a stream of new

surmise, she had suddenly faltered and hooked at the quay. Lucy

herself was at first merely curious. She had no doubts, certainly no

fears. What had been the matter with Mabel, when she hinted that

perhaps, after all, James had never done anything? What could Mabel

know, or guess, or suspect? Lucy owned to herself, candidly, that

James was incomprehensible. After thirteen years, or was it

fourteen?--suddenly--with no warning symptoms, to plunge into such

devotion as never before, when everything had been new, and he only

engaged--! Men were like that when they were engaged. They aren't

certain of one, and leave no chances. But James, even as an engaged

man, had always been certain. He had taken her, and everything else,

for granted. She remembered how her sisters, not only Mabel, but the

critical Agnes (now Mrs. Riddell in the North), had discussed him and

found him too cocksure to be quite gallant. Kissed her? Of course he

had kissed her. Good Heavens. Yes, but not as he had that night at the

Opera. "You darling! You darling!" Now James had called her "my

darling" as often as you please--but never until then "you darling."

There's a world of difference. Anybody can see it.

And then--after the beautiful, the thrilling, the deeply touching

episode--the moment after it--there was the old, indifferent, slightly

bored James with the screwed eye and the disk. Not a hint, not a

ripple, not the remains of a flush. It was the most bewildering, the

most baffling jig-saw of a business she had ever heard of. You would

have said that he was two quite separate people; you might have

said--Mabel would have said at once--that James had had nothing to do

with it.

But she _had_ said so! The discovery stabbed Lucy in the eyes like a

flash of lightning, left her blind and quivering, with a swim of red

before her hurt vision. That was why Mabel had been frightened. And

now Lucy herself was frightened.

Francis Lingen, absurd! Mr. Urquhart? Ah, that was quite another

thing. She grew hot, she grew quite cold, and suddenly she began to

sob. Oh, no, no, not that. A flood of tossing thoughts came rioting

and racing in, flinging crests of foam, like white and beaten water.

She for a time was swept about, a weed in this fury of storm. She was

lost, effortless, at death's threshold. But she awoke herself from the

nightmare, walked herself about, and reason returned. It was nonsense,

unwholesome nonsense. Why, that first time, he was in the library with

James and Francis Lingen, his second visit to the house! Why, when she

was at the Opera he had been at Peltry with the Mabels. And as for

Wycross, he had wired from St. James's in the afternoon, and come on

the next day. Absurd--and thank God for it. And poor Francis Lingen!

She could afford to laugh at that. Francis Lingen was as capable of

kissing the Duchess of Westbury--at whose horrible party she had been

the other night--as herself.

She felt very safe, and enormously relieved. So much so that she could

afford herself the reflection that if hardihood had been all that was

wanting, Jimmy Urquhart would have had plenty and to spare. Oh, yes,

indeed. But--thank God again--he was a gentleman if ever there was

one. Nobody but a gentleman could afford to be so simple in dealing.

Having worked all this out, she felt that her feet at least were on

solid ground. A spirit of adventure was renewed in her, and a rather

unfortunate _contretemps_ provoked it. Before she knew where she was,

she was up to the neck, as Urquhart would have said, in a turbid

stream.

Francis Lingen, that elegant unfortunate, was certainly responsible,

if you could call one so tentative and clinging responsible for

anything. He had proposed the Flower Show, to which she had been, as

an earnest gardener, early in the morning, by herself, with a

note-book. She did not want to go with him at all; and moreover she

had an appointment to meet James at a wedding affair in Queen's Gate.

However, being ridiculously amiable where the pale-haired hectic was

concerned, go she did, and sat about at considerable length. He had

only cared to look at the sweet-peas, his passion of the hour, and

urged a chair upon her that he might the better do what he really

liked, look at her and talk about himself. So he did, and read her a

poem, and made great play with his tenderness, his dependence upon her

judgment and his crosses with the world. He pleaded for tea, which,

ordered, did not come; then hunted for the motor, which finally she

found for herself. She arrived late at Queen's Gate; the eyeglass

glared in horror. James, indeed, was very cross. What any chance

victim of his neighbourhood may have endured is not to be known. So

far as Lucy could see he did not open his mouth once while he was

there. He refused all nourishment with an angry gleam, and seemed

wholly bent upon making her self-conscious, uncomfortable and,

finally, indignant. Upon this goodly foundation he reared his mountain

of affront.

He made himself a monument of matter-of-fact impassivity during the

drive home. His arms were folded, he stared out of window; she thought

once she heard him humming an air. But he didn't smoke, as he

certainly would have done had relations been easy. He kept her at a

distance, but not aggressively.

Lucy was by this time very much annoyed. Her apologies had been frozen

at the front by his angry glare. She had no intention now of renewing

them, nor did she care to justify herself, as she might have done, by

pointing out that, while she was half-an-hour late, he was probably a

quarter of an hour too early. This would have been a safe venture, for

his fussiness over an appointment and tendency to be beforehand with

it were quite well known to himself. She kept the best face she could

upon the miserable affair, but was determined that she would force a

crisis at home, come what might.

Arrived at Onslow Square, James strode into the library and shut the

door behind him. When Crewdson was disposed of on his numerous

affairs, Lucy followed her lord. He turned, he stared, and waited for

her to speak.

Lucy said, "I think that you must be sorry that you have treated me

so. I feel it very much, and must ask you how you justify it."

James did his best to an easy calm. "Apologies should be in the air. I

should have looked for one myself an hour or so ago."

"You should have had it," she said, "if you had given me time. But you

stared me out of countenance the moment I came in. Anger before you

had even heard me is not a nice thing to face."

James turned pale. He used his most incisive tones. "I am ready to

hear your explanation. Perhaps I had better say that I know it."

Lucy showed him angry eyes. "If you know it, there is no need for me

to trouble you with it. You must also know that it isn't easy to get

away from a great crowd in a minute."

But he seemed not to hear her. He had another whip in waiting, which

nothing could have kept him from the use of. "I think that I must

trouble you, rather. I think I should be relieved by hearing from you

where the crowd was of which you were one--or two, indeed."

She discovered that he was white with rage, though she had never seen

him so before. "What do you mean, James?" she said--and he, "I know

that you were at the Flower Show. You were there with Lingen."

"Yes," said Lucy, "I was indeed. And why shouldn't I be?"

"I have told you before this what my views are about that. I don't

intend to repeat them, at present."

"I think you must be mad," said Lucy. "Do you mean to tell me that you

object to Francis Lingen to that extent--to the extent of such a scene

as this?"

He faced her from his height. "I do mean that."

"Then," she said, out of herself, "you are insulting me. I don't think

you can intend to do that. And I should like to say also that you, of

all the men in the world, are the last person to be jealous or

suspicious of anybody where I am concerned."

She hadn't meant to say that; but when she saw that he took it as a

commonplace of marital ethics, she determined to go further still.

He took it, in fact, just so. It seemed to him what any wife would say

to any indignant husband. "I beg your pardon," he said, "you don't

quite follow me. I agree with you that I should be the last person;

but I beg to point out to you that I should also be the first person.

And I will go on to add, if you will excuse me, that I should be the

only person."

"No person at all," said Lucy, "has the right or the reason to suspect

me of anything, or to be jealous of any of my acquaintance. You didn't

understand me: I suppose because you are too angry. What I meant you

to remember was how much, how very much, you are bound to believe in

me--now of all times in our life."

Here then was a Psyche with the lamp in her hand. Here was Lucy on the

limit of a world unknown. Here she stood, at her feet the tufted

grasses and field herbs, dusty, homely, friendly things, which she

knew. Beyond her, beyond the cliff's edge were the dim leagues of a

land and sea unknown. What lay out there beyond her in the mist? What

mountain and forest land lay there, what quiet islands, what sounding

mains?

But it was done now. James gazed blankly, but angrily, puzzled into

her face.

"I haven't the faintest notion what you mean," he said. Evidently he

had not.

She must go on, though she hated it. "You are very surprising. I can

hardly think you are serious. Let me remind you of the opera--of the

_Walkuere_."

He gave his mind to it, explored the past, and so entirely failed to

understand her that he looked rather foolish. "I remember that we were

there." Then he had a flash of light--and shed it on her, God knows.

"I remember also that Lingen was in the box."

"Oh, Lingen! Are you mad on--? Do you not remember that you were there

before Lingen?"

"Yes, I do remember it." He stood, poor fool, revealed. Lucy's voice

rang clear.

"Very well. If that is all that your memory brings you, I have nothing

more to say."

She left him swiftly, and went upstairs in the possession of an

astounding truth, but rapt with it in such a whirlwind of wonder that

she could do no more than clutch it to her bosom as she flew. She sent

out word that she was not coming down to dinner, and locked herself in

with her truth, to make what she could of it.