CHAPTER XX

FAIR WARNING

Vera Nugent, a brisk woman of the world, with a fondness for vivid

clothing and a Spanish air which went oddly with it, took the trouble

one fine day to tackle her brother. "Look here, Jimmy," she said as

they breasted a mountain pass, "are you quite sure what you are up to

with these people?"

Urquhart's eyes took a chill tinge--a hard and pebbly stare. "I don't

know what you mean," he said.

"Men always say that, especially when they know very well. Of course I

mean the Macartneys. You didn't suppose I was thinking of the

Poplolly?" The Poplolly, I regret to say, was Francis Lingen, whom

Vera abhorred. The term was opprobrious, and inexact.

But Urquhart shrouded himself in ice. "Perhaps you might explain

yourself," he said.

Vera was not at all sure that she would. "You make it almost

impossible, you know."

They were all out in a party, and were to meet the luncheon and the

boys, who had gone round in the boat. As parties will have it, they

had soon scattered. Lingen had taken Margery Dacre to himself, Lucy

was with her husband. Urquhart, now he came to think of it, began to

understand that the sceptre was out of his hands. The pass, worn out

of the shelving rock by centuries of foot-work, wound itself about

the breasting cliffs like a scarf; below them lay the silver fiord,

and upon that, a mere speck, they could see the motor-boat, with a

wake widening out behind her like parallel lines of railway.

Urquhart saw in his mind that he would be a fool to quarrel with Vera.

She was not on his side, he could feel; but he didn't despair of her.

One way of putting her off him forever was to allow her to think him a

fool. That he could not afford.

"Don't turn against me for a mannerism, my dear," he said.

"I turn against you, if at all, for a lack of mannerism," said Vera

briskly. "It's too bad of you. Here I am as so much ballast for your

party, and when I begin to make myself useful, you pretend I'm not

there. But I _am_ there, you know."

"I was cross," he said, "because I'm rather worried, and I thought you

were going to worry me more."

"Well, maybe that I am,"--she admitted that. "But I don't like to see

a sharp-faced man make a donkey of himself. The credit of the family

is at stake."

He laughed. "I wouldn't be the first of us--and this wouldn't be the

first time. There's whimsy in the blood. Well--out with it. Let me

know the worst."

Vera stopped. "I intend to do it sitting. We've heaps of time. None of

the others want us."

Urquhart hit the rock with his staff. "That's the point, my child. Do

they--or don't they?"

"You believe," Vera said, "that Lucy is in love with you."

Urquhart replied, "I know that she was."

"There you have the pull over me," she answered. "I haven't either

your confidence or hers. All I can tell you is that now she isn't."

Urquhart was all attention. "Do you mean, she has told you anything?"

"Good Heavens," Vera scoffed, "what do you take me for? Do you think I

don't know by the looks of her? If you weren't infatuated you'd know

better than I do."

"My dear girl," Urquhart said, with a straight look at her, "the fact

is, I am infatuated."

"I'm sorry for you. You've made a mess of it. But I must say that I'm

not at all sorry for her. Don't you suppose that she is the sort to

find the world well lost for your _beaux yeux_. Far from that. She'd

wilt like a rose in a window-box."

"I'd take her into fairy-land," said Urquhart. "She should walk in the

dawn. She wouldn't feel her feet."

"She would if they were damp," said Vera, who could be as direct as

you please. "If you think she's a wood nymph in a cage, you're very

much mistaken. She's very domestic."

"I know," said the infatuate, "that I touched her." Vera tossed her

head.

"I'll be bound you did. You aren't the first man to light a fire.

That's what you did. You lit a fire for Macartney to warm his hand at.

She's awfully in love with him."

Urquhart grew red. "That's not probable," he said.

Vera said, "It's certain. Perhaps you'll take the trouble to satisfy

yourself before you take tickets for fairy-land. It's an expensive

journey, I believe. Had you thought what you would be doing about

Lancelot--a very nice boy?"

"No details had been arranged," said Urquhart, in his very annoying

way.

"Not even that of the lady's inclinations, it appears. Well, I've

warned you. I've done it with the best intentions. I suppose even you

won't deny that I'm single-minded? I'm not on the side of your

solicitor." That made Urquhart very angry.

"I'm much obliged to you, my dear. We'll leave my solicitor out of

account for the moment." But that nettled Vera, who flamed.

"Upon my word, Jimmy, you are too sublime. You can't dispose of people

quite like that. How are you to leave him out of account, when you

brought his wife into it? If you ever supposed that Macartney was

nothing but a solicitor, you were never more mistaken in your

life--except when you thought that Lucy was a possible law-breaker."

At the moment, and from where they stood, the sea-scape and the

coast-road stood revealed before and behind them for many a league. In

front it descended by sharp spirals to a river-bed. Vera Nugent

standing there, her chin upon her hands, her hands upon her staff,

could see straight below her feet two absorbed couples, as it were on

different grades of the scene. In the first the fair Margery Dacre

leaned against a rock while Lingen, on his knees, tied her shoestring;

at a lower level yet Macartney, having handed his Lucy over a torrent,

stooped his head to receive his tribute. Vera, who had a grain of pity

in her, hoped that Urquhart had been spared; but whether he was or not

she never knew. No signs of disturbance were upon him at the ensuing

picnic, unless his treatment of Macartney--with a kind of humorous

savagery--betrayed him. They talked of the Folgefond, that mighty

snow-field beyond the fiord which the three men intended to traverse

in a day or two's time.

"Brace yourself, my friend," Urquhart said. "Hearts have been broken

on that ground before now."

James said that he had made his peace with God--but Lucy looked

full-eyed and serious.

"I never know when you are laughing at us," she said to Urquhart.

"Be sure that I have never laughed at you in my life," he said across

the table-cloth.

"He laughs at me," said James behind his eyeglass; "but I defy him.

The man who can laugh at himself is the man I envy. Now I never could

do that."

"You've hit me in a vital spot," Urquhart said. "That's my little

weakness; and that's why I've never succeeded in anything--even in

breaking my neck."

Lancelot nudged his friend Patrick. "Do you twig that?"

Patrick blinked, having his mouth too full to nod conveniently.

"Can't drive a motor, I suppose! Can't fly--I don't think."

"As to breaking your neck," said James, "there's still a chance for

you."

"I shall make a mess of it," Urquhart retorted.

"Is this going to be a neck-breaking expedition?" That was from

Lingen, who now had an object in life.

"I never said so," Urquhart told him. "I said heart-breaking--a far

simpler affair."

"What is going to break your heart in it, please?" Lucy asked him.

She saw that there lay something behind his rattle.

"Well," said Urquhart, brazening it out, "it would break mine to get

over the snow-field--some eight miles of it, there are--and to find

that I couldn't get down. That might easily happen."

"And what would you do?"

James fixed her with his eyeglass. "That's where the neck-breaking

might intervene," he said. "Jimmy would rather risk his neck any day."

"Than his heart!"

"Heart!" said Vera. "No such thing. Quite another organ. It's a case

of dinner. He'd risk his neck for a dinner, and so would any man."

"I believe you are right," said James.

Lucy with very bright eyes looked from one to the other of her lovers.

Each wore a mask. She determined to ask James to give up the

Folgefond, discerning trouble in the air.

They went home by water, and Lancelot added his unconscious testimony.

He was between Urquhart's knees, his hand upon the tiller, his mood

confidential.

"I say--" he began, and Urquhart encouraged him to say on.

--"It's slightly important, but I suppose I couldn't do the Folgefond

by any chance?"

"You are saying a good deal," said Urquhart. "I'll put it like this,

that by some chance you might, but by no chance in the world could

Patrick."

"Hoo!" said Lancelot, "and why not, pray?"

"His mother would put her foot on it. Splosh! it would go like a

cockroach."

"I know," said dreamy Lancelot. "That's what would happen to me, I

expect." Then he added, "That's what will happen to my father."

"Good cockroach," said Urquhart, looking ahead of him. "You think she

won't want him to go."

Lancelot snorted. "_Won't_ want him! Why, she doesn't already. And

he'll do what she wants, I'll bet you."

"Does he always?"

"He always does now. It's the air, I fancy."