CHAPTER IV

AFTER-TALK

Nevertheless the two men talked down to Knightsbridge together, and

Lingen did most of the talking. He chose to expand upon Macartney, the

nearest he dared get to the subject of his thoughts. "Now Macartney,

you know, is a very self-contained man. No doubt you've noticed how he

shies at expression. Chilling at times. Good in a lawyer, no doubt.

You get the idea of large reserves. But perhaps as a--well, as a

father, for instance-- That bright boy of theirs now. You may have

noticed how little there is between them. What do you think of the

Spartan parent--in these days?"

"Oh, I think Mr. Lancelot can hold his own," said Urquhart. "He'll

do--with his mother to help. I don't suppose the Spartan boy differed

very much from any other kind of boy. Mostly they haven't time to

notice anything; but they are sharp as razors when they do."

An eager note could be detected in Francis Lingen's voice, almost a

crow. "Ah, you've noticed then! The mother, I mean. Mrs. Macartney.

Now, there again, I think our friend overdoes the repression business.

A sympathetic attitude means so much to women."

"She'll get it, somewhere," said Urquhart shortly.

"Well," said Lingen, "yes, I suppose so. But there are the

qualifications of the martyr in Mrs. Macartney."

"Greensickness," Urquhart proposed; "is that what you mean?"

Lingen stared. "It had not occurred to me. But now you mention

it--well, a congestion of the faculties, eh?"

"I don't know anything about it," said Urquhart. "She seemed to me a

fond mother, and very properly. Do you mean that Macartney neglects

her?"

Lingen was timid by nature. "Perhaps I went further than I should. I

think that he takes a great deal for granted."

"I always thought he was a supercilious ass," said Urquhart, "but I

didn't know that he was a damned fool."

"I say,"--Lingen was alarmed. "I say, I hope I haven't made mischief."

Urquhart relieved him. "Bless you, not with me. I use a lawyer for

law. He's no fool there."

"No, indeed," Lingen said eagerly. "I've found him most useful. In

fact, I trust him further than any man I know."

"He's a good man," Urquhart said, "and he's perfectly honest. He'd

sooner put you off than on, any day. That's very sound in a lawyer.

But if he carries it into wedlock he's a damned fool, in my opinion."

They parted on very good terms, Lingen for the Albany, Urquhart

elsewhere.

Meantime Lancelot, wriggling in his bed, was discussing Urquhart. "I

say, Mamma," he said--a leading question--"do you think Mr. Urquhart

really had two wives?"

"No, darling, I really don't. I think he was pulling our legs."

That was bad. "All our legs?"

"All that were pullable. Certainly your two."

"Perhaps he was." Lancelot sighed. "Oh, what happened to the Turk? I

forgot him, thinking of his wives.... He said, 'one of my wives,' you

know. He might have had six then.... I say, perhaps Mr. Urquhart is a

Turk in disguise. What do you think?"

Lucy was sleepy, and covered a yawn. "I don't think, darling. I can't.

I'm going to bed, and you are going to sleep. Aren't you now?"

"Yes, of course, yes, of course. Did I tell you about the pirate part?

His ship was a brigantine ... called the _Dog Star_."

"Oh, was it?"

"Yes, it was. And he used to hang the chaps, sometimes for treachery,

and sometimes for fun."

"How horrid!" said Lucy. "Good night."

"Oh, well," came through the blankets, "of course you don't

understand, but I do. Good night." And he was asleep at the turn of

that minute.

James had disappeared into his room, so she took herself off to bed.

Surely he might have said a word! It had all gone off so well. Mr.

Urquhart had been such a success, and she really liked him very much.

And how the Judge had taken to him! And how Lancelot! At the first

stair she stopped, in three quarters of a mind to go in and screw a

sentence out of him. But no! She feared the angry blank of the

eyeglass. Trailing up to bed, she thought that she could date the

crumbling of her married estate by the ascendency of the eyeglass. And

to think, only to think, that when she was engaged to James she used

to play with it, to try it in her eye, to hide it from him! Well, she

had Lancelot--her darling boy. That brought to mind that, a week

to-night, she would be orphaned of him. The day she dreaded was coming

again--and the blank weeks and months which followed it.

True to his ideas of "discipline," of the value of doing a thing well

for its own sake, Macartney was dry about the merits of the

dinner-party when they met at breakfast. "Eh? Oh, yes, I thought it

went quite reasonably. Urquhart talked too much, I thought."

"My dear James,"--she was nettled--"you really are--"

He looked up; the eyeglass hovered in his hand. "_Plait-il_?"

"Nothing. I only thought that you were hard to please."

"Really? Because I think a man too vivacious?"

Lancelot said to his porridge-bowl, over the spoon, "I think he's

ripping."

"You've hit it," said his father. "He'd rip up anybody."

Lucy, piqued upon her tender part, was provoked into what she always

avoided if she could--acrimony at breakfast.

"I was hostess, you see; and I must say that the more people talk the

more I am obliged to them. I suppose that you asked Mr. Urquhart so

that he might be amusing...."

James's head lifted again. You could see it over the _Morning Post_.

"I asked Urquhart for quite other reasons, you remember."

"I don't know what they were," said Lucy. "My own reason was that he

should make things go. 'A party in a parlour...'" She bit her lip. The

_Morning Post_ quivered but recovered itself.

"What was the party in a parlour, Mamma? Do tell me." That was

Lancelot, with a _flair_ for mischief.

"It was 'all silent and all damned,'" said Lucy.

"Jolly party," said Lancelot. "Not like yours, though." The _Morning

Post_ clacked like a bellying sail, then bore forward over an even

keel. Lucy, beckoning Lancelot, left the breakfast-room.

She was ruffled, and so much so that Lancelot noticed it, and, being

the very soul of tact where she was concerned, spoke neither of his

father nor of Urquhart all the morning. In the afternoon the weather

seemed more settled, and he allowed himself more play. He would like

to see Mr. Urquhart on horseback, in a battle, he thought. He expected

he'd be like Henry of Navarre. Lucy thought that he might be. Would he

wear a white plume though? Much head-shaking over this. "Bareheaded, I

bet you. He's just that sort. Dashing about! Absolutely

reckless!--frightfully dangerous!--a smoking sword!--going like one

o'clock! Oh, I bet you what you like." Then with startling conviction,

"Father doesn't like him. Feels scored off, I expect. He wasn't

though, but he might be, all the same ... I think Father always

expects he's going to be scored off, don't you? At any minute." Lucy

set herself to combat this hazard, which was very amusing and by no

means a bad shot. Poor James! What a pity it was that he couldn't let

himself like anybody. It was true--it was quite true--he was afraid

of being scored off. She husbanded a sigh. "Poor James!"

To pity James was a new experience. She felt all the better for it,

and was able to afford a lighter hand when they met at dinner. It may

even be that James himself had thought the time come for a little

relaxation of _askesis_, or he may have had something to forestall: he

seldom spoke of his affairs without design. At any rate, he told her

that Francis Lingen had been with him, and that Urquhart was likely to

be of use. "I've written to him, anyhow. He will do as he thinks well.

Urquhart is a sharp man of business."

Lucy said, "He struck me so. I thought that he could never have any

doubt of his own mind."

James wriggled his eyeglass, to wedge it more firmly. "Ah, you noticed

that? Very acute of you, Lucy. We may have a meeting before long--to

arrange the whole thing.... It's a lot of money ... ten thousand

pounds.... Your Francis is an expensive young man ... or let's say

_ci-devant jeune homme_."

"Why do you call him 'my' Francis?" she asked--rather mischievous than

artless.

The eyeglass dropped with a click and had to be sought. "Well, I can

hardly call him _mine_, could I?"

"I don't see why he should be anybody's," said Lucy, "except his own."

"My dear girl," said Macartney, "_himself_ is the last person he

belongs to. Francis Lingen will always belong to somebody. I must say

that he has chosen very wisely. You do him a great deal of good."

"That's very nice of you," she said. "I own that I like Francis

Lingen. He's very gentle, not too foolish, and good to look at. You

must own that he's extremely elegant."

"Oh," said James, tossing up his foot, "elegant! He is what his good

Horace would have called 'a very pretty fellow'--and what I call 'a

nice girl.'"

"I'm sure he isn't worth so much savagery," Lucy said. "You are like

Ugolino--and poor Francis is your _fiero pasto_."

James instantly corrected himself. "My besetting sin, Lucy. But I must

observe--" He applied his glazed eye to her feet--"the colour of your

stockings, my friend. Ha! a tinge of blue, upon my oath!" So it passed

off, and that night when, after his half-hour with the evening paper

in the drawing-room, he prepared to leave her, she held out her hand

to him, and said good night. He took it, waved it; and then stooped to

her offered cheek and pecked it delicately. The good girl felt quite

elate. She did so like people to be kind to her.

Half an hour later yet, in her evening post was a letter from

Urquhart. He proposed for herself and Lancelot to go to the play with

him. The play, _Raffles_, "which ought to meet the case," he said. He

added, "I don't include Macartney in this jaunt, partly because he

won't want to come, but mainly because there won't be room for him. I

am taking a nephew, one Bob Nugent, an Osborne boy, but very gracious

to poor civilians like Lancelot and me." He signed himself, "Yours to

command."

Lucy was pleased, and accepted promptly; and Lancelot was pleased when

he heard of it. His hackles were up at the graciousness of the Osborne

kid. He honked over it like a heron. "Ho! I expect you'll tell him

that I'm R. E., or going to be," he said, which meant that he himself

certainly would. The event, with subsequent modifications on the

telephone, proved to be the kind of evening that Lancelot's

philosophy had never dreamed of. They dined at the Cafe Royal, where

Urquhart pointed out famous Anarchists and their wives to his young

guests; they went on to the theatre in what he called a 'bus, but

Lancelot saw to be a mighty motor which rumbled like a volcano at

rest, and proceeded by a series of violent rushes, accompanied by

explosions of a very dangerous kind. The whole desperate passage,

short as it was, had the right feeling of law-breaking about it.

Policemen looked reproachfully at them as they fled on. Lancelot, as

guest of honour, sat in front, and wagged his hand like a semaphore at

all times and in all faces; he felt part policeman and part

malefactor, which was just right. Then they thrilled at the smooth and

accomplished villainy of Mr. Du Maurier, lost not one line of his

faultless clothes, nor one syllable of his easy utterance, "like

treacle off a spoon," said Urquhart; and then they tore back through

the starry night to Onslow Square, leaving in their wake the wrecks

and salvage of a hundred frail taxis; finally, from the doorstep waved

the Destroyer, as the boys agreed she should be called, upon her

ruthless course, listened to the short and fierce bursts of her wrath

until she was lost in the great sea of sound; and then--replete to

speechlessness--Lancelot looked up to his mother and squeezed her

hand. She saw that his eyes were full. "Well, darling?" she said. "You

liked all that?" Lancelot had recovered himself. He let go her hand.

His reply was majestic. "Not bad," he said. Lucy immediately hugged

him.

Now that was exactly what James would have said, _mutatis mutandis_.

Yet she would not have hugged James for it, nor have loved him because

of it. "These are our crosses, Mr. Wesley!" Reflecting on the jaunt,

she warmed to the thought of Urquhart, who had, she felt, the knack of

making you at ease. What had he done, or how done it? Well, he seemed

to be interested in what you said. He looked at you, and waited for

it; then he answered, still looking at you. Now, so many men looked at

their toes when they answered you. James always did. Yet Mr. Urquhart

did not look too much: there were men who did that. No, not too much.