CHAPTER VI

A LEAP OUTWARDS

She arose, a disillusioned bride, with scarcely spirit enough to cling

to hope, and with less taste for Urquhart's motor than she had ever

had for any duller task-work. Nothing in the house tended to her

comfort. James was preoccupied and speechless; the coffee was wrong,

the letters late and stupid. She felt herself at cross-purposes with

her foolish little world. If James had resought her love overnight, it

had been a passing whim. She told herself that love so desired was

almost an insult.

Nevertheless at eleven o'clock the motor was there, and Urquhart in

the hall held out his hand. "She can sprint," he said; "so much I've

learned already. I think you'll be amused."

Lucy hoped so. She owned herself very dull that morning. Well, said

Urquhart, he could promise her that she should not be that. She might

cry for mercy, he told her, or stifle screams; but she wouldn't stifle

yawns. "Macartney," he said, "would sooner see himself led out by a

firing-party than in such an engine as I have out there." She smiled

at her memory. "James is not of the adventurous," she said--but wasn't

he? "Shall I be cold?"

"Put on everything you have," he bade her, "and then everything else.

She can do sixty."

"You are trying to terrify me," she said, "but you won't succeed. I

don't know why, but I feel that you can drive. I think I have caught

Lancelot's complaint."

"Perhaps so. I know that I impose upon the young and insipient."

"And which am I, pray?"

He looked at her. "Don't try me too far."

She came forth finally to see Crewdson and her own chauffeur grouped

with Urquhart. The bonnet was open; shining coils, mighty cylinders

were in view, and a great copper feed-pipe like a burnished

boa-constrictor. The chauffeur, a beady-eyed Swiss, stared approval;

Crewdson, rubbing his chin, offered a deft blend of the deferential

butler and the wary man of the world. She was tucked in; the Swiss

started the monster; they were off with a bound.

They slashed along Knightsbridge, won Piccadilly Circus by a series

of short rushes; avoided the City, and further East found a broad road

and slow traffic. Soon they were in the semi-urban fringe, among villa

gardens, over-glazed public-houses, pollarded trees and country

glimpses in between. There was floating ice on the ponds, a violet

rime traversed with dun wheelmarks in the shady parts of the way.

After that a smooth white road, deep green fields, much frozen water,

ducks looking strangely yellow, and the low blue hills of Essex.

Urquhart was a sensitive driver; she noticed that. The farseeing eye

was instantly known in the controlling foot. He used very little

brake; when he pushed his car there was no mark upon him of urgency.

Success without effort! The Gospel of James! Urquhart accepted it as a

commonplace, and sought his gospel elsewhere.

He began to talk without any palpable beginning, and drifted into

reminiscence. "I remember being run away with by a mule train in

Ronda ... the first I had ever handled. They got out of hand--it was a

nasty gorge with a bend in it where you turn on to the bridge. I got

round that with a well-directed stone which caught the off-side leader

exactly at the root of his wicked ear. He had only one ear, so you

couldn't mistake it. He ducked his head and up with his heels. He went

over, and the next pair on top of him. We pulled up, not much the

worse. Well, the point of that story is that the pace of that old

coach and six mokes, I assure you, has always seemed to me faster than

any motor I've ever driven. It was nothing to be compared with it, of

course; but the effort of those six mad animals, the _elan_ of the

thing, the rumbling and swaying about, heeling over that infernal

gorge of stone--! You can't conceive the whirl and rush of it. Now

we're doing fifty, yet you don't know it. Wind-screen: yes, that's

very much; but the concealment of effort is more."

"You've had a life of adventure," she said. "Lancelot may have been

right."

"He wasn't far wrong," Urquhart said. "As a fact, I have never been a

pirate; but I have smuggled tobacco in the Black Sea, and that's as

near as you need go. I excuse myself by saying that it was a long time

ago--twenty years I dare say; that I was young at the time; that I was

very hard up, and that I liked the fun. Lovely country, you know, that

strip of shore. You never saw such oleanders in your life. And sand

like crumbled crystal. We used to land the stuff at midnight, up to

our armpits in water sometimes; and a man would stand up afterwards

shining with phosphorus, like a golden statue. Romantic! No poet could

relate it. They used to cross and recross in the starlight--all the

gleaming figures. Like a ballet done for a Sultan in the Arabian

Nights. I was at that for a couple of years, and then the gunboats got

too sharp for us and the game didn't pay."

She had forgotten her spleen. Her eyes were wide at the enlarging

landscape. "And what did you do next--or what had you done before?

Tell me anything."

"I really don't know what I did before. I went out to the Chersonese

from Naples. I remember that well. I had been knocking about Vesuvius

for a bit, keeping very bad company, which, nevertheless, behaved very

well to me. But finally there was a row with knives, which rather

sickened me of the Vesuvians; so I shipped for Constantinople and fell

in with a very nice old chap on board. He took me on at his contraband

job. I didn't get very much money, but I got some, and saw a deal of

life. When it was over I went to Greece. I like the Greeks. They are

a fine people."

"What did you do in Greece?" she insisted, not interested in the

fineness of the people.

"Blasting, first," he said. "They were making the railway from Larissa

through Tempe. That was a dangerous job, because the rock breaks so

queerly. You never know when it has finished. I had seen a good deal

of it in South America, so I butted in, and was taken on. Then I did

some mining at Lavrion, and captained a steamer that carried mails

among the islands. That was the best time I had. You see, I like

responsibility, and I got it. Everything else was tame--out there, I

mean....

"I got into Government service at Corfu and stopped there six years or

more ... I was all sorts of things--lighthouse-keeper, inspector of

marine works, harbour-master ... And then my wicked old father (I must

tell you about him some day. You could write a book about him) up and

died--in his bed of all places in the world, and left me a good deal

of money. That was the ruin of me. I really might have done something

if it hadn't been for that. Strange thing! He turned me out of the

house in a rage one day, and had neither seen me nor written me a

letter from my seventeenth to my thirtieth birthday, when he died--or

thereabouts. But at the last, when he was on his bed of death, he

rolled himself over and said to the priest, 'There's Jimmy out at his

devilry among the haythen Turks,' he says. 'Begob, that was a fine

boy, and I'll leave him a plum.' And so he did. I wish he hadn't. I

was making my hundred and fifty in Corfu and was the richest man in

the place. And I liked the life."

"That was where you had so many wives," she reminded him.

"So it was. Well, perhaps I needn't assure you that the number has

been exaggerated. I've very nearly had some wives, but there was

always something at the last minute. There was a girl at Valletta, I

remember--a splendid girl with the figure of a young Venus, and a

tragic face and great eyes that seemed to drown you in dark. Lady

Macbeth as a child might have been like that--or Antigone with the

doom on her, or perhaps Elektra. No, I expect Elektra took after her

mother: red-haired girl, I fancy. But there you are. She was a lovely,

solemn, deep-eyed, hag-ridden goose. Not a word to say--thought

mostly of pudding. I found that out by supposing that she thought of

me. Then I was piqued, and we parted. I suppose she's vast now, and

glued to an upper window-ledge with her great eyes peering through a

slat in the shutter. Living in a bed-gown. Imagine a wife who lives in

a bed-gown!"

They were lunching at Colchester when these amorous chapters were

reached. Lucy was quite at her ease with her companion. "A wife who

was always at the dressmaker's would suit you no better. But I don't

know that mixed marriages often answer. After all, so dreadfully much

can never be opened between you."

"That's quite true," he said, "and by no means only of mixed

marriages. How much can your average husband and wife open between

them? Practically nothing, since they choose to live by speech."

"But what else have we?"

"I would choose to live by touch," he said. "If two people can't

communicate fully and sufficiently by the feelers they are not in the

same sphere and have no common language. But speech is absurd. Why,

every phrase, and nearly every word, has a conventional value."

By touch! She was set dreaming by that. So she and James--a James she

had had no conception of--had communicated not four-and-twenty hours

ago. Certainly subsequent speech had not advanced the intelligence

then conveyed.

But she resumed Urquhart's affairs. "And do you despair of finding a

woman with whom you can hold communion?"

"No," he said, looking at the bread which he broke. "I don't despair

at all. I think that I shall find her." And then he looked steadily at

her, and she felt a little uncomfortable. But it was over in a minute.

She feared to provoke that again, so made no fishing comment; but she

was abundantly curious of what his choice would be. Meantime he mused

aloud.

"What you want for a successful marriage is--a layer of esteem,

without which you will infallibly, if you are a man, over-reach

yourself and be disgusted; then a liberal layer of animal

passion--and I only shrink from a stronger word for fear of being

misunderstood--which you won't have unless you have (a) vitality, (b)

imagination; thirdly, for a crown, respect. You must know your due,

and your duty, and fear to omit the one or excuse the other.

Everything follows from those three."

"And how do you know when you have found them?"

He looked up and out into the country. "A sudden glory," he said, "a

flare of insight. There's no mistake possible."

"Who was the man," she asked him, rather mischievously, "who saw a

girl at a ball, and said, 'That's a fine girl; I'll marry her'--and

did it--and was miserable?"

He twinkled as he answered, "That was Savage Landor; but it was his

own fault. He could never make concessions." She thought him a very

interesting companion.

On the way home he talked more fitfully, with intervals of brooding

silence. But he was not morose in his fits, and when he excused

himself for sulking, she warmly denied that he did any such thing. "I

expect you are studying the motor," she said; and he laughed. "I'm

very capable of that."

Altogether, a successful day. She returned braced to her duties, her

James, and his hidden-up Eros. To go home to James had become an

exciting thing to do.