The Climber/Chapter 16

by Edward Frederic Benson

CHAPTER XVI

"But a miracle-worker, no less than a miracle-worker," said Madge. "I always knew that you would astonish our weak minds. I feel like the Queen of Sheba."

Lucia laughed.

"I am sorry for that," she said, "because the Queen of Sheba was rather paltry. She got carried away by a Semitic and ostentatious display of wealth. But you haven't explained why you feel like her."

"Because there is no need. But if you like explanations the month is November, and we ought all to be tucked up in our horrible country-houses, being privileged to dine every evening with a lot of sleepy men who have been shooting or hunting all day, and want to go to bed. Instead, here we all are in the most civilized place in England, behaving exactly as if it was June, though luckily it is not so hot. It is a miracle, and a very nice one. Pheasants, or rather the necessity of killing them, have been the curse of my life. It is so like England to perpetuate a breed of creatures merely for the purpose of slaughtering them. It is like bringing murderers and would-be suicides back to life that they may be up to being hanged. Foxes also. Don't let us start for the play just yet. Let us miss the first act and talk. I have things to say."

"I too," said Lucia quickly.

"Then you shall say them next. But I must pay my tribute-money. For years we have all got dreadfully bored in the country in November, and knew it. But we sat there and were bored without attempting to remedy it, except by going to London first thing in the morning and returning to dinner. Sunday in the country, too! What a deplorable day! Heron always insisted on everybody going to church. And the chants invariably gave me a bilious attack. Now you, for this year anyhow, have changed all that."

"Ah, I may only have precipitated it," said Lucia. "You told me once that I had not made a set, but precipitated it."

"I remember, but I think I was wrong. Anyhow, you have changed the autumn; you can't precipitate an autumn, or—what would happen? I suppose it would become winter. But there must be now in this nice town at least fifty people who would not have been here except for you. And to move fifty people, especially when they are those who matter, is remarkable."

Lucia nodded her head in frank appreciation of this recognition.

"Tribute-money is delicious," she observed.

Lady Heron never flattered anybody, never, at any rate, said insincere things because they would please. But she was notable for seeing what there was to praise in a world that a less clever woman might have thought but mediocre, and she was always quick to praise it.

"The tribute-money is willingly paid," she said, "for it is beyond doubt that you have done what you meant to do, which is a royal attribute. You found November dull in the country, and so came to town. And we sheep came too. We also, and for years, had found the country dull in November, but we didn't come to town for fear we should be quite alone there. Probably we should have been, too. Oh, Lucia, I really envy you. You built a pinnacle yourself, and proceeded to sit on the top of it. It must be such fun building and then climbing. I never did that. I found a pinnacle built—yes, I am on a pinnacle, though it is lower than yours—and just went and sat on it. I have had enormous fun. But I never could do what you have done already. It is a question of vitality, I think. Your vitality is a little higher, or a great deal higher than anybody else's. Don't lose it. I envy it, but I rejoice in it."

The two had dined alone and early, meaning to go to the play. But having abandoned the thought of the first act, the question of the play was dismissed for the time. The night before Lucia had given a dance, a November dance, a thing as unheard of as a December rose, and it was this, and the success of it, that had started the question of the tribute-money. And Madge Heron had done no more than render unto Lucia the things that were Lucia's. She had left Brayton in the last week of October, and settled herself firmly and squarely in Prince's Gate. As usual, people were passing to and fro, sleeping a night at a hotel before going on somewhere else, but when she had given the lead a change came. Half a dozen people came to stop a week in town, instead of flying up and down, and they found it pleasant after the three months in the country. Then the movement was really started. Houses reopened; people came at first to spend the week-end in London, just as in the summer they spent the week-end in the country. Then the week-end in town lengthened itself; then it became clear that with all this leaf on the trees it would be time enough to begin pheasant-shooting in December, and by the middle of November there were at least fifty of the people who mattered, who were friends, who had come to stop in London for the present. And last night Lucia had given a dance to inaugurate the new movement. Royalty had been there, quite big royalty. It was, as Lady Heron said, just like June. It certainly was an astounding achievement. And the personality of Lucia, who had always interested her, was absorbing to her now. As a rule, she did not like women; she was not even sure that she liked Lucia, but she loved the quality that made for success and domination. Certainly, at any rate, she was more interesting than the play.

"And where will you climb to next?" she asked. "I think of you always as some wonderful figure going up and up. And you never seem to stop, whereas all the rest of us climb to a certain level, and then go on doing the same things again and again. You filled a south-country house in August; you fill London in November. What next?"

Lucia cast a sudden flashlight of memory back over the time, so short a while ago, when she had envied Madge Heron, had resolved to study her. And already it was with the same sort of incredulous wonder with which she looked back on the dreary blank years at Brixham, that she thought of herself as having ever had anything to learn from dear Madge. She had, as a matter of fact, learned very much, but what she had learned she had assimilated so completely that it formed an indivisible part of herself, and could no more be traced to its origin than can a muscle of the human frame be traced back into beef or mutton that once, in the form of oxen and sheep, grazed in a field. But she was not sure that she had not more to learn yet, although what she had already learned was no longer capable of being thought back to its origin. And by coincidence, perhaps, or more likely from intuition on the part of the elder woman, Madge instantly spoke of what Lucia was thinking of.

"You have suddenly grown up, too," she said. "You used to do your feats in a sort of childish unconsciousness. I believe you had your child when you were asleep. Then about August last you awoke, you sleeping beauty."

That was intentional; it was flattering with a purpose. All London rang with certain rumours, and though, as a general rule, Lady Heron paid as little heed to rumours as Lucia had once professed to her husband that she paid, yet the coincidence of such rumours with an undoubted change in Lucia could not but interest her. And, looking up, she saw that Lucia was now attending to what she said with a closer interest than she had shown even in the matter of the tribute-money.

"I awoke in August, do you say?" she asked. "How interesting! I hate talking about myself, but I wonder why you think that? How did I become different? And what made the difference? what wakened me?"

Madge did not reply at once.

"I have no idea," she said at length. "That was what I wanted to ask you. Did I conjecture? Oh, certainly I conjectured. I thought that no doubt maternity had awakened you."

Lucia could not help laughing. The idea genuinely amused her; it was amusing also that anyone as shrewd as she knew Madge to be should be so hopelessly astray. And her amusement rather put her off her guard, though, indeed, with Madge she had no cause to keep her point up.

"Ah, guess again," she said. "You are not even warm."

"You admit the awakening, then?" asked Madge.

Lucia hesitated. But she saw that she had already given that away. Her answer had admitted the awakening. But there was no harm done; indeed, she had often been on the point of telling Madge all about it, and why she had not done so she scarcely knew. It must be supposed that it was some remnant of self-respect that had deterred her.

"Yes, I admit the awakening," she answered. "I did awake. And I found I had awoke from a nightmare. Yes, a nightmare. Being awake, I knew it was that. And the nightmare goes on now."

She had not meant to say quite as much, but her tongue had obeyed not her judgment, but an instinct that lay below and beyond it. As far as judgment and quiet thinking went, she was without fear and quite without scruple. Only something very deep within her was afraid. It was that secret fear that made her say what she had said.

But having said it, she saw at once that it was better to say more—to explain, to tell Madge that which she felt others might suspect, though she had no reasonable cause for supposing that anybody suspected anything. Only it seemed incredible that what was real to her, that which was her life, should be nonexistent for others. She wanted to be assured that it was so, that nobody else suspected anything.

"Tell me," she said, "are people talking about me?"

Madge Heron laughed.

"They are talking about no one else," she said. "You are the theme; it is to the theme I have paid my tribute-money."

Lucia swept a place clear for her elbows; they were still sitting at the dinner-table, though a full quarter of an hour had passed since the servant had told her the carriage was at the door.

"Oh, I don't mean that," she said. "But domestic affairs are the only things that really interest the public. So—are they talking about me?"

"Oh yes," said Madge.

"I understand; so do you. Charlie is supposed to be in love with me, is it not so? And am I supposed to be in love with him? It is that that matters. God knows why, but in this higgledy-piggledy world it is thought quite nice that heaps of men should be in love with a woman, but if that unfortunate woman is supposed to be in love with any of them, there is talk—talk—talk. I" (even Lucia stumbled then) "I am not in love with Charlie. Do they say I am?"

Madge again felt what she had not felt for the last year or so, that she was immeasurably ahead of Lucia.

"Oh yes, they say that," she said. "But what does it matter? You can get anybody to say anything."

"I would give a great deal to get anybody not to say that," said Lucia.

"Yes, but it is impossible to give enough to make people hold their tongues," said Madge. "Twopence-halfpenny or less will set tongues wagging, but there is only one thing that will stop them!"

"And that?" asked Lucia.

"Giving them nothing to wag about. That, and taking no notice when they do wag. It is not sufficient to pretend to take no notice; you have really to take no notice."

"But if people say things to Maud or to Edgar?" asked Lucia. The play was completely forgotten.

"What does that matter?" asked Madge, "since you are not in love with him? Lies, slanders are always still-born. It is the unfortunate circumstance of guilt that hangs people. You have only got to do nothing, and—and before long there is quiet little funeral of all such gossip. Nobody attends it; it is no longer interesting. And even if you are guilty, you must remember you have to be found out before they hang you."

Lucia again cleared a broader space for her elbows, knocking a wine-glass over, that broke into splinters on the cloth. But she was quite unconscious of it; she knew only of some deep-seated uneasiness of mind that suddenly felt lonely and called for companionship.

"Yes, but this isn't lies," she said quietly. "I said it was One always does at first, I imagine. Didn't you?"

Lady Heron got up with rather a terrible look in her face tha frightened Lucia.

"You are rather strange and mysterious," she said. "At one moment you tell me you are not in love with Charlie; at the very next you say you are. And then you proceed to ask me whether I have not done the same under similar circumstances."

Lucia tried to interrupt, but Madge stopped her by a little contemptuous gesture of her hand.

"I assure you I don't care in the least what your relations with Charlie are. But when you assume that I have been in the same position, and have—well, equivocated about it, you commit a gross impertinence. You have never asked me about my life; I have never spoken of it to you; and it is obvious you have been listening to gossip about me, and believing it, assuming it was true. You may do that to your heart's content, but it is a little too much that you should refer it to me. Now, I am older than you, and I give you a word of warning. You have done wonderful things in London; you are right up at the very top; but so far from that making you safe, it makes the greatest care necessary. I am not speaking now of your private relations—or the absence of them—with Charlie; I am speaking of what you have just said to me. It was a great mistake to say that; it is the sort of thing that wrecks people. It's lucky it is to me that you said it. Do you understand? You may be Messalina, if you choose, but—I am going to speak very plainly—you must not be a cad."

Lucia listened at first in mere astonishment and bewilderment, then gradually it dawned upon her that Madge was quite right. Those two little words, "Didn't you?" she saw to have been quite horrible. And she received these very plain remarks with a rather touching gentleness.

"It was disgusting of me, Madge," she said. "I ask your pardon."

Lady Heron had in a very notable degree the bigness of nature which Lucia so utterly lacked. And though she did not withdraw or repent of a single word she had said, she did not mean to quarrel with Lucia of her own initiative.

"My dear, of course you have it," she said. "And now, what shall we do, as we are on our feet? If we are to see anything of our play we must go, or we shall not be in time even for the fall of the curtain, which is very often the best thing that happens in an English play, and it would be a pity to miss it. But if we don't go I will send my motor away, and tell it to come back later."

"Oh, let us stop at home," said Lucia. "I want to talk to you. Somehow I am nervous and uneasy. I don't know if I have cause for it or not."

The motor was sent away, and the two went into Lucia's private sitting-room. Madge established herself near the fire, but Lucia stood in front of it a little while in silence.

"Sometimes I think Maud knows," she said at length.

"Knows what? How much?" said Madge. "Whatever Maud knows, I know nothing."

"I think she knows that Charlie and I are in love with each other," said Lucia.

"Why do you think so?"

"I can hardly say. Sometimes, if you know a person very well, as I know Maud, you have intuitions which you cannot quite explain. But let me try. I am sure she is unhappy about something, and I can think of nothing in the world that could make her unhappy except that."

"But she has said nothing?"

"No, but she looks—I can't tell you what she looks like. She looks unhappy, and oh, so dreadfully sorry, and I feel that she is hoping I shall say something to her. And Charlie sees it too; it makes us both wretched!"

It made them both wretched! The egoism of this was colossal. There was something almost sublime about it.

"All, if you are right, there is only one thing to be done," said Madge quickly. "You must give it all up at once. It is too perilous; that is the way smashes come. And we can't afford that you should go smash, dear Lucia; you are too precious."

Lucia threw her hands wide.

"But I can't give it up," she said. "I can't! I could as easily commit suicide. Besides, you don't know Maud as I do. I believe that she could not do anything that would injure me. She is the finest woman I know—the most generous."

Calm and controlled as Lucia usually was, a sudden agitation began to shake her hold over herself. Certainly she had woke up last August, and she had woke to find herself a woman who knew forces that seemed stronger than herself. As a matter of fact, it was only the full power of her own temperament, which had slept hitherto, that then gripped her, but it seemed as if the force came from without. And since, in spite of her transcendent selfishness, she had not absolutely lost sight of something a little finer and better than the life she led, though, like some distant mountain-peak, it was unscalable by her, there were still moments when she could see the horror of her doings, and pour bitter irony on herself for those things which even in the same breath she would declare to be resistless.

"And what a fine friend I have been to her," she said. "It was always the same; whatever Maud had, I wanted and got. It was like that at Cambridge, when I knew her first; all her things were mine. She told me that, and she meant it. And I've taken them all. She had a sort of girlish attachment to Edgar, you know. So I cut her out, and took him myself. If it had not been for me, I think it very likely he would have married her. I never loved him, never for a single moment. I just wanted what he could give me. And got it. Then Maud got Charlie, so I took him, too. That's me."

Lucia's beautiful mouth was curled in scorn of herself, and the words came with the sharpness of hammer-blows on a steel anvil. Then she went on more calmly, but still with the egoist's passionate interest in herself.

"I have always been greedy," she said, "and greedy people always go from bad to worse. Their greediness coarsens even that in them which might have been fine. Even things like love, which are supposed to ennoble, get infected by their coarseness. For them there is no such thing as the light of love; there are only lumps of love. And they eat them up, and get stouter. I am huge, let me tell you, bloated, monstrous. I suck out the juice from everything, and leave dry skins behind."

Madge found herself suddenly wondering how much of was this genuine. She need not; it was all perfectly genuine. Lucia felt what she said; it was honest criticism of herself. But she was not shocked at it; she was only interested. She told herself that there were forces against which it was idle to struggle, and did not propose to do anything so useless.

"And it is all so utterly mean," she said. "I, we, deliberately take advantage of Maud's immense generosity, and, though I have begun to doubt it now, her incapacity of thinking evil of those she loves. Yet I don't really doubt that; I think she knows that we are in love with each other, and is merely dreadfully sorry for us."

"Ah, then, I expect that you are dancing on a volcano," said Madge. "I know Maud, too, and know that she is the soul of generosity and kindliness. But, dear Lucia, I know woman, the genus, better than you, and you are taking an impossible view of things. A woman can no more give her husband up, if she loves him, to another woman than she could throw her baby on to the fire. The situation is one you must put an end to. And Edgar: if Maud has seen, are you sure he has not? He loves you, you know, as Maud loves Charlie, and there is a terrible clairvoyance about love, which enables it with startling and disconcerting improbability to see straight through a brick wall. And this isn't a brick wall. It is more like a pane of plate-glass, which we can all see through without any clairvoyance at all."

Lucia still retained a great deal of respect for her friend's wisdom. She had certainly managed her life—though Lucia did not intend to ask any more questions about that—with extreme tact, and though a moment before Lucia had declared that to give anything up was impossible, she felt she would like a little more advice on the subject.

"What would you do, then?" she asked.

"I'm afraid it will sound unpalatable."

"Advice usually does," said Lucia. "Good advice, anyhow."

"Well, I know my advice is good, and it answers the test of being unpalatable. You must act with great finesse, because, if you seem suddenly to quarrel with Charlie, a construction will be put by both Maud and Edgar on to your late intimacy which it is your whole desire to avert."

"Ah, that is wise," said Lucia, finding some prospective comfort.

"Yes, dear; of course it is, because I am not a fool," remarked Madge. "You must let your public manner to him. be still a shade on the near side of friendship, as it has been lately. It is that, I may tell you, that has been so universally remarked."

Lucia frowned.

"Ah, what a horrid world!" she said. "As if one mightn't be friendly with one's husband's cousin."

That, again, considering the actual state of affairs, was colossal. Lucia was shocked at the horrid world for putting the right construction on what she was doing. But Madge only wore the faintest smile.

"Horrid or not," she said, "it is the only world with which we have to deal, and if you want it not to be horrid to you, you must make the concessions it insists on. Maud, you see, has been horrid, so you think, too. Perhaps Edgar also."

Lucia considered this. It was wise, but not being so comforting, she did not applaud it.

"Yes, dear Madge," she said.

"As I say, I should continue my very friendly public manner, and have—no private manner at all. Don't see him privately at all—for a time. Give suspicion no scent to follow. For a time, until they whip it off and take it home to its kennel. They are only—only cub-hunting at present. They go home early."

Then an impulse of tremendous inconsistency visited Madge, an inconsistency which every now and then, like some bolt from the blue or sudden earthquake-shock, comes to tempt or, on the other hand, to trouble those who deal most singly with life. She had lived herself with astonishing singleness of purpose, and had consistently taken all that life could be made to give her that was to herself desirable, without considering too closely the cost to others or even distantly what her own soul paid for it. These spiritual cheques were easily signed, and they went to a bank that seemed never to worry her with letters that warned of an overdraft. But now it seemed a pity that Lucia should take the same path as she had taken. The world offered her everything. How good it would be to see the rejection of the forbidden fruit. Yes, it was forbidden; and whether she herself had fed or not on forbidden things even to the extent of making a diet of them, seemed for the moment not to matter. Dimly, and almost dumbly, till the words broke through the barrier of the sense of her own utter inconsistency, she longed to urge Lucia to do as she herself had not done. It might have been but a whet to a jaded appetite to see herself in the rôle of preacher, but she cared not whence the impulse came. She wanted to see someone of her own corrupt world shining with the lambent vitality that was Lucia's, living purely, walking unstained and enthusiastic through the rainbow mud of life.

"It isn't only that," she said, speaking quickly and nervously; "what I have said to you is only the wisdom of the commonly prudent. Oh, Lucia, I beg you, as an inestimable personal gift, to do so much more. I and—I needn't mention who else, but people who are our friends, amuse ourselves tremendously, but they and I behave as if we lack all moral sense. And when you get older—you are so young, you know—you will see what that lack means. Before you are forty, you will find that you have run through everything, unless you put up a 'Trespasser' notice in your soul. That, too, is only an extension of the wisdom of the commonly prudent. But can't you—can't you go much higher than that? Show us the big good life, instead of the big bad life. Yes—good, bad: you think I am using obsolete terms. But when you are older you will wonder whether, after all, they are obsolete, and when you are older again you will know, too late, that they are not. How sickeningly stupid is the proverb that says it is never too late to mend! Of course, sometimes it is too late to mend, for the time comes when you remember the desire to have mended quite clearly, but you no longer know what it means."

She got up, taking her fan from the table.

"I suppose that is what they mean by hell," she said. "It is nonsensical, otherwise."

She had done her best; she had tried to put into words all that she was capable of feeling. But she did not wholly know of how utterly inferior a nature to herself was she to whom she was speaking. She had been in deadly earnest; every word she had spoken was quite true, as far as she knew, but she was speaking to one to whom the only reality was her own gratification, and who could not really grasp another point of view. Lucia could say of her own conduct that it "was so mean," but she said it merely as an actress might criticize the part for which she was cast. She did not feel abased because it was mean; she felt only that the playwright had given her a mean part, and that even as she was acting it, she could stand aside and criticize it.

She replied with a silken quietness.

"What has come to you, dear Madge," she said, "I mean the sense of its being too late, has already come to me. Thank you for your counsels of prudence; I think they are quite—quite excellent. But supposing you could put the clock of years back, and live your life over again, do you suppose you would do differently?"

The allusion to Madge's past life went unnoticed by both now. Lucia had not, in spite of the severe handling of an hour before, thought of any embarrassment that might attend its reintroduction.

"I suppose I should not do differently," said Madge; "but when I was forty-two again, I suppose I should be again sorry for not having done differently. And—and you may be sorry before," she added.

"You mean I am not so clever as you?" asked Lucia.

"I mean nothing of the sort. I mean you may be better than me. And I tell you—worldly disaster may be avoided; if you are clever you will probably avoid it. But there is damage beyond that. You can maim and scarify yourself, the essential you. I have done so, and when that is brought home to me, as somehow it has been to-night, I hate myself, as David hated the blind and the maim. I hate my soul. Don't laugh at me till I have gone. Even then I shall feel it all down my back."

Lucia smiled at her, quite untroubled.

"I shall not laugh at you at all," she said. "On the contrary, I think it is all rather sad, and you have given me just a touch of the blues. And I am dreadfully sorry for you. It must dreadful to feel, when you are only just forty, that you wish you had acted consistently otherwise, and that it is too late. Can't you get over that, put it behind you? It can do no good: it must be both unpleasant and useless, so that there is no excuse for its existence. And it was dear of you to have warned me. I think some of the things you said were excellent—quite excellent. I shall follow some of your advice. I might even go for a short cruise with Edgar in the Mediterranean, all alone. That would be a splendid insurance policy, would it not?"

Madge did not answer directly, but she gave a little shiver, and drove the poker into the heart of the fire.

"It is cold to-night," she said.

Lucia's dramatic sense was always quick, and she received a very poignant dramatic impression at these words. Poor Madge! the fire was beginning to burn not so warmly in her life, and, alas for her, there was no possibility of making it blaze afresh by prodding at it, as she was doing to its material counterpart on the hearth. It was too late; she felt it herself. But it had not been very amiable of her to try to envelope Lucia also in her own chilliness. No doubt (it was very reasonable) she felt just a touch of envy of her before whom so many fiery years yet lay. Poor Madge: she was so clever, so tactful, so full of wisdom, and already that was availing her nothing against the coldness that was beginning to creep over her. And surely, at forty-two, it was yet early to begin to think about your soul, and to hate yourself. Lucia proposed not to indulge in any such qualms till she was much older than that. Yes; it was quite a dramatic moment, with Madge kneeling there by the fire, with her wit and her wisdom all as powerless to console her as her pearls and her really exquisite high evening-dress, saying only that it was cold. But it was not quite kind of her to have suggested these things; despite herself, Lucia felt a little prickle of goose-flesh. It was certainly better, after appreciating the dramatic, to dismiss these chilly thoughts.

"You have been charming to me to-night," she said; "and how much more interested we have been in ourselves than we should have been in any play. I am going, for a time, to be a model of discretion and piety, so the Archbishop and Bishops will probably ask my permission to canonize me, and I shall certainly let them. They would think it so strange if I refused, and might begin to suspect something, which is obviously undesirable."

Madge got up.

"I feel warmer," she said, "and I must go. Do remember we can't afford to have you smashed. Good-night, dear Lucia."

Lucia never did things by halves, and having made up her mind that Madge was right, and that it was important—for a time—to behave with extreme prudence, she spent no regrets over this unwelcome necessity, and, though sleepy, waited for Edgar, who had been dining with bimetallists or some strange sect, to come home, so that she might proceed to put her plan into action at once.

"Dear old boy!" she said, as he came in; "but how late you are. Were the bigamists or bimetallists so fascinating? Madge dined with me, but she has been gone hours—oh, hours! We meant to go to the play, but stopped at home and talked about ourselves instead. Do you remember once, well, criticizing her rather severely, to me? You were so wrong. She is very serious and struggling, really. I never knew it before. It was rather a surprise."

Edgar was capable of a certain dryness.

"I do not wonder at your surprise," he said. "It was perfectly natural. But how late you are, Lucia! You said you meant to go to bed early."

"I know, but I thought I would sit up for you. Is that quite unheard-of conduct? And I wanted to have a chat. Since we have been in town I have not set eyes on you. Have you been wearing the cap of darkness?"

"No," said Edgar. "The cap of invisibility fits you, not me. At least, you have been visible to so many people that I have seen nothing of you. We have not met all day, have we? I hope you were pleased with your dance last night."

"Ah, it was the greatest success," said Lucia. "In November, too. No one had ever thought of it before. And it is such fun not only hearing about, but doing, some new thing."

"You are a true Athenian," said he.

"Thank you, dear. That is a great compliment, for certainly they realized both the beautiful as well as the intellectual value of the world better than any race before or since."

"Ah, you separate the two," said he. But it was clear that he had no thoughts of a discussion; indeed, he seemed a little distant and preoccupied. Lucia had noticed that for the last month or two such a mood seemed to have grown rather common with him.

He sat down on the sofa opposite her.

"And what are your plans?" he asked. "How long would you like to stop in town?"

"I, too, was going to speak of that," she said. "It is getting rather chilly and foggy, you know, and we have had our ball. And my bones rather long for the sun; there is nothing at this moment I should like so well as to sit and be baked in it for a week or two."

"I am told they are having charming weather on the South Coast," he said.

"Yes, but it is a second-rate sun at the best which is obtainable in England," she said. "Oh, Edgar, why shouldn't we go Darby-and-Joaning in the yacht for a fortnight? We might join her at Marseilles, and have a cruise up the Riviera coast. Oh, think of it, on a day like to-day, when it was so foggy and muddy! At the best, the sun was like a new penny. And you don't have your first shooting-party till the second week in December, do you? Do take me on the yacht. Just you and I."

Something that had slumbered in Edgar's mind since the night of the thunderstorm at Brayton suddenly stirred and lifted its head.

"Let's ask Charlie to come with us," he said. "Maud, of course, wouldn't; she hates the sea."

And he looked across to his wife, watching her narrowly. He saw her bosom heave suddenly, and there was a perceptible change of colour. And when she spoke her voice, for a sentence or two, was not quite steady.

"How nice of you to think of Charlie!" she said. "Of course, he is a dear, but do you think he would be a good third on the yacht? I'm not sure that I do. How horrid of me, when Charlie is such a friend! But somehow I don't see him and you and me together. Let us ask half a dozen people, if you will, and let Charlie be one, but otherwise let us go alone."

Lucia got up; she felt that Edgar was watching her, and for that reason forbore to look at him, for she knew that hate, hostility, must come into her face if she did. But again and again she asked herself why he had suggested that. Did it mean anything? Did he say it with purpose? And why was he watching her? Already that one moment of ungovernable emotion which had seized her at the very unexpected suggestion was past, and she wondered if any sign of it had escaped her. That she could not tell: she knew only that her heart had suddenly begun to beat very quickly when the suggestion was made. But it got quiet again quite soon.

"I cannot fail to be charmed by your preference for my undiluted society," he said, "and I think that even you would find it hard to get half a dozen people to come with us at so short a notice as this will have to be."

Again she wondered if anything lurked below his words. It was the sort of sentiment, slightly pompous in expression, that was quite characteristic of him; but was that all? And then, with a want of wisdom that would have made Madge wring hands of despair, she thought that even if there was something below, she could easily disarm it, instead of which she but gave it a weapon the more. Had she jumped at the idea of asking Charlie to join them, Edgar, given that there was anything sinister in his suggestion, would have concluded that his suspicions were baseless. But her rejection of a companionship that he knew she liked was a thing that required explanation far more than her acceptance of it would have done. The one was quite unaccountable; the other would have been perfectly natural. And the thing that had lain slumbering in his own mind, and had just now raised its head, did more. It opened its eyes, and its ears were pricked.

Lucia gave a long elaborate yawn.

"Quite true," she said, "though not complimentary this time. But I allow that to get half a dozen people to come to the Mediterranean at a few days' notice is beyond my probable powers. Mind, I only say probable. So let us go alone. You are angelic to me, Edgar; I do so want the sun. Let us make arrangements to-morrow. I am sleepy, sleepy. Are you going to bed?"

"Not yet," said he. "I have things to do."

She kissed him.

"I always foresaw that bimetallism would wreck our lives, she said. "But it is a good thing to get rid of pennies and halfpennies. At least, I hope you keep silver and gold as the two metals. Am I talking nonsense? I hope so; it shows I shall go to sleep at once."

The "things" that Edgar had to do appeared, when his wife left him, to be of an inactive character, and as far as action was concerned, required only that he should frown at the fire. He did so for a considerable period.