Edward Frederic Benson

“ Lucia sat down in the chair in front of her looking-glass and blew out the candles. The blinds were down over the window and the room was almost absolutely dark, so that Maud had to feel for the silver-handled brush which she had given her friend, for no glimmer of light shone on the dressing-table; and having found it, she had to feel with her hand to find the golden billows of Lucia's head. Thick and soft and warm they lay there in untroubled calm at present; soon she would raise in them that mysterious tempest of fiery life that lay in them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I do hope you are quite happy, Lucia."
Suddenly Lucia thought she was not, if she compared herself to Maud. She had certain clouds, after all; Maud looked as if she had none. She enjoyed herself quite enormously, and never till this moment had she wondered whether that was the same as happiness. For the present, in any case, she assumed that it was.
"Happy? Yes, brilliantly happy," she said. "It has all been the most wonderful success, and I am sure Edgar is happy, too. We both want still; that is such a good thing, for I think that happiness really ends when you have all you wish for. ”

“ You will make your house the head, the fountain of a new artistic and intellectual movement; you will teach people to see and hear, you will make them understand that it is wiser to think than to eat, and better to be busy than lazy. Lazy! that is the root fault of so many of us! We won't be stirred. But for Heaven's sake, stir us, Lord Brayton! Stir us up like you stir toffee, don't you know, or else it sticks to the side and is burnt and uneatable. Heavens! How lucky you are! What opportunities! What a big life you can make! ”

“ Aunt Cathie felt hotly about this.
"Then you've got no business to, Elizabeth," she said, "and I wonder at you. You demean yourself by looking over Lucia's letter."
"I consider it a providential circumstance that I did," said Elizabeth.
"Well, then, I'm not of your way of thinking," said Cathie. "If there's anything that we ought to know, Lucia will tell us. If she does not, it's not our business."
"I shall not rest till I find out the contents of that letter," said Elizabeth firmly. "You have no strength of character, Catherine; you leave everything to me." ”

“ Oh, Lucia——"
Maud stopped a moment, calling to mind the extremely crude things that Lucia had said about love, when they sat in the window-seat of the house in Warwick Square.
"How completely love has turned the tables on you," she said. "Don't you remember the dreadful things you said to me that night—how that all young men were exactly alike, and that you did not like them, but that you could imagine liking an old man most awfully? And all the time, I remember, you thought you were making discoveries about yourself, and getting to know yourself! Now go on quick—quick, dear Lucia! ”

“ Maud, in her thought, became an enemy, one who had got possessed of what should have belonged to Lucia. She had dared to love that possession, she had dared to use it. Lucia was not jealous of her—the time for jealousy was past; jealousy had dropped dead the moment she had just beckoned to Charlie out there on the terrace after dinner; it was absurd to be jealous of one who no more than imagined she had a treasure in her keeping. Yet she was the nominal possessor of that treasure, and for that reason Lucia hated her. ”

“ If she falls in love with some very attractive young man, I know I shall cut her out, and take him for a devoted slave, Number whatever it happens to be."
"Oh, Lucia, don't talk such nonsense!" said Maud.
"Maud, you're a darling!" said Lucia. "And it's dear of you always to tell me I am talking nonsense just when I am saying the things that are most essentially myself. They are very sensible; they are not nonsense. And, as I said before, I'm not filled with rapture at the thought of having a child. I'm not I'm not! And think of all the waste of time that will never come again. ”

“ Lucia waved her hands in a sort of impotent despair.
"Well, what if I did? It was inconsistent, I suppose. But what's the good of being consistent? It is the dullest possible state to be in. I wish you wouldn't interrupt when the spirit of—anything you like—is upon me."
Maud was obediently silent. It appeared that this attitude did not suit Lucia any better.
"Darling, you are dignifiedly mute," she said. "You adopt a disapproving silence, like Aunt Cathie when she hasn't anything to say. It does irritate me so." ”

“ 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. ”

“ Though maternity appealed so little to the mother, paternity seemed a tremendous thing to him. "In fact, he takes the entire credit," Lucia had once remarked to Mouse. And with this great ambition gratified, his spirits had been almost boisterous.
"Ah, capital, capital!" he said. "You cut so neatly, my darling, a conversational surgeon. But pairing—no, no. One must be in one's place. Dearest, I regret the necessity; nothing would please me more than to start to-morrow, all alone with you and baby, and go on and on in the yacht for ever. You priceless one!" ”

“ Charlie got up with a stifled note of impatience.
"No; I wish you did sometimes. You—you wear armour, you know. I wish you would take it off and pawn it. Yes, that's what's the matter with you You aren't greedy; you aren't a liar, or lazy, or a drunkard; you don't lose your temper. I don't think you ever want to behave yourself unseemly. Really, when one comes to think of it, I don't know why I like you so much."
Edgar Brayton had quite unconsciously taken a cigarette again, and as unconsciously, while this list of his virtues was being recited, had lit it. ”

“ When Lucia had come to live with her aunts a year ago, Aunt Catherine began to want, though never to get, but during this last month she had continued to want and had reaped a wonderful harvest. Lucia, of course, had been the sun and wheat of her harvesting, and the crop, as Aunt Cathie reaped it, had never ceased to grow and ripen, fresh shoots rising continually from the ground over which her sickle had passed, rising and growing tall and swelling with grain in a sort of celestial profusion unknown to naturalists. ”

“ A great serene smile spread over Maud's face.
"Yes, I certainly will," she said. "That's the kind of childish joke that amuses Chubby and me. But again I disagree with you. Nobody can make shipwreck of your life. If a man behaves disgustingly, and you don't love him, it is no shipwreck; you are sorry; it is very sad—but, after all, you don't love him. And if—if the man you loved behaved like that, I don't see that even that, Lucia, could touch your love. Love is so much bigger than anything a person can do."
Maud paused a moment, lit by her own phrase. ”

“ Lucia carefully and naturally looked back from the railway embankment to him.
"No, it is a phrase merely," she said; "we mean the same people. Whether we say that they depend or surround, does not matter. But I chose to say dependents. By them I mean your scullery-maid, and your boot-boy, and your farmers, and your friends, and your tenants—we, I mean, who live in your houses."
"And I want to have friends among all those," he said. "You class my friends as separate from my servants and my farmers and my tenants. May I not have friends among them?" ”

“ The exaggeration was only slight, but it was there, and consisted in the fact that in the matter of friendship Lucia took the part to-day rather of the wooer than the wooed, knowing that she reversed their positions. Maud took refuge in sincerity instead.
"It is dreadful that I haven't set eyes on you all these weeks," she said, "for I don't count meeting you at a ball as setting eyes on you. One never truly meets a friend at a ball; people don't go to balls, they only send their society-wraiths there." ”

“ Indeed, she was incapable of radical disapproval with regard to anything Lucia did, for all her actions came to her through the golden haze, so to speak, of her personality. Maud could no more really judge them than the dazzled eye can judge of colour.
"Yes, cargoes of talk," she said, "all disconnected, all nonsensical, I dare say, but all me. Because if one is really absurd as I am, one is most ridiculous when one is most oneself. Most people are ridiculous, but they won't say so, and talk about politics instead, or something which is possibly not ridiculous. ”

“ And in a few years' time everybody would be dead.
The rattling on of an approaching train, getting rapidly louder, caught her ear, and the next moment with a shriek the engine belching fire, followed by its train of illuminated carriages, tore past along the embankment, swift and alive, carrying its fortunate freight at top speed by the sleepy town. That was the contrast Lucia wanted; even though the tennis-net drooped in the garden, and Aunt Elizabeth had gone to bed, out in the world there was life and movement day and night. ”

“ Aunt Elizabeth rose and tottered to the door.
"It is past my bedtime," she said. "Do not wish me a good-night good-night, Catherine, nor you, Lucia. It would be but a hollow mockery."
Aunt Cathie sat silent a moment or two. Then suddenly she mopped her eyes.
"Poor old Elizabeth!" she said. "She doesn't mean half what she says, Lucia, so don't—don't be distressed. And she knows she doesn't mean it, poor Elizabeth. It's awful when you feel you can't help acting in a way you don't really want to. It's the matter with lots of old maids. ”

“ Yet is there nobody who is genuine all the time? I should have thought that you were. To have moods doesn't mean that you are not genuine, for moods are not poses. Though one is all sorts of different people, they are all oneself. But don't let us talk about abstract questions yet. I want to know all your year's history; I want you to know mine. Let us talk about ourselves entirely for half an hour."
Maud smiled at her with that old sweetness and serenity that Lucia knew so well, and at this moment somehow envied. ”

“ Buttercups spread their gold on the green velvet of the fields, and in the hedges the leaves of the hawthorn were varnished with the dew, and cascades of starry blossom, vigorous and refreshed by the night, were spilled and sprayed over them. Then still mounting, she came to the down, all carpeted with thyme and cushions of rockrose, and stiff and springy to the feet with its short closegrowing grasses. Harebells trembled on wire-like stalks, and over all had been thrown the magic shuttle of the gossamer webs. Then turning round, Lucia looked over the hollow that held the town itself. ”

“ Then Maud spoke again in that cool, slow voice that so admirably expressed her.
"How wilful you are sometimes, dear Lucia!" she said, "as now, when for some reason you seem to want to make yourself out so mean and unfeeling. Is it not a good thing that I see through you? You know the difference quite well. If one just likes a person, and there is a piece of pleasure going about, why, I am afraid one grabs it very often, and doesn't mind much whether the other person has to go without it. But if you love anybody, you grab the pleasure in order to give it to the person you love. ”

“ Above all, then, it was important to be careful, to make the insupportable appear the desirable, to make treachery robe itself in the garb of loyalty and friendship. On the whole, after a cup of tea, she felt up to it. Madge was coming down to-day, too. Madge knew so much; Lucia would try to learn about these things.
Her bath was waiting for her next door, and she got out of bed to go to it. She always took her bath dead-cold, whether summer blazed or winter froze, for there was nothing so sane, so invigorating as that cool plunge. ”

“ Lucia shrugged her shoulders, and spread out her hands with a charming little desolate gesture.
"And I have never seen it," she said. "Isn't it maddening to think that Venice is going on all the time, and that when it is sunset in Venice to-day I shall be looking at that stupid cricket, and hearing that ridiculous band play Strauss waltzes? Tea for you? Sugar? Milk? I am so hungry. And after tea I can, anyhow, show you a magic la France. After all, between Schubert, Omar Khayyám, and the rose I shall have had a very nice afternoon." ”

“ But there was no abatement of bliss; "now" was exquisite, but the future would be more exquisite. The smouldering gold of her hair, the flower-like mouth, would be his, just as her companionship, her stimulus, would be his. He had felt them his already; he was in love with them all. And his love was accepted; it was returned!
Lucia also had her anti-climax. All that had happened had happened to the utmost pitch of her aspirations, and with the exception of her sudden terror, she had done her part with the completeness that her imagination of it all demanded. ”

“ She rejoiced that Lucia had not told Maud their secret, and could not help crowing. Lucia had told her what she had not told to her best friend. It was true that she had told Aunt Cathie about it (and had made no secret of that) because Aunt Cathie could help her. But in this hour of triumph that was forgotten. Then the dear old soul, still pining for love and affection, laid a hand on Maud's arm.
"Old folks are greedy," she said. "Can't you tell me something you haven't told Lucia? I should chuckle over Lucia, too, then!" ”

“ The answer to the telegram had been satisfactory, and one morning a few days later Lucia was sitting on the sands just to the east of the single row of houses that fronts the sea at Littlestone, letting her hair dry in the sun and wind after her bath. The sand, trodden by the wavelet feet of the outgoing tide, was wet and shiny, and covered with little ripples, while beyond stretched the great pearly levels of the sea, basking and vacant. After the confined heat of Brixham, the warm salt breezes and fresh heat of the seaside was unspeakably invigorating ”