Maurice Hewlett

“ Tulips are like a drug. A little is exquisite, and you are led on. Excess brings no more enchantment, only nausea. You buy a million and plant your woodland, and the result is horror. A hundred would have been heavenly. That's what I find."
She had mockery in her look, gleams of it shot with happiness to be there. "Is that what you've done at Martley? I shan't praise you when I see it. I hate too-muchness."
"So do I, but always too late. I ought to learn from you, whose frugality is part of your charm. One can't imagine too much Lucy."
"Ah, don't be sure," she cautioned him. "Ask James." ”

“ As things fell out, she slipped into love without knowing it. The moment she had known it, she withdrew to the shadow of her hearth. That was his Lucy all over. His Lucy? Yes, for that wasn't the Solicitor's Lucy—if, indeed, the solicitor had a Lucy. But had he? A little weakness of Urquhart's was to pride himself on being a man of whims, and to suppose such twists of the mind his unique possession. All indeed that he had of unique was this, that he invariably yielded to his whims; whereas other people did not. ”

“ Men never like other men's poetry. Wordsworth, we know, avowedly read but his own.
But Mabel, and Lucy too, read all sorts of implications. His lowered tones, his frequency, his persistence—"My dear, he caresses you with his eyes. You know he does," Mabel used to say. Lucy wondered whether he really did, and ended by supposing it.
Just now, therefore, Francis Lingen flowed murmuring on his way, like a purling brook, rippling, fluctuant, carrying insignificant straws, insects of the hour, on his course, never jamming, or heaving up, monotonous but soothing. ”

“ James's very words. She nodded without speaking, but laughter flickered over her face like summer lightning.
"Well," said Urquhart, "I am—to him. I've known Macartney for years—long before you did. I like him, but I think he gives himself airs. Now you can't, you know, when the man with you is a liar. You never know where to have a liar, or whether you have him or not. And then you get in a fright whether he's not having you. Macartney, saving your presence, doesn't like being had."
Lucy laughed, and turned to wave her hand to Lancelot in the entry of the conservatory. ”

“ In short, James was growing sentimental about Lucy. Man of fashion as he was, with that keen eye for style and the mode, it may well be that Urquhart's interest in her was a kind of cachet. A hall-mark! However that may be, James looked at her more curiously during that July than he had done since he saw her first in the garden of Drem House. Yes, Lucy was pretty; more than that, she had charm. He saw it now. She moved her head about like a little bird—and yet she was not a little woman by any means; tall, rather, for a woman. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Without that shining buckler of the soul he would have been simply nobody; with it, he was a demi-god. Here then, under the very shadow of his immortality, Lucy pursued her researches. What of the romantic, hidden, eponymous James? Where did he stand now in her regard?
Since Easter at Wycross, James had not been her veiled Eros, but the possibilities were all there. He was not a garden god, by any means, nor a genius of the Spring. January and Onslow Square had not frozen his currents; February and the Opera House had heightened his passion. ”

“ He was not angry any more; he couldn't be—and there was Lucy to be thought of. What would Urquhart think of a Lucy who could have revealed such things as these? He would have judged her brazen, little knowing the warm passion of her tears. Ah, not for him these holy moments. No, let him die thinking honour of her—honour according to his own code. He put his hand out and touched Urquhart's face with the back of it.
"Let us leave it at this," he said; "we both love her. We are neither of us fit. She would have taken either of us. But I came first, and then came Lancelot—and she loves the law. ”

“ James went, forgiven, to his Bishops and Deans, and to lunch with his Johnny Mallet and the tufted. Lucy, her household duties done, arrayed herself for the tulips of the Park.
The grey watches of the night with their ache and moments of panic, the fever and fret, the wearing down of rage and emptying of wonder [Pg 140] and dismay, the broken snatches of dream-sleep, and the heavy slumber which exhaustion finally gave her—all this had brought downstairs, to be kissed, embraced and forgiven, a Lucy disillusioned and tired to death, but schooled to patience. ”

“ And poor Francis Lingen! She could afford to laugh at that. Francis Lingen was as capable of kissing the Duchess of Westbury—at whose horrible party she had been the other night—as herself.
She felt very safe, and enormously relieved. So much so that she could afford herself the reflection that if hardihood had been all that was wanting, Jimmy Urquhart would have had plenty and to spare. Oh, yes, indeed. But—thank God again—he was a gentleman if ever there was one. Nobody but a gentleman could afford to be so simple in dealing. ”

“ The height of her esteem for Urquhart was the measure of her growing disrelish for James. It was hard to visit upon a man the sense that he was not what he had never dreamed of being; but that is what happened to him. By how much he had risen in her eyes when she made an Eros of him, by so much did he fall when she found out her mistake. Because he was obviously no Eros, was he so obviously but part of a man? ”

“ 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." ”

“ James had suddenly ordered this variation of practice—he did not say why—and so it was to be. Crewdson, the invaluable butler-valet of the house, who presided over a zenana of maids, and seemed to carry his whiskers into the fray like an oriflamme, was visibly perturbed at this new notion. "Mr. Macartney has his reason, we know. But how is one gentleman's servant to split himself in halves? And where does he stand, Mrs. Jenkins? With tables dotted about—like a café—or an archumpelygo?" ”

“ Nobody likes to be tied."
"Then nobody should be married," said Mabel, who had listened to these outbursts of speech, and pauses which had been really to find words rather than breath, with staring and hard-rimmed eyes. She had a gift of logic, and could be pitiless. "What it comes to, you know," she said, "is that you want to have your fun in private. We all do, I suppose; but that can't come off in nine cases out of ten. Especially with a man like James, who is as sharp as a razor, and just as edgy. The moment anybody peers at you you show a tarnish, and get put off. ”

“ Francis Lingen knocked and entered. She could afford that; and presently a couple added themselves, young married people whom she liked for their poverty, hopefulness and unaffected pleasure in each other. She made Lingen acquainted with them, and talked to young Mr. Pierson. He spoke with a cheer in his voice. "Ripping opera. Madge adores it. We saw your husband downstairs, but I don't think he knew us."... And through her head blew the words like a searching wind: "You darling! You darling!" Oh, that was great love! Small wonder that James saw nothing of the Piersons. ”

“ Your tears brought you down to earth."
"That's poetry," said Lucy.
"It's the nature of man," he maintained.
She wanted to know if he "minded" her seeing Urquhart. He did, very much; but wouldn't say so.
"You needn't mind a bit," she told him. "He has terrified me. I'm not adventurous at all; besides—"
"Besides—?"
"No, no, not now." She would say nothing more.
An expedition was made to the foot of the snow-field—for the benefit of the boys. From a distance they saw the great cornice, and the plateau where James had watched by Urquhart. Lancelot was here confronted with irony for the first time. ”

“ Lancelot looked extremely serious. "Not Mr. Urquhart?" he said.
"No," said Lucy, "I am sure Mr. Urquhart is older than that. But there's Margery Dacre. She might do."
Lancelot had his own ideas as to whether women counted or not, in omens, but was too polite to express them.
"Is she twenty-five, do you think? She's rather thin." Lucy exploded, and had to kiss the unconscious humourist. "Do you think we grow fatter as we grow older? ”

“ He laid it before her: she, Lancelot and [Pg 181] James were to be the nucleus. He should ask the Corbets and their boys, Vera and hers. Nugent would refuse, he knew. Meantime, what did she say? He watched her shining eyes perpending, saw the gleam of anticipated delight. What a plan! But then she looked down, hesitating. Something must now be said.
"Oh, of course Lancelot would go mad with joy, and I dare say I could persuade James—"
"Well? But you?"
"I should live every moment of the time, but—sometimes life seems to cost too much." ”

“ I can't tell you how contented I am that you approve of him."
"He's all right," said Urquhart, who didn't like all this. James, on the contrary, liked it awfully. He became a chatterbox.
"He's more than that in his mother's esteem. But Lucy's a wise mother. She moves with her finger on her lip. And that, mind you, without coddling. She'll risk him to the hair's-breadth—and never a word. But she won't risk herself. Not she! Why, she might be wanted! But there it is. Women can do these things, God knows how! ”

“ Hard riding seemed to involve hard living, and hard swearing. She had once heard Laurence let himself go to some rider over hounds, and had put him on a back shelf in her mind—him and his Peltry with him. A prude? No, she was sure she was nothing of the sort; but she liked people to keep a hold on themselves.
A gay little dinner-party, one of hers, as she told James, finished a month of high light. The young Pierson couple, some Warreners, a Mrs. Treveer and Jimmy Urquhart—eight with themselves. The faithful Francis Lingen was left out as a concession to James and love in the dark. ”

“ Much as you and I esteem each other, my dear Urquhart, if there's walking to be done—serious walking, I think we shall be better three than two. I don't at all agree that three is no company. Where men are concerned I think it better than two or four. If only to give a knee, or hold the sponge! And with more than four you become a horde. We want a man now."
"I think so too," Urquhart said. "Well, who's your candidate?"
James meditated, or appeared to meditate. "Well," he said, looking up and fixing Urquhart with his eyeglass, "what do you say to Francis Lingen? ”

“ What had been the matter with Mabel, when she hinted that perhaps, after all, James had never done anything? [Pg 125] What could Mabel know, or guess, or suspect? Lucy owned to herself, candidly, that James was incomprehensible. After thirteen years, or was it fourteen?—suddenly—with no warning symptoms, to plunge into such devotion as never before, when everything had been new, and he only engaged—! Men were like that when they were engaged. They aren't certain of one, and leave no chances. But James, even as an engaged man, had always been certain. ”

“ Lancelot, preternaturally moved, said to his mother, "I say, Mamma, what a man—eh?" She, lightly, "Yes, isn't he wonderful?" and Lancelot, with a snort: "A man? Ten rather small men—easily." And James, poor James, saw nothing kissable in that!
It hadn't been till May of that year that Lucy began to think about Urquhart—or rather it was in May that she discovered herself to be thinking about him. Mabel assisted her there. Mabel was in Cadogan Square for the season, and the sisters saw much of each other. ”

“ He pleaded for tea, which, ordered, did not come; then hunted for the motor, which finally she found for herself. She arrived late at Queen's Gate; the eyeglass glared in horror. James, indeed, was very cross. What any chance victim of his neighbourhood may have endured is not to be known. So far as Lucy could see he did not open his mouth once while he was there. ”

“ Everything was grown to the top of its bent; but there was nothing very rare. "No frills," said Lord Considine, and approved of it all. "I dare say a woman would beautify it, but it would cease to be Jimmy's and would cease to be interesting too. She would have more flowers and fewer shrubs. Now Jimmy knows enough about it to understand that shrubs and trees are the real test of gardening. Anybody can grow flowers; but shrubs want science." Lucy felt rebuked. She had desiderated more flowers. James, who knew nothing and cared little about gardens, passed approval of the house and offices. ”

“ But from the moment of landing at Bergen she had been transformed. She was now the sister of her son, a wild, wilful, impetuous creature, a nymph of the heath, irresponsible and self-indulgent, taking what she could get of comfort and cherishing, and finding a boundless appetite for it. It was something, perhaps, to know in her heart that every man in the party was in love with her ”

“ They parted at the entry of the wood with Good night, and Lucy flitted back with a pain in her heart like the sound of wailing. But women can wail at heart and show a fair face to the world. Her stretched smile had lost none of its sweetness, her eyes none of their brightness. Vera Nugent watched her narrowly, and led the conversation upstairs. ”

“ The husband of a very pretty wife, the father of a delightful and healthy son, the best-dressed solicitor in London, and therefore, you may fairly say, in the world, with an earned income of some three or four thousand a year, with money in the funds, two houses, and all the rest of it, a member of three very old-fashioned, most uncomfortable and absurdly exclusive clubs—if this is not success, what is? And all got smoothly, without a crease of the forehead, by means of an eyeglass, a cold manner and an impassivity which nothing foreign or domestic had ever disturbed. ”

“ Men were not made so. And yet—and yet—James was a possible Eros, an Eros (bless him!) with an eyeglass: and Eros loved in the dark.
She comforted herself with this thought, which seemed to her a bright solution of the puzzle, and saw James rise and stretch his length without mutiny. She received the taps on the cheek of his rolled Punch, allowed, nay, procured, another chilly peck, with no pouting lips, no reproachful eyes. Then came a jar, and her puzzlement renewed. "Shall you be late?" "Oh, my dear soul, how can I possibly say? ”

“ It is beautiful, even for you, to make people happy. That is why you do it: what else could you do? Life is made up of illusions, I think. Let me therefore add to the sum of mine that you have desired my happiness." This sort of thing, which once had stirred her to gentle amusement, now made her words fall dry. "You mustn't forget that James has desired it too." "Oh," said Francis Lingen, "that's very kind of him."
"Really, it is Mr. Urquhart's party. ”

“ James was the offspring of a tradition and a looking-glass. But the zest and high spirits of Urquhart were catching, and after a week Francis Lingen ceased to murmur to ladies in remote corners, and James to care whether his clothes were pressed. Everybody behaved well: Urquhart, who believed that he possessed Lucy's heart, James, who knew now what he possessed, Vera Nugent, who was content to sit and look on, and Lucy herself, who simply [Pg 228] and honestly forgot everything except the beauty of the world, and the joy of physical exertion. ”