Part 21 (1/2)
”Now, then,” Poyntz said, ”we'll go and have tea on the terrace at the Sardinia. There will be a band, a really good band, and the embankment will look beautiful just now. Come along, young ladies; we'll walk, shall we? It won't take us five minutes.” They left the theatre.
”Ah!” Lucy said with a sudden gasp of relief, ”how good the air is after that dark place and the stage. My eyes feel as if they had been actually burnt.”
The long lights of the summer afternoon irradiated everything. There are moments in summer when the busiest London street seems like a street in fairy-land. It was so now as they walked to the great riverside hotel; a tender haze of gold lay over all the vast buildings, the sky began to be as if it were hung with banners.
They pa.s.sed from the roar of the street to the great courtyard, with its gay awnings of white and red, its palms and tree-ferns in green tubs, its little tables like the tables of a continental cafe. Little groups of people of all nationalities sat about there. The party heard the tw.a.n.ging accent of the United States, the guttural German, the purring, spitting Russian.
They entered the hotel, walked down a corridor, descended some steps, and came out upon the terrace.
Lucy had a finely developed social instinct. She knew what was going on instinctively, and it was plain to her at once that the moment had come.
Agatha Poyntz and her cousin had disappeared as she sat down at a small table with James, hidden by shrubs from the rest of the terrace.
Below and beyond were gardens in which children were playing, the wide embankment, and the silver Thames itself, all glowing under the lengthening sun rays.
What did she feel at that moment? She found that she was calm, her pulses were quiet, her breathing untroubled and slow.
He leaned forward and took her hands strongly in both of his. At first, his words came haltingly to him, but then, gathering courage, he made her a pa.s.sionate declaration.
Her heart cried out vaguely to some outside power for guidance; her inarticulate appeal was hardly a prayer, it was the supreme expression of perplexity and doubt.
”For months, all my work and life have been coloured by thoughts of you, have had reference to you. I can conceive, since I have been writing to you, and you to me, I have had hopes and dreams that have become part of my life! If you could accept this, this devotion, this strong feeling of love which has grown up in me, I feel that our companions.h.i.+p would be a beautiful thing. Lucy, I am not eloquent in love as some men are said to be, I can only tell you that I love and admire you dearly and have no greater hope than to share everything with you, my lady, my love!”
The strong, self-contained young man was deeply moved. He continued, in a monologue of singular delicacy and high feeling, to pour out the repressed feelings of the past year, to offer her a life that was more stainless--she knew it well--than that of most young men.
She was deeply touched, interested, and rather overawed. But there was no thrill of pa.s.sion in her that could answer to the notes of it that were coming into his voice and shaking it from its firmness, sending tremulous waves quivering through it.
Her hand shook in his hold, but it was pa.s.sive. Emotion rushed over her, but it was a cool emotion, so to say; she was touched, but her blood did not race and leap at his touch, she felt no wish to rest in his arms, to find her home there!
At last she was able to speak. There was a pause in his pleading, his eyes remained fixed upon her face in anxious scrutiny.
She withdrew her hand gently.
”You have touched me very deeply,” she said. ”But I can't, oh, I _can't_ answer you now. This is such a great thing. There is so much to think over, so much self-examination. It might all look quite different to one to-morrow! Let me wait, give me time. I will write to you.”
His ear found the lack of what he sought in her voice. Even to herself her tones sounded cold and conventional after his impa.s.sioned pleading.
But she found herself mistress neither of reason nor of feeling as she spoke. She was bewildered, though not taken by surprise.
He seemed to understand something of her state of mind. If his disappointment was keen, he showed nothing of it, realising with the pertinacity of a strong, vigorous nature that nothing really worth having was won easily, thankful, perhaps, that he had won as much as he had--her consideration.
”You know how great a thing this is to me,” he said. ”You would never be unkind or hard to me and it would be an unkindness to prolong my suspense. When will you give me my answer?”
”Oh, soon, soon! But I must have time. I will write to you soon, in a fortnight I will write.”
”That is so long a time!”
”It will pa.s.s very swiftly.”
”Then I accept your decree. But I shall write to you, even if you don't answer me until I get the letter, oh, happy day! on which you tell me what my whole heart longs to hear. You will read my letters during the time of waiting? Promise me that, Lucy.”
”Yes, yes, I promise,” she said hastily, seeing that Agatha and Adelaide Lelant were coming towards them.