Part 10 (1/2)

'I think we can achieve a happy little Christmas for you here,' said her aunt, smiling the smile she smiled when she found difficulty in smiling.

'Of course you and Lucy would want to be together. I ought to have told you earlier that we were counting on you, but somehow Christmas comes on one so unexpectedly.'

'Perhaps you'll tell me why you won't come to The Willows,' said Wemyss, holding on to himself as she used to make him hold on to himself in Cornwall. 'You realise, of course, that if you persist you spoil both Lucy's and my Christmas.'

'Ah, but you mustn't put it that way,' said Miss Entwhistle, gentle but determined. 'I promise you that you and Lucy shall be very happy here.'

'You haven't answered my question,' said Wemyss, slowly filling his pipe.

'I don't think I'm going to,' said Miss Entwhistle, suddenly flaring up.

She hadn't flared up since she was ten, and was instantly ashamed of herself, but there was something about Mr. Wemyss----

'I think,' she said, getting up and speaking very gently, 'you'll like to be alone together now.' And she crossed to the door.

There she wavered, and turning round said more gently still, even penitentially, 'If Lucy wishes to go to The Willows I'll--I'll accept your kind invitation and take her. I leave it to her.'

Then she went out.

'That's all right then,' said Wemyss with a great sigh of relief, smiling broadly at Lucy. 'Come here, little love,--come to your Everard, and we'll fix it all up. Lord, what a kill-joy that woman is!'

And he put out his arms and drew her to him.

XII

But Christmas was spent after all at Eaton Terrace, and they lived on Wemyss's turkeys and plum puddings for a fortnight.

It was not a very successful Christmas, because Wemyss was so profoundly disappointed, and Miss Entwhistle had the apologeticness of those who try to make up for having got their own way, and Lucy, who had shrunk from The Willows far more than her aunt, wished many times before it was over that they had after all gone there. It would have been much simpler in the long run, and much less painful than having to look on at Everard being disappointed; but at the time, and taken by surprise, she had felt that she couldn't have borne festivities, and still less could she have borne seeing Everard bearing festivities in that house.

'This is morbid,' he said, when in answer to his questioning she at last told him it was poor Vera's dreadful death there that made her feel she couldn't go; and he explained, holding her in his arms, how foolish it was to be morbid, and how his little girl, who was marrying a healthy, sensible man who, G.o.d knew, had had to fight hard enough to keep so--she pressed closer--and yet had succeeded, must be healthily sensible too.

Otherwise, if she couldn't do this and couldn't do that because it reminded her of something sad, and couldn't go here and couldn't go there because of somebody's having died, he was afraid she would make both herself and him very unhappy.

'Oh, Everard----' said Lucy at that, holding him tight, the thought of making him unhappy, him, her own beloved who had been through such terrible unhappiness already, giving her heart a stab.

His little girl must know, he continued, speaking with the grave voice that was natural to him when he was serious, the voice not of the playmate but of the man she adored, the man she was in love with, in whose hands she could safely leave her earthly concerns,--his little girl must know that somebody had died everywhere. There wasn't a spot, there wasn't a house, except quite new ones----

'Oh yes, I know--but----' Lucy tried to interrupt.

And The Willows was his home, the home he had looked forward to and worked for and had at last been able to afford to rent on a long lease, a lease so long that it made it practically his very own, and he had spent the last ten years developing and improving it, and there wasn't a brick or a tree in it in which he didn't take an interest, really an almost personal interest, and his one thought all these months had been the day when he would show it to her, to its dear future mistress.

'Oh, Everard--yes--you shall--I want to----' said Lucy incoherently, her cheek against his, 'only not yet--not festivities--please--I won't be so morbid--I promise not to be morbid--but--please----'

And just when she was wavering, just when she was going to give in, not because of his reasoning, for her instincts were stronger than his reasoning, but because she couldn't bear his disappointment, Miss Entwhistle, sure now of Lucy's dread of Christmas at The Willows, suddenly turned firm again and announced that they would spend it in Eaton Terrace.

So Wemyss was forced to submit. The sensation was so new to him that he couldn't get over it. Once it was certain that his Christmas was, as he insisted, spoilt, he left off talking about it and went to the other extreme and was very quiet. That his little love should be so much under the influence of her aunt saddened him, he told her. Lucy tried to bring gaiety into this att.i.tude by pointing out the proof she was giving him of how very submissive she was to the person she happened to live with,--'And presently all my submissiveness will be concentrated on you,' she said gaily.

But he wouldn't be gay. He shook his head in silence and filled his pipe. He was too deeply disappointed to be able to cheer up. And the expression 'happen to live with,' jarred a little. There was an airy carelessness about the phrase. One didn't happen to live with one's husband; yet that had been the implication.

Every year in April Wemyss had a birthday; that is, unlike most people of his age, he regularly celebrated it. Christmas and his birthday were the festivals of the year for Him, and were always spent at The Willows.

He regarded his birthday, which was on the 4th of April, as the first day of spring, defying the calendar, and was accustomed to find certain yellow flowers in blossom down by the river on that date supporting his contention. If these flowers came out before his birthday he took no notice of them, treating them as non-existent, nor did he ever notice them afterwards, for he did not easily notice flowers; but his gardener had standing orders to have a bunch of them on the table that one morning in the year to welcome him with their bright s.h.i.+ny faces when he came down to his birthday breakfast, and coming in and seeing them he said, 'My birthday and Spring's'; whereupon his wife--up to now it had been Vera, but from now it would be Lucy--kissed him and wished him many happy returns. This was the ritual; and when one year of abnormal cold the yellow flowers weren't there at breakfast, because neither by the river's edge nor in the most sheltered of the swamps had the increasingly frantic gardener been able to find them, the entire birthday was dislocated. He couldn't say on entering the room and beholding them, 'My birthday and Spring's,' because he didn't behold them; and his wife--that year Vera--couldn't kiss him and wish him many happy returns because she hadn't the cue. She was so much used to the cue that not having it made her forget her part,--forget, indeed, his birthday altogether; and consequently it was a day of the extremest spiritual chill and dinginess, matching the weather without. Wemyss had been terribly hurt. He hoped never to spend another birthday like it.