Part 12 (1/2)

'Oh, I'm _that_ all right,' laughed Lucy.

'Then you share my room. None of these d.a.m.ned new-fangled notions for me, young woman.'

'Oh, but I didn't mean----'

'What? Another but?' he exclaimed, pouncing down on to her mouth and stopping it with an enormous kiss.

'_Monsieur et Madame se refroidiront_,' said the woman, turning round and drawing her shawl closer over her chest as a gust of chilly wind swept over the terrace.

They were honeymooners, poor creatures, and therefore one had patience; but even honeymooners oughtn't to wish to embrace in a cold wind on an exposed terrace of a chateau round which they were being conducted by a woman who was in a hurry to return to the preparation of her Sunday dinner. For such purposes hotels were provided, and the shelter of a comfortable warm room. She had supposed them to be _pere et fille_ when first she admitted them, but was soon aware of their real relations.h.i.+p.

'_Il doit etre bien riche_,' had been her conclusion.

'Come along, come along,' said Wemyss, getting up quickly, for he too felt the gust of cold wind. 'Let's finish the chateau or we'll be late for lunch. I wish they hadn't preserved so many of these places--one would have been quite enough to show us the sort of thing.'

'But we needn't go and look at them all,' said Lucy.

'Oh yes we must. We've arranged to.'

'But Everard----' began Lucy, following after him as he followed after the conductress, who had a way of darting out of sight round corners.

'This woman's like a lizard,' panted Wemyss, arriving round a corner only to see her disappear through an arch. 'Won't we be happy when it's time to go back to England and not have to see any more sights.'

'But why don't we go back now, if you feel like it?' asked Lucy, trotting after him as he on his big legs pursued the retreating conductress, and anxious to show him, by eagerness to go sooner to The Willows than was arranged, that she wasn't being morbid.

'Why, you know we can't leave before the 3rd of April,' said Wemyss, over his shoulder. 'It's all settled.'

'But can't it be unsettled?'

'What, and upset all the plans, and arrive home before my birthday?' He stopped and turned round to stare at her. 'Really, my dear----' he said.

She had discovered that my dear was a term of rebuke.

'Oh yes--of course,' she said hastily, 'I forgot about your birthday.'

At that Wemyss stared at her harder than ever; incredulously, in fact.

Forgot about his birthday? _Lucy_ had forgotten? If it had been Vera, now--but Lucy? He was deeply hurt. He was so much hurt that he stood quite still, and the conductress was obliged, on discovering that she was no longer being followed, to wait once more for the honeymooners; which she did, clutching her shawl round her abundant French chest and s.h.i.+vering.

What had she said, Lucy hurriedly asked herself, nipping over her last words in her mind, for she had learned by now what he looked like when he was hurt. Oh yes,--the birthday. How stupid of her. But it was because birthdays in her family were so unimportant, and n.o.body had minded whether they were remembered or not.

'I didn't mean that,' she said earnestly, laying her hand on his breast.

'Of course I hadn't forgotten anything so precious. It only had--well, you know what even the most wonderful things do sometimes--it--it had escaped my memory.'

'Lucy! Escaped your memory? The day to which you owe your husband?'

Wemyss said this with such an exaggerated solemnity, such an immense pomposity, that she thought he was in fun and hadn't really minded about the birthday at all; and, eager to meet every mood of his, she laughed.

Relieved, she was so unfortunate as to laugh merrily.

To her consternation, after a moment's further stare he turned his back on her without a word and walked on.