Part 16 (2/2)

'That was because she got just as great a fright when she saw us as I did when I heard her.'

'I don't care what she got. Her business is not to drop things. That's what I pay her for. But look here--don't you go thinking such a lot of tangled-up things and arguing. Do, for goodness sake, try and be simple.'

'I feel _very_ simple,' said Lucy, smiling and putting out her hand to him, for his face was clouding. 'Do you know, Everard, I believe what's the matter with me is that I'm _too_ simple.'

Wemyss roared, and forgot how near he was getting to being hurt. 'You simple! You're the most complicated----'

'No I'm not. I've got the untutored mind and uncontrolled emotions of a savage. That's really why I jumped.'

'Lord,' laughed Wemyss, 'listen to her how she talks. Anybody might think she was clever, saying such big long words, if they didn't know she was just her Everard's own little wife. Come here, my little savage--come and sit on your husband's knee and tell him all about it.'

He held out his arms, and Lucy got up and went into them and he rocked her and said, 'There, there--was it a little untutored savage then----'

But she didn't tell him all about it, first because by now she knew that to tell him all about anything was asking for trouble, and second because he didn't really want to know. Everard, she was beginning to realise with much surprise, preferred not to know. He was not merely incurious as to other people's ideas and opinions, he definitely preferred to be unconscious of them.

This was a great contrast to the restless curiosity and interest of her father and his friends, to their insatiable hunger for discussion, for argument; and it much surprised Lucy. Discussion was the very salt of life for them,--a tireless exploration of each other's ideas, a clas.h.i.+ng of them together, and out of that clas.h.i.+ng the creation of fresh ones.

To Everard, Lucy was beginning to perceive, discussion merely meant contradiction, and he disliked contradiction, he disliked even difference of opinion. 'There's only one way of looking at a thing, and that's the right way,' as he said, 'so what's the good of such a lot of talk?'

The right way was his way; and though he seemed by his direct, unswerving methods to succeed in living mentally in a great calm, and though after the fevers of her father's set this was to her immensely restful, was it really a good thing? Didn't it cut one off from growth?

Didn't it shut one in an isolation? Wasn't it, frankly, rather like death? Besides, she had doubts as to whether it were true that there was only one way of looking at a thing, and couldn't quite believe that his way was invariably the right way. But what did it matter after all, thought Lucy, snuggled up on his knee with one arm round his neck, compared to the great, glorious fact of their love? That at least was indisputable and splendid. As to the rest, truth would go on being truth whether Everard saw it or not; and if she were not going to be able to talk over things with him she could anyhow kiss him, and how sweet that was, thought Lucy. They understood each other perfectly when they kissed. What, indeed, when such sweet means of communion existed, was the good of a lot of talk?

'I believe you're asleep' said Wemyss, looking down at the face on his breast.

'Sound,' said Lucy, smiling, her eyes shut.

'My baby.'

'My Everard.'

XVIII

But this only lasted as long as his pipe lasted. When that was finished he put her off his knee, and said he was now ready to gratify her impatience and show her everything; they would go over the house first, and then the garden and outbuildings.

No woman was ever less impatient than Lucy. However, she pulled her hat straight and tried to seem all readiness and expectancy. She wished the wind wouldn't howl so. What an extraordinary dreary place the library was. Well, any place would be dreary at half-past two o'clock on such an afternoon, without a fire and with the rain beating against the window, and that dreadful terrace just outside.

Wemyss stooped to knock out the ashes of his pipe on the bars of the empty grate, and Lucy carefully kept her head turned away from the window and the terrace towards the other end of the room. The other end was filled with bookshelves from floor to ceiling, and the books, in neat rows and uniform editions, were packed so tightly in the shelves that no one but an unusually determined reader would have the energy to wrench one out. Reading was evidently not encouraged, for not only were the books shut in behind gla.s.s doors, but the doors were kept locked and the key hung on Wemyss's watch-chain. Lucy discovered this when Wemyss, putting his pipe in his pocket, took her by the arm and walked her down the room to admire the shelves. One of the volumes caught her eye, and she tried to open the gla.s.s door to take it out and look at it. 'Why,'

she said surprised, 'it's locked.'

'Of course,' said Wemyss.

'Why but then n.o.body can get at them.'

'Precisely.'

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