Part 27 (1/2)

'I think----' she stammered, flus.h.i.+ng, for she was now very timid indeed, 'you've forgotten the sugar, Chesterton.'

'Will you not interfere!' exclaimed Wemyss very loud, putting down his cup with a bang.

The flush on Lucy's face vanished as if it had been knocked out. She sat quite still. If she moved, or looked anywhere but at her plate, she knew she would begin to cry. The scenes she had dreaded had not included any with herself in the presence of servants. It hadn't entered her head that these, too, were possible. She must hold on to herself; not move; not look. She sat absorbed in that one necessity, fiercely concentrated.

Chesterton must have gone away and come back again, for presently she was aware that sugar was being put on the tea-tray; and then she was aware that Everard was holding out his cup.

'Give me some more tea, please,' he said, 'and for G.o.d's sake don't sulk. If the servants forget their duties it's neither your nor my business to tell them what they've forgotten,--they've just got to look and see, and if they don't see they've just got to stand there looking till they do. It's the only way to teach them. But for you to get sulking on the top of it----'

She lifted the teapot with both hands, because one hand by itself too obviously shook. She succeeded in pouring out the tea without spilling it, and in stopping almost at the very moment when he said, 'Take care, take care--you're filling it too full.' She even succeeded after a minute or two in saying, holding carefully on to her voice to keep it steady, 'I'm not--sulking. I've--got a headache.'

And she thought desperately, 'The only thing to be done with marriage is to let it wash over one.'

XXV

For the rest of that day she let it wash; unresistingly. She couldn't think any more. She couldn't feel any more,--not that day. She really had a headache; and when the dusk came, and Wemyss turned on the lights, it was evident even to him that she had, for there was no colour at all in her face and her eyes were puffed and leaden.

He had one of his sudden changes. 'Come here,' he said, reaching out and drawing her on to his knee; and he held her face against his breast, and felt full of maternal instincts, and crooned over her. 'Was it a poor little baby,' he crooned. 'Did it have a headache then----' And he put his great cool hand on her hot forehead and kept it there.

Lucy gave up trying to understand anything at all any more. These swift changes,--she couldn't keep up with them; she was tired, tired....

They sat like that in the chair before the fire, Wemyss holding his hand on her forehead and feeling full of maternal instincts, and she an unresisting blank, till he suddenly remembered he hadn't shown her the drawing-room yet. The afternoon had not proceeded on the lines laid down for it in his plans, but if they were quick there was still time for the drawing-room before dinner.

Accordingly she was abruptly lifted off his knee. 'Come along, little Love,' he said briskly. 'Come along. Wake up. I want to show you something.'

And the next thing she knew was that she was going downstairs, and presently she found herself standing in a big cold room, blinking in the bright lights he had switched on at the door.

'This,' he said, holding her by the arm, 'is the drawing-room. Isn't it a fine room.' And he explained the piano, and told her how he had found a b.u.t.ton off, and he pointed out the roll of rugs in a distant corner which, unrolled, decorated the parquet floor, and he drew her attention to the curtains,--he had no objections to curtains in a drawing-room, he said, because a drawing-room was anyhow a room of concessions; and he asked her at the end, as he had asked her at the beginning, if she didn't think it a fine room.

Lucy said it was a very fine room.

'You'll remember to put the cover on properly when you've finished playing the piano, won't you,' he said.

'Yes I will,' said Lucy. 'Only I don't play,' she added, remembering she didn't.

'That's all right then,' he said, relieved.

They were still standing admiring the proportions of the room, its marble fireplace and the brilliancy of its lighting--'The test of good lighting,' said Wemyss, 'is that there shouldn't be a corner of a room in which a man of eighty can't read his newspaper'--when the gong began.

'Good Lord,' he said, looking at his watch, 'it'll be dinner in ten minutes. Why, we've had nothing at all of the afternoon, and I'd planned to show you so many things. Ah,' he said, turning and shaking his head at her, his voice changing to sorrow, 'whose fault has that been?'

'Mine,' said Lucy.

He put his hand under her chin and lifted her face, gazing at it and shaking his head slowly. The light, streaming into her swollen eyes, hurt them and made her blink.

'Ah, my Lucy,' he said fondly, 'little waster of happiness--isn't it better simply to love your Everard than make him unhappy?'

'Much better,' said Lucy, blinking.