AMARI ALIQUID

Lingen was exceedingly gratified by Lucy’s letter. James had thought the invitation should come from her, and, as the subject-matter was distasteful to her, sooner than discuss it she had acquiesced. Few pin-pricks had rankled as this one. She had never had any feeling but toleration for Lingen; James had erected him as a foible; and that he should use him now as a counter-irritant made her both sore and disgustful. She wished to throw up the whole scheme, but was helpless, because she could neither tell James, who would have chuckled, nor Urquhart either. To have told Urquhart, whether she told him her reason or left him to guess it, would have precipitated a confession that her present position was untenable. In her heart she knew it, for the heart knows what the mind stores; but she had not the courage to summon it up, to table it, and declare, “This robe is outworn, stretched at the seams, ragged at the edges. Away with it.” Just now she could not do it; and because she could not do it she was trapped. James had her under his hand.

Therefore she wrote her, “Dear Francis,” and had his grateful acceptance, and his solemn elation, visible upon his best calling face. “I can’t tell you how happy you have made me. It is beautiful, even for you, to make people happy. That is why you do it: what else could you do? Life is made up of illusions, I think. Let me therefore add to the sum of mine that you have desired my happiness.” This sort of thing, which once had stirred her to gentle amusement, now made her words fall dry. “You mustn’t forget that James has desired it too.” “Oh,” said Francis Lingen, “that’s very kind of him.”

“Really, it is Mr. Urquhart’s party. He invented it.”

“Did he desire my happiness too?” asked Lingen, provoked into mockery of his own eloquence by these chills upon it.

“At least he provided for it,” said Lucy, “and that you shouldn’t be uncomfortable I have asked Margery Dacre to come.”

Lingen felt this to be unkind. But he closed his eyes and said, “How splendid.”

That was the fact. It had been an afterthought of hers, and partially countered on James. Margery Dacre also had accepted. She had said, “How too delicious!” James, when made aware that she was coming, ducked his head, it is true, but made a damaging defence.

“Is she?” he said. “Why?”

“She’ll make our number a square one,” she replied, “to begin with. And she might make it more pleasant for the others Francis Lingen and Mr. Urquhart.”

If she hadn’t been self-conscious she would never have said such a thing as that. James’s commentary, “I see,” and the subsequent digestion of the remark by the eyeglass, made her burn with shame. She felt spotted, she felt reproach, she looked backward with compunction and longing to the beginning of things. There was now a tarnish on the day. Yet there was no going back.

Clearly she was not of the hardy stuff of which sinners must be made if they are to be cheerful sinners. She was qualmish and easily dismayed. Urquhart was away, or she would have dared the worst that could befall her, and dragged out of its coffer her poor tattered robe of romance. Between them they would have owned to the gaping seams and frayed edges. Then he might have kissed her and Good-bye. But he was not at hand, and she could not write down what she could hardly contemplate saying.

Never, in fact, was a more distressful lady on the eve of a party of pleasure. Lancelot’s serious enjoyment of the prospect, evident in every line of his letters, was her only relish; but even that could not sting her answers to vivacity. “I hope the Norwegians are very sensible. They will need all their sense, because we shall have none when the pirate is there.” “There used to be vikings in Norway. They came to England and stole wives and animals. Now we bring them a man for wives. That is what for with the chill of.” “I must have a new reel to my fishing-rod. The old one has never been the same since I made a windlass of it for the battleship when it was a canal-boat, and it fell into the water when we made a landslide and accident which was buried for three days and had a worm in the works. Also a v. sharp knife for reindeer, etc. They are tough, I hear, and my knife is sharpest at the back since opening sardines and other tins, all rather small.” He drove a fevered pen, but retained presence of mind enough to provide for his occasions: “The excitement of Norway may lose me some marks in term’s order. Not many I dare say.” Again, “When you are excited reports go bad. I have been shouting rather, kicking up a shine. Once there was a small fight which was twigged. Norway is a serious matter.” There was an undercurrent of nervousness, discernible only to her eyes. She could not account for it till she had him home, and they were on the edge of adventure. It was lest he should be seasick and disgrace himself in the esteem of young Nugent, who, as a naval officer, was of course sea-proof. “I expect Nugent likes it very rough,” he said and then, “I don’t, you know, much. Not for weeks at a time. Rather a nuisance.” However, it was solved in the event by Nugent being prostrate from the time they left the Tyne. Between his spasms he urged his mother to explain that Lord Nelson was always seasick. But Lancelot was very magnanimous about it.

There was diversion in much of this, and she used it to lighten her letters to Urquhart, which, without it, had been as flat as yesterday’s soda-water. As the time came near when they should leave home she grew very heavy, had forebodings, wild desires to be done with it all. Then came a visitation from the clear-eyed Mabel and a cleansing of the conscience.

Mabel said that she was sorry to miss Norway. It would have amused her enormously. “To see you in the saddle, with two led horses!” She always talked as if she was an elder sister. “I almost threw Laurence over; but of course I couldn’t do that. He’s so dependent and silent and pathetic but thank goodness, he hasn’t found out, like James, the real use of wives. That is, to have somebody to grumble to who really minds. There’s your James for you. He doesn’t want to go a bit; he’d much rather be at Harrogate or somewhere of that sort. Perhaps he’d like Homburg. But he wouldn’t go for the world. He’s not pathetic at all, though he wants to be; but he wants to be sarcastic at the same time, and is cross because the two things won’t go together. Of course he stuck in Francis Lingen. He would. As if he cared about Francis Lingen, a kind of poodle!”

“You oughtn’t to abuse James to me,” Lucy said, not very stoutly; “I don’t abuse Laurence.”

“Abuse him!” cried Mabel. “Good Heavens, child, I only say out loud what you are saying to yourself all day. We may as well know where we are.” Then came a pause; and then, “I suppose you and Jimmy Urquhart are in a mess.”

Lucy said nothing; whereupon Mabel showed her clear sight. “And I suppose you know now who turned the light off.” At that terrible surmise Lucy got up and stood above her sister. “Mabel, I don’t know what to do.”

“I am sure you don’t,” said Mabel. “On the other hand, you know what you have to do.”

“Yes,” Lucy replied; “but it isn’t so easy as you would think. You see, I have never spoken to him about it, nor he to me; and it seems almost impossible to begin now.”

Mabel was out of her depth. “Do you mean ? What do you really mean?”

“I mean exactly what I say. I found out the truth, by a kind of accident one day. It wasn’t possible to doubt. Well, then it went on, you know ”

“Of course it did,” said Mabel. “Well?”

“And there was no disguise about it, after there couldn’t be.”

“Why should there be, if there couldn’t be?” Mabel was at her wits’ end.

“There was no disguise about it, while it was going on, you know. But in the daytime well, we seemed to be ordinary people, and nothing was said. Now do you see?”

Mabel did. “It makes it very awkward for you. But feeling as you do now, you simply must have it out.”

“I can’t,” Lucy said with conviction. “I know I can’t do that. No, it must stop another way. I must be hateful.”

“Do you mean to make him dislike you? To put him off?”

Lucy nodded. “Something like that.”

“Try it,” said Mabel.

“You mean it won’t answer?”

“I mean that you won’t, my dear. You are not that sort. Much too kind. Now I could be perfectly beastly, if I felt it the only thing.”

Lucy was in a hard stare. “I don’t feel kind just now. James has given me a horror of things of the sort. I don’t believe he meant it. I think he felt snappish and thought he would relieve his feelings that way. But there it is. He has made it all rather disgusting. It’s become like a kind of intrigue of vulgar people, in a comedy.”

“These things do when you take them out and look at them,” Mabel said. “Like sham jewellery. They are all right in their cases. The velvet lining does so much. But although you may be disgusted with James’s handling of your private affairs, you are not disgusted with the other?”

“No, I suppose not. I really don’t know. He is the most understanding man in the world, and I would trust him through everything. I don’t think he could tell me an untruth. Not one that mattered, anyhow. I could see him go away from me for a year, for two, and not hear a word from him, and yet be sure that he would come back, and be the same, and know me to be the same. I feel so safe with him, so proud of his liking me, so settled in life I never felt settled before like being in a nest. He makes everything I love or like seem more beautiful and precious Lancelot, oh, I am much prouder of Lancelot than I used to be. He has shown me things in Lancelot which I never saw. He has made the being Lancelot’s mother seem a more important, a finer thing. I don’t know how to say it, but he has simply enhanced everything as you say, like a velvet lining to a jewel. All this is true and something in me calls for him, and urges me to go to him. But now but yet all this hateful jealousy this playing off one man against another Francis Lingen! As if I ever had a minute’s thought of Francis Lingen oh, it’s really disgusting. I didn’t think any one in our world could be like that. It spots me I want to be clean. I’d much rather be miserable than feel dirty.”

Here she stopped, on the edge of tears, which a sudden access of anger dried up. She began again, more querulously. “It’s his fault, of course. It was outrageous what he did. I’m angry with him because I can’t be angry with myself for not being angry. How could I be angry? Oh, Mabel, if it had been James after all! But of course it wasn’t, and couldn’t be; and I should be angry with him if I wasn’t so awfully sorry for him.”

Mabel stared. “Sorry for James!”

“Yes, naturally. He’s awfully simple, you know, and really rather proud of me in his way. I see him looking at me sometimes, wondering what he’s done. It’s pathetic. But that’s not the point. The point is that I can’t get out.”

“Do you want to get out?” Mabel asked.

“Yes, I do in a way. It has to be and the sooner the better. And whether I do or not, I don’t like to feel that I can’t. Nobody likes to be tied.”

“Then nobody should be married,” said Mabel, who had listened to these outbursts of speech, and pauses which had been really to find words rather than breath, with staring and hard-rimmed eyes. She had a gift of logic, and could be pitiless. “What it comes to, you know,” she said, “is that you want to have your fun in private. We all do, I suppose; but that can’t come off in nine cases out of ten. Especially with a man like James, who is as sharp as a razor, and just as edgy. The moment anybody peers at you you show a tarnish, and get put off. It doesn’t look to me as if you thought so highly of the other as you think you do. After all, if you come to that, the paraphernalia of a wedding is pretty horrid; one feels awfully like a heifer at the Cattle Show. At least, I did. The complacency of the bridegroom is pretty repulsive. You feel like a really fine article. But one lives it down, if one means it.”

Lucy told her to go, or as good as told her. Sisters may be plain with each other. She wasn’t able to answer her, though she felt that an answer there was.

What she had said was partly true. Lucy was a romantic without knowing it. So had Psyche been, and the fatal lamp should have told her so. The god removed himself. Thus she felt it to be. He seemed just outside the door, and a word, a look, would recall him to his dark beauty of presence. That he was beautiful so she knew too well, that he was unbeautiful in the glare of day she felt rather than knew. The fault, she suspected, lay in her, who could not see him in the light without the blemish of circumstance not his, but circumstance, in whose evil shade he must seem smirched. What could she do with her faulty vision, but send him away? Was that not less dishonourable than to bid him remain and dwindle as she looked at him? What a kink in her affairs, when she must be cruel to her love, not because she loved him less, but rather that she might love him more!

But the spirit of adventure grew upon her in spite of herself, the sense of something in the wind, of the morning bringing one nearer to a great day. It pervaded the house; Crewdson got in the way of saying, “When we are abroad, we shall find that useful, ma’am”; or “Mr. Macartney will be asking for that in Norway.” As for James, it had changed his spots, if not his nature. James bought marvellous climbing boots, binoculars, compasses of dodgy contrivance, sandwich-cases, drinking-flasks, a knowing hat. He read about Norway, studied a dictionary, and ended by talking about it, and all to do with it, without any pragmatism. Lucy found out how he relied upon Urquhart and sometimes forgot that he was jealous of him. Jealous he was, but not without hope. For one thing, he liked a fight, with a good man. Lingen caught the epidemic, and ceased to think or talk about himself. He had heard of carpets to be had, of bold pattern and primary colouring; he had heard of bridal crowns of silver-gilt worthy of any collector’s cabinet. He also bought boots and tried his elegant leg in a flame-coloured sock. And to crown the rocking edifice, Lancelot came home in a kind of still ecstasy which only uttered itself in convulsions of the limbs, and sudden and ear-piercing whistles through the fingers. From him above all she gained assurance. “Oh, Mr. Urquhart, he’ll put all that straight, I bet you in two ticks!...” and once it was, “I say, Mamma, I wonder where you and I would be without Mr. Urquhart.” James heard him, and saw Lucy catch her breath. Not very pleasant.