Read Ebook: Love and Lucy by Hewlett Maurice

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Ebook has 1086 lines and 63738 words, and 22 pages

"Where else?"

"Why, I thought you were in Switzerland."

"So I was," he said. "All among the curates. But I came back--because they didn't." He turned to Lucy. "And because I was asked here."

She asked him, "Were you ski-ing? Lancelot will grudge you that."

Lucy's table--she was between the Judge and Urquhart and had Mabel, Worthington and Miss Bacchus before her--at once took the mastery. Urquhart fixed Crewdson with his eye and thenceforward commanded him. James's eyeglass, speechless with horror over Lady Bliss's shoulder, glared like a frosty moon.

Miss Bacchus, it seems, was his old acquaintance. She too called him Jimmy, and drove at him with vigour. He charged her not to rally him, and being between the two sisters, talked to both of them at once, or rather started them off, as a music-hall singer starts the gallery, and then let them go on over his head.

They talked of Wycross, Lucy's house in the country, compared it with Peltry, which Mabel deprecated as a barrack, and came to hear of Urquhart's house in the New Forest. It was called Martley Thicket. Urquhart said it was a good sort of place. "I've made an immense lake," he said, with his eyes so very wide that Miss Bacchus said, "You're making two, now." He described Martley and the immense lake. "House stands high in beech woods, but is cut out to the south. It heads a valley--lawns on three sides, smooth as billiard tables--then the lake with a marble lip--and steps--broad and low steps, in flights of eight. Very good, you know. You shall see it."

Lucy wanted to know, "How big was the lake, really."

Urquhart said, "It looked a mile--but that's the art of the thing. Really, it's two hundred and fifty yards. Much better than a jab in the eye with a blunt stick. I did it by drainage, and a dam. Took a year to get the water up. When a hunted stag took to it and swam across, I felt that I'd done something. Fishing? I should think so. And a bathing-house in a wooded corner--in a cane-brake of bamboos. You'll like it."

Miss Bacchus said, "I don't believe a word of it;" but he seemed not to hear her.

"When will you come and see it?" he asked Lucy.

She agreed that see it she must, if only to settle whether it existed or not. "You see that Miss Bacchus has no doubts."

Urquhart said, "She never has--about anything. She is fixed in certainty like a bee in amber. A dull life."

"Bless you, Jimmy," she said, "I thrive on it--and you'll never thrive."

"Pooh!" said Urquhart, "what you call thriving I call degradation. What! you snuggle in there out of the draughts--and then somebody comes along and rubs you, and picks up bits of paper with you." His good spirits made the thing go--and James's eyeglass prevailed not against it.

But Urquhart's real triumph was at dessert--Lancelot sedately by his mother; between her and the Judge, who briskly made way for him. Lancelot in his Eton jacket took on an air of precocious, meditative wisdom infinitely diverting to a man who reflects upon boys--and, no doubt, infinitely provocative.

His coming broke up the talk and made one of those momentous pauses which are sometimes paralysing to a table. This one was so, and even threatened the neighbouring island. Upon it broke the voice of Urquhart talking to Mabel Corbet.

"I was out in Corf? in 1906," he was heard to say; "I was in fact in the bath, when one of my wives came to the door, and said that there was a Turk in the almond-tree. I got a duck-gun which I had and went out--" Lancelot's eyes, fixed and pulsing, interdicted him. They held up the monologue. In his hand was a robust apple; but that was forgotten.

"I say," he said, "have you got two wives?"

Urquhart's eyes met his with an extenuating look. "It was some time ago, you see," he said; and then, passing it off, "There are as many as you like out there. Dozens."

Lancelot absorbed this explanation through the eyes. You could see them at it, chewing it like a cud. He was engrossed in it--Lucy watched him. "I say--two wives!" and then, giving it up, with a savage attack he bit into his apple and became incoherent. One cheek bulged dangerously and required all his present attention. Finally, after a time of high tension, Urquhart's wives and the apple were bolted together, and given over to the alimentary juices. The Turk in the almond-tree was lost sight of, and no one knows why he was there, or how he was got out--if indeed he ever was. For all that, Urquhart finished his story to his two ladies; but Lucy paid him divided attention, being more interested in her Lancelot than in Urquhart's Turk.

But he did it. "We'll go and talk to the Judge," he said to his company, and led the way. Urquhart settled down to claret, and was taciturn. He answered Linden's tentative openings in monosyllables. But he and the Judge got on very well.

IN THE DRAWING-ROOM

I believe myself that both Mabel and Lucy overrated Francis Lingen's attentions. I don't think that they amounted to much more than providing himself with a sounding-board, and occasional looking-glass. He loved to talk, and to know himself listened to; he loved to look and to know himself looked at. You learned a lot about yourself that way. You saw how your things were taken. A poet--for he called himself poet, and had once so described himself in a hotel visitors' book--a poet can only practise his art by exerting it, and only learn its effect by studying his hearers. He preferred ladies for audience, and one lady at a time: there were obvious reasons for that. Men never like other men's poetry. Wordsworth, we know, avowedly read but his own.

But Mabel, and Lucy too, read all sorts of implications. His lowered tones, his frequency, his persistence--"My dear, he caresses you with his eyes. You know he does," Mabel used to say. Lucy wondered whether he really did, and ended by supposing it.

It was while this was going on that Lancelot, hovering and full of purpose, annexed Urquhart. The Judge, suddenly aware of him between them, put a hand upon his head as you might fondle the top of a pedestal--which Lancelot, intent upon his prey, endured. Then his moment came, a decent subsidence of anecdotes, and his upturned eyes caught Urquhart's.

"I say, will you come and see my orange-tree? It's just over there, in the conservatory. It's rather interesting--to me, you know."

Urquhart considered the proposition. "Yes," he said, "I'll do that." And they went off, Lancelot on tiptoe. Lucy's attention strayed.

The orange-tree was exhibited, made the most of; its history was related. There was nothing more to say about it. Lancelot, his purpose growing, gave a nervous laugh.

"No Turk could hide in that, I expect," he said, and trembled. Urquhart gazed at the weedy little growth.

"No," he said, "he couldn't--yet. But a ladybird could." He picked out a dormant specimen. But Lancelot was now committed to action beyond recall. The words burned his lips. "I say," he said, twiddling a leaf of his orange-tree, "I expect you've been a pirate?"

The Judge had wandered in, and was surveying the pair, his hands deep in his trousers-pockets.

Urquhart nodded. "You've bit it," he said.

Lancelot had been certain of it. Good Lord! The questions crowded upon him. "What kind of a ship was yours?"

"She was a brigantine. Fifteen hundred tons."

"Oh! I say--" with the air of, You needn't tell me if you'd rather not--"was she a good one?"

"She was a clipper."

"What name?"

This was beyond everything. "Oh--good. Did you ever hang fellows?"

"We did."

"Many?"

"Some."

He had expected that too. He felt that he was being too obvious. The man of the world in him came into use. "For treachery, I suppose, and that kind of thing?"

"Yes," said Urquhart, "and for fun, of course."

Lancelot nodded gloomily. "I know," he said.

"So does Sir Matthew, now," he said. "You've led me into admissions, you know."

"You are up to the neck," said the Judge. For a moment Lancelot looked shrewdly from one to the other. Was it possible that--? No, no. He settled all that. "It's all right. He's a guest, you see--the same as you are."

Urquhart was looking about him. "I should smoke a cigarette, if I had one," he said.

Lancelot's hospitality was awake. "Come into Father's room. He has tons." He led the way for his two friends. They pierced the conservatory and entered another open glass door. They were now in James's private room.

On the threshold Lancelot paused to exhibit what he said was a jolly convenient arrangement. These were two bay windows, with two glass doors. Between them stretched the conservatory. "Jolly convenient," said Lancelot. "What, for burglars?" the Judge asked. "Yes, for burglars, and policemen, and Father, you know ... I don't think," said the terse Lancelot. "Why don't you think, my friend?" says the Judge, and Lancelot became cautious. "Oh, Father won't come into the drawing-room if he can possibly help it. He says it's Mamma's province--but I expect he's afraid of meeting women, I mean ladies." Urquhart blinked at him. "'Never be afraid of any one' will do for you and me," he said; and Lancelot said deeply, "Rather not." Then they went into the misogynist's study. The Judge and Urquhart were accommodated with cigarettes, and Lancelot entertained them. But he did not pry any further into Urquhart's past. A hint had been enough.

Conversation was easy. Lancelot talked freely of his father. "Father will be awfully waxy with me for not going to bed. He might easily come in here--hope he won't, all the same. But do you know what he likes? He likes the same things to happen at the same time every day. Now Mamma and I don't agree with him, you see. So it's rather pink sometimes."

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