“It’s a great thing that you’re on my side,” he declared.
“Oh, I am, I am,” said Melissa. “With Lucy it’s got to be like that. In a week or not at all. I’ll do everything I can. Here she comes with the punch. I’ll wish it for my New Year’s wish. When the clock strikes twelve I’ll wish that Lucy shall be married in a week.”
She rose and went across to John by whom she wanted to stand when they greeted the new year. Lucy, with an escort of helpers, was handing round the glasses of punch. McIntyre had removed the dance records and turned on the radio. The Westminster bells rang out through the clamour and exclamations as everybody took off their masks. Not much surprise was felt, for most disguises had been thin, but Charles was scrutinised with considerable curiosity and Captain Quinn had a bad moment when he realised that Nell Gwyn was not Mrs. Fothergill.
Ding-dong, ding-dong! went the bells, as husbands and wives drew together and a circle was formed. Charles, abandoned, looked round for Lucy and saw her at the other side of the room between Cobb and Brett. Ding-dong, ding-dong … the bells faded and the voices sank and silence fell upon the Club, as they waited for Big Ben.
John took Melissa’s hand. They thought of what the new year would bring to them.
BOOM … BOOM …
I wish that Lucy shall be married in a week, thought Melissa. I wish she shall be happy … happy … as happy as I am … in a week….
BOOM … BOOM … BOOM … BOOM …
All over England, people are listening, thought Lucy. Mother and Stephen at Gorling, and Mr. and Mrs. Chick….
BOOM … BOOM … BOOM …
A beastly cross-country journey, thought Charles. Much better hire a car from Fenswick and drive her down.
BOOM … BOOM …
I ought to have wished she should be married to him in a week! But that’s only a detail!
BOOM!
A chorus of “Happy New Years” broke out. Wives and husbands kissed and then a good deal of indiscriminate kissing went on. People who disliked one another felt a temporary warmth. Glasses were raised, punch was drunk, and hands were crossed for the ritual song. Charles looked longingly at Lucy who was still monopolised by Cobb and Brett. Strangers on either side of him were extending hands. He crossed his own and took them, still wondering about the best route from Drumby to Slane forest.
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Lucy had not sung it since the party at Ravonsbridge and it seemed suddenly to her as if the Drumby Club and all these people had faded away; she was back in the Institute hall, in that other circle, and face after face flashed before her inward eye. Lady Frances, Colonel Harding. Ianthe, Mr. Mildmay, Mrs. Mildmay, Rickie, Mr. Hayter, Wendy, Owen, Emil, Nancy … Emil … Nancy …
With my hands I shall do all for her, like that. Even as she is, she will know. They will not be strange hands. And that, thought Lucy, is love.
She whispered a word to Cobb and Brett and slipped out of the circle. She ran downstairs and out into the frosty night, back to Canal Cottages where she could think and be alone.
*
There was not so very much thinking to be done. There was only truth to be faced and accepted. She blew up the ashes of her fire and put on a log and sat down to review life in that sublime, relentless light which played upon Emil and Nancy. She did not love Charles; she did not feel for him one-tenth of what she could feel, what she must feel, for the man with whom she should share her life.
His desire would die, when once it had been gratified, and her own response would die with it. Their sympathy over the Institute was only temporary, only an accident. Other issues would arise, and they would quarrel as bitterly as they had once quarrelled in his office. He would be icy and obstinate, she furious and frustrated. Even when he had been telling her of his plans with Owen, and she had been most tempted to go back, she had found herself thinking: Then I could keep him up to it. She could not go back. Ravonsbridge was behind her, and the time had come to go on to some other place. If it was her lot to be lonely, she must endure that. In Ravonsbridge she had known Lady Frances, who had loved Matt Millwood, and drank out of the little cup that he had used, and tried to speak the truth in love, because his living self was still with her. In Ravonsbridge Emil had sat looking at his hands as the train went down the valley.
Love is an invisible sun, she thought. It is shining down upon us all the time. It is not of us. We don’t know where it comes from. But sometimes, when it shines through a life, like hers, like Emil’s, we know that it is divine. And there is nothing of that between Charles and me.
As the long winter night wore on she wrote to Charles, telling him that she could not marry him and begging him to go away without seeing her again. She took the letter up to the Lion early in the morning and gave it to the night porter.
4
THE thaw was coming. The frost still held but the north-east wind no longer whistled in from the coast. It had shifted to the west. The clouds had softer edges; grass, plough and stubble took on a greater variety of hue.
Most people in Drumby spent New Year’s morning in bed, recovering from the party and enjoying their holiday. But John was one of the few who had to go up to the Hall for an hour or two. He hurried away after an early breakfast, promising to be back for luncheon and apologising for being so hard-worked. Next year he would arrange things better.
“Next year,” said Melissa gloomily, “we shall be wheeling little Buttinski about in his perambulator. There’ll be no days off next year. We shan’t even be able to go to the Club.”
“We’ll get a sitter-in for them,” said John.
“Them?”
“If we’re going to be pessimistic, don’t let’s spoil the ship for a ha’porth of tar.”
John no longer took everything she said very seriously. Hump had taught him to laugh at her a little. When Melissa shoots a line, Hump had once told him, don’t protest or argue. Take it up and embroider it. She shoots a line to hide her feelings from herself, not you.
He went off to the Hall and on his way home he met Lucy, Cobb and Brett, running full tilt to catch a train, their skates swinging from their hands. The sight of his two juniors did not surprise him, though he had heard Melissa’s indignant account of the Farraday-Quinn plot to keep them at the Hall. He had never believed that they would be kept, but he had been too discreet to say so, for he had formed the habit of never mentioning the smallest detail, even to Melissa, of what went on behind the barbed wire. Mrs. Farraday might undertake such a mission, but Mr. Farraday was not in a position to oblige her. Cobb and Brett were not his bottle-washers.
“We’re just off to Fenswick,” called Lucy.
“I thought it was Brattle.”
“It was. But the wind has changed, so we’re going up the line, not down.”
She was looking very happy and gay in a short red skirt and a red leather coat. John wondered why she should be rushing off to skate with Cobb and Brett when she was supposed to be in love with the solemn ass. Where was the fellow?
The fellow was in the Beauclercs’ sitting-room, drinking their best sherry and receiving sympathy from Melissa. He had called to return the blue coat and remained to tell his sad story. Lucy had refused him. She had sent a letter which came up with his early morning tea, begging him to go away and not to see her again.
John was unfairly prejudiced against Charles and even snorted at the tea, though he had some every morning himself before he got up. Melissa made it from an electric kettle beside their bed. But to share a wife’s tea, he felt, is one thing; it is quite another when a bachelor solemnly orders it the night before and causes a chambermaid to bring it up to him. He was so contemptuous over the tea that he was not very compassionate towards the anguish which accompanied it.
Melissa, however, was warmly compassionate, though in her heart she would have thought more of Charles had he kept his disappointment to himself. But he was consulting her, and few wo
men are proof against the temptation of explaining their sex to a man. He wanted to know whether he should go or stay. If he went, of course he could come back, for nothing would induce him to desist in his suit. But did Melissa think he should stay and force another interview, or did she think he might have a better chance if he raised the siege for a while?
Melissa implored him to stay. A letter written in the middle of the night, after an exhausting party, could not, she said, be taken seriously. She was anxious that it should be disregarded for she had made up her mind that Lucy loved him. Also, she believed that Cobb and Brett were at the Hall, that Lucy was going alone to Brattle, and that she would be ambushed there by Quinn. If Charles were suddenly to appear, and rescue her, there might be a very pretty reconciliation. Prompt, manly behaviour was likely to appeal to Lucy.
“But …” interposed John.
Melissa frowned at him. She wanted no words from that quarter. She would have liked to despatch Charles on his knight-errantry before John came in to throw cold water on the idea and suggest, by his buts, that a more sensitive lover would accept his dismissal, respect Lucy’s wishes, and go away.
“There is only one train to Brattle, the 1.30,” she told Charles. “Lucy will certainly take that….”
“But …”
“… And start skating from a wharf close to the station. I imagine that if Captain Quinn really means to thrust his company on her he’ll be waiting there.”
All right, thought John. I won’t say but any more. I’ll leave them to it. I’ve tried to tell her twice that Lucy has gone to Fenswick, and all I get is an old-fashioned look.
“John can lend you his skates.”
“No, I can’t,” said John. “I’m going skating myself this afternoon.”
Charles said hastily that he could buy skates in the town. The cosy atmosphere of Melissa’s sympathy had been quite dissipated by her husband’s demeanour, which suggested that Lucy’s affairs ought not to be settled for her in this high-handed way.
“I’ll take a car to Brattle,” said Charles, getting up, “and if she doesn’t want to skate back with me she can say so. Otherwise I’d have no means of getting back.”
A thoroughly ill-tempered mouth, thought John. Lucy will have a sorry life of it if she takes him. A peevish fellow who mistakes obstinacy for firmness. Why! I should never have treated Melissa like this. If she had said no I’d have taken my medicine and gone away and tried to get over it. Let him go to Brattle. Let him go and cool his heels there with Quinn! I don’t see why Lucy’s afternoon should be spoilt.
He escorted the guest to the door and they parted rather coolly. When he returned to the sitting-room Melissa was all ready for battle. So he said nothing save to ask when lunch would be ready. Melissa replied that she must now cook it. They took the sherry glasses into the kitchen and he washed them while she made a cheese soufflé. Still nothing was said. During lunch they discussed the party. Melissa was extremely pleasant, as was her way when ruffled. But an unspoken argument was going on between them all through the meal.
If Lucy is in love with the fellow, she’d have accepted him.
You don’t understand women.
Yes I do. They’re very like men, only sillier.
You were ungracious. I was ashamed of you.
I’m not the fellow’s Nanny.
Scowling like that over the sherry decanter!
Simpering because he asked your advice!
It was not until they were drinking coffee that the dispute became vocal. There was one question to which he could not imagine Melissa’s answer.
“Why,” he asked suddenly, “do you think Lucy refused him if she wants him? It’s not like her.”
“Oh … I think it’s the money.”
“His money, you mean?”
“Yes. After all, even for these days he’s oppressively rich. A girl like Lucy needs to be tremendously in love before she’ll marry a very rich man. If he hadn’t a penny I think she’d know her own mind.”
“Now I wouldn’t have thought Lucy ever considered the money one way or the other. I’ve never met anyone less conscious of money than she is.”
Melissa knew this to be true. It had struck her at Oxford that money meant nothing to Lucy. Her allowance had been very small but she seemed to enjoy an independence which was rare, even among richer girls. Anything which she badly wanted she got; what she could not get she seemed very well able to do without.
“Lucy,” she said, “has got rather a noble character really. And that makes her do stupid things.”
“I agree about her character,” said John, smiling. “And therefore I think we should let her do as she pleases.”
“Oh, no, John. People with noble characters ought to be certified. They never attend to their own interests. Look at Hump! Look how he’s been exploited! So cracked about his cattle fly he lets other people get all the credit.”
“They have a different idea of their own interests. They want the best or nothing.”
“So they get nothing.”
“Very often. But they aren’t so disappointed as we would be, if we got nothing. The best seems to them so much more worth-while than any compromise they could have had.”
“But life is nothing but a compromise,” argued Melissa.
“For most of us. But it’s a good thing to have a few noble characters cropping up. Not for anything they do, so much, as for their challenge to our values. They force us to compare our good with their best. They see the best and say Hi! And make straight for it. They don’t see all the pitfalls and barbed wire that frightens us. They may never get anywhere. It’s their Hi! that matters. It forces us to look at what they’ve seen.”
“Well, I’m not content to leave Lucy hung up on barbed wire all her life. I hope she’ll take a rest from being noble, and marry Charles, and devote herself to Ravonsbridge.”
“But she’s probably done all she could do in Ravonsbridge. She went and said Hi! I don’t gather that anything else she did was particularly sensible or effective. And I notice that you agree there’s nothing noble in marrying Charles.”
“But I’m quite sure she’s really in love with him. You didn’t see her when he arrived yesterday. I did. I believe they’ll come back from Brattle engaged and very grateful to me for pushing them into it.”
“And I,” said John, “am quite positive they won’t.”
“What will you bet?”
“I never bet on a certainty.”
“I’ll wager half my dowry.”
“Darling, you can’t, and a good thing too. It’s all in the hands of trustees.”
“I’m going to get out a bottle of the champagne my father sent us. I’m perfectly convinced it will be needed.”
“That’s all right as far as I’m concerned. I never mind drinking your father’s pop.”
“You’ll drink it on your knees. You’ll drink it in a white sheet.”
Charles went back to the Lion and rang up his mother, who reproved him for wasting money on an unnecessary trunk call. He explained that he would be staying in Drumby for some days.
“You could have said that on a postcard.”
“I thought you’d want my news.”
“Have you got any?”
“Yes. I’ve asked her.”
“And she said yes?”
“No. She said no.”
“Then why are you staying in Drumby?”
“I’m hoping she’ll change her mind.”
“Why should she?”
“Girls often don’t know what they want.”
“Lucy Carmichael does. You’d much better come home.”
“I’m not going home without her.”
“Don’t be childish. You’ve no right to pester her. That’s three pips. Come home at once. Goodbye.”
There was a ping as Lady Frances hung up.
Charles pondered for a while and then thought that he would take her advice. He did not like skating and did not much relish this f
arcical drama with Quinn. He decided that he had better withdraw for a while, mobilise his resources, and renew the attack when the weather was milder.
5
THE sun came out as the skating party emerged from the wharves and gas-works of Fenswick. They congratulated themselves on having seized the day, for the ice would scarcely be safe for very many more hours. The green fields, the reed-beds and the alders were waking from the rigid death which had held them for a week. During the gale flocks of gulls had flown inland; now they flashed silvery through the dark trees as they returned to the coast.
Cobb and Brett were very young and they liked Lucy because she was the only girl in Drumby who did not make them feel inferior, callow and poor. She was always ready for a lark. She did not mind that their boat leaked and she paid for her own ice-cream. They skated on either side of her, holding her crossed hands, as the benign west wind blew them home, and they all sang:
“You’ll never get to Heaven on roller skates;
You’ll shoot right past dem pearly gates….”
The canal ran through fields to a horizon which had gained in distance since the thaw began. They knew it well, for in summer they had often sailed their boat from Drumby to Fenswick and back. They knew the reed-beds, where swans nested and herons fished, and all the low bridges where a road or a cart track crossed the canal. These were a nuisance to sailors for the mast had to come down, and there was a pleasant spice of risk about skating under them. All three had to bend nearly double as they shot under a bridge; upright, they would have cracked their heads against the arch. To maintain speed and to bend at the very last minute was part of the game.
“You’ll never get to Heaven in a rocking chair!
De Lawd don’t want no slackers there….”
Lucy Carmichael Page 38
