Part 9

And in the dark he kissed away her tears, and held her close till her sobbing quieted down; and presently, held close like that, his kisses shutting her smarting eyes, she now the baby comforted and reassured, and he the soothing nurse, she fell asleep, and for the first time since her marriage slept all night.

XV

Early in their engagement Wemyss had expounded his theory to Lucy that there should be the most perfect frankness between lovers, while as for husband and wife there oughtn't to be a corner anywhere about either of them, mind, body, or soul, which couldn't be revealed to the other one.

'You can talk about everything to your Everard,' he assured her. 'Tell him your innermost thoughts, whatever they may be. You need no more be ashamed of telling him than of thinking them by yourself. He _is_ you. You and he are one in mind and soul now, and when he is your husband you and he will become perfect and complete by being one in body as well. Everard--Lucy. Lucy--Everard. We shan't know where one ends and the other begins. That, little Love, is real marriage. What do you think of it?'

Lucy thought so highly of it that she had no words with which to express her admiration, and fell to kissing him instead. What ideal happiness, to be for ever removed from the fear of loneliness by the simple expedient of being doubled; and who so happy as herself to have found the exactly right person for this doubling, one she could so perfectly agree with and understand? She felt quite sorry she had nothing in her mind in the way of thoughts she was ashamed of to tell him then and there, but there wasn't a doubt, there wasn't a shred of anything a little wrong, not even an unworthy suspicion. Her mind was a chalice filled only with love, and so clear and bright was the love that even at the bottom, when she stirred it up to look, there wasn't a trace of sediment.

But marriage--or was it sleeplessness?--completely changed this, and there were perfect crowds of thoughts in her mind that she was thoroughly ashamed of. Remembering his words, and whole-heartedly agreeing that to be able to tell each other everything, to have no concealments, was real marriage, the day after her wedding she first of all reminded him of what he had said, then plunged bravely into the announcement that she'd got a thought she was ashamed of.

Wemyss pricked up his ears, thinking it was something interesting to do with sex, and waited with an amused, inquisitive smile. But Lucy in such matters was content to follow him, aware of her want of experience and of the abundance of his, and the thought that was worrying her only had to do with a waiter. A waiter, if you please.

Wemyss's smile died away. He had had occasion to reprimand this waiter at lunch for gross negligence, and here was Lucy alleging he had done so without any reason that she could see, and anyhow roughly. Would he remove the feeling of discomfort she had at being forced to think her own heart's beloved, the kindest and gentlest of men, hadn't been kind and gentle but unjust, by explaining?

Well, that was at the very beginning. She soon learned that a doubt in her mind was better kept there. If she brought it out to air it and dispel it by talking it over with him, all that happened was that he was hurt, and when he was hurt she instantly became perfectly miserable. Seeing, then, that this happened about small things, how impossible it was to talk with him of big things; of, especially, her immense doubt in regard to The Willows. For a long while she was sure he was bearing her feeling in mind, since it couldn't have changed since Christmas, and that when she arrived there she would find that he had had everything altered and all traces of Vera's life there removed. Then, when he began to talk about The Willows, she found that such an idea as alterations hadn't entered his head. She was to sleep in the very room that had been his and Vera's, in the very bed. And positively, so far was it from true that she could tell him every thought and talk everything over with him, when she discovered this she wasn't able to say more than that hesitating remark on the château terrace at Amboise about supposing he was going to change his bedroom.

Yet The Willows haunted her, and what a comfort it would have been to tell him all she felt and let him help her to get rid of her growing obsession by laughing at her. What a comfort if, even if he had thought her too silly and morbid to be laughed at, he had indulged her and consented to alter those rooms. But one learns a lot on a honeymoon, Lucy reflected, and one of the things she had learned was that Wemyss's mind was always made up. There seemed to be no moment when it was in a condition of becoming, and she might have slipped in a suggestion or laid a wish before him; his plans were sprung upon her full fledged, and they were unalterable. Sometimes he said, 'Would you like----?' and if she didn't like, and answered truthfully, as she answered at first before she learned not to, there was trouble. Silent trouble. A retiring of Wemyss into a hurt aloofness, for his question was only decorative, and his little Love should instinctively, he considered, like what he liked; and there outside this aloofness, after efforts to get at him with fond and anxious questions, she sat like a beggar in patient distress, waiting for him to emerge and be kind to her.

Of course as far as the minor wishes and preferences of every day went it was all quite easy, once she had grasped the right answer to the question, 'Would you like?' She instantly did like. 'Oh yes--_very_ much!' she hastened to assure him; and then his face continued content and happy instead of clouding with aggrievement. But about the big things it wasn't easy, because of the difficulty of getting the right flavour of enthusiasm into her voice, and if she didn't get it in he would put his finger under her chin and turn her to the light and repeat the question in a solemn voice,--precursor, she had learned, of the beginning of the cloud on his face.

How difficult it was sometimes. When he said to her, 'You'll like the view from your sitting-room at The Willows,' she naturally wanted to cry out that she wouldn't, and ask him how he could suppose she would like what was to her a view for ever associated with death? Why shouldn't she be able to cry out naturally if she wanted to, to talk to him frankly, to get his help to cure herself of what was so ridiculous by laughing at it with him? She couldn't laugh all alone, though she was always trying to; with him she could have, and so have become quite sensible. For he was so much bigger than she was, so wonderful in the way he had triumphed over diseased thinking, and his wholesomeness would spread over her too, a purging, disinfecting influence, if only he would let her talk, if only he would help her to laugh. Instead, she found herself hurriedly saying in a small, anxious voice, 'Oh yes--_very_ much!'

'Is it possible,' she thought, 'that I am abject?'

Yes, she was extremely abject, she reflected, lying awake at night considering her behaviour during the day. Love had made her so. Love did make one abject, for it was full of fear of hurting the beloved. The assertion of the Scriptures that perfect love casteth out fear only showed, seeing that her love for Everard was certainly perfect, how little the Scriptures really knew what they were talking about.

Well, if she couldn't tell him the things she was feeling, why couldn't she get rid of the sorts of feelings she couldn't tell him, and just be wholesome? Why couldn't she be at least as wholesome about going to that house as Everard? If anybody was justified in shrinking from The Willows it was Everard, not herself. Sometimes Lucy would be sure that deep in his character there was a wonderful store of simple courage. He didn't speak of Vera's death, naturally he didn't wish to speak of that awful afternoon, but how often he must think of it, hiding his thoughts even from her, bearing them altogether alone. Sometimes she was sure of this, and sometimes she was equally sure of the very opposite. From the way he looked, the way he spoke, from those tiny indications that one somehow has noticed without knowing that one has noticed and that are so far more revealing and conclusive than any words, she sometimes was sure he really had forgotten. But this was too incredible. She couldn't believe it. What had perhaps happened, she thought, was that in self-defence, for the preservation of his peace, he had made up his mind never to think of Vera. Only by banishing her altogether from his mind would he be safe. Yet that couldn't be true either, for several times on the honeymoon he had begun talking of her, of things she had said, of things she had liked, and it was she, Lucy, who stopped him. She shrank from hearing anything about Vera. She especially shrank from hearing her mentioned casually. She was ready to brace herself to talk about her if it was to be a serious talk, because she wanted to help and comfort him whenever the remembrance of her death arose to torment him, but she couldn't bear to hear her mentioned casually. In a way she admired this casualness, because it was a proof of the supreme wholesomeness Everard had attained to by sheer courageous determination, but even so she couldn't help thinking that she would have preferred a little less of just this kind of wholesomeness in her beloved. She might be too morbid, but wasn't it possible to be too wholesome? Anyhow she shrank from the intrusion of Vera into her honeymoon. That, at least, ought to be kept free from her. Later on at The Willows....

Lucy fought and fought against it, but always at the back of her mind was the thought, not looked at, slunk away from, but nevertheless fixed, that there at The Willows, waiting for her, was Vera.

XVI

Those who go to Strorley, and cross the bridge to the other side of the river, have only to follow the towpath for a little to come to The Willows. It can also be reached by road, through a white gate down a lane that grows more and more willowy as it gets nearer the river and the house, but is quite passable for carts and even for cars, except when there are floods. When there are floods this lane disappears, and when the floods have subsided it is black and oozing for a long time afterwards, with clouds of tiny flies dancing about in it if the weather is at all warm, and the shoes of those who walk stick in it and come off, and those who drive, especially if they drive a car, have trouble. But all is well once a second white gate is reached, on the other side of which is a gravel sweep, a variety of handsome shrubs, nicely kept lawns, and The Willows. There are no big trees in the garden of The Willows, because it was built in the middle of meadows where there weren't any, but all round the iron railings of the square garden--the house being the centre of the square--and concealing the wire netting which keeps the pasturing cows from thrusting their heads through and eating the shrubs, is a fringe of willows. Hence its name.

'A house,' said Wemyss, explaining its name to Lucy on the morning of their arrival, 'should always be named after whatever most insistently catches the eye.'

'Then oughtn't it to have been called The Cows?' asked Lucy; for the meadows round were strewn thickly as far as she could see with recumbent cows, and they caught her eye much more than the tossing bare willow branches.

'No,' said Wemyss, annoyed. 'It ought not have been called The Cows.'

'No--of course I didn't mean that,' she said hastily.

Lucy was nervous, and said what first came into her head, and had been saying things of this nature the whole journey down. She didn't want to, she knew he didn't like it, but she couldn't stop.

They had just arrived, and were standing on the front steps while the servants unloaded the fly that had brought them from the station, and Wemyss was pointing out what he wished her to look at and admire from that raised-up place before taking her indoors. Lucy was glad of any excuse that delayed going indoors, that kept her on the west side of the house, furthest away from the terrace and the library window. Indoors would be the rooms, the unaltered rooms, the library past whose window..., the sitting-room at the top of the house out of whose window..., the bedroom she was going to sleep in with the very bed.... It was too miserably absurd, too unbalanced of her for anything but shame and self-contempt, how she couldn't get away from the feeling that indoors waiting for her would be Vera.

It was a grey, windy morning, with low clouds scurrying across the meadows. The house was raised well above flood level, and standing on the top step she could see how far the meadows stretched beyond the swaying willow hedge. Grey sky, grey water, green fields,--it was all grey and green except the house, which was red brick with handsome stone facings, and made, in its exposed position unhidden by any trees, a great splotch of vivid red in the landscape.

'Like blood,' said Lucy to herself; and was immediately ashamed.

'Oh, how bracing!' she cried, spreading out her arms and letting the wind blow her serge wrap out behind her like a flag. It whipped her skirt round her body, showing its slender pretty lines, and the parlourmaid, going in and out with the luggage, looked curiously at this small juvenile new mistress. 'Oh, I love this wind--don't take me indoors yet----'

Wemyss was pleased that she should like the wind, for was it not by the time it reached his house part, too, of his property? His face, which had clouded a little because of The Cows, cleared again.

But she didn't really like the wind at all, she never had liked anything that blustered and was cold, and if she hadn't been nervous the last thing she would have done was to stand there letting it blow her to pieces.

'And what a lot of laurels!' she exclaimed, holding on her hat with one hand and with the other pointing to a corner filled with these shrubs.

'Yes. I'll take you round the garden after lunch,' said Wemyss. 'We'll go in now.'

'And--and laurustinus. I love laurustinus----'

'Yes. Vera planted that. It has done very well. Come in now----'

'And--look, what are those bare things without any leaves yet?'

'I'll show you everything after lunch, Lucy. Come in----' And he put his arm about her shoulders, and urged her through the door the maid was holding open with difficulty because of the wind.

There she was, then, actually inside The Willows. The door was shut behind her. She looked about her shrinkingly.

They were in a roomy place with a staircase in it.

'The hall,' said Wemyss, standing still, his arm round her.

'Yes,' said Lucy.

'Oak,' said Wemyss.

'Yes,' said Lucy.

He gazed round him with a sigh of satisfaction at having got back to it.

'All oak,' he said. 'You'll find nothing gimcrack about _my_ house, little Love. Where are those flowers?' he added, turning sharply to the parlourmaid. 'I don't see my yellow flowers.'

'They're in the dining-room, sir,' said the parlourmaid.

'Why aren't they where I could see them the first thing?'

'I understood the orders were they were always to be on the breakfast-table, sir.'

'Breakfast-table! When there isn't any breakfast?'

'I understood----'

'I'm not interested in what you understood.'

Lucy here nervously interrupted, for Everard sounded suddenly very angry, by exclaiming, 'Antlers!' and waving her unpinned-down arm in the direction of the----

'Yes,' said Wemyss, his attention called off the parlourmaid, gazing up at his walls with pride.

'What a lot,' said Lucy.

'Aren't there. I always said I'd have a hall with antlers in it, and I've got it.' He hugged her close to his side. 'And I've got you too,' he said. 'I always get what I'm determined to get.'

'Did you shoot them all yourself?' asked Lucy, thinking the parlourmaid would take the opportunity to disappear, and a little surprised that she continued to stand there.

'What? The beasts they belonged to? Not I. If you want antlers the simple way is to go and buy them. Then you get them all at once, and not gradually. The hall was ready for them all at once, not gradually. I got these at Whiteley's. Kiss me.'

This sudden end to his remarks startled Lucy, and she repeated in her surprise--for there still stood the parlourmaid 'Kiss you?'

'I haven't had my birthday kiss yet.'

'Why, the very first thing when you woke up----'

'Not my real birthday kiss in my own home.'

She looked at the parlourmaid, who was quite frankly looking at her. Well, if the parlourmaid didn't mind, and Everard didn't mind, why should she mind?

She lifted her face and kissed him; but she didn't like kissing him or being kissed in public. What was the point of it? Kissing Everard was a great delight to her. A mixture of all sorts of wonderful sensations, and she loved to do it in different ways, tenderly, passionately, lingeringly, dreamily, amusingly, solemnly; each kind in turn, or in varied combinations. But among her varied combinations there was nothing that included a parlourmaid. Consequently her kiss was of the sort that was to be expected, perfunctory and brief, whereupon Wemyss said, 'Lucy----' in his hurt voice.

She started.

'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously.

That particular one of his voices always by now made her start, for it always took her by surprise. Pick her way as carefully as she might among his feelings there were always some, apparently, that she hadn't dreamed were there and that she accordingly knocked against. How dreadful if she had hurt him the very first thing on getting into The Willows! And on his birthday too. From the moment he woke that morning, all the way down in the train, all the way in the fly from the station, she had been unremittingly engaged in avoiding hurting him; an activity made extra difficult by the unfortunate way her nervousness about the house at the journey's end impelled her to say the kinds of things she least wanted to. Irreverent things; such as the silly remark on his house's name. She had got on much better the evening before at the house in Lancaster Gate where they had slept, because gloomy as it was it anyhow wasn't The Willows. Also there was no trace in it that she could see of such a thing as a woman ever having lived in it. It was a man's house; the house of a man who has no time for pictures, or interesting books and furniture. It was like a club and an office mixed up together, with capacious leather chairs and solid tables and Turkey carpets and reference books. She found it quite impossible to imagine Vera, or any other woman, in that house. Either Vera had spent most of her time at The Willows, or every trace of her had been very carefully removed. Therefore Lucy, helped besides by extreme fatigue, for she had been sea-sick all the way from Dieppe to Newhaven, Wemyss having crossed that way because he was fond of the sea, had positively been unable to think of Vera in those surroundings and had dropped off to sleep directly she got there and had slept all night; and of course being asleep she naturally hadn't said anything she oughtn't to have said, so that her first appearance in Lancaster Gate was a success; and when she woke next morning, and saw Wemyss's face in such unclouded tranquillity next to hers as he still slept, she lay gazing at it with her heart brimming with tender love and vowed that his birthday should be as unclouded throughout as his dear face was at that moment. She adored him. He was her very life. She wanted nothing in the world except for him to be happy. She would watch every word. She really must see to it that on this day of all days no word should escape her before it had been turned round in her head at least three times, and considered with the utmost care. Such were her resolutions in the morning; and here she was not only saying the wrong things but doing them. It was because she hadn't expected to be told to kiss him in the presence of a parlourmaid. She was always being tripped up by the unexpected. She ought by now to have learned better. How unfortunate.

'Oh Everard--what is it?' she asked nervously; but she knew before he could answer, and throwing her objections to public caresses to the winds, for anything was better than that he should be hurt at just that moment, she put up her free arm and drew his head down and kissed him again,--lingeringly this time, a kiss of tender, appealing love. What must it be like, she thought while she kissed him and her heart yearned over him, to be so fearfully sensitive. It made things difficult for her, but how much, much more difficult for him. And how wonderful the way his sensitiveness had developed since marriage. There had been no sign of it before.

Implicit in her kiss was an appeal not to let anything she said or did spoil his birthday, to forgive her, to understand. And at the back of her mind, quite uncontrollable, quite unauthorised, ran beneath these other thoughts this thought: 'I am certainly abject.'

This time he was quickly placated because of his excitement at getting home. 'Nobody can hurt me as you can,' was all he said.

'Oh but as though I ever, ever mean to,' she breathed, her arm round his neck.

Meanwhile the parlourmaid looked on.

'Why doesn't she go?' whispered Lucy, making the most of having got his ear.

'Certainly not,' said Wemyss out loud, raising his head. 'I might want her. Do you like the hall, little Love?'

'_Very_ much,' she said, loosing him.

'Don't you think it's a very fine staircase?'

'_Very_ fine,' she said.

He gazed about him with pride, standing in the middle of the Turkey carpet holding her close to his side.

'Now look at the window,' he said, turning her round when she had had time to absorb the staircase. 'Look--isn't it a jolly window? No nonsense about that window. You can really see out of it, and it really lets in light. Vera'--she winced--'tried to stuff it all up with curtains. She said she wanted colour, or something. Having got a beautiful garden to look out at, what does she try to do but shut most of it out again by putting up curtains.'

The attempt had evidently not succeeded, for the window, which was as big as a window in the waiting-room of a London terminus, had nothing to interfere with it but the hanging cord of a drawn-up brown holland blind. Through it Lucy could see the whole half of the garden on the right side of the front door with the tossing willow hedge, the meadows, and the cows. The leafless branches of some creeper beat against it and made a loud irregular tapping in the pauses of Wemyss's observations.

'Plate glass,' he said.

'Yes,' said Lucy; and something in his voice made her add in a tone of admiration, 'Fancy.'

Looking at the window they had their backs to the stairs. Suddenly she heard footsteps coming down them from the landing above.

'Who's that?' she said quickly, with a little gasp, before she could think, before she could stop, not turning her head, her eyes staring at the window.

'Who's what?' asked Wemyss. 'You do think it's a jolly window, don't you, little Love?'

The footsteps on the stairs stopped, and a gong she had noticed at the angle of the turn was sounded. Her body, which had shrunk together, relaxed. What a fool she was.

'Lunch,' said Wemyss. 'Come along--but isn't it a jolly window, little Love?'

'_Very_ jolly.'

He turned her round to march her off to the dining-room, while the housemaid, who had come down from the landing, continued to beat the gong, though there they were obeying it under her very nose.

'Don't you think that's a good place to have a gong?' he asked, raising his voice because the gong, which had begun quietly, was getting rapidly louder. 'Then when you're upstairs in your sitting-room you'll hear it just as distinctly as if you were downstairs. Vera----'