CHAPTER XI
Lucia rode divinely, and Edgar was delighted to supply her with divine horses to ride. He did not very often in London accompany her himself, for after being up till the small hours began to grow large, he did not feel inclined to tackle the middle-sized hours again, but preferred that they should pass over his head like a troop of ministering angels while he slept. But Lucia, to whatever hour she might have been dancing, was always ready to be up again by eight, and usually began the day by a gallop in the Park. Sometimes Maud rode with her, sometimes Charlie, occasionally both. On this particular morning, half-way through July, it was Charlie for whom, so it turned out, she waited by the Alexandra Gate.
"Oh, you are late, Charlie," she called to him. "Don't try to excuse yourself; there is no clock. Did you ever see a more heavenly day? How hot it is going to be, and in three minutes how hot you are going to be!"
"Morning, Lucia," said he. "How long did you sleep last night?"
"I never know the time. And what is the use of knowing at what hour by the clock you go to bed or get up? People invented watches, and then became slaves to them, so that they get up and go to bed or have their meals when watches and clocks point to a certain hour. I go to bed when I am tired of being up. I get up—yes, I suppose I have to mention the hour. But it isn't the hour that matters; it is to see the young day that matters. Oh, don't talk so much. Only birds are fit to talk early in the morning, because they just sing in gratitude for the nice big worm they have swallowed. Charlie, let's go and drink the dew and eat a few worms, and then sing till evening. Then more worms, and you tuck your head under your wing—have you got a wing? mine are sprouting—and go to sleep again. Yes, don't talk so much. We will gallop up to the end, and then seriously gallop down the mile, and after that I shall be able to speak. And why isn't Maud here? She is as bad as Edgar; they both want to sleep and sleep. Aren't they darlings? They really were made for each other. Now ride!"
The day was of midsummer; it was no apology for blue that domed the sky; the colour would have been considered blue anywhere. Rain had fallen during the night, and now, as Lucia looked on the lime-leaves, clean and varnished with the fall, and on the pearl-laden grass, she remembered having woke once during the night while it was still dark, and having heard the beautiful whisper of its outpouring. Across the path from the Serpentine came belated bathers, towel on neck, who, like-minded with her, made the most of the morning hour when all London forgets itself, and is country again. As they raced, tan-scattering, past the Knightsbridge Barracks, some bugle sounded, and there was a stir of erect figures. A little mist, born of the night-rain, hung in the air, and the steeple of the Albert Monument just pricked it, showing gold against the blue. Houses were a little veiled in these ascending vapours, and the roadway outside the Park was damp with them, so that Prince's Gate looked like a line of Venetian palaces, with the dark water of a canal (the wet wood of the street) reflecting them below.
Lucia turned to her companion, snuffing in a great restful breath of the cool morning.
"Don't speak," she said, "nor will I. But, oh, it's so nice!"
They cantered round the short bend at the top of the mile, and then turned on to the straight.
"Now," she said.
They started level, and she had to check her mare to let the shorter stride of Charlie's cob keep pace. There was no wind; the elms by the side of the Serpentine were towers of motionless leaf, but the movement of their going made a soft, steady breeze to hum against them. Of other sound there was none, except the soft rhythmical chant of the horses' hoofs, scattering the loose brown stuff behind them. Occasionally one or the other of their mounts tossed a bridle, with a little jingle of a bit, or the mare blew out an audible breath from her wide nostrils. Then, too soon, the mile was over, and Lucia drew rein, with a great deal to say.
"The complicated life!" she said. "That is what I love. Oh, how I despise simplicity of existence; to be content with it shows a very low vitality, or very high stupidity, probably both. I like to ride like this, then to rush home and have no time for breakfast, because I am going to see the Rodin Exhibition at ten. Three-quarters of an hour there, and then a dress-maker; then lunch with Madge Heron, then a concert; then I must be at home for an hour, because I have told fifty people I shall be in; then I shall read till dinner, dine, dance, and get to bed about this time to-morrow. Let's turn and walk up under the trees. Don't you agree, Charlie?"
"Oh, I like it," he said—"Heaven knows I like it! But I haven't got a passion for it, as I think you have."
Lucia looked at him sideways a moment.
"I believe you have, too," she said, "only just now you have put a lid on it. Oh, a lid of gold, I grant you; no one knows that better than I. But a lid."
Charlie did not affect to misunderstand this.
"I'll tell Maud you called her a lid," he remarked.
"Do. Charlie, you are the luckiest man on the earth."
"That I know. About the lid. I don't agree with you. Maud has got just as much intellectual and artistic and human activity as you have; it is merely a question of tempo. But when God wrote your music, Lucia, He marked it prestissimo."
Lucia flicked off with the tassel of her riding-whip a fly that her mare was twitching its skin to get rid of.
"Probably," she said. "I maintain, however, that He marked you prestissimo also, and that Maud crossed it out and put andante con moto."
"No, she played me her own piece, and I liked the time better than that of my own. I crossed mine out."
Lucia thought over this a moment.
"I crossed Edgar's out," she said, "and substituted presto; but he got hold of it, and wrote the old direction in again: allegro ma non troppo, e ben marcato."
"Yes; he always was ben marcato," said Charlie.
"And aways will be. But I am learning that it is never the slightest use to interfere with somebody else's tempo. Everyone proceeds at the tempo to which he was set. You might as well try to alter a person's character. You can make people act as if their characters were not what they are, but the character itself cannot be altered by other people or by circumstance or life. You can squeeze it and squash it into all sorts of other shapes, like those india-rubber faces you get on crackers; you can make it wear all sorts of different expressions, but the moment you put it down it goes back into what it was before. And tempo is decidedly a part of character."
Charlie laughed.
"Then we might all of us have spared our pains in crossing each other's tempo out and substituting a different one," he said.
"Yes, that seems to be the conclusion. Not that we shall any of us cease continuing to do so. You see, character is destiny; that's what it comes to. Or you can call it the divinity—or something else—that shapes our ends; but divine or not, there is something in ourselves that shapes our ends, and that something is character. Dear me, I think I shall write a small book of table aphorisms. 'Character is destiny' shall be the first. Yes, 'Table Aphorisms by a Lady of Title.' That's the sort of thing which the serious-smart like nowadays. They think it is so clever, and they find they can all do it, which is very gratifying. Of course, they can when they are shown how. You only have to think of an idea, and then say it in as few words as possible."
"The serious-smart?" asked Charlie. "Is that the same as the New Set?"
"Of course; you belong to it. Edgar is delighted with me because he says I invented it, brought it together. He and Madge Heron were quarrelling about it the other day; she says I only precipitated it, which is probably much nearer the mark."
"How precipitated it?"
"Oh, don't you know how, if you drop some sort of clear solution into another clear solution, they both become cloudy or solid or something? Cloudy is more the word with the serious-smart; they are a little vague, and tend to confuse Moroni with Murillo."
"I don't," said Charlie stoutly. "I know nothing about either. You can't confuse two things if you are totally ignorant of both of them."
"No, you are rather refreshing. Oh, Charlie, isn't it a pity that I am made in such a way that I instantly begin not to care about anything very much as soon as I have got it? And the worst of it is that if it was then taken away from me, I should miss it. However, there is lots more to get, even with regard to the serious-smart; in fact, it has only just been born and baptized. No; when I come to think of it, Madge is wrong and Edgar is right. After all, I did invent it; it is just what I sketched out to him three years ago, in a small backyard at Brixham, with luggage-trains squealing all around, and Aunt Cathie in sandshoes doing the pear-tree touch while Aunt Elizabeth made head-rests. I don't mean that all these things happened actually together, but they are the composition of the picture. It was then I really had the moment of inspiration which led to all that has happened since. I told him of my vision of him as the centre of an artistic, intellectual set of eager, beauty-loving people. I said the vision was of him, but it was really of me. And it's all coming true. We work, we study, we appreciate, we criticize. By the way, he is going to take a house at Fantasie, near Baireuth, for the festival, and we are going to have a sort of Bowdlerized Boccaccio party. There! again it sounds as if I was laughing at it, but I'm not, I'm not!"
"I hadn't heard of that before," said Charlie.
"No, it only occurred to him yesterday. I wish you and Maud could come with us, but you will be on the honeymoon, I suppose. Oh, Maud was so divine the other day—more divine than usual, I mean. Zimpfen had been playing the appassionata, at my house too perfectly, and Gertie Miller was there, who is very, very anxious to learn, the darling, but cannot avoid exposing her ignorance in a manner that is almost indecent. Well, as you know, the second and third movements of the sonata are always played as one, and when Zimpfen had finished, and we were all a good deal emotioned, Gertie said to Maud: 'Isn't he going to play that heavenly last movement?' But Maud can't be unkind—except that she told me about it afterwards—and only said: 'I don't think we had better ask Herr Zimpfen for it; I fancy he is not satisfied with his rendering of it.' Wasn't it darling of her? And Gertie said: 'Oh, how sweet and remembering of you!' Where was I? Oh yes, you and Maud will be honeymooning still, I suppose. Couldn't you have an eclipse for a week and join us? You will have had a fortnight by then."
Charlie looked at her, smiling.
"'O moon of my delight, that knows no wane,'" he quoted.
"Then you can easily spare a week, if that is the case," said she.
"It is so kind of you," he said. "Personally I should love to come, if we are anywhere within reach, but I don't know if Maud"
"Oh, then Maud will love to come too," said Lucia.
They had walked their horses slowly to the west end of the mile by now, and Lucia looked longingly down the broad brown ribbon of it. But she shook her head; the sun was already high and had wiped the washed face of the earth; it was time to get to work again.
"I long, I just long for another gallop," she said, "but I am late already. Do get Maud to come out to-morrow, and let us start at half -past seven. We shall get an hour then. Good-bye, Charlie; we shall meet again somewhere, I suppose, in the course of a few minutes."
"Mayn't I ride home with you?" asked he.
"No, I think not," said she. "It would be a pity. We should have to bawl remarks at each other if we talked at all in these roaring streets. Remember to tell Maud about Baireuth."
Though beyond doubt the New Set, such as it was, had been invented and prophesied by Lucia three years ago, Lady Heron, in spite of Lucia's demur, was more right than Edgar when she said that his wife had only precipitated it. For just as in Brixham, in the days of the lean years, so here, on a larger stage and with greater luxury of appointment, Lucia had done no more than to make herself a rallying point. She had, so to speak, the quality of centrality; whether at Newnham or at Brixham or in Prince's Gate, she was apt to be in the middle of a group, not revolving round others. Nor was that strange; with her charm, her position, her beauty, her brilliant vitality, it was small wonder that where wealth alone can do so much, she easily and without effort made herself a very central situation. The initiative instinct of the world did the rest: for two years she and her husband had been known to be on a pilgrimage of culture (on board a most luxurious yacht), and culture this year became a craze, especially when it was seen how delightful the pursuit of culture was. For it was still more than permissible, it was even desirable, to go much to the Opera, to attend concerts, to stroll about the National Gallery or the Tate, the spacious halls of which were much cooler and more airy in this torrid weather than the middle-class suffocation of the Academy. Dress, again, was by no means beneath the notice of the cultured; indeed, in the chase of beauty it was incumbent on its huntresses to be exquisite: they had to realize as completely as they could in themselves the ideals at which they aimed. Even the palate, too, must share in the education of the senses, and the lamp of Art must shine in the kitchen, no less than from glowing canvas and the piercing sweetness of the horns. Nor did this renaissance cause an emptying of ball-rooms. Dancing was an exquisite thing, an art; so, too, was the music of voices, the gleam of diamonds, the great staircase hung upon, as with a swarm of bees, by the brilliant crowd, the entrancing rhythm of the band.
All this to Lucia and to many others was absolutely real. She, like a large minority of those among whom she moved, had a potential passion for the beautiful and exquisite things of Life; but she became, as has been said, the centre of what in the microcosm of London was a real movement, because her passion for these things was articulate; she understood with her fine taste what was fine, and she could talk about it in a way that was marvellous to all those whose emotions, as is generally the case with English people, are the subject on which they are most dumb. She enjoyed, too, but not pedantically, as it is to be feared her husband did; he could never completely get out of his head that it was more improving to the mind to listen to a Beethoven symphony than to hold four aces at bridge, whereas to Lucia these unimpeachable moral sentiments never occurred at all. She preferred Beethoven to bridge merely because she enjoyed it more, but she could and did play bridge with remarkable acuteness when, so to speak, Beethoven was not present. All that was sincere, but what was not less sincere was that it was all part of her plan. She had intended to have everything, and she was raking it in.
What had established her, had made her the authentic centre of this really considerable constellation, was the Brayton week. It was extremely daring, and, like all really daring things, unless it is a fool who has dared, it met with the success it merited, and she leaped on to her throne. Towards the end of June she had observed that the second week in July was a perfect congestion of gaiety in town, and she had then and there written thirty notes to her most intimate friends, who, like herself, would be engaged over the page on each day, and asked them to come down to Brayton for a full week from Monday to Monday. They were going, so ran the note, to have a really nice time. There would be a band in the house, and the French company were going to play two—well, two nice little plays; otherwise—it was a little scratch gathering—everyone would do exactly as he chose. There was golf and rather good fishing, and the garden was looking nice. In fact, it would be a sort of retreat, with a little music in the evening. No doubt lots of people would come down for the day (underlined) on most of the days, and stop to dinner and go up late, but she particularly wanted the recipient of this note to spend the whole week there. It would be so cool and pleasant to sit in the garden and read books, and not talk unless you felt inclined, and you must come. The notes were all delivered by hand.
Edgar had been simply craven over this experiment.
"They will all refuse," he said, "and where will you be then? You will have to begin all over again, from the very beginning, and, besides, London never forgets a failure!"
Lucia stared at him in blank incomprehension.
"Begin what all over again?" she said. "What do yoi mean? London never forgets a failure? You speak as if I fighting for a place."
"Dear, it is rather strong to expect people to leave town the middle of July," he said.
"Then they won't come," said Lucia, "if they don't want to. I only want, and so do you, to have a quiet week. Personally I believe that plenty of our friends want it too. I may be wrong. If I am, what happens? You and I will have our quiet we alone. I shall—I shall just love it!"
"But the band and the French company?" he asked.
Lucia dimpled at him.
"I'll pay for it all," she said, "if it turns out we are to be alone, out of the ridiculously enormous allowance you give me. It is your birthday that week. But now explain: begin what all over again?"
Edgar felt a thrill of wonder at her, as no doubt she had meant he should do. She seemed genuinely unconscious, so he thought of the wonderful power she was becoming in the microcosm, and the words had slipped from him, betraying his knowledge of that of which she seemed so unaware. It was better to explain.
"I spoke as a spectator," he said, "when I should have spoken as your husband. You are doing such wonderful things, Lucia; you are realizing all your dream for me so completely, that I cannot help sometimes looking on, so to speak, observing how you succeed. But I am wrong; it is only you fulfilling yourself."
"Certainly that is all," she said; "but you still distrust me, not my plan, any more, but my instinct. Wait till we get the answers to my notes."
Acceptance after acceptance came in. It appeared that everybody longed for exactly that which Lucia had proposed. But Edgar was still timorous.
"But think of the dinner-parties you have spoiled," he said. "You will make an enemy for every night of the week."
"Hush!" said Lucia, "and go away. I shall be very busy for an hour. There will be no enemies at all, because I am as clever as I am beautiful. Darling, tell them to send me up reams more paper and packets of envelopes."
There were five nights in a week, Saturday and Sunday of course not being reckoned, since everybody would be out of town, and Lucia had a dinner engagement for four of these, while on the fifth she had a tiny dinner herself, with music and people afterwards. All the diners had accepted her week, instead of the dinner, and she wrote to all those who were "coming in afterwards" to ask them to dine at Brayton instead. There would be a special back to town. Then she crossed "Thursday" out; Thursday was settled.
Monday and Tuesday she had to consider very carefully. They were dining with the Duchess of Wiltshire on Monday, and with Mrs. Eddis on the Tuesday. She wrote to the Duchess first, who was one of the intimes, though at present she had not asked her for the week.
"Darling Mouse,
"Don't be cross, but do let me be rude, and not dine with you on Monday, July 6, because Edgar and I are going to give a quiet week down at Brayton, and I want you most awfully to come there on Tuesday, and stop till the following Monday. Do come; the whole world is going to be there, I hope, and the French company for two nights, and we really shall have great fun. We shall read books, and sit on the lawn, and play golf, and I personally shall talk to you all the time, if you will let me."
Mrs. Eddis—it was better to write to Maud:
"Maud, it's too awful. I've asked heaps of people down for a whole week at Brayton from July 6, and now I see I am dining with you on the 7th. If you can forgive me, come down on the Wednesday, as you can't come before, or, of course, otherwise I should have insisted on your spending the whole week with us. Do say 'Yes.' I think I will promise that Charlie says 'Yes' when he knows.
Here Lucia bit her pen for a moment. No, it didn't matter about Mr. and Mrs. Eddis. She would never know if they were friends or enemies. Who cared?
Wednesday and Friday alone remained. She did not want either of her hosts on that night to stay at Brayton, but she wrote the most charming letter to each, asking them to come down (special) and dine on each other's nights, and hear respectively the string band and the French play. As a postscript, she gave them her opera-box on Monday and Tuesday.
Mr. and Mrs. Eddis! She sighed at her own thoroughness, and opened the note to Maud, though she had already closed it, and added that she would be so delighted if her father and mother would use her box on Wednesday. Then she telephoned to the box-office, to tell them to let it on the three remaining days of the week if they could.
Such were the preparations for the Brayton week. As they proceeded, Lucia saw what she had not fully grasped at first—the magnitude of its significance, if -it succeeded. Nobody had ever done anything like it before, and to plan it and execute it at the last moment had the daring of genius. True, if it failed, she would have not only to begin again at the beginning, which was as far as Edgar's purblind vision had taken him, but to begin at a disadvantage, at a minus quantity. On the other hand, if it succeeded, she would leap at one bound to an astounding preeminence. To empty London for a week in the middle of the season (as the world counts empty) had hitherto been the office of some institution only like Ascot. And as the hours went on, and the telephone rang, or notes were brought her, she saw that she had not been rash, only daring. Everyone was coming; they could settle their differences and inconveniences among themselves; they had thrown each other over right and left in order to come to Brayton. On the minor readjustments which her plan had entailed, she no longer cared to speculate; as far as the Brayton week went, her balloon was above the clouds; it might be raining below; umbrellas and apologies might be running about in all directions, but she had serene weather.
The foundation of the grand success was laid; everybody was coming, right in the middle of the season, at notice so short that it might be called a summons rather than a notice. But Lucia said no Nunc Dimittis yet, nor did she lose her head. Instead, she planned every hour of those days, all seven of them, so that while every one of her guests would feel free to do as the spirit prompted, he would find that some admirable occupation was ready, in case it recommended itself to him. Till lunch-time each day a careful blank was left by her, but she arranged that motor-cars, golf-caddies and fishing gillies were lurking like wild beasts round the corner, ready to pounce. There would be lunch indoors or out-of-doors as the weather dictated, but that would be as informal as the affairs of the morning. But—here again she showed herself daring—at half-past five the formal day began. Her dinner guests would be arriving by then, and she (appearing for the first time that day, if so she chose) would receive them on the deep loggia which had been built the year before to take the place of the veranda where Edgar and Charlie had lounged and drunk their coffee after lunch three years ago. It stretched out thirty feet from the windows of the big drawing-room, darkening it considerably, which, as Lucia pointed out, was without consequence, since the room was never used till after dinner. It ran half the length of the house, a hundred feet at the least, and at one end was a raised stage where the band would be placed, and where, when it was shut in down all its length with wooden shutters, the French comedy would play after dinner. At tea, then, the more elaborate part of the simple day would begin. For those who wanted to hear music, there would be the band; for those who wanted to talk there would be the garden, while she would occupy the central position, able to stroll with those who wished to stroll, able to move a little to the left and hear the music.
Dinner would follow, and again she gave accident no chance, going through the menu for each evening, weighing, so to speak, the value of each dish not in itself, but its relation to the dinner. Clever as her chef was, he was but a weak campaigner in comparison with his mistress, and it was not till Lucia pointed out that three days of salmon out of seven was an excess of that admirable fish that his mind awoke to the fact. But, with a thousand pardons, what was to be done? Miladi could not have seven different fish. There were no seven fish to be eaten.
Lucia gave this her full consideration.
"Then on Thursday we will have no fish at all," she said; "and on Friday we will have herrings. Herrings! There is nothing better. Mustard sauce, and plain fried herrings. Is it fried? They are browner on one side than on the other. That makes Friday's dinner all wrong. Let us begin it again. It must be all plain, quite plain. Bonne femme, the herrings, sans blague, Adolph, I mean it. Then—then little bits of lamb—yes, you can get lamb in July if you insist, quite little lamb, done up round, epigrammes d'agneau, that is it. But neat epigrams, you know. Then"
M. Adolph waved his hands in French despair.
"But dinner for the bourgeois, miladi," he said.
"Not at all. Epigrammes d'agneau—yes. Then cold beef, do you understand? Plain cold beef, with horse-radish sauce, and endive salad. Yes, I know what I am saying, endive salad. Then one vegetable. Asparagus is so common. Make something out of cabbage, Adolph. Only cabbage, I charge you. Then—no, no bird at all, absolutely no bird. Then apple-tart, please—plain apple-tart. After that toasted cheese, à paté—no, not either. Apple-tart and the dessert. But please see that the coffee is good. Do not grind it till the apple-tart comes up. And that evening we will have an English menu—soup, herrings, lamb, cold beef, cabbage, apple-tart. Saturday—yes, perhaps you had better put in an extra entrée. Cailles à la Lindsay would do. Mr. Charlie will be down that night. But they must be served in separate little casseroles, and over each you must pour the juice of another quail. And little squares of toast served with it, so that the juice can be eaten. How good!"
"But miladi never eats quail," said Adolph.
"No, but other people do. That is all, Adolph. I want you to take particular pains over this week. You can get extra help if you need it. There will be about thirty for breakfast and lunch every day, and I expect about seventy to dinner. Wait a moment."
Lucia rang a bell, and a male secretary appeared.
"The Brayton week," she said. "The numbers only"
She looked quickly at the list.
"That is all, is it?" she asked. "Very well, Adolph. Monday we shall be fifty-one. Tuesday, Wednesday, about sixty. Thursday—please pay attention—the special will arrive at five, and so you must make preparations for tea as well, they will all stop to dinner, a hundred and forty. They will not leave till quite late—no, no supper, but plenty of sandwiches and ice and fruit. Friday, Saturday, these are the numbers. On Monday you can go back to town. Just leave a marmiton. His lordship and I may not return till Tuesday."
The infinite capacity for attention to details certainly characterized Lucia. She cared not a cheese-straw what she ate, herself alone considered, provided that, however plain, it was clean and excellent of its kind; but she knew, supremely well, how large a part of life is played by palate and digestion. She could not give her guests digestion, but with great wisdom she spent a couple of hours over the consideration of how she would make their meals suitable to the state of mind that she hoped they would be in. Dinner on Friday, for instance, was intimately connected with the music. The French company was not going to act that day; there would be the band only, and arranging the music first, she had arranged a corresponding dinner. Friday, indeed, was to be the crucial day. On Thursday there was going to be a French play, which perhaps was almost too On Saturday there was going to be a third play (this she had not announced in her invitations, and it was a surprise), which was also very French. Friday, therefore, in order to enhance the memory of Thursday, and to anticipate Saturday, must be plainly exquisite. The band would play the "Suite in D," by Bach, after tea, and on that day—and on that day alone—she meant to go to church at seven in the evening, a short service to be over by half-past seven, so that there would be time to dress for dinner if one chose. Then, after the plain dinner, there would be more simple music. Mestra was coming down that night; he would play the Handel "Sonata in A," for the violin. Lucia, planning this day, almost had a fit, so she told Edgar, at the thought of the slovenly proceedings that in the general way characterized hostesses.
"Who wants to listen to Bach after a great fat dinner?" she said; "or who would want to look at 'Ami Intime' after cold beef, such as we shall have on Friday? To be any use, you must arrange the whole menu of the day. You must make your arrangements, not only for what your people eat, but for what they do."
"What they do depends on the weather," said he.
"Yes, darling, but I don't. I look further ahead than that. Do you suppose that I will give them a fat, stuffy dinner if it has been wet? Not at all. There are two menus for every day. If it has been hot and fine, and everybody has been out of doors, you will get menu A. If it has been wet and rainy, so that at the utmost we have walked under umbrellas or payed billiards and bridge, you will get menu B. Oh, I am not an ass!"
That was thoroughness again; Lucia certainly was not an ass. The audacity of the Brayton week, which appeared so unpremeditated, had to be solidly meditated over. She had to provide, and did, for fine weather and wet weather, in so far as she could. Whatever was the conduct of the possible winds and clouds, she had to be prepared with a counter-check to any devilish manœuvres on their part. She was climbing, and knew it; the essential thing was that nobody else should see she was climbing. She must appear to the world as having arrived; appear as one who had only to write a few notes in order to fill her country house with guests while yet July was scarcely middle-aged. She had done that. She had done it in such a way that it appeared effortless. There happened to be a French company playing at Brayton, and an excellent band; there were a few special trains to be arranged for, all of which, though hideously expensive from one point of view, were extraordinarily cheap, if they got her what she wanted—namely, a fashionable exodus from town. And Edgar wanted that sort of thing no less than she. The intellectual renaissance which Lady Heron had spoken of had impressed him enormously. It bore out Lucia's original prophecy for him, and he felt confidence, as was most reasonable, in her power of getting into practical shape what she had prophesied about. Even the special trains did not stagger him, To entice fifty people out of town in order to have dinner, a play, and go back again that night, was clearly a feat. He respected feats, being himself capable of imagining them, but wholly incapable of doing them.
No feat can be perfectly calculated; blind luck may spoil the most thorough plans, but in regard to the Brayton week, blind luck had arranged itself on Lucia's side. It was not merely that a spell of prodigious heat drove the gasping out of town, or that the weather, so intolerable there, was of brisk warmth only down in Hampshire; it was that the world in general was interested at that particular and psychological moment in Lucia, the girl from nowhere, who looked like Aphrodite fresh from the sea, and had had the cheek—yes, the cheek—to ask everybody to leave London at its midmost and spend quiet days in the country. But what was originally cheek became, as the week went on the kind of genius that London respected. Lucia did not give them the precepts of the lecture on the delectable life; she gave the delectable life itself. She had anticipated their inclinations and anybody who felt inclined to do anything found that the implements and adjuncts of his inclinations were to hand. Among her guests, for instance, there were two or three socialistic aristocrats. They found a Labour Member or two coming down by special train, and a polished writer of suburban plays who spoke of the intellectual movement going on in Tooting. There were musicians there—pure and simple musicians—who on Friday, after a cold-beef dinner (with excellent wine), listened to Bach, while the moon was reflected in the lake. There were others who liked—well, they liked the French plays. All who could possibly help Lucia at that period were catered for; she fed them all, she entertained them all, she provided congenial pursuits for them. It was the planting of her garden, the sowing of seed with lavish hand. Later, no doubt, she would lead, would choose her line, for it appeared to her that of all the various types of fool that the world supplied there was none so abject as that which continued to be of the menagerie order. If you liked tigers, have tigers; if you liked parrots, have parrots. But why anybody who had "arrived" kept a menagerie, she, with her cool, clever brain, could not imagine. The point of the world was to pick out from it what you wished to do, and to do it only; to see those about whom you wished to see. But you had to see them all first.
To-day, after her ride with Charlie, she knew that she would be called upon to go gardening in herself, for she was to lunch all alone with Lady Heron, and this all-alone lunch was the upshot of several interrupted conversations, several beckoning glances, that had passed between them. In spite of the brilliant success of the Brayton week, Lucia knew quite well that there was something that sat between her and above that kind of success. In that week she had made her definite mark: she had "pied-pipered" London down to the country, but—but she knew she had "pied-pipered" it. What she really wanted was to do that without effort, because it was natural to her to ask her friends, and because it was natural in her friends to come. But that week had been an effort; she had had to think, to plan. She wanted to get where no planning was necessary, to issue her inclinations to the world, and have them gratified; to admit the world into her own private manner of passing her time. In this week at Brayton she had studied the world's inclinations and gratified them; between that and the more regal style, as she already dimly guessed, there was a world of difference. Three-quarters or more of the busy climbers in London would have been ecstatically satisfied with what she had already achieved; she had the brains to use this success only as a fresh spring-board to higher branches. Others never thought of doing more than they had already done; only last Sunday, indeed, Lucia had gone down to spend the afternoon and dine with a largely entertaining hostess near Kingston at a royal and select party. But how stupid and bourgeois it all was! A prima-donna had sung, an actor had spoken a scene, Royalty had eaten and giggled; everything was exactly as it had been on similar Sundays for the last ten years. That sort of repetition was so aimless, yet people were gratified at being asked, and thought it all so smart and so wonderful. It seemed to Lucia that the only wonderful thing about it was that people thought it smart. You stopped reading a letter or a book if it began to repeat itself; surely you had better stop entertaining if you could think of nothing new to say or do.
Madge Heron had kept her word about Lucia's lunch with her to-day being an all-alone lunch, and a tiny table was laid for them in the corner of the balcony outside the ball-room, already awninged in, in preparation for the dance she was giving this evening. As a matter of fact, the keepng of this tête-à-tête engagement was entirely in accordance with her own wishes; she wanted very much to have a talk to Lucia alone, for she was immensely interested in her, immensely attracted by her, and up till now Lucia's self (though not her success) puzzled and intrigued her. That bright reflecting surface on which life so shone and sparkled, naturally dazzled and attracted this pleasureseeking brain of London, and her freshness and originality were sufficient to assure her success. She was something of a new type also, a woman who really was desperately in earnest about appreciation of all that was fine from an artistic point of view; she had at least precipitated a New Set, and without affectation those who were of it would prefer, even in the height of the season, to spend an hour at the Tate rather than at Hurlingham. There had been sets like it before, but Lady Heron found a new note in Lucia's precipitate; she and hers really knew about what they admired: they did not only "thrill" as other sets had done.
But all this Lady Heron believed to be only the surface of Lucia; what lay below, whether she was kind or selfish, good or bad, she had at present no idea. It was that she wanted to find out, and now, whereas a few weeks ago Lucia had considerably studied her, it was she to-day who wanted to study Lucia no less.
Lucia appeared, as always, with a rush. On this occasion she hurried upstairs before Lady Heron's wan-faced butler could overtake her, and came into the room some eight yards in advance of him, while he gasped her name out from the neighbourhood of the door.
"Dearest Madge," she said, "and nobody else is here, is there? How heavenly of you! Oh, I wish I had large brown eyes like you, and grey hair! As it is, I lack impressiveness. I've ridden, I've been to see the Rodin Exhibition—I shan't go there again—I've been to my dressmaker, and I want lunch more than I can possibly tell you. How are you?"
"What's the matter with Rodin?" asked Lady Heron.
"I'm not sure that I can explain—yes, perhaps it is that his things are quite small, I mean in actual size, but on a scale as big as a nightmare. Things on a big scale must be of a certain size, just as things on a small scale must be of a certain smallness. You can't have Hercules, or Day or Night or Morning to stand on the top of a clock, any more than you could have a Dresden shepherdess nine feet high. Also, if a man never finished his work at all, you can't help wondering if it is because he can't. Gertie Miller was there, gasping. She has taken to gasping, because she doesn't really know what she feels about a thing, and if she gasps she can't talk. And Charlie and Maud turned up. I rode with Charlie this morning. Do you know, I have scarcely set eyes on you since the Brayton week? I want to ask you such a heap of questions."
"About it? There is no need for any question at all. It was quite beyond question. I don't know anybody else who could have done it like that. It seemed perfectly effortless, and so I suspect that it was most carefully planned."
Lucia nodded.
"I should just think it was," she said. "I tried to leave nothing to chance."
Lucia leaned back in her chair.
"I came here for tuition," she said. "I want you to tell me your plan. It seems to me that anybody who does anything must have a plan, like the string that keeps the beads of a necklace together. It is invisible, but it runs through them all, keeping them together, making a whole of them, instead of a series of detached beads that run into corners and get lost. Or am I wrong?"
Madge Heron considered her answer. She felt that Lucia was talking far below the surface, as it were; she was not talking, at any rate, from the Brayton-week standpoint. But before she answered Lucia went on:
"Do you see what I mean?" she said. "It is that I should consider it a dreadfully stupid thing to do, if I only went on giving Brayton weeks, so to speak. I gave that one because I thought it would amuse people, and because—to be perfectly frank—I wanted to get a foot down firmly. But after that, what next? That was just a bead. What is to be the string? Of course, oneself, one's character, is the string; but what is oneself? I know the shell of it, the case of it, and that is love of art, love of beautiful things, love of worldly success, if you like. Oh, 1 do like that enormously; it is the greatest fun. But in a manner of speaking, that is mine. Now, I want to stand firmly upon all that, and jump somewhere else. Where? Where do you jump to?"
This, again, came from below. Madge Heron had sufficiently considered her answer.
"It depends on your power of wanting," she said, "and what your power of wanting is you must find out for yourself; nobody, except a woman's husband, perhaps, can teach her."
Lucia looked up in a sort of comic dismay.
"Oh, but Edgar can't teach me anything," she said. "I had a rhapsody of wanting once, and rhapsodied to him, and he didn't understand the feeling even. It's I who make him want."
"But you propose to jump hand in hand?" asked Madge.
To herself she added: "She has never loved him."
Lucia puckered up her eyebrows for a moment, but at once grasped this.
"Why, of course," she said. "I never contemplated any other plan."
"She has never loved anybody else," thought Madge.
Lucia leaned forward again.
"He jumps beautifully," she said; "the—the only thing is that he looks back to see what a beautiful jump it has been. But I want to hear more about the string of the necklace. He can't teach me, and I know so little about it myself. Do suggest things."
Madge Heron laughed quietly; she saw now why she knew so little about Lucia, for at present there was so little to know. Lucia had never really dived into herself; she had never really brought up the things that lay in the deep water. Her scoopings, her self-revelation, had all been made in the shallows, just as her tastes, her achievements, had all been affairs of surface currents. But she was conscious anyhow of the possibility of depths, and Madge wondered if already some tremor or agitation from them had just vibrated upwards to the shining surface.
"Dear Lucia," she said, "you are a brilliant, beautiful child. Just that. And a certain weird gift of doing the right thing in the right way is yours. Now do answer a question or two. I long to know about you just as much as you long to know about yourself. Supposing—supposing that funny old aunt of yours whom you told me about was dying and wanted to see you, and to see her you had to leave town at two-thirty, and there was going to be performed an unpublished opera of Wagner's in the evening, what would you do?"
Lucia laughed; the laugh already answered the question.
"Ah, that is a dreadful sort of question," she said, "and I don't see how it Oh, I should go, of course, and see her, and hurry back to town. There would be heaps of time."
"But if you could not get back?"
"Oh, Frau-confessorin!" said Lucia, hiding her eyes for a moment. Then she looked up again and shook her head.
"I shouldn't go," she said. "Isn't it awful? But I shouldn't. Would you, if you felt like me about Wagner?"
"Assuredly not. But then I know about the string of my necklace."
They had already finished lunch, and Lucia got up and took a big basket-chair next Lady Heron. She did not appear to notice the last remark; at least, her answer did not bear on it. She was looking quite grave, and a certain shrewdness and sharpness of expression had come into her face.
"But I know all that," she said. "I found out long ago that I was not kind, not soft-hearted. You see, if I want a thing, I want it very badly. I wonder if you would be shocked if I told you something. No, I don't think you would. Well, it is this: I knew quite well when Edgar and I met at Brixham that Maud, my best friend, you know, was a good deal attracted by him. But that seemed to me no reason why I should not—well, do what I could. So I did my best to make him want nie. I think it would have been foolish to do otherwise. I don't think it was mean; I think it was sensible. Maud saw it in the same light. She realized that I could not help myself."
Lady Heron could not help interrupting with a flash of a question.
"Since you, too, were in love with him?" she asked.
There was a slight pause.
"Exactly," said Lucia. "So I am not kind, you see," she added in a moment. "I wanted you to tell me something new about myself. Or about you. You said you knew the story of your necklace."
Madge Heron's handsome but rather hard face softened a little and looked extraordinarily young under its beautiful grey hair. She liked Lucia, she was attracted by her, and at the moment she was very sorry for her. Clearly, to her acute eye, Lucia's nature had never been awakened at all; all that she had attained had been won by mere brain-work; she had been a clever child, winning prizes at school. And the awakening to life was, in Madge's opinion, a painful process to most women, if it came after they were out in the world and married, for it was always associated with the thought of what might have been. A choice, too, was then set before them, as to whether they would behave as if they were content, or—grab, steal what was not theirs. She had been through that late awakening herself, and she had chosen. Some day, unless, as now appeared extremely unlikely, Lucia fell in love with her husband, she, too, would have to choose. From the direction and trend of her previous achievements, it was not difficult to guess what her choice would be. Yet it was a pity; and a certain vague regret that stirred in Madge herself tinged what she said.
"My dear, I will preach you a little sermon on bead-strings," she said; "not on my string, nor on yours, but on strings in the abstract."
Lucia's face lit up with that brilliant child-like smile, and she moved her chair a little closer.
"Ah, that will be delightful!" she said. "I shall love to hear a little sermon from you. It is sure to be clear-cut and incisive, like your life."
"I will try to make it clear. Now, dear, with all your success, your—your everything—you don't yet know in the least degree what life is. You haven't even decided, you know, if your string—that is yourself, your character—is to be black or white. You talk charmingly about character: you are full of cleverness and perception; but when you talk about it, it is as if you played—let me see—the appassionata up at the top of the piano. It is tinkle, tinkle, tinkle. It doesn't go down to the depths. And it can't, because you have never been there. All you have done has been done with your brain."
Lucia gave a delighted little sigh.
"Oh, it is too fascinating!" she said. "You mean that even now the whole of life is before me, that there is a whole other plane to explore. But I've got to jump down to that, haven't I, to dive?"
Transcendent egoism was there, but still shallow, still sunny and enchanting.
"Yes, dive probably," said Madge. "But I don't know whether you will find it fascinating. As I said, you haven't yet decided whether your string is to be black or white. Do you understand? Are you going to be good, or are you going to be bad?"
Lucia frowned a little; there was something brutally direct about this, which was not much to her taste.
"Yes, it puzzles you a little because it is so simple," went on Madge; "and no doubt such a consideration seems to you a little middle-class, a little bourgeois."
"I always say my prayers," said Lucia, "however late I am. At least, almost."
"Ah, that's bad!" said Madge quickly. "If you pray, you should pray when you have got something to pray about."
"Oh, but I always have," said Lucia. "I prayed tremendously that the Brayton week might be fine, and it was lovely."
Madge could not help laughing. Lucia spoke with such sincerity. But she became grave again.
"Oh, you poor child!" she said. "You will be awake some day, and then—then you will either pray prayers that scald you, and wring the heart out of you, or you will not pray at all. It is one thing to struggle to get what you want; it is quite another to struggle not to take what you want. Many people don't struggle then, they take it."
Lucia put her head a little on one side, like some inquiring bird.
"Oh, do you mean horrid things," she said, "like wanting somebody else's husband? I think that is so disgusting."
Lady Heron got up
"I will preach no more," she said. "Dear Lucia, I hope you will never understand a word I have said."
"Oh, but I think it's fascinating," said she. "But I think you are wrong about me."
She got up also, still incapable of honesty.
"You quite leave out the fact that I adore Edgar," she said. "I think you believe I am heartless. Is that it?"
"Tinkle, tinkle," said Madge.
Lucia felt a little displeased.
"Well then, I hope I shall always tinkle, tinkle," she said. "It is gay, anyhow."