The flush on Lucy's face vanished as if it had been knocked out. She sat
quite still. If she moved, or looked anywhere but at her plate, she knew
she would begin to cry. The scenes she had dreaded had not included any
with herself in the presence of servants. It hadn't entered her head
that these, too, were possible. She must hold on to herself; not move;
not look. She sat absorbed in that one necessity, fiercely concentrated.
Chesterton must have gone away and come back again, for presently she
was aware that sugar was being put on the tea-tray; and then she was
aware that Everard was holding out his cup.
'Give me some more tea, please,' he said, 'and for God's sake don't
sulk. If the servants forget their duties it's neither your nor my
business to tell them what they've forgotten,--they've just got to look
and see, and if they don't see they've just got to stand there looking
till they do. It's the only way to teach them. But for you to get
sulking on the top of it----'
She lifted the teapot with both hands, because one hand by itself too
obviously shook. She succeeded in pouring out the tea without spilling
it, and in stopping almost at the very moment when he said, 'Take care,
take care--you're filling it too full.' She even succeeded after a
minute or two in saying, holding carefully on to her voice to keep it
steady, 'I'm not--sulking. I've--got a headache.'
And she thought desperately, 'The only thing to be done with marriage is
to let it wash over one.'
XXV
For the rest of that day she let it wash; unresistingly. She couldn't
think any more. She couldn't feel any more,--not that day. She really
had a headache; and when the dusk came, and Wemyss turned on the lights,
it was evident even to him that she had, for there was no colour at all
in her face and her eyes were puffed and leaden.
He had one of his sudden changes. 'Come here,' he said, reaching out and
drawing her on to his knee; and he held her face against his breast, and
felt full of maternal instincts, and crooned over her. 'Was it a poor
little baby,' he crooned. 'Did it have a headache then----' And he put
his great cool hand on her hot forehead and kept it there.
Lucy gave up trying to understand anything at all any more. These swift
changes,--she couldn't keep up with them; she was tired, tired....
They sat like that in the chair before the fire, Wemyss holding his hand
on her forehead and feeling full of maternal instincts, and she an
unresisting blank, till he suddenly remembered he hadn't shown her the
drawing-room yet. The afternoon had not proceeded on the lines laid down
for it in his plans, but if they were quick there was still time for the
drawing-room before dinner.
Accordingly she was abruptly lifted off his knee. 'Come along, little
Love,' he said briskly. 'Come along. Wake up. I want to show you
something.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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