Love and Lucy   By: Maurice Henry Hewlett (1861-1923)

LOVE AND LUCY

by

MAURICE HEWLETT

Author of "The Forest Lovers," "The Life and Death of Richard Yea and Nay," etc.

New York Dodd, Mead and Company 1916

Copyright, 1916 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.

BEATI POSSIDENTES

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I ONSLOW SQUARE 1 II A DINNER PARTY 16 III IN THE DRAWING ROOM 31 IV AFTER TALK 41 V EROS STEPS IN 53 VI A LEAP OUTWARDS 74 VII PATIENCE AND PSYCHE 84 VIII AGAIN 102 IX SUNDRY ROMANTIC EPISODES 112 X AT A WORLD'S EDGE 121 XI ANTEROS 134 XII MARTLEY THICKET (1) 148 XIII MARTLEY THICKET (2) 162 XIV THE GREAT SCHEME 175 XV JAMES 188 XVI Amari Aliquid 196 XVII THE SHIVERING FIT 209 XVIII THE HARDANGER 227 XIX THE MOON SPELL 235 XX FAIR WARNING 247 XXI THE DEPARTURE 256 XXII CATASTROPHE 268 XXIII JAMES AND JIMMY 280 XXIV URQUHART'S APOLOGY 292 EPILOGUE: Quid Plura ? 306

LOVE AND LUCY

CHAPTER I

ONSLOW SQUARE

This is a romantic tale. So romantic is it that I shall be forced to pry into the coy recesses of the mind in order to exhibit a connected, reasonable affair, not only of a man and his wife prosperously seated in the mean of things, nel mezzo del cammin in space as well as time for the Macartneys belonged to the middle class, and were well on to the middle of life themselves , but of stript, quivering and winged souls tiptoe within them, tiptoe for flight into diviner spaces than any seemly bodies can afford them. As you peruse you may find it difficult to believe that Macartney himself James Adolphus, that remarkable solicitor could have possessed a quivering, winged soul fit to be stript, and have hidden it so deep. But he did though, and the inference is that everybody does. As for the lady, that is not so hard of belief. It very seldom is with women. They sit so much at windows, that pretty soon their eyes become windows themselves out of which the soul looks darkling, but preening; out of which it sometimes launches itself into the deep, wooed thereto or not by aubade or serena . But a man, with his vanity haunting him, pulls the blinds down or shuts the shutters, to have it decently to himself, and his looking glass; and you are not to know what storm is enacting deeply within. Finally, I wish once for all to protest against the fallacy that piracy, brigandage, pearl fishery and marooning are confined to the wilder parts of the habitable globe. Never was a greater, if more amiable, delusion fostered (to serve his simplicity) by Lord Byron and others. Because a man wears trousers, shall there be no more cakes and ale? Because a woman subscribes to the London Institution, desires the suffrage, or presides at a Committee, does the bocca baciata perde ventura ? Believe me, no. There are at least two persons in each of us, one at least of which can course the starry spaces and inhabit where the other could hardly breathe for ten minutes. Such is my own experience, and such was the experience of the Macartney pair and now I have done with exordial matter.