“That will be fun,” said Lucy with sarcastic politeness.
From his post of observation Walter looked on. The General had been handsome once. Corseted, his tall figure still preserved its military bearing. The gallant and the guardsman, he smiled, he fingered his white moustache. The next moment he was the playful, protective, and confidential old uncle. Faintly smiling, Lucy looked at him out of her pale grey eyes with a detached and unmerciful amusement. Walter studied her. She was not even particularly good-looking. So why, why? He wanted reasons, he wanted justification. Why? The question persistently reverberated. There was no answer. He had just fallen in love with her—that was all; insanely, the first time he set eyes on her.
Turning her head, Lucy caught sight of him. She beckoned and called his name. He pretended to be surprised and delightfully astonished.
“I hope you’ve not forgotten our appointment,” he said.
“Do I ever forget? Except occasionally on purpose,” she qualified with a little laugh. She turned to the General. “Walter and I are going to see your stepson this evening,” she announced in the tone and with the smile which one employs when one talks to people about those who are dear to them. But between Spandrell and his stepfather the quarrel, she knew very well, was mortal. Lucy had inherited all her mother’s fondness for the deliberate social blunder and with it a touch of her father’s detached scientific curiosity. She enjoyed experimenting, not with frogs and guinea pigs, but with human beings. You did unexpected things to people, you put them in curious situations and waited to see what would happen. It was the method of Darwin and Pasteur.
What happened in this case was that General Knoyle’s face became extremely red. “I haven’t seen him for some time,” he said stiffly.
“Good,” she said to herself. “He’s reacting.”
“But he’s such good company,” she said aloud.
The General grew redder and frowned. What he hadn’t done for that boy! And how ungrateful the boy had responded, how abominably he had behaved! Getting himself kicked out of every job the General had wangled him into. A waster, an idler; drinking and drabbing; making his mother miserable, sponging on her, disgracing the family name. And the insolence of the fellow, the things he had ventured to say the last time they had met and, as usual, had a scene together! The General was never likely to forget being called “an impotent old fumbler.”
“And so intelligent,” Lucy was saying. With an inward smile she remembered Spandrell’s summary of his stepfather’s career. “Superannuated from Harrow,” it began, “passed out from Sandhurst at the bottom of the list, he had a most distinguished career in the Army, rising during the war to a high post in the Military Intelligence Department.” The way he rolled out this anticipated obituary was really magnificent. He was the Times made audible. And then his remarks on Military Intelligence in general! “If you look up ‘Intelligence’ in the new volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica,” he had said, “you’ll find it classified under the following three heads: Intelligence, Human; Intelligence, Animal; Intelligence, Military. My stepfather’s a present specimen of Intelligence, Military.”
“So intelligent,” Lucy repeated.
“Some people think so, I know,” said General Knoyle very stiffly. “But personally …” He cleared his throat with violence. That was his personal opinion.
A moment later, still rigid, still angrily dignified, he took his leave. He felt that Lucy had offended him. Even her youth and her bare shoulders did not compensate him for those laudatory references to Maurice Spandrell. Insolent, bad-blooded young cub! His existence was the General’s standing grievance against his wife. A woman had no right to have a son like that, no right. Poor Mrs. Knoyle had often atoned to her second husband for the offences of her son. She was there, she could be punished, she was too weak to resist. The exasperated General visited the sins of the child on his parent.
Lucy glanced after the retreating figure, then turned to Walter. “I can’t risk that sort of thing happening again,” she said. “It would be bad enough even if he didn’t smell so unpleasant. Shall we go away?”
Walter desired nothing better. “But what about your mother and the social duties?” he asked.
She shrugged her shoulders. “After all, Mother can look after her own bear garden.”
“Bear garden’s the word,” said Walter, feeling suddenly hopeful. “Let’s sneak away to some place where it’s quiet.”
“My poor Walter!” Her eyes were derisive. “I never knew anybody with such a mania for quietness as you. But I don’t want to be quiet.”
His hope evaporated, leaving a feeble little bitterness, an ineffective anger. “Why not stay here then?” he asked with an attempt at sarcasm. “Isn’t it noisy enough?”
“Ah, but noisy with the wrong sort of noise,” she explained. “There’s nothing I hate more than the noise of cultured, respectable, eminent people, like these creatures.” She waved her hand comprehensively. The words evoked, for Walter, the memory of hideous evenings passed with Lucy in the company of the disreputable and uncultured—tipsy at that. Lady Edward’s guests were bad enough. But the others were surely worse. How could she tolerate them?
Lucy seemed to divine his thoughts. Smiling, she laid a hand reassuringly on his arm. “Cheer up!” she said. “I’m not taking you into low company this time. There’s Spandrell …”
“Spandrell,” he repeated and made a grimace.
“And if Spandrell isn’t classy enough for
