She gathered all this in the first day or two of her stay, and it was as delightful and personal to her, as though she herself had been God, and had created it all.
Hortons, in its own turn, was delighted with her. It had never seen anything so fresh and charming in all its long life. It had often received beautiful women into its capacious heart, and it had known some very handsome men, but Lucy was lovely. Mr. Nix, who could be on occasions a poet, said of her that she made him think of "strawberries and junket and his own self at twenty." He did not say this to Mrs. Nix.
To Lucy, the only thing that was wrong with Hortons was her aunt. She disliked Mrs. Comstock from the very first moment. She did not like the way that she was over-dressed, the way that she talked without looking at you, the way that she spoke so crossly to her maid, the way that she loved her food, the way that she at once implied that it was wonderfully fortunate for Lucy to have her to come to.
She discovered at once that her aunt was on the side of her parents with regard to Mr. Simon Laud. Mrs. Comstock's opinion was that Lucy might consider herself very fortunate to have been selected by so good a man, that she must do her best to deserve her good fortune, because girls nowadays don't find it easy to pick up men. Men know too much!
"To pick up men!" What a horrible phrase! And Lucy had not picked up Simon Laud. She had been picked up—really against her will. Lucy then discovered that her Aunt Harriet—that is, Mrs. Comstock—had invited her to London for this month in order to have a companion. She had a paid companion—Miss Flagstaff—but that unfortunate woman had at last been allowed a holiday. Here was a whole month, then, and what was poor Mrs. Comstock to do? Why, of course, there was that niece up in Yorkshire. The very thing. She would do admirably.
Lucy found that her first duty was to read every morning the society papers. There was the Tatler with Eve's letter. There was the Queen and the Lady's Pictorial, and several other smaller ones. These papers appeared once a week, and it was Lucy's duty to see that they stretched out, two hours every morning, from Saturday to Saturday.
Aunt Harriet had society at her fingers' ends, and the swiftly succeeding marriages of Miss Elizabeth Asquith, Miss Violet Keppel, and Lady Diana Manners just about this time gave her a great deal to do. She had a scrap-book into which she pasted photographs and society clippings. She labelled this "Our leaders," and Lucy's morning labours were firmly linked to this scrap-book. Once she pasted an impressionist portrait of Miss Keppel upside-down into the book, and saw for a full five minutes what Aunt Harriet was like when she was really angry.
"I'd better go back to Hawkesworth!" Lucy cried, more defiant than she would ever have suspected she could be. However, this was not at all what Aunt Harriet wanted; Lucy was making herself extremely useful. Lucy did not want it either. So peace was made. One result of this snipping up of society was that Lucy began to be strangely conscious of the world that was beating up around her.
A strange, queer, confused, dramatic world! For positively the first time she was aware of some of the things that the war had done, of what it had meant to many people, of the chasms that it had made in relationships, the ruins in homes, and also of the heroisms that it had emphasised—and, beyond all these individual things, she had a sense of a new world rising painfully and slowly from the chaos of the old—but rising! Yes, even through these ridiculous papers of her aunt's, she could feel the first stirrings, the first trumpetings to battle, voices sounding, only a little distance from her, wonderful new messages of hope and ambition.