“Katie is perhaps more kind to me than she is to you, Miss Trevor,” said Bertie; “she knew I wanted to tell you—various things; and she did not realize, perhaps, that it would be so disagreeable to you.”
This troubled Lucy in her sensitive dislike to give pain. “Oh,” she said, “Mr. Bertie, indeed I did not mean to be rude.”
“You could not be rude,” he said, with an audible sigh. “Those who have not the gift to please have only themselves to blame. I wanted to call, but your old lady does not like me, Miss Trevor. I heard this morning from Mrs. Berry-Montagu. Did I tell you she had taken me up? She has been in Scotland in her husband’s shooting-quarters, and she says Sir Thomas Randolph is off to the East again.”
“To the East!” Lucy said: what did it mean? for a moment the sight seemed to go out of her eyes, the world to swim round her. A great giddiness came over her; was she going to be ill? she did not understand what it was.
“Yes,” said Bertie’s voice, quite unconcerned; and, even in the midst of this wonderful mist and darkness, it was a consolation to her that he did not seem to perceive her condition. “When that mania of travel seizes a man there is no fighting against it. Mrs. Montagu says that Lady Randolph is in despair.”
“I should think she will not like it,” Lucy said. The light was beginning slowly to come back. She saw the path under her feet, and the shrubs that stood on either hand, and Bertie by her side whom she had been so alarmed to see, but whom she thought nothing of now. What did it mean? she was too much confused and confounded in all her faculties to be able to tell. And she asked no questions. That was why Sir Tom had not written, had not taken any notice. Lucy had thought herself very wretched, abandoned by heaven and earth this morning, but how different were her sensations now! An invisible prop had been taken away, which had held her up without her own knowledge. She felt herself sink down to the very dust, her limbs and her courage failing alike. And all the time Bertie’s voice went on.
“I have been wandering about the town renewing my acquaintance with it, and making notes. May I tell you about what I am going to do, Miss Trevor? Perhaps it will only bore you? Well, if you will let me— I am about beginning my second book; and your advice did so much for me in the first. I know how much of my success I owe to you.”
“Oh, no, no, Mr. Bertie,” said Lucy, “you only say so. I never gave you any advice, you don’t owe anything to me.”
“Perhaps not,” he said, with a smile. “Perhaps the Madonna on the mast does not save the poor Italian fisherman from the storm. You may think, if you are a severe Protestant, that she has nothing to do with it, but he kneels down and thanks our lady when he gets on shore, and you must let me thank the saint of my invocation too.”
Lucy made no reply. She did not understand what he meant by all these fine words, and if she had understood she did not care. What did it matter? His voice was not much more to her than the organ playing popular tunes in the street beyond. The two sounds made a sort of half-ludicrous concert to her ears. She heard them and heard them not, and went on in a maze, still giddy, not knowing where she was going, keeping very still to command herself. Going to the East! all that, she thought, had been over. He had gone to Scotland, from whence he was to write, and she to him, if she wanted advice or anything! And he had written to her, but not for a long time. And now he was going away again, going away perhaps forever. This was what was going on in Lucy’s mind while Bertie spoke. She had no feeling about Bertie now, or about the betrayal of her trust by his sister. What did it matter? Sir Tom was going—going to the East. Sometimes she felt disposed to grasp at Bertie’s arm to steady herself, and sometimes there came over her an almost irrestrainable impulse to break in, to say, “To the East! do you mean that he is really, really going to the East?” It was only instinct that saved her, not anything better. When the words came to her lips, she became vaguely conscious that he was talking about something else.