CHAPTER LV

He asked himself how it was that he had had no premonition of the thing that was about to happen to him; that the supreme moment should have come upon him so casually and with so light a step; that he went to meet it in a mood so commonplace and unprepared? (Good Heavens!  He remembered that he had been eating pea soup at the time, and wishing it were artichoke.)

Had he not known that she would come back again, and in just that way?  Had he not looked for her coming five years ago?  And what were five years, after all?  How was it that he had heard no summons of the golden and reverberant hour?

And what was he going to do with it, or it with him, now that it had come?  That was a question that he preferred to leave unanswered for the present.

It seemed that Lucia was going to stay for a week as Miss Roots’ guest; and it was Mrs. Downey’s hope that she would be with them for a much longer period on her own account.  This hope Rickman judged to be altogether baseless; she would never be able to bear the place for more than a week.  He inquired of Miss Roots early the next morning on this subject; and at the same time he found out from her what Lucia had been doing in the last five years.  She had not been (as Jewdwine had allowed him to suppose) abroad all the time with Kitty Palliser.  She had only lived with Miss Palliser in the holidays.  The rest of the year, of the five years, she had been working for her living as music mistress in a Women’s College somewhere in the south of England.  To his gesture of horror Miss Roots replied that this was by no means the hideous destiny he conceived it to be.

“But—­for her—­” he exclaimed.

“And why not for her?” Miss Roots, B.A., retorted, stung by his undisguised repugnance.  If Lucia had got her post merely by interest (which Miss Roots seemed to consider as something of a blot on her career) at the end of her first year she had the pick of the students waiting for her.  Unfortunately Lucia had never been strong; and this summer her health had completely broken down.

At that he shuddered, and turned abruptly away.  Miss Roots looked at him and wondered why.  When he approached her again it was to offer her, with every delicacy and hesitation, the loan of his study for the time of Miss Harden’s visit.  This was not an easy thing to do; but he was helped by several inspirations.  The room, he said, was simply standing empty all day.  He had hardly any use for it now.  He would be kept busy at the office up to the time of his marriage.  And he thought it would be a little more comfortable for Miss Harden than the public drawing-room.

“I want,” he said (lying with a certain splendour), “to pay some attention to her.  You see, she’s my editor’s cousin—­”

Miss Roots turned on him a large look that took him in, his monstrous mendacity and all.  But she nodded as much as to say that the explanation passed.