It was at Lucille’s suggestion that they had come to the Hermitage. Never a human sunbeam, Mr. Brewster had shown such a bleak front to the world, and particularly to his son-in-law, in the days following the Pongo incident, that Lucille had thought that he and Archie would for a time at least be better apart–a view with which her husband cordially agreed. He had enjoyed his stay at the Hermitage, and now he regarded the eternal hills with the comfortable affection of a healthy man who is breakfasting well.
“It’s going to be another perfectly topping day,” he observed, eyeing the shimmering landscape, from which the morning mists were swiftly shredding away like faint puffs of smoke. “Just the day you ought to have been here.”
“Yes, it’s too bad I’ve got to go. New York will be like an oven.”
“Put it off.”
“I can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve a fitting.”
Archie argued no further. He was a married man of old enough standing to know the importance of fittings.
“Besides,” said Lucille, “I want to see father.” Archie repressed an exclamation of astonishment. “I’ll be back to-morrow evening. You will be perfectly happy.”
“Queen of my soul, you know I can’t be happy with you away. You know–”
“Yes?” murmured Lucille, appreciately. She never tired of hearing Archie say this sort of thing.
Archie’s voice had trailed off. He was looking across the room.
“By Jove!” he exclaimed. “What an awfully pretty woman!”
“Where?”
“Over there. Just coming in, I say, what wonderful eyes! I don’t think I ever saw such eyes. Did you notice her eyes? Sort of flashing! Awfully pretty woman!”
Warm though the morning was, a suspicion of chill descended upon the breakfast-table. A certain coldness seemed to come into Lucille’s face. She could not always share Archie’s fresh young enthusiasms.
“Do you think so?”
“Wonderful figure, too!”
“Yes?”
“Well, what I mean to say, fair to medium,” said Archie, recovering a certain amount of that intelligence which raises man above the level of the beasts of the field. “Not the sort of type I admire myself, of course.”
“You know her, don’t you?”
“Absolutely not and far from it,” said Archie, hastily. “Never met her in my life.”
“You’ve seen her on the stage. Her name’s Vera Silverton. We saw her in–”
“Of course, yes. So we did. I say, I wonder what she’s doing here? She ought to be in New York, rehearsing. I remember meeting what’s- his-name–you know–chappie who writes plays and what not–George Benham–I remember meeting George Benham, and he told me she was rehearsing in a piece of his called–I forget the name, but I know it was called something or other. Well, why isn’t she?”
“She probably lost her temper and broke her contract and came away. She’s always doing that sort of thing. She’s known for it. She must be a horrid woman.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to talk about her. She used to be married to someone, and she divorced him. And then she was married to someone else, and he divorced her. And I’m certain her hair wasn’t that colour two years ago, and I don’t think a woman ought to make up like that, and her dress is all wrong for the country, and those pearls can’t be genuine, and I hate the way she rolls her eyes about, and pink doesn’t suit her a bit. I think she’s an awful woman, and I wish you wouldn’t keep on talking about her.”
“Right-o!” said Archie, dutifully.
They finished breakfast, and Lucille went up to pack her bag. Archie strolled out on to the terrace outside the hotel, where he smoked, communed with nature, and thought of Lucille. He always thought of Lucille when he was alone, especially when he chanced to find himself in poetic surroundings like those provided by the unrivalled scenery encircling the Hotel Hermitage. The longer he was married to her the more did the sacred institution seem to him a good egg. Mr. Brewster might regard their marriage as one of the world’s most unfortunate incidents, but to Archie it was, and always had been, a bit of all right. The more he thought of it the more did he marvel that a girl like Lucille should have been content to link her lot with that of a Class C specimen like himself. His meditations were, in fact, precisely what a happily-married man’s meditations ought to be.