Love And Lucy

XIII HARTLEY THICKET 2 162 XIV THE GREAT SCHEME 175 XV JAMES 188 XVI Amari A liquid 196 XVII THE SHIVERING FIT 209 XVIII THE HARDANGER 227 XIX THE MOON-SPELL 233 XX FAIR WARNING 247 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XXI THE DEPARTURE 256 XXII CATASTROPHE 268 XXIII JAMES AND JIMMY 280 XXIV URQUHARTS APOLOGY 292 EPILOGUE Quid Plura ..... . . 306 LOVE AND LUCY LOVE AND LUCY CHAPTER I ONSLOW SQUARE t AHIS is a romantic tale. So romantic is it I that I shall be forced to pry into the coy recesses of the mind in order to exhibit a connected, reasonable affair, not only of a man and his wife prosperously seated in the mean of things, nel mezzo del cammin in space as well as time for the Macartneys belonged to the mid dle class, and were well on to the middle of life themselves , but of stript, quivering and winged souls tiptoe within them, tiptoe for flight into diviner spaces than any seemly bodies can afford them. As you peruse you may find it difficult to believe that Macartney himself James Adol phus, that remarkable solicitor could have pos sessed a quivering, winged soul fit to be stript, and have hidden it so deep. But he did though, and the inference is that everybody does. As for the lady, that is not so hard of belief. It very seldom is with women. They sit so 2 LOVE AND LUCY much at windows, that pretty soon their eyes be come windows themselves out of which the soul looks darkling, but preening out of which it sometimes launches itself into the deep, wooed thereto or not by aubade or serena. But a man, with his vanity haunting him, pulls the blinds down or shuts the shutters, to have it decently to himself, and his looking-glass and you are not to know what storm is enacting deeply within. Finally, I wish once for all to protest against the fallacy that piracy, brigandage, pearl-fishery and marooning are confined to the wilder parts of the habitable globe. Never was a greater, if more amiable, delusion fostered to serve his simplicity by Lord Byron and others. Because a man wears trousers, shall there be no more cakes and ale Because a woman subscribes to the London Institution, desires the suffrage, or presides at a Committee, does the bocca baciata perde ventura Believe me, no. There are at least two persons in each of us, one at least of which can course the starry spaces and inhabit where the other could hardly breathe for ten minutes. Such is my own experience, and such was the experience of the Macartney pair and now I have done with exordial matter. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.