Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/68

58 Edgar Brayton did not usually take tea, any more than he smoked two cigarettes after lunch, but he found himself breaking his rule without any sense of fracture, while Lucia entertained him. It was entertainment, too, to watch her, with that fresh, eager face, that charm of vivid girlhood, that entire absence of self-consciousness. There was also something very attractive in her friendliness, her frank avowal of her tastes and pleasures; she showed herself to him with the frankness of a boy showing his room and his books to some new acquaintance. He had till to-day seen nothing of those who would be his neighbours at Brixham, and it struck him (though he was not in the least superstitious) as a good omen that he should open acquaintance with them so pleasantly. Then a train shrieked its way by on the embankment at the bottom of the garden, and interrupted conversation for a moment. But Lucia sat up and looked at it with a smile.

"Ah! and I love that too," she said. "Isn't it nice to think of all those carriages full of people, all going to fresh places? I do hope they will enjoy themselves. Don't you?"

This was almost the nonsense-mood again, but it contained more of Lucia than had been given him at first. He thought about his answer before replying.

"I don't think I do," he said. "At least, restlessness doesn't seem to me to be a virtue. Of course, eagerness is, but isn't it rather shallow that your eagerness should demand fresh places? Why not stop where you are and be eager over a fresh book?"

Lucia leaned forward.

"Oh, go on!" she said. "Tell me all about that. That's a gospel I long to hear preached."

Insensibly this flattered him.

"I wish, then, I was a preacher," he said; "but I am afraid I am not. Only it seems to me that people talk about what they would do if their circumstances were different, and think that altered circumstances would expand and develop them, whereas the expansion and development come from within. People really make themselves; circumstances have very little to do with their making. For instance"

He paused a moment, finding himself already committed to a sort of intimacy. He did not find fault with the intimacy; he only wondered what had caused it. Then, with complete honesty, he told himself that two simple people were talking to each other.