Chapter II: Part 2

“Why not? We Fanes are as good a family as any in England. And I’m handsome: Bernard, you said I was.”

“Yes, but you aren’t like the woman in the black frills,” said Bernard, measuring his sister by the only standard of taste he knew. “Besides, I guess Merton’s morally sure you were out poaching last time with me, and he and Farquhar are as thick as thieves. Girls oughtn’t to poach.”

“There are some people who don’t class that among the seven deadly sins, and he’s one; I know it. He has wild blood, as we have.”

“But would you marry him if he wanted you to?”

“I’m not sure. I might. He could give me what I want—experience.”

“I don’t see why you aren’t contented here,” said Bernard, bending to his work again.

“I dare say not,” retorted Dolly, pacing the shed. “You’re phlegmatic. You’re content with the rind of life. Bitter or sweet, I mean to taste the core.”

“I expect, you know, you’ll come to awful grief.”

“Perhaps. But so I’ve lived my life first, I’ll not complain.”

“Well,” said Bernard, “I never saw you in heroics before, and I guess I don’t care if I never do again.”

Then he returned to his work, and drowned Dolly’s aspirations in the harsh duet of squeaking saw and dissentient wood.

V

SHE GOES ON SUNDAY TO THE CHURCH

Eumenes Fane’s marriage had been both more respectable and more romantic than his kind enemies believed: living in Paris, he had eloped with a handsome, wilful French girl of noble family. Her relations swallowed the match as a bitter pill, his did not exist; and the married lovers lived in isolation far away in Brittany until death cut short their long honeymoon. Eumenes returned to England embittered; he had always been disagreeable. The relations between him and his children were eccentric. He lived with them, he had taught them, yet he lavished satire upon their boorishness and stupidity; he had been devoted to the mother, yet for the children he had no feeling but unamiable contempt. They, on their part, repaid him with indifference. Bernard at eighteen, on his own initiative, took control of the farm and made it pay; Dolly managed the dairy and the household. Their lives were isolated equally from their father and from the world. Bernard was not much of a reader, and never strayed far from his Shakespeare and his farming journals, with excursions into Tennyson; but Dolly was insatiable. She had read and digested every book in their heterogeneous library. Unfortunately, the collection was not representative; the modern French novelists were there arranged in full tale, and fresh volumes were added as they appeared, but it had no single work of English fiction later than the date of the admirable _Sir Charles Grandison_. Both Bernard and Dolly could read and speak French as easily as English, though they did not know the worth of their accomplishment; and from their study of fin-de-siècle literature they had gained an innocently lurid knowledge of the world which hardly fitted in with the conditions of English country life, and was particularly inappropriate as applied to the blameless households at the vicarage, the surgery, or The Lilacs. When young Merton of The Hall brought home a pretty bride, Dolly seriously looked for the appearance of Tertium Quid. He delayed his coming for a year, and then arrived in the cradle. Dolly was surprised; but she ascribed this breach of custom to the fact that Merton senior’s money was made in soap. Only the true aristocrats indulge in a friend of the house.

After Farquhar’s visit Dolly made a dress for herself. It was then the fashion to wear a bodice opening at the sleeves and in front to show a lighter under-dress, which also appeared beneath the skirt, as the corolla of a flower beneath the calyx. Dolly’s gown of dark chestnut matched her hair; the colour of the vest was white. She was more skilful in the dairy than with her needle, but she gave her mind to this, and in the end her work was crowned with fair success.

“I guess that colour, what they call, suits you,” said Bernard, whom she called in to assist at the full-dress rehearsal.

“I expect it does,” assented Dolly, bending back her swan’s-neck to catch a glimpse of her supple young waist in the spotty mirror. “It fits rather badly; any one can see it is homemade, but that can’t be helped. I am going to wear it to church on Christmas Day.”

“Father’ll be awfully angry if you go to church.”

“Of course, but that doesn’t matter. No one except small shopkeepers and mill-girls goes to chapel now. Besides, the minister drops his h’s and mixes his metaphors and talks the silliest nonsense: I wouldn’t listen to him even if it were the fashion. Shall you come with me?”

“I guess I’d better. Have you seen that Farquhar chap again?”

“I have,” Dolly answered, composedly.

“You’ll get yourself into a mess if you don’t look out.”

“Oh no. He may get into a mess, but I shall not.”

“Then I don’t think you are playing fair.”

“Yes, I am. He knows why I spoke to him.”

“Why did you?”

“To know how ladies behave.”

“I suppose you’ll go your own way,” said Bernard, after a pause; “but people’ll talk if you go on meeting him.”

“Let them. I don’t mean to stay down here.”

“I do,” said Bernard.

Dolly perceived the force of this objection. She valued Farquhar’s advice; but where her own aims clashed with Bernard’s well-being, she rarely hesitated.

“Very well; I won’t meet him again,” she said. “But, Bernard, if he speaks to you, do you respond. Ask him here; no one can find fault if I see him in my own house. Or I don’t think they can; do you?”

She was reassured by Bernard’s hearty assent, backed by a special instance. “For,” said he, “when Maude had his sister staying here, Farquhar went and saw them; and I guess if he goes to Maude’s house he can come to us.” And the point was thus settled.

Two days before Christmas the wind blew softly from the south, the snow melted from the earth and the clouds from the sky, the robins broke out into their pure celestial strains, and it was spring in all but name. Farquhar’s invalid began to pester his doctor for permission to go out, and Dolly got a white hat to go with her chestnut gown.

Christmas Day itself was a flash of summer. Dolly came down dressed for church at half-past ten, and found her brother ready in a Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and a cap. An inward monitor told her that this attire was incorrect, and she said so; but as Bernard had nothing else to wear, the question _solvitur ambulando_.

Neither of them had ever been to church. In early days Bernard had been sent to a chapel with a damnatory creed, and he took his sister with him till she developed opinions of her own: an epoch early in Dolly’s history. She rebelled: Bernard, who was bored by the service, outraged by the music, and submissive only from indifference, supported her: and Mr. Fane’s graceless children took their own way, and henceforth spent the Sabbath hours in reading, prefaced always by a chapter of the Bible.

They arrived late, having lingered in the woods because Dolly said, and Bernard agreed, that Mrs. Merton and the lady in the black frills had never entered the church till after the bells stopped ringing. Such is the force of bad example. Bernard held the door open for his sister, and followed her in, according to instructions which he had received from her, and she from Noel Farquhar. The aisles were crossed by dim sunbeams swimming with drowsy motes, the people were sleepy, the priest was monotoning monotonously out of tune; and Dolly’s entrance, in company with a beam of pure sunshine and a gust of wind which set the Christmas wreaths rustling all round the church, electrified everybody. Heads turned to stare; the choristers, ever the devotees of inattention, nudged and whispered. Up the aisle came Dolly, a glowing piece of colour in her rich dress and richer hair, with the immaculate whiteness of her brow and the deepening carmine of her cheeks, her eyes shining like brown diamonds. She walked steadily, carrying her head high, up to the big square pew assigned by tradition to the house of Fanes, unlatched the door, and took her seat. Bernard followed, his height and his patent unconcern making his figure quite as imposing as hers.

For a space Dolly knelt, as she saw others doing, and hid her hot face; but when the time came she rose, and pinched Bernard, who had sat down and stayed there. He got up slowly, plunged his hands into his pockets, and looked round him. Dolly was convinced that his behaviour was improper; she also looked round her, but without moving her head, and found her exemplar in the person of Noel Farquhar, who was attentively following the service in a large prayer-book. Three volumes lay on the shelf of their pew; Dolly opened one and handed another to her brother, signing to him to do his duty. He looked into it helplessly; it was a copy of _Hymns Ancient and Modern_, and it is not surprising that he could not find the place. Dolly was no better off, but she had a model to imitate; she turned over the pages as though they were perfectly familiar, found her place near the beginning of the volume, and devoutly studied the evening hymns while the choristers chanted the Venite.

The recollection of that morning always brought a smile to Dolly’s lips. Occupied by her culte of deportment, and still more by her culte of Bernard’s deportment, she missed the humours at the moment, but found them all the more amusing under the enchantment lent by distance. Bernard, who was not thinking about himself, was not amused. Music at chapel had been bad enough, but this, more ambitious, was really horrible. The choir sang neither better nor worse than most village performers; there was a preponderance of trebles out of tune and raucous, an absence of altos, two tenors who sang wrong, and three basses who sang treble. When they should have monotoned they climbed unevenly and one by one in linked sweetness long drawn out down a chromatic scale, until Bernard suddenly launched the true note at them in a voice of startling richness and power, which would have made his fortune had he taken it to market in town. It had the true bass quality, but an unusually extensive compass, ranging from the C below the bass clef up to the octave of middle C.

After he began to sing, most of the curious eyes were diverted from Dolly to him, and she regained her composure. Farquhar had not looked at her; it was not his cue to let his eye wander during service. But Dolly was sure, from the dark flush which overspread his face, that he had seen her enter. She designed this meeting as a test. If he refused to acknowledge her before his friends, Dolly vowed that she would never speak to him again. Her pride of birth was keen; she went to the length of thinking her brother the only gentleman present, inasmuch as he alone, so far as she knew, had the right to bear arms. She took little part in the religious ceremonies. Dolly had her creed, and held to it in practice, but at this time she was too intent on this world to think much of the next.

She got up with alacrity after the benediction, and marshalled out Bernard, glad to go. The organist was now playing music soft and slow, and tenderly touching the pedals with boots so large that he frequently put down two notes at once by accident. Music was really the only subject about which Bernard was sensitive; as a false quantity to a Latinist, as a curse to a Quaker, as a red rag to a bull, so was a wrong note to Bernard Fane.

Outside shone the sun and breathed the wind and danced the grasses over the graves of women as young and beautiful as Dolly; but she was not thinking of them. The stream of people began to condense into groups of two and three, who gave each other the accustomed greetings and echoed cheerful wishes at cross purpose in a babel of inanity. Farquhar was shaking hands with Mrs. Merton, a fragile little lady with dark eyes, _frileuse_, as Dolly christened her, who dressed very well and talked plaintive nonsense in an erratic fashion. Dolly knew by instinct that they were speaking of her. She went on at an even pace. Farquhar broke from his friends and followed, and Dolly, with true Christmas good-will in her heart, found herself shaking his hand in the overhand style, according to the custom of the lady in black frills.

“I wish I could walk home your way; I’ve a hundred things to say about that Burnt House business, and one never has a chance of seeing Mr. Fane. But I’ve an invalid at home who’s to take his first airing to-day, and I know he’ll go too far if I don’t look after him.”

“Is that the chap you picked up on the road?” asked Bernard, who had heard the story from the men, with romantic embellishments.

“Oh, I didn’t pick him up; don’t think it; he was planted on me by Providence. I say, Fane, if you’ve nothing better to do, I wish you’d come in to-night and have a knock-up at billiards. It would be a Christian act, for I’ve not a soul in the house except the invalid, who toddles off to bye-bye at seven.”

“I can’t play billiards,” was Bernard’s reply, rather proudly spoken.

“Right; I’ll teach you. There’s nothing I like better; is there, Mrs. Merton?”

“Don’t ask me; I never pretend to fathom you,” said Mrs. Merton, plaintively, shaking her head. And she put out a very small hand to Dolly. “Please don’t snub me, Miss Fane; I’d so like to come and call, if you’ll let me. I was told you were a dreadful person, who dropped the h and divided the hoof—skirt, I mean; besides, it was your turn to call first on me. But you aren’t dreadful, are you? So may I come?”

Had there been any patronage in Mrs. Merton’s manner, Dolly would have been delighted to snub her; but there was none. The formula of gracious acceptance was less easy than a refusal, but Dolly let no one guess her difficulties. An interesting general discussion of the weather followed, during which one remarked that it gave the doctors quite a holiday, a second that it was muggy and unwholesome and why didn’t we have a nice healthy frost, a third that it was excellent for the crops, and a fourth that the harvest would be certainly ruined by wireworms, and each agreed with all the rest. Bernard, standing still, thought fashionable people talked like imbeciles. Dolly, shy, though no one saw it, was in a glow of triumph.

Their way home led through woods. So much rain had fallen that the mossy bridle-path was scored with deep ruts full of water, and Dolly had to hold her skirt away from the black leaf-mould. Rain-drops held in crumpled copper leaves shone gemlike, smooth young stems glistened; only the grey boles of the forest trees looked warm and dry. Dolly, herself like a russet leaf, harmonised with the woodland scenery, which seemed a frame made for her.

Farther on down the path, resignedly sitting on a bundle of fagots, and beginning to grow chilly, Lucian de Saumarez was waiting for some one to pass. He had set out with the virtuous intention of returning home in half an hour precisely, but had been lured on by a shrew-mouse, a squirrel, and the enchanting sun, till the end of his strength put a period to his walk; his legs gave way under him. Then he sat down and whistled “Just Break the News to Mother,” very cheerfully. It was fortunate that in Bernard’s hearing he did not attempt to sing, for his voice can only be described by the adjective squawky. He looked like a tramp who had stolen a coat, for over his own he wore one of Farquhar’s, which was truly a giant’s robe to him. At first glimpse of Dolly he whipped off his cap, and stood up bareheaded and recklessly polite.

“Excuse me—” he began.

“If you want relief, you’d better go to Alresworth workhouse; they’ll take you in there,” interrupted Bernard, who would never give to tramps.

“Be quiet, Bernard. Is there anything we can do for you?” asked Dolly, in her gentlest voice.

“Candidly, I only ask an arm, and not an alms,” said Lucian, laughing in Bernard’s face. “Fact is, I’ve walked up from The Lilacs and just petered out. Your woods are such a very remarkably long way through.”

“Then your name is De Saumarez. Bernard, give Mr. de Saumarez your arm. You must come home with us and rest; afterwards you can go back. You ought not to be sitting down out-of-doors this weather,” said Dolly, fixing her imperious young eyes upon him, between pity and severity.

“No, I’m an abomination, I confess it,” answered the culprit, meekly.

“You must be feeling very tired.”

“I’m feeling more like boned goose than anything else, especially in the legs. By-the-way, I wonder if Farquhar will leave his to look for the strayed lamb?”

“Let him; it won’t do him any harm.”

Lucian’s eyes opened wide; Farquhar had described the ladies of Monkswell in picture-making phrases, and he was trying to fit this vivid young beauty into some one of the frames provided, which all seemed too strait. “Am I speaking to Miss Maude?” he asked at a venture, choosing the likeliest.

“Oh no. I am Mirabelle Fane, and this is my brother Bernard.”

“The dickens you are!” said Lucian to himself; for Farquhar, in relating the adventure of Mr. Fane and the copper, had not mentioned Miss Fane. Her foreign name and intonation caught Lucian’s ear, and he asked if she were French.

“My mother was Comtesse de Beaufort,” Dolly told him, and her naïve pride was quaint and pretty. Lucian mentioned Paris, and she fastened upon him with a string of eager questions, but put him to silence before half were answered, by declaring that he had talked too much.

“I’ve been off the silent list this fortnight past,” Lucian pleaded.

“But you are already overtired. You ought to lie down directly you get in, and take a dose of cod-liver oil.”

“I take cod-liver oil three times a day,” Lucian assured her, with equal gravity.

“How? In port wine?”

“I should consider that a sacrilege. No; I will describe the operation,” said Lucian, warming to his subject, which in any of his many conversations with pretty girls he had never discussed before. “I squeeze half a lemon into a wineglass, so; then I pour the oil in on it; next I squeeze the juice of the other half-lemon into another wineglass; and finally I swallow first the lemon plus oil and then the lemon solus. It is a process which requires great nicety and precision. Farquhar is not so careful as I could wish. Of course, it is nothing to him if I suffer.”

“Port wine would be far more nourishing than lemon-juice,” Dolly asseverated, knitting her brows. “Or milk would be better. Have you ever tried goat’s milk?”

“I have not; is it a sovereign specific?”

“I have known it work wonderful cures on emaciated people. How much do you weigh?”

“Six stone eleven, I believe.”

“That is far too little. You should test your weight every day—are you laughing at me?”

“I’m awfully sorry!” said Lucian, who certainly was. “But, Miss Fane, what a nurse you would make! I was expecting you to feel my pulse, and take my temperature, and look at my tongue.”

“So I was intending to do; I have a clinical thermometer at home,” Dolly proudly answered. “I do not know how to behave. I have never learned any manners.”

“Say you’ve never learned customs; manners come by nature.”

Lucian’s smile was irresistible.

“Mine come very badly, then,” said Dolly, smiling back at him; “for when we get in you will certainly have to lie down; and, what’s more, I _shall_ give you a glass of goat’s milk.”

VI

HONESTY IS THE BEST POLICY

A royal stag, whose many-branched and palmate antlers showed that he had seen at least ten springs, looked down upon the mantel-piece of Noel Farquhar’s library; a huge elk fronted him across the room. This style of decoration, which took its origin in the simple skull palisades of primitive Britain and latter-day Africa, which was handed down by the traditions of Tower Hill, and which is rampant in the modern hall, had in Noel Farquhar a devotee. The walls of his smoking-room bristled with the heads of digested enemies. Thither the two men repaired after dinner on Christmas night, taking with them a decanter of mid-century port, cigars of indubitable excellence, and a dish of nuts for Lucian, who took a childlike interest in extracting and peeling walnuts without breaking the kernel. Farquhar was inclined to be silent, in which mood Lucian, the student of the abnormal, found him specially interesting.

“Queer chap you are Farquhar,” he suddenly remarked. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about the fascinating Fanes?”

“Didn’t I? I thought I had.” Farquhar did not think any such thing, and Lucian knew it. “The day I went there Miss Dolly Fane stopped me in the hall, and would know whether I thought she’d make an actress. An odd girl.”

“Well, and what did you say to her?”

“Said she would. I couldn’t do otherwise, could I?”

“My immaculate friend, I’m afraid the charms of Miss Fane have persuaded you into a statement which is very remarkably near to a L, I, E, lie. At the least, you were disingenuous, decidedly.”

“Who says I am immaculate? Not I. You thrust virtues upon me and then cry out when I don’t come up to your notions of an archangel.”

“And your church-going and your alms-giving and your brand-new coppers and general holiness? Eh, sonny?”

“I’ve a creed, as four-fifths of the men down here are supposed to have; but whereas they deny in their acts what they repeat with their tongues, I prefer to perform what I profess. There’s a fine lack of logic about the way men regard their faith; each time they repeat their Credo they’re self-condemned fools. Well, I don’t relish making a fool of myself. Either I’ll be an infidel, and thus set myself free, or else I’ll act up to what I say. For that you praise me. Now, the only virtue to which I do lay claim is patience, of which I think I possess an extraordinary store.”

Lucian peeled a walnut with painstaking earnestness, and ate it with salt and pepper. The shell he flicked across at Farquhar, who had fallen into a brown study and was looking very grim. He looked up with a quick, involuntary smile.

“Did you shoot all these horned beasties yourself?” Lucian inquired, introducing the elk and the stag with a wave of the hand.

“Yes. I shot the elk in Russia; the horns weigh a good eighty pounds. Shy brutes they are, and fierce when at bay; this one lamed me with a kick after I thought I had done for him.”

“My biggest bag was twenty sjamboks running,” said Lucian, pensively. “I and some others were up country on a big shoot, and, of course, I got fever and had to lie up. Well, they used to come in with their blesbok and their springbok, and all the rest of it, so I didn’t see why I shouldn’t do a little on my own. So I lined up all our niggers with a sjambok apiece, and made my bag from my couch of pain. I worked those sjamboks afterwards for all they were worth. Yes, sir-ree.”

“Sometimes I really think you’re daft, De Saumarez!”

“Pray don’t mention it. Let’s see, where were you? Oh, in Russia. No, I’ve never been there—I don’t know Russia at all.”

“I do.”

“What, intimately?”

Farquhar turned his head, met Lucian’s eyes, and smiled. “Oh no; quite slightly,” he said, lying with candour and glee.

“Oh, indeed,” said Lucian. “Now that’s queer; I thought I’d met you there. By the way, do you believe in eternal constancy?”

“In what?”

“In eternal constancy; did you never hear of it before?”

“Well, yes, pulex irritans, I’ve seen a man go mourning all his life long; so I do believe in it.”

“No, no, sonny; I’m not discussing its existence, but its merits. Do you hold that a man should be eternally faithful to the memory of a dead woman?”

“Not if he doesn’t want to.”

“My point is that he oughtn’t to want to. See here; your body changes every seven years, and I’ll be hanged if your mind doesn’t change, too. Now, your married couple change together and so keep abreast. But if the woman dies, she comes to a stop. In seven years the survivor will have grown right away from her. The constant husband prides himself on his loyalty, and is ashamed to admit even in camera that a resurrected wife wouldn’t fit into his present life; but in nine cases out of ten the wound’s healed and cicatrised, and only a sentimental scruple bars him from saying so. And there, as I take it, he’s wrong.”

“What would you have him do?”

“Take another woman and make her and himself happy.”

“What becomes of the dead wife’s point of view?”

“According to my creed, you know, she’s got no point of view at all.”

“You can’t expect me to follow you there.”

“No; and so I’ll cite your own creed. After the resurrection there shall be no marrying or giving in marriage. She’s no call to be jealous.”

“You’ve no romance about you.”

“No sentimentalism, you mean. Half the feelings consecrated by public opinion are trash. It’s astounding how we do adore the dumps. Happiness is our first duty. It seems to me that one needs more courage to forget than to remember. That’s where I’ve been weak myself.”

Lucian put his hand inside his coat and took out the letter which Farquhar had read; he had been leading up to this point. He spread it open on his knee, showing the thick, chafed, blue paper, the gilded monogram and daisy crest, the thin Italian writing. “I’ve carried that about for nine years,” he said, glancing up, and then held the paper to the fire and watched it catch light. The advancing line of brown, the blue-edged flame, crept across the letter, leaving shrivelled ash in its track. Lucian held it till the heat scorched his fingers, and then let it fall in the fire. “A passionate letter, was it not?” he said, turning from the black, rustling tinder to meet Farquhar’s eyes.

“My dear De Saumarez!”

“Don’t humbug; you read it when you thought I was unconscious.”

“Ah,” said Farquhar, “now I understand why you understood.”

He altered his pose slightly, relaxing as though freed from some slight, omnipresent constraint; the nature which confronted Lucian was different in gross and in detail from the mask of excellence which he had hitherto kept on. Vices were there, and virtues unsuspected: coarse, barbaric, potent qualities, dominated by a will-power mightier than they. Race-characteristics, hitherto overlaid, suddenly started out; and Lucian, recurring quickly to the last fresh lie which Farquhar had told him, exclaimed, “Why, man, you’re a Russian yourself!”

“Half-breed. My mother was Russian. My father was Scotch, but a naturalized Russian subject. The worse for him; he died in the mines. Confound him: a pretty ancestry he’s given me, and a pretty job I’ve had to keep the story out of the papers. I’ve done it, though.”

“But what’s it for?” asked Lucian, whose mind was flying to the story of Jekyll and Hyde.

“Respectability; that’s the god of England. Do you think I could confess myself the son of a couple of dirty Russian nihilists and keep my position? Not much. It’s the only crevice in my armour. Scores of men have tried to get on by shamming virtuous, but I’ve gone one better than they; I _am_ virtuous. You can’t pick a hole in my character, because there’s none to pick. I speak the truth, I do my duty, I’m honest and honourable down to the end of the whole fool’s catalogue, I even go out of my way to be chivalrously charitable, as when I picked you up, or made a fool of myself over that confounded copper. That’s all the political muck-worms find when they come burrowing about me. Yes, honesty’s the best policy; it pays.”

“H’m! well, my most honourable friend, you’d find yourself in Queer Street if I related how you’d read my letter.”

“Not in the least. I was glancing at it to find your address.”

“You took a mighty long time over your glance.”

“The paper was so much rubbed that I could hardly see where it began or ended.”

“There was the monogram for a sign-post.”

“Plenty women begin on the back sheet.”

“You’re abominable; faith, you are,” said Lucian. “You’re a regular prayer-mill of lies!”

“I’d never have touched it if I hadn’t prepared my excuse beforehand. Ruin my career for the sake of reading an old love-letter? Not I!”

Even as Farquhar wished it, the contemptuous and insulting reference displeased Lucian; the letter was still sacred in his eyes. But he would not, and he did not, allow the feeling to be seen. Farquhar’s measure of reserve was matched by his present openness; but Lucian, whose affairs were everybody’s business, kept his mind as a fenced garden and a fountain sealed. Action and reaction are always equal and opposite; the law is true in the moral as well as the physical world.

“Kindly speak of my letter with more respect, will you?” was all Lucian said.

“Oh, the letter was charming; I wish it had been addressed to me!”

“You shut up, and don’t try to be a profane and foolish babbler. I want to know what it’s all for—what’s your aim and object, sonny?”

“I’m going to get into the Cabinet.”

“You are, are you?” said Lucian. “And why not be premier?”

“And why not king? Because I happen to know my own limitations. I’ll make a damned good understrapper, but the other’s beyond me.”

“You’ll change your mind when you’ve got your wish.”

“And there you’re wrong. I’ll be content then. I’m content now, for that matter. It’s as good as a play to see how the virtuous people look up to me.”

Lucian leaned back in the attitude proper to meditation, and studied his vis-à-vis over his joined finger-tips. Strength of body, strength of mind, a will keen as a knife-blade to cut through obstacles, an arrogant pride in himself and his sins, all these had writ themselves large on Farquhar’s face; but the acute mind of the critic was questing after more amiable qualities.

“And so you took me in as an instance of chivalrous charity, eh? And what do you keep me here for, now I’m sain and safe?”

“You’re not well enough to be dismissed cured.”

“I beg your pardon. I could go and hold horses to-morrow.”

“I shall have to find some work for you before I let you go. I like to do the thing thoroughly.”

“I see. I’m being kept as an object-lesson in generosity; is that so?”

“You’ve hit it,” said Farquhar. “Hope you like the position. Have a cigar?”

“No, thanks. I don’t mind being a sandwich-man, but I draw the line at an object-lesson.” Lucian got up, and began buttoning his coat round him. “If that’s your reason for keeping me, I’m off.”

“De Saumarez, don’t be a fool.”

“I will not be an object-lesson,” said Lucian, making for the door. “My conscience rebels against the deception. I will expire on your threshold.”

Farquhar jumped up and put his back against the door. “Go and sit down, you fool!”

“I’ve not the slightest intention of sitting down. I will be a body—a demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body.”

“Do you mean this?”

“I do. I’m too proud to take money from a man who’s not a friend.”

Farquhar was very angry. He knew what Lucian wanted, but he would not say it. “Go, and be hanged to you, then!” he retorted, and flung round towards the fire.

“All right, I’m _going_,” said Lucian, as he went into the hall.

He took his cap and his stick. Overcoat he had none, and he could not now borrow Farquhar’s. His own clothes were inadequate even for mid-day wearing, and for night were absurd. All this Farquhar knew. He heard Lucian unbolt and unlock the front door, and presently the wind swept in, invaded the hall, and made Farquhar shiver, sitting by the fire. Lucian coughed.

Up sprang Farquhar; he ran into the hall, flung the door closed, caught Lucian round the shoulders, and in the impatient pride of his strength literally carried him back to the library close to the fire. “You fool!” he said. “You dashed fool!”

“Well?” said Lucian, looking up, laughing, from the sofa upon which he had been cast. “Own up! Why do you keep me here?”

“Because you have a damnable way of getting yourself liked. Because you’re sick.”

“Sh! don’t swear like that, sonny; you really do shock me. And so you like me?”

“I’ve always a respect for people who find me out,” retorted Farquhar. “The others—Lord, what fools—what fools colossal! But you’ve grit; you know your own mind; you do what you want, and not what your dashed twopenny-halfpenny passions want. Besides, you’re ill,” he wound up again, with a change of tone which sent Lucian’s eyebrows up to his shaggy hair.

“You’re a nice person for a small Sunday-school!” was his comment. “Well, well! So you profess yourself superior to dashed twopenny-halfpenny passions—such as affection, for example?”

“I was bound to stop you going. You’d have died at my door and made a scandal.”

“You know very well that never entered your head. Take care what you say; I can still go, you know.”

Farquhar laughed, half angry; he chafed under Lucian’s control; would fain have denied it, but could not. “Confound you, I wish I’d never seen you!” he said.

“You’ll wish that more before you’ve done. I’m safe to bring bad luck. Gimme your hand and I’ll tell your fortune. I can read the palm like any gypsy; got a drop of Romany blood in me, I guess.”

“You’ll not read mine,” said Farquhar, grimly, putting it out.

“Won’t I? Hullo! You’ve got a nice little handful!”

The hand was scarred from wrist to finger-tips.

“Never noticed it before, did you? I’m pretty good at hiding it by now.”

“How on earth was it done?”

“In hell—that’s Africa. I told you I learned massage from an old Arab sheikh; well, I practised on him. I was alone and down with fever, and they don’t have river police on the Lualaba. He made me his slave. Used to thrash me when he chose to say I’d not done my work; make me kneel at his feet and strike me on the face.”

“Good Lord! How did you like that, sonny?”

“I smiled at him till he got sick of it. Then he put me on silence: one word, death. He thought he’d catch me out, but I’d no notion of that; I held my tongue. So one day the old devil sent me to fetch his knife. It was dusk, and I picked it up carelessly; the handle was white-hot. He’d tried that trick with slaves before. Liked to see them howl and drop it, and then finish them off with the very identical knife—confound him!”

“Amen. And what did you do?”

“I? Brought him his knife by the blade; do you think I was going to let him cheat me out of my career?”

Lucian stared at him. “You—you!” he said. “And I verily believe the man’s telling the truth. What happened next?”

“Something to do with termites that I won’t repeat; it might make you ill.”

“Only a channel steamer does that, sonny. You got away, though?”

“Eventually; half blind and deadly sick. By the way, you’ve not told me why you made up your mind to burn that letter at this precise time?”

“To draw you, of course. And now you’ll be pleased to go and see that my room’s ready; I can hear Bernard Fane hammering at the door, so you can play billiards with him while I go to bye-low.”

VII

COURAGE QUAND MÊME

January came with the snow-drop, February brought the crocus, and March violets were empurpling the woods before the next scene came on the stage and introduced a new actor. In the meanwhile, Lucian continued to live on Noel Farquhar’s bounty. It should have been an intolerable position, but Lucian’s luckless head had received such severe bludgeonings at the hands of Fate that he was glad to hide it anywhere, and give his pride the congé. His choice lay between remaining with Farquhar, retiring to the workhouse, and expiring in a haystack without benefit of clergy; he chose the least heroic course, and, sad to say, he found it very pleasant.

One night alarm he gave Farquhar. Punctual to its time, the cold snap of mid-January arrived on the eleventh of the month, and Lucian went skating at Fanes. His tutelary divinity Dolly being absent, he was beguiled into staying late, got chilled, and awoke Farquhar at three in the morning by one of his usual attacks. It was very slight and soon checked, but the incident strengthened the bond between them; for Lucian did not forget Farquhar’s face when he found him fighting for breath, nor the lavish tenderness of his subsequent nursing, which seemed to be extorted from him by a force stronger than his would-be carelessness. That constraining force Lucian declined to christen: friendship seemed too mild a term for Farquhar’s crude emotions.

No one could have felt more horribly ashamed than Lucian, on finding that his host gave up all engagements to wait upon him. He was soon about again, but he now guarded his health as though he had it on a repairing lease. When Dolly consulted him on points of etiquette, as she soon learned to do, he retaliated with questions concerning the proper conduct of an invalid; it is only fair to say that Dolly was the more correct informant. He was welcome at Fanes. Dolly liked him; so also did Bernard, whose affections were pure in quality, but exclusive; and fate gave him a third admirer in the person of Eumenes Fane, though the esteem in this case was but a bruised reed, liable to fail in time of stress. Farquhar, who was also a frequent visitor at Fanes, was not so popular.

On a fine morning in March, when the air felt like velvet and the linnets were beginning to nest, Bernard drove over to Swanborough market, as his habit was, to buy Dolly her week’s stores. On his way home he met with an adventure. The distance from Swanborough to Monkswell by the London road was only fourteen miles; but Bernard’s horse was young and fresh, and he chose a longer route through by-ways where there was less chance of meeting motors and traction-engines, Vronsky’s special bugbears. Lonely, wild, and hilly was the country-side; the gold sun had just sunk behind the leafless woods, and a rosy twilight was invading the sky, when Bernard turned into a certain steep and narrow lane between high banks of violet-haunted grass, locally known as Hungrygut Bottom. As they spun down the slope, from behind them sounded the nasal Hoot! toot! which Vronsky hated. Bernard looked back over his shoulder. A small car with a single rider had topped the crest of the hill and was swiftly descending: too swiftly to be stopped at such short notice. Vronsky could be brought to tolerate a motor that he met; but to be overtaken and passed by one was more than his nerves could bear. Good whip though Bernard was, in this narrow lane he feared disaster. Midway down, where the banks were lower, a gate stood open, leading into a meadow. Bernard touched up the horse, and made for this haven as fast as he could. But, as the dog-cart turned to enter, Vronsky caught sight of the appalling monster behind. He kicked, he danced, he stood on his hind-legs, he backed the dog-cart right across the road, and there he stayed, broadside on to the advancing motor, while Bernard set his teeth and awaited the crash. The car was almost upon them: suddenly it swerved violently to the left and flew up the bank. Right up to the top it ran, and upset. For a moment Bernard’s heart was in his mouth as he thought to see it fall over sideways on the driver and burst into flames; but it rocked, and steadied, and stood in equilibrium, while the electric batteries came hurtling through the air into the road like so many fourteen-pound jampots.

Vronsky turned and bolted down the hill, and was some way up the opposite slope before Bernard could bring him to his senses. He came back as fast as he could, and found the driver sitting up beside his car, hatless, with a somewhat bewildered air. He had been pitched heels over head among the brambles close to a heap of flints, and there he had stayed.

“I say, are you hurt?” Bernard hailed him.

“I don’t think so. I believe I still possess a head.”

The voice was soft and low and lazy, with a touch of quaint humor. He looked up at Bernard without offering to rise. In the twilight Bernard could see only that he was tall and slight and young, and dressed in gray.

“It was an awfully plucky thing to do. If you’d come on I must have been killed,” said Bernard, simply.

“Well, so must I, you know.”

“No, you’d have been pitched out, and might have got off scot-free. It was about the pluckiest thing I’ve seen.”

“The whole thing was my fault.”

“It was the horse’s fault, not yours at all.”

“It was mine,” said the stranger, with swift decision. “I was going too fast. I should have changed the speed to come down the hill, and I would not; I thought I should meet no one, and I chose to risk it. I shall have to give up motoring, I suppose.”

“What on earth should you do that for?”

“Because otherwise I shall infallibly end by killing somebody.”

“You needn’t if you only take reasonable care.”

“And that is precisely what I never shall do. There’s a fascination about it—a sense of power—it’s as fatal as gambling. Yes; I must give it up.”

He got on his feet with an effort and regarded himself. Disgust at the mud on his clothes and his hands apparently preoccupied his mind, though he had scratched his face and bumped his head and bruised himself most thoroughly all down his side; in addition, Bernard saw that his right hand was streaming with blood. This he had not noticed until Bernard pointed it out.

“Oh, that was the flints,” he observed, in his former quaint and lazy way.

“Lucky for you you didn’t fall right on them. Your wrist’s cut to the bone.”

“So I should fancy,” said the stranger, wincing under Bernard’s ministrations. He looked so faint with pain and loss of blood that Bernard went down to the dog-cart and brought up the flask which he carried in case of accidents; with Vronsky in the shafts they were to be expected. But when he got back the stranger was at the top of the bank examining his car, and rejected the brandy with thanks and scorn.

“It hasn’t suffered much,” he said, with satisfaction. “There’s a small crack in the panel, but if I can get the batteries in I believe I shall be able to go on.”

“You can’t steer the thing with that wrist. You’d better come on with me to Dove Green; it’s only a mile on, and you can send back for the car.”

“One doesn’t need two hands to steer.”

“But you said you meant to give up motoring.”

“So I do; which is an additional reason why I should drive it to-night, when I have the excuse.”

“Do you _like_ the thing?” exclaimed Bernard.

“Don’t you like that handsome chestnut of yours?”

“Yes, but that’s different. A horse has sense; you can’t compare it to that beastly, snorting, smelling thing.”

“If you’d ever driven a motor, you’d be ready to declare that it had sense, too; machinery’s almost human, sometimes.”

Bernard was wholly unconvinced, and thought the stranger a little mad. “You’d much better come on with me,” he said.

“Thanks very much; but I have to get on to Monkswell this evening, and then back to Swanborough. I came this cross-country route because I thought I should have it to myself and could drive fast.”

“Are you going to Monkswell?”

“I am; do you know it?”

“I live there.”

“Do you? Then I expect you know my friends, the Mertons, at the Hall.”

“M’yes.”

“Ah! very likely we shall meet, then; I believe I am to stay there as soon as I get my next leave.”

“No, I don’t suppose we shall,” Bernard answered. “We hardly know them; only on sufferance. They’re a cut above us.”

“I see.”

The tone was neutral, it was too dark to read faces, and the stranger said no more. In a minute he was calling upon Bernard to help him set the motor on its wheels again, and together they dragged it down into the road, Bernard doing most of the work, for the stranger’s strength was frail, like his physique.

“You’re not fit to go on,” were Bernard’s last words, as the stranger settled uneasily into his seat, with a tender consideration for all his bruises and cuts. But he got no answer save a smile and a wave of the hand. He waited till the car was out of sight, and then fetched Vronsky out of the field and drove home without further incident.

He found Dolly waiting in the warm, dark parlor, reading by firelight, her feet on the marble rim of the hearth, her face close to the flames, which glowed and reddened the ceiling and flickered in gold on her hair. She raised a flushed face from her book: an intent reader was Dolly.

“Where have you been? You’re late.”

Bernard told his story in detail.

“I wonder who he can be?” Dolly said, nursing her chin in her hand.

“He was an awfully plucky chap, whoever he was. I never saw anything neater than the way he turned that machine up the bank; he kept so jolly cool. And he made his head spin, too, I’d bet; he’d got a lump on his forehead the size of a seed-potato, but he never said a word about it. Yes, he was plucky. I like that sort.”

“Was he a gentleman?”

“Rather! A regular dude to look at; all his things were made in town, I guess.”

“And coming to stay with the Mertons. I do wonder who he is?”

“Nobody we shall ever know, anyhow.”

“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Dolly, wisely. “I shall ask Mr. de Saumarez.”

Next morning Lucian came tapping at one of the less honourable doors of Fanes, and was bidden enter by a preoccupied voice. He found Dolly hard at work, with sleeves rolled to the shoulders; she was in the second dairy, but her occupation had no fellowship with butter, cream, or cheese. A cool, dark, and lofty chamber it was, the walls midway to the roof being covered with white glazed tiles, the floor with red. Waist-high stood out a broad white shelf, now piled with square frames of unpainted deal confining square panes of glass, upon one of which Dolly was spreading soft white pomade with a palette-knife. A bushel-basket half filled with violets stood beside her; the air reeked with the scent of them. Lucian’s curiosity found vent in the natural inquiry:

“What on earth are you doing?”

“Oh, it’s you, is it?” Dolly glanced round, straightened her shoulders, swept her basket to the floor, and exposed a three-legged milking-stool. “There’s a chair for you; you must not stand. I’m making scent.”

“How enthralling! Mayn’t I help?”

“Wait till you see how I do it,” quoth prudent Dolly.

Lucian unwound a yard and a half of comforter, deposited his mackintosh, umbrella, and goloshes, and sat down to watch, tucking his long legs under the stool, and tossing back his shaggy brown hair. Dolly spread the white paste thickly and evenly over the glass in two of the frames. Next she filled her hands with violets, decapitated the pretty blossoms, and sprinkled them broadcast on the pomade till the frame was full to the brim; she capped that frame with the second and pressed them close, so that they formed a box three inches deep, enclosing the violets between two layers of pomade; they were then ready to be put aside for the time being. She would not trust Lucian to spread the pomade, but she allowed him to behead the violets for her, and was grateful; for the quicker she was the fresher were the violets, and the more valuable the pomade made from them. Thrifty Dolly made a small income by her perfumes.

Her dress, between lavender and blue, just matched the blue chicory which borders August cornfields; and the cluster of violets which she had tucked into her bosom agreed with its color. She was bareheaded, and her hair glistened even in shadow like copper veined with gold. She was not thinking of herself, but of her violets, and Lucian’s eyes were fixed on her to the hindrance of his work.

“You’re leaving stalks on the flowers,” Dolly pointed out.

“I couldn’t help it. My eyes were all for you.”

“Don’t,” said Dolly, brusquely.

“It’s really the correct thing to say; besides, it’s the truth.”

“I don’t like it, from you. How is your cough?”

“Mayn’t I pay you compliments because I have a cough?”

“You may not; they don’t sound appropriate.”

“That’s very cruel of you. I think I shall go home.”

“No; wait till you’re rested. Do you know if the Mertons have a young man coming to stay with them soon?”

“A young man, lydy? What’s his name?”

“I don’t know. He nearly killed Bernard and Vronsky with his motor-car, and Bernard was immensely taken with him. He is young, in the army, stationed at Swanborough, a friend of the Mertons, and Bernard generally calls him the dude.”

Dolly’s curiosity was not to be satisfied yet. Lucian shook his head.

“Couldn’t say, my dear girl. There are any number of young officers at Swanborough, all as like as peas, and you can’t call it a distinction to run down Vronsky. If he _hadn’t_ done it, now—”

“I thought you might have known from the Mertons; you know Mrs. Merton, don’t you?”

“I used to, before she was married; I haven’t kept up with all her distinguished acquaintances since. Ah! There were days when she loved me dearly. Once when I was a sandwich-man she walked up and down Fleet Street with me for an hour. I was carrying the advertisements of ‘Woman—the Charmer,’ and I could hear everybody saying it was an object-lesson.”

Dolly had by this time heard a good many well-found anecdotes from Lucian, and had learned that his personal experiences were sometimes culled from another person’s past. “I don’t believe that,” she said, calmly.

“Well, anyhow, she gave me a penny once when I begged of her—fact!” said Lucian, unabashed.

“Where?”

“At a fancy ball where I went got up as a blind beggar; I was the success of the evening. She’s a right-down good sort, is little Ella Merton. You never told me how you got on when she called, by the way.”

“I think, pretty well,” said Dolly, doubtfully. “Fortunately, I saw the carriage driving down, and I sent Maggie to open the door, instead of going myself.” Maggie was a little black-eyed maiden of fourteen, who helped in the housework. “I had put fresh flowers in the parlour that very morning, and I was wearing this dress—now it is tumbled, but it was fresh then—”

“And you didn’t change it?”

“No, I did not; should I have?”

“No, you did quite right, Sweet Lavender. Well?”