Chapter III: Part 3

“I went in, and we talked. She stayed for an hour. Part of that time I was out fetching tea; it seemed rude, but I explained to her that Maggie was not strong enough to carry the silver salver. I used the red-and-gold china that you like, and there were scones and flead-cakes, and I put out some apricots in syrup; but very little of each, not as Bernard likes them. I thought that must be right, because she ate less even than you do. Was it?”

Lucian was laughing without disguise as he commended her wisdom. “And what did you talk about?”

“I don’t quite know,” said Dolly, doubtful again. “She really does say such strange things. Bernard will have it that she’s crazy, but I think she’s only clever. I should imagine her conversation was all epigrams and paradoxes.”

“And what do you know about epigrams and paradoxes, pray?”

“Sometimes in reviewing society novels the newspapers give examples of the wit with which they literally coruscate. I can’t always follow them,” said Dolly, who was candour itself, even to her own hindrance, “but I suppose that is because I don’t understand the allusions. Mrs. Merton talks like them. Why do you laugh?”

“Mrs. Merton makes a point of talking sheer nonsense,” said Lucian, as soon as he could speak. “I sha’n’t send my novels to you for criticism. Something lingering, with boiling oil, is your idea of a mild review.”

“If I thought them silly I should say so,” said Dolly, calmly; “that is, if you wanted my opinion. But what ought I to do about Mrs. Merton’s call? I am sure there is something, if I only knew what?”

Lucian promptly furnished her with information concerning the social laws in good society. In all innocence, he gave her counsels likely to raise the hair on Mrs. Merton’s head if Dolly obeyed them. Many things Lucian could teach, but not propriety.

“But what’s the use of this? I thought you were going on the stage,” he said, breaking away. “You haven’t forgotten about it, have you?”

“No, I’ve not forgotten,” Dolly answered; and she put up her hand, which had just met his among the violets, perhaps to brush her hair back, and perhaps to conceal her face. “What do you think of Mr. Farquhar?” she asked.

“Oho!” said Lucian, after one second’s hesitation. “Well, he’s the best hand at a friendship I ever met. But why?”

Dolly vouchsafed no answer to this question. “I am glad you think so; you who know him so well,” she said, scattering her violets so carelessly that some of them fell to the floor. Lucian picked them up and coughed in stooping. “There! I have let you work too long. Sit; you must.”

Lucian found himself maternally condemned to the milking-stool. His face darkened as he sat down; one might have thought him angry, but the shadow passed over his face and was gone. “My dear girl, why do you inquire about Farquhar?” he said, quietly persistent. “And why do you couple his name with your future? Go on; you may as well tell me.”

Dolly hesitated. “There’s nothing to tell,” she said.

“Exactly so,” said Lucian. “Lord! I never thought of that! I am an owl.” And he fell into a brown-study.

Violets were clinging to Dolly’s fingers and her arms; one was even swinging in a tendril of hair above her temple. As she went to put the last frame in its place, she crossed the solitary sun-ray which shot through the deep, narrow window athwart the room, and was transfigured. Her very lashes shone like threads of gold.

“Let me do that,” said Lucian, taking the frame away. Dolly stood watching him, as a woman will do when work is taken out of her hands. The pile of frames was high by now, and Lucian was careless; they tottered, and threatened to fall.

“Take care!” exclaimed Dolly; and her hand shot out beside Lucian’s, to steady them. Round the curve of her bare arm twined a vein as blue as lazuli, winding inwards at the elbow, where a faint rose stained the clear milky alabaster. Lucian took it in the palm of his brown hand. “The loveliest thing I’ve seen in my life, Dolly,” he said, softly.

The frames might fall, now; Dolly bent up her arm so quickly that she almost shut in Lucian’s nose. The frames did not fall, however; for Lucian steadied them before he turned. A rose of indignation burned in Dolly’s cheek; she was drawing down her sleeve to hide the insulted arm from view.

“I’m awfully sorry,” said Lucian.

“I don’t allow liberties of that kind,” Dolly retorted.

“Candidly, it wasn’t a liberty. An indiscretion, if you will, but I meant what I said.”

“I think you had better go home.”

“I will, in a minute. But, look here; if you shouldn’t take Farquhar, would there be any chance for me?”

“You!” cried Dolly, her indignation changed to wide amazement. Lucian smiled.

“Now go and tell me that the words don’t sound appropriate from me,” he said, sweet-temperedly. “I’ll be shot if I don’t agree with you, too. They don’t. A poor, rickety, ill-digested ostrich like me has no business in this galley. All the same, I don’t believe in losing anything for want of asking. So if Farquhar by any chance doesn’t suit, remember you’ve got another beau on your string—will you, dear?”

But Dolly stood silent, fastening the links at her wrist and beating the tiles with her foot. Her virginal dignity had been ruffled, but she did not care for that now.

“I thought we were friends!” she said.

“Aren’t we?”

“Not if you are wanting this. How can we be?”

“All right, then, I _don’t_ want it. I guess I know my answer when I’ve got it.”

Dolly took her eyes off the ground and fixed them on his face, using all her powers of observation and deduction. He stood laughing, whimsical, insouciant, with his hands in his pockets, and defied them. But Dolly remembered that he had quoted her own words about his incapacity. “_Compliments don’t sound appropriate from you._” If they had not stung, they would have been forgotten. Dolly understood.

“I am sorry—I am sorry!” she exclaimed.

“My dear girl, don’t distress yourself. I’ve had at least twenty affairs before, to say nothing of being actually married.”

“Married!”

“All right, all right; I’ve no Italian wives up my sleeve. She’s been dead these nine years past. I merely wish to point out to you that my heartstrings take cement. Look here, I’m going to call you Dolly; do you mind?”

“Is it the proper thing?” began Dolly, her eyes dancing.

“Yes, my dear girl; say we’re cousins—we are, through Adam. Anyway, I’ll do the lying for you; I’m handy at it. Are you going to have old Farquhar?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t care for him?”

Dolly shook her head.

“That’s a pity. But he’s very keen on you?”

“How can I possibly tell? He’s not said so.”

“Don’t be coy; now don’t,” said Lucian. “I’m anxious to further your happiness. Then, I take it, he’s desperately smitten; h’m! he’ll be neither to hold nor to bind, I’m thinking.”

“I am sure this conversation is not at all the proper thing,” said Dolly, demurely.

“It’s not, like the holes in my elbows; you’re right there. But look here; what I want to say is this: There’s a heap of unregenerate wickedness in old Farquhar, as I reckon you’ve found out, but anybody he likes can lead him by the nose. I’ve heard him talk surprising bosh about his career, and the aims of his life, und so wieder; but I tell you he’d throw the whole cargo overboard to the sharks if it got in your way. You know what his arm’s like? Well, he’s got a mind made on the same pattern; and you, my dear, good girl, have got Samson in chains. And mind you don’t play Delilah, or there’ll be the etcetera to pay. That’s the truth for you.”

Dolly listened to this homily and did not commit herself. “I believe you really want me to marry him,” was her comment.

“I’d dance at the wedding with a light heart,” Lucian averred.

“That you should not; nothing could be worse for you.”

“Look here, I’ve had one mother,” said Lucian. “Be a sister for a change, now do.”

“I like looking after you.”

“So does Farquhar. Community of tastes—”

“Please, Mr. de Saumarez, will you go home? I’ve the dinner to lay.”

“Lunch, we call it in society.”

“I shall give you a dose of cod-liver oil if you don’t go.”

The threat was sufficient, and Lucian fled, forgetting his comforter and goloshes. Dolly swept the floor and washed the shelf and put all trim again. “I wish I loved him,” once she said, and offered to her coldness the tribute of a sigh.

* * * * *

The rejected suitor did not at once return to The Lilacs. He made a détour through the church-yard, and sat down to meditate appropriately among the tombs. Lucian could not, like his friend, claim the consolations of religion, for he was an agnostic. That is to say, he acknowledged that he did not know anything; he did not boast that he knew nothing. Like poor James Thomson, he thought, as he saw the spire ascending to the blue and open sky, that it would be sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray; the pride of unbelief was not his sin. It was a pity that he could not do it, because he had a natural gift for religion; and no one pretends that agnosticism, except that militant on a stump in Hyde Park, is a soul-satisfying creed.

VIII

“I HAVE THEE BY THE HANDS
AND WILL NOT LET THEE GO”

That afternoon Dolly tied a handkerchief over her head and with Maggie’s help spring-cleaned the parlour, an operation which involved the brushing, clapping, and dusting of every separate volume on the shelves. She moved the furniture out into the hall, swept the floor with tea-leaves mixed with violets, and had everything tidy in time for tea at half-past five. A capable housewife was Dolly Fane. But after tea she left Maggie to wash up, under orders to be careful of the Worcester china which Lucian admired, and herself went out for a walk to rest herself.

Beyond the stream a hill rose steep and grassy, crossed by the hedge-rows and sentinel elms of a Kentish lane, still netted in autumn’s grey clematis, though violets blossomed thick below. Eglantine Lane was its local name; it was a lonely place, neglected by the parish council, and voluminously muddy. A satirical notice-board announced that the authorities would not be responsible for injuries sustained by persons using the unmetalled part of the road, and another sign at the top of the hill described it truthfully as Dangerous to Cyclists. Dolly, nevertheless, scaled it without loss of breath; she had been on her feet since six in the morning, but she knew no better how to feel tired than the unfortunate Hans how to shiver and shake. Near the top was a gate and a stile, and a view of a field which had broken out into a black small-pox of heaps that were presently to be strewn over the soil. Fish-manure: as Dolly had known a month ago at Fanes, any day when the wind was blowing from the east. These are the vernal scents of happy Kent.

Dolly climbed upon the post of the stile to look at the crops and congratulate herself that Bernard was a better farmer than his neighbours. Bernard worked with his men, and was to be seen in due season carting manure with the best of them; though, afterwards, Dolly forbade him the parlour and grudged him the house until he had bathed and changed. Example is better than precept, and Fane’s farm flourished while others declined; and Dolly, to whom Bernard was still the first man in the world, glowed with sympathetic triumph in watching his fruitful acres.

She presently witnessed a touching scene. At a stone’s-throw beyond the next bend stood a solitary cottage, and from the cottage came wandering a stray angel aged three, with blue eyes and golden curls and a brow of smutty pearl. The angel progressed erratically, chanting a ditty, and smiting the ground with a stick as tall as herself. So large a sceptre is awkward for handling, and it soon happened that it got between the angel’s fat legs and upset her in the mire. The ditty became an ululation. Dolly was trying to screw her recalcitrant sympathy up to the point of sympathizing when a fresh actor appeared. Round the corner spun a cyclist at full speed, who came within a hair of involving the angel and himself in one red ruin. A skilful rider, he skirted the edge of tragedy and passed safely by, but immediately jumped off his bicycle and went back to see what was wrong. He heard a perfectly unintelligible tale of woe, ruined his handkerchief by using it as a towel, consoled the angel with a penny, and sent her off with a kiss.

The last was too much for Dolly; she laughed.

“Ah! it’s you,” said Farquhar. He wheeled his bicycle to the bank and came and leaned against the gate. Something in his tone and his words, some threat in his manner (always the truthful index of his mood), prompted Dolly to say, in her chilliest tones:

“Are you going to stay?”

“I am.”

“Then I’ll go.”

She put one hand on the post to vault down. Farquhar took her wrists and forcibly stayed her. “No, you won’t; I want to talk to you.”

“Talk, then; I won’t answer you.”

“Will you answer if I let you go?”

Dolly thought for a minute and slowly answered, “Yes.”

“That’s right,” said Farquhar, releasing her. “I’ve been wanting to speak to you this month past. Why have you kept out of my way?”

“For the same reason that I’m speaking to you now: because I chose to.”

“Because you chose to—Dolly, I swear I never saw a woman to compare with you for beauty! Why don’t you ride? On horseback you’d be a queen.”

“I used to, but my horse got staked and had to be shot.”

“Were you on him?”

“I was; afterwards he was on me.”

“My God! I’m glad I didn’t see it.”

“I was not hurt; and why should it affect you if I had been?”

“Anything affects me that has to do with you. I’m in love with you; you know it.”

“How much?” inquired Dolly. He stood; she still sat on the gate, one foot swinging, and his face, thrown back to look up at her, fronted the sunset. Dolly felt like Fatima turning the little golden key, but she was at present mistress of the situation, and her spirits rose. “How much?” she said again.

“You want the whole fool’s catalogue? Hear, then: you’re heaven and earth and hell, sun and darkness, flower and dove and angel, light of my soul, fire in my veins—no! I’ll be hanged if those trashy similes will serve! I’ll tell you what you’re like: quick-lime in the eyes, vitriol on the naked flesh. See there!”—he pushed his sleeve up (Dolly, though her nerves were tolerably steady, uttered an exclamation)—“see those scars? I’ll tell you what they are—ants. I’ve been tied up to be eaten alive by them. You put it to yourself what that’s like. Well, I’d stand that all over again sooner than have you refuse me.”

That he was sincere and spoke the truth Dolly could not doubt, and he made her sick; she turned away her face. Farquhar dropped from passion to passionate entreaty, his voice sank to a murmur, he captured her hand and pressed it to his cold cheek. “Dolly, Dolly, give yourself to me, and I’ll make you love me; I swear it. You’re my only one, my own; I’d not snap my fingers to win a queen. I’ve never so much as kissed a woman before. You’ll never have a man say that to you again and tell the truth. And I’ll never change; don’t you make any error about that. What I say to-day I’ll say again in fifty years, when you’re old and ugly. Only come to me, Dolly; do come to me. Dolly, Dolly!” He was covering her palm with kisses; his lips were hot, though he was shivering, or rather shuddering. “If you’ll only come, I’ll make you love me,” he said, lifting his face; and the surprising strength of his passion made Dolly own that the boast was likely to prove true. She was moved. Bluebeard’s chamber was worth exploring; but she did not want to stay there.

“Well, I don’t love you, Mr. Farquhar,” she said, calmly. “I hate the way you talk, and I mean to be my own mistress awhile yet.”

“I’ll say no word that could hurt a child.”

“What’s the use of that? Your thoughts are all wrong.”

“I’ll keep my thoughts in as I keep my tongue.”

“No,” said Dolly, with mounting spirit.

Farquhar bent his head against her knee and breathed hard. When he looked up he was haggard. He was suffering there before her eyes, but hardily.

“I’ll not take that answer as final,” said he.

“It’s not meant to be. I want time to think.”

“Do you? I’ll have you yet.”

“Don’t be so sure. I’d far rather marry Mr. de Saumarez.”

“Has that miserable little etiolated pensioner of mine dared to come after you?”

“Don’t speak of my friend so, if you please.”

“Would you like me to go and beg his pardon? I’d do it, if you told me.”

Only the thought of Lucian’s disgust kept Dolly back from taking him at his word. “I like Mr. de Saumarez, and I don’t think I like you at all. But you can give me the position I want, and he can’t. I want time to think it over. Come to me three months hence, and I’ll tell you my decision.”

“Do you like love at second-hand? De Saumarez has carried his sweetheart’s letter against his heart for nine years, and she wasn’t you.”

“I’d like his love at tenth-hand better than yours,” said Dolly, with spirit.

Farquhar laughed grimly. “And there you’re wrong, my dear. I love you pretty decently well, though I’ll admit there’s a bit of the devil in me. You want me to wait three months? All right; only I warn you that my position and, consequently, your ambition’ll suffer.”

“Why?”

“Do you expect me to reel out platitudes in Parliament while you’re playing the deuce with me? Not much! And if I hold my tongue this session, I may as well take the Chiltern Hundreds.”

“Nonsense,” said Dolly, a trifle cross. “You could do it if you tried. Of course, if you lose your position you won’t be so eligible.”

“Hard lines; you put me on the rack and punish me for being disabled. But I’ll have you yet, in spite of yourself.”

“You may,” retorted Dolly, “or, on the other hand, you mayn’t.”

“I shall.”

“Peut-être. Please to move, Mr. Farquhar, I want to get down.”

“Wait a moment. A kiss first, if you please.”

“I will not! Take your arm away.”

“No,” said Farquhar, evenly. “I’m going to have one.”

“I’ll never give it you.”

“I’ll take it, then.”

“Do you think this is the way to make me have you?”

“I do; a woman’s never mistress of herself till she’s been mastered by a man.”

“Don’t apply your aphorisms to me, if you please; I’m not like the women you know.”

“Aren’t you? That’s where you make a mistake, my girl; women never know themselves.”

“I know myself well enough to be sure I’m not going to kiss you.”

“Very possibly you aren’t; that’s not the point, though I should like you to. I’m going to kiss you.”

“Let me go!”

“One kiss, Dolly.”

“Let me go!” Dolly repeated, struggling against him. She would have had a chance with any other man, for she was strong and supple and desperate; but Noel Farquhar’s arms closed round her like a snake’s constricting folds. Though the cottage was within earshot, Dolly would have died sooner than call for help. She went on fighting, and when he drew her down she turned her face away. Uselessly: Farquhar’s hand was laid against her cheek, and he bent her face to his. They looked into each other’s eyes: Dolly’s all rebellion, his all fire; and then he kissed her.

Once only; he had sufficient self-control to let her go when he had kept his word. Dolly pulled out her handkerchief to brush it away. If she had had a knife she would have used it against him; yet behind her anger there was an unwilling respect. That immense strength which she could not defy, the strength of will as well as the strength of body, had left its impression. Farquhar was right in thinking that he had stamped his claims upon her memory. It was better that she should say, as she did, “I hate you from the bottom of my heart,” than that she should part from him in a mood of calm and confident triumph.

“Well, I love you,” he answered her, simply. “There; I beg your pardon. You’ll not forgive me, of course, but—well, there are times when I wonder if I’m mad.”

“You’ve made that excuse before; try something fresh.”

“Did I? It’s the truth. Dolly, you—” He put up his hand over his eyes. “Sheer madness; or say I’m drunk. Dolly, what—what eyes you’ve got!”

That was the last she heard from him that night. They parted, he taking a footpath to The Lilacs. He forgot his bicycle, and Dolly, seeing it, wheeled it down to Fanes to the safe custody of the tool-shed, not without some pride in an affection which could make a man oblivious of a very handsome, free-wheeled, Bowden-braked, acetylene-lamped, silver-plated, thirty-guinea Singer. At that hour Lucian’s chances were poor.

“Where have you been?” was Bernard’s greeting when she came into the parlour. “Merton’s been here, and left a note for you.”

“Did you see him in those slippers?” exclaimed Dolly, pointing at the purple cross-stitched pansies which spread their blossoms over Bernard’s instep. Bernard looked at them himself.

“They’re all right; they haven’t got any holes,” he said.

“I’m sure gentlemen don’t wear such things. In the evening they wear—they wear pumps.”

“They may wear pumps or they may wear buckets,” Bernard responded. “I guess I don’t much care. Old Merton wears slippers, for I’ve seen ’em on him. You open the letter and see what Mrs. Merton says—if she writes so that you can understand her, that is.”

Dolly perused the note, written in a random, spidery fashion upon hand-made paper. “She wants us to dine there on Thursday,” she said, tapping her lips with the paper in a thoughtful manner.

“Thursday? I shall be at Swanborough market.”

“Dinner means eight o’clock in the evening; you’ll be home then.”

“Oh, I forgot,” said Bernard. “Shall you accept?”

Dolly did not reply, but continued to tap her lips. Mrs. Merton had been at the pains of mentioning her other invited guests. Presently Dolly said, “Bernard.”

“Well.”

“I’ve had two offers of marriage to-day.”

“I’m glad Farquhar’s come up to the scratch. I didn’t want to have to thrash him. But who’s the other?”

“Lucian de Saumarez.”

“Him!” exclaimed Bernard. “Dolly, I’d take him; I like him.”

“Oh, I know, I know; so do I. But he hasn’t a penny.”

“He’d take you about and show you things.”

“Quite so; out of a third-class window. I don’t care for that.”

“You aren’t going to have that Farquhar chap?”

“I’ve not quite made up my mind.”

“Well, you’ll be a fool if you choose him,” said Bernard, returning to the _Daily Telegraph_; and human nature is so constituted that at that moment Dolly would have accepted Farquhar on the spot, had he been present.

The clock struck nine. Dolly got up, extended her arms above her head, and yawned. “Oh, I _am_ sleepy,” she said. “Good-night, Bernard.”

“’D-night,” answered Bernard, deep in the finance news.

Dolly moved towards the door; then, a certain thought crossing her mind, she came to Bernard’s chair and bent her beautiful head.

“Give me a kiss, Bernie.”

Somewhat surprised, Bernard complied.

“Do you like kissing me, Bernard?”

“M’yes. I don’t mind it. Why?”

“Ah!” said Dolly, and lighted her candle for bed.

IX

WE TOOK SWEET COUNSEL TOGETHER

Lucian was a poor sleeper, hard to lull and easy to rouse, with a habit of waking at four in the morning and reading novels in bed; his good nights had six hours’ sleep, his bad nights none. As a young man, he had innocently done his best to acquire the chloral habit, but years had taught him wisdom; his present panacea was bromide of potassium, of which, at times, he took a surprising quantity. But he shunned it whenever he could.

Excitements in the day usually entailed sleeplessness at night. After Dolly refused him Lucian was not surprised to find himself broad awake at one o’clock in the morning, with every prospect of remaining so. But the dark hours had long ceased to seem interminable; he lighted the gas, enshrouded himself in a gorgeous dressing-gown, in whose gay colours he took an artless pleasure, and devoted his mind to the _Golden Novelettes_, at a penny a number. Since Lucian’s last illness, Farquhar slept in the dressing-room adjoining, and usually left the communicating door ajar; but Lucian had wisely shut it early in the evening, and was blest in solitude.

Towards dawn a voice came through that closed door, repeating the very name which was running in Lucian’s thoughts. “Dolly, Dolly!” Lucian took it for the creature of his brain, and thought with joy that now he might legitimately take some bromide; but it came again, and was this time coupled with epithets which had never crossed Lucian’s mind, still less his lips. He divined that something was wrong with Farquhar, and slid off his bed to see, taking a candle. Farquhar lay on his back, restlessly muttering, between sleep and delirium; his face was flushed and his skin dry. “Fever,” said Lucian, and sat down to watch.

Fever ravings are not commonly coherent, nor do patients, except in books, relate at length the stories of their lives; all that Lucian learned was some strange oaths, besides the fact that Farquhar wanted water. He supplied that desire liberally, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing Farquhar wake up and stare about him with the air of a man newly released from Incubus.

“Fever, sonny?” said Lucian. “How did you pick up that?”

“In Africa. Yes, I’m let in for it occasionally—curse the place! I’ve had a pretty bad turn, I reckon. Where’s that clinical?”

The thermometer when consulted climbed to a hundred and three, and Farquhar decreed quinine. Hurrying off to prevent him in getting it, Lucian caught the tail of his robe in the fire-irons and dragged the fender half across the room before he could stop. He turned round and solemnly cursed it with a malediction exceeding that of the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims. Farquhar flung a pillow to speed him on his way, and Lucian stepped backward into the water-jug.

When this contretemps had been arranged with the help of the towels, Lucian sat on the bed—a quaint figure, with his bright eyes and brown face and draggle-tailed dressing-gown, the skirt of which he carefully spread over a chair to keep it away from his ankles.

“You ought to be in bed,” said Farquhar, impatiently; “not sitting up and playing the fool with me. Phew! how hot it is!”

“Oh, I’m not asking for any flowers on my grave,” said Lucian. “I like doing it. And, look here, Farquhar; I don’t want to be inquisitive, but have you been making love to Miss what’s-her-name?”

Farquhar sprang up. “What’s it to you if I have?”

“Something, sonny; because I happen to have been making love to her myself.”

“Yes, confound you! Living here on my charity, and by way of return you make love to my girl on the sly.”

“Farquhar, you shut up and lie down,” said Lucian, authoritatively.

Tormented with fever and worse tormented with jealousy, midway between love and friendship, Farquhar hesitated; but he finished by obeying. He flung up his scarred hand over his eyes and breathed deeply, longing for coolness. “Put that light out,” he said, “it drives me wild. I’ll be right enough to-morrow, but I’m ill now, and that’s the fact. Ill! I’m parching!”

Lucian snuffed out the candle neatly between his finger and thumb, an inelegant trick which has the advantage of killing the smell. “You been popping the question?” he asked, and dropped his long cold fingers across Farquhar’s forehead.

“Yes.”

“Well?”

“I’m to wait three months.”

“What on earth for?”

“She wants to consider my virtues—and yours.”

“Mine? Oh, I’m out of the running; I only put myself forward as a pis-aller, in case you didn’t suit.”

“You’re not out of the running. I shouldn’t wonder if she took you. She says she likes you better than me.”

“You sure of that?”

“She told me so to my face. I wished her in Hades.”

“You’ve got it badly, sonny, very badly; but I’d rather you didn’t swear at her.”

“Badly? Yes. But I’ll tell you what’s playing the mischief with me—I kissed her.”

“She let you?”

Farquhar laughed. “I took it.”

“Oho, my irreverent friend, you did, did you?”

“I did. Heavenly sweet it was, too; where do they get it, these girls, the power to drive a man sheer mad—hold on, will you? you dashed fool! That’s meant for me, De Saumarez, not you.”

“It’s a fact,” said Lucian, “that I never could resist a kiss myself. After all, there’s no harm in it, and it’s mighty agreeable when both parties are willing; though I take it Miss Dolly was not?”

“She wasn’t. You’re right there.”

“Upon my solemn honour, I wish I could thrash you!”

A scratch and a spurt of white flame: Farquhar had struck a lucifer. The outleap of light showed Lucian’s unguarded face and was gone.

“My God!” said Farquhar, “and it’s the truth!”

Lucian got up, went into his own room, and shut himself in. An instant later there shone again the lighted parallelogram of the open doorway with his figure black against it, as he came stoically back to his place on the bed. Farquhar said through the darkness, “I’ll be damned if you shall get her.”

“I’ll be damned if you shall,” Lucian answered.

Truth cleared the air, as it generally does. They had been in deadly jealousy the minute before, but now a spirit of Christian charity fell upon them.

“She’s safe to choose you,” Lucian argued. “She’s as ambitious as she can stand, and look at me! I don’t know which is more invalid, my health or my prospects.”

“Well, I won’t be taken for my money. You see here: didn’t you say you could model and carve? I’ve just bought a granite-quarry in the Ardennes, and I’ll put you in as managing partner, and in three months you’ll be talking differently.”

“I bet you a shilling you’ll go bankrupt if you do!”

“Betting’s contrary to Christian principles.”

They both laughed, and then Lucian said: “Seems to me you rather enjoy shamming virtuous, you consummate old humbug!”

“I do; hadn’t you found that out?”

“I can believe virtue comes easier when it’s a vice,” said Lucian, meditatively; “but it strikes me very forcibly, sonny, that patient continuance in well-doing has undermined your principles. You’d feel pretty awkward at going to the deuce.”

“Would I? If I had that girl in my power, I’d be handy enough.”

“I deny it; but let that pass. Anyhow, if you had me in your power you wouldn’t lift a finger against me.”

“If you got between me and her—”

“You’d say, ‘Confound you, my children!’ and bite your thumb at us.”

“For my own sake and not yours, then; I never did an unselfish thing yet.”

“Oh, you are a liar,” said Lucian. “Why _do_ you tell such lies? And, look here; I’ve something serious to say to you. I won’t put up with being told I live on your charity, not even when you’re sick.”

“I shall say what I please.”

“And I shall go when I please.”

“Oh, confound you!” said Farquhar; and he laughed and acquiesced.

* * * * *

As has been said, Dolly was at this time inclining towards Farquhar, but an episode of the next week set the rivals even again. She and Bernard accepted Mrs. Merton’s invitation. She bought a book on etiquette and studied it, but was nervous, nevertheless. Bernard also studied the book, because he wished to avoid blunders, but he remained perfectly composed; a point illustrating the radical difference between their characters. Bernard took in to dinner a pretty, clever, well-bred, well-dressed girl of five-and-twenty, who had heard his story, was impressed by his looks, and took an interest in him, as she told Mrs. Merton. She tried to draw him out and put him at his ease, and their conversation grew rather humourous ere she recognized her error.

Dolly’s partner was a big, dark, heavy-featured man, with a low, soft, monotonous voice and tired eyes. Hugh Meryon was Hugh Meryon to Dolly, and he was nothing more; but at Monaco he was known as Gambling Meryon, for among gamblers his play was remarkable by reason of his extraordinary and fantastic luck. He was the son of a highly respectable dean, and had suffered a highly respectable education; but he was born to gamble as the sparks fly upward, and gamble he did, sacrificing all to his passion. He loved the excitement, not the money won: like Fox, who declared that his favourite occupation was playing and winning, his second favourite playing and losing. His presence at Monkswell was due to Mrs. Merton’s fondness for black sheep, mustard with mutton, and other things which she should not have liked.

“I hear De Saumarez was to have come to-night,” Meryon began, without preface, before the advent of the soup. “I’m awfully sorry he couldn’t, I wanted to see him again. Do you know him?”

“Do _you_ know him?” Dolly exclaimed, simultaneously.

“Oh yes; I used to know him pretty well, but I haven’t seen him for nine years. But he’s the sort of fellow one doesn’t forget; besides, I was there when his wife died.”

“Did you know her? What was she like?”

“Awfully delicate, and quite young and very pretty. De Saumarez was mad about her, waited on her hand and foot, though he wasn’t much good himself. You used to see him taking her out in a bath-chair and dodging the stones for fear they should jolt her—I’m boring you!” Meryon was diffident, and always expected to be found a bore; he had taken fright now at his own fluency, and annoyed Dolly inexpressibly by trying to talk about the weather, which he could not do. It was several minutes before she got him on the track again.

“What was wrong with Mrs. de Saumarez?”

“Consumption.”

“He’s afraid of that himself now.”

“Is he? I expect he’s caught it from her—doctors say you can, and he was always with her. But the queerest part of it all was the end.”

“Yes?” said Dolly, softly. Meryon had forgotten her, and she thought it safer to let him forget, lest he should shy again. The gambler went on, simply:

“He came in to me one night looking rather wild and asked me to play. I didn’t want to; I didn’t want to clean him out with his wife sick, and I knew my next streak of luck was about due. And once I begin I can’t leave off—the cards won’t let you go till they’ve had their sport out. But he would have it. Écarté we chose; I could tell every card in every game we played, and that was fifty-three—but that wouldn’t interest you. Anyway, I’ve seen queer things in the cards, but never anything so queer as that night’s play. I dare say you’ve heard that gamblers say spades mean death. Well, the king of spades kept on haunting us, and every time the black suit showed I swept the board. He kept on doubling the stakes, and I—I lost my head, as I always do, so when we came to the end of the spell and counted up I found I’d won sixteen thousand of him; only fancy! He swore that Marguerite—his wife, you know—was provided for, but I didn’t believe him, for he was just as if he were fey. So then he asked me to come in and see her and convince myself, and I said I would, then and there, though it was three in the morning. I was pretty queer, for the cards had got into my head, and I was counting the steps and multiplying them by the stones on the pavement, and I was mad with myself besides, and I thought I might get her to take it back, or some of it. Well, he took me in and up; I didn’t know where he was going till he threw open a door, and there we were in her room, and there was she laid out on the bed, dead. Candles at the four corners, and flowers all about—I never shall forget it.” He shuddered and stopped.

“And Mr. de Saumarez?”

“Oh, he was like a lunatic—talking to her—He’d put by money for the funeral; that’s what he meant by saying she was provided for. He hadn’t ten shillings himself. I tried to get him to take some, but he went off after the funeral, and I didn’t see him again. I never have, till now. I swore I’d never touch a card again, after that.”

“And did you keep your vow?” Dolly asked, not because she had much curiosity upon the subject; one is not greatly interested in the feelings of a phonograph.

“Yes, till a girl I knew asked me to play—I couldn’t refuse her.”

“Did she know of your promise?”

“Yes, but she wanted me to play specially. You see, I had rather a name; my luck’s so queer. She was writing a book about it; besides, she didn’t quite understand.”

“And afterwards?”

“Oh, afterwards, I just went on playing. It didn’t seem worth while not to, you know,” said the gambler, with his tired smile.

X

WAS THAT THE LANDMARK?

As a hostess Mrs. Merton possessed a penetrating amiability which could persuade the lioness to lie down with the lamb, and could temporarily repair rifts in the social lute so well that it would run up and down the social scale without any disconcerting discords. When she brought up her women guests after dinner, they gathered round the fire and gossiped like school-girls. Sitting next the mantel-piece with her shoes on the tiled hearth, shielding her face with a peacock-feather fan, Bernard’s pretty partner was holding forth concerning flirtation. She had thin little features and a retroussé nose, and she lifted and moved her head like a bird; her thick, curly fair hair was cut short; her eyes were gray and clear, and not a little imperious. In dress she was so demure and simple that Dolly set her down as a great heiress, not discerning that her demure simplicity was of the kind that comes from Paris.

“No. I detest flirtation,” she was saying. “It is an appeal to the vulgarity of our natures. It may be fit for men, but not for women.”

“My dear girl,” drawled her vis-à-vis, a plain but well-dressed young matron with fine dark eyes: “you never set eyes on Hugh Meryon before to-day, and you sat in the brambles with him the whole afternoon!”

“She was converting him,” said Ella Merton. “She belongs to the Anti-Gambling League, don’t you, Angela? and she had to gambol around him to lure him away.”

“Always think that people are like consols, they lose interest when they’re converted,” murmured the dark-eyed matron, whom Dolly recognized as the lady in the black frills.

“Maud, don’t be flippant,” said Angela, not at all disconcerted. “If you know Mr. Meryon, you must know that he absolutely can’t flirt. That’s why I like him.”

“I like flirting,” said Maud; “it’s so desperately interesting. Talking sense is such a desperate bore, you know. It’s all very well for you, my dear girl; men’ll listen to an angel that’s paid a visit to Worth. But with my sallow complexion it’s simply suicidal.”

“Men who flirt are no better than city clerks who kiss their best girls under the mistletoe at suburban tea-parties,” said Angela, elevating her little pointed chin.

“Now, I like that kind of young man,” said Ella: “besides, they don’t exist. She won’t talk like this when she’s married, will she, Maud?”

“I never shall marry,” Angela asseverated. “To decline a proposal is bad enough, but to accept one—horrible!”

“Don’t see where the horrors come in,” murmured Maud, placidly. “I suppose my sensibilities aren’t fine enough. I’ve always enjoyed it.”

“I dislike the ceremony of kissing,” said Angela, throwing down the gauntlet.

“It isn’t a ceremony, it’s one of the rites of women,” said Ella, dissolving into laughter.

Angela laughed too. She was in earnest, but not to the extent of becoming a bore. “I believe in the rights of women,” she said. “Don’t you agree with me, Miss Fane?”

“About kissing?” said Dolly, “I don’t think it matters much; a kiss means nothing.”

Angela looked rather horrified; Maud Prideaux smiled behind her fan; Mrs. Merton was frankly interested. “What a lovely original idea!” she said. “All the three-volume novels used to end with the first kiss. Lord Arthur saw sanctified snakes, and Lady Imogen felt the tide of love bearing her away and her hair came down. And in girls’ stories it’s the bell that rings down the curtain on the sacred scene. And you don’t believe in it?”

“No,” said Dolly, speaking in her swift, straightforward way. “A kiss is a touch and nothing more, neither pleasant nor the reverse. What I should dislike would be to be kissed against my will.”

“You’re quite a revolutionary, Miss Fane,” drawled Mrs. Prideaux. “I sha’n’t let my husband talk to you.”

“With your sallow complexion it would be simply suicidal,” Mrs. Merton agreed, smoothly.

Maud Prideaux’s cynicism was pointed by the fact that she and her husband were notoriously devoted.

“I’d trust Lal anywhere,” said Angela Laurenson, half to herself.

“Oh, Lal! but we all know that Lal’s perfection. When’s he coming, Angela? I wonder you exist without him,” said Mrs. Prideaux. Angela coloured, but she stood her ground.

“To-morrow, I expect,” she said. “I hoped he would be here to-night, but he said he might not be able to get off.”

“Then we shall have to be on our best behaviour—” Mrs. Prideaux was beginning, when the gentlemen, coming up, cut short the discussion.

In the solitude of her chamber, Dolly that night took her heart and mind to pieces, and diligently perquisited all their workings, pried into motives, dissected sensations, and probed like any surgeon. She wanted replies to two questions: first, why she was unnaturally indifferent to kisses; second, whether she preferred Lucian de Saumarez or Noel Farquhar. Her analysis left her little the wiser; she got few facts, because there were few to get. As Bernard would have accepted a kiss with unaffected composure, so Dolly in the same spirit could not understand the pother made about the matter; she was gifted with a masculine indifference, or, as Angela Laurenson would have phrased it, with no feminine modesty. Yet, when she turned to the second question, the thought of loving either suitor sent Dolly flying to unapproachable snow-peaks of virgin coldness, where the foot of no man ever had trodden or ever would tread. Dolly married, loving and beloved, the mother of half a dozen children, would still have kept in her heart a shrine of vestal purity. Careless about the borders of her kingdom she might be, but the citadel was inviolable. She came out of her quest little the wiser, but with her mind made up.

She turned on her pillow and slept soundly, till the dawn, blossoming like a golden rose between the clouds, shone in upon her lying between linen sheets which smelt of violets, with all her chestnut hair twisted into one thick plait. The light roused her, and she was up in a trice and splashing in her tub of rain-water; then dressing rapidly, rolling up her hair in a knot, fastening on her blue dress and her plain white apron: in twenty minutes she was ready. Down-stairs she went full ten minutes late, and annoyed with herself and consequently with Maggie, who had been late too—for no reason, as Dolly told her, severely. Dolly laid the table for breakfast, with a pot of wall-flowers in the middle; she fetched the coffee-pot, and put on the milk to boil in an enamelled saucepan, and refilled the shining kettle—all Dolly’s pots and pans looked like silver. She sliced the bacon into the thinnest of thin rashers and set Maggie to fry it. Finally she went to the churn, where she should have been half an hour earlier, praying that the butter might come quickly. She stood at the open window; the sun looked across the sill; a brown bee hummed in, seeking the wall-flowers; the bacon sizzled, the churn gurgled, and Dolly frowned.

“Oo, miss,” said Maggie, pausing with the frying-pan aslant—“Oo, miss, there’s a gentleman coming down the drive!”

“Hold the frying-pan straight!” was Dolly’s stern reply.

“Oo, miss,” said the irrepressible one, staring, wide-eyed, “but he’s coming to the window, and it’s—”

“Go on with your work!” said Dolly, in such a tone that Maggie went on. A shadow fell across Dolly’s hands.

“Good-morning, Sister Dolly,” said Lucian de Saumarez, leaning his elbows on the sill.

“Don’t call me that; I’m not a Roman Catholic,” said Dolly, not too graciously.

“Nor I, praise the pigs!”

“Why, do you dislike them so?”

“I hate the doctrine of confession and the system of spiritual directors,” said Lucian, with unusual emphasis. “I call it morally degrading—however, I didn’t come here to talk theology. Is the agrarian barbarian anywhere about?”

“Bernard’ll be in to breakfast at half-past seven, if you mean him.”

“Then I guess I’ll wait. Hullo, Maggie; how’s the headache?”

“Teethache, sir,” said the delighted Maggie, dropping a courtesy. “They’re nicely, thank you, sir.”

“Maggie, go and dust the parlour; I’ll see to the bacon,” said Dolly. Maggie retired quite crestfallen and sad.

“Why did you send the child off? She wasn’t doing any harm,” said Lucian.

“I’ll call her back and go myself, if you want to talk to her.”

“I don’t, I don’t; you know I don’t. But why are you so cross?”

“Because I was late,” said Dolly, candidly, and laughed, and recovered her temper. “Why weren’t you at the Mertons’ last night? Mrs. Merton said she asked you.”

“I was looking after old Farquhar; he’s been seedy.” Dolly’s lip curled. “Fact, I assure you. He had a touch of fever the night before last, and raved about you like Old Boots.”

“I should have thought that as a literary man you might find a better simile. I met a friend of yours there—Mr. Meryon.”

“What? Gambling Meryon? You don’t say!” exclaimed Lucian. “I’ll look him up. I haven’t seen him since he won sixteen thousand off me at a sitting. Lordy! what a getting down-stairs that was!”

“So he told me.”

“Did you hear the whole thing?”

“Yes.”

“What, about Marguerite?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” said Lucian, and whistled a few notes. “Well?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Dolly, conscious that his bright inquisitive eyes were studying her face.

“Does it make any difference?”

“No. Yes,” said Dolly. “I am very, very sorry.”

“If I’d thought you’d take it that way,” said Lucian, swinging himself up to a seat on the sill, “I’d have given you the whole history myself, and made it most awfully pathetic. I bet Meryon didn’t pile it on half strong enough.”

“You’re perfectly callous!”

“My dear good girl, it’s nine years ago,” said Lucian, “and there’s no sentiment about me, at my age. Hullo! whom have we here?”

Dolly looked up from the churn and saw a stranger coming up the path. He was a young man of six or seven and twenty, tall, fair, slender, very good-looking, and most correctly dressed. At first glance Dolly saw a resemblance to her last night’s acquaintance, Angela Laurenson. He had the same fair hair, the same dark-grey eyes, and the same delicate and colourless type of features, though his were more regular, his nose in particular being accurately Greek; but the likeness appeared only in the outward mould, Angela’s alertness being replaced by an air of languid tranquillity. He was carrying his bag and a gold-headed cane, and seemed to find the cane alone quite as much as he wished to support.

“I beg your pardon,” he said; “could you direct me to The Hall?”

“Go back to our gates and turn to the right, straight on till you come to four cross-roads; take the left-hand road up the hill, and you will see The Hall on your right, a white house among fir-trees,” said Dolly, who had the masculine power of concise explanation.

“About how far is it?”

“Two miles and a quarter.”

“Thanks very much,” said the stranger, with a resigned air, preparing to go.

“Been walking far?” inquired Lucian, who had not failed to notice the dust on his boots.

“From Wemborne. I missed my train and could get no cab,” said the stranger, mentioning a junction twelve miles away.

“Why, man, you must be dog-tired! Have you had any breakfast?”

The stranger smiled and shook his head.

“We shall be very glad if you will come in and share ours. It is ready now,” said Dolly, simply.

“Thanks very much. I am particularly grateful, but I’m afraid I can’t wait.”

“Have some cider; I can recommend it,” said Lucian, hospitably.

“Or a glass of milk,” suggested Dolly, maternally careful of his health.

“You are very good,” said the stranger. “I am rather thirsty.”

“You’ll have some cider, then?”

“No, no cider, thanks. But I should very much like the milk.”

Dolly went away to fetch it, and the stranger’s eyes followed her with involuntary admiration.

“What a confounded nuisance these Wemborne trains are!” said Lucian, who knew the time-table considerably better than the porters at the station. “They leave you two minutes to catch your connection, and then make the main-line train half an hour late!”

“I could have caught mine,” said the stranger, with the hint of a smile, “if I had chosen to run for it. But it was such a fag, you know.”

“You like walking twelve miles better than running twelve yards?”

“I don’t know that I put it to myself in that form,” said the stranger; “but I own that I don’t like hurrying. I could take my time over the twelve miles, you see.”

“You’ve done it in pretty good time,” said Lucian. “Three hours, or less.”

“Nearer eight, I fancy.”

“You came by the early train?”

“No, by the late.”

“Ye towers o’ Julia!” was Lucian’s irrelevant comment on this admission.

“I have an idea that I got lost in the dark,” explained the stranger. “I seemed to meet the same duck-pond several times. Thank you very much. I am immensely obliged to you.” He took from Dolly’s hand the warm and foaming milk, drank it, and went on his way, walking, as Lucian now noticed, slightly lame, but gracefully still, as he went up the steep, stony path. Dolly said, watching him with softened eyes, as she sometimes watched Lucian: “He looks tired to death. I am sure he is not strong.”

“Maternal spirit! You were born to be a nurse, Dolly.”

“No. I never want to nurse women or children, but I am sorry for men, especially when they are plucky, as he is. I wonder who he can be?”

“So do I,” said Lucian. “I’d also like to know why he shied so violently at the notion of cider. I dare say we shall hear.”

They left off talking by common consent. The entrance of the stranger had checked and turned their thoughts, and, strangely enough, seemed to dislocate their simple and friendly relation. Dolly took out her butter, pulled down her sleeves, and turned her attention to the bacon. When she broke silence it was to speak of a fresh subject, one which she had not meant to broach that morning, though it had been on her mind since the night before.

“Mr. de Saumarez, will you take a message from me to Mr. Farquhar?”

“With all my heart, only I’ve a kind of idea that he’d rather you told him yourself.”

“No, but I would not. I don’t wish to see him again for the present. I don’t wish to see him for three months.”

“Three months!”

“Yes.”

“That’s a long time, Dolly.”

“Not long for what I want to do.”

“Make up your mind?”