Chapter IV: Part 4

“Yes.”

“Can’t see why you shouldn’t do that now. Farquhar’s what I should call eligible building-ground; you might erect a cathedral on him, or you might run up a slave-market; anyhow, he’ll be what you make him, Dolly.”

“I certainly sha’n’t make anything of him if you go on praising him. You ought to know that praise is the strongest of disqualifications.”

“You’re an unreasonable being. If you don’t see him, how do you think you’re going to know your own mind better three months hence than now?”

“I’m coming to that. I don’t want to see him; but if he cares to write to me I’ll answer his letters. That’s what I want you to tell him.”

“Glory!” said Lucian. “Then while he’s away I’ll walk in daily and praise him up to the skies. I think I read my title clear to a gay time.”

“I want you to go, too,” said Dolly.

“Me? Oh, I’m a harmless individual; you needn’t do that.”

“But I want to put you both on an equality and judge fairly.”

“Ah, but you’ll never marry me.”

The sincerity of conviction was in Lucian’s voice; Dolly had that one fleeting glimpse into his fundamental creed. While he lived he would never give up hope, but behind it he accepted the certainty that no hope of his would ever find fulfilment; such indelible characters had failure written upon his spirit. Dolly pitied him so much that she was almost ready to contradict his creed by the promise of herself. Almost, but not quite; the shadow of the change which she had felt that morning interfered to prevent her. Better to wait, she thought; better to deliberate and weigh, not act on the impulse of a mood. She did not speak, and Lucian’s golden chance passed.

“I don’t know whether I shall marry you or not,” she said. “I’ll write to you both; and at the end of the three months I’ll let you know, if you still care. There’s Bernard.”

It was not Bernard, however; Bernard was very late that morning. For the space of half an hour those two, who felt that their interview should have been neatly rounded off by the entrance of a third person, were forced to make conversation in the regions of small talk. Real life is not often appropriate in its arrangement of incidents. Eight o’clock struck before Bernard walked in, large and calm and hungry. Lucian disburdened himself of his message, which was merely an invitation to play billiards.

“I guess Farquhar must be pretty sick of teaching me,” said Bernard, cutting himself a round off the loaf; after which he supplied Dolly’s needs. “But I suppose he knows his own business best. I say, did you see that girl who took me in to supper last night?”

“Dinner, Bernard.”

“Dinner, then. Did you see her?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who was she?” asked Lucian.

“Miss Angela Laurenson.”

“Pretty girl, very smart, woman’s rights, little aristocrat; yes, I know. Go ahead, Colossus; what about her?”

“I guess the dude who ran me down’s her brother; I met him again this morning,” said Bernard; “that’s all.”

“Oh, what was he like?”

“Weedy looking chap in gray, with a drawl and a carpet-bag.”

“L. L. Laurenson, Esq., Royal Artillery, Distinguished Service Order,” said Lucian. “I know him, too, by name; as you would if you’d ever talked to Angela Laurenson for two minutes on end. She can’t keep him out of the conversation.”

“Does she call him Lal?” Dolly asked, curiously. Lucian nodded.

“Well, I guess I talked to her for two hours on end,” said Bernard, cutting himself another slice from the loaf; “but she didn’t mention him.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Me,” said Bernard, “and her. Pass me a couple of eggs, will you, Dolly?”

XI

IN ARDEN

The breast of a wooded hill, leaning towards water still as glass and green as malachite, confronted the Hôtel des Boërs, at Vresse-sur-Semois. Dark-green and silver, the valley lay below; a nightingale was singing in the dawn; and presently the gold eye of the sun, looking down through the high woods, shone on hills white with dew, spangling them with fiery drops, and changing into silver threads the little singing streams which tumbled down through bright-green dells to join the silent river. Mists cleared away like breath from a mirror, and there on the water a little lawny islet lay like an anchored dream; they had been cutting the hay, and from the grey swaths floated up the odours of Eden. Thus rose Lucian’s first day in Arden, and he was up to see the dawn.

Farquhar had gone on some weeks before to complete his arrangements. Having been brought up by his Scotch relations near Aberdeen, he knew a good deal about granite, and on his first visit of inspection had pointed out that in texture, grain, and colour the stone of the Petit-Fays quarry resembled the valuable red granite of Peterhead. The owner simply laughed him to scorn, and went about lauding his scrupulous honesty at the expense of his sense in a fashion which afforded a subtle gratification to the person praised. Nevertheless, Farquhar persisted in buying the quarry, and soon proved himself right. At once he brought over new, modern machinery, and sent for skilled workmen from England. His design was to supply the Belgian market, which had heretofore been satisfied with Scotch granite. Paving-stones, better finished than those turned out by the primitive quarries of the Meuse; polished shop-fronts for the new suburbs of Brussels, especially the splendid streets near the Boulevard d’Anspach: these he could tender at lower prices than the Scotch dealers, for in Belgium labour is cheap and the cost of transport light, especially on the state railways. For the present he retained his English workmen, with the intention of replacing them by Belgians so soon as they had learned the niceties of their trade; and for this purpose he had already formed classes for instruction in polishing and sculpture. His manager, an American named Charlesworth, had the teaching of them, and Lucian had promised to give his services as well.

The quarry, which was already in full work, lay behind the bend of the Semois, just out of sight of the hotel. In Belgium one looks for the grubbily picturesque, for endless variations on the themes of dirt and art, rather than for the beauty of rock and wood and river; yet here in the south the streams run through the loneliest, loveliest valleys, abandoned to their kingfishers and great butterflies, and musical with little springs which run among the hills. The quarries are hardly eyesores. The approaches of Farquhar’s were even picturesque; the intractable granite, interrupting with its fire-scarred shoulders the suave contour of the hills, had scattered rocks across the stream, which reared in a white ruff round each and raced away with plenty of noise and foam. The stately cliff which the quarrymen were labouring to destroy rose up behind from among trees. Lucian, who never loved his bed, by six o’clock had had his breakfast and was standing on the verge, looking down into the pit. It was unbeautiful; blackened like a hollow tooth by the smoke of the blasting, swarming with midget figures, the rocks fell away down to the depth, where the blocks of granite were being split up for convenience of loading. The graceful, deliberate crane let sink its trucks to be filled, and as slowly raised each to its appointed bourn; the noise of the steam crusher, where the chips were being ground to powder for cement, went on continuously; the boring-machine was also at work; and four or five men, splitting up a large block of granite, were playing “The Bluebells of Scotland” by striking on drills of different tones.

Presently the whistle of a siren silenced the music, and with one accord the quarrymen left their work and took shelter. Five minutes later, a detonation and strong reverberations shook the cliff; and when the smoke cleared, Lucian saw fresh boulders lying displaced from their bed, and a fresh scar graven upon the corrugated walls. So the work went on. Danger was always present; but the danger of the quarry is not like the loathsome sleuth-hound of disease which tracks down the potter and the worker in lead. It is a sudden and violent peril, which leaps out like a lion and strikes down its victim in the midst of life. Day by day the quarryman deliberately stakes against death the dearest of man’s gifts; it is not surprising that for other stakes he is a gambler, too.

There was an accident even as Lucian watched. A young Belgian neglected to obey the warning of the siren, and was overtaken. After the fumes and smoke had cleared, his mates went down and found him lying unconscious, little injured, but stupefied by the poisonous gases which the explosion had set free. A crowd came together, Farquhar among them, barely distinguishable by the eye, though the tone of his voice came up with surprising clearness. The lad was carried away, and work went on again; but Lucian was now all on fire to join the toilers and take his share in their risks. Most excitable men fall disinterestedly in love with danger at least once in their lives; Lucian himself had done so before, and had stopped a mad dog scare by picking up in his arms the supposed terror, an extremely depressed but perfectly sane fox-terrier. For this piece of uncalculated bravado he had consistently and correctly disclaimed the title of heroism, of course in vain. He turned now and marched gaily down the path, with the intention of falling to work at once; but midway down he encountered Farquhar, with Charlesworth, the quarry-master, and was stopped for introduction.

Smith Charlesworth was a huge man who would have balanced Bernard Fane upon a see-saw; he dwarfed Farquhar’s excellent proportions. His bronzed countenance might have been hammered out of the granite which he surveyed, without any great skill on the part of the craftsman; but it inspired confidence. His slow, soft voice and deliberate movements built up the notion of strength; and Lucian had not heard him speak two sentences before he knew that he liked him. Here was a man whose calm courage was not at the mercy of his nerves; a man also of stern rectitude, by nature narrow, but broadened into tolerance by experience.

“Yes, it’s a bad business about that young chap,” he was saying: “but what can you expect? It was his own fault. They’ve got industry but no method. Here’s Mr. Farquhar thinks they’re going to turn out A1 copper-bottomed sculptors, but I guess he’ll find his error. They haven’t got it in ’em.”

“Well, we’ve just got to put it in,” said Farquhar, good-humouredly. He was on his best behaviour, saying not a word that was genuine, and consequently his conversation was dull.

“What do you think of the quarry?” Lucian asked.

“First rate.” Charlesworth stepped to the edge of the pit and stood there calm as a rock, with the square toes of his big boots projecting into the air. He pointed to the dark buttress behind which the boring-machine was at work. “See that? That’s the finest sample I’ve seen out of Scotland. You mark my words; in five years you’ll be sending shipments right out to the States, and they’ll take all you’ve got and ask for more. Mr. Farquhar’s begun the right way; he’s put plenty money in the concern and he’ll take plenty out—always providing we don’t get sent to kingdom come first.”

Farquhar laughed at this last idea, but Lucian asked an explanation. The American impressed him as a very careful speaker, not given to random words.

“Well,” said Charlesworth, stroking his chin, “these chaps here don’t take to your Britishers, and that’s the bed-rock fact.”

“What’s going to happen, do you think?”

“I guess we shall be running into some dirt before long.”

“Most pacific nation in the world, the Belgians,” said Lucian, cheerfully. “Been fought over so many times that they haven’t a ha’porth of kick left in them.”

“Yes; good square fighting’s not in their line. It’s the stab in the dark they go in for,” said the American, drily. “Two-thirds of the continental anarchists hail from Brussels. I’ve run Dutchmen and I’ve run Kanakas, and I guess I can make out to put up with these stiff-necked Britishers of yours; but the Belgian mongrels are enough to make an oyster sick. However, the crew’s not my affair; and if Mr. Farquhar’s satisfied, why, so am I. And I hope I may be wrong.”

Charlesworth was no croaker; having given his warning he left the matter, and they went down into the quarry talking of possibilities rather than of presentiments. Lucian could not see the grounds of his forebodings; the men seemed friendly, both with the manager and between themselves, and they were certainly all that is gracious to him personally. Lucian thought in French when he spoke to a Frenchman.

They stayed all day at the quarry, taking lunch in the engine-room on slim little sausages and beer. Later on, Lucian assisted at the modelling class, acting as interpreter for Charlesworth, who could not always find the right technical terms. He was a strict master, extreme to mark what was done amiss. “I’ve no opinion of soft jobs,” he said to Lucian, who had stood listening to what seemed a very harsh rebuke for a very small fault on the part of an elderly English workman who had taken Lucian’s fancy. “Keep them up to the mark, that’s my motto. I never will tolerate scamping. Give me good work and I’ll give you good wages; but if a man don’t handle the tools the way he ought, why, he can go! and good riddance, say I.”

“That’s all right for you, with your confounded meticulous correctitude and exactitude, my friend,” said Lucian, still vicariously sore; “but how would you feel if you knew that the worst work they put in was head and shoulders better than the best work you put in?”

“I guess I should turn to and take a hand at something I could do.”

“And suppose you were incompetent all round?”

Charlesworth turned and looked at him. Lucian, laughing, appeared hardened and insouciant, but the American was slow to judge. “Well, I don’t say I’m right,” he said; “and I don’t say you’re wrong. But I couldn’t do with your way, and I guess you couldn’t do with mine.”

“There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right,” quoted Lucian, coughing.

“You toddle home; the siren will go in half an hour, and this air’s bad for your cough,” said Farquhar, coming up and putting his hand on Lucian’s shoulder.

“Shut up, you prophet! you thing of evil! I haven’t coughed once this day.”

“There you err; I’ve heard you twice, myself.”

“Well, that isn’t once, is it?”

They laughed, and Farquhar shook him by the shoulder, apostrophizing him as a fool. “It’s reeking damp here by the water; you’ll be laid up if you aren’t careful.”

“You want me to see your dinner’s ready, that’s what it is,” said Lucian, going. Charlesworth looked at Farquhar. “Sick?” he asked, with a backward nod.

“No constitution at all.”

“I should put a bullet through my head if it was me,” said Charlesworth, briefly. “This world’s not made for incompetents.” But, luckily for the peace of the quarry, Farquhar did not hear what he said.

Lucian went to the Hôtel des Boërs and flirted with Laurette, the charmingly pretty maid, as he smoked on the veranda. He shared Dolly’s opinion that a kiss or two did not matter to any one, and he carried his views into practice, which she did not. This was not heroic, but Lucian had many commonplace failings which disqualified him for the post of hero. He was still living at Farquhar’s expense; he had brought into this present undertaking nothing but his knowledge of modelling. Yet he accepted his position and was in the main content. The timely sale of a couple of short stories had permitted him to buy the clothes which he was wearing and to pay his journey over, otherwise he would have euphemistically borrowed from Farquhar. Little debts such as that galled him; but the main burden sat lightly on his shoulders, which was well; for, as he told himself with obstinate pride when visited by the pricks of self-contempt, he had consistently done his best and had failed not through his own fault.

The evening set the pattern of many evenings following. Charlesworth came in with Farquhar to dinner; he had been lodging at Petit-Fays, but now talked of transferring himself to the hotel, which, though as primitive as the pious farmers whose name it bore, was certainly cleaner than they. The dinner made Farquhar sigh for the flesh-pots of England; he permitted himself to be a bon-vivant, to tone down his excessive virtues. Sorrel soup, beefsteak which never grew on an ox, tongue stewed with cherries, and a _baba_ made by the eldest son of the house, who was a pâtissier; this was the menu. Now a _baba_ is a kind of sponge-cake soaked in rum and sweet as saccharine: Charlesworth would not touch it, Farquhar ate a morsel and did not want any more, but Lucian, with the whimsical appetite of an invalid, was only deterred from clearing the dish by Farquhar’s solemn assurance that it would make him tipsy. Such was their meal, finished off by a cup of excellently strong black coffee, which they drank on the veranda as they smoked and talked. The night was dark, still, and starry; the huge, soft, shadowy hills shut out all wandering airs, and the river passed them silent, gleamless. But close beside them a wooden trough guided down the water of a spring which rose among the moss of the steep hill-orchard, and the loquacious little fount made an irregular sibilant accompaniment for their voices. Laurette’s young brothers, shy but friendly, hovered round the door listening to the strange foreign talking, anxious only to be allowed to be useful. The Ardennois are hospitable folk.

Farquhar was thinking of building a small house; he had interviewed a local architect, who proffered him weird designs for a maisonette after the style of the Albert Memorial, with multitudinous tourelles and pinnacles picked out in red and white and blue, and liberally gilded. Refusing this gorgeous domicile, he was beset with advice from Lucian and from Charlesworth, each of whom professed to know something about architecture; though Lucian’s counsels recalled the wise saw that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially in ceilings, and seemed likely to afford a modern instance of a castle in the air. The talk became more personal. They were all travellers: Lucian the most inveterate, for he had wandered the world across. Farquhar could speak familiarly of Africa; Charlesworth of the States and the South Seas, where for several years he had traded with a schooner of his own, until a drunken pilot kept Christmas by sinking her off Butaritari, in the Gilberts. Charlesworth’s voice softened when he spoke of the Islands, which had set their spell upon him; but there was little softness in it when he mentioned that pilot. His talk was deeply coloured by the sea, but he had when he chose the address of a gentleman. He was married, he said: had married a clever Boston girl, grown tired of high culture, who sailed with him till the _Golden Horn_ met her watery fate, and who was now teaching school in California at a salary of two hundred dollars a month. She put by every cent she could spare, and he was doing the same, until they had saved enough to return to the South Seas. “For,” said Charlesworth, “there’s nothing draws you like the Islands.”

“Islands have a special fascination, I suppose,” said Lucian, thinking of Guernsey.

“Yes, it’s right enough out here, but England’s the place for me,” said Farquhar, pushing back his chair. “Come to bed, De Saumarez; it’s time for all good little boys to turn in.”

Lucian settled back into his seat. “Go away: I won’t be mussed up! I believe you’re simply thirsting to flesh your clinical on me.”

“Not I. I’ve done enough nursing since December to last me my life.”

“Very good for you,” said Lucian, lighting a fresh cigar.

Farquhar watched his chance and snatched it. Lucian was up in a moment, and there was a scrimmage in which he did not conquer; whereupon he lifted up his voice and wailed aloud, to the amazement of Charlesworth, who was not used to Lucian’s ways. “I want my cigar!” was the burden of his complaint, repeated with variations.

“Go to bed and you shall have it,” said Farquhar, laughing and wary.

“Never!”

“You’re unreasonable. Why shouldn’t you?”

“I’ll be shot if I’ll give in to an arrogant brute like you! Besides, I want to wait for the post.”

“Oh, the post,” said Farquhar, with a singular change of tone. He dropped the cigar and sat down. He did not look at Lucian, but Lucian shot a glance at him, and both were silent. Charlesworth stared. The constraint lasted for a moment. Then, pat to the occasion, Laurette came out with the letters. Farquhar half rose and put out his hand, but she passed him by for Lucian. “Pour monsieur.” The amazed Charlesworth saw rapidly varying expressions flit over both faces: anger, jealousy, triumph, rancour: and then Laurette, after rubbing her hand clean on her skirt, turned and held out to Farquhar the exact facsimile of Lucian’s small grey envelope. “Et pour monsieur, encore une.”

Farquhar took his letter, and Charlesworth took himself home.

XII

AND WILT THOU LEAVE ME THUS?

There were eight young Laurensons, of whom the two youngest were Laurence Lionel, commonly known as Lal, and Angela. Angela was the only girl, and had been spoilt, or rather given her own way; but then, that way was always exemplary. She had done her best for all her brothers, she said, with pathos, yet Bertie still remained a dude and Harold still a fool, and with none of them had she succeeded save with Lal, who was a pattern of virtue. Angela bade him work for the army, enter Woolwich, and pass into the Royal Engineers; he obeyed her by coming out first in his batch. After this they had a slight difference of opinion, for Lal chose to enter the Royal Artillery and would not be dissuaded from it by all the accusations of laziness which his guardian angel hurled at his head. She did not know, and nobody else noticed, that a certain poor country parson’s son, who after patient toil had attained only the eighteenth place on the list, was by Lal’s retirement elevated among the lucky seventeen to be drafted into the Engineers—the only regiment where a penniless man can live on his pay. Lal’s choice remained a puzzle to Angela. But Lal was queer; she was sure that her deepest soundings never quite touched bottom.

Lal entered at once upon a distinguished career. During the South African war he was twice mentioned in despatches, received the Distinguished Service Order, and was never taken prisoner: three grand distinctions which made the guardian angel proudly preen her wings. She had cried herself to sleep every night of the first week after he sailed. In Somaliland he got enteric and was wounded in the foot; he was invalided home amid a blaze of glory with six months’ sick leave and another medal to hang beside the two which a liberal Conservative War Office had already bestowed for his services in Africa. He sustained the character of wounded hero with fortitude, but without enjoyment: Lal was modest. Admiration silenced him; he had been more open with Bernard, a stranger who did not know him, than he had ever been with his sister. He made a vaguely impressive figure at Ella Merton’s garden-parties: a quiet, languid, fair-haired young aristocrat, always very correctly dressed, always courteous, always reticent. Maud Prideaux, who had names for everybody, hit off the Laurensons’ peculiarities to a nicety when she christened Angela _On dit_ and her brother _Cela va sans dire_.

Angela Laurenson had views; she had also a first-class dressmaker. These sentences are not gems from a German grammar, but the statement of correlated facts; the first would never have been in evidence but for the second. The temperance question, the rights of women, public scandals, and private fads were Angela’s happy hunting-grounds. She was member of a dozen associations, and corresponded with a dozen wooden-headed boards. She had chased the Protestant donkey to his home in a mare’s-nest. Sweeping into one condemnation offenders against manners and morals, she declined to know wicked noblemen, whitewashed ladies, grocery knights, and Chicago millionaires. In fact, her fair little thin face, her clear little imperious voice, her perfectly simple and simply perfect frocks were pretty widely known; and in spite of certain errors, she was respected.

In the fore-front of her battles she always posted Lal. He was not allowed to smoke. He would have been enrolled in the Ladies’ League had that been possible. He was constrained to become what in temperance language is called an abstainer: which was especially hard on Lal, who inherited a delicate critical taste in wines together with an ancestral cellar. But he disliked these things less than being dragged to meetings and forced to sing “Dare to be a Daniel” upon a platform. Lal hated publicity: not the lion, but the lookers-on, seemed to him the real test of Daniel’s courage. If anything could have held him back from distinguishing himself in action, it would have been the fear of reward.

Now one day at lunch the story of Mrs. Searle and her copper came up, and was discussed in all its ramifications, down to the illness of Mrs. Searle’s baby and Noel Farquhar’s political prospects. Angela, who was present, took it into her pretty little head that duty called her to visit the sick child. Like most city-bred girls, she expected the country lanes to be haunted by drunken tramps, and was nervous of walking alone; but Maud Prideaux vowed that babies were beyond her charity, and Mrs. Merton, who was enthusiastically consulting planchette in a corner with a serious young man, professed a bad headache. Angela fell back on Lal; and, accordingly, at three o’clock they were walking towards Burnt House, Lal irreproachable in grey, with lilies in his button-hole; Angela, also in grey, a demure little Quakeress. The sky was in grey as well, and mist clung to the face of the earth like fine grey powder, dulling all colours. The flattened uplands round the black cottages were as dingy as a suburban street on a wet day.

Mrs. Searle was at the new copper, trying to do the family wash; but between the naughtiness of Randolph, aged thirteen months, the frettiness of Florry, aged twenty days, and her own health, she had not done much. She was not at first very gracious; poor people have their feelings, and the attitude of Angela, with her skirts unconsciously held very high to avoid contamination, suggested the supercilious patronage of the lady bountiful. But Angela’s kindness was too homely to remain hidden under a Paris hat; she soon received the story of Mrs. Searle’s illness and the baby’s delicacy: “but we’re getting on nicely now,” the girl added, leaning against the copper and holding the brickwork to keep herself steady, the lovely, pathetic brown eyes uncomplainingly lifted to Angela’s. She said she had at first fed the baby on Brighton biscuit and boiled bread, beaten up in water.

“Brighton biscuit?” said Angela, doubtfully, looking, with no feeling but repulsion, at the purplish, spidery, open-mouthed creature in its tumbled clothes. “Is that good for it, do you think?”

“Well, Miss Dolly she says give her milk and barley-water, but the milkman don’t come up here. So I tried her with the condensed, and it’s wonderful how she’s got on since.”

“I’ll tell the milkman to bring you up a gallon a day,” said Angela, with a small sigh relinquishing a silver blotting-book which she had coveted. “That will be enough for it, won’t it?”

“Well, I’m sure you _are_ kind—”

“And couldn’t you get a woman in to help you? You’re not fit to be doing your own work yet.”

Then suddenly Mrs. Searle melted into tears, not for her own misfortunes, and poured forth the tale of her sister Hilda, who should have been her help, but had got into trouble. Not yet seventeen, very pretty, and now desperate, she was gone to a low public-house in Swanborough. “Mr. Searle he can’t get her to come away, and I can’t get so far, you see. And really, miss, some days I don’t know how to crawl about, my back is that bad; only things has got to be done somehow. I did think Hilda would have kept straight. Or she might have stopped at home till my trouble was over. I told her as nobody would think the worse of her if it was just once, as you may say, and she kept herself respectable after; but there, you never know how to have girls, and off she goes, as bold as brass, and me so ill I couldn’t say nothing to her—”

Angela sighed impatiently; none of her pet reforms touched Mrs. Searle’s case; no reforms ever do. The celebrated last words of the poor woman who always was tired, who lived in a house where help was not hired, represent the aspirations of most cottage mothers, night by night, until the children are grown old enough to help them. Angela did her best; she promised a nurse, and left a half-crown; and then walked out upon Dolly Fane, who was talking to Lal. They were standing so close to the door that Angela knew Lal must have overheard Mrs. Searle’s story, and the colour came into her face as she took Dolly’s hand. She forgot to be surprised to find them acquainted until Dolly in her direct fashion told her of their early meeting; when Angela did not forget to feel annoyed.

Nor was she better pleased when Dolly, entering the cottage, quieted Randolph and prescribed for the baby and put Mrs. Searle into a chair, proving herself efficient where Angela had just proved herself incapable. It was all done in innocence, and innocent, too, was Dolly’s laugh when she heard of the liberal provision of milk allotted for the baby, for Mrs. Searle had not mentioned the giver; nevertheless, Angela decided that she was not a nice companion for Lal.

“We shall be late for tea, Lal,” she whispered, suggestively.

“Miss Fane will be ready directly.”

“Not for half an hour or so; I am going to finish these things in the copper,” said Dolly, appearing at the door in a large apron and with her sleeves rolled up. No inclement clouds could dim the brilliancy of her colouring; she was independent of sun and sky. But Angela became conscious that her own face looked drab, and that did not please her.

“If you don’t mind walking home alone I think I’ll stay and help Miss Fane; these cans are very heavy,” said Lal, depriving Dolly of that she was carrying.

“I _do_ mind walking home alone, across all those fields!”

“It really is not lonely, Angela.”

“But there are bulls in them!”

“Oh no, Miss Laurenson, the cows have been driven home to be milked by now,” said Dolly, serenely; “you need not be alarmed. But I don’t want any help; I hope Mr. Laurenson won’t stay for me.”

“I’ll take you as far as the high-road, then, and come back,” said Lal.

Dolly put up her eyebrows and laughed softly. “I’m perfectly competent to do the work myself; these cans weigh nothing.” She held it out at arm’s-length and lightly put it down, rising again elastic from the burden.

“You’re accustomed to the work, of course,” said Angela, dryly.

“I am; we do our own washing at home.”

“If you want to be in by four, we had better start,” Lal interposed.

“Good-bye,” said Angela, not offering her hand; was not Dolly’s wet?

“Pray don’t come back, Mr. Laurenson; there are so many bad characters about the roads now; you might meet my brother Bernard!” Dolly retorted, with a faintly satirical accent.

“I certainly shall,” said Lal, quietly.

Between Burnt House and the high-road Lal received a full-length portrait of his misconduct; he listened, as his habit was, in silence. Angela soon tired of reproving a dummy. “Why don’t you say something?” she cried at last.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Do you mean to go back to that _girl_?”

“Certainly I do.”

“O Lal!” said Angela. “Oh, do you really?”

“I can’t leave her with that work on her hands.”

“Yes, but—Lal, I don’t like walking alone!”

“I’m sorry, Angela, but I promised.”

“There’s Mr. Fane,” cried Angela, in a note of relief, and she hurried to meet him. Bernard in his working clothes was something of a shock to her nerves, but she got over it and gave him her hand.

“We’ve left your sister at the black cottages, Mr. Fane,” she began, “and my brother wanted to go back and help her—”

“And my sister is a little nervous in these lanes,” Lal continued, “so that if you would be so good as to see her as far as The Hall, I should be very grateful. It is on your way, I know.”

“I’d like to very much,” said Bernard, promptly.

“Thanks so much. Good-night.”

He lifted his hat and walked off, leaving Angela speechless and ready to cry; for she had not desired Lal’s presence with her so much as his absence from Dolly, and that Lal knew, and she knew that he knew. However, it was not easy to embarrass Bernard; he talked on for both till she had recovered. “Ah,” thought Angela, coming back to the remembrance of her escort, “here is some one who will not flout and contradict me and fling my own axioms in my face!”

“That chap Searle, now,” Bernard was saying when next his word reached her brain: “he’s a good worker; he might get on if he liked; but he will drink. Comes home every Saturday night drunk as a lord. What are you to do with a chap like him?”

“He should be persuaded to take the pledge,” said Angela, reviving a little to discuss one of her favourite hobbies.

“Oh, the teetotal tomfoolery; no, I guess that wouldn’t do for him. What he wants is to know when to pull up.”

“Teetotal—nonsense?” said Angela, avoiding Bernard’s too strong expression. “The pledge of abstinence is the only safeguard for an habitual drunkard. I am a total abstainer myself.”

“Ah, but I guess you didn’t ever drink,” said Bernard, as one who scores a point. “Besides, girls don’t want it so much; I daresay they can do without. But it stands to reason a man can’t do a decent day’s work on water. Spirits are no good; they’re mostly adulterated with beastly stuff, and the best of them isn’t wholesome. But a glass of good, honest beer don’t do anybody any harm. A couple of quarts a day, that’s my limit; I dare say a quart and a half would do for a little chap like Searle, except, perhaps, in harvesting. The point is to know your limit and stick to it, and that he’ll never do, more’s the pity.”

Angela felt the primitive truths of her life flying round her like slates in a gale. “But doctors say—” she was beginning.

“Doctors’ll say anything; and, come this time ten years, they’ll all say all different. That old chap in Tennyson, now, who said he’d have his quart if he died for it; I guess he didn’t lose much by sticking to his beer.”

“Oh, do you read Tennyson?” said Angela, faintly.

“Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons. There isn’t much to do on the farm, and there’s no paper, and you can’t read the Bible all day long; so when I’ve done my chapter I often turn in on him. I like the things in dialect; they’re uncommonly good. I like the thing about the Baptists, who left their sins in the pond and poisoned the cow,” he continued, with a grin. “Father lent ’em our pond once, when he’d had a split with the Wesleyans; but I guess they won’t come there again to do their baptising. It looks as clear as the river, but it’s about six feet deep in mud.”

“I was thinking of starting a branch of the C. E. T. S. here, and asking you to join it,” said Angela, with the calmness of despair.

“Me turn teetotaller? I should die of it!”

“Your adherence would have strengthened my hands, but, of course, since you feel like this, there is no more to be said.”

“Do _you_ want me to join?”

“It does not matter. I sha’n’t start the branch now.”

Bernard walked on in silence. Six miles an hour was his usual rate of walking, four when with Dolly, or, as he supposed, with any other able-bodied female; but Angela was used to crowded London pavements and the very deliberate pace of lazy Lal. She did not protest, she was too much out of heart to mind being out of breath. She sadly supposed that Bernard was not observant. Great was her surprise when, remarking, “I guess we’re going too fast,” he reduced his pace to three miles an hour and rather doubtfully offered his arm.

“I suppose it’s not the proper thing,” was his comment when she declined it. “Dolly said so, but then she doesn’t know everything; and you do take arms in to dinner. I’ll remember another time. Look here, are you set on this temperance business?”

“I think it a noble cause,” said Angela, wearily standing to her guns.

“Then I’ll take the pledge for a month.”

“You will?”

“I guess I couldn’t stand it any longer,” Bernard explained; “but a month from now’ll just keep clear of the harvesting. I’d like to do what you want, as far as is reason. And here we are. I’m awfully glad to have met you. You’ll remember I’d like to please you, won’t you?”

Oh yes, Angela said, she would remember; and she kept her word, for all the night through she reflected alternately on Lal’s defection and on Bernard Fane’s subjection—a word which she refused to lengthen into subjugation.

Lal, on his way to the black cottages, walked really fast, but he did not get back in time to help Dolly with her cans of water; she was feeding the baby when he came up. Sitting in a low chair with the child on her knee, holding the bottle, the delicate little toy fingers clasped round her own, Dolly, intent and serious, was no Madonna of pity and love, but a business-like young woman performing a duty. But Lal, who was fond of little children, unconsciously ascribed to her his own feelings; he saw the divine spirit of motherhood, and stood quietly watching, too reverent to speak and break the charm. It was the traitorous sun, suddenly bursting out to throw Lal’s shadow on the floor, which made Dolly look up. She smiled. She had forgotten her vexation, and was frankly glad to see him, yet her first words were a reproach.

“Why did you come back? Your sister hated it, and there was no need!”

“I came to help you.”

“It was a pity. Your sister is very fond of you, very proud; you should not vex her,” Dolly said, laying the child in the cradle. She rose and came to the door, and stood in the hot sunshine, rich in colour as a Tintoretto, spiritual as the crowned Madonna of the angelical painter. She was still thinking of Mrs. Searle, and pity was Dolly’s loveliest expression.

“I left my sister in the charge of your brother; he was going to see her home. Now will you accuse me of vexing her? Or are you going to give me something to do?”

“You may watch the baby while I sweep the room.”

“Thank you; I will sweep the room while you watch the baby.”

“You? You sweep?”

“Why not?”

“Have you ever swept in your life?”

“I have not; but I can try.”

“Oh! very well,” said Dolly, suddenly folding her hands and sitting down in her low chair. “Do it: there’s the broom behind the door. Do it: I should love to see you.”

The road outside was far cleaner than the floor of Mrs. Searle’s kitchen. Lal stood, doubtfully surveying his task and the aged broom. “It really wants scrubbing,” he said, seriously.

“Sweeping will do, if you sweep properly.”

“‘Will do!’ Miss Fane, I am surprised to hear you use that sloven’s expression. However, I am afraid sweeping will have to do, as we have neither sand nor Brooke’s soap.”

Leaving Dolly amazed at his erudition, Lal made a sudden descent upon the hearth-rug, shook it, rolled it up, and carried it out. He took out the cradle as well, very gently putting it down in the shade without waking the child. The chairs he piled on the table; the curtains he tucked up. Dolly took her place outside with the rest of the furniture, and stood in the doorway, watching and laughing. Lal paused, leaning on his broom in the middle of the floor as Maud Muller might have leaned upon her hay-rake.

Suddenly he made a triumphant pounce upon Mrs. Searle’s brown teapot, which spent all its days upon the hob. He emptied away the liquid tea, shook out the leaves on a broken plate, and began to strew them with fastidious fingers about the floor: the contrast between him and his task was piquant. Bernard would never have attempted to sweep at all, Lucian might have tried, but he was not wise enough for the tea-leaf plan. Dolly’s imagination could see him happily brooming all the dust out of the open door, and gathering it up with his fingers when it lodged in the inequalities of the flooring. This amateur house-maid worked in different style. Neat, deft, precise, that was Lal; he coaxed the flue out of the corners, he lifted the fender and swept underneath, he took away cobwebs from the window and spiders’ nests from the angles of the ceiling, and swept all his gleanings into a symmetrical pile.

“A dust-pan, now,” he said, looking round enquiringly.

“There’s no such thing. Let me do it now: you’ve proved your powers.”

“No,” said Lal; “no.” His eye rested on a copy of the local paper; in a trice he had it folded firmly with sharp edges, and was bending it into a convenient receptacle for the débris, which he emptied into the fire. Then he dusted the furniture with his handkerchief and put everything back in place, twitching the ragged hearth-rug straight to the eighth of an inch and arranging all the chairs in pairs exactly.

“But it should have been scrubbed,” he wound up, with a sigh of regret.

“I won’t have it; Mrs. Searle wouldn’t know her own room. Do you know, I never thought a man could have so—could be—”

“Could have so much sense,” Lal finished, quaintly.

“Well, I didn’t. Where did you learn how to do it?” said Dolly, laughing.

“Miss Fane, I have a pair of eyes, and our rooms at home are swept sometimes.”

“Ah, but you’ve the hands, too.”

“I know it,” Lal said, displaying them with disgust. Dolly looked, with a wise little nod, and went into the scullery; she brought back a fresh towel, a piece of yellow soap, and a tin basin full of clean hot water.

“That is good,” Lal said, plunging in his hands with an air of relief. Dolly was looking at her own. “I think I’ll wash, too,” she said; and without more ado stripped back her cuffs and slipped her fingers in beside Lal’s. The sunlight sparkled in the water and flashed in silver circles, following the curve of the white metal. Dolly chased the piece of soap all round the basin, and Lal captured it and gave it to her; her wrist was soft to the touch as a baby’s. Lal was warmly alive to the charm of the moment, and would have prolonged it; not so Dolly. She withdrew her hands with the same indifference as though Bernard had been her partner. They were obliged to share the same towel; there were but two in Mrs. Searle’s establishment.

“What a pussy-cat you are!” Dolly laughed, noticing Lal’s fastidious movements. “Do you manicure your hands?”

“I rather think that is a deadly insult. No, I do not manicure my hands; I am merely clean.”

“Merely clean! You’re hard on the rest of us.” Dolly was thinking of Lucian as he had appeared after half an hour of weeding in the violet-bed. She held out her own hand, soft, rosy, crinkled by the hot water. “There are stains on my fingers; I can’t get them off without taking the skin, too; so I leave them on. Am I not clean, please?”

Lal was in danger of losing his head, and kissing the pretty palm that lay in his, “I don’t see any stains,” he said. Dolly withdrew it, colouring at his tone. She pulled down her sleeves, and told herself she was a fool to forget that men are fools.

“Do you always do as your sister tells you?” she asked, abruptly.

“Miss Fane, do you always do as your brother tells you?”

“I? Not often,” Dolly frankly admitted. “I do as I like.”

“You’re more independent than I am: I do what Angela likes, except on serious and important questions of principle. It saves so much trouble, you know; I can do no wrong, like the king.”

“What principle was involved in your staying this afternoon?”

Lal was dumb, manifestly embarrassed by this sudden attack.

“Tell me,” Dolly insisted. She was expecting that he would answer “You,” in which case she meant to snub him and give him up. But he remained silent.

“Why did you come back, when your sister hated it and you hated vexing her, as I know very well you did?”

“Because I couldn’t stand seeing a girl carry those heavy cans.”

Dolly had her answer now, and she knew it was the truth. Lal had coloured over his admission and cast down his eyes; he should have looked youthful and ingenuous, but he did not. A very expressive mouth had Lal; the underlip was remarkably firm, pure, decisive; tenacity and independence controlled its curves. One might expect to find originality in his theory of life, anachronisms in his creed, possibly asceticism, certainly unworldliness: in fact, all those queer ideas whose existence Angela unhappily suspected. So much may be read in a momentary twist of the lips. Chivalry here in the twentieth century! Bernard looked on woman as an inferior animal, Lucian as a comrade, Farquhar as slave or sultana by turns: Dolly’s observations and reflections were summed up in the involuntary remark:

“Mr. Laurenson, how very odd you are!”

XIII

THE FIRST DROPS OF THE THUNDER-SHOWER

“_O Medjé, who with thy smiling
Hast enchained my heart, once free_—”

Gounod, whose sweet and sensuous church music has something of the quality of _good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke_, has written some acceptable love-songs; such at least was Lucian’s opinion. Aided by the night’s stillness and the seductive influence of the stream which cradled their boat, Noel Farquhar’s fine dramatic voice rang up the valley to the hotel, half a mile away. The twangs and pangs of Lucian’s banjo did not travel so far. Farquhar had a powerful voice, thoroughly well trained; he did not tremble in sentimental passion and murder time in the name of liberty, nor yet did he alternately spue out his words and gobble them down. And he had fire; he could sing the very heart out of a song. His native taste in music he usually sacrificed to the general good; he would sing “The Lost Chord” and “The Holy City” and “Beauty’s Eyes,” and other favourites, to please young ladies such as Angela Laurenson and elderly gentlemen who like a little music after dinner. But Lucian laid a taboo on these; he offered Farquhar the choice between what he called gamey music (meaning the glorious modern discords which we all delight to honour in the abstract) and ditties of the Bank Holiday school, with a chorus in which he expressed his desire to join. Whereupon Farquhar hurriedly embarked upon “Medjé.”

It was a clear night of summer, still and starry. The stream’s dark glass was filmed with silver mist which wavered and rose and receded as if it were the visible vesture of the wind; the smooth hills, spreading dark wings over the valley, breathed peace. For sounds they had the tinkle of the orchard runnel and the deep breaths of cows wrenching the dewy grass; and for scents the night perfume of the water and of the woods, as well as the sweeter individual smells of flowers: flaxen meadow-sweet, wild mint blowing purple among the reeds, and clover in the meadow-grasses.

“A summer night like this is the best imitation of Paradise this side of the Golden Gates,” said Lucian, leaning down to watch the ripples parting silver-rimmed beneath the prow.

“I’d not give a cent to get into Paradise.”

“You won’t be asked, sonny.”

“There you’re right, for there’s no such place.”

“Your views on eschatology, my friend, appear demned definite.”

“Definite? Finite, don’t you mean?”

Lucian leaned back and folded his arms restfully; he liked nothing better than to explore the recesses of Farquhar’s character, which were commonly open only after dark.

“Haven’t you any intimations of immortality from the recollections of early childhood?” he asked.

“None,” said Farquhar. “Never had. Seventy years of this world’s long enough for me. I don’t want an eternity to learn to be good in. Another point: if I believed what you Christians believe, do you think I’d live as you live? Not much. Act up to your creed; there’s the secret of happiness.”

“And what’s your creed, then?”

“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” said Farquhar, cynically enjoying his own cynicism.

“And suppose the workings of Causation came and put a stopper on your eating and drinking? If you were brought to grinding poverty, say, or got infected with leprosy, or didn’t marry Dolly Fane?”

“There’s always the ultimate remedy,” said Farquhar, with a shrug.

“Which means, being interpreted?”

“Suicide while of unsound mind: I’d take good care it wasn’t called accidental death. I wonder, now, if they’d give me Christian burial?”

“Not if I was anywhere around, sonny; you may depend on that. So you seriously contemplate suicide as a possible end of your life?”

“Probable, not possible: I keep my revolver loaded. I’ve had that before me ever since I remember.”

“Well, I’ll give you the credit of being consistent; only, don’t you include me among the Christians, for I’m not one. You can put down my inconsistencies to that if you like. If I’d owned a creed, I believe I might have stuck to it—tolerably well.”

“You’re sorry you’ve none?”

“Yes,” said Lucian.

“The Almighty doesn’t seem to know His own business very well.”

“Don’t you blaspheme,” said Lucian. “I can’t say I believe that there is a God, but I know I don’t believe that there isn’t. When little boys like you are profane, you make me think of some kids I knew, who had a midnight supper in the church-yard to show they weren’t afraid of bogies. And it rained, and one got rheumatic fever; that was me,” he wound up, cheerfully.

Farquhar laughed, and broke off to ask, “Is that any one calling?”

“Who’d look us up at this time of night, ’cept it was the postman?”

“Are you expecting a letter?”

“I had my weekly budget yesterday, and so did you, sonny; don’t be jealous.”

“I _am_ jealous; I’m confoundedly jealous.”

“What is it you want, boy?”

“To see your letter.”

Lucian was fully alive to the fascination of playing with a tiger; he pulled out Dolly’s grey envelope and played a tune on the back of it. “Here it is; what do you want to know?”

“I want to know how she addresses you and signs herself, and what the substance of it’s like, and how many sheets she sends you.”

“How many does she send you?”

“Curious, too, are you? Exchange, then.”

“Not much. Suppose she called you darling and me only dear?”

“By Heaven, Lucian, I shouldn’t wonder if I murdered you in my sleep some night!”

“Did you say in your sleep or in mine?” Lucian put in.

“I’d not do it in my senses, for I’ve no wish to be hanged for murder; but, I tell you, I can’t get the thought of those letters of yours out of my head. And when the will’s in abeyance the body sometimes works of itself. You keep your door locked: mind, I’ve warned you.”

“Upon my solemn honour, old Farquhar, you are a savage!” exclaimed Lucian.

“Take the thing away, then; keep it out of my sight!”