Shy brutes they are, and fierce when at bay; this one lamed me with a
kick after I thought I had done for him.”
“My biggest bag was twenty sjamboks running,” said Lucian, pensively.
“I and some others were up country on a big shoot, and, of course, I
got fever and had to lie up. Well, they used to come in with their
blesbok and their springbok, and all the rest of it, so I didn’t see
why I shouldn’t do a little on my own. So I lined up all our niggers
with a sjambok apiece, and made my bag from my couch of pain. I worked
those sjamboks afterwards for all they were worth. Yes, sir-ree.”
“Sometimes I really think you’re daft, De Saumarez!”
“Pray don’t mention it. Let’s see, where were you? Oh, in Russia. No,
I’ve never been there—I don’t know Russia at all.”
“I do.”
“What, intimately?”
Farquhar turned his head, met Lucian’s eyes, and smiled. “Oh no; quite
slightly,” he said, lying with candour and glee.
“Oh, indeed,” said Lucian. “Now that’s queer; I thought I’d met you
there. By the way, do you believe in eternal constancy?”
“In what?”
“In eternal constancy; did you never hear of it before?”
“Well, yes, pulex irritans, I’ve seen a man go mourning all his life
long; so I do believe in it.”
“No, no, sonny; I’m not discussing its existence, but its merits. Do
you hold that a man should be eternally faithful to the memory of a
dead woman?”
“Not if he doesn’t want to.”
“My point is that he oughtn’t to want to. See here; your body changes
every seven years, and I’ll be hanged if your mind doesn’t change,
too. Now, your married couple change together and so keep abreast. But
if the woman dies, she comes to a stop. In seven years the survivor
will have grown right away from her. The constant husband prides
himself on his loyalty, and is ashamed to admit even in camera that a
resurrected wife wouldn’t fit into his present life; but in nine cases
out of ten the wound’s healed and cicatrised, and only a sentimental
scruple bars him from saying so. And there, as I take it, he’s wrong.”
“What would you have him do?”
“Take another woman and make her and himself happy.”
“What becomes of the dead wife’s point of view?”
“According to my creed, you know, she’s got no point of view at all.”
“You can’t expect me to follow you there.”
“No; and so I’ll cite your own creed. After the resurrection there
shall be no marrying or giving in marriage. She’s no call to be
jealous.”
“You’ve no romance about you.”
“No sentimentalism, you mean. Half the feelings consecrated by public
opinion are trash. It’s astounding how we do adore the dumps. Happiness
is our first duty. It seems to me that one needs more courage to forget
than to remember. That’s where I’ve been weak myself.”
Lucian put his hand inside his coat and took out the letter which
Farquhar had read; he had been leading up to this point. He spread it
open on his knee, showing the thick, chafed, blue paper, the gilded
monogram and daisy crest, the thin Italian writing. “I’ve carried that
about for nine years,” he said, glancing up, and then held the paper to
the fire and watched it catch light. The advancing line of brown, the
blue-edged flame, crept across the letter, leaving shrivelled ash in
its track. Lucian held it till the heat scorched his fingers, and then
let it fall in the fire. “A passionate letter, was it not?” he said,
turning from the black, rustling tinder to meet Farquhar’s eyes.
“My dear De Saumarez!”
“Don’t humbug; you read it when you thought I was unconscious.”
“Ah,” said Farquhar, “now I understand why you understood.”
He altered his pose slightly, relaxing as though freed from some
slight, omnipresent constraint; the nature which confronted Lucian was
different in gross and in detail from the mask of excellence which
he had hitherto kept on. Vices were there, and virtues unsuspected:
coarse, barbaric, potent qualities, dominated by a will-power mightier
than they. Race-characteristics, hitherto overlaid, suddenly started
out; and Lucian, recurring quickly to the last fresh lie which Farquhar
had told him, exclaimed, “Why, man, you’re a Russian yourself!”
“Half-breed. My mother was Russian. My father was Scotch, but a
naturalized Russian subject. The worse for him; he died in the mines.
Confound him: a pretty ancestry he’s given me, and a pretty job I’ve
had to keep the story out of the papers. I’ve done it, though.”
“But what’s it for?” asked Lucian, whose mind was flying to the story
of Jekyll and Hyde.
“Respectability; that’s the god of England. Do you think I could
confess myself the son of a couple of dirty Russian nihilists and keep
my position? Not much. It’s the only crevice in my armour. Scores of
men have tried to get on by shamming virtuous, but I’ve gone one better
than they; I _am_ virtuous. You can’t pick a hole in my character,
because there’s none to pick. I speak the truth, I do my duty, I’m
honest and honourable down to the end of the whole fool’s catalogue, I
even go out of my way to be chivalrously charitable, as when I picked
you up, or made a fool of myself over that confounded copper. That’s
all the political muck-worms find when they come burrowing about me.
Yes, honesty’s the best policy; it pays.”
“H’m! well, my most honourable friend, you’d find yourself in Queer
Street if I related how you’d read my letter.”
“Not in the least. I was glancing at it to find your address.”
“You took a mighty long time over your glance.”
“The paper was so much rubbed that I could hardly see where it began or
ended.”
“There was the monogram for a sign-post.”
“Plenty women begin on the back sheet.”
“You’re abominable; faith, you are,” said Lucian. “You’re a regular
prayer-mill of lies!”
“I’d never have touched it if I hadn’t prepared my excuse beforehand.
Ruin my career for the sake of reading an old love-letter? Not I!”
Even as Farquhar wished it, the contemptuous and insulting reference
displeased Lucian; the letter was still sacred in his eyes. But he
would not, and he did not, allow the feeling to be seen. Farquhar’s
measure of reserve was matched by his present openness; but Lucian,
whose affairs were everybody’s business, kept his mind as a fenced
garden and a fountain sealed. Action and reaction are always equal and
opposite; the law is true in the moral as well as the physical world.
“Kindly speak of my letter with more respect, will you?” was all Lucian
said.
“Oh, the letter was charming; I wish it had been addressed to me!”
“You shut up, and don’t try to be a profane and foolish babbler. I want
to know what it’s all for—what’s your aim and object, sonny?”
“I’m going to get into the Cabinet.”
“You are, are you?” said Lucian. “And why not be premier?”
“And why not king? Because I happen to know my own limitations. I’ll
make a damned good understrapper, but the other’s beyond me.”
“You’ll change your mind when you’ve got your wish.”
“And there you’re wrong. I’ll be content then. I’m content now, for
that matter. It’s as good as a play to see how the virtuous people look
up to me.”
Lucian leaned back in the attitude proper to meditation, and studied
his vis-à-vis over his joined finger-tips. Strength of body, strength
of mind, a will keen as a knife-blade to cut through obstacles, an
arrogant pride in himself and his sins, all these had writ themselves
large on Farquhar’s face; but the acute mind of the critic was
questing after more amiable qualities.
“And so you took me in as an instance of chivalrous charity, eh? And
what do you keep me here for, now I’m sain and safe?”
“You’re not well enough to be dismissed cured.”
“I beg your pardon. I could go and hold horses to-morrow.”
“I shall have to find some work for you before I let you go. I like to
do the thing thoroughly.”
“I see. I’m being kept as an object-lesson in generosity; is that so?”
“You’ve hit it,” said Farquhar. “Hope you like the position. Have a
cigar?”
“No, thanks. I don’t mind being a sandwich-man, but I draw the line at
an object-lesson.” Lucian got up, and began buttoning his coat round
him. “If that’s your reason for keeping me, I’m off.”
“De Saumarez, don’t be a fool.”
“I will not be an object-lesson,” said Lucian, making for the door.
“My conscience rebels against the deception. I will expire on your
threshold.”
Farquhar jumped up and put his back against the door. “Go and sit down,
you fool!”
“I’ve not the slightest intention of sitting down. I will be a body—a
demd, damp, moist, unpleasant body.”
“Do you mean this?”
“I do. I’m too proud to take money from a man who’s not a friend.”
Farquhar was very angry. He knew what Lucian wanted, but he would not
say it. “Go, and be hanged to you, then!” he retorted, and flung round
towards the fire.
“All right, I’m _going_,” said Lucian, as he went into the hall.
He took his cap and his stick. Overcoat he had none, and he could not
now borrow Farquhar’s. His own clothes were inadequate even for mid-day
wearing, and for night were absurd. All this Farquhar knew. He heard
Lucian unbolt and unlock the front door, and presently the wind swept
in, invaded the hall, and made Farquhar shiver, sitting by the fire.
Lucian coughed.
Up sprang Farquhar; he ran into the hall, flung the door closed, caught
Lucian round the shoulders, and in the impatient pride of his strength
literally carried him back to the library close to the fire. “You
fool!” he said. “You dashed fool!”
“Well?” said Lucian, looking up, laughing, from the sofa upon which he
had been cast. “Own up! Why do you keep me here?”
“Because you have a damnable way of getting yourself liked. Because
you’re sick.”
“Sh! don’t swear like that, sonny; you really do shock me. And so you
like me?”
“I’ve always a respect for people who find me out,” retorted Farquhar.
“The others—Lord, what fools—what fools colossal! But you’ve grit; you
know your own mind; you do what you want, and not what your dashed
twopenny-halfpenny passions want. Besides, you’re ill,” he wound up
again, with a change of tone which sent Lucian’s eyebrows up to his
shaggy hair.
“You’re a nice person for a small Sunday-school!” was his
comment. “Well, well! So you profess yourself superior to dashed
twopenny-halfpenny passions—such as affection, for example?”
“I was bound to stop you going. You’d have died at my door and made a
scandal.”
“You know very well that never entered your head. Take care what you
say; I can still go, you know.”
Farquhar laughed, half angry; he chafed under Lucian’s control; would
fain have denied it, but could not. “Confound you, I wish I’d never
seen you!” he said.
“You’ll wish that more before you’ve done. I’m safe to bring bad luck.
Gimme your hand and I’ll tell your fortune. I can read the palm like
any gypsy; got a drop of Romany blood in me, I guess.”
“You’ll not read mine,” said Farquhar, grimly, putting it out.
“Won’t I? Hullo! You’ve got a nice little handful!”
The hand was scarred from wrist to finger-tips.
“Never noticed it before, did you? I’m pretty good at hiding it by now.”
“How on earth was it done?”
“In hell—that’s Africa. I told you I learned massage from an old Arab
sheikh; well, I practised on him. I was alone and down with fever, and
they don’t have river police on the Lualaba. He made me his slave. Used
to thrash me when he chose to say I’d not done my work; make me kneel
at his feet and strike me on the face.”
“Good Lord! How did you like that, sonny?”
“I smiled at him till he got sick of it. Then he put me on silence: one
word, death. He thought he’d catch me out, but I’d no notion of that; I
held my tongue. So one day the old devil sent me to fetch his knife. It
was dusk, and I picked it up carelessly; the handle was white-hot. He’d
tried that trick with slaves before. Liked to see them howl and drop
it, and then finish them off with the very identical knife—confound
him!”
“Amen. And what did you do?”
“I? Brought him his knife by the blade; do you think I was going to let
him cheat me out of my career?”
Lucian stared at him. “You—you!” he said. “And I verily believe the
man’s telling the truth. What happened next?”
“Something to do with termites that I won’t repeat; it might make you
ill.”
“Only a channel steamer does that, sonny. You got away, though?”
“Eventually; half blind and deadly sick. By the way, you’ve not told me
why you made up your mind to burn that letter at this precise time?”
“To draw you, of course. And now you’ll be pleased to go and see that
my room’s ready; I can hear Bernard Fane hammering at the door, so you
can play billiards with him while I go to bye-low.”
VII
COURAGE QUAND MÊME
January came with the snow-drop, February brought the crocus, and March
violets were empurpling the woods before the next scene came on the
stage and introduced a new actor. In the meanwhile, Lucian continued
to live on Noel Farquhar’s bounty. It should have been an intolerable
position, but Lucian’s luckless head had received such severe
bludgeonings at the hands of Fate that he was glad to hide it anywhere,
and give his pride the congé. His choice lay between remaining with
Farquhar, retiring to the workhouse, and expiring in a haystack without
benefit of clergy; he chose the least heroic course, and, sad to say,
he found it very pleasant.
One night alarm he gave Farquhar. Punctual to its time, the cold snap
of mid-January arrived on the eleventh of the month, and Lucian went
skating at Fanes. His tutelary divinity Dolly being absent, he was
beguiled into staying late, got chilled, and awoke Farquhar at three
in the morning by one of his usual attacks. It was very slight and
soon checked, but the incident strengthened the bond between them; for
Lucian did not forget Farquhar’s face when he found him fighting for
breath, nor the lavish tenderness of his subsequent nursing, which
seemed to be extorted from him by a force stronger than his would-be
carelessness. That constraining force Lucian declined to christen:
friendship seemed too mild a term for Farquhar’s crude emotions.
No one could have felt more horribly ashamed than Lucian, on finding
that his host gave up all engagements to wait upon him. He was soon
about again, but he now guarded his health as though he had it on a
repairing lease. When Dolly consulted him on points of etiquette, as
she soon learned to do, he retaliated with questions concerning the
proper conduct of an invalid; it is only fair to say that Dolly was the
more correct informant. He was welcome at Fanes. Dolly liked him; so
also did Bernard, whose affections were pure in quality, but exclusive;
and fate gave him a third admirer in the person of Eumenes Fane, though
the esteem in this case was but a bruised reed, liable to fail in time
of stress. Farquhar, who was also a frequent visitor at Fanes, was not
so popular.
On a fine morning in March, when the air felt like velvet and the
linnets were beginning to nest, Bernard drove over to Swanborough
market, as his habit was, to buy Dolly her week’s stores. On his
way home he met with an adventure. The distance from Swanborough to
Monkswell by the London road was only fourteen miles; but Bernard’s
horse was young and fresh, and he chose a longer route through by-ways
where there was less chance of meeting motors and traction-engines,
Vronsky’s special bugbears. Lonely, wild, and hilly was the
country-side; the gold sun had just sunk behind the leafless woods,
and a rosy twilight was invading the sky, when Bernard turned into a
certain steep and narrow lane between high banks of violet-haunted
grass, locally known as Hungrygut Bottom. As they spun down the slope,
from behind them sounded the nasal Hoot! toot! which Vronsky hated.
Bernard looked back over his shoulder. A small car with a single rider
had topped the crest of the hill and was swiftly descending: too
swiftly to be stopped at such short notice. Vronsky could be brought
to tolerate a motor that he met; but to be overtaken and passed by one
was more than his nerves could bear. Good whip though Bernard was, in
this narrow lane he feared disaster. Midway down, where the banks
were lower, a gate stood open, leading into a meadow. Bernard touched
up the horse, and made for this haven as fast as he could. But, as the
dog-cart turned to enter, Vronsky caught sight of the appalling monster
behind. He kicked, he danced, he stood on his hind-legs, he backed
the dog-cart right across the road, and there he stayed, broadside on
to the advancing motor, while Bernard set his teeth and awaited the
crash. The car was almost upon them: suddenly it swerved violently to
the left and flew up the bank. Right up to the top it ran, and upset.
For a moment Bernard’s heart was in his mouth as he thought to see it
fall over sideways on the driver and burst into flames; but it rocked,
and steadied, and stood in equilibrium, while the electric batteries
came hurtling through the air into the road like so many fourteen-pound
jampots.
Vronsky turned and bolted down the hill, and was some way up the
opposite slope before Bernard could bring him to his senses. He came
back as fast as he could, and found the driver sitting up beside his
car, hatless, with a somewhat bewildered air. He had been pitched heels
over head among the brambles close to a heap of flints, and there he
had stayed.
“I say, are you hurt?” Bernard hailed him.
“I don’t think so. I believe I still possess a head.”
The voice was soft and low and lazy, with a touch of quaint humor. He
looked up at Bernard without offering to rise. In the twilight Bernard
could see only that he was tall and slight and young, and dressed in
gray.
“It was an awfully plucky thing to do. If you’d come on I must have
been killed,” said Bernard, simply.
“Well, so must I, you know.”
“No, you’d have been pitched out, and might have got off scot-free. It
was about the pluckiest thing I’ve seen.”
“The whole thing was my fault.”
“It was the horse’s fault, not yours at all.”
“It was mine,” said the stranger, with swift decision. “I was going
too fast. I should have changed the speed to come down the hill, and I
would not; I thought I should meet no one, and I chose to risk it. I
shall have to give up motoring, I suppose.”
“What on earth should you do that for?”
“Because otherwise I shall infallibly end by killing somebody.”
“You needn’t if you only take reasonable care.”
“And that is precisely what I never shall do. There’s a fascination
about it—a sense of power—it’s as fatal as gambling. Yes; I must give
it up.”
He got on his feet with an effort and regarded himself. Disgust at
the mud on his clothes and his hands apparently preoccupied his mind,
though he had scratched his face and bumped his head and bruised
himself most thoroughly all down his side; in addition, Bernard saw
that his right hand was streaming with blood. This he had not noticed
until Bernard pointed it out.
“Oh, that was the flints,” he observed, in his former quaint and lazy
way.
“Lucky for you you didn’t fall right on them. Your wrist’s cut to the
bone.”
“So I should fancy,” said the stranger, wincing under Bernard’s
ministrations. He looked so faint with pain and loss of blood that
Bernard went down to the dog-cart and brought up the flask which he
carried in case of accidents; with Vronsky in the shafts they were to
be expected. But when he got back the stranger was at the top of the
bank examining his car, and rejected the brandy with thanks and scorn.
“It hasn’t suffered much,” he said, with satisfaction. “There’s a small
crack in the panel, but if I can get the batteries in I believe I shall
be able to go on.”
“You can’t steer the thing with that wrist. You’d better come on with
me to Dove Green; it’s only a mile on, and you can send back for the
car.”
“One doesn’t need two hands to steer.”
“But you said you meant to give up motoring.”
“So I do; which is an additional reason why I should drive it to-night,
when I have the excuse.”
“Do you _like_ the thing?” exclaimed Bernard.
“Don’t you like that handsome chestnut of yours?”
“Yes, but that’s different. A horse has sense; you can’t compare it to
that beastly, snorting, smelling thing.”
“If you’d ever driven a motor, you’d be ready to declare that it had
sense, too; machinery’s almost human, sometimes.”
Bernard was wholly unconvinced, and thought the stranger a little mad.
“You’d much better come on with me,” he said.
“Thanks very much; but I have to get on to Monkswell this evening, and
then back to Swanborough. I came this cross-country route because I
thought I should have it to myself and could drive fast.”
“Are you going to Monkswell?”
“I am; do you know it?”
“I live there.”
“Do you? Then I expect you know my friends, the Mertons, at the Hall.”
“M’yes.”
“Ah! very likely we shall meet, then; I believe I am to stay there as
soon as I get my next leave.”
“No, I don’t suppose we shall,” Bernard answered. “We hardly know them;
only on sufferance. They’re a cut above us.”
“I see.”
The tone was neutral, it was too dark to read faces, and the stranger
said no more. In a minute he was calling upon Bernard to help him set
the motor on its wheels again, and together they dragged it down into
the road, Bernard doing most of the work, for the stranger’s strength
was frail, like his physique.
“You’re not fit to go on,” were Bernard’s last words, as the stranger
settled uneasily into his seat, with a tender consideration for all his
bruises and cuts. But he got no answer save a smile and a wave of the
hand. He waited till the car was out of sight, and then fetched Vronsky
out of the field and drove home without further incident.
He found Dolly waiting in the warm, dark parlor, reading by firelight,
her feet on the marble rim of the hearth, her face close to the
flames, which glowed and reddened the ceiling and flickered in gold on
her hair. She raised a flushed face from her book: an intent reader was
Dolly.
“Where have you been? You’re late.”
Bernard told his story in detail.
“I wonder who he can be?” Dolly said, nursing her chin in her hand.
“He was an awfully plucky chap, whoever he was. I never saw anything
neater than the way he turned that machine up the bank; he kept so
jolly cool. And he made his head spin, too, I’d bet; he’d got a lump on
his forehead the size of a seed-potato, but he never said a word about
it. Yes, he was plucky. I like that sort.”
“Was he a gentleman?”
“Rather! A regular dude to look at; all his things were made in town, I
guess.”
“And coming to stay with the Mertons. I do wonder who he is?”
“Nobody we shall ever know, anyhow.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Dolly, wisely. “I shall ask Mr. de
Saumarez.”
Next morning Lucian came tapping at one of the less honourable doors
of Fanes, and was bidden enter by a preoccupied voice. He found Dolly
hard at work, with sleeves rolled to the shoulders; she was in the
second dairy, but her occupation had no fellowship with butter, cream,
or cheese. A cool, dark, and lofty chamber it was, the walls midway
to the roof being covered with white glazed tiles, the floor with
red. Waist-high stood out a broad white shelf, now piled with square
frames of unpainted deal confining square panes of glass, upon one of
which Dolly was spreading soft white pomade with a palette-knife. A
bushel-basket half filled with violets stood beside her; the air reeked
with the scent of them. Lucian’s curiosity found vent in the natural
inquiry:
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” Dolly glanced round, straightened her
shoulders, swept her basket to the floor, and exposed a three-legged
milking-stool. “There’s a chair for you; you must not stand. I’m making
scent.”
“How enthralling! Mayn’t I help?”
“Wait till you see how I do it,” quoth prudent Dolly.
Lucian unwound a yard and a half of comforter, deposited his
mackintosh, umbrella, and goloshes, and sat down to watch, tucking his
long legs under the stool, and tossing back his shaggy brown hair.
Dolly spread the white paste thickly and evenly over the glass in two
of the frames. Next she filled her hands with violets, decapitated
the pretty blossoms, and sprinkled them broadcast on the pomade till
the frame was full to the brim; she capped that frame with the second
and pressed them close, so that they formed a box three inches deep,
enclosing the violets between two layers of pomade; they were then
ready to be put aside for the time being. She would not trust Lucian to
spread the pomade, but she allowed him to behead the violets for her,
and was grateful; for the quicker she was the fresher were the violets,
and the more valuable the pomade made from them. Thrifty Dolly made a
small income by her perfumes.