which borders August cornfields; and the cluster of violets which she
had tucked into her bosom agreed with its color. She was bareheaded,
and her hair glistened even in shadow like copper veined with gold. She
was not thinking of herself, but of her violets, and Lucian’s eyes were
fixed on her to the hindrance of his work.
“You’re leaving stalks on the flowers,” Dolly pointed out.
“I couldn’t help it. My eyes were all for you.”
“Don’t,” said Dolly, brusquely.
“It’s really the correct thing to say; besides, it’s the truth.”
“I don’t like it, from you. How is your cough?”
“Mayn’t I pay you compliments because I have a cough?”
“You may not; they don’t sound appropriate.”
“That’s very cruel of you. I think I shall go home.”
“No; wait till you’re rested. Do you know if the Mertons have a young
man coming to stay with them soon?”
“A young man, lydy? What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. He nearly killed Bernard and Vronsky with his motor-car,
and Bernard was immensely taken with him. He is young, in the army,
stationed at Swanborough, a friend of the Mertons, and Bernard
generally calls him the dude.”
Dolly’s curiosity was not to be satisfied yet. Lucian shook his head.
“Couldn’t say, my dear girl. There are any number of young officers at
Swanborough, all as like as peas, and you can’t call it a distinction
to run down Vronsky. If he _hadn’t_ done it, now—”
“I thought you might have known from the Mertons; you know Mrs. Merton,
don’t you?”
“I used to, before she was married; I haven’t kept up with all her
distinguished acquaintances since. Ah! There were days when she loved
me dearly. Once when I was a sandwich-man she walked up and down
Fleet Street with me for an hour. I was carrying the advertisements
of ‘Woman—the Charmer,’ and I could hear everybody saying it was an
object-lesson.”
Dolly had by this time heard a good many well-found anecdotes from
Lucian, and had learned that his personal experiences were sometimes
culled from another person’s past. “I don’t believe that,” she said,
calmly.
“Well, anyhow, she gave me a penny once when I begged of her—fact!”
said Lucian, unabashed.
“Where?”
“At a fancy ball where I went got up as a blind beggar; I was the
success of the evening. She’s a right-down good sort, is little Ella
Merton. You never told me how you got on when she called, by the way.”
“I think, pretty well,” said Dolly, doubtfully. “Fortunately, I saw the
carriage driving down, and I sent Maggie to open the door, instead of
going myself.” Maggie was a little black-eyed maiden of fourteen, who
helped in the housework. “I had put fresh flowers in the parlour that
very morning, and I was wearing this dress—now it is tumbled, but it
was fresh then—”
“And you didn’t change it?”
“No, I did not; should I have?”
“No, you did quite right, Sweet Lavender. Well?”
“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.”