thrash him. But who’s the other?”
“Lucian de Saumarez.”
“Him!” exclaimed Bernard. “Dolly, I’d take him; I like him.”
“Oh, I know, I know; so do I. But he hasn’t a penny.”
“He’d take you about and show you things.”
“Quite so; out of a third-class window. I don’t care for that.”
“You aren’t going to have that Farquhar chap?”
“I’ve not quite made up my mind.”
“Well, you’ll be a fool if you choose him,” said Bernard, returning
to the _Daily Telegraph_; and human nature is so constituted that at
that moment Dolly would have accepted Farquhar on the spot, had he been
present.
The clock struck nine. Dolly got up, extended her arms above her head,
and yawned. “Oh, I _am_ sleepy,” she said. “Good-night, Bernard.”
“’D-night,” answered Bernard, deep in the finance news.
Dolly moved towards the door; then, a certain thought crossing her
mind, she came to Bernard’s chair and bent her beautiful head.
“Give me a kiss, Bernie.”
Somewhat surprised, Bernard complied.
“Do you like kissing me, Bernard?”
“M’yes. I don’t mind it. Why?”
“Ah!” said Dolly, and lighted her candle for bed.
IX
WE TOOK SWEET COUNSEL TOGETHER
Lucian was a poor sleeper, hard to lull and easy to rouse, with a habit
of waking at four in the morning and reading novels in bed; his good
nights had six hours’ sleep, his bad nights none. As a young man, he
had innocently done his best to acquire the chloral habit, but years
had taught him wisdom; his present panacea was bromide of potassium,
of which, at times, he took a surprising quantity. But he shunned it
whenever he could.
Excitements in the day usually entailed sleeplessness at night. After
Dolly refused him Lucian was not surprised to find himself broad awake
at one o’clock in the morning, with every prospect of remaining so.
But the dark hours had long ceased to seem interminable; he lighted
the gas, enshrouded himself in a gorgeous dressing-gown, in whose
gay colours he took an artless pleasure, and devoted his mind to the
_Golden Novelettes_, at a penny a number. Since Lucian’s last illness,
Farquhar slept in the dressing-room adjoining, and usually left the
communicating door ajar; but Lucian had wisely shut it early in the
evening, and was blest in solitude.
Towards dawn a voice came through that closed door, repeating the very
name which was running in Lucian’s thoughts. “Dolly, Dolly!” Lucian
took it for the creature of his brain, and thought with joy that now he
might legitimately take some bromide; but it came again, and was this
time coupled with epithets which had never crossed Lucian’s mind, still
less his lips. He divined that something was wrong with Farquhar, and
slid off his bed to see, taking a candle. Farquhar lay on his back,
restlessly muttering, between sleep and delirium; his face was flushed
and his skin dry. “Fever,” said Lucian, and sat down to watch.
Fever ravings are not commonly coherent, nor do patients, except in
books, relate at length the stories of their lives; all that Lucian
learned was some strange oaths, besides the fact that Farquhar wanted
water. He supplied that desire liberally, and presently had the
satisfaction of seeing Farquhar wake up and stare about him with the
air of a man newly released from Incubus.
“Fever, sonny?” said Lucian. “How did you pick up that?”
“In Africa. Yes, I’m let in for it occasionally—curse the place! I’ve
had a pretty bad turn, I reckon. Where’s that clinical?”
The thermometer when consulted climbed to a hundred and three, and
Farquhar decreed quinine. Hurrying off to prevent him in getting it,
Lucian caught the tail of his robe in the fire-irons and dragged the
fender half across the room before he could stop. He turned round and
solemnly cursed it with a malediction exceeding that of the Cardinal
Lord Archbishop of Rheims. Farquhar flung a pillow to speed him on his
way, and Lucian stepped backward into the water-jug.
When this contretemps had been arranged with the help of the towels,
Lucian sat on the bed—a quaint figure, with his bright eyes and brown
face and draggle-tailed dressing-gown, the skirt of which he carefully
spread over a chair to keep it away from his ankles.
“You ought to be in bed,” said Farquhar, impatiently; “not sitting up
and playing the fool with me. Phew! how hot it is!”
“Oh, I’m not asking for any flowers on my grave,” said Lucian. “I like
doing it. And, look here, Farquhar; I don’t want to be inquisitive, but
have you been making love to Miss what’s-her-name?”
Farquhar sprang up. “What’s it to you if I have?”
“Something, sonny; because I happen to have been making love to her
myself.”
“Yes, confound you! Living here on my charity, and by way of return you
make love to my girl on the sly.”
“Farquhar, you shut up and lie down,” said Lucian, authoritatively.
Tormented with fever and worse tormented with jealousy, midway between
love and friendship, Farquhar hesitated; but he finished by obeying. He
flung up his scarred hand over his eyes and breathed deeply, longing
for coolness. “Put that light out,” he said, “it drives me wild. I’ll
be right enough to-morrow, but I’m ill now, and that’s the fact. Ill!
I’m parching!”
Lucian snuffed out the candle neatly between his finger and thumb, an
inelegant trick which has the advantage of killing the smell. “You been
popping the question?” he asked, and dropped his long cold fingers
across Farquhar’s forehead.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I’m to wait three months.”
“What on earth for?”
“She wants to consider my virtues—and yours.”
“Mine? Oh, I’m out of the running; I only put myself forward as a
pis-aller, in case you didn’t suit.”
“You’re not out of the running. I shouldn’t wonder if she took you. She
says she likes you better than me.”
“You sure of that?”
“She told me so to my face. I wished her in Hades.”
“You’ve got it badly, sonny, very badly; but I’d rather you didn’t
swear at her.”
“Badly? Yes. But I’ll tell you what’s playing the mischief with me—I
kissed her.”
“She let you?”
Farquhar laughed. “I took it.”
“Oho, my irreverent friend, you did, did you?”
“I did. Heavenly sweet it was, too; where do they get it, these girls,
the power to drive a man sheer mad—hold on, will you? you dashed fool!
That’s meant for me, De Saumarez, not you.”
“It’s a fact,” said Lucian, “that I never could resist a kiss myself.
After all, there’s no harm in it, and it’s mighty agreeable when both
parties are willing; though I take it Miss Dolly was not?”
“She wasn’t. You’re right there.”
“Upon my solemn honour, I wish I could thrash you!”
A scratch and a spurt of white flame: Farquhar had struck a lucifer.
The outleap of light showed Lucian’s unguarded face and was gone.
“My God!” said Farquhar, “and it’s the truth!”
Lucian got up, went into his own room, and shut himself in. An instant
later there shone again the lighted parallelogram of the open doorway
with his figure black against it, as he came stoically back to his
place on the bed. Farquhar said through the darkness, “I’ll be damned
if you shall get her.”
“I’ll be damned if you shall,” Lucian answered.
Truth cleared the air, as it generally does. They had been in deadly
jealousy the minute before, but now a spirit of Christian charity fell
upon them.
“She’s safe to choose you,” Lucian argued. “She’s as ambitious as she
can stand, and look at me! I don’t know which is more invalid, my
health or my prospects.”
“Well, I won’t be taken for my money. You see here: didn’t you say
you could model and carve? I’ve just bought a granite-quarry in the
Ardennes, and I’ll put you in as managing partner, and in three months
you’ll be talking differently.”
“I bet you a shilling you’ll go bankrupt if you do!”
“Betting’s contrary to Christian principles.”
They both laughed, and then Lucian said: “Seems to me you rather enjoy
shamming virtuous, you consummate old humbug!”
“I do; hadn’t you found that out?”
“I can believe virtue comes easier when it’s a vice,” said Lucian,
meditatively; “but it strikes me very forcibly, sonny, that patient
continuance in well-doing has undermined your principles. You’d feel
pretty awkward at going to the deuce.”
“Would I? If I had that girl in my power, I’d be handy enough.”
“I deny it; but let that pass. Anyhow, if you had me in your power you
wouldn’t lift a finger against me.”
“If you got between me and her—”
“You’d say, ‘Confound you, my children!’ and bite your thumb at us.”
“For my own sake and not yours, then; I never did an unselfish thing
yet.”
“Oh, you are a liar,” said Lucian. “Why _do_ you tell such lies? And,
look here; I’ve something serious to say to you. I won’t put up with
being told I live on your charity, not even when you’re sick.”
“I shall say what I please.”
“And I shall go when I please.”
“Oh, confound you!” said Farquhar; and he laughed and acquiesced.
* * * * *
As has been said, Dolly was at this time inclining towards Farquhar,
but an episode of the next week set the rivals even again. She and
Bernard accepted Mrs. Merton’s invitation. She bought a book on
etiquette and studied it, but was nervous, nevertheless. Bernard also
studied the book, because he wished to avoid blunders, but he remained
perfectly composed; a point illustrating the radical difference
between their characters. Bernard took in to dinner a pretty, clever,
well-bred, well-dressed girl of five-and-twenty, who had heard his
story, was impressed by his looks, and took an interest in him, as she
told Mrs. Merton. She tried to draw him out and put him at his ease,
and their conversation grew rather humourous ere she recognized her
error.
Dolly’s partner was a big, dark, heavy-featured man, with a low,
soft, monotonous voice and tired eyes. Hugh Meryon was Hugh Meryon
to Dolly, and he was nothing more; but at Monaco he was known as
Gambling Meryon, for among gamblers his play was remarkable by reason
of his extraordinary and fantastic luck. He was the son of a highly
respectable dean, and had suffered a highly respectable education;
but he was born to gamble as the sparks fly upward, and gamble he did,
sacrificing all to his passion. He loved the excitement, not the money
won: like Fox, who declared that his favourite occupation was playing
and winning, his second favourite playing and losing. His presence at
Monkswell was due to Mrs. Merton’s fondness for black sheep, mustard
with mutton, and other things which she should not have liked.
“I hear De Saumarez was to have come to-night,” Meryon began, without
preface, before the advent of the soup. “I’m awfully sorry he couldn’t,
I wanted to see him again. Do you know him?”
“Do _you_ know him?” Dolly exclaimed, simultaneously.
“Oh yes; I used to know him pretty well, but I haven’t seen him for
nine years. But he’s the sort of fellow one doesn’t forget; besides, I
was there when his wife died.”
“Did you know her? What was she like?”
“Awfully delicate, and quite young and very pretty. De Saumarez was
mad about her, waited on her hand and foot, though he wasn’t much good
himself. You used to see him taking her out in a bath-chair and dodging
the stones for fear they should jolt her—I’m boring you!” Meryon was
diffident, and always expected to be found a bore; he had taken fright
now at his own fluency, and annoyed Dolly inexpressibly by trying to
talk about the weather, which he could not do. It was several minutes
before she got him on the track again.
“What was wrong with Mrs. de Saumarez?”
“Consumption.”
“He’s afraid of that himself now.”
“Is he? I expect he’s caught it from her—doctors say you can, and he
was always with her. But the queerest part of it all was the end.”
“Yes?” said Dolly, softly. Meryon had forgotten her, and she thought it
safer to let him forget, lest he should shy again. The gambler went on,
simply:
“He came in to me one night looking rather wild and asked me to play. I
didn’t want to; I didn’t want to clean him out with his wife sick, and
I knew my next streak of luck was about due. And once I begin I can’t
leave off—the cards won’t let you go till they’ve had their sport out.
But he would have it. Écarté we chose; I could tell every card in every
game we played, and that was fifty-three—but that wouldn’t interest
you. Anyway, I’ve seen queer things in the cards, but never anything
so queer as that night’s play. I dare say you’ve heard that gamblers
say spades mean death. Well, the king of spades kept on haunting us,
and every time the black suit showed I swept the board. He kept on
doubling the stakes, and I—I lost my head, as I always do, so when we
came to the end of the spell and counted up I found I’d won sixteen
thousand of him; only fancy! He swore that Marguerite—his wife, you
know—was provided for, but I didn’t believe him, for he was just as if
he were fey. So then he asked me to come in and see her and convince
myself, and I said I would, then and there, though it was three in the
morning. I was pretty queer, for the cards had got into my head, and
I was counting the steps and multiplying them by the stones on the
pavement, and I was mad with myself besides, and I thought I might
get her to take it back, or some of it. Well, he took me in and up; I
didn’t know where he was going till he threw open a door, and there we
were in her room, and there was she laid out on the bed, dead. Candles
at the four corners, and flowers all about—I never shall forget it.” He
shuddered and stopped.
“And Mr. de Saumarez?”
“Oh, he was like a lunatic—talking to her—He’d put by money for the
funeral; that’s what he meant by saying she was provided for. He
hadn’t ten shillings himself. I tried to get him to take some, but he
went off after the funeral, and I didn’t see him again. I never have,
till now. I swore I’d never touch a card again, after that.”
“And did you keep your vow?” Dolly asked, not because she had much
curiosity upon the subject; one is not greatly interested in the
feelings of a phonograph.
“Yes, till a girl I knew asked me to play—I couldn’t refuse her.”
“Did she know of your promise?”
“Yes, but she wanted me to play specially. You see, I had rather a
name; my luck’s so queer. She was writing a book about it; besides, she
didn’t quite understand.”
“And afterwards?”
“Oh, afterwards, I just went on playing. It didn’t seem worth while not
to, you know,” said the gambler, with his tired smile.
X
WAS THAT THE LANDMARK?
As a hostess Mrs. Merton possessed a penetrating amiability which could
persuade the lioness to lie down with the lamb, and could temporarily
repair rifts in the social lute so well that it would run up and down
the social scale without any disconcerting discords. When she brought
up her women guests after dinner, they gathered round the fire and
gossiped like school-girls. Sitting next the mantel-piece with her
shoes on the tiled hearth, shielding her face with a peacock-feather
fan, Bernard’s pretty partner was holding forth concerning flirtation.
She had thin little features and a retroussé nose, and she lifted and
moved her head like a bird; her thick, curly fair hair was cut short;
her eyes were gray and clear, and not a little imperious. In dress she
was so demure and simple that Dolly set her down as a great heiress,
not discerning that her demure simplicity was of the kind that comes
from Paris.
“No. I detest flirtation,” she was saying. “It is an appeal to the
vulgarity of our natures. It may be fit for men, but not for women.”
“My dear girl,” drawled her vis-à-vis, a plain but well-dressed young
matron with fine dark eyes: “you never set eyes on Hugh Meryon before
to-day, and you sat in the brambles with him the whole afternoon!”
“She was converting him,” said Ella Merton. “She belongs to the
Anti-Gambling League, don’t you, Angela? and she had to gambol around
him to lure him away.”
“Always think that people are like consols, they lose interest
when they’re converted,” murmured the dark-eyed matron, whom Dolly
recognized as the lady in the black frills.
“Maud, don’t be flippant,” said Angela, not at all disconcerted. “If
you know Mr. Meryon, you must know that he absolutely can’t flirt.
That’s why I like him.”
“I like flirting,” said Maud; “it’s so desperately interesting. Talking
sense is such a desperate bore, you know. It’s all very well for you,
my dear girl; men’ll listen to an angel that’s paid a visit to Worth.
But with my sallow complexion it’s simply suicidal.”
“Men who flirt are no better than city clerks who kiss their best girls
under the mistletoe at suburban tea-parties,” said Angela, elevating
her little pointed chin.
“Now, I like that kind of young man,” said Ella: “besides, they don’t
exist. She won’t talk like this when she’s married, will she, Maud?”
“I never shall marry,” Angela asseverated. “To decline a proposal is
bad enough, but to accept one—horrible!”
“Don’t see where the horrors come in,” murmured Maud, placidly. “I
suppose my sensibilities aren’t fine enough. I’ve always enjoyed it.”
“I dislike the ceremony of kissing,” said Angela, throwing down the
gauntlet.
“It isn’t a ceremony, it’s one of the rites of women,” said Ella,
dissolving into laughter.
Angela laughed too. She was in earnest, but not to the extent of
becoming a bore. “I believe in the rights of women,” she said. “Don’t
you agree with me, Miss Fane?”
“About kissing?” said Dolly, “I don’t think it matters much; a kiss
means nothing.”
Angela looked rather horrified; Maud Prideaux smiled behind her fan;
Mrs. Merton was frankly interested. “What a lovely original idea!” she
said. “All the three-volume novels used to end with the first kiss.
Lord Arthur saw sanctified snakes, and Lady Imogen felt the tide of
love bearing her away and her hair came down. And in girls’ stories
it’s the bell that rings down the curtain on the sacred scene. And you
don’t believe in it?”
“No,” said Dolly, speaking in her swift, straightforward way. “A kiss
is a touch and nothing more, neither pleasant nor the reverse. What I
should dislike would be to be kissed against my will.”
“You’re quite a revolutionary, Miss Fane,” drawled Mrs. Prideaux. “I
sha’n’t let my husband talk to you.”
“With your sallow complexion it would be simply suicidal,” Mrs. Merton
agreed, smoothly.
Maud Prideaux’s cynicism was pointed by the fact that she and her
husband were notoriously devoted.
“I’d trust Lal anywhere,” said Angela Laurenson, half to herself.
“Oh, Lal! but we all know that Lal’s perfection. When’s he coming,
Angela? I wonder you exist without him,” said Mrs. Prideaux. Angela
coloured, but she stood her ground.
“To-morrow, I expect,” she said. “I hoped he would be here to-night,
but he said he might not be able to get off.”
“Then we shall have to be on our best behaviour—” Mrs. Prideaux was
beginning, when the gentlemen, coming up, cut short the discussion.
In the solitude of her chamber, Dolly that night took her heart and
mind to pieces, and diligently perquisited all their workings, pried
into motives, dissected sensations, and probed like any surgeon.
She wanted replies to two questions: first, why she was unnaturally
indifferent to kisses; second, whether she preferred Lucian de Saumarez
or Noel Farquhar. Her analysis left her little the wiser; she got few
facts, because there were few to get. As Bernard would have accepted
a kiss with unaffected composure, so Dolly in the same spirit could
not understand the pother made about the matter; she was gifted with a
masculine indifference, or, as Angela Laurenson would have phrased it,
with no feminine modesty. Yet, when she turned to the second question,
the thought of loving either suitor sent Dolly flying to unapproachable
snow-peaks of virgin coldness, where the foot of no man ever had
trodden or ever would tread. Dolly married, loving and beloved, the
mother of half a dozen children, would still have kept in her heart a
shrine of vestal purity. Careless about the borders of her kingdom she
might be, but the citadel was inviolable. She came out of her quest
little the wiser, but with her mind made up.
She turned on her pillow and slept soundly, till the dawn, blossoming
like a golden rose between the clouds, shone in upon her lying between
linen sheets which smelt of violets, with all her chestnut hair twisted
into one thick plait. The light roused her, and she was up in a trice
and splashing in her tub of rain-water; then dressing rapidly, rolling
up her hair in a knot, fastening on her blue dress and her plain white
apron: in twenty minutes she was ready. Down-stairs she went full ten
minutes late, and annoyed with herself and consequently with Maggie,
who had been late too—for no reason, as Dolly told her, severely. Dolly
laid the table for breakfast, with a pot of wall-flowers in the middle;
she fetched the coffee-pot, and put on the milk to boil in an enamelled
saucepan, and refilled the shining kettle—all Dolly’s pots and pans
looked like silver. She sliced the bacon into the thinnest of thin
rashers and set Maggie to fry it. Finally she went to the churn, where
she should have been half an hour earlier, praying that the butter
might come quickly. She stood at the open window; the sun looked across
the sill; a brown bee hummed in, seeking the wall-flowers; the bacon
sizzled, the churn gurgled, and Dolly frowned.
“Oo, miss,” said Maggie, pausing with the frying-pan aslant—“Oo, miss,
there’s a gentleman coming down the drive!”
“Hold the frying-pan straight!” was Dolly’s stern reply.
“Oo, miss,” said the irrepressible one, staring, wide-eyed, “but he’s
coming to the window, and it’s—”
“Go on with your work!” said Dolly, in such a tone that Maggie went on.
A shadow fell across Dolly’s hands.
“Good-morning, Sister Dolly,” said Lucian de Saumarez, leaning his
elbows on the sill.
“Don’t call me that; I’m not a Roman Catholic,” said Dolly, not too
graciously.
“Nor I, praise the pigs!”
“Why, do you dislike them so?”
“I hate the doctrine of confession and the system of spiritual
directors,” said Lucian, with unusual emphasis. “I call it morally
degrading—however, I didn’t come here to talk theology. Is the agrarian
barbarian anywhere about?”
“Bernard’ll be in to breakfast at half-past seven, if you mean him.”
“Then I guess I’ll wait. Hullo, Maggie; how’s the headache?”
“Teethache, sir,” said the delighted Maggie, dropping a courtesy.
“They’re nicely, thank you, sir.”
“Maggie, go and dust the parlour; I’ll see to the bacon,” said Dolly.
Maggie retired quite crestfallen and sad.
“Why did you send the child off? She wasn’t doing any harm,” said
Lucian.
“I’ll call her back and go myself, if you want to talk to her.”
“I don’t, I don’t; you know I don’t. But why are you so cross?”
“Because I was late,” said Dolly, candidly, and laughed, and recovered
her temper. “Why weren’t you at the Mertons’ last night? Mrs. Merton
said she asked you.”
“I was looking after old Farquhar; he’s been seedy.” Dolly’s lip
curled. “Fact, I assure you. He had a touch of fever the night before
last, and raved about you like Old Boots.”
“I should have thought that as a literary man you might find a better
simile. I met a friend of yours there—Mr. Meryon.”
“What? Gambling Meryon? You don’t say!” exclaimed Lucian. “I’ll look
him up. I haven’t seen him since he won sixteen thousand off me at a
sitting. Lordy! what a getting down-stairs that was!”
“So he told me.”
“Did you hear the whole thing?”
“Yes.”
“What, about Marguerite?”
“Yes.”
“Ah!” said Lucian, and whistled a few notes. “Well?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Dolly, conscious that his bright
inquisitive eyes were studying her face.
“Does it make any difference?”
“No. Yes,” said Dolly. “I am very, very sorry.”
“If I’d thought you’d take it that way,” said Lucian, swinging himself
up to a seat on the sill, “I’d have given you the whole history myself,
and made it most awfully pathetic. I bet Meryon didn’t pile it on half
strong enough.”
“You’re perfectly callous!”
“My dear good girl, it’s nine years ago,” said Lucian, “and there’s no
sentiment about me, at my age. Hullo! whom have we here?”