He was a young man of six or seven and twenty, tall, fair, slender,
very good-looking, and most correctly dressed. At first glance Dolly
saw a resemblance to her last night’s acquaintance, Angela Laurenson.
He had the same fair hair, the same dark-grey eyes, and the same
delicate and colourless type of features, though his were more regular,
his nose in particular being accurately Greek; but the likeness
appeared only in the outward mould, Angela’s alertness being replaced
by an air of languid tranquillity. He was carrying his bag and a
gold-headed cane, and seemed to find the cane alone quite as much as he
wished to support.
“I beg your pardon,” he said; “could you direct me to The Hall?”
“Go back to our gates and turn to the right, straight on till you come
to four cross-roads; take the left-hand road up the hill, and you will
see The Hall on your right, a white house among fir-trees,” said Dolly,
who had the masculine power of concise explanation.
“About how far is it?”
“Two miles and a quarter.”
“Thanks very much,” said the stranger, with a resigned air, preparing
to go.
“Been walking far?” inquired Lucian, who had not failed to notice the
dust on his boots.
“From Wemborne. I missed my train and could get no cab,” said the
stranger, mentioning a junction twelve miles away.
“Why, man, you must be dog-tired! Have you had any breakfast?”
The stranger smiled and shook his head.
“We shall be very glad if you will come in and share ours. It is ready
now,” said Dolly, simply.
“Thanks very much. I am particularly grateful, but I’m afraid I can’t
wait.”
“Have some cider; I can recommend it,” said Lucian, hospitably.
“Or a glass of milk,” suggested Dolly, maternally careful of his health.
“You are very good,” said the stranger. “I am rather thirsty.”
“You’ll have some cider, then?”
“No, no cider, thanks. But I should very much like the milk.”
Dolly went away to fetch it, and the stranger’s eyes followed her with
involuntary admiration.
“What a confounded nuisance these Wemborne trains are!” said Lucian,
who knew the time-table considerably better than the porters at the
station. “They leave you two minutes to catch your connection, and then
make the main-line train half an hour late!”
“I could have caught mine,” said the stranger, with the hint of a
smile, “if I had chosen to run for it. But it was such a fag, you know.”
“You like walking twelve miles better than running twelve yards?”
“I don’t know that I put it to myself in that form,” said the stranger;
“but I own that I don’t like hurrying. I could take my time over the
twelve miles, you see.”
“You’ve done it in pretty good time,” said Lucian. “Three hours, or
less.”
“Nearer eight, I fancy.”
“You came by the early train?”
“No, by the late.”
“Ye towers o’ Julia!” was Lucian’s irrelevant comment on this admission.
“I have an idea that I got lost in the dark,” explained the stranger.
“I seemed to meet the same duck-pond several times. Thank you very
much. I am immensely obliged to you.” He took from Dolly’s hand the
warm and foaming milk, drank it, and went on his way, walking, as
Lucian now noticed, slightly lame, but gracefully still, as he went up
the steep, stony path. Dolly said, watching him with softened eyes, as
she sometimes watched Lucian: “He looks tired to death. I am sure he is
not strong.”
“Maternal spirit! You were born to be a nurse, Dolly.”
“No. I never want to nurse women or children, but I am sorry for men,
especially when they are plucky, as he is. I wonder who he can be?”
“So do I,” said Lucian. “I’d also like to know why he shied so
violently at the notion of cider. I dare say we shall hear.”
They left off talking by common consent. The entrance of the stranger
had checked and turned their thoughts, and, strangely enough, seemed
to dislocate their simple and friendly relation. Dolly took out her
butter, pulled down her sleeves, and turned her attention to the bacon.
When she broke silence it was to speak of a fresh subject, one which
she had not meant to broach that morning, though it had been on her
mind since the night before.
“Mr. de Saumarez, will you take a message from me to Mr. Farquhar?”
“With all my heart, only I’ve a kind of idea that he’d rather you told
him yourself.”
“No, but I would not. I don’t wish to see him again for the present. I
don’t wish to see him for three months.”
“Three months!”
“Yes.”
“That’s a long time, Dolly.”
“Not long for what I want to do.”
“Make up your mind?”
“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!”