“I’ll be shot if I’ll give in to an arrogant brute like you! Besides, I
want to wait for the post.”
“Oh, the post,” said Farquhar, with a singular change of tone. He
dropped the cigar and sat down. He did not look at Lucian, but Lucian
shot a glance at him, and both were silent. Charlesworth stared. The
constraint lasted for a moment. Then, pat to the occasion, Laurette
came out with the letters. Farquhar half rose and put out his hand, but
she passed him by for Lucian. “Pour monsieur.” The amazed Charlesworth
saw rapidly varying expressions flit over both faces: anger, jealousy,
triumph, rancour: and then Laurette, after rubbing her hand clean on
her skirt, turned and held out to Farquhar the exact facsimile of
Lucian’s small grey envelope. “Et pour monsieur, encore une.”
Farquhar took his letter, and Charlesworth took himself home.
XII
AND WILT THOU LEAVE ME THUS?
There were eight young Laurensons, of whom the two youngest were
Laurence Lionel, commonly known as Lal, and Angela. Angela was the only
girl, and had been spoilt, or rather given her own way; but then, that
way was always exemplary. She had done her best for all her brothers,
she said, with pathos, yet Bertie still remained a dude and Harold
still a fool, and with none of them had she succeeded save with Lal,
who was a pattern of virtue. Angela bade him work for the army, enter
Woolwich, and pass into the Royal Engineers; he obeyed her by coming
out first in his batch. After this they had a slight difference of
opinion, for Lal chose to enter the Royal Artillery and would not
be dissuaded from it by all the accusations of laziness which his
guardian angel hurled at his head. She did not know, and nobody else
noticed, that a certain poor country parson’s son, who after patient
toil had attained only the eighteenth place on the list, was by Lal’s
retirement elevated among the lucky seventeen to be drafted into the
Engineers—the only regiment where a penniless man can live on his pay.
Lal’s choice remained a puzzle to Angela. But Lal was queer; she was
sure that her deepest soundings never quite touched bottom.
Lal entered at once upon a distinguished career. During the South
African war he was twice mentioned in despatches, received the
Distinguished Service Order, and was never taken prisoner: three
grand distinctions which made the guardian angel proudly preen her
wings. She had cried herself to sleep every night of the first week
after he sailed. In Somaliland he got enteric and was wounded in the
foot; he was invalided home amid a blaze of glory with six months’
sick leave and another medal to hang beside the two which a liberal
Conservative War Office had already bestowed for his services in
Africa. He sustained the character of wounded hero with fortitude, but
without enjoyment: Lal was modest. Admiration silenced him; he had
been more open with Bernard, a stranger who did not know him, than he
had ever been with his sister. He made a vaguely impressive figure
at Ella Merton’s garden-parties: a quiet, languid, fair-haired young
aristocrat, always very correctly dressed, always courteous, always
reticent. Maud Prideaux, who had names for everybody, hit off the
Laurensons’ peculiarities to a nicety when she christened Angela _On
dit_ and her brother _Cela va sans dire_.
Angela Laurenson had views; she had also a first-class dressmaker.
These sentences are not gems from a German grammar, but the statement
of correlated facts; the first would never have been in evidence but
for the second. The temperance question, the rights of women, public
scandals, and private fads were Angela’s happy hunting-grounds. She
was member of a dozen associations, and corresponded with a dozen
wooden-headed boards. She had chased the Protestant donkey to his home
in a mare’s-nest. Sweeping into one condemnation offenders against
manners and morals, she declined to know wicked noblemen, whitewashed
ladies, grocery knights, and Chicago millionaires. In fact, her fair
little thin face, her clear little imperious voice, her perfectly
simple and simply perfect frocks were pretty widely known; and in spite
of certain errors, she was respected.
In the fore-front of her battles she always posted Lal. He was not
allowed to smoke. He would have been enrolled in the Ladies’ League had
that been possible. He was constrained to become what in temperance
language is called an abstainer: which was especially hard on Lal,
who inherited a delicate critical taste in wines together with an
ancestral cellar. But he disliked these things less than being dragged
to meetings and forced to sing “Dare to be a Daniel” upon a platform.
Lal hated publicity: not the lion, but the lookers-on, seemed to him
the real test of Daniel’s courage. If anything could have held him back
from distinguishing himself in action, it would have been the fear of
reward.
Now one day at lunch the story of Mrs. Searle and her copper came up,
and was discussed in all its ramifications, down to the illness of
Mrs. Searle’s baby and Noel Farquhar’s political prospects. Angela,
who was present, took it into her pretty little head that duty called
her to visit the sick child. Like most city-bred girls, she expected
the country lanes to be haunted by drunken tramps, and was nervous
of walking alone; but Maud Prideaux vowed that babies were beyond
her charity, and Mrs. Merton, who was enthusiastically consulting
planchette in a corner with a serious young man, professed a bad
headache. Angela fell back on Lal; and, accordingly, at three o’clock
they were walking towards Burnt House, Lal irreproachable in grey,
with lilies in his button-hole; Angela, also in grey, a demure little
Quakeress. The sky was in grey as well, and mist clung to the face of
the earth like fine grey powder, dulling all colours. The flattened
uplands round the black cottages were as dingy as a suburban street on
a wet day.
Mrs. Searle was at the new copper, trying to do the family wash;
but between the naughtiness of Randolph, aged thirteen months, the
frettiness of Florry, aged twenty days, and her own health, she had not
done much. She was not at first very gracious; poor people have their
feelings, and the attitude of Angela, with her skirts unconsciously
held very high to avoid contamination, suggested the supercilious
patronage of the lady bountiful. But Angela’s kindness was too homely
to remain hidden under a Paris hat; she soon received the story of
Mrs. Searle’s illness and the baby’s delicacy: “but we’re getting on
nicely now,” the girl added, leaning against the copper and holding
the brickwork to keep herself steady, the lovely, pathetic brown eyes
uncomplainingly lifted to Angela’s. She said she had at first fed the
baby on Brighton biscuit and boiled bread, beaten up in water.
“Brighton biscuit?” said Angela, doubtfully, looking, with no feeling
but repulsion, at the purplish, spidery, open-mouthed creature in its
tumbled clothes. “Is that good for it, do you think?”
“Well, Miss Dolly she says give her milk and barley-water, but the
milkman don’t come up here. So I tried her with the condensed, and it’s
wonderful how she’s got on since.”
“I’ll tell the milkman to bring you up a gallon a day,” said Angela,
with a small sigh relinquishing a silver blotting-book which she had
coveted. “That will be enough for it, won’t it?”
“Well, I’m sure you _are_ kind—”
“And couldn’t you get a woman in to help you? You’re not fit to be
doing your own work yet.”
Then suddenly Mrs. Searle melted into tears, not for her own
misfortunes, and poured forth the tale of her sister Hilda, who should
have been her help, but had got into trouble. Not yet seventeen, very
pretty, and now desperate, she was gone to a low public-house in
Swanborough. “Mr. Searle he can’t get her to come away, and I can’t get
so far, you see. And really, miss, some days I don’t know how to crawl
about, my back is that bad; only things has got to be done somehow. I
did think Hilda would have kept straight. Or she might have stopped at
home till my trouble was over. I told her as nobody would think the
worse of her if it was just once, as you may say, and she kept herself
respectable after; but there, you never know how to have girls, and off
she goes, as bold as brass, and me so ill I couldn’t say nothing to
her—”
Angela sighed impatiently; none of her pet reforms touched Mrs.
Searle’s case; no reforms ever do. The celebrated last words of the
poor woman who always was tired, who lived in a house where help was
not hired, represent the aspirations of most cottage mothers, night by
night, until the children are grown old enough to help them. Angela
did her best; she promised a nurse, and left a half-crown; and then
walked out upon Dolly Fane, who was talking to Lal. They were standing
so close to the door that Angela knew Lal must have overheard Mrs.
Searle’s story, and the colour came into her face as she took Dolly’s
hand. She forgot to be surprised to find them acquainted until Dolly in
her direct fashion told her of their early meeting; when Angela did not
forget to feel annoyed.
Nor was she better pleased when Dolly, entering the cottage, quieted
Randolph and prescribed for the baby and put Mrs. Searle into a
chair, proving herself efficient where Angela had just proved
herself incapable. It was all done in innocence, and innocent, too,
was Dolly’s laugh when she heard of the liberal provision of milk
allotted for the baby, for Mrs. Searle had not mentioned the giver;
nevertheless, Angela decided that she was not a nice companion for Lal.
“We shall be late for tea, Lal,” she whispered, suggestively.
“Miss Fane will be ready directly.”
“Not for half an hour or so; I am going to finish these things in the
copper,” said Dolly, appearing at the door in a large apron and with
her sleeves rolled up. No inclement clouds could dim the brilliancy of
her colouring; she was independent of sun and sky. But Angela became
conscious that her own face looked drab, and that did not please her.
“If you don’t mind walking home alone I think I’ll stay and help Miss
Fane; these cans are very heavy,” said Lal, depriving Dolly of that she
was carrying.
“I _do_ mind walking home alone, across all those fields!”
“It really is not lonely, Angela.”
“But there are bulls in them!”
“Oh no, Miss Laurenson, the cows have been driven home to be milked by
now,” said Dolly, serenely; “you need not be alarmed. But I don’t want
any help; I hope Mr. Laurenson won’t stay for me.”
“I’ll take you as far as the high-road, then, and come back,” said Lal.
Dolly put up her eyebrows and laughed softly. “I’m perfectly competent
to do the work myself; these cans weigh nothing.” She held it out at
arm’s-length and lightly put it down, rising again elastic from the
burden.
“You’re accustomed to the work, of course,” said Angela, dryly.
“I am; we do our own washing at home.”
“If you want to be in by four, we had better start,” Lal interposed.
“Good-bye,” said Angela, not offering her hand; was not Dolly’s wet?
“Pray don’t come back, Mr. Laurenson; there are so many bad characters
about the roads now; you might meet my brother Bernard!” Dolly
retorted, with a faintly satirical accent.
“I certainly shall,” said Lal, quietly.
Between Burnt House and the high-road Lal received a full-length
portrait of his misconduct; he listened, as his habit was, in silence.
Angela soon tired of reproving a dummy. “Why don’t you say something?”
she cried at last.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Do you mean to go back to that _girl_?”
“Certainly I do.”
“O Lal!” said Angela. “Oh, do you really?”
“I can’t leave her with that work on her hands.”
“Yes, but—Lal, I don’t like walking alone!”
“I’m sorry, Angela, but I promised.”
“There’s Mr. Fane,” cried Angela, in a note of relief, and she hurried
to meet him. Bernard in his working clothes was something of a shock to
her nerves, but she got over it and gave him her hand.
“We’ve left your sister at the black cottages, Mr. Fane,” she began,
“and my brother wanted to go back and help her—”
“And my sister is a little nervous in these lanes,” Lal continued, “so
that if you would be so good as to see her as far as The Hall, I should
be very grateful. It is on your way, I know.”
“I’d like to very much,” said Bernard, promptly.
“Thanks so much. Good-night.”
He lifted his hat and walked off, leaving Angela speechless and ready
to cry; for she had not desired Lal’s presence with her so much as
his absence from Dolly, and that Lal knew, and she knew that he knew.
However, it was not easy to embarrass Bernard; he talked on for both
till she had recovered. “Ah,” thought Angela, coming back to the
remembrance of her escort, “here is some one who will not flout and
contradict me and fling my own axioms in my face!”
“That chap Searle, now,” Bernard was saying when next his word reached
her brain: “he’s a good worker; he might get on if he liked; but he
will drink. Comes home every Saturday night drunk as a lord. What are
you to do with a chap like him?”
“He should be persuaded to take the pledge,” said Angela, reviving a
little to discuss one of her favourite hobbies.
“Oh, the teetotal tomfoolery; no, I guess that wouldn’t do for him.
What he wants is to know when to pull up.”
“Teetotal—nonsense?” said Angela, avoiding Bernard’s too strong
expression. “The pledge of abstinence is the only safeguard for an
habitual drunkard. I am a total abstainer myself.”
“Ah, but I guess you didn’t ever drink,” said Bernard, as one who
scores a point. “Besides, girls don’t want it so much; I daresay they
can do without. But it stands to reason a man can’t do a decent day’s
work on water. Spirits are no good; they’re mostly adulterated with
beastly stuff, and the best of them isn’t wholesome. But a glass of
good, honest beer don’t do anybody any harm. A couple of quarts a day,
that’s my limit; I dare say a quart and a half would do for a little
chap like Searle, except, perhaps, in harvesting. The point is to know
your limit and stick to it, and that he’ll never do, more’s the pity.”
Angela felt the primitive truths of her life flying round her like
slates in a gale. “But doctors say—” she was beginning.
“Doctors’ll say anything; and, come this time ten years, they’ll all
say all different. That old chap in Tennyson, now, who said he’d have
his quart if he died for it; I guess he didn’t lose much by sticking to
his beer.”
“Oh, do you read Tennyson?” said Angela, faintly.
“Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons. There isn’t much to do on the farm,
and there’s no paper, and you can’t read the Bible all day long; so
when I’ve done my chapter I often turn in on him. I like the things in
dialect; they’re uncommonly good. I like the thing about the Baptists,
who left their sins in the pond and poisoned the cow,” he continued,
with a grin. “Father lent ’em our pond once, when he’d had a split with
the Wesleyans; but I guess they won’t come there again to do their
baptising. It looks as clear as the river, but it’s about six feet
deep in mud.”
“I was thinking of starting a branch of the C. E. T. S. here, and
asking you to join it,” said Angela, with the calmness of despair.
“Me turn teetotaller? I should die of it!”
“Your adherence would have strengthened my hands, but, of course, since
you feel like this, there is no more to be said.”
“Do _you_ want me to join?”
“It does not matter. I sha’n’t start the branch now.”
Bernard walked on in silence. Six miles an hour was his usual rate
of walking, four when with Dolly, or, as he supposed, with any other
able-bodied female; but Angela was used to crowded London pavements and
the very deliberate pace of lazy Lal. She did not protest, she was too
much out of heart to mind being out of breath. She sadly supposed that
Bernard was not observant. Great was her surprise when, remarking, “I
guess we’re going too fast,” he reduced his pace to three miles an hour
and rather doubtfully offered his arm.
“I suppose it’s not the proper thing,” was his comment when she
declined it. “Dolly said so, but then she doesn’t know everything; and
you do take arms in to dinner. I’ll remember another time. Look here,
are you set on this temperance business?”
“I think it a noble cause,” said Angela, wearily standing to her guns.
“Then I’ll take the pledge for a month.”
“You will?”
“I guess I couldn’t stand it any longer,” Bernard explained; “but a
month from now’ll just keep clear of the harvesting. I’d like to do
what you want, as far as is reason. And here we are. I’m awfully glad
to have met you. You’ll remember I’d like to please you, won’t you?”
Oh yes, Angela said, she would remember; and she kept her word, for
all the night through she reflected alternately on Lal’s defection and
on Bernard Fane’s subjection—a word which she refused to lengthen into
subjugation.
Lal, on his way to the black cottages, walked really fast, but he did
not get back in time to help Dolly with her cans of water; she was
feeding the baby when he came up. Sitting in a low chair with the
child on her knee, holding the bottle, the delicate little toy fingers
clasped round her own, Dolly, intent and serious, was no Madonna of
pity and love, but a business-like young woman performing a duty. But
Lal, who was fond of little children, unconsciously ascribed to her
his own feelings; he saw the divine spirit of motherhood, and stood
quietly watching, too reverent to speak and break the charm. It was
the traitorous sun, suddenly bursting out to throw Lal’s shadow on the
floor, which made Dolly look up. She smiled. She had forgotten her
vexation, and was frankly glad to see him, yet her first words were a
reproach.
“Why did you come back? Your sister hated it, and there was no need!”
“I came to help you.”
“It was a pity. Your sister is very fond of you, very proud; you should
not vex her,” Dolly said, laying the child in the cradle. She rose and
came to the door, and stood in the hot sunshine, rich in colour as a
Tintoretto, spiritual as the crowned Madonna of the angelical painter.
She was still thinking of Mrs. Searle, and pity was Dolly’s loveliest
expression.
“I left my sister in the charge of your brother; he was going to see
her home. Now will you accuse me of vexing her? Or are you going to
give me something to do?”
“You may watch the baby while I sweep the room.”
“Thank you; I will sweep the room while you watch the baby.”
“You? You sweep?”
“Why not?”
“Have you ever swept in your life?”
“I have not; but I can try.”
“Oh! very well,” said Dolly, suddenly folding her hands and sitting
down in her low chair. “Do it: there’s the broom behind the door. Do
it: I should love to see you.”
The road outside was far cleaner than the floor of Mrs. Searle’s
kitchen. Lal stood, doubtfully surveying his task and the aged broom.
“It really wants scrubbing,” he said, seriously.
“Sweeping will do, if you sweep properly.”
“‘Will do!’ Miss Fane, I am surprised to hear you use that sloven’s
expression. However, I am afraid sweeping will have to do, as we have
neither sand nor Brooke’s soap.”
Leaving Dolly amazed at his erudition, Lal made a sudden descent upon
the hearth-rug, shook it, rolled it up, and carried it out. He took out
the cradle as well, very gently putting it down in the shade without
waking the child. The chairs he piled on the table; the curtains he
tucked up. Dolly took her place outside with the rest of the furniture,
and stood in the doorway, watching and laughing. Lal paused, leaning on
his broom in the middle of the floor as Maud Muller might have leaned
upon her hay-rake.
Suddenly he made a triumphant pounce upon Mrs. Searle’s brown teapot,
which spent all its days upon the hob. He emptied away the liquid tea,
shook out the leaves on a broken plate, and began to strew them with
fastidious fingers about the floor: the contrast between him and his
task was piquant. Bernard would never have attempted to sweep at all,
Lucian might have tried, but he was not wise enough for the tea-leaf
plan. Dolly’s imagination could see him happily brooming all the dust
out of the open door, and gathering it up with his fingers when it
lodged in the inequalities of the flooring. This amateur house-maid
worked in different style. Neat, deft, precise, that was Lal; he coaxed
the flue out of the corners, he lifted the fender and swept underneath,
he took away cobwebs from the window and spiders’ nests from the angles
of the ceiling, and swept all his gleanings into a symmetrical pile.
“A dust-pan, now,” he said, looking round enquiringly.
“There’s no such thing. Let me do it now: you’ve proved your powers.”
“No,” said Lal; “no.” His eye rested on a copy of the local paper; in a
trice he had it folded firmly with sharp edges, and was bending it into
a convenient receptacle for the débris, which he emptied into the fire.
Then he dusted the furniture with his handkerchief and put everything
back in place, twitching the ragged hearth-rug straight to the eighth
of an inch and arranging all the chairs in pairs exactly.
“But it should have been scrubbed,” he wound up, with a sigh of regret.
“I won’t have it; Mrs. Searle wouldn’t know her own room. Do you know,
I never thought a man could have so—could be—”
“Could have so much sense,” Lal finished, quaintly.
“Well, I didn’t. Where did you learn how to do it?” said Dolly,
laughing.
“Miss Fane, I have a pair of eyes, and our rooms at home are swept
sometimes.”
“Ah, but you’ve the hands, too.”
“I know it,” Lal said, displaying them with disgust. Dolly looked, with
a wise little nod, and went into the scullery; she brought back a fresh
towel, a piece of yellow soap, and a tin basin full of clean hot water.
“That is good,” Lal said, plunging in his hands with an air of relief.
Dolly was looking at her own. “I think I’ll wash, too,” she said; and
without more ado stripped back her cuffs and slipped her fingers in
beside Lal’s. The sunlight sparkled in the water and flashed in silver
circles, following the curve of the white metal. Dolly chased the
piece of soap all round the basin, and Lal captured it and gave it to
her; her wrist was soft to the touch as a baby’s. Lal was warmly alive
to the charm of the moment, and would have prolonged it; not so Dolly.
She withdrew her hands with the same indifference as though Bernard had
been her partner. They were obliged to share the same towel; there were
but two in Mrs. Searle’s establishment.
“What a pussy-cat you are!” Dolly laughed, noticing Lal’s fastidious
movements. “Do you manicure your hands?”
“I rather think that is a deadly insult. No, I do not manicure my
hands; I am merely clean.”
“Merely clean! You’re hard on the rest of us.” Dolly was thinking
of Lucian as he had appeared after half an hour of weeding in the
violet-bed. She held out her own hand, soft, rosy, crinkled by the hot
water. “There are stains on my fingers; I can’t get them off without
taking the skin, too; so I leave them on. Am I not clean, please?”
Lal was in danger of losing his head, and kissing the pretty palm that
lay in his, “I don’t see any stains,” he said. Dolly withdrew it,
colouring at his tone. She pulled down her sleeves, and told herself
she was a fool to forget that men are fools.
“Do you always do as your sister tells you?” she asked, abruptly.
“Miss Fane, do you always do as your brother tells you?”
“I? Not often,” Dolly frankly admitted. “I do as I like.”
“You’re more independent than I am: I do what Angela likes, except on
serious and important questions of principle. It saves so much trouble,
you know; I can do no wrong, like the king.”
“What principle was involved in your staying this afternoon?”
Lal was dumb, manifestly embarrassed by this sudden attack.
“Tell me,” Dolly insisted. She was expecting that he would answer
“You,” in which case she meant to snub him and give him up. But he
remained silent.
“Why did you come back, when your sister hated it and you hated vexing
her, as I know very well you did?”
“Because I couldn’t stand seeing a girl carry those heavy cans.”