had refused to go to bed, and was now ready to discuss his experience
with gusto. He had already been doing so with Charlesworth, who got up
from a chair by the sofa when Farquhar came in. The invalid at once
patted the chair.
“Sit down, sit down,” he said, hospitably. “Let’s fight our battles all
o’er again. I’ve been taking notes of everybody’s sensations all round,
and I’m going to write a realistic Christmas-number tale—‘The Tragedy
of Penywern Quarry; or, Little Willy Wears Poor Father’s Pants.’ How’s
that for a title, hey?”
Charlesworth, however, declined to criticise. “I’ve got to thank you
for my life, sir,” he said, looking Farquhar straight in the face, as
he always did. “If we’d stayed in that hole till the shovel-and-pick
department nosed us out to-day or to-morrow, I guess they’d have got
empty shells for their pains. Now I’ve a use for my life, and so has my
wife. I don’t know whether gratitude’s any use to you, sir, but you may
count on mine.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” said Farquhar, easily. But he met and returned
Charlesworth’s look with some degree of honesty; and when Farquhar was
honest his eyes had the latent dangerous cruelty of one of the great
cats, panther or leopard or tiger, and they showed the force of a will
keen as a knife-blade to cut through obstacles. Charlesworth recognised
these two unpleasant qualities and did not flinch; perhaps he had
guessed that Farquhar was too good to be true. His steadiness called
out a glint of satisfaction; when they had shaken hands, each felt
this encounter to be the foundation of a friendship. “You’ll continue
as manager?” Farquhar said, as the American was going; and, “While you
want me, sir,” came the proudly respectful reply.
Farquhar was left alone with Lucian; the reckoning hour had come.
Lucian was looking after Charlesworth with a lamentable air. “I like
that man, but he don’t care a red cent for me,” he said, pathetically.
“He makes me feel so awfully small that I’m only fit for a microscope.
And yet I’m sure I’ve been splendidly heroic. I had a splitting
headache, and I never once let on. Though, to be sure, he mightn’t have
known that. What are you looking so down in the mouth for, sonny?”
Farquhar flung the letter at him and turned on his heel; he stood
staring out of the window, his hands thrust deep in his pockets and
clenched there. He heard Lucian’s “Hullo!” the tearing of the envelope,
the withdrawal of the folded sheet grating against the torn flap. Then
Lucian sprang off the sofa and came and dropped a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m awfully glad, old man, and that’s the truth,” he said. “I knew
you’d win.”
Farquhar wheeled round. “What’s that you say?”
“Congratulations: that’s what I say.”
“What the devil do you mean by such damnable nonsense as this?”
“Hasn’t she written to you?”
“Yes, confound her! I tell you, I was thirsting to leave you to die
there, and rot, till the worms had done with you. I’d have given my
right hand to do it. I’d have given my eyes.”
“Oho!” said Lucian. “You would, would you? Why didn’t you, then?”
“Confound you! What do you mean by asking such a question as that?
You know well enough. Well, then, take her, and enjoy yourself. Mind
you, I’ve given you back to her. You owe every second of joy you
get out of her to me. And don’t you come playing the fool with your
congratulations; I’d not swear but that some day I wouldn’t pick you up
and snap your miserable little backbone in two, as I very well could.
You’ll be feebler than your wife is, Lucian de Saumarez.”
“Has she been writing to you?”
“Haven’t I told you so?—curse her!”
“What does she say?”
“What does she say to you?”
They stood watching each other like stags preparing to fight.
Then Lucian held out his letter. Farquhar held out his in return
and took Lucian’s with his other hand; the letters changed owners
simultaneously. Farquhar devoured the open page in an instant:
“DEAR MR. DE SAUMAREZ,—I have now made up my mind upon the question
which you asked me. If you are still interested, and care to come and
see me next time you are in England, I will tell you my decision.
“Sincerely yours,
“MIRABELLE FANE.”
“God! When’s the next train?” said Farquhar.
XIX
ROMANCE BRINGS UP THE NINE-FIFTEEN
Four o’clock at Gedinne station, thirteen miles from Vresse. Rain was
streaming down in torrents, yet of the two passengers waiting for the
train only one was under the shelter; and when the other in momentary
absence of mind came under the glass, the first vacated his seat and
took refuge in the storm. There he stayed, keeping an immovable face
while the wind lashed him and the grey lances of rain assailed him,
staring steadily at the silver-and-golden line along the horizon under
the storm-cloud, and the amber glow which was slowly transfusing
the sombre brown swells of vapour. Mademoiselle Hélène-Marie-Denise
Bonin-Watelot, the signal-man’s eldest hope, with whom Farquhar had
conscientiously made friends on his journeys to Brussels, came up and
told him the number of the forks she had washed and the nature of the
garters which she wore; but she got no _pralines_ to-day from the big
pocket in the overcoat.
When the train came in, the rivals got into different carriages as far
apart as might be. Glad enough were they to be moving at all, though
they stopped at every station. No lover journeying to his bride, nor
widow hurrying to the sick-bed of her only son, ever found the giant
steam more laggard. Five o’clock brought them to Houyet, where they
changed trains and had their second encounter; for the platform was
crowded, and Farquhar, springing into an empty seat at the moment
before their start, found himself face to face with Lucian, and fled
out again with an exclamation which the Belgian ladies, sitting stout
and placid in an atmosphere of indescribable tobacco, luckily did
not understand. Lucian, spite of his anxiety, nearly choked with
laughter to see his friend hurrying into the company of three babies
and a nurse, in preference to travelling up with him. Farquhar had a
delightful journey; he stood all the way to Dinant and enjoyed a chorus
of wails at every tunnel.
Six o’clock: Dinant sailed into sight and brought their third change.
And now they had to wait for a full half-hour. The rain was done; the
sunlight streamed over the earth like a tissue of gold, and across
the blue sky floated low huge masses of dove-grey cloud, clear-edged
with pearl, and higher, motionless as though painted on the motionless
dome, long plumes of immaculate white widened out to the wind. The
indefatigable artist tried to describe the scene with a stump of
lead-pencil on the back of Dolly’s letter while he waited.
Travelling up through the lovely rocky valley of the Meuse, bright-hung
with rain-drops, Farquhar sat watch in hand counting the minutes; for
their train was late, and there was a doubt whether it could catch the
main-line connection at Namur, and if they failed in that they could
not cross that night and must wait a whole day more ere hearing Dolly’s
decree. Seven found them passing Yvoir, the sky bare of clouds, and
the wide Meuse rosing herself in the sunset’s glow, which stained the
very granite cliffs and dyed the green of young leaves madder-brown.
Half-past seven: they were coming into Namur station, ten minutes
late, and the Brussels express was due. Standing up, Farquhar held
himself in readiness. Before the wheels were still he had sprung
out, leaping with the train to balance his initial velocity, and was
running along the platform towards the main line, for he knew his way.
Lucian did not know his way, but he did not stay to ask it; he ran
after Farquhar. There was a crowd, and two stout Belgians, excitedly
discussing the wonderful rescue at Vresse, got right in his way: as
he reached the platform the train began to move, and Lucian, who was
too much exhausted to do more than just clutch at the foot-board,
would certainly have been left had not somebody opened the door of a
first-class carriage and hauled him in by the collar and tail of his
coat. Lucian collapsed, utterly spent, his face as white as paper;
the stranger ministered to his needs with half a glass of brandy, and
assisted him to a seat. There Lucian lay with his eyes shut for several
minutes before he found energy even to feel curiosity concerning his
saviour. To a person of Lucian’s inquisitive temper, three minutes is
an æon of time.
When his heart had moderated its suffocating pulsations and his eyes
had ceased to swim, he made use of them, and discovered that his
companion was a slight, fair-haired, good-looking young Englishman
dressed in grey—who was watching him with a good deal of friendliness
out of a pair of dark-grey eyes. Lucian smiled back and gave him a
military salute, being still beyond speech.
“You were almost left behind,” said the stranger. Lucian nodded. “I
hope I didn’t tear your coat.”
Lucian put up his hand and found a long rent, but he smiled on. “No,
it’s all right, thanks. I’m no end obliged to you. I was dead set on
catching this train; there’d have been Holy Moses to settle if I’d
missed it.”
“I’m glad.”
“You crossing to-night?”
“Yes, I’m going back,” said the stranger, taking a paper out of his
bag. Lucian made a bet with himself as to what that paper would be,
and transferred a sixpence from the right-hand pocket of his coat to
the left when the _Spectator_ came into view. The _Engineer Journal_
followed. “Oho!” said Lucian to himself; “a soldier of the king, my
friend, are you? That’s why you look so smart.” He went on aloud: “I’ve
a kind of idea you saved my life, you know.”
“By pulling you in? Surely not.”
“No-o; not that way. By the kindly, felicitous, and opportunitatious
administration of O. D. V.”
“You ought not to run if you have trouble with your heart,” said the
stranger, unfolding the _Spectator_ preparatory to beginning to read.
“Thirteen different sawboneses have told me that very same thing,”
Lucian confessed; “but it’s one of those things no fellow can
remember.”
“I dare say it is difficult,” the stranger assented, his eyes on the
printed page.
In face of that august _Spectator_, Lucian had not the impudence to go
on talking, though his own thoughts were far from pleasant company. He
amused himself by studying the delicate and rather feminine profile
and the long eyelashes of his vis-à-vis, trying from them to read his
character and from his clothes his position and prospects; and the
longer he looked the more certain he grew that both should be known to
him.
“Where have I seen your face before?
It seems so familiar to me!”
whistled Lucian softly to himself, trying to fit together fragments
of memory, as in one of those terrible improving Scripture puzzles
which had haunted the Sundays of his childhood. Bright sunshine, an
architrave of light-coloured wood framing an open door, and some
bright figure standing beside him: his brain served up these scraps of
information, but he could not complete the picture. His feverish mind
had cooled. Lucian was not by nature excitable; it was the electrical
influence of Farquhar’s stormy temperament which threw him off his
balance, and in his wildest movements he was never mastered by a single
motive and passion to the exclusion of every other, as happened to
Farquhar. So now, anxiety respecting Dolly lay like a core of ice
within his heart while the surface of his fertile brain was occupied
in weaving a romantic secret history for the quiet young aristocrat of
the _Spectator_. By the time they had reached Brussels he had made him
a bigamist inclining to trigamy, and was only not sure whether he had
poisoned his first wife or his mother.
Nine, ten, half-past. Darkness had fallen, spangled with stars, and
the southwest wind came sweeping across the sky with a full and steady
pressure which reminded Lucian of the strong blue tide of the Trades.
Brussels sparkling in lights lay far behind, and Ghent was passed,
and they tore through Bruges with three screeches, leaving a trail of
opalescent smoke threaded with fire, and noisily rocking and stuffily
smelling as a Belgian train alone can. Over the wide flat lands they
raced, with a throbbing repeated in triplets as clear as the gait of
a galloping horse. No tunnels were here; a grating rush and a roar
told when they passed a canal and mirrored their square golden windows
one after one in the glass of the water, so dark and so still. Lucian
leaned out, received a peppering of grit from the engine, and got his
first breath of the sea. There in the west the sky glowed over Ostend.
He relegated the aristocratic stranger to a prison dark and drear,
with prospects of the gallows, and turned from his own fancies to face
the facts of life. Years dropped away like dead leaves; he lived again
through the hours when he gambled with Meryon while his wife lay dead
above. In those hours he had come to know despair; and now, displacing
the veils which resolute courage drew across the face of truth, he saw
the same inexorable lineaments confronting him. He had met them now in
every path of life. He was a failure: Dolly was not for him. He had
known this, while refusing to believe; he did acknowledge it now, and
reached the nadir of his troubles before the final sentence fell.
“We shall have a rough crossing,” said the stranger, folding up his
paper. “Are you a good sailor?”
“Tolerably vile; are you?”
“Couldn’t be worse,” said the stranger, laughing. “Do you go below?”
“No; I lie where I fall and abide in my misery until my journey’s end.
_Sic transit_ is my motto; and sick it always is, too.”
“You’ll get wet through if you stay on deck to-night. Why don’t you try
a private cabin? They’re comfortable.”
“To tell the plain but honest truth,” said Lucian, cheerfully leaning
back and stretching a pair of muddy boots on the opposite seat,
“because I’m clean cleaned out. I’ve nothing but my fare up from Dover.”
“I see.”
The stranger stood up to lift down his bag and put on his overcoat,
in all of which actions he was as neat and quiet and dainty as a cat.
After a short pause he turned to Lucian again and said, with some
hesitation, “I shall have a deck cabin myself; will you share it?”
“I shall be awfully ill,” said Lucian, very much amazed.
“So shall I.”
“Well, under those circumstances you may be grateful and comforting;
I’m disgusting. Sure you want me?”
“If I did not I should not have asked you,” said the stranger concisely.
“It’s really remarkably good of you.”
“Then that’s settled; thanks very much.”
Thus it came to pass that Lucian and Lal crossed the Channel in one
cabin, and very ill were they both, especially Lal, who suffered
like a martyr, without one groan. He could hardly have done a thing
more unselfish than this, but, unluckily, his conscience was too
lofty-minded to applaud him for a sacrifice merely of personal
dignity. Virtue failed to reward itself here. Moreover, he was partly
of opinion that he had made a fool of himself in making friends with a
stranger. The hollow sound of Lucian’s cough and the mournful display
of dripping passengers at Dover were consolatory, inasmuch as they
permitted him to father his impulsive behaviour on common humanity.
Of those, dripping passengers Farquhar was the wettest and least
pitiable. For the past four hours he had been leaning over the bows,
watching the speed of the steamer, and formulating arguments that
should be urgent enough to procure him a special at Dover. Those
arguments only failed because the thing was impossible. Cursing high
and cursing low, Farquhar went to look at a time-table, and found that
the quickest way to reach Monkswell was by going straight past it in
the express up to London, and coming down again by the slow. He went
off to take his ticket, confident that though he and his rival might
arrive at Monkswell together he would yet be the first to see Dolly at
Fanes. How that could be was his secret.
But they did not arrive at Monkswell together. Lucian’s unrecognised
friend had a mind to follow Farquhar’s plan, and he went up by the
express; Lucian bade him good-bye and remained at Dover. When crossing
in the spring he had made the acquaintance of a porter; between the
station and the pier they had become intimate friends. Lucian sought
out this man now, and by dint of much persuasive eloquence seduced
him into an alliance. There was no slow train up for some hours; but
a goods train started immediately after the express. The porter and
Lucian both talked to the driver of that engine from the time the
boat came in till the goods train went off, and after its departure
Lucian was no more to be seen at Dover Priory. It was strictly against
the rules, no doubt, but rules are not unbreakable. The consequence
was that Lucian was turned out at Faversham Junction at three in
the morning, and there waited until a slow train up from the Kent
coast-line carried him on to Monkswell.
First of the three, Lucian reached the station at ten minutes to
seven, and set off to walk to Fanes, at two miles’ distance. He was
utterly tired; the exhaustion of the previous day’s adventures, capped
by a long journey, bad sea-sickness, a sleepless night, and exciting
anxiety, weighed down each step he made. He had had nothing to eat,
feeling disinclined at Dover and lacking the chance at Monkswell. The
familiar morning-scented country lanes spun round him as he went.
Nine minutes after the up, the down train from town came in, bringing
Noel Farquhar and Lal Laurenson. Seeing each other for the first time
on the platform, they saluted distantly. Lal passed straight out of
the station from the down platform, whence a field path led past the
station-master’s pigsties and clothes-line to the road. Farquhar
crossed over to the main buildings of the station, on the up platform,
and there in the yard found his dog-cart waiting with an extremely
sleepy groom. This was his trump card; he had telegraphed to Simpson
from Gedinne before ever they started; by this he hoped to forestall
Lucian at Fanes. And now all three had entered on the final stage of
their journey.
Farquhar’s dog-cart flew down the hill and under the railway arch,
noiselessly running on its rubber tyres: past the surgery and through
the village and on into the country lanes, long tunnels of green
sprinkled with sunlight. The irreproachable Simpson still sat behind.
They turned a sharp corner, and the horse shied across the road:
Farquhar checked him mercilessly, glanced back to see the cause of
offence, and pulled him up short. Lucian sat clasping his knees by the
way-side.
He looked up; consciousness of defeat blent with laughing and
charitable defiance was writ on his face; impotent anger and deadly
impatience on Farquhar’s. He tossed the reins to his groom with a curt,
“Hold that,” sprang down, and went to Lucian.
“Come, will you? Confound you!”
Lucian’s face changed. “Going to give me a lift, sonny?”
“D’you suppose I can leave you here?”
“Right, then; I’m dead beat.”
For the second time Farquhar picked him up and deposited him in the
dog-cart; and they drove on together.
Half a mile beyond this the gates of Fanes confronted the road. As the
horse slackened to ascend the hill, the groom jumped down to throw them
open, but when he turned he saw that they were open already, and that
his master’s carriage was vanishing down the slope. He ran after it for
a little way; then with great philosophy relapsed among the bushes and
got out his pipe.
Farquhar drove noiselessly down the smooth yellow drive between
snow-wreathed acacias, past the stream and past the lawn and past the
rookery, till at the turn of the path where it widened to the sweep and
the house came in sight, he again pulled up with a jerk.
In the fresh morning sunshine before the open door stood Dolly, in
her blue frock, calling the pigeons to be fed. They sailed down to
her, blue, and fawn, and white as snow, settling around and upon her,
and she scattered handfuls of grain which glittered like gold. Her
milk-white skin, her chestnut hair, her cornflower dress were bright
and pure in colour as the sunlight itself. One pigeon floated down with
outspread quiet wings and alit on her bare head, and she laughed as she
shook it off: a careless laugh, a free gesture, which brought the blood
to Lucian’s face. Then Farquhar’s hand fell on his arm, and he saw what
he had not seen before, what Dolly, with her back turned, still did not
see: the figure of a young man in a grey suit in the act of leaning a
bicycle against the wall, a bicycle which unkindly refused to stand. He
settled it at last, came noiselessly behind, and slipped his arm round
the curve of her waist.
Dolly turned to him; the watchers saw her colour blossom and the
breaking of light over her beautiful, vivid young face, as her basket
slid down the curve of her drooping arm and spilled her golden store.
“You!” she said. “Back already! I’ve wished ten times an hour I’d
never sent you, Lal.”
Lucian shut his eyes. Farquhar, without a word, dragged the chestnut
round and lashed him till he went flying back up the drive, scattering
pebbles at every step.
XX
SO THEY TWO WENT ON
In the break that followed, both turned and looked after the dog-cart.
Dolly spoke first. “There!” she said, clasping her hands together; “now
it’s done!”
“They had no business to listen,” Lal said. It was his embarrassment
that spoke, but Dolly turned on him in a flash. “Lucian listen? Lucian
would no more listen than you would. They could not help seeing.” Again
she pressed her hands together, and let them drop at her side with a
gesture unconsciously tragic. “I wish it had not happened so, Lal!”
“I don’t wonder you like him; he’s very attractive.”
“I’m so sorry for him!” She lifted her candid eyes. “Because I say
little, never think I don’t feel. Well, it can’t be helped now.” She
turned the basket upside down over the pigeons crowding round her feet,
and brushed the husks from her skirt. “Did you bring them back with
you? Did you know they were coming? Last night’s paper said they were
rescued, no more.”
Lal gave her an evening journal, price three centimes, whose themes
were murder and sudden death and the seventh commandment, all printed
in vile black type upon villanous drab paper. “When I got to Namur I
saw this. I thought it useless to go on,” he said, while Dolly skimmed
through a highly sensational narrative of Farquhar’s heroism and
Lucian’s fortitude. “I actually travelled in the same carriage with De
Saumarez, but I did not recognise him. Last time we met I think he had
not shaved for several days,” he finished, with a smile. Dolly let her
paper drop against her skirt.
“I never should have sent you, Lal; I ought to have known better. I to
think he had hurt Lucian! Oh, I have been a fool. A baby could not be
more harmless than Noel Farquhar when he cares for any one; and he does
care for Lucian. There, I’ve been in the wrong all through. I like him;
I like both of them. This is a hateful affair. I wonder, I do wonder
what they’ll do.”
“I should fancy that Farquhar will console himself within the year,”
said Lal, perversely. “I’m very sorry for De Saumarez.”
“That is sheer prejudice. Lucian is far more likely to get over it
soon than Noel Farquhar. In fact, I don’t believe he ever will get over
it. Well!” She looked away at the golden sky, sighing, her brows drawn
down. “I can’t go to them myself, that’s certain, nor can you. I must
write and explain, I suppose.”
“Dolly,” Lal said, detaining her, “you have never told me which, after
all, you meant to take when you summoned them in that fashion.”
“I dare say you’ll think me a fool,” Dolly said, after a pause. “I
hate vacillating people myself; but the truth is—I could _not_ make
up my mind. I could hardly bear to refuse Lucian; yet Noel Farquhar
fascinated me, I don’t deny it. His is such a strong character, and
he did care for me. Then Lucian was penniless, while Mr. Farquhar was
rich and in a good position; and I’m ambitious, Lal. Besides, Bernard
was continually warning me against him. And I was so completely in love
with you that I did not very much care what I did with myself. You
_did_ trouble me so,” she broke off, her voice softening to a richer
inflection. “You almost broke my heart. I was so proud of you for being
what you are; and to find you in that place! I could have died for
grief; I could have beaten out my eyes for seeing it.”