It followed as a matter of inevitable consequence that Lucian and Sprats
when they emerged from the waters of the wayside ditch had become fast
friends for life; from that time forward they were as David and
Jonathan, loving much, and having full confidence in each other. They
became inseparable, and their lives were spent together from an early
hour of the morning until the necessary bedtime. The vicar was to a
certain degree shelved: his daughter possessed the charm of youth and
high spirits which was wanting in him. He became a species of elder
brother, who was useful in teaching one things and good company on
occasions. He, like the philosopher which life had made him, accepted
the situation. He saw that the devotion which Lucian had been about to
pour out at his own feet had by a sudden whim of fate been diverted to
his daughter, and he smiled. He took from these two children all that
they gave him, and was sometimes gorged to satiety and sometimes kept on
short commons, according to their vagaries and moods. Like all young and
healthy things, they believed that the world had been made for their own
particular benefit, and they absorbed it. Perhaps there had never been
such a close companionship as that which sprang up between these two.
The trifling fact that one was a boy and the other a girl never seemed
to strike them: they were sexless and savage in their freedom. Under
Sprats’s fostering care Lucian developed a new side of his character:
she taught him to play cricket and football, to climb trees and
precipices, to fish and to ride, and to be an out-of-door boy in every
way. He, on his part, repaid her by filling her mind with much of his
own learning: she became as familiar with the scenes of his childhood as
if she had lived in them herself.
For three years the vicar, Sprats, and Lucian lived in a world of their
own, with the Pepperdines as a closely fitting environment. Miss
Pepperdine was accustomed to remark that she did not know whether Lucian
really lived at the farm or at the vicarage, but as the vicar often made
a similar observation with respect to his daughter, things appeared to
be equalised. It was true that the two children treated the houses with
equal freedom. If they happened to be at the farm about dinner-time they
dined there, but the vicarage would have served them equally well if it
had harboured them when the luncheon-bell rang. Mr. Pepperdine was
greatly delighted when he found them filling a side of his board: their
remarks on things in general, their debates, disputes, and more than
all, their quarrels, afforded him much amusement. They were not so well
understood by Miss Pepperdine, who considered the young lady from the
vicarage to be something of a hoyden, and thought it the vicar’s duty to
marry again and provide his offspring with a mother.
‘And a pretty time she’d have!’ remarked Mr. Pepperdine, to whom this
sage reflection was offered. ‘A nice handful for anybody, is that young
Sprats--as full of mischief as an egg is full of meat. But a good ge’l,
a good ge’l, Keziah, and with a warm heart, you make no mistake.’
Sprats’s kindness of heart, indeed, was famous throughout the village.
She was her father’s almoner, and tempered charity with discrimination
in a way that would have done credit to a professional philanthropist.
She made periodical visits through the village, followed by Lucian, who
meekly carried a large basket containing toothsome and seasonable doles,
which were handed out to this or that old woman in accordance with
Sprats’s instructions. The instinct of mothering something was strong
within her. From the moment of her return from school she had taken her
father in hand and had shaken him up and pulled him together. He had
contracted bad habits as regards food and was becoming dyspeptic; he
was careless about his personal comfort and neglectful of his
health--Sprats dragooned him into the paths of rectitude. But she
extended her mothering instincts to Lucian even more than to her father.
She treated him at times as if he were a child with whom it was
unnecessary to reason; there was always an affectionate solicitude in
her attitude towards him which was, perhaps, most marked when she
bullied him into subjection. Once when he was ill and confined to his
room for a week or two she took up her quarters at the farm, summarily
dismissed Keziah and Judith from attendance on the invalid, and nursed
him back to convalescence. It was useless to argue with her on these
occasions. Sprats, as Boggles had truly said, was not one to be denied
of anything, and every year made it more manifest that when she had
picked Lucian up in the turnip-field and had fallen headlong into the
ditch with him, it had been a figure of her future interest in his
welfare.
It was in the fourth summer of Lucian’s residence at Simonstower, and he
was fifteen and Sprats nearly two years older, when the serpent stole
into their Paradise. Until the serpent came all had gone well with them.
Sprats was growing a fine girl; she was more rudely healthy than ever,
and just as sunburned; her freckles had increased rather than decreased;
her hair, which was growing deeper in colour, was a perpetual nuisance
to her. She had grown a little quieter in manner, but would break out at
times; the mere fact that she wore longer skirts did not prevent her
from climbing trees or playing cricket. And she and Lucian were still
hand-in-glove, still David and Jonathan; she had no friends of her own
sex, and he none of his; each was in a happy state of perfect content.
But the stage of absolute perfection is by no means assured even in the
Arcadia of childhood--it may endure for a time, but sooner or later it
must be broken in upon, and not seldom in a rudely sudden way.
The breaking up of the old things began one Sunday morning in summer,
in the cool shade of the ancient church. Nothing heralded the momentous
event; everything was as placid as it always was. Lucian, sitting in the
pew sacred to the family of Pepperdine, looked about him and saw just
what he saw every Sunday. Mr. Pepperdine was at the end of the pew in
his best clothes; Miss Pepperdine was gorgeous in black silk and bugles;
Miss Judith looked very handsome in her pearl-grey. In the vicarage pew,
all alone, sat Sprats in solemn state. Her freckled face shone with much
polishing; her sailor hat was quite straight; as for the rest of her,
she was clothed in a simple blouse and a plain skirt, and there were no
tears in either. All the rest was as usual. The vicar’s surplice had
been newly washed, and Sprats had mended a bit of his hood, which had
become frayed by hanging on a nail in the vestry, but otherwise he
presented no different appearance to that which always characterised
him. There were the same faces, and the same expressions upon them, in
every pew, and that surely was the same bee that always buzzed while
they waited for the service to begin, and the three bells in the tower
droned out. ‘_Come_ to church--_come_ to church--_come_ to church!’
It was at this very moment that the serpent stole into Paradise. The
vicar had broken the silence with ‘When the wicked man turneth away from
his wickedness,’ and everybody had begun to rustle the leaves of their
prayer-books, when the side-door of the chancel opened and the Earl of
Simonstower, very tall, and very gaunt, and very irascible in
appearance, entered in advance of two ladies, whom he marshalled to the
castle pew with as much grace and dignity as his gout would allow.
Lucian and Sprats, with a wink to each other which no one else
perceived, examined the earl’s companions during the recitation of the
General Confession, looking through the slits of their hypocritical
fingers. The elder lady appeared to be a woman of fashion: she was
dressed in a style not often seen at Simonstower, and her attire, her
lorgnette, her vinaigrette, her fan, and her airs and graces formed a
delightful contrast to the demeanour of the old earl, who was famous for
the rustiness of his garments, and stuck like a leech to the fashion of
the ‘forties.’
But it was neither earl nor simpering madam at which Lucian gazed at
surreptitious moments during the rest of the service. The second of the
ladies to enter into the pew of the great house was a girl of sixteen,
ravishingly pretty, and gay as a peacock in female flaunts and fineries
which dazzled Lucian’s eyes. She was dark, and her eyes were shaded by
exceptionally long lashes which swept a creamy cheek whereon there
appeared the bloom of the peach, fresh, original, bewitching; her hair,
curling over her shoulders from beneath a white sun-bonnet, artfully
designed to communicate an air of innocence to its wearer, was of the
same blue-black hue that distinguished Lucian’s own curls. It chanced
that the boy had just read some extracts from _Don Juan_: it seemed to
him that here was Haidee in the very flesh. A remarkably strange
sensation suddenly developed in the near region of his heart--Lucian for
the first time in his life had fallen in love. He felt sick and queer
and almost stifled; Miss Pepperdine noticed a drawn expression on his
face, and passed him a mint lozenge. He put it in his mouth--something
nearly choked him, but he had a vague suspicion that the lozenge had
nothing to do with it.
Mr. Chilverstone had a trick of being long-winded if he found a text
that appealed to him, and when Lucian heard the subject of that
morning’s discourse he feared that the congregation was in for a sermon
of at least half an hour’s duration. The presence of the Earl of
Simonstower, however, kept the vicar within reasonable bounds, and
Lucian was devoutly thankful. He had never wished for anything so much
in all his life as he then wished to be out of church and safely hidden
in the vicarage, where he always lunched on Sunday, or in some corner of
the woods. For the girl in the earl’s pew was discomposing, not merely
because of her prettiness but because she would stare at him, Lucian.
He, temperamentally shy where women were concerned, had only dared to
look at her now and then; she, on the contrary, having once seen him
looked at nothing else. He knew that she was staring at him all through
the sermon. He grew hot and uncomfortable and wriggled, and Miss Judith
increased his confusion by asking him if he were not quite well. It was
with a great sense of relief that he heard Mr. Chilverstone wind up his
sermon and begin the Ascription--he felt that he could not stand the
fire of the girl’s eyes any longer.
He joined Sprats in the porch and seemed in a great hurry to retreat
upon the vicarage. Sprats, however, had other views--she wanted to speak
to various old women and to Miss Pepperdine, and Lucian had to remain
with her. Fate was cruel--the earl, for some mad reason or other,
brought his visitors down the church instead of taking them out by the
chancel door; consequently Haidee passed close by Lucian. He looked at
her; she raised demure eyelids and looked at him. The soul within him
became as water--he was lost. He seemed to float into space; his head
burned, his heart turned icy-cold, and he shut his eyes, or thought he
did. When he opened them again the girl, a dainty dream of white, was
vanishing, and Sprats and Miss Judith were asking him if he didn’t feel
well. New-born love fostered dissimulation: he complained of a sick
headache. The maternal instinct was immediately aroused in Sprats: she
conducted him homewards, stretched him on a comfortable sofa in a
darkened room, and bathed his forehead with eau-de-cologne. Her care and
attention were pleasant, but Lucian’s thoughts were of the girl whose
eyes had smitten him to the heart.
The sick headache formed an excellent cloak for the shortcomings of the
afternoon and evening. He recovered sufficiently to eat some lunch, and
he afterwards lay on a rug in the garden and was tended by the faithful
Sprats with a fan and more eau-de-cologne. He kept his eyes shut most of
the time, and thought of Haidee. Her name, he said to himself, must be
Haidee--no other name would fit her eyes, her hair, and her red lips. He
trembled when he thought of her lips; Sprats noticed it, and wondered if
he was going to have rheumatic fever or ague. She fetched a clinical
thermometer out of the house and took his temperature. It was quite
normal, and she was reassured, but still a little puzzled. When tea-time
came she brought his tea and her own out into the garden--she observed
that he ate languidly, and only asked twice for strawberries. She
refused to allow him to go to church in the evening, and conducted him
to the farm herself. On the way, talking of the events of the day, she
asked him if he had noticed the stuck-up doll in the earl’s pew. Lucian
dissembled, and replied in an indifferent tone--it appeared from his
reply that he had chiefly observed the elder lady, and had wondered who
she was. Sprats was able to inform him upon this point--she was a Mrs.
Brinklow, a connection, cousin, half-cousin, or something, of Lord
Simonstower’s, and the girl was her daughter, and her name was Haidee.
Lucian knew it--it was Fate, it was Destiny. He had had dreams that some
such mate as this was reserved for him in the Pandora’s box which was
now being opened to him. Haidee! He nearly choked with emotion, and
Sprats became certain that he was suffering from indigestion. She had
private conversation with Miss Pepperdine at the farm on the subject of
Lucian’s indisposition, with the result that a cooling draught was
administered to him and immediate bed insisted upon. He retired with
meek resignation; as a matter of fact solitude was attractive--he wanted
to think of Haidee.
In the silent watches of the night--disturbed but twice, once by Miss
Pepperdine with more medicine, and once by Miss Judith with nothing but
solicitude--he realised the entire situation. Haidee had dawned upon
him, and the Thing was begun which made all poets mighty. He would be
miserable, but he would be great. She was a high-born maiden, who sat in
the pews of earls, and he was--he was not exactly sure what he was. She
would doubtless look upon him with scorn: well, he would make the world
ring with his name and fame; he would die in a cloud of glory, fighting
for some oppressed nation, as Byron did, and then she would be sorry,
and possibly weep for him. By eleven o’clock he felt as if he had been
in love all his life; by midnight he was asleep and dreaming that Haidee
was locked up in a castle on the Rhine, and that he had sworn to release
her and carry her away to liberty and love. He woke early next morning,
and wrote some verses in the metre and style of my Lord Byron’s famous
address to a maiden of Athens; by breakfast-time he knew them by heart.
It was all in accordance with the decrees of Fate that Lucian and Haidee
were quickly brought into each other’s company. Two days after the
interchange of glances in the church porch the boy rushed into the
dining-room at the vicarage one afternoon, and found himself confronted
by a group of persons, of whom he for the first bewildering moment
recognised but one. When he realised that the earth was not going to
open and swallow him, and that he could not escape without shame, he saw
that the Earl of Simonstower, Mrs. Brinklow, Mr. Chilverstone, and
Sprats were in the room as well as Haidee. It was fortunate that Mrs.
Brinklow, who had an eye for masculine beauty and admired pretty boys,
took a great fancy to him, and immediately began to pet him in a manner
which he bitterly resented. That cooled him, and gave him
self-possession. He contrived to extricate himself from her caresses
with dignity, and replied to the questions which the earl put to him
about his studies with modesty and courage. Sprats conducted Haidee to
the garden to inspect her collection of animals; Lucian went with them,
and became painfully aware that for every glance which he and Haidee
bestowed on rabbits, white mice, piebald rats, and guinea-pigs, they
gave two to each other. Each glance acted like an electric thrill--it
seemed to Lucian that she was the very spirit of love, made flesh for
him to worship. Sprats, however, had an opinion of Miss Brinklow which
was diametrically opposed to his own, and she expressed it with great
freedom. On any other occasion he would have quarrelled with her: the
shame and modesty of love kept him silent; he dared not defend his lady
against one of her own sex.
It was in the economy of Lucian’s dream that he and Haidee were to be
separated by cruel and inexorable Fate: Haidee, however, had no
intention of permitting Fate or anything else to rob her of her just
dues. On the afternoon of the very next day Lord Simonstower sent for
Lucian to read an Italian magazine to him; Haidee, whose mother loved
long siestas on summer days, and was naturally inclined to let her
daughter manage her own affairs, contrived to waylay the boy with the
beautiful eyes as he left the Castle, and as pretty a piece of comedy
ensued as one could wish to see. They met again, and then they met in
secret, and Lucian became bold and Haidee alluring, and the woods by the
river, and the ruins in the Castle, might have whispered of romantic
scenes. And at last Lucian could keep his secret no longer, and there
came a day when he poured into Sprats’s surprised and sisterly ear the
momentous tidings that he and Haidee had plighted their troth for ever
and a day, and loved more madly and despairingly than lovers ever had
loved since Leander swam to Hero across the Hellespont.