When Lucian went back to town Haidee was winding up a short round of
visits in the North; she rejoined him a week later in high spirits and
excellent health. Everything had been delightful; everybody had been
nice to her; no end of people had talked about Lucian and his new
play--she was dreaming already of the glories of the first night and of
the radiance which would centre about herself as the wife of the
brilliant young author. Lucian had returned from Norway in equally good
health and spirits; he was confident about the tragedy and the epic: he
and his wife therefore settled down to confront an immediate prospect of
success and pleasure. Haidee resumed her usual round of social gaieties;
Lucian was much busied with rehearsals at the theatre and long
discussions with Harcourt; neither had a care nor an anxiety, and the
wheels of their little world moved smoothly.
Saxonstowe, who had come back to town for a few weeks before going
abroad again, took to calling a good deal at the little house in
Mayfair. He had come to understand and to like Lucian, and though they
were as dissimilar in character as men of different temperament can
possibly be, a curious bond of friendship, expressed in tacit
acquiescence rather than in open avowal, sprang up between them. Each
had a respect for the other’s world--a respect which was amusing to
Sprats, who, watching them closely, knew that each admired the other in
a somewhat sheepish, schoolboy fashion. Lucian, being the less reserved
of the two, made no secret of his admiration of the man who had done
things the doing of which necessitated bravery, endurance, and
self-denial. He was a fervent worshipper--almost to a pathetic
extreme--of men of action: the sight of soldiers marching made his toes
tingle and his eyes fill with the moisture of enthusiasm; he had been so
fascinated by the mere sight of a great Arctic explorer that he had
followed him from one town to another during a lecturing tour, simply to
stare at him and conjure up for himself the scenes and adventures
through which the man had passed. He delighted in hearing Saxonstowe
talk about his life in the deserts, and enjoyed it all the more because
Saxonstowe had small gift of language and told his tale with the blushes
of a schoolboy who hates making a fuss about anything that he has done.
Saxonstowe, on his part, had a sneaking liking, amounting almost to
worship, for men who live in a world of dreams--he had no desire to live
in such a world himself, but he cherished an immense respect for men
who, like Lucian, could create. Sometimes he would read a page of the
new epic and wonder how on earth it all came into Lucian’s head; Lucian
at the same moment was probably turning over the leaves of Saxonstowe’s
book and wondering how a man could go through all that that laconic
young gentleman had gone through and yet come back with a stiff upper
lip and a smile.
‘You and Lucian Damerel appear to have become something of friends,’
Lady Firmanence remarked to her nephew when he called upon her one day.
‘I don’t know that there’s much in common between you.’
‘Perhaps that is why we are friends,’ said Saxonstowe. ‘You generally do
get on with people who are a bit different to yourself, don’t you?’
Lady Firmanence made no direct answer to this question.
‘I’ve no doubt Lucian is easy enough to get on with,’ she said dryly.
‘The mischief in him, Saxonstowe, is that he’s too easy-going about
everything. I suppose you know, as you’re a sort of friend of the
family, that a good deal is being said about Mrs. Damerel and Eustace
Darlington?’
‘No,’ said Saxonstowe; ‘I’m not in the way to hear that sort of thing.’
‘I don’t know that you’re any the better for being out of the way. I am
in the way. There’s a good deal being said,’ Lady Firmanence retorted
with some asperity. ‘I believe some of you young men think it a positive
crime to listen to the smallest scrap of gossip--it’s nothing of the
sort. If you live in the world you must learn all you can about the
people who make up the world.’
Saxonstowe nodded. His eyes fixed themselves on a toy dog which snored
and snuffled at Lady Firmanence’s feet.
‘And in this particular case?’ he said.
‘Why was Lucian Damerel so foolish as to go off in one direction while
his wife went in another with the man she originally meant to marry?’
inquired Lady Firmanence. ‘Come now, Saxonstowe, would you have done
that?’
‘No,’ he said hesitatingly, ‘I don’t think I should; but then, you see,
Damerel looks at things differently. I don’t think he would ever give
the foolishness of it a thought, and he would certainly think no
evil--he’s as guileless as a child.’
‘Well,’ remarked Lady Firmanence, ‘I don’t admire him any the more for
that. I’m a bit out of love with grown-up children. If Lucian Damerel
marries a wife he should take care of her. Why, she was three weeks on
Darlington’s yacht, and three weeks at his place in Scotland (of course
there were lots of other people there too, but even then it was
foolish), and he was with her at two or three country houses in
Northumberland later on--I met them at one myself.’
‘Lucian and his wife,’ said Saxonstowe, ‘are very fond of having their
own way.’
Lady Firmanence looked at her nephew out of her eye-corners.
‘Oh!’ she said, with a caustic irony, ‘you think so, do you? Well, you
know, young people who like to have their own way generally come to
grief. To my mind, your new friends seem to be qualifying for trouble.’
Saxonstowe studied the pattern of the carpet and traced bits of it out
with his stick.
‘Do you think men like Damerel have the power of reckoning things up?’
he said, suddenly looking at his aunt with a quick, appealing glance. ‘I
don’t quite understand these things, but he always seems to me to be a
bit impatient of anything that has to do with everyday life, and yet
he’s keen enough about it in one way. He’s a real good chap, you
know--kindly natured and open-hearted and all that. You soon find that
in him. And I don’t believe he ever had a wrong thought of anybody--he’s
a sort of confiding trust in other people that’s a bit amusing, even to
me, and I haven’t seen such an awful lot of the world. But----’ He came
to a sudden pause and shook his head. Lady Firmanence laughed.
‘Yes, but,’ she repeated. ‘That “but” makes all the difference. But this
is Lucian Damerel--he is a child who sits in a gaily caparisoned,
comfortably appointed boat which has been launched on a wide river that
runs through a mighty valley. He has neither sail nor rudder, and he is
so intent on the beauty of the scenery through which he is swept that he
does not recognise their necessity. His eyes are fixed on the
rose-flushed peak of a far-off mountain, the glitter of the sunshine on
a dancing wave, or on the basket of provisions which thoughtful hands
have put in the boat. It may be that the boat will glide to its
destination in safety, and land him on the edge of a field of velvety
grass wherein he can lie down in peace to dream as long as he pleases.
But it also may be that it will run on a rock in mid-stream and knock
his fool’s paradise into a cocked hat--and what’s going to happen then?’
asked Lady Firmanence.
‘Lots of things might happen,’ said Saxonstowe, smiling triumphantly at
the thought of beating his clever relative at her own game. ‘He might be
able to swim, for example. He might right the boat, get into it again,
and learn by experience that one shouldn’t go fooling about without a
rudder. Some other chap might come along and give him a hand. Or the
river might be so shallow that he could walk ashore with no more
discomfort than he would get from wet feet.’
Lady Firmanence pursed her lips and regarded her nephew with a fixed
stare which lasted until the smile died out of his face.
‘Or there might be a crocodile, or an alligator, at hand, which he could
saddle and bridle, and convert into a park hack,’ she said. ‘There are
indeed many things which might happen; what I’m chiefly concerned about
is, what would happen if Lucian’s little boat did upset? I confess that
I should know Lucian Damerel much more thoroughly, and have a more
accurate conception of him, if I knew exactly what he would say and do
when the upsetting happened. There is no moment in life, Saxonstowe,
wherein a man’s real self, real character, real quality, is so severely
tested and laid bare as that unexpected one in which Fortune seizes him
by the scruff of his neck and bundles him into the horsepond of
adversity--it’s what he says and does when he comes up spluttering that
stamps him as a man or a mouse.’
Saxonstowe felt tolerably certain of what any man would say under the
circumstances alluded to by Lady Firmanence, but as she seemed highly
delighted with her similes and her epigrams, he said nothing of his
convictions, and soon afterwards took his departure.