Lucian arrived at the old vicarage towards the close of the afternoon.
He had driven over from Oakborough through a wintry land, and every
minute spent in the keen air had added to the buoyancy of his spirits.
Never, he thought as he was driven along the valley, did Simonstower
look so well as under its first coating of snow, and on the rising
ground above the village he made his driver stop so that he might drink
in the charm of the winter sunset. At the western extremity of the
valley a shelving hill closed the view; on its highest point a long row
of gaunt fir-trees showed black and spectral against the molten red of
the setting sun and the purpled sky into which it was sinking; nearer,
the blue smoke of the village chimneys curled into the clear, frosty
air--it seemed to Lucian that he could almost smell the fires of
fragrant wood which burned on the hearths. He caught a faint murmur of
voices from the village street: it was four o’clock, and the children
were being released from school. Somewhere along the moorland side a dog
was barking; in the windows of his uncle’s farmhouse, high above the
river and the village, lights were already gleaming; a spark of bright
light amongst the pine and fir trees near the church told him that Mr.
Chilverstone had already lit his study-lamp. Every sound, every sight
was familiar--they brought the old days back to him. And there, keeping
stern watch over the village at its foot, stood the old Norman castle,
its square keep towering to the sky, as massive and formidable as when
Lucian had first looked upon it from his chamber window the morning
after Simpson Pepperdine had brought him to Simonstower.
He bade the man drive on to the vicarage. He had sent no word of his
coming; he had more than once descended upon his friends at Simonstower
without warning, and had always found a welcome. The vicar came bustling
into the hall to him, with no sign of surprise.
‘I did not know they had wired to you, my boy,’ he said, greeting him in
the old affectionate way, ‘but it was good of you to come so quickly.’
Lucian recognised that something had happened.
‘I don’t understand you,’ he said. ‘No one wired to me; I came down on
my own initiative--I wanted to see my uncle on business.’
‘Ah!’ said the vicar, shaking his head. ‘Then you do not know?--your
uncle is ill. He had a stroke--a fit--you know what I mean--this very
morning. Your Aunt Judith is across at the farm now. But come in, my
dear boy--how cold you must be.’
Lucian went out to the conveyance which had brought him over, paid the
driver, and bade him refresh himself at the inn, and then joined the
vicar in his study. There again were the familiar objects which spelled
Home. It suddenly occurred to him that he was much more at home here or
in the farmhouse parlour along the roadside than in his own house in
London, and he wondered in vague, indirect fashion why that should be
so.
‘Is my uncle dangerously ill, then?’ he asked, looking at the vicar, who
was fidgeting about with the fire-irons and repeating his belief that
Lucian must be very cold.
‘I fear so, I fear so,’ answered Mr. Chilverstone. ‘It is, I think, an
apoplectic seizure--he was rather inclined to that, if you come to think
of it. Your aunt has just gone across there. It was early this morning
that it happened, and she has been over to the farm several times during
the day, but this time I think she will find a specialist there--Dr.
Matthews wished for advice and wired to Smokeford for some great man who
was to arrive an hour ago. I am glad you have come, Lucian. Did you see
Sprats before leaving?’
Lucian replied that he had seen Sprats on the previous day. He sat down,
answering the vicar’s questions respecting his daughter in mechanical
fashion--he was thinking of the various events of the past twenty-four
hours, and wondering if Mr. Pepperdine’s illness was likely to result in
death. Mr. Chilverstone turned from Sprats to the somewhat sore question
of the tragedy. It was to him a sad sign of the times that the public
had neglected such truly good work, and he went on to express his own
opinion of the taste of the age. Lucian listened absent-mindedly until
Mrs. Chilverstone returned with news of the sick man. She was much
troubled; the specialist gave little hope of Simpson’s recovery. He
might linger for some days, but it was almost certain that a week would
see the end of him. But in spite of her trouble Aunt Judith was
practical. Keziah, she said, must not be left alone that night, and she
herself was going back to the farm as soon as she had seen that the
vicar was properly provided for in respect of his sustenance and
comfort. Ever since her marriage Mrs. Chilverstone had felt that her
main object in life was the pleasing of her lord; she had put away all
thought of the dead hussar, and her romantic disposition had bridled
itself with the reins of chastened affection. Thus the vicar, who under
Sprats’s _régime_ had neither been pampered nor coddled, found himself
indulged in many modes hitherto unknown to him, and he accepted all that
was showered upon him with modest thankfulness. He thought his wife a
kindly and considerate soul, and did not realise, being a truly simple
man, that Judith was pouring out upon him the resources of a treasury
which she had been stocking all her life. He was the first thing she had
the chance of loving in a practical fashion; hence he began to live
among rose-leaves. He protested now that Lucian and himself wanted for
nothing. Mrs. Chilverstone, however, took the reins in hand, saw that
the traveller was properly attended to and provided for, and did not
leave the vicarage until the two men were comfortably seated at the
dinner-table, the maids admonished as to lighting a fire in Mr.
Damerel’s room, and the vicar warned of the necessity of turning out
the lamps and locking the doors. Then she returned to her brother’s
house, and for an hour or two Lucian and his old tutor talked of things
nearest to their hearts, and the feelings of home came upon the younger
man more strongly than ever. He began to wonder how it was that he had
settled down in London when he might have lived in the country; the
atmosphere of this quiet, book-lined room in a village parsonage was, he
thought just then, much more to his true taste than that in which he had
spent the last few years of his life. At Oxford Lucian had lived the
life of a book-worm and a dreamer: he was not a success in examinations,
and he brought no great honour upon his tutor. In most respects he had
lived apart from other men, and it was not until the publication of his
first volume had drawn the eyes of the world upon him that he had been
swept out of the peaceful backwater of a student’s existence into the
swirling tides of the full river of life. Then had followed Lord
Simonstower’s legacy, and then the runaway marriage with Haidee, and
then four years of butterfly existence. He began to wonder, as he ate
the vicar’s well-kept mutton, fed on the moorlands close by, and sipped
the vicar’s old claret, laid down many a year before, whether his recent
life had not been a feverish dream. Looked at from this peaceful
retreat, its constant excitement and perpetual rush and movement seemed
to have lost whatever charm they once had for him. Unconsciously Lucian
was suffering from reaction: his moral as well as his physical nature
was crying for rest, and the first oasis in the desert assumed the
delightful colours and soft air of Paradise.
Later in the evening he walked over to the farmhouse, through softly
falling snow, to inquire after his uncle’s condition. Mrs. Chilverstone
was in the sick man’s room and did not come downstairs; Miss Pepperdine
received him in the parlour. In spite of the trouble that had fallen
upon the house and of the busy day which she had spent, Keziah was robed
in state for the evening, and she sat bolt upright in her chair plying
her knitting-needles as vigorously as in the old days which Lucian
remembered so well. He sat down and glanced at Simpson Pepperdine’s
chair, and wished the familiar figure were occupying it, and he talked
to his aunt of her brother’s illness, and the cloud which hung over the
house weighed heavily upon both.
‘I am glad you came down, Lucian,’ said Miss Pepperdine, after a time.
‘I have been wanting to talk to you.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘What about?’
Keziah’s needles clicked with unusual vigour for a moment or two.
‘Simpson,’ she said at last, ‘was always a soft-hearted man. If he had
been harder of heart, he would have been better off.’
Lucian, puzzled by this ambiguous remark, stared at Miss Pepperdine in a
fashion indicative of his amazement.
‘I think,’ continued Miss Pepperdine, with pointed emphasis, ‘I think it
is time you knew more than you know at present, Lucian. When all is said
and done, you are the nearest of kin in the male line, and after hearing
the doctors to-night I’m prepared for Simpson’s death at any moment.
It’s a very bad attack of apoplexy--if he lived he’d be a poor invalid
all his life. Better that he should be taken while in the full
possession of his faculties.’
Lucian gazed at the upright figure before him with mingled feelings.
Miss Pepperdine used to sit like that, and knit like that, and talk like
that, in the old days--especially when she felt it to be her duty to
reprimand him for some offence. So far as he could tell, she was wearing
the same stiff and crackly silk gown, she held her elbows close to her
side and in just the same fashion, she spoke with the same precision as
in the time of Lucian’s youth. The sight of her prim figure, the sound
of her precise voice, blotted out half a score of years: Lucian felt
very young again.
‘It may not be so bad as you think,’ he said. ‘Even the best doctors may
err.’
Miss Pepperdine shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s all over with Simpson. And I think you ought to
know, Lucian, how things are with him. Simpson has been a close man, he
has kept things to himself all his life; and of late he has been obliged
to confide in me, and I know a great deal that I did not know.’
‘Yes?’ said Lucian.
‘Simpson,’ she continued, ‘has not done well in business for some time.
He had a heavy loss some years ago through a rascally lawyer whom he
trusted--he always was one of those easy-going men that will trust
anybody--and although the old Lord Simonstower helped him out of the
difficulty, it ultimately fell on his own shoulders, and of late he has
had hard work to keep things going. Simpson will die a poor man. Not
that that matters--Judith and myself are provided for. I shall leave
here, afterwards. Judith, of course, is married. But as regards you,
Lucian, you lent Simpson some money a few months ago, didn’t you?’
‘My dear aunt!’ exclaimed Lucian, ‘I----’
‘I know all about it,’ she said, ‘though it’s only recently that I have
known. Well, you mustn’t be surprised if you have to lose it, Lucian.
When all is settled up, I don’t think there will be much, if anything,
over; and of course everybody must be paid before a member of the
family. The Pepperdines have always had their pride, and as your mother
was a Pepperdine, Lucian, you must have a share of it in you.’
‘I have my father’s pride as well,’ answered Lucian. ‘Of course I shall
not expect the money. I was glad to be able to lend it.’
‘Well,’ said Miss Pepperdine, with the air of one who deals out justice
impartially, ‘in one way you were only paying Simpson back for what he
had laid out on you. He spent a good deal of money on you, Lucian, when
you were a boy.’
Lucian heard this news with astonished feelings.
‘I did not know that,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I am careless about these
things, but I have always thought that my father left money for me.’
‘I thought so too, until recently,’ replied Miss Pepperdine. ‘Your
father thought that he did, too, and he made Simpson executor and
trustee. But the money was badly invested. It was in a building society
in Rome, and it was all lost. There was never a penny piece from it,
from the time of your father’s death to this.’
Lucian listened in silence.
‘Then,’ he said, after a time, ‘my uncle was responsible for everything
for me? I suppose he paid Mr. Chilverstone, and bought my clothes, and
gave me pocket-money, and so on?’
‘Every penny,’ replied his aunt. ‘Simpson was always a generous man.’
‘And my three years at Oxford?’ he said inquiringly.
‘Ah!’ replied Miss Pepperdine, ‘that’s another matter. Well--I don’t
suppose it matters now that you should know, though Simpson wouldn’t
have told you, but I think you ought to know. That was Lord
Simonstower--the old lord. He paid every penny.’
Lucian uttered a sharp exclamation. He rose from his chair and took a
step or two about the room. Miss Pepperdine continued to knit with
undiminished vigour.
‘So it would seem,’ he said presently, ‘that I lived and was educated on
charity?’
‘That is how most people would put it,’ she answered, ‘though, to do
them justice, I don’t think either Lord Simonstower or Simpson
Pepperdine would have called it that. They thought you a promising youth
and they put money into you. That’s why I want you to feel that Simpson
was only getting back a little of his own in the money that you lent
him, though I know he would have paid it back to the day, according to
his promise, if he’d been able. But I’m afraid that he would not have
been able, and I think his money affairs have worked upon him.’
‘I wish I had known,’ said Lucian. ‘He should have had no anxiety on my
account.’
He continued to pace the floor; Miss Pepperdine’s needles clicked an
accompaniment to his advancing and retreating steps.
‘I thought it best,’ she observed presently, ‘that you should know all
these things--they will explain a good deal.’
‘Yes,’ he answered, ‘it is best. I should know. But I wish I had known
long ago. After all, a man should not be placed in a false position even
by his dearest friends. I ought to have been told the truth.’
Miss Pepperdine’s needles clicked viciously.
‘So I always felt--after I knew, and that is but recently,’ she
answered. ‘But, as I have said to you before, Simpson Pepperdine is a
soft-hearted man.’
‘He has been a kind-hearted man,’ said Lucian. He was thinking, as he
walked about the room, glancing at the well-remembered objects, that the
money which he had wasted in luxuries that he could well have done
without would have relieved Mr. Pepperdine of anxiety and trouble. And
yet he had never known, never guessed, that the kindly-hearted farmer
had anything to distress him.
‘I think we all seem to walk in darkness,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘I
never had the least notion of this. Had I known anything of it, Uncle
Simpson should have had all that I could give him.’
Miss Pepperdine melted. She had formed rather hard thoughts of Lucian
since his marriage. The side-winds which blew upon her ears from time to
time represented him as living in a style which her old-fashioned mind
did not approve: she had come to consider him as extravagant, frivolous,
and unbalanced. But she was a woman of sound common sense and great
shrewdness, and she recognised the genuine ring in Lucian’s voice and
the sincerity of his regret that he had not been able to save Simpson
Pepperdine some anxiety.
‘I’m sure you would, my boy,’ she said kindly. ‘However, Simpson has
done with everything now. I didn’t tell Judith, because she frets so,
but the doctors don’t think he’ll ever regain consciousness--it will
only be a matter of a few days, Lucian.’
‘And that only makes one wish that one had known of his anxieties
sooner,’ he said. ‘Five years ago I could have helped him
substantially.’
He was thinking of the ten thousand pounds which had already
disappeared. Miss Pepperdine did not follow his line of thought.
‘Yes, I’ve heard that you’ve made a lot of money,’ she said. ‘You’ve
been one of the lucky ones, Lucian, for I always understood that poets
generally lived in garrets and were half-starved most of their time. I’m
sure one used to read all that sort of thing in books; but perhaps times
have changed, and so much the better. Simpson always read your books as
soon as you sent them. Upon my word, I’m sure he never understood what
it was all about, except perhaps some of the songs and ballads, but he
liked the long words, and he was very proud of these little green
books--they’re all in his bureau there, along with his account-books.
Well, as I was saying, I understand you’ve made money, Lucian. Take care
of it, my boy, for you never know when you may want it, and want it
badly, in this world. There’s one thing I want you to promise me. I
don’t yet know how things will be when Simpson’s gone, but if he is a
bit on the wrong side of the ledger, it must be made up by the family,
and you must do your share. It mustn’t be said that a Pepperdine died
owing money that he couldn’t pay. I’ve already talked it over with
Judith, and if there is money to be found, she and I and you must find
it between us. If need be, all mine can go,’ she added sharply. ‘I can
get a place as a housekeeper even at my age.’
Lucian gave her his promise readily enough, and immediately began to
wonder what it might imply. But he agreed with her reasoning, and
assured himself that, if necessary, he would live on a crust in order to
carry out her wishes. And soon afterwards he set out for the vicarage,
promising to return for news of Mr. Pepperdine’s condition at an early
hour in the morning.
As he walked back over the snow Lucian was full of thought. The
conversation with Miss Pepperdine had opened a new world to him. He had
always believed himself independent: it now turned out that for years
and years he had lived at other men’s charges. He owed his very food to
the charity of a relative; another man, upon whom he had no claim, had
lavished generosity upon him in no unstinted fashion. He was full of
honest gratitude to these men, but he wished at the same time that he
had known of their liberality sooner. He felt that he had been placed in
a false position, and the feeling lowered him in his own estimation. He
thought of his father, who earned money easily and spent it freely, and
realised that he had inherited his happy-go-lucky temperament. Yet he
had never doubted that his father had made provision for him, for he
remembered hearing him tell some artist friends one afternoon in
Florence that he had laid money aside for Lucian’s benefit, and Cyprian
Damerel had been a man of common sense, fond of pleasure and good living
and generous though he was. But Lucian well understood the story of the
Roman building society--greater folk than he, from the Holy Father
downwards, had lost money out of that feverish desire to build which has
characterised the Romans of all ages. No doubt his father had been
carried away by some wave of enthusiasm, and had put all his eggs into
one basket, and they had all been broken together. Still, Lucian wished
that Mr. Pepperdine had told him all this on his reaching an age of
understanding--it would have made a difference in many ways. ‘I seem,’
he thought, as he plodded on through the snow, ‘I seem to have lived in
an unreal world, and to have supposed things which were not!’ And he
began to recall the days of sure and confident youth, when his name was
being extolled as that of a newly risen star in the literary firmament,
and his own heart was singing with the joy of pride and strength and
full assurance. He had never felt one doubt of the splendour of his
career, never accepted it as anything but his just due. His very
certainty on these matters had, all unknown to himself, induced in him
an unassuming modesty, at which many people who witnessed his triumphs
and saw him lionised had wondered. Now, however, he had tasted the
bitterness of reverse; he had found that Fortune can frown as easily as
she can smile, and that it is hard to know upon what principle her
smiles and frowns are portioned out. To a certain point, life for Lucian
had been a perpetual dancing along the primrose way--it was now
developing into a tangle wherein were thorns and briars.
He was too full of these thoughts to care for conversation, even with
his old tutor, and he pleaded fatigue and went to bed. He lay awake for
the greater part of the night, thinking over his talk with Miss
Pepperdine, and endeavouring to arrange his affairs so that he might
make good his promise to her, and when he slept, his sleep was troubled
by uneasy dreams. He woke rather late in the morning with a feeling of
impending calamity hanging heavily upon him. As he dressed, Mr.
Chilverstone came tapping at his door--something in the sound warned
Lucian of bad news. He was not surprised when the vicar told him that
Simpson Pepperdine had died during the night.
He walked over to the farm as soon as he had breakfasted, and remained
there until noon. Coming back, he overtook the village postman, who
informed him that the letters were three hours late that morning in
consequence of the heavy fall of snow, which had choked up the roads
between Simonstower and Oakborough.
‘It’ll be late afternoon afore I’ve finished my rounds,’ he added, with
a strong note of self-pity. ‘If you’re going up to the vicarage, sir, it
’ud save me a step if you took the vicar’s letters--and there’s one, I
believe, for yourself.’
Lucian took the bundle of letters which the man held out to him, and
turned it over until he found his own. He wondered why Haidee had
written to him--she had no great liking for correspondence, and he had
not expected to hear from her during his absence. He opened the letter
in the vicar’s study, without the least expectation of finding any
particular news in it.
It was a very short letter, and, considering the character of the
intimation it was intended to make, the phrasing was commendably plain
and outspoken. Lucian’s wife merely announced that his plans for the
future were not agreeable to her, and that she was leaving home with the
intention of joining Eustace Darlington in Paris. She further added that
it was useless to keep up pretences any longer; she had already been
unfaithful, and she would be glad if Lucian would arrange to divorce her
as quickly as possible, so that she and Darlington might marry. Either
as an afterthought, or out of sheer good will, she concluded with a
lightly worded expression of friendship and of hope that Lucian might
have better luck next time.
It is more than probable that Haidee was never quite so much her true
self in her relation to Lucian as when writing this letter. It is
permitted to every woman, whatever her mental and moral quality, to have
her ten minutes of unreasoning romance at some period of her life, and
Haidee had hers when she and Lucian fell in love with each other’s
beauty and ran away to hide themselves from the world while they played
out their little comedy. It was natural that they should tire of each
other within the usual time; but the man’s sense of duty was developed
in Lucian in a somewhat exceptional way, and he was inclined to settle
down to a Darby and Joan life. Haidee had little of that particular
instinct. She was all for pleasure and the glory of this world, and
there is small wonder that the prospect of exile in a land for which she
had no great liking should have driven her to the salvation of her
diamonds and herself by recourse to the man whom she ought to have
married instead of Lucian. There was already a guilty bond between them;
it seemed natural to Haidee to look to it as a means of drawing her away
from the dangers which threatened her worldly comfort. It was equally
natural to her to announce all these things to Lucian in pretty much the
same terms that she would have employed had she been declining an
invitation to some social engagement.
Lucian read the letter three times. He gave no sign of whatever emotion
it called up. All that he did was to announce in quiet, matter-of-fact
tones that he must return to London that afternoon, and to beg the loan
of the vicar’s horse and trap as far as Wellsby station. After that he
lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Chilverstone, and if they thought him
unusually quiet, there was good reason for that in the fact that Simpson
Pepperdine was lying dead in the old farmhouse behind the pine groves.