II
HE THAT SHOWED MERCY ON HIM
Ten minutes later a train passed southwards across the arch. It had discharged passengers at the station, and among them one who soon came driving down the lane in a high dog-cart fitted with pneumatic tyres, acetylene lamps, and a correct groom sitting up behind. As it turned the corner the horse, a handsome chestnut signally well groomed, shied violently at John Smith’s prostrate figure, and was promptly checked by the driver, who had him well in hand. He looked back over his shoulder. “What’s that, Simpson?”
“Drunken man, sir,” said the correct groom, stolidly.
“Pleasant weather to lie in the road. Still, will you?” He gripped the reins as though to curb the restive horse gave him pleasure. “Just go and see if he’s all right, Simpson. He’ll get run over lying under the arch there.”
Simpson got down. He resented his master’s charitable fads when they affected his comfort, but he dared not complain. It was true that Mr. Farquhar carried generosity to his servants to its extreme limit, but those who transgressed his laws had to go. He bent over John Smith and announced with undeviating stolidity: “Been fighting, sir.”
“Fighting, has he? Come and hold the horse for a minute.”
Servant and master changed places, and Farquhar in his turn scrutinised the features of John Smith. He moved the stained handkerchief, sniffed at his lips, laid a finger on the spot where the pulse should have beaten, and then stood up.
“Shift the seat as far forward as it’ll go. Yes; now put the cushions in the bottom of the cart. The rug over them. Is the back let down? That’s right.” He picked up John Smith and shouldered him as if he were a gun. The luckless artist in words weighed less than eight stone, but the strength required to lift him so easily was very great, and was shown more remarkably still when Farquhar raised him up at arm’s-length to put him into the dog-cart. Simpson lent his assistance, protesting only by silence against the introduction of a drunken and excessively muddy prodigal between the folds of the new carriage-rug. His discretion was rewarded by his master, who explained, as he took his seat again and picked up the reins: “It’s a case of illness, poor chap. The man’s not drunk.”
“Very good, sir,” said Simpson, touching his cap; but he did not believe it. Even the irreproachable Mr. Farquhar was no hero to his groom.
About a mile beyond the arch Simpson had to get down to open a gate, and the dog-cart drew up at the front door of The Lilacs, which was the pleasing name of Farquhar’s bachelor residence. It was a large modern villa built of red brick and white stucco, boasting Elizabethan mullioned windows on the first floor, modern bays below, a castellated turret, and a Byzantine porch with a cupola, which tasteful decorations the officious ivy had done its best to veil. Inside, the house was furnished well and, before all things, comfortably; it was heated by an arrangement of hot-air pipes in the Russian fashion, and cooled in summer by genuine punkahs. John Smith was carried in and laid before the library fire; Simpson was sent to fetch the doctor, and the master of the house himself attended on the muddy stranger. Farquhar was a wonderfully good Good Samaritan.
He began by stripping off John Smith’s wet clothes, noting that the shirt, which had seen its best and almost its worst days, was neatly marked in a woman’s writing with the name of Lucian de Saumarez. His other garments, which were in better condition, bore only the red cotton hieroglyphics of the laundress. Few people could have excelled Lucian de Saumarez in the art of dressing badly; his hat alone would have roused envy in a scarecrow. Farquhar did not dare to give him brandy, but he began to practise a remedy potent as alcohol and safer. Kneeling beside the parchment-covered articulated skeleton on the sofa, he ran his fingers over him with subtle, measured movements, unpleasantly suggestive of the coiling and uncoiling of a snake. He had learned the art of massage among strange people in a strange land; it seemed literally to recall the spirit to the body it had quitted.
Lucian de Saumarez became conscious of existence in a tingling thrill of warmth which crept all over his frame. The return to life was exquisitely delicious; a deep peace rapt him far out of reach of pain, and his mental faculties came back one by one while yet his bodily sense was drowned in dreams. But, suddenly, he was aware of a change, the truth being that Farquhar had paused in his task. Vague discomfort followed; then he opened his eyes and saw, as a vignette beyond a tunnel of darkness, the face of a man reading a letter. That letter, written by a woman’s hand on thick blue paper with a gilded monogram, was familiar to Lucian; it was the same which he for nine years had carried close to his heart. Without wonder he saw the dream-stranger turn the page and read to the end, he watched him fold it up and put it back in its place; and then the trance reabsorbed him, and again he revelled in delicious dreams under the magic touch of Noel Farquhar. Some minutes later he came to himself completely, and discovered what was being done to his unconscious frame. Lucian looked on massage as first cousin to hypnotism, and hated both, with all the lively independence of a character which could not bear to place itself, even voluntarily, even for a moment, at the mercy of another man’s will. Prepared with a strong protest, he opened his eyes and was struck dumb. In the open English face of Noel Farquhar he recognized the dream-vision who had read his letter.
“Ah, you’ve come to yourself,” said Farquhar, pleasantly. “You’re with friends; don’t speak. The doctor will be here directly.”
Lucian put up his eyebrows, sent his eyes straying round the room, and brought them back to his host’s face with an air of inquiry. Farquhar smiled.
“How you came here? My horse shied at you and I picked you up. My name’s Farquhar—Noel Farquhar.”
“M. P.?” said Lucian, who was by fits an ardent politician.
“Quite right. Can I communicate with your friends?”
“Don’t own any.”
“I hope you won’t say that long. Now you really must not talk any more; I sha’n’t answer you if you do.”
As he evidently meant to keep his word, Lucian subsided, and gave himself up to observing. The room was conventionally furnished, but he saw on the floor the skin of a black panther, and behind the door the nine-foot spiral ivory horn of a narwhal, trophies which even Whiteley cannot provide. Himself a wanderer, he rejoiced to see such tokens of his host’s pursuits; a sportsman is kin to a sportsman all the world over. From studying the furniture he turned to study Noel Farquhar.
Most people knew the name of the member for Mid-Kent, and his face was tolerably familiar through the slanderous presentations which the papers call portraits. He had been in Parliament for several years, and was supposed to be a coming man. When he got on his legs, members deferred their engagements; his speeches were generally lively, always pithy, and never long, a trinity of virtues rare as the Christian graces, and, like them, culminating in the last. He had the advantage of a good voice and delivery. As a politician he was incorruptible; he would criticise his own party, when it seemed in danger of deviating from that ideal of rectitude which animates the bosom of every British statesman. A Bayard without fear or reproach, a high-souled patriot with a caustic tongue, he had a niche all to himself among parliamentary celebrities.
He stood in his socks only five feet nine, but the width of his shoulders was exceptional, and his frame was lean and hard and supple as a panther’s. Every muscle had been trained and trained again to the pitch of excellency, and every movement had the sure grace of controlled strength. The comeliness of perfect health and physical fitness was his; he diffused a kind of tonic energy which acted on susceptible people almost like an electric current. For the rest, he was the typical Englishman: fair-haired, grey-eyed, sunburnt, pleasant, in spite of the grim curve of cheek and jaw, which matched the almost ominous strength of his physique. Lucian, like other people, would have accepted him for what he seemed, if he had not seen him deliberately reading through his love-letter. As it was, he looked into the fair, open face and knew him for a humbug; though he could not imagine why he should have read it, nor how it could advantage him to befriend a miserable, sordid, reprobate, and degraded outcast such as Lucian de Saumarez.
Dr. Maude came hard on the heels of the returning Simpson; he did not resort to Bob Sawyer’s tactics to increase the reputation of his practice. Farquhar met him in the hall and brought him in, and the patient overheard an edifying fragment of conversation.
“Well, I couldn’t very well leave him out in the road, poor chap, so I had to bring him along.”
“And he will probably recoup himself from your plate-chest.”
“What a cynic you are! I never thought of such a thing,” said Farquhar, laughing.
“Your innocence must stand in your way sometimes, I should think.”
“I never knew it do so. I believe, myself, that trust begets trustworthiness.”
“Ah, you’re a philanthropist,” said Maude, walking into the room. The patient lay quiet, apparently unconscious. “I expected that it was this fellow you’d got hold of,” Maude said, without surprise. “He came to me an hour ago. I told him to go to Alresworth infirmary; I suppose he had an attack while waiting for the ’bus.”
“Well, I think you might have let him wait in the surgery.”
“He’s probably a thief. I don’t profess to be a philanthropist, myself.”
“Philanthropist, indeed!” said Farquhar. “It’s not philanthropy I’m feeling for you, doctor.”
“I dare say,” Maude responded, proceeding with his analysis of Lucian’s bones.
“You persist in crediting me with virtues I don’t possess.”
“Modesty’s your great fault; every one knows that.”
“Well, yours isn’t over-amiability, anyhow,” returned Farquhar, again laughing.
Satirical compliments are more difficult to meet than most forms of attack, but Farquhar’s unconsciousness was a perfect piece of acting. Lucian wondered whether Maude knew the motive of his philanthropy. As a fact, Maude knew nothing and suspected merely because Farquhar was a virtuous person; he would have believed that the Apostle Peter got himself martyred for a consideration, and canonised by a piece of celestial jobbery. Being put to rebuke, he confined his conversation to the subject of Lucian’s illness, and in a short time the prodigal was installed in the best room and fed with the fatted calf under the form of tinned essence of beef.