V
SHE GOES ON SUNDAY TO THE CHURCH
Eumenes Fane’s marriage had been both more respectable and more romantic than his kind enemies believed: living in Paris, he had eloped with a handsome, wilful French girl of noble family. Her relations swallowed the match as a bitter pill, his did not exist; and the married lovers lived in isolation far away in Brittany until death cut short their long honeymoon. Eumenes returned to England embittered; he had always been disagreeable. The relations between him and his children were eccentric. He lived with them, he had taught them, yet he lavished satire upon their boorishness and stupidity; he had been devoted to the mother, yet for the children he had no feeling but unamiable contempt. They, on their part, repaid him with indifference. Bernard at eighteen, on his own initiative, took control of the farm and made it pay; Dolly managed the dairy and the household. Their lives were isolated equally from their father and from the world. Bernard was not much of a reader, and never strayed far from his Shakespeare and his farming journals, with excursions into Tennyson; but Dolly was insatiable. She had read and digested every book in their heterogeneous library. Unfortunately, the collection was not representative; the modern French novelists were there arranged in full tale, and fresh volumes were added as they appeared, but it had no single work of English fiction later than the date of the admirable Sir Charles Grandison. Both Bernard and Dolly could read and speak French as easily as English, though they did not know the worth of their accomplishment; and from their study of fin-de-siècle literature they had gained an innocently lurid knowledge of the world which hardly fitted in with the conditions of English country life, and was particularly inappropriate as applied to the blameless households at the vicarage, the surgery, or The Lilacs. When young Merton of The Hall brought home a pretty bride, Dolly seriously looked for the appearance of Tertium Quid. He delayed his coming for a year, and then arrived in the cradle. Dolly was surprised; but she ascribed this breach of custom to the fact that Merton senior’s money was made in soap. Only the true aristocrats indulge in a friend of the house.
After Farquhar’s visit Dolly made a dress for herself. It was then the fashion to wear a bodice opening at the sleeves and in front to show a lighter under-dress, which also appeared beneath the skirt, as the corolla of a flower beneath the calyx. Dolly’s gown of dark chestnut matched her hair; the colour of the vest was white. She was more skilful in the dairy than with her needle, but she gave her mind to this, and in the end her work was crowned with fair success.
“I guess that colour, what they call, suits you,” said Bernard, whom she called in to assist at the full-dress rehearsal.
“I expect it does,” assented Dolly, bending back her swan’s-neck to catch a glimpse of her supple young waist in the spotty mirror. “It fits rather badly; any one can see it is homemade, but that can’t be helped. I am going to wear it to church on Christmas Day.”
“Father’ll be awfully angry if you go to church.”
“Of course, but that doesn’t matter. No one except small shopkeepers and mill-girls goes to chapel now. Besides, the minister drops his h’s and mixes his metaphors and talks the silliest nonsense: I wouldn’t listen to him even if it were the fashion. Shall you come with me?”
“I guess I’d better. Have you seen that Farquhar chap again?”
“I have,” Dolly answered, composedly.
“You’ll get yourself into a mess if you don’t look out.”
“Oh no. He may get into a mess, but I shall not.”
“Then I don’t think you are playing fair.”
“Yes, I am. He knows why I spoke to him.”
“Why did you?”
“To know how ladies behave.”
“I suppose you’ll go your own way,” said Bernard, after a pause; “but people’ll talk if you go on meeting him.”
“Let them. I don’t mean to stay down here.”
“I do,” said Bernard.
Dolly perceived the force of this objection. She valued Farquhar’s advice; but where her own aims clashed with Bernard’s well-being, she rarely hesitated.
“Very well; I won’t meet him again,” she said. “But, Bernard, if he speaks to you, do you respond. Ask him here; no one can find fault if I see him in my own house. Or I don’t think they can; do you?”
She was reassured by Bernard’s hearty assent, backed by a special instance. “For,” said he, “when Maude had his sister staying here, Farquhar went and saw them; and I guess if he goes to Maude’s house he can come to us.” And the point was thus settled.
Two days before Christmas the wind blew softly from the south, the snow melted from the earth and the clouds from the sky, the robins broke out into their pure celestial strains, and it was spring in all but name. Farquhar’s invalid began to pester his doctor for permission to go out, and Dolly got a white hat to go with her chestnut gown.
Christmas Day itself was a flash of summer. Dolly came down dressed for church at half-past ten, and found her brother ready in a Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and a cap. An inward monitor told her that this attire was incorrect, and she said so; but as Bernard had nothing else to wear, the question solvitur ambulando.
Neither of them had ever been to church. In early days Bernard had been sent to a chapel with a damnatory creed, and he took his sister with him till she developed opinions of her own: an epoch early in Dolly’s history. She rebelled: Bernard, who was bored by the service, outraged by the music, and submissive only from indifference, supported her: and Mr. Fane’s graceless children took their own way, and henceforth spent the Sabbath hours in reading, prefaced always by a chapter of the Bible.
They arrived late, having lingered in the woods because Dolly said, and Bernard agreed, that Mrs. Merton and the lady in the black frills had never entered the church till after the bells stopped ringing. Such is the force of bad example. Bernard held the door open for his sister, and followed her in, according to instructions which he had received from her, and she from Noel Farquhar. The aisles were crossed by dim sunbeams swimming with drowsy motes, the people were sleepy, the priest was monotoning monotonously out of tune; and Dolly’s entrance, in company with a beam of pure sunshine and a gust of wind which set the Christmas wreaths rustling all round the church, electrified everybody. Heads turned to stare; the choristers, ever the devotees of inattention, nudged and whispered. Up the aisle came Dolly, a glowing piece of colour in her rich dress and richer hair, with the immaculate whiteness of her brow and the deepening carmine of her cheeks, her eyes shining like brown diamonds. She walked steadily, carrying her head high, up to the big square pew assigned by tradition to the house of Fanes, unlatched the door, and took her seat. Bernard followed, his height and his patent unconcern making his figure quite as imposing as hers.
For a space Dolly knelt, as she saw others doing, and hid her hot face; but when the time came she rose, and pinched Bernard, who had sat down and stayed there. He got up slowly, plunged his hands into his pockets, and looked round him. Dolly was convinced that his behaviour was improper; she also looked round her, but without moving her head, and found her exemplar in the person of Noel Farquhar, who was attentively following the service in a large prayer-book. Three volumes lay on the shelf of their pew; Dolly opened one and handed another to her brother, signing to him to do his duty. He looked into it helplessly; it was a copy of Hymns Ancient and Modern, and it is not surprising that he could not find the place. Dolly was no better off, but she had a model to imitate; she turned over the pages as though they were perfectly familiar, found her place near the beginning of the volume, and devoutly studied the evening hymns while the choristers chanted the Venite.
The recollection of that morning always brought a smile to Dolly’s lips. Occupied by her culte of deportment, and still more by her culte of Bernard’s deportment, she missed the humours at the moment, but found them all the more amusing under the enchantment lent by distance. Bernard, who was not thinking about himself, was not amused. Music at chapel had been bad enough, but this, more ambitious, was really horrible. The choir sang neither better nor worse than most village performers; there was a preponderance of trebles out of tune and raucous, an absence of altos, two tenors who sang wrong, and three basses who sang treble. When they should have monotoned they climbed unevenly and one by one in linked sweetness long drawn out down a chromatic scale, until Bernard suddenly launched the true note at them in a voice of startling richness and power, which would have made his fortune had he taken it to market in town. It had the true bass quality, but an unusually extensive compass, ranging from the C below the bass clef up to the octave of middle C.
After he began to sing, most of the curious eyes were diverted from Dolly to him, and she regained her composure. Farquhar had not looked at her; it was not his cue to let his eye wander during service. But Dolly was sure, from the dark flush which overspread his face, that he had seen her enter. She designed this meeting as a test. If he refused to acknowledge her before his friends, Dolly vowed that she would never speak to him again. Her pride of birth was keen; she went to the length of thinking her brother the only gentleman present, inasmuch as he alone, so far as she knew, had the right to bear arms. She took little part in the religious ceremonies. Dolly had her creed, and held to it in practice, but at this time she was too intent on this world to think much of the next.
She got up with alacrity after the benediction, and marshalled out Bernard, glad to go. The organist was now playing music soft and slow, and tenderly touching the pedals with boots so large that he frequently put down two notes at once by accident. Music was really the only subject about which Bernard was sensitive; as a false quantity to a Latinist, as a curse to a Quaker, as a red rag to a bull, so was a wrong note to Bernard Fane.
Outside shone the sun and breathed the wind and danced the grasses over the graves of women as young and beautiful as Dolly; but she was not thinking of them. The stream of people began to condense into groups of two and three, who gave each other the accustomed greetings and echoed cheerful wishes at cross purpose in a babel of inanity. Farquhar was shaking hands with Mrs. Merton, a fragile little lady with dark eyes, frileuse, as Dolly christened her, who dressed very well and talked plaintive nonsense in an erratic fashion. Dolly knew by instinct that they were speaking of her. She went on at an even pace. Farquhar broke from his friends and followed, and Dolly, with true Christmas good-will in her heart, found herself shaking his hand in the overhand style, according to the custom of the lady in black frills.
“I wish I could walk home your way; I’ve a hundred things to say about that Burnt House business, and one never has a chance of seeing Mr. Fane. But I’ve an invalid at home who’s to take his first airing to-day, and I know he’ll go too far if I don’t look after him.”
“Is that the chap you picked up on the road?” asked Bernard, who had heard the story from the men, with romantic embellishments.
“Oh, I didn’t pick him up; don’t think it; he was planted on me by Providence. I say, Fane, if you’ve nothing better to do, I wish you’d come in to-night and have a knock-up at billiards. It would be a Christian act, for I’ve not a soul in the house except the invalid, who toddles off to bye-bye at seven.”
“I can’t play billiards,” was Bernard’s reply, rather proudly spoken.
“Right; I’ll teach you. There’s nothing I like better; is there, Mrs. Merton?”
“Don’t ask me; I never pretend to fathom you,” said Mrs. Merton, plaintively, shaking her head. And she put out a very small hand to Dolly. “Please don’t snub me, Miss Fane; I’d so like to come and call, if you’ll let me. I was told you were a dreadful person, who dropped the h and divided the hoof—skirt, I mean; besides, it was your turn to call first on me. But you aren’t dreadful, are you? So may I come?”
Had there been any patronage in Mrs. Merton’s manner, Dolly would have been delighted to snub her; but there was none. The formula of gracious acceptance was less easy than a refusal, but Dolly let no one guess her difficulties. An interesting general discussion of the weather followed, during which one remarked that it gave the doctors quite a holiday, a second that it was muggy and unwholesome and why didn’t we have a nice healthy frost, a third that it was excellent for the crops, and a fourth that the harvest would be certainly ruined by wireworms, and each agreed with all the rest. Bernard, standing still, thought fashionable people talked like imbeciles. Dolly, shy, though no one saw it, was in a glow of triumph.
Their way home led through woods. So much rain had fallen that the mossy bridle-path was scored with deep ruts full of water, and Dolly had to hold her skirt away from the black leaf-mould. Rain-drops held in crumpled copper leaves shone gemlike, smooth young stems glistened; only the grey boles of the forest trees looked warm and dry. Dolly, herself like a russet leaf, harmonised with the woodland scenery, which seemed a frame made for her.
Farther on down the path, resignedly sitting on a bundle of fagots, and beginning to grow chilly, Lucian de Saumarez was waiting for some one to pass. He had set out with the virtuous intention of returning home in half an hour precisely, but had been lured on by a shrew-mouse, a squirrel, and the enchanting sun, till the end of his strength put a period to his walk; his legs gave way under him. Then he sat down and whistled “Just Break the News to Mother,” very cheerfully. It was fortunate that in Bernard’s hearing he did not attempt to sing, for his voice can only be described by the adjective squawky. He looked like a tramp who had stolen a coat, for over his own he wore one of Farquhar’s, which was truly a giant’s robe to him. At first glimpse of Dolly he whipped off his cap, and stood up bareheaded and recklessly polite.
“Excuse me—” he began.
“If you want relief, you’d better go to Alresworth workhouse; they’ll take you in there,” interrupted Bernard, who would never give to tramps.
“Be quiet, Bernard. Is there anything we can do for you?” asked Dolly, in her gentlest voice.
“Candidly, I only ask an arm, and not an alms,” said Lucian, laughing in Bernard’s face. “Fact is, I’ve walked up from The Lilacs and just petered out. Your woods are such a very remarkably long way through.”
“Then your name is De Saumarez. Bernard, give Mr. de Saumarez your arm. You must come home with us and rest; afterwards you can go back. You ought not to be sitting down out-of-doors this weather,” said Dolly, fixing her imperious young eyes upon him, between pity and severity.
“No, I’m an abomination, I confess it,” answered the culprit, meekly.
“You must be feeling very tired.”
“I’m feeling more like boned goose than anything else, especially in the legs. By-the-way, I wonder if Farquhar will leave his to look for the strayed lamb?”
“Let him; it won’t do him any harm.”
Lucian’s eyes opened wide; Farquhar had described the ladies of Monkswell in picture-making phrases, and he was trying to fit this vivid young beauty into some one of the frames provided, which all seemed too strait. “Am I speaking to Miss Maude?” he asked at a venture, choosing the likeliest.
“Oh no. I am Mirabelle Fane, and this is my brother Bernard.”
“The dickens you are!” said Lucian to himself; for Farquhar, in relating the adventure of Mr. Fane and the copper, had not mentioned Miss Fane. Her foreign name and intonation caught Lucian’s ear, and he asked if she were French.
“My mother was Comtesse de Beaufort,” Dolly told him, and her naïve pride was quaint and pretty. Lucian mentioned Paris, and she fastened upon him with a string of eager questions, but put him to silence before half were answered, by declaring that he had talked too much.
“I’ve been off the silent list this fortnight past,” Lucian pleaded.
“But you are already overtired. You ought to lie down directly you get in, and take a dose of cod-liver oil.”
“I take cod-liver oil three times a day,” Lucian assured her, with equal gravity.
“How? In port wine?”
“I should consider that a sacrilege. No; I will describe the operation,” said Lucian, warming to his subject, which in any of his many conversations with pretty girls he had never discussed before. “I squeeze half a lemon into a wineglass, so; then I pour the oil in on it; next I squeeze the juice of the other half-lemon into another wineglass; and finally I swallow first the lemon plus oil and then the lemon solus. It is a process which requires great nicety and precision. Farquhar is not so careful as I could wish. Of course, it is nothing to him if I suffer.”
“Port wine would be far more nourishing than lemon-juice,” Dolly asseverated, knitting her brows. “Or milk would be better. Have you ever tried goat’s milk?”
“I have not; is it a sovereign specific?”
“I have known it work wonderful cures on emaciated people. How much do you weigh?”
“Six stone eleven, I believe.”
“That is far too little. You should test your weight every day—are you laughing at me?”
“I’m awfully sorry!” said Lucian, who certainly was. “But, Miss Fane, what a nurse you would make! I was expecting you to feel my pulse, and take my temperature, and look at my tongue.”
“So I was intending to do; I have a clinical thermometer at home,” Dolly proudly answered. “I do not know how to behave. I have never learned any manners.”
“Say you’ve never learned customs; manners come by nature.”
Lucian’s smile was irresistible.
“Mine come very badly, then,” said Dolly, smiling back at him; “for when we get in you will certainly have to lie down; and, what’s more, I shall give you a glass of goat’s milk.”