VII
COURAGE QUAND MÊME
January came with the snow-drop, February brought the crocus, and March violets were empurpling the woods before the next scene came on the stage and introduced a new actor. In the meanwhile, Lucian continued to live on Noel Farquhar’s bounty. It should have been an intolerable position, but Lucian’s luckless head had received such severe bludgeonings at the hands of Fate that he was glad to hide it anywhere, and give his pride the congé. His choice lay between remaining with Farquhar, retiring to the workhouse, and expiring in a haystack without benefit of clergy; he chose the least heroic course, and, sad to say, he found it very pleasant.
One night alarm he gave Farquhar. Punctual to its time, the cold snap of mid-January arrived on the eleventh of the month, and Lucian went skating at Fanes. His tutelary divinity Dolly being absent, he was beguiled into staying late, got chilled, and awoke Farquhar at three in the morning by one of his usual attacks. It was very slight and soon checked, but the incident strengthened the bond between them; for Lucian did not forget Farquhar’s face when he found him fighting for breath, nor the lavish tenderness of his subsequent nursing, which seemed to be extorted from him by a force stronger than his would-be carelessness. That constraining force Lucian declined to christen: friendship seemed too mild a term for Farquhar’s crude emotions.
No one could have felt more horribly ashamed than Lucian, on finding that his host gave up all engagements to wait upon him. He was soon about again, but he now guarded his health as though he had it on a repairing lease. When Dolly consulted him on points of etiquette, as she soon learned to do, he retaliated with questions concerning the proper conduct of an invalid; it is only fair to say that Dolly was the more correct informant. He was welcome at Fanes. Dolly liked him; so also did Bernard, whose affections were pure in quality, but exclusive; and fate gave him a third admirer in the person of Eumenes Fane, though the esteem in this case was but a bruised reed, liable to fail in time of stress. Farquhar, who was also a frequent visitor at Fanes, was not so popular.
On a fine morning in March, when the air felt like velvet and the linnets were beginning to nest, Bernard drove over to Swanborough market, as his habit was, to buy Dolly her week’s stores. On his way home he met with an adventure. The distance from Swanborough to Monkswell by the London road was only fourteen miles; but Bernard’s horse was young and fresh, and he chose a longer route through by-ways where there was less chance of meeting motors and traction-engines, Vronsky’s special bugbears. Lonely, wild, and hilly was the country-side; the gold sun had just sunk behind the leafless woods, and a rosy twilight was invading the sky, when Bernard turned into a certain steep and narrow lane between high banks of violet-haunted grass, locally known as Hungrygut Bottom. As they spun down the slope, from behind them sounded the nasal Hoot! toot! which Vronsky hated. Bernard looked back over his shoulder. A small car with a single rider had topped the crest of the hill and was swiftly descending: too swiftly to be stopped at such short notice. Vronsky could be brought to tolerate a motor that he met; but to be overtaken and passed by one was more than his nerves could bear. Good whip though Bernard was, in this narrow lane he feared disaster. Midway down, where the banks were lower, a gate stood open, leading into a meadow. Bernard touched up the horse, and made for this haven as fast as he could. But, as the dog-cart turned to enter, Vronsky caught sight of the appalling monster behind. He kicked, he danced, he stood on his hind-legs, he backed the dog-cart right across the road, and there he stayed, broadside on to the advancing motor, while Bernard set his teeth and awaited the crash. The car was almost upon them: suddenly it swerved violently to the left and flew up the bank. Right up to the top it ran, and upset. For a moment Bernard’s heart was in his mouth as he thought to see it fall over sideways on the driver and burst into flames; but it rocked, and steadied, and stood in equilibrium, while the electric batteries came hurtling through the air into the road like so many fourteen-pound jampots.
Vronsky turned and bolted down the hill, and was some way up the opposite slope before Bernard could bring him to his senses. He came back as fast as he could, and found the driver sitting up beside his car, hatless, with a somewhat bewildered air. He had been pitched heels over head among the brambles close to a heap of flints, and there he had stayed.
“I say, are you hurt?” Bernard hailed him.
“I don’t think so. I believe I still possess a head.”
The voice was soft and low and lazy, with a touch of quaint humor. He looked up at Bernard without offering to rise. In the twilight Bernard could see only that he was tall and slight and young, and dressed in gray.
“It was an awfully plucky thing to do. If you’d come on I must have been killed,” said Bernard, simply.
“Well, so must I, you know.”
“No, you’d have been pitched out, and might have got off scot-free. It was about the pluckiest thing I’ve seen.”
“The whole thing was my fault.”
“It was the horse’s fault, not yours at all.”
“It was mine,” said the stranger, with swift decision. “I was going too fast. I should have changed the speed to come down the hill, and I would not; I thought I should meet no one, and I chose to risk it. I shall have to give up motoring, I suppose.”
“What on earth should you do that for?”
“Because otherwise I shall infallibly end by killing somebody.”
“You needn’t if you only take reasonable care.”
“And that is precisely what I never shall do. There’s a fascination about it—a sense of power—it’s as fatal as gambling. Yes; I must give it up.”
He got on his feet with an effort and regarded himself. Disgust at the mud on his clothes and his hands apparently preoccupied his mind, though he had scratched his face and bumped his head and bruised himself most thoroughly all down his side; in addition, Bernard saw that his right hand was streaming with blood. This he had not noticed until Bernard pointed it out.
“Oh, that was the flints,” he observed, in his former quaint and lazy way.
“Lucky for you you didn’t fall right on them. Your wrist’s cut to the bone.”
“So I should fancy,” said the stranger, wincing under Bernard’s ministrations. He looked so faint with pain and loss of blood that Bernard went down to the dog-cart and brought up the flask which he carried in case of accidents; with Vronsky in the shafts they were to be expected. But when he got back the stranger was at the top of the bank examining his car, and rejected the brandy with thanks and scorn.
“It hasn’t suffered much,” he said, with satisfaction. “There’s a small crack in the panel, but if I can get the batteries in I believe I shall be able to go on.”
“You can’t steer the thing with that wrist. You’d better come on with me to Dove Green; it’s only a mile on, and you can send back for the car.”
“One doesn’t need two hands to steer.”
“But you said you meant to give up motoring.”
“So I do; which is an additional reason why I should drive it to-night, when I have the excuse.”
“Do you like the thing?” exclaimed Bernard.
“Don’t you like that handsome chestnut of yours?”
“Yes, but that’s different. A horse has sense; you can’t compare it to that beastly, snorting, smelling thing.”
“If you’d ever driven a motor, you’d be ready to declare that it had sense, too; machinery’s almost human, sometimes.”
Bernard was wholly unconvinced, and thought the stranger a little mad. “You’d much better come on with me,” he said.
“Thanks very much; but I have to get on to Monkswell this evening, and then back to Swanborough. I came this cross-country route because I thought I should have it to myself and could drive fast.”
“Are you going to Monkswell?”
“I am; do you know it?”
“I live there.”
“Do you? Then I expect you know my friends, the Mertons, at the Hall.”
“M’yes.”
“Ah! very likely we shall meet, then; I believe I am to stay there as soon as I get my next leave.”
“No, I don’t suppose we shall,” Bernard answered. “We hardly know them; only on sufferance. They’re a cut above us.”
“I see.”
The tone was neutral, it was too dark to read faces, and the stranger said no more. In a minute he was calling upon Bernard to help him set the motor on its wheels again, and together they dragged it down into the road, Bernard doing most of the work, for the stranger’s strength was frail, like his physique.
“You’re not fit to go on,” were Bernard’s last words, as the stranger settled uneasily into his seat, with a tender consideration for all his bruises and cuts. But he got no answer save a smile and a wave of the hand. He waited till the car was out of sight, and then fetched Vronsky out of the field and drove home without further incident.
He found Dolly waiting in the warm, dark parlor, reading by firelight, her feet on the marble rim of the hearth, her face close to the flames, which glowed and reddened the ceiling and flickered in gold on her hair. She raised a flushed face from her book: an intent reader was Dolly.
“Where have you been? You’re late.”
Bernard told his story in detail.
“I wonder who he can be?” Dolly said, nursing her chin in her hand.
“He was an awfully plucky chap, whoever he was. I never saw anything neater than the way he turned that machine up the bank; he kept so jolly cool. And he made his head spin, too, I’d bet; he’d got a lump on his forehead the size of a seed-potato, but he never said a word about it. Yes, he was plucky. I like that sort.”
“Was he a gentleman?”
“Rather! A regular dude to look at; all his things were made in town, I guess.”
“And coming to stay with the Mertons. I do wonder who he is?”
“Nobody we shall ever know, anyhow.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” said Dolly, wisely. “I shall ask Mr. de Saumarez.”
Next morning Lucian came tapping at one of the less honourable doors of Fanes, and was bidden enter by a preoccupied voice. He found Dolly hard at work, with sleeves rolled to the shoulders; she was in the second dairy, but her occupation had no fellowship with butter, cream, or cheese. A cool, dark, and lofty chamber it was, the walls midway to the roof being covered with white glazed tiles, the floor with red. Waist-high stood out a broad white shelf, now piled with square frames of unpainted deal confining square panes of glass, upon one of which Dolly was spreading soft white pomade with a palette-knife. A bushel-basket half filled with violets stood beside her; the air reeked with the scent of them. Lucian’s curiosity found vent in the natural inquiry:
“What on earth are you doing?”
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” Dolly glanced round, straightened her shoulders, swept her basket to the floor, and exposed a three-legged milking-stool. “There’s a chair for you; you must not stand. I’m making scent.”
“How enthralling! Mayn’t I help?”
“Wait till you see how I do it,” quoth prudent Dolly.
Lucian unwound a yard and a half of comforter, deposited his mackintosh, umbrella, and goloshes, and sat down to watch, tucking his long legs under the stool, and tossing back his shaggy brown hair. Dolly spread the white paste thickly and evenly over the glass in two of the frames. Next she filled her hands with violets, decapitated the pretty blossoms, and sprinkled them broadcast on the pomade till the frame was full to the brim; she capped that frame with the second and pressed them close, so that they formed a box three inches deep, enclosing the violets between two layers of pomade; they were then ready to be put aside for the time being. She would not trust Lucian to spread the pomade, but she allowed him to behead the violets for her, and was grateful; for the quicker she was the fresher were the violets, and the more valuable the pomade made from them. Thrifty Dolly made a small income by her perfumes.
Her dress, between lavender and blue, just matched the blue chicory which borders August cornfields; and the cluster of violets which she had tucked into her bosom agreed with its color. She was bareheaded, and her hair glistened even in shadow like copper veined with gold. She was not thinking of herself, but of her violets, and Lucian’s eyes were fixed on her to the hindrance of his work.
“You’re leaving stalks on the flowers,” Dolly pointed out.
“I couldn’t help it. My eyes were all for you.”
“Don’t,” said Dolly, brusquely.
“It’s really the correct thing to say; besides, it’s the truth.”
“I don’t like it, from you. How is your cough?”
“Mayn’t I pay you compliments because I have a cough?”
“You may not; they don’t sound appropriate.”
“That’s very cruel of you. I think I shall go home.”
“No; wait till you’re rested. Do you know if the Mertons have a young man coming to stay with them soon?”
“A young man, lydy? What’s his name?”
“I don’t know. He nearly killed Bernard and Vronsky with his motor-car, and Bernard was immensely taken with him. He is young, in the army, stationed at Swanborough, a friend of the Mertons, and Bernard generally calls him the dude.”
Dolly’s curiosity was not to be satisfied yet. Lucian shook his head.
“Couldn’t say, my dear girl. There are any number of young officers at Swanborough, all as like as peas, and you can’t call it a distinction to run down Vronsky. If he hadn’t done it, now—”
“I thought you might have known from the Mertons; you know Mrs. Merton, don’t you?”
“I used to, before she was married; I haven’t kept up with all her distinguished acquaintances since. Ah! There were days when she loved me dearly. Once when I was a sandwich-man she walked up and down Fleet Street with me for an hour. I was carrying the advertisements of ‘Woman—the Charmer,’ and I could hear everybody saying it was an object-lesson.”
Dolly had by this time heard a good many well-found anecdotes from Lucian, and had learned that his personal experiences were sometimes culled from another person’s past. “I don’t believe that,” she said, calmly.
“Well, anyhow, she gave me a penny once when I begged of her—fact!” said Lucian, unabashed.
“Where?”
“At a fancy ball where I went got up as a blind beggar; I was the success of the evening. She’s a right-down good sort, is little Ella Merton. You never told me how you got on when she called, by the way.”
“I think, pretty well,” said Dolly, doubtfully. “Fortunately, I saw the carriage driving down, and I sent Maggie to open the door, instead of going myself.” Maggie was a little black-eyed maiden of fourteen, who helped in the housework. “I had put fresh flowers in the parlour that very morning, and I was wearing this dress—now it is tumbled, but it was fresh then—”
“And you didn’t change it?”
“No, I did not; should I have?”
“No, you did quite right, Sweet Lavender. Well?”
“I went in, and we talked. She stayed for an hour. Part of that time I was out fetching tea; it seemed rude, but I explained to her that Maggie was not strong enough to carry the silver salver. I used the red-and-gold china that you like, and there were scones and flead-cakes, and I put out some apricots in syrup; but very little of each, not as Bernard likes them. I thought that must be right, because she ate less even than you do. Was it?”
Lucian was laughing without disguise as he commended her wisdom. “And what did you talk about?”
“I don’t quite know,” said Dolly, doubtful again. “She really does say such strange things. Bernard will have it that she’s crazy, but I think she’s only clever. I should imagine her conversation was all epigrams and paradoxes.”
“And what do you know about epigrams and paradoxes, pray?”
“Sometimes in reviewing society novels the newspapers give examples of the wit with which they literally coruscate. I can’t always follow them,” said Dolly, who was candour itself, even to her own hindrance, “but I suppose that is because I don’t understand the allusions. Mrs. Merton talks like them. Why do you laugh?”
“Mrs. Merton makes a point of talking sheer nonsense,” said Lucian, as soon as he could speak. “I sha’n’t send my novels to you for criticism. Something lingering, with boiling oil, is your idea of a mild review.”
“If I thought them silly I should say so,” said Dolly, calmly; “that is, if you wanted my opinion. But what ought I to do about Mrs. Merton’s call? I am sure there is something, if I only knew what?”
Lucian promptly furnished her with information concerning the social laws in good society. In all innocence, he gave her counsels likely to raise the hair on Mrs. Merton’s head if Dolly obeyed them. Many things Lucian could teach, but not propriety.
“But what’s the use of this? I thought you were going on the stage,” he said, breaking away. “You haven’t forgotten about it, have you?”
“No, I’ve not forgotten,” Dolly answered; and she put up her hand, which had just met his among the violets, perhaps to brush her hair back, and perhaps to conceal her face. “What do you think of Mr. Farquhar?” she asked.
“Oho!” said Lucian, after one second’s hesitation. “Well, he’s the best hand at a friendship I ever met. But why?”
Dolly vouchsafed no answer to this question. “I am glad you think so; you who know him so well,” she said, scattering her violets so carelessly that some of them fell to the floor. Lucian picked them up and coughed in stooping. “There! I have let you work too long. Sit; you must.”
Lucian found himself maternally condemned to the milking-stool. His face darkened as he sat down; one might have thought him angry, but the shadow passed over his face and was gone. “My dear girl, why do you inquire about Farquhar?” he said, quietly persistent. “And why do you couple his name with your future? Go on; you may as well tell me.”
Dolly hesitated. “There’s nothing to tell,” she said.
“Exactly so,” said Lucian. “Lord! I never thought of that! I am an owl.” And he fell into a brown-study.
Violets were clinging to Dolly’s fingers and her arms; one was even swinging in a tendril of hair above her temple. As she went to put the last frame in its place, she crossed the solitary sun-ray which shot through the deep, narrow window athwart the room, and was transfigured. Her very lashes shone like threads of gold.
“Let me do that,” said Lucian, taking the frame away. Dolly stood watching him, as a woman will do when work is taken out of her hands. The pile of frames was high by now, and Lucian was careless; they tottered, and threatened to fall.
“Take care!” exclaimed Dolly; and her hand shot out beside Lucian’s, to steady them. Round the curve of her bare arm twined a vein as blue as lazuli, winding inwards at the elbow, where a faint rose stained the clear milky alabaster. Lucian took it in the palm of his brown hand. “The loveliest thing I’ve seen in my life, Dolly,” he said, softly.
The frames might fall, now; Dolly bent up her arm so quickly that she almost shut in Lucian’s nose. The frames did not fall, however; for Lucian steadied them before he turned. A rose of indignation burned in Dolly’s cheek; she was drawing down her sleeve to hide the insulted arm from view.
“I’m awfully sorry,” said Lucian.
“I don’t allow liberties of that kind,” Dolly retorted.
“Candidly, it wasn’t a liberty. An indiscretion, if you will, but I meant what I said.”
“I think you had better go home.”
“I will, in a minute. But, look here; if you shouldn’t take Farquhar, would there be any chance for me?”
“You!” cried Dolly, her indignation changed to wide amazement. Lucian smiled.
“Now go and tell me that the words don’t sound appropriate from me,” he said, sweet-temperedly. “I’ll be shot if I don’t agree with you, too. They don’t. A poor, rickety, ill-digested ostrich like me has no business in this galley. All the same, I don’t believe in losing anything for want of asking. So if Farquhar by any chance doesn’t suit, remember you’ve got another beau on your string—will you, dear?”
But Dolly stood silent, fastening the links at her wrist and beating the tiles with her foot. Her virginal dignity had been ruffled, but she did not care for that now.
“I thought we were friends!” she said.
“Aren’t we?”
“Not if you are wanting this. How can we be?”
“All right, then, I don’t want it. I guess I know my answer when I’ve got it.”
Dolly took her eyes off the ground and fixed them on his face, using all her powers of observation and deduction. He stood laughing, whimsical, insouciant, with his hands in his pockets, and defied them. But Dolly remembered that he had quoted her own words about his incapacity. “Compliments don’t sound appropriate from you.” If they had not stung, they would have been forgotten. Dolly understood.
“I am sorry—I am sorry!” she exclaimed.
“My dear girl, don’t distress yourself. I’ve had at least twenty affairs before, to say nothing of being actually married.”
“Married!”
“All right, all right; I’ve no Italian wives up my sleeve. She’s been dead these nine years past. I merely wish to point out to you that my heartstrings take cement. Look here, I’m going to call you Dolly; do you mind?”
“Is it the proper thing?” began Dolly, her eyes dancing.
“Yes, my dear girl; say we’re cousins—we are, through Adam. Anyway, I’ll do the lying for you; I’m handy at it. Are you going to have old Farquhar?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t care for him?”
Dolly shook her head.
“That’s a pity. But he’s very keen on you?”
“How can I possibly tell? He’s not said so.”
“Don’t be coy; now don’t,” said Lucian. “I’m anxious to further your happiness. Then, I take it, he’s desperately smitten; h’m! he’ll be neither to hold nor to bind, I’m thinking.”
“I am sure this conversation is not at all the proper thing,” said Dolly, demurely.
“It’s not, like the holes in my elbows; you’re right there. But look here; what I want to say is this: There’s a heap of unregenerate wickedness in old Farquhar, as I reckon you’ve found out, but anybody he likes can lead him by the nose. I’ve heard him talk surprising bosh about his career, and the aims of his life, und so wieder; but I tell you he’d throw the whole cargo overboard to the sharks if it got in your way. You know what his arm’s like? Well, he’s got a mind made on the same pattern; and you, my dear, good girl, have got Samson in chains. And mind you don’t play Delilah, or there’ll be the etcetera to pay. That’s the truth for you.”
Dolly listened to this homily and did not commit herself. “I believe you really want me to marry him,” was her comment.
“I’d dance at the wedding with a light heart,” Lucian averred.
“That you should not; nothing could be worse for you.”
“Look here, I’ve had one mother,” said Lucian. “Be a sister for a change, now do.”
“I like looking after you.”
“So does Farquhar. Community of tastes—”
“Please, Mr. de Saumarez, will you go home? I’ve the dinner to lay.”
“Lunch, we call it in society.”
“I shall give you a dose of cod-liver oil if you don’t go.”
The threat was sufficient, and Lucian fled, forgetting his comforter and goloshes. Dolly swept the floor and washed the shelf and put all trim again. “I wish I loved him,” once she said, and offered to her coldness the tribute of a sigh.
The rejected suitor did not at once return to The Lilacs. He made a détour through the church-yard, and sat down to meditate appropriately among the tombs. Lucian could not, like his friend, claim the consolations of religion, for he was an agnostic. That is to say, he acknowledged that he did not know anything; he did not boast that he knew nothing. Like poor James Thomson, he thought, as he saw the spire ascending to the blue and open sky, that it would be sweet to enter in, to kneel and pray; the pride of unbelief was not his sin. It was a pity that he could not do it, because he had a natural gift for religion; and no one pretends that agnosticism, except that militant on a stump in Hyde Park, is a soul-satisfying creed.