‘Have you any of the old tobacco?’ he asked. ‘A pipe might lead us over the forgotten ground again, and revive the dead persons of that little Antwerp drama. You’ve added bees to botany, I see. Could you get up a massacre of the drones while I am here? I’ve never been able to put full faith in all the astounding stories we have of the bees, and might be converted by a practical demonstration.’
‘Come along inside, and leave my bees alone, you insolent sceptic of the world. That’s your French air—the very worst to breathe. I suppose you take brandy and mud in your literature, too. I heard you talk of Dumas once, and thought it bad, but now, of course, you’re down with the naturalists, the symbolists, and the philosophers of insanity.’
‘Not a bit. I haven’t got beyond dear old Dumas, where you left me. And here I am, anchored momentarily in Arcadia, among the bees and the flowers, under the protection of St. George, with a mighty minster near at hand.’
Under the congenial influences of Pilsener and a certain French tobacco affected by the pair, they sat in a book-lined study and talked of many things. It was only at table, later, that Luffington, over his soup, remembered to mention the name of Mr. Malcolm Fitzroy.
‘An old friend of the family,’ the priest explained, meaning the earl and his wife. Upon the Harborough estates there could, of course, be only one family in all conversation.
The priest walked back to the inn with Luffington, and accepted a glass of rum punch from the hand of Mrs. Matcham.
‘Mr. Malcolm Fitzroy always says that nobody can make rum punch like me,’ she remarked, not without the hue of modesty upon her cheek at sounding her own praises; and her glance sparkled to Luffington’s upon his acknowledgment of the truth.
‘There are drawbacks to a sojourn upon the vacant hearth of a god,’ he said, when the door closed upon her exit. ‘His worshippers are invidiously reminiscent, and you court unfavourable comparison whether you sit, sleep, eat, or drink.’
But the punch was good, the bed excellent, the quiet conducive to dreamless sleep. Luffington was abroad early next morning, indifferent to the thought of Mr. Malcolm Fitzroy, as he sipped the dew with a shower of song in his face, and the light at his feet ran along the grass and through the trees in dimpled rivers of gold. The priest had told him that the earl loved his trees like children. Fred did not wonder, as he hailed them ‘magnificent,’ and went his way among them in full-eyed admiration.
It was a placid, even scene, such as one dwells on in loving memory when homesick in far-off lands. Lordly oaks and beeches and sentimental firs beshadowed the well-trimmed lawny spaces. The air played freely round and about them, and the light was broad and soft. If you stepped aside from the lawn and level avenues, you might lose yourself in the pleasant woods, alive with the chatter of birds, in the midst of fragrance and gloom. Water was not absent, and if you crossed the deer-park, you could follow its lazy way to Fort Mary, where the earl had a summer residence, aptly named by the French governess, ‘Le Petit Trianon.’ Luffington liked the notion. It was all so artificial, so costly, so preposterously pastoral, that his mind willingly went back to Versailles, and the musked and scarlet-heeled century. The ground was green velvet, unrelieved by as much as a daisy. It demanded Watteau robes, and periwigged phrases and piping strains of Lulli and Rameau. The boats were toys upon an artificial lake, and it was like hearing of children’s games to learn of regattas held here every summer. The idea of a Venetian fête was more appropriate to celebrate the birth of the heir, and lords and ladies in rich Elizabethan disguises grouped upon the velvet sward, upon the balcony of the ‘Trianon,’ or making pictures of glitter and sharp shadow upon the breast of dark water in the gleam of variously coloured lamps.