Lucian the dreamer

by J. S. Fletcher

Then he went away, and Sprats, after spending five minutes in deep thought, remembered her other children and hastened to them, wondering whether the most juvenile of the whole brood were quite so childish as Lucian. ‘It will go hard with him if his disillusion comes suddenly,’ she thought, and for the rest of the day she felt inclined to sadness.

Lucian went home in a good humour and a brighter flow of spirits. He was always thus when a new course of action suggested itself to him, and on this occasion he felt impelled to cheerfulness because he was meditating a virtuous deed. He wrote some letters, and then went to his club, and knowing that his wife had an engagement of her own that night, he dined with an old college friend whom he happened to meet in the smoking-room, and to whom before and after dinner he talked in lively fashion. It was late when he reached home, and he was then more cheerful than ever; the picture of the old palazzo on the Lung’ Arno had fastened itself upon the wall of his consciousness and compelled him to look at it. Haidee had just come in; he persuaded her to go with him into his study while he smoked a final cigarette, and there, full of his new projects, he told her what he intended to do. Haidee listened without saying a word in reply. Lucian took no notice of her silence: he was one of those people who imagine that they are addressing other people when they are in reality talking to themselves and require neither Yea nor Nay; he went on expatiating upon his scheme, and the final cigarette was succeeded by others, and Haidee still listened in silence.

‘You mean to do all that?’ she said at last. ‘To sell everything and go to Florence? And to live there?’

‘Certainly,’ he replied tranquilly; ‘it will be so cheap.’

‘Cheap?’ she exclaimed. ‘Yes—and dull! Besides, why this sudden fuss about owing Darlington money? It’s been owing for months, and you didn’t say anything.’

‘I expected to be able to put the account straight out of the money coming from the book and the play,’ he replied. ‘As they are not exactly gold-mines, I must do what I can. I can’t remain in Darlington’s debt in that way—it wouldn’t be fair to him.’

‘I don’t see that you need upset everything just for that,’ she said. ‘He has not asked you to put the account straight, has he?’

‘Of course not!’ exclaimed Lucian. ‘He never would; he’s much too good a fellow to do that sort of thing. But that’s just why I must get out of his debt—it’s taking a mean advantage of his kindness. I’m quite certain nobody else would have been so very generous.’

Haidee glanced at her husband out of the corners of her eyes: the glance was something like that with which Sprats had regarded him in the afternoon. He had not caught Sprats’s glance, and he did not catch his wife’s.

‘By the bye, Haidee,’ he said, after a short silence, ‘I called at Darlington’s to-day to find out just how we stand there, and the manager gave me the exact figures. You’ve rather gone it, you know, during the past half-year. You’ve gone through seven thousand pounds.’