Lucian the dreamer

by J. S. Fletcher

‘Jim,’ he said, ‘my trap’s at the Grange; maybe you could put that trunk and portmanteau on a barrow and bring them down in a while? No need to hurry—I shall have a pipe with Mr. Trippett before going on.’

‘All right, sir,’ answered the porter. ‘I’ll bring ’em both down in an hour or so.’

‘Come on, then, lad,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, nodding good-night to the station-master, and leading the way to the gate. ‘Eh, but it’s good to be back where there’s some fresh air! Can you smell it, boy?’

The boy threw up his face, and sniffed the fragrance of the woods. There had been April showers during the afternoon, and the air was sweet and cool: he drew it in with a relish that gratified the countryman at his side.

‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I smell it—it’s beautiful.’

‘Ah, so it is!’ said Mr. Pepperdine; ‘as beautiful as—as—well, as anything. Yes, it is so, my lad.’

The boy looked up and laughed, and Mr. Pepperdine laughed too. He had no idea why he laughed, but it pleased him to do so; it pleased him, too, to hear the boy laugh. But when the boy’s face grew grave again Mr. Pepperdine’s countenance composed itself and became equally grave and somewhat solicitous. He looked out of his eye-corners at the slim figure walking at his side, and wondered what other folk would think of his companion. ‘A nice, smart-looking boy,’ said Mr. Pepperdine to himself for the hundredth time; ‘nice, gentlemanlike boy, and a credit to anybody.’ Mr. Pepperdine felt proud to have such a boy in his company, and prouder still to know that the boy was his nephew and ward.

The boy thus speculated upon was a lad of twelve, somewhat tall for his age, of a slim, well-knit figure, a handsome face, and a confidence of manner and bearing that seemed disproportionate to his years. He walked with easy, natural grace; his movements were lithe and sinuous; the turn of his head, as he looked up at Mr. Pepperdine, or glanced at the overhanging trees in the lane, was smart and alert; it was easy to see that he was naturally quick in action and in perception. His face, which Mr. Pepperdine had studied a good deal during the past week, was of a type which is more often met with in Italy than in England. The forehead was broad and high, and crowned by a mass of thick, blue-black hair that clustered and waved all over the head, and curled into rings at the temples; the brows were straight, dark, and full; the nose and mouth delicately but strongly carved; the chin square and firm; obstinacy, pride, determination, were all there, and already stiffening into permanence. But in this face, so Italian, so full of the promise of passion, there were eyes of an essentially English type, almost violet in colour, gentle, soft, dreamy, shaded by long black lashes, and it was in them that Mr. Pepperdine found the thing he sought for when he looked long and wistfully at his dead sister’s son.

Mr. Pepperdine’s present scrutiny passed from the boy’s face to the boy’s clothes. It was not often, he said to himself, that such a well-dressed youngster was seen in those parts. His nephew was clothed in black from head to foot; his hat was surrounded by a mourning-band; a black tie, fashioned into a smart knot, and secured by an antique cameo-pin, encircled his spotless man’s collar: every garment was shaped as if its wearer had been the most punctilious man about town; his neat boots shone like mirrors. The boy was a dandy in miniature, and it filled Mr. Pepperdine with a vast amusement to find him so. He chuckled inwardly, and was secretly proud of a youngster who, as he had recently discovered, could walk into a fashionable tailor’s and order exactly what he wanted with an evident determination to get it. But Mr. Pepperdine himself was a rustic dandy. Because of the necessities of a recent occasion he was at that moment clad in sober black—his Sunday-and-State-Occasion’s suit—but at home he possessed many wonderful things in the way of riding-breeches, greatcoats ornamented with pearl buttons as big as saucers, and sprigged waistcoats which were the despair of the young country bucks, who were forced to admit that Simpson Pepperdine knew a thing or two about the fashion and was a man of style. It was natural, then, Mr. Pepperdine should be pleased to find his nephew a petit-maître—it gratified an eye which was never at any time indisposed to regard the vanities of this world with complaisance.

Mr. Pepperdine, striding along at the boy’s side, presented the cheerful aspect of a healthy countryman. He was a tall, well-built man, rosy of face, bright of eye, a little on the wrong side of forty, and rather predisposed to stoutness of figure, but firm and solid in his tread, and as yet destitute of a grey hair. In his sable garments and his high hat—bought a week before in London itself, and of the latest fashionable shape—he looked very distinguished, and no one could have taken him for less than a churchwarden and a large ratepayer. His air of distinction was further improved by the fact that he was in uncommonly good spirits—he had spent a week in London on business of a sorrowful nature, and he was glad to be home again amongst his native woods and fields. He sniffed the air as he walked, and set his feet down as if the soil belonged to him, and his eyes danced with satisfaction.