Lucian the dreamer

by J. S. Fletcher

Lucian, all unconsciously, had developed into an egoist. He watched himself playing his part in life with as much interest as the lover of dramatic art will show in studying the performance of a great actor. He seemed to his own thinking a bright and sunny figure, and he arranged everything on his own stage so that it formed a background against which that figure moved or stood with striking force. He was young; he was a success; people loved to have him in their houses; his photograph sold by the thousands in the shop windows; a stroll along Bond Street or Piccadilly was in the nature of a triumphal procession; hostesses almost went down on their knees to get him to their various functions; he might have dined out every night, if he had liked. He very often did like—popularity and admiration and flattery and homage were as incense to his nostrils, and he accepted every gift poured at his shrine as if nothing could be too good for him. And yet no one could call him conceited, or vain, or unduly exalted: he was transparently simple, ingenuous, and childlike; he took everything as a handsome child takes the gifts showered upon him by admiring seniors. He had a rare gift of making himself attractive to everybody—he would be frivolous and gay with the young, old-fashioned and grave with the elderly. He was a butterfly and a man of fashion; there was no better dressed man in town, nor a handsomer; but he was also a scholar and a student, and in whatever idle fashion he spent most of his time, there were so many hours in each day which he devoted to hard, systematic reading and to his own work. It was the only matter in which he was practical; in all other moods he was a gaily painted, light-winged thing that danced and fluttered in the sunbeams. He was careless, thoughtless, light-hearted, sanguine, and he never stopped to think of consequences or results. But through everything that critical part of him kept an interested and often amused eye on the other parts.

Sprats at this stage watched him carefully. She had soon discovered that he and Haidee were mere children in many things, and wholly incapable of management or forethought. It had been their ill-fortune to have all they wanted all their lives, and they lived as if heaven had made a contract with them to furnish their table with manna and their wardrobes with fine linen, and keep no account of the supply. She was of a practical mind, and had old-fashioned country notions about saving up in view of contingencies, and she expounded them at certain seasons with force and vigour to both Lucian and Haidee. But as Lucian cherished an ineradicable belief in his own star, and had never been obliged to earn his dinner before he could eat it, there was no impression to be made upon him; and Haidee, having always lived in the softest corner of luxury’s lap, could conceive of no other state of being, and was mercifully spared the power of imagining one.

CHAPTER XVI

In spite of Sprats’s sermon in the little café-restaurant, Lucian made no effort to follow her advice. He was at work on a new tragedy which was to be produced at the Athenæum in the following autumn, and had therefore no time to give to considerations of economy, and when he was not at work he was at play, and play with Lucian was a matter of as much importance, so far as strenuous devotion to it was concerned, as work was. But there came a morning and an occurrence which for an hour at least made him recall Sprats’s counsel and ponder rather deeply on certain things which he had never pondered before.

It was ten o’clock, and Lucian and Haidee were breakfasting. They invariably spent a good hour over this meal, for both were possessed of hearty appetites, and Lucian always read his letters and his newspapers while he ate and drank. He was alternately devoting himself to his plate and to a leading article in the Times, when the footman entered and announced that Mr. Pepperdine wished to see him. Lucian choked down a mouthful, uttered a joyous exclamation, and rushed into the hall. Mr. Pepperdine, in all the glories of a particularly horsy suit of clothes, was gazing about him as if he had got into a museum. He had visited Lucian’s house before, and always went about in it with his mouth wide open and an air of expectancy—there was usually something fresh to see, and he never quite knew where he might come across it.

‘My dear uncle!’ cried Lucian, seizing him in his arms and dragging him into the dining-room, ‘why didn’t you let me know you were coming? Have you breakfasted? Have some more, any way—get into that chair.’

Mr. Pepperdine solemnly shook hands with Haidee, who liked him because he betrayed such ardent and whole-souled admiration of her and had once bought her a pair of wonderful ponies, assured himself by a careful inspection that she was as pretty as ever, and took a chair, but not at the table. He had breakfasted, he said, at his hotel, two hours earlier.

‘Then have a drink,’ said Lucian, and rang the bell for whisky and soda. ‘How is everybody at Simonstower?’

‘All well,’ answered Mr. Pepperdine, ‘very well indeed, except that Keziah has begun to suffer a good deal from rheumatism. It’s a family complaint. I’m glad to see you both well and hearty—you keep the roses in your cheeks, ma’am, and the light in your eyes, something wonderful, considering that you are a townbird, as one may say. There are country maidens with less colour and brightness, so there are!’

‘You said that so prettily that I shall allow you to smoke a cigar, if you like,’ said Haidee. ‘Lucian, your case.’