“And the cause of it all, the rubber? I never speak of it to him. Perhaps when Franca’s beyond any chance of profiting by it. . . . Perhaps then. . . . But I don’t know, I’m not sure of Buck. He’s talked to me a good deal, of the house, and Bonnie West, and her letter in his hand. He remembered every word of that letter, wrote them down for me, but gave me no confidence, for he changed the directions. . . . It was not the fifth tributary; only he knows what it was, and I’ve an idea only he will ever know. I think not through Buck Brennan will the hell of the rubber trade come to the country where Bonnie West lived and died. It wouldn’t be the first sacrifice he’d made to that erratic sense of—humour.
“He hasn’t gone on any expedition this year. I think he’s inclined to domesticity. He’s been incredibly staunch to that little brown girl of Bonnie West’s. I often think of them in the cabin, and cutting the parson’s shoes off. They were far too small, those shoes for Buck Brennan.”
THE SLEEPING FAUN
I
“William writes that he is home from Italy, Helena; that he is married to Lucia Vasotti, and that he begs us to send the child to Great House on a visit, so that it may be less lonely for Lucia—a stranger in a strange land, as he justly observes.”
“And likely to remain so. Most unsuitable.”
“Hush, Helena, we must not be harsh. We will send the child, but only for a short time.”
Launce was that child, and that was the first word he had of Lucia Vasotti—her name, linked with “unsuitable.” It must have been blown to him on some wind of chance, because he was up in the dove-house at the time with three Ribston pippins and The Bride of Lammermoor. The flutter of homely wings was in his ears, the sharp fresh apple-scent on his lips, Lucia was maddening on the sunlit page before him, and “Lucia” was blown past him on the keen spring air. Until he died, that name was to him as the call of remembered music far away. Then old Pansy came and hauled him down the ladder in a hurry to be measured for two new shirts.
Launce was the only child at that time in the family, and he was used to being handed round a large circle of grown-ups for the comfort of this or that member thereof, like a foot-warmer. He remembered his Uncle William as a tall, dark man, incredibly supplied with shillings and generous of the same. Great House he did not know, but he was a child of steadfast mind. He went off very calmly, well shawled and muffled, with a small black box and two white mice in a cage. It was a day’s journey, of which he remembered little, save that the willow catkins were out and the southward-fronting gorse in bloom along the windy coast. He reached Great House just as a wild sunset was faring above the sea.
The house stood high for that level land, surrounded with a great sweep of terraces and plantations. It was built upon a fair and gracious plan, but the bitter sea and the north-east had taken their toll of it. The gardens were starved with sand, and the trees shorn off at wind-mark as with a sword. The buildings too were grey and wind-bitten, but now they swam in a strange red light. On the terrace above the beach a lady paced up and down, wrapped in a red cloak. And she moved like a moving flame in a still mist of fire.