About a mile beyond the arch Simpson had to get down to open a gate, and the dog-cart drew up at the front door of The Lilacs, which was the pleasing name of Farquhar’s bachelor residence. It was a large modern villa built of red brick and white stucco, boasting Elizabethan mullioned windows on the first floor, modern bays below, a castellated turret, and a Byzantine porch with a cupola, which tasteful decorations the officious ivy had done its best to veil. Inside, the house was furnished well and, before all things, comfortably; it was heated by an arrangement of hot-air pipes in the Russian fashion, and cooled in summer by genuine punkahs. John Smith was carried in and laid before the library fire; Simpson was sent to fetch the doctor, and the master of the house himself attended on the muddy stranger. Farquhar was a wonderfully good Good Samaritan.
He began by stripping off John Smith’s wet clothes, noting that the shirt, which had seen its best and almost its worst days, was neatly marked in a woman’s writing with the name of Lucian de Saumarez. His other garments, which were in better condition, bore only the red cotton hieroglyphics of the laundress. Few people could have excelled Lucian de Saumarez in the art of dressing badly; his hat alone would have roused envy in a scarecrow. Farquhar did not dare to give him brandy, but he began to practise a remedy potent as alcohol and safer. Kneeling beside the parchment-covered articulated skeleton on the sofa, he ran his fingers over him with subtle, measured movements, unpleasantly suggestive of the coiling and uncoiling of a snake. He had learned the art of massage among strange people in a strange land; it seemed literally to recall the spirit to the body it had quitted.
Lucian de Saumarez became conscious of existence in a tingling thrill of warmth which crept all over his frame. The return to life was exquisitely delicious; a deep peace rapt him far out of reach of pain, and his mental faculties came back one by one while yet his bodily sense was drowned in dreams. But, suddenly, he was aware of a change, the truth being that Farquhar had paused in his task. Vague discomfort followed; then he opened his eyes and saw, as a vignette beyond a tunnel of darkness, the face of a man reading a letter. That letter, written by a woman’s hand on thick blue paper with a gilded monogram, was familiar to Lucian; it was the same which he for nine years had carried close to his heart. Without wonder he saw the dream-stranger turn the page and read to the end, he watched him fold it up and put it back in its place; and then the trance reabsorbed him, and again he revelled in delicious dreams under the magic touch of Noel Farquhar. Some minutes later he came to himself completely, and discovered what was being done to his unconscious frame. Lucian looked on massage as first cousin to hypnotism, and hated both, with all the lively independence of a character which could not bear to place itself, even voluntarily, even for a moment, at the mercy of another man’s will. Prepared with a strong protest, he opened his eyes and was struck dumb. In the open English face of Noel Farquhar he recognized the dream-vision who had read his letter.
“Ah, you’ve come to yourself,” said Farquhar, pleasantly. “You’re with friends; don’t speak. The doctor will be here directly.”
Lucian put up his eyebrows, sent his eyes straying round the room, and brought them back to his host’s face with an air of inquiry. Farquhar smiled.
“How you came here? My horse shied at you and I picked you up. My name’s Farquhar—Noel Farquhar.”
“M. P.?” said Lucian, who was by fits an ardent politician.
“Quite right. Can I communicate with your friends?”
“Don’t own any.”
“I hope you won’t say that long. Now you really must not talk any more; I sha’n’t answer you if you do.”