It was invariably the same, and never was the olive branch rejected for a moment by his long-suffering wife. Hers was the dog-like fidelity which men of Duveen's pattern have the gift of inspiring in women, and had he been haled to the felon's dock she would gladly and proudly have stood beside her man. So the years stole by, and Flamby crept nearer to womanhood and closer to her father's heart. The drinking-bouts grew less frequent and only once again did Duveen offer violence to his wife. It was on the occasion of a house-party at Hatton Towers, and a racy young French commercial man who was one of Sir Jacques' guests fell to the lure of Flamby's ever increasing charms.
Flamby, who now was wise with a wisdom possessed by few women, and who could confound a gallant with the wit of Propertius, or damn his eyes like any trooper, amused herself with the overdressed youth, and ate many expensive chocolates. Mistaking the situation, and used to the complaisance of the French peasant, M. le Petit-Maitre presented himself at Dovelands Cottage and made certain overtures of a financial nature to Mrs. Duveen. Between his imperfect English, his delicate mode of expressing the indelicate, and his great charm, poor Mrs. Duveen found confusion, brewed tea and reported the conversation to her husband.
Michael Duveen grew black with wrath, and, taking up a heavy dish from the table, he hurled it at the poor, foolish woman. As he did so the door opened and Flamby came in. The dish, crashing against the edge of the door, was shattered and a fragment struck Flamby's bare arm, inflicting a deep wound.
Like a cloak discarded, Duveen's wrath fell from him at sight of the blood on that soft round arm. He was a man suddenly sick with remorse; and, to the last, the faint scar which the wound left was as a crucifix before which he abased himself. He did not even thrash the Frenchman, but was content with sending to that astonished gallant an acknowledgment of his offer couched in such pure and scathing French prose that it stung more surely than any lash.
Duveen's was a strange nature, and to Flamby, as her powers of observation grew keener, he presented a study at once fascinating and mournful. He had deeper scholarship than many a man who holds a university chair; he knew the classics as lesser men know their party politics; and the woodlands, fields and brooks, with their countless inhabitants, held no mysteries for him. Yet he was content to be as Flamby had always known him—a manual labourer. The larder of Dovelands Cottage was well stocked, winter and summer alike, and Mrs. Duveen, who accepted what the gods offered unquestioningly, never troubled to inquire how folks so poor as they could procure game and fish at all proper seasons. Fawkes could have enlightened her; but there was no man in Lower Charleswood, or for that matter in the county, of a hardihood to cross Michael Duveen. Furthermore, Sir Jacques, who was a Justice of the Peace, would hear no ill of him. Finally, one bitter winter's morning in the first year of the war, Flamby learned why.
Sir Jacques, for the first time since the Duveens had resided there, crossed the threshold of Dovelands Cottage, bringing a letter which he had received from Duveen, then newly arrived in Flanders. That memorable visit was the first of many; and the diabolical patience with which Sir Jacques for over two years had awaited his opportunity was further exemplified in his conduct of the affair now that he was truly entered upon it.
At his first word of greeting, Flamby read his secret and her soul rose up in arms; by the time that he took his departure she doubted her woman's intuition—and wondered. Such was the magic of the silver voice, the Christian humility expressed in the bearing of that black figure. And when he had come again, and yet again, the first, true image began to fade more and more, and she listened with less and less misgiving to the words of encouragement which he bestowed upon her drawings. Her father, although himself no draughtsman, understood art as he understood all that was beautiful, and had taught her the laws of perspective and the tricks of the pencil as he had taught her the ways of the woodland and of the creatures who dwelt there. On her sixteenth birthday he had presented Flamby with a complete water-colour outfit, together with a number of text books; and many a golden morning had they spent together in solving the problem of why, although all shadows look black, some are really purple and others blue, together with kindred mysteries of the painter's craft.
Now came Sir Jacques, a trained critic and collector, with helpful suggestion and inspiring praise. He made no mistakes; his suggestions held no covert significance, his praise was never extravagant. Miss Kingsbury, of High Fielding, the local Lady Butler, hearing of Sir Jacques' protégée, as she heard of everything else in the county, sent a message of honeyed sweetness to Flamby, desiring her to call and bring some of her work. Flamby had never forgotten the visit. The honey of Miss Kingsbury was honey of Trebizond, and it poisoned poor Flamby's happiness for many a day. Strange is the paradox of a woman's heart; for Flamby, well knowing that this spinster's venom was a product of jealousy—jealousy of talent, super-jealousy of youth and beauty—yet took hurt from it and hugged the sting of cruel criticism to her breast. In this, for all her engrafted wisdom, she showed herself a true limb of Eve.
It was Sir Jacques who restored her confidence, and Sir Jacques who seized the opportunity to invite her to study the works in his collection. The original image of the master of Hatton Towers (which had possessed pointed ears and the hoofs of a goat) was faded by this time, and was supplanted by that of a courtly and benevolent patron. Flamby went to Hatton Towers, and meeting with nothing but kindness at the hands of Sir Jacques, went again many times. With the art of a Duc de Richelieu, Sir Jacques directed her studies, familiarising her mind with that "broad" outlook which is essential to the artist. It was done so cleverly that even Flamby the wise failed to recognise whither the rose-strewn path was tending, and might have pursued it to the end but that Fate—or Pan, god of the greenwood, jealous of trespass—intervened and unmasked the presumptuous Silenus.
Like one of those nymphs to whom Don had detected her resemblance, Flamby, throughout the genial months, often betook herself at early morning to a certain woodland stream far from all beaten tracks and inaccessible from the highroads. Narcissi carpeted the sloping banks above a pool like a crystal mirror, into which the tiny rivulet purled through forest ways sacred to the wild things and rarely profaned by foot of man. In their shy, brief hour, violets lent their sweetness to the spot, and at dusk came quiet creatures afoot and awing timidly to slake their thirst at the magic fountain. A verdant awning, fanlike, swayed above, and perhaps in some forgotten day an altar had stood in the shady groves which protected all approaches to this pool whereby Keats might have dreamed his wonder dreams.