Bien foi qui s'y fie."
Lawrence Colquhoun was not, in point of fact, devoting much time to his ward at this time. She was pretty; she was fresh; she was unconventional; but then he was forty. For twenty years he had been moving through a panorama of pretty girls. It was hardly to be expected that a girl whom he had seen but once or twice should move a tough old heart of forty. Phillis pleased him, but lazy Lawrence wanted girls, if that could be managed, to come to him, and she necessarily stayed at Twickenham. Anyhow, she was in good and safe hands. It was enough to know that Agatha had her in safe charge and custody, and when he could find time he would go down and see her again. As he had been thirteen years trying to find time to visit Phillis at Highgate, it was possible that he might be in the same way prevented by adverse circumstances from going to Twickenham.
He was troubled also by other and graver matters.
Victoria Cassilis asked him in the Park to call upon her—for auld lang syne. What he replied is not on record, because, if anybody heard, it could only have been the lady. But he did not call upon her. After a day or two there came a letter from her. Of this he took no notice. It is not usual for a man to ignore the receipt from a lady, but Lawrence Colquhoun did do so. Then there came another. This also he tore in small pieces. And then another. "Hang the woman," said Lawrence; "I believe she wants to have a row. I begin to be sorry I came home at all."
His chambers were on the second floor in the Albany, and any one who knows Lawrence Colquhoun will understand that they were furnished in considerable comfort, and even luxury. He did not pretend to a knowledge of Art, but his pictures were good; nor was he a dilettante about furniture, but his was in good style. China he abhorred, like many other persons of sound and healthy taste. Let us leave a loophole of escape; there may be some occult reason, unknown to the uninitiated, for finding beauty, loveliness, and desirability in hideous china monsters and porcelain. After all we are but a flock, and follow the leader. Why should we not go mad for china? It is as sensible as going mad over rinking. Why should we not buy water-colours at fabulous prices? At least these can be sold again for something, whereas books—an extinct form of madness—cannot; and besides, present their backs in a mute appeal to be read.
The rooms of a man with whom comfort is the first thing aimed at. The chairs are low, deep, and comfortable; there are brackets, tiny tables, and all sorts of appliances for saving trouble and exertion; the curtains are of the right shade for softening the light; the pictures are of subjects which soothe the mind; the books, if you look at them, are books of travel and novels. The place is exactly such a home as lazy Lawrence would choose.
And yet when we saw his laziness in the Prologue, he was living alone in a deserted city, among the bare wooden walls of a half-ruined hotel. But Lawrence was not then at home. He took what comfort he could get, even there; and while he indulged his whim for solitude, impressed into his own service for his own comfort the two Chinamen who constituted with him the population of Empire City.
But at Empire City he was all day shooting. That makes a difference to the laziest of men. And he would not have stayed there so long had he not been too lazy to go away. If a man does not mind lonely evenings, the air on the lower slope of the Sierra Nevada is pleasant and the game is abundant. Now, however, he was back in London, where the laziest men live beside the busiest. The sun streamed in at his windows, which were bright with flowers; and he sat in the shade doing nothing. Restless men take cigars; men who find their own thoughts insufficient for the passing hour take books; men who cannot sit still walk about, Lawrence Colquhoun simply lay back in an easy-chair, watching the sunlight upon the flowers with lazy eyes. He had the gift of passive and happy idleness.
To him there came a visitor—a woman whom he did not know.
She was a woman about thirty years of age, a hard-featured, sallow-faced woman. She looked in Lawrence's face with a grim curiosity as she walked across the room and handed him a letter.