TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE

Changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book].

LOVE IN CHIEF

A Novel

BY

ROSE K. WEEKES

“One should master one’s passions (love, in chief),
And be loyal to one’s friends.”

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS · MCMIV

Copyright, 1904, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
Published September, 1904.

CONTENTS

LOVE IN CHIEF

LOVE IN CHIEF

I
WRITE ME AS ONE WHO LOVES HIS FELLOW-MEN

The waiting-room of Dr. Maude’s surgery at Monkswell was sparely furnished with guests, mainly because the December weather was of that mild and unseasonable type commonly called unhealthy. The darkness outside was pierced by a fine, invisible rain, borne on a south wind, and the waiting-room, though heat as well as light was spread only by a single gas-burner, was not cold. One patient was with the doctor; the details of his complaint could have been overheard by the others if they had cared to listen, but they did not; sufficient unto them were their own diseases. Five centres of self-complacent misery were sitting on a cane-seated bench; the sixth person was leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets. The only other representative of the male sex was eight years old, and had come to have a tooth out; too stolid to feel nervous, he sat sucking peppermints. His mother, in a decent black mantilla and a square-fronted bonnet trimmed with red chrysanthemums, was talking to a girl with a baby about wrongs invisible to the unjaundiced eye. The young mother’s dark eyes and delicate features had the remains of real beauty, though two years of matrimony had made her middle-aged; her pretty young sister, sitting beside her, showed what she must have been. The baby was not handsome; its pinkish-purple face was framed in a yellow woollen hood, and the colour which should have tinged its cheeks had settled upon its ugly little button of a nose and on its chin. It wheezed; the mother coughed loosely; the girl stared before her; the young man also coughed, but inobtrusively. He did not give to phthisis its due dignity.

The surgery presently discharged its patient and received the small martyr to toothache. The young man took the seat left vacant; and the gaslight, falling on his face, showed thin, brown features, eyebrows strongly arched and strongly marked, and bright, vagrant eyes which took an interest in everything. He edged a little closer to the young mother and looked inquiring. Finding that did not answer, he plunged into conversation with a speech which was admirable in sentiment but not discreet in wording.

“Jolly baby, that.”

“Yes, he was a fine boy,” said the girl, her tired eyes quickening as she looked down at her child, “but he’s after his teeth now, and it’s pulled him daouwn awful. We didn’t have a wink of sleep with him last night.”

“You must be pretty tired, then,” quoth the stranger. “Wonder if the little chap would come to me?”

“He don’t like strangers,” said the mother, doubtfully. She was unused to hear her boy called either a jolly baby or a little chap; and she distrusted the abilities of a young man, plainly unmarried, moreover, who used such terms.

“I’ll hold him like a patent rocking-chair,” the stranger asserted. “Come on, sonny. You won’t howl at me, will you? Great land, what a weight you are! I never turned ayah before—yes, put my eye out, will you? What’s wrong besides the teeth?”

“He’s got a touch of bromtitus; I caught it washing-day, and he took it from me. Oh, it’s crool work washing in the winter; our houses hasn’t any coppers, and we has to do it all out at the back.”

“Do you mean you wash the clothes in the open air?”

“Every mite of ’em. My husband he’s been to the landlord times and again, but he won’t do nothing for us; and they’re the cheapest houses round, so we just have to put up with it.”

“What a beastly shame! Who’s your landlord?”

“Old Fane, up at Fanes. Ah, he is a hard man. Last time as Mr. Searle went to see him, ‘You can take or leave it,’ he says; ‘I can get plenty more as won’t complain. I will not be pestered with discontented gutter-birds,’ he says. So my husband he come away; there wasn’t nothing to be done.”

“Fane, I think you said,” said the brown-eyed stranger, upon whose face the tale had painted a gleeful anticipation, as he took down the name in a pocket-book. “I’m thinking I’d like a little friendly conversation with Mr. Fane. Whereabouts is your place?”

“Burnt House, they call it; right out in the fields it is. If he’d put in one copper for the six houses, you wouldn’t think he’d ever miss the money. But he don’t care about us poor folks. I wish we was in Farquhar’s houses, that I do.”

Conversation was here broken by Dr. Maude, who summoned Mrs. Searle and her sister and the baby. Her short interview left her in tears. The doctor had ordered milk, which seemed to her as far beyond her means as caviare or turtle-soup. It would be got, but meanwhile Mrs. Searle would starve, Mr. Searle would swear, and the debt at the shop would grow. The stranger gave her a shilling, and fled into the surgery to escape her thanks.

The place smelt strong of drugs; shelves laden with bottles climbed up one wall, and the others were decorated with framed photographs and cases of medical books. Everything was strictly professional and methodically neat; and the doctor, slight and dark in appearance, cool and composed in manner, was the essence of his room embodied.

“What’s your trouble?” he asked of the stranger, who stood before him interested and insouciant, his hands still in his pockets.

“Hæmorrhage from the lungs. Oh, I’ve had the charming complaint before, and I know the ways of it; I’ve been despaired of three times already. But I’d like you just to tinker up my old constitution, if that’s possible.”

“When did the hæmorrhage occur?”

“I had a smart attack Sunday, and it’s been off and on ever since.”

“Then you ought to be in bed.”

“Quite so, Æsculapius, but I haven’t one.”

“There is the workhouse infirmary at Alresworth.”

“To which I’m on the way; but I didn’t think I could git.”

Then there was silence, while Maude applied his stethoscope. After testing the lungs he tried the heart, and after the heart other organs, and soon discovered that his patient was a collection of inceptive diseases. His questions elicited a tale of ill-health lightly borne in which he did not believe, for stoicism is rare in surgery patients.

“I don’t know your face—where do you come from?” Maude asked him.

“I was at Alresworth with a travelling company as a kind of a sort of a shadowy understudy of a sub-super, but I knocked up Sunday and was left behind. Nobody missed me. I can’t act any more than a dead egg,” said the patient, candidly—“ninety-nine, ninety-nine, ninety-nine; is that enough? But that don’t matter in the profession. Hullo, were you in the cricket-team at Queens? Nice game, cricket. I always shone in it myself.”

He disengaged himself, and walked across to study the photographed groups on the wall.

“Come back, please; I have not done with you,” said the doctor. “What’s your name?”

“Oh, I don’t know—John Smith, I guess. Last time I played cricket was near the English cemetery at Iquique. Jolly ground it was, too. There’s never a drop of rain from year’s end to year’s end, so the turf isn’t too good; but we had thousand-foot precipices on three sides of the ground, and what could you ask more? We played till Saunders made a boundary hit, and then we hadn’t a rope long enough to fetch up the ball. Next time Saunders went up there was after Yellow Jack had done with him. My hat! it was hot enough for kingdom come. The very abomination of desolation; red hills, and never a blade of grass, except the thread of green where the water comes down from the snows.”

“Well, John Smith,” said the doctor, “I can’t do much for you; your constitution’s rotten. You had better stop talking, take this medicine, and go to the infirmary, if it’s true that you have no home. A motor ’bus passes here at seven, and goes to Alresworth.”

The patient made a grimace. “More land of counterpane for me, I suppose. Passes here at seven, does it? I shall certainly be ’bus-sick; but, after all, tout passe, tout casse, tout lasse. Take my tip, Æsculapius, and don’t you drop your cricket. Good-night.”

It was only half-past six. Maude felt an impulse to recall the picturesque stoic and bid him wait in the surgery until the omnibus passed; but honesty is a rare quality, and the stranger, by pleasing him, inspired him with mistrust. An observant man, he noticed that John Smith spoke French like a Frenchman: a Parisian could have detected the difference, for his accent was that of Guernsey: but Maude had learned modern languages at a public school. In brief, the rain was inaudible in the surgery; the stranger was a questionable character; and Maude did not ask him in.

John Smith went out whistling; his frame was lean and gaunt and loose-jointed, but he walked with a fine swing. The surgery was the last house of the village. Some hundred yards further on the railway embankment spanned the road, and a lane turning up just beyond it led to the station. John Smith, sauntering along in the increasing rain, found shelter beneath the arch and stayed there. The wind blew up from the south straight through the tunnel, and the scene circumscribed by the arc of masonry was wild and beautiful. Across the black sky raced a froth of fleecy clouds, through which a half-moon shone, girt by a pallid zone of blue and bronze. The wild streamers were so unearthly pale, the heaven so solemnly dark, that only by the moon’s presence could sky be told from cloud. Gray hills, crowned with dark soft masses of woodland, folded down to a valley deep in mist, where a cluster of golden lights burned like a constellation magnified by rain; while up to his very feet the streaming road was turned to a sheet of glory by a common street-lamp.

John Smith immediately brought out a penny pencil and a penny exercise-book and began to write. Valiantly disregarding the inequalities of the brick-work, he rested the paper against the wall. He had thought of some elegant words and phrases for describing the evening sky, and wanted to fix them fast on paper before they escaped from his volatile memory. Actor he had been by chance, artist he was by nature; an artist in words, he professed himself gravely; a lover of apt phrase and finely balanced sentence; one of that happy confraternity whose goal in a strange room is always the bookcase. He had as many interests as ideas, but this reigned paramount.

The wind blew, and the rain came with it. It may have been the cold, or it may have been the weight of Mrs. Searle’s baby, or it may have been the inevitable sequence of his disease, which suddenly arrested the writer’s hand, and made him, choking, press a handkerchief to his lips to quell the flow. He knew how to meet the attack, and, lacking any other couch, lay down in the road; he could not well be wetter, and a mud-bath, at least, is warm. His handkerchief was drenched, but the stream did not stop. Presently the moon dimmed before his eyes, and his own troubled breathing seemed a far-off sound. It crossed his blurred mind that he was about to solve the great riddle, and go out with the wind; and he reflected with satisfaction that Dr. Maude, who had unmercifully turned him out into the rain, would be visited by pangs of conscience. He felt neither fear nor elation, but a certain regret in leaving a world which he had persistently enjoyed in spite of all; after which consciousness went out like a spark, and John Smith lay still in the road.

II
HE THAT SHOWED MERCY ON HIM

Ten minutes later a train passed southwards across the arch. It had discharged passengers at the station, and among them one who soon came driving down the lane in a high dog-cart fitted with pneumatic tyres, acetylene lamps, and a correct groom sitting up behind. As it turned the corner the horse, a handsome chestnut signally well groomed, shied violently at John Smith’s prostrate figure, and was promptly checked by the driver, who had him well in hand. He looked back over his shoulder. “What’s that, Simpson?”

“Drunken man, sir,” said the correct groom, stolidly.

“Pleasant weather to lie in the road. Still, will you?” He gripped the reins as though to curb the restive horse gave him pleasure. “Just go and see if he’s all right, Simpson. He’ll get run over lying under the arch there.”

Simpson got down. He resented his master’s charitable fads when they affected his comfort, but he dared not complain. It was true that Mr. Farquhar carried generosity to his servants to its extreme limit, but those who transgressed his laws had to go. He bent over John Smith and announced with undeviating stolidity: “Been fighting, sir.”

“Fighting, has he? Come and hold the horse for a minute.”

Servant and master changed places, and Farquhar in his turn scrutinised the features of John Smith. He moved the stained handkerchief, sniffed at his lips, laid a finger on the spot where the pulse should have beaten, and then stood up.

“Shift the seat as far forward as it’ll go. Yes; now put the cushions in the bottom of the cart. The rug over them. Is the back let down? That’s right.” He picked up John Smith and shouldered him as if he were a gun. The luckless artist in words weighed less than eight stone, but the strength required to lift him so easily was very great, and was shown more remarkably still when Farquhar raised him up at arm’s-length to put him into the dog-cart. Simpson lent his assistance, protesting only by silence against the introduction of a drunken and excessively muddy prodigal between the folds of the new carriage-rug. His discretion was rewarded by his master, who explained, as he took his seat again and picked up the reins: “It’s a case of illness, poor chap. The man’s not drunk.”

“Very good, sir,” said Simpson, touching his cap; but he did not believe it. Even the irreproachable Mr. Farquhar was no hero to his groom.

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.”

As he evidently meant to keep his word, Lucian subsided, and gave himself up to observing. The room was conventionally furnished, but he saw on the floor the skin of a black panther, and behind the door the nine-foot spiral ivory horn of a narwhal, trophies which even Whiteley cannot provide. Himself a wanderer, he rejoiced to see such tokens of his host’s pursuits; a sportsman is kin to a sportsman all the world over. From studying the furniture he turned to study Noel Farquhar.

Most people knew the name of the member for Mid-Kent, and his face was tolerably familiar through the slanderous presentations which the papers call portraits. He had been in Parliament for several years, and was supposed to be a coming man. When he got on his legs, members deferred their engagements; his speeches were generally lively, always pithy, and never long, a trinity of virtues rare as the Christian graces, and, like them, culminating in the last. He had the advantage of a good voice and delivery. As a politician he was incorruptible; he would criticise his own party, when it seemed in danger of deviating from that ideal of rectitude which animates the bosom of every British statesman. A Bayard without fear or reproach, a high-souled patriot with a caustic tongue, he had a niche all to himself among parliamentary celebrities.

He stood in his socks only five feet nine, but the width of his shoulders was exceptional, and his frame was lean and hard and supple as a panther’s. Every muscle had been trained and trained again to the pitch of excellency, and every movement had the sure grace of controlled strength. The comeliness of perfect health and physical fitness was his; he diffused a kind of tonic energy which acted on susceptible people almost like an electric current. For the rest, he was the typical Englishman: fair-haired, grey-eyed, sunburnt, pleasant, in spite of the grim curve of cheek and jaw, which matched the almost ominous strength of his physique. Lucian, like other people, would have accepted him for what he seemed, if he had not seen him deliberately reading through his love-letter. As it was, he looked into the fair, open face and knew him for a humbug; though he could not imagine why he should have read it, nor how it could advantage him to befriend a miserable, sordid, reprobate, and degraded outcast such as Lucian de Saumarez.

Dr. Maude came hard on the heels of the returning Simpson; he did not resort to Bob Sawyer’s tactics to increase the reputation of his practice. Farquhar met him in the hall and brought him in, and the patient overheard an edifying fragment of conversation.

“Well, I couldn’t very well leave him out in the road, poor chap, so I had to bring him along.”

“And he will probably recoup himself from your plate-chest.”

“What a cynic you are! I never thought of such a thing,” said Farquhar, laughing.

“Your innocence must stand in your way sometimes, I should think.”

“I never knew it do so. I believe, myself, that trust begets trustworthiness.”

“Ah, you’re a philanthropist,” said Maude, walking into the room. The patient lay quiet, apparently unconscious. “I expected that it was this fellow you’d got hold of,” Maude said, without surprise. “He came to me an hour ago. I told him to go to Alresworth infirmary; I suppose he had an attack while waiting for the ’bus.”

“Well, I think you might have let him wait in the surgery.”

“He’s probably a thief. I don’t profess to be a philanthropist, myself.”

“Philanthropist, indeed!” said Farquhar. “It’s not philanthropy I’m feeling for you, doctor.”

“I dare say,” Maude responded, proceeding with his analysis of Lucian’s bones.

“You persist in crediting me with virtues I don’t possess.”

“Modesty’s your great fault; every one knows that.”

“Well, yours isn’t over-amiability, anyhow,” returned Farquhar, again laughing.

Satirical compliments are more difficult to meet than most forms of attack, but Farquhar’s unconsciousness was a perfect piece of acting. Lucian wondered whether Maude knew the motive of his philanthropy. As a fact, Maude knew nothing and suspected merely because Farquhar was a virtuous person; he would have believed that the Apostle Peter got himself martyred for a consideration, and canonised by a piece of celestial jobbery. Being put to rebuke, he confined his conversation to the subject of Lucian’s illness, and in a short time the prodigal was installed in the best room and fed with the fatted calf under the form of tinned essence of beef.

III
THE PROPER STUDY OF MANKIND IS MAN

For several days Lucian was kept dumb by the tactics of his host, who walked punctually out of the room as soon as the invalid opened his lips. In half an hour he would return to the chafing guest; and then, if Lucian remained silent, he heard the paper read aloud, but if he dared to speak he was once more left to himself. As Lucian was eminently gregarious and hated his own society, the discipline achieved its object. He was treated like a royal guest, and repaid his host by vivisecting his character. The ground of his suspicions seemed trivial, but was substantial. Feeling the letter in its old place, Lucian sometimes wondered if he had dreamed that scene. But, no, he knew it was real; for the reason that he had seen on Farquhar’s face as he read an expression which he could never have imagined. What he suspected was not very clear; but Lucian had an inquisitive disposition, and his interests at this time were limited in number. Hence his exaggerated curiosity.

The church at Monkswell was heated by pipes which on mild days brought the temperature up to seventy degrees Fahrenheit, and in cold weather left the air in such a condition that to uncover his bald head was a severe trial of the parson’s faith. The weather had changed, and Farquhar, coming in after service on Sunday afternoon, went straight to the fire to warm his hands. He was an exemplary church-goer.

“Cold?” inquired Lucian, who was now allowed to talk a little.

“Bitterly. The snow-wind’s blowing; we shall be white to-morrow, if I don’t err.”

“Gale at seventy miles an hour, temperature twenty degrees below zero; yes, I’ve tried that out in Athabasca, and it didn’t suit me,” said Lucian, whose rebellious body appreciated luxury though his hardy spirit despised it.

“My faith, no! but I’m not sure that twenty degrees below isn’t better than a hundred and twenty above.”

“That’s a nice preparation for the bad time coming,” said the incorrigible Lucian. “Talking of which, what was that devilry you used when you carried in my fainting form?”

“Devilry, indeed! It was massage.”

“Not the ordinary, common or garden English massage, sonny; I’ve tried that.”

“Massage is massage all the world over, I should have said. However, I learned mine in Africa.”

“And who was your moonshee?”

“An old Arab sheikh who wore immaculate robes, and carried a dagger with a handle of silver filigree and a very sharp point, with which he prodded his slaves when they failed in their duties. Are you satisfied now?”

“No, not in the least; but I didn’t expect to be. Who’s old Fane?”

“My dear fellow,” said Farquhar, mildly, “your mind reminds me of a flea. Mr. Fane is a farmer hereabouts, a kind of local squire.”

“Is he well off?”

“Tolerably, I believe. Why do you ask?”

“Old curmudgeon!” said Lucian. “Stingy old miserly murderer!”

“One at a time, I beg,” said Farquhar.

“Well, he may be an angel incognito, but his war-paint’s unco guid, that’s all.”

“How has he roused your righteous wrath?”

Lucian related Mrs. Searle’s story, waxing eloquent over her wrongs, and illustrating his points with rapid foreign gestures, as his manner was. Farquhar compressed his lips, which already joined in a sufficiently firm line. “I know those houses,” he said; “they are unfit for habitation. I tried to get them condemned a year ago. Want a copper, do they? They’ll never get it from Fane.”

“I wish he’d tried what starvation’s like, that’s all.”

“Have you?”

“Have I? I was a thousandaire till I was four-and-twenty,” said Lucian, clasping his lean, brown hands behind his head—“but since then, devil a penny have I had to spend! My head is bloody but unbowed beneath the bludgeonings of Fate—W. E. Henley. I’m proud to say I could take the shine out of Orestes.”

Farquhar sat down by the fire and pulled the tea-table towards him. He was very useful at an afternoon party: could always remember the precise formula for every person’s several cup. “How did you lose your money?” he inquired, flavoring his own tea with lemon, in the Russian style.

“Sixteen thousand in one night playing écarté, sonny. No, don’t preach; I never gamble now I’ve got no money. Besides, on that memorable occasion my circumstances were exceptional.”

“Exceptionally bad, I should think. What did you do?”

“What did I do? Commenced author, and I flatter myself I should have made a decided hit, only I was overtaken by what another distinguished author calls Bluidy Jack. The medico swore it was the writing brought it on. I also swore, in many tongues, and had a second go; I held on gallantly for three months, and then went to a hospital, and a nurse fell in love with me. ‘Those lips so sweet, so honey-sweet—’ We swore fidelity. I shared with her my fortune—we broke a sixpence. She had three hundred a year and a large soul. Inconstant creature! On getting my ticket-of-leave from the hospital I introduced her to my chief pal; and would you believe it? the base villain borrowed my first fiver to elope with her with.”

“Good Heavens, de Saumarez!” said Farquhar, laughing against his will, “you don’t mean to tell me that all this is true?”

“True? True? Every blessed word of it. I then tried to ’list, but couldn’t pass the medical. So I got another pal and started as a tomato-johnny in Guernsey. We’re Guernsey people, you know,” he added, his voice taking a different intonation. “I’ve a certain affection for it, too; there I’ll hope to lay these carious old bones of mine when I’ve done with them. Mighty poor crops they’ll make, too. Well, I thought Guernsey, being my own, my native land, might be a sort of all-inclusive mascot for me. But, Lord bless you, sonny, it rained thunderbolts! Give you my word, no sooner were our glass-houses up than there arrived a record shower of aerolites; sticky, shiny, black things they were, for all the world like liquorice. Two-thirds of the panes went. As I didn’t want to wreck the bosom friend’s boat, we dissolved partnership, and Jonah went off on his own.”

Farquhar could himself corroborate this story; he remembered the meteoric shower, which had attracted some attention.

“The stars in their courses came out of them to fight against me, you see. Well, I went back to town and held horses. I fared sumptuously every day at coffee-stalls, or at Lockhart’s when I was in funds. I draw a veil over this period. I was submerged. Then, in hospital, I met a very decent fellow who got me a berth in Miss Inez Montroni’s travelling company, where I lived gaily on a pound a week till that memorable Sawbath which I broke by knocking up. I was discovered by a kind angel: adsum. Are you insured against fire?”

“Oh, I’m not afraid of ill-luck!” said Farquhar.

“Aren’t you, now? I detect a kind of arrogance, a sort of healthy scepticism in your tone, my friend. I wonder what you are afraid of? Not much, I guess.”

“Was your ill-health hereditary?” asked Farquhar, who as a temperance advocate studied the question of transmission.

“Don’t know. My parents died ere I was born, and never saw their son, you see. I inherited my bad luck, anyway.

‘Oh, Keith of Ravelston,

The sorrows of thy line!’”

“It hasn’t depressed your spirits.”

“Oh, I don’t believe in letting trouble beat you.”

“You talk as though trouble were a living personality.”

“So it is; a force inimical, to be conquered, held down, and trampled into the earth.”

“I don’t see how you’re going to conquer trouble. It has its way, and that’s all.”

“It’s not all. Trouble will make a man despair, or drink, or gamble, or go mad, or maybe even shoot himself. Well, I’d defy it to make me deflect a hair’s-breadth from myself, come all the shafts of fate. As long as I’ve lips I’ll grin.”

“That’s how you take things?” said Farquhar. “Well, it’s not my way.” His face lighted up with a heady defiance, his lips shut in a straight line, his eyes sparkled with quite unregenerate fire.

“What is your way, then?”

Farquhar’s expression went instantly out, and he lowered his eyelids. “Well, you know, things are different for you and me,” he said, diffidently. “I’m lucky in having a religious faith to fall back on.”

“Oh, I do like you!” said Lucian, after a few seconds, smitten with an admiration which was not wholly admirable. He solemnly stretched out his hand. “Sonny, you’re a great man,” he declared. “I wish I had your cheek. Shake!”

Farquhar smiled politely, deprecated the compliment, and evaded the point at issue; and shortly afterwards conveyed himself out of the room on the plea that the invalid had done enough talking. It was fortunate for him that the language of the eye cannot be put in as evidence, for Lucian knew that he had detected, in Farquhar’s too candid orbs, a tacit acknowledgment of all the deceit wherewith he was desirous of charging him.

Next morning in country and city men awoke to a white, silent world under a dome of blue, immaculate sky. There was no wind; and the breath of horse and rider hung still in the air after Noel Farquhar as he rode up to Burnt House. A huge sweep of bare, white country lay outspread, sparkling in the sun; the hedges were so thickly thatched with snow that they did not break the even whiteness of the prospect. The miserable little group of black, wooden cottages, Farquhar’s goal, was discernible a great way off; they were so lonely that when Farquhar rode back an hour later only his own tracks, black where the crushed snow had melted, confronted him upon the road.

The day passed, and several beside, and a week later the soiled rags of the snow still lingered under hedges and by tussocks in the fields when Farquhar took another morning ride, this time in the direction of Fanes. The house lay low; its E-shaped façade, built of bright-red brick and ornamented with facings of freestone, and with diagonal bands of dark brown crossing one another, looked across shaven lawns and wide gravel paths to a stream formally laid out with cascades and little islands, in summer bright with roses. Some noble trees sprang from the lawn; in particular, a most beautiful silver birch, whose slight, tapering branches sustained a colony of ragged black blots, which were the nests of the rooks of Fanes. The birds took toll from all the orchards around, and were almost as well hated as their owners.

Mr. Fane had a thin, tall figure, with stooping shoulders and forward-thrusting head. A pair of keen, cold eyes looked suspiciously forth from under penthouse brows; self-sufficiency had compressed his lips, selfish study had hollowed his cheeks, and his thin, even voice, precise in enunciation even to pedantry, was the true index of a steadfastly unamiable character. The Fanes enjoyed great unpopularity; father, son, and daughter, they were all shunned like lepers. Old Fane had married abroad; no one heard his wife’s maiden name, and when he came back as a widower nobody cared to ask. The two children grew up as they would. The son, Bernard, was notoriously a poacher; the daughter was a beauty, a wild rider, untutored and untamed, and shared, so it was said, her brother’s heinous crimes in the preserves. It was this business which shut off the young Fanes from the society of their peers. Once in past years they had made their appearance at the first meet of the season, but they never went again; and thenceforward avoided society more scrupulously than society avoided them.

All this happened before Noel Farquhar came to The Lilacs. He had more than once tried to make friends with young Fane, and had been snubbed for his pains; and thus to this hour matters stood. Nobody knew much about them, but they possessed a fearsome reputation, which caused nervous ladies to skip nimbly over fences when they saw Bernard Fane approaching on his big black horse.

Eumenes Fane received in his library, a long, low room walled with books. One case held tier on tier of novels in their native French, both old and new; another was devoted to theology, and put a row of Blair’s most unchristian sermons across the middle shelf as a gilded breastplate against the assaults of modern heresies. Mr. Fane was a ferocious Calvinist; he felt it his duty to go in for hell, and wished to exact consent in the same beliefs from his children, his servants, and in ever-widening circles from the ends of the earth. Over the mantel hung an interesting old design in black and white, which represented the Last Day: a small queue of saints in stained-glass attitudes ascending the celestial mountains under the convoy of woolly angels, a large corps of sinners being haled out of their tombs by demons armed with three-pronged spears, which they used as toasting-forks. His Satanic Majesty was gleefully directing their operations, amid tongues of realistic flame. On the card-board mount of the picture the following verse was inscribed in youthful round-hand:

Perdition is needful; beyond any doubt

Hell fire is a thing that we can’t do without.

Saltpetre and pitchforks with brimstone and coals

Are arguments new to rescue men’s souls.

We must keep it up, if we like it or not,

And make it eternal, and make it red-hot.

Mirabelle Fane.

The signature seemed to indicate that Mr. Fane was not always implicitly obeyed by his children.

He remained sitting when Farquhar was announced, and looked as forbidding as possible. Farquhar bowed, and looked as pleasant as possible. The interview promised to be unconventional.

“You are Noel Farquhar?”

“That’s my name, sir,” said Farquhar, always particularly respectful to an elderly man.

“You write to me that you have made some alterations in my cottages at Burnt House,” continued old Fane, referring to a letter in his hand.

“I have, sir; and I hope you will forgive my officiousness in acting without your leave.”

“I understand that you have put in a copper.”

“It hasn’t damaged the property; I’ll answer for that; and it was pretty badly wanted. If you’d looked at the place yourself—”

“Where is the copper set?”

“As a lean-to on the last house.”

“What are the dimensions?”

Farquhar supplied him with precise particulars. “I happened to hear the story from one of your tenants, and I ordered the thing at once, without a thought of the landlord’s right in the matter. When I did remember, it was too late; the work was begun. I can assure you, sir, that it actually adds to the value of the property.”

“So I supposed. What should you say at a guess is the rental worth of the improvement?”

“Oh, something very small; not more than sixpence a week, sir.”

Mr. Fane made an entry in his book. “Thank you; I am much obliged to you. Good-morning.”

“You’ll overlook my indiscretion?”

“Overlook it? Indiscretion? I am a poor man, and you have put into my pocket three shillings a week, Mr. Farquhar; I am greatly indebted to you.”

“I have put into your pocket three shillings a week?”

“The additional rent of the six houses, you understand.”

“You mean to raise the rent?”

“Certainly. Indiscriminate charity is against my principles.”

“But, sir, they’ll never be able to pay it.”

“I shall, I hope, find other tenants who will.”

“And the charity is mine, Mr. Fane.”

“And the houses are mine, Mr. Farquhar. Would you be so good as to let yourself out? The men are out on the farm. You cannot well miss your way.”

Farquhar took up his hat and retired. He really could not attempt to argue the matter, and was aware that he had been neatly outwitted. So great a philanthropist should have been saddened by thoughts of the Searles, victims of his blunder; but Noel Farquhar, as he walked down the hall, was smiling, in candid appreciation of the nice precision of his defeat.

IV
MY ACTIONS ALWAYS HARMONISED WITH MY OWN SWEET VOLITION; I ALWAYS DID WHAT I DEVISED AND RARELY ASKED PERMISSION.

Ere he was able to let himself out, however, he was recalled.

“Mr. Noel Farquhar!”

Farquhar turned, and saw on the stairs a girl with a small head and a crown of chestnut hair. She came leisurely down with her hand on the balustrade, planting each foot lightly but with decision; her gait was very characteristic. The light was from behind and left her features dark. When she had reached the hall, “I want to speak to you,” said she, calmly; “please to come in here.”

Farquhar held his peace and followed her into another low room, littered with more books and with Miss Fane’s somewhat masculine appurtenances—a pair of dogskin gloves, a hard felt hat, and a riding-whip among them. Armorial bearings were carved upon the lintel and traced again in silver upon the uprights of the andirons, across which logs were lying, in primitive style. The girl went first to the fire and stooped to warm her hands before she confronted him.

“Have you been talking to my father?”

“Am I speaking to Miss Fane?”

“Of course; why do you ask such a question as that?”

“Because I really was not sure; I thought you were younger.”

“Most people know us by sight, though we are too wicked to be received,” returned Miss Fane, indifferently. “I don’t know whether you mistook me for a servant. However, that doesn’t matter; have you been speaking to my father?”

“I came by appointment on a business matter, Miss Fane.”

“About those cottages at Burnt House. You should have written to my brother Bernard; he manages the farm, and he is reasonable to deal with. Does my father mean to raise the rents?”

“He said such was his intention, but I hope he will think better of it.”

“Oh no, he won’t. Are you going to acquiesce, and let your protégés be evicted?”

“I can hardly make Mr. Fane lower the rents, can I?”

“You could make up the difference yourself.”

As this was precisely what Farquhar had determined to do, he was, of course, struck by her intelligence. But he did his alms in modest secrecy. “I dare say they will find the extra sixpence,” he said.

“They can’t. Searle drinks, and the others are as bad, or worse. They’re helpless.”

Farquhar did not answer her. She had just moved into the sunlight, and he was startled by her beauty. No flower-loveliness was hers, delicate and evanescent; she glowed like a jewel with colour, the brighter for the sunlight which illumined the rich damask of her cheeks, the rich whiteness of her brow, the rich hazel of her eyes, the rich chestnut of her hair. Dolly Fane possessed in its full splendour the misnamed devil’s beauty, the beauty of colour, vitality, youth. Her lips were virginally severe, her figure slight, girlishly formed, not yet mature; she was not so old, nor yet so self-possessed, as she wished to appear.

“Well, if you are giving in there is no more to be said,” she added, with a slight contemptuous movement which was plainly a prelude to showing him out.

Farquhar hastily cast to the winds his modest reserve. “I am not giving in; I do mean to make up the difference,” he said.

“You do?” said Dolly, fastening her eyes upon him.

“You’re very charitable, Miss Fane,” said Farquhar, smiling.

“Not in the least. I am sorry for Mrs. Searle; but I did not ask you for that reason. I wanted to see what you are like. You’ve spoken to my brother Bernard once or twice, haven’t you?”

“I have; but he did not seem interested in my conversation.”

“Oh, that’s Bernard’s way; he always thinks people mean to patronise him. You know London well, don’t you?”

“I’ve lived a good deal in town, certainly.”

“Should I pass muster in society?”

“Pass muster?” Farquhar repeated. It was not easy to abash him, but this young beauty, with her odd questions, contrived to do it.

“Yes. I know I am behaving in an unusual way now, but have I the accent and the appearance of a lady?”

“Most certainly you have.”

“Do you think so? Should I get on in town? Do you think I am sufficiently presentable to be an actress?”

“An actress? Yes, I should say you were.”

“You’ve not seen me act, of course; I can do it. And I’ve a passable voice, and I’m fairly good-looking. Books say that theatre-goers will put up with poor acting for the sake of a pretty face; is that true?”

“It depends on the prettiness of the face. It would be true in your case.”

“I don’t in the least want compliments. I want the plain truth.”

“And I’m giving it.”

“Oh,” said Dolly, evidently disconcerted. He had checked her for the minute, and she remained silent, though fresh questions were at her very lips.

“Are you fond of acting?” Farquhar asked, to loosen her tongue. “Are you burning to play Juliet?”

“Juliet? Oh no! I’d like to be Cleopatra or Lady Macbeth, though. Some one powerful and perhaps wicked; but not like La Dame aux Camélias, or Iris, or Agnes Ebbsmith. If I threw the Bible in the fire, I should keep it there.”

“And make it eternal, and make it red-hot,” suggested Farquhar.

“Did you read those lines? Aren’t they good? Years ago I wrote them there, and father never could make me rub them out, though he tried with his riding-whip. But that wouldn’t interest you. On your honour, do you think I should have a chance on the stage?”

“On my honour, I do. But why do you want to go? I should have thought you’d too much sense to be stage-struck.”

“I’m not stage-struck, but I want to leave this place, and that seems the simplest way. We are badly off. I never see any one except my brother. I do not know how to behave. I have never had the chance of speaking to a gentleman before: which was why I called you in and asked you these questions. I expect no girl you know would have done it, would she?”

“You’re right—she wouldn’t; the more fool she, if she wanted the answer as badly as you did.”

“Exactly,” said Dolly; “for, after all, it doesn’t matter what you think of me.”

Farquhar slightly altered his whole bearing. He leaned against the chimney-piece and looked her in the face. “My opinion does matter, you know,” he said. “I’ve some influence, which I could use either to promote or to frustrate your interests. I know plenty managers, and so forth, and I’m popular.”

“It does not matter,” Dolly corrected swiftly; “for I would under no circumstances consent to be beholden to you for anything beyond the piece of truth you’ve already given me.”

“You’re independent.”

“I hope so.”

“I’d much like to teach you to obey.”

“Mathematicians have always wanted to square the circle.”

“You’ve a will of your own; you’re worth talking to.”

“Is this how a gentleman speaks to a lady?”

“No, it’s how a man speaks to a woman.”

Dolly glanced out of the window. “That’s my brother Bernard with his dogs. He stands six foot three, and he’s the best wrestler in Kent.”

“Meaning you’d set him to turn me out? He’d never do it.”

“Do you think you’re as strong as Bernard?”

“Stronger,” answered Farquhar, stretching out his arm. Pride of strength was in that gesture, and more than pride—arrogance.

Dolly had a primitive admiration for strength, and his self-confidence tingled through her veins. She liked him the better that he was dangerous to handle; she was more at her ease that they were outside convention.

“At least, you’re not stronger than Bernard plus half a dozen men whom I could call in a minute,” she remarked, evenly. “Wouldn’t it be wiser to make no fuss, but go?”

Farquhar started, passed his hand across his eyes, and looked at her earnestly, as though her words had wakened him. “Miss Fane, I believe I’ve been saying the most outrageous things!” he exclaimed. “Haven’t I? I don’t know what possessed me. What have I said?”

“A little harmless nonsense, that’s all,” Dolly assured him.

“I must ask you to forgive me. To tell the truth, I’d a touch of sunstroke out in Africa, and since then I’m not my own master at times. I’m literally out of my wits. I don’t know what I’ve said, but nothing was farther from my mind than any rudeness to you—to any lady. You will believe that?”

“Perhaps. Good-bye.”

“You won’t punish me by declining to speak to me?”

“We aren’t likely to meet. Your friends don’t know me.”

“We shall meet, if you allow it. Will you?”

“Will I, now?” said Dolly. She went and threw open the door. “Good-morning.”

Farquhar pleaded, but his words were wasted. Not a word more would Miss Fane say, and at last he took up his hat and walked out.

When she had watched him out of sight, Dolly went bareheaded across the lawn to a tool-shed under the trees, round which circled a numerous company of dogs, ranging from a smart terrier up to a huge grave brute, half bloodhound, half Great Dane, of the breed which Virginian planters used in the good old days for tracking down their runaway slaves. Within, Dolly found the tall young fellow whom she had pointed out to Farquhar. He was darker than his sister, and not so handsome, but the two were plainly slips of the same tree. Bernard’s manners needed attention. When his sister appeared he did not lay down his saw, which produced an ear-piercing rasping and ratching such as denied conversation. Dolly put her hand on his and arrested his work by force.

“Well, what did that chap Farquhar want?” asked Bernard, without resentment.

Dolly related Farquhar’s doings at Burnt House, and the sequel. Bernard’s comment was: “I guess he must be an ass,” and he took up his saw to resume work, but was once more summarily stopped by his sister. These incidents were stages in the conversation; as people of quick wits often do when they live together, these two were in the habit of expressing themselves by signs.

“He’s going to pay the difference himself, and not let father know,” Dolly explained.

“Then I guess he’s only a soft. But how did you hear?”

“I called him into the parlour and asked. I asked him whether I should succeed on the stage.”

A pause, during which Bernard framed, and discarded as useless, a reproof. “What did he say?”

“He said I should.”

“I don’t see you can count that. I guess it wouldn’t be good manners for him to tell you you wouldn’t.”

“He did mean it. He wasn’t particularly polite.”

“What did he do?”

“Oh, nothing actually rude. It was odd,” said Dolly, reflectively. “At first he was—oh, Bernard, you know what I mean: turned out on a pattern and polished, like all the other gentlemen we’ve seen. I was rather nervous; but I meant to go through with it. Then his manner seemed to break in half. He was almost brutal. I must say I rather liked that; it was raw nature. And quite at the end he apologised, and said that he’d had sunstroke in Africa. Do you think that likely to be true?”

“I couldn’t say,” said Bernard. “I know he’s been in Africa.”

“What! out at the front? How painfully ordinary!”

“You do it very well,” said Bernard, with admiration. “That was just like the woman in the black frills at Merton’s. You’d soon be as good as they are. Farquhar wasn’t volunteering, though; he was up farther north, where they get miasma.”

“Oh,” said Dolly, leaning her elbows on the bench and her chin on her clasped hands. “Do you like him, Bernie?”

“Not if he was rude to you; though I guess swells generally are cads, like in books.”

“He wasn’t exactly rude. He was primitive. I should say he was very strong, and rather wicked, and subtle; not like us. We’re quite simple, simplex, one-fold; we mean what we say and do what we mean, you and I.”

“I should hope so,” said Bernard, who was not troubled by uncertain ethics.

“Noel Farquhar doesn’t, then; I’m sure of it. He is very strong. He says he is stronger than you are.”

Bernard stretched out a brawny arm. “He’s six inches shorter, anyway. At that rate he’d have to be a Hercules to lick me.”

“I’d like you to wrestle with him. I’d like to see him thrown.”

“Hullo, Dolly!”

“And I mean to meet him again.”

“I know that isn’t the proper thing. You ought to get introduced first.”

“I can take care of myself. He interests me.”

“You’ll be falling in love with him if you don’t look out.”

“That I never should do. But he might fall in love with me.”

“Shouldn’t think that was likely.”

“Why not? We Fanes are as good a family as any in England. And I’m handsome: Bernard, you said I was.”

“Yes, but you aren’t like the woman in the black frills,” said Bernard, measuring his sister by the only standard of taste he knew. “Besides, I guess Merton’s morally sure you were out poaching last time with me, and he and Farquhar are as thick as thieves. Girls oughtn’t to poach.”

“There are some people who don’t class that among the seven deadly sins, and he’s one; I know it. He has wild blood, as we have.”

“But would you marry him if he wanted you to?”

“I’m not sure. I might. He could give me what I want—experience.”

“I don’t see why you aren’t contented here,” said Bernard, bending to his work again.

“I dare say not,” retorted Dolly, pacing the shed. “You’re phlegmatic. You’re content with the rind of life. Bitter or sweet, I mean to taste the core.”

“I expect, you know, you’ll come to awful grief.”

“Perhaps. But so I’ve lived my life first, I’ll not complain.”

“Well,” said Bernard, “I never saw you in heroics before, and I guess I don’t care if I never do again.”

Then he returned to his work, and drowned Dolly’s aspirations in the harsh duet of squeaking saw and dissentient wood.

V
SHE GOES ON SUNDAY TO THE CHURCH

Eumenes Fane’s marriage had been both more respectable and more romantic than his kind enemies believed: living in Paris, he had eloped with a handsome, wilful French girl of noble family. Her relations swallowed the match as a bitter pill, his did not exist; and the married lovers lived in isolation far away in Brittany until death cut short their long honeymoon. Eumenes returned to England embittered; he had always been disagreeable. The relations between him and his children were eccentric. He lived with them, he had taught them, yet he lavished satire upon their boorishness and stupidity; he had been devoted to the mother, yet for the children he had no feeling but unamiable contempt. They, on their part, repaid him with indifference. Bernard at eighteen, on his own initiative, took control of the farm and made it pay; Dolly managed the dairy and the household. Their lives were isolated equally from their father and from the world. Bernard was not much of a reader, and never strayed far from his Shakespeare and his farming journals, with excursions into Tennyson; but Dolly was insatiable. She had read and digested every book in their heterogeneous library. Unfortunately, the collection was not representative; the modern French novelists were there arranged in full tale, and fresh volumes were added as they appeared, but it had no single work of English fiction later than the date of the admirable Sir Charles Grandison. Both Bernard and Dolly could read and speak French as easily as English, though they did not know the worth of their accomplishment; and from their study of fin-de-siècle literature they had gained an innocently lurid knowledge of the world which hardly fitted in with the conditions of English country life, and was particularly inappropriate as applied to the blameless households at the vicarage, the surgery, or The Lilacs. When young Merton of The Hall brought home a pretty bride, Dolly seriously looked for the appearance of Tertium Quid. He delayed his coming for a year, and then arrived in the cradle. Dolly was surprised; but she ascribed this breach of custom to the fact that Merton senior’s money was made in soap. Only the true aristocrats indulge in a friend of the house.

After Farquhar’s visit Dolly made a dress for herself. It was then the fashion to wear a bodice opening at the sleeves and in front to show a lighter under-dress, which also appeared beneath the skirt, as the corolla of a flower beneath the calyx. Dolly’s gown of dark chestnut matched her hair; the colour of the vest was white. She was more skilful in the dairy than with her needle, but she gave her mind to this, and in the end her work was crowned with fair success.

“I guess that colour, what they call, suits you,” said Bernard, whom she called in to assist at the full-dress rehearsal.

“I expect it does,” assented Dolly, bending back her swan’s-neck to catch a glimpse of her supple young waist in the spotty mirror. “It fits rather badly; any one can see it is homemade, but that can’t be helped. I am going to wear it to church on Christmas Day.”

“Father’ll be awfully angry if you go to church.”

“Of course, but that doesn’t matter. No one except small shopkeepers and mill-girls goes to chapel now. Besides, the minister drops his h’s and mixes his metaphors and talks the silliest nonsense: I wouldn’t listen to him even if it were the fashion. Shall you come with me?”

“I guess I’d better. Have you seen that Farquhar chap again?”

“I have,” Dolly answered, composedly.

“You’ll get yourself into a mess if you don’t look out.”

“Oh no. He may get into a mess, but I shall not.”

“Then I don’t think you are playing fair.”

“Yes, I am. He knows why I spoke to him.”

“Why did you?”