Part 7

In the solitude of her chamber, Dolly that night took her heart and mind to pieces, and diligently perquisited all their workings, pried into motives, dissected sensations, and probed like any surgeon. She wanted replies to two questions: first, why she was unnaturally indifferent to kisses; second, whether she preferred Lucian de Saumarez or Noel Farquhar. Her analysis left her little the wiser; she got few facts, because there were few to get. As Bernard would have accepted a kiss with unaffected composure, so Dolly in the same spirit could not understand the pother made about the matter; she was gifted with a masculine indifference, or, as Angela Laurenson would have phrased it, with no feminine modesty. Yet, when she turned to the second question, the thought of loving either suitor sent Dolly flying to unapproachable snow-peaks of virgin coldness, where the foot of no man ever had trodden or ever would tread. Dolly married, loving and beloved, the mother of half a dozen children, would still have kept in her heart a shrine of vestal purity. Careless about the borders of her kingdom she might be, but the citadel was inviolable. She came out of her quest little the wiser, but with her mind made up.

She turned on her pillow and slept soundly, till the dawn, blossoming like a golden rose between the clouds, shone in upon her lying between linen sheets which smelt of violets, with all her chestnut hair twisted into one thick plait. The light roused her, and she was up in a trice and splashing in her tub of rain-water; then dressing rapidly, rolling up her hair in a knot, fastening on her blue dress and her plain white apron: in twenty minutes she was ready. Down-stairs she went full ten minutes late, and annoyed with herself and consequently with Maggie, who had been late too—for no reason, as Dolly told her, severely. Dolly laid the table for breakfast, with a pot of wall-flowers in the middle; she fetched the coffee-pot, and put on the milk to boil in an enamelled saucepan, and refilled the shining kettle—all Dolly’s pots and pans looked like silver. She sliced the bacon into the thinnest of thin rashers and set Maggie to fry it. Finally she went to the churn, where she should have been half an hour earlier, praying that the butter might come quickly. She stood at the open window; the sun looked across the sill; a brown bee hummed in, seeking the wall-flowers; the bacon sizzled, the churn gurgled, and Dolly frowned.

“Oo, miss,” said Maggie, pausing with the frying-pan aslant—“Oo, miss, there’s a gentleman coming down the drive!”

“Hold the frying-pan straight!” was Dolly’s stern reply.

“Oo, miss,” said the irrepressible one, staring, wide-eyed, “but he’s coming to the window, and it’s—”

“Go on with your work!” said Dolly, in such a tone that Maggie went on. A shadow fell across Dolly’s hands.

“Good-morning, Sister Dolly,” said Lucian de Saumarez, leaning his elbows on the sill.

“Don’t call me that; I’m not a Roman Catholic,” said Dolly, not too graciously.

“Nor I, praise the pigs!”

“Why, do you dislike them so?”

“I hate the doctrine of confession and the system of spiritual directors,” said Lucian, with unusual emphasis. “I call it morally degrading—however, I didn’t come here to talk theology. Is the agrarian barbarian anywhere about?”

“Bernard’ll be in to breakfast at half-past seven, if you mean him.”

“Then I guess I’ll wait. Hullo, Maggie; how’s the headache?”

“Teethache, sir,” said the delighted Maggie, dropping a courtesy. “They’re nicely, thank you, sir.”

“Maggie, go and dust the parlour; I’ll see to the bacon,” said Dolly. Maggie retired quite crestfallen and sad.

“Why did you send the child off? She wasn’t doing any harm,” said Lucian.

“I’ll call her back and go myself, if you want to talk to her.”

“I don’t, I don’t; you know I don’t. But why are you so cross?”

“Because I was late,” said Dolly, candidly, and laughed, and recovered her temper. “Why weren’t you at the Mertons’ last night? Mrs. Merton said she asked you.”

“I was looking after old Farquhar; he’s been seedy.” Dolly’s lip curled. “Fact, I assure you. He had a touch of fever the night before last, and raved about you like Old Boots.”

“I should have thought that as a literary man you might find a better simile. I met a friend of yours there—Mr. Meryon.”

“What? Gambling Meryon? You don’t say!” exclaimed Lucian. “I’ll look him up. I haven’t seen him since he won sixteen thousand off me at a sitting. Lordy! what a getting down-stairs that was!”

“So he told me.”

“Did you hear the whole thing?”

“Yes.”

“What, about Marguerite?”

“Yes.”

“Ah!” said Lucian, and whistled a few notes. “Well?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Dolly, conscious that his bright inquisitive eyes were studying her face.

“Does it make any difference?”

“No. Yes,” said Dolly. “I am very, very sorry.”

“If I’d thought you’d take it that way,” said Lucian, swinging himself up to a seat on the sill, “I’d have given you the whole history myself, and made it most awfully pathetic. I bet Meryon didn’t pile it on half strong enough.”

“You’re perfectly callous!”

“My dear good girl, it’s nine years ago,” said Lucian, “and there’s no sentiment about me, at my age. Hullo! whom have we here?”

Dolly looked up from the churn and saw a stranger coming up the path. He was a young man of six or seven and twenty, tall, fair, slender, very good-looking, and most correctly dressed. At first glance Dolly saw a resemblance to her last night’s acquaintance, Angela Laurenson. He had the same fair hair, the same dark-grey eyes, and the same delicate and colourless type of features, though his were more regular, his nose in particular being accurately Greek; but the likeness appeared only in the outward mould, Angela’s alertness being replaced by an air of languid tranquillity. He was carrying his bag and a gold-headed cane, and seemed to find the cane alone quite as much as he wished to support.

“I beg your pardon,” he said; “could you direct me to The Hall?”

“Go back to our gates and turn to the right, straight on till you come to four cross-roads; take the left-hand road up the hill, and you will see The Hall on your right, a white house among fir-trees,” said Dolly, who had the masculine power of concise explanation.

“About how far is it?”

“Two miles and a quarter.”

“Thanks very much,” said the stranger, with a resigned air, preparing to go.

“Been walking far?” inquired Lucian, who had not failed to notice the dust on his boots.

“From Wemborne. I missed my train and could get no cab,” said the stranger, mentioning a junction twelve miles away.

“Why, man, you must be dog-tired! Have you had any breakfast?”

The stranger smiled and shook his head.

“We shall be very glad if you will come in and share ours. It is ready now,” said Dolly, simply.

“Thanks very much. I am particularly grateful, but I’m afraid I can’t wait.”

“Have some cider; I can recommend it,” said Lucian, hospitably.

“Or a glass of milk,” suggested Dolly, maternally careful of his health.

“You are very good,” said the stranger. “I am rather thirsty.”

“You’ll have some cider, then?”

“No, no cider, thanks. But I should very much like the milk.”

Dolly went away to fetch it, and the stranger’s eyes followed her with involuntary admiration.

“What a confounded nuisance these Wemborne trains are!” said Lucian, who knew the time-table considerably better than the porters at the station. “They leave you two minutes to catch your connection, and then make the main-line train half an hour late!”

“I could have caught mine,” said the stranger, with the hint of a smile, “if I had chosen to run for it. But it was such a fag, you know.”

“You like walking twelve miles better than running twelve yards?”

“I don’t know that I put it to myself in that form,” said the stranger; “but I own that I don’t like hurrying. I could take my time over the twelve miles, you see.”

“You’ve done it in pretty good time,” said Lucian. “Three hours, or less.”

“Nearer eight, I fancy.”

“You came by the early train?”

“No, by the late.”

“Ye towers o’ Julia!” was Lucian’s irrelevant comment on this admission.

“I have an idea that I got lost in the dark,” explained the stranger. “I seemed to meet the same duck-pond several times. Thank you very much. I am immensely obliged to you.” He took from Dolly’s hand the warm and foaming milk, drank it, and went on his way, walking, as Lucian now noticed, slightly lame, but gracefully still, as he went up the steep, stony path. Dolly said, watching him with softened eyes, as she sometimes watched Lucian: “He looks tired to death. I am sure he is not strong.”

“Maternal spirit! You were born to be a nurse, Dolly.”

“No. I never want to nurse women or children, but I am sorry for men, especially when they are plucky, as he is. I wonder who he can be?”

“So do I,” said Lucian. “I’d also like to know why he shied so violently at the notion of cider. I dare say we shall hear.”

They left off talking by common consent. The entrance of the stranger had checked and turned their thoughts, and, strangely enough, seemed to dislocate their simple and friendly relation. Dolly took out her butter, pulled down her sleeves, and turned her attention to the bacon. When she broke silence it was to speak of a fresh subject, one which she had not meant to broach that morning, though it had been on her mind since the night before.

“Mr. de Saumarez, will you take a message from me to Mr. Farquhar?”

“With all my heart, only I’ve a kind of idea that he’d rather you told him yourself.”

“No, but I would not. I don’t wish to see him again for the present. I don’t wish to see him for three months.”

“Three months!”

“Yes.”

“That’s a long time, Dolly.”

“Not long for what I want to do.”

“Make up your mind?”

“Yes.”

“Can’t see why you shouldn’t do that now. Farquhar’s what I should call eligible building-ground; you might erect a cathedral on him, or you might run up a slave-market; anyhow, he’ll be what you make him, Dolly.”

“I certainly sha’n’t make anything of him if you go on praising him. You ought to know that praise is the strongest of disqualifications.”

“You’re an unreasonable being. If you don’t see him, how do you think you’re going to know your own mind better three months hence than now?”

“I’m coming to that. I don’t want to see him; but if he cares to write to me I’ll answer his letters. That’s what I want you to tell him.”

“Glory!” said Lucian. “Then while he’s away I’ll walk in daily and praise him up to the skies. I think I read my title clear to a gay time.”

“I want you to go, too,” said Dolly.

“Me? Oh, I’m a harmless individual; you needn’t do that.”

“But I want to put you both on an equality and judge fairly.”

“Ah, but you’ll never marry me.”

The sincerity of conviction was in Lucian’s voice; Dolly had that one fleeting glimpse into his fundamental creed. While he lived he would never give up hope, but behind it he accepted the certainty that no hope of his would ever find fulfilment; such indelible characters had failure written upon his spirit. Dolly pitied him so much that she was almost ready to contradict his creed by the promise of herself. Almost, but not quite; the shadow of the change which she had felt that morning interfered to prevent her. Better to wait, she thought; better to deliberate and weigh, not act on the impulse of a mood. She did not speak, and Lucian’s golden chance passed.

“I don’t know whether I shall marry you or not,” she said. “I’ll write to you both; and at the end of the three months I’ll let you know, if you still care. There’s Bernard.”

It was not Bernard, however; Bernard was very late that morning. For the space of half an hour those two, who felt that their interview should have been neatly rounded off by the entrance of a third person, were forced to make conversation in the regions of small talk. Real life is not often appropriate in its arrangement of incidents. Eight o’clock struck before Bernard walked in, large and calm and hungry. Lucian disburdened himself of his message, which was merely an invitation to play billiards.

“I guess Farquhar must be pretty sick of teaching me,” said Bernard, cutting himself a round off the loaf; after which he supplied Dolly’s needs. “But I suppose he knows his own business best. I say, did you see that girl who took me in to supper last night?”

“Dinner, Bernard.”

“Dinner, then. Did you see her?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who was she?” asked Lucian.

“Miss Angela Laurenson.”

“Pretty girl, very smart, woman’s rights, little aristocrat; yes, I know. Go ahead, Colossus; what about her?”

“I guess the dude who ran me down’s her brother; I met him again this morning,” said Bernard; “that’s all.”

“Oh, what was he like?”

“Weedy looking chap in gray, with a drawl and a carpet-bag.”

“L. L. Laurenson, Esq., Royal Artillery, Distinguished Service Order,” said Lucian. “I know him, too, by name; as you would if you’d ever talked to Angela Laurenson for two minutes on end. She can’t keep him out of the conversation.”

“Does she call him Lal?” Dolly asked, curiously. Lucian nodded.

“Well, I guess I talked to her for two hours on end,” said Bernard, cutting himself another slice from the loaf; “but she didn’t mention him.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Me,” said Bernard, “and her. Pass me a couple of eggs, will you, Dolly?”

XI

IN ARDEN

The breast of a wooded hill, leaning towards water still as glass and green as malachite, confronted the Hôtel des Boërs, at Vresse-sur-Semois. Dark-green and silver, the valley lay below; a nightingale was singing in the dawn; and presently the gold eye of the sun, looking down through the high woods, shone on hills white with dew, spangling them with fiery drops, and changing into silver threads the little singing streams which tumbled down through bright-green dells to join the silent river. Mists cleared away like breath from a mirror, and there on the water a little lawny islet lay like an anchored dream; they had been cutting the hay, and from the grey swaths floated up the odours of Eden. Thus rose Lucian’s first day in Arden, and he was up to see the dawn.

Farquhar had gone on some weeks before to complete his arrangements. Having been brought up by his Scotch relations near Aberdeen, he knew a good deal about granite, and on his first visit of inspection had pointed out that in texture, grain, and colour the stone of the Petit-Fays quarry resembled the valuable red granite of Peterhead. The owner simply laughed him to scorn, and went about lauding his scrupulous honesty at the expense of his sense in a fashion which afforded a subtle gratification to the person praised. Nevertheless, Farquhar persisted in buying the quarry, and soon proved himself right. At once he brought over new, modern machinery, and sent for skilled workmen from England. His design was to supply the Belgian market, which had heretofore been satisfied with Scotch granite. Paving-stones, better finished than those turned out by the primitive quarries of the Meuse; polished shop-fronts for the new suburbs of Brussels, especially the splendid streets near the Boulevard d’Anspach: these he could tender at lower prices than the Scotch dealers, for in Belgium labour is cheap and the cost of transport light, especially on the state railways. For the present he retained his English workmen, with the intention of replacing them by Belgians so soon as they had learned the niceties of their trade; and for this purpose he had already formed classes for instruction in polishing and sculpture. His manager, an American named Charlesworth, had the teaching of them, and Lucian had promised to give his services as well.

The quarry, which was already in full work, lay behind the bend of the Semois, just out of sight of the hotel. In Belgium one looks for the grubbily picturesque, for endless variations on the themes of dirt and art, rather than for the beauty of rock and wood and river; yet here in the south the streams run through the loneliest, loveliest valleys, abandoned to their kingfishers and great butterflies, and musical with little springs which run among the hills. The quarries are hardly eyesores. The approaches of Farquhar’s were even picturesque; the intractable granite, interrupting with its fire-scarred shoulders the suave contour of the hills, had scattered rocks across the stream, which reared in a white ruff round each and raced away with plenty of noise and foam. The stately cliff which the quarrymen were labouring to destroy rose up behind from among trees. Lucian, who never loved his bed, by six o’clock had had his breakfast and was standing on the verge, looking down into the pit. It was unbeautiful; blackened like a hollow tooth by the smoke of the blasting, swarming with midget figures, the rocks fell away down to the depth, where the blocks of granite were being split up for convenience of loading. The graceful, deliberate crane let sink its trucks to be filled, and as slowly raised each to its appointed bourn; the noise of the steam crusher, where the chips were being ground to powder for cement, went on continuously; the boring-machine was also at work; and four or five men, splitting up a large block of granite, were playing “The Bluebells of Scotland” by striking on drills of different tones.

Presently the whistle of a siren silenced the music, and with one accord the quarrymen left their work and took shelter. Five minutes later, a detonation and strong reverberations shook the cliff; and when the smoke cleared, Lucian saw fresh boulders lying displaced from their bed, and a fresh scar graven upon the corrugated walls. So the work went on. Danger was always present; but the danger of the quarry is not like the loathsome sleuth-hound of disease which tracks down the potter and the worker in lead. It is a sudden and violent peril, which leaps out like a lion and strikes down its victim in the midst of life. Day by day the quarryman deliberately stakes against death the dearest of man’s gifts; it is not surprising that for other stakes he is a gambler, too.

There was an accident even as Lucian watched. A young Belgian neglected to obey the warning of the siren, and was overtaken. After the fumes and smoke had cleared, his mates went down and found him lying unconscious, little injured, but stupefied by the poisonous gases which the explosion had set free. A crowd came together, Farquhar among them, barely distinguishable by the eye, though the tone of his voice came up with surprising clearness. The lad was carried away, and work went on again; but Lucian was now all on fire to join the toilers and take his share in their risks. Most excitable men fall disinterestedly in love with danger at least once in their lives; Lucian himself had done so before, and had stopped a mad dog scare by picking up in his arms the supposed terror, an extremely depressed but perfectly sane fox-terrier. For this piece of uncalculated bravado he had consistently and correctly disclaimed the title of heroism, of course in vain. He turned now and marched gaily down the path, with the intention of falling to work at once; but midway down he encountered Farquhar, with Charlesworth, the quarry-master, and was stopped for introduction.

Smith Charlesworth was a huge man who would have balanced Bernard Fane upon a see-saw; he dwarfed Farquhar’s excellent proportions. His bronzed countenance might have been hammered out of the granite which he surveyed, without any great skill on the part of the craftsman; but it inspired confidence. His slow, soft voice and deliberate movements built up the notion of strength; and Lucian had not heard him speak two sentences before he knew that he liked him. Here was a man whose calm courage was not at the mercy of his nerves; a man also of stern rectitude, by nature narrow, but broadened into tolerance by experience.

“Yes, it’s a bad business about that young chap,” he was saying: “but what can you expect? It was his own fault. They’ve got industry but no method. Here’s Mr. Farquhar thinks they’re going to turn out A1 copper-bottomed sculptors, but I guess he’ll find his error. They haven’t got it in ’em.”

“Well, we’ve just got to put it in,” said Farquhar, good-humouredly. He was on his best behaviour, saying not a word that was genuine, and consequently his conversation was dull.

“What do you think of the quarry?” Lucian asked.

“First rate.” Charlesworth stepped to the edge of the pit and stood there calm as a rock, with the square toes of his big boots projecting into the air. He pointed to the dark buttress behind which the boring-machine was at work. “See that? That’s the finest sample I’ve seen out of Scotland. You mark my words; in five years you’ll be sending shipments right out to the States, and they’ll take all you’ve got and ask for more. Mr. Farquhar’s begun the right way; he’s put plenty money in the concern and he’ll take plenty out—always providing we don’t get sent to kingdom come first.”

Farquhar laughed at this last idea, but Lucian asked an explanation. The American impressed him as a very careful speaker, not given to random words.

“Well,” said Charlesworth, stroking his chin, “these chaps here don’t take to your Britishers, and that’s the bed-rock fact.”

“What’s going to happen, do you think?”

“I guess we shall be running into some dirt before long.”

“Most pacific nation in the world, the Belgians,” said Lucian, cheerfully. “Been fought over so many times that they haven’t a ha’porth of kick left in them.”

“Yes; good square fighting’s not in their line. It’s the stab in the dark they go in for,” said the American, drily. “Two-thirds of the continental anarchists hail from Brussels. I’ve run Dutchmen and I’ve run Kanakas, and I guess I can make out to put up with these stiff-necked Britishers of yours; but the Belgian mongrels are enough to make an oyster sick. However, the crew’s not my affair; and if Mr. Farquhar’s satisfied, why, so am I. And I hope I may be wrong.”

Charlesworth was no croaker; having given his warning he left the matter, and they went down into the quarry talking of possibilities rather than of presentiments. Lucian could not see the grounds of his forebodings; the men seemed friendly, both with the manager and between themselves, and they were certainly all that is gracious to him personally. Lucian thought in French when he spoke to a Frenchman.

They stayed all day at the quarry, taking lunch in the engine-room on slim little sausages and beer. Later on, Lucian assisted at the modelling class, acting as interpreter for Charlesworth, who could not always find the right technical terms. He was a strict master, extreme to mark what was done amiss. “I’ve no opinion of soft jobs,” he said to Lucian, who had stood listening to what seemed a very harsh rebuke for a very small fault on the part of an elderly English workman who had taken Lucian’s fancy. “Keep them up to the mark, that’s my motto. I never will tolerate scamping. Give me good work and I’ll give you good wages; but if a man don’t handle the tools the way he ought, why, he can go! and good riddance, say I.”

“That’s all right for you, with your confounded meticulous correctitude and exactitude, my friend,” said Lucian, still vicariously sore; “but how would you feel if you knew that the worst work they put in was head and shoulders better than the best work you put in?”

“I guess I should turn to and take a hand at something I could do.”

“And suppose you were incompetent all round?”

Charlesworth turned and looked at him. Lucian, laughing, appeared hardened and insouciant, but the American was slow to judge. “Well, I don’t say I’m right,” he said; “and I don’t say you’re wrong. But I couldn’t do with your way, and I guess you couldn’t do with mine.”

“There are nine-and-sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them is right,” quoted Lucian, coughing.