Part 8

“You toddle home; the siren will go in half an hour, and this air’s bad for your cough,” said Farquhar, coming up and putting his hand on Lucian’s shoulder.

“Shut up, you prophet! you thing of evil! I haven’t coughed once this day.”

“There you err; I’ve heard you twice, myself.”

“Well, that isn’t once, is it?”

They laughed, and Farquhar shook him by the shoulder, apostrophizing him as a fool. “It’s reeking damp here by the water; you’ll be laid up if you aren’t careful.”

“You want me to see your dinner’s ready, that’s what it is,” said Lucian, going. Charlesworth looked at Farquhar. “Sick?” he asked, with a backward nod.

“No constitution at all.”

“I should put a bullet through my head if it was me,” said Charlesworth, briefly. “This world’s not made for incompetents.” But, luckily for the peace of the quarry, Farquhar did not hear what he said.

Lucian went to the Hôtel des Boërs and flirted with Laurette, the charmingly pretty maid, as he smoked on the veranda. He shared Dolly’s opinion that a kiss or two did not matter to any one, and he carried his views into practice, which she did not. This was not heroic, but Lucian had many commonplace failings which disqualified him for the post of hero. He was still living at Farquhar’s expense; he had brought into this present undertaking nothing but his knowledge of modelling. Yet he accepted his position and was in the main content. The timely sale of a couple of short stories had permitted him to buy the clothes which he was wearing and to pay his journey over, otherwise he would have euphemistically borrowed from Farquhar. Little debts such as that galled him; but the main burden sat lightly on his shoulders, which was well; for, as he told himself with obstinate pride when visited by the pricks of self-contempt, he had consistently done his best and had failed not through his own fault.

The evening set the pattern of many evenings following. Charlesworth came in with Farquhar to dinner; he had been lodging at Petit-Fays, but now talked of transferring himself to the hotel, which, though as primitive as the pious farmers whose name it bore, was certainly cleaner than they. The dinner made Farquhar sigh for the flesh-pots of England; he permitted himself to be a bon-vivant, to tone down his excessive virtues. Sorrel soup, beefsteak which never grew on an ox, tongue stewed with cherries, and a _baba_ made by the eldest son of the house, who was a pâtissier; this was the menu. Now a _baba_ is a kind of sponge-cake soaked in rum and sweet as saccharine: Charlesworth would not touch it, Farquhar ate a morsel and did not want any more, but Lucian, with the whimsical appetite of an invalid, was only deterred from clearing the dish by Farquhar’s solemn assurance that it would make him tipsy. Such was their meal, finished off by a cup of excellently strong black coffee, which they drank on the veranda as they smoked and talked. The night was dark, still, and starry; the huge, soft, shadowy hills shut out all wandering airs, and the river passed them silent, gleamless. But close beside them a wooden trough guided down the water of a spring which rose among the moss of the steep hill-orchard, and the loquacious little fount made an irregular sibilant accompaniment for their voices. Laurette’s young brothers, shy but friendly, hovered round the door listening to the strange foreign talking, anxious only to be allowed to be useful. The Ardennois are hospitable folk.

Farquhar was thinking of building a small house; he had interviewed a local architect, who proffered him weird designs for a maisonette after the style of the Albert Memorial, with multitudinous tourelles and pinnacles picked out in red and white and blue, and liberally gilded. Refusing this gorgeous domicile, he was beset with advice from Lucian and from Charlesworth, each of whom professed to know something about architecture; though Lucian’s counsels recalled the wise saw that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, especially in ceilings, and seemed likely to afford a modern instance of a castle in the air. The talk became more personal. They were all travellers: Lucian the most inveterate, for he had wandered the world across. Farquhar could speak familiarly of Africa; Charlesworth of the States and the South Seas, where for several years he had traded with a schooner of his own, until a drunken pilot kept Christmas by sinking her off Butaritari, in the Gilberts. Charlesworth’s voice softened when he spoke of the Islands, which had set their spell upon him; but there was little softness in it when he mentioned that pilot. His talk was deeply coloured by the sea, but he had when he chose the address of a gentleman. He was married, he said: had married a clever Boston girl, grown tired of high culture, who sailed with him till the _Golden Horn_ met her watery fate, and who was now teaching school in California at a salary of two hundred dollars a month. She put by every cent she could spare, and he was doing the same, until they had saved enough to return to the South Seas. “For,” said Charlesworth, “there’s nothing draws you like the Islands.”

“Islands have a special fascination, I suppose,” said Lucian, thinking of Guernsey.

“Yes, it’s right enough out here, but England’s the place for me,” said Farquhar, pushing back his chair. “Come to bed, De Saumarez; it’s time for all good little boys to turn in.”

Lucian settled back into his seat. “Go away: I won’t be mussed up! I believe you’re simply thirsting to flesh your clinical on me.”

“Not I. I’ve done enough nursing since December to last me my life.”

“Very good for you,” said Lucian, lighting a fresh cigar.

Farquhar watched his chance and snatched it. Lucian was up in a moment, and there was a scrimmage in which he did not conquer; whereupon he lifted up his voice and wailed aloud, to the amazement of Charlesworth, who was not used to Lucian’s ways. “I want my cigar!” was the burden of his complaint, repeated with variations.

“Go to bed and you shall have it,” said Farquhar, laughing and wary.

“Never!”

“You’re unreasonable. Why shouldn’t you?”

“I’ll be shot if I’ll give in to an arrogant brute like you! Besides, I want to wait for the post.”

“Oh, the post,” said Farquhar, with a singular change of tone. He dropped the cigar and sat down. He did not look at Lucian, but Lucian shot a glance at him, and both were silent. Charlesworth stared. The constraint lasted for a moment. Then, pat to the occasion, Laurette came out with the letters. Farquhar half rose and put out his hand, but she passed him by for Lucian. “Pour monsieur.” The amazed Charlesworth saw rapidly varying expressions flit over both faces: anger, jealousy, triumph, rancour: and then Laurette, after rubbing her hand clean on her skirt, turned and held out to Farquhar the exact facsimile of Lucian’s small grey envelope. “Et pour monsieur, encore une.”

Farquhar took his letter, and Charlesworth took himself home.

XII

AND WILT THOU LEAVE ME THUS?

There were eight young Laurensons, of whom the two youngest were Laurence Lionel, commonly known as Lal, and Angela. Angela was the only girl, and had been spoilt, or rather given her own way; but then, that way was always exemplary. She had done her best for all her brothers, she said, with pathos, yet Bertie still remained a dude and Harold still a fool, and with none of them had she succeeded save with Lal, who was a pattern of virtue. Angela bade him work for the army, enter Woolwich, and pass into the Royal Engineers; he obeyed her by coming out first in his batch. After this they had a slight difference of opinion, for Lal chose to enter the Royal Artillery and would not be dissuaded from it by all the accusations of laziness which his guardian angel hurled at his head. She did not know, and nobody else noticed, that a certain poor country parson’s son, who after patient toil had attained only the eighteenth place on the list, was by Lal’s retirement elevated among the lucky seventeen to be drafted into the Engineers—the only regiment where a penniless man can live on his pay. Lal’s choice remained a puzzle to Angela. But Lal was queer; she was sure that her deepest soundings never quite touched bottom.

Lal entered at once upon a distinguished career. During the South African war he was twice mentioned in despatches, received the Distinguished Service Order, and was never taken prisoner: three grand distinctions which made the guardian angel proudly preen her wings. She had cried herself to sleep every night of the first week after he sailed. In Somaliland he got enteric and was wounded in the foot; he was invalided home amid a blaze of glory with six months’ sick leave and another medal to hang beside the two which a liberal Conservative War Office had already bestowed for his services in Africa. He sustained the character of wounded hero with fortitude, but without enjoyment: Lal was modest. Admiration silenced him; he had been more open with Bernard, a stranger who did not know him, than he had ever been with his sister. He made a vaguely impressive figure at Ella Merton’s garden-parties: a quiet, languid, fair-haired young aristocrat, always very correctly dressed, always courteous, always reticent. Maud Prideaux, who had names for everybody, hit off the Laurensons’ peculiarities to a nicety when she christened Angela _On dit_ and her brother _Cela va sans dire_.

Angela Laurenson had views; she had also a first-class dressmaker. These sentences are not gems from a German grammar, but the statement of correlated facts; the first would never have been in evidence but for the second. The temperance question, the rights of women, public scandals, and private fads were Angela’s happy hunting-grounds. She was member of a dozen associations, and corresponded with a dozen wooden-headed boards. She had chased the Protestant donkey to his home in a mare’s-nest. Sweeping into one condemnation offenders against manners and morals, she declined to know wicked noblemen, whitewashed ladies, grocery knights, and Chicago millionaires. In fact, her fair little thin face, her clear little imperious voice, her perfectly simple and simply perfect frocks were pretty widely known; and in spite of certain errors, she was respected.

In the fore-front of her battles she always posted Lal. He was not allowed to smoke. He would have been enrolled in the Ladies’ League had that been possible. He was constrained to become what in temperance language is called an abstainer: which was especially hard on Lal, who inherited a delicate critical taste in wines together with an ancestral cellar. But he disliked these things less than being dragged to meetings and forced to sing “Dare to be a Daniel” upon a platform. Lal hated publicity: not the lion, but the lookers-on, seemed to him the real test of Daniel’s courage. If anything could have held him back from distinguishing himself in action, it would have been the fear of reward.

Now one day at lunch the story of Mrs. Searle and her copper came up, and was discussed in all its ramifications, down to the illness of Mrs. Searle’s baby and Noel Farquhar’s political prospects. Angela, who was present, took it into her pretty little head that duty called her to visit the sick child. Like most city-bred girls, she expected the country lanes to be haunted by drunken tramps, and was nervous of walking alone; but Maud Prideaux vowed that babies were beyond her charity, and Mrs. Merton, who was enthusiastically consulting planchette in a corner with a serious young man, professed a bad headache. Angela fell back on Lal; and, accordingly, at three o’clock they were walking towards Burnt House, Lal irreproachable in grey, with lilies in his button-hole; Angela, also in grey, a demure little Quakeress. The sky was in grey as well, and mist clung to the face of the earth like fine grey powder, dulling all colours. The flattened uplands round the black cottages were as dingy as a suburban street on a wet day.

Mrs. Searle was at the new copper, trying to do the family wash; but between the naughtiness of Randolph, aged thirteen months, the frettiness of Florry, aged twenty days, and her own health, she had not done much. She was not at first very gracious; poor people have their feelings, and the attitude of Angela, with her skirts unconsciously held very high to avoid contamination, suggested the supercilious patronage of the lady bountiful. But Angela’s kindness was too homely to remain hidden under a Paris hat; she soon received the story of Mrs. Searle’s illness and the baby’s delicacy: “but we’re getting on nicely now,” the girl added, leaning against the copper and holding the brickwork to keep herself steady, the lovely, pathetic brown eyes uncomplainingly lifted to Angela’s. She said she had at first fed the baby on Brighton biscuit and boiled bread, beaten up in water.

“Brighton biscuit?” said Angela, doubtfully, looking, with no feeling but repulsion, at the purplish, spidery, open-mouthed creature in its tumbled clothes. “Is that good for it, do you think?”

“Well, Miss Dolly she says give her milk and barley-water, but the milkman don’t come up here. So I tried her with the condensed, and it’s wonderful how she’s got on since.”

“I’ll tell the milkman to bring you up a gallon a day,” said Angela, with a small sigh relinquishing a silver blotting-book which she had coveted. “That will be enough for it, won’t it?”

“Well, I’m sure you _are_ kind—”

“And couldn’t you get a woman in to help you? You’re not fit to be doing your own work yet.”

Then suddenly Mrs. Searle melted into tears, not for her own misfortunes, and poured forth the tale of her sister Hilda, who should have been her help, but had got into trouble. Not yet seventeen, very pretty, and now desperate, she was gone to a low public-house in Swanborough. “Mr. Searle he can’t get her to come away, and I can’t get so far, you see. And really, miss, some days I don’t know how to crawl about, my back is that bad; only things has got to be done somehow. I did think Hilda would have kept straight. Or she might have stopped at home till my trouble was over. I told her as nobody would think the worse of her if it was just once, as you may say, and she kept herself respectable after; but there, you never know how to have girls, and off she goes, as bold as brass, and me so ill I couldn’t say nothing to her—”

Angela sighed impatiently; none of her pet reforms touched Mrs. Searle’s case; no reforms ever do. The celebrated last words of the poor woman who always was tired, who lived in a house where help was not hired, represent the aspirations of most cottage mothers, night by night, until the children are grown old enough to help them. Angela did her best; she promised a nurse, and left a half-crown; and then walked out upon Dolly Fane, who was talking to Lal. They were standing so close to the door that Angela knew Lal must have overheard Mrs. Searle’s story, and the colour came into her face as she took Dolly’s hand. She forgot to be surprised to find them acquainted until Dolly in her direct fashion told her of their early meeting; when Angela did not forget to feel annoyed.

Nor was she better pleased when Dolly, entering the cottage, quieted Randolph and prescribed for the baby and put Mrs. Searle into a chair, proving herself efficient where Angela had just proved herself incapable. It was all done in innocence, and innocent, too, was Dolly’s laugh when she heard of the liberal provision of milk allotted for the baby, for Mrs. Searle had not mentioned the giver; nevertheless, Angela decided that she was not a nice companion for Lal.

“We shall be late for tea, Lal,” she whispered, suggestively.

“Miss Fane will be ready directly.”

“Not for half an hour or so; I am going to finish these things in the copper,” said Dolly, appearing at the door in a large apron and with her sleeves rolled up. No inclement clouds could dim the brilliancy of her colouring; she was independent of sun and sky. But Angela became conscious that her own face looked drab, and that did not please her.

“If you don’t mind walking home alone I think I’ll stay and help Miss Fane; these cans are very heavy,” said Lal, depriving Dolly of that she was carrying.

“I _do_ mind walking home alone, across all those fields!”

“It really is not lonely, Angela.”

“But there are bulls in them!”

“Oh no, Miss Laurenson, the cows have been driven home to be milked by now,” said Dolly, serenely; “you need not be alarmed. But I don’t want any help; I hope Mr. Laurenson won’t stay for me.”

“I’ll take you as far as the high-road, then, and come back,” said Lal.

Dolly put up her eyebrows and laughed softly. “I’m perfectly competent to do the work myself; these cans weigh nothing.” She held it out at arm’s-length and lightly put it down, rising again elastic from the burden.

“You’re accustomed to the work, of course,” said Angela, dryly.

“I am; we do our own washing at home.”

“If you want to be in by four, we had better start,” Lal interposed.

“Good-bye,” said Angela, not offering her hand; was not Dolly’s wet?

“Pray don’t come back, Mr. Laurenson; there are so many bad characters about the roads now; you might meet my brother Bernard!” Dolly retorted, with a faintly satirical accent.

“I certainly shall,” said Lal, quietly.

Between Burnt House and the high-road Lal received a full-length portrait of his misconduct; he listened, as his habit was, in silence. Angela soon tired of reproving a dummy. “Why don’t you say something?” she cried at last.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Do you mean to go back to that _girl_?”

“Certainly I do.”

“O Lal!” said Angela. “Oh, do you really?”

“I can’t leave her with that work on her hands.”

“Yes, but—Lal, I don’t like walking alone!”

“I’m sorry, Angela, but I promised.”

“There’s Mr. Fane,” cried Angela, in a note of relief, and she hurried to meet him. Bernard in his working clothes was something of a shock to her nerves, but she got over it and gave him her hand.

“We’ve left your sister at the black cottages, Mr. Fane,” she began, “and my brother wanted to go back and help her—”

“And my sister is a little nervous in these lanes,” Lal continued, “so that if you would be so good as to see her as far as The Hall, I should be very grateful. It is on your way, I know.”

“I’d like to very much,” said Bernard, promptly.

“Thanks so much. Good-night.”

He lifted his hat and walked off, leaving Angela speechless and ready to cry; for she had not desired Lal’s presence with her so much as his absence from Dolly, and that Lal knew, and she knew that he knew. However, it was not easy to embarrass Bernard; he talked on for both till she had recovered. “Ah,” thought Angela, coming back to the remembrance of her escort, “here is some one who will not flout and contradict me and fling my own axioms in my face!”

“That chap Searle, now,” Bernard was saying when next his word reached her brain: “he’s a good worker; he might get on if he liked; but he will drink. Comes home every Saturday night drunk as a lord. What are you to do with a chap like him?”

“He should be persuaded to take the pledge,” said Angela, reviving a little to discuss one of her favourite hobbies.

“Oh, the teetotal tomfoolery; no, I guess that wouldn’t do for him. What he wants is to know when to pull up.”

“Teetotal—nonsense?” said Angela, avoiding Bernard’s too strong expression. “The pledge of abstinence is the only safeguard for an habitual drunkard. I am a total abstainer myself.”

“Ah, but I guess you didn’t ever drink,” said Bernard, as one who scores a point. “Besides, girls don’t want it so much; I daresay they can do without. But it stands to reason a man can’t do a decent day’s work on water. Spirits are no good; they’re mostly adulterated with beastly stuff, and the best of them isn’t wholesome. But a glass of good, honest beer don’t do anybody any harm. A couple of quarts a day, that’s my limit; I dare say a quart and a half would do for a little chap like Searle, except, perhaps, in harvesting. The point is to know your limit and stick to it, and that he’ll never do, more’s the pity.”

Angela felt the primitive truths of her life flying round her like slates in a gale. “But doctors say—” she was beginning.

“Doctors’ll say anything; and, come this time ten years, they’ll all say all different. That old chap in Tennyson, now, who said he’d have his quart if he died for it; I guess he didn’t lose much by sticking to his beer.”

“Oh, do you read Tennyson?” said Angela, faintly.

“Sometimes, on Sunday afternoons. There isn’t much to do on the farm, and there’s no paper, and you can’t read the Bible all day long; so when I’ve done my chapter I often turn in on him. I like the things in dialect; they’re uncommonly good. I like the thing about the Baptists, who left their sins in the pond and poisoned the cow,” he continued, with a grin. “Father lent ’em our pond once, when he’d had a split with the Wesleyans; but I guess they won’t come there again to do their baptising. It looks as clear as the river, but it’s about six feet deep in mud.”

“I was thinking of starting a branch of the C. E. T. S. here, and asking you to join it,” said Angela, with the calmness of despair.

“Me turn teetotaller? I should die of it!”

“Your adherence would have strengthened my hands, but, of course, since you feel like this, there is no more to be said.”

“Do _you_ want me to join?”

“It does not matter. I sha’n’t start the branch now.”

Bernard walked on in silence. Six miles an hour was his usual rate of walking, four when with Dolly, or, as he supposed, with any other able-bodied female; but Angela was used to crowded London pavements and the very deliberate pace of lazy Lal. She did not protest, she was too much out of heart to mind being out of breath. She sadly supposed that Bernard was not observant. Great was her surprise when, remarking, “I guess we’re going too fast,” he reduced his pace to three miles an hour and rather doubtfully offered his arm.

“I suppose it’s not the proper thing,” was his comment when she declined it. “Dolly said so, but then she doesn’t know everything; and you do take arms in to dinner. I’ll remember another time. Look here, are you set on this temperance business?”

“I think it a noble cause,” said Angela, wearily standing to her guns.

“Then I’ll take the pledge for a month.”

“You will?”

“I guess I couldn’t stand it any longer,” Bernard explained; “but a month from now’ll just keep clear of the harvesting. I’d like to do what you want, as far as is reason. And here we are. I’m awfully glad to have met you. You’ll remember I’d like to please you, won’t you?”

Oh yes, Angela said, she would remember; and she kept her word, for all the night through she reflected alternately on Lal’s defection and on Bernard Fane’s subjection—a word which she refused to lengthen into subjugation.

Lal, on his way to the black cottages, walked really fast, but he did not get back in time to help Dolly with her cans of water; she was feeding the baby when he came up. Sitting in a low chair with the child on her knee, holding the bottle, the delicate little toy fingers clasped round her own, Dolly, intent and serious, was no Madonna of pity and love, but a business-like young woman performing a duty. But Lal, who was fond of little children, unconsciously ascribed to her his own feelings; he saw the divine spirit of motherhood, and stood quietly watching, too reverent to speak and break the charm. It was the traitorous sun, suddenly bursting out to throw Lal’s shadow on the floor, which made Dolly look up. She smiled. She had forgotten her vexation, and was frankly glad to see him, yet her first words were a reproach.

“Why did you come back? Your sister hated it, and there was no need!”

“I came to help you.”