Part 9

“It was a pity. Your sister is very fond of you, very proud; you should not vex her,” Dolly said, laying the child in the cradle. She rose and came to the door, and stood in the hot sunshine, rich in colour as a Tintoretto, spiritual as the crowned Madonna of the angelical painter. She was still thinking of Mrs. Searle, and pity was Dolly’s loveliest expression.

“I left my sister in the charge of your brother; he was going to see her home. Now will you accuse me of vexing her? Or are you going to give me something to do?”

“You may watch the baby while I sweep the room.”

“Thank you; I will sweep the room while you watch the baby.”

“You? You sweep?”

“Why not?”

“Have you ever swept in your life?”

“I have not; but I can try.”

“Oh! very well,” said Dolly, suddenly folding her hands and sitting down in her low chair. “Do it: there’s the broom behind the door. Do it: I should love to see you.”

The road outside was far cleaner than the floor of Mrs. Searle’s kitchen. Lal stood, doubtfully surveying his task and the aged broom. “It really wants scrubbing,” he said, seriously.

“Sweeping will do, if you sweep properly.”

“‘Will do!’ Miss Fane, I am surprised to hear you use that sloven’s expression. However, I am afraid sweeping will have to do, as we have neither sand nor Brooke’s soap.”

Leaving Dolly amazed at his erudition, Lal made a sudden descent upon the hearth-rug, shook it, rolled it up, and carried it out. He took out the cradle as well, very gently putting it down in the shade without waking the child. The chairs he piled on the table; the curtains he tucked up. Dolly took her place outside with the rest of the furniture, and stood in the doorway, watching and laughing. Lal paused, leaning on his broom in the middle of the floor as Maud Muller might have leaned upon her hay-rake.

Suddenly he made a triumphant pounce upon Mrs. Searle’s brown teapot, which spent all its days upon the hob. He emptied away the liquid tea, shook out the leaves on a broken plate, and began to strew them with fastidious fingers about the floor: the contrast between him and his task was piquant. Bernard would never have attempted to sweep at all, Lucian might have tried, but he was not wise enough for the tea-leaf plan. Dolly’s imagination could see him happily brooming all the dust out of the open door, and gathering it up with his fingers when it lodged in the inequalities of the flooring. This amateur house-maid worked in different style. Neat, deft, precise, that was Lal; he coaxed the flue out of the corners, he lifted the fender and swept underneath, he took away cobwebs from the window and spiders’ nests from the angles of the ceiling, and swept all his gleanings into a symmetrical pile.

“A dust-pan, now,” he said, looking round enquiringly.

“There’s no such thing. Let me do it now: you’ve proved your powers.”

“No,” said Lal; “no.” His eye rested on a copy of the local paper; in a trice he had it folded firmly with sharp edges, and was bending it into a convenient receptacle for the débris, which he emptied into the fire. Then he dusted the furniture with his handkerchief and put everything back in place, twitching the ragged hearth-rug straight to the eighth of an inch and arranging all the chairs in pairs exactly.

“But it should have been scrubbed,” he wound up, with a sigh of regret.

“I won’t have it; Mrs. Searle wouldn’t know her own room. Do you know, I never thought a man could have so—could be—”

“Could have so much sense,” Lal finished, quaintly.

“Well, I didn’t. Where did you learn how to do it?” said Dolly, laughing.

“Miss Fane, I have a pair of eyes, and our rooms at home are swept sometimes.”

“Ah, but you’ve the hands, too.”

“I know it,” Lal said, displaying them with disgust. Dolly looked, with a wise little nod, and went into the scullery; she brought back a fresh towel, a piece of yellow soap, and a tin basin full of clean hot water.

“That is good,” Lal said, plunging in his hands with an air of relief. Dolly was looking at her own. “I think I’ll wash, too,” she said; and without more ado stripped back her cuffs and slipped her fingers in beside Lal’s. The sunlight sparkled in the water and flashed in silver circles, following the curve of the white metal. Dolly chased the piece of soap all round the basin, and Lal captured it and gave it to her; her wrist was soft to the touch as a baby’s. Lal was warmly alive to the charm of the moment, and would have prolonged it; not so Dolly. She withdrew her hands with the same indifference as though Bernard had been her partner. They were obliged to share the same towel; there were but two in Mrs. Searle’s establishment.

“What a pussy-cat you are!” Dolly laughed, noticing Lal’s fastidious movements. “Do you manicure your hands?”

“I rather think that is a deadly insult. No, I do not manicure my hands; I am merely clean.”

“Merely clean! You’re hard on the rest of us.” Dolly was thinking of Lucian as he had appeared after half an hour of weeding in the violet-bed. She held out her own hand, soft, rosy, crinkled by the hot water. “There are stains on my fingers; I can’t get them off without taking the skin, too; so I leave them on. Am I not clean, please?”

Lal was in danger of losing his head, and kissing the pretty palm that lay in his, “I don’t see any stains,” he said. Dolly withdrew it, colouring at his tone. She pulled down her sleeves, and told herself she was a fool to forget that men are fools.

“Do you always do as your sister tells you?” she asked, abruptly.

“Miss Fane, do you always do as your brother tells you?”

“I? Not often,” Dolly frankly admitted. “I do as I like.”

“You’re more independent than I am: I do what Angela likes, except on serious and important questions of principle. It saves so much trouble, you know; I can do no wrong, like the king.”

“What principle was involved in your staying this afternoon?”

Lal was dumb, manifestly embarrassed by this sudden attack.

“Tell me,” Dolly insisted. She was expecting that he would answer “You,” in which case she meant to snub him and give him up. But he remained silent.

“Why did you come back, when your sister hated it and you hated vexing her, as I know very well you did?”

“Because I couldn’t stand seeing a girl carry those heavy cans.”

Dolly had her answer now, and she knew it was the truth. Lal had coloured over his admission and cast down his eyes; he should have looked youthful and ingenuous, but he did not. A very expressive mouth had Lal; the underlip was remarkably firm, pure, decisive; tenacity and independence controlled its curves. One might expect to find originality in his theory of life, anachronisms in his creed, possibly asceticism, certainly unworldliness: in fact, all those queer ideas whose existence Angela unhappily suspected. So much may be read in a momentary twist of the lips. Chivalry here in the twentieth century! Bernard looked on woman as an inferior animal, Lucian as a comrade, Farquhar as slave or sultana by turns: Dolly’s observations and reflections were summed up in the involuntary remark:

“Mr. Laurenson, how very odd you are!”

XIII

THE FIRST DROPS OF THE THUNDER-SHOWER

“_O Medjé, who with thy smiling Hast enchained my heart, once free_—”

Gounod, whose sweet and sensuous church music has something of the quality of _good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke_, has written some acceptable love-songs; such at least was Lucian’s opinion. Aided by the night’s stillness and the seductive influence of the stream which cradled their boat, Noel Farquhar’s fine dramatic voice rang up the valley to the hotel, half a mile away. The twangs and pangs of Lucian’s banjo did not travel so far. Farquhar had a powerful voice, thoroughly well trained; he did not tremble in sentimental passion and murder time in the name of liberty, nor yet did he alternately spue out his words and gobble them down. And he had fire; he could sing the very heart out of a song. His native taste in music he usually sacrificed to the general good; he would sing “The Lost Chord” and “The Holy City” and “Beauty’s Eyes,” and other favourites, to please young ladies such as Angela Laurenson and elderly gentlemen who like a little music after dinner. But Lucian laid a taboo on these; he offered Farquhar the choice between what he called gamey music (meaning the glorious modern discords which we all delight to honour in the abstract) and ditties of the Bank Holiday school, with a chorus in which he expressed his desire to join. Whereupon Farquhar hurriedly embarked upon “Medjé.”

It was a clear night of summer, still and starry. The stream’s dark glass was filmed with silver mist which wavered and rose and receded as if it were the visible vesture of the wind; the smooth hills, spreading dark wings over the valley, breathed peace. For sounds they had the tinkle of the orchard runnel and the deep breaths of cows wrenching the dewy grass; and for scents the night perfume of the water and of the woods, as well as the sweeter individual smells of flowers: flaxen meadow-sweet, wild mint blowing purple among the reeds, and clover in the meadow-grasses.

“A summer night like this is the best imitation of Paradise this side of the Golden Gates,” said Lucian, leaning down to watch the ripples parting silver-rimmed beneath the prow.

“I’d not give a cent to get into Paradise.”

“You won’t be asked, sonny.”

“There you’re right, for there’s no such place.”

“Your views on eschatology, my friend, appear demned definite.”

“Definite? Finite, don’t you mean?”

Lucian leaned back and folded his arms restfully; he liked nothing better than to explore the recesses of Farquhar’s character, which were commonly open only after dark.

“Haven’t you any intimations of immortality from the recollections of early childhood?” he asked.

“None,” said Farquhar. “Never had. Seventy years of this world’s long enough for me. I don’t want an eternity to learn to be good in. Another point: if I believed what you Christians believe, do you think I’d live as you live? Not much. Act up to your creed; there’s the secret of happiness.”

“And what’s your creed, then?”

“Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die,” said Farquhar, cynically enjoying his own cynicism.

“And suppose the workings of Causation came and put a stopper on your eating and drinking? If you were brought to grinding poverty, say, or got infected with leprosy, or didn’t marry Dolly Fane?”

“There’s always the ultimate remedy,” said Farquhar, with a shrug.

“Which means, being interpreted?”

“Suicide while of unsound mind: I’d take good care it wasn’t called accidental death. I wonder, now, if they’d give me Christian burial?”

“Not if I was anywhere around, sonny; you may depend on that. So you seriously contemplate suicide as a possible end of your life?”

“Probable, not possible: I keep my revolver loaded. I’ve had that before me ever since I remember.”

“Well, I’ll give you the credit of being consistent; only, don’t you include me among the Christians, for I’m not one. You can put down my inconsistencies to that if you like. If I’d owned a creed, I believe I might have stuck to it—tolerably well.”

“You’re sorry you’ve none?”

“Yes,” said Lucian.

“The Almighty doesn’t seem to know His own business very well.”

“Don’t you blaspheme,” said Lucian. “I can’t say I believe that there is a God, but I know I don’t believe that there isn’t. When little boys like you are profane, you make me think of some kids I knew, who had a midnight supper in the church-yard to show they weren’t afraid of bogies. And it rained, and one got rheumatic fever; that was me,” he wound up, cheerfully.

Farquhar laughed, and broke off to ask, “Is that any one calling?”

“Who’d look us up at this time of night, ’cept it was the postman?”

“Are you expecting a letter?”

“I had my weekly budget yesterday, and so did you, sonny; don’t be jealous.”

“I _am_ jealous; I’m confoundedly jealous.”

“What is it you want, boy?”

“To see your letter.”

Lucian was fully alive to the fascination of playing with a tiger; he pulled out Dolly’s grey envelope and played a tune on the back of it. “Here it is; what do you want to know?”

“I want to know how she addresses you and signs herself, and what the substance of it’s like, and how many sheets she sends you.”

“How many does she send you?”

“Curious, too, are you? Exchange, then.”

“Not much. Suppose she called you darling and me only dear?”

“By Heaven, Lucian, I shouldn’t wonder if I murdered you in my sleep some night!”

“Did you say in your sleep or in mine?” Lucian put in.

“I’d not do it in my senses, for I’ve no wish to be hanged for murder; but, I tell you, I can’t get the thought of those letters of yours out of my head. And when the will’s in abeyance the body sometimes works of itself. You keep your door locked: mind, I’ve warned you.”

“Upon my solemn honour, old Farquhar, you are a savage!” exclaimed Lucian.

“Take the thing away, then; keep it out of my sight!”

“I guess you’d read it if you found it lying about?”

“You’re right, I should. I’d have opened the envelope yesterday by the steam of the kettle, only Dolly’d been at the pains to seal it, confound her!”

Lucian gave him a queer glance. That cynical confession did not alienate him; for one thing, he knew that it was necessary to make a large discount upon Farquhar’s revelations of iniquity, and for another, had it been true to the last word it could not have changed his feeling. Strong, quiet, and immovable, that lay welded, into his life; it almost equalled his love for Dolly; it outweighed his love for himself. He moved to give his letter to Farquhar, but checked his hand in mid-air; Dolly’s affectionate words might so easily be misconstrued by a jealous eye. Instead, he plunged the envelope over the side, and let it float away.

“There goes temptation,” he said, as the chain of bubbles ended.

“There’ll be others to come, though. There _is_ some one calling.”

It was Charlesworth hailing them from the shore; Farquhar took up the oars and rowed back. The huge figure of the American loomed up against the twilit sky, quiet as a rock; he never was impatient.

“Way up at the hotel I heard you singing, and I made out you must be down here, sir; higher up the water’s not deep enough to drown a kitten,” he said, as Farquhar secured the boat. A stake and a rope were all that was needed, without bars or locks; theft was unfashionable at Petit-Fays.

“Nothing wrong, is there?” Farquhar asked.

“I’d not go so far as to say that; but I told you we were running into some dirt, and it’s come up pretty close.”

“Ah! what’s up, then?”

Charlesworth fell in beside him and told his tale. The path was narrow, the grass dewy, and the American had shown pretty plainly that he took his orders from one master only. Lucian dropped behind and meekly held his peace. It appeared that the lad who had been injured was demanding compensation; Charlesworth, who was ready to give, had refused to concede; and a venomous little dispute had sprung up, which was breeding bad blood between him and the men. Added to this, they were asking higher wages.

“I couldn’t put up with him, and that’s the square truth,” Charlesworth frankly acknowledged. “If he’d come to me and said, ‘I was knocked silly, and I’ve lost a couple of weeks; I know I’d no business to be where I was, and I deserved all I got, but can you do anything for me?’—then I don’t say but what I might have turned to and helped him out; that’s talking. But when he swaggers up and says, ‘Show us the colour of your money and be hanged to you, else I’ll make you,’ why, then I tell him that he’s at liberty to go to Hades if he likes, but not a red cent shall he get from me. I don’t know whether that’s your way of doing business, sir, but I guess it’s mine.”

“My dear fellow, I’d not have you back down, don’t think it! I’ve a preference myself for fighting things out. When was this?”

Farquhar’s words were exemplary, but his face was less discreet; it was manifest that he did prefer to fight things out, and Charlesworth, who laid no claim to the Christian grace of meekness, hailed a spirit akin.

“This evening, after pay-time. I came right round to you.”

“What’s the next move to be?”

“Well,” said Charlesworth, deliberately: “I guess it’s me they’ve got a down on now; but when the time comes they won’t stop to sort us out. They’re pretty sick about your newfangled machinery for one thing, and then there’s the business about the Britishers: taking one thing with another, and this compensation racket on the top, you may bet they’re sure-enough mad. And I’ve no use for a funeral at present. So before we go any further, sir, I’d ask you to come round to the works; for there’s a job there I’d like you to see.”

He would not explain any further, and the trio walked on past the gold-litten windows of the hotel towards the quarry. All was silent there and dark save for the signal-lamp of the watchman, sparkling on the brow of the pit among the constellations high in the dark sky, like a topaz among diamonds. Picking their way among the truck lines, which converged like so many silver cords from all directions towards the mouth of the quarry, they came up to the splendid block of granite marked out by Charlesworth for their first serious essay in carving. Its rich, even colour and fine-grained texture made it very valuable. A pillar hewn from it, overrun by curly-tailed dragons and roses of strange design, was assigned to stand in a temple of the Flowery Land. Another part was to misrepresent the king in the market-place of a country town; and they had accepted other orders as well, for the whole mass weighed some thousands of tons. Upon the fulfilment of these conditions the future of the quarry depended. For three weeks past they had been hard at work loosening the granite from its bed and getting it free from the other blocks which wedged it in: an operation involving nice calculation and accurate obedience. Under Charlesworth’s directions, shot-holes three feet deep and six inches apart were bored along the line of cleavage, cleaned out, charged with a cartridge, and filled up or tamped with clay. With each cartridge a length of slow fuse was connected, the different strands being gathered together in a metal case called the igniter, so that the cartridges could be fired simultaneously. Some use electricity to explode the charge, Charlesworth did not. The operator, generally himself, had to betake himself nimbly out of the way while the fuse burned on at three feet per minute till it came to the cartridge and finished its work. Already several small blasts had taken place, preparatory to the large final explosion which was to dissever the whole block from its bed.

“I guess _that’s_ what they’ve got their eye on,” said Charlesworth, coming to a stand in front of the cliff.

Farquhar thrust his hands into his pockets and said nothing.

“Dmitri Dmitriyevitch vows to be avenged of his enemies,” suggested Lucian at his ear.

“What’s that?—Shut up, De Saumarez, I’m doing a little thinking. So you think they mean to spoil the stone, eh, Charlesworth?”

“I guess they mean to,” said the American, austerely, “but I guess I don’t mean them to.”

“Well, yes, I guess the same; but how do you think they’d set about it?”

“Tamper with the cartridges. Overcharge them, I’d bet: smash the whole place up, so’s you couldn’t cut a lady’s paper-weight out of the bits. And if we went up along with it I guess they wouldn’t go into mourning. That’s the kind of crowd they are: measly little city-bred slushes who’ll do anything so long as they can keep their own skins whole.”

“I don’t want to lose my granite, and still less to lose my life,” said Farquhar. “How do you propose to circumvent them?”

“Well, there’s three of us, sir; I reckon we should be able to keep things straight. I dare say you know the difference between a one-pound charge and a two-pound, and I know I do, and so does Mr. de Saumarez here. What we shall have to do is to watch. There’s a matter of a couple more blasts to run, besides the last. It’ll mean testing every charge every time; but that’s how I made out we’d do it. Or, of course, if you like it better, we could cave in, and give the little beggar his solatium, and raise the men; that’d quiet them for a bit, and then I dare say they’d let us get this job through and we could fight it out after, when we don’t stand to lose so much. I’m not boss here; it’s for you to choose, sir.”

“What do you say, De Saumarez?”

“What the dickens is the use of me saying anything, when you’ve already made up your mind like unto the solid earth that cannot be moved?”

“Well, I think we’ll fight it out, then,” said Farquhar, with a laugh.

“Fight goes,” concluded Charlesworth.

And they went back to the hotel.

XIV

SMALL BEER

A white cloth, white lilies and scarlet geraniums, red-tiled floor, flax-blue china: the low sun of evening painted their colours afresh; the lily petals glistened and sparkled like frosty snow. All the windows were open, and the soft little wind that stirred the straight muslin curtains filled the empty room with the scent of unseen pinks. Then came in Dolly, carrying a squat rounded jug of brown earthenware smoothly overlaid in silver; the spot of light dancing inside showed that the jug was full. She set it down by the wooden elbow-chair at the table’s foot, put straight a sprig of parsley on the dish of cold meat, glanced at the clock, which said five minutes to seven, and then sat down, half in sunshine and half in shade, with her hands in her lap. For no longer than a minute was she idle; a book lay open on the table, its leaves ruffling and flying over and over, and she pulled it across and began to read at haphazard, as one visiting an old friend. For between those covers her old friends dwelt in an army, and Dolly’s favourite was named Jonis d’Artagnan. Since the age of seven she had read Dumas in his native tongue. Her brow was clear, her breath was even, she only moved to turn her page; tranquillity was Dolly’s dower, bestowed on her by perfect health and peaceful nerves.

At seven o’clock Bernard came in, and Dolly quitted the oak of Fontainebleau to make the tea. “Have you washed your hands?” was her greeting, for Bernard was not as careful about such things as he might have been. Bernard answered: “Yes.”

“Had a good day?”

“Pretty fair.”

Standing before the tray, Dolly put a piece of sugar into her cup, then some milk, then some cream, and, lastly, the clear, auburn, aromatic tea. Authorities agree that this is the only correct method of tea-making, but Dolly kept their laws without knowing them. Bernard tilted up the silver jug and looked inside, and glanced across at his sister. “Have you got another cup?” he inquired. “I guess I’ll have tea to-night.”

“_Tea_, Bernard?”

“Isn’t there enough to go round?”

“Oh! plenty,” said Dolly. “Aren’t you well?”

“I’m off beer for the present; that’s all.”

“It’s quite good; I tasted some when I drew it,” said Dolly, after a pause.

“Dare say,” said Bernard, regarding the silver jug as though he thought the beer very good indeed, “but I don’t want it to-day. Are you going to give me some tea?”

Dolly made a step towards the cupboard, checked herself, and sat down. “You’d better fetch the cup yourself; it’s the proper thing for you to wait on me.”

“I don’t see why we should always be on our best behaviour here at home,” observed Bernard, as, in complying, he knocked over the sugar basin.

“Because if you don’t practise at home you go wrong when you are out. You pushed past me on Sunday as we came out of church.”

The charge being true, Bernard felt annoyed. He essayed to drink his tea, pursed up his lips, and put down the cup in a hurry.

“If you won’t drink the beer, I will; it would be a pity to waste it,” said Dolly, who was watching him.

“You’d get tipsy if you drank all that.”