Lucian was a poor sleeper, hard to lull and easy to rouse, with a habit of waking at four in the morning and reading novels in bed; his good nights had six hours’ sleep, his bad nights none. As a young man, he had innocently done his best to acquire the chloral habit, but years had taught him wisdom; his present panacea was bromide of potassium, of which, at times, he took a surprising quantity. But he shunned it whenever he could.
Excitements in the day usually entailed sleeplessness at night. After Dolly refused him Lucian was not surprised to find himself broad awake at one o’clock in the morning, with every prospect of remaining so. But the dark hours had long ceased to seem interminable; he lighted the gas, enshrouded himself in a gorgeous dressing-gown, in whose gay colours he took an artless pleasure, and devoted his mind to theGolden Novelettes, at a penny a number. Since Lucian’s last illness, Farquhar slept in thedressing-room adjoining, and usually left the communicating door ajar; but Lucian had wisely shut it early in the evening, and was blest in solitude.
Towards dawn a voice came through that closed door, repeating the very name which was running in Lucian’s thoughts. “Dolly, Dolly!” Lucian took it for the creature of his brain, and thought with joy that now he might legitimately take some bromide; but it came again, and was this time coupled with epithets which had never crossed Lucian’s mind, still less his lips. He divined that something was wrong with Farquhar, and slid off his bed to see, taking a candle. Farquhar lay on his back, restlessly muttering, between sleep and delirium; his face was flushed and his skin dry. “Fever,” said Lucian, and sat down to watch.
Fever ravings are not commonly coherent, nor do patients, except in books, relate at length the stories of their lives; all that Lucian learned was some strange oaths, besides the fact that Farquhar wanted water. He supplied that desire liberally, and presently had the satisfaction of seeing Farquhar wake up and stare about him with the air of a man newly released from Incubus.
“Fever, sonny?” said Lucian. “How did you pick up that?”
“In Africa. Yes, I’m let in for it occasionally—curse the place! I’ve had a pretty bad turn, I reckon. Where’s that clinical?”
The thermometer when consulted climbed to a hundred and three, and Farquhar decreed quinine. Hurrying off to prevent him in getting it, Lucian caught the tail of his robe in the fire-irons and dragged the fender half across the room before he could stop. He turned round and solemnly cursed it with a malediction exceeding that of the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims. Farquhar flung a pillow to speed him on his way, and Lucian stepped backward into the water-jug.
When this contretemps had been arranged with the help of the towels, Lucian sat on the bed—a quaint figure, with his bright eyes and brown face and draggle-tailed dressing-gown, the skirt of which he carefully spread over a chair to keep it away from his ankles.
“You ought to be in bed,” said Farquhar, impatiently; “not sitting up and playing the fool with me. Phew! how hot it is!”
“Oh, I’m not asking for any flowers on my grave,” said Lucian. “I like doing it. And, look here, Farquhar; I don’t want to be inquisitive, but have you been making love to Miss what’s-her-name?”
Farquhar sprang up. “What’s it to you if I have?”
“Something, sonny; because I happen to have been making love to her myself.”
“Yes, confound you! Living here on my charity, and by way of return you make love to my girl on the sly.”
“Farquhar, you shut up and lie down,” said Lucian, authoritatively.
Tormented with fever and worse tormented with jealousy, midway between love and friendship, Farquhar hesitated; but he finished by obeying. He flung up his scarred hand over his eyes and breathed deeply, longing for coolness. “Put that light out,” he said, “it drives me wild. I’ll be right enough to-morrow, but I’m ill now, and that’s the fact. Ill! I’m parching!”
Lucian snuffed out the candle neatly between his finger and thumb, an inelegant trick which has the advantage of killing the smell. “You been popping the question?” he asked, and dropped his long cold fingers across Farquhar’s forehead.
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“I’m to wait three months.”
“What on earth for?”
“She wants to consider my virtues—and yours.”
“Mine? Oh, I’m out of the running; I only put myself forward as a pis-aller, in case you didn’t suit.”
“You’re not out of the running. I shouldn’t wonder if she took you. She says she likes you better than me.”
“You sure of that?”
“She told me so to my face. I wished her in Hades.”
“You’ve got it badly, sonny, very badly; but I’d rather you didn’t swear at her.”
“Badly? Yes. But I’ll tell you what’s playing the mischief with me—I kissed her.”
“She let you?”
Farquhar laughed. “I took it.”
“Oho, my irreverent friend, you did, did you?”
“I did. Heavenly sweet it was, too; where do they get it, these girls, the power to drive a man sheer mad—hold on, will you? you dashed fool! That’s meant for me, De Saumarez, not you.”
“It’s a fact,” said Lucian, “that I never could resist a kiss myself. After all, there’s no harm in it, and it’s mighty agreeable when both parties are willing; though I take it Miss Dolly was not?”
“She wasn’t. You’re right there.”
“Upon my solemn honour, I wish I could thrash you!”
A scratch and a spurt of white flame: Farquhar had struck a lucifer. The outleap of light showed Lucian’s unguarded face and was gone.
“My God!” said Farquhar, “and it’s the truth!”
Lucian got up, went into his own room, and shut himself in. An instant later there shone again the lighted parallelogram of the open doorway with his figure black against it, as he came stoically back to his place on the bed. Farquhar said through the darkness, “I’ll be damned if you shall get her.”
“I’ll be damned if you shall,” Lucian answered.
Truth cleared the air, as it generally does. They had been in deadly jealousy the minute before, but now a spirit of Christian charity fell upon them.
“She’s safe to choose you,” Lucian argued. “She’s as ambitious as she can stand, and look at me! I don’t know which is more invalid, my health or my prospects.”
“Well, I won’t be taken for my money. You see here: didn’t you say you could model and carve? I’ve just bought a granite-quarry in the Ardennes, and I’ll put you in as managing partner, and in three months you’ll be talking differently.”
“I bet you a shilling you’ll go bankrupt if you do!”
“Betting’s contrary to Christian principles.”
They both laughed, and then Lucian said: “Seems to me you rather enjoy shamming virtuous, you consummate old humbug!”
“I do; hadn’t you found that out?”
“I can believe virtue comes easier when it’s a vice,” said Lucian, meditatively; “but it strikes me very forcibly, sonny, that patient continuance in well-doing has undermined your principles. You’d feel pretty awkward at going to the deuce.”
“Would I? If I had that girl in my power, I’d be handy enough.”
“I deny it; but let that pass. Anyhow, if you had me in your power you wouldn’t lift a finger against me.”
“If you got between me and her—”
“You’d say, ‘Confound you, my children!’ and bite your thumb at us.”
“For my own sake and not yours, then; I never did an unselfish thing yet.”
“Oh, you are a liar,” said Lucian. “Whydoyou tell such lies? And, look here; I’ve something serious to say to you. I won’t put up with being told I live on your charity, not even when you’re sick.”
“I shall say what I please.”
“And I shall go when I please.”
“Oh, confound you!” said Farquhar; and he laughed and acquiesced.
As has been said, Dolly was at this time inclining towards Farquhar, but an episode of the next week set the rivals even again. She and Bernard accepted Mrs. Merton’s invitation. She bought a book on etiquette and studied it, but was nervous, nevertheless. Bernard also studied the book, because he wished to avoid blunders, but he remained perfectly composed; a point illustrating the radical difference between their characters. Bernard took in to dinner a pretty, clever, well-bred, well-dressed girl of five-and-twenty, who had heard his story, was impressed by his looks, and took an interest in him, as she told Mrs. Merton. She tried to draw him out and put him at his ease, and their conversation grew rather humourous ere she recognized her error.
Dolly’s partner was a big, dark, heavy-featured man, with a low, soft, monotonous voice and tired eyes. Hugh Meryon was Hugh Meryon to Dolly, and he was nothing more; but at Monaco he was known as Gambling Meryon, for among gamblers his play was remarkable by reason of his extraordinary and fantastic luck. He was the son of a highly respectabledean, and had suffered a highly respectable education; but he was born to gamble as the sparks fly upward, and gamble he did, sacrificing all to his passion. He loved the excitement, not the money won: like Fox, who declared that his favourite occupation was playing and winning, his second favourite playing and losing. His presence at Monkswell was due to Mrs. Merton’s fondness for black sheep, mustard with mutton, and other things which she should not have liked.
“I hear De Saumarez was to have come to-night,” Meryon began, without preface, before the advent of the soup. “I’m awfully sorry he couldn’t, I wanted to see him again. Do you know him?”
“Doyouknow him?” Dolly exclaimed, simultaneously.
“Oh yes; I used to know him pretty well, but I haven’t seen him for nine years. But he’s the sort of fellow one doesn’t forget; besides, I was there when his wife died.”
“Did you know her? What was she like?”
“Awfully delicate, and quite young and very pretty. De Saumarez was mad about her, waited on her hand and foot, though he wasn’t much good himself. You used to see him taking her out in a bath-chair and dodging the stones for fear they should jolt her—I’mboring you!” Meryon was diffident, and always expected to be found a bore; he had taken fright now at his own fluency, and annoyed Dolly inexpressibly by trying to talk about the weather, which he could not do. It was several minutes before she got him on the track again.
“What was wrong with Mrs. de Saumarez?”
“Consumption.”
“He’s afraid of that himself now.”
“Is he? I expect he’s caught it from her—doctors say you can, and he was always with her. But the queerest part of it all was the end.”
“Yes?” said Dolly, softly. Meryon had forgotten her, and she thought it safer to let him forget, lest he should shy again. The gambler went on, simply:
“He came in to me one night looking rather wild and asked me to play. I didn’t want to; I didn’t want to clean him out with his wife sick, and I knew my next streak of luck was about due. And once I begin I can’t leave off—the cards won’t let you go till they’ve had their sport out. But he would have it. Écarté we chose; I could tell every card in every game we played, and that was fifty-three—but that wouldn’t interest you. Anyway, I’ve seen queer things in the cards, but never anythingso queer as that night’s play. I dare say you’ve heard that gamblers say spades mean death. Well, the king of spades kept on haunting us, and every time the black suit showed I swept the board. He kept on doubling the stakes, and I—I lost my head, as I always do, so when we came to the end of the spell and counted up I found I’d won sixteen thousand of him; only fancy! He swore that Marguerite—his wife, you know—was provided for, but I didn’t believe him, for he was just as if he were fey. So then he asked me to come in and see her and convince myself, and I said I would, then and there, though it was three in the morning. I was pretty queer, for the cards had got into my head, and I was counting the steps and multiplying them by the stones on the pavement, and I was mad with myself besides, and I thought I might get her to take it back, or some of it. Well, he took me in and up; I didn’t know where he was going till he threw open a door, and there we were in her room, and there was she laid out on the bed, dead. Candles at the four corners, and flowers all about—I never shall forget it.” He shuddered and stopped.
“And Mr. de Saumarez?”
“Oh, he was like a lunatic—talking to her—He’d put by money for the funeral; that’s whathe meant by saying she was provided for. He hadn’t ten shillings himself. I tried to get him to take some, but he went off after the funeral, and I didn’t see him again. I never have, till now. I swore I’d never touch a card again, after that.”
“And did you keep your vow?” Dolly asked, not because she had much curiosity upon the subject; one is not greatly interested in the feelings of a phonograph.
“Yes, till a girl I knew asked me to play—I couldn’t refuse her.”
“Did she know of your promise?”
“Yes, but she wanted me to play specially. You see, I had rather a name; my luck’s so queer. She was writing a book about it; besides, she didn’t quite understand.”
“And afterwards?”
“Oh, afterwards, I just went on playing. It didn’t seem worth while not to, you know,” said the gambler, with his tired smile.