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 visitingan 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.”
“I was not proposing to drink all that; I could not do it if I tried. I cannot understand how men can dispose of so much.”
“Girls don’t work like men do.”
“It’s a good thing you are giving it up, then; I’ve noticed that you were beginning to get stout.”
Bernard continued to look stolid. Out of patience, Dolly launched at him a sudden question.
“Are you turning teetotaller to please Miss Laurenson?”
“I’m not turning teetotaller. I’m only trying it for a time.”
“But is it to please Miss Laurenson?”
“Well, yes; I guess it is.”
“Not really, Bernard?” asked Dolly, with a change of tone.
“Why not?”
“She isn’t your sort. And you’ve only known her for six weeks.”
“Come to think of it, I wouldn’t say the dude is your sort; but you seem to like talking to him.”
“Bernard, do you want to marry her?” asked Dolly, after a pregnant pause.
“I’m going to.”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that she may have something to say about that?”
“I dare say she’ll refuse me, but if she does I can ask her again.”
“And if she refuses you again?”
“Then I’ll go on asking till she accepts.”
“In fact, if you persevere you think she is bound to give in?”
“Girls generally do.”
“Do they? I shouldn’t.”
“You aren’t like most girls. You’ve been brought up with men.”
“But, Bernard, Miss Laurenson is an heiress; she has eight hundred a year of her own, and more to come. Mrs. Merton told me so.”
“Has she? Well, eight hundred a year’ll come in handy; I’m glad to hear it. If it’s true, that is.”
“And she is very pretty, and she dresses well, and her family is unexceptionable,” pursued Dolly. “I expect she could marry a peer if she liked, or at any rate a courtesy title.”
“Yes, but all those titled chaps are pretty rotten,” said Bernard, cheerfully damning the aristocracy in a lump. “She’d do a sight better to take me. I’m pretty strong and free from vice, and sound in wind and limb; and as for family, I guess ours is good enough for anybody, isn’t it?”
Dolly was reduced to silence, but she was so completely preoccupied that she poured cream and sugar into Bernard’s cup and filled it up with beer, producing a mixture which he denounced in emphatic language and emptiedout of the window. Presently she interrupted his talk about the farm by asking:
“Bernard, are you fond of her?”
“She’s getting a bit long in the tooth, it’s true, but she’s a pretty creature still. I guess she suits me as well as any,” was the surprising answer.
“I mean Miss Laurenson.”
“Oh, I thought you were talking about old Empress; I was.”
“Are you fond of her?”
“Yes,” said Bernard, composedly. “I am.”
Dolly shrugged her shoulders. “I hope it will turn out well.”
“Hope so, too,” said Bernard. “She ought to take me simply out of gratitude. Anything more beastly than tea with this cold beef I never did taste!”
On the morrow, while Dolly was sweeping her room out, Maggie came up, gasping, to announce “Miss Lawson”; she had a happy knack of confounding names. It was, in truth, Angela, driven up by the pair of donkeys, as Ella Merton said, though only one was in the shafts. Mrs. Merton herself would not come in, because, she declared, Jehoshaphat would eat the reins if he were left. Jehoshaphat had a satanic temper and was more completelyomnivorous than an ostrich; beside devouring reins and boots and tin-tacks, he had a craving for any human flesh except that of his mistress, an exception which Ella triumphantly adduced in support of her self-bestowed name, since, said she, dog doesn’t eat dog.
Therefore Angela was alone in the parlour when Dolly came down; rather hot, in a faded old dress: Angela, very cool and dainty in white muslin, now feeling that the advantage of appearance had fallen to her. Yet, in spite of her dress and her daintiness, she was still like a delicate sketch by the side of a beautiful painting.
“I’m sorry Mr. Fane isn’t in,” she began, rather stiffly. Angela could not approve of Dolly, and would not pretend that she did.
“The regret will be all on his side. Won’t you sit down?” quoth Dolly, very polite.
“I’m afraid I can’t stay, I am keeping Mrs. Merton. May I leave a message for him?”
“I shall be charmed to deliver it,” Dolly assured her; and Angela sought consolation by mentally dubbing her accent provincial. Dolly exasperated her to such an extent that she was ready to imagine a Kentish twang in Miss Fane’s foreign intonation.
“I believe Mr. Fane is interested in temperancereform”—here Dolly smiled—“and I thought under the circumstances he might care to attend the great unsectarian conference which is to be held at Swanborough next week. I dare say you have heard of it.”
“No; we have severed our connection with the chapel.”
“This meeting is undenominational.”
“Essence of chapel, isn’t that? Or so I have always understood.”
“Perhaps you will tell your brother that it begins at three o’clock,” Angela trusted herself to say.
“I am sure Bernard will be delighted to go. Of course, he might speak himself almost as a reformed drunkard.”
“Mr. Fane?”
“You converted him, did you not?”
“I converted him? From what?”
“Oh! from his habit of drinking beer. I am so glad; I have often told him that he took too much.”
“Really, Miss Fane?” said Angela, in accents of serious concern. “I had no idea of it! What a shocking thing! I am indeed thankful that I have been instrumental in helping him to reform.”
Dolly’s lips twitched, but she instantly followed Angela’s lead. “Of course it was notyet very serious, and he did not often—well—exceed. But I assure you I am most grateful for all you have done; you have a wonderful influence over him—truly wonderful!”
“Then I shall hope to see him at Swanborough; and perhaps you will come, too? You need not feel embarrassed; there will be plenty of girls of your own age to keep you in countenance,” said Angela, pleasantly.
“Thank you so much,” said Dolly, as she opened the front door.
She stood on the step to speed the parting guests. When the last flicker of Angela’s white parasol had vanished, she remarked to herself: “Certainly Bernard has a better right to trust his own judgment than any one I know!”
Both she and Bernard went to Swanborough for the meeting. They drove; and, after putting up the horse, had the satisfaction of encountering Miss Laurenson and her brother outside the station. Bernard went straight to Angela’s side, and Dolly found herself walking with Mr. Laurenson. Lal was no talker; and as the uncivilized Dolly had not yet learned to speak when she did not want to, they walked on in silence.
Swanborough was a town of twenty thousand people, mostly wicked. Standing on a tidalriver, it harboured the vessels of all nations and the peculiar vices of each; there were, besides, barracks in the town, which brought their special dangers. High wages and a high standard of living prevailed: the head of one family would be calling for green peas in April, while the head of another, discharged from the same position, perhaps for drunkenness, would send his children, filthy, barefoot, and famishing, into the street to beg. That popular vice, drunkenness, flourished like a green bay-tree. A public-house blossomed at every street’s corner, and its devotees lounged in its shade with their hands in their holey pockets. Passing one such palace as a youth pushed open the door, Dolly had a view of the crowded bar, and breathed in a puff of hot vapour wherein the scents of tobacco and gin and old clothes contended for the mastery.
“There are too many of those places!” she exclaimed, averting her offended face.
“There are,” Lal answered her, rather bitterly.
“I cannot see why the licenses are renewed.”
“Can you not? Every English government lives by this traffic; do you expect pious sons to commit parricide?”
“You feel very strongly about it,” said Dolly, wondering.
“I see the results of the present system.”
“Then do you believe in Prohibition or in Local Option?”
“I? I believe in putting the whole trade under public control, in reducing the number of licenses, and in giving the publicans a fixed salary independent of the number of men they turn into drunkards.”
“But those are not Miss Laurenson’s views, surely?” asked Dolly, somewhat taken aback. Lal was already repenting of his candour.
“It’s one of the questions of principle on which we differ,” he said, in his soft, lazy voice. “Don’t betray me, Miss Fane; it will be time for me to reveal my heresies when Prohibition comes down out of the clouds. Angela herself is not where her theories are; she does plenty of practical hard work.”
“Mr. Laurenson, what practical hard work do you do?”
“I?”
“You. I know you do something.”
“Who told you anything about me?”
“No one. I gathered it from the way you speak.”
“Oh, I see.” Lal was unmistakably relieved.
“I wish you would tell me how you set about it.”
“I’d rather not discuss the question.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Dolly. Twice, now, had he shut up like an oyster and pinched her fingers; and she was half angry, until she recognised that he meant no rudeness. To this conclusion was she brought by the study of his face. Lal, when he spoke of himself, had a trick of drooping his eyelids, so that, as the lashes were long, his eyes were hidden completely; he was foolish enough to be modest. The compression of his sensitive lips notified Dolly of another extenuating circumstance: namely, that he was uncomfortable to the point of frenzy. In escaping her inquiries he was ready to leap clear over the bars of politeness; surely, then, since he so valorously defended their privacy, his convictions must be very dear to him. As she was musing thus, the drooped lids were raised with disconcerting abruptness, and Lal’s beautiful dark-grey eyes looked down appealingly.
“I did not mean to be rude. I would rather be rude to any one than you,” he said.
Dolly’s breathing quickened; a warm spring rose in her heart. “I had no business to ask you; but I thought perhaps I might do something myself,” she said.
“It is only that I—” Here Lal stopped. “I don’t think—” he began again; and finallyclothed his thought in a general law, altogether eliminating the painful personal pronounI. “An amateur’s private opinion is never very interesting.”
“And you would rather not talk about your private opinions.”
“I’m not very good at it,” Lal admitted. “In fact, I generally make a fool of myself when I try—as on the present occasion.” The victim of aphasia had put off his apology until they were close to the hall, and further conversation was stopped by their arrival at the door.
“You’re coming in?” said Dolly, as he paused.
He shook his head.
“Don’t you approve ofthis?”
“I’m afraid I don’t like religion when it’s vulgar,” said Lal. He raised his hat and walked off down the street, and Dolly and her friends went in.
No cause needs salvation from its friends as does this of temperance. Intolerance, exaggeration, bad logic, bad taste, and bad grammar have all supported and do support it still, estranging men who would be content to work with the reformers if they took their stand on the noble charter given them by St. Paul: “If meat make my brother to offend, I willeat no flesh while the world standeth.” At Swanborough there were two evangelists, whose names appeared on the programme as Rev. Dr. Brown and Rev. S. Jones, for your true temperance evangelist eschews the adjectivetheas rigidly as temperance in his speeches. The one spoke on “Gospel Dynamics”; the other proved the Bible a total-abstinence book and, incidentally, himself no orator. Angela found it hard to feel pleased; she looked at Bernard, and saw him yawning undisguisedly, and then at Dolly, who sat with hands folded, inattentive but composed.
And Dolly was composed, though she was conscious of a strange exaltation which rosed her cheek and set her heart throbbing and pulses beating in time with it in every finger. A well-spring of soft warmth suffused her frame; she shut her eyes and saw visions, she who was no dreamer—visions in which one figure alone was constant. She owned the truth. “I love him,” she told herself. Shame she did not feel; she believed that Lal loved her back, and even if he did not there was no humiliation, since her gift was voluntary, since she was proud of her love. He won her by being better than herself. Dolly was a little pagan; her love was wild as a bird; but in it ran a puritan strain which claimed an answeringpurity in the man she loved. Irreproachable though he was, Noel Farquhar could not give her that, nor yet could Lucian, though he was nearer to her ideal. But in Dolly’s room at home she had an engraving of Watts’s fine picture of Sir Galahad; and the artist might have drawn his young knight’s face from Lal as he looked on a Sunday morning in church, when he sat in his corner behind a pillar which hid him from sight, as he thought. Had he known that Dolly had a clear though narrow view of his profile against the black marble of a mural tablet, it would have made him retrospectively very unhappy.
Love left Dolly the same girl as before, save that it illumined a side of her nature which had been hidden, as the sunlight, creeping across from the first faint rim of the crescent, slowly enlightens the disk of the moon. True, she now felt quite charitable towards Angela; but Angela was Lal’s sister. She was also more lenient to the ungrammatical orators on the platform; for the excellent reason that she did not listen to them. These were accidents of circumstance. But when a stout lady in front ecstatically planted the hind-leg of her chair upon Dolly’s instep and sat heavily down, the ennobling power of love did not hold her back from feeling annoyed.
When they came out Dolly listened to a discussion of the meeting, and herself added her word with moderate indifference. They walked together to the station, but Dolly, whose mood was dreamy, soft, and languorous, dissociated herself from the others and walked alone. As she passed the Sailors’ Arms, which seemed a popular hostelry, the door again stood open, and again Dolly glanced in, and again saw the crowded bar; but this time Sir Galahad was leaning across the counter conversing with the bar-maid.