As a hostess Mrs. Merton possessed a penetrating amiability which could persuade the lioness to lie down with the lamb, and could temporarily repair rifts in the social lute so well that it would run up and down the social scale without any disconcerting discords. When she brought up her women guests after dinner, they gathered round the fire andgossipedlike school-girls. Sitting next the mantel-piece with her shoes on the tiled hearth, shielding her face with a peacock-feather fan, Bernard’s pretty partner was holding forth concerning flirtation. She had thin little features and a retroussé nose, and she lifted and moved her head like a bird; her thick, curly fair hair was cut short; her eyes were gray and clear, and not a little imperious. In dress she was so demure and simple that Dolly set her down as a great heiress, not discerning that her demure simplicity was of the kind that comes from Paris.
“No. I detest flirtation,” she was saying. “It is an appeal to the vulgarity of our natures. It may be fit for men, but not for women.”
“My dear girl,” drawled her vis-à-vis, a plain but well-dressed young matron with fine dark eyes: “you never set eyes on Hugh Meryon before to-day, and you sat in the brambles with him the whole afternoon!”
“She was converting him,” said Ella Merton. “She belongs to the Anti-Gambling League, don’t you, Angela? and she had to gambol around him to lure him away.”
“Always think that people are like consols, they lose interest when they’re converted,” murmured the dark-eyed matron, whom Dolly recognized as the lady in the black frills.
“Maud, don’t be flippant,” said Angela, not at all disconcerted. “If you know Mr. Meryon, you must know that he absolutely can’t flirt. That’s why I like him.”
“I like flirting,” said Maud; “it’s so desperately interesting. Talking sense is such a desperate bore, you know. It’s all very well for you, my dear girl; men’ll listen to an angel that’s paid a visit to Worth. But with my sallow complexion it’s simply suicidal.”
“Men who flirt are no better than city clerks who kiss their best girls under the mistletoe atsuburban tea-parties,” said Angela, elevating her little pointed chin.
“Now, I like that kind of young man,” said Ella: “besides, they don’t exist. She won’t talk like this when she’s married, will she, Maud?”
“I never shall marry,” Angela asseverated. “To decline a proposal is bad enough, but to accept one—horrible!”
“Don’t see where the horrors come in,” murmured Maud, placidly. “I suppose my sensibilities aren’t fine enough. I’ve always enjoyed it.”
“I dislike the ceremony of kissing,” said Angela, throwing down the gauntlet.
“It isn’t a ceremony, it’s one of the rites of women,” said Ella, dissolving into laughter.
Angela laughed too. She was in earnest, but not to the extent of becoming a bore. “I believe in the rights of women,” she said. “Don’t you agree with me, Miss Fane?”
“About kissing?” said Dolly, “I don’t think it matters much; a kiss means nothing.”
Angela looked rather horrified; Maud Prideaux smiled behind her fan; Mrs. Merton was frankly interested. “What a lovely original idea!” she said. “All the three-volume novels used to end with the first kiss. Lord Arthur saw sanctified snakes, and Lady Imogen feltthe tide of love bearing her away and her hair came down. And in girls’ stories it’s the bell that rings down the curtain on the sacred scene. And you don’t believe in it?”
“No,” said Dolly, speaking in her swift, straightforward way. “A kiss is a touch and nothing more, neither pleasant nor the reverse. What I should dislike would be to be kissed against my will.”
“You’re quite a revolutionary, Miss Fane,” drawled Mrs. Prideaux. “I sha’n’t let my husband talk to you.”
“With your sallow complexion it would be simply suicidal,” Mrs. Merton agreed, smoothly.
Maud Prideaux’s cynicism was pointed by the fact that she and her husband were notoriously devoted.
“I’d trust Lal anywhere,” said Angela Laurenson, half to herself.
“Oh, Lal! but we all know that Lal’s perfection. When’s he coming, Angela? I wonder you exist without him,” said Mrs. Prideaux. Angela coloured, but she stood her ground.
“To-morrow, I expect,” she said. “I hoped he would be here to-night, but he said he might not be able to get off.”
“Then we shall have to be on our best behaviour—”Mrs. Prideaux was beginning, when the gentlemen, coming up, cut short the discussion.
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 herquest 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 accuratelyGreek; 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 toknow that praise is the strongest ofdisqualifications.”
“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?”