Lucianwent to sleep in a chamber smelling of lavender. He was very tired, and passed into a land of gentle dreams as soon as his head touched the pillow. Almost before he realised that he was falling asleep he was wide awake again and it was morning. Broad rays of sunlight flooded the room; he heard the notes of many birds singing outside the window; it was plain that another day was already hastening to noon. He glanced at his watch: it was eight o’clock. Lucian left his bed, drew up the blind, and looked out of the window.
He had seen nothing of Simonstower on the previous evening: it had seemed to him that after leaving Mr. Trippett’s farmstead he and Mr. Pepperdine had been swallowed up in deep woods. He had remarked during the course of the journey that the woods smelled like the pine forests of Ravenna, and Mr. Pepperdine had answered that there was a deal of pine thereabouts and likewise fir. Out of the woods they had not emerged until they drove into the lights of a village, clattered across a bridge which spanned a brawling stream, and climbed a winding road that led them into more woods. Then had come the open door, and the new faces, and bed, and now Lucian had his first opportunity of looking about him.
The house stood halfway up a hillside. He saw, on leaning out of the window, that it was stoutly fashioned of great blocks of grey stone and that some of the upper portions were timbered with mighty oak beams. Over the main doorway, a little to the right of his window, a slab of weather-worn stone exhibited a coat of arms, an almost illegible motto or legend, of which he could only make out a few letters, and the initials ‘S. P.’ over the date 1594. The house, then, was of a respectableantiquity, and he was pleased because of it. He was pleased, too, to find the greater part of its exterior half obscured by ivy, jessamine, climbing rose-trees, honeysuckle, and wistaria, and that the garden which stretched before it was green and shady and old-fashioned. He recognised some features of it—the old, moss-grown sun-dial; the arbour beneath the copper-beech; the rustic bench beneath the lilac-tree—he had seen one or other of these things in his father’s pictures, and now knew what memories had placed them there.
Looking further afield Lucian now saw the village through which they had driven in the darkness. It lay in the valley, half a mile beneath him, a quaint, picturesque place of one long straggling street, in which at that moment he saw many children running about. The houses and cottages were all of grey stone; some were thatched, some roofed with red tiles; each stood amidst gardens and orchards. He now saw the bridge over which Mr. Pepperdine’s mare had clattered the night before—a high, single arch spanning a winding river thickly fenced in from the meadows by alder and willow. Near it on rising ground stood the church, square-towered, high of roof and gable, in the midst of a green churchyard which in one corner contained the fallen masonry of some old abbey or priory. On the opposite side of the river, in a small square which seemed to indicate the forum of the village, stood the inn, easily recognisable even at that distance by the pole which stood outside it, bearing aloft a swinging sign, and by the size of the stables surrounding it. This picture, too, was familiar to the boy’s eyes—he had seen it in pictures a thousand times.
Over the village, frowning upon it as a lion frowns upon the victim at its feet, hung the grim, gaunt castle which, after all, was the principal feature of the landscape on which Lucian gazed. It stood on a spur of rocky ground which jutted like a promontory from the hills behind it—on three sides at least its situation was impregnable. From Lucian’s point of vantage it stillwore the aspect of strength and power; the rustic walls were undamaged; the smaller towers and turrets showed little sign of decay; and the great Norman keep rose like a menace in stone above the skyline of the hills. All over the giant mass of the old stronghold hung a drifting cloud of blue smoke, which gradually mingled with the spirals rising from the village chimneys and with the shadowy mists that curled about the pine-clad uplands. And over everything—village, church, river, castle, meadow, and hill, man and beast—shone the spring sun, life-giving and generous. Lucian looked and saw and understood, and made haste to dress in order that he might go out and possess all these things. He had a quick eye for beauty and an unerring taste, and he recognised that in this village of the grey North there was a charm and a romance which nothing could exhaust. His father had recognised its beauty before him and had immortalised it on canvas; Lucian, lacking the power to make a picture of it, had yet a keener æsthetic sense of its appeal and its influence. It was already calling to him with a thousand voices—he was so impatient to revel in it that he grudged the time given to his breakfast. Miss Pepperdine expressed some fears as to the poorness of his appetite; Miss Judith, understanding the boy’s eagerness somewhat better, crammed a thick slice of cake into his pocket as he set out. He was in such haste that he had only time to tell Mr. Pepperdine that he would not ride the pony that morning—he was going to explore the village, and the pony might wait. Then he ran off, eager, excited.
He came back at noon, hungry as a ploughman, delighted with his morning’s adventures. He had been all over the village, in the church tower, inside the inn, where he had chatted with the landlord and the landlady, he had looked inside the infants’ school and praised the red cloaks worn by the girls to an evidently surprised schoolmistress, and he had formed an acquaintance with the blacksmith and the carpenter.
‘And I went up to the castle, too,’ he said in conclusion, ‘and saw the earl, and he showed me the picture which my father painted—it is hanging in the great hall.’ Lucian’s relatives betrayed various emotions. Mr. Pepperdine’s mouth slowly opened until it became cavernous; Miss Pepperdine paused in the act of lifting a potato to her mouth; Miss Judith clapped her hands.
‘You went to the castle and saw the earl?’ said Miss Pepperdine.
‘Yes,’ answered Lucian, unaware of the sensation he was causing. ‘I saw him and the picture, and other things too. He was very kind—he made his footman give me a glass of wine, but it was home-made and much too sweet.’
Mr. Pepperdine winked at his sisters and cut Lucian another slice of roast-beef.
‘And how might you have come to be so hand-in-glove with his lordship, the mighty Earl of Simonstower?’ he inquired. ‘He’s a very nice, affable old gentleman, isn’t he, Keziah? Ah—very—specially when he’s got the gout.’
‘Oh, I went to the castle and rang the bell, and asked if the Earl of Simonstower was at home,’ Lucian replied. ‘And I told the footman my name, and he went away, and then came back and told me to follow him, and he took me into a big study where there was an old, very cross-looking old gentleman in an old-fashioned coat writing letters. He had very keen eyes....’
‘Ah, indeed!’ interrupted Mr. Pepperdine. ‘Like a hawk’s!’
‘...and he stared at me,’ continued Lucian, ‘and I stared at him. And then he said, “Well, my boy, what do you want?” and I said, “Please, if you are the Earl of Simonstower, I want to see the picture you bought from my father some years ago.” Then he stared harder than ever, and he said, “Are you Cyprian Damerel’s son?” and I said “Yes.” Hepointed to a chair and told me to sit down, and he talked about my father and his work, and then he took me out to look at the pictures. He wanted to know if I, too, was going to paint, and I had to tell him that I couldn’t draw at all, and that I meant to be a poet. Then he showed me his library, or a part of it—I stopped with him a long time, and he shook hands with me when I left, and said I might go again whenever I wished to.’
‘Hear, hear!’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘It’s very evident there’s a soft spot somewhere in the old gentleman’s heart.’
‘And what did his lordship talk to you about?’ asked Miss Pepperdine, who had sufficiently recovered from her surprise to resume her dinner. ‘I hope you said “my lord” and “your lordship” when you spoke to him?’
‘No, I didn’t, because I didn’t know,’ said Lucian. ‘I said “sir,” because he was an old man. Oh, we talked about Italy—fancy, he hasn’t been in Italy for twenty years!—and he asked me a lot of questions about several things, and he got me to translate a letter for him which he had just received from a professor at Florence—his own Italian, he said, is getting rusty.’
‘And could you do it?’ asked Miss Pepperdine.
Lucian stared at her with wide-open eyes.
‘Why, yes,’ he answered. ‘It is my native tongue. I know much, much more Italian than English. Sometimes I cannot find the right word in English—it is a difficult language to learn.’
Lucian’s adventures of his first morning pleased Mr. Pepperdine greatly. He chuckled to himself as he smoked his after-dinner pipe—the notion of his nephew bearding the grim old earl in his tumble-down castle was vastly gratifying and amusing: it was also pleasing to find Lucian treated with such politeness. As the Earl of Simonstower’s tenant Mr. Pepperdine had much respect but little affection for his titled neighbour: the old gentleman was arbitrary and autocratic and totallydeaf to whatever might be said to him about bad times. Mr. Pepperdine was glad to get some small change out of the earl through his nephew.
‘Did his lordship mention me or your aunties at all?’ he said, puffing at his pipe as they all sat round the parlour fire.
‘Yes,’ answered Lucian, ‘he spoke of you.’
‘And what did he say like? Something sweet, no doubt,’ said Mr. Pepperdine.
Lucian looked at Miss Judith and made no answer.
‘Out with it, lad!’ said Mr. Pepperdine.
‘It was only about Aunt Judith,’ answered Lucian. ‘He said she was a very pretty woman.’
Mr. Pepperdine exploded in bursts of hearty laughter; Miss Judith blushed like any girl; Miss Pepperdine snorted with indignation. She was about to make some remark on the old nobleman’s taste when a diversion was caused by the announcement that Lucian’s beloved chest of books had arrived from Wellsby station. Nothing would satisfy the boy but that he must unpack them there and then; he seized Miss Judith by the hand and dragged her away to help him. For the rest of the afternoon the two were arranging the books in an old bookcase which they unearthed from a lumber-room and set up in Lucian’s sleeping chamber. Mr. Pepperdine, looking in upon them once or twice and noting their fervour, retired to the parlour or the kitchen with a remark to his elder sister that they were as throng as Throp’s wife. Judith, indeed, had some taste in the way of literature—in her own room she treasured a collection of volumes which she had read over and over again. Her taste was chiefly for Lord Byron, Moore, Mrs. Hemans, Miss Landon, and the sentimentalists; she treasured a steel-plate engraving of Byron as if it had been a sacred picture, and gazed with awe upon her nephew when he told her that he had seen the palazzo in which Byron lived during his residence in Pisa, and the house which he had occupied in Venice. Her own romance hadgiven Judith a love of poetry: she told Lucian as she helped him to unpack his books and arrange them that she should expect him to read to her. Modern literature was an unexplored field in her case; her knowledge of letters was essentially early Victorian, and her ideas those of the age in which a poet was most popular when most miserable, and young ladies wore white stockings and low shoes with ankle-straps. She associated fiction with high waists, and essays with full-bottomed wigs, and it seemed the most natural thing to her to shed the tear of sympathy over the Corsair and to sigh with pity for Childe Harold.
Luciansettled down in his new surroundings with a readiness and docility that surprised his relatives. He rarely made any allusion to the loss of his father—he appeared to possess a philosophic spirit that enabled him, even at so early an age, to accept the facts of life as they are. He was never backward, however, in talking of the past. He had been his father’s constant companion for six years, and had travelled with him wherever he went, especially in Italy, and he brought out of his memory stores of reminiscences with which to interest and amuse his newly found relatives. He would talk to Mr. Pepperdine of Italian agriculture; to Keziah of Italian domestic life; to Judith of the treasures of Rome and Naples, Pisa and Florence, of the blue skies and sun-kissed groves of his native land. He always insisted on his nationality—the accident of his connection with England on the maternal side seemed to have no meaning for him.
‘I am Italian,’ he would say when Mr. Pepperdine slyly teased him. ‘It does not matter that I was born in England. My real name is Luciano Damerelli, and my father’s, if he had used it, was Cypriano.’
Little by little they began to find out the boy’s qualities and characteristics. He was strangely old-fashioned, precocious, and unnaturally grave, and cared little for the society of other children, at whom he had a trick of staring as if they had been insects impaled beneath a microscope and he a scientist examining them. He appeared to have two great passions—one for out-door life and nature; the other for reading. He would sit for hours on the bridge watching the river run by, or lie on his back on the lawn in front of the house staring at the drifting clouds. He knew every nook of the ruinous part of the castle and every cornerof the old church before he had been at Simonstower many weeks. He made friends with everybody in the village, and if he found out that an old man had some strange legend to tell, he pestered the life out of him until it was told. And every day he did so much reading, always with the stern concentration of the student who means to possess a full mind.
When Lucian had been nearly two months at the farm it was borne in upon Miss Pepperdine’s mind that he ought to be sent to school. She was by no means anxious to get rid of him—on the contrary she was glad to have him in the house: she loved to hear him talk, to see him going about, and to watch his various proceedings. But Keziah Pepperdine had been endowed at birth with the desire to manage—she was one of those people who are never happy unless they are controlling, devising, or superintending. Moreover, she possessed a very strict sense of justice—she believed in doing one’s duty, especially to those people to whom duty was owing, and who could not extract it for themselves. It seemed to her that it was the plain duty of Lucian’s relatives to send Lucian to school. She was full of anxieties for his future. Every attempt which she had made to get her brother to tell her anything about the boy’s affairs had resulted in sheer failure—Simpson Pepperdine, celebrated from the North Sea to the Westmoreland border as the easiest-going and best-natured man that ever lived, was a past master in the art of evading direct questions. Keziah could get no information from him, and she was anxious for Lucian’s sake. The boy, she said, ought to be fitted out for some walk in life.
She took the vicar into her confidence, seizing the opportunity when he called one day and found no one but herself at home.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘the boy is a great book-worm. Reading is all that he seems to care about. He brought a quantity of books with him—he has bought others since. He reads in an old-fashioned sort of way—notas you would think a child would. I offered him a child’s book one night—it was one that a little boy who once stayed here had left in the house. He took it politely enough, and pretended to look at it, but it was plain to see that he was amused. He is a precocious child, Mr. Chilverstone.’
The vicar agreed. He suggested that he might be better able to judge the situation, and to advise Miss Pepperdine thereon, if he were allowed to inspect Lucian’s library, and Keziah accordingly escorted him to the boy’s room. Mr. Chilverstone was somewhat taken aback on being confronted by an assemblage of some three or four hundred volumes, arranged with great precision and bearing evidences of constant use. He remarked that the sight was most interesting, and proceeded to make a general inspection. A rapid survey of Lucian’s books showed him that the boy had three favourite subjects—history, mediæval romance, and poetry. There were histories of almost every country in Europe, and at least three of the United States of America; there were editions of the ancient chronicles; the great Italian poets were all there in the original; the English poets, ancient and modern, were there too, in editions that bespoke the care of a book-lover. There was nothing of a juvenile, or even a frivolous nature from the top of the old bookcase to the bottom—the nearest approach to anything in the shape of light literature was found in the presence of certain famous historical romances of undoubted verisimilitude, and in much-thumbed copies ofRobinson CrusoeandThe Pilgrim’s Progress.
Mr. Chilverstone was puzzled. As at least one-half of the books before him were in Italian, he concluded that Lucian was as well acquainted with that language as with English, and said so. Miss Pepperdine enlightened him on the point, and gave him a rapid sketch of Lucian’s history.
‘Just so, just so,’ said he. ‘No doubt the boy’s father formed his taste. It is really most interesting.It is very evident that the child has an uncommon mind—you say that he reads with great attention and concentration?’
‘You might let off a cannon at his elbow and he wouldn’t take any notice,’ said Miss Pepperdine.
‘It is evident that he is a born student. This is a capital collection of modern histories,’ said Mr. Chilverstone. ‘If your nephew has read and digested them all he must be well informed as to the rise and progress of nations. I should like, I think, to have an opportunity of conversing with him.’
Although he did not say so to Miss Pepperdine, the vicar was secretly anxious to find out what had diverted the boy’s attention from the usual pursuits of childhood into these paths. He contrived to waylay Lucian and to draw him into conversation, and being a man of some talent and of considerable sympathy, he soon knew all that the boy had to tell. He found that Lucian had never received any education of the ordinary type; had never been to school or known tutor or governess. He could not remember who taught him to read, but cherished a notion that reading and writing had come to him with his speech. As to his choice of books, that had largely had its initiative in his father’s recommendation; but there had been a further incentive in the fact that the boy had travelled a great deal, was familiar with many historic scenes and places, and had a natural desire to re-create the past in his own imagination. For six years, in short, he had been receiving an education such as few children are privileged to acquire. He talked of mediæval Italy as if he had lived in its sunny-tinted hours, and of modern Rome as though it lay in the next parish. But Mr. Chilverstone saw that the boy was in no danger of becoming either prig or pedant, and that his mind was as normal as his body was healthy. He was the mere outcome of an exceptional environment. He had lived amongst men who talked and worked and thought but with one object—Art—and their enthusiasm had filledhim too. ‘I am to be a poet—a great poet,’ he said, with serious face and a straight stare from the violet eyes whose beauty brought everybody captive to his feet. ‘It is my destiny.’
Mr. Chilverstone had a sheaf of yellow papers locked away in a secret drawer which he had never exhibited to living man or woman—verses written in long dead college days. He was sentimental about them still, and the sentiment inclined him to tenderness with youthful genius. He assured Lucian that he sincerely trusted that he might achieve his heart’s desire, and added a word of good advice as to the inadvisability of writing too soon. But he discovered that some one had been beforehand with the boy on that point—the future poet, with a touch of worldly wisdom which sounded as odd as it was quaint, assured the parson that he had a horror of immaturity and had been commanded by his father never to print anything until it had stood the test of cool-headed reflection and twelve months’ keeping.
The vicar recognised that here was material which required careful nursing and watchful attention. He soon found that Lucian knew nothing of mathematics, and that his only desire in the way of Greek and Latin was that he might be able to read the poets of those languages in the originals. Of the grammar of the English language he knew absolutely nothing, but as he spoke with an almost too extreme correctness, and in a voice of great refinement, Mr. Chilverstone gave it as his opinion that there was no necessity to trouble him with its complexities. But in presenting his report to Miss Pepperdine the vicar said that it would do the boy good to go to school. He would mix with other boys—he was healthy and normal enough, to be sure, and full of boyish fun in his way, but the society of lads of his own age would be good for him. He recommended Miss Pepperdine to send him to the grammar-school at Saxonstowe, the headmaster of which was a friend of his and would gladly give specialattention to any boy whom he recommended. He volunteered, carrying his kindness further, to go over to Saxonstowe and talk to Dr. Babbacombe; for Lucian, he remarked, was no ordinary boy, and needed special attention.
Miss Pepperdine, like most generals who conceive their plans of campaign in secret, found that her troubles commenced as soon as she began to expose her scheme to criticism. Mr. Pepperdine, as a lifelong exponent of the art of letting things alone, wanted to know what she meant by disturbing everything when all was going on as comfortably as it could be. He was sure the boy had as much book-learning as the archbishop himself—besides, if he was sent away to school, he, Simpson Pepperdine, would have nobody to talk to about how they farmed in foreign countries. Judith, half recognising the force of her sister’s arguments, was still angry with Keziah for allowing them to occur to her—she knew that the boy had crept so closely into her heart and had so warmed it with new fire that she hated the thought of his leaving her, even though Saxonstowe was only thirty miles away. Consequently Miss Pepperdine fought many pitched battles with her brother and sister, and Simpson and Judith, who knew that she had more brains in her little finger than they possessed in their two heads, took to holding conferences in secret in the vain hope of circumventing her designs.
It came as a vast surprise to these two conspirators that Lucian himself, on whose behalf they basely professed to be fighting, deserted to, or rather openly joined, the enemy as soon as the active campaign began. Miss Pepperdine, like the astute woman she was, gained the boy’s ear and had talked him over before either Simpson or Judith could pervert his mind. He listened to all she had to say, showed that he was impressed, and straightway repaired to the vicarage to seek Mr. Chilverstone’s advice. That evening, in the course of a family council, shared in by Mr. Pepperdine with agloomy face and feelings of silent resentment against Keziah, and by Judith with something of the emotion displayed by a hen who is about to be robbed of her one chicken, Lucian announced that he would go to school, adding, however, that if he found there was nothing to be learnt there he would return to his uncle’s roof. Mr. Pepperdine plucked up amazingly after this announcement, for he cherished a secret conviction that his nephew already knew more than any schoolmaster could teach him; but Judith shed tears when she went to bed, and felt ill-disposed towards Keziah for the rest of the week.
Lucian went to Saxonstowe presently with cheerfulness and a businesslike air, and the three middle-aged Pepperdines were miserable. Mr. Pepperdine took to going over to the Grange at Wellsby nearly every night, and Judith was openly rebellious. Miss Pepperdine herself felt that the house was all the duller for the boy’s absence, and wondered how they had endured its dumb monotony before he came. There was much of the Spartan in her, however, and she bore up without sign; but the experience taught her that Duty, when actually done, is not so pleasing to the human feelings as it seems to be when viewed from a distance.
No word came from Lucian for two weeks after his departure; then the postman brought a letter addressed to Mr. Pepperdine, which was opened amidst great excitement at the breakfast table. Mr. Pepperdine, however, read it in silence.
‘My dear Uncle Simpson Pepperdine,’ wrote Lucian, ‘I did not wish to write to you until I had been at school quite two weeks, so that I could tell you what I thought of it, and whether it would suit me. It is a very nice school, and all the boys are very nice too, and I like Dr. Babbacombe, and his wife, and the masters. We have very good meals, and I should be quite content in that respect if one could sometimes have a cup of decent coffee, but I believe that is impossiblein England. They have a pudding here, sometimes, which the boys call Spotted Dog—it is very satisfying and I do not remember hearing of it before—it has what English people call plums in it, but they are in reality small dried raisins.‘I am perfectly content with my surroundings and my new friends, but I greatly fear that this system of education will not suit me. In some subjects, such as history and general knowledge, I find that I already know much more than Dr. Babbacombe usually teaches to boys. As regards other subjects I find that it is noten règleto permit discussion or argument between master and pupil. I can quite see the reasonableness of that, but it is the only way in which I have ever learnt everything. I am not quick at learning anything—I have to read a thing over and over again before I arrive at the true significance. It may be that I would spend a whole day in accounting to myself why a certain cause produces a certain effect—the system of education in use here, however, requires one to learn many things in quite a short time. It reminds me of the man who taught twelve parrots all at once. In more ways than one it reminds me of this, because I feel that many boys here learn the sound of a word and yet do not know what the word means. That is what I have been counselled to avoid.‘I am anxious to be amenable to your wishes, but I think I shall waste time here. If I could have my own way I should like to have Mr. Chilverstone for a tutor, because he is a man of understanding and patience, and would fully explain everything to me. I am not easy in my mind here, though quite so in my body. Everybody is very kind and the life is comfortable, but I do not think Dr. Babbacombe or his masters are greatsavants, though they are gracious and estimable gentlemen.‘I send my love to you and my aunts, and to Mr. Chilverstone and Mr. and Mrs. Trippett. I have bought a cricket-bat for John Trippett and a doll forMary, which I shall send in a box very soon.—And I am your affectionate kinsman,‘Lucian Damerel.
‘My dear Uncle Simpson Pepperdine,’ wrote Lucian, ‘I did not wish to write to you until I had been at school quite two weeks, so that I could tell you what I thought of it, and whether it would suit me. It is a very nice school, and all the boys are very nice too, and I like Dr. Babbacombe, and his wife, and the masters. We have very good meals, and I should be quite content in that respect if one could sometimes have a cup of decent coffee, but I believe that is impossiblein England. They have a pudding here, sometimes, which the boys call Spotted Dog—it is very satisfying and I do not remember hearing of it before—it has what English people call plums in it, but they are in reality small dried raisins.
‘I am perfectly content with my surroundings and my new friends, but I greatly fear that this system of education will not suit me. In some subjects, such as history and general knowledge, I find that I already know much more than Dr. Babbacombe usually teaches to boys. As regards other subjects I find that it is noten règleto permit discussion or argument between master and pupil. I can quite see the reasonableness of that, but it is the only way in which I have ever learnt everything. I am not quick at learning anything—I have to read a thing over and over again before I arrive at the true significance. It may be that I would spend a whole day in accounting to myself why a certain cause produces a certain effect—the system of education in use here, however, requires one to learn many things in quite a short time. It reminds me of the man who taught twelve parrots all at once. In more ways than one it reminds me of this, because I feel that many boys here learn the sound of a word and yet do not know what the word means. That is what I have been counselled to avoid.
‘I am anxious to be amenable to your wishes, but I think I shall waste time here. If I could have my own way I should like to have Mr. Chilverstone for a tutor, because he is a man of understanding and patience, and would fully explain everything to me. I am not easy in my mind here, though quite so in my body. Everybody is very kind and the life is comfortable, but I do not think Dr. Babbacombe or his masters are greatsavants, though they are gracious and estimable gentlemen.
‘I send my love to you and my aunts, and to Mr. Chilverstone and Mr. and Mrs. Trippett. I have bought a cricket-bat for John Trippett and a doll forMary, which I shall send in a box very soon.—And I am your affectionate kinsman,
‘Lucian Damerel.
As the greater part of this remarkable epistle was pure Greek to Mr. Pepperdine, he repaired to the vicarage with it and laid it before Mr. Chilverstone, who, having duly considered it, returned with Lucian’s kinsman to the farm and there entered into solemn conclave with him and his sisters. The result of their deliberations was that the boy was soon afterwards taken from the care of the gracious and estimable gentlemen who were notsavants, and placed, so far as his education was concerned, under the sole charge of the vicar.
Mr. Chilverstonewas one of those men upon whom many sorrows and disappointments are laid. He had set out in life with a choice selection of great ambitions, and at forty-five not one of them had fructified. Ill-health had always weighed him down in one direction; ill-luck in another; the only piece of good fortune which had ever come to him came when the Earl of Simonstower, who had heard of him as an inoffensive man content to serve a parish without going to extremes in either of the objectionable directions, presented him to a living which even in bad times was worth five hundred pounds a year. But just before this preferment came in his way Mr. Chilverstone had the misfortune to lose his wife, and the enjoyment of the fit things of a country living was necessarily limited to him for some time. He was not greatly taxed by his pastoral duties, for his flock, from the earl downwards, loved that type of parson who knows how to keep his place, and only insists on his professional prestige on Sundays and the appointed days, and he had no great inclination to occupy himself in other directions. As the bitterness of his great sorrow slipped away from him he found his life resolving itself into a level—his time was passed in reading, in pottering about his garden, and, as she grew up, in educating his only child, a girl who at the time of her mother’s death was little more than an infant. At the time of Lucian’s arrival in the village Mr. Chilverstone’s daughter was at school in Belgium—the boy’s first visits to the vicarage were therefore made to a silent and lonely house, and they proved very welcome to its master.
Lucian’s experience at the grammar-school was never repeated under the newrégime. The vicar had been somewhat starved in the matter of conversation formore years than he cared to remember, and it was a Godsend to him to have a keen and inquiring mind opposed to his own. His pupil’s education began and was continued in an unorthodox fashion; there was no system and very little order in it, but it was good for man and boy. They began to spend much time together, in the field as much as in the study. Mr. Chilverstone, encouraged thereto by Lucian, revived an ancient taste for archæology, and the two made long excursions to the ruined abbeys, priories, castles, and hermitages in their neighbourhood. Miss Pepperdine, to whom Lucian invariably applied for large supplies of sandwiches on these occasions, had an uncomfortable suspicion that the boy would have been better employed with a copy-book or a slate, but she had great faith in the vicar, and acknowledged that her nephew never got into mischief, though he had certainly set his room on fire one night by a bad habit of reading in bed. She had become convinced that Lucian was an odd chicken, who had got into the brood by some freak of fortune, and she fell into the prevalent fashion of the family in regarding him as something uncommon that was not to be judged by ordinary rules of life or interfered with. To Mr. Pepperdine and to Judith he remained a constant source of wonder, interest, and amusement, for his tongue never ceased to wag, and he communicated to them everything that he saw, heard, and thought, with a freedom and generosity that kept them in a perpetual state of mental activity.
Towards the end of June, when Lucian had been three months at Simonstower, he walked into the vicar’s study one morning to find him in a state of mild excitement. Mr. Chilverstone nodded his head at a letter which lay open on his desk.
‘The day after to-morrow,’ he said, ‘you will see my daughter. She is coming home from school.’
Lucian made no answer. It seemed to him that this bare announcement wrought some subtle change. He knew nothing whatever of girls—they had never comeinto his life, and he was doubtful about them. He stared hard at the vicar.
‘Will you be glad to see her?’ he asked.
‘Why, surely!’ exclaimed Mr. Chilverstone. ‘Yes—I have not seen her for nearly a year, and it is two years since she left home. Yes—Millie is all I have.’
Lucian felt a pang of jealousy. It was part of his nature to fall in love with every new friend he made; in return, he expected each new friend to devote himself to him. He had become very fond of the vicar; they got on together excellently; it was not pleasant to think that a girl was coming between them. Besides, what Mr. Chilverstone said was not true. This Millie was not all he had—he had some of him, Lucian.
‘You will like my little girl,’ the vicar went on, utterly oblivious of the fact that he was making the boy furiously jealous. ‘She is full of life and fun—a real ray of sunshine in a house.’ He sighed heavily and looked at a portrait of his wife. ‘Yes,’ he continued, ‘she is quite a lively girl, my little Millie. A sort of tomboy, you know. I call her Sprats; it seems to fit her, somehow.’
Lucian almost choked with rage and grief. All the old, pleasant companionship; all the long talks and walks; all the disputations and scholarly wrangles were to be at an end, and all because of a girl whose father called her Sprats! It was unbelievable. He gazed at the unobservant clergyman with eyes of wonder; he had come to have a great respect for him as a scholar, and could not understand how a man who could make the Greek grammar so interesting could feel any interest in a girl, even though that girl happened to be his own daughter. For women like his aunts, and Mrs. Trippett, and the housekeeper at the castle, Lucian had a great liking; they were all useful in one way or another, either to get good things to eat out of, or to talk to when one wanted to talk; but girls—whatever place had they in the economy of nature! He had never spoken to a girl in his life, except to little Mary Trippett, who wasnine, and to whom he sometimes gave sweets and dolls. Would he be expected to talk to this girl whose father called her Sprats? He turned hot and cold at the thought.
His visit to the vicarage that morning was a dead failure. Mr. Chilverstone’s behaviour was foolish and ridiculous: he would talk of Sprats. He even went as far as to tell Lucian of some of Sprats’s escapades. They were mostly of the practical-joke order, and seemed to afford Mr. Chilverstone huge amusement—Lucian wondered how he could be so silly. He endeavoured to be as polite as possible, but he declined an invitation to stay to lunch. He would cheerfully listen to Mr. Chilverstone on the very dryest points of an irregular verb, but Mr. Chilverstone on Sprats was annoying—he almost descended to futility.
Lucian refused two invitations that afternoon. Mr. Pepperdine offered to take him with him to York, whither he was proceeding on business; Miss Judith asked him if he would like to go with her to the house of a friend in whose grounds was a haunted hermitage. He declined both invitations with great politeness and went out in solitude. Part of the afternoon he spent with an old man who mended the roads. The old man was stone-deaf and needed no conversational effort on the part of a friend, and when he spoke himself he talked of intelligent subjects, such as rheumatism, backache, and the best cure for stone in the bladder. Lucian thought him a highly intelligent man, and presented him with a screw of tobacco purchased at the village shop—it was a tacit thankoffering to the gods that the old man had avoided the subject of girls. His spirits improved after a visit to the shoemaker, who told him a brand-new ghost story for the truth of which he vouched with many solemn asseverations, and he was chatty with his Aunt Keziah when they took tea together. But that night he did not talk so much as usual, and he went to bed early and made no attempt to coax Miss Pepperdine into letting him have the extralight which she had confiscated after he had set his bed on fire.
Next day Lucian hoped to find the vicar in a saner frame of mind, but to his astonishment and disgust Mr. Chilverstone immediately began to talk of Sprats again, and continued to do so until he became unbearable. Lucian was obliged to listen to stories which to him seemed inept, fatuous, and even imbecile. He was told of Sprats’s first distinct words; of her first tooth; of her first attempts to walk; of the memorable occasion upon which she placed her pet kitten on the fire in order to warm it. The infatuated father, who had not had an opportunity of retailing these stories for some time, and who believed that he was interesting his listener, continued to pour forth story after story, each more feeble and ridiculous than the last, until Lucian could have shrieked with the agony which was tearing his soul to pieces. He pleaded a bad headache at last and tried to slip away—Mr. Chilverstone detained him in order to give him an anti-headache powder, and accompanied his researches into the medicine cupboard with a highly graphic description of a stomach-ache which Sprats had once contracted from too lavish indulgence in unripe apples, and was cured by himself with some simple drug. The vicar, in short, being a disingenuous and a simple-minded man, had got Sprats on the brain, and he imagined that every word he said was meeting with a responsive thrill in the boy’s heart.
Lucian escaped the fatuous father at last. He rushed out into the sunlight, almost choking with rage, grief, and disappointment. He flung the powder into the hedge-bottom, sat down on a stone-heap at the side of the road, and began to swear in Italian. He swore freely and fluently until he had exhausted that eloquent vocabulary which one may pick up in Naples and Venice and in the purlieus of Hatton Garden, and when he had finished he began it all over again and repeated it with as much fervour as one should display, if one is honest, in reciting the Rosary. This saved him fromapoplexy, but the blood grew black within him and his soul was scratched. It had been no part of Lucian’s plans for the future that Sprats should come between him and his friend.
He slept badly that night, and while he lay awake he said to himself that it was all over. It was a mere repetition of history—a woman always came between men. He had read a hundred instances—this was one more. Of course, the Sprats creature would oust him from his place—nothing would ever be as it had been. All was desolate, and he was alone. He read several pages of the fourth canto ofChilde Haroldas soon as it was light, and dropped asleep with the firm conviction that life is a grey thing.
All that day and the next Lucian kept away from the vicarage. The domestic deities wondered why he did not go as usual; he invented plausible excuses with facile ingenuity. He neglected his books and betrayed a suspicious interest in Mr. Pepperdine’s recent purchases of cattle; he was restless and at times excited, and Miss Keziah looked at his tongue and felt his forehead and made him swallow a dose of a certain home-made medicine by which she set great store. On the third day the suppressed excitement within him reached boiling-point. He went out into the fields mad to work it off, and by good or ill luck lighted upon an honest rustic who was hoeing turnips under a blazing midsummer sun. Lucian looked at the rustic with the eye of a mocking and mischievous devil.
‘Boggles,’ he said, with a Mephistophelian coaxing, ‘would you like to hear some Italian?’ Boggles ruminated.
‘Why, Master Lucian,’ he said, ‘I don’t know as I ever did hear that language—can’t say as I ever did, anyhow.’
‘Listen, then,’ said Lucian. He treated Boggles to a string of expletives, delivered with native force and energy, making use of his eyes and teeth until the man began to feel frightened.
‘Lord sakes, Master Lucian!’ he said, ‘one ’ud think you was going to murder somebody—you look that fierce. It’s a queer sort o’ language that, sir—I never heard nowt like it. It flays a body.’
‘It is the most delightful language in the world when you want to swear,’ said Lucian. ‘It....’
‘Nonsense! It isn’t a patch on German. You wait till I get over the hedge and I’ll show you,’ cried a ringing and very authoritative voice. ‘I can reel off twice as much as that.’
Lucian turned round with an instinctive feeling that a critical moment was at hand. He caught sight of something feminine behind the hedgerow; the next instant a remarkably nimble girl came over a half-made gap. The turnip-hoeing man uttered an exclamation which had much joy in it.
‘Lord sakes if it isn’t Miss Millie!’ he said, touching his cap. ‘Glad to see ’ee once again, missie. They did tell me you was coming from them furrineerin’ countries, and there you be, growed quite up, as one might say.’
‘Not quite, but nearly, Boggles,’ answered Miss Chilverstone. ‘How’s your rheumatics, as one might call ’em? They were pretty bad when I went away, I remember.’
‘They’re always bad i’ th’ winter, miss,’ said Boggles, leaning on his hoe and evincing a decided desire to talk, ‘and a deal better in summer, allus providing the Lord don’t send no rain. Fine, dry weather, miss, is what I want—the rain ain’t no good to me.’
‘A little drop wouldn’t hurt the turnips, anyway,’ said Miss Chilverstone, looking about her with a knowing air. ‘Seem pretty well dried up, don’t they?’ She looked at Lucian. Their eyes met: the boy stared and blushed; the girl stared and laughed.
‘Did it lose its tongue, then?’ she said teasingly. ‘It seemed to have a very long and very ready one when it was swearing at poor old Boggles. What made him use such bad language to you, Boggles?’
‘Lord bless ’ee, missie,’ said Boggles hurriedly, ‘he didn’t mean no harm, didn’t Master Lucian—he was telling me how they swear in Eye-talian. Not but what it didn’t sound very terrible—but he wouldn’t hurt a fly, wouldn’t Master Lucian, miss, he wouldn’t indeed.’
‘Dear little lamb!’ she said mockingly, ‘I shouldn’t think he would.’ She turned on the boy with a sudden twist of her shoulders. ‘So you are Lucian, are you?’ she asked.
‘I am Lucian, yes,’ he answered.
‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked, with a flashing look.
Lucian stared back at her, and the shadow of a smile stole into his face.
‘I think,’ he said musingly, ‘I think you must be Sprats.’
Then the two faced each other and stared as only stranger children can stare.
Mr. Boggles, his watery old eyes keenly observant, leaned his chin upon his hoe and stared also, chuckling to himself. Neither saw him; their eyes were all for each other. The girl, without acknowledging it, perhaps without knowing it, recognised the boy’s beauty and hated him for it in a healthy fashion. He was too much of a picture; his clothes were too neat; his collar too clean; his hands too white; he was altogether too much of a fine and finicking little gentleman; he ought, she said to herself, to be stuck in a velvet suit, and a point-lace collar, and labelled. The spirit of mischief entered into her at the sight of him.
Lucian examined this strange creature with care. He was relieved to find that she was by no means beautiful. He saw a strong-limbed, active-looking young damsel, rather older and rather taller than himself, whose face was odd, rather than pretty, and chiefly remarkable for a prodigality of freckles and a healthy tan. Her nose was pugnacious and inclined to be of the snub order; her hair sandy and anything but tidy;there was nothing beautiful in her face but a pair of brown eyes of a singularly clear and honest sort. As for her attire, it was not in that order which an exacting governess might have required: she wore a blue serge frock in which she had evidently been climbing trees or scrambling through hedgerows, a battered straw hat wherein she or somebody had stuck the long feathers from a cock’s tail; there was a rent in one of her stockings, and her stout shoes looked as if she had tramped through several ploughed fields in them. All over and round her glowed a sort of aureole of rude and vigorous health, of animal spirits, and of a love of mischief—the youthful philosopher confronting her recognised a new influence and a new nature.
‘Yes,’ she said demurely, ‘I’m Sprats, and you’ve a cheek to call me so—who gave you leave, I’d like to know? What would you think if I told you that you’d look nice if you had a barrel-organ and a monkey on it? Ha! ha! had him there, hadn’t I, Boggles? Well, do you know where I am going, monkey-boy?’
Lucian sighed resignedly.
‘No,’ he answered.
‘Going to fetch you,’ she said. ‘You haven’t been to your lessons for two days, and you’re to go this instant minute.’
‘I don’t think I want any lessons to-day,’ replied Lucian.
‘Hear him!’ she said, making a grimace. ‘What do they do with little boys who won’t go to school, Boggles—eh?’
If Lucian had known more of a world with which he had never, poor child, had much opportunity of making acquaintance, he would have seen that Sprats was meditating mischief. Her eyes began to glitter: she smiled demurely.
‘Are you coming peaceably?’ she asked.
‘But I’m not coming at all,’ replied Lucian.
‘Aren’t you, though? We’ll soon settle that,won’t we, Boggles?’ she exclaimed. ‘Now then, monkey—off you go!’
She was on him with a rush before he knew what was about to happen, and had lifted him off his feet and swung him on to her shoulder ere he could escape her. Lucian expostulated and beseeched; Sprats, shouting and laughing, made for a gap in the hedgerow; Boggles, hugely delighted, following in the wake. At the gap a battle royal ensued—Lucian fighting to free himself, the girl clinging on to him with all the strength of her vigorous young arms.
‘Let me go, I say!’ cried Lucian. ‘Let me down!’
‘You’d best to go quiet and peaceable, Master Lucian,’ counselled Boggles. ‘Miss Millie ain’t one to be denied of anything.’
‘But I won’t be carried!’ shouted Lucian, half mad with rage. ‘I won’t....’
He got no further. Sprats, holding on tight to her captive, caught her foot in a branch as she struggled over the gap, and pitched headlong through. There was a steep bank at the other side with a wide ditch of water at its foot: Boggles, staring over the hedge with all his eyes, beheld captor and captive, an inextricable mass of legs and arms, turn a series of hurried somersaults and collapse into the duck-weed and water-lilies with a splash that drowned their mutual screams of rage, indignation, and delight.
Itfollowed as a matter of inevitable consequence that Lucian and Sprats when they emerged from the waters of the wayside ditch had become fast friends for life; from that time forward they were as David and Jonathan, loving much, and having full confidence in each other. They became inseparable, and their lives were spent together from an early hour of the morning until the necessary bedtime. The vicar was to a certain degree shelved: his daughter possessed the charm of youth and high spirits which was wanting in him. He became a species of elder brother, who was useful in teaching one things and good company on occasions. He, like the philosopher which life had made him, accepted the situation. He saw that the devotion which Lucian had been about to pour out at his own feet had by a sudden whim of fate been diverted to his daughter, and he smiled. He took from these two children all that they gave him, and was sometimes gorged to satiety and sometimes kept on short commons, according to their vagaries and moods. Like all young and healthy things, they believed that the world had been made for their own particular benefit, and they absorbed it. Perhaps there had never been such a close companionship as that which sprang up between these two. The trifling fact that one was a boy and the other a girl never seemed to strike them: they were sexless and savage in their freedom. Under Sprats’s fostering care Lucian developed a new side of his character: she taught him to play cricket and football, to climb trees and precipices, to fish and to ride, and to be an out-of-door boy in every way. He, on his part, repaid her by filling her mind with much of his own learning: she became as familiar with the scenes of his childhood as if she had lived in them herself.
For three years the vicar, Sprats, and Lucian lived in a world of their own, with the Pepperdines as a closely fitting environment. Miss Pepperdine was accustomed to remark that she did not know whether Lucian really lived at the farm or at the vicarage, but as the vicar often made a similar observation with respect to his daughter, things appeared to be equalised. It was true that the two children treated the houses with equal freedom. If they happened to be at the farm about dinner-time they dined there, but the vicarage would have served them equally well if it had harboured them when the luncheon-bell rang. Mr. Pepperdine was greatly delighted when he found them filling a side of his board: their remarks on things in general, their debates, disputes, and more than all, their quarrels, afforded him much amusement. They were not so well understood by Miss Pepperdine, who considered the young lady from the vicarage to be something of a hoyden, and thought it the vicar’s duty to marry again and provide his offspring with a mother.
‘And a pretty time she’d have!’ remarked Mr. Pepperdine, to whom this sage reflection was offered. ‘A nice handful for anybody, is that young Sprats—as full of mischief as an egg is full of meat. But a good ge’l, a good ge’l, Keziah, and with a warm heart, you make no mistake.’
Sprats’s kindness of heart, indeed, was famous throughout the village. She was her father’s almoner, and tempered charity with discrimination in a way that would have done credit to a professional philanthropist. She made periodical visits through the village, followed by Lucian, who meekly carried a large basket containing toothsome and seasonable doles, which were handed out to this or that old woman in accordance with Sprats’s instructions. The instinct of mothering something was strong within her. From the moment of her return from school she had taken her father in hand and had shaken him up and pulled him together. He had contracted bad habits as regards food and wasbecoming dyspeptic; he was careless about his personal comfort and neglectful of his health—Sprats dragooned him into the paths of rectitude. But she extended her mothering instincts to Lucian even more than to her father. She treated him at times as if he were a child with whom it was unnecessary to reason; there was always an affectionate solicitude in her attitude towards him which was, perhaps, most marked when she bullied him into subjection. Once when he was ill and confined to his room for a week or two she took up her quarters at the farm, summarily dismissed Keziah and Judith from attendance on the invalid, and nursed him back to convalescence. It was useless to argue with her on these occasions. Sprats, as Boggles had truly said, was not one to be denied of anything, and every year made it more manifest that when she had picked Lucian up in the turnip-field and had fallen headlong into the ditch with him, it had been a figure of her future interest in his welfare.
It was in the fourth summer of Lucian’s residence at Simonstower, and he was fifteen and Sprats nearly two years older, when the serpent stole into their Paradise. Until the serpent came all had gone well with them. Sprats was growing a fine girl; she was more rudely healthy than ever, and just as sunburned; her freckles had increased rather than decreased; her hair, which was growing deeper in colour, was a perpetual nuisance to her. She had grown a little quieter in manner, but would break out at times; the mere fact that she wore longer skirts did not prevent her from climbing trees or playing cricket. And she and Lucian were still hand-in-glove, still David and Jonathan; she had no friends of her own sex, and he none of his; each was in a happy state of perfect content. But the stage of absolute perfection is by no means assured even in the Arcadia of childhood—it may endure for a time, but sooner or later it must be broken in upon, and not seldom in a rudely sudden way.
The breaking up of the old things began one Sundaymorning in summer, in the cool shade of the ancient church. Nothing heralded the momentous event; everything was as placid as it always was. Lucian, sitting in the pew sacred to the family of Pepperdine, looked about him and saw just what he saw every Sunday. Mr. Pepperdine was at the end of the pew in his best clothes; Miss Pepperdine was gorgeous in black silk and bugles; Miss Judith looked very handsome in her pearl-grey. In the vicarage pew, all alone, sat Sprats in solemn state. Her freckled face shone with much polishing; her sailor hat was quite straight; as for the rest of her, she was clothed in a simple blouse and a plain skirt, and there were no tears in either. All the rest was as usual. The vicar’s surplice had been newly washed, and Sprats had mended a bit of his hood, which had become frayed by hanging on a nail in the vestry, but otherwise he presented no different appearance to that which always characterised him. There were the same faces, and the same expressions upon them, in every pew, and that surely was the same bee that always buzzed while they waited for the service to begin, and the three bells in the tower droned out. ‘Cometo church—cometo church—cometo church!’
It was at this very moment that the serpent stole into Paradise. The vicar had broken the silence with ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness,’ and everybody had begun to rustle the leaves of their prayer-books, when the side-door of the chancel opened and the Earl of Simonstower, very tall, and very gaunt, and very irascible in appearance, entered in advance of two ladies, whom he marshalled to the castle pew with as much grace and dignity as his gout would allow. Lucian and Sprats, with a wink to each other which no one else perceived, examined the earl’s companions during the recitation of the General Confession, looking through the slits of their hypocritical fingers. The elder lady appeared to be a woman of fashion: she was dressed in a style not often seen atSimonstower, and her attire, her lorgnette, her vinaigrette, her fan, and her airs and graces formed a delightful contrast to the demeanour of the old earl, who was famous for the rustiness of his garments, and stuck like a leech to the fashion of the ‘forties.’
But it was neither earl nor simpering madam at which Lucian gazed at surreptitious moments during the rest of the service. The second of the ladies to enter into the pew of the great house was a girl of sixteen, ravishingly pretty, and gay as a peacock in female flaunts and fineries which dazzled Lucian’s eyes. She was dark, and her eyes were shaded by exceptionally long lashes which swept a creamy cheek whereon there appeared the bloom of the peach, fresh, original, bewitching; her hair, curling over her shoulders from beneath a white sun-bonnet, artfully designed to communicate an air of innocence to its wearer, was of the same blue-black hue that distinguished Lucian’s own curls. It chanced that the boy had just read some extracts fromDon Juan: it seemed to him that here was Haidee in the very flesh. A remarkably strange sensation suddenly developed in the near region of his heart—Lucian for the first time in his life had fallen in love. He felt sick and queer and almost stifled; Miss Pepperdine noticed a drawn expression on his face, and passed him a mint lozenge. He put it in his mouth—something nearly choked him, but he had a vague suspicion that the lozenge had nothing to do with it.
Mr. Chilverstone had a trick of being long-winded if he found a text that appealed to him, and when Lucian heard the subject of that morning’s discourse he feared that the congregation was in for a sermon of at least half an hour’s duration. The presence of the Earl of Simonstower, however, kept the vicar within reasonable bounds, and Lucian was devoutly thankful. He had never wished for anything so much in all his life as he then wished to be out of church and safely hidden in the vicarage, where he always lunched on Sunday, or in some corner of the woods. For the girl in the earl’spew was discomposing, not merely because of her prettiness but because she would stare at him, Lucian. He, temperamentally shy where women were concerned, had only dared to look at her now and then; she, on the contrary, having once seen him looked at nothing else. He knew that she was staring at him all through the sermon. He grew hot and uncomfortable and wriggled, and Miss Judith increased his confusion by asking him if he were not quite well. It was with a great sense of relief that he heard Mr. Chilverstone wind up his sermon and begin the Ascription—he felt that he could not stand the fire of the girl’s eyes any longer.
He joined Sprats in the porch and seemed in a great hurry to retreat upon the vicarage. Sprats, however, had other views—she wanted to speak to various old women and to Miss Pepperdine, and Lucian had to remain with her. Fate was cruel—the earl, for some mad reason or other, brought his visitors down the church instead of taking them out by the chancel door; consequently Haidee passed close by Lucian. He looked at her; she raised demure eyelids and looked at him. The soul within him became as water—he was lost. He seemed to float into space; his head burned, his heart turned icy-cold, and he shut his eyes, or thought he did. When he opened them again the girl, a dainty dream of white, was vanishing, and Sprats and Miss Judith were asking him if he didn’t feel well. New-born love fostered dissimulation: he complained of a sick headache. The maternal instinct was immediately aroused in Sprats: she conducted him homewards, stretched him on a comfortable sofa in a darkened room, and bathed his forehead with eau-de-cologne. Her care and attention were pleasant, but Lucian’s thoughts were of the girl whose eyes had smitten him to the heart.
The sick headache formed an excellent cloak for the shortcomings of the afternoon and evening. He recovered sufficiently to eat some lunch, and he afterwardslay on a rug in the garden and was tended by the faithful Sprats with a fan and more eau-de-cologne. He kept his eyes shut most of the time, and thought of Haidee. Her name, he said to himself, must be Haidee—no other name would fit her eyes, her hair, and her red lips. He trembled when he thought of her lips; Sprats noticed it, and wondered if he was going to have rheumatic fever or ague. She fetched a clinical thermometer out of the house and took his temperature. It was quite normal, and she was reassured, but still a little puzzled. When tea-time came she brought his tea and her own out into the garden—she observed that he ate languidly, and only asked twice for strawberries. She refused to allow him to go to church in the evening, and conducted him to the farm herself. On the way, talking of the events of the day, she asked him if he had noticed the stuck-up doll in the earl’s pew. Lucian dissembled, and replied in an indifferent tone—it appeared from his reply that he had chiefly observed the elder lady, and had wondered who she was. Sprats was able to inform him upon this point—she was a Mrs. Brinklow, a connection, cousin, half-cousin, or something, of Lord Simonstower’s, and the girl was her daughter, and her name was Haidee.
Lucian knew it—it was Fate, it was Destiny. He had had dreams that some such mate as this was reserved for him in the Pandora’s box which was now being opened to him. Haidee! He nearly choked with emotion, and Sprats became certain that he was suffering from indigestion. She had private conversation with Miss Pepperdine at the farm on the subject of Lucian’s indisposition, with the result that a cooling draught was administered to him and immediate bed insisted upon. He retired with meek resignation; as a matter of fact solitude was attractive—he wanted to think of Haidee.
In the silent watches of the night—disturbed but twice, once by Miss Pepperdine with more medicine, and once by Miss Judith with nothing but solicitude—he realised the entire situation. Haidee had dawned upon him, and the Thing was begun which made all poets mighty. He would be miserable, but he would be great. She was a high-born maiden, who sat in the pews of earls, and he was—he was not exactly sure what he was. She would doubtless look upon him with scorn: well, he would make the world ring with his name and fame; he would die in a cloud of glory, fighting for some oppressed nation, as Byron did, and then she would be sorry, and possibly weep for him. By eleven o’clock he felt as if he had been in love all his life; by midnight he was asleep and dreaming that Haidee was locked up in a castle on the Rhine, and that he had sworn to release her and carry her away to liberty and love. He woke early next morning, and wrote some verses in the metre and style of my Lord Byron’s famous address to a maiden of Athens; by breakfast-time he knew them by heart.
It was all in accordance with the decrees of Fate that Lucian and Haidee were quickly brought into each other’s company. Two days after the interchange of glances in the church porch the boy rushed into the dining-room at the vicarage one afternoon, and found himself confronted by a group of persons, of whom he for the first bewildering moment recognised but one. When he realised that the earth was not going to open and swallow him, and that he could not escape without shame, he saw that the Earl of Simonstower, Mrs. Brinklow, Mr. Chilverstone, and Sprats were in the room as well as Haidee. It was fortunate that Mrs. Brinklow, who had an eye for masculine beauty and admired pretty boys, took a great fancy to him, and immediately began to pet him in a manner which he bitterly resented. That cooled him, and gave him self-possession. He contrived to extricate himself from her caresses with dignity, and replied to the questions which the earl put to him about his studies with modesty and courage. Sprats conducted Haidee to the garden to inspect her collection of animals; Lucianwent with them, and became painfully aware that for every glance which he and Haidee bestowed on rabbits, white mice, piebald rats, and guinea-pigs, they gave two to each other. Each glance acted like an electric thrill—it seemed to Lucian that she was the very spirit of love, made flesh for him to worship. Sprats, however, had an opinion of Miss Brinklow which was diametrically opposed to his own, and she expressed it with great freedom. On any other occasion he would have quarrelled with her: the shame and modesty of love kept him silent; he dared not defend his lady against one of her own sex.
It was in the economy of Lucian’s dream that he and Haidee were to be separated by cruel and inexorable Fate: Haidee, however, had no intention of permitting Fate or anything else to rob her of her just dues. On the afternoon of the very next day Lord Simonstower sent for Lucian to read an Italian magazine to him; Haidee, whose mother loved long siestas on summer days, and was naturally inclined to let her daughter manage her own affairs, contrived to waylay the boy with the beautiful eyes as he left the Castle, and as pretty a piece of comedy ensued as one could wish to see. They met again, and then they met in secret, and Lucian became bold and Haidee alluring, and the woods by the river, and the ruins in the Castle, might have whispered of romantic scenes. And at last Lucian could keep his secret no longer, and there came a day when he poured into Sprats’s surprised and sisterly ear the momentous tidings that he and Haidee had plighted their troth for ever and a day, and loved more madly and despairingly than lovers ever had loved since Leander swam to Hero across the Hellespont.