The railway station stood in the midst of an apparent solitude, and from its one long platform there was no sign of any human habitation. A stranger, looking around him in passing that way, might well have wondered why a station should be found there at all; nevertheless, the board which figured prominently above the white palings suggested the near presence of three places—Wellsby, Meadhope, and Simonstower—and a glance at a map of the county would have sufficed to show him that three villages of the names there indicated lay hidden amongst the surrounding woods, one to the east and two to the west of the railway. The line was a single one, served by a train which made three out-and-home journeys a day between the market-town of Oakborough and the village of Normanford, stopping on its way at seven intermediate stations, of which Wellsby was the penultimate one. These wayside stations sometimes witnessed arrivals and departures, but there were many occasions on which the train neither took up passengers nor set them down—it was only a considerable traffic in agricultural produce, the extra business of the weekly market-day, and its connection with the main line, that enabled the directors to keep the Oakborough and Normanford Branch open. At each small station they maintained a staff consisting of a collector or station-master, a booking-clerk, and a porter, but the duties of these officials were light, and a good deal of spare time lay at their disposal, and was chiefly used in cultivating patches of garden along the side of the line, or in discussing the news of the neighbourhood.
On a fine April evening of the early eighties the staff of this particular station assembled on the platform at half-past six o’clock in readiness to receive the train (which, save on market-days, was composed of an engine, two carriages, and the guard’s van), as it made its last down journey. There were no passengers to go forward towards Normanford, and the porter, according to custom, went out to the end of the platform as the train came into view, and held up his arms as a signal to the driver that he need not stop unless he had reasons of his own for doing so. To this signal the driver responded with two sharp shrieks of his whistle, on hearing which the porter turned away, put his hands in his pockets, and slouched back along the platform.
‘Somebody to set down, anyway, Mr. Simmons,’ said the booking-clerk with a look at the station-master. ‘I wonder who it is—I’ve only booked one up ticket to-day; James White it was, and he came back by the 2.30, so it isn’t him.’
The station-master made no reply, feeling that another moment would answer the question definitely. He walked forward as the train drew up, and amidst the harsh grinding of its wheels threw a greeting to the engine-driver, which he had already given four times that day and would give again as the train went back two hours later. His eyes, straying along the train, caught sight of a hand fumbling at the handle of a third-class compartment, and he hastened to open the door.
‘It’s you, is it, Mr. Pepperdine?’ he said. ‘I wondered who was getting out—it’s not often that this train brings us a passenger.’
‘Two of us this time,’ answered the man thus addressed as he quickly descended, nodding and smiling at the station-master and the booking-clerk; ‘two of us this time, Mr. Simmons. Ah!’ He drew a long breath of air as if the scent of the woods and fields did him good, and then turned to the open door of the carriage, within which stood a boy leisurely attiring himself in an overcoat. ‘Come, my lad,’ he said good-humouredly, ‘the train’ll be going on—let’s see now, Mr. Simmons, there’s a portmanteau, a trunk, and a box in the van—perhaps Jim there’ll see they’re got out.’
The porter hurried off to the van; as he turned away the boy descended from the train, put his gloved hands in the pockets of his overcoat, and stared about him with a deliberate and critical expression. His glance ran over the station, the creeping plants on the station-master’s house, the station-master, and the booking-clerk; his companion, meanwhile, was staring hard at a patch of bright green beyond the fence and smiling with evident enjoyment.
‘I’ll see that the things are all right,’ said the boy suddenly, and strode off to the van. The porter had already brought out a portmanteau and a trunk; he and the guard were now struggling with a larger obstacle in the shape of a packing-case which taxed all their energies.
‘It’s a heavy ’un, this is!’ panted the guard. ‘You might be carrying all the treasure of the Bank of England in here, young master.’
‘Books,’ said the boy laconically. ‘They are heavy. Be careful, please—don’t let the box drop.’
There was a note in his voice which the men were quick to recognise—the note of command and of full expectancy that his word would rank as law. He stood by, anxious of eye and keenly observant, while the men lowered the packing-case to the platform; behind him stood Mr. Pepperdine, the station-master, and the booking-clerk, mildly interested.
‘There!’ said the guard. ‘We ha’n’t given her a single bump. Might ha’ been the delicatest chiny, the way we handled it.’
He wiped his brow with a triumphant wave of the hand. The boy, still regarding the case with grave, speculative eyes, put his hand in his pocket, drew forth a shilling, and with a barely perceptible glance at the guard, dropped it in his hand. The man stared, smiled, pocketed the gift, and touched his cap. He waved his green flag vigorously; in another moment the train was rattling away into the shadow of the woods.
Mr. Pepperdine stepped up to the boy’s side and gazed at the packing-case.
‘It’ll never go in my trap, lad,’ he said, scratching his chin. ‘It’s too big and too heavy. We must send a horse and cart for it in the morning.’
‘But where shall we leave it?’ asked the boy, with evident anxiety.
‘We’ll put it in the warehouse, young master,’ said the porter. ‘It’ll be all right there. I’ll see that no harm comes to it.’
The boy, however, demanded to see the warehouse, and assured himself that it was water-tight and would be locked up. He issued strict mandates to the porter as to his safe-keeping of the packing-case, presented him also with a shilling, and turned away unconcernedly, as if the matter were now settled. Mr. Pepperdine took the porter in hand.
‘Jim,’ he said, ‘my trap’s at the Grange; maybe you could put that trunk and portmanteau on a barrow and bring them down in a while? No need to hurry—I shall have a pipe with Mr. Trippett before going on.’
‘All right, sir,’ answered the porter. ‘I’ll bring ’em both down in an hour or so.’
‘Come on, then, lad,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, nodding good-night to the station-master, and leading the way to the gate. ‘Eh, but it’s good to be back where there’s some fresh air! Can you smell it, boy?’
The boy threw up his face, and sniffed the fragrance of the woods. There had been April showers during the afternoon, and the air was sweet and cool: he drew it in with a relish that gratified the countryman at his side.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I smell it—it’s beautiful.’
‘Ah, so it is!’ said Mr. Pepperdine; ‘as beautiful as—as—well, as anything. Yes, it is so, my lad.’
The boy looked up and laughed, and Mr. Pepperdine laughed too. He had no idea why he laughed, but it pleased him to do so; it pleased him, too, to hear the boy laugh. But when the boy’s face grew grave again Mr. Pepperdine’s countenance composed itself and became equally grave and somewhat solicitous. He looked out of his eye-corners at the slim figure walking at his side, and wondered what other folk would think of his companion. ‘A nice, smart-looking boy,’ said Mr. Pepperdine to himself for the hundredth time; ‘nice, gentlemanlike boy, and a credit to anybody.’ Mr. Pepperdine felt proud to have such a boy in his company, and prouder still to know that the boy was his nephew and ward.
The boy thus speculated upon was a lad of twelve, somewhat tall for his age, of a slim, well-knit figure, a handsome face, and a confidence of manner and bearing that seemed disproportionate to his years. He walked with easy, natural grace; his movements were lithe and sinuous; the turn of his head, as he looked up at Mr. Pepperdine, or glanced at the overhanging trees in the lane, was smart and alert; it was easy to see that he was naturally quick in action and in perception. His face, which Mr. Pepperdine had studied a good deal during the past week, was of a type which is more often met with in Italy than in England. The forehead was broad and high, and crowned by a mass of thick, blue-black hair that clustered and waved all over the head, and curled into rings at the temples; the brows were straight, dark, and full; the nose and mouth delicately but strongly carved; the chin square and firm; obstinacy, pride, determination, were all there, and already stiffening into permanence. But in this face, so Italian, so full of the promise of passion, there were eyes of an essentially English type, almost violet in colour, gentle, soft, dreamy, shaded by long black lashes, and it was in them that Mr. Pepperdine found the thing he sought for when he looked long and wistfully at his dead sister’s son.
Mr. Pepperdine’s present scrutiny passed from the boy’s face to the boy’s clothes. It was not often, he said to himself, that such a well-dressed youngster was seen in those parts. His nephew was clothed in black from head to foot; his hat was surrounded by a mourning-band; a black tie, fashioned into a smart knot, and secured by an antique cameo-pin, encircled his spotless man’s collar: every garment was shaped as if its wearer had been the most punctilious man about town; his neat boots shone like mirrors. The boy was a dandy in miniature, and it filled Mr. Pepperdine with a vast amusement to find him so. He chuckled inwardly, and was secretly proud of a youngster who, as he had recently discovered, could walk into a fashionable tailor’s and order exactly what he wanted with an evident determination to get it. But Mr. Pepperdine himself was a rustic dandy. Because of the necessities of a recent occasion he was at that moment clad in sober black—his Sunday-and-State-Occasion’s suit—but at home he possessed many wonderful things in the way of riding-breeches, greatcoats ornamented with pearl buttons as big as saucers, and sprigged waistcoats which were the despair of the young country bucks, who were forced to admit that Simpson Pepperdine knew a thing or two about the fashion and was a man of style. It was natural, then, Mr. Pepperdine should be pleased to find his nephew a petit-ma?tre—it gratified an eye which was never at any time indisposed to regard the vanities of this world with complaisance.
Mr. Pepperdine, striding along at the boy’s side, presented the cheerful aspect of a healthy countryman. He was a tall, well-built man, rosy of face, bright of eye, a little on the wrong side of forty, and rather predisposed to stoutness of figure, but firm and solid in his tread, and as yet destitute of a grey hair. In his sable garments and his high hat—bought a week before in London itself, and of the latest fashionable shape—he looked very distinguished, and no one could have taken him for less than a churchwarden and a large ratepayer. His air of distinction was further improved by the fact that he was in uncommonly good spirits—he had spent a week in London on business of a sorrowful nature, and he was glad to be home again amongst his native woods and fields. He sniffed the air as he walked, and set his feet down as if the soil belonged to him, and his eyes danced with satisfaction.
The boy suddenly uttered a cry of delight, and stopped, pointing down a long vista of the woods. Mr. Pepperdine turned in the direction indicated, and beheld a golden patch of daffodils.
‘Daffy-down-dillies,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘And very pretty too. But just you wait till you see the woods about Simonstower. I always did say that Wellsby woods were nought to our woods—ah, you should see the bluebells! And as for primroses—well, they could stock all Covent Garden market in London town with ’em, and have enough for next day into the bargain, so they could. Very pretty is them daffies, very pretty, but I reckon there’s something a deal prettier to be seen in a minute or two, for here’s the Grange, and Mrs. Trippett has an uncommon nice way of setting out a tea-table.’
The boy turned from the glowing patch of colour to look at another attractive picture. They had rounded the edge of the wood on their right hand, and now stood gazing at a peculiarly English scene—a green paddock, fenced from the road by neat railings, painted white, at the further end of which, shaded by a belt of tall elms, stood a many-gabled farmhouse, with a flower-garden before its front door and an orchard at its side. The farm-buildings rose a little distance in rear of the house; beyond them was the stackyard, still crowded with wheat and barley stacks; high over everything rose a pigeon-cote, about the weather-vane of which flew countless pigeons. In the paddock were ewes and lambs; cattle and horses looked over the wall of the fold; the soft light of the April evening lay on everything like a benediction.
‘Wellsby Grange,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, pushing open a wicket-gate in the white fence and motioning the boy to enter. ‘The abode of Mr. and Mrs. Trippett, very particular friends of mine. I always leave my trap here when I have occasion to go by train—it would be sent over this morning, and we shall find it all ready for us presently.’
The boy followed his uncle up the path to the side-door of the farmhouse, his eyes taking in every detail of the scene. He was staring about him when the door opened, and revealed a jolly-faced, red-cheeked man with sandy whiskers and very blue eyes, who grinned delightedly at sight of Mr. Pepperdine, and held out a hand of considerable proportions.
‘We were just looking out for you,’ said he. ‘We heard the whistle, and the missis put the kettle on to boil up that minute. Come in, Simpson—come in, my lad—you’re heartily welcome. Now then, missis—they’re here.’
A stout, motherly-looking woman, with cherry-coloured ribbons in a nodding cap that crowned a head of glossy dark hair, came bustling to the door.
‘Come in, come in, Mr. Pepperdine—glad to see you safe back,’ said she. ‘And this’ll be your little nevvy. Come in, love, come in—you must be tired wi’ travelling all that way.’
The boy took off his hat with a courtly gesture, and stepped into the big, old-fashioned kitchen. He looked frankly at the farmer and his wife, and the woman, noting his beauty with quick feminine perception, put her arm round his neck and drew him to her.
‘Eh, but you’re a handsome lad!’ she said. ‘Come straight into the parlour and sit you down—the tea’ll be ready in a minute. What’s your name, my dear?’
The boy looked up at her—Mrs. Trippett’s memory, at the sight of his eyes, went back to the days of her girlhood.
‘My name is Lucian,’ he answered.
Mrs. Trippett looked at him again as if she had scarcely heard him reply to her question. She sighed, and with a sudden impetuous tenderness bent down and kissed him warmly on the cheek.
‘Off with your coat, my dear,’ she said cheerily. ‘And if you’re cold, sit down by the fire—if it is spring, it’s cold enough for fires at night. Now I’ll be back in a minute, and your uncle and the master’ll be coming—I lay they’ve gone to look at a poorly horse that we’ve got just now—and then we’ll have tea.’
She bustled from the room, the cherry-coloured ribbons streaming behind her. The boy, left alone, took off his overcoat and gloves, and laid them aside with his hat; then he put his hands in the pockets of his trousers, and examined his new surroundings.
Never before had Lucian seen the parlour of an English farmhouse, nor such a feast as that spread out on the square dinner-table. The parlour was long and wide and low-roofed, and the ceiling was spanned by beams of polished oak; a bright fire crackled in the old-fashioned grate, and a lamp burned on the table; but there were no blinds or curtains drawn over the latticed windows which overlooked the garden. Lucian’s observant eyes roved about the room, noting the quaint old pictures on the walls; the oil paintings of Mr. Trippett’s father and mother; the framed samplers and the fox’s brush; the silver cups on the sideboard, and the ancient blunderbuss which hung on the centre beam. It seemed to him that the parlour was delightfully quaint and picturesque; it smelled of dried roses and lavender and sweetbriar; there was an old sheep-dog on the hearth who pushed his muzzle into the boy’s hand, and a grandfather’s clock in one corner that ticked a solemn welcome to him. He had never seen such an interior before, and it appealed to his sense of the artistic.
Lucian’s eyes wandered at last to the table, spread for high tea. That was as new to him as the old pictures and samplers. A cold ham of generous proportions figured at one side of the table; a round of cold roast-beef at the other; the tea-tray filled up one end; opposite it space was left for something that was yet to come. This something presently appeared in the shape of a couple of roast fowls and a stand of boiled eggs, borne in by a strapping maid whose face shone like the setting sun, and who was sharply marshalled by Mrs. Trippett, carrying a silver teapot and a dish of hot muffins.
‘Now then, my dear,’ she said, giving a final glance over the table, ‘we can begin as soon as the gentlemen come, and I lay they won’t be long, for Mr. Pepperdine’ll be hungry after his journey, and so I’m sure are you. Come and sit down here and help yourself to an egg—they’re as fresh as morning dew—every one’s been laid this very day.’
The boy sat down and marvelled at the bountiful provision of Mrs. Trippett’s tea-table; it seemed to him that there was enough there to feed a regiment. But when Mr. Trippett and Mr. Pepperdine entered and fell to, he no longer wondered, for the one had been out in the fields all day, and the other had been engaged in the unusual task of travelling, and they were both exceptional trenchermen at any time. Mr. Trippett joked with the boy as they ate, and made sundry references to Yorkshire pudding and roast-beef which seemed to afford himself great satisfaction, and he heaped up his youthful visitor’s plate so generously that Lucian grew afraid.
‘Cut and come again,’ said Mr. Trippett, with his mouth full and his jaws working vigorously. ‘Nothing like a good appetite for growing lads—ah, I was always hungry when I was a boy. Never came amiss to me, didn’t food, never.’
‘But I’ve never eaten so much before,’ said Lucian, refusing his host’s pressing entreaty to have another slice off the breast, or a bit of cold ham. ‘I was hungry, too, or I couldn’t have eaten so much now.’
‘He’ll soon get up an appetite at Simonstower,’ said Mrs. Trippett. ‘You’re higher up than we are, Mr. Pepperdine, and the air’s keener with you. To be sure, our children have good enough appetites here—you should see them at meal times!—I’m sure I oft wonder wherever they put it all.’
‘It’s a provision of nature, ma’am,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘There’s some wonderful things in Nature.’
‘They’re wanting to see you, my dear,’ said Mrs. Trippett, ignoring her elder guest’s profound remark and looking at her younger one. ‘I told them Mr. Pepperdine was going to bring a young gentleman with him. You shall see them after tea—they’re out in the orchard now—they had their teas an hour ago, and they’ve gone out to play. There’s two of them—John and Mary. John’s about your own age, and Mary’s a year younger.’
‘Can’t I go out to them?’ said Lucian. ‘I will, if you will please to excuse me.’
‘With pleasure, my dear,’ said Mrs. Trippett. ‘Go by all means, if you’d like to. Go through the window there—you’ll hear them somewhere about, and they’ll show you their rabbits and things.’
The boy picked up his hat and went out. Mrs. Trippett followed him with meditative eyes.
‘He’s not shy, seemingly,’ she said, looking at Mr. Pepperdine.
‘Not he, ma’am. He’s an old-fashioned one, is the lad,’ answered Lucian’s uncle. ‘He’s the manners of a man in some things. I reckon, you see, that it’s because he’s never had other children to play with.’
‘He’s a handsome boy,’ sighed the hostess. ‘Like his father as I remember him. He was a fine-looking man, in a foreign way. But he’s his mother’s eyes—poor Lucy!’
‘Yes,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘He’s Lucy’s eyes, but all the rest of him’s like his father.’
‘Were you in time to see his father before he died?’ asked Mr. Trippett, who was now attacking the cold beef, after having demolished the greater part of a fowl. ‘You didn’t think you would be when you went off that morning.’
‘Just in time, just in time,’ answered Mr. Pepperdine. ‘Ay, just in time. He went very sudden and very peaceful. The boy was very brave and very old-fashioned about it—he never says anything now, and I don’t mention it.’
‘It’s best not,’ said Mrs. Trippett. ‘Poor little fellow!—of course, he’ll not remember his mother at all?’
‘No,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, shaking his head. ‘No, he was only two years old when his mother died.’
Mr. Trippett changed the subject, and began to talk of London and what Mr. Pepperdine had seen there. But when the tea-table had been cleared, and Mrs. Trippett had departed to the kitchen regions to bustle amongst her maids, and the two farmers were left in the parlour with the spirit decanters on the table, their tumblers at their elbows and their pipes in their mouths, the host referred to Mr. Pepperdine’s recent mission with some curiosity.
‘I never rightly heard the story of this nephew of yours,’ he said. ‘You see, I hadn’t come to these parts when your sister was married. The missis says she remembers her, ’cause she used to visit hereabouts in days past. It were a bit of a romance like, eh?’
Mr. Pepperdine took a pull at his glass and shook his head.
‘Ah!’ said he oracularly. ‘It was. A romance like those you read of in the story-books. I remember the beginning of it all as well as if it were yesterday. Lucy—that was the lad’s mother, my youngest sister, you know, Trippett—was a girl then, and the prettiest in all these parts: there’s nobody’ll deny that.’
‘I always understood that she was a beauty,’ said Mr. Trippett.
‘And you understood rightly. There wasn’t Lucy’s equal for beauty in all the county,’ affirmed Mr. Pepperdine. ‘The lad has her eyes—eh, dear, I’ve heard high and low talk of her eyes. But he’s naught else of hers—all the rest his father’s—Lucy was fair.’
He paused to apply a glowing coal to the tobacco in his long pipe, and he puffed out several thick clouds of smoke before he resumed his story.
‘Well, Lucy was nineteen when this Mr. Cyprian Damerel came along. You can ask your missis what like he was—women are better hands at describing a man’s looks than a man is. He were a handsome young man, but foreign in appearance, though you wouldn’t ha’ told it from his tongue. The boy’ll be like him some day. He came walking through Simonstower on his way from Scarhaven, and naught would content him but that he must set up his easel and make a picture of the village. He found lodgings at old Mother Grant’s, and settled down, and he was one of that sort that makes themselves at home with everybody in five minutes. He’d an open face and an open hand; he’d talk to high and low in just the same way; and he’d a smile for everybody.’
‘And naturally all the lasses fell in love with him,’ suggested Mr. Trippett, with a hearty laugh. ‘I’ve heard my missis say he’d a way with him that was taking with the wenches—specially them as were inclined that way, like.’
‘Undoubtedly he had,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘Undoubtedly he had. But after he’d seen her, he’d no eyes for any lass but our Lucy. He fell in love with her and she with him as naturally as a duckling takes to water. Ah! I don’t think I ever did see two young people quite so badly smitten as they were. It became evident to everybody in the place. But he acted like a man all through—oh yes! My mother was alive then, you know, Trippett,’ Mr. Pepperdine continued, with a sigh. ‘She was a straight-laced ’un, was my mother, and had no liking for foreigners, and Damerel had a livelyish time with her when he came to th’ house and asked her, bold as brass, if he might marry her daughter.’
‘I’ll lay he wo’d; I’ll lay he wo’d,’ chuckled Mr. Trippett.
‘Ay, and so he had,’ continued Mr. Pepperdine. ‘She was very stiff and stand-off, was our old lady, and she treated him to some remarks about foreigners and papists, and what not, and gave him to understand that she’d as soon seen her daughter marry a gipsy as a strolling artist, ’cause you see, being old-fashioned, she’d no idea of what an artist, if he’s up to his trade, can make. But he was one too many for her, was Damerel. He listened to all she had to say, and then he offered to give her references about himself, and he told her who he was, the son of an Italian gentleman that had come to live in England ’cause of political reasons, and what he earned, and he made it clear enough that Lucy wouldn’t want for bread and butter, nor a silk gown neither.’
‘Good reasoning,’ commented Mr. Trippett. ‘Very good reasoning. Love-making’s all very well, but it’s nowt wi’out a bit o’ money at th’ back on’t.’
‘Well, there were no doubt about Damerel’s making money,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, ‘and we’d soon good proof o’ that; for as soon as he’d finished his picture of the village he sold it to th’ Earl for five hundred pound, and it hangs i’ the dining-room at th’ castle to this day. I saw it the last time I paid my rent there. Mistress Jones, th’ housekeeper, let me have a look at it. And of course, seeing that the young man was able to support a wife, th’ old lady had to give way, and they were married. Fifteen year ago that is,’ concluded Mr. Pepperdine with a shake of the head. ‘Dear-a-me! it seems only like yesterday since that day—they made the handsomest bride and bridegroom I ever saw.’
‘She died soon, didn’t she?’ inquired Mr. Trippett.
‘Lived a matter of four years after the marriage,’ answered Mr. Pepperdine. ‘She wasn’t a strong woman, wasn’t poor Lucy—there was something wrong with her lungs, and after the boy came she seemed to wear away. He did all that a man could, did her husband—took her off to the south of Europe. Eh, dear, the letters that Keziah and Judith used to have from her, describing the places she saw—they read fair beautiful! But it were no good—she died at Rome, poor lass, when the boy was two years old.’
‘Poor thing!’ said Mr. Trippett. ‘And had all that she wanted, seemingly.’
‘Everything,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘Her life was short but sweet, as you may say.’
‘And now he’s gone an’ all,’ said Mr. Trippett.
Mr. Pepperdine nodded.
‘Ay,’ he said, ‘he’s gone an’ all. I don’t think he ever rightly got over his wife’s death—anyway, he led a very restless life ever after, first one place and then another, never settling anywhere. Sometimes it was Italy, sometimes Paris, sometimes London—he’s seen something, has that boy. Ay, he’s dead, is poor Damerel.’
‘Leave owt behind him like?’ asked Mr. Trippett sententiously.
Mr. Pepperdine polished the end of his nose.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘there’ll be a nice little nest-egg for the boy when all’s settled up, I dare say. He wasn’t a saving sort of man, I should think, but dear-a-me, he must ha’ made a lot of money in his time—and spent it, too.’
‘Easy come and easy go,’ said Mr. Trippett. ‘I’ve heard that’s the way with that sort. Will this lad take after his father, then?’
‘Nay,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, ‘I don’t think he will. He can’t draw a line—doesn’t seem to have it in him. Curious thing that, but it is so. No—he’s all for reading. I never saw such a lad for books. He’s got a great chest full o’ books at the station yonder—wouldn’t leave London without them.’
‘Happen turn out a parson or a lawyer,’ suggested Mr. Trippett.
‘Nay,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘It’s my impression he’ll turn out a poet, or something o’ that sort. They tell me there’s a good living to be made out o’ that nowadays.’
Mr. Trippett lifted the kettle on to the brightest part of the fire, mixed himself another glass of grog, and pushed the decanter towards his friend.
‘There were only a poorish market at Oakbro’ t’other day,’ he said. ‘Very low prices, and none so much stuff there, nayther.’
Mr. Pepperdine followed his host’s example with respect to the grog, and meditated upon the market news. They plunged into a discussion upon prices. Mrs. Trippett entered the room, took up a basket of stockings, planted herself in her easy-chair, and began to look for holes in toes and heels. The two farmers talked; the grandfather’s clock ticked; the fire crackled; the whole atmosphere was peaceful and homelike. At last the talk of prices and produce was interrupted by the entrance of the stout serving-maid.
‘If you please’m, there’s Jim Wood from the station with two trunks for Mr. Pepperdine, and he says is he to put ’em in Mr. Pepperdine’s trap?’ she said, gazing at her mistress.
‘Tell him to put them in the shed,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘I’ll put ’em in the trap myself. And here, my lass, give him this for his trouble,’ he added, diving into his pocket and producing a shilling.
‘And give him a pint o’ beer and something to eat,’ said Mr. Trippett.
‘Give him some cold beef and pickles, Mary,’ said Mrs. Trippett.
Mary responded ‘Yes, sir—Yes’m,’ and closed the door. Mr. Pepperdine, gazing at the clock with an air of surprise, remarked that he had no idea it was so late, and he must be departing.
‘Nowt o’ th’ sort!’ said Mr. Trippett. ‘You’re all right for another hour—help yourself, my lad.’
‘The little boy’s all right,’ said Mrs. Trippett softly. ‘He’s soon made friends with John and Mary—they were as thick as thieves when I left them just now.’
‘Then let’s be comfortable,’ said the host. ‘Dang my buttons, there’s nowt like comfort by your own fireside. And how were London town looking, then, Mr. Pepperdine?—mucky as ever, I expect.’
Mr. Pepperdine, with a replenished glass and a newly charged pipe, plunged into a description of what he had seen in London. The time slipped away—the old clock struck nine at last, and suddenly reminded him that he had six miles to drive and that his sisters would be expecting his arrival with the boy.
‘Time flies fast in good company,’ he remarked as he rose with evident reluctance. ‘I always enjoy an evening by your hospitable fireside, Mrs. Trippett, ma’am.’
‘You’re in a great hurry to leave it, anyhow,’ said Mr. Trippett, with a broad grin. ‘Sit ye down again, man—you’ll be home in half an hour with that mare o’ yours, and it’s only nine o’clock, and ten to one th’ owd clock’s wrong.’
‘Ay, but my watch isn’t,’ answered Mr. Pepperdine. ‘Nay, we must go—Keziah and Judith’ll be on the look-out for us, and they’ll want to see the boy.’
‘Ay, I expect they will,’ said Mr. Trippett. ‘Well, if you must you must—take another glass and light a cigar.’
Mr. Pepperdine refused neither of these aids to comfort, and lingered a few minutes longer. But at last they all went out into the great kitchen, Mrs. Trippett leading the way with words of regret at her guest’s departure. She paused upon the threshold and turned to the two men with a gesture which commanded silence.
The farmhouse kitchen, quaint and picturesque with its old oak furniture, its flitches of bacon and great hams hanging from the ceiling, its bunches of dried herbs and strings of onions depending from hooks in the corners, its wide fireplace and general warmth and cheeriness, formed the background of a group which roused some sense of the artistic in Mrs. Trippett’s usually matter-of-fact intellect. On the long settle which stretched on one side of the hearth sat four shock-headed ploughboys, leaning shoulder to shoulder; in an easy-chair opposite sat the red-cheeked maid-servant; close to her, on a low stool, sat a little girl with Mrs. Trippett’s features and eyes, whose sunny hair fell in wavy masses over her shoulders; behind her, hands in pockets, sturdy and strong, stood a miniature edition of Mr. Trippett, even to the sandy hair, the breeches, and the gaiters; in the centre of the floor, at a round table on which stood a great oil lamp, sat the porter, busy with a round of beef, a foaming tankard of ale, and a crusty loaf. Of these eight human beings a similar peculiarity was evident. Each one sat with mouth more or less open—the ploughboys’ mouths in particular had revolved themselves into round O’s, while the porter, struck as it were in the very act of forking a large lump of beef into a cavernous mouth, looked like a man who has suddenly become paralysed and cannot move. The maid-servant’s eyes were wider than her mouth; the little girl shrank against the maid’s apron as if afraid—it was only the sturdy boy in the rear who showed some symptoms of a faint smile. And the object upon which all eyes were fixed was Lucian, who stood on the hearth, his back to the fire, his face glowing in the lamplight, winding up in a low and thrilling voice the last passages of what appeared to be a particularly blood-curdling narrative.
Mr. Trippett poked Mr. Pepperdine in the ribs.
‘Seems to ha’ fixed ’em,’ he whispered. ‘Gow—the lad’s gotten the gift o’ the gab!—he talks like a book.’
‘H’sh,’ commanded Mrs. Trippett.
‘And so the body hung on the gibbet,’ Lucian was saying, ‘through all that winter, and the rain, and the hail, and the snow fell upon it, and when the spring came again there remained nothing but the bones of the brigand, and they were bleached as white as the eternal snows; and Giacomo came and took them down and buried them in the little cemetery under the cypress-trees; but the chain still dangles from the gibbet, and you may hear it rattle as you pass that way as it used to rattle when Luigi’s bones hung swaying in the wind.’
The spell was broken; the porter sighed deeply, and conveyed the interrupted forkful to his mouth; the ploughboys drew deep breaths, and looked as if they had arisen from a deep sleep; the little girl, catching sight of her mother, ran to her with a cry of ‘Is it true? Is it true?’ and Mr. Trippett brought everybody back to real life by loud calls for Mr. Pepperdine’s horse and trap. Then followed the putting on of overcoats and wraps, and the bestowal of a glass of ginger-wine upon Lucian by Mr. Trippett, in order that the cold might be kept out, and then good-nights and Godspeeds, and he was in the dogcart at Mr. Pepperdine’s side, and the mare, very fresh, was speeding over the six miles of highway which separated Mr. Trippett’s stable from her own.
While Mr. Pepperdine refreshed himself at his friend’s house, his sisters awaited the coming of himself and his charge with as much patience as they could summon to their aid. Each knew that patience was not only necessary, but inevitable. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Mr. Pepperdine to have driven straight home from the station and supped in his own parlour, and that, under the circumstances, would have seemed the most reasonable thing to do. But Mr. Pepperdine made a rule of never passing the gates of the Grange Farm, and his sisters knew that he would tarry there on his homeward journey, accept Mrs. Trippett’s invitation to tea, and spend an hour or two afterwards in convivial intercourse with Mr. Trippett. That took place every market-day and every time Mr. Pepperdine had occasion to travel by train; and the Misses Pepperdine knew that it would go on taking place as long as their brother Simpson and his friends at the Grange Farm continued to exist.
At nine o’clock Miss Pepperdine, who had been knitting by the parlour fire since seven, grew somewhat impatient.
‘I think Simpson might have come home straight from the station,’ she said in sharp, decided tones. ‘The child is sure to be tired.’
Miss Judith Pepperdine, engaged on fancy needlework on the opposite side of the hearth, shook her head.
‘Simpson never passes the Grange,’ she said. ‘That night I came with him from Oakborough last winter, I couldn’t get him to come home. He coaxed me to go in for just ten minutes, and we had to stop four hours.’
Miss Pepperdine sniffed. Her needles clicked vigorously for a few minutes longer; she laid them down at a quarter past nine, went across the parlour to a cupboard, unlocked it, produced a spirit-case and three glasses, and set them on the table in the middle of the room. At the same moment a tap sounded on the door, and a maid entered bearing a jug of hot water, a dish of lemons, and a bowl of sugar. She was about to leave the room after setting her tray down when Miss Pepperdine stopped her.
‘I wonder what the boy had better have, Judith?’ she said, looking at her sister. ‘He’s sure to have had a good tea at the Grange—Sarah Trippett would see to that—but he’ll be cold. Some hot milk, I should think. Bring some new milk in the brass pan, Anne, and another glass—I’ll heat it myself over this fire.’
Then, without waiting to hear whether Miss Judith approved the notion of hot milk or not, she sat down to her knitting again, and when the maid had brought the brass pan and the glass and withdrawn, the parlour became hushed and silent. It was an old-world room—there was not an article of furniture in it that was less than a hundred years old, and the old silver and old china arranged in the cabinets and on the side-tables were as antiquated as the chairs, the old bureau, and the pictures. Everything was old, good, and substantial; everything smelled of a bygone age and of dried rose-leaves.
The two sisters, facing each other across the hearth, were in thorough keeping with the old-world atmosphere of their parlour. Miss Keziah Pepperdine, senior member of the family, and by no means afraid of admitting that she had attained her fiftieth year, was tall and well-built; a fine figure of a woman, with a handsome face, jet-black hair, and eyes of a decided keenness. There was character and decision in her every movement; in her sharp, incisive speech; in her quick glance; and in the nervous, resolute click of her knitting needles. As she knitted, she kept her lips pursed tightly together and her eyes fixed upon her work: it needed little observation to make sure that whatever Miss Pepperdine did would be done with resolution and thoroughness. She was a woman to be respected rather than loved; feared more than honoured; and there was a flash in her hawk’s eyes, and a grimness about her mouth, which indicated a temper that could strike with force and purpose. Further indications of her character were seen in her attire, which was severely simple—a gown of black, unrelieved by any speck of white, hanging in prim, straight folds, and utterly unadorned, but, to a knowing eye, fashioned of most excellent and costly material.
Judith Pepperdine, many years younger than her sister, was dressed in black too, but the sombreness of her attire was relieved by white cuffs and collar, and by a very long thin gold chain, which was festooned twice round her neck ere it sought refuge in the watch-pocket at her waist. She had a slender figure of great elegance, and was proud of it, just as she was proud of the fact that at forty years of age she was still a pretty woman. There was something of the girl still left in her: some dreaminess of eye, a suspicion of coquetry, an innate desire to please the other sex and to be admired by men. Her cheek was still smooth and peach-like; her eyes still bright, and her brown hair glossy; old maid that she undoubtedly was, there were many good-looking girls in the district who had not half her attractions. To her natural good looks Judith Pepperdine added a native refinement and elegance; she knew how to move about a room and walk the village street. Her smile was famous—old Dr. Stubbins, of Normanfold, an authority in such matters, said that for sweetness and charm he would back Judith Pepperdine’s smile against the world.
There were many people who wondered why the handsome Miss Pepperdine had never married, but there was scarcely one who knew why she had remained and meant to remain single. Soon after the marriage of her sister Lucy to Cyprian Damerel, Judith developed a love-affair of her own with a dashing cavalry man, a sergeant of the 13th Hussars, then quartered at Oakborough. He was a handsome young man, the son of a local farmer, and his ambition had been for soldiering from boyhood. Coming into the neighbourhood in all his glory, and often meeting Judith at the houses of mutual friends, he had soon laid siege to her and captured her susceptible heart. Their engagement was kept secret, for old Mrs. Pepperdine had almost as great an objection to soldiers as to foreigners, and would have considered a non-commissioned officer beneath her daughter’s notice. The sergeant, however, had aspirations—it was his hope to secure a commission in an infantry regiment, and his ambition in this direction seemed likely to be furthered when his regiment was ordered out to India and presently engaged in a frontier campaign. But there his good luck came to an untimely end—he performed a brave action which won him the Victoria Cross, but he was so severely wounded in doing it that he died soon afterwards, and Judith’s romance came to a bitter end. She had had many offers of marriage since, and had refused them all—the memory of the handsome Hussar still lived in her sentimental heart, and her most cherished possession was the cross which he had won and had not lived to receive. Time had healed the wound: she no longer experienced the pangs and sorrows of her first grief. Everything had been mellowed down into a soft regret, and the still living affection for the memory of a dead man kept her heart young.
That night Judith for once in a while had no thought of her dead lover—she was thinking of the boy whom Simpson was bringing to them. She remembered Lucy with wondering thoughts, trying to recall her as she was when Cyprian Damerel took her away to London and a new life. None of her own people had ever seen Lucy again—they were stay-at-home folk, and the artist and his wife had spent most of their short married life on the Continent. Now Damerel, too, was dead, and the boy was coming back to his mother’s people, and Judith, who was given to dreaming, speculated much concerning him.
‘I wonder,’ she said, scarcely knowing that she spoke, ‘I wonder what Lucian will be like.’
‘And I wonder,’ said Miss Pepperdine, ‘if Damerel has left any money for him.’
‘Surely!’ exclaimed Judith. ‘He earned such large sums by his paintings.’
Miss Pepperdine’s needles clicked more sharply than ever.
‘He spent large sums too,’ she said. ‘I’ve heard of the way in which he lived. He was an extravagant man, like most of his sort. That sort of money is earned easily and spent easily. With his ideas and his tastes, he ought to have been a duke. I hope he has provided for the boy—times are not as good as they might be.’
‘You would never begrudge anything to Lucy’s child, sister?’ said Judith timidly, and with a wistful glance at Miss Pepperdine’s stern countenance. ‘I’m sure I shouldn’t—he is welcome to all I have.’
‘Umph!’ replied Miss Pepperdine. ‘Who talked of begrudging anything to the child? All I say is, I hope his father has provided for him.’
Judith made no answer to this remark, and the silence which followed was suddenly broken by the sound of wheels on the drive outside the house. Both sisters rose to their feet; each showed traces of some emotion. Without a word they passed out of the room into the hall. The maid-servant had already opened the door, and in the light of the hanging lamp they saw their brother helping Lucian out of the dogcart. The sisters moved forward.
‘Now, then, here we are!’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘Home again, safe and sound, and no breakages. Lucian, my boy, here’s your aunts Keziah and Judith. Take him in, lassies, and warm him—it’s a keenish night.’
The boy stepped into the hall, and lifted his hat as he looked up at the two women.
‘How do you do?’ he said politely.
Miss Pepperdine drew a quick breath. She took the outstretched hand and bent down and kissed the boy’s cheek; in the lamplight she had seen her dead sister’s eyes look out of the young face, and for the moment she could not trust herself to speak. Judith trembled all over; as the boy turned to her she put both arms round him and drew him into the parlour, and there embraced him warmly. He looked at her somewhat wonderingly and critically, and then responded to her embrace.
‘You are my Aunt Judith,’ he said. ‘Uncle Pepperdine told me about you. You are the handsome one.’
Judith kissed him again. She had fallen in love with him on the spot.
‘Yes, I am your Aunt Judith, my dear,’ she said. ‘And I am very, very glad to see you—we are all glad.’
She still held him in her arms, looking at him long and hungrily. Miss Pepperdine came in, businesslike and bustling; she had lingered in the hall, ostensibly to give an order to the servant, but in reality to get rid of a tear or two.
‘Now, then, let me have a look at him,’ she said, and drew the boy out of Judith’s hands and turned him to the light. ‘Your Aunt Judith,’ she continued as she scanned him critically, ‘is the handsome one, as I heard you say just now—I’m the ugly one. Do you think you’ll like me?’
Lucian stared back at her with a glance as keen and searching as her own. He looked her through and through.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I like you. I think——’ He paused and smiled a little.
‘You think—what?’
‘I think you might be cross sometimes, but you’re good,’ he said, still staring at her.
Miss Pepperdine laughed. Judith knew that she was conquered.
‘Well, you’ll find out,’ said Miss Pepperdine. ‘Now, then, off with your coat—are you hungry?’
‘No,’ answered Lucian. ‘I ate too much at Mrs. Trippett’s—English people have such big meals, I think.’
‘Give him a drop of something warm,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, entering with much rubbing of hands and stamping of feet. ‘’Tis cold as Christmas, driving through them woods ’twixt here and Wellsby.’
Miss Pepperdine set the brass pan on the fire, and presently handed Lucian a glass of hot milk, and produced an old-fashioned biscuit-box from the cupboard. The boy sat down near Judith, ate and drank, and looked about him, all unconscious that the two women and the man were watching him with all their eyes.
‘I like this room better than Mrs. Trippett’s,’ he said suddenly. ‘Hers is a pretty room, but this shows more taste. And all the furniture is Chippendale!’
‘Bless his heart!’ said Miss Pepperdine, ‘so it is. How did you know that, my dear?’
Lucian stared at her.
‘I know a lot about old furniture,’ he said; ‘my father taught me.’ He yawned and looked apologetic. ‘I think I should like to go to bed,’ he added, glancing at Miss Pepperdine. ‘I am sleepy—we have been travelling all day.’
Judith rose from her chair with alacrity. She was pining to get the boy all to herself.
‘I’ll take him to his room,’ she said. ‘Come along, dear, your room is all ready for you.’
The boy shook hands with Aunt Keziah. She kissed him again and patted his head. He crossed over to Mr. Pepperdine, who was pulling off his boots.
‘I’ll go riding with you in the morning,’ he said. ‘After breakfast, I suppose, eh?’
‘Ay, after breakfast,’ answered Mr. Pepperdine. ‘I’ll tell John to have the pony ready. Good-night, my lad; your Aunt Judith’ll see you’re all comfortable.’
Lucian shook hands with his uncle, and went cheerfully away with Judith. Miss Pepperdine sighed as the door closed upon them.
‘He’s the very image of Cyprian Damerel,’ she said; ‘but he has Lucy’s eyes.’
‘He’s a fine little lad,’ said Mr. Pepperdine. ‘An uncommon fine little lad, and quite the gentleman. I’m proud of him.’
He had got into his slippers by this time, and he cast a longing eye at the spirit-case on the table. Miss Pepperdine rose, produced an old-fashioned pewter thimble, measured whisky into it, poured it into a tumbler, added lemon, sugar, and hot water, and handed it to her brother, who received it with an expression of gratitude, and sipped it critically. She measured a less quantity into two other glasses and mixed each with similar ingredients.
‘Judith won’t be coming down again,’ she said. ‘I’ll take her tumbler up to her room; and I’m going to bed myself—we’ve had a long day with churning. You’ll not want any news to-night, Simpson; it’ll keep till to-morrow, and there’s little to tell—all’s gone on right.’
‘That’s a blessing,’ said Mr. Pepperdine, stretching his legs.
Miss Pepperdine put away her knitting, removed the spirit-case into the cupboard, locked the door and put the key in her pocket, and took up the little tray on which she had placed the tumblers intended for herself and her sister. But on the verge of leaving the room she paused and looked at her brother.
‘We were glad you got there in time, Simpson,’ she said. ‘And you did right to bring the child home—it was the right thing to do. I hope Damerel has made provision for him?’
Mr. Pepperdine was seized with a mighty yawning.
‘Oh ay!’ he said as soon as he could speak. ‘The lad’s all right, Keziah—all right. Everything’s in my hands—yes, it’s all right.’
‘You must tell me about it afterwards,’ said Miss Pepperdine. ‘I’ll go now—I just want to see that the boy has all he wants. Good-night, Simpson.’
‘Good-night, my lass, good-night,’ said the farmer. ‘I’ll just look round and be off to bed myself.’
Miss Pepperdine left the room and closed the door; her brother heard the ancient staircase creak as she climbed to the sleeping-chambers. He waited a few minutes, and then, rising from his chair, he produced a key from his pocket, walked over to the old bureau, unlocked a small cupboard, and brought forth a bottle of whisky. He drew the cork with a meditative air and added a liberal dose of spirit to that handed to him by his sister. He replaced the bottle and locked up the cupboard, poured a little more hot water into his glass, and sipped the strengthened mixture with approbation. Then he winked solemnly at his reflection in the old mirror above the chimney-piece, and sat down before the fire to enjoy his nightcap in privacy and comfort.
Lucian went 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 respectable antiquity, 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 still wore 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 ?sthetic 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.” He pointed 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 totally deaf 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 had given 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.
Lucian settled 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 corner of 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—not as 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, medi?val 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 of Robinson Crusoe and The 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 medi?val 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 filled him 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 special attention 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 a gloomy 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 impossible in 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 not en règle to 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 great savants, 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 for Mary, 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 not savants, and placed, so far as his education was concerned, under the sole charge of the vicar.
Mr. Chilverstone was 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 new régime. The vicar had been somewhat starved in the matter of conversation for more 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 arch?ology, 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 come into 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 was nine, 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 extra light 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 from apoplexy, 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 of Childe Harold as 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.
It followed 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 was becoming 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 Sunday morning 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. ‘Come to church—come to church—come to 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 at Simonstower, 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 from Don 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’s pew 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 afterwards lay 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; Lucian went 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.
Sprats was of an eminently practical turn of mind. She wanted to know what was to come of all this. To her astonishment she discovered that Lucian was already full of plans for assuring bread and butter and many other things for himself and his bride, and had arranged their future on a cut-and-dried scheme. He was going to devote himself to his studies more zealously than ever, and to practise himself in the divine art which was his gift. At twenty he would publish his first volume of poems, in English and in Italian; at the same time he would produce a great blank verse tragedy at Milan and in London, and his name would be extolled throughout Europe, and he himself probably crowned with laurel at Rome, or Florence, or somewhere. He would be famous, and also rich, and he would then claim the hand of Haidee, who in the meantime would have waited for him with the fidelity of a Penelope. After that, of course, there would follow eternal bliss—it was not necessary to look further ahead. But he added, with lordly condescension, that he and Haidee would always love Sprats, and she, if she liked, might live with them.
‘Did Haidee tell you to tell me so?’ asked Sprats, ‘because the prospect is not exactly alluring. No, thank you, my dear—I’m not so fond of Haidee as all that. But I will teach her to mend your clothes and darn your socks, if you like—it will be a useful accomplishment.’
Lucian made no reply to this generous offer. He knew that there was no love lost between the two girls, and could not quite understand why, any more than he could realise that they were sisters under their skins. He understood the Sprats of the sisterly, maternal, good-chum side; but Haidee was an ethereal being though possessed of a sound appetite. He wished that Sprats were more sympathetic about his lady-love; she was sympathetic enough about himself, and she listened to his rhapsodies with a certain amount of curiosity which was gratifying to his pride. But when he remarked that she too would have a lover some day, Sprats’s rebellious nature rose up and kicked vigorously.
‘Thank you!’ she said, ‘but I don’t happen to want anything of that sort. If you could only see what an absolute fool you look when you are anywhere within half a mile of Haidee, you’d soon arrive at the conclusion that spooniness doesn’t improve a fellow! I suppose it’s all natural, but I never expected it of you, you know, Lucian. I’m sure I’ve acted like a real pal to you—just look what a stuck-up little monkey you were when I took you in hand!—you couldn’t play cricket nor climb a tree, and you used to tog up every day as if you were going to an old maid’s muffin-worry. I did get you out of all those bad ways—until the Dolly came along (she is a Dolly, and I don’t care!). You didn’t mind going about with a hole or two in your trousers and an old straw hat and dirty hands, and since then you’ve worn your best clothes every day, and greased your hair, and yesterday you’d been putting scent on your handkerchief! Bah!—if lovers are like that, I don’t want one—I could get something better out of the nearest lunatic asylum. And I don’t think much of men anyhow—they’re all more or less babies. You’re a baby, and so is his Vicarness’ (this was Sprats’s original mode of referring to her father), ‘and so is your uncle Pepperdine—all babies, hopelessly feeble, and unable to do anything for yourselves. What would any of you do without a woman? No, thank you, I’m not keen about men—they worry one too much. And as for love—well, if it makes you go off your food, and keeps you awake at night, and turns you into a jackass, I don’t want any of it—it’s too rotten altogether.’
‘You don’t understand,’ said Lucian pityingly, and with a deep sigh.
‘Don’t want to,’ retorted Sprats. ‘Oh, my—fancy spending your time in spooning when you might be playing cricket! You have degenerated, Lucian, though I expect you can’t help it—it’s inevitable, like measles and whooping-cough. I wonder how long you will feel bad?’
Lucian waxed wroth. He and Haidee had sworn eternal love and faithfulness—they had broken a coin in two, and she had promised to wear her half round her neck, and next to the spot where she believed her heart to be, for ever; moreover, she had given him a lock of her hair, and he carried it about, wrapped in tissue paper, and he had promised to buy her a ring with real diamonds in it. Also, Haidee already possessed fifteen sonnets in which her beauty, her soul, and a great many other things pertaining to her were praised, after love’s extravagant fashion—it was unreasonable of Sprats to talk as if this were an evanescent fancy that must needs pass. He let her see that he thought so.
‘All right, old chap!’ said Sprats. ‘It’s for life, then. Very well; there is, of course, only one thing to be done. You must act on the square, you know—they always do in these cases. If it’s such a serious affair, you must play the part of a man of honour, and ask the permission of the young lady’s mamma, and of her distinguished relative the Earl of Simonstower—mouldy old ass!—to pay your court to her.’
Lucian seemed disturbed and uneasy.
‘Yes—yes—I know!’ he answered hurriedly. ‘I know that’s the right thing to do, but you see, Sprats, Haidee doesn’t wish it, at present at any rate. She—she’s a great heiress, or something, and she says it wouldn’t do. She wishes it to be kept secret until I’m twenty. Everything will be all right then, of course. And it’s awfully easy to arrange stolen meetings at present; there are lots of places about the Castle and in the woods where you can hide.’
‘Like a housemaid and an under-footman,’ remarked Sprats. ’Um—well, I suppose that’s inevitable, too. Of course the earl would never look at you, and it’s very evident that Mrs. Brinklow would be horrified—she wants the Dolly kid to marry into the peerage, and you’re a nobody.’
‘I’m not a nobody!’ said Lucian, waxing furious. ‘I am a gentleman—an Italian gentleman. I am the earl’s equal—I have the blood of the Orsini, the Odescalchi, and the Aldobrandini in my veins! The earl?—why, your English noblemen are made out of tradesfolk—pah! It is but yesterday that they gave a baronetcy to a man who cures bacon, and a peerage to a fellow who brews beer. In Italy we should spit upon your English peers—they have no blood. I have the blood of the C?sars in me!’
‘Your mother was the daughter of an English farmer, and your father was a macaroni-eating Italian who painted pictures,’ said Sprats, with imperturbable equanimity. ‘You yourself ought to go about with a turquoise cap on your pretty curls, and a hurdy-gurdy with a monkey on the top. Tant pis for your rotten old Italy!—anybody can buy a dukedom there for a handful of centesimi!’
Then they fought, and Lucian was worsted, as usual, and came to his senses, and for the rest of the day Sprats was decent to him and even sympathetic. She was always intrusted with his confidence, however much they differed, and during the rest of the time which Haidee spent at the Castle she had to listen to many ravings, and more than once to endure the reading of a sonnet or a canzonet with which Lucian intended to propitiate the dark-eyed nymph whose image was continually before him. Sprats, too, had to console him on those days whereon no sight of Miss Brinklow was vouchsafed. It was no easy task: Lucian, during these enforced abstinences from love’s delights and pleasures, was preoccupied, taciturn, and sometimes almost sulky.
‘You’re like a bear with a sore head,’ said Sprats, using a homely simile much in favour with the old women of the village. ‘I don’t suppose the Dolly kid is nursing her sorrows like that. I saw Dicky Feversham riding up to the Castle on his pony as I came in from taking old Mother Hobbs’s rice-pudding.’
Lucian clenched his fists. The demon of jealousy was aroused within him for the first time.
‘What do you mean?’ he cried.
‘Don’t mean anything but what I said,’ replied Sprats. ‘I should think Dickie has gone to spend the afternoon there. He’s a nice-looking boy, and as his uncle is a peer of the rel-lum, Mrs. Brinklow doubtless loves him.’
Lucian fell into a fever of rage, despair, and love. To think that Another should have the right of approaching His Very Own!—it was maddening; it made him sick. He hated the unsuspecting Richard Feversham, who in reality was a very inoffensive, fun-loving, up-to-lots-of-larks sort of schoolboy, with a deadly hatred. The thought of his addressing the Object was awful; that he should enjoy her society was unbearable. He might perhaps be alone with her—might sit with her amongst the ruined halls of the Castle, or wander with her through the woods of Simonstower. But Lucian was sure of her—had she not sworn by every deity in the lover’s mythology that her heart was his alone, and that no other man should ever have even a cellar-dwelling in it? He became almost lachrymose at the mere thought that Haidee’s lofty and pure soul could ever think of another, and before he retired to his sleepless bed he composed a sonnet which began—
‘Thy dove-like soul is prisoned in my heart
With gold and silver chains that may not break,’
and concluded—
‘While e’er the world remaineth, thou shalt be
Queen of my heart as I am king of thine.’
He had an assignation with Haidee for the following afternoon, and was looking forward to it with great eagerness, more especially because he possessed a new suit of grey flannel, a new straw hat, and new brown boots, and he had discovered from experience that the young lady loved her peacock to spread his tail. But, as ill-luck would have it, the earl, with the best intention in the world, spoiled the whole thing. About noon Lucian and Sprats, having gone through several pages of Virgil with the vicar, were sitting on the gate of the vicarage garden, recreating after a fashion peculiar to themselves, when the earl and Haidee, both mounted, came round the corner and drew rein. The earl talked to them for a few minutes, and then asked them up to the Castle that afternoon. He would have the tennis-lawn made ready for them, he said, and they could eat as many strawberries as they pleased, and have tea in the garden. Haidee, from behind the noble relative, made a moue at this; Lucian was obliged to keep a straight face, and thank the earl for his confounded graciousness. Sprats saw that something was wrong.
‘What’s up?’ she inquired, climbing up the gate again when the earl had gone by. ‘You look jolly blue.’
Lucian explained the situation. Sprats snorted.
‘Well, of all the hardships!’ she said. ‘Thank the Lord, I’d rather play tennis and eat strawberries and have tea—especially the Castle tea—than go mooning about in the woods! However, I suppose I must contrive something for you, or you’ll groan and grumble all the way home. You and the Doll must lose yourselves in the gardens when we go for strawberries. I suppose ten minutes’ slobbering over each other behind a hedge or in a corner will put you on, won’t it?’
Lucian was overwhelmed at her kindness. He offered to give her a brotherly hug, whereupon she smacked his face, rolled him into the dust in the middle of the road, and retreated into the garden, bidding him turn up with a clean face at half-past two. When that hour arrived she found him awaiting her in the porch; one glance at him showed that he had donned the new suit, the new hat, and the new boots. Sprats shrieked with derision.
‘Lord have mercy upon us!’ she cried. ‘It might be a Bank Holiday! Do you think I am going to walk through the village with a thing like that? Stick a cabbage in your coat—it’ll give a finishing touch to your appearance. Oh, you miserable monkey-boy!—wouldn’t I like to stick you in the kitchen chimney and shove you up and down in the soot for five minutes!’
Lucian received this badinage in good part—it was merely Sprats’s way of showing her contempt for finicking habit. He followed her from the vicarage to the Castle—she walking with her nose in the air, and from time to time commiserating him because of the newness of his boots; he secretly anxious to bask in the sunlight of Haidee’s smiles. And at last they arrived, and there, sprawling on the lawn near the basket-chair in which Haidee’s lissome figure reposed, was the young gentleman who rejoiced in the name of Richard Feversham. He appeared to be very much at home with his young hostess; the sound of their mingled laughter fell on the ears of the newcomers as they approached. Lucian heard it, and shivered with a curious, undefinable sense of evil; Sprats heard it too, and knew that a moral thunderstorm was brewing.
The afternoon was by no means a success, even in its earlier stages. Mrs. Brinklow had departed to a friend’s house some miles away; the earl might be asleep or dead for all that was seen of him. Sprats and Haidee cherished a secret dislike of each other; Lucian was proud, gloomy, and taciturn; only the Feversham boy appeared to have much zest of life left in him. He was a somewhat thick-headed youngster, full of good nature and high spirits; he evidently did not care a straw for public or private opinion, and he made boyish love to Haidee with all the shamelessness of depraved youth. Haidee saw that Lucian was jealous, and encouraged Dickie’s attentions—long before tea was brought out to them the materials for a vast explosion were ready and waiting. After tea—and many plates of strawberries and cream—had been consumed, the thick-headed youth became childishly gay. The tea seemed to have mounted to his head—he effervesced. He had much steam to let off: he suggested that they should follow the example of the villagers at the bun-struggles and play kiss-in-the-ring, and he chased Haidee all round the lawn and over the flower-beds in order to illustrate the way of the rustic man with the rustic maid. The chase terminated behind a hedge of laurel, from whence presently proceeded much giggling, screaming, and confused laughter. The festive youngster emerged panting and triumphant; his rather homely face wore a broad grin. Haidee followed with highly becoming blushes, settling her tumbled hair and crushed hat. She remarked with a pout that Dickie was a rough boy; Dickie replied that you don’t play country games as if you were made of egg-shell china.
The catastrophe approached consummation with the inevitableness of a Greek tragedy. Lucian waxed gloomier and gloomier; Sprats endeavoured, agonisingly, to put things on a better footing; Haidee, now thoroughly enjoying herself, tried hard to make the other boy also jealous. But the other boy was too full of the joy of life to be jealous of anything; he gambolled about like a young elephant, and nearly as gracefully; it was quite evident that he loved horseplay and believed that girls were as much inclined to it as boys. At any other time Sprats would have fallen in with his mood and frolicked with him to his heart’s content; on this occasion she was afraid of Lucian, who now looked more like a young Greek god than ever. The lightning was already playing about his eyes; thunder sat on his brows.
At last the storm burst. Haidee wanted to shoot with bow and arrow at a target; she despatched the two youngsters into the great hall of the Castle to fetch the materials for archery. Dickie went off capering and whistling; Lucian followed in sombre silence. And inside the vaulted hall, mystic with the gloom of the past, and romantic with suits of armour, tattered banners, guns, pikes, bows, and the rest of it, the smouldering fires of Lucian’s wrath burst out. Master Richard Feversham found himself confronted by a figure which typified Wrath, and Indignation, and Retribution.
‘You are a cad!’ said Lucian.
‘Cad yourself!’ retorted Dickie. ‘Who are you talking to?’
‘I am talking to you,’ answered Lucian, stern and cold as a stone figure of Justice. ‘I say you are a cad—a cad! You have grossly insulted a young lady, and I will punish you.’
Dickie’s eyes grew round—he wondered if the other fellow had suddenly gone off his head, and if he’d better call for help and a strait waistcoat.
‘Grossly insulted—a young lady!’ he said, puckering up his face with honest amazement. ‘What the dickens do you mean? You must be jolly well dotty!’
‘You have insulted Miss Brinklow,’ said Lucian. ‘You forced your unwelcome attentions upon her all the afternoon, though she showed you plainly that they were distasteful to her, and you were finally rude and brutal to her—beast!’
‘Good Lord!’ exclaimed Dickie, now thoroughly amazed, ‘I never forced any attention on her—we were only larking. Rude? Brutal? Good heavens!—I only kissed her behind the hedge, and I’ve kissed her many a time before!’
Lucian became insane with wrath.
‘Liar!’ he hissed. ‘Liar!’
Master Richard Feversham straightened himself, mentally as well as physically. He bunched up his fists and advanced upon Lucian with an air that was thoroughly British.
‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I don’t know who the devil you are, you outrageous ass, but if you call me a liar again, I’ll hit you!’
‘Liar!’ said Lucian, ‘Liar!’
Dickie’s left fist, clenched very artistically, shot out like a small battering-ram, and landed with a beautiful plunk on Lucian’s cheek, between the jaw and the bone. He staggered back.
‘I kept off your nose on purpose,’ said Dickie, ‘but, by the Lord, I’ll land you one there and spoil your pretty eyes for you if you don’t beg my pardon.’
‘Pardon!’ Lucian’s voice sounded hollow and strange. ‘Pardon!’ He swore a strange Italian oath that made Dickie creep. ‘Pardon!—of you? I will kill you—beast and liar!’
He sprang to the wall as he spoke, tore down a couple of light rapiers which hung there, and threw one at his enemy’s feet.
‘Defend yourself!’ he said. ‘I shall kill you.’
Dickie recoiled. He would have faced anybody twice his size with fists as weapons, or advanced on a battery with a smiling face, but he had no taste for encountering an apparent lunatic armed with a weapon of which he himself did not know the use. Besides, there was murder in Lucian’s eye—he seemed to mean business.
‘Look here, I say, you chap!’ exclaimed Dickie, ‘put that thing down. One of us’ll be getting stuck, you know, if you go dancing about with it like that. I’ll fight you as long as you like if you’ll put up your fists, but I’m not a fool. Put it down, I say.’
‘Coward!’ said Lucian. ‘Defend yourself!’
He made at Dickie with fierce intent, and the latter was obliged to pick up the other rapier and fall into some sort of a defensive position.
‘Of all the silly games,’ he said, ‘this is——’
But Lucian was already attacking him with set teeth, glaring eyes, and a resolute demeanour. There was a rapid clashing of blades; then Dickie drew in his breath sharply, and his weapon dropped to the ground. He looked at a wound in the back of his hand from which the blood was flowing rather freely.
‘I knew you’d go and do it with your silliness!’ he said. ‘Now there’ll be a mess on the carpet and we shall be found out. Here—wipe up that blood with your handkerchief while I tie mine round my hand. We.... Hello, here they all are, of course! Now there will be a row! I say, you chap, swear it was all a lark—do you hear?’
Lucian heard but gave no sign. He still gripped his rapier and stared fixedly at Haidee and Sprats, who had run to the hall on hearing the clash of steel and now stood gazing at the scene with dilated eyes. Behind them, gaunt, grey, and somewhat amused and cynical, stood the earl. He looked from one lad to the other and came forward.
‘I heard warlike sounds,’ he said, peering at the combatants through glasses balanced on the bridge of the famous Simonstower nose, ‘and now I see warlike sights. Blood, eh? And what may this mean?’
‘It’s all nothing, sir,’ said Dickie in suspicious haste, ‘absolutely nothing. We were larking about with these two old swords, and the other chap’s point scratched my hand, that’s all, sir—’pon my word.’
‘Does the other chap’s version correspond?’ inquired the earl, looking keenly at Lucian’s flushed face. ‘Eh, other chap?’
Lucian faced him boldly.
‘No, sir,’ he answered; ‘what he says is not true, though he means honourably. I meant to punish him—to kill him.’
‘A candid admission,’ said the earl, toying with his glasses. ‘You appear to have effected some part of your purpose. And his offence?’
‘He——’ Lucian paused. The two girls, fascinated at the sight of the rapiers, the combatants, and the blood, had drawn near and were staring from one boy’s face to the other’s; Lucian hesitated at sight of them.
‘Come!’ said the earl sharply. ‘His offence?’
‘He insulted Miss Brinklow,’ said Lucian gravely. ‘I told him I should punish him. Then he told lies—about her. I said I would kill him. A man who lies about a woman merits death.’
‘A very excellent apothegm,’ said the earl. ‘Sprats, my dear, draw that chair for me—thank you. Now,’ he continued, taking a seat and sticking out his gouty leg, ‘let me have a clear notion of this delicate question. Feversham, your version, if you please.’
‘I—I—you see, it’s all one awfully rotten misunderstanding, sir,’ said Dickie, very ill at ease. ‘I—I—don’t like saying things about anybody, but I think Damerel’s got sunstroke or something—he’s jolly dotty, or carries on as if he were. You see, he called me a cad, and said I was rude and brutal to Haidee, just because I—well, because I kissed her behind the laurel hedge when we were larking in the garden, and I said it was nothing and I’d kissed her many a time before, and he said I was a liar, and then—well, then I hit him.’
‘I see,’ said the earl, ‘and of course there was then much stainless honour to be satisfied. And how was it that gentlemen of such advanced age resorted to steel instead of fists?’
The boys made no reply: Lucian still stared at the earl; Dickie professed to be busy with his impromptu bandage. Sprats went round to him and tied the knot.
‘I think I understand,’ said the earl. ‘Well, I suppose honour is satisfied?’
He looked quizzingly at Lucian. Lucian returned the gaze with another, dark, sombre, and determined.
‘He is still a liar!’ he said.
‘I’m not a liar!’ exclaimed Dickie, ‘and as sure as eggs are eggs I’ll hit you again, and on the nose this time, if you say I am,’ and he squared up to his foe utterly regardless of the earl’s presence. The earl smiled.
‘Why is he a liar?’ he asked, looking at Lucian.
‘He lies when he says that—that——’ Lucian choked and looked, almost entreatingly, at Haidee. She had stolen up to the earl’s chair and leaned against its high back, taking in every detail of the scene with eager glances. As Lucian’s eyes met hers, she smiled; a dimple showed in the corner of her mouth.
‘I understand,’ said the earl. He twisted himself round and looked at Haidee. ‘I think,’ he said, ‘this is one of those cases in which one may be excused if one appeals to the lady. It would seem, young lady, that Mr. Feversham, while abstaining, like a gentleman, from boasting of it——’
‘Oh, I say, sir!’ burst out Dickie; ‘I—didn’t mean to, you know.’
‘I say that Mr. Feversham, like a gentleman, does not boast of it, but pleads that you have indulged him with the privileges of a lover. His word has been questioned—his honour is at stake. Have you so indulged it, may one ask?’
Haidee assumed the airs of the coquette who must fain make admissions.
‘I—suppose so,’ she breathed, with a smile which included everybody.
‘Very good,’ said the earl. ‘It may be that Mr. Damerel has had reason to believe that he alone was entitled to those privileges. Eh?’
‘Boys are so silly!’ said Haidee. ‘And Lucian is so serious and old-fashioned. And all boys like to kiss me. What a fuss to make about nothing!’
‘I quite understand your position and your meaning, my dear,’ said the earl. ‘I have heard similar sentiments from other ladies.’ He turned to Lucian. ‘Well?’ he said, with a sharp, humorous glance.
Lucian had turned very pale, but a dark flush still clouded his forehead. He put aside his rapier, which until then he had held tightly, and he turned to Dickie.
‘I beg your pardon,’ he said; ‘I was wrong—quite wrong. I offer you my sincere apologies. I have behaved ill—I am sorry.’
Dickie looked uncomfortable and shuffled about.
‘Oh, rot!’ he said, holding out his bandaged hand. ‘It’s all right, old chap. I don’t mind at all now that you know I’m not a liar. I—I’m awfully sorry, too. I didn’t know you were spoons on Haidee, you know—I’m a bit dense about things. Never mind, I shan’t think any more of it, and besides, girls aren’t worth—at least, I mean—oh, hang it, don’t let’s say any more about the beastly affair!’
Lucian pressed his hand. He turned, looked at the earl, and made him a low and ceremonious bow. Lord Simonstower rose from his seat and returned it with equal ceremony. Without a glance in Haidee’s direction Lucian strode from the hall—he had forgotten Sprats. He had, indeed, forgotten everything—the world had fallen in pieces.
An hour later Sprats, tracking him down with the unerring sagacity of her sex, found him in a haunt sacred to themselves, stretched full length on the grass, with his face buried in his arms. She sat down beside him and put her arm round his neck and drew him to her. He burst into dry, bitter sobs.
‘Oh, Sprats!’ he said. ‘It’s all over—all over. I believed in her ... and now I shall never believe in anybody again!’