No More Learning

' Oh, well ! ' he said, ' it doesn't matter, only he'll be
able to get heavy damages, and I wanted to clear him out. It's the fortune of war. Well, I'm going. Good-
day. '
He had walked across to the door and laid his hand
upon the latch ere Haidee comprehended the meaning of his words. Then she sprang up with a scream.
' And what of me? ' she cried. ' Am Ito be left here? '
' You brought yourself here,' he retorted, eyeing her evilly. ' I did not ask you to come. '
She stared at him open-mouthed as if he were some strange thing that had come into her line of vision for the first time. Her breath began to come and go in gasps. She was an elementary woman, but at this treat- ment from the man she had known as her lover a natural
indignation sprang up words.
in her and she began to find
' But this ! ' she said, with a nearer approach to honesty than she had ever known, ' this is—desertion ! '
' I am under no vow to you,' he said.
' You have implied it. I trusted you. '
' As Lucian trusted you,' he sneered.
She became speechless again. Something in her looks
brought Darlington back from the door to her side.
' Look here, Haidee,' he said, not unkindly, ' don't be a little fool. Go home quickly and settle things with
your husband. Tell him you wrote that letter in a fit of temper; tell him—oh, tell him any of the lies that women
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 215
invent so easily on these occasions! It's absolutely hopeless to look to me for protection, absolutely impos- sible for me to give it '
He stopped. She was staring at him in a strange way
the way in which a dumb animal might stare if the butcher who was about to kill it condescended to try to explain to it why it was necessary that he should
cut its throat. Darlington hummed and ha'd when he caught that look. He cast a furtive glance at the door and half turned away from Haidee.
presently
' Yes, quite impossible,' he repeated. ' The fact is
well, you may as well knew it now as hear it later on— I am going to be married. '
She nodded her head as if she quite understood his
and he, looking full at her again, noticed that she was trying to moisten her lips with the tip of her
and that her eyes were dilated to an imusual
' You can't say that I've treated you badly,' he said. ' After all, you had the first chance, and it wasn't my
meaning,
tongue, degree.
There, now, be sensible and go back to London and make it up with Damerel. You can easily get round him—he'll believe anything you tell
him. Say you were upset at the thought of going to Italy with him, and lost your head. Things will come all right if you only manage your cards properly. Well, I'm going —good-day. '
He turned slowly from her as if he were somewhat ashamed of his desertion. They had been standing by the side of a table, littered about on v/hich were several odds and ends picked up by Haidee on the previous day. Amongst them was an antique stiletto, sharp as a needle, which had taken her fancy at a shop in the Palais Royal. She had thought of using it as a hat-pin, and was charmed when the dealer suggested that it had
fault if you threw it away.
tasted the heart' s-blood of more than one victim. Its glitter caught her eye now, and she picked it up and struck furiously at Darlington's back.
probably
At that moment Lucian was being conducted to his
2i6 LUCIAN THE DREAMER
wife's room by a courteous manager. At the threshold they paused, brought to a simultaneous standstill by a wild scream. When they entered the room, Darlington lay crumpled up and dead in the centre of the floor, and
Haidee, gazing spellbound at him from the furthest corner, was laughing—a long, low ripple of laughter that seemed as if it would never cease. The stiletto, thrown at her feet, flashed back a ray of sunlight from the window.
CHAPTER XXVI
That afternoon Saxonstowe arrived in town from York- shire with a grim determination in his heart to have it out once and for all with Sprats. He had tried to do his duty as a country squire and to interest himself in country life and matters: he had hunted the fox and shot pheasants, sat on the bench at petty and at quarter sessions, condoled with farmers on poor prices and with old women on bad legs, and he was still unsatisfied and restless and conscious of wanting something. The folk round about him came to the conclusion that he was not as other young men of his rank and wealth —he seemed inclined to bookishness, he was a bit shy and a little bit stand-ofhsh in manner, and he did not appear to have much inclination for the society of neighbours in his own station of hfe. Before he succeeded to the title Saxon- stowe had not been much known in the neighbourhood. He had sometimes visited his predecessor as a schoolboy, but the probability of his becoming the next Lord Saxon- stowe was at that time small, and no one had taken much notice of Master Richard Feversham. When he came back to the place as lord and master, what reputation he had was of a sort that scarcely appealed to the country people. He had travelled in some fearsome countries where no other man had ever set foot, and he haid written a great book about his adventures, and must therefore be a clever young man. But he was not a soldier, nor a sailor, and he did not particularly care for hunting or shooting, and was therefore somewhat of a hard nut to crack. The honest gentlemen who found fox-hunting the one thing worth living for could scarcely realise that even its undeniable excitements were somewhat tame to a man who had more than once taken part in a hunt in which he was the quarry, and they were disposed to 217
2i8 LUCIAN THE DREAMER
regard the new Viscount Saxonstowe as a bit of a prig, being unconscious that he was in reaUty a very simple-
minded, unaffected young man who was a httle bit embarrassed by his title and his wealth. As for their ladies, it was their decided opinion that a young peer of such ancient lineage and such great responsibilities should marry as soon as possible, and each beUeved that it was Lord Saxonstowe' s bounden duty to choose a wife from one of the old north-country famihes. In this Saxonstowe agreed with them. He desired a wife, and a wife from the north country, and he knew where to find her, and wanted her so much that it had long been evident to his sober judgment that, failing her, no other woman would ever call him husband. The more he was left alone, the more deeply he sank in the sea of love. And at last he felt that life was too short to be trifled with, and he went back to Sprats and asked her firmly
and insistently to marry him.
Sprats was neither hurt nor displeased nor surprised.
She listened silently to all he had to say, and she looked at him with her usual frankness when he had finished.
' I thought we were not to talk of these matters? ' she said. ' We were to be friends—was there not some sort
of compact? ' —
' If so, I have broken it,' he answered ' not
the
friendship —that, never! —but the compact. Besides, I don't remember anything about that. As to talking of this, well, I intend to go on asking you to marry me until you do. '
' You have not forgotten what I told you? ' she said, eyeing him with some curiosity.
* Not at all. I have thought a lot about it/ he
answered. ' I have not only thought,
but I have come
to a conclusion. ' '
' Yes? ' she said, still curious.
' That you are deceiving yourself,' he answered.
' You think you love Lucian Damerel. I do not doubt that you do, in a certain way, but not in the way in which I would wish you, for instance, to love me, and
What conclusion? '
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 219
in which I believe you could and would love me—if you
would let yourself. '
Sprats stared at him with growing curiosity and sur-
There was something masterful and lordly about his tone and speech that filled her heart with a great sense of contentment —it was the voice of the superior animal calling to the inferior, of the stronger to the weaker. And she was so strong that she had a great longing to be weak—always providing that something stronger than herself were shielding her weakness.
prise.
' Well? ' was all she could say. '
' You have always felt a sense of protection for him, continued Saxonstowe. ' It was in you from the first — you wanted something to take care of. But isn't there sometimes a feeling within you that you'd like to be taken care of yourself? '
' Who taught you all this? ' she asked, with puzzled
brows. ' You seem to have acquired some strange
knowledge of late. '
' I expect it's instinct, or nature, or something,' he
said. ' Anyhow, have I spoken the truth? '
' You don't expect me to confess the truth to you, do
you? ' she answered. ' You have not yet learned every- thing, I see. ' She paused and regarded him for some time in silence. ' I don't know why,' she said at last, ' but this seems as if it were the prelude to a fight. I feel as I used to feel when I fought with Lucian —there was always a lot of talk before the tearing and rending began. I feel talky now, and I also feel that I must fight you. To begin with, just remember that I am a woman and you're a man. I don't know anything about men—they're incomprehensible to me. To begin with, why do you wish to marry me? —you're the first man
who ever did. I want to know why—why—why? '
' Because you're the woman for me and I'm the man
for you,' he replied masterfully. ' You are my mate. ' ' How do you know ? '
• I feel it. '
' Then why don't I feel it? ' she asked quickly.
220 LUCIAN THE DREAMER
' Are you dead certain you don't? ' he said, smiling at her. ' I think, perhaps, that if you could just get deep down into yourself, you do. '
' But that doesn't explain why you want to marry me,' she said inconsequently. ' You tell me that what I have always felt for Lucian is not what I ought to feel for the man I love. Well, if I analyse what I feel for Lucian, perhaps it is what you say it is—a sense of protection, of wanting to help, and to shield; but then, you say that that is the sort of love you have for me. '
' Did I? ' he said, laughing quietly. * You forget that I have not yet told you what sort of love I have for you —we have not reached the love-making stage yet. '
Sprats felt femininity assert itself. She knew that she blushed, and she felt very hot and very uncomfortable, and she wished Saxonstowe would not smile. She was as much a girl and just as shy of a possible lover as in her tom-boy days, and there was something in Saxon- stowe 's presence which aroused new tides of feeling in her. He had become bold and masterful; it was as if she were being forced out of herself. And then he sud- denly did a thing which sent all the blood to her heart with a wild rush before it leapt back pulsing and throbbing through her body. Saxonstowe spoke her
name.
* Millicent ! ' he said, and laid his hand very gently on
hers. 'Millicent! '
She drew away from him quickly, but her eyes met
his with courage.
* My name ! ' she said. ' No one ever called me bymy
name before. I had half forgotten it. '
' Listen,' he said. ' I want you to think all this over,
like the woman you are. Don't waste your life on a dream or a delusion. Come to me and be my wife and friend so long as God lets us live. You are a true woman—a woman in a thousand. I would not ask you else. I will be a true man to you. And you and I together can do great things, for others. Think, and tell me your thoughts —afterwards. '
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
221
' Yes, afterwards/ she said. She wanted him to go, and he saw it and went, and Sprats sat down to think. But for the first time in her hfe she found it impossible to think clearly. She tried to marshal facts and to place them before her in due sequence and proper order, but she discovered that she was pretty much Uke all other women at these junctures and that a strange confusion had taken possession of her. For the moment there was too much of Saxonstowe in her mental atmosphere to enable her to think, and after some time she uttered an impatient exclamation and went off to attend to her duties. For the remainder of the afternoon she bustled about the house, and the nursing-staff wondered what it was that had given their Head such a fit of vigorous research into unexplored corners. It was not until even- ing that she allowed herself to be alone again, and by that time she was prepared to sit down and face the situa- tion. She went to her own room with a resolute deter- mination to think of everything calmly and coolly, and there she found evening newspapers lying on the table, and she picked one up mechanically and opened it with-
it, and ere she knew what was happening she had read of the tragedy in Paris. The news stamped itself upon her at first without causing her smart or pain, even as a clean shot passes through the flesh with little tearing of the fibres. She sat down and read all that the telegrams had to tell, and searched each of the newspapers until she was in possession of the latest
news.
She had gone into her room with the influence of
Saxonstowe's love-making still heavy upon her woman- hood; she left it an unsexed thing of action and forceful determination. In a few moments she had seen her senior nurse and had given her certain orders; in a few more she was in her outdoor cloak and bonnet and at the door, and a maid was whistling for a hansom for her. But just as she was running down the steps to enter it, another came came hurriedly into the square, and Saxon- stowe waved his hand to her. She paused and went
out the intention of reading
222
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
door; he jumped from his cab and joined her, and they went into the house together, and
into the room which she had just left.
' I was going to you,' she said, ' and yet I might have
known that you would come to me. '
' I came as soon as I knew,' he answered.
She looked at him narrowly : he was watching her with
back to the open
inquiring eyes.
' We must go there at once,' she said.
'
There is time
to catch the night train? '
' Yes,' he said, ' plenty of time. I have already made
some arrangements —I thought you would wish it. '
She nodded in answer to this, and began to take some things out of a desk. Saxonstowe noticed that her hand
was perfectly steady, though her face was very pale.
She turned presently from packing a small handbag and
came up to him.
' Listen,' she said; ' it is you and I who are going—
you understand? ' silence, and then He looked at her for a moment in
bowed his head. He had not understood, but he felt that she had come to some determination, and that that was no time to question her. In a few moments more they had left the house and set out on their journey to Paris.
CHAPTER XXVII
Our neighbours on the other side of the Channel are
blessed with many qualities which were not given to us who reside in these islands, and amongst them is one which most EngUshmen would not pay a penny for if it were on sale in market overt. This is the quality of sentiment a thing which we others strive to choke at its birth, and to which at any time we give but an outside corner of the hearth of life. It is a quality of which one may have too much, but in its place it is an excellent and a desirable quality, for it tends to the establishment of a fitting sense of proportion, and makes people polite and considerate at the right moment. Had the tragedy of Haidee and Darlington occurred in England, there would have been much vulgar curiosity manifested, for amongst us we often fail to gauge the niceties of a situa- tion. In Paris, sentiment fixed the affaire Darnerel at its right value in a few hours. It was a veritable tragedy —one to be spoken of with bated breath —one of those terrible dramas of real life which far transcend anything that can be placed upon the stage. The situations were
the figures of the chief actors of a veritable notability. The young husband, great as a poet and handsome as a Greek god; the young wife, beautiful and charming; the plutocrat lover, of whom death forbade to speak—they were all of a type to attract. Then the intense tragedy of the final situation ! Who could tell what had occurred between the lover and the wife in that last supreme scene, since he was dead and she bereft of reason? It had all the elements of greatness, and greatness demands respect. Therefore, instead of being
vulgarised, as it would have been in unsentimental England, the affaire Damerel was spoken of with a tender respect and with few words. It was an event too deplor- able to merit common discussion,
223
pathetic,
224
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
Lucian had swept through London to Paris intent on killing Darlington with his own hands. His mental balance had been destroyed, and he himself rendered
of hearing or seeing reason long before he reached the French capital. The courteous manager who replied to Lucian's calm inquiries for Mrs. Damerel did not realise that the composure of the distinguished- looking young gentleman was that of the cunning madman. Inside Lucian's breast nestled a revelver— his fingers were itching to get at it as he followed his guide up the stairs, for he had made up his mind to shoot his faithless wife and his treacherous enemy on sight.
The sight of Haidee, mopping and mowing in her corner, the sound of her awful laughter, brought Lucian back to sanity. Living and moving as if he were in some fearful dream, he gave orders and issued directions. The people of the hotel, half paralysed by the strangeness of the tragedy, wondered at his calmness; the police were astonished by the lucidity of the statement which he gave to them. His one great desire was to shield his wife's name. The fierce resentment which he had felt during his pursuit of her had completely disappeared in presence of the tragedy. Before the end of the afternoon some curious mental process in him had completely re- habilitated Haidee in his estimation : he believed her to have been deeply wronged, and declared with emphasis that she must have killed Darlington in a fit of despera- tion following upon some wickedness of his own. Her incriminating letter he swept aside contemptuously—it was a sure proof, he said, that the poor child's mind was already unhinged when it was written. He turned a blind eye to undoubted facts. Out of a prodigal imagination and an exuberant fancy he quickly built up a theory which presently assumed for him the colours of absolute truth.
Haidee had been tempted in secret by this devil who had posed as friend; he had used his insidious arts to corrupt her, and the temptation had fallen upon her at the very moment when he, Lucian,
incapable
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 225
was worrying her with his projects of retrenchment. She had taken flight, the poor Haidee who had Uved in rose-leaf luxury all her days, and had fled from her exaggerated fears to the man she believed her friend and Lucian's. Then, when she had found out his true char- acter, she—in a moment of awful fear or fright, most probably—had killed him. That was the real story, the poor, helpless truth. He put it before Sprats and Saxonstowe with a childlike belief in its plausibility and veracity that made at least one of them like to weep— he had shown them the letter which Haidee had written to Lucian before leaving town, and they knew the real truth of the whole sorry business. It seemed best, after all, thought Sprats, and said so to Saxonstowe when she
chance, that Lucian should cherish a fiction rather than believe the real truth. And that he did believe his fiction was soon made evident.
got the
' It is all my fault—all ! ' he said to Sprats, with bitter
' I never took care of her as I should have done, as I had vowed to do. You were right. Sprats, in everything that you said to me. I wonder what it is that makes me so bhnd to things that other
self-reproach.
people see so clearly? I ought not to have let the poor child be exposed to the temptations of that arch-devil; but I trusted him implicitly. He always made the most sincere professions of his friendship for both of us. Then again, how is it, why is that people so constantly deceive me believe every man as expect every man to beHeve me. Do you think ever dreamt of all this, ever dreamt of what was in that scoundrel's mind? Yet
ought to have foreseen— ought to have been guided by you. all my fault, all my fault
was useless to argue with him or to condole with him. He had persuaded himself without an effort that such and such things were, and the only thing to be done with him was to acquiesce in his conclusions and help him as judiciously as possible. The two faithful friends who had hurried to his side remained with him until the troubled waters grew calm again. That was now
P
I It
It ?
is
I
!
'
I
I
it,
I
226 LUCIAN THE DREAMER
an affair of time. Haidee was certainly insane, and the physicians held out Uttle hope of her recovery. By their
advice she was removed to a private institution within easy distance of Paris, and Lucian announced his inten-
tion of settling down in the gay city in order to be near her. He talked of her now as if she had been a girl- bride, snatched away from him by ruthless fate, and it was plain to see that he had obliterated the angry thoughts that had filled him during his frenzy of resent- ment, and now cherished nothing but feelings of
chastened and tender regret. For
frailest of frail mortals, became apotheosised into some- thing very different. Lucian, who never did anything by halves and could not avoid extremes, exalted her into a sort of much-wronged saint; she became his dream, and nobody had the heart to wake him.
Sprats
for Haidee, the other of a large part of the business affairs brought into active operation by the recent tragedy. Saxonstowe, working untiringly
on his behalf, was soon able to place Lucian's affairs in order. Lucian gave him full power to act, and ere long had the satisfaction of knowing that the liability to Darlington and Darlington had been discharged, that Miss Pepperdine's mind had been set at rest as to the
necessary arrangements
honour, and that he owed money to no one. He would be able to surround the stricken Haidee with every comfort and luxury that one
in her condition could enjoy, and he himself need never feel a moment's anxiety. For the affaire Damerel had had its uses. Lucian came again in the market. Mr. Robertson began to sell the thin green-clad volumes more rapidly than ever before; even the portly epic moved,
and finally began racing its sister competitors for the favour of the fickle public. Mr. Harcourt, with a rare sense of fitness, revived Lucian's first play to crowded houses; an enterprising Frenchman went over to London and witnessed a performance, and within a few weeks
preservation of the family
Haidee, indeed,
and Saxonstowe worked hard for him at this time, one relieving him of much trouble in making the
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 227
presented a version of it at ons of the Parisian theatres. French translations of Lucian's works followed, and sold Hke hot cakes; the Italian translations received a fillip, and people in the United States became interested.
Nothing, said Mr.
from a trade point of view.
Robertson, could have been better,
Lucian accepted all this with indifference and equani- mity. All his thoughts were centred on the quiet house in the little village outside Paris, where Haidee laughed
at her own fingers or played with dolls. Every afternoon he left his appartement and travelled into the country to inquire after his wife's health. He always carried some little gift with him—flowers, fruit, a child's picture- book, a child's toy, and the nurse to whom these things were given used to weep over them, being young and sentimental, and very much in love with Lucian's face and hair, which was now turning a pretty and becoming grey at the temples. Sometimes he saw the doctor, who was sympathetic, and guarded in his answers, and some- times he walked in the garden with an old abbe who used to visit the place, and exchanged pious sentiments with him. But he never saw Haidee, for the doctors feared and thus his conception of her was not of the madwoman, but of the young beauty with whom he had made an impetuous runaway marriage. He used to walk about Paris in those days with eyes that wore
and the women would speak of his beauty with tears in their eyes and shake their heads over the sadness of his story, which was well known to everybody, and in pecuniary value was worth gold-
mine.
far-away expression,
a
a
it,
CHAPTER XXVIII
When they had done everything that could be done for him at that time, Sprats and Saxonstowe left Lucian in Paris and returned together to London. He appeared to have no particular desire that they should remam with him, nor any dread of being alone. Sprats had seen to the furnishing of his rooms and to the transportation of his most cherished books and pictures; he was left sur- rounded with comfort and luxury, and he assured his friends that he wanted for nothing. He intended to devote himself to intense study, and if he wanted a little society, well, he already had a considerable acquaintance amongst authors and artists in Paris, and could make use of it if need were. But he spoke of himself as of an anchorite; it was plain to see that he believed that the joie de vivre existed for him no longer. It was also plain that something in him wished to be clear of the old life and the old associations. He took an affectionate fare- well of Sprats and of Saxonstowe at the Gare du Nord, whither he accompanied them on their departure, but Sprats was keenly aware of the fact that there was that in him which was longing to see the last of them. They were links of a chain that bound him to a life with which he wished to have no further connection. When they said good-bye, Sprats knew that she was turning down a page that closed a long chapter of her own life.
She faced the problem bravely and with clear-headed- ness. She saw now that much of what she had taken to be real fact had been but a dream. Lucian had awak- ened the mother-instinct in her by his very helplessness, but nothing in him had ever roused the new feeling which had grown in her every day since Saxonstowe had told her of his love. She had made the mistake of taking interest and affection for love, and now that she had
found it out she was contented and uneasy, happy and 228
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
229
miserable, pleased and furious, all at once. She wanted to run away from Saxonstowe to the very ends of the earth, but she also cherished a secret desire to sit at his feet and be his slave, and would rather have torn her tongue out than tell him of it.
While they were father-and-mother-ing Lucian in Paris, Saxonstowe had remained solid and grim as one of the Old Guard, doing nothing but his duty. Sprats had watched him with keen observation, and had admired his stern determination and the earnest way in which he did everything. He had taken hold of Lucian as a big brother might take a little one, and had been gentle and firm, kindly and tactful, all at once. She had often longed to throw her arms round him and kiss him
for his good-boy qualities, but he had sunk the lover in the friend with unmistakable purpose, and she was afraid of him. She began to catch herself looking at him out of her eye-corners when he was not looking at her, and she hated herself. Once when he came suddenly into a room, she blushed so furiously that she could have cried with vexation, and it was all the more aggravating, she said, because she had just happened to be thinking of him. Travelling back together, she was very subdued and essentially feminine. Her manner invited con- fidence, but Saxonstowe was stiff as a ramrod and cold as an icicle. He put her into a hansom at Charing Cross, and bade her good-bye as if she had been a mere
acquaintance.
But he came to her the next afternoon, and she knew
from his face that he was in an urgent and a masterful mood. She recognised that she would have to capitu- late, and had a happy moment in assuring herself that she would make her own terms. Saxonstowe wasted no time. He might have been a smart young man calling to collect the water-rate.
* The night that we went to Paris together,' he said, ' you made an observation which you thought I under- stood. I didn't understand and now want to know
what you meant. '
it,
I
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
230
' What I said. That we were going—you and I—
together,' she answered. '
' But what did that mean?
' Together,' she said, ' together means—well, of
course, it means — together. ' shoulders; she Saxonstowe put his hands on her
immediately began to study the pattern of the hearthrug
at their feet. me, Millicent? ' he said. ' Will you marry
She nodded her head, but her eyes still remained fixed
on his toes.
' Answer me,' he commanded.
' Yes,' she said, and lifted her eyes to his.
A moment later she disengaged herself from his arms
and began to laugh. conditions,' she ' I was going to extract such a lot of
said. ' Somehow I don't care about them now. But
will you tell me just what is going to happen? '
' You knew, I suppose, that I should have already mapped everything out. Well, so I have. We shall be
married at once, in the quietest possible fashion, and then we are going round the world in our own way. It is to be your holiday after all these years of work. '
She nodded, with perfect acquiescence in his plans.
' At once? ' she said questioningly.
' A week from to-day,' he said.
The notion of such precipitancy brought the blood into
her face.
' I suppose I ought to say that I can't possibly be
ready in a week,' she said, ' but it so happens that I can.
A week to-day, then. '
Mr. Chilverstone came up from Simonstower to marry
them. It was a very quiet wedding in a quiet church. Lady Firmanence, however, was there, and before the bride and bridegroom left to catch a transatlantic liner for Ney York she expressed a decided opinion that the fourth Viscount Saxonstowe had inherited more than his share of the good sense and wise perception for which their family had always been justly famous.
XXIX
LuciAN settled down into a groove-like existence. He read when he liked and worked when he felt any parti- cular inclination to do so; he amused himself at times with the life which a man of his temperament may live in Paris, but always with the air of one who looks on. He made a few new friends and sometimes visited old ones. Now and then he entertained in a quiet, old- fashioned way. He was very indulgent and caressing to a certain coterie of young people who believed in him as a great master and elevated his poetry to the dignity of a cult. He was always a distinguished figure when he showed himself at the opera or the theatre, and people still pointed him out on the boulevards and shook their heads and said what a pity it was that one so young and handsome and talented should carry so heavy a burden. In this way he may be said to have become quite an institution of Paris, and Americans stipulated with their guides that he should be pointed out to them at the first opportunity.
Whatever else engaged Lucian's attention or his time, he never forgot his daily visit to the quiet house in the suburbs where Haidee still played with dolls or laughed gleefully at her attendants. He permitted nothing to interfere with this duty, which he regarded as a penance for his sins of omission to Haidee in days gone by. Others might forsake Paris for the sea or the mountains; Lucian remained there all the year round for two years, making his daily pilgrimage. He saw the same faces every day, and heard the same report, but he never saw his wife. Life became curiously even and regular, but it never oppressed him. He had informed himself at the very beginning of this period that this was a thing to be endured, and he endured it as pleasantly and
231
CHAPTER
232
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
bravely as possible. During those two years he pub- lished two new volumes, of a somewhat new note, which sold better in a French translation than in the English original, and at Mr. Harcourt's urgent request he wrote a romantic drama. It filled the Athenaeum during the whole of a London season, and the financial results were gratifying in a high degree, for the glamour and mystery of the affaire Damerel were still powerful, and Lucian had become a personality and a force by reason of his troubles.
At the end of two years, the doctor to whose care Haidee had been entrusted called Lucian into his private room one day and told him that he had grave news to communicate. His patient, he said, was dying—slowly,
But there was more than that: before her death she would recover her reason. She would probably recall everything that had taken place; it was more than possible that she would have painfully clear
but very surely.
recollections of the scene, whatever it might be, that had immediately preceded her sudden loss of sanity. It was but right, said the doctor, that Mr. Damerel should know of this, but did Mr. Damerel wish to be with his wife when this development occurred? It might be a pain- ful experience, and death must soon follow it. It was for Mr. Damerel to decide. Lucian decided on the instant. He had carried an image of Haidee in his mind for two years, and it had become fixed on his mental vision with such firmness that he could not think of her as anything but what he imagined her to be. He told the doctor that he would wish to know as soon as his
wife regained her reason —it was his duty, he said, to be with her. After that, every visit to the private asylum was made with anxious wonder if the tortured brain had cleared. —
It was not until the following spring two and a half years after the tragedy of the Bristol—that Lucian saw Haidee. He scarcely knew the woman to whom they took him. They had deluged him with warnings as to the change in her, but he had not expected to find her a
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 233
grey-haired, time-worn woman, and he had difficulty in preserving his composure when he saw her. He did not know it, but her reason had returned some time before, and she had become fully cognisant of her surroundings and of what was going to happen. More than that, she had asked for a priest and had enjoyed ghostly consola- tion. She gazed at Lucian with a curious wistfulness,
and yet there was something strangely
sullen in her
manner.
* I wanted to see you,' she said, after a time. ' I
know I'm going to die very soon, and there are things I want to say. I remember all that happened, you know. Oh yes, it's quite clear to me now, but somehow it doesn't trouble me—I was mad enough when I did it. '
' Don't speak of that,' he said. ' Forget it all. '
She shook her head.
' Never mind,' she went on. ' What I wanted to say
was, that I'm sorry that—well, you know. '
Lucian gazed at her with a sickening fear creeping
closely round his heart. He had forced the truth away
from him: he was to hear it at last from the lips of a
dying woman.
* You were to blame, though,' she said presently.
' You ought not to have let me go alone on his yacht or to the Highlands. It was so easy to go wrong there. '
Lucian could not control a sharp cry.
' Don't! ' he said, ' don't! You don't know what you're saying. It can't be that—that you wrote the truth in that letter? It was—hallucination. '
She looked at him out of dull eyes.
' I want you to say you forgive me,' she said. ' The priest —he said I ought to ask your forgiveness. '
Lucian bowed his head.
' Yes,' he said, ' I forgive all you wish. Try not to
think of it any more. '
He was saying over and ovei to himself that she was
still disordered of mind, that the sin she was confessing was imaginary; but deeper than his insistence on this lay a dull consciousness that he was hearing the truth.
234
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
He stood watching her curiously. She suddenly looked up at him, and he saw a strange gleam in her eyes.
' After all,' she said, half spitefully, ' you came between him and me at the beginning. '
Lucian never saw his wife again. A month later she was dead. All the time of the burial service he was thinking that it would have been far better if she had never recovered her reason. For two years he had cherished a dream of her that had assumed tender and pathetic tones. It had become a part of him; the ugly reality of the last grim moments of her life stood out in violent contrast to its gentleness and softness. When the earth was thrown upon the coffin, he was wondering at the wide difference which exists between the real and the unreal, and whether the man is most truly blessed who walks amongst stern verities or dreams amidst the
poppy-beds of illusion. One thing was certain : the face of truth was not always beautiful, nor her voice always soothing to the ear.
XXX
After Haidee's death Lucian left Paris, and during the rest of the spring and summer of that year went wander-
autumn.
unwonted activity.
CHAPTER
ing hither and thither about Europe.
this time in a state of quiescence; he lounged from one place to another, faintly interested and lazily amused. He was beginning to be a little bored by life, and a little tempted to drift with its stream. It was in this frame of mind that he returned to London in the following
There, soon after his return, he sprang into
It was on the very eve of the outbreak of the war in South Africa. Men were wondering what was going
His mind was at
Some, clearer of vision than their fellows, saw that nothing but war would solve the problem which
to happen.
had assumed vast proportions
because of the vacillating poUcy of a weak Government of twenty years before; the Empire was going to pay now, with millions of its treasure and thousands of its men, for the fatal error which had brought the name of
in the Transvaal and given the Boers a false notion of English strength and character.
Others were all for a policy of smoothing things over, for spreading green boughs over pitfalls — not that any one should fall into them, but in order to make believe that the pitfalls were not there. Others again, of a breed that
England into contempt
islands, advocated, not without success, a policy of surrender to everybody and everything. There was much talking at street comers and in the market-place; much angry debate and acrimonious discussion. Men began to be names, and few took the trouble to meantime, events
has but lately sprung into existence in these
labelled by new
understand each
developed as inevitable consequence always develops them in such situations. Amidst the chattering of tiny voices the thunders of war burst loud and clear.
other. In the 235
and strange intricacies
236
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
Fond as he was of insisting on his ItaHan nationality, he was passionately
devoted to England and the English, and had a great admiration for the history and traditions of the country
Lucian was furious with indignation.
There had once been a question in his mind as to whether he should write in English or in Italian—he had elected to serve England for many reasons, but chiefly because he recognised her greatness Like all Italians, he loved her for what she had done for Greece and for Italy. England and Liberty were synonymous names; of all nations in the world, none had made for freedom as
England had. His blood had leapt in his veins many a time at the thought of the thousand and one great things she had done, the mighty battles she had fought for truth and liberty; he had drunk in the notion from boyhood that England stood in the very vanguard of the army of deliverance. And now she was sending out her armies, marshalling her forces, pouring out her money like water, to crush a tiny folk, a nation of farmers, a sturdy, simple- minded race, one of the least amongst the peoples of the
earth! He shook his head as if he had been asleep, and asked himself if the nation had suddenly gone mad with lust of blood. It was inconceivable that the England of his dreams could do this thing.