CHAPTER IV
It was a very hot afternoon in the beginning of July, rather more than a month later, and Brayton Hall in general appeared to be having a very suitable siesta. All along the south front of the house, which looked toward the garden, the blinds were down, and the veranda, which stretched the whole length of the ground-floor, and was screened from the glare of the day by Indian curtains, contained two very lazy-looking figures. In front of the veranda was a broad walk made of old paving-stones—an adorable material—from between the joints of which sprang tight little cushions of velvety moss and minute spires of flowering stonecrops. Iceland poppies had been planted there, too, but the heat of the last few weeks had been too much for them, and they looked somewhat pale and anaemic. Beyond, on the same level, was an assembly of small formal flower-beds, with narrow paved paths in between, having for the centre of their system a grey stone fountain, where a somewhat rococo nymph, very suitably clad for this hot weather, poured water from a high-held jug into the basin below. Beyond, again, ran a low balustrade of columns, and a flight of half a dozen steps opposite the fountain led down to the lawn and less formal part of the garden. Just below the terrace the ground had been artificially levelled to give room for a couple of tennis-courts, but beyond it fell away towards a lake of an acre or so in extent, half covered with the broad leaves and golden flowers of water-lilies, while on each side it rose upward in gentle undulations, between shrubs and big flower-beds that looked as if they had been allowed to do as they chose for a considerable period, and was gradually brought to a green end in shrubberies. The whole place, as could be seen at the most cursory glance, had been laid out with skill and care, but not less evident were the signs of subsequent neglect. Below the lake the ground again declined rapidly, and in the V-shaped gap between the down on each side could be seen, reeling in the heat-mist, the houses and towers of Brixham.
As has been said, an air of suspended animation hung over the place, but soon a big mowing-machine emerged from the trees at the far end of the lawn, and the renewed sound of life in its clicking journeyings roused one of the figures on the veranda, and he rose and put down his coffee-cup with the air of one who means to make a move.
"Well, of course, you shall do as you choose, Charlie," he said; "but I must go in to Brixham. They have had three days of the cricket week already, and I haven't been, and there are calls I must return."
Charlie Lindsay turned a little in his long chair, and yawned quite fully and satisfactorily.
"Clearly, then, you are going only from a sense of duty," he said, "which does not appeal to me. I have no duties towards Brixham, but as Brixham is your neighbour, I realize that you have. Go forth, then, to conquer and be conquered."
"What do you mean!"
"You will make a triumphant entry on to the cricket-ground with a terrific back-fire from your motor to call attention to you, and perhaps a tyre will burst. The assembled mothers and daughters of Brixham will say to each other: 'Lord Brayton—how young and how interesting and wealthy!' That will be your conquering. Then you will turn from the proud beauties of Brixham and observe, sitting rather apart, a girl of pensive aspect, dressed in blue, with an earnest expression, and a folio copy of the Divine Comedy in her hand, which she reads instead of looking at the cricket. You will ask her name, and find she is the daughter of the Dean. So you will be conquered, and that will be another divine comedy. I can't go on: it's too hot."
Lord Brayton seemed neither amused nor ruffled, and stood looking out over the garden. He was scarcely twenty-five years of age, but looked at least five years older, and a guess might be safely hazarded that in mind he was at least thirty, so mature, though in no bald or obese or wrinkled sense, did his face appear. Good-looking he certainly was, but in a rather formal manner: his features were all of the fine, well-finished type which is usually associated—as it was in his case—with a tall, well-set-up frame. But he looked as if he had quite made up his mind about most things, and would probably be willing to give you the result of his researches. As his cousin spoke, he took a cigarette out of a silver box that stood on the table, but next moment put it back without lighting it.
"I think I had one with my coffee," he remarked.
Charlie laughed.
"There we are again at what we were talking of last night," he said. "What does it matter if you smoke two cigarettes?"
"It matters in that I should have done what I did not intend to do. I believe it matters almost less whether what you intend to do is a good thing or an indifferent one than not to do it when you have intended it. The latter is a failure in character."
Charlie Lindsay sat up in his chair and crossed one leg over the other. His quick, excitable voice, that jumped about from note to note might have led the hearer to expect that alert and youthful face, pleasant and attractive to look at, and vivid but notably unstable. His blue eyes looked quickly here and there, never dwelling long in one place, and his hands had movements as restless as his eyes.
"Well, it would be a failure in character," he said, "if I ever did what I intended. The key of my character is to do something quite different to what I meant. You get most fun that way. I mean, for instance chuck me a cigarette not to smoke. So I enjoy quantities of stolen pleasures, which are the nicest sort."
Edgar put straight with his toe the corner of the rug which Charlie had ruffled when he sat up. That also was characteristic of them both.
"My dear fellow," he said, "pray don't think I condemn you, when I say that I should condemn myself for doing that sort of thing. I am aware there are many different sorts of people in the world."
"You don't really mean that?" interpolated the other.
"Yes, and it seems to you priggish, does it not? Not that I mind. I was saying that there are many different people in the world, and since character is one of the most unchangeable things there is, one must allow them to act in ways in which one would not think of acting oneself. I should never condemn other people, I think, whatever they did."
"You would if it injured you," said Charlie, "or injured someone you were fond of."
"I am speaking in the abstract, about the principle."
Charlie got up.
"Oh, but that's an impossible way of regarding the world," he said. "The world's material, and though there may be abstract principles behind it, yet they are dealing with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and how our application of a principle affects them. Your principle, for instance, of never condemning other people breaks down as soon as their actions begin to affect you."
Edgar was silent a moment.
"The real difference between us," he said, "is, as you said just now, that by your plan you get most fun. I should hardly have called it a plan at all. You have no settled object in life."
"I don't think one is meant to have a settled object in life till one is forty," said the other. "Till then, one ought to experimentalize—try everything."
"With a view to seeing which is the most fun?"
"Exactly, and of doing it ever afterwards. I think it an extremely sound plan. What's yours? No, I needn't ask; I know it already. It is to do your duty and cultivate your mind. Also to cultivate other people's, you know, which I think is rather a liberty. You have no more right to interfere with other people's minds than you have to cut their hair."
Edgar smiled again in a slightly superior manner. In point of fact, he had every right to do so, since he was a little superior.
"There are always two ways in which to put a thing," he said, "the appreciative and the depreciatory. When you tell me that my object is to do my duty and cultivate my mind, you describe my object quite correctly, but use a phraseology that makes it appear priggish. Personally I do not think it priggish to do one's duty, though it no doubt savours of priggishness to say so like that."
"Sorry; I didn't mean to be offensive."
"You weren't; at least, if you did, it was quite unsuccessful. I never take offence, you see."
Charlie got up with a stifled note of impatience.
"No; I wish you did sometimes. You—you wear armour, you know. I wish you would take it off and pawn it. Yes, that's what's the matter with you You aren't greedy; you aren't a liar, or lazy, or a drunkard; you don't lose your temper. I don't think you ever want to behave yourself unseemly. Really, when one comes to think of it, I don't know why I like you so much."
Edgar Brayton had quite unconsciously taken a cigarette again, and as unconsciously, while this list of his virtues was being recited, had lit it. His cousin, with secret glee, had observed this, and continued talking volubly in order to keep Edgar's mind occupied till it was finished.
"Perhaps it is because you are so extremely efficient," he said. "You lead such a neat life. Things happen as you intend. Yet I don't believe you get any really keen satisfaction out of any of them. You always get all you want without wanting it very badly, whereas, though most people, on the whole, get what they want, they have to want it very badly first. Finally, I observe with extreme satisfaction that you are half-way through your second cigarette after lunch. Thank God you have done what you didn't intend, and I needn't go on feverishly jawing any more. I was only keeping your mind occupied."
Brayton did the most consistent thing possible, and threw the rest of it away.
"Brute!" he said without annoyance; "and as you won't come in to Brixham, I shall go without you. I shall be back by six, and we can put in an hour's fishing before dinner. I've been here a fortnight, and I haven't been to the river yet. But I really think that I've got through all the business now. It is so much better to do what one has to do first, and what one likes afterwards."
This was a somewhat sententious close, but it appeared to him to be rather liberal than otherwise, and, to save trouble, he walked down the terrace to go to the stables, rather than ring the bell to have the motor sent round. The servants, like himself, had been somewhat overworked during this last fortnight, for, with the sound maxim that it is better to see things done than to give absent orders about them, he had come down a fortnight before to a spidery and disordered house rather than command the dissolution of spider and the restoration of order from a distance. There had been a great deal to do; and it was creditable that so much had already been done. The house, at any rate, was habitable again after a period of prolonged neglect, during which only a room or two had been used, while the rest had been left for a large staff of servants, spoiled by the want of supervision, to deal with as they chose. They had chosen to deal with it very badly, and Charlie's advice, "Sack the lot," had been, on the whole, complied with, though differently phrased. Brayton had, in fact, sacked the lot, but he had sacked them severally, after conviction. Though a clean sweep had been made, the cleaning, so to speak, had been done in bits, and the new household had been worked to the limits of their capacity in restoring the neglect of the old. The garden, however, was still an untackled problem, except in so far as a mowing-machine, as has been seen, had begun to operate upon it. The garden would take another fortnight more in the planning of what should be done, but, the house being finished, Brayton felt that a pause in life was justified.
Brixham, however, remained. He owned a considerable part of what is called the "residential quarter," though, since in a town which boasts no manufacturing industries people reside in every quarter, it is hard to see why one quarter should be more markedly residential than another. Indeed, to look into the matter more closely, the residential quarter is generally that quarter in which fewest people reside, since the houses and gardens there are bigger than elsewhere. In any case it was this quarter he owned, and so, since during this week the garrison was entertaining the residential inhabitants to cricket, tea, and a band, it was incumbent on him, as he said to Charlie, to show himself. In his heart of hearts he was not at all sorry to do so, since the role of a young lord in a provincial town was by no means an uninteresting one. He felt the part too; there was no doubt he would do it admirably.
Proprietorship, besides, was a very real and responsible thing to him. Had his worldly possessions consisted only of a canary, he would have done his best, so long as the stress of want did not compel him to sell it, to provide it with suitable food and a clean cage. He would also, without doubt, have striven to make himself known to and appreciated by the yellow bird. But Providence having granted him a larger ownership, he felt it was his duty to behave likewise on the larger scale; and though he did not own the inhabitants of those excellent cages on the hill at Brixham, and had not got to supply them with butcher's meat, he still felt a responsibility towards them. He wanted, in fact, to be an excellent landlord, not only because a good landlord is more likely to have his houses full than an indifferent one, but also since this was one of his duties; and, as his agent had already found out, questions of drainage and roof-repair were matters with which he desired direct acquaintance. Nor were his projects limited to these material considerations; he wished to know with more than pasteboard civility the more substantial of his tenants, who in their turn, to judge by the acres of calling-cards that he had already received, were equally desirous of knowing him. The Firs and the Granges, and the Laburnums and the Hollies, and the Views and the Prospects, had already come in their forests to pay their respects; and in this swift motor-car of his an hour's card-leaving, since without doubt everyone would be at the cricket-ground, would pave the way for further interchange. The practice of leaving cards without asking whether the mistress of the house was at home he strongly deprecated, but it was cheering, since he had so many calls to make, to know that it was probable that not anybody would be in.
He drove himself, and though the car was a powerful one, and the three miles of white, straight road between him and Brixham was empty alike of passengers and vehicles, he always checked the throbbing engines when the dial showed by its vibrating finger that he was travelling at the outside of the legal limit; for, since there was a regulation that no car should go faster than that, it was binding on drivers not to exceed such a speed, whether anybody saw them or not. The fact that one was unobserved did not relax the obligation; it would have been as consistent to call oneself an honest citizen because one only stole when nobody happened to be looking.
The breeze made by the movement was pleasant on so hot a day, and pleasant were the thoughts with which his mind entertained itself as he bowled along the straight, empty road. He was full of schemes for a useful and busy future in the large sphere into which he had lately come, and though the responsibilities which to his mind were implied by his wealth and position were immense, the burden, so far from oppressing him, was the; cause of a rich and sober exhilaration. Responsibilities really spelled opportunities, duty spelled privilege; and it was with the eagerness of youth, combined with the strength of manhood, that he planned an ever-widening influence. He did not in the least want to preach to those who squandered opportunity and melted wealth into mere excitement and sensuous gratification, and, so far as that went, the dreadful monosyllable "prig" was no label for him. But though without the desire to preach, he had almost a passion for the practice, which was the outcome of what his sermon would have been, and in so far as that went, since his desire was self-conscious, the label was correct. The couple of years he had spent in the Guards filled him now with regret for wasted time, and though he was too consistent to waste more in regretting them, the regret was a constant spur to him. Not that he had any intention of giving up London and the business of socialities, which acts both as intoxicant and soporific to his mind, stimulating it on the one hand to activity of thought and impression, and drugging it on the other into inactivity of action, but he intended to use its stimulus and discard the drug. He was intensely English in the way that he took such relaxations seriously, even as he played games and hunted seriously for the sake not only of the pleasure they gave him, but of their admirable digestive aids; but he was not insular, and believed that even in Paris there was such a thing as intellectual activity. Nor did he propose, though he was determined to set aside for charitable purposes a quite considerable portion of his wealth, to live an ascetic and penurious life. Beautiful things, objects which educated the senses, giving acumen to the eye and discrimination to the ear, were as real to him as his opportunities and his privileges, and were a right stimulus to the intellectual and artistic activity. It was the card-table, the racecourse, the scandalous sofa only, that he meant to avoid, both in London and here, where he should pass many months of the year; he would collect round him eager, strenuous people, who longed, like himself, to live a full, fine life—not narrow, not bigoted, but with hands of welcome to all that was worthy. Then for a moment he turned to the practical side of his ideal, as he began to pass between rows of detached houses. How was he to make a beginning? A Shakespeare Society was all that immediately occurred to him, and this somehow was rather an anticlimax. There were, however, more pressingly practical things to do, and for the next half-hour he was occupied in taking rather sharp corners into rather narrow carriage-drives, and inquiring of neat maid-servants if their mistresses were in. As he had expected, their mistresses were, without exception, out, and his packet of calling-cards melted like summer snow.
But one tiny question of etiquette a little perplexed him; among the cards which had been left on him was one inscribed:
Miss Lucia Grimson.
He had gone so far as to consult Charlie as to whether it was customary for unmarried ladies to initiate a call on an unmarried man. Charlie had held that they were probably pushing and middle-class, and had advised no notice to be taken, but Brayton had inclined to the view that perhaps this proceeding was provincially correct. Also he thought he remembered the name. though he could attach no distinct association to it, and now the sight of the Miss Grimsons' gate with "In" very clear on the door-post, and "Fair View" in white letters along the top bar, decided him. What if the Misses Grimson's proceedings were correct or not? It was a kindly thing of them to have called; it would be a churlish thing on his part not to return their civility. Besides, it was fairly certain that they would be out.
The bell which his chauffeur had rung tinkled itself away into silence again; bees buzzed drowsily from the strip of flower-bed below the windows, on the sill of one of which lay a girlish-looking hat, and from somewhere overhead, in a higher key, came the sound of whistling, clear, soft, but piercing notes, which arrested his attention, The whistler, whoever it was, was whistling the melody from the first movement of Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony," and in its way it was a remarkable performance, for both the tone of the notes was of that lazy flute-like quality which is so exquisite in itself, and, an even rarer merit, the notes were perfectly and absolutely in tune. Then the door was opened, and to his inquiry whether Miss Grimson was at home, it appeared that Miss Lucia was.
He was shown into the drawing-room, that temple of worsted work, and while Miss Lucia was being "told," he looked round. It surprised him a little to find how strange a mixture of objects met his eye: heavy early Victorian furniture was decorated with unspeakable ornaments, all standing on woollen mats; a shiny sofa of American cloth had a long covering of worsted laid over it like a bedspread; a kettle-holder was hung on a brass nail by the fireplace, and a Carlo Dolci engraving smirked on the wall above it. These things were all consistent, part of a whole, yet the other part was so intensely inconsistent. The hat on the window-sill, with a big bow of scarlet ribbon, was a most foreign object; on the piano was open a copy of the Symphony of which he had just heard a few bars. Omar Khayyám lay on the bedspread of the sofa, and on a table in the corner, where a cut-glass vase might have been looked for, was a coarse green crockery jug with a great bough of pendulous laburnum in it, where calceolarias were probable.
Then there came a light foot in the passage outside, and Lucia entered. Then he remembered. It was at a dance they had met; she was a friend of—that he could not recollect.
But Lucia gave him no pause to consider.
"How are you, Lord Brayton?" she said, "and how good of you to call! My aunts will be so sorry to have missed you. They have gone to the cricket match. It is Dissipation Week, you know. We all have headaches afterwards."
It was all said in the handshake, and, trivial as the words were, Lucia had thought them carefully over as she came downstairs. Indeed, it was partly by virtue of their triviality that they were so admirable; but they were friendly and cordial, and by their very lightness admitted him to her private humorous view of the dissipations. Furthermore, the art was concealed; they appeared quite natural, and yet they thawed the ice of what she expected him to believe was their first meeting, for she made not the very slightest claim on him to remember that they had met before. She was not even sure that she wished Mm to remember it.
"This is my first stroke of good fortune this afternoon," he said. "I have paid a dozen calls, but everybody is out."
Lucia, for an infinitesimal part of a second, considered whether she should follow this up, and ask him if he was sure he considered it good fortune. But her common sense instantly rejected such a thing. It would not be exactly fishing for a complimentary speech, but it would be alluding to fishing-rods. Instead, with far greater tact, she answered more simply.
"Yes; all the world is broiling in tents at the cricket," she said. "I have broiled for the last three days, but to-day I said the dissipation-headaches had begun. It wasn't true, by the way, but it was lying with a moral purpose."
"And what was the moral purpose?" he asked.
"I wanted to practise," she said, looking across to the piano, "and I wanted to read a book. You will have a cup of tea, will you not? Do let us drink it in the garden, where there is a little shade."
The complete naturalness of her manner made it not even occur to him whether Brixham etiquette allowed him to drink tea alone with this girl. Besides, he could hardly have done otherwise; she had come down to see him when he called, apparently without the slightest hesitation, whereas if the tête-à-tête had been irregular she would, of course, have said she was not in. Even before he replied, too, she had rung the bell—whether he meant to have tea or not, it was clear that she did. Her manner was merely simple and friendly. It was impossible not to return a similar currency.
"The practising concerned Schubert," he said. "I hope the book was on the same level."
She looked at him with a charming look of surprise, then guessed.
"Ah, it was on the piano," she said.
"No. I knew before."
Again she wrinkled her forehead into a soft frown.
"I give it up," she said.
"You were whistling it."
She nodded at him.
"That is highly likely. You see, I can only whistle when my aunts are out. They think it so unlady-like. Sometimes I whistle when they have gone to bed, and always if I am walking alone. I'm afraid I must be unlady-like at heart. Isn't it a pity? Oh, there's that awful cat again on the flower-bed! Might I trouble you to throw a small stone at it? It digs up tender plants all day, and sings songs of triumph all night. Thank you very much. It will now go and meditate evilly in the asparagus for half an hour, and make fresh plans."
Lucia was quite aware she was talking nonsense, and carefully observed him the while. He had thrown the stone with precision, because she had asked him to, but he had thrown it with no more gaiety than he would have exhibited had he given her a chair at her request. And she instantly changed her tone.
"But surely one may be forgiven for whistling Schubert," she said. "He is one of the magical things of the world, is he not? There are so few that are really magic. Venice, I think, must be; Omar Khayyám—that was my book, by the way—is; great big la France roses are"
This was far better; he was quickened at this.
"Really, I congratulate you on your selection," he said; "those are certainly all magic. And how completely one piece of magic outweighs all that is not magic. I would cheerfully rain fire and brimstone on to Paris and London and Rome and Florence to save Venice."
Lucia shrugged her shoulders, and spread out her hands with a charming little desolate gesture.
"And I have never seen it," she said. "Isn't it maddening to think that Venice is going on all the time, and that when it is sunset in Venice to-day I shall be looking at that stupid cricket, and hearing that ridiculous band play Strauss waltzes? Tea for you? Sugar? Milk? I am so hungry. And after tea I can, anyhow, show you a magic la France. After all, between Schubert, Omar Khayyám, and the rose I shall have had a very nice afternoon."
Edgar Brayton did not usually take tea, any more than he smoked two cigarettes after lunch, but he found himself breaking his rule without any sense of fracture, while Lucia entertained him. It was entertainment, too, to watch her, with that fresh, eager face, that charm of vivid girlhood, that entire absence of self-consciousness. There was also something very attractive in her friendliness, her frank avowal of her tastes and pleasures; she showed herself to him with the frankness of a boy showing his room and his books to some new acquaintance. He had till to-day seen nothing of those who would be his neighbours at Brixham, and it struck him (though he was not in the least superstitious) as a good omen that he should open acquaintance with them so pleasantly. Then a train shrieked its way by on the embankment at the bottom of the garden, and interrupted conversation for a moment. But Lucia sat up and looked at it with a smile.
"Ah! and I love that too," she said. "Isn't it nice to think of all those carriages full of people, all going to fresh places? I do hope they will enjoy themselves. Don't you?"
This was almost the nonsense-mood again, but it contained more of Lucia than had been given him at first. He thought about his answer before replying.
"I don't think I do," he said. "At least, restlessness doesn't seem to me to be a virtue. Of course, eagerness is, but isn't it rather shallow that your eagerness should demand fresh places? Why not stop where you are and be eager over a fresh book?"
Lucia leaned forward.
"Oh, go on!" she said. "Tell me all about that. That's a gospel I long to hear preached."
Insensibly this flattered him.
"I wish, then, I was a preacher," he said; "but I am afraid I am not. Only it seems to me that people talk about what they would do if their circumstances were different, and think that altered circumstances would expand and develop them, whereas the expansion and development come from within. People really make themselves; circumstances have very little to do with their making. For instance"
He paused a moment, finding himself already committed to a sort of intimacy. He did not find fault with the intimacy; he only wondered what had caused it. Then, with complete honesty, he told himself that two simple people were talking to each other.
"For instance" suggested Lucia.
"Well, just this. People think that their circumstances make them, that their circumstances bound them. I don't believe ihat is true. Brixham, so the Londoner might say, is provincial. That would be because he is provincial himself. But here am I coming to call, and find Schubert's "Unfinished Symphony" on the piano and Omar Khayyám on the sofa, and you, Miss Grimson, who find magic in the air and in your roses, and romances in an express train."
Suddenly he recollected that he was seeing this girl for the first time, and caught and bottled up, so to speak, the natural instinct that dictated his last speech, and became conventional instead. Yet, perhaps, it was almost more natural for him to be conventional than to be natural. That is the case of many people.
"In fact, it is completely true," he said, "that we find in a place just what we bring to it."
Lucia observed the distinction between his former manner and this. He had brushed his hair and put on his coat again. She was wise enough to follow his lead, not wrench him back again. She got up laughing.
"So that if one feels dull or bored," she said, "one may know that there is a dull or boring person present, and make a very good guess as to who that person is. Do come and see my rose. Aunt Cathie said it was dying a month ago, which roused it. That is so natural, is it not? I am sure, when the family doctor tells me I am dying, I shall feel I must show him that he is mistaken. By the way, have you seen Maud Eddis again? She is my greatest friend."
This took the conversation back to Maud, and closely as Lucia had applied herself to it before, she listened even more intently now. Though at the moment of meeting her he had not recollected the connection in which he had seen her before, his memory of Maud was vivid.
"But there is a splendid example of what we were saying," he said. "I never knew anyone with so individual an atmosphere. Can you imagine living in the provinces would ever make her provincial, or living in town make her worldly?"
"Ah! that is interesting," said Lucia. "And what is her atmosphere?"
"Surely, you who know her so well must know. It is all kindliness: it is all serenity."
Lucia turned to him with enthusiasm.
"Ah! thank you, thank you," she said. "Praise of a friend is like a gift to one, is it not? Of course, I knew what Maud's atmosphere was; I wanted to know if it struck you, too. But those are qualities of character, are they not? I think prc vincialism affects the intellect more than the soul. Sometimes I wonder whether if Maud was stuck down here No, even that is a disloyalty. And here is my la France. Is it not superb?"
Lucia had let it be understood that she was going to see the cricket later on, but when Lord Brayton took his departure, she refused with perfectly spontaneous laughter his offer to take her down to the field in his car.
"Why, Brixham would turn faint and pale," she said, "and my aunts would have a fit each. But it was kind of you to suggest it."
"You must introduce me to them," he said. "Will you be so kind?"
"But charmed," said Lucia. "Good-bye, Lord Brayton: au revoir, rather."
She saw him off at the door, professing an interest, not feigned, in the motor, and turned back into the house again.
"As it is, Brixham will turn green," she observed to herself.