by Grant Allen
Geraldine nodded a quiet assent.
‘Psyche asked me to come round,’ she said. ‘She’s full of Mr. Linnell. She wanted to know from me all about him.’
Mrs. Maitland glanced up sharply with quick, inquiring eyes.
‘Why, what on earth does she know of him?’ she inquired half angrily. ‘Has she met him anywhere?’
‘She met him yesterday afternoon at the Mansels’,’ Geraldine answered shortly.
‘And what did you tell her, Geraldine? You didn’t let her know he was rich, I suppose, did you?’
‘How could I, mother? He always implies himself that he isn’t. Even if I thought it, which I’ve no reason to do, it would be very wrong of me to say so to Psyche. I told her he was a most agreeable young man, though painfully shy and awkward and nervous, and that we knew him only as an English painter who often wintered in Egypt or Algeria.’
Mrs. Maitland breathed more freely for a moment. Next instant there came a small ring at the bell, and the servant, entering, announced Mr. Linnell, followed in a minute more by both the Mansels.
Linnell took Geraldine in to dinner; but being the guest of the evening, he was sandwiched in between herself and her mother, an arrangement which ensured the possibility for Mrs. Maitland of exercising throughout an efficient supervision over Geraldine’s conversation with the eligible stranger.
‘And how do you like Petherton now you’ve fairly settled down to it?’ Mrs. Maitland asked him as the soup went round. ‘Have you found any subjects for sketching yet, Mr. Linnell?’
The young man looked up with an embarrassed smile. If there was anything on earth that his soul hated it was ‘being trotted out,’ on his art especially; and he saw quite clearly that Mrs. Maitland meant to trot him out in due course this evening, in order to exhibit his paces properly before the admiring eyes of Petherton society.
‘Yes,’ he answered shyly, with half an appealing glance towards Mrs. Mansel opposite; ‘I began to sketch a sweet little cottage on the hillside yesterday; and when I’d got half-way through with it, I learnt, to my surprise, it was no less a personage’s than Haviland Dumaresq’s. I’d no idea, Mrs. Maitland, you had so great a man as the Encyclopædic Philosopher living in your neighbourhood.’
‘Oh yes, Mr. Dumaresq’s very clever, I believe,’ Mrs. Maitland answered somewhat frigidly, with the austere manner which the British matron thinks it proper to adopt when speaking of people who are ‘not exactly in our set, you know, dear.’ ‘He’s very clever, I’ve always understood, though hardly the sort of person, of course, one quite cares to mix with in society. He wears such extremely curious hats, and expresses himself so very oddly sometimes. But he’s clever in his own way, extremely clever, so people tell me, and full of information about all the ologies. We have a great many of these local celebrities about here, don’t you know. There’s our postman’s a very clever person, too. Why, he writes the most amusing New-Year addresses, all in verse, which he brings round every year when he calls to get his Christmas-box. Geraldine, don’t you think you could hunt up some of Briggs’s verses to show Mr. Linnell, if he’s interested in that kind of thing, you know, dear?’
A faint smile played round the corners of Linnell’s mouth at the juxtaposition in Mrs. Maitland’s mind of Haviland Dumaresq and the postman poet; but politeness prompted him to say nothing. Comment on his part on such a subject would have been wholly superfluous. He answered not the fool according to her folly. Geraldine, however, could hardly imitate him: she looked up, one flush of sympathetic shame from chin to forehead, and answered quickly: ‘No, mother; I don’t think I could find them anywhere; and even if I did, I don’t think Mr. Linnell would care in the least to see them. You’ve met the Dumaresqs, Mr. Linnell; so Psyche’s been telling me. She says her father’s always so glad to come across anybody who’s read his books. He’s a wonderful old man, so wholly absorbed and swallowed up in his work. He lives for nothing on earth, I do believe, but two things now — Philosophy and Psyche.’
‘Two very good things indeed to live for,’ Linnell murmured, almost inaudibly. ‘I hardly know how he could do better.’
‘Yes, he’s wasted his life on writing books that were of no earthly use to himself or to anybody,’ Mrs. Maitland went on, taking up the thread of her daughter’s parable; ‘and I’ve no doubt, now his girl’s growing up, he bitterly repents he didn’t turn his talents earlier in life to something more useful, that would have brought him in a little money. A gentleman born — for he was once a gentleman — to live contentedly in such a hovel as that! But he was always headstrong, and so’s the girl. He never cared for anybody’s advice. He was offered a good place under Government once, but he wouldn’t take it. He had no time to waste, he said, on making money. He went his own way, and wrote his own useless unsaleable books for his own amusement. And what on earth he lives upon now, nobody hereabouts can ever imagine.’
‘His “Philosophy” has had a very small circulation, no doubt,’ Linnell ventured to put in apologetically, at the first pause in Mrs. Maitland’s flowing river of speech; ‘but it has received an immense amount of attention at the hands of all profound thinkers. It gains every day more and more adherents among the most intelligent classes in every country. I believe it will prove to be the philosophy of the future.’
‘I don’t care much about these “everythings of the future” that we hear such a precious lot of talk about nowadays,’ the General put in from the head of the table: ‘the music of the future, the politics of the future, the tactics of the future, and all that sort of thing. For my part, I’m quite content to live in the present, where it has pleased a wise Providence to place me, and leave the future to provide its own philosophy, and its own music, and its own tactics, too, whenever it happens to want them. I’m for the present day all round, I am. But I must say I think Dumaresq’s a very fine soldierly kind of man in his own way, too; he’s been set at his post to hold Philosophy, like a forlorn hope, and he sticks to it bravely, in spite of everything. He thinks he’s got his work cut out for him in life. I don’t know whether it’s good work or bad: I don’t understand these things myself: I don’t pretend to. In my day soldiers weren’t expected to take up philosophy: this wretched examination system that bothers us now hadn’t even been invented: we fought and bled and did our duty, and that was all the country asked or wanted of us. It didn’t inquire whether Nelson or Wellington had passed an examination in English literature. But Dumaresq thinks he’s called upon by nature or his commanding officer to see this business through to the bitter end, come what may: and he sees it through, right or wrong: and by George, sir, I say, I honour him, too, for it. I’ve never read one line the fellow’s written, and if I did read it, I don’t suppose I’d understand a single word of the whole lot, for I’ve hard enough work to understand what the dickens he’s driving at when he’s talking, even — let alone when he’s writing for the people who can follow him: but I can see he thinks he’s sticking to his post, and, hang it all! when a fellow sticks to his post like a brick, if he’s only a marine, you know, you can’t help admiring him for it.’
‘I quite agree with you,’ Linnell answered, looking up hastily with most unusual decision. ‘Haviland Dumaresq’s a very great man, and the way he sticks to his work in life commands one’s respect, whatever one may or may not think of his particular opinions.’
‘Many of them very questionable,’ the Vicar remarked parenthetically.
‘But most of them profoundly true and original,’ Linnell answered with quiet dignity.
Mrs. Maitland’s feminine quickness told her at once that she had started on quite the wrong tack with Linnell, so she made haste diplomatically to retrieve her position.
‘Oh, of course, he’s a wonderful man in his way,’ she said, with conciliating promptitude. ‘Just look at the things he’s fixed up in the garden for drawing water by hydraulic pressure or something, don’t they call it? I know he’s a very remarkable man. And what a picturesque, funny
little cottage! So you’re really sketching it!’
‘It is picturesque,’ Linnell answered, with a fresh return of his engrained dislike to hearing himself or his work talked about. ‘The porch is so pretty, all covered with those lovely hanging creepers. I suppose Dumaresq — it seems absurd to speak of so great a man as that as “Mister Dumaresq” — takes care of it himself. I never saw creepers grow better even in Africa.’
‘Aren’t they just lovely?’ Geraldine interposed quickly. ‘They always remind me so of dear old Algeria. These passion-flowers I’m wearing came from there. Psyche gave them to me.’
And she handed a stray one from the folds of her dress for Linnell to examine. The painter took it and looked at it closely.
‘Miss Dumaresq gave it you!’ he said slowly. ‘She’s very pretty. I should like her to sit to me. In Moorish costume, she’d be the very person for the foreground of that doorway I began at Algiers. You remember the sketch, Miss Maitland; I showed you the study I made for it there: a horseshoe archway in an inner courtyard near the Bab-Azzoun gate, with an Arab girl in indoor dress just stepping out with a tray in her hands among the palms and bananas.’ And as he spoke, he thrust the passion-flower without a word into his own button-hole, and pinned it in as if half unconsciously with a pin from the flap of his evening waistcoat.
Geraldine noticed his action with a quiet smile. He had money, she believed; and Psyche liked him.
‘She’s the very girl for it, Mr. Linnell,’ she cried, with unwonted graciousness. Mrs. Maitland by this time had become engaged in conversation by the amiable Vicar. ‘Of course I remember your sketch perfectly. You must get her to sit for you. She’d be delighted, I’m sure. Now, do please go to-morrow and ask her.’
‘I will,’ Linnell answered, anxious once more to escape the subject — for here he was, talking a second time about his own pictures. ‘I’m going there, as it happens, to dinner in the evening. I’ll take the opportunity to ask her then if she’ll give me sittings.’
Geraldine started.
‘To dinner to-morrow!’ she cried. ‘To dinner at the Dumaresqs’! Why, that’s quite a new departure for them. I never heard of their asking anybody to dinner before. Lunch sometimes, or afternoon tea; but that’s the outside. How very funny! I don’t quite understand it.’
‘But I do,’ Linnell answered. ‘I’m going, and the Mansels too. We’re all invited.’
Geraldine paused for a moment in surprise. Then she added in an undertone:
‘Psyche never said a word of it to me, which is very queer, for I was over there with her the whole afternoon, and she generally tells me everything that happens.’
‘She didn’t know herself, no doubt,’ the painter replied with a glance at his button-hole. ‘Dumaresq met Mansel and me in the lane about six, and asked us then whether we’d come and dine with them, quite unceremoniously. He seemed rather preoccupied and dreamy this evening. He probably asked us on the spur of the moment, and only went home to tell her afterwards.’
‘Probably,’ Geraldine answered with a falling face and a slight sigh. ‘He seemed preoccupied and dreamy this evening, did he? He’s sometimes so. I’m sorry to hear it. But I’m glad you’ve to dine at Psyche’s to-morrow, anyhow. Now I won’t let you off, remember. You must paint her in that picture.’
‘But how about the Arab costume?’ Linnell asked, his usual shyness disappearing for a moment. ‘The portrait would be nothing without the haik and the yashmak.’
‘I can lend you one,’ Geraldine answered with great promptitude. ‘I had it for the Newsomes’ charades last season. It’ll just suit her — a delicate creamy-white Arab wrap, with the loveliest salmon-pink silky covering.’
‘Will you, though?’ the painter cried, delighted. ‘How very good of you! That’s just what I want. The picture shall be painted, you may take my word for it, Miss Maitland. Thank you so much for your kind co-operation.’
At that moment Mrs. Maitland, disengaging herself one second from the Vicar’s eye, strained her ears to the utmost to catch their conversation, while politely assenting to her neighbour’s views on the best way of dealing with rural pauperism. She couldn’t exactly make out what they were saying, but she was sure the conversation was unusually animated. She noted the tone of Linnell’s voice, with its obvious note of pleasure and gratification, and she thought she even caught distinctly the words, ‘Thank you so much for your kind’ something or other.
Later on in the evening, while that safely plain Miss Craigie from the Manor House was putting her stock war-horse through its paces upon the big piano, Mrs. Maitland noticed, to her surprise and pleasure, that Linnell was wearing a passion-flower in his button-hole.
‘Why, what a pretty bouquet!’ she said, glancing over at it archly. ‘I think I know where you got that from, Mr. Linnell.’
Linnell looked down awkwardly at his button-hole for a second in doubt. It was Psyche’s passion-flower, from the creeper on the porch! How should he defend himself? A girl he had only once seen! Then a happy subterfuge flashed across his brain.
‘Yes, Miss Maitland gave it me,’ he answered, with much boldness. ‘It was one of the flowers she was wearing at dinner.’
In his timid anxiety to avoid the imputation of having got it from Psyche, he never saw himself what interpretation Mrs. Maitland must needs put upon his blush and his words. But that astute lady smiled to herself, and remarked inwardly that things seemed really to be coming to a head. Geraldine had given that young man a flower! And the young man for his part had worn it and blushed over it!
As the whole party of visitors walked home together from the Maitlands’ that night, Mrs. Mansel turned to the young painter and said, with a meaning look:
‘You and Geraldine seemed to get on very well together, Mr. Linnell, in spite of your objection to ladies’ society.’
Linnell laughed.
‘Her arctic smile thawed a little this evening,’ he answered casually. ‘Besides, we’ve found an interest in common. She means to help me in the get-up of a picture for which I hope Miss Dumaresq will give me a sitting.’
At that very moment, in the deserted drawing-room, Mrs. Maitland was saying in a confidential tone to her husband:
‘Now, George, remember, when you go up to town next week, you must try to find out at your club the real facts about this young Linnell. Has he money or has he not? That’s the question. We ought to make quite sure about his position and prospects before we let things go any further between him and Geraldine.’
‘I think he’s well off,’ the General murmured in reply, beneath his moustaches.
‘Think! Oh yes. I think so, too. But where one’s daughter’s happiness is at stake, you know, George, one oughtn’t to rest satisfied with mere thinking: one ought, as the Kirkpatrick said, to “mak sicker.” There’s some sort of mystery hanging over the young man’s head, I fancy. If he has money, why doesn’t he marry, and take a country place, and keep his carriage, and hunt the county like other people?’
‘Tastes differ,’ the General murmured, with philosophic calm, as he lighted his cigar. ‘Perhaps the young man doesn’t care for hunting.’
‘Perhaps not,’ Mrs. Maitland replied loftily, curling her upper lip. ‘But a young man of means ought to care for hunting: he owes it to society; and if he doesn’t care, you may depend upon it, George, he has some good reason of his own for wishing to be singular; and not a very creditable reason, either.’
CHAPTER V.
A MODERN STOIC.
To Psyche Dumaresq it was a matter of much internal questioning next day why on earth her father had invited that charming Mr. Linnell to dinner. A dinner-party, on however humble a scale, at the Wren’s Nest was an almost unheard-of novelty. And then, besides, her father had spoken to her somewhat slightingly of Mr. Linnell only the day before yesterday. What could he mean now by this sudden change of front? Why thus incontinently break through all the established rules of that Spartan household, and invite a perfect strange
r to a lordly banquet? The thing was really little short of a miracle.
But Psyche would have been even more astonished still if only she could have known the cause of the change in her father’s demeanour. It was a chance word dropped by Mansel in the course of conversation, implying that Linnell, for all his studious simplicity of dress and manner, had a good deal more money than he ever pretended to. Within all Psyche’s previous experience, a man’s possession of money, especially as fixed and certain income, had always to her father been a positive reason for not desiring the honour of his acquaintance. ‘I dislike the society of men who don’t earn their own living,’ he used to say, in his quiet, restrained way. ‘The necessity for work is the great humanizer. Those who toil not, neither do they spin, can have but very imperfect sympathies, after all, with those who earn their own livelihood by the sweat of their brow. I’m not prejudiced against money, but I find moneyed folks generally distasteful to me. They may be very nice people in their own circle; but I don’t care to let them intersect mine. I feel most at home among my brother-workers.’ If Psyche could have known, therefore, the real reason why her father had invited Linnell to dine with them, her astonishment would indeed have reached its zenith.
As it was, however, she contented herself with making the very best preparations the house could afford for the little entertainment that magical evening; and whatever her dinner lacked in delicacies, it certainly more than made up in delicacy; for the flowers were of Psyche’s own dainty arrangement, and the fruit was plucked from Psyche’s own little garden, and the silk-wrought strip down the centre of the tablecloth had been stitched with that graceful arabesque pattern by Psyche’s own pretty and deft little fingers.
When Linnell arrived, he was shown alone into the tiny drawing-room, and he had some minutes to himself to examine its contents before either Psyche or her father came down to receive him. The young man’s respect for the author of the ‘Encyclopædic Philosophy’ gave a profound interest in his eyes to every detail in that small and severely furnished room. Most of the furniture, indeed — at least, whatever had any pretence to rank as a luxury — had been made by Haviland Dumaresq’s own hands, and bore the impress of his stern and strictly stoical taste. On the carved oak over-mantel — two plain wooden slabs, supported by pillars of Ionic simplicity — lay an uncut copy of the Japanese translation of Dumaresq’s great monumental work, with a framed photograph of a spare face, bearing beneath the simple inscription, ‘John Stuart Mill, to Haviland Dumaresq.’ The plain table by the window was covered with pamphlets, letters, and papers: Linnell took up casually the topmost of the lot, and saw at a glance it was a German dissertation ‘On Certain Side-Aspects of the Dumaresquian Philosophy,’ by two well-known Professors at Bonn and Heidelberg. The next was a controversial religious work by a Polish Archbishop, ‘On Rationalistic Ethics, and especially on the Dumaresquian Law of Reciprocity.’ By their side lay a paper-covered Italian volume, bearing in its upper left-hand corner the manuscript words ‘A Haviland Dumaresq, Hommage de l’Auteur.’ Linnell glanced carelessly at the envelopes on the table. One of them was franked with a Chilian stamp; the other had printed across its top in blue letters, ‘Bureau of Indian Affairs, Washington.’ The gold medal that hung on the wall was the decoration of the Académie des Sciences at Paris: the diploma rolled up on the bookcase beyond conferred the degree of Doctor of Laws of the University of Vienna. And this was the man, known over the whole civilized world, who toiled hard for his daily bread in that tiny cottage at publishers’ hackwork! This was the man whom Mrs. Maitland, in the comfortable villa on the hillside opposite, had complacently classed, in her local ignorance, with the postman poet!
