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{72} 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.’{73}
‘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{74} 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{75} 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—{76}
‘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{77} 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{78} straw for public or private opinion, and he made boyish love to Haidee with all the shamelessness of depraved youth. H............