



Produced by Al Haines









[Frontispiece: "YOU HAVE MADE ME ONCE MORE IN LOVE WITH THE GOODNESS OF
GOD, IN LOVE WITH LIFE" See page 325]




  Adrian
  Savage

  A Novel


  BY LUCAS MALET

  AUTHOR OF
  "SIR RICHARD CALMADY"



  HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
  NEW YORK AND LONDON
  MCMXI



[Illustration: Title page]




  COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY HARPER & BROTHERS

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  PUBLISHED OCTOBER, 1911




  TO

  GABRIELLE FRANCESCA LILIAN MARY

  THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED. UPON
  HER BIRTHDAY. AS A LOVE-TOKEN

  BY
  LUCAS MALET

  THE ORCHARD, EVERSLEY   AUGUST 28, 1911




CONTENTS


I

CONCERNING THE DEAD AND THE LIVING

CHAP.

I. In which the Reader is Invited to Make the Acquaintance of the Hero
of this Book

II. Wherein a Very Modern Young Man Tells a Time-Honored Tale with but
Small Encouragement

III. Telling How René Dax Cooked a Savory Omelette, and Why Gabrielle
St. Leger Looked Out of an Open Window at Past Midnight

IV. Climbing the Ladder

V. Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

VI. Some Consequences of Putting New Wine into Old Bottles

VII. In which Adrian Helps to Throw Earth into an Open Grave

VIII. A Modern Antigone


II

THE DRAWINGS UPON THE WALL

I. A Waster

II. The Return of the Native

III. A Straining of Friendship

IV. In which Adrian Sets Forth in Pursuit of the Further Reason

V. With Deborah, under an Oak in the Parc Monceau

VI. Recording the Vigil of a Scarlet Homunculus and Aristides the Just


III

THE OTHER SIDE

I. Recording a Brave Man's Effort to Cultivate His Private Garden

II. A Strategic Movement which Secures Victory while Simulating Retreat

III. In which Euterpe is Called Upon to Play the Part of Interpreter

IV. Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

V. In which Adrian's Knowledge of Some Inhabitants of the Tower House
is Sensibly Increased

VI. Which Plays Seesaw between a Game of Lawn Tennis and a Prodigal Son

VII. Pistols or Politeness--For Two

VIII. "Nuit de Mai"


IV

THE FOLLY OF THE WISE

I. Re-enter a Wayfaring Gossip

II. In the Track of the Brain-storm

III. In which the Storm Breaks

IV. On the Heights

V. De Profundis


V

THE LIVING AND THE DEAD

I. Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

II. Recording a Sisterly Effort to Let in Light

III. In which Joanna Embraces a Phantom Bliss

IV. "Come Unto These Yellow Sands"

V. In which Adrian Makes Disquieting Acquaintance with the Long Arm of
Coincidence

VI. Concerning a Curse, and the Manner of Its Going Home to Roost

VII. Some Passages from Joanna Smyrthwaite's Locked Book

VIII. In which a Strong Man Adopts a Very Simple Method of Clearing His
Own Path of Thorns

IX. Wherein Adrian Savage Succeeds in Awakening La Belle au Bois Dormant




PREFATORY NOTE

I will ask my readers kindly to understand that this book is altogether
a work of fiction.  The characters it portrays, their circumstances and
the episodes in which they play a part, are my own invention.

Every sincere and scientific student of human nature and the social
scene must, of necessity, depend upon direct observation of life for
his general types--the said types being the composite photographs with
which study and observation have supplied him.  But, for the shaping of
individual characters out of the said types, he should, in my opinion,
rely exclusively upon his imagination and his sense of dramatic
coherence.  Exactly in proportion as he does this can he claim to be a
true artist.  Since the novel, to be a work of art, must be impersonal,
neither autobiographical nor biographical.--I am not, of course,
speaking of the historical novel, whether the history involved be
ancient or contemporary, nor am I speaking of an admitted satire.

I wish further to assure my readers that the names of my characters
have been selected at random; and belong, certainly in sequence of
Christian and surname, to no persons with whom I am, or ever have been,
acquainted.  I may also add that although I have often visited
_Stourmouth_ and its neighborhood--of which I am very fond--my
knowledge of the social life of the district is of the smallest, while
my knowledge of its municipal and commercial life is _nil_.

Finally, the lamented disappearance of _La Gioconda_, from the _Salon
Carré_ of the Louvre, took place when the whole of my manuscript was
already in the hands of the printers.  May I express a pious hope that
this most seductive of women will be safely restored to her former
dwelling-place before any copies of my novel are in the hands of the
public?

LUCAS MALET.

_August_ 28, 1911




I

CONCERNING THE DEAD AND THE LIVING



ADRIAN SAVAGE



CHAPTER I

  IN WHICH THE READER IS INVITED TO MAKE THE
  ACQUAINTANCE OF THE HERO OF THIS BOOK

Adrian Savage--a noticeably distinct, well-groomed, and well-set-up
figure, showing dark in the harsh light of the winter afternoon against
the pallor of the asphalt--walked rapidly across the Pont des Arts,
and, about half-way along the _Quai Malaquais_, turned in under the
archway of a cavernous _porte-cochère_.  The bare, spindly planes and
poplars, in the center of the courtyard to which this gave access,
shivered visibly.  Doubtless the lightly clad, lichen-stained nymph to
whom they acted as body-guard would have shivered likewise had her
stony substance permitted, for icicles fringed the lip of her tilted
pitcher and caked the edge of the shell-shaped basin into which, under
normal conditions, its waters dripped with a not unmusical tinkle.  Yet
the atmosphere of the courtyard struck the young man as almost mild
compared with that of the quay outside, along which the northeasterly
wind scourged bitingly.  Upon the farther bank of the turgid,
gray-green river the buildings of the Louvre stood out pale and stark
against a sullen backing of snow-cloud.  For the past week Paris had
cowered, sunless, in the grip of a black frost.  If those leaden
heavens would only elect to unload themselves of their burden the
weather might take up!  To Adrian Savage, in excellent health and
prosperous circumstances, the cold in itself mattered nothing--would,
indeed, rather have acted as a stimulus to his chronic appreciation of
the joy of living but for the fact that he had to-day been suddenly and
unexpectedly called upon to leave Paris and bid farewell to one of its
inhabitants eminently and even perplexingly dear to him.  Having, for
all his young masculine optimism, the artist's exaggerated sensibility
to the aspects of outward things, and equally exaggerated capacity for
conceiving--highly improbable--disaster, it troubled him to make his
adieux under such forbidding meteorologic conditions.  His regrets and
alarms would, he felt, have been decidedly lessened had kindly sunshine
set a golden frame about his parting impressions.

Nevertheless, as--raising his hat gallantly to the concierge, seated in
her glass-fronted lodge, swathed mummy-like in shawls and mufflers--he
turned shortly to the left along the backs of the tall, gray houses, a
high expectation, at once delightful and disturbing, took possession of
him to the exclusion of all other sensations.  For the past eighteen
months--ever since, indeed, the distressingly sudden death of his old
friend, the popular painter Horace St. Leger--he had made this selfsame
little pilgrimage as frequently as respectful discretion permitted.
And invariably, at the selfsame spot--it was where, as he noted
amusedly, between the third and fourth of the heavily barred
ground-floor windows a square leaden water-pipe, running the height of
the house wall from the parapet of the steep slated roof, reached the
grating in the pavement--this quickening of his whole being came upon
him, however occupied his thoughts might previously have been with his
literary work, or with the conduct of the bi-monthly review of which he
was at once assistant editor and part proprietor.  This quickening
remained with him, moreover, as he entered a doorway set in the near
corner of the courtyard and ran up the flights of waxed wooden stairs
to the third story.  In no country of the civilized world, it may be
confidently asserted, do affairs of the heart, even when virtuous,
command more indulgent sympathy than in France.  It followed that
Adrian entertained his own emotions with the same eager and friendly
amenity which he would have extended to those of another man in like
case.  He was not in the least contemptuous or suspicious of them.  He
permitted cynicism no smallest word in the matter.  On the contrary, he
hailed the present ebullience of his affections as among those
captivating surprises of earthly existence upon which one should warmly
congratulate oneself, having liveliest cause for rejoicing.

To-day, as usual, there was a brief pause before the door of the
vestibule opened.  A space of delicious anxiety---carrying him back to
the poignant hopes and despairs of childhood, when the fate of some
anticipated treat hangs in the balance--while he inquired of the trim
waiting-maid whether her mistress was or was not receiving.  Followed
by that other moment, childlike, too, in its deliciously troubled
emotion and vision, when, passing from the corridor into the warm,
vaguely fragrant atmosphere of the long, pale, rose-red and
canvas- drawing-room, he once again beheld the lady of his
desires and of his heart.

From the foregoing it may be deduced, and rightly, that Adrian Savage
was of a romantic temperament, and that he was very much in love.  Let
it be immediately added, however, that he was a young gentleman whose
head, to employ a vulgarism, was most emphatically screwed on the right
way.  Only child of an eminent English physician of good family, long
resident in Paris, and of a French mother--a woman of great personal
charm and some distinction as a poetess--he had inherited, along with a
comfortable little income of about eighteen hundred pounds a year, a
certain sagacity and decision in dealing with men and with affairs, as
well as quick sensibility in relation to beauty and to drama.  Artist
and practical man of the world went, for the most part, very happily
hand and hand in him.  At moments, however, they quarreled, to the
production of complications.

The death of both his parents occurred during his tenth year, leaving
him to the guardianship of a devoted French grandmother.  Under the
terms of Doctor Savage's will one-third of his income was to be applied
to the boy's maintenance and education until his majority, the
remaining two-thirds being set aside to accumulate