Part 21

"And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here, to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?"

"Chedsey, sir."

"Seems familiar--" He shook his head. "You don't recall a Mr. Ayling--twenty-five or thirty years ago?"

"Ayling, sir? I recall there _was_ a member of that name.... _You're_ not Mr. Ayling, sir?"

"We're not very flattering, either of us, it seems. But then, privilege of the aged, I suppose."

"Beg pardon, sir. I'm sorry--I ought to remember you."

"We're wearing masks, Chedsey, you and I."

"You're right, sir, I'm afraid."

They regarded each other, those two, Chedsey, rotund and pink, looking down upon Ayling, long and lean, with fine wrinkles about his eyes, and hair considerably grayed, wondering, both of them, why names should be so much more enduring than they themselves had been.

It was not until Ayling had begun to ask Chedsey for news of old friends, and chanced almost at once to mention Lonsdale, that both he and the old waiter exclaimed in the same breath, "Major Lonsdale!" as if the Major's name had been a key to open the doors of both their memories.

"And you're young Mr. Dick Ayling! I remember you perfectly now!" Chedsey beamed. How could he have failed to remember any one of those gay young friends of the major's?

"And where," asked Ayling, "is the major now?"

"Major Lonsdale, sir--has been gone seven years. Hadn't you heard?"

Lonsdale gone! Lonsdale dead! Lonsdale had begun life so brilliantly. Ayling did feel left over and old.

"What happened?" he asked, and Chedsey, glad to talk of the major, told how he had left the club to be Major Lonsdale's man just after he came back from the Boer War. How things hadn't seemed to go well with the major after that; he lost money--just how, Chedsey didn't say, but gave one to understand that it was a misfortune beyond the major's control. In the end he was forced to give up his house, and Chedsey came back to the club. A few years later the major was taken with pneumonia, quite suddenly, and died. Did Mr. Ayling know Major Lonsdale's wife?

"Yes," said Ayling. "What became of Mrs. Lonsdale?"

"Here in London, sir."

"Wasn't there," asked Ayling, "a child, a little girl?"

"Ah, Miss Peggy, sir!" It was plain that "Miss Peggy" was one of Chedsey's enthusiasms. A young lady now ... and soon to be married to a fine young gentleman of one of the best Scotch families.... She'll have a title some day.... Picture in the _Sketch_ recently--perhaps he could find it for Mr. Ayling.

"Never mind," said Ayling, who was not thinking of Miss Peggy at all, but of her parents, young Major Harry Lonsdale, and his pretty wife.--He remembered her as a bride--Bessie, the major had called her--a graceful young creature with brown hair and brown-flecked eyes, already at that age a charming hostess in the fine old house Harry Lonsdale had inherited from his father.

"They are living in Cambridge Terrace," Chedsey was saying. "Would Mr. Ayling like the address?"

Ayling wrote down the address Chedsey gave him, and put it away in his pocket, with no more definite idea than that some day, if opportunity offered, he might look her up, for his old friend's sake.

He began to inquire about other men--Carrington, Farnsby, Blake. Dead, all three of them--Farnsby only last spring. Was it some fate that pursued his particular friends? But those men had all, he reflected, been older than he. And yet, he recalled the words of his doctor:

"A man's as old as his arteries. You've been too long out here. Be sensible, Ayling.... Go home--take it easy--rest. You'll have a long time yet...."

Just a week later, to the day, Ayling stepped into a telephone-booth, looked up Mrs. Lonsdale's number, and telephoned. He had not counted upon loneliness.

* * * * *

At forty-five Bessie Lonsdale had encountered one of those universal experiences which invariably give us, as individuals, so strong a sense of surprise. She had discovered suddenly, upon completion of the task to which she had so long given her energies, that she had become the task; that she no longer had any identity apart from it. And her consciousness of having arrived at exactly the place where hundreds before her must have arrived had only added to the strangeness of her experience.

A week ago she had seen her twenty-year-old daughter off to the north of Scotland for a month's visit to the family which she was soon to enter as a bride. It seemed to her that Peggy had never been so lovely as when she said good-by to her at the station that day, slim, fragrant, shining-eyed, and looking very patrician indeed in her smart sable jacket (cut from the luxurious sable cape that had been part of her mother's trousseau), with the violets pinned into the buttonhole. And Bessie Lonsdale had seen with pride and no twinge of jealousy the admiration in the eyes of that aristocratic, if somewhat stern-faced, old lady who was to be Peggy's mother-in-law, and who, with true Scotch propriety, had come all the way down to London to take her home with her.

"I don't like leaving you alone," Peggy had said, as they kissed each other good-by. "You're going to let yourself be dull."

And her mother had patted the soft cheek, and replied: "I'm going to enjoy every minute of it. I mean to have a good rest and get acquainted with myself."

When, a few moments later, she waved them good-by as the train moved slowly out of the station, Bessie Lonsdale had turned away with a long-drawn and involuntary sigh--a sigh of thanksgiving and relief.

Peggy at last was safe! Her happiness and her future assured. All those years of hoping and holding steady had come now to this happy end. Ever since her husband's early death Bessie Lonsdale had centered herself upon the future of her child. She had had only her few hundred a year saved from the wreck of her husband's affairs, but she had set her course, and, with an air of sailing in circles for pleasure's sake, stood clear of the rocks and shoals. She had never borrowed; she had never apologized; had never been considered a poor relation, or spoken of as pathetic or "brave." Her little flat was an achievement. It was astonishing how she had managed at once so much simplicity, so much downright comfort, and so charming an atmosphere. She had done so much with so little, yet hers were not anxious rooms, like the rooms of so many women of small means. They had space, repose, good cheer, even an air of luxury. It was the home of a gentlewoman who could make a little better than "the best of things." She had even entertained a little, now and then--more of late, now that Peggy's education was complete--but this at the cost of many economies in the right quarter, and many extravagances also rightly placed.

Call this "climbing" if you will, and a stress upon false values. Bessie Lonsdale gave herself to no such futile speculations as that. She was too busy at her task. She was neither so young nor so hypocritical as to pretend that these things were to be despised. She had done only what every other mother in the world wishes to do--to guide and protect her child and see her future provided for; only she had done it more efficiently than most; had brought, perhaps, a greater fitness or a greater consecration to the task. And the success of her achievement lay in the art with which she had concealed all trace of effort and strain. Peggy herself would have been first to laugh at the notion that her mother had had anything whatever to do with her falling in love with Andrew McCrae. She believed that it was by the sheer prodigality of the Fates that, besides being in love with her, romantically, as only a Scotchman can be, young Andrew McCrae was heir to one of the most substantial fortunes in all the north, and would succeed to a title one day....

So Bessie Lonsdale had sighed her deep sigh of peace and gone back to her flat. And because she had really wanted to be alone she had sent her one faithful old servant away for a long-postponed visit to country relatives. Then she had sat down to rest, and to "get acquainted with herself." And in two days she had made her discovery. There was no "herself." She had been Peggy's mother so long that Bessie Lonsdale as a separate entity had entirely ceased to exist.

It was at the end of the week that Ayling telephoned. And, although she had been avoiding even chance meetings with acquaintances, she found herself asking Ayling, whom she had not seen for twenty-five years, and whom she had known but slightly then, to come that day at five to tea. She realized only after she had left the telephone that it was because his voice had come to her out of that far time before she had become the mother of Peggy, and because she had a vague sort of hope that he might help to bring back a bit of the old self she had lost.

She was, when she thought of it, a little puzzled by his looking her up. Had he and Harry been such friends?

Promptly at five he came. At the door they greeted each other with a sudden unexpected warmth. And while he was clasping her hand and saying how jolly it was, after all this time, to find her here, and she was saying how nice it was to see _him_, how nice of him to look her up, he was thinking to himself that he might have recognized her by the brown-flecked eyes, and she was thinking, "He's an old man, older than I--the age Harry would have been----"

"So you've come home," she said, "to stay?"

"Yes, we all do. It's what we look forward to out there."

"I know." With a little hospitable gesture and a step backward she brought him in.

They had not mentioned the major who was gone, nor had they mentioned the years that had passed since their last meeting, yet suddenly, without any premonition, those two turned their eyes away from each other, to avoid bursting senselessly into tears. An almost inconceivable disaster, yet one for the moment perilously imminent.

Yet neither of them was thinking of Major Lonsdale nor of anything so grievous as death; they were thinking of those terrifying little wrinkles round their eyes, and of the little up-and-down lines that would never disappear, and something inside them both gave suddenly away, melted, flooding them inside with tears that must not be shed.

She held out her hand for his hat and stick. For an instant they both felt a deep constraint, and as he was getting out of his coat each wondered if the other had noticed it.

Ayling turned about and stumbled awkwardly over a small hassock on the floor, and they both laughed, which helped them recover themselves.

"How long has it really been?" she asked, as she faced him beside the fire.

"Twenty-five years." He smiled at her, shaking his head. "Twenty-five years!"

"You _must_ feel the prodigal son!"

"Not until I came in your door just now, I didn't at all." And then, without in the least intending to say it, he added, "You were the only person in London I knew."

It was the first of many things he had not intended to tell. As it was the first of many afternoons when they sat before the fire in her pretty drawing-room--that gallant little blaze that did its best to combat the gloom and chill of London's late winter rains--and drank their tea and talked, the comfortable, scattering talk of old friends; although it was not because of the past that they were friends, but because of the present and their mutual need. They did not speak of loneliness; it was a word, perhaps, of which they were both afraid.

When they talked of her husband, of the old house, the old days, she felt herself coming back, materializing gradually again, out of the past. Ayling said to himself that he could talk to Bessie Lonsdale of things he had never been able to speak of to any one else, because they had had so much common experience. For from the beginning Ayling had had the illusion that Bessie Lonsdale, as well as he, had been away all those years, and had just come back to London again. He had said this to her as he was leaving on that first afternoon, and she had smiled and said, "So I have, just that--I've been away and come back, and I hardly know where to begin." Later he understood. For once or twice he met there a few of her friends, people who dropped in to inquire what she had heard from Peggy; people who talked of how they were missing Peggy, of the time when she would be coming home, of her approaching wedding, and one and all they commented upon the emptiness of the flat without Peggy there, and how lonely it must be for dear Mrs. Lonsdale with Peggy away.

"I seem to be the only person in London not missing Peggy," he said to her one day. Her brown-flecked eyes looked at him straight for an instant, and then slowly they smiled, for she knew that he understood. She had not needed to tell him, for he had divined it for himself. Just as he had not needed to tell her how much her being in London had meant to him.

As it was, the incessant chill and dampness of the weather had done his health no good. His blood was thin from long years of Indian sun, and he found it a constant effort to resist. The gloom seemed even worse than the cold, and, although he had thought that he should never wish for sun again, after India, he did wish for it now, wished for it until it became a sheer physical need. For the first time in his life he began to feel that he was getting old. Or was it, he asked himself, only that he had time now to think of such things? Bessie Lonsdale saw it, for her eyes were quick and keen, and she had long been in the habit of mothering. "It's this beastly London," she said. "I know!" And it was she who made him promise to go away for a week in the country, where he might have a glimpse at least of the sun. He remembered an inn at Homebury St. Mary, where he had spent a summer as a child, and it was there, for no reason except the memory of so much sun, that he planned to go, "by the middle of next week," he said, "when Peggy will be coming home."

They had been talking of her return, and he had confessed to the notion that he would feel himself superfluous, out of place, somehow, when Peggy came home. His confession had pleased her, she hardly knew why. As for herself, she had had something of the same thought that when Peggy came there would be--well, a different atmosphere.

She was looking forward daily now to a letter saying by what train Peggy would return. On Thursday there arrived, instead, a letter from Lady McCrae, begging that they be allowed "to keep our dear Peggy for another ten days." The heavy weather had kept the young people indoors, and a great many excursions which they had planned had had to be put off on account of it. She said, in her dignified way, many things vastly pleasing to a mother's heart, and Mrs. Lonsdale could do nothing but write, giving her consent.

When she had written the letter and sent it off she began to be curiously depressed, and she wandered through the flat, conscious at last of just how much she had really missed Peggy's laughter, her gaiety, and her swift young step. The week before her loomed longer than all the time she had been away.

That afternoon she told Ayling her news, but it was not until she had finished telling him that she remembered that he, too, would be going away. She hadn't known until then how much his being there had meant.

"I don't know," she said, "how I shall put in the week! After all, I've been missing her more than I knew."

It occurred to Ayling that, standing there before him with Lady McCrae's letter, which she had been showing him, in her hand, she was exactly like a little girl who was going to be left all alone.

The idea came to him suddenly. "Look here, Bessie; come down to Homebury St. Mary with me! It would do you no end of good."

The quality of their friendship was clear in the simplicity with which he made the suggestion, and the absence of self-consciousness with which she heard it made.

"I should love it!" she said.

"Then come along. You've nothing to keep you here; the country's just what you need."

She did not answer at once, but stood looking away from him, a little frown between her eyes. She was thinking how absurd it would be to object, and how equally absurd it seemed to say yes. It _was_ so nice to have some one think of her as he thought of himself, simply, normally, humanly, as Dick Ayling seemed to have thought of her from the first.

Then abruptly she accepted his simplification. "I'll go," she said.

"Good! I'll telephone through for a room for you.... When can you be ready?" he asked.

"To-day--this afternoon. Let's get away before I discover all the reasons to prevent! I won't bother about a lot of luggage--my big bag will do."

"Great! I'll ask about trains."

All at once, like two children, they became immensely exhilarated at the prospect before them--a week's holiday!

He went to the telephone and presently reported: "There's a train at two-forty. Can you make it by then?"

She looked at the clock on the mantel. "We'll make it," she said.

He was getting into his coat. "I'll go on to the club, get my things together, and come back for you at two-fifteen, then."

He rushed away, both of them almost forgetting to say good-by, and she went into her bedroom to pack.

When, promptly at two-fifteen, he rang her bell, she was waiting, hat and gloves on, and called out, "All ready!" as the taxi-driver followed Ayling up for her bag....

* * * * *

The spring had come up to meet them at Homebury St. Mary. So Bessie Lonsdale said to herself when she woke in her old-fashioned chintz-curtained room. The sun shone in at the windows, the air was balmy and sweet, and lifting herself on her elbow, she saw in a little round swale in the garden outside a faint showing of green nestled into the damp brown earth.

She got up, rang for a maid, who came, smiling, white-capped, rosy-cheeked. She had coffee and rolls with rich country cream while she dressed. Her room opened directly into the garden, and she put on stout boots and a walking-suit and a soft little hat of green felt, and went out. Ayling, who had evidently risen early, was coming toward her, swinging a great, freshly whittled staff cut from the woods beyond the inn. He called to her:

"You see! The sun _does_ shine at Homebury St. Mary!" And then, as if in gratitude for so glorious a day, he wished to be fair to the rest of the world, he added, as he came up, "I wonder if it's shining in London, too."

"London?" she said. "London? There's no such place!"

"Glad you came?" he asked.

"Glad!" Her tone was enough.

"That's a jolly green hat," he said, and made her a little bow.

"Glad you like it," she laughed. "And that's a jolly staff."

He showed it off proudly. "Work of art," he said. "I made one just like it when I was here the summer I was twelve--I remembered it this morning when I woke up, and I came out to get this one."

She admired it critically, particularly the initials of the dark bark left on, but suggested an improvement about the knob.

"By Jove! you're right," he admitted, and set to work with his knife.

They were like two youngsters out of school. All morning they idled out-of-doors, exploring the little lanes that led off into the buff-colored hills, returning at noon, ravenous, to lunch in the dining-room of the inn, parting afterward in the corridor, and going to their own rooms to rest and read. At four Ayling tapped at her door to say that there was in the sitting-room "an absolutely enormous tea."

That night, before a beautiful fire in the sitting-room, they caught each other yawning at half past nine, and at ten they said good-night.

It had been so perfect that the next day found them following the same routine. And the next day, and the next. Bessie Lonsdale had not felt for years so much peace and so much strength. In their morning walks together her strength showed greater than his. The bracing air exhilarated her, and she felt she could have walked forever in the lovely rolling hills. Once she had walked on and on, faster and faster, not noticing how she had quickened her pace, her head up, facing the light wind blowing in from the sea. And, turning to ask a question of Ayling at her side, his white face stopped her instantly.

"Oh, I _am_ sorry! Forgive me," she said.

He smiled, embarrassed, and waited a moment for breath before he said, "It's just the wind; it's pretty stiff."

And she had said no more, because it embarrassed him, but she suited her pace to his after that, never forgiving herself for her thoughtlessness. And she chose, instead of the hill roads, the level, winding lanes.

For five perfect spring days they spent their mornings out-of-doors in the sun, lunched, parted until tea, met at dinner again, and said good night at a preposterously early hour. And they could not have said whether they amused or interested or merely comforted each other. Perhaps they did all three. At any rate, it was an idyll of its kind, and of more genuine beauty than many less platonic idylls have been.

On the morning of the sixth day Bessie Lonsdale went out into the garden as usual, to find the sky overcast with light, fleecy clouds. But the air was soft, and she wandered about for half an hour before it occurred to her that perhaps Ayling was waiting for her inside. She went in to look, but saw him nowhere, and decided that he was sleeping late. She waited until eleven, and then went out to walk by herself. But she did not relish the walk because she was uneasy about Ayling. She was afraid he was ill. She forced herself to go on a little way, but when she came to the second turn in the road, she faced abruptly about and came back to the inn. Still Ayling was nowhere about. He was not in the garden; he was not in the coffee-room. She went to her own room and sat down with a book, but she could not read. So she went into the corridor, searching for some one of whom she might inquire. But no one was visible.

Ayling's room opened off of the little public sitting-room at the end of the corridor. She went on until she reached the sitting-room, which she entered, and then stood still, listening for some sound from beyond Ayling's door. The silence seemed to grow round her; it filled the room, it spread through the house. And then, propelled by that silence toward the door, she put out her hand and knocked softly. There was no response. She repeated the knock--twice--and only that pervading silence answered her. She took hold of the knob and turned it without a sound; the door gave inward and she stepped inside the room. The bed faced her, and Ayling was lying there, on his side. Even before she saw his face, her own heart told her that he was dead.... He lay there quite peacefully, as if he had died in his sleep.