Part 17

After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that was not hers. For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey, dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a deserted nest. It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it, where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands, where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love.

On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England. The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas should pass. But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that touched anything so fantastic as this picture. The Duchess was serious and lonely. With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made her bedroom. Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place in.

"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is hurrying to _me_!"

She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at the cloister effect. She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room for a wife. "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has gone. I shall break my promise. Oh, I can't really wait at all! If things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"

The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere dum licet_. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer in winter time.

The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.

"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"

The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.

"A mort, my lady."

"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too, every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."

The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind his ear, he nodded.

"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the castle."

She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions, then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she remembered the shot.

"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here, you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate and in the direction of the brick path.

As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart; the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple blooms at her feet. Then the hands that had gone to her heart extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's name.

The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up. He was a strong man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line. The sound of voices had reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale, clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and his balance not all he could wish. Before him was a little brick house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself, lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were extended towards him.

"Cecil!" she cried. "Oh, my God! Cecil, what has happened to you?"

Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support, and it felt warm and wonderful.

"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. I'm nasty and bloody. It's all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really. A lot of beastly shot has gone off into my shoulder. Just call some one to help me, will you?"

"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you can perfectly well get along with only me. Come, come!"

The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept him manfully to his feet. With his left hand he very firmly pushed the Duchess a little away from him.

"Come?" he repeated. "Come where?"

"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up. "Oh, lean on me! You'll fall, you'll fall! Mellon!" she cried. "O Mellon!"

But the Duke put up his hand. "I'm all right," he said. "Don't call. What house is that? What home do you mean?"

"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr. Bulstrode's."

The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.

"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed. "What the devil does he do here? I saw you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. If I ever get back to where Bulstrode is----"

"Cecil!" cried the Duchess. She again wound her arms around him, and it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a child that has just learned to walk.

"He is fainting!" she cried. "Mellon, Mellon!"

The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. They hit the big dial with a ring.

The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "I beg your pardon," he said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's house, you know."

"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are! Bulstrode's house! Why, it's mine! Oh, don't break my heart. He's only bought it, you know, that's all."

"Break her heart!" It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of Westboro'. He had never heard it in all his life. It was warm and struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover.

"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted.

"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess.

The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?"

"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day. I think I have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came."

The Duke halted again on his crawling way. Mellon, who had really reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried, but ceased to flow.

"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word, he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble visitor was.

With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly: "Send this damned gardener away."

"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him."

They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial, round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of the afternoon sun touched its edges. Westboro' lurched towards the wall. "Send this man away," he commanded.

"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones." But at her husband's face she motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit. His Grace wants to rest on the wall. I'll call you."

With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall, his ashen face lifted to her.

"I've only one arm," he said. He put it around her and he drew her down as close to him as he could. He felt her face warm against his, wet against his with tears. As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud.

"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed. "Do you forgive me? ... Then," said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured. I love you--I love you."

The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. After a few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband, she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at once for Bulstrode at the castle.

Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour. I need no one but you; send them all away, all away."

He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been indifferent to her disobedience. But now she did what he bade her, and led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm; led him to the lounge, where he sank down. Here, by his side, she gave him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen Elizabeth.

The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and knew that he was hers. And he, more wild with love for her than suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him and that she was his.

The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately "filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it, filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode, when he came and found it housing the lovers.

THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE

VIII

IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN

England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite another.

Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.

He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.

She was at home.

An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten years, meant to him still.

In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.

He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were not at his tongue's end.

The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there could be no doubt.

The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate, than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him from her hard bench, had said:

"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!"

"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a line she did not want him to see.

"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future towards which he looks! It's only those people whose doors are all shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want to go--only those people are old!"

And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led rapidly away. Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again. Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted. But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to endure the _étape_ that lay between self and life. Such a little tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer. He did not, with any degree of anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took existence in his mind. But he knew that he waited for his own.

It was with some such personal feeling that in something that looked like a future he might one day lead the woman he loved home, that he had taken any pleasure whatsoever in his involuntary purchase of the old property known as The Dials. The gray house down in Glousceshire in its half-forsaken seclusion, the lie of the land round it, its shut-offness from the world, its ancient beauty, had been a constant suggestion to him of a future dwelling, and the doors, the windows, the low-inviting rooms, the shadowy stairways, ingles, gables, terraces, the dials and sunken gardens, had appeared to him conceived, planned and waiting to be the settings for a life of his own. He wanted very much to tell Mrs. Falconer all about the lovely English country-seat.

In the room where they now talked, wreaths of fog filled the corners like spiders' dusty webs that poised and swung. The odor that stamps England hung in the mist, furthermore permeated with the scent of a bouquet at Mrs. Falconer's elbow and which at one moment of his visit Jimmy recognized for a lot of roses sent by parcel post from the Westboro' greeneries.

"Do you ever sew?" he asked her, and she admitted to a thimble which persistently, with a suggestion of reproach, turned up every now and then amongst her belongings; now falling out from a jewel box, then stowed away in a handkerchief case, out of place and continually reproachful: kept because it had been her mother's.

If he did not speak other than in a general way of the rather long visit he had been making to the Duke of Westboro' in Glousceshire, he did tell his friend all about The Dials and dwelt on the fascination that the old place possessed. The Dials was, in point of fact, very agreeably described to Mrs. Falconer, who looked it out on the map of Glousceshire, and Bulstrode's purchase (for he had legally gone in for it, the whole thing), was made to seem a very jewel of a property.

"It's as lovely as an old print," she said, "as good as a Turner. You're a great artist along your lines, Jimmy. Don't have it rebuilt by some more than designing architect in trouble, or landscape-gardened by some inebriated Adam out of charity. Leave it beautifully alone."

"Oh, I will," he assured her. "It shall tumble away and crush away in peace. You shall see it all, however," he assured, "for you really will come down for Christmas? You see, poor old fellow, Westboro's house is rather empty."

"Yes," nodded Mrs. Falconer.

"You see, every one else has gone back on him."

"Poor dear," sympathized the lady. "Of course we'll go down."

No matter to what extent he had thought of her, and it was pretty sure to be a wide one, her beauty struck him every time afresh. There was the fine exquisiteness of _fin de race_ in Mary Falconer. Her father had been an Irishman born, and the type of his island's lovely women was repeated in his daughter's blue eyes, the set of her head and her arms; her taper and small-boned little wrists, her cool hands with the slender fingers told of muscle and moulding and completed the well-finished, well turned-out creature whose race it had taken generations to perfect. These distinctions her clever father bequeathed her as well as her laugh and her wit, her blue eyes and her curling hair.

Bulstrode stayed on in the dingy delightful room, until at an order of his hostess, luncheon was served them on a small table, and over the good things of an amazingly well-understood buffet and a bottle of wine, they were left alone. Bulstrode stayed on until the fog in the corners darkened to the blackest of ugly webs and choked the fire and clutched the candles' slender throats as if to suffocate the flame. Tea was served and put away and the period known as _entre chien et loup_ at length stole up Portman Square alongside the fog and found Bulstrode still staying on....

Later, much later, when the lamps in the street and the square found themselves, with no visible transition, lighting night-time as they had lighted day--when the hansoms began to swing the early diners along to their destinations, a hansom drew up before No. ----, Portman Square.

It was at the hour soft-footed London had ceased to roll its rubber tires down the little street, and only an occasional cab slipped by unheard. But a small hand cart on which a piano organ was installed wheeled by No. ----, Portman Square, and stopped directly under the Sorghams' window and a man began to sing:

"I'll sing thee songs of Araby And tales of old Cashmere."

The creature was singing for his living, for his supper doubtless, certainly for his breakfast, but he chanced to possess a remarkable gift and he evidently loved his trade. The silence--wherein all London appeared to listen, the quiet wherein the magically suspended room had swung and swung until even Bulstrode's clear mind and good sense began fatally to blur and swing with the pendulant room--was broken into by the song.

And as Bulstrode moved and turned away his eyes from the woman's lovely face, she sighed and covered her own eyes with her hands. The small coffee table had been taken away. Mrs. Falconer was in a low chair leaning forwards, her hands lying loosely in her lap. The distance between the two his hand could have bridged in one gesture. The voice of the street singer was superb, liquid and sweet. He sang his ballad well.

"I'll sing thee songs of Araby And tales of old Cashmere."

Mrs. Falconer's guest rose.

"You'll come down for Christmas," he said, "and I'll meet you as we have arranged, to-morrow."

"Jimmy," she protested, "it's only ten o'clock."

"I must, however, go."

"Nonsense. Where will you pass the next hour and a half? There's not a cat in town."

"Nevertheless, I promised a man to meet him at the...."

"_Jimmy_!"

He had reached the door, making his way with a dogged determination and, like a man who has touched terra firma after months on a dancing brig, still not feeling quite sure of the land or its tricks.

"How you hurry from me," she said softly.

"Oh, I'm hurrying off," he explained brightly, "because I want to get hold of that chap out there and take him to supper, and to find out why he isn't on the operatic stage. He's got a jolly voice. Good night, good night."

He was gone from her with scant courtesy and a brusquerie she knew well, adored and hated! During these last years she had done her cruel best, her wicked best, to soften and change and break it down.

The curtains, as she drew them back, showed that the fog had for the most part lifted, and she was just in time to see the piano and the two musicians disappear in the mist which still tenaciously held the end of the street in shadow--a gentleman in long evening cloak and high hat hurried after the street people. The woman's face was tender as she watched the distinguished figure melt into the fog, and at her last glimpse of her friend she blew a kiss against the pane.

Bulstrode did not go back that night to Westboro'. He wired out that Mrs. Falconer and himself would be down for dinner the following day and he also wired for a motor to meet him some few miles from Penhaven Abbey, as the motor did the next day.

As he speeded towards Penhaven Bulstrode leaned towards the man who drove him.

"Stop first at the inn, will you, Bowles? I'll order tea there, and then drive on to the station at the Hants. It's the three o'clock from London we're to meet, you know, and we've just the time."

The Abbey and its clustering village hung on the hill side some fifteen lovely miles away to the south of them. And Bulstrode, who was at length obediently answering the call of it, and in response to the fancied bell of the entire country side, religiously hastening to whatever might reward him, settled himself back in his corner.