Dominey spent a curiously placid, and, to those with whom he was brought
into contact, an entirely satisfactory afternoon. With Mr. Mangan by
his side, murmuring amiable platitudes, and Mr. Johnson, his agent,
opposite, revelling in the unusual situation of a satisfied landlord and
delighted tenants, he made practically the entire round of the Dominey
estates. They reached home late, but Dominey, although he seemed to
be living in another world, was not neglectful of the claims of
hospitality. Probably for the first time in their lives, Mr. Johnson
and Lees, the bailiff, watched the opening of a magnum of champagne. Mr.
Johnson cleared his throat as he raised his glass.
“It isn't only on my own account, Sir Everard,” he said, “that I drink
your hearty good health. I have your tenants too in my mind. They've
had a rough time, some of them, and they've stood it like white men.
So here's from them and me to you, sir, and may we see plenty of you in
these parts.”
Mr. Lees associated himself with these sentiments, and the glasses were
speedily emptied and filled again.
“I suppose you know, Sir Everard,” the agent observed, “that what you've
promised to do to-day will cost a matter of ten to fifteen thousand
pounds.”
Dominey nodded.
“Before I go to bed to-night,” he said, “I shall send a cheque for
twenty thousand pounds to the estate account at your bank at Wells. The
money is there waiting, put aside for just that one purpose and--well,
you may just as well have it.”
Agent and bailiff leaned back in the tonneau of their motor-car, half an
hour later, with immense cigars in their mouths and a pleasant, rippling
warmth in their veins. They had the sense of having drifted into
fairyland. Their philosophy, however, met the situation.
“It's a fair miracle,” Mr. Lees declared.
“A modern romance,” Mr. Johnson, who read novels, murmured. “Hello,
here's a visitor for the Hall,” he added, as a car swept by them.
“Comfortable-looking gent, too,” Mr. Lees remarked.
The “comfortable-looking gent” was Otto Seaman, who presented himself at
the Hall with a small dressing-bag and a great many apologies.
“Found myself in Norwich, Sir Everard,” he explained. “I have done
business there all my life, and one of my customers needed looking
after. I finished early, and when I found that I was only thirty miles
off you, I couldn't resist having a run across. If it is in any way
inconvenient to put me up for the night, say so--”
“My dear fellow!” Dominey interrupted. “There are a score of rooms
ready. All that we need is to light a fire, and an old-fashioned
bed-warmer will do the rest. You remember Mr. Mangan?”
The two men shook hands, and Seaman accepted a little refreshment after
his drive. He lingered behind for a moment after the dressing bell had
rung.
“What time is that fellow going?” he asked.
“Nine o'clock to-morrow morning,” Dominey replied.
“Not a word until then,” Seaman whispered back. “I must not seem to
be hanging after you too much--I really did not want to come--but the
matter is urgent.”
“We can send Mangan to bed early,” Dominey suggested.
“I am the early bird myself,” was the weary reply. “I was up all last
night. To-morrow morning will do.”
Dinner that night was a pleasant and social meal. Mr. Mangan especially
was uplifted. Everything to do with the Domineys for the last fifteen
years had reeked of poverty. He had really had a hard struggle to
make both ends meet. There had been disagreeable interviews with angry
tenants, formal interviews with dissatisfied mortgagees, and remarkably
little profit at the end of the year to set against these disagreeable
episodes. The new situation was almost beatific. The concluding touch,
perhaps, was in Parkins' congratulatory whisper as he set a couple of
decanters upon the table.
“I have found a bin of Cockburn's _fifty-one_, sir,” he announced,
including the lawyer in his confidential whisper. “I thought you
might like to try a couple of bottles, as Mr. Mangan seems rather a
connoisseur, sir. The corks appear to be in excellent condition.”
“After this,” Mr. Mangan sighed, “it will be hard to get back to the
austere life of a Pall Mall club!”
Seaman, very early in the evening, pleaded an extraordinary sleepiness
and retired, leaving his host and Mangan alone over the port. Dominey,
although an attentive host, seemed a little abstracted. Even Mr. Mangan,
who was not an observant man, was conscious that a certain hardness,
almost arrogance of speech and manner, seemed temporarily to have left
his patron.
“I can't tell you, Sir Everard,” he said, as he sipped his first
glass of wine, “what a pleasure it is to me to see, as it were, this
recrudescence of an old family. If I might be allowed to say so, there's
only one thing necessary to round the whole business off, as it were.”
“And that?” Dominey asked unthinkingly.
“The return of Lady Dominey to health. I was one of the few, you may
remember, privileged to make her acquaintance at the time of your
marriage.”
“I paid a visit this morning,” Dominey said, “to the doctor who has been
in attendance upon her since her marriage. He agrees with me that there
is no reason why Lady Dominey should not, in course of time, be restored
to perfect health.”
“I take the liberty of finishing my glass to that hope, Sir Everard,”
the lawyer murmured.
Both glasses were set down empty, only the stem of Dominey's was snapped
in two. Mr. Mangan expressed his polite regrets.
“This old glass,” he murmured, looking at his own admiringly, “becomes
very fragile.”
Dominey did not answer. His brain had served him a strange trick. In
the shadows of the room he had fancied that he could see Stephanie
Eiderstrom holding out her arms, calling to him to fulfill the pledges
of long ago, and behind her--
“Have you ever been in love, Mangan?” Dominey asked his companion.
“I, sir? Well, I'm not sure,” the man of the world replied, a little
startled by the abruptness of the question. “It's an old-fashioned way
of looking at things now, isn't it?”
Dominey relapsed into thoughtfulness.
“I suppose so,” he admitted.
That night a storm rolled up from somewhere across that grey waste of
waters, a storm heralded by a wind which came booming over the marshes,
shaking the latticed windows of Dominey Place, shrieking and wailing
amongst its chimneys and around its many corners. Black clouds leaned
over the land, and drenching streams of rain dashed against the
loose-framed sashes of the windows. Dominey lit the tall candles in
his bedroom, fastened a dressing-gown around him, threw himself into an
easy-chair, and, fixing an electric reading lamp by his side, tried to
read. Very soon the book slipped from his fingers. He became suddenly
tense and watchful. His eyes counted one by one the panels in the wall
by the left-hand side of the bed. The familiar click was twice repeated.
For a moment a dark space appeared. Then a woman, stooping low, glided
into the room. She came slowly towards him, drawn like a moth towards
that semicircle of candle. Her hair hung down her back like a girl's,
and the white dressing-gown which floated diaphanously about her was
unexpectedly reminiscent of Bond Street.
“You are not afraid?” she asked anxiously. “See, I have nothing in my
hands. I almost think that the desire has gone. You remember the little
stiletto I had last night? To-day I threw it into the well. Mrs. Unthank
was very angry with me.”
“I am not afraid,” he assured her, “but--”
“Ah, but you will not scold me?” she begged. “It is the storm which
terrifies me.”
He drew a low chair for her into the little circle of light and arranged
some cushions. As she sank into it, she suddenly looked up at him and
smiled, a smile of rare and wonderful beauty. Dominey felt for a moment
something like the stab of a knife at his heart.
“Sit here and rest,” he invited. “There is nothing to fear.”
“In my heart I know that,” she answered simply. “These storms are part
of our lives. They come with birth, and they shake the world when death
seizes us. One should not be afraid, but I have been so ill, Everard.
Shall I call you Everard still?”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because you are not like Everard to me any more,” she told him,
“because something has gone from you, and something has come to you. You
are not the same man. What is it? Had you troubles in Africa? Did you
learn what life was like out there?”
He sat looking at her for a moment, leaning back in his chair, which
he had pushed a few feet into the shadows. Her hair was glossy and
splendid, and against it her skin seemed whiter and more delicate than
ever. Her eyes were lustrous but plaintive, and with something of the
child's fear of harm in them. She looked very young and very fragile to
have been swayed through the years by an evil passion.
“I learnt many things there, Rosamund,” he told her quietly. “I learnt
a little of the difference between right doing and wrongdoing. I learnt,
too, that all the passions of life burn themselves out, save one alone.”
She twisted the girdle of her dressing-gown in her fingers for a
moment. His last speech seemed to have been outside the orbit of her
comprehension or interest.
“You need not be afraid of me any more, Everard,” she said, a little
pathetically.
“I have no fear of you,” he answered.
“Then why don't you bring your chair forward and come and sit a little
nearer to me?” she asked, raising her eyes. “Do you hear the wind, how
it shrieks at us? Oh, I am afraid!”
He moved forward to her side, and took her hand gently in his. Her
fingers responded at once to his pressure. When he spoke, he scarcely
recognised his own voice. It seemed to him thick and choked.
“The wind shall not hurt you, or anything else,” he promised. “I have
come back to take care of you.”
She sighed, smiled like a tired child, and her eyes closed as her head
fell farther back amongst the cushions.
“Stay just like that, please,” she begged. “Something quite new is
coming to me. I am resting. It is the sweetest rest I ever felt. Don't
move, Everard. Let my fingers stay in yours--so.”
The candles burned down in their sockets, the wind rose to greater
furies, and died away only as the dawn broke through the storm clouds.
A pale light stole into the room. Still the woman slept, and still her
fingers seemed to keep their clutch upon his hand. Her breathing was all
the time soft and regular. Her silky black eyelashes lay motionless upon
her pale cheeks. Her mouth--a very perfectly shaped mouth--rested in
quiet lines. Somehow he realised that about this slumber there was a new
thing. With hot eyes and aching limbs he sat through the night. Dream
after dream rose up and passed away before that little background of
tapestried wall. When she opened her eyes and looked at him, the same
smile parted her lips as the smile which had come there when she had
passed away to sleep.
“I am so rested,” she murmured. “I feel so well. I have had dreams,
beautiful dreams.”
The fire had burned out, and the room was chilly.
“You must go back to your own room now,” he said.
Very slowly her fingers relaxed. She held out her arms.
“Carry me,” she begged. “I am only half awake. I want to sleep again.”
He lifted her up. Her fingers closed around his neck, her head fell back
with a little sigh of content. He tried the folding doors, and, finding
some difficulty in opening them carried her out into the corridor, into
her own room, and laid her upon the untouched bed.
“You are quite comfortable?” he asked.
“Quite,” she murmured drowsily. “Kiss me, Everard.”
Her hands drew his face down. His lips rested upon her forehead. Then he
drew the bedclothes over her and fled.