here is Mrs. Ansdey to confirm it.”
Both men looked up as the portly figure in its rustling black silken
robes hurried down the great staircase.
“Sir Vivian! Oh, welcome home, Sir Vivian, a thousand times!” The
housekeeper’s face was very pale, her hands worked nervously, crumpling
her fine lace apron. “But something dreadful has happened! it’s written
in your face!” she cried, “and God forgive a sinful woman, but I am
beginning to believe that I have spoken with a spirit!”
“Cradell tells me that----” Sir Vivian made an upward gesture.
“It’s true,” cried Mrs. Ansdey. “Her ladyship--if ’twas her
ladyship--explained that you were delayed. Someone was killed in the
railway accident----”
“Someone _was_ killed!”
“And you were coming on after you had seen to the wounded.... She--she
would not eat, or drink, or rest; she wished--all she wished was to
see the house, and I obeyed, and we went through room after room
until--there was a ring at the hall-door bell, and a knocking, and
I turned to speak to my lady as we stood together in the painted
chamber--and she was gone! Oh, Sir Vivian, what does it all mean?”
cried Mrs. Ansdey.
“It means--that!”
As the hall-door opened to admit the bearers with their precious
burden, and as the men laid that cold, lovely, smiling image of Death
reverently on the settle, the bloodhound wakened from his slumber and
rising, uttered a long plaintive howl.
“Welcome home, my wife!” said Sir Vivian. “Now please to leave us here
together!”
So the servants and the bearers withdrew.
“It was the same face!” Mrs. Ansdey whispered, as her faithful old
comrade led her away. “Why did she come?”
Cradell said: “Because she’d made up her mind to--and she was a woman!
There’s two answers in one!”
He stooped mechanically to pick up the sable-trimmed mantle that had
lain upon the floor. No hand had touched it, but it was no longer
there.
THE MOTOR-BURGLAR
A DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGE OF PETROL
“A quite remarkable case of coincidence, dear fellars--a parallel
without precedent,” said Hambridge Ost to a select circle of
listeners in the smoking-room of the Younger Sons’ Club, “is that the
giant plate-burglary successfully accomplished at Lord Whysdale’s
shooting-box in Deershire on Tuesday last by a party of three polite
persons traveling in a large, roomy and handsomely-appointed pale
blue ‘Flygoer’ automobile, was echoed, so to put it--on Friday by
a colossal robbery at the seat of my cousin, Lord Pomphrey; the
defrauding persons being also, in that case, a trio of civil-spoken
and well-dressed strangers, occupying a light green ‘Runhard’ of
twenty-eight horse-power with a limousine body and singularly brilliant
nickel fittings. The _most_ remarkable point on one side, and one which
has given cause for the noisy derision of the _profanum vulgus_--do you
foller me?--being that Lord Pomphrey--I regret to add--assisted and
abetted by the humble individual now speaking, actually assisted the
thieves to get clear off with his property, includin’ an Elizabethan
beaker with a cover, out of which the Virgin Monarch graciously quaffed
a nightcap of the cordial called ‘lambswool’ when staying at The Towers
during a Royal progress in the year 1566, and a silver tea-kettle and
punch-bowl presented by the tenants on the late Earl’s coming-of-age,
with a cargo of other valuables, out of which I had the melancholy
privilege of rescuing one Queen Anne Apostle spoon.
“My cousin Wosbric, between attacks of his hereditary gout, is an
ardent golfer. Residing at his Club during the absence of Lady Pomphrey
and the family in the Tyrol, he takes every feasible opportunity of
cultivating his skill and renewing his enthusiasm for the game, the
intricacies of which, dear fellars, I may own I have never been able
to master. To me, when a large, cheerful, whiskered man, dressed in
shaggy greenish clothes, with gaiters, announces, rubbing his hands,
which are invariably encased in woolen mitts, that he has _taken his
driver twice going to the twelfth hole; did not altogether mishit
either shot, and yet was not up to the green, because the wind bore
down like a Vanguard omnibus_;--to me nothing wildly incredible or
curious has been said. The large man in the shaggy clothes is talking a
shibboleth I do not and never could understand, dear fellars, if I bent
my whole intelligence--considered by some decent judges not altogether
contemptible--to the task, until the final collapse of the present
Social System. But, nevertheless, Lord Pomphrey is partial to the
company of this humble individual upon his golfing days, and to me the
Head of my House--d’ye foller me?--in mentioning a preference issues a
mandate. Enveloped in a complete golfing costume of Jaeger material,
surmounted by two fur-lined overcoats, the pockets of the under one
containing two patent ‘keep-hot’ bottles of warm and comforting
liquids--coffee and soup--which aid to maintain the temperature
of the outer man at normal, before being transferred to the inner
individual--I manage to defy the rigors of the English climate and
support the exhaustion consequent upon indulgence in the national game
of North Britain. My walking-stick is convertible into a camp-stool;
the soles of my thick boots are protected by goloshes, a peaked cap
with flaps for the ears crowns my panoply; and, place in the mouth of
the individual thus attired one of Dunhill’s ‘Asorbal’ cigarettes,
each of which is furnished with a patent hygienic mouthpiece-filter
which absorbs the deleterious oil of nicotine, and catches the stray
particles of tobacco--d’ye foller me, dear fellars?--which otherwise
find their way into the system of the smoker--and the picture is
complete.
“The run by road from the Club doorsteps to Cluckham Pomphrey, where
the Fargey Common Golf-links equal any that our country can boast,
faithful copies of the eighteen best holes in the world having been
carefully made under the supervision of Lord Pomphrey--the run can be
made within four hours. We started. I had received the Fiery Cross from
my kinsman, so to put it, in a laconic note, running: ‘Golf to-morrow
if the weather keeps up and the gout keeps down.--Yours, Pomphrey.’
We started in a mild drizzle, at six-thirty. Our car, a ‘Rusher,’ of
twenty-six horse-power, with a detachable top and glass driving-screen,
behaved excellently. Driving through Cluckham, our county town--it
happened to be market-day!--we accidentally converted a lamb into
cutlets; but the immolated creature, as it chanced, being the property
of one of my cousin’s farmer-tenants, the casualty passed over with
fewer comments than generally ensue. Bowing to several well-known
yeomen and county land-holders, my cousin and myself alighted at the
Pink Boar, kept by an old retainer of the family, took a light but
nourishing ante-luncheon or snack of a couple of raw eggs beaten up
with whisky, and proceeded on our way to the Fargey Common Links.
“A mile from The Towers, whose picturesque battlements could be
descried, dear fellars, embosomed, as it were, in surroundin’ trees,
we encountered some motorists upon the road in quite a regrettable
plight. Their car, a large, light green ‘Runhard’ of twenty-eight
horse-power, was drawn up by the roadside;--quite an arsenal of
tools glittered in the wintry rays of the sun, spread out upon an
india-rubber sheet, and what had occurred was plain to the meanest
automobiling capacity. A tire had exploded after a long, stiff climb of
the steep hill, a notable feature in our county landscape--the descent
of which we were about to negotiate. And the spare tire, after being
attached, had proved to be leaky beyond repair.
“Fellar-feeling, dear fellars!--would have moved any fellar of you to
foller our example. We raised our hats, the three strangers in the
‘Runhard’ car politely returning the salutation; we offered aid, and
met with grateful acceptance. Larger than our own locomotive--the
‘Runhard’ wheels were of exactly the same diameter--the ‘Runhard’ tires
were ‘Fridolines,’ like our own. We offered our spare tire, it fitted
to a miracle. We were overwhelmed with the grateful acknowledgments of
its three polite proprietors.
“‘You will at least permit me to pay for the tire!’ pleaded the
gentleman who appeared to take the lead. As Lord Pomphrey refused, with
the courtly wave of the hand that distinguishes this thirteenth wearer
of the coronet, he continued: ‘For you do not know--you never can
know!--how inestimable a service your lordship has rendered us!’
“Wosbric was known, then. He elevated his eyebrows in polite surprise.
Not being able to discern the features of the strangers behind their
cap-masks and goggles, he could not recall ever having met them
before. Then the second polite stranger, who was even more polite than
the first, explained in a slight American accent the reason of his
companion’s recognition of Lord Pomphrey. ‘We have, like many other
tourists,’ he said, ‘recently enjoyed the privilege of going over your
lordship’s antique and noble family pile. In the hall, the feudal
stateliness of which especially appealed to me as an American citizen,
hangs a portrait of your lordship taken, in company with a gold-hilted
sword and a red velvet curtain, as Lord-Lieutenant of the County.’
“Lord Pomphrey bowed. ‘As Lord-Lieutenant of the County,’ I put in.
‘Quite so. The likeness is agreed to be a striking one. And as you have
viewed the other treasures of The Towers, I presume you did not miss
the large oak cabinet of Jacobean silver plate--magnificent and unique
as having belonged to Queen Anne of Denmark--which stands at the end of
the smaller library behind the large Chinese screen?’
“The polite strangers looked at me and then at Lord Pomphrey and then
at each other. A cloud passed over the bright intelligent eyes that
shone through their motor-goggles as they sorrowfully shook their heads.
“‘We missed that cabinet!’ said the first polite stranger, with a sigh.
“‘I guess we did!’ said the second.
“‘Just like wot I calls our beastly, blooming luck!’ sighed the third
stranger who was sitting in the car, and who, though polite, was not
in the least a refined sort of person. As all three of them seemed
unfeignedly depressed, Lord Pomphrey, who is the soul of hospitality,
begged them to return to The Towers, accept refreshment, and examine
under his personal superintendence, the magnificent contents of the oak
cabinet in the second library.
“‘We thank your lordship profoundly!’ said the first polite stranger,
bowing, ‘but we are unable to accept your invitation!’ He bowed again,
and got into the car.
“‘And we shall never cease to regret, I guess,’ said the second,
‘that we have missed the most valuable item of your lordship’s
collection of silver heirlooms. But we have garnered many precious
momentos’--it struck me at that moment that there were a great many
waterproof-covered bundles in the ‘Runhard’ car, and as he spoke he
patted one of these affectionately--‘of our visit to this country which
must serve to sweeten life for us when we are far away. And with these
we must endeavor to be content!’
“He too bowed, dear fellars, and got into the car. The machinery began
to splutter at a touch upon the lever.
“‘Let ’er rip, Cocky,’ advised the third stranger; ‘we ain’t got none
too much of a start with this yere tire a-busting. So long!’ he said,
and like an arrow from a bow, so to put it, dear fellars, the large,
light green ‘Runhard’ leapt forward and was out of sight in an instant.
We proceeded in the ‘Rusher’ toward our destination.
“Presently, dear fellars, we met two large, hot, county constables on
bicycles. They did not recognize us, so great was their haste. Their
large boots vigorously trod the pedals, their bulky, blue-uniformed
figures were crouched over the handle-bars as they pounded up the hill
from Cluckham Pomphrey. We wondered whither they might be going? We
questioned what agricultural breach of the peace, what local felony,
had spurred them to such an unusual display of energy. We found out.
“For at the next bend of the road, dear fellars, we encountered quite
a little cavalcade of hot and red-faced, or pale and panting persons.
The steward from Pomphrey Towers in his T-cart, the head-bailiff from
Pomphrey Towers on his cob, the coachman driving a light gig with two
armed grooms on the back seat, an excited mob of stable-helpers and
gardeners straggling along behind.... Even before they recognized us,
those in the van of the pursuers shouted to us, asking if we had passed
an automobile upon the road--a large, light green ‘Runhard’ containing
three men?
“In a few gasped sentences, dear fellars, the ghastly truth stood
revealed; the facts were laid bare to us. Pomphrey Towers had been,
to employ the expression of the bailiff, ‘cracked and burgled,’ only
an hour previously, of a quantity of silver articles and a mass of
valuable plate. Lord Pomphrey and myself had met the burglars upon the
road, had supplied them with the means of continuing their flight,
had entered into conversation with them, and returned their polite
farewells.
“We joined the pursuit, all thoughts of golf submerged in the bosom of
Lord Pomphrey, beneath the boiling lava-flood of rage and indignation.
To be robbed is bad; to be placed in the position of confederate to
the robbers, unknowing aider and abettor of their nefarious flight,
is maddening. The three polite individuals in the large, light green
motor-car have not, up to the present, been traced. One small spoon
of the Apostle-headed kind, found by the roadside where they replaced
their own deflated tire, with that so generously bestowed upon them by
Lord Pomphrey, is the only clue so far.
“A distressin’ experience, dear fellars!--confoundedly so in the
estimation of this humble individual. Thanks, I _will_ take another of
those long Dutch cigars and a Scotch, with Hebinaris’--the new mineral
water, do you foller me?--with iridescent bubbles that snap at your
nose. My love to you, dear fellars, and a Happy New Year!”
THE LOST ROOM
They were going to part at last--to separate quietly, but
formally--after a married life of nearly three years.
There was no Other Woman, even she was quite sure of that; there wasn’t
even the shadow of another man. He rather wished there were, with a
good solid six-foot personality to project it. He was so confoundedly
tired of conjugal life.
He had an old historic title, a large estate unencumbered by the
prodigalities of ancestors, unhampered by his own. She had inherited
from an American mother a large fortune and some of the biggest jewels
Tiffany had ever set. Their tastes were similar, their constitutions
robust, their tempers strong and healthy, their temperaments ardent
and enthusiastic, their moral and mental temperatures since the last
decisive meeting between the trustees of her property and his family
lawyers had been slowly descending to normal. Never, oh, never would
either of them put their heads again, they were determined, into
the noose of marriage! even if a _decree nisi_ should ever make it
possible. Because naturally, as time went on, she would meet somebody
she liked, he thought.... Because men were so constituted, reflected
she, that if a woman only told one of them often enough that he was in
love with her, he would begin to believe it.
They had used up all their capability for passion, devotion, and so
on, during their romantic wooing, their short but divine engagement,
and the incandescent eight weeks’ honeymoon that had followed the
wedding. They wanted to forget the world then, and be alone together;
and they got what they wanted, one April, one May, in that great old
granite-built pepper-box turreted Scotch mansion on the banks of the
silver Tweed.
It was heavenly, or at the very least Paradisaical. They wanted it to
be quite an old-fashioned honeymoon, so they did not go down by motor,
but by the Euston express. Ten hours of traveling, and then they got
out at a little gray station of a little Scots town with a dreadful
tweed-factory in it whose dye and grease terribly defiled the silvery
river reaches, and does so to this day--and drove through lovely woods
of larch and birch and hawthorn, just breaking into green leaf, to
Maryhouse, the cradle of the race from which she sprang, the unhappy
lovely Queen--whose great wrought gates of rusted iron, with the Stuart
shield of arms in faded gold and crimson and blue, would never be
unlocked again until a Stuart should reign once more upon the throne of
England.
The great avenue had been turned into park, and you reached the house
by the lesser way. It had a square courtyard, closed by another pair of
great wrought gates, and bears with ragged staves were on the pillars,
and even held up the antique scraper at the low-browed door, and the
knocker was the tiniest bear of all. There were no rooms to some of
the four hundred casements that winked out of the lichened walls. You
pulled the bear-handle of the house-bell, and it clanged up high out
of sight somewhere among the twisted chimneys and the great slants of
stone-tiled roof studded with pinky house-leek and gay with yellow moss.
Then the low, square, iron-studded door had opened, and two people had
gone in, to commence, among the tragic relics of vanished, forgotten
existences, their own new life together. Perhaps some sorrowful shadow
of failure and disillusion had fallen upon them from those old gray
walls. A week before they went there a piece of paneling had fallen
from the wall in the great hall, revealing in a niche behind it a
skull, and what else Time had left of the man who had suffered such a
tragic ending.
As I have said, the Deed of Separation had been formally signed by both
parties, their trustees and lawyers. She was beautifully free. She sang
a little song as her motor-victoria ran her homeward to the house which
he had no right to enter now, and she ordered the touring limousine to
be at the door very early in the morning before she ran upstairs.
She was as gay as possible. She told her maid, as she hummed the “Dream
Waltz,” to have a cabin trunk and a bag packed. Only these, because she
would be back in a week. She was only going to visit some old great,
quiet people in an old great, quiet house up North, who had been very
fond of society in their time, but now never even dressed for dinner.
She meant the fair murdered Scots’ Queen and the Kings who had dwelt at
Maryhouse, of course.
“Fancy that, my lady!” said the maid, thanking her own stars that she
was not to accompany her mistress. Many silken calves and much company
above and below stairs constituted the waiting-woman’s ideal of Life.
Well, the itinerary of the Great North road--that would take too long.
Behind the glass screen she sat, swathed in her sables, while the
taciturn, clean-shaven chauffeur made England spin by. She chose her
own road, the collieries were left behind in their smoke, the ruins
of St. Oswald’s Chapel of Ease were passed, standing gray and battered
on their battle-site. Serving-shields, where under the enchanted hall
sleep Arthur and his Knights, she saw before she lost the vision. She
slept at Carlisle, and went on next morning to Peebles, where Needpath
elevates its single fang above the salmon pool.
And so to Maryhouse, not even a telegram having been sent ahead of her.
She knew her dear friends, the owners of the place, were still abroad.
But there was always Mistress Dumphie, the old, old lady-housekeeper,
who had been born and reared and wooed and married, too, at Maryhouse.
Mistress Dumphie would take her in for a night, and if not--there was
an inn in the ugly little weaving village. The great limousine rolled
through the gates of the smaller avenue and over the bridge of the
Arbalestiers Tower, and stopped before the great, rusty crowned gates
of the sunny courtyard.
The larks were singing. The Quhair brook ran under the hazel-banks. Oh!
what sweet quiet after the roar of Paris and London and the dust of the
roads.
The rusty chain was pulled, the great bell clanged on the side of a
pepper-box turret ever so high overhead. Mistress Dumphie, in her
morn’s merino and black net cap, appeared behind the rusty grille.
“Guid preserve ’s a’! It’s the young lord’s leddy!” she said.
The “young lord’s leddy” came in. She was to stay. The chauffeur went
back to the hotel.
“I feel as though I should find something here,” said the “young lord’s
leddy,” “something that I have lost somehow. It is very odd!”
She wandered about the beautiful old house all the rest of the day.
“Here is the great oak window-seat where we used to sit together.
Here is the little stone parlor where we quarreled and made it up.
Here is the vast tapestried chamber, with the faded Stuart portraits
on the walls, that was my bedroom; and this smaller room, with the
acorn-shaped stone mullions and the ebony and tulip wood furniture, was
_his_!”
What fine days they had spent in those daisied avenues, under those
huge oaks. What wet ones under the old painted, diapered ceilings. The
wettest of all they had spent in looking for the Lost Room.
The Lost Room was a chamber that everybody knew of, but nobody ever
discovered. Counting from outside, you could be sure there was an extra
window, but go where you would about the hushed mysterious house, you
never opened a door that led into the Lost Room.
She supped in a little dining-parlor that those dead Queens had used
before her. She went to bed in the tapestried room. She slept well and
woke in the middle of the night with a great bell clanging in her ears.
She could not sleep after that. Lights flickered before her shut eyes
in the darkness.
“I _did_ hear a step on the staircase! I _did_ hear the shutting of a
door!” she said to herself, and got out of the great bed on the daïs
and put warm slippers on her white little naked feet, and threw on a
dressing gown lined with unborn Persian lambskin--such a cruel idea,
you know, but very fashionable. And she took her electric torch, and
unlocked the door noiselessly, and stepped out boldly into the wide,
dusky corridor.
She trod upon something soft, and repressed a scream. She held the
light downward and picked up a man’s dogskin glove.
“Ah, now I know that I am dreaming!” she said quite cheerfully. She
need not be afraid of mice or rats, because she knew that she was all
the time lying in bed in the big tapestried room. As for ghosts, she
wanted to see one frightfully--always had.
The door of the room that had been his was just opposite. Something
made her go in, on her noiseless dream-feet, carrying the dream-glove
in her hand. The dream went on quite as dreams usually do. She had gone
back to the sweet old half-forgotten honeymoon time.
“This is the night on which we had tiffed, and I was the first to make
it up!” She smiled and went in. It was just as she had expected. There
he lay, fast asleep in the big tapestry-hung bed.
She went up to the side of it, and pulled back the curtain without
waking him, and sat down, shading the light from the dear, handsome,
manly face, and devouring it with famished eyes. This was what she had
come seeking; some glamour of the old time; some sweet remembrance
unspoiled by anything that had happened since.
The jars, the disagreements, the quarrels had never happened.... She
was back in the old times, and he was not yet regretting his lost
freedom, but tightening the bond a little closer every day by words and
deeds of love.
This was the Lost Room, this dream-chamber where he lay. She was glad
to have come down to Maryhouse for this. Who would not take a journey
to find your old self and your old self’s self at the end of it, and
Love lying sleeping in the shadow of dear memories, ready to be wakened
with a kiss?
She stooped and gave the kiss. He started and awakened. He stared at
her, and the light of the old joy leaped into his eyes.
“Alice! You’re only a dream, I know, but it is better than the real
Alice, who grew to hate me. Oh! put your arms round me again! let me
have your heart on mine again; let both of us forget what a ruin we
have made of the life that we set out to make so sweet and fair!”