In the taxi Ayling suddenly realized that there was no need for all this
haste. After twenty-five years, and a loitering, circuitous journey
home--six weeks to the day since he had said good-by to India--this
last-minute rush was, to say the least, illogical, particularly as there
was no one in London waiting for him; no one who was even aware of his
arrival. Indeed, it was likely that there was no one in London who was
aware of his existence, except, perhaps, the clerk of the club, to whom
he had telegraphed ahead for accommodations.
The rigidity of his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became
suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more
than it was worth, and he sat forward again, looking out.
Yes, things were familiar enough--but familiar like old photographs one
has forgotten the significance of. The emotion had gone out of them. It
was the new things, the unfamiliar contours, that were most apparent,
that seemed to thrust upon his consciousness the city's gigantic,
self-centered indifference. Yet it was just that quality that he had
loved most in London. She had let him alone. She had been--he recalled
the high-flown phrase of his youth--the supremely indifferent friend!
Perhaps, he thought to himself, when one is fifty, one cares less to be
"let alone"; less for indifference as the supreme attribute of a friend.
He felt a queer sweep of homesickness for India, whence he had come; but
to feel homesick for India was ridiculous, since he had just come out
of India because he was homesick for England. He had been homesick for
England, he had been telling himself, for all those twenty-five years.
Well! here he was. Home!
Strange he hadn't thought of the automobiles and the electricity, and
the difference they would make.
The taxi backed suddenly, gears shifted, and drew up alongside the curb.
Looking out, Ayling recognized the high, familiar street door of the
club. Something about it had been changed, or replaced, he couldn't
quite make out what. The driver opened the door, lifted out Ayling's
bag, and deposited it expertly with a swing on the step. Then he waited
respectfully while Ayling fished in his pockets for change. Having
received it, he leaped with great agility to the seat, shifted gears,
chugged, backed and turned, and was abruptly round the corner and out of
sight.
At the desk, Ayling experienced a momentary surprise to find himself
actually expected.
"Mr. Ayling? Yes, sir. Your room is ready, I believe." The clerk rang a
bell, and began to give instructions about Mr. Ayling's luggage.
Ayling felt that he ought to ask for some one, inquire if some of the
old members were in; but, standing there, he could not think of a single
name except names of a few non-resident members like himself, men who
were at that moment in India.
"Will you go up, sir?"
"Later," said Ayling. "Just send up my things."
He crossed the foyer and entered the lounge. Here, as before in the
streets, it was the changes of which he was most aware--figured hangings
in place of the old red velours, the upholstery renewed on the old
chairs and divans. Strangers sat here and there in the familiar nooks,
strangers who looked up at him with a mild curiosity and returned to
their papers or their cigars. He wandered on through the rooms,
seeking--without quite saying so to himself--seeking a familiar face,
and found none. Even the proportions of the rooms seemed changed; he
could hardly have said just how; not much, but slightly, though, all in
all, the club was the same. Names began to come back to him; memories
resurrected themselves, rose out of corners to greet him as he passed.
They began to give him a queer sense of his own unreality, as if he
himself were only another memory.... Abruptly he turned, made his way
back to the desk, and asked to be shown to his room. There he spent an
hour puttering aimlessly, adjusting his things, putting in the time.
Then he dressed and went down to a solitary dinner. There was a great
activity in the club at that hour, comings and goings, in parties of
four and five. He found a kind of dolorous amusement in seeing now much
more at home all the youngsters about him seemed than he. And he had
been at home there when they were in the nursery doing sums.
Here and there at the tables were older men, men of his own age, and he
reflected that among them might easily be some of his boyhood friends.
He would never know them now. He searched their faces for a familiar
feature, watched them for a gesture he might recognize. But in the end
he gave it up. "Old town," he said to himself, "old town, by Jove!
you've forgotten me!"
That night he went alone to a theater, walked back through the crowds to
the club, and went immediately to bed. He was grateful to find himself
suddenly very tired.
The next morning he rose late and did not leave his room until noon,
when he went down to a solitary lunch. After lunch he stopped at the
clerk's window and inquired about one or two old members. The clerk
looked up the names. After a good deal of inquiry and fussing about, he
ascertained that one of the gentlemen was in China, one was dead, and a
third about whom Ayling also inquired could not be traced at all. Ayling
went out and walked for a while through the streets, but was driven back
to the club by the chill drizzle which suddenly began to descend.
* * * * *
He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite.
Settled there, he remembered the position of a near-by bell, just under
the window-curtain.... Yes, there it was. He rang, and a waiter came--a
rotund, pink-faced, John-Bullish waiter, with little white tufts on each
cheek. Ayling ordered a whisky-and-soda, and when presently the waiter
brought it Ayling asked how long he had been in the service of the club.
"Thirty-five years, sir."
Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he
asked.
The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at
all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir--I couldn't just
at the moment say--"
"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.
For an instant Bessie Lonsdale thought she was going to faint. And then,
moved by the force of an emotion which seemed to take possession of her
from the outside, an emotion which she could not recognize, but which
was irresistible and which, as the silence had propelled her a moment
ago, took her backward now, step by step, noiselessly, out of that
room; caused her to close the door after her, and, still moving backward
without a sound, to come to a stop in the middle of the little
sitting-room. For now that strange fear, premonition--she knew not
what--which seemed to have been traveling toward her from a great
distance, seemed suddenly to concentrate itself into a single name,
"Peggy!" ... Confused, swirling, the connotations that accompanied the
name took possession of her mind, of her body, her will. _Peggy was
threatened_.... Through this thing that had happened Peggy's happiness
might be destroyed! In a flash she saw the story--the cold facts printed
in a newspaper--as they would undoubtedly be--or told by gossips, glad
of a scandal to repeat: She, Peggy's mother--and Richard Ayling together
at a country inn--the sudden and sensational discovery of Ayling's
death.... She could see the stern face of Lady McCrae--the accusing blue
eyes of Andrew McCrae ... and Peggy's stricken face.
She tried to pull herself together--to think; her thoughts were not
reasoning thoughts, but unrelated, floating, detached....
Suddenly, by some strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out
clear. They stood out like the three facts of a simple syllogism.
There was nothing she could do for Richard Ayling now.... No one knew
she was here.... A train for London passed Homebury St. Mary a little
after noon.
All the years of Bessie Lonsdale's motherhood commanded her to act. Her
muscles alone seemed to hear and obey. She was like a person hypnotized,
who had been ordered with great detail and precision what to do.
Soundlessly, she went from the room and down the length of the corridor.
In her own room she threw scattered garments into a bag, swept in the
things from the dresser, glanced into the mirror, and was astonished to
see that she had on her coat and hat. Then out through the door that led
to the garden, a sharp turn to the right, and she was off, walking
swiftly, with no sensation of touching the earth. A train whistled in
the distance, came into sight. She raced with it, reached the station
just as it drew alongside and came to a stop. The guard took her bag,
and she swung onto the step. It did not seem strange to her that she had
reached the station at precisely the same time as the train. It seemed
only natural ... in accordance with the plan....
At seventeen minutes past three o'clock Bessie Lonsdale hurried into a
telephone-booth in Victoria Station, called up a friend, and asked her
to tea. Then she took a taxi to within a block of the flat, where she
dismissed the taxi, went into a pastry-shop, bought some cakes, and five
minutes later she was taking off her hat and coat in her own bedroom.
She worked quickly, automatically, without any sense of exertion, still
as if she but obeyed a hypnotist's command. At four o'clock a leaping
fire in the drawing-room grate flickered cheerily against silver
tea-things, against the sheen of newly dusted mahogany; books lay here
and there, carelessly, a late illustrated review open as if some one had
just put it down, and dressed in a soft gown of blue crêpe, Bessie
Lonsdale received her guest. She was not an intimate friend, but a
casual one whom she did not often see. A Mrs. Downey, who loved to talk
of herself and of her own affairs. Bessie Lonsdale did not know why she
had chosen her. Her brain had seemed to work without direction,
independent of her will. She could never have directed it so well.
Even now, as she brought her in and heard herself saying easy, friendly,
commonplace things, she had no sense of willing herself to say them
consciously. They said themselves. She heard nothing that Mrs. Downey
said, yet she answered her. Later, while she was pouring Mrs. Downey's
tea, she remembered a time, over a year ago, when she had heard Mrs.
Downey say, "Two, and no cream." She put in the two lumps, and was
startled to hear her guest exclaim, "My dear, what a memory!" ... She
did not know whether Mrs. Downey told her one or many things that
afternoon. Only certain words, parts of sentences, gestures, imprinted
themselves upon her mind, never to be erased. She seemed divided into
two separate selves, neither of them complete--one, the intenser of the
two, was at Homebury St. Mary, looking down upon Ayling's still, dead
face; and that self was filled with pity, with remorse, with a
tenderness that hurt. The other self was here, in a gown of blue crêpe,
drinking tea, and possessed of a voice which she could hear vaguely
making the conversation one makes when nothing has happened, when one
has been lonely and a little bored....
All at once something was going on in the room, a clangor that seemed to
waken Bessie Lonsdale out of the unreality of a dream. It summoned her
will to come back to its control.
Mrs. Downey was smiling and saying in an ordinary tone, "Your
telephone."
Bessie Lonsdale rose and crossed the room, took the receiver from its
stand, said, "Yes," and waited.
A man's voice came over the wire. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Lonsdale,
please."
"I am Mrs. Lonsdale," she said in a smooth, low voice. Her voice was
perfectly smooth because her will had deserted her again. Only her brain
worked, clearly, independently.
"Ah, Mrs. Lonsdale; this is Mr. Burke speaking, Mr. Franklin Burke, of
the Cosmos Club. I am making an effort to get into touch with friends of
Mr. Richard Ayling, and I am told by a man named Chedsey, who I believe
was at one time in your employ, that Mr. Ayling is an old friend of your
family."
"Yes," she said, "we are old friends."
"You knew, then, I presume, that Mr. Ayling had gone away--to the
country some days ago."
"Yes," she said, again, "I knew that he had not been well and that he
had gone out of town for a week.... Is there--anything?" Her heart was
beating very loudly in her ears.
"I dislike to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Lonsdale, but I must tell
you that we have received a telephone message here at the club that--I
hope it will not shock you too much--that Mr. Ayling died sometime
to-day, at an inn where he was staying, at Homebury St. Mary, I
believe."
His voice was very gentle and concerned. She hesitated perceptibly, and
his voice came over the wire, "I'm sorry--very sorry, to tell you in
this way--"
She heard herself speaking: "Naturally, I--it's something of a
shock...."
"Indeed I understand."
Again she caught the sound of her own voice, as if it belonged to some
one else, "I suppose it was his heart."
"He was known to have a bad heart?"
"Yes; it has been weak for years."
"I wonder, Mrs. Lonsdale, if I may ask a favor of you. You know, of
course, that Mr. Ayling had very few close friends in London; you are,
in fact, the only one we have been able, on this short notice, to find.
For that reason I am going to ask that you let me come to see you this
afternoon; you will understand that there are certain formalities, facts
which it will be necessary for us to have, which only an old friend of
Mr. Ayling could give--that we could get in no other way...."
"I understand, perfectly."
"Then I may come?"
"Certainly." ... There was nothing else she could say.
* * * * *
She did not know how she got rid of her guest, what explanation she
made, nor how she happened to be saying good-by to her at the very
moment when the dignified, elderly Mr. Burke arrived, so that they had
to be introduced. Though she must have made some adequate explanation,
since Mrs. Downey's last words were, in the presence of Mr. Burke, "It's
always so hard, I think, to lose one's really _old_ friends."
Mr. Burke came in. He was very correct, very kind. He begged Mrs.
Lonsdale to believe that it was with the greatest regret that he called
upon so sad an errand; that he came only because it was necessary and
she was the only person to whom they could turn. He added that he had
known her husband, Major Lonsdale, in his lifetime, and hoped that she
would consider him, therefore, not so entirely a stranger to her.
She heard him as one hears music far away, only the accents and the
climaxes coming clear. He asked her questions, and she was conscious of
answering them: How long had she known Mr. Ayling?--He and her husband
had been boyhood friends; she had met him first at the time of her
marriage to Major Lonsdale. Had they kept up the friendship during all
these years?--No, she had heard nothing of Mr. Ayling since her
husband's death; she knew that he was in India; they had renewed the
friendship when he returned to England a short time ago.--Ah, it was
probable, then, that she knew very little about any attachments Mr.
Ayling might have had?--Here Mr. Burke shifted his position, coughed
slightly, and said:
"I ask you these questions, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of a very--may I
say--a very unfortunate element in connection with the case. It appears
that there was a woman with Mr. Ayling at the Homebury St. Mary inn."
Bessie Lonsdale waited, she did not know for what. Whole minutes seemed
to go by with the elderly Mr. Burke sitting there in his attitude of
formal sympathy before his voice began again.
"I have only been free to mention this to you, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of
the fact that you will hear of it in any case, since it must come out in
the formalities--"
"Formalities?" Her voice cut sharply into his.
"There will, of course, be an inquest--an investigation--the usual
thing. I have been in communication with the coroner's office by
telephone, and I have promised to drive down to Homebury St. Mary myself
this afternoon. He was away on another case, and will not reach there
himself until six. Meantime we must do what we can. They will
necessarily make an effort to discover the woman."
Bessie Lonsdale must have given some sort of involuntary cry, the
implication of which Mr. Burke interpreted in his own way, for he
changed his tone to say:
"I'm afraid, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale, that she was a bit of a rotter,
whoever she was, for she--ran."
"Ran?" She repeated the word.