Miss Winifred Goode sat in her garden in the shade of a clipped yew, an
unopened novel on her lap, and looked at the gabled front of the Tudor
house that was hers and had been her family's for many generations. In
that house, Duns Hall, in that room beneath the southernmost gable, she
had been born. From that house, save for casual absences rarely
exceeding a month in duration, she had never stirred. All the drama,
such as it was, of her life had been played in that house, in that
garden. Up and down the parapeted stone terrace walked the ghosts of
all those who had been dear to her--her father, a vague but cherished
memory; a brother and a sister who had died during her childhood; her
mother, dead three years since, to whose invalid and somewhat selfish
needs she had devoted all her full young womanhood. Another ghost
walked there, too; but that was the ghost of the living--a young man
who had kissed and ridden away, twenty years ago. He had kissed her
over there, under the old wistaria arbour at the end of the terrace.
What particular meaning he had put into the kiss, loverly, brotherly,
cousinly, friendly--for they had played together all their young lives,
and were distantly connected--she had never been able to determine. In
spite of his joy at leaving the lethargic country town of Dunsfield for
America, their parting had been sad and sentimental. The kiss, at any
rate, had been, on his side, one of sincere affection--an affection
proven afterwards by a correspondence of twenty years. To her the kiss
had been--well, the one and only kiss of her life, and she had
treasured it in a neat little sacred casket in her heart. Since that
far-off day no man had ever showed an inclination to kiss her, which,
in one way, was strange, as she had been pretty and gentle and
laughter-loving, qualities attractive to youths in search of a mate.
But in another way it was not strange, as mate-seeking youths are rare
as angels in Dunsfield, beyond whose limits Miss Goode had seldom
strayed. Her romance had been one kiss, the girlish dreams of one man.
At first, when he had gone fortune-hunting in America, she had fancied
herself broken-hearted; but Time had soon touched her with healing
fingers. Of late, freed from the slavery of a querulous bedside, she
had grown in love with her unruffled and delicately ordered existence,
in which the only irregular things were her herbaceous borders, between
which she walked like a prim school-mistress among a crowd of bright
but unruly children. She had asked nothing more from life than what
she had--her little duties in the parish, her little pleasures in the
neighbourhood, her good health, her old house, her trim lawns, her
old-fashioned garden, her black cocker spaniels. As it was at forty,
she thought, so should it be till the day of her death.
But a month ago had come turmoil. Roger Orme announced his return.
Fortune-making in America had tired him. He was coming home to settle
down for good in Dunsfield, in the house of his fathers. This was Duns
Lodge, whose forty acres marched with the two hundred acres of Duns
Hall. The two places were known in the district as "The Lodge" and
"The Hall." About a century since, a younger son of The Hall had
married a daughter of The Lodge, whence the remote tie of consanguinity
between Winifred Goode and Roger Orme. The Lodge had been let on lease
for many years, but now the lease had fallen in and the tenants gone.
Roger had arrived in England yesterday. A telegram had bidden her
expect him that afternoon. She sat in the garden expecting him, and
stared wistfully at the old grey house, a curious fear in her eyes.
Perhaps, if freakish chance had not brought Mrs. Donovan to Dunsfield
on a visit to the Rector, a day or two after Roger's letter,
fear--foolish, shameful, sickening fear--might not have had so dominant
a place in her anticipation of his homecoming. Mrs. Donovan was a
contemporary, a Dunsfield girl, who had married at nineteen and gone
out with her husband to India. Winifred Goode remembered a gipsy
beauty riotous in the bloom of youth. In the Rector's drawing-room she
met a grey-haired, yellow-skinned, shrivelled caricature, and she
looked in the woman's face as in a mirror of awful truth in which she
herself was reflected. From that moment she had known no peace. Gone
was her placid acceptance of the footprints of the years, gone her
old-maidish pride in dainty, old-maidish dress. She had mixed little
with the modern world, and held to old-fashioned prejudices which
prescribed the outward demeanour appropriate to each decade. One of
her earliest memories was a homely saying of her father's--which had
puzzled her childish mind considerably--as to the absurdity of sheep
being dressed lamb fashion. Later she understood and cordially agreed
with the dictum. The Countess of Ingleswood, the personage of those
latitudes, at the age of fifty showed the fluffy golden hair and
peach-bloom cheeks and supple figure of twenty; she wore bright colours
and dashing hats, and danced and flirted and kept a tame-cattery of
adoring young men. Winifred visited with Lady Ingleswood because she
believed that, in these democratic days, it was the duty of county
families to outmatch the proletariat in solidarity; but, with every
protest of her gentlewoman's soul, she disapproved of Lady Ingleswood.
Yet now, to her appalling dismay, she saw that, with the aid of paint,
powder, and peroxide, Lady Ingleswood had managed to keep young. For
thirty years, to Winifred's certain knowledge, she had not altered.
The blasting hand that had swept over Madge Donovan's face had passed
her by.
Winifred envied the woman's power of attraction. She read, with a
curious interest, hitherto disregarded advertisements. They were so
alluring, they seemed so convincing. Such a cosmetic used by queens of
song and beauty restored the roses of girlhood; under such a treatment,
wrinkles disappeared within a week--there were the photographs to prove
it. All over London bubbled fountains of youth, at a mere guinea or so
a dip. She sent for a little battery of washes and powders, and, when
it arrived, she locked herself in her bedroom. But the sight of the
first unaccustomed--and unskilfully applied--dab of rouge on her cheek
terrified her. She realised what she was doing. No! Ten thousand
times no! Her old-maidishness, her puritanism revolted. She flew to
her hand-basin and vigorously washed the offending bloom away with soap
and water. She would appear before the man she loved just as she
was--if need be, in the withered truth of a Madge Donovan.... And,
after all, had her beauty faded so utterly? Her glass said "No." But
her glass mocked her, for how could she conjure up the young face of
twenty which Roger Orme carried in his mind, and compare it with the
present image?
She sat in the garden, this blazing July afternoon, waiting for him,
her heart beating with the love of years ago, and the shrinking fear in
her eyes. Presently she heard the sound of wheels, and she saw the
open fly of "The Red Lion"--Dunsfield's chief hotel--crawling up the
drive, and in it was a man wearing a straw hat. She fluttered a timid
handkerchief, but the man, not looking in her direction, did not
respond. She crossed the lawn to the terrace, feeling hurt, and
entered the drawing-room by the open French window and stood there, her
back to the light. Soon he was announced. She went forward to meet
him.
"My dear Roger, welcome home."
He laughed and shook her hand in a hearty grip.
"It's you, Winifred. How good! Are you glad to see me back?"
"Very glad."
"And I."
"Do you find things changed?"
"Nothing," he declared with a smile; "the house is just the same." He
ran his fingers over the corner of a Louis XVI table near which he was
standing. "I remember this table, in this exact spot, twenty years
ago."
"And you have scarcely altered. I should have known you anywhere."
"I should just hope so," said he.
She realised, with a queer little pang, that time had improved the
appearance of the man of forty-five. He was tall, strong, erect; few
accusing lines marked his clean-shaven, florid, clear-cut face; in his
curly brown hair she could not detect a touch of grey. He had a new
air of mastery and success which expressed itself in the corners of his
firm lips and the steady, humorous gleam in his eyes.
"You must be tired after your hot train journey," she said.
He laughed again. "Tired? After a couple of hours? Now, if it had
been a couple of days, as we are accustomed to on the other side----
But go on talking, just to let me keep on hearing your voice. It's
yours--I could have recognised it over a long-distance telephone--and
it's English. You've no idea how delicious it is. And the smell of
the room"--he drew in a deep breath--"is you and the English country.
I tell you, it's good to be back!"
She flushed, his pleasure was so sincere, and she smiled.
"But why should we stand? Let me take your hat and stick."
"Why shouldn't we sit in the garden--after my hot and tiring journey?"
They both laughed. "Is the old wistaria still there, at the end of the
terrace?"
She turned her face away. "Yes, still there. Do you remember it?" she
asked in a low voice.
"Do you think I could forget it? I remember every turn of the house."
"Let us go outside, then."
She led the way, and he followed, to the trellis arbour, a few steps
from the drawing-room door. The long lilac blooms had gone with the
spring, but the luxuriant summer leafage cast a grateful shade. Roger
Orme sat in a wicker chair and fanned himself with his straw hat.
"Delightful!" he said. "And I smell stocks! It does carry me back. I
wonder if I have been away at all."
"I'm afraid you have," said Winifred--"for twenty years."
"Well, I'm not going away again. I've had my share of work. And
what's the good of work just to make money? I've made enough. I sold
out before I left."
"But in your letters you always said you liked America."
"So I did. It's the only country in the world for the young and eager.
If I had been born there, I should have no use for Dunsfield. But a
man born and bred among old, sleepy things has the nostalgia of old,
sleepy things in his blood. Now tell me about the sleepy old things.
I want to hear."
"I think I have written to you about everything that ever happened in
Dunsfield," she said.
But still there were gaps to be bridged in the tale of births and
marriages and deaths, the main chronicles of the neighbourhood. He had
a surprising memory, and plucked obscure creatures from the past whom
even Winifred had forgotten.
"It's almost miraculous how you remember."
"It's a faculty I've had to cultivate," said he.
They talked about his immediate plans. He was going to put The Lodge
into thorough repair, bring everything up-to-date, lay in electric
light and a central heating installation, fix bathrooms wherever
bathrooms would go, and find a place somewhere for a billiard-room.
His surveyor had already made his report, and was to meet him at the
house the following morning. As for decorations, curtaining,
carpeting, and such-like æsthetic aspects, he was counting on
Winifred's assistance. He thought that blues and browns would
harmonise with the oak-panelling in the dining-room. Until the house
was ready, his headquarters would be "The Red Lion."
"You see, I'm going to begin right now," said he.
She admired his vitality, his certainty of accomplishment. The Hall
was still lit by lamps and candles; and although, on her return from a
visit, she had often deplored the absence of electric light, she had
shrunk from the strain and worry of an innovation. And here was Roger
turning the whole house inside out more cheerfully than she would turn
out a drawer.
"You'll help me, won't you?" he asked. "I want a home with a touch of
the woman in it; I've lived so long in masculine stiffness."
"You know that I should love to do anything I could, Roger," she
replied happily.
He remarked again that it was good to be back. No more letters--they
were unsatisfactory, after all. He hoped she had not resented his
business man's habit of typewriting. This was in the year of grace
eighteen hundred and ninety-two, and, save for Roger's letters,
typewritten documents came as seldom as judgment summonses to Duns Hall.
"We go ahead in America," said he.
"'The old order changeth, yielding place to new.' I accept it," she
said with a smile.
"What I've longed for in Dunsfield," he said, "is the old order that
doesn't change. I don't believe anything has changed."
She plucked up her courage. Now she would challenge him--get it over
at once. She would watch his lips as he answered.
"I'm afraid I must have changed, Roger."
"In what way?"
"I am no longer twenty."
"Your voice is just the same."