"I was telling our old friend, Arthur, that when you are gone I shall
be a very lonely old woman."
"Oh, I don't think so;" he said in a strange voice.
"He means, Mr. Withers, he means, my dear child," she said, sweeping
her eyes over Alice, "he means that I shall have memory for
company--heavenly memory--the ghosts of other days. Sentimental boy!
And did you enjoy our music, Alice? Did I really stir that youthful
heart?... O, O, O," continued the horrible old creature, "you billers
and cooers, I have been listening to such flatteries, such confessions!
Beware, beware, Arthur, there's many a slip." She rolled her little
eyes at me, she shrugged her shoulders at Alice, and gazed an instant
stonily into her nephew's face.
I held out my hand. "Good night, good night!" she cried. "'He that
fights and runs away.' Ah, good night, Mr. Withers; come again soon!"
She thrust out her cheek at Alice, and we all three filed slowly out of
the room.
Black shadow darkened the porch and half the spreading sycamore. We
walked without speaking up the dusty village street. Here and there a
crimson window glowed. At the fork of the high-road I said good-bye.
But I had taken hardly more than a dozen paces when a sudden impulse
seized me.
"Seaton!" I called.
He turned in the moonlight.
"You have my address; if by any chance, you know, you should care to
spend a week or two in town between this and the--the Day, we should be
delighted to see you."
"Thank you, Withers, thank you," he said in a low voice.
"I dare say"--I waved my stick gallantly to Alice--"I dare say you will
be doing some shopping; we could all meet," I added, laughing.
"Thank you, thank you, Withers--immensely;" he repeated.
And so we parted.
But they were out of the jog-trot of my prosaic life. And being of a
stolid and incurious nature, I left Seaton and his marriage, and even
his aunt, to themselves in my memory, and scarcely gave a thought to
them until one day I was walking up the Strand again, and passed the
flashing gloaming of the covered-in jeweller's shop where I had
accidentally encountered my old schoolfellow in the summer. It was one
of those still close autumnal days after a rainy night. I cannot say
why, but a vivid recollection returned to my mind of our meeting and of
how suppressed Seaton had seemed, and of how vainly he had endeavoured
to appear assured and eager. He must be married by now, and had
doubtless returned from his honeymoon. And I had clean forgotten my
manners, had sent not a word of congratulation, nor--as I might very
well have done, and as I knew he would have been immensely pleased at
my doing--the ghost of a wedding-present.
On the other hand, I pleaded with myself, I had had no invitation. I
paused at the corner of Trafalgar Square, and at the bidding of one of
those caprices that seize occasionally on even an unimaginative mind, I
suddenly ran after a green 'bus that was passing, and found myself
bound on a visit I had not in the least foreseen.
All the colours of autumn were over the village when I arrived. A
beautiful late afternoon sunlight bathed thatch and meadow. But it was
close and hot. A child, two dogs, a very old woman with a heavy basket
I encountered. One or two incurious tradesmen looked idly up as I
passed by. It was all so rural and so still, my whimsical impulse had
so much flagged, that for a while I hesitated to venture under the
shadow of the sycamore-tree to enquire after the happy pair. I
deliberately passed by the faint-blue gates and continued my walk under
the high green and tufted wall. Hollyhocks had attained their topmost
bud and seeded in the little cottage gardens beyond; the Michaelmas
daisies were in flower; a sweet warm aromatic smell of fading leaves
was in the air. Beyond the cottages lay a field where cattle were
grazing, and beyond that I came to a little churchyard. Then the road
wound on, pathless and houseless, among gorse and bracken. I turned
impatiently and walked quickly back to the house and rang the bell.
The rather colourless elderly woman who answered my enquiry informed me
that Miss Seaton was at home, as if only taciturnity forbade her
adding, "But she doesn't want to see _you_."
"Might I, do you think, have Mr. Arthur's address?" I said.
She looked at me with quiet astonishment, as if waiting for an
explanation. Not the faintest of smiles came into her thin face.
"I will tell Miss Seaton," she said after a pause. "Please walk in."
She showed me into the dingy undusted drawing-room, filled with evening
sunshine and the green-dyed light that penetrated the leaves
overhanging the long French windows. I sat down and waited on and on,
occasionally aware of a creaking footfall overhead. At last the door
opened a little, and the great face I had once known peered round at
me. For it was enormously changed; mainly, I think, because the old
eyes had rather suddenly failed, and so a kind of stillness and
darkness lay over its calm and wrinkled pallor.
"Who is it?" she asked.