such a deal. The place would go up like a rocket in price. If you
really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most
you can do. But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow."
Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated
his agitated friend.
"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear
Bulstrode."
"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief.
"There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained--it's quite
perfect. I shall be a landowner in England. At all events, it's lucky
the property is sympathetic. I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this
affair in, let us say, _New Jersey_, and find myself forced to purchase
the Hackensack Meadows.
"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly.
"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman.
"Really!" wondered Westboro'. "Why, they tell me that it is let to a
Donna Incognita--a foreign lady."
Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's
knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. And the Duke, in
whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth,
and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed
over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he
credited his suspicions or not.
"Good heavens! _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple
country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but
Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and
showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a
vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect
such a _liason_ with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began
to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he
suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more
sinless than other men--than himself? He couldn't answer his own
question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house
party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The
Dials was certainly not she.
Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in
the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human,
rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had
felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed.
Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his
own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be.
And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt
himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.
By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had
stopped at one of the side doors of the castle.
"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke
decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all.
Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's
own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps
he's going to marry. Why not?
Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal
position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an
affectionate hand on the American's shoulder.
"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your
sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials."
Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn
in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard
here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too
sharply tempted."
"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live
here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm
coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll
understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared.
Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place."
The Duchess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be
obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly
agreed with her.
"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you
originally came."
She looked at him rather quizzically.
"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"
"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or
less true one."
But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say:
"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep
you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your
own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the
divorce as soon as possible."
"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."
He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight,
my dear Duchess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the
Duke."
She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his
face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took
his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went
on to make out her case for her.
"He has quite spoiled your life. He has been a brute, and not in the
least worth your----"
But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the
hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him.
"It's a _piege_," she murmured, "an _autodafe_."
"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me
everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally
condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the
justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side."
"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such
words."
Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"
"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?"
"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how
wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more,
therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."
She said passionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode? How--why do
you speak to me like this?"
Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind.
"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed."
"But why should you tell it to me?"
"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest
tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond
of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things
are made right for you. I've been very blind. I have longed for a
reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is,
loves you still. But I see what a sentimental ass I've been, and how
right you are."
She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she
had grown very pale indeed.
"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr.
Bulstrode? I have not told them to you."
"But I've been able to guess them," he replied.
"You've dared to, then?" she flashed.
"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the
while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to
your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very
cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what
the Duke's been up to."
Her voice was suffocated as she said:
"Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't
know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do."
Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right
in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you."
She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want
you."
He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you
through."
"See me through what?"
"Through your divorce," he said practically.
"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with
just a little hesitation in his voice:
"Oh, not so much as yours. But I'm the friend of both of you in this.
It's the best thing all round."
The gentleman's attitude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he
took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he
meant what he said.
"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged.
"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical. I'm going henceforth
to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point."
She put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, leave that for the rest of us.
It quite spoils you."
"I don't pretend to think--" He made his gaze small as he looked past
her in an attitude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an
ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the
modern divorce, is there?"
The Duchess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands
together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near
him.
"Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let
me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked
piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and
yours is such an understanding atmosphere."
Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped
himself now to sugar.
"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you
know. And I have been of the most colorless kind."
"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him.
"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's
after all where we belong, Duchess. Stand firm, keep to your own part
of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you
off your little foothold."
"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion.
The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his
material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked
at the lady.
"You should have married an American husband," he said to her, "a man
who would have idolized you, not cared whether you developed or not. A
duchess isn't far enough up. An American empress is higher."
The lady listening to him, shuddered a little.
"As it is," he went on regretfully, "you've been forced to develop,
whether or not you wanted to, to grow finer and freer, to go farther
on, to become more delightful. Here you are progressed and civilized,
after years of education, experience and suffering, and, my poor child,
here you are all alone."
She cried out, "Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," with a little gasp.
"Oh, no, no," he softly ejaculated, "it is not fair! You're terribly
wasted, and you've been, as you too well know, terribly betrayed."
But here he felt her hand on his arm with a strong grasp. She shook
the arm a little.
"Don't go on," she said deeply. "I tell you not to go on." After a
few seconds, in which he heard the fire and the slow bubbling of the
gently boiling water and the cooing of the doves without, under the
eaves, the Duchess said: "Listen to me. I haven't talked at all to
you, let me say something now."
Her companion reflected to himself: "Well, at all events, she's not
going to malign the Duke; that's a foregone conclusion."
The Duchess clasped her hands round her knee and raised her face to him.
"Do you think," she asked, "that there's any egoist as nasty as a
feminine one? Men are admitted to be generally selfish, but we
specialize, and each one of us has the faculty of getting up some new
and peculiar brand, I begin to believe. At any rate, when I married, I
was an egoist, and I've stayed on being one until a very little time
ago. I suppose I must in a way have more or less ornamented my
position, as the papers say. I did have two children as well, and in
that way fulfilled my duty as a Westboro'. But really and truly, I
have never in the least been a wife, and very little of a mother. I
was as silly and vain as could be, and I never for a moment valued my
husband. I wasn't indifferent to my children, but I was absorbed by my
worldly life, and when my little boys were taken ill and died, I was on
a dahabeah on the Nile, and I don't think that Cecil ever forgave us
for being so far away."
She remained quiet for a long time, looking down at her hands, and when
she lifted her face Bulstrode saw that she had wept.
"That," she went on, "broke the ice round my heart, when I came home to
those empty rooms."
He said soothingly, "There, there, my child."
"Oh, let me go on," she urged him, "let me speak. I shall probably
never feel like doing so again. But at that time when I turned to find
my husband, I discovered that I had no power over him, and I realized
that for years I had not possessed his love. I suppose you'll tell me
that it is unusual for a woman to see so clearly as this. Perhaps it
is. At any rate, just because I did so clearly, I forgave him when he
came to me last year, at Cannes."
"You were wonderful!" he repeated again, "perfectly noble, and, as I
said before, Westboro' did not deserve you."
She did not here, as she had done before, catch him up; on the
contrary, after a few moments, she asked him point-blank:
"What then do you advise us, knowing us both, to do?"
He was distinctly disappointed that she should have put the question to
him, and gave her time to withdraw it as he asked tentatively: "You
really feel that you must ask me, Duchess?"
"Tell me, at all events."
"You are quite sure that you could not go back to your husband?"
After a little pause, she lingeringly said:
"Yes, quite sure. You must know that he will not be the first to break
the ice now." Then she pushed: "You would advise my filing my papers
for divorce?"
Held in this way pitilessly for a direct challenge, he met her eyes
with his own, asking her gently:
"Is there nothing that speaks for Westboro' more distinctly than
anything I can say? And more appealingly than anything which you in
all your pride feel?"
The Duchess assented that there was, with a movement of her lips; she
put her hands over her face and so sat quietly for a few moments, and
when she spoke again to her visitor, her words were irrelevant. When
some few moments after she bade him good-by, she regretted his absence
in London and begged him to come and see her as soon as he returned.
"Come," she said, "at least to see whether I am here or whether I have
pitched my tent and gone away."
As Bulstrode stood in the doorway she asked him: "I understand there
are a lot of people at the castle for Christmas, and among them will be
Mrs. Falconer? Isn't it so? Is she really so very lovely?"
"It's a different type of loveliness from yours," Bulstrode returned.
And the Duchess supposed: "A happier type?"
"Well, she's rather happy I think, take it all together," Jimmy said.
"Has she children?"
"None."
"Is she in love with her husband?"
And he was so long searching for a reply that the Duchess laughed
quietly.
"Poor man," she said, "don't bother. But then since she's so happy,
she must be in love with somebody else's husband."
But he put her right immediately.
"I don't think she in the least is. And why," he went on, "since
happiness is so greatly the question of other people's state of mind,
might we not let it go at the fact that she is herself very much loved?"
The Duchess looked at her guest rather absently. She was thinking of
the happy beauty, the woman of a different type from her own, whose
presence at Westboro' had been sought by her husband for the second
time.
"Oh," she answered rather absently, giving Jimmy her hand, "she
wouldn't, you know, be happy if the feeling were all on the other side."
When the Duke had casually asked his guest's plans for Christmas week,
Bulstrode had come near to offending his host by declaring that he
could not possibly be one of a second house party.
"Do you, then," Westboro' had asked, "_hate_ the holidays?"
The genial Bulstrode had assured him to the contrary.
"Nor do I," continued the Duke, "even though I'm a miserable man on the
verge of a divorce. I expect there's too long a line of jolly
Christmases back of the Westboro's for me to mope through the season.
But I don't want to have Christmas coming to an empty house, my dear
fellow"--He put it pathetically, "there's no one in this gloomy place
but yourself and myself. We must have a Christmas party. The tenants
will, of course, be noisy and cheerful, but I'm going to ask a lot of
people down and make the list out now."
And Bulstrode had, however, firmly insisted that he could not really
stop on--that he must go away. "There are," he wound up his arguments,
"a thousand reasons why I should go."
But Westboro' had comprehendingly suggested that they might together
bring "every reason" down to the country. "And," continued his Grace,
"we'll narrow things into the most intimate circle possible. For I
shall ask the Ravensworths of Surrey and their children, there are
eight of them, ripping little things; they used to play with my boys.
We'll turn them loose and have a tree, old man."
Jimmy watched his face with a keen pity, for there had not been one ray
of light in it as he planned for his celebration.
"But you arrange to come back for Christmas Eve. There _must_ be some
one in charge--I mean to say, some one so that if the whole thing is
too much for me, why I'll bolt and you'll have to stand by."
He was, as he spoke, writing the names on a sheet of paper. Bulstrode
felt the plan to be rather _triste_ and lifeless, and he knew that he
could not and would not keep the Duchess' secret much longer, let its
revelation cost him what it would.
"Westboro'," he said, "I shall have to be getting off to-morrow. You
know I would stand by you if I could possibly see my way clear."
"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore
I've been, and how sick of me you must be." He wrote on: "I shall ask
Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in
town at Lady Sorgham's." As he quoted this last name the Duke folded
his list up. He nodded affectionately at Jimmy. "You'll arrange
perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?"
And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys
and things for the tree," he offered.
"Ripping!" his Grace nodded.
Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials,
and was hurrying across the forest when the Duchess herself appeared to
him at the big dial. She wore her furs, muff, and big enveloping
stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil. She was not in house or
garden trim. The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode,
and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected,
something great, something decisive.
"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of
passing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to
see you again."
"Again?"
"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times. But I mean I
wanted to see you _here_." Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a
piece of final news. He did not care to learn of an arbitrary
departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property?
Any repairs you...?"
"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they
ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone." She
smiled. ".... or with whom." Before he could speak she added: "Where
is my husband to-day?"
"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode
replied. "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other. I
expect he himself didn't quite know what. For something to cheer up
the empty rooms."
"Oh, don't," she murmured.
But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew. "I doubt if Westboro'
stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting."
"But he has a house full of people....?"
"No one has come, or is coming, after all."
"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!"
"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well."
The Duchess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you
don't for a moment think----"
"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled. "Well, that
would be a new phase. No, I think on the other hand they would revel,
and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that
they were really asked too late. Christmas week, you know--
"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the Duchess's face brightened.
"She----"
"Oh, _she_!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible. She's
sure to be along in good season."
"Oh!" accepted the Duchess, "and with whom does she come?"
Bulstrode waited. "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find
more or less some one to help her bear up her end. And I can't say how
she will take the fact of only us two."
The Duchess interrupted cheerfully:
"Why, she, of course, will go directly back! You don't think for a
second that she would stop on alone like that?"
"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice. "But she'll have
Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the
rector or curate or corral a neighbor."
But the Duchess shook her head as if she understood. "Oh, no, not at
this time."
Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time? You see, I know
the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more
or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness. I
am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off
like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that
when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be
no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think----"
The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it."
"Yes, if you like," he laughed. "Or be a sport," he preferred to put
it. "Stay on, stand by. It will be perfectly ripping of her, you
know."
But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman. Her eyes fixed
themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the
distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it?
Does he shoot birds on your premises?"
Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street
dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had
intended going up to see her husband.
"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I
must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off
place, I have an engagement."
Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever,
ever thank you."
"Oh, after your divorce----"
But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me
to think then that you do not believe...."
"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or
think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "It's I who am
as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict."
He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone
a problem which it takes two to answer. When you see Westboro' you
will know."
She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her
display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?"
He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would
have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner.
"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?"
"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!"
He laughed. "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?"
With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see
it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes,
you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend.
If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to
you."
He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing."
There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to,
and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been
reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would
only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away
again. Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle
of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?"
"Yes, at Methodist meetings."
She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever _has_ happened
it's only been since you told me things."
Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden,
that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find
words to say good-by to her. She went on to say, in a tone so low that
he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "You told me you could not
advise my husband to come to me."
Ah, had he! It was hard to remember that. _Had_ he said so?