want to come."
As her friend said nothing, she added in a voice more like a child than
a great Duchess, "You may trust me. I _want_ him to come-- There,
I've said it. I _hope_ he'll come. If he doesn't--
"Why, then, you'll go away," he finished. "You can't bear it."
The Duchess shook her head. "I'll go to him, on the contrary."
"You were going?"
"Yes, when you came."
He cried out: "Oh, I'm off then, I'm off for London, and I shan't be
back for the Christmas holidays. You may count on me."
The Duchess smiled delightfully, and was in a second the elusive woman,
intangible, and impossible to seize.
"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or
to-morrow. It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you
that I'm not jealous. I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has
gone away."
The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness
through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and
hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy.
He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and
refusals, one after another, came in during the week. The poor
gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of
his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when
charity would have been sweet. And it was with really tragic
melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming:
"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."
He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him
that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he
believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to
regard the matter with a pity for her.
"If Jimmy _isn't_ married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!"
The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of
spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle
throughout with their fragrance. Setting and decoration suggested a
feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the
doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that
the little gates were twisted with green.
The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the
house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and
superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off
his unrest. The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell
over the bare nakedness of the land. The little low clumps of
neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and
field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his
hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length
stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings.
Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard.
His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel,
skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's
indifference. The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries
bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite
mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy
grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the
finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. As the
forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where
he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property
Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to
avoid.
There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and
in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every
now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of
hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of
a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. It was winter, however,
and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a
December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the
festivities of the time. He heard the bird who was persistent and
sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had
come out for, he paused. His dogs were gone, the beggars! He called
them to no purpose, whistled and waited. They were a new brace and
young. God knew where they had cut away to.
Before him, as he stood, the brown vistas of the winter forest opened
out here and there into ochre circles and filled at this hour with
brilliant sunlight, their round openings overflowing; the light
filtered gently out and was swallowed up by the cold and closer wood.
Under his feet there was only the faint ghost of the late snowfall on
the turned-up, curled-up edges of the dry leaves. There beeches, red
as copper, and iron-strong oaks struck their roots deep down into the
mould. Westboro' did not know where he had wandered to, but here and
there through the bare trees gleamed the white of a statue on its mossy
base, and a little farther along, a broken pedestal held its slender
column up amongst the tree trunks as mossy and veined as they, and
right in the heart of the bowl, on a brick pedestal was a sundial, a
round brass disc, cut into with the tooth of time, and all black and
green. The sun at this moment shone full on it and its slight shadow
fell along the noon. The Duke stooped down and through the glass read
the inscription:
_Utere dum licet_.
"I'm a trespasser," he thought. "This is Bulstrode's property."
Through an opening just to the right he could see a brown path, and at
the end of it a gate.
"What the deuce could Jimmy have so wanted this old place for? What
was he hiding here?"
He turned back with the intention of taking as sudden leave of the
place as he had made an entrance. He saw his dogs in front of him and
called them. Before him lay the clean low fall of the meadow with the
line of high hedge, and directly opposite him he could see the elms of
his own park. He had not gone more than a couple of hundred feet away
before he paused again and turned about to have one last look back at
the enchanting place. As he stood thus, in Jimmy's property, he at
first took it to be a trick of vision, for he stood perfectly rigid,
peering back at the opening he had left not five minutes before. He
leaned forwards, setting his eyeglass and staring at two figures who
had come into the bowl and stood close by the big dial.
He set his gun on the ground and leaned upon it. There was a cordial
meeting; he could hear the voices but he could not distinguish their
words, and during all the interview, which must have consumed some
fifteen minutes, the Duke never stirred. Finally, and curiously enough
it seemed a short time to him, they took leave of each other, the man
going out of the forest by a different path, the woman slowly turning
down the neat walk that led to the brick arch, and to the old house.
Whether or not the Duke had at this moment the vaguest suspicion of
her, suspicion of his friend or of his wife that did them wrong, he
never had time or clearness to reflect or to ask himself. A dense
blindness took his senses away from him. He put his hands out to
steady himself in vain, and staggered. His dogs were at his feet, he
fell over them, struggled to get his balance back and like a stricken
tree went down. In his heavy fall on his gun it discharged, filling
his upper arm and shoulder with a quantity of bird shot. The
scattering pain, instead of finishing his faint, roused him with a
sharp, ugly sting, and the rush of the warm, wet blood. He half picked
himself up, and then, aware of the pain tearing his muscles and flesh,
he fell back like a dog on his haunches. Through his confusion he
still contrived to remember a little path, and inch by inch he dragged
himself towards it. He pulled along over the leaves and russet paths
of ground. His bare hand finally struck the bricks of the little walk
and he could still know that he was wonderfully in the road. There was
a cloud before his swimming eyes and his troubled mind; his face, pale
as death, was lifted towards the arch; leaving a bloody trail as he
crawled along the ground, he contrived to reach the gate and fell
across its threshold. His head lay on his arm, the string of his
broken eyeglass wound pathetically about his wrist. The Duke proved to
be a modern replica of the poor knight who fell, face downwards, on the
grass when Elizabeth's carriage passed him by, some four hundred years
before the present Duke.
After Bulstrode had left her, the Duchess of Westboro' hurried back to
the house that was not her home; to the little long drawing-room that
was not hers. For the first time since her voluntary exile, since her
occupation of this asylum, she found it bereft of charm and the cosey,
dear place as cold to her as if the snows had drifted in and filled a
deserted nest. It had nevertheless been a cloister, and she knew it,
where the best of her had prayed, where the true woman--and the true
woman is always something of a saint--had folded submissive hands,
where self had gone away and left nothing at all but love.
On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England.
The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a
stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared
whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas
should pass. But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that
touched anything so fantastic as this picture. The Duchess was serious
and lonely. With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her
furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling
brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made
her bedroom. Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with
chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming
in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the
scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place
in.
"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love
Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she
went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is
hurrying to _me_!"
She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at
the cloister effect. She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room
for a wife. "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has
gone. I shall break my promise. Oh, I can't really wait at all! If
things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want
at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully
good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"
The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on
the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She
could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere
dum licet_. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the
snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few
winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer
in winter time.
The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle
shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in
this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of
character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no
shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more
serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound
followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down
stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door
into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the
wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier
of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.
"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"
The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.
"A mort, my lady."
"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too,
every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."
The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command
to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind
his ear, he nodded.
"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I
think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take
his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the
castle."
She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions,
then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she
remembered the shot.
"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here,
you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find
the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask
him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate
and in the direction of the brick path.
As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart;
the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple
blooms at her feet. Then the hands that had gone to her heart
extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's
name.
The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up. He was a strong
man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the
mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line. The sound of voices had
reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a
few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale,
clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and
his balance not all he could wish. Before him was a little brick
house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself,
lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were
extended towards him.
"Cecil!" she cried. "Oh, my God! Cecil, what has happened to you?"
Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were
about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps
than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support,
and it felt warm and wonderful.
"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. I'm nasty and bloody. It's
all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really. A lot of beastly shot has
gone off into my shoulder. Just call some one to help me, will you?"
"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you
can perfectly well get along with only me. Come, come!"
The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he
was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept
him manfully to his feet. With his left hand he very firmly pushed the
Duchess a little away from him.
"Come?" he repeated. "Come where?"
"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up.
"Oh, lean on me! You'll fall, you'll fall! Mellon!" she cried. "O
Mellon!"
But the Duke put up his hand. "I'm all right," he said. "Don't call.
What house is that? What home do you mean?"
"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr.
Bulstrode's."
The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.
"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed. "What the devil does he do here? I saw
you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole
mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I
fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. If I ever get back to
where Bulstrode is----"
"Cecil!" cried the Duchess. She again wound her arms around him, and
it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the
columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a
child that has just learned to walk.
"He is fainting!" she cried. "Mellon, Mellon!"
The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after
staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like
a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. They hit the big dial with
a ring.
The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly
to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "I beg your pardon," he
said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its
formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's
house, you know."
"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are!
Bulstrode's house! Why, it's mine! Oh, don't break my heart. He's
only bought it, you know, that's all."
"Break her heart!" It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of
Westboro'. He had never heard it in all his life. It was warm and
struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was
the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover.
"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted.
"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess.
The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?"
"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day. I think I
have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the
Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came."
The Duke halted again on his crawling way. Mellon, who had really
reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself
well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried,
but ceased to flow.
"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word,
he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble
visitor was.
With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly:
"Send this damned gardener away."
"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him."
They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial,
round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of
the afternoon sun touched its edges. Westboro' lurched towards the
wall. "Send this man away," he commanded.
"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones." But at her husband's face she
motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit. His Grace wants to rest on the
wall. I'll call you."
With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall,
his ashen face lifted to her.
"I've only one arm," he said. He put it around her and he drew her
down as close to him as he could. He felt her face warm against his,
wet against his with tears. As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no
lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud.
"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed. "Do you forgive me? ... Then,"
said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured. I love you--I
love you."
The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the
warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. After a
few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his
balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the
circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the
maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband,
she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at
once for Bulstrode at the castle.
Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he
assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour. I need no one but you;
send them all away, all away."
He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been
indifferent to her disobedience. But now she did what he bade her, and
led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm;
led him to the lounge, where he sank down. Here, by his side, she gave
him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to
come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's
wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous
cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen
Elizabeth.
The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and
knew that he was hers. And he, more wild with love for her than
suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him
and that she was his.
The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and
rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The
Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately
"filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it,
filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode,
when he came and found it housing the lovers.
THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE
VIII
IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN
England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and
drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through
which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground glass the sun contrives
to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite
another.
Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the
time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in
immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself
lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.
He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the
door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find
his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.
She was at home.
An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected
that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten
years, meant to him still.
In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a
pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.
He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the
consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a multitude of feelings, were
not at his tongue's end.
The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and
candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there
could be no doubt.
The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly
comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a
hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had
they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real
and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate,
than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it
and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an
occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some
out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country
station to pass there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies
and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety
degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him
from her hard bench, had said:
"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!"
"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an
occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their
conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her
hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had
suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a
line she did not want him to see.
"No one is old, Jimmy, who has even the least little bit of future
towards which he looks! It's only those people whose doors are all
shut, whose window blinds are all drawn to, who, no matter which way
they look, see no opening into a distance towards which they will want
to go--only those people are old!"
And as for Bulstrode, if Mrs. Falconer's idea were right, he was a very
young man still, for at the end of every path others opened and led
rapidly away. Scene gave on to scene, dissolved and grew new again.
Every door gave to rooms whose suites were delightful, indefinite, and
all followed towards a future whose existence Bulstrode never doubted.
But there were certainly times, as the days went methodically on, there
were decidedly many times when it took all his faith and his spirit to
endure the _etape_ that lay between self and life. Such a little
tranquil home as a certain property he had lately acquired was what he
dreamed of sharing with Mrs. Falconer. He did not, with any degree of
anxiety, ask himself whether or not it were dead men's shoes he was
waiting for, and no clear, formulated thought of tangible events took
existence in his mind. But he knew that he waited for his own.