the kindlings, and Bulstrode went over to welcome the crackling of the
young blaze. The absence of his host, the castle once more handed over
to him for the time, gave him a feeling of proprietorship in the bright
cordial room, but looking up at the portraits of Westboro's in puffs
and velvets, Jimmy couldn't find an ancestor! Their amours and
indulgences had written brilliant and amusing history; the gentlemen
had gone mad at ladies' carriage wheels, they had carried off their
scandals with the highest of hands, and still held their heads well.
They had carved and raped and loved their way down to the present time,
and were none the less a proud line of pure British blood. The
American bachelor, about whose fine head nothing picturesque or worthy
of history circled, looked up at the Dukes of Westboro' musingly, and
there was not a peer or a noble better to look upon or who had been at
heart a truer lover, although he did not know it.
During the lapse of time between leaving this same room and his present
return, Bulstrode had not tossed on a sleepless bed; he had slept
soundly, and during his rest the several dials had called out like
bells, their voice, _Utere dum licet_; and finally a real bell had
roused him to the fact that it was day, a new day, and that unless he
was killed en route to the castle, nothing could keep him from the
place and from her.
He had no consolation in the fact that the honor and decency of society
were by him strengthened and retained, nor did he plan out the sane,
wise project of not seeing her again. Nor did he weigh or balance his
charge or responsibility. There had been a cessation of vibration of
any kind, and only one supreme, sovereign reality took possession of
the world and of himself, and the limitless beauty and the limitless
delight he had breathed in ever since he left her and knew how she
loved him. Nothing in life, he had so felt, could dull or tarnish the
glory of her face; nothing, no matter what life held for them both,
could efface the touch she had laid upon him, as her arms were about
him. Through the interval his past life appeared to have been, on
through the new and unlived interval to come, she would be as last
night she had been, she would look at him as last night she had looked.
"Heavens!" he meditated, in the faces of the self-indulgent, cynical
Westboro's, "I am not going to be blase through six paradises just
because there happens to be a seventh!"
A new fire spun its lilac flames behind his back. The spicy breath of
the wreaths of hemlock was deliciously sweet. Little by little the sun
had made its eastern way and sparkled at the pane outside, and in the
radiant clarity the terrace and its charming railing, the urns with the
little cedars, stood out clearly; and more than all else, the truth
cried itself to him, that whatever happened, she was still here, still
in the house with him.
He had chosen a Christmas gift for her in London, and determined to
send it up to her now with some roses, and in this way to announce the
fact that he had come back from The Dials and was ready to use the day
as she liked. He felt only how beautiful it would be to see her, that
it did not for a second occur to him to wonder if she on her part would
feel a certain embarrassment.
In answer to his ring, not a man servant, but the perfect housekeeper
rustled in, her crisp silks, her cameos, and her "Christmas face," as
one of the little Westboro' chaps had called her rosy countenance, on
one of his few Christmas days.
"Where would Mr. Bulstrode please to have breakfast?"
"Why, wherever it best suited, went with the house, with the day.
Where, indeed, and that was more to the point, would Mrs. Falconer have
it?"
"Mrs. Falconer? Why, Mr. Bulstrode didn't know then that Mrs. Falconer
had gone?"
She saw by his face that he knew nothing less in the world.
Why, directly the despatch had been fetched over from the Abbey
station. There had been but twenty minutes between the getting of it
and her starting away. A motor had been sent with her and the maid,
and Mrs. Falconer had fortunately been able to make the train; the only
one, it so happened, being Christmas Day, that connected with the Dover
and Calais special.
The matter-of-fact bit of news came to Bulstrode so coldly and so
ruthlessly that it took some seconds for the bitter thought that she
had gone because she couldn't trust him, to penetrate. Then this gave
place to an effulgent hope that it might be _herself_ she couldn't
trust! But the discovery that she had left him no message of any kind,
and that she was above all irrevocably gone, struck him more cruelly
than had any blow in his kindly life. He could not suffer in peace
before the bland creature in silks and cameos. Crises and departures,
battle, murder, and sudden death, he felt the housekeeper would accept
serenely should any of them chance to occur at Westboro', and above all
if they were part of the sacred family history. But Mrs. Falconer and
he were not Westboro's, and he wanted to be rid of his companion and to
find himself alone in order to consult time tables, to find out why it
had been imperative to go to Calais, with what boat for America a
Christmas-Day train could possibly connect, and to turn it all over in
his mind. He at first believed that there had never been any telegram
and that she had only employed a polite ruse in order to facilitate her
flight.
Why, at all events, couldn't she have left him a line? She might, he
ruefully complained, have strained a point and wished him a Merry
Christmas! As he walked to and fro in the room now supremely deserted,
he began slowly to approach a certain hypothesis which as soon as he
granted, he as violently discarded. But the thought was imperious:
something of its kind always haunted him like a bad ghost. It could
usually be dismissed, but now it was persistent. A despatch from
Falconer had certainly come the night before. Another might have
followed on this morning, hard upon it? To have been sent over from
the Abbey on a holiday must have been a very grave message indeed; "a
matter," as the old term went, "of life and death." The phrase began
to repeat itself and the conviction to grow, and as he was obliged to
give it admittance and to face it, and to wonder what the shock would
be to her, and what the news would be to him, how it would change
things, and how they would both meet it--his promenade to and fro in
the room brought him up before the centre table and he looked down upon
it at length with a seeing eye. Why not? why not? he was wondering.
We are all essentially mortal, and lightning never had struck yet, _why
not in this place_? And since there had been neither shame nor blame,
why couldn't he face the possibility of a perfectly natural mortality?
Before him on the table lay Mrs. Falconer's green scarf, and as
Bulstrode lifted the soft thing he saw that underneath it lay a
despatch.
Then he knew instantly that Mary Falconer had left both scarf and
telegram there, and that this was her message to him. He seemed, as
the word he had not yet read met him in this form, to have been waiting
all his life for just this news. The road, so long in winding home,
had wound home at length, and now that he believed the crisis was
really reached, there was something infinitely stilling in its
solemnity.
Bulstrode could not at once draw the sheet from its envelope. He lit a
cigar and sat down before the fire.
He knew, as though he saw it all before his eyes, how the despatch had
found her this early Christmas Day, in her room--he knew how she had
read it first and borne it well--for she was a brave, strong woman--he
knew that his absence had been a relief to her. He knew how she had
worn her long, dark cloak and thick veil, and had gone out to travel
home alone. Oh, he knew her, and as he thought of the picture she had
made, and how she would begin her sad and dreadful journey, he for the
first time thought of himself--of themselves. He was too human not to
know that there would be a future and that they would build anew. In
the new house there would be no driftwood now; nor would they ever be
haunted by the sound of a bell in the dark, for with the few brave
souls who sail across the seas of life they had both of them stood by
the sinking ship until it put into port.
Mrs. Shawles came in again presently and told him that she had laid his
breakfast in the little room facing the gardens. Then she waited, and
as Bulstrode looked up at her he forced himself to smile faintly and
wished her a Merry Christmas.
She thanked him, gave him many, and said it was a happy morning for all
of the Westboro's, and that the castle and the house would see new
times and better things, and when he had stirred himself to the point
of putting what he had for her into her hand, he was not sure whether
he wanted her to go, or not, this time and leave him alone.
She still hesitated. It was a custom with them, she told him, with the
Westboro's, to have hall prayers on holidays. When the Duke himself
was there, he always read them; the servants and the children of the
place had already come in. In the absence of the family _would_ Mr.
Bulstrode...?
"Oh, no, on no account, on no account," he hurried. "Wasn't there some
one else?"
"Well, to be sure, there was Portman."
The guest was sure that Portman would do it quite in the proper way,
and as for himself, he would have his breakfast in a few moments, he
thanked her.
And Mrs. Shawles, who had expected a more favorable answer, left open
on the table the little Book which she had brought in with her.
Bulstrode took it up after she was gone.
In a few seconds he heard from the distance the sound of the children
singing. Their voices ceased, to be followed by the subdued murmur of
reading. As Bulstrode opened the Book he held, the leaves fell apart
at the marriage rite. He hurriedly passed this over, and his eyes were
arrested by the opening lines of a more solemn service. He paused to
read the beautiful, pitiful words, and then, still with the open Book
in his hands, he drew the telegram out of its cover....