Part 5 (1/2)

I went on walking in the wind and rain. Up the avenue to where the four roads met, and eastwards to the boundary of our land; then back through the woods again and northwards to the outlying farms, where I made a point of dallying and talking with the tenants, thus s.p.a.cing out the time. Across the park and over the westward hills, and home at last by the Barton, just as it grew dusk. I was wet nearly to the skin but I did not care.

I opened the hall door and went into the house. I expected to see the signs of arrival, boxes and trunks, travel rugs and baskets; but all was as usual, there was nothing there.

A fire was burning in the library, but the room was empty. In the dining room a place was laid for one. I pulled the bell for Seecombe. ”Well?” I said.

He wore his newfound look of self-importance, and his voice was hushed.

”Madam has come,” he said.

”So I would suppose,” I answered, ”it must be nearly seven. Did she bring luggage? What have you done with it?”

”Madam brought little of her own,” he said. ”The boxes and trunks belonged to Mr. Ambrose. They have all been put in your old room, sir.”

”Oh,” I said. I walked over to the fire and kicked a log. I would not have him notice for the world that my hands were trembling.

”Where is Mrs. Ashley now?” I said.

”Madam has gone to her room, sir,” he said. ”She seemed tired, and she asked you to excuse her for dinner. I had a tray taken up to her about an hour ago.”

His words came as a relief. Yet in a sense it was an anticlimax.

”What sort of journey did she have?” I asked.

”Wellington said the road after Liskeard was rough, sir,” he answered, ”and it was blowing hard. One of the horses cast a shoe, and they had to turn in at the smithy before Lostwithiel.”

”H'm.” I turned my back upon the fire and warmed my legs.

”You're very wet, sir,” said Seecombe. ”Better change your things, or you'll take cold.”

”I will directly,” I answered him, and then, glancing about the room, ”Where are the dogs?”

”I think they followed madam upstairs,” he said, ”at least old Don did, I am not certain of the others.”

I went on warming my legs before the fire. Seecombe still hovered by the door, as if expecting me to draw him in conversation.

”All right,” I said, ”I'll bath and change. Tell one of the boys to take up the hot water. And I'll dine in half an hour.”

I sat down that evening alone to my dinner before the newly polished candlesticks and the silver rose bowl. Seecombe stood behind my chair, but we did not speak. Silence must have been torture to him, on this night of nights, for I knew how much he longed to comment on the new arrival. Well, he could bide his time, and then let forth to his heart's content in the steward's room.

Just as I finished dinner, John came into the room and whispered to him. Seecombe came and bent over my shoulder.

”Madam has sent word that if you should wish to see her, when you have dined, she will be pleased to receive you,” he said.

”Thank you, Seecombe.”

When they had left the room I did something that I very rarely did. Only after extreme exhaustion, after riding perhaps, or a hard day's shoot, or buffeting about in a summer gale in the sailing boat with Ambrose. I went to the sideboard and poured myself a gla.s.s of brandy. Then I went upstairs, and knocked upon the door of the little boudoir.

8.

A low voice, almost inaudible, bade me come in. Although it was now dark, and the candles had been lit, the curtains were not drawn, and she was sitting on the window seat looking out onto the garden. Her back was turned to me, her hands were clasped in her lap. She must have thought me one of the servants, for she did not move when I entered the room. Don lay before the fire, his muzzle in his paws and the two young dogs beside him. Nothing had been moved in the room, no drawers opened in the small secretaire, no clothes flung down; there was none of the litter of arrival.

”Good evening,” I said, and my voice sounded strained and unnatural in the little room. She turned, and rose at once and came towards me. It was happening so quickly that I had no time, no moment for reflection back upon the hundred images I had formed of her during the past eighteen months. The woman who had pursued me through the nights and days, haunted my waking hours, disturbing my dreams, was now beside me. My first feeling was one of shock, almost of stupefaction, that she should be so small. She barely reached my shoulder. She had nothing like the height or the figure of Louise.

She was dressed in deep black, which took the color from her hair, and there was lace at her throat and at her wrists. Her hair was brown, parted in the center with a low knot behind, her features neat and regular. The only things large about her were the eyes, which at first sight of me widened in sudden recognition, startled, like the eyes of a deer, and from recognition to bewilderment, from bewilderment to pain, almost to apprehension. I saw the color come into her face and go again, and I think I was as great a shock to her as she was to me. It would be hazardous to say which of us was the more nervous, which the more ill-at-ease.

I stared down at her and she looked up at me, and it was a moment before either of us spoke. When we did, it was to speak together.

”I hope you are rested,” was my stiff contribution, and hers, ”I owe you an apology.” She followed up my opening swiftly with ”Thank you, Philip, yes,” and moving towards the fire she sat down on a low stool beside it and motioned me to the chair opposite. Don, the old retriever, stretched and yawned, and pulling himself onto his haunches placed his head upon her lap.

”This is Don, isn't it?” she said, putting her hand on his nose. ”Was he really fourteen last birthday?”

”Yes,” I said, ”his birthday is a week before my own.”

”You found him in a piecrust with your breakfast,” she said. ”Ambrose was hiding behind the screen in the dining room, and watched you open up the pie. He told me he would never forget the look of amazement on your face when you lifted the crust and Don struggled out. You were ten years old, and it was the first of April.”

She looked up from patting Don, and smiled at me; and to my great discomfiture I saw tears in her eyes, gone upon the instant.

”I owe you an apology for not coming down to dinner,” she said. ”You had made so much preparation, just for me, and must have come hurrying home long before you wanted. But I was very tired. I would have made a poor sort of companion. It seemed to me that it would be easier for you if you dined alone.”

I thought of how I had tramped about the estate from east to west so as to keep her waiting, and I said nothing. One of the younger dogs woke up and licked my hand. I pulled his ears to give myself employment.

”Seecombe told me how busy you were, and how much there is to do,” she said. ”I don't want you to feel hampered in any way by my sudden unexpected visit. I can find my way about alone, and shall be happy doing so. You mustn't make any sort of alteration in your day tomorrow because of me. I just want to say one thing, which is thank you, Philip, for letting me come. It can't have been easy for you.”

She rose then, and crossed over to the window to draw the curtains. The rain was beating against the panes. Perhaps I should have drawn the curtains for her, I did not know. I stood up, awkwardly, in an attempt to do so, but it was too late anyway. She came back beside the fire, and we both sat down again.

”It was such a strange feeling,” she said, ”driving through the park and up to the house, with Seecombe standing by the door to welcome me. I've done it so many times, you know, in fancy. Everything was just as I had imagined it. The hall, the library, the pictures on the walls. The clock struck four as the carriage drove up to the door; I even knew the sound of it.” I went on pulling at the puppy's ears. I did not look at her. ”In the evenings, in Florence,” she said, ”last summer and winter before Ambrose became ill, we used to talk about the journey home. It was his happiest time. He would tell me about the gardens, and the woods, and the path down to the sea. We always intended to return by the route I came; that's why I did it. Genoa, and so to Plymouth. And the carriage coming there with Wellington to bring us back. It was good of you to do that, to know how I would feel.”

I felt something of a fool, but found my tongue.

”I fear the drive was rather rough,” I said, ”and Seecombe told me you were obliged to stop at the smithy to shoe one of the horses. I'm sorry about that.”

”It did not worry me,” she said. ”I was quite happy, sitting beside the fire there, watching the work and chatting to Wellington.”

Her manner was quite easy now. That first nervousness had gone, if it had been nervousness at all. I could not tell. I found now that if anyone was at fault it was myself, for I felt oddly large and clumsy in so small a room, and the chair in which I was sitting might have been made for a dwarf. There is nothing so defeating to ease of manner as being uncomfortably seated, and I wondered what sort of a figure I must cut, hunched there in the d.a.m.nable little chair, with my large feet tucked awkwardly beneath it and my long arms hanging down on either side of it.

”Wellington pointed out to me the entrance to Mr. Kendall's house,” she said, ”and for a moment I wondered if it would be right, and polite, to go and pay him my respects. But it was late, and the horses had been far, and very selfishly I was longing to be-here.” She had paused a moment before saying the word ”here,” and it came to me that she had been on the point of saying ”home” but checked herself. ”Ambrose had described it all so well to me,” she said, ”from the entrance hall to every room in the house. He even sketched them for me, so that today, I well believe, I could find my way blindfold.” She paused a moment, and then she said, ”It was perceptive of you to let me have these rooms. They were the ones we meant to use, had we been together. Ambrose always intended you to have his room, and Seecombe told me you had moved into it. Ambrose would be glad.”

”I hope you'll be comfortable,” I said. ”n.o.body seems to have been in here since someone called aunt Phoebe.”

”Aunt Phoebe fell lovesick of a curate, and went away to Tonbridge to mend a broken heart,” she said, ”but the heart proved stubborn, and aunt Phoebe took a chill that lasted twenty years. Did you never hear the story?”

”No,” I said, and glanced across at her, under my eyes. She was looking into the fire, smiling, I suppose at the thought of aunt Phoebe. Her hands were clasped on her lap in front of her. I had never seen hands so small before on an adult person. They were very slender, very narrow, like the hands of someone in a portrait painted by an old master and left unfinished.

”Well,” I said, ”what happened to aunt Phoebe?”

”The chill left her, after twenty years, at sight of another curate. But by then aunt Phoebe was five-and-forty, and her heart was not so brittle. She married the second curate.”