CHAPTER VI
“Dion! Is it you at last?”
A warm voice called from above, and the blood rushed to his temples.
“Yes.”
It seemed to him that he took the old staircase in his stride, and he had a feeling almost such as a man has when he is going into action.
“Rose!”
He held her in his arms and kissed her.
“It’s—seemed a long time!”
He felt moisture springing to his eyes. The love he felt for her almost overwhelmed his self-control. Till this moment he had never known how great it was. All his deprivation was in that embrace.
“Years it’s seemed!” he said, letting her go with a little laugh, summoned up—he did not know how—to save him from too much emotion.
She gazed at him.
“Oh, Dion, how you have altered!”
“Have I?”
“Tremendously.”
How well he knew the kindly glance of her honest brown eyes; a thousand times he had called it up before him in South Africa. But this was not the glance so characteristic of her. In the firelit room her eyes looked puzzled, almost wide, with a sort of startled astonishment.
“You had a lot of the boy in you still when you went away. At least, I used to think so.”
“Haven’t I any left?”
“I can’t see any. No, I think you’ve come back all man. And how tremendously burnt you are.”
“Almost black, I suppose. But I’m so accustomed to it.”
“It’s right,” she said. “Your face tells the story of what you’ve done. Robin”—she paused, then slowly she said—“Robin’s got almost a new father.”
“Where is he? He’s sure to have altered more than I have.”
“Oh no. He’ll be in about five. I’ve sent him out to tea with some one you know.”
“With whom?”
“Mr. Thrush.”
“Mr. Thrush at Welsley?”
“Yes. I’ll explain all that presently. I thought I’d have you all to myself for half an hour, and then Robin should have his turn. Here comes Annie.”
When the two arm-chairs were occupied, Dion said:
“And you, Rosamund?”
“What about me?”
“Haven’t you altered?”
“If I have, probably you would know it and I shouldn’t.”
“Yes, I dare say that’s true. You aren’t conscious of it, then?”
But she was giving him his tea, and that took her mind away from his question, no doubt. He felt a change in her, but it was not almost fiercely marked like the change in him, on whom a Continent had written with its sun and its wind, and with its battlefields. The body of a man was graven by such a superscription. And no doubt even a child could read something of it. But the writing on Rosamund was much fainter, was far less easy to decipher; it was perhaps traced on the soul rather than on the body. The new legend of Dion was perhaps an assertion. But this story of Rosamund, what was it? She saw the man in Dion, lean, burnt, strong, ardent, desirous, full of suppressed emotion that was warmly and intensely human; he saw in her, as well as the mother, something that was perhaps almost pale, almost elusive, like the still figure and downbent face of a recluse seen in passing an open window.
She saw in Dion his actions; he saw in her her meditations. Perhaps that was it. All this time he had been living incessantly in the midst of men, never alone, nearly always busy, often fiercely active, marching, eating, sleeping in company. And all the time she had been here, in the midst of this cloistral silence, and perhaps often alone.
“You know everybody here, I suppose?” he asked, drinking his tea with relish, and eating the toast which seemed to him crisply English, but always faintly aware of that still figure and of that downbent face.
“Almost everybody. I’ve sung a great deal, and got to know them all partly through that. And they’re dear people most of them. They let one alone when they know one wants to be alone.”
“And I expect you can enjoy being alone here.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “At times. It would be difficult to feel lonely, in the miserable, dreadful way, I mean, in the Precincts. We are rather like a big family here, each one with his, or her, own private room in the big family house.”
“I know you’ve always loved a certain amount of solitude, Rose,” he said tenderly. “D’you remember that day in London when I burst in upon your solitude with Dante, and was actually jealous of the ‘Paradiso’?”
“Yes,” she said, smiling.
“But you forgave me, or I shouldn’t be here now.”
He gave her his cup for some more tea.
“You can’t imagine how absolutely wonderful it is to me to be here after what I’ve been through.”
He lay back in his chair, but he still looked tremendously alert, wiry, powerful even.
Dion was much more impressive than he had been when he went away. Rosamund felt a faint creeping of something that was almost like shyness in her as she looked at him.
“After Green Point Camp and Orange River—I shall never forget the dust-storm we had there!—and Springfontein and Kaffir River—oh, the heat there, Rose!—and Kaalfontein and all the rest of it. It was near Kaalfontein that we first came under fire. I shan’t forget that.”
He was silent for a moment. She looked at him across the tea-table. All that he knew and she did not know now made him seem rather strange to her. The uniting of two different, utterly different, experiences of life, was more tremendous, more full of meaning and of mystery, than the uniting of two bodies. This, then, was to be a second wedding-day for her and for Dion? All their letters, in which, of course, they had tried to tell each other something of their differing experiences, had really told very little, almost nothing. Dion’s glance told her more than all his letters, that and his color, and certain lines in his face, and the altered shapes of his hands, and his way of holding himself, and his way of speaking. Even his voice was different. He was an unconscious record of what he had been through out there; and much of it, she felt sure, he would never tell to her except unconsciously by being a different Dion from the Dion who had gone away.
“How little one can tell in letters,” she said. “Scarcely anything.”
“You made me feel Welsley in yours.”
“Did I? Why did you walk from the station?”
“I wanted to taste your home, to get into your atmosphere, if I could, before seeing you. Rose, love can make a man almost afraid at times.”
It seemed to her that his dark eyes burned with fires they had captured in South Africa. Sitting in the old room with its homely and ecclesiastical look, he had an oddly remote appearance, she thought, as if he belonged to a very different milieu. Always dark, he now looked almost gipsy-like; yet he had the unmistakable air of a soldier. But if there had ever been anything there was now nothing left of the business man in Dion.
“Won’t you find it very difficult to settle down again to the life in Austin Friars, Dion?” she said.
“Perhaps I should, but for one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“You and Robin at home when the drudgery is done.”
Rosamund saw Welsley receding from her into darkness, with its familiar faces and voices, its gray towers, its cloisters, its bells, the Dresden Amen, the secret garden, the dreams she had had in the garden.
“Number 5 is all ready to go into. It was lucky we only let it for six months,” she said quietly.
“Uncle Biron has given me a fortnight’s holiday, or rather gladly agreed to my taking it. Of course I’m my own master in a way, being a partner, but I want to consider him. He was awfully good about my going away. Mother’s looking well. She was at our Thanksgiving Service; Beattie and Guy too. I’ve had just a glimpse of godfather.”
They talked about family things till Robin came in from his festivity with Mr. Thrush, who was staying at Little Cloisters, but only till the following day.
That was a great moment, the moment of Robin’s arrival. Mr. Thrush did not appear with him, but, being a man of delicate perceptions despite his unfortunate appearance, retired discreetly to the servants’ hall, leaving his devoted adherent free for the “family reunion,” as he called it.
“Go up quietly, dear,” said the nurse to Robin, “and tap at the drawing-room door.”
“Shall I tap?” asked Robin earnestly.
He was looking unusually solemn, his lips were parted, and his eyes almost stared.
“Yes, dear. Tap prettily, like a young gentleman as you are, and when you hear ‘Come in!’——”
“I know then!” interrupted Robin, with an air of decision.
He walked rather slowly upstairs, lifting one brown leg after the other thoughtfully from step to step, till he was outside the drawing-room door. Inside he heard the noise of a man’s voice, which sounded to him very tremendous and important, the voice of a brave soldier.
“That’s Fa!” he thought, and he listened for a moment as to the voice of a god.
Then he doubled his small fist and gave a bang to the door. Some instinct told him not to follow nurse’s injunction, not to try to be pretty in his tapping. The voice of the soldier ceased inside, there was a brief sound of a woman’s voice, then came a strong “Come in!”
Robin opened the door, went straight up to the very dark and very thin man whom he saw sitting by the fire, and, staring at this man with intensity, lifted up his face, at the same time saying:
“‘Ullo, Fa!”
There was a dropped aitch for which nurse, who was very choice in her English, would undoubtedly have rebuked him had she been present. The dark man did not rebuke Robin, but caught him up and enfolded him in a hug that was powerful but not a bit rough. Robin was quite incapable of analyzing a hug, but he loved it as he would not have loved it if it had been rough, or if it had been merely gentle. A sense of great happiness and of great confidence flooded him. From that moment he adored his father as he had never adored him before. The new authority of his father’s love for him captured him. He knew nothing about it and he knew all about it, as is the way with children, those instinctive sparks fresh from the great furnace.
Long before dinner time Dion knew that he had won something beside the D.C.M. which he had won in South Africa, something that was wonderfully precious to him. He gave Robin the Toby jar and another gift.
He cared for his little son that night as he had never cared for him before. It was as if the sex in Robin spoke to the sex in him for the first time with a clear, unmistakable voice, saying, “We’re of the comradeship of the male sex, we’re of the brotherhood.” It was not even a child’s voice that spoke, though it spoke in a little child. Dion blessed South Africa that night, felt as if South Africa had given him his son.
That gift would surely be a weapon in his hands by means of which, or with the help of which, he would conquer the still unconquered mystery, Rosamund’s whole heart. South Africa had done much for Dion. Out there in that wonderful atmosphere he had seen very clearly, his vision had pierced great distances; he saw clearly still, in England. War, it seemed, was so terribly truthful that it swept a man clean of lies; Dion was swept clean of lies. He did not feel able any longer even to tell them occasionally to himself. He knew that Rosamund’s greeting to him, warm, sweet, sincere though it had been, had lacked something which he had found in Robin’s. But he felt that now he had got hold of Robin so instantly, and so completely, the conquest of the woman he had only won must be but a question of time. That was not pride in him but instinct, speaking with that voice which seems a stranger to the brain of man, but a friend to something else; something universal of which in every man a fragment is housed, or by which every man is mysteriously penetrated.
A fortnight’s holiday—and then?
On that first evening it had been assumed that as soon as Dion went back to business in Austin Friars, No. 5 Little Market Street would receive its old tenants again, be scented again with the lavender, made musical with Rosamund’s voice, made gay with the busy prattle and perpetual activities of Robin.
For two days thereafter no reference was made by either Rosamund or Dion to the question of moving. Dion gave himself up to Welsley, to holiday-making. With a flowing eagerness, not wholly free from undercurrents, Rosamund swept him sweetly through Welsley’s delights. She inoculated him with Welsley, or at any rate did her best to inoculate him, secretly praying with all her force that the wonderful preparation might “take.” Soon she believed that it was “taking.” It was evident that Dion was delighted with Welsley. On his very first day they went together to the afternoon service in the Cathedral, and when the anthem was given out it proved to be “The Wilderness.” Rosamund’s quick look at Dion told him that this was her sweet doing, and that she remembered their talk on the hill of Drouva. He listened to that anthem as he had never listened to an anthem before. After the service Canon Wilton, who, though no longer in residence as “three months’ Canon,” was still staying on at his house in the Precincts for a few days, came up to welcome him home. Then Mr. Dickinson appeared, full of that modesty which is greedy for compliments. Mrs. Dickinson, too, drifted up the nave in a casual way which scarcely concealed her curiosity about Mrs. Dion’s husband; when, later, Rosamund told Dion of her Precincts’ name, “the cold douche,” he could not see its applicability.
“I thought her an observant but quite a warm-hearted woman,” he said.
“She is warm-hearted; in fact she’s a dear, and I’m very fond of her,” said Rosamund.
“Every one here seems very fond of you,” he replied.
Indeed, he was struck by Welsley’s evident love of Rosamund. It was like a warm current flowing about her, and about him now, because he was her husband. He was greeted with cordial kindness by every one.
“It is jolly to be received like this,” he said to Rosamund. “It does a fellow good when he’s just come home. It makes him feel that there is indeed no place like England. But it’s all owing to you.”
But she protested.
“They all admire and respect you for what you’ve done,” she said. “You’ve brought the best introductions here, your own deeds. They speak for you.”
He shook his head, loving her perfectly sincere modesty.
“You may be a thousand things,” he told her, “but one thing you’ll never be—vain or conceited.”
The charm of her, which was compounded of beauty and goodness, mixed with an extraordinary hold upon, and joy in, the simple and healthy things of life, came upon him with a sort of glorious newness after his absence in South Africa. He loved other people’s love of her and the splendid reasons for it so apparent in her. But for Robin he might nevertheless have felt baffled and sad even in these moments dedicated to the joys of reunion, he might have felt acutely that the completeness and perfection of reunion depended upon the exact type of union it followed upon. Robin saved him from that. He hoped very much in Robin, who had suddenly given him a confidence in himself which he had never known till now. This was a glorious possession. It gave him force. People in Welsley were decidedly impressed by Mrs. Leith’s husband. Mrs. Dickinson remarked to her Henry over griddle cakes after the three o’clock service:
“I call Mr. Leith a very personable man. Without having Mrs. Leith’s wonderful charm—what man could have?—he makes a distinct impression. He has suppressed force, and that’s what women like in a man.”
Henry took another griddle cake, and wondered whether he was wise in looking so decided. Perhaps he ought to suppress his undoubted force; perhaps all his life, without knowing it, he had hovered on the verge of the blatant.
Canon Wilton also was struck by the change in Dion, and said something, but not just then all, of what he felt.
“You know the phrase, ‘I’m my own man again,’ Leith, don’t you?” he said, in his strong bass voice, looking steadily at Dion with his kindly stern eyes. (He always suggested to Dion a man who would be very stern with himself.)
“Yes,” said Dion. “Why?”
“I think South Africa’s made you your own man.”
Dion looked tremendously, but seriously, pleased.
“Do you? And what about the again?”
“Cut it out. I don’t think you’d ever been absolutely your own man before you went away.”
“I wonder if I am now,” Dion said, but without any weakness.
He had been through one war and had come out of it well; now he had come home to another. The one campaign had been but a stern preparation for the other perhaps. But Rosamund did not know that. Nevertheless, it seemed to him that already their relation to each other was slightly altered. He felt that she was more sensitive to him than formerly, more closely observant of what he was and what he did, more watchful of him with Robin, more anxious about his opinion on various matters.
For instance, there was the matter of Mr. Thrush.
Dion had not seen Mr. Thrush on the evening of his first day at Welsley. He had been kept so busy by Rosamund, had done and seen so much, that he had quite forgotten the ex-chemist. In the evening, however, before dinner, he suddenly remembered him.
“What’s become of Mr. Thrush?” he asked. “And, by the way, what is he doing down here? You never told me, Rose, and even Robin’s not said a word.”
“I asked him not to,” said Rosamund, with her half-shrewd, half-soft look. “The fact is——” She broke off, then continued, with her confidential air, “Dion, when you see Mr. Thrush I want you to tell me something truthfully. Will you?”
“I’ll try to. What is it?”
“I want you to look at his nose—”
“Rosamund!”
“No, really,” she pursued, with great earnestness. “And I want you to tell me whether you think, honestly think, it—better.”
“But why?”
“It’s very important for Mr. Thrush that it should look better. He’s down here to be seen.”
Her voice had become almost mysterious.
“To be seen? By whom? Is he on show in the town?”
“No—don’t laugh. It’s really important for his future. I must tell you something. He’s taken the modified pledge.”
Her look said, “There! what d’you think of that?”
“Modified!” said Dion, rather doubtfully.
“Never between meals—never.”
“At any rate that’s a step in the right direction.”
“Isn’t it? I took it with him.”
“The modified pledge?”
“Yes,” she said, with great seriousness.
“But you never——! To help him, of course.”
“Yes.”
“And has it made a difference to the nose?”
“I think it’s made a considerable difference. But I want your opinion.”
“I’ll give it you for what it’s worth. But who’s going to see Mr. Thrush?”
“The Dean.
“The Dean! Why on earth?”
“Almost directly there’s going to be a vacancy among the vergers, and the Dean has promised me faithfully that if Mr. Thrush seems suitable he shall have the post.”
“Mr. Thrush a verger! Mr. Thrush carry a poker before a bishop!”
“Not a poker, only a white wand. I’ve been making him practise here in the garden, and he does it quite admirably already.”
She spoke now with almost defiant emphasis. Dion loved her for the defiance and for its deliciously absurd reason.
“The Dean is away, but he’s coming back to-morrow, so I begin to feel rather anxious. Of course, he’ll see at once that Mr. Thrush is an educated man. I’m not afraid about that. It’s only—well, the little failing. It would mean so much for Mr. Thrush to get the post. He’ll be provided for for life. I’ve set my heart on it.”
Annie came in.
“Oh, Annie, is it Mr. Thrush?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Please ask him to come in.”
With a very casual air, as of one doing a thing for no particular reason and almost without thought, she lowered the wick of the lamp which illuminated the room.
“We don’t want it to flare,” she said, as she came away from it. “Oh, Mr. Thrush, here’s my husband back again!”
With a certain unostentatious dignity Mr. Thrush stepped into the room. He was most respectably dressed in a neat black suit, the coat of which looked rather like either a frock coat which was in course of diminishing gradually into what tailors call “a morning coat,” or a morning coat which was in course of expanding gently into a frock coat; a speckless collar with points appeared above a pair of dark worsted gloves, and a hat which resembled a square bowler half-way on the road to top hatdom.
Dion felt touched by his appearance and his gait, which seemed to hint at those rehearsals in the garden, and especially touched by the fact that he had bought a new hat.
“Welcome home, sir!” he said at once to Dion. “I’m sure the country is proud of you.”
He paid the compliment with so much sincerity that Dion did not feel embarrassed by it.
“Do sit down, Mr. Thrush,” said Rosamund, after hands had been cordially shaken. “No, not there!”—as he was about to sit full in the lamplight—“This chair will be more comfortable. Now I’ll leave you to have a little talk with my husband.”
With an inquiring look at Dion she went out of the room.
Before she came back Mr. Thrush had told Dion all his hopes and fears with regard to the Dean, and had dwelt on his overwhelming desire to become a verger. Quite unself-conscious in his simplicity he rose almost to dignity. He frankly confessed his “failing,” and alluded to the taking of the modified pledge.
“We took it together, sir, your kind lady and I, we both pledged ourselves never to touch a drop of liquor between meals whatever the occasion.”
“Quite right!” said Dion, with firmness, almost with bruskness.
“I’m glad you think so, sir. But a verger can’t be too careful. He’s held up as an example to the whole city by his position, walking so often in procession as he does before the eyes of all men. Even a chemist scarcely takes so much upon himself. In respect of the body he may, I’ll allow you,—for no verger has to do with prussic acid, iodine, cascara and all such-like,—but in respect of what I might all the uplifting of the soul not a doubt of it but that the verger comes far before any chemist. It’s a solemn thing to think of, and I hope, if so be as I’m elected, I shall be worthy of the position. I see Mr. Dean to-morrow, sir, at eleven o’clock. I trust I shall make a favorable impression. I lived just off Hanover Square for more years than some can remember, and that, I hope, with a Very Reverend will tell in my favor. None of them vergers here, though I’m sure they’re a splendid body of men,—any one who has seen them walking before his Lordship, the Bishop, the Canons and what not, as I did last Sunday morning, would say the same,—but none of the vergers here can say as much. I’ve made inquiry, but of course with all discretion. As to the duties, sir, I think I can fulfil them. The carrying of the wand I may say I am almost perfect in already. I’ve been at it in the garden with your kind good lady since I came. I found it a bit difficult at first, sir. There’s what you might call a knack to it, though from the congregation it looks simple enough. But there, what does a congregation know of the things a verger has to master any more than it does of what is required of a good chemist? Often and often when I was just off Hanover Square——”
He was still flowing on with imperturbable volubility when Rosamund came back and sent another, more inquiring, glance to Dion.
When Mr. Thrush had retired she at once said anxiously:
“Well?”
“He’s a nice old chap.”
“Yes, isn’t he? But what did you really think?”
“About the nose?”
“Yes.”
“The lamp was turned rather low, but I really believe the modified pledge has—”
“There! What did I say?” she interrupted triumphantly. “I knew you’d notice the difference. It’s really very much like yours or mine now, and I’m sure—”
But here Dion broke in decisively.
“No, Rosamund, I can’t let that pass. It’s not like yours yet. I say nothing about mine. But I honestly think it’s modified and I hope the Dean will pass it.”
“The Dean and I are great cronies!” she murmured doubtfully. “My only fear is that after he is a verger Mr. Thrush may—may lapse if I’m not——”
She stopped, looking at Dion, and again he thought that she was more sensitive to his opinion, to his wishes, than she had formerly been. Her slightly changed attitude made Dion gladly aware of change in himself. He meant more to Rosamund now than he had meant when he left England.
CHAPTER VII
Three days had slipped by. Dion had been accepted as one of the big Welsley family, had been made free of the Precincts. During those three days he had forgotten London, business, everything outside of Welsley. It had seemed to him that he had the right to forget, and he had exercised it. Robin had played a great part in those three days. His new adoration of his father was obvious to every one who saw them together. The soldier appealed to the little imagination. Robin’s ardor was concentrated for the moment in his pride of possession. He owned a father who—his own nurse had told him so—was not as other fathers, not as ordinary fathers such as stumped daily about the narrow streets of Welsley, rubicund and, many of them, protuberant in the region of the watch-chain. They were all very well; Robin had nothing against them; many of them were clergymen and commanded his respect by virtue of their office, their gaiters, the rosettes and cords that decorated their wide-winged hats. But they were not like “Fa.” They had not become lean, and muscular, and dark, and quick-limbed, and keen-eyed, and spry, in the severe service of their country. They had not—even the Archdeacon, Robin’s rather special pal, had not—ever killed any wicked men who did not like England, or gone into places where wicked men who did not like England might have killed them. Some of them did not know much about guns, did not seem to take any interest in guns. It was rather pitiable. Since his father had come back Robin had had an opportunity of sounding the Archdeacon on the subject of an advance in open order. The result had not been satisfactory. The Archdeacon, Robin thought, had taken the matter with a lightness, almost a levity, which one could not have looked for from a man in his position, and when questioned as to his methods of taking over had frankly said that he had none.
“I like him,” Robin said ruefully. “But he’ll never be a good scout, will he, Fa?”
To which Dion replied with discretion.
“There are plenty of good scouts, old boy, who would never make good archdeacons.”
“Is there?” said Robin. “Why not? I know what scouts does, but what does archdeacons does?”
And with that he had his father stumped. Dion had not been long enough at Welsley to dive into all its mysteries.
On the evening of the third day Dion told Rosamund that he must go to London on the following morning.
“I’ve got something I must do and I want to tell you about it,” he said. “You remember Mrs. Clarke?”
“Yes,” said Rosamund.
“It must be more than two years since I’ve seen her. She lives a great deal in Constantinople, you know. But she sometimes comes to London in the winter. It’s abominably cold in Constantinople in winter. There are perpetual winds from the Black Sea.”
“Yes, I know there are. Esme Darlington has told me about them.”
“Mrs. Clarke’s in London now.”
“Did you see her when you passed through?”
“No, but I want to see her to-morrow. Rose, I’m going to tell you something which nobody else must know. I was asked to keep it entirely to myself, but I refused. I was resolved to tell you, because I don’t believe in secrets between husband and wife—about their doings, I mean.” (Just then he had happened to think of Mrs. Clarke’s farewell telegram to him when he had sailed for South Africa.)
“I know how frank and sincere you always are, Dion,” she said gently.
“I try to be. You remember that party at Mrs. Chetwinde’s where you sang? You met Mrs. Clarke that night.”
“Of course I remember. We had quite an interesting talk.”
“She’s clever. Lord Brayfield was there, too, that night, a fair man.
“I saw him. He wasn’t introduced to me.”
“Brayfield was shot in the war. Did you know it?”
“No. I thought I had read everything. But I didn’t happen to see it.”
“And I didn’t mention it when I wrote. I thought I’d tell you if I came home. Brayfield, poor fellow, didn’t die immediately. He suffered a great deal, but he was able to write two or three letters—last messages—home. One of these messages was written to Mrs. Clarke. He gave it to me and made me promise to convey it to her personally, not to put it in the post.”
“Was Lord Brayfield in the C.I.V.?” asked Rosamund.
“Oh no. He was a captain in the 5th Lancers. We were brigaded with them for a bit and under fire at the same time. Brayfield happened to see me. He knew I was an acquaintance of Mrs. Clarke’s, and when he was shot he asked that I should be allowed to come to him. Permission was given. I went, and he asked me if I’d give Mrs. Clarke a letter from him when I got home. It seems none of his brother officers happened to know her. He might have given the letter to one of them. It would have been more natural. But”—Dion hesitated—“well, he wanted to say a word or two to some one who knew her, I suppose.”
Rosamund quite understood there were things Dion did not care to tell even to her. She did not want to hear them. She was not at all a curious woman.
“I’m glad you are able to take the letter,” she said.
And then she began to talk about something else. Mr. Thrush’s prospects with the Dean, which were even yet not quite decided.
By the quick train at nine o’clock Dion left Welsley next morning; he was in London by half-past ten. He had of course written to Mrs. Clarke asking if he could see her. She had given him an appointment for three o’clock at the flat she had taken for a few months in Park Side, Knightsbridge. Dion went first to the City, and after doing some business there, and lunching with his uncle at the Cheshire Cheese, got into a cab and drove to Knightsbridge.
Mrs. Clarke’s flat was on the first floor of a building which faced the street on one side and Hyde Park on the other. Dion rang at a large, very solid oak door. In two or three minutes the door was opened by an elderly maid, with high cheek-bones and long and narrow light gray eyes, who said, with a foreign accent, that Mrs. Clarke was at home. Afterwards Dion knew that this woman was a Russian and Mrs. Clarke’s own maid.
She showed Dion into a long curving hall in which a fire was burning. Here he left his hat and coat. While he was taking the coat off he had time to think, “What an original hall this is!” From it he got an impression of warmth and of a pleasant dimness. He had really no time to look carefully about, but a quick glance told him that there were interesting things in this hall, or at any rate interestingly combined. He was conscious of the stamp of originality.
The Russian maid showed him into a drawing-room and went away to tell “Madame.” She did not go out by the hall, but walked the whole length of the long narrow drawing-room, and passed through a small doorway at its farther end. Through this doorway there filtered into the drawing-room a curious blue light. All the windows of the drawing-room looked into Hyde Park, on to the damp grass, the leafless trees, the untenanted spaces of autumn.
Dion went to the fireplace, which faced the far doorway. There was not a sound in the room; not a sound came to it just then from without. He could scarcely believe he was in Knightsbridge. Not even a clock was ticking on the mantelpiece above the fire, in which ship logs were burning. The flames which came from them were of various shades of blue, like magical flames conjured up by a magician. He looked round. He had never seen a room like this before. It was a room to live in, to hear strange music in; it was not a reception-room. Not crowded with furniture it was not at all bare. Its “note” was not austere but quite the contrary. It was a room which quietly enticed. Dion was not one of those men who know all about women’s dresses, and combinations of color, and china, and furniture, but he was observant; as a rule he noticed what he saw. Fresh from South Africa, from a very hard life out of doors, he looked at this room and was almost startled by it. The refinement of it was excessive in his eyes and reminded him of something overbred, of certain Italian greyhounds, for instance. Strange blues and greens were dexterously combined through the room, in the carpet, the curtains, the blinds, the stuffs which covered the chairs, sofas, divans, cushions—blues and greens innumerable. He had never before seen so many differing shades of the two colors; he had not known that so many shades existed. In the china these colors were repeated. The door by which he had come in was of thick glass in a frame of deep blue wood and, by means of a mysterious light in the hall, was made mistily blue. All along the windows, lilies were growing, or seemed to be growing, in earth closely covered with green moss. There were dwarf trees, like minute yew trees, in green and blue china pots.
And always the ship logs in the fire gave out the magical blue flames.
Certainly the general effect of the room was not only luxuriously comfortable, but also strangely beautiful, though there was nothing in it which a lover of antiques would have given his eyes for. To Dion, fresh from South Africa, the room looked too comfortable, too ingeniously beautiful. It struck him as ultra modern, ahead of anything he had ever yet seen, and almost as evil. But certainly it enticed.
He heard the distant sound of a woman’s dress and saw Mrs. Clarke coming slowly in from the room beyond (another blue and green room perhaps), and he thought of Brayfield dying. He thrust a hand into the breast-pocket of his coat and brought out the dead man’s letter.
Mrs. Clarke came up to the fire and greeted him. She did not look a moment older than when he had seen her last at Claridge’s, or indeed than when he had first seen her standing under the statue of Echo in Mrs. Chetwinde’s drawing-room. The same feverish refinement still was with her, belonged to her; she looked as before, wasted as if by some obscure disease, haunted, almost distressed, and yet absolutely self-controlled, mistress of herself and unconscious of critical observation. Not even for a moment, seeing her thus again after a long interval of time, did Dion hesitate about her beauty. Undoubtedly she had beauty. The shape of her head was lovely, and her profile was like a delicate vision seen in water. The husky sound of her voice in her first words to him took him back to the Divorce Court.
“You haven’t changed,” she said, staring intently at him in her oddly impersonal way, which appraised and yet held something of inwardness.
“But people say I have changed very much.”
“People?”
“Well—my people.”
“I don’t call natural development change. I saw in you very plainly when we first met what you are now. You have got there. That’s all.”
Her lips were very pale. How strangely unshining her hair was.
“Yes, she looked punished!” he thought. “It’s that look of punishment which sets her quite apart from all other women.”
She glanced at the letter he was holding and sat down on a very broad green divan. There were many cushions upon it; she did not heap them behind her, but sat quite upright. She did not ask him to sit down. He would do as he liked. Absurd formalities of any kind did not enter into her scheme of life.
“How is Jimmy?” he asked.
“Brilliantly well. He’s been at Eton for a long time, doing dreadfully at work—he’s a born dunce—and splendidly at play. How he would appreciate you as you are now!”
She spoke with a gravity that was both careless and intense. He sat down near her. In his letter asking to see her he had not told her that he had a special object in writing to visit her. By her glance at Brayfield’s letter he knew that she had gathered it.
They talked of Jimmy for a few minutes; then Dion said:
“My regiment was brigaded with Lord Brayfield’s for a time in South Africa. I was in the action in which he was shot, poor chap. He saw me and remembered that I was a—a friend of yours. When he was dying he wanted to see me. I was sent for, and he gave me this letter for you. He asked me to give it to you myself if I came back.”
He bent down to her with the letter.
“Thank you,” she said, and she took it without looking at all surprised, and with her habitual composed gravity. “There are Turkish cigarettes in that ivory box,” she added, looking at a box on a table close by.
“Thank you.”
As Dion turned to get a cigarette he heard her tearing Brayfield’s envelope.
“Will you give me one?” said the husky voice.
Without saying anything he handed to her the box, and held a lighted match to her cigarette when it was between the pale lips. She smoked gently as she opened and read Brayfield’s letter. When she had finished it—evidently it was not a long letter—she put it back into the envelope, laid it down on the green divan and said:
“What do you think of this room? It was designed and arranged by Monsieur de Vaupre, a French friend of mine.”
“By a man!” said Dion, irrepressibly.
“Who hasn’t been in the South African War. Do you like it?”
“I don’t think I do, but I admire it a good deal.”
He was looking at the letter lying on the divan, and Brayfield was before him, tormented and dying. He had always disliked the look of Brayfield, but he had felt almost a sort of affection for him when he was dying. Foolishly perhaps, Dion wanted Mrs. Clarke to say something kind about Brayfield now.
“If you admire it, why don’t you like it?” she asked. “A person—I could understand; but a room!”
He looked at her and hesitated to acknowledge a feeling at which he knew something in her would smile; then he thought of Rosamund and of Little Cloisters and spoke out the truth.
“I think it’s an unwholesome-looking room. It looks to me as if it had been thought out and arranged by somebody with a beastly, though artistic, mind.”
“The inner room is worse,” she said.
But she did not offer to show it to him, nor did she disagree with his view. He even had the feeling that his blunt remark had pleased her.
He asked her about Constantinople. She lived there, she told him, all through the spring and autumn, and spent the hottest months on the Bosphorus.
“People are getting accustomed to my temerity,” she said. “Of course Esme Darlington is still in despair, and Lady Ermyntrude goes about spreading scandal. But it doesn’t seem to do much harm. She hasn’t any more influence over my husband. He won’t hear a word against me. Like a good dog, I suppose, he loves the hand which has beaten him.”
“You’ve got a will of iron, I believe,” said Dion.
She changed the subject.
“I don’t ask you to tell me about South Africa,” she said. “Because you told me the whole story as soon as I came into the room. But what are you going to do now? Settle down in the Church’s bosom at Welsley?”
There was no sarcasm in her voice.
“Oh—I’m going back to business in a few days.”
“You’ll run up and down, I suppose.”
“It’s too far, an hour and a half each way. I shall have to be in London.”
He spoke rather indecisively.
“I’m taking a fortnight’s holiday, and then we shall settle down.”
“I’ve been in Welsley,” said Mrs. Clarke. “It’s beautiful but, to me, stifling. It has an atmosphere which would soon dry up my mind. All the petals would curl up and go brown at the edges. I’m glad you’re not going to live there. But after South Africa you couldn’t.”
“I don’t know. I find it very attractive,” he said, instinctively on the defensive because of Rosamund, who had not been attacked. “The coziness and the peace of it are very delightful after all the—well, of course, it was a pretty stiff life in South Africa.”
Again he looked at Brayfield’s letter. He wanted to tell Mrs. Clarke about Brayfield, but it seemed she had no interest in the dead man. While he was thinking this she quietly put out her hand, took the letter, got up and dropped it into the fire among the blue flames from the ship logs.
“I seldom keep letters,” she said, “unless I have to answer them.”
She turned round.
“I’ve kept yours,” she said.
“The one I—it was awfully good of you to send me that telegram.”
“So Allah had you in His hand.”
“I don’t know why when so many much better fellows——” He broke off, and then he plunged into the matter of Brayfield. He could not go without telling her, though hearing, perhaps, would not interest her.
All the time he was speaking she remained standing by the fire, with her lovely little head slightly bending forward and her profile turned towards him. The emaciation of her figure almost startled him. She wore a black dress. It seemed to him a very simple dress. She could have told him that such simplicity only comes from a few very good dressmakers, and is only fully appreciated by a very few women.
Brayfield, though he was dying, had been very careful in what he had said to Dion. In his pain he had shown that he had good blood in him. He had not hinted even at any claim on Mrs. Clarke. But he had spoken of a friendship which had meant very much to him, and had asked Dion, if he ever had the opportunity, to tell Mrs. Clarke that when he was dying she was the woman he was thinking about. He had not spoken interestingly; he was not an interesting man; but he had spoken with sincerity, with genuine feeling.
“She’s a woman in a thousand,” he had said. “Tell her I thought so till the last. Tell her if she had been free I should have begged her to marry me.”
And he had added, after a pause:
“Not that she’d ever have done it. I’m pretty sure of that.”
When Dion had finished, still standing by the fire, Mrs. Clarke said:
“Thank you for remembering it all. It shows your good heart.”
“Oh—please!”
Why didn’t she think about Brayfield?
She turned round and fixed her distressed eyes on him.
“Which is best, to be charitable or to be truthful?” she said, without any vibration of excitement. “De Mortuis—it’s a kindly saying. A true Turk, one of the old Osmanlis, might have said it. If you hadn’t brought me that letter and the message I should probably never have mentioned Brayfield to you again. But as it is I am going to be truthful. I can say honestly peace to Brayfield’s ashes. His death was worthy. Courage he evidently had. But you mustn’t think that because he liked me I ever liked him. Don’t make a mistake. I’m not a nervous suspicious fool of a woman anxiously defending, or trying to defend, her honor—not attacked, by the way. If Lord Brayfield had ever been anything to me I should just be quiet, say nothing. But I didn’t like him. If I had liked him I shouldn’t have burnt his letter. And now”—to Dion’s great astonishment she made slowly the sign of the Cross—“requiescat in pace.”
After a long pause she added:
“Now come and see the other room. I’ll give you Turkish coffee there.”