Chapter II (3)

“She wrote to me from Mentone,” went on Mrs. Ansdey, “and I truly call it a pretty thought, and a gracious one, of me that have been my master’s nurse, and held him on my knees when he picked out bounding ‘B’ and curly ‘Q’ with an ivory crotchet-hook.” She produced from a morocco pocketbook, of solid and responsible appearance, a letter written with violet ink on thin, foreign paper, in delicate upright characters. “‘_My husband has told me of all your faithful service and true devotion to him and his_,’ she read; ‘_and I hope before long to take your kind hand in mine and thank you for him and for myself!_’ There now!”

“Gracious and graceful too,” said old Cradell, who had beaten noiseless time to the reading of the young mistress’s letter with one wrinkled finger on a withered palm. “Good breeding there--and old blood--in every line!”

“And she looks forward to seeing her husband’s dear old English home,” went on the housekeeper, “and prays God to give them many days in it together--and I trust He will!”

“Let us hope so, for all concerned!” said the Rector’s wife, who resented theological references as trenching upon her own particular province.

“Though in this family it’s been like a fate, or a doom, or whatever you might please to term it,” said Mrs. Ansdey, “that the course of true love, the deeper it was and the truer it was, was always to be broken--not by change or faithlessness of one that loved, but by the hand of death. There was Sir Geoffrey and Lady Euphrasia--hundreds of years back--that were drowned crossing the ford on the ride home from their baby’s christening and the baby lived to be Sir Launcelot, whose bride was carried off by the Black Death before the roses on her wedding garland were withered.... And then there were Sir Alan and Sir Guy, who were both killed in battle within a year of their weddings, and Sir Vivian’s great-grandfather, old Sir Vivian, found his young wife dead at her tapestry-frame when he’d crept up quiet to surprise her with his unexpected return from the Embassy to Rome. And Sir Vivian’s own dear mother lived but a very few years after the dear child came to comfort her for his father’s early loss. But time goes by, and the curse--if it be a curse, as they say it is, brought upon the founder of the family for some secret deed of evil--the curse may have passed over, or worn itself out. What’s that?”

“What’s what, ma’am?” asked the butler, as Mrs. Ansdey rose in her rustling silks and made a sign for silence.

“I fancied I heard a timid kind of tap on the hall door,” said the housekeeper.

“A robin blew against it, perhaps,” said the butler. “They’re stupid with the frost.”

“There was a footstep too,” said Mrs. Ansdey, holding up her hand and making her old-fashioned rings gleam and twinkle in the firelight. “At least, if there wasn’t, Mr. Cradell, I admit I’ve been deceived!”

“We’ll see, we’ll see!” said Cradell, moving to the great oaken door. “It may be a tramp.” The handle turned, the massive oak door moved inward. The fog had thinned, it had grown clearer beyond doors. Within the frame of the massive lintels appeared the glimmering stone steps, a segment of the formal garden, with its black Irish yews, pale marble urns, and cartwheel beds of late flowers, enclosed within borders of box. Beyond the trees reared a somber barrier, shutting out the sky, and the chill wind of winter drove the dead leaves in swirls and drifts across the melancholy picture. The Rector’s wife, thinking of her walk across the park to the Rectory, sniffed and shivered, and the housekeeper motioned to the butler to shut the door.

“For I was mistaken, as you see, and there’s not a living soul about, unless it’s skulking in the shadow of the trees,” she said. “Another cup of tea, or a drop of cherry-brandy, ma’am, to keep the bitter air out as you walk home? Though there’s no reason you should walk when there’s the pony-chair.... Or perhaps you would rather----” She started. “Call me nervous, or finical, or what you like,” she said, peering anxiously through her gold-rimmed spectacles in the direction of the door. “But, if I spoke with my dying breath, there was a tap, and then a pause, and then another tap, as plain as plain could be!”

“Dear me!” The Rector’s wife, alarm in her eyes and crumbs on her chin, rose from her chair, dropping her imitation sable boa. “I really believe I heard it too!... Had you not better----?”

Cradell shook his old head and clucked softly with his tongue. “The ladies must always have their way!” he said, shuffling on his neatly polished shoes toward the hall-door. He opened it, and both the housekeeper and the Rector’s wife uttered a simultaneous exclamation of surprise.

For a woman was standing in the moonlight outside. She was of slight form, and wore a wide-brimmed feathered hat, and the heavy shadow of the portico fell blackly over her, so that she seemed no more than a silhouette with a pale glimmering background. But a delicate perfume stole upon the senses of those who, from within, looked out at her, and when she moved there was the unmistakable frou-frou of silken linings.

“Ma’am!” the butler began.

“I came on before,” a sweet plaintive voice said--a voice that was viola-like in its rather thin, but sweet and vibrating quality. “And you must be Cradell.”

“_Ma’am?_” the old servant said again, while the Rector’s wife and the housekeeper listened with strained anxiety.

“I am Lady Wroth,” came in the clear, vibrating tones. “I came on before.... It does not matter why. There was a slight accident between Greystoke Station and the Elvand Tunnel. Do not be alarmed. Sir Vivian is safe, quite safe,” she went on, as agitated exclamations broke from the three listeners. “Indeed only one person was killed, though two or three are injured, and he--my husband--is helping the sufferers. He is always like that, so ready to help, so full of sympathy....”

She was now standing in the firelight, whose ruddy glow illumined the slight figure, and drew gleams of crimson and emerald from the jewels at her throat and shone in the depths of her great dark eyes. Her face was of delicate, pearly paleness, her hair had the tints of autumn leaves, and her draperies, too, were of the tints of autumn. She drew off a glove, and her wedding ring, with its diamond keeper, showed upon the slight and pretty hand, as her traveling mantle of velvet trimmed with costly sables fell to the floor.

“Oh, your ladyship!” cried the housekeeper. “What must you think of us--standing here and staring? But as goodness sees us--what with your sudden coming, and the news about the accident, and all--we’ve lost our heads, me and Mr. Cradell!”

“So very alarming!” said the Rector’s wife. “I trust Lady Wroth will excuse what may seem like an intrusion----”

“The intrusion is mine,” said the sweet viola-voice. “I should have given warning of my coming, but it was not to be. Oh! the dear house!” She looked with wondering, shining eyes upon the paneled walls, the trophied arms, the noble pictures, and the quaint antique furniture, and between her lips, of the faintest rose, her delicate teeth gleamed like pearls, as her breath came quick and eager. “Vivian’s old home ... Vivian’s home, and mine!” she whispered to herself, and laid a hand upon her heart, as though to check its beating.

“I will not intrude,” said the Rector’s wife. “I will hope for the pleasure of calling, with the Rector, at a more fitting time. Good-night, Lady Wroth.”

The Rector’s wife had held out her large hand in its cheap glove, but the new mistress of the manor only smiled upon her with vague wistful sweetness, and did not touch the massive extremity. Whereupon its owner set down Lady Wroth as “proud,” and made a mental note to tell the Rector so, as her large feet carried her out of the house and out of the story.

The two old servants exchanged a glance as the slight figure of their mistress moved across the polished floor, strewn with Oriental rugs and skins of wild beasts.

“Would my lady wish to go to her room, or to have some refreshment in the dining-room?” the housekeeper asked.

My lady declined.

“I have no need of anything. I only wish to rest a little and see my husband’s home before starting upon a journey,” she explained.

“A journey? Dear, gracious me! And your ladyship just fresh from travel, and shaken by an accident and all!” cried Mrs. Ansdey, shaking her lace lappets.

“I am so used to travel,” said her ladyship, “though this is the longest journey I have ever taken--or ever shall take!” She smiled upon the two old people, and settled herself in the seat she had chosen, and resting her elbow upon the arm of it, and her pretty chin in her delicate palm, let her sweet shining eyes travel about the place. “All as he described it, yes!” she whispered to herself. “The mullioned windows with the coats of arms, the carved and painted ceiling, the hooded Tudor fireplaces, the arms and the pictures.... That is the great Gainsborough portrait of Sir Alan’s young wife, the girl who died of grief when they brought her husband’s _bâton_ of Field Marshal to her--won an hour before he was killed in battle. There is the painting by Velasquez of the Wroth who was made Bishop of Toledo. That must be the Vandyck of Lady Marjorie with the deerhound by her side, and there is the Watts picture of Vivian’s young mother playing ball with her boy. Ah! what a sweet, sweet child!”

The plaintive voice thrilled and trembled. Tears might not have been far from the shadowy dark eyes, as Lady Wroth rose and moved to the foot of the great staircase, attended by the housekeeper.

“Shall I show you your rooms, my lady?” Mrs. Ansdey began. “The fires are burning beautifully, and everything is quite ready, and I feel sure your ladyship must need rest after----”

“I will rest presently. But what I wish now, is to be shown the house, if you are not too tired. Lady Audrey’s turret, and the paneled chamber where Sir Roger fought the duel with the Spanish cavalier, and the bedroom where Queen Elizabeth slept, and the banqueting-hall and the chapel where the Templar’s heart is buried under the altar, and the gallery where Lady Euphrasia danced with King Henry VIII., in masquing dress, and the whispering corridor, and the painted room----”

“And the ghost-chamber, my lady? Oddly enough, that’s the first room that American ladies ask to see!... But maybe your ladyship doesn’t believe in ghosts, or the fact of its being late and getting dark----”

Lady Wroth laughed quietly and sweetly. “Do you believe that the spirits of those who have passed on can only appear in the dark, dear Mrs. Ansdey?”

The housekeeper rustled her stiff silken skirts as she followed her new mistress up the broad staircase with its carven balusters and mossy carpets.

“I don’t believe in ghosts at all, my lady!”

“Not in ghosts as they are commonly imagined; those shadowy white things that point and scare and hover,” came floating back in the thin, sweet tones; “but in the spirits of the departed--it may be long-dead, or newly called from earth--who borrow for a little while the semblance in which they lived and loved, and return for one last look at a beloved home, or come for one dear glimpse of what might, but for the Infinite Eternal Will, have been a home. You believe in them, do you not? Or, if you do not now, you will! Ah, yes! you will, dear Mrs. Ansdey!”

Looking upward from the hall, the butler saw the slight figure of Sir Vivian’s bride traverse the first landing and pass out of view, followed by the portly figure of the housekeeper; and in that moment came the grind of wheels upon the avenue, a loud knock at the hall-door, and a sharp peal at the bell. Two liveried servants, appearing in haste, admitted the master of the house, and at the first glimpse of Sir Vivian’s ghastly face and torn and disordered garments, Cradell cried out in alarm.

“Sir Vivian--sir! It’s worse than what my lady said!... You’ve been hurt! Shall I send for the doctor?”

“He is with us!” came the hoarse reply, and Cradell, peering out into the chill, gathering darkness, saw a strange carriage drawn up before the door, whose lamps threw a yellow reflection on the clouds of steam rising from the flanks of a pair of jaded horses. They were busy about the door; something was being lifted out? _What?_ asked the old servant’s shaking lips dumbly.

“Drove in from Greystoke ... hospital carriage.... Send the men to help.... Get me some brandy,” came from Sir Vivian in hoarse shaking tones. “I can’t ... my arm ... dislocated, that’s all. I wish to Heaven----” His face expressed the nature of the wish, and the old butler cried with spirit, as he brought the brandy from the dining-room. “You should be thankful, sir, that you’ve been spared to her!”

“Spared to--her?”

The decanter clinked against the glass. Sir Vivian set it down upon the tray, and turned a white, seamed face and haggard eyes upon Cradell.

“Spared to my lady, sir, God bless her!” the old servant said. “Your hand shakes sadly; let me pour the brandy out.”

Sir Vivian laughed, or made a grimace of laughter, showing his teeth and stretching his pale lips.

“Lord, sir! don’t look like that!” Cradell begged. “Think if her ladyship were to see you! She----”

“If her ladyship were to see me!” repeated Sir Vivian. He drank off a glass of brandy and laughed again. “Cradell--are you mad, or am I?”

“Neither of us, sir, I hope!” said Cradell. Then a light broke upon him, and he cried, “Good gracious, Sir Vivian, is it possible that you don’t know ... my lady is here?”

“I know it.” An awful agony was expressed in Sir Vivian’s face. “I know it too well!” Great drops stood upon his forehead; he turned aside, clenching his hand, and fighting for self-command.

“She came half an hour ago,” began the butler. “Me and Mrs. Ansdey were quite took aback. Mrs. Ansdey is upstairs with her ladyship now....”

“Man--man!” cried Sir Vivian, “do you know what you are saying?”

He turned his streaming face upon the frightened butler and gripped him by the arm, fiercely.

“Lady Wroth--my wife, she is dead! There was an accident--she was killed instantaneously, with little pain, thank God! They said so at the Greystoke Hospital.... She is outside--there!” He pointed a shaking hand toward the partly open hall-door, through which a pale line of moonlight came stealing as the careful, measured tread of men carrying a precious burden sounded on the stone. “Yet you say to me--she arrived half an hour ago! You are raving--or I am delirious!”

For answer the butler pointed to the velvet mantle trimmed with costly sables that lay upon the floor.

“It’s heaven’s truth, Sir Vivian! And there lies the proof! ... and here is Mrs. Ansdey to confirm it.”

Both men looked up as the portly figure in its rustling black silken robes hurried down the great staircase.

“Sir Vivian! Oh, welcome home, Sir Vivian, a thousand times!” The housekeeper’s face was very pale, her hands worked nervously, crumpling her fine lace apron. “But something dreadful has happened! it’s written in your face!” she cried, “and God forgive a sinful woman, but I am beginning to believe that I have spoken with a spirit!”

“Cradell tells me that----” Sir Vivian made an upward gesture.

“It’s true,” cried Mrs. Ansdey. “Her ladyship--if ’twas her ladyship--explained that you were delayed. Someone was killed in the railway accident----”

“Someone _was_ killed!”

“And you were coming on after you had seen to the wounded.... She--she would not eat, or drink, or rest; she wished--all she wished was to see the house, and I obeyed, and we went through room after room until--there was a ring at the hall-door bell, and a knocking, and I turned to speak to my lady as we stood together in the painted chamber--and she was gone! Oh, Sir Vivian, what does it all mean?” cried Mrs. Ansdey.

“It means--that!”

As the hall-door opened to admit the bearers with their precious burden, and as the men laid that cold, lovely, smiling image of Death reverently on the settle, the bloodhound wakened from his slumber and rising, uttered a long plaintive howl.

“Welcome home, my wife!” said Sir Vivian. “Now please to leave us here together!”

So the servants and the bearers withdrew.

“It was the same face!” Mrs. Ansdey whispered, as her faithful old comrade led her away. “Why did she come?”

Cradell said: “Because she’d made up her mind to--and she was a woman! There’s two answers in one!”

He stooped mechanically to pick up the sable-trimmed mantle that had lain upon the floor. No hand had touched it, but it was no longer there.

THE MOTOR-BURGLAR

A DEVELOPMENT OF THE AGE OF PETROL

“A quite remarkable case of coincidence, dear fellars--a parallel without precedent,” said Hambridge Ost to a select circle of listeners in the smoking-room of the Younger Sons’ Club, “is that the giant plate-burglary successfully accomplished at Lord Whysdale’s shooting-box in Deershire on Tuesday last by a party of three polite persons traveling in a large, roomy and handsomely-appointed pale blue ‘Flygoer’ automobile, was echoed, so to put it--on Friday by a colossal robbery at the seat of my cousin, Lord Pomphrey; the defrauding persons being also, in that case, a trio of civil-spoken and well-dressed strangers, occupying a light green ‘Runhard’ of twenty-eight horse-power with a limousine body and singularly brilliant nickel fittings. The _most_ remarkable point on one side, and one which has given cause for the noisy derision of the _profanum vulgus_--do you foller me?--being that Lord Pomphrey--I regret to add--assisted and abetted by the humble individual now speaking, actually assisted the thieves to get clear off with his property, includin’ an Elizabethan beaker with a cover, out of which the Virgin Monarch graciously quaffed a nightcap of the cordial called ‘lambswool’ when staying at The Towers during a Royal progress in the year 1566, and a silver tea-kettle and punch-bowl presented by the tenants on the late Earl’s coming-of-age, with a cargo of other valuables, out of which I had the melancholy privilege of rescuing one Queen Anne Apostle spoon.

“My cousin Wosbric, between attacks of his hereditary gout, is an ardent golfer. Residing at his Club during the absence of Lady Pomphrey and the family in the Tyrol, he takes every feasible opportunity of cultivating his skill and renewing his enthusiasm for the game, the intricacies of which, dear fellars, I may own I have never been able to master. To me, when a large, cheerful, whiskered man, dressed in shaggy greenish clothes, with gaiters, announces, rubbing his hands, which are invariably encased in woolen mitts, that he has _taken his driver twice going to the twelfth hole; did not altogether mishit either shot, and yet was not up to the green, because the wind bore down like a Vanguard omnibus_;--to me nothing wildly incredible or curious has been said. The large man in the shaggy clothes is talking a shibboleth I do not and never could understand, dear fellars, if I bent my whole intelligence--considered by some decent judges not altogether contemptible--to the task, until the final collapse of the present Social System. But, nevertheless, Lord Pomphrey is partial to the company of this humble individual upon his golfing days, and to me the Head of my House--d’ye foller me?--in mentioning a preference issues a mandate. Enveloped in a complete golfing costume of Jaeger material, surmounted by two fur-lined overcoats, the pockets of the under one containing two patent ‘keep-hot’ bottles of warm and comforting liquids--coffee and soup--which aid to maintain the temperature of the outer man at normal, before being transferred to the inner individual--I manage to defy the rigors of the English climate and support the exhaustion consequent upon indulgence in the national game of North Britain. My walking-stick is convertible into a camp-stool; the soles of my thick boots are protected by goloshes, a peaked cap with flaps for the ears crowns my panoply; and, place in the mouth of the individual thus attired one of Dunhill’s ‘Asorbal’ cigarettes, each of which is furnished with a patent hygienic mouthpiece-filter which absorbs the deleterious oil of nicotine, and catches the stray particles of tobacco--d’ye foller me, dear fellars?--which otherwise find their way into the system of the smoker--and the picture is complete.

“The run by road from the Club doorsteps to Cluckham Pomphrey, where the Fargey Common Golf-links equal any that our country can boast, faithful copies of the eighteen best holes in the world having been carefully made under the supervision of Lord Pomphrey--the run can be made within four hours. We started. I had received the Fiery Cross from my kinsman, so to put it, in a laconic note, running: ‘Golf to-morrow if the weather keeps up and the gout keeps down.--Yours, Pomphrey.’ We started in a mild drizzle, at six-thirty. Our car, a ‘Rusher,’ of twenty-six horse-power, with a detachable top and glass driving-screen, behaved excellently. Driving through Cluckham, our county town--it happened to be market-day!--we accidentally converted a lamb into cutlets; but the immolated creature, as it chanced, being the property of one of my cousin’s farmer-tenants, the casualty passed over with fewer comments than generally ensue. Bowing to several well-known yeomen and county land-holders, my cousin and myself alighted at the Pink Boar, kept by an old retainer of the family, took a light but nourishing ante-luncheon or snack of a couple of raw eggs beaten up with whisky, and proceeded on our way to the Fargey Common Links.

“A mile from The Towers, whose picturesque battlements could be descried, dear fellars, embosomed, as it were, in surroundin’ trees, we encountered some motorists upon the road in quite a regrettable plight. Their car, a large, light green ‘Runhard’ of twenty-eight horse-power, was drawn up by the roadside;--quite an arsenal of tools glittered in the wintry rays of the sun, spread out upon an india-rubber sheet, and what had occurred was plain to the meanest automobiling capacity. A tire had exploded after a long, stiff climb of the steep hill, a notable feature in our county landscape--the descent of which we were about to negotiate. And the spare tire, after being attached, had proved to be leaky beyond repair.

“Fellar-feeling, dear fellars!--would have moved any fellar of you to foller our example. We raised our hats, the three strangers in the ‘Runhard’ car politely returning the salutation; we offered aid, and met with grateful acceptance. Larger than our own locomotive--the ‘Runhard’ wheels were of exactly the same diameter--the ‘Runhard’ tires were ‘Fridolines,’ like our own. We offered our spare tire, it fitted to a miracle. We were overwhelmed with the grateful acknowledgments of its three polite proprietors.

“‘You will at least permit me to pay for the tire!’ pleaded the gentleman who appeared to take the lead. As Lord Pomphrey refused, with the courtly wave of the hand that distinguishes this thirteenth wearer of the coronet, he continued: ‘For you do not know--you never can know!--how inestimable a service your lordship has rendered us!’

“Wosbric was known, then. He elevated his eyebrows in polite surprise. Not being able to discern the features of the strangers behind their cap-masks and goggles, he could not recall ever having met them before. Then the second polite stranger, who was even more polite than the first, explained in a slight American accent the reason of his companion’s recognition of Lord Pomphrey. ‘We have, like many other tourists,’ he said, ‘recently enjoyed the privilege of going over your lordship’s antique and noble family pile. In the hall, the feudal stateliness of which especially appealed to me as an American citizen, hangs a portrait of your lordship taken, in company with a gold-hilted sword and a red velvet curtain, as Lord-Lieutenant of the County.’

“Lord Pomphrey bowed. ‘As Lord-Lieutenant of the County,’ I put in. ‘Quite so. The likeness is agreed to be a striking one. And as you have viewed the other treasures of The Towers, I presume you did not miss the large oak cabinet of Jacobean silver plate--magnificent and unique as having belonged to Queen Anne of Denmark--which stands at the end of the smaller library behind the large Chinese screen?’

“The polite strangers looked at me and then at Lord Pomphrey and then at each other. A cloud passed over the bright intelligent eyes that shone through their motor-goggles as they sorrowfully shook their heads.

“‘We missed that cabinet!’ said the first polite stranger, with a sigh.

“‘I guess we did!’ said the second.

“‘Just like wot I calls our beastly, blooming luck!’ sighed the third stranger who was sitting in the car, and who, though polite, was not in the least a refined sort of person. As all three of them seemed unfeignedly depressed, Lord Pomphrey, who is the soul of hospitality, begged them to return to The Towers, accept refreshment, and examine under his personal superintendence, the magnificent contents of the oak cabinet in the second library.

“‘We thank your lordship profoundly!’ said the first polite stranger, bowing, ‘but we are unable to accept your invitation!’ He bowed again, and got into the car.

“‘And we shall never cease to regret, I guess,’ said the second, ‘that we have missed the most valuable item of your lordship’s collection of silver heirlooms. But we have garnered many precious momentos’--it struck me at that moment that there were a great many waterproof-covered bundles in the ‘Runhard’ car, and as he spoke he patted one of these affectionately--‘of our visit to this country which must serve to sweeten life for us when we are far away. And with these we must endeavor to be content!’

“He too bowed, dear fellars, and got into the car. The machinery began to splutter at a touch upon the lever.

“‘Let ’er rip, Cocky,’ advised the third stranger; ‘we ain’t got none too much of a start with this yere tire a-busting. So long!’ he said, and like an arrow from a bow, so to put it, dear fellars, the large, light green ‘Runhard’ leapt forward and was out of sight in an instant. We proceeded in the ‘Rusher’ toward our destination.

“Presently, dear fellars, we met two large, hot, county constables on bicycles. They did not recognize us, so great was their haste. Their large boots vigorously trod the pedals, their bulky, blue-uniformed figures were crouched over the handle-bars as they pounded up the hill from Cluckham Pomphrey. We wondered whither they might be going? We questioned what agricultural breach of the peace, what local felony, had spurred them to such an unusual display of energy. We found out.

“For at the next bend of the road, dear fellars, we encountered quite a little cavalcade of hot and red-faced, or pale and panting persons. The steward from Pomphrey Towers in his T-cart, the head-bailiff from Pomphrey Towers on his cob, the coachman driving a light gig with two armed grooms on the back seat, an excited mob of stable-helpers and gardeners straggling along behind.... Even before they recognized us, those in the van of the pursuers shouted to us, asking if we had passed an automobile upon the road--a large, light green ‘Runhard’ containing three men?

“In a few gasped sentences, dear fellars, the ghastly truth stood revealed; the facts were laid bare to us. Pomphrey Towers had been, to employ the expression of the bailiff, ‘cracked and burgled,’ only an hour previously, of a quantity of silver articles and a mass of valuable plate. Lord Pomphrey and myself had met the burglars upon the road, had supplied them with the means of continuing their flight, had entered into conversation with them, and returned their polite farewells.

“We joined the pursuit, all thoughts of golf submerged in the bosom of Lord Pomphrey, beneath the boiling lava-flood of rage and indignation. To be robbed is bad; to be placed in the position of confederate to the robbers, unknowing aider and abettor of their nefarious flight, is maddening. The three polite individuals in the large, light green motor-car have not, up to the present, been traced. One small spoon of the Apostle-headed kind, found by the roadside where they replaced their own deflated tire, with that so generously bestowed upon them by Lord Pomphrey, is the only clue so far.

“A distressin’ experience, dear fellars!--confoundedly so in the estimation of this humble individual. Thanks, I _will_ take another of those long Dutch cigars and a Scotch, with Hebinaris’--the new mineral water, do you foller me?--with iridescent bubbles that snap at your nose. My love to you, dear fellars, and a Happy New Year!”

THE LOST ROOM

They were going to part at last--to separate quietly, but formally--after a married life of nearly three years.

There was no Other Woman, even she was quite sure of that; there wasn’t even the shadow of another man. He rather wished there were, with a good solid six-foot personality to project it. He was so confoundedly tired of conjugal life.

He had an old historic title, a large estate unencumbered by the prodigalities of ancestors, unhampered by his own. She had inherited from an American mother a large fortune and some of the biggest jewels Tiffany had ever set. Their tastes were similar, their constitutions robust, their tempers strong and healthy, their temperaments ardent and enthusiastic, their moral and mental temperatures since the last decisive meeting between the trustees of her property and his family lawyers had been slowly descending to normal. Never, oh, never would either of them put their heads again, they were determined, into the noose of marriage! even if a _decree nisi_ should ever make it possible. Because naturally, as time went on, she would meet somebody she liked, he thought.... Because men were so constituted, reflected she, that if a woman only told one of them often enough that he was in love with her, he would begin to believe it.

They had used up all their capability for passion, devotion, and so on, during their romantic wooing, their short but divine engagement, and the incandescent eight weeks’ honeymoon that had followed the wedding. They wanted to forget the world then, and be alone together; and they got what they wanted, one April, one May, in that great old granite-built pepper-box turreted Scotch mansion on the banks of the silver Tweed.

It was heavenly, or at the very least Paradisaical. They wanted it to be quite an old-fashioned honeymoon, so they did not go down by motor, but by the Euston express. Ten hours of traveling, and then they got out at a little gray station of a little Scots town with a dreadful tweed-factory in it whose dye and grease terribly defiled the silvery river reaches, and does so to this day--and drove through lovely woods of larch and birch and hawthorn, just breaking into green leaf, to Maryhouse, the cradle of the race from which she sprang, the unhappy lovely Queen--whose great wrought gates of rusted iron, with the Stuart shield of arms in faded gold and crimson and blue, would never be unlocked again until a Stuart should reign once more upon the throne of England.

The great avenue had been turned into park, and you reached the house by the lesser way. It had a square courtyard, closed by another pair of great wrought gates, and bears with ragged staves were on the pillars, and even held up the antique scraper at the low-browed door, and the knocker was the tiniest bear of all. There were no rooms to some of the four hundred casements that winked out of the lichened walls. You pulled the bear-handle of the house-bell, and it clanged up high out of sight somewhere among the twisted chimneys and the great slants of stone-tiled roof studded with pinky house-leek and gay with yellow moss.

Then the low, square, iron-studded door had opened, and two people had gone in, to commence, among the tragic relics of vanished, forgotten existences, their own new life together. Perhaps some sorrowful shadow of failure and disillusion had fallen upon them from those old gray walls. A week before they went there a piece of paneling had fallen from the wall in the great hall, revealing in a niche behind it a skull, and what else Time had left of the man who had suffered such a tragic ending.

As I have said, the Deed of Separation had been formally signed by both parties, their trustees and lawyers. She was beautifully free. She sang a little song as her motor-victoria ran her homeward to the house which he had no right to enter now, and she ordered the touring limousine to be at the door very early in the morning before she ran upstairs.

She was as gay as possible. She told her maid, as she hummed the “Dream Waltz,” to have a cabin trunk and a bag packed. Only these, because she would be back in a week. She was only going to visit some old great, quiet people in an old great, quiet house up North, who had been very fond of society in their time, but now never even dressed for dinner. She meant the fair murdered Scots’ Queen and the Kings who had dwelt at Maryhouse, of course.

“Fancy that, my lady!” said the maid, thanking her own stars that she was not to accompany her mistress. Many silken calves and much company above and below stairs constituted the waiting-woman’s ideal of Life.

Well, the itinerary of the Great North road--that would take too long. Behind the glass screen she sat, swathed in her sables, while the taciturn, clean-shaven chauffeur made England spin by. She chose her own road, the collieries were left behind in their smoke, the ruins of St. Oswald’s Chapel of Ease were passed, standing gray and battered on their battle-site. Serving-shields, where under the enchanted hall sleep Arthur and his Knights, she saw before she lost the vision. She slept at Carlisle, and went on next morning to Peebles, where Needpath elevates its single fang above the salmon pool.

And so to Maryhouse, not even a telegram having been sent ahead of her. She knew her dear friends, the owners of the place, were still abroad. But there was always Mistress Dumphie, the old, old lady-housekeeper, who had been born and reared and wooed and married, too, at Maryhouse. Mistress Dumphie would take her in for a night, and if not--there was an inn in the ugly little weaving village. The great limousine rolled through the gates of the smaller avenue and over the bridge of the Arbalestiers Tower, and stopped before the great, rusty crowned gates of the sunny courtyard.

The larks were singing. The Quhair brook ran under the hazel-banks. Oh! what sweet quiet after the roar of Paris and London and the dust of the roads.

The rusty chain was pulled, the great bell clanged on the side of a pepper-box turret ever so high overhead. Mistress Dumphie, in her morn’s merino and black net cap, appeared behind the rusty grille.

“Guid preserve ’s a’! It’s the young lord’s leddy!” she said.

The “young lord’s leddy” came in. She was to stay. The chauffeur went back to the hotel.

“I feel as though I should find something here,” said the “young lord’s leddy,” “something that I have lost somehow. It is very odd!”

She wandered about the beautiful old house all the rest of the day.

“Here is the great oak window-seat where we used to sit together. Here is the little stone parlor where we quarreled and made it up. Here is the vast tapestried chamber, with the faded Stuart portraits on the walls, that was my bedroom; and this smaller room, with the acorn-shaped stone mullions and the ebony and tulip wood furniture, was _his_!”

What fine days they had spent in those daisied avenues, under those huge oaks. What wet ones under the old painted, diapered ceilings. The wettest of all they had spent in looking for the Lost Room.

The Lost Room was a chamber that everybody knew of, but nobody ever discovered. Counting from outside, you could be sure there was an extra window, but go where you would about the hushed mysterious house, you never opened a door that led into the Lost Room.

She supped in a little dining-parlor that those dead Queens had used before her. She went to bed in the tapestried room. She slept well and woke in the middle of the night with a great bell clanging in her ears. She could not sleep after that. Lights flickered before her shut eyes in the darkness.

“I _did_ hear a step on the staircase! I _did_ hear the shutting of a door!” she said to herself, and got out of the great bed on the daïs and put warm slippers on her white little naked feet, and threw on a dressing gown lined with unborn Persian lambskin--such a cruel idea, you know, but very fashionable. And she took her electric torch, and unlocked the door noiselessly, and stepped out boldly into the wide, dusky corridor.

She trod upon something soft, and repressed a scream. She held the light downward and picked up a man’s dogskin glove.

“Ah, now I know that I am dreaming!” she said quite cheerfully. She need not be afraid of mice or rats, because she knew that she was all the time lying in bed in the big tapestried room. As for ghosts, she wanted to see one frightfully--always had.

The door of the room that had been his was just opposite. Something made her go in, on her noiseless dream-feet, carrying the dream-glove in her hand. The dream went on quite as dreams usually do. She had gone back to the sweet old half-forgotten honeymoon time.

“This is the night on which we had tiffed, and I was the first to make it up!” She smiled and went in. It was just as she had expected. There he lay, fast asleep in the big tapestry-hung bed.

She went up to the side of it, and pulled back the curtain without waking him, and sat down, shading the light from the dear, handsome, manly face, and devouring it with famished eyes. This was what she had come seeking; some glamour of the old time; some sweet remembrance unspoiled by anything that had happened since.

The jars, the disagreements, the quarrels had never happened.... She was back in the old times, and he was not yet regretting his lost freedom, but tightening the bond a little closer every day by words and deeds of love.

This was the Lost Room, this dream-chamber where he lay. She was glad to have come down to Maryhouse for this. Who would not take a journey to find your old self and your old self’s self at the end of it, and Love lying sleeping in the shadow of dear memories, ready to be wakened with a kiss?

She stooped and gave the kiss. He started and awakened. He stared at her, and the light of the old joy leaped into his eyes.

“Alice! You’re only a dream, I know, but it is better than the real Alice, who grew to hate me. Oh! put your arms round me again! let me have your heart on mine again; let both of us forget what a ruin we have made of the life that we set out to make so sweet and fair!”

He caught her hands. The torch fell with a crash, and went out. The dark was full of light, and warm, throbbing memories, and they were one again. Just for a little while, only in a dream....

But day came through the diamond casements, laughing, and hand in hand with Hope. There were tears and laughter in her train. Two real people. No dream after all.

He had wanted to look at Maryhouse again, and had traveled down in the express from Euston, hours after she had started. It was he who had rung the bell in the night.

Mistress Dumphie had let him in and given him supper, and lighted the old room for him. He had thought there was a curious twinkle in her eye.

The Deed of Separation, now waste-paper, may be had on application, by any young, wealthy couple who are desirous, upon a sensible arrangement, to part.

FATHER TO THE MAN

_Being a Confidential Letter from the Right Hon. Viscount
Tynstone, at the Rev. O. Gotobed’s, Eton College, to the Lady Mary
Cliffe-Bradlay, ooo Wessex Street, Park Lane, W._

GOOD OLD POLL,--

It is awfully nice of you to be so fritefully sick about it--_i. e._, my Getting Swished this Half, but fellows get Hardened to these things at School. Hemming major says there is something in a rotten poetry-book about a Divinity that shapes our Ends. I expect the beggar who wrote it was trying to get round the Head for his own Reesons. Your simpathy about the Ladies’ Plate is cumforting, but the Eton Eight must give other Crews a chance sumtimse. So everyboddy says, and as far as stile went our Fellowse boddies were better under controle, and the whole Appearanse of the Rowing was up to the best traddishunse of Eton. No. 7, Biggly-Wade, presenting a beautiful example of rithm and elastissity; and Henson No. 4, simply being a Tower of strength. N. B., he is Captain of my Tutor’s and Has licked me awfully several timse, so I am in a pusition to Judge.

While the Thames Cup was being slogged for I made up my mind to Sacrifise myself for the good of my Fammaly, and drop into Lunch with Mr. and Mrs. Le Moser, those Millionaire Friends of Mother’s, who she said were such Howling Cads, and so anxhus to know me. They Had an A.1. Motor-Launch, sedar-built, with plated fittingse and with salloons 4 and aft, and Green Awnings second on the Bucks side 2 Private Lawns billow the Kingston Rowing Club. There were Moundse of Flowers, and though lots of other awfully smart launches filled up the First Section of the Bank before the Houseboats Began, where you, and Mother, and the Girls were on Uncle Todmore’s _Roulette_, the Le Moser craft collared the bikker for sumshuous splender. Regger minor of my house, who is quite an awfully Brilliant umorist, made an eppigram about the general Swellness of boats and launches billonging to people like the Le Moser’s. He said: “On the Berks side there are piles only, and no Booms. On the Bucks side there are _both_ Boomse and Piles.”

Regger was so awfully Pleased with himself for saying such a clever Remark that I Had to Kick him to Tone Him down. He is Fritefully litterary and Artistic, because his Father Has just Bought a Weakly Illustrated Journal, and He is to Eddit it when He leaves Oxford; and the Things he said about the akwatic Fairy Palaces bineath the Pine treese and the Green-clad Hilly Vista, kombining to make up a Picture uneek in its English beauty, and without Paralel in the sivilised World were like hearing bitts read out of some Rotten Newspaper the day after the Rigatta.

I had Not Had much Brekker, bicause our Boys’ Maid is quite awfully spoons on Henson No. 4 of the Eight, and forgetse where she has Hidden the Knives and Forkse to kepe Other Fellows from getting at Them. I Found them in my Cricket Pads after I had Eaten eggs and Sausages with my Fingers like one of those Prehistorick Beggers with Stone Hatchets. So the Hospitallity of the Le Mosers was ixtremely Welcome. Mrs. Le Moser was Frightfully Civil. She Had Diamond buttons on a White Reefer Jacket, and Rows and Rows of pearls as big as Sparrows’ eggse. A White Gangway, railed with gilt chains on posts with gilt Knobs, led to a Markay on Shore, which was Decorated as a Medievil Banqueting Hall, and there was a Footman in the Le Moser livery behind everybody’s chair. The Dalmatian Band and the Castillian Minstrels Played, and it was an awfully ripping lunchon, with everything you could think of to Eat and Drink and lots more bissides. There were 4,000 Pot plants on Board, and when it Got Dark the Fairy Litse looked awfully fine.

Mr. Le Moser was a ripping good Host, though his waistcoat and necktie were frightfully loud, and he wares his Nails as long as the front ends of a Pair of Swedish Skates. N. B., Perhaps it is to Rake in the Money with? He told me that my Distinguished Father’s Name was Down as One of the Directors of His New Company, and that He Hoped to have Mine in a Few Years. He said the Risponsibilities of Rank were fritefully tremendous, and never seemed to Notice how I kept Slogging into the Champagne. He told me to keep the Cigarretts biside me, and offered me a Partagga in a glass case, price 8s. 6d., which I expect comes to a frightfully big price for a box of 100. I acsepted the luxurious Weed, but Did Not Smoak it. (N. B., I have got it now, and Regger, who has been swotting Pericles this half for English Classics, calls it “a glorious casket stored with ill.” I can’t think what makes him.)

After everybody was stodged we went on Board the launch, and Miss Le Moser--Mother is quite rite about her being a pretty girl, though her Pater and Mater are such awful form, and her Pater doesn’t know how to stop talking about the money he has Bagged on the Stock Ixchange, and in other Places, the Diamond Mines in South Africa particularly. A chap in the Guards who was on the launch said it was a well-developed case of I. D. B., but Forgot to tell me what the Letters ment. He said, “Josie would carry the pile” (Josie is Miss Le Moser), and that if I was a sensible young beggar, and not a rotten Ass, I would see where my own advantidge lay even before I left School for Sandhurst. He went on about an infusion of Radical blood being a good thing to mingel with the ancient Tory blue, and rather Valuable than otherwise to one’s descendents, and said that to win a young and distinctly decently-looking wife with a hundred and eighty thousand jimmies in her wedding nightcap would be getting the Grand Slam in mattrimony. I checked him a bit and asked him if he had Praktised what he jolly well preached, and he twisted his mustash and said: “Unfortunately, no, young ’un; as like a Good many other fellows, I Came under the Married Women’s propperty Act before I was eighteen.”

Then he pointed out a weedy, long-legged Beggar with the ghost of a red mustash and fritefully swagger clothes, who was making himself tremendously nice to Josie Le Moser, and said he was the Son of Mr. Joyd Lorge’s privite Secretary and an _enfant gâtày_ of the Liberal Government, with a seat in the Lower House being kept warm for him until he should come of age, and a lot more, ending up by asking me if I was driving an Automobile and saw a Dog trying to Bite through one of my Tyres, what I should do to the dog? I said I should Drive over it, of course, which seemed to pleese him frightfully, for he tipped me a sov, and then winked towards the Fellow who was showing his teeth at Miss Le Moser and said, “Then, there’s the Dog, don’t you know!” and went off to talk to a frightfully swell woman who called him to come over to her. I should rather like to be like that Guardsman when I go into the Army. His name is Gerald, for I heard the lady call him by it; he is Lord Dennismore, and he was so jolly Respectful and attentive to the lady, who wore quite a lot of vales and had heaps of golden hair, though she was quite old, and a tremendously red and white Complection, and a front figure that rinkled and bulged when she stooped or sat down, that I thought she must be his Mother, until Mrs. Le Moser told me she was the Duchess of Rinkhorn and his great friend. What I said about the Duchess being his mother seemed to amuse Mrs. Le Moser like mad, for I Heard her tell quite a lot of people, and they All yelled, as if I had been trying to be funny, which I was Not.

She told me lots more About Lord Dennismore, which made me feel beastly proud of his having talked to me, and given me Advice. He was out with his battalion in the South African War, and did splendid thingse at the Front, and got speshally mentioned in Despatches, after Jaegersfontein and for Rescewing twenty wounded Tommies who had fallen in the Grass which the liddite from the shells had set on fire--I think it was liddite. And he got potted in the Shoulder, and was getting quite fit again, and would have done a lot more fiting if the Duchess hadn’t come out in a Speshul Hospital ship and carried him back “to England, Home and Duty,” as a lady who was listening to Mrs. Le Moser put in. I think it was jolly mean of the Duchess, don’t you? As if a chap could be properly grateful for being muffed like that! I forgot to say that Lord Denismore, when a little chap, was Father’s fag at school, and used to field for him when stump cricket in the passage in wet weather first came in. And he, Lord Denismore, was picked to Play in the School Eleven when he was still only a Lower Boy, and was Captain for a half before he left. And I feel awfuly Glad I met him, but I wonder why he said that about coming under the Married Women’s Property Act before he was eighteen? There is a Duke of Rinkhorn, who goes about in a Bath Chair with a Nurse in a white cap and apron to feed him and blow his nose when it wants it, so Perhaps the Duchess is the married woman he meant after all.

I must say Josie Le Moser seemed to like me talking to her and explaining things more than she seemed to when the weedy chap with the ghost of a red mustash was trying to. After the phinal of the Diamonds, when the Crowds began to thin, and later when the Twilite came down and the Nats came out, and the Le Moser’s launch and their markay were elluminated up with about twice as many Fairy Lites as anybody else had, and the Castillian Minstrils played splendidly on their mandalins, I began to think her an awfully pretty girl. I don’t believe it was the crême de Menth her Pater had made me have with my coffy after Lunch and the Champagne, or the Russian rum they sent round in little dekanters, with the five o’clock tea, because the fellows say my Head is frightfully strong. But I got her hand and squeezed it a lot of times, and whenever the sucking M. P. edged a word in, and he tried to keep in Josie’s pocket the Most of the time, I wanted to fit him, and I think He guessed it from my Manner. He let Out He had been Edducated by Private Tutors at Home because his constitushion was dellicate as a Boy, and I said “Oh!” and I think Josie began to feel him rather in the way after that. His name is Wenham-Biggs, and I xpect his Constitushion is giving him a lot more trouble by now.