Chapter VII: In Which He Becomes the Possessor of a Certain Piece of Property (3)

On this Christmas Eve, The Dials was the loneliest corner of England. The scarcely occupied house suggested to the Duchess the thought of a stocking hung before a chimney when there were no children who cared whether it was filled or not, when there was no reason why St. Nicholas should pass. But it was only the very edge of her thoughts that touched anything so fantastic as this picture. The Duchess was serious and lonely. With a sigh, and winking back tears she threw off her furs, laid off her hat, and, after poking up the fire into sparkling brightness, she wandered up-stairs to the apartment that she had made her bedroom. Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place in.

"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is hurrying to _me_!"

She walked aimlessly about the pretty room, irritated and annoyed at the cloister effect. She found it too remote, too virgin, and no room for a wife. "I promised," she mused, "to wait until Mrs. Falconer has gone. I shall break my promise. Oh, I can't really wait at all! If things are going to be as bad as this, I want to leave England, I want at least to know. And Jimmy will forgive me, it's such a wonderfully good cause ... a woman going to find her husband on Christmas Eve!"

The Duchess threw open the window to its widest. Down in the garden on the stone wall the big dial lay in the shadow of the afternoon. She could not read its motto, but she knew perfectly what it said--_Utere dum licet_. As she leaned out above her garden, under her window the snowballs hung their waxen globes in a green tree. There were a few winter roses blooming, and the English garden had the beauty of summer in winter time.

The Duchess heard a sharp sound close to the house. It was a rifle shot, and died instantly on the still air. Shots were not uncommon in this season, but here in The Dials woods they were entirely out of character; in fact, they were quite inadmissible. There was no shooting let, and a shot could only mean poaching, or something more serious. The Duchess waited a few moments, but no other sound followed. She nevertheless drew the casement in, and, going down stairs threw her stole about her shoulders and opened the house door into the garden. At the sight of her, down by the other end of the wall, the gardener lifted up his bent form, and with a little pannier of hot-house violets in his hands, hurried towards his lady.

"Mellon," said she, "have you any violets?"

The Duchess took the fragrant basket with its delicate burden.

"A mort, my lady."

"Pick them all, Mellon, and all the flowers from the green-house too, every one of them, and fetch up whatever there is to the cottage."

The old man was deaf, as well as discreet, and if this sudden command to vandalism surprised him, he did not say so. Holding his hand behind his ear, he nodded.

"I shall send them," the Duchess thought, "up to Jimmy Bulstrode. I think he will understand, and I will ask him at the same time to take his friend off somewhere in a motor that I may go unobserved to the castle."

She said a few more words to the old man, asked him a few questions, then with the basket on her arm she was about to turn away when she remembered the shot.

"Did you hear a shot, Mellon? They should not be shooting about here, you know." But the old man had heard nothing, and, intending to find the lodgekeeper who was clipping the trees on the lower terrace and ask him to go through the woods for her, the Duchess walked toward the gate and in the direction of the brick path.

As she came up to it she gave a low cry, lifted her hands to her heart; the basket of flowers fell to the earth and scattered their purple blooms at her feet. Then the hands that had gone to her heart extended, she held out her arms and went forwards, crying her husband's name.

The Duke of Westboro' had managed to pick himself up. He was a strong man, in the fulness of health and vigor; there was nothing of the mollycoddle about the last Duke of the line. The sound of voices had reached his dull ear, his swoon was over, and he had manfully, with a few sturdy curses, pulled himself up and now stood, albeit very pale, clinging to the gatepost, leaning on it, finding his legs shaking and his balance not all he could wish. Before him was a little brick house, with bright curtains in the windows, and between it and himself, lovely as a ghost, and no less white, was his wife, and her arms were extended towards him.

"Cecil!" she cried. "Oh, my God! Cecil, what has happened to you?"

Before Westboro' knew it, the arms to which he had gone in visions were about him and the soft shoulder gave him a prop more fragile perhaps than the stone against which he leaned, but it was a living support, and it felt warm and wonderful.

"Don't," he said vaguely, "get near me. I'm nasty and bloody. It's all right; I'm only a bit scratched, really. A lot of beastly shot has gone off into my shoulder. Just call some one to help me, will you?"

"Cecil," she said, "lean on me, put your arm around my shoulder; you can perfectly well get along with only me. Come, come!"

The Duke saw that he could perfectly get along with another faint--he was near to it, but something besides his wound and his light head kept him manfully to his feet. With his left hand he very firmly pushed the Duchess a little away from him.

"Come?" he repeated. "Come where?"

"Home," said the Duchess with a catch in her voice--she was bearing up. "Oh, lean on me! You'll fall, you'll fall! Mellon!" she cried. "O Mellon!"

But the Duke put up his hand. "I'm all right," he said. "Don't call. What house is that? What home do you mean?"

"Mine," said the Duchess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr. Bulstrode's."

The Duchess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.

"Damn Bulstrode!" he breathed. "What the devil does he do here? I saw you together--I saw you not half an hour since--that is the whole mischief of it--it was too much for me--it took away my senses and I fell on my gun, and the beastly thing went off. If I ever get back to where Bulstrode is----"

"Cecil!" cried the Duchess. She again wound her arms around him, and it was as well that she was a strong, fine creature and that the columns of the gate were back of him, for Westboro' was swaying like a child that has just learned to walk.

"He is fainting!" she cried. "Mellon, Mellon!"

The old man had not heard his mistress but he had seen her, and after staring open-mouthed at the couple at the gate, he came scurrying like a rabbit, dropping his shears on the wall. They hit the big dial with a ring.

The Duke heard the steps and tried to start forwards; also tried weakly to extricate himself from his wife's embrace. "I beg your pardon," he said, with a coolness that had something of the humorous in its formality--"I beg your pardon, but I am _not_ going to Bulstrode's house, you know."

"_Cecil_," pleaded the woman tenderly, "how ridiculous you are! Bulstrode's house! Why, it's mine! Oh, don't break my heart. He's only bought it, you know, that's all."

"Break her heart!" It was a new voice that spoke to the Duke of Westboro'. He had never heard it in all his life. It was warm and struggling for clearness, it was full of tears and quivering, it was the voice of love, and unmistakable, certainly, to a lover.

"What was Bulstrode doing here?" he persisted.

"Going to Mrs. Falconer," breathed the Duchess.

The Duke moved a step forwards: "What are you doing here?"

"Going to you, Cecil--I have _been_ going to you all day. I think I have been going to you ever since you left me that night on the Riviera; at any rate, I was on my way to the castle as you came."

The Duke halted again on his crawling way. Mellon, who had really reached his side, was doing his best to be of some use and kept himself well under the wounded arm, on which the blood had clotted and dried, but ceased to flow.

"Lean hard on me, your Grace," pleaded the gardener, and with his word, he looked over at his mistress to see if she realized who their noble visitor was.

With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly: "Send this damned gardener away."

"Oh, Cecil, no, no; you can't stand without him."

They had reached the garden wall, just at the place where the big dial, round and shining, had come a little out of the shadow and the last of the afternoon sun touched its edges. Westboro' lurched towards the wall. "Send this man away," he commanded.

"He is deaf, Cecil, as the stones." But at her husband's face she motioned to Mellon: "Stand away a bit. His Grace wants to rest on the wall. I'll call you."

With his wife's arms about him, Westboro' leaned on the garden wall, his ashen face lifted to her.

"I've only one arm," he said. He put it around her and he drew her down as close to him as he could. He felt her face warm against his, wet against his with tears. As the Duke, who, Bulstrode said, was no lover, kissed his wife, the dial seemed to sing its motto aloud.

"You _were_ coming to me?" he breathed. "Do you forgive me? ... Then," said Westboro', satisfied by what he heard, "I'm cured. I love you--I love you."

The woman could not find her voice, but as she held him she was the warmest, sweetest prop that ever a wounded man leaned upon. After a few seconds she helped him to rise, helped him on, and he found his balance and his equilibrium to be very wonderful under the circumstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the maids were there, and as the Duchess passed in, leading her husband, she bade them send for a doctor as fast as they could and to send at once for Bulstrode at the castle.

Westboro's wound had become a sort of intoxication to him, and he assured her, "I'll be all right in an hour. I need no one but you; send them all away, all away."

He had never commanded her before, he had let her rule him, he had been indifferent to her disobedience. But now she did what he bade her, and led him to the drawing-room, suddenly repossessed of all its old charm; led him to the lounge, where he sank down. Here, by his side, she gave him stimulants and bathed his head and hands, waiting for the doctor to come; and Westboro', like his ancestors who had fought in the King's wars, bore up like a man with no resemblance whatsoever to the amorous cavalier whose curls had met the dust of the road for love of Queen Elizabeth.

The Duchess found him that best of all things--very much of a man, and knew that he was hers. And he, more wild with love for her than suffering physical pain, found her a woman and knew that she loved him and that she was his.

The house, so deserted and desolate an hour ago, grew fresh, warm, and rosy as over the west meadows the sunset, gilding the wall and The Dials, flushed the windows red, and the deserted bird's-nest, lately "filled with snow" appeared to have, as the light rained upon it, filled itself with roses. So, an hour later, it seemed to Bulstrode, when he came and found it housing the lovers.

THE EIGHTH ADVENTURE