It was long, and from an unknown firm of lawyers in America, to say that papa had died out in the West, leaving me and grandmamma a perfectly colossal fortune–all made in the space of three years, it must have been.
I seemed past feeling any grief. Papa was a shadow, a strange flash in my life for so long a time now.
I was perfectly unacquainted with business, and had no more idea than a child what I should have to do about this. I wished I had a friend to advise me. Where could I turn? I thought of Antony. For the first time since my widowhood I let my thoughts turn to him. He would give me any advice I wanted, but then–no, he had had the good taste never even to write to me. There was time enough for our meeting. I would not push fate–I, who had been a widow only two months.
The only thing there seemed for me to do was to start for America immediately, and, after taking paid advice–one gets very good advice by paying for it–Roy, McGreggor, my lawyer, and I left England one cold and bleak March morning.
IV
As my trip to America was one of business entirely, and was unaccompanied by any interesting incidents or adventures, I have let it pass by in silence. I was too busy all the time, and too lonely, to take many fresh impressions. It seemed hurry and rush, continuous noises, and tension of the nerves. I felt glad when I once more found myself on board the great liner that was taking me to England.
It was fortunately a fine passage, not even really cold at the end of May. Just over a year ago since I was a very young girl, wondering what life had in store for me, and in twelve months a whole chapter of events and sensations had passed. I seemed to know the whole string of emotions–or so I thought.
I had my deck-chair put where I could watch the waves receding as the great ship cut her way through them.
The salt air seemed to bring fresh life to me–fresh life and fresh ideas. Two things were certain–first, that I was now much too rich for one woman, and Amelia, who had tasted nothing but the rough bits of life, was much too poor after her long service.
A scheme had come into my head in these months alone.
My mother-in-law was still an imbecile, happy and contented. She was surrounded with nurses and all the attention that money and affection could buy. Why should not poor Amelia get some pleasure out of life?
I had a feeling that I, too, meant to live when the period of my mourning should be over; and how glorious to live and to forget that I had ever even had the name of Gurrage! I would give the whole of Augustus’s fortune to Amelia; then she would gain by it, and I, too, would have the satisfaction of feeling that my marriage was an episode, a year to be blotted out of my life.
This thought would never have come if Mrs. Gurrage had not passed into another sphere of mental living. I would not have wounded her for the world.
I settled all the details in my mind, on my voyage home, and no sooner got to London than I executed them. The law is a slow and delaying business, and even a deed of gift requires endless formalities to go through.
Amelia was overcome. Her gratitude was speechless some days, and at others broke into torrents of words.
“I can have aunt to live with me back in the dear old home,” she said, once.
To Amelia the crimson-satin boudoir, and the negro figures, and the bears, and the stained-glass window are all household gods, and far be it from me to wish to disillusionize her.
And I? I can take my household gods to a more congenial setting, perhaps. Who can tell? With the summer coming on and the birds singing it would be useless for me to pretend to grieve any more. A joy lives always in my heart. Some day–not too soon, but some day–I shall see Antony.
I shall never hurry matters. If he cares for me as deeply as I once thought, he will write to me soon or make some sign. Meanwhile–oh, I am free! Free and rich and young again! The shadows are fading away.
Grandmamma was right.
“Remember, above all things, that life is full of compensations.”
Dear grandmamma! I wish you could come back to enjoy this second youth with me.
Shall I travel? It is late June now. Shall I go and see the world, or shall I wait, and perhaps, later on, have a companion to see it with me?
To avoid the Coronation festivities, when all details about my transfer of Augustus’s property to Amelia were finished, I went over to France. I should stop at Versailles for a month and see the Marquis in Paris, and then, perhaps, go back to the cottage.
I had often heard from Lady Tilchester–charming, sympathetic, feminine letters. I must come to them at Harley whenever I decided to go out a little, she said. I felt the whole of the world was opening fairly for me.
I stopped a day or two in Paris to do a little shopping on my way to Versailles, and coming down the steps at Ritz one day I met Mr. Budge. He had come over for a breath of gayer air, he told me, after the Coronation fiasco.
“You are looking wonderfully well,” he said, “and not quite fifty years old now.”
“I am hardly more than thirty,” I informed him, “and hope, if the weather keeps fine, to grow a little younger still.”
He said he was glad to hear it, and prayed I would let him come and see the process.
“One grows in the night, when one is asleep,” I said, “so no one can see it. But if you would care to take tea with me in the afternoon, I shall be very pleased to see you.”
He came the next day.
We talked gravely, as was befitting my mourning. He gave me news of my friends at Harley.
Lady Tilchester, he said, had a new scheme on hand for the employment of the returning volunteers whose places in business had been filled up in their absence. She was absorbed in this undertaking, but when not too busy was more charming than ever.
“I spent a Sunday at Harley a couple of weeks ago.” he said. “I don’t think many of the people were there that you met before–none, I believe, but Sir Antony Thornhirst.”
“And how was he?” I tried to say as naturally as possible.
“He seemed in the best of health and spirits. There is an intelligent person, if you like. I wish he would enter Parliament.”
“But Sir Antony is a Tory, I understand, Mr. Budge! He would be no use to you,” I said.
“Yes, indeed, he would. We want some brilliancy just now in the House to wake us up. It does not matter which side it comes from.”
“Don’t you think he is too casual to care enough about it? He would not give himself the trouble to enter Parliament, I believe.”
“That is just it. The ablest people are so lazy. Lady Tilchester has often tried to persuade him, but he has some whimsical answer ready, and remains at large.”
I should like to have talked much more on this subject, but Mr. Budge changed the conversation. He drifted into saying some personal things which did not quite please me, considering my mourning. They were not in perfect taste. I remembered how in the beginning I had not liked his hands. One’s first instincts are generally right.
When he had gone I said to myself I should not care to see him any more.
In Paris one finds a hundred things to do and to buy if one happens suddenly to have become a rich widow, as is my case. My few days stretched themselves into a week.
I had a letter from the Marquis de Rochermont. He was returning to his tiny apartments in the Rue de Varennes the following day, after a fortnight’s absence, he told me. The dear old Marquis! I should be glad to see him again. He must be a very old man now, almost eighty, although he was several years grandmamma’s junior.
He would lunch with me with pleasure, he said, and at one next day arrived in my sitting-room. He looked just as he used to do at first, but soon I noticed his gayety was gone. He seemed frail and older. He had deeply grieved for grandmamma.
His conversation was much the same, however. We spoke English as usual. I had grown, he said, into the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, and my air and my dignity were worthy of the _ancien regime_. I had found, he hoped, that his _conseils_ had been of some use to me in my brief married life.
“Yes, Marquis,” I said, “I have often been grateful to you and grandmamma.”
“You are of a great _richesse_ now, _n’est-ce pas, mon enfant_?”
“Yes, of a _richesse_. And so I have given all the Gurrage money back to one of their family–you may remember her–Amelia Hoad was her name.”
“Ah!” he said, and he kissed my hand. “That was worthy of you and worthy of your race. It would have pleased our dear madam.”
“I had become so rich, you see, from papa, I did not really want the money, and I had a feeling that if I gave it all back I should have no further ties with them. I could slip away into another atmosphere and gradually forget this year of my life.”
We had a delightful luncheon, in spite of my poor old guest’s infirmities; he had grown blinder and more tottering since last we met. He eat very little and sipped his sparkling hock.
I had determined somehow to try and give him some of my great wealth; but how even to broach the subject I did not know. At last, driven into a corner with nervousness, I blurted out my wishes.
“Oh, I want you to benefit too, dear friend!” I said. “You shared our poverty, why not my riches?”
His old, faded cheeks turned pink. He rose from his chair.
“I thank you, madam,” he said, haughtily. “The de Rochermonts do not accept money from women.”
I felt as I used to when grandmamma was ever displeased with me. My knees shook.
“Oh, please forgive me!” I implored. “I have always looked upon myself as almost your child, although we are no relations, dear Marquis, and I thought–“
“_Assez, assez, mon enfant_,” he said, and he resumed his chair, “You meant it _gentiment_, but it was a _betise quand meme_. We shall speak of it no more.”
Before he left he gave me some more _conseils_.
“You took no _amant_, child? No? Well, perhaps in England it was as well. But now listen to me. Be in no hurry _de prendre un second mari_. The _agrements_ of life are at their beginnings for you. All doors fly open to a _jeune et belle veuve_. _Amusez-vous bien._”
I looked at him. We were such old friends. I could speak to him.
“Even if one loved some one very much, Marquis?” I asked.
“_On ne sait jamais combien de temps cela va durer, l’amour a vingt ans! C’est dangereux!_” And he shook his head. Then, with an air of illumination, “It is your kinsman, Sir Thornhirst?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And you love him very much?”
“I think so.”
“In all cases wait–_attendez_–_surtout_–_point trop de hate!_”
V
Versailles for me is always full of charms. There is a dignity about it which reminds me of grandmamma. I love to walk in the galleries and look at the portraits of the great ladies of the past. The gay _insouciance_ of their expressions, the daintiness of their poses, the beautiful and suitable color of everything give me a sense of satisfaction and repose.
I had been there for some little while, spending days of peace and reflection, when, nearly eight months after the death of Augustus, I received two letters.
It was a most curious coincidence that neither of my correspondents had written to me before, even letters of condolence, and that they should select the same date now.
The letters were from Antony and the Duke. They were both characteristic.
“Comtesse,” Antony wrote, “you know I am thinking of you always. When may I come and see you, and where?”
The Duke’s was longer. It began conventionally, and went on in delicate language to tell me that time was passing, and surely soon I must be thinking of seeing my friends again, and he was entirely at my disposition when I should return to England.
This amused me. Antony’s caused me a wave of joy. Oh! should I be able to take the Marquis’s advice and wait for several years? I feared not.
Of course, I should not think of marrying Antony yet. It would be absolutely indecent haste. Certainly not for eighteen months or two years, anyway. But there could be no harm in my seeing him soon.
Excitement tingled to my very finger-tips at the thought. I did not answer either letter for nearly a week. I walked about the gardens at Versailles and luxuriously enjoyed my musings.
I was, as it were, a cat playing with a mouse, only I was both cat and mouse.
One day I would picture our meeting–Antony’s and mine. The next I would push him away from my thoughts, and decide that I would not even let him come to me until the year was up. Then, again, when it grew evening, and the darkness gradually crept up, there came a scent in the air which affected me so that I longed to see him at once–to see him–to let him kiss me. Oh, to myself I hardly dared to think of this!
The kisses of Augustus were, as yet, the only ones I knew.
At last I wrote my answers.
To the Duke I said my plans were uncertain. I did not know when I should return to England; probably not at all until next year, as I thought of going to Egypt for the winter. I finished with some pleasant platitudes.
Antony’s answer took longer to write, and was only a few words when finished.
“I am staying at Versailles,” I wrote. “If you like to come and see me casually–to talk about the ancestors–you may; but not for a week.”
Why I made this stipulation of a week I do not know. Directly I had posted the letter I felt the time could never pass. It was with the greatest difficulty I prevented myself from sending a telegram of three words: “Come now. To-day.” How would he find me looking? Would he, too, think I had improved in appearance? I had grown an inch, it seemed to me. I was never very short, but now, at five feet seven, he could not call me “little Comtesse” any more. Oh, to hear his dear voice! To look into his greeny-blue, beautiful eyes! Oh, I fear no advice in the world of a hundred marquises could keep me from Antony much longer!
Would Wednesday never come? The Wednesday in August after the Coronation, that was the day I had fixed for our meeting.
Should I be out, and leave a message for him to follow me into the gardens, or should I quietly stay in my sitting-room? What should we say to each other? I must be very calm, of course, and appear perfectly indifferent, and we must not speak upon any subjects but the pictures here, and our mutual friends, and the pleasure of Paris, and the health of the dogs.
He had replied, immediately:
“I shall be there, and we can talk of the ancestors–and other things,” No, there must be no “other things” yet.
But what immense joy all this was to think about for me! I who had never in all my life been able to do as I pleased. Now I would nibble at my cake and enjoy its every crumb–not seize and eat it all at once.
On Tuesday morning I got a telegram from Lady Tilchester, sent from Paris. I had written to her some days before. She had run over to Ritz for a week, she said, to recover from her fatigues of the Saturday, and would I come into town, and lunch with her that day at half-past twelve?
With delight I started in my automobile. I had not seen her for months.
“Oh, you beautiful thing!” she exclaimed, when we met, “I have never seen such a change in any one. You are like an opening rose, a glorious, fresh flower.”
She looked tired, I thought, but fascinating as ever. We lunched together in the restaurant, and had a long conversation.
She told me an amusing story of the American Lady Luffton, whom she had seen the day before. An expected family event had prevented her from gracing the Coronation.
“My dear”–and Lady Tilchester imitated her voice exactly–“it is a dispensation of Providence that circumstances did not permit me to attend this ceremony. You Englishwomen would have gone anyhow; but we Americans are different. But, I say, it is a dispensation of Providence, as I am considerably contented with Luffy and my position up to the present time. But if I had gotten there, stuffed behind with the baronesses, and had seen those duchesses marching along with their strawberry-leaves ahead of me, I kinder think I should have had a fit of dyspepsia right there in the Abbey.”
After lunch we went up to the sitting-room. I meant to stay for half an hour before going back to Versailles.
Telegrams called Lady Tilchester away for a little. She is always so full of business.
“I shall send Muriel to entertain you while I answer these,” she said. “I brought her over with me to have a glimpse of Paris, too.”
In a few moments the sound of feet running down the passage caused me to turn round as the door opened and a slender child of ten or eleven entered the room. She was facing the light. I happened to be standing with my back to the window.
“How do you do?” she said, sweetly, and put out her little hand. “Mother says I may come and talk to you.”
There are some moments in life too anguishing for words!
Her face is the face of Lady Tilchester, but her eyes–her eyes are grayish-greeny-blue, with black edges, and that look like a cat’s, that can see in the dark.
Now I know whom her photograph reminded me of.
There can be only one other pair of such eyes in the world.
I don’t remember what I said. Something kind and _banal_. Then I invented an excuse to go away.
“Give my best love to your mother, dear,” I said, “and say I must not stop another moment. I have remembered an important appointment with the dressmaker, and I must fly!”
She put up her _mignonne_ oval face to kiss me.
“I have heard so much of you,” she said. “I wanted so to see you. I wish you could have stayed.” And so we kissed and parted.
When I got into the automobile outside, I felt as if I were going to faint for a few awful moments. Everything was clear to me now! I remembered the little photograph on his mantel-piece, his sudden changing of the conversation, a number of small things unnoticed at the time. How had I been so ridiculously blind? It was because she seemed so great and noble, and utterly apart from all these things.
Had it been Babykins or Lady Grenellen, or any other woman, this discovery would have made no difference to me. I did not doubt that Antony loved me, and me only, now. He had been “not wearyingly faithful,” like the rest of his world, that was all.
But she–Lady Tilchester–my friend! Oh, I could not take her lover from her! She who had always been so good to me, from the first moment of our acquaintance, kind and sympathetic and dear! I owed her deepest gratitude. If one of us must suffer, it should certainly be I. I could not play her false like this. Of course she loved him still! He was often with her, I knew, and her face had softened when first she spoke of him. They had known each other for fourteen years, she had said. I seemed to see it all. This was her “mid-summer madness,” and Antony had gone away to travel for several years, and then returned to her again. They had probably been so happy together until I came upon the scene.
Well, they can be happy once more when he forgets me. I, at least, shall not stand in the way. Dear Margaret, I am not so mean as that! You shall keep your lover, and I will never have mine!
All my life I shall hate the road to Versailles. “Go at top speed,” I told my chauffeur.
I felt if we might dash against a tree and have done with the whole matter, it would be the best thing in the end.
The rapid motion through the air revived me. I had my wits about me when we drew up at the hotel door.
“I am going to Switzerland to-night,” I said to McGreggor. “Pack up everything.”
She is a maid of wonderful sense.
“Very well, ma’am,” she said, without the slightest appearance of surprise.
I sat down and wrote a telegram to Antony. It would just catch him. He was to leave by the night mail:
“I have seen Muriel and I know. Lady Tilchester has been always kind to me. Do not come. Good-bye.”
Then I took it to the post-office myself.
That night we left for Lucerne–McGreggor and Roy and I.
VI
It being August, crowds of tourists faced me everywhere. Lucerne, which I had always heard was such a pretty place, filled me with loathing. I only stayed a day there. At last, after stopping in several places, we arrived one afternoon at Zuiebad. Here, at least, there were no tourists, only ugly rheumatic invalids, and unattractive. What made me choose such a place I do not know, unless it was because I happened to see the name printed large upon the map. Any place would do. I had not felt much in my rapid rush. A numbness, as of a limb cut off, an utter indifference to everything in life.
But when I found myself alone in the vast pine-woods, an anguish, as of physical pain, took possession of me. Every tree spoke to me of Antony. The surroundings were all perfect.
What would he do? Would he follow me and try to persuade me to alter my mind? Oh no, he could never do that. He would know that this must be final. What had been his idea all along? How could he think I should never find out, and having done so, that I would ever accept such a position?
Or was it that he, like all his world, thought so lightly of passing from one love to another that fidelity to Lady Tilchester was among the catalogue of things that do not count.
I had taken no pains to hide my whereabouts.
At each hotel they would know to where I had gone on. For days a feverish excitement took possession of me. Every knock at the door made me start. Would he write? Would he make any sign? I almost prayed not, and yet I feared and longed to hear from him.
This is not a school-girl love story I am writing, but the chronicle of my life. I have always despised sentimental heart-burnings, and when I used to read of the heroine dying for love, it always made me laugh. But, oh, never again can I know such bitterness in life as I have suffered in this black week–to have been so near to bliss, and now to be away forever!
What good to me were my freedom and riches? As well be married or dead. I never knew before how much I had been looking forward to seeing Antony again. I never realized how, instinctively, for months my soul had been living in the background on this thought.
And now it was all finished. I must not be a coward. Oh, how I wished again for grandmamma’s spirit! This time I must tear the whole thing out of my life at once.
To go on caring for another woman’s lover was beneath contempt.
When I should have recovered a little, I would go back to England and mix with the world, and gradually forget, and eventually marry the Duke. Fortunately, as the Marquis said, _a vingt ans_ one could never be sure of love lasting. So probably I should soon be cured, and there would be compensation in being an English duchess. It was a great position, as Miss Corrisande K. Trumpet had said. And all men make good enough husbands if you have control of the dollars, I remember she added.
Well, I should have control of the dollars. So we should see.
The Duke was a gentleman, too, and intelligent, agreeable, and had liberal views. His Duchess might eventually have a “friend,” like the rest, he had said. So, no doubt, I should be able to acquire the habit of thus amusing myself. Why should I hesitate, when the best and the noblest gave me examples?
All my ideas on those subjects had fallen to pieces like a pack of cards.
“‘Eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow you die.'”
Well, I had never eaten or drunk of happiness yet, and now my heart was dead. So what was the good of it all, anyway? _A quoi bon_? and again, _a quoi bon_? That is what the trees said to me when they tired of calling for Antony.
I breakfasted and lunched and dined and walked miles every day. I loathed my food. I hated the faces of the people who stared at me. I fear I even snapped at McGreggor. Roy was my only comfort.
But gradually the beauty and peace of the pine-forests soothed me. Better thoughts came. I said to myself: “Enough. Now you will go home and face life. At least you can try to do some good in the world, and with your great wealth make some poor creatures happy. You have behaved according to your own idea of gratitude and honor. No one asked you to do it; therefore, why sit there and growl at fate? Have courage to carry the thing through. No more contemptible repinings.”
* * * * *
Far away up the hills there is a path that leads to an open space–a tiny peep out over the tree-tops, sheer precipices below. I would go there for the last time, and to-morrow return to England.
The climb was steep. I was a little out of breath, and leaned on the stone ledge to rest myself when I arrived at the top. I was quite alone.
The knife on my chatelaine caught in the lichen and dragged at the chain. It angered me. I took it off the twisted ring and looked at it.
“Little ‘ill omen,’ as he called you, is it your fault that once fate, once honor, once gratitude to a woman have kept me from my love? Well, I shall throw you away now, then I shall have no link left to remind me of foolish things that might have been.”
I lifted my arm, and with all my might flung the tiny, glittering thing out into the air. It fell far away down among the tree-tops in the valley.
Then I turned to go down the hill. I had done with ridiculous sentiment, which I had always disliked and despised.
Footsteps were coming towards me up the long, winding path. It was a lonely place. I hoped it was not one of the fat German Jews who had followed me once or twice. Ugly creatures!–hardly human, they seemed to me. I wished I had Roy with me. He had gone with McGreggor into the town.
A bend in the path hid the person from view until we met face to face.
And then I saw it was Antony, and it seemed as if my heart stopped beating.
“At last I have found you, Ambrosine, sweetheart!” he said, and he clasped me in his arms and kissed my lips.
Then I forgot Lady Tilchester and gratitude and honor and self-control, because in nature I find there is a stronger force than all these things, and that is the _touch_ of the one we love.
* * * * *
It was perhaps an hour afterwards. The shadows looked blue among the pine-trees.
We sat on a little wooden bench. There was a warm, still silence. Not a twig moved. A joy so infinite seemed everywhere around.
“It was all over between us ten years ago,” Antony said. “It only lasted a year or two, when we were very young. The situation galled us both too much, and Tilchester was always my friend. She knows I love you, and she only cares for her great works and her fine position now. So you need not have fled, Comtesse.”
“I shall tell you something, Antony.” I whispered. “I am glad I am doing no wrong, but if it was to break Lady Tilchester’s heart, if grandmamma were to come back and curse me here for forgetting all her teachings, if it was almost disgrace–now that I know what it is like to stay in your arms–I should stay!”
THE END