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

"Home," said the d.u.c.h.ess 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 d.u.c.h.ess, "my house--that is, I mean to say, Mr.

Bulstrode's."

The d.u.c.h.ess saw a slight wave of red rush up her husband's pale cheek.

"d.a.m.n 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 d.u.c.h.ess. 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 d.u.c.h.ess.

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 n.o.ble visitor was.

With fine disregard for his help or existence, the Duke said crossly: "Send this d.a.m.ned 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 circ.u.mstances, and managed to reach the door-sill. Mellon and the maids were there, and as the d.u.c.h.ess pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sured 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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

VIII

IN WHICH HE COMES INTO HIS OWN

England, the heart of the countryside, freshened by December and drifted over by delicate breaths that are scarcely fog, and through which like a chrysanthemum seen behind ground gla.s.s the sun contrives to shine, the English country in December is one thing, London quite another.

Jimmy wandered across from Paddington to his destination, part of the time on foot, part of the time peering from a crawling hansom in immediate peril of collision with every other object that like himself lost bearings in the nightmarish yellow fog.

He fetched up before No. ----, Portman Square, at mid-day, and rang the door bell of Lady Sorgham's town-house, and in his eagerness to find his friend did not ask himself how the time accorded with calling hours.

She was at home.

An insignificant footman told him this, and the gentleman reflected that it was astounding what the words, heard often in the course of ten years, meant to him still.

In the sitting-room, before a coal fire, a writing table at her side, a pen in her hand, he found Mrs. Falconer.

He sincerely struggled with an inability to speak at once, even the consoling how-d'-dos that cover for us a mult.i.tude of feelings, were not at his tongue's end.

The fire had burned away a few feet of fog and lighted lamps and candles shone pallidly through an obscurity about whose existence there could be no doubt.

The inmates of Lady Sorgham's thoroughly English and thoroughly comfortable drawing-room were aliens, possessing neither of them a hearthstone within range of several thousand miles. But no sooner had they greeted--Bulstrode triumphantly peering at her through both real and mental haze--shaken hands, and each found a seat before the grate, than an enchanting homeliness overspread the place. Bulstrode felt it and smiled with content to think she did as well, and remembered an occasion in America when they had both of them missed a train for some out-of-the-way place and found themselves side by side in a mid-country station to pa.s.s there three hours of a broiling afternoon. The flies and mosquitoes buzzed about them, the thermometer registered ninety degrees, but happy, cool and unruffled Mary Falconer, smiling up at him from her hard bench, had said:

"Jimmy, let's _build_ here!"

"No one, Jimmy, is old"--Mrs. Falconer had once said to him on an occasion when a word regarding gray hairs had drifted into their conversation. Noticing the smooth reflection of the light along her hair, Bulstrode had spoken of its golden quality, and the lady had suddenly covered the strand with her hand; she knew that there ran a line she did not want him to see.