The Best Short Stories of 1920 Part 42

It was at the end of the week that Ayling telephoned. And, although she had been avoiding even chance meetings with acquaintances, she found herself asking Ayling, whom she had not seen for twenty-five years, and whom she had known but slightly then, to come that day at five to tea.

She realized only after she had left the telephone that it was because his voice had come to her out of that far time before she had become the mother of Peggy, and because she had a vague sort of hope that he might help to bring back a bit of the old self she had lost.

She was, when she thought of it, a little puzzled by his looking her up.

Had he and Harry been such friends?

Promptly at five he came. At the door they greeted each other with a sudden unexpected warmth. And while he was clasping her hand and saying how jolly it was, after all this time, to find her here, and she was saying how nice it was to see _him_, how nice of him to look her up, he was thinking to himself that he might have recognized her by the brown-flecked eyes, and she was thinking, "He's an old man, older than I--the age Harry would have been----"

"So you've come home," she said, "to stay?"

"Yes, we all do. It's what we look forward to out there."

"I know." With a little hospitable gesture and a step backward she brought him in.

They had not mentioned the major who was gone, nor had they mentioned the years that had pa.s.sed since their last meeting, yet suddenly, without any premonition, those two turned their eyes away from each other, to avoid bursting senselessly into tears. An almost inconceivable disaster, yet one for the moment perilously imminent.

Yet neither of them was thinking of Major Lonsdale nor of anything so grievous as death; they were thinking of those terrifying little wrinkles round their eyes, and of the little up-and-down lines that would never disappear, and something inside them both gave suddenly away, melted, flooding them inside with tears that must not be shed.

She held out her hand for his hat and stick. For an instant they both felt a deep constraint, and as he was getting out of his coat each wondered if the other had noticed it.

Ayling turned about and stumbled awkwardly over a small ha.s.sock on the floor, and they both laughed, which helped them recover themselves.

"How long has it really been?" she asked, as she faced him beside the fire.

"Twenty-five years." He smiled at her, shaking his head. "Twenty-five years!"

"You _must_ feel the prodigal son!"

"Not until I came in your door just now, I didn't at all." And then, without in the least intending to say it, he added, "You were the only person in London I knew."

It was the first of many things he had not intended to tell. As it was the first of many afternoons when they sat before the fire in her pretty drawing-room--that gallant little blaze that did its best to combat the gloom and chill of London's late winter rains--and drank their tea and talked, the comfortable, scattering talk of old friends; although it was not because of the past that they were friends, but because of the present and their mutual need. They did not speak of loneliness; it was a word, perhaps, of which they were both afraid.

When they talked of her husband, of the old house, the old days, she felt herself coming back, materializing gradually again, out of the past. Ayling said to himself that he could talk to Bessie Lonsdale of things he had never been able to speak of to any one else, because they had had so much common experience. For from the beginning Ayling had had the illusion that Bessie Lonsdale, as well as he, had been away all those years, and had just come back to London again. He had said this to her as he was leaving on that first afternoon, and she had smiled and said, "So I have, just that--I've been away and come back, and I hardly know where to begin." Later he understood. For once or twice he met there a few of her friends, people who dropped in to inquire what she had heard from Peggy; people who talked of how they were missing Peggy, of the time when she would be coming home, of her approaching wedding, and one and all they commented upon the emptiness of the flat without Peggy there, and how lonely it must be for dear Mrs. Lonsdale with Peggy away.

"I seem to be the only person in London not missing Peggy," he said to her one day. Her brown-flecked eyes looked at him straight for an instant, and then slowly they smiled, for she knew that he understood.

She had not needed to tell him, for he had divined it for himself. Just as he had not needed to tell her how much her being in London had meant to him.

As it was, the incessant chill and dampness of the weather had done his health no good. His blood was thin from long years of Indian sun, and he found it a constant effort to resist. The gloom seemed even worse than the cold, and, although he had thought that he should never wish for sun again, after India, he did wish for it now, wished for it until it became a sheer physical need. For the first time in his life he began to feel that he was getting old. Or was it, he asked himself, only that he had time now to think of such things? Bessie Lonsdale saw it, for her eyes were quick and keen, and she had long been in the habit of mothering. "It's this beastly London," she said. "I know!" And it was she who made him promise to go away for a week in the country, where he might have a glimpse at least of the sun. He remembered an inn at Homebury St. Mary, where he had spent a summer as a child, and it was there, for no reason except the memory of so much sun, that he planned to go, "by the middle of next week," he said, "when Peggy will be coming home."

They had been talking of her return, and he had confessed to the notion that he would feel himself superfluous, out of place, somehow, when Peggy came home. His confession had pleased her, she hardly knew why. As for herself, she had had something of the same thought that when Peggy came there would be--well, a different atmosphere.

She was looking forward daily now to a letter saying by what train Peggy would return. On Thursday there arrived, instead, a letter from Lady McCrae, begging that they be allowed "to keep our dear Peggy for another ten days." The heavy weather had kept the young people indoors, and a great many excursions which they had planned had had to be put off on account of it. She said, in her dignified way, many things vastly pleasing to a mother's heart, and Mrs. Lonsdale could do nothing but write, giving her consent.

When she had written the letter and sent it off she began to be curiously depressed, and she wandered through the flat, conscious at last of just how much she had really missed Peggy's laughter, her gaiety, and her swift young step. The week before her loomed longer than all the time she had been away.

That afternoon she told Ayling her news, but it was not until she had finished telling him that she remembered that he, too, would be going away. She hadn't known until then how much his being there had meant.

"I don't know," she said, "how I shall put in the week! After all, I've been missing her more than I knew."

It occurred to Ayling that, standing there before him with Lady McCrae's letter, which she had been showing him, in her hand, she was exactly like a little girl who was going to be left all alone.

The idea came to him suddenly. "Look here, Bessie; come down to Homebury St. Mary with me! It would do you no end of good."

The quality of their friendship was clear in the simplicity with which he made the suggestion, and the absence of self-consciousness with which she heard it made.

"I should love it!" she said.

"Then come along. You've nothing to keep you here; the country's just what you need."

She did not answer at once, but stood looking away from him, a little frown between her eyes. She was thinking how absurd it would be to object, and how equally absurd it seemed to say yes. It _was_ so nice to have some one think of her as he thought of himself, simply, normally, humanly, as d.i.c.k Ayling seemed to have thought of her from the first.

Then abruptly she accepted his simplification. "I'll go," she said.

"Good! I'll telephone through for a room for you.... When can you be ready?" he asked.

"To-day--this afternoon. Let's get away before I discover all the reasons to prevent! I won't bother about a lot of luggage--my big bag will do."

"Great! I'll ask about trains."

All at once, like two children, they became immensely exhilarated at the prospect before them--a week's holiday!

He went to the telephone and presently reported: "There's a train at two-forty. Can you make it by then?"

She looked at the clock on the mantel. "We'll make it," she said.

He was getting into his coat. "I'll go on to the club, get my things together, and come back for you at two-fifteen, then."

He rushed away, both of them almost forgetting to say good-by, and she went into her bedroom to pack.

When, promptly at two-fifteen, he rang her bell, she was waiting, hat and gloves on, and called out, "All ready!" as the taxi-driver followed Ayling up for her bag....

The spring had come up to meet them at Homebury St. Mary. So Bessie Lonsdale said to herself when she woke in her old-fashioned chintz-curtained room. The sun shone in at the windows, the air was balmy and sweet, and lifting herself on her elbow, she saw in a little round swale in the garden outside a faint showing of green nestled into the damp brown earth.

She got up, rang for a maid, who came, smiling, white-capped, rosy-cheeked. She had coffee and rolls with rich country cream while she dressed. Her room opened directly into the garden, and she put on stout boots and a walking-suit and a soft little hat of green felt, and went out. Ayling, who had evidently risen early, was coming toward her, swinging a great, freshly whittled staff cut from the woods beyond the inn. He called to her:

"You see! The sun _does_ shine at Homebury St. Mary!" And then, as if in grat.i.tude for so glorious a day, he wished to be fair to the rest of the world, he added, as he came up, "I wonder if it's shining in London, too."

"London?" she said. "London? There's no such place!"

"Glad you came?" he asked.

"Glad!" Her tone was enough.

"That's a jolly green hat," he said, and made her a little bow.

"Glad you like it," she laughed. "And that's a jolly staff."

He showed it off proudly. "Work of art," he said. "I made one just like it when I was here the summer I was twelve--I remembered it this morning when I woke up, and I came out to get this one."