The Best Short Stories of 1920 Part 43

She admired it critically, particularly the initials of the dark bark left on, but suggested an improvement about the k.n.o.b.

"By Jove! you're right," he admitted, and set to work with his knife.

They were like two youngsters out of school. All morning they idled out-of-doors, exploring the little lanes that led off into the buff-colored hills, returning at noon, ravenous, to lunch in the dining-room of the inn, parting afterward in the corridor, and going to their own rooms to rest and read. At four Ayling tapped at her door to say that there was in the sitting-room "an absolutely enormous tea."

That night, before a beautiful fire in the sitting-room, they caught each other yawning at half past nine, and at ten they said good-night.

It had been so perfect that the next day found them following the same routine. And the next day, and the next. Bessie Lonsdale had not felt for years so much peace and so much strength. In their morning walks together her strength showed greater than his. The bracing air exhilarated her, and she felt she could have walked forever in the lovely rolling hills. Once she had walked on and on, faster and faster, not noticing how she had quickened her pace, her head up, facing the light wind blowing in from the sea. And, turning to ask a question of Ayling at her side, his white face stopped her instantly.

"Oh, I _am_ sorry! Forgive me," she said.

He smiled, embarra.s.sed, and waited a moment for breath before he said, "It's just the wind; it's pretty stiff."

And she had said no more, because it embarra.s.sed him, but she suited her pace to his after that, never forgiving herself for her thoughtlessness.

And she chose, instead of the hill roads, the level, winding lanes.

For five perfect spring days they spent their mornings out-of-doors in the sun, lunched, parted until tea, met at dinner again, and said good night at a preposterously early hour. And they could not have said whether they amused or interested or merely comforted each other.

Perhaps they did all three. At any rate, it was an idyll of its kind, and of more genuine beauty than many less platonic idylls have been.

On the morning of the sixth day Bessie Lonsdale went out into the garden as usual, to find the sky overcast with light, fleecy clouds. But the air was soft, and she wandered about for half an hour before it occurred to her that perhaps Ayling was waiting for her inside. She went in to look, but saw him nowhere, and decided that he was sleeping late. She waited until eleven, and then went out to walk by herself. But she did not relish the walk because she was uneasy about Ayling. She was afraid he was ill. She forced herself to go on a little way, but when she came to the second turn in the road, she faced abruptly about and came back to the inn. Still Ayling was nowhere about. He was not in the garden; he was not in the coffee-room. She went to her own room and sat down with a book, but she could not read. So she went into the corridor, searching for some one of whom she might inquire. But no one was visible.

Ayling's room opened off of the little public sitting-room at the end of the corridor. She went on until she reached the sitting-room, which she entered, and then stood still, listening for some sound from beyond Ayling's door. The silence seemed to grow round her; it filled the room, it spread through the house. And then, propelled by that silence toward the door, she put out her hand and knocked softly. There was no response. She repeated the knock--twice--and only that pervading silence answered her. She took hold of the k.n.o.b and turned it without a sound; the door gave inward and she stepped inside the room. The bed faced her, and Ayling was lying there, on his side. Even before she saw his face, her own heart told her that he was dead.... He lay there quite peacefully, as if he had died in his sleep.

For an instant Bessie Lonsdale thought she was going to faint. And then, moved by the force of an emotion which seemed to take possession of her from the outside, an emotion which she could not recognize, but which was irresistible and which, as the silence had propelled her a moment ago, took her backward now, step by step, noiselessly, out of that room; caused her to close the door after her, and, still moving backward without a sound, to come to a stop in the middle of the little sitting-room. For now that strange fear, premonition--she knew not what--which seemed to have been traveling toward her from a great distance, seemed suddenly to concentrate itself into a single name, "Peggy!" ... Confused, swirling, the connotations that accompanied the name took possession of her mind, of her body, her will. _Peggy was threatened_.... Through this thing that had happened Peggy's happiness might be destroyed! In a flash she saw the story--the cold facts printed in a newspaper--as they would undoubtedly be--or told by gossips, glad of a scandal to repeat: She, Peggy's mother--and Richard Ayling together at a country inn--the sudden and sensational discovery of Ayling's death.... She could see the stern face of Lady McCrae--the accusing blue eyes of Andrew McCrae ... and Peggy's stricken face.

She tried to pull herself together--to think; her thoughts were not reasoning thoughts, but unrelated, floating, detached....

Suddenly, by some strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out clear. They stood out like the three facts of a simple syllogism.

There was nothing she could do for Richard Ayling now.... No one knew she was here.... A train for London pa.s.sed Homebury St. Mary a little after noon.

All the years of Bessie Lonsdale's motherhood commanded her to act. Her muscles alone seemed to hear and obey. She was like a person hypnotized, who had been ordered with great detail and precision what to do.

Soundlessly, she went from the room and down the length of the corridor.

In her own room she threw scattered garments into a bag, swept in the things from the dresser, glanced into the mirror, and was astonished to see that she had on her coat and hat. Then out through the door that led to the garden, a sharp turn to the right, and she was off, walking swiftly, with no sensation of touching the earth. A train whistled in the distance, came into sight. She raced with it, reached the station just as it drew alongside and came to a stop. The guard took her bag, and she swung onto the step. It did not seem strange to her that she had reached the station at precisely the same time as the train. It seemed only natural ... in accordance with the plan....

At seventeen minutes past three o'clock Bessie Lonsdale hurried into a telephone-booth in Victoria Station, called up a friend, and asked her to tea. Then she took a taxi to within a block of the flat, where she dismissed the taxi, went into a pastry-shop, bought some cakes, and five minutes later she was taking off her hat and coat in her own bedroom.

She worked quickly, automatically, without any sense of exertion, still as if she but obeyed a hypnotist's command. At four o'clock a leaping fire in the drawing-room grate flickered cheerily against silver tea-things, against the sheen of newly dusted mahogany; books lay here and there, carelessly, a late ill.u.s.trated review open as if some one had just put it down, and dressed in a soft gown of blue crepe, Bessie Lonsdale received her guest. She was not an intimate friend, but a casual one whom she did not often see. A Mrs. Downey, who loved to talk of herself and of her own affairs. Bessie Lonsdale did not know why she had chosen her. Her brain had seemed to work without direction, independent of her will. She could never have directed it so well.

Even now, as she brought her in and heard herself saying easy, friendly, commonplace things, she had no sense of willing herself to say them consciously. They said themselves. She heard nothing that Mrs. Downey said, yet she answered her. Later, while she was pouring Mrs. Downey's tea, she remembered a time, over a year ago, when she had heard Mrs.

Downey say, "Two, and no cream." She put in the two lumps, and was startled to hear her guest exclaim, "My dear, what a memory!" ... She did not know whether Mrs. Downey told her one or many things that afternoon. Only certain words, parts of sentences, gestures, imprinted themselves upon her mind, never to be erased. She seemed divided into two separate selves, neither of them complete--one, the intenser of the two, was at Homebury St. Mary, looking down upon Ayling's still, dead face; and that self was filled with pity, with remorse, with a tenderness that hurt. The other self was here, in a gown of blue crepe, drinking tea, and possessed of a voice which she could hear vaguely making the conversation one makes when nothing has happened, when one has been lonely and a little bored....

All at once something was going on in the room, a clangor that seemed to waken Bessie Lonsdale out of the unreality of a dream. It summoned her will to come back to its control.

Mrs. Downey was smiling and saying in an ordinary tone, "Your telephone."

Bessie Lonsdale rose and crossed the room, took the receiver from its stand, said, "Yes," and waited.

A man's voice came over the wire. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Lonsdale, please."

"I am Mrs. Lonsdale," she said in a smooth, low voice. Her voice was perfectly smooth because her will had deserted her again. Only her brain worked, clearly, independently.

"Ah, Mrs. Lonsdale; this is Mr. Burke speaking, Mr. Franklin Burke, of the Cosmos Club. I am making an effort to get into touch with friends of Mr. Richard Ayling, and I am told by a man named Chedsey, who I believe was at one time in your employ, that Mr. Ayling is an old friend of your family."

"Yes," she said, "we are old friends."

"You knew, then, I presume, that Mr. Ayling had gone away--to the country some days ago."

"Yes," she said, again, "I knew that he had not been well and that he had gone out of town for a week.... Is there--anything?" Her heart was beating very loudly in her ears.

"I dislike to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Lonsdale, but I must tell you that we have received a telephone message here at the club that--I hope it will not shock you too much--that Mr. Ayling died sometime to-day, at an inn where he was staying, at Homebury St. Mary, I believe."

His voice was very gentle and concerned. She hesitated perceptibly, and his voice came over the wire, "I'm sorry--very sorry, to tell you in this way--"

She heard herself speaking: "Naturally, I--it's something of a shock...."

"Indeed I understand."

Again she caught the sound of her own voice, as if it belonged to some one else, "I suppose it was his heart."

"He was known to have a bad heart?"

"Yes; it has been weak for years."

"I wonder, Mrs. Lonsdale, if I may ask a favor of you. You know, of course, that Mr. Ayling had very few close friends in London; you are, in fact, the only one we have been able, on this short notice, to find.

For that reason I am going to ask that you let me come to see you this afternoon; you will understand that there are certain formalities, facts which it will be necessary for us to have, which only an old friend of Mr. Ayling could give--that we could get in no other way...."

"I understand, perfectly."

"Then I may come?"

"Certainly." ... There was nothing else she could say.

She did not know how she got rid of her guest, what explanation she made, nor how she happened to be saying good-by to her at the very moment when the dignified, elderly Mr. Burke arrived, so that they had to be introduced. Though she must have made some adequate explanation, since Mrs. Downey's last words were, in the presence of Mr. Burke, "It's always so hard, I think, to lose one's really _old_ friends."

Mr. Burke came in. He was very correct, very kind. He begged Mrs.

Lonsdale to believe that it was with the greatest regret that he called upon so sad an errand; that he came only because it was necessary and she was the only person to whom they could turn. He added that he had known her husband, Major Lonsdale, in his lifetime, and hoped that she would consider him, therefore, not so entirely a stranger to her.

She heard him as one hears music far away, only the accents and the climaxes coming clear. He asked her questions, and she was conscious of answering them: How long had she known Mr. Ayling?--He and her husband had been boyhood friends; she had met him first at the time of her marriage to Major Lonsdale. Had they kept up the friendship during all these years?--No, she had heard nothing of Mr. Ayling since her husband's death; she knew that he was in India; they had renewed the friendship when he returned to England a short time ago.--Ah, it was probable, then, that she knew very little about any attachments Mr.

Ayling might have had?--Here Mr. Burke shifted his position, coughed slightly, and said:

"I ask you these questions, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of a very--may I say--a very unfortunate element in connection with the case. It appears that there was a woman with Mr. Ayling at the Homebury St. Mary inn."

Bessie Lonsdale waited, she did not know for what. Whole minutes seemed to go by with the elderly Mr. Burke sitting there in his att.i.tude of formal sympathy before his voice began again.