THE LOST ROOM
THEY were going to part at last—to separate quietly, but formally—after a married life of nearly three years.
There was no Other Woman, even she was quite sure of that; there wasn’t even the shadow of another man. He rather wished there were, with a good solid six-foot personality to project it. He was so confoundedly tired of conjugal life.
He had an old historic title, a large estate unencumbered by the prodigalities of ancestors, unhampered by his own. She had inherited from an American mother a large fortune and some of the biggest jewels Tiffany had ever set. Their tastes were similar, their constitutions robust, their tempers strong and healthy, their temperaments ardent and enthusiastic, their moral and mental temperatures since the last decisive meeting between the trustees of her property and his family lawyers had been slowly descending to normal. Never, oh, never would either of them put their heads again, they were determined, into the noose of marriage! even if adecree nisishould ever make it possible. Because naturally, as time went on, she would meet somebody she liked, he thought.... Because men were so constituted, reflected she, that if a woman only told one of them often enough that he was in love with her, he would begin to believe it.
They had used up all their capability for passion, devotion, and so on, during their romantic wooing, theirshort but divine engagement, and the incandescent eight weeks’ honeymoon that had followed the wedding. They wanted to forget the world then, and be alone together; and they got what they wanted, one April, one May, in that great old granite-built pepper-box turreted Scotch mansion on the banks of the silver Tweed.
It was heavenly, or at the very least Paradisaical. They wanted it to be quite an old-fashioned honeymoon, so they did not go down by motor, but by the Euston express. Ten hours of traveling, and then they got out at a little gray station of a little Scots town with a dreadful tweed-factory in it whose dye and grease terribly defiled the silvery river reaches, and does so to this day—and drove through lovely woods of larch and birch and hawthorn, just breaking into green leaf, to Maryhouse, the cradle of the race from which she sprang, the unhappy lovely Queen—whose great wrought gates of rusted iron, with the Stuart shield of arms in faded gold and crimson and blue, would never be unlocked again until a Stuart should reign once more upon the throne of England.
The great avenue had been turned into park, and you reached the house by the lesser way. It had a square courtyard, closed by another pair of great wrought gates, and bears with ragged staves were on the pillars, and even held up the antique scraper at the low-browed door, and the knocker was the tiniest bear of all. There were no rooms to some of the four hundred casements that winked out of the lichened walls. You pulled the bear-handle of the house-bell, and it clanged up high out of sight somewhere among the twisted chimneys and the great slants of stone-tiled roof studded with pinky house-leek and gay with yellow moss.
Then the low, square, iron-studded door had opened,and two people had gone in, to commence, among the tragic relics of vanished, forgotten existences, their own new life together. Perhaps some sorrowful shadow of failure and disillusion had fallen upon them from those old gray walls. A week before they went there a piece of paneling had fallen from the wall in the great hall, revealing in a niche behind it a skull, and what else Time had left of the man who had suffered such a tragic ending.
As I have said, the Deed of Separation had been formally signed by both parties, their trustees and lawyers. She was beautifully free. She sang a little song as her motor-victoria ran her homeward to the house which he had no right to enter now, and she ordered the touring limousine to be at the door very early in the morning before she ran upstairs.
She was as gay as possible. She told her maid, as she hummed the “Dream Waltz,� to have a cabin trunk and a bag packed. Only these, because she would be back in a week. She was only going to visit some old great, quiet people in an old great, quiet house up North, who had been very fond of society in their time, but now never even dressed for dinner. She meant the fair murdered Scots’ Queen and the Kings who had dwelt at Maryhouse, of course.
“Fancy that, my lady!� said the maid, thanking her own stars that she was not to accompany her mistress. Many silken calves and much company above and below stairs constituted the waiting-woman’s ideal of Life.
Well, the itinerary of the Great North road—that would take too long. Behind the glass screen she sat, swathed in her sables, while the taciturn, clean-shaven chauffeur made England spin by. She chose her own road, the collieries were left behind in their smoke, theruins of St. Oswald’s Chapel of Ease were passed, standing gray and battered on their battle-site. Serving-shields, where under the enchanted hall sleep Arthur and his Knights, she saw before she lost the vision. She slept at Carlisle, and went on next morning to Peebles, where Needpath elevates its single fang above the salmon pool.
And so to Maryhouse, not even a telegram having been sent ahead of her. She knew her dear friends, the owners of the place, were still abroad. But there was always Mistress Dumphie, the old, old lady-housekeeper, who had been born and reared and wooed and married, too, at Maryhouse. Mistress Dumphie would take her in for a night, and if not—there was an inn in the ugly little weaving village. The great limousine rolled through the gates of the smaller avenue and over the bridge of the Arbalestiers Tower, and stopped before the great, rusty crowned gates of the sunny courtyard.
The larks were singing. The Quhair brook ran under the hazel-banks. Oh! what sweet quiet after the roar of Paris and London and the dust of the roads.
The rusty chain was pulled, the great bell clanged on the side of a pepper-box turret ever so high overhead. Mistress Dumphie, in her morn’s merino and black net cap, appeared behind the rusty grille.
“Guid preserve ’s a’! It’s the young lord’s leddy!� she said.
The “young lord’s leddy� came in. She was to stay. The chauffeur went back to the hotel.
“I feel as though I should find something here,� said the “young lord’s leddy,� “something that I have lost somehow. It is very odd!�
She wandered about the beautiful old house all the rest of the day.
“Here is the great oak window-seat where we used to sit together. Here is the little stone parlor where we quarreled and made it up. Here is the vast tapestried chamber, with the faded Stuart portraits on the walls, that was my bedroom; and this smaller room, with the acorn-shaped stone mullions and the ebony and tulip wood furniture, washis!�
What fine days they had spent in those daisied avenues, under those huge oaks. What wet ones under the old painted, diapered ceilings. The wettest of all they had spent in looking for the Lost Room.
The Lost Room was a chamber that everybody knew of, but nobody ever discovered. Counting from outside, you could be sure there was an extra window, but go where you would about the hushed mysterious house, you never opened a door that led into the Lost Room.
She supped in a little dining-parlor that those dead Queens had used before her. She went to bed in the tapestried room. She slept well and woke in the middle of the night with a great bell clanging in her ears. She could not sleep after that. Lights flickered before her shut eyes in the darkness.
“Ididhear a step on the staircase! Ididhear the shutting of a door!� she said to herself, and got out of the great bed on the daïs and put warm slippers on her white little naked feet, and threw on a dressing gown lined with unborn Persian lambskin—such a cruel idea, you know, but very fashionable. And she took her electric torch, and unlocked the door noiselessly, and stepped out boldly into the wide, dusky corridor.
She trod upon something soft, and repressed a scream. She held the light downward and picked up a man’s dogskin glove.
“Ah, now I know that I am dreaming!� she said quitecheerfully. She need not be afraid of mice or rats, because she knew that she was all the time lying in bed in the big tapestried room. As for ghosts, she wanted to see one frightfully—always had.
The door of the room that had been his was just opposite. Something made her go in, on her noiseless dream-feet, carrying the dream-glove in her hand. The dream went on quite as dreams usually do. She had gone back to the sweet old half-forgotten honeymoon time.
“This is the night on which we had tiffed, and I was the first to make it up!� She smiled and went in. It was just as she had expected. There he lay, fast asleep in the big tapestry-hung bed.
She went up to the side of it, and pulled back the curtain without waking him, and sat down, shading the light from the dear, handsome, manly face, and devouring it with famished eyes. This was what she had come seeking; some glamour of the old time; some sweet remembrance unspoiled by anything that had happened since.
The jars, the disagreements, the quarrels had never happened.... She was back in the old times, and he was not yet regretting his lost freedom, but tightening the bond a little closer every day by words and deeds of love.
This was the Lost Room, this dream-chamber where he lay. She was glad to have come down to Maryhouse for this. Who would not take a journey to find your old self and your old self’s self at the end of it, and Love lying sleeping in the shadow of dear memories, ready to be wakened with a kiss?
She stooped and gave the kiss. He started and awakened. He stared at her, and the light of the old joy leaped into his eyes.
“Alice! You’re only a dream, I know, but it is better than the real Alice, who grew to hate me. Oh! put your arms round me again! let me have your heart on mine again; let both of us forget what a ruin we have made of the life that we set out to make so sweet and fair!�
He caught her hands. The torch fell with a crash, and went out. The dark was full of light, and warm, throbbing memories, and they were one again. Just for a little while, only in a dream....
But day came through the diamond casements, laughing, and hand in hand with Hope. There were tears and laughter in her train. Two real people. No dream after all.
He had wanted to look at Maryhouse again, and had traveled down in the express from Euston, hours after she had started. It was he who had rung the bell in the night.
Mistress Dumphie had let him in and given him supper, and lighted the old room for him. He had thought there was a curious twinkle in her eye.
The Deed of Separation, now waste-paper, may be had on application, by any young, wealthy couple who are desirous, upon a sensible arrangement, to part.