# The Windsor Magazine/A Breaker of Hearts

Extracted from The Windsor Magazine, Vol 66 1927, pp. 297–309. Accompanying illustrations may be omitted. [#Duchess Laura]
A BREAKER OF HEARTS
By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES
ILLUSTRATED BY HENRY COLLER
"IT'S so nice—no, not nice, delicious!—to have you here again, Ella. James and I were saying so just now to one another——"
The Duke, the Duchess, and Ella Carleton, a friend of long ago, were sitting on the terrace after luncheon. Miss Carleton had arrived at the Castle two days before, but the Duke had only that morning come home, so he had hardly seen her.
"Your being with us again seems to roll back the years," the Duchess went on in a feeling voice. Then, more lightly, she added, "And makes me feel quite ridiculously young again!"
Ella Carleton smiled; but it was such a sad, wistful smile that the Duke told himself that his dear Laura had not been very happily inspired as to that last remark of hers. The Duchess still looked young, in a sense surprisingly young, considering that, unlike the majority of her contemporaries, she made no effort to improve nature with the aid of rouge and lipstick. But the other woman looked like the wraith of the lovely girl who had been the Duchess's closest friend before her marriage.
In those far-off days Ella Carleton's abundant hair had been of that rare and exquisite tint which the French call blond cendré, and she had possessed the delicate rose-leaf complexion which sometimes, not always, goes with that sunny-tinted hair. True, her face still retained its perfect oval, and her blue eyes, if dimmed and tired-looking, were still beautiful. But she now had that indefinable, and in a woman, piteous, look, which can only be described as faded.
The Duke was not a very perceptive man, and he was not given to taking much notice of either people or things that did not concern him nearly. But now there did well up in his heart a feeling of sincere pity for one whose life, at the time he had first known her, had seemed likely to be happier than that falling to the lot of most mortals. She had been the cherished only daughter of a couple who, though not rich, had been in the position to give her many social advantages at that time still denied to the merely wealthy.
As he looked reflectively at his guest, Ella Carleton's host began to recall certain facts concerning her early life. He even remembered, vaguely, that the listless, delicate-looking woman now sitting by his wife's side could more than once have made a brilliant marriage. But her father had died when she was three-and-twenty, and her mother had had a long, lingering, most painful, illness, during the course of which Mrs. Carleton had, all unconsciously, acted with terrible selfishness, scarcely bearing her daughter out of her sight.
After the death of her mother, Ella, then being about thirty, had begun a wandering life, never going far from the beaten track, for such was not her nature, but spending more and more time away from England, till at last she had settled down for life, or so it seemed, in Italy. The outbreak of war had driven her home, and hard war-work had taken away the remnant of youth left to her. Then had come what had seemed a call to keep home for her childless widower brother in South America. But after two years he had died, leaving her lonely indeed.
Now she was back in England for good, throwing herself, with what energy was left to her, into the Girl Guide movement. This was somewhat curious, for Miss Carleton was gentle, abstracted in manner, and very fragile in appearance.
The Duke broke the long—he felt it the almost painful—silence, by saying suddenly, "Whom do you think I knocked up against yesterday afternoon, Laura?" And as, smiling, she shook her head, he went on, "Beau Saberer!"
A little to his surprise, the colour flew into his wife's face. "I thought he'd given up going anywhere," she observed. "Where did you meet him?"
"I was walking across the Green Park, and there was the poor chap sitting on a bench while some evening paper was being read aloud to him by a man-servant whom I remembered as his batman in the war. I spoke to him, of course, and I could see he was really glad to see me, so I sat down, and we had quite a long pow-wow. From what he let out I could see that he leads a queerly solitary life. But he kept his end up. He was always a plucky chap. All the same, there was a kind of——"
He hesitated, and the Duchess supplied the words—"aftermath of bitterness? Oh, James, how well I can understand that."
"So can I. When one thinks of what he was like when we were all young together—— How I used to envy him!"
"He was a good bit older than you," observed the Duchess.
"When one's twenty-three, one longs to be twenty-nine," said the Duke sententiously. "And Beau doesn't look old, even now."
"Has Sir John Saberer been ill?" Miss Carleton asked the question in a quiet, toneless voice.
The Duke turned to her quickly. "Not that I know of. In fact, save that his hair's gone white, he's as good-looking as ever, and very much 'the beau' too—in fact, he dresses a thought too smartly for to-day! But of course he can't see what other men look like, poor chap."
"Has he gone blind?" The question was uttered in a tone of shocked dismay, and it was the Duchess who answered her friend.
"Surely you know what happened to Beau Saberer in the war, Ella?" And as the other shook her head: "He did really splendidly, and though I believe he was recklessly, foolishly, brave, he escaped without a scratch during the three years he was out in France, till two days before the Armistice. By that time he was a General, and on that 9th of November, 1918, he and his staff were caught, ever so far behind the line, while sitting at mess, by a bomb dropped from an aeroplane! His best friend—you remember Jack Robey?—was killed by his side, and Beau himself was blinded, though, oddly enough, his looks, or so they say, weren't a bit affected."
The colour rushed into Ella Carleton's face, and for a moment, so the Duke told himself, she looked quite young.
"What a horrible, horrible thing!" she murmured.
And then she lifted her right hand to her face, and put it over her eyes, as if to shut out a terrible sight. With a sudden movement, she got up: "I think I ought to go upstairs and write some letters before tea, Laura. After I've had my lovely rest here, with you, I hope to be well enough to go with some of my guides to a country camp in September."
For a few moments the two left alone together remained silent, then the Duke exclaimed: "To tell you the truth, Laura, I half invited that poor chap to come down here, for this next week-end. I told him we should be practically alone, and I could see he was overjoyed at the idea. I'm ashamed I never thought of asking him to stay with us before, but he's so dropped out——"
She did not answer at once, so, "Have you any reason for not wanting Beau Saberer to come here?" he asked, surprised.
Again she waited, but this time only a fraction of a second. "Of course not! I shall be very glad to see poor Beau again. I'd better send him a wire."
She got up, and he got up too. As they stood side by side, he put his arm round her shoulder, "Darling?"
"Yes, love?"
"I wonder if you know how jealous I once was of that poor chap?"
She laughed. "Who was the lady?"
He pinched her ear. "Who d'you think, eh?"
"Not me, James?"
"Come! Don't pretend! What a long, long time ago it all seems, eh, Laura?"
"It does indeed," she said sincerely.
"D'you remember a late July evening when you and I and Beau drove down to Ranelagh? Beau had his private hansom, and I'd chartered one to take us down. I can't remember who was the other girl——?"
"It was Ella Carleton," interjected the Duchess quietly.
"By Jove—so it was! I'd quite forgotten that. All I remember is that Beau Saberer, when we started to go home, by some sleight of hand—you know how clever he was at that sort of thing?—got you, while I was left, very much left, with the other girl!"
"I remember that night too, and how surprised and disappointed I was——"
"Surprised, but not disappointed. No, darling, you were not disappointed! Be honest."
"I am honest," she protested. "I really was disappointed."
Under her breath she whispered, "And so was Ella." But the Duke did not hear those four little words.
"I was in a rage!" he laughed aloud. "I'm afraid Ella must have thought me a regular bear. And what 'put the lid on,' as your son Algy would say, was that though the two cabs were supposed to keep together, Beau's hansom soon vanished in the dusty distance."
"Of course it did!"
And now she, too, broke into a peal of laughter. "I remember that evening as if it was yesterday, James. Beau had a taking way with him, hadn't he?"
"I should think he had! There were a good many young chaps who'd have given years of their life to change places with Beau Saberer."
"I suppose every man secretly longs to be a breaker of hearts 1 D'you remember old Pam's answer, when someone asked him why he made love to every woman he met?"
"What did he say?"
"That he liked to give every woman a chance!"
"Confess that Beau did make love to you, Laura? I've never asked you that before——"
She smiled a little wryly. "Of course he did. And perhaps it was lucky for me that I'd taken a liking to you, dearest, before Beau turned his—ahem!—serious attention to me."
"Did it go as far as that?"
"It did." She said the two little words in a grave tone; and in the same tone she went on: "He was fearfully extravagant, always on the edge of a smash, and I swam into his ken when he had about come to the end of his tether. I was such a goldfish you see, James. No wonder poor Beau was tempted. You were the only one of my 'followers' who never seemed to remember that I was a great heiress."
He tightened his grip of her. "What nonsense!"
"No, not nonsense. Horrid, plain, unvarnished truth. Beau didn't really like me—not one little bit. He cared for someone very different from me, a girl who was not only lovely, but good, unselfish—an angel, in fact."
"Did I know her? "
"Let me see?" The Duchess waited a moment. "I think you did. But it wouldn't be fair now to tell you who she was——"
"What happened?"
"Nothing happened. Beau only broke her heart."
She had slipped away from his encircling arm, and there was a troubled, condemning look on her face.
"Whatever Beau Saberer's sins of commission——"
"And omission——"
"—he has been well punished," the Duke ended his sentence.
"But what an innings he had first!" she exclaimed.
"He said two things yesterday afternoon that would have touched even your hard heart."
"What were they?"
"One, that he was now in a land that knew not Joseph——"
"And the other?"
"That he had never realised till now the truth of the saying, 'A bachelor lives like a king, and dies like a dog.'"
"I don't see why he shouldn't marry, even now," said the Duchess thoughtfully.
He smiled quizzically. "You're an incorrigible matchmaker, Laura."
More seriously, he added: "I can't imagine a more melancholy fate for any girl, however plain and stupid she may be, than to marry a man of nearly sixty who is not only blind, but who has outlived everything that he thinks makes life worth living, and who feels like Rip Yan Winkle."
"I don't want him to marry a girl," observed the Duchess a little crossly, "still less anyone plain and stupid, James."
"I don't say you might find him a widow, especially among his old loves, who'd be willing to take him. You might have a try when you go up to town in November. Meanwhile, will you send him a wire?"
"Of course I will—and write him a line too. But first I must go and see Parsleet, for the dear old thing's not well. It's the first time I've ever known her take to her bed."
"What fun, to say nothing of the high life, they must be having below stairs!" exclaimed the Duke.
II.
The Duchess had sent a herald, in the person of the head housemaid, to inform Mrs. Parsleet who was coming to see her. So the old lady had had plenty of time to make herself, as she had expressed it, "fit to be seen by her Grace." This had taken the form of swathing her thin, pale face, in a seventy-year-old cream-tinted net veil, and placing round her shrunken shoulders a Chuddah shawl, which she had been wont to wrap about her dear nursling a matter of forty odd years ago.
There came a gentle knock on the door; it opened, and the Duchess walked in. "I'm so sorry you're not well, dear Parsy. I've brought you a few roses."
Mrs. Parsleet had always been a strong woman, and during her many years at the Castle she had never taken to her bed till two days ago, so the Duchess had never been in this room before, and she looked round her with some curiosity.
What an austere, plainly furnished room, and how entirely lacking in any of the prettinesses of life! Not one of the women servants who were "under her," in that great house, had liked the housekeeper sufficiently well to bring her up a bunch of flowers, and that though the gardens round the Castle were now a riot of splendid bloom and colour.
Above the mantelpiece, painted to look like yellow veined marble, on which there stood a travelling clock—a singularly incongruous gift presented by the Duke to Mrs. Parsleet soon after his marriage to her "young lady," hung a dozen or more framed photographs of the Duchess, from those taken in infancy onwards.
The two high, narrow windows of the bedroom looked to the north, and that, to be sure, was quite a pleasant feature just now, as it was very hot weather. But quickly the old housekeeper's mistress told herself that by next winter "Parsy" should be moved to a warm, sunny room, on the other side of the Castle.
As the Duchess's glance travelled back to the painted iron and brass bed, she saw that on a small square mahogany-topped table, within reach of the invalid's hand, there lay three books—Taylor's Holy Living and Dying, The Pilgrim's Progress, and a Bible.
The sight of these three volumes brought a rush of childish memories to Mrs. Parsleet's visitor. They had always been kept by "Parsy's" bed in the night-nursery, and out of that weather-beaten-looking Bible "Parsy's" little charge, from the age of six onwards, had read each day "her chapter."
The Duchess told herself, with a sudden tightening of the throat, how very much this old woman, albeit unknowingly, had influenced her life for good. Jane Parsleet had not been what is called a pleasant person, but she always had a very strong sense of duty, and she had never allowed her passionate love of the child to whom she really stood in the place of mother, as well as of nurse, to interfere with what she believed it to be right to say or do.
That child, now a mother herself, realised what the cost of such speech and action must have been, now and again, to the still indomitable old woman who was lying there before her, looking, oh! so pale and weak.
The Duchess pulled the one upright, uncomfortable, armchair the room contained a little closer to the bed. It had been placed, by Mrs. Parsleet's orders, at what she considered a proper distance from herself.
"Please don't come so near, your Grace. I've got what's called a summer cold. 'Twould put me about ever so, if you was to catch it!"
"I shan't catch your cold," said the Duchess quietly. Besides, if you had smallpox, Parsy, I should come and look after you—of course I should! I should be an ungrateful wretch if I didn't——"
"Your Grace 'ud be a very foolish lady if you did such a thing as that!"
But Mrs. Parsleet's face lighted up, as she uttered the reproof. Then she said suddenly: "I hopes as I'll be up and about afore Miss Carleton leaves the Castle. I'd like to see her again, that I would, if she wouldn't mind, that is. She was such a gentle, meek, sweet young lady——"
"Not a bit like me, eh, Parsy?"
Mrs. Parsleet chuckled feebly: "I used to think when you two was together that a bit of her meekness, and a bit of your spirit mixed up together, wouldn't 'a' done either your Grace or Miss Ella any harm."
Then the Duchess said something that some people would have thought irrelevant, but Mrs. Parsleet, old as she was, made no such mistake.
"D'you remember Captain Saberer, Parsy?"
The old woman straightened herself. There came a light—was it of battle?—in her dim eyes. "I'm not likely ever to forget him. The Captain gave me trouble enough—that he did! Never could I see what the ladies saw in him, a regular popinjay, that's what he was, and I weren't the only one to say so."
"You thought I liked him, Parsy; but you were quite wrong, and I do hope you'll believe me, when I tell you so now?"
Mrs. Parsleet looked deprecatingly at the Duchess.
"I was afraid you might get to like him, dearie. Many a young lady begins by not liking a young gentleman, and concludes by liking him too much"—and she dolefully shook her old head. "The Captain followed you close, that he did, and I was sore afraid that it was her fine fortune, and not my precious lamb herself, that he was after."
The Duchess smiled just a little ruefully. "You were right there, Parsy. And now that we're both getting on," she rose and, coming close up to the side of the bed, she looked down into the now upturned face of her old nurse, "I'll tell you something I've never told anyone in the world!"
"And what may that be?"
"I once made Beau Saberer confess—well, to put it plainly, I forced him to admit that he only wanted to marry me because of my money."
"You never did!"
"I did, indeed—and he took it very well. But he didn't deny it."
"Then he did ask your Grace to marry him?" exclaimed Mrs. Parsleet excitedly. "I often wondered if he'd dared to do that——"
The Duchess shook her head. "I stopped him just in time! I said I was afraid he was thinking of marrying for money, and that, as we were friends, I hated thinking that of him. Men are more honest than women, Parsy, for, as I told you just now, he didn't deny it, and—and he never did ask me to marry him."
"The young lady he ought to 'a' married," said Mrs. Parsleet slowly, "was sweet Miss Ella. He did love her, though he was hartful in not showing it when there was any other body by. He was a crafty one—the Captain was. But there! Some do say that out of evil now and again good do come, and I mind that his Grace was very much upset by Captain Saberer's attentions with regard to your Grace—I mean, of course, afore your Grace was your Grace. Peeping over the banisters of our house one afternoon, I once saw them scowling at one another something awful, just as his Grace was going out, and Captain Bo, as he was then called, I never could make out just why, was coming in to tea, conquering-like. I was pleased to see the look his Grace cast on the Captain—that I was."
Illustration: "The Duke said 'Well, Laura? What's your business?' 'My business, and yours too, James, is to keep out of their way while Beau and Ella make friends again.'"
The Duchess laughed aloud. "You cruel old thing! But you're right, Parsy. I'm afraid the Duke was jealous, at one time, of poor Beau Saberer."
Mrs. Parsleet shut her eyes for a moment. "Though it was all such a long, long time ago," she said reflectively: "I mind one evening when your Grace didn't come home till near one o'clock in the morning, and you was with the Captain, as well I knew. Oh dear, oh dear! I shudders now when I remembers that night. I thought there'd been a haccident, also I didn't know what your papa 'ud say if he came in afore you did."
"You mean a night," exclaimed the Duchess, "when the Duke and I, with Captain Saberer and Miss Carleton, dined at Ranelagh?"
"Ay, that's where you was! You'd said to me faithful, that you'd be back afore twelve o'clock. And when you was a young lady your Grace did keep your words—as a rule, that is."
"You were in a paddy that night, Parsy—even I can remember that!"
"And I wasn't made hany the happier when your Grace hexplained the reason of your being so shockin' late."
"What was the reason?" asked the Duchess, feeling just a little hypocritical, for, as a matter of fact, she could remember the reason quite well.
Illustration: "The one-time lovers had walked off together, she guiding him down the steep steps leading to the gardens below."
"The reason, dearie, was that you'd been driving round and round the Regent's Park, and in a hansom-cab too, with that very villain. You told me as how he'd shouted hup, through the nasty little trap-door in the roof, 'Drive round and round till the horse drops dead!'—a very unfeeling thing for a gentleman to order about a poor quadruped has had served him faithful."
"That was only his fun, Parsy. Of course, I knew that!"
"Fun, indeed? It's as true as I'm lying in this bed that when that hansom-cab did stop afore our house the poor horse was all of a lather——"
"That was my fault! When I found how late it was I made Beau rush me home."
"Ho dear! How well I remembers that night! There I was, in the hall, waitin', waitin', waitin'. And when you did come in at last the Captain says, says he, as bold as brass, 'I've brought your young lady safe back. You could trust her with me anywhere, Mrs. Parsleet.' And after my fine gentleman had driven off, you laughed and laughed, hysterical-like, and I thought to myself, 'What is going to happen? Is my precious lamb going to take that rip?'"
"Beau Saberer wasn't a rip," said the Duchess thoughtfully, "not a real rip. I think I'd have liked him better if he had been."
"I oughtn't to have been afraid, for well I know your Grace would never have parted him from the young lady as did love him."
The Duchess went and sat down again in the hard armchair.
"Then you, too, knew that she loved him, Parsy?"
"A body hadn't to be very sharp to know that," said the old woman quietly.
The Duchess sighed. "My heart aches to-day—thinking of those old days."
"And I could 'a' told Miss Ella that the Captain wasn't worth a haporth of love," went on Mrs. Parsleet ruthlessly. "If I'd been her old nurse I would 'a' told. her so. But there! It wasn't my place to do that."
"If you'd told her so a thousand times, she wouldn't have believed it," said the Duchess mournfully.
"I don't suppose she would, for she was set on him, and very bad indeed did he act by her, poor young lady."
"But we must think kindly of him now, Parsy?"
Mrs. Parsleet shook her head, "That I never will!"
"He's a sad, lonely, blind man, and I'm asking him to come here on Friday for a few days. I hope we shall persuade him to stay on till his Grace goes to Scotland."
And then the old woman startled her nursling. Fixing her dim eyes on the Duchess, she said suddenly: "Your Grace isn't thinking of making up a match between him and Miss Carleton? The time's passed by for that."
"I wonder if it is, Parsy? He was very, very fond of her, you know—the better side of him did really love her."
"That side didn't remain uppermost, your Grace. To my thinking, if Miss Carleton's any sperrit left she wouldn't look at him."
"It's difficult for a woman to show any spirit if she cares for a man."
"Then let's hope she don't care for him any more. 'Twould be very poor-sperrited of Miss Carleton to take him now—after all that's come and gone."
"I dare say you're right, Parsy. No doubt they've quite forgotten each other by now."
"Few is as faithful-hearted as your Grace," said the old woman fondly.
And then she added with a funny little smile: "And if I may be so bold as to say so, few is as romantical."
A few moments later the Duchess was walking down a corridor which ended in two delightful rooms, a bedroom and a sitting-room, which had been occupied in turn by her three elder, and now married, daughters. The little suite formed part of what in the Castle were called "the family rooms," and no visitor was ever put there. But when the Duchess had asked Ella Carleton to stay with her for all August, she had told herself that, as Ella was delicate, it would be nice for her to have a pleasant, cool sitting-room, opening out of her bedroom.
She was on her way to that sitting-room now, for she felt that she must tell her friend of Sir John Saberer's coming visit, before she had actually sent him the telegram containing her invitation. Mrs. Parsleet's outspoken comments had made her feel nervous, and it was with a feeling of relief that she stepped through into a room where the blinds had been drawn down, and the heavy shutters pulled to. Even so she saw dimly that Miss Carleton was lying down.
"Ella? I'm afraid I woke you up?"
"Indeed you didn't! I'm only resting—resting, and going back to the past—always an unprofitable occupation when a woman reaches my age."
There was a most unwonted tone of rebellious bitterness in the low, sweet voice.
Pushing her still abundant hair back, she went on: "Hearing that dreadful thing about Beau Saberer, Laura, gave me a horrible shock."
"I remember what a shock it gave me, Ella. Somehow one can't think of Beau as blind——"
Ella Carleton's face quivered. "It's brought back everything—everything I thought I had quite, quite forgotten 1 I schooled myself, years ago, never to think of him. I had to do that, for I needn't tell you, my darling friend, that I adored him——"
She paused a moment, and then again there came a touch of bitterness in her low voice. "What a fool I was! I threw away two chances of being a happy woman, and of leading a normal, happy life. In a way I suppose I did realise, even then, how unwise I was, for I did try, for nearly a year, to forget Beau. It was after his smash, during the time he was A.D.C. to some Colonial Governor. But he came back at the end of twelve months, and it all began again!"
"I didn't know that. You see I was married by then, and selfishly absorbed in myself," said the Duchess in a remorseful tone.
The other went on, as if she had not heard the interruption, "I can talk of it all, now, as if it had happened to someone else," but she was clasping and unclasping her hands with a nervous movement. "Perhaps you'll be surprised to hear, Laura, that he admitted, not once but many, many times, that he loved me—loved me, I mean, as he had never loved anyone else. But he also had to confess that he didn't care enough for me to lead a poor man's life. And yet—and yet he wouldn't let me go! He knew that Jack Robey, his own best friend, cared for me; but that only made him the more determined to—to keep my love."
And then Ella Carleton burst into a storm of weeping, and the Duchess, running forward, knelt down by the sofa and put her arms round the thin shoulders of her friend.
"Why didn't you marry Jack Robey, after Beau's second smash?" she asked pitifully.
"My mother's illness kept me a prisoner—and, well, the truth is I was smashed up too, in a way. Some women always remain young. You look as if you would never grow old, Laura. Your hair will go grey, and then it will become white, but you will still feel as if you were a young woman. Things have gone well with you—thank God they have! But they have gone ill with me, right through. You were clever, and got the man you loved; I was stupid, and failed."
The Duchess began, "He wasn't——"
But the other cut her short. "Don't say he wasn't worthy of me! That was what my mother was always saying. Of course I didn't know, then, all that I learnt afterwards. I didn't realise that he was—well, how shall I put it?"—she hesitated, then with an effort she brought out the words, "a professional lady-killer, a breaker of hearts."
"I don't think that's true; you're not fair, Ella."
The Duchess felt very much dismayed. She told herself quickly that she would have to tell the Duke that they couldn't ask Sir John Saberer to stay with them till later in the year.
"Beau did really love you," she murmured. "And women ran after him far more than he ran after them. I once challenged him to tell me the truth about you. It was during that evening—I wonder if you remember it as well as I do?—when we four, James and I, you and Beau, spent an evening at Ranelagh."
"I've cause to remember that night," said Ella Carleton sorely. "Though I knew Beau was fearfully in debt, it was the first time I realised that if he married at all he would only marry a girl with money."
The Duchess winced. "It was the first time I realised it too," she said slowly. "I told him so right out. Of course he couldn't deny it; and he admitted that you were the only girl he'd ever cared for, Ella."
"I've often wondered if he did ask you to marry him that night?"
"I'm afraid he meant to. I know that I told him right out that I liked James. And he wouldn't believe me! He thought I was set on becoming a Duchess," she smiled mirthlessly, "and we parted on really bad terms that evening. I almost hated him after that! But he wrote me such a nice letter when my engagement was given out, and then I forgave him!"
Ella Carleton drew herself gently from the other woman's arms. She dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief. "Forget all we've said, Laura. It's wrong of me to have spoken of poor Beau as I did just now. In a way I should be glad to see him again."
"D'you really mean that, Ella?" asked the Duchess in a singular tone.
The other hesitated. "I think I do really mean it. You see," she smiled wanly, "as he's blind now, he wouldn't see how very, very changed I am, from the girl he once loved."
"I asked you that question because James wants me to send him a wire asking him to come here on Friday for a long week-end. But of course I can put off doing so to the autumn. In fact, just now I'd made up my mind to do that."
"I shouldn't like you to put him off, now that it's so hot, and the country is so lovely," said Ella Carleton simply. "In a way I feel as if all that had happened to me in another life, and—and I really should like to see Beau again, Laura."
III.
At three o'clock on Friday afternoon the Duchess was sitting alone, reading a book, on the terrace. Sir John Saberer, who was coming by train, was not due for another three hours, and the Duke had taken off Miss Carleton after lunch to see a very remarkable calf, on which all his hopes were just now fixed.
Suddenly there fell on the still, warm, air, the sound of a door opening and, looking up, the Duchess saw coming towards her, walking with quick even strides down the long terrace, her old friend and one-time wooer. His head was thrown back, and there was about him nothing to mark one who is blind from his fellows, excepting that by his side stepped a respectable soldierly-looking servant, evidently his one-time batman.
"Beau? How glad I am to see you again!" she exclaimed, in a tone of real welcome, though a welcome she studiously made clear of any touch of pity in her kind, soft voice.
He stopped in his long stride with an almost painful suddenness. "You can go now, Bentley," and the man turned on his heel.
As the Duchess took her old friend's hand, "James will be here very soon now," she said.
"I must apologise for having come so long before my time, but to tell you the truth——"
He smiled, and at once she told herself that he was in very truth the same Beau Saberer; for it was a most delightful smile. A smile which now, as in the old days, went straight to any woman's heart—and that whether she were young or old, plain or lovely.
"—I've been so looking forward to coming to you to-day, Duchess, that I felt I couldn't spend the whole of this lovely day in town. So I just took the first train—it was a very slow train—and a stuffy old fly brought me up the hill to the Castle."
"You mustn't call me 'Duchess.'"
She put her soft hand on his arm. "I'm sure you used to call me 'Laura' in the old days—at any rate when no one was by."
"But I don't remember that you ever called me 'Beau,' till just now. It was always 'Captain Saberer.'"
"Ah well, girls were still very proper in our young days—more proper, and just a little more sly than they are now, eh?"
And then he said something which touched her. "All the same, those were the good days," he exclaimed. "I wouldn't exchange the girls of my youth for the girls of to-day, if half of what I'm told by my friends is true. Only yesterday I heard an old chap at the club imploring his nephew to remain single."
"You mustn't believe all that the old fogeys say," she said, smiling.
"You've not changed one bit, Laura!" and he laughed.
"I hope James told you that you would find no party here?"
"I'd much rather be alone with you!"
"But we've one visitor, who's a great friend of mine," went on the Duchess a little quickly. "I'm sure you remember Ella Carleton?"
"Ella Carleton?"
All the light left his handsome face, and there was also a good deal of surprise in his voice. "I thought she lived abroad entirely, now?"
"She's come back, and I hope she'll settle down in England for good."
There was—was it an awkward?—pause. Then, hesitatingly, he uttered the words, "Of course, I remember that you and she were very great friends as girls."
"Indeed we were, and we've never lost sight of one another. After all, there's no new friend, however delightful, like an old friend."
"That's true," he said slowly.
"And there was always something different about Ella," went on the Duchess a little breathlessly. "It wasn't that she was clever, exactly; but she was what a lovely girl so seldom is—marvellously kind, and so unselfish."
And then something happened which very much surprised the Duchess. The man whom she still thought of as Beau Saberer uttered in a low voice the lines:
"'A sweet attractive kinde of grace,
A full assurance given by lookes,
Continuall comfort in a face
The lineaments of gospel-books.'
I used to think that those lines described Ella Carleton exactly."
"I never knew that reciting poetry was among your many accomplishments, Beau."
With a somewhat embarrassed laugh he answered: "When I was a little chap my mother made me learn a lot of poetry—I mean really good verse. I often recite poetry to myself now. It helps the time to go by."
There was a long silence between them. Then she asked suddenly: "If you really felt like that about Ella, how had you the heart to behave to her as you did?"
He answered at once, in a hard voice: "I was stupidly vain, foolishly spoilt by the fools about me and, further, idiotically extravagant. Also her father couldn't stand me, and—you can't condemn me more than I condemn myself."
As she said nothing, he turned and faced her, his face working. "I've been well punished, Laura"—and she saw the pain in his sightless eyes. "I wonder if you remember a talk you and I had about twenty-six years ago? I've never forgotten it—if you have. You said I was behaving like a cad—and I was. When you told me just now that Ella Carleton was here, I felt like going back to town by the next train. But it all happened such a long time ago, and she was so young then, that I hope she's forgotten that I behaved like a beast——"
After a moment's pause he added, sorely, "Women don't suffer as men suffer. They're such self-deceivers."
"I'm surprised to hear you say that, Beau," said the Duchess mildly, and to herself she whispered, "I do believe he's still fond of her, after all," while aloud, in a tone she strove to make natural and unconcerned, she observed, "There are James and Ella—coming over the lawn. James will be pleased that you took an earlier train."
A few moments later, but each moment seemed like a long minute to the Duchess, Sir John Saberer and Miss Carleton were shaking hands as if they had parted only the day before. There followed a little desultory talk, though not the "do you remember this?" "do you remember that?" which would have been natural among four such old friends.
Even the Duke realised that bygones were to be bygones; but he did not connect that fact with his quiet, faded-looking guest, but rather with his own wife.
At last he exclaimed: "Look here, Beau? D'you feel like taking a stroll? Mind you, it's hot!—but we can go down a shady way."
The other sprang to his feet, "It's never too hot for me."
As soon as the two men were out of earshot, Ella Carleton turned to the friend of her girlhood. "I'm so glad that's over," and then she smiled, but it was a very sad smile.
"Seeing Beau like this has killed all the bitterness—the foolish, unkind, unreasonable bitterness—which I still felt, Laura."
"I don't think what you felt was either unkind or unreasonable," said the Duchess in a low voice.
"Oh yes, it was, Laura—utterly unreasonable!" She waited a moment. "The Duke said Beau wasn't altered at all. But I see such a change—the expression of his face is entirely different."
"I know what you mean, though if you hadn't said so, I shouldn't have realised it, Ella. There was something in the expression of poor Beau's face that I never liked in the old days. He was always secretly conscious, I think, of how good-looking he was, and how popular. Also what a fine fellow all round the younger men about him took him to be! That self-satisfied look, I admit, has quite gone now."
She did not like to add, "But some of his old, conquering charm has gone with it."
"He looks," said Ella pensively, "as if he's forgotten the way to smile."
"Oh, but there you're wrong!" The Duchess spoke with a good deal of energy. "Something I said before you and James came back made him shout with laughter."
"Then I'm afraid," said Miss Carleton quietly, "that my presence makes him feel uncomfortable."
And, as her friend made a quick gesture of denial—"It would be strange indeed if it didn't. So I hope you won't mind, Laura, if I'm up in my sitting-room a great deal during the short time Beau Saberer's going to be here. By the way, how long is he going to stay?"
"I think till Tuesday," said the Duchess hesitatingly.
She felt a good deal disturbed—things were not going at all as she had planned. Less than half an hour ago she had thought that everything was going to fall out with fairy-tale exactness and perfection.
"That's only three days," observed the other quietly. "I'll begin by having tea upstairs, if I may, and then I'll have a good rest till it's time to dress for dinner."
As she saw the Duchess about to utter a word of protest, she added quickly: "Honestly! I'd far rather see very little of Beau. We're not likely ever to meet again—I mean after this visit of his here. And of course you can make him believe what is true—that I came here for a rest. We shall see quite enough of one another as it is, for of course I don't want him to think I am avoiding him."
IV.
Though the Duchess, in a simple way, prided herself on her knowledge of men and women, men and women were always surprising her by the things they did and by the things they left undone.
About six o'clock, after the Duke, the Duchess, and Sir John Saberer had had, or so at any rate the Duchess said secretly to herself, quite enough of one another, Ella Carleton came down and joined them.
"I've had a wonderful rest," she said cheerfully.
There was a joyous, almost a youthful, lilt in her voice; and even her host, who seldom noticed what another woman was looking like when his wife was by, noted that his guest did look very much better than she had done, say, yesterday.
"That's owing to our good air. It's the best air in England," he said dogmatically.
"Though you're by way of being so modest, James, I always notice," said the Duchess teasingly, "that your good wine does require a good deal of bush!"
As she said the words she was telling herself, with a good deal of surprise, that Ella certainly did look—was it younger, or only very much less tired, than even a couple of hours ago? She even felt sorry that the fourth member of their party could not see how very charming his old love looked just now.
For one thing. Miss Carleton had put on a pretty grey chiffon frock, which the Duchess had not yet seen her wear; and, with that becoming frock, she wore a large shady hat of a type which, if not in the fashion, gives grace and charm to a face no longer young.
"It's much cooler now," went on Ella Carleton, still in that happy, almost light-hearted, new tone. "I think I'll go off and have a little walk. Will you come too, Laura?"
The Duchess hesitated, just for the fraction of a second, and while she was hesitating, Beau Saberer spoke, "May I come too, Ella?"
And then before her friend could answer, the Duchess exclaimed, "I've some tiresome local business to talk over with James! But after that's over I'll come and meet you."
After the one-time lovers had walked off together, she guiding him down the steep steps leading to the gardens below, the Duke said, "Well, Laura? What's your business?"
"My business, and yours too, James, is to keep out of their way while Beau and Ella make friends again."
"Friends again? Were they ever enemies?" he asked, staring at her.
"You forget," she said demurely, "that Beau, like old Pam, liked to give every woman a chance. I suppose he gave Ella a chance—just as he gave me a chance."
A light broke in on him. "D'you mean that Ella was the girl to whom, according to you, Beau behaved badly ages ago? If so, I can't understand your having allowed me to ask him down here, Laura," and he looked perturbed.
"Beau was a breaker of hearts!" she answered lightly. "I don't suppose that he chipped more than a little bit off Ella's heart. But look over there, darling? See how slowly they are walking. He's hard at it now, mending that break"—her voice faltered, and the tears welled up into her eyes.
"Then that's why she's looking this evening so much——"
"—younger and prettier?"
"I wasn't going to say that at all! Do let me finish what I was going to say."
"Say it!"
"She looks better. It's the effect of our good air."
The Duchess gazed at him scornfully. "Did you notice her pretty frock, James, and her really lovely hat?"
"You're not going to tell me that she put those on for a blind man?"
"Are you vain enough to think that she put them on for you?" she asked, dabbing her eyes.
He took hold of her arm, and forced her to look up into his face.
"Are you doing a wise thing, Laura? It's dangerous work, you know, bringing about a marriage between middle-aged people. The couple don't always thank you afterwards."
"Kindness," said the Duchess thoughtfully, "often brings its own punishment. But I don't think it will in this case! Besides, why shouldn't those two be friends without any thought of marriage?" she said hypocritically.
"Don't ever tell me afterwards that I approved of, or abetted you, in any way!" he exclaimed, but there was a twinkle in his eyes.
"Men are much greater cowards than women," cried the Duchess gaily, "especially when a good deed is in question."
"Don't go and raise false hopes."
"I don't know what you mean, James," and the Duchess grew very pink.
"I meant Beau," he cried, shrinking back with a pretence of being frightened.
"Liar!" she exclaimed. And then—"Of course I'm not so foolish as to expect anything to happen before ever so long. But I do think he's still fond of her."
"I doubt it," and the Duke shook his head. "But I quite admit that in time propinquity, as Grandmamma used to say, may work wonders."
At half-past seven the Duchess made her way to Miss Carleton's sitting-room. She felt consumed with affectionate curiosity, but, to her surprise, her friend was not there. On her way down to the sitting-room, where they generally sat when alone, or with a tiny party, she ran across the Duke. "Have you seen Beau? It's getting on for eight. They must have come in long ago!"
"I'm sure they're still out. I said I was to be told at once when he came in."
And then he began to laugh. "I'm beginning to believe that you're right. I mean that Beau is still very fond of Ella, and also up to his old tricks. Why, they've been out nearly two hours!"
The Duchess said crossly, "He's the same old Beau—selfish as ever. She'll be quite ill to-morrow—she's not up to even half an hour's walk!"
Said the Duke mildly, "It might occur to you, darling, that——"
"That what?" she asked eagerly.
"They may have been sitting down part of the time? Thanks to your humane forethought, I've had thirty new benches put up in the park since the war, and at this time of year they're often covered with lovers."
"Sitting or standing, two hours is a long time."
"Let's go onto the terrace, and look if we can see them," suggested the Duke. "They may have lost count of time."
"They have so much time to make up," said the Duchess softly.
"You're incurably romantic!" exclaimed the Duke.
Eight o'clock rang out from the clock tower, as husband and wife walked out on to the terrace.
"There they are!" cried the Duchess joyfully. "But how slowly they're walking."
Her quick eyes noted the fact that Beau Saberer had his arm through that of his companion.
"James was right. He's up to his old tricks," she thought vexedly, and hoped that the Duke did not see all she saw.
"We'll go and hurry them up, Laura. I do hate sitting down late to my dinner!" And he called out, "I wonder if you know that it's gone eight?"
But the two who were now walking slowly towards him did not seem to hear his voice. And even the Duke forgot how late it was when, as the four met, Sir John Saberer said gravely, "Laura? Ella has just done me the great honour of saying she will be my wife. As I think you know, I've loved her since the first moment I saw her, so—so there seems no reason for delay."
"Beau wonders if——" Ella Carleton looked pleadingly at her friend.
"——we could be married here, by special licence," went on Sir John Saberer eagerly. "Do you think James would mind?"
And then the blind man started, for it was the Duke's voice that answered, and in such, a kind, hearty tone: "Mind, my dear old chap? I shall be delighted!"
And then, none of them ever quite knew how it happened, the Duchess found herself embracing the future bridegroom, and the Duke the future bride.
But when they had sorted themselves out, the two ladies walked on together. "You must be so tired, darling Ella," observed the Duchess. "Would you rather not come down to dinner?"
But the Duke called out: "Nonsense! Of course she must come down and have her health drunk. I'll tell Fannit to open our last bottle of the Waterloo Brandy, both because a thimbleful of it will do Ella great good, and also——"
"And also what?" interrupted the Duchess.
"Well, Laura, I've not forgotten the old saying, 'Brandy for heroes,' eh?"
Copyright, 1927, by Paul Reynolds, in the United States of America.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1947, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 76 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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