Ostensibly, but little. Many things could have occurred, simple in themselves, to give Mercedes an excuse to summon him. That she would take advantage of an excuse to shorten their separation, he well knew. As he turned over and re-read the telegram, he chided himself for the chill sense of impending trouble which was unnerving him; but his efforts came to nothing. He started for London at once, in irrepressible perturbation of mind.
Arrived home, the commonplace aspect of the familiar old house somewhat relieved him of his mental oppression. The housekeeper had had notice of his return in a week or ten days, and charwomen were about; there was a clatter of pails and the homely sound of busy brooms and scrubbing-brushes.
He spent the hours till Mercedes should arrive in superintending the arrangement of the library, and pretending to dine. His study lamp smoked. Just as he and the housekeeper had succeeded in coaxing it to burn with its wonted urbanity, one quarter chimed from the nearest church clock-tower.
A quarter-past nine! In a quarter-of-an-hour she would be here—and the big, dingy room seemed to him full of the ill-savoured fumes of lamp oil. He dismissed the housekeeper, who knew he expected a patient, and threw open the windows.
It was a clear night. The stars shone, brilliant specks in the dark-blue. He leaned out of the window, listening for the roll of wheels—for that peal of the hall bell which he longed for, yet dreaded. He would always long for her presence with an intense longing: yet this longing would be tempered by the dread that he would betray himself in some unguarded moment, would betray the passionate character of his love.
He mentally forecast the interview. Leaning out in the sharpened autumnal air, he braced himself to endure: to keep himself at a completely respectful distance from the woman whose soul he believed to be the soul of his lost wife, and part of his own soul, but whose physical being belonged to the lazy voluptuary, the Prince Andriocchi.
“It is hard,” he told himself. “Oh, God! Thou alone knowest how hard!”
The wild apostrophe brought a calm, a sudden peace—as if indeed his guardian angel had laid its holy hand upon his heated head; and as he took courage from the sense of occult help in his sore need, the clock slowly, warningly—it seemed to him with some knowledge of what was to come—chimed the half-hour.
Would she come? What was it all about? Perhaps the next few minutes’ silence and suspense were the worst of his life. Often afterwards, looking back into his past with a shudder, he thought so.
Yet the ring of the bell, sudden, impetuous, when it did come, was horrible. The sound of her voice, the slow footsteps along the hall—he clenched his hands as he listened, and cold drops of sweat were on his brow.