"Please—-just a second—won't you, guard?"
The bell rang, and Bulstrode found himself helping the lady into his own compartment. The guard shut the door, which closed with the customary soft thick sound of a lock setting, and pasted over the window the exclusive and forbidding paper—RESERVED.
Then it was in his corner by the window, once chimney pots and suburbs left behind, that the traveller to Westboro' watched the landscape with the pale, transparent smoke from the little farms floating like veils across the golden atmosphere; the slow winding streams between low-bushed, rosy shores, and red-tinged thickets; the flocks of rooks across fields long harvested: the flocks of sheep on the gently swelling downs.
"England, England," he murmured, as if it were a refrain in whose melody he found much charm, as if his traditions of insular forebears might in some way be recalled in the word, as if it spoke more than a chance traveller's appreciation for the melodious countryside.
He had letters, read them, and put his correspondence aside, then comfortably settling himself in his corner, began to construct for himself a picture of Westboro', whose lines and architecture he knew from photographs, although he had never been there. It was agreeable to him as he mused to fancy himself for the first time with Mrs. Falconer in England, in the country they preferred to all the others in the Old World. They were in sympathy with English life and manners, and here, if (oh, of course, a world of "ifs")—here no doubt they would both choose to live when abroad, were there any choice for them of mutual life.
Westboro' is Elizabethan and of vast proportions. The house would naturally be very full—how much of the time would they discover for themselves? There would decidedly be occasions. Mary Falconer did not hunt, and although Jimmy Bulstrode could recall having postulated that "there are only two real occupations for a real man—to kill and to love," he also knew what precedence he himself gave, and how little the sportsmen of Westboro' would have cause to fear his concurrence if by lucky chance in more or less of solitude he should find his lady there.
It was months since he had seen Mrs. Falconer—months. It had been a long exile. Each time that he started out to run away, it was just that—running away—it was with a curious wonder whether or not on his return he should not find a change. Time and absence—above all, time, worked extraordinary infidelities in other people. Why should they two believe themselves immune? The long months might have altered her. The mischief was yet to be seen. But when in the list of noble names he had in his hand, his eyes fell upon the single prefix—Mrs.—and found it followed by The Name, if he had not sincerely known before, his pulse at sight of the written words told Jimmy that he had not, at all events, changed!
Thinking at this point to light a cigarette, he became at the second mindful of the other passenger in his carriage and that they were alone. As he looked across towards the lady who had unwound her dark veil, he observed that she was herself smoking, holding the cigarette in her hand as with head turned from him she scanned the landscape through the window of the compartment.
He saw with a little start of pleasure what a delight she gave to the eye, tastefully dressed as she too was, in leaf brown from head to foot, with the slightest indication of forest green at buttons and hem of her dress. Her hat, with its drooping feathers, fell rather low over her wonderful hair, bronze in its reflections. Indeed, the lady blended well with the November landscape, and as she apparently was not conscious of her companion, he enjoyed the harmonious note she made to the full.
"What scope," he mused, "what scope they all have—and how prettily they most of them know it! So just to sit and be a thing of beauty; with head half-drooping, and eyelash meditative, one hand ungloved, and such a perfectly lovely hand...! (It held the half-smoked cigarette, but his taste was not offended.) He thought her a whim too debonnaire for a Parisian of the best world, and of that she most distinctly was—Austrian more than likely. Every woman has her history—only when she is part of several has she a past. What had this woman so to meditate upon? She turned and he met her eyes.