"No, no," she said, "please don't exile yourself either to-day or to-morrow. It isn't after all the moment, and I want to prove to you that I'm not jealous. I've decided to wait until that lovely woman has gone away."
The waste of his territory, its largesse to no purpose, its vastness through which only unbearable silences echoed; accumulated revenues and hereditary title, only added to the Duke's melancholy.
He had planned the Christmas house party too late as it proved, and refusals, one after another, came in during the week. The poor gentleman's mood led him to resent each fresh defection on the part of his guests as personal wounds inflicted by old friends at a time when charity would have been sweet. And it was with really tragic melancholy that he threw the last letter down exclaiming:
"And they all with one consent began to make excuse."
He quite waited for a line from Mrs. Falconer, which would tell him that she, too, had decided to abandon him: and the thought of what he believed to be Jimmy's complications at The Dials caused him half to regard the matter with a pity for her.
"If Jimmy isn't married, he's the most whited of sepulchres!"
The satin shine of holly, the glimmer of pearly mistletoe, the odor of spruce and pine, and heavier scent of hemlock bewitched the castle throughout with their fragrance. Setting and decoration suggested a feast, and the Duke as he passed through the upper halls, and by the doors of his children's rooms, saw holly wreaths on the walls and that the little gates were twisted with green.
The day was dampish and the Duke, unable to bear the silence of the house, with his gun and his dogs and with a lack of resource and superfluity of ennui to urge him from the castle, started to tramp off his unrest. The afternoon was young, and the bare, naked sunlight fell over the bare nakedness of the land. The little low clumps of neutral-colored underbrush, the reddish-brown thickets between wood and field, would hide the birds well, and with his gun across his back, his hands in his pockets, his Grace covered many miles before he at length stopped to take in the length of the land or to listen for wings.
Coveys had flown up and away unseen by him, and their whirring unheard. His dogs had run off, and without being abruptly brought to heel, skulked back by themselves shamefaced and bewildered by the hunter's indifference. The holly reddened on the hedges, the scarlet berries bright among the glowing leaves; high in the poplars the parasite mistletoe with crystal balls, hung tiny white globules like fairy grapes; holiday in the air, and over the grey winter landscape the finest possible powder of snow lay pale under the furtive sun. As the forest edges closed about him and the Duke with still no idea of where he was going, continued to tramp, he unconsciously entered the property Bulstrode had lately acquired, and which he had begged his friend to avoid.
There was something in the country air, in its pungent sweetness, and in the season, that penetrated even Westboro's melancholy, and every now and then he lifted his head to breathe in deeply the fragrance of hemlock and the cold earthy aroma, the spice of bracken and the balm of a fragrant thicket that smelled like a rose. It was winter, however, and although a snow bird piped in it and the sun was out, there was a December quality that, in the mood he was in, overcame all the festivities of the time. He heard the bird who was persistent and sharp-voiced, and, for the first time thinking of the other game he had come out for, he paused. His dogs were gone, the beggars! He called them to no purpose, whistled and waited. They were a new brace and young. God knew where they had cut away to.