As things had turned out, if he had married, that, she had understood, would have been such a closing of the door as would have shut him out for ever. And now that he was knocking at the door again, now that there was no reason why, once opened, it should not remain open, she began to be afraid of what might enter in with him. She made up her mind that she would not let him in. So she sat down and wrote a cold little note to say that she was afraid she would not be able to see him next week. Could he not explain the business in writing? She took that letter to the post herself. And as each step brought her nearer to the inevitable act, the conviction grew on her that this conduct of hers was cowardly, and unworthy both of him and of herself. A refusal to see him was a confession of fear, and fear assumed the existence of the very thing his letter had ignored. It was absurd too, if he had come to see that his feeling for her was (as she persisted in believing it to be) a piece of poetic folly, an illusion of the literary imagination. She turned back and tore up that cold little note, and wrote another that said she would be very glad to see him any day next week, except Friday. There was no reason why she should have excepted Friday; but it sounded more business-like somehow.
She did not take Kitty into her confidence, and in this she failed to perceive the significance of her own secrecy. She told herself that there was no need to ask Kitty's advice, because she knew perfectly well already what Kitty's advice would be.
He came on Tuesday. Monday was too early for his self-respect, Wednesday too late for his impatience. He had looked to find everything altered in and about Court House; and he saw, almost with surprise, the same April flowers growing in the green garden, and the same beech-tree dreaming on the lawn. He recognized the black rifts in its trunk and the shining sweep of its branches overhead. The door was opened by Robert, and Robert remembered him. There was a shade more gravity in the affectionate welcome, but then Robert was nine years older. He was shown into the drawing-room, and it, too, was much as he had left it nine years ago.
Kitty Palliser was there; she rose to meet him with her irrepressible friendliness, undiminished by nine years. There was nothing cold and business-like about Kitty.
"Will you tell Miss Harden?" said she to the detached, retreating Robert. Then she held out her hand. "I am very glad to see you." But a wave of compassion rather than of gladness swept over her face as she looked at him. She made him sit down, and gave him tea. There was a marked gentleness in all her movements, unlike the hilarious lady she used to be.
The minutes went by and Lucia did not appear. He could not attend to what Kitty was saying. His eyes were fixed on the door that looked as if it were never going to open. Kitty seemed to bear tenderly with his abstraction. Once he glanced round the room, recognizing familiar objects. He had expected, after Dicky's descent on Court House, to find nothing recognizable in it. Kitty was telling him how an uncle of hers had lent them the house for a year, how he had bought it furnished, and how, but for the dismantled library and portrait gallery, it was pretty much as it had been in Miss Harden's time. So unchanged was it and its atmosphere that Rickman felt himself in the presence of a destiny no less unchanging and familiar. He had come on business as he had done nine years ago; and he felt that the events of that time must in some way repeat themselves, that when he was alone with Lucia he would say to her such things as he had said before, that there would be differences, misunderstandings, as before, and that his second coming would end in misery and separation like the first. It seemed to him that Kitty, kind Kitty, had the same perception and foreboding. Thus he interpreted her very evident compassion. She meant to console him.
"Robert remembers you," said she.
"That's very clever of Robert," said he.
"No, it's only his faithfulness. What a funny thing faithfulness is. Robert won't allow any one but Miss Harden to be mistress here. My people are interlopers, abominations of desolation. He can barely be civil to their friends. But to hers—he is as you see him. It's a good thing for me I'm her friend, or he wouldn't let me sit here and pour out tea for you."
He thought over the speech. It admitted an encouraging interpretation. But Miss Palliser may have been more consoling than she had meant.