The Colonel had scarcely swallowed his tea when Durant saw him trotting off in the direction of the cottage; there was that about him which, considering his recent bereavement, suggested an almost indecent haste. He returned and sat down to dinner, flushed but uncommunicative. He seemed aware that it was Durant's last night, and it was after some weak attempts to give the meal a commemorative and farewell character, half-festal, half-funereal, that he sank into silence, and remained brooding over the ice pudding in his attitude of owl-like inscrutability. But during the privacy of dessert his mystic mood took flight; he hopped, as it were, onto a higher perch; he stretched the wing of victory and gazed at it admiringly; there was an effect as of the preening of young plumage, the fluttering of innumerable feathers.
And, with champagne running in his veins like the sap of spring, he proclaimed his engagement to that charming lady, Mrs. Fazakerly.
Durant had no sooner congratulated him on the event than he remembered that he had left the postscript of Miss Tancred's letter unanswered. She had said, "Write and tell me how he takes it"; she had hoped that he would not be unhappy. So he wrote: "He took it uncommonly well" (that was not strictly true, but Durant was determined to set Frida Tancred's conscience at rest, even if he had to tamper a little with his own). "I should not say that he will be very unhappy. On the contrary, he has just assured me that he is the happiest man on earth. He is engaged to be married to Mrs. Fazakerly."
It was a masterly stroke on Mrs. Fazakerly's part, and it had followed so closely on the elopement (as closely, indeed, as consequence on cause) that Durant had to admit that he had grossly underrated the powers of this remarkable woman. He had been lost in admiration of Miss Chatterton's elaborate intrigue and bold independent action; but now he came to think of it, though Miss Chatterton's style was more showy, Mrs. Fazakerly had played by far the better game of the two. Durant, who had regarded himself as a trump card up Mrs. Fazakerly's sleeve, perceived with a pang that he had counted for nothing in the final move. Mrs. Fazakerly had not, as he idiotically supposed, been greatly concerned with Frida Tancred's attitude toward him. She had divined nothing, imagined nothing, she had been both simpler and subtler than he knew. She had desired the removal of Frida Tancred from her path, and at the right moment she had produced Georgie Chatterton. She had played her deliberately, staking everything on the move. Georgie's independence had been purely illusory. She had appeared at Mrs. Fazakerly's bidding, she had behaved as Mrs. Fazakerly had foreseen, she had removed Frida Tancred, and Durant had been nowhere. Mrs. Fazakerly's little gray eyes could read the characters of men and women at a glance, and as instantly inferred their fitness or unfitness for her purpose. She might be a poor hand at the game of whist, but at the game of matrimony she was magnificent and supreme.
Frida had said, "We sail to-morrow"; therefore, Durant walked all the way to Whithorn-in-Arden to post his letter, so that it might reach her before she left London. And as he came back across the dewy path in the dim light, and Coton Manor raised its forehead from the embrace of the woods and opened the long line of its dull windows, he realized all that it had done for Frida. He understood the abnegation and the tragedy of her life. She had been sacrificed, not only to her father, but to her father's fetish, the property; Coton Manor had to be kept up at all costs, and the cost had been Frida's, it had been her mother's. The place had crushed and consumed her spirit, as it swallowed up two-thirds of her material inheritance; it had made the living woman as the dead. He remembered how the house had been called her mother's monument, and how it had become her own grave. Her soul had never lived there. And now that she was gone it was as empty as the tomb from which the soul has lifted the body at resurrection time.
And he, too, was set at liberty.
He left by the slow early train on Wednesday without waiting for the afternoon express, his object being not so much to reach town as to get away from Coton Manor. The Colonel accompanied him to the station; and, to his infinite surprise and embarrassment, he found Mrs. Fazakerly on the platform waiting to see him off.
He could think of nothing nice to say to her about her engagement, not even when she took possession of him with a hand on his arm, led him away to the far end of the platform, and gazed expectantly into his face.
"You don't congratulate me, Mr. Durant."
"On what?" he asked moodily.