"They all begin that way with me, but after a while they're broken in. You did quite right to tell Mrs. Strode to stay."
And after a few months Winifred saw a change in Mrs. Strode, and not only in Mrs. Strode, but in all the servants whom she had engaged. They worked the household like parts of a flawless machine. They grew to be imperceptible, shadowy, automatic, like Wang Fu and Mr. Jukes.
*****
The months passed and melted into years. Roger Orme became a great personage in the neighbourhood. He interested himself in local affairs, served on the urban district council and on boards innumerable. They made him Mayor of Dunsfield. He subscribed largely to charities and entertained on a sumptuous scale. He ruled the little world, setting a ruthless heel on proud necks and making the humble his instruments. Mr. Jukes died, and other secretaries came, and those who were not instantly dismissed grew to be like Mr. Jukes. In the course of time Roger entered Parliament as member for the division. He became a force in politics, in public affairs. In the appointment of Royal Commissions, committees of inquiry, his name was the first to occur to ministers, and he was invariably respected, dreaded, and hated by his colleagues.
"Why do you work so hard, Roger?" Winifred would ask.
He would say, with one of his laughs: "Because there's a dynamo in me that I can't stop."
And all these years Miss Winifred Goode stayed at Duns Hall, leading her secluded, lavender-scented life when Roger was in London, and playing hostess for him, with diffident graciousness, when he entertained at The Lodge. His attitude towards her never varied, his need of her never lessened.
He never asked her to be his wife. At first she wondered, pined a little, and then, like a brave, proud woman, put the matter behind her. But she knew that she counted for much in his strange existence, and the knowledge comforted her. And as the years went on, and all the lingering shreds of youth left her, and she grew gracefully into the old lady, she came to regard her association with him as a spiritual marriage.
Then, after twenty years, the dynamo wore out the fragile tenement of flesh. Roger Orme, at sixty-five, broke down and lay on his death-bed. One day he sent for Miss Winifred Goode.
She entered the sick-room, a woman of sixty, white-haired, wrinkled, with only the beauty of a serene step across the threshold of old age. He bade the nurse leave them alone, and put out his hand and held hers as she sat beside the bed.