But this Rose was his youth again, the best part of his life, the part of it that had had all the visions in it and all the hopes. How they had dreamed together, he and she, before he struck that vein of memoirs; how they had planned, and laughed, and loved. They had lived for a while in the very heart of poetry. After the happy days came the happy nights, the happy, happy nights, with her asleep close against his heart, with her when he woke in the morning still close against his heart, for they hardly moved in their deep, happy sleep. It was wonderful to have it all come back to him at the touch of her, at the feel of her face against his—wonderful that she should be able to give him back his youth.
“Sweetheart—sweetheart,” he murmured, overcome by remembrance, clinging to her now in his turn.
“Beloved husband,” she breathed—the bliss of it—the sheer bliss …
Briggs, coming in a few minutes before the gong went on the chance that Lady Caroline might be there, was much astonished. He had supposed Rose Arbuthnot was a widow, and he still supposed it; so that he was much astonished.
“Well I’m damned,” thought Briggs, quite clearly and distinctly, for the shock of what he saw in the window startled him so much that for a moment he was shaken free of his own confused absorption.
Aloud he said, very red, “Oh I say—I beg your pardon”—and then stood hesitating, and wondering whether he oughtn’t to go back to his bedroom again.
If he had said nothing they would not have noticed he was there, but when he begged their pardon Rose turned and looked at him as one looks who is trying to remember, and Frederick looked at him too without at first quite seeing him.
They didn’t seem, thought Briggs, to mind or to be at all embarrassed. He couldn’t be her brother; no brother ever brought that look into a woman’s face. It was very awkward. If they didn’t mind, he did. It upset him to come across his Madonna forgetting herself.
“Is this one of your friends?” Frederick was able after an instant to ask Rose, who made no attempt to introduce the young man standing awkwardly in front of them but continued to gaze at him with a kind of abstracted, radiant goodwill.
“It’s Mr. Briggs,” said Rose, recognizing him. “This is my husband,” she added.
And Briggs, shaking hands, just had time to think how surprising it was to have a husband when you were a widow before the gong sounded, and Lady Caroline would be there in a minute, and he ceased to be able to think at all, and merely became a thing with its eyes fixed on the door.
Through the door immediately entered, in what seemed to him an endless procession, first Mrs. Fisher, very stately in her evening lace shawl and brooch, who when she saw him at once relaxed into smiles and benignity, only to stiffen, however, when she caught sight of the stranger; then Mr. Wilkins, cleaner and neater and more carefully dressed and brushed than any man on earth; and then, tying something hurriedly as she came, Mrs. Wilkins; and then nobody.
Lady Caroline was late. Where was she? Had she heard the gong? Oughtn’t it to be beaten again? Suppose she didn’t come to dinner after all …
Briggs went cold.
“Introduce me,” said Frederick on Mrs. Fisher’s entrance, touching Rose’s elbow.
“My husband,” said Rose, holding him by the hand, her face exquisite.
“This,” thought Mrs. Fisher, “must now be the last of the husbands, unless Lady Caroline produces one from up her sleeve.”
But she received him graciously, for he certainly looked exactly like a husband, not at all like one of those people who go about abroad pretending they are husbands when they are not, and said she supposed he had come to accompany his wife home at the end of the month, and remarked that now the house would be completely full. “So that,” she added, smiling at Briggs, “we shall at last really be getting our money’s worth.”
Briggs grinned automatically, because he was just able to realise that somebody was being playful with him, but he had not heard her and he did not look at her. Not only were his eyes fixed on the door but his whole body was concentrated on it.
Introduced in his turn, Mr. Wilkins was most hospitable and called Frederick “sir.”
“Well, sir,” said Mr. Wilkins heartily, “here we are, here we are”—and having gripped his hand with an understanding that only wasn’t mutual because Arbuthnot did not yet know what he was in for in the way of trouble, he looked at him as a man should, squarely in the eyes, and allowed his look to convey as plainly as a look can that in him would be found staunchness, integrity, reliability—in fact a friend in
