Laburnums an old General and his rheumatic spouse dwelt together in quiet content, and were yearly cheered by the visit of that darling naval officer in the King's service, their son? What if the last Mayor but two, a man without an "h," found in the Cedars a tranquillity and happiness that was lacking to those who looked at Corots, and saw slightly doubtful plays acted beneath that superb vault of the theatre he had built at Brayton? And then—
Next the Cedars was Fair View. The car had passed it before it could slow down to the pace that was necessary to enter the narrow gate and take the ellipse of the "carriage sweep," but with a little hooting and grunting it backed its way into the gate labelled "Out," which Aunt Cathie had caused to be repainted. There were no other chariots in the carriage-sweep; the possible difficulty of compelling them to back into the road was non-existent.
Edgar got out and rang the bell. It was not so far off that the twitched wire caused the jangle, and standing there on the doorstep, it was no longer "here and now" with him, but here and on a day that seemed so long past that it had, till the bell scolded in the basement, no existence at all. But that sound conjured the past up again out of the well of the relentless years; it was almost with expectation that he was silent for the whistle from above that should recall Schubert's "Unfinished" to him; it was almost with conviction that he looked at the sill of the drawing-room window, thinking to see there the broad-brimmed rush-hat with the scarlet bow. Yet, simultaneously, sickness and ache of heart was his; whether it was she, the same she who had come downstairs to greet him who now was staying at Ashdown, he dared not think. He but knew that somebody else, not the he who had heard that jangling bell before on a day of brilliant sunshine, stood here now waiting for the bell to be answered. Another being usurped his envelope; somebody not looking eagerly forward, but looking hopelessly back; somebody sick at heart, tired, tired with a struggle that made him momently weaker, who found the present intolerable instead of finding the future bright.
There was an irony in external things. He remembered that flies buzzed on the wall; in this sheltered November sunshine they buzzed there now; flowers had been bright below the windows, and to-day the scarlet salvia still showed traces of its bravery, and chrysanthemums blazed and smouldered.
