We were quite at one, too, in that
we had so often gossiped about death with cheerful conjecture and
interested surmise based on the steady assurance that something of new
and delightful import was to follow, since neither of us happened to be
of that melancholy cast of mind that can envisage annihilation. I had
promised, in case I was the first to embark on the great adventure, to
do my best to “get through,” and give him some irrefutable proof of the
continuance of my existence, just by way of endorsement of our belief,
and he had given a similar pledge, for it appeared to us both, that,
whatever the conditions of the future might turn out to be, it would
be impossible when lately translated there, not to be still greatly
concerned with what the present world still held for us in ties of
love and affection. I laughed now to remember how he had once imagined
himself begging to be excused for a few minutes, directly after death,
and saying to St. Peter: “May I keep your Holiness waiting for a minute
before you finally lock me into Heaven or Hell with those beautiful
keys? I won’t be a minute, but I do want so much to be a ghost, and
appear to a friend of mine who is on the look-out for such a visit. If
I find I can’t make myself visible I will come back at once.... Oh,
_thank_ you, your Holiness.”

So we agreed that I should run the risk of his dying in my house, and
promised not to make any reproaches posthumously (as far as he was
concerned) in case he did so. He on his side promised not to die if he
could possibly help it, and next week or so he would come down to me in
the heart of the country that he loved, and see April at work. “And I haven’t told you anything about my house yet,” I said. “It’s
right at the top of the hill, square and Georgian and red-bricked. A
panelled hall, dining-room and panelled sitting-room downstairs, and
more panelled rooms upstairs. And there’s a garden with a lawn, and
a high brick wall round it, and there is a big garden room, full of
books, with a bow-window looking down the cobbled street. Which bedroom
will you have? Do you like looking on to the garden or on to the
street? You may even have my room if you like.”

He looked at me a moment with eager attention. “I’ll have the square
panelled bedroom that looks out on to the garden, please,” he said. “It’s the second door on the right when you stand at the top of the
stairs.”

“But how do you know?” I asked. “Because I’ve been in the house before, once only, three years ago,”
he said. “Margaret Alton took it furnished and lived there for a year
or so. She died there, and I was with her. And if I had known that
this was your house, I should never have dreamed of hesitating whether
I should accept your invitation. I should have thrown my good manners
about not dying in other people’s houses to the winds. But the moment
you began to describe the garden and garden-room I knew what house it
was. I have always longed to go there again. When may I come, please? Next week is too far ahead. You’re off there this afternoon, aren’t
you?”

I rose: the clock warned me that it was time for me to go to the
station. “Yes. Come this afternoon,” I suggested. “Come with me.”

“I wish I could, but I take that to mean that it will suit you if I
come to-morrow. For I certainly will. Good Lord! To think of your
having got just that house! It ought to be a wonderfully happy one,
for I saw---- But I’ll tell you about that perhaps when I’m there. But
don’t ask me to: I’ll tell you if and when I can, as the lawyers say. Are you really off?”

I was really off, for I had no time to spare, but before I got to the
door he spoke again. “Of course, the room I have chosen was _the_ room,” he said, and there
was no need for me to ask what he meant by _the_ room. *       *       *       *       *

I knew no more than the barest and most public outline of that affair,
distant now by the space of many years, but, so I conceived, ever green
in Roderick’s heart, and, as my train threaded its way through the
gleams of this translucent spring evening, I retraced this outline as
far as I knew it. It was the one thing of which Roderick never spoke
(even now he was not sure that he could manage to tell me the end of
it), and I had to rummage in my memory for the reconstruction of the
half-obliterated lines. Margaret--her maiden-name would not be conjured back into memory--had
been an extremely beautiful girl when Roderick first met her, and, not
without encouragement, he had fallen head over ears in love with her. All seemed to be going well with his wooing, he had the air of a happy
lover, when there appeared on the scene that handsome and outrageous
fellow, Richard Alton. He was the heir to his uncle’s barony and his
really vast estates, and the girl, when he proceeded to lay siege, very
soon capitulated. She may have fallen in love with him, for he was
an attractive scamp, but the verdict at the time was that it was her
ambition, not her heart, that she indulged. In any case, there was the
end of Roderick’s wooing, and before the year was out she had married
the other. I remembered seeing her once or twice in London about this time,
splendid and brilliant, of a beauty that dazzled, with the world
very much at her feet. She bore him two sons; she succeeded to a
great position; and then with the granting of her heart’s desire, the
leanness withal followed. Her husband’s infidelities were numerous and
notorious; he treated her with a subtle cruelty that just kept on the
right side of the law, and, finally, seeking his freedom, he deserted
her, and openly lived with another woman. Whether it was pride that
kept her from divorcing him, or whether she still loved him (if she
had ever done so) and was ready to take him back, or whether it was
out of revenge that she refused to have done with him legally, was an
affair of which I knew nothing. Calamity followed on calamity; first
one and then the other of her sons was killed in the European War, and
I remembered having heard that she was the victim of some malignant and
disfiguring disease, which caused her to lead a hermit life, seeing
nobody. It was now three years or so since she had died. Such, with the addition that she had died in my house, and that
Roderick had been with her, was the sum of my meagre knowledge, which
might or might not, so he had intimated, be supplemented by him. He
arrived next day, having motored down from London for the avoidance
of fatigue, and certainly as we sat after dinner that night in the
garden-room, he had avoided it very successfully, for never had I seen
him more animated. “Oh, I have been so right to come here,” he said, “for I feel steeped
in tranquillity and content. There’s such a tremendous sense of
Margaret’s presence here, and I never knew how much I wanted it. Perhaps that is purely subjective, but what does that matter so long as
I feel it?