Epilogue: The Eternal Mr West
They buried him one gloomy November afternoon, Mr West tutting and fussing throughout the ceremony much to the annoyance of the vicar, who took the ragged figure for an impious relative of the deceased.
Thereafter, happiness reigned briefly at Tor Manor. The Captain and Lady Tor were married. Eustace, altogether changed since the departure of Percy, came to accept the new world order so that when, inevitably, the next war came, he fought for Kaiser and country against the Danes, and was killed in the battle of Groningen. Lady Tor died shortly after, of a broken heart one might say, and the Captain was not long in following.
And what of West? Why, he continues to haunt the old Manor to this day, though in the manner of ghosts he has not so much aged as worn thin, like old fabric, becoming a shadow of himself, and then a whisper and finally, nothing more than a memory of the wind among the winter roses that still bloom in the ruined garden; a final resting place, perhaps, for the eternal, inestimable Mr West.