The world, during all these months, had seemed to Lizzie Rand a very silent place. Before that July night it had been loud with incident, coloured with possibilities, strange and varied and thrilling. Now she was only conscious of the duties that must be fulfilled between daybreak and darkness; she was unconscious of all life and movement, only she was aware of the demands on her deliberate activity—these demands she obeyed.
Slowly, as the dreary autumn dragged its days past her, she accustomed herself to forestall the horrid moments that would leap from some hidden darkness upon her. There was the moment when a something said: "Fancy caring for someone who had never asked nor shown any sign...." Another moment when something said: "Remember how here you stood, with your heart beating, waiting for him to come—There you caught some light in his eyes and fancied it a sign...."
Burning shame was in those moments did she indulge them—a realization, too, of the bare grey desolation of a world without movement or vision. She could not see the people about her, her mother, her sister, Lady Adela, Dr. Christopher (always kind to her), other friends—they were not there for her at all.
Only two things were there—that she must cling, at all possible costs, to her pride and that she hated Rachel. Her pride had been called to her defence before, but to hate anyone was new to her. She had never hated any human being and now the restlessness that this new emotion brought confused her.
Night after night stretched ironically before her, banishing sleep. All her life she had slept from the moment that her head was upon the pillow; now, at that instant, her brain sprang to fire, thought after thought, memory after memory, passed in dancing procession before her.
She saw him as little as possible, she supposed that in time she would not care, would be indifferent to him; she hoped so.
Meanwhile she went out when he came in; saw his kind distress because he thought that she was not well, and shuddered at it.
Then Lady Adela told her that Rachel had asked whether she were free for Christmas.
She received a letter:
"Dear Miss Rand,I wonder whether by any chance you would care to come to us here for three weeks at Christmas time? I should be so grateful if you would come and help me a little with some tiresome social things here. May I add that I have for a long time wanted to know you better than the London rush ever gives time for? My aunt says that you have been overworking lately, she thinks. If you come here you shall have all the rest and quiet possible.Yours sincerely,Rachel Seddon."
"Dear Miss Rand,
I wonder whether by any chance you would care to come to us here for three weeks at Christmas time? I should be so grateful if you would come and help me a little with some tiresome social things here. May I add that I have for a long time wanted to know you better than the London rush ever gives time for? My aunt says that you have been overworking lately, she thinks. If you come here you shall have all the rest and quiet possible.
Yours sincerely,
Rachel Seddon."
A funny little letter—stiff and then suddenly impulsive and friendly.
Of course she would go—she had never doubted that. Here at last was some food for the burning restlessness that was always at her breast—Through these months she had longed for some step that would help to kill the pain.
Now she would watch Rachel and discover her heart and perhaps find from that discovery some way for her own release. For her shame, night and day, was that she still cared, cared, yes, as deeply as she had ever done—that caring must die.
Perhaps the sight and knowledge of this other woman would kill it.
At least here at last was action after the terrible silence and remoteness of those many months.
She would go to Seddon and she would not leave it without finding some way by which she might still make some use of life.
She had really stayed at very few houses before. The anticipation at any other time would have excited her, now nothing mattered except that she would meet Rachel.
Her mother and sister had watched her during these past months with a dismay stirred by the sudden absence of her genial friendliness.
They had taken so much of her kindliness for granted and now when she refused them the sympathy that they had always demanded for a thousand unimportant incidents they, clamorously, missed it.
At first it was easy to say that Lizzie was callous and selfish, afterwards that she was ill and overworked, finally they hailed with relief the promise of a three-weeks' holiday. "She'll come back," said Mrs. Rand, "as fresh as paint, and taken out of herself."
Meanwhile no solution of Lizzie's trouble occurred to them; that she should ever feel the tyranny of love, like more sentimental mortals, was, at this time of day, impossible. "We know Lizzie, thank you," said Mrs. Rand.
They watched her, on the afternoon of the 23rd of December, depart in a cab for Seddon Court. She was grave and pale and beautifully neat. "I do admire Lizzie, you know," said Daisy, returning with her mother into the house. "I can't get that kind of tidiness. Her things go on for years, looking as good as new."
"Men like a bit of disorder," said Mrs. Rand. "It seems more agitated. All the same I'd like to know what is worrying Lizzie."
It was a wet and gusty day and the wind blew the rain with hard impatient spurts against the windows of the cab. Few people were about: Hyde Park Corner was grey and deserted, umbrellas like black mushrooms started here and there from the shining ground.
Victoria Station also had, on this afternoon, nothing beautiful to offer. She found her way to her train, chose an empty carriage, sat in her corner with her hands upon her lap, waited for the train to move.
People, grey people with white faces, hurried past her carriage. She wondered whether they too had something in their hearts that made every thought, every movement a danger.
Because the train would not move and because for the first time in all these months she found herself without any occupation, she could not hold thought at bay. She resisted, she tried to sweep her brain empty, she surrendered. She, Lizzie Rand, always so fond of her self-discipline and restraint, found control now slipping from her. Before she had met Breton her duties, the skilful manipulation and arrangement of detail, her work and her place as a worker, these had supplied her needs. Now all those things were dust and ashes; high and lofty above them shone that bright fire whose warmth and colour she had, for an instant, felt and seen. What was life going to be, through all the years to come, if she were never to recapture her tranquillity?
The train moved off and she sat there, her eyes bright and shining, her little body stiff and resolute. Somewhere, a long way away, like a rounded coloured cloud, hovered emotion—emotion that would break her heart, would tear her to pieces and then perhaps build up for her a new life. But her eyes now were dry and her heart was cold.
The train went whir-whack—whack-whir and the telegraph wires flew up, hung, hesitated, were coming down, flew higher, then with a rush were buried below the window, and with the noise and movement there danced before her eyes the questions, "Does she love him?" "Does she love him? Has she told him that she loves him? What will her husband do? Does she love her husband?" And then, beyond that, "Why did she come and take from me all that I had, she who had already so much?"
And then, most bitter of all, "Ah, but you never had him. She took nothing from you. He never thought of you except as someone to whom he could talk——"
She had no doubt that these weeks were intended for a crisis. Something was going to happen at Seddon.... Something in which she was to have her share. She felt as though she had known that she would be sent to meet Rachel—It had to be....
Then her thoughts left, for a time, her own miserable little history. She wondered how Lady Adela would manage without her. Lady Adela had never been alone before and now that the Duchess had had, a fortnight ago, that fainting fit, they were all unsettled and alarmed. What would happen if the Duchess died? Then all the dignity and splendour of 104 Portland Place would pass away! other people might inhabit it, but the soul of that house would be dead.
Everything on every side of her seemed to be hastening to a climax and Lizzie could see that old woman fighting, behind her closed doors, for Life, beaten at last, dead, swept away, others laughing in her place—a new world to whom she was only a portrait cleverly painted by some young artist.
Yes, there were other histories developing now besides Lizzie's and she felt as though she had been whirled, during the last months, into a wild, tossing medley of contacts and revelations—all this after a life so grey and quiet and steadily busy.
As the train plunged into Sussex the rain stayed for a little and the shining earth steamed upwards to a grey sky broken here and there to saffron. Little towns quietly rested under the hills and many streams ran through the woods and the roads drove white like steel through the crust of the soil. White lights spread in the upper air and the heaving grey was pushed, as though by some hand, back into the distant horizon. For a moment it seemed that the sun was bursting through; trees were suddenly green where they had been black and fields red where they had been sombre dark—Light was on all the hills.
But the hand was stayed. Back the grey rolled again, heavily like chariots the clouds wheeled round and drove down upon the earth—The rain fell.
The carriage was very cold. Lizzie's hand and feet were so chill that they seemed not to belong to her at all. Pictures of houses at Brighton and the dining-car of some train and two public-houses at the bottom of a hill stared at her.
The sense of some coming disaster grew with her. It was as though someone were telling her that she must prepare to be very brave and controlled and wise because, very soon, all her restraint and wisdom would be needed. She summoned now, as she had learnt to do, a stern armoured resolution that sat always a little oddly upon her. Any observer who had seen her sitting there would have noticed the mild softness of her eyes, the tenderness of some curve at the corners of her mouth, and would have smiled at the lines of resolution as though he had known that the sternness was all assumed.
But she was saying that nothing should touch or move her down here at Seddon; her heart should be closed. She must grow into a woman who had no need of emotion—and even as she determined that some vision swept her by, revealing to her the happy dear uses that she could have made of love and sympathy had life been set that way for her. How she could have cared!... A dry little sob was at her throat and burning pain behind her tearless eyes. God, the things that other people had and did not value!
The train stopped at a wind-swept deserted station and a man and woman with a little child, the three of them tired, wet, bedraggled, entered the carriage.
The man was gaunt with a beard and large helpless eyes, the woman shapeless, loose-breasted, little eyes sunk in her cheeks, an old black straw hat tilted back on her head. These two did not glance at Lizzie, nor was there any curiosity of interest in their eyes, but the small child, yellow wisps of hair falling about her dirty face, detached herself from them, crept into the furthest corner of the carriage and from there stared at Lizzie.
The train droned on through a country now shrinking beneath a deluge of rain. The child moved a little, looked at the woman, looked again at Lizzie, crept to Lizzie's side of the carriage, at last, still without a word, came close and, finally, stole fingers towards Lizzie's dress.
Lizzie turned and smiled at the child, who stared back at her, now with wide terrified eyes. Lizzie looked away, out of the window, and after a long time, felt the grimy hand upon her knee.
Once the woman said, "Come away, Cissie. You're worrying the lady."
"No. Please," said Lizzie. She took the hand in her own and smiled again at the wide baby face. The child was very, very young and very, very dirty—
No child had ever come near her before. She wondered why it had come now.
At Lewes a carriage was waiting for her and, in a moment, it seemed that she was driving through a dark village street and in front of her, like a great wall topping the skies, the Downs rose.
When the carriage entered the courtyard and stopped before the broad stone door Lizzie was seized with terror. She wished, oh! she wished that she had not come. The sense of descending trouble was so strong with her that she felt for the first time in her life that she was going to prove unequal to her task.
Her life was over and done with! Why had she allowed herself to be pushed back again into all these affairs of other people?
She was ushered into a square lighted hall where they were all having tea round a wide open fireplace. She was conscious of Rachel rising, slim and tall, to greet her, of the square ruddy-faced country-looking man who gripped her hand, jolly hard, and was, of course, Sir Roderick; of a handsome, athletic-looking girl in a riding-habit, of a man or two and an elderly smartly dressed woman.
They were all immensely cheerful and friendly and to Lizzie, white and tired, noisy and horribly robust. She would have liked to have slipped up to her room and stayed there alone until dinner, but Rachel said:
"Oh! you must be perished after that wet journey. Tea's just at its hottest and its freshest. Quick, Roddy—the toast—Never mind the rest of us, Miss Rand—just drink that tea and get warm."
They allowed her to sink back into an easy chair somewhere in the shadow and the tea was very comforting and the stern hall with its crackling fire and its cosy solid shape most friendly. She listened to them all noisily discussing people and dances and horses and dinners. She watched Rachel Seddon, sitting a little gravely, straight in her chair, throwing in a word now and again.
This was the woman.... This was the woman....
She felt a warm tongue that licked her hand. She looked down and saw at her side the oddest dog, a dog like a mat, shapeless with two brown eyes behind its hair and a black wet nose.
There was something about the eyes and the way that the warm body was pressed against her dress that won her instant affection.
"What an adorable animal!" she said to Roddy, who was sitting next to her.
"Oh! Jacob!" he said, laughing. "He really oughtn't to be in here at all—servants' hall's his proper place—If you care for dogs, Miss Rand, I'll show you some——"
As he spoke she caught the dog's eyes and saw in the depths of them shame. He had been sitting, very square and upright, with his eyes gravely fixed, with great interest, upon the company. Then, at the sound of Roddy's voice his head had dropped, instantly he became furtive, his eyes searching for some place of escape.
Her hand caught his rough coat and she drew him to her side and stroked his ears.
"I think he's perfectly delightful," she said. "I'm afraid I prefer mongrels to better dogs."
"Do you really?" said Roddy, looking kindly at her. "'Pon my word, Miss Rand, I must show you my little lot. I don't think you'll have much use for that animal there afterwards."
At last the girl in the riding-habit and the other woman and the young man noisily departed.
Rachel took Lizzie upstairs. "Are you sure," she said, "you'd like to come down to dinner? Wouldn't you rather, to-night, go early to bed and have it there?"
"No, thank you, Lady Seddon." Lizzie looked about the room. "This is all splendid, thank you. I'm not a bit tired."
"I'm so glad you've come," said Rachel, searching for Lizzie's eyes. But Lizzie had turned away.
At last she was alone.
Her room was splendid—so wide, and high, and such a fire!
She flung up her window. There the Downs were, black, huge before her; the rain came down hissing from the sky and a smell of wet earth and grass stole up to her.
"That's the woman ..." she said again to herself—"What shall we say to one another?"
Then as she stared into the fire she thought, "She wants me to help her."
Afterwards she heard a scratching at the door. A maid had been sent to her, but she had dismissed her, saying that she would manage for herself.
She went to the door and found outside it the shaggy, square dog.
He walked into her room, sniffed for a time at the bed, pricked up his ears at the noise that the fire made, listened to the sound of the rain, at last sat down in a distant corner with one leg stretched at right angles to his body and watched her.
She was indignant with herself for the softness in her heart that his company brought to her.
"I and my mistress, side by side,Shall be together, breathe and ride,So, one day more am I deified,Who knows but the world may end to-night?"Robert Browning.
"I and my mistress, side by side,Shall be together, breathe and ride,So, one day more am I deified,Who knows but the world may end to-night?"
Robert Browning.
Introspection had been always to Roddy a thing unknown. He had never regarded himself as in any way different from the other men whom he met, and he would have been greatly distressed had he thought that hewasdifferent.—"What you writin' fellers," he had once said to Garden, "can find amusin' in inventin' people for I can't think; you've got to make 'em odd for people to be interested in 'em and then they aren't like anyone."
Now, however, for the first time in his life he would have been glad of help from someone who knew a little about the motive of human beings. He was worried, distressed, perplexed; slowly his temper was rising—a temper roused by his irritation at not being able to deal with the situation.
It was not his way to ask for help from anyone and he always had all the inarticulate self-confidence of the healthy Englishman, but now, as the days crept towards Christmas he was increasingly aware that something must soon happen to prevent his patience giving away.
He might as well not be married to Rachel at all—and that was an intolerable position for him as husband, as lover, as master of his house. Beyond doubt, he knew Rachel less now than he had known her when he married her. Her very kindness to him, her strange alternations of silence and affection perplexed him; for a long time he had told himself that he knew that she did not love him and that he must make companionship do, but ever since that quarrel about Nita Raseley the division between them had grown wider and wider.
Because he loved her he had been very patient with her—very patient for Roddy, who had always had what he wanted and shown temper if he were refused.
But Roddy's character was of a very real simplicity. The men and women and animals whom he had known had also been, for the most part, of a simple character and, in all his life, there had only been one horse and two women who had been too much for him, and even these, at the last, he had beaten by temper and dogged determination.
Rachel was utterly beyond him. The strange way that she had of suddenly becoming quite another woman baffled him; had he only not loved her he was sure that it would have been easier, much easier.
But now, as the days passed at Seddon, his irritation thrived. Women were all the same. Theyseemedobstinate enough, but there was nothing like brute force to bring them to heel. He was growing surly—cross with the servants and the animals. He didn't sleep. His discontent made him silent so that, when they were alone, instead of talking to her and interesting her and winning her, perhaps, in that way, he would sit and look at her and answer her in monosyllables, and, afterwards, would be furious with himself for behaving so absurdly.
This trouble sent him out of doors and away over the Downs on his horse. Fiercely he hurled himself into his fields and lanes and farms, getting up sometimes very early and riding out to some distant place, thinking always, as he rode, of Rachel and what he was to do.
His devotion for the country round Seddon, a devotion that had stirred his heart since his first conscious sight of the outside world, nobly now rewarded him. The land seemed to understand that he was suffering, and drew closer to him and watched him with gentle and loving eyes, and soothed his soul.
Before Christmas there came some sharp, frosty mornings; he would go out very early and would see, first, the garden, the lawn crisp and white, the grey jagged wall that divided his land from the sweeping Downs, the grey house behind him so square and solid and comfortable. At the end of the garden away from the road there was an old iron gate with stone pillars, and upon these pillars sat old stone gryphons. These gryphons had been there since long ago and he liked the friendliness of their faces, the strength of their crouching bodies and the way that they would look out so patiently, over a great expanse of fields and hedges, until their gaze rested on the white chalk hollows in the rising hills away behind Lewes.
Roddy, standing with the Downs so immediately behind him and this green spread of land in front of him, was always conscious of happiness. Here he was at home. He knew those fields, the streams that ran through them, the farmers, the labourers, the horses and dogs that lived upon them. No fear here that "one of those clever fellers" would wonder at his stupidity, no sudden "letting you down" or "showing you up." Behind him was his house, before him the land that he had always known; here he was safe.
He had, too, beyond this, some unformulated recognition of a service and a worship that here he was called on to pay. He had always declared that he could understand those Johnnies who worshipped the sun and the earth. "Damn it all—there's something to catch on to there."—He did not, in his heart, believe in all this civilization, this preserving of the sick and tending of the maimed and halt. "You've got to clear out if you're broken up" was his opinion. "If you can't do your bit, can't see or smell or anything, you're just in the way."—What he meant was that the halt and maimed were simply insults to the vigour and vitality of his fields and sky.
But indeed, whatwouldhe have done during these days had he not had his riding, farms to visit, shepherds and farmers for company? At first Rachel had ridden with him and they had been closer together during those rides than at any other time, but lately she had refused, on one excuse or another, to come with him.
He went a good deal now to other houses, but it was awkward because Rachel would not come with him. She asked people to Seddon and was charming when they came, but she would not often go out with him when the country people invited them.
Since the Nita Raseley episode he had thought that she might show jealousy did he ride and drive with some girl in the country. He hoped that she would be jealous, that would have filled him with tingling happiness—but no, she seemed to be glad that he should find someone who could take her place.
Over all these things he brooded and brooded. He would look at his old friendly gryphons and feel, in some dumb confused way, that they were being insulted.—"Poor old beggars—I bet she doesn't know they're there"—And through all of this, he loved her more and more, and was, daily, more wretched and unhappy.
The coming of Miss Rand puzzled him. He had, of course, known of her for a long time—"Adela Beaminster's secretary, most capable woman, simply runs the whole place."—As a human being she simply did not occur to him.
Now she seemed to be the one person whom Rachel wished to know. Another instance of Rachel's unexpectedness. When Lizzie came he was still more astonished. This tidy, trim little woman looked as though she ought always to have a typewriter by her side; her sharp eyes were always restlessly discovering things that were out of order. Roddy found himself fingering his tie and patting his hair when she was with him—not, he would have supposed, the sort of woman for whom Rachel would have cared.
Then after a while he discovered another astonishing thing. Miss Rand did not like his wife, did not like her at all. He watched and fancied that Rachel soon discovered this and was doing her utmost to force Miss Rand to like her.
Miss Rand was always pleasant and polite; she was an immense help about dinners and this dance that was to be given early in the New Year, but she yielded to none of Rachel's advances, was always reserved, unresponsive.
Roddy was afraid of her but believed in her. She liked animals and loved the house and the Downs and the country.—"She's all clean and bright and hard," he thought; "no emotion about her, no sentimentthere. A man 'ud have a stiff time love-making with her."
But it gradually appeared that, whatever her feelings might be towards Rachel, she was ready to like Roddy. She walked with him, asked him sensible questions, listened attentively to his rather lumbering explanations. After a time, he almost forgot that she was a woman at all—"Damn sensible and yet she never makes you feel a fool."
He liked her very much, though she obviously preferred Jacob, the mongrel, to all other dogs in the place. He wondered as the days passed whether she might not help him with Rachel. He would not speak to anyone living about his own feelings for Rachel and his unhappiness, but he thought that, perhaps, in a roundabout way, he might obtain from Miss Rand some general wisdom that he could apply to his especial case.
The afternoon of Christmas Eve was cold and foggy and Roddy and Lizzie sat over the fire in the hall waiting for Rachel, who had gone out for a solitary walk. Roddy looking at his companion approved of the sharp delicate little face with the firelight touching it to colour and shadow; her dress was grey with a tiny brooch of old gold at her throat, and she wore one ring of small pearls; the look of her gave him pleasure.
"I wonder," Miss Rand said, "that you don't go where you'll get better hunting—you don't hunt round here at all, do you?"
"A bit"—Roddy looked gravely at the fire—"I go very little though. You see, Miss Rand, it's a case of bein' born down here and likin' the place, don't you know.Of courseI'd love to have been born in a huntin' country, but bein' here I've got fond of it, you see, and wouldn't leave it for any huntin' anywhere."
She looked at him sharply: "You do love the place very much—I envy you that."
Even as she spoke her consciousness of "the place" faced her; she had always known that she was more acutely aware of the personality of her surroundings than were most of her friends, but her experience here was different from anything that she had ever known before.
She remembered that in the train she had been warned of some coming event and now, sitting opposite to Roddy beside the blazing fire, she was sharply and definitely frightened.
Rachel had already appealed to her; Roddy was appealing to her now, but stronger than either of these demands was some force in herself, warning her and raising in her the most conflicting, disturbing emotions.
The very silence of the house about them, the long green stretches of the level fields, came almost personally and presented themselves to her, and in her heart, growing with every moment of passing time, was her hatred of Rachel and, from that, tenderness for Roddy, who could thus be left, so pathetically unhappy, so eloquently without words that might express his unhappiness.
Something she knew was soon to occur that would involve all three of them in a common crisis.
It was almost as though she must leap to her feet and cry to the startled and innocent Roddy, "Look out!" her finger pointing at the closed door behind him.
Meanwhile Roddy had been considering her. She said that she envied him the place. That was pleasant of her, and he warmed to the urgency with which she had said it. If she felt in that way about such things, why then, all the more, he thought, he could speak to her about his trouble with Rachel. Perhaps, too, although this he would not admit to himself—his conviction that Lizzie disliked Rachel gave him more courage.
Everyone thought Rachel so wonderful—wonderful of course she was, but a complete sense of that wonder must blind the looker-on to Roddy's point of view.
"Places," he said moodily, "ain't everythin'—courseIlove this old bit o' ground, but when you love anything a lot you're disappointed because every feller don't see it exactly as you do."
Lizzie looked at him.
"I should have thought, though, Sir Roderick, that you were a very, very happy person."
Roddy considered, then slowly shook his head—"No, Miss Rand, not exactly—no, you know, I shouldn't say that exactly—but then, I suppose, no man on this earth is absolutely happy."
"Well," said Lizzie, "a great many people would envy you—your health, your home, your wife, you've got a good deal, Sir Roderick."
As she spoke her anxiety to help him seized and held her. He wanted advice so badly, advice that she could give him, and this English strain in him prevented him from speaking. Had she gone more deeply into her motives she would have known that her anger with Rachel, even more actively prompted, it seemed, by the stones and the fields and the hills around her, was urging her interference.
"People envy me," said Roddy, "but then, Miss Rand, people don't know. It's all my own fault, mind you, that I'm not perfectly happy. It's all because I'm such a fool, not able to see what people are gettin' at, always blunderin' in at the wrong moment and blunderin' out again when I ought to be stayin' in, and that sort o' thing. I used to think," he concluded, "that all the talk about people's feelin's, studying them and so on, was rot, but now I'm not so sure. I'd give anythin'—" he stopped abruptly.
"Itisall rot," Lizzie said sharply—"I can only speak as a woman, of course, but I know that what every woman ever born into this world has wanted is just to be taken by someone stronger than herself and be beaten or kissed, loved or strangled as the case may be. Believe me, it is so."
Roddy looked at her, some new thought, perhaps a prologue to some new determination, shining from his eyes.
"By Jove!" he said. "I believe you're right, Miss Rand—I do indeed.Everywoman, would you say?"
"Every woman," said Lizzie firmly.
Their eyes met. The sure steadiness of her gaze, the way that she sat there, her little body so sure and resolute, her very neat composure an argument against lightheaded reasoning, encouraged him beyond any help that he had yet found.
Their gaze seemed long and intimate; the colour rose and flushed his brown cheeks and into his eyes there crept that consciousness of a victory about to be won, although the odds were hard against him. The door opened behind him and he turned at the sound and saw that Rachel had come in.
Her entry gave him now, as it always did, a conviction that during her absence he hadn't had the least idea as to how splendid she really was. She brought into that little stone hall a wild colour, a strong, fine challenge to anything small, or shackled or conventional.
Her walk had given her cheeks a flame, the black furs round her throat, the black coat falling below her knees, a red feather in her round black fur cap, all these things set off and accentuated the brilliant fire and energy of her eyes.
As she came towards them then so splendid was she that Lizzie was herself for an instant lost in admiration—She lit the hall, she lit the house, she lit the country and the evening sky.
To Roddy, as he looked at her, there stole the spirit of some pagan ancestor telling him that here was his capture, that this fine creature was his to bind, to burden, to chastise, as his lordly pleasure might be.
Rachel, meanwhile, had come in from her walk, unappeased, unsated; the exertion had only succeeded in stirring in her a deeper, more urgent uneasiness. During these last weeks she had known no moment of peace. She had come down to Seddon determined to do her duty to Roddy; she had found that at every turn her duty to Roddy involved more than any determination could force her to give.
She had not known what that last interview with Breton would do to every situation that followed it. It seemed to her then that those last words with him would make her duty plain, they had only made her duty harder.
She could not now act, think, sleep, move but that last kiss, those last words of his, that last vision of him standing, struggling so finely for control—these things pursued her, caught her eyes and held them.
All her duty to Roddy could not hide from her now that she had, at one flaming instant, known what life at its most intense could be. She had felt the fire—how cold to her now these antechambers, these passages so chill, so far from that inner room. Lizzie had then occurred to her as the strongest person she knew. She sent for Lizzie, found instantly that Lizzie disliked her, suspected then that Lizzie knew about Breton.
She knew Lizzie for her enemy.... During the last week also she had detected a new attitude in Roddy; she had felt in him some active growing impatience that quite definitely threatened her safety. That wild lawlessness in Roddy that she had always known, that had produced the Nita episode and others, was now turning towards herself.
But most of all did she fear her thoughts of Breton. She drove him again and again and again from her mind, she called all her strength, mental, moral, and physical, to her aid—always, with a smile, with one glance from his eyes he defeated her.
Day and night he was with her, and yet at her heart she did not even now know whether it were Francis Breton whom she loved, or the life with Roddy, the whole Beaminster scheme of things that she hated. Every day it seemed to her that Lizzie was more watchful, Roddy more impatient, Breton more insistent—but afraid of them all as she was, fear of herself gave her the sharpest terror.
She rang for tea, reproached them because they had waited for her. Then they were—all three of them—silent.
One of the footmen brought in the five o'clock post with the tea and laid Rachel's letters on the table at her side.
Lizzie had leant across the table for something and saw, as though flashed to her by some special designing Providence, that the letter on the top of the pile was in Francis Breton's handwriting.
Rachel, busied with tea, had not looked down. Now she did so; the handwriting rose, as though she had at that instant heard his step beyond the room, and filled first her eyes, then her cheeks, then her heart.
Her eyes met Lizzie's and for the barest moment of time their challenges met. Rachel seemed to hesitate, then, gathering up her letters, looked round at Roddy and said, "I think I'll just go up and take my things off, this fire's hotter than I expected—I'll be back in a moment."
She walked slowly across the room and up the broad staircase.
She did not switch on the light. The evening dusk left the room cool and dim, but by the window, standing so that green shadows met the grey and through them both a pale light trembled before it vanished, she took the letter in her hand, allowing the others to drop and be scattered, white, on the floor at her feet.
She held the envelope; he had written and he had sworn to her that he would not do so—she should have been furious at his broken word, scornful of him for his weakness, indignant at his treating her so lightly.
But she could not think of that now, she could only think of the letter. The envelope was so precious to her that it seemed to return the caress that his fingers gave it and to have of itself some especial individuality. She traced his hand on the address, treasured every line and mark, and then at last tore it open. It was not a very long letter. He had written to her:
"You will despise me for breaking my word. Perhaps you won't read this—but Ican'thelp it, Ican'thelp it, and even if I could I don't think that I would. I know that my writing to you is just another of the rash, foolish, silly weak things that I've gone on doing all my life, but let it be so. I don't pretend to be fine or brave and I have tried all these weeks, tried harder than you can know. I've written to you every day letter after letter, and torn them up—torn them all up. I've fancied that perhaps you've forgotten by now and then I've known that you've not and then I've known that it were better if you did.I love you so madly that—(here he had scratched some words out)—I must tell you that I love you so thatyoucan hear me and not only my walls and furniture and my own self. I'm trying not to be selfish. I know that I'm doing something now that is hard on you, but my silence is eating me, thrusting, killing—I shall be better soon—I will be sensible—soon—I will be——But now, oh, my darling! for a moment at least I have caught you and held you throbbing against me, and put my hands in your hair and stroked your cheeks and kissed your eyes.Don't write to me if you must not, don't be angry with me for this.I will try not to break my word again."
"You will despise me for breaking my word. Perhaps you won't read this—but Ican'thelp it, Ican'thelp it, and even if I could I don't think that I would. I know that my writing to you is just another of the rash, foolish, silly weak things that I've gone on doing all my life, but let it be so. I don't pretend to be fine or brave and I have tried all these weeks, tried harder than you can know. I've written to you every day letter after letter, and torn them up—torn them all up. I've fancied that perhaps you've forgotten by now and then I've known that you've not and then I've known that it were better if you did.
I love you so madly that—(here he had scratched some words out)—I must tell you that I love you so thatyoucan hear me and not only my walls and furniture and my own self. I'm trying not to be selfish. I know that I'm doing something now that is hard on you, but my silence is eating me, thrusting, killing—I shall be better soon—I will be sensible—soon—I will be——
But now, oh, my darling! for a moment at least I have caught you and held you throbbing against me, and put my hands in your hair and stroked your cheeks and kissed your eyes.
Don't write to me if you must not, don't be angry with me for this.
I will try not to break my word again."
As the letter ended so silence came back into the room that had been beating and throbbing with sound.
The pale light had gone, only the Downs were dim grey shapes against a darker sky—the ripple of some water slipping and falling came from the garden.
The letter fell from her hands and lay white with the others on the floor.
She tumbled on to her knees by the window and her heart was the strangest confusion of triumph and fear, exultation and shame.
For a little time she lay there and felt that she was in his arms and that his lips were on her mouth and that her hand pressed his cheek.
She got up, turned on the lights, took off her walking things, brushed her hair and washed her hands, picked up the other letters, but put his in the inside of her dress—then went down to the others.
She found Lizzie sitting alone—"Where's Roddy?"
Lizzie looked up at her. "He had to go and see about a horse or something."
Rachel came down to the table and poured out some tea and then sat smiling at Lizzie; Lizzie smiled back.
"I hope you liked your walk."
"Yes, there's a storm coming up. You've no idea how deeply one gets to care for these Downs—their quiet and their size."
They were silent for a little and then Rachel said:
"Miss Rand—I do hope—that this really has been something of a holiday for you, being here, away from all your London work!"
Lizzie's eyes were sharp—"Yes—It's delightful for me. The first holiday I've had for years...."
"Don't think it impulsive of me—but I've asked you here hoping that we'd get to know one another better. I've wanted to know you, to have you for a friend—for a long time. I've always admired so immensely the way that you've helped Aunt Adela—done things that I could never possibly have done——"
She stopped, but Lizzie said nothing—Then she went on more uncertainly—
"You see, I hoped that perhaps you'd teach me a little order and method. I've married so young—I've hoped...." Then almost desperately—"But you know, Miss Rand, I don't feel as though your coming here has helped us to know one another any better."
The storm had come up and the sky beyond the house was black. Lizzie's face, lighted by the fire, was white, sharp and set—there was no kindness in her eyes.
"Perhaps, Lady Rachel," she said slowly, "I'm not a very emotional kind of woman. If one's worked, as I have, since one was small—had to earn one's living and fight for one's place—it makes one perhaps rather self-reliant and independent of other people—Our lives have been so different, I'm afraid," she added with a little laugh, "that I'm a dried-up, unsatisfactory kind of person—I know that my mother and sister have always found me so."
"Yes," Rachel said, "our liveshavebeen different. Perhaps if mine had been a little more like yours—perhaps ifIhad had to work for my living—I...."
She broke off—a little catch was in her voice—she rose from her chair and went to the window and stood there, with her back to Lizzie, gazing into the darkening garden.
She knew that Lizzie had repulsed her; she was hardly aware why she had made her appeal, but she was now frightened of Lizzie and to her overstrung brain it seemed that she could now see Lizzie and Roddy in league against her.
She heard a step and turning round found Peters, the butler, large, square, of an immense impassivity.
"Please, my lady, might I speak to you a moment?"
She went out.
Lizzie, left in the darkening room, could think now only of the letter. The sight of that handwriting had stirred in her passions that she had never before imagined as hers—that first pathetic appeal of Roddy and then the sight of that letter!
Her brain, working feverishly, showed her the words that that letter would contain—the passion, the passion! There in the very face of her husband, Rachel was receiving letters from her lover, letters that she could not wait a moment to read, but must go instantly and openthem.
This hour brought to a crisis Lizzie's agony. Had such a letter been written to her!
She tortured herself now with the picture of him as he sat there in his room in Saxton Square writing it! It appeared to her now as though they two—there in the very throne of their triumphant love—had plotted this insult, this snap of the fingers, to show her, Lizzie Rand, how desolate, how lonely, how neglected and unwanted she was!
That then, after this, Rachel should appeal to her for friendship! The cruel insult of it.
She felt as she heard the fast drops of rain lash the window-frames, that no revenge that she could secure would satisfy her thirst for it.
Roddy, meanwhile, had gone out to the stables. That little talk with Lizzie had determined a resolution that had been growing now within him for many weeks.
That little woman, with her assured air and neat little ways, knew what she was about—knew moreover what others were about. She had watched and had given him the tip—He would take it.
Roddy's mind was of far too simple an order to admit of more than one point of view at a time. He saw Rachel now as a dog or horse, of whom he was very fond, who needed, nevertheless, stern discipline. He wondered now how it was that he had allowed himself for so long to remain indecisive.
"London muddles a feller," he concluded; "the country's the place for clear thinkin'."
He looked at his horses with great satisfaction, they were in splendid condition—he had never known them better. He also was in splendid condition—never been better.
As he walked away from the stables and turned towards the end of the garden bounded by the gryphons and the stone gate, he felt his body at its most supreme perfection. He thought, on that afternoon, that he was strong enough for anything, and perhaps never before in his life had he been so conscious of the glories of physical things; of all that it meant to have fine muscles and a strong heart and lungs of the best and thews and sinews as good as "any feller's."
"I'm strong enough for anythin'——" He turned back his arm and felt his muscle. He cocked his head with a little conceited gesture of satisfaction—"I was gettin' a bit fat in London—got rid of all that."
To walk, to ride, to fight, to swim, to eat and sleep, to love women and drink strong drink! God! what a world!
And then, beyond it all, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel! He had her now—she should be under his hand, she should be his as she had never been since the first week of their marriage.
"No more nonsense, by God!" he said triumphantly to himself—"no more nonsense."
He leaned on the stone gate and looked out over the fields—The gryphons regarded him benevolently.
He was conscious, as he stood there, of the Duchess—what was the old lady doing? He'd like to see her. He felt more in sympathy with her than he had been for a long time past. "She's right after all. You've got to stand up and run people. No use just lettin' them handle you."
There was a storm coming up. The white lights of the higher sky were being closed down by black blocks of cloud that spread, from one to another, merging far on the horizon above the hills into driving lines of rain. The white chalk hollows above Lewes stood out sharp and clear; the dark green of the fields was now a dull grey, the hedges were dark and a thin stream that cut the flat surface of the plain was black like ink.
Roddy welcomed the storm. Had he been superstitious the physical energy that now pervaded him might have frightened him. He felt as though with one raising of his arm he could hold up those black clouds and keep them off. The rain and the wind had not more force than he—
Life was a vast pæan of strength—"The weak must go"—He was, at this hour, Lord of Creation.
As he went back to the house the rain met him and whipped his cheek.
"By Gad, I'd like to find the old lady sittin' in the house, waitin' for a chat," he thought.
When he came down to dinner, he came as one who rules the world. That simple clear light was in his eyes that was always there when he had found the solution to something that perplexed him. His expression too was one that belonged to Rachel's earlier experience of him, one that she had not seen on his face for a long time past. His strong but rather stupid mouth had somewhere in its corners the suspicion of a smile. His chin stuck out rather obstinately—the light in the eyes, the smile, the set lips, these things revealed the old Roddy.
After dinner Lizzie went off to her room.
For a while Roddy and Rachel sat there—She read some book, her eyes often leaving the page and staring into the fire.
Then she got up and said good night. She came over and bent down and kissed him. He caught her arm and held her.
"I say, old girl, it's time we had the same room again—much more convenient." He heard her catch her breath and felt her tremble. She tried to draw her arm away, but he held her.
"Oh! but soon, Roddy—Yes—but not just now—I——"
"Yes—now. I'll see about it to-morrow." She stepped back from him, dragging herself away, and then put her hand to her forehead with a desperate gesture.
"No, no—not——"
He got up and smiling, swaying a little, faced her—
"Yes—I've made up my mind—all this business has got to come to an end—Been goin' long enough."
"What business?"
"Seein' nothing of you—nothing from mornin' till night. You know, old girl, it isn't fair—if we didn't care about one another——"
"Yes, I know—but don't let's discuss it to-night. I'm tired, headachy—this storm——"
He said nothing—She looked at him and at the steady stare in his eyes and the smile at his mouth turned away.
She moved towards the door—He said nothing, but his eyes followed her.
"Good night," she said, turning round to him—but he still said nothing, only stood there very square and set.
For a long time he sat, looking into the fire—Then he went up to his room and very slowly undressed. Afterwards he came out, carefully closing the door behind him, then, in dressing-gown and pyjamas, went down the passage to Rachel's door.
The house was very still, but the storm was raging and the boughs of some tree hit, with fierce protesting taps, a window at the passage-end.
He knocked at her door, waited, then heard her ask who was there.
"It's I, Roddy," he said. There was a pause, then the door was opened. He came in and stood in the doorway. Rachel was sitting up in bed, her face very white, her eyes fixed on him.
"I'm sleepin' here to-night, Rachel," he said.
Her voice was a whisper—"No, Roddy—no—not—not——"
"Yes," he said firmly.
"No, not to-night."
"Yes—to-night—now."
He walked carefully across the room, took off his dressing-gown, and hung it over a chair. He looked about the room.
"Too much light"—he said and, going to the door, switched off all the lights save the one above the bed.