"Each in the crypt would cry,'But one freezes here! and why?'When a heart, as chill,'At my own would thrillBack to life, and its fires out-fly?'Heart, shall we live or die?The rest ... settle by-and-by!'"Robert Browning.
"Each in the crypt would cry,'But one freezes here! and why?'When a heart, as chill,'At my own would thrillBack to life, and its fires out-fly?'Heart, shall we live or die?The rest ... settle by-and-by!'"
Robert Browning.
Rachel at Seddon Court watched, from her window, that first fallen snow.
Seddon Court is about three miles from the town of Lewes and lies, tucked and cornered, under the very brow of the Downs. It is a grey little house, old and stalwart, with a courtyard and two towers. The towers are Norman; the rest of the house is Tudor.
Beyond the actual building there are gardens that run to the very foot of the Downs, with only a patch and an old stone wall intervening. Above the house, day and night, year after year, the Downs are bending; everything, beneath their steady solemn gaze, is small and restless; as the colours are flung by the sun across their green sprawling limbs the house, at their feet, catches their reflected smile and, when the sun is gone and the winds blow, cowers beneath their frown; everything in that house is conscious of their presence.
Rachel had been at Seddon Court for a month and now, at the window of her writing-room, looking across the garden, up into their dark shadows, she wondered at their indifference and monotony. Anyone who had known her before her marriage would be struck instantly, on seeing her now, by a change in her.
Her whole attitude to the world, during her first season in London, had been an attitude of wonder, of expectation, of the uncertainty that comes from expectation.
With that expectation were also alarm, distrust, and it was only when some sudden incident or person called happiness into her face that that distrust vanished.
Now she was older, that hesitation and awkwardness were gone, but with their departure had vanished, too, much of her honesty. Her dark eyes were as sincere as they had ever been, but to anyone who had known her before her attitude now was assumed. Nothing might catch her unprepared, but what experiences were they that had taught her the need for armour?
Sitting in her room looking on to a lawn that would soon be white and to Downs obscured already by the thick tumbling snow, she knew that she was unhappy, disappointed, even alarmed. Suddenly to-day the uneasiness that had been gathering before her throughout the last weeks assumed, on this afternoon, the definite tangibility of a challenge.
"What's the matter—with me, with everything?... What's happened?"
Her room, dark green and white, had no pictures, but a long low book-case with grave handsome books, an edition of someone in red with white paper labels and another edition of someone else in dark blue and another in gold and brown, an old French gilt mirror, square, with a reflection of the garden and the foot of the Downs in it, an old Queen Anne rosewood writing-table, some Queen Anne chairs, a gate-legged table—a very cool, quiet room.
At her feet with his head resting on her shoe there lay a dog. This dog about a fortnight ago she had found in a field near the house with a kettle tied on to his tail, and his body a confused catastrophe of mud and blood.
She had carried him home; it had needed some courage to introduce him into the household, for Roddy possessed many dogs all of the finest breeds, and this was a mongrel who defied description. He was very short and shaggy and stumpy. He was much too large for a Yorkshire terrier and yet that was undoubtedly his derivation. There was something of a sheep-dog in him and something of a Skye; his hair fell all over his face and, when you could see them, his eyes were brown. His nose was like a wet blackberry and his ears were long and full of emotion; when he ran his short tail, on which the hairs were arranged like branches on a Christmas tree, stuck up into the air and he resembled a rabbit.
In the confusion of the moment Rachel had called him Jacob, because she thought that Jacob was, in the Bible, the "hairy one".... After all, youcouldnot call a dog Esau.
Yes, to retain him had needed courage. Thinking of Roddy's attitude to the dog brought so many other attendant thoughts in its train. Roddy in his devotion to animals (and oh! hewasdevoted), had no room for those that were not of the aristocracy.
Concerning dogs who were mongrels he was kind but thought them much better dead. Unkind he would never be, but the way in which he ignored Jacob was worse than any unkindness.
Jacob, sensitive perhaps from early suffering, knew this and avoided Roddy, ran out of the room when he came into it, showed in every way that he must not expect to rank with the other dogs.
Very characteristic this attitude of Roddy, but very characteristic, too, the affection that Jacob was now receiving from his mistress. There was something that Jacob drew from Rachel that none of the fine, noble dogs of the house was able to secure.... Why?... What, again, was the matter? Why was Rachel unhappy?
Rachel was unhappy, and the answer came quite clearly to her as the room was darkened by the great storm of snow now falling over the Downs and the garden, because marriage with Roddy had not lessened in any way that uneasy disquiet that had stirred, without pause, beneath her life before her marriage; that uneasiness had, indeed, during the last three months, increased....
Was this her fault or Roddy's?
Attacked now by a scrutiny that refused dismissal she delivered herself up to the investigation of these months of her married life.
She knew that she had only once been happy since her marriage—that was on the first evening, when, the noise and clamour of the London wedding having died away, she had walked with Roddy in the peace of the Massiter garden (Lady Massiter had lent her house for the first weeks of the honeymoon), had felt his arm about her, had believed that there had really come to her that comfort and safety for which she longed.
After that there had followed a fortnight of great unreality—the strangest excitement, the most adventurous wonders, but a wonder and excitement that were from herself, the real Rachel Beaminster, most absolutely removed. It was as though she had watched closely but detached the experiences of some other girl. Roddy had, during those times, been a most ardent and passionate lover; she had tried to respond and had hidden, as best she could, her failure.
Then, suddenly, with the time of their going abroad, passion had left him; it had left him as swiftly as the passing of wind over a hill. It was there—it was gone.
But he remained the perfect husband. His kindness, his charm, his simplicity, his affection for her—an affection that could never for an instant be doubted—these things had delighted her. He was now the friend, the strong reliant companion that she had wanted him to be. During those first weeks in Italy and Greece happiness might have come to her had she not been stirred by her remembrance of the earlier weeks. The passion that had been in him, although it had not touched her, now in retrospect lit fires for her imagination. Instantly back to her had come the whole disquiet and unrest. The things that Roddy called from her now, she suddenly discovered with a great shrinking alarm, were all the Beaminster things. All the true emotions, qualities, traditions that made up her secret life were roused in her by their own inherent vitality, never by his evocation of them.Hewas Beaminster—Roddy was Beaminster. With his kindness and courtesy his eyes saw the world with the eyes of his ancestors, his tongue spoke the language that had in it no sincerity, his heart wished for all the ceremonies and lies that the Beaminster had believed in since the beginning of time.
But her discovery did not lead her much further. She had, in her heart of hearts, always known that Roddy was a Beaminster. Why then had she married him? She had married him because she had been untrue to herself, because she had herself encouraged the Beaminster blood in her to blind her eyes, because she had desired deceit rather than truth, because she had wanted the comfort that the man could give her rather than the man himself, because she had muffled and stifled and silenced that Power in her—the Power that made her restless and unquiet; the Power that was as hostile to the Beaminster faith as heaven is to hell—
And yet this vehemence of explanation did not altogether explain Roddy. Roddy was notsimplya Beaminster like Uncle John or Uncle Richard or Aunt Adela. There was an elemental direct emotion in Roddy that was exactly opposed to Beaminster conventionality.
These two elements in him puzzled and even frightened her. His attitude during that first fortnight of their marriage she saw, again and again, in lesser degrees during their time abroad. She had seen him so primitive in his joy and excitement over places and people and moments—colour, food, storms, towns, passers-by, anything—that she had been astounded by the force of it. Emotions swept over him and were gone, but, whilst they were there, she knew that she counted to him for nothing. Strangest of ironies that when he was least a Beaminster, then was she farthest from him—strangest of ironies that her link with him should be the Beaminster in him.
She was frightened of his primitive passions. She had in her the instinct that one day they would touch his relationship to her and that that contact would rouse in her the full tide of the unhappiness of which she was now so conscious, and that then ... what might not happen?...
And yet behind it all she felt a strange, almost pathetic satisfaction because he, after all, had in him, just as she had, his two natures at war. There at least they found some common link; her eagerness to find some link was evidence enough of the affection she had for him.
After their return to England the wilder nature in him had extended and broadened. Everything to do with Seddon Court drew it out of him; his passion for the place was wonderful to witness. Every stone of the little grey building was a jewel in his eyes; the servants, the cattle, the horses, the dogs, the flowers, the villagers, even the townspeople of Lewes drew sentiment from him.
"My old place," he would say, cuddling it to himself; he was never "sloppy" about it, but direct and simple and straightforward. It was obviouslythegreat emotion above all other emotions.
He was most anxious that Rachel should share this with him, and during her first weeks there she thought that she would do so. Then the disquiet in her spread to the place. The house spread itself out before her now as the lure that had from the beginning tempted her.
"It was for this place and quiet that you were false to yourself——"
Roddy felt that she did not share his enthusiasm, and their difficulty over this was exactly their difficulty over everything else; simply that Roddy was the least eloquent person in the world. He could explain nothing whatever of the vague unhappiness or dissatisfaction at his heart. Rachelcouldhave explained a great many things, but Roddy, she felt, would only look at her in his kind puzzled way and wonder why she couldn't take things as they were.
Perhaps during these last weeks he had himself felt that all was not well. Rachel thought that sometimes now through, all his kindness she detected a floating, wistful speculation on his part as to whether she were happy.
Hewantedher to be happy—most tremendously he wanted it—and did she explain to him that she was not happy because she was, now, for ever attended by a sense of her own disloyalty to all that was best in her, he would have suggested a doctor or have made her a present.
Had she been some stranger and had the case been presented to him he would have probably dismissed it by saying that "having made her bed she must lie on it." "After all, she married the feller—Well then, that'sherlook-out."
So, perhaps, if this had been simply her trouble she would have done her bravest best to endeavour.
But there was more behind it all—far, far more.
She saw her marriage to Roddy, her struggling for self-respect, her present morbid introspection as a stage in what was now developing into a duel between herself and her grandmother.
Her grandmother had planned this marriage. Her grandmother was determined to destroy the honesty and truth in her and had chosen a Beaminster for her agent and now waited happy for the death of Rachel's soul.
But Rachel's soul should not so readily die! During all these weeks the thought of her grandmother had been continually with her. How she hated her, and with what fervour did Rachel return that hatred!
There was no melodrama in this hatred. When she had been a very little girl Rachel had somehow believed that her grandmother had been very cruel to her mother and father—She had hated her for that. Then she had seen that her grandmother disliked her and wished to tease her—so she had hated her for that also.
Her older amplification of this into principles and instincts had not altered the original vehemence of the passion, it had only given it grown-up reasons for its existence.
And so, thinking of her grandmother, she thought also of Francis Breton.
Some weeks ago she had received a letter from him and that letter was now lying in the desk of her writing-table.
She had thought that her marriage would have snapped her interest in her cousin because it would have broken that hostility with her grandmother upon which her relationship with her cousin so largely depended. But now when she saw that marriage had only intensified her hostility to the Duchess, so therefore it had intensified her perception of Breton. His letter had aroused in her, just as contact with him aroused in her, everything in her that now, for her own peace of mind, she should keep at bay. His letter had amounted to this:
"You are a rebel as I am a rebel. We have said very little, but you have recognized in me the things that I have recognized in you. You have escaped through marriage, but for me there is no escape, and if you would, for the sake of those things that we have in common, keep me from going utterly under, then you must help me—as only you can."
He did not say this nor anything at all like this. He only, very quietly, congratulated her on her marriage, hoped that she would be very happy, said that London was a little desolate and difficult, hoped that she would not think more harshly of him than she could help, and, at the very end, told her that meeting her made him feel that he was not entirely abandoned by everybody.
It was the letter of a weak man and she knew it, but it was the letter of a man who was weak exactly in the places where she also failed. And this, more than anything else, moved her.
They two alone, it seemed, were struggling to keep their feet in a world that did not need them. It had been, through these months, Rachel's sharpest unhappiness, the consciousness that Roddy and indeed everything at Seddon Court could get on so very well without her.
Nobody in London needed her—nobody here needed her. If you accepted the Beaminster doctrine, then no wife would demand more from a husband than Roddy gave Rachel—but was this not simply another proof that Rachel had made a Beaminster marriage?
Rachel had been flung straight from the schoolroom into marriage and the sensitive agonizing cry of a child to be loved by somebody—the cry that had always been so urgent in her—was urgent still.
It was exactly this comfortable sense of being a help that Roddy had not given her. Now this letter gave it to her.
But if this letter was an appeal, just as the mongrel Jacob, now at her feet, was an appeal, on the part of someone wounded and outcast, to her pity, so also was it an invitation to rebellion.
It was also a temptation to deceit and, did she answer the letter, she encouraged Breton to write again; she opened up not only a new relationship to him, but also a new relationship to all the forces that were most hostile to Roddy and her married happiness. May Eversley had once said to her: "Sit down and see, without any exaggeration or false colouring, what you've got. Take away, ruthlessly, anything that you imagine that you've got but haven't. Take away ruthlessly everything that you imagine that you would like to have but are not confident of securing—See what's happened to you in the past—Take away ruthlessly any sentimental repentances or sloppy regrets, but learn quite resolutely from your ugly mistakes."
Long ago she had written this down—now was the first necessity for applying it.
The doctrine of Truth—Truth to Oneself, the one thing that mattered. She knew that the pursuit of Truth was to her, and to every rebel against the Beaminsters, the restive Tiger. In marrying Roddy she had been untrue to herself. In writing to Breton she would be true to herself but untrue to Roddy. She was fond of Roddy although she did not love him, nor did he, really, love her. The anxiety on both their parts to avoid hurting one another was proof enough of that, she thought.
There then was the whole situation. As she felt Jacob's warm head against her foot a great agitation of loneliness and dismay and helplessness swept over her.
Tears were in her throat and eyes—Then with a strong disdain she pushed it all from her. She was growing morbid, losing her sense of humour and proportion. Here in the house there was Nita Raseley staying; in the country there were people to be called upon, to be invited, to be interested in, there was Roddy, a perfect husband.
She strangled that other Rachel, there in her room. "Now you're dead," she felt, and seemed to fling a lifeless, crumpled figure out into the snow—
She looked at herself in the glass.
"You're not Rachel Beaminster now—you're Rachel Seddon. Act accordingly and don't whine—" She washed her face and brushed her hair, and combed Jacob's hair out of his eyes, and then, determined to be sensible and cheerful and civilized, went down to tea.
The room called the Library was the pleasantest room in the house; an old, long, low-ceilinged room with windows that stretched from floor to ceiling, with a large stone open fireplace and book-cases running from end to end and old sporting prints above them.
Before the great fireplace the tea was waiting and there also was Nita Raseley, very charming and fresh and pink in the face and golden in the hair. It was strange that Nita Raseley should have been their first guest since their marriage, because Rachel, most certainly, did not like her; but, after that meeting at the Massiters' the girl had flung a passionate and incoherent correspondence upon Rachel and had ended by practically inviting herself.
Roddy liked her; Rachel knew that—so perhaps after all it had been a good thing to have her there. Rachel's dislike of her was founded on a complete distrust. "She's all wrong and insincere and beastly. I'll never have her here again...." And yet, really, Miss Raseley had behaved herself, had been most quiet and decorous andmostaffectionate.
The electric light was delicately shaded, the curtains were drawn, outside was the storm, here cosiness and shining comfort.
"Oh!darlingRachel—Iamso glad you've come—I do so want tea——"
"Where's Roddy?"
"Just come in—He'll be here in a minute——"
Rachel came over to the fire and was busy over the tea-table.
"Well, Nita, what have you been at all the afternoon?"
"Oh! that silly old book. Rachel, howcouldyou tell me——"
"What book?"
"Oh!youknow—you lent it me. Something like drinking—youknow. By that man Westcott—sucha silly name."
"The Vines!—Didn't you like it?"
"Like it! My dear Rachel, why, they go on for pages about each other's feelings and nothing happens and I'm sure it's most unwholesome. They're all so unhappy and always hating one another. I like books to be cheerful and about people one knows—don't you?"
"Well, Nita dear, it's a good thing we don't all like the same things, isn't it? Sugar?"
"Yes, dear, you know—lots—Darling, have you got a headache? Youdolook rotten—youdoreally."
Rachel knew that she must keep an especial guard to-day: she was irritable, out of sorts. She would have liked immensely to send Nita to have her tea in the nursery, were there one.
"No, I'm all right. But I wanted to get out and this storm stopped me."
"You do look dicky! Oh! what do you think! Roddy's taking us over to Hawes to-morrow to lunch if the weather's anything like decent. He's just fixed it up—sent a wire——"
"To-morrow? ButIcan't.... He knows. I've got Miss Crale coming here——"
"Only old Miss Crale? Put her off——"
"I can't possibly—I've put her off once before. She wants to talk about her Soldiers' Institute place—" Then Rachel added more slowly, "But Roddy knew——"
"Oh! he said you'd got some silly old engagement, but heknewyou'd put it off!"
"He knows I can't. He was talking about it this morning. He knew how——" Then she stopped. She was not going to show Nita Raseley that she minded anything.
But Roddy had always said that they would go over together to Hawes—one of the loveliest old places in the world—He had always promised....
She knew perfectly well what had occurred. Nita had caught Roddy and clung on to him and persuaded him—Roddy was such a boy—But she was hurt and she despised herself for it.
"Oh," she said, laughing. "That's all right. You two must just go over together—that's all! I'll go another time——"
"Well, you see, Roddydidsend a wire and the Rockingtons wouldhatebeing put off at the last moment.... Oh! You beastly dog! He's been licking my shoe, Rachel. Really he oughtn't to, ought he? So funny of you, Rachel, when he'ssucha mongrel and Roddy's got such lovely darlings—Of course Jacob's a dear, but heisrather absurd to look at——"
Jacob glanced at her, shook his ears and then, hearing a step that he knew, retired, instantly, under a sofa in a far corner of the room.
Roddy came in and stood for a moment laughing across at them. He was in an old tweed suit with a soft collar and his face was brick-red; looking at him as he stood there, the absolute type of health and strength and cleanly vigour, Rachel wondered why she felt irritable. She certainly was out of sorts.
"Hullo, you two," Roddy said, "you do look cosy! Talkin' secrets, or will you put up with a man?"
"Oh!Roddy," said Nita Raseley, "why, ofcourse. Rachel's only just come down, hasn't been any time for secrets. Come and get warm."
Room was made for him. Rachel smiled at him as she gave him his tea. "Well, Roddy, what haveyoubeen doing? I've been trying to write letters and Nita's been abusing a novel I lent her. I hope you've been better employed——"
"I've been botherin' around with Nugent over those two horses he bought last week. And—oh! I say, Rachel, you'll come over to Hawes to-morrow, won't you?"
"You know I can't. I've got Miss Crale coming to luncheon——"
"Oh, I say! Put her off——"
"Can't—I've put her off before and she doesn't deserve to be badly treated——"
"Oh! dash it! But I've gone and wired. The Rockingtons won't like my changin'——"
"Well, don't change—you and Nita go over——"
"No, but you know we'd always arranged to go over together. You see, I felt sure you'd put old Miss Crale on to another day.Shewon't mind——"
"No, Roddy, thank you. That's not fair on her. It can't be helped. You go over with Nita."
Then there occurred between them one of those little situations that were now so frequent. Rachel was hurt, but was determined to show nothing; Roddy knew that she was hurt, but was quite unable to improve relations, partly because he had no words, partly because "a feller looks such a fool tryin' to explain," partly because there was in him a quality of sullen obstinacy that was mingled, most strangely, with his kindness and sentiment.
He was absolutely ready to fling Nita and the Rockingtons into limbo, but he was quite unable to set about such a business.
Moreover now there was Nita Raseley—It was at this moment that Jacob, having fought in the dark recesses of the sofa between his dislike of Roddy and his love of tea, declared for his stomach and walked slowly, and with the dignity required by the presence of an enemy, across the room.
"Hullo! there's the mongrel—" Roddy endeavoured to cover earlier awkwardness by easy laughter, but the laughter was not easy and his attempt to pat Jacob was frustrated by a sidling movement on the dog's part.
Then Nita Raseley laughed.
Roddy now thought that women were damnable, that his wife had no right to drag a mongrel like that about with her, that he'd show them if they laughed at him, and that if Rachel couldn't come to-morrow, why then, she must just lump it—The last thought of all was that Rachel was always finding a grievance in something.
He waited a little while, talked in a stiff and unnatural fashion and then went.
"This weatherisvery trying, dear, isn't it?" said Nita. "If I were you I really would go and lie down. You do looksoseedy!"
"I think I will," said Rachel.
As she went slowly upstairs to her room she knew that she would answer Francis Breton's letter.
"He began to love her so soon, as he perceived that she was passing out of his control."Jane Austen.
"He began to love her so soon, as he perceived that she was passing out of his control."
Jane Austen.
Next morning Rachel wrote the following letter to Francis Breton:
"Dear Mr. Breton,It was good of you to write to me and I must apologize for allowing your letter to remain so long unanswered, but, on my return from abroad, there were naturally a great many things to do and a great many people to see.My husband and I enjoyed our time abroad immensely: it was my first visit to Greece and Italy and I loved every bit of it—Athens is to me more wonderful than now, here so snugly in England, seems possible; Florence and Rome very beautiful of course but spoilt, don't you think, by tourists and the modern Italian who has learnt American habits—How is London? I've not yet had a good look at it since I came back, but we shall be coming up soon, I expect, and have taken a flat in Elliston Square, between Portland Place and Byranston Square.Your letter sounds a little dismal; it is kind of you to say that I can help you, but, indeed, if writing to me helps do so. It is only fair to say that at present my husband shares the family point of view and, so long as that is so, I cannot ask you to come and see me, but I hope that soon he will see the whole affair more sensibly.Yours very sincerely,Rachel Seddon."
"Dear Mr. Breton,
It was good of you to write to me and I must apologize for allowing your letter to remain so long unanswered, but, on my return from abroad, there were naturally a great many things to do and a great many people to see.
My husband and I enjoyed our time abroad immensely: it was my first visit to Greece and Italy and I loved every bit of it—Athens is to me more wonderful than now, here so snugly in England, seems possible; Florence and Rome very beautiful of course but spoilt, don't you think, by tourists and the modern Italian who has learnt American habits—
How is London? I've not yet had a good look at it since I came back, but we shall be coming up soon, I expect, and have taken a flat in Elliston Square, between Portland Place and Byranston Square.
Your letter sounds a little dismal; it is kind of you to say that I can help you, but, indeed, if writing to me helps do so. It is only fair to say that at present my husband shares the family point of view and, so long as that is so, I cannot ask you to come and see me, but I hope that soon he will see the whole affair more sensibly.
Yours very sincerely,
Rachel Seddon."
She was not proud of this letter when she read it. She whose impulse was for truth seemed to be flung, at every turn, into direct dishonesty. No, she would not seize on the excuse of some vague tyrannical fate.
She was herself her own agent in this affair and she bitterly, from her heart, condemned herself ... and yet, strangely, this letter to Breton seemed, in obedience to some inward impulse, her most honest action since her marriage.
Yet why did she not go to Roddy now and say to him that she had written to Breton and was determined to act as his friend?
Roddy would forbid any further relationship; she knew that. And then?...
No, she could not see beyond—
She banished the letter from her mind, saw the two of them off to Hawes, and entertained Miss Crale to luncheon. Miss Crale was a broad and shapeless old maid with huge boots, a bass voice and a moustache. She was behind most of the charitable affairs in the county, was popular everywhere, and the most energetic character Rachel had ever met—
Rachel liked her and she liked Rachel, and after she had departed, breathless and red-faced, on some further visit concerned with some further charity, Rachel felt braced and invigorated and happier than she had been for many weeks.
It was a day of frosted blue and the sun flashed fire on to the great field of snow that stretched from sky to sky. The Downs lay humped against the blue and the whole world was frozen into silence.
The only sounds were the soft stir the snow, falling from branches or walls, made and the sharp cries of some children playing in a field near at hand.
When Miss Crale had gone Rachel went off for a walk. Jacob was with her. She struck up the winding path on to the Downs. The snow was hard and yielded a pleasant friendly crunch beneath her feet. Shadows that were dark and yet were filled with colour lay across the snow; beneath her a white valley against which trees and buildings seemed little wooden toys and, in the far distance, hills rising, cut, with their iridescent glow, the blue sky.
No clouds; no movement; no sound: and soon the sun would be golden and then hard and red, and then across all the snow pink shadows would creep and the evening stars would burn—
In the heart of the snow, a valley between the shoulders of the Downs, a black clump of trees clustered; she could see, now, Seddon Court like a grey box at her feet, very tiny and breathing rest and peace.
Some of her trouble slipped from her under this clear sky and in this sharp air; from these quiet hills she saw all her introspection as an evil thing, morbid, cowardly; from here it seemed to her that her trouble with Roddy had been because he did not know what introspection meant and could not understand the appeals that she made to him.
But was it not unfair that men should have so many things that could take the place of love? For Roddy there were a thousand emotions to give meaning to life: for Rachel all experience seemed to come to her only through people and her relations with people.
Soon the valley and the little toy houses were behind her and she had only the white rise and fall of the hill on every side. Dropped into a hollow was a little dark deserted house with bare trees about it; otherwise there was no dwelling-place to be seen.
This absence of human life suddenly drew up before her, as sharply and with as living an actuality as though some mirage had cast it there—London—
Three months in the country had flung the London that she knew into a vivid perspective that was quite novel to her. By the London that she knew she did not mean the London of parties and theatre, the London of Nita and her kind, but rather the actual London of the streets and squares and fountain and parks and dusty plane trees and tinkling organ-grinders.
She felt now quite a thrill of excitement to think that, in another week or two, she would be back in it all and would see all the lamps coming out and the jingling cabs and the heavy lumbering omnibuses, and that she would hear again the sharp crying of the newspaper boys and the ringing of church bells and the thud of the horses down the Row and the hum of voices above the orchestra during the intervals of some play.
She thought of Portland Place and the park and the Round Church and the little shops and Oxford Circus and the buses tumbling down Regent Street into Piccadilly and then tumbling down again into Pall Mall. From Portland Place she seemed to look down over the whole of London and to see it like a jewel, with its glow dazzling the night sky—
She knew now that although she hated her grandmother she did not hate the Portland Place house and she was glad that Roddy had taken a flat near there. No other part of London would ever be quite the same to her as that was: it would always be home to her more than any other place in the world, with its space and air and sense of life crowding around it.
And, as she walked, she was fired with the desire to have some real active share in the London life; not in the sham life of pleasure and entertainment, but to be working, as all kinds of men must be working, with London behind them, influencing them, sometimes depressing them, sometimes exalting them, always moving within them.
That was a fine ambition to work towards a greater London, a greater, finer, truer world, and whether you were politician or artist or journalist or merchant or novelist or clerk or philanthropist, still by your working honestly you would deserve your place in that company.
If she could have some share in such things, then her miserable doubts and forebodings would vanish in a vision too bright and glorious to contain them—
As she walked her face glowed and her body moved as though it could continue thus, swinging through the clear air, for all time.
She determined that on this very evening she would tell Roddy about Breton. Whatever might be the result life in the future should be clear of Beaminster confusions. She would even ask Roddy to help her about Breton, to influence, perhaps, her grandmother with regard to him—
Then, in a few days, Nita Raseley would be gone, and, afterwards, she would discipline all her wit and energy towards establishing a fine relationship with Roddy.
Something had, throughout all these months, been wrong; she would discover where that wrong lay—She would curb her own impatience, would fling herself into his interests, would learn the things that Roddy wanted from her and give them to him—
Then, as the sun sank lower and the yellow shadows crept up the sky, she felt desolate and lonely. Vigour left her—She had descended now into the valley and had come to the deserted house with the stark frowning trees. This place, she had heard, had in the eighteenth century been a private mad-house, and now behind its darkened windows she could have fancied shapes and down the wind the echo of voices.
She fought with all her might against a great tide of loneliness that was now sweeping up about her. There had always been so many people around her and yet she had always been lonely. Even May and Dr. Christopher had not helped her there. She had a sense now of all the people in all the world who were waiting for the other people who could understand them; they were always missing one another, so near sometimes, sometimes touching, and then, after all, going through life alone.
Those were the people with feelings and emotions—and as for the people without them, of what use was life tothem?
Either way, except for the fortunate way, Life was a futile business.
Then, climbing up from that sinister little valley and seeing that the sky had turned to violet and that the evening star was there burning as she had known that it would, she laughed at her morbidity.
She shook herself free from it, thought once more of the things that she would do with Roddy, thought of London and the fun that she would have there, thought of Christopher and Uncle John and even Aunt Adela; then, as she turned down the little crooked path towards the house, she thought again of her cousin; she would work without ceasing to bring him back into the family.
That, at any rate, was work upon which she might commence on her return to London, and as she clicked the little wicket-gate, a side-entrance to the garden, behind her, she was almost happy again.
The dusk was deepening into darkness, the moon had not yet risen above the hill. She had entered the garden on the further side of the house and passed through a long laurel path, her feet silenced by the snow.
Jacob had stayed, some way behind. She could see the white lawn and beyond it the lighted house; she was about to step out of the dark shadow of the laurels when she found, just in front of her, almost touching her, hidden by the black depth of the trees, two figures.
She was upon them with a startled cry. A man had his arms about a woman; bending back a little he had pulled her forward against him and was kissing her so fiercely that her hands were buried deep in his coat to steady herself.
Rachel knew them instantly; they were her husband and Nita Raseley—
She stepped past them on to the lawn and at that instant they were conscious of her—
Then she walked swiftly into the house.
She went up to her bedroom. No thought came to her, her mind was blank, but she noticed little things, put some of the silver things on her dressing-table in order, pulled her blind a little lower, moved to the fire and pushed the logs into a blaze. She sat there for a long, long time.
When the dressing-bell echoed through the rooms she was still sitting there, thinking nothing—
Her maid came to her; she told her the dress that she would wear and after a while sat staring into her mirror whilst her hair was brushed.
Lucy said, "The snow's begun again, my lady. Coming down fast——"
Then some absence of light in her mistress's eyes frightened her and she said no more.
Someone knocked on the door: a note for her ladyship. Rachel read it:
"It was all a horrible,horriblemistake. Darling Rachel, youknowit was only fun—just nothing at all. Shall I come and explain? If you'd rather not see me just now say so and I shallquiteunderstand. I've been so upset that I think I won't come down to dinner, if it isn'ttoomuch bother having just a little sent up to me. It was allsucha silly mistake, as you'll see when we've explained.Your lovingNita."
"It was all a horrible,horriblemistake. Darling Rachel, youknowit was only fun—just nothing at all. Shall I come and explain? If you'd rather not see me just now say so and I shallquiteunderstand. I've been so upset that I think I won't come down to dinner, if it isn'ttoomuch bother having just a little sent up to me. It was allsucha silly mistake, as you'll see when we've explained.
Your loving
Nita."
When she came to "we" Rachel coloured a little. Then she said, "Lucy, bring me the local railway-guide. In my writing-room."
Lucy brought it to her. Then she wrote:
"Dear Nita,No explanations necessary. There is a good train up to town from Hawes at 9.30 to-morrow morning.Yours,Rachel Seddon."
"Dear Nita,
No explanations necessary. There is a good train up to town from Hawes at 9.30 to-morrow morning.
Yours,
Rachel Seddon."
"I want this taken to Miss Raseley, Lucy—now. She's not very well, so ask Haddon to see that dinner is sent up to her room, please."
Then she finished dressing and went down to Roddy.
He had perhaps expected that she would not come down, but there was no opportunity given them for speech because the butler announcing dinner followed her into the library. They went in.
He sat opposite her, looking ashamed, with his eyes lowered, and the red coming and going in his sunburned cheeks.
They talked for the sake of the servants, and she asked him whether Hawes had been as lovely as ever and whether Lady Rockington's nerves were better, and how their youngest boy (delicate from his birth) was now.
Whilst she spoke her brain was turning, turning like a wheel; could she only, for five minutes, think clearly, then might much after disaster be avoided. She knew that in the conversation that was to come Roddy would follow her lead and that it would be she who would be responsible for all consequences.
She knew that and yet she could not force her brain to be clear nor foresee what the end of it all was to be.
The dessert and the wine came at last and she went—
"I'll be in the library, Roddy," she said.
He gave her a quarter of an hour, and in that pause, with the house quite silent all about her and the fire crackling and the lights softly shining, she strove to discipline her mind.
She had known as soon as she had seen them there that the most awful element in it was that this had in no way altered the earlier case—it merely precipitated a crisis and demanded a definition. Nothing could have proved to her that she had never loved Roddy so much as her own feeling at this crisis towards him. Therein lay her own sin.
It was simply now of the future that she must think. The awful chasm that might divide them after this night, were not their words most carefully ordered, shook her with fear; peril to herself, for she could stand aside and see herself quite clearly: and she knew that if to-night she and he were to say things that they could neither of them afterwards forget, then, for herself, and from her deep need of love and affection, there was temptation awaiting her that no disguise could cover.
Then, as more clearly she figured the scene in the garden, patience seemed difficult to command.
She hated Nita Raseley—that was no matter—but she despised Roddy, and were he once to-night to see that contempt she knew that his after remembrance of it would divide them more completely than anything else could do.
When he came in she had still no clearer idea of what she intended to say, or how she wished things to go. She was sitting in an arm-chair by the fire with her hands shielding her face, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her and cleared his throat and wished that she would take her hands down and then finally plunged:
"Rachel—I don't know—I can't—hang it all, whatcanI say? I've been a beastly cad and I'd cut my right hand off to have prevented it happening——"
She took her hand down and turned towards him—
"Let's cut all the recrimination part, Roddy," she said. "It was very unfortunate—that was all. It was rather beastly of you, and as for Nita——"
Here he broke in—"No, I say, you mustn't say anythin' about her. She wasn't a little bit to blame—It just——"
"Well, we'll leave Nita. She isn't of any importance, anyway. The point is that things have been wrong for months between us, and as we haven't been married very long that's a pity. This has just brought things to a head, that's all——"
"No," said Roddy firmly. "No, Rachel, that ain't fair to Nita. I know it isn't nice, but I must put that out fair and square—fair and square to Nita.
"We'd had a jolly old drive to Hawes—rippin' day, cold as anythin', with the horse just spankin' along, and then the Rockingtons were jolly and the lunch was jolly and back we came. We looked about the house for you and heard you were still out walkin', so we just strolled about the garden a bit and then—Well, anyway, Nita simply had nothin' to do with it. It was so rippin' and jolly after the drive and all, that I just kissed her. All in a second I just felt I had to ... beastly weak of me," he finally added in a contemplative tone.
"Well, that disposes of Nita," said Rachel. "Don't let's mention her again. Meanwhile what sort of life am I going to have if 'things' are going to sweep over you like this continually? Besides, it's rather early days, isn't it? We haven't been married half a year yet."
"No," said Roddy slowly, "no, we haven't and it's simply beastly. I'm a perfect swine. When I married you the one thing I meant to do was to be just as kind to you as I jolly well could be, and give you a perfectly rippin' time, and here I am hurtin' you like anything——"
She moved impatiently. "Never mind that, Roddy. Youhavebeen very kind and I'm sure you'd have given anything for me not to have come into the garden just when I did, so as to have avoided hurting me. But what I do know is that you're not straight with me. You know I told you before we were married that the one thing that mattered was Truth—truth to oneself and truth to everyone else—Well, we haven't been straight with one another for a single instant. You've done any number of things that would be wrong to you if I knew about them, but wouldn't be in the least wrong if I didn't."
"Of course," said Roddy, "no feller tells his wife everything—that would be absurd. I think things are worse if people know about 'em whom it hurts to know—muchworse."
She was suddenly confronted now with a Roddy whose assurance and confidence in his own personality startled her. Because he had never been gifted with words and liked to be in the company of dogs and horses she had fancied that he had no ideas about anything.
Rachel was a great deal younger than she knew and a great deal more contemptuous of the other half world than her experience of it justified. Strangely enough this confidence on Roddy's part angered her more than anything else could have done.
"The fact is that since our marriage we've never got to know each other in the least. We talk and go to places together and you give me things and I give you things—and that's all. I don't know you and now, after to-day, I can't trust you——"
He coloured a little at that, but said nothing.
She went on, rather fast and her breath coming between her words: "But I'm not going to be so silly as to make a scene because I saw you kissing Nita Raseley. She's simply not worth thinking about,—but you ought to be straighter to me all the way round. If you've wanted to be kind to me as you say, then you might have taken me more into your life——"
"Well," said Roddy slowly, "if you'd managed to love me a bit, Rachel, things might be different."
This answer was so utterly unexpected that it took her like a blow. That Roddy should attackherwhen he had, only a few hours before, been discovered so abominably!
"What do you mean, Roddy?" she stammered angrily. "Love you? But——"
"Yes," he persisted doggedly, "I know when you accepted me you said you didn't and I know that I hadn't any right to expect it, but I believe if you hadn't thought me such a silly ass and hadn't looked all the time as though you were just indulgin' my silly fancies until somethin' more sensible had come along, things might have been different. I'm the sort of feller," Roddy said, choosing his words carefully, "that you could have made anythin' out of, Rachel. I'm weak in some ways—most men are—and when a thing comes dancin' along lookin' ever so temptin', why, then I generally have to go after it. But you could have kept me, Rachel, more than anyone I've ever known——"
She was not touched nor moved, only angered that he, so obviously in the wrong, should attempt justification.
"Yes," she said hotly. "And I suppose in another moment you'll be telling me that it's silly of me to be angry at what I saw this afternoon?"
He thought it out a moment, then answered: "No, it was perfectly natural of course—only I don't think you ought to mind much. If you really cared, you wouldn't. It don't matterreallyso much what I do if I still like you best. Moments don't count—it's what goes on all the time that matters. Why, I might kiss a hundred women and still you'd be the only woman who mattered to me. I've never cared for one so long before," he added simply.
Then as she said nothing he went on: "I've never been sort of educated—never cared enough for anyone to give things up. I would have given things up for you if you'd wanted me to, but you didn't really——"
"Aren't we a little off the point, Roddy?" she flung back. "The point is how are we going to get along all the years and years we've got in front of us? What are we going to do?"
"Everybody's just the same," said Roddy quietly. "It takes a lot of years before married people settle down. We can't expect to be any different——"
But although he spoke so quietly he watched her, hoping for some yielding on her part; in an instant, had she come to him, she would have seen a Roddy whom she had never seen before and from that moment onwards would have had a power over him that nothing could have shaken.
So delicately hung the balance between them. But she was filled with a sense of her own wrongs, her loneliness, the injustice of it all. At that moment all affection for Roddy had left her, she would only have been glad if she had known that she was never to see him again. His slow voice, his way of thinking out his sentences, his thick clumsy hands and his red face, everything came to her now as a continuation of the chains that she had worn all her days.
She got up and confronted him—
"Yes," she said fiercely, "that's exactly it. Life is to be like everyone else. We're to say the things, do the things that our neighbours say and do. Because your friends at Brooks's kiss their wives' friends, therefore you are to do so. Because the men you know never say what they mean and lie about everything they do, therefore you do the same. Oh! I know! Haven't I heard it all my life? Haven't my precious family lived on lies? You've caught it all from my delightful grandmother! I congratulate you!"
"What if I have?" he said. "She's a friend of mine, Rachel. She's been dashed good to me—You're not to say a word against her."
"I hate her," Rachel cried passionately. "All my life she's been over me—for years she's been my enemy. If she stands for everything that you believe, then it isn't any wonder that we have nothing in common, that you should be proud of this afternoon, that—that——"
She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. Over his face had crept a sulky obstinate look that might have told her, had she seen it, that she was driving him very far.
"She's fine," he said. "She's made England what it is. You're all for ideas, Rachel, and for Truth and lots of things, but you're difficult to live with."
"Very well, Roddy. Thank you. Now we know how we stand. I at least owe Nita a debt for having cleared up the situation. If you find it difficult with me I can at least return the compliment—and I have at any rate this added advantage, that I speak the truth."
As he looked at her across the room he saw in her that same figure that he'd seen once just before proposing to her—someone foreign, unknown—He felt as though he were quarrelling with a stranger....
She turned and went.
For a long while he stood gazing into the fire, his hands in his pockets. How had it all happened? Why had they let it come to that kind of quarrel when they might so easily have prevented it?
And she, crying bitterly in her room, asked herself the same question.
Christopher had snatched his first holiday for two years and was abroad during the January of 1899 when the Seddons were in town.
February, March and April they spent at Seddon Court, and it was not therefore until early in May that Christopher saw Rachel.
She had dreaded with an almost fantastic alarm this meeting. No other human being knew her so honestly and accurately as did Christopher, and the change in her that he would at once discern would, when she caught the reflection of it in his eyes, mark definitely the sinister country into which these last months had carried her.
It had seemed as though some malign spirit had been determined to make the most of that quarrel that Nita Raseley had provoked.
Both Roddy and Rachel hated scenes—upon that, at least, they were agreed—and from their determination never to have another arose a deliberate avoidance of any plain speaking. Rachel, longing for honesty, found herself caught in a thousand deceits—Roddy, avoiding any kind of analysis, found that everything that he provided in conversation seemed to lead to danger.
He was now always ill at ease in Rachel's company; he had stood on that fatal evening, more strongly for the Beaminster interest than he had intended, but from his very determination to maintain his new independence, he produced the Duchess for Rachel's benefit at every turn of the road.
Roddy knew that the Duchess feared that Rachel would lead him from her side and that she received with rejoicing every sign on his part of irritation against Rachel. She had wanted him to marry her granddaughter because that bound him more closely to her, but she had not, perhaps, been prepared for the probable effect of Rachel's character upon him.
The Duchess therefore made, throughout these months, a third member of their company. Roddy, finding Rachel's society a growing embarrassment, spent more and more of his time with his animals and his tenants and labourers. But all this time he was conscious, in a dumb way, of unhappiness and a puzzled dismay, so that his very affection for Rachel produced in him a growing irritation that it should be so needlessly thwarted. Things were all wrong and his resentment of his own failure to right them reacted, without his will, upon the very person whom he wished to propitiate.
For Rachel these months were baffling in their hideous discomfort. Her affection for Roddy was there, but it was swallowed by her desperate efforts to analyse a situation that was, in definite outline, no situation at all.
As Roddy withdrew, her loneliness wrapped her round, and in every day that added to her distance from Roddy she saw the active and malignant agency of her grandmother. She was intelligent enough to be aware that in this constant vision of the Duchess she was outstepping the probabilities; but her early years and the precipitation with which she had been shot out of them into an atmosphere that unexpectedly resembled their own earlier surroundings seemed to point to some diabolical agency.
"Oh! when I get free of this," had been her earlier cry, and now the foreboding that she was never to be free of it until she died terrified her with its possibility. Imagine her brought up in a stuffy house with windows tightly closed, in full vision of a high road, imagine her promised the freedom of the road at a future time; imagine her liberated, at last, rushing into the new life and finding that, after all, the walls of the house were still about her, and about her now for ever.
Her one reserve during the early months of the year at Seddon had been her letters to Francis Breton. His letters to her had been a series of self-revelation; he had restrained himself in so far as appealing to her simply on the score of their relationship and his enmity to the head of the house. She had replied revealing her sympathy, hinting at rebellion on her own side and feeling, after the writing of every letter, a hatred of her own deceit, a curiously heightened sense of affection for Roddy, above all a conviction that impulses were, of their own agency, working to some climax that she could not, or would not, control.
The foreign blood in her, the English blood in him, baffled their advances toward one another. Everything that Rachel did now seemed to Roddy so close to melodrama that it was best to use silence for his weapon. All Roddy's actions were to Rachel further illustrations of Beaminster muddle and second-rate personality.
Had Roddy called out of Rachel the great depth of passion and reality that she inherited from her mother her own love of him would have solved everything—but that he could not call from her, nor ever would.
For Rachel, she saw in him now a possibility of perpetual infidelity, and at every suspicion of it her disgust both at herself and him grew because that possibility did not move her more.
They came up to London at the beginning of May and hid, very successfully from the world, the widening breach.
To Rachel, it was sheer terror to discover the thrill that the adjacence of Elliston Square to Saxton Square gave her. In this one self-revelation there was enough to present her with night after night of sleepless misery. She visited the Duchess and found that her presence was continually demanded. Every visit was a battle.
"Show me how you are treating him, whether he cares for you. Have you found him out? Tell me everything——"
"I will tell you nothing. I will come here day after day and you shall gather nothing from me. I have escaped you."
"Indeed you have not escaped me. My power over you is only now beginning——"
No word between them but the most civil. There was no trace in the old woman now of her earlier irony—no sign in Rachel of irritation or rebellion.
But the girl knew that war was declared, that her only ally was one in whose alliance lay, for her, the very heart of danger.
All these things she might hide from the world—from Christopher she knew that she could hide nothing.
It was on an early afternoon in May that Christopher had tea with Rachel. He had waited for his visit with very real anxiety; the letters that he had had from her had been unsatisfactory, not because they were actively expressive of unhappiness, but because there was an effort in every word of them—Rachel had never found it difficult to write to him before.
He was also uneasy because he had been against this marriage from the beginning. He did, as he said to the Duchess, know Rachel better than anyone else knew her; he knew her from his love for her, and also from that scientific study that he applied in his profession. And he had found, too, in her, as he had found in Breton, some strain of fierce helplessness, as of an animal caught in a trap, that especially moved his interest and affection—
Was Rachel's marriage a disaster? If so she had certainly managed to conceal it, for even the Duchess did not know—of that he was sure.
If Rachel were indeed unhappy would she come to him as she used to come to him?
What change had marriage wrought in her?
It was one of those May days when the weather is hot before London is ready. It was a day of tension; buildings, streets quivered beneath a sun in whose gaze there was no kindliness nor comfort. Christopher drove from Eaton Square, where, for some hours he had been engaged in preventing an old man from dying, when both the old man himself and all his friends and relations were convinced that death was the best thing for him—
Sloane Street ran like white steel before his eyes, not dimly veiled as he had so often seen it; Park Lane offered houses that stared with haughty faces upon a world that would, they knew, do anything for money—
Elliston Square itself was white and sterile; the town was, on this afternoon, irritated, sinister ... feet ached upon its pavements and hearts were suddenly clutched with foreboding.
As he ascended in the lift to her flat he knew that, did he find that this marriage was, truly, a misadventure for Rachel, then, until his death, he would reproach himself for some weak inaction, some hesitation when first he had heard that it was to be.
Hehadprotested, but now he felt that he should have done more.
Soon he had his answer to all his questions.
He saw at once that Rachel was no longer the impulsive, nervous girl whom he had always known. She was a girl no longer.
Her eyes greeted him now steadily, she seemed taller and her body was in perfect control—very tall and slim and dark, her cheeks pale but shadowed a little with the shadow deepening beneath her eyes. Her mouth, that had always been too large, had had before a delightful quality of uncertainty, so that smiles and frowns and alarms, distress and happiness all hovered near. It was now grave and composed.
Her limbs had always moved unsteadily and with the awkward lack of control of a child, now there was no kind of impulse, every movement was considered, and that was the first thing that Christopher saw, that nothing that Rachel now did or said was spontaneous.
There was less in her now to remind him of her foreign blood.
The flat was comfortable, but more commonplace than it would have been had it been Rachel's only.
He kissed her, as he had always done, and he fancied that she clung for a moment to him, as her hands went up to his coat.
He settled his big loose body and looked across at her.
Christopher was no subtle analyser of other people's emotions. His own feelings were never complicated and he expected life to run on plain and simple lines of likes and dislikes, sorrow, anger, love and hatred. If someone of whom he was fond made a direct appeal to him his simple remedies were often wonderfully useful—he was no fool and he had been brought, during a great number of years, into the most direct relations with men and women, but, if that direct appeal was not made, then he was frightened and baffled.
He was frightened of Rachel now; he knew instantly that instead of appealing she would defend herself from him.... Some mysterious conviction seemed to forebode that he would not be able to help her. He was, essentially, of those who, believing in goodness and virtue and the glorious Millennium, are contented, quite simply, with that belief and might, if they stated those simplicities, irritate the scoffers. But he was saved because he made statements on the rarest occasions and lived his life instead.
Here, however, was a crisis in his relations with Rachel that no platitudes could satisfy. Did he not touch her now he might never touch her again.
In a situation that was beyond him he was always hopelessly self-conscious. His love for Rachel was so tremendous a thing in him that a statement of it should surely have been the simplest thing in the world. But he saw in her eyes that to challenge her with—"My dear, you know how I love you. Tell me what's the matter," would frighten her to absolute silence. "I'm going to tell you nothing," she seemed to say to him, "unless you move me in spite of myself. But, if I don't tell you now I shall never tell you."
"Well, my dear," he said, smiling at her, "how are you after all this time?"
"I'm all right," she answered, smiling back at him. "It is good to see you again. Tell me all about your holiday."
"Tell me about yours first."
"Oh! There isn't very much to tell. I enjoyed it all enormously, of course."
"What did you enjoy most?"
"Oh! some of the smaller towns—Rapallo, for instance.—Oh! yes, and Bologna was fascinating."
"Not Rome and Florence?"
"In a way. But there were too many tourists. Rome one's got to stay in, I'm sure. That first view was disappointing."
"And how did Roddy—if I may call him Roddy—enjoy it?"
"Immensely, I think. He liked the country better than the towns though."
"You saw lots of pictures?"
"Heaps. Roddy enjoyed them enormously. I'd no idea he knew so much about them. Oh! it was all lovely, and such colours, such light—London seems like a cellar, even in June."
There followed then a pause that swelled and swelled between them until it resembled some dreadful monster, horribly stationed there to separate them.
Christopher looked at Rachel, but she refused to meet his eyes.
"I've lost her. I shall never see her again!" he thought with despair. Two years ago he would have gone to her, put his arms around her, kissed her and drawn from her at once her trouble.
He could not do that now.
"Your turn, Dr. Chris dear. Tell me about your holidays."
"Oh, mine don't count. I went to Brittany first, then up to St. Andrews with another man to play golf."
"You're looking splendidly well and you're thinner. What was Brittany like?"
"Delightful. Have you ever been there?"
"Never. I must get Roddy to take me. Just suit him, I should think."
To Christopher's intense relief tea was brought. He came to the table and then, for an instant, he did catch her eyes, saw tears in them, and behind the tears some appeal to him to help her. Her hand was shaking.
"How silly of me to spill your tea. I'm so sorry. Let me pour it back...."
"Rachel——" he began, but a servant entered with something and he waited. When they were alone again, standing over her as though he were afraid that she would escape him, he plunged.
"Rachel dear. We're talking as though we'd never met before. You've never been shy with me like this. If marriage is going to make a stranger of you, I shall break young Seddon's neck——"
"No," she said in a voice that was between laughter and tears. "Of course, Dr. Chris. Things are just the same between us, only, only—well, I'm married and—one thing and another, you know."
He caught both her hands.
"You're perfectly happy?"
She met his eyes.
"Perfectly."
"Happier than you've ever been in your life?"
She dropped her eyes.
"Happier than I've ever been in my life."
"And you'll come to me just the same if there's any kind of trouble?"
"Of course."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
They talked then, for a little time, of other things. But he was not satisfied. Rachel's soul, caught away in alarm, was still beyond his grasp.
At last, feeling that the moments were precious and that Roddy might at any instant appear, he sat down on the sofa beside her.
"Rachel dear. Something's worrying you. You won't tell me?"
"Nothing's worrying——"
"Ah, but I know—well, if you won't you won't—but if you knew how much I loved you you'd feel that you were cruel not to let me help you."
"DearDr. Chris—but there isnothing."
But her eyes were full of tears.
"Look here," he said. "Perhaps you'll feel later on you can talk to me. Just come straight away if you do feel that."
He went on. "Don't be frightened, my dear, if there are a whole heap of new emotions, new instincts, stirred in you by marriage. Just take them all as they come. It's all progress, you know. Don't be frightened of anything. Just take the animal by the head and look at it."
That led him to speak about Brun's Tiger. He explained it—the force in people, the way they either grappled with the creature, and at last trained it to help them with their work in the world, or ignored it, silenced it, allowed it at last to die, and so, cosy and lazily comfortable, passed to their day's end, but had, nevertheless, missed the whole purpose of life.
He enlarged on that and showed the connection of the individual Tiger with the welfare of the world, so that everyone who denied his Tiger added to his world's muddle and confusion, and at last there would come an inevitable crisis when war would spring up between those who had grappled with their Tiger and those who had not.
"One knows one's own Tiger—absolutely of oneself one knows it and has, of oneself, the choice whether to grapple or not—at least that's what I gathered he meant—I know it struck me at the time."
"Oh," she said, with a sigh that quivered through her whole body. "It's soeasyto talk.... But it's true what he says. I know it."
At last Christopher got up to go. He did not know whether he had done any good; he felt that he was a miserable failure, and he had a foreboding that one day he would be ashamed indeed that he had not helped her.
"Do something," a voice seemed to tell him. "You'll regret ... all your life you'll regret."
He turned and held again her hands in his.... "Rachel—dear—tell me——"