In the high beautiful hall where they all stood about and had tea she could see who they were. There was a girl whom she had met on several occasions this season, Nita Raseley, there was a large florid cheerful person who was, she discovered, Maurice Garden, the well-known and popular novelist, there was his wife, there was a thin intellectual cousin of Lady Massiter's, Miss Rawson, old and plain enough for her cleverness to have turned to acidity, Roddy Seddon and, of course, Lord and Lady Massiter.
Lord Massiter was large and florid like the novelist, and when they stood together by the fireplace foreign customs and languages were suddenly absurd, so English was the atmosphere. Lady Massiter was also large, but she had the kind and warm placidity that makes some women the type of all maternity. She would be, Rachel felt, a sure resource in all time of trouble and she would also be entirely unsatisfactory as an intimate personal friend. She would, like philanthropists and clergymen, love people by the mass, never by the individual.
Nita Raseley was pink and white, with large blue eyes that confided in everyone they looked at. Her laugh was a little shrill, her clothes very beautiful, and men liked her.
So there they all were.
She had said good day to Roddy and then had moved away from him, governed by some self-consciousness and the conviction that Nita Raseley's blue eyes were upon her.
It was all very cheerful and very English as they stood talking there, and the doors beyond the hall showed through their dark frames green lawns and terraces soaked in evening light. It was all very, very comfortable.
As she dressed for dinner Rachel had her windows open, so hot was the night, and she could watch the evening star that shone with a wonderful brilliance above a dark little wood that crowned a rise beyond the gardens. She had a maid who was very young indeed; this was her first place, but she had, during the three months, learnt with great quickness and had attached herself to her mistress with the most burning devotion. She was a silent, unusual girl and kept herself apart from the rest of the servants.
Rachel as she sat before her dressing-table could see in that mirror the dark reflection of the twilit garden.
"It's a lovely place, Lucy——"
"Yes, Miss Rachel."
"Are you glad to get away from London?"
"It has been hot there these last weeks."
Rachel met in the glass the girl's black eyes. They were searching Rachel's face.
"Lucy, would you rather live in London or in the country?"
"I don't mind, Miss Rachel." Then after a little pause: "I hope I've give satisfaction these last weeks?"
"Why, yes, of course."
"Then I hope, miss, that you'll allow me to stay with you whether—in London or the country."
The colour mounted to Rachel's cheeks.
"I hope there'll be no need for any change," she said.
She found when she came down to the drawing-room that Monty Carfax had arrived. Monty Carfax was the chief of the young men who were, just at that time, entertaining London dinner-tables. About half a dozen of God's creatures, under thirty and perfectly dressed, with faces like tombstones and the laugh of the peacock, went from house to house in London and mocked at the world.
They belonged, as the mediæval jesters belonged, each to his own court, and Monty Carfax, certainly the cleverest of them, was attached to the Beaminster Court and served the Duchess by faith, if not by sight.
Rachel hated him and always, when she found herself next to him, wrapped herself in her old farouche manner and behaved like an awkward schoolgirl.
She was terribly disappointed at discovering that he was going to take her into dinner to-night; he knew that she disliked him and felt it a compliment that a raw creature fresh from the schoolroom should fail to appreciate him; on this occasion he devoted himself to the elderly Massiter cousin on his other side—throughout dinner they happily undressed the world and found it sawdust.
Rachel meanwhile found Maurice Garden her other companion. He genially enjoyed his dinner and talked in a loud voice and prepared the answers that he always gave to ladies who asked him when he wrote, whether he thought of his plots or his characters first, and "she did hope he wouldn't mind her saying that of all his books the one——"
He frankly liked these questions and was taken by surprise when Rachel said:
"I've never read any of your novels, Mr. Garden, so I won't pretend——"
He asked her what she did read.
"Have you ever read anything by an author called Peter Westcott?"
"Westcott? Westcott?... Let me see ... Westcott?... Well now—One of the young men, isn't he?"
"Yes. He wrote a book calledReuben Hallard."
"Ah yes. I remember aboutReuben Hallard—had quite a little success as a first book. He's one of your high-brow young men, all for Art and the rest of it. We all begin like that, Miss Beaminster. I was like that myself once——"
She looked at him coolly.
"Why did you give it up?"
"Simply didn't pay, you know—not a penny in it. And why should there be? People don't want to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story. All young men think the same—green leaves, moons and stars and lots of symbols, you know—all good enough if they don't expect people to pay for it."
"I thinkReuben Hallard'sa fine book," she said, "and so are some of the others. After all, everyone doesn't want only a plot in a book."
He looked at her with patronizing kindness. "Well, you see if your Mr. Westcott doesn't change. Every writer wants an audience whatever he may pretend, and the best way to get a audience is to give the audience what it wants. It needs unusual courage to sit on a packing-case year after year and shave in a broken looking-glass——"
She looked round the table. Everyone was happy. The butler was fat and had the face of a Roman emperor, the food was very, very good, Nita Raseley and Roddy laughed and laughed and laughed—
Suddenly Rachel's heart jumped in her body. Oh! she was glad; glad that Roddy cared for her and would look after her, because otherwise she didn't know what violence she might suddenly commit, what desperations she might not engage upon, what rebels and outlaws she would not support—
What Outlaws! And then, looking beyond the thickly curtained windows, she could fancy that she could see one gravely standing out there on the lawn, standing with his one arm and his pointed beard and his eyes appealing to be let in.
Then there was an ice that was so good that Peter Westcott and Francis Breton seemed more outcast than ever.
After dinner, when the men had come into the drawing-room, they all went out into the gardens. It was such a night of stars as Rachel had never seen, so dense an army that all earth was conscious of them; the sky was sheeted silver, here fading into their clouded tracery, there, at fairy points drawing the dark woods and fields up to its splendour with lines of fire. The world throbbed with stars, was restless under the glory of them—God walked in all gardens that night.
At first Nita Raseley, Monty Carfax, Rachel and Roddy went together, then, turning up a little path into the little wood that rose above the garden, Rachel and Roddy were alone.
They found the trunk of a tree and sat down—Behind them the trees were thin enough to show the stars, below them in a dusk lit by that glimmering lustre that starlight flings—a glow that would be flame were it not dimmed by distance immeasurable—they could see the lawns and hedges of the garden and across the dark now and again some white figure showed for an instant and was gone. The house behind the shadows rose sharp and black.
Roddy looked big and solid sitting there. Rachel sat, even now uncertain that she did not see Francis Breton in front of her, looking down, as she did, into the shadowy garden.
"I hope," she said abruptly, "that you don't like Monty Carfax."
"I've never thought about him," he said. "He's certainly no pal of mine—why?"
"Because I hate him," she said fiercely. "What right has he got toexiston a night like this?"
"He's always supposed to be a very clever feller," Roddy said slowly. "But I think him a silly sort of ass—knows nothin' about dogs or horses, can't play any game, only talks clever to women——"
"I can't bear that sort of man and I don't like Mr. Garden either. He's so fat and he loves his food."
"So do I," said Roddy quite simply. "I love it too. It was a jolly good dinner to-night."
She said nothing and then, when he had waited a little, he said anxiously:
"I say, Miss Beaminster, we've been such jolly good friends—all these weeks. And yet—sometimes—I'm afraid you think me the most awful fool——"
She laughed. "I think you are about some things, but then—so am I about a good many things—most of your things——"
"Look here, Miss Beaminster—I wish you'd help me about things I'm an ass in. You can, you know—I'd be most awfully glad."
"What," she said, turning round and facing him, "are the things you really care about?"
"The things? ... care about?"
"Yes—really——"
"Well! Oh! animals and bein' out in the open and shootin' and ridin' and fishin'—any old exercise—and comin' up to town for a buck every now and again, and then goin' back and seein' no one, and my old place and—oh! I don't know," he ended.
"You wouldn't tell anyone a lie, would you, about things you liked and didn't like?"
"It wouldn't be much use if I did," he said, laughing. "They'd find me out in a minute——"
"No, but would you? If you were with a number of people who thought art the thing to care about and knew nothing about dogs and horses, would you say you cared about art more than anything?"
"No," he said slowly. "No—but sometimes, you see, pictures and music and such do please me—like anything—I can't put into words, but I might suddenly be in any old mood—for pictures, or your uncle's fans, or dogs or the Empire or these jolly old stars—Why, there, you see I just let it go on—the mood, I mean, till it's over——" Then he added with a great sigh, "But I am a dash fool at explainin'——"
"But I know you wouldn't be like Mr. Garden or Mr. Carfax—just pretending not to like the thing because it's the thing not to. Or like Aunt Adela, who picks up a phrase about a book or picture from some clever man and then uses it everywhere."
"I should never remember it—a phrase or anythin'—I never can remember what a feller says——"
"Oh! I know you'd always be honest about these things. I feel you would—about everything. It's all these lies that are so impossible: I think I've come to feel now after this first season that the only thing that matters is being straight. It is the only thing—if a person just gives you what they've got—whatthey'vegot, not what someone else is supposed to have. May Eversley used to say that people's minds are like soup—thick or clear—but they're only thick because they let them get thick with other people's opinions—you don't mind all this?" she said, suddenly pausing, afraid lest he should be bored.
"It's most awfully interestin'," he said from the bottom of his heart.
"There are some men and women—I've met one or two—who're just made up of Truth. You know it the minute you're with them. And they'll have pluck too, of course—Courage goes with it. Our family," she ended, "are of course the most terrible liars that have ever been—ever——"
"Oh! I say——" he began, protesting.
"Oh! but yes—they run everything on it. My uncle Richard ran through Parliament beautifully because he never said what he meant. And Aunt Adela—andUncle John, although he's a dear. But then my grandmother brought them up to it. My grandmother would have about three clever people and then muddle all the rest so that the three clever ones can have everything in their hands——"
"Look here," he broke in, "I'm most awfully fond of your grandmother—we're tremendous pals——"
"You may be—I hate her. Oh! I don't hate her with melodrama, I don't want to strangle her or beat her face or burn her, but I'm frightened of her and she's always making me do things I'm ashamed of. That's the best reason for hating anyone there is."
"But she's such a sportsman. One of the old kind. One——."
"Oh! I know all that you can say. I've heard it so many times. But she's all wrong. There isn't any good in her. She's just remorseless and selfish and stubborn. She thinks she ran the world once and she wants to do it still."
"That's all rather fine,Ithink," said Roddy. "I agree with her a bit. I think most people havegotto be run—they just can't run themselves, so you have to put things into them."
"Well, that's just where we differ," she said sharply. "It isn't so. That's where all the muddle comes in. If everyone were just himself without anythingborrowed—Oh! the brave world it'd be——"
Then she laughed. "But I'm all wrong myself, you know. I'm as muddled as anyone. I've got all the true, real me there, but all the Beaminster part has slurred it over. But I've got a horrid fear that Truth gets tired of waiting too long. One day, when you're not expecting it, it comes up and says—'Now you choose—your only chance.Areyou going to use me or not? If not, I'm going'—How awful if one didn't realize the moment was there, and missed it."
She was laughing, but in her heart that other woman in her was stirring. For a startled, trembling second the wood seemed to flame, the gardens to blaze with the challenge:
"Are you, for the sake of the comfort and safety of life, playing false? Which way are you going?"
She burst into laughter, she caught Roddy by the arm. "Oh! I've talked such nonsense—It's getting cold—we've got to go in. Don't think I talk like that generally, Sir Roderick, because I don't—I——"
She was nervous, frightened. The stars were so many and it was so dark and Roddy no longer seemed a protection.
"I know it's late—Look here, I'm going to run—Race me——"
She tore for her very life out of the little wood, felt him pounding behind her, seized, with a gasp of relief, the lights and the voices—
She knew, with joy, that Roddy was closing the door behind her and that the garden and the stars and the wood were shut into silence.
For a little while, in the drawing-room, she talked excitedly, laughed a great deal, even at Monty Carfax's jokes.
She knew that they were all thinking that she was pleased because she had been with Roddy. She did not care what their thoughts were.
At last in her room she cried to Lucy—"Pull the curtains tight—Tighter—Tighter—Those stars—they'll get through anything."
When at last Lucy was gone she lit her candle and lay there, hearing the clocks strike the hours, wondering when the day would come.
Roddy, dozing after a night of glorious sleep, lay on his back and swung happily to and fro.
The footman who was valeting him had pulled up the blind and drawn aside the curtains, and the garden came to him, not as on last evening, weighed with its canopy of stars, but now asserting its own happiness and colour and freshness.
The man said: "The bathroom is the last door down the passage on your right, sir. Breakfast is at half-past nine. It has just gone eight. What clothes, sir?"
Roddy stared at him and smiled. After a little time, the man enquired again: "Which suit will you wear this morning, sir?"
"Dark blue." Roddy, still happily floating somewhere near the ceiling—floating with delicious lightness—"Dark blue—Dark blue—Dark blue——"
For a little while the man, a strange vague shape, pulled out drawers and closed them and walked about the floor, like Agag, delicately. Roddy, from the ceiling watched him and resented the fact that every sharp click of a drawer pulled him nearer to the carpet.
The man's final shutting of the bedroom door plumped Roddy into his bed, wide awake.
"Damn him! What a wonderful day!"
He lay back and watched how waves of light danced on the walls. A fountain splashed in the gardens and the long mirror on the right of the bed had in it the corner of the green lawn and the cool grey stones of an old wall.
Roddy lay on his back and allowed his sensations to run up and down his body. It was for moments such as this that his life was intended. He lived, deliberately and without any selfishness in the matter, for the emotions that the good old god Pan might choose to provide for him.
He did not know Pan by name except as a silly fancy dress that Monty Carfax had once worn at a fancy-dress dance and as Someone alluded to every now and again, vaguely, in the papers, but even though he did not call him by name he, nevertheless, paid, without question, his daily homage.
When, as on this beautiful morning, one had only to lie down and be instantly conscious of a thousand things—sheep moving slowly across hills, cattle browing in deep pools, those Downs that he loved rising, slowly, like aged men, to greet a new day—then one questioned nothing, one argued nothing, one needed no words, one was happy from the crown of one's head to the toes of one's feet.
On this especial morning these delights were connected with the fact that, during the day, he intended to propose marriage to Rachel Beaminster. He thought of her, now, as she had looked last night, sitting in that wood, in a pale blue dress, with the stars behind her, staring, so seriously, down into the garden. She had been very beautiful last night, and it had been a splendid moment—not more splendid than other moments that he had had, but splendid enough to remember.
He was always prepared for the necessity of the short duration of his sensations. He had discovered, when he was very young, that nothing lasted and that the things that lasted the shortest time were generally the best things, and therefore he had, quite unconsciously, trained himself to store his memory with splendid moments; now, although he had no memory at all for any sort of facts or books or histories, he could recall precisely, in all their forms and colours, scenes, persons, adventures that had, at any time, thrilled him.
He could remember days; once when, as a little boy, he had been overtaken by night on the Downs and had sheltered in a deserted house, black and evil, that had, he afterwards discovered, been, in the eighteenth century, a private mad-house; once when the sea had been green and purple, the sky black, and he had discovered a star-fish for the first time (very young on that occasion); once when his horse had run away with him and the danger had been exceeded by the glorious speed through the air ... many, many others, all to be counted by him to their very least detail, and now, of some of them, Rachel Beaminster was the central figure.
He had had relations of many kinds with many different women and never until now had he supposed, for an instant, that these relations would be permanent. Even now, although he was intending to marry Rachel Beaminster, he was not so foolish as to imagine that the freshness and novelty of the feeling that he now had for her would last more than a very short time.
Quite deliberately he treasured up in his mind a thousand pictures of her, as he had seen her during the last two months, so that when the time came for seeing her no longer in that way, he would have his memories: there was the time of her first ball, all excitement and happiness, the day at her uncle's when she had looked at him over the top of the fans, the night at the opera when she had been so angry with him, last night—
She had, through all this time, remained elusive. He did not know her, could not reconcile one inconsistency with another—but he thought that she cared about him and would marry him.
He had always known that he must one day marry. That necessity was, in no way, connected with the emotional side of him, it rather had its relationship with the common sense of him, the part that believed in the Beaminsters and all their glory.
He must marry because Seddon Court must have a mistress, because he himself must have children, because he would like to have someone there to be kind to. That need in him for bestowing kindness upon someone was always most urgent, and all sorts of animals and all sorts of persons had shared it—now one person would have it all. He could not bear to hurt anyone or anything, and the crises of his life were provided by those occasions when, in the delight of one of his emotional moments, hurting somebody was involved—there was always then a conflict.
He knew that it was just here that the Duchess failed to understand him. She liked hurting people and expected him to be amused when she told him little stories about her having done so. He had now a kind of dim feeling that it was because the Duchess hoped that he was going to hurt Rachel that she had prosecuted so strenuously his marriage.
He trusted with all his heart that he would never hurt Rachel, he intended always to be very, very kind to her; it was indeed a thousand pities that the present quality of his attitude to her must, like all attitudes, eventually change.
But he was always—he was sure of this—going to be good to her and give her everything that the mistress of Seddon Court should have.
At the same time, vaguely, he wished that the old Duchess had had nothing to do with this; sometimes he wondered whether the side in him that found pleasure in her was really natural to him.
Whenever he thought of her, she, in some way, confused his judgment and made life difficult.
She was doing that now....
When he came down to breakfast he found that he was the last. He sat next to Nita Raseley and was conscious, after a little time, that she was behaving with a certain reserve. He had known her in the kind of way that he knew many people in his own set in London, pleasantly, indifferently, without curiosity. She had, however, attracted him sometimes by the impression that she gave him that she was too young to know many men, but, however long she lived, would never find anyone as splendid as he: she had certainly never been reserved before. Finally he realized that she expected to hear of his engagement to Rachel Beaminster at any moment. "Well, so she will," he thought, smiling to himself. Meanwhile he avoided Rachel quite deliberately.
He was now self-conscious about her and did not wish to be with her until he could ask her to marry him. No more uncertainty was possible. He felt, not frightened, but excited, just as he would feel were he about to ride a dangerous horse for the first time.
He seized, with relief, upon the proposal of church; he wanted the morning to pass; his prayer was that she would not walk to church with him, because he had now nothing to say to her except the one thing. When he heard that she was staying behind and walking with Nita Raseley he was surprised at his own sense of release.
Lady Adela was kind to him this morning in a sort of motherly way and apparently seized on his going to church as an omen of his future married happiness.
"They're all waiting to hear," he said to himself.
They were to walk across the park to the little village church, and when they set out he was conscious that Lord John, like a large and amiable bird, was hovering about him: finally, Lord John, nervous apparently, most certainly embarrassed, settled upon him.
"Going to church, aren't you, Roddy?"
"Yes, Beaminster."
"Well, let's strike off together, shall we?"
Roddy liked Lord John best of the Beaminster brothers; the Duke he could not endure and Lord Richard was so superior, but Johnny Beaminster was as amiable as an Easter egg and fond of race meetings and pretty women, and not too dam' clever—in fact, really, not clever at all.
But Johnny Beaminster embarrassed was another matter and Roddy found soon that this embarrassment led to his own confusion.
Lord John flung out little remarks and little whistles because of the heat and little comments upon the crops. He obviously had something that he very much wanted to say—"Of course," thought Roddy, "this is something to do with Rachel—he's very fond of Rachel."
Although Johnny Beaminster had not, in strict accuracy, himself the reputation of the whitest of Puritans, yet Roddy wondered whether perhaps he were not now worrying over some of Roddy's past history, as rumoured in London society.
"Doesn't want his girl to be handed over to a reg'lar Black Sheep, shouldn't wonder," thought Roddy, and this led him to rather indignant consideration of the confusion of the Beaminster mind and its muddled moralities.
The walk to the church was not very long, but it became, towards the close of it, quite awful in its agitation.
"Dam' hot," said Lord John.
"Very," said Roddy.
"Wouldn't wonder if this weather broke soon——"
"Quite likely."
"Makes you hot walking to church this hour of the morning."
"Yes—don't it? Farmers will be wantin' rain pretty badly. Down at my little place they tell me it's dried up like anythin'——"
"Reg'lar Turkish bath——"
"Well, the church ought to be cool——"
"You never know with these churches——"
Roddy thought "He's afraid of his old mother. Doesn't want me to marry Rachel, but he's afraid of his old mother."
"Massiter's getting fat——" This was Lord John's contribution.
"Yes—so's that novelist feller——"
"Oh! Garden! Yes—ever read anything of his?"
"Never a line. Never read novels."
"Not bad—good tales, you know."
"He's probably," Roddy thought, "had a row with the old lady about me——"
Then, strangely enough, the notion hit him—"Wish it was he wanted me to marry Rachel and the Duchess didn't—Wish she didn't, by Gad."
As they entered the church Roddy might have seen, had he been gifted in psychology, that there was in Lord John's face the look of a man who had fought a battle with his dark angel and been, alas, defeated.
After luncheon Roddy said:
"Miss Beaminster, come for a walk?"
"A little way," she said, looking at him with her eyes in that straight direct way that she had.
"She must know," said Roddy to himself, "that I'm going to do it now. They all know. It's awful!"
Some of the others had gathered together under a great oak that shaded the central lawn, and now as he climbed the hill with his capture he felt that from beneath that tree many eyes watched them.
They did not go very far. At the top of the hill, above the little wood and the gardens and the house, there was a grassy hollow, and under this grassy hollow a great field of wheat, a sheet of red-gold with sudden waves and ripples in it as though some hand were shaking it, ran down to the valley.
"Let's stop here," Rachel said. "I was out all this morning with Nita Raseley and it's too hot for any exertion whatever."
A tree shaded them and they sat down and watched corn.
"What sort of a girl do you think she is—Nita Raseley, I mean?" asked Rachel.
"Oh! I don't know—the ordinary kind of girl—why?"
"She seems to want to know me. Says that she hasn't many friends. Is that true? I thought she had heaps——"
"You never can tell with girls. You're all so uncertain about one another—devoted one moment and enemies the next."
"Are we?" said Rachel slowly. "I don't think I'm like that—Oh! how hot it is!" She lay back against the grass with her arms behind her head.
"Do you like me?" Roddy said suddenly.
"I?... You!"
She slowly sat up and he saw at once that she knew now what he was going to say. At that moment, sitting there, staring at him, with her breasts moving a little beneath her white dress and her hands pressing flatly against the grass, in her agitation and the look in her eyes of some suddenly evoked personality that he did not know at all she was more elusive to him than she had ever been—
She was frightened—and also glad—but the change in her from the girl he had known all the summer was so startling that he felt that he was about to propose to someone he had never seen before.
"Do I like you?" she repeated slowly, and her lips parted in a smile.
"Yes," he said, looking at her hands that seemed to belong to the earth into which they were pressing—"Because I want you to marry me——"
The moment of her surprise had come before—now she only said very quietly—
"Why—what do you know about me?"
"I know—enough—to ask you," he said, stumbling over his words. He was now afraid that, after all, she intended to refuse him, and the terror of this made his heart stop. No words would come. He stared at her with all the fright in his eyes.
"Roddy" (she had never called him that before), "do you care——"
Then she stopped.
She began again. "I don't want to talk nonsense. I want to say exactly what I feel. I suppose most girls would want to be free a little longer, would want to have a good time another two or three seasons—but I don't—I hate being free—I want somebody to keep me, to prevent my doing silly things, to look after me ... and ... I'd rather you did it—than anybody else...." Then she went on quickly—"But it is more than that. I do like you most awfully, only I suppose I'm not the kind of girl to be frantically excited, to be wild about it all. I'm not that. I do like you—better than any other man I know—Is that enough?"
"I think—we can be most awfully good pals—always," he said.
"Oh!" she cried suddenly, putting her hand on his and looking straight into his face. "That's what I want—that, that—If that's it, and you think we can, why then, I'd rather marry you, Roddy dear, than anyone in the world."
"Then it's settled," he said. But he did not take her hand or touch her. They sat for quite a long time, looking at the rippling corn and the house, that was like a white boat sailing on the green far below them.
They said no word.
Then, without speaking, they got up from the grass and walked down the path to the little wood. But when they came to the place where they had been the night before he caught her to him so furiously that his own body was bent back, and he kissed her again and again and again.
"For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow.And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:But even for them awhile no cares encumberTheir minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumberAt the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken."Robert Bridges.
"For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow.And trains of sombre men, past tale of number,Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go:But even for them awhile no cares encumberTheir minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken,The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumberAt the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have broken."
Robert Bridges.
In the early days of the December of that year, 1898, the first snow fell.
Francis Breton, standing at his window high up in the Saxton Square house, watched the first flakes, as they came, lingering, from the heavy brooding sky; as he watched a great tide of unhappiness and restlessness and discontent swept over him. His was a temperament that could be raised to heaven and dashed to hell in a second of time; life never showed him its true colours and his sensitive suspicion to the signs and omens of the gods gave him radiant confidence and utter despair when only a patient quiescence had been intended. During the last three months he had risen and fallen and risen again, as the impulse to do something magnificent somewhere interchanged with the impulse to do something desperate—meanwhile nothing was done and, standing now staring at the snow, he realized it.
He had never, in all his days, known how to moderate. If he might not be the hero of society then must he be the famous outcast, in one fashion or another London must ring with his name.
And yet now here had he been in London since the end of April and nothing had occurred, no steps, beyond that first letter to his grandmother, had he taken. He had not even responded to the advances made to him by his old associates, he had seen no one save Christopher, Brun once or twice, the Rands and his cousin Rachel.
Throughout this time he had done what he had never done before, he had waited. For what?
A little perhaps he had expected that the family would take some step. Looking back now he knew that the shadow of his grandmother had been over it all. He had always seen her when he had contemplated any action, seen her, and, deny it as he might, feared her. She confused his mind; he had never been very readily clear as to reasons and instincts—he had never paused for a period long enough to allow clear thinking, but now, through all these weeks, he had been conscious that that same clear thinking would have come to him had not his grandmother clouded his mind. He felt her as one feels, in a dream, some power that prevents our movement, holds us fascinated—so now he was held.
The other great force persuading him to inaction was Rachel Beaminster, now Rachel Seddon.
Long before his return to England the thought of this cousin of his had often come to him. He would speculate about her. She, like himself, was by birth half a rebel, shemustbe—Shemustbe. He had sometimes thought that he would write to her, and then he had felt that that would not be fair. Behind all his dreams and romances he always saw some destiny whose colours were woven simply for him, Francis Breton, and this confidence in an especial personally constructed God had been responsible for his wildest and most foolish mistakes.
Often had he seen this especial God bringing his cousin and himself together. Always he had known that, in some way, they two were to be chosen to work out, together, vengeance and destruction against all the Beaminsters. When, therefore, that meeting in the Rands' drawing-room had taken place he had accepted it all. She was even more wonderful than he had expected, but he had known, instantly, that she was his companion, his chosen, his fellow-traveller; between them he had realized a claim, implied on some common knowledge or experience, at the first moment of their meeting.
From the age of ten, when he had been petted by one of his father's mistresses, his life had been entangled with women; some he had loved, others he had been in love with, others again hadloved him.
He did not know now whether he were in love with Rachel or no—he only knew that the whole current of his life was changed from the moment that he met her and that, until the end of it, she now would be intermingled with all his history.
At first so sure had he been of the workings of fate in this matter that he had been content (for the first time in all his days) to wait with his hands folded. During this period all thought of action against the Beaminsters on the one hand or a relapse into the company of the friends of his earlier London days on the other, had been out of the question. This certainty of Rachel's future alliance with himself had made such things impossibly absurd.
Then had come the announcement of her engagement to Seddon. For a moment the shock had been terrific. He had suddenly seen the face of his especial God and it was blind and stupid and dead....
Then swiftly upon that had come thought of his grandmother. This was, of course, her doing—Rachel was too young to know—She would discover her mistake: the engagement would be broken off.
During this time he had met Rachel on several occasions, and although the meetings had been very brief, yet always he had felt that same unacknowledged, secret intimacy. After every meeting his confidence had risen, once again, to the skies.
Then had come the news of her marriage.
From that moment he had known no peace. At first he had wildly fancied that this had happened because he had not come to her and more plainly declared himself; his picture of her idea of him was confused with all the dramatic untruth ofhisidea of her; then, interchanging with that, had come moods when he had seen things more plainly as they were and had told himself that all relations between herself and him had been invented by himself, that any kindness that she had shown him had been kindness sprung from pity.
During the early months of the autumn Rachel and her husband were abroad, and during this time, Breton told himself that he was waiting for her return before taking any action. Then a certain Mrs. Pont, a lady whose beauty had been increased but her reputation lessened by several scandals and a tiresomely querulous Mr. Pont, had suggested to Francis Breton a continuation of certain earlier relationships.
He knew himself well enough to be sure that one evening in Mrs. Pont's company would put an end to his struggles, so weak was he in his own knowledge that the only possible evading of a conflict was by the denial of the enemy's very existence.
He denied Mrs. Pont and, throughout those dark gloomy autumn weeks, clinging to Christopher and Lizzie Rand, waited to hear of Rachel's return.
Although he would confess it to no man alive, he longed now, with an aching heart, for some sort of reconciliation with the family. He would have astonished them with his humility had they given him any sign or signal. He fancied that Lord John or even the Duke might come.... Once admitted to his proper rank again and what a citizen he would be! Vanish for ever Mrs. Pont and her tribe and all that dark underworld that waited, like some sluggish but confident monster, for his inevitable descent. Wild phantasmic plans crossed his brain every hour of every day—nothing came of it all; only when at last it was announced that Sir Roderick and Lady Seddon had returned to England he discovered that he had nothing to do, nothing to say, no step to take.
That return had been at the end of October; from then until the end of November he waited, expecting that she would write to him; still, by this anticipation, were Mrs. Pont and Mrs. Pont's world kept at bay.
No word came. Driven now to take some step that would shatter this silence, he wrote to her a long letter about nothing very much, only something that would bring him a line from her.
For ten days now he had waited and there had come no word. As these first flakes of snow softly, relentlessly, fell past his window the nebulous cloud of all the uncertainties, disappointments, rebellions, of this pointless wasted thing that men called Life crystallized into form—"I'm no good—Life, like this, it's impossible—I'm no good against it—I'd better climb down...."
And here the irony of it was that he'd never climbedup.
The awful moments in Life are those that threaten us by their suspension of all action. "Just feel what's piling up for you out of all this silence," they seem to say. Breton's trouble now was that he did not know in what direction to move. His relation to Rachel was so nebulous that it could scarcely be called a relation at all.
He only knew that she alone was the person for whom now life was worth combating. He had told her in his letter that she could help him, and the absence of an answer spoke now, in this threatening silence, with mighty reverberating voice. "She doesn't care."
Well then, who else is there? Almost he could have fancied that his grandmother, there in the Portland Place house, was withdrawing from him all the supports in which he trusted.
Now the snow, falling ever more swiftly, ever more stealthily, seemed to be with him in the room, stifling, choking, blinding.
He felt that if he could not find company of some kind he would go mad, and so, leaving the storm and the silence behind him in his room, he went to find Lizzie Rand.
Lizzie Rand did not conceal from herself now that she loved him. So long had her emotional life been waiting there, undesired, that now it could be kept by her utterly apart from her daily habit, but it became a flame, a fire, that lighted with its splendid warmth and colour the whole of her accustomed world. She indulged it now without restraint, through the long dark autumn she had it treasured there; she did not, as things then were, ask for more than this splendid knowledge that there was now someone upon whom she loved to spend her care. She had not loved to spend it upon her mother and sister, but that had been a duty defined and necessary. Now everything that she could do for Breton was more fuel to fling to her flame. That further question as to whether he might care for her she kept just in sight, but nevertheless not definite enough to risk the absolute challenge.
At least, now, as the weeks passed, he sought her company more and more. She helped him, she cheered and comforted him, enough for her present need.
Even, beyond it all, could she survey herself humorously. This the first love affair of her life made her smile at her capture and defeat.
"Well, I'm just like the rest—And oh! I'm glad, I'm glad that I am."
Finally she knew that there was still a step that might be taken, between them, at any moment. He had, she knew, something to tell her. Again and again lately he had been about to speak and then had caught the impulse back.
This too she would not examine too closely, but from the moment that he should demand from her definite concrete assistance, from that moment she would be to him what she knew no one now living could claim to be.
Breton was glad when the little maid told him that Mrs. Rand was out, but that Miss Lizzie was at home. He saw her in the warm cosy room, sitting before the fire with her toes on the fender and her skirts pulled up, drying her shoes.
She looked up and smiled at him and told him to sit down, but did not move from her position.
"Mother's out at a matinee with Daisy. I got away early this afternoon. Do you hate snow, Mr. Breton?"
"I hate it to-day. I've got the dumps. I had to find someone to talk to or I'd have gone screaming into the street——"
"Couldn't find anyone better, so took me—thank you for the compliment. But I like the snow. Your pool's more like a pool now than ever, Mr. Breton."
He went across to the window and stood there looking at the little square now white with the gaunt trees rising black from the heart of it and the grey houses that hemmed it in. Over it the snow, yellow and grey and then delicately white, swirled and tossed.
He came back and sat down beside her and wondered at her neat comfort and air of calm control of all her emotions and desires.
She, looking at him, saw that he was ill. Dark lines beneath his eyes, his cheeks pale and an air of picturesque melancholy that made her want first to laugh at him and then mother him.
"I know what's the matter with you," she said, nodding her head.
"What?"
"Something to do. That's what you want." She turned towards him, looking at him with a little smile and yet with grave seriousness in her eyes. "Oh! Mr. Breton, why don't you? What is the use of sitting here month after month, doing nothing, just waiting for something to happen—something that can't happen unless you make it? Things don't fall into people's mouths just because they sit with them open."
He coloured. "Everybody's always scolding me," he said. "Christopher—you—everybody. Nobody understands—how difficult...."
He broke off. So intangible were his difficulties that no words would define them, and yet, God knew, they were real enough.
"I know—" she said, nodding her head. "It's the thought of them all at Portland Place that's holding you back. You began by fancying that you wanted to cut their throats, and you still wouldn't mind slaughtering them if only they in their turn would do something definite. It's their doingnothingthat just holds you up. But really as long as your grandmother's alive I'm afraid that it's no good thinking of them. When she's dead—and shecan'tlive for ever—anything may happen. Meanwhile why not show them what youcando?"
"But whatcanI do?" he answered her fiercely. "I've never been brought up to do anything—except what I oughtn't—There's my arm and one thing and another—Besides, there's more than that in it, Miss Rand. It's the fact that—well, that there's nobody that cares that's—so freezing. If only somebody minded——"
As he spoke Rachel rose, beautifully, wonderfully, before him. There, as she had been on that first day when she had had tea there, bending forward, listening, her dark wondering eyes on his face.
Lizzie at the sound of the appeal in his voice had felt her heart expand, beat, so that her body seemed to hold, suddenly, some great possession that hurt her by its force and urgency.
But she answered almost sharply:
"Nonsense, Mr. Breton. Excuse me, but I've no patience with that kind of thing. People are meant to stand alone, not to go leaning about for other people's support. You're cursed with too much imagination, Mr. Breton, and you remember too clearly everything that's happened before. Begin now, as though you were born yesterday, and startle the family by your energy——"
"Now you're laughing at me," he said hotly. "I dare say I deserve it, but I don't feel as though I could stand—very much of it from anyone to-day——"
Then he was astonished by the sudden softness of her voice. "No, no, please," she said; "I understand so well. But indeed you have got friends who believe in you. Dr. Christopher, myself, if you'll count me, and lots more. You'll win everyone in time if you're not impatient and don't despair. Don't think of your grandmother too much. The mere fact of your not seeing her makes you imagine her as something portentous and dreadful, and she weighs you down, but she isn't really anything at all. She can't stop one's energies if one's determined to let them go. Please, please don't think I'm laughing. I only want to help——"
"I know you do," he answered warmly, "I owe you more than I can say. All these last weeks you and Christopher have been the two people who've held the world together for me. But there's more than you know, Miss Rand. There's——"
He bent towards her. She knew that the confidence was at last to be hers. It needed her strongest control to prevent the trembling of her hands. His eyes were alight, his whole body eloquent. At the thought of what he might be about to tell her the room turned before her.
Voices in the little hall. Then the door opened and in came Mrs. Rand and Daisy. They had been to the play—Suchnonsense. One of these new, serious plays with long, long conversations—Mrs. Rand wanted tea. Daisy wanted admiration.
Between Lizzie and Breton the precious cup had fallen, smashed to the tiniest atoms.
Meanwhile aimless conversation was more than he, in his present mood, could endure.
He made some excuse and, scarcely knowing what he did, found his hat and coat and went out into the square.
There had come to him one of those agonies of loneliness that no argument, no reasoning can destroy.
The absence of any letter from Rachel seemed to show that she had abandoned him. In all this vast thickly peopled world there was now no one to whom his presence or absence, his fortunes or disasters mattered. The snowstorm gathered him into its folds; the snow fell against his mouth, his eyes, and before him, behind him, around him there was a world deserted of man, houses blind and without life.
The snow might fall now to the end of time. It would creep up and up, falling from the heavens, rising from the earth, swallowing all creation—the end of the world.
He pressed into the park and there under the trees stretching like gallows against the throttling sky temptation to give it all up, to go under and have done with it all, leapt, hot and fierce, upon him. Mrs. Pont and the others were waiting for him. They would be good to him. The Upper World would not hear nor see nor think of his disasters, and slowly, with the others, life would recede, he would crumble and decay and cease to care, and death would come soon enough.
Then the wind smote his face and tore at his coat: the snow died away, beyond the black bare trees a very faint yellow bar threaded the thick grey—promise that the storm was at an end.
Suddenly with the cessation of the storm the long field of white seemed good and restful, and beyond the park the houses showed light in their windows.
The yellow spread through the sky, and stars, very slowly, came and the wind died away.
Courage filled him. Rachel might never come or write or care, but he would make the thought of her the one true thing in his heart, and with that he would do battle so long as he could.
Christopher and Miss Rand ... he thought of them as he trudged his way home—and when he saw the white silence of Saxton Square and the golden sky breaking above its peace and quiet he thought that, for a time longer, he would keep his place and hold his own.