At that Breton struck in with something about music that he had heard in strange places abroad, and then Rachel, looking in his face for the first time, asked him about his travels.
As their eyes and voices met she was again overwhelmed with the vivid consciousness of their earlier meeting. She thought, "If I were to ask him whether he remembered that same snow and silence he would say yes—I know he would say yes."
Miss Rand, with eyes that were kind but very, very sharp, watched them. She noticed the eagerness of Breton and wished that he did not seem quite so anxious to please. "But that's because he's young," she thought again.
And, now that he had begun, the words poured from him. With gesticulation that was faintly foreign, ever so little dramatic, he unpacked his adventures. He spoke as though this were, beyond all time,themoment when he must make his effect.
He did it well, a born teller of tales. And yet Miss Rand wished that he had not had to do it at all, that there had been more reserve, less drama, less volubility.
Mrs. Rand, an older Desdemona, listened spellbound. This was as good as getting a circulating library without paying a subscription. As she said to her daughter afterwards: "He really was as good as those novels by what's his name—you know who I mean—those delightful stories about those foreign places—and the sea."
He spoke of the first time that he had actually been conscious of the jungle. "Of course I'd been into it dozens of times—often and often. But there was a day—I remember as though it were yesterday—when we went up in a boat—some river or another—That river was the most secret and sleepy green, and the place all closed about it as though we'd gone into a box, and they'd closed the lid. Nothing but the green river and all the forest getting closer and closer and darker and darker, all blacker than you can imagine, and worse still when it was lighter—a kind of twilight—and you could see enough to make you shiver—no sound but the animals, and the branches and the great plants and brilliant flowers all creeping and crawling—Suddenly—all in a flash—I wanted a lamp-post and a public house, a wet night shining on streets, the rattle of a hansom—I was suddenly ghastly frightened, and we got deeper and deeper into it, and human beings further and further behind, and only the beastly monkeys and the alligators and the hideous flowers. I can feel it still——"
Rachel was enthralled. He called up, on every side about her, that stern life of hers. He knew and she knew—they alone out of all the world. All her gaiety, her happiness, her interest of the last weeks went now for nothing beside this experience. He was not now related to the Beaminsters—to Grandmother, to Aunt Adela, to Uncle John—but toherand to that part of her that had nothing to do with the Beaminsters at all. The room, the commonplace furniture, the pictures of "Lodore Falls" and "The Fighting Téméraire," the little glimpses of the square beyond the window, these things shared in the mystery.
Miss Rand had seen her caught and held. "She'svery young too," she said to herself a little grimly and a little tenderly also—"All too sensational to be true," she thought. "There's a little bit of unreality in him all the way through."
Mrs. Rand said: "What do you think of alligators, Miss Beaminster? Don't you agree with me that they must be most unpleasant to meet? I always dislike their sluggish ways when I see them in the Zoological Gardens."
Then upon them all broke the little maid with a husky "Miss Beaminster's carriage, please, mem."
Rachel, as she said good-bye, was aware of him again as "her scandalous cousin." He too was now awkward and embarrassed. They said good-bye hurriedly and there was between them both a consciousness that no word of the family or their relationship had been mentioned.
"Well," said Mrs. Rand, when the door was closed, "no one in the world could have been pleasanter...."
They did not arrive at the opera that night until the beginning of the second act. It was Lady Carloes' box and she and Uncle John and Roddy Seddon were Rachel's companions.
All the way home in the carriage Rachel had been silent and Lord John, perceiving uneasily that some of the old Rachel was back again, had said very little.
Her mind was confused. At one moment she felt that she did not want to see him again, that he disturbed her peace and worried her with memories that were better forgotten. At another moment she could have returned, then and there, to ask him questions, to know whether he felt this or that: had he ever pictured such a place? Had he...?
And then sharply she dismissed such thoughts. She would think of him no more—and yet he did not look a villain. How delightful to persuade the family to take him back. Why should she not help towards a reconciliation? She was herself so happy now that she could not bear that anyone should feel outcast or lonely—they were all very hard upon him.
It was not until she heard the voices of the apprentices that thought of her cousin left her. As she groped her way in the dark box and heard Lady Carloes' stuffy whisper (she had the voice of a cracknel biscuit), "You sit there, my dear—Lord John here. That's right—I knew you'd be late because ..." she was gloriously aware that quite close to her the music that she loved best in all the world was transforming existence. She touched Roddy's hand and then surrendered herself.
She had been to Covent Garden now on four or five occasions and from the first the shabby building with its old red and gold, its air of belonging to any period earlier than the one it was just then amusing, its attitude, above all, of indifference to its aspect—all this had attracted her and won her affection. London, she discovered, was always best when it was shabbiest and one could not praise it more highly than by declaring, with perfect truth, that it was the shabbiest city in the world. Now, feeling instinctively that English apprentices (she had had already some taste of the Covent Garden chorus) would act too much or too little, she closed her eyes.
Now, as the music reached her, the old red and gold seemed a cage, swinging, swinging higher and ever higher with old Lady Carloes and Roddy Seddon and all the brilliant people in the stalls, and all the enthusiastic people in the gallery, swinging, swinging inside it. She could feel the lift of it, the rise and fall, and almost the clearer air about her as it rose into the stars.
Then there came to her the voice for which she had surely all her days been waiting. It enwrapped her round and comforted her, consoled her for all her sorrows, reassured her for all her fears. It filled the cage and the air beyond the cage, it was of earth and of heaven, and of all things good and beautiful in this world and the next.
For the second time to-day her early years came back to her; the voice had in it all those hours when someone's tenderness had made Life worth living. "Life is immortal," it cried. "And I am immortal, for I am Love and Charity, and, whatever the wise ones may tell you, I cannot die." She felt again the space and the silence and the snow, but now with no alarm, only utter reassurance. And the cage swung up and up and there were now only the stars and the wind around and about them.
Then, in an instant of time, the cage, with a crash, was upon the ground. Across her world had cut Lady Carloes' voice—"Oh yes, and there's Lord Crewner—no, not in that row—the one behind—next that woman with the silver thing in her hair—four from the end——"
And Roddy Seddon's voice—"Yes, I see him. Who's he got with him?"
Lady Carloes again: "I can't quite see—Miss Mendle as likely as not.... You know, old Aggie Mendle's daughter...."
Rachel felt in that moment that murder was assuredly no crime. Her hands shook on her lap and one of those passions, that she had not known for many months, caught her so that she could have torn Lardy Carloes' hair from her head had the chairs been happily arranged.
Fortunately the interruption had been accompanied by Beckmesser's entrance: that other voice was, for the moment, still. Then, as Sachs caught up Beckmesser's serenade, there came again:
"Well, of course if you can't go that week-end I dare say she'll give you another. Only I know she's settling her dates now."
"Yes, but it's a bore havin' to fix up such a long way ahead and you don't know what old stumers you mayn't be boxed up with——"
Oh! It was abominable! She had been seeing a great deal of Roddy during these last weeks, and ever since that visit to Uncle Richard she had been conscious of an intimacy that she had certainly not resented.
But any favour that he may have had with her was certainly now forfeited. His voice was again superior to Beckmesser:
"And so of course I said that if theywouldgo to such shockin' rot I wasn't goin' to waste my evenin's——"
She pushed her chair back against his knees: "Beg pardon, Miss Beaminster, afraid I jolted you——"
"Oh! Keep quiet! Keep quiet!"
Her whisper was so urgent, so packed with irritation that instantly there was, in the box, the deepest of silences.
She sat forward again, anger choking her: she could not recover any illusion. She hated him,hatedhim! The crowd came on with a whirl. Then there was that last moment when the old watchman cries to the genial moon and the silvered roofs.
Then the curtain fell.
Without a word, her face white, her hands still trembling, she rose to leave the box. She passed out into the passage and found that Roddy was by her side.
"I say, Miss Beaminster, I am most awfully sorry, most awfully. I hadn't any idea, really, that I was kickin' up that row. I could have hit myself."
She walked down the passage and he followed her. She was superb, she was indeed, with her head up, that neck, those hands, those flashing eyes. He had never seen anyone so fine. She ought always to be enraged. That instant decided him. She was the woman for a man to have for his own, someone who could look like someone at the head of your table, someone with the right blood in her veins, someone....
"I couldbeatmyself," he said again.
"How dared you——" she broke out at last. They were, by good luck, alone in the passage. "How could you? What do you come for if you care nothing for music at all? If you can hear a voice like that and then talk about your own silly little affairs.... And the selfishness of it! Of course you think of nobody but yourself!"
"Upon my word, Miss Beaminster!"
"No, I've no patience with you. Go to your musical comedy if you like, but leave music like this for people who can appreciate it!"
Oh! she was superb! Entirely superb! She ought to be like this every day of her life! To think that he should have the chance of winning such a prize!
Nevertheless she would not speak to him again and they went back to the box. She would not speak to Lady Carloes nor to her uncle.
Then as the loveliest music in all opera flooded the building her anger began to melt.
He had looked so charmingly repentant and, after all, theMeistersingerwas long for anyone who did not really care for music—and then they all did talk. It was only in the gallery that one found the proper reverence.
Her anger cooled and then descended upon her the quintet, and she was once again swept, in her cage, to the stars.
Now she and all live things seemed to be opening their hearts together to God—no shame now to speak of one's deepest and most sacred thoughts. No fear now of God nor the Archangels nor all the long spaces of Immortality. The cage had ascended to the highest of all the Heavens, and there, for a moment, one might stand, worshipping, with bowed head.
The quintet ceased and Rachel felt that she could never be angry with anyone again. She wished to tell him so.
At last, the revels were over, the "Prieslied" had won its praises, Sachs had been acclaimed by his world, and they were all in the lobby, waiting for carriages, talking, laughing, hurrying to the restaurants.
Her face was lighted now with happiness. She touched his arm.
"I didn't mean to be angry—like that. It was silly and rude of me. Forgive me, please——"
He turned, stuttering. "Forgive you!" He took her hand—"I ought to have been shot—Yes, I'll never forgive myself. You—you——" And then he could say no more, but suddenly, raising his hat, bolted away.
As the door swung behind him Lady Carloes turned a perplexed face—
"Why! he said good night! And now I shall never find——"
But Lord John appeared just then and all was well.
Going back, in the dark brougham, Rachel put her head on her uncle's shoulder and, exhausted with excitement and happiness and something more than either of them, cried her eyes away.
"What of Adam cast out of Eden?(And O the Bower and the hour!)Lo! with care like a shadow shakenHe kills the hard earth whence he was taken."Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
"What of Adam cast out of Eden?(And O the Bower and the hour!)Lo! with care like a shadow shakenHe kills the hard earth whence he was taken."
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
To the ordinary observer Lizzie Rand was, during that hot July, as she had ever been.
The servants in 104 Portland Place could detect no change, but then they did not search for one, having long regarded Miss Rand as a piece of machinery, symbolized by that broad shining belt of hers, happily calculated to fit, precisely, the duties for which it was required.
But Miss Rand herself knew that there was a sharp, accurate, shrewd piece of machinery named Miss Rand, and a breathing, emotional, uncertain human being called Lizzie. There had always been those two, but since the inadequacy of her mother and sister had been confronted with the stern necessity of making two ends meet, Miss Rand had been in constant demand and Lizzie had only, by her occasional obtrusion, made life complicated and disturbing.
Miss Rand had told herself that Lizzie was now almost an anachronism, that the emotions in life that aroused her were bad cheap emotions, and that this was an age that demanded increasingly of women a hard practical efficiency without sentiments or enthusiasms.
These forcible arguments had for a time kept Lizzie in a darkened background; it was some years since Miss Rand had been disturbed. But now in the warm weather of 1898 Lizzie had not only reappeared, but had leapt, an insistent, shining presence, into urgent life. Miss Rand faced her—what had created her? A little, the weather, the beauty of those brazen days—A little, Rachel's coming out into the world, an adventure that had stirred the whole house into a new and sympathetic excitement—a little, these things. But chiefly, and no pretence nor shame could conceal the fact, did this new Lizzie owe her creation to the appearance of Francis Breton.
Lizzie Rand had had, from her birth, a romantic heart; she had had also a prosaic practical exterior, and a mind as hard and clear, if necessary, as her own most lucent typewriter.
The romantic heart had, throughout these years, been there, and now this romantic, scandalous, youthful, engaging unfortunate had called it out.
She was never so warmly attracted as by someone lacking, most obviously, in those qualities with which she herself abounded. That people should be foolish, impetuous, careless, haphazard commended them straight to her keeping. "Poor dears" had their instant claim upon her. Her mother and sister were "poor dears" and she had suffered from them now during many years. Francis Breton was most assuredly a "poor dear!"
Here the Duchess a little flung her shadow and confused the mind. Although Lizzie had never seen that splendid figure she was, nevertheless, acutely conscious of her. She was conscious of her through her own imagination, through her mother, finally through Lady Adela.
Her imagination painted the old lady, the room, the furniture fantastic, strangely coloured, always with dramatic effect. Her picture was never precisely defined, but in its very vagueness lay its terrors and its omens.
Miss Rand, the most practical and collected of young women, could never pass the Duchess's door without a "creep."
Through her mother the Duchess came to her as the head of society. Society had never troubled Lizzie's visions of Life. She had, in her years with the Beaminsters, seen it pass before her with all its comedy and pathos, and the figures that had been concerned in that procession had seemed to her exactly like the figures in any other procession except that they were dressed for their especial "subject." But oddly enough when, through her own observation, this life, seen accurately at first hand, amounted only to any other life, seen through the eyes of her mother, it achieved another size.
She knew that her mother was a foolish woman, that her mother's opinions on life were absurd and untrue, and yet that dim, great figure that the Duchess assumed in her mother's eyes, in some odd way impressed her.
Lastly, and most strikingly of all, came Lady Adela's conception to her. Lady Adela was in terror of her mother; everyone knew it, friends, relations, servants. Lizzie herself saw it in a thousand different ways—saw it when Lady Adela spoke of her, saw it in the way that Lady Adela addressed Dorchester when that grim woman was interviewed by her, saw it when Lady Adela was suddenly summoned to that room upstairs.
Lizzie, during the hours when she was writing from Lady Adela's dictation or working with her, found her dry, stupid, sometimes kind, never emotional. It was to her, therefore, the most convincing proof of the Duchess's power, this emotion, this alarm drawn from so dry a heart.
Now the influence that the Duchess had upon Lizzie was always a confused one. Persuasion from this source followed lines of reasoning that were false and led to some conclusions that were muddled and untrue.
Through such minds as her mother's and Lady Adela's no clear truth could come, and yet it was through such minds as these that the Duchess's influence descended upon Lizzie.
It descended now with regard to Francis Breton. It told Lizzie that Breton had been proved by society to be a scoundrel, that he should be no worthy man's friend, that he belonged to that world, the world of shadows and past misadventures, that no proper soul might, with honesty, investigate.
This was what the Duchess told to Lizzie and perhaps by so doing increased her sympathy with the sinner.
It must not be supposed that Mrs. Rand had not, at first, been unsettled by scruples.
The fact that Breton was, in the eyes of the Beaminster family, a ne'er-do-well who had brought disgrace upon the family name had, for a time, distressed her, but the romantic hope of being herself the agent of his restoration to his grandmother, and the delightful manners of the scoundrel when he appeared, killed her alarm. Mrs. Rand's mind was a dark misty place except when the candles of romance were lit; whentheyflamed, blown by the wind though they might be, there was, around the candlesticks at any rate, a real and even splendid blaze.
One afternoon, towards the end of July, Mrs. Rand meeting Breton on their doorstep was moved to ask him whether he would come in and spend the evening with them, if he had nothing better to do. They had only a simple little meal, and would he please not bother to dress? Breton said that he would be delighted.
Mrs. Rand had been, that afternoon, to a romantic comedy in which ladies and gentlemen with French accents had made love and escaped together and been caught together and been married together. Mrs. Rand had gone quite alone into the pit and had returned with tears in her eyes and affection for all the world.
So she had asked Mr. Breton to dinner.
After a while, however, she was a little uncertain. Daisy was away in the country with friends. How would Lizzie then like this unexpected visitor? Mrs. Rand was, quite frankly, frightened of Lizzie and complained of her a good many times a week to Daisy. Lizzie was for ever interfering with innocent pleasures; Lizzie was mean and unromantic and unimaginative; Lizzie was thoroughly tiresome.
The fact that Lizzie worked incessantly for her mother and her sister never occurred to Mrs. Rand at all.
Lizzie objected to all innocent amusement and she would, in all likelihood, object now.
However, when Mrs. Rand with a fearful mind said, "Oh, Lizzie dear, I've had such a delightful afternoon. I went toLove and the Kingand it was too charming—you ought to go, really—and Mr. Breton's coming to dinner to-night," Lizzie only smiled a little and asked whether there was food enough. Lizzie wassostrange....
Alone in her bedroom Lizzie wondered at her excitement. She looked at her trim, neat figure in the glass, with the hair so gravely brushed, with her collar and her cuffs, with her compact businesslike air: what had she to do with excitement because a young man was coming to dinner? "It must be because I'm tired—this heat," she said to the mirror. And the mirror replied, "You know that you are glad because your sister Daisy is away."
And to that she had no answer.
When he arrived he was grave and seemed sad and tired, she thought. Dinner was a serious affair and Mrs. Rand, who disliked people when they refused to respond to her moods, wished, at first, that she had not asked him, and felt sure that there was much truth in what people said about his wickedness.
Then, when dinner was nearly over, he brightened up and told stories and was entertaining. Mrs. Rand noticed that he drank much claret, but this was, after all, a compliment to her housekeeping. By the end of dinner Mrs. Rand almost loved him and wished that Daisy had been here to entertain him.
Of course it must be dull for a man with only a plain cut-and-dried girl like Lizzie for company.
Lizzie, meanwhile, knew that he was waiting for an opportunity of speech. She had read an appeal in his eyes when he had first entered the room, and now she sat there, curiously, ironically amused at her own agitation. "Lizzie Rand," she said to herself, "you're only, after all, the kind of fool that you despise other people for being. What are you after in thisgalère?"
Nevertheless even now, in retrospect, how arid and sterile seemed all those other active useful days. One moment's little grain of sentiment and a life's hard work goes for nothing in comparison.
After dinner, when the lamp burnt brightly and the furniture seemed to be less anxious to fill every possible space and the windows were opened into the square with its stars and grey shadows, the room seemed, of a sudden, comfortable, and Mrs. Rand, sitting in an arm-chair, with a novel on her lap and spectacles on her nose, was almost cosy. She had left, before going to her matinee,Just a Heroineat one of its most thrilling crises, and Lizzie knew that the talk with Breton depended for its very existence on the relative strength of the play and the novel. IfLove and the Kingwere the more powerful, then would Mrs. Rand make a discursive third. But no, for a moment there was a pause, then, indecisively, Mrs. Rand took up her book. For a while she talked to Breton over its pages, then the light of excitement stole into her eyes, her soul was netted by the snarer, Breton was forgotten as though he had never been.
Their chairs were by the open window and a very little breeze came and played around them. In the square there was that sense of some imminent occurrence, a breathless suggestion of suspense, that a hot evening sometimes carries with it. The stars blazed in a purple sky and a moon was full rounded, a plate of gold; beneath such splendour the square was cool and dim.
"You mustn't think mother rude," Lizzie said with a little smile. "If she once gets deep into a book nothing can tear her from it."
He said something, but she could see that he was not thinking of Mrs. Rand. It was always in the evening, she thought, when uncertain colours and shadows filled the air, that he looked his best. He touched, now, as he had touched on that day of their first meeting, a note of something fine and strange—someone, very young and perhaps very foolish and impetuous, but someone armoured in courage and set apart for some great purpose.
He sat back in his chair, flinging, every now and again, little restless glances beyond the window, pulling sometimes at his beard, answering her absent-mindedly. Then suddenly he began, fiercely, looking away from her—
"Miss Rand, I've got an apology to make to you——"
His voice was so low that she could only catch the words by leaning forward—"To me?"
"Yes—I've been wanting to speak all these weeks. It seemed right enough before, but since I've known you I've felt ashamed of it—as though I'd done something wrong."
"What is it, Mr. Breton?" Her clear grave eyes encouraged him.
"Why—I came to this house, took my rooms, simply because I knew that you were here——"
"That I was here?"
"Yes. I was looking about in this part of the world for rooms. I wanted to be—near Portland Place, you know. I came here and old Mrs. Tweed talked a lot and then, after a time, I said something—about my grandmother. And then she told me that someone who lived here did secretarial work for my aunt——"
He stopped abruptly.
"Well?" said Lizzie, laughing. "All this is not very terrible."
"Then, you see, I determined to stay. I was full of absurd ideas just at the time, thought that I was going to take some great revenge—I was quite melodramatic. And so I thought that I'd use you, get to know you and then, through you—do something or another."
Lizzie eyed him with merriment. "Upon my word, what were you going to make me do? Carry bombs into your aunt's bedroom or set fire to the Portland Place house? Tell me, I should like to know——"
"Ah," he said, "it's all very well for you to laugh. It's very kind of you to take it that way, but lots of women wouldn't have liked it. They'd have thought it another of the things I'm always accused of doing, I suppose."
"No," said Lizzie gravely, "it was all perfectly natural. I understand. I should have done just the same kind of thing, I expect, if I'd been in your place."
The fierceness of his voice showed her that he had been brooding for weeks, and that life was, just now, harder than he could endure.
"You can trust me a great deal farther than that, Mr. Breton," she said.
"The other night," he began, "you said that I might talk to you. I've been pretty lonely lately—and it would help me if——"
"Anything you like," she assured him.
"Besides, there's more than that," he went on. "You've heard—of course you must have heard all kinds of things against me. You're in the enemy's camp and I don't suppose they measure their words. I don't know why you've been so decent to me as you have after what you must have heard——"
"Don't worry your head about that," she said. "We all have our enemies."
"No, but now that we're friends I'd like you to know my side of it all. I don't want to make myself out a hero or blacken all the other people, but thereissomething to be said for me—thereis—thereis——"
He muttered these last words with the deepest intensity. He seemed to fling them through the window into the square, as though he were standing out there, on his defence, before all those listening lighted windows.
"I've been a fool—a thousand times. I've done silly things often and once or twice bad, rotten things, but all these others—these virtuous people who are so ready to judge me, have they been any better?"
"My father was a scoundrel, although I loved him and would love him now if he came back—but he was just as bad as they make 'em and there's no use in denying it. He'd tell you so himself if he were here. He broke my poor mother's heart and killed her. I don't remember her—I was no age at all when she died—but I've got an old picture of her, kept it always with me; she must have been rather like my cousin Rachel, who was here the other day——"
Lizziewatched his face. There had left him now all that hint of insincerity, of exaggeration that she had noticed when he had talked before. She knew that he was telling her now absolutely the truth as he saw it.
"She died and after that I was taken about Europe with my father. We lived in almost every capital in Europe—Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna, everywhere. Sometimes we were rich, sometimes poor. Sometimes we knew the very best people, sometimes the very worst. Sometimes I'd go to school for a little, then I'd suddenly be taken away. My father was splendid to me then; the best-looking man you ever saw, tall, broad, carried himself magnificently—the finest man in Europe. I only knew, bit by bit, the things that he used to do. It was cards most of the time, and he taught me to play, of course, as he taught me to do everything else.
"When I was eighteen my eyes were opened—I tried to leave him—But I loved him and I verily believe that I was the only human being in the world that he cared for. Anyway, he died of fever and general dissipation when I had just come of age, and I came home to England with a little money and great hopes of putting myself right with the world."
As he had talked to her he had gathered confidence; her silence was, in some way to him, reassuring and comforting. Some people have the gift of listening without words so warmly, with such eloquence that they reassure and console as no speech could ever do. This was Lizzie's gift, and Breton, depending, more than most human beings, upon the protection of his fellows, gathered courage.
"My father had always taught me to hate my grandmother. He painted her to me as I have since found her—remorseless, eaten up with pride, cruel. I came home to England, meaning to lead a new life, to be decent—as I'd always wanted to be.
"Well, they wouldn't have me, not one of them. They pretended to at first; and my Uncle John at least was sincere, I think, and was kind for a time, but was afraid of my grandmother as they all were. Christopher—you know him of course—was a real friend to me. He'd stood up for my father before and he stood up for me now. But what was the use? I was wild when I saw that my grandmother was against me and was going to do her best to ruin me. I just didn't care then—what was the good of it all? Other people encouraged me. The set in London that hated my people would have done something with me, but I wouldn't be held by anyone.
"I'm not excusing myself," he said quietly, looking away from the window and suddenly taking his judgment from her eyes.
"I know you're not," she said, smiling back to him.
"Cards finished me. I'd always loved gambling—I love it still—my father had given me a good education in it. There were plenty of fellows in town to take one on and—Oh! it's all such an old story now, not worth digging up. But there was a house and a table and a young fool who lost all he possessed and—well, did for himself. It had all been square as far as I was concerned, but somebody had to be a scapegoat and two or three of us were named. It was hushed up for the sake of the young fellow's people, but everyone knew. Of course they all said, as far as I was concerned, 'Like father like son,' and I think I minded that more than anything——"
"Oh! I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lizzie said.
"I give you my word of honour that it had all been straight as far as I was concerned—gambling just as anyone might. That's what made me so mad, to think of the rest of them—all so virtuous and good—and then going off to Monte Carlo and losing or winning their little bit—just as I'd done.
"I tried to brazen it out for a bit, but it was no good. Christopher still stuck by me—otherwise it was—well, the Under Ten, you know——"
"The Under Ten?"
"Yes—all the men and women who've done something—once—done one of the things that you mustn't do. It mayn't have been very bad, not half so bad as the things—the cruel, mean things—that most people do every day of their lives, but, once it's there, you're down, you're under. There's a regular colony of them here in London; their life's amusing. There they are, hanging on here, keeping up some pretence of gaiety, some kind of decency, waiting, hoping that the day will come when they'll be taken back again, when everything will be forgotten. They pretend, bravely enough, not to mind their snubs, not to notice the kind people, once their friends, who cut them now. Every now and again they make a spring like fish to the top of the water, see the sun, hope that the light and air are to be theirs again, after all—and then back they are pushed, down into the dark, their element now, they are told. Oh! there's comedy there, Miss Rand, if you care to look for it."
She said nothing; the fierce bitterness in his voice had made him seem older suddenly, as though, in this portion of his journey, be had spent many, many years.
"I must cut it short—you'll have had enough of this. I couldn't stand it. I left London and went abroad. After that, what didn't I do? I was everywhere, I did everything. Sometimes I was straight, sometimes I wasn't. I was always bitter, wild with fury when I thought of that old woman—of her complacency, sitting there and striking down all the poor devils that had been less fortunate than she. All those years abroad I nourished that anger and, at last, when I thought that I'd been abroad long enough, that people would have forgotten, perhaps, and forgiven, I came back. I came back to be revenged on my grandmother and to re-establish myself. I'd got some money, enough for a little annuity, and I was careful now—I wasn't going to make any mistakes this time." He laughed bitterly. "One doesn't learn much with age. What a fool I was! I've got the reputation I had before, whether I'm good or bad. It would all be hopeless—utterly hopeless—if it weren't for one thing——"
She looked up, and as she glanced at him, could feel the furious beating of her heart.
"I'd go back at once—I've almost gone back already—not abroad, that never again for long—but back to my friends, the unfortunates—" He laughed. "They're anxious to have me. They'll welcome me. I can have my cards and the rest then, with no one to object or to lecture—and I'll be done for quite nicely, completely done for."
Then he pulled himself together, squared his shoulders. "But one thing keeps me," he said. "Something's happened in the last few weeks—I've met somebody——"
"Yes," she said almost in a whisper.
"Somebody who's made it worth while for me to fight on a bit." She could feel his agitation: his voice, although he tried very hard to control it, was shaking. Then he laughed, raised his voice and caught and held her eyes with his.
"But there, Miss Rand. I've talked a fearful lot, only I wanted to tell you—I had to tell you. And now—if you feel—that you'd rather not know me, you've only got to say so."
She laughed a little unsteadily.
"Thank you for taking me into your confidence. You shall never regret it. I'm glad you're going to hold on, and, after all, we're all doing that more or less."
"It's done me a world of good talking like this. It's what I've been wanting for months."
She quieted her emotion. Looking out into the stars she knew that she believed every word that he had said. She thought that she valued Truth above every other quality; the directness that there was in Truth; its honesty and clarity. He might not always be honest with her, but she would never forget that he had, on this night, at least, spoken no falsehood.
Life—her work, her surroundings, Portland Place, her home—this was full of falsehood and deceit and muddle.
Here, this evening, at last, was honesty.
They said no more, but sat there silently and listened to the echo of dance music from some house.
Mrs. Rand, whom their conversation had lured into oblivion of them, was roused now by their silence.
She looked up. "It's quite splendid," she said, "you must read it, Lizzie. The part about the Riviera is lovely." Then, slowly remembering, "Really, Mr. Breton, I'm afraid you must consider me very rude."
He came towards her, assuring her that his evening had been delightful.
Lizzie was happy, happier than she could ever remember to have been before. She felt her cheeks burn. She leant out of the window to cool them. She flung back, over her shoulder:
"By the way, Mr. Breton—a piece of gossip. Your cousin is to marry Sir Roderick Seddon!"
She could not see him. He said nothing. Mrs. Rand said:
"Really, Lizzie! How interesting! How long's that been announced?"
"Oh! it isn't announced. I don't believe that he's even asked her, but all the house knows it. It's settled. I believe she likes him immensely and, of course, the Duchess is devoted to him."
Anything would do to talk about. What did it matter? Only that she should keep on talking so that they should not see how happy she was—how happy!
He said good night, rather sharply; his voice was constrained as though he too were keeping in his emotion.
After he had gone Mrs. Rand said, "I don't like him, my dear. I can't help it—you may laugh at me—but my impressions are always right. He hardly spoke to me all the evening."
"Why, mother, you were reading. How could he?"
"That's all very well, but I don't like him. And I believe he's in love with his cousin. He went quite white when you spoke about the engagement."
"Mother—how absurd you are. He's only seen her once——"
"Well, my dear, that's a book you ought to read; really, I haven't enjoyed anything so much for weeks. I simply——"
Up in her bedroom Lizzie flung wide her window and laughed at the golden moon. Then she lay, for hours, staring at the pale light that it flung upon her ceiling.
Oh! what a fool she was! But she was happy, happy, happy. And he needed someone to look after him—he did, indeed!
The Duchess had suffered, during the last five or six years, from sleeplessness, and throughout these hot days and nights of June and July sleep almost deserted her. Grimly she gave it no quarter, allowing to no one that she was sleeping badly, pretending even to Christopher that all was well.
Nevertheless those long dark hours began to tell upon her. She had known many nights sleepless through pain, certain nights sleepless through anxiety, but they, terrible though they had been, had not worn so stern a look as these long black spaces of time when all rest and comfort seemed to be drawn from her by some mysterious hand.
To herself now she admitted that she dreaded that moment when Dorchester left her; she began to do what she had never in her life done before, to fall asleep during the daytime. Small mercy to anyone who might attract any attention to those little naps.
She fell asleep often towards six or seven and, therefore, without any comment, Dorchester, seeing her fatigue, left her to sleep until late in the morning. She had not for many years left her room before midday, but she had been awake with her correspondence and the papers by half-past seven at the latest. Now it was often eleven before she awoke.
She found that she did not awake with the energy and freshness that she had always known before. About her there always hovered a great cloud of fatigue—something not quite present, but threatening at any moment to descend.
On a certain morning late in July she awoke after two or three hours' restless sleep. As she woke she was conscious that those hours had not removed from her that threatening cloud: she heard a clock strike eleven. Dorchester was drawing back the curtains and from behind the blinds there leapt upon her a blazing, torrid day.
Her bedroom carried on the touch of fantasy that her other room had shown; she was lying in a red lacquer Japanese bed that mounted up behind her like a throne. Her wall-paper was an embossed dull gold and the chairs were carved Indian, of black ebony.
Lying in bed she appeared very old and ugly; the sharp nose was exceedingly prominent and her white hair scattered about the pillow gave her face the colour of dried parchment.
Dorchester brought her her chocolate and her letters andThe Timesand theMorning Post.
"Another terribly hot day, your Grace."
"Yes—I suppose so." As she took her letters she felt, for the first time in her life, that it would perhaps be better to lie in bed for the rest of her life and conduct the world from there.
She put the letters down and stared at the day—
"Draw the curtains again, Dorchester, and kindly ask Lady Adela if she will be so good as to come and see me in a quarter of an hour's time."
When Dorchester had gone she lay back and closed her eyes and dozed again, whilst the chocolate grew cold and the births and deaths and marriages grew aged and stale. She did not care, she did not want to see her daughter ... she did not want to see anyone, nor was there anything now in the world worth her energy or trouble. Her body, being now at ease, was called back to days, brighter days, days filled with thrilling events and thrilling people, days when the world was a world and not a dried-up cinder. Those were men ... those were women ... and then, suddenly, she was conscious first that her daughter was speaking and then that her daughter was a tiresome fool.
She sat up a little and her nightdress fell back showing a neck bony, crinkled and yellow.
"I said a quarter of an hour," she snapped.
"It is a quarter of an hour, mother," said Lady Adela.
Lady Adela hated and dreaded these morning interviews. In the first place she disliked the decorations of her mother's bedroom, thought them almost indecent, and could never be comfortable in such surroundings. She was also aware, by long experience, that her mother was always at her worst at this hour in the morning and many were the storms of temper that that absurd bed and those unpleasant black chairs had witnessed. Thirdly she knew that she herself looked her worst and was her weakest amongst these eccentricities and shadowed by this dim light.
She waited now whilst her mother fumbled her letters.
"There's your chocolate, mother," she said at last. "It'll be cold."
The Duchess was looking at her letters, but was absorbing only a little of their contents. She was summoning all her will to her aid; she wanted to order the blind to be pulled down, to command her daughter to avoid her presence for at least a week, to scatter her correspondence to the four corners of the earth, and to see none of it again; at the same time she was driving into her brain the fact that before Adela, of all people in the world, she must be alert and wise and wonderful; Adela, the ugliest and most foolish of living women, must see no weakness.
"Shall I read your letters to you, mother?"
She did not answer; slowly, steadily at last, her will was flooding her brain. She could feel the warmth and the colour and the strength of it pervading again her body. The day did not now appear of so appalling a heat and the weight of the things to be done was less heavy upon her.
Lady Adela, meanwhile, watching her mother was struck once again by that chill dismay that had alarmed her first on that May evening, after the visit to the picture gallery. In that half-light her mother did seem very, very old and very, very feeble. Lady Adela had a dreadful temptation to say in a brusque sharp voice, "What do you let your chocolate get cold like that for? Why don't you get someone to read your letters sensibly to you instead of groping through them like that?" and at the mere horror of such a thought a shudder shook her and her heart began wildly to beat. Let once such words as those cross her lips and an edifice, a wonderful, towering temple raised by submissions and subduals and self-denials, would tumble to the ground.
For some moments the struggle in Lady Adela's breast was sharp, then by a tense dominion of her will she produced once again for herself the Ceremonial, the Terror, the agitated, humble Submission.
"Julia Massiter," the Duchess said, "has asked Rachel for the last week-end in July—She'll go of course——"
"Yes," said Lady Adela.
"Roddy Seddon is going——"
"Yes."
"Roddy is going to marry Rachel. He's coming to see me this afternoon."
Lady Adela was silent.
"A very suitable business. I'd intended it for a long time." Then, after a pause—
"You may tell Dorchester I will dress now."
Lady Adela, conscious, as she left the room, of the relief of her dismissal, joyfully yielded that relief as witness—
The Terror was still there, and she was glad.
Very different, however, at three in the afternoon. Now she sat in her high black chair waiting for Roddy Seddon. Very difficult now to imagine that early discourage of the morning. Magnificent now with her black dress and flashing eyes and white hair, waiting for Roddy Seddon.
This that she had long planned was at length to come to pass. Roddy Seddon was to be united to the Beaminster family, never again to be separated from it.
Of Rachel she thought not at all. She had never liked Rachel; indeed it was a more positive feeling than that. Alone of all the family was Rachel still in rebellion; even the Duke, although he was so often abroad or in the country (he hated London), was submissive enough when he was with them. But Rachel the old woman knew that she had not touched.
Frightened—yes. The girl hated that evening half-hour and would give a great deal to avoid it, but the terror that she showed did not bring her any closer to her grandmother's power; she stood outside and away.
The Duchess had attempted to influence the girl's brain, to catch some trait, some preference, some dislike, that she could hold and use.
Still Rachel's soul was beyond her grasp, beyond even her guessing at. But she knew Roddy Seddon—she knew Roddy Seddon as no one knew him. And Roddy Seddon knew her.
Even when he was a boy he had known her as no one else knew her. He had seen through all her embroideries and disguises, had known where she was theatrical and why she was so, had discovered her plots and prides, her defeats and victories—and together they two, Pagan to the very bone of them, had laughed at a credulous, superstitious world.
The London that knew Roddy Seddon thought him a country bumpkin with dissipated tastes and an amiable heart. But she knew him better than that. He was not clever—no. He was amazingly innocent of books, he had no intellectual attainments whatever—yet had he received any kind of education, she knew that he might have had one of the finest brains in the country.
He had preferred dogs and horses and the simple enjoyments of his sensations.
Bowing to the outward rules and laws of the modern world he was less modern than anyone she had ever known.
Pagan—root and branch Pagan. In his simplicities, in his complexities, in his moralities and immoralities, in his kindnesses and cruelties—Pagan.
When they were together it was astonishing the number of trappings that they were able to discard. They were Pagan together.
But Rachel? Rachel?
Well, Rachel did not matter. It would be a rather good sight to see Rachel suffer, to watch her proud spirit up against something that she could not understand.
And meanwhile the Beaminster family was strengthened by a great addition and the campaign against this new generation, that refused to be led, that wished to lead, that thought itself so very, very brilliant, should go victoriously forward....
"Sir Roderick Seddon, your Grace."
As she looked at the healthy and red-faced Roddy sitting opposite to her, for an instant, some sharp warning, some foreordained consciousness of trouble to come, bade her pause. She knew that a word from her, now, would be enough to prevent the match. He would not prosecute it were she against it. After all, ought Roddy to marry anybody? Could a girl, as ignorant of the world as Rachel, put up any fight against Roddy's simple complexities?
What, after all, did Roddy think of the girl? Did he imagine that he was in love with her? Did he know her, understand her?
Then, looking at him, the affection that she had for him—the only affection that she had for anyone in the world—swept over her. This marriage would bind him to her, would give her another ally before the world—yes, it should go on.
She smiled at him.
"Well, Roddy, have you no news for me, now?"
He had been silent, gazing before him, his brows puckered.
Now he smiled back at her.
"Well, there's been the usual doin's the last week or two. I've been dancin' every night till I'm tired. 'Bout time for the country agen——"
"Have you been down to Seddon at all?"
"Yes. Two nights last week—all dried up—Place wants me a bit oftener down there——"
"What's this I hear about young Olive Ormond marrying Besset Crewe's daughter?"
"So they say—can't imagine it myself. The girl's about eighty-four and a half and he's the most awful kid. Saw them at the opera the other night——"
"What about Scotland this summer, Roddy? Are you going?"
"Don't think so. Depends——"
Then there was silence. The little conversation had been as stiff as it was possible a conversation could be. The China dragons must have wondered—never before so constrained a dialogue between these two!
Now another pause, then suddenly Roddy, his hands clutching one another, his face redder than ever—
"I want—I wonder—dash it—have I your leave to ask your granddaughter to marry me?"
She laughed.
"Really, my dear Roddy, you've been very long about it—coming out with it, I mean. Didn't you know and didn't I know that that's what you came for to-day?"
"Well then, may I?"
She paused and watched his anxiety. Between both of them there hung, now, the recollection of so many things—conversations and deeds and thoughts known to both of them, so many, many things that no others in all the world could know. She waited for his eyes, caught them and held them.
"Are you in love with her?"
"Yes—that is—she's splendid——"
"You haven't known her very long and you're a little impulsive, ain't you, Roddy, about these things?"
"No—I don't know her now. But we've seen a lot of one another these last months—a fearful lot. She's—oh! hang it! I never can say things—but she's a brick."
"Do you think she'll accept you?"
"How can any feller tell? I think she likes me—she's odd——"
"Yes—she is—very. She's a mixture—she's very young—and she won't understand you."
His eyes were suddenly troubled and, as she saw that trouble, she was alarmed. He reallydidcare....
"Yes, I know—I don't understand myself. I'm wild sometimes—I wish I weren't——"
"Marriage is going to make you a model character, Roddy. Of course I'm glad—but it won't be easy, you know. And she won't be easy."
"I want her though. I've never thought of marriage before. I do want her."
"My dear Roddy, you speak as though she were a sheep or a dog. It's only her first season. Don't you think you'd better wait a little?"
"No. I want her now."
"Well, you're definite enough—" She paused and then, in a voice that had, in spite of her, real emotion, "You have my consent. You've gotmyblessing."
He rose and came clumsily towards her.
"You don't know—I'm no use at words, but I'm dam' grateful—Rippin' of you!"
For a second he touched her dried, withered hand—how cold it was! and in this hot weather, too.
"You'll ask her at Julia Massiter's next week?"
"Expect so—I say you are——"
Then he sat down again. The room was relieved of an immense burden; once more they were at ease together.
"The other night—" he said, bending forward and chuckling ever so little.
Lady Carloes, Agnes Lady Farnet, and old Mrs. Brunning were coming to play bridge with her. The ceremonial was ever the same! They arrived at half-past nine and at half-past eleven supper for four was served in the Duchess's little green room, behind her bedroom (a little room like a box with a green wall-paper, a card-table and silver candlesticks). They played, sometimes, until three or four o'clock in the morning; the Duchess played an exceedingly good game and Mrs. Brunning (a bony little woman like a plucked chicken) was the best bridge player in London. The other two were moderate, but made mistakes which allowed the Duchess the free use of her most caustic wit and satire.
Lord John came just before dinner as he always did for a few minutes every evening. He stood there, fat and smiling and amiable and, as always, a little nervous.
"Well, John?"
She liked John the best of her children, although he was, of course, the most fearful fool, but she liked his big broad face and he was always clean and healthy; moreover, she could use him more easily than any of them.
"Bridge to-night, mother, isn't it?"
"Yes. Not so hot this evening. Just give me that book. Turn the lamp up a little—no—not that one. The de Goncourt book. Yes. Thank you."
"Anything I can get for you, mother? Anyone I can send to you?"
He was thinking, as he smiled down at her, "She's old to-night—old and tired. This hot weather...."
She looked up at him before she settled herself—
"Roddy Seddon came this afternoon——"
"Yes. I know."
Suddenly his heart began to beat. He had known, during all these last weeks, of what the common talk had been. He knew, too, what his conscience had told him, and he knew, too, how perpetually he had silenced that same conscience.
"He asked me whether he had my permission to propose to Rachel——"
"Yes."
"Of course I gave it him. I thought it most suitable in every way."
Now was Lord John's moment. He knew, even as it descended upon him, what was the right to do. He must protest—Roddy Seddon was not the right man to marry Rachel, Rachel who was to him more than anyone in the world—
He must protest—
And then with that impulse went the old warning that because his mother seemed to him older and feebler to-night than he had ever known her, therefore if he spoke now, it would involve far more than the immediate dispute. There was a sudden impulse in him to risk discomfort, to risk a scene, to break, perhaps, in the new assertion of his authority, all the old domination, to smash a tradition to pieces.
He glanced at his mother. She met his eyes. He knew that she was daring him to speak. After all to-morrow would be a better time—she was tired now—he would speak then. His eyes fell, and after a pause and a word about some indifferent matter, he said good night and went.
Once, in some early hour of the morning when the candles were burning low, the thought of Rachel came to her.
Even as she noticed that her hand shone magnificently with hearts she was conscious that the girl stood opposite to her, there against the green wall, straight and fierce, all black and white, looking at her.
Christopher? John?...
For a second her brain was clouded. Might she not have attempted some relationship with the girl? Given her some counsel and a little kindness? She must have been lonely there in that great house without a friend. She was going now into a very perilous business.
She pushed the weakness from her. Her eyes were again upon the cards.
"Hearts," she said. The odd trick this game and it was her rubber. The dying flame rose in the silver sconces and the four old heads bobbed, wildly, fantastically, upon the wall.
Rachel sat in the train with Aunt Adela and Uncle John: they were on their way to Trunton St. Perth, Lord Massiter's country house. It was a July day softened with cool airs and watered colours; trees and fields were mingled with sky and cloud; through the counties there was the echo of running streams, only against an earth fading into sky and a sky bending and embracing earth, sharp, with hard edges, the walls and towers that man had piled together showed their outlines cut as with a sword.
Over all the country in the pale blue of the afternoon sky a great moon was burning and the corn ran in fine abundance to the summit of the hills.
Rachel, as the train plunged with her into the heart of Sussex, was gazing happily through the window, dreaming, almost dozing, feeling in every part of her a warm and grateful content. Opposite to her Aunt Adela, gaunt and with the expression that she always wore in trains as of one whose person and property were in danger, at any instant, of total destruction, read a life of a recently deceased general whose widow she knew. Uncle John, with three illustrated papers, was interested in photographs of people with one leg in the air and their mouths wide open; every now and again he would say (to nobody in particular), "There's old Reggie Cutler with that foreign woman—youknow"—or "Fancy Shorty Monmouth being at Cowes after all this year—you know we heard——"
Rachel had been having a wonderful time—that was the great fact that ran, up and down, through her dozing thoughts. Yes, a wonderful time. It was surely, now, a century ago, that strange period when she had dreaded, so terribly, her plunge.
That day, after her visit to the Bond Street gallery, when it had all seemed simply more than she could possibly encounter, those talks with May Eversley (who, by the way, had just announced herself as engaged to a middle-aged baronet) when the world had frowned down from a vast, incredible height upon a miserably terrified midget. Why! the absurdity of it! It had all been as easy, simply as easy as though she had been plunged in the very heart of it all her life.
Followed there swiftly upon that the knowledge that Roddy Seddon was to be, for this same week-end, at Lady Massiter's. Rachel did not pretend that, ever since thatMeistersingernight at the opera she had not known of his attentions to her—impossible to avoid them had she wished, impossible to pretend ignorance of the meaning that his inarticulate sentences had, of late, conveyed, impossible to mistake the laughing hints and suggestions of May and the others.
She did not know what answer she would give did he ask her to marry him. At that concrete suggestion her doze left her and, sitting up, staring out at the wonderful day into whose heart muffled lights were now creeping, she asked herself what, indeed, was her real thought of him.
He was to her as were Uncle John and Dr. Christopher—safe, kind, simple. He appealed to everything in her that longed for life to be clear, comfortable, without danger. She loved his happiness in all out-of-door things—horses and dogs and fields and his little place in Sussex. Ever since that visit to Uncle Richard's fans she had suspected him of other appreciations and enthusiasms, perhaps she might in time encourage those hidden things in him.
Above all did she find him true, straight, honest. Lies, little mannerisms, disguises, these were not in him, he was as clear to her as a mirror, she would trust him beyond anyone she knew.
He did not touch in any part of him that other secret, wild, unreal life of hers, and indeed that was, in him, the most reassuring thing of all.
The Rachel who was in rebellion, to whom everything of her London life, everything Beaminster, was hateful, whose sudden memories and instincts, whose swift alarms and fore-warnings were so shattering to every clinging security that life might offer—this Rachel knew nothing of Roddy Seddon.
He was there to take her away from that, to drive it all into darkness, to reassure her against its return, and marriage with him would mean release, security, best of all freedom from her grandmother who knew, so well, that life in her and loved to play with that knowledge. Her colour rose and her eyes shone as she thought of what this so early escape from the Portland Place house would mean to her. Already, in her first season, to be free of it all—to be free of humbug and deception—Oh! for that would she not surrender everything in the world?
Roddy, as she pictured him, with his clean life, his love of nature, his kindliness, seemed, just then, the safest refuge that would ever be offered to her.
And at that, without reason, she saw before her her cousin Francis Breton. Several times she had met him since that first occasion at Lizzie Rand's. Once again at Lizzie's and twice in Regent's Park when she had been walking with May.
Yes—that was all. Thinking of it now the meetings appeared to her almost infinite. Between each actual encounter intimacy seemed to leap in its progress, and although, on at least two of them, he had only walked with her for the shortest period, yet, always with them, she was conscious of the number of things that, between them, did not need to be said—knowledge that they shared.
In all this there was, with her, a confusion of motives and sensations that, at present, refused to be disentangled. For one thing there was, in all of this, a furtiveness, a secrecy, that she loathed. Against that was the persuasion that it would be the finest thing in the world for her to bring him back into the Beaminster fold, not, of course, that he should remain there (he was far too strong and adventurous for that), but that, accepted there, he could use it as a springing-off board for success and fortune. Let her once, as the situation now was, say a word to Uncle John or the others, and that of course was the end....
She knew, quite definitely, that now she wished that she had never met him.
He had been, during these weeks, the only influence that had drawn that other Rachel to the light. It was always that other Rachel that met him—someone alarming, rebellious, conscious of unhappiness, and apprehensive, above everything, that in some hidden manner she was being untrue to her real self.
At such moments it was as though she had blinded some force within her, muffled it, stifled it, because her way through the world was easier with it so muffled, so stifled.
At some future time, what if there should leap out upon her that muffled figure, bursting its bonds, refusing any longer to be silenced, proclaiming the world no easy, comfortable place, but a battle, a fierce, unresting war?
When she thought of Breton it was as though she knew herself for a coward, as though he had threatened to expose her for one, and as though (and this was the worst of all) something in her was eager that he should—
Against this there was the peace, the security that Roddy could offer her....
Beaminster security, perhaps—nevertheless....
They were at Trunton St. Perth. The little station glittered in the evening air. It was all suddenly thrilling. Who would be there? What might not happen before Monday?