"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall goAlways a little farther: it may beBeyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,Across that angry or that glimmering sea.... but surely we are braveWho make the Golden Journey to Samarcand."The Golden Journey to Samarcand.James Alroy Flecker.
"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall goAlways a little farther: it may beBeyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,Across that angry or that glimmering sea.... but surely we are braveWho make the Golden Journey to Samarcand."
The Golden Journey to Samarcand.
James Alroy Flecker.
Rachel now awaited her meeting with Breton with restless impatience. It should afford her, beyond everything, a solution. She was young enough and inexperienced enough to make many demands upon life—that it should be romantic, that it should, in the issues that it presented, be honest and open and clear, that it should allow her to settle her own place in it without any hurt to anyone else, that it should, in fact, arrange any number of compromises to suit herself and that it should nevertheless be so honest that it would admit of no compromises at all.
She approached life with all the reckless boldness of one who has never come into direct contact with it. Neither her relations with her grandmother nor with Roddy had as yet taken from her any of her youngest nor simplest illusions. Were life drab and uninteresting, why, then one turned simply to the place where it promised colour and adventure.
She had not yet discovered that when we go deliberately to grasp at happiness we are eternally eluded.
But in spite of her desire for honesty she refused to face the actual meeting with Breton. She knew him so slightly as Francis Breton and so intimately as an idea. What she felt in her heart was, that her grandmother had hoped to catch her by marrying her to Roddy and that nothing could prove so eloquently that she had not been caught as her friendship with Breton.
"I will show her and I will show Roddy that I am my own mistress, free whatever they may say or do."
Breton—seen dimly as a rebel against a harsh dominating world—was the figure of all romance and freedom. "Roddy doesn't care what happens to me. He'll do anything grandmother tells him to...."
She was now out to attack the Beaminster fortress; she did not as yet know that half of her was urgent for its defence.
When the afternoon arrived she took a cab and was driven to Saxton Square. She mounted the stairs, knocked on the door and was admitted by his ugly man-servant.
"Is Mr. Breton at home?" she asked.
"Yes, my lady," he answered and smiled; she disliked his smile and before she passed into the room had a moment of wild unreasoning panic when she wished that she were not there, when Roddy's face came to her, kind and loving and homely.
She stepped forward into the room, heard the door close behind her and felt rather than saw him as he came forward to greet her.
Then she heard him say—
"Oh, I'm so glad you've come. I was so afraid lest something should stop you."
His windows, although only on the first floor, had a wide sweeping view; a world of chimneys and towers glittering now beneath the sinking sun.
His room was simple and had the effect of cleanly emptiness; a table arranged for tea, two rather faded arm-chairs, a dark green carpet, a book-case, two large framed photographs on the walls, one of some street in Bombay, the other of the Niagara Falls.
The sunshine lit the bare room and their faces and she was suddenly comfortable and at ease.
He drew one of the easy chairs forward to the window.
"Sit down in the sun; Marks will bring the tea in a moment."
She sat back in the chair and looked out on to the shining roofs and towers, not glancing towards him, but acutely aware of him, of all his movements. He sat down upon the broad window-seat near her and looked at her.
She knew that she had never been conscious, physically, of anyone before. Roddy's clumsy hands and rather awkward body had always simply belonged to Roddy and stayed at that; now she felt as if Francis Breton's hand, close, as she knew, to hers, was joined to her by a running current of attraction.
Although he was not touching her, it was as though she were chained to him. If he moved she felt that she must move with him and every motion that he made seemed to rouse some response in her.
She was aware, of course, as she was always aware with him, of the way that intimacy between them had moved since their last meeting. All her romantic evocation of life as she wanted it to be helped her to this. It was as though she said to herself, "Here at least is my true self free and dominant. I must make the most of it"—and yet, with that, something seemed to warn her that freedom too easily obtained carried at its heart disappointment. The ugly man-servant brought in tea and then disappeared. Breton moved about, waited upon her, then sat down closer to her, leaning forward and looking into her eyes.
It was part of his temperament that he should take her coming to him as an instant acknowledgment of the complete fulfilment of his wishes. He always saw life as the very rosiest of his dreams until it woke him to reality. He was ruled completely by the mood of the moment, and his one emotion now was that Rachel was divinely intended for him alone of all human beings—
But he could not wait.... He knew, by this time, that reflection was always a period of disappointment. He was unhappily made in that he yielded to his impulses of regret as eagerly as to his impulses of anticipation—One mood followed so swiftly upon another that collision might seem inevitable.
They were, both of them, young enough to see life as something that would inevitably, in a short time, condemn them both to years of sterile monotony. Rachel indeed felt that she was already caught....
They must, both of them, therefore, make the best of their time.
"Iwasso afraid," he repeated again, "lest something should have stopped you."
"I would have asked you to come to us, only I'm afraid that my husband still——"
"Oh! I quite understand."
"It's natural—Roddy's like that. If he wants to do a thing he doesn't care for anybody and just does it. But if nothing makes him especially want to do it, then he just takes other people's opinions. Now he might ask you suddenly to come and see us—simply because he took it into his head. Then nobody could stop him.... He's very obstinate."
She was rather surprised at herself for talking about Roddy. She had a curious feeling about him as though she were going on a journey and had just said good-bye to him and had a rather desolate choke in her throat because she wouldn't see him again for so long.
"Oh! but I'm glad you've come! If you knew the times and times when I've imagined this meeting—thought about it, pictured——"
She saw that his hand was trembling on the window-ledge—
"I oughtn't to have come, perhaps—But I don't know. I've felt so indignant at the way that grandmother is treating you. I wanted toshowyou that I was indignant...."
"You don't know," he said, "what a help you've been to me already—You showed me the very first time that we met that youdidsympathize...."
His voice was tender, partly because her presence moved him so deeply and partly because the sympathy of anyone about his own affairs made him instantly full of sorrow for himself—When anyone said that they thought that he had been badly treated he always felt with an air of surprised discovery: "By Jove, Ihavebeen having a bad time!"
"Yes—Wasn't it strange, that first meeting in Miss Rand's room? We seem to have known one another all our lives."
She looked at him. "That you should hate grandmamma so," she said, "was a great thing to me. I'd been all alone—fighting her—for so long."
Rachel felt, in the glow of the occasion, that, all her days, there had been active constant war-to-the-knife in the Portland Place house.
"She's been the curse of my life," he said bitterly. "Always keeping me down, making me unable to do myself justice. Why should she hate me so?"
"She hates us," cried Rachel, "because we're both determined to be free. We wouldn't have our lives ruled for us. She wants everyone to be under her ineverything."
They glowed together, very close to one another now, in a glorious assertion of rebellious independence. He put his hand upon the back of her chair—
"Now," he said, his voice trembling, "now that we've got to know one another, you won't go back on it, will you? If I couldn't feel that you were behind me, after being so encouraged, it would be terrible for me—worse than anything's ever been for me."
"You needn't be afraid," she said, not looking at him, but tremendously conscious of his hand that now touched her dress. Then there was a long and very difficult silence during which events seemed to move with terrific impetus.
She was overwhelmed by a multitude of emotions. She was past analysis of regret or anticipation. Somewhere, very far away, there was Roddy, and somewhere—also very far away—there was her grandmother, but, for herself, she could only feel that she was very lonely, that nobody cared about her except Breton and that nobody cared about him except herself—and that she wanted urgently to be comforted and that he himself needed comfort from her.
She knew that if she were not very strong-minded and resolute she would cry; she could feel the tears burning her eyes.
"Perhaps I oughtn't to have come—Oh! it's all so difficult—with grandmother—and everything—I thought I could—could manage things, but I can't—We oughtn't—I wanted to do what was best. I—I didn't know—You——"
Then the tears came—She tried desperately to stop them, then they came rushing; she buried her head in her hands and abandoned herself to weeping that was partly sorrow for herself and partly sorrow for Breton and partly, in the strangest way, sorrow for Roddy.
He was on his knees by her chair, had his arm about her, was crying:
"Oh! Rachel—Rachel—Rachel—I love you. I love you—Don't cry—Don't—Rachel——" He kissed her again and again and she clung to him like a frightened child.
After a time her crying ceased, she got up from the chair, moving gently out of his embrace, and then went to the looking-glass above the fireplace and stood there wiping her eyes.
Then, smiling, she looked back at him—He was standing in front of the window and behind him the reflection, from the departed sun, flooded the town with gold. He seemed a man transformed, gazing upon her with an ecstasy of triumph, exaltation, happiness.
"My dear—my dear—Oh! how glorious you are!"
But she did not move.
He stirred impatiently, and then, looking at her with adoring eyes, he whispered, "Oh! my dear! but I love you!"
"I must go," she said, her eyes, large and frightened, appealingly upon him—
He smiled at her, his eyes laughing.
"Yes, Francis—let me—let me. Now while I can still see what I ought to do."
"There's only one thing that you ought to do. You belong to me now." She plucked nervously with her hands one against the other.
"Francis, let me go—please—please——" He saw then that she was unhappy and the laughter died from his eyes. His voice, fallen from its happiness, was almost harsh, as he replied—
"You know we love one another, have loved one another ever since that day when we met in Miss Rand's rooms? You know it as well as I do. You knew it when you came to these rooms to-day."
"I oughtn't to have come." Her voice had gathered strength. "It's only because I realize now what you are to me that I want to go. I thought I was so strong, that I could be fair to Roddy and to you too ... I didn't know——"
"Then stay—stay—" he whispered urgently. "It's a thing that you've got to face anyhow—We can't stay apart, you and I, now. We can try, but you know—you know as well as I—that we can't do it."
"We must—That's what I meant before. That's why I must go now, because soon I shan't be strong enough. But we've got to part—we've got to."
"Oh, this is absurd," he cried. "We're human beings, not figures to hang a theory on—Now just as we realize what we are to one another——"
"Yes, because of that," she broke in swiftly, urgently. "You know that I love you—I know that you love me. We've got that knowledge that nothing can take away from us—and we've got the love—nothing can touch it. But my duty is with Roddy."
"You knew that," he said, "when you came here to-day."
Her face flamed—"That's not fair of you, Francis."
"No, I beg your pardon. It isn't——" He suddenly came to her, caught her and kissed her, holding her with his arm close to him, murmuring in her ear. At first she had struggled, then she lay absolutely still against him, making no response.
He felt her passive against his beating heart. He released her and watched her as she went across to the window and looked out into the darkening city.
"I don't care," he said roughly, "I love you. There's no talk about it or anything else. You belong tome."
"I belong to Roddy," she answered quietly. "It's all quite clear. My duty is to him until ... unless, life with him becomes impossible. I've got absolutely to do my best and while I'm doing that you've got to help me."
"What do you mean?" he said, his eyes upon her.
"Help me by our not meeting, by our not writing, by our doing nothing—nothing——"
"No—No," he answered her, his eyes set upon her.
"You don't get me any other way. Francis, don't you see that we're not the sort of people, either of us, to put up with the deceits, the trickeries, the lies that the other thing means? Some people might—lots of people do, I suppose—but we're not built that way. We're idealists—We aren't made to stand quietly and see all the quality of the thing vanish before our eyes—just to take the husk when we've known what the kernel was like.
"Besides, it isn't as though I hated Roddy. If I did I'd go off with you now, in a minute if you wanted me, although even then it would be a hopeless thing forusto do. But I'm very fond of Roddy. I'm not in love with him—I never have been—I told him from the first—But I'm going to do my best by him."
"Why did you come here?"
"I came here because I was driven towards you. I wanted to hear you say that you loved me—I wanted to tell you that I loved you. We've both of us said it. We know it now—and we've got to keep it, the most precious thing in the world.
"But we should soon hate one another if we destroyed one another's ideals. For many people it wouldn't matter—For us, weak as we are, it matters everything."
"All this talk," he said. "I'm a man. I'm here to love you, not to talk about it. I've got you and I'm going to keep you."
"You haven't got me," she cried. "You've got a bit of me. There'll be times when I'm away from you when I shall think that you've got all of me. But you haven't—no one's got all of me....
"And I haven't got you either—You think now for the moment that it is so—But I know what it would be if we were hiding about on the Continent or secretly meeting here in London—That's not for us, Francis."
"I've got you," he repeated. "I'm not going to wait any longer——"
"It's the only way you'll ever have me," she answered, "by letting me do my duty to Roddy—I promise you that. If ever life is impossible—if it's ever better for both of us that I should go, I'll come to you—But I shall tell him first."
"Tell him! But he won't let you go."
"He won't stop me—if it comes to that."
He pleaded with her then, telling her about his life, its loneliness, his unhappiness, how impossible it would be now without her.
But she shook her head.
"Don't you think," she cried, "that grandmother would be delighted if we went off? Both of us done for—you never able to return again ... Ah! no! For all of us, for every reason, it's not to be."
"I won't let you go—I've got you. I'll keep you."
"You can't, Francis——"
"I can and I will——"
Then looking up, catching a vision of her framed in the window with the lighted city behind her, he saw in her eyes how unattainable she might be....
He had, he had always had, his ideals. There was a long silence between them, then he bowed his head.
"You shall do as you will—anything with me that you will."
"Oh, my dear," she whispered, "I love you for that."
Then hurriedly, moving as though she feared her own weakness, she went to put on her wraps—He came to her.
"Let me write—let me."
"No—Better not."
"Just a line—Nothing that any ordinary person——"
"No, we mustn't, Francis."
He put her furs about her neck, then his hand rested on her shoulder. Her head fell back.
"Once more"—she said. He kissed her throat, then her eyes, then their lips met.
"Stay," he whispered, "stay"—Very slowly she drew away from him, smiled at him once, and was gone.
"I judge more than I used to—but it seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till one is forty; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant."Henry James.
"I judge more than I used to—but it seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till one is forty; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant."
Henry James.
The War had the City in its grip. There was now, during these early weeks of November, no other thought, no other anxiety, no other interest. The shock of its reality came most severely upon those whose lives had been most unreal. Here, in the midst of their dining and their dancing, was the sure fact that many whom they knew and with whom they had been in the habit of playing might now, at any moment, find death—
Here was a reality against which there was no argument, and against the harshness of it music screamed and food was uninteresting.
During that first month of that war, so new a thing was the horrid grimness of it, that hysteria was abroad, life was twopence coloured. For everyone now it was the question—"What might they do?"
Something to help, something to ease that biting truth—"Your life has been the most utterly useless business—no purpose, no strength, no unselfishness from first to last—what now?"
Christopher's life had not been useless and he knew it. The reality of it had never been in doubt and death—the haphazard surprise of it and the pathos and melodrama and sometimes drab monotony of it—had been his companion for many years.
Christopher, although he had been a hard worker from his childhood, had always taken life lightly. He loved the gifts of this world—food and amusement and exercise and pleasant company. He loved, also, certain people whose lives were of immense concern to him. He also believed in a quite traditional God about Whom he had never argued, but Whose definite particular existence was as certain to him as his own.
He had faults that he tried to cure—his temper—his pleasure in food and wine.
He had three great motives in his life—His love of God, his love of his friends and his love of his work. He hated hypocrites, mean persons, cruel persons, anyone who showed cowardice or deceit or arrogance. He was dogmatic and therefore disliked anyone else to be so. He was humble about his work, but not humble about his position in the world, which he thought, quite frankly, a very good one.
His interest in his especial friends was compounded of his love for them and also of his curiosity about them, and he always loved someone the more if he or she gave him the opportunity to practise his inquisitiveness upon them.
After Rachel Seddon he cared more, perhaps, for Francis Breton than anyone in the world. He had also of late been interested in Roddy, who was a far better fellow than he had expected.
One puzzle, meanwhile, obstinately and continually beset him. What had happened to Breton during this last year? Something, or in surer probability someone, had been behind him. Christopher might have flattered himself that he had been the influence, but he knew that, if that had been so, Breton's attitude to him would have implied it. Breton was fond of him, but did not owe that to him. Who then was it?
On one of these November days he invited a friend and Breton to luncheon together.
Christopher's geniality and the supreme importance of the war over everything else helped amiability. Christopher's little house in Harley Street showed, beyond its consulting-room, a cheerful Philistine appreciation of comfort and love. There was old silver, there were old prints, sofas, soft carpets, book-cases, whose glass coverings were more important than their contents. Also a luncheon that was the most artistic thing that the house contained, save only the wine.
At the side of the round gleaming table Christopher sat smiling, and soon Breton told the friend about India and the friend told Breton about Africa.
Meanwhile Christopher watched Breton. He knew Breton very well and, in the old days, he would have said that that nervous excitement that the man sometimes betrayed meant that he was on the edge of some most foolish action.
He knew that light in the eyes, that excited voice, that restlessness—these things had meant that Breton's self-control was about to break.
To-day there were all these signs, and Christopher knew that after luncheon Breton would escape him.
Breton did escape him, went off somewhere in a hurry; no, Christopher could not drive him—he was going in the opposite direction.
Whilst Christopher drove, first down to Eaton Square, then back to 104 Portland Place, he was wondering about Breton....
It seemed that, on this afternoon, he was unduly sensitive to impression. The house struck him with a chill, deserted air. There seemed to be no one about as Norris led him up to the Duchess's rooms, the old portraits grinned at him, as though they would have him to know that, very soon, the house would be once more in their possession and Beaminsters dead and gone be of more importance than Beaminsters alive.
At any rate it was a cold November day, and always now the streets seemed to echo with newsboys crying out editions.
Even through these stone walls, those cries could penetrate; he could hear one as he climbed the stairs.
The Duchess, looking peaked and shrivelled, received him with an eagerness that showed that she was longing for company. The room was close, but, in spite of that, now and again she shivered a little.
As he sat opposite her the glance that she flung him was almost pathetic—struggling to maintain her pride, but showing, too, that she might now, in his company, a little relax that great effort.
"I'm not so well," she said; "I've slept badly."
"I'm sorry for that," he said; "what's the trouble?"
"It's this war," she said, taking her eyes away from his face. "This war—I don't think I've ever felt anything before, but this—Oh! I'm old, old at last," she said almost savagely.
"Everybody's feeling it just now," Christopher answered her quietly. "I suppose I'm as level-headed as most people, but even I have been imagining things to-day—Nerves, simply nerves——"
"Nonsense," she answered him—"Don't tellme, Christopher. What have I ever had to do with nerves?"
"Wait a little. All we want is to get used to War: it's a new experience for all of us——"
She laughed sharply—
"It's ludicrous, but really you'd think if you studied my family that I was responsible for the whole thing. It's positively as though I'd made some huge blunder which they would do their best to excuse. Adela, John—I'm now to them an old sick woman who's got to be kept quiet and away from worry. They wouldn't havedaredlet me see that six months ago—"
Her voice was trembling.
She went on again, more quietly. "Every hour now one hears some horrible thing. This morning that young Dick Staveling dead, shot in some skirmish or another—Fine boy he was. They're all going out, one after the other—Not useless idiots who aren't wanted here like John or Vincent—but boys, boys like—like Roddy."
Again her voice trembled.
For the first time in his knowledge of her some pity for her stirred in him, for the first time in her knowledge of him she definitely looked to him with some appeal.
"Roddy came to see me yesterday," she said.
"Yes?" said Christopher.
"He had not been so often as he used—I told him so; he made some feeble apology, but I can see that he will not come again so often——"
He would have interrupted her, but she went on—"He's not happy, but he loves her madly—madly. He did not tell me so, but I could see that. That was something I had never reckoned on."
"You prefer," Christopher said sharply, "to imagine that he is not happy. I know, unfortunately, what your feeling is about Rachel. Fond of him though you are you'd prefer that he was unhappy with her."
"I know that he is unhappy. He would not care for her so much if she returned it. I know Roddy. But she's clever enough——" She broke off.
"If Roddy were to go out to South Africa," she said, "I think I would kill Rachel—then die happy——"
"Forgive me," Christopher said, "but this is sheer melodrama. Rachel is devoted to Roddy and Roddy to Rachel. I've the best means for knowing——"
Even as he spoke he saw her mouth curve with that smile that was always the wickedest thing about her. He had seen it on many occasions and it always meant that, then, in her heart there was something cruel or remorseless.
It gave her now an elfin look so that, amongst the absurd furniture of the room, she took her place as some old witch might take hers amongst the paraphernalia of her incantations—her cauldron, her bones, her noxious herbs.
"That shows, Christopher my friend, that you know very little. I've a piece of news that will surprise you."
He said nothing, but, in his heart, made ready for some blow.
"What would you say if our Rachel—your Rachel and my Rachel—had found a new friend in my worthy, most admirable nephew, Francis?"
"Rachel—Rachel and Breton?"
The Duchess watched him with amusement. "Exactly. I have the surest information——"
"What does your—information—say?"
He hated her at that moment as he had never hated her before.
"It says—and I know that it is true—that for more than a year now they have been meeting and corresponding—The other day Rachel went to tea with him—alone. Was with him alone for some time—I'm sure that Roddy knows nothing of this——"
"It's impossible—impossible! Rachel is the soul of honour——"
"I know that you have always thought so. But what more likely? Their feeling about myself would, alone, be enough...."
But he would not let her see how hardly he was taking it. He deprived her of her triumph, did not even question her as to what she would do with it, turned the conversation into other channels, and left her at last—seeming there, amongst her candles, with her nose and thin hands, like some old bird of most evil omen.
But for him there was to be no more peace.
It was now about four o'clock and already the dusk was closing in about the town. He decided that he would go and see whether Rachel were in.
He was determined that he would ask Rachel nothing; if she wished to speak to him he would help her, but it must be of her own free will—that was the only way at present.
For how much was the Duchess's malignity responsible? What exactly did she know? What did she intend to do?
Oddly enough, for a long time past some subconscious part of him had linked Rachel and Breton together, perhaps because they were the two persons in all the world for whom he most cared, perhaps because he had always known in both of them that rebellious discontent so unlike that Beaminster acquiescence.
As he drove through the evening streets, he felt that never, until now, had he known how dearly he loved Rachel. In his mind there was no judgment of her, only a sense of her peril; if she would speak to him!...
When he asked at the door of the flat for Lady Seddon he was told that she was out.
"Sir Roderick is at home, sir." He would see Roddy.
Roddy was sitting in the little box-like room known as the smoking-room, poring over a war map. About the map little flags were dotted; he had two in his hand and, with one hand lifted, was hesitating as to their position.
"That was a damned bad mess——" Christopher heard him say as he came in.
At the sound of the door Roddy looked up, straightened himself, and then came forward.
"Hallo! Christopher," he said. "Delighted. Splendid! Rachel's out, but she said she'd be back to tea."
He was not looking well—fat, his cheeks pale and puffy, lines beneath his eyes.
"I'm jolly glad you've come," he said. He drew two arm-chairs to the fire and they sat down.
Roddy then talked a great deal. He was always a little nervous with Christopher because he was well aware that the doctor had disapproved of his marriage.
Christopher had lately shown him that he liked him, but still Roddy was not at his ease. He talked of the war, then of golf, then polo, then horses, Seddon Court—abruptly he stopped and sat there gazing moodily into the fire.
"You're not looking well, Seddon," Christopher said quietly.
"I'm not very—Nobody's at their liveliest just now with fellers one knows droppin' out any minute.... One feels a bit of a worm keepin' out of it all—skunkin' rather——"
Moodily he sat there, his head hanging, dejected as Christopher had never seen him before.
Suddenly he said—"That ain't quite the truth, Doctor. Iama bit worried——"
"My dear boy," Christopher said, putting his hand on the other's knee—"If there's anything in the world I can do for you, tell me."
"Thank you. You're a brick. I'm damned unhappy, Christopher, and that's the truth——"
"Rachel——" said Christopher.
"Yes—Rachel. I got to talk to somebody. I've been goin' along on my own now for months and I know you're fond of her——"
"I am," said Christopher, "more than of anyone in the world——"
"I know. That's how I can talk to you. I wouldn't have you think I'm complainin' of her. I'm gettin' nothin' but what I asked for, you know. But it's just this. When she took me she never said she loved me, in fact she said she didn't, but I thought that it wouldn't matter—all you wanted in marriage was just to be pals and show up about the town together and treat one another honourably. Well," said Roddy, taking now a melancholy interest in his discoveries concerning himself, "damn it all, if I haven't rotted the bargain by fallin' in love with her. Jove! Why, I hadn't a ghost's guess at what Love meant before Rachel came along. Of course it isn't her fault. You couldn't expect her to love an ordinary sort of chap like me, just like a million other fellers knockin' about—but she's so unusual there ain't another woman in the world so surprisin' as Rachel—
"She's fond of me," he went on, "I know that, but what I want she just can't give me and that's the long and short of it.
"Lately it's been terrible hard. She's not happy and that makes me wild, and every day that passes I seem to want her more. Nothin' else, no one else matters now. I've been playin' golf, ridin', sittin' down to this bridge they're all getting mad about, doin' every blessed thing—it isn't any use. Do you know, Christopher," he said slowly, "I'd give my soul to make her happy and I just can't——"
"I know——" said Christopher.
"But it's worse than that—" Roddy went on, taking up the poker and knocking on the fire—"Lately she's been having a room of her own. Started it a while ago as a temporary thing and now she sticks to it. Up here, in this damned town, we hardly see one another; always a crowd either here or outside. I know Rachel don't like it and I don't like it, but there it is—
"Next week we're going down to Seddon and things may get better there—But I can't stand it much more—not like this."
"Wait a bit. It'll come all right." Christopher spoke confidently. "I've know Rachel since she was a small child. She's half Russian, you know—you must always remember that—and Russian and Beaminster make a strange mixture—Wait——"
"That's so easy to say—" Roddy answered, shaking his head. "It's so easy to say, but I don't see just what's goin' to make things different from what they are——"
"No—one never sees," said Christopher. "And then Destiny comes along and does something that we call coincidence and just settles it all. Your trouble will be settled, Roddy, if you're patient——"
"Perhaps," Roddy said slowly, "you could see her a bit—find out——" he stopped.
"Anything in the world I can do I will. We'll find a way. Meanwhile, Seddon, there is a bit of advice I can give you——"
"What's that?" asked Roddy.
"Go and see the Duchess more than you've been doing. See her a lot—more than you did ever——"
"Oh! the Duchess!" Roddy sighed. "I don't know, but it all seems different with her now. I've changed, I suppose. All her ideas are old-fashioned and wrong; I used to think her rather splendid——"
"Yes—but she's ill and old, and you're the only person in the world she cares about."
"Yes, I'll go," said Roddy slowly. "I've known I ought to go."
Voices broke in upon them; the door opened and Rachel, followed by her friend May Cremlin, once May Eversley, came in—
"Oh! Dr. Chris! You dear!" she cried, and came forward and flung her arms about him and kissed him.
Her cheeks were flushed, from her black furs her eyes shone at him. Some thought caught him. He knew where he had seen that excited glitter already to-day—Breton at luncheon—
They all talked. Then Christopher said that he must go.
Rachel came with him to the door. In the hall she looked at him defiantly, that flash he knew so well.
"You never come now, Dr. Chris: you've given me up."
"I don't care for you in a crowd very much. There's always a crowd now——"
"Ask me alone and I'll come," she said, but still her eyes were defiant.
"No," he said gravely. "I'll do no asking, Rachel. When you want me I'm there for you at any time—atanytime——"
For answer she flung her arms again about him and hugged him. Her heart was beating furiously. Then without another word she left him.
He could not go back to Harley Street yet. The sense of apprehension that had been growing with him all day would give him a melancholy evening, were he to spend it alone. He thought of Brun. Someone had told him that the little man was in London.
He found him in his rooms, reading, with a cynical expression on his face, a French review.
"I came to see—" said Christopher, "whether you happened to be free to-night and would dine with me. I'm a pessimist for once this evening and it doesn't suit me!"
Brun was very, very sorry, but he was dining with a Russian princess; it was most tiresome that he should have to waste his time with a Russian princess when he'd come over to London on this occasion expressly to study the English people at this interesting crisis of their affairs, but there it was—he'd no idea how he'd let himself in for it, and how much rather would he spend the evening with his friend, Christopher.
Christopher said that he would smoke one cigarette and that then he must go.
"And so you feel pessimistic?" said Brun, looking at Christopher curiously—"It's the war,Je crois bien—How alike you all are!"
"No," said Christopher, "I don't think the war's much to do with it. I dare say the war's a very good thing for all of us."
"Didn't I tell you—?" said Brun, greatly excited—then pulled himself up—"No, it wasn't you. It was Arkwright. More than a year ago we were in a picture gallery looking at your Duchess's picture, and coming home we talked. I said then that something would come, that somethingmustcome, and that then everything,everythingwould crumple up. And behold!" cried Brun, his eyes flashing—"See, it crumples!"
"That's a little previous of you," said Christopher. "Nothing crumpled yet. We're disturbed of course——"
"It is most lucky," Brun said, "most lucky. Here we are, you and I, ordinary people enough, with the end of a Period with its death and the way it takes it, all for us to watch.Mostlucky...."
"End of Victorian Age ...Voilà!" and with a little dramatic gesture he waved his hand as though he were flinging the Age and its lumber away, out of the window.
"You know, Christopher," he went on, "I've seen things coming over here for so long. All you people, you couldn't have gone on very much longer so remote from life. And now this—it will finish your Duchess, your Beaminsters, your queen in her bonnet, your Sundays and your religion and your Whigs and Tories, and all your hypocrisies—No names any more taken just because they've always been taken, but new names made by men who're doing things. Nothing taken for granted any more.
"Your Beaminsters will vanish, and then you'll have your Denisons and Oaks and Ruddards on top. Then you'll see a time. You'll all be spinning like a top, dancing, dancing like dervishes. Then while you're busy dancing up the other people will quietly come—all the real people, the Individualists—Women will have their justice—no man will skunk behind his garden hedge because he doesn't want to be bothered. No more superstition, no more inefficiency——"
"You're a wonderful fellow, Brun," said Christopher, getting up and flinging away the end of his cigarette. "You've always got any amount to say—but do you never think of people as people, not as theories or movements or developments——"
"No, thank God, I don't. That's for the sentimentalists like you, Christopher. People are all the same, fools or knaves."
"Well, I'm glad I don't think so," said Christopher.
"Tell me," Brun put his little hand on the other's elbow, "your Beaminsters now, how are they?"
"They're all right."
"The Duchess? I hear she's not so well——"
"Oh! nonsense—Well as she's been any time these last thirty years."
"Yes? So—I'm glad. But the other Beaminsters? Ah! I must go quickly and call—To see them burst asunder, that will be most amusing——"
Christopher laughed. "You won't see the Duke or Richard Beaminster burst," he said—"They're like you—no personal feeling."
"And the girl?"
"Lady Seddon?"
"Yes. She'll stir things up. She's not a Beaminster, or only enough of one to make her hate the family. And she does hate them,hein?"
"Oh, my dear Brun, you've got an absurdly exaggerated view about everything. You'd twist the Beaminsters into anything to make them fit your theory."
"Oh, they'll fit it right enough. But I must be in at the death. We'll meet there together, Christopher. Things will occur before we're much older, my sentimentalist."
Christopher shook his head. "There's something sinister about your appearances in the City, Brun. 'Where the carcases are, there will....'"
Brun nodded. "It's true enough this time," he said.
"So God help us! and God knows what disorders we may fall into.... Home and to bed with a heavy heart."Diary of Samuel Pepys.
"So God help us! and God knows what disorders we may fall into.... Home and to bed with a heavy heart."
Diary of Samuel Pepys.
During that terrible December week in 1899, England suffered more defeats to her arms than during any other week of the century. Magersfontein, Stormberg, Colenso, their names leapt one after another on to the screen.
London was dismayed; London was impatient. Easy enough to declare that the most criminal blunders had been perpetrated, easy enough to explain how one would oneself have conducted this or that, man[oe]uvred hither or thither some pawn in the game.
Dismay remained—a wide active alarm at the things that Life, so suddenly real and dominating and destructive, might in the future be preparing.
To Lord John this terrible week was simply the climax to a succession of disturbing revelations of reality. All his days had he been denying Life, wrapping it up in one covering after another, calling it finally a box of chocolates or a racing card, a good cigar or a pretty woman, knowing, at his heart, that somewhere in the dark forest the wild beast was waiting for him, hoping that he might survive to the end without facing it.
Now it was before him and its glittering eyes were upon him.
He had gone on the Friday of this week, to pay a week-end visit at a country house near Newmarket. Many jolly, happy week-ends he had spent at this same house on other occasions, now, from first to last, it was nightmare.
On the Monday morning at breakfast a sudden conviction of the impossible horror of this world struck at his heart. It came as a revelation, life was for him never to be the same again. His hostess, a large-bosomed white-haired lady, planted at the end of the table like an enormous artificial toy in the middle of whose back some key must be turned if the affair is to amuse the crowd, suddenly horrified him; the women of the party, their noses a little blue, their cheeks a touch too white, their voices hard and sharp, the men, red and brown, boisterously hearty about the animals they hoped to kill before the day was done, the cold food in a glazed and greedy row, the hot food—kidneys, fish, bacon, sausages, sizzling and scenting the air—: the table itself with its racks of toast and marmalade and silver and fruit: the conversation that sounded as though the speakers were afraid that the food would all disappear were they spontaneous or natural—all these things suddenly appeared to Lord John in a very horrible light, so that, in an instant, racing and women and clothes and food were banished from a naked biting world in which he was a naked solitary figure.
He caught a train as one flies from some horrible plague: he arrived in London, breathless, confused, miserable, the foundations of Life broken from beneath him.
Here he found Lady Adela in a like condition.
He had never cared very greatly for his sister, he had not found her sympathetic or amusing, she had never appealed to him for assistance, nor challenged his violent opposition. He had never enquired very deeply into her interests; she had much correspondence and many acquaintances. She ran, he supposed, the house or, at least, directed Miss Rand to run it for her.
He thought her a rather stupid woman, but then all the Beaminsters thought one another stupid because they believed so intensely in the Duchess and she had always made a point of seeing that, individually, they despised one another, although collectively they faced the world.
Finally, Adela had always seemed to him unsympathetic towards Rachel and that he found it very hard to forgive—but then, he often reflected they were all, with the exception of himself, a most unsentimental family. He wondered sometimes why he was so different.
On the afternoon of his return from Newmarket, however, he began to wonder whether, after all, Adela had not more in common with him than he had ever expected. He had lunched at the club, had plunged down into the City to enquire about some investments, it had begun to rain, and he had returned with the weight of that gloomy day full heavily upon him.
He did not, as a rule, have tea, but to-day he needed company, and he found Adela in the little sitting-room next to the library, a little room with faded wall-paper, faded pictures (groups, some of them, of himself and Vincent and Richard at Eton and Oxford), faded arm-chairs and faded chintzes—a nice, cosy, friendly room, full of old associations and old hopes and despairs.
This room did not often see either Lady Adela or John, but to-day Norris, for reasons best known to himself, had put tea there and, to both of them, as they sat over the fire with the great house so still and quiet about them, the shabby intimacy of the little place was grateful.
John, disturbed, himself, out of his normal easy geniality, noticed that Adela also was disturbed.
That dry and rather gritty assurance that had all her life protected her from both the praise and abuse of her fellow-men and women was, to-day, absent. She seemed really grateful to John for coming to have tea with her to-day. He wondered whether she felt as he did that this war, with all its horrors, foreboded, in some manner, special disasters upon the Beaminster family, as though it were a portent, to be read of all men, of the destruction and ruin of that family.
"Poor Adela," he thought, "she's very plain. If she asks me to help her I will. She's got something on her mind."
"Rachel's here," Lady Adela said, looking at her brother nervously.
"Now?"
"Yes, she's with mother. She came to say good-bye to her. She and Roddy are going down to Seddon to-morrow."
"Yes, I know——" said John.
"She's very queer—very odd. I don't pretend to understand her."
"We're all queer just now," said John. "Down at the club to-day it was too awful. No other subject—fellows killed, fellows going out to be killed. Blunder, blame, disgrace—all the time. But what's Rachel been doing odd?"
"You understand her better than I do," said his sister. "She always liked you better. I did my best with her, but she never cared about me. But now I understand her less than ever. She's so excited and hard and unnatural. Something's happened to her that we don't know about, I'm sure."
John said nothing. He was unhappy enough about Rachel, but he did not intend to talk to Adela about it. He would rather not talk to anyone about it because talking only brought it more actually in front of him. Besides, he did not know what to say. He knew that he had been cowardly about Rachel. He had tried to pretend to himself that she was happy when he had known that she was not and so, for the sake of his comfort, he had stifled the most genuine emotion in his life; that indeed was the Beaminster habit.
"She's not happy," continued Adela. "I'm sure I don't know why—Roddy's very good to her—very good. She's so queer. She wants to have Miss Rand down with her at Seddon for Christmas."
"Miss Rand?"
"Yes—she asked me whether I'd let her go. She's got to give a dance and a dinner-party or two and asked me whether she might have her help. Of course I said 'Yes.' Miss Rand hasn't been looking at all well for some time now. A change will do her good."
"What did Miss Rand say when you told her?"
"Oh, she was odd. She has been odd lately. At first she thought she wouldn't go. Then she said she would. I told her it would do her good."
"How's mother been the last two days?"
"Oh! the same. She won't say anything—she confides in nobody."
John looked at his sister and wondered why it was that he had never, during all these years, considered her as a personality or as anything actively happy or miserable. She had had, he suddenly supposed, a life of her own that was, in a way, as acute and sensitive as his and yet he had never realized this.
He had always taken his mother's word for it that Adela was a dried-up stick who resented interference; now he was sure that that judgment was short-sighted, and then, upon this, came criticism of his mother; therefore, to banish such disloyalty, he said hurriedly:
"I didn't enjoy the Massiters a bit—longed to get away—Sunday was miserable——"
Adela said—"I never could bear them—John——" she stopped.
"Yes," he said, looking across at her. His large good-tempered eyes met hers and then the colour mounted very slowly into her cheeks. He had never seen her agitated before—
"John—" she began again. "I must do something. I can't sit here—just quietly—going on as though nothing were happening. I know—all one's life one's stood aside rather, I've never wanted to interfere with anyone. But now, this war has made one feel differently, I think."
"Well?" said her brother.
"Well—an organization is being formed—women, you know—to help in some way. They're going to do everything, make clothes, have sales and concerts and get money together. It's to be a big thing—Nelly Ponsonby, Clara Raddleton, lots of others.... They've asked me to be on the committee——"
"Well?" said John, "why not?"
She looked at him appealingly. "Mrs. Bronson's on it too—one of the originators of it."
"Oh!" John was silent. Here was, indeed, a question. Mrs. Bronson, the Beaminster arch-enemy. Mrs. Bronson, who had snapped her bejewelled American fingers at the Duchess—Mrs. Bronson, who called the Beaminsters the most insulting names. Why, a fortnight ago any alliance with such a woman was unthinkable, incredible—
"I believe," went on Lady Adela, "that she herself proposed that I should be asked...."
A fortnight ago ... and now—
John knew that he was glad that Adela wished to join the committee, he knew that he was closer to Adela now than he had ever been at any moment during their lives together.
He looked across at her and their eyes met and in that glance exchanged between them barriers were broken down, curtains turned aside—they would never be strangers again.
"Mother isn't well." Adela said quite firmly. "Hasn't been well for a long time—we've all known it. She has felt this war and—and other things very much. She will feel my going on to the same committee as Mrs. Bronson—she will certainly feel it. But I think it's my duty to do so. After all, on an occasion like this family feeling must give way before national ones." Why did not the walls and foundations of No. 104 Portland Place rock and quiver before the horrid sacrilege of such words? John, himself, almost expected them to do so and yet he was of his sister's opinion.
"I think you are perfectly right, Adela," he said.
"Oh! I'm so glad that you do. I don't want to worry mother, just now. I'm frankly rather nervous about telling her—but it must be done."
"It's odd, Adela," said John, leaning back in his chair and crossing his fat legs. "But something real like this war, a ghastly day with boys shouting horrors at you followed by another ghastly day with more boys shouting more horrors, it does shake one's life up. I've been very cowardly, Adela, about a number of things. I see that now. I've never really wanted to see it before. It makes one uncomfortable."
"I don't think one ought to give way," said Adela with a slight return to her gritty manner, "to one's feelings too much. But certainly one is beginning to see things differently, which is a dangerous thing for people of our age, John."
"Yes," said John, "I suppose it is." He paused and then brought out—"There's Francis, Adela. We've all been very wrong about Francis. I've felt it for a long time, but hadn't the courage.... He's been behaving very well all this time—One oughtn't to hold aloof—altogether——"
"Mother refuses to have his name mentioned——"
"We must take into account," John said very slowly and now without meeting his sister's eye—"that mother is not so well—scarcely so sure in her judgment——"
He broke off. There was a long pause and they looked away from one another, as though they had been guilty conspirators. Norris came in to take the tea away.
"Has Lady Seddon gone?"
"Yes, my lady. She was with Her Grace a very short time——"
Adela turned impatiently to John. "So like Rachel. She might at least have come to say good-bye to us."
When Norris had gone John got up and walked a little about the room.
He stopped beside his sister and put his hand on her shoulder:
"If there's anything I can ever do to help you, Adela, tell me——!" he said.
"Thank you, John," she answered.
Rachel had never understood why it was that she was driven so constantly into her grandmother's presence. The impulse that drove her had in it, perhaps, something of defiance and something of challenge as though she cried to some weakness in her that it should not master her and that she would just show it how little those visits mattered to her. It had all begun from some reason of that kind, and lately, when she grew older, she discovered that her grandmother was more terrible through imagination than she was through actual vision.
There was never absent from Rachel a lurking presentiment of what her grandmother might one day do, and she went to see her now to discover what she might be at, to prove to her that, whatever she be doing, Rachel was "up" to her.
On this particular occasion the visit was a very brief one, but there was one moment in it that after events always produced for Rachel as a most definite and (on the part of the Duchess) omniscient omen.
Rachel had said that she had come in only for a moment to say good-bye. She had talked a little and then, rising, stood by the fire.
As she stood there her grandmother suddenly looked at her—a glance that Rachel had not been intended to catch. There was there a malicious humour, a consciousness of some power, of some disaster that could be delivered, triumphantly, at an instant's notice.
Very swiftly Rachel gathered her control, but she had felt what that look conveyed.
"Francis ... she knows ... what is she going to do?"
She strung her slim, tall figure to its finest restraint and without a quiver in her voice (her heart was beating wildly), "Good-bye, grandmamma. I promised Roddy to be back."
But the old lady looked at her—
"How you do hate me, my dear," she said almost complacently.
Rachel compelled the other's eyes. "Would I come to see you so often if I did?" she said.
"Yes, my dear, you would. You've got a sense of humour hidden somewhere although, God knows, we've seen little enough of it lately. Oh! yes, you'd come all right—if it were only to see me growing older and older."
Rachel turned flaming. "There, at any rate, you're unjust. It's you that have always hated me from the beginning—since I was small. Hated me, been unjust to me——"
Her body trembled with agitation—she was not far from one of her old tempests of passion.
But the Duchess smiled. "You exaggerate, Rachel, your old fault. At any rate, I'll be gone soon, I suppose—it will seem trivial enough one day...." Then as Rachel, turning to the door, left her—"But hurt a hair of Roddy's head, my dear, and—well, you'll hate me more than ever——"
When Rachel had gone the Duchess felt very ill indeed. She had only to touch a bell and Dorchester would be with her, but she did not intend to summon Dorchester before she need.
She felt now, at this minute, that her spirit of resistance had almost snapped. Again and again, throughout the last months, the temptation to lie down and surrender had swept up, beaten about her walls and then sunk, defeated, back again.
But this last week of disaster had tried her severely. Her pride in life had been largely her pride in the arrangement of it and now all that arrangement was tumbling to pieces and she powerless to prevent it. For the first time in all her days she felt that she would like to have someone with her who would reassure her—someone less acid than Dorchester.
Why had she never had a companion—a woman like Miss Rand who would understand without being sentimental?
There was pain in every muscle and nerve of her body: it swept up and down her old limbs in hot waves.... She clutched the arms of her chair.
Even her brain, that had always been so sharp and clear, was now confused a little and passed strange unusual pictures before her eyes. That girl ... yes ... Dorchester had been very clever about that: Dorchester had been in communication with Breton's man-servant for a long time past. To go to tea there ... to be alone with him ... Roddy—
And at that dearly loved name all was sharp and accurate. Night and day she was terrified lest she should suddenly hear that he was off to South Africa. She believed that that would really kill her. Roddy—her Roddy—to go and make another of those ghastly tragedies with which the newspapers were now full. But let Rachel disdain him and he would go merely to show her how fine a fellow he was—what idiots men were!
Or let this other thing become a scandal, then surely he would go.
She shook there in her chair and then with her eyes fixed on the fire prayed to whatever gods or devils were hers that he might not go. Anything, anything so that he might not go. Break him up, hurt him—only, only he must not go.
She prayed, thrusting her whole soul and spirit into her urgency—
Then, even as she sat there, her darkest hour was suddenly upon her. It leapt upon her, as it were a beast out of some sudden darknesses—leapt upon her, seized her, tore her, crushed her little dried withered soul in its claws and tossed it to the fire.
She was held by the sudden absolute realization of Death. She had never seen it or known it before. Others had died and she had not cared; many were dying now and it did not concern her.
But this beast crouching in front of her, with its burning eyes on her face, said to her: "All your life I've been beside you, waiting for this moment. I knew that it would come. I have waited a long time—you have played and thought yourself important and have cared for meddling in the affairs of the world, but Reality has never touched you. You have gathered things about you to pretend that I was not there. You have mocked at others when they have seen me—you have enjoyed their terror—now your own terror has come."
Death.... She had never—until this instant—given it a thought. Everything was gone before its presence. In a week or two, a month or two, silence—
Rachel—she saw her standing there by the fire, full of life and energy, so young, so strong.
She, the Duchess of Wrexe, the great figure, courted by kings, princes, artists, all the men and women of her time, now must crumble into the veriest dust, be forgotten, be followed by others, banished by this new world.
She and her Times were slipping, slipping into disuse. Who cared now for those other glories? What minds now were fit to tackle those minds that she had known? What beauty now could stand beside that beauty that had shone when she was young?
The beast crouched nearer. The room darkened. She could feel the hot breath, could be dazed by the shining of those eyes. Behind her, around her, the trumpery toys that she had gathered faded.
Darkness rose; a great space and desolation was about her—She tried to summon all her energy.
She cried out and Dorchester, coming in, found that her mistress had, for the first time in her life, fainted, bending, an old, broken woman, forward in her chair.