"Exile of immortality, strongly wise,Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes,To what may be beyond it. Sets your star,O heart, for ever? Yet behind the night,Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,Some white tremendous daybreak."Rupert Brooke.
"Exile of immortality, strongly wise,Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes,To what may be beyond it. Sets your star,O heart, for ever? Yet behind the night,Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar,Some white tremendous daybreak."
Rupert Brooke.
That night Lizzie had a dream and, waking in the early hours of the grey dim morning, saw before her every detail of it. She had dreamt that she was lost in the house. No human being was there. Every room was closed and she knew that every room was empty.
It was full day, but only a dull yellow light lit the passages.—She could not find her way to the central staircase. A passage would be familiar to her and then suddenly would be dark and vague and menacing. She opened doors and found wide dusty empty rooms with windows thick in cobwebs and beyond them a garden green, tangled, deserted.
She knew that if she did not escape soon some disaster would overtake her, some disaster in which both Roddy and Rachel would be involved. She knew also that, in some way, Rachel's safety absolutely depended upon her—She felt, within herself, a struggle as to whether she should save Rachel. She did not wish to save Rachel.... But some impulse drove her....
She ran down the passage, stumbling in the strange indistinct yellow light—She knew that, could she only reach the garden, Rachel would be saved.
She reached a window, looked down, and saw below her, like a green pond, the lawn overgrown now with weeds and bristling with strange twisted plants.
She flung open the window and tried to jump, but a cold blast of some storm met her and drove her back. The storm screamed about her, the dust rose in the room, the plants in the garden waved their heads ... the wind rushed through the house and she heard doors banging and windows creaking.
She knew suddenly that she was too late—Rachel was dead.
She stood there thinking, "I thought that I hated her—I know now that I loved her all the time."
The storm died down—died away. A voice quite close to her said, "You made a mistake, Miss Rand. People have souls, you know—having a soul of your own is more important than criticizing other people's.... People have souls, you know."
She woke and heard a clock strike seven. As she lay there a sense of uneasiness was with her so strongly that she repeated to herself, half sleeping, half waking, "I wish to-day were over, quite over, quite over. I want to-day to be over."
She was completely wakened by a sound. She lay there for a little time wondering what it was. Then she realized that something was scratching on the door.
She got out of bed, opened the door and found the dog, Jacob, sitting in the long dark passage, looking through his tangled hair into space as though the very last thing that he had been doing had been trying to attract her attention. Jacob was nearer to a human being than any animal that she had ever known. He had attached himself to Miss Rand and she had decided, after watching him, that he knew more about the situation in the house than anyone else. To catch him, as he watched, with his grave brown eyes, Roddy or Rachel as they spoke or moved was to have no kind of doubt as to his wisdom, his deep philosophy, his penetration into motives.
He liked Miss Rand, but she knew well that his feeling for her had nothing of the passionate urgency with which he regarded Roddy or Rachel. All tragedy—the depths and the heights of it—she had seen in that dog's eyes, fixed with the deepest devotion upon Roddy.—"He knows," she had often thought during the last week, "exactly what's the matter with all of us."
He always slept, she knew, in a basket in Rachel's room, and she wondered why he had been ejected. He sat now in the middle of the floor and seemed deeply unhappy. He sat square with his legs spread out, his hair hanging in melancholy locks over his eyes, his small beard giving a last wistful touch to his expression. He did not look at Lizzie or show any interest in her, he only stared before him at the pattern on the wall.
Lizzie did not attempt to pat him—she went back to bed, and, lying there, saw the light gather about the room.
Once Jacob sighed. Otherwise he made no movement until the maid came in with Lizzie's tea—Then he crawled under the bed.
When she came down to breakfast she felt that she could not endure another day of this place. She wished now for no revenge upon Rachel, she had no longer any curiosity as to the particular feelings of any one of these people for any other ... she felt detached from them all, and utterly, absolutely weary.
She was weighed down with a sense of disaster and she felt that she must, instantly, escape from it all, fling herself again into her London work, deal with the tiresome commonplaces of her mother and sister—she must escape.
Roddy was sitting alone at breakfast and she saw at once that he was uneasy. He seemed to avoid her eyes and he coloured as she came towards him.
"Mornin', Miss Rand," he said, "Rachel's not comin' down. Bit of headache—rotten night."
"I didn't have a very good night either. That storm made me sleep badly."
"Yes, wasn't it a corker? It's all right to-day though."
She looked through the wide high windows and saw out over a country painted as in a delicate water-colour—The softest green and dark brown lay beneath a pale blue sky, very still, very gentle. Tiny white puffs of cloud were blown, like soap bubbles across the sun, so that bright gleams floated and passed and flashed again.
She drew a deep breath—"Nothing terrifying in such a day as this."
"Yes, it's beautiful—beautiful! I'm off for the day," Roddy said, "ridin'——"
She helped herself to some breakfast and sat down.
Roddy said, "Well, no one would ever believeyou'dhad a bad night, Miss Rand."—"You're fresh as a pin."
"Thank you," she said, laughing. "But, all the same, Ididsleep badly."
"I'm not feeling princely myself," he confessed, "that's why I'm goin' off for a ride, nothin' like a ride to take you out of yourself. Don't you ever feel, Miss Rand, that you want to get right away from yourself and be someone else?"
She looked at him. Roddy was in real trouble. His very physical strength showed the more clearly that he was unhappy. His fingers moved restlessly, his eyes were never still. She looked at her letters. There was one from Lady Adela.
"Oh! I'm sorry—I'm afraid I shall have to go back almost immediately—The Duchess is much less well—They're worried about her."
"The Duchess!" Roddy started up and then sat down again. "I'm sorry—I was thinking about her only yesterday. What's the matter?"
"Lady Adela doesn't say, but she asks about you—the Duchess, I mean. Got it into her head, Lady Adela says, that you're not well or something."
"I'll write to her." Roddy spoke slowly as though to himself—"I've not treated her very well lately and she's always been such a brick to me." He left his breakfast, walked backwards and forwards once or twice—"Always been such a brick to me, the old lady has," he repeated.
Lady Adela really did want Lizzie to return. This horrid war was getting on her nerves, the house was all in disorder and nobody seemed either well or happy.
"Somebody really does want me," thought Lizzie with a certain grim satisfaction.
But she was terribly restless that morning. She could settle down to nothing and ended by walking up and down the garden paths, watching the pale winter light cross the Downs in sweeping shadow, seeing the bare branches, all black and sharp against the blue distance.
How she loved life and how, at every turn, life was thrust from her! For that other woman, there inside the house, two men were ready, eager to die—for herself, in all the world, no one cared.
There came up to her again, borne as it were on the sharp winter air, a determination to drive down Rachel's defences. The very sense that now, after Lady Adela's letter, she must shortly return to London, hardened her resolution.
Before breakfast she had felt that she did not care, now, quite suddenly she was determined that she would confront Rachel and drag the truth from her. How much did Rachel care? Was Rachel already involved in a liaison with Breton?
And, at that thought, a pain so fierce clutched her heart that for a moment she could not see and the garden and the sky mingled like coloured smoke before her eyes.
Suddenly, coming to the end of the garden by the stone gate she saw that a strange thing had happened—one of the gryphons, perched there for many centuries, had tumbled to the ground and lay in the path, beyond the garden, broken into two pieces.
The storm of last night must have driven it down. But what had broken it?
She was sorry. She knew how deeply attached Roddy was to those gryphons; she remembered his pride when he had pointed them out to her.
The other gryphon looked very lonely.
"Hewillbe distressed." The dead leaves on the path were trembling over the broken pieces of stone and whistling, in little excited groups, above it—"Just as though they are glad," she thought.
She and Rachel had a very amiable conversation at luncheon. Rachel confessed to a bad night.
Lizzie told her about Jacob.
"How tiresome of him to come and bother you—yes, I couldn't sleep and he was very restless too, so I put him into the passage. It was after six—I meant him to go down to the servants' hall. I'm so sorry, Miss Rand."
"Oh, he didn't worry me at all. Iwasawake." That appeal was in Rachel's eyes to-day more than ever. Lizzie saw it and steeled her heart. "I must know," she thought. "Imustknow."
"I'm afraid," she said, "that I'll have to go back to London to-morrow. I heard from Lady Adela this morning—The Duchess is not so well."
"Oh!" Rachel caught her breath—"oh, Miss Rand, no, no, oh! I hope not! Youmuststay! I——!" her colour came and went. "There's the dance. I don't know what I shall do without you." And she went on more desperately, catching Lizzie's eyes and evading them. "We are just beginning to be so happy here. My husband likes you so much. I do hope——"
She stopped and the colour left her again; her hands were trembling on the white tablecloth.
The strangest impulse flooded Lizzie's breast, an impulse to go to her and put her arms about her and kiss her and let her, there and then, unburden her heart—
Lizzie drove the impulse down, buried it. Her eyes were cold and her voice hard as she answered—
"I'm so sorry, but I think Imustgo. I can't leave Lady Adela if things are really difficult. I'll come this afternoon, shall I? and we might go over the dance——"
Rachel had been thinking; she looked up sharply and stared at Lizzie, staring as though she had been some stranger whom she saw for the first time.
"Yes—Come to the Chinese room at four, will you? We'll have tea up there."
"Yes," said Lizzie, "at four."
They were both of them aware that something, now quite irrevocable, had been settled by these words.
There was a little old library up in one of the towers, and there Lizzie went. She had a desperate need of some place where, during the next hour, she might think and decide upon some plan. The room had little diamond-paned windows that looked down, on one side, over the courtyard, and on the other over the garden and the Downs. The shelves went from ceiling to floor and were filled with books that dimly shone with their old gold and were dusky in their rich, faded bindings.
It was very seldom that anyone came here; Lizzie was quite alone as, perched up in one of the deep-seated windows, she looked down at the garden, saw the stone gate with the solitary gryphon, watched the swiftly fading afternoon light fill the green lawn as a pot is filled with water.
Even now, early though it was, the little room was growing dark.
She strove now, resolutely, to discipline her mind. Although the very thought of Francis Breton now shamed her, it was for him that she must care. "Poor dear," he was even now, in her heart. "Foolish, indiscreet—must plunge from one mess into another, needs someone—Oh, so dreadfully—to help him out."
Her hostility to Rachel did not prevent her from feeling that here was someone very young, terribly inexperienced, most unhappily impulsive—the very last in the world to prevent Breton from having another catastrophe as bad as the early ones.
She must know absolutely what it was that he and Rachel were doing, and only Rachel could tell her that—And here her feeling about Rachel was compounded of the strangest mixture of anger and suspicion, of tenderness and compassion, of sympathy and hard callous indifference.
"Oh!" Lizzie thought, "why has all this come to me? Why wasn't I allowed just to go on with my life as it was—My life that was so safe and sure and dull?"—
She was conscious, as she sat there, that she was listening for something. She felt, in an odd way, that the day had been a direct continuance of the dream that she had had in the night; all the morning she had been aware that her ears, in spite of herself, had been waiting for some sound, a message, or an arrival.
She sat now in the swiftly darkening room, as though she had been told that someone was coming at such and such an hour and she had heard the clock strike and was listening for the grating of the wheels on the cobbles of the courtyard.
The calm winter's day passed now into a purple twilight—lights were coming in the windows—
She thought she heard a step in the passage and was startled as though someone had been suddenly, unexpectedly within the room.
She opened the window and listened—"Someone—several people—will come down that garden path in a minute—I know they will."
But the air was very cold and she closed the window; even as she did so a clock struck four.
She got up and went to Rachel.
The Chinese room was so called because its walls were covered with a stiff golden Chinese paper. It had wide windows looking on to the garden; Rachel used it a great deal.
Lizzie fixed upon her mind, very deliberately, all the details of her surroundings. Rachel was dressed in black with red round her throat and her waist, and this brilliant colour made her face seem white and there were deep, heavy black marks under her eyes.
She looked up when Lizzie came in, seemed, with a violent effort, to compel control.
They sat there for some time and discussed the dance; the dusk filled the room, then tea was brought. There was a light in their corner; slowly the rest of the room grew dark.
They finished tea, it was taken away, and Lizzie, sitting quite close to Rachel, on a little sofa that had a window just behind it, was aware that again, in spite of herself, her ears were straining for some sound. The house and all the world were profoundly still.
When the servant had at last left them alone, Rachel said—"Miss Rand, you mustn't go away to-morrow—Aunt Adela can manage for another week. After all, she did promise that you should stay for me over the ball."
"Why did you ask me here, Lady Rachel?" Lizzie said. Her speech was a direct challenge and, instantly, when she had spoken she knew that they had entered upon those personal relations that they had, during all these weeks, feared.
"I asked you because I wanted you for a friend—I've no friend—no woman friend—whom I can trust. I knew that I could trust you—I hoped that you could help me——"
"I've been here for some time now and you have told me nothing."
"No—because you have held me off, have shown me so plainly that you disliked and distrusted me. You didn't always dislike me—what have I done?"
"That's only my way. As I told you this morning, Lady Seddon, I'm not an emotional person. But I feel more than I show. I would like to help you, if you will let me."
Rachel leaned forward and caught first Lizzie's arm, then her hand. Then she spoke, her voice quivering as though she were forcing upon herself the most intense control.
"Oh! you're so strange, so odd I don't know what you feel, whether you care, but these last months have been so hard for me that even though you hate me, despise me, it doesn't matter—nothing matters if only I can get away from myself, you're so different—so dry, so hard, but you are, you are!—just as hard——" she stopped—Lizzie drew her hand away.
"Please—don't tell me things if you feel about me like that. It hasn't been my fault, has it, that we don't get on?Ididn't ask to come here, to know you—let me go—let me go back. Don't bother about me—leave me alone," she at last brought out.
But Rachel said more urgently—"No, don't go now. Even though you don't care, even though you hate me, help me. I've no one else. If only you knew the things I've suffered these past weeks, how I've hated myself for my indecision, for my weakness and shame. I don't know why I feel as though you were the only person to whom I could talk. I'm being driven, I suppose, by this long silence—and then you're so absolutely to be trusted—even though you dislike me—you're straight all through—I've always known that."
At Lizzie's heart again now that strange confusion of sensation, and with it a sure conviction that fate had this scene between them in hand, and that events now, whatever the hours might bring forth, were beyond her control.
"Yes, you may trust me," she said drily—"I'm useful, at any rate for that."
Lizzie watched her as, in the little pause that followed, Rachel struggled for concentration and for the point of view that would make the strongest appeal.That, Lizzie grimly knew, was the thing for which the girl was struggling and it yielded her the pleasanter irony because she was, herself, so surely aware of that one fact that all Rachel's confessions contained—
For herself she had only confidently to sit and wait.... Then Rachel plunged—
"I'm unhappy," she said, "in my married life, miserably unhappy, and entirely, utterly by my own fault. I've tried, or fancied that I've tried. I've done what I've thought was my best—Things have happened now, at last, that have made it impossible—I can't go on any longer."
She spoke as though she were, very urgently, endeavouring to deliver a fair honest statement. There was in her voice a note that showed that life had truly, of late, been very hard for her—
"I married, in the beginning, for a wrong reason. I knew then that I didn't love my husband. I married because I wanted to escape. I had always hated my grandmother and she had always hated me—you knew that, Miss Rand; everyone who had anything to do with us knew it. She had done more than hate me, she had made me frightened—frightened of life and people. Someone came along who was kind and easy and comfortable, and everyone said it would be a good thing, and so I, not because I loved him, but because I wanted to escape from my grandmother, married him. Because I had to silence everything that was honest in me I'm paying now."
"It was all quite natural," Lizzie said. "Most women would have done the same."
"It was horrible from the beginning; I found that I had not escaped from my grandmother at all. She had arranged the marriage and now was always, and in some curious way, influencing it.
"I soon saw what I had done—that I had been false to myself and therefore false to everything else. My husband was in love with me—He was very patient and good to me, but I found that everything that I did or thought or said in connection with my husband was false. What made it so hard was that I was, and I am, very fond of him. My training—the training of all our family had always been—to learn how to be sham, so that one's real self never appeared all one's life. It ought to have been easy enough—but I've never been like one of my family—I'd always been different.
"I had determined that this year I would do my duty to Roddy—But it's harder than any determination can govern. It's bad for Roddy, it's deadly for me ... at last things have happened that have made it impossible for me—I've made up my mind this morning. I must leave Roddy, let him divorce me, give him a better chance with someone else."
She spoke with the desperate immediate determination of youth, staring in front of her, her hands clenched. Like flame at Lizzie's heart leapt this knowledge.
"She and Breton are going—only you can stop them—she and Breton."
"Don't you think," said Lizzie, "a little of your husband?"
"I'm thinking of him all the time—It's for his sake—that he should have a better chance with someone who cared——"
"No, that isn't true," said Lizzie—"It's because you love someone else——"
Rachel, with her head down, whispered, "Yes—it's because ... someone else."
"Francis Breton."
"Yes, Francis Breton."
That whisper of his name had in it confidence, worship, defiance ... all these things were torture to Lizzie sitting there, very composed, very stern, very quiet.Sheshould have been able to say that name with just that precious intimacy, and she saw, in Rachel's eyes, beyond her trouble the glad pride that the pronouncing of the name had given her.
"You know?" Rachel asked at length.
"Yes——"
"You've known a long time."
"Yes—a long time."
"Oh! If you'd only spoken to me!—All this time I've been wanting you to—Youmusthave known."
"Yes—I knew." Then Lizzie brought out slowly, letting her grave eyes wander over Rachel's face—
"You yourself insisted on telling me. You have brought it upon yourself if I say what I must...."
Rachel caught the hostility.
"Yes?" she said sharply.
"I'm older than you—older in every way. You know so little yet, the harm that you can do.... You must leave Francis Breton alone, Lady Seddon."
Rachel laughed—"Of course I knew that you—that it was the kind of way that you must look at it. But don't you see, we've got past all that first stage—It isn't, in the very least, any good looking at it from any general point of view. It's simply the individual happiness of the three of us, my husband, Francis Breton, myself—It's better for all of us that I should go."
"No ... not better for Francis Breton."
Rachel moved impatiently—"He—he and I—can judge that, Miss Rand——"
"No—You can't—you're too young. You don't know—I have a right to speak here, I know him—I have known him all this time——"
Lizzie broke off. Rachel, suddenly looking up, gazed at her—Lizzie, fiercely, also proudly as though she were guarding something very precious that they were trying to take from her, returned her gaze.
"All this time," Rachel said slowly. "You've known him—of course ... at Saxton Square...."
Then, as though the revelation had suddenly broken upon her, "Why you—you——!"
"Yes," said Lizzie, now fiercely indeed, hurling back at the girl thenaïvetéof her surprise. "Yes—it's odd, isn't it? I'm not the kind of woman, am I, ever to care for a man, or to have a man care for me?—To have any feeling or desire or affection. But it is not so strange as it may seem—I love him every bit as well as you do—I've cared more patiently perhaps, more unselfishly even. But there it is ... it gives me the right."
Nothing more surprising than that on this special circumstance Rachel had never reckoned. Feeling it now, blazing there before her, the way that she was to deal with it was beyond her experience. In an instant Lizzie Rand was, to her, a new creature. Always she had seen Lizzie patiently, with method, with discipline, putting things in order—that was her world and dominion. Lizzie had appeared, to Rachel, to stand for all the things that she herself was not. Rachel had often envied that absence of emotion, that security from impulse and passion, and it was upon that very security that Rachel had wished to depend. It was that that had driven her to seek Lizzie's friendship. She herself so unsure, so caught and destroyed by powers too potent for her resistance, had looked with wonder and desire upon Lizzie's safety—
Now Lizzie Rand was no longer Lizzie Rand. She was of Rachel's number, she might, as easily as Rachel, be swept, whirled away,—after death and destruction.
But there was more than that. There was the realization that Lizzie must hate her, that Lizzie was the last person in the world to whom she should have given her confidence, that Lizzie would fight now to the last breath in her body to keep Francis Breton from her.
During a long silence they sat facing one another—the little room was now nearly dark and it was only by the faint pale shadow from the sky beyond the window that they could catch, each from each, their consciousness of their new relationship.
It was during that silence that Lizzie was again aware that her ears were straining to catch some sound....
"I didn't know," Rachel said at last very softly; "it must seem brutal to you now that I should have told you all this. I wouldn't of course have spoken."
"Ah! you needn't mind," Lizzie said grimly. "He's never seen anything of it. You must never give him any reason to suspect—I trust you for that. No one in this world knows but you, and you should never have known if it had not been that Ihadto prove my right to interfere. Perhaps even now, you don't see that Ihavea right, but whether I have one or no, you've got to reckon with me now——"
"Andyou'vegot to reckon," Rachel answered, with some of Lizzie's own fierceness, "with a power that's beyond your power or mine or anyone's. Don't you imagine that we, all of us, haven't tried hard enough. Why! all these last two years we've done nothing but try. Now it's simply stronger than we are. If Roddy," she went on, speaking now more slowly, "hadn't forced it.... If he'd not been impatient—but now—after what's just happened, it's right—it isn't fair to him, to myself, to any of us, that things should go on as they are——"
"I'm thinking," Lizzie answered quietly, "simply of Francis Breton."
"Well! isn't it fairer too for him? He's been living, as we have, all this time, a life that's denying all his ownrealself. Anything's better than being false to that—life may be hard for us if we go away together, but at any rate it will be honest——"
"Ah! that just shows how young you are! Don't I know that pursuit of truth and honesty as well as you? Don't I know that when life's beginning for us, the one thing that seems to matter is exposing ourselves, showing ourselves to the world just as we are! At first it seems such an easy thing—Just round that corner the moment's coming when the real person in us is going to stand up and proclaim itself just as it is, fine and splendid? but always something just comes in the way and stops it—the years go on and we're further off from truth than ever.
"You think that if you go off with Francis Breton now, you'll, both of you, be leading, suddenly, honest brave lives before the world. I tell you it isn't so. Things will be just as crooked, just as shadowed—issues just as confused—it will be worse than it was."
"But you don't know——"
"I know Francis Breton. Don't you know too the kind of man that he is? Don't you know that he's as weak as a man can be, weaker than any woman evercouldbe? He's the kind of man who must have society to bolster him up. If the men of his world are supporting him then he's as good as gold, as fine as you like. Let them leave him and down he goes. All his life the world's been down on him and that's why he's been down. Lately he's been quiet—he's been winning his place back. Soon, if he's patient, they'll all come round him again. But let him go off with you and he's done, finished—absolutely, utterly. 'Ah!' everyone will say, 'that's what we expected. That's what we always knew would happen.' Don't you know what kind of effectthatwill have upon him? Don't you know?... Of course you do. It will break him up. His old life abroad, creeping from place to place, will begin again, only now he'll have the additional knowledge that he's done for you as well as for himself. It will be the end, utterly the end of him. And I, who love him, will not let it be."
Lizzie's speech had roused in Rachel one of those old storms of anger. She was exerting now her utmost self-control, but her heart seemed bound tight with some cord so slender that one movement, one impulse, would snap it—Then.... She saw in Lizzie now, only moved by a sense of jealous injury—"She sits there, knowing that I've taken him from her. That's it.... That's what she's feeling—she's lost him. She can't forgive me for that."
But when she spoke her voice was quiet and controlled.
"That isn't so," Rachel said; "it won't, I think, be like that. There's so much more between us than you can understand. There's all our early life—not that we were together, but we seem to have it all in common, to have known it all together. We're unlike our family—all the Beaminsters—we're together in that—we are together in everything."
But Lizzie's voice went on, so coldly, with such assurance that, with every word, the flame of Rachel's anger climbed a little higher, grew stronger and steadier.
"There's another thing too. I watched you, more than you know. No, no man—no man in the world—will ever keep you altogether—there's something—I can't tell you what it is—there's something in you that demands more than just a personal relationship like that—Perhaps it's maternity—it is, with many women,—perhaps it's a great cause, a movement of a country—
"But I know, with certainty, that you will never love Breton as you should love a man. Realization will never be the thing to you that anticipation and retrospection are. I believe if you were to lose your husband now, you'd find that you loved him—All thoughts of Francis Breton, would go——"
At that, because at the very heart of her determination burnt the knowledge that Lizzie's words were true, Rachel's control was abandoned, her anger leapt: "You think you know—you think ... why ... why ... you don't know me at all!—you can't know me—we're strangers, Miss Rand—now—always....
"Nothing,nothingcan ever make us friends again—I'll never forgive you for what you've said—the poor creature that you take me for—no doubt you'd have done better had the chance been yours, but you go too far——"
"That was unfair of you," Lizzie said very low—"You may say to me what you please—That's of no importance to anybody. But Francis Breton's happiness, his success, that is more to me than anything or anyone.—Youshallnot break his life into pieces for your own pleasure. There are more important things than your personal happiness, Lady Seddon——"
They were both standing, but they could not see one another, save, very faintly, their hands and faces—
"It's too late, Miss Rand," Rachel laughed. "I shall write to him to-morrow. I myself shall tell my husband—there is nothing that you can do——"
They stood there, conscious that a word, a movement on either side might produce an absurd, a tragic scene. Lizzie had never known such anger as the passion that now held her. Rachel was taunting her with the thing that she had missed; she stood there, before the world, as the woman for whom no man cared—she stood there with the one human being who mattered to her on the edge of complete disaster—nothing that she could do could prevent it—and the woman at her side was the cause.
A sudden sweeping consciousness of the things that it would mean if Rachel were dead flowed over her. Her heart stopped—that way—at least—Francis Breton might be saved....
The room, dark as pitch before her, was filled now with a red glow—Her hands, clenched, were ice in a world that was all of an overpowering heat.
Lizzie never afterwards could remember what then exactly happened.
She was worked to a pitch of anger, she was thinking to herself, "What would be a way? ... anything to save him...."
"She shouldn't have taunted me with that"—when, suddenly, exactly as though someone had taken her brain and emptied it, she had forgotten Rachel, had forgotten her own personal injury, forgotten her anger, was only aware that, with every nerve in her body on edge, she was waiting for some sound—
Like an answer to an invocation, the sound, through the closed window, came—
She must have made some startled noise, because she heard Rachel say, "What is it?"
She fled to the window and opened it. She could see nothing, but she could hear, as she had known all day that she would hear, steps, stumbling, falling heavily, upon the heavy gravel path.
She felt Rachel's hand upon her sleeve: "What is it?" Rachel said again—"Lizzie, what is it?"
Both women were seized and held by fear. Their feelings for one another were lost, sunk in the cold, shattering sense of disaster that had come, through the open window, into the room.
They could see lights now and figures—There were murmuring voices—
"Oh, Lizzie, what is it?" Rachel said for the third time, and then after a moment—"Roddy!"
Lizzie said—"Wait there. It may be nothing. I'll see—Don't you come for a moment."
She crossed the dark room, and opening the door saw Peters hurrying down the passage towards her. His face was in complete disorder—the face of someone who, throughout his life, has had only one kind of face that has served most admirably for every kind of occasion—suddenly a situation has arisen for which that face willnotserve—
His body was shaking—
"Oh! Miss Rand, the master!"
Lizzie felt Rachel follow her, brush past both of them, down the passage and out of sight—
"An accident—flung from his horse and dragged along—been hours on the hill—a shepherd found him."
"Is he dead?"
"No, miss, not dead—not yet, thank God!"
"The doctor?"
"Dr. Crane from Lewes—we caught him, miss, most fortunately, on the way from another patient—he's downstairs now."
"Quick, Peters, things will be wanted."
Lizzie passed to the head of the stairs, Peters behind her said, "They've taken Sir Roderick into the green drawing-room, miss, so as not to have to go upstairs."
She came down the stairs and then stood, waiting in the hall. That was, for the moment, deserted, but the house wore an air of dismay, surprised alarm, so that every sound was of momentous import. Somewhere, a long way away, someone—perhaps a frightened kitchen-maid—was sobbing—the hall door was still open and little gusts of cold wind came in and stirred and rustled the pages of some illustrated papers on one of the tables.
Lizzie went to the door and closed it—what should she do? To go into the room and ask whether she could be of use? Her quarrel with Rachel had made any movement now on her part difficult—Rachel might resent her presence—
Someone came into the hall: she saw that it was the doctor. He stood, looking about him, as though he were searching for someone, and Lizzie went up to him—
"Doctor, please tell me—I'm staying in the house—is there anything—anything at all—that I can do?"
The doctor was tall, thin, black, like an elongated crow.
"Ah yes—no, I think there is nothing for the moment—there are two of us here—we instantly wired to London and the London men should be here if they catch the seven o'clock in an hour and a half. Lady Seddon is with her husband."
"There's hope?"
"Oh yes—I think Sir Roderick will live—It's the spine that's damaged."
He seemed to realize Miss Rand's efficiency. This was no ordinary country-house visitor. He went to the hall door and opened it. "I'm waiting for the things from Lewes. I just came on with what I'd got. Yes, the spine ... afraid will never be able to get about again—such a strong fellow too."
"There's nothing I can do?"
"Nothing anyone can do for the moment. Lady Seddon's taking it wonderfully, but she'll want you later. I advise you to get some quiet in the next hour—it's afterwards that they'll need your help——"
Lizzie went up to her room and lay down on her bed. She did not light the candles, but lay there in the darkness striving to compel some order out of the turmoil that rioted in her brain—her first thought was of Roddy. Roddy had always been to her the supreme type of animal spirits and vigour—thathad been, above everything else, what he stood for. Thatheshould have been struck down like this!
The cruelty, the irony of it! Much better that he should die than be compelled to lie on his back for the rest of his life—anything better for him than that—
If he died Rachel would be free. Lizzie faced that thought quite calmly! her quarrel with Rachel seemed to be now very, very long ago, something distant and remote, something whose very conditions had been torn asunder and flung aside—
As she lay there tenderness for Rachel came sweeping about her—"She must want someone now—she's so young and so ignorant—never had any crisis like this to deal with—hard for this to happen to him just after she'd thought those things ... that must be terrible for her.... Oh! she'll need someone now."
Something reminded Lizzie of other things, of Francis Breton, of Rachel's words, of Lizzie's anger, then—
"Ah, but that's all so long ago. It doesn't seem to count. There are things more important than all of that. What will she do now? Perhaps she still hates me—won't let me come near her—it's my own fault after all; I kept away for so long, wouldn't lethercome nearme. Oh! but she must have someone to help her!"
After a while Lizzie thought—"She won't be practical—she won't know the things that ought to be done—I'll wait a little and then I'll go."
Then she slept. She awoke with a clear active brain; she felt as though she could be awake now for weeks—a tremendous energy filled her....
She left her room and at the turn of the passage met a thick-set clean-shaven man whom she knew for Cramp—one of the most famous of the London doctors, a man whom she had sometimes seen with Christopher at the Portland Place house.
She stopped him—"I'm Miss Rand, Doctor—Lady Adela's secretary—we've met in London—I want you to tell me how I can help."
He shook hands with her, eyeing her with approval—
"Why, yes, of course—How do you do, Miss Rand? Yes, you're just the sort we want. For the moment Lady Seddon's my chief anxiety—she's borne up splendidly so far, but now I am a little afraid. I've got her to go and lie down—would you go to her, Miss Rand? Just be with her a little and let me know if anything happens——"
"Sir Roderick?"
"Pretty bad, I'm afraid—He'll live, I think—afraid will never run about, though, again."
Lizzie made her way to Rachel's bedroom. She paused outside the door. This was the very hardest thing that she had ever, in all her life, had to do. If Rachel were to repulse her now it would surely be the final absolute proof that she was of no use, no use to anyone in this whole wide world.
She knocked on the door and went in. "Who's that?"
"It's I—Lizzie."
The room was dark, but she saw that Rachel was lying on the bed—she went up to her—Rachel did not move.
"I came," Lizzie said, "to see whether I could help—if I could do anything——"
Rachel said nothing—
"If you'd rather—if you don't want to see me, of course just say...."
Rachel turned over and Lizzie heard her say—"I did it—I wanted him—it was my fault—it was my fault."
Lizzie knelt down beside the bed. "Rachel dear, you mustn't think that. It was nothing to do with anyone. But you can help him now, Rachel—He'll want you, he'll need you now as he's never wanted anyone."
Rachel gave a bitter cry—Her hand touched Lizzie's, then she flung up her arm, caught Lizzie's neck, drew her towards her, put both her arms around her and held her, held her as though she would never let her go.
"Yes," said Mrs. Bright, "he missed it all the time.""Missed what?" asked Miss Rankin."'Is good luck," sighed Mrs. Bright.—Henry Galleon.
"Yes," said Mrs. Bright, "he missed it all the time."
"Missed what?" asked Miss Rankin.
"'Is good luck," sighed Mrs. Bright.—Henry Galleon.
Francis Breton had known, during the weeks that preceded his letter to Rachel, torture that became to him at last so personal that he felt deliberate malignant agency behind its ingenious devices.
At first it had seemed that that wonderful hour with Rachel would satisfy his needs for a long time to come; he had only, when life was hard, dull, colourless, monotonous, to recall it—to see again her movements, to hear her voice, to remember to the last and tiniest detail the things that she had said, to feel that clutch of her hand upon his coat, and instantly he was inflamed, exultant.
So, for a time, it was. Into every moment of his daily life he worked this scene—Rachel was always with him, never, for a single instant, did he doubt that, in some fashion or another, she was coming to him. He had purchased an interest in some little business that had to do, for the most part, with candles, and down to the City now every morning he went. The candles prospered in a small but steady fashion and he found them of a more thrilling and romantic interest than he would once have believed possible. He had always known that he had a business head and now that his life was equable and regular he was astonished at the useful man that he was becoming.
He liked the men with whom he worked, he found that some of his friends of the old days sought him out ... he was assured that he had only to wait for the death of his grandmother for his restoration to the Beaminster bosom.
He was, during these first weeks, tranquil, almost happy, feeling that Mrs. Pont and the rest were, with every hour, passing more surely from his world, nourishing always, like hoarded treasure, his consciousness of Rachel....
Then a faint, a very faint restlessness crept upon him. The repetition of those precious moments was growing dry; from the very frequency of their recounting came impatience. His assurance that she would, ultimately, come to him grew chill.
He needed now something more tangible, and gradually there grew with him the conviction that she would write. She had said, very clearly and distinctly, that she would not—but, if she cared as he knew that she did, then this silence must be as impossible for her as for himself.
His state of mind now was that he expected a letter. When he came back from the City at half-past six or seven he expected to find lying there on the green tablecloth, the letter—In the morning his man appeared with a jug of hot water in one hand and the letters in the other—There, one of those tantalizing, mysterious envelopes, must be the letter.
At first disappointment was reassured with "Oh! it will be there to-morrow." But as the days passed and the silence grew the torture developed. Now after that first search in the morning, after that swift sharp glance to the green tablecloth came physical pain—sickened heavy drooping of the spirits when the world looked one vast deserted plain of monotonous dullness, when the hours and hours and days and days that yet remained to life seemed intolerable in their dreary multitude.
He would go to bed early in order that the morning letters might come the sooner; he fled home from the City, his heart beating like a drum, as he mounted his stairs.
Only one line, one line, would have been sufficient. It needed only the reassurance that she thought of him, that she still cared ...sucha short letter would have given him all the comfort he needed.
The need for some sign came as much from his impatience with the whole situation as from his love for Rachel, but this, because he always saw himself as a fine coloured centre of some passionate crisis, he naturally did not perceive. His whole idea of Rachel was, as the days passed, increasingly a picture that was far enough from reality—On the one side Rachel—on the other side his restoration to his family ... now as he waited it seemed to him that he was in danger of losing both the one thing and the other.
There was nothing that so speedily drove Breton to frenzy as enforced inaction.
After all, they had been together so little—
Breton was cursed with his imagination. All his instability of character came from his imagination. He looked ahead and saw such wonderful events, he knew why people did this or that; he could see so clearly what would happen did he act in such and such a way.... He traced future action through many hazardous windings into a safe, fair Haven, and for the sake of the Haven embarked on the preliminary dangers—discovered, of course, too late, that the Haven was a dream. He saw Rachel now, sitting alone, thinking of him, loving him, forcing herself to be fair to her blockhead of a husband, feeling at last that she could endure it no longer, and so writing! or he saw her falling in love with that same blockhead, forgetting everyone and everything else.
In all of this his grandmother played her part. He was aware that behind all the attraction that he had had for Rachel was the consciousness that he was a rebel against the Duchess—they were rebels together—that, he knew, was the way that she thought of it.
He was aware, however, that he was a rebel only because he was forced to be one. Let his grandmother hold out her old arms to him and into them he would run! He would be restored to the family—horribly he wanted it! The spirit with which he had returned to England was one of hot vengeance that would, indeed, have suited the finest of Rachel's moods, but that spirit had, he knew, subtly changed—Here then, with regard to Rachel, he felt a traitor—Would she come to him, why then he would do anything for her even to pulling the Duchess's nose—but if she would not come to him, why then he would rather that the Beaminsters should take him to themselves and make him one of them.
But he felt—although he had no tangible arguments to support his feeling—that the old lady was "round the corner"—"she knows, you bet, all about things—what I'd give for just one talk with her.... I believe we'd be friends——"
His weakness of character came, as he himself knew, from his inability to allow life to stay at a good safe dull level. "To-day's dull—Somethingmusthappen before evening; I mustmakeit happen," and then he would go and do something foolish—
London excited him—the lighted shops, the smell of food and flowers and women and leather and tobacco, the sky—signs flashing from space to space, the carts and omnibuses, the shouts and cries and sudden silences, the confused life of the place so that you could never say, "Thisis London," but could only, in retrospect say, "Ah,thatmust have been London," and still know that you had failed to grasp its secret.
The dirt and shabbiness and lack of plan and good humour and crime and indecency and priggishness—its life!
Many things out of all this glory called him—racing, women, drink, the gutter one minute, the stars the next—from them all he held himself aloof because of Rachel ... and Rachel meanwhile perhaps did not care.
As Christmas approached he became utterly obsessed by this one thought—that he must have a letter. His obsession had been able, during these weeks, to clutch the tighter in that he had seen nothing of Lizzie Rand. Throughout the autumn he had encountered her very seldom—
Ever since that night in the summer when he had taken her to the theatre she had avoided him, and he decided that she had been shocked at his confession about Rachel—"You never know about women—I shouldn't have thought that would have shocked her—But there it is; you never can tell." Lizzie had been very good for him; he missed her now. He would tackle her, he said, one day.
Then not only with every day, but with every hour the torture grew. He avoided Christopher, because Christopher might see things. His work faded like mist from before him—He could not sleep, but lay on his back thinking of what she would say if shedidwrite, whether she were thinking of him—how she found his own silence and what she felt about it.
Then he heard the astonishing news that Lizzie Rand had gone down to Seddon to stay.... At first he thought that he would write to her and beg her to find out for him all that she could as to Rachel's mind.
But Lizzie's avoidance of him checked him there—if she had been shocked at his just telling her, why then she would not be likely to help him now—No, that would not be fair to Rachel....
It occurred to him then that Rachel had asked Lizzie in order that she might speak of him, have with her someone who could tell her about his daily life, and so, without breaking her word, yet be in some kind of communication with him—
Soon this became with him a certainty. It assured him that her patience was exhausted and that she would forgive, and more than forgive, a letter from him.
He wrote—then in an agony would have snatched it back again, and yet was glad that the post had taken it from him. He had broken his word, and shown himself for the miserable poor creature that he was. She would never trust him again, but surely now she would write were it only to dismiss him for ever.
He waited and the agony once again grew phantasmal in its terrors; then swiftly came word first that Roddy Seddon had been flung from his horse and was hovering between life and death, then that he would not die, but—"Paralysis of the spine—always have to lie on his back, I'm afraid" (this from Christopher)—then, finally this note:
"Seddon Court,Near Lewes,Sussex.Dear Mr. Breton,I have to come up to London next Tuesday for the day—I shall return here that same evening. I have a message for you. Could we have tea together that afternoon—or what do you say to a walk in Regent's Park? Perhaps we could talk there more easily—I'll meet you at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens about 3.30 unless I hear from you.Yours sincerely,E. Rand."
"Seddon Court,
Near Lewes,
Sussex.
Dear Mr. Breton,
I have to come up to London next Tuesday for the day—I shall return here that same evening. I have a message for you. Could we have tea together that afternoon—or what do you say to a walk in Regent's Park? Perhaps we could talk there more easily—I'll meet you at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens about 3.30 unless I hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
E. Rand."
The effect upon him of Roddy's accident was indescribable. He was sorry, terribly sorry—dreadful for a man whose whole interests are in physical things to be laid on his back, like this, for ever. Surely it would be better for him to die, and then, at that, sober thought would forsake him—He did not wish Seddon to die, but around the possibility of it, always turning, wheeling, his mind fluttered.
He did not know what Lizzie would have to say to him, but, at his heart, he expected triumph—with so little encouragement, he would wait so faithfully—
It was a cold windy afternoon of early spring and up to the gates of the Botanical Gardens little eddies came sweeping: twigs and dust and pieces of paper tossing, under a grey sky, beneath branches that creaked and strained; Breton stood there impatiently; he was ten minutes before his time; this biting windy world took from him his confidence ... a dirty little brown dog walked round and round, wagging, now and again, a pessimistic tail.
There at last she was, coming, as orderly and neat as ever, up the road; her grey dress, her little shining shoes, her hair that no breeze could disturb, her expression as though she were ready for anything and would be surprised at nothing—these all, to-day, irritated him. Good heavens! was she so surely tied to her typewriter that she could understand nothing of the emotions that an ordinary human being might be feeling? Had she no imagination? Because she had never herself known sentiment about anyone alive was it beyond her to consider what others might encounter?
Breton would have preferred any other ambassador in this affair than the neat, efficient Miss Rand, forgetting that there had been a time when he had chosen her as his one and only confidante.
"How do you do, Mr. Breton?" she said, giving him her little gloved hand.
"It's just struck—I was a little early," he answered, feeling confused and hating himself for his confusion—
"Let's go round to the left here and turn over the bridge and then out past the Zoo and back—That makes quite a good round."
"Yes"—he said.
"I chose the Park because I thought that we could talk better—We might have been interrupted at home."
He caught then a little tremor in her voice and was grateful for it. Shedidfeel a little that this was important for him; she sympathized perhaps more than he should have expected.
"Let's come straight to the point, Miss Rand," he said, "you have a message for me."
She nodded, felt in the pocket of her dress and produced an envelope, which she gave him.
"She thought it better that I should give it you like this because then I could say something as well—something she had asked me to say——"
His hand trembled as he saw the writing on the envelope—"Francis Breton, Esq., 24 Saxton Square"—During what months and months he had longed for that handwriting and how often had he imagined that letter lying, just as it lay now, in his hand—
He read it, Lizzie walking gravely at his side—
"This letter is not easy to write and you must realize that and forgive me if I have not put things properly. These last weeks have all made such a demand on me that I'm tired out...."I said once, Francis dear, that I would not write to you until I meant to come to you. Now I have broken my word—This is to tell you that everything, anything, that we have felt for one another must be ended, now and for ever."Don't think that I am angry with you for writing to me. Perhaps I should have been, but I understood—Only now all my life must be always, entirely, devoted to my husband. That is now all that I live for. I feel as though in some way I had been responsible for the disaster; at any rate his bravery and pluck are wonderful and it is a small thing that I can do to make his life as easy as I can, but it will take the whole of me."Perhaps after a time we shall meet—one day be friends—I can't look ahead or look back; I only know that I am now absolutely, entirely, my husband's—"Don't hate me for this—it was taken out of our hands. I've asked Lizzie Rand to give you this. She knows everything and it would make me happy to think that you two had become great friends."
"This letter is not easy to write and you must realize that and forgive me if I have not put things properly. These last weeks have all made such a demand on me that I'm tired out....
"I said once, Francis dear, that I would not write to you until I meant to come to you. Now I have broken my word—This is to tell you that everything, anything, that we have felt for one another must be ended, now and for ever.
"Don't think that I am angry with you for writing to me. Perhaps I should have been, but I understood—Only now all my life must be always, entirely, devoted to my husband. That is now all that I live for. I feel as though in some way I had been responsible for the disaster; at any rate his bravery and pluck are wonderful and it is a small thing that I can do to make his life as easy as I can, but it will take the whole of me.
"Perhaps after a time we shall meet—one day be friends—I can't look ahead or look back; I only know that I am now absolutely, entirely, my husband's—
"Don't hate me for this—it was taken out of our hands. I've asked Lizzie Rand to give you this. She knows everything and it would make me happy to think that you two had become great friends."
They had crossed the little bridge, left behind them the strange birds that chattered beneath it, and had passed into the wide green spaces, often given up to cricket or football, now empty of any human being—the Zoological Gardens, a deserted bandstand, a fringe of trees on which the first tiny leaves were showing; above them the grey sky had broken into blue and white, the cloud shaped with ribs and fleecy softness like a huge wing stretching above them from horizon to horizon.
Over the two of them, so tiny on that broad expanse, this wing brooded tenderly, gravely—
Breton had crushed the letter in his hand and stood looking in front of him, but seeing nothing. His one thought was that he had been brutally treated,—she had simply, without a thought, without a care, flung him aside.
He had, of course, known that this accident to her husband must, for a time, hold her, but now, in this fashion, she had passed on without hesitation—leaving him anywhere, anyhow; was it so long ago that she had said to him that, whether she came to him or no she would always love him? Had she already forgotten that kiss, that moment when she had clung to him, held to him?
He stood there, filled with self-pity. This restraint, this self-discipline all done for her and now all useless. It was not wanted;hewas not wanted....
Had she only preserved some relationship, told him to wait, assured him that he meant something to her, anything but this—
But there was greater pain at Breton's heart than thought of Rachel brought him. To every man comes in due time the instant of revelation; it had flashed before Breton now.
He saw that his relationship with Rachel was at an end, utterly—However he might delude himself that, in his soul, he knew. There had been a moment when they had met and the moment had passed. But he saw more than this. He saw that he was a man to whom life had always been a succession of moments—moments flashing, stinging, flying, gone—he, always, helpless to grasp and hold.
Had he, on that day, been strong, held Rachel, conquered her, made her his.... He was weak through the fine things in him as surely as through the base—His ideals forced his purpose to tremble as often as his regrets....
Standing there, he faced himself and saw that, whether for good or evil, Life for him had always been evasive, fluid, a thing grasped at but never caught.
Rachel was not for such as he—
Lizzie had watched him and her face had grown very tender—"I know I'm a nuisance just now," she said—"it hasn't, naturally, been a very pleasant thing for me to have to do—but I thought that I could tell you a little about her—I've seen her through all of this."
He strode along fiercely, his eyes staring in front of him; he looked, she thought, like a boy who had been forbidden some longed-for pleasure; she found it difficult to keep pace with him.
"She's so very, very young," Lizzie went on, "I expect you forget that—she's filled, above everything else, with a determination to express her own individuality, a protest, you know, against its having been squashed by her family.
"Anything that helps her to express it she seizes on. You helped her—she seized on you. Now all her heart is stirred by this disaster to her husband, the most active person she's ever known absolutely helpless, so now that has seized her. She can't have two things in her mind at once—that's where her troubles come from—she cares for you. You'll always be something to her that no one else can ever be, and oh! it's so much better, so much, much better, than if you'd gone off, made a mess of it all, spoilt all your beautiful ideas of one another."
The thrill in her voice made him, even though he was intensely concerned with his own wrongs and losses, consider her. What Lizzie Rand was this? It flung him back, almost against his will, as though he hated to throw over all the ideas he had formed of her, to that first meeting when they had stood at the window and looked out on the grey square and he had called it the Pool. Then he had suspected her of emotion and sentiment; it was afterwards, when he had made her his wise Counsellor and common-sense Adviser, that he had thought of her as unemotional.
He felt now that he had been treating her rather badly. He stopped abruptly and looked down at her; there was something in her earnest gaze at him, something rather nervous and hesitating that did not belong at all to the efficient Miss Rand.
"Itisgood of you, Miss Rand, to have come and given me this note. I'm finding it all rather difficult at the moment, as I'm sure you'll understand. I'd better go off somewhere by myself a bit, I think, but it was good of you." He broke off and stared desolately about him. He was not very far from tears, she thought.
She too remembered their first meeting. She had found him melodramatic then, a little insincere—Now she knew that she had been wrong. He was sincere as a child is sincere; the world was utterly black, was transcendently bright as it was for a child.
She understood him so well—so much better than Rachel. She knew that neither he nor Rachel would ever have had the wisdom to endure that romantic impatience that was in both of them—"They would have been fighting in a week—But I—should know how to deal with him——"
The green park and the brooding sky seemed to join in her tenderness—She had never loved him so surely, so unselfishly as she loved him now.
"Tell me," he said gruffly. "I wrote to her ... did she tell you anything about that?"
"Yes," Lizzie answered—"I don't know what might have happened if he hadn't had the accident.... But as it is, I know she's glad you wrote—She likes to look back on it, but it's on something that died—gone altogether. And it's much, much better so."
"To you," he said, "it may be so."
"Only because through these weeks I've got to know her so well. She's strange—unlike any other woman I've known. Her great charm is that she's so unattainable. Men will always love her for that and sometimes she may think she loves them in return, but no man will ever call therealwoman out of her. If she were to have a child, perhaps that would ... but we—all of us—you, I, Dr. Christopher, her husband—all of us who love her will always love her without quite knowing why and without, in the end, her belonging to any one of us.
"I've grown to love her during these last weeks and I've thought it was because I was sorry for her and admired her pluck—but it isn't that really—It's simply because—well, because—there's something wonderful in her that isn't for any of us."
"Well, you've been very kind, Miss Rand, I shan't forget it. You've said just the thing to put it all straight and clear. I wouldn't do anything now to disturb her or hurt her husband, poor devil ... it must be hell for him ... and it don't anyway matter much what happens to me—it never has done.
"You've been a brick. If you really care to bother about a rotten waster like myself I'll be proud.... Good-bye and thank you——"
He took her hand and shook it and then was gone, striding off, furiously, towards the trees.
She walked slowly back to Saxton Square.