by Hugh Walpole
John Beaminster came in. Lady Carloes liked him because he was good-tempered and injudicious. He told her a number of things that nobody else ever told her, and he had so simple a mind that extracting news from it was as easy as taking plums from a pudding. He did not come over to them at once, but stood laughing with Lord Crewner and his brother. He would come, however, in a moment, so Lady Carloes made a last hurried plunge at her friend.
“What’s this I hear, my dear, about Frank Breton?”
“Yes, it’s perfectly true. He’s come back, and has taken rooms quite near here. He wrote to mother — —”
Lady Carloes took this in with a gulp of delight. “My dear Adela! What did he say?”
“Oh! a very rude letter. He told mother that he knew that she would like him to be near at hand and that they ought to let bygones be bygones, and that he was sure that she would be glad to hear that he was a reformed character. Of course he hates all of us.”
“What will you all do?”
“Oh! Nothing, of course. We gave him up long ago. By a tiresome coincidence he’s taken rooms in the same house as my secretary, Miss Rand. I would send her away if she weren’t simply invaluable. But it gives him a kind of a link with us.”
“Monty Carfax saw him yesterday. He’s lost his left arm, Monty says, and looks more of an adventurer than ever. So tiresome for your mother, my dear.”
Then, as Lord John began to break away from the group at the fireplace and move towards them ——
“Roddy Seddon told me he might look in this afternoon.... Your mother’s so devoted to him. He seems to understand her so well.”
The two ladies faced one another. Their eyes crossed. Lady Carloes murmured, “Such a splendid fellow!” then, as Lord John’s cheerful laugh broke upon them ——
“Isn’t Rachel coming down?” she asked.
II
Lady Adela left her brother and Lady Carloes together and crossed over to the group at the fireplace. Of all her brothers, she liked Richard best. He seemed to her to be precisely all that a Beaminster should be: she liked his appearance — his fine domed forehead, his grey hair, his long rather melancholy face, his austere and orderly figure.
He had to perfection that reserve, that kind benignancy that a Beaminster ought to have; whenever Lady Adela questioned the foundations upon which the stability of her life depended he reassured her. Without saying anything at all, he gravely comforted her. That is what a Beaminster ought to do.
She knew, as she saw him standing there by the fire, that he would never doubt his mother. To him she would always be splendid and magnificent, and with what determination would he expel from him any base attacks on that loyalty! Lady Adela thought that power to expel resolutely and firmly everything that attacked the settled assurance of one’s mind the finest thing in the world.
Lord Crewner was a thin, handsome man of any age at all over forty and under sixty. He was polished and brushed and scrubbed to such an extent that he looked like an advertisement of some fine old English firm that produced, at great cost and with wonderful completeness, Fine old English gentlemen. He believed in not thinking about things very much, because thinking let in Radicals and diseases and the poor, and made one uncomfortable. He loved the London that he knew, a London bounded by Sloane Square, the Marble Arch, Trafalgar Square and Westminster.
He was a bachelor, but might have married Lady Adela had the Duchess not refused to hear of Lady Adela leaving her; he adored the Duchess, although he was scarcely ever allowed to see her because he bored her. He always lowered his voice a little when talking to women, and heightened it a little when talking to men; to his valet he spoke in the voice that Nature had given him.
Lady Adela was reassured as she came towards them. Although she did not especially desire to marry Lord Crewner, the thought that he might, had affairs been differently arranged, have asked her, placed him, in her eyes, apart from other men. At any rate these two were comfortable to her, and, for a moment, she was able to dismiss Rachel and Frank Breton from her mind.
They talked easily beside the fireplace. The voices of Lady Carloes and Lord John, the pleasant murmur of the fire, the ticking clocks, all helped that lazy swaying of time and space about one, that happy reassurance that as the world had been so would it continue ever to be, and that the old emotions and the old experiences and the old opinions would always hold their own against all invasion and decay.
Lord Richard talked of Chippendale and some wonderful Lowestoft, Lord Crewner talked of Madeira and Lady Masters’ new house; Lady Adela listened and was soothed.
Upon them all broke a voice:
“Sir Roderick Seddon, my lady.”
There stood in the doorway the freshest, the most beaming of young men. He was tall and broad; his face was of a red-brick colour, and his dark London clothes, although they were well cut and handsome enough, were obviously only worn to please a necessary convention. His hair was light brown and cut close to his head, and his body had the healthy sturdiness of someone whose every muscle was in proper training.
He came forward to the group at the fireplace with the walk of a man accustomed to space and air and freedom; his smiling face was so genial and good-humoured that the whole room seemed to break away a little from its decorous and shining propriety. They were all pleased to see him. Lady Carloes and Lord John came over and joined the group, and they stood all about him talking and laughing.
Roddy Seddon was the only young man whom the Duchess permitted, and people said that that was because he was the only young man who had never shown any fear of her. The knowledge of this fact gave him in Lady Adela’s eyes a curious interest. She beheld him always rather as she would have beheld anyone who had learnt an abstruse language that no one else had ever mastered or some traveller who was reputed to have said or done the most extraordinary things in some savage country. How could he? What talisman had he discovered that protected him? And then, swiftly on that, came the curious thought that she herself was glad that she had her terror, that she was proud, in some strange, inverted way, that any Beaminster could have the effect upon anyone that her mother had upon her.
But Roddy Seddon had another especial interest for her, for it was Roddy, all the Beaminsters had decided, who was to marry Rachel. Roddy was, in every way, the right person; not very wealthy, perhaps, but he had one nice place in Sussex, and Rachel would not, herself, be a pauper.
Roddy would never let the Beaminsters down; he hated all these new invaders as strongly as any Beaminster could. He hated this mixing of the classes, this perpetual urging of the working man to think.
“Lots of our fellows,” Lady Adela had heard him say, “get along without thinkin’ — why not the other fellers?”
She felt now that a conversation with Roddy would complete the soothing process that Lord Crewner and her brother had begun. He would finally reassure her.
She had no difficulty in securing him. Lady Carloes sat by the fire and talked to Lord Crewner, and the nondescript, and the two brothers departed.
When Roddy had drunk his tea, she led him away to the farther part of the long dim room, and there by that more distant fireplace the two of them sat, shadowy against the leaping light, their faces and their hands white and sharp and definite.
“Who else is dinin’ on Thursday?”
She gave him names. “The Prince and Princess are coming, you know, but they aren’t alarming. They’ve been often to see mother when they’ve been over here before. They’re getting old enough now to be comfortable. He dances like anything still.”
“I always like dinin’ in the place you’re dancin’ at. You don’t get that shivery feeling comin’ up the stairs and puttin’ your gloves on. You’re one up on the others if you’ve been dinin’.”
Lady Adela looked at him, and sighed a little impatiently. He was incredibly young and might, after all, let them down.
He was thirty now, but he looked not a day more than nineteen, and he always talked and
behaved as though he were still in his last year at Eton. She opposed him, in her mind’s eye, to that figure of Frank Breton that had been before her all day. How could a mere boy stand up against a scoundrel like that?
Moreover, she had heard stories about Roddy. Women had terrible power over him, she had been told, and then, with a glance at him, sighed again at the thought that her own time had gone by for having power over anybody, even Lord Crewner.
Well, after all, her mother knew the boy better than anyone did and her mother loved him — better than everyone else put together her mother loved him.
“How’s Rachel takin’ it?”
“How does Rachel take anything? She never says anything, and one never knows. She seems to have no curiosity, or eagerness.”
“I was talkin’ to May Eversley about her the other night. May says she’ll be splendid.”
“I don’t like May Eversley” — Lady Adela nervously moved her hands on her lap. “I wish Rachel hadn’t made such friends with her in Munich.”
“Oh, May’s all right.” Roddy’s blue eyes were smiling. “Took her down to Hurlingham yesterday and we had no end of a time.”
It was a pity, Lady Adela reflected, that Roddy was so absolutely on his own.
His mother had died at his birth, and his father had been dead for five years now, and here it seemed to Lady Adela a curious coincidence that both Rachel and Roddy were orphans — and both so young.
She leant forward towards him —
“You can do a lot for Rachel, Roddy. You can help her to understand her grandmother, you can reconcile her to all of us.”
“Oh! I say,” Roddy laughed. “Perhaps she won’t have anythin’ to say to me, you know. My seein’ your mother so often is quite enough — —”
“No. She likes cheerful people — Dr. Christopher and John. You’re in the same line of country, Roddy. She doesn’t like me, and I haven’t got the things in me to draw affection out of her. I’m not that kind of woman.”
As a rule Lady Adela betrayed no emotion of any kind, but now, this afternoon, both to Lady Carloes and Roddy she had made some vague, indefinite appeal. Perhaps the news of Breton’s arrival had alarmed her, perhaps her visit to the gallery with Rachel had really disturbed her. She seemed to beg for assistance.
Roddy analysed neither his own emotions nor those of his friends, but, this afternoon, Lady Adela did appear to him a little more human than before. He was suddenly sorry for her.
“Rachel’ll be all right,” he assured her. “Wait a bit. By the way, I met that little feller Brun yesterday — said he was comin’ on Thursday. He’s wild about your mother’s picture — —”
“Yes — we saw him at the gallery this afternoon. Rachel and I were there.”
“Rachel! What did she think of it?”
“Seemed to take no interest in it at all. We were there only a few minutes — —”
Silence fell between them, a silence filled with meaning. Lady Adela had intended to speak about Breton — now, suddenly, she could say nothing. The mention of the picture-gallery had brought back all her earlier discomfort — she saw the picture, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the white pinched cheeks. Then she saw the great bedroom upstairs, the high white bed, the little shrivelled figure.
Had Rachel pointed this contrast? Had Breton? Was it something that Roddy had discovered already, something that had made his courage so easy for him? What, what was going to be done with her if she were no longer afraid? Why, on that terror, on that trembling service, were built the foundations of all her life. How could she face that picture that the world had of a splendid, historic, dominating figure if she herself saw only a sick, miserable old woman tumbling to pieces, passing to decay?
The minutes had passed, and she had said nothing. Roddy must be wondering at her silence. To her relief Lady Carloes came towards her to say good-bye.
Roddy’s eyes were puzzled. For what had she carried him off if she had nothing to say to him?
III
When they were all gone she went up to her mother. Before the door she paused. The house was very still, and her heart was furiously beating.
She opened the door, and at the sight of the room was instantly reassured.
Dorchester met her. “Her Grace went to bed early to-night. But she will see you, my lady.”
Lady Adela stepped softly to the farther door. All was well. About her, around her, within her, was that same splendid terror, that same knowledge that she was approaching some great presence that had been with her all her life ——
As she opened the bedroom door and saw the high white bed she knew that her mother was more magnificent, more wonderful than any painted picture could possibly make her.
CHAPTER IV
THE POOL
I
On that same afternoon in another part of the house Miss Rand, Lady Adela’s secretary, finished her work for the day, and prepared to go home.
It was about a quarter-past six, and the May evening was sending through the windows its pale glow suggesting soft blue skies and fading lights. Miss Rand’s room told you at once everything about Miss Rand. For efficiency and neatness, for discipline and restraint, it could not be beaten. Miss Rand herself was all these things, efficient and neat, disciplined and restrained.
Her room had against one white and shining wall a black and shining typewriter. Against another wall was a table, and on this table were so many contrivances for keeping letters and papers decent and docketed that it made every other table the observer could remember seem untidy and littered. There was nothing in the room superfluous or unnecessary, and even some carnations in a green bowl near the window looked as though they were numbered and ticketed.
Miss Rand was a little woman who appeared thirty-five when she was busy, and twenty-five when someone was pleasant to her. When she was at work the broad dark belt that she wore at her waist was her most characteristic feature. Then, in keeping with this, was her dark hair, beautiful hair perhaps if it had been allowed some freedom, but now ordered and sternly disciplined; she wore no ornaments, and about her there was nothing out of place nor extravagant.
Her face was full of light and colour and her eyes were beautiful, but no one considered them: it was impossible to look beyond that stern shining belt — one felt that Miss Rand herself would resent appreciation.
From ten o’clock in the morning until five o’clock in the evening the huge Portland Place house absorbed her energies. She saw it sometimes in her dreams, as a great unwieldy machine kept in place by her hand, but leaping, did she leave it for an instant, trembling, soaring, carrying destruction with it into the heart of the city.
Meanwhile her hand was upon it. From Norris the butler, from Dorchester the guardian of the Duchess’s apartments, down to the smallest, most insignificant kitchen-maid, Miss Rand knew them all. There was, of course, Mrs. Newton, the most splendid and elevating of housekeepers, but when matters below stairs went beyond her control Miss Rand could always arrange them. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that, in the way of managing her fellow-creatures, Miss Rand could not do.
But it was because Miss Rand never occurred to any single creature in the Portland Place house as a sentient breathing human being that she succeeded as she did. She had no prejudices, no angers, no rebellions, no rejoicings. She was the little engine at the heart of the house that sent everything into motion. “One can’t imagine her eating her meals, Mrs. Newton,” Mr. Norris once said. “And as to her sleeping like you or me — —”
To see her now as she put the final touches to her room before leaving it, arranging a paper here and a paper there, going to the bookshelf and pushing back a book that jutted in front of the others, setting a chair against the wall, placing the blotting-pad exactly in the middle of the table, finally taking her hat and coat and putting them on with the same careful and almost automatic distinction — this sufficiently revealed her. She seemed, as she looked for the last time about the room with her
bright eyes, like some sharp little bird, perched on a window-sill, looking beyond closed windows for new adventure.
It was one of the striking points in her that her eyes always seemed to be searching for some disorder in some place outside her immediate vision.
She closed the door behind her. As she stepped into the passage someone was coming down the staircase to her right, and looking up she saw that it was Rachel Beaminster. Rachel was on her way from her grandmother’s room, and before she saw Miss Rand standing there, waiting to let her pass, her face was grave and, in that half-light, strangely white. Then, as she saw Miss Rand, she smiled —
“Good evening, Miss Rand.”
“Good evening, Miss Beaminster.”
“I’m afraid that this ball is giving you a lot of trouble.”
“I think that everything is arranged now, Miss Beaminster. I hope that it will be a great success.”
Rachel sighed and then laughed.
“Don’t I wish the whole stupid thing was over. And I expect you do too!”
Miss Rand smiled a very little. “It’s good for the servants,” she said. “They’re always happy when they’re really busy.”
For a moment they stood there smiling. It occurred to Rachel that Miss Rand must be rather nice. She had never thought of her before as anything but Aunt Adela’s secretary.
“Good night, Miss Rand.”
“Good night, Miss Beaminster.”
II
In Portland Place Miss Rand drew a little breath and paused. So many times during the last five years had she walked from Portland Place to Saxton Square, and from Saxton Square to Portland Place, that the streets and houses encountered by her had become individual, alive, always offering to her some fresh adventure or romance. Portland Place itself was no bad beginning, with its high white colour, its air, and its dark mysterious park hovering at the edge of it.
If one had not known, Miss Rand thought, one might have supposed that just beyond it lay the sea, so fresh and full of breezes was the air. The light was yellow now and the houses black and sharp against the faint sky. In another half-hour the lamps would be lit.