by Hugh Walpole
Brun nodded. “It’s true enough this time,” he said.
CHAPTER IX
THE DARKEST HOUR
“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.
I
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, an
d 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.
II
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 — —”
III
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 firs
t 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.”