by Hugh Walpole
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 ... such a 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 — Something must happen before evening; I must make it 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, “This is London,” but could only, in retrospect say, “Ah, that must 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 she did write, 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.”
II
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. She did feel 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.”
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; he was 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 plea
sure; 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.
“It is good 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.