by Hugh Walpole
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 the real woman 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.
CHAPTER II
THE DUCHESS MOVES
“Fear of the loss of power has more to do with disasters in the history of nations than any other motive.”
James Anthony Froude.
I
Trouble invaded the strongholds of 104 Portland Place that winter: The Duchess was not so well ... no evasions, whether above or below stairs, could conceal the harsh truth. The Duchess was not so well....
To the bewildered mind of Lady Adela the horrid succession of disasters that the winter had provided no other years could equal. It had all begun, she often fancied, from the day of Rachel’s coming out, from the ball, or even, although for this she could not find a real excuse, from that visit to the Bond Street Picture Gallery. It was on that afternoon, Lady Adela well remembered, that there had first come to her those strange, treacherous thoughts about her mother that had, afterwards, as they had grown stronger and more formidable, changed life for her. Yes, it had seemed that, with Rachel’s appearance before the world, disaster to the Beamister house had appeared also. Her mother’s illness, the War, perpetual rumours of Rachel’s unsatisfactory marriage, the uncomfortable presence of Frank Breton, the horrible disaster to poor Roddy — how they trooped before Lady Adela’s eyes! Finally, more terrible than all of them, was the complete destruction of the old fiction, the old terror, the old submission. Lady Adela did not now dare to look into her mind because of the horrible things that she found there.
Roddy’s accident had had the most terrible effect upon the Duchess. Only Christopher could really tell how Her Grace had taken it, but throughout the house, it was understood that the effect of it had been serious. “Wouldn’t give her long now,” said Mr. Norris. “What with this War and what not she was goin’ as it was, and now Sir Roderick, as was always, as you might say, her pet, having this awful disaster — no, I don’t give her long.”
Adela of course saw nothing of her mother’s feelings; she never had been allowed to see anything of them and she was not allowed now.
The old lady was outwardly as she had ever been, although she spoke less and, if you watched her, you could see sometimes that her hands were shaking. She used paint for her cheeks and she rouged her lips. Her love of fantastic things had grown very much, and, on the little table behind her chair, there was a row of strange china animals and some Indian dolls with wooden limbs that jangled when you touched them.
But Adela was no longer afraid of her mother. Stimulate it as she would, force upon herself her sensations of the days when she had been afraid, as she did, still the terror would not now confront her. There had been a dreadful scene when the Duchess had been told that her daughter was acting on the same committee as Mrs. Bronson, the dazzling American ... a terrible scene ... but Adela had come through it without a tremor — it had not affected her at all. “It isn’t that I’ve changed much either. I’m just as nervous of other things — I’m just the same coward....”
Perhaps it was, a little, that the war had altered one’s values — So many Beaminster necessities were not quite so necessary —
Certainly John felt the same, and the one consolation to Adela, through all this horrible time, was that she had grown nearer to John than she had ever been to anyone — John and she had been attacked by the Real World, both of them at the same moment, and they did find comfort, at this terrifying crisis, in being together.
But all Adela’s energy was directed towards concealing from her mother that there was any change at all— “She must think that things are just the same, exactly the same. She mustn’t ever know that ... well, that ...”
She could not put it into words. Her Grace’s illness was never alluded to by any member of the household.
There came word, at the beginning of March, that Roddy had been moved up to London, that Rachel had taken a little house in York Terrace overlooking Regent’s Park, that Roddy was wonderfully cheerful, suffered pain at times, but was, on the whole marvellous —
Two or three days after this news when Christopher arrived at 104 on his usual morning visit Lord John met him in the hall.
“I say, come in here a minute,” he said, leading the way into his own little smoking-room — Lord John was fatter, scarcely now as rubicund, as shining as he had been — as neat and clean as ever, but there were lines on his forehead, and in his eye, that glance of surprise that had always been there had advanced into one of alarm —
“What the devil is life going to do, what horrible trick is it up to next?” he seemed to say —
“Look here, Christopher,” he brought out, when the door was closed. “There’s the devil and all to pay. My mother declares this morning that she’s going to pay a visit to Roddy!”
“Well?” Christopher seemed amused.
“But ... Good heavens!” John was aghast— “She hasn’t stirred out of her room for thirty years! She ... she ... it’ll kill her!”
“Oh! no, it won’t—” Christopher answered, “not if she really means to do it. Of course she can’t walk much — she won’t have to — We can get her downstairs, and Roddy’s room in York Terrace is on the ground floor — We’ll have to see she doesn’t catch cold — She’ll have to choose a warm day.”
“She says she’s going this afternoon!” said Lord John, still overwhelmed by this amazing development.
“Well, to-day won’t do any harm — —”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. The danger with your mother has always been to stop her inclinations. Indulge ’em all the time if you can, let h
er say what she wishes, do what she wishes. If you were to carry her out of doors against her will, why it would do a great deal of harm indeed — but if she wants to go she’ll see that she’s up to it. It may be the best thing for her. She could have gone out heaps of times in the last thirty years if she’d wished to!”
Lord John rubbed his forehead —
“It’s a great relief to hear you say that, Christopher. I didn’t know how we were going to get out of it. She was so determined this morning — —”
He broke off— “You’re sure it won’t do any harm?” he said again.
“I’m sure,” said Christopher.
“There’s something,” Lord John went on again, “dreadfully on my mother’s mind — She seems to feel that, in some way or other, she was responsible for his accident. I can’t get at the bottom of it all and of course she won’t tell me — she never tells me things. Perhaps you can get at it. I saw Rachel yesterday.”
“Yes?”
“She’s very fair about it all. Must be having a very hard time. She was glad to see me, I think, but—” he added a little wistfully— “I’ve never been anything to her since her marriage.
“She just seemed not to want me after that, and I’d been a good deal to her before. When one’s getting old, Christopher, we old bachelors, we begin to notice that nobody wants us very much.”
Christopher looked at him — Yes, John Beaminster had changed in the last year. Had he himself, he wondered, also changed?
“Yes,” he said, smiling. “But I’ve been an old bachelor, Beaminster, for years and years and I see no likelihood of your ever being one. You get younger with every year, I believe.”
“This accident to Roddy,” John said slowly, as though he were thinking it all out, “has upset us all. It seems so terrible, happening to him ... much worse for him ... and then Rachel — But look here, I know you’ve got to go up to my mother, I won’t keep you a minute — But there’s a thing I’ve got to talk to you about — It’s been on my conscience now for ages.... I’ve not known what to do ... at last I’ve made up my mind.”
John Beaminster had made up his mind to do something that he hated! To Christopher perhaps more than to anyone else in the world this was a revelation of the most vital, the most moving interest — He had known John for so long, seen him struggling behind screens and curtains, hugging to himself the happy knowledge that to the very end he would be able to keep life from getting at him, and now behold! Life had got at him, wag clutching him by the throat.
“It’s about Frank” — at last he desperately brought out “I’ve made up my mind. I must go and see him — now, perhaps whilst mother is — is still suffering from the effects of Roddy’s accident it wouldn’t be wise perhaps to have him here actually in the house — But something must be done.... Adela agrees.”
Adela agrees! Well, if the old woman upstairs.... Christopher was moved, as he had lately been often moved, by a swift stirring of pathos.
“You see, this War has upset us all so, has made one feel differently — And then he really does seem to have changed, been as quiet as anything all this time, and I hear that he’s working at something sensible down in the City. I must go and see him — —”
Then they hadn’t heard, Christopher knew, of any rumours about Rachel and Francis.
Perhaps there were no rumours, perhaps only in the mind of the old lady.... But then let John say a word to her about this visit to Breton and out she would come with it all.
“Yes, Beaminster,” Christopher said. “Of course I’m delighted. It’s just what I hoped would happen, but perhaps, as your mother has been rather upset lately it would be just as well to say nothing to her....”
“Quite so....” John looked away, out of the window — Poor John!
Christopher held out his hand, and John took it and for a moment they stood there, then Christopher went upstairs.
II
Dorchester no longer asserted that her mistress was “better than she had ever been” — Since that terrible morning when Dr. Christopher had broken the news of Sir Roderick’s accident Dorchester had made no pretence about anything. This was the time that must, she had always known, one day arrive, but what she had not known was that it would be quite like this.
She was a woman of some imagination; moreover, were there one person in the world who touched her heart, then was it her mistress; she had penetrated, she thought, some of the strange secrets and fantasies of that old woman’s soul, and it seemed that now, in these later days, she was at last in touch with every motive and grim artifice that her mistress adopted —
But no — since that terrible day at the beginning of the year Dorchester had lost touch, was left, bewildered, at a loss, as though she were suddenly in the service of some stranger.
She had known that nothing more terrible could happen to her mistress than this — When she heard it she said to herself, “This will kill her — bound to—” She had known too that her mistress would not flinch, outwardly, and that to the ordinary observer there would be no sign, but the thing for which she had not been prepared was this silence, a silence so profound and yet so eloquent that one could obtain from it no clue, could discern no visible wound, but daily, almost hourly, as she sat there, change was at work ... she was dying before their eyes —
What Dorchester did not know was that the Duchess had been aware, for a long time, that this was to occur, if not exactly this, why, then, something like it.
All through that autumn she had sat there waiting — the War, the rebellion of her children — it only needed that disaster should overtake Roddy and the circle was complete.
She did not doubt that it was because he had married Rachel that this had happened to him, and she might have prevented his marriage to Rachel had she wished.
The girl had now for her sitting there in her room the fatal inevitability of some hostile spirit. She saw all her past years as a duel with this girl, the one soul in rebellion against hers. Rachel had taken everything from her; she had first stirred Adela and John into rebellion, she had encouraged Francis Breton, she had destroyed Roddy ... she rose, before the old woman’s eyes, black, titanic, sweeping, with great dark wings, across the horizon.
The Duchess did not in so many words state that Rachel had flung her husband from his horse and then watched whilst his body was dragged along the stones, but, in some way, the girl had plotted it.
The old woman had indeed during these last months suffered from visions. There were days when her brain was as clear as it had ever been and on these days she thought more of Roddy than of Rachel, ached to be with him, longed to comfort him and make life bearable for him, cursed whatever fate it was that had ordained that upon him of all people such a burden should have fallen. Then there were other days when the old china dragons seemed more real than Dorchester, when shapes and sizes altered in an instant, when the cushion at her feet was swollen like a mountain, when she seemed floating through space, looking down upon houses, cities, mountains, when only like a jangling chain upon which everything hung, ran her hatred of her granddaughter.
On such a day if Rachel had come to her and she had been alone with her, she would have wished the dragons to devour her, would have urged the silver Indian snake on the little black table to have strangled her. On such a day she would sit hour after hour and wonder what she could do to her granddaughter....
It was upon one of her clear days that it flashed upon her that she would go and see Roddy. Beyond the actual excitement of visiting Roddy there was the determination to show the world what she still could do. Doubtless they were saying out there that she was bedridden now, ill, helpless, dying even ... well, she would show them.
For thirty years she had not been outside her door — now, because she wished it, she would go.
She said nothing to Adela about this — she saw Adela now as seldom as possible. She told John on the morning of the day itself — on that same morning she told Christopher.
She told him sitting in her chair, with her cheeks painted and her white fingers covered with rings —
“I’m going to pay a visit — this afternoon, Christopher.” She had expected opposition — she was a little disappointed when he said —
“Yes, so I’ve already heard this morning. I think it’s an excellent thing — the day’s warm. You’ll have to be carried downstairs, you know — —”
“You and Norris can do that. I won’t have anyone else.”
“Very well, I shall have to come with you — —”
“Yes — You can talk to my granddaughter.”
“It’s thirty years....”
“Yes — The last time was Old Judy Bonnings’s reception. They’re all dead — all of ’em — D’you remember, Dorchester?”
“Yes — Your Grace — Very well.”
Dorchester expressed no surprise — Anything was better than that silence of the last months. Moreover she had trusted Christopher. She had often been amazed at the knowledge that he showed of her mistress’s temperament, would allow her temper, her imperious self-will indulgence one day and on another would control them absolutely. He knew what he was doing....
The picture that she presented, however, when helped downstairs by the pontifical Norris and Christopher! the house, with the decorous watchfulness of some large, solemn, and immensely authoritative policeman, surveying her descent, her own little bird-like face, showing nothing but a fine assumption of her splendid appearance before the public, after thirty years, she thus, once again, was saluted by Portland Place! Black furs of Lady Adela’s surrounded, enfolded her, and from out of them her eyes haughtily but triumphantly surveyed a crossing-sweeper, two small children with their nurse, a messenger boy, and Roller the coachman. To Roller this must have been the dramatic moment of a somewhat undramatic career, but stout and imperial upon his box his body was held, rigid, motionless, and his large stupid eyes gazed in front of him at the trees and the light cloud-flecked March sky, and moved neither to the right nor to the left.