by Hugh Walpole
Then down it swung, swung like an iron door shutting all the world away from him, inexorable— “Always on your back ... never get up again!”
His hand gripped the bed-clothes.
“Nurse.”
“Yes?”
“Tell me — am I dreaming or did someone say something the other day about — about my never being able, well, to toddle again, you know?”
“I’m afraid — —”
“Thanks.”
He closed his eyes and then summoned all the grit and determination that there was in him to face this fact. He could not face it. It was as though he were struggling up the side of a high slippery rock — up he would struggle, up and up, now he was at the top, down he would slip again — it could not, oh! it could not be true!
It was true. As the days passed grimly in silence, he accepted it. It had always been his creed that in this world there was no place for the maimed and the halt. He was sorry for them, of course, but it was better that they should go; they only occupied room that was intended for lustier creatures.
Well, now he was himself of the halt and maimed — that was ironical, wasn’t it? Indeed he would much rather that he had pegged out altogether — better for everybody — but, as things were, he would square things out and see what he could make of it all. Then he saw as, every day, he grew stronger, that he had no resources; everything in his other life, as he now had come to think of it, had depended upon his physical strength, every pleasure, every desire, every ambition had had to do with his body — everything except Rachel.
In his other life half his happiness arose simply from the sense of his physical movement, his consciousness that, as the rivers flowed and the winds blew and the sun blazed, so did he also live and have his being — And with all this, most intimately was his house mingled. That grey building and he grew and moved and developed together; life could never be very terrible for him so long as he had his place to come back to, his place to care for, his fields and his gardens, his horses and his dogs to look after. Now he could do nothing more for it — perhaps one day he would be wheeled about its courts and paths, but oh! with what pitying eyes would it look down upon him, how sorrowfully his gryphons would greet him, with what memories they would confront him!
He could not bear now to look out upon the Downs on the little village path — His bed was moved. A day arrived when he felt that it was all, really, more than he could endure. He was in wild, furious rebellion, surly, sometimes in raging tempers, sometimes sulking from day to day. He cursed all the world. Even Christopher could do nothing with him —
Then upon this there followed a period of silence. He lay there and beyond “Yes” and “No” would answer no one. His eyes stared at the wall. Christopher feared at this time for his sanity.
Suddenly the silence was broken. He must go to London because he could not endure the memories that this place thronged upon him — At the beginning of March he was moved to the house in York Terrace.
II
The little house by the park helped him to construct his new life. The normality that there was in Roddy, the same balance of common sense, fostered his recovery. He was not going to die — Life would be an infernal trouble were he always to be in rebellion against it — he must simply make the best of the conditions. And then, after all, he had Rachel. Rachel had been a heroine during this time, and to his love for her he now clung, passionately, tenaciously, the one thing left to him out of his great catastrophe.
She seemed, during these months, to have thought for nothing else in all the world. She was not so useful in a sick room as Miss Rand — Miss Rand was wonderful — but there were certain moments when she would bend down and kiss him or would look at him or would take his hand, when he wondered whether love for him had not crept into her heart after all.
Funny when he had gone out for his ride on that eventful morning expecting that he had offended her for ever! Well, if his accident had won Rachel for him, it had been worth while!
But there were other days when he knew for a certainty that it was not so, knew that it was pity that moved her; affection too perhaps, but nothing more than affection....
Nevertheless he hoped that this might be the beginning of something else; he would lie for hours looking out at the park and creating visions.
He made now something tolerable of his life. People showed a wonderful kindness and there was always someone to entertain him, some new present that someone had sent him; people could not be kind enough. He was grateful for all of this, but he spent many, many hours in thinking. He found that he had never thought before; he found that he would have gone to his grave without thinking had not the great catastrophe occurred. He thought of a great many things, but especially of what other people’s lives were like. There were, he supposed, a great number of people who had had misfortunes as overwhelming at his — How had they behaved? And what, after all, were all the other people, in all their different circumstances, doing? Before this it had only occurred to him to be interested in the people who were leading lives like his, now he wondered about everybody.
Little things became of the greatest importance. Every day he read the paper with absorbed care from the first line to the last. The arrangement of the room interested him and he would give its details, minutely, his consideration.
He was greatly interested in gossip and he would chatter, happily, all the afternoon did someone come and visit him. To everyone it was an amazing thing that he should take it all so easily. No one had ever given Roddy credit for the strength of character that was in him and they did not perhaps recognize that his earlier impatient condemnation of other people— “Why the devil don’t the feller stand up to it like a man?” — made him now conscious that he was himself at last faced with a similar test to which he himself must stand up.
But, beyond question, he could not have held the position as he did had it not been for Rachel; he seemed to see that here was a chance of seizing her and making her really his own, a chance that would never be his again. He was making an appeal to her — she was closer to him, he thought, with every day.
So his natural humour and spirits returned — At present life was tolerable; he suffered very little pain and he was aware that a number of people to whom he had never meant anything whatever now cared for him very much indeed.
He was ashamed when he heard of the men who were dying and suffering for their country— “He would have had to have gone to Africa,” he told himself, “if he’d not had his accident. Then enteric or a bullet and good-bye to Rachel altogether!”
III
He had often, during those long hours, thought of the Duchess. He had, always, in his heart, considered her affection for him strange; he knew that it was difficult for her to be patient with fools and he knew that his own intellectual gifts were on no very high level. He based her friendship for him on the naive transparency with which he displayed his frankly pagan indulgences. His love for Rachel and this accident had changed all that. He was still pagan enough at heart, but there were other things in his world. Principally it occurred to him now that one couldn’t judge about the way things looked to other people, and the Duchess, of course, always did judge; if they didn’t look her way, why then wipe them out!
He had, in fact, much less now to say to the Duchess; he was afraid that he would no longer agree with her about things— “Of course she knows the world and is a damn clever woman, but she’s jolly well too hard on people who aren’t quite her style — She’d put my back up, I believe, if she talked.” He had, indeed, always been uncomfortable at the old lady’s approaches to sentiment. She was never sentimental with other people — He hated sentiment in anyone except, of course, Rachel and she never was sentimental.
He looked out now upon the road that ran through the park beyond his window, watched the nursemaids and the children, the old gentlemen, the girls, the smart women and the pale young men with books and the smart young men with shiny hats, and he wondere
d about them all.
Sometimes when the grass, was very green, when high white clouds piled one upon another hung above the pond whose corner he could just see, thoughts of his little grey house, his gardens, the Downs, his horses and dogs would come to him —
“Come out! Come out!” a sparrow would dance on his window ledge —
“Damn you, I can’t!” he would cry and then his eyes would fly to Rachel’s photograph— “If I get her it will be worth it, won’t it, Jacob, my son?”
He talked continually to Jacob and found great comfort in the stolid assurance with which the dog would wag his stump of a tail— “He’s more than human, that dog,” he would tell Rachel; “funny how I never used to see anything in him.”
Of course there were many days when life was utterly impossible; then he would snap at everyone, lie scowling at the park, curse his impotence, his miserable degraded infirmities. “Curse it, to die in a ditch like this — to be broken up, to be smashed....”
His majestic butler — now the tenderest and most devoted of attendants — stood these evil days with great equanimity.
“Bless you, of course he’s bound to be wild now and again — wonder is it don’t happen more often — It does him good to curse a bit.”
So things were with him until the day of the Duchess’s visit. His surprise at seeing her was confused with an assurance that “she had come for something.” After her departure what she had come for was plain enough to see.
He had not taken her words about Breton at first with any credulity. His principal emotion at the time had been anger with the old woman, a great desire that she should go before he should forget himself and be disgraced by showing temper to anyone so old and feeble — But when she had gone, he found that peace had left him now once and for all.
He knew that the Duchess hated Rachel and he was ready to allow for the bias and exaggeration that spite would lend, but, when that was taken away, much remained.
Rachel knew Breton, that was certain; she had never told him. Breton’s name had occurred sometimes in conversation and she had always spoken of him as though he were a complete stranger. Rachel knew Breton and she had never told him....
He might tell himself that she had not told him because she knew that he would instantly stop the acquaintance — It was, of course, simply a friendship that had sprung up because Rachel was sorry for his ostracism. Roddy thought that that was just like Rachel, part of her warm-hearted interest in anyone who seemed to be unfairly treated — yet — she had never told him.
Then, lying there all alone with no one in whom he could confide, there sprang before him suspicions. If she had known this scoundrel of a cousin of hers, if she had been so careful to keep from her husband all cognizance of her friendship, did not that very silence and deceit imply more than friendship? Was Breton the kind of man to abstain from snatching every advantage that was open to him? Did not this explain Rachel’s avoidance of Roddy during the last year, her moods of restraint, repentance, her sudden silences?
Then upon this came the thought, how much of all this did the world know? Perhaps it was true once again that the husband was the last to be informed, perhaps during the last year all London Society had mocked at Roddy’s blindness.
The Duchess, he might be sure, had not spared her tongue — The Duchess ... he cursed her as he lay there and then wondered whether he should not rather thank her for opening his eyes, then cursed himself for daring to allow such suspicions of Rachel to gain their hold upon him.
In Roddy there was, strong beyond almost any other principle, a sturdy hereditary pride. He was proud of his stock, proud of his ancestors and all their doings, worthy and unworthy, proud of his own pluck and standing— “Different from all these half-baked fellers with only their own grandmothers to go back to.” It had been this arrogance, with other things somewhat closely allied, that had endeared him to the Duchess. Now it was that same pride that suffered most terribly. Here was some disaster hanging over his head that threatened most nearly the honour of his family — Let Breton touch that....
He was alone on that evening after the Duchess’s visit; Rachel had gone out to a party; she went, he had noticed, reluctantly, protested again and again that she wished she could stay with him, seemed to hang about him as though she would speak to him, looked, oh! too adorably, too adorably beautiful!
Whilst she was with him he saw behind her the dark shadow of Breton, that fellow kicked out of the country for cheating at cards or something as bad, disowned by his family, and she, she, Rachel so proudly apart, could have gone to him — He was glad when, at last, she had left him.
Then, lying there, he endured three of the most awful hours of agony that he was ever, in, all his life, to know. Nothing that had come to him through his accident was so bad as this. At one moment it was fury — wild, raging, unreasoning fury — that wished that Rachel and Breton and the Duchess, all of them together might suffer the torments of hell — And then swiftly following it came his love of Rachel, nearer now to burning heights, so that he swore that, whatever she had done, he did not care, he would forgive her everything, but all that mattered was that she should be spared, that her honour should be vindicated. Then, more quietly, he reflected that he was uncertain of everything as yet, he had only that malicious old woman’s word, and until he had something more solid than that he must trust Rachel.
Oh! if only she would, of her own accord, speak! If she would only sit there by his sofa and, with her hand in his, tell him, quite simply, in what exactly her friendship with Breton consisted — Ah! then how he would forgive her! How together they would be revenged upon the Duchess!
If she did not speak he did not know what he would do. That old woman’s mouth must be stopped; he must find out exactly how far the danger had spread — he must deal with Breton — Now indeed he cursed so that he should be tied to this sofa; there had swept down upon him the hardest trial of his life.
Rachel returned from her party — she sat by his sofa and he lay there looking at her.
Had it been a nice party? Not very — One of those war parties that everyone had now. That silly Lady Meikleham recited “The Absent-minded Beggar,” and they had that French tenor from Covent Garden to sing patriotic songs, and of course they got money out of everybody.
There’d been nothing for supper — She’d seen nobody amusing —
She broke out: “Roddy dear, what have you been doing with yourself? You look as white and tired as anything — Has that pain in your back —— ?”
“No, dear, — thank you.”
“I wish I hadn’t gone, and the dinner at Lady Massiter’s was so stupid — Monty Carfax whom I loathe and Lord Massiter so dull and stupid — says he’s coming to see you to-morrow afternoon.”
“Well, he can, I’m at anybody’s mercy!”
She got up, stood over him for a moment looking so tall and slender, so dark with diamonds in her black hair, so lovely to-night!
She looked down upon him, then suddenly bent and kissed him.
“Roddy — —”
“What is it, dear?” He caught her hand so fiercely that she cried:
“Roddy dear, I — —”
“Yes.”
“Oh, nothing, only you look so tired, I wish I could take some of the pain — —”
“There isn’t any, dear, I’m wonderfully lucky.”
Peters came in to take him to bed.
She kissed him again and left him.
“Looking done up to-night, sir,” said Peters.
“I am,” said Roddy.
CHAPTER IV
MARCH 13th: BRETON’S TIGER
“If I’d had the power not to be born, I would certainly not have accepted existence upon conditions that are such a mockery. But I still have the power to die, though the days I give back are numbered. It’s no great power, it’s no great mutiny.” — Dostoevsky.
I
Christopher’s knowledge of Rachel, long and intimate though it
had been, had never made him sure of her. In his relations with his fellow-men he proceeded on the broad lines that best suited, he felt, any investigation of his own character. Broad lines, however, did not catch that subtle spirit that was Rachel; he had been baffled again and again by some fierceness or sudden wildness in her, and had often been held from approaching her lest by something too impetuous or ill-considered he should drive her from him altogether. He had been aware that, since her marriage, she had been gradually slipping from him, and this had made him, during the last year, the more careful how he approached her. He loved her the more in that something that was part of her was strange and mysterious to him; the idealist and the poet concealed in him behind his frank worldliness cherished her aloofness. She was precious to him because nothing else in this life had quite her unexpected beauty.
Since that afternoon when the Duchess had paid her visit to Roddy he wished many times that he were a cleverer man. He felt that something must instantly be done, but he felt, too, that one false step on his part would plunge them all into the most tragical catastrophe.
He was baffled by his own ignorance as to the real truth; neither Breton nor Rachel had taken him into their confidence. He could not say how any of them could be expected to act, and yet he knew that something must be done at once. He saw Rachel through it all, like a strange dark flower, mysterious, shining, with her colour, beyond his grasp, but so beautiful, so poignant! She had never appealed to him as now, in the heart of some danger that he could not define she eluded him and yet demanded his help.
After much puzzled thinking he decided that it must be Breton whom he had best approach, and so he wrote and asked him to come and dine quietly with him in Harley Street on the evening of March 13th. Breton accepted if he might be released at nine-thirty, as he had then another appointment.
“Can’t stand a whole evening,” thought Christopher, “thinks I want to bully him. Well, perhaps I do!”