by Hugh Walpole
His scheme must be carried out at once. He felt that he could not wait a moment. He would have liked to have had them all there, before him, to-night.
“Why, by this time to-morrow, old boy, it will all be straight. Thank God, my brain cleared, in spite of this damn weather.”
He rang the bell and Peters, large, solemn, but bending a loving eye upon his master, appeared.
“Writing things, Peters.”
He wrote swiftly two notes.
“Very close to-night, sir.”
“Yes, Peters, very.”
“You’re looking better, sir ... less tired. Your dinner will be up in a quarter of an hour. Nice omelette, nice little bird, nice fruit salad, sardines on toast.”
“Thank you, Peters, I’m hungry as — as anything.”
“Very glad to hear it, sir.”
“I want these two notes sent by hand instantly, do you see?”
“Yes, Sir Rod’rick.”
“At once.”
“Yes, Sir Rod’rick.”
Roddy lay back and surveyed the black sky.
“Nasty storm comin’ up — look here, Peters, give me that bird book over there. That big one. Thanks.”
Peters retired.
III
Meanwhile Her Grace had found this close evening very trying. That visit to Roddy had not harmed her physically, but had made her restless. The very fact that it had not hurt her, urged her to have more of such evenings. Having shown them once what she could do she would like to show them all again, and yet with this new energy was also lethargy so that she sat, thinking about her adventures, but felt that it would be difficult to move.
Then this thundery afternoon really did drag the strength from her. She allowed her fire to fall into a few golden coals, she allowed Dorchester to move her from her high-back chair on to a sofa that was near the wide window, now flung open. She could see roofs, chimneys, towers of churches, all dingy grey beneath the leaden sky.
She lay there, a book on her lap, but not reading; she was thinking of Roddy. For perhaps the very first time in all her life she regretted something that she had done. Nobody but Roddy could have called this regret out of her and now, she would confess it to no living soul, but she lay there, thinking about it, remembering every movement and gesture of his, seeing always that, at the end, he had wanted her to go, had, as her sharp old eyes had seen, hurried her away.
There had been so splendid a chance, she had shown her love for him so magnificently that he could not but have been touched and moved had she only left Rachel alone. Ah! that girl! again, again.... The Duchess looked at the plain roofs that lay dry and sterile beneath the torrid sky and wished, not by any means for the first time, that she had left that marriage with Roddy alone.
Roddy would have married some other girl, Nita Raseley or such, and he would have been mine ... mine!
Hard and utterly selfish in all her ordinary dealings with a world that she professed to despise but really adored, her love for Roddy was a little golden link to a thousand softnesses and, as she termed them, weak indulgences. Why had she loved him so? She was like the grim pirate of some conventional fiction. See him on his dark vessel surveying with cold and cruel eye the beautiful captives provided by the stricken ship, on every side of him! See him select, for the very flavour that the contrast gave him, some ordinary slave from the crowd to whom he shows weak indulgence! So much blacker, he feels, does this kindness make his infamies.
But the Duchess’s career as the dark pirate of her period was swiftly vanishing; the black hulk of her vessel remained, but upon its boards only the little slave was to be seen, and even he, with furtive eye, sought his way of escape.
Yes, on this torrid evening every soul in that vast city, surely, felt that he was alone, abandoned, in a desert of a world. But the fear that she was losing even Roddy brought the Duchess very close to panic. She had not grasped before how resolutely she had been using him to bolster up life for her, how important his friendly existence was for her.
Since his marriage that friendliness had grown, with every hour, weaker. Something she must do now to repair her error of the other day; she was even ready to pretend affection for her granddaughter if that would bring Roddy back to her.
She watched the sky and longed for the threatened storm to break; her bones were indeed old and feeble to-day, to move at all was an effort and, with it all, there was a sense of apprehension as though she were some terrified bird conscious of the hawk’s approach, she who had, until now, been herself the hawk. She remembered the day when she had realized more poignantly than ever before, that the hour must come — and indeed was not far away — when she would inevitably meet death. She had loathed that realization, attempted to defy it, been defeated by it. Now on this evening, she suspected again the invasion of that same power. But to-night there was no resistance in her, she lay there, whitely submitting to the tyranny of any enemy. She could scarcely breathe; London, like a scaly dragon, flung its hot breath upon her and withered her defiance. She would have moved away from the window had not those grey roofs held her, by their ugly indifference, with a terrible fascination. “I’m going — I’m going — and they don’t care. Just like that — just like that — long after I’m gone.”
The evening slipped away and Dorchester, coming to her, thought that she was sleeping; she did not disturb her, but ordered her evening meal to be kept until she should wake.
The Duchess did sleep. She awoke to find, in the sky above the now vanishing roofs, a golden glow and in the room behind her the shaded lamps, the fire burning, and her table spread.
But she had had a horrible dream; she struggled to recall it and, even as she struggled, trembling seized her body as the vague horror that it had left behind it still thrilled and troubled her.
She could recollect nothing of her dream except this, that she had died, and that being dead, she was immediately aware that God awaited her. She could remember her frantic effort to reassert all those earthly convictions that had been based on the definite creed that the Duchess existed but not God. She had still with her the sensation of hurry and dismay, the dismal knowledge that she had only a moment with which to break down the discoveries of a lifetime and place new ones in her stead.
She had, above all, the horrible knowledge that her punishment was settled, that at last she was in the hands of a power stronger than herself and that nothing, nothing, nothing could help her.
She was frightened, but she knew not by what or by whom. She tried to tell herself that she had been dreaming, that this breathless evening was responsible, that she would be all right very soon. But she was seized by that terrible vague uncertainty that had been with her so much lately, uncertainty as to what was real and what was not. She looked at the French novel lying upon her lap; that was real, she supposed, and yet as she touched its pages her fingers seemed to seize upon nothing, only air between them.
The fits of trembling shook her from head to foot and yet she could scarcely breathe, so close and heavy was the night.
“That was only a dream — only a dream. Suppose it should be true though. What if I were to die — to-night?”
Dorchester came to her and was alarmed.
“Dinner is ready, Your Grace.”
Her mistress did not answer, but lay there, looking through the open window and shivering.
“Your Grace will catch cold by that open window. I had better close it.”
“It’s stifling — stifling.”
“Will you have dinner now?”
“No — no. Why do you worry me? I can eat nothing.”
Dorchester was seriously alarmed; an evening like this might very easily.... She determined to send word round to Dr. Christopher.
She went away, gave directions about the dinner, saw that her mistress’s bedroom was warm and comfortable.
She came back. The Duchess was sitting up, colour in her cheeks and her eyes sparkling. On her lap lay a note.
“I
’ve had a dream, Dorchester — a horrid dream. I was disturbed for a moment. I think I will eat something after all.”
“The way she goes up and down!” thought Dorchester. “Must say I don’t like the look of her — not knowing her own mind, so unlike her — Who’s the letter from, I wonder?”
It was the letter, plainly, that had done it. Sitting up and enjoying her soup, forgetting that black sky and the Dragon’s scaly menace, the Duchess knew that that dream — that dream about God — had been as silly, as futile as dreams always are.
The note, brought to her by Norris and lying now beside her plate, had told her so. The note of course had been from Roddy. It said:
“Dear Duchess,
I don’t want to ask anything impossible of you, but, encouraged by your coming to me the other day and hearing that you took no harm from your expedition, I am wondering whether to-morrow afternoon about five you could come again and have tea with me. There is something about which you can help me — only you in all the world. If I don’t hear from you I will conclude that you can come — five o’clock.
Your affectionate friend,
Roddy.”
That letter showed the perfection of his tactful understanding....
No absurd talk about her age, her feebleness, the weather, but simply it was taken for granted that of course she would be there. Well, of course, she would be there — nothing should stop her. She was aware that Christopher, hearing that to-night she had not been so well, would certainly forbid her to move. He should, therefore, know nothing about it, nothing at all. His visit would be paid in the morning — she would have the afternoon to herself — Norris and Dorchester should help her to the carriage.
Christopher expected, on his arrival, to find her in a very bad way, exhausted by the closeness of the evening: it was possible that he might have to remain all night. He found her in bed, a lace cap on her head, a crimson dressing-gown about her shoulders, and all her rings glittering upon her fingers. An old-fashioned massive silver candlestick with six branches illuminated the lacquer bed, the black Indian chairs, the fantastic wall-paper. The windows were closed and the dry heat of the room was appalling.
She was in her mildest, most amiable mood, had enjoyed an excellent dinner, laughed her cracked, discordant laugh, was delighted to see him.
“Sit down, there, close to me. Have some coffee.”
“No, thank you.”
“Dorchester can bring it in a minute.”
“No, really, thank you.”
“Who sent for you?”
“Lord John.”
“Yes, I thought so. Pretty state of things with them all hanging round like this waiting for me to die — never felt better in my life.”
“So I see — delighted. I’ll go.”
“Not a bit of it. Stay and talk. I feel like telling someone what I think of things, although you’ve heard it all often enough before. But the truth is, Christopher, I did have a nasty dream — a very nasty dream — and the nastiest part of it was that I couldn’t remember it when I woke up.
“But it’s the weather — I was frightened for a minute although I wouldn’t have anyone else know.”
“But you had a good dinner.”
“Splendid dinner, thank you.”
She lay back in bed and looked at him; delightful to think that she would play a little game with him to-morrow; he would in all probability be angry when he knew — that would be very amusing; delightful, too, to think that, just when she was afraid that she had seriously alienated Roddy away from her, he should write and say that he needed her. She would go to-morrow and would be exceedingly pleasant to him and would reassure him about Rachel....
Yes, she had seldom felt so genial. She told Christopher stories of men and women whom she had known, wicked stories, gay stories, cruel stories, and her eyes twinkled and her fingers sparkled and her old withered face poked out above the dressing-gown, with the white hair, fine and proud beneath the lace cap.
Once she said to him: “You think all this queer, don’t you?” waving her hand at the bed, the chairs, the paper. “This colour and the odds and ends and the rest.”
“It’s part of you,” he said; “I shouldn’t know you without them.”
“I love them,” she breathed. “I love them. Oh! if I’d had my way I’d have been born when one could have piled up and splashed it about and had it everywhere — jewels, clothes, processions — Ah! that’s why I hate this generation that’s coming; the generation that you believe in so devoutly, it’s so ugly. It wears ugly things, it likes ugly people, it believes in talking about ugly morals and making ugly laws....” Then she laughed— “It’s funny, isn’t it? I had to use the age I was born into, I cut my cloth to it, but what a figure I’d have made in any century before the nineteenth. All the old times were best. You could command and see that you were obeyed.... None of your Individualism then, Christopher.”
She was silent for a time and he said nothing. He was thinking about Breton, wondering where he was, feeling that he should not have let him go. She said suddenly:
“Christopher, do you think there’s a God?”
“I know there is.”
“Well, I know there isn’t — so there we are. One of us will find that we’ve made a mistake in a few years’ time.”
He said nothing. At last she began again:
“You’re sure of it?”
“Quite sure.”
“So like you — and you get a deal of comfort from it, no doubt. But what kind of a God, Christopher?”
“A just God — a loving God.”
“How any doctor can say that truthfully! The pain, the crime you must have seen — —”
“Exactly. I’ve known, I suppose, of as much misery, as much agony, much wickedness as most men in a lifetime. I’ve never had a case under my notice that hasn’t shown the necessity for pain, the necessity for struggle, for defeat, for disaster. If this life were all, still I should have had proof enough that a loving God was moving in the world.”
She lay back, smiling at him.
“You’re a sentimentalist of course. I’ve heard you talk before. You’re wrong, Christopher, badly wrong. I shall prove it before you will.”
“Well,” he said, smiling back at her, “we’ll see.”
“Oh, yes, you’re a sentimentalist of the very worst — I don’t know that I like you the less for it. I’m an old pagan and it’s served me all my life. Ah! there’s the thunder!”
She sat up in bed, her cap pushed back, her skinny arms stretched out in a kind of ecstasy. “There! That’s it! That’s the kind of thing I like! There’s your God for you, Christopher.”
A flash of lightning flung the room into unreality.
“I’d hoped for one more good storm before I went. I’ve been waiting all day for this.”
He never forgot the strange figure that she made; she displayed the excitement of a child presented with a sudden unexpected gift.
He himself had known many storms, but, perhaps because she now made so strange a central figure of this one, this always remained with him as the worst of his life. He had never heard such thunder and, as each crash fell upon them, he felt that she rose to it and exulted in it as though she were a swimmer meeting great ocean rollers.
There was at last a peal that broke upon them as though it had tumbled the whole house about their ears. Deafened by it he looked about him as though he had expected to find everything in the room shattered.
“That was the best,” she cried to him.
At last she lay back tired, and he bade her good night.
She held his hand for a moment. “I regret nothing,” she said, “nothing at all. I’ve had a good time.”
But, after he had left her, the sound of the rain had some personal fury about it that made her uneasy.
She called to Dorchester. “I think I’d like you to sleep here to-night, Dorchester. I may need you.”
“Very well, Your Grace.”
CHAPTER VII
CHAMBER MUSIC — A TRIO
“A place may abound in its own sense, as the phrase is, without bristling in the least.” — The American Scene.
Henry James.
I
The storm savagely retreating left blue skies, spring, and the greenest grass the parks had ever displayed, behind it. Roddy, lying before his window, watched the pond, gleaming like blue grass but crisped by the breeze into a thousand ripples. Two babies ran, tumbled, screamed and shouted, and all the many-coloured ducks, the ducks with red bills, the ducks with draggled feathers, the ducks in grey and brown, chattered beneath the sun.
By midday a note had arrived from Breton saying that he would be with Roddy at half-past four; there was no word from the Duchess. He knew therefore that his plan had prospered. But, with those morning reflections that freeze so remorselessly the hot decisions of the night before, he was afraid of what he had done; he was afraid of Rachel.
He was afraid of Rachel because he recognized, now that he was on the brink of this plunge, how much deeper and more dangerous it might be for him than he had thought. During these last months he had been slowly capturing Rachel; that capture was the one ambition and desire of his life.
But in the very intensity and ardour of his desire he had learnt more surely than ever the strange contradictions that made her character. His accident had increased his own age and so emphasized her youth; she was ever so young, ever so impulsive; her seriousness was the seriousness of some very youthful spirit, who, guessing at the terrific difficulty of life, feels that the only way to surmount it is to close eyes blindly and leap over the whole of it at once. This was what he knew in his heart — although he would never have put it into words — as her adorable priggishness.
She had found her solution and everything must fit into it, but, since she had finally resolved it, nothing would fit into it at all — and there was the whole of Rachel’s young history!