'/C
 
 The Duchess 
 of Wrexe 
 
 HUGH WALPOLE
 
 HER DECLINE AND DEATH 
 A ROMANTIC COMMENTARY 
 
 by HUGH WALPOLE 
 GROSSET & DUNLAP - Publishers 
 
 by arrangement with Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc.
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1914 
 31i GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 TO 
 MY MOTHER 
 
 A SMALL EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE 
 BEYOND WORDS
 
 PR 
 
 "And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's Wood.*' 
 Letter to Maria Oisborne
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I: THE DUCHESS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGB 
 
 I FELIX BBUN, DR. CHRISTOPHER, RACHEL, BEAMIN- 
 
 STER THEY ARE SURVEYED BY THE PORTRAIT . 13 
 
 II RACHEL 26 
 
 III LADY ADELA 42 
 
 IV THE POOL, 54 
 
 V SHE COMES OUT 66 
 
 VI FANS . 76 
 
 VII IN THE HEART OF THE HOUSE 85 
 
 VIII THE TIGER 98 
 
 IX THE GOLDEN CAGE 108 
 
 X LIZZIE AND BRETON 121 
 
 XI HER GRACE'S DAY 135 
 
 XII DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I . 146 
 
 XIII DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER II 159 
 
 BOOK II: RACHEL 
 I THE POOL AND THE SNOW ...... . 171 
 
 II A LITTLE HOUSE 182 
 
 III FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 196 
 
 IV RACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER AND RODDY . . . 210 
 V LIZZIE'S JOURNEY I 221 
 
 VI ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 233 
 
 VII RACHEL AND BRETON 246 
 
 VIII CHRISTOPHER'S DAY ......>.. 256 
 
 IX THE DARKEST HOUR .... : . .... 269 
 
 X LIZZIE'S JOURNEY II ........ 280 
 
 XI RODDY Is MASTER . . . .. > ; M : >. ... 290 
 
 XII LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III , ; : >] - * , ; . . 308
 
 CONTENTS 
 BOOK III: RODDY 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I REGENT'S PARK BRETON AND LIZZIE .... 333 
 
 II THE DUCHESS MOVES . . . . . . . . . 345 
 
 III RODDY MOVES 362 
 
 IV MARCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER ...... 373 
 
 V MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 389 
 
 VI MARCH 13TH: RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL AND 
 
 THE DUCHESS DENIES GOD 409 
 
 VII CHAMBER Music A TRIO 425 
 
 VIII A QUARTETTE 436 
 
 IX RACHEL AND RODDY 450 
 
 X LIZZIE BECOMES Miss RAND AGAIN 454 
 
 XI THE LAST VIEW FROM HIGH WINDOWS .... 467 
 
 XII RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN, CHRISTOPHER . . 477 
 
 XIII EPILOGUE PROLOGUE .... ... 490
 
 BOOK I 
 THE DUCHESS
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 FELIX BRUN, DR. CHRISTOPHER, RACHEL BEAMINSTER 
 THEY ARE SURVEYED BY THE PORTRAIT 
 
 FELIX BRTJN, perched like a little bird, on the steps of 
 the Rede Art Gallery, gazed up and down Bond Street, 
 with his sharp eyes for someone to whom he might show Yale 
 Ross's portrait of the Duchess of Wrexe. The afternoon was 
 warm, the date May of the year 1898, and the occasion was 
 the Young Portrait Painters' first show with Ross's " Duch- 
 ess " as its principal attraction. 
 
 Brun was thrilled with excitement, with emotion, and he 
 must have his audience. There must be somebody to whom 
 he might talk, to whom he might explain exactly why this 1 
 occasion was of so stirring an importance 
 
 His eyes lighted with satisfaction. Coming towards him 
 was a tall, gaunt man with a bronzed face, loose ill-fitting 
 clothes, a stride that had little of the town about it. This 
 was Arkwright, the explorer, a man who had been lost in 
 African jungles during the last five years, the very creature 
 for Brun's purposes. 
 
 Here was someone who, knowing nothing about Art, would 
 listen all the more readily to Brun's pronouncement upon it, 
 a homely simple soul, fitted for the killing of lions and tigers, 
 but pliable as wax in the hands of a master of civilization 
 like Brun. At the same time Arkwright was no fool; a 
 psychologist in his way, he had written two books about the 
 East that had aroused considerable interest. 
 
 No fool, Arkwright. . . . He would be able to appreciate 
 Brun's subtleties and perhaps add some of his own. 
 
 He had, however, been away from England for so long a 
 
 13
 
 14 
 
 time that anything that Brim had to tell him about the 
 London world would be pleasantly fresh and stimulating. 
 
 Brun, round and neat, and a citizen of the world from the 
 crown of his head to the top of his shining toes, tapped Ark- 
 wright on his shoulder : 
 
 " Hallo ! Brun. How are you ? It is good to see you ! 
 Haven't seen a soul I know for the last ever so long." 
 
 " Good good. Excellent. Come along in here." 
 
 " In there ? Pictures ? What's the use of me looking at 
 pictures ? " 
 
 " We can talk in here. I'll tell you all the news. Besides, 
 there's something that even you will appreciate." 
 
 " Well ? " Arkwright laughed good-humouredly and moved 
 towards the door. " What is it ? " 
 
 " The Duchess," Brun answered him. " Yale Eoss's 
 portrait of the Duchess of Wrexe. At last," he triumphantly 
 cried, " at last we've got her ! " 
 
 H 
 
 The Duchess had a small corner wall for her own in- 
 dividual possession. The thin glowing May sunlight fell 
 about her and the dull gold of her frame received it and 
 gave it back with a rich solemnity as though it had said, 
 " You have been gay and unrestrained enough with all those 
 crowds, but here, let me tell you, is something that requires 
 a very different attitude." 
 
 The Duchess received the colour and the sunlight, but 
 made no response. She sat, leaning forward a little, bend- 
 ing with one of her dry wrinkled hands over a black ebony 
 cane, a high carved chair supporting and surrounding her. 
 She seemed, herself, to be carved there, stone, marble, any- 
 thing lifeless save for her eyes, the tense clutch of her fingers 
 about the cane, and the dull but brooding gleam that a large 
 jade pendant, the only colour against the black of her dress, 
 flung at the observer. Her mouth was a thin hard line, her 
 nose small but sharp, her colour so white that it seemed to
 
 15 
 
 cut into the paper, and the skin drawn so tightly over her 
 bones that a breath, a sigh, might snap it. 
 
 Her little body was, one might suppose, shrivelled with 
 age, with the business and pleasure of the world, with the 
 pursuit of some great ambition or prize, with the battle, 
 unceasing and unyielding, over some weakness or softness. 
 
 Indomitable, remorseless, unhumorous, proud, the pose 
 of the body was absolutely, one felt, the justest possible. 
 
 On either side of the chair were two white and green 
 Chinese dragons, grotesque with open mouths and large flat 
 feet; a hanging tapestry of dull gold filled in the back- 
 ground. 
 
 Out upon these dull colours the little body, with the white 
 face, the shining eyes, the clenched hand, was flung, poised, 
 sustained by its very force and will. 
 
 Nothing in the world could be so fierce as that determined 
 absence of ferocity, nothing so energetic as that negation of 
 all energy, nothing so proud as that contemptuous rejection 
 of all that had to do with pride. 
 
 It was as though she had said : " They shall see nothing 
 of me, these people. I will give them nothing" . . . and 
 then the green jade on her bosom had betrayed her. 
 
 Maliciously the dragons grinned behind her back. 
 
 in 
 
 Arkwright, as he watched, was conscious suddenly of an 
 overwhelming curiosity. He had in earlier days seen her 
 portrait, and always it had been interesting, suggestive, 
 provocative; but now, as he stood there, he was aware that 
 something quite definite, something uncomfortably discon- 
 certing had occurred ; life absurdly seemed to warn him that 
 he must prepare for some new development. 
 
 The Duchess had, he was aware, taken notice of him for 
 the first time. 
 
 Little Felix Brun watched Arkwright with interest. They 
 were, at that moment, the only persons in the room, and it
 
 16 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 was as though they had begged for a private interview and 
 had been granted it. The other portraits of the exhibition 
 had vanished into the mild May afternoon. 
 
 " She doesn't like us/' Brun said, laughing. " She'd turn 
 the dragons on to us if she could." 
 
 " It's wonderful." Arkwright moved back a little. 
 " Young Eoss has done it this time. No other portrait has 
 ever given one the least idea of her. She must be that." 
 
 Brun stood regarding her. " There'll never be anything 
 like her again. As far as your England is concerned she's 
 the very, very last, and when she goes a heap of things will 
 go with her. There'll be other Principalities and Powers, 
 but never that Power." 
 
 " She's asked us to come," said Arkwright, " or, at any 
 rate, asked me. I wonder what she wants." 
 
 " She's only asked you," said Brun, " to tell you how she 
 hates you. And doesn't she, my word ! " 
 
 There were voices behind him; Brun turned, and Ark- 
 wright heard him exclaim beneath his breath. Then in a 
 moment the little man was received with : " Why, Mr., 
 Brun! How fortunate! We've come to see my mother's 
 portrait." 
 
 Arkwright caught these words, and knew that the lady 
 standing there must be Lady Adela Beaminster, the Duchess's 
 only daughter. He had never seen Lady Adela before, but 
 it amused him now that she should resemble so exactly the 
 figure that he had imagined it showed, after all, that one 
 could take the world's verdict about these things. 
 
 The world's verdict about Lady Adela was that she was 
 dull, but important, bearing her tall dried body as a kind of 
 flag for the right people to range themselves behind her - 
 and range themselves they did. Standing now, with Felix 
 Brun in front of her demanding a display of graciousness, 
 she extended her patronage. Thin, with her sharp nose and 
 tight mouth, she was like an exclamation mark that had 
 left off exclaiming, and it was only her ability to be gracious.
 
 SURVEYED BY THE POETEAIT 17 
 
 and the sense that she conveyed of having any number of 
 rights and possessions to stand for, that gave her claim to 
 attention. 
 
 Her black hat was harsh, her hair iron-grey, her eyes cold 
 with lack of intelligence. Arkwright thought her unpleas- 
 ant. 
 
 Standing a little behind her was a tall thin girl who was 
 obviously determined to be as ungracious as a protest against 
 her companion's amiability should require. The gh'l's thin- 
 ness was accentuated by her rather tightly clinging white 
 dress, and beneath her long black gloves her hands moved a 
 little awkwardly, as though she were not quite sure what she 
 should do with them. A large black hat overshadowed her 
 face, but Arkwright could see that her eyes, large and dark, 
 were more beautiful than anything else about her. Her 
 nose was too thin, her mouth too large, her face too white 
 and pinched. 
 
 Her body as she stood there was graceful, but not yet dis- 
 ciplined, so that she made movements and then checked them, 
 giving the impression that she wished to do a number of 
 things, but was uncertain of the correctness of any of them. 
 
 She was of foreign blood Arkwright decided much too 
 black and white for England. But it was her expression, 
 that demanded his attention. As she watched Felix Brun 
 talking to Lady Adela, she seemed to be longing to express the 
 contempt that she felt for both of them, and yet to have 
 behind that desire a pathetic hesitation as to whether she had 
 a right to be contemptuous of anyone. 
 
 It was the pathos, Arkwright decided, that one ultimately 
 felt concerning her. She looked lonely, she looked frightened, 
 and she looked " in the devil of a temper." Her black eyea 
 would be beautiful, whether they were filled with tears or 
 with anger, and it seemed that they must very often be filled 
 with both. " I wouldn't like to have the handling of her," 
 thought Arkwright, and then instantly after, " I'd like to> 
 take away some of that loneliness."
 
 18 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 " She'll have a fine old time," he thought, " if she isn't 
 too sensitive." 
 
 Lady Adela had now moved forward with Bnm to look at 
 the picture, but the girl did not move with them. She did 
 not look at the portrait nor did she appear to take any interest 
 in the other pictures. She stood there, making, every now 
 and again, little nervous movements with her black gloves. 
 
 Arkwright moved about the gallery by himself a little, and 
 he was conscious that the girl's large black eyes followed 
 him. He fancied, as, for an instant he glanced back, that the 
 Duchess from her high wall leaned forward on her cane just 
 a little further, so that she might force the girl to give her 
 attention. " That girl's got plenty of spirit," thought Ark- 
 wright, " I'd like to see a battle between her and the old lady. 
 It would be tooth and nail." 
 
 Then once again the door opened there was again an 
 addition to the company. Arkwright was, at that moment, 
 facing the girl, and as he heard the sharp closing of the door 
 he saw in her eyes the welcome that the new-comer had re- 
 ceived. 
 
 She was transformed. The pallor of her face was now 
 flooded with colour, and she seemed almost beautiful as the 
 hostility left her, and her mouth curved in a smile of so 
 immense a relief that it emphasized indeed her earlier burden. 
 Her whole body expressed the intensity of her pleasure ; her 
 awkwardness had departed; she was suddenly in possession 
 of herself. Arkwright's gaze went past her to the door. The 
 man who stood there was greeting the girl with a smile that 
 had in it both surprise and intimacy, as though they were 
 the two oldest friends in the world, and yet he was astonished 
 to see her there. The man was large, roughly built, with 
 big limbs and a face that, without being good-looking, 
 beamed kindness and good-nature. His eyes and mouth were 
 sensitive and less ragged than the rest of him, his nose, the 
 plainest thing about him, was square and too large for hig 
 mouth. His hair was white, although he looked between
 
 SURVEYED BY THE PORTRAIT 19 
 
 forty and fifty years of age. His dress was correct, but lie 
 obviously did not give his clothes more consideration thai* 
 the feelings of his friends required of him. Ruddy of face, 
 with his white hair and large limbs and smiling good-humour, 
 he was pleasant to look upon, and Arkwright did not wonder 
 at the girl's welcome ; he would be, precisely, the kind of friend 
 that she would need benevolent, understanding, strong. 
 
 They greeted one another, and then they moved forward 
 and spoke to Lady Adela and Brun. 
 
 Arkwright watched them. There they all were, gathered 
 together under the sharp eyes of the Duchess, and she seemed, 
 so Arkwright fancied, to hold them with her gaze. Little 
 Brun was neater than ever, and Lady Adela drier than ever 
 by the side of the stranger. They talked; they were dis- 
 cussing the picture their eyes travelled up to it, and for an 
 instant there was silence as though they were all charging 
 it with their challenge or surrender, as the case might ba 
 The girl's eyes moved up to it with a sudden sharpened, 
 thinning of the face that brought back the gleam of hostility 
 that it had worn before. Then her eyes fell, and, with a 
 smile, they sought her friend. 
 
 Arkwright did not know any reason for his interest, but He 
 watched them breathlessly, and the sense that he had had, on 
 first entering the room, of being on the verge of some new 
 experience, deepened with him. 
 
 Brun was apparently suddenly conscious that he had left 
 his friend alone long enough, for he detached himself from 
 the group, shook hands with Lady Adela and the girl, bowed 
 stiffly to the man and joined Arkwright. 
 
 " Seen enough ? " he said. 
 
 " Yes/' said Arkwright. 
 
 They went out together. 
 
 IV 
 
 Felix Brun and Arkwright were not intimate friends. No 
 one was intimate with Brun, apd the little man came and
 
 20 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 disappeared, was there and was not there, was absent for a 
 year, and then back again as though he had been away a 
 week, was, indeed, simply a succession of explanatory foot- 
 notes to the social history of Europe. 
 
 It was for the social history of Europe that he lived, for 
 the eager penetrating gaze into this capital and that, some- 
 thing suddenly noted, some case examined and dismissed. 
 Life is discovered most accurately by those who learn to 
 watch for its accidents rather than its intentions, and it was 
 always the things that occurred by chance that gave Brun 
 his discoveries. He was a cosmopolitan of a multitude of 
 acquaintances, no friends, no occupation, an enthusiasm only 
 for cynical and pessimistic observation, invaluable as a com- 
 mentator, useless as a human being. 
 
 When, as was now the case, some chance meeting had 
 assisted his theories his neat little body shone like a celluloid 
 ball. If, having made his discovery, he might also have his 
 audience to whom he might declare it, then his very fingers 
 quivered with the excitement of it. His hands, white and 
 thin and tapering, waved now. His eyes were on fire. As 
 they walked up Bond Street one might have imagined air- 
 bladders at his armpits, Mercury's wings at his heels. The 
 quiet evening air was charged with him. 
 
 " Well," said Arkwright, smiling and looking down at his 
 companion. " Who are they all ? " 
 
 " Lady Adela Beaminster, Rachel Beaminster, Christo- 
 pher " 
 
 "Christopher?" 
 
 " Dr. Christopher, the Harley Street man. He's the 
 Duchess's doctor, has been for years. The girl was the 
 Duchess's granddaughter Lady Adela's niece." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " The girl's coming out in three days' time. They're 
 giving a ball in Portland Place for her. Nobody knows much 
 about her. She's been educated abroad, and always kept 
 very close when she's here. I shouldn't think the old Duchess
 
 21 
 
 loves her much. She loved the girl's father, but he married 
 a Russian actress, bolted to Russia with her, and the old lady 
 never forgave him. He and the actress were both killed in a 
 Petersburg fire, and the child was sent home only tiny 
 then " 
 
 " Ah ! that explains the foreign air she had. She didn't 
 look as though she loved her aunt very much either." 
 
 " No don't suppose she does. But that's not it that's 
 not it." 
 
 They had arrived now at the top of Bond Street, and they 
 paused for a moment to allow the Oxford Street traffic to 
 sweep past them. 
 
 It was an hour of stir and clatter hansoms, carts, lum- 
 bering omnibuses, bicycles, all were hurled along as though 
 by some impatient hand, and the evening light crept higher 
 and higher along the walls of the street, leaving grey-purple 
 shadows beneath it. 
 
 They crossed over, and were instantly in a dim, gold- 
 en, voiceless square. It was as though a door had been 
 closed. 
 
 Brun still held Arkwright's arm. " Now we can talk 
 no noise. Francis Breton has come back." 
 
 To Arkwright this name, unfortunately, conveyed nothing. 
 
 " You don't know ? " Brun was disappointed. 
 
 " Never heard of him." 
 
 " Fancy that. World of wonders ; what have you been 
 doing with your time? He is the Duchess's grandson, son 
 of the beautiful, the wonderful Iris Beaminster, who eloped 
 with Kit Breton thirty years ago. I believe the old Duchess 
 pursued her relentlessly until the end. They were married 
 only a few years and then Iris Breton committed suicide. 
 Kit Breton beat her and was always drunk ; an absolute rascal. 
 There was one boy, and he wandered about Europe with hia 
 father until he was twenty or so. Then Kit Breton died, and 
 the boy came home. Revenge on his grandmother was his 
 one idea. He was taken up by her enemies, of whom she al-
 
 22 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 ways had a goodly store, and they might have made some- 
 thing out of him, if he hadn't developed his father's habits 
 and finally been mixed tip in some gambling scandal, and 
 forced to leave the country. 
 
 " You can imagine what all this was to the Beaminsters 
 the great immaculate Beaminsters you can picture the 
 Duchess. . . . .He went and saw her once . . . but that's 
 another story. Well, abroad he went, and abroad he stayed 
 just now, coming out of the Gallery, I saw him " 
 
 " You are sure ? " 
 
 "Positive. There could be no mistake. He's just the 
 same, a trifle tireder, a trifle lower down but the same, oh 
 yes." 
 
 It was when Brun was most excited that he was unmistak- 
 ably the foreigner. Now little exclamations that escaped 
 him revealed him. As a rule in England he was more Eng- 
 lish than the English. 
 
 They had left the square and were passing up Harley 
 Street. The houses wore their accustomed air of profitable 
 secrecy. The doors, the windows, the brass knockers, the 
 white and chastened steps were so discreet that Sunday morn- 
 ing was the only time in the week when they were really 
 comfortable and at home. In every muffled hall there was 
 lying in wait a muffled man-servant, beyond every muffled 
 man-servant there was a muffled waiting-room with muffled 
 illustrated papers: only the tinkling, at long intervals, of 
 some sharp little bell from some inner secrecy would pierce 
 that horrible discretion. Upon both men that shining suc- 
 cession of little brass plates produced its solemnity. 
 
 Arkwright was nevertheless interested by Bran's dis- 
 coveries. He was accompanied, as they talked, by that pic- 
 ture of the thin, dark girl moving restlessly her long, gloved 
 hands. He could see now that look that she had flung at 
 the picture. . . . Oh ! she was interesting ! 
 
 " But tell me, Brun," he said, " you go on so fast As I 
 understand you there are these two, Breton and the girl, both
 
 SURVEYED BY THE PORTRAIT 23 
 
 of them the result of tragedies. . . . Do they know one an- 
 other, do you suppose ? " 
 
 " No. The girl was only a small child when Breton was 
 in England, and you can be sure that she was carefully kept 
 out of his way. But now that he's back . . . now that he's 
 back!" 
 
 " It's the girl that interests me ! " said Arkwright. 
 
 " Oh ! the girl ! " Brun was almost contemptuous. 
 " There you go English sentiment missing all the time 
 the great thing, the splendid thing." 
 
 " Explain," Arkwright said, laughing ; " I know you won't 
 be happy until you have." 
 
 " Why it's the Duchess, the Duchess, the Duchess all the 
 time. She's the centre of the picture; she is the picture. 
 She's the subject." 
 
 Arkwright said nothing. Brun tossed his hands in the 
 air. 
 
 " Oh you English ! No wonder you're centuries behind 
 everything you miss the very things under your nose. 
 There's the Duchess, sitting there a great figure as she has 
 been these sixty years, but a figure hidden, veiled. There 
 she has been for the last thirty years, shut up in that great 
 house, wrapped about and concealed. Nobody knows what 
 the matter was I don't know. I should think Christo- 
 pher's the only man who can tell. At any rate, thirty years 
 ago she retired altogether from the world, and sees only the 
 fewest of people. But all the ceremony goes on, dressing up, 
 receiving, and the influence she has! She was powerful 
 enough before she disappeared, but since! Why, there's no 
 pie she hasn't her finger in : politics, society, revolution, life, 
 death ; nothing goes on without her knowledge, her approval, 
 her disapproval " 
 
 " Her family, poor dears ! " 
 
 " Oh I they love it at any rate, the ones who are left do. 
 The rebels are the younger generation. Society in England, 
 my dear Arkwright, is dissolved into three divisions the
 
 24 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Autocrats, the Aristocrats, and the Democrats. I take my 
 hat off to the Aristocrats the Chichesters, the Medleys, the 
 Darrants, the Weddons. All those quiet, decorous people, 
 poor as mice many of them, standing aside altogether from 
 any movements or war-cries of the day, living in their quiet 
 little houses, or their empty big ones, clever some of them, 
 charitable all of them, but never asserting their position or 
 estimating it. They never look about them and see where 
 they are. They've no need to. They're just there. 
 
 " The Democrats are quite a new development not much 
 of them at present the Euddards, the Denisons, the Oaks 
 j but we shall hear a lot of them in the future, I'm sure. 
 They'll sacrifice anything for cleverness; they must be 
 amused; life must be entertaining. They embrace every- 
 body: actors, Americans, writers; they're quite clever, mind 
 you, and it's all perfectly genuine. They're not snobs 
 they say, l Here are our lands and our titles. You're com- 
 mon and vulgar, but you've got brains you're amusing and 
 we're well born let's make an exchange. Life must be fun 
 for us, so we'll have anyone with money or talent.' 
 
 " Then, last of all, the Autocrats the Beaminsters, the 
 Gutterils, the Ministers. I'm using Autocrat in its broadest 
 sense, but that's just what they are. You must have your 
 quarterings, and you must look down on those who haven't. 
 But, more than that, everything must be preserved, and 
 continual ceremonies, dignities, chastities, restraints, pomps, 
 and circumstances. Above all, no one must be admitted 
 within the company who is not of the noblest, the stupidest, 
 the narrowest. 
 
 " The Beaminsters are the bodyguard of this little army, 
 and the Duchess is their general. There, behind her shut 
 doors, she keeps it all going ; an American like Mrs. Bronson, 
 a democrat like George Lent, she spoils their games here, 
 there, everywhere. So far all has been well. But at last 
 there are enemies within her gates that girl, Breton. Now, 
 at lasti for the first time in her life, she must look out"
 
 25 
 
 He paused. They had reached Portland Place. To right 
 and left of them the broad road was golden in the sun dark 
 trees guarded one end of it, hronzed roofs the other. 
 
 Two carriages stood like sentinels at the upper end. 
 
 Brun raised his hand as though he would invoke the spirit 
 of it " There, Arkwright, there's your subject. The 
 Duchess, tiny, indomitable, brooding over this place. This 
 square of London round the Circus, your prostituted street, 
 this splendour, Harley Street, Morris Square with its re- 
 spectability, Ferris Street with its boarding-houses, over them 
 all the Duchess is ruling. There's not one of them, I dare 
 fancy, that is not conscious of her existence, not one of them 
 that will not see life differently when she is gone. Mean- 
 while, she'll fight for her Autocrats to the last breath, and 
 she's got a battle in front of her that will take her all her 
 time. And when she goes the Autocrats will go with her, 
 the Beaminsters as Beaminsters will be done for; life here 
 round the Circus will never be the same again. There's a 
 new city rising, Arkwright, and the new citizens may forget, 
 the Aristocrats may compromise with the Democrats, but 
 they'll turn out the Autocrats. A lot of good things will go 
 with them good old things but a lot of fine new things 
 will come in." 
 
 As they passed out of Portland Place the wooden-legged 
 crossing-sweeper touched his hat to them. 
 
 " Will Tie come in ? " said Arkwright, laughing. 
 
 " Perhaps," said Brun gravely. 
 
 Arkwright shook his head. " You can talk, Brun, you can 
 say a lot But it's artificial, the whole of it Your subject, 
 as you call it, is in the air. We're realists nowadays, you 
 know." 
 
 Brun's flat stared at them with its hideous red brick and 
 ugly shaplessness. No romance for Dent Street ; the glitter- 
 ing expanse of Portland Place was gone. 
 
 " You can't be a realist only, if you're to do the Duchess 
 properly," said Brun. " There's more than that wanted."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 RACHEL 
 
 ** My dear thing, it all comes back, as everything always does, simply 
 to personal pluck. It's only a question, no matter when or where, of 
 having enough." HENEY JAMES. 
 
 NO. 104: Portland Place was the house where the Duchess 
 of Wrexe had lived now for sixty years. On the left 
 as you go towards the park it had an air that no other house 
 in the Place had ever been able to catch. There were cer- 
 tain buildings, Nos. 31, 26, 42, for instance, that were obvi- 
 ously doing their little best to present a successful imitation, 
 but they were left a long, a very long way behind. The in- 
 teresting thing would be to know whether ~No. 104 had had 
 that wonderful " note " sixty years ago, when the Duchess 
 came to it. Probably not ; it was, beyond question, her pres- 
 ence that had thus given it its distinction. Its grim fagade, 
 without her, would not so strangely have hinted at beauties 
 and wonders and glories within, nor would the windows have 
 gleamed so finely, nor the great hall-door have symbolized 
 such rich dark depths. 
 
 Here the temple of the Beaminsters, here, therefore, tK! 
 shrine of all that is best and finest in English aristocracy. 
 It was indeed the largest house in Portland Place, and most 
 of the houses there were large, but, across that blank austere 
 front more was written than mere size. It was Age at its 
 most scornful, but observant Age, an Age that could compare 
 one period with another, an Age that had not forgotten the 
 things that belonged to its Youth. 
 
 There was very little, up and down Portland Place, at 
 morning, at midday, at night, that the house did not per- 
 ceive. Those high, broad, shining windows were not as other 
 
 26
 
 KACHEL 27 
 
 windows there was assertion in their very bland stupid- 
 ity. 
 
 Within the house was dark and cold, with high square 
 rooms, wide stone staircase, and a curious capacity for clutch- 
 ing any boisterous or seedy humanity on the very threshold 
 and strangling it. 
 
 From the hall the great stone staircase was the feature. 
 It struck a chill, at once, into the heart of the visitor, so vast 
 was it, so cold and white, so uncompromising, so scornful of 
 other less solid staircases. Very ancient, too went back a 
 long, long way and would last, just like that, for ever ! 
 
 What people it must have known, what scenes, what catas- 
 trophes encountered ! About it, on either side, the hall van- 
 ished into blackness; here a gleaming portrait, there some 
 antlers, here again an eighteenth-century gentleman with a 
 full wig and the Beaminster nose and comfortable contempt 
 in his eyes . . . and, around and about it all, silence; no 
 sound from any part of the house penetrated here. 
 
 Up the stone staircase, passages, doors, more family por- 
 traits, more staircase, more passages, more doors, and some- 
 where, in some hidden solemnity, the ticking of a clock, so 
 lonely in all that silence that every now and again it would 
 catch its breath with a little whir, as though it wondered 
 whether it really could go on in the teeth of so contemptuous 
 an indifference. 
 
 Rachel Beaminster's sitting-room overlooked Portland 
 Place, and caught the sun on lucky days for quite a time. 
 It was small, square of shape, like a box with a high window, 
 a tiny fireplace, an arm-chair, and a squat table with a bright 
 blue cloth. 
 
 Always during the two years that had been devoted to 
 " finishing " in Munich she had had that little room, cosy, 
 compact, before her. Now did it seem a little shabby, the 
 carpet and tablecloth and curtains a little faded; it yet had 
 its cosiness, there in the heart of the great waste and desert 
 that the house presented to her.
 
 28 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 The little silver clock on the mantelpiece had struck five : 
 she had come back with Aunt Adela from the picture gallery, 
 and, hearing voices in the Long Drawing-room (the voices 
 said, " My dear Adela, we just came. . . ." " Adela dear, 
 how well . . ."), she slipped up the stairs and secured her 
 own refuge, and rang for tea to be brought to her there. 
 
 She wanted to think: she wanted to lie in the arm-chair 
 there with the window a little open and the evening air coming 
 from the park across Portland Place curiously scented like 
 the sea, 
 
 As she lay back in her chair her body seemed fragile, and, 
 almost, in its abandonment, exhausted. Under the black 
 eyes her cheeks and neck were very white, and her black hair 
 gave it all the intensest setting. 
 
 She was tired, horribly tired, and she wondered, vaguely, 
 as she lay there how she was ever to manage this life that, 
 in three days' time, she must take up and carry, a life that 
 offered, perhaps, a little freedom, a little release, but so many, 
 so many terrors. 
 
 As her gaze took in the little room its grey paper, a 
 photograph of Uncle John, a bookcase with poets, some mis- 
 cellaneous and untidy-looking novels, and a number of little 
 red Carlyles, a china cockatoo with an impertinent stare, a 
 copy of Furze's " Bide," and a water-colour of red Munich 
 roofs signed " Mary," a tiny writing-table with one old yellow 
 photograph of a sad dark woman in a silver frame these 
 things were, it seemed, the only friendly things she knew. 
 Outside this room there was her grandmother, the house,' 
 London, the world more and more horrible as the circles 
 grew wider and wider. 
 
 At the mere thought of the things that she must, in three 
 days' time, face, her heart began to beat so that she could 
 scarcely breathe, and, with that beating, came the iron detei> 
 mination that no one should ever know. 
 
 She could not remember a time when these two emotions 
 had not come together. She saw, as though it had happened
 
 RACHEL 29 
 
 only an hour ago, a tiny child in a black frock stumbling 
 across endless deserts of carpet towards someone who looked 
 older and more curious than anything one could have con- 
 ceived possible. Someone sitting in a high carved chair, 
 someone leaning on a stick, with two terrifying great dragons 
 behind her. 
 
 The child was seized with such a panic that her breath 
 came in little pumping gasps, her legs quivered and trembled, 
 her mouth was open, her eyes like saucers. And then, sud- 
 denly, after what had seemed a century of time, there came 
 the thin trembling voice : " Why, the child's an idiot ! " 
 
 Since that awful day Rachel had determined that "no one 
 should ever know." There had come to her, at that moment, 
 the knowledge that round every corner there might lurk 
 dragons and a witch. Sometimes they were there, sometimes 
 they were not, but always there was the terror before the 
 corner was turned. 
 
 Life for Rachel during those early years was one long 
 determination to meet bravely that half-hour, from six to 
 half-past. Every evening at five minutes before six down the 
 long passages she would be led, then would come the short 
 pause before the dark door, a pause when the beating of the 
 child's heart seemed the only sound in the vast house ; then 
 the knock, someone's voice " Come in," then the slow open- 
 ing of the door, the revelation of the strange dim room with 
 the old mirrors, the purple carpet, the china dragons, and 
 grandmother in the high carved chair. There was always, in 
 the hottest weather, a fire burning, always Dorchester, a large 
 ugly woman, behind the chair, always the cockatoo see-saw- 
 ing on a golden perch and crying out every now and again 
 with shrill, hostile cries. And then, in the centre of this, 
 grandmother, with her terrible hands, her terrible nose, her 
 terrible eyes, and, most terrible of all, her voice. 
 
 Rachel would sit upright on her chair, and very often 
 nothing would be said throughout the half-hour. Sometimes 
 Dorchester would ask questions, such as : " And what has
 
 30 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Miss Rachel been doing to-day ? " " Did Miss Rachel enjoy 
 her walk in the park this afternoon ? " " Has Miss Rachel 
 enjoyed her lessons to-day ? " Sometimes, and these were 
 the terrible occasions, her grandmother would speak : " Well, 
 have you been a good little girl ? " or " Tell me what you have 
 been doing, child." 
 
 At the sound of that voice the room would flood with terror : 
 the child would still, by an effort of will, her body. She 
 could feel now, from all that distance of years, the discipline 
 that it had needed to steady her little black legs that dangled 
 from her chair. She learnt, in time, to control herself so that 
 she could give long answers in a grave, reserved tone. 
 
 The old lady never moved as she spoke, only bent forward 
 and stared at her, as though she would see whether it were 
 the truth that she were speaking. 
 
 As the days passed and Rachel grew older it was around 
 this half -hour that the house ranged itself. The things in it 
 the rooms, the passages, the stairs, the high, cold school- 
 room with its shining maps and large frigid table, the tapes- 
 try room, long and dark and mysterious with strange beasts 
 and horsemen waving in the dusk, the white drawing-room 
 so delicate and fragile that the furniture seemed to be all 
 holding its breath as though a little motion in the air would 
 dissipate it, the vast dining-room with the great hanging 
 candelabra, and the family portraits and the stone fireplace 
 all these things existed only that that terrible half-hour might 
 fling its shadow about the day. 
 
 The child was much alone; she had governesses, a music 
 master, a drawing master, but from these persons, however 
 friendly they might be, she held aloof. She told them noth- 
 ing of her thoughts. She had behind her her very early 
 years that were now to her like a dream; she did not know 
 that it had ever really existed, that picture of snow and some 
 dark kind figure that was always beside her protecting her, 
 and in the air always a noise of bells. As she grew older that 
 picture was not dimmed in the vision of it, but only she
 
 EACHEL 31 
 
 doubted its authenticity. Nevertheless, the memory provided 
 a standard and before that standard these governesses were 
 compelled to yield. 
 
 There were, of course, her uncles and her aunt. Aunt 
 Adela was more immediately concerned in the duty of her 
 niece's progress than any other, but as a duty she always, 
 from the first, represented it. From that first morning, when 
 she had given her cold dry cheek to the little girl to kiss until 
 now, three days before Rachel's freedom, she had made no 
 suggestion nor provocation of affection. " It is a business, 
 my dear niece/' she seemed to say, " that, for the sake of 
 our family, we must go through. Let us be honest and deny 
 all foolish sentiment." 
 
 To this Rachel was only too ready to agree. She did not 
 like her Aunt Adela. Aunt Adela resembled a dry, wintry 
 tree, a tree whose branches cracked and snapped, a tree that 
 gave no hope of any spring. Rachel always saw Aunt Adela 
 as an ugly necessity ; she was not a thing of terror, but merely 
 something unpleasant, something frigid and of a lukewarm 
 hostility. 
 
 Then there were the uncles Uncle Vincent, Uncle John, 
 and Uncle Richard. 
 
 Uncle Vincent, the Duke, was over sixty now and very 
 like his mother, withered and sharp and shrivelled, but he 
 was without her terror, being merely dapper and insignifi- 
 cant, and his sleek hair (there was only a little of it very care- 
 fully spread out) and his white spats were the most promi- 
 nent things about him. He was fond, Rachel gathered, of his 
 racing and his club and his meals, and he was unmarried. 
 
 Uncle Richard had been twice Prime Minister and was a 
 widower. He lived in a beautiful house in Grosvenor Street, 
 and collected wine and fans and first editions. He was al- 
 ways very kind to Rachel, and she liked his tall thin figure, 
 bent a little, with his high white forehead, gold-rimmed pince- 
 nez on the Beaminster nose, and beautiful long white hands. 
 She went to nave tea with him sometimes, and this was an
 
 32 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 hour of freedom and delight, because he talked to her about 
 the Elizabethans and Homer, and, when she was older, 
 Nietzsche and Kant. She liked the warm rooms, with their 
 thick curtains and soft carpets and rows and rows of gleaming 
 glittering books, and he always had tea in such beautiful china 
 and the silver teapot shone like a mirror. But she never felt 
 that she was of the same value to him as a first edition would 
 be, and he talked to her of the Elizabethans for their sake, 
 and not for hers. 
 
 Lastly, there was Uncle John, and her heart was divided 
 between Uncle John and Dr. Christopher. Uncle John was a 
 dear. He was round and fat, with snow-white hair that had 
 waves in it, and his face resembled that of a very, very good- 
 natured pig. His nose was not in the least a Beaminster nose, 
 being round and snub, and his eyes beamed kindliness. 
 Rachel, although she had always loved him, had long learnt 
 to place no reliance upon him. His aim in life was to make 
 it as comfortable, as free from all vulgar squabble and dispute, 
 as pleasant for everyone everywhere as it could possibly be. 
 He was a Beaminster in so far as he thought the Beaminsters 
 were a splendid and ancient family, and that there was no 
 other family to which a man might count himself so fortunate 
 to belong. But he was kind and pleasant about the rest of the 
 world. He would like everyone to have a good time, and it 
 was vaguely a puzzle to him that it should be so arranged 
 that life should have any difficulties it would be so much 
 easier if everything were pleasant. When, however, diffi- 
 culties did arise they must at all costs be dismissed. There 
 had been no time in his life when he had not been in love 
 with some woman or other, but the hazards and difficulties 
 of marriage had always frightened him too much. 
 
 He was not entirely selfish, for he thought a great deal 
 about the wishes and comforts of other people, but unpleas- 
 antness frightened him, like a rabbit, into his hole. He 
 lived the life of the " Compleat Bachelor " at 93 Portland 
 Place, having a multitude of friends of both sexes, spending
 
 RACHEL 33 
 
 hours in his clubs with some of them, week-ends in country- 
 houses with others of them, and months in delightful places 
 abroad with one or two of them. 
 
 He was very popular, always smiling and good-natured, 
 and cared more for Rachel than for anyone else in the world 
 . . . but even for Rachel he would not risk discomfort. 
 
 There they all were, then. 
 
 Gradual]y they had emerged, for her, out of the mists and 
 shadows, arranging themselves about her as possible pro- 
 tections against that horrible half-hour of hers. She soon 
 found that, in that, at any rate, they would, none of them, 
 be of use to her except Uncle John. Uncle Vincent did not 
 count at all. Uncle Richard only counted as china or pictures 
 counted. 
 
 Uncle John could not count as a very strong defence, it was 
 true, but he was fond of her; he showed it in a thousand 
 ways, and although he might never actually stand up for her, 
 yet he would always be there to comfort her. 
 
 ~Not that she wanted comfort From a very early age 
 indeed she resolutely flung from her all props and sympathies 
 and sentiments. She hated the house, she hated the loneli- 
 ness, most of all she hated grandmother . . . but she would 
 go through with it, and no one should know that she suffered. 
 
 Then, when she was seventeen, came Munich. 
 
 On the day that she first heard that she was to go to Ger- 
 many to be " finished " the flashing thought that came to her 
 jvas that, for a time at any rate, the " half-hour " would be 
 suspended. Standing there thinking of the days passing 
 without the shadow of that interview about them was like 
 emerging from some black and screaming, banging, shouting 
 tunnel into the clear serenity of a shining landscape. Two 
 years might count for her escape, and perhaps, on her return, 
 she would be old enough for her grandmother to have lost her 
 terrors perhaps . . .
 
 34 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Meanwhile, that Germany, with its music and forests and 
 toys and fairies, danced before her. Her two years in it gave 
 her all that she had expected ; it gave her Wagner and Mozart 
 and Beethoven, it gave her Goethe and Heine, Jean Paul and 
 Heyse, Hauptmann and Morike, it gave her a perception of 
 life that admitted physical and spiritual emotions on precisely 
 the same level, so that a sausage and the Unfinished Sym- 
 phony gave you the same ecstatic crawl down your spine 
 and did not, for an instant, object to sharing that honour. 
 
 Munich also gave her the experience and revelations of 
 May Eversley. 
 
 There were some twenty or thirty girls who were, with 
 Rachel, under the finishing care of Frau Bebel, but Rachel 
 held herself apart from them all. She could not herself have 
 explained why she did so. It was partly because she felt 
 that she had nothing, whether experience or discovery, to 
 give to them, partly because they seemed already so happy 
 and comfortable amongst themselves that they had surely 
 no need of her, and partly because she feared that from some 
 person or some place, suddenly, round the corner there would 
 spring the terror again. She could even fancy that her grand- 
 mother, watching her, had placed horrors behind curtains, 
 closed doors, grimed and shuttered windows. " If you think, 
 my dear," she might perhaps be saying, " that you've escaped 
 by this year or two in Germany, you're mightily mistaken. 
 Back to me you're coming." 
 
 But May Eversley was different from the other girls. She 
 was different because she saw things without a muddle, knew 
 what she wanted, knew what she disliked, knew what was 
 delightful, knew what was intolerable. 
 
 To Rachel this clear-cut decision was more enviable than 
 any other quality that one could have. At this stage of her 
 experience it was the asset, so it seemed to her, that could 
 give life its intensest value. " Sit down and see, without any 
 exaggeration or false colouring, what you've got. Take away, 
 ruthlessly, anything that you imagine that you've got but
 
 RACHEL 35 
 
 haven't. See what you want. Take away ruthlessly every- 
 thing that you imagine that you would like to have but are 
 not confident of securing. See what's happened to you in 
 the past. Take away ruthlessly any sentimental repentances 
 or sloppy regrets, but learn quite resolutely from your ugly 
 mistakes." 
 
 Rachel's world had hitherto been limited very largely to 
 the schoolroom in Portland Place, the park and Beaminster 
 House, the country place-in-chief (three others, one in Leices- 
 tershire, one in Northumberland, one in Norfolk), but even 
 within this limited country the terrific importance of those 
 rules was driven in upon her. 
 
 She felt that her grandmother was clear-headed, but, no, 
 none of the others not Aunt Adela, nor the uncles, nor any 
 of the governesses. She was allowed to meet one or two 
 little boys and girls of her own age. She walked with them in 
 the park, played with them at Beaminster House, had tea with 
 them occasionally, but they were, none of them, clear-headed. 
 
 She was not priggish about this discovery of hers. She did 
 not despise other people because their definite rules did not 
 seem to them of importance. She did not talk about these 
 things. 
 
 To see facts very steadily without blinking was impelled 
 upon her by the necessity for courage. It was the only 
 weapon wherewith to fight her grandmother. " Now," she 
 might say to herself, " this half-hour of yours. Is it so bad ? 
 What definitely do you fear about it ? Is it the knock at the 
 door? Is it the crossing the room? Is it answering ques- 
 tions ? " 
 
 So challenged her terror did fall, a little, away from her, 
 ashamed at its inadequate cause. So she went to face every 
 peril " Is the danger really so bad ? What exactly is 
 it? . . ." 
 
 May Eversley was thin and spare, small with sharp fea- 
 /ures, pince-nez, hair brushed sternly back, and every inch of 
 her body trained to the purpose that it was meant to fulfil.
 
 36 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 She rang her sentences on the air like coin on a plate. Mean 
 while, as she explained to Rachel, she had been fighting since 
 she was five. Her mother, Lady Eversley, was the widow of 
 Tom Eversley, now happily deceased, once the most dissolute 
 scamp in Europe. He had died leaving nothing but debts 
 behind him. Since then his widow and his daughter had 
 lived in three little rooms above a public house off Shep- 
 herd's Market, and the widow had battled to keep up the 
 gayest of appearances. May had been, at a very early age, 
 introduced to the struggle. " My silver mug and rattle were 
 pawned to get a dress for mother to go to a drawing-room in. 
 I shouldn't be here now if it weren't for an uncle, and it's the 
 last thing he'll do for us. So back I go in two years' time 
 to do my damnedest." 
 
 Of course she was clear-headed she had to be. 
 
 " There are only two sorts of people," she said to Rachel. 
 " Like soup thick and clear the Clear ones get on and 
 the Thick don't" 
 
 May obviously liked Rachel, but was amused by her. No- 
 body, it seemed to May, showed so nakedly her emotions as 
 Rachel, and yet, also, nobody could produce, more suddenly, 
 the closest of reserves. May, to whom the world had been, 
 since she was six, a measured plain of contest, marvelled at the 
 poignancy of Rachel's contact with it. " If she's going to be 
 hurt as easily as this by everything, how on earth is she going! 
 to get through ? " 
 
 Then, as the Munich days passed, May found, to her own 
 delight, Rachel's keen sense of humour. Munich afforded 
 enough food for it, and finally one discovered that Rachel 
 smiled more readily than she trembled, but she hid her smile 
 because, as yet, she was not sure of it. 
 
 " All she wants," May Eversley concluded, " is to be told 
 things." 
 
 Nobody in the world could be better adapted to give out 
 these revelations. London, to May Eversley, was an open 
 book ; moreover, the most stormy of battle-fields on which the
 
 EACHEL 37 
 
 combatants fought, were wounded, were slain, were gloriously 
 victorious. 
 
 She told Rachel a great deal a great deal about people, a 
 great deal about sets and parties, a great deal about likes and 
 dislikes. She had on her side one burning curiosity to know 
 about Rachel's Duchess. " Is she as terrible, so tremendous 
 as people say ? Has she such a brain even now ? Old Lady 
 Grandon, who was a great friend when they were both girls, 
 eays that she wasn't clever then a bit rather stupid and shy 
 but you never know. Jealousy on old Grandon's part, I 
 expect. They say she's wonderful still." 
 
 Questions of taste never worried May Eversley, and it did 
 not worry her now that Rachel might dislike so penetrating 
 an inquisition. But at least May got nothing for her trouble. 
 Rachel told her nothing. 
 
 May's final word was, " You care too much about it all 
 care whether it's going to hurt, whether it's going to be 
 frightening or not. My advice to you is, just dash in, snatch 
 what you can, and dash out again. It doesn't matter a hair 
 pin what anyone says. Everyone says everything in London, 
 and nobody minds. They've all got the shortest memories." 
 
 Rachel, sitting now in her little room and thinking of 
 Munich, wondered how completely her own discovery of Lon- 
 don would coincide with May's. May's idea of it was cer- 
 tainly not Aunt Adela' s. Aunt Adela, Rachel thought, was 
 far too dried and brittle to risk any sharp contact with any- 
 thing. None of her uncles, she further reflected, liked sharp 
 contacts, and yet, how continually grandmother provided 
 them! 
 
 How comfortable all of them Aunt Adela and the uncles 
 would be without their mother, and yet how proud they 
 were of having her ! For herself, Rachel faced her approach- 
 ing deliverance with a tightening of all the muscles of her 
 body. " I won't care. It shall be as May says and there 
 are sure to be some comfortable people about, some people 
 who want to make it pleasant for one."
 
 38 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 Then there was a tap at the door and Uncle John came in. 
 Uncle John often came in about half-past five. It was a 
 convenient time for him to come, but also, perhaps, he recog- 
 nized that that approaching half-hour that Rachel was to 
 have with his mother demanded, beforehand, some kind of 
 easy, amiable prologue. 
 
 To-day, however, there was more in his comfortable smil- 
 ing countenance than merely paying a visit warranted. He 
 stood for a moment at the door looking over at her, rather 
 fat but not very, his white hair, his pearl pin, his white spats 
 all gleaming, a rosiness and a cleanliness always about him 
 so that he seemed, at any moment of the day, to have come 
 straight from his tub, having jumped, in his eagerness to see 
 you, into his beautiful clothes, and hurried, all in a glow, to 
 get to you. 
 
 " They're all chattering downstairs chattering like any- 
 thing. There's Roddy Seddon, old Lady Carloes and Crew- 
 ner and some young ass Crewner's brought with him and your 
 Uncle Dick looking bored and your Aunt Adela looking noth- 
 ing at all and so out of it I came." 
 
 He came over and sat on the broad, fat arm of her chair 
 and looked out, in his contented, amiable way, over the light, 
 salmon-coloured and pale, that now had persuaded Portland 
 Place into silence. His eyes seemed to say : " ISTow this is 
 how I like things all pink and quiet and comfortable." 
 
 Rachel leant a little against his shoulder, and put her hand 
 on his knee 
 
 " You've had tea down there ? " 
 
 " Yes, thank you all I wanted. What have you been 
 doing all the afternoon ? " 
 
 He put his own hand down upon hers. 
 
 " Oh ! Aunt Adela and I went to look at grandmother's 
 portrait." 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " It's as clever as it can be. To anyone who doesn't know
 
 EACHEL 3d 
 
 her, it's the most wonderful likeness. It's what grandmother 
 would like herself." 
 
 He caught the note in her voice that threatened the pink 
 security of Portland Place. He held her hand a little tighter. 
 
 " In what way ? " 
 
 " Oh, it's got the dragons and the tapestry and the purple 
 carpet. All the coloured things that grandmother likes so 
 much and that help her so. Why, imagine her for a second in 
 an ordinary room, in an old arm-chair with a worn-out carpet 
 and everlastings on the mantelpiece ; what would she do ? 
 The young man, whoever he is, has helped her all he can." 
 
 Rachel felt his grasp of her hand slacken a little. 
 
 " Yes, I know it's wrong of me to talk like that. But it's 
 all so sham. It's like someone in one of those absurd fantastic 
 novels that people write nowadays when half the characters 
 are out of Dickens, only put into a real background. I'm 
 frightened of grandmother you know I always have been 
 but sometimes I wonder whether " 
 
 She paused. 
 
 " Whether there's anything really to be frightened of. 
 And yet the relief when I can get off this half-hour every 
 evening the relief even now when I'm grown up oh! 
 it's absurd ! " 
 
 " Well, my dear, you're coming out, you're going to break 
 away from all of us you'll have your own life now to make 
 what you like of." 
 
 " Yes, that's all very well. But I've been brought up all 
 wrong. Most girls begin to come out when they're about ten 
 and go on, more and more, until, when the time actually 
 comes, well, there's simply nothing in it. I've never known 
 anyone intimately except May, and now at the thought of 
 crowds and crowds of people, at one moment I'd like to fly 
 into a convent somewhere, and at the next I want to go and 
 be rude to the lot of them to get in quickly you know, leat 
 they should be rude to me first"
 
 40 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Now that she had begun, it came out in a flood. " Oh ! I 
 shall make such a mess of it all. What on earth am I to talk 
 about to these people ? What do they want with me or I with 
 them ? What have I ever to say to anybody except you and 
 Dr. Chris, and even with you I'm as cross as possible most of 
 the time. Grandmother always thought me a complete fool, 
 and so I suppose I am. If people aren't kind I can't say a 
 word, and if they are I say far too much and blush afterwards 
 for all the nonsense I've poured out. It doesn't matter with 
 you and Dr. Chris because you know me, but the others ! And 
 always behind me there'd be grandmother ! She knows I'm 
 going to be a failure, and she wants me to be but just to 
 prove to her, just to prove ! " 
 
 She jumped up, and standing in front of the window, met, 
 furiously, a hostile world. Her hands were clenched, her 
 face white, her eyes desperate. 
 
 " Just to prove I'll be a success I'll marry the most 
 magnificent husband, I'll be the most magnificent person 
 I'll bring it off " 
 
 Suddenly her agitation was gone she was laughing, look- 
 ing down on her uncle half humorously, half tenderly. 
 
 " Just because I love you and Dr. Chris, I'll do my best 
 not to shame you. I'll be the most decorous and amiable of 
 Beaminsters. No one shall have a word to say " 
 
 She bent down, put her arms round his neck, and kissed 
 him. Then she sat down on the edge of the arm-chair with 
 her hands clasped over his knee. Uncle John would not have 
 loved her so dearly had he not been, on so many occasions, 
 frightened of her. She was often hostile in the most curious 
 way so militant that he could only console himself by think- 
 ing that her mother had been Russian, and from Russia one 
 might expect anything. And then, in a moment, the hostility 
 would break into a tenderness, an affection that touched him to 
 the heart and made the tears come into his eyes. But for one 
 who loved comfort above everything Rachel was an agitating 
 person.
 
 RACHEL 41 
 
 "Now as lie felt the pressure of her hands on his knees, he 
 knew that he would do anything, anything for her. 
 
 " That's all right, Rachel dear," was all that he could say. 
 " You hold on to me and Christopher. We'll see you 
 through." 
 
 The little silver clock struck six. She got up from the chair 
 and smiled down at him. " If I hadn't got you and Dr. Chris 
 well I just don't know what would happen to me." 
 
 Meanwhile Uncle John had remembered what it was that 
 he had come to say. His expression was now one of puzzled 
 distress as though he wondered how people could be so pro- 
 voking and inconsiderate. 
 
 He looked up at her. " By the way," he said, " it's doubt- 
 ful whether mother will see you this evening. You'd better 
 go and ask, but I expect " 
 
 " What's happened ? " 
 
 " I may as well tell you. You're bound to hear sooner or 
 later. Your cousin Francis is back in London. He's written 
 a most insulting letter to your grandmother. It's upset her 
 very much." 
 
 "Cousin Frank?" 
 
 " Yes. He's living apparently quite near here in some 
 cheap rooms." 
 
 May Eversley had, long before, supplied Rachel with all 
 details as to that family scandal. 
 
 Rachel now only said : " Well, I'll go and see whether she 
 would like me to come." 
 
 For a moment she hesitated, then turned back and flung 
 her arms again about her uncle's neck. 
 
 " Whatever happens, Uncle John, whatever happens, we'll 
 stick together." 
 
 " Whatever happens," he repeated, " we'll stick together." 
 
 His eyes, as they followed her, were full of tenderness 
 but behind the tenderness there lurked a shadow of alarm.
 
 CHAPTEK III 
 
 LADY ADKLA 
 
 At first it seemed a little speck, 
 
 And then it seemed a mist; 
 It moved and moved, and took at last 
 
 A certain shape, I wist." 
 
 The Ancient Mariner. 
 
 LADY ADELA had returned from that visit to her 
 mother's portrait with a confused mind. She was not 
 used to confused minds and resented them; whenever so 
 great an infliction came upon her she solved the confusion by 
 dismissing it, by leaving her mind a blank until it should 
 take upon itself to be clear again. To obtain that blank an 
 interval of reflection was necessary, and now, to-day, that 
 had been impossible. On returning, she had been instantly 
 confronted by a number of people who required to be given 
 tea and conversation, and no time had been allowed her in 
 which she might resolve that her mind should be cleared. 
 
 Her confusion was that the portrait of her mother was 
 precisely like, a most brilliant affair, and yet wasn't like in 
 the least. Further than that, in some completely muddled 
 way, it was in the back of her mind that her mother, suddenly, 
 this afternoon, presented herself to her as not entirely living 
 up to the portrait, as being less sharp, less terrible, less mag- 
 nificent. Horror lest she should in any way be doubting her 
 mother's terror and magnificence both proved every day of 
 the week lay, like a dark cloud, at the back of her confu- 
 sion. 
 
 She could not, however, extract anything definite from the 
 little cluster of discomforts ; old Lady Carloes and Lord Crew- 
 
 ner, a young thing that Lord Crewner had brought with him, 
 
 42
 
 LADY ADELA 43 
 
 and her brother Richard were all waiting for tea, and floods 
 of conversation instantly covered Lady Adela's poor mind 
 and drowned it. 
 
 The Long Drawing-room, where they now were, was long 
 and narrow, with two large open fireplaces, a great deal of old 
 furniture rather faded and very handsome, silver that gleamed 
 against the dark wall-paper, one big portrait of the Duchess, 
 painted by Sargent twenty years ago, and high windows shut 
 off now by heavy dark green curtains. 
 
 The Duchess, it was understood, did not approve of electric 
 light and the house therefore disdained it. Parts of the room 
 were lighted by candles placed in heavy old silver candle- 
 sticks. Round the fireplace at the farther end the light 
 shone and glittered; there the tea-tables stood, and round 
 about them the company was gathered. 
 
 The rest of the room, hung in dark shadow, stretched into 
 black depths, lit only now and again by the gleam of silver or 
 glass as the light of the more distant fire flashed and fell. 
 
 The voices, the clatter of the tea-things, these sounds 
 seemed to be echoed by the darker depths of the farther 
 stretches of the room. 
 
 Lady Carloes was eighty, extremely vigorous, and believed 
 in bright colours. She was dressed now in purple, and wore 
 a hat with a large white feather. Her figure was bunched 
 into a kind of bundle, so that her waist was too near her 
 bosom and her bosom too near her chin and her chin too near 
 her forehead. 
 
 It was as though some spiteful person had pressed all of 
 her too closely together. But this very shapelessness added 
 to her undoubted amiability; her face was fat and smiling, 
 her hair white and untidy, and she maintained her dignity in 
 spite of her figure. Nobody knew anything with certainty 
 as to her income, but she was charitable, and ran a little house 
 in Charles Street with a great deal of ceremony and hospi- 
 tality. Her husband had long been dead and her two daugh- 
 ters had long been married, so that she was happy and inde-
 
 4* THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 pendent Many people considered her tiresome because her 
 curiosity was insatiable and her discretion open to question, 
 yet she was a staunch Beaminster adherent, an old friend oi 
 the Duchess, and saw both this world and the next in the 
 proper Beaminster light. 
 
 Lady Adela depended on her a good deal, at certain times ; 
 she had foreseen that the old lady would come to-day ; she had 
 heard of course of Frank Breton's arrival in town, she would 
 demand every detail ; Lady Adela knew that the account that 
 she gave to Lady Carloes would be the account that the town 
 would receive. 
 
 By the fire Lord Richard, Lord Crewner and the non- 
 descript young man were talking together. Lady Adela 
 caught fragments. " But of course Dilchester is incautious 
 when was he anything else? What these fellows 
 need " 
 
 That was her brother. 
 
 And then Lord Crewner, who believed that the windows of 
 White's and Brooks's were the only courts of Ultimate Judg- 
 ment. " That's all very well, Beaminster, but I assure you, 
 they were saying last night at the club " 
 
 As far as all that was concerned Lady Adela flung it aside. 
 She must attend to Lady Carloes, she must give to her the 
 version of Frank Breton's arrival that her mother would wish 
 her to give. But what was that version? And was her 
 mother really to be depended upon ? 
 
 At so terrible a flash of disloyalty Lady Adela coloured. 
 Why were things so difficult this afternoon ? And why had 
 she ever gone to that picture-gallery ? 
 
 Lady Carloes had, however, not yet arrived at Frank 
 Breton. She never paid a visit anywhere without tabulating 
 carefully in her mind the things that she must know before 
 leaving the house. Her theory was that she was really very 
 old indeed, and couldn't possibly live much longer, and that 
 no moment therefore must be wasted. The more news that
 
 LADY ADELA 45 
 
 slie could give and receive before her ultimate departure, the 
 more value would her life have in retrospect. 
 
 She never went definitely into the exact worth that all the 
 gossip that she collected might have for anybody or any- 
 thing ; as with any other collection it was pursuit rather than 
 acquisition that fired the blood. At the back of her old mind 
 was a perfect lumber-room of muddle and confusion dusty 
 gossip, cobwebs of scandal, windows thick with grime and 
 tightly closed. There was no time left now to do anything 
 to that. Meanwhile every day something was purchased or 
 exchanged; muddle there might be, but, thank God, nobody 
 knew it. 
 
 " You must be very busy about the ball, my dear." 
 
 " Yes it means a great deal of work. It's so long since 
 we've had anything here, but Morris is invaluable. You 
 don't find servants like that nowadays." 
 
 " No, my dear, you don't. But, of course, it will go off 
 splendidly. We're all so anxious that Rachel shall have a 
 good time. It's the least we can do for your mother." 
 
 At the mention of Eachel Lady Adela's thoughts straight- 
 ened for a second ; that was where the confusion lay. It had 
 been Rachel's attitude to the portrait that had caused Lady 
 Adela's own momentary disloyalty. Of course Rachel hated 
 her grandmother. Lady Adela made a little sound with her 
 fingers, a sound like the clicking of needles. 
 
 " As far as Rachel is concerned nobody can tell possibly 
 how she's going to take it all. I don't pretend to understand 
 her." 
 
 Lady Carloes found this interesting she bent forward a 
 little. " We're all greatly excited about her. You've kept 
 her away from all of us and one hears such different accounts 
 of her. And of course her success is most important as 
 things are just now." 
 
 Lady Adela answered, " I can tell you nothing. She isn't 
 in the least like any of us, and I don't suppose for a moment
 
 46 
 
 that she'll listen to anybody. She made a friend of May 
 Eversley in Munich, and I don't think that was the best thing 
 for her. But you know I've talked about this to you be- 
 fore." 
 
 Not only had Lady Adela talked ; all of them had done so. 
 In the Beaminster camp this appearance that Rachel was 
 about to make was of the last importance. There were 
 enemies, redoubtable enemies, in the field. Rachel Bea- 
 minster's bow to the world was for the very reason that all the 
 world was watching, a responsibility for them all. 
 
 But there were many rumours. Rachel was not to be relied 
 upon she hated her grandmother, she was strange and 
 foreign and morose. Lady Carloes was not happy about it, 
 and Lady Adela's attitude now was anything but reassur- 
 ing. 
 
 John Beaminster came in. Lady Carloes liked him be- 
 cause he was good-tempered and injudicious. He told her a 
 number of things that nobody else ever told her, and he had so 
 simple a mind that extracting news from it was as easy as 
 taking plums from a pudding. He did not come over to them 
 at once, but stood laughing with Lord Crewner and his 
 brother. He would come, however, in a moment, so Lady 
 Carloes made a last hurried plunge at her friend. 
 
 " What's this I hear, my dear, about Frank Breton ? " 
 
 " Yes, it's perfectly true. He's come back, and has taken 
 rooms quite near here. He wrote to mother " 
 
 Lady Carloes took this in with a gulp of delight. " My 
 dear Adela ! What did he say ? " 
 
 " Oh ! a very rude letter. He told mother that he knew 
 that she would like him to be near at hand and that they ought 
 to let bygones be bygones, and that he was sure that she 
 would be glad to hear that he was a reformed character. Of 
 course he hates all of us." 
 
 "What will you all do?" 
 
 " Oh ! Nothing, of course. We gave him up long ago. 
 By a tiresome coincidence he's taken rooms in the same houswa
 
 LADY ADELA 4T 
 
 as my secretary, Miss Rand. I would send her away if she 
 weren't simply invaluable. But it gives him a kind of a link 
 with us." 
 
 " Monty Carfax saw him yesterday. He's lost his left 
 arm, Monty says, and looks more of an adventurer than ever. 
 So tiresome for your mother, my dear." 
 
 Then, as Lord John began to break away from the group 
 at the fireplace and move towards them 
 
 " Roddy Seddon told me he might look in this afternoon. 
 . . . Your mother's so devoted to him. He seems to under- 
 stand her so well." 
 
 The two ladies faced one another. Their eyes crossed. 
 Lady Carloes murmured, " Such a splendid fellow ! " then, 
 as Lord John's cheerful laugh broke upon them 
 
 " Isn't Rachel coming down ? " she asked. 
 
 n 
 
 Lady Adela left her brother and Lady Carloes together and 
 crossed over to the group at the fireplace. Of all her brothers, 
 she liked Richard best. He seemed to her to be precisely 
 all that a Beaminster should be : she liked his appearance 
 his fine domed forehead, his grey hair, his long rather melan- 
 choly face, his austere and orderly figure. 
 
 He had to perfection that reserve, that kind benignancy 
 that a Beaminster ought to have; whenever Lady Adela 
 questioned the foundations upon which the stability of her 
 life depended he reassured her. Without saying anything at 
 all, he gravely comforted her. That is what a Beaminster 
 ought to do. 
 
 She knew, as she saw him standing there by the fire, that 
 lie would never doubt his mother. To him she would always 
 be splendid and magnificent, and with what determination 
 would he expel from him any base attacks on that loyalty! 
 Lady Adela thought that power to expel resolutely and firmly 
 everything that attacked the settled assurance of one's mind 
 the finest thing in the world.
 
 48 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Lord Crewner "was a thin, handsome man of any age at all 
 over forty and under sixty. He was polished and brushed 
 and scrubbed to such an extent that he looked like an adver- 
 tisement of some fine old English firm that produced, at 
 great cost and with wonderful completeness, fine old English 
 gentlemen. He believed in not thinking about things very 
 much, because thinking let in Radicals and diseases and the 
 poor, and made one uncomfortable. He loved the London 
 that he knew, a London bounded by Sloane Square, the Marble 
 Arch, Trafalgar Square and Westminster. 
 
 He was a bachelor, but might have married Lady Adela 
 had the Duchess not refused to hear of Lady Adela leaving 
 her; he adored the Duchess, although he was scarcely ever 
 allowed to see her because he bored her. He always lowered 
 his voice a little when talking to women, and heightened it a 
 little when talking to men ; to his valet he spoke in the voice 
 that Nature had given him. 
 
 Lady Adela was reassured as she came towards them. Al- 
 though she did not especially desire to marry Lord Crewner, 
 the thought that he might, had affairs been differently ar- 
 ranged, have asked her, placed him, in her eyes, apart from 
 other men. At any rate these two were comfortable to her, 
 and, for a moment, she was able to dismiss Rachel and Frank 
 Breton from her mind. 
 
 They talked easily beside the fireplace. The voices of 
 Lady Carloes and Lord John, the pleasant murmur of the 
 fire, the ticking clocks, all helped that lazy swaying of time 
 and space about one, that happy reassurance that as the world 
 had been so would it continue ever to be, and that the old 
 emotions and the old experiences and the old opinions would 
 always hold their own against all invasion and decay. 
 
 Lord Richard talked of Chippendale and some wonderful 
 Lowestoft, Lord Crewner talked of Madeira and Lady 
 Masters' new house ; Lady Adela listened and was soothed. 
 
 Upon them all broke a voice: 
 
 " Sir Roderick Seddon, my lady."
 
 LADY ADELA 49 
 
 There stood in the doorway the freshest, the most beaming 
 of young men. He was tall and broad ; his face was of a red- 
 brick colour, and his dark London clothes, although they 
 were well cut and handsome enough, were obviously only 
 worn to please a necessary convention. His hair was light 
 brown and cut close to his head, and his body had the healthy 
 sturdiness of someone whose every muscle was in proper 
 training. 
 
 He came forward to the group at the fireplace with the 
 walk of a man accustomed to space and air and freedom; 
 his smiling face was so genial and good-humoured that the 
 whole room seemed to break away a little from its decorous 
 and shining propriety. They were all pleased to see him. 
 Lady Carloes and Lord John came over and joined the group, 
 and they stood all about him talking and laughing. 
 
 Roddy Seddon was the only young man whom the Duchess 
 permitted, and people said that that was because he was the 
 only young man who had never shown any fear of her. The 
 knowledge of this fact gave him in Lady Adela's eyes a 
 curious interest. She beheld him always rather as she would 
 have beheld anyone who had learnt an abstruse language 
 that no one else had ever mastered or some traveller who was 
 reputed to have said or done the most extraordinary things 
 in some savage country. How could he? What talisman 
 had he discovered that protected him ? And then, swiftly on 
 that, came the curious thought that she herself was glad that 
 she had her terror, that she was proud, in some strange, 
 inverted way, that any Beaminster could have the effect upon 
 anyone that her mother had upon her. 
 
 But Roddy Seddon had another especial interest for her, 
 for it was Roddy, all the Beaminsters had decided, who was 
 to marry Rachel. Roddy was, in every way, the right per- 
 son ; not very wealthy, perhaps, but he had one nice place in 
 Sussex, and Rachel would not, herself, be a pauper. 
 
 Roddy would never let the Beaminsters down; he hated 
 all these new invaders as strongly as any Beaminster could.
 
 50 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 He hated this mixing of the classes, this perpetual urging of 
 the working man to think. 
 
 " Lots of our fellows," Lady Adela had heard him say, 
 " get along without thinkin' why not the other fellers ? " 
 
 She felt now that a conversation with Roddy would com- 
 plete the soothing process that Lord Crewner and her brother 
 had begun. He would finally reassure her. 
 
 She had no difficulty in securing him. Lady Carloes sat 
 by the fire and talked to Lord Crewner, and the nondescript, 
 and the two brothers departed. 
 
 When Roddy had drunk his tea, she led him away to the 
 farther part of the long dim room, and there by that more 
 distant fireplace the two of them sat, shadowy against the 
 leaping light, their faces and their hands white and sharp 
 and definite. 
 
 " Who else is dinin' on Thursday ? " 
 
 She gave him names. " The Prince and Princess are com- 
 ing, you know, but they aren't alarming. They've been 
 often to see mother when they've been over here before. 
 They're getting old enough now to be comfortable. He 
 dances like anything still." 
 
 " I always like dinin' in the place you're dancin' at. You 
 don't get that shivery feeling comin' up the stairs and puttin' 
 your gloves on. You're one up on the others if you've been 
 dinin'." 
 
 Lady Adela looked at him, and sighed a little impatiently. 
 He was incredibly young and might, after all, let them down. 
 He was thirty now, but he looked not a day more than nine- 
 teen, and he always talked and behaved as though he were 
 still in his last year at Eton. She opposed him, in her 
 mind's eye, to that figure of Frank Breton that had been be- 
 fore her all day. How could a mere boy stand up against a 
 scoundrel like that? 
 
 Moreover, she had heard stories about Roddy. Women 
 had terrible power over him, she had been told, and then, 
 with a glance at him, sighed again at the thought that her
 
 LADY ADELA 51 
 
 own time had gone by for having power over anybody, even 
 Lord Crewner. 
 
 Well, after all, her mother knew the boy better than any- 
 one did and her mother loved him better than everyone else 
 put together her mother loved him. 
 
 " How's Kachel takin' it ? " 
 
 " How does Kachel take anything ? She never says any- 
 thing, and one never knows. She seems to have no curiosity, 
 or eagerness." 
 
 " I was talkin' to May Eversley about her the other night. 
 May says she'll be splendid." 
 
 " I don't like May Eversley " Lady Adela nervously 
 moved her hands on her lap. " I wish Rachel hadn't made 
 such friends with her in Munich." 
 
 " Oh, May's all right." Roddy's blue eyes were smiling. 
 " Took her down to Hurlingham yesterday and we had no 
 end of a time." 
 
 It was a pity, Lady Adela reflected, that Roddy was so 
 absolutely on his own. 
 
 His mother had died at his birth, and his father had been 
 dead for five years now, and here it seemed to Lady Adela a 
 curious coincidence that both Rachel and Roddy were or- 
 phans and both so young. 
 
 She leant forward towards him 
 
 " You can do a lot for Rachel, Roddy. You can help her 
 to understand her grandmother, you can reconcile her to all 
 of us." 
 
 "Oh! I say," Roddy laughed. "Perhaps she won't 
 have anythin* to say to me, you know. My seein' your 
 mother so often is quite enough " 
 
 " "No. She likes cheerful people Dr. Christopher and 
 John. You're in the same line of country, Roddy. She 
 doesn't like me, and I haven't got the things in me to draw 
 affection out of her. I'm not that kind of woman." 
 
 As a rule Lady Adela betrayed no emotion of any kind, 
 but now, this afternoon, both to Lady Oarloes and Roddy
 
 52 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 she had made some vague, indefinite appeal. Perhaps the 
 news of Breton's arrival had alarmed her, perhaps her visit 
 to the gallery with Rachel had really disturbed her. She 
 seemed to beg for assistance. 
 
 Roddy analysed neither his own emotions nor those of his 
 friends, but, this afternoon, Lady Adela did appear to him a 
 little more human than before. He was suddenly sorry for 
 her. 
 
 " Rachel'll be all right," he assured her. " Wait a bit. 
 By the way, I met that little feller Brun yesterday said 
 he was comin' on Thursday. He's wild about your mother's 
 picture " 
 
 " Yes we saw him at the gallery this afternoon. Rachel 
 and I were there." 
 
 " Rachel ! What did she think of it ? " 
 
 " Seemed to take no interest in it at all. We were therb 
 only a few minutes " 
 
 Silence fell between them, a silence filled with meaning. 
 Lady Adela had intended to speak about Breton now, 
 suddenly, she could say nothing. The mention of the pic- 
 ture-gallery had brought back all her earlier discomfort 
 she saw the picture, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the white 
 pinched cheeks. Then she saw the great bedroom upstairs, 
 the high white bed, the little shrivelled figure. 
 
 Had Rachel pointed this contrast ? Had Breton ? Was it 
 something that Roddy had discovered already, something 
 that had made his courage so easy for him? What, what 
 was going to be done with her if she were no longer afraid ? 
 Why, on that terror, on that trembling service, were built 
 the foundations of all her life. How could she face that 
 picture that the world had of a splendid, historic, dominating 
 figure if she herself saw only a sick, miserable old woman 
 tumbling to pieces, passing to decay ? 
 
 The minutes had passed, and she had said nothing. 
 Roddy must be wondering at her silence. To her relief Lady 
 Carloes came towards her to say good-bye.
 
 LADY ADELA 53 
 
 Roddy's eyes were puzzled. For what had she carried 
 him off if she had nothing to say to him ? 
 
 in 
 
 When they were all gone she went up to her mother. Be- 
 fore the door she paused. The house was very still, and 
 her heart was furiously beating. 
 
 She opened the door, and at the sight of the room was 
 instantly reassured. 
 
 Dorchester met her. " Her Grace went to bed early to- 
 night. But she will see you, my lady." 
 
 Lady Adela stepped softly to the farther door. All was 
 well. About her, around her, within her, was that same 
 splendid terror, that same knowledge that she was approach- 
 ing some great presence that had been with her all her 
 life 
 
 As she opened the bedroom door and saw the high white 
 bed she knew that her mother was more magnificent, more 
 wonderful than any painted picture could possibly make her.
 
 ON that same afternoon in another part of the house 
 Miss Hand, Lady Adela's secretary, finished her work 
 for the day, and prepared to go home. 
 
 It was about a quarter-past six, and the May evening was 
 sending through the windows its pale glow suggesting soft 
 blue skies and fading lights. Miss Rand's room told you at 
 once everything about Miss Rand. For efficiency and neat- 
 ness, for discipline and restraint, it could not be beaten. 
 Miss Rand herself was all these things, efficient and neat, 
 disciplined and restrained. 
 
 Her room had against one white and shining wall a black 
 and shining typewriter. Against another wall was a table, 
 and on this table were so many contrivances for keeping 
 letters and papers decent and docketed that it made every 
 other table the observer could remember seem untidy and 
 littered. There was nothing in the room superfluous or un- 
 necessary, and even some carnations in a green bowl near the 
 window looked as though they were numbered and ticketed. 
 
 Miss Rand was a little woman who appeared thirty-five 
 when she was busy, and twenty-five when someone was 
 pleasant to her. When she was at work the broad dark belt 
 that she wore at her waist was her most characteristic feature. 
 Then, in keeping with this, was her dark hair, beautiful hair 
 perhaps if it had been allowed some freedom, but now ordered 
 and sternly disciplined; she wore no ornaments, and about 
 her there was nothing out of place nor extravagant. 
 
 Her face was full of light and colour and her eyes were 
 
 beautiful, but no one considered them: it was impossible to 
 
 54
 
 THE POOL 55 
 
 look beyond that stern shining belt one felt that Miss Rand 
 herself would resent appreciation. 
 
 From ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the 
 evening the huge Portland Place house absorbed her energies. 
 She saw it sometimes in her dreams, as a great unwieldy 
 machine kept in place by her hand, but leaping, did she leave 
 it for an instant, trembling, soaring, carrying destruction 
 with it into the heart of the city. 
 
 Meanwhile her hand was upon it. From Morris the 
 butler, from Dorchester the guardian of the Duchess's apart- 
 ments, down to the smallest, most insignificant kitchen-maid, 
 Miss Rand knew them all. There was, of course, Mrs. New- 
 ton, the most splendid and elevating of housekeepers, but 
 when matters below stairs went beyond her control Miss 
 Rand could always arrange them. There was nothing, ab- 
 solutely nothing, that, in the way of managing her fellow- 
 creatures, Miss Rand could not do. 
 
 But it was because Miss Rand never occurred to any single 
 creature in the Portland Place house as a sentient breathing 
 human being that she succeeded as she did. She had no 
 prejudices, no angers, no rebellions, no rejoicings. She was 
 the little engine at the heart of the house that sent everything 
 into motion. " One can't imagine her eating her meals, Mrs. 
 Newton," Mr. Morris once said. " And as to her sleeping 
 like you or me " 
 
 To see her now as she put the final touches to her room 
 before leaving it, arranging a paper here and a paper there, 
 going to the bookshelf and pushing back a book that jutted 
 in front of the others, setting a chair against the wall, placing 
 the blotting-pad exactly in the middle of the table, finally 
 taking her hat and coat and putting them on with the same 
 careful and almost automatic distinction this sufficiently 
 revealed her. She seemed, as she looked for the last time 
 about the room with her bright eyes, like some sharp little 
 bird, perched on a window-sill, looking beyond closed win- 
 dows for new adventure.
 
 56 
 
 It was one of the striking points in her that her eyes al- 
 ways seemed to be searching for some disorder in some place 
 outside her immediate vision. 
 
 She closed the door behind her. As she stepped into the 
 passage someone was coming down the staircase to her right, 
 and looking up she saw that it was Rachel Beaminster. 
 Rachel was on her way from her grandmother's room, and 
 before she saw Miss Rand standing there, waiting to let her 
 pass, her face was grave and, in that half-light, strangely 
 white. Then, as she saw Miss Rand, she smiled 
 
 " Good evening, Miss Rand." 
 
 " Good evening, Miss Beaminster." 
 
 " I'm afraid that this ball is giving you a lot of trouble." 
 
 " I think that everything is arranged now, Miss Bea- 
 minster. I hope that it will be a great success." 
 
 Rachel sighed and then laughed. 
 
 " Don't I wish the whole stupid thing was over. And I 
 expect you do too ! " 
 
 Miss Rand smiled a very little. " It's good for the serv- 
 ants," she said. " They're always happy when they're really 
 busy." 
 
 For a moment they stood there smiling. It occurred to 
 Rachel that Miss Rand must be rather nice. She had never 
 thought of her before as anything but Aunt Adela's secre- 
 tary. 
 
 " Good night, Miss Rand." 
 
 " Good night, Miss Beaminster." 
 
 ii 
 
 In Portland Place Miss Rand drew a little breath and 
 paused. So many times during the last five years had she 
 walked from Portland Place to Saxton Square, and from 
 Saxton Square to Portland Place, that the streets and houses 
 encountered by her had become individual, alive, always 
 offering to her some fresh adventure or romance. Portland 
 Place itself was no bad beginning, with its high white colour,
 
 THE POOL 57i 
 
 its air, and its dark mysterious park hovering at the edge 
 of it. 
 
 If one had not known, Miss Rand thought, one might have 
 supposed that just heyond it lay the sea, so fresh and full of 
 breezes was the air. The light was yellow now and the 
 houses black and sharp against the faint sky. In another 
 half -hour the lamps would be lit. 
 
 It was pleasant and fitting that the end of Portland Place 
 should be guarded by the Round Church and the Queen's 
 Hall. " Leave that calm and chaste society behind you/' 
 those places said, " but before you plunge into the wicked 
 careless world (that is Oxford Circus) choose from us. Here 
 you have religion or music, both if you will, but here at 
 any rate we are, the very best of our kind." 
 
 The Queen's Hall looked shabby in the evening light, but 
 Miss Rand liked that; it heightened her sense of the splen- 
 dour within Beethoven and Wagner and Brahms needed 
 no illumination it was your musical comedy demanded 
 that. 
 
 Miss Rand liked good music. 
 
 Then there was the Polytechnic with wonderful offers in 
 the windows enticing you to see Rome for eleven guineas, and 
 Paris for three, and there was a hat shop with three glorious 
 hats wickedly dangling on poles, and there was a pastry- 
 cook's, a tobacconist's, and a theatre agency : all this variety 
 paving the way between music and religion and the whirling, 
 tossing, heaving melodrama of Oxford Circus. 
 
 Miss Rand loved Oxford Circus. It was like the sea in 
 that it was never from one moment to another the same. 
 Miss Rand knew the way that it had of piling the melodrama 
 up and up, faster and faster, wilder and wilder, bursting 
 into a frantic climax and then sinking back, for hours per- 
 haps, into comparative silence. She knew all its moods, 
 from its broom and milkman mood in the early morning, to 
 its soiled and slinking mood somewhere between midnight 
 and one o'clock.
 
 58 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Just now it was getting ready for the evening. Up Regent 
 Street the cabs and buses were straining, the flower women 
 with their baskets were bunched in splashes of colour against 
 the distant outline of the Round Church. Out of every door 
 people were pouring, and in the middle of the Circus three 
 of the four lines of traffic were turned suddenly into some- 
 thing sleepy and indifferent by the hand of a policeman. For 
 an instant the restless movement seemed to be crystallized 
 the hansoms, the bicycles, the omnibuses, the carts were all 
 held, then at a sign the flow and interflow had begun once 
 more; life was hurled in and hurled out again, stirred and 
 tossed and turned, as though some giant cook were up in the 
 heavens busy over a giant pudding. 
 
 And the light faded and the lamps came out, and Miss 
 Rand, walking through two streets that were as dark and 
 secret as though they were spying on the Circus and were 
 going to give all its secrets away very shortly, passed into 
 Saxton Square. 
 
 To-night Miss Rand had more to think about than Oxford 
 Circus. She was tired after all the work that there had been 
 during the last few days, and she always noticed that it was 
 when she was tired that she was ready to imagine things. 
 She had been imagining things all day and had found it 
 really difficult to keep steadily to her proper work, but out 
 and beyond her imagination there was, before her, this 
 definite, tremendous fact namely, that she would find, this 
 evening, on entering her little drawing-room, that Mr. 
 Francis Breton was being entertained at tea by her sister and 
 mother. 
 
 It was a quarter to seven now, so perhaps he had gone, but 
 at any rate there would be a great deal that her mother and 
 sister would wish to tell her about him. A week ago Mr. 
 Francis Breton had come to live on the second floor in 24 
 Saxton Square, had put there his own furniture, had brought 
 with him his own man-servant (a most sinister-looking man). 
 These matters might have remained (although, of course,
 
 THE POOL 5& 
 
 Miss Lizzie Hand's connection with the Beaminster family 
 made his arrival of the most dramatic interest) had not Miss 
 Daisy Rand (Miss Lizzie Rand's prettier and younger sister) 
 happened, one evening, to run into Mr. Breton in the dark 
 hall ; she screamed aloud because she thought him a burglar, 
 became very shaky about the knees, and needed Mr. Breton's 
 assistance as far as the Rand drawing-room. Here, of course, 
 there followed conversation; finally Mr. Breton was asked 
 to tea and accepted the invitation. 
 
 On this very afternoon must this tea-party have taken 
 place. Lizzie Rand knew her mother and sister very well, 
 and she had, long ago, learnt that their motto was, " Let 
 everything go for the sake of adventure." That was well 
 enough, but when your income was very small indeed, and 
 you wished to do no work at all and yet to have your home 
 pleasant and your life adventurous, certainly someone must 
 suffer. Everything had always fallen upon Lizzie. 
 
 Mrs. Rand's husband had been a colonel and they had lived 
 at Eastbourne; on his death it was discovered that he had 
 debts and obligations to a lady in the chorus of a light opera 
 then popular in London. The debts and the lady Mrs. Rand 
 had covered with romance, because she considered that they 
 were due to the Colonel's insatiable appetite for Adventure - 
 but, romance or no, there was now very little to live upon. 
 
 They moved to London. Daisy was obviously so pretty 
 that it would be absurd to expect her to work, and " she would 
 be married in a minute," so Lizzie had, during the last five 
 years, kept the family. It would be impossible to give any 
 clear idea of the effect on Mrs. Rand that Lizzie's connection 
 with the Beaminster family had. Mrs. Rand loved anything 
 that was great and solemn and ceremonious; she loved 
 Royalties, bands and soldiers gave her a choke in her throat, 
 the " Society News " in the Daily Mail was like a fine pic- 
 ture or a splendid play. She was no snob; it was simply 
 that she saw life as a background to slow stately figures 
 gorgeously attired.
 
 60 
 
 In all England there was no one like the Duchess of 
 Wrexe ; in all England there was no family like the Beamin- 
 ster family. 
 
 Even Royalty had not quite their glow and glitter ; Eoyalty 
 you might see any day, driving, bowing, smiling. The Queen 
 had a smile for everyone and was at home in the merest 
 cottage; but the Duchess, the Duchess no one, not even 
 Lizzie, on whose shoulders the whole fortunes of the Bea- 
 minsters rested, ever saw. 
 
 There was nothing about the Beaminsters that Mrs. Rand 
 did not know, and so of course she knew all about the un- 
 happy past history of Francis Breton. That any Beaminster 
 should have behaved rather as her own dead colonel had once 
 behaved gave one a link at once. 
 
 Mrs. Rand's mind was, at the best of times, a confused 
 one, and, in the dead of night, she could imagine a scene in 
 which the wonderful Duchess would send for her, give her 
 tea, press her hands and say, " Ah ! Dear Mrs. Rand, our 
 men-folk your husband and my grandson what trouble 
 they give us, but we love them nevertheless." 
 
 So romantic was Mrs. Rand's mind that she saw nothing 
 extraordinary in the coincidence of Mr. Breton's arrival at 
 their very doors. Of course he would arrive there! Where 
 else could he arrive? And of course he would fall in love 
 with Daisy, would reform for her sake; there would be a 
 splendid marriage; the Duchess would thank Mrs. Rand for 
 having saved her grandson. 
 
 Yes, Mrs. Rand had an incurably romantic mind. 
 
 Lizzie knew all about her mother's mind, and Daisy's 
 mind. She dealt with them very much as she dealt with 
 Lady Adela's mind or Lord John's mind. They were all 
 muddled people together, and the clear-headed people had 
 the advantage over them. 
 
 So with regard to her mother and sister Lizzie had 
 developed a protective feeling ; she wished to save them from
 
 THE POOL 61 
 
 the inroads of the clear-headed people who might so rob and 
 devour them. 
 
 She saw also that her connection with the Beaminster 
 family was a very bad thing for her mother and sister be- 
 cause it encouraged them to be romantic and muddled and 
 idle. But, at present, at any rate, there was nothing to be 
 done. 
 
 As she turned into the grey silence of little Saxton Square 
 she did hope that her mother and sister would not behave 
 too outrageously about Mr. Breton. She was interested, she 
 would like to see him; his whole possible relation to the 
 Duchess, to Lady Adela, to Miss Beaminster set her own 
 imagination working. She did hope that her mother and 
 sister would not behave so disgracefully that they would 
 frighten Mr. Breton away so that he would never come near 
 them again. 
 
 And then, as she reached the door of No. 24, she thought 
 for a moment of Eachel Beaminster. 
 
 " I like her," she thought, " I'd like to know her. She's 
 never spoken to me like that before." 
 
 in 
 
 !N"o. 24 had three floors : the ground floor was occupied by 
 the Rands, the first floor by Breton and the second floor by 
 an old decrepit invalid called Caesar and his son, who was a 
 bank clerk. 
 
 Down in the basement lived Mr. and Mrs. Tweed, owners 
 of the whole house; he had been a butler and she a house- 
 keeper, and exceedingly respectable they were. Every floor 
 had its own kitchen and every lodger found his own servants, 
 but the hall was common for all the three floors, and if young 
 Mr. Ca?sar came in at two in the morning and banged the 
 front door everybody knew about it. 
 
 It must have been a fine old house in its day, !NTo. 24, and 
 there were still fine carvings, good fireplaces and ceilings,
 
 62 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 high broad windows and thick solid walls. Mrs. Rand liked 
 to think that her drawing-room had once seen fine eighteenth- 
 century ladies reflected in its mirrors, heard the tapping of 
 high-heeled shoes on its polished floors. The thought of 
 those glorious days gave her own rather faded furniture a 
 colour and a touch of poetry. Sometimes, Lizzie thought 
 with a sigh, if her mother had inhabited a plain nineteenth- 
 century house living within a small income would have been 
 easier for her. 
 
 Lizzie, entering the drawing-room, knew at once that Mr. 
 Breton was still there. She saw that he was tall and spare, 
 that he had no left arm, that he had a rather small pointed 
 brown beard and eyes that struck her as fierce and protest- 
 ing. She did not know whether it were the beard or the eyes 
 or the absence of the arm, but at her first vision of him she 
 said to herself : " He's too dramatic ; it's not quite real," 
 and her second thought was : " He's just what mother will 
 like him to be ! " 
 
 He was standing against the window, and he wore a black 
 suit, a little faded. The blinds had not been drawn, and the 
 square beyond the window was elephant grey, with the lamps 
 at each corner a dim yellow; there was a thin rather ragged 
 garden in the middle of the square, and in the garden was a 
 statue of a nymph, old and deserted, and some trees now 
 faintly green. Over it all was a sky so pale that it was more 
 nearly white than blue. 
 
 Although the curtains had not been drawn a lamp in the 
 middle of the room was lit and the fire burnt merrily. The 
 furniture had once been good and was now respectable. 
 There were several photographs, a copy of " The Fighting 
 Temeraire," and a water-colour sketch of " Lodore Falls." 
 There was a book-case with the works of Tennyson, Long- 
 fellow, and Miss Braddon, and on one of the tables two 
 French novels, one by Gyp and one by Zola. 
 
 Mrs. Rand would have been handsome had her grey hair 
 been less untidy and her clothes more uniform in design and
 
 THE POOL 63 
 
 colour. Her blouse was cut too low and she wore too many 
 rings; her eyes always wore a lying-in-wait expression, as 
 though she might be called on to be excited at any moment 
 and didn't wish to miss the opportunity. 
 
 Daisy Rand was pretty and pink with light fluffy hair. 
 All her clothes looked as though their chief purpose were to 
 reveal other clothes. The impression that she left on a casual 
 observer was that she must be cold in such thin things. 
 
 Lizzie, looking at Frank Breton, could not tell what im- 
 pression her sister and mother had made upon him. " At 
 any rate," she thought, " he's stayed a long time. That looks 
 as though he had been entertained." She was introduced to 
 him and liked the cool, firm grasp of his hand. She saw that 
 her mother and Daisy were quiet and subdued that was a 
 good thing. She caught, before she sat down, his instinctive 
 look of surprise. She knew that he had not expected her to 
 be like that. 
 
 " We've been telling Mr. Breton, Lizzie," said Mrs, Rand, 
 " all about the theatres. He's been away so long that he's 
 quite out of touch with things." 
 
 Lizzie always knew when her mother was finding conversa- 
 tion difficult by the amount of enthusiasm and surprise that 
 she put into her sentences. 
 
 " So terrible it must be to have missed so many splendid 
 things." 
 
 " I assure you, Mrs. Rand," said Breton, " that I've been 
 seeing other splendid things in other countries. "Now I'm 
 ready for this one again." 
 
 Mrs. Rand was silent and at a loss. Lizzie knew the 
 explanation of this. Her mother had been trying to venture 
 on to the subject of Breton's family and had found un- 
 expected difficulty. Perhaps there had been something in 
 Breton's attitude that had warned her. 
 
 They talked for a little while, but disjointedly. Then 
 suddenly there was a knock at the door, and young Mr. Caesar, 
 a bony youth with a high collar and an unsuccessful mous-
 
 64 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 tache, came in. He had not very much to say, but the result 
 of his coming was that Lizzie found herself standing at the 
 window with Breton ; they looked at the square now sinking 
 into dusk. 
 
 He spoke ; his voice was lowered : " I understand that you 
 are secretary to my aunt, Miss Rand ? " 
 
 " Yes," she said. 
 
 " They haven't heard of my return with any great delight, 
 I'm afraid?" 
 
 She noticed that he was trying to steady his voice, but 
 that it shook a little in spite of his efforts. 
 
 " I don't know," she said, looking up and smiling. " I'm 
 far too busy to think of things that are not my concern." 
 
 " They are giving a ball to-morrow night for my cousin ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Do you see much of her ? " 
 
 " No nothing at all. She's been abroad, you know." 
 
 " Yes, so I heard. But I saw her driving yesterday. She 
 looks different from the rest of them." 
 
 All this time, as he spoke to her, she was conscious of his 
 eyes ; if only she could have been sure that the protest in them 
 was genuine she would have been moved by them. 
 
 She did not help him in any way, and perhaps her silence 
 made him feel that he had done wrong to speak to her about 
 his affairs. They looked at the square for a little time in 
 silence. At last, speaking without any implied fierceness, he 
 said: 
 
 " You know, Miss Rand, I'm a wanderer by nature, and 
 sometimes I find cities very hard to bear. Do you know what 
 I do ? " 
 
 " No," she said. 
 
 " Turn them into other things. Now here in London, do 
 you never think of streets as waterways? Portland Place, 
 for instance, is like ever so many rivers I've seen, broad and 
 shining. And some of those high thin streets beside it are 
 like canals ; Oxford Circus is a whirlpool, and so on "
 
 THE POOL 06 
 
 He laughed. " I get no end of relief from thinking of 
 things like that." 
 
 " You hate cities ? " she asked him. 
 
 " No not really. But it depends how they receive you. 
 If they're hostile " He shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 " And this square ? " she said. " What's this square ? " 
 
 " A pool. All the houses hang over it as though they were 
 hiding it. It's restful like a pool. There's no noise " 
 
 The statue of the nymph had disappeared. The trees were 
 a black splash against the lamp-lit walls. Lights were in the 
 windows. 
 
 He seemed suddenly conscious that it was late. When he 
 had gone Lizzie stood, for some time, looking into the square 
 and thinking how right he had been. 
 
 All that evening Daisy was out of temper.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SHE COMES OUT 
 
 DOWNSTAIRS the dinner-party was at its height. Mrs. 
 Newton, the housekeeper, went softly down the pas- 
 sages to give one last glimpse at the ballroom. There it 
 lay, like a great golden shell, empty, expectant. The walls 
 were white, the ceilings gold; on the white walls hung the 
 Lelys, the Van Dycks, and at the farther end of the room 
 Sargent's portrait of Her Grace, brought up, for this espe- 
 cial occasion, from the Long Drawing-room. There was the 
 gleaming, shining floor, there the golden chairs with their 
 backs against the wall, and there before each picture a little 
 globe of golden flame ministering to its beauties, throwing 
 the proud pale faces of the old Beaminsters into scornful 
 relief, and none of them so scornful as that Duchess in the 
 far distance, frowning from her golden frame. 
 
 Mrs. Newton was plump and important. She worshipped 
 the Beaminster family, and it yielded her now intense satis- 
 faction to see these rooms, that were used so seldom, given 
 to their proper glory and ceremony. For a moment as she 
 stood there and felt the fine reflection of all that light upon 
 the shining floor, absorbed the silence and the space and the 
 colour, she was uplifted with pride, and thanked her God 
 that she was not as other women were, but had been per- 
 mitted by Him to assist in no small measure in the glories 
 and splendours of this great family. 
 
 Then, with a little sigh of satisfied approval, she softly 
 walked away again. 
 
 
 
 Two hours later Rachel Beaminster, standing a little be- 
 hind her aunt, saw the people pressing up the stairs. To 
 
 60
 
 SHE COMES OUT 67 
 
 those who watched her, she seemed perfectly composed, her 
 flushed cheeks, her white dress, her dark hair and eyes gave 
 her distinction against the colour and movement of the room. 
 
 Her eyes were a little stern, and her body was held proudly, 
 but her hands moved with sharp spasmodic movements against 
 her dress. 
 
 As she stood there men were brought up to her in constant 
 succession and introduced. They wrote their names on her 
 programme, bowed and went away. She smiled at each one 
 of them. Before dinner she had been introduced to the 
 Prince German, fat and cheerful and the second dance 
 of the evening was to be with him. Some of the men who 
 had been dining in the house she already knew Lord Crew- 
 ner, Roddy Seddon, Lord Massiter, and others and once 
 or twice now the faces that were led up to her were familiar 
 to her. 
 
 The great ballroom seemed to be already filled with people, 
 and still they came pressing up the stairs. 
 
 Rachel was miserably unhappy. For one moment before 
 she had left her room, where her maid had stood admiringly 
 beside her, when she herself had seen the reflection of the 
 white dress and the dark hair and the flushed cheeks in the 
 long mirror, for one great moment she had been filled with 
 exaltation. This ball, this agitation, this excitement was all 
 for her. The world was at her feet. The locked doors wertf 
 at last rolling open before her and all life was to be revealed, 
 
 Pearls that Uncle John had given her were her only orna- 
 ment. They laughed at her from the mirror, laughed and 
 promised her success, conquest, glory. Life at that instant 
 was very precious. 
 
 But, alas ! the dinner had been a terrible failure. She had 
 sat between Lord Crewner and Lord Massiter, and had no 
 word to say to either of them. Lord Massiter was middle- 
 aged and hearty and kind, and he had done his best for her, 
 but she had been paralysed. They had talked to her about 
 the opera, the theatres, hunting, books, Munich ; she had had
 
 568 THE DUCHESS OF WBEXE 
 
 a great deal to say about all these things, and she had said 
 nothing. Always within her there seemed to be rivalry be- 
 tween the Beaminster way of saying things and the other way. 
 When Lord Crewner said to her, " What I like in music is a 
 real cheerful little piece that one can go to after dinner, you 
 know," there were a whole number of Beaminster observa- 
 tions to make. But as soon as they rose to her mouth some- 
 thing within her whispered, " You know that you don't mean 
 that. That's at second hand. Give him your opinion." 
 And then that seemed presumption, so she said nothing. 
 
 It was all wretched and quite endless. Uncle John sent 
 her encouraging smiles every now and again, but she felt 
 that he must be disappointed at her failure. The food choked 
 her. The tears filled her eyes and it was her pride only that 
 saved her. Through it all she felt that her grandmother up- 
 stairs in her bedroom was planning this. 
 
 Afterwards the Princess, seeing perhaps that she was un- 
 happy, was kind and motherly to her, and told her funny 
 stories about her childhood in Berlin. But all the time 
 Rachel was saying to herself, " You're a fool. You're a fool. 
 You've got no self-control at all." 
 
 She had been dreading the introductions to so many young 
 men, but she found that that was easy enough. They were 
 not young men ; they were simply numbers on her programme 
 and they vanished as soon as they came. 
 
 Then the band in the distance began to play an extra, 
 whilst the young men wandered about and discovered their 
 friends, and the sound of the music cheered her. It amused 
 her now to watch the people as they mounted the stairs. 
 She noticed that all the faces were grave and preoccupied 
 until a moment before the arrival at Aunt Adela, and then a 
 smile was tightly fastened on, held for a moment, and then 
 dropped to give way to the preoccupation again. 
 
 The room was so full now that it seemed that it would be 
 quite impossible for any dancing to take place. Uncle John 
 was working very hard at introducing people to one another z
 
 SHE COMES OUT 69 
 
 and as she saw his good-natured face and his white hair her 
 heart went out to him. If everyone were as kind as Uncle 
 John how nice the world would be ! Meanwhile her eyes 
 anxiously watched the stairs, and as every woman turned the 
 corner at the bottom the question was " Was this May 
 Eversley ? " 
 
 There had been a battle about May. Aunt Adela did not 
 like her, disapproved of her, would not hear of inviting her. 
 Very well, then, Rachel would not come to the ball at all. 
 They could give the ball for somebody else. If May were not 
 asked Rachel would not come. 
 
 So Lady Eversley and May had both been asked, and of 
 course they had accepted. 
 
 Rachel waited and gazed and was continually disappointed. 
 The extra was over and soon the first dance would begin; 
 with the second dance would arrive the Prince and Rachel 
 would have no talk with May at all. It was too bad of May 
 to be late. She had promised so faithfully Ah ! there she 
 was with her air of one confidently conducting a most diffi- 
 cult campaign. She mounted the stairs like a general, gave 
 Lady Adela the tiniest of smiles, and was at Rachel's side. 
 
 That clasp of May's hand filled Rachel's body with confi- 
 dent happiness. May's hardy self-control, her discipline de- 
 rived from some stern old Puritans, dim centuries away, was 
 all waiting there at Rachel's service. 
 
 " How late you are ! " 
 
 "Mother was such a time. And then we couldn't get a 
 cab. How are you, Rachel ? " 
 
 " Dinner was terrible all wrong. I hadn't a word to 
 say to anyone. I'm better now that you've come." 
 
 " Is the Prince here ? " 
 
 " Yes. I'm dancing the next dance with him. The Prin- 
 cess was very kind after dinner. Oh! May, dinner was a 
 'disaster, an absolute disaster ! " 
 
 " Not nearly so bad as you thought, you may be sure. 
 TVings always seem so much worse."
 
 70 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 And now May had been discovered. Gentlemen young 
 and old dangled their programmes in front of her, were re- 
 ceived, were dismissed. May had the air of a general, sitting 
 fiercely in his tent and receiving reports from his officers as 
 to the progress in the field. Confident young men were in- 
 stantly timid before her. 
 
 The first dance was over. Against the white splendour 
 vivid colours were flung and withdrawn. Threads and pat- 
 terns crossed and recrossed, and then presently the glittering 
 floor was waste and deserted; on its surface was reflected 
 dark gold from the shining walls. 
 
 The second dance came, and with it the Prince. Rachel 
 had now lost all sense of the ball having been given in any 
 way for herself. The dancing, it comforted her to see, was 
 not of the very best, and at once she found that she had 
 herself nothing to fear. The Prince danced well, and soon 
 she was lost to all sense of everything save the immediate joy 
 of rhythm and balance, and the perfect spontaneity of the 
 music and her body's acknowledgment of it. 
 
 When it came to an end, and they were sitting in a corner, 
 somewhere, he was a fat middle-aged man again, and she 
 Rachel Beaminster, but she knew now for what life was 
 intended. 
 
 After that, for a long period, her dancers did not concern 
 her. They were there simply to supply her with that ecstasy 
 of rhythm and movement. Sometimes they could not supply 
 her because they were bad dancers, and one of her partners 
 was indeed so bad that she ruthlessly suggested, after one 
 turn round the room, that they should sit out. Then she sat 
 in a room near at hand, irritated by the sound of that glorious 
 music, and paying very scant attention to the young man's 
 stammered apologies, his information about his experiences 
 of Paris and the way that he shot birds in Scotland. 
 
 She was to go down to supper with Roddy Seddon, and she 
 was awaiting that experience with some curiosity. If her 
 grandmother were so fond of him, then he must be a dis*
 
 SHE COMES OUT 71 
 
 agreeable young man, and yet his appearance was not dis- 
 agreeable. 
 
 He looked as though, like Uncle John and Dr. Chris, he 
 were one of the comfortable people. Dr. Chris, by the way, 
 had not arrived. He had told her that he might not be able 
 to escape until late hours. 
 
 And so, as the evening advanced, her happiness grew ; im- 
 possible now to understand that speechlessness at dinner, 
 impossible to find reasons for that earlier misery. She 
 danced now both with Lord Massiter and with Lord Crewner, 
 and said exactly what she thought to both of them ; impossible 
 now to imagine anything but that the world was an enchant- 
 ing, thrilling place especially invented for the happiness of 
 Miss Rachel Beaminster. 
 
 in 
 
 Uncle John had been promised a dance; his moment ar- 
 rived. He had watched her during the early part of the 
 evening, and had been afraid that she was not at all happy. 
 
 She was so unlike other girls, and that first miserable hour 
 seemed to him the most tragic omen of her future career. 
 
 " How is she ever to get on if she takes things as badly as 
 this ? I wish I could help her. I know so exactly how she 
 must be feeling." 
 
 But imagine him now confronted with a figure that shone 
 with happiness, with success, with splendour ! 
 
 She caught his arm " Come, Uncle John, we won't dance. 
 .We'll talk. Up here There's no one in this room." 
 
 She ran ahead of him, found a corner for them both, and 
 then, pushing him on to a sofa, twisted round in front of him, 
 turning on her toes, flashing laughter at him, sitting down at 
 last beside him, and then kissing him. 
 
 " Oh, my dear ! I'm so glad," he said. " I thought you 
 were miserable." 
 
 " So I was at first perfectly wretched. Now it's all 
 splendid glorious ! "
 
 This was to him an entirely new Rachel. In her move- 
 ment, her excitement, her immediate glad acceptance of the 
 life that an hour ago she had feared with such alarm, he 
 perceived an element that was indeed foreign to all things 
 Beaminster. And this new attitude reminded him with! 
 renewed sharpness that he could not now hope to hold the old 
 Eachel with the intimate affection that had been his before. 
 She was slipping from him slipping . . . even as he 
 watched her, she was going. 
 
 She laid her hand upon his arm : " Uncle John, I'm a 
 success! I am really. I can dance, dance beautifully! I 
 can put these young men in their places. They're frightened ! 
 . . . really frightened." 
 
 " Of course you're lovely the biggest success there's 
 ever been. But what was the matter with you at dinner ? " 
 
 "Yes. Wasn't that dreadful? Everything went wrong, 
 and the only thing I could think of was how glad grand- 
 mamma would be. I had a kind of paralysis." 
 
 Uncle John nodded his head. " I know exactly what it's 
 like." 
 
 "Well, I shall never let myself be so stupid again 
 never ! I swear it ! " They sat in silence for some time, she, 
 restless, straining towards the music, he a little overcome by 
 her happiness. 
 
 There was a pause between the dances and then the band 
 began once more. 
 
 " Have you danced with Roddy Seddon yet ? " 
 
 "No. What's he like?" 
 
 " Oh ! he's nice you'll like him." 
 
 " I don't expect to. He's a friend of grandmamma's. 
 Hark ! There's the band again ! . . . Come along, back we 
 go!" 
 
 Smiling, radiant, she hung upon his arm. Afterwards, 
 standing in a doorway, he watched her. 
 
 He sighed. " What a selfish old pig I am ! . . . But she'll 
 never be mine again."
 
 SHE COMES OUT 73 
 
 rv 
 
 Uncle John held only for a moment Rachel's attention. 
 "No single person now, but rather a gorgeous pattern that 
 the whole evening was weaving about her. She saw the 
 lights, she heard the music, she felt the movement of her 
 body, she gathered through a haze of happiness the faces of 
 her uncles and Aunt Adela and others whom she knew, but 
 now for the first time in her life she knew what happiness, 
 happiness without thought, or doubt, or foreboding could be. 
 
 Thus it was that she came to Roddy Seddon, who was 
 certainly enjoying himself: this, however, was not the first 
 ball of his life nor even, if all the truth were known, his best. 
 He had expected it to be solemn and sedate you could not 
 hope to find here the jolly kind of dance that they had had 
 at the Menets', for instance, last week; that would not be 
 possible in a Beaminster household. 
 
 It was all, to be honest, a little old-fashioned. Things were 
 moving a bit faster nowadays. Waltzes and Lancers were all 
 very well, but one might have had a cotillon, something un- 
 expected ! However, May Eversley and one or two other girls 
 had had the right kind of go about them. He smiled a little 
 and tugged at his short bristling yellow moustache, and then 
 discovered that it was time to take Rachel Beaminster down 
 to supper. 
 
 This event was of more than ordinary interest to him. He 
 was perfectly aware that most of his friends and relatives 
 thought that it would be a very good thing for him to marry 
 Rachel Beaminster. He was, himself, not scornful of this 
 idea. 
 
 He was thirty-two, and it was time that Seddon Court in 
 Sussex had a mistress ; his life had been varied and exciting 
 and it was right now that he should make some ties. There 
 were a number of other reasons in favour of his marrying. 
 
 As to Rachel Beaminster, she was not pretty, but she was 
 interesting. She was unusual; moreover she was a Bea-
 
 T4 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 minster, and an alliance with that ancient family would be, 
 past dispute, a magnificent alliance. But the element in it all 
 that intrigued him most was the fact that nobody could tell 
 him anything about Rachel, even May Eversley who knew her 
 so well was not sure about her. " You'll go on being sur- 
 prised," she had said. 
 
 Surprise, indeed, was waiting for him this evening. On 
 the few occasions that he had seen Rachel he had seen her 
 grave, shy, a little awkward, most reserved. Now she met 
 him as though she had known him for years, glowing, almost 
 pretty, so burning were her eyes. At supper she laughed, 
 called across the room to May, agreed with everything that 
 everybody said, and with it all was younger than any girl 
 that he had ever known. The girls who were Roddy's friends 
 talked about life at times more boldly than he would have 
 talked with his men friends, and were, at all events, for ever 
 hinting at the things that they knew. 
 
 Rachel hinted at nothing; she kept nothing back, she 
 allowed him no disguises. 
 
 " Oh ! don't I wish," she cried, " that this night could go 
 on for ever just like this " and he, taking the compliment to 
 himself, agreed with her. He had expected to find someone 
 haughty and cold, a young Aunt Adela with a dash of foreign 
 temper. 
 
 He found someone entirely delightful. Afterwards, when 
 they sat out on a balcony overlooking Portland Place, he was 
 Encouraged to talk about himself. 
 
 " I like all this, you know," he said, waving his hand at 
 the grey mysterious street that the pale lamps so mournfully 
 guarded. " I like this air comin' along from the park. I'm 
 all for the open, Miss Beaminster horses and dogs and 
 tushin' along with the wind at your back. It's a rippin' little 
 place I've got down in Sussex. I hope you'll see it one day 
 old as anything, with jolly Roman roads and such hangin' 
 around, and the most spiffin' lot of gees. Look, the sun will 
 he getthx' above the houses soon. I've seen some sunrises in
 
 SHE COMES OUT 75 
 
 my day. You ought to be on the Downs at night, Miss Bea- 
 minster." 
 
 Roddy was surprised at himself at the way that he was 
 talking, but she really looked quite beautiful there in the 
 window with her dark hair and her eyes and white dress. 
 
 " I can't tell you," she said, when it was time for them to 
 part, " how much all you say interests me. I love horses 
 too, and I adore dogs " 
 
 " I've got a dog I'd like you to have," he began. " It' a 
 a " 
 
 " Oh no," she answered. " Aunt Adela would never let 
 me keep one here. Thank you all the same. But you'll let 
 me come down to Seddon Court one day, won't you ? " 
 
 " Let you ! " Roddy could find no words. 
 
 She flung one glance at the square, where the daw was 
 beginning, and then was back in the ballroom again^ dancing, 
 dancing, dancing. . . . 
 
 The sky was all pink above the roofs, and the birds were 
 making a whirl of chattering, when her bedroom received 
 her again. 
 
 Her maid was sleepy but proud. 
 
 " They all say it's been a great success, Miss Rachel." 
 
 " Success ! " She stood for a moment in the middle of the 
 room with her arms extended. " Oh ! It's been glorious, 
 glorious. I've never " 
 
 She paused. Her arms fell to her sides " Oh ! Dr. 
 Chris! Dr. Chris! He never came he said that he 
 mightn't be able. It was the only thing that was wrong " 
 Then more slowly, as she moved to her dressing-table " And 
 all the last part I never missed him." 
 
 " Well, I dare say," said Lucy, standing behind Rachel's 
 chair and staring at the white face in the mirror, " that with 
 his patients and the rest he couldn't get away " 
 
 " Oh ! But I ought to have missed him," said Rachel, and 
 afterwards, lying in bed, sleepless with excitement, it was 
 Dr. Christopher's face that she saw.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 FANS 
 
 " II est doux de sommeiller a 1'ombre chaude, sur le tiede oreiller d'un 
 mal opicurisnie et d'une intelligence ironique, tres simple, assez 
 curieuse, et prodigieusement indifferente, au fond." 
 
 ROMAIN 
 
 ON the afternoon that followed the ball Lady Adela 
 took Rachel to tea with Lord Richard. 
 
 It was a superb May afternoon; white clouds, bolster- 
 shaped, were piled in the heavens and made, so rounded were 
 they, the blue sky seem an infinite distance away. It was a 
 day of sparkling dazzling gaiety the air seemed electric 
 with the happiness of the world, and, as they drove down to 
 Grosvenor Street, Rachel felt that the little breeze that just 
 touched the hats and coats of the people on the omnibuses 
 was created simply by the joy of the beautiful weather. 
 
 As they moved slowly down Bond Street Rachel looked at 
 the world and thought of last night. She looked at the men 
 with their shining hats and shining boots; at the messenger 
 boys and the young women with parcels and the young women 
 without; at the old men who thought themselves young and 
 the young men who thought themselves old ; at the fish shops 
 and the picture galleries, at the jewellers' and the book shops, 
 at the place where they taught you Swedish exercises and the 
 place where there was a palmist with a Japanese name, and it 
 was all splendid and magnificent and simply carried on the 
 glories of the night before. Before the turning into Gros- 
 venor Street there was a great crush of carriages and a long 
 pause. In the carriage next to Rachel there was a very stout, 
 very richly coloured lady with a strong scent and a pug dog. 
 
 A little farther away there were two young gentlemen in a 
 
 76
 
 FANS 7U 
 
 smart little carriage, and their hats were so large and their 
 expression so haughty and the top of their canes so golden that 
 it seemed absurd that they should have to wait for anybody, 
 and near them was a small boy on a little butcher's cart and 
 near him an omnibus with a red-faced driver and any 
 number of interested ladies, and all these incongruities seemed 
 only to add to the haphazard happiness of this shining after- 
 noon. 
 
 Rachel had many things to consider as she sat there. Aunt 
 Adela did not interfere with her thoughts, because she never 
 talked when she was in a carriage, but always sat up and 
 looked wearily at the people about her. She had never very 
 much to say, but the open air made her feel stupid. 
 
 Rachel was aware that last night had altered her point of 
 view for all time. She was aware, as she sat there in sun- 
 shine, of a new world. By one glance at Aunt Adela was this 
 new world made apparent. Aunt Adela had hitherto been 
 important Aunt Adela was now unimportant. 
 
 Had this afternoon been wet and gloomy, then Rachel might 
 have doubted that passionate discovery of the world that she 
 now felt was hers, but here with this blazing sun and sky the 
 note was sustained. Surely never again would Rachel be 
 afraid of her grandmother, surely never again would she be 
 afraid of anyone. Holding herself very proudly in a dress 
 that was a soft primrose colour and in a hat that was dark 
 and shady, Rachel looked round about her on the world. 
 
 " There's Lady Massiter 1 " Lady Adela smiled lightly 
 and bowed a very little " Monty Carfax is with her." 
 
 Rachel thought of Lord Massiter, and wondered again at 
 last night's dinner " How could I have been like that ? 
 How could 1 3 " 
 
 There passed them a very handsome carriage with a little 
 dark handsome lady who looked happily round about her, 
 all alone in her magnificence. Rachel did not know whether 
 her aunt had seen or no : here was the Beaminster arch-enemy, 
 Mrs. Bronson, a young American -?idow, incredibly rich, in-
 
 78 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 credibly fascinating, incredibly bold. Mrs. Bronson had 
 been in London only a year, had snapped her jewelled fingers 
 at the Beaminsters and everything that they stood for, had 
 laughed at snubs and threats, was intending, so it was said, 
 to have London at her feet in a season or two. 
 
 Rachel considered her. She was like some jewelled bird 
 of paradise. She was one must admit it better suited 
 to this glorious day than was Aunt Adela. 
 
 Why need Aunt Adela refuse to be glad because the sun 
 was shining? Why could not Aunt Adela have said some- 
 thing pleasant about last night's dance? Why must this 
 absurd outward dignity be so carefully maintained? Why 
 when one was looking attractive in a primrose dress could 
 one's aunt not say so ? 
 
 That reminded her of Roddy Seddon. 
 
 She liked him. He might be a real friend like Dr. Chris- 
 topher. The thought of him made her, as she sat there in 
 the sun, feel doubly certain that the world was a comfortable, 
 reassuring place and that that vision of cold spaces and dark 
 forests that had been so often with her was now to be banished 
 like an evil dream never to return. 
 
 At the end of Grosvenor Street the trees were so green that 
 they might have been painted, and here they were at Uncle 
 Richard's house. 
 
 n 
 
 But, with the closing of Uncle Richard's doors the sun was 
 taken from the world. Uncle Richard's house was always 
 soft and dim, like one of those little jewel cases, all wadding 
 and dark wood. Uncle Richard's carpets were so thick and 
 soft that everyone seemed to walk on tiptoe, and the wonder- 
 ful old prints in the hall and the beautiful dark carving on 
 the staircase and the sudden swiftness of the doors as they 
 closed behind you only helped to increase the impression 
 that everything here, yourself included, was in for a beautiful 
 exhibition, and that light might hurt the exhibits.
 
 FANS 7& 
 
 Uncle Richard's study, where they always had tea, wa 
 lined from roof to ceiling with book-cases, and behind the 
 shining glass there gleamed the backs of the haughtiest and 
 proudest books in the world. For, were they old and dingy, 
 then they were first editions of transcendent value, and were 
 they new and shining, then were they " Editions de luxe/' or 
 some of Uncle Richard's favourites bound in the most intri- 
 cate and precious of bindings. 
 
 Some china on the mantelpiece was so valuable that house- 
 maids must surely have a sleepless time because of it, and all 
 the furniture was so conscious of its rich and ancient glories 
 that to sit down on the chairs or to lean on the tables was to 
 offer them terrible insults. 
 
 Two Conders and a Corot shone from the grey walls. 
 
 In the midst of this was Uncle Richard, elaborately, 
 ironically indifferent to all emotions. " I have governed the 
 country, yes but really, my friends, scarcely a job for a 
 fine spirit nowadays. I have collected these few things 
 yes, but after all what does it come to ? Don't many pawn- 
 brokers do the same ? " 
 
 Rachel, as she stood in the room, felt that her newly found 
 Independence was slipping away from her. With the depar- 
 ture of the sun had fled also that consciousness of last night's 
 eplendours. About her again was creeping that atmosphere 
 that was always with her in this room, something that made 
 her feel that she was a wretched, ignorant Beaminster, and 
 that even if she did learn the value of all these precious things, 
 why then that knowledge was of little enough use to her. 
 
 Uncle Richard with his high white forehead, his long dark 
 trousers, his grey spats and his great collar that bent back, 
 in humble deference, before the nobility of his neck and chin, 
 Uncle Richard required a great deal of courage. 
 
 " Well, dear, I hope you enjoyed your dance." 
 
 " Yes, Uncle Richard, thank you." 
 
 " I left early, but everything seemed to be going very welL" 
 
 " Yes, I think it was all right."
 
 80 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 How different this from the fashion in which she had in- 
 tended to fling her enthusiasm upon him. What, she won- 
 dered, would have been the effect had she done so? How 
 would he have taken it? Could she have pierced that mel- 
 ancholy ironical armour that always kept the real man from 
 her? 
 
 Meanwhile she was now hack again in the old, old world ; 
 tea was brought, the footman and butler moved softly about 
 the room. Aunt Adela said a little, Uncle Richard said a 
 little . . . the lid was down upon the world. 
 
 Meanwhile, impossible to imagine that only a quarter of 
 an hour ago there had been that gay confusion in Bond Street, 
 impossible to believe Mrs. Bronson in her carriage anything 
 but common and vulgar, impossible to prefer that dazzling 
 sun to this cloistered quiet. 
 
 A wonderful lacquered clock ticked the minutes away. 
 " I'm in a cage I'm in a cage and I want to get out," 
 someone in Rachel Beaminster was crying, and someone else 
 replied, " Thank God that you are allowed to be in such a 
 cage at all. There's no other cage so splendid." 
 
 Her primrose gown was forgotten; when Uncle Richard 
 asked her questions she answered " Yes," or " No." Her 
 old terrors had returned. 
 
 Upon the three of them, sitting thus, Roddy Seddon was 
 announced. Roddy had assaulted and conquered Lord 
 Richard in as masterly a fashion as he had subdued the 
 Duchess and Lady Adela. He had done it simply by present- 
 ing so boisterous and honest an allegiance to the Beaminster 
 standard. Lord Richard's irony had been useless against 
 Roddy's ingenuous appeal. Moreover, there was the 
 Duchess's advocacy young Seddon was the hope of the 
 party. 
 
 Roddy brought to view no evidence of last night's energies ; 
 he was as fresh, as highly coloured, as browned and bronzed 
 and clear as any pastoral shepherd, his skin was so finely 
 coloured that clothes always seemed, with him, a pity. Lord
 
 FANS 81 
 
 Richard's melancholy cynicism had poor chance against such 
 vigour. 
 
 His eyes, as they fastened upon Rachel, brightened. She 
 gave that dim room such fresh pleasure, sitting there in her 
 primrose frock with her serious eyes and long hands. No, 
 she was not beautiful; he knew that his last night's impres- 
 sion had been the true one; but she was unusual, she would 
 make, he was sure, a most unusual companion. " You 
 wouldn't think it," May Eversley had said, " but there's any 
 amount of fun in Rachel you'll find it when you know her." 
 
 He was not sure but that he saw it now, lurking in her eyes, 
 her mouth, as she sat there, so gravely, opposite to her uncle 
 and aunt. 
 
 " How d'ye do, Lady Adela ? How d'ye do, Miss Bea- 
 minster ? How are you, sir ? Thanks I will have some 
 tea. Pretty gorgeous day, ain't it ? Rippin' dance of yours 
 last night, Lady Adela." 
 
 Meanwhile, Rachel knew that she had nothing to say to him. 
 Out there in the sunlight she might, perhaps, have maintained 
 that relationship that had been begun between them the 
 night before, but in here, with Aunt Adela and Uncle Richard 
 so consciously an audience, with the air so dim and the walls 
 so grey, Roddy Seddon seemed the most strident of strangers. 
 
 She sat, silently, whilst he talked to Aunt Adela. " I've 
 never had so toppin' a dance as last night 'pon my soul, no. 
 Young Milhaven, whom I tumbled on at Brooks's at lunch- 
 eon, said the same. Band first-rate, and floor spiffin'." 
 
 " I'm glad you liked it, Roddy," said Lady Adela, with a 
 dry little smile. " I must confess to being glad that it's 
 over." 
 
 Roddy glanced a little shyly at Rachel. " I suppose you're 
 goin' hard at it now, Miss Beaminster ? " 
 
 She looked across the tea-table at him. " There's Lady 
 Grode's and Lady Massiter's, and Lady Carloes is giving one 
 for her niece " 
 
 " The Massiter thing ought to be a good one. Always do
 
 82 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 it well," said Roddy. " 'Pon my word, on a day like this 
 it makes one hot to think of dancing." 
 
 He was perplexed. He had instantly perceived that he 
 had here a Rachel Beaminster very different from last night's 
 heroine. She was now beyond all contemplated intimacy. 
 He had heard others speak of that aloofness that came like a 
 cloud about her. He now saw it for himself. 
 
 After a time he came across to her whilst Lady Adela and 
 her brother talked as though the world consisted of one Bea- 
 minster railed round by high palings over which a host of 
 foolish people were trying to climb. 
 
 He stood beside her smiling in that slightly embarrassed 
 manner of his, a manner that caused those who did not know 
 him to say that they liked Roddy Seddon because he was so 
 modest. 
 
 " Such a day it seems a shame to be in town." 
 
 " Yes isn't it lovely ? " 
 
 " The opera's pretty hot in the evenin' just now. Have 
 you been yet ? " 
 
 " I've been in Munich often. I've never been here." 
 
 " My word ! Haven't you really ? Wish I could say the 
 eame. I'm always bein' dragged " 
 
 " Why do you go if you don't care about it ? " 
 
 " Can't think always askin' myself. Why do half the 
 Johnnies go ? And yet in a way I like some sorts o' music. 1 " 
 
 "Whai kind of music?" 
 
 " Sittin' in the dark, in a room, with someone just strokin 7 
 the piano up and down just strokin' it not hammerin' it. 
 I don't care what the old tune is " 
 
 Rachel laughed a little, but said nothing. Of course, she 
 thought him the most thundering kind of fool, and this made 
 him eager to display to her his wisdom and common sense. 
 
 But he could say nothing. There followed the most awk- 
 ward silence. She did not try to help him, but sat there 
 quietly looking in front of her. 
 
 Suddenly she said : " Uncle Richard, I want to see your
 
 FANS 83 
 
 fans again. I haven't seen them for a long time. I know 
 you've added some lately. Sir Eoderick, have you ever seen 
 my uncle's fans ? " 
 
 " No," he said. " I'd be delighted " 
 
 Lord Eichard's eyes lifted. The lines of his mouth grew 
 softer. 
 
 Eachel watched him. " Now he'll pretend," she said, 
 " that he doesn't care. He'll pretend that they're nothing to 
 him at all." 
 
 He went, in his solemn guarded manner, to a place in the 
 room where a large cabinet was let into the wall. He drew 
 this cabinet forward, and then, out of it, moving his hands 
 almost pontifically, he pulled trays, and on these trays lay 
 the fans. 
 
 The others had gathered around him. There were nearly 
 five hundred fans fans Dutch and Italian and French and 
 Chinese and Japanese ; fans of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries, of the eighteenth and of the Empire modern 
 Japanese heavy with iron spokes, others light as gossamer, 
 with spokes of ivory or tortoise shell. There were French 
 fans, painted only on one side, with pictures of fantastic 
 shepherds and shepherdesses; there were Chinese fans with 
 bridges and mandarins and towers ; Empire fans perforated 
 with tinsel and such lovely shades of colour that they seemed 
 to change as one gazed. 
 
 There they all lay in that rich solemn room, quietly, 
 proudly conscious of their beauty, needing no word of praise, 
 catching all the colour and the daintiness and fragrance that 
 had ever been in the world. 
 
 Eachel drank in their splendour and then looked about her. 
 
 Uncle Eichard's eyes were flaming and his hands trembling 
 against the case. 
 
 Then she looked at Eoddy Seddon. His head was flung 
 back ; with eyes and mouth, with every vein and fibre of his 
 body he was drinking in their glory. 
 
 His eyes were suddenly caught away. He was staring at
 
 84 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 her before she looked away Her eyes said to him, " Why ! 
 Do you care like that ? Do those things mean that to you ? " 
 
 She smiled across at him. They were in communion again 
 as they had been last night. 
 
 He was surprised that he should be so glad.
 
 CHAPTEK VII 
 
 IN THE HEART OF THE HOUSB 
 
 'Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things 
 The honest thief, the tender murderer, 
 The superstitious atheist, demirep, 
 That loves and saves her soul in new French books 
 We watch while these in equilibrium keep 
 The giddy line midway: one step aside, 
 
 They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line " 
 
 BISHOP BLOUGBAM'S Apology. 
 
 r 1 1 HE Duchess could but dimly guess at the splendour of 
 A that fine May afternoon. 
 
 It had been her complaint lately that she was always 
 cold and now the blinds and curtains were closely drawn and a 
 huge fire was blazing. Her chair was close to the flame : she 
 sat there looking, in the fierce light, small and shrivelled ; she 
 was reading intently and made no movement except now and 
 again when she turned a page. Dorchester was the only 
 other person there and she sat a little in the shadow, busily 
 sewing. 
 
 Prom where she sat she could see her mistress's face, and 
 behind her carved chair there were the blue china dragons 
 and the deep heavy red curtains and a black oak table covered 
 with little golden trays and glass jars and silver boxes. 
 
 Neither heat nor cold nor youth nor age had any effect upon 
 Dorchester. ~No one knew how old she was, nor how long she 
 had been with her mistress, nor her opinions or sentiments 
 concerning anything in the world. 
 
 She was tall and gaunt and snapped her words as she might 
 snap a piece of thread. 
 
 From Mrs. Newton and Morris downwards the servants 
 were afraid of her. She made a confidant of no one, was 
 
 supposed to have no emotions of any kind, absurd and fan- 
 
 85
 
 86 THE DUCHESS OP WEEXE 
 
 tastic stories were told of her ; she was certainly not popular 
 in the servants* hall and yet at a word from her anything 
 that she requested was done. 
 
 With Miss Rand only was it understood that she had a 
 certain friendly relationship ; it was said that she liked Miss 
 Rand. 
 
 Dorchester had witnessed the whole of the Duchess's career. 
 
 As she sat now in the shadow every now and again she 
 looked up and glanced at that sharp white face and those thin 
 hands. What a little body it was to have done so much, to 
 have hattled its way through such a career, to have fought and 
 to have won so many conflicts ! It seemed to Dorchester only 
 yesterday that splendid time, when the Duchess had been 
 queen of London. Dorchester also had been young then and 
 had had an energy as enduring, a will as finely tempered as 
 had her mistress. 
 
 What a character it had been then with its furies and its 
 disciplines, its indulgences and its amazing restrictions, its 
 sympathies and cold clodded cruelties, its tremendous sense 
 of the dramatic moment so that again and again a position 
 that had been nearly surrendered was held and saved. She 
 had never been beautiful, always little and sharp and some- 
 times even wizened. But she gained her effects one way or 
 another and beat beautiful and wise and wonderful women off 
 the field. 
 
 And then sweeping down upon her had come disease. At 
 first it had been fought and magnificently fought. But it 
 was the horror of its unexpected ravages that had been so 
 difficult to combat. She had never known when the pain 
 would be upon her it might seize her at any public moment 
 and her retreat be compelled before the whole world. There 
 had been doctors and doctors and doctors, and then opera- 
 tion after operation, but no one had done any good until 
 Dr. Christopher had come to her, and now, for years, he had 
 been keeping her alive. 
 
 Out of that very necessity of disease, however, had she
 
 IN THE HEAKT OF THE HOUSE 8T 
 
 'dragged her drama. She had retired from the world, not as 
 an old woman beaten by pain, but as a priestess might with- 
 draw within her sanctuary or some great queen demand her 
 privacy. 
 
 And it had its effect. Very, very carefully were chosen to 
 see her only those who might convey to the world the right 
 impression. The world was given to understand that the 
 Duchess was now more wonderful than she had ever been, and 
 it was so long since the world at large had seen her that 
 every sort of story was abroad. 
 
 Certain old ladies like Lady Carloes who played bridge with 
 her gained most of their public importance from their in- 
 timacy with her. It was rumoured that at any moment she 
 might return and take her place again in the world, old though 
 she was. 
 
 All this was known to Dorchester and she smiled grimly 
 as she thought of it. The real Duchess ! Perhaps she and 
 Dr. Christopher alone in all the world knew the intricacies, 
 the inconsistencies of that amazing figure. From the moment 
 that illness had come every peculiarity had grown. Her self- 
 indulgences, her temper, her pride, her egotism now knew, 
 in private, no restraint. And yet when her friends were there 
 or anyone at all from the outside world she displayed the old 
 dignity, the old grand air, the old imperious quiet that be- 
 longed to no one else alive. 
 
 But what, during these last years, Lady Adela had suffered ! 
 Dorchester herself had had many moments when it had 
 seemed that she had more to control than her strength could 
 maintain, but long custom, an entire absence of the nervous 
 system, and a comforting sense that she was, after all, paid 
 well for her trouble, sustained her endurance. 
 
 But Lady Adela had nothing. 
 
 The Duchess had always hated her children, but had used 
 them, magnificently, for her purposes. They had all been 
 fools, but they were just the kind of fools that the Beaminster 
 tradition demanded.
 
 88 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 Lady Adela had from the first been more of a fool than the 
 others. She had never had the gift of words and before her 
 mother was, as a rule, speechless, and it had been only by 
 her changing colour that an onlooker could have told that her 
 mother's furies moved her. 
 
 Often Dorchester had attempted interference, but had 
 found at last that it was better to allow the fury to spend its 
 force. Then also Dorchester had noticed a curious thing. 
 The Duke, Lord Richard, Lord John, Lady Adela were proud 
 of these prides and tempers. They were proud of everything 
 that their mother did; they might suffer, their backs might 
 wince under the blows, but it was part of the tradition that 
 their mother should thus behave. 
 
 Dorchester fancied that sometimes there was flashed upon 
 them a sudden suspicion that their mother was in these days 
 only an old, ailing, broken woman no great figure now, no 
 magnificent tyrant, no mysterious queen of society. And 
 then Dorchester fancied that she had noticed that when such 
 a suspicion had come upon them they had put it hastily 
 aside and locked it up and abused themselves for such base- 
 ness. 
 
 Curious people, these Beaminsters ! 
 
 Well, it was no business of hers. And, perhaps, after all 
 she had herself some touch of that feeling, some fierce im- 
 patient pride in those very tempests and rebellion. After all, 
 was there anyone in the world like this mistress of hers ? Was 
 there another woman who would bear so bravely the pain that 
 she bore ? And was not that fierce clutch on life, that energy 
 with which she tried still to play her part in the great game, 
 grand in its own fashion ? 
 
 Would not Dorchester also fight when her time came ? 
 
 She looked across the firelight at her mistress. When 
 would arrive the inevitable moment of surrender ? How im- 
 minent that moment when in the eyes of all those about her 
 the old woman would see that all that was now hers was a 
 guiet abandonment to death !
 
 IN THE HEAUT OF THE HOUSE 89 
 
 Well, there would be some fine, savage struggling when that 
 crisis struck into their midst. Dorchester smiled grimly, and 
 then, in spite of herself, sighed a little. 
 
 They were all growing old together. 
 
 ii 
 
 At five o'clock came Dr. Christopher, and Dorchester 
 moved into the other room and left the two together. With 
 his large limbs and cheerful smile he made the Duchess seem 
 elighter and more fragile than ever, and she herself felt always 
 with his coming some addition of warmth and strength ; each 
 visit, so she might have expressed it, gave her life for at 
 least another tiny span. 
 
 That he, knowing so much of the follies and catastrophes of 
 life, should yet be an optimist, would have proved him in her 
 opinion a fool had she not known, by constant proof, that he 
 was anything but that. " Well, one day he will discover his 
 mistake," she would say, and yet, perversely, would cling to 
 him for the sake of this very illusion. He helped her courage, 
 he helped her battle with her pain, he gave her, sometimes, 
 some shadowy sense of shame for her passions and rebellions, 
 but, more than all this, he yielded her a reassurance that life, 
 precious, adorable, wonderful life, was yet for a little time to 
 be hers. 
 
 He knew well enough the influence that he possessed, and 
 when, as on this afternoon, he felt it his duty to avail himself 
 of it, he could not pretend that he faced his task with any 
 exultation. 
 
 That he should rouse her fury, as he had one or twice 
 already roused it, meant humiliation for him as well as for 
 herself, and afterwards embarrassment for them both as they 
 saw those scenes in retrospect. 
 
 She glanced up at him carefully as he came in and knew 
 him well enougt to realize that there was something that he 
 must say to her. There had been other such occasions, she 
 remembered them all. Sometimes she herself had been the
 
 90 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 subject of them, something that was injuring her health, some 
 indulgence that he could not allow her. Sometimes the battle 
 had been about others ; she had fought him and on occasions 
 it had seemed that their relationship was broken once and for 
 all, that nothing could cover the words that had been spoken 
 but always through everything she had admired his cour- 
 age. 
 
 The way had always been to stand up to her. 
 
 For a little time they talked about her health, and then 
 there fell a pause. She, leaning back in her chair with her 
 thin, sharp hands on her lap, watched him grimly as he sat on 
 the other side of the fireplace, leaning forward a little, look- 
 ing into the fire. 
 
 " Well," she said at last. " What is it ? " Her voice was 
 deep, but every word was clear-cut, resonant. 
 
 " There is something two things," he answered her 
 slowly. " You can dismiss me for an interfering old fool, you 
 know. You often have been tempted to do it before, I dare 
 say." 
 
 " I have," she said. " Go on." 
 
 But as she spoke she drew her hands a little more closely 
 together. She was not quite so ready for these battles as she 
 had once been. She was afraid a little now. A new sensa- 
 tion for her; she hated that restricting awkwardness that 
 would remain between them for days afterwards. 
 
 She looked at his red, cheerful face and wondered im- 
 patiently why he must always be meddling in other people's 
 affairs. She hated Quixotes. 
 
 " Your Grace," he began again, " has only got to stop me 
 and I'll say no more." 
 
 " Oh yes, you will," she said impatiently. " I know you. 
 Say what you please." 
 
 " I want to speak about Francis Breton " He paused, 
 
 but she said nothing, only for an instant her whole face 
 flashed into stone. The firelight seemed for an instant to hold 
 it there, then, as the flame fell, she was once again indifferent.
 
 IN THE HEAET OF THE HOUSE 91 
 
 Christopher had grasped his courage now. He went on 
 gravely : 
 
 " I must speak about him. I know how unpleasant the 
 whole subject is to you. We've had our discussions before 
 and I've fought his battles with all the world more times than 
 I can count. You must remember that I've known Frank all 
 his life I knew his unhappy father. I've known them both 
 long enough to realize that the boy's been heavily handicapped 
 from the beginning " 
 
 " Must you," she said, looking him now full in the face, 
 " must it be this ? Have we not thrashed it out thoroughly 
 enough already ? I don't change, you know." 
 
 He understood that she was appealing to his regard for 
 their own especial relationship. But there was a note of con- 
 trol in her voice ; he knew that now she would listen : 
 
 " I've cared for Frank during a number of years. I know 
 he's weak, impulsive, incredibly foolish. He's always been 
 his own worst enemy. I know that the other day he wrote 
 a most foolish letter " 
 
 " It was a letter beyond forgiveness," she said, her voice 
 trembling. 
 
 " Yes, I would give anything to have prevented it. I know 
 that when he was in England before I pleaded for him, as I 
 am doing now, and that by a thousand foolhardy actions he 
 negatived anything that I could say for him. 
 
 " I'm urging no defence for the things that he did, the shady, 
 disreputable things. But he has come back now, I do verily 
 believe, ready, even eager, to turn over a new leaf. I " 
 
 She interrupted him, smiling. 
 
 " Yes. That letter " 
 
 " Oh, I know. But isn't it a very proof of what I say 
 would anyone but a foolhardy boy have done such a thing? 
 Sheer bravado, hoping behind it all to be taken back to the 
 fold eager, at any rate, not to show a poor spirit, coward- 
 ice." 
 
 " Over thirty now old for a boy "
 
 92 
 
 " In years, yes. But younger, oh ! ages younger than that 
 in. spirit, in knowledge of the world, in everything that mat- 
 ters I know," he went on more slowly, smiling a little, 
 " that you've called me sentimentalist times without number 
 but really here I'm not urging you to anything from senti- 
 mental reasons. I'm not asking you to take him back and kill 
 the fatted calf for him. 
 
 " I'm asking nothing absurd only that you, his relations, 
 all that he has of kith and kin, should not be his enemies, 
 should not drive him to desperation and worse." 
 
 " If you imagine," she said steadily, " that his fate is of the 
 smallest concern to me you know me very little. I care 
 nothing of what becomes of him. He and I have been 
 enemies for many years now and a few words from you. cannot 
 change that." 
 
 " I'm only asking you," he replied, " to give him a chance. 
 See what you can make of him, instead of sending him into 
 the other camp use him even if you cannot care for him. 
 There's fine stuff there in spite of his follies. The day 
 might come, even now, when you will own yourself proud of 
 him " 
 
 But she had caught him up, leaning forward a little, her 
 voice now of a sharper turn. " The other camp ? What 
 other camp ? " 
 
 He caught the note of danger. " I only mean," he said, 
 choosing now his words with the greatest care, " that if you 
 turn Frank definitely, once and for all, from your doors, there 
 may be others ready to receive him " 
 
 " His men and his women," she broke in scornfully ; " don't 
 I know them? I've not lived these years without knowing 
 the raffish tenth-rate lot that failures like Frank Breton 
 affect " 
 
 " No there are others," Christopher said firmly, " Mrs. 
 Bronson, for instance " 
 
 At that name she broke in. 
 
 " Yes exactly. Mrs. Bronson. Oh ! I know the kind of
 
 IN THE HEAET OF THE HOUSE 93 
 
 crowd that Mrs. Bronson and her like can gather. They are 
 welcome to Francis and he to them." She paused. He saw 
 that she was controlling herself with a great effort. For a 
 little while there was silence and then she went on, more 
 quietly : 
 
 " There, now you have it. That is why there can never be 
 any truce between Francis and myself. It is more than 
 Francis it is all the things that he stands for, all the things 
 that will soon make England a rubbish heap for every dirty 
 foreigner to dump his filth on to. Hate him? Why, I'll 
 fight him and all that he stands for so long as there's breath 
 in my body " 
 
 " But Frank is with you/' Christopher urged eagerly, " if 
 you'll let him be. He's only in need of your hand and back 
 he'll come. He's waiting there now longing, in spite of his 
 defiance, for a word. Give him it and in the end I know as 
 surely as I sit here that he'll be worth your while " 
 
 " What can he do for me ? " 
 
 " Ah ! He'll show you. After all, he is one of the family : 
 ne's miserable there in his exile. He's got your own spirit 
 he'd die rather than own to defeat but he'll repay you if 
 you have him." 
 
 He saw then, as she turned towards him, that he had done 
 no good. 
 
 " Listen," she said, " I've heard you fairly. Let us leave 
 this now, once and for all. I tell you finally no word that 
 God Almighty could speak on this business could change me 
 one atom. Francis Breton and I are foes for all time. I 
 hate not only himself and the miserable mess that he's 
 made of his life, I hate all this new generation that he stands 
 for. 
 
 " I hate these new opinions, I hate this indulgence now 
 towards everything that any fool in the country may choose 
 to think or say. In my day we knew how to use the fools. 
 Took advantage of their muddle, ran the world on it. I 
 loathe this tendency to make everyone as intelligent as they
 
 94 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 can be ! Why ! in God's name ! Give me two intelligent men 
 and a -dozen fools and you'll get something done. Take a 
 wastrel like Frank and turn him out. Take muddlers like 
 my family and keep 'em muddled. Richard ran the country 
 well enough for a time or two, and he's been a muddler from 
 his childhood. 
 
 " All this cry to educate the people, to be kind to thieves 
 and murderers ! to help the fools my God ! If I still had 
 my say Whilst there's breath in me I'll fight the lot of 
 them." 
 
 She leant back in her chair, waited for breath, and then 
 went on more mildly : 
 
 " You may like all this noise and clamour, Doctor. You 
 may like your Mrs. Bronson and the rest common, vulgar, 
 brainless ruling the world. Every decent law that held 
 society together is being broken and nobody cares. 
 
 " Frank Breton may find his place in this new world. He 
 has no place in mine." 
 
 Then she added : " So much for that what's the other 
 thing?" 
 
 But he hesitated. Her voice was tired, even tremulous, 
 and he was aware as he looked across at her that her emotions 
 now treated her more severely than they had once done. 
 At the same time he was aware that giving free play to her 
 temper always did her good. 
 
 " Well perhaps another day " 
 
 " No now. I may as well take my scoldings together 
 it saves time ! " 
 
 He stood up and, leaning on the mantelpiece with one arm, 
 looked down upon her. 
 
 " Here," he said, " I'm afraid I may seem doubly imperti- 
 nent, but it's a matter that is closer to me than anything in 
 the world. You know that I'm a lonely old bachelor and that 
 all those sentiments that you accuse me of must find some 
 vent somewhere. I'm fonder of Rachel, I think, than I am of 
 anyone in the world, and it's only that affection and the
 
 IN THE HEART OF THE HOUSE 95 
 
 feeling that, in some ways, I know her better than any of you 
 do that give me courage to speak." 
 
 He could see that now she was reaching the limits of her 
 patience. 
 
 " Well what of Rachel ?" 
 
 " I understand I know that you that all of you 
 intend that she shall marry young Seddon " 
 
 "Well?" 
 
 " I know that it is impertinent of me, but, as I have said, I 
 think I know Rachel differently from anyone else in the 
 world. She is strange curiously ignorant of life in many 
 ways, curiously wise in others. Her simplicity the things 
 that she takes on trust there is no end to it. The things, 
 too, that she cannot forgive she doesn't know how often, 
 later on, she will have to forgive them 
 
 " But the first man who breaks her trust " 
 
 " Thank you for this interesting light on Rachel's char- 
 acter. What does it mean ? " 
 
 " It means," he said abruptly, " that she mustn't be hurt. 
 Your Grace may turn me out of the house here and now if 
 you will, but Seddon is the wrong man for her to marry " 
 
 " What are his crimes ? " Her voice was rising, and her 
 hand tapped impatiently on her dress. 
 
 " I know him only slightly, but common repute anyone 
 who is in the London world at all will tell you his reputa- 
 tion is bad. I've nothing against him myself, but his affairs 
 with women have been many. He is no worse, I dare say, 
 than a thousand others. At least he's young and I myself, 
 God knows, am no moralist. But to marry him to Rachel 
 will be a crime." 
 
 He knew as he heard his own voice drop that the scene 
 that he dreaded was upon him. The air was charged with it. 
 In the strangest way everything in the room seemed to be 
 changed because of it. The furniture, the dragons, the tables, 
 the very trifles of gold and silver, seemed to withdraw, leav- 
 ing the air weighted with passion.
 
 96 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 She was trembling from head to foot. Her voice was very- 
 low. 
 
 "You've gone too far. What business is this of yours? 
 How dare you come to me with these tales ? How dare you ? 
 You've taken too much on your shoulders. See to your own 
 house, Doctor " 
 
 He stepped back from the fireplace. 
 
 " Please to-morrow " 
 
 " No. Here and now." Her words flashed at him. 
 " You've begun to think yourself indispensable. Because 
 I've shown you that I rely upon you Because, at times, 
 I've seemed to need your aid therefore you've interfered in 
 matters that are no concern of yours." 
 
 " They are concerns of mine," he answered firmly, " in so 
 far as this affair is connected with my friend." 
 
 " Your friend and my granddaughter," she retorted. 
 tf But it is not only that. I will return you your own 
 words. You say that your friend is in danger what of 
 mine ? You have dared to attack someone who is more to 
 me than you and all the rest of the world put together. Some- 
 one whom I care for as I have never cared for my own sons. 
 It was bold of you, Dr. Christopher, and I shall not forget 
 it" 
 
 He took it without flinching. ^ Very well," he said. 
 " But my word to the end is the same. If you marry Seddon 
 to your granddaughter you do your own sense of justice 
 wrong." 
 
 At that the last vestige of restraint left her. Leaning 
 forward in her chair she poured her words upon him in a 
 torrent of anger. Her voice was not raised, but her words 
 cut the air, and now and again she raised her hands in a move- 
 ment of furious protest. 
 
 She spared him nothing, dragged forward old incidents, old 
 passages between them that he had thought long ago for- 
 gotten, reminded him of occasions when he had been mistaken 
 or over-certain, accused him of crimes that would have caused
 
 IN THE HEART OF THE HOUSE 97 
 
 him to leave the country had there heen a vestige of truth in 
 her words ; at last, heaten for breath, gasped out : " Sir 
 Roderick Seddon shall know of what you accuse him. He 
 shall deal with you " 
 
 " I have nothing," Christopher answered gravely, " against 
 Seddon nothing except that he should not marry Rachel ! " 
 
 " You have attacked him ! " she gasped out. " He shall 
 answer." 
 
 But her rage had exhausted her. She lay back against her 
 chair, heaving, clutching at the arms for support. 
 
 He summoned Dorchester, but when he approached the 
 Duchess feebly motioned him away. 
 
 " I've done with you never again/'* she murmured. 
 
 She seemed then most desperately old. Her dress was in 
 disorder, her face wizened with deep lines beneath her eyes 
 and hollows in her cheeks. 
 
 Christopher waited while Dorchester helped her mistress 
 into the farther room. For some time there was silence. 
 The room was stifling, and, impatiently, he pulled back the 
 heavy red curtains. 
 
 He sat, waiting, eyeing the stupid dragons, every now and 
 again glancing at his watch. 
 
 Even now the room seemed to vibrate with her voice, and 
 he could imagine that the French novel, fallen from her lap 
 on to the carpet, winked at him as much as to say : 
 
 " Oh, we're up to her tempers, aren't we ? We know what 
 they're worth. We don't care ! " 
 
 At last Dorchester appeared. 
 
 " Her Grace is in bed and will see you, sir," she said. 
 
 Her face was grave and without expression. 
 
 After another glance at his watch he passed into the 
 bedroom.
 
 CHAPTEK VIII 
 
 THE TIGER 
 
 For every Manne there lurketh 
 hys Wilde Beast." 
 
 SABDUS AQUINAS (1512), 
 
 BRUIN", meeting Christopher one day, had asked him to 
 tea in his flat, and then, remembering his interest in 
 the Beaminster history, invited him to bring Breton with him. 
 
 " I haven't seen him for years. I'd like to see him again." 
 
 Christopher had accepted this invitation, and now on a 
 sultry afternoon in June found himself sitting in Brun's 
 rooms. Brun's sitting-room had a glazed and mathematical 
 appearance as though, from cushions to ceiling, it had been 
 purchased at a handsome price from a handsome warehouse. 
 It was not comfortable, it was very hot. . . . The narrow 
 street squeezed between Portland Square and Great Portland 
 Street lay on its back, the little windows of its mean houses 
 gasping like mouths for air, the hard sun pouring pitilessly 
 down. 
 
 No weather nor atmosphere ever affected Brun. His 
 clothes as well as his body had that definite appearance of 
 something outside change or disorder. He might have been, 
 one would allow, something else at earlier stages before this 
 final result had been achieved (as a painting is presented to 
 the observer before its completion), but surely now nothing 
 would ever be done to him again. Surveying him, he ap- 
 peared less a man with a history, origins, destinies about him 
 than an opinion or a criticism. He was designed exactly by 
 Nature for cynical observation, and was intended to play no 
 other part in life. 
 
 " Well, Christopher ? " said Brun. " Hot, isn't it ? " 
 
 " My word yes. Breton's coming along presently." 
 
 98
 
 THE TIGER 99 
 
 " Good. I've asked Arkwright the explorer. Nice fel- 
 low." They sat in silence for a little. Then Brun said: 
 
 " Interested in writers, Christopher ? " 
 
 " Not very much. Why ? " 
 
 " Just been lunching with a young novelist, Westcott. 
 What he said interested me. Of course, he's very young, got 
 no humour, takes himself dreadfully seriously, but he asked 
 my advice and it is as a sign of the times over here that I 
 mention it." 
 
 " Go ahead." 
 
 " He tells me that a number of young novelists are going to 
 band themselves into a kind of Artists' Young Liberty move- 
 ment artists, poets, novelists, some thirty altogether go- 
 ing to have a magazine, do all kinds of things. Some of the 
 older men will scoff. At the same time " 
 
 " Well ? " said Christopher. 
 
 " They'd asked him to join. He wanted my opinion." 
 
 " What did you say ? " 
 
 " He interested me he was a kind of test case. It would 
 mean that, commercially, from the popular point of view, it 
 would put him back for years. Those young men will all be 
 put down as conceited cranks. They will tilt at the success- 
 ful popular men like Lawson and the others, will worship at 
 the feet of the unsuccessful ' Great ' men like Lester and 
 Cotton. The papers will hate 'em, the public will be indiffer- 
 ent. The result will be that, in the end, they may do a big 
 thing at any rate they'll have done a fine thing, but they'll 
 all die on the way, I expect." 
 
 Brun spoke with enthusiasm unusual for him. 
 
 " How was this a test of Westcott ? " asked Christopher. 
 
 " Well would he go or no ? He's at the kind of parting 
 of the ways. I believe success is coming to him, if he wants 
 it ; but he'll have to build another wall in front of his Tiger 
 cither before the success or after. If he joins this crowd of 
 men, there'll be no walls for him ever again." 
 
 Christopher knew that when Brun had some idea that he
 
 100 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 was pleasantly pursuing and had secured an audience nothing 
 would stay or hinder him. 
 
 He pushed a chair towards him. 
 
 " What do you mean by your Tiger ? " he asked. 
 
 " My Tiger is what every man has within him I don't 
 mean, you know, a nasty habit or a degrading passion or 
 anything of necessity vicious only my theory is that every 
 man is given at the outset of life a Beast in the finest, noblest 
 sense with whom through life he has got to settle. It may be 
 an Ambition, or a Passion, or a Temptation, or a Virtue, what 
 you will, but with that Beast he's got to live. Now it's 
 according to his dealings with the Beast that the man's great 
 or no. If he faces the Beast and the Beast is generally 
 something that a man knows about himself that nobody else 
 knows the Beast can be used, magnificently used. If he's 
 afraid, pretends the Tiger isn't there, builds up walls, hides 
 in cities, does what you will, then he must be prepared for a 
 life of incessant alarm, and he may be sure that at some 
 moment or another the Tiger will make his spring then 
 there'll be a crisis ! 
 
 " Over here in England you're hiding your Tigers all the 
 time. That's why you're muddled about Art, Literature, 
 Government, everything that matters and an old woman 
 like the Duchess of Wrexe sharp enough herself, mind you 
 uses all of you. 
 
 " No Beaminster has ever faced his or her Tiger yet, and 
 they're down, like knives, on everyone who does and every- 
 thing that shows the Tiger's bright eyes 
 
 " But I see oh, Lord ! I see a time coming, yes, here 
 in England, when the Individual, the great man, is coming 
 through, when the Duchess will be dead and the Beaminster 
 driven from power and every man with his Tiger there in 
 front of him, faced and trained, will have his chance 
 
 " More brain, more courage, no muddle God help the 
 day!" 
 
 " You see things moving everywhere ? "
 
 THE TIGER 101 
 
 " Everywhere. These fellows, Randal arid the rest, are 
 bringing their Tigers with 'em. They're going to put them 
 there for all the world to see. It's only another party out 
 against the Duchess, she wants all the Tigers hidden only 
 herself to know about them then she can do her work. 
 She'll hate these fellows until they've made their stand and 
 then she'll try to adopt them in order to muzzle them the 
 better in the end. 
 
 " If Westcott hides his Tiger, forgets he's there, his way's 
 plain enough. He'll make money, the Duchess will ask him 
 to tea. Let him join these fellows and his Tiger may tear all 
 his present self to pieces." 
 
 " What about yourself, Bran ? " 
 
 " Oh, I'm nothing ! I'm the one great exception. No 
 Tiger thinks me worth while. I merely observe, I don't 
 feel and you have to feel to keep your Tiger alive." 
 
 Brun's little lecture was over. He suddenly drew his body 
 together, clapped his mental hands to dismiss the whole thing 
 and was drawing Westcott to the door. 
 
 " But I talk how I talk ! You bear with me, Christo- 
 pher, because I must go on, you know. It means nothing 
 absolutely nothing. But they will have arrived now, so down 
 we go. I go on in my sleep, exactly the same. And now 
 tea and I will talk less because Breton talks a great deal 
 and so does Arkwright, and so do you. . . ." 
 
 n 
 
 Arkwright came, and after a little, Breton. But the meet- 
 ing was not a success. Arkwright had heard a good deal 
 about Breton's reputation, and although, on the whole, he was 
 tolerant of any backsliding in women, he made what he called 
 his liking for " clean men " an excuse for much narrow- 
 mindedness. 
 
 It is quite a mistake to suppose that living in solitude and 
 danger makes a human being tolerant It has the precisely 
 apposite effect. Arkwright was more frightened of a man
 
 102 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 who was not " quite right with society " than of any number 
 of enraged natives. With natives one knew where one was. 
 Whereas with a man like this . . . 
 
 Breton, anxious to please, made the mistake of showing his 
 anxiety. Seeing an enemy round every corner he was a little 
 theatrical, too demonstrative, too foreign. Arkwright dis- 
 liked his beard and the movement of his hands. " He 
 wouldn't have come, had he known. . . ." 
 
 Breton had, of course, at once perceived this man's hostil- 
 ity. Returning to England had involved, as he had known 
 that it must, a life of battles, skirmishes, retreats, wounds, 
 and every kind of hostility. People did not forget and even 
 had they desired to do so, his relationship family history pre- 
 vented Breton's oblivion. 
 
 He was ready for discourtesy, however eager he may have 
 been for friendship. But what the Devil, he thought, is this 
 fellow doing here at all ? If Brun brought him in he must 
 have told him just whom he was to meet, and if he came with 
 that knowledge about him, why then should he not behave 
 like a gentleman? Breton's half timid advance towards 
 friendliness now yielded to curt hostility. 
 
 Brun maintained his silence and only watched the two 
 men with an amusement just concealed. Conversation at 
 last ceased and the heat beat, in waves, through the open 
 windows and the air seemed now to be stiffened into bronze. 
 Beyond the room all the city lay waiting for the cool of the 
 evening. 
 
 Christopher liked Arkwright and Arkwright liked Christo- 
 pher. 
 
 Christopher had read one of Arkwright's books and spoke 
 of it with praise and also intelligence, and nothing goes to an 
 author's heart like intelligent appreciation from an unbiassed 
 critic. But Breton was not to be won over. He sat deep in 
 his chair and replied in sulky monosyllables whenever he was 
 addressed.
 
 THE TIGER 103 
 
 Christopher soon gave him up and the three men talked 
 amongst themselves. 
 
 The heat of the afternoon passed and a little breeze danced 
 into the room, and the hard brightness of the sky changed to 
 a pale primrose that had still some echo of the blue in its faint 
 colour. 
 
 The city had uttered no sound through the heat of the day, 
 but now voices came up to the windows: the distant crying 
 of papers, the call of some man with flowers, then the bells of 
 the Eound Church began to ring for evensong. 
 
 Breton sat there, wrapped in sulky discontent. In his 
 heart he was wretched. Christopher had deserted him ; these 
 men would have nothing to do with him. As was his nature 
 everything about him was exaggerated. He had come to 
 Brun's rooms that afternoon, feeling that men had taken him 
 back to their citizenship again. Now he was more urgently 
 assured of his ostracism than before. Who were these men 
 to give themselves these airs ? Because he had made one slip 
 were they to constitute themselves his judges ? These Bea- 
 minster virtues again the trail of his family at every step, 
 that same damnable hypocrisy, that same priggish assumption 
 of the right to judge. Better to die in the society of those 
 friends of his who had suffered as he had done, from the judg- 
 ment of the world no scorn of sinners there, no failure in 
 all sense of true proportion. 
 
 Christopher got up to go. He gave Arkwright his card. 
 (t Come in and dine one night and tell me all you're do- 
 ing " 
 
 " Of course I'll come," Arkwright said. " Only you're 
 jnuch too busy " 
 
 " Indeed no," said Christopher. " One day next week 
 you'll hear from me " 
 
 Breton got up. " I'll come with you," he said to Christo- 
 pher. 
 
 The two men went away together.
 
 104 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 When they were gone Arkwright said to Brim, " Now that's 
 the kind of man I like " 
 
 " Yes," said Brun, laughing. " Better than the other 
 fellow, eh?" 
 
 Arkwright smiled. " More my sort, I must confess." 
 
 Christopher and Breton did not speak until they reached 
 Oxford Circus. Here everything, flower-women, omnibuses, 
 grey buildings, grimy men and women was drowned in: 
 purple shadow. It might be only a moment's beauty, but now 
 beneath the evening star, frosted silver and alone in a blue 
 heaven, sound advanced and receded with the quiet rhythm 
 of water over sand. For an instant a black figure of an om- 
 nibus stood against the blue and held all the swell, the glow, 
 the stir at a fixed point then life was once more distrib- 
 uted. 
 
 Here, as they turned down Oxford Street Christopher broke 
 silence. He put his arm through Breton's : 
 
 " Well, Frank ? Sulks not over yet ? " 
 
 Breton broke away. " It's all very well, but I suppose I'm 
 to pretend that I like being insulted by any kind of fool who 
 happens to turn up. Good God, Chris, you'd think I was a 
 child by the way you talk to me." 
 
 " And so you are a child," said Christopher impatiently, 
 " and a thankless child too. Sometimes I wonder why I keep 
 on bothering with you." 
 
 Christopher was, like other Scotchmen, a curious mixture 
 of amiability and irascibility ; his temper came from his pride 
 and Breton had learnt, many years ago, to fear it. In fact, of 
 all the things in life that he disliked doing, quarrelling with 
 Christopher was the most disagreeable. Then there were 
 stubbornness and tenacity that were hard indeed to deal with. 
 But to-day he was reckless ; the heat of the afternoon and now 
 the beauty of the evening had both, in their different ways, 
 contributed to his ill-temper. He knew, even now, that after*
 
 THE TIGER 105 
 
 wards lie would regret every word that he uttered, hut he 
 let his temper go. 
 
 " I wonder that you do bother," he said. " Let me alone 
 and let me find my own way." 
 
 " Don't be a fool," Christopher answered. " There's noth- 
 ing in the world for us to quarrel about, only I can't bear to 
 see you giving such a wrong impression of yourself to 
 strangers sulking there as though you were five years 
 old " 
 
 "All very well," retorted Breton; "you. didn't hear the 
 way that fellow insulted me. I'll wring his neck if I meet 
 him again. I'll " 
 
 " Now, enough of that ! " Christopher's voice was stern. 
 " You know quite well, Frank, that you're hardly in a posi- 
 tion to wring anyone's neck. You remember the account I 
 gave you of my little dispute with your grandmother " 
 
 " Thank you," said Breton fiercely. " You remind me 
 rather frequently of the kind things you do for me." 
 
 And all the time something in him was whispering to him, 
 " What a fool you are to talk like this ! " 
 
 Christopher's voice now was cold : " That's hardly fair of 
 
 you. I'm turning up here " They paused. Breton 
 
 looked away from him up into the quiet blue recesses of the 
 side street. Christopher went on : "I only mean that if I 
 were you I should drop hanging on to the skirts of a family 
 who don't want you. I should set about and get some work 
 to do, cut all those rotten people you go about with, and 
 behave decently to strangers when you meet them. That's 
 all. Good night." 
 
 And Christopher was gone. 
 
 Breton stood there, for a moment, with the tide of hia 
 misery full upon him. Then he turned down Oxford Street 
 and drove his way through the crowds of people who were 
 coming up towards the Circus. He was alone, utterly alone 
 in all the world. Everyone else had a home to go to, he alone 
 had nowhere.
 
 106 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Only a few weeks ago lie had come back to England, with: 
 money enough to keep him alive and a fine burning passion 
 of revenge. That family of his should lament the day of his 
 birth, that old woman should be down on her knees, begging 
 his mercy. "Now how cold and wasted was that revenge! 
 What a fool was he wincing at the ill-manners of a stranger, 
 quarrelling with the best friend man ever had. 
 
 How evilly could Life desert a man and kill him with lone- 
 liness. 
 
 And then his mood changed; if Christopher and the rest 
 intended to cast him off, let them. There were his old friends 
 men and women who had been ostracized by the world as 
 he had been they would know how to treat him. 
 
 He turned into the silence and peace of Saxton Square and 
 there met Miss Rand, who was also walking home. The 
 statue was wrapped in blue mist, the trees were fading into 
 grey and the evening star seemed to have taken Saxton Square 
 under its especial protection. 
 
 " Good evening, Miss Rand." 
 
 " Good evening, Mr. Breton." 
 
 " Isn't it a lovely evening ? " 
 
 " Yes. But hasn't it been hot ? " 
 
 Miss Rand did not look as though she could ever, under any 
 possible circumstances, be hot, so neat and cool was she, 
 but she said yes it had been. 
 
 " Isn't it odd the way that as soon as it's fine people begin 
 to complain just as they do when it's wet ? " 
 
 " It gives them something to talk about just as it's giving 
 us something now," said Miss Rand, laughing. 
 
 Breton looked at her and liked her. She seemed so strong 
 and wise and safe. She would surely always give one the 
 kind of sensible encouragement that one needed. She would 
 be a good person in whom to confide. 
 
 They were on the top doorstep now. 
 
 "" No. I've got a key." He let her pass him. 
 
 !They stood for a moment in the hall together.
 
 THE TIGER 107 
 
 He spoke, as he always did, on the instant's inspiration : 
 
 "Miss Rand?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I'm alone such a lot in my evenings I mean. I wonder 
 might I come down sometimes and just talk a little ? You 
 don't know how bad thinking too much is for me, and if I 
 might " 
 
 " Why, of course, Mr. Breton whenever you like." 
 
 Seeing her now, he thought, just now, with her sudden 
 colour she looked quite pretty. 
 
 " I expect you could advise me help me in lots of 
 ways " 
 
 " If there's anything mother or I can do, Mr. Breton, 
 you've only got to ask Good night " 
 
 The door closed behind her. 
 
 He went up to his room, a less miserable man.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 
 
 " She gives away because she overflows. She has her own feelings, 
 her own standards; she doesn't keep remembering that she must be 
 proud." The Lesson of the Master. 
 
 THOSE weeks were, to Rachel, a golden time. She did 
 not pretend to deny or examine their golden quality 
 they were far, far better than she had imagined anything 
 could ever he, and that was enough. She had never, very 
 definitely, imagined to herself this " coming out," but it had 
 been, at any rate, behind its possible glories, a period of 
 terror. " All those people " was the way that, with fright- 
 ened eyes, she had contemplated it. 
 
 And now the kindness that there had been ! All the Lon- 
 don world had surely nothing to do but to pay her compliv 
 ments, to surround her with courtesies, to natter her every 
 wish. Even Aunt Adela had under the general enthusiasm, 
 blossomed a little into good-will, even Uncle Richard had re- 
 membered to wish her well, even the Duke had cracked ap^ 
 plause, and as for Uncle John ! ... he was like an amiable 
 conjurer whose best (and also most difficult) trick had 
 achieved an absolute triumph. 
 
 And behind all this there was more. May, June and the 
 early part of July showered such weather upon London as 
 had surely never been showered before, and these brilliant 
 days dressed, for Rachel, her brilliant success in cloth of gold 
 and emblazoned robes. She felt the presence of London for 
 the first time, as the hot weather came beating up the streets 
 and the brilliant whites and blues and greens and reds flung 
 back to the burning blue their contrast and splendour. 
 
 She felt, for the first time, her own especial London, and 
 
 109
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 109 
 
 now the grey cool cluster of buildings at one end of blazing 
 Portland Place and the dark green of the hovering park at 
 the other end had a new meaning for her, as though she had 
 only just come to live here and was seeing it all for the first 
 time. In the streets that hung about Portland Place she 
 noticed little shops little bakers and little shoemakers and 
 little tailors and little sweetshops and they were all furtive 
 and dark and shabby. 
 
 And these little shops led to the growth in her mind of an 
 especial picture of her square of London life, Portland Place 
 white and shining in the middle, with the Circus like a fair 
 at one end of it, the park like a mystery at the other end of it, 
 and, on either side, little secret shops and little dim squares 
 hanging about it, and Harley Street sinister and ominous by 
 its side. 
 
 Every element of Life and Death was there, the whole 
 History of Man's Journey Through This World to the Next. 
 
 Behind all the joy and overflowing happiness of these weeks 
 this sudden setting of London about her was consciously 
 present, 
 
 n 
 
 Since that meeting with Miss Rand on the day before the 
 ball Rachel had often spoken to her. They met at first by 
 accident and then Rachel had gone to Lizzie's neat little sit- 
 ting-room to ask for something and, after that, had looked in 
 for five minutes or so, and they had talked very pleasantly 
 about the hot weather and the theatres and the ways of the 
 world. 
 
 Behind all the splendour there was, for Rachel, the dark 
 shadow of suspense. Was it going to last? What was to 
 follow it? When would those awkward uncertainties that 
 had once kept her company return to her? Now whatever 
 else might be doubtful about Miss Rand, one thing was cer- 
 tain, that she would last, would remain to the end the samo 
 clean, reliable, honest person that she was now.
 
 110 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Imagine Lizzie Rand unreliable and she vanishes alto- 
 gether ! Rachel welcomed this and she also admired the won- 
 derful manner in which Miss Rand accomplished her gigantic 
 task. To run a house like this one and at the end of it all to 
 remain as composed and safe as though nothing had been 
 done! 
 
 Rachel herself might carry off a difficult situation by rid' 
 ing desperately at it, stringing her resources to their highest 
 pitch, but afterwards reaction would claim its penalty. 
 
 The penalties were never claimed from Miss Rand. 
 
 So, gradually, without any definite words or events, almost 
 without active consciousness, they became friends. 
 
 Rachel, suddenly, on one afternoon early in July, deter- 
 mined to go and pay Lizzie Rand a visit in her house. 
 
 That house in Saxton Square had acquired a new romantic 
 interest since Rachel had learnt that the abandoned, abomin- 
 able cousin, who defied Grandmamma and whose name one 
 was never to mention, lived there. Rachel had considered 
 this cousin more than once during these last months. She 
 had resented, from the first, the fact that he was to be given, 
 by the family, no chance of redemption. However bad he 
 had been (and he had apparently been very bad indeed) his 
 opportunity should have been offered to him. His life, she 
 knew, had been hard, he was, like herself, an orphan, and ho 
 hated, as she did, her grandmother. Of course, then, he in- 
 terested her. 
 
 She did not now say to herself that if this romantic cousin 
 had not been staying in that house she would not have con- 
 templated a visit to Lizzie. The Beaminster in her had just 
 now the upper hand, and the Beaminster simply said that 
 S-axton Square would be a nice place in which Uncle John, 
 who was, this afternoon, taking her out for a drive, might 
 leave her whilst he went to the club; later he could pick her 
 up and take her home. 
 
 The Beaminster part of her did not acknowledge the cousin. 
 
 Quite casually she said to Uncle John, " I want you to
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 111 
 
 leave me at Miss Rand's for half an hour this afternoon 
 she is helping me about some clothes." 
 
 Now Uncle John had during these last weeks continually 
 congratulated himself on the disappearance of Rachel's 
 irritable, unsettled self. Always lately one had been pre- 
 sented with her delightful young eager self and always she 
 had been anxious to agree with Uncle John's proposals. The 
 world had been going smoothly for him in other ways of late, 
 and no one had been disagreeable. How pleasant to keep the 
 world in this amiable condition and how dangerous to risk 
 anyone's displeasure ! 
 
 He had moreover almost (not quite) forgotten that his 
 rascal of a nephew was living in the same house as Miss Rand, 
 and, even if he did remember it, well, it was quite another 
 part of the house, and in all probability Miss Rand had never 
 spoken to Frank Breton, nor so much as said good day to him. 
 
 Finally it was so sumptuous a day, and Rachel was clothed 
 in so radiant a happiness and so fluttering and billowing and 
 chuckling a dress of white and blue, and he himself was look- 
 ing so handsome in the most shining of top-hats, the broadest 
 of black bow ties, the most elegant of pepper-and-salt trousers 
 and the whitest of white spats, that complaining or arguing or 
 disputing was utterly out of the question. 
 
 " Miss Rand's, my dear ? What's the address ? . . . Right 
 you are " so off they went. 
 
 She arrived to find Miss Rand, a round chubby lady in 
 bright pink, and a stranger having tea together. The chubby 
 lady was Mrs. Rand and the stranger was Francis Breton. 
 She had not expected that her arrival would cause such a dis- 
 turbance, nor that she herself would discover the right and 
 easy words so difficult to say. The little room seemed to 
 be crowded with furniture and tea-things, and she, quite de- 
 liberately, put off any consideration of her cousin until the 
 atmosphere had been allowed, a little, to settle around them. 
 
 Miss Rand looked at her almost sternly and was, plainly, 
 at a loss. Mrs. Rand was excited, and so nervous that her
 
 112 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 tea-cup rattled in her saucer and she stayed for quite a long 
 time with her finger in the tea under the delusion that she 
 was using a teaspoon, 
 
 Mrs. Band's absence of mind was generally due to the fact 
 that she read one novel a day all the year round and that her 
 thoughts, her hopes, her despairs were always centred in the 
 book of the day, although when to-morrow came she could 
 not tell you the author nor the title nor any of the incidents. 
 Had she been to a play, then, for twenty-four hours following, 
 it was the drama that held the field. 
 
 She spent her life in an amiable desire to remember, for the 
 sake of her friends, the plays and books of the past. But she 
 was never successful. As she said, " The attempt to keep up 
 with the literature and drama of the day, although praise- 
 worthy, demands all one's time and energy." 
 
 The Beaminster family alone of all other interests in the 
 wide world might be calculated to draw her out of the realms 
 of the imagination, and Eachel's entrance scattered all plots 
 to the four winds. 
 
 Rachel sat down and, for a little while, Mrs. Rand held the 
 field. She told them all that this visit of Miss Beaminster 
 was the most wonderful and unexpected thing, that it was like 
 a novel, and that she would never forget it. " But I always 
 do say, Miss Beaminster, that it's the unexpected that hap- 
 pens. Life's stranger than fiction is my opinion, and I don't 
 care who contradicts me I shall still hold it." 
 
 At length Rachel had leisure to consider her cousin and 
 then was, instantly, convinced that she had met him before. 
 She also knew that she could not have met him before. 
 
 In the strangest way he was connected with those early 
 dream years which, now, she struggled so sternly to forget. 
 The snow, the bleak sky, the silence, the sleigh-bells, some 
 strange voice speaking high in air as though from a distant 
 summit, and all this coming to her with a poignancy that, 
 even now, brought the tears to her heart and filled it to over- 
 flowing.
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 113 
 
 As she saw his thin body, his eyes, his head and the attitude 
 of the boy in all his movements and gestures she knew that, 
 for her, he belonged to that earlier world. She knew it so 
 certainly that, although he had not yet spoken, she could be 
 sure of the exact quality that his voice would have. 
 
 And confused with this recognition of him was the alarm 
 that she always felt when her early life returned to her. 
 
 Also she was young enough to be pleased at the agitation 
 into which her coming had thrown him. It meant, plainly, 
 so much to him ; although he was silent he leant forward in 
 his chair, with his eyes fixed upon her, waiting for his oppor- 
 tunity. 
 
 Miss Eand, watching him, saw how tremendously this meet- 
 ing with one of the family excited him, and, seeing him, her 
 heart filled with pity. " He's so young. It is hard. He does 
 want someone to look after him." 
 
 Rachel's happiness had, now, returned to her. She liked 
 them all so much, it was all so cosy, it was so good of them to 
 wish to see her. She talked with Mrs. Eand about the theatre 
 and the opera. 
 
 " We're going to the opera to-night the Meistersinger. 
 I've heard it in Munich twice, but never with Van Rooy, 
 who's singing to-night. I believe that's an experience one 
 never forgets " 
 
 Mrs. Rand did not really care about opera ; everything in 
 opera happened so slowly, except in Carmen, and even that 
 was better simply as a play. She liked musical comedy be- 
 cause there you could laugh, or plays like The Mikado, for 
 instance. 
 
 She was vague as to the Meistersinger and she had never 
 heard of Van Rooy, but she said, " I agree with you, Miss 
 Beaminster. There's nobody like him." 
 
 At that Breton struck in with something about music that 
 he had heard in strange places abroad, and then Rachel, look- 
 ing in his face for the first time, asked him about his travels. 
 
 As their eyes and voices met she was again overwhelmed
 
 114 
 
 with the vivid consciousness of their earlier meeting. She 
 thought, " If I were to ask him whether he remembered that 
 same snow and silence he would say yes I know he would 
 say yes." 
 
 Miss Rand, with eyes that were kind but very, very sharp, 
 watched them. She noticed the eagerness of Breton and 
 wished that he did not seem quite so anxious to please. " But 
 that's because he's young," she thought again. 
 
 And, now that he had begun, the words poured from him. 
 With gesticulation that was faintly foreign, ever so little 
 dramatic, he unpacked his adventures. He spoke as though 
 this were, beyond all time, .the moment when he must make 
 his effect. 
 
 He did it well, a born teller of tales. And yet Miss Rand 
 wished that he had not had to do it at all, that there had been 
 more reserve, less drama, less volubility. 
 
 Mrs. Rand, an older Desdemona, listened spellbound. 
 This was as good as getting a circulating library without 
 paying a subscription. As she said to her daughter after- 
 wards : " He really was as good as those novels by what's his 
 name you know who I mean those delightful stories 
 about those foreign places and the sea." 
 
 He spoke of the first time that he had actually been con- 
 scious of the jungle. " Of course I'd been into it dozens of 
 times often and often. But there was a day I remem- 
 ber as though it were yesterday when we went up in a boat 
 some river or another That river was the most secret 
 and sleepy green, and the place all closed about it as though 
 we'd gone into a box, and they'd closed the lid. Nothing but 
 the green river and all the forest getting closer and closer and 
 darker and darker, all blacker than you can imagine, and 
 worse still when it was lighter a kind of twilight and 
 you could see enough to make you shiver no sound but the 
 animals, and the branches and the great plants and brilliant 
 flowers all creeping and crawling Suddenly all in a 
 flash I wanted a lamp-post and a public house, a wet night
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 115 
 
 shining on streets, the rattle of a hansom I was suddenly 
 ghastly frightened, and we got deeper and deeper into it, and 
 human beings further and further behind, and only the 
 beastly monkeys and the alligators and the hideous flowers. 
 I can feel it still " 
 
 Rachel was enthralled. He called up, on every side about 
 her, that stern life of hers. He knew and she knew they 
 alone out of all the world. All her gaiety, her happiness, her 
 interest of the last weeks went now for nothing beside this 
 experience. He was not now related to the Beaminsters 
 to Grandmother, to Aunt Adela, to Uncle John but to her 
 and to that part of her that had nothing to do with the Bea- 
 minsters at all. The room, the commonplace furniture, the 
 pictures of " Lodore Falls " and " The Fighting Temeraire," 
 the little glimpses of the square beyond the window, these 
 things shared in the mystery. 
 
 Miss Rand had seen her caught and held. "She's very 
 young too," she said to herself a little grimly and a little 
 tenderly also " All too sensational to be true," she thought. 
 " There's a little bit of unreality in him all the way through." 
 
 Mrs. Rand said : " What do you think of alligators, Miss 
 Beaminster? Don't you agree with me that they must be 
 most unpleasant to meet? I always dislike their sluggish 
 ways when I see them in the Zoological Gardens." 
 
 Then upon them all broke the little maid with a husky 
 " Miss Beaminster's carriage, please, mem." 
 
 Rachel, as she said good-bye, was aware of him again as 
 " her scandalous cousin." He too was now awkward and 
 embarrassed. They said good-bye hurriedly and there was 
 between them both a consciousness that no word of the family 
 or their relationship had been mentioned. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Rand, when the door was closed, " no 
 one in the world could have been pleasanter. . . ."
 
 116 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 in 
 
 They did not arrive at the opera that night until the begin- 
 ning of the second act. It was Lady Carloes' box and she and 
 Uncle John and Roddy Seddon were Rachel's companions. 
 
 All the way home in the carriage Rachel had been silent 
 and Lord John, perceiving uneasily that some of the old 
 Rachel was back again, had said very little. 
 
 Her mind was confused. At one moment she felt that she 
 did not want to see him again, that he disturbed her peace 
 and worried her with memories that were better forgotten. 
 At another moment she could have returned, then and there, 
 to ask him questions, to know whether he felt this or that: 
 had he ever pictured such a place ? Had he . . . ? 
 
 And then sharply she dismissed such thoughts. She would 
 think of him no more and yet he did not look a villain. 
 How delightful to persuade the family to take him back. 
 Why should she not help towards a reconciliation ? She was 
 herself so happy now that she could not bear that anyone 
 should feel outcast or lonely they were all very hard upon 
 him. 
 
 It was not until she heard the voices of the apprentices 
 that thought of her cousin left her. As she groped her way 
 in the dark box and heard Lady Carloes' stuffy whisper (she 
 had the voice of a cracknel biscuit), "You sit there, my 
 dear Lord John here. That's right I knew you'd be 
 late because . . ." she was gloriously aware that quite close 
 to her the music that she loved best in all the world was trans- 
 forming existence. She touched Roddy's hand and then 
 surrendered herself. 
 
 She had been to Covent Garden now on four or five occa- 
 sions and from the first the shabby building with its old red 
 and gold, its air of belonging to any period earlier than the 
 one it was just then assuming, its attitude, above all, of in- 
 difference to its aspect all this had attracted her and won 
 her affection. London, she discovered, was always best when
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 11T 
 
 it was shabbiest and one could not praise it more highly than 
 by declaring, with perfect truth, that it was the shabbiest city 
 in the world. Now, feeling instinctively that English ap- 
 prentices (she had had already some taste of the Covent Gar- 
 den chorus) would act too much or too little, she closed her 
 eyes. 
 
 Now, as the music reached her, the old red and gold seemed 
 a cage, swinging, swinging higher and ever higher with old 
 Lady Carloes and Roddy Seddon and all the brilliant people 
 in the stalls, and all the enthusiastic people in the gallery, 
 swinging, swinging inside it. She could feel the lift of it, 
 the rise and fall, and almost the clearer air about her as it 
 rose into the stars. 
 
 Then there came to her the voice for which she had surely 
 all her days been waiting. It enwrapped her round and 
 comforted her, consoled her for all her sorrows, reassured her 
 for all her fears. It filled the cage and the air beyond the 
 cage, it was of earth and of heaven, and of all things good and 
 beautiful in this world and the next. 
 
 For the second time to-day her early years came back to 
 her; the voice had in it all those hours when someone's 
 tenderness had made Life worth living. " Life is immortal," 
 it cried. " And I am immortal, for I am Love and Charity, 
 and, whatever the wise ones may tell you, I cannot die." Sher 
 felt again the space and the silence and the snow, but now 
 with no alarm, only utter reassurance. And the cage swung 
 up and up and there were now only the stars and the wind 
 around and about them. 
 
 Then, in an instant of time, the cage, with a crash, was 
 upon the ground. Across her world had cut Lady Carloes' 
 voice " Oh yes, and there's Lord Crewner no, not in that 
 row the one behind next that woman with the silver 
 thing in her hair four from the end " 
 
 And Roddy Seddon's voice " Yes, I see him. Who's he 
 got with him ? " 
 
 Lady Carloes again : " I can't quite see Miss Mendle
 
 118 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 as likely as not . . . You know, old Aggie Mendle's daugh- 
 ter " 
 
 L * . 1 
 
 Rachel felt in that moment that murder was assuredly no 
 crime. Her hands shook on her lap and one of those pas- 
 sions, that she had not known for many months, caught her 
 eo that she could have torn Lardy Carloes' hair from her head 
 had the chairs been happily arranged. 
 
 Fortunately the interruption had been accompanied by 
 Beckmesser's entrance : that other voice was, for the moment, 
 still. Then, as Sachs caught up Beckmesser's serenade, there 
 came again: 
 
 " Well, of course if you can't go that week-end I dare say 
 she'll give you another. Only I know she's settling her dates 
 now." 
 
 " Yes, but it's a bore havin' to fix up such a long way ahead 
 and you don't know what old stumers you mayn't be boxed 
 up with " 
 
 Oh! It was abominable! She had been seeing a great 
 deal of Roddy during these last weeks, and ever since that 
 visit to Uncle Richard she had been conscious of an intimacy 
 that she had certainly not resented. 
 
 But any favour that he may have had with her was cer- 
 tainly now forfeited. His voice was again superior to Beck- 
 messer : 
 
 " And so of course I said that if they would go to such 
 shockin' rot I wasn't goin' to waste my evenin's " 
 
 She pushed her chair back against his knees : " Beg par- 
 don, Miss Beaminster, afraid I jolted you " 
 
 "Oh! Keep quiet! Keep quiet!" 
 
 Her whisper was so urgent, so packed with irritation that 
 instantly there was, in the box, the deepest of silences. 
 
 She sat forward again, anger choking her: she could not 
 recover any illusion. She hated him, hated him! The 
 crowd came on with a whirl. Then there was that last mo- 
 ment when the old watchman cries to the genial moon and 
 the silvered roofs.
 
 THE GOLDEN CAGE 119] 
 
 Then the curtain fell. 
 
 Without a word, her face white, her hands still trembling, 
 she rose to leave the box. She passed out into the passage 
 and found that Roddy was by her side. 
 
 " I say, Miss Beaminster, I am most awfully sorry, most 
 awfully. I hadn't any idea, really, that I was kickin' up 
 that row. I could have hit myself." 
 
 She walked down the passage and he followed her. She 
 was superb, she was indeed, with her head up, that neck, 
 those hands, those flashing eyes. He had never seen anyone 
 so fine. She ought always to be enraged. That instant de- 
 cided him. She was the woman for a man to have for his 
 own, someone who could look like someone at the head of your 
 table, someone with the right blood in her veins, some- 
 one . . . 
 
 " I could beat myself," he said again. 
 
 " How dared you " she broke out at last. They were, 
 
 by good luck, alone in the passage. " How could you ? 
 What do you come for if you care nothing for music at all ? 
 If you can hear a voice like that and then talk about your own 
 silly little affairs. . . . And the selfishness of it ! Of course 
 you think of nobody but yourself ! " 
 
 " Upon my word, Miss Beaminster ! " 
 
 " No, I've no patience with you. Go to your musical 
 comedy if you like, but leave music like this for people who 
 can appreciate it ! " 
 
 Oh ! she was superb ! Entirely superb ! She ought to be 
 like this every day of her life! To think that he should 
 have the chance of winning such a prize ! 
 
 Nevertheless she would not speak to him again and they 
 went back to the box. She would not speak to Lady Carloea 
 nor to her uncle. 
 
 Then as the loveliest music in all opera flooded the building 
 her anger began to melt. 
 
 He had looked so charmingly repentant and, after all, the 
 Meistersinger was long for anyone who did not really care for
 
 120 
 
 music and then they all did talk. It was only in the gal- 
 lery that one found the proper reverence. 
 
 Her anger cooled and then descended upon her the quintet, 
 and she was once again swept, in her cage, to the stars. 
 
 Now she and all live things seemed to be opening their 
 hearts together to God no shame now to speak of one's 
 deepest and most sacred thoughts. No fear now of God nor 
 the Archangels nor all the long spaces of Immortality. The 
 cage had ascended to the highest of all the Heavens, and there, 
 for a moment, one might stand, worshipping, with bowed 
 head. 
 
 The quintet ceased and Rachel felt that she could never be 
 angry with anyone again. She wished to tell him so. 
 
 At last, the revels were over, the " Prieslied " had won its 
 praises, Sachs had been acclaimed by his world, and they were 
 all in the lobby, waiting for carriages, talking, laughing, 
 hurrying to the restaurants. 
 
 Her face was lighted now with happiness. She touched 
 his arm. 
 
 " I didn't mean to be angry like that. It was silly and 
 rude of me. Forgive me, please " 
 
 He turned, stuttering. " Forgive you ! " He took her 
 hand " I ought to have been shot Yes, I'll never forgive 
 
 myself. You you " And then he could say no 
 
 more, but suddenly, raising his hat, bolted away. 
 
 As the door swung behind him Lady Carloes turned a per- 
 plexed face 
 
 " Why ! he said good night ! And now I shall never 
 find " 
 
 But Lord John appeared just then and all was well. 
 
 Going back, in the dark brougham, Rachel put her head on 
 her uncle's shoulder and, exhausted with excitement and 
 happiness and something more than either of them, cried her 
 eyes away.
 
 "What of Adam cast out of Eden? 
 
 (And the Bower and the hourl) 
 Lo! with care like a shadow shaken 
 He kills the hard earth whence he was taken." 
 
 DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI. 
 
 TO the ordinary observer Lizzie Hand was, during that 
 hot July, as she had ever been. 
 
 The servants in 104 Portland Place could detect no change, 
 but then they did not search for one, having long regarded 
 Miss Eand as a piece of machinery, symbolized by that broad 
 shining belt of hers, happily calculated to fit, precisely, 
 the duties for which it was required. 
 
 But Miss Eand herself knew that there was a sharp, ac- 
 curate, shrewd piece of machinery named Miss Rand, and a 
 breathing, emotional, uncertain human being called Lizzie. 
 There had always been those two, but since the inadequacy of 
 her mother and sister had been confronted with the stern 
 necessity of making two ends meet, Miss Eand had been in 
 constant demand and Lizzie had only, by her occasional ob- 
 trusion, made life complicated and disturbing. 
 
 Miss Eand had told herself that Lizzie was now almost an 
 anachronism, that the emotions in life that aroused her were 
 bad cheap emotions, and that this was an age that demanded 
 increasingly of women a hard practical efficiency without 
 sentiments or enthusiasms. 
 
 These forcible arguments had for a time kept Lizzie in a 
 darkened background; it was some years since Miss Eand 
 had been disturbed. But now in the warm weather of 1898 
 
 Lizzie had not only reappeared, but had leapt, an insistent, 
 
 121
 
 122 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 shining presence, into urgent life. Miss Rand faced her 
 what had created her? A little, the weather, the beauty of 
 those brazen days A little, Rachel's coming out into the 
 world, an adventure that had stirred the whole house into a 
 new and sympathetic excitement a little, these things. 
 But chiefly, and no pretence nor shame could conceal the fact, 
 did this new Lizzie owe her creation to the appearance of 
 Francis Breton. 
 
 Lizzie Rand had had, from her birth, a romantic heart; 
 she had had also a prosaic practical exterior, and a mind as 
 hard and clear, if necessary, as her own most lucent type- 
 writer. 
 
 The romantic heart had, throughout these years, been there, 
 and now this romantic, scandalous, youthful, engaging un- 
 fortunate had called it out. 
 
 She was never so warmly attracted as by someone lacking, 
 most obviously, in those qualities with which she herself 
 abounded. That people should be foolish, impetuous, care- 
 less, haphazard commended them straight to her keeping. 
 " Poor dears " had their instant claim upon her. Her 
 mother and sister were " poor dears " and she had suffered 
 from them now during many years. Francis Breton was 
 most assuredly a " poor dear ! " 
 
 Here the Duchess a little flung her shadow and confused 
 the mind. Although Lizzie had never seen that splendid 
 figure she was, nevertheless, acutely conscious of her. She 
 was conscious of her through her own imagination, through 
 her mother, finally through Lady Adela. 
 
 Her imagination painted the old lady, the room, the furni- 
 ture fantastic, strangely coloured, always with dramatic ef- 
 fect. Her picture was never precisely defined, but in its 
 very vagueness lay its terrors and its omens. 
 
 Miss Rand, the most practical and collected of young 
 women, could never pass the Duchess's door without a 
 " creep." 
 
 Through her mother the Duchess came to her as the head of
 
 LIZZIE AND BEETON 123 
 
 society. Society had never troubled Lizzie's visions of Life. 
 She had, in her years with the Beaminsters, seen it pass be- 
 fore her with all its comedy and pathos, and the figures that 
 had been concerned in that procession had seemed to her 
 exactly like the figures in any other procession except that 
 they were dressed for their especial " subject." But oddly 
 enough when, through her own observation, this life, seen 
 accurately at first hand, amounted only to any other life, seen 
 through the eyes of her mother, it achieved another size. 
 
 She knew that her mother was a foolish woman, that her 
 mother's opinions on life were absurd and untrue, and yet 
 that dim, great figure that the Duchess assumed in her 
 mother's eyes, in some odd way impressed her. 
 
 Lastly, and most strikingly of all, came Lady Adela's con- 
 ception to her. Lady Adela was in terror of her mother; 
 everyone knew it, friends, relations, servants. Lizzie herself 
 saw it in a thousand different ways saw it when Lady 
 Adela spoke of her, saw it in the way that Lady Adela ad- 
 dressed Dorchester when that grim woman was interviewed 
 by her, saw it when Lady Adela was suddenly summoned to 
 that room upstairs. 
 
 Lizzie, during the hours when she was writing from Lady 
 Adela's dictation or working with her, found her dry, stupid, 
 sometimes kind, never emotional. It was to her, therefore, 
 the most convincing proof of the Duchess's power, this emo- 
 tion, this alarm drawn from so dry a heart 
 
 Now the influence that the Duchess had upon Lizzie was 
 always a confused one. Persuasion from this source followed 
 lines of reasoning that were false and led to some conclusions 
 that were muddled and untrue. 
 
 Through such minds as her mother's and Lady Adela's no 
 clear truth could come, and yet it was through such minds as 
 these that the Duchess's influence descended upon Lizzie. 
 
 It descended now with regard to Francis Breton. It told 
 Lizzie that Breton had been proved by society to be a scoun- 
 drel, that he should be no worthy man's friend, that he be-
 
 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 longed to that world, the world of shadows and past mis- 
 adventures, that no proper soul might, with honesty, 
 investigate. 
 
 This was what the Duchess told to Lizzie and perhaps by 
 so doing increased her sympathy with the sinner. 
 
 n 
 
 It must not be supposed that Mrs. Rand had not, at first, 
 been unsettled by scruples. 
 
 The fact that Breton was, in the eyes of the Beaminster 
 family, a ne'er-do-well who had brought disgrace upon the 
 family name had, for a time, distressed her, but the romantic 
 hope of being herself the agent of his restoration to his grand- 
 mother, and the delightful manners of the scoundrel when he 
 appeared, killed her alarm. Mrs. Rand's mind was a dark 
 misty place except when the candles of romance were lit; 
 when they flamed, blown by the wind though they might be, 
 there was, around the candlesticks at any rate, a real and even 
 splendid blaze. 
 
 One afternoon, towards the end of July, Mrs. Rand meetr 
 ing Breton on their doorstep was moved to ask him whether 
 he would come in and spend the evening with them, if he had 
 nothing better to do. They had only a simple little meal, 
 and would he please not bother to dress ? Breton said that 
 he would be delighted. 
 
 Mrs. Rand had been, that afternoon, to a romantic comedy 
 in which ladies and gentlemen with French accents had made 
 love and escaped together and been caught together and been 
 married together. Mrs. Rand had gone quite alone into the 
 pit and had returned with tears in her eyes and affection for 
 all the world. 
 
 So she had asked Mr. Breton to dinner. 
 
 After a while, however, she was a little uncertain. Daisy 
 was away in the country with friends. How would Lizzie 
 then like this unexpected visitor? Mrs. Rand was, quite 
 frankly, frightened of Lizzie and complained of her a good
 
 LIZZIE AND BRETOK 125 
 
 many times a week to Daisy. Lizzie was for ever interfer- 
 ing with innocent pleasures ; Lizzie was mean and unroman- 
 tic and unimaginative; Lizzie was thoroughly tiresome. 
 
 The fact that Lizzie worked incessantly for her mother and 
 her sister never occurred to Mrs. Rand at all. 
 
 Lizzie objected to all innocent amusement and she would, 
 in all likelihood, object now. 
 
 However, when Mrs. Rand with a fearful mind said, " Oh, 
 Lizzie dear, I've had such a delightful afternoon. I went to 
 Love and the King and it was too charming you ought to 
 go, really and Mr. Breton's coming to dinner to-night," 
 Lizzie only smiled a little and asked whether there was food 
 enough. Lizzie was so strange. . . . 
 
 Alone in her bedroom Lizzie wondered at her excitement. 
 She looked at her trim, neat figure in the glass, with the hair 
 so gravely brushed, with her collar and her cuffs, with her 
 compact businesslike air : what had she to do with excitement 
 because a young man was coming to dinner ? " It must be 
 because I'm tired this heat," she said to the mirror. And 
 the mirror replied, " You know that you are glad because 
 your sister Daisy is away." 
 
 And to that she had no answer. 
 
 When he arrived he was grave and seemed sad and tired, 
 she thought. Dinner was a serious affair and Mrs. Rand, 
 who disliked people when they refused to respond to her 
 moods, wished, at first, that she had not asked him, and felt 
 sure that there was much truth in what people said about hia 
 wickedness. 
 
 Then, when dinner was nearly over, he brightened up and 
 told stories and was entertaining. Mrs. Rand noticed that he 
 drank much claret, but this was, after all, a compliment to 
 her housekeeping. By the end of dinner Mrs. Rand almost 
 loved him and wished that Daisy had been here to entertain 
 him. 
 
 Of course it must be dull for a man with only a plain cut- 
 and-dried girl like Lizzie for company.
 
 126 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Lizzie, meanwhile, knew that he was waiting for an oppor- 
 tunity of speech. She had read an appeal in his eyes when he 
 had first entered the room, and now she sat there, curiously, 
 ironically amused at her own agitation. " Lizzie Rand," she 
 said to herself, " you're only, after all, the kind of fool that 
 you despise other people for being. What are you after in 
 this galere ? " 
 
 Nevertheless even now, in retrospect, how arid and sterile 
 seemed all those other active useful days. One moment's 
 little grain of sentiment and a life's hard work goes for noth- 
 ing in comparison. 
 
 After dinner, when the lamp burnt brightly and the furni- 
 ture seemed to be less anxious to fill every possible space and 
 the windows were opened into the square with its stars and 
 grey shadows, the room seemed, of a sudden, comfortable, and 
 Mrs. Rand, sitting in an arm-chair, with a novel on her lap 
 and spectacles on her nose, was almost cosy. She had left, 
 before going to her matinee, Just a Heroine at one of its most 
 thrilling crises, and Lizzie knew that the talk with Breton 
 depended for its very existence on the relative strength of 
 the play and the novel. If Love and the King were the more 
 powerful, then would Mrs. Rand make a discursive third. 
 But no, for a moment there was a pause, then, indecisively, 
 Mrs. Rand took up her book. For a while she talked to 
 Breton over its pages, then the light of excitement stole into 
 her eyes, her soul was netted by the snarer, Breton was for- 
 gotten as though he had never been. 
 
 Their chairs were by the open window and a very little 
 breeze came and played around them. In the square there 
 was that sense of some imminent occurrence, a breathless 
 suggestion of suspense, that a hot evening sometimes carries 
 with it. The stars blazed in a purple sky and a moon was 
 full rounded, a plate of gold; beneath such splendour the 
 square was cool and dim. 
 
 " You mustn't think mother rude," Lizzie said with a little
 
 LIZZIE AND BRETON 
 
 smile. " If she once gets deep into a book nothing can tear 
 her from it." 
 
 He said something, but she could see that he was not think- 
 ing of Mrs. Rand. It was always in the evening, she thought, 
 when uncertain colours and shadows filled the air, that he 
 looked his best He touched, now, as he had touched on that 
 day of their first meeting, a note of something fine and strange 
 someone, very young and perhaps very foolish and impetu- 
 ous, but someone armoured in courage and set apart for some 
 great purpose. 
 
 He sat back in his chair, flinging, every now and again, 
 little restless glances beyond the window, pulling sometimes 
 at his beard, answering her absent-mindedly. Then, sud- 
 denly he began, fiercely, looking away from her 
 
 " Miss Rand, I've got an apology to make to you " 
 
 His voice was so low that she could only catch the words 
 by leaning forward " To me ? " 
 
 " Yes I've been wanting to speak all these weeks. It 
 seemed right enough before, but since I've known you I've 
 felt ashamed of it as though I'd done something wrong." 
 
 " What is it, Mr. Breton ? " Her clear grave eyes en- 
 couraged him. 
 
 " Why I came to this house, took my rooms, simply 
 because I knew that you were here " 
 
 " That I was here ? " 
 
 " Yes. I was looking about in this part of the world for 
 rooms. I wanted to be near Portland Place, you know. 
 I came here and old Mrs. Tweed talked a lot and then, after 
 a time, I said something about my grandmother. And 
 then she told me that someone who lived here did secretarial 
 work for my aunt " 
 
 He stopped abruptly. 
 
 " Well ? " said Lizzie, laughing. " All this is not very 
 terrible." 
 
 " Then, you see, I determined to stay. I was full of
 
 128 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 absurd ideas just at the time, thought that I was going to 
 take some great revenge I was quite melodramatic. And 
 so I thought that I'd use you, get to know you and then, 
 through you do something or another." 
 
 Lizzie eyed him with merriment. " Upon my word, what 
 were you going to make me do? Carry bombs into your 
 aunt's bedroom or set fire to the Portland Place house ? Tell 
 me, I should like to know " 
 
 " Ah," he said, " it's all very well for you to laugh. It's 
 very kind of you to take it that way, but lots of women 
 wouldn't have liked it. They'd have thought it another of 
 the things I'm always accused of doing, I suppose." 
 
 " No," said Lizzie gravely, " it was all perfectly natural. 
 I understand. I should have done just the same kind of 
 thing, I expect, if I'd been in your place." 
 
 The fierceness of his voice showed her that he had been 
 brooding for weeks, and that life was, just now, harder than 
 lie could endure. 
 
 " You can trust me a great deal farther than that, Mr. 
 Breton," she said. 
 
 " The other night," he began, " you said that I might talk 
 to you. I've been pretty lonely lately and it would help 
 me if " 
 
 " Anything you like," she assured him. 
 
 " Besides, there's more than that," he went on. " You've 
 heard of course you must have heard all kinds of things 
 against me. You're in the enemy's camp and I don't suppose 
 they measure their words. I don't know why you've been so 
 decent to me as you have after what you must have 
 heard " 
 
 " Don't worry your head about that," she said. " We all 
 have our enemies." 
 
 " No, but now that we're friends I'd like you to know my 
 side of it all. I don't want to make myself out a hero or 
 blacken all the other people, but there is something to be 
 said for me there is there is "
 
 LIZZIE AND BRETON 129 
 
 He muttered these last words with the deepest intensity. 
 He seemed to fling them through the window into the square, 
 as though he were standing out there, on his defence, before 
 all those listening lighted windows. 
 
 " I've been a fool a thousand times. I've done silly 
 things often and once or twice bad, rotten things, but all 
 these others these virtuous people who are so ready to judge 
 me, have they been any better ? 
 
 " My father was a scoundrel, although I loved him and 
 would love him now if he came back but he was just as 
 bad as they make 'em and there's no use in denying it. He'd 
 tell you so himself if he were here. He broke my poor 
 mother's heart and killed her. I don't remember her I 
 was no age at all when she died but I've got an old picture 
 of her, kept it always with me; she must have been rather 
 like my cousin Rachel, who was here the other day " 
 
 Lizzie watched his face. There had left him now all that 
 hint of insincerity, of exaggeration that she had noticed when 
 he had talked before. She knew that he was telling her now 
 absolutely the truth as he saw it. 
 
 " She died and after that I was taken about Europe with 
 my father. We lived in almost every capital in Europe 
 Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna, everywhere. Sometimes we 
 were rich, sometimes poor. Sometimes we knew the very 
 best people, sometimes the very worst. Sometimes I'd go to 
 school for a little, then I'd suddenly be taken away. My 
 father was splendid to me then; the best-looking man you 
 ever saw, tall, broad, carried himself magnificently the 
 finest man in Europe. I only knew, bit by bit, the things 
 that he used to do. It was cards most of the time, and he 
 taught me to play, of course, as he taught me to do everything 
 else. 
 
 " When I was eighteen my eyes were opened I tried to 
 leave him But I loved him and I verily believe that I was 
 the only human being in the world that he cared for. Any- 
 way, he died of fever and general dissipation when I had just
 
 130 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 come of age, and I came home to England with a little montfy 
 and great hopes of putting myself right with the world." 
 
 As he had talked to her he had gathered confidence; her 
 silence was, in some way to him, reassuring and comforting. 
 Some p -ople have the gift of listening without words so 
 warmly, with such eloquence that they reassure and console 
 as no speech could ever do. This was Lizzie's gift, and 
 Breton, depending, more than most human beings, upon thri 
 protection of his fellows, gathered courage. 
 
 " My father had always taught me to hate my grand' 
 mother. He painted her to me as I have since found her - 
 remorseless, eaten up with pride, cruel. I came home to 
 England, meaning to lead a new life, to he decent as I'd 
 always wanted to be. 
 
 " Well, they wouldn't have me, not one of them. They 
 pretended to at first ; and my Uncle John at least was sincere, 
 I think, and was kind for a time, but was afraid of my grand- 
 mother as they all were. Christopher you know him of 
 course was a real friend to me. He'd stood up for my 
 father before and he stood up for me now. But what was the 
 use ? I was wild when I saw that my grandmother wag 
 against me and was going to do her best to ruin me. I just 
 didn't care then what was the good of it all ? Other peo- 
 ple encouraged me. The set in London that hated my people 
 would have done something with me, but I wouldn't be held 
 by anyone. 
 
 " I'm not excusing myself," he said quietly, looking away 
 :from the window and suddenly taking his judgment from, 
 her eyes. 
 
 " I know you're not," she said, smiling back to him. 
 
 " Cards finished me. I'd always loved gambling I love 
 it still my father had given me a good education in it. 
 There were plenty of fellows in town to take one on and 
 Oh! it's all such an old story now, not worth digging up. 
 OBut there was a house and a table and a young fool who lost 
 all he possessed and well, did for himseJi It. had all been
 
 LIZZIE AND BKETOtf iai 
 
 square as far as I was concerned, but somebody had to be a 
 scapegoat and two or three of us were named. It was hushed 
 up for the sake of the young fellow's people, but everyone 
 knew. Of course they all said, as far as I was concerned, 
 ' Like father like son,' and I think I minded that more than 
 anything " 
 
 " Oh ! I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lizzie said. 
 
 " I give you my word of honour that it had all been straight 
 as far as I was concerned gambling just as anyone might. 
 That's what made me so mad, to think of the rest of them 
 all so virtuous and good and then going off to Monte Carlo 
 and losing or winning their little bit just as I'd done. 
 
 " I tried to brazen it out for a bit, but it was no good. 
 Christopher still stuck by me otherwise it was well, the 
 Under Ten, you know " 
 
 "The Under Ten?" 
 
 " Yes all the men and women who've done something 
 once done one of the things that you mustn't do. It 
 mayn't have been very bad, not half so bad as the things 
 the cruel, mean things that most people do every day of 
 their lives, but, once it's there, you're down, you're under. 
 There's a regular colony of them here in London ; their life's 
 amusing. There they are, hanging on here, keeping up some 
 pretence of gaiety, some kind of decency, waiting, hoping 
 that the day will come when they'll be taken back again, when 
 everything will be forgotten. They pretend, bravely enough, 
 not to mind their snubs, not to notice the kind people, once 
 their friends, who cut them now. Every now and again they 
 make a spring like fish to the top of the water, see the sun, 
 hope that the light and air are to be theirs again, after all 
 and then back they are pushed, down into the dark, their ele- 
 ment now, they are told. Oh! there's comedy there, Miss 
 Hand, if you care to look for it." 
 
 She said nothing; the fierce bitterness in his voice had 
 made him seem older suddenly, as though, in this portion of 
 his journey, he had spent many, many years.
 
 132 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " I must cut it short you'll have had enough of this. I 
 couldn't stand it. I left London and went abroad. After 
 that, what didn't I do ? I was everywhere, 1 did everything. 
 Sometimes I was straight, sometimes I wasn't. I was always 
 bitter, wild with fury when I thought of that old woman 
 of her complacency, sitting there and striking down all the 
 poor devils that had been less fortunate than she. All those 
 years abroad I nourished that anger and, at last, when I 
 thought that I'd been abroad long enough, that people would 
 have forgotten, perhaps, and forgiven, I came back. I came 
 back to be revenged on my grandmother and to re-establish 
 myself. I'd got some money, enough for a little annuity, 
 and I was careful now I wasn't going to make any mis- 
 takes this time." He laughed bitterly. " One doesn't learn 
 much with age. What a fool I was! I've got the reputa- 
 tion I had before, whether I'm good or bad. It would all be 
 hopeless utterly hopeless if it weren't for one 
 thing 
 
 She looked up, and as she glanced at him, could feel thu 
 furious beating of her heart. 
 
 " I'd go back at once I've almost gone back already 
 not abroad, that never again for long but back to my 
 friends, the unfortunates " He laughed. " They're 
 anxious to have me. They'll welcome me. I can have my 
 cards and the rest then, with no one to object or to lecture 
 and I'll be done for quite nicely, completely done for." 
 
 Then he pulled himself together, squared his shoulders. 
 " But one thing keeps me," he said. " Something's hap- 
 pened in the last few weeks I've met somebody " 
 
 " Yes," she said almost in a whisper. 
 
 " Somebody who's made it worth while for me to fight on 
 a bit." She could feel his agitation : his voice, although he 
 tried very hard to control it, was shaking. Then he laughed, 
 raised his voice and caught and held her eyes with his. 
 
 " But there, Miss Rand. I've talked a fearful lot, only I 
 wanted to tell you I had to tell you. And now if you
 
 LIZZIE AND BRETON 133 
 
 feel that you'd rather not know me, you've only got to 
 say so." 
 
 She laughed a little unsteadily. 
 
 " Thank you for taking me into your confidence. You 
 shall never regret it. I'm glad you're going to hold on, and, 
 after all, we're all doing that more or less." 
 
 " It's done me a world of good talking like this. It's what 
 I've been wanting for months." 
 
 She quieted her emotion. Looking out into the stars she 
 knew that she believed every word that he had said. She 
 thought that she valued Truth above every other quality; 
 the directness that there was in Truth; its honesty and 
 clarity. He might not always be honest with her, but she 
 would never forget that he had, on this night, at least, spoken 
 no falsehood. 
 
 Life her work, her surroundings, Portland Place, her 
 home this was full of falsehood and deceit and muddle. 
 
 Here, this evening, at last, was honesty. 
 
 They said no more, but sat there silently and listened to 
 the echo of dance music from some house. 
 
 Mrs. Rand, whom their conversation had lured into oblivion 
 of them, was roused now by their silence. 
 
 She looked up. " It's quite splendid," she said, " you must 
 read it, Lizzie. The part about the Riviera is lovely." 
 Then, slowly remembering, " Really, Mr. Breton, I'm afraid 
 you must consider me very rude." 
 
 He came towards her, assuring her that his evening had 
 been delightful. 
 
 Lizzie was happy, happier than she could ever remember 
 to have been before. She felt her cheeks burn. She leant 
 out of the window to cool them. She flung back, over her 
 shoulder : 
 
 " By the way, Mr. Breton a piece of gossip. Your 
 cousin is to marry Sir Roderick Seddon ! " 
 
 She could not see him. He said nothing. Mrs. Rand 
 said:
 
 134 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " Keally, Lizzie ! How interesting ! How long's that been 
 announced ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it isn't announced. I don't believe that he's even 
 asked her, but all the house knows it. It's settled. I be- 
 lieve she likes him immensely and, of course, the Duchess is 
 devoted to him." 
 
 Anything would do to talk about. What did it matter? 
 Only that she should keep on talking so that they should not 
 see how happy she was how happy ! 
 
 He said good night, rather sharply; his voice was con- 
 strained as though he too were keeping in his emotion. 
 
 After he had gone Mrs. Rand said, " I don't like him, my 
 dear. I can't help it you may laugh at me but my im- 
 pressions are always right. He hardly spoke to me all the 
 evening." 
 
 " Why, mother, you were reading. How could he ? " 
 
 " That's all very well, but I don't like him. And I believe 
 he's in love with his cousin. He went quite white when you 
 spoke about the engagement." 
 
 " Mother how absurd you are. He's only seen hef 
 once " 
 
 " Well, my dear, that's a book you ought to read ; really, 
 I haven't enjoyed anything so much for weeks. I 
 simply " 
 
 Up in her bedroom Lizzie flung wide her window and 
 laughed at the golden moon. Then she lay, for hours, staring 
 at the pale light that it flung upon her ceiling. 
 
 Oh! what a fool she was! But she was happy, happy, 
 happy. And he needed someone to look after him ha 
 did, indeed!
 
 CHAPTEK XI 
 
 HER GRACE'S DAY 
 
 Duchess had suffered, during the last five or six 
 A years, from sleeplessness, and throughout these hot days 
 and nights of June and July sleep almost deserted her. 
 Grimly she gave it no quarter, allowing to no one that she 
 was sleeping badly, pretending even to Christopher that all 
 was well. 
 
 Nevertheless those long dark hours began to tell upon her. 
 She had known many nights sleepless through pain, certain 
 nights sleepless through anxiety, but they, terrible though 
 they had been, had not worn so stern a look as these long 
 black spaces of time when all rest and comfort seemed to be 
 drawn from her by some mysterious hand. 
 
 To herself now she admitted that she dreaded that moment 
 when Dorchester left her ; she began to do what she had never 
 in her life done before, to fall asleep during the daytime. 
 Small mercy to anyone who might attract any attention to 
 those little naps. 
 
 She fell asleep often towards six or seven and, therefore, 
 without any comment, Dorchester, seeing her fatigue, left 
 her to sleep until late in the morning. She had not for many 
 years left her room before midday, but she had been awake 
 with her correspondence and the papers by half-past seven 
 at the latest. Now it was often eleven before she woke. 
 
 She found that she did not wake with the energy and 
 freshness that she had always known before. About her 
 there always hovered a great cloud of fatigue something 
 not quite present, but threatening at any moment to descend. 
 
 On a certain morning late in July she awoke after two or 
 three hours' restless sleep. As she woke she was conscious 
 
 135
 
 136 
 
 that those hours had not removed from her that threatening 
 cloud : she heard a clock strike eleven. Dorchester was draw- 
 ing back the curtains and from behind the blinds there leapt 
 upon her a blazing, torrid day. 
 
 Her bedroom carried on the touch of fantasy that her other 
 room had shown; she was lying in a red lacquer Japanese 
 bed that mounted up behind her like a throne. Her wall- 
 paper was an embossed dull gold and the chairs were carved 
 Indian, of black ebony. 
 
 Lying in bed she appeared very old and ugly; the sharp 
 nose was exceedingly prominent and her white hair scattered 
 about the pillow gave her face the colour of dried parchment. 
 
 Dorchester brought her her chocolate and her letters and 
 The Times and the Morning Post. 
 
 " Another terribly hot day, your Grace." 
 
 " Yes I suppose so." As she took her letters she felt, 
 for the first time in her life, that it would perhaps be better 
 to lie in bed for the rest of her life and conduct the world 
 from there. 
 
 She put the letters down and stared at the day 
 
 " Draw the curtains again, Dorchester, and kindly ask Lady 
 Adela if she will be so good as to come and see me in a quarter 
 of an hour's time." 
 
 When Dorchester had gone she lay back and closed her eyes 
 and dozed again, whilst the chocolate grew cold and the births 
 and deaths and marriages grew aged and stale. She did not 
 care, she did not want to see her daughter . . . she did not 
 want to see anyone, nor was there anything now in the world 
 worth her energy or trouble. Her body, being now at ease, 
 was called back to days, brighter days, days filled with 
 thrilling events and thrilling people, days when the world 
 was a world and not a dried-up cinder. Those were 
 men . . . those were women . . . and then, suddenly, she 
 was conscious first that her daughter was speaking and then 
 that her daughter was a tiresome fool.
 
 HER GRACE'S DAY 137 
 
 She sat up a little and her nightdress fell back showing a 
 neck bony, crinkled and yellow. 
 
 " I said a quarter of an hour," she snapped. 
 
 " It is a quarter of an hour, mother," said Lady Adela. 
 
 Lady Adela hated and dreaded these morning interviews. 
 In the first place she disliked the decorations of her mother's 
 bedroom, thought them almost indecent, and could never be 
 comfortable in such surroundings. She was also aware, by 
 long experience, that her mother was always at her worst at 
 this hour in the morning and many were the storms of temper 
 that that absurd bed and those unpleasant black chairs had 
 witnessed. Thirdly she knew that she herself looked her 
 worst and was her weakest amongst these eccentricities and 
 shadowed by this dim light. 
 
 She waited now whilst her mother fumbled her letters. 
 
 " There's your chocolate, mother," she said at last. " It'll 
 be cold." 
 
 The Duchess was looking at her letters, but was absorbing 
 only a little of their contents. She was summoning all her 
 will to her aid; she wanted to order the blind to be pulled 
 down, to command her daughter to avoid her presence for at 
 least a week, to scatter her correspondence to the four corners 
 of the earth, and to see none of it again ; at the same time she 
 was driving into her brain the fact that before Adela, of all 
 people in the world, she must be alert and wise and wonderful ; 
 Adela, the ugliest and most foolish of living women, must 
 see no weakness. 
 
 " Shall I read your letters to you, mother ? " 
 
 She did not answer; slowly, steadily at last, her will was 
 flooding her brain. She could feel the warmth and the colour 
 and the strength of it pervading again her body. The day 
 did not now appear of so appalling a heat and the weight of 
 the things to be done was less heavy upon her. 
 
 Lady Adela, meanwhile, watching her mother was struck 
 once again by that chill dismay that had alarmed her first on
 
 138 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 that May evening, after the visit to the picture gallery. In 
 that half-light her mother did seem very, very old and very, 
 very feeble. Lady Adela had a dreadful temptation to say in 
 a brusque sharp voice, " What do you let your chocolate get 
 cold like that for ? Why don't you get someone to read your 
 letters sensibly to you instead of groping through them like 
 that ? " and at the mere horror of such a thought a shudder 
 shook her and her heart began wildly to beat. Let once such 
 words as those cross her lips and an edifice, a wonderful, 
 towering temple raised by submissions and subduals and 
 self-denials, would tumble to the ground. 
 
 For some moments the struggle in Lady Adela's breast was 
 sharp, then by a tense dominion of her will she produced once 
 again for herself the Ceremonial, the Terror, the agitated, 
 humble Submission. 
 
 " Julia Massiter," the Duchess said, " has asked Rachel 
 for the last week-end in July She'll go of course " 
 
 " Yes," said Lady Adela. 
 
 " Roddy Seddon is going " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Roddy is going to marry Rachel. He's coming to see me 
 this afternoon." 
 
 Lady Adela was silent. 
 
 " A very suitable business. I'd intended it for a long 
 tima" Then, after a pause 
 
 " You may tell Dorchester I will dress now." 
 
 Lady Adela, conscious, as she left the room, of the relief of 
 her dismissal, joyfully yielded that relief as witness 
 
 The Terror was still there, and she was glad. 
 
 n 
 
 Very different, however, at three in the afternoon. Now 
 she sat in her high black chair waiting for Roddy Seddon. 
 Very difficult now to imagine that early discouragement of 
 the morning. Magnificent now with her black dress and 
 flashing eyes and white hair, waiting for Roddy Seddon.
 
 HEE GRACE'S DAY 
 
 This that she had long planned was at length to come to 
 pass. Roddy Seddon was to be united to the Beaminster 
 family, never again to be separated from it. 
 
 Of Rachel she thought not at all. She had never liked 
 Rachel; indeed it was a more positive feeling than that, 
 Alone of all the family was Rachel still in rebellion ; even the 
 Duke, although he was so often abroad or in the country 
 (he hated London), was submissive enough when he was with! 
 them. But Rachel the old woman knew that she had not 
 touched. 
 
 Frightened yes. The girl hated that evening half-hour 
 and would give a great deal to avoid it, but the terror that she 
 showed did not bring her any closer to her grandmother's 
 power ; she stood outside and away. 
 
 The Duchess had attempted to influence the girl's brain, to 
 catch some trait, some preference, some dislike, that she could 
 hold and use. 
 
 Still Rachel's soul was beyond her grasp, beyond even her 
 guessing at But she knew Roddy Seddon she knew 
 Roddy Seddon as no one knew him. And Roddy Seddon 
 knew her. 
 
 Even when he was a boy he had known her as no one else 
 knew her. He had seen through all her embroideries and dis- 
 guises, had known where she was theatrical and why she was 
 so, had discovered her plots and prides, her defeats and 
 victories and together they two, Pagan to the very bone of 
 them, had laughed at a credulous, superstitious world. 
 
 The London that knew Roddy Seddon thought him a 
 country bumpkin with dissipated tastes and an amiable heart. 
 But she knew him better than that He was not clever 
 no. He was amazingly innocent of books, he had no intellec- 
 tual attainments whatever yet had he received any kind of 
 education, she knew that he might have had one of the finest 
 brains in the country. 
 
 He had preferred dogs and horses and the simple enjoy- 
 ments of his sensations.
 
 140 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Bowing to the outward rules and laws of the modern world 
 he was less modern than anyone she had ever known. 
 
 Pagan root and branch Pagan. In his simplicities, in 
 his complexities, in his moralities and immoralities, in his 
 kindnesses and cruelties Pagan. 
 
 When they were together it was astonishing the number of 
 trappings that they were able to discard. They were Pagan 
 together. 
 
 But Kachel ? Rachel ? 
 
 Well, Rachel did not matter. It would be a rather good 
 sight to see Rachel suffer, to watch her proud spirit up against 
 something that she could not understand. 
 
 And meanwhile the Beaminster family was strengthened 
 by a great addition and the campaign against this new gen- 
 eration, that refused to be led, that wished to lead, that 
 thought itself so very, very brilliant, should go victoriously 
 forward. . . . 
 
 " Sir Roderick Seddon, your Grace." 
 
 As she looked at the healthy and red-faced Roddy sitting 
 opposite to her, for an instant, some sharp warning, some fore- 
 ordained consciousness of trouble to come, bade her pause. 
 She knew that a word from her, now, would be enough to 
 prevent the match. He would not prosecute it were she 
 against it. After all, ought Roddy to marry anybody? 
 Could a girl, as ignorant of the world as Rachel, put up any 
 ftght against Roddy's simple complexities ? 
 
 What, after all, did Roddy think of the girl? Did he 
 imagine that he was in love with her? Did he know her, 
 nnderstand her? 
 
 Then, looking at him, the affection that she had for him 
 the only affection that she had for anyone in the world 
 swept over her. This marriage would bind him to her, 
 would give her another ally before the world yes, it should 
 go on. 
 
 She smiled at him. 
 
 " Well, Roddy, have you no news for me, now ? "
 
 HEE GRACE'S DAY 141 
 
 He had been silent, gazing before him, his brows puckered. 
 
 Now he smiled back at her. 
 
 " Well, there's been the usual doin's the last week or two. 
 I've been dancin' every night till I'm tired. 'Bout time for 
 the country agen " 
 
 " Have you been down to Seddon at all ? " 
 
 " Yes. Two nights last week all dried up Place 
 wants me a bit oftener down there " 
 
 " What's this I hear about young Olive Ormond marrying 
 Besset Crewe's daughter ? " 
 
 " So they say can't imagine it myself. The girl's about 
 eighty-four and a half and he's the most awful kid. Saw 
 them at the opera the other night " 
 
 " What about Scotland this summer, Roddy ? Are you 
 going?" 
 
 " Don't think so. Depends " 
 
 Then there was silence. The little conversation had been 
 as stiff as it was possible a conversation could be. The China 
 dragons must have wondered never before so constrained a 
 dialogue between these two ! 
 
 Now another pause, then suddenly Roddy, his hands 
 clutching one another, his face redder than ever 
 
 " I want I wonder dash it have I your leave to ask 
 your granddaughter to marry me ? " 
 
 She laughed. 
 
 " Really, my dear Roddy, you've been very long about it 
 coming out with it, I mean. Didn't you know and didn't I 
 know that that's what you came for to-day ? " 
 
 " Well then, may I ? " 
 
 She paused and watched his anxiety. Between both of 
 them there hung, now, the recollection of so many things 
 conversations and deeds and thoughts known to both of them, 
 so many, many things that no others in all the world could 
 know. She waited for his eyes, caught them and held them. 
 
 " Are you in love with her ? " 
 
 " Yes that is she's splendid "
 
 142 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 " You haven't known her very long and you're a little 
 impulsive, ain't you, Roddy, about these things ? " 
 
 " No I don't know her now. But we've seen a lot of 
 one another these last months a fearful lot. She's oh ! 
 hang it ! I never can say things but she's a brick." 
 
 " Do you think she'll accept you ? " 
 
 " How can any feller tell ? I think she likes me she's 
 odd " 
 
 " Yes she is very. She's a mixture she's very 
 young and she won't understand you." 
 
 His eyes were suddenly troubled and, as she saw that 
 trouble, she was alarmed. He really did care. . . . 
 
 " Yes, I know I don't understand myself. I'm wild 
 sometimes I wish I weren't " 
 
 " Marriage is going to make you a model character, Roddy. 
 Of course I'm glad but it won't be easy, you know. And 
 she won't be easy." 
 
 " I want her though. I've never thought of marriage be- 
 fore. I do want her." 
 
 " My dear Roddy, you speak as though she were a sheep or 
 a dog. ' It's only her first season. Don't you think you'd 
 better wait a little ? " 
 
 " No. I want her now." 
 
 " Well, you're definite enough " She paused and then, 
 in a voice that had, in spite of her, real emotion, " You have 
 my consent. You've got my blessing." 
 
 He rose and came clumsily towards her. 
 
 " You don't know I'm no use at words, but I'm dam.' 
 grateful Rippin' of you ! " 
 
 For a second he touched her dried, withered hand how 
 cold it was ! and in this hot weather, too. 
 
 " You'll ask her at Julia Massiter's next week ? " 
 
 " Expect so I say you are " 
 
 Then he sat down again. The room was relieved of an 
 immense burden ; once more they were at ease together.
 
 HER GRACE'S DAY 143 
 
 " The other night " he said, bending forward and chuck- 
 ling ever so }ittle. 
 
 m 
 
 Lady Carloes, Agnes Lady Farnet, and old Mrs. Brunning 
 were coining to play bridge with her. The ceremonial was 
 ever the same ! They arrived at half-past nine and at half- 
 past eleven supper for four was served in the Duchess's little 
 green room, behind her bedroom (a little room like a box with 
 a green wall-paper, a card-table and silver candlesticks). 
 They played, sometimes, until three or four o'clock in the 
 morning; the Duchess played an exceedingly good game and 
 Mrs. Brunning (a bony little woman like a plucked chicken) 
 was the best bridge player in London. The other two were 
 moderate, but made mistakes which allowed the Duchess the 
 free use of her most caustic wit and satire. 
 
 Lord John came just before dinner as he always did 'for a 
 few minutes every evening. He stood there, fat and smiling 
 and amiable and, as always, a little nervous. 
 
 "Well, John?" 
 
 She liked John the best of her children, although he was, 
 of course, the most fearful fool, but she liked his big broad 
 face and he was always clean and healthy; moreover, she 
 could use him more easily than any of them. 
 
 " Bridge to-night, mother, isn't it ? " 
 
 " Yes. Not so hot this evening. Just give me that book. 
 Turn the lamp up a little no not that one. The do 
 Goncourt book. Yes. Thank you." 
 
 " Anything I can get for you, mother ? Anyone I can send 
 to you ? " 
 
 He was thinking, as he smiled down at her, " She's old to- 
 night old and tired. This hot weather. . . ." 
 
 She looked up at him before she settled herself 
 
 " Roddy Seddon came this afternoon " 
 
 " Yes. I know."
 
 144 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Suddenly his heart began to beat He had known, during 
 all these last weeks, of what the common talk had been. He 
 knew, too, what his conscience had told him, and he knew, too, 
 how perpetually he had silenced that same conscience. 
 
 " He asked me whether he had my permission to propose 
 to Rachel " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Of course I gave it him. I thought it most suitable in 
 every way." 
 
 Now was Lord John's moment He knew, even as it de- 
 scended upon him, what was the right thing to do. He must 
 protest Roddy Seddon was not the right man to marry 
 Rachel, Rachel who was to him more than anyone in the 
 world 
 
 He must protest 
 
 And then with that impulse went the old warning that 
 because his mother seemed to him older and feebler to-night 
 than he had ever known her, therefore if he spoke now, it 
 would involve far more than the immediate dispute. There 
 was a sudden impulse in him to risk discomfort, to risk a 
 scene, to break, perhaps, in the new assertion of his authority, 
 all the old domination, to smash a tradition to pieces. 
 
 He glanced at his mother. She met his eyes. He knew 
 that she was daring him to speak. After all to-morrow would 
 be a better time she was tired now he would speak then. 
 His eyes fell, and after a pause and a word about some in- 
 different matter, he said good night and went. 
 
 IV 
 
 Once, in some early hour of the morning when the candles 
 were burning low, the thought of Rachel came to her. 
 
 Even as she noticed that her hand shone magnificently 
 with hearts she was conscious that the girl stood opposite to 
 her, there against the green wall, straight and fierce, all black 
 and white, looking at her. 
 
 Christopher? John? . . .
 
 HER GRACE'S DAY 145 
 
 For a second her brain was clouded. Might she not have 
 attempted some relationship with the girl ? Given her some 
 counsel and a little kindness? She must have been lonely 
 there in that great house without a friend. She was going 
 now into a very perilous business. 
 
 She pushed the weakness from her. Her eyes were again 
 upon the cards. 
 
 " Hearts," she said. The odd trick this game and it was 
 her rubber. The dying flame rose in the silver sconces and 
 the four old heads bobbed, wildly, fantastically, upon the 
 walL
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I 
 
 RACHEL sat in the train with Aunt Adela and Uncle 
 John: they were on their way to Trunton St. 
 Perth, Lord Massiter's country house. It was a July day 
 softened with cool airs and watered colours ; trees and fields 
 were mingled with sky and cloud ; through the counties there 
 was the echo of running streams, only against an earth fading 
 into sky and a sky bending and embracing earth, sharp, with 
 hard edges, the walls and towers that man had piled together 
 showed their outlines cut as with a sword. 
 
 Over all the country in the pale blue of the afternoon sky a 
 great moon was burning and the corn ran in fine abundance 
 to the summit of the hills. 
 
 Rachel, as the train plunged with her into the heart of 
 Sussex, was gazing happily through the window, dreaming, 
 almost dozing, feeling in every part of her a warm and grate- 
 ful content. Opposite to her Aunt Adela, gaunt and with the 
 expression that she always wore in trains as of one whose 
 person and property were in danger, at any instant, of total 
 destruction, read a life of a recently deceased general whose 
 widow she knew. Uncle John, with three illustrated papers, 
 was interested in photographs of people with one leg in the 
 air and their mouths wide open; every now and again he 
 would say (to nobody in particular), " There's old Reggie 
 Cutler with that foreign woman you know " or " Fancy 
 Shorty Monmouth being at Cowes after all this year you 
 know we heard " 
 
 Rachel had been having a wonderful time that was the 
 great fact that ran, up and down, through her dozing thoughts. 
 Yes, a wonderful time. It was surely, now, a century ago, 
 
 146
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I 
 
 that strange period when she had dreaded, so terribly, Her 
 plunge. 
 
 That day, after her visit to the Bond Street gallery, when it 
 had all seemed simply more than she could possibly encounter, 
 those talks with May Eversley (who, by the way, had just 
 announced herself as engaged to a middle-aged baronet) when 
 the world had frowned down from a vast, incredible height 
 upon a miserably terrified midget. Why ! the absurdity of it ! 
 It had all been as easy, simply as easy as though she had 
 been plunged in the very heart of it all her life. 
 
 Followed there swiftly upon that the knowledge that Roddy 
 Seddon was to be, for this same week-end, at Lady Massiter's. 
 Rachel did not pretend that, ever since that Meistersinger 
 night at the opera she had not known of his attentions to her 
 impossible to avoid them had she wished, impossible to 
 pretend ignorance of the meaning that his inarticulate sen- 
 tences had, of late, conveyed, impossible to mistake the laugh- 
 ing hints and suggestions of May and the others. 
 
 She did not know what answer she would give did he ask 
 her to marry him. At that concrete suggestion her doze left 
 her and, sitting up, staring out at the wonderful day into 
 whose heart muffled lights were now creeping, she asked her- 
 self what, indeed, was her real thought of him. 
 
 He was to her as were Uncle John and Dr. Christopher > 
 safe, kind, simple. He appealed to everything in her that 
 longed for life to be clear, comfortable, without danger. She 
 loved his happiness in all out-of-door things horses and 
 dogs and fields and his little place in Sussex. Ever since that 
 visit to Uncle Richard's fans she had suspected him of other 
 appreciations and enthusiasms, perhaps she might in time 
 encourage those hidden things in him. 
 
 Above all did she find him true, straight, honest Lies, 
 little mannerisms, disguises, these were not in him, he was as 
 clear to her as a mirror, she would trust him beyond anyone 
 she knew. 
 
 He did not touch in any part of him that other secret, wild.
 
 148 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 unreal life of hers, and indeed that was, in him, the most 
 reassuring thing of all. 
 
 The Rachel who was in rebellion, to whom everything of 
 her London life, everything Beaminster, was hateful, whose 
 sudden memories and instincts, whose swift alarms and fore- 
 warnings were so shattering to every clinging security that 
 life might offer this Rachel knew nothing of Roddy 
 Seddon. 
 
 He was there to take her away from that, to drive it all into 
 darkness, to reassure her against its return, and marriage with 
 him would mean release, security, best of all freedom from 
 her grandmother who knew, so well, that life in her and loved 
 to play with that knowledge. Her colour rose and her eyes 
 shone as she thought of what this so early escape from the 
 Portland Place house would mean to her. Already, in her 
 first season, to be free of it all to be free of humbug and 
 deception Oh ! for that would she not surrender everything 
 in the world ? 
 
 Roddy, as she pictured him, with his clean life, his love of 
 nature, his kindliness, seemed, just then, the safest refuge 
 that would ever be offered to her. 
 
 And at that, without reason, she saw before her her cousin 
 Francis Breton. Several times she had met him since that 
 first occasion at Lizzie Rand's. Once again at Lizzie's and 
 twice in Regent's Park when she had been walking with 
 May. 
 
 Yes that was all. Thinking of it now the meetings 
 appeared to her almost infinite. Between each actual en- 
 counter intimacy seemed to leap in its progress, and although, 
 on at least two of them, he had only walked with her for the 
 shortest period, yet, always with them, she was conscious of 
 the number of things that, between them, did not need to be 
 said knowledge that they shared. 
 
 In all this there was, with her, a confusion of motives and 
 sensations that, at present, refused to be disentangled. For 
 one thing there was, in all of this, a furtiveness, a secrecy, that
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I 149 
 
 she loathed. Against that was the persuasion that it would be 
 the finest thing in the world for her to bring him back into the 
 Beaminster fold, not, of course, that he should remain there 
 (he was far too strong and adventurous for that), but that, 
 accepted there, he could use it as a springing-off board for 
 success and fortune. Let her once, as the situation now was, 
 say a word to Uncle John or the others, and that of course was 
 the end. . . . 
 
 She knew, quite definitely, that now she wished that she 
 had never met him. 
 
 He had been, during these weeks, the only influence that 
 had drawn that other Rachel to the light. It was always that 
 other Rachel that met him someone alarming, rebellious, 
 conscious of unhappiness, and apprehensive, above everything, 
 that in some hidden manner she was being untrue to her real 
 self. 
 
 At such moments it was as though she had blinded some 
 force within her, muffled it, stifled it, because her way through 
 the world was easier with it so muffled, so stifled. 
 
 At some future time, what if there should leap out upon her 
 that muffled figure, bursting its bonds, refusing any longer to 
 be silenced, proclaiming the world no easy, comfortable 
 place, but a battle, a fierce, unresting war ? 
 
 When she thought of Breton it was as though she knew 
 herself for a coward, as though he had threatened to expose 
 her for one, and as though (and this was the worst of all) 
 something in her was eager that he should 
 
 Against this there was the peace, the security that Roddy 
 could offer her. . . . 
 
 Beaminster security, perhaps nevertheless. . . . 
 
 They were at Trunton St. Perth. The little station glit- 
 tered in the evening air. It was all suddenly thrilling. Who 
 would be there ? What might not happen before Monday ?
 
 150 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 In the high beautiful hall where they all stood about and 
 had tea she could see who they were. There was a girl whom 
 she had met on several occasions this season, Nita Raseley, 
 there was a large florid cheerful person who was, she dis- 
 covered, Maurice Garden, the well-known and popular 
 novelist, there was his wife, there was a thin intellectual 
 cousin of Lady Massiter's, Miss Rawson, old and plain enough 
 for her cleverness to have turned to acidity, Roddy Seddon 
 and, of course, Lord and Lady Massiter. 
 
 Lord Massiter was large and florid like the novelist, and 
 when they stood together by the fireplace foreign customs 
 and languages were suddenly absurd, so English was the 
 atmosphere. Lady Massiter was also large, but she had the 
 kind and warm placidity that makes some women the type 
 of all maternity. She would be, Rachel felt, a sure resource 
 in all time of trouble and she would also be entirely un- 
 satisfactory as an intimate personal friend. She would, like 
 philanthropists and clergymen, love people by the mass, 
 never by the individual. 
 
 Nita Raseley was pink and white, with large blue eyes that 
 confided in everyone they looked at. Her laugh was a little 
 shrill, her clothes very beautiful, and men liked her. 
 
 So there they all were. 
 
 She had said good day to Roddy and then had moved away 
 from him, governed by some self-consciousness and the con- 
 viction that Nita Raseley's blue eyes were upon her. 
 
 It was all very cheerful and very English as they stood 
 talking there, and the doors beyond the hall showed through 
 their dark frames green lawns and terraces soaked in evening 
 light. It was all very, very comfortable. 
 
 As she dressed for dinner Rachel had her windows open, so 
 hot was the night, and she could watch the evening star that 
 shone with a wonderful brilliance above a dark little wood 
 that crowned a rise beyond the gardens. She had a maid
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGEK I 151 
 
 who was very young indeed ; this was her first place, but she 
 had, during the three months, learnt with great quickness and 
 had attached herself to her mistress with the most burning 
 devotion. She was a silent, unusual girl and kept herself 
 apart from the rest of the servants. 
 
 Rachel as she sat before her dressing-table could see in that 
 mirror the dark reflection of the twilit garden. 
 
 " It's a lovely place, Lucy " 
 
 " Yes, Miss Rachel." 
 
 " Are you glad to get away from London ? " 
 
 " It has been hot there these last weeks." 
 
 Rachel met in the glass the girl's black eyes. They were 
 searching Rachel's face. 
 
 " Lucy, would you rather live in London or in the coun- 
 try?" 
 
 " I don't mind, Miss Rachel." Then after a little pause : 
 " I hope I've given satisfaction these last weeks ? " 
 
 " Why, yes, of course." 
 
 " Then I hope, miss, that you'll allow me to stay with you 
 whether in London or the country." 
 
 The colour mounted to Rachel's cheeks. 
 
 " I hope there'll be no need for any change," she said. 
 
 She found when she came down to the drawing-room that 
 Monty Carfax had arrived. Monty Carfax was the chief of 
 the young men who were, just at that time, entertaining 
 London dinner-tables. About half a dozen of God's creatures, 
 under thirty and perfectly dressed, with faces like tomb- 
 stones and the laugh of the peacock, went from house to house 
 in London and mocked at the world. 
 
 They belonged, as the mediaeval jesters belonged, each to 
 his own court, and Monty Carfax, certainly the cleverest of 
 them, was attached to the Beaminster Court and served the 
 Duchess by faith, if not by sight. 
 
 Rachel hated him and always, when she found herself next 
 to him, wrapped herself in her old farouche manner and be- 
 haved like an awkward schoolgirl.
 
 152 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 She was terribly disappointed at discovering that he was 
 going to take her in to dinner to-night ; he knew that she dis- 
 liked him and felt it a compliment that a raw creature fresh 
 from the schoolroom should fail to appreciate him; on this 
 occasion he devoted himself to the elderly Massiter cousin on 
 this other side throughout dinner they happily undressed 
 the world and found it sawdust. 
 
 Rachel meanwhile found Maurice Garden her other com- 
 panion. He genially enjoyed his dinner and talked in a loud 
 voice and prepared the answers that he always gave to ladies 
 who asked him when he wrote, whether he thought of hig 
 plots or his characters first, and " she did hope he wouldn't 
 mind her saying that of all his books the one " 
 
 He frankly liked these questions and was taken by surprise 
 when Rachel said : 
 
 " I've never read any of your novels, Mr. Garden, so I 
 won't pretend " 
 
 He asked her what she did read. 
 
 " Have you ever read anything by an author called Peter 
 Westcott ? " 
 
 "Westcott? Westcott? ... Let me see ... Westcott? 
 . . . Well now One of the young men, isn't he ? " 
 
 " Yes. He wrote a book called Reuben Hallard." 
 
 " Ah yes. I remember about Reuben Hallard had quite 
 a little success as a first book. He's one of your high-brow 
 young men, all for Art and the rest of it. We all begin like 
 that, Miss Beaminster. I was like that myself once " 
 
 She looked at him coolly. 
 
 " Why did you give it up ? " 
 
 " Simply didn't pay, you know not a penny in it. And 
 why should there be? People don't want to know what a 
 young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story. All young 
 men think the same green leaves, moons and stars and lots 
 of symbols, you know all good enough if they don't expect 
 people to pay for it." 
 
 " I think Reuben Hallard's a fine book," she said, " and so
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I 153 
 
 are some of the others. After all, everyone doesn't want only 
 a plot in a book." 
 
 He looked at her with patronizing kindness. " Well, you 
 see if your Mr. Westcott doesn't change. Every writer wants 
 an audience whatever he may pretend, and the best way to 
 get a audience is to give the audience what it wants. It 
 needs unusual courage to sit on a packing-case year after 
 year and shave in a broken looking-glass " 
 
 She looked round the table. Everyone was happy. The 
 butler was fat and had the face of a Roman emperor, the food 
 was very, very good, Mta Raseley and Roddy laughed and 
 laughed and laughed 
 
 Suddenly Rachel's heart jumped in her body. Oh! she 
 was glad; glad that Roddy cared for her and would look 
 after her, because otherwise she didn't know what violence 
 she might suddenly commit, what desperations she might 
 not engage upon, what rebels and outlaws she would not 
 support 
 
 What Outlaws! And then, looking beyond the thickly 
 curtained windows, she could fancy that she could see one 
 gravely standing out there on the lawn, standing with his one 
 arm and his pointed beard and his eyes appealing to be let in. 
 
 Then there was an ice that was so good that Peter Westcott 
 and Francis Breton seemed more outcast than ever. 
 
 m 
 
 After dinner, when the men had come into the drawing- 
 room, they all went out into the gardens. It was such a night 
 of stars as Rachel had never seen, so dense an army that all 
 earth was conscious of them ; the sky was sheeted silver, here 
 fading into their clouded tracery, there, at fairy points draw- 
 ing the dark woods and fields up to its splendour with lines 
 of fire. The world throbbed with stars, was restless under 
 the glory of them God walked in all gardens that night. 
 
 At first Nita Raseley, Monty Carfax, Rachel and Roddy 
 went together, then, turning up a little path into the little
 
 154 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 wood that rose above the garden, Rachel and Roddy were 
 alone. 
 
 They found the trunk of a tree and sat down Behind 
 them the trees were thin enough to show the stars, below them 
 in a dusk lit by that glimmering lustre that starlight flings 
 a glow that would be flame were it not dimmed by distance im- 
 measurable they could see the lawns and hedges of the 
 garden and across the dark now and again some white figure 
 showed for an instant and was gone. The house behind the 
 shadows rose sharp and black. 
 
 Roddy looked big and solid sitting there. Rachel sat, 
 even now uncertain that she did not see Francis Breton in 
 front of her, looking down, as she did, into the shadowy 
 garden. 
 
 " I hope," she said abruptly, " that you don't like Monty 
 Carfax." 
 
 " I've never thought about him," he said. " He's cer- 
 tainly no pal of mine why ? " 
 
 " Because I hate him," she said fiercely. " What right has 
 he got to exist on a night like this ? " 
 
 " He's always supposed to be a very clever feller," Roddy 
 said slowly. " But I think him a silly sort of ass knows 
 nothin' about dogs or horses, can't play any game, only talks 
 clever to women " 
 
 " I can't bear that sort of man and I don't like Mr. Garden 
 either. He's so fat and he loves his food." 
 
 " So do I," said Roddy quite simply. " I love it too. It 
 was a jolly good dinner to-night." 
 
 She said nothing and then, when he had waited a little, he 
 said anxiously : 
 
 " I say, Miss Beaminster, we've been such jolly good friends 
 all these weeks. And yet sometimes Pm afraid you 
 think me the most awful fool " 
 
 She laughed. " I think you are about some things, but 
 then so am I about a good many things most of your 
 things "
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I 155 
 
 " Look here, Miss Beaminster I wish you'd help me 
 about things I'm an ass in. You can, you know I'd be 
 most awfully glad." 
 
 " What," she said, turning round and facing him, " are the 
 things you really care about ? " 
 
 " The things ? . . . .care about ? " 
 
 "Yes really " 
 
 " Well ! Oh ! animals and bein' out in the open and 
 shootin' and ridin' and fishin' any old exercise and 
 comin' up to town for a buck every now and again, and then 
 goin' back and seein' no one, and my old place and oh ! I 
 don't know," he ended. 
 
 " You wouldn't tell anyone a lie, would you, about things 
 you liked and didn't like ? " 
 
 " It wouldn't be much use if I did," he said, laughing. 
 " They'd find me out in a minute " 
 
 " No, but would you ? If you were with a number of peo- 
 ple who thought art the thing to care about and knew nothing 
 about dogs and horses, would you say you cared about art 
 more than anything ? " 
 
 " No," he said slowly. " No but sometimes, you see, 
 pictures and music and such do please me like anything 
 I can't put into words, but I might suddenly be in any old 
 mood for pictures, or your uncle's fans, or dogs or the 
 Empire or these jolly old stars Why, there, you see I just 
 
 let it go on the mood, I mean, till it's over " Then 
 
 he added with a great sigh, "But I am a dash fool at ex- 
 plainin' " 
 
 " But I know you wouldn't be like Mr. Garden or Mr. 
 Carfax just pretending not to like the thing because it's the 
 thing not to. Or like Aunt Adela, who picks up a phrase 
 about a book or picture from some clever man and then uses 
 it everywhere." 
 
 " I should never remember it a phrase or anythin' I 
 never can remember what a feller says " 
 
 " Oh ! I know you'd always be honest about these things.
 
 156 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 I feel you would about everything. It's all these lies that 
 are so impossible: I think I've come to feel now after this 
 first season that the only thing that matters is being straight. 
 It is the only thing if a person just gives you what they've 
 got what they've got, not what someone else is supposed to 
 have. May Eversley used to say that people's minds are like 
 soup thick or clear but they're only thick because they 
 let them get thick with other people's opinions you don't 
 mind all this ? " she said, suddenly pausing, afraid lest he 
 should be bored. 
 
 " It's most awfully interesting" he said from the bottom of 
 his heart. 
 
 " There are some men and women I've met one or two 
 who're just made up of Truth. You know it the minute 
 you're with them. And they'll have pluck too, of course 
 Courage goes with it. Our family," she ended, " are of 
 course the most terrible liars that have ever been 
 ever " 
 
 " Oh ! I say " he began, protesting. 
 
 " Oh ! but yes they run everything on it. My uncle 
 'Richard ran through Parliament beautifully because he never 
 said what he meant. And Aunt Adela and Uncle John, 
 although he's a dear. But then my grandmother brought 
 them up to it. My grandmother would have about three 
 clever people and then muddle all the rest so that the three 
 clever ones can have everything in their hands " 
 
 " Look here," he broke in, " I'm most awfully fond of your 
 grandmother we're tremendous pals " 
 
 " You may be I hate her. Oh ! I don't hate her with 
 melodrama, I don't want to strangle her or beat her face or 
 burn her, but I'm frightened of her and she's always making 
 me do things I'm ashamed of. That's the best reason for 
 hating anyone there is." 
 
 " But she's such a sportsman. One of the old kind. 
 One ." 
 
 " Oh ! I know all that you can say. I've heard it so many
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER I 157 
 
 times. But she's all wrong. There isn't any good in her. 
 She's just remorseless and selfish and stubborn. She thinks 
 she ran the world once and she wants to do it still." 
 
 " That's all rather fine, I think," said Roddy. " I agree 
 with her a bit. I think most people have got to be run 
 they just can't run themselves, so you have to put things into 
 them." 
 
 " Well, that's just where we differ," she said sharply. 
 u It isn't so. That's where all the muddle comes in. If 
 everyone were just himself without anything borrowed 
 Oh ! the brave world it'd be " 
 
 Then she laughed. " But I'm all wrong myself, you know. 
 I'm as muddled as anyone. I've got all the true, real me 
 there, but all the Beaminster part has slurred it over. But 
 I've got a horrid fear that Truth gets tired of waiting too long. 
 One day, when you're not expecting it, it comes up and says 
 1 "Now you choose your only chance. Are you going to use 
 me or not ? If not, Fm going ' How awful if one didn't 
 realize the moment was there, and missed it." 
 
 She was laughing, but in her heart that other woman in 
 her was stirring. For a startled, trembling second the wood 
 seemed to flame, the gardens to blaze with the challenge : 
 
 " Are you, for the sake of the comfort and safety of life, 
 playing false ? Which way are you going ? " 
 
 She burst into laughter, she caught Roddy by the arm. 
 " Oh ! I've talked such nonsense It's getting cold 
 we've got to go in. Don't think I talk like that generally, Sir 
 Roderick, because I don't I " 
 
 She was nervous, frightened. The stars were so many and 
 it was so dark and Roddy no longer seemed a protection. 
 
 " I know it's late Look here, I'm going to run Race 
 me " 
 
 She tore for her very life out of the little wood, felt him 
 pounding behind her, seized, with a gasp of relief, the lights 
 and the voices 
 
 She knew, with joy, that Roddy was closing the door behind
 
 158 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 her and that the garden and the stars and the wood were shut 
 into silence. 
 
 For a little while, in the drawing-room, she talked excitedly, 
 laughed a great deal, even at Monty Carfax's jokes. 
 
 She knew that they were all thinking that she was pleased 
 because she had been with Roddy. She did not care what 
 their thoughts were. 
 
 At last in her room she cried to Lucy " Pull the curtains 
 tight Tighter Tighter Those stars they'll get 
 through anything." 
 
 When at last Lucy was gone she lit her candle and lay there, 
 hearing the clocks strike the hours, wondering when the day 
 would come.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER II 
 
 RODDY, dozing after a night of glorious sleep, lay on 
 his back and swung happily to and fro. 
 
 The footman who was valeting him had pulled up the blind 
 and drawn aside the curtains, and the garden came to him, 
 not as on last evening, weighted with its canopy of stars, but 
 now asserting its own happiness and colour and freshness. 
 
 The man said : " The bathroom is the last door down the 
 passage on your right, sir. Breakfast is at half-past nine. 
 It has just gone eight. What clothes, sir ? " 
 
 Eoddy stared at him and smiled. After a little time, the 
 man enquired again : " Which suit will you wear this morn- 
 ing, sir ? " 
 
 " Dark blue." Eoddy, still happily floating somewhere 
 near the ceiling floating with delicious lightness " Dark 
 blue Dark blue Dark blue " 
 
 For a little while the man, a strange vague shape, pulled 
 out drawers and closed them and walked about the floor, 
 like Agag, delicately. Eoddy, from the ceiling watched him 
 and resented the fact that every sharp click of a drawer pulled 
 him nearer to the carpet. 
 
 The man's final shutting of the bedroom door plumped 
 Eoddy into his bed, wide awake. 
 
 " Damn him ! What a wonderful day ! " 
 
 He lay back and watched how waves of light danced on 
 the walls. A fountain splashed in the gardens and the long 
 mirror on the right of the bed had in it the corner of the green 
 lawn and the cool grey stones of an old wall. 
 
 Eoddy lay on his back and allowed his sensations to run 
 UD and down his body. It was for moments such as this that 
 
 159
 
 160 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 his life was intended. He lived, deliberately and without 
 any selfishness in the matter, for the emotions that the good 
 old god Pan might choose to provide for him. 
 
 He did not know Pan hy name except as a silly fancy dress 
 that Monty Carfax had once worn at a fancy-dress dance and 
 as Someone alluded to every now and again, vaguely, in the 
 papers, hut even though he did not call him by name he, 
 nevertheless, paid, without question, his daily homage. 
 
 When, as on this beautiful morning, one had only to lie 
 down and be instantly conscious of a thousand things sheep 
 moving slowly across hills, cattle browsing in deep pools, those 
 Downs that he loved rising, slowly, like aged men, to greet 
 a new day then one questioned nothing, one argued nothing, 
 one needed no words, one was happy from the crown of one's 
 head to the toes of one's feet. 
 
 On this especial morning these delights were connected 
 with the fact that, during the day, he intended to propose 
 marriage to Rachel Beaminster. He thought of her, now, aa 
 she had looked last night, sitting in that wood, in a pale blue 
 dress, with the stars behind her, staring, so seriously, down 
 into the garden. She had been very beautiful last night, and 
 it had been a splendid moment not more splendid than 
 other moments that he had had, but splendid enough to remem- 
 ber. 
 
 He was always prepared for the necessity of the short dura- 
 tion of his sensations. He had discovered, when he was very 
 young, that nothing lasted and that the things that lasted the 
 shortest time were generally the best things, and therefore he 
 had, quite unconsciously, trained himself to store his memory 
 with splendid moments ; now, although he had no memory at 
 all for any sort of facts or books or histories, he could recall 
 precisely, in all their forms and colours, scenes, persons, ad- 
 ventures that had, at any time, thrilled him. 
 
 He could remember days f , once when, as a little boy, he had 
 been overtaken by night on the Downs and had sheltered in a 
 deserted house, black and evil, that had, he afterwards dis-
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER II 161 
 
 <?overed, been, in the eighteenth century, a private mad-house ; 
 once when the sea had been green and purple, the sky black, 
 and he had discovered a star-fish for the first time (very 
 young on that occasion) ; once when his horse had run away 
 with him and the danger had been exceeded by the glorious 
 speed through the air . . . many, many others, all to be 
 counted by him to their very least detail, and now, of some of 
 them, Rachel Beaminster was the central figure. 
 
 He had had relations of many kinds with many different 
 women and never until now had he supposed, for an instant, 
 that these relations would be permanent. Even now, although 
 he was intending to marry Rachel Beaminster, he was not so 
 foolish as to imagine that the freshness and novelty of the 
 feeling that he now had for her would last more than a very 
 short time. 
 
 Quite deliberately he treasured up in his mind a thousand 
 pictures of her, as he had seen her during the last two months, 
 so that when the time came for seeing her no longer in that 
 way, he would have his memories : there was the time of her 
 first ball, all excitement and happiness, the day at her uncle's 
 when she had looked at him over the top of the fans, the night 
 at the opera when she had been so angry with him, last 
 night 
 
 She had, through all this time, remained elusive. He did 
 not know her, could not reconcile one inconsistency with an- 
 other but he thought that she cared about him and would 
 marry him. 
 
 He had always known that he must one day marry. That 
 necessity was, in no way, connected with the emotional side 
 of him, it rather had its relationship with the common sense 
 of him, the part that believed in the Beaminsters and all their 
 glory. 
 
 He must marry because Seddon Court must have a mistress, 
 because he himself must have children, because he would like 
 to have someone there to be kind to. That need in him for 
 bestowing kindness upon someone was always most urgent,
 
 162 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 and all sorts of animals and all sorts of persons had snared it) 
 now one person would have it all. He could not bear to 
 hurt anyone or anything, and the crises of his life were pro- 
 vided by those occasions when, in the delight of one of his 
 emotional moments, hurting somebody was involved there 
 was always then a conflict. 
 
 He knew that it was just here that the Duchess failed to 
 understand him. She liked hurting people and expected him 
 to be amused when she told him little stories about her having 
 done so. He had now a kind of dim feeling that it was be- 
 cause the Duchess hoped that he was going to hurt Rachel 
 that she had prosecuted so strenuously his marriage. 
 
 He trusted with all his heart that he would never hurt 
 Rachel, he intended always to be very, very kind to her; it 
 was indeed a thousand pities that the present quality of his 
 attitude to her must, like all attitudes, eventually change. 
 
 But he was always he was sure of this going to be good 
 to her and give her everything that the mistress of Seddon 
 Court should have. 
 
 At the same time, vaguely, he wished that the old Duchess 
 had had nothing to do with this; sometimes he wondered 
 whether the side in him that found pleasure in her was really 
 natural to him. 
 
 Whenever he thought of her, she, in some way, confused 
 his judgment and made life difficult. 
 
 She was doing that now. . . . 
 
 n 
 
 When he came down to breakfast he found that he was the 
 last. He sat next to Nita Easeley and was conscious, after a 
 little time, that she was behaving with a certain reserve. He 
 had known her in the kind of way that he knew many people 
 in his own set in London, pleasantly, indifferently, without 
 curiosity. She had, however, attracted him sometimes by the 
 impression that she gave him that she was too young to know 
 many men, but, however long she lived, would never find
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER II 163 
 
 anyone as splendid as he: she had certainly never been re- 
 served before. Finally he realized that she expected to hear 
 of his engagement to Rachel Beaminster at any moment. 
 " Well, so she will," he thought, smiling to himself. Mean- 
 while he avoided Rachel quite deliberately. 
 
 He was now self-conscious about her and did not wish to be 
 with her until he could ask her to marry him. No more un- 
 certainty was possible. He felt, not frightened, but excited, 
 just as he would feel were he about to ride a dangerous horse 
 for the first time. 
 
 He seized, with relief, upon the proposal of church; he 
 wanted the morning to pass ; his prayer was that she would 
 not walk to church with him, because he had now nothing to 
 say to her except the one thing. When he heard that she was 
 staying behind and walking with Nita Raseley he was sur- 
 prised at his own sense of release. 
 
 Lady Adela was kind to him this morning in a sort of 
 motherly way and apparently seized on his going to church 
 as an omen of his future married happiness. 
 
 " They're all waiting to hear," he said to himself. 
 
 They were to walk across the park to the little village 
 church, and when they set out he was conscious that Lord 
 John, like a large and amiable bird, was hovering about him : 
 finally, Lord John, nervous apparently, most certainly em- 
 barrassed, settled upon him. 
 
 " Going to church, aren't you, Roddy 2 " 
 
 "Yes, Beaminster." 
 
 " Well, let's strike off together, shall we ? " 
 
 Roddy liked Lord John best of the Beaminster brothers; 
 the Duke he could not endure and Lord Richard was so 
 superior, but Johnny Beaminster was as amiable as an Easter 
 egg and fond of race meetings and pretty women, and not too 
 dam' clever in fact, really, not clever at all. 
 
 But Johnny Beaminster embarrassed was another matter 
 and Roddy found soon that this embarrassment led to his own 
 confusion.
 
 164 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Lord John flung out little remarks and little whistles be* 
 cause of the heat and little comments upon the crops. He 
 obviously had something that he very much wanted to say 
 " Of course," thought Roddy, " this is something to do with 
 Rachel he's very fond of Rachel." 
 
 Although Johnny Beaminster had not, in strict accuracy, 
 himself the reputation of the whitest of Puritans, yet Roddy 
 wondered whether perhaps he were not now worrying over 
 some of Roddy's past history, as rumoured in London soci- 
 ety. 
 
 " Doesn't want his girl to be handed over to a reg'lar Black 
 Sheep, shouldn't wonder," thought Roddy, and this led him to 
 rather indignant consideration of the confusion of the Bea* 
 minster mind and its muddled moralities. 
 
 The walk to the church was not very long, but it became, 
 towards the close of it, quite awful in its agitation. 
 
 " Dam' hot," said Lord John. 
 
 " Very," said Roddy. 
 
 " Wouldn't wonder if this weather broke soon " 
 
 " Quite likely." 
 
 " Makes you hot walking to church this hour of the morn- 
 ing." 
 
 " Yes don't it ? Farmers will be wantin' rain pretty 
 badly. Down at my little place they tell me it's dried up like 
 anythin' " 
 
 " Reg'lar Turkish bath " 
 
 " Well, the church ought to be cool 
 
 " You never know with these churches 
 
 Roddy thought " He's afraid of his old mother. Doesn't 
 want me to marry Rachel, but he's afraid of his old mother." 
 
 " Massiter's getting fat " This was Lord John's con- 
 tribution. 
 
 " Yes so's that novelist feller " 
 
 " Oh ! Garden ! Yes ever read anything of his ? " 
 
 " Never a line. Never read novels." 
 
 " Not bad good tales, you know."
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER II 165 
 
 * He's probably," Roddy thought, " had a row with the 
 old lady about me " 
 
 Then, strangely enough, the notion hit him " Wish it was 
 he wanted me to marry Rachel and the Duchess didn't 
 Wish she didn't, by Gad." 
 
 As they entered the church Roddy might have seen, had be 
 been gifted in psychology, that there was in Lord John's 
 face the look of a man who had fought a battle with his dark 
 angel and been, alas, defeated. 
 
 m 
 
 After luncheon Roddy said : 
 
 " Miss Beaminster, come for a walk ? " 
 
 " A little way," she said, looking at him with her eyes in 
 that straight direct way that she had. 
 
 " She must know," said Roddy to himself, " that I'm going 
 to do it now. They all know. It's awful ! " 
 
 Some of the others had gathered together under a great oak 
 that shaded the central lawn, and now as he climbed the hill 
 with his capture he felt that from beneath that tree many 
 eyes watched them. 
 
 They did not go very far. At the top of the hill, above the 
 little wood and the gardens and the house, there was a grassy 
 hollow, and under this grassy hollow a great field of wheat, 
 a sheet of red-gold with sudden waves and ripples in it as 
 though some hand were shaking it, ran down to the valley. 
 
 " Let's stop here," Rachel said. " I was out all this morn- 
 ing with Nita Raseley and it's too hot for any exertion what- 
 ever." 
 
 A tree shaded them and they sat down and watched the 
 corn. 
 
 " What sort of a girl do you think she is Nita Raseley, I 
 mean ? " asked Rachel. 
 
 " Oh ! I don't know the ordinary kind of girl 
 why?" 
 
 " She seems to want to know me. Says that she hasn't 
 many friends. Is that true ? I thought she had heaps - w
 
 166 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " You never can tell with girls. You're all so uncertain 
 about one another devoted one moment and enemies the 
 next." 
 
 " Are we ? " said Rachel slowly. " I don't think I'm like 
 that Oh ! how hot it is ! " She lay back against the grass 
 with her arms behind her head. 
 
 " Do you like me ? " Roddy said suddenly. 
 
 "I? ... You!" 
 
 She slowly sat up and he saw at once that she knew now 
 what he was going to say. At that moment, sitting there, 
 staring at him, with her breasts moving a little beneath her 
 white dress and her hands pressing flatly against the grass, in 
 her agitation and the look in her eyes of some suddenly evoked 
 personality that he did not know at all she was more elusive 
 to him than she had ever been 
 
 She was frightened and also glad but the change in 
 her from the girl he had known all the summer was so start- 
 ling that he felt that he was about to propose to someone he 
 had never seen before. 
 
 " Do I like you ? " she repeated slowly, and her lips parted 
 in a smile. 
 
 " Yes," he said, looking at her hands that seemed to belong 
 to the earth into which they were pressing " Because I want 
 you to marry me " 
 
 The moment of her surprise had come before now she 
 only said very quietly 
 
 " Why what do you know about me ? " 
 
 " I know enough to ask you," he said, stumbling over 
 his words. He was now afraid that, after all, she intended to 
 refuse him, and the terror of this made his heart stop. No 
 words would come. He stared at her with all the fright in 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Roddy " (she had never called him that before), " do 
 you care " 
 
 Then she stopped. 
 
 She began again. " I don't want to talk nonsense. I want
 
 DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER II 167 
 
 to say exactly what I feel. I suppose most girls would want 
 to be free a little longer, would want to have a good time an- 
 other two or three seasons but I don't I hate being free 
 
 I want somebody to keep me, to prevent my doing silly 
 things, to look after me . . . and . . . I'd rather you did it 
 
 than anybody else . . ." Then she went on quickly 
 " But it is more than that. I do like you most awfully, only 
 I suppose I'm not the kind of girl to be frantically excited, to 
 be wild about it all. I'm not that. I do like you better 
 than any other man I know Is that enough ? " 
 
 " I think we can be most awfully good pals always," 
 he said. 
 
 " Oh ! " she cried suddenly, putting her hand on his and 
 looking straight into his face. " That's what I want that, 
 that If that's it, and you think we can, why then, I'd rather 
 marry you, Roddy dear, than anyone in the world." 
 
 " Then it's settled," he said. But he did not take her hand 
 or touch her. They sat for quite a long time, looking at the 
 rippling corn and the house, that was like a white boat sail- 
 ing on the green far below them. 
 
 They said no word. 
 
 Then, without speaking, they got up from the grass and 
 walked down the path to the little wood. But when they 
 came to the place where they had been the night before he 
 jcaught her to him so furiously that his own body was bent 
 back, and lie kissed her again and again and again.
 
 BOOK II 
 RACHEL
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE POOL AND THE SNOW 
 
 " For now doors open, and war is waged with the snow. 
 And trains of sombre men, past tale of number, 
 Tread long brown paths, as toward their toil they go: 
 But even for them awhile no cares encumber 
 Their minds diverted; the daily word is unspoken, 
 The daily thoughts of labour and sorrow slumber 
 
 At the sight of the beauty that greets them, for the charm they have 
 broken." 
 
 ROBERT BRIDGES. 
 
 JN the early days of the December of that year, 1898, the 
 first snow fell. 
 
 Francis Breton, standing at his window high up in the 
 Saxton Square house, watched the first flakes, as they came, 
 lingering, from the heavy brooding sky ; as he watched a 
 great tide of unhappiness and restlessness and discontent 
 swept over him. His was a temperament that could be raised 
 to heaven and dashed to hell in a second of time ; life never 
 showed him its true colours and his sensitive suspicion to the 
 signs and omens of the gods gave him radiant confidence and 
 utter despair when only a patient quiescence had been in- 
 tended. During the last three months he had risen and fallen 
 and risen again, as the impulse to do something magnificent 
 somewhere interchanged with the impulse to do something 
 desperate meanwhile nothing was done and, standing now 
 staring at the snow, he realized it. 
 
 He had never, in all his days, known how to moderate. If 
 he might not be the hero of society then must he be the famous 
 outcast, in one fashion or another London must ring with 
 ihis name. 
 
 And yet now here had he been in London since the end of 
 
 171
 
 172 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 April and nothing had occurred, no steps, beyond that first 
 letter to his grandmother, had he taken. He had not evett 
 responded to the advances made to him by his old associates, 
 he had seen no one save Christopher, Brun once or twice, the 
 Rands and his cousin Rachel. 
 
 Throughout this time he had done what he had never done 
 before, he had waited. For what ? 
 
 A little perhaps he had expected that the family would take 
 some step. Looking back now he knew that the shadow of 
 his grandmother had been over it all. He had always seen 
 her when he had contemplated any action, seen her, and, deny 
 it as he might, feared her. She confused his mind ; he had 
 never been very readily clear as to reasons and instincts 
 he had never paused for a period long enough to allow clear 
 thinking, but now, through all these weeks, he had been 
 conscious that that same clear thinking would have come to 
 him had not his grandmother clouded his mind. He felt her 
 as one feels, in a dream, some power that prevents our move- 
 ment, holds us fascinated so now he was held. 
 
 The other great force persuading him to inaction was 
 Rachel Beaminster, now Rachel Seddon. 
 
 Long before his return to England the thought of this 
 cousin of his had often come to him. He would speculate 
 about her. She, like himself, was by birth half a rebel, she 
 must be She must be. He had sometimes thought that he 
 would write to her, and then he had felt that that would 
 not be fair. Behind all his dreams and romances he always 
 saw some destiny whose colours were woven simply for him, 
 Francis Breton, and this confidence in an especial personally 
 constructed God had been, responsible for his wildest and most 
 foolish mistakes. 
 
 Often had he seen this especial God bringing his cousin and 
 himself together. Always he had known that, in some way, 
 they two were to be chosen to work out, together, vengeance 
 and destruction against all the Beaminsters. When, there- 
 fore, that meeting in the Rands' drawing-room had taken place
 
 THE POOL AND THE SNOW 173 
 
 he had accepted it all. She was even more wonderful than he 
 iad expected, but he had known, instantly, that she was his 
 companion, his chosen, his fellow-traveller ; between them he 
 had realized a claim, implied on some common knowledge 
 or experience, at the first moment of their meeting. 
 
 From the age of ten, when he had been petted by one of 
 his father's mistresses, his life had been entangled with 
 women ; some he had loved, others he had been in love with, 
 others again had loved Mm. 
 
 He did not know now whether he were in love with Rachel 
 or no he only knew that the whole current of his life was 
 changed from the moment that he met her and that, until 
 the end of it, she now would be intermingled with all his 
 history. 
 
 At first so sure had he been of the workings of fate in this 
 matter that he had been content (for the first time in all his 
 ilays) to wait with his hands folded. During this period all 
 thought of action against the Beaminsters on the one hand 
 or a relapse into the company of the friends of his earlier 
 London days on the other, had been out of the question. This 
 certainty of Rachel's future alliance with himself had made 
 such things impossibly absurd. 
 
 Then had come the announcement of her engagement to 
 Seddon. For a moment the shock had been terrific. He had 
 suddenly seen the face of his especial God and it was blind 
 and stupid and dead. . . . 
 
 Then swiftly upon that had come thought of his grand- 
 mother. This was, of course, her doing Eachel was too 
 young to know She would discover her mistake : the engage- 
 ment would be broken off. 
 
 During this time he had met Rachel on several occasions, 
 and although the meetings had been very brief, yet always he 
 had felt that same unacknowledged, secret intimacy. After 
 every meeting his confidence had risen, once again, to the 
 skies. 
 
 Then had come the news of her marriage.
 
 From that moment he had known no peace. At first he 
 had wildly fancied that this had happened because he had 
 not come to her and more plainly declared himself ; his picture 
 of her idea of him was confused with all the dramatic untruth 
 of his idea of her; then, interchanging with that, had come 
 moods when he had seen things more plainly as they were, and 
 had told himself that all relations between herself and him 
 had been invented by himself, that any kindness that she had 
 shown him had been kindness sprung from pity. 
 
 During the early months of the autumn Rachel and her 
 husband were abroad, and during this time, Breton told him- 
 self that he was waiting for her return before taking any 
 action. Then a certain Mrs. Pont, a lady whose beauty had 
 been increased but her reputation lessened by several scandals 
 and a tiresomely querulous Mr. Pont, had suggested to 
 Francis Breton a continuation of certain earlier relation- 
 ships. 
 
 He knew himself well enough to be surft that one evening 
 in Mrs. Pont's company would put an end to his struggles, 
 so weak was he in his own knowledge that the only possible 
 evading of a conflict was by the denial of the enemy's very 
 existence. 
 
 He denied Mrs. Pont and, throughout those dark gloomy 
 autumn weeks, clinging to Christopher and Lizzie Rand, 
 waited to hear of Rachel's return. 
 
 Although he would confess it to no man alive, he longed 
 now, with an aching heart, for some sort of reconciliation 
 with the family. He would have astonished them with his 
 humility had they given him any sign or signal. He fancied 
 that Lord John or even the Duke might come. . . . Once 
 admitted to his proper rank again and what a citizen he would 
 be ! Vanish for ever Mrs. Pont and her tribe and all that 
 dark underworld that waited, like some sluggish but confident 
 monster, for his inevitable descent. Wild phantasmic plans 
 crossed his brain every hour of every day nothing came of
 
 it all ; only when at last it was announced that Sir Roderick 
 and Lady Seddon had returned to England he discovered 
 that he had nothing to do, nothing to say, no step to take. 
 
 That return had been at the end of October; from then 
 until the end of November he waited, expecting that she 
 would write to him; still, by this anticipation, were Mrs. 
 Pont and Mrs. Font's world kept at bay. 
 
 No word came. Driven now to take some step that would 
 shatter this silence, he wrote to her a long letter about noth- 
 ing very much, only something that would bring him a line 
 from her. 
 
 For ten days now he had waited and there had come no 
 word. As these first flakes of snow softly, relentlessly, fell 
 past his window the nebulous cloud of all the uncertainties, 
 disappointments, rebellions, of this pointless wasted thing 
 that men called Life crystallized into form " I'm no good 
 
 Life, like this, it's impossible I'm no good against it 
 
 I'd better climb down. . . ." 
 
 And here the irony of it was that he'd never climbed up. 
 
 The awful moments in Life are those that threaten us by 
 their suspension of all action. " Just feel what's piling up 
 for you out of all this silence," they seem to say. Breton's 
 trouble now was that he did not know in what direction to 
 move. His relation to Rachel was so nebulous that it could 
 scarcely be called a relation at all. 
 
 He only knew that she alone was the person for whom now 
 life was worth combating. He had told her in his letter that 
 she could help him, and the absence of an answer spoke now, 
 in this threatening silence, with mighty reverberating voice. 
 " She doesn't care." 
 
 Well then, who else is there? Almost he could have 
 fancied that his grandmother, there in the Portland Place 
 house, was withdrawing from him all the supports in which he 
 trusted. 
 
 Now the snow, falling ever more swiftly, ever more stealth-
 
 176 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 ily, seemed to be with him in the room, stifling, choking, 
 blinding. 
 
 He felt that if he could not find company of some kind he 
 would go mad, and so, leaving the storm and the silence be- 
 hind him in his room, he went to find Lizzie Rand. 
 
 ii 
 
 Lizzie Rand did not conceal from herself now that she loved 
 him. So long had her emotional life been waiting there, un- 
 desired, that now it could be kept by her utterly apart from 
 her daily habit, but it became a flame, a fire, that lighted with 
 its splendid warmth and colour the whole of her accustomed 
 world. She indulged it now without restraint, through the 
 long dark autumn she had it treasured there; she did not, 
 as things then were, ask for more than this splendid knowl- 
 edge that there was now someone upon whom she loved to 
 spend her care. She had not loved to spend it upon her 
 mother and sister, but that had been a duty defined and 
 necessary. Now everything that she could do for Breton was 
 more fuel to fling to her flame. That further question as to 
 whether he might care for her she kept just in sight, but 
 nevertheless not definite enough to risk the absolute challenge. 
 
 At least, now, as the weeks passed, he sought her company 
 more and more. She helped him, she cheered and comforted 
 him, enough for her present need. 
 
 Even, beyond it all, could she survey herself humorously. 
 This the first love affair of her life made her smile at her 
 capture and defeat. 
 
 " Well, I'm just like the rest And oh ! I'm glad, I'm 
 glad that I am." 
 
 Finally she knew that there was still a step that might be 
 taken, between them, at any moment. He had, she knew, 
 something to tell her. Again and again lately he had been 
 about to speak and then had caught the impulse back. 
 
 This too she would not examine too closely, but from the 
 moment that he should demand from her definite concrete
 
 THE POOL AKD THE SNOW 177 
 
 assistance, from that moment she would be to him what she 
 knew no one now living could claim to be. 
 
 Breton was glad when the little maid told him that Mrs. 
 Rand was out, but that Miss Lizzie was at home. He saw her 
 in the warm cosy room, sitting before the fire with her toes 
 on the fender and her skirts pulled up, drying her shoes. 
 
 She looked up and smiled at him and told him to sit down, 
 but did not move from her position. 
 
 " Mother's out at a matinee with Daisy. I got away early 
 this afternoon. Do you hate snow, Mr. Breton ? " 
 
 " I hate it to-day. I've got the dumps. I had to find 
 someone to talk to or I'd have gone screaming into the 
 street " 
 
 " Couldn't find anyone better, so took me thank you for 
 the compliment But I like the snow. Your pool's more 
 like a pool now than ever, Mr. Breton." 
 
 He went across to the window and stood there looking at 
 the little square now white with the gaunt trees rising black 
 from the heart of it and the grey houses that hemmed it in. 
 Over it the snow, yellow and grey and then delicately white, 
 swirled and tossed. 
 
 He came back and sat down beside her and wondered at 
 her neat comfort and air of calm control of all her emotiona 
 and desires. 
 
 She, looking at him, saw that he was ill. Dark lines be- 
 neath his eyes, his cheeks pale and an air of picturesque 
 melancholy that made her want first to laugh at him and then 
 mother him. 
 
 " I know what's the matter with you," she said, nodding 
 her head. 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Something to do. That's what you want." She turned 
 towards him, looking at him with a little smile and yet with 
 grave seriousness in her eyes. " Oh ! Mr. Breton, why don't 
 you? What is the use of sitting here month after month, 
 doing nothing, just waiting for something to happen some*
 
 178 THE DUCHESS OF WBEXE 
 
 thing that can't happen unless you make it? Things don't 
 fall into people's mouths just because they sit with them 
 open." 
 
 He coloured. " Everybody's always scolding me," he said. 
 " Christopher you everybody. Nobody understands 
 how difficult . . ." 
 
 He broke off. So intangible were his difficulties that no 
 words would define them, and yet, God knew, they were real 
 enough. 
 
 " I know " she said, nodding her head. " It's the 
 thought of them all at Portland Place that's holding you back. 
 You began by fancying that you wanted to cut their throats, 
 and you still wouldn't mind slaughtering them if only they 
 in their turn would do something definite. It's their doing 
 nothing that just holds you up. But really as long as your 
 grandmother's alive I'm afraid that it's no good thinking of 
 them. When she's dead and she can't live for ever any- 
 thing may happen. Meanwhile why not show them what 
 you can do ? " 
 
 " But what can I do ? " he answered her fiercely. " I've 
 never been brought up to do anything except what I 
 oughtn't There's my arm and one thing and another 
 Besides, there's more than that in it, Miss Rand. It's the 
 fact that well, that there's nobody that cares that's so 
 freezing. If only somebody minded " 
 
 As he spoke Eachel rose, beautifully, wonderfully, before 
 him. There, as she had been on that first day when she had 
 had tea there, bending forward, listening, her dark wondering 
 eyes on his face. 
 
 Lizzie at the sound of the appeal in his voice had felt her 
 heart expand, beat, so that her body seemed to hold, sud- 
 denly, some great possession that hurt her by its force and 
 urgency. 
 
 But she answered almost sharply: 
 
 " Nonsense, Mr. Breton. Excuse me, but I've no patience 
 .with that kind of thing. People are meant to stand alone,
 
 THE POOL AND THE SNOW 179 
 
 not to go leaning about for other people's support. You're 
 cursed with too much imagination, Mr. Breton, and you 
 remember too clearly everything that's happened before. 
 Begin now, as though you were born yesterday, and startle 
 the family by your energy " 
 
 " Now you're laughing at me," he said hotly. " I dare say 
 I deserve it, but I don't feel as though I could stand very 
 much of it from anyone to-day " 
 
 Then he was astonished by the sudden softness of her voice. 
 " No, no, please," she said ; " I understand so well. But 
 indeed you have got friends who believe in you. Dr. Christo- 
 pher, myself, if you'll count me, and lots more. You'll win 
 everyone in time if you're not impatient and don't despair. 
 Don't think of your grandmother too much. The mere fact 
 of your not seeing her makes you imagine her as something 
 portentous and dreadful, and she weighs you down, but she 
 isn't really anything at all. She can't stop one's energies if 
 one's determined to let them go. Please, please don't think 
 I'm laughing. I only want to help " 
 
 " I know you do," he answered warmly, " I owe you more 
 than I can say. All these last weeks you and Christopher 
 have been the two people who've held the world together for 
 me. But there's more than you know, Miss Rand. 
 There's " 
 
 He bent towards her. She knew that the confidence was at 
 last to be hers. It needed her strongest control to prevent 
 the trembling of her hands. His eyes were alight, his whole 
 body eloquent. At the thought of what he might be about to 
 tell her the room turned before her. 
 
 Voices in the little hall. Then the door opened and in 
 came Mrs. Rand and Daisy. They had been to the play 
 Such nonsense. One of these new, serious plays with long, 
 long conversations Mrs. Rand wanted tea. Daisy wanted 
 admiration. 
 
 Between Lizzie and Breton the precious cup had fallen, 
 smashed to the tiniest atoms.
 
 180 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Meanwhile aimless conversation was more than he, in his 
 present mood, could endure. 
 
 He made some excuse and, scarcely knowing what he did, 
 found his hat and coat and went out into the square. 
 
 in 
 
 There had come to him one of those agonies of loneliness 
 that no argument, no reasoning can destroy. 
 
 The absence of any letter from Rachel seemed to show that 
 she had abandoned him. In all this vast thickly peopled 
 world there was now no one to whom his presence or absence, 
 his fortunes or disasters mattered. The snowstorm gathered 
 him into its folds ; the snow fell against his mouth, his eyes, 
 and before him, behind him, around him there was a world 
 deserted of man, houses blind and without life. 
 
 The snow might fall now to the end of time. It would 
 creep up and up, falling from the heavens, rising from the 
 earth, swallowing all creation the end of the world. 
 
 He pressed into the park and there under the trees stretch- 
 ing like gallows against the throttling sky temptation to give 
 it all up, to go under and have done with it all, leapt, hot and 
 fierce, upon him. Mrs. Pont and the others were waiting for 
 him. They would be good to him. The Upper World would 
 not hear nor see nor think of his disasters, and slowly, with 
 the others, life would recede, he would crumble and decay and 
 cease to care, and death would come soon enough. 
 
 Then the wind smote his face and tore at his coat: the 
 snow died away, beyond the black bare trees a very faint 
 yellow bar threaded the thick grey promise that the storm 
 was at an end. 
 
 Suddenly with the cessation of the storm the long field of 
 white seemed good and restful, and beyond the park the 
 houses showed light in their windows. 
 
 The yellow spread through the sky, and stars, very slowly, 
 came and the wind died away. 
 
 Courage filled him. Rachel might never come or write or
 
 THE POOL AND THE SNOW 181 
 
 care, but he would make the thought of her the one true thing 
 in his heart, and with that he would do battle so long as he 
 could. 
 
 Christopher and Miss Rand ... he thought of them as he 
 trudged his way home and when he saw the white silence 
 of Saxton Square and the golden sky breaking above its peace 
 and quiet he thought that, for a time longer, he would keep 
 his place and hold his own.
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 
 
 *' Each in the crypt would cry, 
 ' But one freezes here ! and why ? 
 ' When a heart, as chill, 
 ' At my own would thrill 
 'Back to life, and its fires out-fly! 
 ' Heart, shall we live or die ? 
 The rest . . . settle by-and-by! '" 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING. 
 
 RACHEL at Sedden Court watched, from her window, 
 that first fallen snow. 
 
 Seddon Court is about three miles from the town of Lewes 
 and lies, tucked and cornered, under the very brow of the 
 Downs. It is a grey little house, old and stalwart, with a 
 courtyard and two towers. The towers are Norman; the 
 rest of the house is Tudor. 
 
 Beyond the actual building there are gardens that run to 
 the very foot of the Downs, with only a path and an old stone 
 wall intervening. Above the house, day and night, year after 
 year, the Downs are bending ; everything, beneath their steady 
 solemn gaze, is small and restless; as the colours are flung 
 by the sun across their green sprawling limbs the house, at 
 their feet, catches their reflected smile and, when the sun is 
 gone and the winds blow, cowers beneath their frown ; every- 
 thing in that house is conscious of their presence. 
 
 Rachel had been at Seddon Court for a month and now, 
 at the window of her writing-room, looking across the garden, 
 up into their dark shadows, she wondered at their indiffer- 
 ence and monotony. Anyone who had known her before her 
 marriage would be struck instantly, on seeing her now, by 
 
 a change in her. 
 
 182
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 183 
 
 Her whole attitude to the world, during her first season in 
 London, had been an attitude of wonder, of expectation, of 
 the uncertainty that conies from expectation. 
 
 With that expectation were also alarm, distrust, and it was 
 only when some sudden incident or person called happiness 
 into her face that that distrust vanished. 
 
 ISTow she was older, that hesitation and awkwardness were 
 gone, but with their departure had vanished, too, much of 
 her honesty. Her dark eyes were as sincere as they had ever 
 been, but to anyone who had known her before her attitude 
 now was assumed. Nothing might catch her unprepared, but- 
 what experiences were they that had taught her the need for 
 armour ? 
 
 Sitting in her room looking on to a lawn that would soon be 
 white and to Downs obscured already by the thick tumbling 
 snow, she knew that she was unhappy, disappointed, even 
 alarmed. Suddenly to-day the uneasiness that had been 
 gathering before her throughout the last weeks assumed, on 
 this afternoon, the definite tangibility of a challenge. 
 
 " What's the matter with me, with everything ? . . . 
 What's happened ? " 
 
 Her room, dark green and white, had no pictures, but a 
 long low book-case with grave handsome books, an edition of 
 someone in red with white paper labels and another edition 
 of someone else in dark blue and another in gold and brown, 
 an old French gilt mirror, square, with a reflection of the 
 garden and the foot of the Downs in it, an old Queen Anne 
 rosewood writing-table, some Queen Anne chairs, a gate- 
 legged table a very cool, quiet room. 
 
 At her feet with his head resting on her shoe there lay 
 a dog. This dog about a fortnight ago she had found in a 
 field near the house with a kettle tied on to his tail, and his 
 body a confused catastrophe of mud and blood. 
 
 She had carried him home; it had needed some courage 
 to introduce him into the household, for Roddy possessed 
 many dogs, all of the finest breeds, and this was a mongrel
 
 184 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 who defied description. He was very short and shaggy and 
 stumpy. He was much too large for a Yorkshire terrier and 
 yet that was undoubtedly his derivation. There was some- 
 thing of a sheep-dog in him and something of a Skye; his 
 hair fell all over his face and, when you could see them, his 
 eyes were brown. His nose was .like a wet blackberry and 
 his ears were long and full of emotion ; when he ran his short 
 tail, on which the hairs were arranged like branches on a 
 Christmas tree, stuck up into the air and he resembled a 
 rabbit. 
 
 In the confusion of the moment Rachel had called him 
 Jacob, because she thought that Jacob was, in the Bible, the 
 " hairy one." . . . After all, you could not call a dog Esau. 
 
 Yes, to retain him had needed courage. Thinking of 
 Roddy's attitude to the dog brought so many other attendant 
 thoughts in its train. Roddy in his devotion to animals 
 (and oh! he was devoted), had no room for those that were 
 not of the aristocracy. 
 
 Concerning dogs who were mongrels he was kind but 
 thought them much better dead. Unkind he would never 
 be, but the way in which he ignored Jacob was worse than 
 any unkindness. 
 
 Jacob, sensitive perhaps from early suffering, knew this 
 and avoided Roddy, ran out of the room when he came into 
 it, showed in every way that he must not expect to rank with 
 the other dogs. 
 
 Very characteristic this attitude of Roddy, but very char- 
 acteristic, too, the affection that Jacob was now receiving 
 from his mistress. There was something that Jacob drew 
 from Rachel that none of the fine, noble dogs of the house 
 was able to secure. . . . Why? . . . What, again, was the 
 matter ? Why was Rachel unhappy ? 
 
 Rachel was unhappy, and the answer came quite clearly 
 to her as the room was darkened by the great storm of snow 
 now falling over the Downs and the garden, because mar- 
 riage with Roddy had not lessened in any way that uneasy
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 185 
 
 disquiet that Jjad stirred, without pause, heneath her life be- 
 fore her marriage; that uneasiness had, indeed, during the 
 last three months, increased. . . . 
 
 Was this her fault or Roddy's ? 
 
 Attacked now by a scrutiny that refused dismissal she 
 delivered herself up to the investigation of these months of 
 her married life. 
 
 She knew that she had only once been happy since her 
 marriage that was on the first evening, when, the noise 
 and clamour of the London wedding having died away, she 
 had walked with Roddy in the peace of the Massiter garden 
 (Lady Massiter had lent her house for the first weeks of the 
 honeymoon), had felt his arm about her, had believed that 
 there had really come to her that comfort and safety for 
 which she longed. 
 
 After that there had followed a fortnight of great un- 
 reality the strangest excitement, the most adventurous 
 wonders, but a wonder and excitement that were from her- 
 self, the real Rachel Beaminster, most absolutely removed. 
 It was as though she had watched closely but detached the 
 experiences of some other girl. Roddy had, during those 
 times, been a most ardent and passionate lover; she had 
 tried to respond and had hidden, as best she could, her fail- 
 ure. 
 
 Then, suddenly, with the time of their going abroad, pas- 
 sion had left him ; it had left him as swiftly as the passing of 
 wind over a hill. It was there it was gone. 
 
 But he remained the perfect husband. His kindness, his 
 charm, his simplicity, his affection for her an affection 
 that could never for an instant be doubted these things 
 had delighted her. He was now the friend, the strong re- 
 liant companion that she had wanted him to be. During 
 those first weeks in Italy and Greece happiness might have 
 come to her had she not beep stirred by her remembrance of 
 the earlier weeks. The passion that had been in him, al- 
 though it had not touched her, now in retrospect lit fires fo*
 
 18'6 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 her imagination. Instantly back to her had come the whole 
 disquiet and unrest. The things that Roddy called from 
 her now, she suddenly discovered with a great shrinking 
 alarm, were all the Beaminster things. All the true emo- 
 tions, qualities, traditions that made up her secret life were 
 roused in her by their own inherent vitality, never by hia 
 evocation of them. He was Beaminster Roddy was Bea- 
 minster. With his kindness and courtesy his eyes saw the 
 world with the eyes of his ancestors, his tongue spoke the lan- 
 guage that had in it no sincerity, his heart wished for all the 
 ceremonies and lies that the Beaminster had believed in since 
 the beginning of time. 
 
 But her discovery did not lead her much further. She 
 had, in her heart of hearts, always known that Roddy was a 
 Beaminster. Why then had she married him ? She had 
 married him because she had been untrue to herself, because 
 she had herself encouraged the Beaminster blood in her to 
 blind her eyes, because she had desired deceit rather than 
 truth, because she had wanted the comfort that the man could 
 give her rather than the man himself, because she had muf- 
 fled and stifled and silenced that Power in her the Power 
 that made her restless and unquiet; the Power that was as 
 hostile to the Beaminster faith as heaven is to hell 
 
 And yet this vehemence of explanation did not altogether 
 explain Roddy. Roddy was not simply a Beaminster like 
 Uncle John or Uncle Richard or Aunt Adela. There was an 
 elemental direct emotion in Roddy that was exactly opposed 
 to Beaminster conventionality. 
 
 These two elements in him puzzled and even frightened 
 her. His attitude during that first fortnight of their mar- 
 riage she saw, again and again, in lesser degrees during their 
 time abroad. She had seen him so primitive in his joy and 
 excitement over places and people and moments colour, 
 food, storms, towns, passers-by, anything that she had been 
 astounded by the force of it. Emotions swept over him and 
 ;were gone, but, whilst they were there, she knew that she
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 1ST 
 
 counted to him for nothing. Strangest of ironies that when 
 he was least a Beaminster, then was she farthest from him 
 strangest of ironies that her link with him should be the Bea- 
 minster in him. 
 
 She was frightened of his primitive passions. She had in 
 her the instinct that one day they would touch his relation- 
 ship to her and that that contact would rouse in her the full 
 tide of the unhappiness of which she was now so conscious, 
 and that then . . . what might not happen ? . . . 
 
 And yet behind it all she felt a strange, almost pathetic 
 satisfaction because he, after all, had in him, just as she had, 
 his two natures at war. There at least they found some 
 common link; her eagerness to find some link was evidence 
 enough of the affection she had for him. 
 
 After their return to England the wilder nature in him had 
 extended and broadened. Everything to do with Seddon 
 Court drew it out of him ; his passion for the place was won- 
 derful to witness. Every stone of the little grey building 
 was a jewel in his eyes; the servants, the cattle, the horses, 
 the dogs, the flowers, the villagers, even the townspeople of 
 Lewes drew sentiment from him. 
 
 " My old place," he would say, cuddling it to himself ; he 
 was never " sloppy " about it, but direct and simple and 
 straightforward. It was obviously the great emotion above 
 all other emotions. 
 
 He was most anxious that Rachel should share this with 
 him, and during her first weeks there she thought that she 
 would do so. Then the disquiet in her spread to the place. 
 The house spread itself out before her now as the lure that 
 had from the beginning tempted her. 
 
 " It was for this place and quiet that you were false to 
 yourself " 
 
 Roddy felt that she did not share his enthusiasm, and 
 their difficulty over this was exactly their difficulty over 
 everything else; simply that Roddy was the least eloquent 
 person in the world. He could explain nothing whatever of
 
 188 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 the vague unhappiness or dissatisfaction at his heart. Rachel 
 could have explained a great many things, but Roddy, she 
 felt, would only look at her in his kind puzzled way and 
 wonder why she couldn't take things as they were. 
 
 Perhaps during these last weeks he had himself felt that 
 all was not well. Rachel thought that sometimes now 
 through all his kindness she detected a floating, wistful spec- 
 ulation on his part as to whether she were happy. 
 
 He wanted her to be happy most tremendously he 
 wanted it and did she explain to him that she was not 
 happy because she was, now, for ever attended by a sense of 
 her own disloyalty to all that was best in her, he would have 
 suggested a doctor or have made her a present. 
 
 Had she been some stranger and had the case been pre- 
 sented to him he would have probably dismissed it by saying 
 that " having made her bed she must lie on it." " After all, 
 she married the feller Well then, that's her look-out" 
 
 So, perhaps, if this had been simply her trouble she would 
 have done her bravest best to endeavour. 
 
 But there was more behind it all far, far more. 
 
 She saw her marriage to Roddy, her struggling for self- 
 respect, her present morbid introspection as a stage in what 
 was now developing into a duel between herself and her 
 grandmother. 
 
 Her grandmother had planned this marriage. Her grand- 
 mother was determined to destroy the honesty and truth in 
 her and had chosen a Beaminster for her agent and now 
 waited happy for the death of Rachel's soul. 
 
 But Rachel's soul should not so readily die! During all 
 these weeks the thought of her grandmother had been con- 
 tinually with her. How she hated her, and with what fervour 
 did Rachel return that hatred ! 
 
 There was no melodrama in this hatred. When she had 
 been a very little girl Rachel had somehow believed that her 
 grandmother had been very cruel to her mother and father 
 She had hated her for that. Then she had seen that her
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 189 
 
 grandmother disliked her and wished to tease her so she 
 had hated her for that also. 
 
 Her older amplification of this into principles and instincts 
 had not altered the original vehemence of the passion, it had 
 only given it grown-up reasons for its existence. 
 
 And so, thinking of her grandmother, she thought also of 
 Francis Breton. 
 
 Some weeks ago she had received a letter from him and 
 that letter was now lying in the desk of her writing-table. 
 
 She had thought that her marriage would have snapped 
 her interest in her cousin because it would have broken that 
 hostility with her grandmother upon which her relationship 
 with her cousin so largely depended. But now when she saw 
 that marriage had only intensified her hostility to the Duch- 
 ess, so therefore it had intensified her perception of Breton. 
 His letter had aroused in her, just as contact with him 
 aroused in her, everything in her that now, for her own peace 
 of mind, she should keep at bay. His letter had amounted 
 to this: 
 
 " You are a rebel as I am a rebel. We have said very lit- 
 tle, but you have recognized in me the things that I have rec- 
 ognized in you. You have escaped through marriage, but for 
 me there is no escape, and if you would, for the sake of those 
 things that we have in common, keep me from going utterly 
 under, then you must help me as only you can." 
 
 He did not say this nor anything at all like this. He 
 only, very quietly, congratulated her on her marriage, hoped 
 that she would be very happy, said that London was a little 
 desolate and difficult, hoped that she would not think more 
 harshly of him than she could help, and, at the very end, told 
 her that meeting her made him feel that he was not entirely 
 abandoned by everybody. 
 
 It was the letter of a weak man and she knew it, but it was 
 the letter of a man who was weak exactly in the places where 
 she also failed. And this, more than anything else, moved 
 her.
 
 190 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 They two alone, it seemed, were struggling to keep their 
 feet in a world that did not need them. It had been, 
 through these months, Rachel's sharpest unhappiness, the 
 consciousness that Roddy and indeed everything at Seddon 
 Court could get on so very well without her. 
 
 Nobody in London needed her nobody here needed her. 
 If you accepted the Beaminster doctrine, then no wife would 
 demand more from a husband than Roddy gave Rachel 
 but was this not simply another proof that Rachel had made 
 a Beaminster marriage ? 
 
 Rachel had been flung straight from the schoolroom into 
 marriage and the sensitive agonizing cry of a child to be loved 
 by somebody the cry that had always been so urgent in her 
 was urgent still. 
 
 It was exactly this comfortable sense of being a help that 
 Roddy had not given her. Now this letter gave it to her. 
 
 But if this letter was an appeal, just as the mongrel Jacob, 
 now at her feet, was an appeal, on the part of someone 
 wounded and outcast, to her pity, so also was it an invitation 
 to rebellion. 
 
 It was also a temptation to deceit and, did she answer the 
 letter, she encouraged Breton to write again; she opened up 
 not only a new relationship to him, but also a new relation- 
 ship to all the forces that were most hostile to Roddy and her 
 married happiness. May Eversley had once said to her: 
 " Sit down and see, without any exaggeration or false colour- 
 ing, what you've got. Take away, ruthlessly, anything that 
 you imagine that you've got but haven't. Take away ruth- 
 lessly everything that you imagine that you would like to 
 have but are not confident of securing See what's happened 
 to you in the past Take away ruthlessly any sentimental 
 repentances or sloppy regrets, but learn quite resolutely from 
 your ugly mistakes." 
 
 Long ago she had written this down now was the first 
 necessity for applying it. 
 
 The doctrine of Truth Truth to Oneself, the one thing
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 191 
 
 ihat mattered. She knew that the pursuit of Truth was to 
 her, and to every rebel against the Beaminsters, the restive 
 Tiger. In marrying Roddy she had been untrue to herself. 
 In writing to Breton she would be true to herself but untrue 
 to Roddy. She was fond of Roddy although she did not 
 love him, nor did he, really, love her. The anxiety on both 
 their parts to avoid hurting one another was proof enough of 
 that, she thought. 
 
 There then was the whole situation. As she felt Jacob's 
 warm head against her foot a great agitation of loneliness and 
 dismay and helplessness swept over her. 
 
 Tears were in her throat and eyes Then with a strong 
 disdain she pushed it all from her. She was growing mor- 
 bid, losing her sense of humour and proportion. Here in the 
 house there was Nita Raseley staying; in the county there 
 were people to be called upon, to be invited, to be interested 
 in, there was Roddy, a perfect husband. 
 
 She strangled that other Rachel, there in her room. " Now 
 you're dead," she felt, and seemed to fling a lifeless, crumpled 
 figure out into the snow 
 
 She looked at herself in the glass. 
 
 " You're not Rachel Beaminster now you're Rachel Sed- 
 don. Act accordingly and don't whine " She washed her 
 face and brushed her hair, and combed Jacob's hair out of 
 his eyes, and then, determined to be sensible and cheerful and 
 civilized, went down to tea. 
 
 n 
 
 The room called the Library was the pleasantest room in 
 the house; an old, long, low-ceilinged room with windows 
 that stretched from floor to ceiling, with a large stone open 
 fireplace and book-cases running from end to end and old 
 sporting prints above them. 
 
 Before the great fireplace the tea was waiting and there 
 also was Nita Raseley, very charming and fresh and pink in 
 the face and golden in the hair. It was strange that Mta
 
 192 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Raseley should have been their first guest since their mar- 
 riage, because Rachel, most certainly, did not like her; but, 
 after that meeting at the Massiters' the girl had flung a pas- 
 sionate and incoherent correspondence upon Rachel and had 
 ended by practically inviting herself. 
 
 Roddy liked her ; Rachel knew that so perhaps after all 
 it had been a good thing to have her there. Rachel's dislike 
 of her was founded on a complete distrust. " She's all wrong 
 and insincere and beastly. I'll never have her here 
 again. . . ." And yet, really, Miss Raseley had behaved 
 herself, had been most quiet and decorous and most affec- 
 tionate. 
 
 The electric light was delicately shaded, the curtains were 
 drawn, outside was the storm, here cosiness and shining com- 
 fort. 
 
 " Oh ! darling Rachel I am so glad you've come I do 
 BO want tea " 
 
 "Where's Roddy?" 
 
 " Just come in He'll be here in a minute " 
 
 Rachel came over to the fire and was busy over the tea- 
 table. 
 
 " Well, Nita, what have you been at all the afternoon ? " 
 
 " Oh 1 that silly old book. Rachel, how could you tell 
 me " 
 
 "What book?" 
 
 " Oh ! you know you lent it me. Something like drink- 
 ing you know. By that man Westcott such a silly 
 name." 
 
 " The Vines! Didn't you like it? " 
 
 " Like it ! My dear Rachel, why, they go on for pages 
 about each other's feelings and nothing happens and I'm sure 
 it's most unwholesome. They're all so unhappy and always 
 hating one another. I like books to be cheerful and about 
 people one knows don't you ? " 
 
 " Well, Nita dear, it's a good thing we don't all like the 
 eame things, isn't it ? Sugar ? "
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 193 
 
 u Yes, dear, you know lots Darling, have yon got a 
 headache? You do look rotten you do really." 
 
 Rachel knew that she must keep an especial guard to-day : 
 she was irritable, out of sorts. She would have liked im- 
 mensely to send Nita to have her tea in the nursery, were 
 there one. 
 
 " No, I'm all right But I wanted to get out and this 
 storm stopped me." 
 
 " You do look dicky ! Oh ! what do you think ! Roddy's 
 taking us over to Hawes to-morrow to lunch if the weather's 
 anything like decent. He's just fixed it up sent a 
 wire " 
 
 " To-morrow ? But I can't. . . . He knows. I've got 
 Miss Crale coming here " 
 
 " Only old Miss Crale ? Put her off " 
 
 " I can't possibly I've put her off once before. She 
 wants to talk about her Soldiers' Institute place " Then 
 Rachel added more slowly, " But Roddy knew " 
 
 " Oh ! he said you'd got some silly old engagement, but he 
 knew you'd put it off ! " 
 
 " He knows I can't. He was talking about it this morning. 
 
 He knew how " Then she stopped. She was not going 
 
 to show Nita Raseley that she minded anything. 
 
 But Roddy had always said that they would go over to- 
 gether to Hawes one of the loveliest old places in the world 
 He had always promised. . . . 
 
 She knew perfectly well what had occurred. Nita had 
 caught Roddy and clung on to him and persuaded him 
 Roddy was such a boy But she was hurt and she despised 
 herself for it. 
 
 " Oh," she said, laughing. " That's all right. You two 
 must just go over together that's all! I'll go another 
 time " 
 
 " Well, you see, Roddy did send a wire and the Rocking- 
 tons would hate being put off at the last moment . . . Oh ! 
 You beastly dog! He's been licking my shoe, RacheL
 
 194 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 Really he oughtn't to, ought he ? So funny of you, Rachel, 
 when he's such a mongrel and Roddy's got such lovely 
 darlings Of course Jacob's a dear, but he is rather absurd 
 to look at " 
 
 Jacob glanced at her, shook his ears and then, hearing a 
 step that he knew, retired, instantly, under a sofa in a far 
 corner of the room. 
 
 Roddy came in and stood for a moment laughing across at 
 them. He was in an old tweed suit with a soft collar and his 
 face was brick-red; looking at him as he stood there, the 
 absolute type of health and strength and cleanly vigour, 
 Rachel wondered why she felt irritable. She certainly was 
 out of sorts. 
 
 " Hullo, you two," Roddy said, " you do look cosy ! 
 Talkin' secrets, or will you put up with a man ? " 
 
 " Oh ! Roddy/' said Nita Raseley, " why, of course. 
 Rachel's only just come down, hasn't been any time for se- 
 crets. Come and get warm." 
 
 Room was made for him. Rachel smiled at him as she 
 gave him his tea. " Well, Roddy, what have you been doing ? 
 I've been trying to write letters and Nita's been abusing a 
 novel I lent her. I hope you've been better employed " 
 
 " I've been botherin' around with Nugent over those two 
 horses he bought last week. And oh ! I say, Rachel, you'll 
 come over to Hawes to-morrow, won't you ? " 
 
 " You know I can't. I've got Miss Crale coming to 
 luncheon " 
 
 " Oh, I say ! Put her off 
 
 " Can't I've put her off before and she doesn't deserve 
 to be badly treated " 
 
 " Oh ! dash it ! But I've gone and wired. The Rocking- 
 tons won't like my changin' " 
 
 " Well, don't change you and Nita go over " 
 
 " No, but you know we'd always arranged to go over to- 
 gether. You see, I felt sure you'd put old Miss Crale on to 
 another day. She won't mind "
 
 A LITTLE HOUSE 195 
 
 " No, Roddy, thank you. That's not fair on her. It can't 
 be helped. You go over with Nita." 
 
 Then there occurred between them one of those little situa- 
 tions that were now so frequent. Rachel was hurt, but was 
 determined to show nothing ; Roddy knew that she was hurt, 
 but was quite unable to improve relations, partly because he 
 had no words, partly because " a feller looks such a fool tryin' 
 to explain," partly because there was in him a quality of sul- 
 len obstinacy that was mingled, most strangely, with his kind- 
 ness and sentiment. 
 
 He was absolutely ready to fling Nita and the Rockingtons 
 into limbo, but he was quite unable to set about such a business. 
 
 Moreover now there was Nita Raseley It was at this mo- 
 ment that Jacob, having fought in the dark recesses of the 
 sofa between his dislike of Roddy and his love of tea, de- 
 clared for his stomach and walked slowly, and with the dig- 
 nity required by the presence of an enemy, across the room. 
 
 " Hullo ! there's the mongrel " Roddy endeavoured to 
 <:over earlier awkwardness by easy laughter, but the laughter 
 was not easy and his attempt to pat Jacob was frustrated by 
 a sidling movement on the dog's part. 
 
 Then Nita Raseley laughed. 
 
 Roddy now thought that women were damnable, that his 
 wife had no right to drag a mongrel like that about with 
 her, that he'd show them if they laughed at him, and that if 
 Rachel couldn't come to-morrow, why then, she must just 
 lump it The last thought of all was that Rachel was always 
 finding a grievance in something. 
 
 He waited a little while, talked in a stiff and unnatural 
 fashion and then went. 
 
 " This weather is very trying, dear, isn't it ? " said Mta. 
 " If I were you I really would go and lie down. You do look 
 so seedy ! " 
 
 " I think I will," said Rachel. 
 
 As she went slowly upstairs to her room she knew that she 
 would answer Francis Breton's letter.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 
 
 "He began to love her so soon as he perceived that she was passing 
 But of his control." 
 
 JANE AUSTEN. 
 
 N 
 
 EXT morning Rachel wrote the following letter to Fran- 
 cis Breton: 
 
 " DEAR ME. BRETON, 
 
 It was good of you to write to me and I must 
 apologize for allowing your letter to remain so long un- 
 answered, but, on my return from abroad, there were 
 naturally a great many things to do and a great many 
 people to see. 
 
 My husband and I enjoyed our time abroad im- 
 mensely : it was my first visit to Greece and Italy and I 
 loved every bit of it Athens is to me more wonderful 
 than now, here so snugly in England, seems possible; 
 Florence and Rome very beautiful of course but spoilt, 
 don't you think, by tourists and the modern Italian who 
 has learnt American habits 
 
 How is London ? I've not yet had a good look at it 
 since I came back, but we shall be coming up soon, I ex- 
 pect, and have taken a flat in Elliston Square, between 
 Portland Place and Byranston Square. 
 
 Your letter sounds a little dismal ; it is kind of you to 
 say that I can help you, but, indeed, if writing to me 
 helps do do so. It is only fair to say that at present my 
 husband shares the family point of view and, so long as 
 that is so, I cannot ask you to come and see me, but I hope 
 that soon he will see the whole affair more sensibly. 
 
 Yours very sincerely, 
 
 RACHEL SEDDON." 
 196
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 19? 
 
 She was not proud of this letter when she read it. She 
 whose impulse was for truth seemed to be flung, at every turn, 
 into direct dishonesty. No, she would not seize on the ex- 
 cuse of some vague tyrannical fate. 
 
 She was herself her own agent in this affair and she bit- 
 terly, from her heart, condemned herself . . . and yet, 
 strangely, this letter to Breton seemed, in obedience to some 
 inward impulse, her most honest action since her marriage. 
 
 Yet why did she not go to Roddy now and say to him that 
 she had written to Breton and was determined to act as his 
 friend ? 
 
 Roddy would forbid any further relationship; she knew 
 that. And then? . . . 
 
 No, she could not see beyond 
 
 She banished the letter from her mind, saw the two of them 
 off to Hawes, and entertained Miss Crale to luncheon. Miss 
 Crale was a broad and shapeless old maid with huge boots, a 
 bass voice and a moustache. She was behind most of the 
 charitable affairs in the county, was popular everywhere, and 
 the most energetic character Rachel had ever met 
 
 Rachel liked her and she liked Rachel, and after she had 
 departed, breathless and red-faced, on some further visit con- 
 cerned with some further charifcy, Rachel felt braced and in- 
 vigorated and happier than she had been for many weeks. 
 
 It was a day of frosted blue and the sun flashed fire on to 
 the great field of snow that stretched from sky to sky. The 
 Downs lay humped against the blue and the whole world was 
 frozen into silence. 
 
 The only sounds were the soft stir the snow, falling from 
 branches or walls, made and the sharp cries of some children 
 playing in a field near at hand. 
 
 When Miss Crale had gone Rachel went off for a walk. 
 Jacob was with her. She struck up the winding path on to 
 the Downs. The snow was hard and yielded a pleasant 
 friendly crunch beneath her feet. Shadows that were dark 
 and yet were filled with colour lay across the snow ; beneath!
 
 198 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 her a white valley against which trees and buildings seemed 
 little wooden toys and, in the far distance, hills rising, cut, 
 with their iridescent glow, the blue sky. 
 
 No clouds; no movement; no sound: and soon the sun 
 would be golden and then hard and red, and then across all 
 the snow pink shadows would creep and the evening stars 
 would burn 
 
 In the heart of the. snow, a valley between the shoulders of 
 the Downs, a black clump of trees clustered ; she could see, 
 now, Seddon Court like a grey box at her feet, very tiny and 
 breathing rest and peace. 
 
 Some of her trouble slipped from her under this clear sky 
 and in this sharp air ; from these quiet hills she saw all her 
 introspection as an evil thing, morbid, cowardly; from here 
 it seemed to her that her trouble with Roddy had been be- 
 cause he did not know what introspection meant and could not 
 understand the appeals that she made to him. 
 
 But was it not unfair that men should have so many things 
 that could take the place of love ? For Roddy there were a 
 thousand emotions to give meaning to life: for Rachel all 
 experience seemed to come to her only through people and 
 her relations with people. 
 
 Soon the valley and the little toy houses were behind her 
 and she had only the white rise and fall of the hill on every 
 side. Dropped into a hollow was a little dark deserted house 
 with bare trees about it; otherwise there was no dwelling- 
 place to be seen. 
 
 This absence of human life suddenly drew up before her, 
 as sharply and with as living an actuality as though some 
 mirage had cast it there London 
 
 Three months in the country had flung the London that she 
 knew into a vivid perspective that was quite novel to her. By 
 the London that she knew she did not mean the London of 
 parties and theatre, the London of Nita and her kind, but 
 rather the actual London of the streets and squares and foun-
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 199 
 
 tain and parks and dusty plane trees and tinkling organ- 
 grinders. 
 
 She felt now quite a thrill of excitement to think that, in 
 another week or two, she would be back in it all and would 
 see all the lamps coming out and the jingling cabs and the 
 heavy lumbering omnibuses, and that she would hear again 
 the sharp crying of the newspaper boys and the ringing of 
 church bells and the thud of the horses down the Row and the 
 hum of voices above the orchestra during the intervals of some 
 play. 
 
 She thought of Portland Place and the park and the Round 
 Church and the little shops and Oxford Circus and the buses 
 tumbling down Regent Street into Piccadilly and then tum- 
 bling down again into Pall Mall. From Portland Place she 
 seemed to look down over the whole of London and to see it 
 like a jewel, with its glow dazzling the night sky 
 
 She knew now that although she hated her grandmother she 
 did not hate the Portland Place house and she was glad that 
 Roddy had taken a flat near there. No other part of London 
 would ever be quite the same to her as that was: it would 
 always be home to her more than any other place in the 
 world, with its space and air and sense of life crowding around 
 it. 
 
 And, as she walked, she was fired with the desire to have 
 some real active share in the London life; not in the sham 
 life of pleasure and entertainment, but to be working, as all 
 kinds of men must be working, with London behind them, 
 influencing them, sometimes depressing them, sometimes ex- 
 alting them, always moving within them. 
 
 That was a fine ambition to work towards a greater London, 
 a greater, finer, truer world, and whether you were politician 
 or artist or journalist or merchant or novelist or clerk or 
 philanthropist, still by your working honestly you would de- 
 serve your place in that company. 
 
 If she could have some share in such things, then her mis-
 
 200 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 erable doubts and forebodings would vanish in a vision too 
 bright and glorious to contain them 
 
 As she walked her face glowed and her body moved as 
 though it could continue thus, swinging through the clear air, 
 for all time. 
 
 She determined that on this very evening she would tell 
 Roddy about Breton. Whatever might be the result life in 
 the future should be clear of Beaminster confusions. She 
 would even ask Roddy to help her about Breton, to influence, 
 perhaps, her grandmother with regard to him 
 
 Then, in a few days, Nita Raseley would be gone, and, 
 afterwards, she would discipline all her wit and energy to- 
 wards establishing a fine relationship with Roddy. 
 
 Something had, throughout all these months, been wrong; 
 she would discover where that wrong lay She would curb 
 her own impatience, would fling herself into his interests, 
 would learn the things that Roddy wanted from her and give 
 them to him 
 
 Then, as the sun sank lower and the yellow shadows crept 
 up the sky, she felt desolate and lonely. Vigour left her 
 She had descended now into the valley and had come to the 
 deserted house with the stark frowning trees. This place, she 
 had heard, had in the eighteenth century been a private mad- 
 house, and now behind its darkened windows she could have 
 fancied shapes and down the wind the echo of voices. 
 
 She fought with all her might against a great tide of loneli- 
 ness that was now sweeping up about her. There had always 
 been so many people around her and yet she had always been 
 lonely. Even May and Dr. Christopher had not helped her 
 there. She had a sense now of all the people in all the world 
 who were waiting for the other people who could understand 
 them; they were always missing one another, so near some- 
 times, sometimes touching, and then, after all, going through 
 life alone. 
 
 Those were the people with feelings and emotions and as 
 for the people without them, of what use was life to them?
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 201 
 
 Either way, except for t&e fortunate way, Life was a futile 
 business. 
 
 Then, climbing up from that sinister little valley and seeing 
 that the sky had turned to violet and that the evening star 
 was there burning as she had known that it would, she 
 laughed at her morbidity. 
 
 She shook herself free from it, thought once more of the 
 things that she would do with Roddy, thought of London and 
 the fun that she would have there, thought of Christopher and 
 Uncle John and even Aunt Adela ; then, as she turned down 
 the little crooked path towards the house, she thought again 
 of he* cousin ; she would work without ceasing to bring him 
 back into the family. 
 
 That, at any rate, was work upon which she might com- 
 mence on her return to London, and as she clicked the little 
 wicket-gate, a side-entrance to the garden, behind her, she was 
 almost happy again. 
 
 The dusk was deepening into darkness, the moon had not 
 yet risen above the hill. She had entered the garden on the 
 further side of the house and passed through a long laurel 
 path, her feet silenced by the snow. 
 
 Jacob had stayed, some way behind. She could see the 
 white lawn and beyond it the lighted house; she was about 
 to step out of the dark shadow of the laurels when she found, 
 just in front of her, almost touching her, hidden by the black 
 depth of the trees, two figures. 
 
 She was upon them with a startled cry. A man had his 
 arms about a woman ; bending back a little he had pulled her 
 forward against him and was kissing her so fiercely that her 
 hands were buried deep in his coat to steady herself. 
 
 Rachel knew them instantly; they were her husband and 
 Mta Raseley 
 
 She stepped past them on to the lawn and at that instant 
 they were conscious of her 
 
 Then she walked swiftly into the house.
 
 202 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 ii 
 
 She went up to her bedroom. "No thought came to her, her 
 mind was blank, but she noticed little things, put some of 
 the silver things on her dressing-table in order, pulled her 
 blind a little lower, moved to the fire and pushed the logs into 
 a blaze. She sat there for a long, long time. 
 
 When the dressing-bell echoed through the rooms she was 
 still sitting there, thinking nothing 
 
 Her maid came to her ; she told her the dress that she would 
 wear and after a while sat staring into her mirror whilst her 
 hair was brushed. 
 
 Lucy said, " The snow's begun again, my lady. Coming 
 down fast " 
 
 Then some absence of light in her mistress's eyes fright- 
 ened her and she said no more. 
 
 Someone knocked on the door: a note for her ladyship. 
 Rachel read it: 
 
 " It was all a horrible, horrible mistake. Darling 
 Rachel, you know it was only fun just nothing at all. 
 Shall I come and explain ? If you'd rather not see me just 
 now say so and I shall quite understand. I've been so 
 upset that I think I won't come down to dinner, if it isn't 
 too much bother having just a little sent up to me. It was 
 all such a silly mistake, as you'll see when we've explained. 
 
 Your loving 
 
 NITA." 
 
 When she came to " we " Rachel coloured a little. Then 
 she said, " Lucy, bring me the local railway-guide. In my 
 writing-room." 
 
 Lucy brought it to her. Then she wrote : 
 
 " DEAR NITA, 
 
 No explanations necessary. There is a good train 
 up to town from Hawes at 9.30 to-morrow morning. 
 
 Yours, 
 
 RACHEL
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 203 
 
 " I want this taken to Miss Raseley, Lucy now. She's 
 not very well, so ask Haddon to see that dinner is sent up to 
 her room, please." 
 
 Then she finished dressing and went down to Roddy. 
 
 m 
 
 He had perhaps expected that she would not come dowm, 
 but there was no opportunity given them for speech because 
 the butler announcing dinner followed her into the library. 
 They went in. 
 
 He sat opposite her, looking ashamed, with his eyes low- 
 ered, and the red coming and going in his sunburned cheeks. 
 
 They talked for the sake of the servants, and she asked him 
 whether Hawes had been as lovely as ever and whether Lady 
 Rockington's nerves were better, and how their youngest boy 
 (delicate from his birth) was now. 
 
 Whilst she spoke her brain was turning, turning like a 
 wheel; could she only, for five minutes, think clearly, then 
 might much after disaster be avoided. She knew that in the 
 conversation that was to como Roddy would follow her lead 
 and that it would be she who would be responsible for all con- 
 sequences. 
 
 She knew that and yet she could not force her brain to be 
 clear nor foresee what the end of it all was to be. 
 
 The dessert and the wine came at last and she went 
 
 " I'll be in the library, Roddy," she said. 
 
 He gave her a quarter of an hour, and in that pause, with 
 the house quite silent all about her and the fire crackling and! 
 the lights softly shining, she strove to discipline her mind. 
 
 She had known as soon as she had seen them there that tho 
 most awful element in it was that this had in no way altered 
 the earlier case it merely precipitated a crisis and de?- 
 manded a definition. Nothing could have proved to her that; 
 she had never loved Roddy so much as her own feeling at this 
 crisis towards him. Therein lay her own sin. 
 
 It was simply now of the future that she must think. The
 
 204 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 awful chasm that might divide them after this night, were 
 mot their words most carefully ordered, shook her with fear; 
 peril to herself, for she could stand aside and see herself quite 
 clearly : and she knew that if to-night she and he were to say 
 things that they could neither of them afterwards forget, then, 
 for herself, and from her deep need of love and affection, 
 there was temptation awaiting her that no disguise could 
 cover. 
 
 Then, as more clearly she figured the scene in the garden, 
 patience seemed difficult to command. 
 
 She hated Nita Raseley that was no matter but she 
 despised Roddy, and were he once to-night to see that con- 
 tempt she knew that his after remembrance of it would divide 
 them more completely than anything else could do. 
 
 When he came in she had still no clearer idea of what she 
 intended to say, or how she wished things to go. She was 
 sitting in an arm-chair by the fire with her hands shielding 
 her face, and he sat down opposite her and stared at her and 
 cleared his throat and wished that she would take her hands 
 down and then finally plunged : 
 
 " Rachel I don't know I can't hang it all, what can 
 I say ? I've been a beastly cad and I'd cut my right hand off 
 to have prevented it happening " 
 
 She took her hand down and turned towards him 
 
 "Let's cut all the recrimination part, Roddy," she said, 
 " It was very unfortunate that was all. It was rather 
 beastly of you, and as for Nita " 
 
 Here he broke in " No, I say, you mustn't say anythin' 
 about her. She wasn't a little bit to blame It just " 
 
 " Well, we'll leave Nita. She isn't of any importance, any- 
 way. The point is that things have been wrong for months 
 between us, and as we haven't been married very long that's a 
 ,|>ity. This has just brought things to a head, that's all " 
 
 " No," said Roddy firmly. " No, Rachel, that ain't fair to 
 !N"ita. I know it isn't nice, but I must put that out fair and 
 jKjuare fair and square to Nita.
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 205 
 
 " We'd had a jolly old drive to Hawes rippin' day, cold 
 as anythin', with the horse just spankin' along, and then the 
 Rockingtons were jolly and the lunch was jolly and back we 
 came. We looked about the house for you and heard you 
 were still out walkin', so we just strolled about the garden a 
 bit and then Well, anyway, Mta simply had nothin' to do 
 with it. It was so rippin' and jolly after the drive and all, 
 that I just kissed her. All in a second I just felt I had to 
 . . . beastly weak of me," he finally added in a contempla- 
 tive tone. 
 
 " Well, that disposes of Mta," said Rachel. " Don't let's 
 mention her again. Meanwhile what sort of life am I going 
 to have if ' things ' are going to sweep over you like thia 
 continually? Besides, it's rather early days, isn't it? We 
 haven't been married half a year yet." 
 
 " No," said Roddy slowly, " no, we haven't and it's simply 
 beastly. I'm a perfect swine. When I married you the one 
 thing I meant to do was to be just as kind to you as I jolly 
 well could be, and give you a perfectly rippin' time, and here 
 I am hurtin' you like anything " 
 
 She moved impatiently. " Never mind that, Roddy. 
 You have been very kind and I'm sure you'd have given any* 
 thing for me not to have come into the garden just when I 
 did, so as to have avoided hurting me. But what I do know 
 is that you're not straight with me. You know I told you be- 
 fore we were married that the one thing that mattered was 
 Truth truth to oneself and truth to everyone else Well, 
 we haven't been straight with one another for a single instant. 
 You've done any number of things that would be wrong to 
 you if I knew about them, but wouldn't be in the least wrong 
 if I didn't" 
 
 " Of course," said Roddy, " no feller tells his wife every- 
 thing that would be absurd. I think things are worse if 
 people know about 'em whom it hurts to know much 
 worse." 
 
 She was suddenly confronted now with a Roddy whose
 
 206 THE DUCHESS OE WEEXE 
 
 assurance and confidence in his own personality startled her. 
 Because he had never been gifted with words and liked to be 
 in the company of dogs and horses she had fancied that he 
 had no ideas about anything. 
 
 Rachel was a great deal younger than she knew and a great 
 deal more contemptuous of the other half world than her 
 experience of it justified. Strangely enough this confidence 
 on Roddy's part angered her more than anything else could 
 have done. 
 
 " The fact is that since our marriage we've never got to 
 know each other in the least. We talk and go to places 
 together and you give me things and I give you things and 
 that's all. I don't know you and now, after to-day, I can't 
 trust you " 
 
 He coloured a little at that, but said nothing. 
 
 She went on, rather fast and her breath coming between 
 her words : " But I'm not going to be so silly as to make a 
 ecene because I saw you kissing Nita Raseley. She's simply 
 not worth thinking about, but you ought to be straighter 
 to me all the way round. If you've wanted to be kind to me 
 as you say, then you might have taken me more into your 
 life 
 
 " Well," said Roddy slowly, " if you'd managed to love me 
 a bit, Rachel, things might be different." 
 
 This answer was so utterly unexpected that it took her like 
 a blow. That Roddy should attack Tier when he had, only a 
 few hours before, been discovered so abominably ! 
 
 "What do you mean, Roddy?" she stammered angrily. 
 "Love you? But " 
 
 " Yes," he persisted doggedly, " I know when you accepted 
 me you said you didn't and I know that I hadn't any right to 
 expect it, but I believe if you hadn't thought me such a silly 
 ass and hadn't looked all the time as though you were just 
 indulgin' my silly fancies until somethin' more sensible had 
 come along, things might have been different. I'm the sort 
 of feller," Roddy said, choosing his words carefully, " that
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 20T. 
 
 you could have made anythin' out of, Rachel. I'm weak ii> 
 some ways most men are and when a thing comes 
 dancin' along lookin' ever so tempting why, then I generally 
 have to go after it But you could have kept me, Rachel, 
 more than anyone I've ever known " 
 
 She was not touched nor moved, only angered that he, so 
 obviously in the wrong, should attempt justification. 
 
 " Yes," she said hotly. " And I suppose in another mo- 
 ment you'll be telling me that it's silly of me to be angry at 
 what I saw this afternoon ? " 
 
 He thought it out a moment, then answered : " No, it was 
 perfectly natural of course only I don't think you ought to 
 mind much. If you really cared, you wouldn't. It don't 
 matter really so much what I do if I still like you best. 
 Moments don't count it's what goes on all the time that 
 matters. Why, I might kiss a hundred women and still you'd 
 be the only woman who mattered to me. I've never cared 
 for one so long before," he added simply. 
 
 Then as she said nothing he went on : " I've never been 
 sort of educated never cared enough for anyone to give 
 things up. I would have given things up for you if you'd 
 wanted me to, but you didn't really " 
 
 " Aren't we a little off the point, Roddy ? " she flung back. 
 " The point is how are we going to get along all the years and 
 years we've got in front of us ? What are we going to do ? " 
 
 " Everybody's just the same," said Roddy quietly. " It 
 takes a lot of years before married people settle down. We 
 can't expect to be any different " 
 
 But although he spoke so quietly he watched her, hoping 
 for some yielding on her part ; in an instant, had she come to 
 him, she would have seen a Roddy whom she had never seen 
 before and from that moment onwards would have had a 
 power over him that nothing could have shaken. 
 
 So delicately hung the balance between them. But she was 
 filled with a sense of her own wrongs, her loneliness, the in- 
 justice of it all. At that moment all affection for Roddy had
 
 2D8 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 left her, she would only have been glad if she had known 
 that she was never to see him again. His slow voice, his way 
 of thinking out his sentences, his thick clumsy hands and hia 
 red face, everything came to her now as a continuation of the 
 chains that she had worn all her days. 
 
 She got up and confronted him 
 
 " Yes," she said fiercely, " that's exactly it. Life is to he 
 like everyone else. We're to say the things, do the things 
 that our neighbours say and do. Because your friends at 
 Brooks's kiss their wives' friends, therefore you are to do so. 
 Because the men you know never say what they mean and 
 lie about everything they do, therefore you do the same. 
 Oh ! I know ! Haven't I heard it all my life ? Haven't my 
 precious family lived on lies ? You've caught it all from my 
 delightful grandmother ! I congratulate you ! " 
 
 " What if I have ? " he said. " She's a friend of mine, 
 Rachel. She's been dashed good to me You're not to say a 
 word against her." 
 
 " I hate her," Rachel cried passionately. " All my life 
 she's been over me for years she's been my enemy. If she 
 stands for everything that you believe, then it isn't any won- 
 der that we have nothing in common, that you should be proud 
 of this afternoon, that that " 
 
 She was biting her lips to keep back the tears. Over his 
 face had crept a sulky obstinate look that might have told her, 
 had she seen it, that she was driving him very far. 
 
 " She's fine," he said. " She's made England what it is. 
 You're all for ideas, Rachel, and for Truth and lots of things, 
 but you're difficult to live with," 
 
 " Very well, Roddy. Thank you. Now we know how we 
 stand. I at least owe Nita a debt for having cleared up the 
 situation. If you find it difficult with me I can at least re- 
 turn the compliment and I have at any rate this added 
 advantage, that I speak the truth." 
 
 As he looked at her across the room he saw in her that same 
 figure that he'd seen once just before proposing to her'
 
 FIRST SEQUEL TO DEFIANCE 209 
 
 someone foreign, unknown He felt as though he were 
 quarrelling with a stranger. . . . 
 
 She turned and went. 
 
 For a long while he stood gazing into the fire, his hands in 
 his pockets. How had it all happened ? Why had they let 
 it come to that kind of quarrel when they might so easily 
 have prevented it ? 
 
 And she, crying bitterly in her room, asked herself the 
 same question.
 
 CHAPTEK IV 
 
 RACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER AND RODDY 
 
 CHRISTOPHER had snatched his first holiday for two 
 years and was abroad during the January of 1899 when 
 the Seddons were in town. 
 
 February, March and April they spent at Seddon Court, 
 and it was not therefore until early in May that Christophei 
 saw Rachel. 
 
 She had dreaded with an almost fantastic alarm this meet 
 ing. No other human being knew her so honestly and accu- 
 rately as did Christopher, and the change in her that he would 
 at once discern would, when she caught the reflection of it in 
 his eyes, mark definitely the sinister country into which these 
 last months had carried her. 
 
 It had seemed as though some malign spirit had been 
 determined to make the most of that quarrel that Nita Rase- 
 ley had provoked. 
 
 Both Roddy and Rachel hated scenes upon that, at least, 
 they were agreed and from their determination never to 
 have another arose a deliberate avoidance of any plain speak- 
 ing. Rachel, longing for honesty, found herself caught in a 
 thousand deceits Roddy, avoiding any kind of analysis, 
 found that everything that he provided in conversation seemed 
 to lead to danger. 
 
 He was now always ill at ease in Rachel's company; he 
 had stood on that fatal evening, more strongly for the Bea- 
 minster interest than he had intended, but from his very 
 determination to maintain his new independence, he pro- 
 duced the Duchess for Rachel's benefit at every turn of the 
 road. 
 
 Roddy knew that the Duchess feared that Rachel would 
 
 210
 
 RACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER 211' 
 
 lead him from her side and that she received with rejoicing- 
 every sign on his part of irritation against Rachel. She had 
 wanted him to marry her granddaughter because that bound 
 him more closely to her, but she had not, perhaps, been pre- 
 pared for the probable effect of Rachel's character upon 
 him. 
 
 The Duchess therefore made, throughout these months, a 
 third member of their company. Roddy, finding Rachel's 
 society a growing embarrassment, spent more and more of 
 his time with his animals and his tenants and labourers. 
 But all this time he was conscious, in a dumb way, of unhap- 
 piness and a puzzled dismay, so that his very affection for 
 Rachel produced in him a growing irritation that it should 
 be so needlessly thwarted. Things were all wrong and his 
 resentment of his own failure to right them reacted, without 
 his will, upon the very person whom he wished to propiti- 
 ate. 
 
 For Rachel these months were baffling in their hideous dis- 
 comfort. Her affection for Roddy was there, but it was 
 swallowed by her desperate efforts to analyse a situation that 
 was, in definite outline, no situation at all. 
 
 As Roddy withdrew, her loneliness wrapped her round, and 
 in every day that added to her distance from Roddy she saw 
 the active and malignant agency of her grandmother. She 
 was intelligent enough to be aware that in this constant 
 vision of the Duchess she was outstepping the probabilities; 
 but her early years and the precipitation with which she had 
 been shot out of them into an atmosphere that unexpectedly 
 resembled their own earlier surroundings seemed to point to 
 some diabolical agency. 
 
 " Oh ! when I get free of this," had been her earlier cry, 
 and now the foreboding that she was never to be free of it 
 until she died terrified her with its possibility. Imagine her 
 brought up in a stuffy house with windows tightly closed, 
 in full vision of a high road, imagine her promised the free- 
 dom of the road at a future time; imagine her liberated, at
 
 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 last, rushing into the new life and finding that, after all, the 
 walls of the house were still about her, and about her now for 
 ever. 
 
 Her one reserve during the early months of the year at 
 Seddon had been her letters to Francis Breton. His letters 
 to her had been a series of self -revelation ; he had restrained 
 himself in so far as appealing to her simply on the score of 
 their relationship and his enmity to the head of the house. 
 She had replied revealing her sympathy, hinting at rebellion 
 on her own side and feeling, after the writing of every letter, 
 a hatred of her own deceit, a curiously heightened sense of 
 affection for Roddy, above all a conviction that impulses were, 
 of their own agency, working to some climax that she could 
 not, or would not, control. 
 
 The foreign blood in her, the English blood in him, baffled 
 their advances toward one another. Everything that Rachel 
 did now seemed to Roddy so close to melodrama that it 
 was best to use silence for his weapon. All Roddy's actions 
 were to Rachel further illustrations of Beaminster muddle 
 and second-rate personality. 
 
 Had Roddy called out of Rachel the great depth of passion 
 and reality that she inherited from her mother her own love 
 of him would have solved everything but that he could not 
 call from her, nor ever would. 
 
 Eor Rachel, she saw in him now a possibility of perpetual 
 infidelity, and at every suspicion of it her disgust both at 
 herself and him grew because that possibility did not move 
 her more. 
 
 They came up to London at the beginning of May and hid, 
 very successfully from the world, the widening breach. 
 
 To Rachel, it was sheer terror to discover the thrill that the 
 adjacence of Elliston Square to Saxton Square gave her. 
 In this one self-revelation there was enough to present her 
 with night after night of sleepless misery. She visited the 
 Duchess and found that her presence was continually de- 
 manded. Every visit was a battle.
 
 RACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER 213 
 
 " Show me how you are treating him, whether he cares for 
 you. Have you found him out ? Tell me everything " 
 
 " I will tell you nothing. I will come here day after day 
 and you shall gather nothing from me. I have escaped you." 
 
 " Indeed you have not escaped me. My power over you is 
 only now beginning " 
 
 ~No word between them but the most civil. There was no 
 trace in the old woman now of her earlier irony no sign in 
 Rachel of irritation or rebellion. 
 
 But the girl knew that war was declared, that her only 
 ally was one in whose alliance lay, for her, the very heart of 
 danger. 
 
 All these things she might hide from the world from 
 Christopher she knew that she could hide nothing. 
 
 ii 
 
 It was on an early afternoon in May that Christopher had 
 tea with Rachel. He had waited for his visit with very real 
 anxiety ; the letters that he had had from her had been un- 
 satisfactory, not because they were actively expressive of 
 unhappiness, but because there was an effort in every word 
 of them Rachel had never found it difficult to write to him 
 before. 
 
 He was also uneasy because he had been against this mar- 
 riage from the beginning. He did, as he said to the Duchess, 
 know Rachel better than anyone else knew her ; he knew her 
 from his love for her, and also from that scientific study that 
 he applied in his profession. And he had found, too, in her, 
 as he had found in Breton, some strain of fierce helplessness, 
 as of an animal caught in a trap, that especially moved his 
 interest and affection 
 
 Was Rachel's marriage a disaster ? If so she had certainly- 
 managed to conceal it, for even the Duchess did not know 
 of that he was sure. 
 
 If Rachel were indeed unhappy would she come to him as 
 she used to come to him 2
 
 214 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 What change had marriage wrought in her ? 
 
 It was one of those May days when the weather is hot 
 before London is ready. It was a day of tension ; buildings, 
 streets quivered beneath a sun in whose gaze there was no 
 kindliness nor comfort. Christopher drove from Eaton 
 Square, where, for some hours he had been engaged in pre- 
 venting an old man from dying, when both the old man him- 
 self and all his friends and relations were convinced that death 
 was the best thing for him 
 
 Sloane Street ran like white steel before his eyes, not dimly 
 veiled as he had so often seen it ; Park Lane offered houses 
 that stared with haughty faces upon a world that would, they 
 knew, do anything for money 
 
 Elliston Square itself was white and sterile ; the town was, 
 on this afternoon, irritated, sinister . . . feet ached upon 
 its pavements and hearts were suddenly clutched with fore- 
 boding. 
 
 As he ascended in the lift to her flat he knew that, did he 
 find that this marriage was, truly, a misadventure for Rachel, 
 then, until his death, he would reproach himself for some weak 
 inaction, some hesitation when first he had heard that it was 
 to be. 
 
 He had protested, but now he felt that he should have done 
 more. 
 
 Soon he had his answer to all his questions. 
 
 He saw at once that Rachel was no longer the impulsive, 
 nervous girl whom he had always known. She was a girl no 
 longer. 
 
 Her eyes greeted him now steadily, she seemed taller and 
 her body was in perfect control very tall and slim and dark, 
 her cheeks pale but shadowed a little with the shadow deepen- 
 ing beneath her eyes. Her mouth, that had always been too 
 Jarge, had had before a delightful quality of uncertainty, so 
 that smiles and frowns and alarm, distress and happiness all 
 hovered near. It was now grave and composed. 
 
 Her limbs had always moved unsteadily and with the
 
 RACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER 215 
 
 awkward lack of control of a child, now there was no kind of 
 impulse, every movement was considered, and that was the 
 first thing that Christopher saw, that nothing that Rachel 
 now did or said was spontaneous. 
 
 There was less in her now to remind him of her foreign 
 blood. 
 
 The flat was comfortable, but more commonplace than it 
 would have been had it been Rachel's only. 
 
 He kissed her, as he had always done, and he fancied that 
 she clung for a moment to him, as her hands went up to his 
 coat. 
 
 He settled his big loose body and looked across at her. 
 
 Christopher was no subtle analyser of other people's emo- 
 tions. His own feelings were never complicated and he ex- 
 pected life to run on plain and simple lines of likes and 
 dislikes, sorrow, anger, love and hatred. If someone of whom 
 he was fond made a direct appeal to him his simple remedies 
 were often wonderfully useful he was no fool and he had 
 been brought, during a great number of years, into the most 
 direct relations with men and women, but, if that direct 
 appeal was not made, then he was frightened and baffled. 
 
 He was frightened of Rachel now ; he knew instantly that 
 instead of appealing she would defend herself from him. . . . 
 Some mysterious conviction seemed to forebode that he would 
 not be able to help her. He was, essentially, of those who, 
 believing in goodness and virtue and the glorious Millen- 
 nium, are contented, quite simply, with that belief and might, 
 if they stated those simplicities, irritate the scoffers. But 
 he was saved because he made statements on the rarest occa- 
 sions and lived his life instead. 
 
 Here, however, was a crisis in his relations with Rachel that 
 no platitudes could satisfy. Did he not touch her now he 
 might never touch her again. 
 
 In a situation that was beyond him he was always hope- 
 lessly self-conscious. His love for Rachel was so tremendous 
 a thing in him that a statement of it should surely have been
 
 216 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 the simplest thing in the world. But he saw in her eyes that 
 to challenge her with " My dear, you know how I love you. 
 Tell me what's the matter," would frighten her to absolute 
 silence. " I'm going to tell you nothing," she seemed to say 
 to him, " unless you move me in spite of myself. But, if I 
 don't tell you now I shall never tell you." 
 
 " Well, my dear," he said, smiling at her, " how are you 
 after all this time ? " 
 
 " I'm all right," she answered, smiling back at him. " It 
 is good to see you again. Tell me all about your holiday." 
 
 " Tell me about yours first." 
 
 " Oh ! There isn't very much to tell. I enjoyed it all 
 enormously, of course." 
 
 " What did you enjoy most ? " 
 
 " Oh ! some of the smaller towns Rapallo, for instance. 
 Oh ! yes, and Bologna was fascinating." 
 
 " Not Home and Florence ? " 
 
 " In a way. But there were too many tourists. Rome 
 one's got to stay in, I'm sure. That first view was disappoint- 
 ing." 
 
 " And how did Roddy if I may call him Roddy enjoy 
 it?" 
 
 " Immensely, I think. He liked the country better than 
 the towns though." 
 
 " You saw lots of pictures ? " 
 
 " Heaps. Roddy enjoyed them enormously. I'd no idea 
 he knew so much about them. Oh! it was all lovely, and 
 such colours, such light London seems like a cellar, even in 
 June." 
 
 There followed then a pause that swelled and swelled be- 
 tween them until it resembled some dreadful monster, hor- 
 ribly stationed there to separate them. 
 
 Christopher looked at Rachel, but she refused to meet his 
 eyes. 
 
 " I've lost her. I shall never see her again ! " he thought 
 with despair. Two years ago he would have gone to her, put
 
 RACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER 217 
 
 his arms around her, kissed her and drawn from her at once 
 her trouble. 
 
 He could not do that now. 
 
 " Your turn, Dr. Chris dear. Tell me about your holi- 
 days." 
 
 " Oh, mine don't count. I went to Erittany first, then up 
 to St. Andrews with another man to play golf." 
 
 " You're looking splendidly well and you're thinner. 
 What was Brittany like ? " 
 
 " Delightful. Have you ever been there ? " 
 
 " Never. I must get Roddy to take me. Just suit him, 
 I should think." 
 
 To Christopher's intense relief tea was brought. He came 
 to the table and then, for an instant, he did catch her eyes, 
 saw tears in them, and behind the tears some appeal to him 
 to help her. Her hand was shaking. 
 
 " How silly of me to spill your tea. I'm so sorry. Let 
 me pour it back. . . ." 
 
 " Rachel " he began, but a servant entered with 
 
 eomething and he waited. When they were alone again, 
 standing over her as though he were afraid that she would 
 escape him, he plunged. 
 
 " Rachel dear. We're talking as though we'd never met 
 before. You've never been shy with me like this. If mar- 
 riage is going to make a stranger of you, I shall break young 
 Seddon's neck " 
 
 " No," she said in a voice that was between laughter and 
 tears. " Of course, Dr. Chris. Things are just the same 
 between us, only, only well, I'm married and one thing 
 and another, you know." 
 
 He caught both her hands. 
 
 " You're perfectly happy ? " 
 
 She met his eyes. 
 
 " Perfectly." 
 
 "Happier than you've ever been in your life?" 
 
 She dropped her eyes.
 
 218 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Happier than I've ever been in my life." 
 
 " And you'll come to me just the same if there's any kind 
 of trouble ? " 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 " You promise ? " 
 
 " I promise." 
 
 They talked then, for a little time, of other things. But 
 he was not satisfied. Rachel's soul, caught away in alarm, 
 was still beyond his grasp. 
 
 At last, feeling that the moments were precious and that 
 Roddy might at any instant appear, he sat down on the 
 sofa beside her. 
 
 " Rachel dear. Something's worrying you. You won't 
 tell me?" 
 
 " Nothing's worrying " 
 
 " Ah, but I know well, if you won't you won't but if 
 you knew how much I loved you you'd feel that you were 
 cruel not to let me help you." 
 
 " Dear Dr. Chris but there is nothing." 
 
 But her eyes were full of tears. 
 
 " Look here," he said. " Perhaps you'll feel later on yon 
 can talk to me. Just come straight away if you do feel 
 that." 
 
 He went on. " Don't be frightened, my dear, if there are 
 a whole heap of new emotions, new instincts, stirred in you 
 by marriage. Just take them all as they come. It's all 
 progress, you know. Don't be frightened of anything. Just 
 take the animal by the head and look at it." 
 
 That led him to speak about Brun's Tiger. He explained 
 it the force in people, the way they either grappled with 
 the creature, and at last trained it to help them with their 
 work in the world, or ignored it, silenced it, allowed it at 
 last to die, and so, cosy and lazily comfortable, passed to 
 their day's end, but had, nevertheless, missed the whole pur- 
 pose of life. 
 
 He enlarged on that and showed the connection of the in-
 
 KACHEL AND CHRISTOPHER 219 
 
 dividual Tiger with the welfare of the world, so that every- 
 one who denied his Tiger added to his world's muddle and 
 confusion, and at last there would come an inevitable crisis 
 when war would spring up between those who had grappled 
 with their Tiger and those who had not. 
 
 " One knows one's own Tiger absolutely of oneself one 
 knows it and has, of oneself, the choice whether to grapple 
 or not at least that's what I gathered he meant I know 
 it struck me at the time." 
 
 " Oh," she said, with a sigh that quivered through her 
 whole body. " It's so easy to talk. . . . But it's true what 
 he says. I know it." 
 
 At last Christopher got up to go. He did not know 
 whether he had done any good ; he felt that he was a miser- 
 able failure, and he had a foreboding that one day he would 
 be ashamed indeed that he had not helped her. 
 
 " Do something," a voice seemed to tell him. " You'll 
 regret ... all your life you'll regret." 
 
 He turned and held again her hands in his. ..." Rachel 
 dear tell me " 
 
 Her hands were chill and lifeless. Her voice caught. 
 "Oh! Dr. Chris! . . ." Then she suddenly stepped back 
 from him 
 
 " It's all right. . . . I'm all right. Come again soon, 
 Dr. Chris dear come soon." 
 
 He left her and found his way into the hot, breathless 
 street. 
 
 After he had gone Rachel sat, staring beyond the room 
 out on to the white walls of the houses and the green branches 
 of the trees in the square. 
 
 Roddy came in. 
 
 All the afternoon he had been thinking about her; at one 
 moment he was furious with the discomfort that life was now 
 becoming to him, at another moment he was imagining little 
 plans that would sweep all the discomfort away. 
 
 All this spring they had been miserable together. Now
 
 220 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 was beginning a time that was always jolly in London and 
 yet he could not enjoy a moment of it. Did she dislike him 
 instead of liking him, or did he like her instead of loving 
 her, it would all be so easy just the same as any other 
 couple. 
 
 Ever since that silly Nita incident there had been this 
 restraint, and yet how could that be the cause ? 
 
 Rachel had made nothing of it; it was because it had 
 meant so little to her that he had chafed so at the remem- 
 brance of it. 
 
 She was fond of him he knew that she was miserably 
 unhappy. 
 
 He loved her and he was miserably unhappy. 
 
 Damn this weather. 
 
 He looked at her, wondered what would happen did he 
 cross over and suddenly kiss her, knew that he would see her 
 struggle to be kind, to give him what he wanted, knew that 
 that would hurt most damnably, and that he would be in a 
 bad temper for the rest of the evening and would wonder 
 why 
 
 So, with a muttered word he went out and up to his dress- 
 ing-room, had a bath, and then lay reading with serious 
 brows The Winning Post until his man told him that it was 
 time to dress. 
 
 Slowly and with the absorbed care that he always gave to 
 these preparations he made himself ready for the Beamin- 
 eter dinner.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 UZZIE'S JOURJJEY I 
 
 " So thy great gift, upon misprision growing, 
 Comes home again, on better judgement making; 
 Thus have I had thee, as a dream doth natter 
 In sleep a king; but waking no such matter." 
 
 WILLIAM SHAKESPEABB. 
 
 DURING this year Lizzie Rand was glad that she had 
 so much to do. As she had never until now given 
 the romance in her an opportunity for freedom, so had she 
 never before realized the amazing invasion upon life that 
 that same romance might threaten. 
 
 Indeed by the early summer months of 1899 " threaten " 
 was no longer an honest definition, for, now this same 
 Romance had invaded, had conquered, had confronted the 
 very citadels of Lizzie's heart, citadels never surveyed nor 
 challenged at any time before. 
 
 Nevertheless, even now, Portland Place noticed no change 
 in Miss Rand. Norris, Mrs. Newton, Dorchester would still, 
 had they been challenged, have protested that Miss Rand 
 had no conception of the softer, more sentimental side of 
 life; she was there for discipline and order Norris had 
 been known to be led a fearful dance by young women 
 " time and again " Mrs. Newton had passionately adored 
 the late Mr. Newton until a sudden chill had carried him to 
 St. Agnes, Bare Street Cemetery, whither Mrs. Newton, 
 every Sunday, did still make her stately pilgrimage 
 even Dorchester had once, it was said, paid grim attentions 
 to a soldier who had, unhappily, found in some fluffy young 
 woman a more hopeful comfort. 
 
 Here, above and below stairs^ passion had marked its vic- 
 tims . . . Miss Rand only could have felt no touch of it, 
 
 221
 
 222 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 She sometimes wondered at herself that she could so 
 calmly and dispassionately separate the one life from the 
 other. Never, within that neat stern room at Portland 
 Place, was there a shudder or sudden invading thrill at some 
 flashing recollection or imagination. To her work every 
 nerve, every energy was given. Now, indeed, more than 
 ever before in her experience of it did 104 Portland Place 
 demand her presence. Increasingly throughout these months 
 of 1899 was the solemn heavy air unsettled. 
 
 Lizzie, to whom all impression came with sharpening acute- 
 ness, had seen in the appearance, success and marriage of 
 Rachel Beaminster the disturbing elements at work 
 " Things will never be the same here again " she had said 
 to herself. 
 
 It was, of course, through Lady Adela that Lizzie studied 
 the house. The Duchess she never saw, but it was Lady 
 Adela's attitude, before and after those interviews with her 
 mother, that told their story. Lady Adela had never until 
 now appeared an interesting figure to Lizzie, but now, forth 
 from the dry sterile husk of her, a life, pathetic, struggling 
 against heritages of dumb years, tried to come. 
 
 Lady Adela was unhappy; the very foundations of her 
 existence threatened to dismay her, at any moment, by their 
 insecurity. Within her the Beaminster tradition urged, be- 
 fore Lizzie Rand at any rate, the maintenance of dignity 
 and indifference, but the novelty to her of all this disturb- 
 ance brought with it a hapless inability to deal with it, and 
 again and again little exclamations, little surprised wonders 
 at what the world could be coming to, little confused clutch- 
 ings at anything that offered stability, showed Lizzie that 
 trouble was on every side of her. Then through the house 
 rumour began to twist its way Her Grace was not so well 
 " The Old Lady was breaking up " (this in the close se- 
 curity of shuttered rooms below stairs). 
 
 No one could say whence these whispers gathered. Dor- 
 chester would admit nothing. Her own position in the eer-
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY I 223 
 
 rants' hall was that of a lofty uncompromising female Jove, 
 and she knew well enough that her supremacy over Norris 
 and Mrs. Newton depended on her mistress's supremacy over 
 the world in general. Not for her then to admit ill health. 
 
 " Indeed no Her Grace has been better of late than for 
 years past." 
 
 But Norris and Mrs. Newton were not to be taken in. 
 They were truly proud now of their alliance with the Bea- 
 minster family royal, but, supposing Her Grace were to 
 leave this world to rule in a better one (" Here to-day, gone to- 
 morrow 'igh or low," as Norris remarked), why, then " Le 
 Roi est mort Vive le Hoi," and the Crown might, in the 
 meanwhile, have passed elsewhere. 
 
 " You mark my words," Mrs. Newton said to Norris, " *er 
 Grace will go, old Victorier will go, and where'll the Bea- 
 minster crowd be then, I ask you? Times are movin' too 
 quick. I wouldn't give a toss for your Birth and Debrett 
 and all in another twenty years." 
 
 To Lizzie also there came other signs of the times. She 
 noticed that now the relations and friends of the family 
 gathered more frequently together than ever before within 
 her memory. The Duke, Lord Richard were continually in 
 the house, and the adherents, Lady Carloes, Lord Crewner, 
 the Massiters and all the others, called, dined, came to tea. 
 
 Throughout it all there was no expression of any change 
 in the family policy. To Lizzie Lady Adela admitted noth- 
 ing, only there were occasions when, almost against her will, 
 she asked for advice, was uncertain a little, vague a little, 
 even appealing a little. 
 
 Here Lizzie was exactly right, assisted and yet admitted 
 no need for assistance. Her tact was perfect. 
 
 Lizzie had also Lady Seddon to besiege her attention. 
 
 To her considerable surprise Rachel had written to her 
 three times during this year. On each occasion there had 
 been some definite reason for writing, but behind the reason 
 there had been some implied friendliness and Lizzie had. in
 
 224 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 her turn, sent answers that were more than businesslike re* 
 plies. 
 
 Lizzie had seen Rachel several times in January and at 
 each meeting her impression of Rachel's unhappiness had 
 grown. 
 
 " There've been three of you," Lizzie said to herself. 
 " There was the girl in the schoolroom, and a fierce awkward 
 difficult creature she was. There was the girl in her first 
 season, and a delightful, joyful, radiant creature she was. 
 And now well, there's a girl married, fierce again, suffering 
 again above all, afraid of herself." 
 
 In May Rachel asked Lizzie to go and see her, and Lizzie 
 went. That meeting was in no way personal : Rachel seemed 
 less friendly than she had been on that day, a year ago, when 
 she had been to Lizzie's, but behind all that outward stiffness 
 the appeal was there. 
 
 " She wants me to help her," thought Lizzie. " She's too 
 proud now to ask me : the time will come though." 
 
 All this was connected, she knew, with the fortunes of the 
 house. Through Lord John, Lord Richard, the Duke, Lady 
 Adela, Dorchester, Norris, Mrs. Newton, the spirit of uneasi- 
 ness was abroad. 
 
 The Duchess, during these months, more than ever before, 
 was present in every room and passage of the house 
 
 The shadow of some coming event hovered. 
 
 ii 
 
 Over Lizzie's other life, also, the Duchess hovered. Were 
 any disaster to snatch Her Grace from the domination of this 
 world into a comparatively humble position in the next, 
 Lizzie did not doubt that the Beaminsters would once more 
 take Erancis Breton into their ranks. It was the Duchess 
 who held the gate against him. 
 
 The romantic side of her did not hold complete dominion. 
 She knew that were Erancis Breton once more accepted by 
 the family, his distance from her would be greatly increased.
 
 LIZZIE'S JOUKNEY I 225 
 
 Were he, on the other hand, to marry her whilst he was yet 
 an exile, then had she no fear of after consequences. She 
 could hold her own with anyone. 
 
 She had now very little doubt that he loved her. She had 
 seen, during the last year, the flame of some passion burning 
 in his eyes, increasingly he depended upon her and found 
 opportunities for being with her. There was no other woman 
 whom he saw, of that she was convinced. 
 
 Often he had been about to tell her some secret and then 
 had refrained ; she thought that he was waiting until he could 
 be quite assured that she loved him, and she had fancied 
 that since that day in last December when the first snow had 
 fallen and they had had that little talk together he had been 
 much happier, as though he were now convinced of her love 
 for him. 
 
 The spring passed and still his confession did not come. 
 With the early summer he seemed to be once more unhappy 
 and unsettled, and throughout May she scarcely saw him. 
 
 Then in July he asked her whether she would dine with him 
 and go to the theatre. He had two dress circle tickets for 
 Mrs. Lemiter's Decision. 
 
 Something told her that on this evening he would speak 
 to her. 
 
 As she dressed her fingers trembled so that buttons and 
 hooks and laces were of terrible difficulty. In the glass she 
 saw her cheeks flaming; she wished she were taller, not so 
 sturdy. The lines of her face, she thought, were all so set as 
 though they knew well for what purpose they were there. 
 " Business we're here for . . ." they seemed to say. 
 
 For once she envied her sister's fair rounded fluffiness. 
 Her black evening dress was fashionable, almost smart, but 
 just a little stern : she fastened some dark red carnations into 
 her waist and hung around her throat a chain of tiny pearls, 
 her only piece of jewellery. Her hair was restrained and 
 disciplined she could not extract from it any waves or soft 
 indulgeaeies
 
 226 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 At the end, staring at her reflection, she let herself go. 
 
 " He's seen me all this time as I am. How silly to try to 
 alter things ! " Her face glowed, the pearls and carnations 
 seemed to smile encouragement to her. 
 
 What possibilities had this new, this wonderful Lizzie 
 Rand ! What a life might be hers ! What a happy, fortu- 
 nate woman she was! 
 
 God, how grateful she was ! 
 
 Mrs. Rand saw them off in a four-wheeler with an air of 
 reluctance. It always hurt her that anyone should go to the 
 theatre without her. 
 
 Of course Lizzie was old enough by now to look after her- 
 self, but at the same time this Mr. Breton was no safe char- 
 acter and it would have been altogether " nicer " if Lizzie 
 had suggested her company 
 
 Lizzie had not suggested it; with a shiver Mrs. Rand re- 
 signed herself to an evening made hideous by a vision of a 
 world crowded with theatres through whose portals gay au- 
 diences were pouring 
 
 " Of course it's selfish of her," she said again and again to 
 Daisy " Selfish is the only word." 
 
 Meanwhile the cab was, for Lizzie, a chariot of happiness. 
 He looked splendid to-night, more romantic than he had ever 
 been, with his pointed beard, his armless sleeve buttoned 
 across on to his coat, his top-hat shining, his clothes fitting so 
 perfectly. Poor though he was, he always stood up as smart 
 as anyone, the Duke or Lord John were no smarter. 
 
 Did he realize, she wondered, that the edge of his hand 
 touched the silk of her dress ? Did he notice the absurd way 
 that the pearls jumped up and down on her throat ? Did he 
 feel the little shiver of happiness that ran through her body 
 and out at her toes and fingers ? 
 
 The chariot was dark, but beyond it there were piled lighted 
 buildings; before these ran streets that flung dark figures, 
 here one by one, now in throngs, against the glittering colour.
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY I 227 
 
 She could not believe that anyone there by the lumbering 
 cab could show happiness that could equal hers. 
 
 Had she been coldly surveying, from the careful distance 
 of an outside observer, these emotions in some other woman 
 she would have demanded her reasons for such expectation of 
 happiness, but it was her very inexperience of any other such 
 affair in her life that allowed her now to rest assured. As he 
 touched her hand to help her into the restaurant she was sure, 
 by the beating of her heart, that she could not be deceived. 
 
 The restaurant was in Pall Mall, and as she went in she 
 noticed the string of faithful people waiting round the corner 
 of Her Majesty's Theatre; she was glad that there were so 
 many others enjoying themselves to-night. 
 
 They sat at a little round table on a balcony and below 
 them other happy people were laughing and talking 
 Flowers, lights, women not so beautiful that they disheartened 
 one, and, from the open windows, a whir, a rattle, a shout, a 
 cry, a bell, a hurdy-gurdy, a laugh Oh ! the world was turn- 
 ing to-night! 
 
 There was a beautiful dinner, but she was far too happy to 
 eat much. He seemed to understand. They both talked a 
 little, but it was, it appeared, implied between them that their 
 real conversation should be postponed. 
 
 She was, to herself, an utterly new Lizzie Rand to-night, in- 
 articulate, uncertain, confused. 
 
 " What's this the papers say about South Africa ? " 
 
 " Yes, it looks as though there were going to be trouble 
 there. But you can trust Milner a strong man " 
 
 " Yes, I suppose so but it seems a pity that this Confer- 
 ence that they hoped so much from has all fallen through, 
 doesn't it ? They do seem obstinate people." 
 
 " Well, they are. I was out in Pretoria in '95 obstinate 
 as mules. But there won't be much trouble a troop or two 
 of our fellows have only got to show their faces " 
 
 " Yes, of course. Isn't that a pretty woman down there ?
 
 228 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 There to the right with the black hair and the diamonds 
 tall 
 
 But tall women with black hair and Boers in South Africa 
 were merely points to catch hold, and, for an instant, the thrill 
 of the contact and the anticipation and the glorious vision of 
 the wonderful future. 
 
 Him all this time she closely observed. He was not en- 
 tirely at his ease, when she had been in public with him before 
 she had noticed it, his glance at every new-comer, his con- 
 scious summoning of control lest it should be someone whom 
 he had once known, someone who might now, perhaps, not 
 know him. 
 
 It made him in her eyes all the younger, all the more 
 happily demanding her protection; how terribly she loved 
 him she had never, she thought, realized until this moment. 
 
 The Haymarket Theatre, where Mrs. Lemiter' s Decision 
 had been given to a grateful world for nearly two hundred 
 nights, was next door. 
 
 In a moment they were there and the band was playing 
 and the lights were up, and then the band was not playing 
 and the lights were down, and she was instantly conscious of 
 the places where his body touched hers and of his hand lying 
 white upon his knee. 
 
 She, Lizzie Rand, most perfect of private secretaries, most 
 sedate and composed of women, found it all that her self- 
 control could secure that she should not then and there have 
 touched that hand with her own. 
 
 It was not really a good play. There was a lady, M'rs. 
 Lemiter, who had once done what she should not have done. 
 There were a number of ladies and gentlemen, placed round 
 her by the author, in order that she should, for the benefit 
 of as many audiences as possible, confess what she had done. 
 
 During the first and second acts Mrs. Lemiter made little 
 dashes towards escape and the author (naturally omniscient) 
 always placed someone in front of her just in time and there 
 cries of " Not this way, my good woman." At the end
 
 LIZZIE'S JOUKNEY I 229 
 
 of the third act, Mrs. Lemiter, thoroughly bored and exas- 
 perated, turned on them all and, fdr a good twenty minutes, 
 told them what she thought of them. 
 
 During the fourth act they all assured her that they liked 
 her very much and that, as it was now eleven o'clock and she'd 
 lost her temper so successfully that the house would certainly 
 be filled for many months to come, they'd all better have tea 
 or dinner, whilst a young couple, who had throughout the 
 play loved one another and quarrelled, made it up again. 
 
 When the play was at an end Lizzie did not know what it 
 had been about. She took his hand and when he was about 
 to hail a cab stopped him. 
 
 " Let's walk," she said, " it's such a lovely night." 
 
 He eagerly agreed and they started. 
 
 m 
 
 She knew that her moment had come ; he knew too she 
 could tell that because all the way up the Haymarket he said 
 nothing. 
 
 Piccadilly Circus was a screaming confusion. A music- 
 hall invited you to come and hear " Harry and Clare, draw- 
 ing-room entertainers." Lights red and green and gold 
 flashed and advised drinks and hair-oil and tobacco. Ladies, 
 highly coloured and a little dishevelled, stared haughtily but 
 inquisitively about them, boys shouted newspapers and dived 
 under horses and appeared, miraculously delivered from tha 
 wheels of omnibuses. 
 
 It was a rushing, whirling confusion and through it his arm 
 led her, happier in his secure guard than in anything else 
 under heaven. 
 
 Regent Street was quiet and softly coloured above the mael- 
 strom into which it flowed. He suddenly began : 
 
 " Fve got something I want to tell you something I've 
 wanted to tell you for a long time. You must have 
 seen " 
 
 Her voice, coming to her as though it were a stranger's, said,
 
 230 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 "Yes." At the same time, looking about her, almost un 
 consciously, she registered her memory of the place and the 
 hour the shelving street, rising with its lamps reflected, be- 
 fore them, a bank of dark cloud that had suddenly appeared 
 and hung, sinister against the night sky, behind the white 
 houses, a slip of a silver moon surveying this same cloud with 
 anxiety because it knew that soon its darkness would engulf 
 it. 
 
 " I've wanted to tell you," he began again, " this long time. 
 It's needed courage, and things during this last year have 
 rather taken my courage away from me." 
 
 " You needn't be afraid," she said with a little laugh. 
 " You ought to know by this time that you can tell me any- 
 thing, Mr. Breton." 
 
 " Yes, I do know," he said earnestly. " Of course I know. 
 What you've been to me all this last year I simply can't 
 think how I'd have kept up if it hadn't been for you." 
 
 " Oh, please," she said. 
 
 " No, but it's true. Even with you it's been a bit of a 
 fight." 
 
 He paused. She saw that the black cloud had already swal- 
 lowed up the moon and that a few raindrops were beginning 
 to fall. 
 
 He went on : " You must have seen that all this time some- 
 thing's been helping me, I've never spoken to you, but you've 
 known " 
 
 The moment had come. Her heart had surely stopped its 
 beat and she was glad, in her happiness, of the rain that was 
 now falling more swiftly. 
 
 " I don't know " he stammered a little. " It's so diffi- 
 cult. It's come to this, that I must speak to somebody and 
 you're the only person, the only person. But even with one's 
 best friends one knows jiem so slightly after all, per- 
 haps, you'll think it very wrong " 
 
 At that word it was as though a great hammer had, of $
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY I 231 
 
 sudden, hit her heart and slain it. The street, shining with 
 the rain, rose ever so little and bent towards her. 
 
 " Wrong ? " she said, looking up at him. 
 
 " Yes. I don't know about your standards you've been 
 always so kind to me and put up with my faults and so I've 
 been encouraged " 
 
 Her relief should have awaked the gods of Olympus with 
 its triumph. 
 
 " I've meant everything I've ever said " 
 
 " Yes, I'm sure you have and that's why I think you'll 
 understand. As I say, I've got to tell someone or I'll burst. 
 It's just this it's my cousin Rachel Lady Seddon. Ever 
 since we first met in your room she's been my whole world. 
 Nothing else has mattered. It's she that's kept me all these 
 months from going under. She's my life, my whole exist- 
 ence now and in the world to come, if there is one. Oh! 
 Thank God ! " he cried. " I've told someone at last. If you 
 don't approve I can't help it. I know you'll keep my secret 
 and, after all, it's nothing very terrible. I'm content to go 
 on like this, just seeing her sometimes, writing to her some- 
 times. Now you know, Miss Hand, what's been my secret 
 all this tima I've felt it's been between us and that's why 
 I had to tell you. We'll be twice the friends that we were 
 now that I've told you. And I must, I must have someone 
 to talk to about her sometimes. It's been killing me, getting 
 along without it." 
 
 Now that he had begun words poured from him. He did 
 not know that it was raining; he saw only Rachel with her 
 white face and dark hair. 
 
 Lizzie pulled her wrap about her; she was very cold and 
 the rain was coming fast. 
 
 He was suddenly conscious of this. 
 
 " I say, what a brute I am ! It's pouring ! " He called a 
 passing hansom and they climbed into it. 
 
 He was aware that she had said nothing.
 
 232 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " There ! " he said, " you wish I hadn't told you. I know 
 you do. You're shocked." 
 
 " No," she said, struggling to prevent her teeth from chat- 
 tering. 
 
 He felt her shiver. "Why! you're shaking with cold! 
 We oughtn't to have walked, but I did so want to speak to 
 you about this. We must talk about it another time. But, I 
 fla y> yu aren't really horrified about it, are you ? " 
 
 " No," she said again. " Another time though There 
 must be thunder. This storm makes my head ache." 
 
 She could say no more. The rest of the drive was in 
 silence. In the hall she thanked him for her delightful 
 evening. 
 
 She looked through the drawing-room door and wished her 
 mother and sister good night, but did not stay to discuss 
 incidents. 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Eand, who had a fine list of questions 
 ready about the play " There's selfishness ! " 
 
 Lizzie locked her door, undressed and lay down. 
 
 Like a sword jagging through and through her brain and 
 piercing from there down to her heart stabbed the refrain: 
 
 "Oh! I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!" 
 
 So, wide-eyed, she lay throughout the night.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 
 
 " We must expect change," returned Mrs. Chick. 
 
 " Of weather ? " asked Miss Tox in her simplicity. 
 
 " Of everything," returned Mrs. Chick. " Of course we must. It's 
 a world of change. Anyone would surprise me very much, Lucretia, 
 and would greatly alter my opinion of their understanding, if they 
 attempted to contradict or evade what is so perfectly evident. 
 Change!" exclaimed Mrs. Chick, with severe philosophy "Why, my 
 gracious me, what is there that does not change! Even the silkworm, 
 who I am sure might be supposed not to trouble itself about such sub- 
 jects, changes into all sorts of unexpected things continually." 
 
 Dombcy and Son. 
 
 AT four o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 
 llth, in this year 1899 war between England anji 
 South Africa was declared. 
 
 At that same hour on that same afternoon an afternoon 
 party was given by Lady Adela Beaminster at 104 Portland 
 Place, and all the more important believers in the Beaminster 
 religion were present. 
 
 The Long Drawing-room had the happy property of ex- 
 tending to accommodate its company and now, shadowy as 
 its corners always were, it yielded the impression still of size 
 and space, its mirrors reflecting its dark green walls that 
 receded from the figures that thronged it. 
 
 The Duchess (now Ross's portrait of her) hung above the 
 Adams fireplace and a little globe of light shone, on this dark 
 October day, up into that sharp and wizened face and lit 
 those bending fingers and flung forward the dull green jade 
 and the dark black dress. 
 
 Many people were present. The Duke, Lord John, Lord 
 Richard of course also, of course, Lady Carloes, the Massi- 
 ters, Lord Crewner, Monty Carfax, Brun, Maurice Garden 
 
 233
 
 234 THE DUCHESS OE WEEXE 
 
 the novelist, and his wife also a fine collection of ladies and 
 gentlemen, important in politics, in the graver camps of so- 
 ciety also a certain number who belonged by party to 
 those whom Brim had once called the Aristocrats, the Chi- 
 ehesters, the Medleys, the Darrants. Old Lady Darrant was 
 there looking like a cook, and Fred Chichester with his kind 
 and freckled features, and Mrs. Medley who had married 
 Judge Medley's only son. 
 
 Of the Democrats of the Ruddards, the Denisons, the 
 Oaks, not one to be seen. 
 
 The men and women who stood about in the room seemed 
 strangely, oddly, of one family. No human being present 
 was without his or her self-consciousness, but it was a self- 
 consciousness that had about it nothing vulgar or strident. 
 No voice in that room was raised ; the very laughter implied, 
 " Here we are, in the very Court of our Temple ; we may then 
 relax a little. For a time, at any rate, we know who we all 
 are." 
 
 This security was implied on every hand. It was: 
 " Young Rorke's going out he's the son of Alice Branches 
 he married old Truddits' daughter," or 
 
 " No, I don't know him personally, but Dick Barnett has 
 seen him once or twice and says he's a very decent feller," 
 or 
 
 " Well, I should go carefully, if I were you. Neither the 
 Massiters nor the Crawfords know her and, in fact, I can't 
 find anyone who does." 
 
 Had a stranger penetrated into the fastnesses of the Chi- 
 chesters or the Medleys he would have been overwhelmed 
 with courtesy and politeness and, unless he had full creden- 
 tials, would have been utterly excluded at the end of it. 
 Had he boldly invaded the Denisons he would, unless he 
 could prove his contribution to the entertainment of the day, 
 have been told frankly that he was not wanted. 
 
 Had he passed the doors of No. 104 and had no proof of his
 
 ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 235 
 
 Seaminster faith upon him, Norris would have exchanged 
 with him a quiet word or two and he would have found him- 
 self in the bright spaces of Portland Place. 
 
 Rachel and Roddy had come to the party. Rachel sat on 
 a high chair and looked stiff and pale ; Lady Darrant, bunched 
 up in an arm-chair, was beside her. Lady Darrant' s emotions 
 were divided between the welfare of the church in her parish 
 in Wiltshire and the welfare of her only son, a boy aged 
 twenty who, supposed to be studying for the Diplomatic 
 Service, was really interested in race meetings and polo. 
 Lady Darrant had, like most of the Aristocrats, a tranquil 
 mind. Sorrow, tragedies, perplexities might come and go, the 
 plain surface stability was in no way disturbed. She would 
 have liked to possess more money that she might bestow it 
 upon the church, and she would have preferred that her son 
 should place foreign languages above horses, but, since these 
 things were not so, God knew best and the world might have 
 been much worse: none of her friends were ever agitated, 
 outwardly at any rate. Life was calm, sure, proceeding from 
 a definite commencement to a definite conclusion and God 
 knew best. Rumours came to her of atheists and chorus 
 girls and American millionaires, but she was neither alarmed 
 nor dismayed. 
 
 At a Beaminster entertainment she felt that she was 
 among strangers. Her account of such an affair given after- 
 wards to friends implied that this world into which she had 
 glanced was not her world. Lady Adela frightened her and 
 the mere suggestion of the Duchess, whom she had never seen, 
 threatened more fiercely he r tranquillity than any other event 
 or person. 
 
 Now, every minute or so, she flung little agitated glancea 
 at the portrait. At the back of her mind, this afternoon, 
 was the reflection that there was going to be a war and that 
 quite certainly her boy, Tony, would insist on helping his 
 country.
 
 236 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 She was proud that he should insist, but, had she not bef fi 
 quite so confident of God's care for her, would have been very 
 near to most real agitation. 
 
 She looked at Rachel timidly and wondered whether that 
 strange, fierce, pale girl would be sympathetic. She had 
 heard of Rachel and her marriage, and she knew that that 
 rather stout healthy-looking young man standing and talking 
 to Lord John Beaminster was the husband. 
 
 He looked kinder than she did, Lady Darrant thought. 
 
 " It's terrible about this horrid war, isn't it ? " she said at 
 last. 
 
 Rachel, watching the room, was absorbed by her own. 
 thoughts ; she scarcely noticed the little woman beside her. 
 
 She saw Uncle John, his white hair and happy smile and 
 large rather shapeless body, his way of laughing with his head 
 flung back, the look of him when he was thinking, his face 
 precisely that of a puzzled pig simply to see him there 
 across the room brought back to her a flood of memories. 
 
 She knew that she had avoided him lately and she knew, 
 too, that he was unhappy about her. He was unhappy, poor 
 Uncle John, about a number of things always behind his 
 laughter and cheerful greetings there was the little restless 
 distress as though Life were offering him, just now, more than 
 he could control. 
 
 Rachel looked and then turned her eyes away. 
 
 " Yes," she said to Lady Darrant, " I hope it won't be 
 very much. They say that a week or two will see the end of 
 it." 
 
 Truly, for herself, this afternoon was almost too difficult 
 for her. She had received, that morning, a letter from 
 Francis Breton asking her to go to tea with him in his rooms, 
 one day within the following week. 
 
 She had never been to his rooms; she had not met him 
 once during the whole year. 
 
 She had known, during all these last twelve months, that 
 meeting him had nothing at all to do with the especial claim
 
 ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 237 
 
 that they had upon one another. That claim had existed 
 since that day of their first coming face to face and nothing 
 now could ever alter it. 
 
 But the next time that they met must be, for both of them, 
 a definite landmark. She might either decide, now, once 
 and for all, never to see him again, or grasp, quite definitely, 
 the possible result of her going to him. 
 
 The writing of this letter brought, at last, upon her the 
 climax that she had been avoiding during the last year. 
 
 Sitting there in the Beaminster camp it was difficult to 
 act without prejudice. With the exception of Uncle John 
 and Roddy she hated them all. 
 
 After all if she were to refuse to see Francis Breton did it 
 solve the question ? Did it help her and that was the great 
 need of her present life to love Roddy any better ? 
 
 And if she went to his rooms and saw him, would not the 
 truth emerge from that meeting and the miserable doubts 
 and temptations that had shadowed her since her marriage 
 be cleared away for ever? 
 
 She liked Roddy and did not love him nothing could 
 alter that. 
 
 Breton and she belonged to a world that was hostile to thia 
 world that she was now in nothing could alter that. 
 
 Yes, she would go and see Breton. She got up, smiled at 
 Lady Darrant and went across the room to talk to Uncle John. 
 
 On this afternoon she had a great overpowering longing for 
 someone to love her, to care for her, to pity her, to take her 
 into their arms and whisper comfort to her. It was so long 
 oh ! so long, since Dr. Chris and Uncle John had done that. 
 
 And yet the irony of it there was Roddy eager to do 
 it all : and from him, the fates had decreed that it should 
 mean nothing to her. 
 
 " Why can't he touch me ? Why can't he give me what I 
 want ? Is it my fault ? Whose fault is it ? " 
 
 And when she came to Uncle John she was almost afraid to 
 look at him lest he should see the unhappiness in her eye?-
 
 S38 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 But, in spite of her unhappiness, she could be satirically 
 observant. Her grandmother, up there on the wall, con- 
 trolled, like the moon, this tide of human beings. They 
 flowed forward, they retreated. About them, around them, 
 behind and in front of them hovered this War. . . . 
 
 Rachel knew that it was the Beaminster doctrine that 
 anything that occurred to the nation was to be attributed, in 
 the main, to Beaminster principles. She could tell at once 
 that they had seized upon this war as an example of Bea- 
 minster government. Had diplomacy prevented it, behold the 
 triumph of Beaminster diplomacy; now, as it had not been 
 prevented, a swift and total triumph would assert the genius 
 of Beaminster militancy. 
 
 " A week out there ought to be enough. . . . It's tire- 
 some, of course, but they'll soon have had enough of it . . ." 
 
 Even Rachel, looking up at the portrait, might, not too 
 fantastically, imagine that this war presented the last great 
 manifestation of power on the part of that old woman. 
 
 Everyone in the room, perhaps, felt the same. 
 
 n 
 
 Many eyes were upon her as she moved across to Lord 
 John. This girl, with the foreign colour and bearing, 
 having, apparently, so little of the Beaminster about her and 
 making so quickly so conventional a marriage (" One hadn't 
 expected her to care about a man like Seddon "), stirred their 
 curiosity. 
 
 Monty Carfax, licensed transmitter of public opinion, re- 
 ported her unpopular. " Met her one week-end at the 
 Massiters' that very time when Seddon proposed. Didn't 
 like her and, really, can't find anyone who does. Conceited, 
 farouche. It's my opinion Roddy Seddon finds her difficult." 
 " Yes, but she's interesting," someone would reply, " unusual. 
 Dissatisfied-looking not at all happy, I should say." 
 
 Lady Adela, stiff, awkward but important, in an ugly grey
 
 ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 239 
 
 dress found Lord Crewner the only helpful person in the room. 
 He seemed to understand the way that worries accumulated 
 about one and yet refused to be defined. . . . He stayed 
 near her throughout the afternoon. She saw Rachel moving 
 across to her brother and the sight of her stirred all her dis- 
 comfort. 
 
 " Why need she look as though she hated everyone ? " she 
 thought. 
 
 Rachel came at length to Uncle John and found him talk- 
 ing to Maurice Garden. That large and prosperous gentle- 
 man hastily proclaimed his delight in meeting Rachel again, 
 but she had very little to say to him. 
 
 He left them, secretly determined that he would never 
 speak to the girl again if he could help it. 
 
 Uncle John regarded her with an air of supplicating 
 nervousness. 
 
 " Come along, my dear," he said. " We haven't had a 
 talk for weeks. Let's find a corner somewhere " 
 
 They found a corner and then were both of them uncom- 
 fortable. The girl whom Uncle John had known and loved 
 had had her tempers and intolerances, but she had also had 
 her wonderful spontaneous affections and tendernesses. 
 
 Now she sat there looking straight before her and replying 
 only in monosyllables to his questions. 
 
 She was saying to herself: " Shall I go ? Shall I go " 
 
 At last he said timidly : 
 
 " You'll see mother before you leave ? " 
 
 " Yes," Rachel said. 
 
 " I'm afraid she's not very well." 
 
 " Not very well ? " Rachel looked up at him sharply, Lord 
 John stared away from her. No one had ever said that 
 publicly before, Lord John himself wondered at his words 
 when he had spoken them. 
 
 " Of course she doesn't admit it," he said hurriedly. " No 
 one says anything about it even Christopher. I oughtn't
 
 240 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 perhaps to have said anything myself but I thought * 
 
 He broke off. Rachel knew that he meant that she should be 
 kind and considerate on this visit. 
 
 Before she could say anything the Duke came up and joined 
 them. 
 
 It always amused Rachel to see her two uncles together. 
 The Duke was a little dried-up wasp of a man, absolutely 
 selfish, with a satirical tongue and a self-conceit that nothing 
 could pierce. He wore high white collars, over which his 
 brown sharp face searched for compliments. He walked on 
 his toes, his hands were most wonderfully manicured and his 
 trousers were so stiff and rigid over his thin little legs that 
 they looked like iron. The one soft spot in him was a 
 strangely tender affection for his sister Adela which was in 
 no way returned ; for her, and for her alone, he would forget 
 his selfishness. Richard and John he despised. 
 
 " Well, John," he said. " Well, Rachel ? " 
 
 " Well, Uncle Vincent," she said. The Duke was afraid of 
 Rachel because her tongue was as sharp as his, but he re* 
 spected her for that. 
 
 " Going up to see mother ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Rachel. Should she go ? Should she go ? 
 
 Suddenly, arising, as it seemed, out of that crowd of mov- 
 ing figures and coming and standing there in front of her, 
 was her answer. 
 
 Yes, she would go. All these months of indetermination 
 should be ended. She should know, once and for all, what 
 this Francis Breton meant to her, what that other life of hers> 
 meant to her, and so, in opposition, what Roddy meant to her. 
 She would, as Christopher would have put it, grapple with 
 her Tiger. . . . 
 
 Instantly, the relief, the glad, happy relief showed her how 
 wretched life had been. 
 
 " What about this war, Uncle Vincent ? " she said. 
 
 " Well hem well no need to worry I assure you 
 no need to worry ! "
 
 ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 241 
 
 " It seems a pity," said Lord John, still looking furtively 
 at Eachel and wishing that he could carry her off into some 
 other corner and just ask her whether she were really happy 
 or no. 
 
 " Why, John," said the Duke, cackling. " You'll have to 
 go out, 'pon my word, you will fight 'em, by Jove Ha ! 
 ha ! You'd make a fine soldier, old boy." 
 
 Rachel got up, hating Uncle Vincent very much. She put 
 her hand on Uncle John's fat arm. 
 
 " You may go, Uncle Vincent," she said. " We all give 
 you leave Uncle John we love too much : if it's a question 
 of bravery he'd be quite certainly the first of this family." 
 She gave his arm a squeeze. 
 
 Uncle Vincent looked at her, smiling 
 
 " Well," he said. " None of us would dream of go- 
 ing . . . we're all much too comfortable." 
 
 " I'll see you before I go, uncle dear," she whispered to 
 Lord John. Then she moved away. 
 
 Slowly making her path through the room she left it and 
 climbed the great stone staircasa 
 
 in 
 
 Outside her grandmother's door she paused; so she had 
 always paused, and now, as she waited there, all the proces- 
 sion of other days when she had stood there came before her. 
 Conditions might be changed, but her agitation was the same. 
 Never until she died would she open that door without won- 
 dering, in spite of common sense, whether she might not be 
 caught by some disaster before she closed it again. 
 
 She went in and found her grandmother sitting back in her 
 stiff chair and looking at some patterns of bright silks that 
 lay on a little table beside her. 
 
 A great fire was burning and the room seemed to Rachel 
 intolerably hot; she noticed at once that what Uncle John 
 had said was true. Before she had heard Rachel's entrance 
 the Duchess looked an old, tired woman. Her head was
 
 242 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 drooping a little over the blue and purple silks ; she seemed 
 half asleep. 
 
 But at the sound of the door she was alert ; when she saw 
 that it was her granddaughter who stood there, tall and 
 stately, her large black hat shadowing her face, she seemed in 
 a moment to be transformed with energy and life her head 
 went up, her eyes flashed, her hands stiffened on her lap. 
 
 " May I come in for a moment, grandmother ? " Rachel 
 said. 
 
 By the door she had wondered how could she be afraid of 
 this old sick woman ? Now as she crossed over to the fire her 
 sternest self-command was summoned to control her alarm. 
 She was frightened by nothing but this here it was indeed 
 as though there were some spell that seized her. 
 
 " Certainly, my dear come in." The Duchess gave a 
 last look at the silks and then turned to her granddaughter. 
 " I'm afraid you'll find it very hot I must have a fire, you 
 know." 
 
 She had a trick of drawing in her lower lip as she spoke, so 
 that her words hissed a little over her teeth. She did not do 
 this with everybody and Rachel believed that it was only 
 because she had noticed that Rachel as a little girl had been, 
 frightened of it that she did it now. 
 
 Rachel sat down opposite her and the heat of the fire and 
 a scent of something that had violets and mignonette in it 
 a scent that was always in the room stifled her so that her 
 head began to swim and the rings on the Duchess's hand to 
 hypnotize her. 
 
 " There's a great party going on downstairs," she said. 
 
 " Yes. I know. John came up for a moment and told me 
 about it and how are you ? " 
 
 " Very well, thank you, grandmamma. Roddy and I have 
 been ever so sociable lately, given several dinner-parties and 
 one musical thing." 
 
 " You're not looking very well. Roddy here ? " 
 
 * Yes."
 
 ALE THE BEAMINSTERS 248 
 
 "Hope he'll come and see me before he goes. Hasn't 
 been to see me much lately." 
 
 Their eyes met. Rachel held her ground and then, beaten 
 as though by a physical blow, lowered her gaze. 
 
 " Oh ! hasn't he ? He's been here a lot, I thought. He's 
 been very busy over some horses that he's had to go up and 
 down to Seddon about." 
 
 " H'm. Well I dare say he'll remember me again one 
 day so we're in for a war ? " 
 
 " Yes. They don't seem to think it very serious though 
 Uncle Richard says " 
 
 " Your Uncle Richard knows nothing about it nothing. 
 However, I don't think anyone need be alarmed." 
 
 There was in this last sentence a ring in the Duchess's 
 voice that flung her words out for the nation to grasp at. 
 " N"o need, my good people, for you to worry I have this in 
 hand." 
 
 " Well, I'm very glad," said Rachel. " It's such a long 
 while since anything has happened that it seems quite odd for 
 everyone to have something to talk about except dinner- 
 parties and scandal " 
 
 The old woman looked across at her and then very slowly 
 a smile rose, stiffened between her old dried lips and stayed 
 there 
 
 " WTiat would you say, my dear, if Roddy thought it his 
 duty to go and defend his country ? " 
 
 There was, suddenly, the sharp ring in her voice that 
 Rachel knew so well. 
 
 " I know," Rachel said quietly, " that Roddy would do his 
 duty, and of course I would want him to do that." 
 
 The Duchess, with her eyes still upon her granddaughter's 
 face, said " I've heard a good deal about a young friend 
 of yours lately." 
 
 " Who is that, grandmamma ? " Rachel said, and, in spite 
 of herself her hand trembled a little against her dress. 
 
 " Nita Raseley."
 
 244 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Rachel caught her breath. 
 
 " I gather that you and she haven't seen so much of one 
 another lately." 
 
 " Oh ! I think we have. We never were great friends, 
 you know." 
 
 " Did she enjoy her time at Seddon ? A clever little thing. 
 I shouldn't drop her, Rachel, if I were you." 
 
 " She seemed to enjoy Seddon, grandmamma. I must be 
 going, I'm afraid, with the patient Roddy waiting for me. 
 Shall I tell him to come up ? " 
 
 The old hand struck the arm of the chair and the rings 
 flashed. 
 
 " No, thank you, my dear. If he can't come of his own 
 accord, I'd prefer that he had no prompting. There was a 
 time when it was otherwise." 
 
 Rachel got up. Their eyes met again, and their hatred for 
 one another was so settled, so historic, so traditional an affair, 
 that their glance now was almost friendly. 
 
 Then Rachel bent down very slowly and kissed her grand- 
 mother's cheek. How much, she wondered, did she know of 
 the Nita affair ? Nita's spite would, assuredly, have found a 
 happy ground in which to plant its seed. Oh! how she 
 loathed this thick clouded atmosphere, this deceit, this deceit ! 
 It seemed that, at every turn since her marriage, she had been 
 dragged into an atmosphere of disguise and subterfuge and 
 double-dealing. 
 
 Well, she was soon to be done with it. At the thought of 
 what her grandmother would say did she know of her friend- 
 ship with Breton her heart beat triumphantly. There at any 
 rate was a weapon ! 
 
 " Well, good-bye, my dear. Come and see me again soon." 
 
 " Yes, grandmamma good-bye." 
 
 IV 
 
 In the carriage with Roddy she suddenly laughed. 
 
 All those people, moving so solemnly with such self-im-
 
 ALL THE BEAMINSTERS 245 
 
 portance about that room. The Duke, Lord Richard, Aunt 
 Adela . . Norris, the footman. . . . 
 
 Over them all that fierce commanding portrait. And up- 
 stairs that old, sick woman. . . . 
 
 And beyond, away from that house, a war that that old 
 woman and those self-important people saw only as a means 
 of increasing their own self-importance. 
 
 It was all as a box of tin soldiers and a parcel of stiff 
 china-faced dolls 
 
 What were they all about ? What did they think they were 
 all doing ? What, after all, was she, Rachel ? Had they no 
 conception of the sawdust that they all were beside this 
 real, swiftly moving, death-dealing War that was suddenly 
 amongst them ? 
 
 " What is it ? " said Roddy. 
 
 " Grandmother grandmother my dear, delightful, 
 wonderful grandmother. To think of her sitting all alone 
 up there in her bedroom and all those people moving about 
 downstairs all so conscious of her. And yet she does noth- 
 ing nothing." Rachel, in her excitement, struck her knee 
 with her hand. " She isn't even clever, really She's never 
 in all her life been known to say a witty thing never. She 
 doesn't really know much about politics. . . . She just sita 
 there and acts That's what it's always been, acting the 
 whole time. It it's effective to be old and feeble she is old 
 and feeble if it's effective to be fantastic she is fantastic 
 She just sits still and takes people in. Why, if she'd 
 wanted she could have been going out all these thirty years, 
 I believe!" 
 
 " You're always unfair to her, Rachel," said Roddy. 
 " You know she has ghastly pain often and often." 
 
 " Yes. I'll give her that," said Rachel. " She's brave 
 brave as anything. And after all," she added, " she couldn't 
 affect me more if she were the wittiest woman in the 
 world " 
 
 Roddy yawned " Damn dull party," he said.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 RACHEL AND BRETON 
 
 ** We are the Pilgrims, master ; we shall go 
 
 Always a little farther: it may be 
 Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, 
 Across that angry or that glimmering sea. 
 
 . . . but surely we are brave 
 Who make the Golden Journey to Samarcand." 
 
 The Golden Journey to Samwcand. 
 JAKES ALBOT FLECKER 
 
 RACHEL now awaited her meeting with Breton with 
 restless impatience. It should afford her, beyond 
 everything, a solution. She was young enough and inexperi- 
 enced enough to make many demands upon life that it 
 should be romantic, that it should, in the issues that H pre- 
 sented, be honest and open and clear, that it should allow 
 her to settle her own place in it without any hurt to anyone 
 else, that it should, in fact, arrange any number of com- 
 promises to suit herself and that it should nevertheless be so 
 honest that it would admit of no compromises at all. 
 
 She approached life with all the reckless boldness of one 
 who has never come into direct contact with it. Neither her 
 relations with her grandmother nor with Roddy had as yet 
 taken from her any of her youngest nor simplest illusions. 
 Were life drab and uninteresting, why, then one turned 
 simply to the place where it promised colour and adventure. 
 
 She had not yet discovered that when we go deliberately to 
 grasp at happiness we are eternally eluded. 
 
 But in spite of her desire for honesty she refused to face the 
 actual meeting with Breton. She knew him so slightly as 
 Francis Breton and so intimately as an idea. What she felt 
 in her heart wav>, that her grandmother had hoped to catch her 
 by marrying her to Eoddy and that nothing could prove so 
 
 246
 
 RACHEL AND BRETON 247 
 
 eloquently that she had not been caught as her friendship 
 with Breton. 
 
 " I will show her and I will show Roddy that I am my own 
 mistress, free whatever they may say or do." 
 
 Breton seen dimly as a rebel against a harsh dominating 
 world was the figure of all romance and freedom. " Roddy 
 doesn't care what happens to me. He'll do anything grand- 
 mother tells him to. . . ." 
 
 She was now out to attack the Beaminster fortress; she 
 did not as yet know that half of her was urgent for its de- 
 fence. 
 
 n 
 
 When the afternoon arrived she took a cab and was driven 
 to Saxton Square. She mounted the stairs, knocked on the 
 door and was admitted by his ugly manservant. 
 
 " Is Mr. Breton at home ? " she asked. 
 
 " Yes, my lady," he answered and smiled ; she disliked 
 his smile and before she passed into the room had a moment 
 of wild unreasoning panic when she wished that she were not 
 there, when Roddy's face came to her, kind and loving and 
 homely. 
 
 She stepped forward into the room, heard the door close 
 behind her and felt rather than saw him as he came forward 
 to greet her. 
 
 Then she heard him say 
 
 " Oh, I'm so glad you've come. I was so afraid lest some- 
 thing should stop you." 
 
 His windows, although only on the first floor, had a wide 
 sweeping view ; a world of chimaeys and towers glittering now 
 beneath the sinking sun. 
 
 His room was simple and had the effect of cleanly empti- 
 ness ; a table arranged for tea, two rather faded arm-chairs, a 
 dark green carpet, a book-case, two large framed photographs 
 on the walls, one of some street in Bomkny, the other of the 
 Niagara Falls.
 
 248 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 The sunshine lit the bare room and their faces and she was 
 suddenly comfortable and at ease. 
 
 He drew one of the easy chairs forward to the win- 
 dow. 
 
 " Sit down in the sun ; Marks will bring the tea in a mo- 
 ment." 
 
 She sat back in the chair and looked out on to the shining 
 roofs and towers, not glancing towards him, but acutely 
 aware of him, of all his movements. He sat down upon the 
 broad window-seat near her and looked at her. 
 
 She knew that she had never been conscious, physically, 
 of anyone before. Roddy's clumsy hands and rather awk- 
 ward body had always simply belonged to Roddy and stayed 
 at that ; now she felt as if Francis Breton's hand, close, as she 
 knew, to hers, was joined to her by a running current of 
 attraction. 
 
 Although he was not touching her, it was as though she 
 were chained to him. If he moved she felt that she must 
 move with him and every motion that he made seemed to 
 rouse some response in her. 
 
 She was aware, of course, as she was always aware with 
 him, of the way that intimacy between them had moved since 
 their last meeting. All her romantic evocation of life as she 
 wanted it to be helped her to this. It was as though she said 
 to herself, " Here at least is my true self free and dominant. 
 I must make the most of it " and yet, with that, something 
 seemed to warn her that freedom too easily obtained carried 
 at its heart disappointment. The ugly manservant brought 
 in tea and then disappeared. Breton moved about, waited 
 upon her, then sat down closer to her, leaning forward and 
 looking into her eyes. 
 
 It was part of his temperament that he should take her 
 coming to him as an instant acknowledgment of the complete 
 fulfilment of his wishes. He always saw life as the very 
 rosiest of his dreams until it woke him to reality. He was 
 ruled completely by the mood of the moment, and his one emo-
 
 RACHEL AND BRETON 249 
 
 tion now was that Rachel was divinely intended for him alone 
 uf all human beings 
 
 But he could not wait. . . . He knew, by this time, that 
 reflection was always a period of disappointment. He was 
 unhappily made in that he yielded to his impulses of regret 
 as eagerly as to his impulses of anticipation One mood 
 followed so swiftly upon another that collision might seem in- 
 evitable. 
 
 They were, both of them, young enough to see life as some- 
 thing that would inevitably, in a short time, condemn them 
 both to years of sterile monotony. Rachel indeed felt that 
 she was already caught. . . . 
 
 They must, both of them, therefore, make the best of their 
 time. 
 
 " I was so afraid," he repeated again, " lest something 
 should have stopped you." 
 
 " I would have asked you to come to us, only I'm afraid 
 that my husband still " 
 
 " Oh ! I quite understand." 
 
 " It's natural Roddy's like that. If he wants to do a 
 thing he doesn't care for anybody and just does it. But if 
 nothing makes him especially want to do it, then he just 
 takes other people's opinions. Now he might ask you sud- 
 denly to come and see us simply because he took it into 
 his head. Then nobody could stop him. . . . He's very 
 obstinate." 
 
 She was rather surprised at herself for talking about 
 Roddy. She had a curious feeling about him as though she 
 were going on a journey and had just said good-bye to him 
 and had a rather desolate choke iu her throat because she 
 wouldn't see him again for so long. 
 
 " Oh ! but I'm glad you've come ! If you knew the times 
 md times when I've imagined this meeting thought about 
 it, pictured " 
 
 She saw that his hand was trembling on the window 
 ledge
 
 250 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " I oughtn't to have come, perhaps But I don't know. 
 I've felt so indignant at the way that grandmother is treating 
 you. I wanted to show you that I was indignant. . . ." 
 
 " You don't know," he said, " what a help you've been to 
 me already You showed me the very first time that we met 
 that you did sympathize. . . ." 
 
 His voice was tender, partly because her presence moved 
 him so deeply and partly because the sympathy of anyone 
 about his own affairs made him instantly full of sorrow for 
 himself When anyone said that they thought that he had 
 been badly treated he always felt with an air of surprised 
 discovery : " By Jove, I have been having a bad time ! " 
 
 " Yes Wasn't it strange, that first meeting in Miss 
 Rand's room ? We seem to have known one another all our 
 lives." 
 
 She looked at him. " That you should hate grandmamma 
 so," she said, " was a great thing to me. I'd been all alone 
 fighting her for so long." 
 
 Rachel felt, in the glow of the occasion, that, all her days, 
 there had been active constant war-to-the-knife in the Port- 
 land Place house. 
 
 " She's been the curse of my life," he said bitterly. " Al- 
 ways keeping me down, making me unable to do myself 
 justice. Why should she hate me so ? " 
 
 " She hates us," cried Rachel, " because we're both deter- 
 mined to be free. We wouldn't have our lives ruled for us. 
 She wants everyone to be under her in everything." 
 
 They glowed together, very close to one another now, in 
 a glorious assertion of rebellious independence. He put his 
 hand upon the back of her chair 
 
 " Now," he said, his voice trembling, " now that we've got 
 to know one another, you won't go back on it, will you ? If 
 I couldn't feel that you were behind me, after being so en- 
 couraged, it would be terrible for me worse than anything's 
 ever been for me." 
 
 " YQU needn't be afraid," she said, not looking at him,
 
 RACHEL AND BRETON 251 
 
 but tremendously conscious of his hand that now touched her 
 dress. Then there was a long and very difficult silence dur- 
 ing which events seemed to move with terrific impetus. 
 
 She was overwhelmed by a multitude of emotions. She 
 was past analysis of regret or anticipation. Somewhere, very 
 far away, there was Roddy, and somewhere also very far 
 away there was her grandmother, but, for herself, she could 
 only feel that she was very lonely, that nobody cared about 
 her except Breton and that nobody cared about him except 
 herself and that she wanted urgently to be comforted and 
 that he himself needed comfort from her. 
 
 She knew that if she were not very strong-minded and 
 resolute she would cry ; she could feel the tears burning her 
 eyes. 
 
 " Perhaps I oughtn't to have come Oh ! it's all so difficult 
 
 with grandmother and everything I thought I could 
 
 could manage things, but I can't We oughtn't I 
 wanted to do what was best. I I didn't know 
 You " 
 
 Then the tears came She tried desperately to stop them, 
 then they came rushing ; she buried her head in her hands and 
 abandoned herself to weeping that was partly sorrow for her- 
 self and partly sorrow for Breton and partly, in the strangest 
 way, sorrow for Roddy. 
 
 He was on his knees by her chair, had his arm about her, 
 was crying: 
 
 " Oh ! Rachel Rachel Rachel I love you. I love 
 
 you Don't cry Don't -Rachel " He kissed her 
 
 again and again and she clung to him like a frightened child. 
 
 ni 
 
 After a time her crying ceased, she got up from the chair, 
 moving gently out of his embrace, and then went to the 
 looking-glass above the fireplace and stood there wiping her 
 eyes. 
 
 Then, smiling, she looked back at him He was standing
 
 252 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 in front of the window and behind him the reflection, from, 
 the departed sun, flooded the town with gold. He seemed a 
 man transformed, gazing upon her with an ecstasy of triumph, 
 exaltation, happiness. 
 
 " My dear my dear Oh ! how glorious you are ! " 
 
 But she did not move. 
 
 He stirred impatiently, and then, looking at her with ador- 
 ing eyes, he whispered, " Oh ! my dear ! but I love you ! " 
 
 " I must go," she said, her eyes, large and frightened, ap- 
 pealingly upon him 
 
 He smiled at her, his eyes laughing. 
 
 " Yes, Francis let me let me. !N"ow while I can still 
 see what I ought to do." 
 
 " There's only one thing that you ought to do. You be- 
 long to me now." She plucked nervously with her hands one 
 against the other. 
 
 " Francis, let me go please please " He saw 
 
 then that she was unhappy and the laughter died from his 
 eyes. His voice, fallen from its happiness, was almost harsh, 
 as he replied 
 
 " You know we love one another, have loved one another 
 ever since that day when we met in Miss Rand's rooms? 
 You know it as well as I do. You knew it when you came 
 to these rooms to-day." 
 
 " I oughtn't to have come." Her voice had gathered 
 strength. " It's only because I realize now what you are 
 to me that I want to go. I thought I was so strong, that I 
 could be fair to Roddy and to you too ... I didn't 
 know " 
 
 " Then stay stay " he whispered urgently. " It's a 
 thing that you've got to face anyhow We can't stay apart, 
 you and I, now. We can try, but you know you know as 
 well as I that we can't do it." 
 
 " We must That's what I meant before. That's why I 
 must go now, because soon I shan't be strong enough. But 
 we've got to part we've got to."
 
 RACHEL AND BRETON 253 
 
 " Oh, this is absurd," he cried. " We're human beings, not 
 figures to hang a theory on Now just as we realize what we 
 are to one another " 
 
 " Yes, because of that," she broke in swiftly, urgently. 
 " You know that I love you I know that you love me. 
 We've got that knowledge that nothing can take away from 
 us and we've got the love nothing can touch it. But my 
 duty is with Roddy." 
 
 " You knew that," he said, " when you came here to-day." 
 
 Her face flamed " That's not fair of you, Francis." 
 
 " No, I beg your pardon. It isn't " He suddenly 
 
 came to her, caught her and kissed her, holding her with his 
 arm close to him, murmuring in her ear. At first she had 
 struggled, then she lay absolutely still against him, making no 
 response. 
 
 He felt her passive against his beating heart. He re- 
 leased her and watched her as she went across to the window 
 and looked out into the darkening city. 
 
 " I don't care," he said roughly, " I love you. There's no 
 talk about it or anything else. You belong to me." 
 
 " I belong to Roddy," she answered quietly. " It's all 
 quite clear. My duty is to him until . . . unless, life with 
 him becomes impossible. I've got absolutely to do my best 
 and while I'm doing that you've got to help me." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he said, his eyes upon her. 
 
 " Help me by our not meeting, by our not writing, by our 
 doing nothing nothing " 
 
 " No No," he answered her, his eyes set npon her. 
 
 " You don't get me any other way. Francis, don't you see 
 that we're not the sort of people, either of us, to put up with 
 the deceits, the trickeries, the lies that the other thing means 2 
 Some people might lots of people do, I suppose but we're 
 not built that way. We're idealists We aren't made to 
 stand quietly and see all the quality of the thing vanish before 
 our eyes just to take the husk when we've known what the 
 kernel was like.
 
 254 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Besides, it isn't as though I hated Roddy. If I did I'd 
 go off with you now, in a minute if you wanted me, although 
 even then it would be a hopeless thing for us to do. But I'm 
 very fond of Roddy. I'm not in love with him I never 
 have been I told him from the first But I'm going to 
 do my best by him." 
 
 " Why did you come here ? " 
 
 " I came here because I was driven towards you. I wanted 
 to hear you say that you loved me I wanted to tell you that 
 I loved you. We've both of us said it. We know it now 
 and we've got to keep it, the most precious thing in the world. 
 
 " But we should soon hate one another if we destroyed one 
 another's ideals. For many people it wouldn't matter For 
 us, weak as we are, it matters everything." 
 
 " All this talk," he said. " I'm a man. I'm here to love 
 you, not to talk about it. I've got you and I'm going to keep 
 
 you." 
 
 " You haven't got me," she cried. " You've got a bit of 
 me. There'll be times when I'm away from you when I 
 shall think that you've got all of me. But you haven't no 
 one's got all of me. . . . 
 
 " And I haven't got you either You think now for the 
 moment that it is so But I know what it would be if we 
 were hiding about on the Continent or secretly meeting here 
 in London That's not for us, Francis." 
 
 " I've got you," he repeated. " I'm not going to wait any 
 longer " 
 
 " It's the only way you'll ever have me," she answered, 
 " by letting me do my duty to Roddy I promise you that. 
 If ever life is impossible if it's ever better for both of us 
 that I should go, I'll come to you But I shall tell him 
 first." 
 
 " Tell him ! But he won't let you go." 
 
 " He won't stop me if it comes to that." 
 
 He pleaded with her then, telling her about his life, ita
 
 EACHEL AND BRETON 255 
 
 loneliness, his unhappiness, how impossible it would be now 
 without her. 
 
 But she shook her head. 
 
 " Don't you think," she cried, " that grandmother would 
 be delighted if we went off? Both of us done for you 
 never able to return again . . . Ah ! no ! For all of us, for 
 every reason, it's not to be." 
 
 " I won't let you go I've got you. I'll keep you." 
 
 " You can't, Francis " 
 
 " I can and I will " 
 
 Then looking up, catching a vision of her framed in the 
 window with the lighted city behind her, he saw in her eyes 
 how unattainable she might be. ... 
 
 He had, he had always had, his ideals. There was a 
 long silence between them, then he bowed his head. 
 
 " You shall do as you will anything with me that you 
 will." 
 
 " Oh, my dear," she whispered, " I love you for that." 
 
 Then hurriedly, moving as though she feared her own weak- 
 ness, she went to put on her wraps He came to her. 
 
 " Let me write let me." 
 
 " No Better not" 
 
 " Just a line Nothing that any ordinary person n 
 
 " No, we mustn't, Francis." 
 
 He put her furs about her neck, then his hand rested on her 
 shoulder. Her head fell back. 
 
 " Once more " she said. He kissed her throat, then her 
 eyes, then their lips met. 
 
 " Stay," he whispered, " stay " Very slowly she drew 
 away from him, smiled at him once, and was gone.
 
 CHAPTER ViII 
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 
 
 "I judge more than I used to but it seems to me that I have earned 
 the right. One can't judge till one is forty; before that we are too 
 eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant." 
 
 HENBY JAMES. 
 
 THE War had the City in its grip. There was now, 
 during these early weeks of November, no other thought, 
 no other anxiety, no other interest. The shock of its reality 
 came most severely upon those whose lives had been most un- 
 real. Here, in the midst of their dining and their dancing, 
 was the sure fact that many whom they knew and with whom 
 they had been in the habit of playing might now, at any mo- 
 ment, find death 
 
 Here was a reality against which there was no argument, 
 and against the harshness of it music screamed and food was 
 uninteresting. 
 
 During that first month of that war, so new a thing was the 
 horrid grimness of it, that hysteria was abroad, life was two- 
 pence coloured. For everyone now it was the question 
 " What might they do ? " 
 
 Something to help, something to ease that biting truth 
 " Your life has been the most utterly useless business no 
 purpose, no strength, no unselfishness from first to last 
 what now ? " 
 
 Christopher's life had not been useless and he knew it. 
 The reality of it had never been in doubt and death the 
 haphazard surprise of it and the pathos and melodrama and 
 sometimes drab monotony of it had been his companion 
 for many years. 
 
 Christopher, although he had been a hard worker from his 
 
 childhood, had always taken life lightly. He loved the gifts 
 
 258
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 257 
 
 of this world food and amusement and exercise and pleas- 
 ant company. He loved, also, certain people whose lives wera 
 of immense concern to him. He also believed in a quite 
 traditional God about Whom he had never argued, but Whose 
 definite particular existence was as certain to him as his own. 
 
 He had faults that he tried to cure his temper his 
 pleasure in food and wine. 
 
 He had three great motives in his life His love of God, 
 his love of his friends and his love of his work. He hated 
 hypocrites, mean persons, cruel persons, anyone who showed 
 cowardice or deceit or arrogance. He was dogmatic and 
 therefore disliked anyone else to be so. He was humble 
 about his work, but not humble about his position in the 
 world, which he thought, quite frankly, a very good one. 
 
 His interest in his especial friends was compounded of 
 his love for them and also of his curiosity about them, and he 
 always loved someone the more if he or she gave him the 
 opportunity to practise his inquisitiveness upon them. 
 
 After Rachel Seddon he cared more, perhaps, for Francis 
 Breton than anyone in the world. He had also of late been 
 interested in Roddy, who was a far better fellow than he had 
 expected. 
 
 One puzzle, meanwhile, obstinately and continually beset 
 him. What had happened to Breton during this last year ? 
 Something, or in surer probability someone, had been behind 
 him. Christopher might have flattered himself that he had 
 been the influence, but he knew that, if that had been so, 
 Breton's attitude to him would have implied it. Breton was 
 fond of him, but did not owe that to him. Who then was it ? 
 
 On one of these November days he invited a friend and 
 Breton to luncheon together. 
 
 Christopher's geniality and the supreme importance of the 
 war over everything else helped amiability. Christopher's 
 little house in Harley Street showed, beyond its consulting- 
 room, a cheerful Philistine appreciation of comfort and love. 
 There was old silver, there were old prints, sofas, soft carpets,
 
 258 THE DUCHESS CXB WKEXE 
 
 book-cases, whose glass coverings were more important than 
 their contents. Also a luncheon that was the most artistic 
 thing that the house contained, save only the wine. 
 
 At the side of the round gleaming table Christopher sat 
 smiling, and soon Breton told the friend about India and the 
 friend told Breton about Africa. 
 
 Meanwhile Christopher watched Breton. He knew Breton 
 very well and, in the old days, he would have said that that 
 nervous excitement that the man sometimes betrayed meant 
 that he was on the edge of some most foolish action. 
 
 He knew that light in the eyes, that excited voice, that 
 restlessness these things had meant that Breton's self-con- 
 trol was about to break. 
 
 To-day there were all these signs, and Christopher knew 
 that after luncheon Breton would escape him. 
 
 Breton did escape him, went off somewhere in a hurry; 
 no, Christopher could not drive him he was going in the 
 opposite direction. 
 
 Whilst Christopher drove, first down to Eaton Square, 
 then back to 104 Portland Place, he was wondering about 
 Breton. . . . 
 
 It seemed that, on this afternoon, he was unduly sensitive 
 to impression. The house struck him with a chill, deserted 
 aid. There seemed to be no one about as Morris led him up 
 to the Duchess's rooms, the old portraits grinned at him, as 
 though they would have him to know that, very soon, the 
 house would bo once more in their possession and Beaminsters 
 dead and gone be of more importance than Beaminsters alive. 
 
 At any rate it was a cold November day, and always now 
 the streets seemed to echo with newsboys crying out editions. 
 
 Even through these stone walls, those cries could penetrate ; 
 he could hear one as he climbed the stairs. 
 
 The Duchess, looking peaked and shrivelled, received him 
 jrith an eagerness that showed that she was longing for com-
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 259 
 
 pany. The room was close, but, in spite of that, now and 
 again she shivered a little. 
 
 As he sat opposite her the glance that she flung him was 
 almost pathetic struggling to maintain her pride, but show- 
 ing, too, that she might now, in his company, a little relax 
 that great effort. 
 
 " I'm not so well," she said ; " I've slept badly." 
 
 " I'm sorry for that," he said ; " what's the trouble ? " 
 
 " It's this war," she said, taking her eyes away from his 
 face. " This war I don't think I've ever felt anything 
 before, but this Oh ! I'm old, old at last," she said almost 
 savagely. 
 
 " Everybody's feeling it just now," Christopher answered 
 her quietly. " I suppose I'm as level-headed as most people, 
 but even I have been imagining things to-day Nerves, 
 simply nerves " 
 
 " Nonsense," she answered him " Don't tell me, Christo- 
 pher. What have I ever had to do with nerves ? " 
 
 " Wait a little. All we want is to get used to War : it's 
 a new experience for all of us " 
 
 She laughed sharply 
 
 " It's ludicrous, but really you'd think if you studied my 
 family that I was responsible for the whole thing. It's posi- 
 tively as though I'd made some huge blunder which they 
 would do their best to excuse. Adela, John I'm now to 
 them an old sick woman who's got to be kept quiet and 
 away from worry. They wouldn't have dared let me see that 
 six months ago " 
 
 Her voice was trembling. 
 
 She went on again, more quietly. " Every hour now one 
 hears some horrible thing. This morning that young Dick 
 Staveling dead, shot in some skirmish or another Fine boy 
 he was. They're all going out, one after the other Not 
 useless idiots who aren't wanted here like John or Vincent 
 but boys, boys like like Roddy." 
 
 Again her voice trembled.
 
 260 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 For the first time in his knowledge of her some pity for hef 
 etirred in him, for the first time in her knowledge of him she 
 definitely looked to him with some appeal. 
 
 " Roddy came to see me yesterday," she said. 
 
 " Yes 2 " said Christopher. 
 
 " He had not been so often as he used I told him so ; he 
 made some feeble apology, but I can see that he will not come 
 again so often " 
 
 He would have interrupted her, but she went on " He's 
 not happy, but he loves her madly madly. He did not tell 
 me so, but I could see that. That was something I had never 
 reckoned on." 
 
 " You prefer," Christopher said sharply, " to imagine that 
 he is not happy. I know, unfortunately, what your feeling is 
 about Rachel. Fond of him though you are you'd prefer that 
 he was unhappy with her." 
 
 " I know that he is unhappy. He would not care for her 
 so much if she returned it. I know Roddy. But she's clever 
 enough " She broke off. 
 
 " If Roddy were to go out to South Africa," she said, " I 
 think I would kill Rachel then die happy " 
 
 " Forgive me," Christopher said, " but this is sheer melo- 
 drama. Rachel is devoted to Roddy and Roddy to Rachel. 
 I've the best means for knowing " 
 
 Even as he spoke he saw her mouth curve with that smile 
 that was always the wickedest thing about her. He had seen 
 it on many occasions and it always meant that, then, in her 
 heart there was something cruel or remorseless. 
 
 It gave her now an elfin look so that, amongst the absurd 
 furniture of the room, she took her place as some old witch 
 might take hers amongst the paraphernalia of her incanta- 
 tions her cauldron, her bones, her noxious herbs. 
 
 " That shows, Christopher my friend, that you know very 
 little. I've a piece of news that will surprise you." 
 
 He said nothing, but, in his heart, made ready for some 
 blow.
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 261 
 
 ee What would you say if our Rachel your Rachel and my 
 Rachel had found a new friend in my worthy, most admir- 
 able grandson, Francis? " 
 
 " Rachel Rachel and Breton ? " 
 
 The Duchess watched him with amusement. " Exactly. I 
 have the surest information " 
 
 " What does your information say ? " 
 
 He hated her at that moment as lie had never hated her 
 before. 
 
 " It says and I know that it is true that for more than 
 a year now they have been meeting and corresponding The 
 other day Rachel went to tea with him alone. Was with 
 him alone for some time I'm sure that Roddy knows noth- 
 ing of this " 
 
 " It's impossible impossible ! Rachel is the soul of 
 honour " 
 
 " I know that you have always thought so. But what 
 more likely? Their feeling about myself would, alone, be 
 enough. . . ." 
 
 But he would not let her see how hardly he was taking it. 
 He deprived her of her triumph, did not even question her 
 as to what she would do with it, turned the conversation into 
 other channels, and left her at last seeming there, amongst 
 her candles, with her nose and thin hands, like some old bird 
 of most evil omen. 
 
 ni 
 
 But for him there was to be no more peace. 
 
 It was now about four o'clock and already the dusk was 
 closing in about the town. He decided that he would go and 
 see whether Rachel were in. 
 
 He was determined that he would ask Rachel nothing; 
 if she wished to speak to him he would help her, but it must 
 be of her own free will that was the only way at present. 
 
 For how much was the Duchess's malignity responsible? 
 What exactly did she know ? What did she intend to do ?
 
 262 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 Oddly enough, for a long time past some subconscious 
 part of him had linked Rachel and Breton together, perhaps 
 because they were the two persons in all the world for whom 
 he most cared, perhaps because he had always known in 
 both of them that rebellious discontent so unlike that Bea- 
 minster acquiescence. 
 
 As he drove through the evening streets, he felt that never, 
 until now, had he known how dearly he loved Rachel. In 
 his mind there was no judgment of her, only a sense of her 
 peril ; if she would speak to him ! . . . 
 
 When he asked at the door of the flat for Lady Seddon he 
 was told that she was out. 
 
 " Sir Roderick is at home, sir." He would see Roddy. 
 
 Roddy was sitting in the little box-like room known as the 
 smoking-room, poring over a war map. About the map little 
 flags were dotted ; he had two in his hand and, with one hand 
 lifted, was hesitating as to their position. 
 
 " That was a damned bad mess " Christopher heard 
 
 him say as he came in. 
 
 At the sound of the door Roddy looked up, straightened 
 himself, and then came forward. 
 
 " Hallo ! Christopher," he said. "Delighted. Splendid! 
 Rachel's out, but she said she'd be back to tea." 
 
 He was not looking well fat, his cheeks pale and puffy, 
 lines beneath his eyes. 
 
 " I'm jolly glad you've come," he said. He drew two arm- 
 chairs to the fire and they sat down. 
 
 Roddy then talked a great deal. He was always a little 
 nervous with Christopher because lie was well aware that the 
 doctor had disapproved of his marriage. 
 
 Christopher had lately shown him that he liked him, but 
 still Roddy was not at his ease. He talked of the war, then 
 of golf, then polo, then horses, Seddon Court abruptly he 
 stopped and sat there gazing moodily into the fire. 
 
 "You're not looking well, Seddon," Christopher said 
 quietly.
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 263 
 
 " I'm not very Nobody's at their liveliest just now with 
 fellers one knows droppin' out any minute. . . . One feels 
 a bit of a worm keepin' out of it all skunkin' rather '* 
 
 Moodily he sat there, his head hanging, dejected as Christo- 
 pher had never seen him before. 
 
 Suddenly he said " That ain't quite the truth, Doctor. 
 I am a bit worried " 
 
 " My dear boy," Christopher said, putting his hand on the 
 other's knee " If there's anything in the world I can do for 
 you, tell me." 
 
 " Thank you. You're a brick. I'm damned unhappy, 
 Christopher, and that's the truth " 
 
 " Rachel " said Christopher. 
 
 " Yes Rachel. I got to talk to somebody. I've been 
 goin' along on my own now for months and I know you're 
 fond of her " 
 
 " I am," said Christopher, " more than of anyone in the 
 world " 
 
 " I know. That's how I can talk to you. I wouldn't have 
 you think I'm complainin' of her. I'm gettin' nothin' but 
 what I asked for, you know. But it's just this. When she 
 took me she never said she loved me, in fact she said she 
 didn't, but I thought that it wouldn't matter all you wanted 
 in marriage was just to be pals and show up about the town 
 together and treat one another honourably. Well," said 
 Roddy, taking now a melancholy interest in his discoveries 
 concerning himself, " damn it all, if I haven't rotted the 
 bargain by f allin' in love with her. Jove ! Why, I hadn't a 
 ghost's guess at what Love meant before Rachel came along. 
 Of course it isn't her fault. You couldn't expect her to love 
 an ordinary sort of chap like me, just like a million other 
 fellers knockin' about but she's so unusual there ain't an- 
 other woman in the world so surprisin' as Rachel 
 
 " She's fond of me," he went on, " I know that, but what I 
 want she just can't give me and that's the long and short 
 of it.
 
 264 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Lately it's been terrible hard. She's not happy and that 
 makes me wild, and every day that passes I seem to want her 
 more. Nothin' else, no one else matters now. I've been 
 playin' golf, ridin', sittin' down to this bridge they're all 
 getting mad about, doin' every blessed thing it isn't any 
 use. Do you know, Christopher," he said slowly, " I'd give 
 my soul to make her happy and I just can't " 
 
 " I know " said Christopher. 
 
 " But it's worse than that " Roddy went on, taking up 
 the poker and knocking on the fire " Lately she's been hav- 
 ing a room of her own. Started it a while ago as a temporary 
 thing and now she sticks to it. Up here, in this damned town, 
 we hardly see one another; always a crowd either here or 
 outside. I know Rachel don't like it and I don't like it, but 
 there it is 
 
 " Next week we're going down to Seddon and things may 
 get better there But I can't stand it much more not like 
 this." 
 
 " Wait a bit. It'll come all right." Christopher spoke 
 confidently. " I've known Rachel since she was a small child. 
 She's half Russian, you know you must always remember 
 that and Russian and Beaminster make a strange mixture 
 
 Wait " 
 
 " That's so easy to say " Roddy answered, shaking his 
 head. " It's so easy to say, but I don't see just what's goin' 
 to make things different from what they are " 
 
 'No one never sees," said Christopher. "And then 
 Destiny comes along and does something that we call coinci- 
 dence and just settles it all. Your trouble will be settled, 
 Roddy, if you're patient " 
 
 " Perhaps," Roddy said slowly, " you could see her a bit 
 
 find out " he stopped. 
 
 " Anything in the world I can do I will. We'll find a 
 way. Meanwhile, Seddon, there is a bit of advice I can give 
 you 
 
 " What's that ? " asked Roddy.
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 265 
 
 " Go and see the Duchess more than you've been doing. 
 See her a lot more than you did ever " 
 
 " Oh ! the Duchess ! " Roddy sighed. " I don't know, but 
 it all seems different with her now. I've changed, I suppose. 
 All her ideas are old-fashioned and wrong; I used to think 
 her rather splendid " 
 
 " Yes but she's ill and old, and you're the only person 
 in the world she cares about." 
 
 " Yes, I'll go," said Roddy slowly. " I've known I ought 
 to go/' 
 
 Voices broke in upon them; the door opened and Rachel, 
 followed by her friend May Gremlin, once May Eversley, 
 came in 
 
 " Oh ! Dr. Chris ! You dear ! " she cried, and came for- 
 ward and flung her arms about him and kissed him. 
 
 Her cheeks were flushed, from her black furs her eyes shone 
 at him. Some thought caught him. He knew where he had 
 seen that excited glitter already to-day Breton at lun- 
 cheon 
 
 They all talked. Then Christopher said that he must go. 
 
 Rachel came with him to the door. In the hall she looked 
 at him defiantly, that flash he knew so well. 
 
 " You never come now, Dr. Chris : you've given me up." 
 
 " I don't care for you in a crowd very much. There's 
 always a crowd now " 
 
 " Ask me alone and. I'll come," she said, but still her eyes 
 were defiant. 
 
 " No," he said gravely. " I'll do no asking, Rachel. When 
 you want me I'm there for you at any time at any 
 time " 
 
 For answer she flung her arms again about him and hugged 
 him. Her heart was beating furiously. Then without an- 
 other word she left him.
 
 266 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 rv 
 
 He could not go back to Harley Street yet. The sense of 
 apprehension that had been growing with him all day would 
 give him a melancholy evening, were he to spend it alone. 
 He thought of Brun. Someone had told him that the little 
 man was in London. 
 
 He found him in his rooms, reading, with a cynical expres- 
 sion on his face, a French review. 
 
 " I came to see " said Christopher, " whether you 
 happened to be free to-night and would dine with me. I'm a 
 pessimist for once this evening and it doesn't suit me ! " 
 
 Brun was very, very sorry, but he was dining with a 
 Russian princess; it was most tiresome that he should have 
 to waste his time with a Russian princess when he'd come 
 over to London on this occasion expressly to study the Eng- 
 lish people at this interesting crisis of their affairs, but there 
 it was he'd no idea how he'd let himself in for it, and how 
 much rather would he spend the evening with his friend, 
 Christopher. 
 
 Christopher said that he would smoke one cigarette and 
 that then he must go. 
 
 " And so you feel pessimistic ? " said Brun, looking at 
 Christopher curiously " It's the war, Je crois bien How 
 alike you all are ! " 
 
 " No," said Christopher, " I don't think the war's much 
 to do with it. I dare say the war's a very good thing for all 
 of us." 
 
 " Didn't I tell you ? " said Brun, greatly excited 
 then pulled himself up " No, it wasn't you. It was Ark- 
 wright. More than a year ago we were in a picture gallery 
 looking at your Duchess's picture, and coming home we talked. 
 I said then that something would come, that something must 
 come, and that then everything, everything would crumple up. 
 And behold ! " cried Brun, his eyes flashing " See, it 
 crumples ! "
 
 CHRISTOPHER'S DAY 26T 
 
 " That's a little previous of you," said Christo- 
 pher. "Nothing crumpled yet. We're disturbed of 
 qourse " 
 
 " It is most lucky," Brun said, " most lucky. Here we 
 are, you and I, ordinary people enough, with the end of a 
 Period with its death and the way it takes it, all for us to 
 watch. Most lucky. . . ." 
 
 "End of Victorian Age . . . Voila!" and with a little 
 dramatic gesture he waved his hand as though he were fling- 
 ing the Age and its lumber away, out of the window. 
 
 " You know, Christopher," he went on, " I've seen things 
 coming over here for so long. All you people, you couldn't 
 have gone on very much longer so remote from life. And now 
 this it will finish your Duchess, your Beaminsters, your 
 queen in her bonnet, your Sundays and your religion and your 
 Whigs and Tories, and all your hypocrisies No names any 
 more taken just because they've always been taken, but new 
 names made by men who're doing things. Nothing taken 
 for granted any more. 
 
 " Your Beaminsters will vanish, and then you'll have your 
 Denisons and Oaks and Ruddards on top. Then you'll see a 
 time. You'll all be spinning like a top, dancing, dancing like 
 dervishes. Then while you're busy dancing up the other 
 people will quietly come all the real people, the Individual- 
 ists Women will have their justice no man will skunk 
 behind his garden hedge because he doesn't want to be 
 bothered. No more superstition, no more inefficiency " 
 
 "You're a wonderful fellow, Brun," said Christopher, 
 getting up and flinging away the end of his cigarette. 
 ** You've always got any amount to say but do you never 
 think of people as people, not as theories or movements or 
 developments " 
 
 " No, thank God, I don't That's for the sentimentalists 
 like you, Christopher. People are all the same, fools or 
 knaves." 
 
 " Well, I'm glad I don't think so," said Christopher.
 
 268 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Tell me," Brun put his little hand on the other's elbow, 
 " your Beaminsters now, how are they ? " 
 
 " They're all right." 
 
 " The Duchess ? I hear she's not so well " 
 
 " Oh ! nonsense Well as she's been any time these last 
 thirty years." 
 
 " Yes ? So I'm glad. But the other Beaminsters ? 
 Ah ! I must go quickly and call To see them burst asunder, 
 that will be most amusing " 
 
 Christopher laughed. " You won't see the Duke or Rich- 
 ard Beaminster burst," he said " They're like you no 
 personal feeling." 
 
 "And the girl?" 
 
 "Lady Seddon?" 
 
 " Yes. She'll stir things up. She's not a Beaminster, or 
 only enough of one to make her hate the family. And she 
 does hate them, hein? " 
 
 " Oh, my dear Brun, you've got an absurdly exaggerated 
 view about everything. You'd twist the Beaminsters into 
 anything to make them fit your theory." 
 
 " Oh, they'll fit it right enough. But I must be in at the 
 death. We'll meet there together, Christopher. Things will 
 occur before we're much older, my sentimentalist." 
 
 Christopher shook his head. " There's something sinister 
 about your appearances in the City, Brun. l Where the car- 
 cases are, there will . . .' ' 
 
 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. 
 
 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, mano3uvred 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 upou 
 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 wfcs nightmare. 
 
 269
 
 270 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 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 conversa- 
 tion 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 
 ihorrible 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 be- 
 lieved 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.
 
 THE DARKEST HOUR 2Y1 
 
 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, how- 
 ever, 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 com- 
 pany, and he found Adela in the little sitting-room next to 
 the library, a little room with faded wall-paper, faded pic- 
 tures (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."
 
 272 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " 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 under- 
 stand 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, dis- 
 grace 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. Some- 
 thing'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 j 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."
 
 THE DARKEST HOUR 275 
 
 " 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 person- 
 ality 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, and 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 be- 
 fore 
 
 " 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 every- 
 thing, make clothes, have sales and concerts and get money to- 
 gether. It's to be a big thing Nelly Ponsonby, Clara Rad-
 
 274 THE DUCHESS OP WEEXE 
 
 dleton, 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 
 1 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 pro- 
 posed 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 foun- 
 dations of "No. 104 Portland Place rock and quiver before the 
 horrid sacrilege of such words? John, himself, almost ex- 
 pected 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 
 ber but it must be done." 
 
 " It's odd, Adela," said John, leaning back in his chah
 
 THE DARKEST HOUR 275 
 
 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 differ- 
 ently, 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 con- 
 spirators. 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 shoul- 
 der: 
 
 " If there's anything I can ever do to help you, Adela, tell 
 me ! " he said. 
 
 " Thank you, John," she answered,
 
 76 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 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 de- 
 fiance 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, 
 wheel 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 pro- 
 duced 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
 
 THE DARKEST HOUR 277 
 
 " How you do hate me, my dear," she said almost com- 
 placently. 
 
 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 un- 
 just. It's you that have always hated me from the begin- 
 ning 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, turn- 
 ing to the door, left her " But hurt a hair of Roddy's head, 
 my dear, and well, you'll hate me more than ever " 
 
 m 
 
 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 first 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.
 
 278 THE DUCHESS OE WKEXE 
 
 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 communi- 
 cation with Breton's manservant 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 an- 
 other 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.
 
 THE DARKEST HOUR 279 
 
 But this beast crouching in front of her, with its burning 
 eyes on her face, said to her : " All your life I've been be- 
 side 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." 
 
 Death. . . . She had never until this instant given 
 it a thought Everything was gone before its presence. In 
 a week or two, a month or two, silence 
 
 Rachel she saw her standing there by the fire, full of life 
 and energy, so young, so strong. 
 
 She, the Duchess of Wrexe, the great figure, courted by 
 kings, princes, artists, all the men and women of her time, 
 now must crumble into the veriest dust, be forgotten, be fol- 
 lowed by others, banished by this new world. 
 
 She and her Times were slipping, slipping into disuse. 
 Who cared now for those other glories? What minds now 
 were fit to tackle those minds that she had known? What 
 beauty now could stand beside that beauty that had shone 
 when she was young ? 
 
 The beast crouched nearer. The room darkened. She 
 could feel the hot breath, could be dazed by the shining of 
 those eyes. Behind her, around her, the trumpery toys that 
 she had gathered faded. 
 
 Darkness rose; a great space and desolation was about her 
 She tried to summon all her energy. 
 
 She cried out and Dorchester, coming in, found that her 
 mistress had, for the first time in her life, fainted, bending, 
 an old, broken woman, forward in her chair.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY II 
 
 THE world, during all these months, had seemed to Lizzie 
 Rand a very silent place. Before that July night it 
 had been loud with incident, coloured with possibilities, 
 strange and varied and thrilling. Now she was only con- 
 scious of the duties that must be fulfilled between daybreak 
 and darkness ; she was unconscious of all life and movement, 
 only she was aware of the demands on her deliberate activity 
 
 these demands she obeyed. 
 
 Slowly, as the dreary autumn dragged its days past her, 
 she accustomed herself to forestall the horrid moments that 
 would leap from some hidden darkness upon her. There was 
 the moment when a something said : " Fancy caring for 
 someone who had never asked nor shown any sign. . . ." 
 Another moment when something said : " Remember how 
 here you stood, with your heart beating, waiting for him to 
 come There you caught some light in his eyes and fancied 
 it a sign. . . ." 
 
 Burning shame was in those moments did she indulge them 
 
 a realization, too, of the bare grey desolation of a world 
 without movement or vision. She could not see the people 
 about her, her mother, her sister, Lady Adela, Dr. Christopher 
 (always kind to her), other friends they were not there for 
 her at all. 
 
 Only two things were there that she must cling, at all 
 possible costs, to her pride and that she hated Rachel. Her 
 pride had been called to her defence before, but to hate anyone 
 was new to her. She had never hated any human being and 
 now the restlessness that this new emotion brought confused 
 her. 
 
 280
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY II 281 
 
 Night after night stretched ironically before her, banishing 
 sleep. All her life she had slept from the moment that her 
 head was upon the pillow; now, at that instant, her brain 
 sprang to fire, thought after thought, memory after memory, 
 passed in dancing procession before her. 
 
 She saw him as little as possible, she supposed that in time 
 she would not care, would be indifferent to him ; she hoped so. 
 
 Meanwhile she went out when he came in; saw his kind 
 distress because he thought that she was not well, and shud- 
 dered at it. 
 
 Then Lady Adela told her that Rachel had asked whether 
 she were free for Christmas. 
 
 She received a letter : 
 
 " DEAR Miss RAND, 
 
 I wonder whether by any chance you would care to 
 come to us here for three weeks at Christmas time ? I 
 should be so grateful if you would come and help me a little 
 with some tiresome social things here. May I add that I 
 have for a long time wanted to know you better than the 
 London rush ever gives time for ? My aunt says that you 
 have been overworking lately, she thinks. If you come 
 here you shall have all the rest and quiet possible. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 RACHEL SEDDON." 
 
 A funny little letter stiff and then suddenly impulsive 
 and friendly. 
 
 Of course she would go she had never doubted that. 
 Here at last was some food for the burning restlessness that 
 was always at her breast Through these months she had 
 longed for some step that would help to kill the pain. 
 
 Now she would watch Rachel and discover her heart and 
 perhaps find from that discovery some way for her own re- 
 lease. For her shame, night and day, was that she still 
 cared, cared, yes, as deeply as she had ever done that car- 
 ing must die.
 
 282 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 Perhaps the sight and knowledge of this other woman 
 would kill it. 
 
 At least here at last was action after the terrible silence 
 and remoteness of those many months. 
 
 She would go to Seddon and she would not leave it without 
 finding some way by which she might still make some use of 
 life. 
 
 ii 
 
 She had really stayed at very few houses before. The 
 anticipation at any other time would have excited her, now 
 nothing mattered except that she would meet Rachel. 
 
 Her mother and sister had watched her during these past 
 months with a dismay stirred by the sudden absence of her 
 genial friendliness. 
 
 They had taken so much of her kindliness for granted and 
 now when she refused them the sympathy that they had al- 
 ways demanded for a thousand unimportant incidents they, 
 clamorously, missed it. 
 
 At first it was easy to say that Lizzie was callous and selfish, 
 afterwards that she was ill and overworked, finally they hailed 
 with relief the promise of a three-weeks' holiday. " She'll 
 come back," said Mrs. Rand, " as fresh as paint, and taken 
 out of herself." 
 
 Meanwhile no solution of Lizzie's trouble occurred to them ; 
 that she should ever feel the tyranny of love, like more senti- 
 mental mortals, was, at this time of day, impossible. " We 
 know Lizzie, thank you," said Mrs. Rand. 
 
 They watched her, on the afternoon of the 23rd of Decem- 
 ber, depart in a cab for Seddon Court. She was grave and 
 pale and beautifully neat. " I do admire Lizzie, you know," 
 gaid Daisy, returning with her mother into the house. " I 
 can't get that kind of tidiness. Her things go on for years, 
 looking as good as new." 
 
 " Men like a bit of disorder," said Mrs. Rand. " It seems
 
 LIZZIE'S JOUKKEY II 283 
 
 more agitated. All the same I'd like to know what is worry- 
 ing Lizzie." 
 
 It was a wet and gusty day and the wind blew the rain 
 with hard impatient spurts against the windows of the cab. 
 Few people were about: Hyde Park Corner was grey and 
 deserted, umbrellas like black mushrooms started here and 
 there from the shining ground. 
 
 Victoria Station also had, on this afternoon, nothing beau- 
 tiful to offer. She found her way to her train, chose an 
 empty carriage, sat in her corner with her hands upon her 
 lap, waited for the train to move. 
 
 People, grey people with white faces, hurried past her 
 carriage. She wondered whether they too had something in 
 their hearts that made every thought, every movement, a dan- 
 ger. 
 
 Because the train would not move and because for the 
 first time in all these months she found herself without any 
 occupation, she could not hold thought at bay. She resisted, 
 she tried to sweep her brain empty, she surrendered. She, 
 Lizzie Rand, always so fond of her self-discipline and re- 
 straint, found control now slipping from her. Before she 
 had met Breton her duties, the skilful manipulation and ar- 
 rangement of detail, her work and her place as a worker, these 
 had supplied her needs. Now all those things were dust and 
 ashes ; high and lofty above them shone that bright fire whose 
 warmth and colour she had, for an instant, felt and seen. 
 What was life going to be, through all the years to come, if 
 she were never to recapture her tranquillity ? 
 
 The train moved off and she sat there, her eyes bright and 
 shining, her little body stiff and resolute. Somewhere, a long 
 way away, like a rounded coloured cloud, hovered emotion 
 emotion that would break her heart, would tear her to pieces 
 and then perhaps build up for her a new life. But her eyes 
 now were dry and her heart was cold. 
 
 The train went whir-whack whack-whir and the tele-
 
 284 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 graph wires flew up, hung, hesitated, were coming down, flew 
 higher, then with a rush were buried below the window, and 
 with the noise and movement there danced before her eyes the 
 questions, " Does she love him ? Does she love him ? Has 
 she told him that she loves him? What will her husband 
 do ? Does she love her husband ? " And then, beyond that, 
 " Why did she come and take from me all that I had, she 
 who had already so much ? " 
 
 And then, most bitter of all, " Ah, but you never had 
 him. She took nothing from you. He never thought of you 
 except as someone to whom he could talk " 
 
 She had no doubt that these weeks were intended for a 
 crisis. Something was going to happen at Seddon. . . . 
 Something in which she was to have her share. She felt as 
 though she had known that she would be sent to meet Rachel 
 It had to be. ... 
 
 Then her thoughts left, for a time, her own miserable little 
 history. She wondered how Lady Adela would manage with- 
 out her. Lady Adela had never been alone before and now 
 that the Duchess had had, a fortnight ago, that fainting fit, 
 they were all unsettled and alarmed. What would happen if 
 the Duchess died? Then all the dignity and splendour of 
 104 Portland Place would pass away ! other people might in- 
 habit it, but the soul of that house would be dead. 
 
 Everything on every side of her seemed to be hastening to 
 a climax and Lizzie could see that old woman fighting, be- 
 hind her closed doors, for Life, beaten at last, dead, swept 
 away, others laughing in her place a new world to whom 
 she was only a portrait cleverly painted by some young artist. 
 
 Yes, there were other histories developing now besides Liz- 
 zie's and she felt as though she had been whirled, during the 
 last months, into a wild, tossing medley of contacts and revela- 
 tions all this after a life so grey and quiet and steadily 
 busy. 
 
 As the train plunged into Sussex the rain stayed for a little 
 and the shining earth steamed upwards to a grey sky broken
 
 LIZZIE'S JOUKNEY II 285 
 
 here and there to saffron. Little towns quietly rested under 
 the hills and many streams ran through the woods and the 
 roads drove white like steel through the crust of the soil. 
 White lights spread in the upper air and the heaving grey 
 was pushed, as though by some hand, back into the distant 
 horizon. For a moment it seemed that the sun was burst- 
 ing through ; trees were suddenly green where they had been 
 black and fields red where they had been sombre dark 
 Light was on all the hills. 
 
 But the hand was stayed. Back the grey rolled again, 
 heavily like chariots the clouds wheeled round and drove down 
 upon the earth The rain fell. 
 
 The carriage was very cold. Lizzie's hands and feet were 
 so chill that they seemed not to belong to her at all. Pic- 
 tures of houses at Brighton and the dining-car of some 
 train and two public-houses at the bottom of a hill stared at 
 her. 
 
 The sense of some coming disaster grew with her. It was 
 as though someone were telling her that she must prepare to 
 be very brave and controlled and wise because, very soon, all 
 her restraint and wisdom would be needed. She summoned 
 now, as she had learnt to do, a stern armoured resolution that 
 sat always a little oddly upon her. Any observer who had 
 seen her sitting there would have noticed the mild softness 
 of her eyes, the tenderness of some curve at the corners of her 
 mouth, and would have smiled at the lines of resolution as 
 though he had known that the sternness was all assumed. 
 
 But she was saying that nothing should touch or move her 
 down here at Seddon ; her heart should be closed. She must 
 grow into a woman who had no need of emotion and even 
 as she determined that some vision swept her by, revealing 
 to her the happy dear uses that she could have made of love 
 and sympathy had life been set that way for her. How she 
 could have cared ! . . . A dry little sob was at her throat and 
 burning pain behind her tearless eyes. God, the things that 
 other people had and did not value !
 
 286 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 The train stopped at a wind-swept deserted station and a 
 man and woman with a little child, the three of them tired, 
 wet, bedraggled, entered the carriage. 
 
 The man was gaunt with a beard and large helpless eyes, 
 the woman shapeless, loose-breasted, little eyes sunk in her 
 cheeks, an old black straw hat tilted back on her head. These 
 two did not glance at Lizzie, nor was there any curiosity or 
 interest in their eyes, but the small child, yellow wisps o 
 hair falling about her dirty face, detached herself from them, 
 crept into the furthest corner of the carriage and from there 
 stared at Lizzie. 
 
 The train droned on through a country now shrinking be- 
 neath a deluge of rain. The child moved a little, looked at 
 the woman, looked again at Lizzie, crept to Lizzie's side of 
 the carriage, at last, still without a word, came close and, 
 finally, stole fingers towards Lizzie's dress. 
 
 Lizzie turned and smiled at the child, who stared back at 
 her, now with wide terrified eyes. Lizzie looked away, out 
 of the window, and after a long time, felt the grimy hand 
 upon her knee. 
 
 Once the woman said, " Come away, Cissie. You're 
 worrying the lady." 
 
 " ISTo. Please," said Lizzie. She took the hand in her 
 own and smiled again at the wide baby face. The child was 
 very, very young and very, very dirty 
 
 No child had ever come near her before. She wondered 
 why it had come now. 
 
 m 
 
 At Lewes a carriage was waiting for her and, in a moment, 
 it seemed that she was driving through a dark village street 
 and in front of her, like a great wall topping the skies, the 
 Downs rose. 
 
 When the carriage entered the courtyard and stopped be- 
 fore the broad stone door Lizzie was seized with terror. She 
 wished, oh ! she wished that she had not come. The sense of,
 
 -II 28T 
 
 descending trouble was so strong with her that she felt for the 
 first time in her life that she was going to prove unequal to 
 her task. 
 
 Her life was over and done with ! Why had she allowed 
 herself to he pushed hack again into all these affairs of other 
 people ? 
 
 She was ushered into a square lighted hall where they were 
 all having tea round a wide open fireplace. She was con- 
 scious of Rachel rising, slim and tall, to greet her, of the 
 square ruddy-faced country-looking man who gripped her 
 hand, jolly hard, and was, of course, Sir Roderick ; of a hand- 
 some, athletic-looking girl in a riding-habit, of a man or two 
 and an elderly smartly dressed woman. 
 
 They were all immensely cheerful and friendly and to Liz- 
 zie, white and tired, noisy and horribly robust. She would 
 have liked to have slipped up to her room and stayed there 
 alone until dinner, but Rachel said : 
 
 " Oh ! you must be perished after that wet journey. Tea's 
 just at its hottest and its freshest. Quick, Roddy the toast 
 Never mind the rest of us, Miss Rand just drink that 
 tea and get warm." 
 
 They allowed her to sink back into an easy chair some- 
 where in the shadow and the tea was very comforting and the 
 stern hall with its crackling fire and its cosy solid shape most 
 friendly. She listened to them all noisily discussing people 
 and dances and horses and dinners. She watched Rachel Sed- 
 don, sitting a little gravely, straight in her chair, throwing i$*> 
 a word now and again. 
 
 This was the woman. . . . This was the woman. . . . 
 
 She felt a warm tongue that licked her hand. She looked 
 down and saw at her side the oddest dog, a dog like a mat, 
 shapeless with two brown eyes behind its hair and a black wet 
 nose. 
 
 There was something about the eyes and the way that the 
 warm body was pressed against her dress that won her instant 
 affection.
 
 288 
 
 " What an adorable animal ! " she said to Roddy, who wag 
 sitting next to her. 
 
 " Oh ! Jacob ! " he said, laughing. " He really oughtn't to 
 be in here at all servants' hall's his proper place If you 
 care for dogs, Miss Rand, I'll show you some " 
 
 As he spoke she caught the dog's eyes and saw in the depths 
 of them shame. He had been sitting, very square and up- 
 right, with his eyes gravely fixed, with great interest, upon the 
 company. Then, at the sound of Roddy's voice his head had 
 dropped, instantly he became furtive, his eyes searching for 
 eome place of escape. 
 
 Her hand caught his rough coat and she drew him to her 
 side and stroked his ears. 
 
 " I think he's perfectly delightful," she said. " I'm afraid 
 I prefer mongrels to better dogs." 
 
 " Do you really ? " said Roddy, looking kindly at her. 
 " 'Pon my word, Miss Rand, I must show you my little lot. 
 I don't think you'll have much use for that animal there after- 
 wards." 
 
 At last the girl in the riding-habit and the other woman and 
 the young man noisily departed. 
 
 Rachel took Lizzie upstairs. " Are you sure," she said, 
 " you'd like to come down to dinner ? Wouldn't you rather, 
 to-night, go early to bed and have it there ? " 
 
 " No, thank you, Lady Seddon." Lizzie looked about the 
 room. " This is all splendid, thank you. I'm not a bit 
 tired." 
 
 " I'm so glad you've come," said Rachel, searching for Liz* 
 zie's eyes. But Lizzie had turned away. 
 
 At last she was alone. 
 
 Her room was splendid so wide, and high, and such a 
 fire! 
 
 She flung up her window. There the Downs were, black, 
 huge before her; the rain came down hissing from the sky 
 and a smell of wet earth and grass stole up to her.
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY II 289 
 
 " That's the woman . . ." she said again to herself 
 " What shall we say to one another ? " 
 
 Then as she stared into the fire she thought, " She wants me 
 to help her." 
 
 Afterwards she heard a scratching at the door. A maid 
 had been sent to her, but she had dismissed her, saying that 
 she would manage for herself. 
 
 She went to the door and found outside it the shaggy, 
 square dog. 
 
 He walked into her room, sniffed for a time at the bed, 
 pricked up his ears at the noise that the fire made, listened to 
 the sound of the rain, at last sat down in a distant corner with 
 one leg stretched at right angles to his body and watched her. 
 
 She was indignant with herself for the softness in her heart 
 that his company brought to her.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 
 
 ;. 
 
 "I and my mistress, side by side, 
 
 Shall be together, breathe and ride, 
 
 So, one day more am I deified, 
 Who knows but the world may end to-night ? " 
 
 ROBEET BBQWNING. 
 
 INTROSPECTION had been always to Roddy a thing un> 
 known. He had never regarded himself as in any way 
 different from the other men whom he met, and he would 
 have been greatly distressed had he thought that he wag di 
 ferent. " What you writin' fellers," he had once said to Gar- 
 den, " can find amusin' in inventin' people for I can't think 
 you've got to make 'em odd for people to be interested in 'em 
 and then they aren't like anyone." 
 
 Now, however, for the first time in his life he would have 
 been glad of help from someone who knew a little about the 
 motive of human beings. He was worried, distressed, per- 
 plexed ; slowly his temper was rising a temper roused by 
 his irritation at not being able to deal with the situation. 
 
 It was not his way to ask for help from anyone and he al- 
 ways had all the inarticulate self-confidence of the healthy 
 Englishman, but now, as the days crept towards Christmas he 
 was increasingly aware that something must soon happen to 
 prevent his patience giving away. 
 
 He might as well not be married to Rachel at all and 
 that was an intolerable position for him as husband, as lover, 
 as master of his house. Beyond doubt, he knew Rachel less 
 now than he had known her when he married her. Her very 
 kindness to him, her strange alternations of silence and af- 
 fection perplexed him; for a long time he had told himself 
 
 290
 
 EODDY IS MASTER 291 
 
 that he knew that she did not love him and that he must make 
 companionship do, but ever since that quarrel about Nita 
 Raseley the division between them had grown wider and 
 wider. 
 
 Because he loved her he had been very patient with her 
 very patient for Roddy, who had always had what he wanted 
 and shown temper if he were refused. 
 
 But Roddy's character was of a very real simplicity. The 
 men and women and animals whom he had known had also 
 been, for the most part, of a simple character and, in all his 
 life, there had only been one horse and two women who had 
 been too much for him, and even these, at the last, he had 
 beaten by temper and dogged determination. 
 
 Rachel was utterly beyond him. The strange way that she 
 had of suddenly becoming quite another woman baffled him ; 
 had he only not loved her he was sure that it would have been 
 easier, much easier. 
 
 But now, as the days passed at Seddon, his irritation 
 thrived. Women were all the same. They seemed obstinate 
 enough, but there was nothing like brute force to bring them 
 to heel. He was growing surly cross with the servants and 
 the animals. He didn't sleep. His discontent made him 
 silent so that, when they were alone, instead of talking to her 
 and interesting her and winning her, perhaps, in that way, he 
 would sit and look at her and answer her in monosyllables, 
 and, afterwards, would be furious with himself for behaving 
 so absurdly. 
 
 This trouble sent him out of doors and away over the 
 Downs on his horse. Fiercely he hurled himself into his 
 fields and lanes and farms, getting up sometimes very early 
 and riding out to some distant place, thinking always, as he 
 rode, of Rachel and what he was to do. 
 
 His devotion for the country round Seddon, a devotion that 
 had stirred his heart since his first conscious sight of the 
 outside world, nobly now rewarded him. The land seemed 
 to understand that he was suffering, and drew closer to him
 
 292 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 and watched him with gentle and loving eyes, and soothed his 
 soul. 
 
 Before Christmas there came some sharp, frosty mornings ; 
 he would go out very early and would see, first, the garden, the 
 lawn crisp and white, the grey jagged wall that divided his 
 land from the sweeping Downs, the grey house behind him 
 so square and solid and comfortable. At the end of the gar- 
 den away from the road there was an old iron gate with stone 
 pillars, and upon these pillars sat old stone gryphons. These 
 gryphons had been there since long ago and he liked the friend- 
 liness of their faces, the strength of their crouching bodies and 
 the way that they would look out so patiently, over a great 
 expanse of fields and hedges, until their gaze rested on the 
 white chalk hollows in the rising hills away behind Lewes. 
 
 Roddy, standing with the Downs so immediately behind 
 him and this green spread of land in front of him, was always 
 conscious of happiness. Here he was at home. He knew 
 those fields, the streams that ran through them, the farmers, 
 the labourers, the horses and dogs that lived upon them. No 
 fear here that " one of those clever fellers " would wonder 
 at his stupidity, no sudden " letting you down " or " showing 
 you up." Behind him was his house, before him the land that 
 he had always known; here he was safe. 
 
 He had, too, beyond this, some unformulated recognition 
 of a service and a worship that here he was called on to pay. 
 He had always declared that he could understand those 
 Johnnies who worshipped the sun and the earth. " Damn it 
 all there's something to catch on to there." He did not, in 
 his heart, believe in all this civilization, this preserving of the 
 sick and tending of the maimed and halt. " You've got to 
 clear out if you're broken up " was his opinion. " If you 
 can't do your bit, can't see or smell or anything, you're just 
 in the way." What he meant was that the halt and maimed 
 were simply insults to the vigour and vitality of his fields and 
 sky.
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 293 
 
 But indeed, what would he have done during these days 
 had he not had his riding, farms to visit, shepherds and far- 
 mers for company ? At first Rachel had ridden with him and 
 they had heen closer together during those rides than at any 
 other time, but lately she had refused, on one excuse or an- 
 other, to come with him, 
 
 He went a good deal now to other houses, but it was awk- 
 ward because Rachel would not come with him. She asked 
 people to Seddon and was charming when they came, but she 
 would not often go out with him when the country people 
 invited them. 
 
 Since the Nita Raseley episode he had thought that she 
 might show jealousy did he ride and drive with some girl in 
 the country. He hoped that she would be jealous, that would 
 have filled him with tingling happiness but no, she seemed 
 to be glad that he should find someone who could take her 
 place. 
 
 Over all these things he brooded and brooded. He would 
 look at his old friendly gryphons and feel, in some dumb con- 
 fused way, that they were being insulted. " Poor old beggars 
 I bet she doesn't know they're there " And through all of 
 this, he loved her more and more, and was, daily, more 
 wretched and unhappy. 
 
 n 
 
 The coming of Miss Rand puzzled him. He had, of course, 
 known of her for a long time " Adela Beaminster's secre- 
 tary, most capable woman, simply runs the whole place." 
 As a human being she simply did not occur to him. 
 
 Now she seemed to be the one person whom Rachel wished 
 to know. Another instance of Rachel's unexpectedness. 
 When Lizzie came he was still more astonished. This tidy, 
 trim little woman looked as though she ought always to have 
 a typewriter by her side; her sharp eyes were always rest- 
 lessly discovering things that were out of order. Roddy
 
 294 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 found himself fingering his tie and patting his hair when she 
 was with him not, he would have supposed, the sort of 
 woman for whom Rachel would have cared. 
 
 Then after a while he discovered another astonishing thing. 
 Miss Rand did not like his wife, did not like her at all. He 
 watched and fancied that Rachel soon discovered this and was 
 doing her utmost to force Miss Rand to like her. 
 
 Miss Rand was always pleasant and polite ; she was an im- 
 mense help about dinners and this dance that was to be given 
 early in the New Year, but she yielded to none of Rachel's 
 advances, was always reserved, unresponsive. 
 
 Roddy was afraid of her but believed in her. She liked 
 animals and loved the house and the Downs and the country. 
 " She's all clean and bright and hard," he thought ; " no 
 emotion about her, no sentiment there. A man 'ud have a 
 stiff time love-makin' with her." 
 
 But it gradually appeared that, whatever her feelings might 
 be towards Rachel, she was ready to like Roddy. She walked 
 with him, asked him sensible questions, listened attentively to 
 his rather lumbering explanations. After a time, he almost 
 forgot that she was a woman at all " Damn sensible and yet 
 she never makes you feel a fool." 
 
 He liked her very much, though she obviously preferred 
 Jacob, the mongrel, to all other dogs in the place. He won- 
 dered as the days passed whether she might not help him with 
 Rachel. He would not speak to anyone living about his own 
 feelings for Rachel and his unhappiness, but he thought that, 
 perhaps, in a roundabout way, he might obtain from Miss 
 Rand some general wisdom that he could apply to his especial 
 case. 
 
 The afternoon of Christmas Eve was cold and foggy and 
 Roddy and Lizzie sat over the fire in the hall waiting for 
 Rachel, who had gone out for a solitary walk. Roddy look- 
 ing at his companion approved of the sharp delicate little face 
 with the firelight touching it to colour and shadow; her dress 
 was grey with a tiny brooch of old gold at her throat, and she
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 295 
 
 wore one ring of small pearls ; the look of her gave him pleas- 
 ure. 
 
 " I wonder," Miss Rand said, " that you don't go where 
 you'll get better hunting you don't hunt round here at all, 
 do you ? " 
 
 " A bit " Roddy looked gravely at the fire " I go very 
 little though. You see, Miss Rand, it's a case of bein' born 
 down here and likin' the place, don't you know. Of course 
 I'd love to have been born in a huntin' country, but bein' here 
 I've got fond of it, you see, and wouldn't leave it for any 
 huntin' anywhere." 
 
 She looked at him sharply : " You do love the place very 
 much I envy you that." 
 
 Even as she spoke her consciousness of " the place " faced 
 her ; she had always known that she was more acutely aware 
 of the personality of her surroundings than were most of her 
 friends, but her experience here was different from anything 
 that she had ever known before. 
 
 She remembered that in the train she had been warned 
 of some coming event and now, sitting opposite to Roddy 
 beside the blazing fire, she was sharply and definitely fright- 
 ened. 
 
 Rachel had already appealed to her ; Roddy was appealing 
 to her now, but stronger than either of these demands was 
 some force in herself, warning her and raising in her the most 
 conflicting, disturbing emotions. 
 
 The very silence of the house about them, the long green 
 stretches of the level fields, came almost personally and pre- 
 sented themselves to her, and in her heart, growing with 
 every moment of passing time, was her hatred of Rachel and, 
 from that, tenderness for Roddy, who could thus be left, so 
 pathetically unhappy, so eloquently without words that might 
 express his unhappiness. 
 
 Something she knew was soon to occur that would involve 
 all three of them in a common crisis. 
 
 It was almost as though she must leap to her feet and cry
 
 296 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 to the startled and innocent Roddy, " Look out ! " her fingef 
 pointing at the closed door behind him. 
 
 Meanwhile Roddy had been considering her. She said that 
 she envied him the place. That was pleasant of her, and he 
 warmed to the urgency with which she had said it. If she 
 felt in that way about such things, why then, all the more, he 
 thought, he could speak to her about his trouble with Rachel. 
 Perhaps, too, although this he would not admit to himself 
 his conviction that Lizzie disliked Rachel gave him more cour- 
 age. 
 
 Everyone thought Rachel so wonderful wonderful of 
 course she was, but a complete sense of that wonder must 
 blind the looker-on to Roddy's point of view. 
 
 " Places," he said moodily, " ain't everythin' course I 
 love this old bit o' ground, but when you love anything a lot 
 you're disappointed because every feller don't see it exactly 
 as you do." 
 
 Lizzie looked at him. 
 
 " I should have thought, though, Sir Roderick, that you 
 were a very, very happy person." 
 
 Roddy considered, then slowly shook his head " No, Miss 
 Rand, not exactly no, you know, I shouldn't say that 
 exactly but then, I suppose, no man on this earth is abso- 
 lutely happy." 
 
 " Well," said Lizzie, " a great many people would envy 
 you your health, your home, your wife, you've got a good 
 deal, Sir Roderick." 
 
 As she spoke her anxiety to help him seized and held her. 
 He wanted advice so badly, advice that she could give him, 
 and this English strain in him prevented him from speak- 
 ing. Had she gone more deeply into her motives she would 
 have known that her anger with Rachel, even more actively 
 prompted, it seemed, by the stones and the fields and the 
 hills around her, was urging her interference. 
 
 " People envy me," said Roddy, " but then, Miss Rand, 
 people don't know. It's all my own fault, mind you, thai
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 297 
 
 I'm not perfectly happy. It's all because I'm such a fool, 
 not able to see what people are gettin' at, always blunderin* 
 in at the wrong moment and blunderin' out again when I 
 ought to be stayin' in, and that sort o' thing. I used to 
 think," he concluded, " that all the talk about people's feel- 
 in's, studying them and so on, was rot, but now I'm not so 
 sure. I'd give anythin' " he stopped abruptly. 
 
 " It is all rot," Lizzie said sharply " I can only speak 
 as a woman, of course, but I know that what every woman 
 ever born into this world has wanted is just to be taken 
 by someone stronger than herself and be beaten or kissed, 
 loved or strangled as the case may be. Believe me, it 
 is so." 
 
 Roddy looked at her, some new thought, perhaps a pro- 
 logue to some new determination, shining from his eyes. 
 
 " By Jove ! " he said. " I believe you're right, Miss 
 Rand I do indeed. Every woman, would you say \ " 
 
 " Every woman," said Lizzie firmly. 
 
 Their eyes met. The sure steadiness of her gaze, the 
 way that she sat there, her little body so sure and resolute, 
 her very neat composure an argument against lightheaded 
 reasoning, encouraged him beyond any help that he had yet 
 found. 
 
 Their gaze seemed long and intimate; the colour rose and 
 flushed his brown cheeks and into his eyes there crept that 
 consciousness of a victory about to be won, although the 
 odds were hard against him. The door opened behind him 
 and he turned at the sound and saw that Rachel had 
 come in. 
 
 Her entry gave him now, as it always did, a conviction 
 that during her absence he hadn't had the least idea as to 
 how splendid she really was. She brought into that little 
 stone hall a wild colour, a strong, fine challenge to anything 
 small, or shackled or conventional. 
 
 Her walk had given her cheeks a flame, the black furs 
 round her throat, the black coat falling below her knees, a
 
 298 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 red feather in her round black fur cap, all these things set 
 off and accentuated the brilliant fire and energy of her 
 eyes. 
 
 As she came towards them then so splendid was she that 
 Lizzie was herself for an instant lost in admiration She 
 lit the hall, she lit the house, she lit the country and the 
 evening sky. 
 
 To Roddy, as he looked at her, there stole the spirit of 
 some pagan ancestor telling him that here was his capture, 
 that this fine creature was his to bind, to burden, to chas- 
 tise, as his lordly pleasure might be. 
 
 Rachel, meanwhile, had come in from her walk, unap- 
 peased, unsated ; the exertion had only succeeded in stirring 
 in her a deeper, more urgent uneasiness. During these last 
 weeks she had known no moment of peace. She had come 
 down to Seddon determined to do her duty to Roddy; she 
 ihad found that at every turn her duty to Roddy involved 
 more than any determination could force her to give. 
 
 She had not known what that last interview with Breton, 
 would do to every situation that followed it. It seemed to 
 iher then that those last words with him would make her duty 
 plain, they had only made her duty harder. 
 
 She could not now act, think, sleep, move but that last 
 kiss, those last words of his, that last vision of him standing, 
 struggling so finely for control these things pursued her, 
 caught her eyes and held them. 
 
 All her duty to Roddy could not hide from her now that 
 she had, at one flaming instant, known what life at its most 
 intense could be. She had felt the fire how cold to her 
 now these antechambers, these passages so chill, so far from 
 that inner room. Lizzie had then occurred to her as the 
 strongest person she knew. She sent for Lizzie, found in- 
 stantly that Lizzie disliked her, suspected then that Lizzie 
 knew about Breton. 
 
 She knew Lizzie for her enemy. . . . During the last 
 week also she had detected a new attitude in Roddy ; she had
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 299 
 
 felt in him some active growing impatience that quite defi- 
 nitely threatened her safety. That wild lawlessness in 
 Roddy that she had always known, that had produced the 
 Nita episode and others, was now turning towards herself. 
 
 But most of all did she fear her thoughts of Breton. She 
 drove him again and again and again from her mind, she 
 called all her strength, mental, moral, and physical, to her 
 aid always, with a smile, with one glance from his eyes 
 he defeated her. 
 
 Day and night he was with her, and yet at her heart she 
 did not even now know whether it were Francis Breton 
 whom she loved, or the life with Roddy, the whole Beamin- 
 ster scheme of things that she hated. Every day it seemed 
 to her that Lizzie was more watchful, Roddy more impa- 
 tient, Breton more insistent but afraid of them all as she 
 was, fear of herself gave her the sharpest terror. 
 
 She rang for tea, reproached them because they had 
 waited for her. Then they were all three of them 
 silent. 
 
 One of the footmen brought in the five o'clock post with 
 the tea and laid Rachel's letters on the table at her side. 
 
 Lizzie had leant across the table for something and saw, 
 as though flashed to her by some special designing Provi- 
 dence, that the letter on the top of the pile was in Francis 
 Breton's handwriting. 
 
 Rachel, busied with tea, had not looked down. Now she 
 did so; the handwriting rose, as though she had at that 
 instant heard his step beyond the room, and filled first her 
 eyes, then her cheeks, then her heart. 
 
 Her eyes met Lizzie's and for the barest moment of time 
 their challenges met. Rachel seemed to hesitate, then, 
 gathering up her letters, looked round at Roddy and said, 
 " I think I'll just go up and take my things off, this fire's 
 hotter than I expected I'll be back in a moment." 
 
 She walked slowly across the room and up the broad 
 staircase.
 
 300 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 m 
 
 She did not switch on the light. The evening dusk left 
 the room cool and dim, but by the window, standing so that 
 green shadows met the grey and through them both a pale 
 light trembled before it vanished, she took the letter in her 
 hand, allowing the others to drop and be scattered, white, 
 on the floor at her feet. 
 
 She held the envelope; he had written and he had sworn 
 to her that he would not do so she should have been furi- 
 ous at his broken word, scornful of him for his weakness, 
 indignant at his treating her so lightly. 
 
 But she could not think of that now, she could only think 
 of the letter. The envelope was so precious to her that it 
 seemed to return the caress that his fingers gave it and to 
 have of itself some especial individuality. She traced hi? 
 hand on the address, treasured every line and mark, and 
 then at last tore it open. It was not a very long letter. 
 He had written to her: 
 
 " You will despise me for breaking my word. Per- 
 haps you won't read this but I can't help it, I cant 
 help it, and even if I could I don't think that I would. 
 I know that my writing to you is just another of the rash, 
 foolish, silly weak things that I've gone on doing all my 
 life, but let it be so. I don't pretend to be fine or brave 
 and I have tried all these weeks, tried harder than you 
 can know. I've written to you every day letter after 
 letter, and torn them up torn them all up. I've fan- 
 cied that perhaps you've forgotten by now and then I've 
 known that you've not and then I've known that it were 
 better if you did. 
 
 I love you so madly that (here he had scratched some 
 words out) I must tell you that I love you so that you 
 can hear me and not only my walls and furniture and my 
 own self. I'm trying not to be selfish. I know that I'm
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 301 
 
 doing something now that is hard on you, but my silence 
 is eating me, thrusting, killing I shall be better soon 
 I will be sensible soon I will be 
 
 But now, oh, my darling ! for a moment at least I have 
 caught you and held you throbbing against me, and put 
 my hands in your hair and stroked your cheeks and kissed 
 your eyes. 
 
 Don't write to me if you must not, don't be angry with 
 me for this. 
 
 I will try not to break my word again." 
 
 As the letter ended so silence came back into the room 
 that had been beating and throbbing with sound. 
 
 The pale light had gone, only the Downs were dim grey 
 shapes against a darker sky the ripple of some water 
 slipping and falling came from the garden. 
 
 The letter fell from her hands and lay white with the 
 others on the floor. 
 
 She tumbled on to her knees by the window and her heart 
 was the strangest confusion of triumph and fear, exaltation 
 and shame. 
 
 For a little time she lay there and felt that she was in his 
 arms and that his lips were on her mouth and that her hand 
 pressed his cheek. 
 
 She got up, turned on the lights, took off her walking 
 things, brushed her hair and washed her hands, picked up 
 the other letters, but put his in the inside of her dress 
 then went down to the others. 
 
 She found Lizzie sitting alone " Where's Roddy ? " 
 
 Lizzie looked up at her. " He had to go and see about a 
 horse or something." 
 
 Rachel came down to the table and poured out some tea 
 and then sat smiling at Lizzie; Lizzie smiled back. 
 
 " I hope you liked your walk."
 
 '302 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " Yes, there's a storm coming up. You've no idea how 
 deeply one gets to care for these Downs their quiet and 
 their size." 
 
 They were silent for a little and then Rachel said: 
 
 " Miss Rand I do hope that this really has been 
 something of a holiday for you, being here, away from all 
 your London work ! " 
 
 Lizzie's eyes were sharp "Yes It's delightful for 
 me. The first holiday I've had for years. . . ." 
 
 " Don't think it impulsive of me but I've asked you 
 here hoping that we'd get to know one another better. I've 
 wanted to know you, to have you for a friend for a long 
 time. I've always admired so immensely the way that 
 you've helped Aunt Adela done things that I could never 
 possibly have done " 
 
 She stopped, but Lizzie said nothing Then she went 
 on more uncertainly 
 
 " You see, I hoped that perhaps you'd teach me a lit- 
 tle order and method. I've married so young I'd 
 hoped . . ." Then almost desperately " But you know, 
 Miss Rand, I don't feel as though your coming here has 
 helped us to know one another any better." 
 
 The storm had come up and the sky beyond the house was 
 black. Lizzie's face, lighted by the fire, was white, sharp 
 and set there was no kindness in her eyes. 
 
 " Perhaps, Lady Rachel," she said slowly, " I'm not a 
 very emotional kind of woman. If one's worked, as I have, 
 since one was small had to earn one's living and fight for 
 one's place it makes one perhaps rather self-reliant and 
 independent of other people Our lives have been so dif- 
 ferent, I'm afraid," she added with a little laugh, " that I'm 
 a dried-up, unsatisfactory kind of person I know that 
 my mother and sister have always found me so." 
 
 " Yes," Rachel said, " our lives have been different. 
 Perhaps if mine had been a little more like yours per- 
 haps if I had had to work for my living I ..."
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 303 
 
 She broke off a little catch was in her voice she rose 
 from her chair and went to the window and stood there, with 
 her back to Lizzie, gazing into the darkening garden. 
 
 She knew that Lizzie had repulsed her; she was hardly 
 aware why she had made her appeal, but she was now 
 frightened of Lizzie and to her overstrung brain it seemed 
 that she could now see Lizzie and Roddy in league against 
 her. 
 
 She heard a step and turning round found Peters, the but- 
 ler, large, square, of an immense impassivity. 
 
 " Please, my lady, might I speak to you a moment ? " 
 
 She went out 
 
 Lizzie, left in the darkening room, could think now only 
 of the letter. The sight of that handwriting had stirred in 
 her passions that she had never before imagined as hers 
 that first pathetic appeal of Roddy and then the sight of 
 that letter! 
 
 Her brain, working feverishly, showed her the words that 
 that letter would contain the passion, the passion ! There 
 in the very face of her husband, Rachel was receiving letters 
 from her lover, letters that she could not wait a moment to 
 read, but must go instantly and open them. 
 
 This hour brought to a crisis Lizzie's agony. Had such a 
 letter been written to her! 
 
 She tortured herself now with the picture of him as he sat 
 there in his room in Saxton Square writing it! It ap- 
 peared to her now as though they two there in the very 
 throne of their triumphant love had plotted this insult, 
 this snap of the fingers, to show her, Lizzie Rand, how des- 
 olate, how lonely, how neglected and unwanted she was! 
 
 That then, after this, Rachel should appeal to her for 
 friendship ! The cruel insult of it. 
 
 She felt as she heard the fast drops of rain lash the win- 
 dow-frames, that no revenge that she could secure would 
 satisfy her thirst for it.
 
 304 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 Roddy, meanwhile, had gone out to the stables. That 
 little talk with Lizzie had determined a resolution that had 
 been growing now within him for many weeks. 
 
 That little woman, with her assured air and neat little 
 ways, knew what she was about knew moreover what oth- 
 ers were about. She had watched and had given him the 
 tip He would take it. 
 
 Roddy's mind was of far too simple an order to admit of 
 more than one point of view at a time. He saw Rachel now 
 as a dog or horse, of whom he was very fond, who needed, 
 nevertheless, stern discipline. He wondered now how it 
 was that he had allowed himself for so long to remain inde- 
 cisive. 
 
 " London muddles a feller," he concluded ; " the coun- 
 try's the place for clear thinkin'." 
 
 He looked at his horses with great satisfaction, they were 
 in splendid condition he had never known them better. 
 He also was in splendid condition never been better. 
 
 As he walked away from the stables and turned towards 
 the end of the garden bounded by the gryphons and the 
 stone gate, he felt his body at its most supreme perfection. 
 He thought, on that afternoon, that he was strong enough 
 for anything, and perhaps never before in his life had he 
 been so conscious of the glories of physical things ; of all that 
 it meant to have fine muscles and a strong heart and lungs 
 of the best and thews and sinews as good as " any feller's." 
 
 " I'm strong enough for anythin' " He turned back 
 
 his arm and felt his muscle. He cocked his head with a lit- 
 tle conceited gesture of satisfaction " I was gettin' a bit 
 fat in London got rid of all that." 
 
 To walk, to ride, to fight, to swim, to eat and sleep, to love 
 women and drink strong drink! God! what a world! 
 
 And then, beyond it all, Rachel, Rachel, Rachel! He 
 had her now she should be under his hand, she should be
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 305 
 
 his as she had never heen since the first week of their mais 
 riage. 
 
 " No more nonsense, by God ! " he said triumphantly to 
 himself " no more nonsense." 
 
 He leaned on the stone gate and looked out over the fields 
 
 The gryphons regarded him benevolently. 
 
 He was conscious, as he stood there, of the Duchess 
 what was the old lady doing ? He'd like to see her. He felt 
 more in sympathy with her than he had been for a long 
 time past. " She's right after all. You've got to stand up 
 and run people. No use just lettin' them handle you." 
 
 There was a storm coming up. The white lights of the 
 higher sky were being closed down by black blocks of cloud 
 that spread, from one to another, merging far on the horizon 
 above the hills into driving lines of rain. The white chalk 
 hollows above Lewes stood out sharp and clear; the dark 
 green of the fields was now a dull grey, the hedges were 
 dark and a thin stream that cut the flat surface of the plain 
 was black like ink. 
 
 Roddy welcomed the storm. Had he been superstitious 
 the physical energy that now pervaded him might have 
 frightened him. He felt as though with one raising of his 
 arm he could hold up those black clouds and keep them off. 
 The rain and the wind had not more force than he 
 
 Life was a vast psean of strength " The weak must go " 
 
 He was, at this hour, Lord of Creation. 
 
 As he went back to the house the rain met him and 
 whipped his cheek. 
 
 " By Gad, I'd like to find the old lady sittin' in the house, 
 waitin' for a chat," he thought. 
 
 When he came down to dinner, he came as one who rules 
 the world. That simple clear light was in his eyes that was 
 always there when he had found the solution to something 
 that perplexed him. His expression too was one that be- 
 longed to Rachel's earlier experience of him, one that she 
 had not seen on his face for a long time past. His strong
 
 306 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 but rather stupid mouth had somewhere in its corners the 
 suspicion of a smile. His chin stuck out rather obstinately 
 the light in the eyes, the smile, the set lips, these things 
 revealed the old Roddy. 
 
 After dinner Lizzie went off to her room. 
 
 For a while Roddy and Rachel sat there She read some 
 book, her eyes often leaving the page and staring into the 
 fire. 
 
 Then she got up and said good night. She came over 
 and bent down and kissed him. He caught her arm and 
 held her. 
 
 " I say, old girl, it's time we had the same room again 
 much more convenient." He heard her catch her breath 
 and felt her tremble. She tried to draw her arm away, but 
 he held her. 
 
 " Oh ! but soon, Roddy Yes but not just now 
 j 
 
 " Yes now. I'll see about it to-morrow." She stepped 
 back from him, dragging herself away, and then put her 
 hand to her forehead with a desperate gesture. 
 
 " No, no not " 
 
 He got up and smiling, swaying a little, faced her 
 
 " Yes I've made up my mind all this business has 
 got to come to an end Been goin' long enough." 
 
 " What business ? " 
 
 " Seein' nothing of you nothing from mornin' till night. 
 You know, old girl, it isn't fair if we didn't care about 
 one another " 
 
 "Yes, I know but don't let's discuss it to-night. I'm 
 tired, headachy this storm " 
 
 He said nothing She looked at him and at the steady 
 stare in his eyes and the smile at his mouth turned away. 
 
 She moved towards the door He said nothing, but his 
 eyes followed her. 
 
 " Good night," she said, turning round to him but he 
 still said nothing, only stood there very square and set.
 
 RODDY IS MASTER 30Y 
 
 For a long time lie sat, looking into the fire Then he 
 went up to his room and very slowly undressed. After- 
 wards he came out, carefully closing the door behind him, 
 then, in dressing-gown and pyjamas, went down the passage 
 to Rachel's door. 
 
 The house was very still, but the storm was raging and the 
 boughs of some tree hit, with fierce protesting taps, a win- 
 dow at the passage-end. 
 
 He knocked at her door, waited, then heard her ask who 
 was there. 
 
 " It's I, Roddy," he said. There was a pause, then the 
 door was opened. He came in and stood in the doorway. 
 Rachel was sitting up in bed, her face very white, her eyes 
 fixed on him. 
 
 " I'm sleepin' here to-night, Rachel," he said. 
 
 Her voice was a whisper " No, Roddy no -^ not 
 not " 
 
 " Yes," he said firmly. 
 
 " No, not to-night." 
 
 " Yes to-night now." 
 
 He walked carefully across the room, took off his dress- 
 ing-gown, and hang it over a chair. He looked about the 
 room. 
 
 " Too much light " he said and, going to the door, 
 switched off all the lights save the one above the bed.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 
 
 'Exile of immortality, strongly wise, 
 Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes, 
 To what may be beyond it. Sets your star, 
 O heart, for ever? Yet behind the night, 
 Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar, 
 Some white tremendous daybreak." 
 
 RUPERT BROOKE. 
 
 THAT night Lizzie had a dream and, waking in the 
 early hours of the grey dim morning, saw before her 
 every detail of it. She had dreamt that she was lost in the 
 house. No human being was there. Every room was closed 
 and she knew that every room was empty. 
 
 It was full day, but only a dull yellow light lit the pas- 
 sages. She could not find her way to the central staircase. 
 A passage would be familiar to her and then suddenly would 
 be dark and vague and menacing. She opened doors and 
 found wide dusty empty rooms with windows thick in cob- 
 webs and beyond them a garden green, tangled, deserted. 
 
 She knew that if she did not escape soon some disaster 
 would overtake her, some disaster in which both Roddy and 
 Rachel would be involved. She knew also that, in some way, 
 Rachel's safety absolutely depended upon her She felt, 
 within herself, a struggle as to whether she should save 
 Rachel. She did not wish to save Rachel. . . . But 
 some impulse drove her. . . . 
 
 She ran down the passage, stumbling in the strange in- 
 distinct yellow light She knew that, could she only reach 
 the garden, Rachel would be saved. 
 
 She reached a window, looked down, and saw below her, 
 like a green pond, the lawn overgrown now with weeds and 
 bristling with strange twisted plants. 
 
 308
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 309 
 
 She flung open the window and tried to jump, but a cold 
 blast of some storm met her and drove her back. The 
 storm screamed about her, the dust rose in the room, the 
 plants in the garden waved their heads . . . the wind 
 rushed through the house and she heard doors banging and 
 windows creaking. 
 
 She knew suddenly that she was too late Rachel was 
 dead. 
 
 She stood there thinking, " I thought that I hated her 
 I know now that I loved her all the time." 
 
 The storm died down died away. A voice quite close 
 to her said, " You made a mistake, Miss Rand. People 
 have souls, you know having a soul of your own is more 
 important than criticizing other people's. . . . People have 
 souls, you know." 
 
 She woke and heard a clock strike seven. As she lay 
 there a sense of uneasiness was with her so strongly that she 
 repeated to herself, half sleeping, half waking, " I wish to- 
 day were over, quite over, quite over. I want to-day to be 
 over." 
 
 She was completely wakened by a sound. She lay there 
 for a little time wondering what it was. Then she realized 
 that something was scratching on the door. 
 
 She got out of bed, opened the door and found the dog, 
 Jacob, sitting in the long dark passage, looking through his 
 tangled hair into space as though the very last thing that he 
 had been doing had been trying to attract her attention. 
 Jacob was nearer to a human being than any animal that 
 she had ever known. He had attached himself to Miss Rand 
 and she had decided, after watching him, that he knew more 
 about the situation in the house than anyone else. To catch 
 him, as he watched, with his grave brown eyes, Roddy or 
 Rachel as they spoke or moved was to have no kind of doubt 
 as to his wisdom, his deep philosophy, his penetration into 
 motives. 
 
 He liked Miss Rand, but she knew well that his feeling for
 
 310 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 her had nothing of the passionate urgency with which he 
 regarded Roddy or Rachel. All tragedy the depths and 
 the heights of it she had seen in that dog's eyes, fixed 
 with the deepest devotion upon Roddy. " He knows," she 
 had often thought during the last week, " exactly what's the 
 matter with all of us." 
 
 He always slept, she knew, in a basket in Rachel's room, 
 and she wondered why he had been ejected. He sat now in 
 the middle of the floor and seemed deeply unhappy. He 
 sat square with his legs spread out, his hair hanging in mel- 
 ancholy locks over his eyes, his small beard giving a last 
 wistful touch to his expression. He did not look at Lizzie 
 or show any interest in her, he only stared before him at the 
 pattern on the wall. 
 
 Lizzie did not attempt to pat him she went back to bed, 
 and, lying there, saw the light gather about the room. 
 
 Once Jacob sighed. Otherwise he made no movement 
 until the maid came in with Lizzie's tea Then he crawled 
 under the bed. 
 
 When she came down to breakfast she felt that she could 
 not endure another day of this place. She wished now for 
 no revenge upon Rachel, she had no longer any curiosity as 
 to the particular feelings of any one of these people for any 
 other . . . she felt detached from them all, and utterly, 
 absolutely weary. 
 
 She was weighed down with a sense of disaster and she 
 felt that she must, instantly, escape from it all, fling herself 
 again into her London work, deal with the tiresome common- 
 places of her mother and sister she must escape. 
 
 Roddy was sitting alone at breakfast and she saw at once 
 that he was uneasy. He seemed to avoid her eyes and he 
 coloured as she came towards him. 
 
 " Mornin', Miss Rand," he said, " Rachel's not comin' 
 down. Bit of headache rotten night."
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 311 
 
 " I didn't have a very good night either. That storm 
 made me sleep badly." 
 
 " Yes, wasn't it a corker ? It's all right to-day though." 
 
 She looked through the wide high windows and saw out 
 over a country painted as in a delicate water-colour The 
 softest green and dark brown lay beneath a pale blue sky, 
 very still, very gentle. Tiny white puffs of cloud were 
 blown, like soap bubbles, across the sun, so that bright gleams 
 floated and passed and flashed again. 
 
 She drew a deep breath " Nothing terrifying in such a 
 day as this." 
 
 "Yes, it's beautiful beautiful! I'm off for the day," 
 Roddy said, " ridin' " 
 
 She helped herself to some breakfast and sat down. 
 
 Roddy said, " Well, no one would ever believe you'd had a 
 bad night, Miss Rand." " You're fresh as a pin." 
 
 " Thank you," she said, laughing. " But, all the same, I 
 did sleep badly." 
 
 " I'm not feeling princely myself," he confessed, " that's 
 why I'm goin' off for a ride, nothin' like a ride to take you 
 out of yourself. Don't you ever feel, Miss Rand, that you 
 want to get right away from yourself and be someone else ? " 
 
 She looked at him. Roddy was in real trouble. His 
 very physical strength showed the more clearly that he was 
 unhappy. His fingers moved restlessly, his eyes were never 
 still. She looked at her letters. There was one from Lady 
 Adela. 
 
 " Oh ! I'm sorry I'm afraid I shall have to go back 
 almost immediately The Duchess is much less well 
 They're worried about her." 
 
 " The Duchess ! " Roddy started up and then sat down 
 again. " I'm sorry I was thinking about her only yes- 
 terday. What's the matter ? " 
 
 " Lady Adela doesn't say, but she asks about you the 
 Duchess, I mean. Got it into her head, Lady Adela says, 
 that you're not well or something."
 
 312 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " I'll write to her." Roddy spoke slowly as though to 
 himself " I've not treated her very well lately and she's 
 always been such a brick to me." He left his breakfast, 
 walked backwards and forwards once or twice " Always 
 )>een such a brick to me, the old lady has," he repeated. 
 
 Lady Adela really did want Lizzie to return. This hor- 
 rid war was getting on her nerves, the house was all in dis- 
 order and nobody seemed either well or happy. 
 
 " Somebody really does want me," thought Lizzie with a 
 certain grim satisfaction. 
 
 But she was terribly restless that morning. She could 
 settle down to nothing and ended by walking up and down 
 the garden paths, watching the pale winter light cross the 
 Downs in sweeping shadow, seeing the bare branches, all 
 black and sharp against the blue distance. 
 
 How she loved life and how, at every turn, life was thrust 
 from her! For that other woman, there inside the house, 
 two men were ready, eager to die for herself, in all the 
 world, no one cared. 
 
 There came up to her again, borne as it were on the sharp 
 winter air, a determination to drive down Rachel's defences. 
 The very sense that now, after Lady Adela's letter, she must 
 shortly return to London, hardened her resolution. 
 
 Before breakfast she had felt that she did not care, now, 
 quite suddenly she was determined that she would confront 
 Rachel and drag the truth from her. How much did Rachel 
 care? Was Rachel already involved in a liaison with Bre- 
 ton? 
 
 And, at that thought, a pain so fierce clutched her heart 
 that for a moment she could not see and the garden and the 
 sky mingled like coloured smoke before her eyes. 
 
 Suddenly, coming to the end of the garden by the stone 
 gate she saw that a strange thing had happened one of 
 the gryphons, perched there for many centuries, had tum- 
 bled to the ground and lay in the path, beyond the garden, 
 broken into two pieces.
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURKEY III 313 
 
 The storm of last night must have driven it down. But 
 what had broken it ? 
 
 She was sorry. She knew how deeply attached Roddy 
 was to those gryphons; she remembered his pride when he 
 had pointed them out to her. 
 
 The other gryphon looked very lonely. 
 
 " He will be distressed." The dead leaves on the path 
 were trembling over the broken pieces of stone and whis- 
 tling, in little excited groups, above it " Just as though 
 they are glad," she thought. 
 
 She and Rachel had a very amiable conversation at 
 luncheon. Rachel confessed to a bad night. 
 
 Lizzie told her about Jacob. 
 
 " How tiresome of him to come and bother you yes, I 
 couldn't sleep and he was very restless too, so I put him into 
 the passage. It was after six I meant him to go down to 
 the servants' hall. I'm so sorry, Miss Rand." 
 
 " Oh, he didn't worry me at all. I was awake." That 
 appeal was in Rachel's eyes to-day more than ever. Lizzie 
 saw it and steeled her heart. " I must know," she thought. 
 " I must know." 
 
 " I'm afraid," she said, " that I'll have to go back to Lon- 
 don to-morrow. I heard from Lady Adela this morning 
 The Duchess is not so well." 
 
 " Oh ! " Rachel caught her breath " oh, Miss Rand, no, 
 no, oh! I hope not! You must stay! I !" her col- 
 our came and went. " There's the dance. I don't know 
 what I shall do without you." And she went on more des- 
 perately, catching Lizzie's eyes and evading them. " We 
 are just beginning to be so happy here. My husband likes 
 you so much. I do hope " 
 
 She stopped and the colour left her again ; her hands were 
 trembling on the white tablecloth. 
 
 The strangest impulse flooded Lizzie's breast, an impulse 
 to go to her and put her arms about her and kiss her and let 
 her, there and then, unburden her heart
 
 314 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 Lizzie drove the impulse down, buried it. Her eyes were 
 cold and her voice hard as she answered 
 
 " I'm so sorry, but I think I must go. I can't leave Lady 
 Adela if things are really difficult. I'll come this afternoon, 
 shall I ? and we might go over the dance " 
 
 Rachel had been thinking; she looked up sharply and 
 stared at Lizzie, staring as though she had been some stranger 
 whom she saw for the first time. 
 
 " Yes Come to the Chinese room at four, will you ? 
 We'll have tea up there." 
 
 " Yes," said Lizzie, " at four." 
 
 They were both of them aware that something, now quite 
 irrevocable, had been settled by these words. 
 
 There was a little old library up in one of the towers, and 
 there Lizzie went. She had a desperate need of some place 
 where, during the next hour, she might think and decide 
 upon some plan. The room had little diamond-paned win- 
 dows that looked down, on one side, over the courtyard, and 
 on the other over the garden and the Downs. The shelves 
 went from ceiling to floor and were filled with books that 
 dimly shone with their old gold and were dusky in their rich, 
 faded bindings. 
 
 It was very seldom that anyone came here; Lizzie was 
 quite alone as, perched up in one of the deep-seated windows, 
 she looked down at the garden, saw the stone gate with the 
 solitary gryphon, watched the swiftly fading afternoon light 
 fill the green lawn as a pot is filled with water. 
 
 Even now, early though it was, the little room was grow* 
 ing dark. 
 
 She strove now, resolutely, to discipline her mind. Al- 
 though the very thought of Francis Breton now shamed her, 
 it was for him that she must care. " Poor dear," he was 
 even now, in her heart. "Foolish, indiscreet must 
 plunge from one mess into another, needs someone Oh, so 
 dreadfully to help him out." 
 
 Her hostility to Rachel did not prevent her from feeling
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 315 
 
 that here was someone very young, terribly inexperienced, 
 most unhappily impulsive the very last in the world to 
 prevent Breton from having another catastrophe as bad as 
 the early ones. 
 
 She must know absolutely what it was that he and Rachel 
 were doing, and only Rachel could tell her that And here 
 her feeling about Rachel was compounded of the strangest 
 mixture of anger and suspicion, of tenderness and compas 
 sion, of sympathy and hard callous indifference. 
 
 " Oh ! " Lizzie thought, " why has all this come to me ? 
 Why wasn't I allowed just to go on with my life as it was 
 My life that was so safe and sure and dull ? " 
 
 She was conscious, as she sat there, that she was listening 
 for something. She felt, in an odd way, that the day had 
 been a direct continuance of the dream that she had had in 
 the night ; all the morning she had been aware that her ears, 
 in spite of herself, had been waiting for some sound, a mes- 
 eage, or an arrival. 
 
 She sat now in the swiftly darkening room, as though she 
 had been told that someone was coming at such and such an 
 hour and she had heard the clock strike and was listening 
 for the grating of the wheels on the cobbles of the courtyard. 
 
 The calm winter's day passed now into a purple twilight 
 
 lights were coming in the windows 
 
 She thought she heard a step in the passage and was 
 startled as though someone had been suddenly, unexpectedly 
 within the room. 
 
 She opened the window and listened " Someone sev- 
 eral people will come down that garden path in a minute 
 
 I know they will." 
 
 But the air was very cold and she closed the window; 
 $ven as she did so a clock struck four. 
 She got up and went to Rachel. ,
 
 316 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 in 
 
 The Chinese room was so called because its walls were 
 covered with a stiff golden Chinese paper. It had wide 
 windows looking on to the garden; Rachel used it a great 
 deal. 
 
 Lizzie fixed upon her mind, very deliberately, all the 
 details of her surroundings. Rachel was dressed in black 
 with red round her throat and her waist, and this brilliant 
 colour made her face seem white and there were deep, heavy 
 black marks under her eyes. 
 
 She looked up when Lizzie came in, seemed, with a vio- 
 lent effort, to compel control. 
 
 They sat there for some time and discussed the dance; 
 the dusk filled the room, then tea was brought. There was 
 a light in their corner; slowly the rest of the room grew 
 dark. 
 
 They finished tea, it was taken away, and Lizzie, sitting 
 quite close to Rachel, on a little sofa that had a window just 
 behind it, was aware that again, in spite of herself, her ears 
 were straining for some sound. The house and all the 
 world were profoundly still. 
 
 When the servant had at last left them alone, Rachel said 
 " Miss Rand, you mustn't go away to-morrow Aunt 
 Adela can manage for another week. After all, she did 
 promise that you should stay for me over the ball." 
 
 " Why did you ask me here, Lady Rachel ? " Lizzie said. 
 Her speech was a direct challenge and, instantly, when she 
 had spoken she knew that they had entered upon those per- 
 sonal relations that they had, during all these weeks, feared. 
 
 " I asked you because I wanted you for a friend I've 
 no friend no woman friend whom I can trust. I knew 
 that I could trust you I hoped that you could help 
 me " 
 
 " I've been here for some time now and you have told me 
 nothing."
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 317 
 
 " "No because you have held me off, have shown me so 
 plainly that you disliked and distrusted me. You didn't 
 always dislike me what have I done ? " 
 
 " That's only my way. As I told you this morning, Lady 
 Seddon, I'm not an emotional person. But I feel more 
 than I show. I would like to help you, if you will let 
 me." 
 
 Kachel leaned forward and caught first Lizzie's arm, then 
 her hand. Then she spoke, her voice quivering as though 
 she were forcing upon herself the most intense control. 
 
 " Oh ! you're so strange, so odd I don't know what you 
 feel, whether you care, but these last months have been so 
 hard for me that even though you hate me, despise me, it 
 doesn't matter nothing matters if only I can get away 
 from myself, you're so different so dry, so hard, but you 
 
 are, you are ! just as hard " she stopped Lizzie 
 
 drew her hand away. 
 
 " Please don't tell me things if you feel about me like 
 that. It hasn't been my fault, has it, that we don't get on ? 
 / didn't ask to come here, to know you let me go let 
 me go back. Don't bother about me leave me alone," she 
 at last brought out. 
 
 But Rachel said more urgently " ~No, don't go now. 
 Even though you don't care, even though you hate me, help 
 me. I've no one else. If only you knew the things I've 
 suffered these past weeks, how I've hated myself for my in- 
 decision, for my weakness and shame. I don't know why I 
 feel as though you were the only person to whom I could 
 talk. I'm being driven, I suppose, by this long silence 
 and then you're so absolutely to be trusted -= even though 
 you dislike me you're straight all through I've alwaya 
 known that." 
 
 At Lizzie's heart again now that strange confusion of 
 sensation, and with it a sure conviction that fate had this 
 scene between them in hand, and that events now, whatever 
 the hours might bring forth, were beyond her control.
 
 318 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " Yes, you may trust me," she said drily " I'm useful, 
 at any rate for that." 
 
 Lizzie watched her as, in the little pause that followed, 
 Rachel struggled for concentration and for the point of view 
 that would make the strongest appeal. That, Lizzie grimly 
 knew, was the thing for which the girl was struggling and it 
 yielded her the pleasanter irony because she was, herself, so 
 surely aware of that one fact that all Rachel's confessions 
 contained 
 
 Eor herself she had only confidently to sit and wait. . . . 
 Then Rachel plunged 
 
 " I'm unhappy," she said, " in my married life, miser- 
 ably unhappy, and entirely, utterly by my own fault. I've 
 tried, or fancied that I've tried. I've done what I've 
 thought was my best Things have happened now, at last, 
 that have made it impossible I can't go on any longer." 
 
 She spoke as though she were, very urgently, endeavour- 
 ing to deliver a fair honest statement. There was in her 
 voice a note that showed that life had truly, of late, been very- 
 hard for her -^ 
 
 " I married, in the beginning, for a wrong reason. I knew 
 then that I didn't love my husband. I married because I 
 wanted to escape. I had always hated my grandmother and 
 she had always hated me you knew that, Miss Rand; 
 everyone who had anything to do with us knew it. She had 
 done more than hate me, she had made me frightened 
 frightened of life and people. Someone came along who 
 was kind and easy and comfortable, and everyone said it 
 would be a good thing, and so I, not because I loved him, but 
 because I wanted to escape from my grandmother, married 
 him. Because I had to silence everything that was honest 
 in me I'm paying now." 
 
 " It was all quite natural," Lizzie said. " Most women 
 would have done the same." 
 
 " It was horrible from the beginning ; I found that I had 
 not escaped from my grandmother at all. She had arranged
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 319 
 
 the marriage and now was always, and in some curious way, 
 influencing it. 
 
 " I soon saw what I had done that I had been false to 
 myself and therefore false to everything else. My hus- 
 band was in love with me He was very patient and good 
 to me, but I found that everything that I did or thought or 
 said in connection with my husband was false. What made 
 it so hard was that I was, and I am, very fond of him. My 
 training the training of all our family had always been 
 to learn how to be sham, so that one's real self never appeared 
 all one's life. It ought to have been easy enough but I've 
 never been like one of my family I'd always been dif- 
 ferent. 
 
 " I had determined that this year I would do my duty to 
 Roddy But it's harder than any determination can gov- 
 ern. It's bad for Roddy, it's deadly for me ... at last 
 things have happened that have made it impossible for me 
 I've made up my mind this morning. I must leave Roddy, 
 let him divorce me, give him a better chance with someone 
 else." 
 
 She spoke with the desperate immediate determination of 
 youth, staring in front of her, her hands clenched. Like 
 flame at Lizzie's heart leapt this knowledge. 
 
 " She and Breton are going only you can stop them 
 she and Breton." 
 
 " Don't you think," said Lizzie, " a little of your hus- 
 band?" 
 
 " I'm thinking of him all the time It's for his sake 
 that he should have a better chance with someone who 
 cared " 
 
 " No, that isn't true," said Lizzie " It's because you 
 love someone else " 
 
 Rachel, with her head down, whispered, " Yes it's 
 because . . . someone else." 
 
 " Francis Breton." 
 
 " Yes, Francis Bretou."
 
 320 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 That whisper of his name had in it confidence, worship, 
 defiance ... all these things were torture to Lizzie sitting 
 there, very composed, very stern, very quiet. She should 
 have been able to say that name with just that precious in- 
 timacy, and she saw, in Rachel's eyes, beyond her trouble 
 the glad pride that the pronouncing of the name had given 
 her. 
 
 " You know ? " Rachel asked at length. 
 
 " You've known a long time." 
 
 " Yes a long time." 
 
 " Oh ! If you'd only spoken to me ! All this time I've 
 been wanting you to You must have known." 
 
 " Yes I knew." Then Lizzie brought out slowly, let- 
 ting her grave eyes wander over Rachel's face 
 
 " You yourself insisted on telling me. You have brought 
 it upon yourself if I say what I mus*- .,/> " 
 
 Rachel caught the hostility. 
 
 " Yes ? " she said sharply. 
 
 " I'm older than you older in every way. You know 
 so little yet, the harm that you can do. . . . You must leave 
 Francis Breton alone, Lady Seddon." 
 
 Rachel laughed " Of course I knew that you that it 
 was the kind of way that you must look at it. But don't 
 you see, we've got past all that first stage It isn't, in the 
 very least, any good looking at it from any general point of 
 view. It's simply the individual happiness of the three of 
 us, my husband, Francis Breton, myself It's better for all 
 of us that I should go." 
 
 " No . . . not better for Francis Breton." 
 
 Rachel moved impatiently " He he and I can 
 judge that, Miss Rand - " 
 
 " No You can't you're too young. You don't know 
 I have a right to speak here, I know him I have known 
 him all this time - " 
 
 Lizzie broke off. Rachel, suddenly looking up, gazed at
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 321 
 
 lier Lizzie, fiercely, also proudly as though she were guard- 
 ing something very precious that they were trying to take 
 from her, returned her gaze. 
 
 "All this time," Rachel said slowly. " You've known 
 him of course ... at Saxton Square. . . ." 
 
 Then, as though the revelation had suddenly broken upon 
 her, " Why you you ! " 
 
 " Yes," said Lizzie, now fiercely indeed, hurling back at 
 the girl the na/ivete of her surprise. " Yes it's odd, isn't 
 it? I'm not the kind of woman, am I, ever to care for a 
 man, or to have a man care for me ? To have any feeling or 
 desire or affection. But it is not so strange as it may seem 
 I love him every bit as well as you do I've cared more 
 patiently perhaps, more unselfishly even. But there it is 
 ... it gives me the right." 
 
 Nothing more surprising than that on this special cir- 
 cumstance Rachel had never reckoned. Feeling it now, blaz- 
 ing there before her, the way that she was to deal with it was 
 beyond her experience. In an instant Lizzie Rand was, to 
 her, a new creature. Always she had seen Lizzie patiently, 
 with method, with discipline, putting things in order that 
 was her world and dominion. Lizzie had appeared, to Ra- 
 chel, to stand for all the things that she herself was 
 not. Rachel had often envied that absence of emotion, that 
 security from impulse and passion, and it was upon that 
 very security that Rachel had wished to depend. It was 
 that that had driven her to seek Lizzie's friendship. She 
 herself so unsure, so caught and destroyed by powers too 
 potent for her resistance, had looked with wonder and de- 
 sire upon Lizzie's safety 
 
 Now Lizzie Rand was no longer Lizzie Rand. She was of 
 Rachel's number ; she might, as easily as Rachel, be swept, 
 whirled away, after death and destruction. 
 
 But there was more than that. There was the realization 
 that Lizzie must hate her, that Lizzie was the last person in 
 the world to whom she should have given her confidence,
 
 322 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 that Lizzie would fight now to the last breath in her body to 
 keep Francis Breton from her. 
 
 During a long silence they sat facing one another the 
 little room was now nearly dark and it was only by the faint 
 pale shadow from the sky beyond the window that they could 
 catch, each from each, their consciousness of their new re- 
 lationship. 
 
 It was during that silence that Lizzie was again aware 
 that her ears were straining to catch some sound. . . . 
 
 " I didn't know," Rachel said at last very softly ; " it 
 must seem brutal to you now that I should have told you all 
 this. I wouldn't of course have spoken." 
 
 " Ah ! you needn't mind," Lizzie said grimly. " He's 
 never seen anything of it. You must never give him any 
 reason to suspect I trust you for that. No one in this 
 world knows but you, and you should never have known if 
 it had not been that I had to prove my right to interfere. 
 Perhaps even now, you don't see that I have a right, but 
 whether I have one or no, you've got to reckon with me 
 now " 
 
 " And you've got to reckon," Rachel answered, with some 
 of Lizzie's own fierceness, " with a power that's beyond your 
 power or mine or anyone's. Don't you imagine that we, all 
 of us, haven't tried hard enough. Why! all these last two 
 years we've done nothing but try. Now it's simply stronger 
 than we are. If Roddy," she went on, speaking now more 
 slowly, " hadn't forced it. ... If he'd not been impatient 
 but now after what's just happened, it's right it 
 isn't fair to him, to myself, to any of us, that things should 
 go on as they are " 
 
 " I'm thinking," Lizzie answered quietly, " simply of 
 Francis Breton." 
 
 " Well ! isn't it fairer too for him ? He's been living, as 
 we have, all this time, a life that's denying all his own real 
 self. Anything* s better than being false to that life may
 
 LIZZIE'S JOUBKEY III 323 
 
 be hard for us if we go away together, but at any rate it will 
 be honest " 
 
 " Ah ! that just shows how young you are ! Don't I kno~v? 
 that pursuit of truth and honesty as well as you? Don't 
 I know that when life's beginning for us, the one thing that 
 seems to matter is exposing ourselves, showing ourselves to 
 the world just as we are! At first it seems such an easy 
 thing Just round that corner the moment's coming when 
 the real person in us is going to stand up and proclaim itself 
 just as it is, fine and splendid? but always something just 
 comes in the way and stops it the years go on and we're 
 further off from truth than ever. 
 
 " You think that if you go off with Francis Breton now, 
 you'll, both of you, be leading, suddenly, honest brave lives 
 before the world. I tell you it isn't so. Things will be just 
 as crooked, just as shadowed issues just as confused it 
 will be worse than it was." 
 
 " But you don't know " 
 
 " I know Francis Breton. Don't you know too the kind of 
 man that he is ? Don't you know that he's as weak as a man 
 can be, weaker than any woman ever could be ? He's the 
 kind of man who must have society to bolster him up. If 
 the men of his world are supporting him then he's as good as 
 gold, as fine as you like. Let them leave him and down he 
 goes. All his life the world's been down on him and that's 
 why he's been down. Lately he's been quiet he's been 
 winning his place back. Soon, if he's patient, they'll all 
 come round him again. But let him go off with you and 
 he's done, finished absolutely, utterly. l Ah ! ' everyone 
 will say, ' that's what we expected. That's what we always 
 knew would happen/ Don't you know what kind of effect 
 that will have upon him ? Don't you know ? . . . Of course 
 you do. It will break him up. His old life abroad, creeping 
 from place to place, will begin again, only now he'll have the 
 additional knowledge that he's done for you as well as for
 
 324 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 himself. It will be the end, utterly the end of him. And I, 
 who love him, will not let it be." 
 
 Lizzie's speech had roused in Rachel one of those ola 
 storms of anger. She was exerting now her utmost self- 
 control, but her heart seemed bound tight with some cord 
 so slender that one movement, one impulse, would snap it 
 Then . . . She saw in Lizzie now, only moved by a sense of 
 jealous injury " She sits there, knowing that I've taken 
 him from her. That's it. ... That's what she's feeling 
 she's lost him. She can't forgive me for that." 
 
 But when she spoke her voice was quiet and controlled. 
 
 " That isn't so," Rachel said; " it won't, I think, be like 
 that. There's so much more between us than you can under- 
 stand. There's all our early life not that we were to- 
 gether, but we seem to have it all in common, to have known 
 it all together. We're unlike our family all the Beamin- 
 eters we're together in that we are together in every- 
 thing." 
 
 But Lizzie's voice went on, so coldly, with such assurance 
 that, with every word, the flame of Rachel's anger climbed 
 a little higher, grew stronger and steadier. 
 
 " There's another thing too. I watched you, more than 
 you know. No, no man no man in the world will ever 
 keep you altogether there's something I can't tell you 
 what it is there's something in you that demands more 
 than just a personal relationship like that Perhaps it's 
 maternity it is, with many women, perhaps it's a great 
 cause, a movement of a country 
 
 " But I know, with certainty, that you will never love 
 Breton as you should love a man. Realization will never be 
 the thing to you that anticipation and retrospection are. I 
 believe if you were to lose your husband now, you'd find that 
 you loved him All thoughts of Francis Breton would 
 go " 
 
 At that, because at the very heart of her determination 
 burnt the knowledge that Lizzie's words were true, Rachel's
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 325 
 
 control was abandoned, her anger leapt : " You think you 
 know you think . . . why . . . why . . . you don't know 
 me at all ! you can't know me we're strangers, Miss 
 Rand now always. . . . 
 
 " Nothing, nothing can ever make us friends again I'll 
 never forgive you for what you've said the poor creature 
 that you take me for no doubt you'd have done better had 
 the chance been yours, but you go too far " 
 
 " That was unfair of you," Lizzie said very low " You 
 may say to me what you please That's of no importance to 
 anybody. But Francis Breton's happiness, his success, that 
 is more to me than anything or anyone. You shall not 
 break his life into pieces for your own pleasure. There are 
 more important things than your personal happiness, Lady 
 Seddon " 
 
 They were both standing, but they could not see one an- 
 other, save, very faintly, their hands and faces 
 
 "It's too late, Miss Rand," Rachel laughed. "I shall 
 write to him to-morrow. I myself shall tell my husband 
 there is nothing that you can do " 
 
 They stood there, conscious that a word, a movement on 
 either side might produce an absurd, a tragic scene. Lizzie 
 had never known such anger as the passion that now held 
 her. Rachel was taunting her with the thing that she had 
 missed; she stood there, before the world, as the woman for 
 whom no man cared she stood there with the one human 
 being who mattered to her on the edge of complete disaster 
 nothing that she could do could prevent it and the 
 woman at her side was the cause. 
 
 A sudden sweeping consciousness of the things that it 
 would mean if Rachel were dead flowed over her. Her heart 
 stopped that way at least Francis Breton might be 
 saved. . . . 
 
 The room, dark as pitch before her, was filled now with a 
 red glow Her hands, clenched, were ice in a world that was 
 all of an overpowering heat.
 
 326 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Lizzie never afterwards could remember what then exactly 
 happened. 
 
 She was worked to a pitch of anger, she was thinking to 
 herself, "What would be a way? . . . anything to save 
 him. . . ." 
 
 " She shouldn't have taunted me with that " when, 
 suddenly, exactly as though someone had taken her brain 
 and emptied it, she had forgotten Rachel, had forgotten her 
 own personal injury, forgotten her anger, was only aware 
 that, with every nerve in her body on edge, she was waiting 
 for some sound 
 
 Like an answer to an invocation, the sound, through the 
 closed window, came 
 
 IV 
 
 She must have made some startled noise, because she heard 
 Rachel say, " What is it ? " 
 
 She fled to the window and opened it. She could see noth- 
 ing, but she could hear, as she had known all day that she 
 would hear, steps, stumbling, falling heavily, upon the heavy 
 gravel path. 
 
 She felt Rachel's hand upon her sleeve : " What is it ? " 
 Rachel said again " Lizzie, what is it ? " 
 
 Both women were seized and held by fear. Their feelings 
 for one another were lost, sunk in the cold, shattering sense 
 of disaster that had come, through the open window, into the 
 room. 
 
 They could see lights now and figures There were mur- 
 muring voices 
 
 " Oh, Lizzie, what is it ? " Rachel said for the third time, 
 and then after a moment " Roddy ! " 
 
 Lizzie said " Wait there. It may be nothing. I'll see 
 Don't you come for a moment." 
 
 She crossed the dark room, and opening the door saw 
 Peters hurrying down the passage towards her. His face was 
 in complete disorder the face of someone who, throughout
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 327 
 
 his life, has had only one kind of face that has served most 
 admirably for every kind of occasion suddenly a situation 
 has arisen for which that face will not serve 
 
 His hody was shaking 
 
 " Oh! Miss Rand, the master! " 
 
 Lizzie felt Rachel follow her, brush past both of them, down 
 the passage and out of sight 
 
 " An accident flung from his horse and dragged along 
 been hours on the hill a shepherd found him." 
 
 "Is he dead?" 
 
 " No, miss, not dead not yet, thank God ! " 
 
 "The doctor?" 
 
 " Dr. Crane from Lewes we caught him, miss, most 
 fortunately, on the way from another patient he's down- 
 stairs now." 
 
 " Quick, Peters, things will be wanted." 
 
 Lizzie passed to the head of the stairs, Peters behind her 
 said, " They've taken Sir Roderick into the green drawing- 
 room, miss, so as not to have to go upstairs." 
 
 She came down the stairs and then stood, waiting in the 
 hall. That was, for the moment, deserted, but the house 
 wore an air of dismay, surprised alarm, so that every sound 
 was of momentous import. Somewhere, a long way away, 
 someone perhaps a frightened kitchen-maid was sob- 
 bing the hall door was still open and little gusts of cold 
 wind came in and stirred and rustled the pages of some illus- 
 trated papers on one of the tables. 
 
 Lizzie went to the door and closed it what should she do ? 
 To go into the room and ask whether she could be of use? 
 Her quarrel with Rachel had made any movement now on her 
 part difficult Rachel might resent her presence 
 
 Someone came into the hall : she saw that it was the doctor. 
 He stood, looking about him, as though he were searching 
 for someone, and Lizzie went up to him 
 
 " Doctor, please tell me I'm staying in the house is 
 there anything anything at all that I can do?"
 
 328 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 The doctor was tall, thin, black, like an elongated crow. 
 
 " Ah yes no, I think there is nothing for the moment 
 there are two of us here we instantly wired to London and 
 the London men should be here if they catch the seven o'clock 
 in an hour and a half. Lady Seddon is with her husband." 
 
 "There's hope?" 
 
 " Oh yes I think Sir Roderick will live It's the spine 
 that's damaged." 
 
 He seemed to realize Miss Rand's efficiency. This was no 
 ordinary country-house visitor. He went to the hall door 
 and opened it. " I'm waiting for the things from Lewes. I 
 just came on with what I'd got. Yes, the spine . . . afraid 
 will never be able to get about again such a strong fellow 
 too." 
 
 " There's nothing I can do ? " 
 
 " Nothing anyone can do for the moment. Lady Seddon's 
 taking it wonderfully, but she'll want you later. I advise you 
 to get some quiet in the next hour it's afterwards that 
 they'll need your help " 
 
 Lizzie went up to her room and lay down on her bed. 
 She did not light the candles, but lay there in the darkness 
 striving to compel some order out of the turmoil that rioted 
 in her brain her first thought was of Roddy. Roddy had 
 always been to her the supreme type of animal spirits and 
 vigour that had been, above everything else, what he stood 
 for. That he should have been struck down like this ! 
 
 The cruelty, the irony of it ! Much better that he should 
 die than be compelled to lie on his back for the rest of his life 
 anything better for him than that 
 
 If he died Rachel would be free. Lizzie faced that thought 
 quite calmly; her quarrel with Rachel seemed to be now 
 very, very long ago, something distant and remote, something 
 whose very conditions had been torn asunder and flung 
 aside 
 
 As she lay there tenderness for Rachel came sweeping 
 about her " She must want someone now she's so young
 
 LIZZIE'S JOURNEY III 329 
 
 and so ignorant never had any crisis like this to deal with 
 hard for this to happen to him just after she'd thought 
 those things . . . that must be terrible for her. . . . Oh I 
 she'll need someone now." 
 
 Something reminded Lizzie of other things, of Francis 
 Breton, of Rachel's words, of Lizzie's anger, then 
 
 " Ah, but that's all so long ago. It doesn't seem to count. 
 There are things more important than all of that. What will 
 she do now ? Perhaps she still hates me won't let me come 
 near her it's my own fault after all; I kept away for so 
 long, wouldn't let Tier come near me. Oh I but she must have 
 someone to help her ! " 
 
 After a while Lizzie thought " She won't be practical 
 she won't know the things that ought to be done I'll wait a 
 little and then I'll go." 
 
 Then she slept. She awoke with a clear active brain; 
 she felt as though she could be awake now for weeks a 
 tremendous energy filled her. . . . 
 
 She left her room and at the turn of the passage met a 
 thick-set clean-shaven man whom she knew for Cramp one 
 of the most famous of the London doctors, a man whom she 
 had sometimes seen with Christopher at the Portland Place 
 house. 
 
 She stopped him " I'm Miss Rand, Doctor Lady 
 Adela's secretary we've met in London I want you to 
 tell me how I can help." 
 
 He shook hands with her, eyeing her with approval 
 
 " Why, yes, of course How do you do, Miss Rand ? 
 Yes, you're just the sort we want. For the moment Lady 
 Seddon's my chief anxiety she's borne up splendidly so 
 far, but now I am a little afraid. I've got her to go and lie 
 down would you go to her, Miss Rand ? Just be with her 
 a little and let me know if anything happens " 
 
 "Sir Roderick?" 
 
 "Pretty bad, I'm afraid He'll live, I think afraid 
 never run about, though, again."
 
 230 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 Lizzie made her way to Rachel's bedroom. She paused 
 outside the door. This was the very hardest thing that she 
 had ever, in all her life, had to do. If Rachel were to repulse 
 her now it would surely be the final absolute proof that she 
 was of no use, no use to anyone in this whole wide world. 
 
 She knocked on the door and went in. " Who's that ? " 
 
 " It's I Lizzie." 
 
 The room was dark, but she saw that Rachel was lying 
 on the bed she went up to her Rachel did not move. 
 
 " I came," Lizzie said, " to see whether I could help if I 
 could do anything " 
 
 Rachel said nothing 
 
 " If you'd rather if you don't want to see me, of course 
 just say . . ." 
 
 Rachel turned over and Lizzie heard her say " I did it 
 I wanted him it was my fault it was my fault." 
 
 Lizzie knelt down beside the bed. " Rachel dear, you 
 mustn't think that. It was nothing to do with anyone. But 
 you can help him now, Rachel He'll want you, he'll need 
 you now as he's never wanted anyone." 
 
 Rachel gave a bitter cry Her hand touched Lizzie's, then 
 she flung up her arm, caught Lizzie's neck, drew her towards 
 her, put both her arms around her and held her, held her as 
 though she would never let her go.
 
 BOOK III 
 RODDY
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 REGENT'S PARK BRETON AND LIZZIE 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Bright, "he missed it all the time." 
 
 " Missed what ? " asked Miss Rankin, 
 
 "'Is good luck," sighed Mrs. Bright. HENEY GALLEOH". 
 
 FRANCIS BRETON had known, during the weeks that 
 preceded his letter to Rachel, torture that became to 
 him at last so personal that he felt deliberate malignant 
 agency behind its ingenious devices. 
 
 At first it had seemed that that wonderful hour with Rachel 
 would satisfy his needs for a long time to come ; he had only, 
 when life was hard, dull, colourless, monotonous, to recall it 
 to see again her movements, to hear her voice, to remember 
 to the last and tiniest detail the things that she had said, to 
 feel that clutch of her hand upon his coat, and instantly he 
 was inflamed, exultant. 
 
 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 inter- 
 est 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 waa 
 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 
 
 333
 
 334 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 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 table- 
 cloth 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
 
 REGENT'S PAEK BRETON AND LIZZIE 335 
 
 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. Hia 
 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 instabil- 
 ity 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 ! Thb -pirit
 
 336 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 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 Beamin- 
 sters 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 cor- 
 ner " " 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 some- 
 thing 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
 
 REGENT'S PARK BRETON" AND LIZZIE 33T 
 
 that he had seen nothing of Lizzie Band. 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 to 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 think- 
 ing 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 break- 
 ing 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,
 
 338 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 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 Seddou 
 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 " (thi? 
 from Christopher) then, finally this note: 
 
 " SKDDON 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 after- 
 noon 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 un- 
 less 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 en- 
 couragement, 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 sweej)-
 
 REGENT'S PARK BRETON AND LIZZIE 339 
 
 ing: 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 be- 
 yond 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, feel- 
 ing 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 ex- 
 pected. 
 
 " Let's come straight to the point, Miss Rand," he said, 
 " you have a message for me."
 
 340 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 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 
 has asked me to say " 
 
 Hia 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 dis- 
 aster ; 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 Hand to give you this. She knows 
 everything and it would make me happy to think that you 
 two had become great friends."
 
 REGENT'S PAKE: BRETON AKD LIZZIE 
 
 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 look- 
 ing 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, any- 
 how ; 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 
 ahe 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 Eachel 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 sue-
 
 342 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 cession 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 pleasure; 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. ISTow 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, al-
 
 REGENT'S PARK BRETON AND LIZZIE 343 
 
 most 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 some- 
 thing 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 Hand, 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. 
 
 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 sin- 
 cere; 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
 
 344 THE DUCHESS OP WREXE 
 
 it's on something that died gone altogether. And it's 
 much, much hetter 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 be- 
 longing 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 Hand, 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 FEOXJDB. 
 
 TROUBLE invaded the strongholds of 104 Portland 
 Place that winter: The Duchess was not so well 
 ... no evasions, whether above or below stairs, could con- 
 ceal the harsh truth. The Duchess was not so well. . . . 
 
 To the bewildered mind of Lady Adela the horrid succes- 
 sion 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 formid- 
 able, changed life for her. Yes, it had seemed that, with 
 Rachel's appearance before the world, disaster to the Beam- 
 ister 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 de- 
 struction 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 
 
 345
 
 346 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 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 dis- 
 aster no, / 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 some- 
 times 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 terri- 
 fying crisis, in being together. 
 
 But all Adela's energy was directed towards concealing 
 from her mother that there was any change at all " She
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 34T 
 
 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 ar- 
 rived at 104r 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.
 
 348 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " 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 her 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, " dread- 
 fully 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, Christo- 
 pher, 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,
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 349 
 
 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 con- 
 science 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 him- 
 self 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, was 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
 
 350 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 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 " bet- 
 ter 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,
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 351 
 
 3. 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 
 Eachel that this had happened to him, and she might have 
 prevented his marriage to Eachel 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. Eachel had taken everything from her; she had first 
 stirred Adela and John into rebellion, she had encouraged 
 Francis Breton, she had destroyed Eoddy . . . she rose, be- 
 fore 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 Eachel 
 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 suf- 
 fered from visions. There were days when her brain was 
 as clear as it had ever been and on these days she thought 
 more of Eoddy than of Eachel, ached to be with him, longed 
 to comfort him and make life bearable for him, cursed what- 
 ever 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 Dor- 
 chester, 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 excite- 
 ment of visiting Roddy there was the determination to show 
 the world what she still could do. Doubtless they were say- 
 ing 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 Korris 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, Dor- 
 chester ? " 
 
 " Yes Your Grace Very well."
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 353 
 
 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 down- 
 stairs by the pontifical Morris 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 as- 
 sumption 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 un- 
 dramatic 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. 
 
 She was placed in the carriage Christopher got in beside 
 her and they moved off. He was interested to see the effect 
 that this breaking into the world would have upon her. He 
 felt himself a little in the position of showman and was glad 
 that he had a spring afternoon of gleaming sunshine and a 
 suggestion of budding trees and shrubs in the Portland Cres- 
 cent garden to provide for her. They were held up by traffic 
 as they crossed the Marylebone Road ; drays, hansoms, bicycles 
 passed there was a stir of voices and wheels, somewhere in 
 the park a band was playing. 
 
 He looked at her and saw that she paid no heed, but sat 
 back in the dim shadow, her eyes, he thought, closed. She 
 was, at that instant, more remote from him and all that he
 
 354 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 represented than she had ever been Curiously he waa 
 moved, just then, by a consciousness of her personality that 
 exceeded anything that he had ever felt in her before. 
 
 " Yes, she must have been tremendous," he thought. And 
 then he wondered of what she was thinking, so quiet, and 
 yet, from her very silence, sinister, and then how could he 
 have not considered this before ? What was she going to say 
 to Eoddy ? 
 
 At this, the dark carriage was suddenly, for him, as flash- 
 ing with life and circumstance as though it had been the 
 florid circle of some popular music-hall What would she 
 say to Eoddy ? 
 
 He knew her for the most selfish of all possible old women : 
 unselfish only perhaps if Roddy were concerned, but there 
 also, if some question of her power moved her, ruthless. He 
 had traced the windings of her queer intertwisted brain with 
 some accuracy He knew also that the coloured unreal state 
 that her closed, fantastic life (resembling, you might say, 
 life inside a Chinese puzzle) had brought upon her led her 
 now to see Eachel as arch-antagonist in every step and move- 
 ment of her day. 
 
 She would not wish to make Eoddy unhappy, she might 
 persuade herself that to hint to him of Eachel's infidelity 
 would be to put him on his guard she might say that it was 
 not fair that Eachel should not be pulled up. . . . 
 
 Christopher himself could not tell how far this affair with 
 Breton had gone. . . . 
 
 During that short time it seemed to him that a crisis, that 
 had been building up around him, here, there, for months, 
 for years perhaps, had leapt upon him and that in some way 
 he must deal with it. 
 
 Even whilst he struggled with the thoughts that were 
 sweeping upon him now from every side, they were at the 
 house As he stepped out of the carriage he felt that he was 
 before a locked door, that the safety of many persons de- 
 pended upon his opening it, that he could not find the key.
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 355 
 
 " Lady Seddon was out. Sir Roderick was alone 
 
 The Duchess was half assisted, half carried into the house. 
 
 in 
 
 The Duchess's feelings were indeed confused as she was 
 helped into Roddy's room, placed in a large easy chair op- 
 posite to him and at last left alone with him. 
 
 Enough of itself to disturb her was the fact that now for 
 the first time for thirty years she was able to examine some 
 room different from her own A large, high white-walled 
 room with wide windows that displayed the park, sporting 
 prints on the walls, antlers over the fireplace, a piano in one 
 corner, a large bowl of primroses on the piano, some boxing- 
 gloves and two old swords over the door, a wooden case with 
 thin rosewood drawers and " Birds' Eggs " in gold letters 
 upon it, a round table near the sofa upon which Roddy was 
 lying and on the table a photograph of Rachel 
 
 All these things her sharp old eyes noticed before she al- 
 lowed them to settle upon Roddy 
 
 His quiet, almost humorous " Well, Duchess," set, quite 
 concisely, the note for this conversation. Not for either of 
 them was it to betray any consciousness that this meeting of 
 theirs was in any way out of the ordinary. Formerly it had 
 been the ebullient, vigorous Roddy who had brought his vigour 
 to renew her fierce old age ; now that old age must be brought 
 to him 
 
 The Beaminsters did not show surprise at anything at all ; 
 had she come from her grave to visit him he would have 
 greeted her with his quiet " Well, Duchess " his life was 
 broken in pieces, but she was not to offer any comment on 
 that either. 
 
 She was exhausted even by that little drive, and that little 
 passage from door to door, so she just lay back in her chair 
 for a little while and looked at him. 
 
 His body was covered with a rug; his hands, still brown 
 and large and clumsy, were folded on his lap ; he was wonder-
 
 856 THE DUCHESS OP WKEXE 
 
 fully tidy, brushed and cleaned, it seemed to her, as thougS 
 he were always expecting a doctor or a visitor or were per- 
 formed upon by some valet or other, simply, poor dear, that 
 the time might be filled. His cheeks were paler of course and 
 his face thinner, but it was in his eyes his large, simple, 
 singularly ungrown-up eyes she had always considered them 
 that the great change lay 
 
 They smiled across at her with the same genial good tem- 
 per that they had always presented to her. But indeed she 
 could never call them " ungrown-up " again. Roddy Seddon 
 had grown up indeed since she had seen him last ; she knew 
 now, as she faced the experience and, above all, the strength 
 that those eyes now presented for her, that she had a new 
 spirit to encounter. 
 
 Yes he " had had a horrible time," but she was wise 
 enough, at that instant, to realize that the " horrible time " 
 had drawn character out of him that she, at least, had never, 
 for an instant, suspected. 
 
 The old woman was moved so that she would have liked to 
 have tottered to his sofa, to have caught his hands in her old 
 dry ones, to have kissed him, to have smoothed his hair but 
 she sat quietly in her chair, recovered her breath and, grimly, 
 almost saturninely, smiled at him. 
 
 " Well, Roddy," she said, " how are you 2 " 
 
 " I'm quite splendid. Play patience like a professor, can. 
 knit five mufflers in a week and am learning two foreign lan- 
 guages But indeed how rippin' to see you here. I've spent 
 a lot o' time on this old sofa wonderin' how you and I were 
 goin' to see one another." 
 
 " Have you ? " She was pleased at that " Well, you see, 
 I have managed it and quite easily too, not so bad after thirty 
 years. My good Roddy, you of all people to tumble off a 
 horse ! What were you about ? " 
 
 " Oh ! it was simple enough." Roddy's eyes worked 
 swiftly to the park and then back again. " I was worried, 
 you see my thoughts were wandering, and the old mare
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 357 
 
 just tripped into a hole, pitched and flung me I fell on a 
 heap o' stones, they knocked the sense out of me, the horse 
 was frightened and went dashin-' along with me tangled up in 
 her. All came of my thoughts wanderin' But you know, 
 Duchess, I've had heaps of accidents, heaps and heaps, every 
 kind of thing has happened to me, but it's never been serious 
 always the most wonderful luck. Well, for once it left 
 
 me.' 
 tt 
 
 Poor old Eoddy." 
 
 " Yes, it was ' poor old Roddy/ I can tell you, for the first 
 six weeks thought I simply couldn't stand it, had serious 
 thoughts of kickin' out altogether, seemed to me everythin* 
 had gone . . . it's wonderful, though, the way you pick up. 
 And then everyone's been so tremendous, and as for Rachel ! " 
 
 He heaved a great sigh Her eyes half closed, then she 
 looked very carefully at the photograph on the little round 
 table. " That's a good photograph of her you've got" 
 
 " Yes it's my favourite. But you, Duchess, tell me 
 about yourself. You must be in magnificent form to have 
 planned this great adventure." 
 
 She told him about herself only a little, all very care- 
 fully chosen She was fancying, as she sat there, that she 
 was again playing the great diplomatist before the world. 
 
 This expedition had greatly excited her, it had fired her 
 blood, and just now she felt that she was equal to taking up 
 her old life of thirty years ago, playing once more a tre- 
 mendous part, beating Mrs. Bronson and others of her kind 
 straight off the field. 
 
 She had a great plan now of coming often to see Roddy 
 and of gaining a very great influence over him ; she did not 
 eay to herself in so many words that she could not bear to 
 think of him lying there helpless and therefore completely in 
 Rachel's power, but that is what in reality stirred her. 
 
 Roddy's helplessness the sight and sound of it drove 
 higher that flame that had burnt now for so long before the 
 altar at which Rachel was x one day, to be sacrificed. " She
 
 358 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 may come and go as she pleases. He lies here He can do 
 nothing. He can know nothing of her movements He's in 
 her hands after what I know. . . ." 
 
 What did she know? The acquaintanceship of Breton's 
 manservant and Dorchester had produced the fact of Rachel's 
 visit, of letters hut wasn't that all ? Amongst the strange 
 mingled visions that now crossed and recrossed her brain it 
 were hard to say what were real and what phantasmal. But 
 granted that the two of them had come together at all, why 
 then it was plain enough to anyone who knew them that only 
 one result was possible Poor Eoddy . . . her poor Roddy ! 
 
 But she did not know even now that she intended to tell 
 him anything; her sense of the pain that that revelation 
 would give to him held her, but as the minutes passed her 
 delight at being back once more in this gay, bustling world 
 (yes, she liked its new invigorating noises) , the sense of power 
 that she had, and youth, and strength, spun her brain to 
 finest cobwebs of entanglements. 
 
 She was glad to be with her Roddy again, it was only fair 
 that, helpless as he was, there should still be someone to 
 guard and protect him ... to protect him, yes ! 
 
 Her eyes flashed at the photograph. 
 
 But for a long time they talked in precisely their old 
 fashion. The War, friends and enemies, victories and de- 
 feats, marriages and deaths; Roddy seemed, for a time, the 
 old Roddy. 
 
 And then gradually through it all there pushed towards her 
 the consciousness that he was doing it now to please her; 
 more than that, again and again she was aware that some 
 bitter jest, some sharp distraction, some fierce criticism had 
 been turned by him deftly aside simply rejected with a 
 deftness and a strength that the old Roddy could never have 
 summoned. 
 
 Here again then and it stabbed her there in the midst 
 of her new pride and confidence was a reminder that her 
 power, her sovereignty had vanished ! Was Roddy also to be
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 359 
 
 beyond her influence, Roddy whom she had had at her feet 
 since he was a boy of sixteen ? 
 
 The photograph smiled across at her She bent forward, 
 her hand raised a little as though to lend emphasis to her 
 words " And then you know, Roddy, I'm still troubled 
 with my abominable relation " 
 
 "What! Breton? Why, how's he been behavin'?" 
 Roddy's voice was scornful. 
 
 " Oh ! he's not done anything that I know of But he's 
 always there so tiresome to have him so close, and John 
 and Adela have grown so peculiar lately that there's no know- 
 ing They may ask him in to tea one day " 
 
 " Oh no, they won't," said Roddy. " He must be the most 
 awful outsider." 
 
 " I wanted to speak about him to you because I thought 
 you might give a word of warning to Rachel " 
 
 " To Rachel ? " Roddy's voice was amazed. 
 
 " Yes She's become such a friend of his ! Surely you 
 know? That's what makes it so difficult for me When 
 one's own granddaughter " 
 
 " Rachel ! A friend of Breton's ! But I didn't know 
 she'd ever spoken to him Look here, Duchess, you must 
 explain " 
 
 " I thought you must have known. I've often wished to 
 speak to you about it, only Rachel is so difficult and I didn't 
 want to worry you, and it seems especially hard just 
 now " 
 
 " But it doesn't worry me not a bit. Only tell me 
 How do you mean that she's a friend of his ? " 
 
 " Only that she goes to see him, writes to him " 
 
 " Goes to see him " 
 
 " Oh yes is in complete sympathy " 
 
 " Are you sure ? " 
 
 " Absolutely. You must ask her." 
 
 " I will of course " 
 
 He lay back on his sofa. Tor a little time there was si'
 
 360 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 lence between them. She was filled now with wild regrets. 
 She wished that she had said nothing. His face was hard and 
 old She wished . . . she scarcely knew what she wished ; 
 she only knew that suddenly she was tired and would like to 
 go home. 
 
 A bell was rung and Christopher was sent for. She would 
 like to have kissed Roddy, but only wagged her bony finger 
 at him 
 
 " Now be a good patient boy and I'll soon come again." 
 
 IV 
 
 Meanwhile, five minutes before this, Rachel had come in. 
 She was told of the visits, and going swiftly to the little 
 drawing-room upstairs had found Christopher. 
 
 She flung her arms around him and kissed him. 
 
 "Oh, dear Dr. Chris!" 
 
 But he stopped her. 
 
 " Quick, Rachel. I may only have a minute. . . . I've 
 got to speak to you." 
 
 Instantly she drew back, her grave eyes watching him and 
 her hands, as of old, nervously moving against her dress. 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 " It's just this. The Duchess may ring at any moment 
 she's been with him a long while. Look here, Rachel, she 
 knows about Breton that you've been to see him, that 
 you've written to him " 
 
 "She told you?" 
 
 " Yes long ago But never mind that now, although 
 I'd have spoken to you of it before if you'd let me But the 
 only thing that matters is that I believe I can't of course 
 be sure but I believe that she's come now to tell Roddy." 
 
 Rachel drew a long breath. " Oh ! " she said and, stiffly 
 standing there, showed in her eyes the pitch of feeling to 
 which now her grandmother had brought her. 
 
 Christopher went on urgently " I've been praying for 
 you to come in. I hoped you'd have come half an hour ago.
 
 THE DUCHESS MOVES 361 
 
 There's no time now, but it's simply this, Rachel dear 
 tell Roddy everything " 
 
 She broke in passionately. " You know it's all right, Dr. 
 Chris you've trusted me ? " 
 
 " Absolutely," he said gravely. " But it simply is that 
 Roddy mustn't be there imagining things, waiting, wonder- 
 ing. . . . Perhaps he won't ask you Perhaps he will 
 But, anyway, tell him tell him at once everything. . . ." 
 
 The bell rang, he went across to her, kissed her, and then 
 went downstairs. 
 
 She stood there waiting, without moving except to strip 
 off, very slowly, her black gloves. Her eyes were fixed upon, 
 the door. 
 
 She heard the door downstairs open, the stumbling steps; 
 once she caught the Duchess's voice and at that she drew in 
 her breath. Then the hall door closed, but, for a long time 
 Afterwards, she stood there without moving.
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 RODDY MOVES 
 
 ". . . But the Red Dwarf, although as malevolent as possible, found 
 that his ill-temper had no effect against true love, which always won 
 in the end, even with quite stupid people." 
 
 Grimm's Fairy Tales. 
 
 IT would have been quite impossible for Roddy to have 
 given any clear description of his experiences since the 
 event of his accident. There, surely, like a gleaming sword, 
 that cut his life into two pieces, the fact itself was visible 
 enough, and there floated before him, again and again, the 
 casual canter, the especial view that was before him just 
 then, a view of undulating Downs, somewhere to his left 
 white chalk hollows in grey hills and to his right a blue strip 
 of sea, the wonder that was in his mind about Rachel, his 
 thoughts chasing back over all the incidents of their life 
 together, then suddenly the jerk, his consciousness of falling 
 with the ground rising in a high wall to oppose him, and 
 then darkness. 
 
 After that there was nightmare in which pain and Rachel, 
 Rachel and pain, mingled and parted, were confused and 
 then separate, and with them danced shapes and figures, 
 sometimes in a turmoil that was horrible, sometimes in 
 silence that was the most terrible of all. Clear after that 
 first period of misty confusion was the day when he was 
 told his fate. 
 
 He had come out from the heart of the more terrible pain 
 No longer had he to lie, knowing that soon, after another 
 minute's peace, agony would rise before him like a creature 
 with a wet pale malignant face, and then after looking upon 
 
 him for a moment, would bend down and, with its horrible 
 
 362
 
 RODDY MOVES 363 
 
 damp fingers, would twist and turn his bones one against 
 another until the supreme moment came when nothing mat- 
 tered and no agony, however bad, could touch his indifferent 
 soul. 
 
 He was now simply weak, weak, weak nothing mattered. 
 In his dream he fancied that someone had said that he 
 would never rise from his back again. For days after that it 
 lingered far away from his actual consciousness. Really it 
 had not mattered ; something, this dream, that concerned him, 
 but what could concern him except that people should keep 
 quiet and not fuss ? 
 
 For instance he loved to have Rachel with him, he was 
 miserable were she not there, but at the same time he was 
 conscious that she did fuss, was not quite like Miss Rand. 
 
 But of this thing that he had heard he thought nothing. 
 " There's something that I ought to think about. I don't 
 know what it is One day when I'm stronger I'll look into 
 it" 
 
 There came a day when he was stronger, a day, late in 
 January, of a pale wintry sun and watery gleams. They 
 had placed his bed so that he could see his beloved Downs and 
 the little road that ran from their foot out into the village. 
 
 On this morning he was wonderfully better he had slept 
 well, breezes and pleasant scents came through the open win- 
 dow, geese were cackling, a donkey's braying made him laugh 
 " Silly old donkey," he said aloud to no one in particular. 
 
 Then he was aware of Jacob, sitting bunched into a heap 
 in the middle of the floor, his brown eyes peering anxiously 
 through his hair. At every sound his ears would rise for a 
 moment, but his eyes were fixed upon Roddy. 
 
 The dog had been in Roddy's room a good deal during 
 these last weeks, had been wrenched away from it. Roddy 
 found that he was touched by this devotion; Jacob appar- 
 ently cared more for him than did the other dogs " Not a 
 bad old thing Often these mongrels are more human 
 But, Lord ! he is a sight ! "
 
 364: THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 The nurse was sitting sewing by the window. Roddy lay- 
 happily, thinking that now at last that jolly bad pain real]^, 
 did seem to have been left behind. He was immensely, 
 wonderfully better; it would not be long, surely, before he 
 was quite fit again, before he ... 
 
 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
 
 RODDY MOVES 365 
 
 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. 
 
 n 
 
 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
 
 366 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 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 be 
 haved ? And what, after all, were all the other people, in all 
 their different circumstances, doing ? Before this it had onl^ 
 occurred to him to be interested in the people who were lead 
 ing lives like his, now he wondered about everybody.
 
 RODDY MOVES 367 
 
 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 per- 
 haps 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 him- 
 self 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 ! " 
 
 m 
 
 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 in- 
 tellectual gifts were on no very high level. He based her
 
 368 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 friendship for him on the naive transparency with which 
 he displayed his frankly pagan indulgences. His love for 
 Kachel 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 any- 
 one 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 wondered 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 qf a tail " He's more than human, that dog," he 
 would tell Rachel ; " funny how I never used to see anything 
 in him."
 
 RODDY MOVES 369 
 
 Of course there were many days when life was utterly im- 
 possible; then he would snap at everyone, lie scowling at 
 the park, curse his impotence, his miserable degraded in- 
 firmities. " 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 Eachel 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 conversa- 
 tion 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
 
 370 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 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 friend- 
 ship, 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 sus- 
 picions 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 grand- 
 mothers 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
 
 KODDY MOVES 371 
 
 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 houra 
 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 Duch- 
 ess! 
 
 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.
 
 372 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 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 Mas- 
 siter 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, 1 " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Oh, nothing, only you look so tired, I wish 7 could take 
 eome of the pain " 
 
 " There isn't any, dear, I'm wonderfully lucky." 
 
 Peters came m 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 rv: 
 
 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 power to die, though the days I give back are numbered. 
 It's no great power, it's no great mutiny." DOSTOEVSKY. 
 
 /CHRISTOPHER'S knowledge of Rachel, long and inti< 
 \-^ mate 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 alto- 
 gether. 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 confi- 
 dence. He could not say how any of them could be expected 
 
 373
 
 374 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 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 ! " 
 
 He was detained to a late hour on that afternoon by a 
 patient in Halkin Street and it was after seven when he 
 started home, driving through Piccadilly and Bond Street. 
 
 It had been an afternoon of intense closeness, and now 
 as evening came down upon the town the thick curtain of 
 grey that had been hanging all day overhead seemed, with a 
 clanking and jolting, one might imagine, so heavy and brazen 
 was its aspect, to fall lower above the dim grey streets. The 
 lights were out, swinging pale and distended down the length 
 of Piccadilly, and already the carriages were pressing in a 
 long row towards the restaurants ; boys were crying the latest 
 editions with the war news and upon all those ears their cries 
 now fell drearily, monotonously, for so long had the town 
 been filled with details of escape, folly, death, ignominy, that 
 it was tired and weary of any voice or cry that concerned 
 itself with War. . . . 
 
 Christopher, waiting impatiently for his carriage to move 
 on, thought of Brun ; this oppressive, stifling evening seemed 
 to call, in some manner too subtle for Christopher's powers of 
 expression, the houses, the streets, the lamps, the very railings 
 into some life of their own. Under the iron sky that surely 
 with every minute dropped lower upon the oppressed town
 
 MAKCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER 375 
 
 the clubs opposite the Green Park raised their hooded eyes 
 and stirred ever so little above the people, and the twisted 
 chimneys watched and whispered, as the trail of carriages 
 wound, drearily, into the misty distance. Christopher was 
 not an imaginative man, but he thought that he had never 
 known London so evilly perceptive. 
 
 It grew hotter and hotter, but with a heat that made the 
 body perspire and yet left it cold. A dim yellow colour, that 
 seemed to herald a fog that had not made up its mind whether 
 it would appear or no, hung at street corners. Figures 
 seemed furtive in the half-light and, instinctively, voices were 
 lowered as though some sudden sound would explode the air 
 like a match in a gas-filled room. A bell began to ring and 
 startled everyone. . . . 
 
 " There'll be an awful thunderstorm soon," thought 
 Christopher. " I've never known things so heavy. Every- 
 one's nerves will be on the stretch to-night. Why, one might 
 fancy anything." His own brain would not work. He had 
 just left a case that had needed all his sharpest attention, but 
 he had found that it was only with the utmost difficulty 
 that he could keep his mind alert, and now when he wanted 
 to think about Breton he was continually arrested by some 
 sense of apprehension, so that he had to stop himself from 
 crying out to his driver, " Look out ! Take care ! There's 
 someone there." 
 
 When he got to his house he found that his forehead was 
 covered with perspiration and that he could scarcely breathe. 
 Meanwhile he had decided nothing as to the course he would 
 pursue with Breton. When he had dressed and come down 
 he found that Breton was waiting for him. 
 
 " How ill he looks ! " was Christopher's first thought. Per- 
 haps Breton also was oppressed by the weather and indeed 
 in the house, although the windows were open, it was stifling 
 enough. 
 
 " No, the man's in pieces." Christopher's look was sharp. 
 He had never seen Breton, who was naturally neat and a
 
 376 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 little vain about his appearance, so dishevelled. His beard 
 was untrimmed, his eyes bloodshot, his hair unbrushed, his 
 face white and drawn and his mouth seemed, in that light, 
 to be trembling. 
 
 " Good heavens, man," said Christopher, " what have you 
 been doing to yourself ? " 
 
 Breton smiled feebly " Oh, nothing. Don't badger me 
 I can't stand it." 
 
 " Badger you ? Who's going to badger you ? only " 
 
 Christopher broke off, looked at him a moment, then put 
 his hand on the other's shoulder. 
 
 " Look here, old man, why have you left me alone all these 
 weeks ? " 
 
 " Haven't felt like seeing anybody." 
 
 " Well, you might have felt like seeing me. I've missed 
 you. I haven't got so many friends that I can spare, so 
 easily, my best one." 
 
 " Oh, rot, Chris," Breton said almost angrily. " You know 
 it's only the kind of interest you've got in all lame dogs that 
 ties you to me at all." 
 
 " You're an ungrateful sort of fellow, Frank. But no mat- 
 ter I'm fond of you in spite of your ingratitude. Come in 
 to dinner and see whether you can eat anything on this 
 stifling night." It was stifling, but oppressive with something 
 more than the mere physical discomfort of it. It was a night 
 that worked havoc with the nerves, so that Christopher, who 
 had naturally a vast deal of common sense, found himself 
 glancing round his shoulder, irritated at the least noise that 
 his servant made, expecting always to hear a knock on the 
 door. 
 
 Breton contributed very little to the conversation during 
 dinner. He ate almost nothing, drank only water, looked 
 about him restlessly, muttered something about its being 
 strangely close for March, crumbled up his bread into little 
 heaps. 
 
 When they were back in Christopher's smoking-room
 
 MARCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER 377 
 
 Breton collapsed into a deep chair, lay there, staring des- 
 perately about him, then, with a jerk, pulled himself up and 
 began to stride the room, swinging his arm, then pulling at 
 his beard, crying out at last, " My God ! it's stifling. Chris- 
 topher I must go out. I can't stand this. It's beyond my 
 bearing." 
 
 Christopher made him sit down again and then, feeling that 
 he could not more surely hold the man than by plunging at 
 once into what was, in all probability, the heart of his trouble, 
 said: 
 
 " Look here, Frank, I said I wouldn't badger you and I 
 won't, but there's something about which I must speak to 
 you. You must tell me the truth. There's more involved 
 than just ourselves." 
 
 Breton seemed instantly aware of Christopher's meaning. 
 He sat up. " I knew," he said, " that I was in for a lecture. 
 Well, it can't make any difference." 
 
 " No," Christopher answered brusquely. " Whether it 
 makes any difference to you or no you've got to listen, Frank. 
 It's simply this. I happened to hear, a good time ago, that 
 you had met Rachel. I knew that she had been to your rooms. 
 I knew that you had corresponded. I should dismiss that 
 manservant of yours, Frank." 
 
 Breton muttered something. 
 
 " You might have told me yourself, Frank. You might, 
 both of you, have told me. But never mind it's all too late 
 for that now. The point is that it was your grandmother 
 that told me." 
 
 " My God ! " Breton cried. " She knows ? She knew. 
 . . . But there was nothing to know. There was nothing 
 anyone mightn't have known. If anyone dares to breathe a 
 syllable against one of the purest, noblest ..." 
 
 " Yes, yes. I know all that," Christopher answered. 
 " But the thing is simply this. I don't know she doesn't 
 know exactly what the truth is between you and Rachel. All 
 that she does know is that Rachel went to see you and wrote
 
 878 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 to you. Now Roddy Seddon isn't or wasn't aware that 
 his wife had ever met you. He holds the more or less tra- 
 ditional family point of view about you. I believe that, two 
 or three days ago, the Duchess told him about Rachel's visits. 
 I am not sure of this. I hope that by now Rachel herself 
 has told her husband. But of that also I'm not sure. All I 
 know is that it's our duty your duty and my duty to save 
 Rachel all the unhappiness we can, and still more to save 
 Roddy. Remember the position he's in." 
 
 Breton sprang to his feet. " Look here, Chris, I should 
 have told you of all this long ago. I didn't know that you 
 had heard. I wish to God I had spoken to you. But as 
 Heaven is my witness, Rachel is a saint. I'm a miserable 
 cur a misery to myself and a misery to everyone else. 
 But she " 
 
 " You've been fools, the couple of you," he answered 
 sternly. " It's no use cursing now. I won't go and urge 
 Rachel to tell Roddy she must do that of her own free will 
 All our hands are tied. It depends upon the steps that 
 Roddy takes, and after all the old lady may never have told 
 him. But I've warned you, Frank. It's up to you to do the 
 right thing." 
 
 " What do you want me to do ? " asked Breton. 
 
 " I don't know what you can do. You must see for your- 
 self only, Frank," here Christopher's voice became softer, 
 " by all our old friendship and by any affection that you may 
 have left for me, I do conjure you to play fair by Rachel and 
 her husband. Rachel is very, very young. Roddy is help- 
 less " 
 
 " That's enough," Breton cried. " My God, Christopher, 
 if you could realize the weeks I've been having you wouldn't 
 think, perhaps, so badly of me. It's been more, I swear, than 
 any mortal flesh can endure. I'm driven, driven I'm at 
 the end. . . . But she's safe from me, safe now and safe for 
 ever. And that now that old woman should step in now." 
 
 .Christopher came and again put his arm on Breton's
 
 MARCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER 379 
 
 shoulder and held him up, it might seem, with more than 
 physical strength. 
 
 His affection for Breton was an affection sprung from 
 his very knowledge of the man's weaknesses. He had in him 
 that British quality of ruthless condemnation for the sinner 
 whom he did not know and sentimental weakness for the sin- 
 ner whom he did. He had seen Francis Breton through a 
 thousand scrapes, he would see him, doubtless, through a 
 thousand more. 
 
 " We'll say no more now, old boy You look done up I 
 won't worry you, but if you want me here I am and I promise 
 not to lecture. Only you owe me some confidence, you do 
 indeed." 
 
 Breton got up and stood there, with his hand pressed to 
 his forehead. " What you've told me," he said. " I must 
 do something . . . something . . . it's all been my fault. 
 If they should touch her " 
 
 Then, turning to Christopher, he said : " You are the only 
 friend I've got, and I know it. I do value it only lately 
 I've been going to bits again. If it weren't for you and little 
 Miss Rand I swear I'd have gone altogether. You are a 
 brick, Christopher. Another day I'll come to you and tell 
 you everything. To-night I'm simply past talking." 
 
 A servant came in and gave Christopher a note. It was 
 from Lord John saying that he was anxious about his mother 
 and asking the doctor whether he could possibly come round 
 and see her. 
 
 Breton then said that he must go. He went, promising 
 that he would soon come again. When he had left the house 
 Christopher stood, perplexed, wondering whether he should 
 have left him alone. Then he put on his hat and coat and set 
 off for 104 Portland Place. 
 
 ii 
 
 Breton had, indeed, no destination. He had been fright- 
 ened of a whole evening with Christopher.
 
 380 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 lie was frightened of everything, of everybody above 
 all, of himself. He found himself, with a sense of surprise, 
 as though he were the helpless actor in some bad dream, 
 standing in Oxford Circus. Surely it was a dream. 
 
 The sky, grey and lowering, was yet tinged with a smoky 
 red. He had an overpowering sense of the minuteness of 
 humanity, so that the crowds crossing and recrossing the 
 Circus seemed like tiny animals crawling over the surface of 
 a pond from which the water had been drained. 
 
 His old fancy of the waterways came back to him and now 
 he thought that Oxford Circus, often a maelstrom of tossing, 
 whirling humanity, had run dry and lay stagnant, filled with 
 dying life, beneath the red-tinged sky. 
 
 Ever lower and lower that sky seemed to fall. Theatres, 
 restaurants on that evening were almost deserted. People 
 stood about in groups, saying that soon the thunder .would 
 be upon them, wondering at this weather in March, watching, 
 with curious eyes, the sky. 
 
 Breton was near madness that evening. He was near 
 madness to this extent, that he was not certain of reality. 
 Were those lamp-posts real? What was the meaning of 
 those strange high buildings in whose heart there burnt so 
 sinister a light? He watched them expecting that at any 
 moment these would burst into flame and with a screaming 
 rattling flare go tossing to the sky. 
 
 Near him a girl said, " All right of course it ain't of no 
 moment what I might happen to pre-fere Oh, no ! " 
 
 A mild young man answered her : " Well, if yer want ter 
 go to the -Oxford why not say so ? That's what I say. Why 
 not say so 'stead of 'angin' about - " 
 
 " Oh ! 'angin' about ! Say that again and off I go. 
 'Angin' about! I'd like to know - " 
 
 " I didn't say anythink about your 'angin' about. Yer 
 catch a feller up so quickly, Bertha. What I mean to 
 
 " Oh ! yer and yer meanin's. Don't know what yer do
 
 MAKCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGEE 381 
 
 mean, if the truth were known. 'Ere's a pleasant way of 
 spendin' an evenin' " 
 
 Breton regarded them with curiosity. Were they real? 
 Did they feel the strange oppression of this lowering sky as 
 strongly as he did ? Were they uncertain as to whether these 
 buildings were alive or no? Perhaps they could tell him 
 whether those omnibuses that came lumbering so heavily up 
 Regent Street were safe and secure. 
 
 Oddly enough, although he tried, he could not remember 
 exactly what it was that Christopher had told him. Some- 
 thing, of course, to do with his grandmother. Everything 
 was to do with her. . . . She was the one who was driving 
 him to destruction. Always she was stepping forward, send- 
 ing him down when he was climbing up, at last, to safety ; 
 always it was she who stood behind him, on the watch lest 
 some happiness or success should come his way. 
 
 He felt as though he would like to go and force his way 
 into 104: Portland Place and face the woman and tell her 
 what she had done to him. Yes, that would be a fine thing 
 to see all those Beaminster relations gathering round, 
 protesting, frightened. 
 
 And then it occurred to him that he really did not know 
 the way to Portland Place. Things were so strange to-night. 
 He knew that it was close at hand, but he was afraid that he 
 would never find it. He was really afraid that he would 
 never find it. 
 
 Some man jostled into him, apologized and moved away. 
 The contact cleared his brain, asserted the reality of the 
 buildings, the crowds, the cabs and carriages. He pulled 
 himself together and began slowly to walk down Oxford 
 Street in the direction of Tottenham Court Road. 
 
 He remembered very clearly and distinctly what it was 
 that Christopher had told him. Rachel was in danger be- 
 cause her husband had heard of her friendship with him, 
 Breton. . . . 
 
 It would not have been Francis Breton if he had not taken
 
 382 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 this piece of news and looked at it in its most sensational 
 colours. He had, through all these last weeks, been striving 
 to accustom himself to the agony of enduring life without 
 her. He dimly perceived that it was the emptiness of life 
 rather than any actual loss of any particular person that 
 was so terrible to him. He had still, very fine and beautiful, 
 his memory of the day when she had come to him in his 
 rooms, and had that day been followed by a secret relation- 
 ship between them and many hours spent together, then his 
 passion would have been very genuine and moving. 
 
 But, after all, she had flashed into his life, and then flashed 
 out of it again, and, so swiftly with him did moods follow 
 one upon another, and ideals and ambitions and despairs and 
 glories jostle together in his brain, that she might have 
 remained, very happily raised to a fine altar in his temple, 
 very distantly recognized as a beautiful episode now closed 
 and contemplated only from a worshipping distance, had 
 any other figure or incident definitely occupied his attention. 
 
 But no figure, no incident had arrived. He had had, 
 during all these weeks, no drama into which he might fling 
 his fine feelings, his great ambitions, his glorious sacrifices. 
 Of genuine sincerity were these moods of his he had never 
 stood sufficiently beyond himself to arrive at any definite 
 insincerity about any of his movements or impulses but of 
 all things in the world he could not endure that his life 
 should be empty, and empty now it had been for, as it seemed 
 to his swift impatience, a long, long time. 
 
 Christopher's news did touch him very deeply. He would 
 instantly have sacrificed his life, his honour, anything at all, 
 for Rachel, and the fact that he would enjoy the drama of 
 that sacrifice did not rob it of any atom of its sincerity. 
 
 But the pity of it was that he really did not see what he 
 could do. Had he been able, here and now, to rush into the 
 Portland Place house and seize his grandmother by the throat 
 and shake her, or had it been possible to appear before Roddy 
 Seddon, to declare himself the only culprit, to proclaim
 
 MAKCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER 383 
 
 that he was ready for any condemnation, any punishment, 
 then, in spite of all his unhappiness, he would be now a 
 happy man, but, alas, the only possible action was to pause, 
 to see what happened, to wait and waiting it was that sent 
 him mad. 
 
 One action indeed was possible and that was that he 
 should put a close to his wretched existence. On this close 
 and sterile night such an action did not appear at all absurd. 
 It had fine elements about it, it would deal a sure blow at his 
 grandmother and all that family who had treated him so 
 basely. What a headline for the papers ! " Suicide of 
 member of one of England's noblest families ! " Rachel 
 should be, no longer, annoyed with his unfortunate presence : 
 he would make it, of course, quite obvious that she had had 
 nothing to do with his sad end. 
 
 He looked about him, with an air of fine melancholy, at 
 the passers-by. Little they knew of the terrible tragedy that 
 was even now preparing in their midst! 
 
 He felt almost happy again as he turned this solution over 
 and over again. Some people would be sorry Christopher, 
 Lizzie Rand, and Rachel: above all, it must be heavy upon 
 the consciences of the Duchess and her wretched children. 
 They had driven him to his death and must bear the blame 
 to the grave and beyond. 
 
 Very faintly the rolling of thunder could be heard as the 
 storm approached the town. 
 
 He was standing outside the Oxford Music Hall, and he 
 thought that he would go inside for a little time that he 
 might avoid the rain . . . and then upon that followed the 
 reflection that it did not matter whether he was wet or no 
 he would soon be dead. 
 
 Faintly behind these gloomy resolves some voice seemed 
 to tell him that if he could only pass safely through this 
 night fortune would again be kind to him. " Wait," some- 
 thing told him. " Be patient for once in your life." . . . 
 But no, to wait any more was impossible. Some fine action,
 
 384 THE DUCHESS OE WKEXE 
 
 some splendid defiance or heroic defence, here and now . . 
 otherwise he would show the world that he had courage, at 
 least, to die. Most of his impetuous follies had their origin 
 in his conviction that the eyes of the world were always upon 
 him. 
 
 He paid his money and walked into the circle promenade. 
 Behind him was a bar at which several stout gentlemen and 
 ladies were happily conversational. In front of him a crowd 
 of men and women leaned forward over the back of the 
 circle and listened to the entertainment. 
 
 On the stage, in a circle of brilliant light, a thin man with 
 a melancholy face, a top hat and pepper-and-salt trousers 
 was singing 
 
 " Straike me pink and straike me blue, 
 Straike me purple and crimson too 
 
 I'll be there, 
 
 Lottie dear, 
 Down by the old Canteen." 
 
 Zf Now," said the gentleman, " once more. Let's 'ave it 
 all together." 
 
 There was a moment's pause, then the orchestra began 
 very softly and, in a kind of ecstasy the crowd sang 
 
 " Straike me pink and straike me blue, 
 Straike me purple and crimson too," etc. 
 
 Breton sat down on a little velvet seat near the bar and 
 gloomily looked about him. Did they only realize, these 
 people, the tragedy that was so close to them, then would 
 they very swiftly cease their silly singing. The place was 
 hot, infernally hot. It glowed with light, it crackled with 
 noise, it was possessed with a glaring unreality. It occurred 
 to him that to make a leap upon the railing at the back of 
 the circle, to stand for one instant balanced there before the 
 frightened people, then to plunge, down, down, into the stalls 
 that would be a striking finish! How they would aJl 
 scream, and run and scatter! . . . yes . . .
 
 MARCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER 88$ 
 
 Against the clinking and chatter of the bar he would hear 
 the voice of the funny man : " And so I says to 'er, ' Maria, 
 if you're tryin' to prove to me that it's two in the mornin', 
 then I says what I want to know is GO'S been 'elpin' yer to 
 stay awake all this time ? That's what . . .' " 
 
 It was then that, in spite of himself, he was drawn from 
 his moody thoughts by the eyes of the girl standing near the 
 bar against the wall. She was a small, timid, rather pale 
 girl in a huge black hat. She wore a long trailing purple 
 dress and soiled white gloves, and was looking, just now, 
 unhappy and frightened. 
 
 He had noticed her because of the contrast that her white 
 face and small body made with her grand untidy clothes, 
 but, looking at her more closely, he saw something about her 
 that stirred all his sympathy and protection. 
 
 Like most Englishmen he was at heart an eager senti- 
 mentalist and he was, just now, in a mood that responded 
 instantly to anyone in distress. 
 
 He forgot for the moment his desperate plans of self-de- 
 struction. A fat red-faced man came from the bar towards 
 her, with two drinks; he was himself very unsteady and 
 uncertain in his movements and his smile was both vacuous 
 and full of purpose. He lurched towards her, put his hand 
 upon her shoulder to steady himself, then, as one of the 
 glasses spilled, cursed. 
 
 She refused the drink, but he continued to press it upon 
 her. His fat hand wandered about her neck, stroked her 
 chin, and he was leaning now so that his face almost touched 
 hers. 
 
 Breton heard him say 
 
 " Well, if you won't drink damme come along, my 
 dear let's be goin'." She shook her head, her eyes growing 
 larger and larger. 
 
 " Nbnshensh," he said. " Barn nonshensh." She glanced 
 about her desperately, but no one, save Breton, was watching 
 them. She caught his eyes, pitifully, eagerly.
 
 386 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 The man put his arm about her and tried to draw her from 
 the wall. 
 
 " Come," he said. " We'll go home." 
 
 She drew away. He pulled at her hand. " Damn the 
 O Place. Wash the matter? You got to come." 
 
 Then he seized her by the arm, and, still lurching from side 
 to side, began to move away. 
 
 " No, no," she whispered, obviously terrified of a scene, 
 but using all her strength to resist. Her eyes again met 
 Breton's. 
 
 " That lady," he said, advancing to the stout gentleman, 
 " is a friend of mine." 
 
 The man looked at him with an expression astonished, 
 simple and rather puzzled. 
 
 " Wash wash ... ? " he said. 
 
 " You'll be so good as to leave that lady alone." 
 
 " Well, I'm b well damned. Oh ! gosh." The stout 
 
 gentleman contemplated him with furious amazement. 
 
 " 'Oo the b 'ell I'd like to know ? Get out or I'll kick 
 
 yer out." 
 
 The quarrel had by now gathered its crowd. 
 
 The stout gentleman, lurching forward, aimed a blow at 
 Breton which missed him. 
 
 " Let her alone, do you hear ? " cried Breton. 
 
 The stout gentleman, amazed, apparently, at a world that 
 defied all the probabilities, turned, caught the girl by the 
 Txidy and, dragging her with him, pushed past his opponent. 
 
 Breton seized him by the waist, turned him round so that, 
 with a little puzzled gasp, he half fell, half sat upon the 
 cushioned seat against the wall. 
 
 Then Breton offered the girl his arm and walked away with 
 her, conscious that an attendant had arrived rather late upon 
 the scene and was now abusing the stout gentleman, whilst a 
 sympathetic little crowd listened and advised. 
 
 He walked down the stairs with the girl. " That 
 decent of you," she said. " Most awfully "
 
 MARCH 13TH: BRETON'S TIGER 387 
 
 Beyond the doors the world was a hissing, spurting deluge 
 of rain. 
 
 A cab was called and she climbed into it. 
 
 " What about coming back ? " she said. He shook his 
 head. 
 
 " Not to-night. You have a good rest. That's what you 
 want." 
 
 " Well, I am done. Meet 'nother night p'raps " 
 
 " I hope so," he said politely. He raised his hat and the 
 cab splashed away. 
 
 " Another cab, sir ? " said the commissionaire. 
 
 " No, thanks," said Breton, and plunged out into the rain. 
 The air was fresh and cool. Streams of water danced and 
 spurted on the gleaming pavements. 
 
 Breton walked along. The little adventure had swept com- 
 pletely from his mind his earlier desperate decisions. 
 
 There were still things for him to do ! Poor little girl . . . 
 he was glad that he had been there! What a fool he had 
 been all these weeks, sitting there, letting himself go to pieces 
 because the world had gone badly ! What sort of a creature 
 was he ? Well, he was some good yet. Just one twist of the 
 hand and that man had gone down . . . Yes, she was grate- 
 ful . . . Her eyes had shone. 
 
 And what of the candles, his business? Why had he al- 
 lowed that to drop when he had made, already, so good a 
 Btart ? He would be in the City early to-morrow. Business 
 was humming just now. 
 
 And Rachel? Rachel! 
 
 Let him be content to have her as his ideal, his fine beacon 
 to light him on, to hold him to his work and do the best that 
 was in him ! 
 
 After all, things were for the best. They would always 
 have their fine memories, one of the other. Nothing to spoil 
 that idyll. 
 
 He arrived, soaked to the very skin, at his door. " Funny," 
 he thought, " how that thunder depresses one. I've been
 
 388 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 moody for weeks. Air's ever so much clearer now. God, 
 didn't that old beast tumble? Poor little girl she was 
 grateful though ! " 
 
 Then as he opened the door, he remembered what Chris- 
 topher had, that evening, told him. 
 
 " To-morrow," he said to himself, in a fine glow of hope 
 and confidence, "to-morrow I'll get to work and soon stop 
 that wicked old woman's mouth. Hachel God bless her 
 * I'll show her what I'm like. . . ." 
 
 He climbed the dark stairs Qs though he were storming a 
 town*
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 MARCH 13th: RACHEL'S HEART 
 
 * When God smote His hands together, and struck out the soul at a 
 
 spark, 
 
 Into the organized glory of things, from drops of the dark, 
 Say, didst thou shine, didst thou burn, didst thou honour the power 
 
 in the form, 
 
 As the star does at night, or the fire-fly, or even the little ground- 
 worm ? 
 
 ' I have sinned/ she said." 
 
 ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 MEANWHILE Rachel had not spoken to Roddy. Bad 
 though the months had been since that terrible 
 afternoon at Seddon these days that followed the Duchess's 
 visit were the worst that she had ever known. 
 
 During the weeks that immediately followed Roddy's ac- 
 cident she was allowed no time for thought. She discovered 
 and she never forgot the sharpness of the discovery that 
 she was the poorest of nurses. Everything that she did was 
 clumsily and slowly done; she watched Lizzie Rand with 
 admiration and wonder. Dimly through the absorption that 
 held her, thoughts of Francis Breton pierced, but always to 
 be instantly dismissed. 
 
 Before her was simply the amazing, incredible fact that 
 Roddy, the most active, the most vigorous of human beings, 
 would never stand upon his feet again. She could see noth- 
 ing but Roddy, and no service, no sacrifice, was too stern 
 or too difficult. Meanwhile subtly, almost unconsciously, she 
 was influenced by Lizzie Rand. It was not strange to her 
 that Lizzie should have changed so swiftly from hatred to 
 friendship and affection. Rachel was passionate enough her- 
 self to understand that a woman will go, instantly, to the 
 
 389
 
 390 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 person who needs her most, even though she has hated thai 
 same person five minutes before. No, the thing that was 
 wonderful to her was that Lizzie Kand should combine such 
 feeling with such discipline. 
 
 To watch her as she moved about Koddy's rooms was to 
 deny to her the possibility of emotion, of anything that could 
 disturb that efficiency. And yet Rachel knew . . . she had 
 seen depths of feeling in Lizzie that made her own desires 
 and regrets small and puny things. 
 
 But it did not need Lizzie's power to abase Rachel before 
 Roddy. It would have been enough for her to have re- 
 membered what her thoughts and intentions had been on 
 that day to have brought her on her knees to beg his pardon, 
 but when she saw the fashion in which he bore his sentence, 
 his endurance, his stubborn will beating down any tempta- 
 tion to despair, she recognized that it was very little of Roddy 
 that she had known before this crisis. 
 
 Then as the weeks passed and the world settled into this 
 new shape and form, thoughts of Erancis Breton returned 
 to her. She had written to him soon after the accident, but 
 that was for herself, that she might clear her mind of any- 
 thing except her husband, rather than for Breton. She had 
 considered him whilst she wrote that letter, had seen him as 
 someone in her old, old life, someone who had stirred her 
 then but possessed now no power to move her. She wanted 
 him to be happy, but wished never to see him again; once, 
 long ago, there had been a scene in a room and she had been 
 carried up to strange and dangerous heights and the world 
 had tossed and stormed about her but oh! how long ago 
 that was ! How young she had been then ! 
 
 But, as the weeks passed, that scene drew closer to her 
 and life crept back into its heart. Sometimes, when Roddy 
 was sleeping and she was sitting there beside him, and, 
 about her, the house slumbered and the very birds were still, 
 her heart would beat, beat thickly, her cheeks would flush, 
 and she would remember that, had it not been for a horse
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 391 
 
 that stumbled, she might be now far away, leading a lifo that 
 might be tragedy, but that was, at any rate, Life ! 
 
 She would beat the thought down she would tell herself 
 what, now, from this distance, she knew to be true, that she 
 would not have been happy had she gone with Breton. She 
 remembered that even at that supreme moment in Breton's 
 rooms when he had kissed her for the first time her swift 
 thought had been " Poor Roddy ! " She knew, with an 
 older wisdom than she had possessed two months ago, that 
 Breton on his side would not have held her any more than 
 Roddy, in his so different fashion, could hold her now. Was 
 she to be always thus, wanting something that was not hers ? 
 
 During the weeks that had immediately followed the ac- 
 cident she had thought that, at last, love for Roddy had really 
 come to her. Then, as the days threaded their way, she 
 knew that it was not so. He was more to her, much more 
 to her, helpless and courageous, than he could ever have been 
 under the old conditions. 
 
 But it was not passion it was care, affection, even love ; 
 she loved him, yes, but she was not in love with him. He 
 held all of her save that one part that Breton alone, of all 
 human beings, had called out of her. 
 
 But she had learnt discipline during these weeks down, 
 down she drove rebellion, memory. She was Roddy's she 
 had dedicated her life to his happiness. 
 
 Then they came to London, Lizzie returned to her mother 
 and to Lady Adela, and Rachel was alone. Life was again 
 very difficult for her. Roddy was wonderfully cheerful, but 
 Rachel found that she could not do very much for him. He 
 liked to have her there, but she knew that many of his friends 
 who could tell him the town gossip, the latest from the clubs, 
 the hunting and racing chatter, entertained him more than 
 she did. She had not, since her marriage, made many friends 
 and she knew that almost everyone who came to their little 
 house came for Roddy's sake rather than for hers. She did 
 not mind that she was glad that he was happy . . . but
 
 392 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 she wished that he needed her a little more. Roddy urged 
 her to drive, to see people, to dine and go to the theatre. She 
 went because she saw that it disturbed him if he felt that she 
 stayed indoors for his sake, but she did not enjoy her gaiety. 
 When she was out she wished to hurry back to him and then, 
 when she was with him again, she often wondered whether her 
 presence made him any happier. Through all his intercourse 
 with her she discerned a wistful restraint as though he would 
 like to ask her for something that he had not got and yet was 
 afraid. When she felt this in him she redoubled her affection 
 towards him, but she thought that he noticed this and knew 
 her effort. 
 
 Her thoughts went often now to Francis Breton, not as to 
 anyone whom she would ever see again but she hoped that 
 he was happy, wondered whether there was anyone to look 
 after him, wished that he had some friend so that she might 
 know that he was safe. Her pride did not allow her to 
 speak to Lizzie Eand about him ; they had had one talk when 
 Lizzie had taken her letter, but that was all. 
 
 Then, as February drew to a close, she was unwell; that 
 was so unusual for her that she might have been disturbed 
 had it been anything more material than headaches, strange 
 fits of indifference to everything and a general failure of 
 energy. She thought that she was indoors too much and 
 was now in the air as often as her duties to Roddy allowed 
 her. 
 
 But the indifference persisted. Her feelings for Roddy 
 were an odd confusion; there were times, when she was 
 away from him, and the thought of him made her heart beat 
 " This is love at last." There were times again when, 
 as she sat beside him, she could have beaten her hands against 
 the walls for very boredom and for his impenetrable taciturn- 
 ity as he read The Times from the Births and Marriages on 
 the front page to the advertisements on the last and flung her 
 details " London Scottish won their game at Richmond 
 That Fettes man got over three times," or " I wouldn't give
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 393 
 
 a button for that horse of old Tranty Stummits they're all so 
 gone on. You mark my words. . . ." " I'd like to see that 
 new piece of Edwardes' " " They've got a girl in it who 
 dances on her nose jolly pretty she is, too, so Massiter says. 
 He's been five times and there's a song about moonlight or 
 
 some old rot that they say is spiffin' " How to adjust 
 
 this horrible stupidity with the courage, the humour, the af- 
 fection, even the poetry that she found in him at other times ? 
 
 There were days when she cared for him with a new thrill- 
 ing emotion, something that had in it a quality of curiosity 
 as though he were coming before her as someone unknown 
 and unexpected. There were other days when she wondered 
 how he could have remained, through all the crisis, so pre- 
 cisely the same Roddy. 
 
 Meanwhile between all these uncertainties she lost touch 
 with herself. It was as though her soul flew, like some bird 
 in a strange country, from point to point, restless, unsatis- 
 fied. ... 
 
 n 
 
 Then those few hurried words with Christopher on the 
 afternoon of the Duchess's visit flung, at an instant, her whole 
 life into crisis. Even as the words left him she knew that it 
 was up to this that all her days had been leading, that at 
 last she was, in very truth, face to face with her grandmother, 
 that the battle between the two of them had commenced. 
 
 She knew, in those few minutes whilst she stood there, 
 motionless, in that room, other things. She knew and 
 this was the first sharp conviction that struck her heart 
 that, at all costs, whatever else might come to her, she must 
 not now lose Roddy's love. Strangely, as she stood there 
 facing her danger, some warm glow heightened her colour 
 as she felt from this what Roddy really meant to her. She 
 thought then of Francis Breton, of his danger if her family 
 understood how implicated he was with her. It was true 
 that she had, not very long ago, contemplated miming away
 
 394 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 with him, and surely nothing could have implicated him 
 more than that, but now that he should suffer and yet not 
 have her, secured, as his reward for his suffering that, at 
 all pain to herself, she must prevent. 
 
 Her first impulse after Christopher had left her was to go 
 down instantly to Eoddy and confess everything. Then she 
 paused. 
 
 Perhaps, after all, her grandmother had not spoken ? In 
 that case how cruel to make Eoddy miserable with something 
 that was dead and already remote. In her heart too was 
 terror lest she should precipitate Breton into some peril. On 
 every side it seemed to her better that she should wait and 
 discover, perhaps through Christopher, perhaps by her own 
 intelligence, what exactly had occurred. 
 
 Four days afterwards, on the afternoon of that day that 
 brought Breton to dine with Christopher, she had not yet 
 spoken. She had taken no steps at all; despising herself, 
 afraid for Breton, feeling at one instant that Eoddy knew 
 everything, at another that he knew nothing, ill with this 
 same lassitude that had hung about her now for so many 
 weeks, determining at one moment that she would confront 
 her grandmother, at another that she would go instantly and 
 confess to Eoddy. 
 
 Yet Eachel hesitated and did nothing. 
 
 On this close and heavy afternoon Eachel sat up in her little 
 drawing-room, wondering whether she would wait there for 
 possible callers, or go down to Eoddy, who was being enter- 
 tained at the moment by Lord Massiter, or, complete con- 
 fession of surrender to nerves and general catastrophe, go up 
 to her bedroom, pull down the blinds and lie there, hunting 
 sleep. 
 
 The day was intolerably heavy. The windows of the little 
 room had all been flung open and, through the park, figures 
 wearily dragged themselves and the waters of the lake lay 
 as though they had fallen, because of this leaden heaviness, 
 from the grey sky.
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 395 
 
 She sat there, listening for every sound, starting at every 
 opening or closing of a door, thinking that were Lord Mas- 
 siter not there she would go down now and tell everything to 
 Koddy, yet knowing in her heart that if Peters were to come 
 now and tell her that his master was alone she would not 
 move. 
 
 Peters did come, but it was to tell her that Lord John 
 would like to see her. Uncle John! She scarcely knew 
 whether she hailed him as a relief or no. 
 
 " Oh ! ask him to come up, Peters, at once. Bring tea 
 here. Lord Massiter will have his downstairs, I expect." 
 
 Had her grandmother told Uncle John anything? Was 
 his visit in connection with anything that he had heard? 
 Of all the changes that her marriage had brought her, that 
 she should have slipped away from Uncle John was one of the 
 saddest. She loved him as dearly as ever, but restraint had 
 been there between them, struggle against it though they 
 might. He was, like Roddy, so ineloquent that anything 
 like a situation was real agony to him; he could never ex- 
 plain his feelings about anything and he would eagerly agree 
 with you that it was a great pity that he had any. What 
 had made this trouble between them ? Rachel only knew 
 that now there were so many things in her life which Uncle 
 John could not understand. At her heart her love for him 
 was as clear and simple as it had ever been. 
 
 But oh ! Uncle John was glad to see her ! His picture of 
 her, as she sat there, her cheeks flushed, in a rose-coloured 
 dress, with the room as soft and delicate as a shell around 
 her, filled him with delight: changes had come to him even 
 since their last meeting. The lines in his forehead seemed 
 to her a little deeper, his eyes were anxious and his smile 
 less sure and genial. He wore a beautiful white waistcoat 
 and sat there, with his chest out, his white hair rising into a 
 crest, looking exactly like a pouter pigeon. 
 
 " Dear Uncle John ! I'm so glad ! " 
 
 " Well, my dear, I was just passing. Been to some woman
 
 396 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 who's got a party in Harley House. War party, of cours^ 
 there were characters of the names of different generals and 
 if you won you paid a guinea to the War Fund quite a 
 reversal of the ordinary proceedings. I'm sure, my dear, I 
 don't know why I went. Well, it was so close that I felt I 
 couldn't walk back, even to 104, without a cup of tea from 
 you. How's Roddy ? " 
 
 " All right. Lord Massiter's been down there chatting to 
 him ever since three o'clock. Would you like us to go down 
 and have our tea with them, or shall we stay cosily up here by 
 ourselves ? " 
 
 " Why, stay up here of course ! You're not looking very 
 well, my dear. You've not been the thing lately, have you ? 
 This business with Eoddy ? ..." (he took her hand and held 
 it) " Don't you think it would be a good thing if you went 
 away for a week or two and had a change ? " 
 
 " !Nb, Uncle John dear, thank you. I am tired and I will 
 go away later on, but just now it would only make me anxious 
 and I should worry about Roddy." 
 
 Tea was brought. She looked at Uncle John and thought 
 that he had heard nothing. His guileless eyes smiled back 
 at her; all that she could discern in him was apprehen- 
 sion lest he should say something to displease her, to make 
 her angry. Bless his heart, he need not be afraid of that 
 now! 
 
 As she gave him his sugar she felt that some of the old 
 intimate relationship between them was creeping back. 
 
 " Of course you heard of grandmother's wonderful visit 
 to us the other day," Rachel said. " Wasn't it amazing ? 
 and Christopher says that she was none the worse rather 
 the better." 
 
 " Amazing," said Uncle John very solemnly. " Perfectly 
 astonishing. Your grandmother, Rachel, is an astounding 
 woman. Just when we were all of us thinking that she was 
 really not quite so well, quite so fit as she used to be, she 
 comes along and does something that she hasn't done for
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 397 
 
 fchirty years. I confess I was nervous when I first heard of 
 it, but Christopher reassured me said it would do her no 
 harm, and it hasn't." 
 
 " It shows what her affection for Roddy is," Rachel said 
 slowly. 
 
 " And for you, dear," Uncle John said timidly. " I know 
 that you haven't well, haven't that is, weren't always 
 very friendly, but I hope that now you've come to understand 
 her a little more. She's a difficult woman. She wouldn't be 
 so splendid if she weren't so difficult." 
 
 He saw those hard lines that he knew of old strike into 
 Rachel's face. He shrank back himself, afraid that he had, 
 by one ruthless sentence, lost all the happy intimacy that had 
 returned to them. 
 
 She had risen and walked to the window. " Dear Uncle 
 John," she said, " I know you'd like us to be friends, bless 
 you. But you may as well give that idea up, once and for 
 ever. Grandmother and I the old and the new generation, 
 you know. There's never been anything but war and never 
 will be. Besides, she's never forgiven me for marrying 
 Roddy, although she arranged it all." 
 
 " Oh ! my dear ! " said Uncle John. 
 
 " No, it is so. I shouldn't be astonished," she continued 
 bitterly, " if I were to hear that she thinks that I flung Roddy 
 from his horse and trampled on him. It would be quite 
 likely." 
 
 Then, suddenly, she came back from the window to the 
 sofa where Uncle John, looking greatly distressed, was sitting. 
 She leaned down, put her arms round his neck and her cheek 
 next to his. 
 
 " Uncle John dear. Don't you worry about grandmother 
 and me. That's an old, old story and it can't alter. The 
 case of us two, you and me, is much more important. I've 
 been a beast, for a long time, Uncle John. We've got away 
 from one another somehow and it's all been my fault. I've 
 been a prig and all sorts of horrid things, and I've let things
 
 398 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 come between us. Nothing shall ever come between us again 
 never." 
 
 He kissed her and his fat body thrilled with happiness. 
 Amongst all the distressing things that this last year had 
 brought him, nothing had been more distressing than his 
 separation from Rachel; now the old Rachel had come back 
 to him again. 
 
 They sat on the sofa there and he talked of a number of 
 things in his old happy, disconnected way. Some of her 
 apprehension lifted from Rachel, she forgot the closeness of 
 the day and sat there, happier than she had been for many 
 weeks. Six o'clock struck and he got up to go. 
 
 " Taking your aunt out to dinner. You going anywhere 
 to-night, my dear ? " 
 
 " Yes. It's such a nuisance, but Roddy insists on my 
 going. I'd so much rather stay with him. It's only a silly 
 little dinner at Lady Carloes'. She's asked a harpist in 
 afterwards ! Fancy, harpist ! " 
 
 But Uncle John liked Lady Carloes. She was an old 
 friend of his. " Don't laugh at Lady Carloes, dear. She's 
 a kind creature, and been a friend of the family's for ever 
 so long a devoted friend." 
 
 He stopped suddenly. " By the way, something I meant 
 to have told you." He dropped his voice. " You needn't 
 say anything about it and I don't want to worry your grand- 
 mother. I'm afraid she wouldn't like it. But the black 
 sheep is to be restored to the fold." 
 
 " The black sheep ? " said Rachel, wondering. 
 
 " Yes," said Uncle John. " Your Cousin Frank Breton, 
 my dear. Your Uncle Vincent and your aunt and I thought 
 that he'd behaved so well, been so quiet and steady all this 
 time, that really something ought to be done about him. 
 It's been on my conscience, I can assure you, for a long time 
 past. Well, I've written to him. I'm going to see him. Of 
 course it's better to be quiet about it whilst your grandmother 
 feels as she does but in time "
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 399 
 
 Rachel's voice was sharp and rather harsh as she said, 
 " Dear Uncle John, that is kind of you. I'm so glad. Poor 
 Cousin Frank! I always felt it unfair." 
 
 John looked at her with one of his supplicating, " Please- 
 don't-be-hard-on-me " glances. 
 
 Rachel really was strange. She seemed to dislike the idea 
 of Breton's redemption. He had thought that she would 
 have been delighted. 
 
 She kissed him. " Nothing's ever to come between us 
 again," she whispered. He pressed her hand. 
 
 " I must just look in upon Roddy," he said, and they went 
 down together. 
 
 HI 
 
 The thought that instantly occurred to her was that she 
 must not allow Uncle John to talk to Roddy about Breton. 
 She saw some innocent word falling, like a match into a 
 haystack, and starting immediately the most horrible blaze. 
 
 There were other thoughts behind that thoughts of her 
 grandmother's actions when she heard of this, thoughts of 
 Roddy's probable decision about it, thoughts that she, Rachel, 
 might prove to be the one person in the world who had 
 helped to drive Breton out, thoughts intolerable were they, 
 for a moment, indulged but now, as she walked, laughing, 
 downstairs, with Uncle John, her one urgent resolve was 
 to prevent an immediate scene. 
 
 She need not have feared. Massiter, stout, red-faced, 
 hearty and stupid, held the stage. He had been holding it 
 since three o'clock and Roddy's white face showed fatigue, 
 his eyes were half closed and, although he smiled, his mind, 
 distressed and exhausted, was far away. 
 
 Rachel's glance at him told her that his visitor had been 
 too much for him. When she saw Roddy like this she longed 
 to have him alone, away from all the world, to love him and 
 care for him ; although, in hard fact, when he was worn out, 
 Peters was of more value than she. She looked at him now,,
 
 400 THE DUCHESS OE WEEXE 
 
 loved him and was also afraid; she hated Lord Massiter, at 
 this moment, and hoped that he would go. 
 
 He talked in his cheerful voice, as though he were address*- 
 ing an assembly in the open air. He spoke of the hunting 
 (pretty rotten), of the musical comedies (absolutely rotten), 
 of our tactics in South Africa (rotten of course beyond all 
 words), and of farming on his land in the country (unspeak- 
 ably rotten), and was cheerful about all these things. He 
 knew that he had been self-sacrificing and had spent a whole 
 afternoon in cheering up " that poor devil, Seddon. Got to 
 lie on his back all his life, poor chap. Active beggar he was 
 too." 
 
 He overwhelmed Lord John, whom he liked but scorned. 
 " Never takes any decent exercise, John Beaminster. Al- 
 ways about with a parcel of women." Einally he departed, 
 carrying with him a faint scent of soap and tobacco, swearing 
 that it was the closest night he'd ever known and wiping his 
 red forehead with the air of one who rules this country and is 
 going very shortly to enjoy an excellent meal. 
 
 Soon Uncle John also departed. 
 
 Roddy, alone with Rachel, faintly smiled and then closed 
 his eyes again. 
 
 " Better go and dress, dear. It's gone half-past six." 
 
 " What on earth did he stay all that time for, roaring like 
 a bull ? " she cried indignantly. " Tired you out. Roddy, 
 dear, I don't think I'll go ont to dinner. I'll send a wire to 
 Lady Carloes." 
 
 " No, you must," he said firmly. " It's too late to dis- 
 appoint her." 
 
 " It's such an appalling night. I'm not feeling awfully 
 well. I don't think I could stand one of her dinners. 
 There'll be old Lord Crewner, old Mrs. Brunning and young 
 somebody or other for me, and I believe Uncle Richard. I 
 simply couldn't stand it." 
 
 " Aren't you well ? " He looked up at her sharply. 
 
 "Not very." Their eyes met; she turned hers away. She
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 401 
 
 tvas desperately near to tears, near to flinging herself down 
 at his side and hiding her head and telling him all. " Wait 
 wait perhaps he knows nothing . . ." 
 
 Still looking away from him she said, " Oh yes ! I must 
 go, of course. It's only this thunder that one feels." 
 
 She bent down, hurriedly, and kissed him. They said 
 good night to one another and she left the room. 
 
 Later, in the carriage, she saw his white face and was 
 miserable. She thought of Breton and that made her miser- 
 able too. To everyone she seemed to bring unhappiness. 
 The stifling evening held a hand at her throat; the carriage 
 moved languidly along on every side of her she saw people 
 listlessly moving as though controlled by an enchantment. 
 She really was ill. " If I don't look out," she thought, " I 
 shall be hysterical to-night I shall just have to hold on 
 and keep quiet. I've never felt like this before. Fancy 
 being hysterical before Uncle Richard. How surprised he'd 
 be and how he'd disapprove ! " 
 
 In Lady Carloes' small and stuffy drawing-room bony Mrs. 
 Brunning and Lord Crewner were being polite to one another. 
 One would suppose that it had been Lady Carloes' intention 
 to gather together into a confined space as many of her grand- 
 mother's possessions as possible. Her grandmother had known 
 Sir Walter Scott and had Lord Wellington to tea and spent 
 several days in the country with Joanna Baillie. The little 
 room had an old faded wall-paper covered thickly with prints, 
 miniatures and fading water-colours. On the many little 
 tables were scattered old keepsakes, " bijouterie " of every 
 kind, dragon china, coloured stones and even an ebony box 
 with sea-shells. There were cabinets and glass cases, several 
 chattering clocks, nodding mandarins and shepherdesses on 
 the mantelpiece, a faded illustrated edition of Sir Walter's 
 poems and, finally, three cats with large blue bows and tink- 
 ling bells. All these things added, immensely, to Rachel's 
 distress; on such an evening this jumble of small objects rose, 
 like the sound of the sea, and threatened to throttle her.
 
 402 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 A fire was burning and only the upper part of one window 
 was open. Rachel felt that she was in real peril of fainting ; 
 that she had never done, but to-night she had the sensation 
 that at any moment the floor with its old faded carpet would 
 rise slanting before her and pitch her into the street. Lady 
 Carloes, more hunched together than usual, her voice thick 
 and husky and her dress of blue satin, hurried in. Uncle 
 Richard, untouched by the closeness of the evening, clean and 
 starched and dignified, made his majestic entry; a young 
 man from the Embassy, so beautifully dressed that he ap- 
 peared to have spent his days in the effort to make his 
 personality of less importance than his studs and his waist- 
 coat buttons, apologized from behind his shining collar for 
 being the last of the party. They all went down to din- 
 ner. 
 
 Rachel felt, as the young man led her downstairs, that at 
 last she knew what Panic was. Panic was the state of stand- 
 ing, surrounded by ordinary everyday things and people, wait- 
 ing for the bolt to fall, the enemy to advance, danger to 
 spring, but seeing, in actual vision, nothing to justify terror. 
 She had reached to-night the climax of months of alarm, and, 
 during these past days, unbroken suspensa She was at the 
 ind of endurance. . . . 
 
 How was she ever to compass this horrible meal? The 
 young man was finding her difficult. She was aware that 
 Uncle Richard watched her and was expecting her to sustain 
 the family ease and dignity. They were at a little round 
 table, so that he was able to hear all the conversation. 
 
 " Yes," she said desperately. " I quite agree with you. 
 The lack of enterprise at Covent Garden is shameful. We 
 Want more competition. ..." 
 
 " So I said to her, ' My good woman, if you really imagine 
 that I'm taken in by your pretending that that's Dres- 
 den' .. ." 
 
 " Herr Becknet is coming in afterwards," old Lady Carloes 
 said. " You'll like him, my dear. He plays the harp too
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 403 
 
 wonderfully. I've asked a few friends to come in. Of 
 course the drawing-room isn't very large, but I hope " 
 
 The room was swimming before Rachel. A stuffed bird 
 in a glass case sailed across the table towards her and the fire- 
 place tottered and staggered. She was just able to gasp: 
 " Lady Carloes please it's this heat or something " 
 
 There were cries of agitation. The young man gave her 
 his arm into the passage, she was surrounded by anxious 
 servants ; someone fanned her, she drank water and was con- 
 scious of Lady Carloes' blue satin and Uncle Richard's shirt- 
 front 
 
 She knew now what she wanted; she pulled herself to- 
 gether and absolutely refused Uncle Richard's escort. 
 
 " No, I shall be quite all right really. No, Uncle Rich- 
 ard, I won't hear of it. It was silly of me to come out 
 really. I've been feeling this thundery weather all day. IsTo, 
 Lady Carloes, thank you, I'll just go straight back and go 
 to bed. I won't hear of anyone coming with me, thanks. 
 !N"o, really. I am so sorry, Lady Carloes. I shall be all right 
 in the morning. Yes, if you'd call a cab, please. No, Uncle 
 Richard, I'd rather not." 
 
 She was better. She knew what she wanted. At last the 
 cab was there, but it was not " York Terrace " that she had 
 commanded, but " 24 Saxton Square." 
 
 It was Lizzie whom she needed. 
 
 IV 
 
 It was a long drive to Saxton Square. She was better now, 
 but still strangely unwell, and to open both the windows was 
 of no use: not a breath stirred, the trees, dark and sombre, 
 were of iron, the lamps gave no radiance and the sky was 
 black. 
 
 She was terribly frightened, frightened because here in the 
 dark of her carriage, thoughts of Breton attacked her as they 
 had never done before. She hid her face in her burning 
 hands; her body was shivering. Breton was before her as
 
 404: THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 lie had been in his room. She felt his hands about her, hia 
 breath on her cheek, his mouth was pressed against hers, her 
 fingers knew again the stuff of his coat and the back of her 
 hand had touched his neck. . . . 
 
 And yet, it was at this moment, with those very memories 
 crowding about her, that she knew definitely and with ab- 
 solute assurance, that it was Roddy, and Eoddy only in all 
 the world, whom she now loved. 
 
 Her passion for Breton had been a passion of rebellion, of 
 discontent a moment perhaps in her education that carried 
 her from one stage to another. 
 
 She loved Eoddy. She could not trace the steps by which 
 her love had grown, but affection had first been changed into 
 something stronger on that day when he had been carried 
 back into his house from whose gates he had passed, that 
 morning, so strong and sure. Pity had been the beginning 
 of it, admiration of his courage had continued it, this mo- 
 ment of this stormy night had struck it into flame 
 
 And now, perhaps, in another day or so, she would learn 
 that he had done with her for ever. 
 
 She sat there, huddled, trembling, her eyes burning, her 
 throat dry. 
 
 Oh! why wouldn't the carriage go faster! If only this 
 storm would come and that terrible sky would break ! She 
 knew that Mrs. Eand and Daisy were away in the country 
 and Lizzie went out very seldom. She would find her. She 
 must find her. She shuddered to think what she might do 
 were Lizzie not at home. 
 
 They were there. Yes, Miss Eand was at home : Eachel 
 svent in. 
 
 Lizzie was sitting quietly by the open window, reading. 
 She looked up and saw Eachel in a dress of black and gold, 
 her face very pale, as she stood there in the doorway. 
 
 " Lizzie dear Lizzie." Eachel flung off her cloak, stood 
 for a moment motionless, then without another word, huddled 
 up on to the sofa and, her face buried in her arm, began to
 
 MAECH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 405 
 
 cry. Lizzie came across to her, took her hand, and sat there 
 without speaking. 
 
 After a long time she said, " Rachel dear. What is it ? " 
 
 Rachel clung to her, holding her fiercely. At last, looking 
 up but away from Lizzie, she said, " Oh ! if you hadn't been 
 here. I don't know I simply don't know what I think 
 it's this night This awful night. It's so close and the 
 storm is so long coming." 
 
 " Has anything particular happened ? " 
 
 " Yes. The Duchess has told Roddy about about Fran- 
 cis or I think she has. Roddy's said nothing to me, but I 
 ought to speak to him, to tell him. . . . I've put it off." 
 
 Lizzie said softly. "You must tell him, Rachel. You 
 know that you must. It's the only thing. I thought it 
 would come to that sooner or later." 
 
 " But it's more than that. I'm not well. I don't know 
 what it is, but I've never felt like it before, and it makes me 
 more frightened than I've ever been. To-night I've been 
 more frightened." 
 
 But Lizzie was thinking. 
 
 " Has your grandmother told many people ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I know nothing ; that's what makes it 
 so hard. It's all had a climax to-night. There was an awful 
 dinner at old Lady Carloes' and it was so hot and stuffy that 
 I nearly fainted. I had to leave. And then, coming 
 here . . ." 
 
 Rachel began to tremble again and, creeping close to 
 Lizzie, she held her tighter. 
 
 " Lizzie ... in the cab coming here . . . Francis . . . 
 I had such thoughts. I couldn't have believed. . . ." 
 
 Lizzie's eyes gazed out into the square, far away not like 
 a Pool to-night, Mr. Breton. All hard and cruel and even the 
 Nymph has no softness. 
 
 She kissed Rachel. " It's the night, dear. When the 
 weather's like this it affects one. London's awful to-night. 
 There'll be such a storm soon."
 
 406 
 
 " But it's worse, Lizzie. I seem to-night to have seen my 
 self as I am more clearly than before. My priggishnesa 
 talking so much about Truth and then the things I do. 
 Roddy, Francis, all the same. I've treated them all badly. 
 I've been true to no one. I'm no good. ..." 
 
 " Promise me, dear, that you'll tell him your husband 
 everything to-morrow. Promise me." 
 
 " But Lizzie, perhaps " 
 
 " No no no. Everything. To-morrow." 
 
 " He'll hate me. He'll 
 
 " No matter. You must. To-morrow." 
 
 Rachel was silent. Then she looked into Lizzie's face. 
 " Yes," she said, " I will." 
 
 Then, with a little sigh, she fainted. 
 
 When she rose to a realization of life again she was lying 
 upon Lizzie's bed and the storm had broken over the house. 
 Lizzie was holding her hand ; the thunder roared. Coming 
 with stealthy steps closer and closer, sometimes to creep 
 stealthily away again, sometimes to break, with crashing 
 splendour, upon their very heads. 
 
 The lightning flung Lizzie's bedroom into pale brillianco 
 and was gone; Life leapt into vision, then surrendered to 
 the candle flare, then leapt again. 
 
 Rachel smiled faintly. She felt around her and about her 
 a great peace. She knew that all her terror had departed; 
 her one thought now was to return to Roddy and tell him 
 everything. 
 
 She sat up. " How silly of me to faint. It's a thing I've 
 never done in my life. How did you get me here ? " 
 
 " The maid and I carried you in. It's better for you in 
 here." 
 
 " I think I'll go now, Lizzie dear." 
 
 " Wait a little while."
 
 MARCH 13TH: RACHEL'S HEART 407 
 
 They stayed in silence. Then they heard the rain that 
 lashed the windows. 
 
 " Isn't the rain terrific ? . . . Oh ! Lizzie, it's all gone, 
 all the terror, all that awful fright." She added solemnly, 
 " I don't believe I'll ever feel like that again. It'll never 
 come back I'm sure of it." 
 
 Rachel sat silently for a moment, then turned and buried 
 her head in Lizzie's dress. 
 
 " Lizzie dear, I've been so frightened of something else." 
 
 "Of what?" 
 
 " I'm going to have a child. I've known it for some time. 
 At first I wasn't sure. Then I knew. I was frightened 
 and miserable. Then, as with every day I seemed to grow 
 fonder and fonder of Roddy I became glad about it. Then 
 very happy " 
 
 " Oh, Rachel dear, I'm so glad! " 
 
 " Yes. But now, with this, about Roddy it's all dreadful 
 again. If he should turn on me now just when I've begun 
 to care." 
 
 She sat up in bed, her eyes staring, her hands clutching the 
 clothes. 
 
 "Lizzie, if it should come right! if it should! Just 
 think what a child would mean for him ; he's so brave, lying 
 there all day, making himself amused and interested. I 
 watch him often and wonder where all that courage comes 
 from. I couldn't have done it. ... But now, if the child's 
 a boy, he'll be able to put all his old strength and keenness 
 into him and the Place ! Think what it will mean to him 
 to have that ! " 
 
 " And for you ? " asked Lizzie. 
 
 " I believe it's what I've wanted. Oh ! if only things are 
 all right with Roddy, then I can start again and have some 
 decent pride about it all. I've made such a mess of things 
 so far." 
 
 They talked for a little. Then Rachel got up and dressed.
 
 408 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " I'm all right now. Everything seems to have cleared. 
 I'll tell Roddy everything to-morrow, Lizzie dear." 
 
 " Come and see me as soon as ever you can, won't you ? " 
 
 " I will." 
 
 Rachel said good night. She held Lizzie's shoulders. 
 
 " Lizzie, you're wonderful. Don't think I don't know how 
 wonderful you are. I'll never forget what you've been to- 
 night. And if it's all right to-morrow. Oh! I am going 
 to be happy." 
 
 " That's all right," said Lizzie. " Don't go and get fright- 
 ened again." 
 
 " I'll never be so frightened as I was to-night never." 
 
 " I'm afraid you've got dreadfully wet," she said to the 
 cabman. 
 
 " It don't matter, mum but it does come down." 
 
 Lizzie stood in the doorway and waved her hand. 
 
 The rain slashed the panes and whipped the shining de- 
 serted streets. Very far away the faint whisper of thunder 
 bade the town farewell.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 MARCH 13th: RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL AND THE 
 DUCHESS DENIES GOD 
 
 " ' Que d6sirez-vous savoir plus pr6cis6ment ? ' 
 Mais le porte-drapeau rfipondit: 
 'Non, pas maintenant . . . apres . . .'" 
 
 A. VExtrSme Limite. 
 ABTZTBACHEV. 
 
 THAT afternoon had been a difficult one for Roddy. He 
 felt, lying so eternally on his back, the vagaries of the 
 English weather. There were days when the wind was in 
 the park, when sunshine flashed and flung shadows, when 
 the water of the pond glittered and every duck and baby 
 thrilled with life. Then it was very hard to lie still, and 
 memories of days riding days and swimming days and 
 hunting days would persecute him. But there were dark 
 wet hours when his room seemed warm and cosy then he 
 was happy. 
 
 On a day of thunder, like this afternoon, his one desire was 
 to get out; never had he felt the bars of his cage so sharply, 
 with so intense an irritation as on to-day. 
 
 Massiter broke the chain of his thoughts and he was glad. 
 Four days now and Rachel had said nothing; many times 
 he had thought that she was going to speak, but the moments 
 had passed. He had not slept for two nights over and over 
 he turned the question as to what he was to do. 
 
 Had he been up and about, some solution would have nat- 
 urally come, he thought, but, lying here, thinking so inter- 
 minably with one's body tied to one like a stone, nothing 
 seemed clear or easy. 
 
 This was the worst day in the world to make thinking 
 
 409
 
 410 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 simple. The leaden sky pressed one down and held one's 
 brain. 
 
 " I'm goin' to have a jolly bad evenin'," said Roddy, " I 
 know I am." 
 
 Massiter was a relief; there was no need to talk whilst 
 Massiter was there and his fat cheerful body restored one's 
 balance. The same, sensible world that had once been 
 Roddy's own and had, of late, slipped away from him, was 
 restored when Massiter was there. Nevertheless one hour of 
 Massiter was enough. Roddy could detect in Massiter's at- 
 titude that pity moved him to additional cheerfulness, and 
 this was irritating; then Massiter's clumsy efforts to avoid 
 topics that might be especially tactless that also was tire- 
 some. 
 
 Roddy was glad when Rachel and John Beaminster came 
 down and relieved him, and then the moment arrived when 
 he thought again that Rachel was going to speak, and per- 
 haps if he had made a movement of affection he would have 
 caught her, but always when some expression of feeling was 
 especially demanded of him did he feel the least able to pro- 
 duce it. 
 
 The whole relationship between them depended on such 
 slender incidents; one word from anybody and there would 
 be no more confusion or doubt; the situation had the mad- 
 dening tip-toe indecision of a dream. 
 
 " I'm going to have a bad time to-night," he thought. 
 " It's no use giving in to the thing." He faced it deliber- 
 ately ; if only he could think clearly, but the damned weather. 
 . . . Well, he and Jacob must face the night as best they 
 could. 
 
 The dog lay flat near the window, moving restlessly under 
 the close air, but pricking his ears at every movement that 
 Roddy made, ready to come to him at any instant. 
 
 " That old dog cares for me more than anyone else does 
 and I only appreciated him after I was laid up Rummy 
 thing ! " Roddy was conscious that high above him, some-
 
 RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL 411 
 
 where near the ceiling, hovered a Creature, born of this 
 damnable evening, and that did he allow himself to relax for 
 a moment, down that hovering Creature would come. Very 
 faintly, as it were from a great distance, he could catch its 
 whisper in his ear. " What's the good of this ? . . . What's 
 the good of this ? What did you always say ? What would 
 you have said about anyone placed as you are now ? Better 
 for him to get out." 
 
 " Damn you, shut up. . . ." 
 
 He was in great physical pain, the pain that always came 
 to him when he was tired out, but that was nothing to the 
 mental torture. Twisted figures Rachel, Breton, himself, 
 the Duchess passed before him, mingling, separating, 
 sometimes coming to him as though they were there with 
 him in the room. He had not, even on the day that had told 
 him that he would never get up again, felt so near to utter 
 defeat as he was now. He had been proud of himself, proud 
 of his resistance to what, with another man, might have ap- 
 peared utter catastrophe, proud of his dogged determination, 
 " To have the devil beat. . . ." To-night this same devil 
 was going to be too much for him, did he not fight his very 
 hardest, and the cruelty of it was that this weather took 
 all one's vitality out of one, drained one dry, left one a rag. 
 
 " Curse you, get out," he muttered, clenching his teeth, 
 then whistled and brought Jacob instantly to his side. The 
 dog jumped on to the long sofa, taking care not to touch his 
 master's legs. Then he moved up into the hollow of Roddy's 
 arm and lay there warm against Roddy's side. 
 
 " What's the use ? " The Creature was close to him, his 
 breath warm and damp like the night air. " She doesn't 
 care for you. You can see that she doesn't. She's been in 
 love with her cousin for ever so long, only you didn't know. 
 Wouldn't she have told you that she was a friend of his if 
 there had been nothing more than that in it ? What a fool 
 you are lying here all broken up, simply in the way of her 
 happiness, no good to yourself or anyone else."
 
 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " I wish the thunder would come and smash you up. . . ." 
 Then, more desperately, " What if that's right ? if I were to 
 clear out . . ." 
 
 " After all," said the Creature, " you've never before seen 
 yourself as you really are. You thought that you were all 
 right because you could use your legs and arms. Now you 
 know what you are You're nothing only something that 
 many people must trouble to keep alive useless useless ! 
 Why not ? " 
 
 Yes, Roddy did see himself to-night, sternly; as in the 
 old days he might have looked upon someone and judged 
 him unfit, so now he would confront himself. " It's quite 
 true. You've got nothing nothing to show, you've no in- 
 tellect, you're selfish, you despise all kinds of people for all 
 kinds of reasons. You've stood a little pain so can any 
 man. You'd better get out no one will know." 
 
 " Yes," said the Creature, very close to him now. " You 
 can do it so easily. That morphia that you've had once or 
 twice an overdose. No one would suppose. . . . She 
 would never know, and you'd be rid for ever of all this wrong 
 and you'd free so many people from so much trouble." 
 
 " Jacob, my son," he whispered, " do you hear what they're 
 saying ? " 
 
 He went right down, down, to the depths of a pit that 
 closed about his head, filled his eyes with darkness, was suf- 
 focating. 
 
 " Yes, he's beaten," he heard them say. " We've succeeded 
 at last. We've succeeded. . . ." 
 
 But they had not. 
 
 With an effort of will that was beyond any power that he 
 had believed himself to possess, he pulled himself up. 
 
 " There's one thing you've forgotten." He gasped as he 
 came struggling up. 
 
 He took the Creature in his hands, wrung its neck and 
 flung it out of the window. 
 
 " There's one thing you've forgotten. There's my love for
 
 RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL 413 
 
 her. That's strong enough for anything. That's reason 
 enough for living even though she doesn't want it. I'll beat 
 you all with that ... go back to hell, the lot of you." 
 
 n 
 
 " I must never let it happen like that again. What a state 
 this weather can get one into. . . ." 
 
 But he had come back to his senses. His brain was clear; 
 he could think now. The great point was that it was of no 
 use to think of himself in this affair. " Rachel, Rachel's 
 the only thing that matters." 
 
 Then upon that came the decision. " That old woman's 
 got to pay for it. She's been wantin' to give Rachel a bad 
 time. She's tried to. Her mouth's got to be stopped hover- 
 ever old and ill she is ! " 
 
 He was fiercely, furiously indignant with her vanished, 
 it appeared, all his affection, the sentiment of years. " I've 
 got to defend Rachel from her, no knowin' whom she's been 
 tellin'." Roddy still found it impossible to admit more than 
 one idea at a time, and the idea now was that " he must stop 
 the old lady dead." 
 
 His brain came round now to Breton, and halted there* 
 What kind of fellow, after* all, was he ? What, after all, did 
 Roddy know about him that he could so easily condemn him \ 
 
 To-night, fresh from the battle with the Creature, Roddy's 
 view of the world was painted with new colours. The man 
 had been condemned for things that his father had done, and 
 one recognized, here in London, how difficult it was for a 
 fellow to climb up once he had been pushed down. 
 
 Was the man in love with Rachel ? Well, Roddy did not 
 know that he could blame him for that? . . . difficult 
 enough, surely, for anyone not to be. But was he ? What, 
 after all, was he like? 
 
 Then swiftly the answer came to him. See the man. . . . 
 Talk to him . . . know him. He stared at the idea, felt 
 already new energy in his bones and a surging victory over
 
 414 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 the lethargy of this awful evening at the suggestion of some 
 definite action. 
 
 But see him, yes, and see him here and see him soon. His 
 impatience leapt now hotly upon him; he pulled Jacob's 
 ears. " That's the ticket, old boy, ain't it ? See what kind 
 of a ruffian this is! My word, but wouldn't the old lady 
 hate it if she knew ? " 
 
 But, and at this the room flared with the thrill of it, why 
 not have her here to meet him ? Confront her with him. 
 
 He was cool now. Here was matter that needed careful 
 handling. Still as vigorous now as in his most active days 
 was his impatience. Was something in the way, cobwebs, 
 barriers, obstacles of any sort ? Brush them aside, beat them 
 down! 
 
 Here was a plan. Here, too, most happily at hand, was the 
 Duchess's punishment. 
 
 All these years had the old lady been refusing to set eyes 
 upon her grandson, therefore, how dramatic would it be were 
 she confronted with him unexpectedly. Out of the hea It sf 
 that meeting would come most assuredly the truth about 
 Rachel. 
 
 There, in a flash, solid, substantial, beautifully compact, 
 magnificently splendid his plan lay before him. He would 
 have them there. Rachel, the Duchess, this Breton, all of 
 them there before him. They should come ignorant, unpre- 
 pared, Breton first, then Rachel, then the Duchess. 
 
 Having them there he would quite simply say that some- 
 one had been pouring into his ears a story of friendship to 
 which he might take objection. 
 
 He would then, very quietly . . . But here he paused. 
 Oh ! he knew what he would do. He smiled at the thought 
 of the success of his plan. 
 
 When he had made his little speech to them all there would 
 never again be any danger of scandal. The old lady would 
 never again have any single word to say. 
 
 The thought that Rachel might be angry at his deceptive
 
 RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL 415 
 
 plot did not disturb him. When she had heard his little 
 speech she would not say that and here, suddenly, he knew 
 how deeply, in his heart, he trusted her. 
 
 But what if, after all, it should be a lie on the old lady's 
 part ? Was he not doing wrong to take things so far without 
 a question to anyone else, Christopher or Lizzie Rand ? 
 
 But this was Roddy. Here both his pride and his im- 
 patience were concerned. He did not wish that the business 
 should pass beyond its present bounds. He could not go from 
 person to person asking them whether they trusted his wife. 
 And then he could not wait. Here was a plan that killed the 
 danger at one blow, something direct, open, with sharply 
 defined issues. Oh ! Rachel should see how he loved her ! 
 
 " All these days," he said to Jacob, " I've been worryin* 
 about her, but I knew yes, I knew that she was comin* 
 to me all right." He thought of a day long before and of Miss 
 Nita Raseley and of a meeting in the garden. " I'll show her 
 that I can forgive, too, if it's necessary. Not because I care 
 so little, but, by God, because I care so much. No," he 
 thought, shaking his head over it, " she doesn't love me, not 
 yet. But she's beginnin' to belong to me. She's coming." 
 
 There was also the thought that the Duchess was an old, 
 sick woman and that the scene might be too much for her 
 strength. " Not she," he grimly decided, " that's the kind of 
 thing she lives on. Anyway, I owe her one. Didn't do her 
 any harm comin' to me the other day, won't do her any harm 
 now. / know her." 
 
 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."
 
 416 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 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 
 
 SOC 
 
 " Yes, Sir Eod'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. 
 
 m 
 
 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
 
 417 
 
 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 con- 
 ventional 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
 
 418 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 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 Koddy 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 appre- 
 hension 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
 
 RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL 419 
 
 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 their stead. 
 
 She had, above all, the horrible knowledge that her punish- 
 ment 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.
 
 420 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 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 Morris 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 hear- 
 ing 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 some- 
 thing about which you can help me only you in all the 
 world. If I don't hear from you I will conclude that you 
 ean come five o'clock. 
 
 Your affectionate friend, 
 
 RODDY." 
 
 That letter showed the perfection of his tactful understand- 
 ing. 
 
 TSo 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
 
 RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL 421 
 
 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 some- 
 one 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."
 
 422 THE DUCHESS Ol WKEXE 
 
 " 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 ptted 
 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 GO 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 nine- 
 teenth. All the old times were best. You could command 
 and see that you were obeyed. . . . None of your Individu- 
 alism 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 :
 
 RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL 423 
 
 " 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, as 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 coursa 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 dis- 
 played the excitement of a child presented with a sudden 
 unexpected gift.
 
 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 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." 
 
 "After all," she thought as, the candles blown out, she 
 lay and listened to the rain, " that dream may come
 
 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. 
 
 HENBT JAMES. 
 
 TH K 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 
 
 425
 
 426 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 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 ! 
 
 To Roddy one thing manifest was that a very tiny blunder 
 might shatter the bond that was forming between them, and 
 it was eloquent of a great deal that, whereas before in the 
 Nita Raseley episode, it had been Rachel who feared the one 
 false step, it was now Roddy. What it came to was that, in 
 spite of everything, he was still unable to prophesy about 
 her. She was still unrealized, almost untouched by him, that 
 was partly why he loved her so. 
 
 Roddy's brain had been alive last night and ready to 
 grapple with anything; to-day he felt stupid and confused. 
 " We're in for a jolly good row," he thought, " far as I can 
 see. There's no avoidin' it. Anyway, some clearin' up will 
 come out of all of it." 
 
 So intent was he upon Rachel that he scarcely considered 
 the Duchess. He had not very much imagination about 
 people and made the English mistake of believing that every- 
 one else saw life as he did. He had, for that very reason, 
 never believed very seriously in the Duchess's passion for 
 himself; he liked her indeed for her hardness and resented 
 any appearance of the gentler emotions " She'll like tellin' 
 us all what she thinks of it " placed her in the afternoon's 
 battle. He might have taken it all, had he chosen, as the 
 most curious circumstance, that he should be " arranging 
 things " eloquent of the changed order of his life and of the 
 new man that he was becoming. 
 
 He lay there all the morning, nervous and restless 
 Rachel had looked in for a moment and had told him that she 
 was going to see Christopher, that she might not return to
 
 CHAMBER MUSIC A TRIO 42T 
 
 luncheon. He had fancied that, in those few moments, he 
 had divined in her some especial thrill " We're all going to 
 be tuned up this afternoon." 
 
 If he found and this was the question that he asked 
 himself most urgently that Rachel really had, in the 
 competent interpretation of the term, " deserted " him for 
 Breton, what would be his sensations ? Being an Englishman 
 he would, of course, horsewhip the fellow, divorce Rachel 
 and lead a misanthropic but sensual existence for the rest 
 of his days. But here the wild strain in Roddy counted. 
 That is exactly what Roddy would not do. What was law 
 for the man must be law also for the woman. 
 
 He had, on an earlier day, told her that were he to present 
 her with a thousand infidelities, yet he would love her best 
 and most truly, and therefore she must forgive him. Well, 
 that should be true too for her. . . . Any episode with Breton 
 seemed only an incident in the pursuit of her that Roddy had 
 commenced on that day that he had married her. 
 
 And yet was not this readiness on his part to forgive her 
 sprung from his conviction that she would have told him 
 had she had so much to confess to him ? Let her relations 
 with Breton remain uncertain and shifting, then she might 
 have found justification for her silence ; let them once have 
 found so definite a climax and she must have spoken Roddy 
 had indeed advanced in his knowledge both of her and him- 
 self since two years ago. 
 
 By the early afternoon he was in a pitiable state. Should 
 he send notes to the Duchess and Breton telling them both 
 that he was too unwell, too cross, too sleepy, too " anything " 
 to see them? Should he retire to bed and leave Peters to 
 make his excuses? Should he disappear and tell Rachel to 
 deal with them ? What a scene there' d be between the three 
 of them ! 
 
 His illness had made a difference to his nerve, lying there 
 on one's back took the grit away, gave one too much time to 
 think, showed one such momentous issues.
 
 428 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 On the events of this afternoon might hang all his life and 
 ail Rachel's! 
 
 His capture of her was indeed now to he put to the 
 test ! . . . 
 
 n 
 
 Rachel came into his room at four o'clock. She carried a 
 great hunch of violets and a paper parcel. 
 
 She smiled across the room at him; a cap of white fur 
 on her head, and the hand with the violets held also a large 
 white muff. 
 
 " Roddy I'm coming to have tea with you alone. 
 You'll be out to everyone, won't you? But first, see what 
 I've brought you." 
 
 She was dreadfully excited, he thought, as though she 
 knew already the kind of thing that awaited her. Her smile 
 was nervous, and that trembling of her upper lip, as though 
 she would, perhaps, cry and perhaps would laugh but really 
 was not sure, always told him when she was afraid. 
 
 " See what I've brought you ! " She put the violets down 
 upon the table beside him " Now ! Look ! " She undid 
 the paper and held up to his gaze a deep, gleaming silver 
 lustre bowl, a beautiful bowl because of its instant friendliness 
 and richness and completeness " I found it ! " she said, 
 " staring at me out of a shop window, demanding to be 
 bought. I thought you'd like it." 
 
 She put it on his table, found water and filled it, then 
 arranged the violets in it. 
 
 " Oh ! my dear ! it's beautiful ! " he said, and then, with 
 his eyes fixed upon her face, watched her arrange the flowers. 
 But he brought out at last, " I'm afraid I can't promise to be 
 alone for tea." 
 
 " Oh ! " she stepped back from the flowers and looked at 
 him. They faced one another, the silver bowl between them. 
 She stood, as she always did, when she had something difficult 
 to face, her long arms straight at her side, her hands slowly
 
 CHAMBER MUSIC A TRIO 429 
 
 closing and unclosing, her eyes fixed upon some far distance. 
 
 " Roddy, please ! " she said, " I do want to be alone with 
 you this afternoon. I have a special, very special reason. I 
 want to talk." 
 
 " You see " he said. 
 
 " No," she cried impatiently. " We must have this after- 
 noon to ourselves. Tell Peters that you're too ill, too tired, 
 anything. I'm sure, after all that storm last night, it would 
 be perfectly natural if you were. Now, please, Roddy." 
 
 " I'm awfully sorry, Rachel dear. If I'd only known. If 
 you'd only told me last night." 
 
 " I didn't know myself last night. How could I ? But 
 now it's most awfully important, Roddy. I've I've 
 something to tell you." 
 
 His heart beat thickly, his eyes shone. 
 
 " Well, they won't stay long, I dare say." 
 
 " Who are they ? " 
 
 " Oh ! nobody special. Friends " 
 
 " Then if they aren't special put them off. Roddy dear, I 
 1 /eg you " 
 
 " No, Rachel, I can't " 
 
 " Well you might " For a moment it seemed that 
 
 she would be angry. Then suddenly she smiled, shrugged 
 her shoulders at last, moved across and touched the violets ; 
 then, with a little gesture, bent down and kissed him. 
 
 " Well, my dear, of course you will have your way. But 
 am I to be allowed to come or are these mysterious friends of 
 yours too private too secret ? " 
 
 " Not a bit of it. I want you to come." 
 
 " I'll go and take my things off. I hope they'll come soon ; 
 I'm dying for tea, I've had such a tiring day, and last 
 night " 
 
 " How was last night ? You haven't had time to tell me." 
 
 She was by the door, but she turned and faced him. " Oh I 
 I was so silly. The weather upset me and I went and fainted 
 at Lady Carloes'."
 
 430 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Fainted ! " His voice was instantly sharp with anxiety. 
 
 " Yes in the middle of dinner. Such a scene and Uncle 
 Richard thought I let down the family dreadfully." 
 
 " I hope you went straight to bed Ah ! that was why you 
 saw Christopher this morning ! " 
 
 " Yes, that was why ! !Nb, I didn't come straight back 
 last night I went round to Lizzie's I was frightened and 
 felt that I couldn't come back all alone." 
 
 They were both of them instantly aware that someone else 
 lived at 24 Saxton Square beside Miss Rand. There was a 
 sharp little pause, during which they both of them heard 
 their hearts say : " Oh ! I hope you aren't going to let iTiat 
 little thing matter ! " 
 
 Then Roddy said " Well, dear. I'm jolly glad you did 
 go to Lizzie. I hate your fainting like that What did 
 Christopher say this morning ? " 
 
 " Oh ! nothing I'U tell you later." 
 
 She was gone. 
 
 When she returned Peters was bringing in the tea and they 
 could exchange no word. The spring was beginning, already 
 the evenings were longer and a pale glow, orange-coloured, 
 lingered in the sky and lit the green of the park with dim 
 radiance. Within the room the fire crackled, the silver shone, 
 the lustre bowl was glowing 
 
 Rachel went across to the table, then staring out at the 
 evening light said, " Roddy, who are your visitors ? " 
 
 Peters answered her question by opening the door and an- 
 nouncing 
 
 " Mr. Breton, my lady." 
 
 m 
 
 She took it with a composure that was simply panic frozen 
 into stillness. She saw him come, straight from the square 
 immobility of Peters, out to meet her, noticed that he looked 
 " most horribly ill " and that his eyes cowered, as it were, 
 behind their lashes, as though they feared a blow she saw
 
 CHAMBER MUSIC A TRIO 431 
 
 him catch the picture of her, hold her for an instant whilst 
 his cheeks flooded with colour, then all expression left him; 
 he walked towards her as though the real Francis Breton, 
 after that first glance had turned and left the room, and only 
 the lifeless husk of him remained. 
 
 For herself, after the word from Peters, her mind had flown 
 to Roddy. He knew everything there could no longer be 
 doubt of that but oh ! how she turned furiously now upon 
 the indecision that had allowed her to surrender her courage 
 and her self-respect ! With that she wondered what it was that 
 her grandmother had told him. Perhaps he believed worse 
 than the truth. Perhaps he thought that nothing too bad . . . 
 
 And what, after all, did he intend to do ? This meeting 
 had sprung from some arranged plan and he had, doubtless, 
 now, some end in view. Had he meditated some vengeance 
 upon Breton ? At all costs, he must be protected. 
 
 Meanwhile Breton had, apparently, taken it for granted 
 that she had known about his coming. 
 
 " How do you do, Lady Seddon ? " he said, shaking her 
 hand. 
 
 " You don't know my husband," she said quietly. 
 " Roddy, this is Mr. Breton." 
 
 Breton went over to the sofa and the two men shook hands. 
 
 " How do you do ? " Roddy said, smiling. " My word, the 
 feller does look ill ! " was Roddy's thought. He did not know 
 what type of man he had expected to see, but it was not, most 
 certainly, this nervous rather pathetic figure with the pointed 
 beard, the white cheeks, the blue eyes, the armless sleeve, 
 that uncertain movement that invited your consideration and 
 seemed to say, " I've had a bad time not altogether my 
 fault I'm trying now to do my best. Do help me." 
 
 " Just the sort of feller women would be sorry for," Roddy 
 thought. But he was rather happily conscious that, although 
 he was lying there helpless on his back, he was on the whole 
 in better trim than his visitor. 
 
 Breton, before he sat down, turning to Roddy, said, " I
 
 432 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 was very nearly wiring to you my excuses, Sir Roderick. 
 I've been most awfully unwell lately and all that thunder yes- 
 terday laid me up. I got sunstroke once in Africa and I've 
 always had to be careful since." 
 
 " Jolly good of you to come," said Roddy. " Sorry it was 
 such short notice. But I can never tell, you know, quite how 
 I'll be from day to day." 
 
 Breton sat down and the two men looked at one another. 
 To Breton, whose imagination led him to live in an alternation 
 of consternation and anticipation, the whole affair was utterly 
 bewildering. He had reached his rooms, on the night before, 
 soaked to the skin, and had found Roddy's note waiting for 
 him. It had seemed to him then as though it were, in all 
 probability, some trick of the devil's, but he had of course 
 accepted it as he accepted all challenges. 
 
 He had supposed that he would be confronted by a raging, 
 tempestuous husband. He would welcome anything that 
 would bring him again into contact with Rachel and he 
 always enjoyed a scene. But he had never, for an instant, 
 imagined that Rachel would be present. The sight of her 
 took all calmer deliberation away from him because he wished 
 so eagerly to speak to her and to hear her voice. 
 
 They were sitting with the table between them and they 
 were both of them conscious first of Roddy, lying so still and 
 watching them from his sofa, and then of the last time that 
 they had met and of that last kiss they had taken. But 
 Rachel, with strange relief and also with yet stranger disap- 
 pointment, was realizing that Breton's presence gave her no 
 spark, no tiniest flame of passion. She was sorry for him, 
 she wished most urgently that no harm should come to hin^ 
 she would, here at this moment, protect him with her life, with 
 her honour, with anything that he might demand of her, but 
 her emotion, every vital burning part of it, was given to her 
 retention of Roddy. 
 
 She might have felt anger because she had, as it were, 
 been entrapped, she might have felt terror of the possibly
 
 CHAMBEK MUSIC A TRIO 433 
 
 results to herself . . . she felt nothing except that she must 
 not lose Roddy. 
 
 " I know now," she said, perhaps to herself, " I know at 
 last what it is that I have wanted. And, knowing this, if, 
 just grasping it, I should lose it ! " 
 
 " Tea, Mr. Breton sugar ? Milk ? Would you take my 
 husband's cup to him? Thank you so much. Yes, he has 
 sugar " 
 
 " I was so sorry," Breton said, " to hear of your accident. 
 You must have had a bad time." 
 
 " Yes," said Roddy, laughing. " It was rotten ! But 
 what one loses one way one gains in another, I find. People 
 are much pleasanter than they used to be." 
 
 Roddy, as he looked at them both, had something of the 
 feeling that a schoolboy might be expected to have did he 
 suddenly find that some trick that he had planned was having 
 a really great success. 
 
 He was strangely relieved at Breton's appearance, he was 
 iiiore sure than ever of his retention of Rachel, he had, most 
 delightfully up his sleeve, the imminent appearance of the 
 Duchess. As he looked at his wife he could see that she was 
 appealing to him not to make it too hard for both of them. 
 He could, now that he had seen Breton, flatter himself with 
 something of the same superiority that Rachel had once shown 
 on beholding Nita Raseley. 
 
 Breton, as the moments passed, felt firmer ground beneath 
 his feet. Rachel, wondering how she could contrive their 
 meeting, had chosen this, the boldest way, had begged her hus- 
 band to invite him, planned to make him a friend of the house. 
 And yet with all this new confidence, he felt too that there 
 was something that he missed in Rachel, some response to 
 his thrill ; he could see that she was ill at ease and was relying 
 on him perhaps, " to carry it off." 
 
 So he carried it off, talked and laughed about his experi- 
 ences, the countries that he had seen, things that he; had done, 
 and, as always when he was striving to make the best im-
 
 434: THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 pression, made the worst, letting that note of exaggeration, 
 of something theatrical that was dangerously near to a pose, 
 creep into his voice and his attitude. 
 
 Rachel and Roddy said very little. He stopped, felt that 
 he had been speaking too much, and, sensitive always to an 
 atmosphere that was not kindly to him, cursed himself for a 
 fool and wished that he had never spoken at all. 
 
 There was a little pause, then Roddy said, " That's very 
 interesting. I've never been to South America, but I hear 
 it's going to be the place soon. Everyone's as rich as Crresus 
 out there, I believe. Another cup, Rachel dear, please Oh ! 
 thank you, Mr. Breton." 
 
 Breton brought the cup to Rachel and then stood there, 
 with his back to Roddy, his eyes upon Rachel's face, trying 
 to tell her what he was feeling. Quietly Roddy's voice came 
 to them both. 
 
 " There is one little thing one reason why I wanted you 
 to come this afternoon, Mr. Breton." 
 
 Rachel got up, her eyes fixed intently upon Roddy's face. 
 " No, Rachel, don't go. It concerns us all three." Roddy 
 laughed. " I don't want any of us to take it very seriously. 
 It is entirely between ourselves. I do hope," he went on more 
 gravely, " that I haven't been takin' any liberty in arrangin' 
 things like this, but it seemed to me the only way just to 
 stop, you know, the thing once and for all." 
 
 Breton had left the table and was standing in the middle 
 of the room. A thousand wild thoughts had come to him. 
 This was a trap a trap that Rachel . . . 
 
 The room whirled about him he put his hand on to the 
 back of a chair to steady himself, then turned to Rachel, 
 seeking her with his eyes. 
 
 He saw instantly in her white face and eyes, that never 
 left, for an instant, her husband, that there was nothing here 
 of which she had had any foreknowledge. 
 
 K It's only," said Roddy, " that somebody came to me, a 
 few days ago, and told me that you, Mr. Breton, and my wife
 
 CHAMBER MUSIC A TRIO 435 
 
 were on friendlier terms than I well, than I would, if I had 
 known, have cared for " 
 
 Breton started forward. " I " he began. 
 
 " No, please," said Roddy. " It isn't anythin' that I my- 
 self have taken, don't you know, for a second, seriously. I 
 have only arranged that we three should come like this be- 
 cause for all our sakes if people are sayin' those things 
 it ought to be stopped. It's hard for me, you see, beiri' like 
 this to know quite how to stop it, so I thought we'd just meet 
 and talk it over." 
 
 Roddy drew a deep breath. He hated explaining things, he 
 disliked intensely having to say much about anything. He 
 looked round at Rachel with a reassuring smile to tell her 
 that she need not really be alarmed. 
 
 She had left the table and stood facing both the men. Full 
 at her heart, was a deep, glad relief that, at last, at last, the 
 moment had come when she could tell everything, when she 
 might face Roddy with all concealment cleared, when she 
 might, above all, meet her grandmother's definite challenge 
 and withstand it. 
 
 But, indeed, she was to meet it, more immediately and more 
 dramatically than she had expected. Even as she prepared 
 to speak, she caught, beyond the door, strange shuffling 
 sounds. 
 
 The door, rather clumsily, as though handled with muffled 
 fingers, slowly opened. 
 
 Framed in it, leaning partly upon Peters, and partly upon 
 a footman, staring at the room and its occupants from beneath 
 the sinister covering of a black high-peaked bonnet, was the 
 Duchess. 
 
 The old lady caught, for a second, the vision of her grand- 
 children, beat down from her face the effect that their presence 
 had upon her, then moved slowly, between her supporters, 
 towards the nearest chair.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 A QUARTETTE 
 
 " Her dignity consisted, I do believe, in her recognition, always sure 
 and prompt, of the dramatic moment." HENBY GALLEON. 
 
 RACHEL came forward : Roddy from his sofa said some- 
 thing. 
 
 She was, it seemed, unconscious of them all, fixing her eyes 
 upon a large black-leather arm-chair, settling slowly down 
 into it, dismissing Peters and the footman with " Thank you 
 That is very kind " : then, at last leaning her hands upon 
 her ebony cane, raised her eyes and smiled grimly, almost; 
 triumphantly, at Roddy. 
 
 He had been aware, at that first glimpse of her in the door^ 
 way, that he was ashamed of himself. He should not have 
 done it. 
 
 She was older, feebler, more of a victim than he had ever 
 conceived her possibly to be, and in some way the situation 
 that awaited her changed her entirely from the old tyrant 
 who had sat there talking to him only a week ago into 
 someone who demanded of one's chivalry, of one's courtesy, 
 protection. 
 
 Roddy had also caught the light of fierce recognition that 
 had leapt up into Breton's face as he had realized who it was 
 that stood before him. Breton must have many old scores to 
 pay. . . . Roddy was suddenly frightened of the emotions, 
 the fierce resentments, the angry rebellions that he had 
 brought so lightly into collision. 
 
 But the smile that the Duchess flung to him had in it no 
 fear. It said to him : " Oh, young man, this is your little 
 
 plot, is it? Oh, Roddy, my friend, how young you are and 
 
 436
 
 A QUARTETTE 437 
 
 how little you know me if you think that I am in the least em' 
 barrassed by this little gathering. I'm glad that you've given 
 me a chance of showing what I can do." 
 
 She dominated the room ; she was, from the minute of her 
 appearance, mistress of the situation. They realized her 
 power as they had never realized it before. 
 
 Sitting there, leaning forward upon her cane, she remark- 
 ably resembled Yale Ross's portrait. She was even wearing 
 the green jade pendant, and her black dress, her bonnet, her 
 fine white wrists, a gold chain with its jangling cluster of 
 things a gold pencil, a card case, a netted purse these 
 flung into fine relief the sharp white face lit now with an 
 amused, an ironic vitality. 
 
 She was old, she was ill, she was being trodden down by 
 generations hungrier than any that she had ever known, but 
 she was as indomitable as she had ever been. 
 
 She looked about the room ; her glance passed, without any 
 flash of recognition, without sign or signal that she had 
 realized his presence, over the fierce figure of her grandson. 
 
 " Well, my dear," she said to Rachel, " I'm sure this is all 
 very pleasant and most unexpected. Let's have some tea." 
 
 " I'm afraid," said Rachel, " that it's been standing some 
 time. Let me ring for some fresh." 
 
 " No I like it strong. It used always to be strong when 
 I was younger. This new generation likes things weak, I 
 believe." 
 
 Rachel, looking at her grandmother, felt nothing of Roddy's 
 compunction. She did not, even now, grasp entirely Roddy's 
 intention ; she had no sure conviction of the climax that he 
 intended ; but she did know that here, at last, was her chance ; 
 she should lift, once and for all, out from all the lies and 
 confusion that had shrouded them, her attempts at courage 
 and honesty, attempts that had wretchedly, most forlornly 
 failed. 
 
 Breton should know, Roddy should know, the Duchess 
 should know, and she herself should never again go back.
 
 438 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 Breton did not move from the corner where he was sitting; 
 he waited there, his hand pressing hard upon his knee. 
 
 Roddy said, " Most awfully good of you, Duchess, to come 
 out again. I wouldn't have dared to ask you to come if 
 Christopher hadn't said that last time did you no harm." 
 
 " Only for you, Roddy," she answered him almost gaily, 
 " and Rachel of course. To-day's a nice day. All that 
 thunder has cleared the air." 
 
 What her voice must have seemed to Erancis Breton, com- 
 ing back to him again after so vast a distance, bringing to 
 him a thousand memories, scenes and faces that had been 
 buried, a whole world of regrets, and disappointments. 
 
 Rachel gave her her tea ; brought a little table to her side. 
 
 " Thank you, my dear. How are you, Rachel ? You're 
 not looking very well. Richard, who came in to see me this 
 morning, told me that you were ill at dinner last night. He 
 seemed quite anxious." 
 
 " It was nothing, thank you, grandmamma. That thunder 
 always upsets me. I was sorry to interfere with Lady 
 Carloes' dinner-party." 
 
 " Not much of a party from what Richard told me. And 
 she had in a harpist afterwards. Why a harpist ? Poor 
 Aggie Carloes ! Always done the wrong thing ever since she 
 was a child. Yes, her little drawing-room's so stuffy, they tell 
 me must have been intolerable last night." 
 
 It was for all three of them a quite unbearable situation. 
 Roddy had never, even when he was a boy of sixteen, been 
 afraid of her ; now at last he understood what the power was 
 that had kept her family at her feet for so many years, 
 indeed, he seemed now to perceive in all of them in Breton, 
 in Rachel, as well as in the Duchess a strain of some almost 
 hysterical passion, that, held in check though it was, for the 
 moment, promised to flare into the frankest melodrama at 
 ihe slightest pretext. 
 
 Anything better than this pause ; he plunged. 
 
 " You won't forgive me, Duchess," he said abruptly. " I
 
 A QUARTETTE 439 
 
 believe I've done a pretty rotten thing. I didn't intend it 
 that way. I only meant just to clear everything up and make 
 it all straight for everybody, but if I've been unpardonable 
 just say so and give it me hot." 
 
 He paused and cleared his throat. " I wonder if you'd 
 mind, Rachel," said the Duchess, " passing me that little 
 stool that I see over there that little brown stool. Just put 
 it under my feet, will you ? Thank you." 
 
 Roddy desperately proceeded. 
 
 " It's only this. You said the last time you came that you 
 had heard that you knew that you were afraid that 
 Rachel and your grandson, Mr. Breton, were had been 
 seein' too much of one another. You jnst put it to me, you 
 know Well," he went on, trying to make his voice cheerful 
 and ordinary and failing completely, " lyin' on one's back one 
 gets thinkin' and broodin', specially a feller who hasn't been 
 used to it, like me. I got worried not because I didn't 
 trust Rachel and Mr. Breton, of course, all the way, be- 
 cause I do ; but simply that, you know, it's rotten for a feller 
 to be lyin' helpless on his back, thinkin' that people are talkin' 
 about his wife you know how malicious people are, Duchess 
 and I thought it jolly well must be stopped, don't you 
 know, and I wanted it stopped quick and straight and clean, 
 and I didn't see how it was goin' to be stopped unless I'd got 
 us all friendly together here and just squashed it, all of us. 
 And so well, to speak well, here we are . . . And," he 
 concluded, trying to smile upon everyone present, " I do hope 
 it's all right. It didn't seem then a poor sort of thing to do, 
 but somehow gettin' you all here as a surprise ..." He 
 broke off, made noises in his throat, and felt that the room was 
 of a burning heat. 
 
 He remembered, vaguely, that he had designed this meeting 
 as a punishment to the old lady ; he had only succeeded, how- 
 ever, in revealing his own cowardice ; the first glimpse of her 
 had made a poor creature of him. Oh ! how he wished him- 
 self now well out of it ! And yet, behind that thought was
 
 440 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 the knowledge of the little speech that he was soon to make 
 and the way that, with it, he would win Rachel and hold her 
 for ever 1 After all, it came to that, absolutely : Rachel was 
 the only thing in all the world that mattered. 
 
 The Duchess flung upon him a kindly satiric glance, then, 
 turning from him, bent her sharp little eyes upon Rachel, 
 leaning forward upon her cane so that it appeared that it was 
 now only with Rachel that she had any concern. 
 
 " Had I known that my few careless words ! " She broke 
 off with a little impatient gesture. 
 
 " Ah ! Rachel, my dear, I'm truly sorry. My stupid- 
 
 ity . . ." 
 
 But Rachel, her eyes upon Roddy, had got up, had moved 
 across to Roddy's sofa, and stood there, above him. Her 
 eyes moved, then, slowly to her grandmother. 
 
 " There was no need," she said, her voice low and tremb- 
 ling, " for this. If I'd done, as I should, it couldn't have 
 happened. I'm responsible for all of it and only I. Roddy 
 has got you here on false pretences, grandmamma. If you'd 
 rather go now . . ." 
 
 " Thank you," the Duchess said, " I'd much rather stay. 
 It amuses me to see you all together here." 
 
 " Then," said Rachel, " I'll say what I ought to have said 
 before. Roddy," turning passionately round to him, " you 
 shall have everything everything from the very begin- 
 ning. Mr. Breton Francis will agree that that's what 
 we should have done long ago." 
 
 Breton made a movement as though he would rise, then 
 stayed. 
 
 " Aren't we, my dear Rachel," said the Duchess, " making 
 a great deal of a very small affair ? " 
 
 But Rachel, speaking only to Roddy, sinking her voice and 
 bending a little down to him, began, " Roddy, one thing you've 
 got to know it's been from the beginning only myself that 
 was to blame. Francis " she paused, for an instant, over
 
 A QUARTETTE 441 
 
 the name " Francis, please," as he moved again from his 
 corner, " let me tell Roddy . . ." 
 
 She went on then more firmly, turning a little round to her 
 grandmother again : " Roddy, I don't want to defend myself 
 it's the very last thing I can try to do I only want to 
 tell you all three of you exactly the truth. You know, 
 Roddy, that when I said I'd marry you it wasn't a question 
 of love between us at all. We had that out quite straight from 
 the beginning. I was awfully young: I wanted safety and 
 protection and so I took you. You rather wanted me, and 
 grandmother wanted you to marry me, and so there you were 
 too. Then I met my cousin I'd heard about him since I'd 
 been a baby and he'd heard about me. We had a lot in com- 
 mon, tastes and dislikes all kinds of things. We met and 
 he stirred in me all those things that you, Roddy, had never 
 touched. I had found marriage wasn't the freedom I had 
 thought that it would be. I was fond of you, you were fond 
 of me, but there was something always there jogging both of 
 us just putting us out of patience with one another. 
 Things got worse. You never could explain what you felt. 
 I tried, but the whole trouble wouldn't go into words some- 
 how. 
 
 " Francis and I wrote to one another a little and then one 
 day as grandmamma has so kindly told you (here 
 her voice was sharp for a moment) I went to his 
 rooms." Rachel stopped. She was looking straight in 
 front of her, her hands clenched. She seemed to dive deep 
 for courage, to remain for an instant struggling, then to rise 
 with it in her hands. Her voice was strong and unfaltering. 
 " We found that we loved one another. We told each other 
 ... it seemed to Francis then that the only thing was for us 
 to go away together. But I refused. Odd though it may 
 seem, Roddy, I cared for you then more than I'd ever cared 
 for you before, and I think it's gone on since then, getting 
 stronger always. I wouldn't go and I wouldn't see Francis
 
 442 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 again and we weren't to write again unless I found that ouf 
 living together, Eoddy you and I was hopeless. Then 
 I said I'd go to him." 
 
 Her voice sank and faltered " There did come a day 
 when I thought that we couldn't get on any longer. You 
 know what finally . . . Lizzie Eand found out She knew 
 that I intended to go away with Francis. She fought to pre- 
 vent it she was splendid about it, splendid! We quar- 
 relled, and in the middle of it, came your accident ... I 
 wrote afterwards to Francis and told him that it was all over 
 absolutely for ever. Since then only once . . ." 
 She broke off, recovered : " Since then there's been nothing 
 no letter, no meeting nothing. My whole life now is 
 wrapped up in you, Eoddy, and Francis knows that. I've 
 told you the whole truth ! " She turned from him, fiercely, 
 round to her grandmother. " I don't know what you told 
 Eoddy, what you made him believe you've wanted, always, 
 to harm me with Eoddy if you could. At least, now, you 
 can't tell him more than I've done." 
 
 The Duchess stared first at Eachel, then at Eoddy. She 
 had behaved from the beginning as though Breton did not 
 exist. 
 
 Some of her amiability had left her. Her lips were tightly 
 drawn together as she listened and her rings tapped one 
 against the other. 
 
 " This is all rather tiresome/' she said sharply. " Very 
 like you, Eachel, to do these things in public. You get that 
 from your mother. But you're strangely lacking in humour. 
 It all comes from my own very unfortunate remark the other 
 day. Not like you, Eoddy dear, to arrange this kind of thing. 
 Stupid . . . distinctly I'm sure now, however, that you're 
 satisfied. Eachel's certainly been very frank and now 
 perhaps we might leave it." 
 
 It was then that Francis Breton came forward into the 
 middle of the room, his face grey with anger, something sud-
 
 A QUARTETTE 445 
 
 denly unrestrained and savage in his eyes so that the room 
 was filled with a wind of angry agitation. 
 
 He stood in front of his grandmother, but turned his head, 
 sharply, now and again, round to Roddy. So agitated was 
 he that his words came in little gasps, flung out, in little 
 bundles together, and strangely accented as though he were 
 speaking in a language that was strange to him. 
 
 The sarcastic smile came back into the old lady's eyes and 
 she leaned forward on her stick again, looking up into his eyes. 
 
 " I didn't know I didn't know that we were going to 
 meet like this. You didn't know either or you wouldn't have 
 come, but I've been waiting for years for this. It's been nice 
 for me, hasn't it, to sit by whilst you've done everything to 
 make things wretched for me, to ruin me, to push me back 
 to where . . ." 
 
 Roddy's voice interrupted. 
 
 " Mr. Breton, I think you forget " 
 
 Instantly Breton stopped. He forced control upon his 
 voice, he stammered, " I'm ashamed I oughtn't to have 
 But sitting there not being allowed to speak you must 
 excuse me " 
 
 He turned round to Roddy. " You must think me the most 
 complete blackguard. It's only a climax to everything that's 
 happened since I came back. I don't want to defend myself, 
 but it isn't it isn't all so simple as just talking about it 
 makes it look. You're the kind of man to whom everything's 
 just black or white you do it or you don't but I I've 
 never found that. I've been in things without knowing I've 
 been in them. I've done things that would have turned out 
 straight for any other fellow, but they've always been crooked 
 for me. Something always blinds me just when I need to see 
 straightest. That's no excuse, but it's an awful handicap. 
 
 " I won't hide or pretend about it. Why should I ? I 
 loved Rachel. We've only met so little really only that 
 once in my rooms that you can't grudge us that. We had
 
 4A4: THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 things heaps of things in common long before we knew 
 one another. It wasn't like any ordinary two people meeting, 
 and I knew so well that she could make all the difference to 
 my life that I took the chance of knowing her even though 
 she wasn't ever going to belong to me. I don't think I ever 
 really believed that I'd be the man. I know now that she's 
 yours altogether and you ought to have her now that I've 
 seen you I know that. And last night when I faced the fact 
 that I'd have to go all my life without her I realized what she 
 told me long ago, that it was much better just to have my 
 idea of her and not to have had my regret about having 
 spoiled anything for her. I've no confidence in myself, you 
 see. If I thought I were the kind of man just to carry her 
 off and make her happy for ever and ever, then I suppose 
 I'd have been bolder about her long ago, but I know, even 
 if she didn't belong to you at all, that I should be afraid that 
 I'd spoil her life just as I've always spoiled my own. 
 
 " I expect this is all very confused. It's all so difficult and 
 you don't want long explanations, but I'm only trying to say 
 that you needn't ever have any fear again that I'm going to 
 step in or try to have any part in her. We've got our things 
 together that nobody can take from us. We've seen each 
 other so little that most people would say it wasn't much to 
 give up. But things don't happen only when you're together 
 . . ." He stopped suddenly, seemed to stand there confused, 
 turned and flung a fierce, defiant look at his grandmother 
 exactly the glance that an angry small boy flings at someone 
 in authority who has seen fit to punish him then went back 
 to his corner and stood there in the shadow, watching them all. 
 
 Even as he finished speaking he had realized finally that his 
 relationship with Rachel was over, closed, done for. He had 
 known it on that afternoon in the park He had realized it 
 perhaps again in the heart of the storm last night, but now, 
 when he had seen the soul pierce, through Eachel's eyes, to her 
 husband, he knew that Eoddy, one way or another, had at last 
 won her.
 
 A QUARTETTE 446 
 
 Moreover, to anyone as impressionable as Breton, Roddy's 
 helplessness, his humour, his bravery had, on the score of 
 Roddy alone, settled the matter. Breton had his fierce mo- 
 ments, his high inspirations, his noble resolves! . . . Now, 
 as he looked this last time upon Rachel, his was no mean 
 spirit. 
 
 Rachel drew a sharp breath and looked at Roddy with 
 wide eyes, flooded with fear. He had heard now everything 
 that they had to say ; although she had watched him so closely 
 she could not say what he would do. As she saw the two 
 men there before her she felt that she knew Francis Breton 
 exactly, that she could tell what he would say, how he would 
 see things, what would anger him or surprise him. 
 
 But about Roddy she was always uncertain: she was only 
 now, very slowly, beginning to know him, but she was sure 
 that if Roddy were to beat her she would care for him the 
 more, but if Francis Breton were to beat her she would leave 
 him for ever. 
 
 A flush meanwhile was rising over Roddy's neck, up into 
 his face, to the very roots of his hair. 
 
 " It's rather beastly," he said, speaking very slowly and 
 trying to choose his words, " all this talkin'. I might have 
 known, if I'd been able to think about it, what it would be like, 
 but there, I never did. I had a kind of idea that we'd all get 
 it over sort of in five minutes and then have tea, don't you 
 know, and all go away comfortably. I don't feel now that 
 you've rightly got all that everybody thinks about it. It was 
 very decent of you, Mr. Breton, to say exactly so plainly, 
 you know how you felt. But I don't want to talk a lot I 
 can't you know, anyhow. 
 
 " It's only this. I wanted the Duchess to hear me say, 
 amongst ourselves, that I know all about it, that we all know 
 all about it and that there isn't anything for anyone to talk 
 about because there isn't anything in it, and if I hear of any- 
 one sayin' a word they've just got to reckon with me. Rachel 
 and I know one another and, Mr. Breton, I hope you'll go on
 
 4A& THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 bein' a friend of ours and come and see us often. Of course 
 you and Rachel have a lot in common and it's only natural 
 you should have. 
 
 " Now Duchess, you can just tell anyone who's talkin' that 
 Mr. Breton is welcome here just as often as he pleases and 
 he's a friend of mine and my wife's and they can jolly well 
 shut their mouths. Thank God, all that's over." 
 
 ii 
 
 But he was very swiftly to realize that it was not all over. 
 Sharply, quivering through the air like an arrow from a bow, 
 came the Duchess's words. 
 
 " Good God, Roddy, are you completely insane ? " 
 
 She was twisted, distorted with anger, she seemed to take 
 her rage and fling it about her so that the chairs, the tables, 
 Roddy's innocent little sporting sketches and even the case of 
 birds' eggs were saturated with it. 
 
 The gleaming park, the peaceful evening sky, the sharp 
 curve of an apricot-tinted moon, these things were blotted 
 out and the noises of the town deadened by this indignant 
 fury. Rachel had known it in other days, to Breton it evoked 
 long-distant nursery hours, to Roddy it was something utterly 
 new and unsuspected. For the first time in his life he caught 
 a shadow of the terror that had darkened Rachel's young 
 days. 
 
 To the Duchess it was simply that she now clearly discov- 
 ered that she was the victim of an elaborate plot. The three 
 of them ! Oh ! she saw it all ! and Roddy, Roddy who had 
 been the one living soul to whom her hard independence had 
 made concession ! This came, the definite climax to the year's 
 accumulations, the final decision flung at her, before she died, 
 by those two Rachel and Breton from whom, of all living 
 souls, she could endure it least. 
 
 With her rage rose her fighting spirit. She would show 
 them, these young fools, the kind of woman that an earlier 
 and a finer generation than theirs could produce !
 
 A QUARTETTE 447 
 
 They had more there before them than one old woman, sick 
 and ailing, and they should see it. 
 
 Her voice shook a little, but she gave no other sign, after 
 that first challenge : her little eyes flamed from the mask of her 
 face like candles behind holes in a screen. 
 
 " This is your sense of fun, Roddy, I suppose," she said. 
 " You always were lacking in that. I've told you so before. 
 As you asked me here I suppose you're ready for my opinion. 
 You shall have it. I'll only ask you to cast your eye over any 
 friend of ours : see what you would say if this this idiotic 
 folly committed by someone else had come to your ears. I 
 suppose you'd arranged this, the three of you. Well, you 
 shall know what I think. Your tenderness to Rachel is mag- 
 nificent she has obviously reckoned on it, knew that her 
 frankness would serve her well enough. You've already been 
 more patient with her than men would have been in my day. 
 I only hope that your patience may not be too severely 
 tried. . . . 
 
 " As for my grandson, to whom you have so tenderly en- 
 trusted Rachel, your acquaintance with him is quite recent, is 
 it not ? I am sure that if you were to enquire of any man at 
 one of your clubs he would give you quite excellent reasons for 
 my grandson's long unhappy absence from his relations and 
 his country. At any rate you don't know him as well as I do. 
 I could tell you, if you asked me, that it is a long time now 
 since any decent man or woman has sought his society. Do 
 you suppose that his family have not the best of reasons for 
 trying to forget his existence an attempt that he makes un- 
 pleasantly difficult ? 
 
 " Have you heard nothing, Roddy ? Do you really want a 
 man who has been kicked out of society for the most excellent 
 reasons, who has disgraced his name as no member of his 
 family has ever disgraced it before him, for your wife's lover ? 
 If she must have one . . ." 
 
 Rachel, trembling, had come forward, Roddy had cried out, 
 but quietly, stronger than either of them, Breton had faced
 
 448 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 her. She had not, throughout the afternoon, looked at him 
 nor spoken one word to him. Now, her anger carrying her be- 
 yond all physical control, she was compelled to meet his gaze. 
 He stood very quietly beside her chair, looking at the three 
 of them. " My grandmother is wrong," he said, " I am not 
 quite as deserted as she thinks. Just before I came here thia 
 afternoon Uncle John called upon me. I had half an hour's 
 very pleasant talk with him: he told me that, although his 
 mother had not altered her opinion of me, Uncle Vincent and 
 Aunt Adela and himself considered that I had earned " he 
 smiled a little " forgiveness. He hoped that I would 
 understand that while my grandmother was alive I 
 could not be invited to 104 Portland Place, but that he 
 thought that I would like to know that they had realized my 
 
 well, improvement, and that he hoped that we would be 
 friends. I said that I should be delighted." 
 
 The Duchess spoke to him then, her voice shaking so that 
 it was difficult to catch her words. 
 
 " John came said that to you? " 
 
 11 Yes. It was a curious coincidence that to-day " 
 
 ller eyes had dropped. She murmured to herself: 
 
 " John . . . John . . . Adela . . . behind my back . . . 
 
 Adela . . . Vincent " 
 
 They were all silent. She sat there, her head down, lean- 
 ing on her hands, brooding. Her anger seemed to have de- 
 parted, her fire, her fury had fled : she was a very old woman 
 
 and the room was suddenly chilly. Before her were 
 Rachel and Breton: they faced the ancient enemy. But as 
 Rachel stood there, realizing that there had flashed between 
 them the climax of all their lives together, yes, and a climax 
 of forces greater and more powerful than anything that their 
 own small histories could contain, she had no sense of drama 
 nor of revenge nor of any triumphant victory. A little while 
 before she had been almost insane with anger. . . . Now 
 something had occurred. Rachel only knew that the three of 
 them Roddy, Francis and herself were young and im-
 
 A QUARTETTE 449 
 
 menfiely vigorous, with all life before them ; but that one day 
 they would be old, as this old woman, and would be deserted 
 and sick and past anyone's need of them. 
 
 " Oh ! I wish we hadn't ! I wish we hadn't ! " she 
 thought. 
 
 In that moment's silence they all might have heard the 
 sound of the soft, sharp click the click that marked the 
 supreme moment of their relationship to the situation that 
 had, for all of them, been so long developing 
 
 Breton surrendered Eachel, Roddy received her, and, be- 
 yond them all, the Duchess definitely abandoned her world. 
 
 For them all, grouped there so closely together, the heart 
 of their relations the one to the other had been revealed to 
 them. 
 
 Other dramas, other comedies, other tragedies This had 
 claimed its moment and had passed. . . . 
 
 After the silence the Duchess said, " My family I no 
 longer . . ." She stopped, collected, with all her will, her 
 words, then in a low voice said, looking at Breton, " I owe 
 you, I suppose an apology. I owe that perhaps to you all. 
 My children are wiser in their own generation. I no longer 
 understand the way things go all too confused for my 
 poor intelligence." She pulled herself together as an old 
 ship rights itself after a roller's stinging blow. " This has 
 lasted long enough. . . . We've all talked My family are 
 wiser it seems." 
 
 But she could not go on. " Please, Roddy," she said at 
 length, " I think it's time if you'd ring." 
 
 " I'm sorry " he said and then stopped. 
 
 Soon Peters and a footman appeared. She leaned heavily 
 upon them and, staring before her at the door, slowly went 
 out.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 RACHEL AND RODDY 
 
 "Tell me, Praise, and tell me, Lore, 
 What you both are thinking of? 
 O, we think, said Love, said Praise, 
 Now of children and their ways." 
 
 WILLIAM BRIGHTT RAND. 
 
 BRETON" had gone ; the room was empty. 
 Rachel came and, kneeling on the floor, hid her face 
 in Roddy's coat. He put his hands about hers. 
 
 His only desire now was that there should be peaceful 
 silence. His hatred for scenes had always been with him an 
 instinct, natural, alert, untiring, so that he would undertake 
 many labours, forgo many pleasant prizes, if only emotional 
 crises might be avoided. 
 
 This afternoon had showered upon him a relentless succes- 
 sion of reverberating displays, he had perceived one human 
 being after another reveal quite nakedly their tumultuous 
 feelings. It was, for him, precisely as though the Duchess, 
 Rachel, Breton had stripped there before him and expected 
 him to display no astonishment at their so doing that he 
 should have been the author of the business made it no better ; 
 he reflected that he had even looked forward with excitement 
 to the affair. " If I had only known how beastly . . ." 
 
 He was ashamed ashamed of his own action in provoking 
 these things, ashamed of his own lack of understanding, 
 ashamed to have watched the sharpened tempers of hia 
 friends. 
 
 He would never, Heaven help him, take part in any such 
 scene again ! 
 
 But out of it all one good thing had come he had got 
 
 450
 
 RACHEL AND RODDY 451 
 
 Rachel ! As she had looked across the room, meeting his eyes, 
 he had known that at last his long pursuit of her was at 
 an end. . . . 
 
 It never occurred to him that most husbands, after such a 
 declaration as Rachel had just made, would have stormed, 
 reproached, ridden, for a long time to come, the high horse 
 of conscious superior virtue. 
 
 It did not seem odd to him that at the very moment of 
 Rachel's confession he should feel more sure of her than he 
 had ever been before. At last the Nita Raseley debt was 
 paid off. At last he knew, beyond question, that Rachel 
 loved him. Best of all, perhaps, he had seen Breton and 
 felt his own superiority. 
 
 That being so, he wanted no words about the matter. 
 He would like to lie there on his sofa, with her hands en- 
 closed in his and nothing said between either of them very 
 pleasant and quiet there in the dusk. He hoped that he 
 would never again have to explain anything or speak to any- 
 one about his feelings no, not even to Rachel. 
 
 Then he discovered that she was sobbing as she knelt there, 
 and his face crimsoned with confusion and alarm. Rachel, 
 the proudest woman he had ever known, kneeling to him, 
 crying ! 
 
 He tried to lift her, pressing her hands. 
 
 "Rachel dear . . . Rachel." Her words came between 
 her sobs. 
 
 " I should have told you . . . long ago ... I tried to 
 I did indeed . . . but it was because I was frightened . . . 
 because I ... Oh ! Roddy ! you'll never trust me again ! " 
 
 He was burning hot with the confusion of it: he was al- 
 most angry both with himself and her. 
 
 " Please, Rachel . . . please . . . don't . . . it's all over, 
 dear. There's nothing the matter." 
 
 " It's fine of you ... to take it like that . . . But you'll 
 never forgive me, really, you can't It isn't possible. This 
 very afternoon . . . I was going to tell you if all this . . .
 
 452 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 hadn't happened. You'll be different now you must 
 be ... just when I want you so much." 
 
 He glanced in despair about the room. He looted at the 
 sporting prints and the case of birds' eggs and at last at 
 Rachel's photograph. How proud and splendid she was 
 there! This dreadful abasement! 
 
 He stroked her hair. 
 
 " See here, old girl we've had a rotten afternoon, haven't 
 we? Awfully rotten never remember to have spent a 
 worse. All my fault, too poor old Duchess ! . . . but look 
 here, it's all right now. I understand everythin' and and 
 dash it all do stop cryin', Rachel, old girl." 
 
 " It's been bad enough," she said, her voice steadier now, 
 " the way I've been to you all this time, but I thought at 
 least I was honest I've tried I've made a miserable 
 failure But, Roddy, you need never never be 
 afraid of anything again I'm yours altogether, Roddy, to 
 do anything with. . . . 
 
 " All about Francis I was mad somehow It was grand- 
 mamma feeling she had driven me into marrying you. 
 And then Mta . . . and then I didn't know you a bit all 
 there was in you but now," and she raised her eyes and 
 looked at him, " I love you with all my heart and soul and 
 strength." 
 
 He bent down his head and rather clumsily kissed 
 her. 
 
 " You know, Rachel, I was a bit frightened myself this 
 afternoon thought you might be angry because I took you 
 by surprise. You bet, if I'd known what it was going to be 
 like . . . Well, thank the Lord, it's done, and we'll never 
 have another like it I'll see to that. Scenes are rotten 
 things, aren't they ? I always loathed 'em even when I was 
 tiny * so did the governor. ... If he had me up for lickin* 
 all he ever said was, ' Down with your bags ! ' That was all 
 there was about it." 
 
 She leant her cheek against his.
 
 RACHEL AND EODDY 453 
 
 " You've forgiven me all, everything absolutely ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 " There isn't any forgiveness in it," he answered. " It's 
 all the other way, if it's anythin'. . . . You see, I've been 
 thinkin' a lot while I was lyin' here. When there was that 
 business over Nita I said you should always be free just as I 
 told you I ought to be. Well, since since I got that old 
 tumble I haven't any right to hold you at all. I'm just an 
 old log here, no good, anyway, and only a nuisance. And if 
 I thought I was keepin' you tied I'd be miserable. You see, 
 I know you're fond of me now. I've got that. . . . Don't 
 let's talk any more about it. You've got me and I've got 
 you and we aren't afraid of any old woman in the world." 
 
 He held her closely to him, his arms strong about her. 
 
 " There's something else to tell you." 
 
 "Something else?" 
 
 "Yes. We're going to have a child, you and I, Roddy. 
 And now that you've forgiven me it's all right but that's 
 partly what's made me afraid all these last weeks. As it is, 
 you've got me, got me, got me, safe for ever and ever ! " 
 
 " Well, I'm damned ! " said Roddy. 
 
 She could feel his hand trembling upon hers. 
 
 " Oh," she whispered, " I was frightened this afternoon 
 terrified. I thought you'd never see me again." 
 
 Roddy was turning things over in his mind. 
 
 "A kid . . . my word. Just the thing. A boy . . . it'll 
 be jolly for the Place and I can teach him a lot. It'll be 
 somethin' to go back to the house for. Gosh! There's 
 news ! " 
 
 His eyes wandered round the room. 
 
 " Good thing I kept all those eggs nearly broke 'em up 
 too. They're a jolly fine collection. I'd have prized 'em like 
 anything if they'd come to me when I was small." He caught 
 her hand so fiercely that she gave a little cry. 
 
 " What a day ! We'll have to see about the shootin* down 
 at Seddon again, old girl . . . Lord, what an afternoon ! "
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIN 
 
 " So she put the handkerchief, and the pin, and the lock of hair 
 back into the box, turned the key, and went resolutely about her 
 everyday duties again." MRS. EWING. 
 
 LIZZIE was waiting for Lady Adela. She had finished 
 her work for the day, had come from her own room 
 to Lady Adela's and now stood at one of the high windows 
 looking down upon the April sunshine that coloured the digni' 
 ties of Portland Place. 
 
 The room was spacious and lofty, but curiously uncomfort' 
 ahle and lifeless. High book-cases with glass shutters re- 
 vealed rows of " Cornhill " and " Blackwood " volumes, a long 
 rather low table covered with a green cloth held a silver ink- 
 stand, a blotting-pad, pens and a calendar. There were stiff 
 mahogany chairs ranged against the wall and old prints of 
 Beaminster House (white-pillared, spacious with sloping 
 lawns) and Eton College chapel faced the windows. 
 
 This was where Lady Adela spent several hours of every 
 morning and she had never attempted to " do " anything 
 with it. A large marble clock on the mantelpiece ticked out 
 its sublime indifference to time and change. " We're the 
 same, thank God," it said, " as we've always been." 
 
 Lady Adela had told Lizzie that she would come in from a 
 drive at quarter to four and she would like then to speak 
 to her. 
 
 Lizzie's eyes were fixed upon Portland Place, deserted for 
 the moment and catching in its shining surface some hint of 
 the blue sky above it. There was a great deal just then to 
 occupy her thoughts. Ten days ago, in the middle of a little 
 dinner-party that Lady Adela was giving, upstairs the Duchess 
 
 454
 
 LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIH 455 
 
 had had a stroke. Lizzie had, of course, not been there, but, 
 coming next morning she had been told of it. Her Grace 
 was soon well again, no unhappy effects could be discovered, 
 she had not, herself, been apparently disturbed by it, but it 
 had rung, like a warning bell, through the house. " The 
 beginning of the end. . . . We've been watching, we've been 
 waiting soon these walls will be ours again," said the por- 
 traits of those stiff and superior Beaminsters. 
 
 News ran through the Beaminster camp " The Duchess 
 has had a stroke. . . . The Duchess has had a stroke." 
 
 But, for many weeks now, Lizzie had been aware that some 
 crisis had found its hour. Rachel and her husband, Lady 
 Adela and Lord John, even the Duke and Lord Richard had 
 been involved. It was not her business to ask questions, but 
 every morning that saw her sitting down to her day's work 
 saw her also wondering whether it would be her last in that 
 house. . . . 
 
 Lady Adela, however sharply she may have changed in 
 herself, had never permitted her relationship to Lizzie to be 
 drawn any closer. When Lizzie had returned from that 
 terrible Christmas at Seddon, Lady Adela had asked her no 
 questions, had shown no sign of human anxiety or tenderness. 
 She had never, during all the years that Lizzie had been 
 with her, expressed gratitude or satisfaction. She had, on 
 the other hand, never bullied nor lost her temper with her. 
 She had separated herself from all expression or human 
 emotion. And yet Lizzie liked her. She would miss her 
 when their association ended : yes, she would miss her, and the 
 house and the whole Beaminster interest when the end 
 came. 
 
 She wondered, as she stood at the window, whether that 
 old woman upstairs were suffering, what her struggle against 
 extinction was costing her, how urgently she was protesting 
 against the passing of time and the death of her generation. 
 Flying galleons of silver clouds caught the sun and Portland 
 Place passed into shadow; the bell of the Round Church
 
 456 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 began to ring. " Poor old thing," thought Lizzie ; she would 
 not have considered her thus, a year ago. 
 
 Lady Adela came in; she reminded Lizzie of Mrs. Noah 
 in her stiff wooden hat, her stiff wooden clothes, her anxiety 
 to prevent any mobility that might give her away. She 
 looked, as she always did, carefully about the room, at the 
 " Cornhills " and " Blackwoods," at the marble clock, at the 
 prints of Beaminster House and Eton College Chapel, a little 
 as though she would ascertain that no enemy, no robber, no 
 brigand, no outlaw, was concealed about the premises, a little 
 as though she would say " Well, these things are all right 
 anyway, nothing wrong here." 
 
 " I'm sorry, Miss Rand," she said. " I hope that I haven't 
 kept you." 
 
 " No, thank you, Lady Adela, I have only just finished." 
 
 Lady Adela sat down; they discussed correspondence, 
 trivial things that were, Lizzie knew, placed as a barrier 
 against something that frightened her. 
 
 At length it came. 
 
 " Miss Rand, I wonder whether the fact is, my mother 
 has just decided that she wishes to be moved to Beaminster 
 House. I must of course go with her. I hope that this 
 will not inconvenience you. You can, if you prefer not to 
 leave your mother, come down every day by train; it only 
 takes an hour. Just as you please. . . ." 
 
 Lizzie's heart was strangely, poignantly stirred. The 
 moment had come then ; the house was to be deserted. This 
 could only mean the end. She herself would never return 
 here, her little room, the large solemn house, that walk from 
 Saxton Square, the Round Church, the Queen's Hall, Regent's 
 Park. . . . 
 
 But she gave no sign. 
 
 Gravely she replied : " I think I'd better come down with 
 you, Lady Adela, if you don't mind. My mother has my 
 sister. Perhaps I might come up for the week-ends." 
 
 " Yes* That would be quite easy. The other places, you
 
 LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIN 457 
 
 know, are let, but Beaminster has always been kept. The 
 Duke has been there a good deal. It reminds me ... I 
 was there for some years as a girl." 
 
 Lizzie realized that Lady Adela was very near to tears; 
 she had never before seen her, in any way, moved. She was 
 distressed and uncomfortable. It was as though Lady Adela 
 were, suddenly, after all these years, about to be driven from 
 a position that had seemed, in its day, impregnable. 
 
 " Oh ! don't, please don't, now ! " was Lizzie's silent cry. 
 " It will spoil it all all these years." 
 
 Lady Adela didn't. Her voice became dry and hard, her 
 eyes without expression. 
 
 " We shall go down, I expect, on Monday if Dr. Chris- 
 topher thinks that a good day." 
 
 " I hope that the Duchess " 
 
 " My mother's very well to-day quite her old self. I 
 have just been up with her. It is odd, but for thirty years 
 she has never expressed any interest in Beaminster. Now she 
 is impatient to be there." 
 
 " One often, I think, has a sudden longing for places." 
 
 " Yes. I shall be glad myself to be there again." 
 
 "This house?" 
 
 " Oh ! we shall shut it up for the time Lord John will 
 come down to Beaminster with us. I have spoken to Norris, 
 but to-morrow morning, if you don't mind, we will go through 
 things." 
 
 " Certainly." 
 
 " The house has not been shut for a great number of years 
 a very great number. During the last thirty years through 
 the hottest weather my mother was here. 
 
 " It will seem strange . . ." Her voice trembled. 
 
 " Is there anything more this afternoon ? " Lizzie turned 
 to the door. 
 
 " No, I think not. Except perhaps . . ." Lady Adela 
 was in great agitation. Her eyes sought Lizzie, beseeching 
 her help.
 
 458 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Miss Rand I think it only right to say. I'm afraid 
 one cannot in the nature of things it's impossible, I fear, 
 to expect my mother to live very much longer." Her voice 
 caught in a dry strangled cough. " Dr. Christopher has 
 warned us. After my mother's death my life, of course, will 
 ie very different. I shall live very quietly a good deal in 
 the country and abroad, I expect. 
 
 " I shall not, of course, have a secretary." 
 
 " I quite understand," said Lizzie quietly. 
 
 " I want you to know, Miss Rand," Lady Adela continued, 
 " that although during all these years I have seemed very 
 unappreciative. ... It is not my way I find it difficult 
 to express But I have, nevertheless, been very conscious 
 we have all been of the things that you have done for me, 
 indeed for the whole house. You have been admirable; 
 quite admirable." 
 
 " I have been very happy here," said Lizzie. 
 
 " I am very glad of that. I must have seemed often very 
 blind to all that you were doing. But I should like you to 
 know that it is more it is more than simply your duty to 
 the house it is the many things that you have done per- 
 sonally for me. You have not yourself been, I dare say, 
 aware of the effect that your company has had upon me. It 
 has been very great." 
 
 Lizzie smiled. " I've loved the house and the work. It 
 has meant a very important part of my life. I shall never 
 forget it." 
 
 Their embarrassment was terrible. After a moment of 
 struggle Lady Adela's voice was hard and unconcerned again. 
 " You know, Miss Rand, that when the time comes for this 
 change anything that I, or any of us, can do ... I do not 
 know what your own plans may be, but you need have no 
 fear, I think." 
 
 " Thank you very much, Lady Adela. That is very kind." 
 
 There was a little pause then they said good night. 
 
 As Lizzie went down the great staircase, on every ide of
 
 459 
 
 her, the stones of the house were whispering, " You're all 
 going you're all going you're all going." 
 Her heart was very sad. 
 
 n 
 
 As she passed the Regent Street Post Office Francis Breton 
 came out of it. They had not met often lately, but she was 
 conscious that ever since that interview in Regent's Park, 
 they had been very good friends. Her absorption with 
 Rachel and affairs in the Portland Place house had assisted 
 her own resolution and she had thought that she could meet 
 him now without a tremor. Nevertheless the tremor came as 
 she caught sight of him there and, for a moment, the traffic 
 and the shouting died away and there was a great stillness. 
 
 He was very glad to see her. He stood on the post office 
 steps looking richer and smarter than she had ever known 
 him. He wore a dark blue suit and a black tie and a bowler 
 hat all ordinary garments enough but they surrounded 
 him with an air of prosperity that had not been his before. 
 He seemed to her to gleam and glitter and shine with confi- 
 dence and assurance. One hurried glimpse she had had of 
 him some weeks before, miserable, unkempt, almost furtive. 
 She was glad for his sake that all was well with him, but he 
 needed her more when he was unhappy. . . . 
 
 But he was delighted. "Miss Rand. That's splendid! 
 Are you going back to Saxton Square now ? The very thing ! 
 I've been wanting badly to see you ! " It was always, she 
 thought, in little hurried and occasional walks that they 
 exchanged their confidences. There was not much to show 
 for all the elaborate palace that she had once been building = 
 snatches of conversation, clutches at words and movements, 
 even eloquent interpretation of silences well, she was wiser 
 than all that now ! 
 
 But, when they started off together, she found that she 
 was caught up instantly into that fine assumption of intimacy 
 that was one of his most alluring qualities. Radiant though
 
 460 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 he was lie still needed her ; he was more eager to talk to 
 her than to anyone else even though he had forgotten her very 
 existence until he saw her standing there. 
 
 " I am glad to see you. I should have come down and 
 tried to find you, anyway, in a day or two. I've been through 
 a rotten time really rotten and one doesn't want to see 
 anyone even one's best friends in that sort of condition, 
 does one ? " 
 
 " That's just the time your real friends if they're worth 
 anything want to see you. If they can be of any use " 
 
 " But you'd been such a tremendous help to me. I was 
 ashamed to come to you any more. Besides, you'd showed 
 me, in a way, that I ought to get through on my own without 
 asking help from anyone. You'd taught me that. I did 
 try." 
 
 She saw that he was shining with the glory of one who had 
 come, rather mightily, unaided through times of stress. A 
 pleasant self-congratulatory pathos stirred behind his words. 
 " It was a bad time but it's all right now. And I expect it 
 was good for me," was really what he said. 
 
 " I do want to tell you," he went on eagerly, " about 
 Rachel. It's all been so strange wonderful in a way. 
 After that talk I had with you in the park I was absolutely 
 broken up. Oh! but done for! I simply went under. I 
 tried to go back to some of that old set I've told you about be- 
 fore, but the awful thing was that Rachel wouldn't let me. 
 Thinking of her, wanting her when all those other women were 
 about. It simply wasn't possible. . . . 
 
 " It got worse and worse. I thought I'd go off my head. 
 Then do you remember that awful thunderstorm we 
 had ? " 
 
 " Yes," said Lizzie, " I remember it very well." 
 
 " That night was a kind of climax. I'd dined with Chris- 
 topher, then got wandering about it was horribly close and 
 heavy got into some music hall. I suppose I'd been drink- 
 ing anyway, I had suddenly a kind of vision, there in the
 
 LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIN 461 
 
 music hall. I thought Rachel was dead, that I'd lost her 
 altogether. And then it's all so hard to explain but 
 when I came to myself I seemed to understand that the only 
 way I could keep her was by giving her up. . . . I've got it all 
 muddled, but that was what it came to." 
 
 " You were quite right," said Lizzie. 
 
 " Well, then what do you think happened ? The very 
 next day my uncle, John Beaminster, came to see me 
 yes, came himself. Talked and was most pleasant and 
 wanted to be friends. At the same time now just listen to 
 this came a note from Seddon asking me to go and see him. 
 I went, found Rachel there. Apparently my delightful 
 grandmother had been telling him stories about Rachel and 
 me, and he wanted to put things straight. As though this 
 weren't enough, right upon us, without a word of warning, 
 dropped my grandmother herself ! " 
 
 He stopped that he might convey fully to Lizzie the drama 
 of the occasion. 
 
 There was, in his words, just that touch of absurdity and 
 exaggeration that she had noticed at her very first meeting 
 with him. He was always too passionately anxious to thrill 
 his audience ! 
 
 " There was a scene ! You can imagine it ! We all 
 tried to behave at first, although of course it was immensely 
 difficult, I don't think Seddon had in the least realized the 
 kind of thing it would be. Then she the old tyrant 
 could contain herself no longer and burst out concerning me, 
 the blackguard I was and the rest of it. She was furious, you 
 see, at Seddon taking my friendship with Rachel so quietly. 
 He was splendid about it ! 
 
 " Well, when she burst out about all the family cutting me 
 and everybody casting me out, the opportunity was too good. 
 I couldn't help it. I had to tell her that Uncle John had been 
 round that very afternoon to see me and that the family was 
 holding out its arms." 
 
 " What happened ? " said Lizzie, as he paused.
 
 462 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 " She collapsed altogether, completely. She never said 
 another word she just went." 
 
 " You shouldn't have done it ! " Lizzie cried, turning al- 
 most furiously upon him. " Oh ! it was cruel she was so 
 old and all of you so young and strong." 
 
 " Yes ! " he answered her " But think of the years that 
 I've waited the times she's given me, the suffering " 
 
 " No," interrupted Lizzie, quiet again now. " If you're 
 weak enough to be pushed down by anybody like that, then 
 you're weak enough to sink by your own fault, whether 
 there's anyone there or no. She's been hard in her time, I 
 dare say, but everything's left her now and she's ill and lonely. 
 It was wrong of all of you. I shouldn't have thought Sir 
 Roderick " 
 
 " He only wanted things to be straightened out," Breton 
 said eagerly. " He didn't intend to have a scene. But I 
 expect you're right, Miss Rand, as you always are. I've been 
 a brute, the most howling cad. But there's one thing I 
 don't think it's hurt my grandmother. She likes those scenes, 
 and she's been none the worse since." 
 
 " She's been much worse," said Lizzie gravely. " She's 
 dying She's going down to Beaminster on Monday." 
 
 He stopped. " Oh ! but Fm sorry . . . That's dreadful 
 . . . I'd no idea. I'm always responsible " 
 
 He had sunk to such depths that she was compelled to 
 raise him. 
 
 " I don't think you need be disturbed, Mr. Breton. Some- 
 thing of the sort would have been certain to happen very 
 soon. She would have found out in any case . . . and there 
 were other things, I know. Rachel " 
 
 " Ah ! " he broke in, eager again and almost cheerful. 
 " That was the wonderful thing. When I saw her there first 
 with Seddon I'd never met him before, you know I felt 
 angry and impatient. I wanted to carry her off away from 
 everybody. And then, when Seddon began to speak I lost 
 all sense of Rachel's belonging to me. She seemed older, ever
 
 LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIN 463 
 
 so far away from him, and he was so fine, so splendid about 
 it all that I felt I felt well, that I'd do anything in the 
 world for both of them but never anything that could sep- 
 arate them or make him unhappy." 
 
 " You can't separate them now," said Lizzie, " nobody 
 can." 
 
 " No. It was just finished our episode together that 
 wasn't really an episode at all if you consider the little that 
 we saw one another. . . . Besides, I've never got near Rachel, 
 and I felt in some way that the nearer I got to her the farther 
 away she was. Why, the only time that I kissed her she was 
 the farthest away of all ! " 
 
 They were walking up the grey, peaceful square. 
 
 " You don't mind my telling you all this, do you, Miss 
 Rand ? You've seen it all from the beginning. But I'm odd 
 in a way. . . . 
 
 " Uncle John coming to me, Seddon being friendly to me, 
 the family taking me back . . . that seems to have made 
 all the difference to me. Although I'd never confess it, even 
 to myself, I know that if Rachel and I had gone off together 
 I'd never have been happy. You see, we're both alike that 
 way. We're restless, one half of us, but oh ! we're Beaminster 
 the other, and even Rachel, who's been fighting the family 
 all her days, has one part of her that's happy to be married to 
 Seddon and to be quiet and proper and English. That's 
 why neither I nor Seddon ever could hold her because to be 
 with me she'd have had to give up the other. If she had a 
 child, that might " 
 
 " She's going to have a child ! " said Lizzie. 
 
 He stopped and stared at her. 
 
 "Miss Rand! . . . Is that certain ?" 
 
 " Quite." 
 
 " Ah, well, Seddon's got her all right They'll be happy as 
 anything." He sighed. " You know, Miss Rand, Rachel 
 and I have been fighting the old lady, and we seem to have 
 won . . . but I'm not sure whether, after all, she hasn't ! "
 
 464 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 On the step lie paused. 
 
 <l I'm sticking to Candles, I've got work. I'm recognized 
 again. I've got that little bit of Rachel that she gave me and 
 that nobody else can have, and I've got you for a friend 
 Not so bad after all ! " 
 
 He laughed, opened the door for her, and then as they 
 stood in the dark little hall he said : 
 
 " All along you've been such a friend for me. I want 
 someone like you someone strong and sensible, without my 
 rotten sentiment and impulses. We'll always be friends, 
 won't we ? " 
 
 He held her hand. 
 
 " Always," she said, smiling at him. 
 
 But, perhaps, to both of them there came, just then, sighing 
 through the dark still hall, a breath, a whisper, of that hour 
 when life had been at its intensest, that hour when Breton had 
 held Rachel in his arms, that hour when Lizzie had dressed, 
 with trembling hands, for the theatre. . . . 
 
 For Breton his place once again in the world, for Lizzie 
 work and peace of heart, but once on a day life had flamed 
 before both of them and they would never forget 
 
 " Well, good night, Mr. Breton." 
 
 " Good night, Miss Rand." 
 
 When he had gone, she stood in the hall a moment. 
 
 Their little dialogue had closed, with the sound of a closing 
 door, a stage in her life. She would never be the same as she 
 had been before that episode. It had shown her that she was 
 as romantic as the rest of the world. It had made her kinder, 
 tenderer, wiser. And now once again she was independent 
 once again her soul was her own. She could be, once more, 
 his friend, seeing him with all his faults, his impetuosities, his 
 Weak impulses. 
 
 Her place was there for her to fill. It was not the place 
 that she would once have chosen. But she had regained her 
 soul, had once more control of her spirit. She was free.
 
 LIZZIE BECOMES MISS RAND AGAIN 465 
 
 There stretched before her a world of work, of thrilling and 
 ever-changing interest. There were Rachel and Rachel's 
 baby. . . . 
 
 " You seem in very good spirits, Lizzie," said Mrs. Rand as 
 she came in. " I'm sure I'm very glad because it's too tire- 
 some. Here's Daisy gone off. ..." 
 
 m 
 
 Afterwards she said to her mother : 
 
 " I'm going down to Beaminster on Monday. I'm afraid 
 I shall be away some time." 
 
 " Oh ! Lizzie ! " said Mrs. Rand reproachfully. " Well, 
 now That is a pity. Why must you ? " 
 
 " The Duchess is going and Lady Adela must go with her 
 and I must go with Lady Adela." 
 
 " Dear, dear. Whatever shall we do, Daisy and I ? Daisy 
 gets idler every day. It's always clothes with her now. . . . 
 I suppose we shall manage." 
 
 " I shall come up for week-ends." 
 
 " What a way you speak of it ! Of course you don't care ! 
 If you went away for years you wouldn't miss us, I dare say. 
 I can't think why it is, Lizzie, that you're always so hard. 
 Daisy and I have got plenty of feeling and emotion and your 
 father, poor man, had more than he could manage. But 
 I'm sure more's better than none at all, where feelings are 
 concerned." 
 
 " I suppose," said Lizzie, speaking to more than her 
 mother, " that if everyone had so much feeling there'd be no- 
 body to give the advice. Feelings don't suit everybody." 
 
 " You're a strange girl," said Mrs. Rand, " and you're like 
 no one in our family. All your aunts and uncles are kind and 
 friendly. I don't suggest that you don't do your best, Lizzie. 
 You do, I'm sure and nobody could deny that you've got a 
 head for figures and running a house. But a little 
 fceart . ."
 
 466 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " I've come to the conclusion I'm better without any," 
 Lizzie laughed. " I expect I'm more like you and Daisy, 
 mother, than you know " 
 
 " Well, you're a strange girl," said Mrs. Rand again, " and 
 I never understand half you say." 
 
 Lizzie came to her and kissed her. 
 
 " You always miss me, you know, mother, when I'm away, 
 in spite of my hard heart." 
 
 " Well, that's true," said Mrs. Rand, looking at her daugh- 
 ter with wide and rather tearful eyes. " But I'm sure I don't 
 know why I do-"
 
 R 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE LAST VIEW FROM HIGH WINDOWS 
 
 "Not without fortitude I wait . . . 
 ... I, in this house so rifted, marrM, 
 So ill to live in, hard to leave; 
 I, so star-weary, over-warr'd, 
 That have no joy in this your day." 
 
 Francis Thompson. 
 
 ACHEL, on the morning of April 28th, received this 
 letter from Lady Adela: 
 
 " BEAMINSTEE, HQTJSEI, 
 
 April 
 MY BEAK, RACHE!,, 
 
 Mother suddenly last night expressed an urgent 
 wish to see you. She has not been at all well during the 
 last few days and Dr. Christopher, who has been here since 
 last Saturday, says that if you can come down and see her 
 he thinks that it would be a comfort to her. She is sleep- 
 ing very badly, but is wonderfully tranquil and seems to 
 like to be here again. 
 
 If you can come down to-morrow afternoon I will send 
 to meet the 5.32 at Ryston. That is quicker than going 
 round to Munckston. If I don't hear I conclude that you 
 are coming by that train. 
 My love to Roddy. 
 
 Your affectionate aunt, 
 ADELA BEAMINSTEB." 
 
 Rachel showed the letter to Roddy. 
 
 " I'm so glad," she said, " I've been hoping that she'd send 
 for me. I've felt, ever since that day, that I should never 
 
 467
 
 468 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 be easy again if I hadn't the chance to tell her that I see 
 now that I that we were wrong." 
 
 " She's never answered my letter," said Roddy. " Per- 
 haps she wasn't well enough to write. Yes, I'm glad you're 
 going, Rachel." 
 
 She was moved by many emotions, the old lady dying, the 
 house in whose shadow she had spent so many of her timid, 
 angry, adventurous young years, the thrill that the thought 
 of her child gave her now at every vision of the world, the 
 knowledge that in Roddy she, at last, had someone in her life 
 to whom, after every absence, however short, she was eager to 
 return these things shone with new, wonderful lights 
 around her journey. 
 
 The April evenings were lengthening and the dusks were 
 warm and scented. The little station lay peacefully in the 
 heart of green fields ; across the sky, washed clean of every 
 colour, a dark train of birds slowly, lazily took their flight, 
 trees were dim with edges sharp against the sky-line, a dog 
 barking in the distance gave rhythm to the stillness. Rachel, 
 driving through the falling dark, felt, as she had felt it when 
 she was a small child, the august colour and space and dignity 
 of the first vision of the great house, white as a ghost now 
 under the first stars, speaking to her with the old voice, foun- 
 tains that splashed in gardens, the river that ran at the end 
 of the sloping lawns, the chiming clock that rang out the 
 hour as she drove up to the door. 
 
 Aunt Adela, Uncle John, Dr. Chris, Lizzie, they were all 
 there, and their presences made less chill the dominating 
 reason for their assembly. 
 
 Over all the house the shadow fell. The wide, high rooms, 
 the long picture gallery, the comfortless grandeur of a house 
 that had not found, for some years, many human creatures to 
 lighten it, these echoed and flung forwards and backwards 
 the note of suspense, of pause, of impending crisis. 
 
 But Rachel spent one of the happiest evenings of her life 
 with Uncle John and Christopher. She knew that Uncle
 
 LAST VIEW FROM HIGH WINDOWS 469 
 
 John had had a short but terrible interview with her grand- 
 mother, that he had been charged with treachery and dis- 
 honour and every traitorous wickedness. 
 
 A week ago, when he had told her this, he had been the 
 picture of despair and shame. " I hadn't meant her to know. 
 She wasn't to come into it at all. And then that she should 
 meet him at Roddy's on that very afternoon. . . . There's 
 nothing bad enough for me." But he had added with a 
 strange note of defiance so unlike the old Uncle John : " I 
 had felt it my duty, Rachel ... to speak to Francis. I had 
 felt it the right thing to do. I had felt it very strongly." 
 
 Then he had been overwhelmed, now he was once more at 
 peace, and tranquil. 
 
 " It's all right," he told Rachel. " I've been forgiven. I 
 think she's forgiven all of us. 
 
 " She wouldn't listen when I wanted to tell her how sorry 
 I was. She seems now not to care." 
 
 " She's never forgiven anyone anything before," said 
 Rachel. 
 
 " Hush, my dear, I don't think you ought to say that. 
 We've never understood her, any of us. She's always been 
 beyond us. You'll realize to-morrow, Rachel, how wonder- 
 ful, how wonderful she is ! " 
 
 But he was very happy. He had his old Rachel back, the 
 old Rachel whom he had expected never to see again. She 
 sat between him and Christopher, at dinner, no longer fierce 
 and ironical, with sudden silences and swift angers, but affec- 
 tionate, sympathetic, happy. 
 
 " Mother will see you to-morrow," Adela told her. " She's 
 glad that you've come. The morning's rather a bad time for 
 her. Could you stay for the whole day ? " 
 
 " Of course," Rachel said. 
 
 At the end of the evening she went up to Lizzie's room ; 
 when midnight rang from the tower they parted, but first, 
 Rachel said: 
 
 " Lizzie, I wonder whether you realize what you've been
 
 4TO THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 to all of us to me of course . . . but to the others to 
 the whole family." 
 
 "Oh! Nonsense!" 
 
 " Roddy was speaking about it yesterday. He said that 
 you were the most wonderful person in all the world for 
 making all the difference without saying or doing anything 
 by just being there." 
 
 " Oh, Roddy thinks everybody " 
 
 " But this is what I'm coming to. You can't yourself 
 know how much difference you make to everyone. But there's 
 just this. . . . Roddy feels and I feel that when He 
 comes (of course it'll be a boy) we'd rather have you for his 
 friend than anyone in the whole world. You will you will 
 be, won't you ? " 
 
 " My dear I should think so. I'll whack him and bath 
 him and snub him and teach him his letters anything you 
 like." Then she added, rather gravely: 
 
 " There's one thing, Rachel, I've wanted to say for some 
 time. I want you to know definitely, that all wounds are 
 closed now, everything's healed about Mr. Breton, I mean. 
 I was afraid that you might think I still cared. . . . That's 
 all ended, closed up, that little episode. 
 
 " You needn't be afraid, Rachel. I'm happier, I'm freer 
 than I've ever been in my life. . . . Good night, my dear. 
 Your friendship is more to me than any number of heart- 
 burnings. ... I was always meant to be independent, you 
 know. . . ." 
 
 ii 
 
 It was very strange to Rachel, who had been, on so many, 
 many evenings, to that other room, to pause now outside this 
 new door, to knock with the house solemn and still around 
 her, to hear Dorchester's voice, then, with the old hesitation 
 and yes with some of the old fear, to enter. 
 
 She had considered what she would say. Coming down in
 
 LAST VIEW FEOM HIGH WINDOWS 4Yl 
 
 the train she had turned it over and over her apology, her 
 submission, her cry : " See, I'm different utterly different 
 from the Kachel whom you knew. ... I was a prig of the 
 very worst. I deserved everything you thought of me. Just 
 say you forgive me even though you can't like me." This 
 was the kind of thing that, in the train, had seemed possible 
 enough; now, with the opening of the door and that sharp 
 recurrence of the old thrill, she was not at all sure that she 
 wanted to be submissive and affectionate. " I don't feel 
 fond of her nothing could make me there are too many 
 things . . ." 
 
 Space and silence saluted Rachel. Two great mirrors ran 
 from floor to ceiling, high windows flooded the room with 
 light and everything seemed to be intended only for such a 
 situation as this the very house, the grounds, the colour of 
 the day had arranged themselves, in their purity and air and 
 silence, about the central figure. The Duchess lay in a long 
 low chair before the window; she was wrapped in white 
 shawls and thick rugs covered her body ; Dorchester, the same 
 stern, unbending Dorchester, said gravely to Rachel, " Good 
 afternoon, my lady. I hope that you are well," then moved 
 into another room. 
 
 The Duchess had not stirred at the sound of the closing 
 doors, nor at Dorchester's voice, nor at Rachel's approach. 
 She was gazing out, beyond the windows, to the expanse of 
 sunlit country, fields that sloped towards the river, an orchard, 
 white with blossom, running down the hill, its colour, dazzling, 
 almost visibly trembling against the sky. 
 
 Rachel had only seen her in the Portland Place rooms, with 
 the china dragons, the gold ornaments, the red lacquer bed, 
 the blazing wall-paper. It had seemed then that she must 
 have those things around her, that she needed the colour and 
 extravagance to support her flaming passion for life, so curbed 
 and shackled by disease. 
 
 Their absence made her older, feebler, more human, but
 
 4:72 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 also grander and more impressive. Rachel had always feared 
 her, but despised herself for her fear; now she was in the 
 presence of something that made her proud to be afraid. 
 
 She thought that she might be asleep, so she moved, very 
 quietly, a chair forward near the window and, sitting down, 
 waited. The only sound in all the world was the steady 
 splash splash splash of the fountain below, the only 
 movement the stealthy creeping of the long shadows, flung by 
 white boulder clouds, across the shining fields. 
 
 Suddenly, without turning her head, the Duchess spoke. 
 
 " Very good of you, Rachel. I hoped that you would 
 come." 
 
 Her voice was weak, her words indistinct as though she 
 were speaking through muffled shawls, but, nevertheless, be- 
 hind them the presence of the old dominating will was to be 
 discerned, but now it was a will quiescent, struggling no 
 longer for power. 
 
 " I would have come before if you had sent for me. I'm 
 BO glad that you did." 
 
 " I can't talk for very long, my dear, and I don't suppose 
 that you want to spend hours in my company any more than 
 you've ever done. No, you needn't protest. We're neither 
 of us here for compliments. . . . But there's something that 
 I must say to you. Christopher allows me half an hour." 
 
 " I hope you're better that being here has done you 
 good." 
 
 " Better ? Nonsense. I don't want to be better. That's 
 all over and done with. I had another stroke three days ago 
 and the next one will finish me. So don't pretend. You 
 used to be honest enough. I've asked you to come because I 
 want to speak to you about Roddy." 
 
 " He wrote," Rachel said. 
 
 " Yes. I got his letter. I couldn't reply. I can't write 
 myself and I won't have anyone else do it for me. Besides, 
 there was nothing to write about. He said he was sorry about 
 that little conversation we all had together the other day."
 
 LAST VIEW FROM HIGH WINDOWS 
 
 " And I " Rachel began eagerly, " I was so sorry. I've 
 been longing to tell you it was all wrong, but Roddy has no 
 imagination. He didn't realize in the least " 
 
 " Ah, my dear. I expect I know Roddy a great deal better 
 than you do. He'll do the same sort of thing to you, one day. 
 He's got the devil in him and will always have it, however 
 much you coddle him or let him lie there thinking over his 
 sins. Do you suppose I'd have been so fond of Roddy all 
 these years if I hadn't known him capable of such little re- 
 venges ? I liked it. There was no need to write to me and he 
 knew it but I'm afraid you influence him a good deal." 
 
 Rachel coloured. " I hope " 
 
 you." 
 
 She turned then and, very carefully, very slowly, her eyes 
 searched Rachel's face. 
 
 " I let him marry you, you know. I thought it would be 
 good for you. If I'd guessed the effect that you'd have had 
 upon him I'd have prevented it." 
 
 Rachel's anger was rising. 
 
 "What effect?" 
 
 " He's begun to worry about other people a fatal thing 
 with a man like Roddy who was meant to do things, not 
 think about them. But, anyway, that's all too late now. . . . 
 Waste of time discussing it. ... What I wanted you for is 
 this " 
 
 Her eyes left Rachel's face and returned to the window. 
 
 " You're the one person now that influences him and you 
 will always be so. I can see ahead well enough. Poor 
 Roddy . . . and he might have been a fine man. All the 
 same, I admire him for it ; there are things about you I could 
 have liked if I'd wanted to find them, but we've been fighting 
 from the beginning until now when it's the end . . ." 
 She caught her breath, stayed for an instant struggling for 
 words, then went on : 
 
 " We can call a truce now. We don't like one another,
 
 474 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 but just at the moment you're moved a little because I'm 
 feeble and shall be dead in a fortnight. That disturbs you. 
 ... It needn't. Some months ago a moment did come when 
 I realized that I should die soon. I hated it I fought and 
 struggled with all my might . . . but now that it has come 
 it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. I regret nothing. I've 
 had my time. I hate the new generation, the manly woman 
 and the soft man with all this sentimental nonsense about 
 caring for ether people. Think of yourself, fight for yourself, 
 keep up your pride that's the only way the world's ever 
 been run. You're a sentimentalist and you're making one of 
 Roddy. . . . Nonsense it all is. ... But all this isn't what 
 I really wanted to say." She turned back and her eyes, as 
 again they held Rachel, were softer. 
 
 " Roddy's been my only weakness. I've loved that boy and 
 he's far too good and fine for a wobbler like yourself. That's 
 why I hated it the other day. I couldn't bear that he should 
 see me beaten by the pair of you, both of you thinking your- 
 selves so noble with your fine confessions not that I believe 
 a word that you said but it was clever of you. You are 
 clever and know how to manage men. 
 
 " Yes, that hurt me, but afterwards I loved him all the 
 better, I believe. I'd rather he hadn't written me that soppy 
 letter, but that was your doing, of course. . . . But listen. 
 After I'm gone, I want Roddy to think of me kindly. He's 
 going to think very much what you make him. It's in your 
 hands. You, when you've got past this sentimental moment, 
 will hate the memory of me. It's natural that you should 
 and I'm sure I don't mind. But I want you to leave Roddy 
 alone. If he likes to think of me kindly, let him. Don't 
 blacken his mind to me. I wish to feel my only weakness 
 I do believe that Roddy will be fond of my memory. That 
 rests with you." 
 
 She stopped with a little final movement of her head as 
 though, having said what had been in her mind for a long
 
 LAST VIEW FROM HIGH WINDOWS 475 
 
 while, she was finished, absolutely, with it all, and wanted 
 no word more with any human being. 
 
 Eachel answered quietly : " You've said some rather hard 
 things. You mustn't feel that I'd ever try to make Roddy 
 think badly of you. That's not fair. . . . I'm not very proud 
 of myself, but you don't understand me. You've always been 
 determined not to and perhaps, in the same way, I've not 
 understood you. We're different generations, that's what it 
 really is. 
 
 " But over Roddy we can meet. I didn't love him when ] 
 married him, but I do now, and we're going to have a child. 
 . . . That will make us both very happy, I expect. You love 
 Roddy and I love him. You needn't be afraid that I'll harm 
 his memory of you." 
 
 Her voice was trembling and she was very near to tears. 
 She would have liked to have said something that would have 
 offered some terms of peace between them, something upon 
 which, afterwards, she might look back with comfort. For 
 her that hostility seemed, in the face of death, so small and 
 poor a thing. 
 
 But no words would come. 
 
 Her grandmother, in a voice that was very weak, said : 
 
 " Thank you, Rachel ; that's a great relief to me. That's 
 good of you . . . and now, my dear, I think Christopher 
 would say that I'd talked enough. Good night." 
 
 Rachel knew that this was their last meeting, that here was 
 the absolute conclusion of all the years of warfare that there 
 had been between them. 
 
 There was nothing to say. . . . She bent down and kissed 
 the dry cheek, waited for an instant, but there was no move- 
 ment. 
 
 " Good night, grandmamma," she said. " I hope that 
 you'll be better to-morrow," then softly stole away.
 
 476 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 in 
 
 The Duchess lay very still, watching the shadows as they 
 crept across the fields. They were evening shadows now, for 
 the sky, pink like the inside of a shell, had no clouds upon 
 its surface. 
 
 She would not get up again; this evening should be the 
 last to see her gaze upon the world. It was too fatiguing and 
 all energy had flowed from her, leaving her without desire, 
 without passion, without regret, without fear. Very dreamily 
 and at a great distance figures and scenes from her past life 
 hovered, halted, and passed. But she was not interested, 
 she had forgotten their purpose and meaning, she did not 
 want to think any more. 
 
 The splashing of the fountain was phantasmal and very 
 far away. 
 
 The long black shadow crept up the field. She watched 
 it. At the top of the red ridge of field, against the sky-line, 
 very sharp and clear, was a gate, golden now in the sun. 
 When the shadow caught it she would go to bed . . . and 
 she would never get up again. 
 
 She waited lazily, indifferently. The gate was caught; 
 the last gleams of the sun had left the orchard and the even- 
 ing star glittered in a sky very faintly green. 
 
 She touched a bell at her side and Dorchester appeared. 
 
 " I'll go to bed, Dorchester." 
 
 " Very well, Your Grace." 
 
 " I shan't get up again. Too much trouble." She turned 
 away from the window and closed her eyes.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN, CHRISTOPHER 
 
 "'Everybody came in to dinner in the best of spirits. . . . Every- 
 thing was discussed.'" Inheritance. 
 
 THE Duchess of Wrexe died on the morning of May 2nd 
 at a quarter-past three o'clock. The evening papers 
 of that day and the morning papers of the next had long 
 columns concerning her, and these were picturesque and 
 almost romantic. She appealed as a figure veiled but signifi- 
 cant, hidden but the landmark of a period " Nothing was 
 more remarkable than the influence that she exercised over 
 English Society during the thirty years that she was com- 
 pletely hidden from it " or again, " Although disease com- 
 pelled her, for thirty years, to retire from the world, her in- 
 fluence during that period increased rather than diminished." 
 
 It must be confessed, however, that London Society wa& 
 not moved to its foundations by the news of her death. Pecn 
 pie said, " Oh ! that old woman ; gone at last, I see. She's 
 been dying for years, hasn't she? Quite a power in her 
 day . . ." Or, " Oh, the Duchess of Wrexe is dead, I see, 
 I must write to Addie Beaminster. Don't expect the family 
 will miss her much awful old tyrant, I believe . . ." o> 
 " I say, see Johnnie Beaminster's old lady's gone ? She kept 
 the whip-hand of him in his time. . . . Damned glad he'll 
 be, I bet." 
 
 Two years earlier and it would not have been thus, but 
 now there was the War (daily the relief of Maf eking was 
 frantically anticipated) and fine regal majesty, sitting digni- 
 fied in a solemn room, irritated the world by its quiescence. 
 
 " What we're needing now is for everyone to get a move 
 
 on. "No use sitting around." A few carefully selected 
 
 477
 
 478 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 American phrases can very swiftly kill a great deal of dig- 
 nity and tradition. 
 
 In the Beaminster camp itself there was an unexpressed 
 disappointment. They had grown accustomed to thinking of 
 her as a fine figure, sitting there where, rather fortunately, 
 they were not compelled to visit her, but where, nevertheless, 
 she had a grand effect They had known, for a long time 
 now, that she was not so well, but they had expected, in a 
 vague way, that she would go on living for ever. They had 
 been making, during the last two years, a succession of en- 
 forced compromises and now the crisis of her death showed 
 them how far they had gone without knowing it. 
 
 " Things will never be the same as they were . . ." And 
 in their hearts they said, " We're getting old we aren't 
 wanted as we once were." 
 
 Meanwhile there was a fine funeral down at Beaminster. 
 The Queen was represented, the Prime Minister, the Leader 
 of the Opposition, all the heads of all the old families in Eng- 
 land, artists and one or two very distinguished actor-managers 
 (who looked far more sumptuous than anyone else present) 
 . . . Everyone was there. 
 
 Christopher detected Mrs. Bronson and wondered what the 
 Duchess would think of it if she knew : Brun, also, although 
 Christopher did not see him, flashed upon them from the 
 Continent, was present, neat and solemn and immensely ob- 
 servant. It was all admirable and worthy of the best Eng- 
 lish traditions. 
 
 " She was a fine figure," said the Prime Minister, who had 
 known her and disliked her intensely. " We shall never see 
 her like again," but his sigh was nearer relief than regret. 
 
 Christopher, three days after the funeral, went to have tea 
 with Roddy and Rachel. He was a man of great physical 
 strength and had never had " nerves " in his life, but he was 
 feeling, just now, tired out. He had not realized, in the
 
 4T9 
 
 least, during all these years, the part that that old woman 
 played in his life, and he found that his whole scheme of 
 things was now disorganized and without vitality. It was 
 vitality that she had given him, a tiresome, troublesome, 
 irritating vitality perhaps, but, nevertheless a fire, an energy, 
 a driving curiosity. 
 
 He would capture it again, his eagerness to investigate, to 
 assist, to prophesy, but it would never any more be quite the 
 same energy everyone with whom she had had anything 
 to do would find life now a little different. . . . 
 
 Some weeks before her death Roddy had sent for him. 
 " I'm awfully upset, Christopher," he said and then he had 
 told him about the scene in his rooms and had begged to know 
 the truth. " I hear she's much worse she's had a stroke 
 I wrote to her and she hasn't answered me. Christopher, 
 tell me truthfully, was it her comin' to me that day and all 
 the kick-up and everythin' that made her so much worse ? " 
 
 Christopher had reassured him " Quite honestly, if she'd 
 asked my leave to let her go out that afternoon I'd not have 
 granted it. But as it turned out she wasn't a bit the worse. 
 I saw her directly afterwards she told me all about it. 
 She was rather grimly pleased. Mind you, it marked, I 
 think, a kind of crisis. As she put it to me she saw that 
 afternoon that the whole scheme of things had gone out of 
 her hands and that the new generation didn't want her But 
 I think she was glad to have it settled for her, she was tired of 
 it all, her struggle to keep it had been much earlier. 
 
 " She just wasn't going to bother any more and she might 
 have gone on in that sort of way for years." 
 
 But although he had thus reassured Roddy he was not, in 
 his heart, so certain. He seemed to see a long chain of events 
 (he dated his own observation of them from the time of 
 Rachel's coming out), that had led both Rachel and the 
 Duchess to the climax of their actual challenge one to another. 
 It was not that that meeting in Roddy's house had been of 
 itself so important, it was rather that the fates had selected
 
 480 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 it as a definite culmination of the struggle. That meeting 
 stood for a sharp visualization of much more than the per- 
 sonal conflict. 
 
 She had been glad to go, he did not in any way see her 
 death as a tragedy, but her departure had marked the open- 
 ing of a new period, a new personal history for the remaining 
 characters, ultimately perhaps a new social epoch for every- 
 body 
 
 Meanwhile he was happy about Roddy and Rachel for the 
 first time since their marriage and, as he was a man who 
 lived in the lives of his friends, their happiness meant his 
 own. 
 
 He found Lord John with Roddy, Rachel was with Aunt 
 Adela, but " would be back for tea." Lord John, rather 
 solemn and awkward in black clothes, was demanding com- 
 fort and assistance from his friends. His trouble was that 
 he did not miss his mother as fundamentally as he desired, 
 and that, at the same time, life was now most terribly differ- 
 ent. His brothers, Vincent and Richard, had instantly after 
 the funeral adapted themselves, with gravity and assurance, 
 to the new conditions. 
 
 Lord John had never adapted himself to anything, but had 
 fitted his stout body into the soft places that life had offered 
 to him and had been placidly grateful for their softness. 
 Only once had he shown energy of his own initiative and 
 that had been in the matter of his nephew Francis, and of 
 that now he did not dare to think. 
 
 He could never, so long as he lived, forget the slightest 
 detail of that horrible quarter of an hour with his mother 
 when she discovered his iniquity and yet, even now, he 
 felt, obscurely but obstinately, that he had done right. 
 Nevertheless he would never again take life into his own 
 hands: upon that he was absolutely resolved. What he 
 needed now was reassurance from his friends. He had al- 
 ways before found that life arranged itself about him in a
 
 481 
 
 comfortable way and he confidently expected that it would 
 do so now, but meanwhile he must have kind looks and words 
 from somebody. He was a man who hailed with joy the op- 
 portunity of bestowing affection upon a friend who was not 
 likely, at a later time, to rebuff him. He had never been 
 quite sure of Rachel she was so strange and uncertain 
 but upon Roddy, helpless, good-natured, and a man of his 
 own world, he felt that he could rely. He spent therefore 
 many hours at Roddy's side, rather silent, smiling a great 
 deal, playing chess with him, sticking little flags on the War 
 Map. 
 
 At times, as he sat there, he would think of his mother, 
 of the Portland Place house shortly to be sold, of a world 
 altered and alarming, and then he would wonder how long 
 the time would be before he might again take up his old 
 habits, his old houses, his old comforts, and then his fat cheer- 
 ful face would gather wrinkles upon its surface. " It's after 
 a thing like this that a feller gets old Richard and Adela 
 and I We'll have to make up our minds to it." 
 
 Christopher found them busied with the map, discussing 
 the probable hour of Mafeking's relief. Lord John looked at 
 Christopher a little anxiously, perhaps Tie was going to be 
 down upon him! But Christopher was a very quiet and 
 genial Christopher. He sank down into a chair with a sigh 
 of comfort, waved his hand to them. 
 
 " Don't you mind me. I'm tired to death. Was up all 
 last night with a case " 
 
 " You see," said Roddy, " there's Ramathlabama. Well 
 Plumer lost a lot o' men there and they say his crowd have 
 had fever too and there ain't much to hope for there now 
 Roberts - 
 
 But Lord John's attention was distracted. He wished to 
 be quite sure that Christopher did not regard him with 
 severity. 
 
 " You look fagged out, Christopher."
 
 482 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " I am ! " said Christopher, smiling. 
 
 " I'm feeling a bit done up, too. Think I'll take Adela 
 abroad somewhere for a little." 
 
 " I should," said Christopher. " Excellent thing for both 
 of you." 
 
 " Now where do you suggest ? " 
 
 " Oh, anywhere different from London. Go on a 
 cruise " 
 
 '* Adela's a bad sailor wretched. I'm not very good 
 myself." 
 
 They discussed places. Christopher was more than 
 friendly. There had been occasions when he had been the 
 stern family physician and had treated Lord John with some 
 severity. Now there was implied a new comradeship as 
 though they had passed through perils together and would 
 have always between them in the future a strong bond of 
 friendship. 
 
 John felt that the atmosphere at this moment was so 
 friendly and comforting that he would not risk the disturb- 
 ance of it. 
 
 He got up. 
 
 " Think I'll be going on, Eoddy. Don't like leaving Adela 
 alone. Rachel will be on her way here now, so I'll be getting 
 back." 
 
 He was staying with Adela at a quiet little hotel in Dover 
 Street. 
 
 " Well, good-bye for the moment, Christopher. Adela'd 
 be very glad if you'd come in and see her. Come and have 
 lunch with us to-morrow." 
 
 " Thanks, I will." 
 
 He stood, for a moment, looking out upon the park, warm 
 and comfortable under the sun. He thought of Eachel. He 
 had regained the old Eachel the other night at Beaminster 
 dear Eachel ! 
 
 Eachel, Eoddy, Christopher how nice they all were! 
 There was, he felt, a new feeling of security amongst them
 
 RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN 483 
 
 all. Yes, lie really did believe that life, now, was going to be 
 very comfortable and safe and easy. . . . 
 
 " So long, Roddy." 
 
 He beamed happily upon them and went. 
 
 Jacob, the dog, came in from his afternoon walk, very 
 grave, paying no attention to Christopher, but going at once 
 and lying, full length, near Roddy's sofa, his head between 
 his paws, his eyes fixed upon his master. 
 
 " What's happened to all your other dogs ? " asked Chris- 
 topher. " They must be missing you very badly." 
 
 " Oh, they're down at Seddon, got a jolly good man there 
 whom I can trust don't think they miss me. This beggar 
 would though. Funny thing, Christopher when I was 
 goin' about and all the rest of it I thought nothin' of this dog, 
 couldn't see why Rachel made such a fuss of it now 
 why I don't know how I'd ever get on without it, so under- 
 standin' and quiet with it all too. Nothin' like a trouble of 
 some sort for showin' who's worth what, whether they're 
 dogs or people. . . ." 
 
 " I hope the funeral did Rachel no harm," Christopher 
 said. 
 
 " Not a bit of it. She'd had a last interview with the old 
 lady and knew, after that, she'd never see her again. In a 
 way she hasn't felt it, but in a way too I believe she'd like to 
 have all the old time over again and see whether she couldn't 
 manage it better . . . she said to me she'd never understood 
 the old woman until that last talk with her, not that there 
 was much love lost between 'em even then. Was Breton 
 there?" 
 
 " No He scarcely could go, in the circumstances." 
 
 " Funny feller, Breton. What puzzles me is what did he 
 go and give up Rachel so easily for ? I couldn't tell you why, 
 but that day he came here I was as sure as I was lyin' here 
 that whatever there was between them was finished. I 
 wouldn't have said what I did, seemed to take it so quietly, 
 if I hadn't seen in a minute it was all over."
 
 484 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 " Ah, you don't know Francis," said Christopher. " It's 
 all romantic impulses that set him going Rachel romantic 
 impulse on one side, getting back to the family romantic im- 
 pulse on the other. He knew if he went off with her that 
 getting back to the family would be over for ever as far as 
 he was concerned. He knew that he'd never cease to regret 
 it. ... John Beaminster coming to him gave him what he'd 
 been waiting for, longing for. He seized it " 
 
 "Yes, but it was more than that," said Eoddy slowly. 
 " It all lies with Rachel. He never got close to her any more 
 than I've done. I know now that she's fond of me, but it's 
 by the child I'll hold her and by my helplessness, nothin' 
 else. And she'll have her wild moments when myself and 
 everythin' about me will seem simply impossible, just as if 
 she'd gone off with Breton she'd have had her comfortable 
 domestic sort of longin's and hated him and everythin' about 
 Mm. I believe Breton knew just as I knew that never 
 tryin' to hold her was the way to keep her, and he'd have had 
 to have her if he'd gone off with her. . . . 
 
 " Anyway, Rachel wouldn't be so adorable if there wasn't 
 a lot of her that no one man could master. But I've been 
 given all the tricks in the game by bein' laid up like this 
 just when I thought I'd lost all worth havin' in life and never 
 a chance of a kid again! . . . Funny thing, Life! 
 
 " But she's mine ! Christopher, and no one can take her. 
 Breton's got his idea of her; there is a bit of her that he 
 stirred that I never could touch, but it don't matter she's 
 the most wonderful creature on this earth and I'm the luckiest 
 beggar." 
 
 " She'll be quieter," said Christopher, " now that the 
 Duchess is gone. They were always conscious of one 
 another. . . ." 
 
 " And now there'll be the kid instead. If he's a boy I 
 swear he shall be the best rider, the best sportsman in thia 
 bloomin' old world not that I'd mind a girl, either. I'd 
 like to have a girl just the time for a woman nowadays.
 
 RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN 485 
 
 Whichever way it is I'll be contented. Not, you know," he 
 added hastily, " that I'm going to be a sort o' blessed angel 
 with domestic bliss and never wantin' to get off this old sofa 
 and the rest not a bit of it it's damned tryin' and I 
 curse hours together often enough. Peters has the benefit of 
 it. I wasn't born an angel and I shan't die one. . . ." 
 
 " Nobody wants you to," said Christopher. 
 
 " Well, you needn't worry. But it's funny how I get 
 talkin' nowadays never used to say a word now I gaa 
 away . . . Well, cheers for the new generation, cheers for 
 young Roddy Secundus. . . . Long life to him ! " 
 
 " There's one thing," said Christopher, looking at him. 
 " Whatever inspired you, that day you had the scene here, 
 to behave to Frank Breton as you did ? To give them both 
 carte blanche it wouldn't be the way of most husbands 
 confronted with such a question it was the only way for 
 Rachel . . . but how did you know her well enough ? You'll 
 forgive my saying so, your method as a rule is to drive 
 straight in, let fly all round, and then count the bits." 
 
 " If you love anybody," said Roddy, with confusion and 
 hesitation, " as much as I love Rachel you become wonder- 
 fully understandin'. . . . Look here," he broke off, " don't 
 let's talk any more rot. Just drop all jaw about feelin's and 
 such. There's been an awful lot of it lately." 
 
 He would say no more; they got the war map and, very 
 happily for the next quarter of an hour, moved flags up and 
 down its surface. 
 
 Then came Rachel and, after her, tea. They were a quiet 
 but very happy company during the next half-hour. 
 
 " How's Aunt Adela ? " asked Roddy. 
 
 " Very well, considering," said Rachel. " Of course she's 
 confused and lost her bearings rather. She misses the Port- 
 land Place house more than anything, I think she was there 
 so long. But Uncle Vincent was right ; it would have been 
 very bad for her if she'd stayed in it. ... She's quiet and 
 depending a lot upon Lizzie "
 
 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 When tea was ended Rachel said, " Dr. Chris, I've got 
 something to say to you. I'm going to tear you away from 
 Roddy for five minutes if you'll come upstairs." 
 
 " Well, that's a nice sort of thing " protested Roddy. 
 
 " I won't keep him." She took him up to the little draw- 
 ing-room and as they sat there by the window together he 
 thought of that day when he had told her the Duchess was 
 downstairs with Roddy. They had all travelled a long way 
 since then. 
 
 " There's a favour I want you to grant me." 
 
 " Anything in the world." 
 
 " It f s about Francis " She gave him the name with 
 a little hesitation and with an air of restraint as though about 
 the very whisper penalties could linger. 
 
 " You're the best friend that he's got the best friend 
 any man could have and I want you to care for him, to 
 look after him, to watch over him. I know," she went on 
 hurriedly, " that you always have done that, but I want you 
 to feel now that you're doing it a little for my sake as well as 
 your own. I want you to be the one link that I've still got 
 with him." 
 
 " But Roddy asked him " began Christopher. 
 
 " Oh yes ! I know Roddy was splendid. But of course 
 that can't be. We can't meet, at any rate for years. Be- 
 sides, that time is so utterly done with. There's only Roddy 
 now for me in all the world. But I know, better, I expect, 
 than you think, how weak Francis is, how much he depends 
 upon what the people whom he cares for say to him and 
 so I want you " 
 
 " But of course," Christopher said. " He knows that he 
 can count on me whatever happens he's always known 
 that." 
 
 He stopped and waited for her to continue: he saw that 
 she had more to say. 
 
 " It's so strange," she said, staring, her eyes deep and 
 black seeing into sacred places that were known only to her,
 
 RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN 487 
 
 " how grandmother's death haa cleared, amazingly, the air. 
 The motive for almost everything has gone. I didn't see 
 I hadn't the least idea how all my thoughts and actions 
 and wishes and impulses came from my sense of opposition 
 to her. Francis saw that knowing that we both hated her 
 and that was why I was so difficult with Roddy, because I 
 thought that grandmother had arranged the marriage and had 
 him under her thumb I had no idea of the kind of person. 
 Roddy was." 
 
 " Nor had I nor had anyone," said Christopher. 
 
 " That whole affair with Francis was in idea always 
 more than in fact. I knew, and I believe that he knew, 
 that it was simply a piece of wild rebellion on my part ; and 
 on his well, he's like that, romantic, rebellious, responding 
 in a minute to everything, but wanting, really, all the time to 
 be safe and proper. That day we met in his rooms, we both 
 knew, at heart, that something was missing something one 
 had to have if one was going to break away altogether. He 
 was always a rebel by force of circumstances, never by real 
 inclination." 
 
 She put her hand on Christopher's knee and drew very 
 close to him. " Chris dear, I'm terrified now when I think 
 of how near I was to absolute, complete disaster. If it hadn't 
 been for Roddy's accident and for Lizzie . . . Lizzie's been 
 to all of us everything in the world. 
 
 " Do you remember once telling me about Mr. Brun's 
 Tiger ? I've often thought of it since and it seems to me now 
 that to all of us for Roddy and Francis and Lizzie and 
 me the moment of our consciousness came. Ever since 
 that day when they carried Roddy back to Seddon each one 
 of us has had to wait, just holding ourselves in. ... But, 
 you know, Dr. Chris, that's the secret of the whole matter. 
 It wasn't I, or Breton, or even Lizzie or Roddy that defeated 
 grandmother it was simply Real Life. First the War, 
 then Roddy's accident Roddy's accident most of all. We 
 had, all five of us, been leading sham lives, then sudden!/
 
 488 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 God, Fate, Providence, what you will, steps in, jerks us all 
 back, takes away from all of us what we thought we wanted 
 most, puts us in line with the real thing our Tiger, if you 
 like. Grandmother simply couldn't stand it. Lizzie and 
 Roddy are real half of Breton and me, and most of grand- 
 mother unreal Well, Lizzie and Roddy have just put things 
 straight quietly. . . . Grandmother's generation saw things 
 * through a glass darkly ' They're gone. It's all going to 
 be ' face to face ' now." 
 
 Christopher looked at her, smiling. She was so young, 
 so adorably young with her seriousness. 
 
 She broke in " What rot I'm talking ! It only comes to 
 this, that I wish now, like anything, that I'd been nicer to 
 grandmamma. One sees things always too late. . . . I'd 
 like to have another try, to begin with grandmamma again, 
 to be more tolerant, to hate her less. But I expect in the 
 end it would be the same. She'd have had me tied up, with- 
 out a will of my own, without a word to say ! . . . that was 
 her idea of controlling us all. It's over, it's done with no 
 one, I expect, will have her kind of power again. . . . But 
 she was fine ! I only see now how fine she was ! 
 
 " No one, I expect, will have her kind of power again. . . ." 
 
 Now she stood away from Christopher, looking at him and 
 also beyond him, as though she were finally, once and for all, 
 surveying, cataloguing that same power 
 
 " She wasn't terrible, she wasn't fine, she wasn't really 
 anything except a kind of peg for all sorts of traditions to 
 hang on to. In herself she was just a plucky, theatrical, 
 obstinate old woman. It was simply the idea of her that 
 frightened us all. I remember the first time that I saw Yale 
 Ross's picture of her He'd caught all the ceremony and the 
 terror. It was then that I had the first faint suspicion that 
 she didn't, in herself, live up to the picture in the least. 
 
 " I suppose," she went on, coming up closer to him, " that 
 that's why no one will ever be like her again because no one 
 will ever be taken in so completely by shams again, never by
 
 RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN 489 
 
 the empty shell of anything. But that's just how she in- 
 fluenced us all of us. Myself, you, Lizzie, Roddy, Francis 
 ... we were all mixed up in it 
 
 " And then the first moment that we really came into con- 
 tact with her she wasn't anything wasn't simply there. 
 Do you know, Dr. Chris, seeing her now, just an old sick 
 woman, conscious that everyone was escaping her, I almost 
 love her ! ... I do indeed ! " 
 
 She sprang up and stood hefore him and laughed, crying 
 
 " I'm grown up, Dr. Chris, I'm grown up ! It's taken a 
 time, but it's happened at last! Meanwhile I shall be the 
 most perfect wife, the most perfect mother, and when the 
 Tiger is restive there'll be the youngest Seddon to put it all 
 into. Oh! What a child that child will be! Roddy and 
 his impatience, me and my tempers " 
 
 She laughed and for an instant her old fierce defiance was 
 there; then, as though some spirit had flashed, before his 
 eyes, through the window into space and freedom it was gone. 
 She herself proclaimed its dismissal. 
 
 " It's gone it's all gone Dr. Chris. I'm the happiest 
 woman in England ! " 
 
 But even as she spoke her eyes were wistful; half-seen, 
 half-recalled, eloquent with a colour, a flame that was too 
 fierce for her present world, hung before her the memory of 
 a moment when, in a darkened room, she had caught a letter 
 to her lips, had sunk upon her knees before a passion whose 
 face she had scarcely seen but whose voice she had heard 
 and still now, in her new life, remembered. She had had 
 her moment . . . the last strains of its dying music were still 
 in her ears. She caught her breath, then, turning, dismissed 
 it; and, standing back from Christopher, gave him her last 
 word 
 
 " But look after Francis. Be with him as much as you 
 can. . . . He needs all that you can spare He's got to be 
 he's simply got to be the success of the family ! "
 
 CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 EPILOGUE PROLOGUE 
 
 "Third Apparition A Child Crowned . . . 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 LATE on the evening of May 17th Christopher heard of 
 the relief of Mafeking. It was too advanced an hour, 
 he understood, for the town to display its triumph that even- 
 ing. Let Christopher wait. 
 
 The following night Brun, whom he had not seen for many 
 months, appeared. The clocks had struck nine and Chris- 
 topher was finishing his dinner, when the little man, shining 
 and dapper, pleased and impersonal, was shown in. 
 
 " Hullo ! " cried Christopher ; " thought you were abroad 
 somewhere." 
 
 " I saw you at the Duchess's funeral. Of course I was 
 there. What do you suppose? Meanwhile come out now 
 and see your fine people make manifestations." 
 
 " Is there a noise ? " 
 
 "A noise! Mon Dieu! But come and look! " 
 
 They went out together. Harley Street was silent and 
 deserted and above it a night sky, scattered with stars, was 
 serenely still. But, beyond the further roofs and chimneys, 
 golden light hovered and a confused murmur, like the buzzing 
 of bees, hummed upon space. 
 
 Through Oxford Street a great crowd of people was pass- 
 ing, but it was a crowd hurrying to find some other crowd. 
 Oxford Street was plainly not the meeting-place. There was 
 a good deal of shouting and singing ; young men, five abreast, 
 passed, girls with " ticklers " and whistles screamed and 
 laughed and sang; merry bells were ringing, lights flared in 
 
 the windows and now and again a rocket with a whiz and a 
 
 490
 
 EPILOGUE PKOLOGUE 491' 
 
 shriek flashed into the sky and broke with a little angry- 
 splutter into coloured stars. 
 
 They crossed into Bond Street, down which other people 
 were hurrying; sometimes a roaring echo of a multitude of 
 discordant voices would be carried to them and then would 
 be hidden again as though some huge door in front of them 
 were swinging to and fro. 
 
 At the end of Bond Street, suddenly, as they might turn 
 the corner of some sea road and, instantly, be confronted 
 with the crash of a plunging surf, they met the crowd. 
 
 " Look out ! " cried Brun, clutching hold of Christopher's 
 arm. " We don't want to get drawn into this ! " 
 
 Although they had apparently been walking quietly down 
 Bond Street with no crowd about them, they now were pur- 
 sued, upon all sides, by people. They raised themselves on 
 to a doorstep, hanging there, bending their feet forward, and 
 feeling that if the crowd in front of them were for a moment 
 to give way down they would go ! 
 
 Meanwhile, along Piccadilly, towards the clubs and Hyde 
 Park Corner, a thick mass of human beings was pressing. 
 This gathering seemed, of itself, to lack all human quality. 
 
 A face, a voice, a hand, a cry these things might now 
 
 and again, as fish flash in a stream, detach themselves; some- 
 times a light from a flaring window or an illumination would 
 fling into pale, unreal relief a bundle of faces that repre- 
 sented, at that instant, a piece of human history, but sank 
 instantly back again into chaos. 
 
 One might fancy that this was no crowd of human beings, 
 but some new, unknown creature, dragging its coils from the 
 sluggish bed of some hidden river, stamping to destruction, 
 as it went. 
 
 Then as though one were watching a show, with a click, 
 the human element was back again. There two girls, their 
 hats pushed aside, their hair half uncoiled, their cheeks 
 flushed, their eyes partly bold and partly frightened, were 
 screaming :
 
 492 THE DUCHESS OF WREXE 
 
 " Oo're yer 'itting ? Don't again then. Good old Eng- 
 land ! Gawd save " 
 
 It was not on the whole a crowd stirred only by national 
 joy and pride. It may, in its units, when it first left its 
 many homes, have announced its intention of giving " a jolly 
 'ooray " for our splendid country and our Beloved Queen, 
 but, once in a position from which there was no returning, 
 once in the hands of a force that was stronger than any felt 
 before, it had forgotten the country and its defeats and suc- 
 cesses. Only two courses open. Either admit fear, feel that 
 the breath of you is slowly but quite surely in process of 
 being crushed out of you, feel that your arms and legs are 
 being torn from you, that your ribs are being smashed into 
 powder and that your heart is being pressed as flat as a pan- 
 cake, let then panic overwhelm you, fight and scream to get 
 out and away from it, see yourself finally falling, trampled, 
 kicked, your face squashed to pulp, your eyes torn out, your 
 breath strangled in your body ... so much for Fear. Or, 
 on the other hand arouse Frenzy ! 
 
 Be above and beyond your body, scream and shout, rattle 
 rattles and blow whistles, trample upon everything that is 
 near you, smack faces with your hand, pull off clothing and 
 scatter hats and bonnets, scream aloud, no matter what it is 
 that you are screaming, let your voice exclaim that at length, 
 at length, you, a miserable clerk on nothing a week, in the 
 City, are, for the first time in your existence, the Captain of 
 your soul, the ruthless master of a wretched, law-making 
 tyrannous world. ... So much for Frenzy! 
 
 Either way, be it Frenzy or Fear, the Country has not 
 much to say to it all. With every moment it seems that 
 from the Circus more bodies, more arms and legs are being 
 pressed and crushed and packed; with every moment the 
 clanging of the bells is louder, the fire in the sky higher and 
 wilder, the singing, the screaming, the oaths and the curses 
 are nearer, the defiance that loss of individuality gives. 
 
 " Let's get back," said Brun. He turned, but, at that
 
 EPILOGUE PKOLOGUE 493 
 
 moment, someone from behind him cried, " Oo are yer shov- 
 ing there ? " He was pushed, with Christopher, half falling, 
 half clutching at arms and shoulders, forward into the street. 
 
 They righted themselves, Brun fastened upon Christopher's 
 arm, shouting into his ear, " We'd better go along with the 
 crowd for a bit. We'll get a chance of cutting up Half Moon 
 Street. Can't do anything else." 
 
 They were pressed forward. Now, received into the bosom 
 of the crowd, they were conscious both of the human element 
 and of the stronger composite spirit that was mightier than 
 anything human, a creation of the City against whose walls 
 they were now so riotously shouting. 
 
 Next to Christopher was a young man in evening dress; 
 his hat had disappeared, his collar was torn, sweat was pour- 
 ing down his forehead and at the top of his voice he screamed 
 again and again: 
 
 "Good old England! Good old England! Good old 
 Bobs ! Good old Bobs ! " Squeezed up against Christo- 
 pher's arm was a stout body that looked as though it had 
 once belonged to some elderly gentleman who liked white 
 waistcoats and brass buttons. From somewhere, in obvious 
 connection with these buttons, came a weak, breathless voice : 
 " You'll excuse me hanging on so, sir. It's familiar not 
 my way but this crowd . . ." 
 
 A girl, with crimson face, leant against Christopher, put 
 her arm round his neck, tickled his face with a feather; she 
 screamed with laughter : " Oo-ray ! Oo-ray Oo-bloody- 
 ray!" 
 
 " Look out, you swine ! " somebody shouted. 
 
 " And 'e shouted out, did Bobs 
 Come along, you stinking nobs, 
 We will show you " 
 
 Around them, above them, below them there tossed a whirl- 
 pool of noise, something outside and beyond the immediate 
 sounds that they were making. Bells, ^oices, shouts that
 
 494 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 seemed to have no human origin, the very walls and stones 
 of the City crying aloud. 
 
 Then, opposite the entrance to Half Moon Street another 
 crowd seemed to meet them. There was pause. " Get out 
 of it ! " " Go the other way." " Damn yer eyes, step off 
 it." " Go back, carn't yer ? " 
 
 It was then that for the briefest moment and for the first 
 time in his life Christopher was afraid. Someone was press- 
 ing into his back until surely it would break, some other was 
 leaning, and driving his chest in, driving it so that the breath 
 flooded his face, his eyes, his nose. Colours rose and fell; 
 someone's evil breath burnt upon his cheeks. Light flashed 
 before him in broad, steady flares. 
 
 " Bran, Brun," he cried. 
 
 " All right," a voice from many miles away answered him. 
 
 He was seized with the determination to survive. They 
 thought that they could " down " him, but they should see 
 that they were mistaken; his rage rising, he was no longer 
 Dr. Christopher of Harley Street, but something savage, law- 
 less beyond even his own control. He drove with his arms; 
 curses met him and someone drove back into him and a 
 ridiculous face with staring eyes that stupidly pleaded and 
 a nose that was white and trembling and a mouth that drib- 
 bled at the corners came up against his. 
 
 " Keep back, can't you ? " someone shouted. 
 
 " Brun, Brun," he called again, and then was conscious 
 that bodies were giving way before him. His hand met a 
 stomach covered with cloth and little hard buttons, and then 
 coming against a woman's arm soft and warm, Christophei 1 
 had instantly gained possession of his soul once more. 
 
 " Hope I didn't hurt you," he heard himself saying, then, 
 some barrier of legs and bodies yielding, found that he was 
 flung out, away, stumbling, in spite of himself, on to his 
 knees. 
 
 He caught someone by the arm, and it was Brun. 
 
 " Good Lord ! " said Christopher.
 
 EPILOGUE PEOLOGUE 495 
 
 " It's all right/' answered Brun. " We're in Half Moon 
 Street We're out of it." 
 
 ii 
 
 Somewhere in the peaceful retirement behind the clubs 
 they surveyed one another and then laughed. Brun the 
 dapper perfect Brun had a bleeding cheek, a torn waist- 
 coat, and a large and very unbecoming tear in his trousers. 
 He was half angry and half amused finally a survey of 
 Christopher, with mud on his nose and his collar hanging 
 from one button and revealing a fat red neck, restored his 
 good temper. 
 
 "You'd better come back with me," said Christopher, 
 " and be cleaned up." 
 
 They went back to Harley Street and half an hour later 
 were sitting quietly in easy chairs, with the house as though 
 it were made of cotton-wool, so silent and hidden was it, 
 about them. 
 
 Both men were excited; Christopher had been changed 
 by the events of the last few weeks, and Brun, if he had not 
 been so personally involved, had seen enough to excite his 
 most eager curiosity and speculation. 
 
 Brun's sharp little eyes, flashing across the tip of his cigar, 
 sought Christopher's large comfortable face, fell from there 
 over his large comfortable body, down at last to his large 
 comfortable boots. 
 
 " Well . . . First time I've seen a Continental crowd in 
 England." 
 
 " Continental ? " 
 
 " Always your Englishman, however excited and of what- 
 ever rank, knows there are things a gentleman doesn't do. 
 Those people to-night had not that knowledge. Very inter- 
 esting," he added. 
 
 Christopher peacefully smoked, his body well spread out 
 in the chair, his broad rather clumsy-looking fingers clutch- 
 ing devotedly at his pipe.
 
 496 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 " So you were at the funeral the other day ? " 
 
 " I was. I expect I mourned her more sincerely than any 
 of you. I'd never seen her, but she meant a lot to me as a 
 symbol. And I like symbols better than human beings." 
 
 He pulled his body together with a little jerk and leaned 
 forward : " Christopher, do you remember, a long while 
 ago, going into a gallery in Bond Street and meeting Lady 
 Adela Beaminster there and Lady Seddon? It was just 
 after Ross's portrait was first shown." 
 
 " I remember," said Christopher, nodding his head. 
 " You were there." 
 
 " I was. I was there with Arkwright the African explorer 
 man. I only mention the day because Arkwright was inter- 
 ested in Lady Seddon, wanted to know all about her, and I 
 talked a bit, I remember. My point to him was that there 
 was a situation between that girl and her grandmother that 
 would be worth anybody's watching. I followed it myself 
 for a while and then I lost it. But you're a friend of the 
 family tell me, Christopher, what happened between those 
 two." 
 
 " Nothing," Christopher said, laughing. 
 
 " Oh, nonsense," Brun answered. " They were all in it. 
 Something went on. Then Seddon had that accident . . . 
 Breton was in it." 
 
 But Christopher only smiled. 
 
 " Well, if you won't n'importe I have my own idea 
 of it all. That girl was a fine girl, and the old woman was 
 fine too 
 
 " But how they must have hated one another ! " 
 
 He chuckled ; then sitting back in his chair, his little eyes 
 on the ceiling, he said almost to himself " Once, years ago, 
 when I was very, very young and romantic almost just 
 for a year or two I loved your Shelley. He was everything 
 I could quote him by the page. . . . He's gone from me 
 now, or most of him has, but there was one line that seemed 
 to me then the most romantic thing I had ever read and has
 
 EPILOGUE PEOLOGUE 49T 
 
 remained with me always. It went l And we'll have fireg 
 out of the Grand Duke's wood ' It's in the letter to Maria 
 Gisborne, I think I've quite forgotten what the context is 
 now it's all pretty trivial and unimportant, but those were 
 the days when I made pictures I saw it! Lord, Chris- 
 topher, how it comes back! The wood, very thick, very 
 large, very black, no sun very still, and the great house 
 behind it, huge and white, with long gardens and green lawns 
 and peacocks, and the Grand Duke, with his powdered wig and 
 diamond-buckled shoes, his gorgeous suit, his jewelled sword, 
 his snuff and his wine, his silly little dried-up yellow face. 
 
 " Then the rabble dirty, smelling, ill-conditioned fel- 
 lows breaking through the silence, tearing up the Wood, 
 knocking down the palace, hanging the Grand Duke from a 
 tree, last of all, setting the whole thing into the most splendid 
 blaze! . . . Oh! of course that wasn't Shelley's context 
 his was all about boiling a kettle or something but that's 
 the way I saw it just like that" Nothing stirred Brun 
 like the sound of his own voice and now he was getting very 
 excited indeed and was waving his hands. 
 
 " Yes," said Christopher placidly. " Very dramatic. 
 What does it all mean ? " 
 
 " Well, this. It seems to me that that's just what's been 
 happening over here. Your Duchess is dead and instead 
 there is to-night's crowd. The Grand Duke is gone and all 
 that was his now for the fires ! " 
 
 Christopher, filling his pipe, paused, and then, his voice 
 grave and serious : " Romantics aside, Brun, for a minute. 
 Do you remember your Tiger idea you delivered to me once ? 
 I've often thought of it since. You said then that the reason, 
 why the Duchess and her times the Grand Duke and his 
 wood had got to go was because their policy had been to 
 give the Tigers of the world no liberty to pretend indeed 
 that they weren't there, and that now the time had come when 
 every man should declare his Tiger, should give it liberty 
 and, whether he restrained it or no, acknowledge its existence.
 
 498 THE DUCHESS OF WEEXE 
 
 . . . Well, now what I want to know is this. What to 
 your thinking is going to come of it all ? I'm old-fashioned. 
 I like the old settled laws and customs and the rest of it, and 
 yet I'm not afraid of this new Individualism; but what I 
 expect and what you expect to come of it all are sure to be 
 mightily different things." 
 
 " They are," said Brun, laughing. " You see, Christo- 
 pher, as I've often said to you before, you're a sentimentalist 
 people matter to you ; you're concerned in their individual 
 good or bad luck. Now none of that is worth anything to 
 me. I observe from the outside always. What I want 
 to see is less muddle, more brain, less waste of time, more 
 progress. I believe the loosing of the Tiger is going to bring 
 that about. That's why I welcome it I don't care one little 
 damn about your individual let him be sacrificed every 
 time for the general wisdom. Your Duchess, she was good 
 for her age. Now she is against progress. She vanishes. 
 That crowd of to-night has swept her away. . . . There'll be 
 a chaos here for a time people like the Ruddards will mix 
 things up; a woman like Mrs. Strode will destroy as many 
 good people as she can. But the time will come ; out of that 
 crowd that we got into to-night a world, ruled by brain, by 
 common sense, by understanding, not by sentiment and con- 
 fusion, will arise. . . . May I not be with the good God ! " 
 
 " f Sentiment and confusion,' " said Christopher, smiling. 
 " That's me, I suppose." 
 
 " Well, you are sentimental," said Brun. " You're stuffed 
 with it." 
 
 " Do you yourself . . ." asked Christopher, " is there no 
 one no one in the world who matters to you ? " 
 
 " Nobody," said Brun. " No one in the world. I think 
 I like you better than anybody; you're the honestest man I 
 know and yet one of the most wrong-headed. Yes, I like you 
 very much; but it would not be true to say that it would 
 leave any great blank in my life if you were to die. Women ! 
 Yes, there have been women ! But thank the good God !
 
 EPILOGUE PKOLOGTJE 499 
 
 for the moment only. The Heart no The Brain 
 yes 
 
 " Well, then," said Christopher, " that's all clear enough. 
 It isn't very wonderful that we differ. People are to me 
 everything. Love the only power in the world to make 
 change, to work miracles ; I don't mean only sensual love, or 
 even sexual love, but simply the love of one human being for 
 another, the love that leads to thinking more of your neigh- 
 bour than yourself self-denial. 
 
 " Self-denial ; the only curb for your Tiger, Brun. I've 
 been watching it in a piece of private history, all this last 
 year and a half. There might have been the most horrible 
 mess; self-denial saved it all the time. You'll say that all 
 this is so vague and loose that it's worth nothing." 
 
 " Not at all," said Brun politely. " Go ahead." 
 
 " Well, then, the reason why I, old-fashioned and Philis- 
 tine as I am, hail the passing of the Grand Duke with joy 
 and I cared for the old woman, mind you is just this. I 
 see some chance at last for the plain man not the clever 
 man, or the especially spiritual man or the wealthy man 
 but simply the ordinary man. When I say Brotherhood I 
 don't mean anything to do with associations or meetings or 
 rules Simply that I believe in an age when a man's neigh- 
 bour will matter to a man more than himself, when it won't 
 be priggish or weak to help someone in worse plight than 
 yourself, when it will simply be the obvious thing . . . when, 
 above all, there'll be no jealousy, no getting in a man's way 
 because he does better than you, no knocking a man down be- 
 cause he sees the world this world and the next differ- 
 ently. That's my Individualism, my Rising City, and if you 
 had watched the lives of a few friends of mine during the 
 last year or two as I've watched them you'd know that * Love 
 thy neighbour as thyself ' is the fire that's going to burn all 
 the Grand-Ducal woods in the world in time." 
 
 Brun laughed. " You'll be taken in horribly one of these 
 days, Christopher."
 
 500 THE DUCHESS OE WREXE 
 
 " You speak as though I were a chicken," Christopher 
 broke out indignantly. " Man alive, haven't I lived all these 
 years ? Haven't I seen the poorest and rottenest and feeblest 
 side of human nature time and time again? But this I 
 know: That it's losing the thing you prize most that pays, 
 it's the pursuit, the self-denial, the forgetting of self that 
 scores in the material, practical world as well as the spiritual, 
 heavenly one. That's where the Millennium's coming from. 
 Brains as well perhaps, but souls first." 
 
 "We'll see," said Brun. "A bit of both, I dare say. 
 Anyhow, it's the next generation that's going to be interest- 
 ing. All kinds of people free who've never been free before, 
 all sorts of creeds and doctrines smashed that seemed 
 like Eternity. The old woods flaming already. Apres la 
 Ducliesse! . . . But as for your Love, your Brotherhood, 
 Christopher, I've a shrewd suspicion that human nature will 
 change very little. Unselfishness ? Very fine to talk about 
 but who's going to practise it ? Every man for his own 
 hand, now as ever." 
 
 " We'll see," answered Christopher. " I'm not clever at 
 putting things into words. If I were to go along to the man 
 in the street and say, ' Look here, I've made a discovery 
 I've got something that's going to make everything straight 
 in the world/ and he were to say, ' What's that ? ' and then 
 I were to answer, ' Self-denial. Unselfishness Love of 
 your neighbour/ he would, of course, instantly remind me 
 that Someone greater than myself had made the same remark 
 ,a few thousand years ago. He'd be right. . . . There's 
 nothing new in it. But it's coming new to the world just 
 because the laws and conventions that covered it are breaking. 
 The Tiger in Every Man and Self-denial to curb it ... 
 That's my prophecy, Brun." 
 
 Brun gave himself a whisky-and-soda. " No idea you 
 were such a talker, Christopher. . . . But I'm right all the 
 same." 
 
 He held up his glass.
 
 EPILOGUE PKOLOGUE 501 
 
 " Here's to the Tiger in the next generation." He drank, 
 then held it up again. " And here," he cried, " to the mem- 
 ory of the last Great lady in England ! " 
 
 m 
 
 When Brim had gone it seemed that he had left that last 
 toast of his in the air behind him. 
 
 Christopher was haunted by the thought of the Duchess, 
 he felt her with him in the room ; she stirred him to restless- 
 ness so that at last, desperately, he took his hat and went out. 
 
 His steps took him, round the corner, to Portland Place; 
 here all was very quiet, a few cabs in the middle of the street, 
 a few lights in the windows, the silver field of stars, in the dis- 
 tance the sky golden, fired now and again into life as a rocket 
 rose shielding beneath its glow all that stirring multitude. 
 Sounds rose a cry, a shout, singing then died down 
 again. 
 
 He was outside No. 104. He thought that he would ring 
 and see whether Mrs. Newton were in ; perhaps she had gone 
 to bed, it was after eleven, but, if she were there, he would 
 take one last look at the Portrait before it was packed up and 
 sent down to Beaminster. 
 
 Mrs. Newton unbolted the door and smiled when she saw 
 him " I was just going to bed There's only myself and 
 Louisa here and the watchman." 
 
 " I won't keep you, Mrs. Newton," he said. " The fancy 
 just took me to look at some of the pictures once more before 
 they're packed up. Lady Seddon told me that a good many 
 of them were to be packed up to-morrorw; they won't look 
 quite the same at Beaminster." 
 
 " No, that they won't, sir," said Mrs. Newton. " I shall 
 miss the old house. Just to think of the years ; and now, all 
 of us scattered ! " 
 
 She lit a lamp for him and he went up the stone staircase, 
 found the long drawing-room, and there, on the farther wall, 
 the Portrait.
 
 502 THE DUCHESS OF WKEXE 
 
 The furniture, shrouded in brown Holland, waited like 
 ghostly watchers on every side of him. The huge house, al- 
 ways a place of strange silences and vast disturbances, 
 multiplied now in its long mirrors and its air of cold sus- 
 pense as though it were waiting for something to happen, 
 showed its recognition of death and death's consequences. 
 
 But the Portrait was alive ! As he held the lamp up to it 
 the face leapt into agitation, the eyes were bent once again 
 sharply upon him, the mouth curved to speak, the black silk 
 rustled against the chair. 
 
 A host of memories crowded the room, he was filled with 
 a regret more poignant than anything that he had felt since 
 her death. 
 
 " She was fine ! I miss her more than I had any notion 
 that I would ! She stirred one up, she made one alive ! " 
 
 He put the lamp upon the floor and sat down for a minute 
 amongst the shrouded furniture. 
 
 His mind passed from Brun's generalizations to the little 
 bundle of people whom he knew Rachel, Francis, Roddy, 
 Lizzie Rand. To all of them the Tiger's moment had come ; 
 and out of it all, out of the stress and suffering and struggle, 
 Rachel's child was to be born instead of the Duchess the 
 new generation. Instead of this old house, the hooded furni- 
 ture, the anger at all freedom of thought, the jealousy of all 
 enterprise, the slander and the malice, an age of a universal 
 Brotherhood, of unselfishness, restraint, charity, toler- 
 ance . . . 
 
 Perhaps after all, he was an old, sentimental fool. There 
 had always been those at every birth and every death who had 
 had their dreams of new human nature, new worlds, new 
 virtues and moralities. . . . 
 
 He looked his last at the Portrait 
 
 " I'm nearly as old as you. I shall go soon. But I miss 
 you . . . you'd be yourself surprised if you knew how 
 much!"
 
 EPILOGUE PROLOGUE 503 
 
 He took up the lamp and left her. . . . He said good night 
 to Mrs. Newton and closed the door behind him. 
 
 Standing on the steps of the house he looked about him. 
 Portland Place was like a broad river running silently into 
 the dark trees at the end of it. There was a great rest and 
 quiet here. 
 
 Southwards the sky flamed, the noise of a great multitude 
 of people came muffled across space with the rhythm in it of a 
 beating song. Rockets slashed the sky, broke into golden 
 stars ; the bells from all the churches in the town clashed and, 
 from some great distance, guns solemnly booming rolled 
 through the air. 
 
 Christopher, standing there, smiled as he thought of Brun's 
 little picture. 
 
 Brun springing up, of course, at the right moment, to point 
 his moral. Brun, who appeared, like some Jack-in-the-box, 
 in city after city, with his conclusion, his prophecy, neat and 
 prepared. 
 
 " And we'll have fires out of the Grand Duke's 
 Wood." . . . 
 
 There was the Wood, there the mob, there the Grand Duke, 
 dead and buried 
 
 Christopher shrugged his shoulders ; whatever Brun might 
 say human beings were more than summaries, prophecies, 
 conclusions. 
 
 As he looked towards the trees and felt a little breeze caress 
 his face with, he could swear, some salt of the sea, he thought 
 of the human beings who were his friends Rachel, Roddy, 
 Lizzie, Francis. 
 
 And then it seemed to him that, out of the trees, down 
 the shining surface of Portland Place, a figure came towards 
 him the figure of Rachel's child. 
 
 THE END
 
 VGC