The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death

III

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 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 adoring eyes, he whispered, "Oh! my dear! but I love you!"

"I must go," she said, her eyes, large and frightened, appealingly upon him—

He smiled at her, his eyes laughing.

"Yes, Francis—let me—let me. Now while I can still see what I ought to do."

"There's only one thing that you ought to do. You belong 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."

"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 released 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 upon 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? 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.

"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, its 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 weakness, 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–"

"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."

Henry James.

I

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 unreal. 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 moment, 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 twopence 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 of this world—food and amusement and exercise and pleasant company. He loved, also, certain people whose lives were 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, 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-control 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....

II

It seemed that, on this afternoon, he was unduly sensitive to impression. The house struck him with a chill, deserted air. There seemed to be no one about as Norris 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 be 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 with an eagerness that showed that she was longing for company. 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 showing, 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, Christopher. 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 positively 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.

For the first time in his knowledge of her some pity for her stirred 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?" 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 melodrama. 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 incantations—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.

"What would you say if our Rachel—your Rachel and my Rachel—had found a new friend in my worthy, most admirable nephew, 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 he 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 nothing 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.

III

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?

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 Beaminster 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 he 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.

"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 Christopher 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 fallin' 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 another 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.

"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 having 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 know 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 coincidence 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.

"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 Cremlin, once May Eversley, came in—

"Oh! Dr. Chris! You dear!" she cried, and came forward 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 luncheon—

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 another word she left him.