The Duchess of Wrexe Part 20

Lizzie, meanwhile, knew that he was waiting for an opportunity 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 nothing in comparison.

After dinner, when the lamp burnt brightly and the furniture seemed to be less anxious to fill every possible s.p.a.ce 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 forgotten 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 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 thinking 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 impetuous, 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 suddenly 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 encouraged 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 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 he 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 a.s.sured 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_----"

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. Anyway, he died of fever and general dissipation when I had just come of age, and I came home to England with a little money 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, rea.s.suring and comforting. Some people have the gift of listening without words so warmly, with such eloquence that they rea.s.sure and console as no speech could ever do. This was Lizzie's gift, and Breton, depending, more than most human beings, upon the protection of his fellows, gathered courage.

"My father had always taught me to hate my grandmother. 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 be 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 grandmother 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 was 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 people 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. But there was a house and a table and a young fool who lost all he possessed and--well, did for himself. It had all been 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 element now, they are told. Oh! there's comedy there, Miss Rand, 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, be had spent many, many years.

"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, I 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 mistakes this time." He laughed bitterly. "One doesn't learn much with age. What a fool I was!

I've got the reputation 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 the furious beating of her heart.