The Duchess of Wrexe Part 24

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 indifferent 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?...

For a second her brain was clouded. Might she not have attempted some relations.h.i.+p 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

I

Rachel sat in the train with Aunt Adela and Uncle John: they were on their way to Trunton St. Perth, Lord Ma.s.siter'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 Suss.e.x, was gazing happily through the window, dreaming, almost dozing, feeling in every part of her a warm and grateful 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 ill.u.s.trated 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 n.o.body 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, 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 Ma.s.siter'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 sentences had, of late, conveyed, impossible to mistake the laughing 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 m.u.f.fled lights were now creeping, she asked herself 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 Suss.e.x. 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, unreal life of hers, and indeed that was, in him, the most rea.s.suring 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 rea.s.sure 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 encounter 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 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, m.u.f.fled it, stifled it, because her way through the world was easier with it so m.u.f.fled, so stifled.

At some future time, what if there should leap out upon her that m.u.f.fled 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 glittered in the evening air. It was all suddenly thrilling. Who would be there? What might not happen before Monday?

II

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 discovered, Maurice Garden, the well-known and popular novelist, there was his wife, there was a thin intellectual cousin of Lady Ma.s.siter's, Miss Rawson, old and plain enough for her cleverness to have turned to acidity, Roddy Seddon and, of course, Lord and Lady Ma.s.siter.

Lord Ma.s.siter 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 Ma.s.siter 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 unsatisfactory as an intimate personal friend. She would, like philanthropists and clergymen, love people by the ma.s.s, 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 conviction 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 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."