The Duchess of Wrexe Part 28

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 gra.s.sy hollow, and under this gra.s.sy 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 morning with Nita Raseley and it's too hot for any exertion whatever."

A tree shaded them and they sat down and watched 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----"

"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 gra.s.s 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s moving a little beneath her white dress and her hands pressing flatly against the gra.s.s, 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 startling 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 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 another 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 sailing on the green far below them.

They said no word.

Then, without speaking, they got up from the gra.s.s and walked down the path to the little wood. But when they came to the place where they had been the night before he caught her to him so furiously that his own body was bent back, and he 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 enc.u.mber 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.

I

In 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 h.e.l.l in a second of time; life never showed him its true colours and his sensitive suspicion to the signs and omens of the G.o.ds gave him radiant confidence and utter despair when only a patient quiescence had been intended. 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 fas.h.i.+on or another London must ring with his name.

And yet now here had he been in London since the end of April and nothing had occurred, no steps, beyond that first letter to his grandmother, had he taken. He had not even responded to the advances made to him by his old a.s.sociates, 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 movement, 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 G.o.d had been responsible for his wildest and most foolish mistakes.