The Duchess of Wrexe Part 50

"It's odd, Adela," said John, leaning back in his chair 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 differently, 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 conspirators. 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 shoulder:

"If there's anything I can ever do to help you, Adela, tell me----!" he said.

"Thank you, John," she answered.

II

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 defiance 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, when 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 produced for Rachel as a most definite and (on the part of the d.u.c.h.ess) 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--

"How you do hate me, my dear," she said almost complacently.

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, G.o.d 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 unjust. It's you that have always hated me from the beginning--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 pa.s.sion.

But the d.u.c.h.ess 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, turning to the door, left her--"But hurt a hair of Roddy's head, my dear, and--well, you'll hate me more than ever----"

III

When Rachel had gone the d.u.c.h.ess 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 rea.s.sure her--someone less acid than Dorchester.

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 pa.s.sed strange unusual pictures before her eyes.

That girl ... yes ... Dorchester had been very clever about that: Dorchester had been in communication with Breton's man-servant 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 another 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 G.o.ds 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.

But this beast crouching in front of her, with its burning eyes on her face, said to her: "All your life I've been beside 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 followed by others, banished by this new world.