The Duchess of Wrexe Part 84

He was very glad to see her. He stood on the post office steps looking richer and smarter than she had ever known him. He wore a dark blue suit and a black tie and a bowler hat--all ordinary garments enough--but they surrounded him with an air of prosperity that had not been his before.

He seemed to her to gleam and glitter and s.h.i.+ne with confidence and a.s.surance. One hurried glimpse she had had of him some weeks before, miserable, unkempt, almost furtive. She was glad for his sake that all was well with him, but he needed her more when he was unhappy....

But he was delighted. "Miss Rand. That's splendid! Are you going back to Saxton Square now? The very thing! I've been wanting badly to see you!"

It was always, she thought, in little hurried and occasional walks that they exchanged their confidences. There was not much to show for all the elaborate palace that she had once been building--s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation, clutches at words and movements, even eloquent interpretation of silences--well, she was wiser than all that now!

But, when they started off together, she found that she was caught up instantly into that fine a.s.sumption of intimacy that was one of his most alluring qualities. Radiant though he was he still needed her; he was more eager to talk to _her_ than to anyone else even though he had forgotten her very existence until he saw her standing there.

"I am glad to see you. I should have come down and tried to find you, anyway, in a day or two. I've been through a rotten time--really rotten--and one doesn't want to see anyone--even one's best friends--in that sort of condition, does one?"

"That's just the time your _real_ friends--if they're worth anything--want to see you. If they can be of any use----"

"But you'd been such a tremendous help to me. I was ashamed to come to you any more. Besides, you'd showed me, in a way, that I ought to get through on my own without asking help from anyone. You'd taught me that I did try."

She saw that he was s.h.i.+ning with the glory of one who had come, rather mightily, unaided through times of stress. A pleasant self-congratulatory pathos stirred behind his words. "It _was_ a bad time--but it's all right now. And I expect it was good for me," was really what he said.

"I do want to tell you," he went on eagerly, "about Rachel. It's all been so strange--wonderful in a way. After that talk I had with you in the park I was absolutely broken up. Oh! but done for! I simply went under. I tried to go back to some of that old set I've told you about before, but the awful thing was that Rachel wouldn't let me. Thinking of her, wanting her when all those other women were about. It simply wasn't possible....

"It got worse and worse. I thought I'd go off my head. Then--do you remember that awful thunderstorm we had?"

"Yes," said Lizzie, "I remember it very well."

"That night was a kind of climax. I'd dined with Christopher, then got wandering about--it was horribly close and heavy--got into some music hall. I suppose I'd been drinking--anyway, I had suddenly a kind of vision, there in the music hall. I thought Rachel was dead, that I'd lost her altogether. And then--it's all so hard to explain--but when I came to myself I seemed to understand that the only way I could keep her was by giving her up.... I've got it all muddled, but that was what it came to."

"You were quite right," said Lizzie.

"Well, then--what do you think happened? The very next day my uncle, John Beaminster, came to see me--yes, came himself. Talked and was most pleasant and wanted to be friends. At the same time--now just listen to this--came a note from Seddon asking me to go and see him. I went, found Rachel there. Apparently my delightful grandmother had been telling him stories about Rachel and me, and he wanted to put things straight. As though this weren't enough, right upon us, without a word of warning, dropped my grandmother herself!"

He stopped that he might convey fully to Lizzie the drama of the occasion.

There was, in his words, just that touch of absurdity and exaggeration that she had noticed at her very first meeting with him. He was always too pa.s.sionately anxious to thrill his audience!

"There _was_ a scene! You can imagine it! We all tried to behave at first, although of course it was immensely difficult. I don't think Seddon had in the least realized the kind of thing it would be. Then she--the old tyrant--could contain herself no longer and burst out concerning me, the blackguard I was and the rest of it. She was furious, you see, at Seddon taking my friends.h.i.+p with Rachel so quietly. He was _splendid_ about it!

"Well, when she burst out about all the family cutting me and everybody casting me out, the opportunity was too good. I _couldn't_ help it. I had to tell her that Uncle John had been round that very afternoon to see me and that the family was holding out its arms."

"What happened?" said Lizzie, as he paused.

"She collapsed--altogether, completely. She never said another word--she just went."

"You shouldn't have done it!" Lizzie cried, turning almost furiously upon him. "Oh! it was cruel--she was so old and all of you so young and strong."

"Yes!" he answered her--"But think of the years that I've waited--the times she's given me, the suffering----"

"No," interrupted Lizzie, quiet again now. "If you're weak enough to be pushed down by anybody like that, then you're weak enough to sink by your own fault, whether there's anyone there or no. She's been hard in her time, I dare say, but everything's left her now and she's ill and lonely. It was wrong of all of you. I shouldn't have thought Sir Roderick----"

"He only wanted things to be straightened out," Breton said eagerly. "He didn't _intend_ to have a scene. But I expect you're right, Miss Rand, as you always are. I've been a brute, the most howling cad. But there's one thing--I don't think it's hurt my grandmother. She likes those scenes, and she's been none the worse since."

"She's been much worse," said Lizzie gravely. "She's dying--She's going down to Beaminster on Monday."

He stopped. "Oh! but I'm sorry ... That's dreadful ... I'd no idea. I'm always responsible----"

He had sunk to such depths that she was compelled to raise him.

"I don't think you need be disturbed, Mr. Breton. Something of the sort would have been certain to happen very soon. She would have found out in any case ... and there were other things, I know. Rachel----"

"Ah!" he broke in, eager again and almost cheerful. "That was the wonderful thing. When I saw her there first with Seddon--I'd never met him before, you know--I felt angry and impatient. I wanted to carry her off--away from everybody. And then, when Seddon began to speak I lost all sense of Rachel's belonging to me. She seemed older, ever so far away from him, and he was so fine, so splendid about it all that I felt--I felt--well, that I'd do anything in the world for both of them--but never anything that could separate them or make him unhappy."

"You can't separate them now," said Lizzie, "n.o.body can."

"No. It was just finished--our episode together that wasn't really an episode at all if you consider the little that we saw one another....

Besides, I've never got near Rachel, and I felt in some way that the nearer I got to her the farther away she was. Why, the only time that I kissed her she was the farthest away of all!"

They were walking up the grey, peaceful square.

"You don't mind my telling you all this, do you, Miss Rand? You've seen it all from the beginning. But I'm odd in a way....

"Uncle John coming to me, Seddon being friendly to me, the family taking me back ... that seems to have made all the difference to me. Although I'd never confess it, even to myself, I know that if Rachel and I had gone off together I'd never have been happy. You see, we're both alike that way. We're restless, one half of us, but oh! we're Beaminster the other, and even Rachel, who's been fighting the family all her days, has one part of her that's happy to be married to Seddon and to be quiet and proper and English. That's why neither I nor Seddon ever could hold her--because to be with me she'd have had to give up the other. If she had a child, that might----"

"She's going to have a child!" said Lizzie.

He stopped and stared at her.

"Miss Rand!... Is that certain?"

"Quite."

"Ah, well, Seddon's got her all right. They'll be happy as anything." He sighed. "You know, Miss Rand, Rachel and I have been fighting the old lady, and we seem to have won ... but I'm not sure whether, after all, she hasn't!"

On the step he paused.

"I'm sticking to Candles, I've got work. I'm recognized again. I've got that little bit of Rachel that she gave me and that n.o.body else can have, and--I've got you for a friend--Not so bad after all!"

He laughed, opened the door for her, and then as they stood in the dark little hall he said:

"All along you've been _such_ a friend for me. I want someone like you--someone strong and sensible, without my rotten sentiment and impulses. We'll always be friends, won't we?"

He held her hand.

"Always," she said, smiling at him.

But, perhaps, to both of them there came, just then, sighing through the dark still hall, a breath, a whisper, of that hour when life had been at its intensest, that hour when Breton had held Rachel in his arms, that hour when Lizzie had dressed, with trembling hands, for the theatre....

For Breton his place once again in the world, for Lizzie work and peace of heart, but once on a day life had flamed before both of them and they would never forget--

"Well, good night, Mr. Breton."

"Good night, Miss Rand."

When he had gone, she stood in the hall a moment.