The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death

She sat up a little and her nightdress fell back showing a neck bony, crinkled and yellow.

"I said a quarter of an hour," she snapped.

"It is a quarter of an hour, mother," said Lady Adela.

Lady Adela hated and dreaded these morning interviews. In the first place she disliked the decorations of her mother's bedroom, thought them almost indecent, and could never be comfortable in such surroundings. She was also aware, by long experience, that her mother was always at her worst at this hour in the morning and many were the storms of temper that that absurd bed and those unpleasant black chairs had witnessed. Thirdly she knew that she herself looked her worst and was her weakest amongst these eccentricities and shadowed by this dim light.

She waited now whilst her mother fumbled her letters.

"There's your chocolate, mother," she said at last. "It'll be cold."

The Duchess was looking at her letters, but was absorbing only a little of their contents. She was summoning all her will to her aid; she wanted to order the blind to be pulled down, to command her daughter to avoid her presence for at least a week, to scatter her correspondence to the four corners of the earth, and to see none of it again; at the same time she was driving into her brain the fact that before Adela, of all people in the world, she must be alert and wise and wonderful; Adela, the ugliest and most foolish of living women, must see no weakness.

"Shall I read your letters to you, mother?"

She did not answer; slowly, steadily at last, her will was flooding her brain. She could feel the warmth and the colour and the strength of it pervading again her body. The day did not now appear of so appalling a heat and the weight of the things to be done was less heavy upon her.

Lady Adela, meanwhile, watching her mother was struck once again by that chill dismay that had alarmed her first on that May evening, after the visit to the picture gallery. In that half-light her mother did seem very, very old and very, very feeble. Lady Adela had a dreadful temptation to say in a brusque sharp voice, "What do you let your chocolate get cold like that for? Why don't you get someone to read your letters sensibly to you instead of groping through them like that?" and at the mere horror of such a thought a shudder shook her and her heart began wildly to beat. Let once such words as those cross her lips and an edifice, a wonderful, towering temple raised by submissions and subduals and self-denials, would tumble to the ground.

For some moments the struggle in Lady Adela's breast was sharp, then by a tense dominion of her will she produced once again for herself the Ceremonial, the Terror, the agitated, humble Submission.

"Julia Massiter," the Duchess said, "has asked Rachel for the last week-end in July—She'll go of course–"

"Yes," said Lady Adela.

"Roddy Seddon is going–"

"Yes."

"Roddy is going to marry Rachel. He's coming to see me this afternoon."

Lady Adela was silent.

"A very suitable business. I'd intended it for a long time." Then, after a pause—

"You may tell Dorchester I will dress now."

Lady Adela, conscious, as she left the room, of the relief of her dismissal, joyfully yielded that relief as witness—

The Terror was still there, and she was glad.

II

Very different, however, at three in the afternoon. Now she sat in her high black chair waiting for Roddy Seddon. Very difficult now to imagine that early discourage of the morning. Magnificent now with her black dress and flashing eyes and white hair, waiting for Roddy Seddon.

This that she had long planned was at length to come to pass. Roddy Seddon was to be united to the Beaminster family, never again to be separated from it.

Of Rachel she thought not at all. She had never liked Rachel; indeed it was a more positive feeling than that. Alone of all the family was Rachel still in rebellion; even the Duke, although he was so often abroad or in the country (he hated London), was submissive enough when he was with them. But Rachel the old woman knew that she had not touched.

Frightened—yes. The girl hated that evening half-hour and would give a great deal to avoid it, but the terror that she showed did not bring her any closer to her grandmother's power; she stood outside and away.

The Duchess had attempted to influence the girl's brain, to catch some trait, some preference, some dislike, that she could hold and use.

Still Rachel's soul was beyond her grasp, beyond even her guessing at. But she knew Roddy Seddon—she knew Roddy Seddon as no one knew him. And Roddy Seddon knew her.

Even when he was a boy he had known her as no one else knew her. He had seen through all her embroideries and disguises, had known where she was theatrical and why she was so, had discovered her plots and prides, her defeats and victories—and together they two, Pagan to the very bone of them, had laughed at a credulous, superstitious world.

The London that knew Roddy Seddon thought him a country bumpkin with dissipated tastes and an amiable heart. But she knew him better than that. He was not clever—no. He was amazingly innocent of books, he had no intellectual attainments whatever—yet had he received any kind of education, she knew that he might have had one of the finest brains in the country.

He had preferred dogs and horses and the simple enjoyments of his sensations.

Bowing to the outward rules and laws of the modern world he was less modern than anyone she had ever known.

Pagan—root and branch Pagan. In his simplicities, in his complexities, in his moralities and immoralities, in his kindnesses and cruelties—Pagan.

When they were together it was astonishing the number of trappings that they were able to discard. They were Pagan together.

But Rachel? Rachel?

Well, Rachel did not matter. It would be a rather good sight to see Rachel suffer, to watch her proud spirit up against something that she could not understand.

And meanwhile the Beaminster family was strengthened by a great addition and the campaign against this new generation, that refused to be led, that wished to lead, that thought itself so very, very brilliant, should go victoriously forward....

"Sir Roderick Seddon, your Grace."

As she looked at the healthy and red-faced Roddy sitting opposite to her, for an instant, some sharp warning, some foreordained consciousness of trouble to come, bade her pause. She knew that a word from her, now, would be enough to prevent the match. He would not prosecute it were she against it. After all, ought Roddy to marry anybody? Could a girl, as ignorant of the world as Rachel, put up any fight against Roddy's simple complexities?

What, after all, did Roddy think of the girl? Did he imagine that he was in love with her? Did he know her, understand her?

Then, looking at him, the affection that she had for him—the only affection that she had for anyone in the world—swept over her. This marriage would bind him to her, would give her another ally before the world—yes, it should go on.

She smiled at him.

"Well, Roddy, have you no news for me, now?"

He had been silent, gazing before him, his brows puckered.

Now he smiled back at her.

"Well, there's been the usual doin's the last week or two. I've been dancin' every night till I'm tired. 'Bout time for the country agen–"

"Have you been down to Seddon at all?"

"Yes. Two nights last week—all dried up—Place wants me a bit oftener down there–"

"What's this I hear about young Olive Ormond marrying Besset Crewe's daughter?"

"So they say—can't imagine it myself. The girl's about eighty-four and a half and he's the most awful kid. Saw them at the opera the other night–"

"What about Scotland this summer, Roddy? Are you going?"

"Don't think so. Depends–"

Then there was silence. The little conversation had been as stiff as it was possible a conversation could be. The China dragons must have wondered—never before so constrained a dialogue between these two!

Now another pause, then suddenly Roddy, his hands clutching one another, his face redder than ever—

"I want—I wonder—dash it—have I your leave to ask your granddaughter to marry me?"

She laughed.

"Really, my dear Roddy, you've been very long about it—coming out with it, I mean. Didn't you know and didn't I know that that's what you came for to-day?"

"Well then, may I?"

She paused and watched his anxiety. Between both of them there hung, now, the recollection of so many things—conversations and deeds and thoughts known to both of them, so many, many things that no others in all the world could know. She waited for his eyes, caught them and held them.

"Are you in love with her?"

"Yes—that is—she's splendid–"

"You haven't known her very long and you're a little impulsive, ain't you, Roddy, about these things?"

"No—I don't know her now. But we've seen a lot of one another these last months—a fearful lot. She's—oh! hang it! I never can say things—but she's a brick."

"Do you think she'll accept you?"

"How can any feller tell? I think she likes me—she's odd–"

"Yes—she is—very. She's a mixture—she's very young—and she won't understand you."

His eyes were suddenly troubled and, as she saw that trouble, she was alarmed. He really did care....

"Yes, I know—I don't understand myself. I'm wild sometimes—I wish I weren't–"

"Marriage is going to make you a model character, Roddy. Of course I'm glad—but it won't be easy, you know. And she won't be easy."

"I want her though. I've never thought of marriage before. I do want her."

"My dear Roddy, you speak as though she were a sheep or a dog. It's only her first season. Don't you think you'd better wait a little?"

"No. I want her now."

"Well, you're definite enough—" She paused and then, in a voice that had, in spite of her, real emotion, "You have my consent. You've got my blessing."

He rose and came clumsily towards her.

"You don't know—I'm no use at words, but I'm dam' grateful—Rippin' of you!"

For a second he touched her dried, withered hand—how cold it was! and in this hot weather, too.

"You'll ask her at Julia Massiter's next week?"

"Expect so—I say you are–"

Then he sat down again. The room was relieved of an immense burden; once more they were at ease together.

"The other night—" he said, bending forward and chuckling ever so little.

III

Lady Carloes, Agnes Lady Farnet, and old Mrs. Brunning were coming to play bridge with her. The ceremonial was ever the same! They arrived at half-past nine and at half-past eleven supper for four was served in the Duchess's little green room, behind her bedroom (a little room like a box with a green wall-paper, a card-table and silver candlesticks). They played, sometimes, until three or four o'clock in the morning; the Duchess played an exceedingly good game and Mrs. Brunning (a bony little woman like a plucked chicken) was the best bridge player in London. The other two were moderate, but made mistakes which allowed the Duchess the free use of her most caustic wit and satire.

Lord John came just before dinner as he always did for a few minutes every evening. He stood there, fat and smiling and amiable and, as always, a little nervous.

"Well, John?"

She liked John the best of her children, although he was, of course, the most fearful fool, but she liked his big broad face and he was always clean and healthy; moreover, she could use him more easily than any of them.

"Bridge to-night, mother, isn't it?"

"Yes. Not so hot this evening. Just give me that book. Turn the lamp up a little—no—not that one. The de Goncourt book. Yes. Thank you."

"Anything I can get for you, mother? Anyone I can send to you?"

He was thinking, as he smiled down at her, "She's old to-night—old and tired. This hot weather...."

She looked up at him before she settled herself—

"Roddy Seddon came this afternoon–"

"Yes. I know."

Suddenly his heart began to beat. He had known, during all these last weeks, of what the common talk had been. He knew, too, what his conscience had told him, and he knew, too, how perpetually he had silenced that same conscience.

"He asked me whether he had my permission to propose to Rachel–"

"Yes."

"Of course I gave it him. I thought it most suitable in every way."

Now was Lord John's moment. He knew, even as it descended upon him, what was the right to do. He must protest—Roddy Seddon was not the right man to marry Rachel, Rachel who was to him more than anyone in the world—

He must protest—

And then with that impulse went the old warning that because his mother seemed to him older and feebler to-night than he had ever known her, therefore if he spoke now, it would involve far more than the immediate dispute. There was a sudden impulse in him to risk discomfort, to risk a scene, to break, perhaps, in the new assertion of his authority, all the old domination, to smash a tradition to pieces.

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 relationship 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 Massiter'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 Sussex, 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 illustrated 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 nobody 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 Massiter'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 muffled 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 Sussex. 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 reassuring 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 reassure 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, muffled it, stifled it, because her way through the world was easier with it so muffled, so stifled.

At some future time, what if there should leap out upon her that muffled 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 Massiter's, Miss Rawson, old and plain enough for her cleverness to have turned to acidity, Roddy Seddon and, of course, Lord and Lady Massiter.

Lord Massiter 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 Massiter 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 mass, 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."

"Are you glad to get away from London?"

"It has been hot there these last weeks."

Rachel met in the glass the girl's black eyes. They were searching Rachel's face.

"Lucy, would you rather live in London or in the country?"

"I don't mind, Miss Rachel." Then after a little pause: "I hope I've give satisfaction these last weeks?"

"Why, yes, of course."

"Then I hope, miss, that you'll allow me to stay with you whether—in London or the country."

The colour mounted to Rachel's cheeks.

"I hope there'll be no need for any change," she said.