The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death

She found when she came down to the drawing-room that Monty Carfax had arrived. Monty Carfax was the chief of the young men who were, just at that time, entertaining London dinner-tables. About half a dozen of God's creatures, under thirty and perfectly dressed, with faces like tombstones and the laugh of the peacock, went from house to house in London and mocked at the world.

They belonged, as the mediæval jesters belonged, each to his own court, and Monty Carfax, certainly the cleverest of them, was attached to the Beaminster Court and served the Duchess by faith, if not by sight.

Rachel hated him and always, when she found herself next to him, wrapped herself in her old farouche manner and behaved like an awkward schoolgirl.

She was terribly disappointed at discovering that he was going to take her into dinner to-night; he knew that she disliked him and felt it a compliment that a raw creature fresh from the schoolroom should fail to appreciate him; on this occasion he devoted himself to the elderly Massiter cousin on his other side—throughout dinner they happily undressed the world and found it sawdust.

Rachel meanwhile found Maurice Garden her other companion. He genially enjoyed his dinner and talked in a loud voice and prepared the answers that he always gave to ladies who asked him when he wrote, whether he thought of his plots or his characters first, and "she did hope he wouldn't mind her saying that of all his books the one–"

He frankly liked these questions and was taken by surprise when Rachel said:

"I've never read any of your novels, Mr. Garden, so I won't pretend–"

He asked her what she did read.

"Have you ever read anything by an author called Peter Westcott?"

"Westcott? Westcott?… Let me see … Westcott?… Well now—One of the young men, isn't he?"

"Yes. He wrote a book called Reuben Hallard."

"Ah yes. I remember about Reuben Hallard—had quite a little success as a first book. He's one of your high-brow young men, all for Art and the rest of it. We all begin like that, Miss Beaminster. I was like that myself once–"

She looked at him coolly.

"Why did you give it up?"

"Simply didn't pay, you know—not a penny in it. And why should there be? People don't want to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story. All young men think the same—green leaves, moons and stars and lots of symbols, you know—all good enough if they don't expect people to pay for it."

"I think Reuben Hallard's a fine book," she said, "and so are some of the others. After all, everyone doesn't want only a plot in a book."

He looked at her with patronizing kindness. "Well, you see if your Mr. Westcott doesn't change. Every writer wants an audience whatever he may pretend, and the best way to get a audience is to give the audience what it wants. It needs unusual courage to sit on a packing-case year after year and shave in a broken looking-glass–"

She looked round the table. Everyone was happy. The butler was fat and had the face of a Roman emperor, the food was very, very good, Nita Raseley and Roddy laughed and laughed and laughed—

Suddenly Rachel's heart jumped in her body. Oh! she was glad; glad that Roddy cared for her and would look after her, because otherwise she didn't know what violence she might suddenly commit, what desperations she might not engage upon, what rebels and outlaws she would not support—

What Outlaws! And then, looking beyond the thickly curtained windows, she could fancy that she could see one gravely standing out there on the lawn, standing with his one arm and his pointed beard and his eyes appealing to be let in.

Then there was an ice that was so good that Peter Westcott and Francis Breton seemed more outcast than ever.

III

After dinner, when the men had come into the drawing-room, they all went out into the gardens. It was such a night of stars as Rachel had never seen, so dense an army that all earth was conscious of them; the sky was sheeted silver, here fading into their clouded tracery, there, at fairy points drawing the dark woods and fields up to its splendour with lines of fire. The world throbbed with stars, was restless under the glory of them—God walked in all gardens that night.

At first Nita Raseley, Monty Carfax, Rachel and Roddy went together, then, turning up a little path into the little wood that rose above the garden, Rachel and Roddy were alone.

They found the trunk of a tree and sat down—Behind them the trees were thin enough to show the stars, below them in a dusk lit by that glimmering lustre that starlight flings—a glow that would be flame were it not dimmed by distance immeasurable—they could see the lawns and hedges of the garden and across the dark now and again some white figure showed for an instant and was gone. The house behind the shadows rose sharp and black.

Roddy looked big and solid sitting there. Rachel sat, even now uncertain that she did not see Francis Breton in front of her, looking down, as she did, into the shadowy garden.

"I hope," she said abruptly, "that you don't like Monty Carfax."

"I've never thought about him," he said. "He's certainly no pal of mine—why?"

"Because I hate him," she said fiercely. "What right has he got to exist on a night like this?"

"He's always supposed to be a very clever feller," Roddy said slowly. "But I think him a silly sort of ass—knows nothin' about dogs or horses, can't play any game, only talks clever to women–"

"I can't bear that sort of man and I don't like Mr. Garden either. He's so fat and he loves his food."

"So do I," said Roddy quite simply. "I love it too. It was a jolly good dinner to-night."

She said nothing and then, when he had waited a little, he said anxiously:

"I say, Miss Beaminster, we've been such jolly good friends—all these weeks. And yet—sometimes—I'm afraid you think me the most awful fool–"

She laughed. "I think you are about some things, but then—so am I about a good many things—most of your things–"

"Look here, Miss Beaminster—I wish you'd help me about things I'm an ass in. You can, you know—I'd be most awfully glad."

"What," she said, turning round and facing him, "are the things you really care about?"

"The things? … care about?"

"Yes—really–"

"Well! Oh! animals and bein' out in the open and shootin' and ridin' and fishin'—any old exercise—and comin' up to town for a buck every now and again, and then goin' back and seein' no one, and my old place and—oh! I don't know," he ended.

"You wouldn't tell anyone a lie, would you, about things you liked and didn't like?"

"It wouldn't be much use if I did," he said, laughing. "They'd find me out in a minute–"

"No, but would you? If you were with a number of people who thought art the thing to care about and knew nothing about dogs and horses, would you say you cared about art more than anything?"

"No," he said slowly. "No—but sometimes, you see, pictures and music and such do please me—like anything—I can't put into words, but I might suddenly be in any old mood—for pictures, or your uncle's fans, or dogs or the Empire or these jolly old stars—Why, there, you see I just let it go on—the mood, I mean, till it's over–" Then he added with a great sigh, "But I am a dash fool at explainin'–"

"But I know you wouldn't be like Mr. Garden or Mr. Carfax—just pretending not to like the thing because it's the thing not to. Or like Aunt Adela, who picks up a phrase about a book or picture from some clever man and then uses it everywhere."

"I should never remember it—a phrase or anythin'—I never can remember what a feller says–"

"Oh! I know you'd always be honest about these things. I feel you would—about everything. It's all these lies that are so impossible: I think I've come to feel now after this first season that the only thing that matters is being straight. It is the only thing—if a person just gives you what they've got—what they've got, not what someone else is supposed to have. May Eversley used to say that people's minds are like soup—thick or clear—but they're only thick because they let them get thick with other people's opinions—you don't mind all this?" she said, suddenly pausing, afraid lest he should be bored.

"It's most awfully interestin'," he said from the bottom of his heart.

"There are some men and women—I've met one or two—who're just made up of Truth. You know it the minute you're with them. And they'll have pluck too, of course—Courage goes with it. Our family," she ended, "are of course the most terrible liars that have ever been—ever–"

"Oh! I say–" he began, protesting.

"Oh! but yes—they run everything on it. My uncle Richard ran through Parliament beautifully because he never said what he meant. And Aunt Adela—and Uncle John, although he's a dear. But then my grandmother brought them up to it. My grandmother would have about three clever people and then muddle all the rest so that the three clever ones can have everything in their hands–"

"Look here," he broke in, "I'm most awfully fond of your grandmother—we're tremendous pals–"

"You may be—I hate her. Oh! I don't hate her with melodrama, I don't want to strangle her or beat her face or burn her, but I'm frightened of her and she's always making me do things I'm ashamed of. That's the best reason for hating anyone there is."

"But she's such a sportsman. One of the old kind. One–."

"Oh! I know all that you can say. I've heard it so many times. But she's all wrong. There isn't any good in her. She's just remorseless and selfish and stubborn. She thinks she ran the world once and she wants to do it still."

"That's all rather fine, I think," said Roddy. "I agree with her a bit. I think most people have got to be run—they just can't run themselves, so you have to put things into them."

"Well, that's just where we differ," she said sharply. "It isn't so. That's where all the muddle comes in. If everyone were just himself without anything borrowed—Oh! the brave world it'd be–"

Then she laughed. "But I'm all wrong myself, you know. I'm as muddled as anyone. I've got all the true, real me there, but all the Beaminster part has slurred it over. But I've got a horrid fear that Truth gets tired of waiting too long. One day, when you're not expecting it, it comes up and says—'Now you choose—your only chance. Are you going to use me or not? If not, I'm going'—How awful if one didn't realize the moment was there, and missed it."

She was laughing, but in her heart that other woman in her was stirring. For a startled, trembling second the wood seemed to flame, the gardens to blaze with the challenge:

"Are you, for the sake of the comfort and safety of life, playing false? Which way are you going?"

She burst into laughter, she caught Roddy by the arm. "Oh! I've talked such nonsense—It's getting cold—we've got to go in. Don't think I talk like that generally, Sir Roderick, because I don't—I–"

She was nervous, frightened. The stars were so many and it was so dark and Roddy no longer seemed a protection.

"I know it's late—Look here, I'm going to run—Race me–"

She tore for her very life out of the little wood, felt him pounding behind her, seized, with a gasp of relief, the lights and the voices—

She knew, with joy, that Roddy was closing the door behind her and that the garden and the stars and the wood were shut into silence.

For a little while, in the drawing-room, she talked excitedly, laughed a great deal, even at Monty Carfax's jokes.

She knew that they were all thinking that she was pleased because she had been with Roddy. She did not care what their thoughts were.

At last in her room she cried to Lucy—"Pull the curtains tight—Tighter—Tighter—Those stars—they'll get through anything."

When at last Lucy was gone she lit her candle and lay there, hearing the clocks strike the hours, wondering when the day would come.

CHAPTER XIII

DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER—II

I

Roddy, dozing after a night of glorious sleep, lay on his back and swung happily to and fro.

The footman who was valeting him had pulled up the blind and drawn aside the curtains, and the garden came to him, not as on last evening, weighed with its canopy of stars, but now asserting its own happiness and colour and freshness.

The man said: "The bathroom is the last door down the passage on your right, sir. Breakfast is at half-past nine. It has just gone eight. What clothes, sir?"

Roddy stared at him and smiled. After a little time, the man enquired again: "Which suit will you wear this morning, sir?"

"Dark blue." Roddy, still happily floating somewhere near the ceiling—floating with delicious lightness—"Dark blue—Dark blue—Dark blue–"

For a little while the man, a strange vague shape, pulled out drawers and closed them and walked about the floor, like Agag, delicately. Roddy, from the ceiling watched him and resented the fact that every sharp click of a drawer pulled him nearer to the carpet.

The man's final shutting of the bedroom door plumped Roddy into his bed, wide awake.

"Damn him! What a wonderful day!"

He lay back and watched how waves of light danced on the walls. A fountain splashed in the gardens and the long mirror on the right of the bed had in it the corner of the green lawn and the cool grey stones of an old wall.

Roddy lay on his back and allowed his sensations to run up and down his body. It was for moments such as this that his life was intended. He lived, deliberately and without any selfishness in the matter, for the emotions that the good old god Pan might choose to provide for him.

He did not know Pan by name except as a silly fancy dress that Monty Carfax had once worn at a fancy-dress dance and as Someone alluded to every now and again, vaguely, in the papers, but even though he did not call him by name he, nevertheless, paid, without question, his daily homage.

When, as on this beautiful morning, one had only to lie down and be instantly conscious of a thousand things—sheep moving slowly across hills, cattle browing in deep pools, those Downs that he loved rising, slowly, like aged men, to greet a new day—then one questioned nothing, one argued nothing, one needed no words, one was happy from the crown of one's head to the toes of one's feet.

On this especial morning these delights were connected with the fact that, during the day, he intended to propose marriage to Rachel Beaminster. He thought of her, now, as she had looked last night, sitting in that wood, in a pale blue dress, with the stars behind her, staring, so seriously, down into the garden. She had been very beautiful last night, and it had been a splendid moment—not more splendid than other moments that he had had, but splendid enough to remember.

He was always prepared for the necessity of the short duration of his sensations. He had discovered, when he was very young, that nothing lasted and that the things that lasted the shortest time were generally the best things, and therefore he had, quite unconsciously, trained himself to store his memory with splendid moments; now, although he had no memory at all for any sort of facts or books or histories, he could recall precisely, in all their forms and colours, scenes, persons, adventures that had, at any time, thrilled him.

He could remember days; once when, as a little boy, he had been overtaken by night on the Downs and had sheltered in a deserted house, black and evil, that had, he afterwards discovered, been, in the eighteenth century, a private mad-house; once when the sea had been green and purple, the sky black, and he had discovered a star-fish for the first time (very young on that occasion); once when his horse had run away with him and the danger had been exceeded by the glorious speed through the air … many, many others, all to be counted by him to their very least detail, and now, of some of them, Rachel Beaminster was the central figure.

He had had relations of many kinds with many different women and never until now had he supposed, for an instant, that these relations would be permanent. Even now, although he was intending to marry Rachel Beaminster, he was not so foolish as to imagine that the freshness and novelty of the feeling that he now had for her would last more than a very short time.

Quite deliberately he treasured up in his mind a thousand pictures of her, as he had seen her during the last two months, so that when the time came for seeing her no longer in that way, he would have his memories: there was the time of her first ball, all excitement and happiness, the day at her uncle's when she had looked at him over the top of the fans, the night at the opera when she had been so angry with him, last night—

She had, through all this time, remained elusive. He did not know her, could not reconcile one inconsistency with another—but he thought that she cared about him and would marry him.

He had always known that he must one day marry. That necessity was, in no way, connected with the emotional side of him, it rather had its relationship with the common sense of him, the part that believed in the Beaminsters and all their glory.

He must marry because Seddon Court must have a mistress, because he himself must have children, because he would like to have someone there to be kind to. That need in him for bestowing kindness upon someone was always most urgent, and all sorts of animals and all sorts of persons had shared it—now one person would have it all. He could not bear to hurt anyone or anything, and the crises of his life were provided by those occasions when, in the delight of one of his emotional moments, hurting somebody was involved—there was always then a conflict.

He knew that it was just here that the Duchess failed to understand him. She liked hurting people and expected him to be amused when she told him little stories about her having done so. He had now a kind of dim feeling that it was because the Duchess hoped that he was going to hurt Rachel that she had prosecuted so strenuously his marriage.

He trusted with all his heart that he would never hurt Rachel, he intended always to be very, very kind to her; it was indeed a thousand pities that the present quality of his attitude to her must, like all attitudes, eventually change.

But he was always—he was sure of this—going to be good to her and give her everything that the mistress of Seddon Court should have.

At the same time, vaguely, he wished that the old Duchess had had nothing to do with this; sometimes he wondered whether the side in him that found pleasure in her was really natural to him.

Whenever he thought of her, she, in some way, confused his judgment and made life difficult.

She was doing that now....

II

When he came down to breakfast he found that he was the last. He sat next to Nita Raseley and was conscious, after a little time, that she was behaving with a certain reserve. He had known her in the kind of way that he knew many people in his own set in London, pleasantly, indifferently, without curiosity. She had, however, attracted him sometimes by the impression that she gave him that she was too young to know many men, but, however long she lived, would never find anyone as splendid as he: she had certainly never been reserved before. Finally he realized that she expected to hear of his engagement to Rachel Beaminster at any moment. "Well, so she will," he thought, smiling to himself. Meanwhile he avoided Rachel quite deliberately.

He was now self-conscious about her and did not wish to be with her until he could ask her to marry him. No more uncertainty was possible. He felt, not frightened, but excited, just as he would feel were he about to ride a dangerous horse for the first time.

He seized, with relief, upon the proposal of church; he wanted the morning to pass; his prayer was that she would not walk to church with him, because he had now nothing to say to her except the one thing. When he heard that she was staying behind and walking with Nita Raseley he was surprised at his own sense of release.

Lady Adela was kind to him this morning in a sort of motherly way and apparently seized on his going to church as an omen of his future married happiness.

"They're all waiting to hear," he said to himself.

They were to walk across the park to the little village church, and when they set out he was conscious that Lord John, like a large and amiable bird, was hovering about him: finally, Lord John, nervous apparently, most certainly embarrassed, settled upon him.

"Going to church, aren't you, Roddy?"

"Yes, Beaminster."

"Well, let's strike off together, shall we?"

Roddy liked Lord John best of the Beaminster brothers; the Duke he could not endure and Lord Richard was so superior, but Johnny Beaminster was as amiable as an Easter egg and fond of race meetings and pretty women, and not too dam' clever—in fact, really, not clever at all.

But Johnny Beaminster embarrassed was another matter and Roddy found soon that this embarrassment led to his own confusion.

Lord John flung out little remarks and little whistles because of the heat and little comments upon the crops. He obviously had something that he very much wanted to say—"Of course," thought Roddy, "this is something to do with Rachel—he's very fond of Rachel."

Although Johnny Beaminster had not, in strict accuracy, himself the reputation of the whitest of Puritans, yet Roddy wondered whether perhaps he were not now worrying over some of Roddy's past history, as rumoured in London society.

"Doesn't want his girl to be handed over to a reg'lar Black Sheep, shouldn't wonder," thought Roddy, and this led him to rather indignant consideration of the confusion of the Beaminster mind and its muddled moralities.

The walk to the church was not very long, but it became, towards the close of it, quite awful in its agitation.

"Dam' hot," said Lord John.

"Very," said Roddy.

"Wouldn't wonder if this weather broke soon–"

"Quite likely."

"Makes you hot walking to church this hour of the morning."

"Yes—don't it? Farmers will be wantin' rain pretty badly. Down at my little place they tell me it's dried up like anythin'–"

"Reg'lar Turkish bath–"

"Well, the church ought to be cool–"

"You never know with these churches–"

Roddy thought "He's afraid of his old mother. Doesn't want me to marry Rachel, but he's afraid of his old mother."

"Massiter's getting fat–" This was Lord John's contribution.

"Yes—so's that novelist feller–"

"Oh! Garden! Yes—ever read anything of his?"

"Never a line. Never read novels."

"Not bad—good tales, you know."

"He's probably," Roddy thought, "had a row with the old lady about me–"

Then, strangely enough, the notion hit him—"Wish it was he wanted me to marry Rachel and the Duchess didn't—Wish she didn't, by Gad."

As they entered the church Roddy might have seen, had he been gifted in psychology, that there was in Lord John's face the look of a man who had fought a battle with his dark angel and been, alas, defeated.

III

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 grassy hollow, and under this grassy 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–"