The Duchess of Wrexe Part 43

"No, thank you, my dear. If he can't come of his own accord, I'd prefer that he had no prompting. There was a time when it was otherwise."

Rachel got up. Their eyes met again, and their hatred for one another was so settled, so historic, so traditional an affair, that their glance now was almost friendly.

Then Rachel bent down very slowly and kissed her grandmother's cheek.

How much, she wondered, did she know of the Nita affair? Nita's spite would, a.s.suredly, have found a happy ground in which to plant its seed.

Oh! how she loathed this thick clouded atmosphere, this deceit, this deceit! It seemed that, at every turn since her marriage, she had been dragged into an atmosphere of disguise and subterfuge and double-dealing.

Well, she was soon to be done with it. At the thought of what her grandmother would say did she know of her friendship with Breton her heart beat triumphantly. There at any rate was a weapon!

"Well, good-bye, my dear. Come and see me again soon."

"Yes, grandmamma--good-bye."

IV

In the carriage with Roddy she suddenly laughed.

All those people, moving so solemnly with such self-importance about that room. The Duke, Lord Richard, Aunt Adela ... Norris, the footman....

Over them all that fierce commanding portrait. And upstairs that old, sick woman....

And beyond, away from that house, a war that that old woman and those self-important people saw only as a means of increasing their own self-importance.

It was all as a box of tin soldiers and a parcel of stiff china-faced dolls--

What were they all about? What did they think they were all doing? What, after all, was she, Rachel? Had they no conception of the sawdust that they all were beside this real, swiftly moving, death-dealing War that was suddenly amongst them?

"What is it?" said Roddy.

"Grandmother--grandmother--my dear, delightful, wonderful grandmother.

To think of her sitting all alone up there in her bedroom and all those people moving about downstairs--all so conscious of her. And yet she does nothing--_nothing_." Rachel, in her excitement, struck her knee with her hand. "She isn't even clever, really--She's never in all her life been known to say a witty thing--never. She doesn't really know much about politics.... She just sits there and acts--That's what it's always been, acting the whole time. If it's effective to be old and feeble she _is_ old and feeble--if it's effective to be fantastic she _is_ fantastic--She just sits still and takes people in. Why, if she'd wanted she could have been going out all these thirty years, I believe!"

"You're always unfair to her, Rachel," said Roddy. "You know she has ghastly pain often and often."

"Yes. I'll give her that," said Rachel. "She's brave--brave as anything.

And after all," she added, "she couldn't affect me more if she were the wittiest woman in the world----"

Roddy yawned--"Dam dull party," he said.

CHAPTER VII

RACHEL AND BRETON

"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go Always a little farther: it may be Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow, Across that angry or that glimmering sea.

... but surely we are brave Who make the Golden Journey to Samarcand."

_The Golden Journey to Samarcand._

JAMES ALROY FLECKER.

I

Rachel now awaited her meeting with Breton with restless impatience. It should afford her, beyond everything, a solution. She was young enough and inexperienced enough to make many demands upon life--that it should be romantic, that it should, in the issues that it presented, be honest and open and clear, that it should allow her to settle her own place in it without any hurt to anyone else, that it should, in fact, arrange any number of compromises to suit herself and that it should nevertheless be so honest that it would admit of no compromises at all.

She approached life with all the reckless boldness of one who has never come into direct contact with it. Neither her relations with her grandmother nor with Roddy had as yet taken from her any of her youngest nor simplest illusions. Were life drab and uninteresting, why, then one turned simply to the place where it promised colour and adventure.

She had not yet discovered that when we go deliberately to grasp at happiness we are eternally eluded.

But in spite of her desire for honesty she refused to face the actual meeting with Breton. She knew him so slightly as Francis Breton and so intimately as an idea. What she felt in her heart was, that her grandmother had hoped to catch her by marrying her to Roddy and that nothing could prove so eloquently that she had not been caught as her friendship with Breton.

"I will show her and I will show Roddy that I am my own mistress, free whatever they may say or do."

Breton--seen dimly as a rebel against a harsh dominating world--was the figure of all romance and freedom. "Roddy doesn't care what happens to me. He'll do anything grandmother tells him to...."

She was now out to attack the Beaminster fortress; she did not as yet know that half of her was urgent for its defence.

II

When the afternoon arrived she took a cab and was driven to Saxton Square. She mounted the stairs, knocked on the door and was admitted by his ugly man-servant.

"Is Mr. Breton at home?" she asked.

"Yes, my lady," he answered and smiled; she disliked his smile and before she pa.s.sed into the room had a moment of wild unreasoning panic when she wished that she were not there, when Roddy's face came to her, kind and loving and homely.

She stepped forward into the room, heard the door close behind her and felt rather than saw him as he came forward to greet her.

Then she heard him say--

"Oh, I'm so glad you've come. I was so afraid lest something should stop you."

His windows, although only on the first floor, had a wide sweeping view; a world of chimneys and towers glittering now beneath the sinking sun.

His room was simple and had the effect of cleanly emptiness; a table arranged for tea, two rather faded arm-chairs, a dark green carpet, a book-case, two large framed photographs on the walls, one of some street in Bombay, the other of the Niagara Falls.

The sunshine lit the bare room and their faces and she was suddenly comfortable and at ease.

He drew one of the easy chairs forward to the window.

"Sit down in the sun; Marks will bring the tea in a moment."

She sat back in the chair and looked out on to the shining roofs and towers, not glancing towards him, but acutely aware of him, of all his movements. He sat down upon the broad window-seat near her and looked at her.

She knew that she had never been conscious, physically, of anyone before. Roddy's clumsy hands and rather awkward body had always simply belonged to Roddy and stayed at that; now she felt as if Francis Breton's hand, close, as she knew, to hers, was joined to her by a running current of attraction.