The Duchess of Wrexe Part 49

To Lord John this terrible week was simply the climax to a succession of disturbing revelations of reality. All his days had he been denying Life, wrapping it up in one covering after another, calling it finally a box of chocolates or a racing card, a good cigar or a pretty woman, knowing, at his heart, that somewhere in the dark forest the wild beast was waiting for him, hoping that he might survive to the end without facing it.

Now it was before him and its glittering eyes were upon him.

He had gone on the Friday of this week, to pay a week-end visit at a country house near Newmarket. Many jolly, happy week-ends he had spent at this same house on other occasions, now, from first to last, it was nightmare.

On the Monday morning at breakfast a sudden conviction of the impossible horror of this world struck at his heart. It came as a revelation, life was for him never to be the same again. His hostess, a large-bosomed white-haired lady, planted at the end of the table like an enormous artificial toy in the middle of whose back some key must be turned if the affair is to amuse the crowd, suddenly horrified him; the women of the party, their noses a little blue, their cheeks a touch too white, their voices hard and sharp, the men, red and brown, boisterously hearty about the animals they hoped to kill before the day was done, the cold food in a glazed and greedy row, the hot food--kidneys, fish, bacon, sausages, sizzling and scenting the air--: the table itself with its racks of toast and marmalade and silver and fruit: the conversation that sounded as though the speakers were afraid that the food would all disappear were they spontaneous or natural--all these things suddenly appeared to Lord John in a very horrible light, so that, in an instant, racing and women and clothes and food were banished from a naked biting world in which he was a naked solitary figure.

He caught a train as one flies from some horrible plague: he arrived in London, breathless, confused, miserable, the foundations of Life broken from beneath him.

Here he found Lady Adela in a like condition.

He had never cared very greatly for his sister, he had not found her sympathetic or amusing, she had never appealed to him for a.s.sistance, nor challenged his violent opposition. He had never enquired very deeply into her interests; she had much correspondence and many acquaintances.

She ran, he supposed, the house or, at least, directed Miss Rand to run it for her.

He thought her a rather stupid woman, but then all the Beaminsters thought one another stupid because they believed so intensely in the d.u.c.h.ess and she had always made a point of seeing that, individually, they despised one another, although collectively they faced the world.

Finally, Adela had always seemed to him unsympathetic towards Rachel and that he found it very hard to forgive--but then, he often reflected they were all, with the exception of himself, a most unsentimental family. He wondered sometimes why he was so different.

On the afternoon of his return from Newmarket, however, he began to wonder whether, after all, Adela had not more in common with him than he had ever expected. He had lunched at the club, had plunged down into the City to enquire about some investments, it had begun to rain, and he had returned with the weight of that gloomy day full heavily upon him.

He did not, as a rule, have tea, but to-day he needed company, and he found Adela in the little sitting-room next to the library, a little room with faded wall-paper, faded pictures (groups, some of them, of himself and Vincent and Richard at Eton and Oxford), faded arm-chairs and faded chintzes--a nice, cosy, friendly room, full of old a.s.sociations and old hopes and despairs.

This room did not often see either Lady Adela or John, but to-day Norris, for reasons best known to himself, had put tea there and, to both of them, as they sat over the fire with the great house so still and quiet about them, the shabby intimacy of the little place was grateful.

John, disturbed, himself, out of his normal easy geniality, noticed that Adela also was disturbed.

That dry and rather gritty a.s.surance that had all her life protected her from both the praise and abuse of her fellow-men and women was, to-day, absent. She seemed really grateful to John for coming to have tea with her to-day. He wondered whether she felt as he did that this war, with all its horrors, foreboded, in some manner, special disasters upon the Beaminster family, as though it were a portent, to be read of all men, of the destruction and ruin of that family.

"Poor Adela," he thought, "she's very plain. If she asks me to help her I will. She's got something on her mind."

"Rachel's here," Lady Adela said, looking at her brother nervously.

"Now?"

"Yes, she's with mother. She came to say good-bye to her. She and Roddy are going down to Seddon to-morrow."

"Yes, I know----" said John.

"She's very queer--very odd. I don't pretend to understand her."

"We're all queer just now," said John. "Down at the club to-day it was too awful. No other subject--fellows killed, fellows going out to be killed. Blunder, blame, disgrace--all the time. But what's Rachel been doing odd?"

"You understand her better than I do," said his sister. "She always liked you better. I did my best with her, but she never cared about me.

But now I understand her less than ever. She's so excited and hard and unnatural. Something's happened to her that we don't know about, I'm sure."

John said nothing. He was unhappy enough about Rachel, but he did not intend to talk to Adela about it. He would rather not talk to anyone about it because talking only brought it more actually in front of him.

Besides, he did not know what to say. He knew that he had been cowardly about Rachel. He had tried to pretend to himself that she was happy when he had known that she was not and so, for the sake of his comfort, he had stifled the most genuine emotion in his life; that indeed was the Beaminster habit.

"She's not happy," continued Adela. "I'm sure I don't know why--Roddy's very good to her--very good. She's so queer. She wants to have Miss Rand down with her at Seddon for Christmas."

"Miss Rand?"

"Yes--she asked me whether I'd let her go. She's got to give a dance and a dinner-party or two and asked me whether she might have her help. Of course I said 'Yes.' Miss Rand hasn't been looking at all well for some time now. A change will do her good."

"What did Miss Rand say when you told her?"

"Oh, she was odd. She has been odd lately. At first she thought she wouldn't go. Then she said she would. I told her it would do her good."

"How's mother been the last two days?"

"Oh! the same. She won't say anything--she confides in n.o.body."

John looked at his sister and wondered why it was that he had never, during all these years, considered her as a personality or as anything actively happy or miserable. She had had, he suddenly supposed, a life of her own that was, in a way, as acute and sensitive as his and yet he had never realized this.

He had always taken his mother's word for it that Adela was a dried-up stick who resented interference; now he was sure that that judgment was short-sighted, and then, upon this, came criticism of his mother; therefore, to banish such disloyalty, he said hurriedly:

"I didn't enjoy the Ma.s.siters a bit--longed to get away--Sunday was miserable----"

Adela said--"I never could bear them--John----" she stopped.

"Yes," he said, looking across at her. His large good-tempered eyes met hers and then the colour mounted very slowly into her cheeks. He had never seen her agitated before--

"John--" she began again. "I must do something. I can't sit here--just quietly--going on as though nothing were happening. I know--all one's life one's stood aside rather, I've never wanted to interfere with anyone. But now, this war has made one feel differently, I think."

"Well?" said her brother.

"Well--an organization is being formed--women, you know--to help in some way. They're going to do everything, make clothes, have sales and concerts and get money together. It's to be a big thing--Nelly Ponsonby, Clara Raddleton, lots of others.... They've asked me to be on the committee----"

"Well?" said John, "why not?"

She looked at him appealingly. "Mrs. Bronson's on it too--one of the originators of it."

"Oh!" John was silent. Here was, indeed, a question. Mrs. Bronson, the Beaminster arch-enemy. Mrs. Bronson, who had snapped her bejewelled American fingers at the d.u.c.h.ess--Mrs. Bronson, who called the Beaminsters the most insulting names. Why, a fortnight ago any alliance with such a woman was unthinkable, incredible--

"I believe," went on Lady Adela, "that she herself proposed that I should be asked...."

A fortnight ago ... and now--

John knew that he was glad that Adela wished to join the committee, he knew that he was closer to Adela now than he had ever been at any moment during their lives together.

He looked across at her and their eyes met and in that glance exchanged between them barriers were broken down, curtains turned aside--they would never be strangers again.

"Mother isn't well." Adela said quite firmly. "Hasn't been well for a long time--we've all known it. She has felt this war and--and other things very much. She will feel my going on to the same committee as Mrs. Bronson--she will certainly feel it. But I think it's my duty to do so. After all, on an occasion like this family feeling must give way before national ones." Why did not the walls and foundations of No. 104 Portland Place rock and quiver before the horrid sacrilege of such words? John, himself, almost expected them to do so and yet he was of his sister's opinion.

"I think you are perfectly right, Adela," he said.

"Oh! I'm so glad that you do. I don't want to worry mother, just now.

I'm frankly rather nervous about telling her--but it must be done."