The Duchess of Wrexe Part 53

Now, however, for the first time in his life he would have been glad of help from someone who knew a little about the motive of human beings. He was worried, distressed, perplexed; slowly his temper was rising--a temper roused by his irritation at not being able to deal with the situation.

It was not his way to ask for help from anyone and he always had all the inarticulate self-confidence of the healthy Englishman, but now, as the days crept towards Christmas he was increasingly aware that something must soon happen to prevent his patience giving away.

He might as well not be married to Rachel at all--and that was an intolerable position for him as husband, as lover, as master of his house. Beyond doubt, he knew Rachel less now than he had known her when he married her. Her very kindness to him, her strange alternations of silence and affection perplexed him; for a long time he had told himself that he knew that she did not love him and that he must make companionship do, but ever since that quarrel about Nita Raseley the division between them had grown wider and wider.

Because he loved her he had been very patient with her--very patient for Roddy, who had always had what he wanted and shown temper if he were refused.

But Roddy's character was of a very real simplicity. The men and women and animals whom he had known had also been, for the most part, of a simple character and, in all his life, there had only been one horse and two women who had been too much for him, and even these, at the last, he had beaten by temper and dogged determination.

Rachel was utterly beyond him. The strange way that she had of suddenly becoming quite another woman baffled him; had he only not loved her he was sure that it would have been easier, much easier.

But now, as the days pa.s.sed at Seddon, his irritation thrived. Women were all the same. They _seemed_ obstinate enough, but there was nothing like brute force to bring them to heel. He was growing surly--cross with the servants and the animals. He didn't sleep. His discontent made him silent so that, when they were alone, instead of talking to her and interesting her and winning her, perhaps, in that way, he would sit and look at her and answer her in monosyllables, and, afterwards, would be furious with himself for behaving so absurdly.

This trouble sent him out of doors and away over the Downs on his horse.

Fiercely he hurled himself into his fields and lanes and farms, getting up sometimes very early and riding out to some distant place, thinking always, as he rode, of Rachel and what he was to do.

His devotion for the country round Seddon, a devotion that had stirred his heart since his first conscious sight of the outside world, n.o.bly now rewarded him. The land seemed to understand that he was suffering, and drew closer to him and watched him with gentle and loving eyes, and soothed his soul.

Before Christmas there came some sharp, frosty mornings; he would go out very early and would see, first, the garden, the lawn crisp and white, the grey jagged wall that divided his land from the sweeping Downs, the grey house behind him so square and solid and comfortable. At the end of the garden away from the road there was an old iron gate with stone pillars, and upon these pillars sat old stone gryphons. These gryphons had been there since long ago and he liked the friendliness of their faces, the strength of their crouching bodies and the way that they would look out so patiently, over a great expanse of fields and hedges, until their gaze rested on the white chalk hollows in the rising hills away behind Lewes.

Roddy, standing with the Downs so immediately behind him and this green spread of land in front of him, was always conscious of happiness. Here he was at home. He knew those fields, the streams that ran through them, the farmers, the labourers, the horses and dogs that lived upon them. No fear here that "one of those clever fellers" would wonder at his stupidity, no sudden "letting you down" or "showing you up." Behind him was his house, before him the land that he had always known; here he was safe.

He had, too, beyond this, some unformulated recognition of a service and a worship that here he was called on to pay. He had always declared that he could understand those Johnnies who worshipped the sun and the earth.

"d.a.m.n it all--there's something to catch on to there."--He did not, in his heart, believe in all this civilization, this preserving of the sick and tending of the maimed and halt. "You've got to clear out if you're broken up" was his opinion. "If you can't do your bit, can't see or smell or anything, you're just in the way."--What he meant was that the halt and maimed were simply insults to the vigour and vitality of his fields and sky.

But indeed, what _would_ he have done during these days had he not had his riding, farms to visit, shepherds and farmers for company? At first Rachel had ridden with him and they had been closer together during those rides than at any other time, but lately she had refused, on one excuse or another, to come with him.

He went a good deal now to other houses, but it was awkward because Rachel would not come with him. She asked people to Seddon and was charming when they came, but she would not often go out with him when the country people invited them.

Since the Nita Raseley episode he had thought that she might show jealousy did he ride and drive with some girl in the country. He hoped that she would be jealous, that would have filled him with tingling happiness--but no, she seemed to be glad that he should find someone who could take her place.

Over all these things he brooded and brooded. He would look at his old friendly gryphons and feel, in some dumb confused way, that they were being insulted.--"Poor old beggars--I bet she doesn't know they're there"--And through all of this, he loved her more and more, and was, daily, more wretched and unhappy.

II

The coming of Miss Rand puzzled him. He had, of course, known of her for a long time--"Adela Beaminster's secretary, most capable woman, simply runs the whole place."--As a human being she simply did not occur to him.

Now she seemed to be the one person whom Rachel wished to know. Another instance of Rachel's unexpectedness. When Lizzie came he was still more astonished. This tidy, trim little woman looked as though she ought always to have a typewriter by her side; her sharp eyes were always restlessly discovering things that were out of order. Roddy found himself fingering his tie and patting his hair when she was with him--not, he would have supposed, the sort of woman for whom Rachel would have cared.

Then after a while he discovered another astonishing thing. Miss Rand did not like his wife, did not like her at all. He watched and fancied that Rachel soon discovered this and was doing her utmost to force Miss Rand to like her.

Miss Rand was always pleasant and polite; she was an immense help about dinners and this dance that was to be given early in the New Year, but she yielded to none of Rachel's advances, was always reserved, unresponsive.

Roddy was afraid of her but believed in her. She liked animals and loved the house and the Downs and the country.--"She's all clean and bright and hard," he thought; "no emotion about her, no sentiment _there_. A man 'ud have a stiff time love-making with her."

But it gradually appeared that, whatever her feelings might be towards Rachel, she was ready to like Roddy. She walked with him, asked him sensible questions, listened attentively to his rather lumbering explanations. After a time, he almost forgot that she was a woman at all--"d.a.m.n sensible and yet she never makes you feel a fool."

He liked her very much, though she obviously preferred Jacob, the mongrel, to all other dogs in the place. He wondered as the days pa.s.sed whether she might not help him with Rachel. He would not speak to anyone living about his own feelings for Rachel and his unhappiness, but he thought that, perhaps, in a roundabout way, he might obtain from Miss Rand some general wisdom that he could apply to his especial case.

The afternoon of Christmas Eve was cold and foggy and Roddy and Lizzie sat over the fire in the hall waiting for Rachel, who had gone out for a solitary walk. Roddy looking at his companion approved of the sharp delicate little face with the firelight touching it to colour and shadow; her dress was grey with a tiny brooch of old gold at her throat, and she wore one ring of small pearls; the look of her gave him pleasure.

"I wonder," Miss Rand said, "that you don't go where you'll get better hunting--you don't hunt round here at all, do you?"

"A bit"--Roddy looked gravely at the fire--"I go very little though. You see, Miss Rand, it's a case of bein' born down here and likin' the place, don't you know. _Of course_ I'd love to have been born in a huntin' country, but bein' here I've got fond of it, you see, and wouldn't leave it for any huntin' anywhere."

She looked at him sharply: "You do love the place very much--I envy you that."

Even as she spoke her consciousness of "the place" faced her; she had always known that she was more acutely aware of the personality of her surroundings than were most of her friends, but her experience here was different from anything that she had ever known before.

She remembered that in the train she had been warned of some coming event and now, sitting opposite to Roddy beside the blazing fire, she was sharply and definitely frightened.

Rachel had already appealed to her; Roddy was appealing to her now, but stronger than either of these demands was some force in herself, warning her and raising in her the most conflicting, disturbing emotions.

The very silence of the house about them, the long green stretches of the level fields, came almost personally and presented themselves to her, and in her heart, growing with every moment of pa.s.sing time, was her hatred of Rachel and, from that, tenderness for Roddy, who could thus be left, so pathetically unhappy, so eloquently without words that might express his unhappiness.

Something she knew was soon to occur that would involve all three of them in a common crisis.

It was almost as though she must leap to her feet and cry to the startled and innocent Roddy, "Look out!" her finger pointing at the closed door behind him.

Meanwhile Roddy had been considering her. She said that she envied him the place. That was pleasant of her, and he warmed to the urgency with which she had said it. If she felt in that way about such things, why then, all the more, he thought, he could speak to her about his trouble with Rachel. Perhaps, too, although this he would not admit to himself--his conviction that Lizzie disliked Rachel gave him more courage.

Everyone thought Rachel so wonderful--wonderful of course she was, but a complete sense of that wonder must blind the looker-on to Roddy's point of view.

"Places," he said moodily, "ain't everythin'--course _I_ love this old bit o' ground, but when you love anything a lot you're disappointed because every feller don't see it exactly as you do."

Lizzie looked at him.

"I should have thought, though, Sir Roderick, that you were a very, very happy person."

Roddy considered, then slowly shook his head--"No, Miss Rand, not exactly--no, you know, I shouldn't say that exactly--but then, I suppose, no man on this earth is absolutely happy."

"Well," said Lizzie, "a great many people would envy you--your health, your home, your wife, you've got a good deal, Sir Roderick."

As she spoke her anxiety to help him seized and held her. He wanted advice so badly, advice that she could give him, and this English strain in him prevented him from speaking. Had she gone more deeply into her motives she would have known that her anger with Rachel, even more actively prompted, it seemed, by the stones and the fields and the hills around her, was urging her interference.

"People envy me," said Roddy, "but then, Miss Rand, people don't know.

It's all my own fault, mind you, that I'm not perfectly happy. It's all because I'm such a fool, not able to see what people are gettin' at, always blunderin' in at the wrong moment and blunderin' out again when I ought to be stayin' in, and that sort o' thing. I used to think," he concluded, "that all the talk about people's feelin's, studying them and so on, was rot, but now I'm not so sure. I'd give anythin'--" he stopped abruptly.

"It _is_ all rot," Lizzie said sharply--"I can only speak as a woman, of course, but I know that what every woman ever born into this world has wanted is just to be taken by someone stronger than herself and be beaten or kissed, loved or strangled as the case may be. Believe me, it is so."

Roddy looked at her, some new thought, perhaps a prologue to some new determination, shining from his eyes.

"By Jove!" he said. "I believe you're right, Miss Rand--I do indeed.

_Every_ woman, would you say?"

"Every woman," said Lizzie firmly.