The Duchess of Wrexe Part 56

The house was very still, but the storm was raging and the boughs of some tree hit, with fierce protesting taps, a window at the pa.s.sage-end.

He knocked at her door, waited, then heard her ask who was there.

"It's I, Roddy," he said. There was a pause, then the door was opened.

He came in and stood in the doorway. Rachel was sitting up in bed, her face very white, her eyes fixed on him.

"I'm sleepin' here to-night, Rachel," he said.

Her voice was a whisper--"No, Roddy--no--not--not----"

"Yes," he said firmly.

"No, not to-night."

"Yes--to-night--now."

He walked carefully across the room, took off his dressing-gown, and hung it over a chair. He looked about the room.

"Too much light"--he said and, going to the door, switched off all the lights save the one above the bed.

CHAPTER XII

LIZZIE'S JOURNEY--III

"Exile of immortality, strongly wise, Strain through the dark with undesirous eyes, To what may be beyond it. Sets your star, O heart, for ever? Yet behind the night, Waits for the great unborn, somewhere afar, Some white tremendous daybreak."

RUPERT BROOKE.

I

That night Lizzie had a dream and, waking in the early hours of the grey dim morning, saw before her every detail of it. She had dreamt that she was lost in the house. No human being was there. Every room was closed and she knew that every room was empty.

It was full day, but only a dull yellow light lit the pa.s.sages.--She could not find her way to the central staircase. A pa.s.sage would be familiar to her and then suddenly would be dark and vague and menacing.

She opened doors and found wide dusty empty rooms with windows thick in cobwebs and beyond them a garden green, tangled, deserted.

She knew that if she did not escape soon some disaster would overtake her, some disaster in which both Roddy and Rachel would be involved. She knew also that, in some way, Rachel's safety absolutely depended upon her--She felt, within herself, a struggle as to whether she should save Rachel. She did not wish to save Rachel.... But some impulse drove her....

She ran down the pa.s.sage, stumbling in the strange indistinct yellow light--She knew that, could she only reach the garden, Rachel would be saved.

She reached a window, looked down, and saw below her, like a green pond, the lawn overgrown now with weeds and bristling with strange twisted plants.

She flung open the window and tried to jump, but a cold blast of some storm met her and drove her back. The storm screamed about her, the dust rose in the room, the plants in the garden waved their heads ... the wind rushed through the house and she heard doors banging and windows creaking.

She knew suddenly that she was too late--Rachel was dead.

She stood there thinking, "I thought that I hated her--I know now that I loved her all the time."

The storm died down--died away. A voice quite close to her said, "You made a mistake, Miss Rand. People have souls, you know--having a soul of your own is more important than criticizing other people's.... People have souls, you know."

She woke and heard a clock strike seven. As she lay there a sense of uneasiness was with her so strongly that she repeated to herself, half sleeping, half waking, "I wish to-day were over, quite over, quite over.

I want to-day to be over."

She was completely wakened by a sound. She lay there for a little time wondering what it was. Then she realized that something was scratching on the door.

She got out of bed, opened the door and found the dog, Jacob, sitting in the long dark pa.s.sage, looking through his tangled hair into s.p.a.ce as though the very last thing that he had been doing had been trying to attract her attention. Jacob was nearer to a human being than any animal that she had ever known. He had attached himself to Miss Rand and she had decided, after watching him, that he knew more about the situation in the house than anyone else. To catch him, as he watched, with his grave brown eyes, Roddy or Rachel as they spoke or moved was to have no kind of doubt as to his wisdom, his deep philosophy, his penetration into motives.

He liked Miss Rand, but she knew well that his feeling for her had nothing of the pa.s.sionate urgency with which he regarded Roddy or Rachel. All tragedy--the depths and the heights of it--she had seen in that dog's eyes, fixed with the deepest devotion upon Roddy.--"He knows," she had often thought during the last week, "exactly what's the matter with all of us."

He always slept, she knew, in a basket in Rachel's room, and she wondered why he had been ejected. He sat now in the middle of the floor and seemed deeply unhappy. He sat square with his legs spread out, his hair hanging in melancholy locks over his eyes, his small beard giving a last wistful touch to his expression. He did not look at Lizzie or show any interest in her, he only stared before him at the pattern on the wall.

Lizzie did not attempt to pat him--she went back to bed, and, lying there, saw the light gather about the room.

Once Jacob sighed. Otherwise he made no movement until the maid came in with Lizzie's tea--Then he crawled under the bed.

II

When she came down to breakfast she felt that she could not endure another day of this place. She wished now for no revenge upon Rachel, she had no longer any curiosity as to the particular feelings of any one of these people for any other ... she felt detached from them all, and utterly, absolutely weary.

She was weighed down with a sense of disaster and she felt that she must, instantly, escape from it all, fling herself again into her London work, deal with the tiresome commonplaces of her mother and sister--she must escape.

Roddy was sitting alone at breakfast and she saw at once that he was uneasy. He seemed to avoid her eyes and he coloured as she came towards him.

"Mornin', Miss Rand," he said, "Rachel's not comin' down. Bit of headache--rotten night."

"I didn't have a very good night either. That storm made me sleep badly."

"Yes, wasn't it a corker? It's all right to-day though."

She looked through the wide high windows and saw out over a country painted as in a delicate water-colour--The softest green and dark brown lay beneath a pale blue sky, very still, very gentle. Tiny white puffs of cloud were blown, like soap bubbles across the sun, so that bright gleams floated and pa.s.sed and flashed again.

She drew a deep breath--"Nothing terrifying in such a day as this."

"Yes, it's beautiful--beautiful! I'm off for the day," Roddy said, "ridin'----"

She helped herself to some breakfast and sat down.

Roddy said, "Well, no one would ever believe _you'd_ had a bad night, Miss Rand."--"You're fresh as a pin."

"Thank you," she said, laughing. "But, all the same, I _did_ sleep badly."

"I'm not feeling princely myself," he confessed, "that's why I'm goin'

off for a ride, nothin' like a ride to take you out of yourself. Don't you ever feel, Miss Rand, that you want to get right away from yourself and be someone else?"