The Duchess of Wrexe Part 58

She looked up when Lizzie came in, seemed, with a violent effort, to compel control.

They sat there for some time and discussed the dance; the dusk filled the room, then tea was brought. There was a light in their corner; slowly the rest of the room grew dark.

They finished tea, it was taken away, and Lizzie, sitting quite close to Rachel, on a little sofa that had a window just behind it, was aware that again, in spite of herself, her ears were straining for some sound.

The house and all the world were profoundly still.

When the servant had at last left them alone, Rachel said--"Miss Rand, you mustn't go away to-morrow--Aunt Adela can manage for another week.

After all, she did promise that you should stay for me over the ball."

"Why did you ask me here, Lady Rachel?" Lizzie said. Her speech was a direct challenge and, instantly, when she had spoken she knew that they had entered upon those personal relations that they had, during all these weeks, feared.

"I asked you because I wanted you for a friend--I've no friend--no woman friend--whom I can trust. I knew that I could trust you--I hoped that you could help me----"

"I've been here for some time now and you have told me nothing."

"No--because you have held me off, have shown me so plainly that you disliked and distrusted me. You didn't always dislike me--what have I done?"

"That's only my way. As I told you this morning, Lady Seddon, I'm not an emotional person. But I feel more than I show. I would like to help you, if you will let me."

Rachel leaned forward and caught first Lizzie's arm, then her hand. Then she spoke, her voice quivering as though she were forcing upon herself the most intense control.

"Oh! you're so strange, so odd I don't know what you feel, whether you care, but these last months have been so hard for me that even though you hate me, despise me, it doesn't matter--nothing matters if only I can get away from myself, you're so different--so dry, so hard, but you are, you are!--just as hard----" she stopped--Lizzie drew her hand away.

"Please--don't tell me things if you feel about me like that. It hasn't been my fault, has it, that we don't get on? _I_ didn't ask to come here, to know you--let me go--let me go back. Don't bother about me--leave me alone," she at last brought out.

But Rachel said more urgently--"No, don't go now. Even though you don't care, even though you hate me, help me. I've no one else. If only you knew the things I've suffered these past weeks, how I've hated myself for my indecision, for my weakness and shame. I don't know why I feel as though you were the only person to whom I could talk. I'm being driven, I suppose, by this long silence--and then you're so absolutely to be trusted--even though you dislike me--you're straight all through--I've always known that."

At Lizzie's heart again now that strange confusion of sensation, and with it a sure conviction that fate had this scene between them in hand, and that events now, whatever the hours might bring forth, were beyond her control.

"Yes, you may trust me," she said drily--"I'm useful, at any rate for that."

Lizzie watched her as, in the little pause that followed, Rachel struggled for concentration and for the point of view that would make the strongest appeal. _That_, Lizzie grimly knew, was the thing for which the girl was struggling and it yielded her the pleasanter irony because she was, herself, so surely aware of that one fact that all Rachel's confessions contained--

For herself she had only confidently to sit and wait.... Then Rachel plunged--

"I'm unhappy," she said, "in my married life, miserably unhappy, and entirely, utterly by my own fault. I've tried, or fancied that I've tried. I've done what I've thought was my best--Things have happened now, at last, that have made it impossible--I can't go on any longer."

She spoke as though she were, very urgently, endeavouring to deliver a fair honest statement. There was in her voice a note that showed that life had truly, of late, been very hard for her--

"I married, in the beginning, for a wrong reason. I knew then that I didn't love my husband. I married because I wanted to escape. I had always hated my grandmother and she had always hated me--you knew that, Miss Rand; everyone who had anything to do with us knew it. She had done more than hate me, she had made me frightened--frightened of life and people. Someone came along who was kind and easy and comfortable, and everyone said it would be a good thing, and so I, not because I loved him, but because I wanted to escape from my grandmother, married him.

Because I had to silence everything that was honest in me I'm paying now."

"It was all quite natural," Lizzie said. "Most women would have done the same."

"It was horrible from the beginning; I found that I had not escaped from my grandmother at all. She had arranged the marriage and now was always, and in some curious way, influencing it.

"I soon saw what I had done--that I had been false to myself and therefore false to everything else. My husband was in love with me--He was very patient and good to me, but I found that everything that I did or thought or said in connection with my husband was false. What made it so hard was that I was, and I am, very fond of him. My training--the training of all our family had always been--to learn how to be sham, so that one's real self never appeared all one's life. It ought to have been easy enough--but I've never been like one of my family--I'd always been different.

"I had determined that this year I would do my duty to Roddy--But it's harder than any determination can govern. It's bad for Roddy, it's deadly for me ... at last things have happened that have made it impossible for me--I've made up my mind this morning. I must leave Roddy, let him divorce me, give him a better chance with someone else."

She spoke with the desperate immediate determination of youth, staring in front of her, her hands clenched. Like flame at Lizzie's heart leapt this knowledge.

"She and Breton are going--only you can stop them--she and Breton."

"Don't you think," said Lizzie, "a little of your husband?"

"I'm thinking of him all the time--It's for his sake--that he should have a better chance with someone who cared----"

"No, that isn't true," said Lizzie--"It's because you love someone else----"

Rachel, with her head down, whispered, "Yes--it's because ... someone else."

"Francis Breton."

"Yes, Francis Breton."

That whisper of his name had in it confidence, worship, defiance ... all these things were torture to Lizzie sitting there, very composed, very stern, very quiet. _She_ should have been able to say that name with just that precious intimacy, and she saw, in Rachel's eyes, beyond her trouble the glad pride that the p.r.o.nouncing of the name had given her.

"You know?" Rachel asked at length.

"Yes----"

"You've known a long time."

"Yes--a long time."

"Oh! If you'd only spoken to me!--All this time I've been wanting you to--You _must_ have known."

"Yes--I knew." Then Lizzie brought out slowly, letting her grave eyes wander over Rachel's face--

"You yourself insisted on telling me. You have brought it upon yourself if I say what I must...."

Rachel caught the hostility.

"Yes?" she said sharply.

"I'm older than you--older in every way. You know so little yet, the harm that you can do.... You must leave Francis Breton alone, Lady Seddon."

Rachel laughed--"Of course I knew that you--that it was the kind of way that you must look at it. But don't you see, we've got past all that first stage--It isn't, in the very least, any good looking at it from any general point of view. It's simply the individual happiness of the three of us, my husband, Francis Breton, myself--It's better for all of us that I should go."

"No ... not better for Francis Breton."

Rachel moved impatiently--"He--he and I--can judge that, Miss Rand----"

"No--You can't--you're too young. You don't know--I have a right to speak here, I know him--I have known him all this time----"

Lizzie broke off. Rachel, suddenly looking up, gazed at her--Lizzie, fiercely, also proudly as though she were guarding something very precious that they were trying to take from her, returned her gaze.