The Duchess of Wrexe Part 66

"Yes--long ago--But never mind that now, although I'd have spoken to you of it before if you'd let me--But the only thing that matters is that I believe--I can't of course be sure--but I believe that she's come now to tell Roddy."

Rachel drew a long breath. "Oh!" she said and, stiffly standing there, showed in her eyes the pitch of feeling to which now her grandmother had brought her.

Christopher went on urgently--"I've been praying for you to come in. I hoped you'd have come half an hour ago. There's no time now, but--it's simply this, Rachel dear--tell Roddy everything----"

She broke in pa.s.sionately. "You know it's all right, Dr. Chris--you've trusted me?"

"Absolutely," he said gravely. "But it simply is that Roddy mustn't be there imagining things, waiting, wondering.... Perhaps he won't ask you--Perhaps he will--But, anyway, tell him--tell him at once everything...."

The bell rang, he went across to her, kissed her, and then went downstairs.

She stood there waiting, without moving except to strip off, very slowly, her black gloves. Her eyes were fixed upon the door.

She heard the door downstairs open, the stumbling steps; once she caught the d.u.c.h.ess's voice and at that she drew in her breath. Then the hall door closed, but, for a long time afterwards, she stood there without moving.

CHAPTER III

RODDY MOVES

"... But the Red Dwarf, although as malevolent as possible, found that his ill-temper had no effect against true love, which always won in the end, even with quite stupid people."

_Grimm's Fairy Tales._

I

It would have been quite impossible for Roddy to have given any clear description of his experiences since the event of his accident. There, surely, like a gleaming sword, that cut his life into two pieces, the fact itself was visible enough, and there floated before him, again and again, the casual canter, the especial view that was before him just then, a view of undulating Downs, somewhere to his left white chalk hollows in grey hills and to his right a blue strip of sea, the wonder that was in his mind about Rachel, his thoughts chasing back over all the incidents of their life together, then suddenly the jerk, his consciousness of falling with the ground rising in a high wall to oppose him, and then darkness.

After that there was nightmare in which pain and Rachel, Rachel and pain, mingled and parted, were confused and then separate, and with them danced shapes and figures, sometimes in a turmoil that was horrible, sometimes in silence that was the most terrible of all. Clear after that first period of misty confusion was the day when he was told his fate.

He had come out from the heart of the more terrible pain--No longer had he to lie, knowing that soon, after another minute's peace, agony would rise before him like a creature with a wet pale malignant face, and then after looking upon him for a moment, would bend down and, with its horrible damp fingers, would twist and turn his bones one against another until the supreme moment came when nothing mattered and no agony, however bad, could touch his indifferent soul.

He was now simply weak, weak, weak--nothing mattered. In his dream he fancied that someone had said that he would never rise from his back again. For days after that it lingered far away from his actual consciousness. Really it had not mattered; something, this dream, that concerned him, but what could concern him except that people should keep quiet and not fuss?

For instance he loved to have Rachel with him, he was miserable were she not there, but at the same time he was conscious that she _did_ fuss, was not quite like Miss Rand.

But of this thing that he had heard he thought nothing. "There's _something_ that I ought to think about. I don't know _what_ it is--One day when I'm stronger I'll look into it."

There came a day when he _was_ stronger, a day, late in January, of a pale wintry sun and watery gleams. They had placed his bed so that he could see his beloved Downs and the little road that ran from their foot out into the village.

On this morning he was wonderfully better--he had slept well, breezes and pleasant scents came through the open window, geese were cackling, a donkey's braying made him laugh "Silly old donkey," he said aloud to no one in particular. Then he was aware of Jacob, sitting bunched into a heap in the middle of the floor, his brown eyes peering anxiously through his hair. At every sound his ears would rise for a moment, but his eyes were fixed upon Roddy.

The dog had been in Roddy's room a good deal during these last weeks, had been wrenched away from it. Roddy found that he was touched by this devotion; Jacob apparently cared more for him than did the other dogs--"Not a bad old thing--Often these mongrels are more human--But, Lord! he _is_ a sight!"

The nurse was sitting sewing by the window. Roddy lay, happily, thinking that now at last that jolly bad pain really _did_ seem to have been left behind. He was immensely, wonderfully better; it would not be long, surely, before he was quite fit again, before he....

Then down it swung, swung like an iron door shutting all the world away from him, inexorable--"Always on your back ... never get up again!"

His hand gripped the bed-clothes.

"Nurse."

"Yes?"

"Tell me--am I dreaming or did someone say something the other day about--about my never being able, well, to toddle again, you know?"

"I'm afraid----"

"Thanks."

He closed his eyes and then summoned all the grit and determination that there was in him to face this fact. He could not face it. It was as though he were struggling up the side of a high slippery rock--up he would struggle, up and up, now he was at the top, down he would slip again--it could not, oh! it could not be true!

It _was_ true. As the days pa.s.sed grimly in silence, he accepted it. It had always been his creed that in this world there was no place for the maimed and the halt. He was sorry for them, of course, but it was better that they should go; they only occupied room that was intended for l.u.s.tier creatures.

Well, now he was himself of the halt and maimed--that was ironical, wasn't it? Indeed he would much rather that he had pegged out altogether--better for everybody--but, as things were, he would square things out and see what he could make of it all. Then he saw as, every day, he grew stronger, that he had no resources; everything in his other life, as he now had come to think of it, had depended upon his physical strength, every pleasure, every desire, every ambition had had to do with his body--everything except Rachel.

In his other life half his happiness arose simply from the sense of his physical movement, his consciousness that, as the rivers flowed and the winds blew and the sun blazed, so did he also live and have his being--And with all this, most intimately was his house mingled. That grey building and he grew and moved and developed together; life could never be very terrible for him so long as he had his place to come back to, his place to care for, his fields and his gardens, his horses and his dogs to look after. Now he could do nothing more for it--perhaps one day he would be wheeled about its courts and paths, but oh! with what pitying eyes would it look down upon him, how sorrowfully his gryphons would greet him, with what memories they would confront him!

He could not bear now to look out upon the Downs on the little village path--His bed was moved. A day arrived when he felt that it was all, really, more than he could endure. He was in wild, furious rebellion, surly, sometimes in raging tempers, sometimes sulking from day to day.

He cursed all the world. Even Christopher could do nothing with him--

Then upon this there followed a period of silence. He lay there and beyond "Yes" and "No" would answer no one. His eyes stared at the wall.

Christopher feared at this time for his sanity.

Suddenly the silence was broken. He must go to London because he could not endure the memories that this place thronged upon him--At the beginning of March he was moved to the house in York Terrace.

II

The little house by the park helped him to construct his new life. The normality that there was in Roddy, the same balance of common sense, fostered his recovery. He was not going to die--Life would be an infernal trouble were he always to be in rebellion against it--he must simply make the best of the conditions. And then, after all, he had Rachel. Rachel had been a heroine during this time, and to his love for her he now clung, pa.s.sionately, tenaciously, the one thing left to him out of his great catastrophe.

She seemed, during these months, to have thought for nothing else in all the world. She was not so useful in a sick room as Miss Rand--Miss Rand was wonderful--but there were certain moments when she would bend down and kiss him or would look at him or would take his hand, when he wondered whether love for him had not crept into her heart after all.

Funny when he had gone out for his ride on that eventful morning expecting that he had offended her for ever! Well, if his accident had won Rachel for him, it had been worth while!

But there were other days when he knew for a certainty that it was not so, knew that it was pity that moved her; affection too perhaps, but nothing more than affection....

Nevertheless he hoped that this might be the beginning of something else; he would lie for hours looking out at the park and creating visions.

He made now something tolerable of his life. People showed a wonderful kindness and there was always someone to entertain him, some new present that someone had sent him; people could not be kind enough. He was grateful for all of this, but he spent many, many hours in thinking. He found that he had never thought before; he found that he would have gone to his grave without thinking had not the great catastrophe occurred. He thought of a great many things, but especially of what other people's lives were like. There were, he supposed, a great number of people who had had misfortunes as overwhelming at his--How had they behaved? And what, after all, were all the other people, in all their different circ.u.mstances, doing? Before this it had only occurred to him to be interested in the people who were leading lives like his, now he wondered about everybody.

Little things became of the greatest importance. Every day he read the paper with absorbed care from the first line to the last. The arrangement of the room interested him and he would give its details, minutely, his consideration.

He was greatly interested in gossip and he would chatter, happily, all the afternoon did someone come and visit him. To everyone it was an amazing thing that he should take it all so easily. No one had ever given Roddy credit for the strength of character that was in him and they did not perhaps recognize that his earlier impatient condemnation of other people--"Why the devil don't the feller stand up to it like a man?"--made him now conscious that he was himself at last faced with a similar test to which he himself must stand up.