The Duchess of Wrexe Part 39

Mrs. Rand saw them off in a four-wheeler with an air of reluctance. It always hurt her that anyone should go to the theatre without her.

Of course Lizzie was old enough by now to look after herself, but at the same time this Mr. Breton was no safe character and it would have been altogether "nicer" if Lizzie had suggested her company--

Lizzie had not suggested it; with a s.h.i.+ver Mrs. Rand resigned herself to an evening made hideous by a vision of a world crowded with theatres through whose portals gay audiences were pouring--

"Of course it's selfish of her," she said again and again to Daisy--"Selfish is the only word."

Meanwhile the cab was, for Lizzie, a chariot of happiness. He looked splendid to-night, more romantic than he had ever been, with his pointed beard, his armless sleeve b.u.t.toned across on to his coat, his top-hat s.h.i.+ning, his clothes fitting so perfectly. Poor though he was, he always stood up as smart as anyone, the Duke or Lord John were no smarter.

Did he realize, she wondered, that the edge of his hand touched the silk of her dress? Did he notice the absurd way that the pearls jumped up and down on her throat? Did he feel the little s.h.i.+ver of happiness that ran through her body and out at her toes and fingers?

The chariot was dark, but beyond it there were piled lighted buildings; before these ran streets that flung dark figures, here one by one, now in throngs, against the glittering colour.

She could not believe that anyone there by the lumbering cab could show happiness that could equal hers.

Had she been coldly surveying, from the careful distance of an outside observer, these emotions in some other woman she would have demanded her reasons for such expectation of happiness, but it was her very inexperience of any other such affair in her life that allowed her now to rest a.s.sured. As he touched her hand to help her into the restaurant she was sure, by the beating of her heart, that she could not be deceived.

The restaurant was in Pall Mall, and as she went in she noticed the string of faithful people waiting round the corner of Her Majesty's Theatre; she was glad that there were so many others enjoying themselves to-night.

They sat at a little round table on a balcony and below them other happy people were laughing and talking--Flowers, lights, women not so beautiful that they disheartened one, and, from the open windows, a whir, a rattle, a shout, a cry, a bell, a hurdy-gurdy, a laugh--Oh! the world was turning to-night!

There was a beautiful dinner, but she was far too happy to eat much. He seemed to understand. They both talked a little, but it was, it appeared, implied between them that their real conversation should be postponed.

She was, to herself, an utterly new Lizzie Rand to-night, inarticulate, uncertain, confused.

"What's this the papers say about South Africa?"

"Yes, it looks as though there were going to be trouble there. But you can trust Milner--a strong man----"

"Yes, I suppose so--but it seems a pity that this Conference that they hoped so much from has all fallen through, doesn't it? They do seem obstinate people."

"Well, they are. I was out in Pretoria in '95--obstinate as mules. But there won't be much trouble--a troop or two of our fellows have only got to show their faces----"

"Yes, of course. Isn't that a pretty woman down there? There to the right--with the black hair and the diamonds--tall--"

But tall women with black hair and Boers in South Africa were merely points to catch hold, and, for an instant, the thrill of the contact and the antic.i.p.ation and the glorious vision of the wonderful future.

Him all this time she closely observed. He was not entirely at his ease, when she had been in public with him before she had noticed it, his glance at every new-comer, his conscious summoning of control lest it should be someone whom he had once known, someone who might now, perhaps, not know him.

It made him in her eyes all the younger, all the more happily demanding her protection; how terribly she loved him she had never, she thought, realized until this moment.

The Haymarket Theatre, where _Mrs. Lemiter's Decision_ had been given to a grateful world for nearly two hundred nights, was next door.

In a moment they were there and the band was playing and the lights were up, and then the band was not playing and the lights were down, and she was instantly conscious of the places where his body touched hers and of his hand lying white upon his knee.

She, Lizzie Rand, most perfect of private secretaries, most sedate and composed of women, found it all that her self-control could secure that she should not then and there have touched that hand with her own.

It was not really a good play. There was a lady, Mrs. Lemiter, who had once done what she should not have done. There were a number of ladies and gentlemen, placed round her by the author, in order that she should, for the benefit of as many audiences as possible, confess what she _had_ done.

During the first and second acts Mrs. Lemiter made little dashes towards escape and the author (naturally omniscient) always placed someone in front of her just in time and there were cries of "Not this way, my good woman." At the end of the third act, Mrs. Lemiter, thoroughly bored and exasperated, turned on them all and, for a good twenty minutes, told them what she thought of them.

During the fourth act they all a.s.sured her that they liked her very much and that, as it was now eleven o'clock and she'd lost her temper so successfully that the house would certainly be filled for many months to come, they'd all better have tea or dinner, whilst a young couple, who had throughout the play loved one another and quarrelled, made it up again.

When the play was at an end Lizzie did not know what it had been about.

She took his hand and when he was about to hail a cab stopped him.

"Let's walk," she said, "it's such a lovely night."

He eagerly agreed and they started.

III

She knew that her moment had come; he knew too--she could tell that because all the way up the Haymarket he said nothing.

Piccadilly Circus was a screaming confusion. A music-hall invited you to come and hear "Harry and Clare, drawing-room entertainers." Lights--red and green and gold--flashed and advised drinks and hair-oil and tobacco.

Ladies, highly coloured and a little dishevelled; stared haughtily but inquisitively about them, boys shouted newspapers and dived under horses and appeared, miraculously delivered from the wheels of omnibuses.

It was a rus.h.i.+ng, whirling confusion and through it his arm led her, happier in his secure guard than in anything else under heaven.

Regent Street was quiet and softly coloured above the maelstrom into which it flowed. He suddenly began:

"I've got something I want to tell you--something I've wanted to tell you for a long time. You must have seen----"

Her voice coming to her as though it were a stranger's, said, "Yes." At the same time, looking about her, almost unconsciously, she registered her memory of the place and the hour--the shelving street, rising with its lamps reflected, before them, a bank of dark cloud that had suddenly appeared and hung, sinister against the night sky, behind the white houses, a slip of a silver moon surveying this same cloud with anxiety because it knew that soon its darkness would engulf it.

"I've wanted to tell you," he began again, "this long time. It's needed courage, and things during this last year have rather taken my courage away from me."

"You needn't be afraid," she said with a little laugh. "You ought to know by this time that you can tell me anything, Mr. Breton."

"Yes, I do know," he said earnestly. "Of course I know. What you've been to me all this last year--I simply can't think how I'd have kept up if it hadn't been for you."

"Oh, please," she said.

"No, but it's true. Even with you it's been a bit of a fight."

He paused. She saw that the black cloud had already swallowed up the moon and that a few raindrops were beginning to fall.

He went on: "You must have seen that all this time something's been helping me. I've never spoken to you, but you've known----"

The moment had come. Her heart had surely stopped its beat and she was glad, in her happiness, of the rain that was now falling more swiftly.

"I don't know--" he stammered a little. "It's so difficult. It's come to this, that I must speak to somebody and you're the only person, the only person. But even with one's best friends--one knows them so slightly--after all, perhaps, you'll think it very wrong----"

At that word it was as though a great hammer had, of a sudden, hit her heart and slain it. The street, s.h.i.+ning with the rain, rose ever so little and bent towards her.

"Wrong?" she said, looking up at him.