The Duchess of Wrexe Part 87

Rachel answered quietly: "You've said some rather hard things. You mustn't feel that I'd ever try to make Roddy think badly of you. That's not fair.... I'm not very proud of myself, but you don't understand me.

You've always been determined not to--and perhaps, in the same way, I've not understood you. We're different generations, that's what it really is.

"But over Roddy we _can_ meet. I didn't love him when I married him, but I do now, and we're going to have a child.... That will make us both very happy, I expect. You love Roddy and I love him. You needn't be afraid that I'll harm his memory of you."

Her voice was trembling and she was very near to tears. She would have liked to have said something that would have offered some terms of peace between them, something upon which, afterwards, she might look back with comfort. For her that hostility seemed, in the face of death, so small and poor a thing.

But no words would come.

Her grandmother, in a voice that was very weak, said:

"Thank you, Rachel; that's a great relief to me. That's good of you ... and now, my dear, I think Christopher would say that I'd talked enough. Good night."

Rachel knew that this was their last meeting, that here was the absolute conclusion of all the years of warfare that there had been between them.

There was nothing to say.... She bent down and kissed the dry cheek, waited for an instant, but there was no movement.

"Good night, grandmamma," she said. "I hope that you'll be better to-morrow," then softly stole away.

III

The d.u.c.h.ess lay very still, watching the shadows as they crept across the fields. They were evening shadows now, for the sky, pink like the inside of a sh.e.l.l, had no clouds upon its surface.

She would not get up again; this evening should be the last to see her gaze upon the world. It was too fatiguing and all energy had flowed from her, leaving her without desire, without pa.s.sion, without regret, without fear. Very dreamily and at a great distance figures and scenes from her past life hovered, halted, and pa.s.sed. But she was not interested, she had forgotten their purpose and meaning, she did not want to think any more.

The splas.h.i.+ng of the fountain was phantasmal and very far away.

The long black shadow crept up the field. She watched it. At the top of the red ridge of field, against the sky-line, very sharp and clear, was a gate, golden now in the sun. When the shadow caught it she would go to bed ... and she would never get up again.

She waited lazily, indifferently. The gate was caught; the last gleams of the sun had left the orchard and the evening star glittered in a sky very faintly green.

She touched a bell at her side and Dorchester appeared.

"I'll go to bed, Dorchester."

"Very well, Your Grace."

"I shan't get up again. Too much trouble." She turned away from the window and closed her eyes.

CHAPTER XII

RACHEL, RODDY, LORD JOHN, CHRISTOPHER

"'Everybody came in to dinner in the best of spirits....

Everything was discussed.'"--_Inheritance._

I

The d.u.c.h.ess of Wrexe died on the morning of May 2nd at a quarter-past three o'clock. The evening papers of that day and the morning papers of the next had long columns concerning her, and these were picturesque and almost romantic. She appealed as a figure veiled but significant, hidden but the landmark of a period--"Nothing was more remarkable than the influence that she exercised over English Society during the thirty years that she was completely hidden from it"--or again, "Although disease compelled her, for thirty years, to retire from the world, her influence during that period increased rather than diminished."

It must be confessed, however, that London Society was not moved to its foundations by the news of her death. People said, "Oh! that old woman; gone at last, I see. She's been dying for years, hasn't she? Quite a power in her day ..." Or, "Oh, the d.u.c.h.ess of Wrexe is dead, I see. I must write to Addie Beaminster. Don't expect the family will miss her much--awful old tyrant, I believe ..." or "I say, see Johnnie Beaminster's old lady's gone? She kept the whip-hand of _him_ in his time.... d.a.m.ned glad he'll be, I bet."

Two years earlier and it would not have been thus, but now there was the War (daily the relief of Mafeking was frantically antic.i.p.ated) and fine regal majesty, sitting dignified in a solemn room, irritated the world by its quiescence.

"What we're needing now is for everyone to get a move on. No use sitting around." A few carefully selected American phrases can very swiftly kill a great deal of dignity and tradition.

In the Beaminster camp itself there was an unexpressed disappointment.

They had grown accustomed to thinking of her as a fine figure, sitting there where, rather fortunately, they were not compelled to visit her, but where, nevertheless, she had a grand effect. They had known, for a long time now, that she was not so well, but they had expected, in a vague way, that she would go on living for ever. They had been making, during the last two years, a succession of enforced compromises and now the crisis of her death showed them how far they had gone without knowing it.

"Things will never be the same as they were...." And in their hearts they said, "We're getting old--we aren't wanted as we once were."

Meanwhile there was a fine funeral down at Beaminster. The Queen was represented, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, all the heads of all the old families in England, artists and one or two very distinguished actor-managers (who looked far more sumptuous than anyone else present).... Everyone was there.

Christopher detected Mrs. Bronson and wondered what the d.u.c.h.ess would think of it if she knew: Brun, also, although Christopher did not see him, flashed upon them from the Continent, was present, neat and solemn and immensely observant. It was all admirable and worthy of the best English traditions.

"She was a fine figure," said the Prime Minister, who had known her and disliked her intensely. "We shall never see her like again," but his sigh was nearer relief than regret.

II

Christopher, three days after the funeral, went to have tea with Roddy and Rachel. He was a man of great physical strength and had never had "nerves" in his life, but he was feeling, just now, tired out. He had not realized, in the least, during all these years, the part that that old woman played in his life, and he found that his whole scheme of things was now disorganized and without vitality. It was vitality that she had given him, a tiresome, troublesome, irritating vitality perhaps, but, nevertheless a fire, an energy, a driving curiosity.

He would capture it again, his eagerness to investigate, to a.s.sist, to prophesy, but it would never any more be quite the same energy--everyone with whom she had had anything to do would find life now a little different....

Some weeks before her death Roddy had sent for him. "I'm awfully upset, Christopher," he said and then he had told him about the scene in his rooms and had begged to know the truth. "I hear she's much worse--she's had a stroke--I wrote to her and she hasn't answered me. Christopher, tell me truthfully, was it her comin' to me that day and all the kick-up and everythin' that made her so much worse?"

Christopher had rea.s.sured him--"Quite honestly, if she'd asked my leave to let her go out that afternoon I'd not have granted it. But as it turned out she wasn't a bit the worse. I saw her directly afterwards--she told me all about it. She was rather grimly pleased.

Mind you, it marked, I think, a kind of crisis. As she put it to me she saw that afternoon that the whole scheme of things had gone out of her hands and that the new generation didn't want her--But I think she was glad to have it settled for her, she was tired of it all, her struggle to keep it had been much earlier.

"She just wasn't going to bother any more and she might have gone on in that sort of way for years."

But although he had thus rea.s.sured Roddy he was not, in his heart, so certain. He seemed to see a long chain of events (he dated his own observation of them from the time of Rachel's coming out), that had led both Rachel and the d.u.c.h.ess to the climax of their actual challenge one to another. It was not that that meeting in Roddy's house had been of itself so important, it was rather that the fates had selected it as a definite culmination of the struggle. That meeting stood for a sharp visualization of much more than the personal conflict.

She had been glad to go, he did not in any way see her death as a tragedy, but her departure had marked the opening of a new period, a new personal history for the remaining characters, ultimately perhaps a new social epoch for everybody--

Meanwhile he was happy about Roddy and Rachel for the first time since their marriage and, as he was a man who lived in the lives of his friends, their happiness meant his own.

He found Lord John with Roddy, Rachel was with Aunt Adela, but "would be back for tea." Lord John, rather solemn and awkward in black clothes, was demanding comfort and a.s.sistance from his friends. His trouble was that he did not miss his mother as fundamentally as he desired, and that, at the same time, life was now most terribly different. His brothers, Vincent and Richard, had instantly after the funeral adapted themselves, with gravity and a.s.surance, to the new conditions.

Lord John had never adapted himself to anything, but had fitted his stout body into the soft places that life had offered to him and had been placidly grateful for their softness. Only once had he shown energy of his own initiative and that had been in the matter of his nephew Francis, and of that now he did not dare to think.

He could never, so long as he lived, forget the slightest detail of that horrible quarter of an hour with his mother when she discovered his iniquity--and yet, even now, he felt, obscurely but obstinately, that he had done right. Nevertheless he would never again take life into his own hands: upon that he was absolutely resolved. What he needed now was rea.s.surance from his friends. He had always before found that life arranged itself about him in a comfortable way and he confidently expected that it would do so now, but meanwhile he must have kind looks and words from somebody. He was a man who hailed with joy the opportunity of bestowing affection upon a friend who was not likely, at a later time, to rebuff him. He had never been quite sure of Rachel--she was so strange and uncertain--but upon Roddy, helpless, good-natured, and a man of his own world, he felt that he could rely. He spent therefore many hours at Roddy's side, rather silent, smiling a great deal, playing chess with him, sticking little flags on the War Map.

At times, as he sat there, he would think of his mother, of the Portland Place house shortly to be sold, of a world altered and alarming, and then he would wonder how long the time would be before he might again take up his old habits, his old houses, his old comforts, and then his fat cheerful face would gather wrinkles upon its surface. "It's after a thing like this that a feller gets old--Richard and Adela and I--We'll have to make up our minds to it."