The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death; A Romantic Commentary

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  CHAPTER IV

  THE POOL

  I

  On that same afternoon in another part of the house Miss Rand, LadyAdela's secretary, finished her work for the day, and prepared to gohome.

  It was about a quarter-past six, and the May evening was sending throughthe windows its pale glow suggesting soft blue skies and fading lights.Miss Rand's room told you at once everything about Miss Rand. Forefficiency and neatness, for discipline and restraint, it could not bebeaten. Miss Rand herself was all these things, efficient and neat,disciplined and restrained.

  Her room had against one white and shining wall a black and shiningtypewriter. Against another wall was a table, and on this table were somany contrivances for keeping letters and papers decent and docketedthat it made every other table the observer could remember seem untidyand littered. There was nothing in the room superfluous or unnecessary,and even some carnations in a green bowl near the window looked asthough they were numbered and ticketed.

  Miss Rand was a little woman who appeared thirty-five when she was busy,and twenty-five when someone was pleasant to her. When she was at workthe broad dark belt that she wore at her waist was her mostcharacteristic feature. Then, in keeping with this, was her dark hair,beautiful hair perhaps if it had been allowed some freedom, but nowordered and sternly disciplined; she wore no ornaments, and about herthere was nothing out of place nor extravagant.

  Her face was full of light and colour and her eyes were beautiful, butno one considered them: it was impossible to look beyond that sternshining belt--one felt that Miss Rand herself would resent appreciation.

  From ten o'clock in the morning until five o'clock in the evening thehuge Portland Place house absorbed her energies. She saw it sometimes inher dreams, as a great unwieldy machine kept in place by her hand, butleaping, did she leave it for an instant, trembling, soaring, carryingdestruction with it into the heart of the city.

  Meanwhile her hand was upon it. From Norris the butler, from Dorchesterthe guardian of the Duchess's apartments, down to the smallest, mostinsignificant kitchen-maid, Miss Rand knew them all. There was, ofcourse, Mrs. Newton, the most splendid and elevating of housekeepers,but when matters below stairs went beyond her control Miss Rand couldalways arrange them. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that, in theway of managing her fellow-creatures, Miss Rand could not do.

  But it was because Miss Rand never occurred to any single creature inthe Portland Place house as a sentient breathing human being that shesucceeded as she did. She had no prejudices, no angers, no rebellions,no rejoicings. She was the little engine at the heart of the house thatsent everything into motion. "One can't imagine her eating her meals,Mrs. Newton," Mr. Norris once said. "And as to her sleeping like you orme----"

  To see her now as she put the final touches to her room before leavingit, arranging a paper here and a paper there, going to the bookshelf andpushing back a book that jutted in front of the others, setting a chairagainst the wall, placing the blotting-pad exactly in the middle of thetable, finally taking her hat and coat and putting them on with the samecareful and almost automatic distinction--this sufficiently revealedher. She seemed, as she looked for the last time about the room with herbright eyes, like some sharp little bird, perched on a window-sill,looking beyond closed windows for new adventure.

  It was one of the striking points in her that her eyes always seemed tobe searching for some disorder in some place outside her immediatevision.

  She closed the door behind her. As she stepped into the passage someonewas coming down the staircase to her right, and looking up she saw thatit was Rachel Beaminster. Rachel was on her way from her grandmother'sroom, and before she saw Miss Rand standing there, waiting to let herpass, her face was grave and, in that half-light, strangely white. Then,as she saw Miss Rand, she smiled--

  "Good evening, Miss Rand."

  "Good evening, Miss Beaminster."

  "I'm afraid that this ball is giving you a lot of trouble."

  "I think that everything is arranged now, Miss Beaminster. I hope thatit will be a great success."

  Rachel sighed and then laughed.

  "Don't I wish the whole stupid thing was over. And I expect you do too!"

  Miss Rand smiled a very little. "It's good for the servants," she said."They're always happy when they're really busy."

  For a moment they stood there smiling. It occurred to Rachel that MissRand must be rather nice. She had never thought of her before asanything but Aunt Adela's secretary.

  "Good night, Miss Rand."

  "Good night, Miss Beaminster."

  II

  In Portland Place Miss Rand drew a little breath and paused. So manytimes during the last five years had she walked from Portland Place toSaxton Square, and from Saxton Square to Portland Place, that thestreets and houses encountered by her had become individual, alive,always offering to her some fresh adventure or romance. Portland Placeitself was no bad beginning, with its high white colour, its air, andits dark mysterious park hovering at the edge of it.

  If one had not known, Miss Rand thought, one might have supposed thatjust beyond it lay the sea, so fresh and full of breezes was the air.The light was yellow now and the houses black and sharp against thefaint sky. In another half-hour the lamps would be lit.

  It was pleasant and fitting that the end of Portland Place should beguarded by the Round Church and the Queen's Hall. "Leave that calm andchaste society behind you," those places said, "but before you plungeinto the wicked careless world (that is Oxford Circus) choose from us.Here you have religion or music, both if you will, but here at any ratewe are, the very best of our kind."

  The Queen's Hall looked shabby in the evening light, but Miss Rand likedthat; it heightened her sense of the splendour within--Beethoven andWagner and Brahms needed no illumination--it was your musical comedydemanded that.

  Miss Rand liked good music.

  Then there was the Polytechnic with wonderful offers in the windowsenticing you to see Rome for eleven guineas, and Paris for three, andthere was a hat shop with three glorious hats wickedly dangling onpoles, and there was a pastry-cook's, a tobacconist's, and a theatreagency: all this variety paving the way between music and religion andthe whirling, tossing, heaving melodrama of Oxford Circus.

  Miss Rand loved Oxford Circus. It was like the sea in that it was neverfrom one moment to another the same. Miss Rand knew the way that it hadof piling the melodrama up and up, faster and faster, wilder and wilder,bursting into a frantio climax and then sinking back, for hours perhaps,into comparative silence. She knew all its moods, from its broom andmilkman mood in the early morning, to its soiled and slinking moodsomewhere between midnight and one o'clock.

  Just now it was getting ready for the evening. Up Regent Street the cabsand buses were straining, the flower women with their baskets werebunched in splashes of colour against the distant outline of the RoundChurch. Out of every door people were pouring, and in the middle of theCircus three of the four lines of traffic were turned suddenly intosomething sleepy and indifferent by the hand of a policeman. For aninstant the restless movement seemed to be crystallized--the hansoms,the bicycles, the omnibuses, the carts were all held, then at a sign theflow and interflow had begun once more; life was hurled in and hurledout again, stirred and tossed and turned, as though some giant cook wereup in the heavens busy over a giant pudding.

  And the light faded and the lamps came out, and Miss Rand, walkingthrough two streets that were as dark and secret as though they werespying on the Circus and were going to give all its secrets away veryshortly, passed into Saxton Square.

  To-night Miss Rand had more to think about than Oxford Circus. She wastired after all the work that there had been during the last few days,and she always noticed that it was when she was tired that she was readyto imagine things. She had been imagining things all day and had foundit really difficult to keep steadily to her proper work, but out andbeyond her imaginations there was, before her, this definite, tremendousfact--
namely, that she would find, this evening, on entering her littledrawing-room, that Mr. Francis Breton was being entertained at tea byher sister and mother.

  It was a quarter to seven now, so perhaps he had gone, but at any ratethere would be a great deal that her mother and sister would wish totell her about him. A week ago Mr. Francis Breton had come to live onthe second floor in 24 Saxton Square, had put there his own furniture,had brought with him his own man-servant (a most sinister-looking man).These matters might have remained (although, of course, Miss LizzieRand's connection with the Beaminster family made his arrival of themost dramatic interest) had not Miss Daisy Rand (Miss Lizzie Rand'sprettier and younger sister) happened, one evening, to run into Mr.Breton in the dark hall; she screamed aloud because she thought him aburglar, became very shaky about the knees, and needed Mr. Breton'sassistance as far as the Rand drawing-room. Here, of course, therefollowed conversation; finally Mr. Breton was asked to tea and acceptedthe invitation.

  On this very afternoon must this tea-party have taken place. Lizzie Randknew her mother and sister very well, and she had, long ago, learnt thattheir motto was, "Let everything go for the sake of adventure." That waswell enough, but when your income was very small indeed, and you wishedto do no work at all and yet to have your home pleasant and your lifeadventurous, certainly someone must suffer. Everything had always fallenupon Lizzie.

  Mrs. Rand's husband had been a colonel and they had lived at Eastbourne;on his death it was discovered that he had debts and obligations to alady in the chorus of a light opera then popular in London. The debtsand the lady Mrs. Rand had covered with romance, because she consideredthat they were due to the Colonel's insatiable appetite forAdventure--but, romance or no, there was now very little to live upon.

  They moved to London. Daisy was obviously so pretty that it would beabsurd to expect her to work, and "she would be married in a minute," soLizzie had, during the last five years, kept the family. It would beimpossible to give any clear idea of the effect on Mrs. Rand thatLizzie's connection with the Beaminster family had. Mrs. Rand lovedanything that was great and solemn and ceremonious; she loved Royalties,bands and soldiers gave her a choke in her throat, the "Society News" inthe _Daily Mail_ was like a fine picture or a splendid play. She was nosnob; it was simply that she saw life as a background to slow statelyfigures gorgeously attired.

  In all England there was no one like the Duchess of Wrexe; in allEngland there was no family like the Beaminster family.

  Even Royalty had not quite their glow and glitter; Royalty you might seeany day, driving, bowing, smiling. The Queen had a smile for everyoneand was at home in the merest cottage; but the Duchess, the Duchess--noone, not even Lizzie, on whose shoulders the whole fortunes of theBeaministers rested, ever saw.

  There was nothing about the Beaminsters that Mrs. Rand did not know, andso of course she knew all about the unhappy past history of FrancisBreton. That any Beaminster should have behaved rather as her own deadcolonel had once behaved gave one a link at once.

  Mrs. Rand's mind was, at the best of times, a confused one, and, in thedead of night, she could imagine a scene in which the wonderful Duchesswould send for her, give her tea, press her hands and say, "Ah! DearMrs. Rand, our men-folk--your husband and my grandson--what trouble theygive us, but we love them nevertheless."

  So romantic was Mrs. Rand's mind that she saw nothing extraordinary inthe coincidence of Mr. Breton's arrival at their very doors. Of coursehe would arrive there! Where else could he arrive? And of course hewould fall in love with Daisy, would reform for her sake; there would bea splendid marriage; the Duchess would thank Mrs. Rand for having savedher grandson.

  Yes, Mrs. Rand had an incurably romantic mind.

  Lizzie knew all about her mother's mind, and Daisy's mind. She dealtwith them very much as she dealt with Lady Adela's mind or Lord John'smind. They were all muddled people together, and the clear-headed peoplehad the advantage over them.

  So with regard to her mother and sister Lizzie had developed aprotective feeling; she wished to save them from the inroads of theclear-headed people who might so rob and devour them.

  She saw also that her connection with the Beaminster family was a verybad thing for her mother and sister because it encouraged them to beromantic and muddled and idle. But, at present, at any rate, there wasnothing to be done.

  As she turned into the grey silence of little Saxton Square she did hopethat her mother and sister would not behave too outrageously about Mr.Breton. She was interested, she would like to see him; his wholepossible relation to the Duchess, to Lady Adela, to Miss Beaminster sether own imagination working. She did hope that her mother and sisterwould not behave so disgracefully that they would frighten Mr. Bretonaway so that he would never come near them again.

  And then, as she reached the door of No. 24, she thought for a moment ofRachel Beaminster.

  "I like her," she thought, "I'd like to know her. She's never spoken tome like that before."

  III

  No. 24 had three floors: the ground floor was occupied by the Rands, thefirst floor by Breton and the second floor by an old decrepit invalidcalled Caesar and his son, who was a bank clerk.

  Down in the basement lived Mr. and Mrs. Tweed, owners of the wholehouse; he had been a butler and she a housekeeper, and exceedinglyrespectable they were. Every floor had its own kitchen and every lodgerfound his own servants, but the hall was common for all the threefloors, and if young Mr. Caesar came in at two in the morning and bangedthe front door everybody knew about it.

  It must have been a fine old house in its day, No. 24, and there werestill fine carvings, good fireplaces and ceilings, high broad windowsand thick solid walls. Mrs. Rand liked to think that her drawing-roomhad once seen fine eighteenth-century ladies reflected in its mirrors,heard the tapping of high-heeled shoes on its polished floors. Thethought of those glorious days gave her own rather faded furniture acolour and a touch of poetry. Sometimes, Lizzie thought with a sigh, ifher mother had inhabited a plain nineteenth-century house living withina small income would have been easier for her.

  Lizzie, entering the drawing-room, knew at once that Mr. Breton wasstill there. She saw that he was tall and spare, that he had no leftarm, that he had a rather small pointed brown beard and eyes that struckher as fierce and protesting. She did not know whether it were the beardor the eyes or the absence of the arm, but at her first vision of himshe said to herself: "He's too dramatic; it's not quite real," and hersecond thought was: "He's just what mother will like him to be!"

  He was standing against the window, and he wore a black suit, a littlefaded. The blinds had not been drawn, and the square beyond the windowwas elephant grey, with the lamps at each corner a dim yellow; there wasa thin rather ragged garden in the middle of the square, and in thegarden was a statue of a nymph, old and deserted, and some trees nowfaintly green. Over it all was a sky so pale that it was more nearlywhite than blue.

  Although the curtains had not been drawn a lamp in the middle of theroom was lit and the fire burnt merrily. The furniture had once beengood and was now respectable. There were several photographs, a copy of"The Fighting Temeraire," and a water-colour sketch of "Lodore Falls."There was a book-case with the works of Tennyson, Longfellow, and MissBraddon, and on one of the tables two French novels, one by Gyp and oneby Zola.

  Mrs. Rand would have been handsome had her grey hair been less untidyand her clothes more uniform in design and colour. Her blouse was cuttoo low and she wore too many rings; her eyes always wore alying-in-wait expression, as though she might be called on to be excitedat any moment and didn't wish to miss the opportunity.

  Daisy Rand was pretty and pink with light fluffy hair. All her clotheslooked as though their chief purpose were to reveal other clothes. Theimpression that she left on a casual observer was that she must be coldin such thin things.

  Lizzie, looking at Frank Breton, could not tell what impression hersister and mother had made upon him. "At any rate," she thought, "he'sstayed a
long time. That looks as though he had been entertained." Shewas introduced to him and liked the cool, firm grasp of his hand. Shesaw that her mother and Daisy were quiet and subdued--that was a goodthing. She caught, before she sat down, his instinctive look ofsurprise. She knew that he had not expected her to be like that.

  "We've been telling Mr. Breton, Lizzie," said Mrs. Rand, "all about thetheatres. He's been away so long that he's quite out of touch withthings."

  Lizzie always knew when her mother was finding conversation difficult bythe amount of enthusiasm and surprise that she put into her sentences.

  "So terrible it must be to have missed so many splendid things."

  "I assure you, Mrs. Rand," said Breton, "that I've been seeing othersplendid things in other countries. Now I'm ready for this one again."

  Mrs. Rand was silent and at a loss. Lizzie knew the explanation of this.Her mother had been trying to venture on to the subject of Breton'sfamily and had found unexpected difficulty. Perhaps there had beensomething in Breton's attitude that had warned her.

  They talked for a little while, but disjointedly. Then suddenly therewas a knock at the door, and young Mr. Caesar, a bony youth with a highcollar and an unsuccessful moustache, came in. He had not very much tosay, but the result of his coming was that Lizzie found herself standingat the window with Breton; they looked at the square now sinking intodusk.

  He spoke; his voice was lowered: "I understand that you are secretary tomy aunt, Miss Rand?"

  "Yes," she said.

  "They haven't heard of my return with any great delight, I'm afraid?"

  She noticed that he was trying to steady his voice, but that it shook alittle in spite of his efforts.

  "I don't know," she said, looking up and smiling. "I'm far too busy tothink of things that are not my concern."

  "They are giving a ball to-morrow night for my cousin?"

  "Yes."

  "Do you see much of her?"

  "No--nothing at all. She's been abroad, you know."

  "Yes, so I heard. But I saw her driving yesterday. She looks differentfrom the rest of them."

  All this time, as he spoke to her, she was conscious of his eyes; ifonly she could have been sure that the protest in them was genuine shewould have been moved by them.

  She did not help him in any way, and perhaps her silence made him feelthat he had done wrong to speak to her about his affairs. They looked atthe square for a little time in silence. At last, speaking without anyimplied fierceness, he said:

  "You know, Miss Rand, I'm a wanderer by nature, and sometimes I findcities very hard to bear. Do you know what I do?"

  "No," she said.

  "Turn them into other things. Now here in London, do you never think ofstreets as waterways? Portland Place, for instance, is like ever so manyrivers I've seen, broad and shining. And some of those high thin streetsbeside it are like canals; Oxford Circus is a whirlpool, and so on----"

  He laughed. "I get no end of relief from thinking of things like that."

  "You hate cities?" she asked him.

  "No--not really. But it depends how they receive you. If they'rehostile----" He shrugged his shoulders.

  "And this square?" she said. "What's this square?"

  "A pool. All the houses hang over it as though they were hiding it. It'srestful like a pool. There's no noise----"

  The statue of the nymph had disappeared. The trees were a black splashagainst the lamp-lit walls. Lights were in the windows.

  He seemed suddenly conscious that it was late. When he had gone Lizziestood, for some time, looking into the square and thinking how right hehad been.

  All that evening Daisy was out of temper.