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

by Sir Hugh Walpole

  CHAPTER XIII

  DEFIANCE OF THE TIGER--II

  I

  Roddy, dozing after a night of glorious sleep, lay on his back and swunghappily to and fro.

  The footman who was valeting him had pulled up the blind and drawn asidethe curtains, and the garden came to him, not as on last evening,weighed with its canopy of stars, but now asserting its own happinessand colour and freshness.

  The man said: "The bathroom is the last door down the passage on yourright, sir. Breakfast is at half-past nine. It has just gone eight. Whatclothes, sir?"

  Roddy stared at him and smiled. After a little time, the man enquiredagain: "Which suit will you wear this morning, sir?"

  "Dark blue." Roddy, still happily floating somewhere near theceiling--floating with delicious lightness--"Dark blue--Dark blue--Darkblue----"

  For a little while the man, a strange vague shape, pulled out drawersand closed them and walked about the floor, like Agag, delicately.Roddy, from the ceiling watched him and resented the fact that everysharp click of a drawer pulled him nearer to the carpet.

  The man's final shutting of the bedroom door plumped Roddy into his bed,wide awake.

  "Damn him! What a wonderful day!"

  He lay back and watched how waves of light danced on the walls. Afountain splashed in the gardens and the long mirror on the right of thebed had in it the corner of the green lawn and the cool grey stones ofan old wall.

  Roddy lay on his back and allowed his sensations to run up and down hisbody. It was for moments such as this that his life was intended. Helived, deliberately and without any selfishness in the matter, for theemotions that the good old god Pan might choose to provide for him.

  He did not know Pan by name except as a silly fancy dress that MontyCarfax had once worn at a fancy-dress dance and as Someone alluded toevery now and again, vaguely, in the papers, but even though he did notcall him by name he, nevertheless, paid, without question, his dailyhomage.

  When, as on this beautiful morning, one had only to lie down and beinstantly conscious of a thousand things--sheep moving slowly acrosshills, cattle browing in deep pools, those Downs that he loved rising,slowly, like aged men, to greet a new day--then one questioned nothing,one argued nothing, one needed no words, one was happy from the crown ofone's head to the toes of one's feet.

  On this especial morning these delights were connected with the factthat, during the day, he intended to propose marriage to RachelBeaminster. He thought of her, now, as she had looked last night,sitting in that wood, in a pale blue dress, with the stars behind her,staring, so seriously, down into the garden. She had been very beautifullast night, and it had been a splendid moment--not more splendid thanother moments that he had had, but splendid enough to remember.

  He was always prepared for the necessity of the short duration of hissensations. He had discovered, when he was very young, that nothinglasted and that the things that lasted the shortest time were generallythe best things, and therefore he had, quite unconsciously, trainedhimself to store his memory with splendid moments; now, although he hadno memory at all for any sort of facts or books or histories, he couldrecall precisely, in all their forms and colours, scenes, persons,adventures that had, at any time, thrilled him.

  He could remember days; once when, as a little boy, he had beenovertaken by night on the Downs and had sheltered in a deserted house,black and evil, that had, he afterwards discovered, been, in theeighteenth century, a private mad-house; once when the sea had beengreen and purple, the sky black, and he had discovered a star-fish forthe first time (very young on that occasion); once when his horse hadrun away with him and the danger had been exceeded by the glorious speedthrough the air ... many, many others, all to be counted by him to theirvery least detail, and now, of some of them, Rachel Beaminster was thecentral figure.

  He had had relations of many kinds with many different women and neveruntil now had he supposed, for an instant, that these relations would bepermanent. Even now, although he was intending to marry RachelBeaminster, he was not so foolish as to imagine that the freshness andnovelty of the feeling that he now had for her would last more than avery short time.

  Quite deliberately he treasured up in his mind a thousand pictures ofher, as he had seen her during the last two months, so that when thetime came for seeing her no longer in that way, he would have hismemories: there was the time of her first ball, all excitement andhappiness, the day at her uncle's when she had looked at him over thetop of the fans, the night at the opera when she had been so angry withhim, last night--

  She had, through all this time, remained elusive. He did not know her,could not reconcile one inconsistency with another--but he thought thatshe cared about him and would marry him.

  He had always known that he must one day marry. That necessity was, inno way, connected with the emotional side of him, it rather had itsrelationship with the common sense of him, the part that believed in theBeaminsters and all their glory.

  He must marry because Seddon Court must have a mistress, because hehimself must have children, because he would like to have someone thereto be kind to. That need in him for bestowing kindness upon someone wasalways most urgent, and all sorts of animals and all sorts of personshad shared it--now one person would have it all. He could not bear tohurt anyone or anything, and the crises of his life were provided bythose occasions when, in the delight of one of his emotional moments,hurting somebody was involved--there was always then a conflict.

  He knew that it was just here that the Duchess failed to understand him.She liked hurting people and expected him to be amused when she told himlittle stories about her having done so. He had now a kind of dimfeeling that it was because the Duchess hoped that he was going to hurtRachel that she had prosecuted so strenuously his marriage.

  He trusted with all his heart that he would never hurt Rachel, heintended always to be very, very kind to her; it was indeed a thousandpities that the present quality of his attitude to her must, like allattitudes, eventually change.

  But he was always--he was sure of this--going to be good to her and giveher everything that the mistress of Seddon Court should have.

  At the same time, vaguely, he wished that the old Duchess had hadnothing to do with this; sometimes he wondered whether the side in himthat found pleasure in her was really natural to him.

  Whenever he thought of her, she, in some way, confused his judgment andmade life difficult.

  She was doing that now....

  II

  When he came down to breakfast he found that he was the last. He satnext to Nita Raseley and was conscious, after a little time, that shewas behaving with a certain reserve. He had known her in the kind of waythat he knew many people in his own set in London, pleasantly,indifferently, without curiosity. She had, however, attracted himsometimes by the impression that she gave him that she was too young toknow many men, but, however long she lived, would never find anyone assplendid as he: she had certainly never been reserved before. Finally herealized that she expected to hear of his engagement to RachelBeaminster at any moment. "Well, so she will," he thought, smiling tohimself. Meanwhile he avoided Rachel quite deliberately.

  He was now self-conscious about her and did not wish to be with heruntil he could ask her to marry him. No more uncertainty was possible.He felt, not frightened, but excited, just as he would feel were heabout to ride a dangerous horse for the first time.

  He seized, with relief, upon the proposal of church; he wanted themorning to pass; his prayer was that she would not walk to church withhim, because he had now nothing to say to her except the one thing. Whenhe heard that she was staying behind and walking with Nita Raseley hewas surprised at his own sense of release.

  Lady Adela was kind to him this morning in a sort of motherly way andapparently seized on his going to church as an omen of his futuremarried happiness.

  "They're all waiting to hear," he said to himself.

  They were to walk across the park to the little village c
hurch, and whenthey set out he was conscious that Lord John, like a large and amiablebird, was hovering about him: finally, Lord John, nervous apparently,most certainly embarrassed, settled upon him.

  "Going to church, aren't you, Roddy?"

  "Yes, Beaminster."

  "Well, let's strike off together, shall we?"

  Roddy liked Lord John best of the Beaminster brothers; the Duke he couldnot endure and Lord Richard was so superior, but Johnny Beaminster wasas amiable as an Easter egg and fond of race meetings and pretty women,and not too dam' clever--in fact, really, not clever at all.

  But Johnny Beaminster embarrassed was another matter and Roddy foundsoon that this embarrassment led to his own confusion.

  Lord John flung out little remarks and little whistles because of theheat and little comments upon the crops. He obviously had something thathe very much wanted to say--"Of course," thought Roddy, "this issomething to do with Rachel--he's very fond of Rachel."

  Although Johnny Beaminster had not, in strict accuracy, himself thereputation of the whitest of Puritans, yet Roddy wondered whetherperhaps he were not now worrying over some of Roddy's past history, asrumoured in London society.

  "Doesn't want his girl to be handed over to a reg'lar Black Sheep,shouldn't wonder," thought Roddy, and this led him to rather indignantconsideration of the confusion of the Beaminster mind and its muddledmoralities.

  The walk to the church was not very long, but it became, towards theclose of it, quite awful in its agitation.

  "Dam' hot," said Lord John.

  "Very," said Roddy.

  "Wouldn't wonder if this weather broke soon----"

  "Quite likely."

  "Makes you hot walking to church this hour of the morning."

  "Yes--don't it? Farmers will be wantin' rain pretty badly. Down at mylittle place they tell me it's dried up like anythin'----"

  "Reg'lar Turkish bath----"

  "Well, the church ought to be cool----"

  "You never know with these churches----"

  Roddy thought "He's afraid of his old mother. Doesn't want me to marryRachel, but he's afraid of his old mother."

  "Massiter's getting fat----" This was Lord John's contribution.

  "Yes--so's that novelist feller----"

  "Oh! Garden! Yes--ever read anything of his?"

  "Never a line. Never read novels."

  "Not bad--good tales, you know."

  "He's probably," Roddy thought, "had a row with the old lady aboutme----"

  Then, strangely enough, the notion hit him--"Wish it was he wanted me tomarry Rachel and the Duchess didn't--Wish she didn't, by Gad."

  As they entered the church Roddy might have seen, had he been gifted inpsychology, that there was in Lord John's face the look of a man who hadfought a battle with his dark angel and been, alas, defeated.

  III

  After luncheon Roddy said:

  "Miss Beaminster, come for a walk?"

  "A little way," she said, looking at him with her eyes in that straightdirect way that she had.

  "She must know," said Roddy to himself, "that I'm going to do it now.They all know. It's awful!"

  Some of the others had gathered together under a great oak that shadedthe central lawn, and now as he climbed the hill with his capture hefelt that from beneath that tree many eyes watched them.

  They did not go very far. At the top of the hill, above the little woodand the gardens and the house, there was a grassy hollow, and under thisgrassy hollow a great field of wheat, a sheet of red-gold with suddenwaves and ripples in it as though some hand were shaking it, ran down tothe valley.

  "Let's stop here," Rachel said. "I was out all this morning with NitaRaseley and it's too hot for any exertion whatever."

  A tree shaded them and they sat down and watched corn.

  "What sort of a girl do you think she is--Nita Raseley, I mean?" askedRachel.

  "Oh! I don't know--the ordinary kind of girl--why?"

  "She seems to want to know me. Says that she hasn't many friends. Isthat true? I thought she had heaps----"

  "You never can tell with girls. You're all so uncertain about oneanother--devoted one moment and enemies the next."

  "Are we?" said Rachel slowly. "I don't think I'm like that--Oh! how hotit is!" She lay back against the grass with her arms behind her head.

  "Do you like me?" Roddy said suddenly.

  "I?... You!"

  She slowly sat up and he saw at once that she knew now what he was goingto say. At that moment, sitting there, staring at him, with her breastsmoving a little beneath her white dress and her hands pressing flatlyagainst the grass, in her agitation and the look in her eyes of somesuddenly evoked personality that he did not know at all she was moreelusive to him than she had ever been--

  She was frightened--and also glad--but the change in her from the girlhe had known all the summer was so startling that he felt that he wasabout to propose to someone he had never seen before.

  "Do I like you?" she repeated slowly, and her lips parted in a smile.

  "Yes," he said, looking at her hands that seemed to belong to the earthinto which they were pressing--"Because I want you to marry me----"

  The moment of her surprise had come before--now she only said veryquietly--

  "Why--what do you know about me?"

  "I know--enough--to ask you," he said, stumbling over his words. He wasnow afraid that, after all, she intended to refuse him, and the terrorof this made his heart stop. No words would come. He stared at her withall the fright in his eyes.

  "Roddy" (she had never called him that before), "do you care----"

  Then she stopped.

  She began again. "I don't want to talk nonsense. I want to say exactlywhat I feel. I suppose most girls would want to be free a little longer,would want to have a good time another two or three seasons--but Idon't--I hate being free--I want somebody to keep me, to prevent mydoing silly things, to look after me ... and ... I'd rather you didit--than anybody else...." Then she went on quickly--"But it is morethan that. I do like you most awfully, only I suppose I'm not the kindof girl to be frantically excited, to be wild about it all. I'm notthat. I do like you--better than any other man I know--Is that enough?"

  "I think--we can be most awfully good pals--always," he said.

  "Oh!" she cried suddenly, putting her hand on his and looking straightinto his face. "That's what I want--that, that--If that's it, and youthink we can, why then, I'd rather marry you, Roddy dear, than anyone inthe world."

  "Then it's settled," he said. But he did not take her hand or touch her.They sat for quite a long time, looking at the rippling corn and thehouse, that was like a white boat sailing on the green far below them.

  They said no word.

  Then, without speaking, they got up from the grass and walked down thepath to the little wood. But when they came to the place where they hadbeen the night before he caught her to him so furiously that his ownbody was bent back, and he kissed her again and again and again.

  BOOK II

  RACHEL