THE DUCHESS MOVES
"Fear of the loss of power has more to do with disasters in the
history of nations than any other motive."
JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.
I
Trouble invaded the strongholds of 104 Portland Place that winter: The
Duchess was not so well ... no evasions, whether above or below stairs,
could conceal the harsh truth. The Duchess was not so well....
To the bewildered mind of Lady Adela the horrid succession of disasters
that the winter had provided no other years could equal. It had all
begun, she often fancied, from the day of Rachel's coming out, from the
ball, or even, although for this she could not find a real excuse, from
that visit to the Bond Street Picture Gallery. It was on that afternoon,
Lady Adela well remembered, that there had first come to her those
strange, treacherous thoughts about her mother that had, afterwards, as
they had grown stronger and more formidable, changed life for her. Yes,
it had seemed that, with Rachel's appearance before the world, disaster
to the Beamister house had appeared also. Her mother's illness, the War,
perpetual rumours of Rachel's unsatisfactory marriage, the uncomfortable
presence of Frank Breton, the horrible disaster to poor Roddy--how they
trooped before Lady Adela's eyes! Finally, more terrible than all of
them, was the complete destruction of the old fiction, the old terror,
the old submission. Lady Adela did not now dare to look into her mind
because of the horrible things that she found there.
Roddy's accident had had the most terrible effect upon the Duchess. Only
Christopher could really tell how Her Grace had taken it, but throughout
the house, it was understood that the effect of it had been serious.
"Wouldn't give her long now," said Mr. Norris. "What with this War and
what not she was goin' as it was, and now Sir Roderick, as was always,
as you might say, her pet, having this awful disaster--no, _I_ don't
give her long."
Adela of course saw nothing of her mother's feelings; she never had been
allowed to see anything of them and she was not allowed now.
The old lady was outwardly as she had ever been, although she spoke less
and, if you watched her, you could see sometimes that her hands were
shaking. She used paint for her cheeks and she rouged her lips. Her love
of fantastic things had grown very much, and, on the little table behind
her chair, there was a row of strange china animals and some Indian
dolls with wooden limbs that jangled when you touched them.
But Adela was no longer afraid of her mother. Stimulate it as she would,
force upon herself her sensations of the days when she had been afraid,
as she did, still the terror would not now confront her. There had been
a dreadful scene when the Duchess had been told that her daughter was
acting on the same committee as Mrs. Bronson, the dazzling
American ... a terrible scene ... but Adela had come through it without
a tremor--it had not affected her at all. "It isn't that I've changed
much either. I'm just as nervous of other things--I'm just the same
coward...."
Perhaps it was, a little, that the war had altered one's values--So many
Beaminster necessities were not quite so necessary--
Certainly John felt the same, and the one consolation to Adela, through
all this horrible time, was that she had grown nearer to John than she
had ever been to anyone--John and she had been attacked by the Real
World, both of them at the same moment, and they did find comfort, at
this terrifying crisis, in being together.
But all Adela's energy was directed towards concealing from her mother
that there was any change at all--"She must think that things are just
the same, exactly the same. She mustn't ever know that ... well,
that ..."
She could not put it into words. Her Grace's illness was never alluded
to by any member of the household.
There came word, at the beginning of March, that Roddy had been moved up
to London, that Rachel had taken a little house in York Terrace
overlooking Regent's Park, that Roddy was wonderfully cheerful, suffered
pain at times, but was, on the whole marvellous--
Two or three days after this news when Christopher arrived at 104 on his
usual morning visit Lord John met him in the hall.
"I say, come in here a minute," he said, leading the way into his own
little smoking-room--Lord John was fatter, scarcely now as rubicund, as
shining as he had been--as neat and clean as ever, but there were lines
on his forehead, and in his eye, that glance of surprise that had always
been there had advanced into one of alarm--
"What the devil is life going to do, what horrible trick is it up to
next?" he seemed to say--
"Look here, Christopher," he brought out, when the door was closed.
"There's the devil and all to pay. My mother declares this morning that
she's going to pay a visit to Roddy!"
"Well?" Christopher seemed amused.
"But ... Good heavens!" John was aghast--"She hasn't stirred out of her
room for thirty years! She ... she ... it'll kill her!"
"Oh! no, it won't--" Christopher answered, "not if she really means to
do it. Of course she can't walk much--she won't have to--We can get her
downstairs, and Roddy's room in York Terrace is on the ground
floor--We'll have to see she doesn't catch cold--She'll have to choose a
warm day."
"She says she's going this afternoon!" said Lord John, still overwhelmed
by this amazing development.
"Well, to-day won't do any harm----"
"Are you sure?"
"Quite sure. The danger with your mother has always been to stop her
inclinations. Indulge 'em all the time if you can, let her say what she
wishes, do what she wishes. If you were to carry her out of doors
against her will, why it would do a great deal of harm indeed--but if
she wants to go she'll see that she's up to it. It may be the best thing
for her. She could have gone out heaps of times in the last thirty years
if she'd wished to!"
Lord John rubbed his forehead--
"It's a great relief to hear you say that, Christopher. I didn't know
how we were going to get out of it. She was so determined this
morning----"
He broke off--"You're _sure_ it won't do any harm?" he said again.
"I'm sure," said Christopher.
"There's something," Lord John went on again, "dreadfully on my mother's
mind--She seems to feel that, in some way or other, she was responsible
for his accident. I can't get at the bottom of it all and of course she
won't tell me--she never tells me things. Perhaps you can get at it. I
saw Rachel yesterday."
"Yes?"
"She's very fair about it all. Must be having a very hard time. She was
glad to see me, I think, but--" he added a little wistfully--"I've never
been anything to her since her marriage.
"She just seemed not to want me after that, and I'd been a good deal to
her before. When one's getting old, Christopher, we old bachelors, we
begin to notice that nobody wants us very much."
Christopher looked at him--Yes, John Beaminster had changed in the last
year. Had he himself, he wondered, also changed?
"Yes," he said, smiling. "But I've been an old bachelor, Beaminster,
for years and years and I see no likelihood of your ever being one. You
get younger with every year, I believe."
"This accident to Roddy," John said slowly, as though he were thinking
it all out, "has upset us all. It seems so terrible, happening to
him ... much worse for him ... and then Rachel--But look here, I know
you've got to go up to my mother, I won't keep you a minute--But there's
a thing I've got to talk to you about--It's been on my conscience now for
ages.... I've not known what to do ... at last I've made up my mind."
John Beaminster had made up his mind to do something that he hated! To
Christopher perhaps more than to anyone else in the world this was a
revelation of the most vital, the most moving interest--He had known
John for so long, seen him struggling behind screens and curtains,
hugging to himself the happy knowledge that to the very end he would be
able to keep life from getting at him, and now behold! Life _had_ got at
him, wag clutching him by the throat.
"It's about Frank"--at last he desperately brought out "I've made up my
mind. I must go and see him--now, perhaps whilst mother is--is still
suffering from the effects of Roddy's accident it wouldn't be wise
perhaps to have him here actually in the house--But something must be
done.... Adela agrees."
Adela agrees! Well, if the old woman upstairs.... Christopher was moved,
as he had lately been often moved, by a swift stirring of pathos.
"You see, this War has upset us all so, has made one feel
differently--And then he really does seem to have changed, been as quiet
as anything all this time, and I hear that he's working at something
sensible down in the City. I must go and see him----"
Then they hadn't heard, Christopher knew, of any rumours about Rachel
and Francis.
Perhaps there _were_ no rumours, perhaps only in the mind of the old
lady.... But then let John say a word to her about this visit to Breton
and out she would come with it all.
"Yes, Beaminster," Christopher said. "Of course I'm delighted. It's just
what I hoped would happen, but perhaps, as your mother has been rather
upset lately it would be just as well to say nothing to her...."
"Quite so...." John looked away, out of the window--Poor John!
Christopher held out his hand, and John took it and for a moment they
stood there, then Christopher went upstairs.
II
Dorchester no longer asserted that her mistress was "better than she had
ever been"--Since that terrible morning when Dr. Christopher had broken
the news of Sir Roderick's accident Dorchester had made no pretence
about anything. This was the time that must, she had always known, one
day arrive, but what she had not known was that it would be quite like
this.
She was a woman of some imagination; moreover, were there one person in
the world who touched her heart, then was it her mistress; she had
penetrated, she thought, some of the strange secrets and fantasies of
that old woman's soul, and it seemed that now, in these later days, she
was at last in touch with every motive and grim artifice that her
mistress adopted--
But no--since that terrible day at the beginning of the year Dorchester
had lost touch, was left, bewildered, at a loss, as though she were
suddenly in the service of some stranger.
She had known that nothing more terrible could happen to her mistress
than this--When she heard it she said to herself, "This will kill
her--bound to--" She had known too that her mistress would not flinch,
outwardly, and that to the ordinary observer there would be no sign, but
the thing for which she had not been prepared was this silence, a
silence so profound and yet so eloquent that one could obtain from it no
clue, could discern no visible wound, but daily, almost hourly, as she
sat there, change was at work ... she was dying before their eyes--
What Dorchester did not know was that the Duchess had been aware, for a
long time, that this was to occur, if not exactly this, why, then,
something like it.
All through that autumn she had sat there waiting--the War, the
rebellion of her children--it only needed that disaster should overtake
Roddy and the circle was complete.
She did not doubt that it was because he had married Rachel that this
had happened to him, and she might have prevented his marriage to Rachel
had she wished.
The girl had now for her sitting there in her room the fatal
inevitability of some hostile spirit. She saw all her past years as a
duel with this girl, the one soul in rebellion against hers. Rachel
had taken everything from her; she had first stirred Adela and John
into rebellion, she had encouraged Francis Breton, she had destroyed
Roddy ... she rose, before the old woman's eyes, black, titanic,
sweeping, with great dark wings, across the horizon.
The Duchess did not in so many words state that Rachel had flung her
husband from his horse and then watched whilst his body was dragged
along the stones, but, in some way, the girl had plotted it.
The old woman had indeed during these last months suffered from visions.
There were days when her brain was as clear as it had ever been and on
these days she thought more of Roddy than of Rachel, ached to be with
him, longed to comfort him and make life bearable for him, cursed
whatever fate it was that had ordained that upon him of all people such
a burden should have fallen. Then there were other days when the old
china dragons seemed more real than Dorchester, when shapes and sizes
altered in an instant, when the cushion at her feet was swollen like a
mountain, when she seemed floating through space, looking down upon
houses, cities, mountains, when only like a jangling chain upon which
everything hung, ran her hatred of her granddaughter.
On such a day if Rachel had come to her and she had been alone with her,
she would have wished the dragons to devour her, would have urged the
silver Indian snake on the little black table to have strangled her. On
such a day she would sit hour after hour and wonder what she could do to
her granddaughter....
It was upon one of her clear days that it flashed upon her that she
would go and see Roddy. Beyond the actual excitement of visiting Roddy
there was the determination to show the world what she still could do.
Doubtless they were saying out there that she was bedridden now, ill,
helpless, dying even ... well, she would show them.
For thirty years she had not been outside her door--now, because she
wished it, she would go.
She said nothing to Adela about this--she saw Adela now as seldom as
possible. She told John on the morning of the day itself--on that same
morning she told Christopher.
She told him sitting in her chair, with her cheeks painted and her white
fingers covered with rings--
"I'm going to pay a visit--this afternoon, Christopher." She had
expected opposition--she was a little disappointed when he said--
"Yes, so I've already heard this morning. I think it's an excellent
thing--the day's warm. You'll have to be carried downstairs, you
know----"
"You and Norris can do that. I won't have anyone else."
"Very well, I shall have to come with you----"
"Yes--You can talk to my granddaughter."
"It's thirty years...."
"Yes--The last time was Old Judy Bonnings's reception. They're all
dead--all of 'em--D'you remember, Dorchester?"
"Yes--Your Grace--Very well."
Dorchester expressed no surprise--Anything was better than that silence
of the last months. Moreover she had trusted Christopher. She had often
been amazed at the knowledge that he showed of her mistress's
temperament, would allow her temper, her imperious self-will indulgence
one day and on another would control them absolutely. He knew what he
was doing....
The picture that she presented, however, when helped downstairs by the
pontifical Norris and Christopher! the house, with the decorous
watchfulness of some large, solemn, and immensely authoritative
policeman, surveying her descent, her own little bird-like face, showing
nothing but a fine assumption of her splendid appearance before the
public, after thirty years, she thus, once again, was saluted by
Portland Place! Black furs of Lady Adela's surrounded, enfolded her, and
from out of them her eyes haughtily but triumphantly surveyed a
crossing-sweeper, two small children with their nurse, a messenger boy,
and Roller the coachman. To Roller this must have been _the_ dramatic
moment of a somewhat undramatic career, but stout and imperial upon his
box his body was held, rigid, motionless, and his large stupid eyes
gazed in front of him at the trees and the light cloud-flecked March
sky, and moved neither to the right nor to the left.
She was placed in the carriage--Christopher got in beside her and they
moved off. He was interested to see the effect that this breaking into
the world would have upon her. He felt himself a little in the position
of showman and was glad that he had a spring afternoon of gleaming
sunshine and a suggestion of budding trees and shrubs in the Portland
Crescent garden to provide for her. They were held up by traffic as they
crossed the Marylebone Road; drays, hansoms, bicycles passed--there was
a stir of voices and wheels, somewhere in the park a band was playing.
He looked at her and saw that she paid no heed, but sat back in the dim
shadow, her eyes, he thought, closed. She was, at that instant, more
remote from him and all that he represented than she had ever
been--Curiously he was moved, just then, by a consciousness of her
personality that exceeded anything that he had ever felt in her before.
"Yes, she must have been tremendous," he thought. And then he wondered
of what she was thinking, so quiet, and yet, from her very silence,
sinister, and then--how could he have not considered this before? What
was she going to say to Roddy?
At this, the dark carriage was suddenly, for him, as flashing with life
and circumstance as though it had been the florid circle of some popular
music-hall--_What_ would she say to Roddy?
He knew her for the most selfish of all possible old women: unselfish
only perhaps if Roddy were concerned, but there also, if some question
of her power moved her, ruthless. He had traced the windings of her
queer intertwisted brain with some accuracy--He knew also that the
coloured unreal state that her closed, fantastic life (resembling, you
might say, life inside a Chinese puzzle) had brought upon her led her
now to see Rachel as arch-antagonist in every step and movement of her
day.
She would not wish to make Roddy unhappy, she might persuade herself
that to hint to him of Rachel's infidelity would be to put him on his
guard--she might say that it was not fair that Rachel should not be
pulled up....
Christopher himself could not tell how far this affair with Breton had
gone....
During that short time it seemed to him that a crisis, that had been
building up around him, here, there, for months, for years perhaps, had
leapt upon him and that in some way he must deal with it.
Even whilst he struggled with the thoughts that were sweeping upon him
now from every side, they were at the house--As he stepped out of the
carriage he felt that he was before a locked door, that the safety of
many persons depended upon his opening it, that he could not find the
key.
"Lady Seddon was out. Sir Roderick was alone----" The Duchess was half
assisted, half carried into the house.
III
The Duchess's feelings were indeed confused as she was helped into
Roddy's room, placed in a large easy chair opposite to him and at last
left alone with him.
Enough of itself to disturb her was the fact that now for the first time
for thirty years she was able to examine some room different from her
own--A large, high white-walled room with wide windows that displayed
the park, sporting prints on the walls, antlers over the fireplace, a
piano in one corner, a large bowl of primroses on the piano, some
boxing-gloves and two old swords over the door, a wooden case with thin
rosewood drawers and "Birds' Eggs" in gold letters upon it, a round
table near the sofa upon which Roddy was lying and on the table a
photograph of Rachel--
All these things her sharp old eyes noticed before she allowed them to
settle upon Roddy--
His quiet, almost humorous "Well, Duchess," set, quite concisely, the
note for this conversation. Not for either of them was it to betray any
consciousness that this meeting of theirs was in any way out of the
ordinary. Formerly it had been the ebullient, vigorous Roddy who had
brought his vigour to renew her fierce old age; now that old age must be
brought to him--
The Beaminsters did not show surprise at anything at all; had she come
from her grave to visit him he would have greeted her with his quiet
"Well, Duchess"--his life was broken in pieces, but she was not to offer
any comment on that either.
She was exhausted even by that little drive, and that little passage
from door to door, so she just lay back in her chair for a little while
and looked at him.
His body was covered with a rug; his hands, still brown and large and
clumsy, were folded on his lap; he was wonderfully tidy, brushed and
cleaned, it seemed to her, as though he were always expecting a doctor
or a visitor or were performed upon by some valet or other, simply, poor
dear, that the time might be filled. His cheeks were paler of course and
his face thinner, but it was in his eyes--his large, simple, singularly
ungrown-up eyes she had always considered them--that the great change
lay--
They smiled across at her with the same genial good temper that they had
always presented to her. But indeed she could never call them
"ungrown-up" again. Roddy Seddon had grown up indeed since she had seen
him last; she knew now, as she faced the experience and, above all, the
strength that those eyes now presented for her, that she had a new
spirit to encounter.
Yes--he "had had a horrible time," but she was wise enough, at that
instant, to realise that the "horrible time" had drawn character out of
him that she, at least, had never, for an instant, suspected.
The old woman was moved so that she would have liked to have tottered to
his sofa, to have caught his hands in her old dry ones, to have kissed
him, to have smoothed his hair--but she sat quietly in her chair,
recovered her breath and, grimly, almost saturninely, smiled at him.
"Well, Roddy," she said, "how are you?"
"I'm quite splendid. Play patience like a professor, can knit five
mufflers in a week and am learning two foreign languages--But indeed
how rippin' to see you here. I've spent a lot o' time on this old sofa
wonderin' how you and I were goin' to see one another."
"Have you?" She was pleased at that--"Well, you see, I _have_ managed it
and quite easily too, not so bad after thirty years. My _good_ Roddy,
you of all people to tumble off a horse! What _were_ you about?"
"Oh! it was simple enough." Roddy's eyes worked swiftly to the park and
then back again. "I was worried, you see--my thoughts were wandering,
and the old mare just tripped into a hole, pitched and flung me--I fell
on a heap o' stones, _they_ knocked the sense out of me, the horse was
frightened and went dashin' along with me tangled up in her. All came of
my thoughts wanderin'--But you know, Duchess, I've had heaps of
accidents, heaps and heaps, every kind of thing has happened to me, but
it's never been serious--always the most wonderful luck. Well, for once
it left me."
"Poor old Roddy."
"Yes, it _was_ 'poor old Roddy,' I can tell you, for the first six
weeks--thought I simply _couldn't_ stand it, had serious thoughts of
kickin' out altogether, seemed to me everythin' had gone ... it's
wonderful, though, the way you pick up. And then everyone's been so
tremendous, and as for Rachel!"
He heaved a great sigh--Her eyes half closed, then she looked very
carefully at the photograph on the little round table. "That's a good
photograph of her you've got."
"Yes--it's my favourite. But you, Duchess, tell me about yourself. You
must be in magnificent form to have planned this great adventure."
She told him about herself--only a little, all very carefully
chosen--She was fancying, as she sat there, that she was again playing
the great diplomatist before the world.
This expedition had greatly excited her, it had fired her blood, and
just now she felt that she was equal to taking up her old life of thirty
years ago, playing once more a tremendous part, beating Mrs. Bronson and
others of her kind straight off the field.
She had a great plan now of coming often to see Roddy and of gaining a
very great influence over him; she did not say to herself in so many
words that she could not bear to think of him lying there helpless and
therefore completely in Rachel's power, but that is what in reality
stirred her.
Roddy's helplessness--the sight and sound of it--drove higher that flame
that had burnt now for so long before the altar at which Rachel was, one
day, to be sacrificed. "She may come and go as she pleases. He lies
here--He can do nothing. He can know nothing of her movements--He's in
her hands--after what I know...."
What did she know? The acquaintanceship of Breton's man-servant and
Dorchester had produced the fact of Rachel's visit, of letters--but
wasn't that all? Amongst the strange mingled visions that now crossed
and recrossed her brain it were hard to say what were real and what
phantasmal. But granted that the two of them had come together at all,
why then it was plain enough to anyone who knew them that only one
result was possible--Poor Roddy ... _her_ poor Roddy!
But she did not know even now that she intended to tell him anything;
her sense of the pain that that revelation would give to him held her,
but as the minutes passed her delight at being back once more in this
gay, bustling world (yes, she liked its new invigorating noises) the
sense of power that she had, and youth, and strength, spun her brain to
finest cobwebs of entanglements.
She was glad to be with her Roddy again, it was only fair that, helpless
as he was, there should still be someone to guard and protect him ... to
protect him, yes!
Her eyes flashed at the photograph.
But for a long time they talked in precisely their old fashion. The War,
friends and enemies, victories and defeats, marriages and deaths; Roddy
seemed, for a time, the old Roddy.
And then gradually through it all there pushed towards her the
consciousness that he was doing it now to please her; more than that,
again and again she was aware that some bitter jest, some sharp
distraction, some fierce criticism had been turned by him deftly
aside--simply rejected with a deftness and a strength that the old Roddy
could never have summoned.
Here again then--and it stabbed her there in the midst of her new pride
and confidence--was a reminder that her power, her sovereignty had
vanished! Was Roddy also to be beyond her influence, Roddy whom she had
had at her feet since he was a boy of sixteen?
The photograph smiled across at her--She bent forward, her hand raised a
little as though to lend emphasis to her words--"And then you know,
Roddy, I'm still troubled with my abominable relation----"
"What! Breton? Why, how's he been behaving?" Roddy's voice was scornful.
"Oh! he's not _done_ anything that I know of--But he's always there--so
tiresome to have him so close, and John and Adela have grown so peculiar
lately that there's no knowing--They may ask him in to tea one day----"
"Oh no, they won't," said Roddy. "He must be the most awful outsider."
"I wanted to speak about him to you because I thought you might give a
word of warning to Rachel----"
"To Rachel?" Roddy's voice was amazed.
"Yes--She's become such a friend of his! Surely you know? That's what
makes it so difficult for me--When one's own granddaughter----"
"Rachel! A friend of Breton's! But I didn't know she'd ever spoken to
him--Look here, Duchess, you must explain----"
"I thought you must have known. I've often wished to speak to you about
it, only Rachel is so difficult and I didn't want to worry you, and it
seems especially hard just now----"
"But it doesn't worry me--not a bit. Only tell me--How do you mean that
she's a friend of his?"
"Only that she goes to see him, writes to him----"
"Goes to _see_ him----"
"Oh yes--is in complete sympathy----"
"Are you sure?"
"Absolutely. You must ask her."
"I will of course----"
He lay back on his sofa. For a little time there was silence between
them. She was filled now with wild regrets. She wished that she had said
nothing. His face was hard and old--She wished ... she scarcely knew
what she wished; she only knew that suddenly she was tired and would
like to go home.
A bell was rung and Christopher was sent for. She would like to have
kissed Roddy, but only wagged her bony finger at him--
"Now be a good patient boy and I'll soon come again."
IV
Meanwhile, five minutes before this, Rachel had come in. She was told of
the visits, and going swiftly to the little drawing-room upstairs had
found Christopher.
She flung her arms around him and kissed him.
"Oh, dear Dr. Chris!"
But he stopped her.
"Quick, Rachel. I may only have a minute.... I've got to speak to you."
Instantly she drew back, her grave eyes watching him and her hands, as
of old, nervously moving against her dress.
"What is it?"
"It's just this. The Duchess may ring at any moment--she's been with him
a long while. Look here, Rachel, she knows about Breton--that you've
been to see him, that you've written to him----"
"She told you?"
"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 passionately. "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 Duchess'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.