MARCH 13th: RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL AND THE DUCHESS DENIES GOD
"Que desirez-vous savoir plus precisement?'
Mais le porte-drapeau repondit:
'Non, pas maintenant ... apres ...'"
_A l'Extreme Limite._
ARTZYBACHEV.
I
That afternoon had been a difficult one for Roddy. He felt, lying so
eternally on his back, the vagaries of the English weather. There were
days when the wind was in the park, when sunshine flashed and flung
shadows, when the water of the pond glittered and every duck and baby
thrilled with life. Then it was very hard to lie still, and memories of
days--riding days and swimming days and hunting days--would persecute
him. But there were dark wet hours when his room seemed warm and
cosy--then he was happy.
On a day of thunder, like this afternoon, his one desire was to get out;
never had he felt the bars of his cage so sharply, with so intense an
irritation as on to-day.
Massiter broke the chain of his thoughts and he was glad. Four days now
and Rachel had said nothing; many times he had thought that she was
going to speak, but the moments had passed. He had not slept for two
nights--over and over he turned the question as to what he was to do.
Had he been up and about, some solution would have naturally come, he
thought, but, lying here, thinking so interminably with one's body tied
to one like a stone, nothing seemed clear or easy.
This was the worst day in the world to make thinking simple. The leaden
sky pressed one down and held one's brain.
"I'm goin' to have a jolly bad evenin'," said Roddy, "I know I am."
Massiter was a relief; there was no need to talk whilst Massiter was
there and his fat cheerful body restored one's balance. The same,
sensible world that had once been Roddy's own and had, of late, slipped
away from him, was restored when Massiter was there. Nevertheless one
hour of Massiter was enough. Roddy could detect in Massiter's attitude
that pity moved him to additional cheerfulness, and this was irritating;
then Massiter's clumsy efforts to avoid topics that might be especially
tactless--that also was tiresome.
Roddy was glad when Rachel and John Beaminster came down and relieved
him, and then the moment arrived when he thought again that Rachel was
going to speak, and perhaps if he had made a movement of affection he
would have caught her, but always when some expression of feeling was
especially demanded of him did he feel the least able to produce it.
The whole relationship between them depended on such slender incidents;
one word from anybody and there would be no more confusion or doubt; the
situation had the maddening tip-toe indecision of a dream.
"I'm going to have a bad time to-night," he thought. "It's no use giving
in to the thing." He faced it deliberately; if only he could think
clearly, but the damned weather.... Well, he and Jacob must face the
night as best they could.
The dog lay flat near the window, moving restlessly under the close air,
but pricking his ears at every movement that Roddy made, ready to come
to him at any instant.
"That old dog cares for me more than anyone else does--and I only
appreciated him after I was laid up--Rummy thing!" Roddy was conscious
that high above him, somewhere near the ceiling, hovered a Creature,
born of this damnable evening, and that did he allow himself to relax
for a moment, down that hovering Creature would come. Very faintly, as
it were from a great distance, he could catch its whisper in his ear.
"What's the good of this?... What's the good of this? What did you
always say? What would you have said about anyone placed as you are now?
Better for him to get out."
"Damn you, shut up...."
He was in great physical pain, the pain that always came to him when he
was tired out, but that was nothing to the mental torture. Twisted
figures--Rachel, Breton, himself, the Duchess--passed before him,
mingling, separating, sometimes coming to him as though they were there
with him in the room. He had not, even on the day that had told him that
he would never get up again, felt so near to utter defeat as he was now.
He had been proud of himself, proud of his resistance to what, with
another man, might have appeared utter catastrophe, proud of his dogged
determination. "To have the devil beat...." To-night this same devil was
going to be too much for him, did he not fight his very hardest, and the
cruelty of it was that this weather took all one's vitality out of one,
drained one dry, left one a rag.
"Curse you, get out," he muttered, clenching his teeth, then whistled
and brought Jacob instantly to his side. The dog jumped on to the long
sofa, taking care not to touch his master's legs. Then he moved up into
the hollow of Roddy's arm and lay there warm against Roddy's side.
"What's the use?" The Creature was close to him, his breath warm and
damp like the night air. "She doesn't care for you. You can see that she
doesn't. She's been in love with her cousin for ever so long, only you
didn't know. Wouldn't she have told you that she was a friend of his if
there had been nothing more than that in it? What a fool you are--lying
here all broken up, simply in the way of her happiness, no good to
yourself or anyone else."
"I wish the thunder would come and smash you up...." Then, more
desperately, "What if that's right? if I were to clear out...."
"After all," said the Creature, "you've never before seen yourself as
you really are. You thought that you were all right because you could
use your legs and arms. Now you know what you are--You're nothing--only
something that many people must trouble to keep alive--useless--useless!
Why not?"
Yes, Roddy did see himself to-night, sternly; as in the old days he
might have looked upon someone and judged him unfit, so now he would
confront himself. "It's quite true. You've got nothing--nothing to show,
you've no intellect, you're selfish, you despise all kinds of people for
all kinds of reasons. You've stood a little pain--so can any man. You'd
better get out--no one will know."
"Yes," said the Creature, very close to him now. "You can do it so
easily. That morphia that you've had once or twice--an overdose. No one
would suppose.... She would never know, and you'd be rid for ever of all
this wrong and you'd free so many people from so much trouble."
"Jacob, my son," he whispered, "do you hear what they're saying?"
He went right down, down to the depths of a pit that closed about his
head, filled his eyes with darkness, was suffocating.
"Yes, he's beaten," he heard them say. "We've succeeded at last. We've
succeeded...."
But they had not.
With an effort of will that was beyond any power that he had believed
himself to possess, he pulled himself up.
"There's one thing you've forgotten." He gasped as he came struggling
up.
He took the Creature in his hands, wrung its neck and flung it out of
the window.
"There's one thing you've forgotten. There's my love for her. That's
strong enough for anything. That's reason enough for living even though
she doesn't want it. I'll beat you all with that ... go back to hell,
the lot of you."
II
"I must never let it happen like that again. What a state this weather
can get one into...."
But he had come back to his senses. His brain was clear; he could think
now. The great point was that it was of no use to think of himself in
this affair. "Rachel, Rachel's the only thing that matters."
Then upon that came the decision. "That old woman's got to pay for it.
She's been wantin' to give Rachel a bad time. She's tried to. Her
mouth's got to be stopped _however_ old and ill she is!"
He was fiercely, furiously indignant with her--vanished, it appeared,
all his affection, the sentiment of years. "I've got to defend Rachel
from her, no knowin' _whom_ she's been tellin'." Roddy still found it
impossible to admit more than one idea at a time, and the idea now was
that "he must stop the old lady dead."
His brain came round now to Breton, and halted there. What kind of
fellow, after all, was he? What, after all, did Roddy know about him
that he could so easily condemn him?
To-night, fresh from the battle with the Creature, Roddy's view of the
world was painted with new colours. The man had been condemned for
things that his father had done, and one recognized, here in London, how
difficult it was for a fellow to climb up once he had been pushed down.
Was the man in love with Rachel? Well, Roddy did not know that he could
blame him for that? ... difficult enough, surely, for anyone not to be.
But _was_ he? What, after all, was he like?
Then swiftly the answer came to him. See the man.... Talk to him ...
know him. He stared at the idea, felt already new energy in his bones
and a surging victory over the lethargy of this awful evening at the
suggestion of some definite action.
But see him, yes, and see him here and see him soon. His impatience
leapt now hotly upon him; he pulled Jacob's ears. "That's the ticket,
old boy, ain't it? See what kind of a ruffian this is! My word, but
wouldn't the old lady hate it if she knew?"
But, and at this the room flared with the thrill of it, why not have her
here to meet him? Confront her with him.
He was cool now. Here was matter that needed careful handling. Still as
vigorous now as in his most active days was his impatience. Was
something in the way, cobwebs, barriers, obstacles of any sort? Brush
them aside, beat them down!
Here was a plan. Here, too, most happily at hand, was the Duchess's
punishment.
All these years had the old lady been refusing to set eyes upon her
grandson, therefore, how dramatic would it be were she confronted with
him unexpectedly. Out of the heart of that meeting would come most
assuredly the truth about Rachel.
There, in a flash, solid, substantial, beautifully compact,
magnificently splendid his plan lay before him. He would have them
there. Rachel, the Duchess, this Breton, all of them there before him.
They should come ignorant, unprepared, Breton first, then Rachel, then
the Duchess.
Having them there he would quite simply say that someone had been
pouring into his ears a story of friendship to which he might take
objection.
He would then, very quietly.... But here he paused. Oh! he knew what he
would do. He smiled at the thought of the success of his plan.
When he had made his little speech to them all there would never again
be any danger of scandal. The old lady would never again have any single
word to say.
The thought that Rachel might be angry at his deceptive plot did not
disturb him. When she had heard his little speech she would not say
that--and here, suddenly, he knew how deeply, in his heart, he trusted
her.
But what if, after all, it should be a lie on the old lady's part? Was
he not doing wrong to take things so far without a question to anyone
else, Christopher or Lizzie Rand?
But this was Roddy. Here both his pride and his impatience were
concerned. He did not wish that the business should pass beyond its
present bounds. He could not go from person to person asking them
whether they trusted his wife. And then he could not wait. Here was a
plan that killed the danger at one blow, something direct, open, with
sharply defined issues. Oh! Rachel should see how he loved her!
"All these days," he said to Jacob, "I've been worryin' about her, but I
knew--yes, I knew--that she was comin' to me all right." He thought of a
day long before and of Miss Nita Raseley and of a meeting in the garden.
"I'll show her that I can forgive, too, if it's necessary. Not because I
care so little, but, by God, because I care so much. No," he thought,
shaking his head over it, "she doesn't love me, not yet. But she's
beginnin' to belong to me. She's coming."
There was also the thought that the Duchess was an old, sick woman and
that the scene might be too much for her strength. "Not she," he grimly
decided, "that's the kind of thing she lives on. Anyway, I owe her one.
Didn't do her any harm comin' to me the other day, won't do her any harm
now. _I_ know her."
His scheme must be carried out at once. He felt that he could not wait a
moment. He would have liked to have had them all there, before him,
to-night.
"Why, by this time to-morrow, old boy, it will all be straight. Thank
God, my brain cleared, in spite of this damn weather."
He rang the bell and Peters, large, solemn, but bending a loving eye
upon his master, appeared.
"Writing things, Peters."
He wrote swiftly two notes.
"Very close to-night, sir."
"Yes, Peters, very."
"You're looking better, sir ... less tired. Your dinner will be up in a
quarter of an hour. Nice omelette, nice little bird, nice fruit salad,
sardines on toast."
"Thank you, Peters, I'm hungry as--as anything."
"Very glad to hear it, sir."
"I want these two notes sent by hand instantly, do you see?"
"Yes, Sir Rod'rick."
"At once."
"Yes, Sir Rod'rick."
Roddy lay back and surveyed the black sky.
"Nasty storm comin' up--look here, Peters, give me that bird book over
there. That big one. Thanks."
Peters retired.
III
Meanwhile Her Grace had found this close evening very trying. That visit
to Roddy had not harmed her physically, but had made her restless. The
very fact that it had not hurt her, urged her to have more of such
evenings. Having shown them once what she could do she would like to
show them all again, and yet with this new energy was also lethargy so
that she sat, thinking about her adventures, but felt that it would be
difficult to move.
Then this thundery afternoon really did drag the strength from her. She
allowed her fire to fall into a few golden coals, she allowed Dorchester
to move her from her high-back chair on to a sofa that was near the wide
window, now flung open. She could see roofs, chimneys, towers of
churches, all dingy grey beneath the leaden sky.
She lay there, a book on her lap, but not reading; she was thinking of
Roddy. For perhaps the very first time in all her life she regretted
something that she had done. Nobody but Roddy could have called this
regret out of her and now, she would confess it to no living soul, but
she lay there, thinking about it, remembering every movement and gesture
of his, seeing always that, at the end, he had wanted her to go, had, as
her sharp old eyes had seen, hurried her away.
There had been so splendid a chance, she had shown her love for him so
magnificently that he could not but have been touched and moved had she
only left Rachel alone. Ah! that girl! again, again.... The Duchess
looked at the plain roofs that lay dry and sterile beneath the torrid
sky and wished, not by any means for the first time, that she had left
that marriage with Roddy alone.
Roddy would have married some other girl, Nita Raseley or such, and he
would have been mine ... mine!
Hard and utterly selfish in all her ordinary dealings with a world that
she professed to despise but really adored, her love for Roddy was a
little golden link to a thousand softnesses and, as she termed them,
weak indulgences. Why had she loved him so? She was like the grim pirate
of some conventional fiction. See him on his dark vessel surveying with
cold and cruel eye the beautiful captives provided by the stricken ship,
on every side of him! See him select, for the very flavour that the
contrast gave him, some ordinary slave from the crowd to whom he shows
weak indulgence! So much blacker, he feels, does this kindness make his
infamies.
But the Duchess's career as the dark pirate of her period was swiftly
vanishing; the black hulk of her vessel remained, but upon its boards
only the little slave was to be seen, and even he, with furtive eye,
sought his way of escape.
Yes, on this torrid evening every soul in that vast city, surely, felt
that he was alone, abandoned, in a desert of a world. But the fear that
she was losing even Roddy brought the Duchess very close to panic. She
had not grasped before how resolutely she had been using him to bolster
up life for her, how important his friendly existence was for her.
Since his marriage that friendliness had grown, with every hour,
weaker. Something she must do now to repair her error of the other day;
she was even ready to pretend affection for her granddaughter if that
would bring Roddy back to her.
She watched the sky and longed for the threatened storm to break; her
bones were indeed old and feeble to-day, to move at all was an effort
and, with it all, there was a sense of apprehension as though she were
some terrified bird conscious of the hawk's approach, she who had, until
now, been herself the hawk. She remembered the day when she had realized
more poignantly than ever before, that the hour must come--and indeed
was not far away--when she would inevitably meet death. She had loathed
that realization, attempted to defy it, been defeated by it. Now on this
evening, she suspected again the invasion of that same power. But
to-night there was no resistance in her, she lay there, whitely
submitting to the tyranny of any enemy. She could scarcely breathe;
London, like a scaly dragon, flung its hot breath upon her and withered
her defiance. She would have moved away from the window had not those
grey roofs held her, by their ugly indifference, with a terrible
fascination. "I'm going--I'm going--and they don't care. Just like
that--just like that--long after I'm gone."
The evening slipped away and Dorchester, coming to her, thought that she
was sleeping; she did not disturb her, but ordered her evening meal to
be kept until she should wake.
The Duchess did sleep. She awoke to find, in the sky above the now
vanishing roofs, a golden glow and in the room behind her the shaded
lamps, the fire burning, and her table spread.
But she had had a horrible dream; she struggled to recall it and, even
as she struggled, trembling seized her body as the vague horror that it
had left behind it still thrilled and troubled her.
She could recollect nothing of her dream except this, that she had died,
and that being dead, she was immediately aware that God awaited her.
She could remember her frantic effort to reassert all those earthly
convictions that had been based on the definite creed that the Duchess
existed but _not_ God. She had still with her the sensation of hurry and
dismay, the dismal knowledge that she had only a moment with which to
break down the discoveries of a lifetime and place new ones in her
stead.
She had, above all, the horrible knowledge that her punishment was
settled, that at last she was in the hands of a power stronger than
herself and that nothing, nothing, nothing could help her.
She was frightened, but she knew not by what or by whom. She tried to
tell herself that she had been dreaming, that this breathless evening
was responsible, that she would be all right very soon. But she was
seized by that terrible vague uncertainty that had been with her so much
lately, uncertainty as to what was real and what was not. She looked at
the French novel lying upon her lap; that was real, she supposed, and
yet as she touched its pages her fingers seemed to seize upon nothing,
only air between them.
The fits of trembling shook her from head to foot and yet she could
scarcely breathe, so close and heavy was the night.
"That was only a dream--only a dream. Suppose it should be true though.
What if I _were_ to die--to-night?"
Dorchester came to her and was alarmed.
"Dinner is ready, Your Grace."
Her mistress did not answer, but lay there, looking through the open
window and shivering.
"Your Grace will catch cold by that open window. I had better close it."
"It's stifling--stifling."
"Will you have dinner now?"
"No--no. Why do you worry me? I can eat nothing."
Dorchester was seriously alarmed; an evening like this might very
easily.... She determined to send word round to Dr. Christopher.
She went away, gave directions about the dinner, saw that her mistress's
bedroom was warm and comfortable.
She came back. The Duchess was sitting up, colour in her cheeks and her
eyes sparkling. On her lap lay a note.
"I've had a dream, Dorchester--a horrid dream. I was disturbed for a
moment. I think I will eat something after all."
"The way she goes up and down!" thought Dorchester. "Must say I don't
like the look of her--not knowing her own mind, so unlike her--Who's the
letter from, I wonder?"
It was the letter, plainly, that had done it. Sitting up and enjoying
her soup, forgetting that black sky and the Dragon's scaly menace, the
Duchess knew that that dream--that dream about God--had been as silly,
as futile as dreams always are.
The note, brought to her by Norris and lying now beside her plate, had
told her so. The note of course had been from Roddy. It said:
"DEAR DUCHESS,
I don't want to ask anything impossible of you, but, encouraged
by your coming to me the other day and hearing that you took no
harm from your expedition, I am wondering whether to-morrow
afternoon about five you could come again and have tea with me.
There is something about which you can help me--only you in all
the world. If I don't hear from you I will conclude that you
can come--five o'clock.
Your affectionate friend,
RODDY."
That letter showed the perfection of his tactful understanding....
No absurd talk about her age, her feebleness, the weather, but simply it
was taken for granted that of course she would be there. Well, of
course, she _would_ be there--nothing should stop her. She was aware
that Christopher, hearing that to-night she had not been so well, would
certainly forbid her to move. He should, therefore, know nothing about
it, nothing at all. His visit would be paid in the morning--she would
have the afternoon to herself--Norris and Dorchester should help her to
the carriage.
Christopher expected, on his arrival, to find her in a very bad way,
exhausted by the closeness of the evening: it was possible that he might
have to remain all night. He found her in bed, a lace cap on her head, a
crimson dressing-gown about her shoulders, and all her rings glittering
upon her fingers. An old-fashioned massive silver candlestick with six
branches illuminated the lacquer bed, the black Indian chairs, the
fantastic wall-paper. The windows were closed and the dry heat of the
room was appalling.
She was in her mildest, most amiable mood, had enjoyed an excellent
dinner, laughed her cracked, discordant laugh, was delighted to see him.
"Sit down, there, close to me. Have some coffee."
"No, thank you."
"Dorchester can bring it in a minute."
"No, really, thank you."
"Who sent for you?"
"Lord John."
"Yes, I thought so. Pretty state of things with them all hanging round
like this waiting for me to die--never felt better in my life."
"So I see--delighted. I'll go."
"Not a bit of it. Stay and talk. I feel like telling someone what I
think of things, although you've heard it all often enough before. But
the truth is, Christopher, I _did_ have a nasty dream--a very nasty
dream--and the nastiest part of it was that I couldn't remember it when
I woke up.
"But it's the weather--I was frightened for a minute although I wouldn't
have anyone else know."
"But you had a good dinner."
"Splendid dinner, thank you."
She lay back in bed and looked at him; delightful to think that she
would play a little game with him to-morrow; he would in all probability
be angry when he knew--that would be very amusing; delightful, too, to
think that, just when she was afraid that she had seriously alienated
Roddy away from her, he should write and say that he needed her. She
would go to-morrow and would be exceedingly pleasant to him and would
reassure him about Rachel....
Yes, she had seldom felt so genial. She told Christopher stories of men
and women whom she had known, wicked stories, gay stories, cruel
stories, and her eyes twinkled and her fingers sparkled and her old
withered face poked out above the dressing-gown, with the white hair,
fine and proud beneath the lace cap.
Once she said to him: "You think all this queer, don't you?" waving her
hand at the bed, the chairs, the paper. "This colour and the odds and
ends and the rest."
"It's part of you," he said; "I shouldn't know you without them."
"I love them," she breathed. "I _love_ them. Oh! if I'd had my way I'd
have been born when one could have _piled_ up and splashed it about and
had it everywhere--jewels, clothes, processions--Ah! that's why I hate
this generation that's coming; the generation that you believe in so
devoutly, it's so ugly. It wears ugly things, it likes ugly people, it
believes in talking about ugly morals and making ugly laws...." Then she
laughed--"It's funny, isn't it? I had to use the age I was born into, I
cut my cloth to it, but what a figure I'd have made in any century
before the nineteenth. All the old times were best. You could command
and see that you were obeyed.... None of your Individualism then,
Christopher."
She was silent for a time and he said nothing. He was thinking about
Breton, wondering where he was, feeling that he should not have let him
go. She said suddenly:
"Christopher, do you think there's a God?"
"I know there is."
"Well, I know there isn't--so there we are. One of us will find that
we've made a mistake in a few years' time."
He said nothing. At last she began again:
"You're sure of it?"
"Quite sure."
"So like you--and you get a deal of comfort from it, no doubt. But what
kind of a God, Christopher?"
"A just God--a loving God."
"How any doctor can say that truthfully! The pain, the crime you must
have seen----"
"Exactly. I've known, I suppose, of as much misery, as much agony, much
wickedness as most men in a lifetime. I've never had a case under my
notice that hasn't shown the necessity for pain, the necessity for
struggle, for defeat, for disaster. If this life were all, still I
should have had proof enough that a loving God was moving in the world."
She lay back, smiling at him.
"You're a sentimentalist of course. I've heard you talk before. You're
wrong, Christopher, badly wrong. I shall prove it before you will."
"Well," he said, smiling back at her, "we'll see."
"Oh, yes, you're a sentimentalist of the very worst--I don't know that I
like you the less for it. I'm an old pagan and it's served me all my
life. Ah! there's the thunder!"
She sat up in bed, her cap pushed back, her skinny arms stretched out in
a kind of ecstasy. "There! That's it! That's the kind of thing I like!
There's your God for you, Christopher."
A flash of lightning flung the room into unreality.
"I'd hoped for one more good storm before I went. I've been waiting all
day for this."
He never forgot the strange figure that she made; she displayed the
excitement of a child presented with a sudden unexpected gift.
He himself had known many storms, but, perhaps because she now made so
strange a central figure of this one, this always remained with him as
the worst of his life. He had never heard such thunder and, as each
crash fell upon them, he felt that she rose to it and exulted in it as
though she were a swimmer meeting great ocean rollers.
There was at last a peal that broke upon them as though it had tumbled
the whole house about their ears. Deafened by it he looked about him as
though he had expected to find everything in the room shattered.
"_That_ was the best," she cried to him.
At last she lay back tired, and he bade her good night.
She held his hand for a moment. "I regret nothing," she said, "nothing
at all. I've had a good time."
But, after he had left her, the sound of the rain had some personal fury
about it that made her uneasy.
She called to Dorchester. "I think I'd like you to sleep here to-night,
Dorchester. I may need you."
"Very well, Your Grace."
"After all," she thought as, the candles blown out, she lay and listened
to the rain, "that dream may come back...."