CHAPTER I
REGENT'S PARK--BRETON AND LIZZIE
"Yes," said Mrs. Bright, "he missed it all the time."
"Missed what?" asked Miss Rankin.
"'Is good luck," sighed Mrs. Bright.--HENRY GALLEON.
I
Francis Breton had known, during the weeks that preceded his letter toRachel, torture that became to him at last so personal that he feltdeliberate malignant agency behind its ingenious devices.
At first it had seemed that that wonderful hour with Rachel wouldsatisfy his needs for a long time to come; he had only, when life washard, dull, colourless, monotonous, to recall it--to see again hermovements, to hear her voice, to remember to the last and tiniest detailthe things that she had said, to feel that clutch of her hand upon hiscoat, and instantly he was inflamed, exultant.
So, for a time, it was. Into every moment of his daily life he workedthis scene--Rachel was always with him, never, for a single instant, didhe doubt that, in some fashion or another, she was coming to him. He hadpurchased an interest in some little business that had to do, for themost part, with candles, and down to the City now every morning he went.The candles prospered in a small but steady fashion and he found them ofa more thrilling and romantic interest than he would once have believedpossible. He had always known that he had a business head and now thathis life was equable and regular he was astonished at the useful manthat he was becoming.
He liked the men with whom he worked, he found that some of his friendsof the old days sought him out ... he was assured that he had only towait for the death of his grandmother for his restoration to theBeaminster bosom.
He was, during these first weeks, tranquil, almost happy, feeling thatMrs. Pont and the rest were, with every hour, passing more surely fromhis world, nourishing always, like hoarded treasure, his consciousnessof Rachel....
Then a faint, a very faint restlessness crept upon him. The repetitionof those precious moments was growing dry; from the very frequency oftheir recounting came impatience. His assurance that she would,ultimately, come to him grew chill.
He needed now something more tangible, and gradually there grew with himthe conviction that she would write. She had said, very clearly anddistinctly, that she would not--but, if she cared as he knew that shedid, then this silence must be as impossible for her as for himself.
His state of mind now was that he expected a letter. When he came backfrom the City at half-past six or seven he expected to find lying thereon the green tablecloth, the letter--In the morning his man appearedwith a jug of hot water in one hand and the letters in the other--There,one of those tantalizing, mysterious envelopes, must be the letter.
At first disappointment was reassured with "Oh! it will be thereto-morrow." But as the days passed and the silence grew the torturedeveloped. Now after that first search in the morning, after that swiftsharp glance to the green tablecloth came physical pain--sickened heavydrooping of the spirits when the world looked one vast deserted plain ofmonotonous dullness, when the hours and hours and days and days that yetremained to life seemed intolerable in their dreary multitude.
He would go to bed early in order that the morning letters might comethe sooner; he fled home from the City, his heart beating like a drum,as he mounted his stairs.
Only one line, one line, would have been sufficient. It needed only thereassurance that she thought of him, that she still cared ... _such_ ashort letter would have given him all the comfort he needed.
The need for some sign came as much from his impatience with the wholesituation as from his love for Rachel, but this, because he always sawhimself as a fine coloured centre of some passionate crisis, henaturally did not perceive. His whole idea of Rachel was, as the dayspassed, increasingly a picture that was far enough from reality--On theone side Rachel--on the other side his restoration to his family ... nowas he waited it seemed to him that he was in danger of losing both theone thing and the other.
There was nothing that so speedily drove Breton to frenzy as enforcedinaction.
After all, they had been together so little--
Breton was cursed with his imagination. All his instability of charactercame from his imagination. He looked ahead and saw such wonderfulevents, he knew why people did this or that; he could see so clearlywhat would happen did he act in such and such a way.... He traced futureaction through many hazardous windings into a safe, fair Haven, and forthe sake of the Haven embarked on the preliminary dangers--discovered,of course, too late, that the Haven was a dream. He saw Rachel now,sitting alone, thinking of him, loving him, forcing herself to be fairto her blockhead of a husband, feeling at last that she could endure itno longer, and so writing! or he saw her falling in love with that sameblockhead, forgetting everyone and everything else.
In all of this his grandmother played her part. He was aware that behindall the attraction that he had had for Rachel was the consciousness thathe was a rebel against the Duchess--they were rebels together--that, heknew, was the way that she thought of it.
He was aware, however, that he was a rebel only because he was forced tobe one. Let his grandmother hold out her old arms to him and into themhe would run! He would be restored to the family--horribly he wanted it!The spirit with which he had returned to England was one of hotvengeance that would, indeed, have suited the finest of Rachel's moods,but that spirit had, he knew, subtly changed--Here then, with regard toRachel, he felt a traitor--Would she come to him, why then he would doanything for her even to pulling the Duchess's nose--but if she wouldnot come to him, why then he would rather that the Beaminsters shouldtake him to themselves and make him one of them.
But he felt--although he had no tangible arguments to support hisfeeling--that the old lady was "round the corner"--"she knows, you bet,all about things--what I'd give for just one talk with her.... I believewe'd be friends----"
His weakness of character came, as he himself knew, from his inabilityto allow life to stay at a good safe dull level. "To-day'sdull--Something _must_ happen before evening; I must _make_ it happen,"and then he would go and do something foolish--
London excited him--the lighted shops, the smell of food and flowers andwomen and leather and tobacco, the sky--signs flashing from space tospace, the carts and omnibuses, the shouts and cries and suddensilences, the confused life of the place so that you could never say,"_This_ is London," but could only, in retrospect say, "Ah, _that_ musthave been London," and still know that you had failed to grasp itssecret.
The dirt and shabbiness and lack of plan and good humour and crime andindecency and priggishness--its life!
Many things out of all this glory called him--racing, women, drink, thegutter one minute, the stars the next--from them all he held himselfaloof because of Rachel ... and Rachel meanwhile perhaps did not care.
As Christmas approached he became utterly obsessed by this onethought--that he must have a letter. His obsession had been able, duringthese weeks, to clutch the tighter in that he had seen nothing ofLizzie Rand. Throughout the autumn he had encountered her very seldom--
Ever since that night in the summer when he had taken her to the theatreshe had avoided him, and he decided that she had been shocked at hisconfession about Rachel--"You never know about women--I shouldn't havethought that would have shocked her--But there it is; you never cantell." Lizzie had been very good for him; he missed her now. He wouldtackle her, he said, one day.
Then not only with every day, but with every hour the torture grew. Heavoided Christopher, because Christopher might see things. His workfaded like mist from before him--He could not sleep, but lay on his backthinking of what she would say if she _did_ write, whether she werethinking of him--how she found his own silence and what she felt aboutit.
Then he heard the astonishing news that Lizzie Rand had gone down toSeddon to stay.... At first he thought that he would write to her andbeg her to find out for him all that she could as to Rachel's mind.
But Lizzie's avoidance of him checked him t
here--if she had been shockedat his just telling her, why then she would not be likely to help himnow--No, that would not be fair to Rachel....
It occurred to him then that Rachel had asked Lizzie in order that shemight speak of him, have with her someone who could tell her about hisdaily life, and so, without breaking her word, yet be in some kind ofcommunication with him--
Soon this became with him a certainty. It assured him that her patiencewas exhausted and that she would forgive, and more than forgive, aletter from him.
He wrote--then in an agony would have snatched it back again, and yetwas glad that the post had taken it from him. He had broken his word,and shown himself for the miserable poor creature that he was. She wouldnever trust him again, but surely now she would write were it only todismiss him for ever.
He waited and the agony once again grew phantasmal in its terrors; thenswiftly came word first that Roddy Seddon had been flung from his horseand was hovering between life and death, then that he would not die,but--"Paralysis of the spine--always have to lie on his back, I'mafraid" (this from Christopher)--then, finally this note:
"SEDDON COURT,
NEAR LEWES,
SUSSEX.
DEAR MR. BRETON,
I have to come up to London next Tuesday for the day--I shall return here that same evening. I have a message for you. Could we have tea together that afternoon--or what do you say to a walk in Regent's Park? Perhaps we could talk there more easily--I'll meet you at the entrance to the Botanical Gardens about 3.30 unless I hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
E. RAND."
II
The effect upon him of Roddy's accident was indescribable. He was sorry,terribly sorry--dreadful for a man whose whole interests are in physicalthings to be laid on his back, like this, for ever. Surely it would bebetter for him to die, and then, at that, sober thought would forsakehim--He did not wish Seddon to die, but around the possibility of it,always turning, wheeling, his mind fluttered.
He did not know what Lizzie would have to say to him, but, at his heart,he expected triumph--with so little encouragement, he would wait sofaithfully--
It was a cold windy afternoon of early spring and up to the gates of theBotanical Gardens little eddies came sweeping: twigs and dust and piecesof paper tossing, under a grey sky, beneath branches that creaked andstrained; Breton stood there impatiently; he was ten minutes before histime; this biting windy world took from him his confidence ... a dirtylittle brown dog walked round and round, wagging, now and again, apessimistic tail.
There at last she was, coming, as orderly and neat as ever, up the road;her grey dress, her little shining shoes, her hair that no breeze coulddisturb, her expression as though she were ready for anything and wouldbe surprised at nothing--these all, to-day, irritated him. Good heavens!was she so surely tied to her typewriter that she could understandnothing of the emotions that an ordinary human being might be feeling?Had she no imagination? Because she had never herself known sentimentabout anyone alive was it beyond her to consider what others mightencounter?
Breton would have preferred any other ambassador in this affair than theneat, efficient Miss Rand, forgetting that there had been a time when hehad chosen her as his one and only confidante.
"How do you do, Mr. Breton?" she said, giving him her little glovedhand.
"It's just struck--I was a little early," he answered, feeling confusedand hating himself for his confusion--
"Let's go round to the left here and turn over the bridge and then outpast the Zoo and back--That makes quite a good round."
"Yes"--he said.
"I chose the Park because I thought that we could talk better--We mighthave been interrupted at home."
He caught then a little tremor in her voice and was grateful for it. She_did_ feel a little that this was important for him; she sympathizedperhaps more than he should have expected.
"Let's come straight to the point, Miss Rand," he said, "you have amessage for me."
She nodded, felt in the pocket of her dress and produced an envelope,which she gave him.
"She thought it better that I should give it you like this because thenI could say something as well--something she had asked me to say----"
His hand trembled as he saw the writing on the envelope--"FrancisBreton, Esq., 24 Saxton Square"--During what months and months he hadlonged for that handwriting and how often had he imagined that letterlying, just as it lay now, in his hand--
He read it, Lizzie walking gravely at his side--
"This letter is not easy to write and you must realize that and forgive me if I have not put things properly. These last weeks have all made such a demand on me that I'm tired out....
"I said once, Francis dear, that I would not write to you until I meant to come to you. Now I have broken my word--This is to tell you that everything, anything, that we have felt for one another must be ended, now and for ever.
"Don't think that I am angry with you for writing to me. Perhaps I should have been, but I understood--Only now all my life must be always, entirely, devoted to my husband. That is now all that I live for. I feel as though in some way I had been responsible for the disaster; at any rate his bravery and pluck are wonderful and it is a small thing that I can do to make his life as easy as I can, but it will take the whole of me.
"Perhaps after a time we shall meet--one day be friends--I can't look ahead or look back; I only know that I am now absolutely, entirely, my husband's--
"Don't hate me for this--it was taken out of our hands. I've asked Lizzie Rand to give you this. She knows everything and it would make me happy to think that you two had become great friends."
They had crossed the little bridge, left behind them the strange birdsthat chattered beneath it, and had passed into the wide green spaces,often given up to cricket or football, now empty of any human being--theZoological Gardens, a deserted bandstand, a fringe of trees on which thefirst tiny leaves were showing; above them the grey sky had broken intoblue and white, the cloud shaped with ribs and fleecy softness like ahuge wing stretching above them from horizon to horizon.
Over the two of them, so tiny on that broad expanse, this wing broodedtenderly, gravely--
Breton had crushed the letter in his hand and stood looking in front ofhim, but seeing nothing. His one thought was that he had been brutallytreated,--she had simply, without a thought, without a care, flung himaside.
He had, of course, known that this accident to her husband must, for atime, hold her, but now, in this fashion, she had passed on withouthesitation--leaving him anywhere, anyhow; was it so long ago that shehad said to him that, whether she came to him or no she would alwayslove him? Had she already forgotten that kiss, that moment when she hadclung to him, held to him?
He stood there, filled with self-pity. This restraint, thisself-discipline all done for her and now all useless. It was not wanted;_he_ was not wanted....
Had she only preserved some relationship, told him to wait, assured himthat he meant something to her, anything but this--
But there was greater pain at Breton's heart than thought of Rachelbrought him. To every man comes in due time the instant of revelation;it had flashed before Breton now.
He saw that his relationship with Rachel was at an end, utterly--Howeverhe might delude himself that, in his soul, he knew. There had been amoment when they had met and the moment had passed. But he saw more thanthis. He saw that he was a man to whom life had always been a successionof moments--moments flashing, stinging, flying, gone--he, always,helpless to grasp and hold.
Had he, on that day, been strong, held Rachel, conquered her, made herhis.... He was weak through the fine things in him as surely as throughthe base--His ideals forced his purpose to tremble as often as hisregrets....
Standing there, he faced himself and saw that, whether for good or evil,Life for him had al
ways been evasive, fluid, a thing grasped at butnever caught.
Rachel was not for such as he--
Lizzie had watched him and her face had grown very tender--"I know I'm anuisance just now," she said--"it hasn't, naturally, been a verypleasant thing for me to have to do--but I thought that I could tell youa little about her--I've seen her through all of this."
He strode along fiercely, his eyes staring in front of him; he looked,she thought, like a boy who had been forbidden some longed-for pleasure;she found it difficult to keep pace with him.
"She's so very, very young," Lizzie went on, "I expect you forgetthat--she's filled, above everything else, with a determination toexpress her own individuality, a protest, you know, against its havingbeen squashed by her family.
"Anything that helps her to express it she seizes on. You helpedher--she seized on you. Now all her heart is stirred by this disaster toher husband, the most active person she's ever known absolutelyhelpless, so now that has seized her. She can't have two things in hermind at once--that's where her troubles come from--she cares for you.You'll always be something to her that no one else can ever be, and oh!it's so much better, so much, much better, than if you'd gone off, madea mess of it all, spoilt all your beautiful ideas of one another."
The thrill in her voice made him, even though he was intensely concernedwith his own wrongs and losses, consider her. What Lizzie Rand was this?It flung him back, almost against his will, as though he hated to throwover all the ideas he had formed of her, to that first meeting when theyhad stood at the window and looked out on the grey square and he hadcalled it the Pool. Then he had suspected her of emotion and sentiment;it was afterwards, when he had made her his wise Counsellor andcommon-sense Adviser, that he had thought of her as unemotional.
He felt now that he had been treating her rather badly. He stoppedabruptly and looked down at her; there was something in her earnest gazeat him, something rather nervous and hesitating that did not belong atall to the efficient Miss Rand.
"It _is_ good of you, Miss Rand, to have come and given me this note.I'm finding it all rather difficult at the moment, as I'm sure you'llunderstand. I'd better go off somewhere by myself a bit, I think, but itwas good of you." He broke off and stared desolately about him. He wasnot very far from tears, she thought.
She too remembered their first meeting. She had found him melodramaticthen, a little insincere--Now she knew that she had been wrong. He wassincere as a child is sincere; the world was utterly black, wastranscendently bright as it was for a child.
She understood him so well--so much better than Rachel. She knew thatneither he nor Rachel would ever have had the wisdom to endure thatromantic impatience that was in both of them--"They would have beenfighting in a week--But I--should know how to deal with him----"
The green park and the brooding sky seemed to join in hertenderness--She had never loved him so surely, so unselfishly as sheloved him now.
"Tell me," he said gruffly. "I wrote to her ... did she tell youanything about that?"
"Yes," Lizzie answered--"I don't know what might have happened if hehadn't had the accident.... But as it is, I know she's glad youwrote--She likes to look back on it, but it's on something thatdied--gone altogether. And it's much, much better so."
"To you," he said, "it may be so."
"Only because through these weeks I've got to know her so well. She'sstrange--unlike any other woman I've known. Her great charm is thatshe's so unattainable. Men will always love her for that and sometimesshe may think she loves them in return, but no man will ever call the_real_ woman out of her. If she were to have a child, perhaps thatwould ... but we--all of us--you, I, Dr. Christopher, her husband--all ofus who love her will always love her without quite knowing why andwithout, in the end, her belonging to any one of us.
"I've grown to love her during these last weeks and I've thought it wasbecause I was sorry for her and admired her pluck--but it isn't thatreally--It's simply because--well, because--there's something wonderfulin her that isn't for any of us."
"Well, you've been very kind, Miss Rand, I shan't forget it. You've saidjust the thing to put it all straight and clear. I wouldn't do anythingnow to disturb her or hurt her husband, poor devil ... it must be hellfor him ... and it don't anyway matter much what happens to me--it neverhas done.
"You've been a brick. If you really care to bother about a rotten wasterlike myself I'll be proud.... Good-bye and thank you----"
He took her hand and shook it and then was gone, striding off,furiously, towards the trees.
She walked slowly back to Saxton Square.