CHAPTER VII
IN THE HEART OF THE HOUSE
"Our interest's on the dangerous edge of things The honest thief, the tender murderer, The superstitious atheist, demirep, That loves and saves her soul in new French books-- We watch while these in equilibrium keep The giddy line midway: one step aside, They're classed and done with. I, then, keep the line--"
BISHOP BLOUGRAM'S Apology.
I
The Duchess could but dimly guess at the splendour of that fine Mayafternoon.
It had been her complaint lately that she was always cold and now theblinds and curtains were closely drawn and a huge fire was blazing. Herchair was close to the flame: she sat there looking, in the fiercelight, small and shrivelled; she was reading intently and made nomovement except now and again when she turned a page. Dorchester was theonly other person there and she sat a little in the shadow, busilysewing.
From where she sat she could see her mistress's face, and behind hercarved chair there were the blue china dragons and the deep heavy redcurtains and a black oak table covered with little golden trays andglass jars and silver boxes.
Neither heat nor cold nor youth nor age had any effect upon Dorchester.No one knew how old she was, nor how long she had been with hermistress, nor her opinions or sentiments concerning anything in theworld.
She was tall and gaunt and snapped her words as she might snap a pieceof thread.
From Mrs. Newton and Norris downwards the servants were afraid of her.She made a confidant of no one, was supposed to have no emotions of anykind, absurd and fantastic stories were told of her; she was certainlynot popular in the servants' hall and yet at a word from her anythingthat she requested was done.
With Miss Rand only was it understood that she had a certain friendlyrelationship; it was said that she liked Miss Rand.
Dorchester had witnessed the whole of the Duchess's career.
As she sat now in the shadow every now and again she looked up andglanced at that sharp white face and those thin hands. What a littlebody it was to have done so much, to have battled its way through such acareer, to have fought and to have won so many conflicts! It seemed toDorchester only yesterday that splendid time, when the Duchess had beenqueen of London. Dorchester also had been young then and had had anenergy as enduring, a will as finely tempered as had her mistress.
What a character it had been then with its furies and its disciplines,its indulgences and its amazing restrictions, its sympathies and coldclodded cruelties, its tremendous sense of the dramatic moment so thatagain and again a position that had been nearly surrendered was held andsaved. She had never been beautiful, always little and sharp andsometimes even wizened. But she gained her effects one way or anotherand beat beautiful and wise and wonderful women off the field.
And then sweeping down upon her had come disease. At first it had beenfought and magnificently fought. But it was the horror of its unexpectedravages that had been so difficult to combat. She had never known whenthe pain would be upon her--it might seize her at any public moment andher retreat be compelled before the whole world. There had been doctorsand doctors and doctors, and then operation after operation, but no onehad done any good until Dr. Christopher had come to her, and now, foryears, he had been keeping her alive.
Out of that very necessity of disease, however, had she dragged herdrama. She had retired from the world, not as an old woman beaten bypain, but as a priestess might withdraw within her sanctuary or somegreat queen demand her privacy.
And it had its effect. Very, very carefully were chosen to see her onlythose who might convey to the world the right impression. The world wasgiven to understand that the Duchess was now more wonderful than she hadever been, and it was so long since the world at large had seen her thatevery sort of story was abroad.
Certain old ladies like Lady Carloes who played bridge with her gainedmost of their public importance from their intimacy with her. It wasrumoured that at any moment she might return and take her place again inthe world, old though she was.
All this was known to Dorchester and she smiled grimly as she thought ofit. The real Duchess! Perhaps she and Dr. Christopher alone in all theworld knew the intricacies, the inconsistencies of that amazing figure.From the moment that illness had come every peculiarity had grown. Herself-indulgences, her temper, her pride, her egotism--now knew, inprivate, no restraint. And yet when her friends were there or anyone atall from the outside world she displayed the old dignity, the old grandair, the old imperious quiet that belonged to no one else alive.
But what, during these last years, Lady Adela had suffered! Dorchesterherself had had many moments when it had seemed that she had more tocontrol than her strength could maintain, but long custom, an entireabsence of the nervous system, and a comforting sense that she was,after all, paid well for her trouble, sustained her endurance.
But Lady Adela had nothing.
The Duchess had always hated her children, but had used them,magnificently, for her purposes. They had all been fools, but they werejust the kind of fools that the Beaminster tradition demanded.
Lady Adela had from the first been more of a fool than the others. Shehad never had the gift of words and before her mother was, as a rule,speechless, and it had been only by her changing colour that an onlookercould have told that her mother's furies moved her.
Often Dorchester had attempted interference, but had found at last thatit was better to allow the fury to spend its force. Then also Dorchesterhad noticed a curious thing. The Duke, Lord Richard, Lord John, LadyAdela were proud of these prides and tempers. They were proud ofeverything that their mother did; they might suffer, their backs mightwince under the blows, but it was part of the tradition that theirmother should thus behave.
Dorchester fancied that sometimes there was flashed upon them a suddensuspicion that their mother was in these days only an old, ailing,broken woman--no great figure now, no magnificent tyrant, no mysteriousqueen of society. And then Dorchester fancied that she had noticed thatwhen such a suspicion had come upon them they had put it hastily asideand locked it up and abused themselves for such baseness.
Curious people, these Beaminsters!
Well, it was no business of hers. And, perhaps, after all she hadherself some touch of that feeling, some fierce impatient pride in thosevery tempests and rebellion. After all, was there anyone in the worldlike this mistress of hers? Was there another woman who would bear sobravely the pain that she bore? And was not that fierce clutch on life,that energy with which she tried still to play her part in the greatgame, grand in its own fashion?
Would not Dorchester also fight when her time came?
She looked across the firelight at her mistress. When would arrive theinevitable moment of surrender? How imminent that moment when in theeyes of all those about her the old woman would see that all that wasnow hers was a quiet abandonment to death!
Well, there would be some fine, savage struggling when that crisisstruck into their midst. Dorchester smiled grimly, and then, in spite ofherself, sighed a little.
They were all growing old together.
II
At five o'clock came Dr. Christopher, and Dorchester moved into theother room and left the two together. With his large limbs and cheerfulsmile he made the Duchess seem slighter and more fragile than ever, andshe herself felt always with his coming some addition of warmth andstrength; each visit, so she might have expressed it, gave her life forat least another tiny span.
That he, knowing so much of the follies and catastrophes of life, shouldyet be an optimist, would have proved him in her opinion a fool had shenot known, by constant proof, that he was anything but that. "Well, oneday he will discover his mistake," she would say, and yet, perversely,would cling to him for the sake of this very illusion. He helped hercourage, he helped her battle with her pain, he gave her, sometimes,some shadowy sense of shame for her passions and rebellions, but, morethan all this, he yielded her a reassurance that life, precious,a
dorable, wonderful life, was yet for a little time to be hers.
He knew well enough the influence that he possessed, and when, as onthis afternoon, he felt it his duty to avail himself of it, he could notpretend that he faced his task with any exultation.
That he should rouse her fury, as he had one or twice already roused it,meant humiliation for him as well as for herself, and afterwardsembarrassment for them both as they saw those scenes in retrospect.
She glanced up at him carefully as he came in and knew him well enoughto realize that there was something that he must say to her. There hadbeen other such occasions, she remembered them all. Sometimes sheherself had been the subject of them, something that was injuring herhealth, some indulgence that he could not allow her. Sometimes thebattle had been about others; she had fought him and on occasions it hadseemed that their relationship was broken once and for all, that nothingcould cover the words that had been spoken--but always througheverything she had admired his courage.
The way had always been to stand up to her.
For a little time they talked about her health, and then there fell apause. She, leaning back in her chair with her thin, sharp hands on herlap, watched him grimly as he sat on the other side of the fireplace,leaning forward a little, looking into the fire.
"Well," she said at last. "What is it?" Her voice was deep, but everyword was clear-cut, resonant.
"There _is_ something--two things," he answered her slowly. "You candismiss me for an interfering old fool, you know. You often have beentempted to do it before, I dare say."
"I have," she said. "Go on."
But as she spoke she drew her hands a little more closely together. Shewas not quite so ready for these battles as she had once been. She wasafraid a little now. A new sensation for her; she hated that restrictingawkwardness that would remain between them for days afterwards.
She looked at his red, cheerful face and wondered impatiently why hemust always be meddling in other people's affairs. She hated Quixotes.
"Your Grace," he began again, "has only got to stop me and I'll say nomore."
"Oh yes, you will," she said impatiently. "I know you. Say what youplease."
"I want to speak about Francis Breton----" He paused, but she saidnothing, only for an instant her whole face flashed into stone. Thefirelight seemed for an instant to hold it there, then, as the flamefell, she was once again indifferent.
Christopher had grasped his courage now. He went on gravely:
"I must speak about him. I know how unpleasant the whole subject is toyou. We've had our discussions before and I've fought his battles withall the world more times than I can count. You must remember that I'veknown Frank all his life--I knew his unhappy father. I've known themboth long enough to realize that the boy's been heavily handicapped fromthe beginning----"
"Must you," she said, looking him now full in the face, "must it bethis? Have we not thrashed it out thoroughly enough already? I don'tchange, you know."
He understood that she was appealing to his regard for their ownespecial relationship. But there was a note of control in her voice; heknew that now she would listen:
"I've cared for Frank during a number of years. I know he's weak,impulsive, incredibly foolish. He's always been his own worst enemy. Iknow that the other day he wrote a most foolish letter----"
"It was a letter beyond forgiveness," she said, her voice trembling.
"Yes, I would give anything to have prevented it. I know that when hewas in England before I pleaded for him, as I am doing now, and that bya thousand foolhardy actions he negatived anything that I could say forhim.
"I'm urging no defence for the things that he did, the shady,disreputable things. But he has come back now, I do verily believe,ready, even eager, to turn over a new leaf. I----"
She interrupted him, smiling.
"Yes. That letter----"
"Oh, I know. But isn't it a very proof of what I say--would anyone but afoolhardy boy have done such a thing? Sheer bravado, hoping behind itall to be taken back to the fold--eager, at any rate, not to show a poorspirit, cowardice."
"Over thirty now--old for a boy----"
"In years, yes. But younger, oh! ages younger than that in spirit, inknowledge of the world, in everything that matters--I know," he went onmore slowly, smiling a little, "that you've called me sentimentalisttimes without number--but really here I'm not urging you to anythingfrom sentimental reasons. I'm not asking you to take him back and killthe fatted calf for him.
"I'm asking nothing absurd--only that you, his relations, all that hehas of kith and kin, should not be his enemies, should not drive him todesperation--and worse."
"If you imagine," she said steadily, "that his fate is of the smallestconcern to me you know me very little. I care nothing of what becomes ofhim. He and I have been enemies for many years now and a few words fromyou cannot change that."
"I'm only asking you," he replied, "to give him a chance. See what youcan make of him, instead of sending him into the other camp--use himeven if you cannot care for him. There's fine stuff there in spite ofhis follies. The day might come, even now, when you will own yourselfproud of him----"
But she had caught him up, leaning forward a little, her voice now of asharper turn. "The other camp? What other camp?"
He caught the note of danger. "I only mean," he said, choosing now hiswords with the greatest care, "that if you turn Frank definitely, onceand for all, from your doors, there may be others ready to receivehim----"
"His men and his women," she broke in scornfully; "don't I know them?I've not lived these years without knowing the raffish tenth-rate lotthat failures like Frank Breton affect----"
"No--there are others," Christopher said firmly, "Mrs. Bronson, forinstance----"
At that name she broke in.
"Yes--exactly. Mrs. Bronson. Oh! I know the kind of crowd that Mrs.Bronson and her like can gather. They are welcome to Francis and he tothem."--She paused. He saw that she was controlling herself with a greateffort. For a little while there was silence and then she went on, morequietly:
"There, now you have it. That is why there can never be any trucebetween Francis and myself. It is more than Francis--it is all thethings that he stands for, all the things that will soon make England arubbish heap for every dirty foreigner to dump his filth on to. Hatehim? Why, I'll fight him and all that he stands for so long as there'sbreath in my body----"
"But Frank is with you," Christopher urged eagerly, "if you'll let himbe. He's only in need of your hand and back he'll come. He's waitingthere now--longing, in spite of his defiance, for a word. Give him itand in the end I know as surely as I sit here that he'll be worth yourwhile----"
"What can he do for me?"
"Ah! He'll show you. After all, he is one of the family; he's miserablethere in his exile. He's got your own spirit--he'd die rather than ownto defeat--but he'll repay you if you have him."
He saw then, as she turned towards him, that he had done no good.
"Listen," she said, "I've heard you fairly. Let us leave this now, onceand for all. I tell you finally no word that God Almighty could speak onthis business could change me one atom. Francis Breton and I are foesfor all time. I hate not only himself and the miserable mess that he'smade of his life, I hate all this new generation that he stands for.
"I hate these new opinions, I hate this indulgence now towardseverything that any fool in the country may choose to think or say. Inmy day we knew how to use the fools. Took advantage of their muddle, ranthe world on it. I loathe this tendency to make everyone as intelligentas they can be! Why! in God's name! Give me two intelligent men and adozen fools and you'll get something done. Take a wastrel like Frank andturn him out. Take muddlers like my family and keep 'em muddled. Richardran the country well enough for a time or two, and he's been a muddlerfrom his childhood.
"All this cry to educate the people, to be kind to thieves andmurderers! to help the fools--my God! If I still had my say--Whilstthere's breath in me
I'll fight the lot of them."
She leant back in her chair, waited for breath, and then went on moremildly:
"You may like all this noise and clamour, Doctor. You may like your Mrs.Bronson and the rest--common, vulgar, brainless--ruling the world. Everydecent law that held society together is being broken and nobody cares.
"Frank Breton may find his place in this new world. He has no place inmine."
Then she added: "So much for that--what's the other thing?"
But he hesitated. Her voice was tired, even tremulous, and he was awareas he looked across at her that her emotions now treated her moreseverely than they had once done. At the same time he was aware thatgiving free play to her temper always did her good.
"Well--perhaps--another day----"
"No--now. I may as well take my scoldings together--it saves time!"
He stood up and, leaning on the mantelpiece with one arm, looked downupon her.
"Here," he said, "I'm afraid I may seem doubly impertinent, but it's amatter that is closer to me than anything in the world. You know thatI'm a lonely old bachelor and that all those sentiments that you accuseme of must find some vent somewhere. I'm fonder of Rachel, I think, thanI am of anyone in the world, and it's only that affection and thefeeling that, in some ways, I know her better than any of you do thatgive me courage to speak."
He could see that now she was reaching the limits of her patience.
"Well--what of Rachel?"
"I understand--I know--that you--that all of you intend that she shallmarry young Seddon----"
"Well?"
"I know that it is impertinent of me, but, as I have said, I think Iknow Rachel differently from anyone else in the world. She isstrange--curiously ignorant of life in many ways, curiously wise inothers. Her simplicity--the things that she takes on trust--there is noend to it. The things, too, that she cannot forgive--she doesn't knowhow often, later on, she will have to forgive them--
"But the first man who breaks her trust----"
"Thank you for this interesting light on Rachel's character. What doesit mean?"
"It means," he said abruptly, "that she mustn't be hurt. Your Grace mayturn me out of the house here and now if you will, but Seddon is thewrong man for her to marry----"
"What are his crimes?" Her voice was rising, and her hand tappedimpatiently on her dress.
"I know him only slightly, but common repute--anyone who is in theLondon world at all will tell you--his reputation is bad. I've nothingagainst him myself, but his affairs with women have been many. He is noworse, I dare say, than a thousand others. At least he's young--and Imyself, God knows, am no moralist. But to marry him to Rachel will be acrime."
He knew as he heard his own voice drop that the scene that he dreadedwas upon him. The air was charged with it. In the strangest wayeverything in the room seemed to be changed because of it. Thefurniture, the dragons, the tables, the very trifles of gold and silver,seemed to withdraw, leaving the air weighted with passion.
She was trembling from head to foot. Her voice was very low.
"You've gone too far. What business is this of yours? How dare you cometo me with these tales? How dare you? You've taken too much on yourshoulders. See to your own house, Doctor----"
He stepped back from the fireplace.
"Please--to-morrow----"
"No. Here and now." Her words flashed at him. "You've begun to thinkyourself indispensable. Because I've shown you that I rely uponyou--Because, at times, I've seemed to need your aid--therefore you'veinterfered in matters that are no concern of yours."
"They are concerns of mine," he answered firmly, "in so far as thisaffair is connected with my friend."
"Your friend and my granddaughter," she retorted. "But it is not onlythat. I will return you your own words. You say that your friend is indanger--what of mine? You have dared to attack someone who is more to methan you and all the rest of the world put together. Someone whom I carefor as I have never cared for my own sons. It was bold of you, Dr.Christopher, and I shall not forget it."
He took it without flinching. "Very well," he said. "But my word to theend is the same. If you marry Seddon to your granddaughter you do yourown sense of justice wrong."
At that the last vestige of restraint left her. Leaning forward in herchair she poured her words upon him in a torrent of anger. Her voice wasnot raised, but her words cut the air, and now and again she raised herhands in a movement of furious protest.
She spared him nothing, dragged forward old incidents, old passagesbetween them that he had thought long ago forgotten, reminded him ofoccasions when he had been mistaken or over-certain, accused him ofcrimes that would have caused him to leave the country had there been avestige of truth in her words; at last, beaten for breath, gasped out:"Sir Roderick Seddon shall know of what you accuse him. He shall dealwith you----"
"I have nothing," Christopher answered gravely, "against Seddon--nothingexcept that he should not marry Rachel!"
"You have attacked him!" she gasped out. "He--shall--answer."
But her rage had exhausted her. She lay back against her chair, heaving,clutching at the arms for support.
He summoned Dorchester, but when he approached the Duchess feeblymotioned him away.
"I've--done--with you--never again," she murmured.
She seemed then most desperately old. Her dress was in disorder, herface wizened with deep lines beneath her eyes and hollows in her cheeks.
Christopher waited while Dorchester helped her mistress into the fartherroom. For some time there was silence. The room was stifling, and,impatiently, he pulled back the heavy red curtains.
He sat, waiting, eyeing the stupid dragons, every now and again glancingat his watch.
Even now the room seemed to vibrate with her voice, and he could imaginethat the French novel, fallen from her lap on to the carpet, winked athim as much as to say:
"Oh, we're up to her tempers, aren't we? We know what they're worth._We_ don't care!"
At last Dorchester appeared.
"Her Grace is in bed and will see you, sir," she said.
Her face was grave and without expression.
After another glance at his watch he passed into the bedroom.