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II

Over Lizzie's other life, also, the Duchess hovered. Were any disaster to snatch Her Grace from the domination of this world into a comparatively humble position in the next, Lizzie did not doubt that the Beaminsters would once more take Francis Breton into their ranks. It was the Duchess who held the gate against him.

The romantic side of her did not hold complete dominion. She knew that were Francis Breton once more accepted by the family, his distance from her would be greatly increased. Were he, on the other hand, to marry her whilst he was yet an exile, then had she no fear of after consequences. She could hold her own with anyone.

She had now very little doubt that he loved her. She had seen, during the last year, the flame of some passion burning in his eyes, increasingly he depended upon her and found opportunities for being with her. There was no other woman whom he saw, of that she was convinced.

Often he had been about to tell her some secret and then had refrained; she thought that he was waiting until he could be quite assured that she loved him, and she had fancied that since that day in last December when the first snow had fallen and they had had that little talk together he had been much happier, as though he were now convinced of her love for him.

The spring passed and still his confession did not come. With the early summer he seemed to be once more unhappy and unsettled, and throughout May she scarcely saw him.

Then in July he asked her whether she would dine with him and go to the theatre. He had two dress circle tickets for Mrs. Lemiter's Decision.

Something told her that on this evening he would speak to her.

As she dressed her fingers trembled so that buttons and hooks and laces were of terrible difficulty. In the glass she saw her cheeks flaming; she wished she were taller, not so sturdy. The lines of her face, she thought, were all so set as though they knew well for what purpose they were there. "Business we're here for …" they seemed to say.

For once she envied her sister's fair rounded fluffiness. Her black evening dress was fashionable, almost smart, but just a little stern: she fastened some dark red carnations into her waist and hung around her throat a chain of tiny pearls, her only piece of jewellery. Her hair was restrained and disciplined—she could not extract from it any waves or soft indulgencies.

At the end, staring at her reflection, she let herself go.

"He's seen me all this time as I am. How silly to try to alter things!" Her face glowed, the pearls and carnations seemed to smile encouragement to her.

What possibilities had this new, this wonderful Lizzie Rand! What a life might be hers! What a happy, fortunate woman she was!

God, how grateful she was!

Mrs. Rand saw them off in a four-wheeler with an air of reluctance. It always hurt her that anyone should go to the theatre without her.

Of course Lizzie was old enough by now to look after herself, but at the same time this Mr. Breton was no safe character and it would have been altogether "nicer" if Lizzie had suggested her company—

Lizzie had not suggested it; with a shiver Mrs. Rand resigned herself to an evening made hideous by a vision of a world crowded with theatres through whose portals gay audiences were pouring—

"Of course it's selfish of her," she said again and again to Daisy—"Selfish is the only word."

Meanwhile the cab was, for Lizzie, a chariot of happiness. He looked splendid to-night, more romantic than he had ever been, with his pointed beard, his armless sleeve buttoned across on to his coat, his top-hat shining, his clothes fitting so perfectly. Poor though he was, he always stood up as smart as anyone, the Duke or Lord John were no smarter.

Did he realize, she wondered, that the edge of his hand touched the silk of her dress? Did he notice the absurd way that the pearls jumped up and down on her throat? Did he feel the little shiver of happiness that ran through her body and out at her toes and fingers?

The chariot was dark, but beyond it there were piled lighted buildings; before these ran streets that flung dark figures, here one by one, now in throngs, against the glittering colour.

She could not believe that anyone there by the lumbering cab could show happiness that could equal hers.

Had she been coldly surveying, from the careful distance of an outside observer, these emotions in some other woman she would have demanded her reasons for such expectation of happiness, but it was her very inexperience of any other such affair in her life that allowed her now to rest assured. As he touched her hand to help her into the restaurant she was sure, by the beating of her heart, that she could not be deceived.

The restaurant was in Pall Mall, and as she went in she noticed the string of faithful people waiting round the corner of Her Majesty's Theatre; she was glad that there were so many others enjoying themselves to-night.

They sat at a little round table on a balcony and below them other happy people were laughing and talking—Flowers, lights, women not so beautiful that they disheartened one, and, from the open windows, a whir, a rattle, a shout, a cry, a bell, a hurdy-gurdy, a laugh—Oh! the world was turning to-night!

There was a beautiful dinner, but she was far too happy to eat much. He seemed to understand. They both talked a little, but it was, it appeared, implied between them that their real conversation should be postponed.

She was, to herself, an utterly new Lizzie Rand to-night, inarticulate, uncertain, confused.

"What's this the papers say about South Africa?"

"Yes, it looks as though there were going to be trouble there. But you can trust Milner—a strong man–"

"Yes, I suppose so—but it seems a pity that this Conference that they hoped so much from has all fallen through, doesn't it? They do seem obstinate people."

"Well, they are. I was out in Pretoria in '95—obstinate as mules. But there won't be much trouble—a troop or two of our fellows have only got to show their faces–"

"Yes, of course. Isn't that a pretty woman down there? There to the right—with the black hair and the diamonds—tall—"

But tall women with black hair and Boers in South Africa were merely points to catch hold, and, for an instant, the thrill of the contact and the anticipation and the glorious vision of the wonderful future.

Him all this time she closely observed. He was not entirely at his ease, when she had been in public with him before she had noticed it, his glance at every new-comer, his conscious summoning of control lest it should be someone whom he had once known, someone who might now, perhaps, not know him.

It made him in her eyes all the younger, all the more happily demanding her protection; how terribly she loved him she had never, she thought, realized until this moment.

The Haymarket Theatre, where Mrs. Lemiter's Decision had been given to a grateful world for nearly two hundred nights, was next door.

In a moment they were there and the band was playing and the lights were up, and then the band was not playing and the lights were down, and she was instantly conscious of the places where his body touched hers and of his hand lying white upon his knee.

She, Lizzie Rand, most perfect of private secretaries, most sedate and composed of women, found it all that her self-control could secure that she should not then and there have touched that hand with her own.

It was not really a good play. There was a lady, Mrs. Lemiter, who had once done what she should not have done. There were a number of ladies and gentlemen, placed round her by the author, in order that she should, for the benefit of as many audiences as possible, confess what she had done.

During the first and second acts Mrs. Lemiter made little dashes towards escape and the author (naturally omniscient) always placed someone in front of her just in time and there were cries of "Not this way, my good woman." At the end of the third act, Mrs. Lemiter, thoroughly bored and exasperated, turned on them all and, for a good twenty minutes, told them what she thought of them.

During the fourth act they all assured her that they liked her very much and that, as it was now eleven o'clock and she'd lost her temper so successfully that the house would certainly be filled for many months to come, they'd all better have tea or dinner, whilst a young couple, who had throughout the play loved one another and quarrelled, made it up again.

When the play was at an end Lizzie did not know what it had been about. She took his hand and when he was about to hail a cab stopped him.

"Let's walk," she said, "it's such a lovely night."

He eagerly agreed and they started.

III

She knew that her moment had come; he knew too—she could tell that because all the way up the Haymarket he said nothing.

Piccadilly Circus was a screaming confusion. A music-hall invited you to come and hear "Harry and Clare, drawing-room entertainers." Lights—red and green and gold—flashed and advised drinks and hair-oil and tobacco. Ladies, highly coloured and a little dishevelled; stared haughtily but inquisitively about them, boys shouted newspapers and dived under horses and appeared, miraculously delivered from the wheels of omnibuses.

It was a rushing, whirling confusion and through it his arm led her, happier in his secure guard than in anything else under heaven.

Regent Street was quiet and softly coloured above the maelstrom into which it flowed. He suddenly began:

"I've got something I want to tell you—something I've wanted to tell you for a long time. You must have seen–"

Her voice coming to her as though it were a stranger's, said, "Yes." At the same time, looking about her, almost unconsciously, she registered her memory of the place and the hour—the shelving street, rising with its lamps reflected, before them, a bank of dark cloud that had suddenly appeared and hung, sinister against the night sky, behind the white houses, a slip of a silver moon surveying this same cloud with anxiety because it knew that soon its darkness would engulf it.

"I've wanted to tell you," he began again, "this long time. It's needed courage, and things during this last year have rather taken my courage away from me."

"You needn't be afraid," she said with a little laugh. "You ought to know by this time that you can tell me anything, Mr. Breton."

"Yes, I do know," he said earnestly. "Of course I know. What you've been to me all this last year—I simply can't think how I'd have kept up if it hadn't been for you."

"Oh, please," she said.

"No, but it's true. Even with you it's been a bit of a fight."

He paused. She saw that the black cloud had already swallowed up the moon and that a few raindrops were beginning to fall.

He went on: "You must have seen that all this time something's been helping me. I've never spoken to you, but you've known–"

The moment had come. Her heart had surely stopped its beat and she was glad, in her happiness, of the rain that was now falling more swiftly.

"I don't know—" he stammered a little. "It's so difficult. It's come to this, that I must speak to somebody and you're the only person, the only person. But even with one's best friends—one knows them so slightly—after all, perhaps, you'll think it very wrong–"

At that word it was as though a great hammer had, of a sudden, hit her heart and slain it. The street, shining with the rain, rose ever so little and bent towards her.

"Wrong?" she said, looking up at him.

"Yes. I don't know about your standards—you've been always so kind to me and put up with my faults and so I've been encouraged–"

Her relief should have awaked the gods of Olympus with its triumph.

"I've meant everything I've ever said–"

"Yes, I'm sure you have and that's why I think you'll understand. As I say, I've got to tell someone or I'll burst. It's just this—it's my cousin Rachel—Lady Seddon. Ever since we first met in your room she's been my whole world. Nothing else has mattered. It's she that's kept me all these months from going under. She's my life, my whole existence now and in the world to come, if there is one. Oh! Thank God!" he cried. "I've told someone at last. If you don't approve I can't help it. I know you'll keep my secret and, after all, it's nothing very terrible. I'm content to go on like this, just seeing her sometimes, writing to her sometimes. Now you know, Miss Rand, what's been my secret all this time. I've felt it's been between us and that's why I had to tell you. We'll be twice the friends that we were now that I've told you. And I must, I must have someone to talk to about her sometimes. It's been killing me, getting along without it."

Now that he had begun words poured from him. He did not know that it was raining; he saw only Rachel with her white face and dark hair.

Lizzie pulled her wrap about her; she was very cold and the rain was coming fast.

He was suddenly conscious of this.

"I say, what a brute I am! It's pouring!" He called a passing hansom and they climbed into it.

He was aware that she had said nothing.

"There!" he said, "you wish I hadn't told you. I know you do. You're shocked."

"No," she said, struggling to prevent her teeth from chattering.

He felt her shiver. "Why! you're shaking with cold! We oughtn't to have walked, but I did so want to speak to you about this. We must talk about it another time. But, I say, you aren't really horrified about it, are you?"

"No," she said again. "Another time though—There must be thunder. This storm makes my head ache."

She could say no more. The rest of the drive was in silence. In the hall she thanked him for her delightful evening.

She looked through the drawing-room door and wished her mother and sister good night, but did not stay to discuss incidents.

"Well," said Mrs. Rand, who had a fine list of questions ready about the play—"There's selfishness!"

Lizzie locked her door, undressed and lay down.

Like a sword jagging through and through her brain and piercing from there down to her heart stabbed the refrain:

"Oh! I hate her! I hate her! I hate her!"

So, wide-eyed, she lay throughout the night.

CHAPTER VI
ALL THE BEAMINSTERS

"We must expect change," returned Mrs. Chick.

"Of weather?" asked Miss Tox in her simplicity.

"Of everything," returned Mrs. Chick. "Of course we must. It's a world of change. Anyone would surprise me very much, Lucretia, and would greatly alter my opinion of their understanding, if they attempted to contradict or evade what is so perfectly evident. Change!" exclaimed Mrs. Chick, with severe philosophy—"Why, my gracious me, what is there that does not change! Even the silkworm, who I am sure might be supposed not to trouble itself about such subjects, changes into all sorts of unexpected things continually."

Dombey and Son.

I

At four o'clock on the afternoon of Wednesday, October 11th, in this year 1899 war between England and South Africa was declared.

At that same hour on that same afternoon an afternoon party was given by Lady Adela Beaminster at 104 Portland Place, and all the more important believers in the Beaminster religion were present.

The Long Drawing-room had the happy property of extending to accommodate its company and now, shadowy as its corners always were, it yielded the impression still of size and space, its mirrors reflecting its dark green walls that receded from the figures that thronged it.

The Duchess (now Ross's portrait of her) hung above the Adams fireplace and a little globe of light shone, on this dark October day, up into that sharp and wizened face and lit those bending fingers and flung forward the dull green jade and the dark black dress.

Many people were present. The Duke, Lord John, Lord Richard of course—also, of course, Lady Carloes, the Massiters, Lord Crewner, Monty Carfax, Brun, Maurice Garden the novelist, and his wife—also a fine collection of ladies and gentlemen, important in politics, in the graver camps of society—also a certain number who belonged by party to those whom Brun had once called the Aristocrats, the Chichesters, the Medleys, the Darrants. Old Lady Darrant was there looking like a cook, and Fred Chichester and his kind and freckled features, and Mrs. Medley who had married Judge Medley's only son.

Of the Democrats—of the Ruddards, the Denisons, the Oaks, not one to be seen.

The men and women who stood about in the room seemed strangely, oddly, of one family. No human being present was without his or her self-consciousness, but it was a self-consciousness that had about it nothing vulgar or strident. No voice in that room was raised, the very laughter implied, "Here we are, in the very Court of our Temple; we may then relax a little. For a time, at any rate, we know who we all are."

This security was implied on every hand. It was: "Young Rorke's going out—he's the son of Alice Branches—he married old Truddits' daughter," or—

"No, I don't know him personally, but Dick Barnett has seen him once or twice and says he's a very decent feller," or—

"Well, I should go carefully, if I were you. Neither the Massiters nor the Crawfords know her and, in fact, I can't find anyone who does."

Had a stranger penetrated into the fastnesses of the Chichesters or the Medleys he would have been overwhelmed with courtesy and politeness and, unless he had full credentials, would have been utterly excluded at the end of it. Had he boldly invaded the Denisons he would, unless he could prove his contribution to the entertainment of the day, have been told frankly that he was not wanted.

Had he passed the doors of No. 104 and had no proof of his Beaminster faith upon him, Norris would have exchanged with him a quiet word or two and he would have found himself in the bright spaces of Portland Place.

Rachel and Roddy had come to the party. Rachel sat on a high chair and looked stiff and pale; Lady Darrant, bunched up in an arm-chair, was beside her. Lady Darrant's emotions were divided between the welfare of the church in her parish in Wiltshire and the welfare of her only son, a boy aged twenty who, supposed to be studying for the Diplomatic Service, was really interested in race meetings and polo. Lady Darrant had, like most of the Aristocrats, a tranquil mind. Sorrow, tragedies, perplexities might come and go, the plain surface stability was in no way disturbed. She would have liked to possess more money that she might bestow it upon the church, and she would have preferred that her son should place foreign languages above horses, but, since these things were not so, God knew best and the world might have been much worse: none of her friends were ever agitated, outwardly at any rate. Life was calm, sure, proceeding from a definite commencement to a definite conclusion and—God knew best. Rumours came to her of atheists and chorus girls and American millionaires, but she was neither alarmed nor dismayed.

At a Beaminster entertainment she felt that she was among strangers. Her account of such an affair given afterwards to friends implied that this world into which she had glanced was not her world. Lady Adela frightened her and the mere suggestion of the Duchess, whom she had never seen, threatened more fiercely her tranquillity than any other event or person.

Now, every minute or so, she flung little agitated glances at the portrait. At the back of her mind, this afternoon, was the reflection that there was going to be a war and that quite certainly her boy, Tony, would insist on helping his country.

She was proud that he should insist, but, had she not been quite so confident of God's care for her, would have been very near to most real agitation.

She looked at Rachel timidly and wondered whether that strange, fierce, pale girl would be sympathetic. She had heard of Rachel and her marriage, and she knew that that rather stout healthy-looking young man standing and talking to Lord John Beaminster was the husband.

He looked kinder than she did, Lady Darrant thought.

"It's terrible about this horrid war, isn't it?" she said at last.

Rachel, watching the room, was absorbed by her own thoughts; she scarcely noticed the little woman beside her.

She saw Uncle John, his white hair and happy smile and large rather shapeless body, his way of laughing with his head flung back, the look of him when he was thinking, his face precisely that of a puzzled pig—simply to see him there across the room brought back to her a flood of memories.

She knew that she had avoided him lately and she knew, too, that he was unhappy about her. He was unhappy, poor Uncle John, about a number of things—always behind his laughter and cheerful greetings there was the little restless distress as though Life were offering him, just now, more than he could control.

Rachel looked and then turned her eyes away.

"Yes," she said to Lady Darrant, "I hope it won't be very much. They say that a week or two will see the end of it."

Truly, for herself, this afternoon was almost too difficult for her. She had received, that morning, a letter from Francis Breton asking her to go to tea with him in his rooms, one day within the following week.

She had never been to his room; she had not met him once during the whole year.

She had known, during all these last twelve months, that meeting him had nothing at all to do with the especial claim that they had upon one another. That claim had existed since that day of their first coming face to face and nothing now could ever alter it.

But the next time that they met must be, for both of them, a definite landmark. She might either decide, now, once and for all, never to see him again, or grasp, quite definitely, the possible result of her going to him.

The writing of this letter brought, at last, upon her the climax that she had been avoiding during the last year.

Sitting there in the Beaminster camp it was difficult to act without prejudice. With the exception of Uncle John and Roddy she hated them all.

After all if she were to refuse to see Francis Breton did it solve the question? Did it help her—and that was the great need of her present life—to love Roddy any better?

And if she went to his rooms and saw him, would not the truth emerge from that meeting and the miserable doubts and temptations that had shadowed her since her marriage be cleared away for ever?

She liked Roddy and did not love him—nothing could alter that.

Breton and she belonged to a world that was hostile to this world that she was now in—nothing could alter that.

Yes, she would go and see Breton. She got up, smiled at Lady Darrant and went across the room to talk to Uncle John.

On this afternoon she had a great overpowering longing for someone to love her, to care for her, to pity her, to take her into their arms and whisper comfort to her. It was so long—oh! so long, since Dr. Chris and Uncle John had done that.

And yet—the irony of it—there was Roddy eager to do it all: and from him, the fates had decreed that it should mean nothing to her.

"Why can't he touch me? Why can't he give me what I want? Is it my fault? Whose fault is it?"

And when she came to Uncle John she was almost afraid to look at him lest he should see the unhappiness in her eyes.

But, in spite of her unhappiness, she could be satirically observant. Her grandmother, up there on the wall, controlled, like the moon, this tide of human beings. They flowed forward, they retreated. About them, around them, behind and in front of them hovered this War....

Rachel knew that it was the Beaminster doctrine that anything that occurred to the nation was to be attributed, in the main, to Beaminster principles. She could tell at once that they had seized upon this war as an example of Beaminster government. Had diplomacy prevented it, behold the triumph of Beaminster diplomacy; now, as it had not been prevented, a swift and total triumph would assert the genius of Beaminster militancy.

"A week out there ought to be enough.... It's tiresome, of course, but they'll soon have had enough of it...."

Even Rachel, looking up at the portrait, might, not too fantastically, imagine that this war presented the last great manifestation of power on the part of that old woman.

Everyone in the room, perhaps, felt the same.