The Duchess of Wrexe Part 85

Their little dialogue had closed, with the sound of a closing door, a stage in her life. She would never be the same as she had been before that episode. It had shown her that she was as romantic as the rest of the world. It had made her kinder, tenderer, wiser. And now once again she was independent--once again her soul was her own. She could be, once more, his friend, seeing him with all his faults, his impetuosities, his weak impulses.

Her place was there for her to fill. It was not the place that she would once have chosen. But she had regained her soul, had once more control of her spirit. She was free.

There stretched before her a world of work, of thrilling and ever-changing interest. There were Rachel and Rachel's baby....

"You seem in very good spirits, Lizzie," said Mrs. Rand as she came in.

"I'm sure I'm very glad because it's too tiresome. Here's Daisy gone off...."

III

Afterwards she said to her mother:

"I'm going down to Beaminster on Monday. I'm afraid I shall be away some time."

"Oh! Lizzie!" said Mrs. Rand reproachfully. "Well, now--That _is_ a pity. Why must you?"

"The d.u.c.h.ess is going and Lady Adela must go with her and I must go with Lady Adela."

"Dear, dear. Whatever shall we do, Daisy and I? Daisy gets idler every day. It's always clothes with her now.... I suppose we shall manage."

"I shall come up for week-ends."

"What a way you speak of it! Of course you don't care! If you went away for years you wouldn't miss us, I dare say. I can't think why it is, Lizzie, that you're always so hard. Daisy and I have got plenty of feeling and emotion and your father, poor man, had more than he could manage. But I'm sure more's better than none at all, where feelings are concerned."

"I suppose," said Lizzie, speaking to more than her mother, "that if everyone had so much feeling there'd be n.o.body to give the advice.

Feelings don't suit everybody."

"You're a strange girl," said Mrs. Rand, "and you're like no one in our family. All your aunts and uncles are kind and friendly. I don't suggest that you don't do your best, Lizzie. You do, I'm sure--and n.o.body could deny that you've got a head for figures and running a house. But a little heart...."

"I've come to the conclusion I'm better without any," Lizzie laughed. "I expect I'm more like you and Daisy, mother, than you know----"

"Well, you're a strange girl," said Mrs. Rand again, "and I never understand half you say."

Lizzie came to her and kissed her.

"You always miss me, you know, mother, when I'm away, in spite of my hard heart."

"Well, that's true," said Mrs. Rand, looking at her daughter with wide and rather tearful eyes. "But I'm sure I don't know why I do."

CHAPTER XI

THE LAST VIEW FROM HIGH WINDOWS

"Not without fort.i.tude I wait ...

... I, in this house so rifted, marr'd, So ill to live in, hard to leave; I, so star-weary, over-warr'd, That have no joy in this your day."

_Francis Thompson._

I

Rachel, on the morning of April 28th, received this letter from Lady Adela:

"BEAMINSTER HOUSE,

_April 27th._

MY DEAR RACHEL,

Mother suddenly last night expressed an urgent wish to see you.

She has not been at all well during the last few days and Dr.

Christopher, who has been here since last Sat.u.r.day, says that if you can come down and see her he thinks that it would be a comfort to her. She is sleeping very badly, but is wonderfully tranquil and seems to like to be here again.

If you can come down to-morrow afternoon I will send to meet the 5.32 at Ryston. That is quicker than going round to Munckston. If I don't hear I conclude that you are coming by that train.

My love to Roddy.

Your affectionate aunt,

ADELA BEAMINSTER."

Rachel showed the letter to Roddy.

"I'm so glad," she said, "I've been hoping that she'd send for me. I've felt, ever since that day, that I should never be easy again if I hadn't the chance to tell her that I see now that I--that we--were wrong."

"She's never answered my letter," said Roddy. "Perhaps she wasn't well enough to write. Yes, I'm glad you're going, Rachel."

She was moved by many emotions, the old lady dying, the house in whose shadow she had spent so many of her timid, angry, adventurous young years, the thrill that the thought of her child gave her now at every vision of the world, the knowledge that in Roddy she, at last, had someone in her life to whom, after every absence, however short, she was eager to return--these things shone with new, wonderful lights around her journey.

The April evenings were lengthening and the dusks were warm and scented.

The little station lay peacefully in the heart of green fields; across the sky, washed clean of every colour, a dark train of birds slowly, lazily took their flight, trees were dim with edges sharp against the sky-line, a dog barking in the distance gave rhythm to the stillness.

Rachel, driving through the falling dark, felt, as she had felt it when she was a small child, the august colour and s.p.a.ce and dignity of the first vision of the great house, white as a ghost now under the first stars, speaking to her with the old voice, fountains that splashed in gardens, the river that ran at the end of the sloping lawns, the chiming clock that rang out the hour as she drove up to the door.

Aunt Adela, Uncle John, Dr. Chris, Lizzie, they were all there, and their presences made less chill the dominating reason for their a.s.sembly.

Over all the house the shadow fell. The wide, high rooms, the long picture gallery, the comfortless grandeur of a house that had not found, for some years, many human creatures to lighten it, these echoed and flung forwards and backwards the note of suspense, of pause, of impending crisis.

But Rachel spent one of the happiest evenings of her life with Uncle John and Christopher. She knew that Uncle John had had a short but terrible interview with her grandmother, that he had been charged with treachery and dishonour and every traitorous wickedness.

A week ago, when he had told her this, he had been the picture of despair and shame. "I hadn't meant her to know. She wasn't to come into it at all. And then that she should meet him at Roddy's on that very afternoon.... There's nothing bad enough for me." But he had added with a strange note of defiance so unlike the old Uncle John: "I had felt it my duty, Rachel ... to speak to Francis. I had felt it the right thing to do. I had felt it very strongly."

Then he had been overwhelmed, now he was once more at peace, and tranquil.

"It's all right," he told Rachel. "I've been forgiven. I think she's forgiven all of us.