MARCH 13th: RODDY TALKS TO THE DEVIL AND THE DUCHESS DENIES GOD
“Que désirez-vous savoir plus précisément?’ Mais le porte-drapeau répondit: ‘Non, pas maintenant ... apres ...’”
A l’Extrême 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....”