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 Saturday, 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 space 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 assembly.
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.
"She wouldn't listen when I wanted to tell her how sorry I was. She seems now not to care."
"She's never forgiven anyone anything before," said
Rachel.
"Hush, my dear, I don't think you ought to say that. We've never understood her, any of us. She's always been beyond us. You'll realize to-morrow, Rachel, how wonderful, how wonderful she is!"
But he was very happy. He had his old Rachel back, the old Rachel whom he had expected never to see again. She sat between him and Christopher, at dinner, no longer fierce and ironical, with sudden silences and swift angers, but affectionate, sympathetic, happy.
"Mother will see you to-morrow," Adela told her. "She's glad that you've come. The morning's rather a bad time for her. Could you stay for the whole day?"
"Of course," Rachel said.
At the end of the evening she went up to Lizzie's room; when midnight rang from the tower they parted, but first, Rachel said:
"Lizzie, I wonder whether you realize what you've been—to all of us—to me of course ... but to the others—to the whole family."
"Oh! Nonsense!"
"Roddy was speaking about it yesterday. He said that you were the most wonderful person in all the world for making all the difference without saying or doing anything—by just being there."
"Oh, Roddy thinks everybody——"
"But this is what I'm coming to. You can't yourself know how much difference you make to everyone. But there's just this.... Roddy feels and I feel that when—He—comes (of course it'll be a boy) we'd rather have you for his friend than anyone in the whole world. You will—you will be, won't you?"
"My dear—I should think so. I'll whack him and bath him and snub him and teach him his letters—anything you like." Then she added, rather gravely:
"There's one thing, Rachel, I've wanted to say for some time. I want you to know definitely, that all wounds are closed now, everything's healed—about Mr. Breton, I mean. I was afraid that you might think I still cared.... That's all ended, closed up, that little episode.
"You needn't be afraid, Rachel. I'm happier, I'm freer than I've ever been in my life.... Good night, my dear. Your friendship is more to me than any number of heart-burnings.... I was always meant to be independent, you know...."