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.