II
But he was very swiftly to realize that it was not all over. Sharply, quivering through the air like an arrow from a bow, came the Duchess's words.
"Good God, Roddy, are you completely insane?"
She was twisted, distorted with anger, she seemed to take her rage and fling it about her so that the chairs, the tables, Roddy's innocent little sporting sketches and even the case of birds' eggs were saturated with it.
The gleaming park, the peaceful evening sky, the sharp curve of an apricot-tinted moon, these things were blotted out and the noises of the town deadened by this indignant fury. Rachel had known it in other days, to Breton it evoked long-distant nursery hours, to Roddy it was something utterly new and unsuspected. For the first time in his life he caught a shadow of the terror that had darkened Rachel's young days.
To the Duchess it was simply that she now clearly discovered that she was the victim of an elaborate plot. The three of them! Oh! she saw it all! and Roddy, Roddy—who had been the one living soul to whom her hard independence had made concession! This came, the definite climax to the year's accumulations, the final decision flung at her, before she died, by those two—Rachel and Breton—from whom, of all living souls, she could endure it least.
With her rage rose her fighting spirit. She would show them, these young fools, the kind of woman that an earlier and a finer generation than theirs could produce!
They had more there before them than one old woman, sick and ailing, and they should see it.
Her voice shook a little, but she gave no other sign, after that first challenge: her little eyes flamed from the mask of her face like candles behind holes in a screen.
"This is your sense of fun, Roddy, I suppose," she said. "You always were lacking in that. I've told you so before. As you asked me here I suppose you're ready for my opinion. You shall have it. I'll only ask you to cast your eye over any friend of ours: see what you would say if this—this idiotic folly committed by someone else had come to your ears. I suppose you'd arranged this, the three of you. Well, you shall know what I think. Your tenderness to Rachel is magnificent—she has obviously reckoned on it, knew that her frankness would serve her well enough. You've already been more patient with her than men would have been in my day. I only hope that your patience may not be too severely tried....
"As for my grandson, to whom you have so tenderly entrusted Rachel, your acquaintance with him is quite recent, is it not? I am sure that if you were to enquire of any man at one of your clubs he would give you quite excellent reasons for my grandson's long unhappy absence from his relations and his country. At any rate you don't know him as well as I do. I could tell you, if you asked me, that it is a long time now since any decent man or woman has sought his society. Do you suppose that his family have not the best of reasons for trying to forget his existence—an attempt that he makes unpleasantly difficult?
"Have you heard nothing, Roddy? Do you really want a man who has been kicked out of society for the most excellent reasons, who has disgraced his name as no member of his family has ever disgraced it before him, for your wife's lover? If she must have one...."
Rachel, trembling, had come forward, Roddy had cried out, but quietly, stronger than either of them, Breton had faced her. She had not, throughout the afternoon, looked at him nor spoken one word to him. Now, her anger carrying her beyond all physical control, she was compelled to meet his gaze.
He stood very quietly beside her chair, looking at the three of them. "My grandmother is wrong," he said, "I am not quite as deserted as she thinks. Just before I came here this afternoon Uncle John called upon me. I had half an hour's very pleasant talk with him: he told me that, although his mother had not altered her opinion of me, Uncle Vincent and Aunt Adela and himself considered that I had earned"—he smiled a little—"forgiveness. He hoped that I would understand that—while my grandmother was alive—I could not be invited to 104 Portland Place, but that he thought that I would like to know that they had realized my—well, improvement, and that he hoped that we would be friends. I said that I should be delighted."
The Duchess spoke to him then, her voice shaking so that it was difficult to catch her words.
"John—came—said that—to you?"
"Yes. It was a curious coincidence that to-day——"
Her eyes had dropped. She murmured to herself:
"John ... John ... Adela ... behind my back ... Adela ... Vincent——"
They were all silent. She sat there, her head down, leaning on her hands, brooding. Her anger seemed to have departed, her fire, her fury had fled: she was a very old woman—and the room was suddenly chilly. Before her were Rachel and Breton: they faced the ancient enemy. But as Rachel stood there, realizing that there had flashed between them the climax of all their lives together, yes, and a climax of forces greater and more powerful than anything that their own small histories could contain, she had no sense of drama nor of revenge nor of any triumphant victory. A little while before she had been almost insane with anger.... Now something had occurred. Rachel only knew that the three of them—Roddy, Francis and herself—were young and immensely vigorous, with all life before them; but that one day they would be old, as this old woman, and would be deserted and sick and past anyone's need of them.
"Oh! I wish we hadn't! I wish we hadn't!" she thought.
In that moment's silence they all might have heard the sound of the soft, sharp click—the click that marked the supreme moment of their relationship to the situation that had, for all of them, been so long developing—
Breton surrendered Rachel, Roddy received her, and, beyond them all, the Duchess definitely abandoned her world.
For them all, grouped there so closely together, the heart of their relations the one to the other had been revealed to them.
Other dramas, other comedies, other tragedies—This had claimed its moment and had passed....
After the silence the Duchess said, "My family—I no longer...." She stopped, collected, with all her will, her words, then in a low voice said, looking at Breton, "I owe you, I suppose—an apology. I owe that perhaps to you all. My children are wiser in their own generation. I no longer understand—the way things go—all too confused for my poor intelligence." She pulled herself together as an old ship rights itself after a roller's stinging blow. "This has lasted long enough.... We've all talked—My family are—wiser—it seems."
But she could not go on. "Please, Roddy," she said at length, "I think it's time—if you'd ring."
"I'm sorry——" he said and then stopped.
Soon Peters and a footman appeared. She leaned heavily upon them and, staring before her at the door, slowly went out.