II
In the high beautiful hall where they all stood about and had tea she could see who they were. There was a girl whom she had met on several occasions this season, Nita Raseley, there was a large florid cheerful person who was, she discovered, Maurice Garden, the well-known and popular novelist, there was his wife, there was a thin intellectual cousin of Lady Massiter's, Miss Rawson, old and plain enough for her cleverness to have turned to acidity, Roddy Seddon and, of course, Lord and Lady Massiter.
Lord Massiter was large and florid like the novelist, and when they stood together by the fireplace foreign customs and languages were suddenly absurd, so English was the atmosphere. Lady Massiter was also large, but she had the kind and warm placidity that makes some women the type of all maternity. She would be, Rachel felt, a sure resource in all time of trouble and she would also be entirely unsatisfactory as an intimate personal friend. She would, like philanthropists and clergymen, love people by the mass, never by the individual.
Nita Raseley was pink and white, with large blue eyes that confided in everyone they looked at. Her laugh was a little shrill, her clothes very beautiful, and men liked her.
So there they all were.
She had said good day to Roddy and then had moved away from him, governed by some self-consciousness and the conviction that Nita Raseley's blue eyes were upon her.
It was all very cheerful and very English as they stood talking there, and the doors beyond the hall showed through their dark frames green lawns and terraces soaked in evening light. It was all very, very comfortable.
As she dressed for dinner Rachel had her windows open, so hot was the night, and she could watch the evening star that shone with a wonderful brilliance above a dark little wood that crowned a rise beyond the gardens. She had a maid who was very young indeed; this was her first place, but she had, during the three months, learnt with great quickness and had attached herself to her mistress with the most burning devotion. She was a silent, unusual girl and kept herself apart from the rest of the servants.
Rachel as she sat before her dressing-table could see in that mirror the dark reflection of the twilit garden.
"It's a lovely place, Lucy——"
"Yes, Miss Rachel."
"Are you glad to get away from London?"
"It has been hot there these last weeks."
Rachel met in the glass the girl's black eyes. They were searching Rachel's face.
"Lucy, would you rather live in London or in the country?"
"I don't mind, Miss Rachel." Then after a little pause: "I hope I've give satisfaction these last weeks?"
"Why, yes, of course."
"Then I hope, miss, that you'll allow me to stay with you whether—in London or the country."
The colour mounted to Rachel's cheeks.
"I hope there'll be no need for any change," she said.
She found when she came down to the drawing-room that Monty Carfax had arrived. Monty Carfax was the chief of the young men who were, just at that time, entertaining London dinner-tables. About half a dozen of God's creatures, under thirty and perfectly dressed, with faces like tombstones and the laugh of the peacock, went from house to house in London and mocked at the world.
They belonged, as the mediæval jesters belonged, each to his own court, and Monty Carfax, certainly the cleverest of them, was attached to the Beaminster Court and served the Duchess by faith, if not by sight.
Rachel hated him and always, when she found herself next to him, wrapped herself in her old farouche manner and behaved like an awkward schoolgirl.
She was terribly disappointed at discovering that he was going to take her into dinner to-night; he knew that she disliked him and felt it a compliment that a raw creature fresh from the schoolroom should fail to appreciate him; on this occasion he devoted himself to the elderly Massiter cousin on his other side—throughout dinner they happily undressed the world and found it sawdust.
Rachel meanwhile found Maurice Garden her other companion. He genially enjoyed his dinner and talked in a loud voice and prepared the answers that he always gave to ladies who asked him when he wrote, whether he thought of his plots or his characters first, and "she did hope he wouldn't mind her saying that of all his books the one——"
He frankly liked these questions and was taken by surprise when Rachel said:
"I've never read any of your novels, Mr. Garden, so I won't pretend——"
He asked her what she did read.
"Have you ever read anything by an author called Peter Westcott?"
"Westcott? Westcott?... Let me see ... Westcott?... Well now—One of the young men, isn't he?"
"Yes. He wrote a book called Reuben Hallard."
"Ah yes. I remember about Reuben Hallard—had quite a little success as a first book. He's one of your high-brow young men, all for Art and the rest of it. We all begin like that, Miss Beaminster. I was like that myself once——"
She looked at him coolly.
"Why did you give it up?"
"Simply didn't pay, you know—not a penny in it. And why should there be? People don't want to know what a young ass thinks about life if he can't tell a story. All young men think the same—green leaves, moons and stars and lots of symbols, you know—all good enough if they don't expect people to pay for it."
"I think Reuben Hallard's a fine book," she said, "and so are some of the others. After all, everyone doesn't want only a plot in a book."
He looked at her with patronizing kindness. "Well, you see if your Mr. Westcott doesn't change. Every writer wants an audience whatever he may pretend, and the best way to get a audience is to give the audience what it wants. It needs unusual courage to sit on a packing-case year after year and shave in a broken looking-glass——"
She looked round the table. Everyone was happy. The butler was fat and had the face of a Roman emperor, the food was very, very good, Nita Raseley and Roddy laughed and laughed and laughed—
Suddenly Rachel's heart jumped in her body. Oh! she was glad; glad that Roddy cared for her and would look after her, because otherwise she didn't know what violence she might suddenly commit, what desperations she might not engage upon, what rebels and outlaws she would not support—
What Outlaws! And then, looking beyond the thickly curtained windows, she could fancy that she could see one gravely standing out there on the lawn, standing with his one arm and his pointed beard and his eyes appealing to be let in.
Then there was an ice that was so good that Peter Westcott and Francis Breton seemed more outcast than ever.