II
It was on an early afternoon in May that Christopher had tea with Rachel. He had waited for his visit with very real anxiety; the letters that he had had from her had been unsatisfactory, not because they were actively expressive of unhappiness, but because there was an effort in every word of them—Rachel had never found it difficult to write to him before.
He was also uneasy because he had been against this marriage from the beginning. He did, as he said to the Duchess, know Rachel better than anyone else knew her; he knew her from his love for her, and also from that scientific study that he applied in his profession. And he had found, too, in her, as he had found in Breton, some strain of fierce helplessness, as of an animal caught in a trap, that especially moved his interest and affection—
Was Rachel's marriage a disaster? If so she had certainly managed to conceal it, for even the Duchess did not know—of that he was sure.
If Rachel were indeed unhappy would she come to him as she used to come to him?
What change had marriage wrought in her?
It was one of those May days when the weather is hot before London is ready. It was a day of tension; buildings, streets quivered beneath a sun in whose gaze there was no kindliness nor comfort. Christopher drove from Eaton Square, where, for some hours he had been engaged in preventing an old man from dying, when both the old man himself and all his friends and relations were convinced that death was the best thing for him—
Sloane Street ran like white steel before his eyes, not dimly veiled as he had so often seen it; Park Lane offered houses that stared with haughty faces upon a world that would, they knew, do anything for money—
Elliston Square itself was white and sterile; the town was, on this afternoon, irritated, sinister ... feet ached upon its pavements and hearts were suddenly clutched with foreboding.
As he ascended in the lift to her flat he knew that, did he find that this marriage was, truly, a misadventure for Rachel, then, until his death, he would reproach himself for some weak inaction, some hesitation when first he had heard that it was to be.
He had protested, but now he felt that he should have done more.
Soon he had his answer to all his questions.
He saw at once that Rachel was no longer the impulsive, nervous girl whom he had always known. She was a girl no longer.
Her eyes greeted him now steadily, she seemed taller and her body was in perfect control—very tall and slim and dark, her cheeks pale but shadowed a little with the shadow deepening beneath her eyes. Her mouth, that had always been too large, had had before a delightful quality of uncertainty, so that smiles and frowns and alarms, distress and happiness all hovered near. It was now grave and composed.
Her limbs had always moved unsteadily and with the awkward lack of control of a child, now there was no kind of impulse, every movement was considered, and that was the first thing that Christopher saw, that nothing that Rachel now did or said was spontaneous.
There was less in her now to remind him of her foreign blood.
The flat was comfortable, but more commonplace than it would have been had it been Rachel's only.
He kissed her, as he had always done, and he fancied that she clung for a moment to him, as her hands went up to his coat.
He settled his big loose body and looked across at her.
Christopher was no subtle analyser of other people's emotions. His own feelings were never complicated and he expected life to run on plain and simple lines of likes and dislikes, sorrow, anger, love and hatred. If someone of whom he was fond made a direct appeal to him his simple remedies were often wonderfully useful—he was no fool and he had been brought, during a great number of years, into the most direct relations with men and women, but, if that direct appeal was not made, then he was frightened and baffled.
He was frightened of Rachel now; he knew instantly that instead of appealing she would defend herself from him.... Some mysterious conviction seemed to forebode that he would not be able to help her. He was, essentially, of those who, believing in goodness and virtue and the glorious Millennium, are contented, quite simply, with that belief and might, if they stated those simplicities, irritate the scoffers. But he was saved because he made statements on the rarest occasions and lived his life instead.
Here, however, was a crisis in his relations with Rachel that no platitudes could satisfy. Did he not touch her now he might never touch her again.
In a situation that was beyond him he was always hopelessly self-conscious. His love for Rachel was so tremendous a thing in him that a statement of it should surely have been the simplest thing in the world. But he saw in her eyes that to challenge her with—"My dear, you know how I love you. Tell me what's the matter," would frighten her to absolute silence. "I'm going to tell you nothing," she seemed to say to him, "unless you move me in spite of myself. But, if I don't tell you now I shall never tell you."
"Well, my dear," he said, smiling at her, "how are you after all this time?"
"I'm all right," she answered, smiling back at him. "It is good to see you again. Tell me all about your holiday."
"Tell me about yours first."
"Oh! There isn't very much to tell. I enjoyed it all enormously, of course."
"What did you enjoy most?"
"Oh! some of the smaller towns—Rapallo, for instance.—Oh! yes, and Bologna was fascinating."
"Not Rome and Florence?"
"In a way. But there were too many tourists. Rome one's got to stay in, I'm sure. That first view was disappointing."
"And how did Roddy—if I may call him Roddy—enjoy it?"
"Immensely, I think. He liked the country better than the towns though."
"You saw lots of pictures?"
"Heaps. Roddy enjoyed them enormously. I'd no idea he knew so much about them. Oh! it was all lovely, and such colours, such light—London seems like a cellar, even in June."
There followed then a pause that swelled and swelled between them until it resembled some dreadful monster, horribly stationed there to separate them.
Christopher looked at Rachel, but she refused to meet his eyes.
"I've lost her. I shall never see her again!" he thought with despair. Two years ago he would have gone to her, put his arms around her, kissed her and drawn from her at once her trouble.
He could not do that now.
"Your turn, Dr. Chris dear. Tell me about your holidays."
"Oh, mine don't count. I went to Brittany first, then up to St. Andrews with another man to play golf."
"You're looking splendidly well and you're thinner. What was Brittany like?"
"Delightful. Have you ever been there?"
"Never. I must get Roddy to take me. Just suit him, I should think."
To Christopher's intense relief tea was brought. He came to the table and then, for an instant, he did catch her eyes, saw tears in them, and behind the tears some appeal to him to help her. Her hand was shaking.
"How silly of me to spill your tea. I'm so sorry. Let me pour it back...."
"Rachel——" he began, but a servant entered with something and he waited. When they were alone again, standing over her as though he were afraid that she would escape him, he plunged.
"Rachel dear. We're talking as though we'd never met before. You've never been shy with me like this. If marriage is going to make a stranger of you, I shall break young Seddon's neck——"
"No," she said in a voice that was between laughter and tears. "Of course, Dr. Chris. Things are just the same between us, only, only—well, I'm married and—one thing and another, you know."
He caught both her hands.
"You're perfectly happy?"
She met his eyes.
"Perfectly."
"Happier than you've ever been in your life?"
She dropped her eyes.
"Happier than I've ever been in my life."
"And you'll come to me just the same if there's any kind of trouble?"
"Of course."
"You promise?"
"I promise."
They talked then, for a little time, of other things. But he was not satisfied. Rachel's soul, caught away in alarm, was still beyond his grasp.
At last, feeling that the moments were precious and that Roddy might at any instant appear, he sat down on the sofa beside her.
"Rachel dear. Something's worrying you. You won't tell me?"
"Nothing's worrying——"
"Ah, but I know—well, if you won't you won't—but if you knew how much I loved you you'd feel that you were cruel not to let me help you."
"Dear Dr. Chris—but there is nothing."
But her eyes were full of tears.
"Look here," he said. "Perhaps you'll feel later on you can talk to me. Just come straight away if you do feel that."
He went on. "Don't be frightened, my dear, if there are a whole heap of new emotions, new instincts, stirred in you by marriage. Just take them all as they come. It's all progress, you know. Don't be frightened of anything. Just take the animal by the head and look at it."
That led him to speak about Brun's Tiger. He explained it—the force in people, the way they either grappled with the creature, and at last trained it to help them with their work in the world, or ignored it, silenced it, allowed it at last to die, and so, cosy and lazily comfortable, passed to their day's end, but had, nevertheless, missed the whole purpose of life.
He enlarged on that and showed the connection of the individual Tiger with the welfare of the world, so that everyone who denied his Tiger added to his world's muddle and confusion, and at last there would come an inevitable crisis when war would spring up between those who had grappled with their Tiger and those who had not.
"One knows one's own Tiger—absolutely of oneself one knows it and has, of oneself, the choice whether to grapple or not—at least that's what I gathered he meant—I know it struck me at the time."
"Oh," she said, with a sigh that quivered through her whole body. "It's so easy to talk.... But it's true what he says. I know it."
At last Christopher got up to go. He did not know whether he had done any good; he felt that he was a miserable failure, and he had a foreboding that one day he would be ashamed indeed that he had not helped her.
"Do something," a voice seemed to tell him. "You'll regret ... all your life you'll regret."
He turned and held again her hands in his.... "Rachel—dear—tell me——"
Her hands were chill and lifeless. Her voice caught. "Oh! Dr. Chris!..." Then she suddenly stepped back from him—
"It's all right.... I'm all right. Come again soon, Dr. Chris dear—come soon."
He left her and found his way into the hot, breathless street.
After he had gone Rachel sat, staring beyond the room out on to the white walls of the houses and the green branches of the trees in the square.
Roddy came in.
All the afternoon he had been thinking about her; at one moment he was furious with the discomfort that life was now becoming to him, at another moment he was imagining little plans that would sweep all the discomfort away.
All this spring they had been miserable together. Now was beginning a time that was always jolly in London and yet he could not enjoy a moment of it. Did she dislike him instead of liking him, or did he like her instead of loving her, it would all be so easy—just the same as any other couple.
Ever since that silly Nita incident there had been this restraint, and yet how could that be the cause?
Rachel had made nothing of it; it was because it had meant so little to her that he had chafed so at the remembrance of it.
She was fond of him—he knew that—she was miserably unhappy.
He loved her—and he was miserably unhappy.
Damn this weather.
He looked at her, wondered what would happen did he cross over and suddenly kiss her, knew that he would see her struggle to be kind, to give him what he wanted, knew that that would hurt most damnably, and that he would be in a bad temper for the rest of the evening and would wonder why—
So, with a muttered word he went out and up to his dressing-room, had a bath, and then lay reading with serious brows The Winning Post until his man told him that it was time to dress.
Slowly and with the absorbed care that he always gave to these preparations he made himself ready for the Beaminster dinner.