IV
In the carriage with Roddy she suddenly laughed.
All those people, moving so solemnly with such self-importance about that room. The Duke, Lord Richard, Aunt Adela ... Norris, the footman....
Over them all that fierce commanding portrait. And upstairs that old, sick woman....
And beyond, away from that house, a war that that old woman and those self-important people saw only as a means of increasing their own self-importance.
It was all as a box of tin soldiers and a parcel of stiff china-faced dolls—
What were they all about? What did they think they were all doing? What, after all, was she, Rachel? Had they no conception of the sawdust that they all were beside this real, swiftly moving, death-dealing War that was suddenly amongst them?
"What is it?" said Roddy.
"Grandmother—grandmother—my dear, delightful, wonderful grandmother. To think of her sitting all alone up there in her bedroom and all those people moving about downstairs—all so conscious of her. And yet she does nothing—nothing." Rachel, in her excitement, struck her knee with her hand. "She isn't even clever, really—She's never in all her life been known to say a witty thing—never. She doesn't really know much about politics.... She just sits there and acts—That's what it's always been, acting the whole time. If it's effective to be old and feeble she is old and feeble—if it's effective to be fantastic she is fantastic—She just sits still and takes people in. Why, if she'd wanted she could have been going out all these thirty years, I believe!"
"You're always unfair to her, Rachel," said Roddy. "You know she has ghastly pain often and often."
"Yes. I'll give her that," said Rachel. "She's brave—brave as anything. And after all," she added, "she couldn't affect me more if she were the wittiest woman in the world——"
Roddy yawned—"Dam dull party," he said.