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.