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.
CHAPTER VII
RACHEL AND BRETON
"We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little farther: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea.
... but surely we are brave
Who make the Golden Journey to Samarcand."