He remembered very clearly and distinctly what it was that Christopher had told him. Rachel was in danger because her husband had heard of her friendship with him, Breton....
It would not have been Francis Breton if he had not taken this piece of news and looked at it in its most sensational colours. He had, through all these last weeks, been striving to accustom himself to the agony of enduring life without her. He dimly perceived that it was the emptiness of life rather than any actual loss of any particular person that was so terrible to him. He had still, very fine and beautiful, his memory of the day when she had come to him in his rooms, and had that day been followed by a secret relationship between them and many hours spent together, then his passion would have been very genuine and moving.
But, after all, she had flashed into his life, and then flashed out of it again, and, so swiftly with him did moods follow one upon another, and ideals and ambitions and despairs and glories jostle together in his brain, that she might have remained, very happily raised to a fine altar in his temple, very distantly recognized as a beautiful episode now closed and contemplated only from a worshipping distance, had any other figure or incident definitely occupied his attention.
But no figure, no incident had arrived. He had had, during all these weeks, no drama into which he might fling his fine feelings, his great ambitions, his glorious sacrifices. Of genuine sincerity were these moods of his—he had never stood sufficiently beyond himself to arrive at any definite insincerity about any of his movements or impulses—but of all things in the world he could not endure that his life should be empty, and empty now it had been for, as it seemed to his swift impatience, a long, long time.
Christopher's news did touch him very deeply. He would instantly have sacrificed his life, his honour, anything at all, for Rachel, and the fact that he would enjoy the drama of that sacrifice did not rob it of any atom of its sincerity.
But the pity of it was that he really did not see what he could do. Had he been able, here and now, to rush into the Portland Place house and seize his grandmother by the throat and shake her, or had it been possible to appear before Roddy Seddon, to declare himself the only culprit, to proclaim that he was ready for any condemnation, any punishment, then, in spite of all his unhappiness, he would be now a happy man, but, alas, the only possible action was to pause, to see what happened, to wait—and waiting it was that sent him mad.
One action indeed was possible and that was that he should put a close to his wretched existence. On this close and sterile night such an action did not appear at all absurd. It had fine elements about it, it would deal a sure blow at his grandmother and all that family who had treated him so basely. What a headline for the papers! "Suicide of member of one of England's noblest families!" Rachel should be, no longer, annoyed with his unfortunate presence: he would make it, of course, quite obvious that she had had nothing to do with his sad end.
He looked about him, with an air of fine melancholy, at the passers-by. Little they knew of the terrible tragedy that was even now preparing in their midst!
He felt almost happy again as he turned this solution over and over again. Some people would be sorry—Christopher, Lizzie Rand, and Rachel: above all, it must be heavy upon the consciences of the Duchess and her wretched children. They had driven him to his death and must bear the blame to the grave and beyond.
Very faintly the rolling of thunder could be heard as the storm approached the town.