"You've been a brick. If you really care to bother about a rotten waster like myself I'll be proud.... Good-bye and thank you----"

He took her hand and shook it and then was gone, striding off, furiously, towards the trees.

She walked slowly back to Saxton Square.

CHAPTER II

THE d.u.c.h.eSS MOVES

"Fear of the loss of power has more to do with disasters in the history of nations than any other motive."

JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE.

I

Trouble invaded the strongholds of 104 Portland Place that winter: The d.u.c.h.ess was not so well ... no evasions, whether above or below stairs, could conceal the harsh truth. The d.u.c.h.ess was not so well....

To the bewildered mind of Lady Adela the horrid succession of disasters that the winter had provided no other years could equal. It had all begun, she often fancied, from the day of Rachel's coming out, from the ball, or even, although for this she could not find a real excuse, from that visit to the Bond Street Picture Gallery. It was on that afternoon, Lady Adela well remembered, that there had first come to her those strange, treacherous thoughts about her mother that had, afterwards, as they had grown stronger and more formidable, changed life for her. Yes, it had seemed that, with Rachel's appearance before the world, disaster to the Beamister house had appeared also. Her mother's illness, the War, perpetual rumours of Rachel's unsatisfactory marriage, the uncomfortable presence of Frank Breton, the horrible disaster to poor Roddy--how they trooped before Lady Adela's eyes! Finally, more terrible than all of them, was the complete destruction of the old fiction, the old terror, the old submission. Lady Adela did not now dare to look into her mind because of the horrible things that she found there.

Roddy's accident had had the most terrible effect upon the d.u.c.h.ess. Only Christopher could really tell how Her Grace had taken it, but throughout the house, it was understood that the effect of it had been serious.

"Wouldn't give her long now," said Mr. Norris. "What with this War and what not she was goin' as it was, and now Sir Roderick, as was always, as you might say, her pet, having this awful disaster--no, _I_ don't give her long."

Adela of course saw nothing of her mother's feelings; she never had been allowed to see anything of them and she was not allowed now.

The old lady was outwardly as she had ever been, although she spoke less and, if you watched her, you could see sometimes that her hands were shaking. She used paint for her cheeks and she rouged her lips. Her love of fantastic things had grown very much, and, on the little table behind her chair, there was a row of strange china animals and some Indian dolls with wooden limbs that jangled when you touched them.

But Adela was no longer afraid of her mother. Stimulate it as she would, force upon herself her sensations of the days when she had been afraid, as she did, still the terror would not now confront her. There had been a dreadful scene when the d.u.c.h.ess had been told that her daughter was acting on the same committee as Mrs. Bronson, the dazzling American ... a terrible scene ... but Adela had come through it without a tremor--it had not affected her at all. "It isn't that I've changed much either. I'm just as nervous of other things--I'm just the same coward...."

Perhaps it was, a little, that the war had altered one's values--So many Beaminster necessities were not quite so necessary--

Certainly John felt the same, and the one consolation to Adela, through all this horrible time, was that she had grown nearer to John than she had ever been to anyone--John and she had been attacked by the Real World, both of them at the same moment, and they did find comfort, at this terrifying crisis, in being together.

But all Adela's energy was directed towards concealing from her mother that there was any change at all--"She must think that things are just the same, exactly the same. She mustn't ever know that ... well, that ..."

She could not put it into words. Her Grace's illness was never alluded to by any member of the household.

There came word, at the beginning of March, that Roddy had been moved up to London, that Rachel had taken a little house in York Terrace overlooking Regent's Park, that Roddy was wonderfully cheerful, suffered pain at times, but was, on the whole marvellous--

Two or three days after this news when Christopher arrived at 104 on his usual morning visit Lord John met him in the hall.

"I say, come in here a minute," he said, leading the way into his own little smoking-room--Lord John was fatter, scarcely now as rubicund, as shining as he had been--as neat and clean as ever, but there were lines on his forehead, and in his eye, that glance of surprise that had always been there had advanced into one of alarm--

"What the devil is life going to do, what horrible trick is it up to next?" he seemed to say--

"Look here, Christopher," he brought out, when the door was closed.

"There's the devil and all to pay. My mother declares this morning that she's going to pay a visit to Roddy!"

"Well?" Christopher seemed amused.

"But ... Good heavens!" John was aghast--"She hasn't stirred out of her room for thirty years! She ... she ... it'll kill her!"

"Oh! no, it won't--" Christopher answered, "not if she really means to do it. Of course she can't walk much--she won't have to--We can get her downstairs, and Roddy's room in York Terrace is on the ground floor--We'll have to see she doesn't catch cold--She'll have to choose a warm day."

"She says she's going this afternoon!" said Lord John, still overwhelmed by this amazing development.

"Well, to-day won't do any harm----"

"Are you sure?"

"Quite sure. The danger with your mother has always been to stop her inclinations. Indulge 'em all the time if you can, let her say what she wishes, do what she wishes. If you were to carry her out of doors against her will, why it would do a great deal of harm indeed--but if she wants to go she'll see that she's up to it. It may be the best thing for her. She could have gone out heaps of times in the last thirty years if she'd wished to!"

Lord John rubbed his forehead--

"It's a great relief to hear you say that, Christopher. I didn't know how we were going to get out of it. She was so determined this morning----"

He broke off--"You're _sure_ it won't do any harm?" he said again.

"I'm sure," said Christopher.

"There's something," Lord John went on again, "dreadfully on my mother's mind--She seems to feel that, in some way or other, she was responsible for his accident. I can't get at the bottom of it all and of course she won't tell me--she never tells me things. Perhaps you can get at it. I saw Rachel yesterday."

"Yes?"

"She's very fair about it all. Must be having a very hard time. She was glad to see me, I think, but--" he added a little wistfully--"I've never been anything to her since her marriage.

"She just seemed not to want me after that, and I'd been a good deal to her before. When one's getting old, Christopher, we old bachelors, we begin to notice that n.o.body wants us very much."

Christopher looked at him--Yes, John Beaminster had changed in the last year. Had he himself, he wondered, also changed?

"Yes," he said, smiling. "But I've been an old bachelor, Beaminster, for years and years and I see no likelihood of your ever being one. You get younger with every year, I believe."

"This accident to Roddy," John said slowly, as though he were thinking it all out, "has upset us all. It seems so terrible, happening to him ... much worse for him ... and then Rachel--But look here, I know you've got to go up to my mother, I won't keep you a minute--But there's a thing I've got to talk to you about--It's been on my conscience now for ages.... I've not known what to do ... at last I've made up my mind."

John Beaminster had made up his mind to do something that he hated! To Christopher perhaps more than to anyone else in the world this was a revelation of the most vital, the most moving interest--He had known John for so long, seen him struggling behind screens and curtains, hugging to himself the happy knowledge that to the very end he would be able to keep life from getting at him, and now behold! Life _had_ got at him, wag clutching him by the throat.

"It's about Frank"--at last he desperately brought out "I've made up my mind. I must go and see him--now, perhaps whilst mother is--is still suffering from the effects of Roddy's accident it wouldn't be wise perhaps to have him here actually in the house--But something must be done.... Adela agrees."

Adela agrees! Well, if the old woman upstairs.... Christopher was moved, as he had lately been often moved, by a swift stirring of pathos.

"You see, this War has upset us all so, has made one feel differently--And then he really does seem to have changed, been as quiet as anything all this time, and I hear that he's working at something sensible down in the City. I must go and see him----"

Then they hadn't heard, Christopher knew, of any rumours about Rachel and Francis.

Perhaps there _were_ no rumours, perhaps only in the mind of the old lady.... But then let John say a word to her about this visit to Breton and out she would come with it all.