Читать книгу The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death - Hugh Walpole - Страница 17

Uncle John held only for a moment Rachel's attention. No single person now, but rather a gorgeous pattern that the whole evening was weaving about her. She saw the lights, she heard the music, she felt the movement of her body, she gathered through a haze of happiness the faces of her uncles and Aunt Adela and others whom she knew, but now for the first time in her life she knew what happiness, happiness without thought, or doubt, or foreboding could be.

Thus it was that she came to Roddy Seddon, who was certainly enjoying himself: this, however, was not the first ball of his life nor even, if all the truth were known, his best. He had expected it to be solemn and sedate—you could not hope to find here the jolly kind of dance that they had had at the Menets', for instance, last week; that would not be possible in a Beaminster household.

It was all, to be honest, a little old-fashioned. Things were moving a bit faster nowadays. Waltzes and Lancers were all very well, but one might have had a cotillon, something unexpected! However, May Eversley and one or two other girls had had the right kind of go about them. He smiled a little and tugged at his short bristling yellow moustache, and then discovered that it was time to take Rachel Beaminster down to supper.

This event was of more than ordinary interest to him. He was perfectly aware that most of his friends and relatives thought that it would be a very good thing for him to marry Rachel Beaminster. He was, himself, not scornful of this idea.

He was thirty-two, and it was time that Seddon Court in Sussex had a mistress; his life had been varied and exciting and it was right now that he should make some ties. There were a number of other reasons in favour of his marrying.

As to Rachel Beaminster, she was not pretty, but she was interesting. She was unusual; moreover she was a Beaminster, and an alliance with that ancient family would be, past dispute, a magnificent alliance. But the element in it all that intrigued him most was the fact that nobody could tell him anything about Rachel, even May Eversley who knew her so well was not sure about her. "You'll go on being surprised," she had said.

Surprise, indeed, was waiting for him this evening. On the few occasions that he had seen Rachel he had seen her grave, shy, a little awkward, most reserved. Now she met him as though she had known him for years, glowing, almost pretty, so burning were her eyes. At supper she laughed, called across the room to May, agreed with everything that everybody said, and with it all was younger than any girl that he had ever known. The girls who were Roddy's friends talked about life at times more boldly than he would have talked with his men friends, and were, at all events, for ever hinting at the things that they knew.

Rachel hinted at nothing; she kept nothing back, she allowed him no disguises.

"Oh! don't I wish," she cried, "that this night could go on for ever just like this"—and he, taking the compliment to himself, agreed with her. He had expected to find someone haughty and cold, a young Aunt Adela with a dash of foreign temper.

He found someone entirely delightful. Afterwards, when they sat out on a balcony overlooking Portland Place, he was encouraged to talk about himself.

"I like all this, you know," he said, waving his hand at the grey mysterious street that the pale lamps so mournfully guarded. "I like this air comin' along from the park. I'm all for the open, Miss Beaminster—horses and dogs and rushin' along with the wind at your back. It's a rippin' little place I've got down in Sussex. I hope you'll see it one day—old as anything, with jolly Roman roads and such hangin' around, and the most spiffin' lot of gees. Look, the sun will be gettin' above the houses soon. I've seen some sunrises in my day. You ought to be on the Downs at night, Miss Beaminster."

Roddy was surprised at himself at the way that he was talking, but she really looked quite beautiful there in the window with her dark hair and her eyes and white dress.

"I can't tell you," she said, when it was time for them to part, "how much all you say interests me. I love horses too, and I adore dogs–"

"I've got a dog I'd like you to have," he began. "It's a–"

"Oh no," she answered. "Aunt Adela would never let me keep one here. Thank you all the same. But you'll let me come down to Seddon Court one day, won't you?"

"Let you!" Roddy could find no words.

She flung one glance at the square, where the dawn was beginning, and then was back in the ballroom again, dancing, dancing, dancing....

The sky was all pink above the roofs, and the birds were making a whirl of chattering, when her bedroom received her again.

Her maid was sleepy but proud.

"They all say it's been a great success, Miss Rachel."

"Success!" She stood for a moment in the middle of the room with her arms extended. "Oh! It's been glorious, glorious. I've never–"

She paused. Her arms fell to her sides—"Oh! Dr. Chris! Dr. Chris! He never came—he said that he mightn't be able. It was the only thing that was wrong"—Then more slowly, as she moved to her dressing-table—"And all the last part I never missed him."

"Well, I dare say," said Lucy, standing behind Rachel's chair and staring at the white face in the mirror, "that with his patients and the rest he couldn't get away–"

"Oh! But I ought to have missed him," said Rachel, and afterwards, lying in bed, sleepless with excitement, it was Dr. Christopher's face that she saw.