Читать книгу Wintersmoon - Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole - Страница 12

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When Janet Grandison awakened on the morning after her acceptance of Wildherne Poole her first conscious sensation was one of indefinite, unsubstantiated fear.

She was afraid of something. Something had happened that would have for her appalling consequences. Her life was in danger, her sister's life was in danger.... She must act at once or ...

The dim room swung like water about her, then settled itself. The familiar furniture stepped out from the mist and solidly contemplated her. She raised her head, looked across the room at the open window, a fragment of grey smoky sky, a twisted and ironical chimney. The room was very cold, but she liked that. She was reassured by the fresh sharpness of the air. She knew. Last night she had accepted Wildherne Poole.

His figure appeared before her standing just in front of the window, his head cutting the segment of grey sky. He was there, and he was a stranger, and she was going to marry him. He was so completely a stranger to her that she could look at him with absolute detachment, admiring his fine carriage, his dignity, his aristocratic sedateness that would have been complacency had it not been so entirely unconscious. She had seen him many times, and yet she had never seen him before this morning. Her soul was looking upon him for the first time.

How could she have given her word? She must go at once to him and tell him that she had not meant what she had said. She sat up in bed, her heart thumping beneath her thin nightdress, the cold air assaulting her like a sharp remonstrance. She felt like an animal, trapped. What had she done? How could she have pledged herself?... Her normality rose like the shadow of an old friend reassuring her. There was no need for fear. What was life meant for if one was not to engage it boldly, challenge it; and what was one's own soul engaged upon if it shrank before circumstance? She had accepted Poole for reasons that were neither sudden nor ill-considered. And then again she shrank back. She had always been reserved, impersonal; her life had painted a background for others. Now she must step forward and take her place. She would be an important figure in the lives of many people. The world would watch her to see of what stuff she were made, she, Janet, whose soul had always been shy and reticent and uneloquent save only when love had stirred her.

And now she would play a part where love could not help her. She had dreamt of love in her girlhood, and perhaps if Rosalind had not possessed her so entirely she would have known by now what love—sexual love, married love—might be, but she had never known, and now, by this action, she had shut it out of her life for ever. Sexual love, yes. But there were other loves—love of friends, of beauty, of high deeds—all these were open to her. She could love the old Duke very easily—already she loved him perhaps. And for Wildherne—it might be that constant companionship with him would lead to comradeship, and comradeship to a kind of sisterly love. They would both be tranquilly happy, wise, sensible comrades. Wasn't that the way that marriages were made in France, and were they not more successful than our impetuous, hurried, romantic affairs that had no basis of real understanding?

She understood Wildherne Poole wonderfully. And he her. Their mutual confidence and honesty was a marvellous thing.

The telephone bell rang sharply from the other room. She slipped out of bed, looking at her watch as she did so. Nine o'clock! She had no idea that it was so late.

Old Mrs. Beddoes, who came in the mornings to clean up, was in the other room busy with the breakfast.

"I was wondering whether to wake you, Miss. I thought I'd leave Miss Rosalind. She's sound as sound. The telephone, Miss. I was just a-going to answer it myself."

Janet raised the receiver: "Yes?" she said. "Who is it?"

"Janet, is that you?"

It was Wildherne's voice. The colour mounted, flushed her forehead under her dark hair.

"Yes, Wildherne, good-morning."

"I do hope I'm not too early. I didn't wake you?"

"No, no. I've been awake some time."

There was a pause. She felt that she should say something. She was terribly conscious of Mrs. Beddoes.

His voice, level, kindly, unperturbed, went on:

"It is only that I have told my mother and father. They are so happy that it is good to see."

"I'm glad." Her voice trembled a little.

"They want you to come to luncheon to-day. Will you? I will come and fetch you."

"Of course. I will be delighted. What time?"

"I'll come about half-past twelve. We might walk, if you don't mind."

"Yes, I'll like that."

"All right. Half-past twelve. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, Wildherne."

She stood there staring in front of her. She was thinking of the Duke's happiness. That was one good thing that she had done, one splendid thing; she had made the finest old man in the country gloriously happy, and she would see that that happiness continued. If she were not happy herself, at least she could make others so.

And then, quite unexpectedly, happiness bubbled up in her own heart. She could be, on an instant, like a little child, naïve, pleased with the smallest thing, credulous, buoyant. That came from the simple sincerity of her character. She had always been much simpler than her sister.

After all, there would be very pleasant consequences of this affair—power and friends and comfort and ease from anxiety.

How often in that same little room she had stood there wondering whether she could surmount the difficulties that beat in upon herself and Rosalind, wondering too whether she were always to be alone, fighting her battles by herself without aid from anyone?... although there had been friends ... and one friend....

She went eagerly back to the telephone. Soon a sleepy voice murmured out of space: "Yes? Who's that?"

"Rachel, darling, I am so sorry to have wakened you. It's I, Janet. I have some news for you."

"Oh, Janet. Wait a moment. Now I'm awake. Anything the matter?"

"Well—not the matter exactly," Janet laughed. "It's only that last night Wildherne Poole proposed to me and I accepted him."

"Oh!" The little cry of delight pleased Janet, who laughed eagerly as though her friend were there in person in front of her. "You darling! Oh! I am so glad! How splendid! Splendid!... Wait, I'm coming straight round to you. In half an hour...."

"Yes, that's all right. I'm not going out. He's coming to fetch me at half-past twelve." She turned away from the telephone still smiling, then saw Mrs. Beddoes' eyes fixed on her in a kind of ecstasy.

"Excuse me, Miss. I oughtn't to have heard, but I couldn't 'elp it. Oh, miss, I am so glad! That's Lord Poole, ain't it, the Marquis of Poole? Oh, dear, I am glad. You must excuse me, Miss, but you've been so kind to me, giving Beddoes that introduction and everything, and sending Janie to the 'orspital, that it isn't in human nature for me not to show a bit of pleasure when luck comes your way. And it isn't as if I was a stranger to Lord Poole neither, because my sister-in-law goes to that very church, St. Anne's in Wolverton Street, where all the Duke's people goes to, and she's seen Lord Poole there many a Sunday, and a fine, 'andsome, well-set-up young gentleman he is, they tell me. Oh, I am glad, Miss, and so heveryone will be because a kinder-hearted lady than yourself no one's ever set eyes on, and that I'd declare if I was 'ad up for murderin' my 'usband. You deserve to be 'appy if anyone does."

Mrs. Beddoes did not often express her feelings, and in the morning was inclined to be morose and mournful.

This was pleasant.

"Thank you, Mrs. Beddoes. I hope you will come to the wedding."

"Indeed and I will, Miss." Then she sighed, her original nature returning upon her. "This will mean losing another job for me. Always losing jobs through no fault of my own. That's what Beddoes says: Why is it, he says, that you're so unlucky, he says; you're the unluckiest woman I ever come across, he says—and so I am. It's gospel truth."

"Well, we'll see," said Janet. "Who knows what will happen? There may be jobs better than this."

"There may be and again there mayn't," said Mrs. Beddoes, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. "You never know your luck, of course, but it's been my experience to find things always worse than they ought to be, and so it'll go on to the end, I expect. That's what they call fate."

Janet departed to have her bath and to dress. She was speedy in all her actions (dawdling was abhorrent to her), and soon she was back in the little sitting-room expecting to find Rosalind, very beautiful, and still in spite of her bath only half awake, pouring out dreamily the coffee. "She's dressed and gone out," Mrs. Beddoes explained. "Wouldn't 'ave her coffee. Said she was in a hurry. She's left that note."

The note was there perched against the silver tree that had been arranged in front of Janet's place, and the note said:

Darling—I'm in an awful hurry about something. Meant to have waked and didn't. Look at the tree as you drink your coffee and know that your wicked tiresome sister loves you and will let no Pooles whatsoever take her place.

Rosalind

Janet smiled. She took up the little tree and caressed its stiff green leaves with loving fingers. The silver buds sparkled even in the dull light of the grey morning. Mrs. Beddoes smiled appreciatively, "Why, that is a pretty thing, Miss, I must say. Awful dangerous to dust, though," and she disappeared into Rosalind's bedroom.

Janet sighed. Rosalind might have stayed just for ten minutes on this morning of all others. How characteristic it all was! The haste, the affection, her room left no doubt in hopeless disorder, secrecy, impetuosity, unkindness mingled with the kindness.

As always when Janet thought of her sister that love, hot, tyrannous, jealous, yearning, tender, angry, arose in her heart, causing her to forget everything else. Why does love burn the fiercer from unfulfilment, why so passionately desired the fruit that is just without our reach?

Her coffee unfinished, she rose and walked about the room. She had forgotten Wildherne as though he had never existed. What was Rosalind about? Why had she not told Janet her preoccupation? Why must she always be so secret? Did Janet ever lecture or scold her? Did she not always understand, and if she gave advice was she not always tender and kind?

No, not always. When you felt such love and watched the loved one pursuing something or someone unworthy, how could you quiet that agitation and fear? She had not always quieted it, and Rosalind feared those moods when Janet's eyes were sad and reproachful and her silences minatory.

The little bell rang. Janet went to the door, and there was her dearest best friend, Rachel Seddon.

Rachel came in, and the two women held each other in a long loving embrace; then Rachel kept Janet at arm's length.

"Let me look at you and see whether you're changed. Not a bit. But you will be. Oh, you darling, I am so glad." Rachel Seddon was a woman of fifty, old enough to be Janet's mother. Therein had lain some of the charm of their relationship; Rachel was mother, sister, and friend to one who deeply needed such affection. And yet Rachel was strange. As she stood there in her dark furs, even in this moment of emotion, she seemed remote, apart. It was perhaps the Russian blood in her, something sad and brooding behind her vitality and fun. Her life, she said, was over. Her husband, after a difficult early married life, she had come deeply to love (he crippled by a riding accident and so drawing out of her that maternity that was by far the most passionate element of her nature); after his death she had rebuilt her life around her son, but there too there was a remoteness and a final reserve. Tom was all English, all his father; some of his mother's nature was so foreign to him that she could not share it with him. She could not share it with any one, and in the very moment of intimate affection with Tom, Janet, Uncle John Beaminster, she would withdraw herself and they would fumble blindly for someone who was not there.

Janet knew this, and she knew also that there was another barrier between herself and her friend. Rachel did not like Rosalind, had never liked her. She would try to conceal it, and of course could not. Rosalind, instantly perceptive of all reactions to herself, had always known it. Rosalind did not care for those who did not appreciate her.

But in spite of this Janet loved Rachel more than any one else in the world, save only of course Rosalind.

Rachel had great influence over Janet; Janet was influenced only by those whom she could admire, and her own modesty and self-abnegation were so deep that she could admire easily. Even Rachel's dislike of Rosalind Janet could understand. Rosalind was never at her best with Rachel; Rachel did not understand her, Janet said, saw only her selfish, pleasure-loving side. That such a side existed was of course true; Janet was not blind about Rosalind. Her power over Rosalind would have been greater perhaps had she not seen Rosalind's faults so plainly.

The two friends sat down and talked, Rachel's hand in Janet's. Rachel liked him, Wildherne Poole, so much. She had known him for a long time and rather well. He was one of the kindest and most honourable of men. He and Janet were splendidly suited. They were alike in many ways, Rachel thought, and yet their differences were enough to make their lives together interesting and eventful.

Then a pause came, and Janet knew why it was there. But she could not speak to Rachel of this love affair of Wildherne's. She knew that it was of that that Rachel was thinking, and she knew that it would be of that that everyone in London would be thinking when the engagement was generally known. Only the old Duke and Duchess had heard nothing of it.

The little pause passed and conversation flowed again, but Janet knew that that extra pressure from Rachel's hand had meant: "Janet, dear, if you are ever in any trouble, if anything is ever too difficult for you, I am there. I am always at your side."

Then there was another thing. Rachel got up and, smiling at Janet, said:

"Tom is in love with Rosalind."

"I know," Janet said.

"We won't talk about it now. You have this other thing to think about. But sometime?..."

Then, with a little sigh, she added, "He's terribly in love, poor boy."

They talked for a little while about anything, nothing. Then, clinging together as though to assert against all the world and anything that it might do their mutual love, they parted.

The time passed swiftly. The little silver clock on the mantelpiece struck half-past twelve with so menacing a suddenness that Janet sprang from her writing-desk and stood waiting as though some voice had called her.

A moment later Wildherne Poole was in the room. He came straight to her and kissed her, not as though it were some duty that he must perform, but like a friend, someone who had known her all her life and cared for her dearly. That action seemed at once to establish their relation happily. She laughed, let her hand rest for a moment on the dark rough stuff of his coat, and said:

"Give me a moment. I'll have my things on and be back in no time. How punctual you are!"

When she came back in her dark furs (Rachel had given them to her two Christmases ago) and her little round blue hat he could have sighed with relief. She was fine in her height, her noble carriage, the good honesty of her eyes, the strength and humour of her mouth. He had known that she was, but from the moment of her acceptance of him the test that, almost against his will, he must apply to her had been twice as severe as before.

She would have much that she must do for him and his family. Would she be able to carry it off? He knew now, looking at her, that she would.

She too was reassured by his curly head of hair, the kindliness of his smiling eyes, the strength of chin and neck, the slimness and fine proportion of his body, something boyishly confident in his physical pose and something intellectually mature in his mental assurance—why was it, then, that she felt no love for him, no slightest stirring of the pulse, no eagerness, no physical response? Was it because she knew that he had none of this for her and her pride prevented her? No, she was aware how deeply she would have recoiled had there been any passion in his glance. There was only friendliness there, and that she could return to him, full measure and brimming over.

So, as friends, they walked off. London was London indeed that morning, like no other city in the world. The tang of the frost was still in the air; there was a thin slime of mud over roadway and pavement, ancient prehistoric mud as though in the night palæolithic monsters—dinosaurs and allosaurs—had invaded in vast clumsy cohorts the silent streets bringing their forest slime with them. Everything was thick, grey, and muffled. There was as yet no fog, but soon there would be; the snow was grey and dark, only shining from roof to roof dimly as though under thin moonlight. Some light glimmered in shop windows, and all sounds of traffic were hushed as though the world were straw-covered because of the mortal sickness of some God. So to-day; and yet to-morrow the sun would return and all the town glitter in a network of silver filagree. Eternal beauty and wonder of the London moods—a city where ghosts and living men are both sheltered by that friendly spirit so that time says nothing here. Buildings are for ever rising and falling, streets for ever disappearing, but the kindly London God stretches his colossal legs, murmurs sleepily his blessing, and all his children are included in his giant embrace.

Wildherne and Janet walked briskly, a splendid pair.

Janet, wisely, chose at once the impersonal mood that was safe for them both.

"Wildherne, I want you to tell me everything about Halkin Street. Of course I have been there again and again, but it was always from outside. You have all been sweet to me, but of course I wasn't one of you. Now I am to be, and you must tell me certain things."

He was grateful to her for striking so exactly the right note.

"I'll tell you anything you want to know. Ask your questions."

"Well, there are your mother and father. Then who else is there permanently?"

"Permanently? Let me see. There is Miss Crabbage, mother's secretary—very important. There is Hunt, father's secretary—not so important. There's Hignett, family butler, factotum, friend. If you are ever in a difficulty ask Hignett, he has more common sense than all of us. There is the Reverend Charles Pomeroy of St. Anne's—very important. There is my aunt Alice Purefoy—more important than you would fancy. There is Dick Beresford, father's land-agent, not up in town very much but important anyway. There is Caroline Marsh, mother's protégée. I don't like her, and you won't either. Watch her. She's dangerous. These are the permanents, I think, and of these Miss Crabbage, Charles Pomeroy, and Caroline Marsh matter most. Pomeroy is a good fellow, sincere and true. But watch the two women. Their lives depend on their power with my mother. If you threaten that they'll try to make trouble."

"If they don't make trouble between you and me," Janet said, "it isn't very serious."

"Ah, but it may be." Wildherne answered her more gravely than she had expected. "This Halkin Street life is very queer. You'll see when you get into it more deeply. I love my father passionately, and so he loves me, but my mother has always had a strange jealousy of us both—of his love for me and mine for him. My mother is not a clever woman, but she is deeply acquisitive. She wants to have everything absolutely for herself. She would cut herself to pieces for my father or myself, but she is not clever enough—she has never been clever enough to understand either of us. Don't think me unkind in this. I love my mother, but I find her very irritating to be with because she wants so much more of everything than she will ever have. My father has been escaping from her again and again all his life, and then reproaching himself for unkindness to her and so being over-tender and good to her. But still always escaping her, and she knows that. You have to pay her attention and deference, not because she is a vain woman, but because she is always wishing to be reassured of her power over people, a power of which she is never truly secure, as she knows.

"She is a strange woman, my mother. Apparently slow, unintelligent, conventional, and then, when you least expect it, dominating and overwhelming. The whole problem of Halkin Street and much of the problem of my life revolves round my mother's personality, and that is why I am emphasising her."

"I understand," Janet said in a low voice, following her own thoughts. "She is a lonely woman. She has never had either the power or the love that she wanted."

"Ah, but"—Wildherne broke in—"you mustn't judge my father in that. He loves her deeply, and has always done so. He understands her too, better than any of us and, in her heart, she knows it. She need not be lonely. She would not be if she did not want so much more than any human being has ever been given on this earth, or ever will be."

He was silent a moment as they crossed Sloane Street, then went on again: "You have seen, of course, how tremendous a part religion plays with us at home. Church of England religion, Mr. Pomeroy, St. Anne's, and so on through a network of charities, societies, meetings and assemblies. The difference between my father and my mother in this is that my father is a saint by the grace of God. He has the religious beliefs of a little child, but they are utterly real to him—they make him the happy, tranquil, gentle person he is. Many of the Church affairs bore him. He does his part for my mother's sake, but his religion is something deep within himself, something about which he is almost shy. My mother is quite different. She loves all the offices of the Church. She adores services and meetings, all the paraphernalia of the external world of the Church of England. That is where Miss Crabbage has her power. She has all these things at her fingers' ends; she manipulates with extraordinary skill. She is like a great general sitting in his tent, his maps before him, officers coming in and out for directions. She is a remarkable person, Miss Crabbage.

"Remember another thing," he went on. "As you must have noticed before now, my mother takes everything literally. She has no sense of humour either about herself or others. What you say you mean, and by what you say you'll be judged."

"I'm frightened," Janet said, putting out her hand and touching his arm. "This is all terrifying."

He laughed and drew her arm through his. "It isn't terrifying, because we're friends, because I shall stand by you through thick and thin, as you will by me. And you start with immense advantages. They have longed that I should marry, and that I should marry just such a one as yourself. We are gratifying their dearest wish. My mother thinks the world of you, and you will perhaps be able to do for her what no one else has been able to do."

"Oh, I will try! I will try!" Janet whispered. "Indeed I will do my best!" They were there. The dark, heavy, faded door of the Halkin Street house faced Janet as it had often faced her before, but now, waiting in front of it, her emotions were different from any that she had ever known. When that door opened her new life would begin, begin far more truly than with her acceptance of Wildherne. He scarcely seemed to count for her as she stood there, truly terrified, waiting for her fate.

And yet when it did open and she saw in the doorway the cheerful rosy face of the young footman (brought up probably from the place in Wiltshire), and behind him the dark stony hall so familiar to her with its vast silly-faced clock, its red picture of an eighteenth-century Romney, its dark shadows and dusky piece of tapestry, she was at home. Cold, shabby, echoing house, so bare and naked here, so overcrowded there, so destitute of all taste and artistic feeling and yet with so strong a personality, so untouched by new crazes, fashions and habits, and yet so threatening in its survival to the flimsiness of this chaotic post-war age—she understood it, she knew how to approach it, she belonged to it as she could never belong to Clara Paget's black and yellow bedroom or Althea Bendersley's drawing-room of cubist reds and blues.

In the dusk of the hall Hignett waited—Hignett, stout, round-faced, impersonal, thick in the legs, back, and brain, reactionary, snob, drawing-room slave and kitchen tyrant, faithful, conceited, ill-educated, intolerant, perfect servant and loyal friend of his master. And of his master's son. His face lighted when he saw Wildherne as it but seldom lighted for anyone. The Duke, Wildherne, his own child Thomas Edward (aged eight) were for him the three perfect beings. He despised women (his wife most emphatically included), all other servants; he hated Socialists, Bolshevists, Communists, and the clergy. He had no friends. He wanted none. He had saved a large sum of money, but he would never retire until Wildherne, in his own time as Duke, dismissed him.

He adored Wildherne. He would sacrifice every human being alive on the earth's surface in one vast holocaust (save only Thomas Edward) to please Wildherne. He loved him more, far more, than he had ever loved any woman. He hated especially Miss Crabbage, and between himself and her there was pursued always an unceasing underground warfare. These various emotions were visible to no one. He never showed temper, surprise, disappointment, affection (save only to Thomas Edward), greed. His wife, a thin-faced sour woman who lived with the child in some dim street in Bloomsbury, knew nothing about him but loved him. He was not faithful to her, but she realised that his emotions towards women were ephemeral, trivial, and accidental.

Very little of the soul of Hignett was known to anybody. He was to be of great importance in Janet's life. His love of and fidelity to Wildherne she would one day know, know in a dark hour when she needed that knowledge.

Lastly, there was nothing about Wildherne of which Hignett was not aware. Wildherne on his side knew that Hignett was a devoted servant, but that the man cared for him personally never occurred to him. The man was devoted because he had been brought up on the Wintersmoon estate, had a feudal sense, was paid well, knew when he was well off. Moreover, all the servants worshipped the Duke. Of course they did. How could they help it? So much for Hignett.

When Janet passed into the long green drawing-room she saw three women standing by the wide open fireplace—the little, short, dumpy one the Duchess, the tall thin one with pince-nez Miss Crabbage, and the fluffy flaxen one Caroline Marsh.

The old Duchess, mother of the present Duke, had known a spasm of artistic emotion, and under the influence of that emotion had covered the long drawing-room with Morris wallpaper. Now that paper, green and faded, displaying when closely studied the unending pursuit by three elegant horsemen of a fleeing deer, was the background for Victorian water-colours in heavy gold frames and two enormous oil portraits of the last Duke and Duchess in the gorgeous splendour of Court display. The long room was studded, as is the Ægean Sea by its islands, with gilt furniture. The high windows looked out into Halkin Street.

There was very real emotion in the Duchess's voice as she came forward, embraced Janet, and murmured: "Welcome, dear Janet, to your new home," and then in the funny, husky whisper that was so especially hers and suggested nothing so much as a kettle on the boil: "We are so glad. We are so happy. Nothing could have been better."

Had the Duchess ever been vain (she had never been so) she would have worn very high-heeled shoes and dieted madly. Years ago when the Duke married her she was pretty in a yellow blue-eyed canary kind of way. In those days what she lost in height she saved in aristocratic bearing, being the eldest daughter of Lord Medley, whose wife, as everyone knows, was for so long lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria.

Now she was dumpy and shapeless, with pale blue eyes, no eyebrows to speak of, and a strange round saucer of grey hair that stood over her puckered face like a turban. But her aristocratic bearing was still there. She never of course actively considered her ancestry, her present position—those were things too familiar to be thought of—but she was exceedingly quick to recognise anything that savoured of impertinence or discourtesy. Many a visitor ere now, resting happily on the easy and almost fraternal kindness of the Duke, had been arrested sharply by the sudden remote distinction of the Duchess. That turban of grey hair made up quite sufficiently for the absence of eyebrows, and those eyes, now so dimly blue, could be of a sudden terrible as daggers.

But Janet was of her world, and to-day nothing could be fine enough for her. The Duchess took her off to a little gilt sofa near the window, held her hand in her soft boneless fingers, and spoke straight from her heart. This thing had made her happy as nothing had ever made her happy before. Although she had not heard directly of Wildherne's so famous intrigue, she was nevertheless more in the world than was the Duke, and whispers, murmurs of something, anything, had come to her ears.

Always she had been haunted by the fear that he, their only child, the true hope of the world, would marry someone unworthy. In these dreadful godless democratic days anybody might marry anybody. And now, after all her fears, he had chosen of all the young women she knew the one whom perhaps she herself preferred. A marvellous, marvellous piece of luck and fortune, and now, as she looked at the girl so tall, so graceful, so perfectly at ease and in her right place, she was more than ever reassured. Moreover, the girl would be easy to dominate. She had been poor, struggling, with scarcely enough to eat; she would be so grateful for everything, so ready to fall into any plans, to do what she was told, to follow her mother-in-law's lead.

"Yes, when Wildherne told us last night it seemed as though our most anxious prayers had been answered. You can understand, dear Janet, our only boy, and the Duke and myself the age we are. Before we went we wanted...." Her little fat underlip trembled. Tears swam in her blue eyes. She was deeply moved. Janet also. Nothing stirred her like the need for affection. She felt always so intensely for lonely and unhappy and uncared-for people. The Duchess was, most truly, not lonely nor unhappy nor uncared-for, but at this moment her religious and her family feelings were both deeply stirred. She was therefore quite sincere.

"... As Mr. Pomeroy said this morning, we must from our hearts thank God for His goodness. It is to Him that we all owe this happiness."

At this moment the door at the far end of the room opened and the Duke, followed by Mr. Pomeroy, entered. Janet rose and, moving to Wildherne, walked with him towards his father.

As she was seeing, to-day, Wildherne, the house, the Duchess in a new and more personal light, so now she saw the Duke. He was a short thick-set man with a square-cut beard and hair of snow white. His sturdiness of figure and something of freedom in his walk would have given him a country air had it not been for the perfect cut of his London clothes—his black coat and waistcoat, his pepper-and-salt trousers, his high white collar widely open at the neck, and the thick gold ring that encircled his black tie. But you did not notice these things, his glow of health, his exquisite neatness, and his emphatic sturdiness—you saw only the kindliness, modesty, utter unself-consciousness that shone from his eyes and formed the lines of the mouth above the beard. He had not, perhaps, in his youth been handsome, his nose was too snub, his mouth too irregular; the character of his life had through the actions and thoughts of his seventy years written itself in his face.

Had he not come so late in life to the Dukedom, and had there been in him some element of ruthlessness or vanity or selfish ambition, he would have made more stir in the world. He had never figured in the public life of his country, he shrank from the personalities and falsities of politics, he was still a child in his perception of modern moralities and standards (or absence of them), but he was not a child in his wide tolerance, his warm charity, his negation of self. He had lived always for those he loved, his wife, his child, his tenantry, his servants, some friends. Above all for his religion, about which he rarely spoke and never argued. Unlike his wife he did not care of what sect anyone might be so that God was a reality; atheists, materialists he did not understand, but was sure that one day they would find the way. In God's good time everyone would find the way. "Not a sparrow ..."

He adored Wildherne. The boy had never given him a moment's unhappiness. He had sometimes wished that he were more practical and business-like, because one day, now not so distant, all the Wintersmoon estates must come into his hands, and in these days land was not easy, but he had carefully placed near him wise, honest, and capable men—Beresford the land-agent, Charles Robinson the family solicitor, and Lord Garnet, at one time Attorney-General and the Duke's oldest and closest friend.

These men would look after the boy when he himself was gone, and see that he came to no harm. And now Wildherne had done the one thing that, above all things, he had desired. He had not been anxious about Wildherne's choice as the Duchess had been; he was sure that his taste and fine feeling would guide him right, but of all the young women in London he liked Janet Grandison the best. He had felt from the beginning a father's affection for her, and now in very truth he was in that relation to her.

So now he came to her and caught her into his arms and kissed her. Afterwards he rested his hands on Wildherne's shoulders and, turning to the room in general, said: "You may as well all know—this is the happiest day of my life."

It was intended to be a family luncheon, and Mr. Pomeroy had for long been one of the family. He was an austere, dark, tall man, very neat and straight and silent. His sermons had made St. Anne's the most fashionable church in London; he was immensely in request at social functions, ladies worshipped him, he had large private means, and a house filled with beautiful things. Nevertheless he was entirely sincere and faithful in his religion. He was not an ascetic, although he looked like one. He liked beautiful women and good food and wine and pictures and music, but he cared for God more than any of these, and would have given them, all of them, up immediately had he felt that God wished him to do so. He did not feel that God wished it. He gave away half his income to charity, worked like a slave at his duties, neglected nothing—and then enjoyed his Pissarros and Gauguins (he had one tiny one), his month's holiday on the Riviera, and the chamber music that Lady Pounder had at 12 Brook Street every Tuesday evening in the season.

He had no interest in intrigue or gossip or the manipulation of ecclesiastical strings. He left people like Miss Crabbage to do those things for him. He was the Duchess's best friend.

Hignett said that luncheon was ready. They went in.

Janet had always felt this dining-room to be the coldest and most uncomfortable room in London. The walls were papered with squares of black and white imitation marble; half a dozen portraits hung in gold frames of a desperate heaviness. The elephantine marble mantlepiece supported a huge clock of black marble, and between the two windows was a marble bust of the late Duke in a Gladstonian collar and a marble watch-chain. The high thick curtains that framed the windows were of a dull lustreless red.

To-day this room depressed her desperately. It seemed to step forward and say to her: "You were pleased and flattered by their welcome of you in that other room. But make no mistake, this is the life that you will have to lead. This room holds the Halkin Street atmosphere. It is here that you will be imprisoned."

The slightly chilled clear soup, water and fragments of carrot, the heavy silver fruit-dish that blinked at her from the centre of the table, the soft restrained movements of the two footmen, all these things to which she was so thoroughly accustomed seemed to have some extra meaning to-day for her. She was sitting on the Duke's right hand; on her other side was Mr. Pomeroy, and opposite to her Wildherne, but, oddly enough, it was the women of whom she was so especially conscious.

Or perhaps it was not odd. Any other woman would at that moment have felt the same. She had always been on good terms with Miss Crabbage, but she did not like her, and Caroline Marsh she had been tempted to despise. There was a sycophant if you liked, with her pale fluffy hair, her bad streaky complexion, her clumsy figure, and her swimming eyes fixed always eagerly on the Duchess's face, ready to agree with everything, to anticipate the slightest wish, to yield up compliment or reassurance or consolation the instant that it was demanded. But, poor child! Was it not natural for her to be sycophantic? The Duchess had found her, a miserable, frightened little governess to a band of noisy impertinent children and, her heart touched, had brought her to Halkin Street and to Wintersmoon that she might read to her, run messages, be at hand on any and every occasion. Was it not natural enough that this girl should be watching Janet with apprehension, almost with terror? If this wife of Lord Poole's did not like her what might she not do, she with her power over both the Duke and the Duchess? Poor girl. Janet would like to reassure her. Soon she would do so, would tell her that there was nothing to fear, that she had made another friend. Friend? No! There was something about those weak watery eyes, that loose supplicating mouth, that would make friendship impossible.

As the meal progressed Janet recovered some of her confidence. Her neighbourhood to the Duke warmed her. Strange but true, and something to be faced by her, that she loved the father more than the son. There was some pulse of excitement in her thought of the Duke, over seventy though he was; he was so fine, so noble, and so handsome, with his white hair, his clear skin, his sturdy body. She was his daughter now, and oh! she was proud of him! He turned and, bowing, raised his glass of wine to her. His other hand closed on hers, and it thrilled her to feel how warm and strong his grasp was.

"Janet, your health. And yours, Wildherne. Many, many happy years for you both."

They all stood up, and Janet and Wildherne, sitting, were isolated. They looked into one another's eyes. Perhaps with both of them there was the same thought: "We are cheating these old people. They think that we love one another and we do not. We are marrying each other for a reason of convenience. We mean to make the very best of this, for you as well as for ourselves, but it is not the glorious romantic affair that you fancy."

It was this recognition that drove her, afterwards, as though she was in a way putting all her cards on the table, to mention her sister:

"You haven't asked about Rosalind," she said, turning to the Duke.

"Ah, Rosalind," he answered, smiling. "No. I hope we are going to see her here very soon. How is the beautiful Rosalind? You know, I think she is the prettiest girl in London by far. I don't see a very great many, but however many I saw I should still think Rosalind the prettiest."

"You must bring her," the Duchess echoed, "to see us as soon as ever you can. What about luncheon to-morrow—or let me see, Mr. Pomeroy, isn't it to-morrow you wanted to bring Mr. Brixham and Mrs. Forster in connection with the Agatha Guild? Was it to-morrow? I forget."

"Oh, your Grace," Mr. Pomeroy answered, "any of these next days would do. There is no desperate hurry."

"It is rather important," Miss Crabbage broke in, addressing Mr. Pomeroy, "that the Duchess should see Mrs. Forster as soon as possible. That Agatha Bazaar is on the 22nd, and they are so anxious that the Duchess should be there that evening and just open it for them. And naturally the Duchess wishes to hear from Mrs. Forster first exactly ..." She had a habit of dealing terrific emphasis out to certain words as though she were hitting them on the head with a hammer.

"But really I think it's not so urgent," Mr. Pomeroy murmured. "Mrs. Forster can come any time, can she not?"

"I don't quite agree with you," remonstrated Miss Crabbage. "There is so little time, you see. Almost none at all, and if ..."

Her voice always died into a murmur. The Duchess adored these little struggles over her so-to-speak recumbent body. She always waited for a while to see how things were going, and then sprang up to settle everything with a dominating word.

"Mr. Brixham and Mrs. Forster can come on Wednesday, Miss Crabbage. Do bring Rosalind to luncheon to-morrow, Janet, dear. We shall be so pleased to see her."

All this disturbance and then, perhaps after all, Rosalind might refuse to come. Rosalind had no liking for meals at Halkin Street. However, at this important time ...

"Thank you so much. I'm sure she'll love to come."

And, after all, in a corner of the drawing-room she had her word with the Duke. He put his arm through hers, and drew her to him so that they stood, body and soul, together.

"My dear, I'm over seventy. I have done nothing in my life to deserve that the desire of it should be granted like this. I have always loved you. I have watched you more than you have known. I have watched your courage, your unselfish devotion to others, your loyalty, the fun you've extracted from such little things. I have been proud of you. I have never said anything to Wildherne. I scarcely dared hope that it would be you of all others he would choose. But he has shown his wisdom. I'm proud of him too. But I only want to tell you, my dear, that as long as I live, and that may not be for very long, if there is any trouble of any kind in which an old man, who has known many sides of life, can help and advise you, he will give up everything to do so. God bless you, my dear child, and keep you in His charge and save you from all harm."