Chapter XIII: Defiance of the Tiger--Ii

I

Roddy, dozing after a night of glorious sleep, lay on his back and swung happily to and fro.

The footman who was valeting him had pulled up the blind and drawn aside the curtains, and the garden came to him, not as on last evening, weighed with its canopy of stars, but now asserting its own happiness and colour and freshness.

The man said: "The bathroom is the last door down the passage on your right, sir. Breakfast is at half-past nine. It has just gone eight. What clothes, sir?"

Roddy stared at him and smiled. After a little time, the man enquired again: "Which suit will you wear this morning, sir?"

"Dark blue." Roddy, still happily floating somewhere near the ceiling--floating with delicious lightness--"Dark blue--Dark blue--Dark blue----"

For a little while the man, a strange vague shape, pulled out drawers and closed them and walked about the floor, like Agag, delicately. Roddy, from the ceiling watched him and resented the fact that every sharp click of a drawer pulled him nearer to the carpet.

The man's final shutting of the bedroom door plumped Roddy into his bed, wide awake.

"Damn him! What a wonderful day!"

He lay back and watched how waves of light danced on the walls. A fountain splashed in the gardens and the long mirror on the right of the bed had in it the corner of the green lawn and the cool grey stones of an old wall.

Roddy lay on his back and allowed his sensations to run up and down his body. It was for moments such as this that his life was intended. He lived, deliberately and without any selfishness in the matter, for the emotions that the good old god Pan might choose to provide for him.

He did not know Pan by name except as a silly fancy dress that Monty Carfax had once worn at a fancy-dress dance and as Someone alluded to every now and again, vaguely, in the papers, but even though he did not call him by name he, nevertheless, paid, without question, his daily homage.

When, as on this beautiful morning, one had only to lie down and be instantly conscious of a thousand things--sheep moving slowly across hills, cattle browing in deep pools, those Downs that he loved rising, slowly, like aged men, to greet a new day--then one questioned nothing, one argued nothing, one needed no words, one was happy from the crown of one's head to the toes of one's feet.

On this especial morning these delights were connected with the fact that, during the day, he intended to propose marriage to Rachel Beaminster. He thought of her, now, as she had looked last night, sitting in that wood, in a pale blue dress, with the stars behind her, staring, so seriously, down into the garden. She had been very beautiful last night, and it had been a splendid moment--not more splendid than other moments that he had had, but splendid enough to remember.

He was always prepared for the necessity of the short duration of his sensations. He had discovered, when he was very young, that nothing lasted and that the things that lasted the shortest time were generally the best things, and therefore he had, quite unconsciously, trained himself to store his memory with splendid moments; now, although he had no memory at all for any sort of facts or books or histories, he could recall precisely, in all their forms and colours, scenes, persons, adventures that had, at any time, thrilled him.

He could remember days; once when, as a little boy, he had been overtaken by night on the Downs and had sheltered in a deserted house, black and evil, that had, he afterwards discovered, been, in the eighteenth century, a private mad-house; once when the sea had been green and purple, the sky black, and he had discovered a star-fish for the first time (very young on that occasion); once when his horse had run away with him and the danger had been exceeded by the glorious speed through the air ... many, many others, all to be counted by him to their very least detail, and now, of some of them, Rachel Beaminster was the central figure.

He had had relations of many kinds with many different women and never until now had he supposed, for an instant, that these relations would be permanent. Even now, although he was intending to marry Rachel Beaminster, he was not so foolish as to imagine that the freshness and novelty of the feeling that he now had for her would last more than a very short time.

Quite deliberately he treasured up in his mind a thousand pictures of her, as he had seen her during the last two months, so that when the time came for seeing her no longer in that way, he would have his memories: there was the time of her first ball, all excitement and happiness, the day at her uncle's when she had looked at him over the top of the fans, the night at the opera when she had been so angry with him, last night--

She had, through all this time, remained elusive. He did not know her, could not reconcile one inconsistency with another--but he thought that she cared about him and would marry him.

He had always known that he must one day marry. That necessity was, in no way, connected with the emotional side of him, it rather had its relationship with the common sense of him, the part that believed in the Beaminsters and all their glory.

He must marry because Seddon Court must have a mistress, because he himself must have children, because he would like to have someone there to be kind to. That need in him for bestowing kindness upon someone was always most urgent, and all sorts of animals and all sorts of persons had shared it--now one person would have it all. He could not bear to hurt anyone or anything, and the crises of his life were provided by those occasions when, in the delight of one of his emotional moments, hurting somebody was involved--there was always then a conflict.

He knew that it was just here that the Duchess failed to understand him. She liked hurting people and expected him to be amused when she told him little stories about her having done so. He had now a kind of dim feeling that it was because the Duchess hoped that he was going to hurt Rachel that she had prosecuted so strenuously his marriage.

He trusted with all his heart that he would never hurt Rachel, he intended always to be very, very kind to her; it was indeed a thousand pities that the present quality of his attitude to her must, like all attitudes, eventually change.

But he was always--he was sure of this--going to be good to her and give her everything that the mistress of Seddon Court should have.

At the same time, vaguely, he wished that the old Duchess had had nothing to do with this; sometimes he wondered whether the side in him that found pleasure in her was really natural to him.

Whenever he thought of her, she, in some way, confused his judgment and made life difficult.

She was doing that now....

II

When he came down to breakfast he found that he was the last. He sat next to Nita Raseley and was conscious, after a little time, that she was behaving with a certain reserve. He had known her in the kind of way that he knew many people in his own set in London, pleasantly, indifferently, without curiosity. She had, however, attracted him sometimes by the impression that she gave him that she was too young to know many men, but, however long she lived, would never find anyone as splendid as he: she had certainly never been reserved before. Finally he realized that she expected to hear of his engagement to Rachel Beaminster at any moment. "Well, so she will," he thought, smiling to himself. Meanwhile he avoided Rachel quite deliberately.

He was now self-conscious about her and did not wish to be with her until he could ask her to marry him. No more uncertainty was possible. He felt, not frightened, but excited, just as he would feel were he about to ride a dangerous horse for the first time.

He seized, with relief, upon the proposal of church; he wanted the morning to pass; his prayer was that she would not walk to church with him, because he had now nothing to say to her except the one thing. When he heard that she was staying behind and walking with Nita Raseley he was surprised at his own sense of release.

Lady Adela was kind to him this morning in a sort of motherly way and apparently seized on his going to church as an omen of his future married happiness.

"They're all waiting to hear," he said to himself.

They were to walk across the park to the little village church, and when they set out he was conscious that Lord John, like a large and amiable bird, was hovering about him: finally, Lord John, nervous apparently, most certainly embarrassed, settled upon him.

"Going to church, aren't you, Roddy?"

"Yes, Beaminster."

"Well, let's strike off together, shall we?"

Roddy liked Lord John best of the Beaminster brothers; the Duke he could not endure and Lord Richard was so superior, but Johnny Beaminster was as amiable as an Easter egg and fond of race meetings and pretty women, and not too dam' clever--in fact, really, not clever at all.

But Johnny Beaminster embarrassed was another matter and Roddy found soon that this embarrassment led to his own confusion.

Lord John flung out little remarks and little whistles because of the heat and little comments upon the crops. He obviously had something that he very much wanted to say--"Of course," thought Roddy, "this is something to do with Rachel--he's very fond of Rachel."

Although Johnny Beaminster had not, in strict accuracy, himself the reputation of the whitest of Puritans, yet Roddy wondered whether perhaps he were not now worrying over some of Roddy's past history, as rumoured in London society.

"Doesn't want his girl to be handed over to a reg'lar Black Sheep, shouldn't wonder," thought Roddy, and this led him to rather indignant consideration of the confusion of the Beaminster mind and its muddled moralities.

The walk to the church was not very long, but it became, towards the close of it, quite awful in its agitation.

"Dam' hot," said Lord John.

"Very," said Roddy.

"Wouldn't wonder if this weather broke soon----"

"Quite likely."

"Makes you hot walking to church this hour of the morning."

"Yes--don't it? Farmers will be wantin' rain pretty badly. Down at my little place they tell me it's dried up like anythin'----"

"Reg'lar Turkish bath----"

"Well, the church ought to be cool----"

"You never know with these churches----"

Roddy thought "He's afraid of his old mother. Doesn't want me to marry Rachel, but he's afraid of his old mother."

"Massiter's getting fat----" This was Lord John's contribution.

"Yes--so's that novelist feller----"

"Oh! Garden! Yes--ever read anything of his?"

"Never a line. Never read novels."

"Not bad--good tales, you know."

"He's probably," Roddy thought, "had a row with the old lady about me----"

Then, strangely enough, the notion hit him--"Wish it was he wanted me to marry Rachel and the Duchess didn't--Wish she didn't, by Gad."

As they entered the church Roddy might have seen, had he been gifted in psychology, that there was in Lord John's face the look of a man who had fought a battle with his dark angel and been, alas, defeated.

III

After luncheon Roddy said:

"Miss Beaminster, come for a walk?"

"A little way," she said, looking at him with her eyes in that straight direct way that she had.

"She must know," said Roddy to himself, "that I'm going to do it now. They all know. It's awful!"

Some of the others had gathered together under a great oak that shaded the central lawn, and now as he climbed the hill with his capture he felt that from beneath that tree many eyes watched them.

They did not go very far. At the top of the hill, above the little wood and the gardens and the house, there was a grassy hollow, and under this grassy hollow a great field of wheat, a sheet of red-gold with sudden waves and ripples in it as though some hand were shaking it, ran down to the valley.

"Let's stop here," Rachel said. "I was out all this morning with Nita Raseley and it's too hot for any exertion whatever."

A tree shaded them and they sat down and watched corn.

"What sort of a girl do you think she is--Nita Raseley, I mean?" asked Rachel.

"Oh! I don't know--the ordinary kind of girl--why?"

"She seems to want to know me. Says that she hasn't many friends. Is that true? I thought she had heaps----"

"You never can tell with girls. You're all so uncertain about one another--devoted one moment and enemies the next."

"Are we?" said Rachel slowly. "I don't think I'm like that--Oh! how hot it is!" She lay back against the grass with her arms behind her head.

"Do you like me?" Roddy said suddenly.

"I?... You!"

She slowly sat up and he saw at once that she knew now what he was going to say. At that moment, sitting there, staring at him, with her breasts moving a little beneath her white dress and her hands pressing flatly against the grass, in her agitation and the look in her eyes of some suddenly evoked personality that he did not know at all she was more elusive to him than she had ever been--

She was frightened--and also glad--but the change in her from the girl he had known all the summer was so startling that he felt that he was about to propose to someone he had never seen before.

"Do I like you?" she repeated slowly, and her lips parted in a smile.

"Yes," he said, looking at her hands that seemed to belong to the earth into which they were pressing--"Because I want you to marry me----"

The moment of her surprise had come before--now she only said very quietly--

"Why--what do you know about me?"

"I know--enough--to ask you," he said, stumbling over his words. He was now afraid that, after all, she intended to refuse him, and the terror of this made his heart stop. No words would come. He stared at her with all the fright in his eyes.

"Roddy" (she had never called him that before), "do you care----"

Then she stopped.

She began again. "I don't want to talk nonsense. I want to say exactly what I feel. I suppose most girls would want to be free a little longer, would want to have a good time another two or three seasons--but I don't--I hate being free--I want somebody to keep me, to prevent my doing silly things, to look after me ... and ... I'd rather you did it--than anybody else...." Then she went on quickly--"But it is more than that. I do like you most awfully, only I suppose I'm not the kind of girl to be frantically excited, to be wild about it all. I'm not that. I do like you--better than any other man I know--Is that enough?"

"I think--we can be most awfully good pals--always," he said.

"Oh!" she cried suddenly, putting her hand on his and looking straight into his face. "That's what I want--that, that--If that's it, and you think we can, why then, I'd rather marry you, Roddy dear, than anyone in the world."

"Then it's settled," he said. But he did not take her hand or touch her. They sat for quite a long time, looking at the rippling corn and the house, that was like a white boat sailing on the green far below them.

They said no word.

Then, without speaking, they got up from the grass and walked down the path to the little wood. But when they came to the place where they had been the night before he caught her to him so furiously that his own body was bent back, and he kissed her again and again and again.