The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death. Hugh Walpole
Duchess had always hated her children, but had used them, magnificently, for her purposes. They had all been fools, but they were just the kind of fools that the Beaminster tradition demanded.
Lady Adela had from the first been more of a fool than the others. She had never had the gift of words and before her mother was, as a rule, speechless, and it had been only by her changing colour that an onlooker could have told that her mother's furies moved her.
Often Dorchester had attempted interference, but had found at last that it was better to allow the fury to spend its force. Then also Dorchester had noticed a curious thing. The Duke, Lord Richard, Lord John, Lady Adela were proud of these prides and tempers. They were proud of everything that their mother did; they might suffer, their backs might wince under the blows, but it was part of the tradition that their mother should thus behave.
Dorchester fancied that sometimes there was flashed upon them a sudden suspicion that their mother was in these days only an old, ailing, broken woman—no great figure now, no magnificent tyrant, no mysterious queen of society. And then Dorchester fancied that she had noticed that when such a suspicion had come upon them they had put it hastily aside and locked it up and abused themselves for such baseness.
Curious people, these Beaminsters!
Well, it was no business of hers. And, perhaps, after all she had herself some touch of that feeling, some fierce impatient pride in those very tempests and rebellion. After all, was there anyone in the world like this mistress of hers? Was there another woman who would bear so bravely the pain that she bore? And was not that fierce clutch on life, that energy with which she tried still to play her part in the great game, grand in its own fashion?
Would not Dorchester also fight when her time came?
She looked across the firelight at her mistress. When would arrive the inevitable moment of surrender? How imminent that moment when in the eyes of all those about her the old woman would see that all that was now hers was a quiet abandonment to death!
Well, there would be some fine, savage struggling when that crisis struck into their midst. Dorchester smiled grimly, and then, in spite of herself, sighed a little.
They were all growing old together.
II
At five o'clock came Dr. Christopher, and Dorchester moved into the other room and left the two together. With his large limbs and cheerful smile he made the Duchess seem slighter and more fragile than ever, and she herself felt always with his coming some addition of warmth and strength; each visit, so she might have expressed it, gave her life for at least another tiny span.
That he, knowing so much of the follies and catastrophes of life, should yet be an optimist, would have proved him in her opinion a fool had she not known, by constant proof, that he was anything but that. "Well, one day he will discover his mistake," she would say, and yet, perversely, would cling to him for the sake of this very illusion. He helped her courage, he helped her battle with her pain, he gave her, sometimes, some shadowy sense of shame for her passions and rebellions, but, more than all this, he yielded her a reassurance that life, precious, adorable, wonderful life, was yet for a little time to be hers.
He knew well enough the influence that he possessed, and when, as on this afternoon, he felt it his duty to avail himself of it, he could not pretend that he faced his task with any exultation.
That he should rouse her fury, as he had one or twice already roused it, meant humiliation for him as well as for herself, and afterwards embarrassment for them both as they saw those scenes in retrospect.
She glanced up at him carefully as he came in and knew him well enough to realize that there was something that he must say to her. There had been other such occasions, she remembered them all. Sometimes she herself had been the subject of them, something that was injuring her health, some indulgence that he could not allow her. Sometimes the battle had been about others; she had fought him and on occasions it had seemed that their relationship was broken once and for all, that nothing could cover the words that had been spoken—but always through everything she had admired his courage.
The way had always been to stand up to her.
For a little time they talked about her health, and then there fell a pause. She, leaning back in her chair with her thin, sharp hands on her lap, watched him grimly as he sat on the other side of the fireplace, leaning forward a little, looking into the fire.
"Well," she said at last. "What is it?" Her voice was deep, but every word was clear-cut, resonant.
"There is something—two things," he answered her slowly. "You can dismiss me for an interfering old fool, you know. You often have been tempted to do it before, I dare say."
"I have," she said. "Go on."
But as she spoke she drew her hands a little more closely together. She was not quite so ready for these battles as she had once been. She was afraid a little now. A new sensation for her; she hated that restricting awkwardness that would remain between them for days afterwards.
She looked at his red, cheerful face and wondered impatiently why he must always be meddling in other people's affairs. She hated Quixotes.
"Your Grace," he began again, "has only got to stop me and I'll say no more."
"Oh yes, you will," she said impatiently. "I know you. Say what you please."
"I want to speak about Francis Breton–" He paused, but she said nothing, only for an instant her whole face flashed into stone. The firelight seemed for an instant to hold it there, then, as the flame fell, she was once again indifferent.
Christopher had grasped his courage now. He went on gravely:
"I must speak about him. I know how unpleasant the whole subject is to you. We've had our discussions before and I've fought his battles with all the world more times than I can count. You must remember that I've known Frank all his life—I knew his unhappy father. I've known them both long enough to realize that the boy's been heavily handicapped from the beginning–"
"Must you," she said, looking him now full in the face, "must it be this? Have we not thrashed it out thoroughly enough already? I don't change, you know."
He understood that she was appealing to his regard for their own especial relationship. But there was a note of control in her voice; he knew that now she would listen:
"I've cared for Frank during a number of years. I know he's weak, impulsive, incredibly foolish. He's always been his own worst enemy. I know that the other day he wrote a most foolish letter–"
"It was a letter beyond forgiveness," she said, her voice trembling.
"Yes, I would give anything to have prevented it. I know that when he was in England before I pleaded for him, as I am doing now, and that by a thousand foolhardy actions he negatived anything that I could say for him.
"I'm urging no defence for the things that he did, the shady, disreputable things. But he has come back now, I do verily believe, ready, even eager, to turn over a new leaf. I–"
She interrupted him, smiling.
"Yes. That letter–"
"Oh, I know. But isn't it a very proof of what I say—would anyone but a foolhardy boy have done such a thing? Sheer bravado, hoping behind it all to be taken back to the fold—eager, at any rate, not to show a poor spirit, cowardice."
"Over thirty now—old for a boy–"
"In years, yes. But younger, oh! ages younger than that in spirit, in knowledge of the world, in everything that matters—I know," he went on more slowly, smiling a little, "that you've called me sentimentalist times without number—but really here I'm not urging you to anything from sentimental reasons. I'm not asking you to take him back and kill the fatted calf for him.
"I'm asking nothing absurd—only that you, his relations, all that he has of kith and kin, should not be his enemies, should not drive him to desperation—and worse."
"If you imagine," she said steadily, "that his fate is of the smallest concern to me you know me very little. I care nothing of what becomes of him. He