CHAPTER X
LIZZIE AND BRETON
"What of Adam cast out of Eden?
(And O the Bower and the hour!)
Lo! with care like a shadow shaken
He kills the hard earth whence he was taken."
Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
I
To the ordinary observer Lizzie Rand was, during that hot July, as she had ever been.
The servants in 104 Portland Place could detect no change, but then they did not search for one, having long regarded Miss Rand as a piece of machinery, symbolized by that broad shining belt of hers, happily calculated to fit, precisely, the duties for which it was required.
But Miss Rand herself knew that there was a sharp, accurate, shrewd piece of machinery named Miss Rand, and a breathing, emotional, uncertain human being called Lizzie. There had always been those two, but since the inadequacy of her mother and sister had been confronted with the stern necessity of making two ends meet, Miss Rand had been in constant demand and Lizzie had only, by her occasional obtrusion, made life complicated and disturbing.
Miss Rand had told herself that Lizzie was now almost an anachronism, that the emotions in life that aroused her were bad cheap emotions, and that this was an age that demanded increasingly of women a hard practical efficiency without sentiments or enthusiasms.
These forcible arguments had for a time kept Lizzie in a darkened background; it was some years since Miss Rand had been disturbed. But now in the warm weather of 1898 Lizzie had not only reappeared, but had leapt, an insistent, shining presence, into urgent life. Miss Rand faced her—what had created her? A little, the weather, the beauty of those brazen days—A little, Rachel's coming out into the world, an adventure that had stirred the whole house into a new and sympathetic excitement—a little, these things. But chiefly, and no pretence nor shame could conceal the fact, did this new Lizzie owe her creation to the appearance of Francis Breton.
Lizzie Rand had had, from her birth, a romantic heart; she had had also a prosaic practical exterior, and a mind as hard and clear, if necessary, as her own most lucent typewriter.
The romantic heart had, throughout these years, been there, and now this romantic, scandalous, youthful, engaging unfortunate had called it out.
She was never so warmly attracted as by someone lacking, most obviously, in those qualities with which she herself abounded. That people should be foolish, impetuous, careless, haphazard commended them straight to her keeping. "Poor dears" had their instant claim upon her. Her mother and sister were "poor dears" and she had suffered from them now during many years. Francis Breton was most assuredly a "poor dear!"
Here the Duchess a little flung her shadow and confused the mind. Although Lizzie had never seen that splendid figure she was, nevertheless, acutely conscious of her. She was conscious of her through her own imagination, through her mother, finally through Lady Adela.
Her imagination painted the old lady, the room, the furniture fantastic, strangely coloured, always with dramatic effect. Her picture was never precisely defined, but in its very vagueness lay its terrors and its omens.
Miss Rand, the most practical and collected of young women, could never pass the Duchess's door without a "creep."
Through her mother the Duchess came to her as the head of society. Society had never troubled Lizzie's visions of Life. She had, in her years with the Beaminsters, seen it pass before her with all its comedy and pathos, and the figures that had been concerned in that procession had seemed to her exactly like the figures in any other procession except that they were dressed for their especial "subject." But oddly enough when, through her own observation, this life, seen accurately at first hand, amounted only to any other life, seen through the eyes of her mother, it achieved another size.
She knew that her mother was a foolish woman, that her mother's opinions on life were absurd and untrue, and yet that dim, great figure that the Duchess assumed in her mother's eyes, in some odd way impressed her.
Lastly, and most strikingly of all, came Lady Adela's conception to her. Lady Adela was in terror of her mother; everyone knew it, friends, relations, servants. Lizzie herself saw it in a thousand different ways—saw it when Lady Adela spoke of her, saw it in the way that Lady Adela addressed Dorchester when that grim woman was interviewed by her, saw it when Lady Adela was suddenly summoned to that room upstairs.
Lizzie, during the hours when she was writing from Lady Adela's dictation or working with her, found her dry, stupid, sometimes kind, never emotional. It was to her, therefore, the most convincing proof of the Duchess's power, this emotion, this alarm drawn from so dry a heart.
Now the influence that the Duchess had upon Lizzie was always a confused one. Persuasion from this source followed lines of reasoning that were false and led to some conclusions that were muddled and untrue.
Through such minds as her mother's and Lady Adela's no clear truth could come, and yet it was through such minds as these that the Duchess's influence descended upon Lizzie.
It descended now with regard to Francis Breton. It told Lizzie that Breton had been proved by society to be a scoundrel, that he should be no worthy man's friend, that he belonged to that world, the world of shadows and past misadventures, that no proper soul might, with honesty, investigate.
This was what the Duchess told to Lizzie and perhaps by so doing increased her sympathy with the sinner.
II
It must not be supposed that Mrs. Rand had not, at first, been unsettled by scruples.
The fact that Breton was, in the eyes of the Beaminster family, a ne'er-do-well who had brought disgrace upon the family name had, for a time, distressed her, but the romantic hope of being herself the agent of his restoration to his grandmother, and the delightful manners of the scoundrel when he appeared, killed her alarm. Mrs. Rand's mind was a dark misty place except when the candles of romance were lit; when they flamed, blown by the wind though they might be, there was, around the candlesticks at any rate, a real and even splendid blaze.
One afternoon, towards the end of July, Mrs. Rand meeting Breton on their doorstep was moved to ask him whether he would come in and spend the evening with them, if he had nothing better to do. They had only a simple little meal, and would he please not bother to dress? Breton said that he would be delighted.
Mrs. Rand had been, that afternoon, to a romantic comedy in which ladies and gentlemen with French accents had made love and escaped together and been caught together and been married together. Mrs. Rand had gone quite alone into the pit and had returned with tears in her eyes and affection for all the world.
So she had asked Mr. Breton to dinner.
After a while, however, she was a little uncertain. Daisy was away in the country with friends. How would Lizzie then like this unexpected visitor? Mrs. Rand was, quite frankly, frightened of Lizzie and complained of her a good many times a week to Daisy. Lizzie was for ever interfering with innocent pleasures; Lizzie was mean and unromantic and unimaginative; Lizzie was thoroughly tiresome.
The fact that Lizzie worked incessantly for her mother and her sister never occurred to Mrs. Rand at all.
Lizzie objected to all innocent amusement and she would, in all likelihood, object now.
However, when Mrs. Rand with a fearful mind said, "Oh, Lizzie dear, I've had such a delightful afternoon. I went to Love and the King and it was too charming—you ought to go, really—and Mr. Breton's coming to dinner to-night," Lizzie only smiled a little and asked whether there was food enough. Lizzie was so strange....
Alone in her bedroom Lizzie wondered at her excitement. She looked at her trim, neat figure in the glass, with the hair so gravely brushed, with her collar and her cuffs, with her compact businesslike air: what had she to do with excitement because a young man was coming to dinner? "It must be because I'm tired—this heat," she said to the mirror. And the mirror replied, "You know that you are glad because your sister Daisy is away."
And to that she had no answer.
When he arrived he was grave and seemed sad and tired, she thought. Dinner was a serious affair and Mrs. Rand, who disliked people when they refused to respond to her moods, wished, at first, that she had not asked him, and felt sure that there was much truth in what people said about his wickedness.
Then, when dinner was nearly over, he brightened up and told stories and was entertaining. Mrs. Rand noticed that he drank much claret, but this was, after all, a compliment to her housekeeping. By the end of dinner Mrs. Rand almost loved him and wished that Daisy had been here to entertain him.
Of course it must be dull for a man with only a plain cut-and-dried girl like Lizzie for company.
Lizzie, meanwhile, knew that he was waiting for an opportunity of speech. She had read an appeal in his eyes when he had first entered the room, and now she sat there, curiously, ironically amused at her own agitation. "Lizzie Rand," she said to herself, "you're only, after all, the kind of fool that you despise other people for being. What are you after in this galère?"
Nevertheless even now, in retrospect, how arid and sterile seemed all those other active useful days. One moment's little grain of sentiment and a life's hard work goes for nothing in comparison.
After dinner, when the lamp burnt brightly and the furniture seemed to be less anxious to fill every possible space and the windows were opened into the square with its stars and grey shadows, the room seemed, of a sudden, comfortable, and Mrs. Rand, sitting in an arm-chair, with a novel on her lap and spectacles on her nose, was almost cosy. She had left, before going to her matinee, Just a Heroine at one of its most thrilling crises, and Lizzie knew that the talk with Breton depended for its very existence on the relative strength of the play and the novel. If Love and the King were the more powerful, then would Mrs. Rand make a discursive third. But no, for a moment there was a pause, then, indecisively, Mrs. Rand took up her book. For a while she talked to Breton over its pages, then the light of excitement stole into her eyes, her soul was netted by the snarer, Breton was forgotten as though he had never been.
Their chairs were by the open window and a very little breeze came and played around them. In the square there was that sense of some imminent occurrence, a breathless suggestion of suspense, that a hot evening sometimes carries with it. The stars blazed in a purple sky and a moon was full rounded, a plate of gold; beneath such splendour the square was cool and dim.
"You mustn't think mother rude," Lizzie said with a little smile. "If she once gets deep into a book nothing can tear her from it."
He said something, but she could see that he was not thinking of Mrs. Rand. It was always in the evening, she thought, when uncertain colours and shadows filled the air, that he looked his best. He touched, now, as he had touched on that day of their first meeting, a note of something fine and strange—someone, very young and perhaps very foolish and impetuous, but someone armoured in courage and set apart for some great purpose.
He sat back in his chair, flinging, every now and again, little restless glances beyond the window, pulling sometimes at his beard, answering her absent-mindedly. Then suddenly he began, fiercely, looking away from her—
"Miss Rand, I've got an apology to make to you–"
His voice was so low that she could only catch the words by leaning forward—"To me?"
"Yes—I've been wanting to speak all these weeks. It seemed right enough before, but since I've known you I've felt ashamed of it—as though I'd done something wrong."
"What is it, Mr. Breton?" Her clear grave eyes encouraged him.
"Why—I came to this house, took my rooms, simply because I knew that you were here–"
"That I was here?"
"Yes. I was looking about in this part of the world for rooms. I wanted to be—near Portland Place, you know. I came here and old Mrs. Tweed talked a lot and then, after a time, I said something—about my grandmother. And then she told me that someone who lived here did secretarial work for my aunt–"
He stopped abruptly.
"Well?" said Lizzie, laughing. "All this is not very terrible."
"Then, you see, I determined to stay. I was full of absurd ideas just at the time, thought that I was going to take some great revenge—I was quite melodramatic. And so I thought that I'd use you, get to know you and then, through you—do something or another."
Lizzie eyed him with merriment. "Upon my word, what were you going to make me do? Carry bombs into your aunt's bedroom or set fire to the Portland Place house? Tell me, I should like to know–"
"Ah," he said, "it's all very well for you to laugh. It's very kind of you to take it that way, but lots of women wouldn't have liked it. They'd have thought it another of the things I'm always accused of doing, I suppose."
"No," said Lizzie gravely, "it was all perfectly natural. I understand. I should have done just the same kind of thing, I expect, if I'd been in your place."
The fierceness of his voice showed her that he had been brooding for weeks, and that life was, just now, harder than he could endure.
"You can trust me a great deal farther than that, Mr. Breton," she said.
"The other night," he began, "you said that I might talk to you. I've been pretty lonely lately—and it would help me if–"
"Anything you like," she assured him.
"Besides, there's more than that," he went on. "You've heard—of course you must have heard all kinds of things against me. You're in the enemy's camp and I don't suppose they measure their words. I don't know why you've been so decent to me as you have after what you must have heard–"
"Don't worry your head about that," she said. "We all have our enemies."
"No, but now that we're friends I'd like you to know my side of it all. I don't want to make myself out a hero or blacken all the other people, but there is something to be said for me—there is—there is——"
He muttered these last words with the deepest intensity. He seemed to fling them through the window into the square, as though he were standing out there, on his defence, before all those listening lighted windows.
"I've been a fool—a thousand times. I've done silly things often and once or twice bad, rotten things, but all these others—these virtuous people who are so ready to judge me, have they been any better?"
"My father was a scoundrel, although I loved him and would love him now if he came back—but he was just as bad as they make 'em and there's no use in denying it. He'd tell you so himself if he were here. He broke my poor mother's heart and killed her. I don't remember her—I was no age at all when she died—but I've got an old picture of her, kept it always with me; she must have been rather like my cousin Rachel, who was here the other day–"
Lizzie watched his face. There had left him now all that hint of insincerity, of exaggeration that she had noticed when he had talked before. She knew that he was telling her now absolutely the truth as he saw it.
"She died and after that I was taken about Europe with my father. We lived in almost every capital in Europe—Berlin, Paris, Rome, Vienna, everywhere. Sometimes we were rich, sometimes poor. Sometimes we knew the very best people, sometimes the very worst. Sometimes I'd go to school for a little, then I'd suddenly be taken away. My father was splendid to me then; the best-looking man you ever saw, tall, broad, carried himself magnificently—the finest man in Europe. I only knew, bit by bit, the things that he used to do. It was cards most of the time, and he taught me to play, of course, as he taught me to do everything else.
"When I was eighteen my eyes were opened—I tried to leave him—But I loved him and I verily believe that I was the only human being in the world that he cared for. Anyway, he died of fever and general dissipation when I had just come of age, and I came home to England with a little money and great hopes of putting myself right with the world."
As he had talked to her he had gathered confidence; her silence was, in some way to him, reassuring and comforting. Some people have the gift of listening without words so warmly, with such eloquence that they reassure and console as no speech could ever do. This was Lizzie's gift, and Breton, depending, more than most human beings, upon the protection of his fellows, gathered courage.
"My father had always taught me to hate my grandmother. He painted her to me as I have since found her—remorseless, eaten up with pride, cruel. I came home to England, meaning to lead a new life, to be decent—as I'd always wanted to be.
"Well, they wouldn't have me, not one of them. They pretended to at first; and my Uncle John at least was sincere, I think, and was kind for a time, but was afraid of my grandmother as they all were. Christopher—you know him of course—was a real friend to me. He'd stood up for my father before and he stood up for me now. But what was the use? I was wild when I saw that my grandmother was against me and was going to do her best to ruin me. I just didn't care then—what was the good of it all? Other people encouraged me. The set in London that hated my people would have done something with me, but I wouldn't be held by anyone.
"I'm not excusing myself," he said quietly, looking away from the window and suddenly taking his judgment from her eyes.
"I know you're not," she said, smiling back to him.
"Cards finished me. I'd always loved gambling—I love it still—my father had given me a good education in it. There were plenty of fellows in town to take one on and—Oh! it's all such an old story now, not worth digging up. But there was a house and a table and a young fool who lost all he possessed and—well, did for himself. It had all been square as far as I was concerned, but somebody had to be a scapegoat and two or three of us were named. It was hushed up for the sake of the young fellow's people, but everyone knew. Of course they all said, as far as I was concerned, 'Like father like son,' and I think I minded that more than anything–"
"Oh! I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Lizzie said.
"I give you my word of honour that it had all been straight as far as I was concerned—gambling just as anyone might. That's what made me so mad, to think of the rest of them—all so virtuous and good—and then going off to Monte Carlo and losing or winning their little bit—just as I'd done.
"I tried to brazen it out for a bit, but it was no good. Christopher still stuck by me—otherwise it was—well, the Under Ten, you know–"
"The Under Ten?"
"Yes—all the men and women who've done something—once—done one of the things that you mustn't do. It mayn't have been very bad, not half so bad as the things—the cruel, mean things—that most people do every day of their lives, but, once it's there, you're down, you're under. There's a regular colony of them here in London; their life's amusing. There they are, hanging on here, keeping up some pretence of gaiety, some kind of decency, waiting, hoping that the day will come when they'll be taken back again, when everything will be forgotten. They pretend, bravely enough, not to mind their snubs, not to notice the kind people, once their friends, who cut them now. Every now and again they make a spring like fish to the top of the water, see the sun, hope that the light and air are to be theirs again, after all—and then back they are pushed, down into the dark, their element now, they are told. Oh! there's comedy there, Miss Rand, if you care to look for it."
She said nothing; the fierce bitterness in his voice had made him seem older suddenly, as though, in this portion of his journey, be had spent many, many years.
"I must cut it short—you'll have had enough of this. I couldn't stand it. I left London and went abroad. After that, what didn't I do? I was everywhere, I did everything. Sometimes I was straight, sometimes I wasn't. I was always bitter, wild with fury when I thought of that old woman—of her complacency, sitting there and striking down all the poor devils that had been less fortunate than she. All those years abroad I nourished that anger and, at last, when I thought that I'd been abroad long enough, that people would have forgotten, perhaps, and forgiven, I came back. I came back to be revenged on my grandmother and to re-establish myself. I'd got some money, enough for a little annuity, and I was careful now—I wasn't going to make any mistakes this time." He laughed bitterly. "One doesn't learn much with age. What a fool I was! I've got the reputation I had before, whether I'm good or bad. It would all be hopeless—utterly hopeless—if it weren't for one thing–"
She looked up, and as she glanced at him, could feel the furious beating of her heart.
"I'd go back at once—I've almost gone back already—not abroad, that never again for long—but back to my friends, the unfortunates—" He laughed. "They're anxious to have me. They'll welcome me. I can have my cards and the rest then, with no one to object or to lecture—and I'll be done for quite nicely, completely done for."
Then he pulled himself together, squared his shoulders. "But one thing keeps me," he said. "Something's happened in the last few weeks—I've met somebody–"
"Yes," she said almost in a whisper.
"Somebody who's made it worth while for me to fight on a bit." She could feel his agitation: his voice, although he tried very hard to control it, was shaking. Then he laughed, raised his voice and caught and held her eyes with his.
"But there, Miss Rand. I've talked a fearful lot, only I wanted to tell you—I had to tell you. And now—if you feel—that you'd rather not know me, you've only got to say so."
She laughed a little unsteadily.
"Thank you for taking me into your confidence. You shall never regret it. I'm glad you're going to hold on, and, after all, we're all doing that more or less."
"It's done me a world of good talking like this. It's what I've been wanting for months."
She quieted her emotion. Looking out into the stars she knew that she believed every word that he had said. She thought that she valued Truth above every other quality; the directness that there was in Truth; its honesty and clarity. He might not always be honest with her, but she would never forget that he had, on this night, at least, spoken no falsehood.
Life—her work, her surroundings, Portland Place, her home—this was full of falsehood and deceit and muddle.
Here, this evening, at last, was honesty.
They said no more, but sat there silently and listened to the echo of dance music from some house.
Mrs. Rand, whom their conversation had lured into oblivion of them, was roused now by their silence.
She looked up. "It's quite splendid," she said, "you must read it, Lizzie. The part about the Riviera is lovely." Then, slowly remembering, "Really, Mr. Breton, I'm afraid you must consider me very rude."
He came towards her, assuring her that his evening had been delightful.
Lizzie was happy, happier than she could ever remember to have been before. She felt her cheeks burn. She leant out of the window to cool them. She flung back, over her shoulder:
"By the way, Mr. Breton—a piece of gossip. Your cousin is to marry Sir Roderick Seddon!"
She could not see him. He said nothing. Mrs. Rand said:
"Really, Lizzie! How interesting! How long's that been announced?"
"Oh! it isn't announced. I don't believe that he's even asked her, but all the house knows it. It's settled. I believe she likes him immensely and, of course, the Duchess is devoted to him."
Anything would do to talk about. What did it matter? Only that she should keep on talking so that they should not see how happy she was—how happy!
He said good night, rather sharply; his voice was constrained as though he too were keeping in his emotion.
After he had gone Mrs. Rand said, "I don't like him, my dear. I can't help it—you may laugh at me—but my impressions are always right. He hardly spoke to me all the evening."
"Why, mother, you were reading. How could he?"
"That's all very well, but I don't like him. And I believe he's in love with his cousin. He went quite white when you spoke about the engagement."
"Mother—how absurd you are. He's only seen her once–"
"Well, my dear, that's a book you ought to read; really, I haven't enjoyed anything so much for weeks. I simply–"
Up in her bedroom Lizzie flung wide her window and laughed at the golden moon. Then she lay, for hours, staring at the pale light that it flung upon her ceiling.
Oh! what a fool she was! But she was happy, happy, happy. And he needed someone to look after him—he did, indeed!