Lady Florence Eveleen Eleanore Olliffe Bell

“ He had had one moment, as they came up into the garden and saw there were other people there, before Lady Chaloner had recognised them, to make up his mind as to what he would do. Then he had said to himself desperately that he would risk it. After all, he might be exaggerating the whole thing; Wentworth did not know, and so the others might not. Rendel had felt during the last hour one of those strange sudden lightenings of the burden of existence that for some unexplained reason come to our help without our knowing why. He was almost beginning to think life would be possible again. ”

“ And as on a summer's day to people sitting in a shaded room, the world beyond shut out, the opening of a door into the sunshine may reveal a sudden vista of light, of flowers shining in the sun, so to the two people who were awaiting Rachel's arrival she brought a sudden vision of youth, brightness, colour, hope, as she came swiftly in, smiling and confident, with the face and expression of one who had never come into the presence of either of these two companions without seeing her gladness reflected in the light of welcome that shone in their eyes. ”

“ In the meantime Rendel, in a very different frame of mind from that of his father-in-law, or, indeed, from that of his own of the night before, filled with a buoyant thrill of expectation, with the sense that something was going to happen, that everything might be going to happen, was looking out into life as one who looks from a watch tower waiting on fortune and circumstances, waiting confident and well-equipped without a misgiving. ”

“ Rachel said. "It is a very good thing they're late, you can eat your breakfast in peace for once without knowing what has happened."
"That is not the proper spirit," said Rendel smiling, "for the wife of a future great man."
"The only thing is," said Rachel, "that if you did become a great man, I don't think I should be the sort of wife for you. I am very stupid about politics, don't you think so? I don't understand things properly."
"I think you are exactly the sort of wife I want," said Rendel, "and that is enough for me. That is the only thing necessary for you to understand. ”

“ What can a man wish for more?"
"It sounds as though you had everything you could possibly want, certainly," said Rachel, smiling at him.
"I don't know," said Rendel, reflecting, "if it is that quite. The real happiness is to want everything you can possibly get. That is the best thing of all."
"And not so difficult, I should think," said Rachel.
"I am not sure," said Rendel. "I am not sure that it is quite an easy thing to have an ardent hold on life. Some people keep letting it down with a flop. ”

“ Lady Gore said. "I think to-day it was to tell me that Rachel and I ought not to worship you as we do."
"I don't know what she means," said Sir William, standing from force of habit comfortably in front of the fireplace as though there were a fire in the grate. "I should have thought it was Rachel and I who adored you."
"She would like that better," Lady Gore replied. "But, oh dear, what a weary woman she is!"
"She has tired you out," Sir William said. "It really is not a good plan that your door should be open to every bore who chooses to come and call upon you. ”

“ Then Stamfordham's words rang in his ears: "I must tell my colleagues." It was a small fraction of the world in number, perhaps, that would thus know how it happened, but they were, to Rendel, the only people who mattered—the people, practically, in whose hands his own future lay. He realised now as he had never done before in what calm confidence he had in his inmost heart looked on that future, and most of all how much, how entirely he had always counted on Lord Stamfordham's good opinion of his integrity and worth. It was all gone. What should he do? How should he take hold of life now? ”

“ The ultimate ground, the ultimate arbiter of their empire, is force."
"Empire!" said Sir William. "That is the cry! [Pg 107] In your greed for empire you lose sight of everything but the aggrandisement of a dominion already so immense as to be unwieldy."
"Still," said Rendel, "as we have this big thing in our hands, it is better to keep it there than let it drop and break to pieces."
"I don't wish to let it drop," said Gore. "I wish to be content to increase it by friendly intercourse with the world, by the arts of peace and civilisation, and not by destruction and bloodshed." ”

“ Thrilled by the sight of his utterances in print, he determined in his secret soul to expand that article into a book. The secret was of course shared by his wife, who fervently believed in the yet unwritten masterpiece. The fact that in spite of the dearth of prominent men in his party, of men who had in them the stuff of a leader, that party had not turned to Gore in its need, aroused no surprise, no misgiving, in either his mind or that of his wife. It was simply in their eyes another step in that path of voluntary renunciation which he was treading for her sake. ”

“ She was not a woman to let such a seed die for want of planting and watering. She asked Rendel to dinner to meet the Gores, she talked to Lady Gore about him, she it was who somehow arranged that he should go to call at Prince's Gate, and he finally grew into a habit of finding his way there with a frequency that surprised himself. Lady Gore subjugated him entirely by her sweet kindly welcome, and the interest with which she listened to him, until he found himself to his own astonishment telling her, as he sat by her sofa, of his hopes and fears and plans for the future. ”

“ And Sir William realised, more perhaps than Rachel did, that it never could be. The relation between a father and daughter, when most successful, is formed of delightful discrepancies and differences, supplementing one another in the things that are not of each age. It means a protecting care on the side of the father, an amused tender pride in seeing the younger creature developing an individuality which, however, is hardly in the secret soul of the elder one quite realised or believed in. ”

“ As Rendel went out a few minutes later he was dimly conscious of meeting an agitated little figure which hurried past him into the room. Miss Judd was a lady who contrived to reduce as many of her fellow-creatures to a state of mild exasperation during the day as any female enthusiast in London, by her constant haste to overtake her manifold duties towards the human race. Those duties were still further complicated by the fact that she had a special gift for forgetting more things in one afternoon than most people are capable of remembering in a week. ”

“ Rachel answered simply.
"I agree with him," Rendel said, "that it would be just as difficult to get any idea of what human beings are about by looking down on them from a height, as it is for us to discover what insects are doing when we look down on them."
"Yes, imagine looking at that," said Rachel, pointing towards the drawing-room. "You would see people walking up and down and in and out for no reason, and jostling each other round and round."
"Yes," said Rendel. "How aimless it would look! Not more aimless than it is, after all," he added. ”

“ Sir William said wearily. "The worst of influenza is that one feels just as bad when one is supposed to be getting better as when one is supposed to be getting worse. It is a most annoying form of complaint."
"So I have understood," said Pateley, "though I have not learnt it by personal experience."
"No, you don't look as though you suffered from weakness," said Sir William, with a faint smile and a consciousness that this was not a person from whom it would be very easy to extract sympathy for his own condition. ”

“ Her daughter's last recollection of her had been the caressing endearment with which Lady Gore had deprecated Rachel's remaining with her till Sir William's return—how thankful the girl was to have remained!—her husband's last vision of her, the smiling farewell with which she had sped him on his way in the morning, with a caution as to prudence in his undertakings. As he came back he had found himself telling her already in his mind, before he was actually in her presence, of what he had done. That was the thing which gave an edge to every action, to each fresh development of existence. ”

“ Rendel was in no hurry for that curtain of mysterious distance to lift: possibility and success lay behind it. He relished with an exquisite pleasure the sense of having a dream fulfilled. The crucial moment that comes to nearly all of us of having to compare the place that others [Pg 115] assign to us in life with that which we imagined we were entitled to occupy, is to some fraught with the bitterest disappointment. ”

“ Lady Gore said, "Miss Tarlton is quite harmless."
"Harmless?" repeated Sir William; "I don't know what you call harmless. The very thought of her fills me with impotent rage. A woman who talks of nothing but photography and bicycling, and goes about with her fingers pea-green and her legs in gaiters! It's an outrage on society. I am thankful that Rachel has never gone in for any nonsense of that sort—nor ever shall, while I can prevent it." ”

“ One of the bitterest pangs of Lady Gore's bitter renunciation was the moment when she realised that she could not be the one to guide Rachel's first steps in a wider world than that of her home, that all her plans and theories about the moment when the girl should grow up, when her mother would accompany her, steer her, help her at every step, must necessarily be brought to nought. ”

“ Gradually new possibilities seemed to come into his life, or rather the old possibilities were seen in a new light shed by the womanly sympathy which up to now he had never known. He came away from each visit with some fresh spurt of purpose, some new impulse to achievement. Lady Gore, on her side, had been more favourably impressed by Rendel than by any of the young men she had seen, until she realised that here at last was a possible husband who might be worthy of Rachel. ”

“ He made up his mind to take long walks—the hotel and pavilion lay on the outskirts of the town—to go into the outlying country and explore it on foot. But in the evenings when Rachel was gone to bed, and when, alone at last, he would try to concentrate his mind on the study or the writing to which he had been used so eagerly to turn, another thought that he had been keeping at bay by a conscious effort would rush at him again and overwhelm him.
In the meantime, at the other side of Bad-Schleppenheim, the hours were flying fast and gaily. ”

“ It was when Rachel was seventeen that Lady Gore became helpless and dependent, and the girl suddenly found that their positions were in some ways reversed; it was she who had to take care of her mother, to inculcate prudence upon her, to minister incessantly to her daily wants; there was added to the daughter's love the yearning care that a loving woman feels for a helpless charge, and there was hardly room for anything else in her life. Rachel, fortunately for herself and for others, had no startling originality; no burning desire, arrived at womanhood, to strike out a path for herself. ”

“ It is unpleasant enough for a child, at a time of life generally familiar with humiliation and chastisement, to see the moment nearing when his guilt will be discovered: but it is horrible for a man who is approaching old age, who is dignified and respected, suddenly to find himself in the position of having something to conceal, of being actually afraid of [Pg 178] facing the judgment and incurring the censure of a younger man. And at that moment Gore felt as if he almost hated the man whose hand could hurl such a thunderbolt. ”

“ Sir William Gore, in the meantime, had got better. He had slowly thrown off the fever that had prostrated him, although he was not able to resume his ordinary life. He had demurred a little at first to the proposal that he should take up his abode at Cosmo Place, then, not unwillingly, had yielded. In his ordinary state of health he would have been alive to the proverbial drawbacks of a joint household, but in his present state of weakness and depression he felt he could not be alone, and in his secret heart it was almost a relief to be away from Prince's Gate, its memories and associations. ”

“ That, at any rate, is not more than one man may ask of another."
Sir William winced and writhed helplessly under Rendel's words. The intolerable discomfort and misery that he felt as the moment of discovery drew near had given place gradually to a furious resentment at what he was being made to endure at the hands of one who ought not to have presumed to criticise him. As Rendel stood there, his clearly cut face hard and stern, pouring out accusations and reproach, Gore felt as if the younger man embodied all the adverse influences of his own life. ”

“ Rachel also had been accosted by a vendor as soon as she came in, a moment of poignant embarrassment for all parties concerned—herself, her escort, and the fascinating seller who had offered her wares, for Rachel, looking at her with startled eyes, felt in her pocket as though at last seeing what was wanted of her, and then stammered, "I'm so sorry, I have no money with me." ”

“ Add to these, numbers of pretty girls anxious only to enjoy themselves, and swarms of young men who had come for the same reason, and it will be imagined that the atmosphere reigning in the brilliantly lighted Casino, in and around which the joyous spent their evenings singing, dancing, wandering in the grounds, was singularly different from that of the little isolated pavilion where Rendel sat trying to fashion the picture of his life into something that he could look upon without a shudder. ”

“ Then, with a feeling of extraordinary relief—she hardly knew why—she saw a familiar, substantial person coming along the promenade with a sort of friendly swagger. She went forward to meet him, still feeling as though she were walking in her sleep.
"Mrs. Rendel!" said Pateley in his usual hearty tone, in which there was now an inflection of surprise and almost of anxiety.
Pateley had not met either of the Rendels since the day of his last interview with Sir William Gore, and he had carefully not investigated further the incident which had been of such great advantage to himself. ”

“ Those who watched the general grace and repose of her demeanour and surroundings involuntarily felt that there might be advantages in a condition of life which prevented the mere thought of being hot, untidy, hurried, like some of the ardent ladies who used to rush into her room between a committee meeting and a tea-party and tell her breathlessly of their flustered doings. [Pg 15] Rachel had inherited something of her mother's dainty charm. ”

“ Sir William, after the agony of thinking he was going to lose her, after the rapture of joy at knowing that the parting was not to be yet, had insensibly become accustomed, as one does become accustomed to the trials of another, to the altered conditions of their lives, and it was even unconsciously a sort of agreeable certainty that whatever the weather, whatever the claims of the day, she would every afternoon be found in the same place, never away, never occupied about the house, always ready to listen, to sympathise. ”