The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death; A Romantic CommentaryWalpole, Hugh
History
The Duchess of Wrexe, Her Decline and Death; A Romantic Commentary
Walpole, Hugh
Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901 -- Fiction
She stood there thinking, "I thought that I hated her--I know now that I
loved her all the time."
The storm died down--died away. A voice quite close to her said, "You
made a mistake, Miss Rand. People have souls, you know--having a soul of
your own is more important than criticizing other people's.... People
have souls, you know."
She woke and heard a clock strike seven. As she lay there a sense of
uneasiness was with her so strongly that she repeated to herself, half
sleeping, half waking, "I wish to-day were over, quite over, quite over.
I want to-day to be over."
She was completely wakened by a sound. She lay there for a little time
wondering what it was. Then she realized that something was scratching
on the door.
She got out of bed, opened the door and found the dog, Jacob, sitting in
the long dark passage, looking through his tangled hair into space as
though the very last thing that he had been doing had been trying to
attract her attention. Jacob was nearer to a human being than any animal
that she had ever known. He had attached himself to Miss Rand and she
had decided, after watching him, that he knew more about the situation
in the house than anyone else. To catch him, as he watched, with his
grave brown eyes, Roddy or Rachel as they spoke or moved was to have no
kind of doubt as to his wisdom, his deep philosophy, his penetration
into motives.
He liked Miss Rand, but she knew well that his feeling for her had
nothing of the passionate urgency with which he regarded Roddy or
Rachel. All tragedy--the depths and the heights of it--she had seen in
that dog's eyes, fixed with the deepest devotion upon Roddy.--"He
knows," she had often thought during the last week, "exactly what's the
matter with all of us."
He always slept, she knew, in a basket in Rachel's room, and she
wondered why he had been ejected. He sat now in the middle of the floor
and seemed deeply unhappy. He sat square with his legs spread out, his
hair hanging in melancholy locks over his eyes, his small beard giving a
last wistful touch to his expression. He did not look at Lizzie or show
any interest in her, he only stared before him at the pattern on the
wall.
Lizzie did not attempt to pat him--she went back to bed, and, lying
there, saw the light gather about the room.
Once Jacob sighed. Otherwise he made no movement until the maid came in
with Lizzie's tea--Then he crawled under the bed.
II
When she came down to breakfast she felt that she could not endure
another day of this place. She wished now for no revenge upon Rachel,
she had no longer any curiosity as to the particular feelings of any one
of these people for any other ... she felt detached from them all, and
utterly, absolutely weary.
She was weighed down with a sense of disaster and she felt that she
must, instantly, escape from it all, fling herself again into her London
work, deal with the tiresome commonplaces of her mother and sister--she
must escape.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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