If only she had telegraphed to Barbara from Folkestone!
"Here's two shillings. Ada, have you got a sixpence, by any chance?"
"There's sixpence in the kitchen, 'm," said Ada, and fetched it.
"There!" said Barbara. "Pay him then, please, Ada. Now, Alex, come upstairs and sit down. You look dreadfully ill and worn-out, my dear."
Alex lifted the suit-case again.
"Oh, Ada will see to that. Your room is all ready, Alex. It's very small, but then the house is a perfect doll's house, as you see. This is my tiny drawing-room."
"It's very pretty," said Alex, sinking into a chair.
"It's not bad—the things are nice enough. Ralph had some exquisite things—but, of course, the house is too hateful, and I hate living all the way out here. No one ever comes near me. Cedric's wife can't get her chauffeur to bring her—he pretends he doesn't know where it is. The only person who ever comes is Pamela."
"I thought she was to live with you?"
"Pam! Oh, she wouldn't bury herself out here, for long. Pam's very much in request, my dear. She's been paying visits all over the place, and can go on indefinitely, I believe. She makes her headquarters with Cedric and Violet in Clevedon Square, you know, but of course she'll marry. Pam's all right."
"Last time I saw Pam she was in short frocks and a pigtail."
"She's come out in the most extraordinary way. Every one says so. Not exactly pretty, but frightfully taking, and most awfully attractive to men. They say she's so full of life. I must say, whenwecame out, Alex, we didn't have nearly such a good time as she has. Men seem to go down like ninepins before her. She's always bringing them out here to tea, and to look at the view of London from the Heath. One always used to look on Hampstead Heath as a sort of joke—Phil May's drawings, and that kind of thing. I certainly never expected to live here—but lots of artists do, and Ralph had a big studio here. And it's very inexpensive. Besides, if you know you way about, it's quite easy to come in and out from town. Pamela always brings her young men on the top of a 'bus. Girls can do anything now-a-days, of course. Fancy father, if one ofushad done such a thing!"
"Who looks after her?" asked Alex, rather awe-struck.
"She looks after herself, my dear, and does it uncommonly effectively. She could marry tomorrow if she liked—and marry well, too. Of course, Cedric is her guardian in a sort of way, I suppose, but he lets her do anything she like—only laughs."
"Cedric!" spoke Alex wistfully. "Do you know, I haven't seen Cedric since—I left Clevedon Square."
"My dear, that's ten years, isn't it? Cedric's grown exactly like father. He's got just his way of standing in front of the fire and shaking his spectacles up and down in his hand—you remember father's way? Of course, he's done extraordinarily well—every one says so—and his marriage was an excellent thing, too."
"Is—Violet—nice?"
Barbara laughed rather drily.
"She's got a lot of money, and—yes, I suppose she is nice. Between ourselves, Alex, she's the sort of person who rather aggravates me. She's always so prosperous and happy, as though nothing had ever gone wrong with her, or ever could. She's very generous, I will say that for her—and extraordinarily good-natured. Most people adore her—she's the sort of woman that other women rave about, but I must say most men like her, too. Her people were rather inclined to think she could have done better for herself than Cedric. Of course, he isn't well off, and she's two years older than he is. But it's answered all right, and they were tremendously in love with one another."
"Is she very pretty?"
"She's inclined to be fat, but, of course, she is pretty, in her own style—very. And the little girl is a perfect darling—little Rosemary.
"But, Alex, here am I talking you to death when you must be dying for tea. What sort of a crossing did you have?"
"Not very bad, but I was ill all the way."
"Oh, no wonder you look so washed out," said Barbara, as though relieved, but she went on eyeing her sister uneasily through the rapidly increasing dusk.
When Ada came in with the tea appointments, Barbara told her to bring the lamp.
"Yes'm. And your bag, 'm—may I have the key?"
Alex looked bewildered, then recollected that the maid was offering to unpack for her, and pulled out the key from her purse.
"Isn't there your trunk still to come?" asked Barbara.
"No. You see, I hadn't much to bring—only just one or two things that I got in Rome."
Alex wondered if Barbara understood that until a few months ago she had been a nun, living the life of a nun. She thought of the apprehension with which she had viewed making an explanation to Barbara, and almost smiled. It appeared that no explanation would be required of her.
But presently Barbara said uneasily:
"It seems extraordinary, your having no luggage like this, Alex. I don't know what Ada will think, I'm sure. I told her that you'd been living abroad for a good many years—I thought that was the best thing to say. But I never thought of your having no luggage."
"I hadn't got anything to bring, you see. I must get some things," repeated Alex forlornly.
"You see," said her sister half apologetically, "Ada's been with me ever since I married. She was Ralph's mother's maid, and perfectly devoted to him. I couldn't ever get that sort of servant to live out here, if it wasn't for that—she waits at meals, and maids me, and does everything, except the actual cooking. I know she's rather disagreeable in her manner, but she's a perfect treasure to me."
When Ada had brought in the lamps and filled the little room with cheerful light, drawing the blinds and curtains, Barbara looked again hard at her sister.
"Good heavens, Alex, how thin you are! and you look as though you hadn't slept for a month."
"Oh, but I have," said Alex eagerly, and then stopped.
She did not feel able to explain to Barbara the insatiable powers of sleep which seemed as though they could never be satisfied, after those ten years of unvarying obedience to a merciless five o'clock bell.
"I am glad to hear it," Barbara replied in a dissatisfied voice. "But I never saw any one so changed. Have you been ill?"
"Rather run down," Alex said hurriedly, with the convent instinct of denying physical ills. "I had two or three very troublesome abscesses in my throat, just before Easter, and that left me rather weak."
"My dear, how awful! You never told me. Did you have an operation? Are you scarred?"
"No. They broke of themselvesinsidemy throat, luckily."
"Oh—don't!" cried Barbara, and shuddered.
The sisters were very silent during tea. Alex saw her sister looking hard at her hands, and became conscious of contrast. Barbara was thin, but her hands were slender and exceedingly white. She wore, besides her wedding-ring, a sapphire one, which Alex thought must have been her engagement-ring. On her wrist was a tiny gold watch, and a gold curb-chain bracelet. Her own hands, Alex now saw, were more than thin. They were almost emaciated, with knuckles that shone white, and a sharp prominence at each wrist-bone. They were not white, but rough and mottled, with broken skin round each finger-nail. She wondered if her whole person was in as striking a contrast to her sister's. When she had put on the serge skirt and white muslin shirt, the sensation had overwhelmed her, accustomed to the heavy religious habit, of being lightly, almost indecently clad. But Barbara's dress was of soft, silky material, with a low, turned-down collar, such as was just beginning to come into fashion. Her hair was piled into a shining knot of little, sausage-shaped curls, and parted in front. Though she was only twenty-eight, the grey in Barbara's hair was plentiful, but her small face looked youthful enough, and had none of the hard lines and shadows that Alex knew to lie round her own eyes and lips. Her little, slight figure was very erect, and she wore black suède shoes with sparkling buckles. Alex looked down at her own clumsy, ill-made boots, which had already begun to hurt her feet, and instinctively put up her hands to the cheap black toque, that felt heavy on her head.
"Why don't you take off your hat?" Barbara asked her kindly. "I am sure it would rest you."
She was too much used to obedience not to comply instantly, pushing back with both hands the weight of untidy hair that instantly fell over her eyes.
"Oh, Alex! Your hair!"
"It's growing very fast. I—I've not been cutting it lately. There's just enough to put it up, Barbara."
"It's much darker than it used to be, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's nearly black now. Do you remember how light the ends used to be? But I think it lost its colour from being always under the veil, you know. The worst of it is that it's not growing evenly, it's all short lengths."
"Yes. That's very awkward," said Barbara dispassionately. "Especially when it's so straight."
Alex reflected that her sister was just as self-contained as ever.
"Wouldn't you like to come to your room and rest till dinner, Alex?"
Alex got up at once.
"You ought to take Plasmon, or something of that sort, and try to get a little fatter. There's simply nothing of you, Alex—you're all eyes, with rings like saucers round them."
After Barbara had left her in the tiny, pretty bedroom, that Alex thought looked wonderfully luxurious, she went straight to her looking-glass.
"Good heavens, how ugly I am!" she said to herself involuntarily.
Her face was sallow, with sunken cheeks, and the Roman sun had powdered her skin all over with little, pale freckles. Her eyes, as Barbara had said, had rings like saucers round them, and looked oddly large and prominent, from the slight puffiness of the under-lids.
Her teeth had, perhaps, suffered most of all. She had had one or two taken out, and the gaps were visible and unsightly. They had never been very good teeth, and she remembered still all that she had suffered at the hands of an unskilled Brussels dentist in Belgium. For the last few years she had endured intermittent toothache, sooner than submit to further torture, and she saw now that a small black patch was spreading between the two front teeth. Barbara, with the grey mingled freely in her light hair, and her severe widow's weeds, might look more than twenty-eight but Alex, at thirty-one, bore the semblance of a woman of forty.
She hid her face in her disfigured hands.
Presently she saw that there was hot water in a little brass can on the washing-stand, and she thankfully made use of it.
Ada had unpacked everything, and Alex saw the brush and comb that she had hastily purchased, on the dressing-table. Beside them was the packet of hair-pins that she had remembered to get at the last moment, and that was all.
"There ought to be something else, but I've forgotten," thought Alex.
She wondered if Barbara would expect her to dress for dinner. The idea had not occurred to her. She had one other blouse, a much better one, made of black net, so transparent as to show glimpses of her coarse, white-cotton underwear, with its high yoke and long sleeves.
Her hair, of course, was impossible. Even if it had not been so short and of such an intractable, limp straightness. Alex had forgotten how to do it. She remembered with dim surprise that at Clevedon Square Lady Isabel's maid had always done her hair for her.
She brushed it away from her face, and made a small coil on the top of her head, after the fashion which she remembered best, and tried to fasten back the untidy lengths that fell over her ears and forehead.
The hair-pins that she had bought were very long and thick. She wished that they did not show so obviously.
"Alex?" said Barbara's cool voice at her door.
Alex came out, and they went downstairs together, Alex a few steps behind her sister, since the stairs were not broad enough for two to walk abreast. She tried awkwardly not to step on the tail of Barbara's black lace teagown. Ada waited upon them, and although the helpings of food seemed infinitesimal to Alex, everything tasted delicious, and she wondered if Barbara always had three courses as well as a dessert of fruit and coffee, even when she was by herself.
"You don't smoke, I suppose?" Barbara said. "No, of course not how stupid of me! Let's go up to the drawing-room again."
"Barbara, do you smoke?"
"No. Ralph hated women to smoke, and I don't like to see it myself, though pretty nearly every one does it now. Violet smokesfartoo much. I wonder Cedric lets her. But as a matter of fact, he lets her do anything she likes."
"I can't realize Cedric married."
"I know. Look here, Alex, he'll want to see you—and you'll be wanting to talk over plans, won't you?"
"Yes," said Alex nervously. "I—I don't want to have a lot of fuss, you know. Of course I know it's upsetting for everybody—my coming out of the convent after every one thought I was settled. But, oh, Barbara! Ihadto leave!"
"Personally, I can't think why you ever went in," said Barbara impersonally. "Or why you took ten years to find out you weren't suited to the life. That sounds unkind, and I don't mean to be—you know I don't. Of course, you were right to come away. Only I'm afraid they've ruined your health—you're so dreadfully thin, and you look much older than you've any right to, Alex. I believe you ought to go into the country somewhere and have a regular rest-cure. Every one is doing them now. However, we'll see what Cedric and Violet say."
"When shall I see them?" asked Alex nervously.
"Well," said her sister, hesitating, "what about tomorrow? It's better to get it over at once, isn't it? I thought I'd ring them up this evening—I know they're dining at home." She glanced at the clock.
"Look here, Alex, why don't you go to bed? I always go early myself—and you're simply dead tired. Do! Then tomorrow we might go into town and do some shopping. You'll want some things at once, won't you?"
Alex saw that Barbara meant her to assent, and said "Yes" in a dazed way.
She was very glad to go to her room, and the bed seemed extraordinarily comfortable.
Barbara had kissed her and said anxiously, "I do hope you'll feel more like yourself tomorrow, my dear. I hardly feel I know you."
Then she had rustled away, and Alex had heard her go downstairs, perhaps to telephone to Clevedon Square.
Lying in bed in the dark, she thought about her sister.
It seemed incredible to Alex that she could ever have bullied and domineered over Barbara. Yet in their common childhood, this had happened. She could remember stamping her foot at Barbara, and compelling her to follow her sister's lead again and again. And there was the time when she had forced a terrified, reluctant Barbara to play at tight-rope dancing on the stairs, and Barbara had obediently clambered on to the newel-post, and fallen backwards into the hall and hurt her back.
Alex remembered still the agonized days and nights of despairing remorse which had followed, and her own sense of being all but a murderess. She had thought then that she could never, never quarrel and be angry with Barbara again. But she had gone away to school, and Barbara had got well, and in the holidays Alex had been more overbearing than ever in the schoolroom.
And now Barbara seemed so infinitely competent—so remote from the failures and emotional disasters that had wrecked Alex. She made Alex feel like a child in the hands of a serious, rather ironical grown-up person, who did not quite know how to dispose of it.
Alex herself wondered what would happen to her, much as a child might have wondered. But she was tired enough to sleep.
And the next morning Barbara, more competent than ever, came in and suggested that she should have her breakfast in bed, so as to feel rested enough for a morning's shopping in town.
"Though I must say," said Barbara, in a dissatisfied voice, "that you don't look any better than you did last night. I hoped you might look more like yourself, after a night's rest. I really don't think the others will know you."
"Am I going to see them?"
"Oh, I talked to Violet last night on the telephone, and she said I was to give you her love, and she hoped we'd both lunch there tomorrow."
"At Clevedon Square?" asked Alex, beginning to tremble.
"Yes. You don't mind, do you?"
"No, I don't mind."
It was very strange to be in the remembered London streets again, stranger still to be taken to shops by Barbara and authoritatively guided in the choice of a coat and skirt, a hat that should conceal as much as possible of the disastrouscoiffureunderneath, and a pair of black suède walking-shoes, that felt oddly light and soft to her feet.
"There's no hurry about the other things, is there?" said Barbara, more as though stating a fact than asking a question. "Now we'd better take a taxi to Clevedon Square, or we shall be late."
A few minutes later, as the taxi turned into the square, she said, with what Alex recognized in surprise as a kind of nervousness in her voice:
"We thought you'd rather get it all over at once, you know, Alex. Seeing the family, I mean. Pam is staying there anyway, and Violet said Archie was coming to lunch. There'll be nobody else, except, perhaps, one of Violet's brothers. She's always got one or other of them there."
Alex felt sick with dismay. Then some remnant of courage came back to her, and she clenched her hands unseen, and vowed that she would go through with it.
The cab stopped before the familiar steps, and Barbara said, as to a stranger: "Here we are."
The well-remembered hall and broad staircase swam before Alex' eyes as she followed Barbara upstairs and heard them announced as:
"Mrs. McAllister—and Miss Clare!"
In a dream she entered the room, and was conscious of a dream-like feeling of relief at its totally unfamiliar aspect. All the furniture was different, and there was chintz instead of brocade, everywhere. She would not have known it.
Then she saw, with growing bewilderment, that the room was full of people.
"Alex?" said a soft, unknown voice.
Barbara hovered uneasily beside her, and Alex dimly heard her speaking half-reassuringly and half-apologetically. But Violet Clare had taken her hand, and was guiding her into the inner half of the room, which was empty.
"Don't bother about the others for a minute—Barbara, go and look after them, like a dear—let's make acquaintance in peace, Alex. Do you know who I am?"
"Cedric's wife?"
"Yes, that's it." Then, as Barbara left them, Violet noiselessly stamped her foot. "You poor dear! I don't believe she ever told you there was to be a whole crowd of family here. That's just like poor, dear Barbara! I'm sure she never had one atom of imagination in her life, now had she? The idea of dragging you here the very day after you got back from such a journey." The soft, fluent voice went on, giving her time to recover herself, Alex hardly hearing what was said to her, but with a sensation of adoring gratitude gradually invading her, for this warm, unhesitating welcome and unquestioning sympathy.
She looked dumbly at her sister-in-law.
In Violet she saw the soft, generous contours and opulent prettiness of which she had caught glimpses in the South. The numerous Marchesas who had come to the convent parlour in Rome had had just such brown, liquid eyes, with dark lashes throwing into relief an opaque ivory skin, just such dazzling teeth and such ready, dimpling smiles, and had worn the same wealth of falling laces atdécolletéthroat and white, rounded wrists. Violet was in white, with a single string of wonderful pearls round her soft neck, and her brilliant brown hair was arranged in elaborate waves, with occasional little escaping rings and tendrils.
Alex thought her beautiful, and wondered why Barbara had spoken in deprecation of such sleepy, prosperous prettiness.
She noticed that Violet did not look at her with rather wondering dismay, as her sister had done, and only once said:
"You do look tired, you poor darling! It's that hateful journey. I'm a fearfully bad traveller myself. When we were married, Cedric wanted to go to the south of France for our honeymoon, but I told him nothing would induce me to risk being seasick, and he had to take me to Cornwall instead. Cedric will be here in a minute, and we'll make him come and talk to you quietly out here. You don't want to go in amongst all that rabble, do you?"
"Who is there?" asked Alex faintly.
"Pam and the boys—that's my two brothers, you know, whom you needn't bother about the very least bit in the world, and here's Archie," she added, as the door opened again.
Alex would have known Archie in a moment, anywhere, he was so like their mother. Even the first inflection of his voice, as he came towards Violet, reminded her of Lady Isabel.
She had not seen him since his schooldays, and wondered if he would have recognized her without Violet's ready explanation.
"Alex has come, Archie. That goose Barbara went and brought her here without explaining that she's only just got back to England, and is naturally tired to death. I'll leave you to talk, while I see what's happened to Cedric."
"I say!" exclaimed Archie, and stood looking desperately embarrassed. "How are you, Alex, old girl? We meet as strangers, what?"
"I should have known you anywhere, Archie. You're so like Barbara—so like mother."
"They say Pam's exactly like what mother was. Have you seen her?"
"No, not yet. She—Violet—brought me in here."
"I say, she's a ripper, isn't she? Cedric didn't do badly for himself—trust him. Wonder what the beggar'll be up to next? He's done jolly well, all along the line—retrieved the family fortunes, what? It only remains for me to wed an American, and Pamela to bring off her South African millionaire. She's got one after her, did you know?"
He spoke with a certain boyish eagerness that was rather attractive, but his rapid speech and restless manner made Alex wonder if he was nervous.
"Couldn't you ask Pamela to come to me here, so that I could see her without all those people?"
"What people? It's only old Jack Temple, and Carol. Harmless as kittens, what? But I'll get Pam for you in two twos. You watch."
He put his fingers into his mouth and emitted a peculiar low whistle on two prolonged notes. The signal was instantly answered from the other room, but quaveringly, as though the whistler were laughing.
Then in a minute she appeared, very slim and tall, in the opening between the two rooms.
"I like your cheek, Archie!"
"I say, Pam, Alex is here."
"Oh, Alex!"
Pamela, too, looked and sounded rather embarrassed as she came forward and laid a fresh, glowing cheek against her sister's.
"Barbara telephoned last night that you'd come, and seemed awfully seedy," she said in a quick, confused way. "She ought to have made you rest today."
"Oh, no, I'm all right," said Alex awkwardly. "How you've changed, Pamela! I haven't seen you since you were at school."
Looking at her sister, she secretly rather wondered at what Barbara had said of the girl's attractiveness.
Pamela's round face was glowing with health and colour, and she held herself very upright, but Alex thought that her hair looked ugly, plastered exaggeratedly low on her forehead, and she could not see the resemblance to their mother of which Archie had spoken, except in the fairness of colouring which Pamela shared with Barbara and with Archie himself.
"You've changed, too, Alex. You look so frightfully thin, and you've lost all your colour. Have you been ill?"
"No, I've not been ill. Only rather run down. I was ill before Easter—perhaps that's it."
Alex was embarrassed too, a horrible feeling of failure and inadequacy creeping over her, and seeming to hamper her in every word and movement. Pamela's cold, rather wondering scrutiny made her feel terribly unsure of herself. She had often known the sensation before—at school, in her early days at the novitiate, again in Rome, and ever since her arrival in England. It was the helpless insecurity of one utterly at variance with her surroundings.
She was glad when Violet came back and said: "Here's Cedric. Go down to lunch, children—we'll follow you."
Cedric's greeting to his sister was the most affectionate and the least awkward that she had yet received. He kissed her warmly and said, "Well, my dear I'm glad we've got you back in England again. You must come to us, if Barbara will spare you."
"Oh, Cedric!"
She looked at him for a moment, emotionally shaken. That Cedric should have grown into a man! She saw in a moment that he was very good-looking, the best-looking of them all, with Sir Francis' pleasantly serious expression and the merest shade of pomposity in his manner. Only the blinking, short-sighted grey eyes behind his spectacles remained of the solemn little brother she had known.
"Come down and have some lunch, dear. What possessed Barbara to bring you here, if you didn't feel up to coming? We could have gone to Hampstead. Violet says she's been most inconsiderate to you."
"Yes,most," said Violet herself placidly. "Dear Barbara is always so unimaginative. Of course, it's fearfully trying for Alex, after being away such ages, to have every one thrust upon her like this."
Alex felt a throb of gratitude.
"Barbara thought it had better all be got over at once," she said timidly.
"That's just like her! Barbara is being completely ruined by that parlour-maid of hers—Ada. I always think Ada is responsible for all Barbara's worst inspirations. She rules her with a rod of iron. Shall you hate coming down to lunch, Alex? Those riotous children will be off directly, they're wild about the skating-rink at Olympia. Then we can talk comfortably."
She put her hand caressingly through Alex' arm, as they went downstairs. Alex felt that she could have worshipped her sister-in-law for her easy, pitying tenderness.
The consciousness of it helped her all through the long meal, when the noise of laughter and conversation bewildered her, after so many years of convent refectories and silence, and her solitary dinners in Rome.
Violet had placed her between Cedric and Pamela, and the girl chattered to her intermittently, without appearing to require any answer.
"Are you boys ready?" she cried, just as coffee was brought in. "We can't wait for coffee—come on! My instructor will be engaged."
"How are you going, Pam?" asked Violet.
"Underground. It's the quickest."
"Oh, no, Pam. Take a taxi. Archie, you must!"
Between laughter and admonition, they were dispatched—Pamela, Archie and the two Temple boys, all laughing and talking, and exchanging allusions and references unintelligible to Alex.
The room seemed much quieter and darker when the hall-door had finally slammed behind them. Alex looked round her.
At the head of his own table, Cedric sat reflective. Violet lounged, smoking a cigarette and laughing, where Lady Isabel's place had always been. Opposite Alex, Barbara, in her prim black, was leaning forward and speaking:
"What's the attraction about this roller-skating? Pamela seems to do nothing else, when she isn't dancing."
"Every one's doing it, my dear. I want to take it up myself, so as to reduce my figure, but it's such an impossible place to get at. I've only been to Olympia for the Military Tournaments. But Pam has a perfect passion for getting about by the underground railway. Alex, isn't Pam a refreshing person?"
Alex felt uncertain as to her meaning, and was startled at being addressed. She knew that she coloured and looked confused.
"My dear," said Barbara impressively, "your nerves must simply have gone to pieces. Imagine jumping like that when you're spoken to! Don't you think she ought to do a rest-cure, Violet? There's a place in Belgrave Street."
"No, no," said Violet's kind, soft voice. "She's coming to us. You must let us have her, Barbara, for a good long visit. Mustn't she, Cedric?"
"Of course. You must have your old quarters upstairs, Alex."
The kindness nearly made her cry. She felt as might a child, expecting to be scolded and punished, and unexpectedly met with smiles and re-assurance.
"Come up and see Baby," said Violet. "She's such a little love, and I want her to know her new auntie."
"Violet, we really must talk business some time," said Barbara, hesitating. "There are plans to be settled, you know—what Alex is going to do next."
"She's going to play with Rosemary next. Don't worry, dear—we can talk plans any time. There's really no hurry."
Alex dimly surmised that the words, and the indolent,dégagéesmile accompanying them, might be characteristic of her new sister-in-law.
Violet took her upstairs.
"The nursery is just the same—we haven't changed a thing," she told her.
Alex gave a cry of recognition at the top of the stairs. "Oh, the little gate that fenced off the landing! It was put up when Cedric was a baby, because he would run out and look through the balusters."
"Was it, really?" cried Violet delightedly. "Cedric didn't know that—he told me that it had always been there. I shall love having you, Alex, you'll be able to tell me such lots of things about Cedric, when he was a little boy, that no one else knows. You see, there's so little difference between him and Barbara, isn't there?"
"I am only three years older than Barbara."
"Then you're the same age—or a little older than I am. I am twenty-nine—two whole years older than Cedric. Isn't it dreadful?"
She laughed gaily as she turned the handle of the nursery door.
"Baby, precious, where are you?"
Alex followed her into the big, sunny room.
A young nurse, in stiff white piqué, sat sewing in the window, and a starched, blue-ribboned baby, with disordered, sunny curls, crawled about the floor at her feet.
When she saw her mother she began to run towards her, with outstretched hands and inarticulate coos of pleasure.
"Come along, then, and see your new Auntie." Violet caught her up and lifted her into her arms.
"Isn't she rather a love, Alex? Shall we look after her for a little while, while Nurse goes downstairs?"
Alex nodded. She felt as though she hardly dared speak, for fear of frightening the pretty little laughing child. Besides, the constriction was tightening in her throat.
Violet sank down into a low chair, with Rosemary still in her arms.
"I'll stay with her, Nurse, if you like to go downstairs for half-an-hour."
"Thank you, my lady."
"Sit down and let's be comfy, Alex. Isn't this much nicer than being downstairs?"
Alex looked round the nursery. As Violet had said, it had not been altered. On the mantelpiece she suddenly saw the big white clock, supported by stout Dresden-china cherubs, that had been there ever since she could remember. It was ticking in a sedate, unalterable way.
Something in the sight of the clock, utterly familiar, and yet forgotten altogether during all her years away from Clevedon Square, suddenly caught at Alex. She made an involuntary, choking sound, and to her own dismay, sobs suddenly overpowered her.
"My poor dear!" said Violet compassionately. "Do cry—it'll do you good, and Baby and I won't mind, or ever tell a soul, will we, my Rosemary? I knew you'd feel much better when you'd had it out, and nobody will disturb us here."
Alex had sunk on to the floor, and was leaning her head against Violet's chair.
The soft, murmuring voice went on above her:
"I never heard of such a thing in my life as Barbara's bringing you here today—she never explained when she telephoned that you hadn't been in England for goodness knows how many years, let alone to this house. And, of course, I thought she'd settled it all with you, till I saw your face when she brought you into the drawing-room, all full of tiresome people, and brothers and sisters you hadn't set eyes on foryears. Then I knew, of course, and I could have smacked her. You poor child!"
"No, no," sobbed Alex incoherently. "It's only just at first, and coming back and finding them all so changed, and not knowing what I am going to do."
"Do! Why, you're coming here. Cedric and Rosemary and I want you, and Barbara doesn't deserve to keep you after the way she's begun. I'll settle it all with her."
"Oh, howkindyou are to me!" cried Alex.
Violet bent down and kissed her.
"Kind! Why, aren't I your sister, and Rosemary your one and only niece? Look at her, Alex, and see if she's like any one. Cedric sometimes says she's like your father."
"A little, perhaps. But she's very like you, I think."
"Oh, I never had those great, round, grey eyes! Those are Cedric's. And perhaps yours—they're the same colour. Anyway, I believe she's really very like what you must have been as a baby, Alex!"
It was evident that Violet was paying the highest compliment within her power.
Alex put out her hand timidly to little Rosemary. She was not at all shy, and seemed accustomed to being played with and admired, as she sat on her mother's lap. Alex thought how pretty and happy she and Violet looked together. She was emotionally too much worn-out, and had for too many years felt herself to be completely and for ever outside the pale of warm, human happiness, to feel any pang of envy.
Presently Violet reluctantly gave up Rosemary to the nurse again, and said:
"I'm afraid we ought to go down. I don't like to leave Barbara any longer. She never comes up here—hardly ever. Poor Barbara! I sometimes think it's because she hasn't any babies of her own. Let's come down and find her, Alex."
They found Barbara in the library, earnestly talking to Cedric, who was leaning back, smoking and looking very much bored.
He sprang up when they entered, and from his relieved manner and from Barbara's abrupt silence, Alex conjectured that they had been discussing her own return.
She stood for a moment, forlorn and awkward, till Violet sank on to the big red-leather sofa, and held out her hand in invitation to her.
"Give me a cigarette, Cedric. What have you and Barbara been plotting—like two conspirators?"
Cedric laughed, looking at her with a sort of indulgent pride, but Barbara said with determined rapidity:
"It's all very well, Violet, to laugh, but we've got to talk business. After all, this unexpected step of Alex' has made a lot of difference. One thought of her as absolutely settled—as father did, when he made his will."
"You see, Alex," Cedric told his sister, "the share which should have been yours was divided by father's will between Barbara and Pamela, and there was no mention of you, except just for the fifty pounds a year which my father thought would pay your actual living expenses in the convent. He never thought of your coming away again."
"How could he, after all these years?" ejaculated Barbara.
"I know. But I couldn't have stayed on, Cedric, indeed I couldn't. I know I ought to have found out sooner that I wasn't fitted for the life—but if you knew what it's all been like—"
Her voice broke huskily, and despair overwhelmed her at the thought of trying to explain what they would never understand.
"Poor little thing!" said Violet's compassionate voice. "Of course, you couldn't stay on. They've nearly killed you, as it is—wretched people!"
"No—no. They were kind—"
"The point is, Alex," Barbara broke in, "that you've only got the wretched fifty pounds a year. Of course, I'd be more than glad to let you have what would naturally have been yours—but how on earth I'm to manage it, I don't know. Cedric can tell you what a state poor Ralph left his affairs in—you'd never believe how little I have to live on. Of course, the money from father was a godsend, I don't deny it. But if Cedric thinks it's justice to give it back to you—"
She looked terribly anxious, gazing at her brother.
"No, no, Barbara!" said Alex, horrified. "I don't want the money. Of course, you must keep it—you and Pamela."
"That's all very well, my dear Alex," said Cedric sensibly, "but how do you propose to live? You must look at it from a practical point of view."
"Then you think—" broke from Barbara irrepressibly.
"No, my dear, I don't. One knows very well, as things are—as poor Ralph left things—it would be almost out of the question to expect—"
He looked helplessly at his wife.
"Of course, dear," she said placidly. "But there's Pamela's share."
"Pamela will marry, of course. She's sure to marry, but until then—or at least until she comes of age—I don't think—as her guardian—"
Cedric broke off, looking much harassed.
"If Pam married a rich man—which she probably will," said Violet, with a low laugh.
"We can't take distant possibilities into consideration," Barbara interposed sharply. "We're dealing with actual facts."
Alex looked from one to the other with bewilderment. She hardly understood what they were all discussing. From the natural home of her childhood and girlhood, where she had lived as unthinking of ways and means as every other girl of her class and generation, she had passed into the convent world, where all was communal, and the rights of the individual a thing part shunned, part unknown. She could not, at first, grasp that Cedric and Barbara and Violet, perhaps Pam and Archie, too, were all wondering how she would be able to maintain herself on fifty pounds a year.
"Of course," Barbara was saying, "Alex could come to me for a bit—I'd love to have you, dear—but you saw for yourself what a tiny place mine is—and there's only Ada. I don't quite know what she'd say to having two people instead of one, I must say—"
"We want her, too," Violet exclaimed caressingly. "Let us have her for a little while, Barbara,—while you're preparing Ada's mind for the shock." She broke into her low, gurgling laugh again.
Barbara looked infinitely relieved.
"What do you think, Alex? It isn't that I wouldn't love to have you—but there's no denying that ways and meansdocount, and in a tiny household like mine, every item adds up."
"Oh," said Alex desperately, "I know what you must feel—the difficulty of—of knowing what to do with me. It's always been like that, ever since I was a little girl. I've made a failure of everything. Don't you remember—Barbara,youmust—old Nurse saying, 'Alex will never stick to anything'? And I never have, I never shall. I can only make dreadful muddles and failures, and upset you all. If only one could wreck one's own life without interfering with other people's!"
There was a silence, which Alex, after her outburst, knew very well was not one of comprehension. Then Cedric said gently:
"You mustn't let yourself exaggerate, my dear. We're very glad to have you with us again, one only can't help wishing it had been rather sooner. But there's no use in crying over spilt milk, and after all, as Violet says, there's no hurry about anything. Come to us and have a good long rest—you look as though you needed it—and get a little flesh on your bones again. We can settle all the rest afterwards."
Alex saw Barbara looking at her with furtive eagerness. She turned to her, with the utter dependence on another's judgment that had become second nature to her.
"When shall I go?"
"My dear!" protested Barbara. "Of course, the longer you can stay with me the better I shall be pleased. It's only that Ada—" She broke off at the sound of Violet's irrepressible laugh.
"You must suit yourself absolutely, of course."
"Supposing you came to us at the end of the week?" Violet suggested. "Say Saturday. Pamela is going away then to pay one or two visits—and I shall have you all to myself."
Alex looked at her wonderingly.
It seemed to her incredible that Violet should actually want her, so engrained was her sense of her own isolation of spirit. That terrible isolation of those who have definitely, and for long past, lost all self-confidence, and which can never be realized or penetrated by those outside.
"That will be delightful," said Violet, seeming to take her acceptance for granted.
Barbara got up, smoothing her skirt gently.
"We really ought to be going, Alex. I said we'd be in to tea, and it takes such ages to get back."
Alex rose submissively. She marvelled at the assurance of Barbara, even at the ease of her conventionally affectionate farewells.
"Well, good-bye, my dear. When are you coming out to the wilds to look me up?"
Then, without giving her sister-in-law time to reply, she added gaily, "You must ring me up and let me know, when you've a spare moment. You know I'm always a fixture. What a blessing the telephone is!"
"Then we'll see you on Saturday, Alex," said her brother. "Good! Take care of yourself, my dear." He looked after her with an expression of concern, as the servant held open the door for her and Barbara and they went into the street. Alex could not believe that this kindly, rather pompous man was her younger brother.
"Cedric has grown very good-looking, but I didn't expect to see him so—soold, somehow," she said.
Barbara laughed.
"Time hasn't stood still with any of us, you know.Ithink Violet looks older than he does—she is, of course. She'll be a mountain in a few years' time, if she doesn't take care."
"Oh, Barbara! I think she's so pretty—and sweet."
Barbara shrugged her shoulders very slightly.
"She and I have never made particularly violent friends, though I like her, of course. Pamela adores her—and I must say she's been good to Pam. But her kindness doesn't cost her anything. She's always been rich, and had everything she wanted—she was the only girl, and her people adored her, and now Cedric lets her do everything she likes. She spends any amount of money—look at her clothes, and the way she has little Rosemary always dressed in white."
"Rosemary is lovely. It's so extraordinary to think of Cedric's child!"
Barbara tightened her lips.
"She ought to have been a boy, of course. Cedric pretended not to care, but it must have been a disappointment—and goodness only knows if Violet will ever—"
She stopped, throwing a quick glance out of the corners of her eyes at her sister.
Alex wondered why she did not finish her sentence, and what she had been about to say.
The constraint in her intercourse with Barbara was becoming more and more evident to her perceptions. It was clear that her sister did not intend to ask any questions as to the crisis through which Alex had passed, and when she had once ascertained that Alex had not "seen anybody" whilst in Rome, she did not refer to that either.
Alex wondered if Barbara would tell her anything of Ralph and their married life, but the reserve which had always been characteristic of Barbara since her nursery days, had hardened sensibly, and it was obvious that she wished neither to give nor to receive confidences.
She was quite ready, however, to discuss her brother Cedric and his wife, or the prospects of Pamela and Archie, and Alex listened all the evening to Barbara's incisive little clear tones delivering shrewd comments and judgments. She again suggested that Alex should go to bed early, saying as she kissed her good-night:
"It's quite delightful to have some one to talk to, for me. I generally read or sew all the evening."
"It must be lonely for you, Barbara."
"Oh, I don't mind quiet," she laughed, as though edging away from any hint of emotional topic. "But, of course, it's nice to have some one for a change. Good-night." She turned towards the door of the bedroom. "Oh, Alex! there's just one thing—I know you'd rather I said it. If you wouldn't mind, sometime—any time you think of it—just letting me have the money for those clothes we bought for you today. The bills have come in—I asked for them, as I don't have an account. I knew you'd rather be reminded, knowing what pauper I am. I only wish I hadn't got to worry you. Good-night, my dear. Sleep well."
For days and nights to come, the question of the money that Barbara had paid for her clothes weighed upon Alex.
She had no idea how she was to repay her.
The money that had been given her in Rome for her journey to England had only lasted her to Charing Cross, and even her cab fare to Hampstead had been supplemented by Barbara. Alex remembered it with fresh dismay. Even when she had left Downshire Hill and was in Clevedon Square again, the thought lashed her with a secret terror, until one day she said to Cedric:
"What ought I to do, Cedric, to get my fifty pounds a year? Who do I get it from?"
"Don't Pumphrey and Scott send it half yearly? I thought that was the arrangement. You gave them your change of address, I suppose."
"Oh, no," said Alex gently. "I've never written to them, except once, just after father died, to ask them to make the cheques payable to to the Superior."
"What on earth made you do that?"
"They thought it was best. You see, I had no banking account, so the money was paid into the Community's account."
"I see," Cedric remarked drily. "Well, the sooner you write and revoke that arrangement, the better. When did they last send you a cheque? In June?"
"I don't know," Alex was forced to say, feeling all the time that Cedric must be thinking her a helpless, unpractical fool.
"Write and find out. And meanwhile—I say, Alex, have you enough to go on with?"
"I—I haven't any money, Cedric. In Rome they gave me enough for my travelling expenses, but nothing is left of that."
"But what have you done all this time? I suppose you've wanted clothes and things."
"I got some with Barbara, but they aren't paid for. And there are some other things I need—you see, I haven't got anything at all—not even stamps," said Alex forlornly. "Violet said something about taking me to some shops with her, but I suppose all her places are very expensive."
"They are—dashed expensive," Cedric admitted, with a short laugh. "But look here, Alex, will you let me advance you what you want? It couldn't be helped, of course—but the whole arrangement comes rather hard on you, as things are now. You see, poor Barbara is really as badly off as she can be. Ralph was a most awful ass, between ourselves, and muddled away the little he had, and she gets pretty nearly nothing, except a widow's pension, which was very small, and the money father left. If you'll believe me, Ralph didn't even insure his life, before going to South Africa. Of course, he didn't go to fight, but on the staff of one of the big papers, and it was supposed to be a very good thing, and then what did he do but go and get dysentery before he'd been there a fortnight!"
Cedric's voice held all the pitying scorn of the successful.
"Poor Barbara," said Alex.
"That's just what she is. Of course, I think myself that Pamela will make your share over to you again when she marries.She'snot likely to make a rotten bad match like Barbara—far from it. But until then she can't do anything, you know—at least, not until she's of age, if then."
Cedric stopped, and his right hand tapped with his spectacles on his left hand, in the little, characteristic trick that was so like Sir Francis.
Alex had already heard him make much the same observations, but she realized that Cedric had retained all his old knack of reiteration.
"I see," she said.
"Well, my dear, the long and the short of it is, that you must let me be your banker for the time being. And—and, Alex," said Cedric, with a most unwonted touch of embarrassment breaking into his kind, assured manner, "you needn't mind taking it. There's—there's plenty of money here—there is really—now-a-days."
Alex realized afterwards that it would hardly have occurred to her tomindtaking the twenty pounds which Cedric offered her with such patent diffidence. She had never known the want of money, either in her Clevedon Square days or during her ten years of convent life. She did not realize its value in the eyes of other people.
The isolation of her point of view on this and other kindred subjects gradually became evident to her. Her scale of relative values had remained that which had been set before her in the early days of her novitiate. That held by her present surroundings differed from it in almost every particular, and more especially in degree of concentration. All Violet's warm, healthy affection for Rosemary did not prevent her intense preoccupation with her own clothes and her own jewels, or her innocently-assured conviction that no one was ever in London during the month of August, and that to be so would constitute a calamity.
All Cedric's pride in' his wife and love for her, in no way lessened his manifest satisfaction at his own success in life and at the renovated fortunes of the house of Clare.
Both he and Violet found their recreation in playing bridge, Cedric at his club and Violet in her own house, or at the houses of what seemed to Alex an infinite succession of elaborately-gowned friends, with all of whom she seemed to be on exactly the same terms of an unintimate affection.
Violet at night, when she dismissed her maid and begged Alex to stay and talk to her until Cedric came upstairs, which he never did until past twelve o'clock, was adorable.
She listened to Alex' incoherent, nervous outpourings, which Alex herself knew to be vain and futile from the very longing which possessed her to make herself clear, and said no word of condemnation or of questioning.
At first the gentle pressure of Violet's soft hand on her hair, and her low, sympathetic, murmuring voice, soothed Alex to a sort of worn-out, tearful gratitude in which she would nightly cry herself to sleep.
It was only as she grew slowly physically stronger that the craving for self-expression, which had tormented her all her life, woke again. Did Violet understand?
She would reiterate her explanations and dissections of her own past misery, with a growing consciousness of morbidity and a positive terror lest Violet should at last repulse, however gently, the endless demand for an understanding that Alex herself perpetually declared to be impossible.
It now seemed to her that nothing mattered so long as Violet understood, and by that understanding restored to Alex in some degree her utterly shattered self-respect and self-confidence. This dependence grew the more intense, as she became more aware how unstable was her foothold in the world of normal life.
With the consciousness of an enormous and grotesque mistake behind her, mingled all the convent tradition of sin and disgrace attached to broken vows and the return to an abjured world. One night she said to Violet:
"I didn't do anythingwrongin entering the convent. It was a mistake, and I'm bearing the consequence of the mistake. But it seems to me that people find it much easier to overlook a sin than a mistake."
"Well, I'd rather ask adivorcéeto lunch than a woman who ate peas off her knife," Violet admitted candidly.
"That's what I mean. There's really no place for people who've made bad mistakes—anywhere."
"If you mean yourself, Alex, dear, you know there's always a place for you here. Just as long as you're happy with us. Only I'm sometimes afraid that it's not quite the sort of life—after all you've been through, you poor dear. I know people do come in and out a good deal—and it will be worse than ever when Pam is at home."
"Violet, you're very good to me. You're the only person who has seemed at all to understand."
"My dear, I do understand. Really, I think I do. It's just as you say—you made a mistake when you were very young—muchtoo young to be allowed to take such a step, in my opinion—and you're suffering the most bitter consequences. But no one in their senses could blame you, either for going into that wretched place, or—still less—for coming out of it."
"One is always blamed by some one, I think, for every mistake. People would rather forgive one for murder, than for making a fool of oneself."
"Forgiveness," said Violet thoughtfully. "It's rather an overrated virtue, in my opinion. I don't think it ought to be very hard to forgive any one one loved, anything."
"Wouldyouforgive anything, Violet?"
"I think so," said Violet, looking rather surprised. "Unless I were deliberately deceived by some one whom I trusted. That's different. Of course, one might perhaps forgive even then in a way—but it wouldn't be the same thing again, ever."
"No," said Alex. "No, of course not. Every one feels the same about deceit."
In the depths of her own consciousness, Alex was groping dimly after some other standard—some elusive certainty, that continually evaded her. Were not those things which were hardest to forgive, the most in need of forgiveness?
Alex, with the self-distrust engrained in the unstable, wondered if that question were not born of the fundamental weakness in her own character, which had led her all her life to evade or pervert the truth in a passionate fear lest it should alienate from her the love and confidence that she craved for from others.
Sometimes she thought, "Violet will find me out, and then she will stop being fond of me."
And, knowing that her claim on Violet's compassion was the strongest link that she could forge between them, she would dilate upon the mental and physical misery of the last two years, telling herself all the time that she was trading on her sister's pity.
Her days in Clevedon Square were singularly empty, after Violet had tried the experiment of taking Alex about with her to the houses of one or two old friends, and Alex had come back trembling and nearly crying, and begging never to go again.
Her nerves were still utterly undependable, and her health had suffered no less than her appearance. Violet would have taken her to see a doctor, but Alex dreaded the questions that he would, of necessity, put to her, and Cedric, who distrusted inherently the practice of any science of which he himself knew nothing, declared that rest and good food would be her best physicians.
Sometimes she went to see Barbara at Hampstead, but seldom willingly. One of her visits there was the occasion for a stupid, childish lie, of which the remembrance made her miserable.
Alex, amongst other unpractical disabilities, was as entirely devoid as it is possible to be of any sense of direction. She had never known how to find her way about, and would turn as blindly and instinctively in the wrong direction as a Dartmoor pony turns tail to the wind.
For ten years she had never been outside the walls of the convent alone, and when she had lived in London as a girl, she could not remember ever having been out-of-doors by herself.
Violet, always driven everywhere in her own motor, and accustomed to Pamela's modern resourcefulness and independence, never took so childish an inability into serious consideration.
"Alex, dear, Barbara hoped you'd go down to her this afternoon. Will you do that, or come to Ranelagh? The only thing is, if you wouldn't mind going to Hampstead in a taxi? I shall have to use the Mercédès, and the little car is being cleaned."
"Of course, I shouldn't mind. I'll go to Barbara, I think."
"Just whichever you like best. And you'll be back early, won't you? because we're dining at seven, and you know how ridiculous Cedric is about punctuality and the servants, and all that sort of thing."
After Violet had gone, in all her soft, elaborate laces and flower-wreathed hat, Alex, with every instinct of her convent training set against the extravagance of a taxi, started out on foot, rejoicing that a sunny July day should give her the opportunity of enjoying Pamela's boasted delight, the top of an omnibus.
She took the wrong one, discovered her mistake too late, and spent most of the afternoon in bewilderedly retracing her own footsteps. Finally she found a taxi, and arrived at Downshire Hill very tired, and after five o'clock.
Barbara was shocked, as Alex had known she would be, at the taxi.
"Violet is so inconsiderate. Because she can afford taxis as a matter of course herself, she never thinks that other people can't. I know myself how every shilling mounts up. I'll see you into an omnibus when you go, Alex. It takes just under an hour, and you need only change once."
But that change took place at the junction of four roads, all of them seething with traffic.
And again Alex was hopelessly at sea, and boarded at last an omnibus that conveyed her swiftly in the wrong direction.
She was late for dinner, and when Cedric inquired, with his assumption of the householder whose domestic routine has been flung out of gear, what had delayed her, she stammered and said that Barbara had kept her—she hadn't let her start early enough—had mistaken the time.
It was just such a lie as a child might have told in the fear of ridicule or blame, and she told it badly as a child might have told it, stammering, with a frightened widening of her eyes, so that even easy-going Violet looked momentarily puzzled.
Alex despised and hated herself.
She knew vaguely that her sense of proportion was disorganized. She was a woman of thirty-one, and her faults, her judgments and appreciations, even her mistakes, were those of an ill-regulated, unbalanced child of morbid tendencies.
When Pamela came back to Clevedon Square, Alex was first of all afraid of her, and then became jealous of her.
She was jealous of Pam's self-confidence, of her enormous security in her own popularity and success, jealous even of the innumerable common interests and the mutual love of enjoyment that bound her and Violet together.
She was miserably ashamed of her feelings, and sought to conceal them, none the less as she became aware of a certain shrewdness of judgment underlying all Pamela's breezy vitality andjoie de vivre. She and her sister had nothing in common.
To Pamela, Alex evidently appeared far removed from herself as a being of another generation, less of a contemporary than pretty, sought-after Violet, or than little Rosemary in her joyous, healthy play. Pamela could accompany Violet everywhere, always radiantly enjoying herself, and receiving endless congratulations, thinly disguised as raillery, on her universal popularity and the charm that she seemed to radiate at will. She could play whole-heartedly with Rosemary, thoroughly enjoying a romp for its own sake, and making even Cedric laugh at her completeabandon.
"Don't you like children?" Pamela asked Alex, looking up from the nursery floor where she was playing with her niece.
"Yes, I like them," said Alex sombrely.
She had been reflecting bitterly that she would have known how to play with a baby of her own. But with Pamela and the nurse in the room, she was afraid of picking up Rosemary and making a fuss with her as Pam was doing, afraid with the terrible insecurity of the self-conscious.
And she never would have babies of her own now. The thought had tormented her often of late, watching Violet with her child, and Pamela with her own radiantly-secure future that would hold home and happiness as her rights.
But Alex concealed her thoughts, even, as far as possible, from herself.
The married woman who is denied children may lament her deprivation and receive compassion, but the spinster whose lot forbids her the hope, must either conceal her regrets or know herself to be accounted morbid and indelicate.
"I like babies while they're small," Pam remarked. "Don't I, you little horror of a niece? Other people's, you know. I don't know that I should want any of my own—they're all very well when they're tiny, but I can't bear them at the tell-me-a-story stage. I make it a rule never to tell the children stories at the houses where I stay. I always say, the very first evening, that I don't know any. Then they know what to expect. Some girls let themselves be regularly victimized, if they want to please the children's mother, and get asked again. I must say I do hate that sort of thing myself, and I don't believe it really does any good. Men are generally frightfully bored by the sort of girl who's 'perfectly wonderful with children.' They'd much rather have one who can play tennis, or who's good at bridge."
Pamela laughed comfortably at her own cynicism. "I must say I do think it pays one to be honest in the long run. I always say exactly what I feel myself, and don't care what any one thinks of me."
Alex felt a dull anger at her sister's self-complacent statement of what she knew to be the truth. Pamela could afford to be frank, and her boast seemed to Alex to cast an oblique reflection on herself. She gazed at her without speaking, wretchedly conscious of her own unreason.
"Look at Aunt Alex, Baby!" mischievously exclaimed Pam in a loud whisper. "We're rather afraid of her when she pulls a long face like that, aren't we? Have we been naughty, do you think?"
Alex tried to laugh, contorting her lips stiffly. Pamela jumped up from the floor.
"Really and truly, you know, Alex," she gravely told her sister, "you ought to try and make things lessau grand sérieux. I think you'd be much happier, if you'd only cultivate a sense of humour—we all think so."
Then she ran out of the room.
Alex sat still.
So they all thought that she ought to cultivate a sense of humour. She felt herself to be ridiculous in their eyes, with her eternal air of tragedy, her sombre despair in the midst of their gay, good-humoured conventions, that admitted of everything except of weighty, unseasonable gloom.
Pamela's spontaneous and unwearied high spirits seemed to her to throw her own dejection into greater relief; her own utter social incompetence.
She began to long for the end of July, when the household in Clevedon Square would be dispersed for the remainder of the summer.
Pamela talked incessantly of a yachting invitation which she had received for August, and spoke of the difficulty of "sandwiching in" country-house visits for autumn shooting-parties, and Alex knew that Violet's people were taking a house in Scotland, and wanted her and Cedric and the baby to make it their headquarters. She wondered, with a sense of impending crisis, what would happen to her.
At last Cedric said to her:
"Have you any particular plans for August, Alex? I want to get Violet up north as soon as possible, she's done so much rushing about lately. I wish you could come with us, my dear, but we're going to the Temples'—that's the worst of not having a place of one's own in the country—"
"Oh," said Alex faintly, "don't bother about me, Cedric. I shall find somewhere."
He looked dissatisfied, but said only:
"Well, you'll talk it over with Violet. I know she's been vexed at seeing so little of you lately, but Pamela's an exacting young woman, and chaperoning her is no joke. I wish she'd hurry up and get settled—all this rushing about is too much for Violet."
"I thought she liked it."
"So she does. Anyhow," said Cedric, with an odd, shy laugh, "she'd like anything that pleased somebody else. She's made like that. I've never known her anything but happy—like sunshine." Then he flung a half-smoked cigarette into the fireplace, looked awkward at his own unusual expression of feeling, and abruptly asked Alex if she'd seen the newspaper.
Alex crept away, wondering why happiness should be accounted a virtue. She loved Violet with a jealous, exclusive affection and admiration, but she thought enviously that she, too, could have been like sunshine if she had received all that Violet received. She, too, would have liked to be always happy.
She had her talk with Violet.
There was the slightest shade of wistfulness in Violet's gentleness.
"I wish we'd made you happier, but I really believe quiet is what you want most, and things aren't ever very quiet here—especially with Pam. I simply love having her, but I'm not sure she is the best person for you, just now."
"I don't feel I know her very well. I mean, I'm not at all at home with her. She makes me realize what a stranger I am to the younger ones, after all these years."
"Poor Alex!"
"You're much more like my sister than she is, and yet a year ago I didn't know you."
"Alex, dear, I'm so glad if I'm a comfort to you—but I wish you wouldn't speak in that bitter way about poor little Pamela. It seems so unnatural."
Violet's whole healthy instinct was always, Alex had already discovered, to tend towards the normal—the outlook of well-balanced sanity. She was instinctively distressed by abnormality of any kind.
"I didn't really mean it," said Alex hurriedly, with the old fatal instinct of propitiation, and read dissent into the silence that received her announcement.
It was the subconscious hope of rectifying herself in Violet's eyes that made her add a moment later:
"Couldn't Barbara have me for a little while when you go up to Scotland? I think she would be quite glad."
"Of course she would. She's often lonely, isn't she? And you think you'd be happy with her?"
"Oh, yes," said Alex eagerly, bent on showing Violet that she had no unnatural aversion from being with her own sister.