"Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his factHe can't explain, (he'll tell you smilingly)Which he's too much of a philosopherTo count as supernatural, indeed,So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of itBidding you still be on your guard, you know,Because one fact don't make a system stand,Nor prove this an occasional escapeOf spirit beneath the matter: that's the way!Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,The fact in California, the fine goldThat underlay the gravel—hoarded these,But never made a system stand, nor dug!So wise men hold out in each hollowed palmA handful of experience, sparkling factThey can't explain; and since their rest of lifeIs all explainable, what proof in this?"Robert Browning: 'Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."'
"Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his factHe can't explain, (he'll tell you smilingly)Which he's too much of a philosopherTo count as supernatural, indeed,So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of itBidding you still be on your guard, you know,Because one fact don't make a system stand,Nor prove this an occasional escapeOf spirit beneath the matter: that's the way!Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,The fact in California, the fine goldThat underlay the gravel—hoarded these,But never made a system stand, nor dug!So wise men hold out in each hollowed palmA handful of experience, sparkling factThey can't explain; and since their rest of lifeIs all explainable, what proof in this?"Robert Browning: 'Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."'
"Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his factHe can't explain, (he'll tell you smilingly)Which he's too much of a philosopherTo count as supernatural, indeed,So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of itBidding you still be on your guard, you know,Because one fact don't make a system stand,Nor prove this an occasional escapeOf spirit beneath the matter: that's the way!Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,The fact in California, the fine goldThat underlay the gravel—hoarded these,But never made a system stand, nor dug!So wise men hold out in each hollowed palmA handful of experience, sparkling factThey can't explain; and since their rest of lifeIs all explainable, what proof in this?"Robert Browning: 'Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."'
"Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his factHe can't explain, (he'll tell you smilingly)Which he's too much of a philosopherTo count as supernatural, indeed,So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of itBidding you still be on your guard, you know,Because one fact don't make a system stand,Nor prove this an occasional escapeOf spirit beneath the matter: that's the way!Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,The fact in California, the fine goldThat underlay the gravel—hoarded these,But never made a system stand, nor dug!So wise men hold out in each hollowed palmA handful of experience, sparkling factThey can't explain; and since their rest of lifeIs all explainable, what proof in this?"
"Why, which of those who say they disbelieve,
Your clever people, but has dreamed his dream,
Caught his coincidence, stumbled on his fact
He can't explain, (he'll tell you smilingly)
Which he's too much of a philosopher
To count as supernatural, indeed,
So calls a puzzle and problem, proud of it
Bidding you still be on your guard, you know,
Because one fact don't make a system stand,
Nor prove this an occasional escape
Of spirit beneath the matter: that's the way!
Just so wild Indians picked up, piece by piece,
The fact in California, the fine gold
That underlay the gravel—hoarded these,
But never made a system stand, nor dug!
So wise men hold out in each hollowed palm
A handful of experience, sparkling fact
They can't explain; and since their rest of life
Is all explainable, what proof in this?"
Robert Browning: 'Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."'
Robert Browning: 'Mr. Sludge, "The Medium."'
It was not until his name appeared in the Roll of Honour as "missing" that Barbara appreciated how eagerly discussed she and Jack had been. The discreet sympathy of her relations would have been bewildering if Lady Knightrider had not explained it.
"I hurried round the moment I had the news! My darling child, you've got to be very brave!" she faltered. "I know what you and Jack were to each other."
"Aunt Kathleen, I don't think I can talk about this," Barbara interrupted quietly.
"No...? It sometimes helps. I was always very fond of dear Jack, and youknowhow I love you! But I only came to tell you that you mustn't give up hope——"
"Thank you, dear!"
Barbara realized suddenly that she was being forced into an assumed intimacy which would have been comic at any other time. It was impossible, however, to begin explaining to Lady Knightrider.
"Did you see him when he was home on leave?" her aunt continued with the persistency of one who, having come to harrow and to be harrowed, did not propose to be baulked.
"I've not seen him since that time a year ago."
"Ah, no! You've both been so busy. His poor parents——"
"They're the people to be sorry for," said Barbara.
"Darling, you're quite wonderful!"
Barbara had used the words to deflect the conversation from herself, but her aunt gave her credit for such stoicism that she took a step towards the door for fear that in another moment she would break into a scream. Lady Knightrider followed her, and in the hall they met George Oakleigh, embarrassed and trying to carry off his embarrassment with an air of earnest bustle.
"I'm absolutely at a loose end to-night, Barbara," he began. "I believe somebody must have made peace or something; the Admiralty's not been as slack as this since the first day of the war. I wondered whether you'd care to come and have dinner somewhere."
"It's sweet of you, George, but I've promised to dine with Aunt Eleanor and Amy. Is to-morrow any good to you?"
"I believe I'm dining out, but I can scratch that. Yes, to-morrow. I'll come and pick you up about eight. Now I must simply fly!"
"Back to work? I thought things were so slack?"
"M'yes, I said that, didn't I?"
"And it served its purpose. They'll be slack whenever I say that I want you; and you'll sit up half the night afterwards. Thank you, George. But I wish you didn't make me feel so horribly unworthy of your sweetness."
He turned away and fidgetted with the badge of his cap.
"'Sweetness' be blowed! This war's such a ghastly business.... Sometimes one wants a little companionship. I'm glad you can come to-morrow. Keep a brave heart, Barbara."
It seemed sacrilegious to accept so much sympathy, and, as he hurried into Berkeley Street, she was tempted to run after him and explain. Once she read of some one who murdered a man and went to the widowed mother to confess his crime; his delicacy in telling her of the death caused him to be regarded as her son's dearest friend, and, when the murder went undiscovered, the murderer accepted the situation and attended the funeral as chief mourner, with the widowed mother leaning on his arm.... If Lady Knightrider and George fancied that she had loved Jack, she must accept the situation; it might be sacrilegious, but, on the other hand, if any one said "Did you love Jack Waring?" she could not honestly give a categorical "No."...
And there would be more sympathy—and sacrilege—at dinner. Barbara knew that she had only been invited that Lady Loring and Amy might try to comfort her. Neither referred to Jack by name; but they were more gently affectionate than usual, and she was left to discuss him or not, as she liked. Lady Loring told of the steps which she had taken and the offices which she had approached to gain tidings of her son. George had set enquiries on foot through the Spanish and American Embassies, the Vatican and The Hague; but they were barely instituted, when the War Office received indisputable evidence of death.
"Connie Maitland was very anxious for me to go to a clairvoyant," Amy put in. "She says Mrs. Savage in Knightsbridge is wonderful. When her boy was wounded—before she heard about it—she had a sort of presentiment that something was wrong, so she went there, and Mrs.Savage told her that he was wounded but that it wasn't serious. I believe she actually said that he was wounded in the head, but Connie may have added that."
"Did you try her?" asked Barbara.
"No." Amy hesitated and looked uncomfortable. "I'm always afraid.... I believe, if we weremeantto have that kind of knowledge it would come to us in some other way.... And, if anything terrible's going to happen to me, I'd sooner not hear about it beforehand."
Barbara whispered the name to herself and determined, if need be, to find out more about the woman. Since her tragicséancein Webster's flat, she had decided to play with fire no more; but she could never forget the sight of Jack Summertown, staring a little glassily but speaking with his natural voice and talking so freely of an imminent war and of his own approaching death that none dared tell him what he had said. It might be coincidence that his name had appeared in the first casualty list; but more than coincidence was needed to explain why he should have talked at all of a future war.
"But uncertainty's the most terrible thing of all," Barbara murmured.
"Ithasto be borne," said Lady Loring gently, after a pause. "And sometimes for a long time."
Barbara nodded. It was useless to tell them that she had already waited a year to find out whether Jack wanted to marry her.
The next night she dined with George Oakleigh, who told her that he had taken tickets for Eric Lane's play.
"Oh, George, I don't know that Iwantto go to a theatre," she said doubtfully. "I've not been for so long——"
"Isn't that all the more reason? You're the best unpaid dramatic critic in London; and I want to know what you think of it. Eric's a great friend of mine. I particularly want you to meet him.... Don't come, if you'd rather not.But I've got a box, and, if the play bores you more than my conversation, we can talk in peace."
They compromised by arriving late, but Barbara was not in the mood to enjoy herself. It was a well-constructed play with dialogue of distinction and a good sense of the theatre; the characterization, she complained, was insufferably romantic.
"I congratulate your friend on a great commercial success," she said, "but I don't want to meet him. Listen to the applause! Every single character is so unmistakably labelled that the audience greets them like old friends. The theatre's so conventional that, if you tried to shew men and women who were higherandlower than stage standards, the critics would say that your characters were freaks. On the stage a woman may be jealous or high-minded or a mixture or a saint or a thorough-going, melodramatic villainess, but she's always a child, a kitten. Men idealize us so hopelessly! We're dear little fluffy, rather silly things, with silly little mental kinks of vanity or motherliness; no man understands how mean a woman can be, the lies she'll tell and the crimes she'll commit from motives which she'd be afraid to confess. Your friend Mr. Lane has never met a woman."
"You're hard on your sex," George commented.
Barbara shook her head sadly.
"I've seen it—without its rouge and powder. Look here, Sonia's a friend of yours and of mine; we both know how she behaved to Jim, but you'd never dare put her into a play, because the audience won't accept anything that offends against its standard of human dignity, it won't accept realism which makes people unconventionally mean, it won't believe that any one who's pretty enough to attract can have a really deceitful, petty spirit. Sonia was getting rather a bad name before the war, but she marries a man who's lost his sight, and every one says that the other part was just froth and that this is the true, noble Sonia—just asnine women out of ten become true and noble at the final curtain. Sonia married that man for effect!"
"I don't think you can have seen them together," George suggested.
"If it pays, a woman can always make herself think she's in love with a man—for a time. I daresay she thought she was in love with Jim; it would have been a sensational marriage, and she'd just made a fool of herself with that other man, the barrister. This, in another way, is a sensational marriage, and she feels she's justified herself. It's no good shaking your head, George; you don't know what romances a girl makes up for herself.Ishould do it. As long as women are exposed for sale in a shop-window, they'll do anything to keep up their price. They think it's self-respect; and you men admire them for their pride."
George drew her hand through his arm and walked to Berkeley Square without speaking. From her unwonted bitterness he guessed that she was trying to harden herself in advance for the news of Jack's death; every one had to choose his own form of consolation.
"When will you dine with me again?" she asked, as they reached her house.
"I'm going to the Abbey for the week-end. Any time after that."
"Then what about Monday? I'll pick you up at the same time."
When the day came round, Lady Crawleigh telephoned to say that the dinner must be postponed, as Barbara was ill in bed. She had fainted in the train and would have to take a complete rest; no plans had yet been made, no details or explanation were vouchsafed. Indeed, Barbara would only say that she had found herself stretched on the seat of the railway carriage, while a strange man forced brandy between her lips.
Any fuller report would have increased the alreadyexcessive alarm. The bare facts were that Barbara had entered the train at Crawleigh and remembered nothing until she recovered consciousness a few miles from Farnborough. A young man, who explained that he had got in at Winchester, had picked her up from the floor and taken charge of her until her maid appeared at Waterloo.
When she had been put to bed, Barbara began to recall and reconstruct forgotten incidents. She had felt giddy and had tried to open the window.... At Waterloo the young man had insisted on carrying her, and she had protested that she was too heavy. "I'll take great care of you."... "You are very good to me."... Scraps of their conversation floated through her head, and she remembered that he had a caressing voice which soothed her; they had talked, but she was three parts asleep. Half-way along the platform, he put her to rest on a seat. "I'm supposed to have an overstrained heart," he told her, "so I don't like to take liberties with it." Barbara tried to see his face; but he was bending over her, and the light was behind him. And then he had disappeared before she could thank him. "I do hope you'll be all right. I've given your maid my flask in case you want any more brandy. Good-bye." Barbara remembered making a great effort to rouse herself and look at him; but he had dived into the crowd without even telling her his name. The flask was engraved with a monogram which seemed to be E. L.; that and his voice were her only clues.
In her oversensitive condition, the voice was haunting. When she fell asleep, Barbara heard it again; and in the morning she gave orders that, if he called for the flask, he was to be asked his name and address. Then she tried to remember whether she had told him anything which would enable him to identify her; there was a label on her dressing-case, but he might not have seen it; as soon as her maid and car appeared, he had no need to ask where she lived. Barbara felt a pang of disappointment at the thought thatshe might not meet him again. Two days passed, and no one enquired for the flask; she decided to wait until she was allowed out of bed and then to advertise in theTimes. "E. L. Will the gentleman who rendered assistance to a lady who was taken ill on the 3.40 p. m. between Winchester and Waterloo communicate...."
She was drafting the advertisement when her mother came into the room.
"My darling, you oughtn't to be writing," protested Lady Crawleigh. "Let me do it for you, if it's important."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," Barbara answered.
She tore up the paper and lay back in bed. There was nothing to conceal, but she did not want to talk about her nameless and mysterious rescuer. Every one would laugh at her, if she said that she had fallen in love with a voice; and, if she chose to weave a romance for herself, it passed the time and was no one else's business. When the advertisement appeared, "E. L." would write to a numbered box at theTimesoffice; she would ask him to call so that she could thank him in person. And a charming friendship might result. No one could have carried her more tenderly or behaved more delightfully.... And, as long as she amused herself with speculating about him, she could avoid thinking of other things.
"George has brought you some flowers. He wants to know if you feel up to seeing him," said Lady Crawleigh.
"Oh, George! Yes!"
He was almost the only one of her friends whom she was willing to meet in her present mood, though his arrival interrupted the romance which she was constructing. He was also the only one of her friends who knew or had troubled to find out that she was ill. Apparently he was fond of her.... And she was quite ready to be fond of him.
"I hope you're better," he began. "I mustn't stay more than a moment, but I saw some roses in a shop and I thought they were as good an excuse as any other."
"You felt you needed an excuse?"
"I wanted very much to see you; and I hoped these might mollify your mother. Babs, I thought you might like to know that I met Colonel Waring to-day and we're having some enquiries made through the American Embassy. Jack was such a friend of us all...." he added vaguely.
"Oh, I do hope that they'll be able to hear something."
"Yes." George looked round the room and held out his hand. "I promised your mother I wouldn't do more than put my nose in at the door."
"But Iwantyou to stay!"
"And, dearest Babs, you know that's what I want to do more than anything in the world. But I mustn't tire you, and you mustn't tempt me." He lifted her hands from the sheets and bent quickly to kiss them. "You poor child!"
Barbara felt that this time she must explain, if she was not to be maddened with sympathy.
"You mustn't pity me, George," she began.
"I pity any one who's in suspense.... The colonel's absolutely convinced that Jack's all right. Good-bye, Babs."
As he turned abruptly and hurried out of the room, Barbara covered her eyes. George was not only fond of her, he was in love with her; and he had come on purpose to encourage her, against his own interests, with hopes of Jack's safety. There was a dramatic irony in his coming; there would be a further dramatic irony, if she fell in love with him for his sympathy about Jack and then heard that Jack was safe and sound. Or, indeed, if she fell in love with any one else. Because she was overwrought and full of fancies, the shadow of the man in the train was more real than George's substance; the one voice she could remember and reproduce, but George's might have belonged to anybody.... This was her old fear of the punishment which Providence had in store for her, the image of herself passionately reaching out towards some one and finding her way barred by Jack's inexorable ghost.
Suspense. "I pity any one who's in suspense."... It was the uncertainty of the last year which had worn down her strength. And Lady Loring told her to be patient.... Barbara's mind went back to her dinner of a week before and to Amy's chance reference to a new clairvoyant. Mrs. Savage of Knightsbridge.... No other address had been given, but she could find that from Sonia. All her life Barbara had treated impulse as a thing to be welcomed, a hint from destiny, a voice from the darkness. When she awoke next morning, it was to wonder why she had waited so long. On the first day that she was allowed out of the house she went by herself to Knightsbridge and asked, without giving her name, for an interview.
At another time the setting and her own preparations would have amused her. By putting on her most inconspicuous dress and hat, by veiling herself and by sinking her voice to a whisper, she trusted to escape recognition; unconsciously she also induced in her own mind a mysterious expectancy, which was intensified by the atmosphere of the room into which she was shewn. There were no windows, and it was lighted from the ceiling; three low couches ran round the walls, which were covered with yellow silk hangings; occasionally the hangings moved weirdly, as though some one were peeping behind them. Though there were three women already waiting, they were as silent as if, they were watching by the dead; and it had been ingeniously arranged that, while they waited, there should be nothing to distract their attention from the coming invocation of the unknown. They, too, were dressed inconspicuously; they, too, wore thick veils; and the suggestion of stealth and mystery, which they had received from the room and from those whom they had found there, they handed on to the newcomer.
Barbara's nerves were still unstrung, and she had less control of herself than in the old days when she went to the Baroness Kohnstadt'sséances; then she had gone to bethrilled, but now she was tempted to tell the maid that she could not wait and would come back some other time. But, if she ran away, the other women would guess the reason, and she could never allow another woman to know that she was frightened....
They were staring at her from behind their veils, and she stared coolly back at them until the maid returned and whispered to one that Mrs. Savage could now see her. The hangings moved again; it might have been the draught from the open door, or Mrs. Savage might be having a preliminary look at her clients; certainly it was disquieting, for no one liked to be watched without seeing the watcher.... When next the maid came in, Barbara looked at the clock and noted that interviews lasted for half an hour. She wondered what method the clairvoyant followed—and became suddenly sceptical and disgusted with the whole enterprise. She had done it so often before! Her hand had been read, her character told from her writing; one woman had taken her handkerchief and pressed it to her forehead, another had stared raptly into the time-honoured crystal ball; she had triedplanchetteand rappings; and from it all she had won nothing but an afternoon's excitement....
It was five o'clock; the last of the women had gone, and Barbara was alone. She pretended to examine the embroidery of the silk hangings and contrived to look behind them, but there was nothing more alarming than an expanse of discoloured plaster. Nerves, again.... But the silence and the waiting were hard to bear; the room was hot, Barbara wanted tea, and one of the women had been using a cheap, disagreeable scent which lingered intolerably. Nothing but a refusal to yield to her fear kept her from running away. She was trying to determine what questions she would ask the clairvoyant, when the maid returned.
"Mrs. Savage says she can see your ladyship now."
Barbara started and nearly cried out; but the maid was watching her, and she passed through the door withelaborate outward unconcern. The second room was similar to the first, for, though there was a window, it was thickly curtained, and the only light came from a standard lamp in one corner. For a moment Barbara could see no one; then Mrs. Savage came forward in a yellow dress which was invisible against the silk hangings. She wore a low yellow turban, covering her hair and half her forehead, and stood with her back to the light.
"Good afternoon, Lady Barbara," she said. "Won't you take off your veil?"
The voice was unfamiliar, but after a moment Mrs. Savage lighted a cigarette and shewed cavernous dark eyes and an aquiline nose set in a curiously narrow face which looked as if the cheek-bones had been crushed together.
"Madame Hilary!"
"Won't you have a cigarette?"
She held out a case, and Barbara took one to gain time. So much had happened since the meeting in Webster's room that it no longer troubled her. The woman was certainly a blackmailer, as she had almost proved when she went to Lord Crawleigh and asked for "temporary assistance." There would, of course, be a terrible scene, if it were ever discovered that Barbara had been to her again, and Mrs. Savage would quite possibly threaten blackmail, if she saw her course clear. On the other hand, now as before, the relative positions were equally strong and equally weak; if she even hinted at a threat, she could be reported to the police.... After the two hours of dreary waiting, Barbara felt stimulated by the prospect of an encounter.
"I never imagined it was you," she said.
"What may I have the honour of doing for you?" asked Mrs. Savage.
Barbara thought for a moment of saying vaguely that she had made a mistake and of escaping as soon as possible. But after the strain of waiting she now felt deliciously free from fear. And "Mrs. Savage" or "Madame Hilary" wasnot as other clairvoyants; the incident of Jack Summertown proved that; and the opportunity of consulting her was too good to be thrown away. Barbara felt that she was not entitled to throw it away; had she not almost been guided there? Was it coincidence that Amy Loring, of all unlikely people, should have given her the name at all? Was it coincidence that, when there were scores of women plying the same trade, she should come straight and without choice or deliberation to this one?...
"I'd heard about you," Barbara explained. "I didn't know who it was, of course, but I wanted to consult you."
She hesitated and tried to determine what she wanted.
"Yes?"
"I didn't know who it was," Barbara repeated. "But I'm glad to find itisyou. Do you remember the man in Mr. Webster's flat?"
"Lord Summertown?"
"Yes. Do you remember what you told him?"
"I told him nothing. It was whathesaid."
"Well, yes. He said that he was going to die quite soon, that he was going to be killed in a war. Well, that was months before there was any talk of war. Do you know what's happened to him?"
Mrs. Savage shrugged her shoulders a little impatiently, as though such questions were a waste of time.
"He was killed in the war," she said.
She spoke as if she took credit for it, and Barbara shivered.
"Yes.... I saw him just before he went back to barracks. I never saw him again, but Ifeltthen that he was going to be killed. How did you know?"
"He told me, as you heard."
"Yes, but...."
Barbara frowned and sat down, rubbing her forehead gently with her hand.
"Itell nothing, but I persuade people to tell me,"explained Mrs. Savage with unconcealed boredom. As she dropped back into the part of "Madame Hilary," "Mrs. Savage" was reviving her old staccato English and giving it a hint of a foreign accent. "People come to me to find out whether their sons and husbands are going to be killed.Ido not know. And I tell them so. Then sometimes they allow me to persuadethemto tellme. And, in my turn, I can tell them what they have said. But, generally, no! They are afraid of hearing the truth. When their sons and husbands have been killed, when nothing has been heard of them since long,thenthey come, because they feel that the truth is less hard than the waiting. You have a brother?"
"They're still waiting to go out," answered Barbara.
"And you want to know? I can only tell you, if you tell me first; and you can only tell me, if you know. The lines of life are interlocked. If their lines cross yours, then you know; but, if they are separated.... You understand? It is not likely that you know anything of a man at the other end of the world, whom you have never met, unless it has been ordained that you are to meet him. That is reasonable."
She lighted another cigarette and sat down, looking at Barbara with no apparent interest.
"You want to find out about some one whose life has crossed yours?" she resumed carelessly, and her indifference was more disconcerting than either her stereotyped mysticism or the hostility which she had shewn when Barbara came into the room.
"I want to find outgenerally," answered Barbara. "All about myself. What I've done and what I'm doing now doesn't matter, but I want to know about the future."
Mrs. Savage laughed and shook her head.
"I know your name," she said. "I know who you are, but I know very little about you. I imagine that your life has been very happy, you have had everything to make ithappy. Perhaps it will not always be happy. If you learned that you were going to be very ill or die——"
"I've got to die some time. When I'm seventy-five, I shall know that I'm going to die very soon, because hardly any one lives longer than that. I'm twenty-two now, and I don't in the least mind knowing that Ican'tlive for more than about another fifty years."
"But, if it were five years? I do not know, of course."
"I'd sooner face it, I think."
Mrs. Savage threw away her cigarette impatiently.
"You're a child! And a silly child! Your friend, Lord Summertown—well, I suppose none of you told him what he had said. And I suppose he enjoyed his life to the end. Thewholefuture! Would you like to know that you will marry in a year and be happy and lose your husband after three months and lose your child and marry again—perhaps, this time, some one who will not make you happy? And that then you will have an illness or this or that?... I am talking for your good, because you are nothing but a silly child. Itellyou that people will not be persuaded to say to me all they know; they dare not face it. Their present and future happiness——"
"I'm not so very happy," sighed Barbara.
"You are a child. And your friends are being killed, perhaps some one whom you love——"
"I want toknow," Barbara interrupted. "Everything's in such a muddle, I want to know what's going to happen...." She paused, but Mrs. Savage only shook her head. "Should I know what I was telling you? No! Lord Summertown didn't. Well, you need only tell me back the things that matter. If you ask me questions and I answer them.... Perhaps Idon'twant to know if I'm going to die within a year, but there are all sorts of things that I could quite well be told.... Will you do that? Just the things that matter?"
"But I do not know what matters to you. Do you mean, whether your—friends will come through the war without injury?"
"Ye-es. That sort of thing. I want to know if I'm going to behappy. Generally."
"And you believe that I can help you?" Mrs. Savage's voice was changing its quality to a sleepy drone, and Barbara found herself looking into her eyes. "Only you can tell me what you think willmakeyou happy. I know nothing about you except what you tell me. Perhaps you are in love with some man, perhaps you think that he is in danger.... If you will tell me...."
Barbara never knew at what point she began to come under the influence of Mrs. Savage's eyes and voice. At one moment she was begging her to use her powers, at another she was talking very volubly; it was like a dream in which she fancied herself making a speech; words were pouring out of her, and she was astonished to find that they made the nonsense of words in a dream. "The distinction between the articles in counterpoint, if you think of heliotrope quite accidentally included...."
"What have I been saying?" she demanded.
Mrs. Savage leaned back wearily and closed her eyes.
"It is like that, when you return to yourself, to the present.... Lord Summertown was disturbed by that poor girl who cried out."
"But I didn't know.... Did I go off? How long...?" She looked at her watch and found that she had been in the room for three-quarters of an hour. "What did I say?"
"You were a good subject."
"But what did I say?" Barbara repeated. It was the sight of her watch that upset her. In forty-five minutes it was possible to say so much, and she remembered Jack Summertown's almost indecent want of restraint.
"What shall I tell you," mused Mrs. Savage. "You saidmuch, but you described an empty life. Few lines crossed yours; there may be more to come.... But you did not tell me of any loss. Were you afraid of losing some one?"
"No.... I wanted to know, I wanted to—to straighten things out. But I want to know everything I said. Youmusttell me that."
"You child!"
Barbara sprang up in a grip of terror.
"I've said something awful? You're hiding something from me! It's not fair!"
Mrs. Savage shook her head slowly. She seemed perplexed, and her early hostility had evaporated until she was almost kindly.
"You wanted to know whether you would be happy," she reminded Barbara. "You tell me that you are not going to die this year or next; and you are not going to have any painful or dangerous illnesses. Happy?... There are ups and downs of happiness, you cannot expect to be happy always at the same level. If you have been happy so far, you will be happy again; there will, of course, be ups and downs. What else?"
"I want you to tell me everything I said."
"That I shall not do."
"But why not?"
Mrs. Savage shrugged her shoulders.
"It would not make you any happier. If there is any one thing you want to know...."
Barbara looked at her and looked away. She felt her nerve going.
"What is your fee?" she asked.
Mrs. Savage was still perplexed in expression, but her eyes had lost their momentary softening of kindliness.
"I shall chargeyou—no fee," she answered.
Barbara turned and ran out of the room.
"I loved you all my life; but some lives never meetThough they go wandering side by side through Time."John Masefield: "The Daffodil Fields."
"I loved you all my life; but some lives never meetThough they go wandering side by side through Time."John Masefield: "The Daffodil Fields."
"I loved you all my life; but some lives never meetThough they go wandering side by side through Time."John Masefield: "The Daffodil Fields."
"I loved you all my life; but some lives never meetThough they go wandering side by side through Time."
"I loved you all my life; but some lives never meet
Though they go wandering side by side through Time."
John Masefield: "The Daffodil Fields."
John Masefield: "The Daffodil Fields."
"Fatalism is a doctrine which does not recognise the determination of all events by causes in the ordinary sense; holding, on the contrary, that a certain foreordained result will come about, no matter what may be done to prevent it...."
Barbara's first action on reaching home was to go into the library and consult a dictionary to find out the exact meaning of a word which she had been repeating to herself ever since she hurried out of Mrs. Savage's rooms. She had many new ideas to fit into place, but dominating them all was this sense of hopelessness and inevitability. Whether you walked on the north pavement or the south was preordained; if you asserted your supposed free will and crossed from south to north, even that pitiful show of independence was preordained; God was still pushing you from behind and, probably, laughing at you—as you laughed at the kitten which stared at you with head on one side and wondering eyes, to know what you had done with its reel of cotton. It was preordained that you should play with that kitten for a moment in eternity and that for a fraction of a moment you should hide the reel. Fatalism was paralyzing to the soul, destroying all effort. Nothing mattered any longer....
It was Summertown who had made her a fatalist. Hislife had been mapped out until all initiative was taken away. He had died very gallantly—but he could not help himself; he had lived rather dissolutely, but he could not help himself. There had been a tragedy and a disappointment in his life; but the tragedy was set beforehand, and Destiny decided whether he was to be made or broken by it, whether he was to avert or contribute to it. Fatalism was the negation of morality. It allowed of neither right nor wrong, only necessity.
If there were neither right nor wrong, Barbara had no cause for self-reproach. Destiny had arranged that Jack should come into her life; that he should anger her and that she should try to punish him; in obeying Destiny she was not to blame. But, if fatalism relieved her of responsibility, it also robbed her of resistance; she could do nothing to shield herself from anything that Destiny might have in store for her. Nothing had shielded Summertown when he came within range of the first German bullet....
And the course of Destiny could be laid bare. Though for long she had not believed it, she and the others had known what would happen to Summertown, as Mrs. Savage now knew what would happen to her.... And she had been afraid to insist on being told. All her life she had fancied that she was a free spirit with head and hands to make herself what she pleased. Now she was content to be told that, on the whole, she was preordained to be happy.... Or so Mrs. Savage had thought fit to say; she might be hiding something; there was no obvious reason why she refused her fee.
"My darling, haven't you gone up to dress yet?" said Lady Crawleigh at the door of the library. "You'll be so dreadfully late!"
Barbara knew that whether she was late or punctual had been preordained. Her mother probably would not believethat; she would feel that every one had enough free will not to keep other people waiting for dinner.
"I think I should like to dine in bed," she answered wearily.
"Aren't you feeling well?"
"I'm not equal to meeting a lot of people."
"But it's only George and the O'Ranes and one or two more. They'll be so disappointed. And it's the first time Sonia's dined here since she was married."
Barbara got up and walked reluctantly to the door. It was preordained, then, that she should dine.... Once you accepted predestination, there was no limit to its application. Her maid wanted her to wear a grey dress, but she preferred something else, anything else; her choice fell on a blue, but she was conscious that she was compelled from outside to choose one rather than the other. She could not be troubled to decide what jewellery she would wear; Destiny must do a little work, must choose for her. She felt that she was scoring a point against Destiny, when she refused to wear any; but Destiny had decided beforehand that she was to have this moment's struggle before deciding not to wear any....
Her maid was almost in tears at such indifference.
"You don't do me credit, my lady, to-night," she complained.
"Don't I? I'm sorry, Merton! But I'm tired, I can't take the trouble."
"Your hair, my lady——"
"I think I shall cut it off! It's only a bother."
"My lady, your beautiful hair?"
"No, I shan't cut it off. It's too much trouble. Everything's too much trouble."
She hardly looked at herself in the glass before going downstairs, though she knew that Sonia O'Rane would havespent hours in preparing herself. But it was preordained whether she looked well ... or wanted to look well.
Throughout dinner her mind struggled under the incubus. Predestination peeped round every conversational corner, explaining and stultifying everything. When O'Rane spoke sympathetically of Jim Loring's death, she answered almost callously that it must have been preordained. Since leaving Mrs. Savage, she had tried vainly to discover some point in which she was superior to an animal that was born at the stockman's bidding, to be killed for lamb or shorn for wool or kept to bear other sheep at the stockman's bidding and ultimately killed for mutton.
"You see, I believe in Destiny," Barbara explained. "Destiny meant you to be wounded and Jim to be killed and some one else to be untouched. If Destiny didn't mean me to be burned, I could put my finger in the flame of that candle. Everything we do——"
O'Rane shook his head and laughed.
"You don't believe that, Lady Barbara. You don't believe that you've no choice whether you're good or bad, kind or unkind—that you're helpless."
"I am waiting for you to find fault with my logic," she answered.
"I won't try. I wish I could see you, though! You sound serious, but in the old days, when I looked at you, there was a sort of etherealized smile——"
"Ah, don't!" Barbara shivered.
"——It gave you away.... I'm sorry! I'm getting so used to being blind that I forget other people's feelings.... Your voice is quite serious, and I'm getting wonderful at voices. Shall I tell you something about yours? A change I've noticed?" He waited to assure himself that they were not overheard. "Lady Barbara, are you very unhappy about something? It's not curiosity; I want to help, if I can. When you're blind, you become a bit of an impressionist.If any one asked me to describe you, I'm glad to say that I can still remember exactly what you used to look like, but, when I describe you to myself, I get a massing of colours, a glorious freedom of line that no one else might recognize for you. Your voice would make me crowd my canvas with red, blood red. Pain is always red to me. And you give me the impression of horrible pain. More than that, I'm afraid you've giving in to it. I don't ask for your confidence, but, if I'm right, I should like to help."
Barbara was too much startled to do more than thank him and say that she was not very well.
"Ah, that was a pity!" he sighed.
"But I can't help it, can I?"
"It was a pity to say that. You've covered my picture with a thin grey-yellow wash—Thames water—which dulls my colours."
"Do you mean that I'm not speaking the truth?" she asked stiffly.
"I had no right to say what I did," he answered apologetically. "But you sounded so heart-broken."
"Well, in addition to being not very well, I'mnotparticularly happy. Life's such a hopeless thing, if you can't control it."
"Andyousay that, Lady Barbara, with your brains and your looks and your health and your money——"
"Even if I've got them all, they needn't make me happy.... Theydon't! Sometimes I feel that, if I could give them all up, if I could make one gigantic sacrifice, I might be happy.... You're not sorry to have been fighting, are you? But I wonder what equal sacrifice a woman can make."
"Ah, to die with credit is the easiest thing in the world," O'Rane answered, as he pushed back his chair.
When she was half-way upstairs, Barbara excused herself and went to her room. Sonia and her husband were sohappy that their happiness hurt her; she grudged it them. There was no reason under heaven why she should not be as happy, but Destiny had not yet ordained it. Perhaps Destiny had decided that she should see it for a moment and then have it snatched from her. It was a variant of her old fear that she would have to marry Jack and then fall in love with some one else; then she had regarded such a fate as her punishment. Destiny, she now felt, did not concern itself with rewards and punishments; it was altogether too arbitrary.
She lay on her bed without undressing and thought over the day's emotions. Of all that she had done she only regretted her momentary panic when she ran away from Mrs. Savage; and, the more she regretted it, the more determined she became to go again and to demand full answers to all her questions. As soon as her mind was made up, she felt better. People might call her superstitious, gullible or anything else they pleased, but they should not say that she was a coward. Jumping up from the bed, she tidied her hair and went down to the drawing-room in time to find Sonia saying good-bye.
"Oh, don't go yet," said Barbara. "I had such a headache that I had to lie down, but it's better now. I haven't had a moment with you the whole evening."
"We've promised to go to a party," Sonia answered. "To-night's the hundred and fiftieth performance of Eric Lane's play, and he's giving a supper on the stage. Why don't you come too?"
"I haven't been asked. And I don't know him."
"Oh, that doesn't matter! I don't know him, but David was up at Oxford with him."
"I think I'll wait until I've met him. You're not going too, George?"
"I'm bound for the same debauch, I'm afraid. Barbara,will you dine with me some time to meet him? I'll try to fix a night and telephone to you in the morning."
"I shall love that."
She went to bed, feeling that she would sleep; but her nerves were unsettled by the memory of her encounter with Mrs. Savage. After trying to read, she jumped up and began walking about the room. She was never conscious of having gone outside, but some time later she found herself in the hall, lying on a table with a rug round her. Lady Crawleigh was standing over her with a white face and frightened eyes; her maid hovered in the background, with her hair in curl-papers and a grotesque mackintosh over her nightgown. Farther away stood an unmistakable policeman with close-cropped black hair and a line of white at the top of his forehead. Barbara reflected that she had never before seen a policeman without his helmet. Then she sat up and stared round her.
"What's happened?"
"My darling child, lie still," Lady Crawleigh implored. "How do you feel?"
"I'm all right."
"You were walking in your sleep. Oh, Babs, you've given us all such a fright! D'you know, you'd actually got outside.... Anything might have happened to you!"
Barbara looked from her mother to the policeman.
"Outside?" she repeated.
"You'd unlocked the door and pushed back both bolts—Aston's quite sure he bolted top and bottom——"
"And I went out like this?" Barbara interrupted. She pulled up the end of the rug and found that she was barefooted and in her nightdress. "I can't remember.... I went to bed; Idoremember that it was very hot and that I walked about the room...."
The policeman coughed and prepared to retire. Lady Crawleigh despatched the maid for her purse, but Barbarawas too much dazed even to thank him. A dream which had been wonderfully vivid a moment before was fading from her recollection, driven out scene by scene at the sound of her mother's frightened voice. She had fancied that she was again sitting with Mrs. Savage and that the flicker of kindliness which had for a moment lighted up the gaunt face and smouldering dark eyes was once more visible. In another moment everything would have been told....
"I suppose I was going for a walk. What's the time?"
"It's one o'clock," answered Lady Crawleigh. "I sat up to finish some writing.... My darling child, are you sure you're all right now?"
Barbara stood for a moment to test her strength and then walked to the stairs.
"Yes, thanks. I'll go back to bed now. I'm sorry to have frightened everybody."
"I'll come with you, Babs. If you want anything in the night——"
"I'm really all right!" Barbara was so much exhausted that this time she knew she would be able to sleep. She did not know, however, what she might say in her sleep. "You can lock both doors, mother; and I couldn't throw myself out of the window, if I tried. I couldn't sleep, if I had any one in the room; I should feel I was being watched."
"But just for to-night——"
"I shan't go to bed, unless you do what I ask."
Lady Crawleigh knew well when it was useless to argue, and Barbara went up alone. Mrs. Savage had called her; if the dream had not been so rudely disturbed, she would have been able to remember the form of the call as she still remembered its urgency. But that hardly mattered now; she was only strengthened in her determination to go back to Knightsbridge in the morning. She fell asleep, happier than she had been for a year. Lady Crawleigh peeped into the room once or twice during the night, but Barbara didnot stir until the telephone-bell rang by her bed-side at half-past nine. A strange male voice enquired for her and seemed more than usually anxious to be certain of her identity.
"We are Furnivall and Morton, solicitors," said the voice. "It is Mr. Morton speaking. Is that Lady Barbara Neave?"
"Yes."
"Youare—Lady Barbara Neave? You are acquainted with a client of ours, Mrs. Savage."
The combination of Mrs. Savage and a slightly hectoring solicitor who insisted on speaking to her at half-past nine disconcerted Barbara.
"What Mrs. Savage do you mean?" she asked.
"Mrs. Savage of Knightsbridge. You called on her yesterday. I am sorry to say that there has been a misunderstanding, and our client is in a position of some difficulty. She gave me your name, and, after thinking the matter over very carefully, I felt that you were the person who could be of most service to her. Mrs. Savage assured me that you would do anything in your power to help her, so I need not apologize for troubling you at this rather unseasonable hour."
The voice paused, and Barbara found herself trembling. It was not blackmail to tell her that she would do anything in her power to help some one but the tone could be so confident as to be menacing. Barbara had never been brought into contact with solicitors; she knew from books that it was prudent and legitimate to refer them to one's own solicitors, but it would argue an uneasy conscience to be so summary before she had given Mr. Morton time to explain himself.
"What has happened?" she asked.
"Some malicious person has been writing letters to the Home Office," explained Mr. Morton, "and the long and theshort of it is that it's necessary for us to produce evidence as to character. If you would be kind enough——"
"But I don't know her," Barbara protested. "I've only met her twice."
"That does not matter. One of the charges against our client is that she trades on the credulity of ignorant people who have been made unbalanced by the war and that, when she has got these same ignorant people into her grasp, she extorts money from them. You and I know that such a charge is grotesquely untrue. Our client had devoted her whole life to the study of what I may conveniently call 'the occult'; she has never advertised or solicited business—her peculiar powers have made that unnecessary—and those who have consulted her, so far from being credulous or ignorant people, are drawn to her by a common interest in a study which, though still in its infancy, is capable of almost infinite development." Barbara fancied that Mr. Morton must be reading aloud the draft of the defence which he had prepared for Mrs. Savage. "We feel that the Home Office will take a different view of the case, when confronted with a few of the people whom the anonymous informant is good enough to call ignorant and credulous. I am therefore collecting a few statements from some of the very many people who consulted our client. I shall be glad to know that you will allow me to call on you and suggest to you the general form in which these statements are being drawn."
Barbara was vaguely relieved to find that Mrs. Savage was once more on the defensive and that the solicitor with the ominous voice was asking favours rather than uttering threats. She would have liked to help, if it had been possible; a year before she would undoubtedly have responded; but now she dreaded the publicity of a newspaper report, and there would be a scene with her father to which she felt wholly unequal. The common sense of the world, too, would only rank her with the credulous ignorant.
"You can get other people who know her better, surely?" Barbara suggested.
"I want to get every one I can," answered Mr. Morton. "Your name, if I may say so, will carry a great deal of weight. We wish to show the Home Office thekindof people who went to our client."
Barbara was quite convinced by now that she did not want to be known as "the kind of person" who consulted Mrs. Savage, though in an hour's time she would have been on her way to Knightsbridge.
"I think I'd sooner be left out of it," she said.
"I'm afraid we can't afford to spare you."
"But you can'tmakeme!"
There was a pause, followed by a warning cough, and Mr. Morton began to speak more slowly and emphatically.
"If the Home Office authorities are ill-advised enough to recommend a prosecution, it will be necessary for you to attend. We want to avoid that, of course; we want to satisfy the authorities—without any unpleasantness—that they are under a misapprehension. A statement from you——"
"But would it be published?"
"That we should have to decide later. Our client has also been wantonly attacked by certain papers, and it is our business to see that she is cleared of all suspicion."
"I shan't say anything, if it's going to be published in the papers," Barbara rejoined obstinately.
Mr. Morton hesitated again and became even more impressive.
"I'm afraid—you'll understand, of course, that this is in no sense a threat—I'm afraid that you'll regret it later. If we're unable to settle the matter out of hand, if there's a prosecution——"
"But I've really nothing to do with it! You can't drag me in!" Barbara cried.
"Have you never heard of asubpœna?"
A threat, like any other challenge, roused Barbara to combat, however ill and reluctant she might be; and, when roused, her first act was to throw aside prudence like a cloak that was fettering her sword-arm.
"Oh, I know you can make me come, if you want to," she said. "If you and Mrs. Savage think it's worth while. I've only met her twice—yesterday and about two years ago. She hasn't forgotten the first meeting. You can ask her if she thinks it's worth while."
Barbara hung up the receiver and lay back in bed, breathing quickly. Her mother came in a moment later to enquire how she was and found her with flushed cheeks and dilated pupils.
"My darling, what's the matter?" she cried.
"Oh, I'm worried! Everything worries me!" answered Barbara with a catch in her breath. "Oh, that telephone again!"
This time it was George Oakleigh, and his tone of gentle concern worried her until she wanted to scream and beg to be left alone.
"Good-morning, Barbara. I tried to get through to you before, but your line was engaged. I hope you're better this morning. Well, I went to Eric Lane's party last night after leaving you; I've made him promise to dine with me on Thursday, it's his only free evening for weeks. Is that any good to you? Even if you don't like his play, I think you'll like him."
Barbara felt that, if by pressing a button she could compass Lane's death, she would press it cheerfully and promptly. Then perhaps she would escape having him thrust down her throat every few hours.
"George, it's sweet of you," she said, straining to speak graciously, "but I don't know that I shall feel up to it. All my nerves seem to have gone wrong."
"I'm so sorry; I thought he might amuse you. Would you like to leave it open? Thursday. He's dining with me in any event. If you ring me up between now and then.... Take care of yourself, dear Barbara; you're too precious to lose."
"Oh, I'm not going to die young," she laughed nervously. "The gods don't love me enough for that."
As she put the telephone away again, Lady Crawleigh came back to the bed; she had only troubled to gather one thing from the conversation, and that was the rare admission from Barbara's own lips that she was too ill to accept an invitation.
"Darling, I thought that after last night it would be a good thing for you to see Dr. Gaisford," she said. "Perhaps he can give you a tonic——"
"Oh, I don't want to see a doctor," Barbara interrupted. "My wretched body's all right. No doctor in the world can do me any good."
"But you're not yourself at all. And you'veneverwalked in your sleep before. Theremustbe something a little wrong, when you begin doing that."
Barbara said nothing, because she felt that her nerves were tingling and that she might break out with something so unnaturally irritable and rude that Dr. Gaisford would be summoned without the chance of an appeal. It was absurd to talk about sleep-walking; it was not in sleep that she had walked down the stairs and through the door-way. A trance it might fairly be called; but, where memory failed, instinct told her that she was obeying a call; she had no doubt that, when the policeman stopped her, she was on her way to Mrs. Savage; and she would there have heard something—perhaps everything....
"I was only restless," said Barbara at length, pulling the bed-clothes about with an impatient hand.
"You're notthinkingof getting up, are you?"
Since she could not go back to Knightsbridge, Barbara was undecided what to do. At least she had to remain within reach of the telephone, for Mr. Morton might reopen communication at any moment; and she had to remain at home to secure that, if Mrs. Savage made a personal appeal, it should not be intercepted this time by Lord Crawleigh. Bed was as good a place as any other....
Mr. Morton left her undisturbed, but two days later she heard the last of Mrs. Savage. At some period of her wandering career May Tennigen, sometimes known as "Madame Hilary" or "Mrs. Savage," had become a naturalized American; the Home Office, working sympathetically with the War Office, which suspected her activities, decided to dispense with a prosecution and to return her to the country of her adoption. When Barbara read of the deportation, she was first relieved and then plunged into despair. Her last contact with certainty had been broken. Lady Crawleigh came in to find her crying in her sleep; later she began to talk feverishly and in the morning Dr. Gaisford was summoned.
"She was dreadfully overworked in the hospital," explained Lady Crawleigh. "And I don't think she's got over it yet.Youknow how naughty she is as a rule, when she's told to stay in bed; now she won't get up. She says there's no point in getting up, that there's nothing to do. She says that, if she'sfatedto get up—or something like that.... She says she's got no will of her own, that we've none of us got wills. That fromBarbara!"
The doctor's task was easy in one respect, for Barbara did whatever she was told. If Destiny contrived a man and crossed the thread of his life with hers and made him a physician and sent him with a stethoscope and a fountain-pen to write prescriptions, what was the use of protesting? She could take the medicine—or leave it untouched; that had been arranged for her beforehand. Everything wasarranged beforehand, but she had lost the means of finding out what Destiny had in store for her....
"Is she worried about anything?" asked the doctor.
"Not that I know of," Lady Crawleigh answered.
Since the time eighteen months before, when Barbara said bluntly, "Mother, I'm not going to marry Jack," they had not discussed him. When he was reported "missing," Barbara never commented on her mother's letter, even with a phrase of conventional regret; she did not seem to discuss him with any one, she had rejected her aunt's sympathy, and, if she were breaking her heart for him, it was strange that even in sleep she never referred to him.
When the doctor left, Lady Crawleigh resolved that Barbaramustbe coaxed into saying why she was so miserable. But, if it was hard to corkscrew anything out of her when she was obstinately rebellious, it was harder still when she cowered like a beaten dog. For three nights she had lain moaning "Happy ... I do want to be happy.... Won't any one make me happy?" Lady Crawleigh alluded vaguely to restless nights, and the doctor prescribed a sedative.
For the first time in more than twelve months Barbara slept peacefully and awoke with the memory of a delightful dream. After the disturbance of her encounter with Mrs. Savage, her memory had at last gone back to the day when she fainted in the train. Twice in the night a voice was heard speaking to her very softly, with a child's confiding gentleness; then the child himself appeared, standing over her and holding out both hands until she got up from the grass and walked with him. She found that she, too, was a child, with bare arms and legs and her hair hanging loose and blowing into her face until he brushed it aside and kissed her. They walked with their arms twined about each other's waists, and, when Barbara looked wonderingly at their blue ephods, he said "The Blue Bird," and sheanswered, "Of course! The Blue Bird" and knew that he was come to bring her happiness.
They set out seriously, for there was no time to be lost, through a long narrow garden built like a cliff road, terrace under terrace, with a silver ribbon of water turning in a cascade from the end of each terrace on to the one below. There were fig trees on either side, and he made her sit down in the shade while he gathered the warm soft figs and tossed them into her lap.
"Spain," she said. "We must go on."
"Aren't you happy here?" he asked.
"Yes. I love you."
"And I love you."
"But we must go on," she repeated.
He bent forward on one knee and kissed her feet.
"You are tired. Rest here, where you are happy."
"I am very happy, but we must go on."
He stood up and lifted her in his arms until she laid her cheek against his and clasped her hands round his neck.
"I am too heavy," she protested. "You are only a child."
"I cannot let you hurt your feet on all these stones," he answered.
"You are very good to me."
"I love you. If you will stay here, I will take care of you always. You will be happy. You will never be hurt. I will watch over you, and no one shall come near you."
She looked from under the shade of the fig-tree on to the silver ribbon of water falling in cascades from one terrace to another.
"No oneisnear us. We are alone in the world."
"And I love you; and you love me."
She struggled out of his arms and darted forward.
"We must go on."
"When you are happy?"
"Yes.Ihave to go on. Who are you?"
"I cannot tell you. I have not lived till now."
"I never lived till you told me that you loved me. Kiss me! Kiss my eyes! I love you and I am happy.... But I have to go on. You are a child."
"Like you. Let me kiss your hand."
"My eyes! Kiss my eyes! They were aching, but you have made me happy...."
Barbara was still speaking when she awoke. Her arms were thrown wide, as though she were waiting to embrace some one, and she heard her own whispered "happy."
The door creaked. A wedge of yellow light advanced, broadening, into the room and slowly climbed the opposite wall. Through half-closed eyes she saw her mother; and, though she shut her eyes, she could feel that her mother was crossing the room, standing by her, watching her. Then the door creaked again. Barbara sighed with relief. In another moment sleep would have been banished, but now she might hope to recapture it. Spain ... The Generalife Garden ... Sunshine hot on her face ... Black stains of shadow from the fig trees ... The sweet, creamy figs ... Quivering waves of heat flung back and up from the burning earth on to her bare ankles ... A child in blue ephod kissing her feet in adoration....
She could not remember his face. But, if she did not wake herself by thinking too hard of him, he would come back. Hemustcome back....
The boat was hardly big enough for them both, but he sat at her feet with a bare arm round his bare legs and his other hand dipped in the water. She never knew when he got into the boat or when she got into it herself; but he was speaking, as they came in sight of the Blue Grotto, and this time she determined to see his face.
"The river is not wide enough for oars," he explained.
"I was afraid I had lost you."
"I love you. I will take wonderful care of you. You will stay?"
"We must go on."
The Blue Grotto changed to a horse-shoe doorway, through which she could see a valley of swaying corn studded with poppies. At the doorway their narrow river ended, and a ripple of water lapped and washed over the granite steps.
"I will carry you," he said. "You must not wet your feet."
"I am too heavy. You are only a child."
He laughed, and she found herself in his arms with her cheek pressed against his and one hand drawing back the hair from her eyes.
"At the end," she began, looking over the corn and poppies to a strip of white road winding out of the valley and merging in a white haze on the horizon.
"Stay with me! You are happy. And you love me."
"I love you.... But we must go on."
She ran ahead, trailing her fingers through the waving ears of corn, and looked over her shoulder. He had thrown himself on the ground, but, when she faltered back, he knelt and drew her to him.
"Stay with me! I love you!"
"If you love me, kiss me!"
She stood over him with her head thrown back until he sprang up and clasped her in his arms.
"I will never let you go!"
"You must let me go. I have to go on."
"But you are happy?"
"Yes! I am happy ... happy...."
She had run on alone, with his kiss still on her lips, and had reached the last height of the strip of white road before she awoke. She heard her own whispered "happy," but she was frightened....
Her bedroom was full of sunshine, and Barbara opened her arms to welcome it. She was sitting up, when her mother came in, turning the big illustrated pages of "The Blue Bird"; it was the last thing that she had read before going to sleep and she wanted to see again the Kingdom of the Future and the "halls of the Azure Palace, where the children wait that are yet to be born." The opalescent doors and the blue ephods of the children were still vivid to her; when she fell asleep, she had been reading of "the two holding each other by the hand and always kissing ... the Lovers," who spent "their day looking into each other's eyes, kissing and bidding each other farewell" ... because they could not be born into the world at the same time.
"Darling, you're looking better," said Lady Crawleigh.
"Yes, I had a wonderful night," answered Barbara. "I'm going to get up to-day. I'm going out. I want to be in the sun."
She laid aside the book and began her breakfast.
"Dr. Gaisford's coming to see you at twelve," Lady Crawleigh reminded her.
"Oh, we'll telephone and put him off. He'd much sooner be told that I'd gone out. But he can give me some more of that medicine; it makes me sleep. And I'm quite hungry."