"Sometime, somehow, somewhere—How should I know or care?—It is written aboveThat fortune and loveAre waiting for me somewhere..."
"Sometime, somehow, somewhere—How should I know or care?—It is written aboveThat fortune and loveAre waiting for me somewhere..."
"Sometime, somehow, somewhere—How should I know or care?—It is written aboveThat fortune and loveAre waiting for me somewhere..."
"Sometime, somehow, somewhere—
How should I know or care?—
It is written above
That fortune and love
Are waiting for me somewhere..."
The strict waltz rhythm was slightly modified to give scope to the voice; but no one had began to dance when Jack went upstairs, and Lady Barbara had to break off and say:
"Do begin, some one!"
"We want to hear you sing," murmured a diffident voice.
"Rubbish! What d'you like? Ragtime? A waltz?"
"When you are in love,All the world is fair;Hearts are light with laughter gay;Roses,—roses all the way..."
"When you are in love,All the world is fair;Hearts are light with laughter gay;Roses,—roses all the way..."
"When you are in love,All the world is fair;Hearts are light with laughter gay;Roses,—roses all the way..."
"When you are in love,
All the world is fair;
Hearts are light with laughter gay;
Roses,—roses all the way..."
Bobby Pentyre and Sally Farwell edged through the door; Summertown and his partner followed, and withintwo minutes the room was three-quarters full. Jack squeezed his way forward for a better view. Lady Barbara played tirelessly, modulating from waltz to waltz, humming a line here, whistling two bars there, until the Master panted up to the piano and cried "time." She laughed and sat back on the music-stool, softly fingering the keys and looking round the ball-room to see who was there. Jack stood self-consciously stranded by the door, assuring himself of the line of his tie, pulling down his waistcoat and glancing at the hang of his knee-breeches. Her eyes met his, and she smiled.
"Say when you want me to begin again," she called out.
"Give us just a moment," begged the Secretary.
She struck a chord and threw "Lord Rendel" at them with such tragic intensity that, at the end, Summertown raised a husky view-holloa of applause and the decorous group at the door clapped noiselessly. Jack always freely confessed that he knew nothing of music, but he felt bathed in delightful irresponsibility, as Lady Barbara mingled old English ballads with plantation songs and jolting ragtime with waltzes which seemed to draw his heart out of his body. She was gloriously free from self-consciousness. After two false starts, which were not lost on her, he crossed the room in the wake of a little party which went to beg for its favourite tunes.
"Awfully good of you to play like this," he said, as the others edged away. "I hope you're not making the headache worse?"
"I love making people happy." She stretched out her foot and pulled a chair beside her stool. "Tell me what you'd like me to play. D'you know "Deirdre of the Sorrows"? Not the play, but the waltz. Little O'Rane wrote it. You know him, I expect, he's a great friend of my cousin Jim." At the first chords of the waltz, couples from all round the room rose and began to dance. Jack threw one leg over the other and pushed his chair a short wayback, faintly and belatedly embarrassed to find himself marooned on the dais by her side. "Mr. Waring——"
"Yes?"
"I want to ask you one question. You needn't answer it, unless you like.... And then we'll leave it alone. I'm not as bad as you expected?"
Though he had warned himself at the beginning of dinner to be untiringly on his guard, Jack looked up with a start. She was absorbed in the music; her head was bowed, and she only raised it to glance with half-closed eyes at the dancers, occasionally concentrating on one couple and regulating her time by theirs.
"You've answered your own question. Rather inadequately," he added.
"Thank you ... I wish you danced! You're missing such a lot!"
"Am I? Lady Barbara, why on earth did you ask me that?"
Her head drooped lower over the keys.
"Because it hurt so!" she whispered tremulously. "Am I so vulgar?"
"Do you imagine you're quoting me?"
"Oh, Mr. Waring, be honest! You despised me before you met me. Do you now?"
"It's the last thing I should dream of doing."
"Well, wasn't it rather unfair—before you even knew me? It's done me a lot of harm ... and it hurt so terribly. If you were just to say you were sorry——?"
Her humility was so unexpected as to be bewildering.
"My dear Lady Barbara, I've only seen you once before!" he exclaimed. "Ididsay something about you then; I criticized the people you went about with, if you're referring to that."
"Then you don't despiseme?"
"You're the greatest revelation I've ever had."
As the waltz quickened to the coda, a stout, flamboyant figure appeared in the doorway, attended by a sallow escort armed with music-cases and instruments. The Secretary ended a warm exchange of invective to cross the room and thank Lady Barbara. Refusing to give an encore to the waltz, she bowed to Jack and hurried out of the room.
Half-way down the stairs he overtook her and asked to be allowed to sit out the next dance with her.
"We can hardly leave it like this, can we?" he urged.
"Like what? I must get some air! My head will burst, if I don't!"
She ran across the hall, rattled at the door-handle and hurried into the Market Square. The December night air lashed him like a jet of icy water and cut through his clothes; thirty yards ahead, Lady Barbara was running with arms outstretched and jumping from side to side over the grey-black puddles of dull, frozen water. A group of chauffeurs by the village pound removed their pipes and watched her; then replaced them; then removed them a second time as a second figure, in pink coat and knee-breeches, pounded along the echoing street. Once she glanced back on hearing the sound of footsteps; then ran on without changing her pace. They had overshot the last house and were facing an unhedged expanse of roots and crisp furrows before he overtook her.
"I say, whatareyou doing?" he panted, angry at being made conspicuous by her aimless freak.
Lady Barbara pressed a hand to her side, breathing quickly. Her hair had blown into disorder, her bosom was rising and falling; and once she kicked off a shoe to caress a bruised foot, balancing herself with her other hand on his shoulder.
"Impulse," she answered.
By moonlight her eyes were black; and, as she panted gently, her parted lips and rounded cheeks made a child ofher. It was at least her third incarnation since eight o'clock, but Jack had lost strict count. As she squeezed the pebble out of her shoe, he noticed the provocative whiteness of her shoulders and the softness of her hair. His own pink coat and knee-breeches added the last touch to his discomfiture; and he knew that he could never equal her in creating the unconventional in order to master it.
"I was afraid your head might have made you faint," he murmured, consciously fatuous.
"It was only partly my head. Sometimes.... Did you see "Justice"? You remember the man in solitary confinement? Heknewhe mustn't pound on the door; heknewhe'd be punished, if he did. He pounded all the same.... I've got too much vitality; I seem sometimes as if I'm in prison...." She shivered and gave a slight cough. "Is it very cold?"
"Not more than ten degrees of frost. I thought of bringing you a cloak, but I was afraid of losing you. If you don't come back at once, impulse will land you in double pneumonia."
She slipped her arm through his and began to walk, with a slight limp, back to the hotel.
"We had a gipsy in the family, though no one's ever allowed to mention her," she announced abruptly. "D'you call me pretty? I think you would, rather. Val Arden says I'm the 'haggard Venus.' Well, any looks we've got come from her."
"With a dash of temperament thrown in. Suppose we go abitfaster and then look for a fire? You're quite well enough to dance now."
"But I'd sooner talk to you. A girl told me the other day that you were—what was the word? 'sticky'; you never had anything to say, you were prim and old maidish——"
"I'm no good at ordinary social patter," he interrupted. "But you'd hardly apply that term to our conversation to-night."
They strode incongruously down the broad village street, past the group of expectant chauffeurs and into an ill-ventilated box described as the "reading-room." Both were emotionally out of breath, and the lights of the hotel made Jack self-conscious; he stole a sidelong glance at her and waited for the next change. Wistful appeal passed into effervescent irresponsibility; the self-possession of a woman of the world alternated with the radiant joyousness of a child.... And six months earlier she had left a German Jew's ornate carnival to drive with a sodden debauchee in a stolen car and had impaled an unknown chauffeur on the grey angle of a jutting wall in Hertfordshire. And there was the aeroplane accident; and the poker-party; and a dozen other things.... His glance held admiration as well as curiosity, and she smiled with glowing friendliness.
"Aren't you going to dance at all?" he asked.
"I didn't come here for that.... Now I'm going to pay you a compliment. I got myself invited because I heard you were coming; I wanted to give you a chance of judging me at first hand. There's an opportunity for returning the compliment, if you care to take it."
Jack looked at her with a surprise which he tried to veil, as he reminded himself again that he must be on his guard.
"I only hinted that your friends weren't good enough for you," he answered. "Knowing who you were and the positions your father had held——"
"Dear Jack, don't drag in father! Isn't that what I have to fight against? Having my personality submerged by his dead pomp and glory?"
Her use of his Christian name startled him; and she watched with amusement his stiff attempt not to seem startled.
"I'd sooner think of you as Lord Crawleigh's daughter than as Sir Adolf Erckmann's friend."
Her eyes half closed, and she looked at him through the long black lashes.
"I believe you're falling in love with me."
Jack lazily threw away the end of his cigarette, dusted imaginary specks of ash from his breeches and rose slowly to his feet.
"I was only thinking what I should feel about you, if you were my sister," he said. "Ought we to be going upstairs? Lady Pentyre's rather concerned about you."
"I'll reassure her," said Lady Barbara. "Don't bother to come up; you won't be dancing."
Though she had a reserve of self-control for scenic emergencies, he had snubbed her so wantonly that she darted like a black and silver moth out of the room before he could mark a change of expression. Jack followed in time to see her locate Lady Pentyre and take the chair by her side. The warm, scented air of the ball-room struck and flushed his cheeks like the heavy breath of a hot-house. Summertown, waltzing by, disengaged one hand and whistled shrilly on his fingers above the boom and wail of the band.
"Missing two, Babs?" he called out.
Lady Barbara pressed her hand against her eyes, then drew it away and shook her head.
"I'm not dancing to-night," she answered.
Lady Pentyre turned to her with mingled anxiety and impatience.
"Aren't you feeling any better?" she asked.
"I can't say that I am. When I stand, the floor goes up and down; and, when I sit down, the room goes gently round me."
Jack was leaning aimlessly against the door, and Lady Pentyre beckoned to him. She had no intention of leaving her son to make a fool of himself with Sally Farwell; and, if she told him or young Summertown to take Lady Barbara home, she would next hear that all three had fallen down a shaft in Durham.
"Mr. Waring, you're not dancing!Doyou think youcould find one of the cars and take this child back to bed? I hardly like to send her alone, you know, and every one here has a party of her own to look after."
Jack bowed with adequate graciousness, but Lady Barbara intervened with a vigorous refusal.
"I couldn't think of dragging him away," she exclaimed. "This is the only ball he ever comes to; and he's been looking after me so much that he hasn't had time to see any of his friends."
"But he can be back within an hour," Lady Pentyre urged. "It's still quite early."
Lady Barbara looked uncertainly at Jack, waiting for him to become more inviting. His face expressed no concern, and he was patiently gaining time by consulting his watch and looking from one to the other of them, as though he had no personal interest in the decision.
"Would that be agreeable to you?" he asked her at length.
"I don't feel that I have any right to spoil your evening."
"Illnessis hardly within your control, is it?"
She walked downstairs with a novel sense of failure and a misgiving that she had overestimated his stupidity; yet a man must be more than ordinarily stupid not to appreciate her after the trouble that she had taken. Insisting on an open car, she settled herself in one corner and looked thoughtfully at her companion's reflection in the jolting mirror of the wind-screen. Valentine Arden, who allowed disparagement to become a disease, told her to her face that she had genius; George Oakleigh had said that she had "the clearest-cut personality of her time." And these things were industriously repeated to her.
Rather Lord Crawleigh's daughter than Sir Adolf Erckmann's friend.... But Lord Crawleigh's world had no place for any woman who was above the average. In Canada, in Ireland and in India she had tasted greater personal success before she was sixteen than London could offer herin a life-time. She had seen the government of India at very close quarters; and, after that, it was impossible to feel Sonia Dainton's elation at bobbing to Royalty at the Bodmin Lodge ball in Ascot week. At other times and in other places, dusty, long streets, dazzling white and quivering with heat, had been cleared for her and lined with picked native troops; in an Empire crowded with immemorial soveranties she had been the only daughter of a man who was vicegerent of the Emperor-King.
"You spoke too soon in saying you didn't despise me," she murmured.
They had covered but two of the ten miles, and Jack instinctively avoided altercation. He was no longer interested in a girl who deliberately invited herself to the same house, singled him out and detached him, in an open car and a north-east wind, to pick a quarrel or justify herself.
"If you're feeling ill, why don't you try to go to sleep instead of making conversation?" he suggested.
"I'm notmakingconversation!" she answered impatiently. "You attacked me on such slender evidence that I was wondering whether you'd any better excuse for attacking people like Sir Adolf, who's a very fine musician——"
"And an impossible bounder," Jack interrupted. "My father pilled him at his club ten years ago; if he put up again,I'dpill him; if he got in, I'dresign."
"And I suppose you'd 'pill' Villon and Benvenuto Cellini and Verlaine——"
"I would, if they were friends of Erckmann," Jack answered cheerfully.
She shivered and lapsed into silence. Talking to Jack was like explaining colour to a blind man. She had never sought out the Erckmann circle; it was one of innumerable circles which a connoisseur in life patronized and sampled for its distinctive atmosphere. Her god-father, Dick Freyton, had kept a string of race-horses at Oxford and taken adouble first; he had dined with the Queen one day and entertained a party of comedians and jockeys the next; he had been a gentleman-rider and an ambassador, a soldier and a collector of early printed Bibles, a competent sportsman and a more than competent poet. Touching life at every angle, there was an Elizabethan spaciousness about him;—Loring's father did not forbid him the house because Bessie Galton took her company to Liverpool and he invited them all to stay with him at Poolcup. Freyton was too big to be compromised. And the world had developed so fast that nowadays a woman could touch life at as many angles; for some it was the only thing to do. The queens of the salon were dead, the political hostesses were dying. There was room for one universalist.
They drove to the lodge of Croxton Hall in silence. It was only when she saw him dropping asleep that she fanned the discussion to life.
"It's men like you who kill art in this country," she sighed.
"I can never see why there should be a special code of morals for a fellow because he grows his hair long and plays the fiddle," Jack answered, as he helped her out of the car and rang the bell.
While he explained their return to the butler, Lady Barbara let fall her cloak into a chair and walked to a glowing fire at the end of the hall. In the fender stood a tureen of soup and an urn of cocoa; behind her a big table was invitingly set with sandwiches, cake, fruit, syphons and decanters. Jack watched her for a moment and then explored the table critically.
"Is there anything you'd like me to bring you?" he asked as he chose a cigar and poured himself a brandy and soda. "Don't forget you've had no supper."
She looked at him over one shoulder and sighed contemptuously.
"Howcharacteristic! The indecent irregularity of missing a meal! I eat because I love nice things; one gets a new emotion sometimes. When we were at Ottawa, father took me down to Washington, and one of the secretaries at our embassy fell in love with me. We met at twelve and he was in love with me by a quarter past. I suppose he was a man of method, like you, and never declared his passion under half an hour, so for five minutes we talked about food, and he asked me if I'd ever tasted Baltimore crab-flake. I hadn't. His car was at the door of the chancery, we both got in without a word; at 12:23 we were flying down Connecticut Avenue. We drove to Baltimore without a stop, had our crab-flake and returned to Washington in time for me to have a good rest before dinner. When father began looking for me, some one explained that I'd been taken to see the Congressional Library, and everything was all right till the papers next day came out with great head-lines—'Breakneck Race for a Crab-Flake.' 'Just Bully, Says British Governor-General's Daughter' Then there was the usual unpleasantness.... But the crab-flakewasa new emotion." She turned from the fire and joined him at the table. "If I start eating caviar, I never stop."
The butler returned to announce that her maid had gone to bed and to ask whether she should be called.
"Oh, it's all right, thanks," she answered. "I'm feeling much better." She had talked herself into good-humour and, when they were alone again, she looked at Jack with a smile. "Are you enjoying yourself? You look so bored. What shall I do to amuse you?"
She pulled a chair to the fire and beckoned him to her side.
"I'm sorry to seem ungracious," said Jack, as he put down his empty glass, "but I've been commissioned to send you to bed."
"But the others won't be back for hours!"
"Exactly. Barring the servants, we're alone in the house, and it wouldn't look well for us to bolt away from the ball and then sit here talking all night."
Lady Barbara sprang from the chair and faced him with amazement in her eyes.
"My dear creature, do you imagine you're compromising me?"
"That's a strong word. I'm some years older than you, Lady Barbara," he added meaningly.
"But if youknew——"
Jack interrupted her with a shake of the head.
"If you're trying to tell me some of the things youhavedone, you may spare yourself the trouble. I used to think you were being swept off your feet by the people you went about with. The more stories you tell me, the more I'm tempted to wonder whether you don't set the fashion. Some one's frightfully to blame for not pulling you up, though I know Jim did his best. Does it make no difference to you when a man like that refuses to have you inside his house?"
Lady Barbara walked slowly to the table.
"You must apologize for that, Mr. Waring."
She imagined that she was contending with one man over a single hasty sentence; but behind Jack stood his father, his father's regiment and his father's club, all honestly conservative and gently self-approving. Behind the sentence there lay in support a social philosophy framed in days before England was corrupted by the uncertain morals of the east and the uncouth manners of the west.
"Isn't it true?" demanded Jack, unabashed. "He cabled to his mother from Surinam after the motor smash and that inquest. I wasn't told the exact words, but youhaven'tbeen to the house very lately, have you?"
He was so certain of himself—he was always so certain of himself—that the question rang out like a taunt. Lady Barbara felt her self-control weakening.
"And your informant?" she asked, still trying not to yield ground.
"I've really forgotten. Obviously no one in the family. So, you see, there must be several people who know. For what it's worth, I havenothanded the story on."
"How chivalrous!—And to a girl that you'd never met!"
"I didn't want Jim to be mixed up in a fresh scandal. And you've driven this country near enough to revolution as it is."
He picked up his hat and was starting towards the stairs, when an unexpected sound stopped him, and he turned to see her burying her face in her hands. It was a surprising collapse in one who seemed to be made of steel, though he wondered whether the tears were an artifice or a novel indulgence of emotion.
"Youdidn'tmean what you said!" she sobbed. "Please say you were only punishing me for taking you away from the ball!"
"I've not the least desire to punish you. You've got great qualities; you were charming at dinner, you're kind and good-natured, you can be fascinating when you like. And then you spoil all you are, all you might be and do, by tricks unworthy of a chorus-girl. Arranging this meeting at all to smooth one ruffled feather of your vanity. The sham headache. Calling me by my Christian name the first time we meet. Things of that kind. That's not thegrande dame, Lady Barbara."
She began to collect her gloves and cloak.
"I'm sorry," she said with trembling lips. "You won't be troubled again."
"If you were sorry, you wouldn't try to be dramatic. Your 'curtain,' like your repentance, is only the latest form of the Baltimore crab-flake—a new emotion, a new indulgence.... Look here, I shall be gone before you're up to-morrow; won't you part friends?"
He crossed the hall with a smile and held out his hand without fear of a rebuff. She looked at him and had to confess herself at fault. His heavy overcoat was hanging open, and in his knee-breeches and pink coat he looked slim and boyish; he was a booby at dinner and a clod at the ball; outside his own profession he had no more knowledge or ideas than a schoolboy. Yet she submitted to his criticism almost in silence.
"Won't you part friends?" he repeated.
Lady Barbara could not let him ride off so complacently. She pressed one hand to her side and groped her way to the table; as she leaned against it, the friendliness died out of his smile.
"I shouldn't do that again, if I were you," he counselled, reverting to his slightly nasal drawl; and this time she could have cried without feigning, for she was tired and humiliated by her consistent failure.
"Iamill," she protested. "Needless to say, you don't believe——"
"My dear Lady Barbara, the worst of taking people in by lies is that afterwards they refuse to be taken in by the truth. That always means a dreadful muddle for everybody."
There was no trace of anger in the indolent voice; a lazy, superficial smile played still over the composed face, but she felt that she had touched his vanity, which was so petty that he could allow no one even to chaff him.
"I say, youarerevengeful," she cried. "Just because, in the most harmless way——"
"I don't mind any one making the most complete fool of me—once," he interrupted. "A very moderate sense of humour carries that off. One doesn't want to make a habit of it, that's all. And I always think it's a perilous thing to begin playing with the truth."
"So you'll never believe anything I say?"
"We're so very unlikely to meet that it hardly matters. Won't you shake hands?"
She held out the tips of her fingers and, as he released them, caught him by the sleeve of his coat. He noticed that she was biting her lip and had either improved her acting or lapsed into sincerity.
"Are you like Jim?" she asked. "D'you despise me so much that you refuse to meet me?"
He looked carelessly at his sleeve, but she refused to understand the movement of his eyes.
"I should be honoured to meet you. Only I never go anywhere. Lady Pentyre and Lady Knightrider are about our only two links."
"And I suppose Jim will have me turned out oftheirhouses, when he comes back. If you knew how I hated having people angry with me.... Will you meet me, if I don't have any of my objectionable friends, if I'm on my best behaviour——"
"I don't think that your experience of my society can be so alluring as all that," he laughed.
"I've never allowed any other man to lecture me as you've done!"
"Ah, but you invited it. You don't want me to come merely for a continuation of the lecture."
"Perhaps it won't be necessary."
Her voice and eyes softened appealingly—and then became charged with perplexity, as Jack gently removed her fingers from his sleeve.
"Another new emotion, Lady Barbara?" he laughed. "You won't easily convince me that I've changed your character in a night."
"You interest me," she murmured, with a puzzled frown.
"Ah, that rang true! But I'm no good at the modern business of discussing people with themselves. A man like ValArden does that so much better.... Lady Barbara, are youevergoing to say good-night to me?"
"In a minute. Will you come to Connie Maitland's Consumptive Hospitalmatinéeafter Christmas? It's at the Olympic, and I'm dancing there. Idowant you to appreciate me!"
Jack reflected for a moment and then smiled lazily.
"I'll come to thematinée, if you'll promisenotto perform," he answered. "If I'm not in court.... I know I'm old-fashioned, but I call it intolerable for you to blacken your eyes and rouge your face and make sport for any one who cares to spend a guinea or two for the chance of gaping at you. It cheapens you. I'd as soon put on tights and tie myself in knots on a strip of carpet outside a public-house."
Barbara leant against the table in helpless amazement.
"You're more of a Philistine than my own father!" she cried.
Jack smiled imperturbably.
"And what would you think if Lord Crawleigh came to that samematinéeand gave a display of juggling with billiard-balls?"
"I should die happy," Barbara answered with a gurgle of laughter; then more seriously, "But why on earth shouldn't he? If he can do it, if the thing's all right in itself, why should the professionals have the monopoly? I'm very good."
"No doubt. But, if you had no more idea of dancing than I have, people would still flock to see Lady Barbara Neave. Now do you understand why I loathe the whole life you lead?"
When, late that night, she thought over the long succession of snubs and insults, Barbara chose this as the most wounding. She had recited and danced, acted and sung on occasions innumerable, always hearing and feeling that she was meeting the professionals on their own ground; theythemselves hurried to congratulate her, and she fancied vaguely that she was paying the stage a delicate compliment.
"I've never been told that I hawked my father's position about for advertisement," she answered quietly.
"It's the result."
He picked up his hat again and again held out his hand.
Lady Barbara locked her fingers behind her back and turned away.
"I don't like the feeling that you'll ring for carbolic as soon as I'm out of the room!" she said.
"D'you think I should?"
"You wouldn't wait!" she cried, springing round as though she were going to strike him.
Jack's growing surprise merged in a novel sense of helplessness. The girl had wholly lost control of herself. Her pupils were dilated, her cheeks white with anger and fatigue; one hand gripped the back of her chair, and the other rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball. Not for the first time that night he felt that a man had only himself to blame for getting on to such terms with a woman. A lion's cage could be entered or avoided at will....
Yet he could not escape the feeling that even at the white-heat of passion she was enjoying her scene.
"Do part friends," he begged. "I shouldn't presume to criticize you, if I didn't think you worth it. I ask you—as a favour—to come to thatmatinéewith me. Will you?"
Lady Barbara could not decide whether to try once again to punish him; she dared not admit that she was daunted, but she was certainly puzzled. At one moment he insulted her, at another he hoisted her on to a pinnacle and mounted guard below.
"Would you like me to come?" she asked.
"I should love you to."
"I'll come, if you want me to.... Now I think Ishallgo to bed. It would be a tragedy if we hadanotherscene. Good-night, Mr. Waring."
"Good-night, Lady Barbara."
She looked at him steadily before turning to the stairs, still undecided whether to be angry or intrigued. Jack went into the library, chose himself a book, undressed slowly, read for ten minutes and dropped instantly asleep. Lady Barbara stood for many minutes in front of a long mirror, admiring the black and silver dress and watching the gleam of her arms and shoulders as she moved. Then with careless impatience she loosened the dress, leaving it to fall and lie in a tumbled heap by the fire; shoe followed shoe, stocking followed stocking; her maid would repair the havoc in the morning, and it was a relief to lapse into untidiness after so many hours of Jack Waring's orderly influence. Pulling an armchair to the fire she began to brush her hair. Six hours before, as her maid had brushed it for her, she had rehearsed the meeting with Jack up to the point when he apologized for his presumption in criticizing her. If only she had stopped then! But he was wholly different from her preconception of him; fully as 'superior'—and with as little reason—but disappointing as an intellectual antagonist; he was commonplace in mind and yet had a certain blunt stubbornness of character, a refusal to be stampeded—together with an indifference which still piqued her.
And the indifference was broken by a solicitude which he expressed in terms to earn himself a horse-whipping. Her eyes were blinded by a hot rush of shame when she remembered her gentle words and appealing voice at the piano. "I'm not as bad as you expected?" Humility was a pleasant emotion, but a losing card. At their next encounter....
She laid aside the brush and sat staring into the fire. The room grew gradually colder, but she did not notice it. Only when her ears caught the sound of subdued voices on the stairs did she rouse with a shiver and jump into bed.
"Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite...."Rudyard Kipling: "Et dona ferentes."
"Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite...."
Rudyard Kipling: "Et dona ferentes."
As a matter of form and to wash her hands of personal responsibility, Lady Pentyre sent next morning for the local doctor. His advice—to take things quietly for a few days—enabled Lady Barbara to keep her promise to Jack with a good conscience. "They say that I have been doing too much," she told Sir Adolf Erckmann, "so I'm afraid I shan't be able to come to your party on Thursday...." On the same plea she wrote to Lady Maitland, promising to attend thematinéebut regretting her inability to play an active part. When she had taught Jack to appreciate her, it would be time enough to shew him that her friendship was adequate guarantee for her friends.
On returning to London she angled without success for a first-hand report on him. To her earlier half-dozen words of disparagement Sonia Dainton added a break-up price for the family. The Surinam cable precluded consultation of Amy Loring, and Phyllis Knightrider could only affirm that Jack went every year to Raglan for a few days' fishing—when she was away and there was none but men present.
"I believe he's hopeless with a mixed party," she went on. "If you were told to bring a man anywhere, you'd never dream of askinghim."
"Well, I think that's better than being the first man thateverybody thinks of," Barbara answered. "God created Gerry Deganway to be the eternal fourteenth at dinner."
"Val Arden once said that God invented bridge so that Jack Waring might say he didn't play it," Phyllis went on. "That sums him up."
Lady Barbara was wondering whether the unintelligent appreciation of such a man was worth having, when Jack once more wantonly put himself in the wrong. After writing to remind her of the day and time of thematinée, he had gone about his business. She mislaid the letter and telephoned to his chambers to find out where she was to meet him. An unwelcoming Cockney voice answered that Mr. Waring was engaged and invited her to leave a message.
"I won't keep him a moment," answered Lady Barbara.
"Mr. Waring doesn't like being called to the 'phone when he's got a consultation on."
She hardly knew whether to be angrier with Jack for his hide-bound likes and dislikes or with the officious clerk for his interference.
"Will you be good enough to say that Lady Barbara Neave wants to speak to him?" she said in a voice of authority.
"I'll see," the clerk mumbled reluctantly. "Hold on, please."
She was not accustomed to being kept waiting, and Jack or the clerk kept her waiting so long that the Exchange enquired once whether she had finished and then cut short the call. She hung up the receiver and waited for the connection to be re-established. There was no sound for five minutes; they did not think it worth while to remember her existence or to recall that she had expressed a wish to speak to Mr. Waring, that she had been ordered to wait.... Taking down the receiver, she repeated the number. The same unwelcoming Cockney voice greeted her.
"I was trying to speak to Mr. Waring," she explained, "but I was cut off."
"Mr. Waring's ingiged—Oh, were you the lidy who just rang up? Mr. Waring says, Would you be kind enough to leave a message?"
Half an hour earlier Lady Barbara had been undecided whether to telephone herself or to arrange the meeting through her maid. Now she felt that, whatever it might cost her, she must speak to Jack without intermediaries. And, if he were engaged in a consultation (or whatever the absurd thing was called), so much the better.
"No, I don't want to leave a message," she answered. "I want to speak to him privately."
The new attack seemed only to consolidate the hateful clerk's already strong position.
"Oh, I thought it might be business. Mr. Waring never speaks to any one privately on the 'phone."
"Will you kindly ask him to make an exception, then?"
"I'm afride it's no good," answered the clerk with undisguised boredom. "And Mr. Waring won't be best pleased, if I go in agine."
While Jack should pay for his pleasure to the uttermost farthing, it was undignified to prolong an altercation with a Cockney voice, especially as she was gaining nothing.
"Mr. Waring asked me to go to the theatre with him. Will he kindly let me know when and where I'm to meet him?"
The words were repeated slowly, as the message was written down.
"When-and-where-you're to meet him. Very good. If you'll give me your number, I'll find out and 'phone you as soon as the consultation's over."
"But I want to know now! I've got arrangements of my own to make!"
It was no longer the deliberate high voice of authority. Grievance was merging in anger.
"I don't like to go in agine.... But he can't be long now. If you'll give me your number...."
The Cockney voice suggested a mean, back-bent creature with bitten nails and cunning eyes, a Uriah Heep, cringing but sinister. She did not care for him to know that she had lost her temper; only this and the need to punish Jack for his latest indignity kept her from refusing to accompany him to the theatre.
"Oh, ask him to write," she answered with attempted carelessness.
As she ceased speaking, her maid came in to say that Mr. Webster had called. They had not met since their quarrel on the afternoon of Lady Knightrider's dance; and she was secretly relieved at the hardiness of his ill-humour, for of all men he least repaid the discredit which she earned by being seen in his company. At best he was a good-natured, plastic slave with a ubiquitous car and a knack of securing seats in theatres and tables in restaurants when others failed; at worst he was an enigmatic sensualist, who attracted her because he privately frightened her. They met first on the common ground of an interest in spiritualism, later as companions in misfortune; Sonia Dainton alleged that he was always inviting chorus-girls to his rooms and giving them too much to drink for the amusement of hearing what they would say; some one else added that he smoked opium, and an agreeable air of mystery surrounded an otherwise disagreeable young man. After their last quarrel Lady Barbara had decided to give him up; and she only wavered now because she wanted a whipping-boy and felt that she was in some way scoring a point against Jack by receiving him.
"I'll see him—up here," she told her maid.
Her face was still flushed from the telephone altercation,and she posed herself carefully, backing the window, but with the curtains thrown to their widest extent, so that Webster's œdematous eyelids blinked as he crossed the room and held out a plump white hand.
"New car d'livered t'day," he wheezed. The habit, induced by intemperance, of slurring the major parts of speech and omitting the minor survived even in his sober diction. "'Wondered if you'd care come spin."
"Oh?Iwas wondering whether you'd been ill."
"Ill?" He shook his head and coughed. "No. Only too many cigarettes. Care come?"
"Not till you've apologized for your behaviour to me, Mr. Webster."
"Haven't least idea what mean, but I'll apologize. Always ready apologize."
As a whipping-boy he was too spiritless to be satisfying, and Lady Barbara addressed herself to the invitation. Since the accident and the inquest she had not embarked on any expeditions with him. Indeed, on the evening before she went into court, she had deliberately broken a prized Venetian vase and whispered to herself—or any one who was listening—that, if she emerged without discredit, she would never go with him again. Nemesis had accepted the vase and played false on the bargain. But, while she might fairly feel herself released from her promise, she was oppressed by premonition that disaster would overtake her if she risked her luck again with Webster.
"Where are you going to? I'm waiting for a telephone message," she answered.
At that moment the bell rang; and, as she picked up the receiver, she felt guilty towards Jack Waring; in part she had undertaken to drop her "objectionable friends," in part she felt that, if he were with her, he would stop her going.... But his clerk had been unpardonable....
Gaymer's voice invited her to dine and go to a theatrewith him. She accepted and impatiently replaced the receiver.
"I'll come for a short time," she answered and felt that she was defying Jack. "I must be back for tea, though."
"Have tea my place. Madame Hilary coming. Know who mean? Perfect wonder that woman. Doesn't use medium; makes you, me, any one medium; throws you in trance, andyoudo talking."
Theséancewas more alluring than the drive, for Madame Hilary had been famous in necromantic society for more than a month. Lady Barbara had been generally forbidden by her parents to dabble in black magic, and a special warning had been issued against Madame Hilary, whose methods had made her notorious, if not as a new witch of Endor, at least as an accomplished blackmailer.
"Is she good about the future?" Lady Barbara asked. "I don't want to be told that I've lived in distant lands, sometimes among the palms, sometimes in sight of the snows. I know that better than she does."
"Shedon't tell you anything," Webster explained. "Youdo all the talking, and we listen. Better hear some one else first; people sometimes more candid than they like—afterwards."
He chuckled maliciously and followed her downstairs. For an hour they drove round Richmond Park, and, as the light began to fail, he turned back to London and brought her to his flat by the Savoy in time for tea. The drowsy joy of rapid movement through the air had calmed her nerves and blown away her ill-humour; she was too tranquil to quarrel even with Jack Waring.
As she entered the smoking-room of the flat, the early premonition of disaster returned. It was an unwholesome place after Richmond Park on a December day.... Webster himself, white-faced and orientally impassive, in a frame of yellow down cushions and a heavy atmosphereof burning cedar-wood, was a sinister mystery-monger and purveyor of forbidden fruit. She came to him for excitements and experiences which the world conspired to keep her from obtaining elsewhere. An unwholesome man.... If anything happened, she had only herself to blame.... Yet nothing could happen, unless the new clairvoyant told her something horrid about the future.... She was not going to run away from a clairvoyant....
The warm rooms, thickly curtained and heavy with scented smoke, were already half-full. Sonia Dainton and Jack Summertown were on either side of the club fender with cigarettes in their mouths; the Baroness Kohnstadt, with something of her brother Sir Adolf Erckmann's build and colouring and with all of his guttural intonation, was impressively describing Madame Hilary's powers; Lord Pennington, with a tumbler of brown brandy and soda in one hand, swayed insecurely on one arm of a chair and discharged amorous darts at a weak-mouthed girl with big eyes and a high colour, who giggled in apprehensive appreciation; on the other sat Sir Adolf, bald, bearded and fleshly, competing with Pennington for her attention. Involuntarily Lady Barbara paused in the door-way. If Jack Waring heard that she had been to Webster's rooms on such an errand in such company.... They were not worth it....
"Hullo, Babs!" "Babs darling!" "Liddle Barbara!" "How ripping!"
The usual chorus of welcome greeted her and mounted to her head. Sonia Dainton was kissing her extravagantly. Sir Adolf lurched forward to praise her looks and dress, Lord Pennington to repeat and laugh at any phrase that she let fall. Doing nothing, saying little, simply by being herself, she dominated them until the door opened a second time and a gaunt woman in a clinging black dress and hat like an embossed shield rustled into the room. Her greatheight and noiseless movements diverted attention from Lady Barbara; she threw up her veil with a clockwork gesture as though she were ripping it from her face. Webster advanced with a bow and was preparing to introduce her, when she stopped him with a second mechanical fling of the hand.
"Ah, no! You tell me who they are and then you say, 'Madame Hilary is an impostor; she knew a little before—and she make up the rest.' Is it not so? For an exhibition I like better to know nothing." Her eyes flashed, as she looked round on one face after another. "You, Mr. Webster, I know—your name, at least—but these others I know not at all. It is well. And I like better for you not to tell me. But you are all waiting! While I drink this tea, you shall decide who first is to make trial."
She sat down, unembarrassed by the stealthy examination to which she was being subjected on all sides, and, unpinning her veil, shewed a narrow, lined face with sunken cheeks, an aquiline nose and eyes that were lack-lustre after their initial flash. Too well-bred to seem bored, she displayed at least a want of interest which chilled the spirits of the party and left her ascendant. Webster was flustered at having to stage-manage theséance; for Sir Adolf was so diffident and Sonia so unsympathetic that he had difficulty in finding volunteers. Lady Barbara at once offered herself, but seemed impressed by his whispered warning that she had better first see what surprising exhibitions people sometimes made of themselves.
"Here, I'll start the bidding," cried Jack Summertown, jumping up from the fender. "Don't pinch my simulation-gold watch, any one. Only fair to warn you, ma'am," he went on to Madame Hilary, "that I think all this jolly old spiritualism is a fake. What do I have to do? And may I finish my goodish cork-tipped Turkish Regie?"
Madame Hilary, suddenly appreciating that she wasbeing addressed, seemed to awake and assume new vitality. Shewing neither offence nor amusement at his scepticism, she motioned Summertown to a chair and drew her own opposite to it.
"Yes, go on smoking. It does not matter." She looked round the room with another clockwork movement, switched on a reading-lamp, so that the light shone straight into her own face, and then plunged the rest of the room in darkness. "All that is needed is for you to look at me, into my eyes. Never take your eyes off mine. I like better for you not to try, not to will yourself. I shall ask you questions, and you will answer them. Questions about the past. I like better for you not to be sympathetic. Trynotto answer my questions. And, when I have persuaded you to answer them, I shall ask you more questions—about the future. And you will answer them, too. And afterwards I will tell you what you have said. So you will come to know the future."
She paused to draw breath, and Summertown, obediently looking into her eyes, finished his cigarette and tossed the end into the fire-place. He was still smiling a little; but the room was grown silent, and every one was looking at him; the gaunt, narrow face before him, grimly serious, discouraged levity, though it sharpened his desire to expose her as soon as she began her tricks. And for that the easiest thing was obstinately to answer none of her questions.
"You would that I explain?" The deliberate affectation of broken English was the accepted convention of an English actress playing the part of a Frenchwoman; every one in the room was conscious of the artificiality. The voice was unmodulated and monotonous. "In all ages men have tried to read the future. By the stars and by crystal balls and cards and numbers and pools of ink.... What can a pool of ink tell you? The future lies in yourselves. Within your bodies are seeds of new life—innumerable; and eachseed holds innumerable other seeds of new life—generation after generation, seed within seed. He who put them there ordained that the Future should lie buried in the Present, as the Present lay buried in the Past—and as the Past lies buried in the Present! It is hard for Man to unbury the Future. Man has not been ready to face the light, and I—I who help you to see that light have never seen it myself. Even I do not know how glaring is that light.... But, as the seeds of the Future lie in you, so the knowledge of the Future lies there also. Manknowsall the Future, as Manholdsall the Future within himself, but he has forgotten. It is within his unconscious.Ido not know it, but I can help you to remember. I can tell you nothing, not even your name, but you can tell me everything about yourself, Past, Present and Future. What is your name?"
Lady Barbara started with surprise when the abrupt question cut through the sleepy drone of mock-mystic jargon. Summertown was trapped into seriousness, for he answered promptly:
"John Antony Merivale-Farwell. I'm usually called Jack Summertown."
"Why are you called Jack Summertown?"
"Well, you see, Summertown's the guv'nor's second title. Thirty per cent. on your bills, and not a dam' thing else."
He looked obediently into the unwavering eyes, but Lady Barbara felt that his familiar colloquialism was a deliberate effort to break up the atmosphere of pretentious mystery.
"And your father?"
"Well, he's rather at a loose end at present. He was Councillor of Embassy at Paris, and they offered him Madrid, I believe; but he'd been ill for some time and so he chucked in his hand. Oh,whois he? Marling. Earl of."
"You are married?"
"God, no!"
"You have been in love?"
Summertown hesitated and then answered quietly:
"Oh, well, yes, I suppose so."
"Tell me about it."
Lady Barbara, watching his face as he gazed into Madame Hilary's eyes, became conscious of a change in expression; Summertown might have been drunk. His eyes were glazed, his features set and his forehead moist; he spoke cautiously, too, as though fearful of a trip in articulation.
"It sounds rather sordid," he began diffidently. "She was an awful pretty girl—in a shop. Flower-shop. I palled up with her.... I expect you'll think me an awful cad; I never meant to marry her. It would have meant such a hell of a row at home.... To do myself justice, I told her that. She knew who I was; she said that didn't matter.... The thing lasted for a year—nearly. And most of the time I went through the agony of the damned. Ask any one who thinks he knows me; you'll be told I haven't a soul to save and I'm the village idiot and all that sort of thing. All I know is—I wouldn't go through it again. I loved the girl; and I always felt that she was all right till I came along—and then I corrupted her; and though I sweated to get her to marry me, we both knew it would be God's own failure.... And the end was the most sordid part of the whole business. When I lay awake at night—Idid, honest—thinking I'd dragged her half-way to Hell, another feller turned up. Number One. I was Number Two—or Ten—or Twenty.... That was nineteen-eleven, but, if you sat up till midnight telling me how rotten she was, you wouldn't be able to make me forget her. Wish to God you could!... But weweredam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth."
He laughed jerkily and grew restless, as though he were looking for the usual cigarette. Lady Barbara felt anoverbalancing pull and discovered that she had been making her fingers meet in the soft flesh of Sonia Dainton's arm. Madame Hilary was triumphing. None of them could say when Jack Summertown had passed under her influence; apart from his pallor and glazed eyes, he had not changed; but there was a collective, sympathetic shudder through the room, as he told his stunted romance in characteristic colloquialisms. "Hell of a row at home.... A year—nearly.... All I know is—I wouldn't go through it again.... And then I corrupted her.... Dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth...." And then the jerky, cynical laugh. It was Jack Summertown's manner of describing an unsuccessful meeting at Hawthorn Hill.
"You cannot forget her—but you will find some one else?" The unmodulated voice was pitiless.
"Oh, generally speaking, yes. I mean, one wants to keep the jolly old family going. But I've not got much time with this war."
"This war?"
"Well, the general bust-up. I'm in the army, you know, and I shall get finished off as soon as it starts. Goodish early door for me. Hardly seems worth it.... At least, I mean, if the girl cares for you, it's a bit rough to leave her a widow at the end of a week."
"Then you are going to be killed quite soon?"
Lady Barbara held her breath until she felt that her heart must stop. The others were doing the same. Only Madame Hilary ladled out her questions with a voice as mechanical as her gestures.
"Oh, almost at once."
"Stop!"
Lady Barbara could not tell whence the cry had come. Had they conjured up a spirit? Was God Himself cutting short their quest? But she did not believe in God.... There was a bustle of confused movement, followed bystupefied inertia. Lord Pennington, after flooding the room with light, was seen to be propping himself against the door; Madame Hilary sat blinking rapidly, so like a lone cat surrounded by reluctant terriers that little imagination was required to see the arched back and to hear the spitting tongue. Lady Barbara gripped her chair with both hands, overcoming fear. Only Webster, who had seen the experiment before and exulted in the sense of shocked terror around him, contrived to purge his face of expression.
There was a long silence.
"Well, that's that," gulped Pennington, with an unconvincing laugh.
Lady Barbara's brain was working so quickly that she had time to see and reflect on everything around her. These men who were always drinking made a sorry mess of their nerves; Pennington was hardly less incapacitated than Webster had been when they dashed into the jutting grey angle of wall. And Sonia, who did not drink but lived on excitement, was almost hysterical....
"Reached end of chapter," murmured Webster, glancing covertly at the late medium. "What deuce want spoil everything?" he demanded, in a hectoring aside, of Pennington's late giggling companion.... "Who'd like go next?"
Summertown had been peering lazily in search of cigarettes, but his host's question roused him to activity.
"Don't be in such a hurry, old son," he called out. And, turning to the hypnotist, "You were talking about the jolly old seeds. Big fleas and little fleas...."
Madame Hilary glanced at him and then, carelessly, at the group between the fire-place and the door. She was too well-bred to shew triumph.
"You tell me you doubt. Good!" she answered Summertown. "I try to explain just my theory. Now, in everyman there are seeds of new life, and each seed contains seeds of other new life, of the Future...."
Webster waited until he saw Summertown nodding intelligently; then he joined the group by the door.
"What do you think of it?" he asked, like a conjuror.
The Baroness Kohnstadt shuddered.
"Ach, derrible!"
"It's the same old game," said Pennington, with newly recovered valour. "She pinned herself down to something fairly definite, but, before anything comes along to kill Summertown, she'll have vamoosed and set up in Harrogate as a beauty specialist. Agree with me, Lady Barbara?"
"I don't know what to think—yet," she answered. "We mustn't let her tell him, of course...."
As she stood up, her knees were trembling.
"But nobody believes in itseriously," protested Sonia Dainton with a white face.
"Ido."
They had been joined by Lord Pennington's giggling companion of the armchair. Her eyes were bigger, and fear had washed away the colour from her cheeks.
"Let me try next, Fatty," she implored Webster.
"Why?"
"I want to."
"But why?"
She moved out of earshot and waited for him to join her.
"I want to," she repeated. "I won't say anything that I oughtn't to."
Webster laughed harshly. He did not want to hear the girl unfolding her history before an audience.
"Keep out of it, Dolly; only make fool yourself," he advised. "You're such little coward——"
"I know!" She seemed to take the sneer as a compliment. "But I'm gingered up now. Iwantto know! I want to know if I'm going to die. They said I was, butthey only did it to frighten me and get me away to a sanatorium. I'm going to find out!"
While Webster was still sluggishly trying to make up his mind, she darted past him and presented herself to Madame Hilary. Summertown yielded place reluctantly and joined the group at the door. Before the lights were lowered, the Master of the Ceremonies found time to whisper, "Cut it short. Others want turn, too. Leave out Past and Present; it's Future she's interested in."
There was a rustle of dresses and a squeak of castors, as the audience settled into chairs and the lights were lowered. After the same initial silence the same droning voice pronounced the elementals of the creed. "Though men have tried by the stars and by crystal balls, by cards and numbers and pools of ink, they have not hitherto looked for the Future within themselves...."
"How long does this tripe go on?" Summertown enquired so audibly that the girl started and turned towards the shadowy group by the fire.
Madame Hilary pushed back her chair and rose to her feet with dignity.
"Please! I cannot continue—like this." At a murmured apology she consented to sit down again, and the momentarily human voice became lost in the professional drone of the mystic. "Keep your eyes on mine—so! It is all I ask. I like better that you resist, that you determine not to answer my questions. But, if you look into my eyes, you will tell me all that I ask you. You must. You are telling me now! You are telling me now your name! It is—that name?"
"Dorothea Prilton. I'm called Dolly May on the stage."
"And you have been on the stage since long?"
"Three years."
"And how old are you?"
"Nineteen."
"And why did you go on to the stage?"
"Oh, I always loved it! It's everything in the world to me! And a gentleman friend said he'd introduce me to the manager of the Pall Mall."
There was a tinkle of broken glass, as Webster's elbow swept an ash tray to the floor.
"And you expect to play great parts? What are you acting in now?"
"Well, I'm out of a shop at present. It's such killing work, you know. I had to break one contract and go into a nursing-home; and I've never really pulled up since. One doctor says it's lungs, and another says it's heart. I was never very strong, and my friend had an awful time with me. Sometimes at the end of the show, he had to give me an injection in my arm to pull me round. Of course, it saved my life, but I think it affected the heart, you know. The doctor was very angry, but I said to him, 'It's all very well for you to talk, but you weren't there at the time; I was just dying.' I shall be all right when I've had a bit of a rest."
"And you expect to play great parts?" Madame Hilary repeated.
There was no answer. As the silence lengthened, the audience looked critically at her; she had spoken hitherto with the prattling candour of her class, and the question was hardly an assault on her professional diffidence.
"And are you in love?" pursued Madame Hilary without pity.
The girl looked at her in silence but still without any expression of resentment or confusion.
"Are you never afraid of meeting some man and having to retire from the stage?"
At the third silence Summertown observed loudly:
"This is a blinking frost, you know. Isaidit was, fromthe beginning. She can't make you answer, if you don't want to."
The penetrating voice brought Madame Hilary to her feet a second time.
"Mr. Webster! Where is Mr. Webster?" she demanded. "Please! I cannot go on—like this. You ask this gentleman to go away, and I continue. Otherwise, no! I cannot."
"Oh, I say, no offence meant, you know," Summertown pleaded.
"I cannot," Madame Hilary repeated firmly. "Mr. Webster——"
The sense of the meeting, expressed in murmured protests, was against Summertown.
"Oh, all right! I'll go," he sighed. "You goin' to break away, Babs? It's an absolute frost," he whispered. "Anyone seen a goodish billycock or bowler, not to mention a cane, a rich fur coat—Oh, my God!"
He had turned on the light to look for his belongings and, while the others ringed themselves about Madame Hilary with speeches of condolence and apology, he alone had leisure to see that Miss Dorothea Prilton, known on Pall Mall programmes as "Dolly May," sat dead in the chair which he had occupied ten minutes before.