"A maid too easilyConceits herself to beThose thingsHer lover sings;And being straitly wooed,Believes herself the GoodAnd FairHe seeks in her."Francis Thompson: "Any Saint."
"A maid too easilyConceits herself to beThose thingsHer lover sings;And being straitly wooed,Believes herself the GoodAnd FairHe seeks in her."Francis Thompson: "Any Saint."
"A maid too easilyConceits herself to beThose thingsHer lover sings;And being straitly wooed,Believes herself the GoodAnd FairHe seeks in her."Francis Thompson: "Any Saint."
"A maid too easilyConceits herself to beThose thingsHer lover sings;And being straitly wooed,Believes herself the GoodAnd FairHe seeks in her."
"A maid too easily
Conceits herself to be
Those things
Her lover sings;
And being straitly wooed,
Believes herself the Good
And Fair
He seeks in her."
Francis Thompson: "Any Saint."
Francis Thompson: "Any Saint."
"D'you remember once saying that you wanted the tonic of a good scandal?" asked Jack Waring one night three years later. "It was soon after King Edward's death."
"And we were all very respectable and dull." Valentine Arden roused from sleep, blinked at the clock and rang for a whiskey and soda. "One recalls it. There is a difference between court mourning and the second coming of Christ, but the English are the last people in the world to recognize it. And there is a difference between taking a tonic and being pelted to death with medicine bottles. Since those days one scans the paper each morning to see what new reputations have been lost. Who has made the latest Roman holiday?"
"Oh, it's this old business about your friend Barbara Neave."
Jack threw the paper to Arden and took up another in which he could read, with insignificant verbal changes, a second and equally gratifying account of his own prowess in the Court of Appeal that day. Three years earlier he had talked to Eric Lane of abandoning his unproductivecriminal work on circuit; he now wondered whether he dared abandon circuit work altogether and concentrate on his London practice. After, perhaps, six years more he would be wondering whether to risk his whole practice by applying for silk. Success was none the less gratifying because he had backed his own determination against the disparaging anticipations of his friends. Jack knew as well as any one that he was not a great lawyer; but natural shrewdness gained him a reputation for sound judgement; slowness passed for caution; and the inelasticity which saved him from seeing all round a case was reinforced by an obstinate refusal to let go the single point which he had grasped. More than one over-astute witness in those three years had entered the box with assurance and left it in dismay.
Only those who had known him longest wondered occasionally whether his practice had not been bought at the price of his soul. The plea of work and a ponderous affectation of age excused him from any effort to widen his interests. As old a friend as Eric Lane was allowed to drop out of his life; he refused to enter a new house and on one pretext or another reduced the number of the old, until any time that he could spare from work was divided between his club and his home in the country. At the first his friends were at liberty to visit him, if they chose; but he was obviously happier with the two Chancery silks and the one Indian judge, all of them twice his age, in whose company he dined nightly. And the influence of Red Roofs was even more lamentable on a man who was born self-centred and opinionated; Mrs. Warning and Agnes idolized and spoiled him, the colonel crystallized an intolerant conservatism of ideas which was better justified as the mature experience of a middle-aged soldier and country gentleman than as the untried prejudice of a thirty-year-old barrister. "A man may be a prig or a bore or both," said Pentyre ata time of temporary estrangement, "but he needn't be so infernally pleased with himself about it." The school of sport and fashion which Jack had once led at Oxford entertained the same feeling, if it expressed it with more disappointment and less candour.
"The coroner would seem to have spoken with visible emotion," commented Arden, trying to disguise his relish as he read the paper which Jack had thrown to him. "One wishes one had stayed to the end."
"I've no doubt she'll try to use it as another advertisement," Jack grunted. "What her unfortunate people must think....Andwhat the younger generation is coming to. It's a good thing for Jim that he's being spared all this."
"Yet he also has unselfishly contributed to the general diversion," said Arden.
Three years had passed since Sonia Dainton delighted her friends by becoming engaged to Loring, and two since she astonished them by breaking off the engagement. He had at once gone abroad and was reported to be still cruising aimlessly in the East. The social ghouls had hardly sated themselves with gossip, when Webster entangled himself with the proprietress of a dancing academy and was constrained to pay damages for breach of promise; and, while this case was still being discussed, Jack Summertown proceeded to occupy the press for three days with an enquiry into a series of minor outrages inflicted on an unpopular brother officer. Valentine Arden sat through the whole variety programme, unamused and detached, watching his friends succumbing one after another to epidemic madness. "The spirit of Pan is abroad," he explained gravely.
Lady Barbara Neave had flitted on the outskirts of each new scandal; but, since her flying accident, she had contributed no scandal of her own.
For the first year of the three she opened her social circuit as comprehensively as an unfledged barrister. LadyCrawleigh carried her from Milford to Kenworth, from Warmslow to Lenge and from Cheniston to Granlake. Lady Barbara's interest in social analysis was roused and fed by her tour of the great houses; they required a technique different from the absolutism of Government House and the unaided personal ascendancy of London; and, if she remained unabsorbed into the new atmosphere, at least she returned to Crawleigh Abbey with a mature country-house philosophy and clear-cut ideas of what to avoid and extrude from her own parties. The second year was devoted to romantic exploration. At the end of the court mourning she met a pleasant undistinguished soldier on furlough and chose, for no better reason—so far as her parents could see—than that he was already married, to fancy herself in love with him. Their few meetings—and still more their emotional parting—convinced at least the theatrical side of her temperament that she had broken her heart in a hopeless passion. Always thin, she artistically allowed herself to waste. For twelve teeming months she passively accepted the worship of all who were intrigued by her attitude of mystery and unresponsiveness; then native impatience broke through the unconvincing crust of cynicism, and she returned to London in a dangerous state of expectancy and unsatisfied excitement. In the absence of an overt scandal, her father hoped that she was sobered from the tomboy who had spread devastation through his three viceregal terms of office; the lesser optimists opined that she was only awaiting adequate opportunity.
Disaster overtook her in the summer of 1913; and, whatever other criticism was made, no one could deny that she won notoriety in the grand manner. The facts, as disclosed in court, revealed that Sir Adolf Erckmann had given a ball at his house in Westbourne Terrace. Lady Barbara decided within a few minutes of her arrival that the party was over-crowded and tiresome. Finding her slave Websterunoccupied, she suggested that he should drive her to another dance in the country and return to Westbourne Terrace when the congestion had been relieved. As his own car was gone home, they explored the line until the unknown chauffeur of some one else's car was persuaded to take them to Rickmansworth, wait half an hour and bring them back. Lady Barbara promised that there should be no awkward consequences, if they were discovered; Webster substantiated her guarantee with a five-pound note; and, by the time that they had further cajoled him with a stimulating supper of champagne and cutlets, the driver's last reluctance was overcome.
The story was liberally punctuated with questions on the general propriety of a girl's bribing a strange chauffeur and stealing an unknown car, with comments, too, on the dignity of their carrying a bottle of champagne and a plate of cutlets into the middle of Westbourne Terrace. There followed a digression to discover how much had been consumed; Lady Barbara and Webster asserted unshakably that the chauffeur was sober and that, if his driving became erratic at any point, this was due to his admitted ignorance of the route.
While the question of sobriety was left in suspense, the expedition was reconstructed to the moment when the car reached a fork in the road and the chauffeur turned to Webster and asked "Right or left, sir?" Examined on the question of speed, Lady Barbara was sure that they were not going more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twenty-five at the outside, Webster conceded unwillingly; they could not see the speedometer. It was suggested, however, that they must have calculated how long the double journey would take; they had even noticed when the car started and when it stopped; a damaging calculation shewed that their average pace was thirty-seven miles an hour and that, if they drove slowly out of London, they must havereached forty-five or fifty miles an hour in the country. And they had not told the man to moderate his pace; it even seemed that they had encouraged him to drive faster.
At the fork in the road Webster called out, "To the right, I think"; then he saw that he was mistaken and shouted, "No! the left." In trying to change direction, the chauffeur drove into a wedge-shaped brick wall and was instantly killed. Lady Barbara and her companion escaped with a severe shaking and a few scratches from the broken glass of the wind-screen; the front of the car was smashed beyond repair.
The accident took place in open country without a house in sight. As soon as they saw that the driver was dead, Lady Barbara spread her cloak over the crushed head and broken face; Webster's nerve was gone, and she left him, whimpering, to guard the body, while she went in search of help. An early market-cart came to their rescue, and they rumbled slowly back to London, shivering in their thin clothes and glancing over their shoulders at a pair of twisted legs in black gaiters, which protruded stiffly from beneath a blood-stained cloak.
The news swept through London in the evening papers, and Lady Barbara was inundated next day with enquiries and messages of sympathy. So grudging a critic as Jack Waring contended warmly at the County Club that, apart from her silliness in rushing away to the country in the middle of the night and borrowing a car without leave, she was really not to blame; and it was a dreadful experience for any girl. By comparison with Webster she had kept her head and behaved very properly, taking the body straight to a hospital, communicating with the widow, making herself personally responsible for a liberal pension and undertaking to replace the shattered car. Before night two papers had published sympathetic interviews with her, reproducing in her own not undramatic words the abrupt transition from a careless drive to violent death, the slow passage of a funeralprocession between barren grey fields, the silence and desolation of the night, the early-morning chill which beat on her unprotected arms and shoulders and the haunting sense of helplessness which dominated every other feeling. Inset was one photograph of her in evening dress and another with hollow cheeks and big ghostly eyes, in the subdued black frock which she had worn to receive her interviewers; for these Jack blamed the notorious vulgarity of the Press.
Admiration changed again to pity when the inquest opened. Sonia Dainton, who attended as an act of friendship, reported that the coroner was underbred and ill-tempered; Lady Maitland, who felt no curiosity but did not want Barbara to think that her friends were deserting her, added that he was a natural bully; and the Duchess of Ross, who hated any unpleasantness and only went—with Lord Poynter, Mrs. Shelley and Val Arden—to give the girl confidence, brought back word that, to the best of his ability and the utmost of his despotic functions, he was resolved to humiliate Lady Barbara, to discredit her associates and, without respect of persons, to put such a brand on her family and herself that they would never again dare to shew themselves among decent men and women. The witness learned on the first day that she was a pampered and spoiled child;blaséeand restless, she would do anything for a new excitement; with that absence of rudimentary decorum which some people appeared to think "smart," she had lawlessly appropriated a car—the coroner wondered what she would think if any one took one of her father's cars "just for a joke"—she had helped to make the driver intoxicated, thereby shewing characteristic disregard for the safety of mere ordinary people who might also want to use the road; she or her companion—was it usual for a girl to ride about at night unattended in this way?—had incited the chauffeur to drive at a reckless rate of speed. And the price of this prank—the momentary diversion of the LadyBarbara Neave, daughter of the Marquis of Crawleigh, one time Governor-General of Canada, Viceroy of India and Lord Lieutenant of Ireland—was the hideous death of a man who left behind him a widow and four small children. Lady Barbara, who naturally thought that money paid for everything, was graciously and of her abundance trying to compute the dead man's cash value to his wife. The hearing was adjourned for a week, as Mr. Webster was indisposed by the shock of the accident.
Had the coroner been inspired by malice, he could not have waged a deadlier warfare than by taking three days for the inquest and allowing intervals of a week for the case to be discussed. The stream of sympathy ran dry; and, if no one criticized Lady Barbara to her face, every one chattered about the enquiry and took his time from the coroner. Repenting his precipitate tolerance, Jack Waring told the two Chancery silks and the Indian judge that it was absurd for Crawleigh to say that the man was abusing his position and stirring up class prejudice; when one looked back over the last few years, one remembered a dozen things which Lady Barbara had been allowed to do for no better reason than that she was Lady Barbara Neave; but a line had really to be drawn somewhere. If Crawleigh disliked having mud thrown at him in public, he should exercise his authority with the girl; her friends were wholly impossible....
By the time that Webster was well enough to give evidence, the tide was in flood against him. The breach of promise case was fresh in the public mind; and, if it could not relevantly be brought up against him, it had at least familiarised his appearance and history and made a dark background to his examination. Mr. Webster was a young man; he did not work for his living, as he had considerable private means; in fact, he had nothing to do except to spend money and amuse himself. Pressed to state what good he was effecting for himself or the world at large, he couldonly say that he was interested in the theatre and fond of motoring—another instance of this small, rich, insistent class whose social importance varied in inverse ratio as its public usefulness. Put shortly, his object in life was to kill time, to avoid boredom.
The story of the night drive was rehearsed a second time, as the coroner wished to know who had proposed it; and the suspended question of the driver's sobriety was brought up for retrial. A bottle of champagne had been mentioned; had Mr. Webster and Lady Barbara partaken of it in their idyllically democratic picnic? Mr. Webster had dined at his club; could he remember what he had drunk with his dinner? His bill would no doubt shew that.
On the second adjournment a sordid note had been introduced, alienating the last sympathisers and sinking a tragedy in a drunken frolic. No one acquainted with Webster would associate him with a temperate life; those who saw him for the first time in court with twitching hands, a puffy face and flickering eyelids drew their own conclusions. If it was a shock to look at Lady Barbara and to hear it suggested that she, too, had been hardly accountable for her actions, the shock was not wholly displeasing to those who believed in the rottenness of so-called "society."
"They say I've murdered the man," she whispered to her father, as she left the court. "They've made the foulest insinuations about Fatty Webster and me. Now they say I drink. There's not much left, is there? I shouldn't be surprised if the people in the street hooted me."
Lord Crawleigh chewed his blonde, viking moustache and hurried her across the pavement into a closed car. He had never been present at an inquest before; and a voice had murmured that the coroner was working for a verdict of manslaughter. A nondescript crowd, dotted with cameras, waited in a half-circle outside the court; it was curious, but at present it was silent. Valentine Arden paused at the doorand ostentatiously raised his hat. He, too, would not have been surprised to hear hooting; and he was disappointed to have no vivid contrast for his gesture of chivalry. He wondered whether Lady Barbara was missing the hostile demonstration; it would have been a new sensation....
On the third day she appeared once more in a black hat and dress and sat with her veil up, waiting for the verdict and the coroner's comments. Arden decided that she was modelling herself on Marie Antoinette and hoped that she would be given an opportunity of speaking. At the end, the jury found that death was due to misadventure; the reporters closed their note-books, and Lord Crawleigh reached for his hat. Arden left at once for fear of spoiling his earlier effect by repetition, but the evening papers reported the invective of the coroner in full.
"I suggest to the representatives of the press that it is their duty to give the widest publicity to this case. In an experience which goes back for a good many years now, I have never regretted so bitterly that I have no power to punish those who by wanton carelessness or evil disposition contribute to the death of a man or woman as surely as if they had killed him with their own hands. We have had an illuminating picture of the life and habits of some of those who traditionally expect us to look up to them for an example. If these people are too idle or vicious or brainless to live a life which shall be of use to the community, there should at least be power to restrain them from becoming a source of public danger. The proper treatment for such incipient hooligans and reformatory children is the birch-rod: I wish I had authority to order it. Rank and wealth can only be defended if they impose obligations: to these bright ornaments of the leisured classes they only afford opportunities. There has been far too much of this kind of thing lately, and I hope I shall never again be required to deal with so disgraceful a case. These young hobbledehoys, unchecked by any domesticdiscipline, unrestrained by common decency, owing no obligation to any one, a law unto themselves, are a new and poisonous growth in our social life. They fulfil no useful purpose, there is no room for them."
"Therewasa hostile demonstration in the street," Arden announced, as he came to the end of the report.
"How she must have enjoyed it!" grunted Jack.
"One wishes one had stayed to the end. The court was not unlike a gala night at Covent Garden. You have read the descriptions of the dresses? No?"
"All this only encourages her," Jack pointed out. "I'm about the one man in London who's succeeded in not meeting her, but, if there's ever a revolution, that young woman will have done more than any one else to bring it about. And she'll be photographed getting into the tumbril; and some one will interview her on the scaffold. On my honour, I can't see what amusement she gets out of it."
"Emotion, drama, limelight, romance," Arden suggested. "Lady Barbara may be sure that every one in London is talking about her at this moment; London is her stage."
"Well, she'll have to retire from it after this," said Jack.
"She will re-emerge," Arden prophesied.
Both predictions were fulfilled before the end of the summer. Lord Crawleigh held his hand until the inquest was over, because he could not trust himself to deal even justice while the offence was fresh. For three weeks he was equally indifferent to Lady Barbara's tragic attitude, the sympathy of friends and the infamies of a hostile press: more than one anonymous letter reached him, to be read with a frown and silently filed with the documents in the case; and it was reported that a reference to his family had crept into the patter of a music-hall comedian. In the rich silence of a choleric and expressive man the nerves of family and retainers stretched to breaking-point.
On the morrow of the verdict he assembled his wife andchildren in the library, rehearsed the charges against Lady Barbara and made known his will. Henceforward she was to go nowhere unless attended by her mother, one of her brothers or her maid. The family would proceed to Crawleigh Abbey that day and would remain there until further notice. The ball which Lady Crawleigh was giving would be cancelled; his daughter was to refuse all invitations already accepted and to accept no more. At the end of the season she would stay in no house unless one at least of her parents accompanied her.
As he ended, Lady Barbara stole a glance round the hushed library. Her three brothers were silent and submissive; her mother helpless and pained, like an "honest broker" who saw the nations of the world flying at one another's throats, when she had exhausted herself to keep the peace; her father's eyes were burning, and he dragged at one side of his moustache as though he were trying to tear it out by the roots. In every altercation, great and small, Lady Barbara had to fight single-handed.
"But, father, you seem to think this was myfault!" she cried in bewilderment.
Lord Crawleigh handed his wife a paper with fingers that trembled.
"Here are the dates and trains," he said. "You will go to the Abbey by the 4.10 from Waterloo. I shall join you at the end of the session." He turned to his daughter without trusting himself to face her dark, reproachful eyes. "I contemplate taking you to Raglan in August and House of Steynes in September, if your aunts see fit not to withdraw your invitation——"
"But how long is this going on?" Lady Barbara interrupted.
"I cannot permit any discussion," he answered in something that was half a whisper and half a sigh.
Lady Barbara looked at him reflectively and went to her room. When she came of age, in little more than a year'stime, he would have no means of coercing her. Without waiting a year she could go to Harry Manders and demand to be given a part; he had offered her one in her own duologue. But the tension of the last three weeks and the dazing examination and attack at the inquest had left her uncertain of herself. A day or two at the Abbey, even though she were snatched away in the middle of the season, would give her time to find her bearings and discover what people really thought of her.
The more she pondered, the deeper grew her bewilderment. If all had gone well, the dash to Rickmansworth and back would have been regarded as a wholly innocent diversion in the course of a tiresome evening; on her return every one else would have regretted that he had not come too; even the borrowing of the car was venial, for the owner refused to accept any compensation, though the insurance company might well make difficulties; even he regarded the expedition as a joke, which had unhappily turned to tragedy, and was far sorrier that Lady Barbara should have been upset than that the chauffeur should have been killed.
If the facts, then, were innocent, she was being persecuted by the coroner and threatened with persecution by society at large for an accident to which she had contributed nothing. The chauffeur was sober enough to drive through dense traffic on the Harrow Road; Webster—she remembered his words—had looked at his watch and said through the speaking-tube, "You can let her out a bit now, I should think. We don't want to keep you out too long." The charge that any one of them was drunk would have been more insulting if it had been less grotesque. And for this the coroner had suggested that she should be ostracized. And her simple-minded father imagined that there were other simple-minded souls who would take such a Jack-in-office at his own pontifical valuation.
She almost hoped that they would, so that she might forcethem in triumph to acknowledge her innocence. To start as an outcast and win her way back was a dramatic dream which almost made her wish that she was guilty. To become an outcast might be as dramatic as to rise from obscurity to a pinnacle of fame.... Napoleon owed half his place in history to St. Helena.
An undistracted fortnight at the Abbey cooled Lady Barbara's resentment and checked the more romantic flights of her imagination. Her father's judgement was clearly at fault; to run away was to admit herself in the wrong. By the time that she had got herself into perspective, the season was so near its end that she did not think it worth while to make a demonstration and to occupy her room in Berkeley Square by force. But the late summer and autumn lay before her, and, when her father came to the Abbey for a week-end in July, she informed him that she had not yet cancelled any of her arrangements for staying with friends.
"You will remain here till we go to the Riviera in February," he answered.
"But, father, I'm not going to. This is quite serious. I've been here a month without seeing a soul; I should go mad, if I had to vegetate for another seven months. If you won't let me go, I'm afraid I must go without your leave."
"That may not be as easy as you think."
"What d'you mean?"
Lord Crawleigh unlocked a red leather despatch-box, turned over his files and produced a sheet of paper which he spread before her.
"This is a copy of a cable which your cousin has sent to his mother from Surinam. I had intended taking you to House of Steynes, but that is out of the question now."
"Please arrange that Barbara and her friend are not admitted to my house. This applies to Monmouthshire and Scotland as well as London."
Lady Barbara handed back the paper and tried to laugh,but she knew that her expression was out of control. If the news had reached Surinam, it had reached every cable-station on the way; and the operators had hardly done feasting themselves on the inquest before a message, signed "Loring" and mentioning her by name, added a dainty titbit to the savoury repast. Sooner or later it would be common property that her own cousin had slammed his door in her face for fear of contamination; the family would be divided into those who knew her and those who publicly refused to know her; she would become a test-case for disreputability.
"Jim has his own standards of loyalty, hasn't he?" she commented and was infuriated to find her voice trembling. "He's usually so keen on the family that I shouldn't have thought he'd have wanted to take the whole world into his confidence. One good thing, he can't callmeself-advertising after this. Have you seen the darling boy's mother? Is she—proudof him over this?"
"She was as much shocked as I was that you should have made it necessary."
"I? Father, you can't make me responsible forthis. But is she proud of his chivalry? And I supposeyoudidn't make a fight for me? I must see her. I want to tell her about the accident." She pressed her hands to cheeks which were still hollow from the anxiety of the last two months and looked at her father over her finger-tips. "I'd never seen any one killed before, I'd never seen a dead body; and I couldn't sleep at night, because of it. I kept seeing that unhappy woman's face, too, when I had to tell her that her husband was dead. I didn't ask for sympathy, but I thought perhaps my own father and mother might have seen that I wasn't exactly—enjoying myself, that I was ill, worried out of my mind. IfIhad a daughter, I should have felt for her, I think, when a foul-mouthed little reptile hinted that she wasdrunkand that herloverhad helped her kill an innocent man for her own amusement. Never a word! Doyou know that for three weeks you only said 'Good-morning' to me, father? Even if I was guilty a hundred times over, it wouldn't have compromised you to be sorry that I was suffering. I don't complain. You at least left me alone. But Jim waits till I'm beaten to my knees, waits till I'm bleeding—and then hits wherever he can see a bruise or wound. Thatwasn'tnecessary, father."
Lord Crawleigh rearranged his papers without answering. He was himself so much humiliated by his nephew's cable that he had hardly thought how it might affect Barbara. She was always most formidable when she stood, as now, with drooping head, composed and subdued, speaking in an undertone and rejecting in advance any sympathy that he might belatedly offer her. She had learned in childhood to fight men with their own weapons and to fall back on her sex when the battle was going against her. He had seen her trading on pathos a hundred times with her mother and aunts, using to full advantage a pose of tired frailty, a wistful mouth and big eyes which filled with tears at will or flashed black with indignation; she could droop her head and body until she looked like a tortured martyr, or cough until she looked consumptive. Almost certainly she was acting now, but her passion for romance and a dramatic impact led her to act without knowing it.
"If you had behaved properly, this would not have happened," he threw out with weak, inconsequent irritability.
"It's too late now. Are you going to House of Steynes? Do you allow people to say that they'll be glad to see you on condition you don't bring your daughter with you? And will you invite Amy and Aunt Eleanor here to meet somebody who can't be admitted to their house?"
Lord Crawleigh had enough imagination to see the more obvious consequences of his nephew's ultimatum; but he could not devise an effective reply, and it was merely exasperating to have his own disadvantage explored and stated by Barbara.
"I talked to your aunt. She says she daren't go against Jim's wishes. After all, they're his houses. She's writing to him——"
"To intercede for me?" Lady Barbara interrupted scornfully. "When next I enter House of Steynes, it will be on his invitation. And, before I allow him to invite me, he will apologize."
"It's no use takingthatline," cried her father testily. Her last two sentences had exceeded the probable limits of sincerity, and he swooped before she could escape into a convincing pathos. "Ifany oneought to apologize——"
Lady Barbara caught sight of her reflection, full-length, in a mirror, with her father fidgetting at her side. He looked insignificant, almost ridiculous, with his domed forehead and straggling blonde moustache, his short body and long legs. She wanted to make him see himself and to play up to their two reflections like Metternich and L'Aiglon in the mirror scene.
"I can only apologize for the fact of my existence," she sighed. "I wasnotresponsible, father, and you know it. And, instead of standing up for your own daughter, you let her be insulted. I can't do anything with people who stab in the back, but I'm ready to meet every one! Iwillmeet them. If they want to insult me, they can insult me to my face."
The embargo on Lady Barbara's presence only extended to the houses controlled by her cousin. In August she went to stay with Lady Knightrider in Raglan and was received with demonstrative affection. A gentle reaction had set in, inspired directly by Lord Crawleigh and aided by all who felt that Jim Loring's precipitous cable had placed the family in an intolerable position. Working in a sympathetic atmosphere, Lady Barbara enlisted her aunt's support in a campaign which was to rehabilitate her or at least to shew whether she stood in need of rehabilitation. As soon as they returned to London for the autumn, Lady Knightrider undertook to give a dance and to insist that Lady Loringand Amy should come; if Jim were home by then, she would make him come, too, and the whole ridiculous quarrel would be forgotten. Lady Barbara intended to go farther than the settlement of a family difference. The party should be a challenge to all who felt disposed to criticise her; she was determined to appear side by side with Webster and to give them their opportunity; and any one who declined to come would have to shew convincing justification for his refusal.
The invitations were sent out six weeks in advance; Lady Knightrider reasoned with those who made excuses, sent reminders to those who had accepted and surrounded herself with a staff of energetic lieutenants.
"You'recoming on, Val, aren't you?" asked George Oakleigh distractedly on the night of the ball, as he prowled hungrily through the County Club with a list in his hand. He had undertaken to bring six men and was bribing them beforehand with dinner.
"A doubt has crept in," Arden replied uncertainly. "One invitation may be attributed to hospitality; four suggest panic."
"Well, if there are too few men, you'll be all the more popular; if there are too many, you can go home early. Gerry, I'm counting on you."
Deganway paused for an instant on his way to the cloak-room.
"My dear, I wouldn't miss it for anything."
Oakleigh added a tick to his list and hurried after Jack Waring. They were still disputing, when Eric Lane was announced.
"I don't dance, I can't talk and I want to go to bed," said Jack firmly.
"You can go after half an hour," Oakleigh promised.
"Well, I'll come for one cigar, if Eric comes too. I'm an old man, George; I haven't been to a ball for ten years."
At eleven o'clock Oakleigh convoyed them securely intothe drawing-room of Lady Knightrider's house in South Street. By the test of numbers the dance promised well, for the house was already crowded and Lady Barbara's relations were in full attendance. Her triumph was left incomplete by the absence of Webster, but he had been snubbed more than once in the last few months and was waiting for time to heal his reputation. She had spent the afternoon arguing with him until she felt her dignity compromised, and the embers of her ill-humour smouldered through the night.
By prearrangement Jack escaped to the smoking-room for a cigar, while Eric unbosomed himself of news which had been choking him for three days; Harry Manders had accepted a play, which was to be produced in the following autumn; after eight years of disappointment the daydream was being realized. They were still bandying congratulations and thanks, when the smoking-room was invaded by Deganway and a girl.
"Isn't that the famous Lady Barbara Neave?" Eric whispered.
Jack half turned and shook his head.
"Don't ask me. I'm shortly starring at the Halls as the one man in the world who doesn't know her and doesn't want to. I think it must be, all the same. Gerry seems to be getting called over the coals for something."
Lady Barbara's annoyance with Webster was spending itself on Deganway. There were long silences, broken by deferential squeaks of small-talk from him and restored by petulant rejoinders from her. She treated her companion with a contempt that was almost insolent and jumped restlessly to her feet, as the band began to tune up. Deganway hurried after her to the door, and the calm of the smoking room was only disturbed by half-heard music and the sound of high, rapid voices on the stairs. As his second cigar burnt low, Jack looked at his watch and beckoned Eric from his chair.
"Come and say good-bye; then you can drop me at the club," he suggested.
They steered a tortuous and apologetic course through the couples seated on the stairs and looked hopelessly for Lady Knightrider. In their absence the drawing-room had filled to overflowing, and the landings and balconies were packed to the limit of their capacity. As the next dance started, Deganway entered, blinking in the light, from one of the open French windows; Lady Barbara was still with him, but, as the music began, she was claimed and taken away.
"First time I've ever seen you indulging in frivolities like this, Jack," he said, letting fall his eye-glass and hunting for his cigarette-case.
"Well, I don't dance, and the conventional alternative is to talk to young women," answered Jack. "I confess that I can imagine less dreary pastimes—for both."
"That depends on the woman. I've spent most of the evening with Babs Neave. My dear, there's plenty of excitement in talking toher! Care to meet her?"
"I'm going home as soon as I've found Lady Knightrider," Jack answered.
"It'd pay you to talk to her for a bit. Let me introduce you! She's awful good fun—doesn't care a damn what she says or does——"
"That's her general reputation," interrupted Jack.
"Oh, you mustn't believe everything you hear about her. She's quite all rightreally; awful nice girl. Let me introduce you!"
Jack shook his head and took Eric by the arm.
"My dear Deganway, I've no doubt she's everything you say, but I don't care a great lot for the Websters and Penningtons and Welmans and Erckmanns and all that gang that she goes about with. They're such devilish bad style. Good-night."
Deganway grinned maliciously.
"I've a good mind to tell her what you said. Do her noend of good. And I should get a bit of my own back after the way she's been ragging me."
They stood talking by the door until the music stopped. Then Jack and Eric turned and went downstairs, while Deganway sidled up to Lady Barbara.
"No, you're tiresome to-night," she told him, when he asked for another dance. "Who are those two going out? I don't know them."
"The fair one's Jack Waring——"
"Well, I should like to know him," Lady Barbara interrupted. "I'm tired of everybody."
Deganway hurried obediently out of the room and returned a moment later with a smirk of satisfaction.
"Try again, Babs," he suggested. "Waring's not taking any."
"Do talk intelligibly, Gerry!"
"Well, I told himbeforethat he ought to meet you. I said what good fun you were and what he was missing and all that sort of thing——"
Lady Barbara shivered at the blunt catalogue of her charms.
"What did he say?"
By natural compensation Deganway atoned for certain defects of intelligence by an excellent power of mimicry. He gave not only Jack's lilt and phraseology, but his facial changes and rather prim, tight-lipped smile.
"I tried him again," he added, "but he said hemustgo to bed. I don't believe he wanted to meet you."
Lady Barbara smiled composedly, but the brusque rebuff, brusquely quoted, wounded her pride as nothing had done since Jim's cable. Some one had taken up the challenge, as she had feared—or hoped.
"Sorry he's so hard to please," she answered lightly. "You can give me some supper, if you like. Who and what is he? A candid critic is so rare that I should quite like to meet him."
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!Better be d——d than mentioned not at all!"John Wolcott: "To the Royal Academicians."
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!Better be d——d than mentioned not at all!"John Wolcott: "To the Royal Academicians."
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!Better be d——d than mentioned not at all!"John Wolcott: "To the Royal Academicians."
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!Better be d——d than mentioned not at all!"
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be d——d than mentioned not at all!"
John Wolcott: "To the Royal Academicians."
John Wolcott: "To the Royal Academicians."
"The Princess Juanita dawned upon respectability like Aphrodite rising from the gutters."
According to Mrs. Shelley, as quoted by Eric to George Oakleigh and the author, this was the opening sentence of Valentine Arden's "New Jerusalem," and she had given a luncheon party on the strength of it. Since her husband's death, Eric had edged gently away from her self-conscious artistic menagerie; he had been recaptured for a moment after the Coronation, when his father was knighted for "eminent services to the study of Anglo-Saxon" and he could himself be introduced as "the son of Sir Francis Lane, you know"; and it was no sooner hinted that a play of his had been accepted by Harry Manders than she dragged him back into his cage with a tacit order to stay there until his public interest was exhausted.
It was Mrs. Shelley's practice to read every book of importance on the day of publication; it was her ambition to know all about it before it was written. The new satire, she informed her guests, had engaged Arden's energies for two years and presented a picture of London society under the empire of Sir Adolf Erckmann and the cosmopolitans; the forces of respectability had not escaped the impartial lash of his ridicule, and almost every character was a portrait. Mrs. Welman waltzed unmistakably over the glittering pages with Sir Deryk Lancing; Lord Pennington, JackSummertown and the Baroness Kohnstadt flitted from place to place like the chorus of a musical comedy, and every scandal of the last ten years was described or mentioned. If the book were ever published, Mrs. Shelley was convinced that the heavens would rain writs for libel; certainly no one would continue to know the author. She had reasoned with him, but he was apparently tired of London and contemplated impressing his personality on New York.
While no one was secure, Eric gathered that the greatest speculation surrounded the identity of "Princess Juanita." Mrs. Shelley maintained that the character must be intended for Sonia Dainton, who had joined the Erckmann faction when she broke off her engagement with Loring; Lady Maitland, who was still smarting in the belief that Arden had sketched her for his earlier "Madame Chasseresse-de-Lions," had no doubt that he was now squirting his poison at Lady Barbara Neave. "A man like that," she told Mrs. Shelley, "would never waste time on a commoner like Sonia Dainton when he could besmirch the daughter of a marquess and tickle his wretched provincial audience by calling her a princess." Her bitter words were repeated to the author, who announced that he was giving his book the sub-title "Commoner and Commoner," and dedicating it to Lady Maitland. Only when he was tired of his friends' good advice did he admit that the satire existed but in his imagination.
"One is taken altogether too literally," he complained to his friends in the smoking-room of the Thespian Club. "A grim, cultured hostess, spectacled young poets having their own poems explained to them by Lady Poynter, a dinner which one ate and tried to forget, furtive confidences on the wine from Lord Poynter, a succession oflongueurs—you see the scene? Chelsea.... Earnestness.... Ill-assortment.... Without any wish toépater le bourgeois, one played with an idea, developed it, invented characters, let fall a phrase.... Perhaps one has allowed good Sir Adolfto obsess one's mind.... It was not a remarkable phrase; but one could hardly have caused a greater stir if one had telegraphed anonymously to one's friends—"Fly. All is known." Lady Knightrider almost offered one a blank cheque to stop publication. Ajeu d'espritmust be labelled before it is offered to the English."
"Well, I'm glad the book's not going to be published," said Oakleigh. "That little gang's had quite enough advertisement without any help from you."
"One hates to disappoint Lady Barbara," answered Arden reflectively. "Undeniably she compels a reluctant admiration. She has lived in three continents—in regal state; she has met every one and done everything; in her leisure she has written plays, selected poetry, exhibited caricatures—not altogether contemptible—of her family and friends, patronized new schools of decoration, invented new fashions of dress and, as all the world knows, worn them. What remained? One met her first some years ago and asked oneself that question. It is still unanswered!"
"At present she's bolstering up two or three dozen people who are only received on the strength of her name," Oakleigh replied. "And she's going to find that her name isn't strong enough to carry them."
"These people go to her head," Arden replied with disgust. "One credited her with more detachment."
The campaign of rehabilitation had not been an unqualified success. Lady Knightrider aimed at reconciling Barbara with her relations rather than at reconciling her relations with her friends. There was an implied threat that she must choose one or the other; and a prevalent feeling was crystallized by Jack Waring, when he said that she was not worth knowing at the price of having to know her disorderly retinue. While she welcomed the concordat, Lady Barbara could not explain to Sir Adolf Erckmann that he was her fit companion one day and unfit the next; she mightgently repel a cosmopolitan here and there, but she could not refuse all their invitations always; loyalty imposed its obligations, and stronger than loyalty was an impatient desire to tell other people to mind their own business. Yet the concordat might have endured, if the discussion of Arden's hypothetical book had not impelled Lady Knightrider hot-foot from Mrs. Shelley's house to his rooms at the Ritz. Not content with her legitimate relief at finding that "Princess Juanita" was no less a myth than "The New Jerusalem," she confided to Arden that dear Barbaradidgo about with "really rather dreadful people"; some one at her party had said that the girl's friends were such that he preferred not to know her. So long as she associated with them, it was only too probable that there would be another unpleasantness of some kind.
"I really think it my duty," she said on leaving, "to drop a little hint to my sister."
The nods and winks of verbal warning are apt to take on an exaggerated significance when defined in black and white. On receipt of the letter Lord Crawleigh motored to London and opened a new commission of enquiry to investigate the personal desirability of his daughter's associates. If Lady Barbara was at first bewildered, she was in no way daunted, for in the endless intermingling of groups throughout London she could usually find a sponsor for the most draggled of her friends. Sir Adolf Erckmann's private life might lead him into the Divorce Court, he might even be the "vulgar, common fellow" that her father described, but he had dined in Berkeley Square as a member of Lord Crawleigh's Departmental Committee on Indian Currency Reform. Lady Crawleigh always went to the vulgar, common fellow's famous musical parties in Westbourne Terrace. Lady Barbara had originally met Mrs. Welman at a performance of "The School for Scandal," organized by Lady Maitland for charity, and had naturally accepted the impliedguarantee; it was not against civil, canon or moral law for a woman to have been on the stage. Those who, like Webster, could not so easily be defended were pushed into the background. The battle of wits ceased to be amusing when Lord Crawleigh repeated his threat that Barbara would not be allowed to go anywhere unless she were suitably chaperoned. The dreary banishment at the Abbey lingered in her memory as a summer stolen out of her life. As her patience ebbed, she decided that there must be an end of these inquisitions.
It was easy to trace her present plight through Lady Knightrider to Val Arden; but there was some one behind Arden, for her father claimed to have chapter and verse for saying that people were refusing to know her so long as she associated with her present friends. With a shock of surprise she recalled a self-satisfied young man who had in fact met her invitation to be introduced with a drawling, "Thanks very much. She may be all you say, but...."
It was incredible that one bumptious boy could do so much harm.... Even when the commission adjourned without arriving at an agreed report, Lady Barbara felt that a vendetta was being forced upon her....
She had no plan of campaign and knew nothing of her adversary but his name. Apart from Gerry Deganway she did not know of any one who was acquainted with him; and Deganway had done enough harm already without being given new opportunities. But, if the vendetta required resource, resource should be forthcoming. She called on Sonia Dainton the day after her father's inquisition and proposed that they should go for a drive. As the car entered the Park by Albert Gate, she pretended to recognize a face and said:
"Wasn't that Jack Waring?"
"I didn't see," Sonia answered.
"It was like him—though I don't know him to speak to."
"You'll find him very sticky. He's a great friend of your cousin Jim. When we were engaged, I used to see a certain amount of him. He's a heavy, Stone-Age creature; when he and Jim and George Oakleigh put their wise old heads together, there was nothing they wouldn't disapprove of!"
"I hear he's been good enough to criticizeme," said Lady Barbara carelessly.
"When he doesn't even know you? What did he say?" asked Sonia.
"Oh, what does it matter? Some one started a story the other day that I took drugs. Li Webster heard a woman say, 'I was told by a friend who'd been to the same dressmaker; her arm was all red and pulpy; I believe she's been doing it for years and that's why she always wears long sleeves at night.' Have youeverseen me in long sleeves, Sonia. I've got much too good arms! And, if I wanted to take the beastly stuff, shouldn't I have it injected where it wouldn't shew? Ididwant to meet that woman—just to tell her to use her brains. And, if I ever meet your friend Mr. Waring——"
"My dear, he's notmyfriend! I was asked down to Croxton for the hunt ball at the end of this month; I made Bobby Pentyre tell me who was going to be there and, when I saw Jack Waring's name, I said 'nothin' doin'.' I know those hunt balls! Vermilion men in pink coats.... Jack will be just in his element; he'll support a wall and tell everybody that he doesn't know any of 'these modern dances,' as though it were something to be proud of."
Lady Barbara laughed mechanically and sorted the new information into its appropriate pigeon-hole. She was dining and going to a play that night with Summertown and his sister; Sally Farwell's passion for Pentyre had become a habit, and, if he did not reciprocate her passion, he could hardly refuse her friend an invitation for the ball. Once within the same house as Jack Waring, she had decidednothing save that he could not be allowed to walk through the world with his nose in the air, saying that she or her friends were "bad style."
A week later she arrived at Croxton Hall and explored the terrain for the engagement. Waring, she learned, came once a year into Buckinghamshire from old habit, because he had hunted with the Croxton from Oxford; he was returning to chambers by the breakfast-car train next day. She had few hours for making her effect; and they were further reduced when Jack drove up three-quarters of an hour late to find that the house-party was already dressed and busily adjusting its relationships. Lady Pentyre scrambled through half a dozen introductions in as many seconds and hurried her guests into the dining-room, without giving him time to dress or even to see who was there; Barbara, standing a little behind the others, escaped notice; and, when she found herself seated by prearrangement at his side, she had to introduce herself.
"I believe you're a great friend of Jim's," she began. "He's a cousin of mine, and I've often heard him speak of you."
Jack was already disconcerted by having to dine unwashed and in a tweed suit; and his embarrassment increased as he guessed at her identity. For a while he would only talk disjointedly of Jim Loring, varying his conversation with apologies for his tweed suit; he had been kept late with a consultation, and, when he began to change in the train, two women got in at Bletchley. Barbara fastened on the consultation and with deft questions encouraged him to talk about his work. She had sat next to so many shy young men at official dinners that she could put any one at his ease. At her prompting and wholly unconscious of it, Jack discoursed of the bar in general and his own practice in particular for three-quarters of the dinner and was agreeably surprised to find her so intelligent a listener.
"I oughtn't to be here, really," he confided. "I haven't the time or energy for this kind of thing, but the Croxton's an old love of mine, I've not missed a Croxton ball since I was at Oxford." He was tempted to describe his first Croxton ball; but it was a long story, and he discovered that he had been monopolizing the conversation. "You're a great dancer, I expect?" he said with the indulgence of early middle age. "I look forward to watching you to-night."
Lady Barbara began to shake her head and then stopped with closed eyes and a bitten lip.
"I'm not going," she answered. "I've had such an awful headache all day."
"I'm so sorry! I don't dance myself, but I hoped you might spare me one or two for sitting out. If you'reinterestedin law—the bar's by no means the dry-as-dust life some people think."
Talking to her was so easy that Jack had half determined to ask if he might have supper with her. Of the rest of the evening he could dispose comfortably enough by gossiping with old Gervaise, who had been in his father's regiment, and the other veterans of the hunt. Lady Pentyre never regarded him as a dancing man in making up her numbers. It would not be half so easy to find common ground with Sally Farwell or Grace Pentyre; without meaning to be unsympathetic, he felt that Lady Barbara might have chosen any other night of the year for her headache.
"It'll be better, when you get there," he prophesied encouragingly and wondered whether she would mistake his convenience for her own triumph. So far he had not looked at her, but he now stole a glance out of the corner of his eye and saw a straight, thin nose, haggard cheeks that had a pathetic fascination for him and a mouth which drooped wistfully; the lips were red, her eyes a velvet black, fringed with long black lashes and shaded with dark rings, changing colour and size like a cat's. The white, hollow cheekscombined with the dark eyes and red lips to suggest ravaging dissipation or ill-health; he would never be surprised to be told that she was consumptive. And he could not understand how any one so thin could be so attractive.
She caught him watching her and forced a smile.
"I've only been doing rather too much lately, I expect," she said.
"That I can well believe. But after dinner—I say, have you hadanythingto eat?"
"I had some melon.... But I'm not very hungry. If Idon'tgo, don't tell Aunt Kathleen—Lady Knightrider, you know—will you? She gave me this dress specially and she'd be so awfully disappointed."
"Jolly dress," Jack answered, looking unanalytically at something which he could only remember afterwards as being generally black—with bits of silver here and there—and little transparent triangular pendants hanging down from shoulder to elbow. "I hope you'll be able to come."
"I shan't be able to dance," she sighed. "Every time I turn my head—Oo! I did it then! It's like a red-hot needle at the back of the eyes...." She picked up her gloves and held out a hand, as the butler announced that the cars were at the door. "I'll say good-night and good-bye. I hope you'll enjoy yourself. And I hope I've not been too unutterably boring."
Jack felt her hand pulling gently against his.
"When I'm trying to persuade you to come on with us?" he asked.
Lady Barbara shut her eyes in a second spasm of pain.
"Do you really want me to?"
"If you're up to it."
"I will, if you want me to," she promised.
For many years longer than Jack could remember, the Croxton Ball had taken place in the vast and half-derelict "King's Arms," once famous, with its long coffee-room andunlimited stabling, as the best posting-house in the county and the beginning of the last stage for coaches running from the east and northeast coast through Oxford to South Wales and the west. Once a year the dingy grey-stone hotel, filling one side of the market-place, blazed with unaccustomed light; and the barrack of stables behind awoke to welcome the procession of tightly-packed cars that explored their way with long white fingers down the broad, uneven village street.
Jack changed his clothes and joined a shivering group by the fire in the Commercial Room. Lady Barbara was sitting apart, sniffing a bottle of salts and gently repelling those who tried to engage her for a dance.
"She oughtn't to have come," murmured Lady Pentyre, who neither understood nor forgave her son for this eleventh-hour addition. After the disgraceful episode of the poker-party, she had vowed never to have the girl in her house again; and these later scandals were no recommendation to leniency. But, before she could hint at her objections, she was told that the invitation had already been issued. "If she's beginning a chill or anything——"
Jack crossed to the distant chair and was welcomed with a smile.
"How nice you look in that coat!" Lady Barbara cried. "Are those the Croxton buttons?"
"Yes.... May I sit and talk, if you didn't have too much of me at dinner? I feel responsible for bringing you here, you know."
"But I love doing what people ask me! It's my greatest self-indulgence. When are they going to begin, and what's all the fuss about in the hall?"
A babble of angry voices floated through the open door—criticism, suggestions and conflicting orders. The Secretary came in frowning and snatched at all members of the Committee within reach.
"I'll never go to those people again!" he thundered."After all these years, too. Band hung up on the road. Wrong train. They won't be here for half an hour!"
A murmur of disappointment swelled through the room, eddying round the hall and rising from group to group on the stairs and in the ball-room.
Lady Barbara sat up alert, without any trace of headache or fatigue. The red lips were parted expectantly, with a gleam of small white teeth.
"I'll play!"
She darted from her chair, humming to herself and only pausing to crumple her scarf into a ball and to toss it with her gloves to Jack. He caught it mechanically, wonderingly. In a moment the grave-voiced girl with the tragic eyes and hint of consumption had transformed herself into something untamed, with shining eyes and irresponsible restlessness. He listened to her voice growing fainter on the stairs, then looked with some embarrassment at the crumpled scarf and gloves.