"A drunkard is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better."John Earle: "Microcosmographie."
"A drunkard is one that will be a man to-morrow morning, but is now what you will make him, for he is in the power of the next man, and if a friend the better."
John Earle: "Microcosmographie."
"I knew it.... Yes.... Of course...."
Lady Barbara found herself repeating the words aloud, though no one listened to her. Now that disaster had come, she remembered her premonition; and it gave her a start over the others in recovering self-possession, so that she remained motionless instead of pathetically trying to charm the dead girl back to life. Only Webster and Summertown were making any show of keeping their heads. Madame Hilary had become hysterical; Lord Pennington, mottled and tremulous, was charging distractedly to and fro with a decanter of brandy; and Sonia Dainton, shrinking from the body, sobbed quietly to herself by the fire, while Sir Adolf towered over her, gesticulating with plump, white hands.
"Lock door," whispered Webster. "Tell 'em not s'much dam' row."
He felt the girl's pulse, hurried lumberingly into his bedroom and returned with a shaving-mirror, which he held before her lips. Then he closed the staring eyes and covered the face with a handkerchief.
"Heart failure," he pronounced. "Always had weak heart. Excitement. I tried stop her, youheardme try stop her!"
At the note of pleading in his voice, Madame Hilary'slamentations redoubled in vigour, this time in the unmistakable accent of Essex.
"Before get doctor, better decide story put up," Webster went on more collectedly. "Short and simple,Isuggest. All having tea here——Said she was feeling tired——Went pale——Suddenly stopped middle sentence.... Less said about Madame Hilary, better. Best of all, send her away now. Know what coroners are."
At sound of the formidable word Lady Barbara clutched frantically at Summertown's elbow.
"Will there be aninquest?" she whispered.
"Can't help it. That's bad enough, but, if there's anything of apost mortem, we may find ourselves in the soup. 'Deceased died as result of sudden shock.'Whatshock?Whyshock? I don't at all know that we can afford to let this woman go." He wrinkled his snub nose; and his cheerful, rather dissipated young face was grave. "Don't atallknow," he repeated.
The ink-and-whitewash smell of the court came to life again in Lady Barbara's nostrils; and she heard the coroner once more urging the reporters like hounds on to their quarry. She would again appear side by side with Webster to explain away another gratuitous death. Twice in one year.... And it was not her fault.
"I can't stand it, Jack," she whispered. "I can't! I can't!"
He looked at her in surprise, for it was generally accepted that she could never lose her nerve.
"Jove! yes. I'd forgotten," he answered. "Here, Fatty!" Webster hurried to them anxiously, and Summertown became elaborately calm and practical. "Look here, old son,you'vegot to go through with this; the body's on your premises. And Madame must go through with it, because they may find all sorts of funny things at thepost mortem. When all's said and done, you and I didn't kill her, and there's no reason why we should get the credit of it.I'min with you to the end. I think Pennington and Sir Adolf and the Baroness ought to stay to make a quorum, but we'll talk about that later. Point is—Babs must clear out before the vet. comes; she's never been here, we know nothing about her; we must stick to that and, if need be, swear to it. And there's no need to drag Sonia into the business."
Webster reflected with slow mind, rubbing his fingers against the pad of his thumb, as though they still felt the dead eye-lids of the girl who had at last escaped him.
"Woman's tough customer," he warned them. "Blackmail you quick as thought. And looks bad—much worse—, if any one stays away inquest."
"We'll trust that she's too much rattled," Summertown answered. "And she doesn't even know who Babs is."
"Bet your life she does," Webster answered. Seeing Lady Barbara's undisguised fear, he deliberately played on it, as his price for allowing her to escape the inquest. "If she don't, dam' soon find out."
Future blackmail seemed a less evil than present exposure; and Lady Barbara only wanted to break away from the sweet-smelling, hot room and to avoid the sour-smelling, hot court. Summertown looked to her for an answer; but her eyes were blinking quickly, and two tears rolled unchecked down her cheeks.
"Here, ifyoubreak down, you'll do us all in," he said, glancing furtively round the room. "Sonia's no more use than a sick headache; you've got to take charge of her and clear out before any one lodges an objection. Make certain that you've goteverythingbefore you go—no incriminating muffs or gloves. Now remember! It doesn't matter a damn where you've been, but you've not—been—here. I'll explain to the others. Get home or somewhere and establish a good fat alibi; we'll give you a start before we send for the vet."
With the shrill moans of Madame Hilary still pulsating through their heads, he pushed them out on to the landingand locked the door. Sonia ran headlong down the passage until she was caught and schooled to a careless saunter down the stairs and through the hall.
"Come home with me," Barbara ordered. "Jack's quite right about the alibi."
"But, Babs——"
"If you start talking, I shall scream!"
They found a taxi in the Strand and drove to Berkeley Square. Barbara ostentatiously ordered tea, and they subsided into chairs without speaking. The shock of death was spent and could not be repeated. Dolly May—if that was her name—was dead; surprisingly, horribly dead, but there was no more to be said about it, and Barbara could now recall without a shudder the still face and staring eyes.... She wondered what they were all doing now, whether the doctor had come.... And what had really happened—not only to the girl, but to Summertown? Even death was not so terrific as the power which Madame Hilary seemed to exert.
"Have some tea, Sonia, and try not to think about it," said Lady Barbara, hoping to restore her own tranquillity.
There would be days of agony, while she waited to see whether she would be called as a witness and required to explain her flight. Madame Hilary was not the woman to drown alone; and, though the men had shewn magnanimity andesprit de corps, one never knew what would come out in court, one never knew how far to trust people whom the tolerant Summertown himself always described colloquially as "a bit hairy about the heel." Lord Pennington ... the upward-striving baroness ... Sir Adolf ... Webster, who was an unplumbed pool of iniquity. She would always be a little at their mercy; and, without trying to injure her, people always gossiped.
Sonia Dainton abruptly set down her cup and buried her face in a cushion.
"It was—Fatty closing her eyes," she explained with agulp; and Lady Barbara, in trying to comfort her, found herself crying in sympathy.
They were steadied by the bell of the telephone and a crisp voice, which for once was refreshing in its self-assurance.
"Mr. Waring," it announced. "My clerk told me you were expecting me to ring you up. Didn't you get my letter? I said I'd meet you by the box-office at five to two."
Lady Barbara looked in bewilderment at her watch; less than three hours had passed since her altercation with the Cockney clerk.
"I'm afraid I lost your letter," she answered, almost humbly. "Five to two. I'll try not to be late."
"I warn you that I never wait for any one," Jack laughed. "Was that all you wanted to talk to me about?"
In the first reaction from severe fright, she was prepared for an outburst of anger against the first victim—Sonia, for breaking down like a little fool; the Cockney clerk for his impertinence; and Waring himself as the mainspring of all evil. She had only gone to the flat because she felt that she was scoring a point against him. No one had ever behaved with his indifference—which was more galling than blunt rudeness; no one had ever equalled him in aloofness and self-sufficiency. His stubborn unquestioning faith in himself won her reluctant admiration. It was a new experience to find a man whom she could not twist round her finger at first meeting; ifhehad attended theséance, she felt that Dolly May would still be alive; he would—somehow—have intervened; perhaps he would even have persuaded her to stay at home. She would give five years of her life to have met any one with authority to stop her....
Sonia had ceased crying and was sniffing miserably at her handkerchief. The sound irritated Lady Barbara to the verge of hysteria; if the little fool could see what she looked like with pink eyes and a red nose....
"What are you doing?" she asked Jack.
"To-night? I'm dining at the club," he answered with the same crisp assurance.
"You wouldn't like to dine here?" It was an impulse which she had no time to examine, but Jack's voice, which she had never noticed before, destroyed hysterical images and brought her in contact with reality. "I'd promised to go to a play, but I'm not in the mood for it," she added.
With her disengaged hand she wrote down "Gaymer" to remind herself that she must be excused going to the theatre with him. If her name were mentioned at the inquest, she did not want to hear the coroner explaining to the reporters that she was in her stall before the doctor had finished his examination of Dolly May's dead body; even if her name went unpublished, she did not want Summertown to feel that he had stayed at his post while she pusillanimously escaped and ran off to amuse herself.
"Thanks very much," Jack answered, "but I don't think I will. You know, I hardly ever dine out. And I couldn't talk up to your level for three minutes."
"Well, shall I do the talking? I want somebody to talk to; I shall be all alone."
There was a perceptible pause; and Sonia, finding the one-sided dialogue uninteresting, looked at her watch and began collecting her furs.
"Well, I don't think I very well can, you know," said Jack, "if you're all alone."
"Not in my own house? I must say, you are the most extraordinary person! Therearemen—strange as it may seem—who would give a good deal for the chance of having me to themselves at dinner."
"I'm sure of it. You're wasted on me."
Candour and conceit were so nicely matched in Jack Waring that Lady Barbara could not tell from his voice whether he was laughing at her.
"I've asked youonceto come," she sighed. "I'm so used to getting my own way that I thought that would be enough." She broke off into a cough and gave Sonia time to get out of the room. "If you want to see whether I've got any pride, I haven't—just now. I ask you again. I told you I wasn't in the mood to go to the play; I'm worried out of my mind. But I don't fancy being alone all the evening. If it's too muchtroubleto—talk up to my level, don't come. But I should like you to."
There was a moment's laughter—deliberately mocking or ingenuously unrestrained; she could never make out whether Jack was naturally or intentionally stupid.
"I can't resist the pathetic, Lady Barbara. What time shall I come?"
"We might dine about half-past eight. If you want to meet mother and make certain that I'm not compromising you, come earlier."
The taunt was left unanswered; but it was noticeable that Jack arrived in Berkeley Square at eight o'clock, when the car was at the door and the door itself open. In the hall Lord Crawleigh was being helped into a fur-coat, and a blushing young footman was paying the penalty of inexperience, clumsiness and some one else's hasty dinner. Lady Crawleigh steered a course round the storm-centre and approached the stranger with the outstretched hand of hurried welcome.
"Mr. Waring? You must forgive our running away like this; the wretched play starts at a quarter past eight. Babs will be down in a moment. You won't keep her up late, will you? We've got to go on to a party at the Carnforths, so I must leave you to see that she goes to bed in good time. She's rather overdone."
With a flying introduction to Lord Crawleigh, she rustled down the steps and into the car. Jack was shewn into the morning-room, where he smoothed his hair, straightenedhis tie and settled down to the evening paper, paying as little attention to the Japanese prints on the walls as he had done in the hall to a pair of historic porcelain vases which appeared from time to time at loan exhibitions and were beyond price. At Oxford and in the Temple his attitude to art was one of toleration, ungrudging and unpatronizing. "I suppose it's all right," he would say, when Eric Lane tried to interest him in a new discovery. "Not my line of country, though."
Lady Barbara came down, as he was finishing the report of a case in which he had appeared that day in the Court of Appeal. He was too much engrossed to notice that she was ten minutes late.
"'Blame me not, poor sufferer; that I tarried,'" she began. "I had such an awful headache that I could hardly get up; and I thought it would be straining our friendship if I asked you to dine with me in my room. There's not the least need for you to ask if I'm feeling better," she pouted.
Jack laughed and laid his paper tidily on the table.
"Sorry! I—I warned you I wasn't a social animal. I hope you're all right now."
"Better. I feel rather as if some one had been putting hot coals at the back of my eyes." She paused and looked at him invitingly.
"'But thy dark eyes are not dimm'd, proud Iseult!And thy beauty never was more fair.'
"'But thy dark eyes are not dimm'd, proud Iseult!And thy beauty never was more fair.'
"'But thy dark eyes are not dimm'd, proud Iseult!And thy beauty never was more fair.'
"'But thy dark eyes are not dimm'd, proud Iseult!
And thy beauty never was more fair.'
Some peoplenevertake their cues."
"I haven't a book of the words, I'm afraid."
"And you've probably never heard of Matthew Arnold."
"Oh, yes, I have. He translated Homer or something. My tutor was always quoting him."
"You're wonderfully banal at times, Mr. Waring."
"Well, I warned you that I shouldn't be able to stay the course," he answered unabashed.
They dined in amicable dulness. Lady Barbara, who generally shewed a knack of knowing what she wanted and going straight for it, could not define what had made her invite him. His conversation was a minute-gun fire of laboured conventional questions about theatres, the House of Commons and her plans for Christmas. She lacked the lightness of spirit to banter him about his Cockney clerk, still less to work up a scene out of her conversation on the telephone. The humiliation of the Croxton Ball seemed very far away; and, now that she was face to face with him, she found it hard to believe that she had sat half the night staring vengefully into the fire and plotting to punish her glib critic. He was tough of hide as Fatty Webster....
The name, flashing through her mind, conjured up a picture which she had striven to forget—a hot, scented room with men and women shrinking against the walls, a dead girl in the middle and a convulsive, hysterical witch opposite her. She wondered whether they were still there, what the doctor had said....
"I hadn't time to see the paper to-night," she said. "Was there anything in it?"
"I don't think so. We won our appeal—the Great Southern Railway case; I don't know whether you've been following it—but they're sure to take it to the House of Lords. Otherwise—oh, your friend Webster seems to be in trouble again."
Lady Barbara felt as if he had struck her over the heart.
"What's he been doing?" she asked after a pause.
"Well, this time I think he was more sinned against than sinning. He had some people to tea in his flat, and one of them was inconsiderate enough to die on the premises."
"Oh, how dreadful!" She was quite satisfied with her inflection. "Where's the paper? Herbert, will you get me the evening paper out of the morning-room?"
"It's only a line or so in the stop-press," Jack warned her.
"But I want to see who was there!"
He looked at her closely, for her voice had risen in excitement. When it was too late, she realized that it would have been more natural to ask who had died. Before Jack's eyes her own fell, but she had time to wonder again whether he was stupidly incurious or deliberately secretive. There were moments when his "superiority" seemed more than a manner, when she felt bare and trapped. The placid, round-cheeked smile might have belonged to a cheerful ploughboy, but the commonplace grey eyes were sometimes intelligent and always watchful.
When the paper came, she felt that he was looking through her, and her hands trembled.
"Did you know the girl?" he asked.
"I met her once—for a moment. What a horrible thing to happen!"
"You must be glad you weren't there."
"What d'you mean?"
As the indignant, frightened question broke from her, she felt that she was behaving like a stage criminal and betraying herself because the audience expected it of her. It was a barrister's business to lure you on with innocent questions.... She was convinced that Jack knew everything and was playing with her.
"You always used to go about with him," he pointed out; and she wondered what base satisfaction one human being could derive from torturing another.
"It's curious the way you dislike people without knowing them," she answered. "Now, shall I behave like a perfect Victorian and leave you to your wine while I do a little embroidery in the drawing-room? I haven'tgotany embroidery and, if I had, I couldn't do it. Or would you like me to sit with you?"
When it was too late, she knew that she wanted to escape and collect herself before he went on with his inquisition.
"You won't smoke while I'm drinking port-wine, willyou?" he asked without answering her question; and his impudence determined her to throw away the opportunity of retreat.
She prepared a crushing retort, discarded it for one more crushing and suddenly realized that in her present state he could beat her and very easily make her cry. If she cried, too, he would only think that she was acting....
"Please let me haveonecigarette," she begged. "I'll go to the other end of the room."
As she walked away to the fire-place and stood with her elbow on the mantel-piece and her head half in shadow, Jack thought for a moment of asking her to come back; but he was not wholly reconciled to the practice of smoking among women, and Colonel Waring had taught him that to drink a vintage wine with a tainted palate was even less excusable than to enter a church without removing one's hat.
"Wouldn't you like a chair?" he asked by way of compromise.
"I prefer standing, thanks. Mr. Waring, I told you on the telephone that I was worried out of my mind. I don't know how much you've heard, but I waswithFatty Webster when that girl died. Did you know that?"
The placid, plough-boy smile faded slowly; and, as he raised his eyebrows, Lady Barbara appreciated that she was betraying herself gratuitously.
"I only know what's in the paper. What happened?"
She retained enough judgement to see that she must now tell him everything, enough prudence to exact a promise of secrecy. As she described Madame Hilary and theséance, she could see prim disapproval on his features, deepening with every name and incident in the story. For a man with no great range of facial expression, he succeeded in conveying categorical contempt for her manner of life, her friends and herself; and she forgot her troubles in a warm rush of anger.
"Just let me understand," he interrupted, as the storydrew to an end. "Are you coming to me for advice, do you think I can help you? Or are you just entertaining me with your latest escapade?"
Lady Barbara gripped the edge of the mantel-piece to keep control of herself.
"Perhaps I thought I might get a little sympathy," she answered.
Jack lay back in his chair, pushing away his wine-glass and reaching for his coffee-cup. He chose a cigar and pierced it; and every act in its deliberation and absorbed care for his own comfort set her on fire to ruffle his exasperating composure.
"I should have thought the others had a prior claim on any sympathy that's going about."
"I'm afraid no amount of sympathy will bring the dead back to life," she answered in a whisper.
"I wasn't thinking of her. But the others did at least stand their ground."
"You mean I deserted my friends?" she demanded furiously.
"Well, of course you did,—if they are your friends. It wasn't your fault, but it wasn't theirs, either. Because your own record of inquests doesn't court enquiry, you're allowed to cut and run."
"I couldn't have done any good by staying."
He made no answer until he had found matches and lighted his cigar. It was evidently important that the coffee and brandy and tobacco should march abreast; evidently science and art went to the skilled lighting of a cigar; a man—or at least Jack Waring—could not be expected to attend to other people's troubles until he had made sure of his own comfort.
"Ah, there I disagree," he said at length. "It would have made all the difference in the world. First of all you'd have proved that youwerethe sort of person one can go tiger-shooting with—it wasn't a particularlyproudthingto do, was it?—and then you'd have proved to yourself that you'd got the moral courage to refuse a cheap surrender; and you'd have learned that eccentric amusements have to be paid for at blackmailing prices: you could go into court with an easy conscience, if you'd been having tea at Rumpelmayer's and the girl had died there. In the next place——"
Lady Barbara turned her head slowly and succeeded in stopping him without saying a word.
"I should be careful, if I were you, Mr. Waring," she recommended, as he paused.
"My dear Lady Barbara, you introduced the subject. You can't have all the fun of posing as a candidate for sympathy.... If you'd stayed, it would have changed your whole life. There would have been such an outcry that you'd have been broken; people simply wouldn't meet you. Not only Loring House would be closed to you——"
A coffee-spoon rattled onto the floor, as she turned on him again.
"Iwon'tbe spoken to like this!"
"It may come yet, of course," Jack went on reflectively, hardly noticing her furious interruption. "These things alwaysdoget out——"
"Are you trying to frighten me?" she asked. But she was frightened long before he entered the house. This was the kind of mishap to bring her months of ill luck....
Jack was angry without shewing it or guessing the reason. The young actress's death shocked him less than Lady Barbara's easy acceptance of it. To her and to Sonia Dainton, to Erckmann and the baroness, to Webster and Pennington, the dead girl was a nonentity from another world; they were sorry that she had died so young, they were shocked that she had died at all; but, had she been a Kanaka or Lascar bunker-rat, they could not have troubled less to wonder whether she had mother or sisters to mourn her; she was a super from the theatricalunderworld, and her ill-judged time and place of dying had put them into a very embarrassing position. When Jack hinted at a social boycott of Barbara, he was threatening, what he only lacked power to enforce; she deserved punishment, and, if he could not punish her as she deserved, he could at least get far away from her to a society which took death seriously.
"I'm not sufficiently interested, I'm afraid," he answered with languid boredom that thinly veiled his disgust.
"But you'd like to see me 'broken', you'd feel so superior——," she taunted.
He looked at his watch and slowly pushed back his chair.
"Why you invited me I don't quite know," he mused. "Surely not to help you out with one of your little dramatic scenes?... Now, about to-morrow—will you be up to coming to this show?"
"No! And even I might think twice before going to a theatre while that girl's still unburied. That's why I'm here now, why I gave myself the pleasure of asking you to dine with me.... And you may be quite comfortable in your mind; you won't ever need to risk your reputation by being seen in my company again."
Jack could see that her nerves were sadly unstrung, but he could not understand the restless vanity which always posed her in the limelight ahead of the world in novelty and extravagance and yet so lacked confidence that she was wounded if any dared criticize.
"I accept my dismissal," he said good-humouredly. Nothing would induce him to give her the satisfaction of a parting scene. His training at home, at Eton and at New College taught him that an Englishman might legitimately display every quality but emotion. "I warned you that I was not a social success."
"Have you tried very hard? You always talk to me as if I'd no more feeling than that table."
Lady Barbara needed concentration to analyze him. Sheknew that a man is usually cruel only to those whom he likes or loathes; and it dawned upon her that, when an unsocial animal consented to meet her at all, he would not try to hurt her unless he cared for her.
"I'm not going to join your musical-comedy chorus of adulators, when I think you ought to be soundly whipped; I'm not even going to say, 'Oh, that's Barbara Neave's way; she's always a law unto herself.' I think that's the thinnest excuse.... Why did you insist on telling me about it at all? It's like some one boasting that he smokes a hundred cigarettes a day.... But your mother said I was to send you to bed early. Good-bye, Lady Barbara."
She walked with him into the hall and watched his elaborate and characteristic care in arranging his scarf.
"I seem to have failed again," she sighed; and this time there was an unaffected wistfulness in her voice.
"What were you trying to bring off?" he asked harshly.
"I hardly know.... I'mnottrying to make a scene now, but don't you think you've been a bit hard on me? I was a fool ever to have anything to do with Fatty Webster: good. I was a fool to go to thatséance: good. If you like, I was a coward to come away. But what actually happened was just bad luck, and you've been talking as if it was my fault. I didn't enjoy it very much, I don't like thinking about it; it's just possible that it was a very horrible shock. I wasn't asking you to approve of it, but you might have been a little bit more sympathetic."
Her lips were trembling, and Jack remembered with consternation the night of the Croxton ball when he had made her cry. Then and now he had said nothing that he wanted to retract, but all reasonable discussion ended when tears were brought in as an argument.
"It must have been beastly for you," he assented. "I should have been more sympathetic, perhaps, if I'd thought that it would have any permanent effect on you."
"Don't you think it will?"
"I shan't be there to see," he laughed. "I've been dismissed."
Barbara sighed and reminded him of her headache by drawing her hand slowly across her eyes. Since the night of the ball, when he sat beside her at the piano, he had forgotten how beautiful her hands were.
"You made me lose my temper. I'm sorry, if I said anything rude. There! Do you want to be dismissed?"
The softening in her tone was infectious, and Jack smiled.
"I like you, when you're like this. But the more we meet, the more I shall ruffle your plumage. Why on earth did you ask me to dine with you to-night?"
Lady Barbara looked at him and looked away before answering. To put her feeling into words was at once to overstate it; but she had hovered that afternoon on a shadow-line and for the first time in her life she had lost confidence in herself and reached out towards some one strong enough to help her, perhaps strong enough to check her. It was an impulse inspired by the contrast of Sonia sobbing in her chair and Jack's assured voice on the telephone; the impulse would pass, when her nerves were steady again, but her spirit was changed and no longer self-sufficient.
"I wanted to tell you that I couldn't come to the theatre with you to-morrow," she improvised and wondered whether he would trouble to notice the glaring inadequacy of the excuse. She wondered, too, why she had chosen Jack rather than another.... "Mr. Waring, once in a way I give a party at Crawleigh; no officials, no politicians—just my friends. I'm arranging one quite soon. Will you come? Just for the week-end. It won't interfere with your work."
Jack hesitated and fingered his hat in embarrassment.
"You know, I'm no good at that sort of thing," he grumbled.
"But you like talking to me,—when I'm on my good behaviour."
"How long will it last?"
"As long as you're there," she laughed.
"In other words, you're going to makemeresponsible?"
"Doesn't that appeal to your missionary spirit?"
Jack looked at her and decided that even a formal protest would only feed her vanity. He stared abstractedly at her as though she were a horse led out for his inspection. Suddenly she smiled, and, as her face lit up with vitality and mischief, the haggard expression vanished and left her beautiful. Perhaps the smile had come in answer to an unsuspected light of admiration in his own eyes; perhaps she was a better actress than he thought and could transform herself at will; no one could gain her reputation as a coquette without earning it and working for it.
"It isn't fair to abuse me for behaving badly," she pouted, "if you're too lazy to make me behave well."
"I have a living to earn. You'd want one man's undivided attention," he answered.
"But I should be very repaying."
"You'd be amusing for a time. But it would be a wearing life; I'm doubtful even about this week-end."
"But you'll come?"
"If you haven't quarrelled with me or got into any fresh scrape by then." He turned on the door-step to shake hands with her. "When you marry, Lady Barbara, I shall send your husband my warmest congratulations."
"Thank you. I think that's the first time you've come near doing me justice."
"As a wedding-present," he continued, "I shall send him a little silver-mounted dog-whip."
"My lord master, you have heard the design I am upon which is to marry.... I humbly beseech you ... to give me your best advice therein." "Then," answered Pantagruel, "seeing you have so decreed and taken deliberation theron ... what need is there of further talk thereof, but forthwith to put into execution what you have resolved." "Yea, but," quoth Panurge, "I would be loth to act anything therein without your counsel had thereto." "It is my judgment also," quoth Pantagruel, "and I advise you to it." "Nevertheless," quoth Panurge, "if you think it were much better for me to remain a bachelor, as I am, than to run headlong upon new hare-brained undertakings of conjugal adventure, I would rather choose not to marry." "Not marry then," said Pantagruel. "Yea, but," quoth Panurge, "would you have me so solitarily drag out the whole course of my life without the comfort of a matrimonial consort? You know it is written Vae Soli; and a single person is never seen to reap the joy and solace that is found among those that are wedlockt." "Wedlock it then, in the name of God," quoth Pantagruel. "But if," quoth Panurge, "..."Rabelais:How Panurge asketh counsel ofPantagruel whether he shouldmarry yea or no.
"My lord master, you have heard the design I am upon which is to marry.... I humbly beseech you ... to give me your best advice therein." "Then," answered Pantagruel, "seeing you have so decreed and taken deliberation theron ... what need is there of further talk thereof, but forthwith to put into execution what you have resolved." "Yea, but," quoth Panurge, "I would be loth to act anything therein without your counsel had thereto." "It is my judgment also," quoth Pantagruel, "and I advise you to it." "Nevertheless," quoth Panurge, "if you think it were much better for me to remain a bachelor, as I am, than to run headlong upon new hare-brained undertakings of conjugal adventure, I would rather choose not to marry." "Not marry then," said Pantagruel. "Yea, but," quoth Panurge, "would you have me so solitarily drag out the whole course of my life without the comfort of a matrimonial consort? You know it is written Vae Soli; and a single person is never seen to reap the joy and solace that is found among those that are wedlockt." "Wedlock it then, in the name of God," quoth Pantagruel. "But if," quoth Panurge, "..."
Rabelais:How Panurge asketh counsel ofPantagruel whether he shouldmarry yea or no.
A week before Christmas, Loring cabled to his mother that he was on his way back to England; in the spring of 1914 he landed at Southampton and travelled unobtrusively to London while his yacht proceeded to Glasgow for overhauling and repairs. And, from the moment when his cable was received, an unconscious adjustment of relationships began, crystallizing in a series of informal family councils.
Ever since the ultimatum from Surinam, Lady Barbara had not set foot in House of Steynes or Loring House. It was plausible to pretend that in Jim's absence his mother was not entertaining, but on his return all three branchesof the family decided that they could not afford the scandal of an open breach and of a Catholic house divided against itself. Lady Crawleigh enlisted the support of Lady Knightrider and made an attack in force on Lady Loring. Thirty years before, the three sisters had, each in her own way, been celebrated; Lady Crawleigh had the good looks, Lady Knightrider the good temper and Lady Loring the brains; and their marriages, one after another, to a Scottish baronet and two of the richest Catholic peers in England were felt to be fundamentally satisfactory. As they had begun, so they went on; Kathleen Knightrider bore a daughter and a son, Eleanor Loring a son and a daughter, Doreen Crawleigh three sons and two daughters, of whom the younger died in infancy. The three husbands were above criticism in life and position; if Sir Charles Knightrider was little more than amateur landscape-gardener and ornithologist, Lord Loring was very nearly at the head of the Catholic laity in England; while Lord Crawleigh's succession of great offices, which he not only filled but adorned, would have satisfied the most ambitious woman. If the individuality of the three wives became merged in their husbands, they still made a strong social combination.
"I hear Jim's on his way home," said Lady Crawleigh without preamble. "When he comes, Eleanor, we shall have to make peace between him and Barbara."
"I'll talk to Jim," answered his mother doubtfully. "But you know how obstinate he is." She was divided between loyalty to her son and pity for her sister, who could not enjoy having to plead like this for her own daughter. "I do hope this will be a lesson to dear Barbara."
"I hope so, too," sighed Lady Crawleigh.
If she spoke without conviction, it was because her brain was giddy with successive shocks. The secret of Dolly May's death was kept for exactly five days after the inquest. Then a gaunt woman, giving no name, demanded to seeBarbara and, on hearing that she was in the country, bearded Lord Crawleigh, who promptly threatened her with attentions from the police. All previous courts of enquiry were trivial by comparison with the inquisition now erected; but, as the attack developed, Barbara's resistance developed equally, and she warned her parents that, on the day when she came of age, she would move into a house of her own where she could receive friends of every complexion and practice magic of every colour. If the form of the threat was old, its clarity and vigour were new; Barbara had less than six months to wait for her majority and independence.
Lady Crawleigh was still reeling under the shock of one scandal averted and a second in prospect, when her energies were claimed by a new problem. From an untraced source came the report that Barbara was becoming very intimate with young Waring. He had spent a week-end at the Abbey, unobtrusively burying himself in the smoking-room for most of the time; and Barbara had included him in big and small dinner-parties in Berkeley Square. Save that he was a Protestant with only the few hundreds that he earned, he was unexceptionable; Eton, New College and the bar covered past and present, and for the future he stood second in succession to Penley and his uncle's title; in temperament and character he was reported to be dull and wholly dependable. It was a paradox of Barbara's position, her mother felt, that, when the interlocked Catholic families had been ruled out, she seemed to have no associates except nonentities like Gerald Deganway and John Gaymer, who were family furniture rather than friends, or young politicians, like George Oakleigh, or literary freaks, like Mr. Arden, or the really rather dreadful people like the stout young man with all the cars, Mr. Webster, who was always getting her into one scrape or another: the less said about them, the better. Barbara waslamentably gregarious in her friendships, but in these latter days all girls were allowed so much liberty, they seemed to know so much and to be so intolerant of restraint....
Lady Crawleigh was not at present equal to a struggle on the question of religion. The Church had become unyielding about mixed marriages; that was the wretched Sonia Dainton's excuse for breaking off her engagement to Jim Loring, and, when she had nothing else to disturb her mind, Lady Crawleigh was haunted by the fear that Barbara, who was deplorably lax, would make some terrible scandal by marrying a Protestant without getting a dispensation. Of course, it would not be a true marriage, and no Catholic would consent to know her,—but it was the sort of thing that Babs would do.
The untraced rumour, like many another, travelled far before reaching those most intimately concerned. Jack Waring had devoted so many years to a middle-aged pose and the ostentatious avoidance of all social life that his own friends commented in outspoken amusement on his recantation. In the winter months of 1913 he began to appear at dances, though he still refused to take an active part. "Who's the man with Babs Neave?" quickly became "Who's the man who's always with Babs Neave?" and, before long, "Is anything going to happen about Babs Neave and Jack Waring?" Derision at the fall of a misogynist passed through speculation to resentment.
"Jack simply monopolizes Babs nowadays," complained Summertown one night in the New Year at a dance in his mother's house. He was aggrieved at being unable to attract Barbara's notice and had summoned Deganway, Arden and Oakleigh to a meeting of protest in the smoking-room. "Wonder what she sees in him," he grumbled. "He's a good fellow and all that sort of thing—capital company on a desert island, if you wanted plenty of bar shop, but he's taking all the bubble out of her. I tried torope her in for my party at the Albert Hall, but, when she heard who was coming, she refused. Damned offensive, I thought. Said that people had been talking about her so much that she had to be very careful. And old Jack nodded—you could see she was doing it to please him; it'll be an awful chuck-away if she marries him."
"She will not marry him," Arden predicted. "If for no other reason, Lady Lilith has still to discover a heart."
"What's she doing it for, then?" asked Oakleigh. "I'm very fond of Jack, he's a thoroughly good fellow, but he'srathera bore."
"What man can choose from among a woman's motives?" demanded Arden. "Perhaps she finds a difficulty in getting rid of him. There was a time when she was certainly intrigued, when she pursued him relentlessly. Perhaps she feels a glow of respectability from his presence; one's cook, if not acordon bleu, was recommended to one as 'a regular communicant.'... Perhaps she chose him to see what she could make of him, asle Bon Dieuchose the Jews. But she will not marry him.... One has a certain instinct."
He shook his head sagaciously and dismissed the subject. But a new mile-stone had been reached when four men could be found gathering to discuss Jack's marriage to Barbara as even a remote possibility. Similar discussions had for some weeks taken place in little groups round the walls of the ball-rooms. Lady Knightrider, who had known Jack longest and best, confided to a friend that he was an excellent influence, a man who would stand no nonsense from the girl; he was fearless and unmoved by Barbara's tantrums and had once spoken very sensibly when she revived the absurd project of leaving her parents and taking a house by herself. That evening Phyllis Knightrider epitomised and retailed a conversation which she had not been intended to hear by saying to Barbara,as they drove to the dance, "Mother's quite made up her mind that you ought to marry Jack Waring. She says he's the only man she knows who can keep you in order."
The attack was opened three hours later from the opposite flank, when Gerald Deganway put up his eye-glass and stared at Jack with an affectation of shocked gravity.
"My dear, every one's talking about you," he exclaimed. "It's becoming quite a scandal."
"What'sbecoming a scandal?" asked Jack.
"You and Babs Neave."
"What a pity it is that people can't mind their own business!"
Any one acquainted with Deganway knew better than to take his gossip at face-value, but Jack was amazed to find that he had given material for chatter and speculation even to Deganway. To be a friend of Barbara Neave, as Arden once said, was like going for a walk with an arc-lamp; but they had been frigidly circumspect and restrained. Two week-ends at Crawleigh Abbey, perhaps six dinners in London and twice that number of dances, where he looked in at supper-time and left after an hour, covered their public intimacy. For a moment Jack was roused to violent irritation towards Deganway, then he dismissed the irritation in gratitude for the warning. There was no time to lose, if this kind of nonsense was being talked, and he stationed himself at the door of the ball-room and pounced upon Barbara at the end of the dance.
"You're not really hungry, are you?" she asked, when he suggested that they should have supper together.
"I want to talk with you," he answered.
Barbara started imperceptibly. Jack was less self-possessed than usual; of any other man she would argue from a varied experience that he meditated proposing to her.
"I'll come down, if you like," she answered gently. She always achieved success with Jack when her voice grewcaressing and she promised to do a thing, if he liked. "I hope I'm not in disgrace?"
"You? Oh, no. I'm going away on circuit to-morrow, though," he said, tidying away a litter of dirty plates from the only unoccupied table.
"When will you be back?"
Jack helped her to a cutlet as though he were serving out rations, sprinkled his own with salt, cut his roll in two, prospected for a clean glass and poured out some champagne, which he tasted cautiously, with a murmured, "'04 Bollinger! It's a crime to waste that on a ball!" For a man not naturally greedy, supper was very absorbing.
"I shall be away for a week or two," he explained, precipitately adding, "at least."
Barbara's eyes were on his face, but he had no attention to spare from the cutlet.
"Ring me up, when you come back, and suggest a night for dinner," she said.
"I shall have a good deal of work to do when I get back. I've been getting very slack lately.Anddissipated; you've been making me keep too late hours."
Barbara sighed wearily.
"As if I 'made' you do anything! Will you be back before Easter?"
"Oh, yes."
"Would you like to come to Crawleigh for Easter?"
He went through the same ceremonial with a second cutlet and then said, without looking up:
"I shall be going to my people for Easter."
Barbara raised her eyebrows and turned half away.
"I apologize," she murmured.
"Why?"
"For bothering you with unwelcome invitations."
This time there was no hesitation, though Jack was conscious that his voice and lips were unsteady.
"It doesn't do much good, does it?" he asked with a lop-sided smile.
"What doesn't?"
"Our meeting."
"I thought you liked being with me; and I thought it gratified your missionary spirit," she added tartly.
"But does it do much good beyond affording a topic of conversation for congenital idiots? I'm looking ahead, Lady Barbara."
"What does that mean?"
Jack glanced at her for the first time. He imagined that he could look her in the eyes without embarrassment; but his hand trembled, and he saw that he had spilt the champagne. She must have seen it, too; she could be in no doubt of his meaning. He had intended to warn her that the congenital idiots were coupling their names; and he had now to warn himself that, if he saw any more of the girl, if she ever again looked at him through smiling, half closed eyes, murmuring that she would do what he wished because he wished it, he was quite capable of making a fool of himself. It would not be serious, because any union between a Catholic and the straitly reared son of bitterly Evangelical parents was unthinkable; it would not be serious, because every one knew that Barbara would soon have seven thousand a year of her own, provided always that she married a Catholic, while he might hope very shortly to be making seven hundred a year, which already had to pay for the rent of chambers and club bedroom, share of clerk, subscription to Law Reports, expenses of circuit, club subscriptions, food, drink, tobacco, clothes and sundries. It would not be serious, but it might be very unsettling.
"You see ... I'm—a practising barrister," he explained. "That means that I work for my living and am looking forward to doing so for the best part of my life."
"And I've been wasting your time? I'm sorry, Jack. I like you, when you're gentle and don't find fault with me. I didn't mean to be selfish."
She had not thought it prudent to use his Christian name since the disastrous night of the Croxton Ball.
"I've loved it," he answered. "I always told you that I thought a tremendous lot of you. But I have to work. I sometimes think that, so long as a man's decently dressed, a girl never bothers to think whether he's got twopence a year or ten thousand," he added with a touch of bitterness.
"Can't you manage Easter at Crawleigh?" she asked.
He picked up his gloves and offered her a cigarette.
"Don't you understand?"
"I don't understand about money; people make such an absurd fuss over it. I understand that, as usual, you're making me ask twice for what most men would give me without asking; and that's sometimes a little humiliating. Still, you say I'm a law unto myself. Will you come?" He still hesitated; and she leaned forward with her hand on his sleeve. "Have Ieverrefused to do anything you asked?"
"I don't think you have," said Jack slowly. "I—shall be delighted to come."
He drove her home that night, wondering what she meant by saying in such a context that she was a law unto herself. As the taxi left Berkeley Square, he half thought of driving to the Temple and talking to Eric Lane. But he had nothing to say and did not know what he wanted. He was elated and a little frightened; never before had he so sorely needed cold, brutal advice; and this question, which he did not yet dare to define, was one which he would have to solve by himself. As he undressed, he wondered what Barbara was doing, what she had meant, whether she had meant anything....
He was away from London for three weeks; and in that time he unhurriedly made up his mind to marry her. Lying awake in his berth on the night train to Newcastle, he decided that he must have fallen in love with her at the Croxton ball. As a bachelor his responsibilities and troubles were confined within the four walls of his bedroom at a very comfortable club; he lived like a prince on four or five hundred a year; and he had never needed the companionship of a woman—least of all, of a woman whom he had instinctively avoided for three years and who quarrelled with him daily when they had at last met. He appreciated now that they quarrelled because he could not bear to see her cheapening herself, because he was already in love with her.
And she must have fallen in love with him at the same time; though he lectured her until she broke down and cried, she begged him to come back and give her another chance. The night when she first invited him to dine with her marked her transition to certainty, but it was only when they were parting that their two certainties engaged and interlocked. While he pronged his cutlet and sprinkled it with salt, eyes prudently averted, each discovered that the other was becoming a habit; he liked her sudden petulance and sudden softening, her restless changes and lightning vitality; and he wondered in sudden humility what she, with her charm and quickness, could see in him. Her family, hitherto friendly, would be disappointed; for she could marry any one, and they would murmur that she had thrown herself away on a poor man who might, indeed, gamble his way into silk, but would never rise to the Bench, the Appeal Court or the House of Lords. She would forfeit her godfather's fortune by marrying a Protestant; and, if they were to live at all, the Crawleighs must come to their aid. Perhaps the Crawleighs disliked mixed marriages as much as the Warings....
Jack turned on the light and frowned at the imitation maple-wood compartment. He must be prepared for a struggle.Imprimisthe theological history of the Warings began with Zachary Macaulay, diverged into abolitionism, collected and tidied itself under Lord John Russell and the No-Popery movement and came to an inglorious and unseen end, when the family purged itself politically of a whig taint. Mr. Kensit was a tough, awkward mouthful, and, in the absence of a more restrained leader, the Warings did their good to Protestantism by stealth. The colonel fought an honourable fight for the Geneva gown; he talked of "clergymen" and "communion-tables," where others lisped papistically of "priests" and "altars"; and there were heated and unconvincing arguments in the vicarage library about the ornaments rubric. But, if they no longer took a part in public ecclesiastical controversy, the family would choke at Barbara's name. The colonel was vaguely disquieted when Jack, under the guidance of Jim Loring, drifted into "that Catholic set" (he refrained from calling them Papists out of consideration for Jack's feelings, but he frequently abbreviated their definition to "R. C's"); to marry an "R. C." was hardly more venial than to marry a black woman or to wear a ring in one's nose. And since this insolentNe temeredecree....
Jack had heard it quoted, but had never sought enlightenment lest he should pour oil on the sinking fires. Colonel Waring treated religious controversy as his safety-valve and needed no encouragement. But it was time for Jack to find out where he stood.
Val Arden was discovered unexpectedly in the hotel at Leeds, and Jack invited him to dine with the bar mess after the first day of the Assizes.
"One was persuaded to deliver a lecture," the novelist explained. "The hard-headed men of the West Riding will think twice before repeating the venture; but it was anexperience for them, and one escaped with one's life. The North is very remote. One is still remembered in London? Yes? One's friends are in reasonable health?"
"They're bearing up," Jack answered. "Jim Loring's back in England."
"A sadder and a wiser man, one hears. Well, if a man wants romance, he must be prepared to pay for it. One feels that it is worth the inconvenience of three years' exile not to be married to Sonia Dainton. You know the full sad story? No? It should be a lesson."
At dinner he weighted his gossip and airy moralizing with serviceable information. Jack learned that a Catholic could only obtain dispensation for a mixed marriage, if the non-Catholic undertook that all the children of the marriage should be brought up in the Catholic faith. It seemed an unequal stipulation, but the only alternative was for the Catholic to defy the Church and to renounce his faith, which was no less unequal. When Arden was gone to bed, Jack surveyed the problem from the standpoint of his family, of Barbara and of himself. There would be a bitter fight at Red Roofs and another at Crawleigh Abbey; but the alternative was to give up Barbara. Neither of them submitted easily to opposition.
He returned to London a few days before Easter, only concerned to wonder how a man prepared the ground before asking a girl to marry him; he had talked vaguely of admiration, but he had never made love to Barbara. And he must find out whether the Crawleighs regarded him as apersona grata. And he must explain to Barbara his financial position and the kind of life that a barrister led; and they must have a talk about this religious business....
Barbara herself, and the party which she had gathered for Easter at the Abbey, gave him generous opportunity. With Loring and his sister,—both persuaded by theirmother "to give Babs one last chance"—with Summertown and Sally Farwell, Pentyre, Victor Knightrider, Gerald Deganway, Charles Framlingham and a leavening of the Crawleighs' official friends to entertain one another, there was no difficulty in slipping away unobserved. So long as Barbara distributed herself equitably at luncheon and dinner, no one seemed to miss her at other times; and, as Jack did not play bridge, some one had to talk to him in the evenings.
She welcomed him with the mood and language of their last night together in London.
"Well, I hope the practising barrister made a lot of money," she said to him the first evening after dinner.
"I had rather a good assize," he answered. "My fair share at Leeds and more than my fair share at Newcastle. In money, it wouldn't seem much to you, but I'm quite pleased."
A word of congratulation launched him on a conscientious survey of his fees and cases from the delivery of his first brief. In succeeding conversation he threw further slabs of information at her by schedule, talking of himself with simple-minded absorption. Finance was polished off the first night; the Waring family, three times sub-divided, occupied the following day, and with healthy relentlessness he overhauled Catholicism in particular and revealed religion in general.
The conversation, if one-sided and monotonous, was at least amicable until a smouldering brand from the theological bonfire, waved to life in the kindling breeze of personality, set her ablaze.
"Of course, the whole bag of tricks wants overhauling," said Jack of the Established Church and its liturgy. "When a fellow's ordained, hesayshe believes all sorts of things that he doesn't, really. Every congregation mouths responses like so many parrots, but if you tackled anysingle member with a plain question, he'd have to admit that he didn't believe the whole business exactly as it's set out in the pleadings. Well, I've got a legal mind. If you say ChristdescendedintoHelland on the third dayroseagain from the dead andascendedinto Heaven, I want to know if you mean it literally or figuratively? That's one of the beauties ofyourChurch; you don't admit any doubt or vagueness."