She hurried through breakfast and ran into her bathroom, eager to be by herself, where she could piece together her dream before it faded from her memory. The voice of the child-lover was the voice that she had heard in the train. If he ever kissed her again, she would know him, though she seemed never to have seen his face. Perhaps she would never see him, perhaps Destiny had contrived that they should always be lovers and should never meet, perhaps this was why she had felt frightened on waking. It was absurd, but delightful. She wanted to meet her playmate.... And it was a long time to wait until she could go to bed and dream of him again.
She ran into the Park, because she had been running in the dream; it was more natural; she was a child again, in a mood of unclouded happiness. The passers-by paused to stare and smile, but she smiled back at them and waved her hand. A young officer shot by in a car, turned round and stopped to ask if he could give her a lift, as she seemed to be in a hurry. "It's only lightness of heart," she explained with dancing eyes. The officer looked wonderingly at her and drove to his club, where he described the encounter and opined that Lady Barbara Neave ("It couldn't have been any one else") had apparently gone suddenly mad.
In the Park she found O'Rane basking on a chair in the sunshine and crumpling the silky ears of his Saint Bernard. She sat down beside him, panting for breath and challenging him to guess who she was.
"I knew before you spoke," he answered. "No one else in London wears quite so many carnations to the square inch. I smelt them the moment you came within range."
"I have them sent up three times a week from the Abbey. I'm going to put one in your button-hole as a prize for being so clever."
"Oh, I can be much cleverer than that, when I try," he laughed. "Lady Barbara, either the sunshine's gone to your head—it always does with me; so much of my misspent life has been in the sun, I feel starved in England—; either that, or something very remarkable has happened to you. You've got a different voice, you're a different person. The last time——"
"Ah, don't talk about it," she interrupted. "I'm happy to-day."
"I know you are! If I painted you to-day, there'd be a riot of blue——"
"Blue? How funny!"
"The blue of a cloudless sky. That's how Iseehappiness. Tell me what's happened?"
"I just feel well and happy. I had a wonderful dream. I was about four, and there was a little boy with the most enchanting voice——"
O'Rane laughed and began to sing under his breath:
"'Long years ago—fourteen, maybe,When but a tiny babe of four,Another baby played with me,My elder by a year or more—A little child of beauty rareWith wondrous eyes and marvellous hair...!'
"'Long years ago—fourteen, maybe,When but a tiny babe of four,Another baby played with me,My elder by a year or more—A little child of beauty rareWith wondrous eyes and marvellous hair...!'
"'Long years ago—fourteen, maybe,When but a tiny babe of four,Another baby played with me,My elder by a year or more—A little child of beauty rareWith wondrous eyes and marvellous hair...!'
"'Long years ago—fourteen, maybe,
When but a tiny babe of four,
Another baby played with me,
My elder by a year or more—
A little child of beauty rare
With wondrous eyes and marvellous hair...!'
Good heavens! The last time I sang that song was at Oxford! A man called Sinclair—I'd been at school with him; he was killed at Neuve Chapelle; he was President ... The old Phoenix Club. Jim was there, and Jack Summertown, and George Oakleigh, and Eric Lane, the new playwright, and Jack Waring.... I suppose there's no news of him?"
"I don't think so," Barbara answered soberly. The name took away her lightness of heart and robbed the very sunshine of its glory.
"And I made a bet with Jim," said O'Rane after a moment's musing. "Tell me about your dream," he added abruptly.
"Oh, I couldn't! It's sacred! Besides, I don't remember very much about it except that he was the most adorable little boy in the world....Iwas rather adorable, too, with my little bare feet. Andhefell in love withme, andIfell in love withhim. Ihadbeen feeling wretchedly ill and miserable, but I'm happy now. I think the only thing to do now is to find him and insist on marrying him; we should be wonderfully happy together, because I've never loved any one as I loved that child. How does one start?"
O'Rane shook his head sadly.
"We've no machinery for romance now. In the old days you'd have sat on a throne with your hair in two enormousplaits and a gold crown set with sapphires, and your father would have caused all the men in his kingdom to pass in front of you, and you'd have stepped suddenly forward, when you saw your lover, and you'd have taken him by the hand and made room for him by your side, and both of you would have lived happily ever afterwards."
"The sunshine's gone to your head, too! Why are we sitting still? I want to run about.... Mr. O'Rane, whatwouldhappen if I took off my shoes and stockings in Hyde Park?"
"Youcan do anything, Lady Barbara."
"Yes, but people would say that I was doing it for effect. I don't do things for effect. I do things because Iwantto, because I can't help myself. Long before I believed in Destiny, I felt that there was something inside me stronger than my will...."
She broke off and began thinking again of her dream. In this white sunshine it was easy to discount it, to talk of excited nerves, to trace the dream itself to the book which she had been reading; but, as she lay between sleep and waking, all had been too real to discount. Destiny had decreed the meeting, as Destiny decreed her smallest impulse.
A shadow fell across her feet. She started and looked up to find Oakleigh standing before her.
"I'm glad to see you about again," he said. "I've come to take Raney away to lunch with the Poynters. Sonia's not here yet?"
"She said she might be a few minutes late," answered O'Rane. "Lady Barbara and I have been sitting in the sun, telling each other how happy we are." O'Rane sat up to catch a sound too indistinct for the others. "And here's Sonia," he added. "We must fly, Lady Barbara, or we shall be horribly late, but won't you walk with us?"
"I'm afraid I must go back," she answered.
Barbara watched the two men walking away with Soniabetween them. O'Rane was stooping to keep his fingers inside the great Saint Bernard's collar. Though he was blind, he was happier than she was; though he was blind, he had heard and recognized Sonia's footstep before she did. Some change of mood had overtaken her, and she traced it back to the moment when he asked whether she had received news of Jack....
A car was standing at the door of her house, and she found Dr. Gaisford in the hall.
"Oh, I'm so sorry! Imeantto tell you I was so much better that I'd gone out," she apologized, rallying under her mother's eye.
The doctor noted the quick dilation of pupil and restless change of expression.
"As I've caught you, I may as well overhaul you," he said.
"But I'm all right now," Barbara protested.
"That's good hearing," answered Dr. Gaisford, but none the less he persevered in his examination, unmoved by a flash of petulance, which he did not fail to note, and by a spasm of nervous, contrite amiability, which he noted no less carefully. At the end he was puzzled and dissatisfied.
"You say that therewasa change this morning?" he asked Lady Crawleigh as he left.
"She was a different girl. Now she's as irritable and melancholy.... Doctor,isthis simply the result of overwork, or is it something more?"
It was as far as her mother would unbend towards suggesting that Barbara had anything on her mind. The doctor guessed the purpose of her question, but he felt that she was better qualified to answer it than he was.
"What do you mean by 'something more'?" he asked.
"Oh, well.... You know...."
"If we can get herbodyright and hernervesright," he answered, "everything else will come right. She's veryhighly strung, she's been taking a great deal out of herself all her life; and the war deals such an all-round blow that, if thereisa weak place, we're all of us bound to feel it."
He piled vagueness on vagueness and then took his leave. Barbara was suffering from more than overexcited nerves, but he could not yet diagnose her complaint. There was no suggestion of drink, no trace of drugs, but she had been in his care for several weeks and she refused to shew any improvement. With the best intentions, a woman in her state never told a doctor the truth about herself; and any doctor who had attended Barbara since childhood knew better than to waste his time in trying to make her confide in him.
"I'll come in again on Tuesday or Wednesday," he promised Lady Crawleigh on the door-step. "Then we can talk about sending her into the country. At present I think she'd only mope."
Barbara spent the afternoon at a concert and dined at home with her parents. She went to bed immediately after dinner, drank her medicine and lay with her pillows heaped under her shoulders and the big illustrated "Blue Bird" open against her knees. When she was too tired to read any longer, she turned out the light and settled lower into the bed with her hands clasped under her head, as Peter Ibbetson had lain night after night, waiting for Mary, Duchess of Towers, "healthily tired in body, blissfully expectant in mind."
Drowsiness advanced on her from a distance, perceptibly. She dulled her senses to the far-away echo of footsteps in the house, to the shooting glint of moonlight, silver-grey on the cream-coloured blankets as her curtain bellied in the breeze, to the scent of her beloved carnations, stirred into fragrance as the curtains moved. Drowsiness deepened, but she could not fall asleep; her body lay defiantly in London, where she could still hear a drone of noises,however much she whispered that she was alone in the world—and waiting.
Even her eyes refused to remain closed, but she decided that Destiny must have forced them open, for the curtains blew apart and she saw the boy standing at the foot of her bed. His face was in shadow, and he stood with his hands clasped in front of him, looking down.
"Ah!"
At the sound of her voice he looked up, but his face was still hidden.
"My dearest, I have waited for you so long! All day!" she whispered.
"And I have waited for you all my life. I love you."
"And I love you. You will stay?"
It was his turn to shake his head; and he swept sharply towards the door. Barbara sprang out of bed and caught him by the hand.
"Youshallnot go!"
"I cannot stay here. You will come with me?"
"I must stay here."
"If you come with me, I will take care of you always. You will be happy."
"I must stay here."
"Before, you would not stay. Now, you will not come."
His hand slipped from her fingers, and she saw him pass through the door into a formless marble gallery. His blue ephod shone brilliantly against the grey walls, then faded and lost all colour until she could no longer see him. The gallery foreshortened and grew dark until she felt suffocated. She could see the darkness and a shadow at her feet darker still. Something was holding her back; if she could spring across the forbidding shadow.... Unless she sprang, she would be stifled. Yet to be stifled was to win peace ... or to send her mad....
When she awoke, Lady Crawleigh was once more standing over her.
"Where was I this time?" asked Barbara dully.
"Darling, you must have had a nightmare. You were calling out, so I came to see what was the matter."
"But where was I? What did I say?"
"You didn't say anything. You were just—moaning."
"They were stifling me!" she sobbed.
"No, darling, you'd only got your face among the pillows so that you couldn't breathe properly. What were you dreaming about?"
Barbara looked at her mother and summoned all her resolution to say nothing. It was wonderful to have any resolution left.... But Destiny had decided that she was to say nothing....
"I believe I'm going mad!" she whispered.
Lady Crawleigh tried to comfort her, but the girl shrank to the far side of the bed. It came to this, then, that she could no longer trust herself to go to sleep. For one night she had been in Heaven ... or in sight of Heaven.... She could not understand what had impelled her forward from the Garden and the Valley. Some one, something was waiting for her—on the lowest terrace, on the horizon where the white ribbon of road wound out of sight. Something called her away from the child in the blue ephod. And to-night Destiny had set an angel with a flaming sword to bar her path when she tried to follow him. Yet it was not an angel that she could see nor a sword that she could feel; it was an inhibition, an Authority.... Why not call it Destiny? It was something that kept her from the boy with the wistfully caressing voice, who loved her and promised to make her happy.... Something that frightened her, something that was sending her mad.
"I always said you oughtn't to sleep with all those pillows," sighed Lady Crawleigh.
"You can take them away, if you like. Good-night, mother. I hope I didn't frighten you. I'm going to sleep again now."
She waited until she was alone and then sprang out of bed. If she slept, the shadow would return ... Jack's shadow; she mustered courage to call it by its right name. You could not go to sleep, if you walked up and down, up and down all night.... At three o'clock she stripped a row of glass beads from a dress and poured them into her shoes. You could not go to sleep, if every step made you wince with pain and bite your lip to keep from crying.... When her maid came in, Barbara was asleep, with smarting eyes and tears on her cheeks, huddled at the side of her bed. One foot had a blister as big as a young pea....
She breakfasted and dressed feverishly to escape from the house before her mother was up and before the doctor could mouth his inanities about "getting the nerves right, dear child, and then everything else will be right."
"I don't expect I shall be back to lunch," she told her maid.
Soon she was in St. James' Park, because Destiny sent her there.... Government cars were racing down the Mall; a procession of officers poured into Whitehall, and by the statue of James II she saw Oakleigh and O'Rane walking arm-in-arm towards the Admiralty. George would tell her that she did not look quite so well; O'Rane would mark her voice and paint his conception of her with such blazing splashes of his "red for pain" as seeing eye had never beheld. She turned and ran up the Duke of York's Steps; Destiny had decided that she was to escape these two for once....
To meet Lady Poynter in Bond Street was to be flung against reality and made sane.
"My dear Babs! How wretched you're looking," she heard; and the shops, the taxis and the passers-by steadiedto immobility. They were gloriously solid; they would frown on her, if she screamed or ran away.
"I'm feeling rather wretched," she answered in a recognizable voice. "I had rather a bad night."
"Your mother told me you were disgracefully overworked at the hospital," said Lady Poynter. "Now, what we's all got to do is to arrange a little holiday for you——"
Barbara smiled and shook her head. Yet it was no use shaking your head when Destiny had flung Lady Poynter across your path. If Destiny had arranged for her what might, for argument's sake, be called a holiday....
"I haven't made up my mind what I'm going to do," she answered.
"Then let me make it up for you! What are you doing to-night?"
"I believe mother's got some people dining."
"Well, see if you can't put them off and dine with us."
Barbara closed her eyes until she felt herself rocking. If Destiny meant her to dine with Lady Poynter....
"I should like to," she said.
"Then I shall expect you. At a quarter past eight. In Belgrave Square. It's only quite a small party. Have you met this new dramatist, Eric Lane? I've got him coming."
There was a conspiracy to force them together. George had tried, Sonia had tried. What was the good of meeting any one, if Jack's ghost intervened to thrust them apart? Eric Lane ... Eric Lane.... When she died, they would find "Eric Lane" on her heart. A neat monogram: "E. L." ... Barbara found herself trembling.... If Destiny meant her to meet Eric Lane....
"I was invited to meet him, but I couldn't go."
"You'll fall in love with him," Lady Poynter prophesied.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Transcriber's Note:Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.