beginning to think he's naturally cruel. Or unnaturally. Conscious
cruelty is what divides men from animals.... Aunt Kathleen, if you fuss,
I shall scream; I've been badly frightened and I hated throwing it
away.... I'd sooner die than hurt any one.... Have you ever flown? I've
wanted to for years; I felt it would be a new sensation. Won't it be
awful when we've done so much that there are no sensations left? Aunt
Kathleen's quite irrepressible, isn't she?"
After an interval of indecision Lady Knightrider had hurried out of the
room and downstairs. Arden looked at his watch and prepared to follow
her.
"One always lies down before dinner," he explained.
"You're going--just when we've been left a moment together?" she asked
with a smile that had less of amusement than of artistic sympathy.
"That's a brilliant effect. Not one man in a million would have thought
of it. We must meet again. Why did you come at all? What had you heard
about me? I don't recommend Aunt Kathleen's cigarettes."
She offered him her case, and Arden lighted one.
"A poker party was mentioned at dinner last night," he told her. "One
casually wondered who the man was."
"Claude Arkwright. Jim says I've got his soul on my conscience. Any more
questions?"
Arden laughed and for a moment shed all his mannerisms.
"Yes. What's behind all this?" he asked.
"All this what? All this me? What I do?" Lady Barbara met him
unreservedly on his own chosen ground of sincerity, and her voice and
smile changed. "_I'm_ behind it. Come, you're quite clever enough to
understand. I want to enjoy life and know life and meet people and read
books and do things.... I won't be treated like a minor Royalty. The
world's full of Jim Lorings. Wherever I go, some one says 'Not there,
not there, my child.' And then! _Then_ I go quite mad! You'll like me, I
think. Good-bye."
"Good-bye, Lady Lilith."
"Lilith? Who was she? Wasn't she Adam's first wife?"
"She existed before Man tasted of the tree of knowledge; before good and
evil came into the world," said Arden impressively.
"_I_ remember. I hope you won't become sententious. That went out with
the last of the Wilde plays."
Lady Knightrider was standing in the hall, plump, white-haired and
perplexed, peering through her lorgnettes into the street. The
messenger-boy had disappeared, and the necklace with him.
"He will take it to Scotland Yard," predicted Arden reassuringly. "And
then Lady Barbara will throw it away again for fear of cheating Nemesis.
One despaired of meeting honest superstition in these degenerate latter
days."
"I've never heard----," began Lady Knightrider. One crime jostled
another and confused her mind. "Crawleigh will be furious if he finds
out she's been flying."
Arden walked back to the Ritz, wondering whether the fuller study of
Barbara Neave justified him in giving away points by betraying interest
in her. His preliminary diagnosis discovered energy with no outlet,
premature experience with unsated curiosity; public life held no mystery
or attraction for the only daughter of a viceroy; unless Lord Crawleigh
set himself to gain a dukedom, there were no social heights to scale;
the family was too rich for her to be troubled about money; and so
energy sought its outlet in making and receiving new sensations. This
was well enough at sixteen or seventeen, but after another five years
emotion-hunting...? He was still undecided when he encountered her a
week later at Covent Garden, sitting with Summertown and Webster on a
sofa outside Lady Maitland's box and having her fortune told by Sonia
Dainton. Her setting was of more interest than her occupation, for
Summertown and Miss Dainton were leaders of the younger cavalry in the
cosmopolitan army; they echoed the noise and reflected the insistent
glare of Sir Adolf Erckmann without sharing his solid prestige as a
critic and patron of art. Webster was a sodden, characterless youth, who
bought his way into toleration which he mistook for popularity. Arden
wondered what Loring would say if he found his cousin in such company.
"The discovery of the Ego?" he enquired.
"Hullo! We're having such fun!" said Lady Barbara. "Miss Dainton's
wonderful! I've had two bad illnesses, and something is going to happen
soon which will change the whole of my life. I'm going to have an
enormous success of some kind. And then an enormous tragedy. I'm very
artistic and full of intuition. I've got a strong will and a great
influence over people. Go on, Sonia."
"The line of heart--give me your other hand a minute," said Sonia
Dainton. "Yes, the line of heart hasn't begun yet. When it _does_!"
Lady Barbara withdrew her hand abruptly.
"I don't believe you know anything about it, Sonia. Are there any good
palmists in London, Mr. Arden? I collect fortune-tellers. Let's go
somewhere to-morrow. Father will be back in England next month, and then
I shan't be able to do anything."
"You believe in all this?" Arden asked, remembering her action with the
necklace and wondering how far she was trying to beat him at his own
game of extravagant effects.
"Oh, implicitly. Don't you? And I do want to find out all about the
future. Let's devote a week to it and try _every one_."
"I might spare you two days," he answered, as he passed on to his box.
At the end of the first Arden's curiosity was satisfied. Lady Barbara
was a study in crude contrasts. While she pained her family by sceptical
indifference to religion, there seemed nothing that she would not
believe, provided only that it did not come to her from the lips of a
priest. As they drove from one clairvoyant to another, she revealed a
curious knowledge of necromancy; she had read every book that she could
find on Satanism and the Black Mass and would talk of astrology and the
significance of dreams with grave conviction. But the cult of the
fortune-tellers was inspired primarily by a desire to discuss herself
and to be discussed. A single morning exhausted the possibilities of
amusement from such a source, and her companions were less diverting
than herself; Sonia Dainton dropped out when she found herself accorded
second place, Summertown played a thin stream of monotonous jocosity
over the survivors, and Webster fell asleep with an air of duty well
done when he had provided luncheon for every one, discovered a new
clairvoyant and driven the party to her at breakneck speed in the latest
of the racing cars whose purchase constituted the overt business of his
life.
They were to have met again with Lady Knightrider at the end of the
season; but, when Arden and Jack Waring entered the train for Raglan,
Loring awaited them with a grave face and pointed to a column notice in
his paper, headed "Serious Flying Accident."
"Thank Heaven, it happened when she was with her people and not with
me," he began. "That's my silly little fool of a cousin again! She got
that fellow Gaymer down to Crawleigh Abbey; and, when her parents' backs
were turned, they went off for a jaunt to Salisbury Plain. The
manoeuvres were on, so they brightened them up by flying so low that the
inspecting general bolted and the troops scattered in panic. There'll be
the deuce to pay for that alone. Then, on the way back, they came down
in the New Forest and got hung up on a tree. Gaymer's broken a
collar-bone and two ribs; and Barbara's badly shaken and bruised. Here's
an opportunity for your literary genius, Valentine; help me to draft a
telegram of sympathy which will shew at the same time that I think she
richly deserved all she got."
The accident was Lady Barbara's formal introduction to England.
Throughout 1909 there was an official pretence that she was not yet out;
she would still be no more than seventeen when her parents returned, and
both Lady Loring and Lady Knightrider refused to present her before
that. The baptism of blood in the New Forest made her name and face
known to every reader of every illustrated paper. "The ideal _début_ for
her," exclaimed Loring in disgust. "I can see her spending the rest of
her life trying to live up to it."
Four days later he came into Arden's room with a letter which he threw
onto the bed with a grim smile.
_"Dearest Jim,_
_"It was sweet of you to send me that wire. I've strained my back and
covered myself with bruises, but it was worth it. Fear is a wonderful
sensation; I believe it's the strongest of all the emotions. I certainly
feel that I shall never again get that sublimated degree of fear. I got
Death. (D'you spell Death with a capital D? I always do--from respect;
Death will outlast God.) You heard I had concussion? I knew I was dying
and that one step would carry me over the dividing-line. There was a
black curtain, like a drop-scene; and I knew that, as soon as that
lifted, I should be dead and on the other side. I said to myself I
wouldn't die. When I came to, the doctor was frowning terribly, and I
heard him mutter, 'Just about time, too, young lady.' I wonder whether
you'd be sorry, if I died, Jim. When I had appendicitis at Simla, you
couldn't get through the streets for the people who were waiting to hear
how the operation had gone off. The wires were blocked for three days
with enquiries._
_"I'm to be allowed out at the end of the week and hope to be well
enough to come to you at House of Steynes with father and mother._
_Your loving Barbara."_
Arden smiled as he handed back the letter.
"Characteristic," he commented.
"Oh, very! Not a word about Gaymer. Or the feelings of her parents.
She's had two new sensations and she can't be sure whether she'd get as
good a press for her death here as in India. Crawleigh will have his
hands full. You've not met him? Well, it's one thing to govern India and
another to keep a little devil like that in order."
A month later, still in the detached spirit of the social satirist,
Arden allowed himself to be introduced to Lady Barbara's parents in
Scotland. He was anxious to study her family setting, for Lord Crawleigh
was already beginning to be regarded primarily as the father of his own
daughter and only in afterthought as a distinguished public servant.
Fifteen years earlier he had first shewn the administrative brilliance
and incapacity to work with colleagues which impel a man to a
viceroyalty or the leadership of a disgruntled party of one on the
cross-benches. In Canada, in Ireland and in India he had been publicly
admired and privately abhorred. Without the backing of long established
authority, however, he was thrown on his own resources; and paper-work
genius proved itself powerless without palpable force of character.
Over-sensitive to his personal dignity, he treated his wife and children
with the pomp and despotism of Government House; according to Loring's
description, councils were convened to decide what train should bear
them from London to Crawleigh Abbey; the cook's shortcomings were
minuted to Lady Crawleigh for observations and appropriate action; the
servants were pinned to the straight path of their duties by
proclamation, and the household books were scrutinized with an
exhaustive particularity not vouchsafed to the preparation of an Indian
budget.
It was the self-protective assertion of a man sensitive to his physical
inadequacy. Lord Crawleigh's domed head, ascetic face and rimless
spectacles were impressively intellectual, but he degenerated as he went
lower. The bottom half of his face was confused with a straggling blonde
moustache intended for an operatic viking; his body was too short, his
legs too long; and, when he became excited, his voice rose querulous and
shrill. But the viceregal manner carried him far. Lord Neave and his two
younger brothers had been taught obedience at Eton; Lady Crawleigh, as
her passivity and plumpness hinted, suffered from a family streak of
laziness, which she shared with Lady Loring and Lady Knightrider, and
from twenty-five years' experience of her husband, which she could share
with no one. It required Barbara's temperamental irreverence and gipsy
craving for liberty to break down the imposing forms and spirit of her
father's rule. The boys, who could be caned while she remained immune,
sheltered themselves behind their younger sister; and, with a woman's
genius for tactical alliances and strategical choice of ground, she
explored and profited by the weak places in the enemy's system of
defences. Her father's public position and private dignity were her
strongest accessories. "She can always blackmail him by threatening a
scandal," as Loring explained.
So long as she had her own way, Arden discovered a rule of peace and
mutual affection. Lady Barbara hated to be on bad terms with any one;
and her parents were humanly, if reluctantly, proud of her. Throughout
his visit to House of Steynes, she dominated the party by her vitality
and versatile charm. Loring was in the early stages of devotion to Sonia
Dainton and disappeared as long and often as possible to escape his
mother and sister, who were trying to avert an engagement, and Lady
Dainton, who was forcing it to a head; and in his absence Arden watched
Lady Barbara posing herself in the middle of the stage, methodically
sharing herself among the guests and holding her own with all. It was
the fruit of early years, during which she had lived consistently in
public, meeting men of every profession and country, listening,
remembering, learning and giving her best in return. She shewed a nice
appreciation of personality and varied her attitude with her audience.
In talking to Arden himself she still gravely met pose with pose and
extravagance with extravagance.
"D'you feel you know me adequately now?" she asked him on the last
night. "Mr. Deganway told me you were going to write a book about me."
"And you replied, 'Only one?' It is unfortunate that Meredith has
already taken 'The Egoist' as a title."
Lady Barbara turned slowly, as though he were a mirror, and gave him
time to appreciate her slender height and lithe figure. One hand
directed attention to her hair, as she brushed away a curl from her
forehead; and she looked at him sideways with her fingers pressed
against one cheek so that he should see the size and deep colour of her
eyes.
"D'you think I'm unduly vain?" she asked.
"Genius demands vanity. But one comes back to the old question: what is
behind it? One thinks of you in six years' time and asks oneself what
will be left. You have been everywhere, Lady Lilith, and met every one
whom the world considers worth meeting--they were not too numerous?
No?--and you have read so much.... In six years' time you will be the
best known woman in London, but there will be nothing left for you to
do."
"There are always new experiences. When I had that accident in the New
Forest, a man came from the other end of England, because he'd fallen in
love with my photograph. He said he couldn't marry any one else after
seeing me."
"It is surfeiting to be easily loved," Arden sighed. "One does not shoot
sitting birds. Some day, perhaps, Lady Lilith will meet a man who goes
to the other end of England to avoid her. That will be a new experience.
She will follow him, of course. To find a heart will be the greatest
experience of all. One will watch your career with interest."
"And describe it? Or are you afraid to risk my friendship?"
"The only book that could offend Lady Lilith is one in which she does
not appear."
For the next six months Arden was compelled to study her through the
press. Loring went abroad for the winter in his yacht, Lady Knightrider
withdrew to Scotland, and Lord Crawleigh moved his seat of government
from Berkeley Square to Hampshire. Despite the rival claims of a general
election, however, she secured creditable space in the daily and weekly
papers. A ball at Crawleigh Abbey was followed by an abortive rumour of
her engagement to her cousin Lord John Carstairs. A prompt and
unambiguous disclaimer was issued, but the findings of the commission,
which Lord Crawleigh appointed under his own chairmanship to investigate
his daughter's conduct, were such that he deemed it prudent to transfer
his seat of government from Hampshire to Cap Martin. A series of
photographs from the Riviera correspondent of the 'Catch' shewed her
walking demurely with her father, playing tennis and participating less
demurely in a battle of flowers and a fancy-dress carnival.
In the spring of 1910 public interest was deflected to another branch of
the family, for Loring's engagement to Sonia Dainton was announced. But
by that time, as Arden pointed out, a man had only himself to blame if
he did not know all that was to be known of Lady Barbara Neave.
"How poor Jim must loathe all this self-advertising," said Jack Waring,
when he met Arden at the County Club to discuss the engagement. "I've
never even seen her, but I've had _her_ and her _hats_ and her _clothes_
thrust under my eyes by these infernal papers till I'm sick of them.
She's talented, she's charming. I know all the things she said to all
the big pots in India. When she is twenty-one she comes in for all her
godfather's money on condition that she marries a Catholic.... I suppose
there must be a public for this kind of stuff, or the papers wouldn't
print it; but she's on the level of a musical-comedy star. Arden, my
lad, I'm an old man, but I swear people had a little more dignity and
restraint in my young days. The one good thing about the court mourning
is that she doesn't get so much opportunity for her antics."
"She'll emerge again, when it's over," Arden predicted. "Meanwhile,
London is becoming very tiresome. Has life lost its savour? Are we
growing old? One would give much for the tonic of a good scandal."
"There'll be no lack of that," Jack prophesied, "judging from the people
I see in London nowadays."
CHAPTER THREE
THE SPIRIT OF PAN
"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."
"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 unproductive
criminal 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 at a 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.... _And_ what 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.