comprehensively as an unfledged barrister. Lady Crawleigh carried her
from Milford to Kenworth, from Warmslow to Lenge and from Cheniston to
Granlake. Lady Barbara's interest in social analysis was roused and fed
by her tour of the great houses; they required a technique different
from the absolutism of Government House and the unaided personal
ascendancy of London; and, if she remained unabsorbed into the new
atmosphere, at least she returned to Crawleigh Abbey with a mature
country-house philosophy and clear-cut ideas of what to avoid and
extrude from her own parties. The second year was devoted to romantic
exploration. At the end of the court mourning she met a pleasant
undistinguished soldier on furlough and chose, for no better reason--so
far as her parents could see--than that he was already married, to fancy
herself in love with him. Their few meetings--and still more their
emotional parting--convinced at least the theatrical side of her
temperament that she had broken her heart in a hopeless passion. Always
thin, she artistically allowed herself to waste. For twelve teeming
months she passively accepted the worship of all who were intrigued by
her attitude of mystery and unresponsiveness; then native impatience
broke through the unconvincing crust of cynicism, and she returned to
London in a dangerous state of expectancy and unsatisfied excitement. In
the absence of an overt scandal, her father hoped that she was sobered
from the tomboy who had spread devastation through his three viceregal
terms of office; the lesser optimists opined that she was only awaiting
adequate opportunity.
Disaster overtook her in the summer of 1913; and, whatever other
criticism was made, no one could deny that she won notoriety in the
grand manner. The facts, as disclosed in court, revealed that Sir Adolf
Erckmann had given a ball at his house in Westbourne Terrace. Lady
Barbara decided within a few minutes of her arrival that the party was
over-crowded and tiresome. Finding her slave Webster unoccupied, she
suggested that he should drive her to another dance in the country and
return to Westbourne Terrace when the congestion had been relieved. As
his own car was gone home, they explored the line until the unknown
chauffeur of some one else's car was persuaded to take them to
Rickmansworth, wait half an hour and bring them back. Lady Barbara
promised that there should be no awkward consequences, if they were
discovered; Webster substantiated her guarantee with a five-pound note;
and, by the time that they had further cajoled him with a stimulating
supper of champagne and cutlets, the driver's last reluctance was
overcome.
The story was liberally punctuated with questions on the general
propriety of a girl's bribing a strange chauffeur and stealing an
unknown car, with comments, too, on the dignity of their carrying a
bottle of champagne and a plate of cutlets into the middle of Westbourne
Terrace. There followed a digression to discover how much had been
consumed; Lady Barbara and Webster asserted unshakably that the
chauffeur was sober and that, if his driving became erratic at any
point, this was due to his admitted ignorance of the route.
While the question of sobriety was left in suspense, the expedition was
reconstructed to the moment when the car reached a fork in the road and
the chauffeur turned to Webster and asked "Right or left, sir?" Examined
on the question of speed, Lady Barbara was sure that they were not going
more than fifteen or twenty miles an hour; twenty-five at the outside,
Webster conceded unwillingly; they could not see the speedometer. It was
suggested, however, that they must have calculated how long the double
journey would take; they had even noticed when the car started and when
it stopped; a damaging calculation shewed that their average pace was
thirty-seven miles an hour and that, if they drove slowly out of London,
they must have reached forty-five or fifty miles an hour in the
country. And they had not told the man to moderate his pace; it even
seemed that they had encouraged him to drive faster.
At the fork in the road Webster called out, "To the right, I think";
then he saw that he was mistaken and shouted, "No! the left." In trying
to change direction, the chauffeur drove into a wedge-shaped brick wall
and was instantly killed. Lady Barbara and her companion escaped with a
severe shaking and a few scratches from the broken glass of the
wind-screen; the front of the car was smashed beyond repair.
The accident took place in open country without a house in sight. As
soon as they saw that the driver was dead, Lady Barbara spread her cloak
over the crushed head and broken face; Webster's nerve was gone, and she
left him, whimpering, to guard the body, while she went in search of
help. An early market-cart came to their rescue, and they rumbled slowly
back to London, shivering in their thin clothes and glancing over their
shoulders at a pair of twisted legs in black gaiters, which protruded
stiffly from beneath a blood-stained cloak.
The news swept through London in the evening papers, and Lady Barbara
was inundated next day with enquiries and messages of sympathy. So
grudging a critic as Jack Waring contended warmly at the County Club
that, apart from her silliness in rushing away to the country in the
middle of the night and borrowing a car without leave, she was really
not to blame; and it was a dreadful experience for any girl. By
comparison with Webster she had kept her head and behaved very properly,
taking the body straight to a hospital, communicating with the widow,
making herself personally responsible for a liberal pension and
undertaking to replace the shattered car. Before night two papers had
published sympathetic interviews with her, reproducing in her own not
undramatic words the abrupt transition from a careless drive to violent
death, the slow passage of a funeral procession between barren grey
fields, the silence and desolation of the night, the early-morning chill
which beat on her unprotected arms and shoulders and the haunting sense
of helplessness which dominated every other feeling. Inset was one
photograph of her in evening dress and another with hollow cheeks and
big ghostly eyes, in the subdued black frock which she had worn to
receive her interviewers; for these Jack blamed the notorious vulgarity
of the Press.
Admiration changed again to pity when the inquest opened. Sonia Dainton,
who attended as an act of friendship, reported that the coroner was
underbred and ill-tempered; Lady Maitland, who felt no curiosity but did
not want Barbara to think that her friends were deserting her, added
that he was a natural bully; and the Duchess of Ross, who hated any
unpleasantness and only went--with Lord Poynter, Mrs. Shelley and Val
Arden--to give the girl confidence, brought back word that, to the best
of his ability and the utmost of his despotic functions, he was resolved
to humiliate Lady Barbara, to discredit her associates and, without
respect of persons, to put such a brand on her family and herself that
they would never again dare to shew themselves among decent men and
women. The witness learned on the first day that she was a pampered and
spoiled child; _blasée_ and restless, she would do anything for a new
excitement; with that absence of rudimentary decorum which some people
appeared to think "smart," she had lawlessly appropriated a car--the
coroner wondered what she would think if any one took one of her
father's cars "just for a joke"--she had helped to make the driver
intoxicated, thereby shewing characteristic disregard for the safety of
mere ordinary people who might also want to use the road; she or her
companion--was it usual for a girl to ride about at night unattended in
this way?--had incited the chauffeur to drive at a reckless rate of
speed. And the price of this prank--the momentary diversion of the Lady
Barbara Neave, daughter of the Marquis of Crawleigh, one time
Governor-General of Canada, Viceroy of India and Lord Lieutenant of
Ireland--was the hideous death of a man who left behind him a widow and
four small children. Lady Barbara, who naturally thought that money paid
for everything, was graciously and of her abundance trying to compute
the dead man's cash value to his wife. The hearing was adjourned for a
week, as Mr. Webster was indisposed by the shock of the accident.
Had the coroner been inspired by malice, he could not have waged a
deadlier warfare than by taking three days for the inquest and allowing
intervals of a week for the case to be discussed. The stream of sympathy
ran dry; and, if no one criticized Lady Barbara to her face, every one
chattered about the enquiry and took his time from the coroner.
Repenting his precipitate tolerance, Jack Waring told the two Chancery
silks and the Indian judge that it was absurd for Crawleigh to say that
the man was abusing his position and stirring up class prejudice; when
one looked back over the last few years, one remembered a dozen things
which Lady Barbara had been allowed to do for no better reason than that
she was Lady Barbara Neave; but a line had really to be drawn somewhere.
If Crawleigh disliked having mud thrown at him in public, he should
exercise his authority with the girl; her friends were wholly
impossible....
By the time that Webster was well enough to give evidence, the tide was
in flood against him. The breach of promise case was fresh in the public
mind; and, if it could not relevantly be brought up against him, it had
at least familiarised his appearance and history and made a dark
background to his examination. Mr. Webster was a young man; he did not
work for his living, as he had considerable private means; in fact, he
had nothing to do except to spend money and amuse himself. Pressed to
state what good he was effecting for himself or the world at large, he
could only say that he was interested in the theatre and fond of
motoring--another instance of this small, rich, insistent class whose
social importance varied in inverse ratio as its public usefulness. Put
shortly, his object in life was to kill time, to avoid boredom.
The story of the night drive was rehearsed a second time, as the coroner
wished to know who had proposed it; and the suspended question of the
driver's sobriety was brought up for retrial. A bottle of champagne had
been mentioned; had Mr. Webster and Lady Barbara partaken of it in their
idyllically democratic picnic? Mr. Webster had dined at his club; could
he remember what he had drunk with his dinner? His bill would no doubt
shew that.
On the second adjournment a sordid note had been introduced, alienating
the last sympathisers and sinking a tragedy in a drunken frolic. No one
acquainted with Webster would associate him with a temperate life; those
who saw him for the first time in court with twitching hands, a puffy
face and flickering eyelids drew their own conclusions. If it was a
shock to look at Lady Barbara and to hear it suggested that she, too,
had been hardly accountable for her actions, the shock was not wholly
displeasing to those who believed in the rottenness of so-called
"society."
"They say I've murdered the man," she whispered to her father, as she
left the court. "They've made the foulest insinuations about Fatty
Webster and me. Now they say I drink. There's not much left, is there? I
shouldn't be surprised if the people in the street hooted me."
Lord Crawleigh chewed his blonde, viking moustache and hurried her
across the pavement into a closed car. He had never been present at an
inquest before; and a voice had murmured that the coroner was working
for a verdict of manslaughter. A nondescript crowd, dotted with cameras,
waited in a half-circle outside the court; it was curious, but at
present it was silent. Valentine Arden paused at the door and
ostentatiously raised his hat. He, too, would not have been surprised to
hear hooting; and he was disappointed to have no vivid contrast for his
gesture of chivalry. He wondered whether Lady Barbara was missing the
hostile demonstration; it would have been a new sensation....
On the third day she appeared once more in a black hat and dress and sat
with her veil up, waiting for the verdict and the coroner's comments.
Arden decided that she was modelling herself on Marie Antoinette and
hoped that she would be given an opportunity of speaking. At the end,
the jury found that death was due to misadventure; the reporters closed
their note-books, and Lord Crawleigh reached for his hat. Arden left at
once for fear of spoiling his earlier effect by repetition, but the
evening papers reported the invective of the coroner in full.
_"I suggest to the representatives of the press that it is their duty to
give the widest publicity to this case. In an experience which goes back
for a good many years now, I have never regretted so bitterly that I
have no power to punish those who by wanton carelessness or evil
disposition contribute to the death of a man or woman as surely as if
they had killed him with their own hands. We have had an illuminating
picture of the life and habits of some of those who traditionally expect
us to look up to them for an example. If these people are too idle or
vicious or brainless to live a life which shall be of use to the
community, there should at least be power to restrain them from becoming
a source of public danger. The proper treatment for such incipient
hooligans and reformatory children is the birch-rod: I wish I had
authority to order it. Rank and wealth can only be defended if they
impose obligations: to these bright ornaments of the leisured classes
they only afford opportunities. There has been far too much of this kind
of thing lately, and I hope I shall never again be required to deal with
so disgraceful a case. These young hobbledehoys, unchecked by any
domestic discipline, unrestrained by common decency, owing no
obligation to any one, a law unto themselves, are a new and poisonous
growth in our social life. They fulfil no useful purpose, there is no
room for them."_
"There _was_ a hostile demonstration in the street," Arden announced, as
he came to the end of the report.
"How she must have enjoyed it!" grunted Jack.
"One wishes one had stayed to the end. The court was not unlike a gala
night at Covent Garden. You have read the descriptions of the dresses?
No?"
"All this only encourages her," Jack pointed out. "I'm about the one man
in London who's succeeded in not meeting her, but, if there's ever a
revolution, that young woman will have done more than any one else to
bring it about. And she'll be photographed getting into the tumbril; and
some one will interview her on the scaffold. On my honour, I can't see
what amusement she gets out of it."
"Emotion, drama, limelight, romance," Arden suggested. "Lady Barbara may
be sure that every one in London is talking about her at this moment;
London is her stage."
"Well, she'll have to retire from it after this," said Jack.
"She will re-emerge," Arden prophesied.
Both predictions were fulfilled before the end of the summer. Lord
Crawleigh held his hand until the inquest was over, because he could not
trust himself to deal even justice while the offence was fresh. For
three weeks he was equally indifferent to Lady Barbara's tragic
attitude, the sympathy of friends and the infamies of a hostile press:
more than one anonymous letter reached him, to be read with a frown and
silently filed with the documents in the case; and it was reported that
a reference to his family had crept into the patter of a music-hall
comedian. In the rich silence of a choleric and expressive man the
nerves of family and retainers stretched to breaking-point.
On the morrow of the verdict he assembled his wife and children in the
library, rehearsed the charges against Lady Barbara and made known his
will. Henceforward she was to go nowhere unless attended by her mother,
one of her brothers or her maid. The family would proceed to Crawleigh
Abbey that day and would remain there until further notice. The ball
which Lady Crawleigh was giving would be cancelled; his daughter was to
refuse all invitations already accepted and to accept no more. At the
end of the season she would stay in no house unless one at least of her
parents accompanied her.
As he ended, Lady Barbara stole a glance round the hushed library. Her
three brothers were silent and submissive; her mother helpless and
pained, like an "honest broker" who saw the nations of the world flying
at one another's throats, when she had exhausted herself to keep the
peace; her father's eyes were burning, and he dragged at one side of his
moustache as though he were trying to tear it out by the roots. In every
altercation, great and small, Lady Barbara had to fight single-handed.
"But, father, you seem to think this was my _fault_!" she cried in
bewilderment.
Lord Crawleigh handed his wife a paper with fingers that trembled.
"Here are the dates and trains," he said. "You will go to the Abbey by
the 4.10 from Waterloo. I shall join you at the end of the session." He
turned to his daughter without trusting himself to face her dark,
reproachful eyes. "I contemplate taking you to Raglan in August and
House of Steynes in September, if your aunts see fit not to withdraw
your invitation----"
"But how long is this going on?" Lady Barbara interrupted.
"I cannot permit any discussion," he answered in something that was half
a whisper and half a sigh.
Lady Barbara looked at him reflectively and went to her room. When she
came of age, in little more than a year's time, he would have no means
of coercing her. Without waiting a year she could go to Harry Manders
and demand to be given a part; he had offered her one in her own
duologue. But the tension of the last three weeks and the dazing
examination and attack at the inquest had left her uncertain of herself.
A day or two at the Abbey, even though she were snatched away in the
middle of the season, would give her time to find her bearings and
discover what people really thought of her.
The more she pondered, the deeper grew her bewilderment. If all had gone
well, the dash to Rickmansworth and back would have been regarded as a
wholly innocent diversion in the course of a tiresome evening; on her
return every one else would have regretted that he had not come too;
even the borrowing of the car was venial, for the owner refused to
accept any compensation, though the insurance company might well make
difficulties; even he regarded the expedition as a joke, which had
unhappily turned to tragedy, and was far sorrier that Lady Barbara
should have been upset than that the chauffeur should have been killed.
If the facts, then, were innocent, she was being persecuted by the
coroner and threatened with persecution by society at large for an
accident to which she had contributed nothing. The chauffeur was sober
enough to drive through dense traffic on the Harrow Road; Webster--she
remembered his words--had looked at his watch and said through the
speaking-tube, "You can let her out a bit now, I should think. We don't
want to keep you out too long." The charge that any one of them was
drunk would have been more insulting if it had been less grotesque. And
for this the coroner had suggested that she should be ostracized. And
her simple-minded father imagined that there were other simple-minded
souls who would take such a Jack-in-office at his own pontifical
valuation.
She almost hoped that they would, so that she might force them in
triumph to acknowledge her innocence. To start as an outcast and win her
way back was a dramatic dream which almost made her wish that she was
guilty. To become an outcast might be as dramatic as to rise from
obscurity to a pinnacle of fame.... Napoleon owed half his place in
history to St. Helena.
An undistracted fortnight at the Abbey cooled Lady Barbara's resentment
and checked the more romantic flights of her imagination. Her father's
judgement was clearly at fault; to run away was to admit herself in the
wrong. By the time that she had got herself into perspective, the season
was so near its end that she did not think it worth while to make a
demonstration and to occupy her room in Berkeley Square by force. But
the late summer and autumn lay before her, and, when her father came to
the Abbey for a week-end in July, she informed him that she had not yet
cancelled any of her arrangements for staying with friends.
"You will remain here till we go to the Riviera in February," he
answered.
"But, father, I'm not going to. This is quite serious. I've been here a
month without seeing a soul; I should go mad, if I had to vegetate for
another seven months. If you won't let me go, I'm afraid I must go
without your leave."
"That may not be as easy as you think."
"What d'you mean?"
Lord Crawleigh unlocked a red leather despatch-box, turned over his
files and produced a sheet of paper which he spread before her.
"This is a copy of a cable which your cousin has sent to his mother from
Surinam. I had intended taking you to House of Steynes, but that is out
of the question now."
_"Please arrange that Barbara and her friend are not admitted to my
house. This applies to Monmouthshire and Scotland as well as London."_
Lady Barbara handed back the paper and tried to laugh, but she knew
that her expression was out of control. If the news had reached Surinam,
it had reached every cable-station on the way; and the operators had
hardly done feasting themselves on the inquest before a message, signed
"Loring" and mentioning her by name, added a dainty titbit to the
savoury repast. Sooner or later it would be common property that her own
cousin had slammed his door in her face for fear of contamination; the
family would be divided into those who knew her and those who publicly
refused to know her; she would become a test-case for disreputability.
"Jim has his own standards of loyalty, hasn't he?" she commented and was
infuriated to find her voice trembling. "He's usually so keen on the
family that I shouldn't have thought he'd have wanted to take the whole
world into his confidence. One good thing, he can't call _me_
self-advertising after this. Have you seen the darling boy's mother? Is
she--_proud_ of him over this?"
"She was as much shocked as I was that you should have made it
necessary."
"I? Father, you can't make me responsible for _this_. But is she proud
of his chivalry? And I suppose _you_ didn't make a fight for me? I must
see her. I want to tell her about the accident." She pressed her hands
to cheeks which were still hollow from the anxiety of the last two
months and looked at her father over her finger-tips. "I'd never seen
any one killed before, I'd never seen a dead body; and I couldn't sleep
at night, because of it. I kept seeing that unhappy woman's face, too,
when I had to tell her that her husband was dead. I didn't ask for
sympathy, but I thought perhaps my own father and mother might have seen
that I wasn't exactly--enjoying myself, that I was ill, worried out of
my mind. If _I_ had a daughter, I should have felt for her, I think,
when a foul-mouthed little reptile hinted that she was _drunk_ and that
her _lover_ had helped her kill an innocent man for her own amusement.
Never a word! Do you know that for three weeks you only said
'Good-morning' to me, father? Even if I was guilty a hundred times over,
it wouldn't have compromised you to be sorry that I was suffering. I
don't complain. You at least left me alone. But Jim waits till I'm
beaten to my knees, waits till I'm bleeding--and then hits wherever he
can see a bruise or wound. That _wasn't_ necessary, father."
Lord Crawleigh rearranged his papers without answering. He was himself
so much humiliated by his nephew's cable that he had hardly thought how
it might affect Barbara. She was always most formidable when she stood,
as now, with drooping head, composed and subdued, speaking in an
undertone and rejecting in advance any sympathy that he might belatedly
offer her. She had learned in childhood to fight men with their own
weapons and to fall back on her sex when the battle was going against
her. He had seen her trading on pathos a hundred times with her mother
and aunts, using to full advantage a pose of tired frailty, a wistful
mouth and big eyes which filled with tears at will or flashed black with
indignation; she could droop her head and body until she looked like a
tortured martyr, or cough until she looked consumptive. Almost certainly
she was acting now, but her passion for romance and a dramatic impact
led her to act without knowing it.
"If you had behaved properly, this would not have happened," he threw
out with weak, inconsequent irritability.
"It's too late now. Are you going to House of Steynes? Do you allow
people to say that they'll be glad to see you on condition you don't
bring your daughter with you? And will you invite Amy and Aunt Eleanor
here to meet somebody who can't be admitted to their house?"
Lord Crawleigh had enough imagination to see the more obvious
consequences of his nephew's ultimatum; but he could not devise an
effective reply, and it was merely exasperating to have his own
disadvantage explored and stated by Barbara.
"I talked to your aunt. She says she daren't go against Jim's wishes.
After all, they're his houses. She's writing to him----"
"To intercede for me?" Lady Barbara interrupted scornfully. "When next I
enter House of Steynes, it will be on his invitation. And, before I
allow him to invite me, he will apologize."