sentences had exceeded the probable limits of sincerity, and he swooped
before she could escape into a convincing pathos. "If _any one_ ought to
apologize----"
Lady Barbara caught sight of her reflection, full-length, in a mirror,
with her father fidgetting at her side. He looked insignificant, almost
ridiculous, with his domed forehead and straggling blonde moustache, his
short body and long legs. She wanted to make him see himself and to play
up to their two reflections like Metternich and L'Aiglon in the mirror
scene.
"I can only apologize for the fact of my existence," she sighed. "I was
_not_ responsible, father, and you know it. And, instead of standing up
for your own daughter, you let her be insulted. I can't do anything with
people who stab in the back, but I'm ready to meet every one! I _will_
meet them. If they want to insult me, they can insult me to my face."
The embargo on Lady Barbara's presence only extended to the houses
controlled by her cousin. In August she went to stay with Lady
Knightrider in Raglan and was received with demonstrative affection. A
gentle reaction had set in, inspired directly by Lord Crawleigh and
aided by all who felt that Jim Loring's precipitous cable had placed the
family in an intolerable position. Working in a sympathetic atmosphere,
Lady Barbara enlisted her aunt's support in a campaign which was to
rehabilitate her or at least to shew whether she stood in need of
rehabilitation. As soon as they returned to London for the autumn, Lady
Knightrider undertook to give a dance and to insist that Lady Loring
and Amy should come; if Jim were home by then, she would make him come,
too, and the whole ridiculous quarrel would be forgotten. Lady Barbara
intended to go farther than the settlement of a family difference. The
party should be a challenge to all who felt disposed to criticise her;
she was determined to appear side by side with Webster and to give them
their opportunity; and any one who declined to come would have to shew
convincing justification for his refusal.
The invitations were sent out six weeks in advance; Lady Knightrider
reasoned with those who made excuses, sent reminders to those who had
accepted and surrounded herself with a staff of energetic lieutenants.
"_You're_ coming on, Val, aren't you?" asked George Oakleigh
distractedly on the night of the ball, as he prowled hungrily through
the County Club with a list in his hand. He had undertaken to bring six
men and was bribing them beforehand with dinner.
"A doubt has crept in," Arden replied uncertainly. "One invitation may
be attributed to hospitality; four suggest panic."
"Well, if there are too few men, you'll be all the more popular; if
there are too many, you can go home early. Gerry, I'm counting on you."
Deganway paused for an instant on his way to the cloak-room.
"My dear, I wouldn't miss it for anything."
Oakleigh added a tick to his list and hurried after Jack Waring. They
were still disputing, when Eric Lane was announced.
"I don't dance, I can't talk and I want to go to bed," said Jack firmly.
"You can go after half an hour," Oakleigh promised.
"Well, I'll come for one cigar, if Eric comes too. I'm an old man,
George; I haven't been to a ball for ten years."
At eleven o'clock Oakleigh convoyed them securely into the drawing-room
of Lady Knightrider's house in South Street. By the test of numbers the
dance promised well, for the house was already crowded and Lady
Barbara's relations were in full attendance. Her triumph was left
incomplete by the absence of Webster, but he had been snubbed more than
once in the last few months and was waiting for time to heal his
reputation. She had spent the afternoon arguing with him until she felt
her dignity compromised, and the embers of her ill-humour smouldered
through the night.
By prearrangement Jack escaped to the smoking-room for a cigar, while
Eric unbosomed himself of news which had been choking him for three
days; Harry Manders had accepted a play, which was to be produced in the
following autumn; after eight years of disappointment the daydream was
being realized. They were still bandying congratulations and thanks,
when the smoking-room was invaded by Deganway and a girl.
"Isn't that the famous Lady Barbara Neave?" Eric whispered.
Jack half turned and shook his head.
"Don't ask me. I'm shortly starring at the Halls as the one man in the
world who doesn't know her and doesn't want to. I think it must be, all
the same. Gerry seems to be getting called over the coals for
something."
Lady Barbara's annoyance with Webster was spending itself on Deganway.
There were long silences, broken by deferential squeaks of small-talk
from him and restored by petulant rejoinders from her. She treated her
companion with a contempt that was almost insolent and jumped restlessly
to her feet, as the band began to tune up. Deganway hurried after her to
the door, and the calm of the smoking room was only disturbed by
half-heard music and the sound of high, rapid voices on the stairs. As
his second cigar burnt low, Jack looked at his watch and beckoned Eric
from his chair.
"Come and say good-bye; then you can drop me at the club," he
suggested.
They steered a tortuous and apologetic course through the couples seated
on the stairs and looked hopelessly for Lady Knightrider. In their
absence the drawing-room had filled to overflowing, and the landings and
balconies were packed to the limit of their capacity. As the next dance
started, Deganway entered, blinking in the light, from one of the open
French windows; Lady Barbara was still with him, but, as the music
began, she was claimed and taken away.
"First time I've ever seen you indulging in frivolities like this,
Jack," he said, letting fall his eye-glass and hunting for his
cigarette-case.
"Well, I don't dance, and the conventional alternative is to talk to
young women," answered Jack. "I confess that I can imagine less dreary
pastimes--for both."
"That depends on the woman. I've spent most of the evening with Babs
Neave. My dear, there's plenty of excitement in talking to _her_! Care
to meet her?"
"I'm going home as soon as I've found Lady Knightrider," Jack answered.
"It'd pay you to talk to her for a bit. Let me introduce you! She's
awful good fun--doesn't care a damn what she says or does----"
"That's her general reputation," interrupted Jack.
"Oh, you mustn't believe everything you hear about her. She's quite all
right _really_; awful nice girl. Let me introduce you!"
Jack shook his head and took Eric by the arm.
"My dear Deganway, I've no doubt she's everything you say, but I don't
care a great lot for the Websters and Penningtons and Welmans and
Erckmanns and all that gang that she goes about with. They're such
devilish bad style. Good-night."
Deganway grinned maliciously.
"I've a good mind to tell her what you said. Do her no end of good. And
I should get a bit of my own back after the way she's been ragging me."
They stood talking by the door until the music stopped. Then Jack and
Eric turned and went downstairs, while Deganway sidled up to Lady
Barbara.
"No, you're tiresome to-night," she told him, when he asked for another
dance. "Who are those two going out? I don't know them."
"The fair one's Jack Waring----"
"Well, I should like to know him," Lady Barbara interrupted. "I'm tired
of everybody."
Deganway hurried obediently out of the room and returned a moment later
with a smirk of satisfaction.
"Try again, Babs," he suggested. "Waring's not taking any."
"Do talk intelligibly, Gerry!"
"Well, I told him _before_ that he ought to meet you. I said what good
fun you were and what he was missing and all that sort of thing----"
Lady Barbara shivered at the blunt catalogue of her charms.
"What did he say?"
By natural compensation Deganway atoned for certain defects of
intelligence by an excellent power of mimicry. He gave not only Jack's
lilt and phraseology, but his facial changes and rather prim,
tight-lipped smile.
"I tried him again," he added, "but he said he _must_ go to bed. I don't
believe he wanted to meet you."
Lady Barbara smiled composedly, but the brusque rebuff, brusquely
quoted, wounded her pride as nothing had done since Jim's cable. Some
one had taken up the challenge, as she had feared--or hoped.
"Sorry he's so hard to please," she answered lightly. "You can give me
some supper, if you like. Who and what is he? A candid critic is so rare
that I should quite like to meet him."
CHAPTER FOUR
APHRODITE DEMI-MONDAINE
"What rage for fame attends both great and small!
Better be d----d than mentioned not at all!"
JOHN WOLCOTT: "TO THE ROYAL ACADEMICIANS."
"_The Princess Juanita dawned upon respectability like Aphrodite rising
from the gutters._"
According to Mrs. Shelley, as quoted by Eric to George Oakleigh and the
author, this was the opening sentence of Valentine Arden's "New
Jerusalem," and she had given a luncheon party on the strength of it.
Since her husband's death, Eric had edged gently away from her
self-conscious artistic menagerie; he had been recaptured for a moment
after the Coronation, when his father was knighted for "eminent services
to the study of Anglo-Saxon" and he could himself be introduced as "the
son of Sir Francis Lane, you know"; and it was no sooner hinted that a
play of his had been accepted by Harry Manders than she dragged him back
into his cage with a tacit order to stay there until his public interest
was exhausted.
It was Mrs. Shelley's practice to read every book of importance on the
day of publication; it was her ambition to know all about it before it
was written. The new satire, she informed her guests, had engaged
Arden's energies for two years and presented a picture of London society
under the empire of Sir Adolf Erckmann and the cosmopolitans; the forces
of respectability had not escaped the impartial lash of his ridicule,
and almost every character was a portrait. Mrs. Welman waltzed
unmistakably over the glittering pages with Sir Deryk Lancing; Lord
Pennington, Jack Summertown and the Baroness Kohnstadt flitted from
place to place like the chorus of a musical comedy, and every scandal of
the last ten years was described or mentioned. If the book were ever
published, Mrs. Shelley was convinced that the heavens would rain writs
for libel; certainly no one would continue to know the author. She had
reasoned with him, but he was apparently tired of London and
contemplated impressing his personality on New York.
While no one was secure, Eric gathered that the greatest speculation
surrounded the identity of "Princess Juanita." Mrs. Shelley maintained
that the character must be intended for Sonia Dainton, who had joined
the Erckmann faction when she broke off her engagement with Loring; Lady
Maitland, who was still smarting in the belief that Arden had sketched
her for his earlier "Madame Chasseresse-de-Lions," had no doubt that he
was now squirting his poison at Lady Barbara Neave. "A man like that,"
she told Mrs. Shelley, "would never waste time on a commoner like Sonia
Dainton when he could besmirch the daughter of a marquess and tickle his
wretched provincial audience by calling her a princess." Her bitter
words were repeated to the author, who announced that he was giving his
book the sub-title "Commoner and Commoner," and dedicating it to Lady
Maitland. Only when he was tired of his friends' good advice did he
admit that the satire existed but in his imagination.
"One is taken altogether too literally," he complained to his friends in
the smoking-room of the Thespian Club. "A grim, cultured hostess,
spectacled young poets having their own poems explained to them by Lady
Poynter, a dinner which one ate and tried to forget, furtive confidences
on the wine from Lord Poynter, a succession of _longueurs_--you see the
scene? Chelsea.... Earnestness.... Ill-assortment.... Without any wish
to _épater le bourgeois_, one played with an idea, developed it,
invented characters, let fall a phrase.... Perhaps one has allowed good
Sir Adolf to obsess one's mind.... It was not a remarkable phrase; but
one could hardly have caused a greater stir if one had telegraphed
anonymously to one's friends--"_Fly. All is known._" Lady Knightrider
almost offered one a blank cheque to stop publication. A _jeu d'esprit_
must be labelled before it is offered to the English."
"Well, I'm glad the book's not going to be published," said Oakleigh.
"That little gang's had quite enough advertisement without any help from
you."
"One hates to disappoint Lady Barbara," answered Arden reflectively.
"Undeniably she compels a reluctant admiration. She has lived in three
continents--in regal state; she has met every one and done everything;
in her leisure she has written plays, selected poetry, exhibited
caricatures--not altogether contemptible--of her family and friends,
patronized new schools of decoration, invented new fashions of dress
and, as all the world knows, worn them. What remained? One met her first
some years ago and asked oneself that question. It is still unanswered!"
"At present she's bolstering up two or three dozen people who are only
received on the strength of her name," Oakleigh replied. "And she's
going to find that her name isn't strong enough to carry them."
"These people go to her head," Arden replied with disgust. "One credited
her with more detachment."
The campaign of rehabilitation had not been an unqualified success. Lady
Knightrider aimed at reconciling Barbara with her relations rather than
at reconciling her relations with her friends. There was an implied
threat that she must choose one or the other; and a prevalent feeling
was crystallized by Jack Waring, when he said that she was not worth
knowing at the price of having to know her disorderly retinue. While she
welcomed the concordat, Lady Barbara could not explain to Sir Adolf
Erckmann that he was her fit companion one day and unfit the next; she
might gently repel a cosmopolitan here and there, but she could not
refuse all their invitations always; loyalty imposed its obligations,
and stronger than loyalty was an impatient desire to tell other people
to mind their own business. Yet the concordat might have endured, if the
discussion of Arden's hypothetical book had not impelled Lady
Knightrider hot-foot from Mrs. Shelley's house to his rooms at the Ritz.
Not content with her legitimate relief at finding that "Princess
Juanita" was no less a myth than "The New Jerusalem," she confided to
Arden that dear Barbara _did_ go about with "really rather dreadful
people"; some one at her party had said that the girl's friends were
such that he preferred not to know her. So long as she associated with
them, it was only too probable that there would be another
unpleasantness of some kind.
"I really think it my duty," she said on leaving, "to drop a little hint
to my sister."
The nods and winks of verbal warning are apt to take on an exaggerated
significance when defined in black and white. On receipt of the letter
Lord Crawleigh motored to London and opened a new commission of enquiry
to investigate the personal desirability of his daughter's associates.
If Lady Barbara was at first bewildered, she was in no way daunted, for
in the endless intermingling of groups throughout London she could
usually find a sponsor for the most draggled of her friends. Sir Adolf
Erckmann's private life might lead him into the Divorce Court, he might
even be the "vulgar, common fellow" that her father described, but he
had dined in Berkeley Square as a member of Lord Crawleigh's
Departmental Committee on Indian Currency Reform. Lady Crawleigh always
went to the vulgar, common fellow's famous musical parties in Westbourne
Terrace. Lady Barbara had originally met Mrs. Welman at a performance of
"The School for Scandal," organized by Lady Maitland for charity, and
had naturally accepted the implied guarantee; it was not against civil,
canon or moral law for a woman to have been on the stage. Those who,
like Webster, could not so easily be defended were pushed into the
background. The battle of wits ceased to be amusing when Lord Crawleigh
repeated his threat that Barbara would not be allowed to go anywhere
unless she were suitably chaperoned. The dreary banishment at the Abbey
lingered in her memory as a summer stolen out of her life. As her
patience ebbed, she decided that there must be an end of these
inquisitions.
It was easy to trace her present plight through Lady Knightrider to Val
Arden; but there was some one behind Arden, for her father claimed to
have chapter and verse for saying that people were refusing to know her
so long as she associated with her present friends. With a shock of
surprise she recalled a self-satisfied young man who had in fact met her
invitation to be introduced with a drawling, "Thanks very much. She may
be all you say, but...."
It was incredible that one bumptious boy could do so much harm.... Even
when the commission adjourned without arriving at an agreed report, Lady
Barbara felt that a vendetta was being forced upon her....
She had no plan of campaign and knew nothing of her adversary but his
name. Apart from Gerry Deganway she did not know of any one who was
acquainted with him; and Deganway had done enough harm already without
being given new opportunities. But, if the vendetta required resource,
resource should be forthcoming. She called on Sonia Dainton the day
after her father's inquisition and proposed that they should go for a
drive. As the car entered the Park by Albert Gate, she pretended to
recognize a face and said:
"Wasn't that Jack Waring?"
"I didn't see," Sonia answered.
"It was like him--though I don't know him to speak to."
"You'll find him very sticky. He's a great friend of your cousin Jim.
When we were engaged, I used to see a certain amount of him. He's a
heavy, Stone-Age creature; when he and Jim and George Oakleigh put their
wise old heads together, there was nothing they wouldn't disapprove of!"
"I hear he's been good enough to criticize _me_," said Lady Barbara
carelessly.
"When he doesn't even know you? What did he say?" asked Sonia.
"Oh, what does it matter? Some one started a story the other day that I
took drugs. Li Webster heard a woman say, 'I was told by a friend who'd
been to the same dressmaker; her arm was all red and pulpy; I believe
she's been doing it for years and that's why she always wears long
sleeves at night.' Have you _ever_ seen me in long sleeves, Sonia. I've
got much too good arms! And, if I wanted to take the beastly stuff,
shouldn't I have it injected where it wouldn't shew? I _did_ want to
meet that woman--just to tell her to use her brains. And, if I ever meet
your friend Mr. Waring----"
"My dear, he's not _my_ friend! I was asked down to Croxton for the hunt
ball at the end of this month; I made Bobby Pentyre tell me who was
going to be there and, when I saw Jack Waring's name, I said 'nothin'
doin'.' I know those hunt balls! Vermilion men in pink coats.... Jack
will be just in his element; he'll support a wall and tell everybody
that he doesn't know any of 'these modern dances,' as though it were
something to be proud of."
Lady Barbara laughed mechanically and sorted the new information into
its appropriate pigeon-hole. She was dining and going to a play that
night with Summertown and his sister; Sally Farwell's passion for
Pentyre had become a habit, and, if he did not reciprocate her passion,
he could hardly refuse her friend an invitation for the ball. Once
within the same house as Jack Waring, she had decided nothing save that
he could not be allowed to walk through the world with his nose in the
air, saying that she or her friends were "bad style."
A week later she arrived at Croxton Hall and explored the terrain for
the engagement. Waring, she learned, came once a year into
Buckinghamshire from old habit, because he had hunted with the Croxton
from Oxford; he was returning to chambers by the breakfast-car train
next day. She had few hours for making her effect; and they were further
reduced when Jack drove up three-quarters of an hour late to find that
the house-party was already dressed and busily adjusting its
relationships. Lady Pentyre scrambled through half a dozen introductions
in as many seconds and hurried her guests into the dining-room, without
giving him time to dress or even to see who was there; Barbara, standing
a little behind the others, escaped notice; and, when she found herself
seated by prearrangement at his side, she had to introduce herself.
"I believe you're a great friend of Jim's," she began. "He's a cousin of
mine, and I've often heard him speak of you."
Jack was already disconcerted by having to dine unwashed and in a tweed
suit; and his embarrassment increased as he guessed at her identity. For
a while he would only talk disjointedly of Jim Loring, varying his
conversation with apologies for his tweed suit; he had been kept late
with a consultation, and, when he began to change in the train, two
women got in at Bletchley. Barbara fastened on the consultation and with
deft questions encouraged him to talk about his work. She had sat next
to so many shy young men at official dinners that she could put any one
at his ease. At her prompting and wholly unconscious of it, Jack
discoursed of the bar in general and his own practice in particular for
three-quarters of the dinner and was agreeably surprised to find her so
intelligent a listener.
"I oughtn't to be here, really," he confided. "I haven't the time or
energy for this kind of thing, but the Croxton's an old love of mine,
I've not missed a Croxton ball since I was at Oxford." He was tempted to
describe his first Croxton ball; but it was a long story, and he
discovered that he had been monopolizing the conversation. "You're a
great dancer, I expect?" he said with the indulgence of early middle
age. "I look forward to watching you to-night."
Lady Barbara began to shake her head and then stopped with closed eyes
and a bitten lip.
"I'm not going," she answered. "I've had such an awful headache all
day."
"I'm so sorry! I don't dance myself, but I hoped you might spare me one
or two for sitting out. If you're _interested_ in law--the bar's by no
means the dry-as-dust life some people think."
Talking to her was so easy that Jack had half determined to ask if he
might have supper with her. Of the rest of the evening he could dispose
comfortably enough by gossiping with old Gervaise, who had been in his
father's regiment, and the other veterans of the hunt. Lady Pentyre
never regarded him as a dancing man in making up her numbers. It would
not be half so easy to find common ground with Sally Farwell or Grace
Pentyre; without meaning to be unsympathetic, he felt that Lady Barbara
might have chosen any other night of the year for her headache.
"It'll be better, when you get there," he prophesied encouragingly and
wondered whether she would mistake his convenience for her own triumph.
So far he had not looked at her, but he now stole a glance out of the
corner of his eye and saw a straight, thin nose, haggard cheeks that had
a pathetic fascination for him and a mouth which drooped wistfully; the
lips were red, her eyes a velvet black, fringed with long black lashes
and shaded with dark rings, changing colour and size like a cat's. The
white, hollow cheeks combined with the dark eyes and red lips to
suggest ravaging dissipation or ill-health; he would never be surprised
to be told that she was consumptive. And he could not understand how any
one so thin could be so attractive.
She caught him watching her and forced a smile.
"I've only been doing rather too much lately, I expect," she said.
"That I can well believe. But after dinner--I say, have you had
_anything_ to eat?"
"I had some melon.... But I'm not very hungry. If I _don't_ go, don't
tell Aunt Kathleen--Lady Knightrider, you know--will you? She gave me
this dress specially and she'd be so awfully disappointed."
"Jolly dress," Jack answered, looking unanalytically at something which
he could only remember afterwards as being generally black--with bits of
silver here and there--and little transparent triangular pendants
hanging down from shoulder to elbow. "I hope you'll be able to come."