you were charming at dinner, you're kind and good-natured, you can be
fascinating when you like. And then you spoil all you are, all you might
be and do, by tricks unworthy of a chorus-girl. Arranging this meeting
at all to smooth one ruffled feather of your vanity. The sham headache.
Calling me by my Christian name the first time we meet. Things of that
kind. That's not the _grande dame_, Lady Barbara."
She began to collect her gloves and cloak.
"I'm sorry," she said with trembling lips. "You won't be troubled
again."
"If you were sorry, you wouldn't try to be dramatic. Your 'curtain,'
like your repentance, is only the latest form of the Baltimore
crab-flake--a new emotion, a new indulgence.... Look here, I shall be
gone before you're up to-morrow; won't you part friends?"
He crossed the hall with a smile and held out his hand without fear of
a rebuff. She looked at him and had to confess herself at fault. His
heavy overcoat was hanging open, and in his knee-breeches and pink coat
he looked slim and boyish; he was a booby at dinner and a clod at the
ball; outside his own profession he had no more knowledge or ideas than
a schoolboy. Yet she submitted to his criticism almost in silence.
"Won't you part friends?" he repeated.
Lady Barbara could not let him ride off so complacently. She pressed one
hand to her side and groped her way to the table; as she leaned against
it, the friendliness died out of his smile.
"I shouldn't do that again, if I were you," he counselled, reverting to
his slightly nasal drawl; and this time she could have cried without
feigning, for she was tired and humiliated by her consistent failure.
"I _am_ ill," she protested. "Needless to say, you don't believe----"
"My dear Lady Barbara, the worst of taking people in by lies is that
afterwards they refuse to be taken in by the truth. That always means a
dreadful muddle for everybody."
There was no trace of anger in the indolent voice; a lazy, superficial
smile played still over the composed face, but she felt that she had
touched his vanity, which was so petty that he could allow no one even
to chaff him.
"I say, you _are_ revengeful," she cried. "Just because, in the most
harmless way----"
"I don't mind any one making the most complete fool of me--once," he
interrupted. "A very moderate sense of humour carries that off. One
doesn't want to make a habit of it, that's all. And I always think it's
a perilous thing to begin playing with the truth."
"So you'll never believe anything I say?"
"We're so very unlikely to meet that it hardly matters. Won't you shake
hands?"
She held out the tips of her fingers and, as he released them, caught
him by the sleeve of his coat. He noticed that she was biting her lip
and had either improved her acting or lapsed into sincerity.
"Are you like Jim?" she asked. "D'you despise me so much that you refuse
to meet me?"
He looked carelessly at his sleeve, but she refused to understand the
movement of his eyes.
"I should be honoured to meet you. Only I never go anywhere. Lady
Pentyre and Lady Knightrider are about our only two links."
"And I suppose Jim will have me turned out of _their_ houses, when he
comes back. If you knew how I hated having people angry with me.... Will
you meet me, if I don't have any of my objectionable friends, if I'm on
my best behaviour----"
"I don't think that your experience of my society can be so alluring as
all that," he laughed.
"I've never allowed any other man to lecture me as you've done!"
"Ah, but you invited it. You don't want me to come merely for a
continuation of the lecture."
"Perhaps it won't be necessary."
Her voice and eyes softened appealingly--and then became charged with
perplexity, as Jack gently removed her fingers from his sleeve.
"Another new emotion, Lady Barbara?" he laughed. "You won't easily
convince me that I've changed your character in a night."
"You interest me," she murmured, with a puzzled frown.
"Ah, that rang true! But I'm no good at the modern business of
discussing people with themselves. A man like Val Arden does that so
much better.... Lady Barbara, are you _ever_ going to say good-night to
me?"
"In a minute. Will you come to Connie Maitland's Consumptive Hospital
_matinée_ after Christmas? It's at the Olympic, and I'm dancing there. I
_do_ want you to appreciate me!"
Jack reflected for a moment and then smiled lazily.
"I'll come to the _matinée_, if you'll promise _not_ to perform," he
answered. "If I'm not in court.... I know I'm old-fashioned, but I call
it intolerable for you to blacken your eyes and rouge your face and make
sport for any one who cares to spend a guinea or two for the chance of
gaping at you. It cheapens you. I'd as soon put on tights and tie myself
in knots on a strip of carpet outside a public-house."
Barbara leant against the table in helpless amazement.
"You're more of a Philistine than my own father!" she cried.
Jack smiled imperturbably.
"And what would you think if Lord Crawleigh came to that same _matinée_
and gave a display of juggling with billiard-balls?"
"I should die happy," Barbara answered with a gurgle of laughter; then
more seriously, "But why on earth shouldn't he? If he can do it, if the
thing's all right in itself, why should the professionals have the
monopoly? I'm very good."
"No doubt. But, if you had no more idea of dancing than I have, people
would still flock to see Lady Barbara Neave. Now do you understand why I
loathe the whole life you lead?"
When, late that night, she thought over the long succession of snubs and
insults, Barbara chose this as the most wounding. She had recited and
danced, acted and sung on occasions innumerable, always hearing and
feeling that she was meeting the professionals on their own ground;
they themselves hurried to congratulate her, and she fancied vaguely
that she was paying the stage a delicate compliment.
"I've never been told that I hawked my father's position about for
advertisement," she answered quietly.
"It's the result."
He picked up his hat again and again held out his hand.
Lady Barbara locked her fingers behind her back and turned away.
"I don't like the feeling that you'll ring for carbolic as soon as I'm
out of the room!" she said.
"D'you think I should?"
"You wouldn't wait!" she cried, springing round as though she were going
to strike him.
Jack's growing surprise merged in a novel sense of helplessness. The
girl had wholly lost control of herself. Her pupils were dilated, her
cheeks white with anger and fatigue; one hand gripped the back of her
chair, and the other rolled her handkerchief into a tight ball. Not for
the first time that night he felt that a man had only himself to blame
for getting on to such terms with a woman. A lion's cage could be
entered or avoided at will....
Yet he could not escape the feeling that even at the white-heat of
passion she was enjoying her scene.
"Do part friends," he begged. "I shouldn't presume to criticize you, if
I didn't think you worth it. I ask you--as a favour--to come to that
_matinée_ with me. Will you?"
Lady Barbara could not decide whether to try once again to punish him;
she dared not admit that she was daunted, but she was certainly puzzled.
At one moment he insulted her, at another he hoisted her on to a
pinnacle and mounted guard below.
"Would you like me to come?" she asked.
"I should love you to."
"I'll come, if you want me to.... Now I think I _shall_ go to bed. It
would be a tragedy if we had _another_ scene. Good-night, Mr. Waring."
"Good-night, Lady Barbara."
She looked at him steadily before turning to the stairs, still undecided
whether to be angry or intrigued. Jack went into the library, chose
himself a book, undressed slowly, read for ten minutes and dropped
instantly asleep. Lady Barbara stood for many minutes in front of a long
mirror, admiring the black and silver dress and watching the gleam of
her arms and shoulders as she moved. Then with careless impatience she
loosened the dress, leaving it to fall and lie in a tumbled heap by the
fire; shoe followed shoe, stocking followed stocking; her maid would
repair the havoc in the morning, and it was a relief to lapse into
untidiness after so many hours of Jack Waring's orderly influence.
Pulling an armchair to the fire she began to brush her hair. Six hours
before, as her maid had brushed it for her, she had rehearsed the
meeting with Jack up to the point when he apologized for his presumption
in criticizing her. If only she had stopped then! But he was wholly
different from her preconception of him; fully as 'superior'--and with
as little reason--but disappointing as an intellectual antagonist; he
was commonplace in mind and yet had a certain blunt stubbornness of
character, a refusal to be stampeded--together with an indifference
which still piqued her.
And the indifference was broken by a solicitude which he expressed in
terms to earn himself a horse-whipping. Her eyes were blinded by a hot
rush of shame when she remembered her gentle words and appealing voice
at the piano. "_I'm not as bad as you expected?_" Humility was a
pleasant emotion, but a losing card. At their next encounter....
She laid aside the brush and sat staring into the fire. The room grew
gradually colder, but she did not notice it. Only when her ears caught
the sound of subdued voices on the stairs did she rouse with a shiver
and jump into bed.
CHAPTER FIVE
NOBODY'S FAULT
"Cock the gun that is not loaded, cook the frozen dynamite...."
RUDYARD KIPLING: "ET DONA FERENTES."
As a matter of form and to wash her hands of personal responsibility,
Lady Pentyre sent next morning for the local doctor. His advice--to take
things quietly for a few days--enabled Lady Barbara to keep her promise
to Jack with a good conscience. "_They say that I have been doing too
much_," she told Sir Adolf Erckmann, "_so I'm afraid I shan't be able to
come to your party on Thursday...._" On the same plea she wrote to Lady
Maitland, promising to attend the _matinée_ but regretting her inability
to play an active part. When she had taught Jack to appreciate her, it
would be time enough to shew him that her friendship was adequate
guarantee for her friends.
On returning to London she angled without success for a first-hand
report on him. To her earlier half-dozen words of disparagement Sonia
Dainton added a break-up price for the family. The Surinam cable
precluded consultation of Amy Loring, and Phyllis Knightrider could only
affirm that Jack went every year to Raglan for a few days' fishing--when
she was away and there was none but men present.
"I believe he's hopeless with a mixed party," she went on. "If you were
told to bring a man anywhere, you'd never dream of asking _him_."
"Well, I think that's better than being the first man that everybody
thinks of," Barbara answered. "God created Gerry Deganway to be the
eternal fourteenth at dinner."
"Val Arden once said that God invented bridge so that Jack Waring might
say he didn't play it," Phyllis went on. "That sums him up."
Lady Barbara was wondering whether the unintelligent appreciation of
such a man was worth having, when Jack once more wantonly put himself in
the wrong. After writing to remind her of the day and time of the
_matinée_, he had gone about his business. She mislaid the letter and
telephoned to his chambers to find out where she was to meet him. An
unwelcoming Cockney voice answered that Mr. Waring was engaged and
invited her to leave a message.
"I won't keep him a moment," answered Lady Barbara.
"Mr. Waring doesn't like being called to the 'phone when he's got a
consultation on."
She hardly knew whether to be angrier with Jack for his hide-bound likes
and dislikes or with the officious clerk for his interference.
"Will you be good enough to say that Lady Barbara Neave wants to speak
to him?" she said in a voice of authority.
"I'll see," the clerk mumbled reluctantly. "Hold on, please."
She was not accustomed to being kept waiting, and Jack or the clerk kept
her waiting so long that the Exchange enquired once whether she had
finished and then cut short the call. She hung up the receiver and
waited for the connection to be re-established. There was no sound for
five minutes; they did not think it worth while to remember her
existence or to recall that she had expressed a wish to speak to Mr.
Waring, that she had been ordered to wait.... Taking down the receiver,
she repeated the number. The same unwelcoming Cockney voice greeted her.
"I was trying to speak to Mr. Waring," she explained, "but I was cut
off."
"Mr. Waring's ingiged--Oh, were you the lidy who just rang up? Mr.
Waring says, Would you be kind enough to leave a message?"
Half an hour earlier Lady Barbara had been undecided whether to
telephone herself or to arrange the meeting through her maid. Now she
felt that, whatever it might cost her, she must speak to Jack without
intermediaries. And, if he were engaged in a consultation (or whatever
the absurd thing was called), so much the better.
"No, I don't want to leave a message," she answered. "I want to speak to
him privately."
The new attack seemed only to consolidate the hateful clerk's already
strong position.
"Oh, I thought it might be business. Mr. Waring never speaks to any one
privately on the 'phone."
"Will you kindly ask him to make an exception, then?"
"I'm afride it's no good," answered the clerk with undisguised boredom.
"And Mr. Waring won't be best pleased, if I go in agine."
While Jack should pay for his pleasure to the uttermost farthing, it was
undignified to prolong an altercation with a Cockney voice, especially
as she was gaining nothing.
"Mr. Waring asked me to go to the theatre with him. Will he kindly let
me know when and where I'm to meet him?"
The words were repeated slowly, as the message was written down.
"When-and-where-you're to meet him. Very good. If you'll give me your
number, I'll find out and 'phone you as soon as the consultation's
over."
"But I want to know now! I've got arrangements of my own to make!"
It was no longer the deliberate high voice of authority. Grievance was
merging in anger.
"I don't like to go in agine.... But he can't be long now. If you'll
give me your number...."
The Cockney voice suggested a mean, back-bent creature with bitten nails
and cunning eyes, a Uriah Heep, cringing but sinister. She did not care
for him to know that she had lost her temper; only this and the need to
punish Jack for his latest indignity kept her from refusing to accompany
him to the theatre.
"Oh, ask him to write," she answered with attempted carelessness.
As she ceased speaking, her maid came in to say that Mr. Webster had
called. They had not met since their quarrel on the afternoon of Lady
Knightrider's dance; and she was secretly relieved at the hardiness of
his ill-humour, for of all men he least repaid the discredit which she
earned by being seen in his company. At best he was a good-natured,
plastic slave with a ubiquitous car and a knack of securing seats in
theatres and tables in restaurants when others failed; at worst he was
an enigmatic sensualist, who attracted her because he privately
frightened her. They met first on the common ground of an interest in
spiritualism, later as companions in misfortune; Sonia Dainton alleged
that he was always inviting chorus-girls to his rooms and giving them
too much to drink for the amusement of hearing what they would say; some
one else added that he smoked opium, and an agreeable air of mystery
surrounded an otherwise disagreeable young man. After their last quarrel
Lady Barbara had decided to give him up; and she only wavered now
because she wanted a whipping-boy and felt that she was in some way
scoring a point against Jack by receiving him.
"I'll see him--up here," she told her maid.
Her face was still flushed from the telephone altercation, and she
posed herself carefully, backing the window, but with the curtains
thrown to their widest extent, so that Webster's oedematous eyelids
blinked as he crossed the room and held out a plump white hand.
"New car d'livered t'day," he wheezed. The habit, induced by
intemperance, of slurring the major parts of speech and omitting the
minor survived even in his sober diction. "'Wondered if you'd care come
spin."
"Oh? _I_ was wondering whether you'd been ill."
"Ill?" He shook his head and coughed. "No. Only too many cigarettes.
Care come?"
"Not till you've apologized for your behaviour to me, Mr. Webster."
"Haven't least idea what mean, but I'll apologize. Always ready
apologize."
As a whipping-boy he was too spiritless to be satisfying, and Lady
Barbara addressed herself to the invitation. Since the accident and the
inquest she had not embarked on any expeditions with him. Indeed, on the
evening before she went into court, she had deliberately broken a prized
Venetian vase and whispered to herself--or any one who was
listening--that, if she emerged without discredit, she would never go
with him again. Nemesis had accepted the vase and played false on the
bargain. But, while she might fairly feel herself released from her
promise, she was oppressed by premonition that disaster would overtake
her if she risked her luck again with Webster.
"Where are you going to? I'm waiting for a telephone message," she
answered.
At that moment the bell rang; and, as she picked up the receiver, she
felt guilty towards Jack Waring; in part she had undertaken to drop her
"objectionable friends," in part she felt that, if he were with her, he
would stop her going.... But his clerk had been unpardonable....
Gaymer's voice invited her to dine and go to a theatre with him. She
accepted and impatiently replaced the receiver.
"I'll come for a short time," she answered and felt that she was defying
Jack. "I must be back for tea, though."
"Have tea my place. Madame Hilary coming. Know who mean? Perfect wonder
that woman. Doesn't use medium; makes you, me, any one medium; throws
you in trance, and _you_ do talking."
The _séance_ was more alluring than the drive, for Madame Hilary had
been famous in necromantic society for more than a month. Lady Barbara
had been generally forbidden by her parents to dabble in black magic,
and a special warning had been issued against Madame Hilary, whose
methods had made her notorious, if not as a new witch of Endor, at least
as an accomplished blackmailer.
"Is she good about the future?" Lady Barbara asked. "I don't want to be
told that I've lived in distant lands, sometimes among the palms,
sometimes in sight of the snows. I know that better than she does."
"_She_ don't tell you anything," Webster explained. "_You_ do all the
talking, and we listen. Better hear some one else first; people
sometimes more candid than they like--afterwards."
He chuckled maliciously and followed her downstairs. For an hour they
drove round Richmond Park, and, as the light began to fail, he turned
back to London and brought her to his flat by the Savoy in time for tea.
The drowsy joy of rapid movement through the air had calmed her nerves
and blown away her ill-humour; she was too tranquil to quarrel even with
Jack Waring.
As she entered the smoking-room of the flat, the early premonition of
disaster returned. It was an unwholesome place after Richmond Park on a
December day.... Webster himself, white-faced and orientally impassive,
in a frame of yellow down cushions and a heavy atmosphere of burning
cedar-wood, was a sinister mystery-monger and purveyor of forbidden
fruit. She came to him for excitements and experiences which the world
conspired to keep her from obtaining elsewhere. An unwholesome man....
If anything happened, she had only herself to blame.... Yet nothing
could happen, unless the new clairvoyant told her something horrid about
the future.... She was not going to run away from a clairvoyant....
The warm rooms, thickly curtained and heavy with scented smoke, were
already half-full. Sonia Dainton and Jack Summertown were on either side
of the club fender with cigarettes in their mouths; the Baroness
Kohnstadt, with something of her brother Sir Adolf Erckmann's build and
colouring and with all of his guttural intonation, was impressively
describing Madame Hilary's powers; Lord Pennington, with a tumbler of
brown brandy and soda in one hand, swayed insecurely on one arm of a
chair and discharged amorous darts at a weak-mouthed girl with big eyes
and a high colour, who giggled in apprehensive appreciation; on the
other sat Sir Adolf, bald, bearded and fleshly, competing with
Pennington for her attention. Involuntarily Lady Barbara paused in the
door-way. If Jack Waring heard that she had been to Webster's rooms on
such an errand in such company.... They were not worth it....
"Hullo, Babs!" "Babs darling!" "Liddle Barbara!" "How ripping!"
The usual chorus of welcome greeted her and mounted to her head. Sonia
Dainton was kissing her extravagantly. Sir Adolf lurched forward to
praise her looks and dress, Lord Pennington to repeat and laugh at any
phrase that she let fall. Doing nothing, saying little, simply by being
herself, she dominated them until the door opened a second time and a
gaunt woman in a clinging black dress and hat like an embossed shield
rustled into the room. Her great height and noiseless movements
diverted attention from Lady Barbara; she threw up her veil with a
clockwork gesture as though she were ripping it from her face. Webster
advanced with a bow and was preparing to introduce her, when she stopped
him with a second mechanical fling of the hand.
"Ah, no! You tell me who they are and then you say, 'Madame Hilary is an
impostor; she knew a little before--and she make up the rest.' Is it not
so? For an exhibition I like better to know nothing." Her eyes flashed,
as she looked round on one face after another. "You, Mr. Webster, I
know--your name, at least--but these others I know not at all. It is
well. And I like better for you not to tell me. But you are all waiting!
While I drink this tea, you shall decide who first is to make trial."
She sat down, unembarrassed by the stealthy examination to which she was
being subjected on all sides, and, unpinning her veil, shewed a narrow,
lined face with sunken cheeks, an aquiline nose and eyes that were
lack-lustre after their initial flash. Too well-bred to seem bored, she
displayed at least a want of interest which chilled the spirits of the
party and left her ascendant. Webster was flustered at having to
stage-manage the _séance_; for Sir Adolf was so diffident and Sonia so
unsympathetic that he had difficulty in finding volunteers. Lady Barbara
at once offered herself, but seemed impressed by his whispered warning
that she had better first see what surprising exhibitions people
sometimes made of themselves.
"Here, I'll start the bidding," cried Jack Summertown, jumping up from
the fender. "Don't pinch my simulation-gold watch, any one. Only fair to
warn you, ma'am," he went on to Madame Hilary, "that I think all this
jolly old spiritualism is a fake. What do I have to do? And may I finish
my goodish cork-tipped Turkish Regie?"
Madame Hilary, suddenly appreciating that she was being addressed,
seemed to awake and assume new vitality. Shewing neither offence nor
amusement at his scepticism, she motioned Summertown to a chair and drew
her own opposite to it.
"Yes, go on smoking. It does not matter." She looked round the room with
another clockwork movement, switched on a reading-lamp, so that the
light shone straight into her own face, and then plunged the rest of the
room in darkness. "All that is needed is for you to look at me, into my
eyes. Never take your eyes off mine. I like better for you not to try,
not to will yourself. I shall ask you questions, and you will answer
them. Questions about the past. I like better for you not to be
sympathetic. Try _not_ to answer my questions. And, when I have
persuaded you to answer them, I shall ask you more questions--about the
future. And you will answer them, too. And afterwards I will tell you
what you have said. So you will come to know the future."