before I'm trampled to death."
As they pressed forward to the door of the ball-room, Jack gripped the
banisters to make sure that he was awake. At one moment he was staring
at the broad shoulders of the man in front of him, the next down his
collar; fluttering hands tidied away vagrant wisps of hair and buttoned
gloves. Waves of scent met and blended with the dominant sweetness of
the carnations which wound in clustering chains about the banisters.
Above and before them boomed a far-away voice, announcing names; and
between the shrill clatter of surprised recognitions came the
strangulated music of a frantic band.
"You'll certainly be trampled to death, if you try to get inside," said
Jack. "Let's sit it out somewhere."
She nodded, but, when he had shaken hands with the Duchess of Ross and
was trying to cleave a passage, Barbara was deep in conversation with a
pale, underhung youth; and he felt a second twinge of jealousy. She
talked until the music stopped, while Jack fingered his tie and strove
vainly to keep out of other people's way.
"You know him, don't you?" Barbara asked, when at last the rapt
conversation came to an end. "My cousin, Johnnie Carstairs. He's been
out in Rome for the last three years, but now he's being transferred to
the Foreign Office."
Jack nodded without speaking and continued to look for standing-room.
After his letter it was almost inconceivable that she should not know
what he wanted to tell her; yet she light-heartedly abandoned him for a
cousin whom she could see at any time, talking as though the fellow were
on his way to the scaffold; and their promised moment together was
relegated to the end of the evening; and in this hurly-burly it was
almost too much to expect that they could find an inch of space or a
minute of uninterrupted conversation.
"I can see _one_ chair at the far end, if we can get through to it," he
said.
"The music's starting," she answered doubtfully. "We'd better get back,
I think."
"No, they're playing the same thing. It's only an _encore_."
"Oh, then do let me have it with Johnnie! I haven't seen him for such
ages. You don't mind?"
She had spied a thinning in the crowd and was half-way to the ball-room
door before he had an answer ready. Noting the number of the dance, Jack
went downstairs and tried to be philosophical over a cigar; but his
nerves were unsteady, and, though there was an endless hour and a half
to wait, he had to hurry back every few minutes to make sure that he was
not missing the promise of supper with Barbara. It was irritating to be
so restless--and doubly irritating to feel that others were noticing it.
Jim Loring came into the smoking-room and settled himself for a
comfortable talk, only to find that his companion had run away
unceremoniously in mid-sentence. These people had no sense of the
important; life to them was powder and patches and dance music--less
than that, for they stayed up half the night to smoke furtive cigars and
ostentatiously shut their ears to the dance music. And Barbara was
flitting from one man to another, when their two lives were in the
balance.
In one of his wanderings to and from the ball-room Jack found Deryk
Lancing, ticket in hand, by the cloak-room.
"You off?" he asked with secret relief.
"Yes, this sort of thing bores me stiff. Can I drop you anywhere?"
"Well, I'm booked for supper with Lady Barbara."
"Oh, you might remind her that she cut me."
He moved away, whistling drearily to himself and leaving Jack grateful
for his absence. There was no rivalry to fear from Lancing. Gerald
Deganway came up, swinging his eye-glass distractedly and calling for
his hat.
"My dear, this sort of thing's killing me, positively killing me!" he
simpered. "This is my third ball to-night, and I've got to go to two
more. The Marlings, the Tavitons, this place, the Fenwicks--Oh, no! I've
been to the Fenwicks; I'm almost sure I started there. I shall be such a
wreck to-morrow, a mere bundle of nerves! But Helen Crossleigh will
never forgive me, if I disappoint her. _You_ don't look as if you were
enjoying yourself much. I believe some one who shall be nameless has
_cut_ you! I _believe_ that's it."
He laughed shrilly and dug Jack roguishly in the ribs with the gold knob
of his cane; then set a resplendent hat at a jaunty angle and fluttered
through the hall, murmuring, "Taxi! Oh, some one must get me a taxi! I
shall break down and cry, if I don't get a taxi."
Jack watched him smilingly but with cold rage in his heart. If he had to
wait hour after hour, fretting with nervousness and fuming with
impatience, he might at least have been spared the inane facetiousness
of Deganway.
"A little more of this, and something will happen to my brain," he
growled to Val Arden.
"It is the chatter of the Bandar-Log, aimless, restless, incomplete,"
was the answer.
"'Here we sit in a branchy row,
Thinking of beautiful things we know;
Dreaming of deeds that we mean to do,
All complete, in a minute or two--
Something noble and grand and good,
Won by merely wishing we could.
Now we're going to--never mind,
Brother, thy tail hangs down behind!'"
Jack nodded and tried to smile; but it was no matter for jest when he
remembered that he had himself chosen this time and place for asking
Barbara to marry him.
"One is reminded of our good Lewis Carroll's White Rabbit," Arden
observed, as he watched Deganway's flurried exit. "You play piquet? No?
One would have challenged you to a game. As against bridge, the absence
of vulgar abuse is noteworthy and welcome.... One likes to see the young
people enjoying themselves, but these entertainments are only moderately
amusing. One looked to Lady Lilith in old days to create a diversion,
but your dire friendship has sobered her. Of course, one has one's
bed...."
He sighed and tossed down the ticket for his hat. So many people were
leaving that Jack looked apprehensively at his watch and hurried
upstairs. Only one dance separated him from supper with Barbara; but,
when the music began, she had forgotten her promise, and he had to stand
for a quarter of an hour while she waltzed with Charles Framlingham. As
he went forward to claim her at the end, Summertown advanced from
another corner and forestalled him. There was nothing new in such
behaviour, and Jack realized that he would only look ridiculous, if he
shewed impatience or jealousy; but he felt that he was losing his temper
and that she saw it. The heat of the house tired him, and he was hungry.
"Wait _one_ more, Jack, and then you may take me home," she called out,
as she swept past him.
"Aren't you going to have any supper?"
"Oh, I'd quite forgotten about that."
She passed out of earshot, breathlessly and with shining eyes. If she
remembered that he wanted to talk with her alone, if she guessed what he
was going to say, he could not understand her behaviour; it was very
feminine, but it was also rude and extraordinarily inconsiderate,
exasperating him without in any way intensifying his love; if she
thought that he wanted simply to compete with Deganway in vapidness or
Arden in affectation, well, she was a fool; he had given her the
broadest hints. He caught sight of himself in a strip of looking-glass
and found that he was frowning; without that signal he knew that he had
lost his temper.
"I forget everything, when I'm dancing," was Barbara's nearest approach
to an apology on her return. "I promised to have supper with this child,
too; let's all go down together."
She went on ahead of them before he could say anything; and, as
Summertown shewed no sign of yielding to a prior claimant, Jack pulled
off his gloves with careful deliberation and followed her into the
dining-room. Though he tried to overcome his ill-humour, their minds
were not in tune with his. Barbara prattled unceasingly, Summertown kept
up a monologue of his own, and, when they tried to infect him with their
own lightness of heart, he could only nod or shake his head or smile in
dumb fury that she could play with him in the presence of a spectator.
Women, he decided, must be innately cruel, for, though she was clearly
trying to anger him, it was not mere mischievousness.
"I must have one more dance with this child," she cried at the end of
supper, with a glance of invitation at Summertown.
"Then I don't think I shall wait," said Jack.
The tempo of her dialogue was retarded for half a beat but her
expression was unchanged.
"Oh, but didn't you say you'd got a message for me or something?"
"I can give it you at the Abbey to-morrow."
She looked at him with amused surprise.
"Jack, you're not grumpy with me because I cut your dance--or, at least,
you say so? You may have another, and this child can come later. Let's
go somewhere where it's cooler and where I can have a cigarette."
It was a trifling encounter, but, inasmuch as she saw that he had lost
his temper, Jack felt worsted. He swore that he would keep control of
himself, however much she exasperated him. He was less tired and more
certain of himself than before supper, and for some reason his
nervousness had transferred itself to her. The change was apparent from
the moment that they were quit of Summertown. She became tense in manner
and a little frightened, no longer laughing; and he ceased to fancy that
his hints could have been wasted on her.
"Where are we likely to be undisturbed?" he asked, as they hurried
purposefully up the stairs. "You know this house better than I do."
"Oh--anywhere," she answered rather breathlessly.
CHAPTER NINE
THE JUDGEMENT OF SOLOMON
"The King hailed his keeper, an Arab
As glossy and black as a scarab,
And bade him make sport and at once stir
Up and out of his den the old monster....
One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy
To see the black mane, vast and heapy,
The tail in the air stiff and straining,
The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning....
'How he stands!,' quoth the King....
'We exercise wholesome discretion
'In keeping aloof from his threshold....
'But who's he would prove so fool-hardy?
'Not the best man of Marignan, pardie!'
The sentence no sooner was uttered
Than over the rails a glove fluttered,
Fell close to the lion, and rested:
The dame 'twas, who flung it and jested
With life so, De Lorge had been wooing
For months past; he sat there pursuing
His suit, weighing out with nonchalance
Fine speeches like gold from a balance.
Sound the trumpet, no true knight's a tarrier!
De Lorge made one leap at the barrier,
Walked straight to the glove,--while the lion
Ne'er moved, kept his far-reaching eye on
The palm-tree-edged desert-spring's sapphire,
And the musky oiled skin of the Kaffir,--
Picked it up, and...."
ROBERT BROWNING: "THE GLOVE."
Though he seemed to be leading the way, Barbara urged Jack by suggestion
up a side-staircase and through a billiard-room to a broad _loggia_
overlooking Greenhill Gardens. There were two chairs and a table with
cigarettes and champagne cup; the night air blew chillingly with a scent
of spring leaves, and the music reached them as a reverberation
mingling with the distant traffic of Piccadilly.
"I say, you won't catch cold, will you?" Jack asked.
Barbara smiled to herself. He would never have thought of the wind or of
her, if his match had not been blown out.
"Oh, we shan't be here long enough for that."
Jack lighted the cigarettes and settled himself elaborately in his
chair, with one leg thrown over the other.
"I wanted to talk to you. I think you know what it's about."
She had intended to be thrown off her balance with surprise, but the
bluntness of his opening did not invite ingenuousness.
"I hope I'm not in disgrace," she answered meekly. "You--rather frighten
me, when you're so mysterious. You're not going to say anything
unpleasant?"
"I hope you won't find it unpleasant. Look here, the best thing will be
for me to say what I've got to say, ... and then you.... I mean, if you
interrupt, you'll throw me out of my stride. Barbara, I've told you what
I'm earning; and one naturally hopes that it will increase almost
automatically year by year. As you know, I'm _not_ a Catholic----"
"Jack----"
He flapped one hand at her with nervous impatience, drew furiously at
his cigarette and looked away over the garden and house-tops to the
shadowy Park.
"You mustn't put me off my stroke, Barbara.... These are the two big
obstacles that all the world will see. Well, I can assure you that I
shouldn't be talking to you like this, if you hadn't--in a way--given me
the right to.... At first I couldn't stand you at any price whatsoever.
Then there was a night when I said to myself that I should have to be
careful. It was when you rang me up and invited me to dine with you
alone--after that business in Webster's rooms. At first I was perfectly
furious; you seemed to be taking that luckless girl's death so calmly
and thinking only of the hole _you_ were in. And then--I don't know;
something changed. I began to feel sorry for you, I felt extraordinarily
fond of you; I told myself that I should have to watch out.
Then--something you said--it was when you invited me to one of your own
special parties at the Abbey; I got the feeling that you liked me,
rather. Was I right?"
The question came so suddenly in the middle of his halting narrative
that Barbara started. So far the scene was not developing at all as she
had expected. She could interrupt, confuse, stop him; but there was no
way of bringing in the open-eyed amazement which she had planned; he
seemed to be putting the responsibility on her. And, when he brusquely
told her not to interrupt, she felt strangely disposed to obey him.
"Was I right?" he repeated, turning to look at her.
The customary self-satisfied smile had disappeared, and he was frowning.
Barbara chose to fancy that he must take on the same expression with a
fighting case in court.
"Yes, I quite liked you," she answered. "I always liked you, when you're
not trying to shew me that everything I say and do----"
He cut her short with a quick uplift of one finger.
"Good! Well, when you shewed me that, I took stock and began to look at
things from another point of view. I suggested to you--as fairly and
fully as I could--the chief obstacles; money ... and so forth. If
you--or your people, through you--had thought that insuperable, then
there was nothing more to be said. I felt I must give you the
opportunity of entering a _caveat_. I need hardly say that, knowing you
as I did.... I mean, if you wanted to marry a man, you wouldn't mind if
he were a beggar. Would you?"
The new question again startled her by its abruptness. She had a
misgiving that he was pressing her into a corner.
"Would you?" he repeated; and she half expected to hear him browbeating
her. "It's a simple question.... Yes or no.... I want you to tell the
jury.... Remember you are on your oath. Come now ... yes or no...."
"Of course not. But, Jack----"
He stopped her with another jerk, as she had foreseen.
"I knew that. The next thing was--I suppose 'suitability' is the best
word. I mean we lead different lives, our outlook's different in some
ways. I had to consider what chance of success we should have together.
Well, you sometimes say that I find fault with everything you do; I
think you see now that I've never said a word that your father hasn't
said to you a hundred times. It's what everybody was saying, and I think
everybody's glad to see that you've come round to their point of view.
We all felt that you were too _big_, you know...."
He hesitated and looked away, frowning again as he tried to remember the
sequence of his argument. Barbara shivered instinctively at his
hackneyed, hated phrase, but she was struck silent by the sheer audacity
of his patronizing assumptions.
"Jack----" she began, but he again held up his hand.
"I don't know whether I ought to have gone to your father," he resumed.
"It seemed rather getting hold of the wrong end of the stick to talk to
a woman's father before you've talked to the woman herself. Of course,
one naturally goes to him for his _assent_. I happen to know that your
people, like you, saw what was in the wind, and, as they were good
enough _not_ to pitch me into the street...."
"Jack! Please!"
Barbara leaned to him with her hands appealingly outstretched. In a
little while he would rob her of her last cue. By no abuse of language
could such pleading be associated with passion, but he was quoting her
against herself until it seemed as if she had almost begged him to
marry her.
"I've nearly done," he said, smiling for the first time; then he paused
to collect himself for a concise summary, and she could have laughed
hysterically at the spectacle of a plodding young barrister trying to
argue her into marriage. His voice had never changed in timbre; and, if
he had occasionally hesitated over a word, he had never lost the train
of thought. His chair was as discreetly remote as when he first sat
down, one leg thrown comfortably over the other; and he had not thought
fit to use one whisper of endearment.
"I don't want to hear any more!"
"You must."
"But, Jack, you're not in love with me!"
He laughed good-naturedly, as though he were humouring a child.
"I expect I'm the best judge of that. Well, you admit that I'm not
wholly repellent to you; the difference in religion can be accommodated;
I'm not altogether penniless. I want you to marry me, Babs."
"I can't."
She flung out the words as soon as he gave her a chance of speaking.
With his dogged, relentless attack, it was surprising that he left her
an opportunity of answering; she would hardly have been astonished if he
had taken her firmly by the arm and led her home to announce their
engagement.
"That means you _don't_ care for me?"
There was no sign of perturbation; but he was watching her closely. One
careless word would enable him to demonstrate that she had coquetted
with him for her vanity's sake; his memory was relentless, and she could
not pretend to convince herself that she had behaved merely as if she
"quite liked" him, when a hundred people were gossiping about them....
And he had a passion for demonstrating things; he seemed to be
addressing an invisible jury beyond the pillars of the _loggia_.
"My dear Jack, how could you ever _dream_ of marrying me--thinking of
me, as you do?" she demanded with a breathless attempt to start her
speech and to overwhelm his massive arguments with rhetoric and drama.
"Let's stick to facts. I do dream of it. I want to."
"But you disapprove of everything I do, you think I'm vulgar, cheap. Oh,
you've said it, Jack; you've used those words. They hurt much too much
for me to forget them easily."
"I'm sorry to have hurt you," he interrupted. "But I think you _have_
come round to my way of thinking."
"I'll forget them--I'll try to," she went on, gabbling her speech
murderously. "This is much too important for us to think about our own
wretched little _amour propre_; and, when you say I'm "big," I always
hope it means that I'm generous, forgiving. But, Jack, you despise
me--or you _did_--the woman that you want to be the mother of your
children----"
"You _have_ changed. Otherwise I shouldn't want to marry you."
Barbara walked to the edge of the _loggia_ and stood with her hands on
the stone parapet, looking down on to the shadowy foliage of the
gardens. She could no longer force into service the speech that she had
rehearsed and at any moment she might expect to hear him say--in his
horrible jury voice--"Then am I to understand that you never meant
anything seriously, that this was all an elaborate trick? Was that your
means of vindicating yourself? And do you feel that it has been
successful?" He shewed a disconcerting mastery and a no less
disconcerting restraint; she was not allowed to interrupt, and, when he
had posed a question, he held her to it, waiting silently for an answer
and blocking the loop-holes of irrelevancy.
"Why do you say you can't marry me?"
She turned to find that he was still by the table; he had risen as she
rose, but without following her, without disturbing his deadly,
businesslike composure.
"We should be miserable."
"D'you mean I'm wrong? _Don't_ you care for me?"
"'CARE'? I'm thinking about _love_! You don't know what love _is_! All
the time you've been talking.... So cold and collected.... If you were
in love with me, you'd want to take me in your arms, you'd be
transfigured, there'd be radiance, glory in your eyes, you'd hold me as
if you never meant to let me go!... You--you talked like a leading
article; you never even said you loved me."
"I thought we might take that as read."
"But look at you now! If you loved me, you wouldn't want to keep away;
you wouldn't be able to."
"I've got a certain amount of self-control."
"To resist something that's not a temptation?"
She came slowly back to him and stood gazing up into his face. As on the
night when she had darted from him at the Croxton Ball, her cheeks were
white and hollow, her eyes were nearly black; it was the morbid,
feverish beauty of a consumptive kept alive by force of will. The spray
of orchids rose and fell with her breathing, and he could have caught
and encircled her slender, boyish figure with one arm.
"You're looking _divine_ to-night," he murmured.
"Is _that_ all you've got to say?"
"No! I'm responsible for you at this moment. And, if I were you, I
should think twice before you blaspheme against the Holy Ghost again.
You don't doubt that I love you."
Barbara pressed her hands against her cheeks, throwing her head back and
closing her eyes.
"I wish I could," she whispered. "I was trying to, trying to make you
doubt it so that you wouldn't mind so much. If I could have made you
think that we were just friends.... Jack, you _must_--before it's too
late. You've made a mistake, you're exaggerating everything! Just
because you've hardly met a girl before, you think you're in love with
me. Because I'm pretty, because I amuse you ... I'll be ever so humble!
I'm nothing--nothing but a great friend. If you go away, you'll see it
like that; when you come back, we shall still be friends, but you'll
wonder how you ever imagined you were in love with me. You're not, Jack!
You must tell yourself you're not."
"I don't understand, Barbara."
"I'm trying to help you. I can never marry you; and I want you to see
that you're not losing anything. You don't _really_ want me. Oh, you
_don't_, Jack!"
"Why do you say you can never marry me? _Don't_ you love me?"
Barbara had expected the question for so long that it had lost half its
force before reaching her. Her mind moved quickly, as it had done all
the evening, and she could anticipate Jack's slow change of expression,
his dawning realization and then her punishment. There was no
give-and-take, when he lectured or attacked; no neatness of phrase, no
delicacy of sarcasm or irony, no intellectual joy of battle. He dealt
the bludgeon blows of one who seemed to boast that he was not clever but
tried to be honest. She felt suddenly frightened for her pride and for
herself; and she knew that he would beat her as conscientiously as he
had tried to win her.
"Love isn't everything," she answered.
"I'm waiting to be told what the obstacle is."
In another moment he would have summarized for the third time all
possible objections to the marriage and his own complacent disposal of
them. She could not bear that again.
"Jack, you're not a Catholic," she cried.
"I know. I told you that from the first. But we can arrange that; I'll
do whatever is necessary. It's a nuisance, because I expect your people
loathe the idea of your marrying a heretic as much as mine loathe the
idea of my marrying a Catholic. Fortunately, we can ignore them."
"I could never marry a man who wasn't a Catholic."
She clutched wildly at the promise of escape, and Jack betrayed emotion
for the first time in a gape of astonishment.
"But your own church--if you still call yourself a Catholic--doesn't go
as far as that."
"I don't care. It _should_. It's lying to your soul, if you believe one
thing and let children believe something else that you _know_ to be
false. There's no sympathy of spirit when each thinks the other wrong
and sneers privately.... I _can't_ talk about this, but you _see_ now
why I tried to stop you.... Jack, do take me home! I feel as if I
couldn't stand any more!"