heard, and the car moved slowly towards her. At the corner of the
terrace the head-lights swung dazzlingly on to her, and she threw up her
arm as though they would blind her. Some one began to sing, "Dixie! All
aboard for Dixie!" A voice murmured drowsily, "Dry up! I want to go to
sleep." The gears changed with a grind; Barbara looked up to see a
single red tail-light.
"Jack! Before you go! I want to speak to you!"
She was calling with all her strength now, but the beat of the engine
drowned her voice.
"Jack! _Please_, Jack!"
She hurried down the stone steps at the end of the terrace and ran a few
paces along the drive, repeating his name with a sob and stretching out
her arms to the vanishing pin-point of red light.
George was still standing in the door-way when she returned at a limp.
For a moment she was afraid to speak lest she began to cry.
"I've got a stone in my shoe," she announced at length.
He smiled and offered her his arm.
"You're looking tired, Barbara. Have you had any supper?"
Only the kind and well-intentioned could ask innocent questions which
hurt like the thrust of a needle under a finger-nail. At one time it
seemed as though she would never escape from the banqueting-hall.
"I've had supper, thanks," she answered, resting one hand on his
shoulder, as she felt for the stone in her shoe. Then she remembered a
similar act and attitude, when she and Jack stood breathless at the end
of the Croxton village street on the night of their first meeting; and
she limped to a chair. "It's dreadful to see all those boys going off. I
feel that _some_ of them will never come back."
"But we aren't even at war yet," George protested.
"Everybody seems to think we soon shall be. Didn't I hear Jack Waring
talking to you about trying to get a commission?"
"Well, he wants to be prepared, of course. It's a military family, you
see."
They walked upstairs together and stood in the doorway of the
ball-room. Colonel Farwell's car had come and gone very unobtrusively;
no one seemed to miss the absentees, and Loring and Mayhew, O'Rane and
Arden were holding the party together with tireless energy and zest. At
three o'clock Lady Knightrider and those who had long distances to cover
reluctantly sent for their cars, but the house-party and its near
neighbours danced indefatigably. At sunrise the curtains were flung
aside and the lights turned out; the last of many suppers was eaten on
the terrace at half-past four, and at five O'Rane organized a slow
march-past of the remaining cars in honour of Loring and Violet who
stood on the top of the steps, bowing with weary joyousness their
acknowledgement of the last toast.
Barbara had been compelled at first to do her share of dancing, but,
when the band escaped to catch an early train back to London, she took
possession of the piano. It was again horribly like that first night at
Croxton, when Jack sat in some embarrassment by her side on the dais;
but at least she was not expected to talk or to pretend that she was
enjoying herself. When Arden joined her, she resigned the piano to him
and slipped upstairs to her room. She was down again a moment later,
trying to decide whether it was more intolerable to be with others or
alone. Her room was too tranquil and cool; she had been so happy, as she
dressed, so determined to enjoy herself;--and she had nothing on her
mind. Through the open window she heard Arden's hand and voice at the
piano, punctuated by burst of cheering from the strip of drive under the
terrace. The engines of the cars thrashed and beat, then grew calm and
jerked into sound again as one after another shot forward; Loring and
Violet were hoarse but inexhaustibly happy, and, as Barbara ran
downstairs, she told herself that she too wanted to congratulate them
again; in their present state they were too rare to be wasted.
"What's the next item, Jim?" panted O'Rane, as she came on to the
terrace. His hair was disordered, his shirt and collar crumpled and his
arms full of the champagne glasses which the departing guests had tossed
to him after the final toast. But he was ready to go through the night's
revelry from the beginning. "I'll race you to the river and back!"
"My little man, I assure you that you will do no such thing," Loring
answered. "If any one wants to dance any more, you can play to them; if
any one wants anything more to eat and drink, you can supply their
wants. _I_ think it's high time we were all in bed. _You're_ certainly
going indoors before you catch cold," he said to Violet. "And you,
Sally. And you, Babs."
He rounded them up until Barbara alone remained behind with the chill
wind of early morning beating on her bare shoulders and chest and
blowing unchecked through her gossamer clothes. After the earlier
insufferable heat, this cold air with its burden of dew and
night-scented stock wrapped itself round her body like a bandage laid on
burning flesh. It purified, too, like a mountain torrent of melting snow
pouring over her arms and breast. Some girl in a book--it was by
Gissing, but she could not remember names to-night--had bathed naked in
the sea by moonlight--to cleanse her spirit because she had suffered men
to touch her body; this wind, as yet unwarmed by the orange sun of dawn,
served her in place of the kindly sea....
"If you _want_ triple pneumonia, Babs, that's the way to get it," said
Loring.
His voice suggested a new train of thought, and she pursued it without
answering. Some young wife in a book--it was by Balzac, but she could
not remember names to-night--broke her heart because she fancied that
her husband had ceased to love her; no longer caring for life, she
worked herself into a violent sweat and stood in the dew by the brink of
a pond until she had given herself consumption.... But to take refuge in
suicide was to shew that you were unfit to have been born, that you were
unequal to life; this, even this night of horror, was a thing to be
mastered; Barbara luxuriated in life as a thing to be dominated and
enchained like a destroying flood or fire....
"It's such a wonderful morning, Jim," she said, as she turned.
"Yes, but, as we've managed to get through one whole night without
quarrelling, don't catch a chill at the end and put the blame on me. I
thought, all things considered, that it went off very well."
"I suppose so.... Jim, when I'm responsible for a thing, I never put the
blame on other people. You can't deny me courage."
"My dear girl, I can't remember a single occasion on which you've taken
the blame for anything. Perhaps you'll reply that you never _were_ to
blame for anything, and we might argue about that for a very long time.
Come to bed; you're shivering."
She walked with him into the house and looked wonderingly at the clock,
while he barred the door behind them. Six! It seemed hardly worth while
going to bed....
"Are you tired, Jim? Too tired to smoke a cigarette and listen to me
blaming myself?"
Loring's heart seemed to sink. He had seen her with Jack and he had
listened to an eager but unconvincing story designed to shew that, in
Jack's eyes, it made all the difference in the world whether he motored
to Gloucester and arrived in London in time for breakfast or breakfasted
at the Castle or in Raglan and returned to London by a morning train.
"I'll listen--with pleasure," he said.
Barbara looked for a comfortable seat and led the way to a sofa in the
smoking-room.
"I believe Jack Waring has discussed me with you?" she began.
"I think he's told me everything that was to be told," answered Loring.
"Including to-night?" It was an idle question, for Jim would have been
more Rhadamanthine if Jack had described the last disillusionment.
"Well, you know he asked me to marry him; and I refused, because he
wasn't a Catholic. He _is_ a Catholic now--in name; he asked me again
to-night, and I refused again."
"Why?"
Men preserved a rare sex-loyalty. Loring's tone was Jack's; his face was
setting with the same rigidity, and he would shew as little mercy.
"I didn't feel I was in love with him."
"Were you ever in love with him? A good many people thought you were."
Barbara pondered deeply over her answer.
"I could never be in love with any one who wasn't gentle with me....
I--rather admired Jack, because he was clean and honest and had the
courage to say things that I'd have hit another man for----"
"But you were afraid of him," Loring murmured. "Go on! You wanted to
shew him how wrong he was----"
"I owed it to myself to shew him what I was _really_ like, not what the
halfpenny press thinks I am. He fell in love; and then, when he asked me
to marry him, I lost my head----"
"But you never told him that you weren't in love with him," Loring
interrupted again.
Barbara's eyes fell.
"I'd lost my nerve as well as my head," she sighed. "He'd have thought
so much worse of me. I didn't see him after that until to-night; I
hoped it was all over. I told him again that I couldn't marry him and
then I told him the truth--that I wasn't in love with him. And
then--then he saw everything.... Jim, I'm not asking for mercy from him
or you or any one; I'm telling you the truth and I want to be judged on
that. Until to-night I honestly didn't know how bad it was, I didn't
know that I was anything more than some one who attracted him----"
"You accursed women never do!" Loring broke in. "Well, go on! You played
with him and led him on and checked him till he proposed--men,
hard-headed men who aren't drunk, don't propose when they're merely
'attracted'--he proposed, and you told him an extremely ingenious lie
which I should have thought your extravagant superstition might have
kept you from telling. _Then!_ Then, when he pays you the compliment of
thinking you a woman of honour, you admit it's a lie. Go on, Barbara!"
She shook her head slowly and leaned wearily forward, resting her chin
on her hand.
"It's no good, Jim. If any one hits you often enough in the same place,
you cease to feel. You want to hurt me--I don't wonder!--but you can't;
I'm too bruised. No, _he_ said hardly anything. It wasn't necessary to
_say_ anything; he knew...."
Loring strode to the table, picked up a cigarette and flung it back into
the box. He found that Barbara was watching him with wonder in her eyes
and waited till his indignation was under control.
"And so you got a new emotion," he sneered. "Two, in fact. You played
cat and mouse with a man's happiness; and then you had the morbid
pleasure of letting yourself be flayed alive.... I should think it will
be your last emotion for some time."
"As you like, Jim. But it'll be easier if I tell you everything and
_then_ let you criticize.... Jack hardly said a word. It was sinking
in; and it was sinking in with me, too. I'm not a coward, Jim----"
"Oh, leave your vile little posturings out!"
"I'm not a coward," she repeated patiently. "Standing out there a moment
ago, I thought how _easy_ it would be to get pneumonia and die and end
everything--_Don't_ say 'another emotion'! A coward _would_ have. But
I'd decided to accept the consequences. I was on the point of telling
Jack he could marry me, if he wanted to, when that car came and
everybody started running about.... I tried to catch him before he left,
I ran after the car.... That's all, Jim."
Looking at her, he saw that she was indeed too much bruised to feel.
"And now?" he asked.
Barbara shook her head hopelessly and stared across the room out of the
window.
"He can do what he likes with me. He can marry me and beat me. He can
sit--dear God! he can sit as he sat to-night, looking at me as though I
were a bundle of rags and sores that had thrown its arms round him. He
can tell people.... Or he can keep me to himself and sneer and torture
me when he's in the mood. He can take me and break my heart and fling me
away after a week, if he likes. There's nothing, nothing I won't do!"
Her vehemence startled him for a moment, but her tone and phrasing were
too rhetorical to be convincing.
"I admire your capacity for getting the last ounce even out of
repentance," Loring murmured.
For a moment Barbara did not seem to have heard him; then she got up and
walked out of the smoking-room and across the hall to a studded oak
door. She rattled the handle for a moment and then came back.
"Where's the key of the chapel?" she demanded. "You believe in
something, I suppose? And I suppose you admit that even I would stop
short of _some_ things. Give me the key! I'll swear to you on the image
of the Blessed Virgin----"
"I don't think I should dip any deeper into that kind of thing if I were
you."
"I'll swear by anything! You see those two matches? That's the sign of
the Cross. I swear by the Cross that I'll offer myself to Jack! And he
can do what he likes with me."
"Wouldn't it be rather a waste of breath to talk like this to Jack?"
"You mean I'm not in earnest? I swear to you, Jim, that I'll _beg_ him
to marry me, if he still wants to."
The clock struck half-past six, and Loring shivered.
"I wish to God you'd died before you ever met him!" he muttered. "What
the devil's the good of telling me all this?"
"If I hadn't told you, nobody'd have known. _Jack_ wouldn't tell. I
wanted to commit myself before I had time to go back. Now I'll give the
whole of my life trying to make him happy, to atoning...."
Loring caught her wrists and gripped them.
"Leave him alone!" he cried. "It would be suicide if you married after
this."
"If he wants me...." Barbara began again. "Jim, can't you see that I'm
trying to save my soul? He can have everything. I'm quite young, and he
can have all my youth and life, my looks, anything that I've got,
anything that I am. He can take it all--or he can fling it all back at
me."
She stretched out her hands to him. Loring pulled her to her feet and
led her to the door.
"Leave him alone!" he repeated roughly.
Barbara left by the ten o'clock train, while the rest of the house-party
was still in bed. Her maid was well used to sudden changes of plan, but
she ventured to point out that the family was at the Abbey and that the
house in Berkeley Square was closed.
"Well, it will have to be opened, then," said Barbara.
She had not gone to bed, and there were dark rings round her eyes; but
she was clear-headed and determined. Her maid tried to tempt her with
breakfast before their long drive, but Barbara did not want to eat until
she had seen Jack. In the train she could hardly keep her eyes open;
but, until she had seen Jack, she did not want to sleep. Every one
seemed to be hurrying to London, as though there would be later news of
the war there; and she heard a far away babble of what Lichnowski had
said, what Kuhlmann had proposed for localizing the war.... But she was
wondering only what Jack was about. The luncheon-car attendant slid open
the door, but she shook her head at him; the idea of food nauseated her,
and she was glad to have the compartment to herself for half an hour.
When her fellow-travellers returned, they found her with her head
against the window and her arms limply by her side. One of them hurried
away for water, and, when she shivered and opened her eyes, some one had
laid her flat on the seat, and a voice--the first kind voice that she
had heard for days--was saying:
"Carriage a bit hot for you? Or perhaps you're not a good traveller. I'm
a doctor--or used to be. Just going up to see if the War Office wants
volunteers in case of war. I saw you didn't come along to lunch; when
did you last have anything to eat?"
"I've really forgotten," Barbara answered.
"I thought so. Well, a cup of coffee and a biscuit, eh? And I'll try to
get you a little more room."
He whispered to the men who were standing in the corridor and
distributed them in the other compartments until he and Barbara were
alone. After the coffee she felt less sick and from Swindon to London
she was able to get some sleep. At Paddington the doctor wanted to take
her home, but she protested that her maid could do all that was
necessary, and he left her with an urgent recommendation to bed.
Barbara thanked him for all his kindness and ordered two taxis. One took
the maid and the luggage to Berkeley Square; in the other she drove to
the County Club and enquired bravely for Mr. Waring. The porter replied
that he had left the club immediately after luncheon, and she made her
way to the Temple. Hitherto she had not dreamed that there would be any
difficulty in finding him; but Middle Temple Lane, narrow, cold and
almost empty, daunted her. It was the first of August, and the rows of
names painted at the foot of each staircase looked ownerless and
impersonal as grave-yard head-stones in the general desolation. As she
pattered up two flights of stone steps to Jack's chambers, the giddiness
which had overtaken her in the train returned and stopped her short with
a pain in her side. The walls were advancing and retiring, the banisters
swayed and the floor of the landing heaved gently like a pitching boat.
When she felt steadier, she knocked at the door and waited patiently
until she heard feet shuffling in the distance. A pink-faced elderly man
informed her that Mr. Waring had gone away for the Long Vacation; he
spoke with a strong Cockney accent, and Barbara decided that he must be
the clerk with whom she had contended by telephone and whom she had
imagined to be obsequious and yet sinister, with red eyes, short hair
and bitten nails, a second Uriah Heep.
"Do you know where I can find him?" she asked.
"The first address he give me was at Raglan----"
"Ah, but he came back to London last night. He's not been here to-day?"
"No, miss."
"Do you know his address in Hampshire? Do you think you could telephone
to find out whether he's there?"
The clerk scratched his head and referred to a list of numbers pinned in
the passage by the telephone. Barbara had disturbed his afternoon sleep,
but she was an uncommonly pretty young woman, some one to relieve the
monotony of the moribund chambers; expensively dressed, too, and one who
would liberally repay a little trouble. His curiosity was whetted by her
coming to see young Waring; still waters ran deep....
"If you'll come in and sit down, miss," he suggested hospitably. "What
nime shall I siy?"
"Lady Barbara Neave. You needn't--I mean, I don't want to speak to him.
It's just the address."
"I see. Had the pleasure o' talking to you once before on the 'phone, my
lidy."
"Ah, yes."
Barbara walked into a shabby room with two scarred writing tables, a
threadbare carpet and four hard little armchairs. One wall was covered
by a book-case filled with Law Reports, old, discoloured volumes of the
"Annual Practice" and standard works on Pleading, Criminal Law and
Procedure, Real Property and the like. A few pounds would have freshened
the dingy room out of recognition and perhaps even given it a personal
note, but Jack was insensible to beauty and ugliness alike; he noticed
the peeling yellow wall-paper as little as he noticed the intoxicating
afternoon sun on the river; he had nothing in common with her.... She
remembered the promise which she had made to herself and began to look
at the papers on his table--long, white bundles tied with pink tape and
engrossed with old-fashioned lettering which she could hardly read.
These must be briefs, set out to look imposing, for many were grey with
dust. There was an unexplained red sack, embroidered with his initials
and fastened with a red cord; and a small black box with his name in
white letters, containing an absurd wig. This was his life, a life which
absorbed him....
Outside in the passage the clerk began a sing-song monologue.
"Trunks, miss, please. Trunks, if--_you_--please. Is that Trunks? I want
Lashmar four seven. This is Holborn double four nine double-two. No!
_Nine!_ Double-four nine double-two. Thank you." He shuffled into the
room and smiled familiarly at Barbara. "They'll call me when I'm
through. Now may I get you a cup of tea, me lidy?"
Barbara thanked him, but refused the tea. The Cockney accent was
intensified when he spoke on the telephone, and it reminded her once
again of the winter afternoon when she had tried to drag Jack away from
a consultation, the afternoon of her visit to Webster's flat. If she had
stopped then, there would now be nothing to regret or to repair. Her
fatal step was to invite him to dinner that night merely because she
wanted the support of some one solid and well-balanced. Since that day
she had never been able to decide how she felt towards him; she had been
unable to tell Loring a few hours before. If, instead of always
frightening her, he could have shewn a little gentleness.... George
Oakleigh, to whom she was nothing, always helped her into a cloak as
though she were the most fragile and precious thing in the world; and
she became rebellious and reckless, when any one was harsh to her. Jack
would order her home after a ball like a drill-sergeant; George came up
two minutes later and said, "I wonder whether you'll let me take you
home? You're looking so white and tired." It was more than a difference
of manner. Jack never realized that a girl could be hungry for
tenderness, but love was nothing without affection.... And love was
always easier to give than affection.
The telephone rang, and the clerk reported that Mr. Waring was not in
Hampshire nor expected there for nearly another week. As Barbara walked
downstairs and drove home, she tried to think of any means of getting
into touch with him which her tired brain had not already suggested. At
worst she could always write, but she wanted to throw her pride at his
feet to be trampled and bruised, she wanted to look him in the eyes
without flinching or begging for mercy....
In the train it seemed as if the whole world were coming to London, but
London was now empty of every one that she wanted to see. Summertown,
who might have useful information, could not be found in his rooms or in
barracks; Framlingham was "expected back any minute." She called a
second time at the County Club, but Jack had not returned. And, after
dining by herself in her bare, half-resurrected bedroom, she telephoned
with carefully disguised voice. At the third failure, she abandoned his
club; to welcome humiliation from Jack was hardly the same thing as to
accept it from hall-porters and page-boys....
Though she was a night's sleep in arrears, she could not lie still in
bed. An old French clock with a squeaking, high note that reminded her
absurdly of Jack's clerk, struck midnight, one and two. She turned on
the light and reached for her writing-case.
"_I don't apologize, because no apology is adequate; I don't seek
forgiveness, for, though I honour and admire and wonder at you and your
devotion to some one who never deserved a thousandth part of it, I don't
believe any one has the greatness of soul to forgive me. I am writing to
say that, if you still want me, I will do whatever you ask. I can never
make amends. But I will try with all my heart and soul and mind and
strength._
BARBARA."
She threw the letter into the writing-case and turned the key. A second
sleepless night followed the first, but she was buoyed up by excitement
and the sense of a purpose to fulfil. The Sunday papers dragged war from
the middle-distance into the foreground, and, as she walked in a parched
and unfamiliar Park before luncheon, she felt that Jim would not be able
to keep away from London much longer. On Monday morning she heard that
he was returning next day, and on Tuesday afternoon she called at Loring
House.
"Jim, I don't care what you think of me, but you've got to help me," she
began.
He saw a pinched face lit by feverishly bright eyes, whose pupils
contracted and dilated as he looked into them.
"I'm afraid this has rather come home to roost, Babs," he said gently.
"I'm sorry; honestly, I am."
She was so broken-spirited that he found himself drawing her to him and
kissing her forehead. At the touch of his lips her muscles relaxed until
he was supporting her weight with one arm.
"Ah, kiss my eyes, Jim!" she whispered. "They're aching so terribly! I
want to sleep; and I'm haunted.... What am I to do? I can't find him!"
"I shouldn't try to. Babs, you know Jack always had the pride of the
devil; he's probably very sore. And this is the first time that a woman
has played any kind of trick on him; I don't suppose it'll be the last,
but you can be sure that he feels that the bottom's been knocked out the
universe."
"But I want to help him! If I _can_ give him anything----"
"He doesn't want you now."
"After doing what he did? Jim, if I'd loved a man as he loved me, I'd do
anything to get him, to get him back! There'd be nothing left in life
without him!"