substitute. Leave it alone, Babs. I must run away now, because I want to
talk to the War Office about taking a commission, if war breaks out.
Jack's doing the same.... By the way, I'm standing by to have House of
Steynes and the Castle and the place at Market Harborough turned into
hospitals. If you want something to do, you can apply to be taken on as
a nurse. In six months from now, when the war's over and forgotten,
it'll be time enough to move. I begged Jack to go slow and think the
thing out, because--frankly, Babs--I didn't know what you were up to;
and I beg you to think and go on thinking and to wait till you're cool.
You _hardly_ know what _you're_ doing now; and, if I know anything of
men, Jack's a raving lunatic."
He moved haltingly to the door. Barbara followed with bent head.
"And you want me to leave him like that?"
"You can't mend things at present--if ever."
"And in the meantime he may take a commission and go out----"
"And be killed," said Loring, as she hesitated. "Let's face it."
"And be killed," she replied. "Jim, I can't sit with my hands folded....
What d'you think Judas Iscariot felt like during the Crucifixion?"
Loring shrugged his shoulders and opened the door for her without
answering. For the first time that day he doubted her sincerity. It was
terribly in keeping with her love for the dramatic, the bizarre, the
sensational, the gigantic for her to be comparing herself with Judas
Iscariot....
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A NOTE OF INTERROGATION
"Fenced by your careful fathers, ringed by your leaden seas,
Long did ye wake in quiet and long lie down at ease;
Till ye said of Strife 'What is it?' of the Sword, 'It is far from
our ken';
Till ye made a sport of your shrunken hosts and a toy of your armed
men.
Ye stopped your ears to the warning--ye would neither look nor
heed--
Ye set your leisure before their toil and your lusts above their
need."
RUDYARD KIPLING: "THE ISLANDERS."
"You've probably stirred up an ant-hill with the end of your stick
before now," said Eric Lane, shading his eyes and shifting himself in
bed until he could catch a glimpse of the Lashmar Woods in their riot of
autumn colour. "I feel that's what the Almighty has done here; we're
scattered in every direction, running about in wild confusion without
knowing in the least what any one else is doing. I feel amazingly out of
everything."
He had already been seven weeks in bed at Lashmar Mill-House and was
white-faced and cadaverous, with bloodless lips and immense sunken brown
eyes. This was the worst breakdown that he had undergone since he was a
boy; but all danger was now over, and his voice was beginning to recover
its strength and music. Jack had walked over to sit with him. It was
their first meeting since they journeyed to Oxford together for their
degrees; Jack had been training in London and was wearing for the first
time the uniform of a second lieutenant.
"How soon are you going to be allowed up?"
"In another week," Eric answered. "I don't know when I shall be able to
start regular work again. I've had to chuck the paper. I don't think
they were sorry to get rid of me: there's been drastic staff reduction
in Fleet Street since the war. It's rather a bore, though. _If_ my
play's produced in the spring, _if_ it's a success, I may have some
money; otherwise I must live on my hard-earned savings and try to find
work. One of the government offices might take me. You know that
Oakleigh's in the Admiralty?"
"Yes, and O'Rane's enlisted; and Jim Loring's a staff captain; and that
swine Webster is driving a car for the Red Cross. Even the egregious Val
Arden's taken a commission. I rather respect him--for the first time in
my life; he looks three parts gone in consumption, but he got round the
doctor. He wasn't going to have people saying that he was a funk, and I
think he felt that he'd led a footling life and that this was the
opportunity of shewing what he was made of. Most of us are feeling that
we've wasted a good deal of our time.... What did they spin you for?"
"Overstrained heart. And, when I was examined, of course I was about
half an hour removed from my final collapse--which I think we will not
discuss.... Did you know Deryk Lancing? It was horrible about his
death."
"Yes, I've been wondering whether it _was_ an accident," said Jack. "He
was so full of nerves that I should never have been surprised to hear
he'd gone off his head. But what an opportunity the war would have been
for him! Oakleigh told me that he was always worrying about his money
and wondering what to do with it. Well, the beauty of being in the army
is that you can't think about yourself; you're a tiny part in a gigantic
machine, and your individuality doesn't matter a damn to any one....
When you think how every man and women you know was attitudinizing and
thinking about his own personality--Jack Summertown, Val Arden,
Deganway.... And the women were worse than the men. Everything
sacrificed for effect. Every one looking for new emotions.
Sensationalists.... You tried your personality on a new diet of
excitement every day. How amazingly _small_ it all seems when you
measure it by a war of this kind! Even the biggest thing of all. A man
devotes months and years of his life to engaging the affections of a
woman----"
"Well, that charge can never be brought against you," Eric interrupted
with a laugh.
Jack bent down and spent some moment in knocking out his pipe against
the fender. His parents and sister still did not know that he was even
acquainted with Barbara; but Eric might well have heard gossip from
Oakleigh or a dozen others.
"Well, take Loring's case! _He_ spent years over that business with
Sonia Dainton. Then he got sane. Then he fell in love with Oakleigh's
cousin--engagement announced, flourish of trumpets, an immense ball in
honour of the occasion. The war comes along, and it all fades into the
background. I suppose they'll be married as soon as it can be arranged,
but the war's the important thing in his life now. He's transferring to
a service battalion as soon as he possibly can; with any luck he'll get
killed.... By the way, you saw that Jack Summertown had been knocked
out? In the first casualty list of all. _And_ Archie Stornaway. _And_
Charles Framlingham. All three heirs to peerages, and two of them were
staying with the Lorings at Chepstow when I was there. If you'd been
told a year ago.... But, by Jove, this is pretty much what O'Rane
prophesied _ten_ years ago. What was his bet? One or two of us have gone
under, one or two are dead--with more to follow. One or two married. One
or two have made pretty fair fools of ourselves. O'Rane himself has done
well. And you're going to be our new playwright. _I_ wasn't doing badly
at the bar.... It all seems so small now."
Lady Lane came in with tea, and soon afterwards Jack left. He was due
back in London to dine with Loring, who had written mysteriously to beg
him, as a great favour, to arrange a meeting the moment that he found a
free night. Jack guessed that Barbara was in some way connected with the
request, but he could not imagine what she wanted. For two months he had
divided his time between drilling and being drilled; there were new
friendships to form and new confidences to exchange; the questions that
mattered were the etiquette of the mess and the ethics of saluting--as
they had once been the code and spirit of a public school and, later,
the tone and rule of decorous society. Was the battalion to be sent out
as a whole or used for drafts? Undoubtedly you would secure greater
unity and _esprit de corps_ by keeping it intact; but the men were not
all equally trained, and the latest comers would set the pace for all.
There were heated debates between the rival sects, and the colonel was
claimed by both sides alternately. Once or twice Jack stepped aside and
smiled at the picture of himself working under a captain of nineteen and
taking a warm interest in mess politics. It was hardly the end that he
had imagined; but at least he had worked himself into iron condition
until his nerves were under control and he was too tired for
introspection. Loring's invitation was the first test of fortitude; the
library recalled their debates of other days, and, if he went there from
friendship, he was determined not to exhume something that had been
killed at Chepstow and buried by the war.
"I'm glad you were able to come," Loring began. "I'll say what I've got
to say and get it over as soon as possible. I'm not doing this on my own
initiative. Have you seen Barbara lately?"
"Not since your party. Jim, I'd sooner not hear another word on this
subject----"
"I'm afraid you've got to, old man, for my sake. She's in London and
she asked me to give you this with my own hand."
He held out a letter, and Jack looked at it in silence. The envelope was
addressed in pencil; the upright awkwardness in some of the characters
told him that it had been written, like so many others, in bed; a few
words were smudged, and this, with the bent corners, suggested that it
had probably been composed some time before.
"I don't want it," he said after a long hesitation.
If the mere sight of familiar handwriting could hurt him, he was
resolved to take no further risks with his painfully acquired fortitude.
"You must take it," said Loring. "I don't care what you do with it."
Jack shrugged his shoulders, unbuttoned a pocket of his tunic and
slipped the letter inside, as dinner was announced.
"How soon are you chucking up your staff job?" he asked, to kill any
further discussion, as they walked out of the library together.
When Jack returned to camp, Loring called on his cousin in Berkeley
Square. House and family were in tumult, for, when the Abbey was handed
over to the War Office, Lord Crawleigh was driven to spend the autumn in
London and he returned to find that it was one thing to urge his younger
servants into the army and another to be left without a single
able-bodied man to prepare for his coming. His wife was wholly immersed
in the management of her hospital; Barbara was training for her
certificate; Neave and the two younger boys had been given commissions
in the Guards, and daily life was so uncomfortable that he decided to
share his discomfort with the nation and to explain the origin and
meaning of the war in a series of addresses throughout the country.
"Well, Jack dined with me to-night," Loring began. "I gave him the
letter."
"Yes?"
"He didn't want to take it at first, but I told him I'd promised to give
it him with my own hand."
Barbara was unnerved by waiting, but she contrived to mask her curiosity
with indifference.
"What did he say?" she asked.
"He put it into his pocket."
"He didn't read it?"
"Not then."
"And he didn't say anything? What did he look like?"
"He was like he always is; no one would call Jack demonstrative."
For all her studied indifference, Barbara shuddered involuntarily.
"I know. He frightens me when he's like that," she whispered. "If he
ever flared up for a moment, I should feel that we were more evenly
matched.... He _will_ read the letter?" she persisted.
"My dear Babs, how can I tell?"
"Oh, of course you can't, but the waiting's so awful," she cried. "You
know what was in it? I kept my promise--the promise I made on the Cross
at Chepstow. If he wants me----"
"Well, if he does? You still don't love him?"
"I don't know. He fascinates me.... But that doesn't matter, I've given
him my promise----"
"It seems to me to matter very much," Loring interposed drily. "I've
grown quite fond of you lately, Babs, and I don't want to see you
unhappily married. Or him, either. You say you don't know whether you're
in love with him, but there's a simple test: if you were free in every
way and could choose among all the men in the world, would you fly to
Jack like an arrow to a target?"
"I don't know.... I think he might _make_ me come to him."
"Against your will? Babs, you've either lost all your personality or
else you're in love with him."
She shook her head in perplexity, frowning and smoothing out the
wrinkles with the back of her hand.
"I don't know that it would be against my will. I can't make out. He
never loved me as I _wanted_ to be loved.... I never feel that Jack
could be gentle.... Do you know what I mean, Jim? There are some people
who seem to take loving for granted. They can't waste time on the little
daily tendernesses that are the glorious great tendernesses...." Her
voice faded away, and she sat staring in front of her until a change of
thought made her face resolute. "But it's not for me to find fault. If
he wants me...."
"I wish to God I could do something to help," said Loring.
"I must just wait, I suppose. I wish I knew what _I_ wanted....
Sometimes I feel I'm going mad, Jim. I _can't_ get rid of his eyes, I
_can't_ forget the change that came over him when he _began_ to
understand what I'd done.... Has he gone back to camp? When d'you think
he'll write?"
"My dear girl, you might just as well ask me how long the war's going
on! Perhaps he won't write at all."
"What d'you mean?"
Loring sank lower into his chair and stared at the ceiling.
"I've been trying to think how I should feel in his place," he said. "If
he was simply infatuated about you, he'd go on believing in you until
you'd married some one else. On the other hand, he's ignorant enough of
women still to idealize them; and there's no bitterness like the
bitterness of your disappointed idealist. He may try to cut the whole
thing out of his life; he may tear your letter up unread, he may read it
and throw it in the fire without answering it.... What are you going to
do then, Babs?"
"I belong to him until he throws me aside," she answered. "On my honour
and oath----"
"I wish you weren't quite so ready with your extravagant oaths," he
interrupted. "You'll get into trouble one day. Jephthah took a similar
vow and lived to regret it.... Well, Babs, if there's anything I can do
to straighten things out, let me know."
He got up and prepared to go. Barbara sat with her hands pressed between
her knees and her head bent.
"I must wait," she whispered. "You go, Jim; I'd sooner be alone. You go!
I'll--just wait."
Loring looked at her for a moment and then went downstairs. He could
have sworn that she could see her own drooping head and tired eyes in a
mental looking-glass and was enjoying her doubt and misery; as likely as
not, she would describe it to Jack, if they met. "Jim went away. I said,
'You go. I must wait.' And I waited...." A little of Jephthah's
daughter, the Lady of Shalott, Monna Vanna and Sarah Curran; tragic
pathos, tragic constancy, tragic hopelessness. By giving her the cue of
Jephthah's daughter, he had helped to destroy the illusion of
sincerity....
Barbara sat by herself for a few minutes and then rang for her maid and
began to undress. She had never dreamed that Jack would not answer her
letter. Though written on the night after she had failed to find him at
the Temple, she had kept it locked away for nearly two months, afraid to
send it and unable to say why she was afraid. Then Sonia Dainton had
called on her and, standing by the window with her face averted, had
talked of Jim's approaching marriage. "I hear he's going out to the
front fairly soon," she began. "I want to part friends with him--in case
anything happens. D'you think he'd see me?" "You can only try," answered
Barbara. That was a fortnight ago; some weeks later, on the eve of the
wedding, Sonia called at Loring House to beg and to receive
forgiveness. In the meantime Barbara profited by her own advice to force
herself into communication with Jack. It was all that she could do, if
she hoped ever again to know self-respect or even a quiet conscience.
She could make amends and give him his chance to embrace or spurn her;
that he would ignore her she had never imagined.
The hospital at the Abbey opened three days after her conversation with
Jim; and Barbara at once volunteered for night work. Ever since the
party at Chepstow she had been unable to rest; Jack's haggard face and
fixed stare invaded her dreams, and, when she slept, it was to wake up
repeating some phrase that she had used to him. By going to bed in
daylight and lying with the blinds up and the sun on her face, she never
wholly lost consciousness; her brain was sentinel enough to rouse her,
if she began to dream of the banqueting-hall at Loring Castle....
When Jim's wedding took place, she wrote to offer him good wishes and
added in a postscript:
"_I have had no news._"
He wrote back,
"_I have not seen him since that night. In a case like this, isn't
silence itself an answer? George heard that he was possibly going out
with a draft, but I believe this has been contradicted. Is there
anything I can do? I'll try to get hold of him, if you like, and ask him
what he's up to, but, while I don't mind exposing myself to a rebuff, I
don't see myself leading you by the hand to have your face slapped by
any one...._"
"_Thanks, it's best to do nothing_," Barbara answered. "_I should be
hurt if he thought I was forcing myself on him._"
At the beginning of 1915 Jim wrote on his own initiative.
"_I hear Jack's gone abroad. George is my authority; I didn't see him
myself. I think you may feel that this squares the account. On the whole
I'm glad; and, if you feel as you did when last we discussed this, it's
the best thing for you._"
A few weeks later Jim went abroad himself. So long as he was a channel
of communication, Barbara waved away the necessity of deciding what to
do if she were left with what he called a "cheque drawn but not
presented." Without him, loneliness sapped her courage; and she wrote
three extravagant letters, which, in the act of writing, she knew that
she would never send. Then she tried to forget. Then she centred her
hopes on seeing him, when he came home on leave....
A week before he was expected in England, Amy Loring called in Berkeley
Square to say that Jim was "missing." George Oakleigh had the news from
the War Office, and every one might be told except Violet, who was
expecting a baby.
"_At this rate I sometimes wonder who will be left alive_," Lady
Crawleigh wrote to Barbara. "_Sonia has had one of her brothers killed
and the other wounded. Valentine Arden has been killed. Young O'Rane has
come back slightly wounded but without his sight. No one can ever take
their places. They are all equally splendid.... Poor Mr. Arden and Jack
Summertown.... Though a man may have been frivolous before, that does
not seem to keep him from shewing his true worth when the occasion
arises.... The war has been a great opportunity...._"
Barbara's first thought was that, if Jim too were killed, there was one
person the less to share her secret. She was aghast to find herself even
playing with such consolation; but, as the weeks of silence became
months, she lost hope. With every new death or mutilation she was
becoming less and less equal to the great opportunity. Though she could
work as hard as any one, she came no nearer to justifying herself or
making atonement. The officers in the hospital sometimes refused to let
her do anything for them, because she had already worn herself out with
doing so much, but she was never tired enough to forget. Until she had
placated Providence, she would not be allowed to forget. And Providence
rejected her offering.
In the summer she heard that Sonia Dainton was engaged to be married to
David O'Rane.
"_He and I were sort of engaged when I was sixteen_," Sonia began. "_Of
course, neither of us took it seriously. At least I didn't, as soon as I
was old enough to think at all; perhaps_ HE _did. He_ SAYS _that he
always knew he was going to marry me and that for all practical purposes
we_ WERE _married from the time when I was sixteen. When I was engaged
to Tony Crabtree--I wasn't properly engaged; I don't believe I ever
thought I should marry him; but I was very young, and it was exciting to
be engaged. I believe_ NOW _that Tony only wanted to marry me because he
thought I should be such an asset to him in his career; thought of
course he was very much in love with me--David says that he knew all
about it and didn't trouble himself more than if his wife were flirting
with a man at dinner. Poor darling, he was very unhappy about Jim,
because he thought I might really marry him; but yet--he says--at the
bottom of his heart he always knew I shouldn't. Aren't men ridiculously
vain? But, Babs, isn't it wonderful to think of him waiting all those
years, standing aside, never trying to influence me, always quite
certain that_ ONE _day he'd marry me? Some time I'll tell you the whole
story and how he came into the_ HEART _of Austria, when war'd been
declared, to rescue me. He was terribly wounded at the beginning of this
year, and the doctors say there's no possibility of his ever getting his
sight back. You can imagine what that means; but he says he'd go through
it all again, if that were the only way of getting me! George told me
that, when David was delirious in hospital, he kept calling out my name
night and day. It's wonderful to be loved like that!_
"_We shan't have any money worth speaking of, and darling David thinks
he's committing the most awful crime in wanting to marry me at all. 'A
blind man with no visible means of subsistence ought to be quietly
knocked on the head,' he says. When he got back to England, he wouldn't
come near me, he wouldn't let me come near him; he says he couldn't
trust himself. And, poor lamb! I'm getting quite tired of hearing him
say that I'm throwing myself away and that I_ MUSTN'T _marry him....
But, then, when he tells me that, ever since he was blinded, he's never
seen anything except me, there's no arguing about it, is there?_
"_He's gone back to Melton as a temporary master, and we're going to be
married in the school chapel. I should insist on your being one of my
bridesmaids, if I were having any, but it's going to be the quietest
wedding in the world. But I want you to think of me, Babs darling, and
offer me your blessing. I'm so very happy...._"
Barbara read the letter twice and tried to forget it. Sonia could not
tell her too often how many men had been in love with her and how much
David adored her; there was little mention of love on the other side,
only the eagerly snatched tributes to a colossal vanity. Every one knew
that she had no heart. She justified herself and explained away her
early engagements and broken promises with a light brush. Women would
justify themselves, whatever they did! And Sonia was marrying with both
eyes on the auditorium, listening delightedly to the protests that she
was wasting herself. She was enjoying her sense of reckless generosity;
and, perhaps, like Val Arden and the others who hoped to atone by one
sacrifice for an empty life, she would welcome the sacrifice even
without the audience....
It was a heartless, horrible letter. If Barbara had been invited to the
wedding, she would have refused to go. She wished that she _had_ been
invited.... Yet Sonia was only doing what she had failed to do. Jack's
devotion was no less than O'Rane's, and she had thrown it away; she was
trying to atone for everything in one sacrifice, as Sonia had already
done. She might have been happy, like Sonia; she might have outstripped
Sonia by discovering a heart. Every one was falling in love and
marrying; it was time to discover a heart. Val Arden told her, when she
was sixteen, that this would be her greatest emotion....
The next day Barbara asked for leave to go up to London and choose a
wedding-present. She avoided her family, for her looks did not court
inspection and she could not afford to be torn away from the hospital.
The life at Crawleigh Abbey suited her too well to be disturbed; though
sometimes, as she came off duty and undressed in broad daylight, she
wondered when and how her strength would break. The other nurses never
wearied of telling her that she looked ill; the mirror shewed that her
body was wasting, even if she had not felt that even her stockings hung
loose. And there was a cough which had come mysteriously and as
mysteriously refused to go.
On her arrival at Waterloo she telephoned to George Oakley and invited
him to lunch with her. He, if any one, would have news, he was fond of
her; and, ever since Sonia's engagement, she had felt that something was
wanting until she commanded an equal devotion and gave an equal
surrender. Of her, too, people were saying that she had no heart; she
was ready and more than ready to fall in love.