whether her voice would carry through Space; she was no bigger than
God's right hand . . . alone . . . and naked. "I've always been spoiled,
and that makes any one vain. Some allowance . . ."
It was idle to excuse herself when God was omniscient.
"I _didn't_ realize what I was doing." (God must know that she was
speaking the truth now.) "He never missed an opportunity of hurting
me--quite unfairly; I've nothing to be ashamed of before I met him. I
made up my mind to shew him I wasn't quite as bad as he thought. He . . .
fell in love with me and wanted to marry me. . . . I was taken by
surprise . . . mad. . . . I didn't know what I was saying, I told him I
couldn't marry any one who wasn't a Catholic. . . ."
Catholic . . .
Barbara stopped short to wonder what God must think of all the jarring
sects which laid claim to His exclusive revelation. The Ancient of Days,
God the Father, Jehovah, Allah. . . . She had always wondered what He
would make of His fratricidal followers. Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox.
. . . What must Christ make of the bitter fanatics who swam through
blood to a world of universal love?
She had lost her way in the confession; and God brooded in silence over
Space and Time, ignoring her, forgetting her. She sank to the ground,
hiding her face in her hands and wondering when she had died. Perhaps
God had waited until Jack Waring was killed, so that he might testify
against her. . . .
"I know it was a lie," she broke out suddenly, "but I _didn't_ realize
what I was doing. The next thing . . . Is this Hell? I always felt I was
going through Hell on earth. That night . . . I didn't see or hear from
Jack for three months; I thought he'd given me up. I was happy for the
first time since I'd met him. Then he followed me into the country and
asked me again if I'd marry him. He said he _was_ a Catholic now. He'd
believed me, he'd done this for me, perjured himself. . . . I remember
saying to myself "If there _is_ a God . . ." I didn't know. . . . "If he
_has_ a soul to lose. . . ." I couldn't undo it. I did what I could for
him, I wrote and said I'd marry him, I swore it by the sign of the
Cross. . . . He went out to the war, he never answered; he's killed now.
. . . I don't know what you're going to do with me. I've _been_
punished. It can't be any satisfaction to you to send me out of my mind.
For a year I've been tortured. Now I was just beginning to forget and to
be happy. I suppose you want to take _that_ away. . . . I _didn't_
realize. . . . Why _shouldn't_ I be happy?"
The dim figure on the throne made no answer, and Barbara began to crawl
forward. Perhaps God had not heard. . . . But she would spend years
crawling through Space. . . .
"I want to get it over. No punishment's as bad as this suspense. _You_
know that. . . . Won't you tell me what I'm to do . . .?"
She crawled forward again, though her knees were aching. Above her
loomed God's foot-stool; and she touched it reverently, then beat upon
it furiously in the hope that God might rise and kill her again . . .
for ever. . . . The sheet of flame marched nearer until it scorched her
eyes. Space and Time shrank and were consumed until she found herself
kneeling upright, staring wildly at the fire and beating with open palms
on the wooden end of the bed.
Barbara fell backwards, pulling the clothes up to her chin.
"Another second . . . and I should have gone mad," she whispered.
Downstairs some one had thrown open a window, some one was playing a
piano. She turned on the light and rang for her maid.
"I shall get up for dinner after all," she said. "I mean, I shan't. . . .
I don't know what I'm talking about. What--I mean--is: I shall get out
of _bed_ for dinner, but I shan't go down. _That's_ clear, isn't it?
What's the time?"
"Eight o'clock, my lady."
Then her dream had lasted less than five minutes. . . .
"I'm going to sleep. I shan't want any dinner. Will you bring the
telephone in here?"
The maid left the room in bewilderment at the conflicting orders and
sought counsel of the housekeeper. Ten minutes later Lady Crawleigh came
in to find Barbara in bed with the telephone tucked under one arm and
the receiver to her ear. She finished some request for an address,
nodded as the answer was given and lifted the instrument to a table by
her side.
"Well, my dear, you seem to have given poor Merton a fright," said Lady
Crawleigh. "Is anything the matter?"
"I never felt better in my life," answered Barbara.
"Are you coming down to dinner?"
"I don't think I'm well enough for that. . . . You can get on without
me. If things seem to hang fire, get Gerry Deganway to give imitations
of His Excellency."
Lady Crawleigh bridled at the suggestion.
"That's not at all a respectful way to speak of your father," she
observed reprovingly.
"Well, His ex-Excellency, then. That no better? Sorry. He's very
amusing--Gerry, I mean. Why not get father to give imitations of Gerry?
In its way, that ought to be just as funny."
Her mother advanced reproachfully to the bed and laid her hand upon the
rail.
"_If_ you're not feeling well," she said with incontrovertible logic,
"you ought to go to sleep instead of telephoning to people and writing
to people. If you're all right, you ought to help with these tiresome
creatures. They're _your_ guests."
Barbara felt her own pulse and sighed.
"I'm well enough to write one letter," she said, "and perhaps to get up
in time for lunch to-morrow."
Then she hunted among the pillows for a pencil and addressed an envelope
to "_Eric Lane Esq^{re}, Lashmar Mill-House, Lashmar, Near Winchester,
Hants_."
She was already tired; perhaps, if she could fix her thoughts on Eric
until she fell asleep, she would be spared a second vision of judgement.
A dressing-gong sounded in the distance, and she debated whether to
abandon her letter to Eric and go down. Gerald Deganway would be
simperingly sympathetic. "Your mother tells me you're not feeling very
grand" (odious phrase). "Poor you!" (Damnable phrase, damnable
creature--with his insecure eye-glass and plastered flaxen hair!) Johnny
Carstairs would be pontifical and pretentious--"The unhappy Foreign
Office comes in for all the kicks. There's a body of three-pound-a-week
gentlemen in Fleet Street who'd enforce a _real_ blockade, 'leave it to
the Navy,' don't you know, all that sort of thing. I'm aware of them; I
sometimes wish I could have a heart-to-heart talk with them. . . ." By
staying in bed she was at least keeping the promise that she had given
to Eric; the sense of surrender was a novel experiment in emotion.
She finished the letter and switched off the light. Darkness was not
going to usher in faces to-night. Her soul felt healed.
"You absurd darling child!"
She whispered the words aloud and felt warm tears over-brimming her
eyes. She loved him for his extraordinary callow youth--which had
carried the chaste chivalry of sixteen to the age of twice sixteen; she
loved his little occasional tender gleams of womanliness. . . . And he
was so easy to mystify and tease. She felt the warmth and the taut
muscles of his arm round her body as he led her home across St. James'
Park, her head on his shoulder, sleeping, secure and forgetful.
"Dear Eric, I wish you were here now!" she murmured.
Lord Crawleigh, indignant that Barbara should desert her own party the
first night, but vaguely disquieted that she was ill enough to go to bed
of her own volition, peeped into her room on his way down to dinner.
There was no answer to his jerky, sharp call of "Barbara" and he turned
on the light. Her eyes were closed, but she was smiling; he walked to
the bed to make certain that she was not trying any of her tricks on
him.
"Barbara!"
"Yes, darling?"
She opened her eyes, and their drowsy contentment faded away.
"I only came to see if you were asleep."
"I'm not--now," she answered wistfully.
"Well, why don't you _get_ some decent sleep? You racket about and
overtax your strength and excite yourself. . . . And this is the
result!"
"I'll do my best, father."
As he creaked out of the room, she shut her eyes tight and tried in
despair to woo herself back to the moment of half-consciousness when
Eric drew her cloak across her chest and she roused to ask him sleepily
"Am I coming undressed?"
2
Barbara rang for tea at noon and came down to luncheon in a house which
was gratifyingly demoralized by her absence. Her father had spent Sunday
morning in his study, writing letters; her mother had carried the more
devout members of the party to mass and from mass to a vague, bored
exploration of the garden, where they could be seen scattered on the
lowest terrace, trying to make friends with an unresponsive peacock; the
men, headed by Pentyre, were warmly entrenched round the smoking-room
fire in a blue tobacco-haze and a litter of Sunday papers. George
Oakleigh, in naval uniform, was unashamedly sleeping in a deep
window-embrasure, his mouth open and his eyeglasses on his knees.
Deganway and Carstairs were arguing in subdued tones and seemed as
vacantly uninterested as Pentyre, who had exhausted the _feuilleton_ of
his paper and was studying the advertisements.
She was pleased by the stir with which her entrance galvanized them into
alertness, by Oakleigh's sympathetic enquiries, even by Deganway's
critical examination of her dress.
"Well, make the most of me, everybody," she said. "I'm going back to bed
immediately after lunch. What's everybody doing?"
"I've been asleep," Oakleigh answered contentedly.
Barbara looked round her and wrinkled her nose.
"What are you _going_ to do?" she pursued.
"I should like to go _on_ sleeping. . . ."
"Come for a walk, Babs," interrupted Pentyre. "It's my last leave----"
"Then you'd better rest instead of working on my emotions. George, on
the other hand, never gets any exercise at the Admiralty, and, as he's
never been here before, I think I shall take him round the house.
Besides, he hasn't _asked_ me to do anything. Come on, George!"
Oakleigh rose with sufficient alacrity and accompanied her for an hour
through the ruins of the Abbey, the Elizabethan reconstruction and the
Georgian incrustation. Knowing Barbara, he had secured what he wanted by
pretended indifference, though he was less interested in hall and
refectory, Prior's house and dormitory than in her knowledge of
architecture and early English furniture.
"Another of my accomplishments," she laughed. "George, what sort of
reputation _have_ I got? A man was so surprised the other day to find
that I could play the piano and sing. . . ."
"I know what _I_ think of you," he answered. "Possibly you know it too."
Barbara looked away abstractedly, as though she had not heard him. Ever
since her illness, George had shewn her a tender devotion; and, when
Sonia Dainton and her other friends had succumbed to the war-epidemic of
marriage, she had fancied that it would be very restful to marry him.
The mood lasted for a week, and it was in this time that she had invited
him to the Abbey. Then a dream, of which she could remember few details,
had shattered the lazy romance which she was weaving; there was a shadow
which she knew would take form as Jack Waring, there was a hint of the
wild oath which she had taken when she was mad; and she had decided that
God was punishing her by opening her eyes to happiness and then throwing
a bar of shadow across her path as she struggled to reach it. Those were
the days when she heard that Jack was missing, the nights when she
prayed to hear that he was dead. Now that George was at hand, she did
not want him; she might find peace by marrying him, but she would find
nothing more. . . .
"Dear George! You think I'm perfect, don't you?"
"Perfection is meant to be more admired than loved."
"I've nothing but my imperfections to make people love me."
"That's a woman's way of marrying on her debts. . . . You're better,
Babs, than when I came to see you in London. I hope you're--happier."
"Ah, if only I could _undo_. . . ."
She broke off, and George looked at her cautiously to see whether she
was trying him with the pose of conscience-stricken penitent, already a
little out-moded after fourteen months of war.
"You certainly had your share of scrapes, but there was nothing
discreditable in them. Too much vitality----"
She spread out her hands, white and transparent in the sun-light.
"I'd _done_ everything else! Being with father everywhere. . . . And I
was driven into it by opposition. I must have been a mule in a previous
incarnation. D'you know, if father says he's coming here by the 4.10, I
_have_ to come by the 5.40, however inconvenient it may be to
everybody--just to assert myself?"
"But that wasn't the only reason," George suggested.
"What d'you mean?"
She had ceased to smile, and two faint lines of annoyance were visible
between her eye-brows.
"I'm sorry. It was no business of mine," said George apologetically.
"I don't mind _you_. But it was no business of the Deganway creature.
Can't you break his eye-glass or cut a piece off the end of his nose,
George? Did he tell you who I came down with?"
"Deganway is always thorough in his investigations. I'm sorry I
mentioned it; I was only teasing you."
"I don't mind _you_," she repeated. "But it does make things so
impossible if father and mother go about fancying. . . . Come to lunch!
I'll be in time for one meal," she cried, seizing his arm and hurrying
him the length of the echoing refectory.
At luncheon and recurrently through the afternoon Barbara wondered how
far Deganway's gossiping tongue had already prejudiced her relations
with Eric. If he heard that they were being discussed, he would in all
probability strike an attitude and declare that he could not be a party
to compromising her any longer. At present he was too novel a
distraction for her to spare him easily; already he had become so
important to her life that she had forgotten George Oakleigh and the
thrill of gratitude and elation which she had felt when he began
sluggishly but surely to fall in love with her.
The house-party had dispersed before she came down next day. Breakfast
in bed was a dull meal, because she had hoped to find an unsolicited
letter from Eric--about anything. She had to wait until the second post,
and that only brought her the briefest possible acceptance of her
invitation. Not until Tuesday did she receive the long letter which he
had written on Saturday night. And the intimacy and tenderness of it
were half spoiled even then, for Lady Crawleigh followed her maid into
the room, enquired affectionately how Barbara was feeling and settled
down to read instructive extracts from _The Times_.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Crawleigh Abbey seemed suddenly very big
and deserted. Barbara secured a trunk call to Eric's flat on Monday
night; but, after twenty minutes to wonder why she shewed so little
pride and whether he would be angry with her, a faint voice answered
that Mr. Lane was dining out. Something which she could not analyze told
her that she would be taking an unfair risk with his affection, if she
tried to communicate with him again. She could hardly understand why she
was staying in bed and taking so great care of herself; but it was
Eric's wish, and she had felt a leap at the heart when he interested
himself in her welfare. If he only knew, it would do her much more good
to be with him, to tease him and laugh at him and set him attitudinizing
and then to charm a word or gesture of affection from him . . . and then
to laugh at him again and see him perplexed and exasperated. She was
very grateful to him for bringing a new interest into her life. . . .
Little Val Arden had once said, years before the war, that she would
find her greatest emotion on the day when she lost her heart. . . .
But it were useless to fall in love with Eric if she could not make him
return her love. . . .
Thursday seemed as far away as the throne of God in that ghastly
nightmare. . . . She wrote Mrs. Shelley a letter which she hoped would
not read so transparently false as it seemed to her in writing.
"_Dearest Marion, I feel so rude for never having apologized either for
running away myself so early or for dragging Eric Lane away from your
delightful party. I was feeling dreadfully tired. I'm in bed now; in
fact, I've hardly been out of bed since I came here on Saturday, and he
put a pistol to my head and insisted on taking me home. I shall be in
London for one or two nights next week. Will you shew that you forgive
us by inviting us again? Your affectionate Barbara._"
It seemed a pity not to exploit a good idea to the full, and she next
wrote to her cousin Amy Loring.
"_You said the other day that you had never met Eric Lane, though he
was a great friend of Jim's. He was at Margaret Poynter's the other day
when I was there. Would you like me to invite him to dine one night next
week (I shall be up in London for two or three days)? Ring me up between
tea and dinner on Thursday. . . ._"
There remained Colonel Grayle, who had jerked out, as she left the
"Divorce" with George Oakleigh: "Clever play! Rather like to meet the
author. Decent feller, I believe." If she met him again, she could offer
to bring about a meeting. . . .
It was regrettable that she and Eric knew so few people in common.
3
Before leaving her dentist, Barbara telephoned to remind Eric of his
promise to dine with her. His answering voice was almost audibly guilty,
for the engagement had been allowed to fade from his mind, though his
watchful secretary would have seen to it later that he kept his
appointment.
When he arrived, the house was eerily dark and deserted. The door was
opened by a girl in a black dress, presumably--from the absence of cap
and apron--Barbara's own maid, and he was conducted through a twilit
hall where the great chandeliers were draped in dusting-sheets, up a
side staircase and over more dusting-sheets to the door of the boudoir.
Here the evidence of desolation ended in vast bowls of autumn roses, a
log fire, blazing electric lights and the beginnings of inevitable
untidiness--ripped envelopes on the floor, a silk cloak in one chair and
gloves in another and, on the hearth-rug, a chinchilla muff with a grey
Persian kitten asleep half inside it.
Eric knelt down and played with the kitten until the bedroom door opened
and Barbara hurried in.
"Glad to see me, Eric?" she whispered.
"I've--noticed you weren't here," he answered. "You're looking better,
Babs. And I like your kitten."
"I brought her up to chaperon you," she explained. "Are you going to be
bored, dining alone with me? I warned you what it would be like." She
pointed doubtfully towards a table set for two. "We put the dirty plates
on the floor, and my maid will take them away when she brings coffee.
I've only her and one kitchen-maid to keep me alive. Eric, I've been
looking forward to this most enormously. That was a sweet letter you
wrote me from Lashmar--I love the name! Lashmar Mill-House--You were
very fond of Jack, I could see. Shall we begin?"
Eric looked at the photograph on the mantel-piece before sitting down.
"He was the greatest friend I ever had," he answered wistfully. "An
unusual character. If you liked him, he could make you do anything he
pleased. . . . Did you see much of him? His sister was surprised to find
that you knew him."
Barbara finished her soup without answering. Then, as Eric took away her
empty plate, she looked up at him with a slight frown of perplexity.
"Did he never mention me to you?" she asked. "Somehow--I thought you
understood, Eric. Didn't any one else tell you? There are so many
stories about me----"
"I honestly don't know what you're referring to," said Eric, laying down
his knife and fork in perplexity.
She looked at him closely with eyebrows raised.
"When we discussed the photograph, and I asked you to find out anything
you could . . . Didn't you see that Jack meant a great deal to me?"
The colour had fled from her cheeks, and she was sitting with head bent
forward, deeply preoccupied with the food on her plate. Gazing blankly
at her, Eric tried to imagine what kind of intimacy she could have
formed with the elusive celibate who never spoke to women or discussed
them. . . .
Something was expected of him. . . .
"It never occurred to me," he said lamely. "Of course, Jack never
mentioned a word----"
"_He wouldn't_. . . . Jim knew, but _he_ wouldn't either. . . . There
was no one else to give me away. . . . I've always been afraid of saying
something in my sleep. . . . I want to _forget, forget_. . . ."
The words came out in jerks, with a sobbing struggle for breath between.
Her head was bent so low that she did not see him rise and come round to
her side; a startled shiver passed through her, as he knelt down and put
his arm round her shoulders, drawing her to him until her cheek rested
against his.
"Babs, dear! Darling Babs!" he whispered. "Don't----"
"Ah, don't tell me not to cry, Eric! I've kept it down, I _have_ been
brave, but it's sending me mad!"
She was sliding limply off the chair, as though her bones had been
broken in company with her pride and resistance. He led her to a sofa
and knelt beside her, sometimes gently chafing her hands, sometimes
drying the slow tears which rolled down her cheeks. Once or twice she
tried to speak, but he hushed her to silence.
"Darling, you must stop now," he commanded as the tears ceased and she
began to sob drily. "When I said 'Don't----,' I was going to say 'Don't
stop crying, don't mind me; it will do you good.' But you'll make
yourself ill, if you go on." He caught her wrist and gripped it. "Put
your feet up, because I'm going to push the sofa to the fire. . . . Your
shoulders are frozen. . . . Now I'm going to bring you the lobster. . . .
And you haven't had anything to drink yet."
After a single weak protest she entered into the spirit of his fireside
picnic and by the time that he had seated himself cross-legged on the
floor she was laughing at his apprehensive care in keeping his trousers
from losing their crease. When coffee was brought in, he gave her a
cigarette and raised her hand clumsily to his lips.
"I'm sorry I've been unsympathetic, Babs." There was no answer, and he
could see her staring into the fire with eyes that were covered with a
film of tears. "I _didn't_ understand, I thought you were ill and
over-excited, or I'd have bitten out my tongue before I snubbed you and
told you that you were a nuisance. Will you forgive me?"
The film of tears gathered into shining drops and rolled mournfully down
her cheeks.
"As if _I_ had anything to forgive. . . . You'll never speak to me
again, if I tell you. And if I don't tell you . . . If I don't tell you,
I could never look you in the eyes."
Barbara stared at the fire, and for a moment it seemed as though she
were again making confession at the judgement-seat of God.
"I met Jack two years ago," she began hurriedly. "He'd been saying
things that hurt me, so I arranged to stay with the Pentyres when he was
there and I made him fall in love with me. One night at Ross House he
asked me to marry him. I . . . I don't defend myself; I'd never dreamed
of marrying him. Even then it wouldn't have been so bad, if I'd told him
the truth, if I'd admitted that I'd led him on to punish him. Instead
. . . I looked for some excuse which would save _my_ face; I said 'But you
aren't a Catholic, are you?' I never saw him again till my cousin Jim
Loring's ball just before the war. . . ."
At the memory of their meeting Barbara shuddered until she could not
speak. There had been no hint of warning; she was in the drawing-room
after dinner when Lady Knightrider's car arrived from Raglan, and Jack
put his head in at the door to ask if he might have supper with her.
"I asked him what he'd been doing with himself all the summer," Barbara
went on with a spurt. "He said, 'I've just been received into your
Church.'"
She paused and stared in terror round the room as though it were
changing under her eyes into the haunted banqueting-hall of Loring
Castle.
"I couldn't _speak_. . . . The music stopped, I heard people clapping,
it went on again. Then there were voices on the stairs, and Jack asked
me again to marry him. I said I couldn't. He wanted to know why. Then
. . . then I _had_ to tell him I wasn't in love with him. Then he saw
everything."