Left alone among the little mahogany tables of Gustard's, where the
scent of cake and of orange-flower water made happy all the air, Barbara
had sat for some minutes, her eyes cast down—as a child from whom a toy
has been taken contemplates the ground, not knowing precisely what she
is feeling. Then, paying one of the middle-aged females, she went out
into the Square. There a German band was playing Delibes' Coppelia; and
the murdered tune came haunting her, a very ghost of incongruity.
She went straight back to Valleys House. In the room where three hours
ago she had been left alone after lunch with Harbinger, her sister was
seated in the window, looking decidedly upset. In fact, Agatha had
just spent an awkward hour. Chancing, with little Ann, into that
confectioner's where she could best obtain a particularly gummy sweet
which she believed wholesome for her children, she had been engaged
in purchasing a pound, when looking down, she perceived Ann standing
stock-still, with her sudden little nose pointed down the shop, and her
mouth opening; glancing in the direction of those frank, enquiring eyes,
Agatha saw to her amazement her sister, and a man whom she recognized as
Courtier. With a readiness which did her complete credit, she placed a
sweet in Ann's mouth, and saying to the middle-aged female: “Then you'll
send those, please. Come, Ann!” went out. Shocks never coming singly,
she had no sooner reached home, than from her father she learned of the
development of Miltoun's love affair. When Barbara returned, she was
sitting, unfeignedly disturbed and grieved; unable to decide whether or
no she ought to divulge what she herself had seen, but withal buoyed-up
by that peculiar indignation of the essentially domestic woman, whose
ideals have been outraged.
Judging at once from the expression of her face that she must have heard
the news of Miltoun, Barbara said:
“Well, my dear Angel, any lecture for me?”
Agatha answered coldly:
“I think you were quite mad to take Mrs. Noel to him.”
“The whole duty of woman,” murmured Barbara, “includes a little
madness.”
Agatha looked at her in silence.
“I can't make you out,” she said at last; “you're not a fool!”
“Only a knave.”
“You may think it right to joke over the ruin of Miltoun's life,”
murmured Agatha; “I don't.”
Barbara's eyes grew bright; and in a hard voice she answered:
“The world is not your nursery, Angel!”
Agatha closed her lips very tightly, as who should imply: “Then it ought
to be!” But she only answered:
“I don't think you know that I saw you just now in Gustard's.”
Barbara eyed her for a moment in amazement, and began to laugh.
“I see,” she said; “monstrous depravity—poor old Gustard's!” And still
laughing that dangerous laugh, she turned on her heel and went out.
At dinner and afterwards that evening she was very silent, having on
her face the same look that she wore out hunting, especially when in
difficulties of any kind, or if advised to 'take a pull.' When she got
away to her own room she had a longing to relieve herself by some kind
of action that would hurt someone, if only herself. To go to bed and
toss about in a fever—for she knew herself in these thwarted moods—was
of no use! For a moment she thought of going out. That would be fun, and
hurt them, too; but it was difficult. She did not want to be seen, and
have the humiliation of an open row. Then there came into her head the
memory of the roof of the tower, where she had once been as a little
girl. She would be in the air there, she would be able to breathe, to
get rid of this feverishness. With the unhappy pleasure of a spoiled
child taking its revenge, she took care to leave her bedroom door open,
so that her maid would wonder where she was, and perhaps be anxious, and
make them anxious. Slipping through the moonlit picture gallery on
to the landing, outside her father's sanctum, whence rose the stone
staircase leading to the roof, she began to mount. She was breathless
when, after that unending flight of stairs she emerged on to the roof at
the extreme northern end of the big house, where, below her, was a sheer
drop of a hundred feet. At first she stood, a little giddy, grasping the
rail that ran round that garden of lead, still absorbed in her brooding,
rebellious thoughts. Gradually she lost consciousness of everything save
the scene before her. High above all neighbouring houses, she was almost
appalled by the majesty of what she saw. This night-clothed city, so
remote and dark, so white-gleaming and alive, on whose purple hills and
valleys grew such myriad golden flowers of light, from whose heart came
this deep incessant murmur—could it possibly be the same city through
which she had been walking that very day! From its sleeping body
the supreme wistful spirit had emerged in dark loveliness, and was
low-flying down there, tempting her. Barbara turned round, to take in
all that amazing prospect, from the black glades of Hyde Park, in front,
to the powdery white ghost of a church tower, away to the East. How
marvellous was this city of night! And as, in presence of that wide
darkness of the sea before dawn, her spirit had felt little and timid
within her—so it felt now, in face of this great, brooding, beautiful
creature, whom man had made. She singled out the shapes of the
Piccadilly hotels, and beyond them the palaces and towers of Westminster
and Whitehall; and everywhere the inextricable loveliness of dim blue
forms and sinuous pallid lines of light, under an indigo-dark sky. Near
at hand, she could see plainly the still-lighted windows, the motorcars
gliding by far down, even the tiny shapes of people walking; and the
thought that each of them meant someone like herself, seemed strange.
Drinking of this wonder-cup, she began to experience a queer
intoxication, and lost the sense of being little; rather she had the
feeling of power, as in her dream at Monkland. She too, as well as this
great thing below her, seemed to have shed her body, to be emancipated
from every barrier-floating deliciously identified with air. She
seemed to be one with the enfranchised spirit of the city, drowned
in perception of its beauty. Then all that feeling went, and left her
frowning, shivering, though the wind from the West was warm. Her whole
adventure of coming up here seemed bizarre, ridiculous. Very stealthily
she crept down, and had reached once more the door into 'the picture
gallery, when she heard her mother's voice say in amazement: “That you,
Babs?” And turning, saw her coming from the doorway of the sanctum.
Of a sudden very cool, with all her faculties about her, Barbara smiled,
and stood looking at Lady Valleys, who said with hesitation:
“Come in here, dear, a minute, will you?”
In that room resorted to for comfort, Lord Valleys was standing with his
back to the hearth, and an expression on his face that wavered between
vexation and decision. The doubt in Agatha's mind whether she should
tell or no, had been terribly resolved by little Ann, who in a pause
of conversation had announced: “We saw Auntie Babs and Mr. Courtier in
Gustard's, but we didn't speak to them.”
Upset by the events of the afternoon, Lady Valleys had not shown her
usual 'savoir faire'. She had told her husband. A meeting of this sort
in a shop celebrated for little save its wedding cakes was in a sense of
no importance; but, being disturbed already by the news of Miltoun, it
seemed to them both nothing less than sinister, as though the heavens
were in league for the demolition of their house. To Lord Valleys it was
peculiarly mortifying, because of his real admiration for his daughter,
and because he had paid so little attention to his wife's warning of
some weeks back. In consultation, however, they had only succeeded in
deciding that Lady Valleys should talk with her. Though without much
spiritual insight, they had, each of them, a certain cool judgment;
and were fully alive to the danger of thwarting Barbara. This had
not prevented Lord Valleys from expressing himself strongly on the
'confounded unscrupulousness of that fellow,' and secretly forming
his own plan for dealing with this matter. Lady Valleys, more deeply
conversant with her daughter's nature, and by reason of femininity more
lenient towards the other sex, had not tried to excuse Courtier, but
had thought privately: 'Babs is rather a flirt.' For she could not
altogether help remembering herself at the same age.
Summoned thus unexpectedly, Barbara, her lips very firmly pressed
together, took her stand, coolly enough, by her father's writing-table.
Seeing her suddenly appear, Lord Valleys instinctively relaxed his
frown; his experience of men and things, his thousands of diplomatic
hours, served to give him an air of coolness and detachment which he was
very far from feeling. In truth he would rather have faced a hostile mob
than his favourite daughter in such circumstances. His tanned face with
its crisp grey moustache, his whole head indeed, took on, unconsciously,
a more than ordinarily soldier-like appearance. His eyelids drooped a
little, his brows rose slightly.
She was wearing a blue wrap over her evening frock, and he seized
instinctively on that indifferent trifle to begin this talk.
“Ah! Babs, have you been out?”
Alive to her very finger-nails, with every nerve tingling, but showing
no sign, Barbara answered:
“No; on the roof of the tower.”
It gave her a real malicious pleasure to feel the perplexity beneath
her father's dignified exterior. And detecting that covert mockery, Lord
Valleys said dryly:
“Star-gazing?”
Then, with that sudden resolution peculiar to him, as though he were
bored with having to delay and temporize, he added:
“Do you know, I doubt whether it's wise to make appointments in
confectioner's shops when Ann is in London.”
The dangerous little gleam in Barbara's eyes escaped his vision but not
that of Lady Valleys, who said at once:
“No doubt you had the best of reasons, my dear.”
Barbara curled her lip. Had it not been for the scene they had been
through that day with Miltoun, and for their very real anxiety, both
would have seen, then, that while their daughter was in this mood, least
said was soonest mended. But their nerves were not quite within control;
and with more than a touch of impatience Lord Valleys ejaculated:
“It doesn't appear to you, I suppose, to require any explanation?”
Barbara answered:
“No.”
“Ah!” said Lord Valleys: “I see. An explanation can be had no doubt
from the gentleman whose sense of proportion was such as to cause him to
suggest such a thing.”
“He did not suggest it. I did.”
Lord Valleys' eyebrows rose still higher.
“Indeed!” he said.
“Geoffrey!” murmured Lady Valleys, “I thought I was to talk to Babs.”
“It would no doubt be wiser.”
In Barbara, thus for the first time in her life seriously reprimanded,
there was at work the most peculiar sensation she had ever felt, as
if something were scraping her very skin—a sick, and at the same time
devilish, feeling. At that moment she could have struck her father dead.
But she showed nothing, having lowered the lids of her eyes.
“Anything else?” she said.
Lord Valleys' jaw had become suddenly more prominent.
“As a sequel to your share in Miltoun's business, it is peculiarly
entrancing.”
“My dear,” broke in Lady Valleys very suddenly, “Babs will tell me. It's
nothing, of course.”
Barbara's calm voice said again:
“Anything else?”
The repetition of this phrase in that maddening, cool voice almost broke
down her father's sorely tried control.
“Nothing from you,” he said with deadly coldness. “I shall have the
honour of telling this gentleman what I think of him.”
At those words Barbara drew herself together, and turned her eyes from
one face to the other.
Under that gaze, which for all its cool hardness, was so furiously
alive, neither Lord nor Lady Valleys could keep quite still. It was as
if she had stripped from them the well-bred mask of those whose spirits,
by long unquestioning acceptance of themselves, have become inelastic,
inexpansive, commoner than they knew. In fact a rather awful moment!
Then Barbara said:
“If there's nothing else, I'm going to bed. Goodnight!”
And as calmly as she had come in, she went out.
When she had regained her room, she locked the door, threw off her
cloak, and looked at herself in the glass. With pleasure she saw how
firmly her teeth were clenched, how her breast was heaving, and how her
eyes seemed to be stabbing herself. And all the time she thought:
“Very well! My dears! Very well!”