country," he said very simply. "You know, just put things in a light
that hasn't struck home in England yet at all. Of course, on the
continent they're far more advanced than we are, on those sort of
points. That's why I want to travel, before I start serious work. Of
course, I've got a mass of notes already. Just ideas, that have struck
me as I go along. I'm afraid I'm fearfully observant, and I generally
size up the people I meet, and then make notes about them--or else
simply dismiss them from my mind altogether. My idea is rather to
classify human nature into various _types_, so that the book can be
divided up under different headings, and then have a sort of general
summing up at the end. Of course, that's only a rough sketch of the
whole plan, but you see what I mean?"
"Yes, I do," said Alex with conviction. "I've always, all my life,
thought that _people_ mattered much more than anything else, only I've
never found anybody else who felt like that too."
"It's rather interesting to look at things the same way, don't you
think?" Noel enquired.
"Oh, yes," Alex answered with shy fervour, her heart beating very fast.
She was only anxious to prolong the _tête-à-tête_, and had no idea of
suggesting a return to the drawing-room, in spite of the damage that she
subconsciously felt the damp ground to be doing to her satin slippers.
But presently Lady Isabel called to her from the window, and she came
into the lighted room, conscious both of her own glowing face and of a
certain kindly, interested look bent upon her by her seniors.
X
Noel
In the ensuing days, Alex met that look very often--a look of pleased,
speculative approval, pregnant with unspoken meanings.
Noel sought her company incessantly, and every opportunity was given
them of spending time in one another's society. For five glowing,
heather-surrounded days and five breathless, moonlit evenings, they
became the centre of their tiny world.
Then Lady Isabel said one night to her daughter:
"You've enjoyed this visit, haven't you, darlin'? I'm sorry we're movin'
on."
"Oh," said Alex faintly, "are we really leaving tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow morning, by the early train," her mother assented cheerfully.
The true instinct of the feeble, to clutch at an unripe prize lest it be
taken from them, made Alex wonder desperately if she could not postpone
her departure.
But she dared not make any such suggestion, and Lady Isabel, looking at
her dismayed face, laughed a little as though at the unreason of a
child. Alex blushed with shame as she thought that her mother might have
guessed what was in her mind. That evening, however, Lady Isabel came
into her room as she was dressing for dinner.
"I thought you'd like to put _this_ over your shoulders, Alex," she said
negligently. "It will improve that cream-coloured frock of yours."
It was a painted scarf that she held out, and she stood gazing
critically while the maid laid it across Alex' shoulders.
"You look so nice, darling child. Are you ready?"
"Yes, mother."
They went downstairs together.
Alex was acutely conscious of a certain maternal pride and tenderness,
such as she had not experienced from Lady Isabel since the first days of
her return from Liège, when she had finally left school. She did not let
herself speculate to what such unusual emotion might portend.
But at the sight of Noel Cardew, better-looking than ever in evening
clothes, a chaotic excitement surged up within her in anticipation of
their last evening together.
Almost as she sat down beside him at the dinner-table, she said
piteously, "I wish we weren't going away tomorrow."
"You're _not?_"
"Oh, yes. Didn't you know?"
"I hadn't realized it," said Noel, and although she avoided looking at
him, she noted with a feeling of triumph the dismay in his voice.
"Oh, I say! What a shame. Must you really go?"
"We're going to pay two more visits and then leave Scotland altogether."
"I shan't stay much longer myself," observed Noel nonchalantly.
Alex was conscious of keeping the words as it were at the back of her
mind, with the implication which she attached to them, while the
conversation at the small table became general.
As she followed her hostess and Lady Isabel from the room, Noel, holding
open the door, said to her in a rapid, anxious tone, very low:
"You'll come out into the garden afterwards, won't you?"
An enigmatic "perhaps" was not in Alex' vocabulary.
She gave him a quick, radiant smile, and nodded emphatically.
It never occurred to her eager prodigality that she ran any risk of
cheapening the favours that so few had ever coveted.
In the garden she moved along the gravelled walk beside him, actually
breathless from inward excitement.
"There was heaps more I wanted to say to you about the book," Noel
remarked disconsolately. "I shan't have any one to exchange ideas with
now. They're all so old--and besides, I don't think English people as a
rule care much about psychology and that sort of thing. They're so keen
on games. So am I, in a way, but I must say it seems to me that the
study of human nature is a good deal more worth one's while."
"People are so interesting," said Alex. She was perfectly aware of the
futility of her remark as she made it, but in some undercurrent of her
consciousness there floated the conviction that one need not put forth
any great powers of originality in order to obtain response from Noel
Cardew.
"I can be perfectly _natural_ with him--we think alike," She defended
herself against her own unformulated accusation with inexplicable anger.
"I think they're frightfully interesting," said Noel with conviction.
"Of course, men are far more interesting than women, if you don't mind
my saying so, simply from the psychological point of view. I hope you
don't think I'm being rude?"
"Oh, _no_."
"You see, women, as a general rule, are rather shallow, though, of
course, there are a great many exceptions. But you know what I mean--as
a rule they're rather shallow. That's what I feel about women, they're
shallow."
"Perhaps you're right," said Alex, rather discouraged. She would not
admit to herself that his sweeping assertion awoke no echo whatever
within her.
To her immaturity, the essence of sympathy lay in complete agreement,
and abstract questions meant nothing to her when weighed in the balance
against her desire to establish, to her own satisfaction at least, the
existence of such sympathy between herself and Noel Cardew.
"I've got another mad plan," said Noel slowly. "You'll think I'm always
getting insane ideas, and this one rather depends on you."
"Oh, what?"
"I hope you won't mind my suggesting such a thing--" He paused so long
that Alex' imagination had time for a hundred foolish, ecstatic
promptings, such as her reason knew could not be forthcoming, but for
which her whole undisciplined sense of romance was crying.
"Well, look here: what should you think of collaborating with me over
the book? I'm sure you could write if you tried, and anyway, you could
probably give me sidelights on the feminine part of it. It would be most
awfully helpful to me if you would."
"Oh," said Alex uncertainly. She was invaded by unreasoning
disappointment. "But how could we do it?"
"Oh, well, notes, you know--just keep notes of anything that struck us
particularly, and then put it in together later. We should have to do a
good deal of it by correspondence, of course.... I say, are you a
conventional person?"
"Not in the least," said Alex hastily.
"I'm glad of that. I'm afraid I'm rather desperately unconventional
myself. Of course, in a way it might be rather unconventional, you and
me corresponding--but would that matter?"
"Not to me," said Alex resolutely.
"That's splendid. We could do a lot that way, and then I hope, of
course, that you'll let me come and see you in London."
"Of course," Alex cried eagerly. "I don't know the exact date when we
shall be back, but I could let you know. Have you got the address?"
"Clevedon Square--"
She hastily supplied the number of the house.
"Oh, that's all right. I'm sure to forget it," said Noel easily; "but I
shall find you in the books, I suppose."
"Yes," said Alex, feeling suddenly damped.
She herself would have been in no danger of forgetting the number of a
house wherein dwelt any one whom she wished to see, but with disastrous
and quite unconscious humility, she told herself that it was, of course,
not to be expected that any one else should go to lengths equal to her
own. In her one-sided experience, Alex had always found herself to be
unique.
That Noel Cardew was not in despair at the idea of her departure was
evident. But he repeated several times that he wished she were not going
so soon, and even asked whether she would stay on if invited to do so.
"I'm sure they'd all love you to," he assured her. "Then Lady Isabel
could pay the other visits and call for you on her way back."
"I'm sure I shouldn't be allowed to stay on by myself," said Alex
dolefully.
"There you are! Conventionality again. _My_ daughters," said Noel
instructively, "if I ever have any, shall be brought up quite
differently. I've made up my mind to that. I daresay you'll laugh at all
these theories of mine, but I've always been keen on ideas, if you
remember."
But for once Noel did not receive the habitual ready disclaimer called
for by his speech.
His easy allusion to his hypothetical daughters had reduced Alex to
utter silence.
Afterwards, alone in the darkness of her own room, she wondered why such
a startling sense of protest had revolted within her at his words, but
her mind shied away instinctively from the question, and she found
herself unable to pursue it.
The next morning, in the unromantic atmosphere induced by an early
breakfast, and Sir Francis' anxiety to make sure of catching the
connection, politely concealed, but quite evident to the perceptions of
his wife and daughter, Noel Cardew and Alex exchanged their brief and
entirely public farewell.
"I'll write about the book," was his cheerful parting assurance.
"Don't forget," said Alex.
Lady Isabel was rather humorous on the subject of _fin de siècle_
emancipation, amongst the house party in the midst of which she and her
daughter found themselves that evening.
"What are boys and girls coming to? I hear young men gaily promisin' to
write to Alex on all sorts of subjects, and making private assignations
with her," she declared amusedly. "Aren't you and that nice-looking
Cardew boy writin' a book in collaboration, or something, darling?"
The slight jest was made popular amongst her seniors, and Alex was
kindly rallied about her modern freedom and assumption of privileges
undreamed of by the older generation. The inference obviously placed
upon her friendship with Noel Cardew was evident, and pleased her
starved vanity even more than the agreeable amount of flattery and
attention which at last was being bestowed upon her.
It was her first hint of success achieved amid standards which she had
been taught to believe were all-prevalent. Brushed lightly by the
passing wing of triumph, she became eager and self-confident, even
rather over-clamorous in the assertion of her own individuality, as had
been the child Alex in the nursery at Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel did not check her. She made subtle exploitation of Alex'
youth and sudden, rather boisterous gaiety, and occasionally laughed a
little, and alluded to the collaboration scheme between her and Noel
Cardew. "But all the same, darlin' child," she observed to Alex in
private, "I can't have you correspondin' with young men all over the
country unbeknown to me. Once in a way is all very well, perhaps, but
you'll have to let me see the letters, I think."
Alex was only mildly resentful of the injunction. She surmised shrewdly
enough that her mother was more anxious to establish the authentic
existence of a correspondence between Noel Cardew and herself than to
supervise the details of it. She herself waited with frantic, furtive
eagerness for his first letter.
It did not reach her until after her return to London. Secretly bitterly
disappointed, she read the short, conventional phrases and the
subscription:
"I never know how to end up a letter, but hope this will be all
right--Yours very sincerely,
"NOEL E. CARDEW."
Across the top of the front page was a postscript.
"Next month I shall be in town. Don't forget that I am coming to
call upon you. I hope you won't be 'out'!"
Alex, to whom nothing was trivial, saw the proposed call looming
enormous upon the horizon of her days.
Every afternoon she either sat beside Lady Isabel in the carriage in an
agony, with only one thought in her mind--the expectation of finding
Noel's card upon the hall table on their return--or else took her part
disjointedly and with obvious absent-mindedness in the entertainment of
her mother's visitors.
When, during a crowded At Home afternoon, in the course of which she had
necessarily ceased to listen for the sound of the front-door bell, "Mr.
Cardew" was at length announced, Alex felt almost unable to turn round
and face the entering visitor.
Her own imagination, untempered either by humour or by experience, had
led her to picture the next encounter between herself and Noel so
frequently, and with such a prodigal folly of romantic detail, that it
seemed incredible to her that the reality should take place within a few
instants, amidst brief, conventional words and gestures.
Noel did not talk about the book that they were to write together,
although he remained beside Alex most of the afternoon. Only just as he
was leaving, he asked cheerfully:
"You've not forgotten our collaboration, have you, partner? I've heaps
of things to discuss with you, only you were so busy this afternoon,
looking after all those people."
"We shall be in on Sunday," Alex told him eagerly, "and there won't be
such a crowd."
"Oh, good," said Noel. "Perhaps we'll meet in the Park before that,
though."
"I hope so," said Alex.
They met in the Park and elsewhere, and Noel, all through the ensuing
weeks before Christmas, called often at the house in Clevedon Square.
Lady Isabel twice asked him to dinner, but although he was once placed
next her, on neither occasion, to Alex' astonished resentment was he
assigned to her as a partner.
Alex, for the first time conscious of being sought after, and receiving
with avidity the fragments that fell to her share, forced herself to
believe that they would eventually constitute that impossible whole of
which she had dreamed wildly and extravagantly all her life.
Into the eager assents which she gave to all Noel's many theories, she
read a similarity of outlook, into her almost trembling readiness to
fall in with his every suggestion, a community of tastes, and into his
interminable expositions of his own views an appeal to her deeper
sympathies that surely denoted the consciousness of affinity between
them.
She was happy, although principally in a nervous anticipation of
happiness to come. She was able, when alone, to imagine that from
absolutely impersonal good comradeship, Noel would suddenly plunge into
the impassioned declarations of her own fancy, but when she was actually
with him, his cool, pleasant, boyish voice dispelled the folly, and her
fundamental shyness, that never deserted her save in the realm of her
own thoughts, was relieved, with an intense and involuntary relief, that
it should be so.
She saw Noel's father and mother again, and was greeted by the latter
with a bright and conditional affectionateness that inspected even while
it acclaimed.
It was after this that the trend of Noel's thoughts appeared suddenly to
change, and he spoke to Alex of the place in Devonshire.
"One's first duty is to the place, of course," he said reflectively,
"and I'm not at all sure that I oughtn't to look into the management of
an estate, and all that sort of thing, very thoroughly. Some day--a
long, long time hence, of course--I shall have to run our own place, and
I'm rather keen about the duties of a landlord, and improving the
condition of the people. I used to be a Socialist, as you know, but I
must say one's ideas alter a bit as one goes on through life, and I've
had some talks with the pater lately."
He broke off, and looked rather oddly at Alex for a moment.
"They want me to think of settling down, I believe," he said, almost
shyly.
Alex spent that night in feverishly placing possible and impossible
interpretations on the words, and on the look he had given her.
The sense of an approaching crisis terrified her so much that she felt
she would have given worlds to avoid it.
The following evening it came.
Most conventionally, she met Noel Cardew at an evening reception, and he
conducted her rather solemnly to a small conservatory where two chairs
were placed, conspicuously enough, beneath a solitary palm.
An orchestra was just audible above the hum and buzz of conversation.
"It's luck getting in here," said Noel. "I wanted to see you very
particularly tonight. I must say I never thought I should find myself
particularly wanting to see _any_ girl--in fact, I'd practically made up
my mind never to have anything to do with women--but I see now that two
people who had very much the same sort of ideas about life in general
could do a tremendous lot for a place, and for the country generally;
don't you agree?--and, of course--" He became hopelessly incoherent,
"... knowing one another's other's people it all makes such a difference
... I could never understand fellows running after Gaiety girls and
marrying them, myself!! After all, one's duty to the estate is ... and
then, later on, perhaps, if one thought of Parliament--"
Alex felt that the pounding of her heart was making her physically
faint, and she raised her head desperately, in the hope of stopping him.
Noel met her eyes courageously.
"I wish you'd let me tell our people that you--that we--we're engaged,"
he said hoarsely.
His words struck on Alex' ear almost meaninglessly.
Irrationally in love as she was, with Love, she knew only that he was
asking something of her--that she had at last an outlet for that which
no one had ever yet desired.
Unable to speak, and unconscious of bathos, she vehemently nodded her
head.
Noel immediately took both her hands and shook them wildly up and down.
"Thank Heaven, it's over," he cried boyishly. "You can't imagine how
I've been funking asking you--I thought you'd say yes, but one feels
such an awful fool--and I've never done it before. I say, Alex--I can
call you Alex now, can't I--you're like me, aren't you? You don't want
sentimentality. If there's one thing I bar," said the newly-accepted
lover, "it's sentimentality."
XI
Engagement of Marriage
"I am engaged to be married," Alex repeated to herself, in a vain
endeavour to realize the height to which she must have now attained. But
that realization, by which she meant tangible certainty, for which she
craved, continually eluded her.
The preliminary formalities, indeed, duly took place, from her own
avowal before a graciously-maternal Lady Isabel, to Noel's formal
interview with Sir Francis in the traditional setting of the library.
After that, however, a freakish fate seemed to take control of all the
circumstances connected with Alex' engagement.
Noel Cardew's father became ill, and in the uncertainty consequent upon
a state of health which his doctor declared might be almost indefinitely
prolonged, there could be no question of immediately announcing the
engagement.
"Just as well, perhaps. We're all delighted about it, but they're both
young enough to wait a little while," Lady Isabel smilingly made the
best of it. "Next year will be quite time enough to settle anything."
Her serenity was the obvious outcome of an extreme contentment.
Alex found herself better able to regard herself in the light of one
betrothed in her mother's company than in that of Noel. He treated her
almost exactly as he had always done, with cheerful good-fellowship, and
only at the very outset of the engagement with any tinge of shyness in
his bearing.
"Of course, I ought to have got a ring," he said very seriously, "but I
don't believe in taking any chances, and so, just in case there was any
hitch, I waited. Besides, I don't know what you like best--you'll have
to choose."
Alex smiled at the words. There was a glamour about such a choice, even
beyond that with which her own sense of the romantic perforce enveloped
it.
She wondered whether she would be allowed to go with Noel to a
jeweller's, or whether he would, after all, choose his token alone, and
bring it to her, and place it on her finger with one of those low,
ardently-spoken sentences which she could hear so clearly in her own
mind, and which seemed so strangely and utterly impossible in Noel's
real presence.
But the arrival of Noel's ring, after all, took her by surprise.
He had been lunching with them in Clevedon Square, when the jeweller's
assistant was announced, just as Lady Isabel was rising from the
luncheon-table.
She turned enquiringly.
"Noel?"
"I told him to come here. I thought you wouldn't mind. You see, I want
Alex to choose her ring."
"Oh, my dear boy! how very exciting! But may we see too?"
Mrs. Cardew was also present.
"Oh, rather," said Noel heartily. "We shall want your advice."
They all trooped hastily into the library, where the man was waiting,
with the very large assortment of gleaming rings ordered for inspection
by Noel.
"What beauties!" said Lady Isabel. "But, really, I don't know if I ought
to let him."
She glanced at Mrs. Cardew, who said in a very audible voice:
"Of course. He's so happy. It's quite delightful to watch them both."
She was looking hard and appraisingly at the rings as she spoke.
Alex looked at them too, quite unseeing of their glittering
magnificence, but acutely conscious that every one was waiting for her
first word.
"Oh, how lovely!" she exclaimed faintly.
She chid herself violently for the sick disappointment that invaded her,
not, indeed, at the matter, but at the manner of the gift.
And yet she realized dimly, that it was impossible that it should have
happened in any other way--that any other way, indeed, would have been
as utterly uncharacteristic of Noel Cardew as this was typical.
"Which do you like?" he asked her. "I chose all the most original ones I
could see. I always like unconventional designs better than conventional
ones, I'm afraid. Where's that long one you showed me this morning?"
"The diamond marquise, sir?" The assistant deferentially produced it,
glancing the while at Alex.
"That's it," said Noel eagerly. "Try it on, Alex, won't you?"
He used her name quite freely and without any shyness.
Alex felt more of genuine excitement, and less of wistful bewilderment,
than at any moment since Noel had first asked her to marry him, as she
shyly held out her left hand and the jeweller slipped the heavy,
beautiful ring onto her third finger.
She had long, slim hands, the fingers rather too thin and the knuckles,
though small, too prominent for beauty. But, thanks to the tyranny of
old Nurse, and to Lady Isabel's insistence upon the use of nightly
glycerine-and-honey, they were exquisitely soft and white.
The diamonds gleamed and flashed at her as she moved the ring up and
down her finger.
"We can easily make it smaller, to fit your finger," said the jeweller's
assistant.
"It really is beautiful. Look, Francis," said Lady Isabel.
Alex' father put up his glasses, and after inspection he also exclaimed:
"Beautiful."
"You've such little fingers, dear, it'll have to be made smaller," said
Mrs. Cardew graciously.
"Is it to be that one, then?" Lady Isabel asked.
Alex saw that her mother's pretty, youthful-looking flush of pleasurable
excitement had mounted to her face. She herself, conscious of an
inexplicable oppression, felt tongue-tied, and unable to do more than
repeat foolishly and lifelessly:
"Oh, it's lovely, it's perfectly lovely. It's _too_ beautiful."
Noel, however, looked gratified at the words of admiration.
"That's the one _I_ like," he said with emphasis. "I knew when I saw
them this morning that I liked that one much the best. We'll settle on
that one, then, shall we?"
"You silly boy," laughed his mother, "that's for Alex to decide. Perhaps
she likes something else better. Try the emerald, Alex?"
"Oh, this is lovely," repeated Alex again, shrinking back a little.
Furious with herself, she was yet only desirous that the scene should
not be prolonged any longer.
"Come and look at it in the light?" The urgent pressure of Lady Isabel's
hand on her arm drew her into the embrasure of the window.
"Alex," said her mother low and swiftly, all the time holding up her
hand against the light as though studying the ring. "Alex, you _must_ be
more gracious. What _is_ the matter with you?"
"Nothing," said Alex childishly, feeling inclined to burst into tears.
"Then for Heaven's sake do try and smile and show a _little_
enthusiasm," said her mother with unwonted sharpness.
Alex, scarlet, and most visibly discomposed, returned to the group round
the library table.
Forcing herself to make some attempt at obeying her mother's behest, she
picked up the nearest jewel, two pearls in a prettily-twisted setting,
and began to examine it.
"I like that design, too. It's original," said Mrs. Cardew.
"Oh, but pearls are unlucky--she couldn't have pearls," protested Lady
Isabel.
"They mean tears, don't they?" Alex contributed to the discussion, for
the sake of making her mother see that she was willing to do her best.
"Are you superstitious?" Noel asked rather reproachfully. "I can't say I
believe in all that sort of thing myself, you know. In fact I make
rather a principle of doing things on a 13th, or walking under ladders,
and all the rest of it, just to prove there's nothing in it."
Sir Francis fixed the young man benevolently through his monocle.
"I presume, however, that in this instance you prefer not to tempt the
gods," he remarked affably, and Noel, always obviously in awe of his
betrothed's father, hastily agreed with him.
"Then it's diamonds, is it?--unless Alex prefers the emerald."
"I like the diamond one best," Noel reiterated. "I really pitched on
that one the minute I saw it. I like originality."
"Well, it couldn't be lovelier," said Lady Isabel contentedly.
The jeweller was shown out, leaving the diamond marquise ring, in its
little white-velvet case, on the table in front of Alex.
Sir Francis opened the door for his wife and Mrs. Cardew.
"Oh," said Noel urgently. "You _must_ stay and see her put it on."
Both ladies laughed at the boyish exclamation, and Alex flushed scarlet
once more.
Noel opened the case and looked proudly at his gift.
"You must put it on for her," said his mother, "when it's been made
smaller."
The hint was unmistakable.
Noel held out the ring.
"Let's see it on now at once, Alex. It can go back to the shop later."
Alex, in a sort of utter desperation, thrust out her hand, and Noel,
politely and carefully avoiding touching it with his own, slipped the
heavy hoop over her finger.
"Thank you," she stammered.
There was another laugh.
"Poor dears! Let's leave them in peace," cried Mrs. Cardew mockingly,
and rustled to the door again.
"Did you ever see anything so young as they both are?" she murmured
sweetly to Lady Isabel, audibly enough for Alex to guess at the words,
if she did not actually hear them.
She was thankful that they should no longer be watching her, and turned
with something like relief to Noel's gratified, uncritical looks.
It became suddenly much easier to speak unconstrainedly.
Perhaps she was subconsciously aware that of all of them, it was Noel
himself who would expect the least of her, because his demands upon her
were so infinitesimal.
"It's a beautiful ring; thank you very, very much. I--" She stopped and
gulped, then said bravely, "I _love_ it."
She emphasized the word almost without knowing it, as though to force
from him some response.
Although she had never actually realized it, it was a word which, in
point of fact, had never yet passed between them. Noel's fair face
coloured at last, as his light eyes met her unconsciously tragical gaze.
"_Alex a son air bête aujourd'hui._"
With horrid inappropriateness, the hated gibe of her schooldays flashed
into Alex' thoughts, stiffening her face into the old lines of morbid,
self-conscious misery.
Part of her mind, in unwilling detachment, contemplated ruefully the
oddly inadequate spectacle which they must present, staring shamefacedly
at one another across the glittering token of their troth.
Frenziedly desirous of breaking the silence, heavy with awkwardness,
that hung between them, she began to speak hastily and almost at random.
"Thank you so very much--I've never had such a lovely present--it's
lovely; thank you so much."
"I thought you'd like it," muttered Noel, more overcome with confusion,
if possible, than was Alex.
"Oh, yes, yes. It's lovely."
"I thought you'd like something rather original, you know, not a
conventional one."
"Oh, yes!"
"You're sure you wouldn't rather have one of the others--that emerald
one that mother liked?"
"Oh, no."
"I dare say they'd let me change it, the man knows us very well."
"Oh, no, no."
"Well, I, I--I'm awfully glad you like it."
"Yes, I _do_ like it. I--I think it's lovely."
"I--I thought you'd like it."
Alex began to feel as though she was in a nightmare, but she was
mysteriously unable to put an end to their sorry dialogue.
"It's perfectly lovely, I think. I don't know how to thank you."
Noel swallowed two or three times, visibly and audibly, and then took a
couple of determined steps towards her.
"I think you--you'd better let me kiss you," he said hoarsely. "You
haven't yet, you know."
Something deep down within Alex was surging up in angry bewilderment,
and she was sufficiently aware of a sense of protest to rebut it
indignantly and with lightning-swift determination.
It was the humility of love that had prompted her lover to crave that
permission which should never have been asked.
So she told herself in the flash of a moment, while she waited for
Noel's kiss to lift her once and for all into some far realm of romance
where trivial details of manifestation should no longer obscure the true
values of life.
Unconsciously, she had shut her eyes, but at an unaccountable pause in
the proceedings, she opened them again.
Noel was carefully removing his pince-nez.
"I say," he stammered, "you're--you're sure you don't mind?"
If Alex had followed the impulse of her own feelings, she must have
cried out at this juncture:
"Not if you're quick and get it over!"
But instead, she heard herself murmuring feebly:
"Oh, no, not at all."
She hastily raised her face, turning it sideways to Noel, and felt his
lips gingerly touching the middle of her cheek. Then she opened her eyes
again, and, scrupulously avoiding Noel's embarrassed gaze, saw him
diligently polishing his pince-nez before replacing them.
It was the apotheosis of their anti-climax.
Alex possessed neither the light-heartedness which
is--mistakenly--generally ascribed to youth, nor the philosophy, to face
facts with any determination.
She continued to cram her unwilling mind with illusions which her
innermost self perfectly recognized as such.
It was, on the whole, easier to place her own interpretation upon Noel's
every act of commission or omission when the shyness subsequent to their
first ill-conducted embrace had left him, which it speedily did. Easier
still, when intercourse between them was renewed upon much the same
terms of impersonal enthusiasm in discussion as in Scotland, and easiest
of all when Alex herself, in retrospect, wrenched a sentimental
significance out of words or looks that had been meaningless at the time
of their occurrence.
When Noel went to Devonshire, whither his father by slow, invalid
degrees had at last been allowed to move, he said to Alex in farewell:
"I shall expect to hear from you very often, mind. I always like getting
letters, though I'm afraid I'm not much good at writing them. You know
what I mean: I can write simply pages if I'm in the mood--just as though
I were talking to some one--and other days I can't put pen to paper."
"I don't think I write very good letters myself," said Alex wistfully,
in the hope of eliciting reassurance.
"Oh, never mind," said Noel consolingly. "Just write when you feel like
it."
Alex, who had composed a score of imaginary love-letters, both on his
behalf and her own, tried to compensate herself the following evening
for the vague misery that was encompassing her spirit, by writing.
She was alone in her own room, the fire had fallen into red embers, and
her surroundings were sufficiently appropriate to render attainable the
state of mind which she desired to achieve.
As she involuntarily rehearsed to herself the elements of her own
situation, she lulled herself into a species of happiness.
His ring on her finger, his letter on its way to her--she was going to
write to the man who had asked her to become his wife.
There was really some one at last, Alex told herself, to whom she had
become the centre of the universe, to whom her letters would matter, to
whom everything that she might think or feel would be of importance.
She remembered Maurice Goldstein, his knowledge of Queenie's every
movement, his triumphant rapture at being allowed to take her out to
luncheon or tea. Even now, Alex had seen him follow his wife with his
ardent, glowing gaze, as she moved, serene and graceful, round a crowded
room on the arm of some other man--and the look had made her heart throb
sympathetically, and perhaps not altogether unenviously.
Almost fiercely she told herself that she had Noel's love. She was to
him what Queenie was to young Goldstein.
To every rebellious doubt that rose within her, she opposed the
soundless, vehement assertions, that the indelible proof of Noel's love
lay in the fact that he had asked her to marry him.
Gradually she persuaded herself that only her own self-consciousness, of
which she was never more aware than when with Noel, was responsible for
that strange lack, which she dared not attempt to define, lest in so
doing she should shatter the feeble structure built out of
sentimentality and resolute self-blinding.
Partly because she instinctively craved a relief to her own feelings,
and partly because she had really almost made herself believe in the
truth of her own imaginings, Alex wrote her first love-letter, the shy,
yet passionately-worded self-expression of a young and intensely
romantic girl, in love with the thought of Love, too ignorant for
reserve, and yet too conscious of the novelty of her own experience for
absolute spontaneity.
Alex did not sleep after she had written her letter, but she lay in bed
in the warm, soft glow of the firelight, and saw the square, white
envelope within which she had sealed her letter, leaning against the
silver inkstand on her writing-table.
When the maid came to her in the morning, she brought a letter addressed
in Noel's unformed hand.
It was quite short, and began:
"DEAREST ALEX (is that right?)"
It told her of the journey to Devonshire, of an improvement in the
invalid's state of health, and of Noel's own projected tour of
inspection round the estate, which he thought had been neglected by his
agent of late.
"But I shall be able to put all that right, I hope, as I'm rather keen
about the housing of the poor, and questions of that sort. You might
look out for any decent book on social economy, will you, Alex?"
The letter did not extend beyond the bottom of the second page, but Noel
was going to write again in a day or two, when there was more to tell
her, and with love to every one, he was hers for ever and a day, Noel.
Alex' reply went to Trevose the same day, but the letter she had written
in the firelight, she burnt.
XII
Christmas Pantomime
The engagement was not announced, but a good many people knew about it.
Their congratulations pleased Alex, as did her mother's obvious pride
and satisfaction.
She liked wearing her diamond ring, although she only did so at home,
and she even found pleasure in writing of her new dignities to Barbara
at Neuilly.
In such trivial anodynes did Alex seek oblivion for the ever-increasing
terror that was gaining upon her.
Noel came back from Devonshire after Christmas--and Lady Isabel
sometimes spoke tentatively to Alex of a wedding early in the season.
"Jubilee year would be so charming for your wedding, my darling," she
said effusively.
Alex thought of a white satin dress and long train, of orange blossom
and a lace veil, of bridesmaids, presents, the exciting music of
Mendelssohn's Wedding March, and the glory of a wedding-ring. On any
other aspects of the case her mind refused to dwell.
Nevertheless, she made little or no response to her mother's hinted
suggestions. Neither Noel nor Alex ever exchanged the slightest
reference to their marriage, although Noel often discoursed freely of a
Utopian future for the tenantry at Trevose, the basis of which, by
implication, was his suzerainty and that of Alex.
"I rather believe in the old-fashioned feudal system, personally. You
may say that's just the contrary of my old socialistic ideas, Alex, but
then I always think it's a mistake to be absolutely cast-iron in one's
convictions. One ought to assimilate new ideas as one goes through life,
and, of course, sometimes they're bound to displace preconceived
notions. I'm a tremendous believer in _experience_; it teaches one
better than anything else. Besides, Emerson says, 'Dare to be
inconsistent.' I'm keen on Emerson, you know. Are you?"
"Oh, yes," said Alex enthusiastically, wishing to be sympathetic. "But I
only read Emerson a long while ago, when I was at school. Noel, were you
happy at school?"
"Oh, yes," said Noel unemotionally. "The great thing at school is to be
keen, and get on with the other fellows. They were always very decent to
me."
"_I_ wasn't very happy," said Alex. She was passionately desirous of
sympathy, and was full of youth's mistaken conviction, that unhappiness
is provocative of interest.
Noel cheerfully and unconsciously disabused her of the idea.
"Of course, girls don't have nearly such a good time as boys do at
school. But don't let's talk about rotten things like being unhappy. I
always believe in taking things as they come, don't you? I never look
back, personally. I think it's morbid. One ought always to be looking
ahead. I tell you what I'll do, Alex--I'll give you a copy of Emerson's
_Essays_. You ought to read them."
Noel was very generous, and often made her presents. Alex was
disproportionately grateful, but to her extreme, though unavowed relief,
he never again claimed such a recognition as that which had followed the
bestowal of her engagement-ring.
She drifted on from day to day, scarcely aware of her own unhappiness,
but wondering bitterly why this, the supreme initiation, should seem to
fail her so utterly, and still hoping against hope that the personal
element for which she looked so avidly, might yet enter into her
relation with Noel.
One day she told herself, with shock of discovery, that Noel was
curiously obtuse. He had taken her with Lady Isabel and his brother Eric
to Prince's skating-rink. Alex did not skate, but she enjoyed hearing
the band and watching the skaters. Eric Cardew was among the latter, and
Alex recognized Queenie Goldstein, in magnificent furs.
"Noel, do you see that very fair girl--the one in blue? She was my great
friend at school."
Alex at the same instant saw a look of fleeting, but unmistakable
vexation on her mother's face at the description.
"Why, that's Mrs. Goldstein, isn't it?" said Noel, screwing up his eyes
in an interested look.
"Yes. I wish I could catch her eye." Alex was reckless of her mother. "I
haven't talked to her for such a long while. Do you know her?"
"I've met her once or twice."
"Couldn't you go and speak to her, and bring her over here?" asked Alex
wistfully.
Noel looked at her, surprised.
"I don't think I can do that. She wants to skate."
"Of course not," broke in Lady Isabel. "Don't be a little goose, Alex.
What do you want her for?"
"Oh, nothing," Alex replied dejectedly, and also very crossly.
She was in the frame of mind that seeks a grievance, and her nerves were
far more overstrained than she realized.
She felt a sudden, absolute anger when Noel said didactically:
"I don't think it would be very good manners for me to go and force
myself on Mrs. Goldstein's notice. I don't know her at all well, and
there are heaps of people who want to talk to her--just look at all
those fellows!"
"You might do it just to please me," muttered Alex, less from coquettery
than from injured pride.
Noel became rather red, and after a minute he remarked in a severe
voice:
"I must say, Alex, I think that's rather a ridiculous thing to say."
Alex was silent, but from that day the spirit of resentment had at last
awakened within her.
She became irritable, and although she still strove to persuade herself
that her engagement meant the ultimate realization of happiness, she
often spoke impatiently to Noel, and no longer sought to conform herself
to the type of womanhood which he obviously desired and expected to find
her.
The old sense of "waiting for the next thing" was strong upon her, and
she spent her days in desultory idleness, since Lady Isabel made fewer
engagements for her, and Noel's calls upon her time were far from
excessive.
She made the discovery then, less illuminating at the time than when
viewed afterwards in retrospect, that she could not bear to read novels.
All of them, sooner or later, seemed to deal with the relations between
a man and a woman in love, and Alex found herself reading of emotions
and experiences of which her own seemed so feeble a mockery, that she
was conscious of a physical pang of sick disappointment.
Was all fiction utterly untrue to life? or was hers the counterfeit,
while the printed pages but reproduced something of a reality which was
denied to her?
She dared not face the question, and was further perplexed by the axiom
mechanically passed on by successive authorities in rebuke of her
childhood's passion for reading:
"You can't learn anything about Real Life from story-books."
At all events, Alex found the story-books of no solace to her mental
sickness, and turned away from their perusal with a sinking heart.
She seldom quarrelled with Noel because, although he was sometimes
unmistakably offended at her petulance, he never lost his temper. On the
contrary, he argued with her at such length that Alex, although the
arguments left her quite unconvinced of the rightness of his point of
view, often gave in from sheer weariness and the sense of hopeless,
exhausting muddle.
She could visualize no possible eventual solution of the intangible
problem that somewhere lay heavy, undefined and undefinable, at the back
of all her thoughts.
It seemed to her that such a state of affairs had endured for a
lifetime, and must extend into eternity, when her relations with Noel
entered into the inevitable crisis to which a fortnight's mutual fret
and dissatisfaction had been only the prelude.
Sir Francis, graciously benevolent, invited Noel Cardew to make one of
an annual gathering that, for the Clare children, amounted to an
institution--to view the Christmas pantomime at Drury Lane. For more
years than any of them, except Alex, could remember, a box at the
pantomime had been the yearly almost the solitary, expression of Sir
Francis Clare's recognition of his younger children's existence as
beings other than merely ornamental adjuncts to their mother.
Lady Isabel, who detested pantomimes, never joined the party, and Alex
could remember still--had, indeed, never altogether lost--the feeling of
extreme awe that rendered unnecessary old Nurse's severe injunctions to
the children as to the behaviour suitable to so great an occasion.
This year, Barbara was at Neuilly, and it was considered inadvisable to
"unsettle" her by a return to London for the Christmas holidays. But
Cedric was at home, and Archie and Pamela, as clamorous as they dared to
be for their father's treat.
Sir Francis did not sacrifice himself to the extent of foregoing late
dinner altogether, but he dined at seven o'clock, and issued what more
nearly approached to a royal mandate than an invitation, to Alex, Cedric
and Noel to bear him company.
The big cuckoo clock in the hall still showed the hour as short of eight
o'clock when Pamela and Archie, the former muffled in a large pink
shawl, and both of them prancing with ill-restrained impatience, were at
last permitted to dispatch the footman in search of a cab.
The carriage, in the opinion of Sir Francis, would be amply filled by
himself, his two daughters and Noel Cardew, and it was part of the
procedure that the boys should be allowed to journey to the theatre by
themselves in a hansom-cab.
The streets were snowy, and as shafts of light from the street-lamps
fell across the crowded pavements and brilliant shop windows, still
displaying the Christmas decorations put up a month ago, something of
the old childish glamour surrounding the yearly festival came upon Alex.
Pamela, already a modern child in the lack of that self-conscious awe of
their father that had kept Alex and Barbara tongue-tied in his presence,
nevertheless, had none of the modern child's _blasé_ satiety of parties
and entertainments of all kinds.
The Drury Lane pantomime was her solitary annual experience of the
theatre, and she was proportionately prepared to enjoy herself to the
full. When Sir Francis, with kind, unhumorous smile, made time-honoured
pretence of having forgotten the tickets, Pamela gave Alex a shock by
her cheerful and unhesitating refusal to carry on the dutiful tradition
of her elder sisters and conform tacitly to the jest by a display of
pretended consternation.
"Oh, no, I know you haven't forgotten them," Pamela cried shrilly. "I
saw you look at them just before we started. Besides, you said last year
you'd forgotten them, and you had them in your pocket all the time. I
remember quite well."
She began to bounce up and down on the seat of the carriage, the
accordion-pleated skirts of her new pink frock billowing round her.
"Sit still," said Alex repressively. She reflected that she herself as a
little girl, and even Barbara, had been very much nicer than was Pamela.
She wondered what Noel had been like as a little boy, and looked at him
almost involuntarily.
His glance met hers, and he smiled slightly. The response touched Alex
suddenly and acutely, and she felt a pang of remorse for the intense
irritation that his presence had often caused her lately.
When the carriage stopped and he sprang out to offer her his hand in
descending, she gave hers to him with a tiny thrill, and her fingers
lingered for an instant in his, as though awaiting, almost in spite of
herself, an all-but-imperceptible pressure that was not forthcoming.
"It's begun," gasped Pamela in an agony of impatience in the _foyer_.
Sir Francis, always punctilious, placed Alex in the right-hand corner of
the box, the two children in the centre, and then, with a slight smile,
offered Noel his choice of the remaining chairs.
Alex was conscious of a throb of gratification, perhaps more
attributable to vanity than to anything else, when the young man placed
himself just behind her own chair.
Sir Francis, the comparative isolation of the engaged couple
sufficiently sanctioned by the family party surrounding them,
immediately disposed himself behind Cedric at the extreme left of the
box.
The curtain went down to the sound of applause almost as they took their
places, and the lights were turned up. Alex looked round her.
The huge house was everywhere sprinkled with groups of children--Eton
boys in broad, white collars such as Archie wore, little girls in white
frocks with wide pink or blue sashes and hair-ribbons.
When the orchestra began a medley of old-fashioned popular airs, _Home,
sweet Home, Way down upon the Swanee River, Bluebells of Scotland_, and
the like, Alex overwrought, fell an easy victim to the cheap appeal to
emotionalism.
In the irrational, passionate desire for reassurance that fell upon her,
she leant back until her shoulder almost touched Noel's.
"Look at all those children!" she whispered, hardly knowing what she
said.
Noel gazed at the stalls through his pince-nez.
"The place is crammed," he said. "They say it's the best show they've
ever had. Of course, I haven't seen it yet, but my own idea about these
pantomimes is that they don't stick enough to the original story. Take
'Cinderella,' now, or 'The Babes in the Wood.' The whole thing is simply
a mass of interpolations--they never really follow the thread of one
idea all the way through. I can't help thinking it would be much better
if they did, you know. After all, a pantomime is supposed to be for
children, isn't it?"
"Yes."
Alex wondered what reply she had expected from him to her sudden
ejaculation, that the actuality should bring such a sense of ironical
disappointment.
She leant forward again as the curtain went up.
She was still child enough to enjoy a pantomime for its own sake, but
the swing of catchy tunes and sentimental ballads brought with them
something more than the easy heartache to which youth falls so ready a
victim.
As the crash of the orchestra heralded a big scenic effect of dance and
colour, Noel leant a little towards her and began to speak.
"Of course, it's a good show in its way. Look, Alex, you can see the man
manipulating the coloured lights, up there. If you lean right back into
this corner--there, up there."
His voice was full of interest and almost of eagerness. Alex leant back
as he suggested and gazed obediently up at the lime-light operator,
although she felt no interest, but rather a faint distaste.
"It's the ingenuity of these things I like," Noel's voice in her ear was
explaining. "Of course, the dancing's good, and the comic bits, though I
don't know that I care tremendously about that. They're always apt to be
rather vulgar, even in front of a lot of ladies and children. Pity, that
is. But take the songs, now, Alex; wouldn't you think that it would pay
some one to write really _good_ libretto, and get it taken on at a place
like this and set to decent music? The tunes are good enough, but it's
the words that are so poor, I always think."
Alex listened almost without hearing. The time had gone by when she
could tell herself, with vehement attempt at self-deception, that such
assertions indicated a fundamental resemblance between her tastes and
those of Noel Cardew.
She was now only unreasonably angry and disappointed because of her
baffled desire for the introduction, however belated, of a personal
element into their intercourse.
She actually felt the tears rising to her throat as the evening wore on,
and an intolerable fatigue overcame her.
Sitting upright became more and more of an effort, and the box seemed
narrow and over-full.
The instinct of self-pity made her attempt to draw Noel's sympathy
indirectly.
"Could you move back a little?" she half whispered. "I am getting rather
cramped."
"Are you?" returned Noel with surprise, as he pushed his chair back.
But he did not appear to be in the least concerned about the matter. She
looked at him once or twice and he met her glance absently. She knew
that her face must show signs of the fatigue that she felt, but she knew
also that they would not be perceptible to Noel.
For a moment, one of the rebellious gusts of misery of her stormy
childhood shook Alex.
_Why_--why should there be no one to care, no one to whom it mattered
that she be weary or out of spirits, no one to perceive, unprompted,
when she was tired? She realized what such instinctive protection and
care would mean to her, and the almost passionate gratitude with which
she could welcome and return such solicitude.
But with Noel, she need not even exercise it. Had she loved him as she
had endeavoured to persuade herself that she did, instead of only the
figure of Love called by his name, Alex knew that Noel would have passed
by all the smaller manifestations of her love unheeding and
uncomprehending.
Her gods were mocking her with counterfeit indeed.
"You look tired, Alex," said her father's courteously-displeased voice.
Alex knew that on the rare occasions when he personally supervised a
party of pleasure, Sir Francis liked the occasion to be met with due
appreciation. She gave a forced smile and sat rather more upright.
"To be sure," her father said seriously, "it is a prolonged
entertainment."
But Alex knew that neither Cedric, Archie nor Pamela would hear of any
curtailment of their enjoyment, and Pamela was already urgently
whispering that they _must_ stay for the clown--they always did.
Sir Francis yielded graciously, evidently well-pleased, and they
remained in the theatre for the final humours of the harlequinade.
Snow was actually falling when at length Sir Francis Clare's carriage
was discovered, and Alex, her always low vitality at its lowest, was
shivering with mingled cold and fatigue.
"Get in, children," commanded their father. "Noel, my dear boy, we can
give you a lift, but pray get in--we must not keep the horses standing.
What a terrible night!"
Crouched into a corner of the carriage, with Pamela half asleep on her
lap, Alex was conscious of the relief of the darkness and the swift
motion of the wheels.
Noel was next her, and in the sudden sense of almost childish terror and
loneliness that possessed her, Alex sought instinctive comfort and
reassurance in the unavoidable contact. She leant against his shoulder
in the shelter of the dark, closely-packed carriage, and was sorry when
Clevedon Square was reached at last, and she found herself obliged to
descend.
"Good-night--thanks most awfully," said Noel at the door. "Good-night,
Alex. I say, I'm afraid you were frightfully jammed up in the corner
there--I'm so sorry, but I simply couldn't move."
XIII
Decision
On making up her mind that she must break off her engagement, Alex,
unaware, took the bravest decision of her life.
She was being true to an instinctive standard, in which she herself only
believed with part of her mind, and which was absolutely unknown to any
of those who made up her surroundings.
She hardly knew, however, that she had taken any resolution in her many
wakeful nights and discontented days, until the moment when she actually
put it into execution. She wrote no eloquent letter, entered into no
elaborate explanation such as would have seemed to her, after the manner
of her generation, theoretically indispensable to the situation.
She blurted out three bald words which struck upon her own hearing with
a sense of extreme shock the moment they were uttered.
"It's no use."
Noel looked hard at her for a moment, and then did not pretend to
misunderstand her meaning.
"What, us being engaged?"
His intuitive comprehension, of which Alex had received so little proof
ever before, might be unflattering, but it struck her with immense
relief.
"Yes."
They gazed at each other in silence for a few moments, and Alex was
furious with herself for a phrase sprung from nowhere that reiterated
itself in her brain as she looked at Noel's handsome, inexpressive
face--"_Fish-like flaccidity_...."
And again and again "_Fish-like flaccidity._"
They were in the drawing-room at Clevedon Square, and Noel, as though
seeking to relieve his obvious embarrassment by moving, got up and
walked across the room to the window.
"Of course, I've felt for some time that you weren't very happy about it
all, and naturally--if you feel like that...."
All the seething disappointment and wounded vanity and aching loneliness
that had tortured her since the very first moments of her engagement to
Noel Cardew, rushed back on Alex, but she sought vainly for words in
which to convey any part of her feelings to him.
It would be like trying to explain some abstruse principle of science to
a little child. The sense of the utter uselessness of any attempt at
making clear to him the reasons which were chaotic even to herself,
paralysed Alex' utterance.
"I don't think it's any use going on," she repeated feebly.
"You're perfectly free," Noel assured her scrupulously; "and though, of
course, I--I--I--you--we--it would be--" He broke off, very red.
Alex wished vaguely that it was possible for them to talk it all out
quite frankly and dispassionately with one another, but the hard,
crystalline detachment of the generation that was to follow theirs, had
as yet no place in the scheme of things known to Noel and Alex.
They made awkward, conventional phrases to one another.
"Naturally," the boy said with an effort, "the whole blame must rest
with me."
"Oh, no, I'll tell father and mother that I wanted to--to--break it
off."
Alex stopped, conscious that she could not think of anything else to
say.
But rather to her surprise, it appeared that Noel had something else to
say.
He faced her with hands thrust into his pockets, his hair and little,
fair moustache and his brown eyes looking very light indeed contrasted
with his flushed face.
"Of course, you're absolutely free, as I said, only I must say, Alex,
that you're making rather a mistake. Every one was awfully pleased about
it, and we've known each other since we were kids--since _you_ were a
kid, at any rate--and a broken engagement--well, of course, I don't want
to say anything, naturally, but it _does_ put a girl in a--a--well, in
what's called rather an invidious position. Especially when it isn't as
though there was any particular reason for it."
"The principal reason--" Alex began faintly, not altogether certain of
what it was that she was about to say.
"You see, I always thought we should hit it off together so well. We
always did as kids--when you were a kid, I mean," Noel explained. "We
always seemed to like the same things, and have a good deal in common."
"I don't think that you liked any of the things _I_ cared about
especially," Alex said, with a flash of spirit.
"What does that matter?" Noel demanded naïvely, "so long as one of us
likes the things that the other does? It would be exactly the same
thing."
Alex had never told herself, and was therefore quite unable to tell
Noel, that she had never liked anything particularly, except his liking
for her, which she had striven almost frenziedly to gain and retain by
means of an artificially-stimulated display of sympathetic interest in
his enthusiasms.
"There's another thing--I don't know whether I ought to say it to you,
quite--but, of course, after one's--well, married--there's a lot more
one has in common, naturally."
"Yes," said Alex forlornly. She quite believed it.
There was an awkward silence.
"Are you angry, Noel?"
She did not think he was at all angry, or very violently moved in any
way, but she asked the question from an instinctive desire to hear from
him any expression of his real feelings.
He replied stiffly, "Not at all. Of course, it's much better that you
should say all this in time ... as I say, I've felt for some time that
you weren't particularly cheerful. But I must say, Alex, I'm dashed if I
know why."
"I don't know why, exactly--except that I--I don't feel as if
we--really--cared enough for one another--"
Alex spoke with a pause between each word, blushing scarlet, as though
it really cost her a physical effort to break through the barrier of
reserve that she had been taught so relentlessly should always be
erected between her own soul and the naked truth of her own sensations
and intimate convictions.
Noel blushed too and Alex felt that he was shocked, which increased her
own self-contempt almost unbearably.
"Naturally, if I hadn't--" he left a blank to supply the words, "I
shouldn't have asked you to be engaged to me. I must say, Alex, I think
you're rather exacting, you know."
Alex quivered from head to foot, as though he had insulted her most
brutally. She, who had shrunk, with a genuine dread that had surprised
herself, from Noel's few, shyly-uttered endearments, and had found so
entire a lack of response in herself to his occasionally-attempted
displays of tenderness, to be accused of having been exacting!
She did not for an instant realize, what even Noel faintly surmised,
that she had indeed been exacting, of a romantic fervour which she was
as incapable of inspiring as he of bestowing; from which, had it
existed, the outward expressions of love would have leapt spontaneously,
supremely appropriate, and necessary to them both.
In the mental chaos and muddle of their extreme youth, they looked at
one another confused and bewildered, almost like two children suddenly
conscious of the magnitude of their own naughtiness.
Noel said, rather proudly, as though one of the children suddenly tried
to appear grown-up:
"You must allow me to undertake the distressing task of--breaking it
to--_them_."
Alex almost shuddered, so acute was her own apprehension of the
disclosure to her father and mother.
"I shall tell mother at once," she said, lacking the courage even to
mention Sir Francis.
It was typical of the whole time and circumstances of their brief
engagement that both Noel, and, in a lesser degree, Alex, had looked
upon the relation into which they had entered as one in which their
parents held the stakes and were of primary concern. They themselves
were only puppets for whom strings were pulled, so as to cause certain
vibrations and reactions over which they had no personal control.
This belief, unformulated by either, and entirely characteristic of a
late Victorian generation, was, perhaps, that which they held most in
common.
Alex even wondered whether she ought to wait and speak to Lady Isabel
before taking the next step which she had in mind, but her desire to try
and raise their trivial, shamefaced parting to a higher level by one
dramatic touch, was too strong for her.
She slowly pulled the diamond engagement-ring off her finger, and handed
it to him.
"Oh, I say," stammered Noel. He looked miserably undecided, and she knew
that he was wondering whether he could not ask her to keep it just the
same.
But in the end he slipped it into his pocket, after balancing it
undecidedly for a moment in the palm of his hand.
She sat on the sofa, her left hand feeling strangely bare, unweighted by
the heavy, glittering hoop, and Noel looked out of the window.
"I think I shall go abroad," he announced suddenly, and with mingled
relief and mortification, Alex detected the sound of satisfaction latent
in his voice. She felt that he thought himself to be doing the proper
thing in the circumstances, and the sting inflicted on her pride by his
acquiescence in their parting, though she had expected nothing else,
gave her the sudden impulse necessary to rise and cross the room until
she stood beside him at the window.
"Please forgive me, Noel."
"Oh, there's nothing to forgive," he returned hastily. "Of course, if
you feel like that, it's all over."
He looked at her steadily and Alex felt the suspicion rush over her that
he was trying obliquely to convey a warning to her that if she dismissed
him now, it would be of no use to recall him later.
Alex felt passionately that in the depths of his stubborn vanity lay the
truest presentment of himself that Noel would ever show her. If there
was another side to his personality--and she was dimly willing to
believe it for all her utter ignorance of him--the power to call it
forth did not dwell in her.
Her momentary feeling of anger gave way to humiliation, and she half
held out her hand.
"Good-bye, Noel," she said humbly.
As though to atone for the lack of feeling in his tone, Noel wrung her
hand until it hurt her, as he replied automatically: "Good-bye, Alex."
"I suppose we shall never meet again," thought Alex, with all the
finality of youth, and felt dazed as she saw him open the door.
Mechanically, she rang the bell in order that the servants downstairs
might know that he was leaving, and come into the hall to find his hat
and stick and to open the door for him.
Lady Isabel had instilled into Alex that it was part of her
responsibility in grown-up life to ring the bell for departing guests,
as unostentatiously as possible, at just the right moment, and every
time that she remembered to do it, she always felt rather proud of
herself.
This time she thought:
"It's the last time Noel will ever be in this room with me. He is going
right out of my life."
She was quite unconsciously trying to awaken in herself an anguish of
regret that might yet justify her to herself in recalling her lover.
If he turns round at the door and says, "Alex!" She tried to cheat
herself with a hope that was yet not a hope.
Noel turned at the door.
In a solemn, magnanimous voice he said:
"Alex! I don't want you to feel--ever--that you need reproach yourself,
whatever any one may say. Remember that, if"--he suddenly looked like a
rather frightened little boy--"if there's a great fuss."
Then the door closed very quietly behind him, and Alex heard him go
downstairs slowly.
It seemed to her that Noel's farewell had plumbed the final depth of his
inadequacy.
Presently she sank into an armchair before the fire, and tried to
visualize the effects of her own action.
She was principally conscious of a certain amazement, that a step which
seemed likely to have such far-reaching consequences should have been so
largely the result of sudden impulse. She had not thought the night
before of breaking off her engagement. It had all happened very quickly
in a few minutes, when the sense of tension which had hung round her
intercourse with Noel had suddenly seemed to reach an unbearable pitch,
so that something had snapped. Was this how Important Things happened to
one through life?
Alex felt that she could not believe it.
But a broken engagement--could there be anything more important, more
desperate? Alex felt with melancholy satisfaction that at least it was
real life, as she had always imagined it, full of drama and tragedy.
With, of course, a glory of happiness as final climax, that would make
up for everything.... More physically tired than she knew, Alex
abandoned herself dreamily to the old, idle visions of the wonderful,
perfect love that should come to crown her life. There was no faint,
latent sense of disloyalty to Noel now, in returning to her old dreams,
that had been hers in one form or another ever since her childish ideal
of a perfect friend who would always understand, and yet love one just
the same.
It was with a violent start that Alex came back to reality again. She
had dismissed Noel Cardew, had given him back his beautiful diamond
engagement-ring, and now she would have to tell her father and mother,
with no better reason to adduce than her own caprice.
She felt sick with fright.
She remembered Sir Francis's silent but unmistakable pride and pleasure
in his engaged daughter, and Lady Isabel's additional display of
affection, and even of deference to Alex' taste in choosing her frocks
and hats, and her own sense of having at last atoned to them both for
her unsatisfactory childhood and lack of any conspicuous social success,
such as they had coveted for her.
Alex, cowering in her chair now, wondered how she could face them. Her
only shred of comfort lay in the remembrance that Lady Isabel had said
to her:
"My darlin', I'm so thankful to know you are marrying for love."
Alex, in bitter bewilderment, remembered those words again and again in
the days which followed.
No one reproached her, she heard hardly a word of blame, and the most
severe censure spoken to her was in her mother's soft voice, far more
distressed than angry.
"But, Alex, do you know what people say, about a girl who's behaved as
you have? That she's a vulgar _jilt_, neither more nor less. To throw
over a young man after being engaged to him for four weeks, with no
reason except a capricious fit.... Oh, my darling, _why_ couldn't you
have asked me first? To go and give him back that lovely ring, and hurt
and insult him.... Of course, he'll never come back. Your father says
how well he's behaved, poor boy.... Alex, Alex, what shall I do with
you?"
Tears were running down her pretty face, so slightly lined even now.
Alex cried too, from pity for her mother and wretched, undefined
remorse, and a growing conviction that in acting on her own distorted
impulse she had once more involved herself, and, far worse, others, in
far-reaching and disastrous consequences.
"Thank Heaven, we hadn't announced the engagement, but, of course, it
will all get about--things always do. And there's nothing worse for a
girl than to get that sort of reputation, especially when she's not--not
tremendously sought after, or pretty or anything."
Lady Isabel had never before come so near to an avowal that her eldest
daughter's career had proved a disappointment to her, and Alex in the
admission, rightly gauged the extent of her mother's dismay.
"Why did you do it, Alex?"
Alex tried haltingly to explain, but she could only say:
"I--I felt I didn't care for him enough."
"But you hadn't had time to find out! You accepted him when he proposed,
so you must have been quite ready to like him then, and you'd only been
engaged for four weeks. How could you tell--a little thing like you?"
wailed Lady Isabel.
"Oh, Alex, if you'd only come to me about it first--I could have
explained it all to you--girls often get fancies about being in love."
"I thought you wanted me to marry for love. You said so," sobbed Alex.
"Of course, I don't want you to marry without it. But it's the love that
comes _after_ marriage that really counts--and a boy you'd known all
your life, practically--that we all liked--you could have been ideally
happy, Alex." Lady Isabel looked at her almost resentfully.
"I don't know what will happen to you, my darling, I don't indeed. I
sometimes think you are just as headstrong and exaggerated as when you
were a little girl. And, Alex, I don't like even to say such a thing to
you--but--there's never been any one _but_ Noel, and I'm afraid this
isn't the sort of thing that makes any man.... Nothing puts them off
more--and no wonder."
Alex thought momentarily of Queenie, but she knew that was different. In
the supreme object of woman, to attract, Queenie stood in a class apart.
Nothing that Queenie could ever do would ever rob her of the devotion
that was hers, wherever she chose to claim it, by mysterious right of
attraction.
From her father, Alex heard very little. She was left, in her abnormal
sensitiveness, to measure his disappointment and mortification by his
very silence.
Feeling again like the naughty little girl who had been responsible for
Barbara's fall from the balusters, and had been sent to Sir Francis for
sentence, she listened, in a silence that was broken only by the sobs
that she could hardly control, to his few, measured utterances.
"You are old enough to know your own mind." Sir Francis paused, swinging
his glasses lightly to and fro in his hand. Then he deliberately put
them across his nose and looked at her.
"At least," he added carefully, "I suppose you are. Your mother tells me
that you appear to have been--er--rather suddenly overwhelmed by a fear
of marrying without love. I don't wish to say, Alex, that such a
sentiment was not more or less proper and natural, but to act upon it so
hastily, and with such a heartless lack of consideration, appears to me
to be the action, my dear child"--Sir Francis paused, and then added
calmly--"of a fool. The word is not a pretty one, but I prefer it to the
only other alternative that I can see, for describing your conduct."
"Have you anything to say, my dear?"
Alex had nothing to say, and would, in any case, have been rendered by
this time powerless of saying it. Sir Francis looked at her with the
same grief and mortification on his handsome, severe face that had been
there eight years before when the nursery termagant, sobbing and
terrified, had stood before him in her short frock and pinafore.
"You could have asked advice," he said gently. "You have parents whose
only wish is to see you happy. Why did you not go to your mother?"
Alex tried to say, "Because--" but found that the only reason which
presented itself to her mind was her own conviction that Lady Isabel
would not have understood, and she dared not speak it aloud.
The Clare axiom, as that of thousands of their class and generation,
was that parents by Divine right knew more than their children could
ever hope to learn, and that nothing within the ken of these could ever
prove beyond their comprehension.
Sir Francis shook his head sadly.
"I will tell you, my poor child, since you will not answer me, why you
did not seek your mother's advice. It was because you are weakly
impulsive, and by one act of impetuous folly will lay up for yourself
years of unavailing remorse and regret."
Alex recognized with something like terror the truth of his description.
Weakly impulsive.
She had blindly followed an instinct, and, as usual, all her world had
blamed her and she had found herself faced by consequences that appalled
her.
Why must one always involve others?
She ceased to see clearly that marriage with Noel Cardew would have
meant misery, and blindly accepted the vision thrust upon her by her
surroundings. She had hurt and disappointed and shamed them, and they
could only see her action as a cruel, capricious impulse.
Alex, weakly impulsive, as Sir Francis had said, and sick with misery at
their unspoken blame and silent disappointment, presently lost her
always feeble hold of her own convictions, and saw with their eyes.
XIV
Barbara
Alex became more and more unhappy.
It was evident that Lady Isabel felt hardly any pleasure now in taking
her daughter about with her, and the consciousness of not being approved
rendered Alex more self-conscious and less sure of herself than ever.
It was inevitable that one or two of her mother's more intimate friends
should know of her affair with Noel Cardew, and it did not need Lady
Isabel's occasional sorrowful comments to persuade Alex that they took
the same view of her conduct as did her parents. The sense of being
despised overwhelmed her, and she fretted secretly and lost some of her
colour, and held herself worse than ever from the lassitude that
overwhelmed her physically whenever she was bored or unhappy.
Towards Easter Lady Isabel sent for Barbara to come home from Neuilly.
Alex revived a little at the idea of having Barbara at Clevedon Square
again.
She thought it would impress her younger, still schoolgirl sister to see
her as a fully-emancipated grown-up person, and she could not help
hoping that Barbara, promoted to being a confidante, would thrill at the
first-hand story of a real love affair and a broken engagement. Alex was
prepared to attribute to Noel a romantic despair that had not been his,
at her ruthless dismissal of him, in order to overawe little,
seventeen-year-old Barbara.
But behold Barbara, after those months spent in the household of the
Marquise de Métrancourt de la Hautefeuille!
No need to tell _her_ to keep her shoulders back.
She was not quite so tall as Alex, but her slim figure was exquisitely
upright. Encased in French stays that made even Lady Isabel gasp, she
wore, with an air, astonishing French clothes that swung gracefully
round her as she moved, and her hair, which had developed a surprising
ripple, was gathered up at the back of her head with a huge, outstanding
bow of smartly-tied ribbon that seemed to form a background for the
pale, pointed little face, that was still Barbara's, but had somehow
acquired an elusive charm that actually seemed more distinguished than
ordinary, healthy English prettiness.
And the self-assurance of the child!
Alex was disgusted at the ease with which Barbara, hitherto shy and
tongue-tied in the presence of her parents, chattered lightly to them on
the evening of her return, and offered--actually offered unasked!--to
sing them some of her new songs. "New songs" indeed, when it was only a
year ago that she had written to ask whether she might have a few
singing lessons with the Marquise's daughter! But neither Sir Francis
nor Lady Isabel rebuked her temerity, and they even exchanged amused,
approving glances when the slim, upright figure moved lightly across the
room to the big grand piano.
Alex, in her pink evening dress, with her elaborately-coiled hair, felt
infinitely childish and awkward as she watched Barbara slip off a new
gold bangle from her little white, rounded wrist, and strike a couple of
chords with perfect self-assurance.
She was going to play without music! It was absurd; Barbara had never
been musical.
Certainly the voice in which she sang a couple of little French
_ballades_, was a very tiny one, but there was a tunefulness, above all,
a vivacity, about her whole performance which caused even Sir Francis to
break into unwonted applause at the finish. Alex applauded too,
principally from the desire to prove to herself that it would be
impossible for _her_ ever to feel jealous of little Barbara.
When they had sent her to bed, Lady Isabel laughed with more animation
than she often displayed.
"How the child has developed!"
"Charming, charming!" said Sir Francis. "We must show her something of
the world, I think, even if she is rather young."
But it soon became evident, to Alex, at least, that Barbara had not been
without glimpses of the world, even at Neuilly. She listened with
interest, but very coolly, to Alex' attempted confidences, and finally
said, "Well, I can't imagine how you could have borne to give up the
diamond ring, and it would have been fun to get married and have a
trousseau and a house of your own. But I don't think Noel would make
much of a husband."
The calm disparagement in her tone annoyed Alex. It seemed to rob her
solitary conquest of any lingering trace of glory.
"I don't think you know very much about it," she said rather scathingly.
"You haven't met any men at all, naturally, so how can you judge?"
Barbara laughed.
Something of security that would not even take the trouble to dispute
the point, pierced through that cool, self-confident little laugh of
hers.
Later on, she told Alex, with rather overdone matter-of-factness, that a
young Frenchman, a cousin of Hélène de la Hautefeuille, had fallen very
much in love with her at Neuilly.
Alex at first pretended not to believe her, although she felt an
uncomfortable inward certainty that Barbara would never waste words on
an idle boast that could not be substantiated.
"You need not believe me if you don't want to," said Barbara
indifferently.
"But how could you _know_? I thought the Marquise was so particular?"
"So she was. They all are, in France, with _jeunes filles_. It's
ridiculous. But, of course, as Hélène was his cousin, they weren't quite
so strict, and he used to give her notes and things for me."
"Barbara!"
"You needn't be so shocked, Alex. Of course, _I_ never wrote to
_him_--that would have been too stupid; but he's very nice, and simply
madly in love with me. Hélène said he always admired _le type Anglais_,
and that I was his ideal."
Alex was thoroughly angered at the complacency in Barbara's voice.
"You and Hélène are two silly, vulgar, little schoolgirls. I didn't
think you could be so--so common, Barbara. What on earth would father
and mother say?"
"I daresay they wouldn't mind so very much," said Barbara calmly, "so
long as they didn't know about the notes and our having met once or
twice in the garden."
"I don't believe it!" exclaimed Alex. "You think it sounds grown-up, and
so you're exaggerating the whole thing."
Barbara looked at her sister, with her eyebrows cocked in a provoking,
conceited sort of way, not angrily, but rather contemptuously.
"Really, Alex, to hear you make such a fuss about it, any one would
think that you'd never set eyes on a man. Of course, that sort of thing
happens as soon as one begins to get grown-up. It's part of the fun."
"You know mother would say it was vulgar."
It was almost a relief to see one of Barbara's rare blushes at the word.
"I don't see why it should be more vulgar than you and Noel."
"How can you be so ridiculous! Of course, that was quite different. We
were both grown-up, and properly engaged and everything."
"Alex," said Barbara suddenly, "when you were engaged, did he ever kiss
you?"
Alex turned nearly as scarlet as her sister had been a moment before.
"Shut up!" she said savagely. A thought struck her. "You don't mean to
say you ever let that beastly French boy try to do anything like that?"
she demanded.
"No, no," said Barbara hastily; "of course not. But he's not such a boy
as all that, you know. He has a moustache, and he's doing his _service
militaire_ now. Otherwise," said Barbara calmly, "I daresay he would
have followed me to England."
"You conceited little idiot! He must have been laughing at you."
Barbara shrugged her shoulders, with a gesture that had certainly not
been acquired in Clevedon Square.
"You'll see for yourself presently," she remarked. "He's going to get
his _permission_ next month, and he's coming to London."
"You don't suppose you'll be able to go sneaking about writing notes and
meeting him in corners _here_, do you?" cried Alex, horrified.
Barbara looked at her disdainfully, and gave deft little pulls and pats
to the bow on her hair, so that it stood out more than ever.
"What on earth do you take me for, Alex? Of course, I know as well as
you do that that sort of thing can't be done in London. It will all be
perfectly proper," said Barbara superbly. "I have given him permission
to call here."
Alex remained speechless.
She was quite unable to share in the tolerant amusement with which her
parents apparently viewed the astonishing emancipation of Barbara,
although it was true that Barbara still retained a sufficient sense of
decorum to describe M. Achille de Villefranche to them merely as "a
cousin of Hélène's, who would like to come and call when he is in
London."
Lady Isabel acceded to the proposed visit with gracious amusement, and
Alex wondered jealously why her own attempts to prove grown-up and like
other girls never seemed to succeed as did Barbara's preposterous,
demurely-spoken pretensions--until she remembered with a pang that,
after all, _she_ had never had to ask whether admiring strangers might
call upon her. She knew instinctively that however much Lady Isabel
might exact in the way of elaborate chaperonage, she would secretly have
welcomed any such proof of her daughter's attraction for members of the
opposite sex.
One day Barbara, more boastful or less secretive than usual, showed Alex
one of Achille's notes, written to her on the day that she had left
Neuilly.
Alex deciphered the pointed writing with some difficulty, and then
turned first hot and then cold, as she remembered the few letters she
had ever received from Noel Cardew, written during the period of their
lawful, sanctioned engagement, when she had so fiercely told herself
that, of course, a man was never romantic on paper, and that his very
reticence only proved the depth of his feeling.
And all that time Barbara, utterly cold and merely superciliously
amused, had been the recipient of this Latin hyperbole, these
impassioned poetical flights:
"_Ma petite rose blanche anglaise_
_Ma douce Sainte Barbe._"
(Good Heavens! he had never seen Barbara in one of her cold furies, when
she would sulk in perfect silence for three days on end!) And finally,
with humble pleadings that he might be forgiven for such a
_débordement_, Achille apostrophized her as "_ma mignonne adorer._"
Alex could hardly believe that it was really Barbara who had inspired
these romantic ebullitions.
"How did you answer him?" she asked breathlessly.
"I didn't answer at all," Barbara coolly replied. "You don't suppose I
was so silly as that, do you? Why, girls get into the most awful
difficulties by writing letters and signing their names, and then the
man won't let them have the letters back afterwards. Achille has never
had one single scrap of writing from me."
Alex felt as much rebuked as angered by this display of worldly wisdom.
She knew, and was sure that Barbara, pluming herself over her own
shrewdness, knew also, that had she herself been able to provoke similar
protestations, no considerations of prudence or discretion would have
restrained the ardour of her response.
During the Easter holidays Barbara remained in the schoolroom, sometimes
playing with Archie and Pamela, but generally engaged on one of the many
forms of embroidery which she appeared to have learned at Neuilly, or
diligently practising her French songs at the schoolroom piano.
She did not appear to be at all envious of Alex' grown-up privileges,
for which Alex felt rather wonderingly grateful to her, until one day
when she was out driving with Lady Isabel, when a sudden enlightenment
fell upon her.
"What do you think of this ambition of little Barbara's?" her mother
asked her, with a trace of hesitation.
"What?" asked Alex stupidly.
"Why, this frantic wish of hers to be presented next May and allowed to
make her début. She will be seventeen, after all, and she seems to have
set her heart on it."
"Barbara! She wants to be presented and come out in May! Why, it's
nearly April now, mother. That would mean in another six weeks."
Alex was stupefied.
"Hasn't she said anything to you?" said Lady Isabel, with a sort of
vague, unperceiving wonder. "Funny little thing! I thought she would
have been sure to have talked it all over with you. She's been beggin'
and implorin' us ever since she got back from Neuilly, and your father
is half inclined to say she may."
How like Barbara! Begging and imploring them to let her be presented
next May, and all the time saying nothing at all to Alex, and slyly
pretending to care nothing for coming out, and listening with deceptive
quiet to Alex' little occasional speeches made to mark the difference
between twenty and seventeen. No doubt Barbara knew very well that she
would get her own way by dint of ardent pleading, and did not want the
effect of her arguments and reasonable-sounding representations to be
spoilt by Alex' vigorous protest.
For, of course, Alex was indignant. Why should Barbara come out when she
was barely seventeen, when her sister had had to wait until the orthodox
eighteen?
Alex might not value her privileges highly, but she was far from wishing
Barbara to share them.
In the depths of her soul was a lurking consciousness that neither did
she want sharp-eyed, critical Barbara to see how poor and dull a figure
her sister cut, after the imaginary triumphs of which she had so often
boasted.
Lady Isabel might be disappointed, but she never voiced her
disappointment or hinted at it, and Alex thought she tried to conceal it
from herself. But Barbara would not be disappointed. She might be rather
pleased, and make the small, veiled, spiteful comments by which she
occasionally, and always unexpectedly, paid one back for past slights or
unkindnesses.
Alex felt that she could not bear any further mortifications.
The question of Barbara's coming out was still undecided, principally
owing to Alex's strenuous efforts to persuade her mother not to allow
it, when M. Achille de Villefranche made the ceremonious visit to
Clevedon Square which Barbara had announced.
He came on a Sunday, so soon after three o'clock that Lady Isabel's
luncheon guests had barely departed, and sat on the extreme edge of his
chair, a slim, beautifully-rolled umbrella between his knees, and his
silk hat balanced on the top of it. His tie was tied into an astonishing
bow with out-spread ends that irresistibly reminded Alex of Barbara's
hair-ribbon.
He spoke excellent English, very rapidly, but occasionally lapsed into
still more rapid French, in which he poured forth his enthusiasm for
"cette chère île des brouillards," which description of her native land
was fortunately uncomprehended by Lady Isabel.
Altogether Achille was so like a Frenchman on the stage that Alex almost
expected to see him fall upon his knees in the drawing-room when Barbara
demurely obeyed the summons sent up to the schoolroom by her mother, and
appeared in her prim, dark-blue schoolroom frock. He certainly sprang to
his feet with a sort of bound, but any further intentions were
frustrated by his elegant umbrella, which got between his feet and
nearly tripped him up, and sent his beautiful top-hat rolling into the
furthest corner of the drawing-room.
Alex had to recognize that Achille behaved with great presence of mind,
even taken at such a disadvantage. He bowed over Barbara's hand, at the
same time kicking his umbrella carelessly aside. He waved a contemptuous
hand which made the behaviour of his hat a thing of no account, and he
did not even trouble himself to retrieve it until Barbara was seated,
when he strolled away to pick it up in a nonchalant manner, talking all
the time of other things.
But in spite of the high-handedness of Achille, Alex felt that the whole
affair was of the nature of a farce, and was ashamed of herself for
deriving unmistakable satisfaction from the conviction that no one could
take Barbara's conquest seriously.
Even Sir Francis, who found Achille still discoursing in the
drawing-room on his return from the Club at seven o'clock, indulged in a
little mild chaffing of his younger daughter when M. de Villefranche
amid many bows, had finally taken his leave.
Barbara responded with a sprightly amiability that she had never
displayed in her pre-Neuilly days, and which Alex angrily and
uncomprehendingly perceived both pleased and amused Sir Francis.
"But I am not sure I approve of your taste in the selection of your
admirers, my dear," he said humorously, his right hand lightly swinging
his glasses against his left.
"I have never met any Englishmen, you know, father," said Barbara
piteously, opening her eyes very wide. "If mother would only let me come
out this year and see a few people!"