CHAPTER XXIV
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!”
CHAPTER XXV
In that mood of rebellious mortification she fell asleep. And, curiously enough, dreamed not of him whom she had in mind been so furiously defending, but of Harbinger. She fancied herself in prison, lying in a cell fashioned like the drawing-room at Sea house; and in the next cell, into which she could somehow look, Harbinger was digging at the wall with his nails. She could distinctly see the hair on the back of his hands, and hear him breathing. The hole he was making grew larger and larger. Her heart began to beat furiously; she awoke.
She rose with a new and malicious resolution to show no sign of rebellion, to go through the day as if nothing had happened, to deceive them all, and then – ! Exactly what ‘and then’ meant, she did not explain even to herself.
In accordance with this plan of action she presented an untroubled front at breakfast, went out riding with little Ann, and shopping with her mother afterwards. Owing to this news of Miltoun the journey to Scotland had been postponed. She parried with cool ingenuity each attempt made by Lady Valleys to draw her into conversation on the subject of that meeting at Gustard’s, nor would she talk of her brother; in every other way she was her usual self. In the afternoon she even volunteered to accompany her mother to old Lady Harbinger’s in the neighbourhood of Prince’s Gate. She knew that Harbinger would be there, and with the thought of meeting that other at ‘five o’clock,’ had a cynical pleasure in thus encountering him. It was so complete a blind to them all! Then, feeling that she was accomplishing a masterstroke; she even told him, in her mother’s hearing, that she would walk home, and he might come if he cared. He did care.
But when once she had begun to swing along in the mellow afternoon, under the mellow trees, where the air was sweetened by the South-West wind, all that mutinous, reckless mood of hers vanished, she felt suddenly happy and kind, glad to be walking with him. To-day too he was cheerful, as if determined not to spoil her gaiety; and she was grateful for this. Once or twice she even put her hand up and touched his sleeve, calling his attention to birds or trees, friendly, and glad, after all those hours of bitter feelings, to be giving happiness. When they parted at the door of Valleys House, she looked back at him with a queer, half-rueful smile. For, now the hour had come!
In a little unfrequented ante-room, all white panels and polish, she sat down to wait. The entrance drive was visible from here; and she meant to encounter Courtier casually in the hall. She was excited, and a little scornful of her own excitement. She had expected him to be punctual, but it was already past five; and soon she began to feel uneasy, almost ridiculous, sitting in this room where no one ever came. Going to the window, she looked out.
A sudden voice behind her, said:
“Auntie Babs!”.
Turning, she saw little Ann regarding her with those wide, frank, hazel eyes. A shiver of nerves passed through Barbara.
“Is this your room? It’s a nice room, isn’t it?”
She answered:
“Quite a nice room, Ann.”
“Yes. I’ve never been in here before. There’s somebody just come, so I must go now.”
Barbara involuntarily put her hands up to her cheeks, and quickly passed with her niece into the hall. At the very door the footman William handed her a note. She looked at the superscription. It was from Courtier. She went back into the room. Through its half-closed door the figure of little Ann could be seen, with her legs rather wide apart, and her hands clasped on her low-down belt, pointing up at William her sudden little nose. Barbara shut the door abruptly, broke the seal, and read:
“DEAR LADY BARBARA,
“I am sorry to say my interview with your brother was fruitless.
“I happened to be sitting in the Park just now, and I want to wish you every happiness before I go. It has been the greatest pleasure to know you. I shall never have a thought of you that will not be my pride; nor a memory that will not help me to believe that life is good. If I am tempted to feel that things are dark, I shall remember that you are breathing this same mortal air. And to beauty and joy’ I shall take off my hat with the greater reverence, that once I was permitted to walk and talk, with you. And so, good-bye, and God bless you.
“Your faithful servant,
“CHARLES COURTIER.”
Her cheeks burned, quick sighs escaped her lips; she read the letter again, but before getting to the end could not see the words for mist. If in that letter there had been a word of complaint or even of regret! She could not let him go like this, without good-bye, without any explanation at all. He should not think of her as a cold, stony flirt, who had been merely stealing a few weeks’ amusement out of him. She would explain to him at all events that it had not been that. She would make him understand that it was not what he thought – that something in her wanted – wanted – ! Her mind was all confused. “What was it?” she thought: “What did I do?” And sore with anger at herself, she screwed the letter up in her glove, and ran out. She walked swiftly down to Piccadilly, and crossed into the Green Park. There she passed Lord Malvezin and a friend strolling up towards Hyde Park Corner, and gave them a very faint bow. The composure of those two precise and well-groomed figures sickened her just then. She wanted to run, to fly to this meeting that should remove from him the odious feelings he must have, that she, Barbara Caradoc, was a vulgar enchantress, a common traitress and coquette! And his letter – without a syllable of reproach! Her cheeks burned so, that she could not help trying to hide them from people who passed.
As she drew nearer to his rooms she walked slower, forcing herself to think what she should do, what she should let him do! But she continued resolutely forward. She would not shrink now – whatever came of it! Her heart fluttered, seemed to stop beating, fluttered again. She set her teeth; a sort of desperate hilarity rose in her. It was an adventure! Then she was gripped by the feeling that had come to her on the roof. The whole thing was bizarre, ridiculous! She stopped, and drew the letter from her glove. It might be ridiculous, but it was due from her; and closing her lips very tight, she walked on. In thought she was already standing close to him, her eyes shut, waiting, with her heart beating wildly, to know what she would feel when his lips had spoken, perhaps touched her face or hand. And she had a sort of mirage vision of herself, with eyelashes resting on her cheeks, lips a little parted, arms helpless at her sides. Yet, incomprehensibly, his figure was invisible. She discovered then that she was standing before his door.
She rang the bell calmly, but instead of dropping her hand, pressed the little bare patch of palm left open by the glove to her face, to see whether it was indeed her own cheek flaming so.
The door had been opened by some unseen agency, disclosing a passage and flight of stairs covered by a red carpet, at the foot of which lay an old, tangled, brown-white dog full of fleas and sorrow. Unreasoning terror seized on Barbara; her body remained rigid, but her spirit began flying back across the Green Park, to the very hall of Valleys House. Then she saw coming towards her a youngish woman in a blue apron, with mild, reddened eyes.
“Is this where Mr. Courtier lives?”
“Yes, miss.” The teeth of the young woman were few in number and rather black; and Barbara could only stand there saying nothing, as if her body had been deserted between the sunlight and this dim red passage, which led to-what?
The woman spoke again:
“I’m sorry if you was wanting him, miss, he’s just gone away.”
Barbara felt a movement in her heart, like the twang and quiver of an elastic band, suddenly relaxed. She bent to stroke the head of the old dog, who was smelling her shoes. The woman said:
“And, of course, I can’t give you his address, because he’s gone to foreign parts.”
With a murmur, of whose sense she knew nothing, Barbara hurried out into the sunshine. Was she glad? Was she sorry? At the corner of the street she turned and looked back; the two heads, of the woman and the dog, were there still, poked out through the doorway.
A horrible inclination to laugh seized her, followed by as horrible a desire to cry.