“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 Claire 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.
Collected Works of E M Delafield Page 106