After a few moments, Judith said in a vexed tone: ‘You will surely not permit her to behave with such impropriety!’
‘I see no impropriety,’ he replied.
‘To be alone with that man the whole day!’
‘An indiscretion, certainly.’
She walked on beside him in silence for some way, but presently said: ‘Why do you permit it?’
‘I have no power to stop her even if I would.’
‘Even if you would? What can you mean?’
‘She must be the only judge of her own actions. I won’t become a mentor.’
‘Charles, how nonsensical! Do you mean to let yourself be ridden over roughshod?’
‘Neither to be ridden over nor to ride roughshod,’ he answered. ‘To manage my own affairs in my own way, however.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ she said, in a mortified voice.
He pressed her hand, but after a slight pause began to talk of something else. She attempted no further discussion with him on the subject of the picnic, but to Worth, later, spoke her mind with great freedom. He listened calmly to all she had to say, but when she demanded to know his opinion, replied that he thought her intervention to have been ill-judged.
‘I had no notion of vexing her! I tried only to advise her!’
‘You made a great mistake in doing so. Advice is seldom palatable.’
‘I think she is perfectly heartless!’
‘I hope you may be found to be wrong.’
‘And, what is more, she is a flirt. I am sure there can be nothing more odious!’ She paused, but as Worth showed no sign of wishing to avail himself of the opportunity of answering her, continued: ‘Nothing could be more unfortunate than such an entanglement! I wonder you can sit there so placidly while Charles goes the quickest way to work to ruin his life! She has nothing to recommend her. She has not even the advantages of fortune; she is wild to a fault; indulges every extravagant folly; and in general shows such a want of delicacy that it quite sinks my spirits to think of Charles forming such a connection!’ She again paused, and as Worth remained silent, said: ‘Well? Can you find anything to admire in her, beyond a beautiful face and a well-turned ankle?’
‘Certainly,’ he replied. ‘She has a great deal of natural quickness, and although her vivacity often betrays her into unbecoming behaviour, I believe she wants neither sense nor feeling.’
‘You will tell me next that you are pleased with the engagement!’
‘On the contrary, I am sorry for it. But depend upon it, a man of thirty-five is capable of judging for himself what will best suit him.’
‘Oh, Julian, I know she will make him unhappy!’
‘I think it extremely probable,’ he replied. ‘But as neither of us has the power to prevent such a contingency we should be extremely foolish to interfere in the matter.’
She sighed, and picked up her embroidery. After a period of reflection, she said in a mollified tone: ‘I don’t wish to be censorious, and I must say she is extremely kind to little Julian.’
The entrance of the Colonel put an end to the conversation. He had been dining at the Duke’s table, and seemed to be more concerned with the difficulties of the military situation than with Barbara’s volatility. He sat down with a sigh of relief before the fire, and said: ‘Well! we depart (I need hardly say) at daybreak. It will be a relief to leave these Headquarters behind us. If his temper is to survive this campaign Old Hookey must have a respite from the letters they keep sending from the Horse Guards.’
‘Crusty, is he?’ said Worth.
‘Damned crusty. I don’t blame him: I wouldn’t be in his shoes for a thousand pounds. What is needed is good troops, and all we hear of is general officers. Added to that, the staff which has been employed here is preposterous. One is for ever tumbling over deputy-assistants who are nothing more than subaltern officers, and no more fit for staff duty than your son would be. They are all being turned off, of course, but even so we shall have too many novices still left on the staff.’
‘If I know anything of the matter, you will have more—if Wellington pays any heed to the recommendations he will receive,’ remarked Worth.
‘He don’t, thank the lord! Though, between ourselves, some of those recommendations come from very exalted quarters.’ He stood up. ‘I am off to bed. Have you made up your mind whether you come along with us, or not, Worth?’
‘Yes, as far as to Ghent. Where do you go from there?’
‘Oh, Tournay—Mons! All the fortifications. We shall be away for about a week, I suppose.’
Both men had left the house when Judith came down to breakfast next morning. She sat down at the table, with only The British and Continental Herald to bear her company, and was engaged in perusing the columns of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, when the butler came in to announce the Lady Barbara Childe.
Judith looked up in surprise; she supposed Lady Barbara to be in the salon, but before she could speak that tempestuous beauty had brushed past the butler into the room.
She was dressed in a walking costume, and carried a huge chinchilla muff. She looked pale, and her eyes seemed over-bright to Judith. She glanced round the room, and said abruptly: ‘Charles! I want to see him!’
Judith rose, and came forward. ‘How do you do?’ she said. ‘I am sorry, but my brother has already left for Ghent. I hope it is nothing urgent?’
Barbara exclaimed: ‘Oh, confound it! I wanted to see him! I overslept—it’s those curst drops!’
Her petulance, the violence of the language she used, did nothing to advance her claims to Judith’s kindness. ‘I am sorry. Pray will you not be seated?’
‘Oh no! There’s no use in my staying!’ Barbara replied dejectedly. Her mouth drooped; her eyes were emptied of light; she stood swinging her muff, apparently lost in her own brooding thoughts. Suddenly she looked at Judith, and laughed. ‘Oh, heavens! what did I say? You are certainly offended!’
Judith at once disclaimed. Barbara said, with her air of disarming candour: ‘I am sorry! Only I did wish to see Charles before he left, and I am always cross when I don’t get what I want.’
‘I hope it was not a matter of great importance.’
‘No. That is, I behaved odiously to him yesterday—oh, to you, too, but I don’t care for that! Oh, the devil, now what have I said?’
She looked so rueful, yet had such an imp of mischief dancing behind her solemnity that Judith was obliged to laugh. ‘I wish you will sit down! Have you breakfasted?’
Barbara dropped into a chair. ‘No. I don’t, you know.’ She sighed. ‘Life is using me very hardly today. You will say that is my own fault, but it is nevertheless monstrous that when I do mean to be good, to make amends, I must needs oversleep.’
After a moment’s hesitation, Judith said: ‘You refer, I collect, to your picnic scheme?’
‘Of course. I wanted to tell Charles I was only funning.’
‘You do not mean to go, then!’
‘No.’
‘I am so glad! I was completely taken in, I confess.’
‘Oh no! I did mean to go—yesterday! But Gussie—’ She broke off, grinding her teeth together.
‘Your sister-in-law advised you against the scheme?’
‘On the contrary!’ said Barbara, with an angry little laugh.
‘I don’t think I quite understand?’
‘I daresay you might not. She had the infernal impudence to approve of it. She will be a famous matchmaking mama for her daughters one of these days.’
‘Can you mean that she wishes you to marry the Comte de Lavisse?’ gasped Judith.
‘Most earnestly. Ah, you are astonished. You are not acquainted with my family.’
‘But your engagement to my brother! She could not wish to see that broken!’
‘Why not?’
‘A solemn promise—the scandal!’
Barbara burst out laughing. ‘Oh, you’re enchanting when you’re shocked! An outraged goddess, no less! But you must lea
rn to know my family better. We don’t care for scandal.’
‘Then why do you forgo your picnic?’ demanded Judith.
‘I don’t know. To spite Gussie—to please Charles! Both, perhaps.’
This answer was not encouraging. Judith was silent for a moment. She stole a glance at Barbara’s face, and of impulse said: ‘Do you love him?’ The words were no sooner uttered than regretted. Such a question was an impertinence; she was not on terms of sufficient intimacy with Barbara to allow of its having been asked.
Flushing, she awaited the snub she felt herself to have earned. But Barbara replied merely: ‘Yes.’
‘I should not have asked you,’ Judith apologised.
‘It’s of no consequence. I daresay you wish that Charles had never met me. I should, in your place. I’m horrid, you know. I told him so, but he wouldn’t listen to me. I never loved anyone before, I think.’
This remark accorded so ill with her reputation that Judith looked rather taken aback.
Barbara gave a gurgle of irrepressible amusement. ‘Are you recalling my flirtations? They don’t signify, you know. I flirt to amuse myself, but the truth is that I never fancied myself in love with anyone but Charles.’
‘I beg your pardon, but to fancy yourself in love could surely be the only justification for flirting!’
‘Oh, stuff!’ Barbara said. ‘Flirtation is delightful; being in love, quite disagreeable.’
‘I never found it so!’
‘Truly?’
Judith considered for a moment. ‘No. At least—yes, I suppose sometimes it can be disagreeable. There is a certain pain—for foolish causes.’
‘Ah, you are not so stupid after all! I hate pain. Yes, and I hate to submit, as I am doing now, over this tiresome picnic!’
‘That I understand perfectly!’ Judith said. ‘But you do not submit to Charles; he made no such demand! Your submission is to your own judgment.’
‘Oh no! I don’t go because Charles does not wish it. How tame! Don’t talk of it! It makes me cross! I want to go. I am bored to death!’
‘Well, why should you not?’ Judith said, as an idea presented itself to her. ‘A party of pleasure—there could be no objection! If you will accept of my company, I will go with you.’
‘Go with me?’ said Barbara. ‘In Lavisse’s place?’
‘No such thing! You may ride with the Count; I shall drive with my sister, Lady Taverner. I am persuaded she would delight in the expedition. I daresay my brother will join us as well.’
The green eyes looked blankly for a moment, then grew vivid with laughter. ‘Thus turning a tête-à-tête into the most sedate of family parties! Oh, I must do it, if only for the fun of seeing Etienne’s dismay!’
‘Would you not care for it?’ said Judith, a little dashed.
‘Of all things!’ Barbara sprang up. ‘It’s for tomorrow. We start early, and lunch at this Château Etienne talks of. It will be charming! Thank you a thousand times!’
Nine
The weather remaining fine, and the Taverners declaring themselves to be very ready to join the picnic, the whole party assembled in the Rue Ducale the next morning. As Lady Taverner’s situation made riding ineligible for her, Judith, who would have preferred to have gone on horseback, was obliged to drive with her in an open barouche. Sir Peregrine bestrode a showy chestnut, and Barbara, as usual, rode the Count’s Coup de Grâce.
Upon her first setting out Judith had felt perfectly satisfied with her own appearance. She was wearing a round robe, under a velvet pelisse of Sardinian blue. A high-crowned bonnet, lined with silk and ornamented with a frilled border of lace, gloves of French kid, a sealskin muff, and half boots of jean, completed a very becoming toilet. Beside her sister-in-law, who had chosen to wear drab merino cloth over olive-brown muslin, she looked elegant indeed, but from the moment of Barbara’s descending the steps of the house in the Rue Ducale she felt herself to have been cast quite in the shade.
Barbara was wearing a habit of pale green, resembling the dress of a hussar. Her coat was ornamented with row upon row of frogs and braiding; silver epaulettes set off her shoulders; and silver braiding stretched half way up her arms. Under the habit, she wore a cambric shirt with a high-standing collar trimmed with lace; a cravat of worked muslin was tied round her throat; and there were narrow ruffles at her wrists. Set jauntily on her flaming head was a tall hat, like a shako, with a plume of feathers adding the final touch of audacity to a preposterous but undeniably striking costume.
Lady Taverner was shocked; Judith, who considered the dress too daring for propriety, yet could not suppress a slight feeling of envy. She could fancy herself in such a habit.
‘How can she? Such a quiz of a hat!’ whispered Lady Taverner.
However much she might agree with these sentiments, Judith had no notion of spoiling the day’s pleasure by letting her disapproval appear. She leaned out of the carriage to shake hands with Barbara, saying with the utmost amiability: ‘How delightfully you look! You put me quite out of conceit with myself.’
‘Yes, I’m setting a fashion,’ replied Barbara. ‘You will see: it will be the established mode in a month’s time.’
Lady Vidal, who had come out of the house with her husband, merely bowed to Judith from the top of the stone steps, but Vidal put himself to the trouble of coming up to the barouche to thank Judith for her kindness in joining the expedition. He said in a low voice: ‘Bab is a sad romp! One of these days her crotchets will be the ruin of her. But your presence makes everything as it should be! I shan’t conceal from you that I don’t above half like that fellow Lavisse.’
Not wishing to join in any animadversions on one who was for this day in some sort her host, Judith passed it off with a smile and a trivial remark. Her dislike of Lavisse was as great as Vidal’s, but she was forced to acknowledge the very gentlemanlike way in which he had received the news of the augmentation of his party. Not by as much as the flicker of an eyelid did he betray the mortification he must feel. His civility towards the ladies in the barouche was most flattering; he was all smiles and complaisance, prophesying fine weather, and displaying a proper solicitude for their comfort.
‘Don’t you wish you were coming, Gussie?’ Barbara called.
‘My dear Bab, you must know that of all insipidities I most detest a family party,’ returned Augusta.
Barbara bit her lip, glancing towards the barouche as though she saw it with new eyes. Suddenly impatient, she said: ‘Well, why do we wait? Let us, for God’s sake, start!’
The Count, who was giving some directions to Judith’s coachman, looked over his shoulder with a smile of perfect comprehension. ‘En avant, then!’ he said, reining his horse back to allow the barouche to pass. When it had moved forward with Peregrine riding close behind it, he fell in beside Barbara, and said with some amusement: ‘You repent already, and are asking yourself what you do in this galère.’
‘Oh, by God, I must have been mad!’ she said.
‘Little fool! I admire the guard set about you by your staff officer. It is most formidable!’
‘It was not his doing. The notion was Lady Worth’s, and I fell in with it.’
‘Impayable! Why, for example?’
She laughed. ‘Oh, to make you angry, of course!’
‘But I am not at all angry; I am entirely amused,’ he said.
They were making their way down the Rue de la Pépinière in the direction of the Namur Gate. Once outside the walls of the town, the road led through some neat suburbs to the Forest of Soignes, a huge beechwood stretching for some miles to the south of Brussels, and intersected by the main Charleroi Chaussée. The Forest was almost entirely composed of beech trees, their massive trunks rising up out of the ground with scarcely any underwood to hide their smooth, silvery outlines.
Judith had often ridden in this direction, but this was her first visit to the Forest in springtime. She was enchanted with it, and even Lady Taverner, whose spirits were always low during the first
months of pregnancy, was moved to exclaim at the grandeur of the scene. Sir Peregrine, in spite of already having got his uppers splashed by the mud of the unpaved portion of the road, seemed pleased also, though he would not allow the vista to be comparable to an English scene.
For the first mile or two the party remained together, Barbara and Lavisse riding at a little distance behind the barouche, but from time to time pressing forward to exchange remarks with its occupants. Shortly after the Forest had been entered, however, Barbara announced herself to be tired of riding tamely along the road. She waved her whip in a rather naughty gesture of farewell, and set her horse scrambling up the bank of the wood. The Count lingered only to assure Judith of the impossibility of her coachman’s missing the way, saluted, and followed Barbara.
‘I do think her the most unaccountable creature!’ exclaimed Lady Taverner. ‘It is very uncivil of her to make off like that, besides being so indiscreet!’
Judith, herself disappointed in this fresh evidence of flightiness in Barbara, endeavoured to give her sister-in-law’s thoughts another direction.
It was inconceivable to Lady Taverner that any female who was betrothed to one gentleman could desire a tête-à-tête with another, and for some time she continued to marvel at Barbara’s conduct. Judith did not attend very closely to her remarks; she was lost in her own reflections. She could appreciate the cause of Barbara’s perversity, but although she might sympathise with that wildness of disposition which made convention abhorrent to Barbara, she could not but be sorry for it. She was more than ever convinced that this spoiled, fashionable beauty would make Colonel Audley a wretched wife. Her imagination dwelled pitifully upon his future, which must of necessity be a stormy affair, made up of whims and tantrums and debts; and she could not forbear to contrast this melancholy prospect with the less exciting but infinitely more comfortable life he would enjoy if he would but change Barbara for Lucy.
She was roused from these musings by hearing Peregrine announce a village to have come into view. She looked up; the trees flanking the road dwindled ahead in perspective to the village of Waterloo. A round building, standing on the edge of the Forest, half bathed in sunlight, presented a picture charming enough to make her long for her sketchbook and water colours.
An Infamous Army Page 13