Barnaby Part 21

"Why did you never come back and dance with me?" she was asking. It seemed to her that there was a long pause, and then his answer came, low and close.

"I did not dare," he said.

"Oh," she said piteously;--no, not she, but the imprudent, tired girl whose head was giddy, and who did not know what she said. "Oh,--how funny!"

Perhaps he was throwing dust in people's eyes,--trying to blind them to his fluttering, like a burnt moth, round Julia. If they saw him sitting up here in a corner with her, and she was happy, they would think there was nothing in it. He must be trying to make her laugh.

Well, she must help him. She could say something funny too.

"There's a man downstairs," she told him, "who asked me to marry him."

"What?" said Barnaby. He started as if he had been shot.

"He said he loved me," she repeated. "He wished me to go away and release you and marry him."

"Who?"

"You were with the only woman you ever cared for. That was what he said. I had n.o.body to keep him away from me...."

"Oh, I was with the woman I cared for, was I?" he said. "And who the devil is it wants horsewhipping when I get at him?"

The deadly calm in his voice arrested her. What had she said to him, babbling in her unhappiness? Alarm steadied her; the dizziness was pa.s.sing.

"I will not tell you," she said, forgetting how vainly she had looked for him to s.h.i.+eld her.

His eyes were blue as steel. She had never seen him angry until to-night.

"I'll make you," he said.

They stared at each other a minute, her eyes as unflinching as his were hard. Across the silly little supper table with its gla.s.s and silver, its green, gold-tipped bottles, and its tumbled flowers, he leaned and gripped her hands.

"Did you tell him you are not my wife?" he said.

There was a whiff of scent in their neighbourhood; the great green fronds spreading behind him were rudely stirred. A pa.s.sing couple must have brushed against that screen on their way to the stairs. A burst of merriment came from the upper end of the room. But these two were as much alone as if it had been a desert.

So that was why he was angry. He believed that she had broken faith....

"I told him nothing," she said.

Barnaby took a long breath. She felt his grip relax.

"You are a good girl," he said. "You wouldn't break your promise. I suppose I've no right to order you:--I'll find him out for myself.

Tell me one thing, and we'll let it go--"

She waited. There had been something very bitter to her in his relief.

All he asked of her was to keep the secret until he was tired of the joke....

"Susan," he said. "Did you want to tell him?"

What did that matter to him? Supposing she had--wanted? Supposing she would have given worlds to exchange her difficult post for one so different, so secure?--Her cheek burned.

"I would sooner have died," she said.

Rackham stood under the gallery in a black mood, watching the d.u.c.h.ess send her messenger to hunt out the missing husband. He saw Julia, bereft of her cavalier, pausing uncertainly; and a satiric impulse moved him to join her.

"Come and have supper with me," he said.

"I am engaged to Barnaby," she said, a little defiantly.

"They've sent him up with his wife," he retorted, and his mocking tone seemed to please her. She submitted and pressed his arm.

"Poor Barnaby!" she said. "It's an awful muddle."

She was looking very lovely and pathetic. The man who had once been entangled a little way in her toils himself and, having failed to succ.u.mb, was naturally inclined to despise her, admired her pose. It was hardly to be wondered at if Barnaby, who had been mad about her once, should be incapable of resisting the allurement of these dark eyes, so deep and so reproachful. He could not help speculating how far she was in earnest, and how far a hurt vanity inspired her.

Curiosity piqued him.

"I understand," he said gravely, as they pa.s.sed out and began to climb to the supper-room. It amused him to feel that her confidential att.i.tude, her claim on his sympathy, was a subtle intimation that he had been the unlucky cause of the fatal misunderstanding, and must therefore be kind to her. All at once he had a perverse inclination to cast himself in the scale again. Why not? It would be a bitter joke on Barnaby, and it suited his savage humour.

"I like your dress," he said. His change of tone surprised her. She glanced at him swiftly, half-turning as she mounted, her green garments rippling as she lifted her train on one smooth arm, displaying a whirl of skirts and one little green sequin slipper. "Ah," she said, "down below they've been reviling me for a mermaid, and complaining bitterly of my tail."

"And so," said Rackham, "the little slipper is betrayed, to dispel the illusion?"

"Perhaps," said Julia. She used, at one time, to smile up in his face like that.... A vindictive sense of his power possessed him, flattering him on this night of defeat. In his heart he was still fiercely wors.h.i.+pping the pale girl who had flouted him, clinging obstinately--Oh, she was a fool, and so was Barnaby;--and the irony of it was that he had only to lift his finger--!

"We'll find a place by ourselves," he said, confidentially, pa.s.sing into the room. Inside it he took a step or two, glancing about him.

There were vacant seats on the right, but the tables had a battered air. Farther down, perhaps--; yes, farther down, near the wall. He turned back to look for his partner, and the sight of her face amazed him. With a prompt.i.tude that surprised himself he pulled her back, and got her outside the room. Was it possible that he had been mistaken in her, or could a woman push affectation as far as that?

She broke into a kind of gasping exclamation that was not intelligible at first, and he stared at her in limitless amazement.

"Oh, poor Barnaby, oh, poor Barnaby!" she repeated. There was a ring of triumph in her incoherent voice. She had gone mad, he fancied.

"Hus.h.!.+" he said. "They'll hear you."

He was glad he had shut that door, and thankful there was not a soul on the stairs.

"I was right!" she said, "I was right.... I knew it! You were there when she came here first as his widow, and I told his mother to her face it was a wicked plot!"

"Julia," said Rackham, "you don't know what you are saying."

She controlled herself a little. He held her wrist.

"Didn't you see them in there?" she asked. "Didn't you hear him?"

"If you mean Barnaby," he said, "I was looking out for our places. I didn't notice whereabouts they were till you clutched at me. They didn't see us at all."

"I heard him," she said, in the same wild key of triumph. "I heard his own words.--He said she was not his wife."