Barnaby Part 26

He went first, striking into a kind of track.

"There should be a gate in the corner," he said. "Better let your horse get his head down and smell out the rabbit-holes. We're like the babes in the wood, aren't we? Mind that grip!--Where are you?"

The gate was there. They pa.s.sed through it, and on the other side was a sign-post. Barnaby struck a match, standing up in his stirrups to peer at the moss-stained board.

"I'm afraid," he said, "we'll be late for that concert. Unless we can strike Kilgour's habitation and get him to send us on. Shall we try for it? We're--oh, never mind where we are; it's the end of the world, anyhow. Are you tired to death?"

He turned round with the match in his fingers, and looked at her, but it had burnt down; he dropped it, and reaching out, caught her hand, swinging it in his as their horses stumbled on side by side.

"What a cold little hand!" he said, but his grip was warming it through the leather....

The end of the world.... He had used the word so lightly, but it called her back to reason. Another day was over. And perhaps to-morrow the world might end.

CHAPTER IX

The d.u.c.h.ess and her friend Wickes were a trifle anxious, but their faces cleared as the late ones arrived. Two or three rows behind them the village schoolmaster dropped like a shot rabbit into his seat.

"A minute later and we'd have been lost," whispered the d.u.c.h.ess. "It's always a battle to keep him off the platform. Once he is wound up no power on earth can stop him. Twice already he has offered his recitation, proposing to fill the breach."

"Poor devil, what a shame!" said Barnaby. "Why not let him?"

"We did let him--once," said Wickes, and a reminiscent shudder pa.s.sed down the row. He addressed himself eagerly to Susan.

"It's awfully good of you, Mrs. Hill," he said, the worried creases in his long face relaxing. "Every time I get up a village concert I swear it will be the last, but I go on doing it year by year. You have no idea what the tribulations are----"

"That is meant for me," said the d.u.c.h.ess, lowering her voice to a guilty whisper. "--I ask you, how could I help it? You know what a commotion there was this morning, getting off to the meet.--I told somebody to call down from my window to Rufus Brown that he was to attend this concert and sing _John Peel_.--I could tell him a mile off by his old grey horse; you know how the creature bobs his head up and down:----"

"_I_ did your bidding," said Barnaby. "You only said 'Stop him!' and I don't know who on earth it was, but it certainly wasn't Rufus."

"How was I to know," groaned the d.u.c.h.ess, "that he had sold the grey?"

"But the beggar was quite delighted," protested Barnaby, who saw nothing worse than a joke in this subst.i.tution of a probably voiceless stranger. "He undertook to do it."

The d.u.c.h.ess pointed a solemn finger.

"Barnaby," she said, "you have been out of the world too long. You don't know the whole horror of the position. There he sits!"

"Flushed with victory," murmured someone else, "hoa.r.s.e with bawling:----"

"It was an awful moment," said the d.u.c.h.ess, "when he came and thanked me for the compliment I had paid him. I've never spoken to the wretch in my life."

"He feels you have adopted him now," said the Job's comforter at her elbow. "Barnaby, you don't know him. He's the most impossible bounder who was ever kicked out of society, and we have all been turning him the cold shoulder for the last two seasons. We were beginning to hope we had finally choked him off."

"Poor Wickes is nearly beside himself," said the d.u.c.h.ess. "He will never get over it. But imagine my feelings when I discovered what I had done----"

"The populace at the back didn't know what to make of it; they are used to us rollicking in _John Peel_,--shouting out the chorus. But we were all too utterly petrified to emit a whoop----"

"Is there anything you would like in the way of properties, Mrs. Hill?"

said Wickes, in a severe, sad voice. Susan looked down, suddenly nervous, her hands clenched, her face a little pale.

"What is your wife going to do?" Kilgour was asking, and Barnaby was answering carelessly that he didn't know.

"She is rather a dab at acting," he said, and now he was looking humorously at her. But for once she failed to smile back her recognition of the eternal joke between them.... Yes, she was good at acting....

"Turn the lights down," she said, and Mr. Wickes flew obediently to the nearest lamp. Anything to obliterate past misfortunes!--"And there is a woman at the back with a baby. Ask her to lend it to me."

She had meant to amuse them differently, but some impulse had made her change her mind. She flung a dark shawl, borrowed, over her satin frock. Mr. Wickes came back to her, carrying the child gingerly; its mother had relinquished it with pride, only protesting against his taking it up by the back of its neck like a puppy, which Wickes, distracted by his responsibilities, had seemed inclined to do.

They were all looking at her with interest, mildly stirred to expect something unusual, as the anxious Wickes helped her on to the platform and lowered another lamp. But as she stood above them their curious faces faded, and the touch of the little body, so light in her arm, took her out of herself. She was once more playing, playing for life, in the Tragedy Company; making the people sob at the tragic end of the drama.

"--Don't waken the child...."

The first note of her voice vibrated like the plaintive string of a harp. The listeners were startled.

She was the woman whose husband was faithless and, in the horrible madness that gripped him, was coming to take her life. She was shut in, hidden in a poor shelter, miles away from human help; and she was listening for his step in terror, loving him so bitterly still that she would have been glad to die, but clinging desperately to life for the sake of his child. And she rocked the baby on her arm, half distracted; singing to it, ceasing her chant to listen ... and imagining his approach. But all the while, in her despair, she stifled the scream that was on her lips;--she must not waken the child.

Farther and farther she retreated, staring with frightened eyes at the door, but still hus.h.i.+ng the baby at her breast; and then, all at once, she stopped, and bent her face to its cheek. A pause hung, significant; and then came her cry, dreadful, heart-breaking. The baby was still. He might come; he might kill her ... he could not waken the child....

"Good heavens, how real!" said Mr. Wickes.

Susan, breathing a little quicker, looked down on the dim-lit audience.

All these women could ride, all these women could dance.... She wanted Barnaby to think of her sometimes, later. Would he remember her by the one thing they could not do? by that wild sc.r.a.p of melodrama?

The room was shaking with an almost hysterical applause. Behind there was an enthusiastic stamping. And the only woman who was not crying was the baby's mother, who was too flattered, and one other who looked on with disdainful eyes.

"Did you like it?" asked the actress wistfully. It was Barnaby himself who had come forward to help her down. She could not hear what he said; it was under his breath, and it was drowned in the clapping.

The lights had gone up again; she could recognize the people who were surrounding her, as she stepped down amongst them. Near the wall, not very far from the d.u.c.h.ess, who was frankly borrowing a large, masculine handkerchief, were sitting a thin, fair woman, and a big, stupid, slow-witted man. They both had an odd look of having just found each other. The d.u.c.h.ess wagged her head at them.

"Yes," she whispered, "there they are. They have made it up....

Wickes, don't you think it would be a n.o.ble deed to invite the schoolmaster to play G.o.d Save the King? It will get his name into the local paper."

"Certainly," said Wickes. He took a long breath, conceiving his troubles over, remaining, however, with his eyes fixed on Susan in a kind of awed curiosity. Finally he spoke out the problem in his mind.

"Do you mind telling me," he said, apologetically, "what spell you used--how you contrived to keep the infant quiet?"

"Oh, she's a witch!" said Barnaby.

"Yes, she's a witch," said the d.u.c.h.ess kindly, "but I know the secret.

It had a comforter in its mouth."

They were all moving now, bustling out of their chairs, and blocking up the gangway with their "good nights." The proletariat was waiting for them to depart before shuffling out of the s.h.i.+lling benches. And there was Julia, paler than usual, but as lovely, smiling at Barnaby, giving him a long, strange look that was full of pity and understanding....

"You're done up," said Barnaby. "Come along. I shouldn't have let you be dragged into this performance on the top of a hard day's hunting."

She kept her lip steady, wis.h.i.+ng she had not seen that interchange of glances; shrinking absurdly from the implication that was conveyed by Kilgour's officious interposition of his broad person. Did he think he could arrest the march of events by planting himself like a kind ox between Barnaby and Julia? Did he think they would not find means--?