"Lady Barbara Neave. You needn't—I mean, I don't want to speak to him. It's just the address."
"I see. Had the pleasure o' talking to you once before on the 'phone, my lidy."
"Ah, yes."
Barbara walked into a shabby room with two scarred writing tables, a threadbare carpet and four hard little armchairs. One wall was covered by a book-case filled with Law Reports, old, discoloured volumes of the "Annual Practice" and standard works on Pleading, Criminal Law and Procedure, Real Property and the like. A few pounds would have freshened the dingy room out of recognition and perhaps even given it a personal note, but Jack was insensible to beauty and ugliness alike; he noticed the peeling yellow wall-paper as little as he noticed the intoxicating afternoon sun on the river; he had nothing in common with her.... She remembered the promise which she had made to herself and began to look at the papers on his table—long, white bundles tied with pink tape and engrossed with old-fashioned lettering which she could hardly read. These must be briefs, set out to look imposing, for many were grey with dust. There was an unexplained red sack, embroidered with his initials and fastened with a red cord; and a small black box with his name in white letters, containing an absurd wig. This was his life, a life which absorbed him....
Outside in the passage the clerk began a sing-song monologue.
"Trunks, miss, please. Trunks, if—you—please. Is that Trunks? I want Lashmar four seven. This is Holborn double four nine double-two. No! Nine! Double-four nine double-two. Thank you." He shuffled into the room and smiled familiarly at Barbara. "They'll call me when I'm through. Now may I get you a cup of tea, me lidy?"
Barbara thanked him, but refused the tea. The Cockney accent was intensified when he spoke on the telephone, and it reminded her once again of the winter afternoon when she had tried to drag Jack away from a consultation, the afternoon of her visit to Webster's flat. If she had stopped then, there would now be nothing to regret or to repair. Her fatal step was to invite him to dinner that night merely because she wanted the support of some one solid and well-balanced. Since that day she had never been able to decide how she felt towards him; she had been unable to tell Loring a few hours before. If, instead of always frightening her, he could have shewn a little gentleness.... George Oakleigh, to whom she was nothing, always helped her into a cloak as though she were the most fragile and precious thing in the world; and she became rebellious and reckless, when any one was harsh to her. Jack would order her home after a ball like a drill-sergeant; George came up two minutes later and said, "I wonder whether you'll let me take you home? You're looking so white and tired." It was more than a difference of manner. Jack never realized that a girl could be hungry for tenderness, but love was nothing without affection.... And love was always easier to give than affection.
The telephone rang, and the clerk reported that Mr. Waring was not in Hampshire nor expected there for nearly another week. As Barbara walked downstairs and drove home, she tried to think of any means of getting into touch with him which her tired brain had not already suggested. At worst she could always write, but she wanted to throw her pride at his feet to be trampled and bruised, she wanted to look him in the eyes without flinching or begging for mercy....
In the train it seemed as if the whole world were coming to London, but London was now empty of every one that she wanted to see. Summertown, who might have useful information, could not be found in his rooms or in barracks; Framlingham was "expected back any minute." She called a second time at the County Club, but Jack had not returned. And, after dining by herself in her bare, half-resurrected bedroom, she telephoned with carefully disguised voice. At the third failure, she abandoned his club; to welcome humiliation from Jack was hardly the same thing as to accept it from hall-porters and page-boys....
Though she was a night's sleep in arrears, she could not lie still in bed. An old French clock with a squeaking, high note that reminded her absurdly of Jack's clerk, struck midnight, one and two. She turned on the light and reached for her writing-case.