Barbara's first action on reaching home was to go into the library and consult a dictionary to find out the exact meaning of a word which she had been repeating to herself ever since she hurried out of Mrs. Savage's rooms. She had many new ideas to fit into place, but dominating them all was this sense of hopelessness and inevitability. Whether you walked on the north pavement or the south was preordained; if you asserted your supposed free will and crossed from south to north, even that pitiful show of independence was preordained; God was still pushing you from behind and, probably, laughing at you—as you laughed at the kitten which stared at you with head on one side and wondering eyes, to know what you had done with its reel of cotton. It was preordained that you should play with that kitten for a moment in eternity and that for a fraction of a moment you should hide the reel. Fatalism was paralyzing to the soul, destroying all effort. Nothing mattered any longer....
It was Summertown who had made her a fatalist. His life had been mapped out until all initiative was taken away. He had died very gallantly—but he could not help himself; he had lived rather dissolutely, but he could not help himself. There had been a tragedy and a disappointment in his life; but the tragedy was set beforehand, and Destiny decided whether he was to be made or broken by it, whether he was to avert or contribute to it. Fatalism was the negation of morality. It allowed of neither right nor wrong, only necessity.
If there were neither right nor wrong, Barbara had no cause for self-reproach. Destiny had arranged that Jack should come into her life; that he should anger her and that she should try to punish him; in obeying Destiny she was not to blame. But, if fatalism relieved her of responsibility, it also robbed her of resistance; she could do nothing to shield herself from anything that Destiny might have in store for her. Nothing had shielded Summertown when he came within range of the first German bullet....
And the course of Destiny could be laid bare. Though for long she had not believed it, she and the others had known what would happen to Summertown, as Mrs. Savage now knew what would happen to her.... And she had been afraid to insist on being told. All her life she had fancied that she was a free spirit with head and hands to make herself what she pleased. Now she was content to be told that, on the whole, she was preordained to be happy.... Or so Mrs. Savage had thought fit to say; she might be hiding something; there was no obvious reason why she refused her fee.
"My darling, haven't you gone up to dress yet?" said Lady Crawleigh at the door of the library. "You'll be so dreadfully late!"
Barbara knew that whether she was late or punctual had been preordained. Her mother probably would not believe that; she would feel that every one had enough free will not to keep other people waiting for dinner.
"I think I should like to dine in bed," she answered wearily.
"Aren't you feeling well?"
"I'm not equal to meeting a lot of people."
"But it's only George and the O'Ranes and one or two more. They'll be so disappointed. And it's the first time Sonia's dined here since she was married."