Your loving Barbara."
Arden smiled as he handed back the letter.
"Characteristic," he commented.
"Oh, very! Not a word about Gaymer. Or the feelings of her parents. She's had two new sensations and she can't be sure whether she'd get as good a press for her death here as in India. Crawleigh will have his hands full. You've not met him? Well, it's one thing to govern India and another to keep a little devil like that in order."
A month later, still in the detached spirit of the social satirist, Arden allowed himself to be introduced to Lady Barbara's parents in Scotland. He was anxious to study her family setting, for Lord Crawleigh was already beginning to be regarded primarily as the father of his own daughter and only in afterthought as a distinguished public servant. Fifteen years earlier he had first shewn the administrative brilliance and incapacity to work with colleagues which impel a man to a viceroyalty or the leadership of a disgruntled party of one on the cross-benches. In Canada, in Ireland and in India he had been publicly admired and privately abhorred. Without the backing of long established authority, however, he was thrown on his own resources; and paper-work genius proved itself powerless without palpable force of character. Over-sensitive to his personal dignity, he treated his wife and children with the pomp and despotism of Government House; according to Loring's description, councils were convened to decide what train should bear them from London to Crawleigh Abbey; the cook's shortcomings were minuted to Lady Crawleigh for observations and appropriate action; the servants were pinned to the straight path of their duties by proclamation, and the household books were scrutinized with an exhaustive particularity not vouchsafed to the preparation of an Indian budget.
It was the self-protective assertion of a man sensitive to his physical inadequacy. Lord Crawleigh's domed head, ascetic face and rimless spectacles were impressively intellectual, but he degenerated as he went lower. The bottom half of his face was confused with a straggling blonde moustache intended for an operatic viking; his body was too short, his legs too long; and, when he became excited, his voice rose querulous and shrill. But the viceregal manner carried him far. Lord Neave and his two younger brothers had been taught obedience at Eton; Lady Crawleigh, as her passivity and plumpness hinted, suffered from a family streak of laziness, which she shared with Lady Loring and Lady Knightrider, and from twenty-five years' experience of her husband, which she could share with no one. It required Barbara's temperamental irreverence and gipsy craving for liberty to break down the imposing forms and spirit of her father's rule. The boys, who could be caned while she remained immune, sheltered themselves behind their younger sister; and, with a woman's genius for tactical alliances and strategical choice of ground, she explored and profited by the weak places in the enemy's system of defences. Her father's public position and private dignity were her strongest accessories. "She can always blackmail him by threatening a scandal," as Loring explained.
So long as she had her own way, Arden discovered a rule of peace and mutual affection. Lady Barbara hated to be on bad terms with any one; and her parents were humanly, if reluctantly, proud of her. Throughout his visit to House of Steynes, she dominated the party by her vitality and versatile charm. Loring was in the early stages of devotion to Sonia Dainton and disappeared as long and often as possible to escape his mother and sister, who were trying to avert an engagement, and Lady Dainton, who was forcing it to a head; and in his absence Arden watched Lady Barbara posing herself in the middle of the stage, methodically sharing herself among the guests and holding her own with all. It was the fruit of early years, during which she had lived consistently in public, meeting men of every profession and country, listening, remembering, learning and giving her best in return. She shewed a nice appreciation of personality and varied her attitude with her audience. In talking to Arden himself she still gravely met pose with pose and extravagance with extravagance.
"D'you feel you know me adequately now?" she asked him on the last night. "Mr. Deganway told me you were going to write a book about me."
"And you replied, 'Only one?' It is unfortunate that Meredith has already taken 'The Egoist' as a title."
Lady Barbara turned slowly, as though he were a mirror, and gave him time to appreciate her slender height and lithe figure. One hand directed attention to her hair, as she brushed away a curl from her forehead; and she looked at him sideways with her fingers pressed against one cheek so that he should see the size and deep colour of her eyes.