As a matter of form and to wash her hands of personal responsibility, Lady Pentyre sent next morning for the local doctor. His advice—to take things quietly for a few days—enabled Lady Barbara to keep her promise to Jack with a good conscience. "They say that I have been doing too much," she told Sir Adolf Erckmann, "so I'm afraid I shan't be able to come to your party on Thursday...." On the same plea she wrote to Lady Maitland, promising to attend the matinÉe but regretting her inability to play an active part. When she had taught Jack to appreciate her, it would be time enough to shew him that her friendship was adequate guarantee for her friends.

On returning to London she angled without success for a first-hand report on him. To her earlier half-dozen words of disparagement Sonia Dainton added a break-up price for the family. The Surinam cable precluded consultation of Amy Loring, and Phyllis Knightrider could only affirm that Jack went every year to Raglan for a few days' fishing—when she was away and there was none but men present.

"I believe he's hopeless with a mixed party," she went on. "If you were told to bring a man anywhere, you'd never dream of asking him."

"Well, I think that's better than being the first man that everybody thinks of," Barbara answered. "God created Gerry Deganway to be the eternal fourteenth at dinner."

"Val Arden once said that God invented bridge so that Jack Waring might say he didn't play it," Phyllis went on. "That sums him up."

Lady Barbara was wondering whether the unintelligent appreciation of such a man was worth having, when Jack once more wantonly put himself in the wrong. After writing to remind her of the day and time of the matinÉe, he had gone about his business. She mislaid the letter and telephoned to his chambers to find out where she was to meet him. An unwelcoming Cockney voice answered that Mr. Waring was engaged and invited her to leave a message.

"I won't keep him a moment," answered Lady Barbara.

"Mr. Waring doesn't like being called to the 'phone when he's got a consultation on."

She hardly knew whether to be angrier with Jack for his hide-bound likes and dislikes or with the officious clerk for his interference.

"Will you be good enough to say that Lady Barbara Neave wants to speak to him?" she said in a voice of authority.

"I'll see," the clerk mumbled reluctantly. "Hold on, please."

She was not accustomed to being kept waiting, and Jack or the clerk kept her waiting so long that the Exchange enquired once whether she had finished and then cut short the call. She hung up the receiver and waited for the connection to be re-established. There was no sound for five minutes; they did not think it worth while to remember her existence or to recall that she had expressed a wish to speak to Mr. Waring, that she had been ordered to wait.... Taking down the receiver, she repeated the number. The same unwelcoming Cockney voice greeted her.

"I was trying to speak to Mr. Waring," she explained, "but I was cut off."

"Mr. Waring's ingiged—Oh, were you the lidy who just rang up? Mr. Waring says, Would you be kind enough to leave a message?"

Half an hour earlier Lady Barbara had been undecided whether to telephone herself or to arrange the meeting through her maid. Now she felt that, whatever it might cost her, she must speak to Jack without intermediaries. And, if he were engaged in a consultation (or whatever the absurd thing was called), so much the better.

"No, I don't want to leave a message," she answered. "I want to speak to him privately."

The new attack seemed only to consolidate the hateful clerk's already strong position.

"Oh, I thought it might be business. Mr. Waring never speaks to any one privately on the 'phone."

"Will you kindly ask him to make an exception, then?"

"I'm afride it's no good," answered the clerk with undisguised boredom. "And Mr. Waring won't be best pleased, if I go in agine."

While Jack should pay for his pleasure to the uttermost farthing, it was undignified to prolong an altercation with a Cockney voice, especially as she was gaining nothing.

"Mr. Waring asked me to go to the theatre with him. Will he kindly let me know when and where I'm to meet him?"

The words were repeated slowly, as the message was written down.

"When-and-where-you're to meet him. Very good. If you'll give me your number, I'll find out and 'phone you as soon as the consultation's over."

"But I want to know now! I've got arrangements of my own to make!"

It was no longer the deliberate high voice of authority. Grievance was merging in anger.

"I don't like to go in agine.... But he can't be long now. If you'll give me your number...."

The Cockney voice suggested a mean, back-bent creature with bitten nails and cunning eyes, a Uriah Heep, cringing but sinister. She did not care for him to know that she had lost her temper; only this and the need to punish Jack for his latest indignity kept her from refusing to accompany him to the theatre.

"Oh, ask him to write," she answered with attempted carelessness.

As she ceased speaking, her maid came in to say that Mr. Webster had called. They had not met since their quarrel on the afternoon of Lady Knightrider's dance; and she was secretly relieved at the hardiness of his ill-humour, for of all men he least repaid the discredit which she earned by being seen in his company. At best he was a good-natured, plastic slave with a ubiquitous car and a knack of securing seats in theatres and tables in restaurants when others failed; at worst he was an enigmatic sensualist, who attracted her because he privately frightened her. They met first on the common ground of an interest in spiritualism, later as companions in misfortune; Sonia Dainton alleged that he was always inviting chorus-girls to his rooms and giving them too much to drink for the amusement of hearing what they would say; some one else added that he smoked opium, and an agreeable air of mystery surrounded an otherwise disagreeable young man. After their last quarrel Lady Barbara had decided to give him up; and she only wavered now because she wanted a whipping-boy and felt that she was in some way scoring a point against Jack by receiving him.

"I'll see him—up here," she told her maid.

Her face was still flushed from the telephone altercation, and she posed herself carefully, backing the window, but with the curtains thrown to their widest extent, so that Webster's oedematous eyelids blinked as he crossed the room and held out a plump white hand.

"New car d'livered t'day," he wheezed. The habit, induced by intemperance, of slurring the major parts of speech and omitting the minor survived even in his sober diction. "'Wondered if you'd care come spin."

"Oh? I was wondering whether you'd been ill."

"Ill?" He shook his head and coughed. "No. Only too many cigarettes. Care come?"

"Not till you've apologized for your behaviour to me, Mr. Webster."

"Haven't least idea what mean, but I'll apologize. Always ready apologize."

As a whipping-boy he was too spiritless to be satisfying, and Lady Barbara addressed herself to the invitation. Since the accident and the inquest she had not embarked on any expeditions with him. Indeed, on the evening before she went into court, she had deliberately broken a prized Venetian vase and whispered to herself—or any one who was listening—that, if she emerged without discredit, she would never go with him again. Nemesis had accepted the vase and played false on the bargain. But, while she might fairly feel herself released from her promise, she was oppressed by premonition that disaster would overtake her if she risked her luck again with Webster.

"Where are you going to? I'm waiting for a telephone message," she answered.

At that moment the bell rang; and, as she picked up the receiver, she felt guilty towards Jack Waring; in part she had undertaken to drop her "objectionable friends," in part she felt that, if he were with her, he would stop her going.... But his clerk had been unpardonable....

Gaymer's voice invited her to dine and go to a theatre with him. She accepted and impatiently replaced the receiver.

"I'll come for a short time," she answered and felt that she was defying Jack. "I must be back for tea, though."

"Have tea my place. Madame Hilary coming. Know who mean? Perfect wonder that woman. Doesn't use medium; makes you, me, any one medium; throws you in trance, and you do talking."

The sÉance was more alluring than the drive, for Madame Hilary had been famous in necromantic society for more than a month. Lady Barbara had been generally forbidden by her parents to dabble in black magic, and a special warning had been issued against Madame Hilary, whose methods had made her notorious, if not as a new witch of Endor, at least as an accomplished blackmailer.

"Is she good about the future?" Lady Barbara asked. "I don't want to be told that I've lived in distant lands, sometimes among the palms, sometimes in sight of the snows. I know that better than she does."

"She don't tell you anything," Webster explained. "You do all the talking, and we listen. Better hear some one else first; people sometimes more candid than they like—afterwards."

He chuckled maliciously and followed her downstairs. For an hour they drove round Richmond Park, and, as the light began to fail, he turned back to London and brought her to his flat by the Savoy in time for tea. The drowsy joy of rapid movement through the air had calmed her nerves and blown away her ill-humour; she was too tranquil to quarrel even with Jack Waring.

As she entered the smoking-room of the flat, the early premonition of disaster returned. It was an unwholesome place after Richmond Park on a December day.... Webster himself, white-faced and orientally impassive, in a frame of yellow down cushions and a heavy atmosphere of burning cedar-wood, was a sinister mystery-monger and purveyor of forbidden fruit. She came to him for excitements and experiences which the world conspired to keep her from obtaining elsewhere. An unwholesome man.... If anything happened, she had only herself to blame.... Yet nothing could happen, unless the new clairvoyant told her something horrid about the future.... She was not going to run away from a clairvoyant....

The warm rooms, thickly curtained and heavy with scented smoke, were already half-full. Sonia Dainton and Jack Summertown were on either side of the club fender with cigarettes in their mouths; the Baroness Kohnstadt, with something of her brother Sir Adolf Erckmann's build and colouring and with all of his guttural intonation, was impressively describing Madame Hilary's powers; Lord Pennington, with a tumbler of brown brandy and soda in one hand, swayed insecurely on one arm of a chair and discharged amorous darts at a weak-mouthed girl with big eyes and a high colour, who giggled in apprehensive appreciation; on the other sat Sir Adolf, bald, bearded and fleshly, competing with Pennington for her attention. Involuntarily Lady Barbara paused in the door-way. If Jack Waring heard that she had been to Webster's rooms on such an errand in such company.... They were not worth it....

"Hullo, Babs!" "Babs darling!" "Liddle Barbara!" "How ripping!"

The usual chorus of welcome greeted her and mounted to her head. Sonia Dainton was kissing her extravagantly. Sir Adolf lurched forward to praise her looks and dress, Lord Pennington to repeat and laugh at any phrase that she let fall. Doing nothing, saying little, simply by being herself, she dominated them until the door opened a second time and a gaunt woman in a clinging black dress and hat like an embossed shield rustled into the room. Her great height and noiseless movements diverted attention from Lady Barbara; she threw up her veil with a clockwork gesture as though she were ripping it from her face. Webster advanced with a bow and was preparing to introduce her, when she stopped him with a second mechanical fling of the hand.

"Ah, no! You tell me who they are and then you say, 'Madame Hilary is an impostor; she knew a little before—and she make up the rest.' Is it not so? For an exhibition I like better to know nothing." Her eyes flashed, as she looked round on one face after another. "You, Mr. Webster, I know—your name, at least—but these others I know not at all. It is well. And I like better for you not to tell me. But you are all waiting! While I drink this tea, you shall decide who first is to make trial."

She sat down, unembarrassed by the stealthy examination to which she was being subjected on all sides, and, unpinning her veil, shewed a narrow, lined face with sunken cheeks, an aquiline nose and eyes that were lack-lustre after their initial flash. Too well-bred to seem bored, she displayed at least a want of interest which chilled the spirits of the party and left her ascendant. Webster was flustered at having to stage-manage the sÉance; for Sir Adolf was so diffident and Sonia so unsympathetic that he had difficulty in finding volunteers. Lady Barbara at once offered herself, but seemed impressed by his whispered warning that she had better first see what surprising exhibitions people sometimes made of themselves.

"Here, I'll start the bidding," cried Jack Summertown, jumping up from the fender. "Don't pinch my simulation-gold watch, any one. Only fair to warn you, ma'am," he went on to Madame Hilary, "that I think all this jolly old spiritualism is a fake. What do I have to do? And may I finish my goodish cork-tipped Turkish Regie?"

Madame Hilary, suddenly appreciating that she was being addressed, seemed to awake and assume new vitality. Shewing neither offence nor amusement at his scepticism, she motioned Summertown to a chair and drew her own opposite to it.

"Yes, go on smoking. It does not matter." She looked round the room with another clockwork movement, switched on a reading-lamp, so that the light shone straight into her own face, and then plunged the rest of the room in darkness. "All that is needed is for you to look at me, into my eyes. Never take your eyes off mine. I like better for you not to try, not to will yourself. I shall ask you questions, and you will answer them. Questions about the past. I like better for you not to be sympathetic. Try not to answer my questions. And, when I have persuaded you to answer them, I shall ask you more questions—about the future. And you will answer them, too. And afterwards I will tell you what you have said. So you will come to know the future."

She paused to draw breath, and Summertown, obediently looking into her eyes, finished his cigarette and tossed the end into the fire-place. He was still smiling a little; but the room was grown silent, and every one was looking at him; the gaunt, narrow face before him, grimly serious, discouraged levity, though it sharpened his desire to expose her as soon as she began her tricks. And for that the easiest thing was obstinately to answer none of her questions.

"You would that I explain?" The deliberate affectation of broken English was the accepted convention of an English actress playing the part of a Frenchwoman; every one in the room was conscious of the artificiality. The voice was unmodulated and monotonous. "In all ages men have tried to read the future. By the stars and by crystal balls and cards and numbers and pools of ink.... What can a pool of ink tell you? The future lies in yourselves. Within your bodies are seeds of new life—innumerable; and each seed holds innumerable other seeds of new life—generation after generation, seed within seed. He who put them there ordained that the Future should lie buried in the Present, as the Present lay buried in the Past—and as the Past lies buried in the Present! It is hard for Man to unbury the Future. Man has not been ready to face the light, and I—I who help you to see that light have never seen it myself. Even I do not know how glaring is that light.... But, as the seeds of the Future lie in you, so the knowledge of the Future lies there also. Man knows all the Future, as Man holds all the Future within himself, but he has forgotten. It is within his unconscious. I do not know it, but I can help you to remember. I can tell you nothing, not even your name, but you can tell me everything about yourself, Past, Present and Future. What is your name?"

Lady Barbara started with surprise when the abrupt question cut through the sleepy drone of mock-mystic jargon. Summertown was trapped into seriousness, for he answered promptly:

"John Antony Merivale-Farwell. I'm usually called Jack Summertown."

"Why are you called Jack Summertown?"

"Well, you see, Summertown's the guv'nor's second title. Thirty per cent. on your bills, and not a dam' thing else."

He looked obediently into the unwavering eyes, but Lady Barbara felt that his familiar colloquialism was a deliberate effort to break up the atmosphere of pretentious mystery.

"And your father?"

"Well, he's rather at a loose end at present. He was Councillor of Embassy at Paris, and they offered him Madrid, I believe; but he'd been ill for some time and so he chucked in his hand. Oh, who is he? Marling. Earl of."

"You are married?"

"God, no!"

"You have been in love?"

Summertown hesitated and then answered quietly:

"Oh, well, yes, I suppose so."

"Tell me about it."

Lady Barbara, watching his face as he gazed into Madame Hilary's eyes, became conscious of a change in expression; Summertown might have been drunk. His eyes were glazed, his features set and his forehead moist; he spoke cautiously, too, as though fearful of a trip in articulation.

"It sounds rather sordid," he began diffidently. "She was an awful pretty girl—in a shop. Flower-shop. I palled up with her.... I expect you'll think me an awful cad; I never meant to marry her. It would have meant such a hell of a row at home.... To do myself justice, I told her that. She knew who I was; she said that didn't matter.... The thing lasted for a year—nearly. And most of the time I went through the agony of the damned. Ask any one who thinks he knows me; you'll be told I haven't a soul to save and I'm the village idiot and all that sort of thing. All I know is—I wouldn't go through it again. I loved the girl; and I always felt that she was all right till I came along—and then I corrupted her; and though I sweated to get her to marry me, we both knew it would be God's own failure.... And the end was the most sordid part of the whole business. When I lay awake at night—I did, honest—thinking I'd dragged her half-way to Hell, another feller turned up. Number One. I was Number Two—or Ten—or Twenty.... That was nineteen-eleven, but, if you sat up till midnight telling me how rotten she was, you wouldn't be able to make me forget her. Wish to God you could!... But we were dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth."

He laughed jerkily and grew restless, as though he were looking for the usual cigarette. Lady Barbara felt an overbalancing pull and discovered that she had been making her fingers meet in the soft flesh of Sonia Dainton's arm. Madame Hilary was triumphing. None of them could say when Jack Summertown had passed under her influence; apart from his pallor and glazed eyes, he had not changed; but there was a collective, sympathetic shudder through the room, as he told his stunted romance in characteristic colloquialisms. "Hell of a row at home.... A year—nearly.... All I know is—I wouldn't go through it again.... And then I corrupted her.... Dam' well man and wife for a twelvemonth...." And then the jerky, cynical laugh. It was Jack Summertown's manner of describing an unsuccessful meeting at Hawthorn Hill.

"You cannot forget her—but you will find some one else?" The unmodulated voice was pitiless.

"Oh, generally speaking, yes. I mean, one wants to keep the jolly old family going. But I've not got much time with this war."

"This war?"

"Well, the general bust-up. I'm in the army, you know, and I shall get finished off as soon as it starts. Goodish early door for me. Hardly seems worth it.... At least, I mean, if the girl cares for you, it's a bit rough to leave her a widow at the end of a week."

"Then you are going to be killed quite soon?"

Lady Barbara held her breath until she felt that her heart must stop. The others were doing the same. Only Madame Hilary ladled out her questions with a voice as mechanical as her gestures.

"Oh, almost at once."

"Stop!"

Lady Barbara could not tell whence the cry had come. Had they conjured up a spirit? Was God Himself cutting short their quest? But she did not believe in God.... There was a bustle of confused movement, followed by stupefied inertia. Lord Pennington, after flooding the room with light, was seen to be propping himself against the door; Madame Hilary sat blinking rapidly, so like a lone cat surrounded by reluctant terriers that little imagination was required to see the arched back and to hear the spitting tongue. Lady Barbara gripped her chair with both hands, overcoming fear. Only Webster, who had seen the experiment before and exulted in the sense of shocked terror around him, contrived to purge his face of expression.

There was a long silence.

"Well, that's that," gulped Pennington, with an unconvincing laugh.

Lady Barbara's brain was working so quickly that she had time to see and reflect on everything around her. These men who were always drinking made a sorry mess of their nerves; Pennington was hardly less incapacitated than Webster had been when they dashed into the jutting grey angle of wall. And Sonia, who did not drink but lived on excitement, was almost hysterical....

"Reached end of chapter," murmured Webster, glancing covertly at the late medium. "What deuce want spoil everything?" he demanded, in a hectoring aside, of Pennington's late giggling companion.... "Who'd like go next?"

Summertown had been peering lazily in search of cigarettes, but his host's question roused him to activity.

"Don't be in such a hurry, old son," he called out. And, turning to the hypnotist, "You were talking about the jolly old seeds. Big fleas and little fleas...."

Madame Hilary glanced at him and then, carelessly, at the group between the fire-place and the door. She was too well-bred to shew triumph.

"You tell me you doubt. Good!" she answered Summertown. "I try to explain just my theory. Now, in every man there are seeds of new life, and each seed contains seeds of other new life, of the Future...."

Webster waited until he saw Summertown nodding intelligently; then he joined the group by the door.

"What do you think of it?" he asked, like a conjuror.

The Baroness Kohnstadt shuddered.

"Ach, derrible!"

"It's the same old game," said Pennington, with newly recovered valour. "She pinned herself down to something fairly definite, but, before anything comes along to kill Summertown, she'll have vamoosed and set up in Harrogate as a beauty specialist. Agree with me, Lady Barbara?"

"I don't know what to think—yet," she answered. "We mustn't let her tell him, of course...."

As she stood up, her knees were trembling.

"But nobody believes in it seriously," protested Sonia Dainton with a white face.

"I do."

They had been joined by Lord Pennington's giggling companion of the armchair. Her eyes were bigger, and fear had washed away the colour from her cheeks.

"Let me try next, Fatty," she implored Webster.

"Why?"

"I want to."

"But why?"

She moved out of earshot and waited for him to join her.

"I want to," she repeated. "I won't say anything that I oughtn't to."

Webster laughed harshly. He did not want to hear the girl unfolding her history before an audience.

"Keep out of it, Dolly; only make fool yourself," he advised. "You're such little coward——"

"I know!" She seemed to take the sneer as a compliment. "But I'm gingered up now. I want to know! I want to know if I'm going to die. They said I was, but they only did it to frighten me and get me away to a sanatorium. I'm going to find out!"

While Webster was still sluggishly trying to make up his mind, she darted past him and presented herself to Madame Hilary. Summertown yielded place reluctantly and joined the group at the door. Before the lights were lowered, the Master of the Ceremonies found time to whisper, "Cut it short. Others want turn, too. Leave out Past and Present; it's Future she's interested in."

There was a rustle of dresses and a squeak of castors, as the audience settled into chairs and the lights were lowered. After the same initial silence the same droning voice pronounced the elementals of the creed. "Though men have tried by the stars and by crystal balls, by cards and numbers and pools of ink, they have not hitherto looked for the Future within themselves...."

"How long does this tripe go on?" Summertown enquired so audibly that the girl started and turned towards the shadowy group by the fire.

Madame Hilary pushed back her chair and rose to her feet with dignity.

"Please! I cannot continue—like this." At a murmured apology she consented to sit down again, and the momentarily human voice became lost in the professional drone of the mystic. "Keep your eyes on mine—so! It is all I ask. I like better that you resist, that you determine not to answer my questions. But, if you look into my eyes, you will tell me all that I ask you. You must. You are telling me now! You are telling me now your name! It is—that name?"

"Dorothea Prilton. I'm called Dolly May on the stage."

"And you have been on the stage since long?"

"Three years."

"And how old are you?"

"Nineteen."

"And why did you go on to the stage?"

"Oh, I always loved it! It's everything in the world to me! And a gentleman friend said he'd introduce me to the manager of the Pall Mall."

There was a tinkle of broken glass, as Webster's elbow swept an ash tray to the floor.

"And you expect to play great parts? What are you acting in now?"

"Well, I'm out of a shop at present. It's such killing work, you know. I had to break one contract and go into a nursing-home; and I've never really pulled up since. One doctor says it's lungs, and another says it's heart. I was never very strong, and my friend had an awful time with me. Sometimes at the end of the show, he had to give me an injection in my arm to pull me round. Of course, it saved my life, but I think it affected the heart, you know. The doctor was very angry, but I said to him, 'It's all very well for you to talk, but you weren't there at the time; I was just dying.' I shall be all right when I've had a bit of a rest."

"And you expect to play great parts?" Madame Hilary repeated.

There was no answer. As the silence lengthened, the audience looked critically at her; she had spoken hitherto with the prattling candour of her class, and the question was hardly an assault on her professional diffidence.

"And are you in love?" pursued Madame Hilary without pity.

The girl looked at her in silence but still without any expression of resentment or confusion.

"Are you never afraid of meeting some man and having to retire from the stage?"

At the third silence Summertown observed loudly:

"This is a blinking frost, you know. I said it was, from the beginning. She can't make you answer, if you don't want to."

The penetrating voice brought Madame Hilary to her feet a second time.

"Mr. Webster! Where is Mr. Webster?" she demanded. "Please! I cannot go on—like this. You ask this gentleman to go away, and I continue. Otherwise, no! I cannot."

"Oh, I say, no offence meant, you know," Summertown pleaded.

"I cannot," Madame Hilary repeated firmly. "Mr. Webster——"

The sense of the meeting, expressed in murmured protests, was against Summertown.

"Oh, all right! I'll go," he sighed. "You goin' to break away, Babs? It's an absolute frost," he whispered. "Anyone seen a goodish billycock or bowler, not to mention a cane, a rich fur coat—Oh, my God!"

He had turned on the light to look for his belongings and, while the others ringed themselves about Madame Hilary with speeches of condolence and apology, he alone had leisure to see that Miss Dorothea Prilton, known on Pall Mall programmes as "Dolly May," sat dead in the chair which he had occupied ten minutes before.