Part 20 (1/2)
”Darlin' child, you know very well that your father won't hear of girls goin' to school. A convent is quite different--but I certainly shan't send you to that sort of establishment, after the trick they played me with Alex, sendin' her back round-shouldered, and with her hands all chapped and red and covered with chilblains. _Never_ again,” said Lady Isabel.
Barbara sulked.
She sulked so long and so effectively that the unfortunate Mademoiselle came of her own accord to implore that Barbara might be released from the schoolroom. She was not learning anything, and her example was making little Pamela naughty and defiant.
”What a plague children are!” Lady Isabel said helplessly.
She consulted her friends, drawing a plaintively humorous picture of the recalcitrant young person, which, to the annoyance of Alex, caused a certain amount of amused sympathy to be expressed in Barbara's favour.
At last some one suggested that she should be sent abroad. Not to a school or a convent, certainly not--every one was unanimous on that point excepting one or two ultra-Catholic old aunts of Sir Francis--but to a charming Marquise, living at Neuilly, and desirous of companions.h.i.+p for her only child, a girl of about the same age as Barbara.
”She will learn to speak French like a native, and have dancing and singing lessons with the Helene child, and go to all the art galleries and places.... That girl of the d.u.c.h.ess went there to be finished just before she came out, and _loved_ it, and she came back so much improved--knowing how to put on her clothes, you know ... just the sort of thing that makes all the difference.”
So spoke Lady Isabel's enthusiastic friends.
Barbara was not consulted, but when the plans had been finally settled upon and everything arranged, she was told, in accordance with the usage of her day, that as she was so discontented and troublesome at home, her parents felt obliged, for the sake of the younger children, to send her away from them. Barbara, following her wont, said nothing at all, and did not relax her pouting expression, but once back in the schoolroom again, she jumped up and down on the sofa in a manner denoting extravagant glee.
”I knew they'd have to give in,” she chanted. ”I knew they would, I knew they would.”
For a long while she teased Archie and Pamela by refusing to give them any explanation, and at the same time exciting their curiosity by her continual reference to an approaching triumphant emanc.i.p.ation for her, until Cedric, home for the Easter holidays, and expert in the administrations of schoolboy tortures, ruthlessly made use of them to reduce his sister to her proper position of inferiority.
Barbara was sent to Neuilly early in April, and Alex proceeded to enter upon the second phase of her social career.
It was less of a success than her first season had been.
It was a.s.sumed that she had by this time made her own friends, and her mother's contemporaries accordingly took less pains in the matter of introductions on her behalf.
If it be true that nothing succeeds like success, it is truer still that nothing fails so completely as a failure.
When Alex had sat out four or five dances at a ball, partnerless, her conviction of her own social degradation was absolutely overwhelming.
Her surroundings only interested her as a background to her own personality, and as she derived no pleasure, but only disappointment and mortification, from the majority of the functions at which she was present, her young, expressive face unconsciously advertised both her vexation and the cause of it.
Her youth and her vanity alike were in rebellion against the truth, which she more than half divined, that she, who so longed to please and to attract, was as utterly devoid of that magnetic charm possessed by other girls in a lesser, and by Queenie Goldstein in supreme, degree, as it was possible for a reasonably pretty and healthy young girl to be.
Neither her health nor her beauty improved, moreover.
Late hours, in her case, uncounteracted by the vivid sparkle of enjoyment, drew unbecoming dark circles beneath her eyes, and the physical fatigue always engendered in her by boredom was most unmistakably manifested in her slouching shoulders and mournful pallor.
”_Alex a son air bete aujourd'hui_.”
Memory mercilessly recalled to her the old gibe of her schoolmates sometimes, as she felt, against her own will, her features stiffening into the stupid ”tragedy-queen” look which had met with the mocking of her companions.
”Do try and cheer up, darlin',” Lady Isabel sometimes said, with more impatience than compa.s.sion in her voice, as she glanced at her daughter; and the implication that her looks were betraying her feelings made Alex more wretched and self-conscious than ever.
She often saw Queenie Goldstein, as much surrounded as in the days before her marriage, and her excessive _decolletage_ now enhanced by the jewels showered upon her by her husband.
Queenie once invited her to a dinner-party at her little house in Curzon Street, but Alex knew that she would not be allowed to go, and showed the invitation with great trepidation to her mother.
”Very impertinent of her! Why, she's never been introduced to me. I shouldn't dream of allowin' any daughter of mine to go and dine with people whom I didn't know personally, even if they were _absolutely_ all right.”