Part 54 (2/2)

”When shall I see them?” asked Alex nervously.

”Well,” said her sister, hesitating, ”what about tomorrow? It's better to get it over at once, isn't it? I thought I'd ring them up this evening--I know they're dining at home.” She glanced at the clock.

”Look here, Alex, why don't you go to bed? I always go early myself--and you're simply dead tired. Do! Then tomorrow we might go into town and do some shopping. You'll want some things at once, won't you?”

Alex saw that Barbara meant her to a.s.sent, and said ”Yes” in a dazed way.

She was very glad to go to her room, and the bed seemed extraordinarily comfortable.

Barbara had kissed her and said anxiously, ”I do hope you'll feel more like yourself tomorrow, my dear. I hardly feel I know you.”

Then she had rustled away, and Alex had heard her go downstairs, perhaps to telephone to Clevedon Square.

Lying in bed in the dark, she thought about her sister.

It seemed incredible to Alex that she could ever have bullied and domineered over Barbara. Yet in their common childhood, this had happened. She could remember stamping her foot at Barbara, and compelling her to follow her sister's lead again and again. And there was the time when she had forced a terrified, reluctant Barbara to play at tight-rope dancing on the stairs, and Barbara had obediently clambered on to the newel-post, and fallen backwards into the hall and hurt her back.

Alex remembered still the agonized days and nights of despairing remorse which had followed, and her own sense of being all but a murderess. She had thought then that she could never, never quarrel and be angry with Barbara again. But she had gone away to school, and Barbara had got well, and in the holidays Alex had been more overbearing than ever in the schoolroom.

And now Barbara seemed so infinitely competent--so remote from the failures and emotional disasters that had wrecked Alex. She made Alex feel like a child in the hands of a serious, rather ironical grown-up person, who did not quite know how to dispose of it.

Alex herself wondered what would happen to her, much as a child might have wondered. But she was tired enough to sleep.

And the next morning Barbara, more competent than ever, came in and suggested that she should have her breakfast in bed, so as to feel rested enough for a morning's shopping in town.

”Though I must say,” said Barbara, in a dissatisfied voice, ”that you don't look any better than you did last night. I hoped you might look more like yourself, after a night's rest. I really don't think the others will know you.”

”Am I going to see them?”

”Oh, I talked to Violet last night on the telephone, and she said I was to give you her love, and she hoped we'd both lunch there tomorrow.”

”At Clevedon Square?” asked Alex, beginning to tremble.

”Yes. You don't mind, do you?”

”No, I don't mind.”

It was very strange to be in the remembered London streets again, stranger still to be taken to shops by Barbara and authoritatively guided in the choice of a coat and skirt, a hat that should conceal as much as possible of the disastrous _coiffure_ underneath, and a pair of black suede walking-shoes, that felt oddly light and soft to her feet.

”There's no hurry about the other things, is there?” said Barbara, more as though stating a fact than asking a question. ”Now we'd better take a taxi to Clevedon Square, or we shall be late.”

A few minutes later, as the taxi turned into the square, she said, with what Alex recognized in surprise as a kind of nervousness in her voice:

”We thought you'd rather get it all over at once, you know, Alex. Seeing the family, I mean. Pam is staying there anyway, and Violet said Archie was coming to lunch. There'll be n.o.body else, except, perhaps, one of Violet's brothers. She's always got one or other of them there.”

Alex felt sick with dismay. Then some remnant of courage came back to her, and she clenched her hands unseen, and vowed that she would go through with it.

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