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It was when a thoughtful exegesis on "The War and Indian Home Rule," extending over two columns, had been held up for three days without acknowledgement, apology or explanation, that Lord Crawleigh decided to teach his countrymen a sharp lesson by withdrawing to the south of France until the spring. Any inducement to leniency was overruled when Barbara succumbed to an attack of pleurisy.
"I promised to see if I could get any news of our friend Jack Waring," he began, then hesitated to wonder whether her letters reached Barbara uncensored or whether sharp-eyed, subdued Lady Crawleigh would ask tonelessly, "Who's your letter from, Babs?"
Lord Crawleigh ruled Berkeley Square and Crawleigh Abbey as though he were still in India, as though, too, he were suppressing the Mutiny single-handed. "Once a mutineer, always a mutineer," Lady Barbara would occasionally say of herself.
Eric commended his soul to his humour and circumambulated the room, two steps at a time, until a sudden lessening of noise and tension told him that luncheon had dawned upon Lady Crawleigh as a thing to be not only discussed but eaten. "We've heard so much about you from Babs," she said, struggling to finish one of her interrupted sentences. "So good of you to bring her home the other night."
After the first days of his engagement he had hardly seen or heard anything of Barbara. She was presumably at Crawleigh Abbey, but for a week she answered no more than one letter out of three; after that, with a sense that he could do nothing right and that they were fretting each other's nerves, he ceased to correspond and was trying to absorb and exhaust himself with work.
For the first fifteen months of the war Lord Crawleigh had carried out a campaign, unsparing to his readers, his hearers and himself, to wake England to a more lively realization of her perils.
She finished some request for an address, nodded as the answer was given and lifted the instrument to a table by her side. "Well, my dear, you seem to have given poor Merton a fright," said Lady Crawleigh. "Is anything the matter?" "I never felt better in my life," answered Barbara. "Are you coming down to dinner?" "I don't think I'm well enough for that. . . . You can get on without me.
Can you see me some time? I suppose you're going to Crawleigh to-morrow That's no good. Can you dine with me on Tuesday?" "I wanted you to come here on Tuesday." "You never said anything about it. Will you be alone?" "I'm afraid not. Eric, will you be honourable? It's my half-birthday; I always have two a year. I didn't tell you, because I was afraid you'd rush out and buy me a present.
I shan't want any dinner. Will you bring the telephone in here?" The maid left the room in bewilderment at the conflicting orders and sought counsel of the housekeeper. Ten minutes later Lady Crawleigh came in to find Barbara in bed with the telephone tucked under one arm and the receiver to her ear.
"I always feel that Lord Crawleigh condemned the world and then allowed it to continue existing on day-to-day reprieves," he said. "That's rather my uncle's manner. He hasn't insulted you yet? He will." "He's only seen me once by daylight. I fancy he thinks I'm one of the footmen. If I came to him in any other capacity . . . The industrious ink-slinger, you know " Amy tossed her head impatiently.
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