An Infamous Army (18 page)

"Can you mean that she wishes you to marry the Comte de Lavisse?" gasped Judith.

"Most earnestly. Ah, you are astonished. You are not acquainted with my family."

"But your engagement to my brother! She could not wish to see that broken!"

"Why not?"

"A solemn promise - the scandal!"

Barbara burst out laughing. "Oh, you're enchanting when you're shocked! An outraged goddess, no less! But you must learn to know my family better. We don't care for scandal."

"Then why do you forgo your picnic?" demanded Judith.

"I don't know. To spite Gussie - to please Charles! Both, perhaps."

This answer was not encouraging. Judith was silent for a moment. She stole a glance at Barbara's face, and of impulse said: "Do you love him?" The words were no sooner uttered than regretted. Such a question was an impertinence; she was not on terms of sufficient intimacy with Barbara to allow of its having been asked.

Flushing, she awaited the snub she felt herself to have earned. But Barbara replied merely: "Yes."

"I should not have asked you," Judith apologised.

"It's of no consequence. I daresay you wish that Charles had never met me. I should, in your place. I'm horrid, you know. I told him so, but he wouldn't listen to me. I never loved anyone before, I think."

This remark accorded so ill with her reputation that Judith looked rather taken aback.

Barbara gave a gurgle of irrepressible amusement. "Are you recalling my flirtations? They don't signify, vou know. I flirt to amuse myself, but the truth is that I never fancied myself in love with anyone but Charles."

"I beg your pardon, but to fancy yourself in love could surely be the only justification for flirting!"

"Oh, stuffl" Barbara said. "Flirtation is delightful; being in love, quite disagreeable."

"I never found it so!"

"Truly?"

Judith considered for a moment. "No. At least - yes, I suppose sometimes it can be disagreeable. There is a certain pain - for foolish causes."

"Ah, you are not so stupid after all! I hate pain. Yes, and I hate to submit, as I am doing now, over this tiresome picnic!"

"That I understand perfectly!" Judith said. "But you do not submit to Charles; he made no such demand! Your submission is to your own judgment."

"Oh no! I don't go because Charles does not wish it. How tame! Don't talk of it! It makes me cross! I want _o go. I am bored to death!"

"Well, why should you not?" Judith said, as an idea presented itself to her. "A party of pleasure - there could be no objection! If you will accept of my company, I will go with you."

"Go with me?" said Barbara. "In Lavisse's place?"

"No such thing! You may ride with the Count; I shall drive with my sister, Lady Taverner. I am persuaded she would delight in the expedition. I daresay my brother will join us as well."

The green eyes looked blankly for a moment, then grew vivid with laughter. "Thus turning a tete-a-tete into the most sedate of family parties! Oh, I must do it, if only for the fun of seeing Etienne's dismay!"

"Would you not care for it?" said Judith, a little dashed.

"Of all things!" Barbara sprang up. "It's for tomorrow. We start early, and lunch at this Chateau Etienne talks of. It will be charming! Thank you a thousand times!"

CHAPTER NINE

The weather remaining fine, and the Taverners ,declaring themselves to be very ready to join the picnic, the whole party assembled in the Rue Ducale the next morning. As Lady Taverner's situation made riding Ineligible for her, Judith, who would have preferred to have gone on horseback, was obliged to drive with her in an open barouche. Sir Peregrine bestrode a showy chestnut, and Barbara, as usual, rode the Count's Coup dz Grace.

Upon her first setting out Judith had felt perfectly atisfied with her own appearance. She was wearing a round robe, under a velvet pelisse of Sardinian blue. A high-crowned bonnet, lined with silk and ornamented with a frilled border of lace, gloves of French kid, a sealskin muff, and half boots of Jean, completed a very becoming toilet. Beside her sister-in-law, who had chosen to wear drab merino cloth over olive-brown muslin, she looked elegant indeed, but from the moment of Barbara's descending the steps of the house in the Rue Ducale she felt herself to have been cast quite in the shade.

Barbara was wearing a habit of pale green, resembling the dress of a hussar. Her coat was ornamented with row upon row of frogs and braiding: silver epaulettes set off her shoulders; and silver braiding stretched half way up her arms. Under the habit, she wore a cambric shirt with a high-standing collar trimmed with lace; a cravat of worked muslin way tied round her throat; and there were narrow ruffles at her wrists. Set jauntily on her flaming head was a tall hat, like a shako, with a plume of feathers adding the final touch of audacity to a preposterous but undeniably striking costume.

Lady Taverner was shocked; Judith, who considered the dress too daring for propriety, yet could not suppress a slight feeling of envy. She could fancy herself in such a habit.

"How can she? Such a quiz of a hat!" whispered Lady Taverner.

However much she might agree with these sentiments, Judith had no notion of spoiling the day's pleasure by letting her disapproval appear. She leaned out of the carriage to shake hands with Barbara, saying with the utmost amiability: "How delightfully you look! You put me quite out of conceit with myself."

"Yes, I'm setting a fashion," replied Barbara. "You will see: it will be the established mode in a month's time."

Lady Vidal, who had come out of the house with her husband, merely bowed to Judith from the top of the stone steps, but Vidal put himself to the trouble of coming up to the barouche to thank Judith for her kindness in joining the expedition. He said in a low voice: "Bab is a sad romp! One of these days her crotchets will be the ruin of her. But your presence makes everything as it should be! I shan't conceal from you that I don't above half like that fellow Lavisse."

Not wishing to join in any animadversions on one who was for this day in some sort her host, Judith passed it off with a smile and a trivial remark. Her dislike of Lavisse was as great as Vidal's, but she was forced to acknowledge the very gentleman-like way in which he had received the news of the augmentation of his party. Not by as much as the flicker of an eyelid did he betray the mortification he must feel. His civility iowards the ladies in the barouche was most flattering; he was all smiles and complaisance, prophesying fine weather, and displaying a proper solicitude for their comfort.

"Don't you wish you were coming, Gussie?" Barbara called.

"My dear Bab, you must know that of all insipidities I most detest a family party," returned Augusta.

Barbara bit her lip, glancing towards the barouche as though she saw it with new eyes. Suddenly impatient, she said: "Well, why do we wait? Let us, for God's sake, start."

The Count, who was giving some directions to worth's coachman, looked over his shoulder with a smile of perfect comprehension. "En avant, then!" he said,reining his horse back to allow the barouche to pass.

When it had moved forward with Peregrine riding behind it, he fell in beside Barbara, and said with some amusement: "You repent already, and are asking yourself what you do in this galere."

"Oh, by God, I must have been mad!" she said. "Little fool! I admire the guard set about you by you staff officer. It is most formidable!"

"It was not his doing. The notion was Lady Worth and I fell in with it."

"Impayable! Why, for example?"

She laughed. "Oh, to make you angry, of course!"

"But I am not at all angry; I am entirely amused," he said.

They were making their way down the Rue de la Pepiniere in the direction of the Namur Gate. Once outside the walls of the town, the road led through some neat suburbs to the Forest of Soignes, a hugh beechwood stretching for some miles to the south of Brussels, and intersected by the main Charleroi Chaussee. The Forest was almost entirely composed of beech trees, their massive trunks rising up out of the ground with scarcely any underwood to hide their smooth, silvery outlines.

Judith had often ridden in this direction, but this was her first visit to the Forest in springtime. She was enchanted with it, and even Lady Taverner, whose spirits were always low during the first months of pregnancy, was moved to exclaim at the grandeur of the scene. Sir Peregrine, in spite of already having got his uppers splashed by the mud of the unpaved portion of the road, seemed pleased also, though he would not allow the vista to be comparable to an English scene.

For the first mile or two the party remained together, Barbara and Lavisse riding at a little distance behind the barouche, but from time to time pressing forward to exchange remarks with its occupants. Shortly after the Forest had been entered, however, Barbara announced herself to be tired of riding tamely along the road. She waved her whip in a rather naughty gesture of farewell, and set her horse scrambling up the bank of the wood. The Count lingered only to assure Judith of the Impossibility of her coachman's missing the way, saluted, and followed Barbara.

"I do think her the most unaccountable creature!" exclaimed Lady Taverner. "It is very uncivil of her to make off like that, besides being so indiscreet!"

Judith, herself disappointed in this fresh evidence of flightiness in Barbara, endeavoured to give her sister-in-law's thoughts another direction.

It was inconceivable to Lady Taverner that any female who was betrothed to one gentleman could desire a tete-a-tete with another, and for some time she continued to marvel at Barbara's conduct. Judith did not attend very closely to her remarks; she was lost in her own reflections. She could appreciate the cause of Barbara's perversity, but although she might sympathise with that wildness of disposition which made convention abhorrent to Barbara, she could not but be sorry for it. She was more than ever convinced that this spoiled, fashionable beauty would make Colonel Audley a wretched wife. Her imagination dwelled pitifully upon his future, which must of necessity be astormy affair, made up of whims and tantrums and debts; and she could not forbear to contrast this melancholy prospect with the less exciting but infinitely more comfortable life he would enjoy if he would but change Barbara for Lucy.

She was roused from these musings by hearing Peregrine announce a village to have come into view. She looked up; the trees flanking the road dwindled ahead in perspective to the village of Waterloo. A round building, standing on the edge of the Forest, half bathed in sunlight, presented a picture charming enough to make her long for her sketchbook and water colours.

They had by this time covered some nine and a half miles, and were glad to be leaving the shade of the Forest. In a few minutes the village was reached, and Lady Taverner was exclaiming at the size and style of the church, a strange edifice with a domed roof, standing on one side of the chaussee. Opposite, among a huddle of brick and stone-built cottages, was a small inn, with a painted signboard bearing the legend, Jean de Nivelles. There was little to detain sightseers, and after pausing for a short while to look at the church, they drove on, up a gentle acclivity leading to the village of Mont St Jean, three miles farther on.