THE SENSATIONALISTS: III
THE SECRET VICTORY
STEPHEN McKENNA
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BY STEPHEN MCKENNA
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THE SENSATIONALISTS
PART ONE: LADY LILITH
PART TWO: THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE
PART THREE: THE SECRET VICTORY
SONIA MARRIED
SONIA
MIDAS AND SON
NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE
THE SIXTH SENSE
SHEILA INTERVENES
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NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
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THE
SECRET VICTORY
BY
STEPHEN McKENNA
AUTHOR OF “LADY LILITH,” “SONIA MARRIED,”
“THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE,” “SONIA,”
“NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE,” ETC.
NEW YORK
[Printer's decoration]
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922,
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
[Printer's decoration]
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
WITH GRATITUDE
TO
TEX
WITH LOVE
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_Epistle Dedicatory_
TO ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
You, who have read the three volumes of _The Sensationalists_ in
manuscript, place me under further obligation by allowing me to
dedicate the third to you in commemoration of a friendship which has
been long, intimate and—to me—unmatched. Though I acquit you of
responsibility for shortcomings in anything that I have written, the
tale of these shortcomings would have been far longer if I had not
availed myself of your unfailing vigilance and ever-ready help, as I
have profited by your sensitive criticism and sympathetic encouragement.
The novel-trilogy is so little acclimatized to latter-day Georgian
England that, though it may need no defence, it has provoked attacks
from readers who will suffer all artistic forms but those which
are offered to the public in his present majesty’s reign; I say no
more in its apology than that it provides a convenient medium for
a study in which the story-teller occupies, in succession, three
different standpoints. In _Lady Lilith_, the emotion hunters and
sensation-mongers who supply the drama of this trilogy are still
practising their poses in mirrored and passionless detachment; in _The
Education of Eric Lane_, artifice has grown to such strength that, in
its contest with reality, the battle—between antagonists no longer
detached nor passionless—stands drawn; in _The Secret Victory_, a
close contact with reality deflates the tumid pretensions of artifice
and forces an amateur company of tragi-comedians into the revealing
daylight of the open street. Even if it had been possible to present
these three phases in a single volume, I should have been sorry to lose
the interval which bridged the transition from one phase to another.
Whether a study of flamboyantly conscious egotism deserves three
volumes can hardly be decided impartially by one who has attempted the
study; but the novelist has at no time been more insistently urged to
contemplate unabashed egotism than in an age when the camera and the
printing-press, the public confession and the private conversation, the
conclusions of psychology and the phantasies of psycho-analysis combine
forces to further the cult of personality. “Ninety-five per cent. of
the human race,” said Mr. Cutler Walpole in _The Doctor’s Dilemma_,
“suffer from chronic blood-poisoning, and die of it. It’s as simple as
A. B. C. Your nuciform sac is full of decaying matter....” Ninety-five
_per centum_ would seem a modest estimate for the proportion of the
human race which, in one social division of England at the present
time, is dying spiritually of acute egomania.
In reading the manuscript of this trilogy you encountered characters
whom you had met in earlier novels; if at some future time you have the
patience to read those later novels which have been executed, or at
least planned, but not yet published, you are more than likely to meet
some of them again. The practice of carrying certain characters from
one book to another is hardly so much an arrogant assumption that the
public has made their acquaintance in a former presentation as an
effort to give additional verisimilitude to a picture which is being
built up in sections: an academic history of the years before the war,
of the war itself and of the years following it would inevitably
introduce, in volume after volume, some at least of the same warriors,
statesmen, financiers and social leaders; if, in an imaginary picture
of the same period, the novelist offends by following the same method,
he offends in the consoling company of Balzac, Disraeli and Thackeray
among the dead and of Galsworthy and Mackenzie among the living.
To you I need offer no excuse for having hitherto confined myself for
the most part to men and women whose means and leisure enable them to
be occupied with public affairs or preoccupied with private
introspection: as human beings, susceptible to pain and pleasure, they
are not less interesting than those who devote a greater proportion of
their time to the struggle for existence; in the opinion of some, they
may win an added interest by the larger air of a more spacious life and
by the subtile discrimination of wider intellectual sympathies; if a
novelist offends by neglecting the narrow streets and sunless cottages
of this era, he offends once more in the company of Disraeli and
Thackeray.
The present volume of _The Sensationalists_ brings the trilogy to an
end; the reception accorded to the first volumes was too evenly mixed
to indicate how the third will be greeted; but, since all three books
were planned and completed as one whole before the first was published,
it is as one whole that I should like them to be judged. Jointly and
severally, however, their fate is of less importance to me than the
pleasure which I derived from writing them; and, in the present volume,
no words give me greater pleasure than those on the dedication page.
Ever yours,
STEPHEN MCKENNA.
Lincoln’s Inn,
24 August, 1921.
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I VIGIL 15
II DAWN 38
III THE WILDERNESS OF THIS WORLD 57
IV EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS 79
V THE PRICE OF SYMPATHY 95
VI THE REWARD OF SYMPATHY 111
VII A DOUBLE RESCUE 125
VIII HALF-HONEYMOON 152
IX A DOUBLE ESCAPE 181
X THE WANDERING OF ISHMAEL 210
XI MIRAGE 228
XII NIGHT 248
XIII JOURNEY’S END 276
XIV VIGIL 291
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THE SECRET VICTORY
“There is no God; but still, behind the veil,
The hurt thing works, out of its agony.
Still like the given curse that did not fail
Return the pennies given to passers-by.
There is no God; but we, who breathe the air,
Are God ourselves, and touch God everywhere.”
—JOHN MASEFIELD: _Lollingdon Downs._
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THE SECRET VICTORY
CHAPTER ONE
VIGIL
“Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day,
And took with her your trifle of money;
Bless your heart, they don’t mind—they’re exceedingly kind—
They don’t blame you—as long as you’re funny!”
W. S. GILBERT: “THE FAMILY FOOL.”
Roused by a report of peace hardly less deafening than the crash of war
four and a half years earlier, the winter garden of the Majestic hummed
like a vast and airless beehive. On the long sofas by the walls, in
deferential clusters round some slow-voiced, arm-chair oracle and in
wavering groups at one moment distinct and at another herded together,
everybody who could find room between the crowded tables and the
obtrusive palm-tubs eagerly volleyed question and answer, contributing
his pennyworth of gossip and retiring with his pound of rumour.
No one in New York had seriously doubted that Germany would accept the
armistice terms; but, until they were signed, the talk of private
dinners and public celebrations remained half-hearted. Now that the
invitations had been discharged, no one knew what to do next. One group
of lean, sagacious officers debated how soon they would be demobilized
and restored to their businesses; a harassed parliament of women
exchanged acid confidences about the apartments which they had taken
when their husbands came to New York for the war; a second and a
younger group of officers deplored the untimely cessation of
hostilities before they had seen any fighting.
“‘All-dressed-up-and-nowhere-to-go,’” hummed one. “Why, Carstairs, when
did _you_ get here?”
He shook hands with an agitated young Englishman who was peering over
the heads and under the arms of his neighbours.
“Hullo, Long! I left Washington last night. You’ve not seen my wife,
have you?”
“Lady John was over by the far door a while back. I’ll shew you.”
He took Carstairs by the arm and dragged him through the crowd to a
corner where a young woman had entrenched herself behind a row of
palm-tubs and a breastwork of wicker chairs.
“Much obliged. I say, what about a drink? Oh, of course, you’re not
allowed to. Never mind, there’s a good time ahead of you as soon as
you’re out of uniform. By the way, we’re coming to your dinner. Very
good of you to ask us.”
The officer bowed and went back to his own group. Carstairs dropped
limply into a chair and rang a bell.
“God, what a mob! And what a day! I haven’t had a moment to myself. The
horrors of peace!”
His wife pressed his hand sympathetically, and the gold of a new
wedding-ring caught and flung back the light from the great arc-lamps.
“Could you do anything about our passages?” she asked.
“Yes, I wandered into the chancery and got them to make up a bag. After
that there was no difficulty, but the boat will be ankle-deep in
Ministry of Munitions people and Treasury people and Propaganda people.
There are more English officials than Americans in New York to-day.
Precious glad every one will be to get rid of us! By the way, Sadler
Long wants to give us a farewell dinner at the Biltmore; I said you
weren’t doing anything. Was that all right?”
“Is it to-night?”
“No. We’re dining with Grant to-night at the Plaza. It’s a farewell
dinner to Eric Lane, the dramatist fellow. The great American people
will be both tired and dyspeptic by the time it’s given a farewell
dinner to every munition-contractor, exchange-stabilizer and itinerant
lecturer in the country.”
“I want to meet Mr. Lane,” said Lady John.
“Well, you’ll have every opportunity on the boat. I can’t say _I_ do.”
A waiter came to their table with two cocktails. Carstairs signed for
them, lighted a cigarette and leaned back with one leg thrown over the
other. On the far side of the serried palm-tubs and wicker chairs, an
English voice said:
“Waiter! I ordered a Number Twenty-Three.”
“Number Twenty-Three,” repeated the waiter, turning his head for an
instant in full flight.
Eric Lane nodded and pretended to read his paper, refusing to be driven
from a comfortable chair because a strange Englishman, with the
notorious tact of the English, chose to discuss him by name at two
yards’ distance. Until three minutes before, he had been agreeably
lulled by the high hum of American voices; but this drawling English,
with a hint of impatient superiority in it, assailed and defeated him.
He was also humanly curious to know what the strange Englishman had
heard or thought about him.
“I like his plays,” said Lady John. “Is there anything against him?”
Lane decided that she must be a New Englander. Then he recalled his
glimpse of the underhung, impatient Englishman and remembered that
Frances Naylor of Boston had married Lord John Carstairs six months
earlier. The match had caused nearly a week’s excitement, for Carstairs
was brother and heir-presumptive to the imbecile Duke of Ross, while
Frances Naylor was a future heiress and a present beauty.
“Oh, I’ve no objection to him personally,” said Carstairs. “But I don’t
suppose we’re very popular with him as a family. There was a blighted
romance between him and my cousin, Barbara Neave.” He laughed, and Eric
Lane felt his cheeks warming. “I’m afraid you’ll find Barbara—and her
relicts and reputation—rather a mouthful.”
Not for the first time Frances Carstairs wished that the English had
fewer relations. She had been bewilderingly initiated into the complex
family tangle of the Neaves and Lorings, the Carstairs and
Knightriders; John had drawn her ingenious plans to shew who had
married whom, but every new name impaled her on a new genealogical
tree, so that she openly dreaded her arrival in England and the
threatened tour of inspection among her husband’s manifold connections.
“But I thought you told me your cousin had married recently,” she said.
“Yes, she married George Oakleigh. He was a son of Miles Oakleigh, the
head of the family; and his cousin, Violet Hunter-Oakleigh, who’s of
the Catholic branch in the county Dublin, married _my_ cousin, Jim
Loring, who was killed in ’15. I know it’s confusing at first——”
“It’s maddening! What has all this to do with Mr. Lane? If your
cousin—our cousin——”
“Oh, _that’s_ all over, but he may feel she made rather a fool of him.
However, he’s in good company: when she was seventeen, I was supposed
to be engaged to her, and Crawleigh had to contradict it in the press;
and, to my knowledge, she’s been married off to six people in as many
years, beginning with one of the young princes and ending with some
barrister. She’s all right if you don’t take her seriously, but I’m
told that Lane _did_, rather. She tried to drive him in double harness
with the barrister until they both bolted in opposite directions; then
Lane came out here, and the other man, Waring, quietly retired to the
country; then she married George Oakleigh. And that’s the end of
Barbara.”
Lady John felt that a criticism was expected of her, but could not
decide how far it was safe to disapprove of her celebrated new cousin
without incurring a charge of provincialism.
“Well, she had her fair share of romance,” she ventured after a pause.
“I should think you’re all rather relieved.”
“The Crawleighs were a bit disappointed,” answered Carstairs; “but it
might have been worse. Relieved? I don’t _know_. When I said that was
the _end_ of Barbara... There’s a curious little group that my cousin
Jim Loring used to call “the Sensationalists”; they were always playing
a part and pulling up their psychology by the roots to see how it was
growing. Anything for a new emotion! Barbara always had more
personality than the rest of them put together and she led them till
she really made London too hot to hold her. Then the war came. The men
were killed off and the women married; but the old Adam’s still alive
in some of them. I’m wondering what Barbara’s next outbreak will be;
she had one emotion by marrying a tame-cat Irish squireen, but how long
she’ll stick to him... I’m sure we’ve not finished with her yet. You’ll
find London a curious place... Look here, if we’re going to be in time,
I must go up; I haven’t unpacked yet.”
At the creak of chairs, Eric Lane buried himself in his paper, only
looking up when the bull-necked, consequential young man and his lithe,
decorative companion had sauntered languorously past, leaving in his
nostrils an elusive hint of violets and in his memory a dissolving view
of pearls, a gold bag, white gloves, a cloak tentatively martial and
exquisitely neat shoes. Lady John he had never seen before; Carstairs
he now remembered as a young man with too much chin and too little
hair, intermittently to be found in London theatres; they had
overlapped for a year or two at Oxford where Carstairs won a brief
notoriety by removing the minute hand of the General Post Office clock
every Sunday night throughout one term; twelve years in the diplomatic
service had robbed him of irresponsibility without putting anything in
its place. As they disappeared from sight, Eric threw his paper away
and lighted a cigar. After long months of solitude, it was stimulating
to hear how the world represented by Carstairs summarized and dismissed
his contribution to the romantic Odyssey of Lady Barbara Neave.
He had not, himself, been able to dismiss it so easily; and, when he
left England at the end of 1916, Eric was determined never to come
back. His health was shattered; Dr. Gaisford bluntly threatened him
with a sanatorium; and he needed distance and change of work to heal a
bruised spirit. After lecturing in the United States, he travelled for
six months in South America and started on an aimless and endless
holiday in Japan. While he was in Tokio, he heard that Barbara was
married. At a time when the German armies were pouring down on Paris,
the news was telegraphed all over the world; and the press of Tokio,
New York, Ottawa, Sydney and Calcutta gave her a column of description.
Eric was dining with two men from the Embassy, and throughout the
evening they discussed nothing else. When he first saw the headline:
“_Marriage of Lady Barbara Neave_,” he fought for breath as though his
heart had stopped; then, with slowly returning composure, he realized
for the first time that finality had been achieved and that, in all the
months when he was philosophizing and hardening his heart, he had been
waiting for a fantastic miracle to happen, hoping to see Barbara,
breathless and dusty from the train, coming into his hotel. The London
telegram killed his faith in romance.
And the excited column of small type killed his faith in women, for
Barbara had apparently walked into the street and married the first man
that she saw....
“Who’s this Oakleigh?,” asked his host, squeezing the last drop of
relish out of the story. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“He’s a very nice fellow,” Eric found himself answering. Oakleigh
henceforth was to have the stolen intoxication of glorying in Barbara
when she was well and comforting her when she was ill, of seeing her
great eyes change from mockery to tenderness and from tenderness to
ecstasy; but Oakleigh could never have from her those fifteen fevered
months when their hearts had beaten together... “I’ve known him ever
since I was at Oxford. He used to be in the House; and then he ran a
paper... He has a place in Ireland—”
“What they call ‘a suitable alliance’?,” suggested his host.
“Oh, very.”
“It’s rather a disappointing finish to her career...”
The gossiping discussion rambled on, introducing name after name of the
men whom Lady Barbara had been expected to marry. Eric waited for his
own and, when it was not cited, relapsed into reverie. He had received
a letter that morning from his sister, telling him that she was engaged
and asking whether he would be home in time for the wedding. If he had
ever doubted, there was now no question of returning to England; he was
too well known to be left in peace. The Oakleighs and Neaves, the
Knightriders and Lorings, the Pentyres and Carstairs, the Maitlands and
Poynters all moved in the same little set of three or four hundred
people. Fifteen years before he had dreamed at Oxford of the day when
he would burst upon their startled world and hold it captive; the dream
had sustained him through the mortification of neglect and the despair
of ill-health until of a sudden the reality threw his dream into
shadow. In London, in Boston, in Tokio he was recognized in the street;
to escape the fulfilment of his own prayers he had to travel by
unfamiliar lines and hide himself in unknown hotels; for ultimate and
enduring sanctuary he must retire to a land untouched by books and
theatres.
After three months’ desultory wandering he returned to Tokio and booked
a passage to China. Already his health was improving; and, if he could
lose all touch with English ways of thought, he might begin to lose
touch with himself, to shed his personality, almost to change his
identity; upcountry it must be possible to find a civilization and
scenery so strange that it would absorb him. As he left his hotel for
the shipping office, he was handed a cable from his American agent:
“_Following from Lane Lashmar Hampshire England for you care of me
despatched fourteenth your father seriously ill think you should return
as soon as possible._”
Eric studied the time of despatch and retransmission with stupid
deliberation, giving himself time to recover from the shock. This
meant, of course, that his father was dying, was perhaps already dead;
and it was his duty to be shocked. Lashmar on the fourteenth, New York
on the sixteenth, Tokio on the eighteenth;—the war had made cabling a
slow business... He was a selfish brute not to have told his mother
where he was going instead of leaving her to track him through his
American agent and, before that, through his London agent. His father
had never been ill since he was a child, but he had overworked for
years; this probably meant a stroke....
Eric discovered that he was quite dispassionate; perhaps he was too
much numbed to feel. He must of course return immediately; if anything
happened, the eldest son must be at hand. Once in England, he must let
the future take care of itself.
Three weeks later he landed at San Francisco and arrived in New York
two days before the armistice was signed. “Mother’s Son” was still
running at the Grafton; he was met unexpectedly at the station, and,
before the day was out, two reporters had called at the Majestic and
sought an interview. He tried to dine by himself and was instantly
caught up by a group of friends who set about organizing a banquet in
his honour. A private party of twelve swept within twenty-four hours
far beyond the organizer’s control. Half New York had been to one or
other of the plays; scores of people had already met him, hundreds more
wanted to meet him.
“Look at it this way,” said his agent, Justus Grant, defensively.
“Every one knows you’re here. Well, if it gets out that we’ve given you
a dinner and cornered you, they’ll all ask why in Hell they weren’t
invited. I’ve got to live in New York, and you haven’t. It’s only one
speech, whether we’re twelve or twelve hundred. And you’ve only to
stand and shake a few more hands.”
“I’ll do my best,” Eric promised with ebbing patience. “It’s a
tremendous honour....”
Then he began reading the letters which he had brought from his
agent’s. Lady Lane wrote to confirm her cable and to say that his
father had indeed had a stroke. His life was no longer in danger,
though for some days his speech had been affected and many months must
go by before he could resume work. There was no immediate urgency for
Eric to return; he must decide for himself. Of course, he had been
terribly missed, and every one was looking forward to seeing him.
After resolving never to go back to England, Eric felt that nothing
would now keep him away. There was almost everything to be said against
it, and, in its favour, only that he had secured a cabin where others
had tried and failed. The reason was frivolous, his mind was aimless;
and he accepted the reason, because it chimed with his mood of
aimlessness. Moreover—a reason yet more frivolous!—Justus Grant was
arranging a farewell dinner for him, and, after being bidden God-speed,
he could not decently loiter in New York any longer. Of such stuff were
made the cardinal decisions of a man’s life. Three years earlier, on
the night of his first meeting with Barbara Neave, she had asked him to
wait till the end of her rubber and to take her home.
The crowd in the winter garden was thinning, and Eric could study in
peace the notes which he had jotted down for his speech. Though
Carstairs’ chatter had set his nerves jangling, he must face a graver
ordeal when he was welcomed to the midst of Barbara’s friends in
London; if for the moment he could not abdicate, he must sit his throne
worthily; but he felt contempt for this servile herd which abased
itself before him. For two years he had lived in isolation; and, if he
was now flung face to face with his public, he would shew that he could
preserve his isolation in their midst.
He roused from moody reverie to find his host standing, watch in hand,
before him.
“Haven’t you dressed yet?,” asked Grant anxiously. “The automobile’s at
the door.”
Instead of thinking about his speech, Eric was only brooding over the
hollowness of his belated, unwanted triumph; three years earlier it
would have intoxicated him to take New York or London by storm, but he
was wondering for the first time whether this lust for theatrical
sensationalism did not really lower him to the level of Barbara Neave
and her school. Certainly he had outgrown the phase so much that he
would have been almost a little glad to shew his contempt by making
every one wait....
For a moment he pretended to be unconscious of Grant’s presence; then
he was stung to activity by a fear that this scorn of soul was only
another experiment in sensationalism....
“I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he cried, as he ran out of the winter
garden. For one night he must enter into the spirit of his company;
after that he would hide himself where he could escape equally the
emotion of courting triumph and of avoiding it.
Hundreds were assembled at the Plaza, when he arrived: how many
hundreds he was too indifferent to enquire, but they were lined up in
rows; the rumble of countless conversations shrank to a whisper and
died away in a moment’s silence; then every one who knew him hastened
to shake hands, while the rest begged to be introduced. For all his
indifference, Eric was warmed by his reception. Throughout his
wanderings in South America and Japan, imagination and will had swung
alternate hammers to fashion a new life which he could find worth
living. Here was acclamation. The throne awaited him, if he could mount
it worthily. He was but thirty-five, his health had returned to him...
All his life he had prayed for this moment of domination....
A waiter interrupted the chorus of welcome by thrusting his way forward
with a tray of cocktails and caviare sandwiches. In the moment’s lull
Eric saw Carstairs at his elbow and turned to him.
“I believe we _have_ met,” he said, holding out his hand. “I just
missed you when I called at the Embassy last year.”
Carstairs shook hands awkwardly and muttered an introduction to his
wife.
“When I was in Japan, I saw that Barbara had married my friend George
Oakleigh,” Eric went on. “I know them both very well. Jim Loring, of
course, was one of my greatest friends. And your mother used to be kind
enough to ask me to some of her parties.”
He had dropped his indifference in a calculated effort to shew these
Carstairs that, even if they did not want to meet him, he would meet
them or not as he liked. This dinner, after all, was his apotheosis;
some one at his elbow was whispering that five hundred tickets had been
sold and that the committee could have sold more than twice that
number. It was astonishing that a thousand educated men and women had
no better use for their time and money; astonishing, too, that he had
allowed himself to be dragged out for public display, for in all that
vast gathering there was not one eager face that he wished ever to see
again. Indifference and aloofness returned as a protection against such
a sense of loneliness as he had never known when he was most isolated.
“I believe we’re going by your boat,” said Lady John.
“That will be delightful,” Eric answered.
The babble of voices rose and swelled until the chairman wound his way
back to Eric’s side and led him into the dining-room. Detachment
changed for a moment to antagonism as he walked between the long
whispering rows: warm waves of scent beat upon his cheeks; before,
behind and on either side he felt the magnetism of a thousand eyes
drawing him out of his self-sufficiency and assailing his frozen
reserve. As quickly as his companion would allow, he walked on, looking
stiffly ahead, to the seat of honour. There, while the rigid,
whispering rows broke up and poured in at his heels, he looked idly at
the men and women who made up a world which he had left for ever. It
was difficult to see all the tables and impossible to count his hosts;
but the printed plan shewed him name after honoured name; New York
political, New York a night’s lodging for itinerant diplomacy, New York
literary and artistic, New York rich, New York fashionable and New York
merely curious had crowded into the great room; and his health was to
be proposed by Nelson Millbank, who had been ambassador in London when
Eric was still unborn. Through the flowers, over the little Stars and
Stripes and the Union Jacks fluttering between the vases he tried to
identify those who were nearest to him. Every one seemed to be looking
in his direction; and, to escape their eyes, he turned to his neighbour.
“America’s always been uncommonly good to me, Mr. Millbank,” he said,
“but I’ve never had anything of this kind before.”
“You will shew your gratitude by coming back,” was the answer, “though
we feel that the indebtedness lies the other way.”
“I’m leaving you from necessity and not choice.”
“For leisure—and for more plays, we hope. And what psychological
material, Mr. Lane! Had I your genius and your youth... The
convulsion’s as great, when you turn a soldier into a civilian, as when
you turn a civilian into a soldier. It will be your privilege to
capture and preserve for us the impression of a world in travail. A man
gets his discharge papers one morning—and finds himself with an old
life to take up or a new life to make....”
“Yes. I’ve been thinking of that for some time,” said Eric, half to
himself. “Though I’m not a soldier... It’s all right if he himself has
changed with the world around him; in peace the individual moves more
quickly than the mass, but in war the mass moves more quickly than the
individual.”
He stroked his chin thoughtfully and looked up to find the woman
opposite him leaning forward with a faint air of diffidence and a
question in embryo.
“There’s no old life for women to take up, is there?” she asked,
plucking up courage, but evidently disconcerted by the clear ascendancy
of her own voice.
“Woman is unchanging,” Eric answered, “she resigns herself to
civilization, but she has never been civilized. Man is, to her, a
physiological incident and a domestic accessory, so that a war only
affects woman by withdrawing so many potential fathers of her children
and supporters of her house.”
He glanced covertly at the plan of the table and found opposite his own
name that of Lady Woodstock. Sir Matthew Woodstock, three chairs away,
was a partner in Woodstock, McArthur and Company and had been sent to
America by the Ministry of Munitions as British representative on the
Purchasing and Priority Council.
To right and left rose an eager debate on sex and conduct. Eric had
thrown them a bait which, he knew well, few men and no woman could
resist. An “academic” discussion of sex enabled them to talk about
themselves, to indulge their own sex-curiosity, to fancy themselves
wholesomely fearless and unprejudiced; it enabled him to dine
peacefully in the soothing haze of sham-intellectuality and to study
anew the names on the table-plan. Next to Carstairs he saw Mrs. O’Rane
deep in conversation with John Gaymer; next to him was Lady John, with
O’Rane on her other side. It was indeed no great exaggeration to say
that there were more British officials than Americans in New York; and
the sight of this compact alien colony set Eric thinking about his
speech. He was unlikely to enter the Plaza again, but he could not
spend a week in London without meeting O’Rane or Gaymer; his
valediction should be something for them to remember and quote when he
had slipped through their hands into a retirement from which, this
time, there would be no return... He was roused by the touch of a
woman’s hand on his sleeve. Finding him unoccupied, his neighbour was
asking him to sign her _menu_. Instantly her example was followed by
every one who saw him writing; _menus_ were passed from hand to hand,
waiters appeared from other tables with piled-up trays; he was still
signing when Nelson Millbank whispered a question and stood up to
propose the toast of the evening.
Eric lighted his cigar and leaned back, looking over the heads of the
diners to a vast fan-group of the Allied flags, draped over the main
door. At a semicircular table twenty feet away the press-men were
industriously scribbling: two were looking up at him from their
sketch-books and down to the sketch-books again; he posed himself and
sat patiently still. Millbank’s rising had been greeted with a storm of
cheers and clapping; his opening sentences called forth fresh cheers,
and punctually thereafter, at the polished end of each resonant period,
as he half turned to the guest of the evening or indicated him with a
slight movement of his hand, there was a new outburst of applause.
Though he listened with only half his attention, Eric knew that it was
a great speech from a man who had been known for more than forty years
as one of the greatest after-dinner speakers in America. That much, at
least, he had expected, but he was hardly prepared for the white-hot
enthusiasm of the audience. This, if anything, should stimulate a man
to better work than he had ever yet accomplished; but for two years all
work had mysteriously lost its savour and purpose. If he ever wrote
again, he would still be artist enough to give forth only the best that
was in him, but he no longer cared for the applause of a blurred,
indistinguishable mob; his plays, indeed, were running in three
continents, but in a thousand audiences there was no one whose
judgement mattered to him as in the old days when above “the mad
houseful’s plaudits” he looked “through all the roaring and the
wreaths” for one half smile of praise from Barbara. Had all these
bright-eyed men and women masked their faces, were Millbank speaking an
unknown tongue, Eric could not have had less in common with them. Mrs.
O’Rane threw him a dazzling glance of congratulation; and, before he
could bow, he had to overcome his surprise that she had recognized him.
In all this funeral throng he alone knew that for two years he had been
dead....
Voice, gesture and mounting sentiment shewed that the peroration was at
hand:
“And, lastly, I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the honour and the
opportunity of having my name associated for a moment of one night with
the loved name of our guest. He and I stand at the remote opposite ends
of life, so that I cannot hope to meet him often again. You, who will
meet him and see him and read him, I congratulate and envy. I ask you
to rise and join me in wishing him long life, health and prosperity.”
There was an instant’s silence, and the room rose in a wave of black
and white. “Lane! Lane! Lane!” The thundering repetition of his name
drowned the clink of the glasses, the individual toasts and even the
college yell which rocketed from the end of the room. Eric bowed to
Millbank, then turned slowly and inclined his head to right, to left
and in front. The speech had intoxicated them; they looked at him with
shining eyes, an inch removed from hysteria.
“And what do they expect I can say after that, sir?” Eric whispered to
Millbank, as the applause died slowly away and he sat down.
“Take your time, Mr. Lane.”
Once more every one was looking at him in a silence broken only by a
buzzing commentary on Millbank’s speech. Eric straightened his tie,
pulled down his waistcoat and laid his watch on the table beside his
finger-bowl. As he pushed back his chair and slowly drew himself erect,
he caught sight of his reflection in three long mirrors: black-haired
and white-cheeked, aquiline and thin, with deep-set brown eyes and lips
tightly compressed, he could fancy that he was looking at his own dead
body. The applause broke out again, ten times louder and longer than
before; there was a blinding flash of silver light from a magnesium
flare, followed by dense grey clouds of smoke. As they cleared away, he
once more established the position of Carstairs and his wife, holding
himself upright and only touching the table with the tips of his
fingers. Though slightly built, he was tall enough to dominate an
audience; in three years of public speaking he had acquired such
composure that he could stand for a full minute without saying
anything. It was a test of grip; if he could hold his company without
speaking, he could do what he liked with it afterwards. Before he
turned to Millbank, the great room was as silent as the _Festspielhaus_
before the opening bar of Parsifal. Something seemed to have come to
life within him, for he now felt that he must at all costs eclipse
Millbank’s speech; if he could not match his slow stateliness of
eloquence and diction, he would master him in pure lyrical fire and
music....
“Mr. Millbank, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen...”
The voice was flexible and light, capable of infinite emotional
variation, boyish and appealing after Millbank’s deep resonance. Eric
had discarded and forgotten his rehearsed speech. Dreary months of
stereotyped lecturing set him ablaze to speak his soul. The audience
had surrendered to his presence and surrendered again to his voice; he
could twist every man and woman round his finger....
Forty minutes had passed before he sat down. There was no applause, for
none dared break the silence; but he had made them laugh and he had
brought tears into the eyes of the woman opposite; the audience had
quivered and gasped. Now, if they had not guessed it before, they knew
how he inspired with his own genius the actors who interpreted his
plays; henceforth they would recognize whose personality it was that
spread magnetically across the foot-lights... He picked up the dead
cigar from his plate and felt for a match. He would have liked to look
at Carstairs, but it was unnecessary; Carstairs himself, with his
unmistakable English drawl, broke the silence by exclaiming: “Oh, I
say, that was devilish good, you know!” Thereat the pent storm of
cheering gushed forth as though he had touched a spring.
There followed a presentation and more introductions. Eric stood bowing
to congratulations and trying to answer five questions at a time until
the chairman rescued him and took him back to the Majestic. Even there
he was constrained to hold a new court and to accept the homage of
those who had not found an opportunity of speaking to him before.
Mid-night was striking as he shook the last hand and lighted his last
cigar; with it came nervous exhaustion and an abrupt reaction, in which
once more he seemed to have crossed the boundary between two lives and
to be wandering alone in eternal emptiness....
As he walked back to the winter garden a woman rose from her chair and
hurried up to him.
“Mr. Lane, I _must_ thank you for that speech! It was wonderful! I’ve
never heard anything like it. Aren’t you dreadfully tired?”
The cloak and scarf kept him for a moment from recognizing her as the
woman who had sat opposite him at dinner.
“I am, rather,” he answered, leaning against the arm of a chair. “But
it’s the last speech I shall ever make.”
“In America, you mean? It’s so glorious to feel that I’ve actually met
you! You’re crossing on the _Lithuania_, aren’t you? So are we. I shall
hope to see you on board. And I shall make a thorough nuisance of
myself by asking you to write in my autograph book. Now I mustn’t keep
you; I expect you’ve all sorts of packing to do.”
“I’m glad to say I haven’t unpacked since I left Japan... Good-night,
Lady Woodstock.”
She looked up at him curiously for a moment and then broke into a laugh.
“_I’m_ not—Mr. Lane, you’re not mistaking me for Lady Woodstock, are
you?”
“I thought you were. I saw your name on the plan of the table—”
“Oh, but that was because she was too tired to come. Sir Matthew
brought me in her place. _Wasn’t_ that a piece of luck for me? I’m his
secretary. He’s not come in yet, has he? I simply daren’t go to bed
until I’ve found out whether he has any more work for me.”
“He was still at the Plaza, when I left,” said Eric.
“Then I suppose I must wait up for him.”
She chose herself a chair, threw open her cloak and untied the scarf
from her hair. Now that the girl had told him what she was, Eric
wondered how he could ever have imagined her to be anything else. She
looked eighteen or twenty and displayed the brisk assurance which he
had come to regard as a woman’s price of admission to the temporary
civil service. Her hair was bobbed and surrounded with a red band; a
serviceable black dress revealed slender arms and shoulders; and her
regular, rather sharp features were agreeably relieved by grey-blue
eyes which seemed younger and less self-confident than the rest of her.
Eric had met and striven to avoid very many of her type in English
government offices; they were at all times too much emancipated for his
liking, too energetic, efficient and certain of themselves, too
conscious of sex-superiority to concern themselves with sex-equality.
Sir Matthew Woodstock’s secretary looked devastatingly conscientious
and practical; she billeted herself in the most comfortable chair with
the determination which he could imagine her shewing when she arranged
appointments and guarded her employer from unauthorized telephone
assaults. And she would call him her “chief” rather than her
“employer.”...
Force of habit, rather than any personal interest, had led Eric to
spend a moment in cataloguing her; thereafter he was only concerned to
find a polite excuse for going to bed. The girl seemed conscious that
she had thrust herself upon him, for, after a short silence, she looked
at her watch and exclaimed:
“I’d no idea it was so late! Mr. Lane, I mustn’t keep you up.”
She coloured bashfully as she spoke, and Eric felt that he had been
unkind in not putting her at ease. The flush so changed her _façade_ of
efficiency and determination that, though she evidently wanted him to
stay, she did not know how to ask.
“I’ll finish my cigar with you, if I may,” he said. “You must have a
wearing life with Sir Matthew, if he always keeps you up as late as
this. Have you been with him long?”
The jejune encouragement restored her composure; and Eric saw with
dismay that he must talk in self-defence or submit to unrestricted
loquacity.
“Two years,” she answered; then in rapid, unsought confidence: “You
see, he and father were great friends at Cambridge, and, when I wanted
to do war-work, father wouldn’t let me learn to make munitions and
mother wouldn’t let me go into an office. They’re afraid to allow me
out of their sight. I wanted to nurse or drive a car, but father _and_
mother—”
“You have a lot to put up with from your parents!,” Eric interrupted.
“Oh, they’re hopeless. I expect you’ve met father—”
“I don’t even know your name, as you assure me you’re _not_ Lady
Woodstock.”
“Ivy Maitland. Father’s the judge, you know.”
“I don’t know him, but he’s a brother of the general, isn’t he? I know
Lady Maitland very well—your aunt, I mean.”
“Oh, as if mother knew anybody or anybody knew mother! Well, I had to
do something: both my sisters were married, and my brothers were
fighting. Then Sir Matthew _wanted_ a secretary....”
Eric wondered how quickly he could finish his cigar without spoiling
it, then settled resignedly in his chair and listened with eyes
half-closed. Miss Maitland had worked for Sir Matthew Woodstock in
London, New York, Paris, Rome and Petrograd, crowding into two years
more excitement and experiences than she had dreamed of knowing in a
life-time. She was nineteen and looking for new worlds to explore, but,
as with Alexander on the confines of India, the army insisted on
returning home: and there, Sir Matthew told her with regret, he had his
own trained staff, and there would be no work for her.
“What are you going to do when you get back to England?,” asked Eric in
the first negotiable pause.
“Get hold of a new job before father has time to see that the war’s
over,” she answered promptly. “There’ll be a row, of course, when he
finds out... D’you employ a secretary in England, Mr. Lane?”
“I used to.”
“And you will again. Will you take me? Sir Matthew will tell you that
I’m a first-rate shorthand-typist, I’m fairly well-educated, I’m
intelligent, I hope I’ve got a certain amount of tact. _I_’ll tell you
that I’m honest—honest in the sense that, when I take money from a
person, I work my fingers to the bones for him.”
Eric smiled and shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be very practicable,” he said.
“Why not? I’ll come to you for a month without salary! Three months! I
can’t afford more than that.”
Underneath her eagerness Eric fancied that he could detect something
more than restless impetuosity.
“My dear Miss Maitland, you must think me very sordid,” he laughed.
“Well, why won’t you give me a trial?”
“For purely conventional reasons. I know your uncle and aunt very well.
I’m not going to be party to a conspiracy for taking away the daughter
of a very eminent judge against his wishes. If I can help you to find
work of which your parents approve, I’ll do what I can. But I’ve been
away from England so long that I can’t promise anything; and I’ve no
idea how long I shall be there.”
The cigar was but half-finished, but he threw it away and shook hands,
trying not to see that she was disappointed but in no doubt that it was
hardly reasonable for him to be stampeded by any mercurial
nineteen-year-old to whom he shewed a moment’s civility.
“It’s awfully good of you, I feel I’ve no right to bother you like
this,” she answered. “I _meant_ to talk about your plays; and I’ve only
talked about myself.”
“It was more interesting—to me. If you think I can help in any way,
write to me at the Regency Theatre or the Thespian Club, Grosvenor
Place.”
“But I hope to see you on the boat.”
Eric had not overlooked that possibility, but he decided that he did
not want to meet Miss Ivy Maitland again.
“But—in case we don’t,” he said. “Good-night.”
In his own room he threw open the window to liberate the day’s stifling
accumulation of steam-heating. Kneeling on a chair with his chin on his
hands, he looked down on a plateau of roofs startlingly punctuated by
the blazing bean-stalks of slender giant buildings. It was the last
time that he would see New York at night, the last time that he would
be in America. He had made his last speech; he hoped devoutly that he
had submitted for the last time to the unintelligent exuberance of too
appreciative school-girls....
At three o’clock his vigil was not yet ended, but he turned from the
window with a shiver and began to undress. It was well enough to make
this catalogue of things that he would never do again, but for two
years he had been trying to discover what life he could fashion for
himself in their stead.
“I’m beaten,” he whispered to the darkness as he turned restlessly from
side to side. “I may as well admit it... I’ve never said it before in
all my life. I never thought I _should_ say it; and I can still put up
a good bluff on occasion. But I’m beaten....”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER TWO
DAWN
“And now... now that everything has turned out as I told you
it would, what do you mean to do?”
“I suppose... we must begin all over again.”
EIMAR O’DUFFY: “THE WASTED ISLAND.”
The dinner at the Plaza, described at length and extravagantly
illustrated in a dozen papers, was hardly a greater personal triumph
than the farewell scenes on board the _Lithuania_. Ambassadors honoured
and beloved had left in less magnificence. Scores of his friends came
on board to bid Eric good-bye; the management of the Grafton filled his
state-room with hot-house roses, and he was loaded with presents
ranging from a gold cigar-case to an unsinkable swimming-suit; German
submarines were being recalled, but his friends would not expose him to
the risk of a belated straggler or of a forgotten mine-field.
As the land receded and vanished, Eric turned away from the rail and
went below. He had been watched ever since he came on board; round,
wondering eyes followed the coming and going of his friends, interested
and envious eyes explored the parcels which mounted like a rampart on
the deck more quickly than his steward could carry them away. Eager
whispers rippled about him, becoming hushed at his approach. So Irving
and Melba had travelled—in regal state and more than regal loneliness.