his steward contrived supplementary cases for his spoils. In the
saloon, which he was the last to reach and the first to leave, his seat
was between Lady Woodstock, who seemed afraid to speak, and Lady John
Carstairs, who retired from sight at the first roll of the boat. The
passenger-list was made up almost wholly of soldiers and government
officials, for the most part unknown to Eric and too much occupied with
consultations and reports to force their company upon a man who was
conspicuously avoiding it. John Gaymer, whom he had met at long
intervals during three or four years and who had been seconded as an
instructor at one of the American aerodromes, made a facetious comment
on the Plaza dinner as an overture of friendship before asking him to
play poker; and David O’Rane, returning from a campaign of propaganda
in the Middle West, tried to persuade Eric to transfer himself to the
Chief Engineer’s table. For the rest, he was left in peace until the
third day when, on entering the smoke-room in search of matches, he was
caught by Carstairs and pressed to join him for a cocktail. At once and
with apparent carelessness, four other men attached themselves to the
table and conscientiously offered Eric their compliments on his work
and their thanks for the opportunity of meeting him. He acknowledged
the tribute with a practised show of gratification and submitted to
diffident questions on his method of composition and his theories of
art. When at last he excused himself and went out on deck, O’Rane
overtook him and suggested a stroll before dinner.
“I’ve hardly had a word with you since we came on board, Eric,” he
began. “You’ve not been seedy, have you?”
“No, but I’ve reached an age when I can’t move without running across
people I know. From one end of America to the other, in Japan, here...
On a ship I like to escape my fellow man and have—a rest... I don’t
mean _you_, of course, but the people who feel they must congratulate
me on a play that I wish I’d never written....”
“I’m glad you make an exception in my favour, though I tell you frankly
that I’m much too old a friend to be shaken off easily. It must be
seventeen years since we first met. D’you remember the Phoenix dinners
at Oxford? Jim Loring, Summertown, Draycott, Sinclair—_they_’re all
gone; George Oakleigh—married; you, Jack Waring and me—knocked out to a
certain extent; Knightrider and Deganway pursuing the noiseless tenour
of their way... You can crowd a great deal into seventeen years....”
“I’ve never forgotten the night when you cast our horoscopes for us,”
murmured Eric.
“I’ve sometimes tried to forget it... We were only about twenty, I gave
every man ten years’ run. It’s been too frightfully true. D’you
remember that even in those days I told you we should turn out one
genius? I told you to your face who it would be.”
Eric unlinked his arm on the plea of wanting to refill his pipe. What
with knocking out the ashes and sacrificing four matches to a head
wind, he gave himself time to become collected.
“One man was to achieve some kind of distinction,” he said with an
effort of memory. “And one was to make money... Touch wood and all that
sort of thing, but in eighteen months I made more than I thought I
could make in a life-time.”
“With fame thrown in,” added O’Rane. “That being so, I couldn’t
understand your speech at the Plaza.”
They walked the length of the deck before Eric answered.
“It went down very well,” he protested.
“Oh, yes! And no doubt you looked very nice. The decent women would
always fall in love with you because you look delicate and interesting;
and the fools because they think you’re spiritual. And I’ve no doubt
your button-hole and gestures and lumps in the throat were perfect;
you’re an old stage hand. I couldn’t see any of that, but I could hear.
You must be careful, old man, before you try to put it over people who
can’t see; we hear the very _devil_ of a lot... And you must admit it
was a rotten speech for you to make. Perhaps I know as much as most
people about your private affairs; it was the yelp of a whipped cur.”
“But—I don’t know what you’re driving at! They gave me a marvellous
reception, and I—I let myself go. I told ’em what it meant to me, the
years of agony and bloody sweat... God! I laid myself bare and talked
about art like a Chelsea poet. It had taken me half my life to get
there... And you say it was insincere!”
“As you’d stripped so far, you might have talked about the future a
bit,” suggested O’Rane. “It was that silence I heard most distinctly...
What are you going to do when you get to England?”
“Get out again as soon as possible.”
“Dear man, you can’t get away from yourself any more than a kitten can
catch its own tail. It’s time you pulled yourself together.”
Eric stifled a sigh before it could reach his companion’s too acute
hearing.
“I’m a bit tired... As you know so much, you may as well know that,
after that dinner, I knelt staring out into the night, thinking it all
over; and at the end I had to admit I was beaten,” he added quickly.
“That was what I rudely described as the “whipped cur” note in your
speech,” laughed O’Rane. “On my soul and honour, I should think a bit
better of you if you’d quietly cut your throat. As you _haven’t_...
Look here, Eric, I’ve had one or two facers in my time; and I think,
when the smash _has_ come, the only thing to do is to count the arms
and legs that are left and see what show you can make with _them_.
(When I was blinded, I _did_ wander out in the approved “Light That
Failed” spirit and try to take a bullet through the brain; but to a
certain extent one had lost one’s head, and I’ve never dared tell a
soul but George Oakleigh...) It’s no good, I’m sure, preserving an
amputated limb in spirits of wine. You forget you’ve lost a hand when
you forget you’ve ever had it to lose. Think of yourself as born
one-handed; in other words, think of yourself as a new personality; in
other words, don’t think of yourself at all. Can you do that?”
“I suppose it can be done if one makes a big enough effort.”
“Then you’ll succeed...”
“‘_A little onward, lend thy guiding hand_
_To these dark steps, a little further on..._’
Find me B Deck, there’s a good fellow. It always takes me about four
days to feel my way round a strange ship. You don’t want to talk about
this? I thought not... But don’t waste a week of good Atlantic,
skulking in a hot stateroom....”
On the following day Eric prospected cautiously among the rest of the
passengers. The natural selection common to life on every liner was
still in progress: the socially ambitious had struggled to the
captain’s table in the saloon; more experienced travellers were making
friends with the purser. The government officials, unconsciously jaunty
in their tweed caps and life-belts, separated into the corners of the
smoking-room and drew up voluminous reports, competing craftily for the
services of two overworked and seasick shorthand-writers; the returning
soldiers exercised themselves with deck-tennis in the morning and
scoured the ship for bridge-players in the afternoon. There were not
more than six women on board, and these left Eric alone when they had
secured his autograph. A distinction more subtile than that of mere age
sent the older men to the feet of Mrs. O’Rane, while the younger ranged
themselves round Ivy Maitland. Eric encountered her on the fifth day,
looking no more than sixteen in tennis shoes and white stockings,
woollen jersey and white Tam-o’-Shanter; she treated him to a friendly
“good-morning”, when they met, striding round the deck before
breakfast; but her first conversation in New York did not encourage her
to make further advances, and there were readier triumphs with Gaymer
and the other soldiers of his age.
The three days of deliberate isolation had drawn round Eric a cordon
which his fellow-travellers were at first reluctant to penetrate; but,
when the coast of Ireland came in sight, the general reserve broke down
for a moment: Lady John Carstairs hoped that he would come and see them
in London; Sir Matthew Woodstock confessed bluffly to admiration of his
plays; and on their last night on board Ivy Maitland, armed with her
autograph-book, stalked him to the boat-deck and reminded him of his
promise.
“I expect you thought me very forward in New York,” she began brightly.
“I did _so_ want to meet you... What are you going to write? Something
_nice_, won’t you?”
“How would ‘Children obey your parents’ do?” asked Eric.
“Oh, I’d rather have nothing than that... You see, you don’t know
father, and I _do_...” She laughed a little impatiently and painted a
clever and undutiful picture of their life in the Cromwell Road and her
earliest recollection of the overworked junior who returned at
half-past eight for a dinner which he persisted in ordering for eight,
and of a submissive mother who brewed him cocoa at five o’clock in the
morning and was too tired to entertain or be entertained at night. The
vacations, consecrated to golf at Brancaster, had enabled the two elder
sisters to escape into matrimony with a couple of promising chancery
barristers. (The “promise” was largely invented by Mr. Justice Maitland
by means of a dilemma which amused his humour and saved his pocket. “If
a young man’s worth his salt, he doesn’t want anything from me. If he’s
_not_ worth his salt, don’t marry him. Of course, I don’t expect you to
listen to anything _I_ say...”). The two brothers had drifted from
Cambridge into the army, leaving Ivy to bear the full brunt of her
father’s jurisdiction. “It was bad enough before, but I couldn’t go
back to it after this.”
“What will you do?,” Eric asked, as he began to write.
“I want to live my own life... work... money of my own,” she answered
vaguely. “I don’t want to ask them for _leave_ to go to a dance,
_leave_ to do this and that....”
Eric looked for a moment at the petulant little face and made no
comment. Ivy Maitland collected other people’s phrases with the
undiscriminating energy of a rag-picker; her brain was fermenting with
ill-digested theories; but, when she came to put them into practice,
ignorance or wilfulness set her doing all the things that she should
have instinctively avoided. Decorum habitually took a holiday on board
a big liner, but Ivy’s idea of emancipation consisted in sitting on the
boat-deck with the least desirable of the returning soldiers. On the
second day out, Lady Woodstock had been compelled to detach her from a
boisterous ring of cocktail-drinkers in the smoking-room.
“You’re very young, Miss Maitland,” he said at length.
“But I’ve been in all sorts of places. And girls nowadays _can_ take
care of themselves... Well, I mustn’t keep you. Every one wants to say
good-bye. I wish I were famous!”
As she ran away, Eric settled himself to the exchange of addresses and
invitations which always lent an insincere good-will to the last day of
a voyage. O’Rane he was careful to avoid, for, after the Plaza dinner
and in this new flattering farewell, he felt unable to live up to the
greatness which his admirers thrust upon him, however much he might
talk of the big effort that he intended to make. In his return to
England they saw triumph where he felt only despair. Every mile brought
him nearer to streets and houses, theatres and restaurants haunted by
the ghosts of his dead life; as the _Lithuania_ steamed majestically
into the Mersey, he felt that he was going into action....
As the great ship slowed to a standstill, a boat-load of assertive
officials hurried on board. Port authorities, health authorities,
emissaries of Scotland Yard... Eric was still idly wondering who they
were, when the chief steward thrust a sheaf of telegrams into his hand.
Welcome and good wishes, welcome and good wishes... This was a reduced
replica of New York! There were telegrams from the family, telegrams
from friends, telegrams from the theatre and from half-forgotten
societies. He crammed them uncomprehendingly into his pocket, as a
short, buoyant figure, rime-white in the mist, lined and mischievous as
a monkey, steered towards him and slapped a crushing hand of welcome on
to his shoulder.
“Manders!”
“Eric, boy! You bet you never expected to see _me_ here! The company
came up three days ago for a fortnight. Your old “Mother’s Son”. And a
very fair play, though you _did_ write it. I saw in all the papers that
you were coming home and, though they didn’t give the name of the ship,
I put my pants on the _Lithuania_. Good old packet! Crossed on her a
dozen times! Now look here! You needn’t wait for the tender; I’ve
chartered a motor-launch, and we’ll be ashore half-an-hour before the
rest. I hope you’re in no hurry to get back to town, because I’ve
ordered a bite of lunch for you at the Adelphi. One or two old
friends... I’m mightly glad to see you again, boy.”
He held out his hand a second time, and Eric took it with the
unwillingness of embarrassment. This triumphal progress was well enough
for America, but he could never live up to it in England. A semicircle
of fellow-passengers was watching him, wide-eyed and envious, counting
the telegrams which he thrust half-read into his pocket and speculating
on the identity of Manders, who could play Marc Antony or Louis Dubedat
on the stage and never contrived, in private life, to look anything but
a blend of pugilist, publican and book-maker.
“Is the launch here?”
“Right alongside, boy.”
Eric looked round and caught sight of Carstairs.
“I say, have you room for some friends of mine? Lord John Carstairs is
carrying a Foreign Office bag; if we can get him ashore before the
crowd... And Mr. and Mrs. O’Rane.”
It was late afternoon before Eric found himself locked into a reserved
compartment with a dinner-basket, a bottle of champagne and a box of
cigars. As the train steamed out of Liverpool, he drew his head in from
the window, wrapped a rug round his knees and went to sleep. There
seemed nothing else to do. He was still sleeping when he reached
Euston. A distracted mob burst from the train in search of taxis,
bending under suit-cases and wicker baskets. Eric saw a liveried
footman peering into carriage after carriage.
“Mr. Eric Lane? I have a car here for you, sir.” He walked five yards
across the platform and entered Manders’ car. “If you’ll tell me what
your luggage is, I’ll bring that along, sir,” said the man.
Still not more than half awake, Eric gave the address of his club and
sank shyly into a corner of the great limousine.
Next day he resumed possession of his flat and sniffed the vibrant air
of London. The first bewilderment of the armistice was yielding place
to the excitement of the peace conference and the coming general
election. On one pretext or another every second man in club, office
and street was escaping from England: an army of delegates was making
ready for Paris, a second army was assiduously securing advantageous
flats and rooms from which to direct the deliberations of the
plenipotentiaries. The restlessness seemed greater than even in the
first months of the war, and Eric was thankful for the fevered
commotion. As Nelson Millbank had predicted, there was as great a
revolution in turning soldiers into civilians as in turning civilians
into soldiers: much time must pass before they adapted themselves to
their new life. When the dust-clouds cleared away, Eric would have made
or found his niche and would no longer have to drive in semiregal state
or to slink through the streets like a fugitive from justice.
“_Welcome home expect you luncheon to-morrow Thespian one-thirty
Gaisford._”
The telegram was the first that Eric had opened on board; it was
duplicated to his flat, and, when he entered his club, the squat,
Bacchic figure of the doctor dominated the hall; he was prepared on
slight provocation to extemporize a party of twenty-four, but, after a
glance at Eric, he led him to a table for two and pondered long over
the bill of fare.
When they had given their order, each waited for the other to break
silence.
“Well, how are you?,” asked the doctor at length, industriously
polishing his glasses. “You’re looking better than I’ve seen you any
time since you entrusted your valuable young life to my care. For my
private satisfaction—and to please your mother—, I’d better run the
rule over you—”
“I didn’t think I should escape that,” laughed Eric.
“You’re not fit to look after yourself. You never were and you never
will be; and that, friend Eric, is apt to worry your friends. I’ll tell
you now, what I didn’t dare tell you before, that it was touch and go
whether your lungs would hold out. They’re too valuable a part of the
human body to be neglected... What’s Japan like?”
“The same as anywhere else,” Eric answered with a shrug.
The doctor devoted a connoisseur’s scrutiny to the wine-list before
speaking again.
“I suppose the English papers reached you?,” he asked at length.
“I heard in Tokio.”
“I was sorry, Eric, very sorry. But I’m glad it’s over.” He hurried on
remorselessly to cover the whistle of indrawn breath. “It was killing
you. Whether you’re wise to come back so soon—”
“Well, my father’s been very ill,” Eric interrupted.
“I was sorry to hear it. Are you going to stay in England?”
“Yes.”
Gaisford attacked his luncheon and ate for some moments without
speaking.
“Is that prudent?,” he asked at length.
“I don’t suppose she’s very keen to meet me.”
The doctor threw up his hands and shook his head ruefully.
“Ah, my friend! That’s where you’re wrong. And your trade should have
taught you better than that. A woman doesn’t throw aside a man she’s
fond of, a man who was fond of her, if she can possibly keep him; it
makes her feel warm and comfortable to have him at call. Mark my words:
she’ll try to get you back! If her conscience is clear, she’ll want to
prove it’s clear; if her conscience is _not_ quite clear, she’ll never
rest till she’s justified herself.”
Eric chewed his lips and looked away out of the window, afraid to trust
his own voice.
“Marriage closes all accounts between us,” he muttered. “I’m starting
afresh, I’m not going to think about the past, I’m going to _forget_...
I wonder why she married George,” he added inconsequently.
“One woman in a hundred marries the man she wants,” answered Gaisford;
“the other ninety-nine look for some one they can at least tolerate.”
The bachelor’s love of generalizing about marriage went swiftly to the
doctor’s head. “One man ripens the peach, and another always eats
it.... Well, George has embarked on the great adventure with his eyes
open: every one knows that he wanted to marry Amy Loring, only she was
a Catholic; the other woman he’s very _fond_ of, but she’s not the
great love of his life. He felt it was time to get married; it was a
passionless, restful, convenient marriage for both. Barbara’s last act
of independence, by the way, was formally to cut herself adrift from
her church....”
Eric felt that his friend was helping him to dismiss the subject with
an irrelevancy; but, for all his talk of forgetting, he only wanted to
fill in the blank pages of his tragedy. None knew the whole truth. Even
the actors were familiar only with their own lines and scenes. Of the
first act he himself only knew that Barbara had played with Jack Waring
until he lost his head and embraced her faith in the hope of marrying
her: she continued playing until a panic rush of superstition persuaded
her that she had imperilled Jack’s soul and must offer herself blindly
in reparation.... He did not know why Jack had cast her aside after
keeping them both stretched on a rack for more than a year. And Jack
did not know that his best friend prayed nightly for his death so that
Barbara might be free to marry him. And, with her wild haze of
superstition and conscience, devotion and vanity, passion and pose, no
one could guess what Barbara knew....
A knot of members turned aside from the pay-desk and came up with
congratulations and welcome. Eric was caught up and carried along with
them until it was time for him to return with the doctor and have
himself examined. That night he left London for Hampshire. The sight
and smell of Waterloo were a new and unexpected pain, for the six-ten
was a Winchester and Crawleigh train: Eric had travelled by it a dozen
times with Barbara and, though he knew her to be away from London, he
reconnoitred the filling carriages as though he feared that she would
spring out and attack him. Once inside an empty compartment, he hid
behind his paper, refusing to look up when the door opened and only
rousing when a hand gently patted his knee and Jack Waring’s voice
enquired with surprise:
“Well, Eric, old man, when did _you_ get back? And what sort of time
did you have? D’you know I’ve not seen you for nearly four and a half
years? When I came home after being a prisoner, I always missed you.
Then you went off to America... Tell me all about yourself, old son!”
The voice was unmistakably cordial, and from Waterloo to Winchester the
two men discussed themselves and each other. Jack Waring’s head-wound
had incapacitated him for work indoors; after a dozen failures he was
abandoning the bar and taking to horse-breeding in Worcestershire; two
friends, equally maimed by the war, were coming into partnership with
him.
“And there I propose to end my days,” he said. “Thirty-five’s a bit old
to be making a new start; but I’m alive, when I didn’t expect to be,
and that’s something.”
Eric nodded and looked out of the window at the familiar glimmering
lights of south-west London. In different ways but in equal measure
Barbara had spoiled both their lives; both must know it; and, now that
she had left them for ever, there was a dramatic fitness in their
rebuilding an old friendship out of their common experience and
disaster. This was the fourth act of their play; and, after the
catastrophe, the survivors could meet and prospect to see what
remained... In the gleaming mirror of the window, Eric studied the
reflection of his companion’s face; he was glad to hear that Jack was
going away to the other side of England; after all, the old friendship
could never be revived when one had prayed aloud for the death of the
other... He looked up, startled and conscience-stricken; he had been
mad, but it was Barbara who made him mad, and Jack’s friendship was
part of the price which she exacted.
“I’ve read all about you in the papers, of course,” said Jack, “but
I’ve not seen you in the flesh since the first months of the war. Do
you remember when you were ill and I walked over to talk to you? I’d
just got my commission.”
“I remember.” Eric mustered all his courage and plunged before it had
time to evaporate. “I’ve seen you once since—in the distance. You and
your father and mother and Agnes came to a first night of mine—”
“Were you there?,” Jack asked in surprise. “I came up on purpose to see
you.”
“Only for a moment. I’d been ill again and I was supposed to be in bed.
I saw the first act from a box, but I couldn’t sit it out. You were all
in the front row of the stalls—”
“Oh, I remember it well.”
Eric hurried on desperately:
“It was almost your first public appearance since you got back from
Germany. Every one was congratulating you. George Oakleigh... and
Barbara Neave.” He paused, but Jack’s face told him nothing. “They were
there, I remember. When I was in Japan, I saw that they’d married.”
“Yes.”
Nothing more was coming, and Eric was forced to admire Jack’s restraint.
“That was the last time I set foot in a theatre,” he ended carelessly.
“I suppose I shall have to begin again... I’ve been ill off and on for
some time, and it’s like making a new start with me... By the way, I
met Raney on the boat from New York. D’you remember when you and I came
down from Oxford for the last time? I always felt the night before was
like a vigil. The dawn of a new life, a new world...” His voice became
wistfully reflective; but Jack, as ever, prosaically declined to share
his reverie. “It’s easier to feel that at twenty-one than at
thirty-five...” Eric went on with a laugh. “But I suppose one must
try... When do you start for Worcestershire?”
“To-morrow. I’m only coming here to pick up clothes and say good-bye.
You know Agnes is married? And I hear your sister Sybil’s engaged... I
don’t suppose I shall see you again.”
“Not at present, I’m afraid.”