luggage. He never wanted to see Jack again. Sometime he must walk over
to Red Roofs and pay his respects to the family, but he would not go
until Jack was safely out of the way. If possible, he would avoid the
house altogether, for he never wanted to see Agnes since her marriage.
Five years earlier he had fancied that he would like to make her his
wife; in those days they would have been very happy together; but
Barbara had spoiled his palate for other women....
A car, driven by his sister, was awaiting him, and on the familiar road
out of the town, through the dripping Lashmar Woods and across the
water-logged common to the Mill-House, he listened to tidings of the
family. His father was making an unexpectedly good recovery; his
brother Geoffrey was home on leave from the North Sea; Basil was on his
way from Salonica; Lady Lane, though worried and anxious, was very well.
“And what about you, Sybil?” Eric asked conscientiously. The feeling
which he had suspected in Tokio, when he received the news of her
engagement, returned to perplex and oppress him; he was not interested
in his family. “Tell me about this man you’re marrying,” he added
quickly.
“I’m very well, thanks. And very glad to see you again, Ricky.”
Her fingers slid down from the wheel and squeezed his hand. Outward
affection from one so undemonstrative as Sybil was rare. Perhaps it was
not wholly her pleasure at having him back; he wondered how much they
had heard and guessed....
The doors were thrown open at the first sound of the horn, and Lady
Lane stood silhouetted against the lemon light of the hall with her
husband beside her, leaning on her shoulder. Eric hailed them and
sprang out of the car, sniffing the well-remembered scent of pine-logs
and submitting to a long inspection before he was allowed to take off
his coat. The house, low, warm and homely, was unchanged, his mother
was unchanged, the servants were unchanged; Geoffrey came out of the
library with his invariable, half-cleaned gun under his arm and the
inseparable retriever at his side; only Sir Francis seemed older and
more gaunt, speaking a little indistinctly and glad of an arm when he
walked.
After the triumphal send-off in New York, the splendid isolation of the
voyage and his reception in Liverpool, Eric subsided gratefully into
the tranquillity of Lashmar Mill-House. Nobody here expected him to
play a part, and he could forget the war and put himself back seven
years to the time when he was an overworked journalist coming home to
sleep eighteen hours in country air, or fourteen years to the time when
he was an undergraduate returning across country from Oxford, or
twenty-five years to the time when he was a schoolboy, first allowed to
bring himself unaccompanied from Broadstairs... He had promised
Gaisford, he had in effect promised O’Rane to forget all that had
happened since his first meeting with Barbara....
“We’ll dine at once. Don’t wait to unpack or dress,” called out Lady
Lane as he ran upstairs to his threadbare, bleak bedroom.
Throughout dinner and the long evening which followed he was kept
talking of America and Japan. Sybil sat with her hands clasped round
her ankles, eagerly drinking in every word; Geoffrey interjected lazy
questions about New York and San Francisco, Hawaii and Formosa; Sir
Francis sat lost in thought, hardly listening to what was said but
proudly conscious that Eric had won honour on three continents.
“Bed time! You must tell us the rest to-morrow,” said Lady Lane, as the
clock struck eleven.
The three children were ready to protest, but she was looking at her
husband, whose eyes had closed. Sybil poked the smouldering logs into
safety; Geoffrey slipped an arm through his father’s with a careless,
“Going up, sir?” Eric was left alone with his mother. He knocked out
his pipe and turned to her, with his eyes averted.
“Well, you must be worn out with all your travelling,” she said, after
a moment’s silence.
“I’m not very tired... The guv’nor’s better than I expected, mother.”
“Yes, the first days were the worst. I _had_ to cable to you, Eric. If
anything had happened... I couldn’t take the risk.”
“But I’m very glad you did.”
“I didn’t _want_ to bring you home.”
Eric found a particle of paper on the carpet. He picked it up and
carried it slowly to the fire.
“You knew, then?”
“I guessed, darling.”
“You guessed I never meant to come back.”
“Hush, Eric... I guessed that you probably _felt_ like that. But I
hoped that with time—”
“It gets worse every day! I’m waiting, listening for something to go
snap in my brain!”
In body or nerves something “went snap,” and he plunged forward, nearly
throwing his mother off her balance. She slipped her arm round his
waist and walked slowly up and down the room with him. At the door she
paused and noiselessly turned the key. He was shaking with dry sobs
which seemed to tear him in pieces, and she pulled his head on to her
shoulder, running her fingers through his hair and once kissing his
neck. Thirty years before she had lifted him out of bed night after
night, when he was crying with pain, and walked up and down the nursery
with him until he dropped in her arms or fell asleep standing, with his
head on her breast.
“You’ve grown so tall,” she whispered.
“Since...? I’m sorry, mother! It’s been such hell. I _couldn’t_ tell
you before. That night, when you all came up and dined with me and said
good-bye... I meant to clear out for good and all. When we had a
submarine alarm, I prayed that we should be torpedoed and sunk. And you
knew all the time?”
“I guessed a little bit. Mothers _do_, you know, darling child....”
“It wasn’t her fault, mother,” said Eric with unsteady emphasis.
“You’d always say that. But it’s over, Eric; have you thought what
you’re going to do now?”
“I’m afraid I’m rather damaged goods,” he sighed.
“Too bad to be mended?” She led him to a sofa and sat down with his
head on her shoulder and her arms round him. “You’re dreadfully thin,
Eric... And you’ve been smoking too much. D’you see? Your fingers are
all yellow... Darling boy, I’m afraid you have to make another effort,
a big effort. Do you remember the doctors gave you up three times
before you were seven? And d’you remember at Broadstairs, when you
lived for eight months on the verandah? I’m afraid we’ve given you all
the brains of the family and none of the constitution. But you’re not
going to give in now. Victory, Eric! This will be the biggest of all...
In time—”
He broke away from her arms and buried his face in his hands:
“I’ve had two years!”
“You’ll forget everything, if you can forget yourself. If you could
lose yourself altogether in work or in looking after some one—”
There was a single sob, and he had to fight for breath:
“I used to walk up and down all night in front of her house, when she
was ill.”
“But that’s over. In time....”
She rose and stirred the fire to a blaze.
“In time...” Eric murmured. He did not want to look after any one.
Barbara had destroyed his faith in women.
“It won’t be our first big fight, Eric. In a different way I’ve been
fighting all my life. Father. And you. And the babies. And Sybil. I
thought everything had come out right, before the war; if you’d been a
little bit stronger, Eric, it would have been perfect. When the war
came, it was a bigger fight than I’d ever had. You were ill... and I
knew you weren’t happy. And anything might have happened to Geoff and
Basil. And then, of course, your father’s illness....”
Eric slid on to the floor, resting his head against her knee and gently
turning her rings from side to side.
“You don’t get much rest, mother.”
“I’m happier when I have one of you to look after.”
“I feel I’ve been such a brute to you all.”
“Perhaps I understood... Eric, if you want to go away again, I shan’t
stop you.”
“No, I’m going back to the old life. I must start work again... and try
to feel it’s worth doing. I _meant_ to funk it all, but now I’m
determined to win... We won’t talk about this again, mother. I don’t
want you to think hardly of her, and you must never let any one attack
her... A new life from to-day,” he ended jerkily. “Dawn....”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER THREE
THE WILDERNESS OF THIS WORLD
“Eastward was the wise man’s course.... Mr. Polly saw himself going
along it with all the self-applause a wise man feels. But somehow it
wouldn’t come like that... the figure went slinking... and would not go
otherwise than slinking. He turned his eyes westward as if for an
explanation, and if the figure was no longer ignoble, the prospect was
appalling.
“‘One kick in the stummick would settle a chap like me,’ said Mr. Polly.
“‘Oh, God!’ cried Mr. Polly, and lifted his eyes to heaven, and said
for the last time in that struggle, ‘It isn’t my affair!’
“And so saying, he turned his face towards the Potwell Inn.
“He went back, neither halting nor hastening in his pace after this
last decision, but with a mind feverishly busy.
“‘If I get killed I get killed, and if he gets killed, I get hung.
Don’t seem just somehow...’”
H. G. WELLS: “THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY.”
“We should be so pleased if you could dine with us on Friday,” said
Lady John Carstairs on the threshold of the O’Ranes’ house. “I never
had an opportunity of thanking you for your kindness in getting us off
the boat so early. It will be only a small party, but you’ll meet one
or two friends from America. I wanted to ask you before, but we’re only
now beginning to get our house straight.”
Eric thought over the invitation in the moment allowed him for
consulting his engagement-book. He had intended to begin work on a new
play, but his friends and the strange monster of an adoring public that
he had conjured into existence refused to leave him in peace. For a
week after his return to England the illustrated papers were publishing
photographs of him; four reporters called in two days to learn his
plans for the future and his impressions of America; by letter and
telegram he was begged to write and speak on the fruits of his tour;
and, when he had deflected the applicants to the office of his agent,
there remained private appeals less easy to shelve or refuse. The
dramatic circle of the Thespian Club organized a dinner in his honour;
Dr. Gaisford bade him to “a strictly bachelor party” of his friends and
admirers; he was asked to take the chair for the Actors’ Pension Fund;
and the Penmen’s Club invited him to be the guest of honour at their
weekly luncheon.
Mingled with the official invitations, the unofficial rained down upon
him. It was a repetition of the personal triumph which he had enjoyed
when his first play was produced. Lady Maitland, Mrs. Shelley, Lady
Poynter, Mrs. Manisty and a dozen more urged him to lunch or dine with
them; war and peace made no difference to them, a man might travel to
the end of the world and back to find them still chewing the cud of
their sparse culture. If his position in London three years before had
been incredible even to him, he was forced to believe now that his
absence abroad had mysteriously consolidated it: then the critics had
bracketed him with Pinero and Barrie for the excellence of his
stagecraft and with Shaw for the wit and virility of his dialogue, in
him they saw and blessed the promise of the future; now, though he had
written nothing in the interval, they chose to regard the promise as
fulfilled. “_Among the younger playwrights_,” wrote the grudging editor
of “Green-room and Studio,” “_it is unsafe to predict who will step
into the shoes of the men we have named. Always excepting Mr. Eric
Lane, whose niche is assured to him...”_ The public seemed to take its
time from the press; the enthusiasm of those who knew him reacted on
those who had yet to meet him; and for a month he was whirled from
house to house in a sandstorm of adulation.
When he could see and breathe again, Eric discovered gaps in the
well-remembered catalogue of names: Lady Crawleigh and Lady Knightrider
at least knew too much or suspected too much or had enough
consideration not to ask him to their houses; but Lady John Carstairs’
invitation was a test-case. If he accepted, Eric was sure to meet other
of Lady Barbara’s relations there; but, even as he wavered, he knew
that he dared not surrender to shyness.
“I should love to come,” he answered, as they went forward to shake
hands with their hostess.
Mrs. O’Rane was signalizing her return from America by assembling all
of her many friends who had resisted the lure of the peace conference
or the south of France. During the war Eric had attended sufficient of
her parties to recoil from their noise and studied hilarity, but he was
by now so much sated with the pompous entertaining of such
intellectuals as Lady Poynter that he welcomed the informality of a
Bohemian frolic. Here at least he would be screened by the shadow of
some later and more modish celebrity. As he came into the long, crowded
library, a space was being cleared in the middle; while their leader
explored the quality of the floor, a group of dancers with only their
heads and ballet slippers protruding from a swathing mass of cloaks and
shawls stood whispering in one corner. A tentative chord was struck,
the wrappings slid to the ground, and the dancers pattered forward on
tip-toe with their arms arched above their heads.
Eric was trying to see who was present when Amy Loring came up with a
radiant smile of welcome.
“I’m _very_ glad to see you again!,” she whispered. “Sonia told me
you’d crossed by the same boat, and I came here on purpose to meet you.
I do hope you’re quite strong again now.”
“I’ve as clean a bill of health as our friend Gaisford is ever likely
to give me,” Eric laughed. For a moment he had felt his muscles
tightening in embarrassment and could only think of a dinner at Lady
Crawleigh’s house when Amy had given him the same glowing smile of
encouragement; she had bathed in his happiness at being in love with
her cousin and had exhorted him to go on and prosper in disregard of
any obstacles that Barbara’s father might impose. Eric wondered whether
she remembered that night as vividly as he did. Gaisford’s name touched
another note in his brain, and he remembered the doctor’s telling him
that George Oakleigh had once been in love with her; it was an old,
familiar tale, and, until a few months before, the gossips had
predicted that neither of them would ever marry. In the act of
wondering whether she felt any resentment towards George or Barbara,
Eric realized that she was too big of heart to grudge happiness to any
one. “I’m most awfully glad to see you again!,” he added, unconsciously
pressing her hand.
As they turned to watch the dancing, Eric recalled that he had never
before met Amy in the O’Ranes’ house. After her brother’s jilting at
Sonia’s hands, the two families had found it more comfortable not to
meet; they were apparently now reconciled, and any one could choose
between thinking that they had drifted together in the irresistible
crosscurrents of London and imagining that the more generous had made
overtures of friendship. Behind the warmth of her greeting Eric had
fancied the diffidence of a suppliant, as though Amy were offering him
amends on behalf of all her kin; he realized that he could, if he
liked, live in retirement, but that, if he came back to the old life,
he must try to shew as much graciousness and as little rancour as Amy
displayed towards those who fell below her own exalted standard of
chivalry.
“You don’t see a chair anywhere..?,” he heard her murmuring.
“Why shouldn’t we stake out a claim at the supper-table?,” he asked. “I
was wondering if you were dining with the Carstairs next week... Oh,
well, don’t you think you might get Lady John to invite you? It’s so
very long since I’ve seen you; and it’s impossible to talk here...
London hasn’t changed much in the last two years.”
“Or the last five. I wonder if we’re going _straight_ back to 1914...
I’ve not been to a party of this kind since the war. It’s not _very_
amusing....”
The scenes from the ballet were followed by a pianoforte solo; Harry
Manders poured forth a stream of stories; Deganway gave imitations; and
Pentyre accompanied himself on a banjo, until a restless group headed
by Gaymer suggested clearing away the furniture for a dance. Eric, too,
was finding but little amusement in Mrs. O’Rane’s strenuous programme
and would have preferred to talk in peace to Amy Loring or go home to
bed. This, he decided, would be the last party of its kind which he
could spare time to attend; for a moment he had wandered aimlessly in
the wilderness of London, waiting to light upon anything that would
occupy his thoughts. Nothing had come to him, and he recognized that he
must find his refuge in work.
“I’m too old for this sort of thing,” he murmured to Amy.
“I can’t remember ever being young enough,” she answered with a smile.
The heat and noise were by now almost unbearable; high spirits were
rising by imperceptible shrill stages to rowdiness; and, as Gaymer’s
deputation pressed insistently for its dance, the older members of the
party began to look at their watches.
“Anything you like, if you’ll only wait until every one’s had something
to eat—,” cried Mrs. O’Rane, leaving the supper-table to pacify Gaymer.
“Oh, they’ll go on all night, Sonia! We—want—a—dance. Come on, Gerry,
all together! Pentyre! One, two, three! We—want—a—dance—We—want—a—dance.”
The three men ranged themselves against a wall and shouted through
their open fists like trumpeting heralds.
At the second repetition, those nearest to them joined in the measured,
relentless chorus, drowning the efforts of a girl at the piano and
reducing Mrs. O’Rane to helpless gesticulation.
“Wait till the end of this!,” she begged in an interval of silence.
“We—want—a—dance!”
“But it’s so rude!”
Gaymer laughed and whispered to his companions.
“Do—not—shoot—the—pi-an-ist.—She—is—do-ing—her—best,” rose the new
chorus; then, with swelling menace, “WE—WANT—A—DANCE.”
It was impossible to sing, play or argue against the concerted uproar,
and after a moment’s indecision Mrs. O’Rane gave orders for the rugs
and furniture to be moved. Her husband apologized to the interrupted
musician, and Eric was leading Amy Loring away when Gaymer petitioned
for the first dance.
“Lady Amy’s promised it to me,” Eric improvised.
“The feller’s cut me out,” commented Gaymer with humorous solemnity.
“The next one, then?”
“Didn’t you ask me to find your car after that?,” Eric enquired.
“’Better go somewhere where I _am_ wanted,” muttered Gaymer. “No
objection to my _asking_, was there? ’Hate to give offence, you know.
Nod as good as a wink, you know. Pardon granted as soon as asked?”
As they drove back to Loring House, Amy thanked Eric for his
intervention.
“I’m afraid Johnny’s rather deteriorated since the war,” she mused. “He
was always rather wild, but he never used to be rowdy. There was quite
an unpleasantness at Kathleen Knightrider’s last week; I believe she
had to ask him to go... If he’d only _drink_ less....”
When Eric arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate the following week, he found
that Lady John had conscientiously assembled a novelist and war-poet to
keep him in countenance; the “friends from America” were represented by
Sir Matthew and Lady Woodstock, an _attaché_ from the embassy, David
O’Rane, his wife and Sir Matthew’s former secretary. After that she
seemed to have surrendered to her new family by inviting the Duchess of
Ross, Amy Loring and Phyllis Knightrider; and, when Eric entered the
drawing-room, she cut short her welcome to tell the butler that Captain
Gaymer had asked whether he might dine and to order another cover to be
laid. The dinner promised to be peaceful and proved so dull that Eric
had to invent an excuse for leaving early: he had now sketched the
ground-plan of a new play and, though he could as yet feel no
enthusiasm for it, he conscientiously tried to recover his old habit of
regular work.
“If you’ll wait till half-past ten, we’ll drop you,” volunteered
Gaymer. “Ivy and I are going to a dance of sorts, and I’ve chartered a
taxi for the night.”
Eric remembered that it was raining, when he arrived, and decided that
his vague distaste for Gaymer’s society was weaker than his dislike of
wet pavements.
“It’s very good of you,” he answered. “A taxi for the night sounds
luxurious.”
“Necessary,” answered Gaymer. “Can’t be bothered to fight for the
beastly things or walk home at three in the morning. I can do without
everything except personal comforts. This fellow’s been ticking up
tuppences ever since Armistice Day; I suppose he’ll have to be paid
some time... ’Wonder if Amy’d like a lift.”
As he crossed the room, Eric sat down in the empty chair by Ivy
Maitland’s side. It was ungracious to accept a favour from a man and
then, in the next breath, to disparage him; but, after Gaymer’s
unmannerly conduct at Mrs. O’Rane’s party, any one might feel a little
sorry to see Ivy becoming his friend. Before the war he had been a
leader in the disorderly little group of roystering practical jokers
headed by Jack Summertown and Pentyre; and, though the Air Force had
kept him employed for three or four years, he seemed now to be casting
about for fresh forms of dissipation and rather aimless mischief. While
Ivy was too young and, at heart, too timid to amuse him for long, her
behaviour on the boat had been feather-brained; it was, of course,
their business, but Eric would have preferred to see her with some one
who checked her youthful craving for independence instead of exciting
it.
“Where are you dancing?” he asked her.
“Ssh! _Please!_,” she whispered. “I wish Johnnie hadn’t shouted it out
like that! Mother’d have a fit, if she knew I was going to a dance
alone.”
Eric wondered for a moment whether she was yielding to the youthful
temptation of trying to shock him.
“Your parents seem still to be a great trial to you,” he observed.
“I’ve made _some_ impression on them. Johnnie’s got me a job at the Air
Ministry, and they’ve allowed me to take it. The real fight’s coming
when I tell them I’ve taken rooms of my own.”
“Are you going to live alone?”
“I think so. The girl who was coming with me has cried off... Now, it’s
no use finding fault with me, because I’ve absolutely made up my mind.
I _must_ lead my own life!”
“I think it’s an awful mistake,” said Eric with a shrug. “You’re much
too young, much too good-looking...” After saying good-bye at
Liverpool, he had forgotten her very existence; but in a short and
flimsy blue dance-frock, with blue stockings, shoes and head-band she
was younger and more provocative than he remembered either at their
first meeting in New York or on board the _Lithuania_. “Girls of
nineteen do _not_ leave home and set up housekeeping on their own,” he
added.
“But why shouldn’t they? I know several who do.”
It was waste of breath to tell any one so superficially self-confident
that a girl of nineteen might need protection from risks older and more
insidious than she would deign to admit. His eyes wandered for a moment
to the corner where John Gaymer was talking to Amy Loring; it was hard
for one man to say what attraction any other man exerted over women,
but Gaymer was undeniably popular; without being handsome, he was more
than presentable in appearance, with an immaculate shell; the war had
proved his strength and reckless courage, and he comported himself
towards women with a devil-may-care assurance that occasionally
degenerated into a brutality which they did not seem to resent. It was
his business if he embarrassed himself with Ivy Maitland’s adoration
and hers if she chose to fall in love with him... Eric tried to recall
what he had seen of their manner to each other: Gaymer had apparently
forced himself upon the party when he heard that Ivy was dining, but
this was perhaps no more than a convenient means of meeting his partner
before the dance; he had shewn her only the boisterous attention that
he held in readiness for all women who would accept it; and, if they
were in love, neither would welcome a third person in the taxi....
Eric’s attention was recalled to Ivy when he heard her proclaiming
rather petulantly:
“_Somebody_ must make a start.”
“You’ve not yet convinced me that you’ve any great hardships to put up
with at home,” he answered, with difficulty suppressing a yawn.