small-featured with observant grey eyes and a good deal of detached
humour. Since the incubation of his first unsuccessful play, he had
argued out every character and situation with her; when feminine
psychology was in dispute, her ruling was accepted without cavil. More
than once, as they splashed conversationally through the Lashmar woods,
he had felt that she gave even a self-sufficient bachelor something that
he lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry
celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room oppressed him, his thoughts
drifted to Agnes Waring and a doll's house somewhere on the Eaton
estate, with one table, two chairs and an avalanche of green silk
cushions in the drawing-room. . . . He was not in love with her; but,
when Sybil telephoned to find whether he was coming to the country for
the week-end, he had resolved to retouch his conception of Agnes. For
the first time in his life he could not only afford to marry; he could
regard marriage from the standpoint of an eligible bachelor. If he was
not in love with Agnes, he was in love with love. . . .
Distant voices wakened him from his reverie, and he found the long, low
white-and-gold drawing-room buzzing with congratulations. Benyon had
been to the "Divorce" three nights before; old Nares rubbed his hands,
coughed and described a proud moment, a _very_ proud moment, when he had
been taken behind at the Lyceum and presented to Sir Henry Irving. There
followed an ingenuous account of his make-up. . . . Eric smiled
elastically, stroking his chin and letting his gaze wander round the
white panelled walls, the gilt sofa and chairs and the gold and white
overmantel--the coming of Dionysus to Europe in a chariot drawn by
lions. He realized for the first time how much he hated overmantels.
Sybil was now talking to Agnes, but she withdrew discreetly at his
approach and gave him an opportunity, as they went in to dinner, for a
question about Jack.
"We've heard nothing since the August report that he was missing," said
Agnes. "I'm keeping my mind a blank. I couldn't build all sorts of
wonderful hopes on his being a prisoner and then, perhaps, have to go
through the whole thing again. . . . Mother's quite certain, of course;
but then mothers are like that, bless them. . . . I'll let you know, if
we hear any news, Eric."
"Thanks very much. By the way, can you spare me one of the van Laun
photographs of him?"
Agnes thought for a moment and then wrinkled her forehead.
"He was never taken by van Laun."
"But I've seen one."
"Where?"
"He gave one to Lady Barbara Neave."
Her forehead wrinkled in deeper lines of perplexity.
"I didn't know he even knew her. . . . He never mentioned her name; I
suppose he thought I should disapprove."
Eric was tempted to coax an opinion of Barbara; but they had known each
other for less than a week, and, if he went round collecting the
judgements of all who had ever heard of her, no one would believe that a
serene, professional spirit of enquiry prompted his curiosity. While
native caution kept him hesitating, the opportunity slipped away; Agnes
surrendered to the boisterous advances of Geoff, and he turned to find
Mrs. Nares tentatively conversational on his left.
For a quarter of an hour Eric listened with one ear to the parish
history of Lashmar. Unknown names married and begot families; unknown
names sickened and died or were unexpectedly revived when the copiously
described symptoms had rendered recovery an affront to the imagination;
a few unknown names joined the army; one man was a prisoner, another
wounded; and two more lastingly discredited Lashmar by saying that, when
the army wanted them, the army could come and take them. Eric was
informed that he would hardly know the dear old village now; he felt
that he could support the privation with fortitude and hoped its annals
might be closed with that felicitous generalization, but Mrs. Nares had
recollected her husband's gallant attempt to be accepted as a chaplain
and the Bishop's gracefully worded inability to spare him, with a
postscript in his own writing to commend such spirit in a man of
sixty-two and to hold him up as an example to his juniors.
Eric made mental notes of Mrs. Nares and memorized some of her more
engaging mannerisms. If he could work her up, he could find room for
her; but he must also find some one to play her with a breathless,
unpunctuated patter; Kitty Walters seemed to have gone to America for
good, but Dorothy Martlet could take the part. . . . The whole dinner,
the atmosphere of the place were a satire on life in a remote
country-house. He wondered what the party at Crawleigh Abbey was
like. . . .
An unforeseen question rebuked his inattention. Eric disposed of it
skilfully; but the thread of thought was snapped, and he looked round
the table to see what had been happening since his reverie began. Agnes
had been set at liberty by Geoff and was watching Eric as he watched the
others. Their eyes met, and both smiled.
"Conscription between your father and Benyon over Sybil's body," he
murmured, disentangling the conversations. "Needlework Guild between the
guv'nor and Mrs. Nares. Poor old guv'nor. . . . V.A.D. training between
mother and the vicar. '_Naval Occasions_' between your mother and Geoff.
D'you ever feel you'd like to stir all this up with a pole, Agnes? We're
too far from the coast for an air-raid. . . . And, if you had one, no
one would ever talk about anything else for the rest of his life; it
would be like the Famine in Ireland or the Wesley descent on Cornwall."
A maid, squeezing through the inadequate fairway behind the chairs,
bumped Eric's back and made him spill his wine. "This place gets on my
nerves!" he added irritably.
Out of the corner of her eye Agnes looked at his mobile, discontented
face and crumbled her bread in silence for a moment.
"Don't give up coming here altogether," she pleaded.
Eric sipped his wine thoughtfully and avoided her eyes. Here was an
opportunity, had he cared to take it, for opening up a greater intimacy
with Agnes; but his mind was unconcentrated and he did not know what he
wanted.
"I suppose I shall come down from time to time," he answered vaguely.
"I've been so looking forward to hearing about all you've been doing. We
don't make much history in Lashmar."
It was common ground between them that the Warings lacked money for her
to live as independently as all Warings felt that every Waring had a
right to live. Each generation of younger brothers had been confined
within an ever-narrowing circle; and, but for the war, Jack would now be
patiently going the North Eastern Circuit, the first Waring to apply his
mind to law; but for Jack and the money spent on him at Oxford, Agnes
would have gone to Newnham and prepared a career for herself.
"You're too good for this place, you're wasted," Eric broke out after a
moment's silent brooding.
"There's not much choice, is there?"
Eric brooded again.
"Are you happy?" he asked.
"Happier than you are, I think," she answered with a smile.
"Why on earth d'you say that?" he asked in surprise.
"You just seem changed to-night," Agnes replied. "Have you been working
too hard?"
Over his port--which would not stand comparison with any from the artful
little cellar in Ryder Street--Eric tried to settle in his mind how much
she had seen and how much she had imagined. There was assuredly this
much change in him, that to-night Agnes was not even waking him to
dispassionate interest; he had no attention to spare her. And yet it was
not that Barbara had captured his mind; she was nothing but an elf of
mischief, dancing in the sunshine backwards and forwards across his
path, pelting him with flowers, vanishing and reappearing. Restlessness
or discontent must have peeped from behind the suave mask. He had meant
to be more friendly, far more friendly; they had not met for nine
months;--and both were disappointed.
In the drawing-room Agnes kept her chair a few inches behind the circle
of the others, watching, listening and reflecting. Eric seemed to think
that he was still at one of the tiresome long parties where he was
expected to glitter and to be shewn off; he had talked very well at
times, but he felt that he had been making voluble conversation in a
nervous dread of silence between them. His new life was rather turning
him into a public entertainer; he was enigmatic and unapproachable.
3
As Eric, with caution born of experience, lit one of his own cigars and
made room for Geoff at his side, an idea came to him so seductive, so
simple and so compelling that he wondered why he had never thought of it
before. When Geoff asked: "Are you down here for long, or are you going
back on Monday?" Eric answered with unsought inspiration:
"I shall go back on Sunday night."
It had never occurred to him before that, by this facile course, he
could avoid an early and cold drive into Winchester, a crowded train, a
free fight for the last copy of _The Times_, a late arrival at the
department where he composed propaganda for neutral consumption. And he
had never felt so urgent a need to escape from the Mill-House.
"I haven't seen your jolly old play yet," said Geoff. "I suppose I can
count on you for a box? If you'll give us dinner first, I might collect
a few bright lads and give the thing a bit of a fillip. I should think
it must be rather a rag, being famous."
"I suppose that depends on your definition of fame--and of a rag," Eric
answered.
"Oh, being invited everywhere," said Geoff unhesitatingly. "Having your
photograph in all the papers. Girls waiting in a queue for your
autograph. A galaxy of beauty prostrating itself at your feet to get an
extra line."
"That sounds more like musical comedy," said Eric doubtfully. "I don't
fly as high as that."
Geoff was too young to have outgrown the appeal of the stage. He
regarded Eric with as much admiration as one brother accords another and
with undisguised envy.
"I _did_ enjoy your play," said Benyon, moving into a chair by his side.
"Agnes came up to dine with me, and I took her. . . ."
Eric bowed without listening to the end of the sentence. He was mildly
surprised to find Agnes being discussed by her Christian name and
wondered why he had not heard of Benyon before. Perhaps it was her fault
that they had established no spiritual contact at dinner; she had
conceivably lost interest in him, and he wondered whether he was
sufficiently interested to make sure. . . .
"The mater told me you'd another thing on the stocks," Geoff went on.
"It's being produced next month," answered Eric.
He looked impatiently round the cramped dining-room, listening for a
moment to an altercation between Waring and Nares on the Dardanelles
expedition. It was surely worth while to explore Agnes further and to
see what part in her life this young Benyon was playing. . . .
Fortified by the wise decision to return to London earlier than he had
first intended, Eric entered the drawing-room full of toleration and
good-humour. Bending over Mrs. Nares' sofa, he atoned for his
inattention during dinner with thirty seconds' belated sparkle and a
simple epigram which he had already tried with effect on Mrs. Shelley.
They were joined by Mrs. Waring, and, as he had hardly spoken to her all
the evening, he consented to talk about his forthcoming play--which he
enjoyed as little as a superstitious mother might enjoy describing her
unborn child--until in a subsequent regrouping she confided to Sybil
that she was very much attached to Eric; he was so unspoiled, so
charming. . . .
"Aren't you rather proud of him?" she asked.
"Yes. He's very clever and he's had a big success," Sybil conceded
critically. "But, if any one says 'Lane,' the whole world thinks of
Eric, while father, who's spent his life----"
She was interrupted by Mr. Nares, who stationed himself at her elbow,
coughing apologetically until she gave him an opportunity of asking her
to sing. As she went to the piano, Eric moved across the room to Agnes'
chair and suggested that they should go out on the terrace.
"It's stifling in here," he grumbled; and, after a quick sidelong
glance, Agnes followed him.
They strolled through one of the French windows to a long gravel path,
which ran flush with the inky, slow-moving mill-stream. Overhead the
trees stretched across the narrow ribbon of water, brushing the back of
the house and releasing brittle leaves of copper and dull gold to
undulate in the breeze before they settled on the surface and swept
gently over the creaking wheel. A crescent moon was reflected
unwaveringly in the black water, and the autumn breeze blew a scent of
decaying, damp vegetation from the dense woods all around them.
"Remember when we used to have races with paper boats, Agnes?" Eric
asked suddenly.
She nodded, wondering why he had reminded her.
"What years ago it seems!"
"Only about five. Though we were both old enough to know better."
"It seems longer," said Agnes, looking at him thoughtfully and wondering
whether he had only invited her out there as a demonstration against
Sybil for disparaging him to her mother.
"I don't _feel_ a day older."
"You're changed. We were all of us saying that before you came into the
drawing-room to-night. Your mother's rather worried about you, Eric."
He lighted a cigarette to shew the steadiness of hand and eyes.
"She needn't bother," he answered easily. "I'm carrying a good deal of
sail--but I'm better than I've ever been. Agnes, I don't usually talk
about what I'm only _thinking_ of doing, but with you it's
different. . . ."
He slipped her arm through his and walked up and down the gravel path
describing his conception of a novel as it had revealed itself to him a
week before when he was at an Albert Hall concert. His confidence
flattered her into disregarding the egotism which made him remember her
only when he wanted to talk about himself; she forgot the sensation that
he had outgrown her as much as he had outgrown the paper-boat races on
the mill-stream by their side. Once the night wind, blowing on to her
unprotected shoulders, sent a shiver through her; but it was Eric who
coughed, and she wondered whether he knew why Lady Lane always looked so
anxiously at his sunken cheeks and starved body. She wondered, too,
whether she would have cared for him so much if he had been robust and
tranquil as Geoff.
The music had ended long before he had done talking; tentative cries of
"Agnes!" passed unheeded, and she was only recalled to the present by
the appearance of Colonel Waring in overcoat and soft hat half-way
through the open window.
"Bed-time, Agnes," he called out, sniffing the night air. "If you've
been giving that girl of mine a chill, Eric----"
"You're not cold, are you?" Eric asked her.
"Not very," she answered with a tired and rather disappointed smile.
"Oh, but why didn't you tell me?" he protested in a convincing voice of
concern, as he led her back into the house and helped her into her
cloak. As a chorus of farewell rose and isolated them, he lowered his
voice. "You'll let me know when you have any news of Jack, won't you?"
"_If_," she answered wistfully.
"You mustn't lose heart. I expect he's all right, and there's been some
hitch in getting the news through. He's all right, Agnes."
"I hope so."
She shook hands and walked despondently into the night. Eric seemed to
have become artificial in the last few months--just when he might have
helped her most. He lengthened his face and lowered his voice
sympathetically, but he was growing into a social puppet and losing his
individuality. . . . It had not been a very amusing dinner.
"Did you enjoy yourself?" Colonel Waring asked her, as they settled into
the car.
"Very much, thanks," she answered quietly. "I'm rather tired, though."
Benyon told her that Eric's new play was to be produced within a month
and invited her to come with him. She answered uncertainly and lapsed
into silence.
As the car bumped over the springy turf of Lashmar Common, Eric stood
gazing at the stars and drinking in the thousand mingled scents and
sounds of the night. Somewhere hard by, a bonfire was pungently
smouldering; there was a sour smell where a flock of geese had been
feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt
lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone
before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the
mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a
shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the
trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of an owl.
Eric started--and wondered why he was standing there in the cold. Then
he remembered that he had stayed to be by himself and to think
something out. There was a change somewhere, and he was trying to locate
it. He had come to retouch his memory of Agnes, and he had seen her
alone and with others; they had talked the conventional jargon of the
dinner-table, their fingers had brushed emotion as they discussed her
missing brother, and for half an hour they had marched up and down the
terrace arm-in-arm, discussing and arguing on an unwritten book,
recapturing an old intimacy which he had shared with no one else. In the
light of the drawing-room Agnes' grey eyes were black and mysterious;
her lips were parted, and her cheeks warmly flushed; he had never seen
her look prettier, he had never been more attracted by her.
The change must be in himself; he demanded of her something more
volcanic and inspiring than she could give, something to feed his own
languid vitality instead of placidly laying him to rest. . . .
Shutting the front door, he went back to the drawing-room, where the
family was assembled to compare notes and pool information.
"The vicar's starting a class for making bandages. . . ."
"The Warings haven't heard anything of Jack yet. . . ."
"That Benyon must be one of the Herefordshire lot, I fancy. An old
private bank. . . ."
Eric hesitated on the threshold, looking from one to another. Sybil was
undisguisedly disappointed; she had so desperately set her heart on his
marrying her beloved Agnes, and the night's meeting had brought them no
nearer. Lady Lane, still anxious, beckoned him into the room and took
his face between her hands, turning it to the light and kissing his eyes
again, as on his arrival.
"You look tired, Eric. You'd better go to bed, or you'll never be down
to breakfast."
"I wasn't thinking seriously of being down to breakfast in any case," he
answered with a yawn.
"Oh, don't be late. It makes so much extra work for the maids, if they
have to serve several breakfasts and can't get in to do your room."
He smothered an impatient retort and strolled to a table by the fire
where Sybil and her father were sipping long tumblers of hot milk, while
Geoff gulped home-made lemonade with avid enjoyment.
"Any whiskey?" he asked, raking the tray with critical eye. He did not
greatly want it for himself or at that moment, but every night the same
plea had to be preferred, there was the same hesitation and hint of
inward struggle, the same unspoken protest, as though the shocked
stalwarts of temperance were saying: "You can't want whiskey after
claret _and_ port." He was being made to drink for conscience sake. And
it was intolerable that Waring, Benyon and Nares should have been sent
into the night without a stirrup-cup.
"It's in the dining-room," said Sybil, walking reproachfully to the
door.
"Here! All right! I'll ring," Eric cried.
"The servants are all in bed," she answered. "Or, if they're not, they
ought to be."
He thanked her suitably on her return, but one discordant, trifling
incident coalesced with another, the tepid bath with the whiskey
demonstration, to give him a sense of angular discomfort. In a few hours
he seemed to spend a month's nervous energy in battling for things that
were not worth winning. The whole week-end would be a failure. . . .
The milk tumblers were returned to their tray; Sir Francis filled his
corn-cob for the last time; Geoff ferreted curiously among a pile of
library novels in one corner, and Lady Lane walked softly round the
room, testing the fastenings of the windows, pushing a top-heavy log
into security and turning off unnecessary lights. The hall clock,
striking eleven, seemed to rouse and inspire them with a common impulse.
"Don't burn the mid-night oil too long," said Lady Lane, brushing Eric's
forehead with her lips.
"I simply couldn't sleep, if I went to bed now," he told her.
"Good-night, mother. Good-night, everybody."
As the house grew silent he brought in his despatch-box from the hall
and began to read through the skeleton of a novel which he had promised
himself to write as soon as "The Bomb-Shell" was safely launched. In the
second week of the war he had spent an afternoon in a recruiting office
with men of all ages and physiques, pressing forward for enrolment.
Three over-worked doctors pounded and sounded them, prodding them on to
a weighing-machine, measuring their height and chest expansion, testing
their eyes. Eric had tried to cheat by memorizing the order of the
descending black capitals while he lay on a sofa breathing freely or
holding his breath as he was ordered; but the chart was changed before
his turn came. When he had dressed, the examining doctor referred him to
a row of three weary clerks at a baize-covered table, who informed him
that he was rejected. The folio form contained a comment--cardiac
something; he could not read the second word. There was no appeal, and,
after a moment's indecision, he recognized that there was nothing to do
but to go home.
Outside the office his neighbour in the queue overtook and hailed him
with the words: "What luck?"
"They've spun me," Eric answered. "There was just a chance that I might
slip through in the crowd. . . . What did they say to you?"
"I was spun, too," his companion answered. Then he laughed uneasily and
his face was drawn and dazed in the August sunshine. "You wouldn't think
you could have much the matter with you and not know anything about it.
I always thought I was a first-class life; I haven't had a day's illness
in ten years----"
"What did they say?" Eric asked, as the other hesitated in bewilderment.
"They give me anything between three and six months," he answered,
moistening two grey lips. "One of the fellows . . . took me on one side,
you know . . . asked me a few questions . . ." He broke off and waved to
a taxi which was rolling lazily down Whitehall. "I must go and see my
own man. Good-bye."
"Good-bye! Good luck!" Eric cried.
As he walked home he wondered how much composure he would shew if a
sentence of death were slapped at him like an overdue bill. He wondered,
too, what he would do with those testing, supreme three months, if they
were all that he was allowed. Stoicism, hedonism, the faith of his
childhood, new-fangled mysticisms would join hands and hold revel round
his soul for those twelve weeks, those eighty-four days, those two
thousand and sixteen hours. . . . The speculation fascinated him until
he almost fancied that the sentence had been passed on him. Gradually he
wove a drama round it; line by line it took shape for a book that was to
be subtiler, finer and more sincere than anything that he had ever
written. If only he could find time for six months' uninterrupted work!
London had to be not only captured but held; more than ever before, his
work was the one thing that mattered. . . .
The clock in the library struck twelve, and he tossed the manuscript
skeleton back into his despatch-box. His mind was vaguely disturbed with
a sense of duty undone, until he remembered promising to tell Barbara if
he heard any news of Jack Waring. For a moment he thought of writing to
her; but in fact there was no news, he would have only himself to blame
if he re-established communications with her in obedience to a passing
whim. She was at Crawleigh, resting and building up her strength; he
would be back in full harness within thirty-six hours, and there would
be no room for her madcap incursions into his life.
4
The house was very silent when Eric at length mustered resolution to go
to bed. The fragrance of many wood fires warmed the passages and
staircase with a drowsy scent; once a distant window rattled tremulously
in the wind, the hall clock gathered itself together and hesitated
before striking; all else was deep-brooding peace.