fancied sound of tranquil breathing, as he paused outside each door in
the long, low passage. He at least was awake; his highly-strung new
restlessness would not accord with the placidity of these contented
people. Twenty-five years ago, his mother had fetched him from
Broadstairs for his first Christmas holidays; and he had been
wonderfully glad to see her and to be home again. So it had been every
holiday; he started with an afternoon's preliminary exploration,
flinging open doors, sniffing the familiar scent of leather bindings,
lavender and pine-logs, critically watchful for change. Now the change
had come in himself; Agnes had commented on it, his mother and Sybil had
noticed it. . . .
His bedroom was as he had known it from childhood; a hard brass bed,
white painted chest-of-drawers and wash-hand-stand, threadbare green
carpet, flowered and festooned pink-and-white wall-paper. (It _must_
have been renewed in twenty-five years, but the pattern was the same.)
There was an oak-framed "Light of the World" over the bed, supplemented
on the other walls with progressive personal records--eleven podgy,
flannelled little boys in quartered chocolate-and-gold caps, guarded and
patronized by a flannelled and whiskered master; four lean-faced, stern
young school prefects in gowns and white ties; two hundred shivering and
draggled young men and girls, pressing together for warmth in the five
o'clock chill of a June morning outside the Town Hall of Oxford. There
were two shelves of calf-bound, marbled prize books between the windows,
a pair of limp, battered racquets over the mantel-piece and a fumed-oak
shield with the university and college arms contiguously inclined like
the hearts of two lovers.
Eric shed his coat and waist-coat on the bed, lighted a pipe and prowled
ruminatively round the room. Somewhere in the shivering ball-group Jack
Waring was to be found, marked out by the blue dress-coat of the
Bullingdon. Philpot of B.N.C., Trevor of the House, Loring of the House,
Crabtree of Magdalen, Flint of Exeter--Eric turned from one blue-coated
sign-post to another until he identified Waring with a crumpled shirt
front and disordered hair, cross-legged in the front row. It was a
smiling, vacuous, uncharacteristic photograph, and he abandoned it for a
bulky album stamped with his initials.
He retreated to the bed and sprawled over a group of the "Mystics." This
was a detached and scornful club, exasperating to outsiders, tiresome to
its members; Waring and he had joined it at the same time and taken
possession of it; their vague home intimacy had ripened into an
interested friendship as they strolled back to college from the weekly
meetings, once more refighting the frigidly abstract battles in which
they had lately engaged from the depths of arm-chairs with their feet on
the table and piled dessert-plates in their laps. Without effort or
desire Waring had set a fashion and founded a school of icy
fastidiousness. Within the limits of college discipline, which he
scrupulously observed, Waring dissociated himself from the life and
conventions of the college, the abbreviations and colloquialisms of
Oxford speech, the slovenly mode of dress and juvenility of mind. His
serenity floated as smoothly over the collective ideas and standards of
his fellows as over intercollegiate jealousies; and, as he left the
college distantly alone, the college sought him out, elected him to
clubs which he seldom attended and to banquets which he overlaid with
baffling and frigid aloofness.
When Waring went to the bar, he shared chambers with Eric for four years
in Pump Court; and, though they met at most for an hour each day, there
resulted an intimacy which neither could replace when Waring moved to
the greater comfort of a bedroom at the County Club. For two or three
years before the war they hardly met; Eric, disappointed and sore from
want of recognition, was shutting himself away from his former friends,
while Waring was gathering together a practice and exploring with
discrimination the social diversions of London. The war hardly increased
the distance between them, and it was only when Jack Waring was reported
to be "missing" that Eric realized he had lost his best and oldest
friend.
He replaced the album in its shelf and went on undressing. So many
friends had already been killed in these first fourteen months of war
that he had fallen into a "sooner-or-later" frame of mind about all.
Their death ceased to surprise and no longer shocked him as it had once
done. Until the war, Jack was always at call. Now, when the war ended,
he would _not_ come back. . . . Eric shrugged his shoulders and
clambered into bed. The Warings were plucky about it, because every day
the suspense must become worse; and all the while people would rush up
and ask for news, as he had done with Agnes, instead of leaving her to
spread the news as soon as she had any. People thought that they were
being sympathetic when they were simply tearing the bandage away from
the wound to gratify their own curiosity. He would never have asked the
question but for his promise to Barbara. . . .
Why, then, was he not letting her know the result? He reached for his
despatch-box and settled himself comfortably against the pillows.
"_I promised to see if I could get any news of our friend Jack Waring_,"
he began, then hesitated to wonder whether her letters reached Barbara
uncensored or whether sharp-eyed, subdued Lady Crawleigh would ask
tonelessly, "Who's your letter from, Babs?" Decorum, he decided, should
blossom between the lines and shed its waxen petals round each word. . . .
"_His sister was dining with us to-night, and I am sorry to say_ . . ."
"_Did you know him well? He was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.
I remember once_ . . ."
Eric found himself fondly stringing together anecdotes of Jack until he
had overshot the limits of a single sheet; it seemed but a moment before
he was leaning out of bed to reach a third. "_You must forgive me, if I
have rather let myself go about him_," he ended. "_I remember the first
weeks of the war, when I had a nervous breakdown. His father's place is
about two miles from here, and he used to come round and sit with me.
I've only to shut my eyes to see him standing by the fireplace, with his
elbow on the mantel-piece and his cheek on his hand, talking to me. And
I'd give a great deal to have him here to-night._
"_But I'm afraid I'm occupying an unfair proportion of your time and
strength at a season when you've faithfully promised to take care of
yourself and to have a proper rest. I hope you didn't get carried beyond
Crawleigh station; it's been rather on my conscience that I got out at
Winchester instead of coming on with you the whole way. Are you aware
that you collapsed from sheer exhaustion almost before we were out of
Waterloo? I thought you'd fainted and, as you have my only flask of
brandy, I had a bad fright. Isn't it worth while to take a little care
of yourself? You're so intolerably vain that I needn't remind you that
you're very young, extraordinarily lovely at times, very clever and
utterly wasted. However, that's your affair, and you're not likely to be
much impressed by any advice I give you, nor am I much impressed by my
right to give you advice. If I hear any news of Jack, you may be sure
that I shall let you know. Now, good-night, good-bye and a speedy
recovery._"
In reading through his letter, Eric could not help feeling that, where
he had sown decorum, a certain intimacy had shot up. But at three
o'clock in the morning he could not bother about that.
5
In the first drowsy moments after waking, Eric realized that he was
starting at a disadvantage. It was half-past ten. He had therefore
missed breakfast, disorganized the housemaids' programme for the day and
made himself too late to accompany his mother to church.
"I seem to have broken all the rules of the place before getting out of
bed," he told himself, as he rang for hot water.
Then he laughed as he recalled an old "Punch" drawing of an intoxicated
reveller in a Tube lift, who also contrived simultaneously to break all
the rules by smoking, by not "standing clear of the gates" and,
pre-eminently, by not being beware of pickpockets. The laugh put him in
good humour and reminded him that good humour must be his sword and
shield, if he hoped to get back to London that night without a struggle.
He sauntered in search of his brother with a razor in one hand and a
shaving-brush in the other to ask which night he would like to dine and
have his promised box at the Regency.
When he entered the dining-room, a pencilled note in a distantly
familiar writing was lying by his plate.
"_Now you MUST admit that my intelligence department is good_," he read
in slanting, irregular strokes which hinted at a recumbent position and
a writing-block balanced against the knees. "_You never told me your
address. I didn't know where to look for you in the telephone book, you
were utterly lost. Eric, will you believe me? I carried the telephone
into bed with me; I said, 'Trunks, please,' and Trunks Please said
'Honk!' (Why do they always say 'Honk'? I believe they're Masons, or
else they've always just woken up.) Well, I said 'Honk!' too, and asked
for your number in Ryder Street; and THEN I found out your address in
the country. Don't you think it was rather clever of me? And, dear Eric,
don't you think it was VERY sweet of me? I wanted to thank you for
something I expect you're quite unconscious of. (What a sentence to
throw at the head of a rising dramatist!) I mean your gentleness and
care for me yesterday. I always know I'm so safe with you, Eric._
"_I'm obeying you to the letter. We've got rather an amusing party here;
Gerry Deganway and Sally Farwell, my cousin Johnnie Carstairs (perhaps
ONE pinch too much Foreign Office), Bobbie Pentyre, who's on his last
leave before going out, his rather tiresome mother, the immaculate
George Oakleigh. . . ._" Her pen strayed into mischievous comments and
absurd stories about the house-party. "_But this bores you_," she broke
off abruptly. "_I felt all this week as if I'd been sharing everything
with you so extraordinarily. But no one shall say that I don't know when
I'm becoming tedious! What I wanted to tell you was this; and I was led
astray by this mob of people. I've washed my hands of them! I'm in
bed--bed at 7.15 POST MERIDIEM (is that right?) and I'm staying here.
I'm honestly resting. But--(a new sheet for this)--I've GOT to be in
London next week--Thursday--for a happy day with the dentist. I shall be
all alone, the house will be shut up and everything will be as
uncomfortable and depressing as it can be. Don't you think it's almost
a duty for you to come and dine? I'll have the dusting-sheets in my room
lifted up, and we'll crawl underneath them and eat hard-boiled eggs in
our fingers off the corner of the table. And I'll play to you; I might
even sing to you; in general terms I shall be very sweet to you and, if
you don't come, I shall know it's because you're afraid of falling in
love with me._"
Eric smiled to himself, as he pocketed the letter and prospected for
note-paper and an unoccupied table.
"_Your picnic dinner sounds most attractive_," he wrote. "_I shall be
delighted to come. It is so characteristic of you not to mention a time
that I hesitate to point out the omission. I shall come at 8.0, unless
you tell me to the contrary. And I shall insist on your singing.
Good-bye. Take care of yourself._"
He tossed the letter into the box in the hall, but took it out again
immediately. There was too much idle curiosity in the house already. No
one would accept his picture of Babs as he saw her; assuredly no one
would believe his account of their relationship, if he were in a mood or
state to give it. He put on an overcoat and walked, with the confirmed
Londoner's shivering hatred of the country in autumn, to the tumble-down
shanty which did duty as general store and post office to the hamlet of
Lashmar.
Once nerved to face the wet roads and penetrating chill, Eric decided to
acquire merit by walking through the woods and meeting the church party
on its return. Lady Lane had already shewn off her "sailor son" to the
exiguous congregation; it was the turn of "my eldest son, the author,
you know," to submit. He could hear all about Basil and generally
popularize himself so that he would be allowed to leave that night
without protest.
His mood was so radiant that he achieved his effect before the end of
luncheon. As Geoff drove him to the station, he almost seemed to have
enjoyed himself and to be leaving with regret. . . . Winchester,
Basingstoke, Vauxhall, the river and the Houses of Parliament gave him
successive thrills of pleasure, as though he had been away from England
for years. Pride of possession seized him when he entered Ryder Street;
as he shut the front door and looked at his black-framed prints and
lustre bowls, he felt like a miser locking himself within his
treasure-house to feast his eyes on the signs of his material victory
over fate. So many people allowed life to control them instead of
controlling life. And, when they had failed through their own inertia,
they invented an external destiny to save their faces. Man created God
to have somewhere to put the blame. . . .
There was an average pile of letters on his library table. Lady Poynter
hoped to get some rather amusing people to lunch on Thursday; could he
bear to come again? _So_ sweet of him, if he would. Mrs. O'Rane wrote
vaguely of a party which she had in prospect, without apparently knowing
very much about it: "_a sort of house-warming. I'm not asking you to
meet any one in particular, because I don't know who'll be there. It'll
be a mob, I warn you. I'm inviting my friends, my husband's inviting
his; they'll probably quarrel, and there's sure not to be room for all.
Whatever you do, have a good dinner before you come. It doesn't sound
attractive, does it? But these things are often nothing like so bad as
one fears beforehand. I propose to enjoy MYself._"
Eric was amused by her candour and decided to look in for a few minutes.
Lady Maitland, complaining that "_Margaret Poynter always ACCAPARER-s my
nice young men_," invited him to shew his loyalty by coming to dine on
Friday. "_Babs Neave is coming_," she added.
As he had intended to spend Sunday evening in the country, he was
absolved from all work and could give undivided attention to the dinner
which his cook had improvised. (But he must get an ice-safe capable of
holding an adequate week-end supply. Dinner with only a choice of sherry
and of gin and bitters, with no opportunity for a cocktail suggested
"roughing it" to his mind.) He dined with a book propped against its
silver reading-stand leisurely and warm after his bath, comfortable in a
soft shirt and wadded smoking jacket.
After dinner he unlocked a branded cedar-wood cabinet, the first that he
had ever bought, and looked lovingly at the cigars, rich, dull-brown and
ineffably fragrant, bundle pressed shoulder to shoulder with bundle. A
new stock of wine had still to be entered in the cellar-book; and he had
to find places on his shelves for Hatchard's last consignment. It was
not yet easy to realize that, until the success of his play--six
thousand pounds sterling in eight calendar months--a new book had been
an event. . . .
For a happy hour he arranged and rearranged. At the end, surveying his
handiwork with undisguised pleasure, he thought of the bizarre night
when Babs Neave had forced her way in. He could still hardly believe
that it had occurred. And yet, without shutting his eyes, he could
almost see the child, deadly pale, tired, delighted and wholly
unexplained, bending forward with her wonderful white arms outstretched
to catch poor Agnes Waring's horse-shoe paper-weight, laughing one
moment, crying the next, kissing him the moment after. And how she
seemed to be in love with him. . . .
He took out a foot-rule and measured the space under the windows for two
possible new book-cases. He would need them soon; and they would make
the room look better filled. It was a beautiful room, a beautiful flat.
From every point of view he was leading a very beautiful life. . . .
The clock struck eleven; and his parlour-maid came in with a syphon,
decanter and glasses. He did not drink whiskey once a month, but the
tray added a roundness and finish which the Spartans at Lashmar
Mill-House were incapable of appreciating. Were they Spartans--or simply
people without his instinct for life?
He filled a tumbler with soda-water and subsided into his deepest
arm-chair, looking lazily round the room, drawing pleasurably at his
cigar and wrapping himself in the softest down of contentment. His diary
was within reach, and he thought over his abbreviated week-end. Agnes
Waring had dropped out of his life; Barbara had never come into it.
There was nothing to record but the names of his mother's guests at
dinner. . . .
* * * * *
"_There are few things so exhausting as the quiet of the
country._"--From the Diary of Eric Lane.
CHAPTER FOUR
INTERMEZZO
What hadst thou to do being born,
Mother, when winds were at ease
As a flower of the spring-time of corn,
A flower of the foam of the seas?
For bitter thou wast from thy birth,
Aphrodite, a mother of strife;
For before thee some rest was on earth
A little respite from tears
A little pleasure of life;
For life was not then as thou art,
But as one that waxeth in years
Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife;
Earth had no thorn, and desire
No sting, neither death any dart;
What hadst thou to do amongst these,
Thou, clothed with a burning fire,
Thou, girt with sorrow of heart,
Thou sprung of the seed of the seas
As an ear from a seed of corn
As a brand plucked forth of a pyre,
As a ray shed forth of the moon
For division of soul and disease,
For a dart and a sting and a thorn?
What ailed thee then to be born?
SWINBURNE: "ATALANTA IN CALYDON."
1
Moral delinquency in England, if of sufficiently ancient lineage, grows
venial with the years and, if carried out with adequate ruthlessness or
at least success, may quickly find itself invested with grandeur. No one
boasts of his own illegitimacy, but most men like it to be known that an
ancestress, whose memory is kept green, once enjoyed royal favour. No
man tells his guests that they are eating stolen food from stolen plate
in a stolen house; but many will admit, without imposing a bond of
secrecy, that their great-great-grandfathers went to India to seek their
fortune and apparently found it. "He that goes out an insignificant boy
in a few years returns a great Nabob," said Burke, without dwelling on
the intermediate stages. They will admit almost as readily that their
grandfather reluctantly parted with land to the end that railways might
be built, or that their fathers ran the blockade and supplied the South
and the slave-owners, hazardously and romantically, with munitions of
war.
The Neave fortunes had their origin in the character and position of
Lord Chancellor Crawleigh; and history has dealt faithfully with him.
John, first baron, acquired the Abbey from a misguided supporter of the
'15 and left it with sufficient means for its upkeep to his grandson
William, the second baron and first viscount, who built on sure
foundations. Common sense and a certain practical alertness in the
halcyon days of the Enclosure Acts did nothing to diminish the patrimony
of Charles, fourth baron, third viscount and first earl, though the
estate came to be temporarily encumbered when the good fellowship of
John, the second earl, won him the costly regard of the Regent. At a
time when the House of Commons was pulling one of its long faces over a
periodical schedule of the Prince's debts, a Garter became vacant; and
His Royal Highness, with no other means of marking his affectionate
gratitude, secured it for his friend with a further step to the coveted
rank of marquess. Thereafter the public life of the family was
characterized by honour and integrity; and the Garter, re-bestowed as
soon as surrendered, became a habit. The second marquess held a sinecure
under Lord Aberdeen; another flitted to and fro in shadowy retirement as
a Lord-in-Waiting; a third, exploring the United States for the
broadening of his mind, married an American wife.
The union infused so much new blood into the declining, short-lived
stock that there seemed no limit to the energy and success of the heir.
Charles, fifth marquess, was a member of parliament in his twenty-second
year, an under-secretary when he was twenty-six and Governor-General of
Canada before he was thirty-five. Thereafter, having got him abroad,
succeeding governments vied with one another to keep him abroad. The
vice-royalty of India followed almost automatically; he spent two years
as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to oblige his party leaders and was now in
the full vigour of middle age with nothing to do. The House of Lords
offered no opportunity to an incurably bad debater; and the radicals by
destroying the constitution, bullying the king and playing with
revolution had made it a place of arid pomp, whose futility took away
something of a man's dignity every time that he went there.
Nevertheless, once a viceroy, always a viceroy, as his daughter
sometimes reminded him. Lord Crawleigh ruled Berkeley Square and
Crawleigh Abbey as though he were still in India, as though, too, he
were suppressing the Mutiny single-handed. "Once a mutineer, always a
mutineer," Lady Barbara would occasionally say of herself.
This week-end she had irritated her parents by choosing a train
convenient neither to family nor guests, by arriving speechless with
fatigue and by retiring to her bedroom and announcing that she would
probably stay there. Lady Crawleigh felt that prudence, after so long
delay, might have timed its coming more opportunely; a houseful of young
people could be trusted, in dealing with her sentences, to complete the
ruin which her husband had begun; but late hours, excitement and the
legacy of her illness had reduced Barbara's strength until Dr. Gaisford
pronounced that he could not answer for the result if any pressure were
put upon her.
Though the windows were now thickly curtained and a bright fire was
burning, Barbara could never come into her bedroom without a shiver. In
the spring and summer of 1915, when Crawleigh Abbey was a military
hospital, she had worked by night and lain awake by day, deliberately
and with the sun shining on her face, for fear of dreaming. Madness or
death could be no worse than the torture of being pitilessly and
unceasingly watched when she knew that she was only dreaming but could
not wake. Of late the form of her dreams had changed, growing less
defined; there was no longer the old accusing pair of eyes to reproach
and spy on her as soon as the room was in darkness, but she was
conscious of vague presences which she could not clearly see. After
fainting in the train a month before, she had heard Eric's voice in her
sleep, though she could not recognize a face which she had never seen;
none of her dream-faces had features. There was a shadow somewhere in
all her visions of Eric; some day she feared that the shadow would take
form, the eyes would return to watch her. . . .
The fire was so bright that the room grew no darker when she turned off
the light; and, though she placed a coloured handkerchief over her eyes,
it gave her no protection. When she pulled it impatiently away, the
glare was so fierce that she could not see the familiar bookcases and
chairs. Gradually the whole room was enveloped in a sheet of flame, and
in the midst she saw a gigantic figure on a throne.
"God," she whispered--and knew that she was dead and had come to be
judged.
The throne was familiar from an old picture in Siena; God was the
Ancient of Days, drawn by Blake for the Book of Job. Strange that, after
all, these stories were true. . . . She wondered why He was old or,
being old, why He was no older. . . . The white flame beat mercilessly
upon her eyes, and she could see that they were alone in Space.
God was waiting for her to confess. . . .
It was idle to confess when God was omniscient, and she kept her lips
obstinately closed.
But God and she were alone in Time. He had sat for an eternity before
she came to the judgement-seat; He would wait for an eternity and
condemn her for an eternity. . . .