week, mind! That's the limit of your reprieve before you go away. Don't
imagine that stimulants and sedatives take the place of natural food or
rest. Whatever--odds and ends you have to clear up must be cleared up
within the next week."
Eric nodded and held out his hand. Gaisford had understood, then. . . .
He wondered how long the medicine would take to "tone up" his nerves,
for he had written a telegram to Barbara the night before, as soon as
Agnes left him.
He walked to his office, trying to face the position more clearly than
he had been able to do in the night. Why fret and worry? Barbara's
"solemn promise" had already been broken in spirit; if she kept it in
form, she would be haunted by a new memory, the intrusive shadow would
take on a more terrific outline. There was no proof that Jack was alive
. . . but Eric believed without proof; no certainty that he would
present his claim . . . but Barbara would see nothing but certainty. Two
allegiances, two promises . . . and no one could tell which she would
choose.
Eric was walking blindly through streets which only his feet recognized.
Regency Theatre. . . . And he had been heading for Whitehall. He would
never go to the Regency again without seeing her--either a head leaning
against his knee at rehearsal as they sat on a platform over the
orchestra, or in their box, hand in hand, as on the first night of "The
Bomb-Shell," when his nerves were jangling like the broken wires of a
harp; he could never go to Mrs. Shelley's house without hearing her
singing Madame Butterfly's song--and without some fool's asking if he
had seen anything of Lady Barbara lately. . . .
A telegram was waiting for him, when at last he reached his office:
Barbara would come up that day and dine with him; she hoped that he had
received no bad news. . . . Eleven o'clock; and he would not see her
until eight. He was too restless to work and at one o'clock he handed
his papers to a colleague and slunk into the street. His foot-steps
were turned towards the Thespian Club; but he could not pass the
hall-porter without looking for a note, as on the night when he dined in
his triumph with Lord Ettrick; he could not see a page-boy without
expecting to find that Barbara had telephoned to him. . . .
Half-way across the Horse Guards' Parade, he encountered George
Oakleigh.
"Hallo! Come and have some lunch with me, if you've nothing better to
do," he said. "I haven't seen you for a long time."
"Not since we met at Barbara Neave's," answered Oakleigh. "Where is she?
I've quite lost sight of her."
"They're all down at Crawleigh," said Eric. Every one _would_ come to
him as the leading authority on Barbara's movements. "What about the
Carlton? I can usually get hold of a table."
As they entered the lounge, Eric wondered why he had chosen this of all
places. Last night's ordeal should have kept him away for ever; and the
band was playing a waltz which he had heard when Barbara dined with him
on her return from the Cap Martin. Music, especially the seductiveness
of the waltz rhythm, was bad enough at any time when one needed to keep
one's nerves unstimulated. . . .
When Oakleigh returned to the Admiralty, Eric stood aimlessly in
Trafalgar Square, wondering what to do. It was too late for a _matinee_;
and theatres were all becoming reminiscent of Barbara. He had long meant
to order a new dessert-service and was only waiting until Barbara was in
London again. Perhaps, that night, they would be saying good-bye for
ever; he could no longer tell himself stories of the life that he wanted
her to share with him. Perhaps, when she came to choose a
dessert-service, it would be with some one else; she would give to some
one else all that she had given him, all that she had been unable to
give him. . . .
He was home before he knew that he was even walking homewards and
thankful when his housekeeper came to discuss dinner. He chose a cigar
and at once put it back in the box. His hand was shaking; and, if he
once began to smoke, he would never stop. Stimulants and sedatives, he
must remember, were not the same as natural food and rest; therefore he
had drunk nothing at luncheon, therefore he would not smoke now. There
was nothing that he could do; and Barbara's train did not reach Waterloo
for another hour. . . .
His sense of time became dulled: Barbara was standing in the doorway
before he had even thought of dressing.
"My dear! I expected to find you in bed! How _dare_ you give me such a
fright? When I got your telegram this morning--oh, I'm out of breath! I
ran all the way upstairs!--you'd been saying that you felt so ill! Tell
me what it's all about. I had the most awful difficulty with father
about getting away; he couldn't make out why I always wanted to rush up
to London just when he'd got people staying down there----"
"I didn't mean to work on your emotions," said Eric, as he helped her
out of her cloak.
"Sweetheart, _whatever_ I was doing, you know I'd come from the ends of
the earth, if you were ill. But I'm afraid father'll think me a fraud.
It'll be your fault if I can't get away next week."
Eric had to think for a moment before he recalled that her birthday fell
in the following week. It was the first time that she had referred even
indirectly to it on her own initiative. He looked at her closely, but
her face revealed only high spirits and a radiant pleasure in being with
him again.
"I wanted to talk over one or two things with you," he explained, "We
shall start fairer if you don't feel you're under any obligation to
me----"
She caught hold of his hand and kissed it.
"I shall always feel that, Eric."
"Well, for to-night I want you to feel quite unembarrassed. I want to
talk to you about Jack Waring. He was reported missing last August."
Barbara's face grew suddenly grave; and, in a whisper, she supplied the
date.
"Well, his sister dined with me last n-night----"
Eric stopped as he caught himself stammering, but Barbara laid her hand
imploringly on his arm.
"Go on!" she cried. "I can stand it!"
"They don't know whether he's alive or dead." Her hands were slowly
withdrawn from her cheeks, her face regained its composure, and she
resettled herself, still breathing a little quickly, on the sofa. "They
know nothing," he went on slowly. "But there's reason to suppose that he
wasn't killed at the time when he was reported missing. There's reason
to suppose that he was alive at the beginning of October."
Still standing with his shoulders leaning against the mantel-piece, Eric
told her slowly and colourlessly of the belated cheque. At the end she
sat watching him in silence. She too, surely, was trying to convince
herself that this was what she had always expected. . . .
"That's all I know. That's all his people know," he added.
"But October. . . . June. . . . Why hasn't he written?"
"You're assuming he's alive. We don't know. He may have been badly
wounded, he may have died of wounds----"
"But if he was well enough to write a cheque?"
"I don't pretend to explain it. His sister threshed it all out at the
bank yesterday; she and I threshed it all out again last night. And
we're none the wiser--except that on the ninth of October he drew, dated
and signed a cheque. I think that's certain. There's no doubt about the
signature, and no one would trouble to forge a cheque for ten pounds. . . .
I always promised to let you know as soon as I had any news, Babs."
She nodded and pressed her knuckles into her eyes.
"October to June . . . instead of August to June," she murmured at
length. "And not a word of any kind. What do his people . . .?"
"He'll now be published as 'Previously reported missing, now reported to
be missing and a prisoner.' _They_ don't know what to think any more
than we do."
She sighed and then looked up to him with a grateful smile.
"Thank you for telling me, Eric."
He turned away and moistened his lips.
"You mustn't forget that it affects my own position," he warned her.
The smile faded from her face, and she looked at him with startled eyes.
4
It was a silent dinner, for Eric was exhausted and Barbara was thinking
deeply. Nearly a year ago, when Jack was first missing, she seemed to
have lived through all these emotions, to have been tossed backwards and
forwards in her dreams like a plaything of the gods at sport. For twelve
months she had been sick with longing to know whether he still wanted
her; and, when the gods had tortured her to madness, they let her think
that the cruel game was over. She dreamed again of happiness, seeing
herself as a child; another child, the very symbol of love and
forgiveness, came to bring her peace, and they played together in the
sun-drenched loveliness of a dream. Then the gods flung a shadow before
her feet. In dream after dream her child-lover begged her to stay, but
the shadow parted them and urged her forward. In time she realized that
it was Jack's shadow. . . .
Never were dreams more vivid. She knew each note of her lover's voice as
he begged her to stay and let him make her happy; and night after night
she awoke to find herself stifling in the embrace of the shadow. Every
one thought that she was dying; she herself knew that she was being
driven mad; and, when the gods saw that she could bear no more, they
filled the world with a blaze of light which banished dream and shadow.
"I hoped God had forgotten me," she whispered. "I've been happy too
long. What am I to do, Eric?"
"You must follow your inclination."
She sighed and looked away into the shadows beyond the table.
"My inclination's always to do what you want. . . . I'm glad for both
our sakes that this came when it did. I couldn't have made you happy
while I was uncertain. . . ."
"And, if the war ended to-morrow and Jack came back safe and sound next
week, what then?"
"It depends on him. I gave him my solemn promise, when I was trying to
make reparation."
"And I don't count at all. After all our love, you could forget me----"
"I could never forget you, sweetheart."
"But--you're willing to _try_?"
"What else can I do? Oh, what a muddle I've made of our lives!"
Eric had determined to be patient and restrained; but his voice,
uncontrolled and scornful, seemed to come from a distance.
"Will you make it any better by keeping faith with Jack and breaking it
with me? You'll be unhappy all your life, you'll never forgive yourself,
you'll never forget the wrong you've done me, if you marry any one
else!"
Barbara's eyes filled with fear.
"You speak as if you were putting a curse on me!"
"I don't believe in curses or blessings or luck or your other
superstitions. I'm warning you--and I'll add this. You once undertook my
education, but I think I can teach you one thing, one thing about love:
it has to be whole-hearted. . . ."
He flung away and stood with his arm on the mantel-piece, fumbling the
lock of a cigar-cabinet with clumsy fingers. Barbara made no sound, and
after some moments he stole a look at her.
"I know," she answered quietly.
"Well----" He hesitated and then took his plunge. "You've got to decide,
Babs."
"You must wait till we've heard something definite."
"No! If we heard to-morrow, to-night, in five minutes' time, it would
make no difference. I want the whole of your love, I want to stand
first." He waited, but she said nothing. "You've very often told me how
much you loved me," he went on, ironical at her silence. "You've told me
how you need me, how grateful you are to me, how much you want to make
me happy----"
He had dropped into unconscious parody, and its technical excellence set
her writhing.
"_Don't_, Eric! _Please!_"
"You must decide, Babs."
"_No!_"
She buried her face in her hands and sobbed so wildly that he expected
at any moment to see his maid's head at the door. For a while he was
stoically unmoved; then the crying gave him a pain at the heart, and he
stepped forward, only to pull up before he threw away his victory.
"Eric, _don't_," she cried, as soon as she had mastery of her voice.
"You must decide," he repeated.
"And if I say 'no'?"
"I've said you were under no obligation to me."
"But--you'll turn me away? If I came to you to-morrow and said I'd
changed my mind----"
"It would be too late."
She steadied herself and turned round, bending for her gloves and then
drawing herself upright to face him.
"I . . . can't . . . now, Eric. . . . Is it still raining? If it is, I'd
better have a taxi."
"I'll see if I can get you one."
He had seen this gesture before; and Barbara had followed it with a
stream of notes and messages; begging him to come back. Eric walked
slowly into the street, giving her generous time for consideration. A
taxi stood idle at the top of St. James' Street; and, when he returned
with it, she was in the hall, white-faced but collected, turning over
the pages of a review.
"Good-bye, Eric," she said quietly. "I'm afraid I've only brought you
unhappiness. And my love doesn't seem much use to any one. . . . Don't
bother to come down with me."
He went into the smoking-room and dropped limply onto a sofa, waiting
for the telephone to ring, waiting for her to confess defeat. A hideous
evening--almost as bad as that night before Christmas. His cheeks were
burning, and his head ached savagely. Suddenly his theatrical composure
and stoicism left him; his body trembled, and he was amazed to feel
tears coursing down his cheeks. This, then--he was quite detached about
it--was the nervous break-down which Gaisford had prophesied. He had
not cried for twenty years . . . and now he could not stop. His heart
seemed to have broken loose and to be hammering in space, like the
engine of a disabled clock-work toy.
It was still absurdly early, for their scene had taken place among the
nut-shells and coffee-cups of dinner. There was time for her to come
back, to telephone; she knew by harrowing experience what a parting like
this meant. And, while he waited, he must do something! Perhaps she
would not break silence till the morning. He would see that she did not
wait longer than that. . . .
"_Darling Babs_," he began. A hot tear splashed on to the paper, and he
reached for a fresh sheet. "_Darling Babs, It was your choice. I pray
God that you will find greater happiness elsewhere._ . . ."
He strung sentence to sentence, not knowing what he wrote. Was it not
weakness that he should be writing the first letter? But Barbara was
probably writing to him at this moment, writing or asking for his
number. . . . The night lift-man was bribed to post the letter, because
Eric dared not leave the telephone. He sat by it trembling as though
with fever, while eleven o'clock struck . . . and midnight . . . and one
. . . and three . . . and five. . . .
In the morning he was called at his usual time--to sink back on to the
bed almost before he had risen from it. While he waited for his
secretary, he telephoned to ask a colleague to shoulder double work for
the day and began to think wearily what other engagements he must break.
In an interlude of their over-night discussion Barbara had asked him to
lunch with her. . . .
With a strangely uncontrolled hand he wrote--"_I'm afraid I can't
remember what I said in my letter last night. I was feeling too much
upset. Didn't you ask me to lunch with you to-day? I'm afraid I'm
feeling so ill that I've had to stay in bed._ . . ."
When his secretary arrived, he sent her to Berkeley Square with the
note. While she was gone, his parlour-maid came in with a swaying mass
of White Enchantress carnations and a pencilled note. "_May God make you
happier than I've been able to do!_"
Eric tried to divert his thoughts from the note by giving elaborate
instructions about the flowers and his meals for the day. Before he had
done, his secretary returned, and he was still dictating when a sound in
the hall froze his voice and set his heart thumping.
"I hear Mr. Lane's not well. Do you think he could see me for a moment?"
"I'll enquire, my lady."
As Barbara came into the room, Eric saw that her face was grey with
suffering and that she seemed hardly able to keep her heavy lids open.
"Eric, what's the matter?" she asked, coming to his bedside.
In trying to speak softly her voice, already hoarse, disappeared
altogether and she rubbed her throat wonderingly.
"What's the matter with us both?" he asked weakly. "Babs . . ." His
voice broke. "You look like death!"
Before she turned her face, he could see that she was biting her lip.
"Hush, darling child! I'm only tired; I didn't sleep very well. I kept
on remembering that I'd lost some one I loved better than any one in the
world," she cried tremulously.
He raised himself on his pillows, stretching out hands that twitched.
"You _haven't_, Babs! If you want me----"
"Not at that price, darling. If my love for you were everything--there's
something else. I don't know what it is. . . . But I've not come to
upset you again. Last night I told you that I'd come to you from the
ends of the world, if you were ill. Tell me what's the matter, Eric."
She pulled a chair to the bed and gave him her hand, which he covered
with kisses.
"I'm broken up! I'm sorry; you can despise me, if you like," he cried.
"I can't afford to lose you, Babs: I love you too much."
The tears were standing in his eyes, and the sight steadied her.
Pillowing his head on her breast, she ran her fingers through his hair,
caressing and soothing him like a child.
"_I've_ done this. . . . You must forgive me, Eric," she whispered. "I
didn't see what I was doing; until quite lately I didn't see that you
cared for me at all--not to matter, I mean--you were always sweet to me,
of course. If I'd known how I was hurting you . . . Won't you wait,
Eric? I must let you go now, if you insist; I'm nerved up to it. . . .
But is it worth it?"
Eric thought over the change that had come upon them since Christmas.
"No. I can't afford it," he answered wearily.
She bent down and kissed his forehead. Was the kiss rather mechanical?
Eric lay with his eyes shut, trying to analyze the double change. Was a
nervous break-down always like this? Barbara was stroking his head
gently; she had kissed him compassionately, lovingly, but he had fancied
a change in her, as though she, too, realized the completeness of his
subjugation.
"See if you can't sleep, Eric," she whispered, as he opened twitching
lids to take stock of her.
Pity, or some kind of maternal love, then, survived his defeat. . . .
* * * * *
"_Average man is a match for average woman, eighteen chances to
eighteen, but zero always turns up in woman's favour. Man, being a
philosopher and far less interested in woman (who is an incident)
than woman is interested in him (who is her life), would cheerfully
go on playing with the odds always slightly against him, if he had a
clear idea of the value and significance of zero. But zero is woman
inexplicable--something fantastically loyal or shiveringly
perfidious, savagely cruel or quixotically self-sacrificing,
something that is primitive, non-moral and resolved to win at all
costs. In the sex-gamble, zero is more than a thirty-six to one
chance; it is Poushkin's DAME DE PIQUE and turns up thirty-six times
to one. And man shews his indifference or his greatness of soul by
continuing to play, by rising imperturbably triumphant over zero. . . .
Or perhaps he shews that he is an eternal sex-amateur._ . . ."--From
the Diary of Eric Lane.
CHAPTER SEVEN
EDUCATION FOR THOSE OF RIPER YEARS
"Verily when an author can approve his wife she was deserving of a
better fate."
LEONARD MERRICK: "WHEN LOVE FLIES OUT O' THE WINDOW."
1
"After diagnosis," said Dr. Gaisford, "the prudent physician bases
treatment on self-interest. You're not fit to travel by yourself yet,
Eric; when I've patched you up, I shall send you away. If you don't go,
you'll never do any decent work again."
Having persuaded his patient to stay in bed for a week, the doctor
looked in nightly "for five minutes" and stayed sixty-five, smoking
three disreputable pipes instead of one and generalizing on life and
health.
"It gives me a headache even to think of work," said Eric, his brain
half-paralyzed with bromide.
Perhaps it was the bromide, perhaps it was his nervous and bodily
exhaustion; the most frightening part of this latest illness was the
attendant utter incapacity to make up his mind. When Barbara left him
for Crawleigh Abbey, he had resigned from his department and withdrawn
the resignation, accepted an invitation to lecture in America--and
cancelled the acceptance; every night he led Gaisford through the same
argumentative maze; complete rest, partial rest in London or the
country, flight from England and all association with Barbara, full
work--as soon as he could resume it--to keep him from brooding about
her; he could not decide. And from time to time a mocking refrain told
him that as an undergraduate and again in the first flush of fame he had
aspired to be the new young Byron, dominating London. . . .
"Poisoned rat in a hole," he whispered to himself. . . .
Gaisford would sit with his arms crossed over the back of a chair and
his feet twisted round its legs, puffing thoughtfully at his pipe and
frowning at his boots. In a long experience of practice among rich and
self-conscious patients who would always rather be "interesting" than
normal, it was not the first time that he had watched the bloom being
rubbed off love; nine broken engagements and balked romances were born
of doltish delay; but a mass of sensibility like Eric Lane had not the
stamina to wait nor the placidity to go away and forget.
"You told me you had a novel on the stocks," said Gaisford. "I suppose
you wouldn't let me see it?"
The first draft of the book was already in type, and, though Eric hated
his work to be seen before he had set the last polish on it, the new
indecision and weakness of will allowed him to be overpersuaded.
Gaisford brought back the manuscript at the end of three days and talked
of neurotic impressionism and the methods of literary jerry-builders.
"I hope you're not writing yourself out," he added.
Eric was frightened for the first time since the "Divorce" placed him
beyond the reach of want. So many men seemed capable of one play or
novel--and then no more.
"One can't always be at concert-pitch," he sighed.
"Then you mustn't go on to the platform till you are."
"It's easy to see you've never been a journalist! The agony, the
violence to soul, when you _have_ to come up to scratch, when your copy
_has_ to be delivered by a certain hour! Writing without time to revise
or even to read what you've already written--the compositors setting up
the beginning of an article while you're still writing the middle. . . .
And the public pays its twopence and expects us to be always at our
best!"
"Well, the public pays me its two guineas and expects _me_ to be always
at _my_ best," grunted the doctor. "If I'm off colour, I take things
quietly. Otherwise I should defraud the public and ruin my practice at
the same time. You must take things quietly until you're fit to work
again."
After he had gone, Eric tried to make up his mind what to do. His
thoughts ran uncontrolled to painters whose sight had become impaired
and composers who had lost their hearing. If _he_ had done violence to
the indefinable blend of gift and acquisition which separated the man
who could write from those who could not . . . This was a thing to be
tested. The scenario of "The Singing-Bird" was ready; he had only been
waiting because there was no hurry for another play. There was now every
hurry to establish whether he could write a play. If Manders turned up
his nose, it would be time indeed for a holiday.