anything I wrote----"
"You know that I was only teasing you! That first night, when you were
so dreadfully pleased with yourself. . . . But I found you _were_ human,
after all, when I came home with you----"
"And broke 'the child's toy.'"
"Ah, why did you remind me of that?"
"I was reminded of it myself to-day. I'm not superstitious, but my luck
_has_ gone. I can't write any more."
"Eric, that's not true!"
He compressed his lips and shrugged his shoulders, resignedly.
"You know best, no doubt. Since we met, I've written the first draft of
a novel, which is unreadable, and a play. . . . I sent the play to
Manders about a fortnight ago."
"Without telling me? Don't you like sharing things with me any longer?"
The soft reproach in her voice maddened him. She seemed incapable of
seeing that she wanted the whole of him at a time when she was herself
momentarily drawing away.
"You choose a curious time to ask that question! There's nothing to
share. It's turned down, rejected. Nothing I can do to it will make it
even possible. I can't write any more, I'm used up. . . . Yes, we may
fairly say that my luck has gone. And that night, you may remember, you
recommended me to fall in love, because it would be so good for me. . . ."
4
Since the exchange of incapacitated prisoners began, there had been so
many delays and disappointments that the Warings remained in London,
with what patience they could muster, until they received news that
Jack's party was proceeding to Chateau d'Oex.
For reasons which he was at a loss to define Eric saw them off at
Charing Cross. They found time amid their jubilation to be grateful to
him for his trouble in making enquiries at the War Office and in
expediting the issue of their passports. As chairman of his local
military tribunal, the colonel could not be absent from England for any
long time on end, but they were proposing tentatively and subject to
Jack's condition of health to take a villa and to stay with him by
turns. Agnes and her father expected to come back after a week or ten
days, leaving Mrs. Waring in charge until Christmas.
As they chatted artificially by the carriage door, there was radiance in
the faces of all three; the colonel seemed more upright, Mrs. Waring had
shed her set, stoical calm and, with it, about ten years.
"You won't forget to write, Agnes," said Eric, as the guard bustled
along the platform, breaking up the little groups like a sheep-dog.
"It may be only a line, but I'll tell you everything when we get back,"
she promised.
A week passed before her letter reached him.
"_We got here after the most impossible journey_," Agnes wrote from
Chateau d'Oex, "_and Jack came to us yesterday. You can't imagine what
it was like, seeing him again when we'd NEARLY given up hope! He's very
bad--but I suppose I'd better start at the beginning. When he was taken
prisoner, he'd been wounded in the head and slightly gassed. The gassing
doesn't matter, except that he will always have to take care of his
lungs; the head wound has left a scar and a bald place, but he can cover
that up. At present he gets the most awful head-aches if he tries to do
any work. The Germans let him go because he was simply wasting away on
the horrible food they gave him to eat, and he's like a skeleton now.
But we're going to feed him up and put that right, and then it'll just
be a question how much work and what kind of work he'll be able to do
when he's well._
"_He's alive, Eric, and that's the great thing. And he's well and strong
compared with some of the ghastly wrecks that you see here. I must wait
till we meet before I give you a full account of all he's been through,
but Major Britwell's story was quite true so far as it went. He DID
insult the guard and he WAS carried off to solitary confinement for nine
months. He won't talk much about that, though, but he had a most awful
time; I honestly wonder that he came through it alive and in his right
mind. I could cry when I look at the men here and think what they've
suffered. But they CAN'T go through it again, Eric; that's one of the
terms of their release, of course. They're out of the war for good; and
it may be very unpatriotic, but I for one say 'Thank God!'_
"_Well, I must come to business. Father and I are staying here for
another week, and I want you to do a lot of jobs for us. On a separate
sheet you'll find a number of things that I want you to order and have
sent out here. And on the back of this you'll find a list of names and
addresses. There's so much to do, getting this house straight, that I've
very little time for writing. I want you to be an angel and ring up all
these people and just tell them (you know them all, I think) what I've
told you._
"_Jack sends love to you, and we are all deeply grateful for what you
have done and what I know you will do for us. I don't think there are
any other messages._"
The list of names did not contain Barbara's. Eric telephoned to her as
soon as he had received the letter, though he knew that she would be in
bed and that a tiresome footman would say: "I don't think her ladyship's
been called yet, sir. Perhaps you would ring up later." With patience he
got into communication with her and read out the first pages of the
letter. When she had thanked him, he asked with trepidation whether she
had heard from Jack. An hour seemed to pass while she rang for her
letters and looked at the postmarks.
"There's nothing from Switzerland," she announced at length.
Eric's heart leapt with relief. Agnes had written; surely Jack could
have written, too, had he wished? In the ensuing silence Barbara's
voice, suddenly toneless, came back to him.
"I'm sorry, Babs, for _your_ sake."
"Thank you, darling."
"I'll make a point of seeing Agnes as soon as she gets back to England,"
he went on.
"Thank you, darling."
"And, of course, I'll let you know anything there is to know. Very
likely you'll get a letter before I see her."
"Perhaps I shall." Her voice trembled; and Eric, ceasing to weight
justice or consider provocation, wished that he had Jack Waring's throat
between his hands. "Well, I mustn't keep you from your work. Thank you
for telling me, Eric."
"Good-bye, Babs. I suppose it wouldn't amuse you to lunch or dine with
me anywhere?"
"Not to-day, I think. But I love you for asking me. Good-bye."
For a week he wrote to her twice daily, trying to forget himself in the
effort to keep her amused. They met once at dinner with Lady Maitland;
and it hurt him absurdly when as a matter of ritual he was detailed to
see Barbara home. On the day named, Colonel Waring and Agnes arrived in
London and telephoned, asking him to dine with them at their hotel.
Trepidation hid become his normal mood, and Eric walked into the lounge
with his teeth set and the muscles of his cheeks hard. The burgeoning
happiness of Agnes was harder to bear than ever, but he achieved a
tolerable effect as the undemonstrative, phlegmatic Englishman and
mingled suitable congratulations with his many questions.
"I handed on the good news to every one you mentioned," he said at the
end of dinner. "And to one or two others who I thought would be
interested to hear it. Did he send me any jobs or messages?"
"He wants a pipe, but father can get that. I don't think he sent any
messages."
Eric looked at his watch and begged to be excused. It was half-past ten,
and he had telephoned to say that he would call for Barbara at eleven
and bring her home from a party in Portman Square.
When he reached the house, Eric was disconcerted to learn that Barbara
had already left. He was slightly less surprised, on reaching home, to
find the hall ablaze with light and Barbara lying at full length on a
sofa with her cloak trailing on the carpet and a bottle of
_eau-de-Cologne_ clutched in one hand.
She started and opened her eyes as he came into the room.
"Eric, did you go . . .? I'm sorry! I couldn't wait, I couldn't bear
being with people. I've been asleep. I've got such a racking headache,
darling."
Eric took a bottle of aspirin from the drawer of his writing-table.
"Have you had any of this to-day?" he asked. "Then I can give you
fifteen grains. Wait till I've got some water." He returned with a
tumbler and two cushions and seated himself at her feet. "Have you heard
anything fresh from Switzerland?" he asked. "Well, I'm afraid I haven't,
either. I dined with Colonel Waring and Agnes to-night, as you know."
Barbara had uncovered her eyes to hold the tumbler; but she set it on
the floor, as he began to speak, and shielded her face.
"H-how is he?" she asked.
"He gets tired rather quickly, but otherwise he's all right. Leading
quite a normal life, I mean."
His words were deliberately chosen to shew that Jack was in a state to
have written, had he wished. His choice was not wasted on her.
"And what now, Eric?" she asked.
"Isn't that for you to say?"
Barbara uncovered her eyes again and looked slowly round the room. It
had become so familiar that she no longer noticed its shape or
colouring. Instinctively she knew that the sofa demanded a cushion at
her back and that the arm-chair between the fire and window did not. But
she had never, until now, consciously observed the carpet and curtains,
the breast-high white book-cases and Chippendale writing-table, since
the first night when she came there and stood tossing a glass horse-shoe
idly into the air and stealing curious glances at the furniture.
She recognized it all now and remembered her earliest emotions,
remembered even telling him that the first burning cigarette would spoil
his grey carpet. But her vision was blurred; she fancied herself seeing
through the walls, penetrating a belt of darkness and piercing other
walls beyond which she sat at supper with an undemonstrative, quietly
determined young man. The jig and stamp of ragtime echoed
overhead--"Dixie! All abo-o-oard for Dixie! Dixie! Tak your tickuts
heere for Dixie!"; she heard her own voice--"I love that one-step. Why
did you drag me away in the middle?" and Jack Waring's in answer--"Well,
you ought to be grateful to me for getting you a table before the rush
starts." That was a few hours before war was declared, though the long
banqueting-hall of Loring Castle had resounded with rumours and
expositions of war throughout dinner. Almost at once Jack asked her to
marry him; she once more heard his tranquil explanation--"I've just been
received into your church."
A blaze of light. . . . A thunder of voices. . . . Out of the distance
she heard him saying, "In fact, you've been lying to me all along? You
never intended to marry me?"
A blaze of light; and silence that made her head sing. Jack's face
seemed to grow thinner and the gleam in his eyes more brightly cold. The
supper-room was emptying, but neither could decide to stand up and say
good-bye. Lord Summertown and a brother-officer waltzed in and became
noisily cheerful in one corner. Later they heard a car driving past the
open windows; George Oakleigh appeared in the doorway; Summertown's
companion finished the champagne and rose to his feet protesting
fretfully: "To declare war in the middle of supper is not the act of a
gentleman. . . ." Then at last she had seen that she had tempted Jack to
imperil his soul. . . .
War had seemed a small thing then, though Jack Summertown was to be
killed within six weeks and her cousin Jim within a year. It was a
thing remote and only important as postponing her punishment from Jack.
"I must get back to London," he said suddenly. "I'm going to ask
Summertown for a seat in his car."
For dragging minutes she felt her soul being crucified. While Jack stood
talking in the hall or on the steps, she tried to conceal from herself
what she had done and, when that was impossible, to nerve herself to
make reparation. Then she was blinded by the glare of the head-lights
and opened her eyes to find that the car had swept beyond reach of her
voice. . . .
Once again everything was warm and dark in the summer night. . . .
Slowly the distant wail of the orchestra died from her ears. She had a
vague memory of going upstairs with Oakleigh and of seeing him draw Jim
aside and whisper to him, but between them lingered a white face with
incredulous eyes, and above the music hammered the sound of a broken
sentence: "So this was your revenge?" And then, calling Jim to witness,
she made the sign of the Cross and swore that she would offer herself,
body and soul, to Jack, if he wanted her. . . .
The noise faded out of hearing, and she was once more in a room of
blazing light; a man was looking at her, silent, white-faced and
reproachful; and a new phrase was beating on her brain.
"_I want to know what you're going to do now?_"
She stretched out her hand; but Eric did not take it, and her eyes
wandered once more idly round the room. The forgotten curtains and grey
carpet, the writing-table and neat pile of manuscript flung back to her
memory the summer night when she had first come to disturb his peace of
mind.
"I make _every one_ miserable!" she cried, and both started at the
violation of their long silence.
Eric's head sank lower; but his eyes never left her face. That night
she had been like an animal tortured to madness; since that night she
had taken all that his love could give her and had repaid it by
torturing him to madness in his turn, by destroying his health and
ruining his work.
"Eric, I _want_ to give you everything, but I've sworn to God! Until
I've seen Jack. . . ."
"You've broken your oath in everything but form. From the first night we
met you've belonged to me in all but name."
"But won't you wait? Oh, why will you _drive_ me?"
"I'm not driving you, Babs. I've not asked for anything."
She stood up and drew her cloak round her, glancing once at him and
turning quickly away as she saw his hunched body and haggard face. One
after the other she slowly drew on her gloves, looking with misty eyes
for her bag. As she moved to the door, Eric rose and opened it,
gathering up his overcoat with the other hand. They had parted like this
so often that he no longer seemed to care. . . . A four-wheeler was
ambling along Ryder Street, and he hailed it. Neither spoke until it
drew up opposite her house and she saw him fumbling with the handle.
Then she laid her fingers on his wrist and chokingly bade him stop.
"I'll marry you, Eric," she said.
"Thank you, Barbara."
She hurried out before he could kiss her and stood with face upturned
and eyes tightly shut. God, who had heard the oath taken and broken, was
free to strike her now; if He held His hand, it was because He had more
subtle punishment in store. . . .
Barbara pulled her cloak over her chest and ran despairingly into the
house.
* * * * *
"_Loneliness may be so intolerable that I believe God would forgive
us our blindest groping after alleviation. But would God forgive me,
if, in my groping, I brought such misery of loneliness to another,
knowing now what manner of thing it is?_"--From the Diary of Eric
Lane.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE STRONGEST THING OF ALL
"Tam saepe nostrum decipi Fabullinum
Miraris, Aule? Semper homo bonus tiro est."
MARTIAL.
1
"_If you care for a six-months' lecturing tour in America_," wrote
Grierson, "_I have an unrivalled offer. You would start in the New
Year_. . . ."
His agent's letter was the first that Eric opened on the morning after
Barbara promised to marry him. As he lay half-awake, waiting to be
called, he realized that something had changed the foundations of his
life; he was at peace, well and strong, with a heart tuned for adventure
and a new tireless energy.
Six o'clock. . . . Seven. . . . Eight. . . . He carried the telephone
into the smoking-room, lest he should be tempted to disturb Barbara, and
paced bare-foot up and down, wondering how to inaugurate the new life.
In marrying a Protestant, she would forfeit the money which she had
received under her god-father's will; henceforward he must work and earn
for two. In his safe lay a brown-paper parcel containing the manuscript
of a novel, unopened since the day when Gaisford so contumeliously flung
it back at him. Eric carried the despised book into his bedroom and
began to skim the pages. With his new sense of power, he would so
re-write it that the doctor should eat humble-pie; and there would be a
slice for Manders too. It was no good trying him with another version
of the "Singing-Bird"; but "Mother's Son," which had lain neglected ever
since it was sent back three years before, needed only a word of change
and a touch of polish. October, November, December. . . . Eric would be
ready for America in the New Year.
The next letter was from Agnes, begging him to write occasionally to
Jack; the next from Lady Lane, wondering when he was coming to Lashmar.
A firm of topical photographers respectfully begged leave to send a
representative by appointment to interview Mr. Lane and to enrich their
gallery with a few camera-studies of the house and of the author at
work. The other letters were invitations and charitable appeals.
At ten o'clock he telephoned to ask when he could see Barbara, but was
told that she had not yet been called. After two more unsuccessful
attempts, he sent a note by hand, inviting himself to tea, and spent the
rest of the morning at work on the manuscript of his novel. Shortly
before luncheon his interviewer arrived with an assistant bearing a
camera, and for half an hour the flat was filled with the smoke and
powder of the magnesium flares. Eric submitted sheepishly to being
"discovered" looking (in profile) out of his dining-room window, to
being "interrupted" at his desk (three-quarter face), to being found
taking a moment's respite for thought and a cigarette (full face, with
his back to the smoking-room fire); finally he was dressed up in hat and
coat and shewn to be saying good-bye in the hall. While the assistant
packed up his camera and tripod, Eric allowed himself to be interrogated
on his past and future work, his plans and views of art.
"Have you anything _new_?" asked the interviewer. "I've got all the old
stuff out of '_Who's Who_'."
Eric spoke vaguely of the novel, the play and the course of lectures in
America, remembering the threadbare commonplaces of such illustrated
interviews as he had read; it were fruitless to fancy that he could vary
the form or fact of what was being so industriously scribbled down.
"Nothing expected for some months? I must work up the back stock. I
shall want you to tell me in a minute what _started_ you writing plays.
. . . Now, about your engagement?"
"My engagement?" Eric echoed.
The man nodded and moistened the end of his pencil in anticipation.
"Why, that's what I'm here for! I don't say," he added apologetically,
"that this stuff wouldn't stand by itself--or come in useful, anyway."
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow."
The man looked at him in patient surprise.
"We supply all the pictures for '_The World and His Wife_'," he
explained. "They 'phoned through to know if we could let them have
up-to-date photographs of you and Lady Barbara Neave----"
"But you spoke of an engagement."
"Isn't it true, then?"
"This sort of thing is really intolerable!" Eric cried. "I don't want to
tell other people how to run their business, but in common decency your
firm might wait for an official announcement in '_The Times_' instead of
circulating these rumours----"
"It's only a rumour, then?" said the interviewer blankly, pocketing his
note-book.
As he walked to Berkeley Square, Eric decided that, by telling Barbara
of his encounter, he would annoy her without bringing relief to himself.
The announcement, when it came, would be made with imposing ceremony
after a meeting between his father and Lord Crawleigh, an adjustment of
religious differences and a distressingly material discussion of
settlements. There would be ponderous debates and irritating
disagreements; Barbara and he both needed a respite for recuperation. . . .
"I telephoned three times this morning," said Eric, as he was shewn into
the drawing-room. "I did so want to talk to you! I was so happy I
couldn't sleep."
"I couldn't sleep, either," said Barbara huskily, holding out one hand
and covering her eyes with the other.
"Aren't you going to kiss me?"
"If you like. It's your right now."
Eric let fall her hand and drew back, biting his lip.
"That's not a very pretty thing to say, darling," he murmured.
"I'm sorry. . . . I've been haunted all night. It seemed as if God
_must_ strike me down. . . . And, whenever I fell asleep, Jack was
there, reproaching me, mocking me----"
"He's had his chance," Eric interrupted sharply. "You start absolutely
free."
"You mean he's--rejected me?"
After the tragic talk of God's striking her down for taking His name in
vain, Eric could not attune himself readily to a whimper of wounded
vanity. Barbara's dramatic intensity had hitherto been convincing, and
he had never imagined that she was unhappy because she had offered
herself to a man and he had repelled her.
"I mean it's--all over. You've no reason to reproach yourself, Babs. . . .
I want to talk to you about seeing your father----"
She stopped him with a shudder, and Eric found a difficulty in curbing
his impatience. Trying a fresh cast, he described his latest invitation
to lecture in America. Barbara listened with half her attention,
mechanically agreeing that it would be an experience and a change,
mechanically accepting his figures and wounding him with an indifference
which was made greater by her early love of sharing his triumphs with
him. He hunted through a pile of letters and gave her one in which the
previous occupant of his flat offered generous terms for the remainder
of the lease.
"We must decide some time when we're going to be married," he said, "and
where we're going to live."
"_Please_, Eric!"
He looked at her in amazement and drew slowly away from her side,
walking to the fire-place and resting his forehead on his arm.
"I--don't . . . I don't understand what's the matter," he murmured at
length. "Last night . . . You did it of your own free will, Babs. . . .
And unless you wanted to hurt me more completely and ingeniously than
you've ever succeeded in doing before----"
The girl winced and covered her face with her hands.
"I wouldn't hurt you for the world!" she whispered. "Ah! God! I wish I'd
never met you, I wish I'd never been born! Don't you _see_ that I
couldn't go on taking, taking, taking with both hands--all your
sweetness and gentleness, everything--and giving you nothing in return?
When you said that I'd spoiled your work . . . Didn't I see that I'd
already ruined your health and made you miserable? I _tried_ to make
amends, but it wasn't in my power. I ought never to have given you that
promise!"
"Don't you love me any more, Babs?"
"Oh, yes."
"Well, what have I done since last night?"
"You haven't done anything. . . . It was a letter. . . . You remember
about Jim Loring's ball just before the war----"
Eric drew her head on to his shoulder and kissed her.
"My darling, that's all so long ago! Why distress yourself with it now?"
"Jack was staying with the Knightriders," she persisted. "Kathleen
Knightrider's the only soul who's ever suspected. . . . _I_ never told
her. She's heard that Jack has been sent to Switzerland and she wrote
this morning to--to congratulate me! I tried to make amends to Jack too.
. . . Oh, the mockery of it! All last night I saw the two of you
pulling, pulling . . ."
"He's had his chance," Eric told her again.
"I wish God _had_ struck me down," she whispered.
Eric invented an excuse to leave early, for, when Barbara was not
reproaching herself for the engagement, she affected the abject humility
of a slave whom he had bought for his pleasure. Perhaps she was amusing
herself with a new emotion, perhaps she wanted to keep him alert and
suspended, perhaps she enjoyed the vision of herself torn between the
two men who wanted her more than anything in the world. . . .
2
For the second morning in succession Barbara did not telephone. Eric
waited until noon and then asked her to dine with him.
"I will, if you--want me to," she answered with the new servile
listlessness; and he wondered again whether she was trying to exact some
novel abandonment of adoration or to exhaust him by passive resistance.
"I believe we _have_ people dining," she added.
"Well, choose some other night," he suggested.
"Oh, it doesn't matter. Nothing matters. And I'm going to the country
to-morrow."