"I'm supposed to be ill," she answered and hung up the receiver before
he could say anything more.
Eric returned to his work, affecting unconsciousness of her alternating
indifference and hostility. In the afternoon Agnes Waring telephoned to
say that she was unexpectedly in London and would like to have tea with
him. He welcomed her cordially, only hoping that she would not stay long
enough to clash with Babs, and, guiltily reminded of her letter, put
aside his work and began writing to Jack. Once or twice, as he paused to
fill his pipe, the old feeling of duplicity came back, as on the Sundays
when he walked home from Red Roofs in jubilation after Agnes had told
him with her unchanging composure that there was still no news of her
brother. And now he was writing a gossipy, facetious letter. . . . Eric
tore the envelope in two--and then hesitated. Jack had been given his
opportunity, and he had not taken it.
Agnes did not arrive until nearly six o'clock and then came attended by
a young officer.
"You remember Mr. Benyon," she said. "We brought him to dine at the
Mill-House last year. He hadn't seen 'The Bomb-Shell,' so we went to the
_matinee_ to-day."
"Jolly good, if I may say so," murmured Benyon. "Hope you don't mind my
buttin' in like this? Agnes said----"
"I obviously couldn't come here alone, Dick," she interrupted; and Eric
wondered whether they would have left before Barbara came alone to dine
with him.
He wondered too what intimacy Agnes had reached with this young man who
was beginning to recur in her life and conversation. They had attained
the Christian name milestone without passing it; and she seemed to have
brought him as a challenge. Whenever Eric flagged in attention, Agnes
brought Benyon up like an army of reserve; whenever Benyon fancied that
he had won a position, she rounded on her own reinforcements and
admitted Eric to a private intimacy of conversation about Jack. It was a
new part for her to play, but no woman seemed able to resist the
intoxication of having two men interested in her at the same time. If
only she knew that his interest had died more than a year ago, on the
night when Barbara sat in that room, on that sofa. . . . Perhaps she did
know. He caught her looking at him with an expression which changed
almost before their eyes met. Was it desperation, defiance, an
indifferent resolve to give him one last chance--or his own
hypercritical fancy?
They were still talking when Barbara was announced.
"Gracious! Is it _eight_?" Agnes cried, looking at her watch. "I thought
it was only seven. We must fly. Dick's taking me to a _revue_."
"Won't you wait for a cocktail?" Eric asked. "By the way, I don't think
you know Lady Barbara Neave. Miss Waring, Babs. Mr. Benyon."
The two girls shook hands, and Agnes began searching for her gloves and
purse, hurriedly declining Eric's invitation.
"I used to know your brother quite well before the war," said Barbara.
"I was so thankful to hear your good news."
Agnes looked up with a quick smile.
"We never _quite_ lost hope," she said.
"Eric told me that you and your people had been out to see him in
Switzerland. How did you find him?"
The smile died away in wistfulness.
"Well, he's alive, and that's the great thing," Agnes answered. "The
doctors out there don't seem to think that he'll ever be able to do much
work with his head again; he'll probably have to give up the bar and
live out of doors. You can understand that, when a man's just begun to
get a practice together----"
"But is that quite certain?" Barbara interrupted.
"N-no. But it seems probable. There's a report that some of the bad
cases are going to be sent home. Then we shall see."
Eric watched the faces of the two girls. Barbara's expressed nothing
more than the conventional sympathy of one stranger hearing of another's
misfortune; a few months earlier Agnes had not known that Jack and
Barbara were even acquainted.
"How soon do you expect him?" asked Barbara.
"Oh, I don't think anything's been decided yet. And you know how long
these things take. . . . Eric, if I'd had any idea how late it was . . .!"
He accompanied her to the door and returned to find Barbara still
standing, still in her cloak. The flicker of animation which she had
presented on meeting Agnes had died down, and she was again the sport of
man and the plaything of fate.
"I like her, Eric," she remarked thoughtfully. "Why don't you marry her?
Any one can see she's in love with you."
"You're the only person in the world I want to marry," he answered.
Barbara's face twisted in a spasm of pain.
"God! How it hurts when you say that! Eric, I shall make you miserable
and be miserable myself! I love you; you know I love you! But I don't
want to marry you. Why don't you forget me? Go away----"
"Forget you!" Eric gripped her by the shoulders. "What d'you think would
be left, if I lost you?"
Her eyes opened wide with wonder.
"You can't love me as much as that, Eric!"
"I love you so much that I'd sooner have an air-raid to-night and a bomb
on my head here, now, than lose you! You're the whole world to me!"
She shook her head miserably and without hope of flattering reassurance.
"I could have killed myself when you told me that I'd destroyed your
power of work," she whispered. "And to-night, when that girl said that
Jack might never be able to work again . . . It's what I should feel, if
we married and I couldn't bear children! I should be incomplete,
useless!"
"But _you_'re not responsible."
"I might make things easier. . . ."
So compassion was coming to reinforce or supplant vanity. . . . Eric
felt that he knew Barbara's moods in advance. Lady Knightrider--a curse
on her name--had started by setting every nerve on edge; the sight of
Agnes Waring--with Jack's eyes, hair and voice--had completed her
discomfiture; and Barbara had been morbidly drawing one unhappy picture
after another. Jack was incapacitated; and, with his pride, he would
never win through pity what he had failed to win on merit. Incapacitated
or not, Jack was a pauper; and, with his fantastic honour, he would
regard himself as an outcast from Barbara's society.
"Even if he can't go back to the bar," said Eric at length, "his father
will have no difficulty in getting him a job. Lord Waring could take him
on as his agent."
"Oh, I never thought he'd starve! But it must be such a disappointment."
"Well, the war's been such a mix-up that seven men out of ten will
change their careers, when they come back. . . . Babs . . . do you care
for Jack as much as that?"
She looked up quickly with a gleam of hope in her eyes.
"Are you going to--forget my promise?"
"No! I asked whether you cared for Jack as much as all that."
Barbara shook her head in bewilderment.
"I've given you my heart, Eric. But I owe Jack my soul."
Behind the neat phrasing of the professional trafficker in emotions,
Eric felt that she was trying to weary him of their forty-eight hours'
engagement. . . .
3
At the beginning of November Eric went to Lashmar for a long week-end.
After the first days of his engagement he had hardly seen or heard
anything of Barbara. She was presumably at Crawleigh Abbey, but for a
week she answered no more than one letter out of three; after that, with
a sense that he could do nothing right and that they were fretting each
other's nerves, he ceased to correspond and was trying to absorb and
exhaust himself with work. Now his novel was in the agent's hand, and
"Mother's Son" had been sent to Manders.
As he dawdled before a book-stall at Waterloo, Eric's eye was caught by
"_The World and His Wife_" contents' bill, which announced, with other
attractions, an "Illustrated Interview with Mr. Eric Lane." There had
not been time for him to receive the article from his news-cutting
agency, and he bought a copy to read in the train. The pictures were
well reproduced, and he was by now so hardened to the perverse
inaccuracy and genial blatancy of the letter-press that he hardly
blushed at the aspirations which were attributed to him, until his
attention was arrested in mid-paragraph by Barbara's name. Collecting
himself and glancing almost guiltily round the somnolent carriage, he
turned back to the beginning.
"_Rumour has been busy with the names of Mr. Lane and of Lady Barbara
Neave, only daughter of the Marquess of Crawleigh. No official
announcement has been made, but the young people have been going about
together a good deal lately; some of our readers may have seen them at
the PREMIERE of 'The Bomb-Shell.' The Stage has of recent years
surrendered so much of its beauty and talent to the Peerage that it is
high time for the Peerage to make this romantic return to the Stage. . . .
Mr. Lane's advice to budding playwrights is reminiscent of Mr.
Punch's famous advice to those about to marry--'Don't.' Though the
'Divorce' was his first play to be produced, it was not the first that
he had written; like most authors, he had to buy experience._ . . ."
There was nothing in the rest of the article to incriminate him, but the
offending paragraph was enough in itself. Guiltily Eric looked round a
second time. Two of his fellow-passengers, slumbering with mouths agape,
were clutching "_The World and His Wife_" to their stomachs; it was the
one periodical of later date than "_Punch_" and the monthly reviews
which his parents took in at the Mill-House. Saturday was made eventful
by its appearance; even Sir Francis interested himself in the full-page
studies of actresses and _debutantes_, the house-party groups and
snapshots of celebrities in the Park. . . .
As he climbed into the car Eric was careful to let Sybil see that he was
carrying the paper in his hand. She had scarcely wormed her way out of
the traffic and shot free along the Melton road before she nodded
towards the bulging strap of his despatch-box.
"Is that true, Ricky?"
"Is what true?"
"That you're engaged to that woman?"
"Does the paper say so?" Eric enquired loftily. "By the way, Barbara
Neave is a great friend of mine, and I don't very much care about
hearing her described as 'that woman. . . .' I think the paper only said
that 'rumour' had 'been busy with' our 'names.' Rumour's been damnably
busy; it won't leave us alone!"
His sister was silent for some moments.
"I hope to _Heaven_ you're not going to make a fool of yourself with
her," she exclaimed at length. "She'll wear you out, spoil your work,
make you bankrupt in a month----"
"Isn't this rather sweeping about some one you've never even met?" Eric
interposed gently.
"You take such jolly good care that we shouldn't meet her," Sybil
answered at a tangent.
While he dressed for dinner Lady Lane came into his bedroom, more
diplomatic but no whit less insistent. As his mother, she was prepared
to make the best of everything and to suppress her own feelings; but, if
Eric had committed a crime, he could not have felt greater distaste in
putting her off with half-truths.
"You'll tell us--when there's anything to tell?" begged his mother, as
they went down to dinner; and Eric felt that he might have saved his
elaborate prevarications for a more gullible audience. Sir Francis made
no direct allusion throughout the week-end, but, as they sat over their
wine on the first night, he enquired spasmodically how old Eric was, how
much money he had made during the last year and what literary ventures
he had in contemplation.
It was a relief to walk over to Red Roofs next day and have tea with
Agnes Waring and her father. For an hour he was spared even indirect
references to the unhappy interview, though in his over-sensitive
condition he fancied that Agnes was unwontedly frigid in manner, as
though a new barrier had been placed between them. Conversation centred
about her brother. Humanly speaking, he would be released from
Switzerland within a few weeks and would come either to Paris or London;
he was, of course, debarred from active service, but the War Office
would no doubt test his capabilities of health and brain either in
Whitehall or at the Ministere de la Guerre. Eric could count on seeing
him almost any day--in England, or, if he could invent a mission, in
Paris.
Only when she had walked through the garden to send him on his way
across the fields did Agnes touch on the offending article. They were
standing on opposite sides of a sun-dial at the end of a fruit-walk; and
both were recalling the earlier Sundays when Eric had asked with
sympathetically lowered voice: "No news of Jack, I suppose?"
"You're looking as if you wanted a holiday," Agnes volunteered.
"I've been rather worried lately," Eric answered vaguely.
"Not about that----" She looked at him and moved round, slipping her
hand through his arm. "_I_ shouldn't worry about a thing like that!
She's so well-known that the papers are on to her like cats on a mouse.
. . . I liked her that night I met her, Eric."
"It makes my relations with her rather difficult," he laughed.
"But all you've got to do is not to meet her!" Agnes explained in a tone
of convincing reason.
"She's--_one_ of the greatest friends I've got," he said.
Agnes rubbed gently at the tarnished motto on the dial.
"That makes it rather difficult, of course," she said at length.
And then it seemed easiest for him to shake hands and walk away without
adding anything.
His family by itself on one side, Agnes by herself on the other would
not have spurred Eric to action. He was precipitated by the
felicitations of an almost complete stranger in the train on Monday
morning and held to his course by a succession of congratulatory notes
and telephone messages.
"_I don't know_," he wrote to Barbara on reaching home, "_whether you
have seen this week's '_World and His Wife_.' There's a rather broad
hint at our engagement, and I'm receiving congratulations. Isn't this a
golden opportunity for publishing the news?_"
Barbara's reply was tuned to an uncompromising note which Eric had met
but once before--at the beginning of his last illness, when he had
threatened to go away from her and the threat had misfired; when, too,
he--"one of our conquerors"--had broken down and cringed to her; and
she, with drawn cheeks and leaden eyes, had laid his head on her bosom
and caressed him, not as a conqueror or a lover, but as a tired, sick
child.
"_I am so very miserable_," she wrote. "_Sometimes I could almost wish
to die--just to get us all out of this terrible tangle. You'd be
happier--after a time, when you'd got over the first feeling of loss and
loneliness; and, however lonely and unhappy you'd be without me, it
would be nothing to the misery I should bring you, if we were foolish
enough to marry. Let me be your devoted, your very loving, very grateful
friend! If you try to marry me, you'll be marrying my name, my voice, my
clothes, my body; you won't be marrying me; you'll waste your divine
love on a woman whose soul is at the other end of the world. Whatever
happens, I must do you a hideous wrong._"
Eric read the letter three times and left it unanswered.
A very little more of this erotic battledore-and-shuttlecock would send
them both out of their minds. It was a mistake to write, when both
needed a holiday. He telephoned to his agent and walked to Covent Garden
for a consultation about the lecturing-tour in America.
"I'm worn out, I must have a complete change," said Eric. "And I want to
start at once."
Grierson was surprised out of his habitual placidity by the nervous
vehemence of Eric's manner.
"You'll need a month or two to prepare your lectures," he pointed out.
"You can begin making the arrangements immediately. London's getting on
my nerves rather. Three months in the country, three months out
there--oh, the war may be over by then. . . . I'm sick of England. . . .
If the war's still going on, I shall stay away and go on to Japan.
You'll fix that, Grierson?"
He jumped up restlessly and was starting for the door when his agent
recalled him.
"Are you in a hurry?" he asked. "There are one or two things I want to
talk to you about. Rather good news," he added. "Staines have accepted
your novel on our terms. I had a fight over the advance, but your name
carried you through."
Eric was not interested in the figures. He was recalling the mood in
which he had sent the manuscript to Grierson, when he was working under
inspiration. He had grudged the hours wasted on sleep and food when he
might have been working for Barbara.
"I seem to have more money than I know what to do with," he answered
shortly. "By the way, has Manders given tongue yet about the play?"
"'Mother's Son'? Yes, I wrote you last night. Didn't you get my letter?
Oh, he's quite enthusiastic about it. He suggests a few small
changes----"
"Manders would," Eric rejoined from habit rather than resentment. He did
not care if he never wrote another play; he did not care if they
returned to him battered and dog's-eared after months of delay and
desultory travel--as in the old days. Manders might cut the thing about
to the top of his vulgar Philistine bent.
"He wants to begin rehearsing at once," Grierson went on slowly. "And
the 'Divorce' is being revived at the Emperor's. You'll have three plays
running in London at the same time."
"I'm not going to stay in England to please Manders," Eric interrupted.
"He'd like to have a talk with you about it before you leave London,"
said Grierson.
Eric caught himself yawning. It was such futility to discuss a play in
which he had lost all interest.
On his return, he yawned again over his letters. It was futile to hear
from people in whom he had lost all interest, though a Swiss stamp and a
hand-writing which he had almost forgotten quickened the beating of his
heart.
"_My dear Eric_," he read.
"_Your letter was a joy to me! Please go on writing. You cannot imagine
how home-sick I feel. I want the smell of London again, I want to hear
people talking my own language and I want to see 'em in bulk, drifting
slowly down the Strand from the Temple. Do you remember the old days
when we lived together in Pump Court? I want to go and lunch at the club
again and have a little dinner at the Berkeley, say, and go on to a
theatre, decently dressed with other people decently dressed too.
There's a chance--one lives on hope from day to day--that I may be sent
home; I don't seem to be getting any better here: all goes well for a
time, and then I get such a head-ache as I would not sell for the minted
wealth of the world. Of course, that makes work of any kind rather a
problem, and I see myself looking out for a job which I can do at my own
convenience, when I feel up to it. The bar doesn't look particularly
hopeful, if I'm unable to last out a long case or if I can't appear at
all; I'm afraid my standing's hardly good enough to convince any one if
I say I've got a case in another court. I think you'll have to expound
to me the whole art of writing plays; that's the sort of thing for my
one-hour-on-and-six-hours-off condition._
"_You're such a celebrity nowadays that I suppose you simply won't look
at your humble friends! I saw your first thing the last time I was
home--it seems like the Dark Ages now, before my little sojourn in
Mittel-Europa. I imagine you're sick of hearing it praised, especially
by people who don't know anything about it, but I thought it was an
amazingly good play. The moment I was within range of English
papers--this was before I got your letter--I went through the
advertisements to see if you were still 'drawing all London' (I believe
that's the phrase) and found that yet another was going very strong. You
seem to have struck oil. The best of good luck to you._
"_There's really nothing to tell you about this place. I believe you
know Chateau d'Oex; well, there's a little colony of British prisoners
of war here, some more knocked about than others, but all pretty glad to
be out of Hunland. The Swiss gave us a great reception, and we're
allowed pretty fair liberty, though we can't wander at large over the
whole of Switzerland. The War Office is very busy trying to start
industries out here to keep the men employed and to give training to the
unskilled so that they'll have something to do when they're discharged.
You may remember that before I was called, I spent a year with a firm of
chartered accountants, so I'm supposed to know something of
book-keeping. I don't put a very high price on my service, however,
because my attendance is rather erratic._
"_I suppose it's out of the question for you to come here? Yet a holiday
would do you good, I'm sure. If you can't manage it, we must wait till
the end of the war or till I'm sent back. And then I dine with
you--sumptuously--and make you take me to the latest of your popular
successes._
"_Write again, old man. Your letter did me no end of good._
"_Ever yours_
"_Jack Waring._"
Eric read the letter twice and then locked it in a drawer. It was
characteristic of the writer in that he said hardly anything of himself.
That might have been expected, and there was no need to be frightened by
the hand-writing. A moment later he unlocked the drawer and enclosed
the letter in a note to Barbara, reminding her that he had long ago
promised to let her have any news that came to him. The promise was
before their engagement; but the letter would shew her that Jack was
capable of writing.
A week later Jack wrote again.
"_I've been shifted to Paris, no longer a prisoner of war, but a more or
less free man. I could probably get discharged to-morrow, if I liked,
but the army does pay me SOMETHING, and I haven't yet found anything
else that will._
"_For the last fortnight I've been doing a turn of French-Without-Tears
as an interpreter at the MINISTERE DE LA GUERRE. There was so little
work to do that the job suited me rather well. Alas! it suited equally
well certain others who had a better claim to it, and I'm being
transferred to England next week with a vague promise of some light duty
at the War Office. The best thing about the new arrangement is that I
shall be at home and shall have a chance of seeing you. 'Mr. Eric Lane,
the well-known dramatist and author, in his charming Ryder Street
residence.' As you probably know, the papers have been full of you; the
gaping world now knows to the last inch of your benevolent smile exactly
how you work and smoke a cigarette and dress and have your pyjamas laid
out. If the photographs are at all good, you seem to have got rather a
comfortable billet. Talking of which, if you hear of any cheap and handy
rooms within a hundred miles of Whitehall, you might keep me in mind.
People out here tell me that London's rather congested._ . . ."
There was a chance, Eric reflected, that Jack might have glanced at the
pictures in "_The World and His Wife_" without troubling to read the
letter-press. It was so unlikely as not to be worth entertaining. That
he had read of the rumoured engagement was as certain as that he made no
comment upon it.
Whether he had seen it or not was trivial. All this pernickety analysis
was flooded by the overwhelming fact that Jack was coming home. Germany,
Switzerland, Paris, London; nearer and nearer. Within seven days he
might be taking train for Crawleigh--to shew what was left of him and to
ask whether Barbara wished to withdraw her promise. Within six days she
might be begging to be set free, appealing to Eric's love and
magnanimity. . . .
He determined that, if they were to play battledore-and-shuttlecock with
their capability for self-sacrifice, he would strike the first blow and
stand ready to see what return she would make.
"_Darling Babs, it's essential that I should see you for a moment_," he
wrote. "_And that as soon as possible. Are you going to be in London
next week? If so, please fix your own time. If not, what about this? I'm
going down to Lashmar for the week-end and, if you can meet me for
thirty seconds at Crawleigh station, I'll come straight on to you on
Saturday and then get a train back to Winchester. I can't come to the
Abbey, obviously, or every one would want to know what was up. The
business in hand won't take a moment to discuss, but it's ABSOLUTELY
IMPERATIVE that we should discuss it at once._"
As he posted the letter, Eric was conscious that he could have said all
that was necessary without a meeting, but he knew well that it was far
easier for her to be collected and valiant on paper and at a distance.
If Barbara chose to accept his sacrifice, she should do it in his
presence, looking into his eyes.