"I haven't breathed a word to my people."
He lacked courage to tell them that he was never coming back. It would
be easier if the advertised three months were dragged out to six, the
six to twelve. The shock would be mitigated; and he would escape a
scene.
When the solicitor was gone, Eric stumbled out of bed and unlocked the
safe in his dining-room. There was an infinity of papers to be destroyed
and letters to be written. Lady Maitland attacked him at the
ill-disguised prompting of her own conscience:
"_Why have you neglected us for so long? I hoped to see you at the
theatre last night, but Colonel Grayle told me that he thought you were
ill. I'm so sorry; and I hope it's not serious. When you're able to get
about again, will you telephone and suggest yourself for dinner? I want
to talk to you about your play, which I liked quite enormously._ . . ."
So he was to be lionized again--with no one to share his triumphs. . . .
The next letter was from Mrs. Shelley; the next from Lady Poynter,
proposing a date in the following week and asking him to telephone.
"You can accept all these for me," he told his secretary, "or as many as
don't clash with anything else. I--I've got to say good-bye to a lot of
people before I start," he added unnecessarily. "Keep next Wednesday
free for me; I want to get my people up for that."
If Barbara's engagement was going to be published at once, he felt that
he could not meet Jack after all; at one time it had seemed as though
nothing mattered, but his self-control would break down at such a test.
And Jack's headquarters were presumably still in Hampshire. . . .
There was no letter from Barbara next day; and he searched "_The
Times_" vainly for her name. Lunching with George Oakleigh, he met
Deganway who had neither news to impart nor questions to ask; at dinner
Mrs. Shelley observed with sublime innocence: "You must have been
disappointed not to be able to come the other night. Barbara was there,
and it was she who told me you were ill." The next day brought no
tidings, and Eric had to exert all his strength to keep from writing. It
was inhuman of the girl not to tell him--unless she thought that it
would be easier to bear a month later, when he was three thousand miles
away.
Four days of silence dulled his capacity for suffering; he felt that he
would not disgrace himself even if some one appealed to him as the
leading authority on Barbara's movements and asked for news of this most
romantic engagement. In a week he would be shivering in the danger-zone,
zig-zagging round the north coast of Ireland. The power of attorney only
awaited his signature, the papers were busily announcing his departure,
farewell letters and invitations were pouring in upon him.
There was so much to discuss that he found his family easy to handle.
They dined in Ryder Street; and, what with inspecting the flat (which
seemed now to belong to some other life) and raining down questions of
no importance, they contrived not to ask anything that mattered. Yes, he
was going for at least three months--perhaps more, because it would be a
pity to get as far as San Francisco without going on to Japan. Yes, he
would certainly be grateful for any letters of introduction that his
father could give him. Yes, he had bought himself an outfit that would
last him for years in all climates. . . .
Amid the primitive interrogation Eric looked up suddenly at his parents
and sister. They and the two boys in Salonica and the North Sea were all
that he had; he was fond of them, and they were devoted to him. His
mother was talking as she had done twenty years ago, when she searched
for holes in his underclothes and socks before sending him back to
school; but he once caught her looking at him as though she understood.
. . . His father had roused from an age-long scholar's dream to remember
a friend who was now a professor at Columbia University. Sybil was as
much excited as if she had been going in his place. . . . He would never
see any of them again, after they had been everything to him all these
years! And he was sneaking away without telling them that he would never
come back.
"You'll send us a cable to say that you've arrived safely," Lady Lane
was saying.
Eric promised quickly and harked back to the letters of introduction.
After trying for so long not to think of Barbara, he found that he must
not think of his own family. They were still expecting him back in
April, "when the weather's a bit more settled."
"I only wish you weren't going so soon," said his mother regretfully.
"Geoff's due for leave next month."
"Tell him I was sorry to miss him," Eric answered. "I'm afraid the boat
won't wait for me."
He walked back with them to their hotel and said good-bye in the hall,
explaining that he was unlikely to see them next day. He had promised to
lunch with Manders and to dine with the Poynters; and, though either
engagement might have been cancelled, he could not screw himself up to a
second parting.
It was curious to feel, as he walked home, that he was beginning the
last day of his life in London. Only once more would he unlock the
street door and enter the dimly-lit hall which Barbara had invaded
fifteen months before. . . . In the morning he bade awkward farewell to
his secretary. On his way to luncheon he paused on the steps of the
Thespian, trying to see it as a club and not as one of many places where
Barbara had telephoned to him. . . . Manders, of course, insisted on a
champagne luncheon to wish him Godspeed; at intervals he asked how long
the tour was to be; and Eric wondered whether a suicide or a condemned
man went through this recurrent sense of parting, recurrently spiced
with surprise. He would never sit in the oak-panelled dining-room again,
never see Manders again. . . .
Throughout the ritual of the day he could not grow accustomed to saying
good-bye. It was all so familiar; he never persuaded himself that
everything was over. By an error of judgement he was several minutes
late in reaching Belgrave Square, as when first he dined there. Lady
Poynter protested that she had given up hope of him. Her husband took
him aside to enquire whether he found Gabarnac too sweet, because he had
a bottle on which he would value expert opinion. It was all so like the
night of fifteen months ago that Eric could not believe his passage was
booked and his trunks packed. Lady Poynter began counting her guests
with jerks of a fat, slow forefinger. "Two, three, five, seven, nine,
eleven. . . . Then there's one more. Ah!"
She looked over Eric's shoulder as the door opened and the butler
announced:
"Lady Barbara Neave."
Under the blaze of the chandelier and amid a chorus of "Babs darling!"
"Hullo, Babs," Eric found no difficulty in remaining composed. She was
the more surprised of the two, for, as soon as she caught sight of him,
she turned to Lady Poynter, crying:
"Margaret, you must send him home at once! He's been very ill and he's
no business to be out of _bed_!"
"But he's going to America to-morrow, he was telling us."
For a moment Barbara's face was blank. She recovered quickly and
repeated: "_To-morrow?_ I've simply lost all count of time."
"Including dinner, darling," said Lady Poynter, with a meaning glance at
the clock.
It was all so familiar that Eric's sense of probability would have been
outraged, if he had not been put next to Barbara.
"I'm very glad to see you again, Eric," she whispered: "Dr. Gaisford was
so gloomy about you. . . . How long have you been allowed out?"
"Oh, a week."
"And you never told me? You never wrote or telephoned----"
Eric felt his face stiffening into unamiable lines as he remembered the
agony of the first four days' silence.
"You never wrote or telephoned to me," he interrupted.
"The doctor told me I mustn't. He put me on my honour. I'm not sure that
I didn't really break my word when I sent you those flowers." Her hand
stole out and sought his under the table. "Don't you think it would have
been kind to let me know? Don't you think it's possible I may have been
worrying about you?"
Eric dropped his napkin and picked it up again for an excuse to escape
her hand.
"Isn't it rather late in the day to begin worrying?" he asked. The girl
winced and bit her lip. "I was only a bit overwrought," he added. "Now
I'm rather less overwrought. There was nothing else to tell you."
"About America? I saw it in some paper, but I didn't bother about the
date. I didn't think it necessary. Eric--Eric, you _weren't_ going away
without saying good-bye?"
He turned upon her so suddenly that she was frozen into silence.
"Would _you_ have had anything to say, if you hadn't promised Gaisford
not to communicate with me?"
"The usual things, Eric. I'd have told you what I was doing, I'd have
sent you my love. If you're tired of that, darling----"
"Not _that_, Barbara!"
Her eyes opened wide with distress.
"Eric, what's the matter? What have I done? Mayn't I even call you
'darling' now?"
"_Are_ you being quite honest, Barbara?"
"Thank you, Eric!"
"Have you nothing to tell me since last time?"
She looked at him imperiously and considered her words before speaking.
"The last time we met? Or the last time we corresponded? Which d'you
mean? The last time we corresponded was when your secretary telephoned
to thank me for the flowers. Before that, you sent me a message by her
that you probably wouldn't be well enough to take me to your first
night. . . . I'd have come round the evening before if Dr. Gaisford
hadn't made me promise not to. I've always said that I'd come to you
from the ends of the earth if you were ill. When I heard that you
weren't allowed to see any one----"
"It wasn't as bad as that," Eric interrupted. "Gaisford let me get up
for the first night. I--caught sight of you in the distance. But I left
after the first interval."
4
From the end of the table Lady Poynter was making desperate attempts to
attract Eric's attention.
"Mr. Lane, you're the only person who can tell us this----"
Barbara touched his wrist and nodded past him.
"Margaret's trying to speak to you," she said.
Eric galvanized his attention and turned with a murmur of apology.
"Mr. Lane, is it true that 'Mother's Son' was refused _three--times_?"
Lady Poynter asked. She could not have been more righteously indignant
if she had been judging the three denials of Saint Peter. "I've never
_heard_ of such a thing!"
"It wasn't quite in its present form," Eric explained. "The theme's the
same, but I've rewritten almost every word."
Lady Poynter nodded triumphantly.
"Ah! Then I was right!" she informed her neighbour, and Eric was free to
turn again to Barbara.
"Where had we got to?" he asked, after a moment's embarrassed silence.
"You came to the theatre after all. You saw me. You left after the first
interval," she reminded him fearlessly. "As you seem to be--drawing an
indictment, is that the phrase?--don't you think you'd better go on?"
"There's nothing more to say. Once or twice I wondered whether I should
get home alive; and, on my soul, I prayed the whole time that I
shouldn't. . . . I'm not drawing an indictment. I rather expected to
hear from you. . . . It wasn't easy waiting. . . . As for America, I
didn't see how it could possibly interest you. . . ." He broke off and
whispered to himself, "God! what those days of waiting were like! I
should have thought that, after what _you'd_ been through . . . in
common humanity----"
"And if I had nothing to tell you?" she interrupted.
For a moment Eric did not understand her. For all her self-possession,
there were shadows under her eyes, and she was haggard as on the night
when they first met. Jack's appearance, then, and their conversation
together had made no difference . . . no difference one way or the
other; she had not telephoned because there was nothing to tell him.
"I don't think I've anything more to say, Babs."
An arm interposed itself between them, and he looked down to see what
was being put before him. To his surprise they had only reached the
fish. He seemed to have been dining for an eternity!
"D'you care to hear what happened?" she asked.
"What d'you think I'm made of?" he muttered.
Barbara began eating her fish and telling her story at the same time. It
was short, and she gave it in jerky little sentences. George Oakleigh
had telephoned to say that he had two stalls for "Mother's Son" and
would be delighted if she would dine and go with him. . . . They arrived
and saw a certain number of friends. . . . At the end of the first act
George went out to smoke a cigarette. . . . She had just begun talking
to Gerry Deganway when she looked up and caught Jack's eye. . . . They
were both so much surprised that they became praeternaturally
natural. . . .
"I said: 'I've not seen you for a long time. I heard you were home.' He
said: 'I got back a fortnight ago.' I asked him how he was and whether
he'd had a very awful time in Germany. . . . And he laughed and said he
was glad, on the whole, that it was all over, but that he was a fair
German scholar now--or something of that kind--and he'd never have taken
the trouble to learn another language if it hadn't been for the war. . . .
I think he didn't find it easy to slip away; and I hate people leaning
over me, when they're talking, so I asked him to sit down till George
came back. _Then_ the only thing we talked about was his being wounded
and taken prisoner. I'd heard it all before, of course, but I felt I
couldn't bear it if we both stopped talking. . . . Then George came
along and shook hands. . . . And a moment later Jack went back to his
place. You see, there wasn't very much to tell you."
"But is that all?"
"Absolutely all," she sighed.
Eric lapsed into silence, wishing that his brain were not half
paralyzed. Then he glanced round the table, counting their numbers.
"Say you're too tired to play bridge, Babs," he begged. "Or say you want
to talk to me before I go away; we're such common property here that no
one will be surprised. It's our last chance; we may never meet
again----"
"But, Eric----?"
"Yes! . . . I haven't told even my own people. This is not blackmail,
because I arranged it all before I saw you; I never expected to see you
again after that night at the theatre. I was just trying to save
something out of the wreckage. . . . I'm going away nominally for three
months, but I'm not coming back. I could have got on happily enough, if
you'd never come into my life; but, once you were there, I couldn't get
rid of you. I couldn't go on living in England with you half a mile
away, carved out of my life . . . meeting you, seeing you--and knowing
that it was all over. I've looked on you as my wife; if you ran away
from me and lived with another man, I couldn't keep on a flat next to
yours. . . . I felt it at the theatre; I felt I must clear out; I
couldn't sink back to any passionless friendship. So I arranged to go
away and stay away. After three months I shall say that I'm going for a
holiday in South America--or Japan. I've been moving quickly the last
few days. This morning--and this afternoon--I knew that everything I was
doing was for the last time. And since I've seen you----"
He looked round apprehensively, fearful that he was being overheard.
"You're going away like this from your people? But they love you, Eric!
They're so proud of you! You'll break their hearts!"
"I shouldn't have done it eighteen months ago--before you took my
education in hand," he answered bitterly. "I've given myself heart _and_
soul to you."
He hardly cared now whether the servants or his neighbours heard him,
and Barbara had to press his knee to restrain him.
"Then will you do something for me?" she asked.
"What is it?"
"I want you to come back. Come back in three months, when they expect
you."
"And then?"
"I'm not asking for myself! I'm asking for them. You _can't_ be so
wicked! It's not like you; I don't know you when you talk like this.
You'd break their hearts!"
"I don't know that this comes well from you, Babs."
"Nothing comes well from me. But, if I can't undo the harm I've done, I
may at least stop adding to it. If you don't come back . . . When it's
too late, you'll never forgive yourself."
He shook his head and looked at her defiantly.
"You should have thought of that when we first met in this room. Only
one thing will bring me back or keep me from going."
"Dear Eric, don't start that again!"
"Thanks! It doesn't amuse _me_ to be strung up and cut down and strung
up again. . . . I was facing things--till Lady Poynter shewed the
devilish irony to arrange this meeting."
"Won't you come back for my sake?" she whispered.
"To be told that you're going to marry some one else?"
"You may not be told that. I don't know."
Eric was filled with a blaze of anger; he had to pause long before he
could be sure of his voice.
"You _still_ don't want to let me go? The pathetic invocation of my
mother----"
Barbara tried to speak and then turned away with a helpless shrug. Eric
woke from a trance to a thunder of opposing voices. Lady Poynter was
retailing the secret history of the latest political crisis and the
fall of the Coalition Government. His wheezing, well-fed host was
attacking the Board of Trade with ill-disguised venom. "They've cut down
imports to such an extent," he was saying, "that in six months' time you
won't be able to get a cigar fit to smoke. I went to my man this
morning--he's a fellow I've dealt with all my life, and my father before
me--he promised me _half_ a cabinet--and then made a favour of it!"
Another voice enquired in a drawl: "What is it exactly that you're
lecturing on, Mr. Lane?"
Barbara's head was still turned from him, and he resigned himself to the
reshuffle, noticing with surprise that a finger-bowl had been placed in
front of him. He could not remember having eaten anything since the
fish. And he had been drinking the rather sickly Gabarnac without
tasting it.
"You asked my opinion of this wine, sir," he said to Lord Poynter,
belatedly attentive; in a moment he was swallowed up in a discussion
which dragged its way through dessert until Lady Poynter pushed back her
chair and rustled majestically to the door.
She was hardly outside the room before his host sidled conspiratorially
into the empty chair next him.
"Do you know anything of still champagne?" he enquired darkly, as though
he were giving a pass-word.
"I've _drunk_ it, of course," answered Eric.
"Of course?" Lord Poynter echoed. "My dear friend, not one man in twenty
thousand of your generation has even _heard_ of still champagne. . . ."
It was all wonderfully like that first night fifteen months before. Lord
Poynter explained for the tenth time that he never allowed coffee to be
brought in until the port wine had circulated for twenty minutes. Not
for the first time he apologized for his brandy, retailed the tragedy of
the last bottle of Waterloo and, like a sluggard dragging himself from
bed, reluctantly moved the adjournment.
They arrived in the drawing-room to find three tables set for bridge.
Though he had asked her to talk to him, Eric was relieved to find
Barbara already playing; he had nothing more to say. There was nothing,
indeed, to keep a man whose train left Euston before noon next day. He
waited till Lady Poynter was dummy and then asked her to excuse him.
"Well, I expect you've a great deal to do," she said, shaking hands
reluctantly.
"Oh, Eric, aren't you going to take me home?"
Barbara threw out the question casually, but she found time to look up
and beseech him with her eyes.
"Are you going to be long?" he asked in the same tone.
"They're a game and sixteen. If you'll smoke _one_ cigarette . . ."
In the next hand Barbara was dummy. After spreading out her cards, she
looked round the room, picked up a review and two library novels from a
side table and, after a cursory glance, walked to the piano. The
bridge-players looked up, as she began to sing; an impatient, "It's you
to play, Lady Poynter," passed unheeded; and, one after another, they
laid down their hands.
"_One fine day, we'll notice
A thread of smoke arising on the sea
In the far horizon,
And then the ship appearing;--
Then the trim white vessel
Glides into the harbour, thunders forth her cannon.
See you? He is coming!
I do not go to meet him. Not I. I stay
Upon the brow of the hillock and wait, and wait
For a long time, but never weary
Of the long waiting.
From out the crowded city,
There is coming a man--
A little speck in the distance, climbing the hillock.
Can you guess who it is?
And when he's reached the summit
Can you guess what he'll say?
He will call 'Butterfly' from the distance.
I, without answering,
Hold myself quietly concealed,
A bit to tease him, and a bit so as not to die
At our first meeting: and then, a little troubled,
He will call, he will call:
'Dear baby-wife of mine, dear little orange-blossom!'
The names he used to call me when he came here_. . . ."
"My dear, why don't you use that beautiful voice of yours more?" asked
Lady Poynter, as she ended.
Barbara's face was in shadow, but Eric could see that she was looking
across the room at him.
"Oh, not one person in ten million ever wants me to sing," she laughed,
as she came back to the table.
Five minutes later she opened her purse, pushed a note across to Lady
Poynter and came up to Eric with a smile of gratitude.
"I hope I haven't been long," she said. "Shall we see if we can find a
taxi?"
5
They crossed Belgrave Square and reached Hyde Park Corner in silence.
Then Eric felt a drag at his arm, and Barbara whispered: "I'm so tired!"
"I'm afraid there's not a taxi in sight," he said. "Shall we go by tube
to Dover Street?"
"We may meet a taxi. Eric, d'you remember the first time----"
He shook free of her arm, as though it were eating into his flesh.
"You felt the evening wouldn't be complete without that--after
'Butterfly'?" he asked.
Barbara stood still, swaying slightly until he caught her wrist.
"I'm shutting my eyes and thinking of the past, the time when we were
happy," she gasped. "I can't face the present."
"You can face it as philosophically as I can," he answered. "If love
were stronger than vanity . . . I don't blame you. I only blame myself
because I was fool enough to believe a woman's word, fool enough to
think that, if I gave her everything, she might give me something in
return; that, if I shewed her enough magnanimity, I might shame her into
being magnanimous. I was hopelessly uneducated in those days."
Barbara held up her hands as though each word struck her in the face.
"D'you _want_ to part like this?" she whispered. "Wouldn't you rather
remember the times when I came to you and cried--and you made me happy?
I came to you when I was ill; and you just kissed me or stroked my
forehead, and I was better. And once or twice, when you were ill, I came
to you and laid your head on my breast. . . . Wouldn't you rather
remember _that_, darling?"
"If I could only forget it, I shouldn't regret so bitterly the day when
we first met."
She swayed again and caught hold of the wooden standard of a porter's
rest. There was still no taxi in sight; Eric felt her pulse and dived
into his pocket for a flask. He had never before noticed the rest of its
inscription in honour of R. A. Slaney, for twenty-six years Member of
Parliament for Shrewsbury. . . .
"Take a sip of this," he ordered.
She drank obediently and thanked him with her eyes.
"I'm better. The first time we met I was fainting in the train. Before I
knew you. . . . And I loved you and dreamed of your love for me. I used
to hear your voice. . . . No one will ever look after me as you've done;
no one will ever understand or love or make allowances for me----"
As he restored the flask to his pocket, Eric saw that the time was
within a few minutes of midnight; in less than twenty-four hours he
would be at Liverpool; in less than twenty-four minutes he would have
lost the thing that was dearest to him in life.
"Barbara, you've seen Jack," he said. "He had his chance; he neglected
it. There's the answer we've been waiting for all these weary months. I
don't want to worry you when you're ill, but I can't charge my own
conscience with the knowledge that I've left undone anything which will
stop the present tragedy."
Though she opened her eyes slowly, there was now no trace of faintness
or exhaustion.
"He never had a chance! Eric, if you'll think for one moment--in a
crowded theatre, with people listening all round----"