The Education of Eric Lane Part 22

"Ah, don't tell me not to cry, Eric! I've kept it down, I _have_ been brave, but it's sending me mad!"

She was sliding limply off the chair, as though her bones had been broken in company with her pride and resistance. He led her to a sofa and knelt beside her, sometimes gently chafing her hands, sometimes drying the slow tears which rolled down her cheeks. Once or twice she tried to speak, but he hushed her to silence.

"Darling, you must stop now," he commanded as the tears ceased and she began to sob drily. "When I said 'Don't----,' I was going to say 'Don't stop crying, don't mind me; it will do you good.' But you'll make yourself ill, if you go on." He caught her wrist and gripped it. "Put your feet up, because I'm going to push the sofa to the fire. . . . Your shoulders are frozen. . . . Now I'm going to bring you the lobster. . . .

And you haven't had anything to drink yet."

After a single weak protest she entered into the spirit of his fireside picnic and by the time that he had seated himself cross-legged on the floor she was laughing at his apprehensive care in keeping his trousers from losing their crease. When coffee was brought in, he gave her a cigarette and raised her hand clumsily to his lips.

"I'm sorry I've been unsympathetic, Babs." There was no answer, and he could see her staring into the fire with eyes that were covered with a film of tears. "I _didn't_ understand, I thought you were ill and over-excited, or I'd have bitten out my tongue before I snubbed you and told you that you were a nuisance. Will you forgive me?"

The film of tears gathered into s.h.i.+ning drops and rolled mournfully down her cheeks.

"As if _I_ had anything to forgive. . . . You'll never speak to me again, if I tell you. And if I don't tell you . . . If I don't tell you, I could never look you in the eyes."

Barbara stared at the fire, and for a moment it seemed as though she were again making confession at the judgement-seat of G.o.d.

"I met Jack two years ago," she began hurriedly. "He'd been saying things that hurt me, so I arranged to stay with the Pentyres when he was there and I made him fall in love with me. One night at Ross House he asked me to marry him. I . . . I don't defend myself; I'd never dreamed of marrying him. Even then it wouldn't have been so bad, if I'd told him the truth, if I'd admitted that I'd led him on to punish him. Instead . . . I looked for some excuse which would save _my_ face; I said 'But you aren't a Catholic, are you?' I never saw him again till my cousin Jim Loring's ball just before the war. . . ."

At the memory of their meeting Barbara shuddered until she could not speak. There had been no hint of warning; she was in the drawing-room after dinner when Lady Knightrider's car arrived from Raglan, and Jack put his head in at the door to ask if he might have supper with her.

"I asked him what he'd been doing with himself all the summer," Barbara went on with a spurt. "He said, 'I've just been received into your Church.'"

She paused and stared in terror round the room as though it were changing under her eyes into the haunted banqueting-hall of Loring Castle.

"I couldn't _speak_. . . . The music stopped, I heard people clapping, it went on again. Then there were voices on the stairs, and Jack asked me again to marry him. I said I couldn't. He wanted to know why. Then . . . then I _had_ to tell him I wasn't in love with him. Then he saw everything."

Barbara looked up quickly, with her hand to her forehead as though to ward off a blow. It was then that Jack stared at her, through her, into her soul; and his eyes had followed her ever since. At first she braced herself to meet his attack, but it was not the occasion for conventional recriminations. If a man's soul could be imperilled, she had handed Jack's over to d.a.m.nation. G.o.d . . . h.e.l.l . . . Immortal souls. . . . She had not believed in them till that moment, but there was always that eerie hundredth chance that they existed.

Eerie. . . .

Her attention was captured by the word and wandered away in search of a missing line.

"_It's like those eerie stories nurses tell, Of how some actor on a stage played Death, With pasteboard crown, sham orb and tinselled dart, And called himself the monarch of the world; Then, going in the tire-room afterward, Because the play was done, to s.h.i.+ft himself, Got touched upon the sleeve familiarly, The moment he had shut the closet door, By Death himself._"

Jack had sat silent and motionless, too much dazed even to rise and leave her. There was a sound of more voices in the hall, and Charlie Framlingham waltzed into the room with Jack Summertown and subsided at a table by the door. They had hardly begun supper when George Oakleigh entered to say that war had changed from speculation to probability and that officers were being mobilized. Then at last Jack roused, and she had only a moment for making amends.

"Jack was talking about applying for a commission," she went on. "I went out on to the terrace, I wanted to _think_. . . . It was no good _apologizing_. . . . They got into the car, one after another. I was still trying to think. Jack came down the steps. . . . And then I saw that there was only one reparation I _could_ make; I had to offer myself to him, even if he hit me in the mouth. . . . I didn't care about my vanity now; I called out to him, but the others were making such a noise. . . . The car started, I was blinded by the head-lights. When I could see again, there was only a little pin-point of red light. I shouted, ran. . . . Then I came back. When every one else had gone to bed, I told Jim. And I thought he'd have killed me. . . . And then I swore solemnly that Jack should have me if he wanted me. I wrote to him, and he never answered my letter. I tried to see him. And now . . ."

Eric rose and stood by the fire, resting his head on his hand.

"You offered the only reparation in your power," he said at length.

"What am I to do?" she asked dizzily. "I want peace! . . . I told him that, whatever happened, however long the war went on, I should always be here, always ready to keep my promise, always prepared to make what amends I could. . . . I've dedicated myself. If he's alive, until he tells me that he rejects me . . ."

With a sigh of exhaustion, she slipped forward, turning as she fell and burying her arms and face. The rose in her hair trembled to the heaving of her shoulders and scattered a shower of petals over the cus.h.i.+ons of the sofa.

4

"And I meant to be so sweet, I meant to make you enjoy yourself until you thought me quite irresistible," Barbara laughed through her tears, kneeling upright on the sofa and dabbing at her eyes. "And then I was going to tell you that I have to come up to my dentist once a week for about two months; and I shall be all alone and I wanted you to promise to make me happy--like to-night."

Her recovery was as sudden as her collapse. Still kneeling with her hands clasped behind her head, she leaned forward until he had to catch her in his arms.

"I don't feel I've made you particularly happy to-night," said Eric, bending one arm into an angle for her head and throwing the other round her waist to hold her on to the sofa.

"I feel as if my spirit were almost clean again. . . . Will you come and see me sometimes, Eric?"

"If you'll go to bed _instantly_, after leaving a note on the mat to say that you're not to be called till you ring."

There was a touch of frost in the air, as Eric walked home; yet he went slowly, because he wanted to think. Jack was his best friend, and Barbara had behaved. . . . He could not abuse the girl even in thought, after trying to comfort her and saying that she started with a clean slate. But if any other girl had behaved like that . . . any girl who meant nothing to him. Even with Barbara he ought not to be so suavely forgiving at Jack's expense. . . . It was impossible to reconcile loyalty to both of them.

Before going to bed he wrote her a note, inviting her to lunch with him next day at Claridge's before she went back to Crawleigh Abbey; and, as soon as she was sure of his mood, Barbara released her invitations; the quietest possible party with Amy Loring (who was so anxious to meet him because he had known Jim), two days afterwards a dinner for two in Berkeley Square, followed by Mrs. O'Rane's house-warming, later still a decorous and rather dull dinner with Colonel Grayle.

"You might dine with _me_ for a change," Eric suggested, as he drove her home at the end of the week. "I'll get my sister to come and keep you in countenance--she's never seen my flat--and I'll think of another man."

"I'd sooner dine with you alone, Eric," pleaded Barbara.

"On first principles I discourage young girls from visiting bachelors in their rooms. I was born in the 'eighties, and I don't seem to have caught up."

"There _are_ restaurants," Barbara suggested. "It's quite fairly respectable to dine without a chaperon--since the war."

Eric turned and looked out of the window with a frown. He had not troubled to tell her that he had lately received a shock which threatened to make further meetings impossible. During a lull in the tumult at Mrs. O'Rane's party he had heard Lady Maitland's rumbling preparations for an introduction. "Eric Lane? My dear Raymond Stornaway, you mean to say you haven't heard of him? But he's _the_ coming playwright. You've not seen that thing of his----? My memory's like a _sieve_. . . . You must _go_." It was very familiar, but, as the other voices fortuitously grew hushed, he heard a new pendant. "But you know _her_? Babs. Babs Neave. Barbara Neave. Now don't pretend you don't know Lady Barbara Neave! Every one tells me that they're desperately in love with each other. Of course Crawleigh wouldn't _hear_ of it, but he doesn't know what to do. You know what the girl is! If you oppose her.

. . . It's an absurd position. You must come along and meet them. And I'll arrange a little party. I think you'd be amused."

"All the restaurants are so crowded nowadays," said Eric.

"But if you telephone for a table----"

He was grown too fond of Barbara to provide people like Lady Maitland with an excuse for saying that he was compromising her; and he was not going to pave the way for an unpleasant altercation with Lord Crawleigh (when he would have nothing to say for himself).

"I'll dine with you, if you like," he suggested.

5

On the morning of the day when "The Bomb-Sh.e.l.l" was to be produced, Eric found his diary overflowing into a new volume. Before snapping the lock for the last time and burying the book in the little steel safe which he had had built behind one of the panels in the dining-room, he turned the pages for ten months, starting with the first night of his first play and ending with the dress rehearsal of the second. The ten months'

record was so engrossing that he lay in bed, smoking and reading, instead of ringing for his secretary. One day he had been an unknown journalist; the next--in a phrase of which he could never tire--he awoke to find himself famous. Half-forgotten acquaintances who had sent him cards for dances now invited him to dinners at which he was courted and instantly handed on. At first he had written down, with more pleasure than cynicism, the complimentary phrases which had tickled his vanity; that had soon palled, and the compliments were monotonously framed; after two months he only recorded such triumphs as when old Farquaharson invited him to call. "_I would give much to have written your play; I would have given anything to write it at your age._" Some day, when Barbara was in a disparaging mood, he would shew her that jealously guarded letter.

An idle whim sent his fingers searching for the Poynter dinner where he had first met her. Since that night her influence, suspected but never established, had caused "_Dined with Lady Poynter_" to be a frequent entry. Every Thursday he went to Berkeley Square, every Friday Barbara lunched with him in Ryder Street--after sweeping aside his scruples by appealing in his presence to her mother for leave to come to his flat unchaperoned. And for an appreciable part of each week Barbara devoted herself to arranging further meetings in the houses of their friends.

"_Took Lady B. home late and circuitously._"

Eric was mildly surprised to find how lately their tropical intimacy had begun. Two months. . . . And no one--in court or outside--would believe the truth. . . . "_Dined with B. in her boudoir, the house being in curl-papers. She unwontedly communicative, but tired and in need of rest._" The discreet phrasing gave him all the reminder that he wanted to construct again the night when she had told him about Jack Waring--she had indeed been communicative----; and any one who broke down as she had done presumably stood in need of rest. . . .

On that night she had turned herself from an adventure into a habit; in place of sentimental tilting there had been born a love without pa.s.sion. . . .

He laid aside the diary as the telephone-bell rang.