The Education of Eric Lane Part 27

"No good, I'm afraid."

"Well, try to think of something else," she sighed. "Don't spoil our evening, sweetheart."

The intermittent presence of the maid, rather than any state of mental satisfaction in Eric, kept the conversation peaceful. He almost forgot the annoyances of the last week in watching Barbara's delighted enjoyment of a new experience so trivial as dining with him for the first time in his own flat. Nothing escaped her curious notice--a wine that he gave her to try with the scallops, the Lashmar chrysanthemums in a flat, blue-gla.s.s bowl, the unaging pleasure of an invisibly lighted room, Australian pa.s.sion-fruit at dessert, a new artist's proof. . . .

"You're really like a child at a pantomime, Babs," he laughed, when they were alone.

She rose slowly and bent over him, touching his forehead with her lips and then kneeling beside his chair.

"I'm interested in everything!" she cried. "I love new experiences! At least, I _did_. I loved meeting new people, hearing new things--the world was so wonderful. And then--I never understood why I went on living. . . . _You_ made life wonderful for me again. The first night we met, when I came here. . . . You were quite right, Eric, I was a fool. . . . But somehow I wasn't afraid. I knew you'd put your hand in the fire for me."

He stroked her head and gave a sudden s.h.i.+ver. No one would ever know what path he might have chosen that night out of the maze of his disordered emotions.

"In those days you were nothing to me," he murmured.

"But you put all women on pedestals. . . . Eric, will you believe me if I say that I've tried to live up to your conception of me?"

"But do you know what my conception of you is?"

"Something a thousand miles higher than I can ever climb! When I'm restless, lonely, I think of our love, your wonderful devotion--like a mother's to her child . . . and my love for you. Give me your cigarette, Eric."

Before he could see what she was doing, the glowing end had been pressed against her hand until it blackened and died. He saw her eyes shut and her lip whitening as she bit it. Her body swayed and fell forward before the crumpled cigarette dropped on to the carpet.

"You little--Babs, what's the matter with you?"

She opened her eyes, breathing quickly and holding out her hand to shew a vermilion ring with a leprous-white centre.

"_I'd_ put my hand in the fire for _you_!" she panted.

"You little fool!" He was filled with a desire to hurt her for having hurt herself. "Look here, Barbara. . . ."

But she had risen to her feet and was pressing the wounded hand to her lips.

"You don't _know_ how it hurt!" she cried with a tremble in her voice.

"What good, precisely, d'you think you've done?" he asked.

She s.n.a.t.c.hed a spill from the mantel-piece and thrust it between the bars of the fire.

"If you want it again----!"

Eric dragged her upright with one arm and rang the bell.

"We'll have coffee in the smoking-room," he said. "Barbara, what's the matter with you?"

She laughed almost hysterically.

"I feel I'm fighting for my life! That was to shew you I'd do anything in the world you asked me to! And you talk about our giving up meeting . . . like giving up smoking!"

Eric drew a chair to the fire and lighted her cigarette in silence. Only a fool would break that silence for twenty-four hours. . . .

"A bit rash that, isn't it?" he asked, as he cut his cigar.

"You won't ask me anything that I don't want you to," she answered. "And you know there are some things I _can't_ give you."

Coffee was brought in, and he offered her sugar, knowing well--if he had been able to collect himself--that she never took it. Her cigarette went out and required another match. A pile of five books, still in their wrappers, absorbed her.

It was only half-past ten when she forced a yawn and asked him to get her a taxi. He collected a coat and hat from the hall and arranged his m.u.f.fler elaborately with his back to her.

"Returning to the other thing," he began slowly. "We've not exactly disposed of it, have we?"

"I thought we were going to leave it alone," she answered timidly.

"That's out of the question." He banged open his opera hat and squeezed it shut again. "Why won't you have a simple contradiction in the press?"

he pleaded.

"I don't want it. Isn't that enough?"

"Certainly. But . . . I don't want to say good-bye, if I can help it."

Barbara looked at him slowly and carefully; she was utterly at fault.

"It's for you to decide," she said.

"There doesn't seem to be any alternative."

She stood up and wrapped a lace scarf round her throat. As he helped her into her cloak, she looked reflectively round the room. Save that the windows were closed to shut out the December fog, save that there were chrysanthemums in place of roses, nothing had changed since the night when she forced her way in and sipped soda-water from a heavy goblet and broke the gla.s.s horseshoe and laughed and talked and suddenly cried. . . .

As he watched, her bones seemed to bend like soft wax, and she sank on to the sofa, burying her face in her arms and sobbing convulsively. Eric stood motionless by the fire, because he could not trust himself to move. Her shoulders, which he had always admired for their line and wonderful whiteness, rose in quick jerks and subsided with a quiver; she shook with the abandonment of a bird in its death-spasm.

"Barbara!"

"Oh, can't I even cry?" she moaned.

"Darling, you break my heart when you go on like this!" He found himself kneeling on the floor with his arm round her shoulder and drawing her head back until he could kiss her wet cheek. "If you'll shew me _any_ other way out of it----"

"Why can't you let it go on?" she wailed.

"I can't; I suppose I love you too much."

"Too much to give me the one thing--Eric, you're not going to turn me away?"

"I'm not going to take risks with your reputation."

"But it would be just the same! If you _put_ your denial into the paper, people would still go on talking as long as we went on meeting!

Does it matter? Do you mind it so much, Eric? Oh, my dear, I can't afford to lose you!"

She fell away from him, and he walked back to the fire. This, then, was the moment that came to every man once--the moment that he forced into the lives of his puppets once a play.