The Education of Eric Lane Part 38

"Not immediately. I knocked off all my other work and concentrated on this thing day and night for three months."

"Three months? You're a quick worker. You know, boy, that would have been a better play if you'd given more time to it."

Manders slipped three oysters into his mouth in rapid succession, and Eric smiled with indulgent patience. One hard-dying school of critics always made quick work a synonym for hasty work.

"I managed to crowd about three years into the three months."

"Ah, that means you're writing with your nerves! Now, if I were you, I'd put the thing aside for six months, clear it out of your head; then, when you come to it with a fresh mind----"

"You don't like it?" Eric interrupted. "Why not?"

"I don't like it in its present form. I don't suppose you want a line-by-line criticism. . . . If you look at it in six months' time, you'll see my objection for yourself."

Eric raised his gla.s.s mechanically and was vaguely surprised to find himself drinking champagne. Then he remembered that champagne had been ordered to "buck" him "up"; he remembered, too, Manders' solicitude for his health, the enquiries when the play had been written and how long he had taken to write it, the evasion and silence the night before on the telephone and again at the beginning of luncheon, when he tried to extract a frank opinion. . . . Manders, then, was rejecting the play . . .

and trying to be considerate. . . .

"We don't mince matters at rehearsal," he said with a breathless laugh.

"You think the play's hopeless?"

Manders looked relieved, but he had known so many disappointments himself and seen others so often crushed by them that his brown, monkey eyes were full of pity.

"It's no use at all. In its present form or any other. If it had been any one but you, I wouldn't have read two pages of it. You may as well take the whole of your physic, boy; you've got to stop writing for the present, you've lost your sense of the theatre, you're forgetting all the tricks you ever learned. D'you know, when I read that thing, I thought for a moment that you were trying to palm off some old thing that you'd written when you were an undergrad?"

For a moment Eric lost his sense of distance; the long coffee-room was full of shouting and discordant laughter; a waiter, who seemed quite near, asked in a remote voice whether he might take the black pepper. . . .

Eric gripped the edge of the table, praying that he might not disgrace himself.

"I wonder--_why_," he murmured faintly.

Manders shrugged his shoulders and filled both gla.s.ses encouragingly.

"It often happens. Graham Lever had three plays running in London at the same time; then he chucked romantic comedy and tried to write a revolt-of-the-younger-generation problem play. . . ." Manders omitted to add that Lever had never had another play staged, but Eric's ten years of dramatic criticism enabled him to fill the gap. "George Sharpe failed again and again for eight years; he had one success and then failed for three. It would be hard to think of a man who never loses his touch.

Partly it's the author and partly it's the audience; they get tired . . .

and, when one kind of play succeeds, all the other men unconsciously imitate, and the managers can only see money in that one kind, so that the public gets sated. With you . . ." He paused to tear his bread into lumps and throw it into his soup. "You probably want some fresh air.

You've been living in the theatre too much, you've forgotten what real people are like. If you brought that play down and read it to the company----"

His aposiopesis suggested that there would be uproar and danger to life.

"What had I better do?" Eric asked weakly.

"Frankly? Well, sc.r.a.p your 'Singing Bird' and throw your pen behind the fire. Don't try to write for six months. After that, anything you like to send me . . . I hope you can eat this, by the way?"

Eric found that a sole, half-hidden by mussels, had been placed before him. Manders had taken trouble about the luncheon; he was a good fellow and had tried to soften the blow; throughout the time that they had worked together he had been patient and very human; he was trying to part now on a pleasant note. "Anything you like to send me . . ." It would certainly be read; for a time he would read it himself--the next three failures, say. And then . . . Eric wondered whether he would be able to go back to journalism. The two successful plays would keep him from starving, but he must make a livelihood again . . . and count every s.h.i.+lling before he spent it. The flat must go. . . .

The long triumphal progress which he had enjoyed and disdained rose up in accusing mockery. Here, then, was the end of that life-long dream of domination. For a time Lady Poynter would invite him to her house and ask when the next play was coming out, but her nature and the requirements of her sham-intellectual life demanded that she should drop him when he no longer had any tricks to display. Young Forbes Standish or Carlton Haig--"most promising young playwrights"--would take his place. Perhaps some one like George Oakleigh, who liked him personally, would ask what had become of him; and Lady Poynter would answer easily: "I haven't seen him for a long time. I must find out whether he's in London and get him to lunch one day." And then young Forbes Standish would begin to criticize "The Bomb-Sh.e.l.l" or the "Divorce" with bland patronage. And every one at the Thespian would be tactful and considerate.

"I feel as if I should never be able to write anything again," Eric sighed. "This is the second--facer I've had. There was a novel I started. . . . I'm used up, Manders."

"Take a holiday and don't talk rot!"

Conversation languished through the rest of the meal, and Eric hurried back to his office, pretending that he could not spare time for coffee or a liqueur. It was an office which he had once hated, because it absorbed time and strength which he needed for his own work; he had treated it cavalierly, from time to time writing letters of resignation and throwing them into a drawer. As he settled to the familiar table in the crowded, ill-lit room, he wondered whether he would be of the lucky number for whom the Government service would find openings at the end of the war. He had yet to prove that he could earn a living again as a journalist; and efficiency mattered little in a civil servant, for, if his work were good, some one else would get the credit, and, if it were bad, it would be undiscovered. . . .

A drawling voice from the War Office broke in upon his musings. Had not Mr. Lane been making enquiries about a Captain Waring? His name was on the next list of prisoners to be transferred to Switzerland; his relations would be informed officially.

Eric telephoned at once to Colonel Waring and Barbara. As he dressed for dinner, Agnes arrived in a laden car with both her parents, clamorous for help in securing pa.s.sports. They were staying at the Charing Cross Hotel with their boxes packed, waiting for further news, and the radiance in their eyes scorched him. Barbara had received the news almost without comment; he wondered what manner she would shew him; perhaps this was the last time that they would ever meet. . . .

"I'm not _sure_ that her ladys.h.i.+p's dressed yet. . . . If you wouldn't mind waiting, sir. . . . I _have_ taken the paper into her ladys.h.i.+p's room. . . . I hope you've been keeping well, sir. . . .?"

Eric started in physical pain at the familiar friendliness of the old butler. The little confidences, introduced with a deprecatory cough, floated down from a height one stair above him. Barbara's room, as ever, was in chaos; her kitten, roused by his entrance, stretched herself and arched her back. Then the other door opened, and Barbara hurried in. Her arms were soft and cool as ever against his cheeks, and he caught a well-remembered breath of carnations as her head bent low on to his breast. He held her close; but his pressure suddenly relaxed, and he stepped back.

"Don't you like kissing me any more?" she asked. "I've been hungry for you all these months!"

"I was thinking what it would be like if you suddenly took yourself out of my life," said Eric.

"Darling, why must you spoil the present by dragging in the future?"

"I can't think of anything else."

Barbara took his arm and led him to a chair.

"I wish you didn't look so frightfully ill," she whispered. "Have you been missing me? My dear, what a mess I seem to have made of our lives!

Sit down! Let me take care of you! Let me do what I can for you, darling! It isn't much!"

"I don't think I'd better stay, Babs," said Eric with nervous indecision. "I'm bad company; I shall only get on your nerves and upset you."

The girl shook her head sadly.

"I'm not so happy that there's much to spoil. Eric, I sometimes think you don't quite understand. I'm not miserable because I want Jack and can't get him. I don't know whether I want him or not; that's what makes the suspense such a h.e.l.l. . . . There was a time when I wasn't sure whether I was in love with him or not. . . . He was stronger that I was, he could have done anything with me. If I hadn't felt his power, I should have paid no attention to him, he couldn't have hurt me, I shouldn't have wanted to punish him. Is that love? I suppose it's one form. . . . When I see him . . . if he says he wants me . . . I don't know what I shall feel like. Love . . . ordinary love. . . . There's never been anything to equal my love for you. . . . So it hasn't been easy for me, has it? Ever since I met you, I've pined to know what _was_ going to happen to me."

Eric looked away and was silent for several moments. She had made a romance of her oath to Jack and had played dramatically with alternate ecstasy and despair, seeing herself as a woman cursed by G.o.d. She made a romance of her twin loves and dual obligations, seeing herself as a woman fated to blight all who loved her. She lived for "situations" and conflicts, experimenting in emotion; already a garment of romance had been woven round Jack.

"I came to tell you that I'd seen the Warings to-day," Eric said at length. "They're off to Switzerland as soon as they can get their pa.s.sports. If you'd care . . . I mean, I can write a letter from my office and enclose anything; it wouldn't be censored then."

Barbara bent her head until her trembling lips were hidden from him.

"It's like you to think of that! n.o.body's ever loved any one as you love me! But I won't, Eric. If _he_ wants me . . ."

Eric stared at the fire, kicking one heel against the other toe. If she was in agony of spirit, he could have sworn that she was enjoying the agony.

"Yes, I love you more than any one else ever has. . . . It gives you enormous gratification. . . . But I wonder if you think it's anything more than your own cleverness. I suppose you have some love for me. . . .

But, if he wants you, I shall drop out of your life. . . . I was happy, I didn't need you! You wrapped yourself round my life until you saw that I couldn't do without you, and then--_if--he--wants you_! What have you left for me?"

"Is it nothing to have brought me happiness?" she asked; but his deep-toned reproach, unrehea.r.s.ed, unstudied and faltering, had broken through her surface emotions and shattered her self-absorption. "Eric, I'm not every one! Your work----"

"D'you think I can ever write again? You never _did_ think much of 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.'"