The Education of Eric Lane Part 40

A blaze of light. . . . A thunder of voices. . . . Out of the distance she heard him saying, "In fact, you've been lying to me all along? You never intended to marry me?"

A blaze of light; and silence that made her head sing. Jack's face seemed to grow thinner and the gleam in his eyes more brightly cold. The supper-room was emptying, but neither could decide to stand up and say good-bye. Lord Summertown and a brother-officer waltzed in and became noisily cheerful in one corner. Later they heard a car driving past the open windows; George Oakleigh appeared in the doorway; Summertown's companion finished the champagne and rose to his feet protesting fretfully: "To declare war in the middle of supper is not the act of a gentleman. . . ." Then at last she had seen that she had tempted Jack to imperil his soul. . . .

War had seemed a small thing then, though Jack Summertown was to be killed within six weeks and her cousin Jim within a year. It was a thing remote and only important as postponing her punishment from Jack.

"I must get back to London," he said suddenly. "I'm going to ask Summertown for a seat in his car."

For dragging minutes she felt her soul being crucified. While Jack stood talking in the hall or on the steps, she tried to conceal from herself what she had done and, when that was impossible, to nerve herself to make reparation. Then she was blinded by the glare of the head-lights and opened her eyes to find that the car had swept beyond reach of her voice. . . .

Once again everything was warm and dark in the summer night. . . .

Slowly the distant wail of the orchestra died from her ears. She had a vague memory of going upstairs with Oakleigh and of seeing him draw Jim aside and whisper to him, but between them lingered a white face with incredulous eyes, and above the music hammered the sound of a broken sentence: "So this was your revenge?" And then, calling Jim to witness, she made the sign of the Cross and swore that she would offer herself, body and soul, to Jack, if he wanted her. . . .

The noise faded out of hearing, and she was once more in a room of blazing light; a man was looking at her, silent, white-faced and reproachful; and a new phrase was beating on her brain.

"_I want to know what you're going to do now?_"

She stretched out her hand; but Eric did not take it, and her eyes wandered once more idly round the room. The forgotten curtains and grey carpet, the writing-table and neat pile of ma.n.u.script flung back to her memory the summer night when she had first come to disturb his peace of mind.

"I make _every one_ miserable!" she cried, and both started at the violation of their long silence.

Eric's head sank lower; but his eyes never left her face. That night she had been like an animal tortured to madness; since that night she had taken all that his love could give her and had repaid it by torturing him to madness in his turn, by destroying his health and ruining his work.

"Eric, I _want_ to give you everything, but I've sworn to G.o.d! Until I've seen Jack. . . ."

"You've broken your oath in everything but form. From the first night we met you've belonged to me in all but name."

"But won't you wait? Oh, why will you _drive_ me?"

"I'm not driving you, Babs. I've not asked for anything."

She stood up and drew her cloak round her, glancing once at him and turning quickly away as she saw his hunched body and haggard face. One after the other she slowly drew on her gloves, looking with misty eyes for her bag. As she moved to the door, Eric rose and opened it, gathering up his overcoat with the other hand. They had parted like this so often that he no longer seemed to care. . . . A four-wheeler was ambling along Ryder Street, and he hailed it. Neither spoke until it drew up opposite her house and she saw him fumbling with the handle.

Then she laid her fingers on his wrist and chokingly bade him stop.

"I'll marry you, Eric," she said.

"Thank you, Barbara."

She hurried out before he could kiss her and stood with face upturned and eyes tightly shut. G.o.d, who had heard the oath taken and broken, was free to strike her now; if He held His hand, it was because He had more subtle punishment in store. . . .

Barbara pulled her cloak over her chest and ran despairingly into the house.

"_Loneliness may be so intolerable that I believe G.o.d would forgive us our blindest groping after alleviation. But would G.o.d forgive me, if, in my groping, I brought such misery of loneliness to another, knowing now what manner of thing it is?_"--From the Diary of Eric Lane.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE STRONGEST THING OF ALL

"Tam saepe nostrum decipi Fabullinum Miraris, Aule? Semper h.o.m.o bonus tiro est."

MARTIAL.

1

"_If you care for a six-months' lecturing tour in America_," wrote Grierson, "_I have an unrivalled offer. You would start in the New Year_. . . ."

His agent's letter was the first that Eric opened on the morning after Barbara promised to marry him. As he lay half-awake, waiting to be called, he realized that something had changed the foundations of his life; he was at peace, well and strong, with a heart tuned for adventure and a new tireless energy.

Six o'clock. . . . Seven. . . . Eight. . . . He carried the telephone into the smoking-room, lest he should be tempted to disturb Barbara, and paced bare-foot up and down, wondering how to inaugurate the new life.

In marrying a Protestant, she would forfeit the money which she had received under her G.o.d-father's will; henceforward he must work and earn for two. In his safe lay a brown-paper parcel containing the ma.n.u.script of a novel, unopened since the day when Gaisford so contumeliously flung it back at him. Eric carried the despised book into his bedroom and began to skim the pages. With his new sense of power, he would so re-write it that the doctor should eat humble-pie; and there would be a slice for Manders too. It was no good trying him with another version of the "Singing-Bird"; but "Mother's Son," which had lain neglected ever since it was sent back three years before, needed only a word of change and a touch of polish. October, November, December. . . . Eric would be ready for America in the New Year.

The next letter was from Agnes, begging him to write occasionally to Jack; the next from Lady Lane, wondering when he was coming to Lashmar.

A firm of topical photographers respectfully begged leave to send a representative by appointment to interview Mr. Lane and to enrich their gallery with a few camera-studies of the house and of the author at work. The other letters were invitations and charitable appeals.

At ten o'clock he telephoned to ask when he could see Barbara, but was told that she had not yet been called. After two more unsuccessful attempts, he sent a note by hand, inviting himself to tea, and spent the rest of the morning at work on the ma.n.u.script of his novel. Shortly before luncheon his interviewer arrived with an a.s.sistant bearing a camera, and for half an hour the flat was filled with the smoke and powder of the magnesium flares. Eric submitted sheepishly to being "discovered" looking (in profile) out of his dining-room window, to being "interrupted" at his desk (three-quarter face), to being found taking a moment's respite for thought and a cigarette (full face, with his back to the smoking-room fire); finally he was dressed up in hat and coat and shewn to be saying good-bye in the hall. While the a.s.sistant packed up his camera and tripod, Eric allowed himself to be interrogated on his past and future work, his plans and views of art.

"Have you anything _new_?" asked the interviewer. "I've got all the old stuff out of '_Who's Who_'."

Eric spoke vaguely of the novel, the play and the course of lectures in America, remembering the threadbare commonplaces of such ill.u.s.trated interviews as he had read; it were fruitless to fancy that he could vary the form or fact of what was being so industriously scribbled down.

"Nothing expected for some months? I must work up the back stock. I shall want you to tell me in a minute what _started_ you writing plays.

. . . Now, about your engagement?"

"My engagement?" Eric echoed.

The man nodded and moistened the end of his pencil in antic.i.p.ation.

"Why, that's what I'm here for! I don't say," he added apologetically, "that this stuff wouldn't stand by itself--or come in useful, anyway."

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow."

The man looked at him in patient surprise.

"We supply all the pictures for '_The World and His Wife_'," he explained. "They 'phoned through to know if we could let them have up-to-date photographs of you and Lady Barbara Neave----"

"But you spoke of an engagement."

"Isn't it true, then?"

"This sort of thing is really intolerable!" Eric cried. "I don't want to tell other people how to run their business, but in common decency your firm might wait for an official announcement in '_The Times_' instead of circulating these rumours----"

"It's only a rumour, then?" said the interviewer blankly, pocketing his note-book.

As he walked to Berkeley Square, Eric decided that, by telling Barbara of his encounter, he would annoy her without bringing relief to himself.