The Education of Eric Lane Part 46

With a final low bow he backed up-stage, and the heavy blue curtains tumbled into place at a half-seen movement of his hand.

As the lights went up, Eric watched the customary recrudescence of restlessness. Eager and lazy discussions began; surprised, shrill recognitions volleyed across the stalls; the men looked at their programmes to see how many acts remained and tentatively felt for their cigarette-cases. He saw George Oakleigh lean towards Barbara, glance at his watch and draw himself slowly to his feet. The movement was a signal and spur for a dozen others. Barbara moved into his place and called a greeting to Deganway who was on the opposite side; he stood up and bent over her, swinging his eye-gla.s.s.

Suddenly Eric found himself trembling. After the usual uncertainty, which he had been watching with one eye, he saw Colonel Waring and Jack squeezing past their neighbours. As they turned into the gangway, Jack stared slowly round him and raised his eye-brows in faint surprise when he caught sight of Barbara. They exchanged bows, she held out her hand; Colonel Waring was introduced, and Deganway excused himself. A moment later the colonel bowed a second time and withdrew. Barbara pointed to the empty seat by her side, and Jack stepped across her into it.

The whole meeting was incredibly suave and unemotional. They were talking--as any other two people in the theatre were talking--without any great interest. After a few minutes Oakleigh returned and shook hands with noticeable warmth; there was a short triangular conversation before the lights were lowered; then Jack hurried back to his place.

When the curtain went up on the second act, Eric scribbled a note of congratulation and apology and sent it to Manders by the hand of a programme seller. Then he put on his hat and coat and stole out of the theatre.

3

The next morning Eric summoned his solicitor and divested himself of all domestic ties and obligations as completely as if he were leaving for the Front. A power of attorney was to be prepared; the books were to be stored, the wine sold and the flat let if he had not returned from America within a stated period. . . .

"You see, I've more money than I can spend," Eric explained. "It's well invested, so that, if I never do another stroke of work, I shall have _something_ to live on. Well, my health's gone to pieces, and I want a long rest and change. This is my opportunity. I'm thirty-three; and I've seen nothing of the world outside Europe. If I start by touring from end to end of America . . .."

He was almost carried away by his own enthusiasm in sketching out the years of wandering which lay ahead. Central America, South America, the Pacific Islands, New Zealand, Australia, j.a.pan, China, the Dutch East Indies, Burmah, India. . . .

"This is all in confidence, of course," he interrupted himself to say.

"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. Sh.e.l.ley; 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 Hamps.h.i.+re. . . .

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. Sh.e.l.ley 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 j.a.pan. 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 G.o.dspeed; 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 pa.s.sage 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?"