The Education of Eric Lane Part 17

It had never occurred to him before that, by this facile course, he could avoid an early and cold drive into Winchester, a crowded train, a free fight for the last copy of _The Times_, a late arrival at the department where he composed propaganda for neutral consumption. And he had never felt so urgent a need to escape from the Mill-House.

"I haven't seen your jolly old play yet," said Geoff. "I suppose I can count on you for a box? If you'll give us dinner first, I might collect a few bright lads and give the thing a bit of a fillip. I should think it must be rather a rag, being famous."

"I suppose that depends on your definition of fame--and of a rag," Eric answered.

"Oh, being invited everywhere," said Geoff unhesitatingly. "Having your photograph in all the papers. Girls waiting in a queue for your autograph. A galaxy of beauty prostrating itself at your feet to get an extra line."

"That sounds more like musical comedy," said Eric doubtfully. "I don't fly as high as that."

Geoff was too young to have outgrown the appeal of the stage. He regarded Eric with as much admiration as one brother accords another and with undisguised envy.

"I _did_ enjoy your play," said Benyon, moving into a chair by his side.

"Agnes came up to dine with me, and I took her. . . ."

Eric bowed without listening to the end of the sentence. He was mildly surprised to find Agnes being discussed by her Christian name and wondered why he had not heard of Benyon before. Perhaps it was her fault that they had established no spiritual contact at dinner; she had conceivably lost interest in him, and he wondered whether he was sufficiently interested to make sure. . . .

"The mater told me you'd another thing on the stocks," Geoff went on.

"It's being produced next month," answered Eric.

He looked impatiently round the cramped dining-room, listening for a moment to an altercation between Waring and Nares on the Dardanelles expedition. It was surely worth while to explore Agnes further and to see what part in her life this young Benyon was playing. . . .

Fortified by the wise decision to return to London earlier than he had first intended, Eric entered the drawing-room full of toleration and good-humour. Bending over Mrs. Nares' sofa, he atoned for his inattention during dinner with thirty seconds' belated sparkle and a simple epigram which he had already tried with effect on Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley.

They were joined by Mrs. Waring, and, as he had hardly spoken to her all the evening, he consented to talk about his forthcoming play--which he enjoyed as little as a superst.i.tious mother might enjoy describing her unborn child--until in a subsequent regrouping she confided to Sybil that she was very much attached to Eric; he was so unspoiled, so charming. . . .

"Aren't you rather proud of him?" she asked.

"Yes. He's very clever and he's had a big success," Sybil conceded critically. "But, if any one says 'Lane,' the whole world thinks of Eric, while father, who's spent his life----"

She was interrupted by Mr. Nares, who stationed himself at her elbow, coughing apologetically until she gave him an opportunity of asking her to sing. As she went to the piano, Eric moved across the room to Agnes'

chair and suggested that they should go out on the terrace.

"It's stifling in here," he grumbled; and, after a quick sidelong glance, Agnes followed him.

They strolled through one of the French windows to a long gravel path, which ran flush with the inky, slow-moving mill-stream. Overhead the trees stretched across the narrow ribbon of water, brushing the back of the house and releasing brittle leaves of copper and dull gold to undulate in the breeze before they settled on the surface and swept gently over the creaking wheel. A crescent moon was reflected unwaveringly in the black water, and the autumn breeze blew a scent of decaying, damp vegetation from the dense woods all around them.

"Remember when we used to have races with paper boats, Agnes?" Eric asked suddenly.

She nodded, wondering why he had reminded her.

"What years ago it seems!"

"Only about five. Though we were both old enough to know better."

"It seems longer," said Agnes, looking at him thoughtfully and wondering whether he had only invited her out there as a demonstration against Sybil for disparaging him to her mother.

"I don't _feel_ a day older."

"You're changed. We were all of us saying that before you came into the drawing-room to-night. Your mother's rather worried about you, Eric."

He lighted a cigarette to shew the steadiness of hand and eyes.

"She needn't bother," he answered easily. "I'm carrying a good deal of sail--but I'm better than I've ever been. Agnes, I don't usually talk about what I'm only _thinking_ of doing, but with you it's different. . . ."

He slipped her arm through his and walked up and down the gravel path describing his conception of a novel as it had revealed itself to him a week before when he was at an Albert Hall concert. His confidence flattered her into disregarding the egotism which made him remember her only when he wanted to talk about himself; she forgot the sensation that he had outgrown her as much as he had outgrown the paper-boat races on the mill-stream by their side. Once the night wind, blowing on to her unprotected shoulders, sent a shiver through her; but it was Eric who coughed, and she wondered whether he knew why Lady Lane always looked so anxiously at his sunken cheeks and starved body. She wondered, too, whether she would have cared for him so much if he had been robust and tranquil as Geoff.

The music had ended long before he had done talking; tentative cries of "Agnes!" pa.s.sed unheeded, and she was only recalled to the present by the appearance of Colonel Waring in overcoat and soft hat half-way through the open window.

"Bed-time, Agnes," he called out, sniffing the night air. "If you've been giving that girl of mine a chill, Eric----"

"You're not cold, are you?" Eric asked her.

"Not very," she answered with a tired and rather disappointed smile.

"Oh, but why didn't you tell me?" he protested in a convincing voice of concern, as he led her back into the house and helped her into her cloak. As a chorus of farewell rose and isolated them, he lowered his voice. "You'll let me know when you have any news of Jack, won't you?"

"_If_," she answered wistfully.

"You mustn't lose heart. I expect he's all right, and there's been some hitch in getting the news through. He's all right, Agnes."

"I hope so."

She shook hands and walked despondently into the night. Eric seemed to have become artificial in the last few months--just when he might have helped her most. He lengthened his face and lowered his voice sympathetically, but he was growing into a social puppet and losing his individuality. . . . It had not been a very amusing dinner.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Colonel Waring asked her, as they settled into the car.

"Very much, thanks," she answered quietly. "I'm rather tired, though."

Benyon told her that Eric's new play was to be produced within a month and invited her to come with him. She answered uncertainly and lapsed into silence.

As the car b.u.mped over the springy turf of Lashmar Common, Eric stood gazing at the stars and drinking in the thousand mingled scents and sounds of the night. Somewhere hard by, a bonfire was pungently smouldering; there was a sour smell where a flock of geese had been feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose a.s.sertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of an owl.

Eric started--and wondered why he was standing there in the cold. Then he remembered that he had stayed to be by himself and to think something out. There was a change somewhere, and he was trying to locate it. He had come to retouch his memory of Agnes, and he had seen her alone and with others; they had talked the conventional jargon of the dinner-table, their fingers had brushed emotion as they discussed her missing brother, and for half an hour they had marched up and down the terrace arm-in-arm, discussing and arguing on an unwritten book, recapturing an old intimacy which he had shared with no one else. In the light of the drawing-room Agnes' grey eyes were black and mysterious; her lips were parted, and her cheeks warmly flushed; he had never seen her look prettier, he had never been more attracted by her.

The change must be in himself; he demanded of her something more volcanic and inspiring than she could give, something to feed his own languid vitality instead of placidly laying him to rest. . . .

Shutting the front door, he went back to the drawing-room, where the family was a.s.sembled to compare notes and pool information.

"The vicar's starting a cla.s.s for making bandages. . . ."

"The Warings haven't heard anything of Jack yet. . . ."

"That Benyon must be one of the Herefordshire lot, I fancy. An old private bank. . . ."

Eric hesitated on the threshold, looking from one to another. Sybil was undisguisedly disappointed; she had so desperately set her heart on his marrying her beloved Agnes, and the night's meeting had brought them no nearer. Lady Lane, still anxious, beckoned him into the room and took his face between her hands, turning it to the light and kissing his eyes again, as on his arrival.

"You look tired, Eric. You'd better go to bed, or you'll never be down to breakfast."