The Education of Eric Lane Part 29

"You're getting frightfully old, Ricky. It's time you married and settled down."

"I've settled down without marrying. You can't do both, you know."

The drawl in his voice unconsciously irritated the girl.

"Marrying and shaking up is more in your line," she retorted. "You're too successful, too rich, too selfish, Ricky."

"My dear, I lead my life, and you lead yours. Why should either try to disturb the other?"

"Because you lead such a rotten life. Honestly, Ricky, don't you get sick of gadding about night and day with people who only condescend to know you because you're a fashion?"

He smiled lazily at the uncompromising vigour of her criticism.

"To begin with, I don't do it night and day----"

"Ricky, you simply live in your Lady Barbara's pocket. Lots of people have told me. If I were you, I wouldn't let her make a fool of me. After all, you _are_ somebody. Is she going to marry you?"

"I haven't asked her. She's a great friend of mine----"

"H'm. Everybody asks me when you're going to be married. Honestly, they do, Ricky. Three people this week. That's why I say she's making a fool of you. I don't think you know how people are talking."

"Perhaps I do, but I didn't know it had spread as far as here," he sighed.

"Well, you oughtn't to do it; and she oughtn't either," Sybil declared.

Eric gazed long into the fire without answering. How on earth had they come to discuss Babs? He had been dreaming with wistful contentment of simpler, less embarra.s.sed times when at this hour a red-faced nurse would enter and carry him, sleepily protesting, to bed. Sybil had somehow forced the conversation, they had argued--and his father and mother had listened without taking part, thereby ranging themselves on Sybil's side or at least admitting that she was telling them nothing new. . . . Sybil was a tigress for loyalty! Ever since she had decided that he was to marry Agnes, she would have mauled and clawed any other woman who got in the way. And when that woman trifled with the devotion of a Lane and made a fool of one of the sacred family . . . No sister ever imagined that a man could take care of himself. After all, who had suffered by his tragic intimacy with Barbara?

"_As if I'd murdered her._" What was Babs doing now?

He looked at his watch and pulled himself, stretching and yawning, to his feet.

"I shall go to sleep if I stay here," he said. "Is any one going to dress?"

Twenty minutes later, when he came out of his bath, Lady Lane was sitting in his bedroom.

"I didn't shew you Geoff's last letter," she said. "You'll see he says something about 'The Bomb-Sh.e.l.l'; one of his friends has been to see it and liked it very much."

Eric propped the letter against his looking-gla.s.s, as he began to dress.

"I say, have people down here really been marrying me off?" he asked.

Lady Lane's face, reflected in the mirror, was pa.s.sive and incurious.

"There was some report in one of the papers, I believe," she explained.

"I didn't see it myself."

He volunteered nothing, and his mother looked indifferently round the room, now exploring with her foot a shabby place in the carpet, now rising to hook a sagging length of curtain to its ring. She had come into his room to receive confidences and to help him; his moodiness did not invite congratulations and was troubling her.

"I wonder if I shall _ever_ remember to bring some more shirts down here," he mused. "I've three, four, five that I'll give you for your bandage-cla.s.s."

"I'll take them gratefully," she answered. There was a pause in which he pushed a drawer home, selected a handkerchief and turned off the light over his dressing-table; in another minute they would be downstairs, and the opportunity would be gone. She slipped her arm through his and walked to the door. "There's nothing worrying you, is there, Eric?"

"I'm afraid I've rather a faculty for letting things worry me," he laughed. "If one didn't always have to work against time, at high pressure----"

His mother was not deceived into thinking that work had anything to do with his mood.

"No new worries?" she suggested. "The last month or two . . . You're not looking well; that's why I asked. If you ever feel there's anything I can do . . ."

The subject was dismissed as she opened the door. She was glad that she had given him no opportunity of a denial, for Eric had always told her the truth, hitherto.

He went to bed early and fell asleep at once after the restlessness of the last two nights. When he felt his way back to wakefulness in the morning, there was a subconscious sense that something important had happened; a moment later he remembered with a pang that he and Barbara had said good-bye.

He jumped up and rang for his shaving-water, though it was not yet seven. He must find work to do, he must keep himself continuously occupied; otherwise his brain would go on grinding out that phrase "_As if I'd murdered her_." . . .

5

Half-way through the morning a belated postman splashed with expectant Christmas cheerfulness to the Mill-House and unburdened himself of a crushed and tattered load. Eric's share included an envelope addressed in an unknown writing and marked "Urgent," "By hand." His fingers trembled when he found a pencilled note from Barbara.

"_Christmas Eve._

"_My scarf has just arrived. Thank you for sending it; I'm sorry to have been so careless. And I'm afraid I DID catch cold without it.

At least I'm in bed, and the doctor says he's going to keep me here.

I want you, in spite of everything, to come and see me. Come this afternoon, Eric, before you go down to your people. Just for a moment. I do want to see you so badly. You won't disappoint me, will you? I'm ill, Eric, and so very lonely. Please, please come.

Barbara._"

He pocketed the letter and went on with the others, reading them mechanically. As her note had reached his flat after he had left, no one could blame him for disregarding her summons; for two days he had been spared the necessity of deciding whether it had to be disregarded; he had another twenty-four hours at Lashmar, no telegrams were delivered on Boxing Day, and she had in fact not telephoned. If the servants had not stamped and forwarded the letter, he would have had no knowledge of it until his return to Ryder Street the following day.

And then?

The family was still opening parcels and comparing cards and almanacks in the hall. He filled a pipe and tramped up and down his father's library, trying to decide this question without losing his head. She was ill, he had promised to help her, he wanted to help her, he was glad of any excuse that would spare him a repet.i.tion of that waking sense of loss. So far from having murdered her, he was urged to return; and he asked nothing better than to go back.

And then?

Sybil was right; they ought neither of them to permit such an intimacy, if nothing were to come of it. Sooner or later there would be unpleasantness; and, instead of the one painful parting which still haunted him, there would be two. The position was unchanged from the time when he invited her to dinner and delivered his ultimatum. He must leave the letter unanswered; if she appealed again, he must be deaf to the appeal. There was no need to pretend that he liked his choice. She might have a chill--or pneumonia; and henceforth he must depend on the newspapers and on chance-met friends to find how she was and what she was doing. The friends, too, accepting him as her guardian, would be more likely to come to him for news; he would have to say that he had not seen her for a week, a month, six months. . . . And they would wonder and gossip about the mysterious estrangement as zealously as about their "engagement"; and the kinder sort, like Lady Poynter, instead of scheming to bring them together, would arrange their parties with a tactful eye to secure that they did not meet. . . .

Eric paused to knock out his pipe and to reflect that, as he had made up his mind, there was nothing to gain by pitying himself or by growing angry with imaginary disputants. Sir Francis and Sybil came into the library to begin the day's work; his mother rustled to and fro, giving her orders. All that he had to do was to find an unoccupied table and settle down to work. The intimacy was over. In time he might care to think about it, he might even be able to meet Barbara, but at present he had to keep his mind absorbed with other thoughts.

He had schooled himself to a semblance of stoicism when he reached his office. It was temporarily undermined by a letter, also marked "Urgent,"

"By hand," which he found awaiting him.

"_Christmas Day._"

"_I suppose you left London before my note arrived. I sent another and one to Lashmar, but the posts are so bad nowadays that I'm writing to your office as well. I don't think you told me how long you were going to be away, but please, I beg you, come and see me just for a moment when you're back in London. I must see you again, Eric. If you're not back to-morrow, you will be next day, I'm sure.

Please ring me up the moment you get this. Barbara._"

So she had lain waiting for him all Christmas Day, all Boxing Day; she was waiting now, and he had no idea how to tell her that he could not come.

The telephone rang, and he was surprised to hear Amy Loring's voice instead of Barbara's.