The Education of Eric Lane Part 7

Eric looked up in time to catch a glint in her eyes. It was unexpected and disconcerting. He had been imagining that she was merely over-indulged; but the glint warned him that Barbara would make a bad enemy, cruel perhaps and unscrupulous certainly. The next moment she was again like a child, grown haggard with fatigue; and he gave her a slice of cake and some milk, which she accepted obediently and with a certain surprised grat.i.tude.

"Where d'you imagine all this is going to end?" he asked her, though the question was addressed more to himself. "You're twenty-two, you've been everywhere, seen everything, met everybody. You're utterly uncontrolled and so sated and restless that, rather than go to bed, you'll compromise yourself by sitting talking to me half the night in a bachelor flat."

"Poor Val Arden used to talk like that. He always called me Lady Lilith, because I was older than good and evil. I'm sorry Val's dead; he was such fun. 'In six years' time--one asks oneself the question. . . .' It wasn't 'rather than go to bed,' not altogether."

"It's a nervous disease," Eric interrupted shortly.

"Because I cried just now? I was very unhappy, Eric."

"My dear Lady Barbara, you live in superlatives. You don't know what happiness or unhappiness means. You were badly overwrought then, so you cried and said you were miserable."

She looked at him and raised her eyebrows without speaking.

"It's wonderful how wrong quite clever people can be," she said at length. "I _was_ miserable, I _wanted_ to be kissed, I was _hungry_ for the smallest crumb of affection. I wanted to be _happy_. . . . And you can only see me as neurotic. D'you feel you're a good judge?"

"Of happiness?"

Eric smiled complacently and again glanced lovingly round the room.

Barbara sighed in pity and looked at her watch.

"_I_ seem to have come in the way rather," she interrupted.

"The b.u.t.terfly that settles on the railway track may be said, I suppose, to come in the way of a train. . . . I'm going to take you home now."

"You're not sorry I came? _I'm_ not."

"It was worth while meeting you," he laughed.

As Eric struggled with the sleeves of his coat, she twined her arms round his neck. The scent of carnations was now faintly blended with the deeper fragrance of the single rose behind her ear.

"And you'd never kissed any one before," she whispered.

It was nearly day-light when they found themselves in the street. Two special constables, striding resonantly home, looked curiously at them; but Barbara had again pulled up her shawl until it covered half her face. Piccadilly was at the mercy of scavengers with glistening black waders and pitiless hoses; otherwise they seemed to have all London to themselves.

With a head aching from fatigue, Eric tried to reconstruct the fantastic evening. Little detached pictures jostled their unconvincing way through his brain--Lady Poynter's formal dining-room and the barren, self-conscious literary discussion; Lord Poynter's wheezing confidences about the wood port which should properly be taken as a liqueur. He saw again the bridge-table with Gaymer, neat, immaculate and repellent, calling in a high nasal voice for Barbara to rejoin them. The drive home was a blank until he was galvanized by her leaning through the window and directing the coachman to Ryder Street. Thereafter facts gave place to emotions, and the other emotions to an incredulous elation that Barbara Neave should have thrown herself at his feet. Perhaps, of course, she was only emotion-hunting. . . . But she had lain at his mercy. . . . Perhaps that, too, was an emotion to be wooed, enjoyed and recorded. Any one less artificial could at least be glad that they were pa.s.sing out of each other's life, as they had come into it, without expectation or regret.

"You'd better not come any farther," she advised him, as they reached the end of Berkeley Street. "If anybody _should_ be awake and looking out of the window . . ."

He nodded and held out his hand.

"You have your latch-key?"

"Yes, thanks. Good-night, Eric."

"Good-bye, Lady Barbara."

"_Between men on the Stock Exchange it is a plat.i.tude that you can only get a price in selling what some one else wants to buy; between men and women outside the Stock Exchange this is often considered a paradox._"--From the diary of Eric Lane.

CHAPTER TWO

LADY BARBARA NEAVE

"CONSTANTINE: From seventeen to thirty-four . . . the years which a man should consecrate to the acquiring of political virtue . . .

wherever he turns he is distracted, provoked, tantalised by the bare-faced presence of woman. How's he to keep a clear brain for the larger issues of life? . . . Women haven't morals or intellect in our sense of the words. They have other incompatible qualities quite as important, no doubt. But shut them away from public life and public exhibition. It's degrading to compete with them . . .

it's as degrading to compete for them. . . ."

GRANVILLE BARKER: "THE MADRAS HOUSE."

1

The latest, costliest and most ingenious mechanical device in Eric's bedroom was an electric dial and switchboard communicating with the kitchen and so constructed that, by moving a clock-hand, the corresponding dial abandoned the non-committal elusiveness of "_Please call me at_----" for "_Please call me at 8.00 (or 9.00 or 9.30)._" There was something calculatedly dissolute about the invention (which cost 17.10 and had struck work four times in three weeks). After a long night of work or frolic, the sybarite moved the hand on for twelve hours--his last conscious act before collapsing into bed; if, again, he had retired early or were so much debauched that he could not sleep, he wearily set the hand for "_Please call me now._"

Eric looked with smarting eyes first at the luminous clock, then at the dial. Half-past five, coupled with "_Please call me at eight._" He undressed ruminatively, reheated his hot-water can at the gas-ring, methodically folded his clothes, smoothed his trousers away in their press, selected a suit for the following day, washed face and hands, brushed teeth and hoisted himself into bed. The dial must stand as he had left it. Lady Barbara Neave had come--and gone; she was not going to disturb his work.

His sleep seemed to be interrupted almost instantly by the arrival of a maid with tea, rusks, letters and _The Times_. His head was hot, but he was singularly untired; that would come later.

His letters varied little from day to day; two appeals for free sittings with Bond Street photographers; four receipts; one bill; a dignified protest from a country clergyman who had been shocked by the line: "Oh, you're not sending me down with _that_ woman, Rhoda? She's G.o.d's first and most _perfect_ bore." There was an ill-written request for leave to translate his play into French, three news-cuttings to herald his new play, a conventional letter from his mother, two pet.i.tions for free stalls from impecunious friends and nine invitations to luncheon or dinner. He had hardly finished reading them, when a pencilled note, sent by hand from Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley, made the tenth.

Eric piled his correspondence under the b.u.t.ter-dish to await his secretary's arrival and turned methodically to _The Times_. Half-an-hour later he rang for his housekeeper and subjected her book to scrutiny. A leather-bound journal with a snap-lock lay on his table, and he next wrote his diary for the previous day. "_So to dinner--rather late--with Lady Poynter to meet her nephew, Capt. Gaymer (R. F. C). Mrs. O'Rane (as beautiful as ever, but too voluble for my taste), Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley and Lady Barbara Neave. Meredithian debate on wine with Lord P., which I would give anything to put into a play. Bridge; but I cut out._" He hesitated and drummed with his fingers on the thick creamy pages. "_Took Lady B.

home rather late and circuitously._"

Then his secretary knocked and settled herself on the edge of an arm-chair.

"Good-morning," Eric began. "Will you write first of all to the manager of the bank----"

The telephone rang with a dull drone at the foot of his bed, and the girl made tentative movements of discreet departure.

"No, you deal with this!" Eric cried. "Out of London. You're not sure when I shall be back. Can you take a message?"

The girl picked up the instrument, while Eric glanced again through his letters.

"Hullo! Yes. Yes. He's--away, I'm afraid. . . . But, you see, he's _away_. . . ." She looked despairingly at Eric. "He's _awa-ay_!" Then breathlessly she clapped the receiver back.

"It was Lady Barbara Somebody; I couldn't hear the surname. She said you weren't away and she _must_ speak to you. I thought it was best----"

Eric had to collect himself before answering. In the sane cold light of early morning the overnight escapade was a draggled, unromantic bit of folly. If he met Barbara again, he would make things as easy as possible: there would be no allusions, no sly smiles; the whole thing was to be forgotten. And yet she was already digging it from under the lightly sprinkled earth. If she were throwing herself on his mercy, it was unnecessary; he had said "Good-_bye_ . . ." very distinctly. And she must surely know that she need not beg him not to talk. . . .

"You were quite right," he told his secretary. "Where were we? Oh, the manager----"

The bell rang again. Eric frowned and picked up the receiver, while the girl, after a moment's hesitation, tip-toed out of the room. Barbara had already disturbed his time-table for thirty seconds. . . .

"Hullo? Mr. Lane is away at present," he said. There was a pause. "I told you yesterday, Lady Barbara. Just as when you say 'Not at home.'

. . . I'm exceedingly busy and I _must_ have a few days to myself.

Good-bye."