Stephen McKenna

“ Opposite Bath House Eric hailed an empty taxi and told the driver to take them to Berkeley Square.
"You wouldn't like me to drop you in Ryder Street?" Barbara asked.
"Not even to gratify your love of artistic finish."
"How you hate me!" she whispered with a catch in her breath.
"No, I love you as much as ever; I need you more than ever. Whatever happens to you, I wish you all happiness. You once undertook my education, but I can tell you that you'll never find the happiness I'm wishing you till you learn to sink yourself and think of other people." ”

“ 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 passage was booked and his trunks packed. Lady Poynter began counting her guests with jerks of a fat, slow forefinger. ”

“ Eric was walking blindly through streets which only his feet recognized. Regency Theatre.... And he had been heading for Whitehall. He would never go to the Regency again without seeing her—either a head leaning against his knee at rehearsal as they sat on a platform over the orchestra, or in their box, hand in hand, as on the first night of "The Bomb-Shell," when his nerves were jangling like the broken wires of a harp; he could never go to Mrs. Shelley's house without hearing her singing Madame Butterfly's song—and without some fool's asking if he had seen anything of Lady Barbara lately.... ”

“ The babble of high-toned voices, the quick patter of speech, the sense of hurry, the hyperbolical intimacy and enthusiasm were bewildering to a man who was naturally shy and at that moment mentally tired. Eric commended his soul to his humour and circumambulated the room, two steps at a time, until a sudden lessening of noise and tension told him that luncheon had dawned upon Lady Crawleigh as a thing to be not only discussed but eaten. ”

“ Barbara caught her hostess' eye and picked up her gloves. "You'd write a tolerable play in the middle of it, a work of genius at the end——"
Eric's laugh interrupted her eager outpour.
"I'm quite satisfied to be an observer of life."
"Dear child, you're quite satisfied with everything. You're sunk in soulless contentment; you shirk emotion because it would force you to see below the pink-and-white surface; that's why you write such bad plays. Margaret!" She approached Lady Poynter with outstretched arms. "I've argued myself hoarse trying to persuade Mr. Lane to fall in love with me. ”

“ Extravagant tension and violent relief destroyed the serenity required for good work; but Eric was not dissatisfied with the progress of his play. Ease and command had grown reassuringly; his psychology was surer, perhaps because his own psychological experience had been so much enriched; and his dialogue, losing nothing of its neatness and economy, had taken on an added verisimilitude. It was too early to judge dispassionately; but, as Eric made his last corrections and sent a copy of the script to Manders, he felt a warmer glow of confidence than either of his first plays had inspired. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The intermittent presence of the maid, rather than any state of mental satisfaction in Eric, kept the conversation peaceful. He almost forgot the annoyances of the last week in watching Barbara's delighted enjoyment of a new experience so trivial as dining with him for the first time in his own flat. Nothing escaped her curious notice—a wine that he gave her to try with the scallops, the Lashmar chrysanthemums in a flat, blue-glass bowl, the unaging pleasure of an invisibly lighted room, Australian passion-fruit at dessert, a new artist's proof.... ”

“ They met once at dinner with Lady Maitland; and it hurt him absurdly when as a matter of ritual he was detailed to see Barbara home. On the day named, Colonel Waring and Agnes arrived in London and telephoned, asking him to dine with them at their hotel.
Trepidation hid become his normal mood, and Eric walked into the lounge with his teeth set and the muscles of his cheeks hard. The burgeoning happiness of Agnes was harder to bear than ever, but he achieved a tolerable effect as the undemonstrative, phlegmatic Englishman and mingled suitable congratulations with his many questions. ”

“ There was no call from Barbara in the morning, neither note nor meeting throughout the day and no call at night. Such a thing had never happened before; there might be some occult cause of offence; his experience of Barbara taught Eric that she would cease to sulk when she wanted him; it was his experience of all women that none repaid a man the trouble of trying to understand her moods. Thursday was like Wednesday (and he knew that she was not returning to Crawleigh until Saturday) ; Friday was like Thursday—until the evening, when he nervously entered the Thespian Club as guest of honour. ”

“ The new Byron would achieve an effect, if he gained the reputation of always being ten minutes late for everything; but the pose offended Eric's sense of tidiness. Signing his letters, he ripped open half-a-dozen envelopes and glanced at the contents, pushed the news-cutting album neatly into its shelf and hurried into his bedroom with a glass of sherry in his hand.
It was time to order a taxi, and a tall Scotch parlour-maid, of whom he lived in secret dread, came in answer to his ring. He would have preferred a man, but men were unprocurable in war-time. ”

“ A moment later the champagne was creaming slowly up his glass. He drained it, coughed once and collected himself.
"Let's first hear what Cranborne said," he suggested.
"Oh, he had all sorts of theories! That Jack had lost his memory—he remembered his name all right—; that some one had found the cheque on his body after the push and altered the date—a cheque for ten pounds—; that he'd tried to escape, and those brutes had punished him by not letting us know he was a prisoner.... It doesn't matter, does it, Eric? He's alive! That's what I want you to say to me! He's alive!" ”

“ Lady Crawleigh was timorous and subdued, with an air of having been all her life interrupted in the middle of her sentences and with a compensating pair of flashing pigeon's eyes which seemed to miss nothing.
"I'm so glad Babs gave us the opportunity of meeting you," she said to Eric. "I enjoyed your play so much. Your first, wasn't it? It must be a glorious sensation to make such a success at the outset."
("She takes in a thousand times more than she ever gives out," Eric said to himself; then he found himself being spun through the rest of the family. "Wonder what she does with it?") ”

“ Eric led her into the dining-room and gave her a tumbler of soda-water with a hand that trembled.{43}
She had taken him by surprise as much as if she had struck him in the face. Incuriosity and fastidiousness, partly timid, partly romantic, had conspired to let him reach the age of two-and-thirty without ever kissing or being kissed. The act, now that he had experienced it, was nothing. A warm body, yielding in self-surrender, had pressed against him for a moment ”

“ Eric looked round on a triumph of ill-assortment. He came here partly out of old friendship for his hostess, but chiefly for fear of seeming to avoid a section of society which at least took itself seriously. There was no question of a Byronic descent on Chelsea; these people would ever cringe before the face of success and disparage behind its back, as they had always done; they made a suburb and called it a school. ”

“ Why, she asked, were men given brains if they made gods of their bellies? Mrs. Shelley was the widow of a well-known free-lance journalist, who in his day had brought her into contact with a sufficient number of authors for her to imitate on austerely simple lines the symposia of wit and learning which Lady Poynter assembled on the strength of her own personality and her husband's cellar. There was a long-standing gentle competition between the two, which they abandoned in common hostility to Lady Maitland, who excelled them both in the ruthlessness and speed of her hunting. ”

“ The corridors and stairs were wrapped in warm darkness, and, after one stumble, Eric felt a hand running down his sleeve and twining round his fingers.
"Are you angry with me?" Barbara whispered. "You were so grumpy in the taxi. And I made such a success of your lunch. Mr. Manders and Mr. Grierson loved me, and I made even you smile."
Eric tried to locate Manders in the velvety darkness before replying.
"You were very amusing," he answered unenthusiastically. "But it's possible to be amusing even when you're making rather a nuisance of yourself to several very busy men." ”

“ Eric did not hear the next few sentences. Stoically, yet with an underlying measured jubilance, the old colonel was dragging Jack to security from the presumption of death two months at a time. Alive in October, alive in December! Thirteen months ago, eleven months ago. Some one would have heard of him in February or seen him in April! He was catching up hand over fist. And one day he would land in England, you would meet him in the street without warning; as you dawdled through Berkeley Square, you might see him standing on the door-step of Lord Crawleigh's house. ”

“ Eric smiled tolerantly.
"I don't know enough of what people make her out to be," he replied. Sybil was smiling mysteriously and exasperatingly to herself.... "Is the guv'nor working?" he asked his mother.
Eric prowled through the hall to his father's big work-room. Sir Francis was sitting bent over a litter of papers, with a green eye-shade clamped to his lined forehead and an ill-smelling corn-cob drooping from beneath his unassertive grey moustache. In an arm-chair before the fire Geoff was contentedly dozing with the bog-mud steaming from his boots and a half-cleaned gun across his knees. ”

“ And it was intolerable that Waring, Benyon and Nares should have been sent into the night without a stirrup-cup.
"It's in the dining-room," said Sybil, walking reproachfully to the door.
"Here! All right! I'll ring," Eric cried.
"The servants are all in bed," she answered. "Or, if they're not, they ought to be."
He thanked her suitably on her return, but one discordant, trifling incident coalesced with another, the tepid bath with the whiskey demonstration, to give him a sense of angular discomfort. ”

“ On arriving at her father's house in Berkeley Square, she found her fingers grasping a silver flask with a monogram "E. L."; and that morning, when Lady Poynter invited her to dinner, she had divined that "E. L." must stand for Eric Lane. The coincidence would not have been worth following by itself, but in the latter days of her illness she had repeatedly dreamed of a child with the stranger's voice; and, vaguely and shamefacedly, Barbara believed that dreams had an influence on life and were glimpses beyond the veil of the unknown. ”

“ Lady Barbara——"
He hesitated and felt himself flushing.
"Yes?"
"Lady Barbara—, I don't understand you, I don't begin to understand you."
"You won't write a good play till you do," she laughed. "All your women are romantic dolls. We're much better and much worse than you think. But that wasn't what you started to say."
"I know.... Well, you oughtn't to have come to my rooms last night. And you oughtn't to have come to-day, though that wasn't as bad.... What d'you imagine people like Grierson or Manders think? What d'you imagine Mabel Elstree thinks, when you sit with your head against my knee?" ”

“ The lights were lowered, there was a moment's silence, and the curtain rolled noiselessly up. Eric sat forward with his eyes fixed on the stage. Then, as the first line was spoken, he threw himself back in his chair with a smothered oath. A trim programme-seller was tripping down the gangway with mincing daintiness—down and down to the very front row of the stalls. A party of four stumbled after her, whispering and groping in the darkness, while she gave them programmes and herded them into their seats. ”

“ The telephone could not be more silent if she were in very truth dead. He sat down at his writing-table and addressed an envelope to her, but he had nothing to put inside it.
"As if I'd murdered her." It made it no easier that Barbara had begged him not to cast her off; wives sometimes begged men to run away with them. Until she drove the burning cigarette-end into her hand, crying out that she was fighting for her life, he had not understood her passionate need of him ”

“ Eric suggested.
"But you don't cease loving people because they behave badly to you. I've behaved abominably to you. You've given me everything, and all I've done in return is to make you ill and miserable. I've ruined your work, your life—you've told me so, Eric. I've been utterly selfish and heartless. You know I'm vain, you know I'm spoiled, you admit I've behaved atrociously. But you want to marry me in spite of it all."
"I love you in spite of it all."
Barbara said nothing, and her silence was a confession and answer. There were a hundred reasons why Jack had not come to see her yet ”

“ For three months Eric buried himself in his flat, only emerging at the week-end. Lashmar Mill-House gave him proximity to Agnes Waring; and every week he made an excuse to walk over to Red Roofs and ask for tidings of Jack. The news that he was alive seemed better than the suspense of no news; but the tyranny of love was strange when a man could pray for the death of a friend. The Warings' atmosphere of dignified expectancy rebuked him; they made no more pother than if a single letter had gone astray. The colonel motored daily into Winchester and sat on his tribunal ”

“ You see I didn't want to meet you, Babs. I didn't want to go through that other night again."
He was still standing; but, without noticing, he had drawn nearer to the bed, and she pulled him gently into the chair.
"Haven't you missed me, Eric?" she whispered.
"Damnably!" His laugh was bitter. "I don't see how it's to be avoided, though. And we only make things worse by prolonging the agony. The infernal story's spread to Lashmar now."
Barbara's lips curled assertively.
"I'm sorry you should suffer so much by association with me.... If you aren't expecting any one, will you dine with me, Eric?" ”

“ You can refuse to begin drinking, you can refuse to begin falling in love; (and love at first sight of a woman is as absurd as a morbid craving for drink at first sight of a bottle) . You can trust that you will be able to say in time, 'I can no more.' And then you will find that you only see the turning-point when you are past it. The world then says without pity or understanding: 'The man's drunk.'"—From the Diary of Eric Lane.{184}
CHAPTER SIX ”

“ She was hardly outside the room before his host sidled conspiratorially into the empty chair next him.
"Do you know anything of still champagne?" he enquired darkly, as though he were giving a pass-word.
"I've drunk it, of course," answered Eric.
"Of course?" Lord Poynter echoed. "My dear friend, not one man in twenty thousand of your generation has even heard of still champagne...."
It was all wonderfully like that first night fifteen months before. Lord Poynter explained for the tenth time that he never allowed coffee to be brought in until the port wine had circulated for twenty minutes. ”