"One fine day, we'll noticeA thread of smoke arising on the seaIn the far horizon,And then the ship appearing:—Then the trim white vesselGlides into the harbour, thunders forth her cannon.See you? He is coming!—I do not go to meet him. Not I. I stayUpon the brow of the hillock and wait, and waitFor a long time, but never wearyOf the long waiting.From out the crowded city,There is coming a man—A little speck in the distance, climbing the hillock.Can you guess who it is?And when he's reached the summitCan you guess what he'll say?He will call 'Butterfly' from the distance.I, without answering,Hold myself quietly concealed,A bit to tease him, and a bit so as not to dieAt our first meeting: and then, a little troubled,He will call, he will call:'Dear baby-wife of mine, dear little orange-blossom!'The names he used to call me when he came here.…"
"One fine day, we'll noticeA thread of smoke arising on the seaIn the far horizon,And then the ship appearing:—Then the trim white vesselGlides into the harbour, thunders forth her cannon.See you? He is coming!—I do not go to meet him. Not I. I stayUpon the brow of the hillock and wait, and waitFor a long time, but never wearyOf the long waiting.From out the crowded city,There is coming a man—A little speck in the distance, climbing the hillock.Can you guess who it is?And when he's reached the summitCan you guess what he'll say?He will call 'Butterfly' from the distance.I, without answering,Hold myself quietly concealed,A bit to tease him, and a bit so as not to dieAt our first meeting: and then, a little troubled,He will call, he will call:'Dear baby-wife of mine, dear little orange-blossom!'The names he used to call me when he came here.…"
Eric had allowed his cigar to go out. He lighted it again and turned to his neighbour with an apology, as the voice ceased and then seemed to revive with a last sob of ecstasy.
"She did that very well. Shall we go upstairs? I should like some more. We can take our cigars with us."
Without waiting for an answer, he made for the door and hurried ahead of the others. The drawing-room was sombrely lighted by three low standard lamps which threw the upper half of the room into shadow. He stood for several moments with lips parted and shining eyes, trying to identify three scattered couples of women before reducing the figure at the piano, by elimination, to Barbara.
"I say, was that you?" he demanded.
She made way for him at her side, welcoming him with a chastened smile and wondering at his sudden enthusiasm.
"Did you like it? I'm so glad. I was beginning to think you were a craftsman, but I believe you're an artist.… I'm full of accomplishments, Eric. Pity, isn't it, that inspiteof it all——?"
She hesitated, wistfully provocative.
"What's a pity?" he asked.
"What you were thinking; that I amwhatI am."
"I wasn't thinking that," he answered dreamily. "I was wondering if you'd sing again. We couldn't hear you at all downstairs——"
"Enough to bring you up very quickly?"
He sighed with exasperation.
"Yes, if your vanity needs a sop. Was that why you sang?"
She shook her head at him wearily, and he saw undried tears on her cheeks.
"Marion just asked me to sing. It was either that or talking to Yolande Manisty, and I hate her. What would you like me to sing?"
Eric felt ashamed of his rasping harshness.
"I don't know. That particular song always makes me cry. In spite of that," he looked at her, and smiled to himself. "No, I'm going to be very self-sacrificing. You said you wanted me to take you home, and I will—if you'll come at once."
"But it's not half-past nine yet."
"I don't care. My dear child, d'you think I can't see that you're tired, ill, over-excited——"
"It makes the night so long, Eric! But—thank you! I was beginning to think you were a prig, but I believe you're a saint!" The wistfulness left her eyes, and she smiled mischievously. "In moments of emotion how all our habits and practices break down! 'My dear child,' 'My dear child,' 'D'you think I can't see?' 'My dear child,' 'Tired, ill, over-excited.'"
"I'm sorry, Lady Barbara."
He tried to rise, but she pulled him back.
"You baby! Can't I make fun of youever? It meant so much—just that little change in your voice when you forgot to be inhuman. I prefer 'dear child' to 'Lady Barbara' any day. Do you find it so hard to be affectionate, Eric?"
"I haven't tried. It would be impossible with you. I—I don't understand you. When I was dressing for dinner——"
"You thought you did? I'm so glad you thought of me, when you were dressing for dinner; I've a sort of feeling that it's not your practice to think of me when you're dressing for dinner."
"I don't imagine my affection makes any great difference in your life," he interrupted stiffly.
"Dear Eric, let me laugh at you sometimes! It's good for you and it's ever so good for me. It isn't as if I'd laughed so very much lately.… Iwillcome home and I'll gostraightto bed. But—don't be too hard on me, Eric."
Her voice was trembling, and her eyes had again filled with tears.
"May I say that I'm 'not in the habit' of being hard on people? But—I don't understand you."
"Ah, now you're repeating yourself," she threw back flippantly over her shoulder, as she went to bid Mrs. Shelley good-night. "I'm telling Marion I've got a headache."
Eric felt that he was slipping into the practice of letting people make a fool of him.…
Though it was a fine night, they sought in vain for a taxi and had to walk the whole way from Chelsea to Berkeley Square, Barbara with her arm through Eric's and her hand in his, leaning against him.
"I'm going away on Saturday," she reminded him, as they entered Eaton Square.
"High time, too," he answered.
"Do you want to get rid of me as much as all that?" she asked in gentle reproach.
"Well, you'll automatically stop compromising yourself with me. But even that doesn't matter so much as your health, which you're quite deliberately ruining."
She stopped and put her hands on his shoulders, drawing his head to her until she could kiss him. Still capable of being surprised, he thanked Heaven—after a quick survey—that they had Eaton Square to themselves.
"Dear Eric, are you very delicate?" she asked. "It's only when health is mentioned that you become human. Last night, at the very beginning of dinner.… And again this evening. If—if I gave in and had a week in bed, I could twist you round my finger. Now, don't pull yourself away and look dignified! Don't you see that I'mpaying you a wonderful compliment? You're like a woman—not that that's a compliment.…"
She slipped her arm through his again, and they walked on past St. Peter's. Barbara was tired enough by now to be dragging on his arm, and he felt a sudden responsibility for her—as he had felt the night before when she had implicitly entrusted herself to him. He glanced down and found her walking with eyes closed and a faint smile on a very white face. The wind was blowing her hair into disorder, and he bent forward to draw her cloak more warmly over her chest.
She looked up with her eyes dark and sleep-laden.
"Am I coming undressed? Eric, you're very good to me! I shall miss you. Perhaps you'll write to me, perhaps I shall be coming up to London for just one night in about a week's time; we might dine together. Are you coming to lunch on Saturday?"
"I'll give the matter my best consideration. Go to sleep again, child."
"Dear Eric!"
She roused again as they crossed Piccadilly; and at the end of Berkeley Street she again cautiously bade him good-night.
"And about Saturday?"
Until that moment he had decided to be immovable about the Saturday invitation. He did not want to go, he wanted still less to make her think that he was going to please her. But, when she stopped him before walking on alone to her house, he felt that their position must be regularized. He had a certain status of his own—and some little pride.
"Yes, I'll come. Delighted," he said with sudden determination.
"Good-night, dear."
"Good-night, Lady Barbara."
There was time for an unexpected hour's work; but hisbroken night and jarring day had exhausted him, and he was glad to hurry through his letters and get into bed. Once there he found himself too tired even for the routine of reading the evening paper; and, while he tried to make up his mind to stretch up a hand to the switch, he dropped asleep, clutching theWestminster Gazetteand with the light blazing on to his face.
So he found himself five minutes later when the telephone-bell rang. The voice of a child, eager for praise, said:
"I'm in bed, Eric. And the light's out. And I'm going to sleep in one moment."
"I was actually asleep," he answered.
"Mydear! And I woke you up? Iamsorry. Go to sleep again atonce! Good-night!"
But the sudden shock of the bell had made his nerves restless. He had, after all, to read the evening paper and two chapters of a novel before he felt sleepy enough to turn out the light and compose himself.
Contrition, whim or pressure of other business kept Barbara out of his life the next morning. He read his letters unmolested, dictated to his secretary undisturbed and worked until mid-day uninterrupted. Then, as it was his practice to walk for half-an-hour before luncheon, he abandoned his own pretence that he was away from London and strolled along Piccadilly into the Green Park before making for the Thespian Club in Grosvenor Place. At Devonshire House he caught himself pausing to glance down Berkeley Street.…
At the club, Manders was lunching with a square-faced law lord and a doctor with humorous, shrewd eyes, who called upon Eric to join them.
"We never see anything of you nowadays," complained Dr. Gaisford.
"I don't have time to get as far away as this for lunchevery day," Eric answered, as he pulled a chair in to the table. "You're cutting your vacation short, aren't you, Lord Ettrick?"
"Oh, I had three weeks' fishing in Scotland," the law lord answered. "Ever since I came back, I've been thinking that, if I had my life over again and could choose my own career, on my soul! I'd be a gillie. They're a great breed, and it's a great life."
Manders looked reflectively at the powerful, lined face, tanned yellow over a normally unwholesome white.
"I'd 'a gone into the Navy," he said. "My idea of a holiday is to get into old clothes and moon about the Docks or Portsmouth—anywhere with salt and tar about, you know."
"And what would our young friend do?" asked Dr. Gaisford.
Eric blushed to find three pairs of eyes on him. He thought resentfully over his ten years of journalism; then, with a warm rush of satisfaction, he saw the elaborate little flat in Ryder Street, the bathroom poster of "A Divorce Has Been Arranged," the envelopes from his agent Grierson, containing cheques for—whatwouldthey be for?—the invitations, the pleasant hum of work and stir of interest as shewn in letters from country clergymen who objected to his use of the word "God" in a comedy of manners, the deference paid him when he was invited out to be spoiled and petted, the easy triumphs.…
"If I had my life over again," he answered slowly, "I should alter—nothing."
Lord Ettrick looked at him with raised eyebrows, chewing his under-lip reflectively.
"I wonder how long you'll say that," he murmured.
A page-boy threaded his way to the table and stood bashfully at a distance with a tarnished salver pressed against his buttons.
"Wanted on the 'phone, sir," he whispered.
Eric rose resignedly and followed the page to a dark, ill-ventilated box behind the porters' desk in the hall.
"Hullo!"
"Is that Eric? Say what you like, my staff-work's extraordinarily efficient!" Barbara's voice rippled into laughter. "You weren't at your flat, I justdivinedthat you'd be lunching at your club. I looked inWho's Whoto see which it was.… How are you, Eric, dear? I haven't seen or heard of you since last night."
Eric's utterance hardened and became precise.
"I was asleep then; and I'm at lunch now."
"Who are you lunching with?" she enquired with unabashed interest.
"Oh, nobody that matters! What is it, Lady Barbara? What do you want, I mean?"
"I want to talk to you. Don't youliketalking to me?"
"At the proper time and in the proper place. I say, you know, this is becoming a little bit tiresome."
There was a short pause; then a crestfallen voice murmured:
"I'm sorry, Eric. I'm truly sorry. I apologize."
"Lady Barbara!" he cried.
There was only a dull click, a silence and then a brisk nasal voice saying, "Number, please?"
Eric strode wrathfully back to the coffee-room.
"You can't do right with that damned girl," he muttered.
His companions were already paying their bills, so he abandoned his cheese and walked upstairs with them to the bright biscuit-coloured card-room overlooking the gardens of Buckingham Palace. While the others drank their coffee, he tried to write a very short, very simple note which somehow rejected his best efforts of phrasing. He had torn up four unsatisfactory drafts when Lord Ettrick threwaway his cigar and asked whether any one was walking towards the Privy Council.
"I'm only scribbling one note," Eric answered.
What he was always in danger of forgetting was that Barbara was really only a child; she had begun to speak with a delightful ripple of laughter, and he had driven it from her voice. When she apologized, there was something hurt, something very much surprised—as though he had seen her smiling and slapped the smile away.
"Please forgive me," he wrote. "I didn't mean to be rude."
Before deciding whether to send his letter by hand, Eric ascertained that, by posting it, he could be sure of its reaching its destination by the last delivery. Then he walked through the Park with Lord Ettrick, left him at the door of the Privy Council Office and returned home for an hour's work before rehearsal. On leaving the Regency, he came back to Ryder Street and dressed for dinner. His own letters clattered into their wire cage at a quarter past eight, and, before sitting down to dinner, he transferred the telephone to his dining-room. The child was unlikely to refuse so open an invitation to ring up and say that all was well.…
There was no call during dinner, no call as he worked in the smoking-room with the telephone and lamp on a table at his elbow, no call when he went to bed, though he lay reading for half-an-hour after his usual time, to be ready for her. The morning brought a pencilled note ("Surprisingly tidy hand," Eric commented, "seeing what she's like"), instinct with a new aloofness and restraint. "After your refreshingly plain hint that I was a nuisance to you, I determined that you should not have occasion to suffer from my importunity. You may lunch with us on Saturday, if you like. And I shall be very glad indeed to see you, but you must not feel that you are doing this to please me. ISAYas youTHINK: that I have no claim on you. Barbara."
Eric smiled indulgently and tossed the note into a despatch-box before ringing for his secretary. He must be more careful in future.…
When he looked at his engagement-book on Saturday morning, he found that Barbara had named no hour; which was characteristic of her. When he telephoned to the house, there was no answer; which—by no great stretch of calumny—was characteristic of the house in which she lived. Ninety per cent. of the people that he knew lunched at half-past one, excluding a Cabinet Minister, who lunched punctually at a quarter past two, and three Treasury clerks and one novelist who lunched at one; accordingly, at half-past one, he presented himself in Berkeley Square, to be informed by a sedately combative butler that luncheon was at two o'clock but that Barbara was believed to be in her room.
Eric followed his guide up four short flights of marble stairs and was shewn into the untidiest room that he had ever seen, filled in equal measure with the priceless and the worthless. The bindings of Riviere rubbed shoulders with tattered paper-backs; a cabinet of Japanese porcelain was outraged by foolish, intrusive china cats; there was a shelf of Waterford glass with a dynasty of blown-glass pigs, descending from the ten-inch-high parent to the thumb-nail baby of the litter—gravely and ridiculously arranged in a serpentine procession. Fifty kinds of trophy adorned the mantel-piece, ranging from a West African idol at one end to a pathetic, brown-eyed Teddy Bear at the other, with stiff, conventional photographs and occasional miniatures for punctuation. He recognized his own silver flask—and passed on, with a smile. Three small tables were almostburied beneath their load of pink carnations; a box of cigarettes, half-open and half-empty, lay tucked between the cushions in each of three arm-chairs, and the white bearskin rug was littered withThe Times, a round milliner's box, two cheque-books and a volume of Ronsard.
The butler looked dispassionately at the confusion and withdrew, giving it up as a hopeless task. A moment later he returned to inform Eric that her ladyship would be with him immediately. Ten minutes later Barbara came in by another door to find him cautiously picking his way through the disorder and examining her books and pictures.
"I didn't expect you so early," she began. "Will you give me a little kiss, or am I still a nuisance?"
"You didn't say any time, so I chanced half-past one," Eric answered. "If you'd told me to come at two, you'd still have been ten minutes late, wouldn't you?" he added with a laugh. "Lady Barbara, your conception of tidiness——"
She opened her eyes wide at him in unfeigned surprise.
"My dear, but you should see my bedroom!" she suggested.
"The purple bedroom?"
"Did you remember that? I believe you're beginning to like me, Eric. Come and sit down instead of fidgeting."
He paused to finish his inspection, ending up with the nursery toy-cupboard on the mantel-piece.
"Hullo! I don't know this one of Jack Waring," he exclaimed on reaching a cabinet photograph in a silver frame.
Barbara lighted a cigarette and came beside him, resting her hand on one shoulder and looking over the other at the photograph, her hair brushing against his cheek.
"He—— Give me another match, Eric; this is burning all down one side—— It's good, don't you think?"
"The best I've ever seen of him, poor chap. I must get his sister to give me one."
"And don't forget that you're going to find out whether they've had any news of him, will you? Johnny Carstairs asked the Foreign Office to make enquiries through Copenhagen and Madrid, but he hasn't been able to find out anything."
"I should be afraid there's nothing to find out," Eric murmured. "He's been missing for weeks."
"But if he's been wounded or lost his identification disc—a hundred things. And it takes months to get news sometimes. D'you like my pig family, Eric?"
"Not among Waterford glass," he answered. "Except as part of the general setting for you."
She replaced the photograph, laughing, and took his arm, leading him round the room and giving him the history of her trophies, until a footman knocked and announced that luncheon was on the table.
Eric spent the next five minutes being pushed round a large library, which seemed to contain twice as many voices as people, and introduced to a second person before he had fixed the identity of the first. 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?")
Lord Crawleigh interrupted an indignant, staccato conversation with Lady Maitland, who was holding her own with emphatic shakes of a massive head, to touch finger-tips and introduce him to his sister—the whole done cholerically and with the air of transacting a great deal of tiresome business in a short time.
("Bullies the life out of every one, I've always heard," was Eric's private comment, as he was introduced to a pair of tow-haired young officers with limp hands; "except the girl. And she bullies him.")
"I knew you by sight at Oxford," said Lord Neave, withdrawing his limp hand jerkily, as though he feared that it would be stolen. "You were at Trinity, weren't you? You, er, know my brother Charles—Mr. Lane."
Eric grasped a second limp hand, received a quick, business-like nod from John Gaymer and found himself confronted by the Duchess of Ross.
"No one will introduce us!" she cried shrilly with a vermillion pout. "I'vesomuch wanted to meet you, Mr. Lane. Youwouldn'tdine when I asked you! Won'tsome oneintroduce usproperly!"
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.
"We've heard somuchabout you from Babs," she said, struggling to finish one of her interrupted sentences. "Sogood of you to bring her home the other night."
Eric poised himself on mental tip-toes, wondering, in general, how far Barbara made her family a party to her life and, in particular, to which night Lady Crawleigh was alluding.
"Really——," he began.
"She gets these turns," Lady Crawleigh pursued. "I blame myself entirely; I allowed her to stay on working at the hospital when she simply wasn't fit for it. Nowshehas to pay formyweakness."
Eric looked from one to the other.
"I should prescribe three months in the country, bed at ten—and make her stay there for twelve hours."
"I should be out of my mind in a week," Barbara protested.
There was a pause, and Lady Crawleigh, with a rueful shrug, turned away to speak to Gaymer.
"Ilikethe way you order meintobed andoutof bed!" Barbara whispered. "If you cared what happened to me, it would be one thing, but, when I'm becoming a bit of a nuisance, you know.…"
Eric looked round cautiously and lowered his voice.
"Lady Barbara," he began.
"You persist in that?"
"Babs, then——"
"Yes, but you're receiving a favour, not conferring it."
He drew a deep breath.
"You are the most exasperating——"
"Dear Eric! I can't help teasing you! Are you the clever only child? Well, you ought to be.… I don't believe any one's ever teased you before. You mustn'tbeexasperated by me!"
Her laughter was irresistible, and Eric joined in it.
"Lady Barbara—I'm sorry—Babs, this is serious. You say you'd be out of your mind in a week, if you adopted my prescription. Let me tell you this; if you go on as you're doing now, youwillgo out of your mind——"
"I shouldn't bother you, if I were in an asylum."
Eric stiffened and turned his attention to the food before him.
"You're not aneasyperson to talk to——," he began.
"Oh, you dear child!" said Barbara, with a gurgle of laughter. "Twominutes ago it was, 'Ahaw, Lady Crawleigh, I should prescribe …' Andoneminute ago you became earnest and loving and grand-paternal, with your fond advice! Eric, I love you when you're like that! Now don't be self-conscious! 'Your ideahs of tidiness, aw, Lady Barbarah …' Whatever people may say, I believe you're intelligent. In time you'll understand." Her eyes softened and ceased to laugh at him. "Less than half a week! In time you'll know what you've done for me, what I very humbly hope and pray you're going to go on doing for me.… You'll know why I trust you and love you more than I've ever loved any one in my life before. There! Is that plain enough? I don't say it excuses my being 'tiresome,' but it may explain it.… Now don't say, 'Lady Barbarah, I—er—I don't—aw—understand you!'" Her fingers twined their way confidingly between his. "Why bother? Why not go on being just what you are?" she whispered. "Something that's made me think life's still worth living. I don'tclaimit," she added with a change of tone. "I ask it."
"And will you do something for me in return?" Eric asked. "Will you take six months' complete rest in the country, drop smoking——?"
"But I told you I should go out of my mind in a week!"
"Will you go for six weeks, sixdays?"
"You want to get rid of me?"
Eric felt his patience ebbing.
"I want to see you looking less of a haggard little wreck than you do now," he exclaimed.
"Then I'll go. Thank you, Eric."
From the end of the table Lord Crawleigh's voice penetrated authoritatively.
"Barbara! … Barbara! Are you coming with us by the 4.10?"
She pressed Eric's hand before turning her head.
"I can't come till the 5.40," she said.
"But, my dear Barbara——"
"I—can't, father."
("Bullies the life out of every one, I've always heard," Eric repeated to himself, as Lord Crawleigh subsided into inarticulate blustering. "Except the girl. And she bullies him.")
"I did wonderful staff-work with Waterloo this morning," Barbara confided. "The 5.40 stops at WinchesterandCrawleigh."
"I could have told you that," said Eric. "So could Bradshaw, deceased."
"But fancy looking at Bradshaw, when you can persuade some one to look at it for you! … And you can't getanywhere in Bradshaw without going through the Severn Tunnel and waiting two hours at Bletchley. Besides, Waterloo rather loved me. Just my voice, you know.… We'll go down together. You can wire to your people."
"I told them I'd come by the 5.40."
"But how lucky!"
"How—understanding," he amended.
"If you can be sure of your opponent, you may win by throwing down your weapon. It is the victory of the weak over the strong, the 'tyranny of tears.' Or perhaps it is the victory of the weak over the weaker. But you must be sure of your opponent."—From the Diary of Eric Lane.
"If you can be sure of your opponent, you may win by throwing down your weapon. It is the victory of the weak over the strong, the 'tyranny of tears.' Or perhaps it is the victory of the weak over the weaker. But you must be sure of your opponent."—From the Diary of Eric Lane.
"I've come back … and I was the King of Kafiristan … and you've been setting here ever since—O Lord!"Rudyard Kipling: "The Man Who Would Be King."
"I've come back … and I was the King of Kafiristan … and you've been setting here ever since—O Lord!"
Rudyard Kipling: "The Man Who Would Be King."
As the crow flies, Lashmar Mill-House is but five miles from Winchester. By road, however, there are six miles of tolerable grey flint and rusty gravel on the Winchester and Melton turnpike, followed by three Irish miles of unaided forest track. Half of it lies under water for six months of the year; but in the summer a rutted ride projects from stony sand-pockets framed in velvet moss, with tidal-waves of bracken surging up from the dells at the road-side and low branches meeting to net the sun-shine.
At the end of the three miles Swanley Forest seems to have paused for breath. There is a natural clearing a mile long and three quarters of a mile broad—cherished common-land, where the Lashmar villagers walk many assertive miles of a Sunday to preserve their rights of way; where, too, tethered goats and errant geese make good their eleventh-century claim to free pasturage. At one end of the down-soft clearing, a Methodist chapel, two shops and five cottages constitute the village of Lashmar; at the other lies Lashmar Mill-House, slumbering half-hidden by beech trees to the unchanging murmur of the Bort. The relevant deeds and charters prove beyond a doubt that the lord of Lashmar Mill-House has the right to make Lashmar villagegrind its corn in his mill, paying him in kind and yielding three days' labour a year to grind his. The ambitions of Sir Francis Lane and of his eldest son, however, were not feudal.
The autumn floods were lapping the road-side as Eric and his sister left the twinkling lights behind and turned, after a crackling six miles of metalled high-way, on to the primæval ride that bored faint-heartedly through the forest. He was tired and uncommunicative, though his journey from Waterloo had been uneventful; once inside the carriage and tucked warmly into a corner, Barbara had closed her eyes, sighed and dropped asleep. Not until he stirred himself to collect his hat and coat did she open her eyes and look round with a tired smile; as the train steamed out of Winchester, an ungloved hand fluttered into sight for a moment.
It was Eric's first visit to Lashmar since the production of the "Divorce" had made his name known throughout England; and he could not conceal from himself that he was trying to render his return agreeably dramatic. Lady Lane assisted the conspiracy by inviting their few neighbours to meet him; Sybil was awaiting him on the platform with ill-suppressed excitement; and it was entirely appropriate that Agnes Waring should dine at the Mill-House on his first night at home.
"Geoff came home on leave yesterday," said Sybil.
"From Scapa? Oh, good! I haven't seen him for a long time," said Eric.
But for Basil, who was in Salonica, the party would be complete; and Eric felt a moment's compunction at having allowed himself to be so much caught up by the work and distractions of London. When the car stopped at the door of the Mill-House, he looked with affection at its squat, sleepy extent, punctuated with lifeless, dark windows and wrapped in age-long slumber; as the door opened, he sawhis mother silhouetted against the golden light of the hall.
"At last, Eric!" she cried.
"It's good to be home again, mother," he answered, jumping out of the car and embracing her.
While his sister drove round to the stables, Eric walked arm-in-arm with his mother into the low, warm hall. For more than thirty years Lady Lane had guarded, counselled and provided for an eccentric husband and a turbulent family, shouldering the cares of all, budgeting, nursing and educating on an income which slipped unrewardingly away until she assumed control. She had learned Greek and Latin to help the boys with their home-work and had trained their characters in an austere school of aggressive Puritanism. If she were a little intolerant, at least she reared her children to a lofty sense of honour, a cold chastity of life and speech and a fierce refusal to compromise where truth or personal reputation was concerned. Thanks to her, three boys and one girl were now able to fend for themselves; Sybil, factotum and amanuensis to her father ever since she had learned to read, could support herself anywhere; Geoff was firmly on his feet in the Navy, Basil had passed into the Civil Service a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Lady Lane was justly content with her children; of Eric, whom she had kept alive when the doctors despaired of him, she was justly proud.
"Come into the drawing-room," she said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. "I've got a fire there."
"Nothing's changed," said Eric wonderingly.
Lashmar Mill-House, for all its size, contained hardly more than two rooms on the ground-floor; a vast, book-lined study for Sir Francis, an equally vast living-room for the rest of the family and, between them, a furtive, dark rectangle where they hurried through their meals. Eric had begged for years to have the back wall removed from the hall to make an adequate dining-room, but his mother hadgrown middle-aged in a familiar compass and did not care to be told by him too explicitly how the house should be run and improved. In the moment of arrival Eric was too much pleased with his welcome to be critical.
"You look tired," she said, holding his face to the light. "Tell me what you've been doing all this while. You've become a great celebrity, Eric."
"There's nothing much to tell. I've been doing a lot of work, meeting a lot of people.… It's been rather fun.…"
As soon as she had put away the car, Sybil joined them and stood with her back to the fire and her hands in the pockets of a short tweed skirt, staring idly at her own small feet in their brown stockings and thick brogues and rousing herself with an abrupt jerk of the head when she wanted to intervene with a question.
"You werebarelycivil, when I rang you up the other night," she interjected, in a pause, with the disconcerting directness of nineteen.
"I was late already, and you were making me later," Eric answered patiently. "That night——? Oh, yes."
He detailed Lady Poynter's dinner to his mother and observed an expression of mixed curiosity and disapproval settling upon his sister's face.
"Mrs. O'Rane? Sonia Dainton that was? H'm," said Sybil. "And Lady Barbara Neave. Are you being taken up bythatset now, Ricky?"
"I don't quite know what you mean by 'being taken up.' I met them at dinner.… And I lunched with the Crawleighs to-day," he added without filling in the intervening encounters. "Lady Crawleigh wants me to go down there next week-end, but I'm too busy; and week-ends simply wear me out."
"Youhavemade yourself popular with them all at once!" Sybil commented. "What's Lady Barbara like?"
"Interesting girl," Eric answered, casually.
"Is she anything like what people make her out to be?"
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. By his side an elderly retriever peered reflectively into the flames and from time to time yawned silently.
"'Evening, everybody," said Eric. "I've been sent to hunt you off to dress, father. You asleep, Geoff? If not, how are you?"
Sir Francis pulled off the eye-shade and held out his hand with a wintry smile. The boy in the arm-chair turned on to his other side and dropped asleep again with a disgusted grunt.
"He's got about a year to make up," explained Sir Francis. "The Grand Fleet doesn't do much sleeping. Well, Eric, what news?"
"Everything very much as usual," was the answer.
"Everything's always very much as usual here," said his father, as he turned out the reading-lamp.
He sighed as he said it, and Eric tried to calculate the number of years in which he had come down like this for the week-end—to be met, before the era of motor-cars, by a fat pony and a governess cart, to be greeted by his mother with affection which he never seemed able to repay, to drift into the library and detach his lank, unaging father fromhis studies. Sir Francis had accepted marriage and the presence of a wife as he would have accepted a new house and strange house-keeper; children had been born; after the publication of his Smaller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary the friend of a friend had recommended him, through a friend's friend, for a knighthood, and he had bestirred himself with wide-eyed, childish surprise for the investiture and a congratulatory dinner at the Athenæum, returning to Lashmar Mill-House grievously unsettled and discontented for as much as a week. He had talked of running up to London occasionally, of having these fellows down for the week-end; he had complained that he was growing rusty and losing touch with the world. Then the murmur of the mill-stream had drugged his senses, and he had settled to the Century Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Volume VII E-G.
After the restlessness of London, Eric could not at once accommodate himself to the leisurely contentment and placidity of Lashmar.
"Wake up, Geoff!" he cried.
The boy yawned and stretched himself like a cat, then became suddenly active and projected himself across the room, turning in the door-way to shout: "Bags I first bath, Ricky!"
"Well, don't take all the hot water," Eric begged. After the ingenious comfort of his flat in Ryder Street, he could not at once accommodate himself to the simplicity of the Mill-House. "Pity you never turned the east room into a bathroom," he said to his father. "You talked about it for years. Weneedanother one."
It was an old controversy and part of Eric's persistent but fruitless campaign against the studiedly Spartan attitude of Lashmar Mill-House.
"It's rather an unnecessary expense. And we seem to struggle on without it," said Sir Francis.
"I avoid unnecessary struggles as much as possible," Eric answered shortly.
"You couldn't get the work done while the war's on," Sir Francis pointed out, rooting himself firmly in the particular.
Eric walked upstairs, reflecting in moody dissatisfaction on unnecessary struggles. No one ever laid out his dress clothes for him at Lashmar. It neverhadbeen done when he was a school-boy, carefully protected from pampering. Sporadic attempts were made, whenever he launched an offensive against the domestic economy of the house; but the maids were always changing, Lady Lane believed that all men-servants drank or stole the cigars.… In the last resort, these country-bred girls were so difficult to teach.…
Down the passage came the sound of emptying taps and a voice singing cheerfully in the bath.
"Don't stay there all night, Geoff!" Eric cried, banging on the door. "It's a quarter to eight now."
It was five minutes to eight before the bathroom, sloppy and filled with steam, was surrendered to him. No man could have a hot bath and dress in five minutes; he was particularly anxious to appear at his best for the meeting with Agnes.…
And the water was tepid.…
"I have been apologizing for you," said Lady Lane pointedly, as Eric hurried late and ill-humoured into the drawing-room.
He had ready at hand a caustic little speech about inadequate hot-water supply and insufficient bathrooms, but it was intended for domestic consumption and, after one scowl at Geoff, he laid it aside. Family altercations, like family jokes, should be reserved for the family, though noone else emulated his moderation. He wondered whether the servants grew as weary as he did of the story about the cross-country journey from Oxford to Winchester; it was dragged up at his expense whenever any one missed a train—and trains were missed weekly. Servants, of course, could always leave; they always did. Perhaps they made bets which would hear the Oxford-to-Winchester story most often in three months; perhaps they met in sullen conspiracy and pledged themselves to decamp in a body the next time any one heard it.…
That tepid bath had chilled his enjoyment of everything.…
"I'm sorry to be late," he murmured, stiffly impenitent.
Agnes Waring was in the foreground, talking to his father; he shook hands shyly and squeezed past her to Nares, the apologetic, ineffectual vicar, and from Nares to Mrs. Waring, who was talking to a young officer whom she had brought over with her party. Colonel Waring stood by the fire, retailing safe newspaper opinions on the war and representing to Eric's theatre-trained eyes, with their passion for "types," almost too perfect a picture of the younger brother who had passed from twenty years in a cavalry regiment to half-pay retirement and a certain military pretentiousness of daily life. There was no one else. Had their lives depended on it, Lashmar could not yield another man or woman.
"Entertaining here always reminds me of a musical comedy," Eric murmured to Sybil. "Where one goes, all go: