Eric led her into the dining-room and gave her a tumbler of soda-water with a hand that trembled.
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; two hands had impelled his head forward; he had been blinded for an instant by a scented billow of hair; then his cheeks had been touched as though a leaf had blown against them. That was the temperate analysis of kissing.…
"It's a nice room, Eric," she murmured, glancing slowly round over the top of her tumbler at the panelled walls and shining oak table. "And I like your invisible lighting. It's restful, and I hate a glare. What other rooms have you?"
"Kitchen next door," he answered with intentional abruptness; "then the servants' room—you won't make a noise, will you? or you'll wake them up. Bathroom, spare room, my own room, smoking-room. No, the limits of my unconventionality are soon reached; you can finish your soda-water in the smoking-room, and then I'll take you home."
"But I shouldliketo see your room," she answered with the grave persistence of an unreasonable child. "Mine's purple and white in London—purple carpet, purple curtains, purple counterpane—and nothing but white—except the rose-wood, of course—at Crawleigh."
"This is the smoking-room," said Eric, conscientiously firm and unimpressed.
Barbara gave a little gasp of pleasure as he flooded the room with light. Book-cases surrounded three walls, stretching half-way to the ceiling and topped with rose-bowls and bronzes. The fourth was warmed by longrose Du Barrycurtains over the two windows; between themstood a Chippendale writing-table. The rest of the room was given up to an irregular circle of sofas and arm-chairs, white-covered and laden withrose Du Barrysatin cushions, surrounding a second table.
"Iamglad I came!" she cried. "You know how to make yourself comfortable, Eric! Of course, the first cigarette I drop on your adorable grey carpet—you see how it matches my dress?—the first cigarette spoils it for ever.Andthe roses!" With a characteristically impulsive jerk she dragged the tulle band and artificial flower from her hair, tossed them to Eric and stretched her hand up for a red rose to take their place. "Ah! beloved celibate! not a mirror in the room! I shallhaveto——"
"Please stay where you are, Lady Barbara."
She crammed the rose carelessly into her hair and dropped on the nearest sofa.
"Dotake that coat off and sit down here!" she begged him.
"I'm waiting to take you home."
"But I'm not going home yet. I'm enjoying myself, I'm happy."
"I'm waiting to take you home," he repeated.
She pouted and glanced up at him through half-closed eyes.
"You don't care whether I'm happy or not. You'resoullesslyselfish!" She looked round and helped herself to a cigarette; then her hand crept invitingly, with the shy daring of a mouse, along the sofa. "I want a match."
Eric took the cigarette and replaced it in its box.
"Bed-time," he said. "This meeting was not of my contriving, Lady Barbara, and, when you've learned the meaning of words, you'll find that it won't affect yourhappiness——"
His flow was arrested by a startling gasp.
"Oh, it's no good!" Barbara cried. "You're hopeless, hopeless."
To his amazement she had sprung to her feet, angry and disfigured, forgetting to break through his guard, tossing her weapon away; no longer teasing, imperious or purposely reckless; and without one of her disarming lapses into simplicity. It was the mingled pain and anger of a flesh-wound clumsily reopened. The next moment she had collapsed on the sofa, stiffly upright, staring at him with hot eyes. Then the set cheeks and compressed lips relaxed like the scattering petals of a blown rose; her mouth drooped, her eyes half-closed, and she began to cry.
Eric looked in consternation at her puckered, pathetic face, suddenly colourless save for dark rings round the big, hollow eyes. Then he sat down and drew her to him, patting her hand and talking to her half as if she were a child, half as though she were capable of understanding his weighty diagnosis.
"Lady Barbara! Lady Barbara! Are you listening to me? You mustn't cry—really.… It takes awayallyour prettiness. Now, you were fairly hard on me at dinner, weren't you? But I do possesssomeintelligence; I didn't need to have Lady Poynter shouting from the house-top that you were ill. You're worn out, you ought to be in bed and you ought to stay there, instead of exciting yourself. Lady Barbara,pleasestop crying! I don't know what I said, but I'm very humbly sorry. Won't you stop?"
She stiffened herself with a jerk and smiled as abruptly.
"It was my fault. I've not been well and I've been very miserable. Give me a little kiss, Eric, to shew you're not angry with me."
She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders again.
"Why should I be angry with you?" he asked with a defensive laugh.
Her hands dropped into her lap.
"You won't kiss me?"
"What difference would it make?"
"I ask you to. What difference would it make to you?"
Eric fumbled industriously with a cigarette.
"It so happens that I've never kissed any one," he said, "except my mother and sister, of course." Then, as she sat hungrily reproachful, he repeated: "Whatdifferencewould it make?"
"You wouldn't understand …" she sighed. "And yet I thought you would. Where did you get that tray from, Eric? You've never been to India, have you?"
"It was given me by an uncle of mine. Lady Barbara—If it will give you any satisfaction.…"
He kissed her forehead with shame-faced timidity and became discursively explanatory.
"The candle-sticks were looted during the Commune," he began hurriedly. "I was given them as a house-warming present. The clock …"
Barbara was wandering listlessly round the room and paying little attention to what he was saying. She explored the book-cases, ransacked the writing-table and looked curiously at the horse-shoe paper-weight.
"You can give this to me, Eric," she suggested over her shoulder.
"I'm afraid it was a present. Given me on my first night."
"It would still be a present, if you gave it to me. I had one, but I broke it. All my luck's left me since then. Are you superstitious?"
"Not—in—the—least! I keep this for associations and a toy. If Icouldbring out a play on Friday the thirteenth——"
"If you're not superstitious, there's no excuse for not giving it to me."
She tossed the horse-shoe into the air and caught it neatly with her right hand.
"I'll see if I can get you another one," he promised, "but I don't know whether they're made in England."
"It might make all the difference to me," she pleaded, catching the horse-shoe with her left hand. "It's only a toy to you—a child's toy."
Eric shook his head at her. Barbara pouted and threw the horse-shoe a third time into the air, bending forward to catch it behind her back as it dropped. Eric, watching apprehensively, saw a flash of apprehension reflected for an instant in her eyes; then there was a tinkle of broken glass.
"Oh, mydear! I wouldn't have done that for the world!" she cried, pressing her hands against her cheeks. "I've destroyed your luck now! What a fool I was! Abject fool!"
"Whatdoesit matter?" Eric laughed.
"I wouldn't have done that for the world," she repeated with a white face.
"And you're living in the year of grace nineteen-fifteen? It's only—What did we call it? A child's toy. And, between ourselves, it wasn't a very efficient paper-weight. I can assure you I shan't miss it."
"Perhaps you will some day. And then you'll lift up your hands and curse the hour when you first met me."
Eric looked complacently at the airy room, the crowded book-cases, the soft chairs, the bellying curtains and the neat pile of manuscript on his writing-table:
"Aren't you perhaps exaggerating your potential influence on my life?" he suggested.
Barbara went back to her sofa and helped herself to a cigarette without hurry or fear that this time it would betaken from her; she smiled for a match—and smiled again when it was given her.
"Aren't you perhaps boasting too soon, my self-satisfied young friend? Your education's only just beginning."
Eric lighted a cigarette and sat down beside her. He no longer insisted that, for health or propriety, she must go home at once; and in some forgotten moment he had involuntarily taken off his overcoat.
"I wonder what you think you can teach me," he mused. "I wonder what you know, to start with."
"I know life."
"A considerable subject."
"I've had considerable experience."
The clock on the mantel-piece chimed one. Neither seemed to notice it, for Barbara was becoming autobiographical. Her story was ill-arranged and discursive, with personal characteristics of Lord Crawleigh sandwiched between her life at Government House, Ottawa, and a thwarted romance between her brother and a designing American. She flitted from her four years in India to Viceregal Lodge, Dublin, with a procession of damaging encounters with her father as stepping-stones in the narrative. (From her account it was Lord Crawleigh who sustained most of the damage.) He could never shake off a certain pro-consular manner in private life and had reduced his sons to blundering and untrustworthyaides-de-campand his wife to a dignified but trembling squaw. Barbara alone resisted him.
"What can he do?" she asked. "He whipped me till I was ten, but I'm too big for that now. He can't very well lock me in my room, because the servants would leave in a body. They adore me. If he'd tried to stop my allowance, I should have gone on the stage—we've settledthatpoint once and for all with Harry Manders, half-way through the stage-door of the Hilarity. Now I've got myown money. Mind you, Iadorefather, and he adores me; most people adore me; but I must do what I like.Yousee that now; but I had to shew you, I had to break my way in here by main force."
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 gratitude.
"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. "Iwasmiserable, Iwantedto be kissed, I washungryfor the smallest crumb of affection.I wanted to behappy.… 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.
"Iseem to have come in the way rather," she interrupted.
"The butterfly 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'mnot."
"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 anddirecting 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 passing 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 anybodyshouldbe 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 platitude 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.
"Between men on the Stock Exchange it is a platitude 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.
"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."
"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."
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 suitfor 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 andThe 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 withthatwoman, Rhoda? She's God's first and mostperfectbore." 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 petitions 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. Shelley, made the tenth.
Eric piled his correspondence under the butter-dish to await his secretary's arrival and turned methodically toThe 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. Shelley 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'saway.…" She looked despairingly at Eric. "He'sawa-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 shemustspeak 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. Therewas a pause. "I told you yesterday, Lady Barbara. Just as when you say 'Not at home.'… I'm exceedingly busy and Imusthave a few days to myself. Good-bye."
The constant factor in her overnight autobiography was that every one had always done what Barbara wanted; but, if she fancied that she was going to break into a working-day with any of her nonsense, she would be disappointed.
At the other end of the line a gentle, rather tired voice said:
"Don't cut me off. If youknowthe trouble I've had to get hold of you! Eric, why aren't you in the book? Another device for escaping your adorers? I've been pursuing you round London for a good half-hour; then your people at the theatre——"
"Is it anythingimportant?" he interrupted curtly.
"It's very important that you should listenmostpolitely and carefully and patiently and attentively when I'm talking to you. So far you haven't asked how I am, you haven't told me how you are——"
"I'vesuggestedthat I'm very busy," he interrupted her again.
"But I don't allow that sort of thing to stand in the way."
"AndIdon't allow any one to break into my time. Good-bye——"
"Eric, don't you dare ring me off! I want to know whether you'll lunch here to-day. I've collected rather an amusing party."
"I'm afraid I can't."
"Whereareyou lunching? At home? Then you can certainly come.… I don't carewho'slunching with you.… If you don't—Well, you'll see. In the meantime, has Marion Shelley invited you to dine to-night and are you going?"
"Yes, to the first; no, to the second," Eric answered. "Lady Barbara——"
"It must be 'yes' to the second, too, dear Eric. I rang her up at cock-crow to say that you wanted her to invite us together. You do, you know; you want to see whether last night's impression was true; that's why I asked you to lunch.… Now I want to know if you've a rehearsal to-day, because, if so——"
"Lady Barbara, I am going to cut you off," said Eric distinctly.
He hung up the receiver and was about to ring for his secretary, when his memory was arrested by the picture of Barbara springing to her feet, reviling him, collapsing on the sofa and bursting into tears. "Bully her, and she cries," he murmured impatiently. "Don't bully her, and she bullies you. I'm not cut out for the part of tame cat. Another forty-eight hours, and she'll expect me to drive round London and look at dresses with her.…" But if his petulance had made her cry again … Eric hunted for a pen and, without involving himself in delicacies of address, wrote—"I am not discourteous by preference, but you drive me to it. La comedia è finita." He left the note unsigned and asked his secretary to have it sent by hand to Berkeley Square. When it had left him past recall, he felt that he could have done better; and he knew that he would have done best of all by not writing.… But he was irritated by her too insistent unconventionality; irritated and yet rawly elated by his ascendancy over her.
His secretary returned, and he dictated to her until half-past nine struck. It was his signal to get up so that he could be dressed by ten, so that he could work from ten till one, so that he could walk out and lunch at one-thirty, observing his time-table punctually.
The telephone rang again, and Mrs. Shelley enquired tonelessly whether he had received her invitation.
"Oh, Eric! Ididhope you could come!" she exclaimed."Can't you reconsider? Poor Babs seems so anxious to see you again."
Mrs. Shelley, then, had the wit to guess where the initiative lay.
"I'm afraid that the privilege of gratifying Lady Barbara's whims——"
He forgot how he had meant to finish the sentence, and there was a pause.
"Don't you like her, Eric?" asked Mrs. Shelley. "Most people fall a victim the first time they meet her."
"I've outgrown the susceptible age," he laughed. "And, anyway, I'm working. It's awfully kind of you to invite me, Mrs. Shelley——"
"Eric, I wish you'd reconsider," she interrupted before he could repeat his refusal. "I feel you'll be doing her a kindness by coming; you amused her and turned her thoughts.… I was dreadfully distressed last night; she looked as if she were going into a decline.…"
In contrast to Mrs. Shelley's toneless voice Eric heard again Barbara's abrupt, startling cry, "You're hopeless, hopeless!"—just before she collapsed limply on the sofa and cried about something which she would not explain.…
"You make it impossible for me to refuse," he said with an uneasy laugh.
"I'm so grateful! Iknewyou'd come, Eric."
He threw back the bed-clothes and rang for his bath.
"I suppose Lady Barbara will thinksheknew I was coming, too," he said to himself. "I don't mind being made a fool ofonce.…"
At noon he tidied his papers and lighted a cigarette while he waited for a call from his agent. The "Divorce" was being produced in America; and for an arid, perplexing half-hour Mr. Grierson, with eyes half-closed in the greysmoke of his cigar, pushed cables, letters, copies and a draft agreement across the table.
"Stay and have some lunch," Eric suggested, as half-past twelve struck. "Manders is due any time now. He wants me to make certain alterations in the 'Bomb-Shell,' and you can keep me in countenance. I'm getting rather tired of being told: 'Of course, with great respect, Lane, you're a new-comer to the theatre.…' New-comer I may be, but it doesn't lie in Manders' mouth to say so, if he'll trouble to calculate how many thousands I've put in his pocket.… Isn't this the sort of time when one has a cocktail?"
Grierson's eyes lighted up at the suggestion, and Eric rang for ice. He was in the middle of his preparations when Harry Manders entered in a suit of light tweeds, clutching a flat-brimmed bowler hat in one hand and a leather-topped cane in the other.
"'Mornin', Eric. Hullo, Phil! Sinister combination for a poor devil of an actor-manager—authorandagent. What's this you're givin' me? Well, only up to the top—On my honour, boy, only up to the top!" He nodded over the brimming glass with a knowing "Well, chin-chin!" and subsided diagonally into a chair with his legs across one arm.
"I thought Grierson's age and experience might save my play from further amateur surgery," Eric explained.
"Tootaloo," chirped Manders resiliently and dragged a crumpled script from his pocket. Eric's obstinate assurance would have exasperated any other manager, but, as Manders wearily said, "I've been too long at the game to lose my temper."
With that they settled to work and argued their way through the marked passages of Manders' copy heatedly and without reaching conviction or agreement. Once Grierson rose and shook a second cocktail; twice a maidannounced that luncheon was on the table. Something, which he attributed to his broken night, made Eric unreasonable to a point where he knew that he was being unreasonable. He was too tired for anything except sustained obstinacy, and his companions grated on him.
"Oh, let's have something to eat!" he exclaimed at length. "The second act's got to stand as I wrote it. We shan't do any good by talking.…"
"Now don't you be in a hurry, boy," began Manders. "Turnback to the beginning.…"
Eric looked at his watch.
"Don't forget we've a rehearsal," he said. "I don't know what there is for lunch, but it will be tepid."
"Then let's wait for it to get cold. Now, in the first act you said—Damn!"
He flapped the script impatiently on his knee as the now familiar knock of Eric's parlour-maid was heard yet again.
"Lady Barbara Neave to see you, sir," she whispered a little breathlessly.
"Will you please say that I can't possibly see any one?" Eric answered curtly. "Tell her that two gentlemen have come to see me on business. Ask her to leave a message."
He turned to find Manders smiling, as though to say, "Why didn't you tell us?Weshould have understood. We're men of the world."
"Thefirstact," Eric repeated earnestly. "Asyou will, but do go ahead with it. I want some lunch."
For five seconds the three men turned the limp, dog's-eared pages until they had found the place. Manders cleared his throat unreservedly and then looked up with an expression of ebbing patience, as the door opened again. This time there was no knock, and Lady Barbara walked in after hesitating for a moment on the threshold to identify Eric. She was wearing a black dress with a transparent film of grey hanging from the shoulders, a blackhat shaped like a butterfly's wings with her hair visible through the spider's web crown. One hand swung a sable stole, the other carried to and from her mouth a half-eaten apple.
"Eric,pleaseinvite me to lunch with you!" she begged. "You've such delicious food. I was shewn into your dining-room and I could hardly resist it. There's a dressed crab—I behavedperfectly, I didn't touch it—and, if all three of you had the weeniest little bit less, there'd be enough for us all. Hullo, there's Mr. Manders!"
She shook hands and waited for Eric to introduce Grierson.
"You're interrupting an important discussion, Lady Barbara."
"Is it about your new play? Oh, then I can help! But, if you knew how hungry I was——"
"They're expecting you to lunch at home," Eric interrupted. "You told me you had a party."
"But I've just telephoned to say that I've been invited to lunch here! I've burnt your boats. Father was perfectly furious, because mother's lunching with Connie Maitland, and he counted on me to see him through."
As she smiled at Eric with her head on one side, he realized that work was over for the morning.
"I daresay there will be enough for four," he answered.
"Then for goodness' sake let's begin before any one else turns up unexpectedly!" she cried, catching him by the sleeves and drawing him to the door.
Grierson and Manders smiled and followed them, carefully brushing cigar-ash from their clothes and smoothing the back of their hair.
Elation battled with annoyance in Eric's mind throughout luncheon. Barbara had sought him out, when a hundred other men—several of them, like George Oakleigh, undisguisedly in love with her—might have been preferred to him; but he was offended by her proprietory attitude towards his work and life. Manders would have the whole story, too, helped out with first-rate mimicry, running through the Thespian Club by dinner-time; it would spread in twenty-fours through all of the London that knew him and half of the London that knew her; and Eric Lane would be quoted as the latest foil or companion in the latest Barbara Neave story. One did not even want the girl to be made a peg for Manders' wit.…
The luncheon, Eric observed morosely, was cheaply successful, for Barbara talked with barely concealed desire to lay Grierson and Manders under her spell. By intuition or accident she gave them what tickled their interest most keenly—intimate stories about herself or her friends, the proved history of what to them had hitherto been but alluring gossip, anecdotes of Government House and the minor secrets and scandals of her father's three terms of office. Eric felt that it was alittlebelow the dignity of a girl, who was after all the daughter of a distinguished former viceroy, to be discussing herself and her friends so freely.…
They had lost count of time when Grierson looked furtively at his watch and jumped apologetically to his feet. As he hurried out of the room Barbara again asked Eric whether he had a rehearsal that day.
"Because I want to come," she explained wheedlingly, with her head on one side.
Her eyes were dark and tired after her overnight excitement; she had exhausted herself with talking; and for a moment Eric forgot to be irritated and only saw her as a child whom it would be ungracious to disappoint. Then he remembered one phase of a rambling story in which her love of getting her own way had caused her cavalier ofthe day to wait in his car from midnight until six because she had forgotten to leave a message that she had already gone home. In the story Eric could not remember any apology from Barbara. Triumphs came so quickly and easily that she expected everything and valued nothing; a man was sufficiently rewarded by being allowed to fall in love with her.…
"I'm afraid rehearsals aren't open to the public," he told her, brusquely enough to dismiss the appeal, he hoped, but not so brusquely as to hurt her.
She looked at him with the glint of defiance which he had seen once before; then she turned to Manders.
"Please, I want to come to the rehearsal," she begged. "It's your theatre, Mr. Manders."
"It's my play," Eric interrupted.
She turned her head long enough to say:
"I was asking Mr. Manders."
"But it happens that I also——"
Manders intervened with a clucking noise of the tongue.
"Keep the ring, keep the ring!" he cried. "You got out o' bed the wrong side, Eric boy. Don't quarrel, do-ant quarrel! If Lady Barbara wants to come, let her! It's against the rules, but I'll make an exception for her." The girl rewarded him with a glowing smile. "You'll be bored, my dear, I warn you."
"Oh, if I am, I can talk to Eric."
"Look here, Manders, if a rehearsal's worth taking at all, it's worth taking seriously," cried Eric petulantly. "I've plenty of other use for my time."
Manders was faintly amused by the outburst and wholly unmoved. Dire experience of the jealous and irascible had taught him that he could not afford to let other people lose their tempers.
"Lady Barbara will promise not to talk," he prophesied. "We're late, boy."
"I shall talk afterwards," she warned them. "At dinner to-night—Mr. Manders, I can't get Eric to see what bad plays he writes and what good plays he might turn out. He's very funny about it."
"Authors are a rum lot!" said Manders jocosely, slapping Eric's shoulder. "See about a taxi, boy. I don't let my people keep me waiting and I don't want them to wait for me."
It was a defeat for Eric, formally recorded by Barbara with that glint of triumph which was beginning to fill him with misgiving. They drove in silence to a side street off Shaftesbury Avenue and groped their way through the stage-door down a cork-screw staircase and along several short passages which branched disconcertingly to right or left as soon as Barbara fancied that she could walk ahead with impunity. From above came the mechanical runs and flourishes of a piano-organ against the drone of traffic; somewhere below there was a rapid squeak of voices. 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 sogrumpyin 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 severalverybusy men."
A sigh fluttered wistfully through the darkness, and he felt her drawing closer to him.
"Aren't you alittlebit brutal, Eric?"
"Don't you find every one brutal who doesn't fetch andcarry and wait out in the snow for you all night—and give you material for new stories? … Stand still while I find the handle."
He led her through a studded iron door into the twilit auditorium. The stalls were swathed in holland covers, and there was a brooding warm desolation which invited undertones. Barbara looked with growing interest at a sprawling group of two men and three women on the stage. Without make-up they were white and featureless in the glare of the foot-lights; they were jaded and a little impatient, too, but Manders, who seemed to make his personality unyielding and metallic on entering a theatre, galvanized them into alertness. A wooden platform had been built over the middle of the orchestra; and, as soon as he had disposed of Barbara in the stalls, Eric mounted it and seated himself in an arm-chair. Manders cautiously squeezed past him, script in hand, to the stage; there was a preliminary cough, a cry of "Beginners, please!" and the rehearsal opened.
Eric allowed the first act to be played without interruption; at the end he jumped up and entered into whispered conversation with Manders, turning the leaves of the manuscript and tapping them impressively with his pencil. One player after another emerged from the wings and stood listening, nodding and discussing as each point was thrashed out. A few minutes later Manders came down into the stalls and sat by Barbara.
"Just a breather," he explained. "No good nagging your people, particularly when they've been at the job for years and you're a new-comer.… Some of my spoiled darlings find that a little Eric goes a long way. You're sure you're not bored, my dear?"
"I can'tseevery well," Barbara answered. "If I had a chair on the little platform——"
Manders wasted an unseen wink on her.
"Well, you mustn't talk to Eric, that's all. And, if you see you're making him nervous, you must run away."
He helped her up and accommodated her with a property foot-stool by Eric's chair, leaving her for a moment's resentful scrutiny by a young woman who had been arguing with winsome persuasiveness about a speech which Eric under pressure from Manders had consented to cut.
"Who's that, Eric?" Barbara whispered, as he settled into place.
"Mabel Elstree."
"H'm. She doesn't seem to like my being here.… Doeseverybodycall you Eric?"
"You're well placed to answer that. Now, Lady Barbara, remember your promise: no talking!"
The act was played a second time, taking form and life as all warmed to their work. Eric watched with critical narrowed eyes, no longer scattering pencil-marks in the margin of the script, restrained, impassive and absorbed. Barbara sat with her hands clasped round her ankles and her head resting against his knee. Only when the act was ended did he seem to become aware of her; then he edged away and stood up.
"Better! Very much better! Just turn to the place where——" He rustled back into the middle of the act and had it played through to the curtain.
Half-an-hour later Barbara emerged into sunshine. Eric was tired and rather husky, but pleased and hopeful. His earlier irritability was forgotten save when it obtruded itself reproachfully to remind him that he had been scantly civil to the girl by his side.
"The next thing is a taxi," he murmured, as they came out into Shaftesbury Avenue.
"You wouldn't dream of taking me home and offering me some tea?" she suggested.
"I would not, Lady Barbara," he answered cheerfully."Your practice of visiting young unmarried men in their rooms should be promptly checked. But I'll drop you in Berkeley Square, if you like."
"That would be more—respectable. It's curious how you seem to have made up your mind not to do anything I ask you."
"It doesn't seem to make much difference to the result."
She ceased pouting and smiled self-confidently for a moment. Then her assurance left her, and she slipped her arm timidly through his.
"Am I being a nuisance, Eric? You said so, and—oh, itdidhurt! I honestly enjoyed myself this afternoon; and I wasn't so very much in the way, was I? Don't you like me to enjoy myself? Don't you like to see me happy? Are you sure you're not a little bit sorry you were so brutal to me?"
"My conscience is quite easy, thanks. 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?"
She withdrew her arm and walked for some time without speaking.
"I'm sorry if I'm compromising you with your friends," she said at length.
"And whether you compromise yourself doesn't matter?"
"I suppose I'm used to it," she sighed; then, with one of her April changes, the sigh turned into a provocative laugh. "Ifyoudon't mind being compromised byme, I'd make you write awonderfulplay. My technique's so good. All you have to do is to fall in love with me——"
"I shan't have the opportunity," he interrupted. "We meet to-night at Mrs. Shelley's——"
"And we were sopositivethat we weren't going!" she murmured. "You don't want to see me again?"
Eric hailed a passing taxi.
"I like meeting you," he told her frankly enough. "You amuse me—and you interest me enormously. But I've work to do … for one thing.…"
She seated herself in the taxi and held out her hand through the window.
"You might come and call for me to-night," she suggested.
Eric shook his head. He was shy of entering a house to which he had not been officially admitted, confronting a strange butler, being pushed into a room to wait for her, meeting and explaining himself to Lord Crawleigh or one of the brothers, who would look superciliously at "Babs' latest capture."…
"I'll meet you at Mrs. Shelley's," he said.
The hand was withdrawn, and he could see her biting her lip.
"I'm sorry," she murmured.
"There's no need to be."
"I was apologizing to myself—for giving youanotheropportunity of refusing something I asked you to do for me."
Eric walked back to his flat, puzzled and irritated. Thegirl was intolerably spoiled; nothing that you did was right, there was altogether too much wear and tear in trying to adapt yourself to her moods.…
Even if you wanted to.…
The rehearsal, despite Barbara, was over in good time, and Eric could lie unhurriedly in his bath without fear of being late for Mrs. Shelley's dinner. Two days of his holiday had already slipped away, and he had made little mark on the work which he had schemed to do. To-morrow he would start in earnest.…
Barbara.… He could not remember what had set him thinking about her. She looked desperately ill, but that was not his fault, nor could he cure her; which disposed of Barbara.… What she needed was some one who would pull her up, steady her, master her.… Unfortunately—for her—he could not spare the time; nor was it part of his scheme of life to effect her physical and moral regeneration.… And it was now the moment to begin dressing.
Mrs. Shelley's house lay between Sloane Square and the river; and Eric arrived punctually to find her insipidly grateful to him for coming. A self-conscious Chelsea party was assembling; there were two war-poets, whose "Trench Songs" and "Emancipation," compensating want of finish with violence of feeling, had made thoughtless critics wonder whether the Great War would engender a new Elizabethan splendour of genius; there was Mrs. Manisty, who claimed young poets as of right and helped them to parturition in the pages of theUtopia Review; there was a flamboyant, short-haired young woman who had launched on the world a war-emergency code of sex-morals under the guise of a novel; there were three bashful aliens suspected of being pianists and one self-assured journalist who told Mrs. Shelley with suitable heartiness that he had notmetMr. Lane, but of course he knew hisworkand went on to ask Eric if he was engaged on a new "work." The flamboyant woman, Eric observed, talked much of "creation" and its antecedent labour; the trench poets, with professional modesty, referred to their "stuff." A fourth alien entered and was greeted and introduced in halting French, to which he replied in rapid and faultless English.
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. For ten years Eric had listened to their theories and discoveries; after ten years he was still waiting for achievement. The very house, with its "art" shades of upholstery, its hammered brass fenders, its wooden nooks and angles filled with ramshackle bookcases, hard seats and inadequately stuffed cushions, was artificial; it was make-believe, pretentious, insincere.…
"Lady Barbara Neave."
There was a rustle of excitement, the more noticeable against the conscientious effort of several not to seem interested. Eric smiled to himself, as the young journalist, interrupted in his discourse on "the aristocracy of illiterates," watched Barbara's entry and posed himself for being introduced. She looked round with slow assurance, fully conscious of the lull in conversation and of the eyes that were taking stock of her. Eric felt an artistic admiration for her way of silently dominating a room.
"Am I late, dear Marion?" she asked, with the smile of startled recognition which made men and women anxiousto throw protecting arms round her thin shoulders. "Eric and I have been rehearsing our play—the new one, I mean, that I'm taking in hand—and I had such a lot to do when I got home." She displayed adequate patience, while Mrs. Shelley completed her introductions, and then crossed to Eric's corner. "Glad to see me again?" she whispered. "I've decided that you're to lunch with us on Saturday."
"And I've decided to gladden the hearts of my family by going down to Winchester," he answered.
"But you must go later. I'll come with you, if you'll find a practicable train; I'm going to Crawleigh. Say you'd like to travel down with me."
"I make a practice of sleeping in the train," he answered.
"You won't on Saturday. Sometimes, Eric, I find your little practices and habits and rules rather tiresome; I must educate you out of them. By the way, I want to be seen home to-night."
It was a disappointing dinner for Eric, as, after coming to gratify Barbara, he was separated from her by the length of the table. In conversation Mrs. Shelley always gave people what was good for them rather than what they liked; Barbara was accordingly set next to an art editor, who tried to wheedle from her an article on "Eastern Decoration in Western Houses," while Eric found himself sandwiched without hope of escape between Mrs. Manisty, who discussed poetry which he had not read, and the flamboyant novelist, who had lately discovered and insisted on exposing a mutual-admiration ring in the novel-reviewers of the London press.
If dull, the meal was at least not so embarrassing as his dinner of the night before with Lady Poynter. Barbara seemed chilled by uncongenial company, though she touched his hand on her way to the door and turned, with patent consciousness that she was being watched, to give him a parting smile. Mrs. Manisty also turned, before shecould control her curiosity, to see for whom the smile was intended. And, as Eric threw away his match after lighting a cigar, he found two of the men smiling.
In the absence of a host to pull them together, six groups self-consciously set themselves to discover a subject of conversation more worthy of their steel than either the eveningcommuniquéor the port. The three alien pianists had reduced themselves to a Polish sculptor, an Irish novelist and a Scottish portrait-painter. By sitting next to the journalist, Eric saved himself the effort of talking and recuperated at leisure after the exhausting boredom of dinner. He had looked forward to seeing Barbara again, feeling disappointment that she was not in the big shadowy drawing-room when he arrived—(but she would come any moment)—and a little proprietory thrill of pleasure when she walked straight across the room to him. But her manner, her use of his Christian name—(and Mrs. Shelley knew that they had first met less than twenty-four hours ago)—her clear-voiced, unabashed habit of flirtation, the parting smile at the door.…
One of his neighbours interrupted the ill-humoured train of thought by introducing himself in a pleasant, soft brogue.
"Er, me name's Sullivan, Mr. Lane. Ye know Priestley, I expect? Priestley and I have been concocting a great scheme. I have a new book coming out in the spring and I'm wanting a girl's head for the frontispiece. Well, since I saw Lady Barbara to-night, there's only one head that will do for me. And Priestley's the one man to do it. Charcoal, ye know; a single sitting would be enough. Do ye think she would be willing?"
Eric smiled to hide his impatience.
"Why not ask her?" he suggested. "She's fairly well-known, of course; everybody'd recognize it."
"Ah, don't distress yourself! The book's symbolical,"Sullivan explained vaguely. "I was wondering now, would ye sound her? Priestley and I don't know her, ye see. And, as ye're a friend——"
"We'll ask her, when we get upstairs," Eric answered.
Three tentative chords broke the silence overhead, and a woman's voice began to sing.
"Butterfly," the journalist jerked out as though he were in the last heat of a competition. "Second act, isn't it? Where Madame Butterfly hears that Pinkerton's ship has been sighted. I never thinkButterfly'sas bad as some of the high-brows try to make out. If youlikethat sort of thing, I mean," he added prudently.
Eric held up his hand.
"Please!I want to hear this."