*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 48133 ***

  THE SENSATIONALISTS: III
  THE SECRET VICTORY
  STEPHEN McKENNA




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  BY STEPHEN MCKENNA
  ————————————————————————————————
  THE SENSATIONALISTS
    PART ONE: LADY LILITH
    PART TWO: THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE
    PART THREE: THE SECRET VICTORY
  SONIA MARRIED
  SONIA
  MIDAS AND SON
  NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE
  THE SIXTH SENSE
  SHEILA INTERVENES
  ————————————————————————————————
  NEW YORK
  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

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  THE
  SECRET VICTORY


  BY
  STEPHEN McKENNA


  AUTHOR OF “LADY LILITH,” “SONIA MARRIED,”
  “THE EDUCATION OF ERIC LANE,” “SONIA,”
  “NINETY-SIX HOURS’ LEAVE,” ETC.


  NEW YORK
  [Printer's decoration]


  GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY




  COPYRIGHT, 1922,
  BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
  [Printer's decoration]


  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA




  TO
  ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS
  WITH GRATITUDE


  TO
  TEX
  WITH LOVE

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  _Epistle Dedicatory_

  TO ALEXANDER TEIXEIRA DE MATTOS

You, who have read the three volumes of _The Sensationalists_ in
manuscript, place me under further obligation by allowing me to
dedicate the third to you in commemoration of a friendship which has
been long, intimate and—to me—unmatched. Though I acquit you of
responsibility for shortcomings in anything that I have written, the
tale of these shortcomings would have been far longer if I had not
availed myself of your unfailing vigilance and ever-ready help, as I
have profited by your sensitive criticism and sympathetic encouragement.

The novel-trilogy is so little acclimatized to latter-day Georgian
England that, though it may need no defence, it has provoked attacks
from readers who will suffer all artistic forms but those which
are offered to the public in his present majesty’s reign; I say no
more in its apology than that it provides a convenient medium for
a study in which the story-teller occupies, in succession, three
different standpoints. In _Lady Lilith_, the emotion hunters and
sensation-mongers who supply the drama of this trilogy are still
practising their poses in mirrored and passionless detachment; in _The
Education of Eric Lane_, artifice has grown to such strength that, in
its contest with reality, the battle—between antagonists no longer
detached nor passionless—stands drawn; in _The Secret Victory_, a
close contact with reality deflates the tumid pretensions of artifice
and forces an amateur company of tragi-comedians into the revealing
daylight of the open street. Even if it had been possible to present
these three phases in a single volume, I should have been sorry to lose
the interval which bridged the transition from one phase to another.

Whether a study of flamboyantly conscious egotism deserves three
volumes can hardly be decided impartially by one who has attempted the
study; but the novelist has at no time been more insistently urged to
contemplate unabashed egotism than in an age when the camera and the
printing-press, the public confession and the private conversation, the
conclusions of psychology and the phantasies of psycho-analysis combine
forces to further the cult of personality. “Ninety-five per cent. of
the human race,” said Mr. Cutler Walpole in _The Doctor’s Dilemma_,
“suffer from chronic blood-poisoning, and die of it. It’s as simple as
A. B. C. Your nuciform sac is full of decaying matter....” Ninety-five
_per centum_ would seem a modest estimate for the proportion of the
human race which, in one social division of England at the present
time, is dying spiritually of acute egomania.

In reading the manuscript of this trilogy you encountered characters
whom you had met in earlier novels; if at some future time you have the
patience to read those later novels which have been executed, or at
least planned, but not yet published, you are more than likely to meet
some of them again. The practice of carrying certain characters from
one book to another is hardly so much an arrogant assumption that the
public has made their acquaintance in a former presentation as an
effort to give additional verisimilitude to a picture which is being
built up in sections: an academic history of the years before the war,
of the war itself and of the years following it would inevitably
introduce, in volume after volume, some at least of the same warriors,
statesmen, financiers and social leaders; if, in an imaginary picture
of the same period, the novelist offends by following the same method,
he offends in the consoling company of Balzac, Disraeli and Thackeray
among the dead and of Galsworthy and Mackenzie among the living.

To you I need offer no excuse for having hitherto confined myself for
the most part to men and women whose means and leisure enable them to
be occupied with public affairs or preoccupied with private
introspection: as human beings, susceptible to pain and pleasure, they
are not less interesting than those who devote a greater proportion of
their time to the struggle for existence; in the opinion of some, they
may win an added interest by the larger air of a more spacious life and
by the subtile discrimination of wider intellectual sympathies; if a
novelist offends by neglecting the narrow streets and sunless cottages
of this era, he offends once more in the company of Disraeli and
Thackeray.

The present volume of _The Sensationalists_ brings the trilogy to an
end; the reception accorded to the first volumes was too evenly mixed
to indicate how the third will be greeted; but, since all three books
were planned and completed as one whole before the first was published,
it is as one whole that I should like them to be judged. Jointly and
severally, however, their fate is of less importance to me than the
pleasure which I derived from writing them; and, in the present volume,
no words give me greater pleasure than those on the dedication page.

                                                 Ever yours,

                                                      STEPHEN MCKENNA.

Lincoln’s Inn,

24 August, 1921.

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  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER                           PAGE
     I VIGIL                          15
    II DAWN                           38
   III THE WILDERNESS OF THIS WORLD   57
    IV EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS           79
     V THE PRICE OF SYMPATHY          95
    VI THE REWARD OF SYMPATHY        111
   VII A DOUBLE RESCUE               125
  VIII HALF-HONEYMOON                152
    IX A DOUBLE ESCAPE               181
     X THE WANDERING OF ISHMAEL      210
    XI MIRAGE                        228
   XII NIGHT                         248
  XIII JOURNEY’S END                 276
   XIV VIGIL                         291

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  THE SECRET VICTORY




             “There is no God; but still, behind the veil,
              The hurt thing works, out of its agony.
              Still like the given curse that did not fail
              Return the pennies given to passers-by.
              There is no God; but we, who breathe the air,
              Are God ourselves, and touch God everywhere.”

                 —JOHN MASEFIELD: _Lollingdon Downs._

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  THE SECRET VICTORY


  CHAPTER ONE


  VIGIL


      “Though your wife ran away with a soldier that day,
         And took with her your trifle of money;
       Bless your heart, they don’t mind—they’re exceedingly kind—
         They don’t blame you—as long as you’re funny!”
                        W. S. GILBERT: “THE FAMILY FOOL.”

Roused by a report of peace hardly less deafening than the crash of war
four and a half years earlier, the winter garden of the Majestic hummed
like a vast and airless beehive. On the long sofas by the walls, in
deferential clusters round some slow-voiced, arm-chair oracle and in
wavering groups at one moment distinct and at another herded together,
everybody who could find room between the crowded tables and the
obtrusive palm-tubs eagerly volleyed question and answer, contributing
his pennyworth of gossip and retiring with his pound of rumour.

No one in New York had seriously doubted that Germany would accept the
armistice terms; but, until they were signed, the talk of private
dinners and public celebrations remained half-hearted. Now that the
invitations had been discharged, no one knew what to do next. One group
of lean, sagacious officers debated how soon they would be demobilized
and restored to their businesses; a harassed parliament of women
exchanged acid confidences about the apartments which they had taken
when their husbands came to New York for the war; a second and a
younger group of officers deplored the untimely cessation of
hostilities before they had seen any fighting.

“‘All-dressed-up-and-nowhere-to-go,’” hummed one. “Why, Carstairs, when
did _you_ get here?”

He shook hands with an agitated young Englishman who was peering over
the heads and under the arms of his neighbours.

“Hullo, Long! I left Washington last night. You’ve not seen my wife,
have you?”

“Lady John was over by the far door a while back. I’ll shew you.”

He took Carstairs by the arm and dragged him through the crowd to a
corner where a young woman had entrenched herself behind a row of
palm-tubs and a breastwork of wicker chairs.

“Much obliged. I say, what about a drink? Oh, of course, you’re not
allowed to. Never mind, there’s a good time ahead of you as soon as
you’re out of uniform. By the way, we’re coming to your dinner. Very
good of you to ask us.”

The officer bowed and went back to his own group. Carstairs dropped
limply into a chair and rang a bell.

“God, what a mob! And what a day! I haven’t had a moment to myself. The
horrors of peace!”

His wife pressed his hand sympathetically, and the gold of a new
wedding-ring caught and flung back the light from the great arc-lamps.

“Could you do anything about our passages?” she asked.

“Yes, I wandered into the chancery and got them to make up a bag. After
that there was no difficulty, but the boat will be ankle-deep in
Ministry of Munitions people and Treasury people and Propaganda people.
There are more English officials than Americans in New York to-day.
Precious glad every one will be to get rid of us! By the way, Sadler
Long wants to give us a farewell dinner at the Biltmore; I said you
weren’t doing anything. Was that all right?”

“Is it to-night?”

“No. We’re dining with Grant to-night at the Plaza. It’s a farewell
dinner to Eric Lane, the dramatist fellow. The great American people
will be both tired and dyspeptic by the time it’s given a farewell
dinner to every munition-contractor, exchange-stabilizer and itinerant
lecturer in the country.”

“I want to meet Mr. Lane,” said Lady John.

“Well, you’ll have every opportunity on the boat. I can’t say _I_ do.”

A waiter came to their table with two cocktails. Carstairs signed for
them, lighted a cigarette and leaned back with one leg thrown over the
other. On the far side of the serried palm-tubs and wicker chairs, an
English voice said:

“Waiter! I ordered a Number Twenty-Three.”

“Number Twenty-Three,” repeated the waiter, turning his head for an
instant in full flight.

Eric Lane nodded and pretended to read his paper, refusing to be driven
from a comfortable chair because a strange Englishman, with the
notorious tact of the English, chose to discuss him by name at two
yards’ distance. Until three minutes before, he had been agreeably
lulled by the high hum of American voices; but this drawling English,
with a hint of impatient superiority in it, assailed and defeated him.
He was also humanly curious to know what the strange Englishman had
heard or thought about him.

“I like his plays,” said Lady John. “Is there anything against him?”

Lane decided that she must be a New Englander. Then he recalled his
glimpse of the underhung, impatient Englishman and remembered that
Frances Naylor of Boston had married Lord John Carstairs six months
earlier. The match had caused nearly a week’s excitement, for Carstairs
was brother and heir-presumptive to the imbecile Duke of Ross, while
Frances Naylor was a future heiress and a present beauty.

“Oh, I’ve no objection to him personally,” said Carstairs. “But I don’t
suppose we’re very popular with him as a family. There was a blighted
romance between him and my cousin, Barbara Neave.” He laughed, and Eric
Lane felt his cheeks warming. “I’m afraid you’ll find Barbara—and her
relicts and reputation—rather a mouthful.”

Not for the first time Frances Carstairs wished that the English had
fewer relations. She had been bewilderingly initiated into the complex
family tangle of the Neaves and Lorings, the Carstairs and
Knightriders; John had drawn her ingenious plans to shew who had
married whom, but every new name impaled her on a new genealogical
tree, so that she openly dreaded her arrival in England and the
threatened tour of inspection among her husband’s manifold connections.

“But I thought you told me your cousin had married recently,” she said.

“Yes, she married George Oakleigh. He was a son of Miles Oakleigh, the
head of the family; and his cousin, Violet Hunter-Oakleigh, who’s of
the Catholic branch in the county Dublin, married _my_ cousin, Jim
Loring, who was killed in ’15. I know it’s confusing at first——”

“It’s maddening! What has all this to do with Mr. Lane? If your
cousin—our cousin——”

“Oh, _that’s_ all over, but he may feel she made rather a fool of him.
However, he’s in good company: when she was seventeen, I was supposed
to be engaged to her, and Crawleigh had to contradict it in the press;
and, to my knowledge, she’s been married off to six people in as many
years, beginning with one of the young princes and ending with some
barrister. She’s all right if you don’t take her seriously, but I’m
told that Lane _did_, rather. She tried to drive him in double harness
with the barrister until they both bolted in opposite directions; then
Lane came out here, and the other man, Waring, quietly retired to the
country; then she married George Oakleigh. And that’s the end of
Barbara.”

Lady John felt that a criticism was expected of her, but could not
decide how far it was safe to disapprove of her celebrated new cousin
without incurring a charge of provincialism.

“Well, she had her fair share of romance,” she ventured after a pause.
“I should think you’re all rather relieved.”

“The Crawleighs were a bit disappointed,” answered Carstairs; “but it
might have been worse. Relieved? I don’t _know_. When I said that was
the _end_ of Barbara... There’s a curious little group that my cousin
Jim Loring used to call “the Sensationalists”; they were always playing
a part and pulling up their psychology by the roots to see how it was
growing. Anything for a new emotion! Barbara always had more
personality than the rest of them put together and she led them till
she really made London too hot to hold her. Then the war came. The men
were killed off and the women married; but the old Adam’s still alive
in some of them. I’m wondering what Barbara’s next outbreak will be;
she had one emotion by marrying a tame-cat Irish squireen, but how long
she’ll stick to him... I’m sure we’ve not finished with her yet. You’ll
find London a curious place... Look here, if we’re going to be in time,
I must go up; I haven’t unpacked yet.”

At the creak of chairs, Eric Lane buried himself in his paper, only
looking up when the bull-necked, consequential young man and his lithe,
decorative companion had sauntered languorously past, leaving in his
nostrils an elusive hint of violets and in his memory a dissolving view
of pearls, a gold bag, white gloves, a cloak tentatively martial and
exquisitely neat shoes. Lady John he had never seen before; Carstairs
he now remembered as a young man with too much chin and too little
hair, intermittently to be found in London theatres; they had
overlapped for a year or two at Oxford where Carstairs won a brief
notoriety by removing the minute hand of the General Post Office clock
every Sunday night throughout one term; twelve years in the diplomatic
service had robbed him of irresponsibility without putting anything in
its place. As they disappeared from sight, Eric threw his paper away
and lighted a cigar. After long months of solitude, it was stimulating
to hear how the world represented by Carstairs summarized and dismissed
his contribution to the romantic Odyssey of Lady Barbara Neave.

He had not, himself, been able to dismiss it so easily; and, when he
left England at the end of 1916, Eric was determined never to come
back. His health was shattered; Dr. Gaisford bluntly threatened him
with a sanatorium; and he needed distance and change of work to heal a
bruised spirit. After lecturing in the United States, he travelled for
six months in South America and started on an aimless and endless
holiday in Japan. While he was in Tokio, he heard that Barbara was
married. At a time when the German armies were pouring down on Paris,
the news was telegraphed all over the world; and the press of Tokio,
New York, Ottawa, Sydney and Calcutta gave her a column of description.
Eric was dining with two men from the Embassy, and throughout the
evening they discussed nothing else. When he first saw the headline:
“_Marriage of Lady Barbara Neave_,” he fought for breath as though his
heart had stopped; then, with slowly returning composure, he realized
for the first time that finality had been achieved and that, in all the
months when he was philosophizing and hardening his heart, he had been
waiting for a fantastic miracle to happen, hoping to see Barbara,
breathless and dusty from the train, coming into his hotel. The London
telegram killed his faith in romance.

And the excited column of small type killed his faith in women, for
Barbara had apparently walked into the street and married the first man
that she saw....

“Who’s this Oakleigh?,” asked his host, squeezing the last drop of
relish out of the story. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“He’s a very nice fellow,” Eric found himself answering. Oakleigh
henceforth was to have the stolen intoxication of glorying in Barbara
when she was well and comforting her when she was ill, of seeing her
great eyes change from mockery to tenderness and from tenderness to
ecstasy; but Oakleigh could never have from her those fifteen fevered
months when their hearts had beaten together... “I’ve known him ever
since I was at Oxford. He used to be in the House; and then he ran a
paper... He has a place in Ireland—”

“What they call ‘a suitable alliance’?,” suggested his host.

“Oh, very.”

“It’s rather a disappointing finish to her career...”

The gossiping discussion rambled on, introducing name after name of the
men whom Lady Barbara had been expected to marry. Eric waited for his
own and, when it was not cited, relapsed into reverie. He had received
a letter that morning from his sister, telling him that she was engaged
and asking whether he would be home in time for the wedding. If he had
ever doubted, there was now no question of returning to England; he was
too well known to be left in peace. The Oakleighs and Neaves, the
Knightriders and Lorings, the Pentyres and Carstairs, the Maitlands and
Poynters all moved in the same little set of three or four hundred
people. Fifteen years before he had dreamed at Oxford of the day when
he would burst upon their startled world and hold it captive; the dream
had sustained him through the mortification of neglect and the despair
of ill-health until of a sudden the reality threw his dream into
shadow. In London, in Boston, in Tokio he was recognized in the street;
to escape the fulfilment of his own prayers he had to travel by
unfamiliar lines and hide himself in unknown hotels; for ultimate and
enduring sanctuary he must retire to a land untouched by books and
theatres.

After three months’ desultory wandering he returned to Tokio and booked
a passage to China. Already his health was improving; and, if he could
lose all touch with English ways of thought, he might begin to lose
touch with himself, to shed his personality, almost to change his
identity; upcountry it must be possible to find a civilization and
scenery so strange that it would absorb him. As he left his hotel for
the shipping office, he was handed a cable from his American agent:

“_Following from Lane Lashmar Hampshire England for you care of me
despatched fourteenth your father seriously ill think you should return
as soon as possible._”

Eric studied the time of despatch and retransmission with stupid
deliberation, giving himself time to recover from the shock. This
meant, of course, that his father was dying, was perhaps already dead;
and it was his duty to be shocked. Lashmar on the fourteenth, New York
on the sixteenth, Tokio on the eighteenth;—the war had made cabling a
slow business... He was a selfish brute not to have told his mother
where he was going instead of leaving her to track him through his
American agent and, before that, through his London agent. His father
had never been ill since he was a child, but he had overworked for
years; this probably meant a stroke....

Eric discovered that he was quite dispassionate; perhaps he was too
much numbed to feel. He must of course return immediately; if anything
happened, the eldest son must be at hand. Once in England, he must let
the future take care of itself.

Three weeks later he landed at San Francisco and arrived in New York
two days before the armistice was signed. “Mother’s Son” was still
running at the Grafton; he was met unexpectedly at the station, and,
before the day was out, two reporters had called at the Majestic and
sought an interview. He tried to dine by himself and was instantly
caught up by a group of friends who set about organizing a banquet in
his honour. A private party of twelve swept within twenty-four hours
far beyond the organizer’s control. Half New York had been to one or
other of the plays; scores of people had already met him, hundreds more
wanted to meet him.

“Look at it this way,” said his agent, Justus Grant, defensively.
“Every one knows you’re here. Well, if it gets out that we’ve given you
a dinner and cornered you, they’ll all ask why in Hell they weren’t
invited. I’ve got to live in New York, and you haven’t. It’s only one
speech, whether we’re twelve or twelve hundred. And you’ve only to
stand and shake a few more hands.”

“I’ll do my best,” Eric promised with ebbing patience. “It’s a
tremendous honour....”

Then he began reading the letters which he had brought from his
agent’s. Lady Lane wrote to confirm her cable and to say that his
father had indeed had a stroke. His life was no longer in danger,
though for some days his speech had been affected and many months must
go by before he could resume work. There was no immediate urgency for
Eric to return; he must decide for himself. Of course, he had been
terribly missed, and every one was looking forward to seeing him.

After resolving never to go back to England, Eric felt that nothing
would now keep him away. There was almost everything to be said against
it, and, in its favour, only that he had secured a cabin where others
had tried and failed. The reason was frivolous, his mind was aimless;
and he accepted the reason, because it chimed with his mood of
aimlessness. Moreover—a reason yet more frivolous!—Justus Grant was
arranging a farewell dinner for him, and, after being bidden God-speed,
he could not decently loiter in New York any longer. Of such stuff were
made the cardinal decisions of a man’s life. Three years earlier, on
the night of his first meeting with Barbara Neave, she had asked him to
wait till the end of her rubber and to take her home.

The crowd in the winter garden was thinning, and Eric could study in
peace the notes which he had jotted down for his speech. Though
Carstairs’ chatter had set his nerves jangling, he must face a graver
ordeal when he was welcomed to the midst of Barbara’s friends in
London; if for the moment he could not abdicate, he must sit his throne
worthily; but he felt contempt for this servile herd which abased
itself before him. For two years he had lived in isolation; and, if he
was now flung face to face with his public, he would shew that he could
preserve his isolation in their midst.

He roused from moody reverie to find his host standing, watch in hand,
before him.

“Haven’t you dressed yet?,” asked Grant anxiously. “The automobile’s at
the door.”

Instead of thinking about his speech, Eric was only brooding over the
hollowness of his belated, unwanted triumph; three years earlier it
would have intoxicated him to take New York or London by storm, but he
was wondering for the first time whether this lust for theatrical
sensationalism did not really lower him to the level of Barbara Neave
and her school. Certainly he had outgrown the phase so much that he
would have been almost a little glad to shew his contempt by making
every one wait....

For a moment he pretended to be unconscious of Grant’s presence; then
he was stung to activity by a fear that this scorn of soul was only
another experiment in sensationalism....

“I’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he cried, as he ran out of the winter
garden. For one night he must enter into the spirit of his company;
after that he would hide himself where he could escape equally the
emotion of courting triumph and of avoiding it.

Hundreds were assembled at the Plaza, when he arrived: how many
hundreds he was too indifferent to enquire, but they were lined up in
rows; the rumble of countless conversations shrank to a whisper and
died away in a moment’s silence; then every one who knew him hastened
to shake hands, while the rest begged to be introduced. For all his
indifference, Eric was warmed by his reception. Throughout his
wanderings in South America and Japan, imagination and will had swung
alternate hammers to fashion a new life which he could find worth
living. Here was acclamation. The throne awaited him, if he could mount
it worthily. He was but thirty-five, his health had returned to him...
All his life he had prayed for this moment of domination....

A waiter interrupted the chorus of welcome by thrusting his way forward
with a tray of cocktails and caviare sandwiches. In the moment’s lull
Eric saw Carstairs at his elbow and turned to him.

“I believe we _have_ met,” he said, holding out his hand. “I just
missed you when I called at the Embassy last year.”

Carstairs shook hands awkwardly and muttered an introduction to his
wife.

“When I was in Japan, I saw that Barbara had married my friend George
Oakleigh,” Eric went on. “I know them both very well. Jim Loring, of
course, was one of my greatest friends. And your mother used to be kind
enough to ask me to some of her parties.”

He had dropped his indifference in a calculated effort to shew these
Carstairs that, even if they did not want to meet him, he would meet
them or not as he liked. This dinner, after all, was his apotheosis;
some one at his elbow was whispering that five hundred tickets had been
sold and that the committee could have sold more than twice that
number. It was astonishing that a thousand educated men and women had
no better use for their time and money; astonishing, too, that he had
allowed himself to be dragged out for public display, for in all that
vast gathering there was not one eager face that he wished ever to see
again. Indifference and aloofness returned as a protection against such
a sense of loneliness as he had never known when he was most isolated.

“I believe we’re going by your boat,” said Lady John.

“That will be delightful,” Eric answered.

The babble of voices rose and swelled until the chairman wound his way
back to Eric’s side and led him into the dining-room. Detachment
changed for a moment to antagonism as he walked between the long
whispering rows: warm waves of scent beat upon his cheeks; before,
behind and on either side he felt the magnetism of a thousand eyes
drawing him out of his self-sufficiency and assailing his frozen
reserve. As quickly as his companion would allow, he walked on, looking
stiffly ahead, to the seat of honour. There, while the rigid,
whispering rows broke up and poured in at his heels, he looked idly at
the men and women who made up a world which he had left for ever. It
was difficult to see all the tables and impossible to count his hosts;
but the printed plan shewed him name after honoured name; New York
political, New York a night’s lodging for itinerant diplomacy, New York
literary and artistic, New York rich, New York fashionable and New York
merely curious had crowded into the great room; and his health was to
be proposed by Nelson Millbank, who had been ambassador in London when
Eric was still unborn. Through the flowers, over the little Stars and
Stripes and the Union Jacks fluttering between the vases he tried to
identify those who were nearest to him. Every one seemed to be looking
in his direction; and, to escape their eyes, he turned to his neighbour.

“America’s always been uncommonly good to me, Mr. Millbank,” he said,
“but I’ve never had anything of this kind before.”

“You will shew your gratitude by coming back,” was the answer, “though
we feel that the indebtedness lies the other way.”

“I’m leaving you from necessity and not choice.”

“For leisure—and for more plays, we hope. And what psychological
material, Mr. Lane! Had I your genius and your youth... The
convulsion’s as great, when you turn a soldier into a civilian, as when
you turn a civilian into a soldier. It will be your privilege to
capture and preserve for us the impression of a world in travail. A man
gets his discharge papers one morning—and finds himself with an old
life to take up or a new life to make....”

“Yes. I’ve been thinking of that for some time,” said Eric, half to
himself. “Though I’m not a soldier... It’s all right if he himself has
changed with the world around him; in peace the individual moves more
quickly than the mass, but in war the mass moves more quickly than the
individual.”

He stroked his chin thoughtfully and looked up to find the woman
opposite him leaning forward with a faint air of diffidence and a
question in embryo.

“There’s no old life for women to take up, is there?” she asked,
plucking up courage, but evidently disconcerted by the clear ascendancy
of her own voice.

“Woman is unchanging,” Eric answered, “she resigns herself to
civilization, but she has never been civilized. Man is, to her, a
physiological incident and a domestic accessory, so that a war only
affects woman by withdrawing so many potential fathers of her children
and supporters of her house.”

He glanced covertly at the plan of the table and found opposite his own
name that of Lady Woodstock. Sir Matthew Woodstock, three chairs away,
was a partner in Woodstock, McArthur and Company and had been sent to
America by the Ministry of Munitions as British representative on the
Purchasing and Priority Council.

To right and left rose an eager debate on sex and conduct. Eric had
thrown them a bait which, he knew well, few men and no woman could
resist. An “academic” discussion of sex enabled them to talk about
themselves, to indulge their own sex-curiosity, to fancy themselves
wholesomely fearless and unprejudiced; it enabled him to dine
peacefully in the soothing haze of sham-intellectuality and to study
anew the names on the table-plan. Next to Carstairs he saw Mrs. O’Rane
deep in conversation with John Gaymer; next to him was Lady John, with
O’Rane on her other side. It was indeed no great exaggeration to say
that there were more British officials than Americans in New York; and
the sight of this compact alien colony set Eric thinking about his
speech. He was unlikely to enter the Plaza again, but he could not
spend a week in London without meeting O’Rane or Gaymer; his
valediction should be something for them to remember and quote when he
had slipped through their hands into a retirement from which, this
time, there would be no return... He was roused by the touch of a
woman’s hand on his sleeve. Finding him unoccupied, his neighbour was
asking him to sign her _menu_. Instantly her example was followed by
every one who saw him writing; _menus_ were passed from hand to hand,
waiters appeared from other tables with piled-up trays; he was still
signing when Nelson Millbank whispered a question and stood up to
propose the toast of the evening.

Eric lighted his cigar and leaned back, looking over the heads of the
diners to a vast fan-group of the Allied flags, draped over the main
door. At a semicircular table twenty feet away the press-men were
industriously scribbling: two were looking up at him from their
sketch-books and down to the sketch-books again; he posed himself and
sat patiently still. Millbank’s rising had been greeted with a storm of
cheers and clapping; his opening sentences called forth fresh cheers,
and punctually thereafter, at the polished end of each resonant period,
as he half turned to the guest of the evening or indicated him with a
slight movement of his hand, there was a new outburst of applause.

Though he listened with only half his attention, Eric knew that it was
a great speech from a man who had been known for more than forty years
as one of the greatest after-dinner speakers in America. That much, at
least, he had expected, but he was hardly prepared for the white-hot
enthusiasm of the audience. This, if anything, should stimulate a man
to better work than he had ever yet accomplished; but for two years all
work had mysteriously lost its savour and purpose. If he ever wrote
again, he would still be artist enough to give forth only the best that
was in him, but he no longer cared for the applause of a blurred,
indistinguishable mob; his plays, indeed, were running in three
continents, but in a thousand audiences there was no one whose
judgement mattered to him as in the old days when above “the mad
houseful’s plaudits” he looked “through all the roaring and the
wreaths” for one half smile of praise from Barbara. Had all these
bright-eyed men and women masked their faces, were Millbank speaking an
unknown tongue, Eric could not have had less in common with them. Mrs.
O’Rane threw him a dazzling glance of congratulation; and, before he
could bow, he had to overcome his surprise that she had recognized him.
In all this funeral throng he alone knew that for two years he had been
dead....

Voice, gesture and mounting sentiment shewed that the peroration was at
hand:

“And, lastly, I thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for the honour and the
opportunity of having my name associated for a moment of one night with
the loved name of our guest. He and I stand at the remote opposite ends
of life, so that I cannot hope to meet him often again. You, who will
meet him and see him and read him, I congratulate and envy. I ask you
to rise and join me in wishing him long life, health and prosperity.”

There was an instant’s silence, and the room rose in a wave of black
and white. “Lane! Lane! Lane!” The thundering repetition of his name
drowned the clink of the glasses, the individual toasts and even the
college yell which rocketed from the end of the room. Eric bowed to
Millbank, then turned slowly and inclined his head to right, to left
and in front. The speech had intoxicated them; they looked at him with
shining eyes, an inch removed from hysteria.

“And what do they expect I can say after that, sir?” Eric whispered to
Millbank, as the applause died slowly away and he sat down.

“Take your time, Mr. Lane.”

Once more every one was looking at him in a silence broken only by a
buzzing commentary on Millbank’s speech. Eric straightened his tie,
pulled down his waistcoat and laid his watch on the table beside his
finger-bowl. As he pushed back his chair and slowly drew himself erect,
he caught sight of his reflection in three long mirrors: black-haired
and white-cheeked, aquiline and thin, with deep-set brown eyes and lips
tightly compressed, he could fancy that he was looking at his own dead
body. The applause broke out again, ten times louder and longer than
before; there was a blinding flash of silver light from a magnesium
flare, followed by dense grey clouds of smoke. As they cleared away, he
once more established the position of Carstairs and his wife, holding
himself upright and only touching the table with the tips of his
fingers. Though slightly built, he was tall enough to dominate an
audience; in three years of public speaking he had acquired such
composure that he could stand for a full minute without saying
anything. It was a test of grip; if he could hold his company without
speaking, he could do what he liked with it afterwards. Before he
turned to Millbank, the great room was as silent as the _Festspielhaus_
before the opening bar of Parsifal. Something seemed to have come to
life within him, for he now felt that he must at all costs eclipse
Millbank’s speech; if he could not match his slow stateliness of
eloquence and diction, he would master him in pure lyrical fire and
music....

“Mr. Millbank, Your Excellencies, My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen...”

The voice was flexible and light, capable of infinite emotional
variation, boyish and appealing after Millbank’s deep resonance. Eric
had discarded and forgotten his rehearsed speech. Dreary months of
stereotyped lecturing set him ablaze to speak his soul. The audience
had surrendered to his presence and surrendered again to his voice; he
could twist every man and woman round his finger....

Forty minutes had passed before he sat down. There was no applause, for
none dared break the silence; but he had made them laugh and he had
brought tears into the eyes of the woman opposite; the audience had
quivered and gasped. Now, if they had not guessed it before, they knew
how he inspired with his own genius the actors who interpreted his
plays; henceforth they would recognize whose personality it was that
spread magnetically across the foot-lights... He picked up the dead
cigar from his plate and felt for a match. He would have liked to look
at Carstairs, but it was unnecessary; Carstairs himself, with his
unmistakable English drawl, broke the silence by exclaiming: “Oh, I
say, that was devilish good, you know!” Thereat the pent storm of
cheering gushed forth as though he had touched a spring.

There followed a presentation and more introductions. Eric stood bowing
to congratulations and trying to answer five questions at a time until
the chairman rescued him and took him back to the Majestic. Even there
he was constrained to hold a new court and to accept the homage of
those who had not found an opportunity of speaking to him before.
Mid-night was striking as he shook the last hand and lighted his last
cigar; with it came nervous exhaustion and an abrupt reaction, in which
once more he seemed to have crossed the boundary between two lives and
to be wandering alone in eternal emptiness....

As he walked back to the winter garden a woman rose from her chair and
hurried up to him.

“Mr. Lane, I _must_ thank you for that speech! It was wonderful! I’ve
never heard anything like it. Aren’t you dreadfully tired?”

The cloak and scarf kept him for a moment from recognizing her as the
woman who had sat opposite him at dinner.

“I am, rather,” he answered, leaning against the arm of a chair. “But
it’s the last speech I shall ever make.”

“In America, you mean? It’s so glorious to feel that I’ve actually met
you! You’re crossing on the _Lithuania_, aren’t you? So are we. I shall
hope to see you on board. And I shall make a thorough nuisance of
myself by asking you to write in my autograph book. Now I mustn’t keep
you; I expect you’ve all sorts of packing to do.”

“I’m glad to say I haven’t unpacked since I left Japan... Good-night,
Lady Woodstock.”

She looked up at him curiously for a moment and then broke into a laugh.

“_I’m_ not—Mr. Lane, you’re not mistaking me for Lady Woodstock, are
you?”

“I thought you were. I saw your name on the plan of the table—”

“Oh, but that was because she was too tired to come. Sir Matthew
brought me in her place. _Wasn’t_ that a piece of luck for me? I’m his
secretary. He’s not come in yet, has he? I simply daren’t go to bed
until I’ve found out whether he has any more work for me.”

“He was still at the Plaza, when I left,” said Eric.

“Then I suppose I must wait up for him.”

She chose herself a chair, threw open her cloak and untied the scarf
from her hair. Now that the girl had told him what she was, Eric
wondered how he could ever have imagined her to be anything else. She
looked eighteen or twenty and displayed the brisk assurance which he
had come to regard as a woman’s price of admission to the temporary
civil service. Her hair was bobbed and surrounded with a red band; a
serviceable black dress revealed slender arms and shoulders; and her
regular, rather sharp features were agreeably relieved by grey-blue
eyes which seemed younger and less self-confident than the rest of her.
Eric had met and striven to avoid very many of her type in English
government offices; they were at all times too much emancipated for his
liking, too energetic, efficient and certain of themselves, too
conscious of sex-superiority to concern themselves with sex-equality.
Sir Matthew Woodstock’s secretary looked devastatingly conscientious
and practical; she billeted herself in the most comfortable chair with
the determination which he could imagine her shewing when she arranged
appointments and guarded her employer from unauthorized telephone
assaults. And she would call him her “chief” rather than her
“employer.”...

Force of habit, rather than any personal interest, had led Eric to
spend a moment in cataloguing her; thereafter he was only concerned to
find a polite excuse for going to bed. The girl seemed conscious that
she had thrust herself upon him, for, after a short silence, she looked
at her watch and exclaimed:

“I’d no idea it was so late! Mr. Lane, I mustn’t keep you up.”

She coloured bashfully as she spoke, and Eric felt that he had been
unkind in not putting her at ease. The flush so changed her _façade_ of
efficiency and determination that, though she evidently wanted him to
stay, she did not know how to ask.

“I’ll finish my cigar with you, if I may,” he said. “You must have a
wearing life with Sir Matthew, if he always keeps you up as late as
this. Have you been with him long?”

The jejune encouragement restored her composure; and Eric saw with
dismay that he must talk in self-defence or submit to unrestricted
loquacity.

“Two years,” she answered; then in rapid, unsought confidence: “You
see, he and father were great friends at Cambridge, and, when I wanted
to do war-work, father wouldn’t let me learn to make munitions and
mother wouldn’t let me go into an office. They’re afraid to allow me
out of their sight. I wanted to nurse or drive a car, but father _and_
mother—”

“You have a lot to put up with from your parents!,” Eric interrupted.

“Oh, they’re hopeless. I expect you’ve met father—”

“I don’t even know your name, as you assure me you’re _not_ Lady
Woodstock.”

“Ivy Maitland. Father’s the judge, you know.”

“I don’t know him, but he’s a brother of the general, isn’t he? I know
Lady Maitland very well—your aunt, I mean.”

“Oh, as if mother knew anybody or anybody knew mother! Well, I had to
do something: both my sisters were married, and my brothers were
fighting. Then Sir Matthew _wanted_ a secretary....”

Eric wondered how quickly he could finish his cigar without spoiling
it, then settled resignedly in his chair and listened with eyes
half-closed. Miss Maitland had worked for Sir Matthew Woodstock in
London, New York, Paris, Rome and Petrograd, crowding into two years
more excitement and experiences than she had dreamed of knowing in a
life-time. She was nineteen and looking for new worlds to explore, but,
as with Alexander on the confines of India, the army insisted on
returning home: and there, Sir Matthew told her with regret, he had his
own trained staff, and there would be no work for her.

“What are you going to do when you get back to England?,” asked Eric in
the first negotiable pause.

“Get hold of a new job before father has time to see that the war’s
over,” she answered promptly. “There’ll be a row, of course, when he
finds out... D’you employ a secretary in England, Mr. Lane?”

“I used to.”

“And you will again. Will you take me? Sir Matthew will tell you that
I’m a first-rate shorthand-typist, I’m fairly well-educated, I’m
intelligent, I hope I’ve got a certain amount of tact. _I_’ll tell you
that I’m honest—honest in the sense that, when I take money from a
person, I work my fingers to the bones for him.”

Eric smiled and shook his head.

“It wouldn’t be very practicable,” he said.

“Why not? I’ll come to you for a month without salary! Three months! I
can’t afford more than that.”

Underneath her eagerness Eric fancied that he could detect something
more than restless impetuosity.

“My dear Miss Maitland, you must think me very sordid,” he laughed.

“Well, why won’t you give me a trial?”

“For purely conventional reasons. I know your uncle and aunt very well.
I’m not going to be party to a conspiracy for taking away the daughter
of a very eminent judge against his wishes. If I can help you to find
work of which your parents approve, I’ll do what I can. But I’ve been
away from England so long that I can’t promise anything; and I’ve no
idea how long I shall be there.”

The cigar was but half-finished, but he threw it away and shook hands,
trying not to see that she was disappointed but in no doubt that it was
hardly reasonable for him to be stampeded by any mercurial
nineteen-year-old to whom he shewed a moment’s civility.

“It’s awfully good of you, I feel I’ve no right to bother you like
this,” she answered. “I _meant_ to talk about your plays; and I’ve only
talked about myself.”

“It was more interesting—to me. If you think I can help in any way,
write to me at the Regency Theatre or the Thespian Club, Grosvenor
Place.”

“But I hope to see you on the boat.”

Eric had not overlooked that possibility, but he decided that he did
not want to meet Miss Ivy Maitland again.

“But—in case we don’t,” he said. “Good-night.”

In his own room he threw open the window to liberate the day’s stifling
accumulation of steam-heating. Kneeling on a chair with his chin on his
hands, he looked down on a plateau of roofs startlingly punctuated by
the blazing bean-stalks of slender giant buildings. It was the last
time that he would see New York at night, the last time that he would
be in America. He had made his last speech; he hoped devoutly that he
had submitted for the last time to the unintelligent exuberance of too
appreciative school-girls....

At three o’clock his vigil was not yet ended, but he turned from the
window with a shiver and began to undress. It was well enough to make
this catalogue of things that he would never do again, but for two
years he had been trying to discover what life he could fashion for
himself in their stead.

“I’m beaten,” he whispered to the darkness as he turned restlessly from
side to side. “I may as well admit it... I’ve never said it before in
all my life. I never thought I _should_ say it; and I can still put up
a good bluff on occasion. But I’m beaten....”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER TWO


  DAWN


       “And now... now that everything has turned out as I told you
     it would, what do you mean to do?”
       “I suppose... we must begin all over again.”
                      EIMAR O’DUFFY: “THE WASTED ISLAND.”

The dinner at the Plaza, described at length and extravagantly
illustrated in a dozen papers, was hardly a greater personal triumph
than the farewell scenes on board the _Lithuania_. Ambassadors honoured
and beloved had left in less magnificence. Scores of his friends came
on board to bid Eric good-bye; the management of the Grafton filled his
state-room with hot-house roses, and he was loaded with presents
ranging from a gold cigar-case to an unsinkable swimming-suit; German
submarines were being recalled, but his friends would not expose him to
the risk of a belated straggler or of a forgotten mine-field.

As the land receded and vanished, Eric turned away from the rail and
went below. He had been watched ever since he came on board; round,
wondering eyes followed the coming and going of his friends, interested
and envious eyes explored the parcels which mounted like a rampart on
the deck more quickly than his steward could carry them away. Eager
whispers rippled about him, becoming hushed at his approach. So Irving
and Melba had travelled—in regal state and more than regal loneliness.

He spent the first day in his cabin, unpacking and re-packing, while
his steward contrived supplementary cases for his spoils. In the
saloon, which he was the last to reach and the first to leave, his seat
was between Lady Woodstock, who seemed afraid to speak, and Lady John
Carstairs, who retired from sight at the first roll of the boat. The
passenger-list was made up almost wholly of soldiers and government
officials, for the most part unknown to Eric and too much occupied with
consultations and reports to force their company upon a man who was
conspicuously avoiding it. John Gaymer, whom he had met at long
intervals during three or four years and who had been seconded as an
instructor at one of the American aerodromes, made a facetious comment
on the Plaza dinner as an overture of friendship before asking him to
play poker; and David O’Rane, returning from a campaign of propaganda
in the Middle West, tried to persuade Eric to transfer himself to the
Chief Engineer’s table. For the rest, he was left in peace until the
third day when, on entering the smoke-room in search of matches, he was
caught by Carstairs and pressed to join him for a cocktail. At once and
with apparent carelessness, four other men attached themselves to the
table and conscientiously offered Eric their compliments on his work
and their thanks for the opportunity of meeting him. He acknowledged
the tribute with a practised show of gratification and submitted to
diffident questions on his method of composition and his theories of
art. When at last he excused himself and went out on deck, O’Rane
overtook him and suggested a stroll before dinner.

“I’ve hardly had a word with you since we came on board, Eric,” he
began. “You’ve not been seedy, have you?”

“No, but I’ve reached an age when I can’t move without running across
people I know. From one end of America to the other, in Japan, here...
On a ship I like to escape my fellow man and have—a rest... I don’t
mean _you_, of course, but the people who feel they must congratulate
me on a play that I wish I’d never written....”

“I’m glad you make an exception in my favour, though I tell you frankly
that I’m much too old a friend to be shaken off easily. It must be
seventeen years since we first met. D’you remember the Phoenix dinners
at Oxford? Jim Loring, Summertown, Draycott, Sinclair—_they_’re all
gone; George Oakleigh—married; you, Jack Waring and me—knocked out to a
certain extent; Knightrider and Deganway pursuing the noiseless tenour
of their way... You can crowd a great deal into seventeen years....”

“I’ve never forgotten the night when you cast our horoscopes for us,”
murmured Eric.

“I’ve sometimes tried to forget it... We were only about twenty, I gave
every man ten years’ run. It’s been too frightfully true. D’you
remember that even in those days I told you we should turn out one
genius? I told you to your face who it would be.”

Eric unlinked his arm on the plea of wanting to refill his pipe. What
with knocking out the ashes and sacrificing four matches to a head
wind, he gave himself time to become collected.

“One man was to achieve some kind of distinction,” he said with an
effort of memory. “And one was to make money... Touch wood and all that
sort of thing, but in eighteen months I made more than I thought I
could make in a life-time.”

“With fame thrown in,” added O’Rane. “That being so, I couldn’t
understand your speech at the Plaza.”

They walked the length of the deck before Eric answered.

“It went down very well,” he protested.

“Oh, yes! And no doubt you looked very nice. The decent women would
always fall in love with you because you look delicate and interesting;
and the fools because they think you’re spiritual. And I’ve no doubt
your button-hole and gestures and lumps in the throat were perfect;
you’re an old stage hand. I couldn’t see any of that, but I could hear.
You must be careful, old man, before you try to put it over people who
can’t see; we hear the very _devil_ of a lot... And you must admit it
was a rotten speech for you to make. Perhaps I know as much as most
people about your private affairs; it was the yelp of a whipped cur.”

“But—I don’t know what you’re driving at! They gave me a marvellous
reception, and I—I let myself go. I told ’em what it meant to me, the
years of agony and bloody sweat... God! I laid myself bare and talked
about art like a Chelsea poet. It had taken me half my life to get
there... And you say it was insincere!”

“As you’d stripped so far, you might have talked about the future a
bit,” suggested O’Rane. “It was that silence I heard most distinctly...
What are you going to do when you get to England?”

“Get out again as soon as possible.”

“Dear man, you can’t get away from yourself any more than a kitten can
catch its own tail. It’s time you pulled yourself together.”

Eric stifled a sigh before it could reach his companion’s too acute
hearing.

“I’m a bit tired... As you know so much, you may as well know that,
after that dinner, I knelt staring out into the night, thinking it all
over; and at the end I had to admit I was beaten,” he added quickly.

“That was what I rudely described as the “whipped cur” note in your
speech,” laughed O’Rane. “On my soul and honour, I should think a bit
better of you if you’d quietly cut your throat. As you _haven’t_...
Look here, Eric, I’ve had one or two facers in my time; and I think,
when the smash _has_ come, the only thing to do is to count the arms
and legs that are left and see what show you can make with _them_.
(When I was blinded, I _did_ wander out in the approved “Light That
Failed” spirit and try to take a bullet through the brain; but to a
certain extent one had lost one’s head, and I’ve never dared tell a
soul but George Oakleigh...) It’s no good, I’m sure, preserving an
amputated limb in spirits of wine. You forget you’ve lost a hand when
you forget you’ve ever had it to lose. Think of yourself as born
one-handed; in other words, think of yourself as a new personality; in
other words, don’t think of yourself at all. Can you do that?”

“I suppose it can be done if one makes a big enough effort.”

“Then you’ll succeed...”

            “‘_A little onward, lend thy guiding hand_
             _To these dark steps, a little further on..._’

Find me B Deck, there’s a good fellow. It always takes me about four
days to feel my way round a strange ship. You don’t want to talk about
this? I thought not... But don’t waste a week of good Atlantic,
skulking in a hot stateroom....”

On the following day Eric prospected cautiously among the rest of the
passengers. The natural selection common to life on every liner was
still in progress: the socially ambitious had struggled to the
captain’s table in the saloon; more experienced travellers were making
friends with the purser. The government officials, unconsciously jaunty
in their tweed caps and life-belts, separated into the corners of the
smoking-room and drew up voluminous reports, competing craftily for the
services of two overworked and seasick shorthand-writers; the returning
soldiers exercised themselves with deck-tennis in the morning and
scoured the ship for bridge-players in the afternoon. There were not
more than six women on board, and these left Eric alone when they had
secured his autograph. A distinction more subtile than that of mere age
sent the older men to the feet of Mrs. O’Rane, while the younger ranged
themselves round Ivy Maitland. Eric encountered her on the fifth day,
looking no more than sixteen in tennis shoes and white stockings,
woollen jersey and white Tam-o’-Shanter; she treated him to a friendly
“good-morning”, when they met, striding round the deck before
breakfast; but her first conversation in New York did not encourage her
to make further advances, and there were readier triumphs with Gaymer
and the other soldiers of his age.

The three days of deliberate isolation had drawn round Eric a cordon
which his fellow-travellers were at first reluctant to penetrate; but,
when the coast of Ireland came in sight, the general reserve broke down
for a moment: Lady John Carstairs hoped that he would come and see them
in London; Sir Matthew Woodstock confessed bluffly to admiration of his
plays; and on their last night on board Ivy Maitland, armed with her
autograph-book, stalked him to the boat-deck and reminded him of his
promise.

“I expect you thought me very forward in New York,” she began brightly.
“I did _so_ want to meet you... What are you going to write? Something
_nice_, won’t you?”

“How would ‘Children obey your parents’ do?” asked Eric.

“Oh, I’d rather have nothing than that... You see, you don’t know
father, and I _do_...” She laughed a little impatiently and painted a
clever and undutiful picture of their life in the Cromwell Road and her
earliest recollection of the overworked junior who returned at
half-past eight for a dinner which he persisted in ordering for eight,
and of a submissive mother who brewed him cocoa at five o’clock in the
morning and was too tired to entertain or be entertained at night. The
vacations, consecrated to golf at Brancaster, had enabled the two elder
sisters to escape into matrimony with a couple of promising chancery
barristers. (The “promise” was largely invented by Mr. Justice Maitland
by means of a dilemma which amused his humour and saved his pocket. “If
a young man’s worth his salt, he doesn’t want anything from me. If he’s
_not_ worth his salt, don’t marry him. Of course, I don’t expect you to
listen to anything _I_ say...”). The two brothers had drifted from
Cambridge into the army, leaving Ivy to bear the full brunt of her
father’s jurisdiction. “It was bad enough before, but I couldn’t go
back to it after this.”

“What will you do?,” Eric asked, as he began to write.

“I want to live my own life... work... money of my own,” she answered
vaguely. “I don’t want to ask them for _leave_ to go to a dance,
_leave_ to do this and that....”

Eric looked for a moment at the petulant little face and made no
comment. Ivy Maitland collected other people’s phrases with the
undiscriminating energy of a rag-picker; her brain was fermenting with
ill-digested theories; but, when she came to put them into practice,
ignorance or wilfulness set her doing all the things that she should
have instinctively avoided. Decorum habitually took a holiday on board
a big liner, but Ivy’s idea of emancipation consisted in sitting on the
boat-deck with the least desirable of the returning soldiers. On the
second day out, Lady Woodstock had been compelled to detach her from a
boisterous ring of cocktail-drinkers in the smoking-room.

“You’re very young, Miss Maitland,” he said at length.

“But I’ve been in all sorts of places. And girls nowadays _can_ take
care of themselves... Well, I mustn’t keep you. Every one wants to say
good-bye. I wish I were famous!”

As she ran away, Eric settled himself to the exchange of addresses and
invitations which always lent an insincere good-will to the last day of
a voyage. O’Rane he was careful to avoid, for, after the Plaza dinner
and in this new flattering farewell, he felt unable to live up to the
greatness which his admirers thrust upon him, however much he might
talk of the big effort that he intended to make. In his return to
England they saw triumph where he felt only despair. Every mile brought
him nearer to streets and houses, theatres and restaurants haunted by
the ghosts of his dead life; as the _Lithuania_ steamed majestically
into the Mersey, he felt that he was going into action....

As the great ship slowed to a standstill, a boat-load of assertive
officials hurried on board. Port authorities, health authorities,
emissaries of Scotland Yard... Eric was still idly wondering who they
were, when the chief steward thrust a sheaf of telegrams into his hand.
Welcome and good wishes, welcome and good wishes... This was a reduced
replica of New York! There were telegrams from the family, telegrams
from friends, telegrams from the theatre and from half-forgotten
societies. He crammed them uncomprehendingly into his pocket, as a
short, buoyant figure, rime-white in the mist, lined and mischievous as
a monkey, steered towards him and slapped a crushing hand of welcome on
to his shoulder.

“Manders!”

“Eric, boy! You bet you never expected to see _me_ here! The company
came up three days ago for a fortnight. Your old “Mother’s Son”. And a
very fair play, though you _did_ write it. I saw in all the papers that
you were coming home and, though they didn’t give the name of the ship,
I put my pants on the _Lithuania_. Good old packet! Crossed on her a
dozen times! Now look here! You needn’t wait for the tender; I’ve
chartered a motor-launch, and we’ll be ashore half-an-hour before the
rest. I hope you’re in no hurry to get back to town, because I’ve
ordered a bite of lunch for you at the Adelphi. One or two old
friends... I’m mightly glad to see you again, boy.”

He held out his hand a second time, and Eric took it with the
unwillingness of embarrassment. This triumphal progress was well enough
for America, but he could never live up to it in England. A semicircle
of fellow-passengers was watching him, wide-eyed and envious, counting
the telegrams which he thrust half-read into his pocket and speculating
on the identity of Manders, who could play Marc Antony or Louis Dubedat
on the stage and never contrived, in private life, to look anything but
a blend of pugilist, publican and book-maker.

“Is the launch here?”

“Right alongside, boy.”

Eric looked round and caught sight of Carstairs.

“I say, have you room for some friends of mine? Lord John Carstairs is
carrying a Foreign Office bag; if we can get him ashore before the
crowd... And Mr. and Mrs. O’Rane.”

It was late afternoon before Eric found himself locked into a reserved
compartment with a dinner-basket, a bottle of champagne and a box of
cigars. As the train steamed out of Liverpool, he drew his head in from
the window, wrapped a rug round his knees and went to sleep. There
seemed nothing else to do. He was still sleeping when he reached
Euston. A distracted mob burst from the train in search of taxis,
bending under suit-cases and wicker baskets. Eric saw a liveried
footman peering into carriage after carriage.

“Mr. Eric Lane? I have a car here for you, sir.” He walked five yards
across the platform and entered Manders’ car. “If you’ll tell me what
your luggage is, I’ll bring that along, sir,” said the man.

Still not more than half awake, Eric gave the address of his club and
sank shyly into a corner of the great limousine.

Next day he resumed possession of his flat and sniffed the vibrant air
of London. The first bewilderment of the armistice was yielding place
to the excitement of the peace conference and the coming general
election. On one pretext or another every second man in club, office
and street was escaping from England: an army of delegates was making
ready for Paris, a second army was assiduously securing advantageous
flats and rooms from which to direct the deliberations of the
plenipotentiaries. The restlessness seemed greater than even in the
first months of the war, and Eric was thankful for the fevered
commotion. As Nelson Millbank had predicted, there was as great a
revolution in turning soldiers into civilians as in turning civilians
into soldiers: much time must pass before they adapted themselves to
their new life. When the dust-clouds cleared away, Eric would have made
or found his niche and would no longer have to drive in semiregal state
or to slink through the streets like a fugitive from justice.

“_Welcome home expect you luncheon to-morrow Thespian one-thirty
Gaisford._”

The telegram was the first that Eric had opened on board; it was
duplicated to his flat, and, when he entered his club, the squat,
Bacchic figure of the doctor dominated the hall; he was prepared on
slight provocation to extemporize a party of twenty-four, but, after a
glance at Eric, he led him to a table for two and pondered long over
the bill of fare.

When they had given their order, each waited for the other to break
silence.

“Well, how are you?,” asked the doctor at length, industriously
polishing his glasses. “You’re looking better than I’ve seen you any
time since you entrusted your valuable young life to my care. For my
private satisfaction—and to please your mother—, I’d better run the
rule over you—”

“I didn’t think I should escape that,” laughed Eric.

“You’re not fit to look after yourself. You never were and you never
will be; and that, friend Eric, is apt to worry your friends. I’ll tell
you now, what I didn’t dare tell you before, that it was touch and go
whether your lungs would hold out. They’re too valuable a part of the
human body to be neglected... What’s Japan like?”

“The same as anywhere else,” Eric answered with a shrug.

The doctor devoted a connoisseur’s scrutiny to the wine-list before
speaking again.

“I suppose the English papers reached you?,” he asked at length.

“I heard in Tokio.”

“I was sorry, Eric, very sorry. But I’m glad it’s over.” He hurried on
remorselessly to cover the whistle of indrawn breath. “It was killing
you. Whether you’re wise to come back so soon—”

“Well, my father’s been very ill,” Eric interrupted.

“I was sorry to hear it. Are you going to stay in England?”

“Yes.”

Gaisford attacked his luncheon and ate for some moments without
speaking.

“Is that prudent?,” he asked at length.

“I don’t suppose she’s very keen to meet me.”

The doctor threw up his hands and shook his head ruefully.

“Ah, my friend! That’s where you’re wrong. And your trade should have
taught you better than that. A woman doesn’t throw aside a man she’s
fond of, a man who was fond of her, if she can possibly keep him; it
makes her feel warm and comfortable to have him at call. Mark my words:
she’ll try to get you back! If her conscience is clear, she’ll want to
prove it’s clear; if her conscience is _not_ quite clear, she’ll never
rest till she’s justified herself.”

Eric chewed his lips and looked away out of the window, afraid to trust
his own voice.

“Marriage closes all accounts between us,” he muttered. “I’m starting
afresh, I’m not going to think about the past, I’m going to _forget_...
I wonder why she married George,” he added inconsequently.

“One woman in a hundred marries the man she wants,” answered Gaisford;
“the other ninety-nine look for some one they can at least tolerate.”
The bachelor’s love of generalizing about marriage went swiftly to the
doctor’s head. “One man ripens the peach, and another always eats
it.... Well, George has embarked on the great adventure with his eyes
open: every one knows that he wanted to marry Amy Loring, only she was
a Catholic; the other woman he’s very _fond_ of, but she’s not the
great love of his life. He felt it was time to get married; it was a
passionless, restful, convenient marriage for both. Barbara’s last act
of independence, by the way, was formally to cut herself adrift from
her church....”

Eric felt that his friend was helping him to dismiss the subject with
an irrelevancy; but, for all his talk of forgetting, he only wanted to
fill in the blank pages of his tragedy. None knew the whole truth. Even
the actors were familiar only with their own lines and scenes. Of the
first act he himself only knew that Barbara had played with Jack Waring
until he lost his head and embraced her faith in the hope of marrying
her: she continued playing until a panic rush of superstition persuaded
her that she had imperilled Jack’s soul and must offer herself blindly
in reparation.... He did not know why Jack had cast her aside after
keeping them both stretched on a rack for more than a year. And Jack
did not know that his best friend prayed nightly for his death so that
Barbara might be free to marry him. And, with her wild haze of
superstition and conscience, devotion and vanity, passion and pose, no
one could guess what Barbara knew....

A knot of members turned aside from the pay-desk and came up with
congratulations and welcome. Eric was caught up and carried along with
them until it was time for him to return with the doctor and have
himself examined. That night he left London for Hampshire. The sight
and smell of Waterloo were a new and unexpected pain, for the six-ten
was a Winchester and Crawleigh train: Eric had travelled by it a dozen
times with Barbara and, though he knew her to be away from London, he
reconnoitred the filling carriages as though he feared that she would
spring out and attack him. Once inside an empty compartment, he hid
behind his paper, refusing to look up when the door opened and only
rousing when a hand gently patted his knee and Jack Waring’s voice
enquired with surprise:

“Well, Eric, old man, when did _you_ get back? And what sort of time
did you have? D’you know I’ve not seen you for nearly four and a half
years? When I came home after being a prisoner, I always missed you.
Then you went off to America... Tell me all about yourself, old son!”

The voice was unmistakably cordial, and from Waterloo to Winchester the
two men discussed themselves and each other. Jack Waring’s head-wound
had incapacitated him for work indoors; after a dozen failures he was
abandoning the bar and taking to horse-breeding in Worcestershire; two
friends, equally maimed by the war, were coming into partnership with
him.

“And there I propose to end my days,” he said. “Thirty-five’s a bit old
to be making a new start; but I’m alive, when I didn’t expect to be,
and that’s something.”

Eric nodded and looked out of the window at the familiar glimmering
lights of south-west London. In different ways but in equal measure
Barbara had spoiled both their lives; both must know it; and, now that
she had left them for ever, there was a dramatic fitness in their
rebuilding an old friendship out of their common experience and
disaster. This was the fourth act of their play; and, after the
catastrophe, the survivors could meet and prospect to see what
remained... In the gleaming mirror of the window, Eric studied the
reflection of his companion’s face; he was glad to hear that Jack was
going away to the other side of England; after all, the old friendship
could never be revived when one had prayed aloud for the death of the
other... He looked up, startled and conscience-stricken; he had been
mad, but it was Barbara who made him mad, and Jack’s friendship was
part of the price which she exacted.

“I’ve read all about you in the papers, of course,” said Jack, “but
I’ve not seen you in the flesh since the first months of the war. Do
you remember when you were ill and I walked over to talk to you? I’d
just got my commission.”

“I remember.” Eric mustered all his courage and plunged before it had
time to evaporate. “I’ve seen you once since—in the distance. You and
your father and mother and Agnes came to a first night of mine—”

“Were you there?,” Jack asked in surprise. “I came up on purpose to see
you.”

“Only for a moment. I’d been ill again and I was supposed to be in bed.
I saw the first act from a box, but I couldn’t sit it out. You were all
in the front row of the stalls—”

“Oh, I remember it well.”

Eric hurried on desperately:

“It was almost your first public appearance since you got back from
Germany. Every one was congratulating you. George Oakleigh... and
Barbara Neave.” He paused, but Jack’s face told him nothing. “They were
there, I remember. When I was in Japan, I saw that they’d married.”

“Yes.”

Nothing more was coming, and Eric was forced to admire Jack’s restraint.

“That was the last time I set foot in a theatre,” he ended carelessly.
“I suppose I shall have to begin again... I’ve been ill off and on for
some time, and it’s like making a new start with me... By the way, I
met Raney on the boat from New York. D’you remember when you and I came
down from Oxford for the last time? I always felt the night before was
like a vigil. The dawn of a new life, a new world...” His voice became
wistfully reflective; but Jack, as ever, prosaically declined to share
his reverie. “It’s easier to feel that at twenty-one than at
thirty-five...” Eric went on with a laugh. “But I suppose one must
try... When do you start for Worcestershire?”

“To-morrow. I’m only coming here to pick up clothes and say good-bye.
You know Agnes is married? And I hear your sister Sybil’s engaged... I
don’t suppose I shall see you again.”

“Not at present, I’m afraid.”

They shook hands at Winchester, and Eric dawdled behind to identify his
luggage. He never wanted to see Jack again. Sometime he must walk over
to Red Roofs and pay his respects to the family, but he would not go
until Jack was safely out of the way. If possible, he would avoid the
house altogether, for he never wanted to see Agnes since her marriage.
Five years earlier he had fancied that he would like to make her his
wife; in those days they would have been very happy together; but
Barbara had spoiled his palate for other women....

A car, driven by his sister, was awaiting him, and on the familiar road
out of the town, through the dripping Lashmar Woods and across the
water-logged common to the Mill-House, he listened to tidings of the
family. His father was making an unexpectedly good recovery; his
brother Geoffrey was home on leave from the North Sea; Basil was on his
way from Salonica; Lady Lane, though worried and anxious, was very well.

“And what about you, Sybil?” Eric asked conscientiously. The feeling
which he had suspected in Tokio, when he received the news of her
engagement, returned to perplex and oppress him; he was not interested
in his family. “Tell me about this man you’re marrying,” he added
quickly.

“I’m very well, thanks. And very glad to see you again, Ricky.”

Her fingers slid down from the wheel and squeezed his hand. Outward
affection from one so undemonstrative as Sybil was rare. Perhaps it was
not wholly her pleasure at having him back; he wondered how much they
had heard and guessed....

The doors were thrown open at the first sound of the horn, and Lady
Lane stood silhouetted against the lemon light of the hall with her
husband beside her, leaning on her shoulder. Eric hailed them and
sprang out of the car, sniffing the well-remembered scent of pine-logs
and submitting to a long inspection before he was allowed to take off
his coat. The house, low, warm and homely, was unchanged, his mother
was unchanged, the servants were unchanged; Geoffrey came out of the
library with his invariable, half-cleaned gun under his arm and the
inseparable retriever at his side; only Sir Francis seemed older and
more gaunt, speaking a little indistinctly and glad of an arm when he
walked.

After the triumphal send-off in New York, the splendid isolation of the
voyage and his reception in Liverpool, Eric subsided gratefully into
the tranquillity of Lashmar Mill-House. Nobody here expected him to
play a part, and he could forget the war and put himself back seven
years to the time when he was an overworked journalist coming home to
sleep eighteen hours in country air, or fourteen years to the time when
he was an undergraduate returning across country from Oxford, or
twenty-five years to the time when he was a schoolboy, first allowed to
bring himself unaccompanied from Broadstairs... He had promised
Gaisford, he had in effect promised O’Rane to forget all that had
happened since his first meeting with Barbara....

“We’ll dine at once. Don’t wait to unpack or dress,” called out Lady
Lane as he ran upstairs to his threadbare, bleak bedroom.

Throughout dinner and the long evening which followed he was kept
talking of America and Japan. Sybil sat with her hands clasped round
her ankles, eagerly drinking in every word; Geoffrey interjected lazy
questions about New York and San Francisco, Hawaii and Formosa; Sir
Francis sat lost in thought, hardly listening to what was said but
proudly conscious that Eric had won honour on three continents.

“Bed time! You must tell us the rest to-morrow,” said Lady Lane, as the
clock struck eleven.

The three children were ready to protest, but she was looking at her
husband, whose eyes had closed. Sybil poked the smouldering logs into
safety; Geoffrey slipped an arm through his father’s with a careless,
“Going up, sir?” Eric was left alone with his mother. He knocked out
his pipe and turned to her, with his eyes averted.

“Well, you must be worn out with all your travelling,” she said, after
a moment’s silence.

“I’m not very tired... The guv’nor’s better than I expected, mother.”

“Yes, the first days were the worst. I _had_ to cable to you, Eric. If
anything had happened... I couldn’t take the risk.”

“But I’m very glad you did.”

“I didn’t _want_ to bring you home.”

Eric found a particle of paper on the carpet. He picked it up and
carried it slowly to the fire.

“You knew, then?”

“I guessed, darling.”

“You guessed I never meant to come back.”

“Hush, Eric... I guessed that you probably _felt_ like that. But I
hoped that with time—”

“It gets worse every day! I’m waiting, listening for something to go
snap in my brain!”

In body or nerves something “went snap,” and he plunged forward, nearly
throwing his mother off her balance. She slipped her arm round his
waist and walked slowly up and down the room with him. At the door she
paused and noiselessly turned the key. He was shaking with dry sobs
which seemed to tear him in pieces, and she pulled his head on to her
shoulder, running her fingers through his hair and once kissing his
neck. Thirty years before she had lifted him out of bed night after
night, when he was crying with pain, and walked up and down the nursery
with him until he dropped in her arms or fell asleep standing, with his
head on her breast.

“You’ve grown so tall,” she whispered.

“Since...? I’m sorry, mother! It’s been such hell. I _couldn’t_ tell
you before. That night, when you all came up and dined with me and said
good-bye... I meant to clear out for good and all. When we had a
submarine alarm, I prayed that we should be torpedoed and sunk. And you
knew all the time?”

“I guessed a little bit. Mothers _do_, you know, darling child....”

“It wasn’t her fault, mother,” said Eric with unsteady emphasis.

“You’d always say that. But it’s over, Eric; have you thought what
you’re going to do now?”

“I’m afraid I’m rather damaged goods,” he sighed.

“Too bad to be mended?” She led him to a sofa and sat down with his
head on her shoulder and her arms round him. “You’re dreadfully thin,
Eric... And you’ve been smoking too much. D’you see? Your fingers are
all yellow... Darling boy, I’m afraid you have to make another effort,
a big effort. Do you remember the doctors gave you up three times
before you were seven? And d’you remember at Broadstairs, when you
lived for eight months on the verandah? I’m afraid we’ve given you all
the brains of the family and none of the constitution. But you’re not
going to give in now. Victory, Eric! This will be the biggest of all...
In time—”

He broke away from her arms and buried his face in his hands:

“I’ve had two years!”

“You’ll forget everything, if you can forget yourself. If you could
lose yourself altogether in work or in looking after some one—”

There was a single sob, and he had to fight for breath:

“I used to walk up and down all night in front of her house, when she
was ill.”

“But that’s over. In time....”

She rose and stirred the fire to a blaze.

“In time...” Eric murmured. He did not want to look after any one.
Barbara had destroyed his faith in women.

“It won’t be our first big fight, Eric. In a different way I’ve been
fighting all my life. Father. And you. And the babies. And Sybil. I
thought everything had come out right, before the war; if you’d been a
little bit stronger, Eric, it would have been perfect. When the war
came, it was a bigger fight than I’d ever had. You were ill... and I
knew you weren’t happy. And anything might have happened to Geoff and
Basil. And then, of course, your father’s illness....”

Eric slid on to the floor, resting his head against her knee and gently
turning her rings from side to side.

“You don’t get much rest, mother.”

“I’m happier when I have one of you to look after.”

“I feel I’ve been such a brute to you all.”

“Perhaps I understood... Eric, if you want to go away again, I shan’t
stop you.”

“No, I’m going back to the old life. I must start work again... and try
to feel it’s worth doing. I _meant_ to funk it all, but now I’m
determined to win... We won’t talk about this again, mother. I don’t
want you to think hardly of her, and you must never let any one attack
her... A new life from to-day,” he ended jerkily. “Dawn....”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER THREE


  THE WILDERNESS OF THIS WORLD


“Eastward was the wise man’s course.... Mr. Polly saw himself going
along it with all the self-applause a wise man feels. But somehow it
wouldn’t come like that... the figure went slinking... and would not go
otherwise than slinking. He turned his eyes westward as if for an
explanation, and if the figure was no longer ignoble, the prospect was
appalling.

“‘One kick in the stummick would settle a chap like me,’ said Mr. Polly.

“‘Oh, God!’ cried Mr. Polly, and lifted his eyes to heaven, and said
for the last time in that struggle, ‘It isn’t my affair!’

“And so saying, he turned his face towards the Potwell Inn.

“He went back, neither halting nor hastening in his pace after this
last decision, but with a mind feverishly busy.

“‘If I get killed I get killed, and if he gets killed, I get hung.
Don’t seem just somehow...’”

                              H. G. WELLS: “THE HISTORY OF MR. POLLY.”

“We should be so pleased if you could dine with us on Friday,” said
Lady John Carstairs on the threshold of the O’Ranes’ house. “I never
had an opportunity of thanking you for your kindness in getting us off
the boat so early. It will be only a small party, but you’ll meet one
or two friends from America. I wanted to ask you before, but we’re only
now beginning to get our house straight.”

Eric thought over the invitation in the moment allowed him for
consulting his engagement-book. He had intended to begin work on a new
play, but his friends and the strange monster of an adoring public that
he had conjured into existence refused to leave him in peace. For a
week after his return to England the illustrated papers were publishing
photographs of him; four reporters called in two days to learn his
plans for the future and his impressions of America; by letter and
telegram he was begged to write and speak on the fruits of his tour;
and, when he had deflected the applicants to the office of his agent,
there remained private appeals less easy to shelve or refuse. The
dramatic circle of the Thespian Club organized a dinner in his honour;
Dr. Gaisford bade him to “a strictly bachelor party” of his friends and
admirers; he was asked to take the chair for the Actors’ Pension Fund;
and the Penmen’s Club invited him to be the guest of honour at their
weekly luncheon.

Mingled with the official invitations, the unofficial rained down upon
him. It was a repetition of the personal triumph which he had enjoyed
when his first play was produced. Lady Maitland, Mrs. Shelley, Lady
Poynter, Mrs. Manisty and a dozen more urged him to lunch or dine with
them; war and peace made no difference to them, a man might travel to
the end of the world and back to find them still chewing the cud of
their sparse culture. If his position in London three years before had
been incredible even to him, he was forced to believe now that his
absence abroad had mysteriously consolidated it: then the critics had
bracketed him with Pinero and Barrie for the excellence of his
stagecraft and with Shaw for the wit and virility of his dialogue, in
him they saw and blessed the promise of the future; now, though he had
written nothing in the interval, they chose to regard the promise as
fulfilled. “_Among the younger playwrights_,” wrote the grudging editor
of “Green-room and Studio,” “_it is unsafe to predict who will step
into the shoes of the men we have named. Always excepting Mr. Eric
Lane, whose niche is assured to him...”_ The public seemed to take its
time from the press; the enthusiasm of those who knew him reacted on
those who had yet to meet him; and for a month he was whirled from
house to house in a sandstorm of adulation.

When he could see and breathe again, Eric discovered gaps in the
well-remembered catalogue of names: Lady Crawleigh and Lady Knightrider
at least knew too much or suspected too much or had enough
consideration not to ask him to their houses; but Lady John Carstairs’
invitation was a test-case. If he accepted, Eric was sure to meet other
of Lady Barbara’s relations there; but, even as he wavered, he knew
that he dared not surrender to shyness.

“I should love to come,” he answered, as they went forward to shake
hands with their hostess.

Mrs. O’Rane was signalizing her return from America by assembling all
of her many friends who had resisted the lure of the peace conference
or the south of France. During the war Eric had attended sufficient of
her parties to recoil from their noise and studied hilarity, but he was
by now so much sated with the pompous entertaining of such
intellectuals as Lady Poynter that he welcomed the informality of a
Bohemian frolic. Here at least he would be screened by the shadow of
some later and more modish celebrity. As he came into the long, crowded
library, a space was being cleared in the middle; while their leader
explored the quality of the floor, a group of dancers with only their
heads and ballet slippers protruding from a swathing mass of cloaks and
shawls stood whispering in one corner. A tentative chord was struck,
the wrappings slid to the ground, and the dancers pattered forward on
tip-toe with their arms arched above their heads.

Eric was trying to see who was present when Amy Loring came up with a
radiant smile of welcome.

“I’m _very_ glad to see you again!,” she whispered. “Sonia told me
you’d crossed by the same boat, and I came here on purpose to meet you.
I do hope you’re quite strong again now.”

“I’ve as clean a bill of health as our friend Gaisford is ever likely
to give me,” Eric laughed. For a moment he had felt his muscles
tightening in embarrassment and could only think of a dinner at Lady
Crawleigh’s house when Amy had given him the same glowing smile of
encouragement; she had bathed in his happiness at being in love with
her cousin and had exhorted him to go on and prosper in disregard of
any obstacles that Barbara’s father might impose. Eric wondered whether
she remembered that night as vividly as he did. Gaisford’s name touched
another note in his brain, and he remembered the doctor’s telling him
that George Oakleigh had once been in love with her; it was an old,
familiar tale, and, until a few months before, the gossips had
predicted that neither of them would ever marry. In the act of
wondering whether she felt any resentment towards George or Barbara,
Eric realized that she was too big of heart to grudge happiness to any
one. “I’m most awfully glad to see you again!,” he added, unconsciously
pressing her hand.

As they turned to watch the dancing, Eric recalled that he had never
before met Amy in the O’Ranes’ house. After her brother’s jilting at
Sonia’s hands, the two families had found it more comfortable not to
meet; they were apparently now reconciled, and any one could choose
between thinking that they had drifted together in the irresistible
crosscurrents of London and imagining that the more generous had made
overtures of friendship. Behind the warmth of her greeting Eric had
fancied the diffidence of a suppliant, as though Amy were offering him
amends on behalf of all her kin; he realized that he could, if he
liked, live in retirement, but that, if he came back to the old life,
he must try to shew as much graciousness and as little rancour as Amy
displayed towards those who fell below her own exalted standard of
chivalry.

“You don’t see a chair anywhere..?,” he heard her murmuring.

“Why shouldn’t we stake out a claim at the supper-table?,” he asked. “I
was wondering if you were dining with the Carstairs next week... Oh,
well, don’t you think you might get Lady John to invite you? It’s so
very long since I’ve seen you; and it’s impossible to talk here...
London hasn’t changed much in the last two years.”

“Or the last five. I wonder if we’re going _straight_ back to 1914...
I’ve not been to a party of this kind since the war. It’s not _very_
amusing....”

The scenes from the ballet were followed by a pianoforte solo; Harry
Manders poured forth a stream of stories; Deganway gave imitations; and
Pentyre accompanied himself on a banjo, until a restless group headed
by Gaymer suggested clearing away the furniture for a dance. Eric, too,
was finding but little amusement in Mrs. O’Rane’s strenuous programme
and would have preferred to talk in peace to Amy Loring or go home to
bed. This, he decided, would be the last party of its kind which he
could spare time to attend; for a moment he had wandered aimlessly in
the wilderness of London, waiting to light upon anything that would
occupy his thoughts. Nothing had come to him, and he recognized that he
must find his refuge in work.

“I’m too old for this sort of thing,” he murmured to Amy.

“I can’t remember ever being young enough,” she answered with a smile.

The heat and noise were by now almost unbearable; high spirits were
rising by imperceptible shrill stages to rowdiness; and, as Gaymer’s
deputation pressed insistently for its dance, the older members of the
party began to look at their watches.

“Anything you like, if you’ll only wait until every one’s had something
to eat—,” cried Mrs. O’Rane, leaving the supper-table to pacify Gaymer.

“Oh, they’ll go on all night, Sonia! We—want—a—dance. Come on, Gerry,
all together! Pentyre! One, two, three! We—want—a—dance—We—want—a—dance.”

The three men ranged themselves against a wall and shouted through
their open fists like trumpeting heralds.

At the second repetition, those nearest to them joined in the measured,
relentless chorus, drowning the efforts of a girl at the piano and
reducing Mrs. O’Rane to helpless gesticulation.

“Wait till the end of this!,” she begged in an interval of silence.

“We—want—a—dance!”

“But it’s so rude!”

Gaymer laughed and whispered to his companions.

“Do—not—shoot—the—pi-an-ist.—She—is—do-ing—her—best,” rose the new
chorus; then, with swelling menace, “WE—WANT—A—DANCE.”

It was impossible to sing, play or argue against the concerted uproar,
and after a moment’s indecision Mrs. O’Rane gave orders for the rugs
and furniture to be moved. Her husband apologized to the interrupted
musician, and Eric was leading Amy Loring away when Gaymer petitioned
for the first dance.

“Lady Amy’s promised it to me,” Eric improvised.

“The feller’s cut me out,” commented Gaymer with humorous solemnity.
“The next one, then?”

“Didn’t you ask me to find your car after that?,” Eric enquired.

“’Better go somewhere where I _am_ wanted,” muttered Gaymer. “No
objection to my _asking_, was there? ’Hate to give offence, you know.
Nod as good as a wink, you know. Pardon granted as soon as asked?”

As they drove back to Loring House, Amy thanked Eric for his
intervention.

“I’m afraid Johnny’s rather deteriorated since the war,” she mused. “He
was always rather wild, but he never used to be rowdy. There was quite
an unpleasantness at Kathleen Knightrider’s last week; I believe she
had to ask him to go... If he’d only _drink_ less....”

When Eric arrived at Queen Anne’s Gate the following week, he found
that Lady John had conscientiously assembled a novelist and war-poet to
keep him in countenance; the “friends from America” were represented by
Sir Matthew and Lady Woodstock, an _attaché_ from the embassy, David
O’Rane, his wife and Sir Matthew’s former secretary. After that she
seemed to have surrendered to her new family by inviting the Duchess of
Ross, Amy Loring and Phyllis Knightrider; and, when Eric entered the
drawing-room, she cut short her welcome to tell the butler that Captain
Gaymer had asked whether he might dine and to order another cover to be
laid. The dinner promised to be peaceful and proved so dull that Eric
had to invent an excuse for leaving early: he had now sketched the
ground-plan of a new play and, though he could as yet feel no
enthusiasm for it, he conscientiously tried to recover his old habit of
regular work.

“If you’ll wait till half-past ten, we’ll drop you,” volunteered
Gaymer. “Ivy and I are going to a dance of sorts, and I’ve chartered a
taxi for the night.”

Eric remembered that it was raining, when he arrived, and decided that
his vague distaste for Gaymer’s society was weaker than his dislike of
wet pavements.

“It’s very good of you,” he answered. “A taxi for the night sounds
luxurious.”

“Necessary,” answered Gaymer. “Can’t be bothered to fight for the
beastly things or walk home at three in the morning. I can do without
everything except personal comforts. This fellow’s been ticking up
tuppences ever since Armistice Day; I suppose he’ll have to be paid
some time... ’Wonder if Amy’d like a lift.”

As he crossed the room, Eric sat down in the empty chair by Ivy
Maitland’s side. It was ungracious to accept a favour from a man and
then, in the next breath, to disparage him; but, after Gaymer’s
unmannerly conduct at Mrs. O’Rane’s party, any one might feel a little
sorry to see Ivy becoming his friend. Before the war he had been a
leader in the disorderly little group of roystering practical jokers
headed by Jack Summertown and Pentyre; and, though the Air Force had
kept him employed for three or four years, he seemed now to be casting
about for fresh forms of dissipation and rather aimless mischief. While
Ivy was too young and, at heart, too timid to amuse him for long, her
behaviour on the boat had been feather-brained; it was, of course,
their business, but Eric would have preferred to see her with some one
who checked her youthful craving for independence instead of exciting
it.

“Where are you dancing?” he asked her.

“Ssh! _Please!_,” she whispered. “I wish Johnnie hadn’t shouted it out
like that! Mother’d have a fit, if she knew I was going to a dance
alone.”

Eric wondered for a moment whether she was yielding to the youthful
temptation of trying to shock him.

“Your parents seem still to be a great trial to you,” he observed.

“I’ve made _some_ impression on them. Johnnie’s got me a job at the Air
Ministry, and they’ve allowed me to take it. The real fight’s coming
when I tell them I’ve taken rooms of my own.”

“Are you going to live alone?”

“I think so. The girl who was coming with me has cried off... Now, it’s
no use finding fault with me, because I’ve absolutely made up my mind.
I _must_ lead my own life!”

“I think it’s an awful mistake,” said Eric with a shrug. “You’re much
too young, much too good-looking...” After saying good-bye at
Liverpool, he had forgotten her very existence; but in a short and
flimsy blue dance-frock, with blue stockings, shoes and head-band she
was younger and more provocative than he remembered either at their
first meeting in New York or on board the _Lithuania_. “Girls of
nineteen do _not_ leave home and set up housekeeping on their own,” he
added.

“But why shouldn’t they? I know several who do.”

It was waste of breath to tell any one so superficially self-confident
that a girl of nineteen might need protection from risks older and more
insidious than she would deign to admit. His eyes wandered for a moment
to the corner where John Gaymer was talking to Amy Loring; it was hard
for one man to say what attraction any other man exerted over women,
but Gaymer was undeniably popular; without being handsome, he was more
than presentable in appearance, with an immaculate shell; the war had
proved his strength and reckless courage, and he comported himself
towards women with a devil-may-care assurance that occasionally
degenerated into a brutality which they did not seem to resent. It was
his business if he embarrassed himself with Ivy Maitland’s adoration
and hers if she chose to fall in love with him... Eric tried to recall
what he had seen of their manner to each other: Gaymer had apparently
forced himself upon the party when he heard that Ivy was dining, but
this was perhaps no more than a convenient means of meeting his partner
before the dance; he had shewn her only the boisterous attention that
he held in readiness for all women who would accept it; and, if they
were in love, neither would welcome a third person in the taxi....

Eric’s attention was recalled to Ivy when he heard her proclaiming
rather petulantly:

“_Somebody_ must make a start.”

“You’ve not yet convinced me that you’ve any great hardships to put up
with at home,” he answered, with difficulty suppressing a yawn.

“They _aren’t_ great. They’re small, absurdly small. But they’re
innumerable and everlasting. Now, take to-night. When I met Johnnie
last week at Mrs. O’Rane’s, we found that we danced rather well
together. He’s frightfully good at games and everything—”

“Do you know anything about him?” Eric interrupted.

“Not much. Do you?”

“Nothing at all. I’ve met him on and off for some years, but in all the
time I’ve never seen as much of him as I saw of you that night in New
York. On general principles, don’t you think it’s—imprudent; aren’t
your parents justified in thinking it’s imprudent for you to tumble
into an intimacy—not with Gaymer, but with any man of whom you know
absolutely nothing?”

“But women have instincts about men! I should be no better off if I
dragged him away and introduced him to mother and made her invite him
to dinner. I daresay that’s more conventional, but it doesn’t do any
_good_.”

Eric hesitated long enough to ask himself why he inflicted so much
advice on a very raw child, but not long enough to answer his own
question.

“It puts your relationship on a different footing,” he suggested. “When
a man’s been to your house and eaten your salt, he feels a
responsibility to the house. Look at it this way: during the last week,
how have you differed in essence from—let me say—a chorus-girl who
dines with a man and goes to a dance with him and lets him help her to
get taken on at a new theatre? I don’t suggest that there _are_ no
differences, but what differences are there for a man like Gaymer to
see?”

Ivy looked at him in perplexity which was too strong to allow
resentment to creep in.

“I don’t understand,” she said, and both were glad when the taxi was
reported to be at the door.

As he read his letters and looked with distaste at the work awaiting
him on the morrow, Eric reviewed with morose dissatisfaction the five
weeks that had passed since his return to England. He had sighed with
boredom at the cultured table of Lady Poynter; and in the
conscientiously Bohemian setting of Mrs. O’Rane the boredom had only
been complicated by amazement. (He scrawled a blue-pencil “Refuse”
across four invitations and tossed them into his secretary’s
letter-basket.) He had interested himself for a moment in Ivy Maitland,
at least to the extent of giving her some good advice; but her pert
assurance was a little tiresome, and he was now only interested to
wonder how soon John Gaymer would weary of it. At the Mill-House he had
tried to win his way back to a place in his own family, but they had
mysteriously stood still and he had wandered into a spiritual
wilderness of his own. Even his work no longer promised him a way out
of the wilderness, but it might keep him from brooding over the
astounding emptiness of life.

He had achieved a dull quiescence of spirit when he read in Christmas
week that Mr. and Lady Barbara Oakleigh had returned to London from
Ireland and were leaving England for the Riviera after a few days in
Hampshire. That night, on his way to Winchester, Eric chose a
compartment at the back of the train to avoid all chance of meeting her
in the Crawleigh or Southampton coaches. His window commanded
two-thirds of the platform, and, five minutes before the train was due
to start, he caught sight of Oakleigh and a footman hurrying by, with
Barbara half a pace behind him. Valentine Arden had christened her “the
haggard Venus”; her big sunken eyes and white cheeks had a morbid
fascination of their own, compelling as ever; physical delicacy and
nervous vitality still contended for possession of her tall, wasted
body; tragedy and defiance alternated in the swift changes of her
expression, as she flashed by the window of his compartment. For all
his resolution and training, Eric felt his heart stop as it had stopped
in Tokio, when he read the news of her marriage; when the red mist
lifted from his eyes, he looked at her again from behind the screen of
his paper, surprised to see no change: the green morocco
travelling-cushion still bore the old “B.N.” in one corner; he
recognized her fur-coat, and George was carrying the red leather
jewel-case which he had carried for her fifty times. At their first
meeting she had criticized his first play, offering to re-write it,
telling him that he knew nothing of ‘Life’ and proposing herself as
instructor.

“Oh, well... This is Life, I suppose,” Eric whispered to himself.

To have seen her would break the shock of meeting her on her return to
England, but he was glad that she was going abroad; the shock would
have to be broken by instalments, widely separated, if he was to acquit
himself without disgrace. He wondered how much she had ever told her
husband. He wondered how much she dared admit to herself... At
Winchester he jumped on to the platform, before the train stopped, and
ran out of the station, before any curious head could reconnoitre from
the windows of the Crawleigh and Southampton coaches.

Finality... Eric turned up his collar and sank lower in the seat of the
car. He did not want Sybil to see his face. Christmas Eve... Three
years ago to a day he had reached finality; Barbara was falling in love
with him, when she had sworn by the Cross to offer herself in
reparation to Jack Waring: and in those easy, sane, clear-cut days Eric
had decided to end their intimacy before either clouded it with
tragedy. And then she had appealed to his compassion and sent for
him... perhaps to see if he could continue to resist her. And he had
gone back; and his resistance had broken down. A man only paid for his
own weakness....

But it was finality to see her running along the platform arm-in-arm
with her husband....

“Basil’s home,” said Sybil, as they left the town. “He got back
yesterday and demobilized himself this morning.”

“Oh, good work! I’ve not seen him for three years.”

“It’s the first Christmas since the war that all three of you have been
home.”

His two brothers had walked out to meet the car, and at the sparse edge
of Lashmar Woods they sprang out like highwaymen and secured themselves
on the running-boards. Lady Lane and her husband were waiting for them
in the hall, and, when they sat down to dinner, no one could believe
that they had been scattered for nearly five years. The obliteration of
time was all that Eric needed to complete his sense of finality. For
three days they talked and chaffed one another, exhuming time-honoured
jests and bandying stories and experiences from four continents.

Half-consciously Eric realized that he was reviving an atmosphere of
the past to avoid thinking of the future; but, when each had told the
tale of his wanderings, all looked beyond the smoke and fire of the war
to a world which might be peaceful but would certainly be drab.

“What are you going to do now, Basil?,” asked Eric at breakfast on his
last morning.

“Well, if a grateful Government has kept open my job in the India
Office, I suppose I shall have to start in there—just as if there’d
been no jolly little war.”

“And I’m going back to the dear old China Station, just as if there’d
been no jolly little war,” added Geoffrey. “Everything’s going to be
rather flat... Hullo! Perfectly good postman with Yuletide greetings
for all of us!” He bounded out of the room and helped in the sorting.
“You’ve got more than your fair share, Ricky.”

“You can have them all, if you’ll pay the bills,” answered Eric. “Or
I’ll pay the bills, if you’ll accept the invitations and go in my
place. Would you like to lunch with Lady Poynter? Her husband had some
marvellous port a couple of years ago. Or dine with Mrs. Shelley? I can
give you a list of her _clichés_: a book always “creates an illusion”
with her, and modern poetry is “the pendant to a mood”. I can’t
_honestly_ recommend her. Misguided women who think I still dance... Or
you may dine with Mr. Justice and Lady Maitland; I don’t know them, but
you’re sure to get a good dinner, because their daughter says—here it
is, if you don’t believe me—‘My father is so anxious to meet you.’”

“Sounds as if you’d been trifling with her young affections,” said
Geoffrey. “Take my advice and don’t go.”

“I’ve no intention of going,” Eric answered. “I’ve work to do.”

In the New Year he shut himself up with the first draft of a play and
for three months only left his flat for an hour’s walk each day in the
Green Park. Sometimes, as he sat bent before his miniature theatre,
marshalling, drilling and dismissing his little card-board figures, he
could fancy Barbara’s eager, low voice at his side, her breath warm on
his cheek, and the keen, sweet scent of carnations once more, at each
lithe movement of her body, filling the room where in other years she
had argued out his plays line by line; sometimes, as he read his
speeches aloud, he caught himself pausing for her judgement of their
rhythm; and, when the first rehearsal was called, he knew that he would
find her ghost sitting with clasped hands on a stool by his feet; on
the first night it would await him in his box, defying him to bring any
one else to a seat already taken.

“But this is Life,” he whispered to himself. “I... I told Gaisford I
was going to forget about all this.”

As soon as the new play was mentioned in the theatrical gossip of the
press, he received the usual appeals from unknown men and women to be
given a trial. As usual he sent them bodily to Manders and, as usual,
instructed his secretary and servants to admit no one who called
without a satisfactory explanation. Manders hoped to begin rehearsing
in the late summer and to produce the play in the autumn; Eric had too
much other work on hand to waste his scanty leisure on stage-struck
amateurs; he had not seen a play since his return to England and was
beginning to forget the highly-charged, conventionally unreal
atmosphere of the theatre.

A week’s conscientious study of contemporary drama satisfied him that,
whatever else the critics might say of “The Gate of Horn”, they would
not degrade it by comparison with any of the plays that he had felt
constrained to see. On the last night of his penance he was escaping
into the Strand from the unknown people who persisted in bowing to him,
when a girl, standing by herself a few paces ahead, turned carelessly
and bade him good-evening in a diffident and rather surprised voice.

“I’m afraid I can’t see who it is,” Eric had to confess. “I’m as blind
as a bat, when I come out of a theatre.”

“It’s Ivy Maitland. You wouldn’t remember me.”

“Indeed I do. Are you all by yourself?”

“Yes. I came with a man, but he—he had to go before the end.”

“Then you must let me see you home,” said Eric after a moment’s
hesitation which he hoped she would not notice. “It’s the Cromwell
Road, didn’t you tell me?”

“Not now. I—in spite of your advice... I really couldn’t stand it any
longer at home. But you mustn’t come out of your way; I’m only a step
from here—at the back of the Adelphi.”

“Let me see you as far as the door... Well, I hope it’s a success.”

They crossed the Strand and dived through a hidden courtyard and down a
flight of steps before she answered:

“I can’t say it is—so far.”

“Come! that’s honest!,” said Eric. “If you’ve the moral courage to
admit it’s a failure, why don’t you have the greater moral courage to
chuck the whole thing up?”

“Ah! I can’t do that.” She stopped in front of a door and felt for her
latch-key. “I suppose you wouldn’t come in, if I asked you?”

Eric pretended to look at his watch and even walked away to the nearest
lamp-post, where he looked at it again. He had still two hours’ work to
do, but the girl’s dejection of voice and her candid admission of
failure touched him.

“Are you all alone?” he asked.

“Yes. You won’t compromise _me_; and I shouldn’t mind if you did,” she
added with a touch of her old impatience. “I was thinking of you.
You’re so well-known—”

“If you’re all by yourself... _I_’m thinking of _you_—”

“Ah, I was afraid you wouldn’t come!”

She sighed gently and held out her hand. Loneliness and the sense of
failure seemed to have taken away all her vitality: her hand was cold
and limp, and her head drooped as though she lacked the strength to
keep it erect.

“Let me come to tea some day,” Eric suggested.

“Oh, you’re too busy. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“I’m not too busy for that.”

“Aren’t you?” She made a pitiful attempt to collect the fragments of
her pride; but the drooping head and unsteady lips belied the valiance
of her voice, and haughtiness passed quickly into petulance. “You were
too busy to dine with us, when I invited you; you were too busy to see
me when I called on you, too busy even to answer my letter.”

Eric stared at her in amazement:

“Miss Maitland, I simply don’t understand! I couldn’t dine with you,
because I never dine out when I’ve a play on hand. But the call and the
letter—”

“Your maid said you couldn’t see me, as I hadn’t an appointment.”

“I must apologize for her. She probably thought you’d come to ask for
an engagement.”

“I had. And that’s what I wrote about. You said in New York that I
might come to you for help; I couldn’t go to your club, because
father’s a member. Didn’t you get my letter?”

“If it had anything to do with the theatre, I don’t suppose I finished
it; all those things are sent on to Manders. I’m sorry, Miss Maitland;
I wouldn’t have disappointed you for the world.”

“I began to feel desperate,” she answered dully. “It seemed needlessly
unkind. Of course, I ought to have known that you were very famous—”

“Please! I’ve apologized. I hoped I’d cleared myself. Won’t you choose
your own time for coming,—if you think I can do any good?”

She swung her latch-key reflectively and then touched his arm with her
fingers.

“Won’t you come in—just for a moment?” she pleaded.

“I’m thinking of you,” he repeated.

“You’ll do me more good by coming in for five minutes than by thinking
of my reputation... I’m desperate.”

“That’s the second time you’ve used that word; you oughtn’t to know the
meaning of it.”

“Ah, if you come in, don’t treat me like a child.”

Eric followed her into a narrow, ill-ventilated hall, lighted by a
pin-point of gas. The house was old and full of half-heard noises and
dry, distant scents; the first floor was let to a solicitor, the second
to a dramatic agent; above that was a double flat and at the top,
crushed squat under the roof and pared by sloping ceilings, Ivy
Maitland’s own roomy attic. As she turned up the gas, he saw a round
table and wicker chairs, a piano and book-case and, in an alcove, a
cupboard, bed and chest of drawers. While she slipped off her cloak and
pulled the curtains over the alcove, he read the titles of the books
and glanced at the photographs on the piano. The place of honour was
given to an officer in the uniform of the Air Force, and Eric guessed
its identity almost without looking at the face or at the “Yours
always, John Gaymer,” scrawled across one corner.

“Won’t you sit down? It’s a miserable fire, I’m afraid,” she
apologized, dropping on to her knees and battering unscientifically
with a bent poker on the top of three sadly smouldering lumps of coal,
each too big for the tiny grate.

“I’m not cold, thanks... How long have you been in these quarters?”

“Two months.”

“And who looks after you?”

“A woman comes in and cooks my breakfast and cleans the place. I
usually have my other meals out.” Eric was not conscious that his
expression had changed, but the girl looked up piteously and turned
away to the fire. “Don’t look so disapproving! I’m not defending
myself!”

“My dear child, I’m not attacking you. Haven’t I come here solely to
find out if I can be of any assistance to you?”

She jabbed at the fire in reflective silence, and Eric, watching her
through half-closed eyes, seemed to see rippling waves of unhappiness,
disappointment, loneliness and discomfort rising until they submerged
her and she ceased to struggle. She was white and tired; her arms were
thin and her shoulder-blades sharply outlined under the green gauze of
her dress, as she stolidly poked the fire and refused to look at him.
The air of assured efficiency which she had worn in New York never
seemed more than the assertive protest of extreme youth against
patronage; her abandonment of it now suggested that she habitually
attacked and then ran away, first disregarding advice, then admitting
her mistake where a stronger woman would have converted it into success
and where a prouder woman would have preserved silence. Perhaps it was
too much to expect great strength or pride in a girl of nineteen whose
head was still fermenting with unassimilated catch-words.

“It was very good of you to come. And it was awful cheek of me to ask
you.”

“Imagine—for one night—that I’m quite human,” Eric suggested.

She jumped up and ran to the door.

“You’d like a drink!,” she exclaimed.

“Is that the differentia of the human man?” he laughed.

There was a clink of glasses outside, and she returned with a bottle of
brandy and a box of cigars. While he was mixing himself a drink, she
slipped with apparent aimlessness behind him, and he heard something
drop. When he looked round, the signed photograph of John Gaymer had
disappeared, and she was holding out a tumbler for him to fill.

“I’m not going to give you brandy,” he said, picking up the syphon of
soda-water.

“Just a little! I’m so tired.”

“Not a drop! If you start drinking brandy at nineteen—because you’re
tired—, where d’you think you’ll be at thirty?”

“I don’t much care!” she answered. “I believe those cigars are quite
good. Won’t you try one?”

“Not if you’re going to sleep in this room, thanks,” he answered.

“I don’t mind it—honestly,” she said.

“As a matter of fact I’ve been smoking all day.”

Eric composed himself as comfortably as possible in a room where
everything jarred upon him. She ought not to have been living there by
herself, she was lonely, uncomfortable and probably ill-fed; she ought
not to allow a man to come and see her, she ought not to dream of
drinking a brandy and soda, she ought not to have brandy or cigars in
the house, she ought not to know that she did not mind inhaling
cigar-smoke in her sleep. The incident of the photograph recurred to
his mind, and he wondered whether he was being offered refreshment
which she had provided for Gaymer... and whether she had dropped the
photograph behind the piano because she was ashamed of him... or
whether they had quarrelled, whether it was Gaymer who had taken her to
the theatre and abandoned her....

“I haven’t seen you since that night at the Carstairs’,” she began.
“You remember?”

“When I gave you good advice. Yes.”

“Well, I tried to follow it. I’m not altogether a fool and, thinking it
over, I thought I saw what you meant. After the dance Johnnie asked me
to go to another... It was very hard to do, but I tried to let him see
that, though it was all _right_, of course... I invited him to come and
dine with _us_. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”

“I thought it was better, certainly. Though, why you think my advice—”

“Because you know about things, you’re clever, you’ve met everybody,
you can understand people and write about them. Father’s in such a
rut... Well, Johnnie came. That was when I wanted you to meet him. He
wasn’t much of a success, I’m afraid.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, I don’t know! He _argued_... and father always expects an enormous
lot of deference from boys. Father said afterwards that Johnnie had
drunk much too much for a young man and had become very impertinent.
After that, of course, he wasn’t invited again, and mother kept nagging
and trying to make me give up my job in his office. We had an awful row
one day, just because I dined with Johnnie and came back rather late
after the theatre. Father said I wasn’t to go out with him and that, as
long as I lived at home, he expected me to obey him. I decided that I
couldn’t live at home any longer. Johnnie found me these rooms....”

She coughed and took a sip of her soda-water.

“You consulted him?”

“Yes. He made me see that the only thing to do was to leave home....”

Eric sat suddenly upright and then relaxed to his former attitude,
noting with quick thankfulness that his movement had been unobserved.

“What made you write to me?” he asked.

“Well, you see, everybody in my department is being demobilized, so I
wanted a job. I saw you had a new play—”

“Already cast,” Eric interrupted. “And we could cast the third footman
five times over with people who’ve played respectable parts for years.
There’s nothing there, Miss Maitland, I’m afraid. Even if there were,
I’d sooner see you living with your parents again—”

“I can’t go back.”

“I see. Well, what are you living on?”

“I saved a little money when I was with Sir Matthew. When that’s gone—”

“Oh, Gaymer would see you didn’t starve or get turned into the street,”
said Eric with soft irony.

“Yes. At least he said he would—”

“Before you quarrelled,” he suggested.

She looked at him wonderingly.

“Who told you we’d quarrelled?” she asked.

“You did. Miss Maitland, however unconventional you want to be, you
can’t take money from a man. I’d most gladly lend or give you fifty
pounds to-night, but you couldn’t possibly accept it. You see that?”

“Of course! I hardly know you.”

Eric shook his head in bewilderment, as he tried to determine whether
she was naturally stupid or wholly unsophisticated.

“Are you in love with Gaymer?”

Ivy hesitated before answering, and Eric felt that he was not going to
hear the truth.

“I like him when he’s nice to me,” she answered indifferently.

“Is he in love with you?”

“He likes me. He likes so many people,” she said, as carelessly as
before.

Eric nodded slowly and held out his hand.

“Well, good-night. I’ll do what I can.”

Though he could promise her little, she was better for the
companionship and talk. In opening the door, he turned and saw her
watching him; but now she was spiritless again, her hands were clasped
in front of her, her shoulders were bowed, and she looked crestfallen,
limp and fragile. Remembering how irritation at her pertness had warmed
to impatient dislike on board the _Lithuania_, Eric blamed himself for
intolerance towards a child whose worst crime was her childishness.

“Have you a telephone here?” he asked.

“There’s one downstairs that I use. Shall I shew you?”

“Oh, no, thanks.” Impulse sent him back into the room; and he shook
hands with her again, as though to postpone for an instant the silent
chill of loneliness which he could feel already settling upon her.
Gaymer had contrived to make the girl uncommonly miserable; and, though
unhappiness was a universal distemper of the soul, though Eric had told
himself that Ivy’s relations to Gaymer were their own business, he knew
that he could comfort her spirit by putting an arm round her thin
shoulders, by kissing her forehead and allowing her to sob out her
simple perplexity and pain of heart. A hundred anguished memories
warned him of the price that he had already paid for compassion; common
sense cried out that this was not his affair. And yet, unless he made
it his affair, no one would; and he had now learned wisdom and knew
where to stop. “What I meant was: if you ever feel lonely, ring me up
and have a talk. I’m nearly always at home, night and day. I’m not too
busy for that. Suggest a day for lunch. I lead a fairly solitary life
myself.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER FOUR


  EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS


                          Qui monet amat.
                                      PROVERB.

“_Can you spare a moment to see me some time? You may remember Mrs.
O’Rane’s party and a young man whom we agreed not to like. I want to
find out all I can about him...._”

Amy Loring lay in bed, frowning over Eric’s note and weaving
interpretations of its discreet brevity. After telephoning to invite
him to tea, she read the letter again with mingled curiosity and
misgiving. Obviously the man in question was John Gaymer; no less
obviously John Gaymer had been up to mischief. It was not easy,
however, to establish a connection between him and Eric, unless he had
been up to mischief with the little Maitland girl; Amy had overheard
enough of a conversation between them at the Carstairs’ dinner to
realize that a certain intimacy existed; and she had not failed to
detect in Eric at least a paternal attitude towards a girl whose eyes
just perceptibly brightened when he spoke to her.

In the course of the morning she contrived a meeting with Gaymer’s aunt
Lady Poynter; encountering Lady Maitland at luncheon, she mentioned
Ivy’s name and returned home in time for tea with a collection of
opinions which crystallized in the vigorous statement that Mr. Justice
Maitland was a fool, Gaymer a cad and Ivy a child whom one had not seen
since she was a baby.

“What is it, exactly, that you want to find out?,” asked Amy when Eric
arrived.

“I hardly know... I’ve met this girl half a dozen times; she’s a nice
child, but rather impulsive and very easily led. She’s not happy at
home, and I fancy she’s allowing Gaymer to lead her... Let me put it
this way: if she were your sister, would you entrust her to him with an
easy mind?”

Amy shook her head emphatically:

“No! I daresay I’m old-fashioned... Mr. Lane, I’m waiting for a hideous
scandal—not with her, poor child, but with all these girls who’ve
broken away from home during the war, all the men too, who’ve been
allowed so much liberty with girls that they’ve lost the old reverence
that men like you or my brother Jim had. The parents are to blame—”

“But the children suffer,” Eric interrupted. “That’s an epitome of the
world’s history. And it’s equally true if you put it the other way
round... But what are we to do with this girl?”

A fleeting glance at Eric’s worried eyes told her that he was less
concerned for the world’s history of suffering than for Ivy’s immediate
welfare; his use of the plural shewed that they were to be joined in a
common rescue; and her mind, seizing the possibility that Eric might be
in love, bounded forward to consider whether he should be helped to
fall deeper in love with a girl who possessed superficially little more
than the daintiness and intoxicating lure of adolescence.

“Tell me about her,” she suggested. “I should like to help if I could.”

Eric described their fragmentary conversation in New York, on the
_Lithuania_, at Lady John Carstairs’ and in Ivy’s attic behind the
Adelphi, adding guesswork sketches of the establishment in the Cromwell
Road with an unsympathetic father and a helpless mother. Neither the
range of his information nor his manner of giving it betrayed any great
intimacy.

“Has she any other relations?,” asked Amy.

“Two brothers—demobilized and back at Cambridge—we can rely on them, I
suppose, to intervene with the usual horse-whip, if things go too far—;
and two sisters who’ve married and shed all responsibility... Perhaps
you wonder what _I’m_ doing—”

“It’s very natural. She’s an attractive child.”

“I’m not in love with her or anything of that kind. I don’t think she’s
in... _danger_, but I’d do anything to keep her from being vulgarized.”

Amy busied herself with the tea for a few moments.

“I think she’s a little bit in love with you...” she ventured, when she
had given his momentary warmth time to pass away. “Oh, tiny things that
only a woman sees. She admires you enormously; and she’s flattered that
you take an interest in her. That strengthens your position.”

“But I don’t want to mix myself up in it,” cried Eric impatiently. “One
can’t altogether stand aside... Everybody’s business is nobody’s
business, and that girl _needs_ some one to take an interest in her. As
she doesn’t get on well with her parents, I was wondering if her aunt
could be persuaded to take charge of her. All this revolt of the young
girl is rooted in boredom; it’s the descent of Nemesis on the Cromwell
Road. If Connie Maitland gave her a good time and introduced her and
let her see that people would simply cut her if she went off on her
own, she’d soon drop this aspect of provincialism. Can’t you play on
her vanity? A girl like that would much sooner be a success in society
than a rebel against society; she’d sooner marry the second cousin of a
baronet than live with the greatest poet or painter of all the age...
That’s the object of my call. Forgive me for boring you like this!”

“You haven’t bored me. I took quite a fancy to her. I’ll see what I can
do.”

Eric left the house with relief that he had transferred to other
shoulders the responsibility for Ivy’s welfare. From the library window
Amy watched his thin figure striding away, with what she chose to
construe as rapid purposelessness, until it disappeared round the
corner of Clarges Street; for Ivy’s sake it was worth her while to take
a little trouble, and, if Eric were truly in love with her, she would
take very great trouble indeed; but that, she decided, she would not
know until she saw how impatiently he came to enquire what was being
done. For all she knew, he was befriending Ivy from vague good
nature—as she was befriending him—; Eric was one of the men for whom
most women felt a mild and transitory tenderness because he was nearly
always too much preoccupied to be aware of it.

When she had put herself in communication with Lady Maitland, Amy
waited for another visit from Eric, but for several weeks he was too
busy with his play to think about Ivy; and, as she did not avail
herself of his general invitation to lunch with him, he could only
assume that her position was no more “desperate” than before. A month
after his call at Loring House, Amy took the initiative and wrote to
say that the judge had gone away on circuit and that his sister-in-law
was to take charge of Ivy until her father’s return, when the position
could be reconsidered.

“I think she’ll behave sensibly and go back home,” Amy added when they
met one night at Lady Poynter’s. “Ivy and I have become great friends;
and I’m sure that John Gaymer was at the bottom of the trouble. First
of all he flattered her and dared her to break loose; then he neglected
her, then he made a fuss of her, then he roused her jealousy. After
that he could do what he liked with her. But I’m thankful to say that
he’s sheered off now, and you can rely on Connie to give her other
things to think about.”

Eric looked thoughtfully across the room to the corner where Mrs.
O’Rane and Gaymer were talking in whispers. Throughout dinner Lady
Poynter, whose latest intellectual relaxation was in the works of Freud
and Jung, had been interpreting all human relationships in terms of
psycho-analysis; adopting her language, Eric found that all this
remote, whispered discussion of Gaymer had created a fantastic image of
a man sinister and dissolute, bearing on his face the stamp of evil
passions and the ravages of debauchery. False images, Lady Poynter
explained with annihilating sweeps of a massive arm, could only be
corrected or dispelled by contact with reality. It was a relief and a
disappointment to Eric that he could detect no change in form and
features which always seemed to have been cut by a machine; Gaymer was
powerfully built with sturdy limbs, broad shoulders and back, a
muscular neck and big-boned wrists and hands, the whole so well
proportioned and knit together that his true height and breadth were
unsuspected. In face, manner and dress he had set himself to be
conventional to the verge of commonplace. His hair, black and straight,
was cut, oiled and brushed back from the forehead, as though straight
black hair could be treated in no other way; his blue Air Force
uniform, vividly new and well-fitting, was built and worn unremarkably
but with a suggestion that it could not be worn otherwise. He moved,
smiled and spoke as if he were trying to suppress all personal
characteristics; and everything about him was ready-made except his
clothes.

Eric pretended to be judicial when he knew that he was on the look-out
for faults; but there was no fault to find, unless a man was to be
hanged for impatiently lighting a cigarette while waiting for
dinner—and Mrs. O’Rane began to smoke before the fish-plates had been
taken away—; these were war-manners. Eric watched and listened; but,
like the others of his set, Gaymer talked like a gramophone and thought
not at all. Failing to condemn, Eric tried to appreciate; but Gaymer’s
exasperating suppression of personality left nothing to admire. The set
had agreed to put on humorous Cockney records; Mrs. O’Rane and Gaymer
were improvising a duologue to represent one shop-girl bidding another
good-bye at a station, and fragments of their speech floated across the
room to mingle incongruously with Lady Poynter’s undefeated exposition
of psycho-analysis: “I _should_ ’a thought A Certain Person would ’a
come and seen you off, dearie...” “Ow, ’e knows, when I want ’im, I’ll
send for ’im; _and_ not before. You _will_ write, dearie? I love
letters. And you’ll send my washing on; I’m in me old lodgings”... “You
won’t be ’ungry, missing tea and all?”... “Thenks, I ’ad a nice bit of
cold fish before I started....”

“I _don’t_ see the fascination,” Eric murmured, turning away after a
last look at Gaymer. Any other healthy animal in good condition, well
washed and groomed, enjoying his food and drink, would be as attractive.

“Perhaps it’s—impersonal,” Amy suggested. “I’ve been trying to make out
why so many girls marry in such a hurry. Partly it’s instinct, of
course, and partly it’s just recklessness; when your husband might be
killed any moment, it didn’t much matter who you married. But far more
often, I’m sure, girls marry something symbolical in a man rather than
the man himself. They see a man in a top hat, and he’s nothing in
particular; they hear of him doing something wonderfully brave, and
he’s a very different person to them; he’s a hero, he’s been fighting,
while they—with perhaps just as much bravery—can’t use it.”

“They marry the sex and not the individual,” Eric suggested.

Amy nodded and looked across the room as though to contrast Ivy’s youth
with her own grave maturity.

“Yes, and in twelve or fifteen years’ time, when she’s my age, she’ll
know that it doesn’t matter what a man _represents_ symbolically or
what he _is_. But what he _will_ be, how he’ll wear....”

“I believe Gaymer was incredibly brave until his smash,” said Eric.

“And never really sober from one week’s end to another. He must have a
wonderful physique... That’s another thing: I wonder how much of the
immorality and unhappiness of the present-day is caused by a sort of
shell-shock. It’s a great excuse; it may also be a reason... Have you
seen Ivy since our talk?”

“No, but I believe we’re to meet on the opening night of the opera.”

When Eric entered Lady Maitland’s box the following week, he found Ivy
recovered from her melancholy and pleasurably excited by the amusement
and occupation which her aunt was contriving as a means of shewing her
that, whatever changes the war had effected and whatever “those
freakish people in Chelsea and St. John’s Wood” might do, it was social
outlawry, self-imposed, for a girl of her age and position to live
alone; and it was a pity to be outlawed before she knew anything of the
life to which she was saying good-bye.

Eric participated in the conspiracy to the extent of conducting Ivy
round the house in the second _entr’acte_. Though most of the singers
were new to London, Covent Garden had regained very much of its old
appearance. War, indeed, and the passage of five years had expunged
some well-known names from the box doors; Bertrand Oakleigh’s place was
taken by a war contractor, the double box in which Sir Deryk Lancing
used to sit restless and alone, half-hidden by the curtains, had passed
to Lady Poynter. But, though new names were occasionally seen and
certain old names had taken on a British ring, the changes were
inconsiderable.

“Is there any one you’d like to call on?,” he asked Ivy.

“I haven’t seen any one I know.”

“You’re to be envied.” Eric bowed vaguely and found himself caught up
by three different women in as many minutes. “Let’s go back,” he
suggested, as he took off the last of them. “I’m tired of telling
people that I’m too busy to lunch out; and, though I hate work, I think
it’s preferable to the average luncheon-party.”

He picked up his opera-glasses and began identifying and describing to
her the occupants of the other boxes.

“If _I_ had genius—,” Ivy began diffidently.

“But I haven’t, Miss Maitland,” he interrupted. Adulation was at any
time a weariness, and he had not undermined her alliance with Gaymer in
order to attract her to himself. “You mistake fashion for fame. I’ve
written half a dozen successful plays... I’m glad to see you here
to-night. This is a better frame for you than a garret behind the
Adelphi.”

Ivy left the challenge where it lay.

“I’ve never been to the opera before,” she said. “I shall come as often
as Aunt Connie has room for me.”

“So shall I,” answered Eric, “whenever she or you invite me. That’s one
of the few things I’m _not_ tired of.”

It was only when he had found Lady Maitland’s car for her and sent Ivy
home in it that he recalled his own words and wondered whether she was
reading an unintended enthusiasm into them. Her big grey eyes seemed
startled when the lights were turned on at the end of the third act;
and, though she said nothing, he felt their light upon him. They were
still startled at the opera’s end and looked over her shoulder at him,
as he helped her into her cloak. When they said good-night, she drew
away her hand as though his touch sent a shock through her body, but
she was turning to see the last of him as the car glided away from the
door.

During the next fortnight Eric received three invitations by telephone
and two by letter; but he recalled Amy Loring’s hint and determined to
avoid that one box until Ivy had lived down any suspicion that she was
in love with him; he excused himself until he felt that Lady Maitland’s
friendship hung by a thread and then chose a night when _Louise_ was
being played and he could come late and leave early. As he walked
upstairs, the shrill laughter of the _atelier_ scene warned him that
the second act was not yet over, and he crept down again to finish his
cigar in the hall. He was reading the list of box-holders for the
night, when a voice behind him said:

“Hul-_lo_! When did _you_ get back from America?”

George Oakleigh was standing at his elbow, unembarrassed and cordial,
waiting to shake hands with him. Eric was conscious only of an immense,
sudden appeal to his own strength of heart and nerves; his eyes had
taken in George and his expression at a glance; Barbara was almost
certainly with him; and with another glance, not hurried enough to seem
apprehensive, he saw her three yards away, speaking to Mrs. Shelley. He
had taken in all that he needed, before George was ready for an answer.
Unchanged; tall and slender; in a silver sheath of a dress; with a
black head-band and a bouquet of the white carnations that she always
brought him when he was ill; a white Indian shawl, embroidered with
green and red parrakeets, which he had seen her wear a dozen times. All
the blood in his body seemed to rush to his eyes, and he felt himself
rocking.

“I got back a fortnight after the armistice.”

His voice was detached from him, but, though it came from an unguessed
distance, he could hear that it was steady.

And then it was time for his own question:

“You’ve been on the Riviera, haven’t you?” It was a triumph to meet and
overcome “Riviera” without a stammer. “Lucky man! We had the wettest
winter on record here... George, I hope it’s not too late to offer you
all good wishes. I was in Japan, when I heard about it; I meant to
write, but I was suddenly called home to my father and I thought I
should arrive before the letter... I crossed with Raney, by the way...
Like me, I see you only come for the third act of _Louise_.”

“Yes, I’m rather tired of the rest. I suppose this means that the
second act’s just over.”

Two sluggish streams were trickling out of the stalls and down the
stairs, converging by the open doors. Dr. Gaisford, heading the first,
looked round, nodded to George and walked over to a sofa, where he
perched like a fat, blond idol; it was a perfect opportunity for Eric
to break away and join him, but he knew that this first meeting with
Barbara must be faced and endured.

She brought her conversation to an end at last and looked round for her
husband.

“Oh, how do you do?” she said to Eric.

Even through a glove the touch of her hand was unmistakable. If he did
not meet her for twenty years, he could never forget it; if he were
blind, he would still know it from any other woman’s. He had kissed it
a thousand times, kissed every finger of it; when he was ill and she
came to sit with him, it had lain coolly over his eyes, charming him to
sleep; at the first night of the “Bomb-Shell”, when the success of the
play hung in the balance, he had gripped it until a ring cut into her
finger. He wondered how much she remembered, could not help
remembering....

“How do you do?”

She smiled as she had smiled in saying good-bye to Mrs. Shelley, with a
regrouping of lips and cheeks. It was a smile in which her eyes played
no part; they told him nothing. She was as much collected as he knew
she would be, equal to every social demand and blankly without emotion.
She was neither tender nor hard, neither ashamed nor defiant; and,
though she too must have rehearsed this meeting, her eyes looked at him
without even curiosity.

He was already trembling in reaction before she passed out of sight. He
could not trust himself to light a cigarette; and he was thankful for
the press of people who gave him time for recovery as he threaded his
way to Gaisford’s sofa.

“What d’you think of it?,” he asked, carelessly enough. “I’ve only just
come.”

“Oh, it’s good. Ansseau’s marvellous, and Edvina’s singing very well,
though I’d always sooner hear her in Tosca than in anything. She’s
worked that up wonderfully since the first time it was put on. I
haven’t seen you here before.”

“I came to _Bohème_ the first night. Not since... But I intend to be
here as often as I can spare the time.”

Dr. Gaisford offered him a cigarette, wondering idly why a man whose
trade was in words allowed himself to say “intend” when he could have
used “hope” or “expect” without betraying himself.

“Well, you’re wise... if you feel equal to it,” he said bluntly. “Was
that the first time you’d seen her since her marriage?”

“The first time to speak to,” said Eric, trying to control his voice.

“It will get easier by degrees,” said the doctor.

“We’ll hope so.”

“Bad as that, old man?”

“It was hell!” Eric whispered. “Either she never _had_ a soul, or she’s
lost it.”

“Well, my dear boy—”

Eric interrupted him with a mirthless laugh.

“Oh, I’m sure you’re right!,” he cried. “But I wonder if you ever
appreciate how little good it sometimes does to be right... I must go,
or Lady Maitland will be fuming.”

He jumped up and hurried through the hall and up the stairs. The first
name to meet his eyes was “George Oakleigh, Esq.” but the door was
mercifully shut and he strode past it and worked his way through an
argumentative circle into Lady Maitland’s box. She was sitting with her
husband and Ivy, and he was almost glad to be distracted by her
reproaches for arriving so late.

“I’ll make up by leaving early,” he suggested. “Age cannot wither the
infinite tedium of the fourth act.”

“Oh, you must stay till the end. Maurice and I have to go on to the
Poynter’s musical-party; I was depending on you to take Ivy home or at
least to find her a taxi.”

“Oh, I’ll stay for that with pleasure,” Eric answered.

The drowsy mutter of slip-shod conversation accelerated and became
excitedly clear as the conductor climbed to his place. Eric drew his
glasses lazily from their case and swept the boxes on either side of
him. George and Barbara must be almost at right-angles; she could see
him, if he sat forward; she might be looking at him then, but he dared
not focus the glasses on her. Some one in the stalls underneath him
drawled: “Hullo! D’you see Babs and George? I wonder when they got
back?” Then the lights were lowered, one after another.

Eric tried to lose himself in the music. When that failed, he analyzed
the orchestration and concentrated his attention on the conducting.
Barbara’s presence made itself felt, and he knew that, for all
preoccupation, he was waiting until the stage was dark enough for him
to lean forward and steal a glance at her between Lady Maitland’s
square grey head and Ivy’s dancing black curls. When he turned slowly
and looked at her with all the artificial calm that he could put forth,
she was sitting with one arm on the sill of the box, fingering a big
fan and watching the stage with rapt enjoyment. He leaned back and
closed his eyes.

At the end of the act Sir Maurice and Lady Maitland hurried away, and
he moved into the empty chair at the front of the box. Barbara was
evidently holding a court; her back was turned to the house, and he
could see a phalanx of men breaking rank, shaking hands, exchanging a
word and squeezing their way out again. George was supporting her
adequately, easily, as though it were natural and as though he were her
husband as of right, never seeing that he was a grotesque usurper....

“Are you going to smoke?,” Ivy asked him, as he laid the glasses down.

“I don’t think so,—unless you’d like to.”

“I prefer just to watch the people. I love the opera! I love the music
and the acting, I love the house and the people and the dresses and the
jewellery. I’ve been here every night since the beginning.”

Eric forced himself to take an interest in her though her enthusiasm
jarred on him.

“You’re living with Lady Maitland, aren’t you?,” he asked.

“Yes. She wanted a sort of secretary to arrange her parties and answer
her letters and deal with the telephone... I’m quite enjoying it.”

“I knew you would.”

“Did you suggest it to her?”

“Well, I had a hand in it. I was so shocked—I don’t mean morally, but
you seemed so utterly forlorn and miserable that night when I came to
see you... Are you happy now?”

She looked away without answering for some moments:

“If I thought about it, I should be very unhappy. So I try not to think
about it. I try to enjoy myself and keep so busy... I miss the freedom.
It’s great fun being with Aunt Connie; she’s giving me an awfully good
time, and I’ve all the money and clothes I need; and I’m meeting the
most wonderfully interesting people—_You_ know what her parties are
like.”

“Then what earthly excuse have you for being unhappy?”

“It isn’t everything,” she sighed.

There was no taxi to be found in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden,
and after a fruitless walk down the Strand they struck across the Park.
At the corner of Buckingham Palace an officer in an open car, with a
girl beside him, leaning on his shoulder, passed them and turned with a
jerk of the head to look a second time and to wave his hand.

“Was that intended for me, do you suppose?” Eric asked. “My eyes aren’t
good enough—”

“It was Johnnie Gaymer,” she answered.

Though her voice was dispassionate enough, Eric fancied that he had
felt her hand dragging against his arm.

“I haven’t seen him for a long time,” he murmured.

“Nor have I... He lives in Buckingham Gate... Rather a nice flat,” she
explained jerkily.

Eric was vaguely disquieted at seeing Gaymer, as though not to see him
were to bring his existence to an end. The moment’s glimpse had
disturbed Ivy as much as his own meeting with Barbara. She spoke
hurriedly, with unconcern too elaborate to be convincing; unconsciously
she quickened her pace. And Eric would have wagered a year’s income
that Ivy’s unhappiness was linked with Gaymer’s treatment of her.

“I wonder whether we shall get a taxi at Victoria,” she murmured as
though she knew and wanted to interrupt his thoughts.

“I certainly don’t want to walk home from Eaton Place.”

It was distasteful to suspect a man, when there was no basis for
suspicion, but Eric felt that Gaymer was not to be trusted. That
conceded, it was plausible to imagine that Ivy had fallen in love with
him and that he had tried to exploit her devotion for his own
amusement. Either he had misjudged the character of his quarry or else
he was waiting for her to come to her senses. Eric remembered his
glimpse of the girl in the car, lolling back with her head on Gaymer’s
shoulder: it was a reasonable guess that Ivy had drifted without seeing
where he was leading her and had pulled herself up in time to
administer an unexpected rebuff....

Eric was startled out of his reverie when she drew her arm out of his
and waved to a taxi.

“Don’t come any farther with me!,” she begged. “It was simply sweet of
you to toil right out of your way like this.”

“But I’ll drop you in Eaton Place and take the taxi on.” It was the
most obvious and comfortable arrangement for both. As she hesitated to
accept it, Eric became suddenly suspicious that she wanted to get rid
of him and to be alone. The sight of Gaymer with another woman had hurt
her until she had to cry—and to cry where no one would see her. As she
stood with set face and eyes averted, against the immense gloomy
background of the palace, with the wind blowing through her hair and
snatching at her cloak, she seemed even more fragile and forlorn than
on the night when she had begged him to come home with her from the
theatre.

“Won’t you let me stay with you for another two minutes?,” he begged
her gently. “I promised Lady Maitland to see you home.”

“She only asked you to find me a taxi.”

“But you’re condemning me to walk the whole way from here to Ryder
Street!” he protested.

“Won’t you find a taxi at Victoria? Or you can have this one, and I’ll
walk; I’m nearly home now.”

To press his company on her any further would have been persecution.

“You have your latch-key?,” he asked. “And d’you want any money?”

“I’ve plenty, thanks. Good-night.”

He slammed the door to and turned back towards the Park. As he paused
to light a cigarette, the noise of the taxi grew fainter and died
almost away; then it seemed to become unaccountably clearer, and he
looked up with surprise. The taxi was returning, and, though he could
not see any one inside, the flag was down, and he recognized the
driver. In another moment it had passed him and swept away to the right
down Buckingham Gate. Eric started in pursuit. If his suspicions were
anything but the fruit of a disordered imagination, Ivy Maitland was
preparing to fight the unknown woman for possession of Gaymer.

His pace slackened, as he tried to think how he should explain or
justify himself to Gaymer. He came to a standstill, as he remembered
that he did not know Gaymer’s address.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER FIVE


  THE PRICE OF SYMPATHY


“Novelty is to love like bloom to fruit; it gives a lustre, which is
easily effaced, but never returns.”

                                        DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD: “MAXIMS.”

Half-past twelve was striking, as Eric entered his flat. A pile of
letters awaited him, but he went into his bedroom without looking at
them and began to undress. His unexpected walk had tired him, and he
wanted to go to sleep before his brain woke up to puzzle itself over
Ivy Maitland or to reconstruct his meeting with Barbara and imagine
ways in which he could have carried it off with greater dignity or
triumph. Until twenty minutes ago he fancied that he understood the few
elements of Ivy’s simple character; but, if she were forcing her way
into Gaymer’s flat to evict another woman, she had more passion and
determination than her record of short-lived impulses warranted his
expecting....

The telephone-bell by his bed mercilessly violated the silence of the
room; and he spun around to face it, dropping his watch. No one but
Barbara had ever telephoned to him at such an hour; at such an hour she
had hardly missed one night in fifteen months, when they were both in
London; when last she telephoned to him at such an hour, two and a half
years before, he had returned home after saying good-bye to her; next
day he was leaving for America; and he had let the bell ring on
unanswered, muffling it with his handkerchief, when he could bear the
noise no longer and trying to face his new conception of Barbara as a
woman for whom honour and love had no meaning. For two and a half years
he had wondered what would have happened if he had listened to her
pleading... He took a step towards the bed and then retraced it.

As he picked up his watch and continued to wind it, the bell rang
again. This time he advanced to the telephone unhesitatingly, but with
the dread of a man compelled to draw back the sheet from a corpse’s
face.

“Hullo?”

“Is that Mr. Lane? It’s Lady Maitland speaking. I hope you weren’t
asleep?”

He sat heavily on the bed, limp for the moment with relief.

“Oh, I’m not undressed yet, thanks.”

“I rang you up to find out what had happened to Ivy. She’s not come in
yet; and she’s such a little harum-scarum... Did you bring her home?”

Eric wanted to think over the answer and knew that he had no time.

“I put her into a taxi,” he said promptly.

“Oh... Then she _ought_ to be home by now... She didn’t say she was
going on to a party, did she?”

“No... I hope there’s nothing wrong, Lady Maitland. If _I_ can do
anything... Search-parties or anything of that kind?”

“Oh _no_! She _must_ be in soon. I thought I’d just find out...
Good-night!”

Eric lighted a cigarette and threw himself, half-undressed, on the bed.
He could have done no good by handing on insubstantial suspicions...
Half-an-hour later he went to bed with an unresolved riddle on his mind
and found himself, in his dreams, counselling Ivy or tracking Gaymer.
The riddle kept him company at breakfast, and, as he came to the end of
his letters, he was wondering whether to call for an explanation, when
Ivy herself was announced.

She shook hands and looked round the room with a show of interest, as
his secretary collected her papers and withdrew.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you?,” she asked.

“I think I was expecting you. Won’t you sit down?”

She arranged herself with her back to the light, a moment too late to
keep Eric from seeing that her face was colourless but for blue-grey
shadows under her eyes; a black hat and black dress with transparent
sleeves from shoulder to wrist accentuated her pallor.

“I won’t keep you a minute; it’s about last night,” she began
breathlessly. “You must have thought it very funny of me to ask you not
to see me home, making you walk home yourself—”

“It was fair to assume that you weren’t going straight home,” Eric
laughed.

Ivy’s strangulated voice and expression of tragedy warned him not to
laugh again.

“I—went out to supper,” she explained. “Aunt Connie told me she rang
you up to know what had happened to me. So, if she says anything about
it—”

She stopped in embarrassment at Eric’s look of surprise.

“I suspect you of trying to involve me in a conspiracy, Miss Maitland,”
he said.

“Conspiracy?... Aunt Connie said that you were anxious and that you’d
kindly offered to send out search-parties or something—”

“So you came in person to set my mind at rest instead of writing or
telephoning! Your aunt was very anxious, I thought.”

“I’m afraid she was. You see, I hadn’t told her beforehand.”

Ivy tried to look him frankly in the face, then lowered her eyes and
pretended to inspect the furniture and pictures. Eric turned away and
lighted a cigarette.

“Did you know anything about it, yourself, beforehand?” He gave her
time to decide whether it was worth while to speak the truth. “I don’t
say I _will_ be your accomplice, but, if you want me to be, you must
tell me everything.”

“My accomplice in what?”

Eric turned with a smile and offered her a cigarette:

“To put it quite brutally, in concealing from your aunt what happened
last night.”

“And what did happen?,” she demanded.

Eric found her effort to put him out of countenance by attempted
haughtiness of tone pathetically unsuccessful.

“You went to Gaymer’s flat in Buckingham Gate. I don’t say there
_wasn’t_ any supper; I don’t even say there wasn’t a party, if three
constitute a party. It was informal, however, and as much of a surprise
to the host as to his guests.”

Ivy jumped up indignantly and subsided slowly in defeat.

“I don’t know what you mean!,” she cried with a last rally.

“Am I right so far?”

“How did you find out?,” she asked limply.

“Intuition, if you like. You went there on the spur of the moment,
because you’d seen him driving home with another woman. You went there
to make a scene with the other woman.”

“No, I wanted to talk to him about something.”

“Doesn’t it come to the same thing?”

“I never even saw her. I don’t know who she was.”

There was a long pause. Eric changed his chair so that he should not
seem to be watching her face.

“Well, so far my intuition has been fairly good,” he said. “Isn’t it
your turn now?” There was no answer. “I’m hardly adding anything, if I
say that you’re in love with Gaymer and jealous of the other woman.”

“She’d no right to be there!”

“Oh, come! I’m afraid neither Gaymer nor any other man would allow you
to dictate who may go to his flat.”

“But he’s engaged to _me_!”

Her left hand was bare and carried no ring; Eric seemed to remember her
telling him overnight that she had not seen Gaymer for some time; and,
when he went into her rooms off the Adelphi, she had confessed to at
least a disagreement. The engagement seemed unstable.

“Ah, _that_ I didn’t know, of course,” he said.

There was another pause, and the girl turned her head quickly so that
even her profile was hidden from him. Eric saw the flash of a
handkerchief and heard a sob half-choked down. Throwing away his
cigarette, he seated himself on the arm of the chair and laid his hand
on her shoulder. Nearly three years ago Barbara had swept into that
room like a whirlwind and collapsed as suddenly. Since then he ought to
have learned the price of sympathy....

“Wouldn’t it help you to tell me all about it?,” he asked her gently.

Ivy dabbed at her eyes and felt for his hand. Then she turned and
pressed herself against him until he could feel the fluttering of her
heart.

“_That’s_ why I told you I was desperate,” she gulped, burying a
tear-stained face of misery on his shoulder. “_That’s_ why I told you
at the opera that I couldn’t allow myself to _think_ of things... We
met on the way back from America; we liked each other, we were always
meeting. When life at home became more than I could stand, he helped
me... But I told you all about that... It was glorious at first, I’d
never been in love, I felt I’d never been happy before. I used to dine
with him almost every night and go on to a dance. He’s a beautiful
dancer, and I adore dancing. I seemed to _belong_ to him... When we
didn’t do that, we used to go to a theatre, or he’d just come and talk
to me in my rooms, or I’d go and talk to him—”

“Didn’t you feel that was rather a risk?”

Either the girl did not hear him or she deliberately ignored the
interruption.

“I didn’t think any one _could_ be so happy,” she went on. “I remember
thinking how wrong you were... _Some_ days weren’t as perfect as
others, of course. I suppose I’m very jealous, but I loved him so much
that I simply hated to see him _speak_ to another woman; _I_ never
wanted to speak to another man, so it wasn’t fair... We’d had a row
that night when I met you after the theatre. A woman—she was rude to
me, deliberately; he said he’d known her for years, but _that_ didn’t
make any difference or give her the right... I never said anything to
her, but I could see she hated me; and he just laughed at us both and
seemed to enjoy it. I refused to have anything to do with him for ten
days after that. Then he apologized and said the woman had once been in
love with him and he didn’t want a scene in public... Then we became
engaged.”

She threw out the words so abruptly that Eric was conscious of
disproportion, even of omission.

“What happened?,” he asked.

“He took me out to dinner, and we went on to a dance at the Burlington
Rooms. Then we went to his flat for supper. I didn’t want to go at
first, because it was after two, but he begged so hard and said he was
leaving London next day. We became engaged then.”

Eric was still conscious of an omission.

“It was never announced, was it?,” he asked.

“No. He didn’t want us to marry until he knew whether he was going to
stay on in the army. He wants to be demobilized as soon as possible; he
has friends in the City—”

“But that’s no reason why the engagement shouldn’t be announced,” Eric
persisted.

“He didn’t want it. He made me promise to keep it a secret. I oughtn’t
to have told you, but last night—”

She broke off and began to cry again.

“Well, what happened then?” he asked her after a pause.

“After that—My work in his department was over; and, when Aunt Connie
asked me to come and stay with her, I went. Johnnie didn’t like my
going, he said he’d never see anything of me—”

“But I thought he was going away himself?”

“No, he didn’t go—after all. At least, not then. I saw him whenever we
could arrange it, he used to come and dine... He complained that he
never had me to himself; but I told him that, as soon as the engagement
was announced, he could have me as much to himself as he liked. When my
sisters were engaged, every one ran away as if they’d got plague... I
_did_ dine with him once or twice, but in some ways Aunt Connie’s as
bad as mother; she always comes into my room at night to see I’m home
and she’d have had a fit, if she’d known that I was dining alone with
Johnnie. We used to invent people—‘Captain Richards’ and ‘Mrs.
Bosanquet’; whenever Aunt Connie wanted to know who’d been there, I
used to say ‘Captain Richards and Mrs. Bosanquet’.”

She laughed feebly at her strategem, but Eric was disquieted. Innocence
or stupidity might excuse her for running risks; but there must be a
blind spot in her conscience, if she could tell a lie so
light-heartedly and then talk about it.

“And what happened then?,” he asked, deferring censure for fear of
drying the stream of her confidence.

“Well, then the opera started, and I hardly saw him at all. Aunt Connie
was there every night, and I felt she _had_ first call on me. Besides,
I liked going; and there was always room in the box, if he’d wanted to
come. He said he didn’t care to be with me when there was a crowd of
other people... Then he _did_ go away. That was weeks ago, and I didn’t
see him again till last night.”

“Did he write?”

Ivy turned with anguished protest in her eyes, as though he had asked
the question for the pleasure of hurting her:

“No.”

“And what happened last night?”

As she hesitated, he could see her hardening; and the grip on his hand
tightened.

“I hardly knew what I was doing,” she whispered. “I couldn’t see... But
I felt I _had_ to go... He opened the door, and I asked him... Her coat
was on a chair. I shan’t tell you what we said... But I _did_ tell him
he was a beast to behave like that, when he was engaged to me, a beast
not to write, a beast to make me miserable!”

Her voice had risen, she had drooped away from him and was crying
without concealment. Eric lifted her hand to his lips and put an arm
around her shoulders, drawing her to him until her cheek lay against
his breast.

“You must steady yourself, Ivy! I warn you that, when any one cries,
I’m always liable to join in!”

“You? I don’t mind what you do! You’ve been ripping to me—right from
the first time we met... I _hate_ men! I’d never tell _any_ man what
I’ve told you. I don’t know why you let me; you’ve better things to do,
I should have thought.”

“Well, perhaps I hope that I may be useful. What happened then?”

Ivy dabbed jerkily at her eyes and tried to steady her voice.

“He said that, if I thought so badly of him, we’d better end the
engagement,” she went on.

“There I agree with him.”

“I said I only asked him to behave _properly_ to me. He said the whole
thing was a mistake and, if I wouldn’t end it, he would. I said I
wouldn’t let him!”

She wiped her eyes and began smoothing the front of her dress as though
she had nothing to add. Eric got off the arm of her chair and stood
facing her with his shoulders against the mantelpiece.

“Don’t think me prejudiced,” he began, “if I admit that I don’t greatly
care for Gaymer, but believe me when I tell you that you’re very well
out of it—”

“But I’m _not_!,” she interrupted. “I won’t _let_ him break it off!”

“I imagine you’re not prepared to share him,” Eric suggested drily.

“But I love him more than any one in the world!”

“That’s not enough by itself.”

She fingered her handkerchief for a moment and then broke out
explosively:

“I _won’t_ let him go!”

“How can you keep him?” Eric asked. “Will you threaten him with an
action for breach of promise?”

“I’ll do anything!”

He shook his head and waited for her to calm herself.

“In the first place you couldn’t prove that there’d ever been a promise
to marry,” he began. “In the next place, as it’s never been announced,
you couldn’t prove damage. He’s not kept you from marrying any one
else; and a jury wouldn’t give a farthing for your heart or feelings.
And it’s fantastic to think that you can _make_ a man marry you by
threatening an action if he doesn’t. What kind of married life do you
look forward to after that? Of course, I don’t know whether he was
serious last night or whether you’d both lost your tempers; but, if he
meant it, you must regard the thing as being over.”

Pouting and rebellious, Ivy stared at her shoes and bit at the border
of a crumpled handkerchief:

“I won’t!”

“My dear, you must! However much you love him, he’s not worth having
unless he loves you. What can you do to make him?”

“I’ll publish the engagement!”

“And if he contradicts it?”

“He wouldn’t! He couldn’t! He couldn’t be such a brute!” She was
startled by her own vehemence and repeated in a whisper more poignant
than the cry: “Oh, he couldn’t!”

Eric looked at her and walked away to the window. Pillowing his chin on
his arms, he stared into the lifeless street below. Somewhere in the
silent flat a clock struck twelve; a second and a third joined in with
softly discordant chimes, and he realized that he had been sprawling
there in mental catalepsy for ten minutes....

“From your account—you’ve told me everything, I take it—?” he asked
uncertainly.

“Everything!”

He shrugged his shoulders and turned back to the room, avoiding her
eyes because he knew that she was lying. There was no proof, but her
desperate intensity convinced him, and he wondered why he had not
guessed before.

“What are you going to do?,” he asked.

“I don’t know. I didn’t mean to talk to you about this. I only wanted
you not to give me away to Aunt Connie.” She stood up and looked round
the room for a mirror. “Do I look very awful? I cried myself sick last
night.”

“Come into the next room and tidy up,” he suggested.

“I could drown myself!,” she cried.

He gave her a clean handkerchief and watched her thoughtfully as she
bathed and dried her eyes. When she took off her hat and smoothed her
short dark hair, she would have passed anywhere as a slim boy of
fifteen masquerading in a woman’s black dress. As he watched her, his
mind went back to their first conversation in New York, and he felt
that he had foreseen everything as well as if she carried her future
branded on her forehead. It was a tragedy from which he could see no
escape, perfect material for the third act of a play; and the
psychology and emotion had been presented to him without any strain on
his imagination... But artistic detachment was an indecency when a mere
child was being ruined and heartbroken for the passing pleasure of a
man like Gaymer. She was spiritually ruined whether Gaymer married her
or not....

“You mustn’t talk like that,” he said gently. “I’m going to think
whether I can suggest anything. May I take you home? A walk will do me
good.”

They left Ryder Street and crossed the Park without exchanging six
words. Here and there the passers-by paused and looked back to marvel
at their preoccupation, for both walked with knitted brows and bent
heads, Ivy to hide her red eyes, and Eric to concentrate his thoughts
with no other distraction than brown gravel and grey flag-stones. They
said good-bye in Eaton Place after arranging to meet at the opera.

Eric turned back towards Grosvenor Place and walked to the Thespian
Club. As he entered the dining-room, a hand was laid on his arm.
Carstairs was lunching with Deganway, and they greeted him with an air
of grievance.

“You’ve just cut us _once_. Don’t make a habit of it,” said Deganway.

“I’m sorry! May I join you? And tell me where I cut you.”

“It was in the Park,” said Deganway. “We were coming here from the
Foreign Office, and you were walking with a young and lovely sylph. It
was quite deliberate. I think I shall have to tell John Gaymer about
it; on my honour I shall.”

Eric reached for the _menu_ and began to write his bill. Deganway was
the most intolerable gossip in London, but a gossip was sometimes
useful.

“How does _he_ come into it?,” he asked at length.

“Oh, those two! My dear, she’s Johnnie’s latest passion... At least I
haven’t heard of any one later. You’d better watch out, if he finds you
poaching. You _are_ behindhand.”

“We can’t compete with you, Gerry,” said Carstairs.

Eric made no comment, but he ordered a light luncheon and ate it as
quickly as it could be served. He had offered to take Ivy home because
he knew that he could do no work while he was thinking of her; and it
was useless to go back to his rooms or to fancy that he could compose
his mind until he had done something for her or satisfied himself that
nothing could be done. He wondered whether she knew that he had
guessed... The slim, black figure with the short, boyish hair haunted
him; he saw her in every corner of the dining-room and heard her cry of
despair above the clatter of plates and the babble of voices. Once he
tried to tell himself that it was not his business... But she had
talked to him because there was no one else....

Before he could do anything, he had to hear Gaymer’s version. That had
been obvious from the first, but he had seen only the precipitous
difficulties of a meeting until a chance hint from Deganway shewed him
how to overcome them. As soon as he had finished his meal, he
telephoned to find out whether Gaymer was at home. A voice answered
that he was not expected until after six, and Eric strode into the Park
to be by himself and to rehearse the interview.

There was no one who could undertake it for him. He passed General
Maitland, the judge and Ivy’s two brothers in rapid review, but they
were the last people who must ever know. Then, waiving preliminaries,
he wondered what he was going to say to Gaymer. Plain speaking was more
salutary than effective. Gaymer might deny everything, he might laugh;
this was probably not the first time that he had got himself into an
ambiguous position, and he had probably received his share of plain
speaking. Moreover, invective did not help Ivy. Eric tried to make up
his mind whether he wanted, whether he would help, whether he would
even allow her to marry such a man....

There was no one who could advise him. Amy Loring was a sensible,
sympathetic woman, but, where sex morals were in question, she rather
boasted of her old-fashioned intolerance. To tell her would be to
alienate her forever from some one to whom she was at present mildly
attached. Sonia O’Rane had crammed a life-time of experience into
thirty years and would probably respect a girl the more flagrantly she
overthrew the conventional canons of morality. But it was never safe to
entrust Sonia with a secret. The longer he thought over it, the more
clearly Eric saw that the secret could be shared with no one.

He walked slowly into the Green Park and timed his arrival at
Buckingham Gate for half-past six. Gaymer had come home a moment before
him and was still standing in the hall with his cap on, opening
letters. For an instant he betrayed surprise at receiving a call from a
man whom he knew but slightly and had never invited to his flat, but
the surprise was banished without an effort.

“Hullo! How are you?,” he jerked out. “Just let me finish these, will
you?”

“I wanted to have a word with you, if you could spare time,” said Eric.

“Come along.” Gaymer crossed the hall slowly, reading the last of his
letters, and threw open the door of a small sitting-room decorated with
_Vogue_ plates and furnished with a divan, two arm-chairs and a low
Moorish table. “What’ll you have to drink?,” he asked.

“Nothing, thanks... I’d better explain _why_ I’m here. I was at the
opera last night, and Lady Maitland asked me to see Ivy home. I put her
into a taxi just by the Royal Stables, but, when I got home, Lady
Maitland telephoned to say that she wasn’t in yet; did I know what had
happened to her? This morning Ivy called on me, and I gathered that,
after leaving me, she’d come here.”

Gaymer rang the bell and ordered whiskey to be brought in.

“So it was you she was walking with?” he said. “I couldn’t see.”

“Yes... As the result of coming here, she’s rather upset; and I wanted
to straighten things out, if I could.”

Gaymer filled his tumbler and looked at Eric over the top, slightly
raising his eyebrows.

“Well, drive ahead,” he recommended.

“You and she are engaged, aren’t you?”

“Did she tell you that?”

“I should like to hear if that is so.”

Gaymer emptied half the tumbler and set it down behind him on the
mantelpiece.

“_Would_ you?,” he asked with a smile. “I rather feel that’s my
business.”

“Not entirely. She’s a friend of mine... You and she were being
discussed at lunch to-day.”

“Where?”

“At the Thespian. _Are_ you engaged to her?,” Eric persisted.

In the short pause which followed both men seemed to resolve no longer
to waste time on appearances and the circumlocution of civility.

“What the devil’s that to you?,” Gaymer demanded.

“Are you going to marry her?,” asked Eric.

“Do you want to marry her yourself?”

“I’d sooner marry her myself than see her married to you,” said Eric
and repented of the words almost before they were spoken. In themselves
they were harmless, but he did not want Gaymer to see that his cool
insolence and jerky monosyllables were wearing down his own patience.

“Well, _I_ won’t stop you, if you think you’ll have any success.”

“That’s not the point. She says you promised to marry her, and I want
to know if you’re going to keep your promise.”

“I see. Well, _I_ want to know just where you think you come in.”

“She’s a friend of mine,” Eric repeated.

“Bully for her! But I’m afraid I don’t hold myself responsible to any
friend of hers who chooses to come here and ask impertinent questions.”

“Naturally. But I think I may say she’s asked my advice. Certainly I’ve
given her advice, and she seems to be guided by it to some extent.”

“Bully for her again!”

“She was talking of making the engagement public.”

Gaymer was only impressed to the extent of hesitating for an instant;
then he shewed himself more assured than ever:

“And, if your advice to her is worth a damn, you told her not to do
that!”

“You don’t want to marry her, then?”

Gaymer first yawned and then frowned with a sudden irritability that
suggested more that he wanted to end the interview than that he had
lost his temper.

“Whether I want to or not is beside the point!” he exclaimed. “I’ve no
money to marry on. _She_ knows that. I don’t know from one day to
another whether I’m going to be demobilized. I can’t marry on my pay.”
He looked round with sensual appreciation of the simple warmth and
softness of his quarters. “Far too fond of personal comfort for that.
Have I satisfied your curiosity enough now?”

“No, you haven’t told me why you promised to marry her,” Eric persisted.

“_Did_ I promise? I should be enormously interested to know why you say
that.”

“Because she told me, and in this instance I believe her word in
preference to yours. _Why_ you promised to marry her—I needn’t bother
you to tell me that. I suppose you found it a necessary formality.”

Eric waited for a denial, though he knew that it would tell him
nothing. Guilty or innocent, Gaymer must now lose his temper in
vehement earnest.

And yet no denial came.

“Did she tell you that, too?” he asked.

“I chose to infer it.”

“You’re a desirable friend for a girl to have, if you choose to infer
that sort of thing about her... Lane, the artistic temperament runs
away with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I _must_ go and dress. But,
any time you think of anything else you’d like to ask me, don’t
hesitate to drop in. I’m nearly always at home this time of day and I
can give you a cocktail, if you’ll tell me how to get hold of any gin.
Good-bye.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER SIX


  THE REWARD OF SYMPATHY


“And... there came down a certain priest that way: and... he passed by
on the other side.

“And likewise a Levite...”

                                                    S. LUKE: 10. 31-2.

Eric drove to Ryder Street with the knowledge that he had been beaten;
and for the first time, now that it was too late to be of any use, he
explored his motives in going. An ingrained conventional sense of
fitness told him that, when a man had behaved as Gaymer had done, he
must marry his victim as a matter of honour; more rational modern
teaching objected that a man would commit two crimes instead of one if
he consented to marry a woman whom he did not love. Eric felt he must
really have assumed that Gaymer loved Ivy but that he was too
inconsiderate to treat her kindly; he had himself gone to Buckingham
Gate to demand an explanation rather than to force on the marriage.

But he had been beaten. And what else could he have expected, after
interfering in something that did not concern him? Gaymer’s victorious
rebuff did not matter so much as his adroitness in preventing their
ever getting to grips over Ivy; he might marry her, or he might not,
but at least he had made it plain that he would not be coerced even
into saying whether he cared for her....

In his bath and as he dressed, Eric became permeated with the feeling
that Gaymer had no intention of marrying. An honourable man with an
unclouded conscience would have resented interference far more warmly;
and a man who meant to keep his engagement had no motive for not
publishing it. And, after all, when Ivy had overcome her immediate
unhappiness, was not this all for the best? In a further analysis Eric
fancied that he had gone to assure himself of Gaymer’s bad faith, in
part because he distrusted the fellow and in part because he did not
want to see Ivy’s youth sacrificed to him. Perhaps he would have been a
little disappointed if Gaymer had explained everything convincingly.

The first act of Aida was over before Eric reached Covent Garden.
Hardly seeing who nodded to him, he hurried through the crowded hall to
the pit-tier, only conscious of the languid, chattering double
procession on the stairs, as of a well-dressed, rich and soulless
stage-army that never participated in the emotions and crises of life;
these people surrounded and stared uncomprehendingly at the drama in
their midst, but they seemed to have no drama of their own. George
Oakleigh’s box-door was open, but he had passed it before he had time
to wonder who was inside and in another moment was apologizing to Lady
Maitland for his lateness.

“_I_ must apologize to _you_,” she said, “for disturbing you last
night. It was this naughty child’s fault. She went on to a party and
never warned me.”

Ivy’s excuse had apparently been accepted without further question, and
Eric bowed and shook hands with her as though they had not met earlier
that day. She was paler than in the morning, and her eyes and cheeks
were hollow with fatigue. He could have described every thought that
was passing like a white-hot needle through her brain, for she was
feeling as he had felt when Barbara broke faith with him, betrayed and
utterly lost; ultimately it might be all for the best, but days of
agony lay ahead of her, and she would learn how long and pitiless the
nights could be.

As the lights were lowered, he pulled his chair forward, resting his
arms on the sill of the box. Ivy leaned back to screen herself from her
aunt, and, when he put down his glasses and half-turned to offer them
to her, he saw tears standing in her eyes. Feeling for her hand, he
pressed it gently, and a tear splashed hot and startling on to his own.
She gripped and held his fingers till the end of the act; and, as the
curtain fell, he stood up and made a barrier of himself.

“I think this is the appropriate moment for tobacco and fresh air,” he
suggested. “You not coming, Lady Maitland? Will you, Miss Maitland?”

He opened the door without waiting for a reply and hurried her
downstairs and into the street before the first call had been taken.

“It’s cooler here,” he began, as they walked towards Long Acre. “Do you
mind about smoking in public?”

“I feel too ill, thanks... Mr. Lane, I can’t bear it! All this
afternoon I had to hold myself back to keep from rushing around and
beating on his door! I couldn’t stay in the same room as a telephone. I
_had_ to see him and I was afraid he’d turn me away... I can’t bear it,
I _can’t_!”

“Ssh! I’ve been through this, Ivy, longer and worse than I pray you’ll
ever know. And you can only get over it by setting your teeth—”

“I don’t _want_ to get over it!,” she broke out.

“But you must. And you must begin getting over it to-night. Ivy, I went
to see Gaymer this afternoon.”

She turned on him in swift surprise which changed to dawning hope. But
there was nothing in his face to encourage hope, and her eyes dulled to
resignation.

“Yes?,” she whispered.

“You may say, if you like, that I had no business to interfere. I went
to see if I could do any good. I did no good at all, I found out
nothing and I came away with what’s commonly called a flea in my ear.”

“Was she—?”

Ivy could not bring herself to finish the sentence, but Eric guessed
its end and shook his head.

“I don’t think she has anything to do with it. I don’t believe he ever
meant to marry you from the moment when he refused to publish the
engagement.”

“But he promised, he gave me his oath!”

“Because he... saw you expected it of him. Ivy, you said this morning
that you’d told me everything...” She covered her face with both hands
as though he had struck her. “Dear child, I’m not asking for the
pleasure of torturing you!”

She hurried on without answering by word or nod, and Eric had his
answer.

“You poor child!,” he whispered. “Ivy, I promised to help you, if I
could; you know that this makes no difference, don’t you? Except that
I’m a thousand times more anxious to help you. I’ll help you in any way
I can. But you must help me to help you; you have to put all your
courage into this—”

“I _can’t_! I want to _die_!,” she sobbed.

“Don’t talk like that! This is a frightful thing for you, but you must
see it in perspective. When once you’ve the pluck to recognize it’s all
over... You’ve told no one else; no one else has guessed, no one else
will ever know—”

“But they can’t _help_ it!”

“Ivy—”

Eric looked at her, and the glib solace died on his lips.

“Ivy, pull yourself together and listen to me!” he whispered. “You’re
not to tell a soul till I give you leave! Do you promise? I want time
to think this out. And it’s _going_ to be thought out, we’re going to
win on this. I swear to you that I’ll see you through this somehow. Do
you believe me?”

His vehemence steadied her, and she nodded quickly:

“Yes.”

“Dry your eyes! We must be getting back, or your aunt will wonder
what’s been happening to us. Are you doing anything to-morrow? Right!
I’ll make a plan for to-morrow, and we’ll talk things over. Now get
control of yourself and of your voice: talk to me about the opera,
anything. We have to put up a big bluff. Are you ready?”

They walked back to the opera-house, lazily discussing the singers. The
hall was still half-full, and they stopped to exchange a greeting with
Dr. Gaisford. In the passage behind the boxes, Lord John Carstairs and
his wife were pacing slowly up and down, and they stopped again.
Deganway scurried past like a frightened rabbit and confided to Lady
Poynter that Eric Lane and the little Maitland girl were going about
again together.

“My dear, it’s the second time I’ve caught them to-day!,” he added.
“They’re positively inseparable.”

Eric walked on, deep in conversation. Barbara Oakleigh was standing in
the open door-way of her box. He did not see her, but she looked
curiously at his companion and turned for a second look, as they
passed. When they were out of sight, she returned to the front of her
box and levelled her glasses on them for a moment as they sat down.

“It’s hotter than ever!,” Eric exclaimed. “Lady Maitland, will you
trust Ivy to me for the whole of to-morrow? I want to take her to
Maidenhead, we’d lunch at Skindle’s, punt gently for about ten
yards—which is the limit of my punting capacity—, tie up under a tree
until dinner, dine at Skindle’s and return to London. May I do that? I
promise not to drown her.”

Lady Maitland smiled guardedly. She had noticed for some weeks that
Eric was interested in her niece, but this was the first time that he
had avowed it; and, though she was lazily content to keep Ivy at Eaton
Place or in Shropshire until she or her parents came to their senses, a
marriage so suitable in every way was undeniably the most satisfactory
escape from an awkward family entanglement.

“What do _you_ say about it, Ivy?,” she asked.

“I should love it. It’s sweet of you, Mr. Lane.”

“I’ll call with a taxi at half-past ten,” said Eric.

At the end of the opera he intercepted Gaisford and begged him to wait
and come home for a drink as soon as the Maitlands had been packed into
their car. The distraction of the stage and of the music, the presence
of Ivy and the touch of her hand, which sought his as soon as the
curtain went up, kept him from thinking clearly; and he needed the
shrewd brain and blunt speech of one who had been a second father to
him in order to correct his own impulses.

From Covent Garden to Ryder Street the two men drove in silence. Only
when the doctor had been given an arm-chair, a brandy and soda and a
cigar did he say:

“Well, my son, who’s worrying you now? It’s a mistake to let people
worry you.”

“How d’you know any one’s worrying me?,” asked Eric.

“Because you’re one of these damned reserved people who never squeal
when they’re hurt themselves, but simply go through the world inviting
other people to hurt them. Drive ahead. To-morrow’s Sunday, so I don’t
mind if you keep me up late.”

Eric threw himself into one chair and put his feet up in another.

“It’s in strict confidence, of course,” he began slowly. “A girl I know
slightly has been victimized by some one whom for brevity I may
describe as an “officer and a gentleman”; now she has to face the
consequences. My interest in the thing’s confined to keeping her from
chucking herself under the nearest train. What’s to be done, Gaisford?”

The doctor hoisted himself on to a smaller chair, where he took up a
favourite attitude with feet round the legs and his arms folded over
the back.

“I want a lot more data than that,” he grunted. “Is she the girl who
was with you to-night?” Eric stared at his cigar without answering.
“Good! I don’t want to know her name—or the man’s. I take it she’s a
girl in a good social position. And I take it that you’re not proposing
that I should run my head against the law? Good again! Why doesn’t he
marry her?”

“Doesn’t want to. Never meant to.”

“Does he know the state she’s in?”

“I can’t say. With respect, I don’t think it matters. I’d never
encourage any girl to marry a man against his will just to preserve her
reputation.”

“I’m inclined to agree. Has she any money?”

“Her parents have.”

“She _has_ parents? Then where do you come in?”

Eric laughed with impatient bitterness, jumping up with a wriggle of
his shoulder-blades and beginning to fidget with the bibelots on his
mantelpiece.

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself for some time,” he jerked out;
“and especially while I was bearding the man this afternoon... Father,
mother, married sisters, brothers... But I don’t think she can go to
her people. She doesn’t get on very well with them at the best of times
and, if I diagnose her aright, she’d screw up her courage to commit
suicide long before she’d screw up her courage to face them. I met her
for a moment in New York, and she’s confided in me for some reason.
She’s one of these modern, emancipated girls who want to live by
themselves and lead their own lives—”

The doctor interrupted him with an impatient sniff:

“Then she needn’t bother to find a father for her child.”

“My dear Gaisford, you know the worth and weight of all that froth!
Modern woman wants to make the best of both sexes; she thinks she can
get ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ without fighting or paying for it. Once
present the bill—! As I see it, I’m the only soul that the girl can
turn to; and, in that belief, I’ve promised to see her through. I
suppose this sort of thing is happening daily; I suppose she can be
sent somewhere till the trouble’s over... If necessary—I’ve not thought
it out yet—, I’ll take her abroad as my secretary—”

A scornful snort interrupted his flow of facile suggestion:

“How old is she? Twenty? And a very pretty girl, so far as I could see.
And you’re disgustingly well-known. Don’t you think it would cause some
little comment, if you and she went on your travels together?... After
all, I think you’d better tell me who she is.”

Eric shook his head, and a silence followed. Then he shrugged his
shoulders.

“Connie Maitland’s niece, a daughter of the judge,” he said at length.

“My dear friend, there are limits to human faith even in your moral
reputation!” cried the doctor. “No, something can be done in this
country, but you must find an excuse for getting her away from her
friends for a considerable time.”

“I was wondering whether I’d get my mother to ask her down to Lashmar.”

“It wouldn’t be fair on Lady Lane; she’s of the old school. Besides,
your sister wouldn’t give her a fair chance: a woman’s severest judges
are her own sex. And you’ve brothers; the girl wouldn’t face them. And
you always tell me it’s a dead-and-alive little hamlet where the
servants would gossip and every one would gape and whisper. In
twenty-four hours the responsibility would be laid at _your_ door, and
people would wonder why you didn’t marry her.”

“I’m beginning to wonder that myself.”

Gaisford prepared to speak and then closed his lips, waiting for more
to come, as Eric covered his eyes with his hand and tapped the fender
with one restless heel. By shutting out the light he could forget the
doctor’s presence and imagine the room as he had seen it that morning,
with a slim black figure shrinking into one corner of a big chair. At
this moment—he listened to the calm deliberate ticking of the clock
behind his head—at this moment she was probably lying on her bed,
powerless even to undress, smothering her sobs in a pillow; or perhaps
she was on her knees, praying wildly, desperately until she fell asleep
from exhaustion; when she awoke, a sense of disaster would cloud and
terrify her mind until it defined itself and she wept to find herself
still alive. The anguished incoherence of her prayers seemed to rise
and swell like wind in the rigging of a ship; he could see her very
clearly, hear her very plainly....

The creak of the doctor’s chair recalled him to the present, and Eric
looked cautiously round the room as though uncertain who was there.
From the moment when Ivy came and sobbed in his arms, he had forgotten
everything but an urgent need to help her; one accusing pile of letters
lay unopened on his writing-table, another was waiting unsigned; he had
done no work; and for the first time in nearly three years he had
hardly thought of Barbara.

But there was something more than an abstract desire to help. He could
now confess to himself that he would have been disappointed if Gaymer
had been anxious or even willing to marry Ivy....

“It would be one way out of the difficulty,” he suggested indifferently.

“And it would be one way into a great many others,” said Gaisford
sharply, a little startled to find himself taken so literally.

“You mean I’m damaged goods? I know that,” said Eric quietly.

Gaisford made a noise of impatience as he looked up at the spare frame
and thin, vital face in front of him. He was reasonably proud of the
man whom he had so long kept alive and now restored to full health.

“I mean nothing of the kind. Eric, you owl, you’re making a very big
income, you’ve a very big reputation all over the world. You’ve
_everything_ to offer. If you’re treating the question as a
profit-and-loss account, I confess I don’t see what _this_ girl—”

“Don’t you?” As he stared up at the light, Eric’s eyes grew bigger and
changed from smouldering brown to a black brilliance that illumined his
whole face. “She gives me youth, beauty... Gaisford, if you try to be
cynical, I shall brain you; she gives me something to talk to,
something to look after, something to care for... Some one who believes
in me... I don’t ask more than that of any woman in these latter days.
All this business about money and position... God! If I could give
everything I’ve got, everything I’m likely to get, lay it at her feet,
persuade her to accept it—”

“Are you in love with her?,” the doctor enquired with a sedative
detachment that stilled the passion in Eric’s voice.

“It might make me... I’ve been paralysed for the last two years;
there’s been absolutely nothing in life for me. I must be fond of that
child, or I couldn’t worry about her so much... If I had somebody to
care for, somebody to try and make happy, somebody to take me out of
myself and make me forget myself... Then I could _win_... I never
_used_ to be lonely... I’m talking to you as the ideas come,
Gaisford... You said it as a joke, but, if you ask me seriously why I
don’t marry her....”

His tone and attitude did not invite cynicism. Gaisford stood up and
laid a hand on his shoulders.

“Sit down,” he suggested. “You mustn’t do anything till you’ve thought
this over _coolly_. In the first place, what do you know of the girl?
She’s broken down completely in what most men consider to be woman’s
first essential.”

“She’s a child,” cried Eric, wrestling free from the numbing bondage of
Gaisford’s sedative voice. “If you told me that he’d made her
_drunk_... or _doped_ her... I shouldn’t be surprised. This is a thing
that touched her body and not her spirit.”

The doctor grimaced unconsciously at the romantic phrasing:

“I see. She’s a child, and you think you’re going to form her mind and
character... Don’t interrupt, Eric; every man thinks that of every
woman mentally less mature than himself. Is she going to be an
intelligent companion or a pathetic doll? Is she honest? Is she
honourable? Is she unselfish? Is she loyal? Has she grit—under the pink
and white of the child? Those are qualities that every wife must have.
In other words,” he continued with prosaic mockery, “d’you know
a—single—dam’—_thing_ about her? Is she clever enough, Eric, to know
how to live with you? I don’t doubt your patience, affection,
self-effacement and the rest, but you’re a queer customer, you know; an
idealist... you’d hit me if I said she deserved all she’d got...; too
many nerves, much too sensitive; if I tell you you’ve a smut on your
nose, you’ll probably forswear human society and run away for ten years
to a desert island. Can she live with you without getting on your
nerves? And—remember I’ve seen her for three seconds, at a distance—are
you man enough to control her? I don’t gather she’s learnt much
self-discipline; can you lick her into shape, or will you go flabby
every time she cries?”

He waited for an answer, but Eric only murmured:

“Go on.”

“Marriage is a long and intimate business. You’re not marrying her for
passion—or money—or social advantage; you’ve to start right away with
what most people come to when passion’s worn out; you’ve to be
_companions_ from the beginning. And you know as little of her as I do.
You must wait, therefore—”

Eric interrupted him with a quick gesture:

“If I’m to be of any use, I must act at once. The girl’s nearly out of
her mind.”

“I’m sorry for her. That doesn’t justify you in doing something that
may send both of you nearly out of your minds before you’ve been
married six months. After all, something _can_ be done to avoid a
scandal. And you must study her... And study yourself. I mean, have you
considered how you’ll like to have another man’s child always with you
and to pretend it’s yours? Are you strong enough never to patronize?
And do you want a wife who marries you out of gratitude or one who
marries you because she loves you?”

“I want to have some one in my life who belongs to me,” Eric answered.
“Another man’s child... Complications generally... I feel rather like a
man who tries to escape from the pains of life by embracing a new
faith; the more services and observances and penances you give me, the
better I shall be pleased.”

Gaisford wrinkled his nose and sniffed.

“Excellent for the first week,” he said. “Will you be of the same mind
a year from now, if you find she gets on your nerves so that you can’t
work? This is self-indulgence... Don’t glare at me! You’re as bad as
all the rest, you’ve the faults of your ridiculous, neurotic
generation. This is a _stunt_! You’re having enormous fun with a
brand-new emotion... By the way, you’ll probably have to tell your
people everything.”

Eric nodded without speaking. Obviously Lady Lane would have to be
told. She was a kind woman, a practical Christian; she would be shocked
and touched; she too would think in terms of sacrifice and she would
admire her son extravagantly. In her heart, too, she would despise Ivy
as a traitor who had sold her sex; she would find a thousand honest
objections to the marriage, she would conscientiously make Ivy
miserable by hinting them to her; she would exhaust every device for
getting her practical Christianity carried out by deputy; and, if she
failed to save her son, he would lose his mother in the very struggle
which she was making on his behalf.

“I see that,” said Eric grimly. “Plenty of obstacles, aren’t there? And
all because she sat in this chair this morning and cried her heart out.”

Gaisford looked at his watch and jumped up with an exclamation of
dismay:

“D’you know it’s two o’clock, Eric? I must get to bed. Understand! I’m
not forbidding the banns, but _promise_ me to think before you do
anything irrevocable; you’re too good to waste on an impulse. Only one
thing more. Why was she crying this morning?”

“You can hardly expect her to be light-hearted. I should think the man
didn’t mince matters with her last night—”

“And she was crying—for _him_. Don’t forget that, my friend. Unless
she’s right-down vicious, he must have fascinated her pretty completely
before she consented to play the fool like this; she was _very_ much in
love with him. For all I know, she may be very much in love with him
still. You’re adding to your troubles, if you’ve to chain her by the
leg to keep her from going back to him.”

“She won’t have much temptation when the blackguard’s deserted her.”

Gaisford put on his hat and coat to the accompaniment of a succession
of grunts:

“Women don’t—have much temptation—to go on living—with men who beat
them.—They still do it, though—even when there are no children,—even
when they could run away... You always underrate the strength of sex in
a woman; I’m afraid you always will. It’s because you’re an
idealist....”

Eric did not go to bed at once. The conversation had excited his brain
too much; and he felt that, if he had to meet Ivy in the morning, he
must first deal honestly with every objection raised by Gaisford and
overcome it or be overcome by it. He started virtuously, as he began to
undress, but quickly tired. There was a trace of powder on his
looking-glass; he could not see his familiar wash-hand-stand without
seeing in imagination Ivy’s slim, black figure bending over it, as she
bathed her eyes. And then he knew that he had only listened to Gaisford
in order to have some idea what difficulties he had to face.

Already his brain was half-unconsciously making plans, as it had not
done since last he had in his life some one who belonged to him,
“somebody to work for and take care of.” As he had lived through the
day with scarcely a thought for Barbara, so now he could think of her
without wincing. He set himself to think of her deliberately, as she
used to come into the library, or sit on the floor in front of the
fire, resting her head against his knee. Her changes of expression were
as familiar as ever; he could conjure up her phrases, her intonation
and laugh; the touch of her hand was still felt in his, but he could
think of her without pain. That was a silent answer to Gaisford’s
questions.

Eric could have put it into words, but he only discovered it when he
was alone, when the flat was empty, when he could shut his eyes without
seeing Barbara’s wan ghost....

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER SEVEN


  A DOUBLE RESCUE


“One marries a girl and lives with a woman. I think I know something
about girls, but I am sure I know nothing about women.”

                             J. A. SPENDER: “THE COMMENTS OF BAGSHOT.”

Though the sun shone with warm encouragement as Eric swerved and
rattled through the forbidding Sunday calm of Eaton Place, he was
chilled by anxiety, a broken night and a sense of his own amazing
rashness. Though he was still uncommitted in act, his mind had made
itself up so firmly that he could not change it without a breach of
faith. And now he expected to meet with one disappointment after
another: Ivy had proved herself frail and not wholly truthful; he would
find her to be heartless or insipid or commonplace; perhaps she would
reveal a disconcerting streak of vulgarity, he might well have been
mistaken in thinking her even pretty....

“I hope you hadn’t arranged to do anything else to-day,” he said, as
they drove to Paddington.

“I was only going to dine with father and mother,” Ivy answered
listlessly. “The usual Sunday supper.”

“Well, we can get back in time for that.”

“I don’t mind missing it for once. He’s just come back from assizes;
and they always make him so pompous that mother and I can do nothing
with him for weeks afterwards.”

“But he’ll be disappointed,” Eric suggested. Already a blemish! Ivy
always seemed so selfish in her attitude towards her parents that she
might become equally inconsiderate towards her husband. “We’ll
telephone from Maidenhead to say you’re coming, and you can ask if you
may bring me. I don’t mind cadging an invitation, because you remember
I was invited once before and couldn’t go.”

“Oh, they’ll be delighted to see you,” Ivy answered without enthusiasm.

Was it a blemish that she acquiesced so easily? Would it have been a
blemish if she had resisted? Eric told himself that he must cut short
this microscopic search for faults, but he was not disposed to let her
off a meeting with her parents. He would really know very little of Ivy
until he had seen her framed in her own house and flanked by the
formidable judge and his passive consort; a chance encounter in New
York and their few stilted meetings in London revealed only her
insincere social mannerisms, while in their two emotional passages she
had shewn him only the tragic mask.

In the cab and in the train neither was at ease, for Eric did not know
how or when to begin speaking, and Ivy stared blankly out of the window
with watery eyes, accepting his arrangement and disposal of her with
dull thanks from a drooping mouth. Would she always be like this? Must
her vitality always be drawn from him? For months, perhaps for years,
she would mourn her lost lover; Eric would have to bear with
irresponsive apathy... He gave her two papers, which she allowed to
rest on her knees, and tried to forget his discouragement in looking
about him.

The station was crowded with men in flannels and girls in gauzy frocks,
all oppressively high-spirited and resolved to enjoy themselves. Every
seat was taken before the train had been five minutes in the station,
and, when it started, Eric found himself squeezed between Ivy and
another girl in a carriage with six aside and four men standing. He
looked from one to another, contrasting the girls’ faces and bearing.
There was an absurd similarity in hats and dresses, in their very shape
and feature and age. All were wearing grey or white buckskin shoes,
grey or white silk stockings thin as gossamer; all were wearing
spider’s-web hats and low-cut dresses with transparent sleeves. Their
average age was twenty; they were perfectly happy, perfectly
well-pleased with themselves and in perfect health. Like that
stage-army overnight at the opera, life—as a thing of ecstasy or
racking pain—passed them by. Ivy watched him, as he watched them, and
he could feel her arm trembling against his.

“I telephoned for a cab,” said Eric, as the train slowed into
Maidenhead. “And a table. And a punt.” There was no answer; and he
leaned towards her, lowering his voice to a whisper: “Ivy, I’ve been
looking forward to this ever since last night.”

“I hope you won’t be disappointed in me,” she sighed.

“I shall only be disappointed if you don’t enjoy yourself.”

Ivy shivered and hid her face from him; but, as the arrangements for
the day unfolded themselves, she could not help responding to his
solicitude. Nothing had been forgotten, nothing could have been
improved. They drove in comfort through the crowded, narrow streets of
Maidenhead, while others struggled for cabs or resigned themselves to
walking; a table was waiting for them by an open window, and intuition
had warned him that she would want to lunch off lobster and
strawberries. By luck or contrivance they were served by the most
attentive waiter; the most comfortable chairs were ready for them at
the water’s edge, when they came out to the lawn for coffee; and the
sun blazed down on them from a cloudless sky. In the hotel several
people had spoken or nodded to Eric; Grace Pentyre and Lady John
Carstairs detached themselves from their parties to cross the lawn and
compliment Ivy on her dress; she felt her self-respect reviving and
surrendered to the enveloping atmosphere of well-being.

“You _are_ good to me!,” she exclaimed suddenly, when Eric returned to
her after ordering the punt to be made ready.

“Are you happy?,” he asked.

“I’m—enjoying myself.”

“Ah! that’s not enough... I don’t believe I’ve been to Maidenhead since
I was an undergraduate.”

“Too much work? I’ve never had enough in one year to keep me busy for
one day!,” she exclaimed impatiently.

“And I’ve always had more in one day than I could do in a year, ever
since I was a small boy.”

He helped her into the punt and began paddling up stream in search of a
quiet place for mooring. Half-an-hour passed before he noticed that he
was talking only about himself and his boyhood, his family and his
work; then he stopped self-consciously, and Ivy looked up eagerly,
waiting for him to go on.

“I envy you! I’d give anything to be you!,” she exclaimed. “When I
think of _my_ life... and _yours_....”

Eric smiled and headed for the bank, where he made fast to an obtruding
willow-root. Then he stepped into the middle of the punt, rearranged
the cushions at Ivy’s back and sat beside her.

“Comfortable?,” he asked her. “Ivy... I want you to think over what I’m
going to say, take your time and tell me what you make of it when
you’ve thought it over from every point of view for, say, a month.” He
lighted a cigarette and looked straight ahead of him. “I want to know
whether you’ll marry me.” She sat up, rigid with amazement, looking at
him with round eyes. He laid a hand on her shoulder and pressed her
gently back. “I’ve saved a fair amount of money and I’m making a good
income; one hopes it will go on. I would do all I could to make you
happy... Before you decide, you must try to imagine whether I’m the
sort of person that you think you could live with. I’m not a
professional invalid, but I have to lead rather a careful life and I
suppose I’ve as many angles as most bachelors....”

When she tried to speak, he had stopped her; but he found it impossible
to go on cataloguing himself while she sat silent with bitten,
bloodless lips.

“But... I thought you understood!,” Ivy broke in, as he paused. “I’m
not fit... You... or anybody.”

Eric could not trust himself to look at her, but he felt for her hand.

“I’m not asking you to—yet awhile,” he said. “But, when you’ve had time
to think it over... Anything that you’ve told me, I—I’ve forgotten. In
your turn, you’ll have to take me as you find me... I’m a solitary
man... I should like some one to take care of... Will you think this
over, Ivy, very slowly and very carefully? It’s a big risk... If you
say ‘no’—” he hesitated and shrugged his shoulders. The doubts of the
morning had melted like snow beneath a tropic sun; he had recovered the
mood of overnight in which pity fiercer than desire set before his eyes
the picture of Ivy, praying in wild despair, and filled his ears with
the fancied mutter of her prayers. If she said “no,” he would be
tempted to plead and argue against her decision and his own better
judgement; he hoped that he might not be tempted—“if you say ‘no’”—he
hesitated again and moistened his lips—“I can make certain arrangements
that will spare you the worst; if you say ‘yes’, I propose that we get
married very quietly and go abroad for a time. What matters now is that
you should feel comfortable in mind; there’s nothing in the world for
you to worry about.”

He withdrew his hand and shaded his eyes to look at the leisurely
procession of boats converging at the gate of Boulter’s Lock. Now that
he had laid his proposal before her, he seemed cold and repellent where
he had meant to make a single, irresistible gesture of magnanimity; it
was only by giving her everything and by spending himself to give her
more that he could heal the wounds in his own spirit. Ivy’s world must
be the fairy palace of a dream....

As the silence lengthened, he wondered whether he wanted her to say
anything yet... The announcement would create a sensation. Many would
be disappointed, a few pleased by the surface of romance; his mother
would look at the slim, dark, undeveloped child and wonder whether he
had been captivated by her youthful prettiness and whether such
inexperience could possibly make him happy; he wondered in his turn
whether a mother’s uncanny intuition would discover that he was not
marrying for love. Ivy, for that matter, would not be marrying for
love; she would be marrying, at nineteen, for safety. Even if she had
loved him now, in ten years’ time she would be a different woman,
capable of a different love; if she were assailed later by a passion to
which she could not now pretend, he wondered how far gratitude would
restrain her....

“I don’t understand...” Ivy’s voice was quavering. “I’ve been praying
to die, ever since I knew... Why _should_ you...?”

Her voice rose tremulously, broke and died away. Still without looking
at her, Eric gripped her wrist.

“But why not?,” he asked.

“I’m nothing to you, and you’re—It isn’t fair on you.”

“I’m the best judge of that,” he answered with exultant, fierce
excitement that made his voice harsh. “But you’re not to decide
anything for the moment,” he went on more gently. “Just tell me—are you
happy?”

He felt his hand brushed by her lips. Then she dragged her wrist from
his fingers and bent forward, burying her head in her lap.

They both felt exhausted; and neither knew what to do next. The
pitiless publicity of Boulter’s Lock held them in artificial restraint;
there were numberless prosaic arrangements to be contrived, but Eric
shirked the emotional violence of abruptly broaching them. As she
regained composure, Ivy took off her hat and drew herself upright with
her hands clasped round her knees, looking away from him to the line of
punts under the opposite bank. She had pretty feet and ankles, pretty
arms and shoulders, a straight thin back and slender neck; since their
first meeting she had lost something of her looks by suddenly becoming
so thin, but the sharpness of outline added to her charm of youth and
delicacy. Eric suddenly remembered his chill of misgiving as he drove
to Eaton Place, expecting to be disappointed in her; a warm wave of
compassion blinded him, and he asked himself how a man of Gaymer’s
upbringing and traditions could bring himself to commit the social sin
for which there was no pardon; if he had waited till Ivy was married,
an intrigue would have been venial; if he had chosen a girl from a
humbler walk of life, no one would have asked more than that he should
behave liberally to her... That was conventional morality in England....

Perhaps the one impossible thing had been made possible by the war. For
five years there had been whispered rumours of desolating scandals
scotched at the last moment. England was sex-intoxicated; women married
light-heartedly on a few weeks’ acquaintance and married again a few
months later when their husbands had been killed, without prejudicing
their right to acquire three or four lovers in the interval. And those
who remained technically virtuous talked sex by day and dreamed it at
night; there was nothing they did not know, nothing they would not
discuss, and in this welter of short-lived artificial excitement, when
all were overworked and overstimulated, when vague cosmic hungers made
themselves felt and an opportunity became a duty, it was not surprising
that some had lost their heads.

But Ivy looked too fastidious. Her deferential timidity, under the
skin-deep manner of bustle and efficiency which had irritated him in
New York, was no challenge to a man; her youth imposed an obligation on
any one with the wit to see her as an emancipated school-girl; a
libertine, when he had pierced the veneer of assurance, would find her
insipid; and, even if Gaymer was insensible to discrimination and
honourable restraint, Eric could not understand her allowing herself to
fall into his hands. Men and women drifted dizzily without seeing where
they were going or how far they had gone, but Ivy seemed yet enough of
a child to stop herself by sheer ignorant instinct before she began to
drift.

“Eric!”

He turned quickly, for Ivy had never before used his Christian name.

“Yes?”

“Eric...” She hesitated, and he saw that her cheeks were crimson.
“Eric, I want to tell you about Johnnie.”

“My dear, I’ve forgotten that there is such a person.”

After screwing herself up to do her duty, Ivy did not feel entitled to
be relieved of it.

“Perhaps you won’t think as badly of me afterwards,” she faltered.

“But I _don’t_ think badly of you! I want a new life to start from
to-day. If we get married—you mustn’t _dream_ of deciding yet—, I want
to obliterate everything that happened before to-day. So far as our
joint life is concerned, we meet now for the first time. Let’s see all
we can of each other. If we become engaged, we’ll announce it, get
married as soon as possible and go straight out to America. I’ve always
an excuse to go there for as long as I like; we can come back when it
suits us and we can settle down to domestic life in England. It’s very
probable that you’ll meet Gaymer—I’ve found that you can’t avoid
meeting people in London, however much you may want to—, but you’ll
meet him as a mere acquaintance. And, Ivy, the only thing _I_ know of
him is that I’ve run across him for three years in other people’s
houses and have never invited him to my own, because we don’t seem to
have anything in common. Isn’t that enough?”

She made a vague movement with head and shoulders, but he could see
that she was hardly listening to him.

“I—can’t understand,” she faltered. “You must despise me so, and I’ve
nothing to give... It’s like a dream.”

“I’m asking you to give me the whole of yourself for all my life...,”
Eric answered. “Now I’m going to paddle you back.”

Though there had been no rain for several weeks, a strong stream was
flowing, and he punted swiftly to Skindle’s lawn before he found that
it was still too early for tea. Shooting under Maidenhead Bridge, he
crossed to the Berkshire side and drifted until he found another
stretch of shady bank under which they could moor the boat and smoke.
Ivy beckoned him to her side and struck a match for his cigarette.

“Eric, I shall never be able to _do_ anything for you,” she whispered.
“All you say is that _you_ want to make _me_ happy! Long before I met
you, I’d wanted to meet you, because you wrote such wonderful plays. In
New York... If anybody’d told me I was going to marry you, I should
have burst out laughing. You were so big and famous. Coming over on the
boat I hardly dared speak to you. I can’t believe it yet... If I came
to you as I was in New York—I _had_ something to give then—, I couldn’t
believe it. But I never knew you then, I never thought that any man...
out of a book, I mean... Oh, I can _never_ do enough, I can never
_begin_ to repay you!”

Her urgency sent a glow through blood which Eric once thought would
never again be warm. He wanted to see his mother and Gaisford, to say
to them: “You told me to make one more effort, and I’ve made it. You
told me to forget myself. Well, I have; and I’ve won. The biggest
effort... and the biggest victory....”

“Love must be dead long before a man renders a bill, Ivy,” he said.

“I want to pay without waiting for it!”

“But love hasn’t been born yet.”

“Oh, it has, Eric!”

“When?”

“When you promised... You know.”

Eric laughed and took her hand:

“When you thought you were dreaming? You’re dreaming still, Ivy. That’s
why I won’t let you decide till you’ve had time to wake up and think.
Cold, grey, early-morning thinking... Perhaps I’m dreaming too. It
seems so long... And you’re so absurdly young, Ivy; I’m half a
generation older. When I saw you outside Covent Garden last night, I
felt I’d do anything to make you less miserable. Anything in the world.
If we hadn’t been in a public street, I’d have taken you in my arms and
kissed you... I thought and argued all the evening; I wished I had more
to give you. And I was glad for my own selfish sake that you were
unhappy. I wasn’t particularly happy myself; and I suddenly saw that,
if I could give you everything I had, if I could make a new life, a
happy life for you, Ivy, I should be happy myself. You see, I’ve not
been thinking of you very much,” he laughed.

She turned quickly and put her face up to him.

“Kiss me now, Eric,” she begged.

“I will, when you’re sure you’re in love with me,—if you ever are.”

“I am! You know I am! I’d do anything for you. Isn’t that love?”

“You don’t yet feel that I’m essential to you. That’s why you need
time. And, if you knew what love was, you wouldn’t need me to tell you.”

Ivy knitted her brows and looked away.

“I thought I did,” she murmured. “I thought I couldn’t get on without
Johnnie. That was why; he threatened to go away....”

Eric watched her out of the corner of one eye:

“And you find you can get on without him?”

“I had to.” The answer came without hesitation, but she paused at once
to consider it. Eric wondered whether he had heard regret in her voice.

“If he came to see you to-night,” Eric propounded, “if he explained
away whatever happened two nights ago and said that he’d always meant
to marry you and wanted to marry you, if he told you that it was simply
a question of money—”

She interrupted with a vigorous shake of the head:

“You don’t understand! He’s a different man.”

“He _was_ the man you fell in love with, Ivy.”

“No! I’d been mistaken in him.”

“I only want to be sure that you’re not mistaken now.”

“I’m _certain_ now.”

There was no profit in reminding her that she must have felt at least
as certain before she surrendered to Gaymer. Eric concentrated his
attention on the punt, which was making slow progress against the wind
and stream. As they came alongside the lawn of the Guards Club, he saw
Ivy stiffen and look away; there was no apparent reason for her abrupt
movement, as he could only see two wounded officers, playing with a
dog, and the back of a third, who was making his way slowly towards the
club-house. Evidently she did not want to be seen, and Eric felt a
twinge of misgiving when he reflected how little he knew of her.
Whenever a man married, he had to some extent to inherit the relations
and friends, the family bores and family feuds of his wife, with a
greater or less legacy of complications and indiscretions; all that he
knew of Ivy and her world could be written on a single sheet of paper.

Tea was a silent and reflective meal for both of them. It was only when
they had driven to the station and were walking up and down the
platform that he found a reason for her embarrassment. On a bench by
the head of the stairs two officers were playing with a dog; between
them sat Gaymer. Now as before, Ivy saw him first, but this time he saw
her and bowed. Eric would have walked on, but one of the wounded
officers waved a crutch and hailed him by name.

“Hullo, Pentyre! I haven’t seen you to speak to since you were smashed
up,” said Eric.

“No, I came to look you up when I was home about a year and a half ago,
but they told me you were in America. I caught sight of you in the
distance at one of Sonia’s parties... This is a memento of the final
Hun push. You know my brother, don’t you? And Gaymer?”

“Oh, yes!” Eric felt his heart quickening its beat. There was an
adequate nod, Gaymer rose with adequate alacrity and bowed a second
time to Ivy; but there was no glint of resentment over their late
candid meeting in Buckingham Gate, no flicker of curiosity at finding
Ivy in such company and no embarrassment in meeting her at all. “You
know Lord Pentyre, don’t you? Miss Maitland, Mr. Frank Pentyre.”

“Oh, please don’t get up,” Ivy begged, as Pentyre and his brother
reached for their crutches.

Eric was pleased to see that she was composed—as much composed as he
had been when he found himself confronted with George and Barbara at
Covent Garden; he also remembered his own emotions that night and led
her away as soon as he could make an opportunity.

“Well done!” whispered Eric, pressing Ivy’s arm.

“Let’s go further in front,” she answered. “I don’t want to travel up
with them... Eric! I could have killed him! So cool and collected... He
_knows_ how he’s treated me, he _knows_ he’s been a brute and a liar—”

“Steady on, Ivy,” Eric urged, as her voice became tremulous.

“He always frightened me, because nothing seemed to make any impression
on him. When he was flying, he was inconceivably brave; people have
told me. He’d have been given the V. C. again and again, if any one had
known. When he crashed, it would have killed any other man, but, though
he’s not allowed to fly any more, it’s made no other difference. He
frightens me, because I can’t do anything with him. That night—he let
me do all the talking... He’s a brute.”

Eric was disquieted that Gaymer should have seen them together. Most
men would be glad to be relieved so promptly of their responsibilities,
but under his mask of indifference Gaymer was capable of being piqued
at finding himself so quickly supplanted; it was almost an invitation
to see whether he could reestablish his ascendancy, a challenge to his
idleness and vanity, his taste for mischief and his love of power.

“Don’t have anything to do with him,” Eric urged.

“I want to punish him.”

“You may only punish yourself—and me.”

A taxi had been ordered to wait for them at Paddington, and they
escaped with relief from the crowded train and drove to the Cromwell
Road. It was the first moment of privacy since the morning, and Ivy
caught his hand and pressed it eagerly.

“Eric, I want to cry!,” she gasped, throwing her arms around him and
hiding her face on his shoulder. “I’ve wanted to all day, you’ve been
so wonderful! What can you _see_ in me? I _will_ try to repay you,
though I never can. Eric, tell me it’s all true and that you’re not
playing with me!”

“I’m no good at jokes of that kind.” She had slipped half to the floor,
and he lifted her on to his knees; with a gentle pressure she drew his
head to her bosom and laid a cold, tear-stained cheek against his.
“Ivy, this is not my idea of taking a month to think _calmly_—”

“I don’t want a month!,” she cried, tightening the grip of her arms as
though he were trying to escape.

“Dear child, you _must_ steady yourself! We shall be at your father’s
house in a minute, and you can’t go in like this. Dry your eyes, Ivy
darling. You said you couldn’t see why I was doing this; don’t you see
it’s because I want you? But, however much I want you, I can’t take you
till I’m sure that I can make you happy. Wait a month—”

“I can’t wait a month!”

It was on his lips to say “a week,” but he stopped himself in time.
There was always a temptation to do what a woman asked, when she was
unhappy; but the one way to make a happy woman unhappy, an unhappy
woman unhappier, was to yield to her. And in his overnight sanity,
before she fired his blood, he had promised Gaisford to take time
before risking a double tragedy.

“A month, Ivy,” he repeated. “You must find out the sort of creature
you’re marrying.”

“I shall never see you,” she pouted.

“You shall see me all day and every day, if you like. My secretary went
for a holiday on Saturday. Do you remember once offering yourself for
the position? I don’t mind now. You can tell your aunt and say you’re
coming as a great favour to me. _Then_ we shall see how quickly you get
tired of me... Sit still, you little eel!”

Ivy had slipped on to the floor again and laid her head on his knees:

“Tired of you... _Tired_ of you! I _love_ you. And I can never thank
you or be worthy of you—” She stopped abruptly and sprang up. “Eric! My
darling!”

The taxi came to a standstill, and he helped her out. As they stood
decorously on the steps of her father’s house, he looked at his watch
and said:

“Eight hours ago you were respectfully calling me ‘Mr. Lane.’”

He saw her shivering; and her eyes filled with fear:

“Eight hours ago—seven and a half—I prayed that our train might have a
collision... Is her ladyship expecting us, Henry?”

Though Ivy had only once described her home—and then in a single
sentence—, one glance at the outside and another at the hall enabled
Eric to deduce the character of the occupants and the moral atmosphere
of the house. A young footman with two wound-stripes on his livery coat
took his hat and asked whether he would like to wash before dinner. Ivy
had already run upstairs to her room, and, as he followed the footman,
Eric saw massive orderliness on every hand. In the dim hall stood a
heavy oak table, flanked by two black oak chairs and surmounted by a
presentation salver and a rack with leather-cased Bradshaw, Whittaker
and Law List. It was painfully irregular, he felt, that doors, intended
by the genius of orderliness to be shut, should have been left open;
but he was fortunate in gaining a glimpse, through one, of mahogany
side-board and massive dining-table set with eight heavy mahogany
chairs and, through another, of glass-fronted fumed-oak book-cases, a
double writing-table and red leather couches. The furniture seemed to
have been bought in sets and ordered by post; the books—each surely an
accepted classic, though Eric could see nothing of them but their calf
backs—might well have been supplied by measure. The house was lighted
by gas, and each room had its accredited box of matches. The
all-pervading solemnity filled Eric with unseemly thoughts of
irresponsible humour; he longed to transpose the match-boxes marked
“HALL” and “COAT ROOM” and to see what would happen; over the basin, as
he washed, was a mirror and shelf with two hair-brushes, one branded
“J. F. M.” and the other “VISITORS.” Perhaps Gaymer had been detected
changing the match-boxes; perhaps that was why he had been forbidden
the house....

Eric checked the impulse to laugh, as soon as Gaymer came into his
thoughts. It was easy to understand why a girl had been so desperately
anxious to escape from such a house, easy to imagine how she would
welcome any one who stretched out a hand to help her... But he had felt
no resentment towards Gaymer for two hours; a cad, yes, but a cad who
had made his contribution to Eric’s own destiny... What mattered now
was the remembrance of Ivy’s ecstatic plunge into his arms, her
quavering whisper and trembling mouth, her eyes bright with unshed
tears, a kiss that sent her soul on wings to his lips. He frowned at
his reflection in the mirror and wondered whether the judge would
suspect anything....

Ivy was not yet down when he was shewn into the grim, shadow-filled
drawing-room, but her mother welcomed him with nervous warmth. As she
turned to the light, Eric saw a thin, small woman with the incongruous
remains of a loveable, baby prettiness under her lined skin and her air
of being never at ease. While Mr. Justice Maitland was still an
unproved junior, her friends murmured that she was throwing away both
herself and the snug dowry which came to her from the family business
of wholesale chemists, but the initial advantage was first equalized
and then turned against her; the rearing of five children tied her to
the house, and her speech and outlook hinted that she had not kept pace
with her husband’s social advancement.

“It’s very good of you to let me invite myself like this,” said Eric,
as he shook hands with her. “As I reminded Ivy, you _were_ kind enough
to ask me once before, when I couldn’t come.”

“It’s a great honour, I’m sure. And I expect you’re ever so much run
after.”

The judge laid aside the book that he had been reading and raised
himself with slow solemnity from his chair.

“It’s not our _first_ meeting, Mr. Lane; you’re not likely to remember
that,” he said with austere geniality. “I knew your father in old days
and I did in fact meet you not so many months after your arrival in
this troubled world of ours. I should like to think that your kindness
to our daughter means that you are not going to drop your early friends
now that you are famous.”

The hollow click which his eye-glasses, after glissading down his nose,
struck out of his shirt-front was for a moment disconcerting; but the
bleak, formidable smile which accompanied the words apprised Eric that
his host was venturing on badinage. He hastened to smile
sympathetically, as he took in the details of appearance and manner.
Sir James Maitland was tall and spare, with a long, blue-grained jaw,
plentiful grey hair and light, steady eyes set deep under bushy brows.
His clothes, like himself, were deliberately old-fashioned; the
loose-cut trousers accentuated his thin, bent legs, and a low double
collar gave him the hungry, long neck of a vulture. Eric was prepared
to find him pompous and despotic in his grave moments and tedious in
all; he felt like a reveller who had strayed inadvertently into a
grave-yard where the distant fragrance and music that he had left were
swallowed in chilling mustiness and silence. If any one for a moment
ceased talking in that house, the brooding spirit of melancholy would
claim them all in forfeit.

“I didn’t meet Ivy till just before I left America,” he said. “I wish
I’d seen more of her.”

“I gather you gave her, if I may say so, very sound advice, _very_
sound,” said the judge. “She had heard the same sort of thing from her
parents more than once, but it is the modern fashion to disregard what
parents say. I’ve watched the growth of liberty among the girls of the
present day,” he went on, as though he were delivering a considered
judgement and defying other courts to reverse it on appeal, “and I
can’t find a single good thing to be said for it; not a single good
thing.”

“Oh, _I_ can!,” Eric answered. “A generation ago I’m sure I shouldn’t
have been allowed to take Ivy on the river alone, and we should both
have missed a very delightful day. At least, _I_ enjoyed it; I mustn’t
speak for her.”

“I’m sure she, too...” Lady Maitland turned, as the door opened. “Well,
my dear, how did you get on?”

Ivy looked past her to Eric and then turned to her mother with shining
eyes:

“It was wonderful! Mr. Lane, you’re the perfect host, you know.”

Eric bowed, noting from her form of address that she did not yet
propose to take her parents into her confidence. Lady Maitland was
looking closely at her, and he wondered what inference was being drawn
from the tell-tale, starry brightness of the eyes. Magic and poetry
were not dead so long as a man could charm that soft diamond sheen from
a girl’s eyes... He discovered that the judge was asking him a
question—and wondered what inference would be drawn from his own
tell-tale absence of mind....

“It was such a glorious day, it couldn’t help being successful,” he
said hastily. “We caught the eleven o’clock at Paddington and went to
Maidenhead....”

He was still describing their day, when Ivy’s two sisters entered with
their husbands. Eric did not hear much of Lady Maitland’s mumbled
introduction, but one woman appeared to be Rose and the other Myrtle.
Their mother evidently inclined towards horticultural prettiness; and
the judge had probably been very scornful when the names were chosen.
Scorn, indeed, seemed his fixed attitude of mind towards his family;
the sons-in-law forgot that they were promising young chancery
barristers and were only careful to avoid being committed for contempt
of court. One had travelled from Wimbledon, the other from
Beaconsfield; they came every week like fascinated rabbits... If it had
not been the middle of the Cambridge term, Ivy’s two brothers would
have completed the ceremonial, unchanging circle... The elder sisters
had Ivy’s good looks without her rebelliousness of spirit; in any
massed attack against their parents they would first hesitate and then
surrender; marriage was to them primarily an escape from the necessity
of making massed attacks on any one; they were their mother’s
daughters....

Supper was announced; and Eric found himself between the elder sister,
who never spoke, and Lady Maitland, who only stopped speaking when the
judge drowned her voice. As wine followed wine and course followed
course, Eric felt that rules could be framed for the legal profession,
binding its private life as straitly as the inhibitions of caste-law.
At one remove he had watched it in the days when he shared chambers in
Pump Court with Jack Waring and observed the grub of the pupil-room,
who lunched with fellow-grubs in Hall, developing through the chrysalis
stage of the newly-called junior into the practising barrister who
first marshalled a judge and was later bidden by younger marshals to
dine with the judge in his lodgings. From his friend’s description Eric
gathered that most barristers and all judges lived in the same kind of
house, married the same kind of wife and ate the same food. At the end
of dinner they told the same legal anecdotes before suggesting bridge.
(Mr. Justice Maitland probably disapproved of bridge on Sundays, but he
had been playing golf at Walton Heath—with other judges....)

Eric sipped a matchless sherry and sympathized with Lady Maitland over
her difficulties in obtaining butter during the war. (A small farmer
who lived near her old home in Hampshire had been willing to supply an
unlimited quantity, but the judge felt that it was bad citizenship to
exceed their ration by an ounce.) Ivy was watching them silently,
asking him with her eyes whether he now wondered why she had run away
from home; no vice could be imputed to her parents, but they were
solidly uncongenial, and in his turn Eric privately debated the
possibility of being able to break away altogether from the Cromwell
Road after marriage. To rescue her from the judge was no less important
than to rescue her from Gaymer. It would be intolerable, if he were
expected to dine there regularly; fortunately, he was at present being
treated with extravagant deference, which shewed that a reputation
still had its value; and, for a man, economic freedom consisted in
being able to patronize his father-in-law....

Strong mock-turtle soup and sherry; cold salmon and champagne that was
drinkable—and no more—(the judge had brought it out in Eric’s honour,
and it had been kept long enough to lose its quality); cold roast beef,
gooseberry tart and cheese, followed by a bottle of ’84 Dow; it was a
plain, substantial meal, spoiled by Lady Maitland’s unceasing efforts
to make her guest overeat himself and by his own need to talk in three
keys at once. The judge asked what the next play was to be and gave
himself a cue for recalling and describing the London stage as he had
known it in his youth (from the age of thirty he had been too busy to
spare time for the theatre, and nowadays—with certain illustrious
exceptions which he did not need to specify—there were no plays worth
seeing). Lady Maitland was still troubled by the butter shortage and
the difficulties of providing for a big house; it was a pain of spirit,
which wrung from her a moan whenever she could make it heard; and,
though the judge dominated the conversation with his cues and speeches,
she remained resolutely undefeated with an inexhaustible store of
food-news which she poked through the interstices of her husband’s
periods.

“I was asked to be chairman of a committee on dramatic censorship,” he
explained. “That’s how I come to be interested in the subject.”

“You must have some more gooseberries,” insisted Lady Maitland swiftly,
as he paused. “They’re from our own garden in Norfolk. Fruit always
seems so much nicer when you’ve grown it yourself, don’t you think?...
I was telling you about that salmon. The price—but prices don’t mean
anything to a bachelor, _I’m_ sure; you just order what you fancy, and,
if it’s not in season, so much the worse for you.” She laughed at her
own audacity. “Well, the reason why salmon is so disgracefully dear is
that ever so much has been deliberately allowed to go bad so as to
force up the price of the rest. I always think it’s so wicked to waste
food, don’t you? With so much want about. The people with small fixed
incomes—I’m always so sorry for them. I had a case the other day, the
woman who used to teach my girls music—”

“I’m sure Mr. Lane doesn’t want to hear about _her_,” interposed Ivy
with more solicitude for Eric than civility to her mother. “Father, Mr.
Lane’s secretary has gone away for a holiday, and I’m going in her
place.”

The two sisters looked up with dawning interest; Lady Maitland glanced
covertly at Eric; the judge nodded slowly to give himself time to
think. Ivy had thrown out the announcement without inviting his
approval or opinion. If she wanted either, it was not fair to speak in
front of Eric, but he had not adjusted himself to the new conditions of
her emancipation....

“How does that work in with Connie’s arrangements?,” asked Lady
Maitland, when her husband’s silence began to look like discourtesy to
Eric.

“Oh, she can get on without me for a month,” Ivy answered easily.
“Don’t you think it will be fun?”

“What does Mr. Lane say?”

Eric wished that the subject had not been introduced, if it brought so
much latent antagonism to the surface.

“She will be of very great assistance to me, if you’ll let her come,”
he answered.

The judge reached out eagerly to take up the challenge:

“My dear Lane, _we_ don’t control Ivy’s movements.”

“But I shouldn’t dream of asking her to come against your wishes. We
discussed this in America, before I engaged my present secretary.”

Lady Maitland was still visibly fluttered by finding Eric at her table
and discovering him to be Ivy’s intimate friend. The wives of
barristers and judges lived to as rigid a pattern as that of their
husbands; and it was part of their guild-law to dislike the idea of any
girl’s wandering off in the morning and returning at night without
giving any account of herself or having any one to look after her. Mr.
Lane, indeed, had a big enough position of his own to make him careful
of his reputation; he seemed steady and sensible, agreeing with almost
everything that she had said....

The judge felt that he had been trapped. It was no longer possible to
launch side-long reproaches at Ivy, when the responsibility of the
decision was put into his hands. As he waited for their decision, Eric
was able to break free for a moment from their fog of timid
conventionality and ask himself what they would think if they ever
guessed why he was there at that moment.

“Well, that’s a very proper sentiment,” said the judge at length, “very
proper. I’m glad to find one person in the house who thinks that the
wishes of parents should be consulted; I’m glad that Ivy should see
that this is not merely senile perversity or malice... I’m sure we can
trust her to you, Lane. If you could discover what we’ve done to make
life insupportable to her at home,” he added caustically, “we shall be
glad of enlightenment.”

Eric laughed, because it saved an answer; but Rose and Myrtle were
sitting upright and tense in scared anticipation of a scene, while
their husbands ransacked void brains for an attractive subject of
conversation. Lady Maitland was gamely casting back to the gross
tonnage of bully-beef wantonly wasted by the expeditionary force in the
first six months of the war; but their prompt and practised contrivance
only strengthened his feeling that he had never seen a house in which
the older generation succeeded less in understanding and sympathizing
with the aspirations, the enthusiasms, even the follies of the young.
He was sorry for Ivy and her brothers and sisters, sorry for the
common, faded, pretty mother; but he was also sorry for the blue-jawed
judge, who was a more interesting dramatic type, ruling like a
patriarch until dumb obedience changed without warning, so far as he
could see, to flaming revolt. A bigger man would not feel humiliated
that his daughter had transferred herself to a house two miles away in
the same city, because life at home rawed her nerves; the judge only
knew that this thing had been done, and he suspected that the whole
legal world of South Kensington was discussing it with malicious
interest.

At the end of dinner, the two sisters whispered to their husbands about
trains and slipped away with a murmured good-night. Left with an
untried audience, the judge returned freshly to the charge. While he
was at the bar, Maitland had won grudging tributes to the range and
depth of his knowledge; in his facts, if not in his law, he improvized
the little that he did not know, and the habit had become permanent in
his conversation. Before they had finished discussing the rival degrees
of hard work demanded of literature and the bar, Eric had detached
himself from the plans of personal interest and fatigue and was
surveying his host as a study to be committed to a certain closely
guarded note-book in his safe at home. The judge conversed
methodically: he would introduce his subject with a flourish like a
self-conscious proprietor flinging open the door of a room and asking
his visitors what they thought of _that_; after listening to half the
answer, he would raise one hand, beg leave to interrupt and develop his
theme unsparingly, only stopping when the chance of asking another
question promised him the opportunity of delivering another discourse.

“I’m afraid I shall have to be going in a moment,” said Eric, as the
judge offered him a second cigar. “I have work to do before I go to
bed.”

“Well, I’m very glad to have had this talk. You’ll come upstairs?” He
led the way to the door and paused with his fingers on the handle. “Do
you know a friend of Ivy’s called Gaymer?”

“I’ve met him a certain number of times,” Eric answered easily enough.

“What d’you think of him?”

“Oh, I hardly like to give an opinion of a man I know so little.”

The judge laughed sombrely:

“A good answer! You’re by no means as young and simple as you look,
Lane. Well, the reason I asked is this: I’m making you personally
responsible for Ivy and, if young Gaymer comes round after her, I shall
be obliged if you’ll send him about his business. Half the nonsense in
Ivy’s head comes from him. They struck up a very warm intimacy—quite
unknown to her mother and me, of course! that’s the modern method; I
only heard of it from people who were seeing them about together. So I
got my gentleman to honour me with his company at dinner; and I put it
to him—what was it all about? He pretended he didn’t understand, but I
wouldn’t have any of that. ‘I’ll thank you,’ I told him, ‘not to behave
in such a way as to cause people to gossip about my daughter. I daresay
you think I’m old-fashioned,’ I said. ‘You may think I’m wrong,’ I
said. ‘You may tell me that you’re only doing what thousands of other
men do; all I say is, I was brought up in a different school.’ And I
may tell you, Lane, that it was a school in which young men had manners
flogged into them. My gentleman stared at me very saucily and said:
‘Are you asking me my “intentions”? Nineteen-nineteen! Is that still
done? I’ve been away at the war so long that I’ve lost touch with that
sort of thing.’ Well, then I rang for his coat and hat. I’ve not seen
him since; but that was quite enough to make Ivy take his side, and
I’ve never had any doubt that he put into her head the idea of going
off and living her own life. ‘Living her own life’! How tired I am of
that phrase!...”

“I don’t encourage people to interrupt me when I’m working, judge,”
Eric reassured him.

The double doors of the drawing-room were open, and, as his head came
on a level with the landing, Eric saw Ivy sitting on a cushion at her
mother’s feet and talking with listless unconcern. She had put on her
hat, and her gloves were lying across her knees. Perhaps she was only
tired after her long day in the open air, perhaps she was goaded beyond
bearing by her father’s pin-pricks; or perhaps she had been pleading
fatigue so that he might take her away and be alone with her... As they
came into the room, her unconcern dropped from her, and she turned with
the same sheen of adoration in her eyes. He prayed that the judge might
have missed it; he ought not to have been expecting it, for they had
been talking gravely and responsibly as fathers of families, and Eric
had been commissioned to protect Ivy from undesirable acquaintances...
Lady Maitland had turned at the same moment, so she could not have seen
the glance; but, unless she were blind, she must notice that Ivy was
still transfigured....

“I was just coming down to say good-bye! Mr. Lane, what time do I come
to you to-morrow? If it’s early, I _must_ go to bed now.”

“I suppose nine o’clock’s out of the question?,” Eric hazarded.

“I can manage that.”

“Then won’t you let me see you home? I was telling your father that I’d
work to finish. Lady Maitland, will you think me very rude if I run
away? It’s so kind of you to let me come.”

“We were honoured to have you, I’m sure,” Lady Maitland answered. “And
now that you have found your way here—”

“That’s too charming,” he interrupted before she could finish the
dreaded sentence.

The judge said good-night warmly to his guest and less warmly to his
daughter, adding, before the doors were securely closed, that Lane
seemed a sensible, steady, decent young fellow.

Ivy offered smiling congratulations.

“Eric, I thought you were never coming!,” she whispered. “My dear, you
were wonderful! Mother’s in love with you! And you could hear what a
success you’d been with father. Was it a very terrible evening? I
didn’t notice anything except that you were there; I couldn’t see any
one else. I suppose father was disapproving of me, as usual....”

She stopped speaking, as the front door was opened for them.

“We must get things right with your people somehow,” said Eric
reflectively. “I think it’s awful when children don’t get on well with
their parents.”

“But, my dear, is it my fault? I don’t believe father ever cared for me
much, but he really hates me now.”

“If he does, it’s because he was very fond of you before... Nature’s
substitute....”

Ivy slipped her arm through his and walked for some moments in silence.
A taxi was on the rank by Gloucester Road Station, and they got into it.

“There’s only one substitute for love,” she whispered. “A greater
love... Isn’t that true?”

“I hope so.”

“We’ll make it so.”

“_If_, Ivy. Remember that for a month—”

“A month! But it’ll be just the same. I shall be with you every day. ‘I
suppose nine o’clock’s out of the question,’” she mimicked. “I’ll come
at eight or seven or six. And stay till mid-night.”

“And a nice character I should get from your father. He’s made me
responsible for you, Ivy... Eaton Place. And you _have_ been happy?”

“Oh, Eric, I wish it wasn’t over! Happy!”

Eric laughed and helped her out of the taxi. Her happiness was so
radiant that he felt it could not last. As he drove away he wondered
whether she had been as radiant with Gaymer. Such intensity of passion
was frightening; love that grew from seed to flower and fruit in a
single day might die in a single night....

Ivy stood on the doorstep until he was out of sight. Eric stared long
at an unlighted cigarette and then searched his pockets for a match. He
was bewildered and a little nervous and utterly exhausted....

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER EIGHT


  HALF-HONEYMOON


                “... And by and by my Soul return’d to me,
                And answer’d ‘I Myself am Heav’n and Hell:
                Heav’n but the Vision of fulfill’d Desire,
                And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire...”
              EDWARD FITZGERALD: “RUBÁIYAT OF OMAR KHAYYÁM.”

A fortnight before Whitsuntide Lord Pentyre engaged a taxi for the day
and drove round London, belatedly assembling a house-party for Croxton
Hall.

“Mothers aren’t fit to be trusted!,” he explained querulously to
Deganway, when they met in the smoking-room of the County Club. “I
suppose it’s the war. They’ve got utterly out of hand... And you could
always rely on mine to collect the worst-assorted cranks, crooks and
bores in the length and breadth of Buckinghamshire. I vaguely left
things to her... You must help me out, Gerry; we’ll make up a party of
our own and freeze out the others.”

Deganway called for a draft list of the guests before committing
himself.

“General Sir Maurice Maitland,” he read, letting fall his eye-glass in
blank dismay. “Oh, my dear, he’ll want to talk to me about the war; no
one can make him understand that it’s _over_... Lady Maitland... She
always wants to know what I’m going to do about Russia and _will_ make
me responsible for the peace conference... Ivy... Oh, that’s the niece;
Eric Lane has a wild passion for her—”

“I saw him at Maidenhead with her last Sunday. Happy thought! He shall
come and talk to her... I want one or two bright souls who’ll talk to
_me_ and perhaps take a hand in a little game of poker. You, me, Babs
Oakleigh, Sonia O’Rane, my young brother,—Amy Loring doesn’t play—the
Pinto de Vasconcellos....”

“Oh, Bobbie, _can_ we bear them for the whole of a long week-end?,”
asked Deganway with misgiving. “Madame is mortally offended with any
man who doesn’t make love to her, and the husband with any man who
does. I should hate to be knifed or garotted or whatever they do in
Brazil or wherever they come from.”

“I don’t know them. Margaret Poynter wished them on to my mother.”

“I don’t know them either. I dine with them, and that’s surely
enough... Well, I’ll see you through with them, if you’ll do the same
for me another time.”

Pentyre reached for his crutches and returned to his taxi. After
drawing blank at the Eclectic Club, he found John Carstairs at Hale’s
and Eric at the Thespian. The draft list was again submitted for
approval, with Ivy’s name prominently exposed as a bait; and, with an
effort of concentration, Eric addressed himself to the invitation. For
ten days he had been too much preoccupied to think of a world outside
Eaton Place and Ryder Street; week-end parties were no doubt being made
up; strange, half-forgotten voices summoned him to dine and go to the
opera, but he lived and worked in a dream bounded by unconsciousness
from the moment when Ivy left him at night till the moment when she
reappeared next day.

“Most of the party will be coming on Friday afternoon,” Pentyre
explained.

“Where to?,” asked Eric.

“Croxton, of course, you idiot! Do pay a _little_ attention! You
needn’t pretend you’ve never been there. Well, what about it?”

Eric stretched out his hand for the list and, on reading it again,
discovered that he had read it the first time without taking in any of
the names.

“I should love to come,” he answered absently.

Pentyre limped away in search of new victims, leaving Eric to dine with
Dr. Gaisford. An accomplice is entitled to full confidence, and Eric
had invited the doctor to receive a report on the Maidenhead
expedition; when Pentyre burst disturbingly in on his reverie, he was
wondering how much to tell. A week had passed since Ivy entered upon
her duties as secretary; on the first day she walked sedately into the
library, as nine o’clock was striking, then listened for the door to
close behind her and fluttered into his arms.

“I came so early that I had to wait outside for a quarter of an hour,”
she said, putting up her face to be kissed. “How are you, Eric?”

“Hardly awake yet,” he answered. “I usually dictate from my bed, at
this hour, but I didn’t want to embarrass you, so I’m dressed long
before my time.”

“But what a shame!... Won’t you kiss me good-morning, Eric?”

He shook his head and laughed. A half honeymoon was too dangerous an
experiment with a girl who was supposed to be considering
dispassionately whether she wanted to marry him. And, if he expected to
leave England in six or eight weeks’ time, there was abundant work to
be done first.

“I shall _probably_ call you ‘Miss Maitland’ from nine till six,” he
told her. “Do you like working with or without a hat? I’ll shew you
where I keep my typewriter and stationery and files and things; and
then I can give you enough letters to keep you occupied till
lunch-time.”

He was leading the way to the door, when Ivy laid her hand on his arm.

“Don’t be so horribly efficient for _five_ minutes,” she begged. “I
haven’t seen you since last night, Eric! _Such_ a long time! And I want
to be shewn your flat. I was too miserable to see anything when I was
here before.”

In a day and a night she had recovered her self-respect and composure;
she had slept well, and the shadows under her eyes had faded. Eric had
not the heart to chill her new-found happiness.

“Five minutes, then,” he conceded. “But we shall have to work twice as
fast afterwards. Did your aunt raise any objection to your coming here?”

“Oh, she was delighted... Eric, you _have_ got the loveliest rooms. We
shall live here, of course; I couldn’t bear to go anywhere else.”

“_If_,” he warned her.

“_When_,” she amended. “Eric, why d’you insist on waiting a month?
D’you want to see if you’ll get tired of me?”

“No, I just want to be sure that you know your own mind. Sudden
conversions are always dangerous. And you’re too precious to me to be
married on a snap division. So for a month we won’t say or do anything
that ties your hands in any way. I’m not giving a hint to any one, even
my own people; I’m not proposing to make any allusion to you.”

Before three days had passed Eric found that it was easier to take this
resolution than to live up to it. Amy Loring stopped him in the street
to say:

“I hear the little Maitland girl is working for you now. I’m so glad.”

“My secretary’s gone for a holiday,” he answered, unconsciously putting
himself on his guard. “Ivy kindly consented to come in her place for a
few weeks.”

“I was told you’d taken her on permanently.”

“Oh, no! Who did you hear that from?”

“Johnnie Gaymer. He seems to have transferred his affections to another
quarter. I won’t mention names, but a woman—she’s rather a friend of
mine; at least, her husband is; and, while he’s away, she’s been
getting much too intimate with Johnnie—I talked to her... And then I
talked to him. Whether it ever does any good I don’t know, but I did
tell him very frankly to keep his hands off other people’s property.
And, while I was on the subject, I told him to leave this Maitland
child alone. It was then that he told me she’d gone to you.”

“His intelligence department is good,” Eric commented. “She only came
to me two days ago.”

“I expect Johnnie feels that his nose is a little out of joint.”

Eric smiled, but he was disquieted; though he saw and heard nothing of
Gaymer, he could not help thinking of him; he had been brooding
uneasily when Pentyre came into the club; he continued to worry himself
with vague doubts as he waited for Gaisford.

“Well, I suppose I may say we’re on probation,” Eric announced, when
the doctor arrived for dinner. “I put the whole case before the girl,
the day after our talk, and we’re taking a month to see how we get on
before she makes her final decision. I hope that may be accounted to me
for prudence. By the way, she’s working for me as secretary for a few
weeks.”

“So I heard.”

“Damnation!”

The doctor laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

“You know, Eric, you’re as much of an ostrich as you’ve always been,”
he said. “Either credit people with the faculty of sight, or be
philosophical and say you don’t care what other people think.”

“I _don’t_ care,—but it’s annoying,” said Eric inconsequently. “How did
you hear?”

“From Barbara Oakleigh.”

Eric was startled, and his expression and tone grew hard.

“It’s very good of her to interest herself in me,” he murmured.

Gaisford ignored the sneer and gave Eric time to recover his urbanity.

“It’s very natural,” he amended. “I told you, when you first came back,
that you’d played far too big a part in her life for her to let go of
you without a struggle. You may think that, after the harm she’s done,
she’d keep away out of common decency—that’s a man’s point of view—;
but, when a woman gets down to what she considers vital, common decency
has no meaning for her. The function of woman—”

“What did she say?,” Eric interrupted, blowing away the froth of
generalization.

“We had a long talk. She asked if I’d seen you, and I said ‘Yes.’ How
were you? I said you were better than you’d been in ten years. Did you
seem happy? ‘Very,’ I said. (I’m devoted to Barbara in spite of
everything, but she wanted the luxury of feeling that she’d spoilt your
life and of pretending to be inconsolable about it; I couldn’t allow
that). She asked if you ever mentioned her; I said ‘no’... Then I could
see that she wasn’t satisfied, for her next question was—who was the
girl who was working for you; and was she the girl who was always with
you at the opera? I said, truthfully enough, that I didn’t know... Be
warned, my friend.”

“I wonder how she heard,” was all that Eric would answer; but he was
aflame with resentment at the thought that Barbara even unconsciously
dreamed of overturning the flimsy shelter which he was so patiently
erecting from the rubble and ruin of his life.

Gaisford looked at him out of the corner of his eye and saw that he was
frowning. He saw, too, that, were Barbara to question him now, he could
not so truthfully pay tributes to Eric’s health.

“Well, I wish you the best of luck, my son,” he said. “Of course, it’s
an enormous risk, but I think you do at least see that; and you’re
giving yourself as fair a chance as circumstances allow.”

“You’re—temperate in your enthusiasm,” Eric laughed.

“I’ve reached an age when I no longer look for perfection—even the
perfect marriage,” Gaisford said at length. “And I’ve outgrown romance.
And I’ve not many ideals left. When everything else is burnt out, I
want to know that you’ve found companionship. You’re as bad as all the
rest, Eric; at present you’re doing this for a new emotion... I don’t
_know_ this girl—, but is she going to be a _companion_? It’s an awful
thing to marry some one who’s not educated up to your standard; it’s
like playing bridge eternally with a partner who doesn’t know one suit
from another.”

“She’s—a companion all right,” said Eric softly, remembering with a
warm rush of gratitude the new colour that she had already brought into
his life. Ivy was quick and receptive; he found her also well-read and
intelligent, with a personal standpoint towards books and ideas which
she had taken up by herself and would not surrender without a struggle;
if she picked up her generation’s catch-words, it was because she was
still too young to understand the emancipation of which every one was
talking. Best of all, she was adaptable by nature, and he could see her
moulding herself to his form in the single hope of bringing him
happiness. “She’s companion enough to make me forget everything
else—already,” he added.

“_Already?_ It doesn’t occur to you that you’re both drunk with romance
at the moment? The reason why your two-penny-halfpenny plays are so
popular is that we all love telling ourselves stories and escaping into
a world where we can be as dramatic and romantic and purposeful and
magnanimous as a character in a book—or as you and this child are being
at this moment. Admit that you’re both enjoying it! The heroics, the
tragedy, the sacrifice—”

“I’m making no sacrifice, Gaisford,” Eric interrupted, soberly.

“You’re incorrigible! You were _bound_ to say that! It’s in the part.
Well, well! I only beg you—because I’m fond of you—not to make a farce
of what you call your probation. Imagine yourself criticizing some one
else’s play instead of living in one of your own. Detachment,
detachment!”

For the next few days Eric conscientiously tried to regard his
secretary as a soulless, amorphous machine; Ivy, however, was made too
much of a piece to work mechanically from nine till half-past one, then
give rein to her feelings from half-past one till three and again
relapse into a machine. She toiled as though her life and his career
depended on every letter that she wrote; her eyes shone when he came
into the room; and she took in every movement of his body and every
trick of voice and speech. At the end of the day she sprang up like a
child released from school and threw her arms round him.

“Do you _always_ work like this?,” she asked him one night. “It _must_
be bad for you.”

“I don’t call _this_ work,” he answered. “The atmosphere’s too highly
charged with Miss Ivy Maitland for that. But I want to get my present
job finished, so that, _if_ I go to America—”

“_When_,” she interrupted with a pleading smile that taxed his
fortitude. It was hardly possible to keep at an artificial distance
without robbing her of her precarious security.

“We’ll discuss that in three weeks’ time. _If_ I go, I want to go with
a clear conscience.”

“You insist on waiting?”

“We can’t take any risk, Ivy,” he sighed.

She pushed him gently into a chair and knelt on the floor by his side,
resting her face on her hands and looking at him with an adoration
which seemed still too great for her to comprehend.

“My darling, do you think I don’t love you more and more every day?,”
she asked. “I don’t _want_ to wait. Sometimes I grow frightened, Eric;
I wonder if you’ll repent... I know you love me, or you wouldn’t have
done what you have done—”

“But you wouldn’t be a woman, if you didn’t want me to tell you at
short intervals that I still loved you. I’m trying to get a cool
judgement from you.”

“And I don’t want to be cool or temperate or sensible. I... I want not
to be frightened again, Eric.”

Her eyes, wistful with discouragement, filled with tears and fell until
he could see the long lashes black against her cheeks. Since their
return from Maidenhead, she had never complained; and Eric was in
danger of forgetting that she had anything to fear. Putting his arm
round her waist, he lifted her on to the arm of the chair.

“You’ve nothing to be afraid of, Ivy,” he whispered, stroking her short
black hair until she grew calm at his touch. “I shouldn’t go back on my
promise, even if I wanted to. And it happens that I don’t want to.”

“But you _do_ love me, Eric? I’ve been thinking—quite a lot and quite
cold-bloodedly. I can’t take what you’re offering, unless you love me.
It would be too much, I should have no right... If I did anything,
after this, to make you wretched... And I _shouldn’t_ take it.... You
said you’d marry me in spite of everything, but I sometimes think
you’re marrying me _because_ of everything, _because_ I’ve made such a
mess of my life, _because_ you were divinely sorry for me. But do you
love me apart from that? If I told you that the whole thing was a
dream—”

“I should call it a device of destiny for bringing us together...” He
stopped abruptly, afraid to trust his voice, as her eyes lit up. “And,
by the same test, if that _were_ only a dream, would you want to marry
me?,” he continued.

“Yes.”

“More than any one you’ve ever met or are likely to meet?”

“Yes.” Eric sighed and lapsed into silence; for the first time in ten
days he felt sure of himself. “But I shan’t love you a bit,” she
pouted, “if you’re cold and remote when we’re married.”

“If... All right, I won’t tease you, Ivy child, if it frightens you.
What can I say to keep you from ever being frightened again? Shall I
tell you that my heart and head and everything inside me were dead
until a few days ago? You’ve brought me to life again...” He leaned his
head against her shoulder, staring into the empty fire and talking more
to himself than to her. “What d’you think it means to me to feel that
this room’s alive, alive with you? When I’m called, my first thought is
that in two hours I shall see you. An hour and a half, one hour... When
you come in, Ivy, it’s all dark outside. It’s not what I should call
easy to work with you. I want to break the typewriter and pick you up
in my arms... Is it just a coincidence that I’ve happened to lunch at
home every day this week? Or is it possible that I’ve been looking
forward to it ever since the last moment when we were off duty
together? Is it coincidence that I’ve been to the opera every night
this week—Aida, ye all powerful gods! and another dose of Louise—and
that I’ve sat two feet behind you so that I could see your face lit up
and knew that you were happy?” Her hand stole down over his shoulder,
and he seized and kissed it. “And I wonder if you’ll ever guess how
amazingly empty these rooms seem when I come back at night and find
you’re not here—and _won’t_ be here till next day?”

“I _know_. When I get back... I pray for you, Eric. I never used to
pray before. At least, it never meant anything to me, but now... I
thank God for you; and I feel He understands... He understands that
you’ve interceded for me. And I pray Him to forgive me and shew me some
way of paying you back. And sometimes I pray Him to make me patient;
and sometimes, when I’m frightened, I pray Him just to make the weeks
pass quickly. Ah, my dear one!” Her fingers tightened on his wrist, and
the voice at his ear trembled. “If anything happened to you!”

“Nothing’s going to, Ivy!”

“But _ever_? You’re sixteen years older than I am. When I’m seventy—”

“You’ll have had more than enough of me then.”

“Please God, I shall die before you, Eric!”

“Well, I’ll promise not to marry again,” he laughed. “Ivy, are you too
tired to take down one more letter?”

“My darling, of course not!”

“I want you to write to my solicitors. I’ve never made a will; and, of
course, I shall have to make another, _if_ and _when_ we marry, but I
don’t want to run even the remotest risk. I gather that you can’t look
to your father with any certainty?”

“He told me so—quite definitely. If I _chose_ to cut myself adrift—”

“Well, I’m going to tell my solicitors to draft a will; I’ll leave your
name blank and fill it in afterwards. Then, if I drop down dead in the
street—”

“Don’t, Eric!”

It was seven o’clock before he had finished, and they both had to dress
and make their way out to dinner by a quarter past eight. Eric walked
into Ryder Street to find her a taxi and to post his letters.

“What do you say to coming to my people for this next week-end?,” he
asked. “We won’t tell them anything, of course, but I should like you
to meet them. I’m committed to going any way; and I can take you on the
plea of work, if necessary. My younger brother was away fighting, when
he came of age, so we’re celebrating it now. Will you come? Good. We’ll
discuss details at dinner; you’re coming to this Brazilian show at the
Ritz, aren’t you?”

“Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos? Yes, Aunt Connie’s taking me.”

“Let’s hope we’re together. It threatens to be a tiresome evening.”

His dinner-party, heralded by a flamboyant card of invitation and
reinforced by the personal appeals of Lady Maitland, Mrs. Shelley and
Lady Poynter, had threatened him for three weeks. Early in the season a
taciturn and swarthy South American had descended upon London with a
wife, a bottomless purse and inexhaustible letters of introduction.
Madame Pinto had noteworthy diamonds, vitality, an interest in the more
obvious forms of flirtation and a hunger for entertaining. Her first
letter of introduction was presented to Lady Poynter, who telephoned to
six friends in twice six minutes: “If you will help me out with this
Pinto woman, I’ll do the same for you”; and for three weeks the
Brazilians were pushed from house to house by those who were menaced by
their own Madame Pinto—under other names—or who had launched Madame
Pintos in the past. Gerry Deganway, whose name headed every list of
those whom it did not matter inviting to meet the Pinto de
Vasconcellos, tracked them round London and sketched a map of their
progress from Belgrave Square and Lady Poynter, where they were
submerged by symbolist poets and rapidly expelled because they
“contributed nothing” to the symposium, by way of Eaton Place, where
Lady Maitland sold them boxes for charity concerts, to Grosvenor Square
and Croxton Hall, where Lady Pentyre took them in because, in her son’s
words, she knew no better and would be kind to any one.

Thereafter gratitude or vindictiveness urged them to reprisals, and for
three more weeks Lady Poynter arranged “Pinto parties” on the principle
that, if her friends would keep her in countenance on one day, she
would do the same for them when their turn came. The formula was
incorporated in the code of social honour, till a man would more
readily have malingered on the eve of an attack than failed to succour
a friend who was struck down by a Pinto invitation. Eric had resisted
for some weeks: but Lady Poynter at last presented an ultimatum, which
he saw no means of evading.

There was already a considerable nucleus when he reached the hotel a
few minutes before the advertised time for dinner; and those who knew
nothing of their host were industriously adding to the saga collected
by those who did.

“Why does Margaret Poynter _do_ these things?,” squeaked Deganway with
a petulant glance round the company. “She’s _too_ tiresome. What she
can _hope_ to get out of it—”

“I understand she’s trying to make him subsidize a Shakespeare
theatre,” interrupted Carstairs. “Well, I mustn’t throw stones; my old
mother wants to stick him with Herrig on a long lease. _I_ think it’s a
bit of a gamble, because no one knows anything about them. The Embassy
shuts up like an oyster, if you mention their name; and the Brazilian
colony don’t seem much the wiser.”

“Oh, _I_ heard—Now, let me see, what _did_ I hear?,” said Deganway,
letting fall his eye-glass and frowning. “He got a contract for
building a new railway and, because the contract said nothing about
bridges, he stopped short, whenever he came to a river, and started
again on the other side. Then they gave him a new contract to build the
bridges and link up his system. _That’s_ where he made his profit; but
Brazil wasn’t healthy, when he’d finished, so he bolted with the
boodle. So romantic! He didn’t bolt quick enough, though; _she_
overtook him just as the gangway was being cast off.”

He laughed thinly; but Eric had heard enough from him and, turning
away, he found himself face to face with Lady John Carstairs.

“Do _all_ English people make fun of a woman before eating her food,”
she said rather sharply, with a quelling gesture at her husband, as
they shook hands.

“Only the better-bred,” Eric answered. “It’s one of the things you have
to get used to. What’s Madame Pinto like? I don’t even know her by
sight.”

“Oh, she’s quite harmless, but you can’t pick up everything in a day.
I’ve been here six months and I can’t yet keep all my own husband’s
relations distinct... Ah, here they are!”

She turned with a smile, as a stout, sallow woman in a pink dress
advanced apologetically into the lounge with a tall, saturnine husband
at her heels. Both looked round with dizzy shyness, breaking into
shrill effusiveness, when they recognized a face and could fit it with
an approximate name. Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos spoke fluent English
with a strong accent; her husband limited himself to a bow, a handshake
and a clipped “How do you do?,” as his wife’s friends brought up their
own friends to be introduced. From time to time, pretending to count
the numbers, he peered furtively at a type-written list, but, as Lady
Poynter undertook the introductions and never remembered more than one
name, his initial perplexity deepened to bewilderment.

Eric was caught and pushed forward with a hasty, “You know Madame
Pinto, don’t you? Now, is it worth while waiting for the Oakleighs?
Barbara was born a week late, and she’s never caught up.”

Though he fancied that for the last fortnight he had forgotten Barbara
and that for the last three months he had rehearsed himself into
impassivity, Eric knew that the muscles of his face were stiffening.
Lady Poynter was happily too much preoccupied to notice any sign of
embarrassment, and in a moment he was at ease again. It would be a
strain on his fortitude, perhaps, if he were placed next to Barbara;
but he knew that he could meet her and sit composedly at the same
table. He knew also that this meeting had to take place....

Lady Poynter possessed herself of the type-written list and suggested
that they should begin without waiting any longer. As he peered at the
name-cards, Eric was relieved to find that he was five places away from
Barbara, on the same side of the table, between Ivy and Madame Pinto;
he was further relieved that he was facing the door so that he would
probably see her before she saw him....

As dinner began, his hostess exchanged bewilderment for frank
recklessness.

“I do not know half these people,” she confided loudly. “I meet so
many. Tell me, Mr. ——,” she reached for powdered sugar and tried
without success to read Eric’s name-card, “the woman next to Lord
Poynter; who is she?”

“That’s Lady John Carstairs,” Eric answered. “Her husband’s on Lady
Maitland’s right; and that’s his mother, the Duchess of Ross, between
your husband and Mr. Deganway.”

“Ah, thank you. It is so confusing at first. I have made the most
dreadful mistakes through not knowing who every one was.”

“Well, Lady John says she doesn’t yet know her own relations,” Eric
answered reassuringly. “She’s an American, you know.”

Madame Pinto rolled her eyes in consternation:

“I did not know. We met at Lady Poynter’s house, and I said terrible
things about North America. In my country—Brazil, you know... You are
not an American?”

“You can say anything you like to me, Madame Pinto. Political, racial,
religious... By the way, half these people are Catholics, you know....”

He broke off, as the door opened to admit Barbara and George Oakleigh.
Eric felt his features stiffening again, as she looked round to
identify her hostess and came forward with an exaggerated apology. She
had always dominated any room that she entered; she dominated this one.
While she paused a studied moment in the door-way, every one
involuntarily turned to look at her; the comfortable clatter of
conversation grew still and died away, to be succeeded by blurred cries
of welcome: “Babs!” “Dear Barbara, how sweet you look to-night!” “Babs
darling!” Eric had stood a dozen times, like George Oakleigh, a pace
behind her, as she came into the room; like him, a little embarrassed
to be late; like him, exulting in the theatrical magnificence of her
entry....

Ivy touched his arm and whispered:

“Is that Lady Barbara? I’ve only seen her in the distance before. Eric,
how fascinating she is!”

Barbara brought her apology to an end and looked for her chair. Her
eyes met Eric’s, and, as she passed him, she shook hands and murmured,
“How are you?” There was a final spurt of welcome from the men on
either side of her, as she sat down; and Eric tried to remember what he
had been discussing before her interruption.

Madame Pinto had lost no time in establishing him as her confidant and
adviser; with her second glass of champagne, matter-of-course
friendliness warmed to embarrassingly out-spoken coquetry.

“You are clever and nice,” she proclaimed resonantly, darting a swift
glance from under darkened eye-lashes and touching his hand with
sparkling, ring-laden fingers. “Those two, now? Who are they?”

“George Oakleigh and his wife,” Eric answered in an undertone. “He used
to be in the House—in Parliament, you know. She was Lady Barbara Neave,
daughter of Lord Crawleigh, our Governor-General in Canada at one time,
then Viceroy of India. She’s related to almost everybody here—first
cousin of Carstairs, first cousin of Lady Amy Loring....”

Madame Pinto nodded vehemently until her diamonds quivered and flashed.

“I remember! I met her at lunch with Lady Poynter. And, also, I have
heard of her,” she answered. “That young man in your Ministry of
Foreign Affairs—”

“Deganway? You mustn’t take all he says too literally,” interposed Eric.

Madame Pinto’s voice was more penetrating than she knew; and he could
see that Barbara was sitting inattentive to her neighbours.

“He said that she had broken all your hearts, one after another... I am
not surprised.”

“You _must_ be careful,” Eric whispered in agony. “She’ll hear.”

Barbara had already heard and was pretending that she had not,
galvanizing herself to an interest in her neighbour. Madame Pinto
looked down the table and saw her preoccupied.

“Ah, you are one of all those relations! I am sorry, Mr. ——?”

“An old friend,” Eric answered brusquely.

Perhaps it was feminine curiosity, perhaps Madame Pinto felt
subconsciously that she was being headed off something of interest,
perhaps she had a perverse talent for the _mal à propos_. Certainly it
seemed as though nothing would satisfy her until she had plumbed the
bottomless pool of gossip in which Deganway had submerged Barbara; and
for the hundredth time Eric wished that some one would thrash Deganway
or cut his tongue out.

“I hear you’re taking a house in London,” he began hurriedly.

Madame Pinto was not to be so easily diverted from her quest.

“Mr. Deganway told me,” she pursued, “that, when she was sixteen, a man
blew his brains out, because she would not marry him. He says that,
ever since, she has expected it of all the others.”

“The first part of the story’s probably untrue; the second certainly
is,” Eric answered curtly. “I know her very well, Madame Pinto. She’s
always been rather unconventional, she’s always been greatly admired
and very much in the public eye. The result is that no story is too
fantastic to be believed about her by people who don’t know her.
Deganway _does_; and he’s no business to talk such nonsense... I used
to see a great deal of Lady Barbara before her marriage; I look back on
her friendship as one of the greatest achievements of my life. Steele
said of Lady Elizabeth Hastings that to love her was a liberal
education; I should like to think that my friendship meant half as much
to any one.... Do you know Carstairs well? He’s in the Diplomatic, and
I believe he was out in Rio once....”

The abrupt transition from low-voiced, tense earnestness to a
conversational drawl convinced even Madame Pinto that he was forcibly
dismissing Barbara from discussion.

“Have I said something dreadful?,” she asked with an unabashed smile.

“Didn’t I tell you that you could say anything you liked to me?,” he
laughed. “Political, racial, religious? I only draw the line at
something personal, when it concerns a friend of mine and doesn’t
happen to be true. Deganway ought to know better.”

As he turned to Ivy, Eric glanced involuntarily past her and was in
time to see Barbara looking quickly away. She, then, had heard, too.
And probably half a dozen more on either side, but they did not matter.
He wondered whether she would try to speak to him after dinner. She
would love the dramatic sense of humility in thanking him for his
defence....

“I sent my mother a line before dinner to fix up about the week-end,”
Eric announced at random. “I forget if I warned you that my father had
a serious illness last autumn....”

His family and home provided a subject for discussion with Ivy until
the end of dinner. While Madam Pinto was talking, it seemed as though
they were rivetted to their chairs through all eternity; as soon as he
was set free, their plates were snatched away almost before they could
see what had been placed before them. Lulled by the drone of his own
voice, Eric roused with a start to hear the Duchess of Ross asking her
son whether he had room for her in his car, as she had to be at another
party by eleven. One or two of the men looked at their watches; chairs
were pushed back and heads dived under the table in search of gloves
and bags. Barbara stood up and took in the room at a glance; and Eric
felt that her personality spread through the air like a wave of
electricity. Ivy was talking to Lady Maitland, Madame Pinto was
receiving thanks and showering _adieux_ on her guests; alone and apart,
he was too far from any one to take cover.

Barbara began to draw on her gloves and walked slowly towards the door.
As she came opposite him, she turned almost in afterthought, looking up
for an instant before concentrating afresh on the buttons of her glove.

“It was nice of you to stand up for me against that odious woman,
Eric,” she whispered.

“One lie more or less hardly matters at this season, Lady Barbara.”

“Dear God! don’t call me that!”

Eric had a full armoury of bitterness, but opportunity killed any
desire to use it. He had been ready to find Barbara falsely repentant
or as falsely defiant; she would perhaps explain, perhaps scoff; he had
not expected that she would plead for mercy because he had unwittingly
hurt her.

“_I_ did not seek this meeting,” he answered.

“You never used to be vindictive.”

“I’m doing my best to forget anything I was, anything I’ve done.”

“You hate me as much as that? I thought... No, I hoped, I _hoped_ you
meant it when you said that to love me was a liberal education.”

Her softly reproachful tone puffed into flame every memory of his own
three years’ suffering, which to her was but an occasion for snatching
at a compliment.

“If so, a liberal education has no place for romance. You cured me of
that. It was not your fault. As you know, I’d been a semi-invalid all
my life; I’d been brought up among women who shewed me only
unselfishness and devotion and patience and sacrifice. I could trust
them; they told the truth. When you used the same terms, I thought they
meant the same things to you.”

She bit her lip until it shewed grey under the white gleam of her teeth:

“Well, I hope you at least will be happy, Eric, some time. When you
are, you’ll become magnanimous again. Then perhaps you’ll forgive me.”

“I can’t feel that my forgiveness plays much part in your happiness.”

“I sometimes wonder if I’ve ever known what happiness means...
Good-bye, Eric.”

She held out her hand and stood looking at him with eyelids flickering
as though he had struck her in the face; she was wincing before a
second blow. To act was so much second nature to her that her attitude
of unfriended humility might be a pose; but Eric felt that, inasmuch as
she had not descended to his duel of bitterness, she had prevailed in
the encounter. He hated the whole evening, with its need to lie in her
defence and his own bursting desire to escape the charge of magnanimity.

Eric drew his hand away, but he could not help looking at her
flickering lids and reproachful eyes. So she had stood a score of times
when she had goaded him to madness and his taut nerves had snapped. No
longer acting, but suddenly hurt, suddenly shocked, suddenly tired;
sorry to have maddened him, but helplessly torn and unable to let him
go; and always gently maternal, yearning to comfort, to forgive... Her
lips were parted; Eric could have sworn that her hands twitched as
though she were once more going to throw her arms round him and seal
her forgiveness with a kiss. With theatrical timeliness he heard George
Oakleigh excusing himself from accepting an invitation....

It was impossible to stop looking at her... Why George? He wanted to
fling the question at her, demanding why she had married George
Oakleigh instead of waiting, though he knew that their love was
paralysed before they parted. Waiting would have done no good. But why
George, if he had not made her happy? She did not hint that she had
married the wrong man, but it was written in her eyes; tragedy had come
home to a woman who had played mock-tragic parts all her life...
Loneliness... Despair... And Eric had fancied that the suffering had
been all on his side, that she had at worst been worried to know how to
explain away her treatment of him....

“Thursday, yes. I don’t think we’re doing anything on Thursday. I’ll
ask Babs.”

George was still juggling with his invitation: he must have kept it
aloft for hours by now... And he was coming to draw Barbara into the
game.

“Good-bye, Lady Barbara,” said Eric.

She winced again:

“Do you need that to make yourself secure? If you knew how it hurt!
Whatever I’ve done... I haven’t defended myself, have I, Eric? And,
whatever you think of me, won’t you say you forgive me, if I tell you
that I need it, that it will make a difference to me? Do you want me to
feel that I’ve killed your generosity—in addition to everything else?”

“I’ll say it, if it’s any consolation to you.”

“Thank you, Eric. You needn’t be afraid, I’ve had my share of
education, too. I didn’t know you were going to be here to-night; I’ve
tried not to embarrass you. If it’s any help for you to know where I’m
dining and that sort of thing... I’ll do anything I can not to make
things harder.”

Eric shook his head quickly and looked up, as George crossed the room.
Barbara’s moment of sincerity had passed: she had passed the
half-obliterated line between emotion and drama. Already she was
weaving a romance about the pair of them: there was to be a life’s
passion thwarted, two starved hearts beating in remote loneliness,
resignation on her side and chivalry on his, with ingenious romantic
appliances to keep the starved hearts starving; they were to spend as
much quixotic contrivance on keeping apart as ever a pair of lovers had
given to daily clandestine meetings... A sensationalist to the core...
The distraction would keep her dramatic sense stimulated for years; in
the endless possibilities of make-believe she might forget her tragedy.
He would almost have abetted her, if so he might forget the look of
tragedy which he had seen in her eyes; but he could not trust her....

“We’ll take our chance,” he said. “I shall possibly be going away
fairly soon.”

George was waiting patiently until they had finished.

“I say, Babs, are we doing anything on Thursday?” he asked. “Madame
Pinto wants us to lunch, and I said I thought we could.”

She looked at her husband with a smile of gentle reproach:

“Darling George, we’ve got the O’Ranes lunching with us. Am I right in
thinking that you’ve forgotten all about them?”

Eric bowed and turned away. “_Am I right in thinking...?_” It was a
familiar trick of speech; Barbara had used it to him on the night of
their first meeting nearly four years ago. It hurt him to hear her
using it to George, though he did not mind her calling him “darling”.
Women were a promiscuous sex, transferring their hearts and bodies as
light-heartedly as a servant took a new situation “to better
herself”... As he passed out of sound of their voices, he felt that
this evening he had had the greatest escape of his life; Barbara would
not try to meet him again, and he could keep her at arm’s length, if
she did. He only hoped that he would forget that look of tragedy....

Ivy was waiting for him by the door, and he felt that he owed her an
explanation, perhaps an apology....

“Aunt Connie’s gone home in Lady Poynter’s car,” she announced. “She’s
left her own for us. I’d better drop you at your flat and take it on
home.”

“I’ll just say good-bye...” He darted back and rejoined her a moment
later. “Well, thank goodness _that’s_ over. Of all the forcible feeders
who outrage total strangers in the sacred name of hospitality... Did
you enjoy yourself, Ivy?”

She pressed his hand, once more at ease; and he wondered whether she
fancied that she was rescuing him for herself from Barbara.

“I love being with you—as you know, you vain thing!,” she answered.
“Shall I tell you something? I went into the dining-room before dinner
and found Mr. Deganway and Lord Pentyre working round the table. Lord
Pentyre said, ‘Any luck, Gerry? I’ve drawn Amy Loring and Connie
Maitland. Might be worse.’ And Mr Deganway said, ‘Oh, my dear, I’m
between Eleanor Ross and Margaret Poynter. I don’t think I can bear
that; I shall break down and cry.’ So he changed the cards. Well, you
said you hoped we should be together, I didn’t see why I shouldn’t look
after myself; so I changed places with Lady John and put myself next to
you. Were you pleased?”

“You badly brought-up child! Yes, I was pleased, but I wish you’d given
me Lady John on the other side instead of the Vasconcellos woman.”

He settled comfortably in his corner of the car, reminded inevitably of
the nights three years ago, when he drove home with Barbara, discussing
the party that they had left. She was the first woman to break down the
isolated self-sufficiency of the bachelor and to teach him the
indulgent delight of sharing trivialities; and, from the day when she
dropped out of his life, he had been groping blindly for anything that
would breach the wall of desolation and silence which was her parting
gift....

The car stopped at the door of his flat in Ryder Street, and Ivy put up
her face to be kissed.

“Good-night, darling Eric,” she whispered.

“Good-night, sweetheart.”

As the car drove away, he stood irresolutely in the hall, swinging his
keys. A widower remarrying.... He was beginning to treat Ivy very much
as he had treated Barbara, thinking of her and for her in the same way,
using the words which had once been sacred to Barbara. And Ivy was
fitting herself into his life as Barbara had once done... Promiscuity
was not the differentia of woman....

Two days later his mother wrote colourlessly to say that she would be
delighted to see Miss Maitland for the week-end. If she speculated on
the person and destiny of a girl whose name her son had not mentioned
until that moment, she kept her own counsel. When they travelled down
to Winchester on the Saturday afternoon, a Remington was included in
their luggage, and Eric reminded Ivy that they must keep up the
pretense that she had come to help him with his work. Though they had
rehearsed their parts, both were a little self-conscious; and to their
oversensitive appreciation every one at first seemed elaborately
anxious not to betray surprise. Sybil met them at the station and
greeted Ivy with unreserved friendliness; Lady Lane welcomed her in the
hall, and, when Eric went upstairs to dress, Basil came into his room
with ingenuous congratulations.

“Very nice line in secretaries, old thing,” he observed, throwing
himself on Eric’s bed. “And it’s like you to keep her to yourself, you
old dog, when I’ve been mouldering for two years in Salonica and simply
yearning for refined female society.”

“I took the earliest possible opportunity,” Eric answered. “She’s only
been with me a fortnight, while my permanent secretary’s taking a
holiday; and she’s only going to be with me another fortnight.”

“Well, send her along to my jolly old office, when she’s through with
you,” Basil suggested swiftly. “You’ve simply no conception of the sort
of thing that’s blown in during the war. Every sign of staying, too.”

“I don’t think she’s on the look-out for that kind of job. I know her
people, and, when she heard I was alone and secretaryless, she very
kindly volunteered to come and lend me a hand till the other girl came
back.”

Basil wagged his head dubiously.

“I call it very trusting of her parents,” he said. “Fresh sweet English
girl, young bachelor of doubtful morality, notoriously associated with
the stage... I don’t like it at all. I think I must warn her about you.”

“I doubt if you’ll cut much ice... Is any one dining, or are we
treating her to unrelieved family?”

“The Warings are coming over to ease the monotony. And, by the same
token, I’d better go and dress!”

Basil, then, suspected nothing; Geoffrey would think what Basil told
him to think; his father would awake to interest when the engagement
was announced—and not before. There remained his mother and Sybil.

Lady Lane was by herself in the drawing-room, when he went down, and
she laid aside her paper to say:

“My dear, what a sweet little girl! Where did you find her?”

Whether it were deliberate encouragement or not, Eric was pleased:

“I met her in America first of all. She’s a daughter of the judge. I
gather he knew the guv’nor in some prehistoric period.”

“I don’t remember the name.” Lady Lane waited, as though she expected
that Eric might have something more to tell her; then she repeated: “A
sweet little girl. You’re lucky to find her. What’s happened to the
other one?”

“She’s only having a holiday. Ivy very kindly volunteered to come in
her place.”

He used the Christian name deliberately and left his mother to draw her
own inferences. There was a second silence; and, because she asked
nothing more, he felt that, before he left the house, he must take his
mother into his confidence.

Throughout dinner he tried to keep one eye on his family and the other
on Ivy. She was achieving a marked success, which was not confined to
his younger brothers. Sybil and the Warings made at least a show of
surrender, and her success reacted on Ivy. Though she dared not look at
him, Eric could see that her eyes were shining as on the day when he
had brought her back from Maidenhead; she was feeling, as clearly as if
she cried it aloud, that he had the most delightful parents and
brothers and sister in the world.

It was after eleven—and late for Lashmar Mill-House—before the Warings
left. Eric waited to fasten the windows, while his mother turned out
the lights; they met in his father’s work-room.

“I quite forgot to ask Miss Maitland if she’d like her breakfast sent
up to her,” said Lady Lane, as she collected the day’s papers and
dropped them into a basket.

“She never eats any—except tea and toast,” Eric answered. “Before you
go up, mother, I should like you to tell me candidly what you think of
her.”

“She’s very young, of course,” Lady Lane answered deliberately. She was
puzzled, for he was dispassionate, and no one else in the house seemed
to suspect anything. Eric was grateful to her for cutting all
circumlocution. “I like her, Eric, I like her immensely. She’s sweetly
pretty; I think she’s intelligent, too... You can’t expect any great
experience at that age, but then most girls of the present day are
wofully unpractical; she’ll have to learn, like the rest. So far as one
can tell on very short acquaintance, she’s a thoroughly nice little
girl... I always think a man should try to marry a woman whose
experiences are behind and not in front of her. Of course, they’re
growing all the time, but, like children, they grow so much more
quickly when they’re very young. In that way a man’s in danger of
marrying a child and finding soon afterwards that she’s grown into a
woman that he doesn’t recognize... Have you known her long, Eric?”

“No. And, while I know her very intimately in some ways, I hardly know
her at all in others. That’s why I wanted a general, outside opinion.
It’s more than possible, mother, that I may come to you one day and
tell you that we’re going to be married.”

Lady Lane nodded and kissed him lightly on the forehead:

“Well, I hope you’ll be very happy, dear Eric.” His mother was
delightfully practical and restrained. She looked out on the world with
steady eyes, treating emotion as an indecency. Eric wondered why none
of her calm nerves had descended to him. “She’s devoted to you, you’ve
only to say the word. Up to the present—?”

She paused interrogatively.

“Nothing’s fixed definitely,” Eric answered. “It’s rather hard to
explain, but there’s what I suppose you might call “an understanding.”
I can tell you this much: we’ve both of us seen that in love it’s
possible to be quite certain of yourself and then to find, rather
painfully, that you’ve been utterly mistaken. Yes, even at her age,
poor child... We’ve both learned the lesson and paid the price; we
don’t want to make any more mistakes. I’ve burned my fingers
sufficiently to have become very unromantic... Don’t you think we’re
right to wait?”

Lady Lane did not know what answer to give. Since Eric had seen the
blemishes in one woman, he was looking for them in all; soon he would
see nothing else.

“You mustn’t wait too long; that’s the only thing,” she advised him.

“I don’t want to take any risks.” He seemed to tell every one that—Ivy,
Gaisford and his mother.

“But, in marriage, risks are necessary. Marriage is always an
adventure, a blind leap. You don’t begin to know anything about a woman
until you’re married to her. Even if you waited until you thought there
was nothing more to learn, the girl becomes a wife, Eric, and the wife
becomes a mother. Even she doesn’t see how big the change is until long
afterwards, when she has time to look back and compare. _I_ don’t want
you to run any risks, my precious son.”

“I know... And _I_ want peace and quiet with somebody I love and
somebody who loves me,” he answered wearily. “You remember the last
time we had a talk in this room?”

“Well, Ivy loves you. Of course you’ve got a certain name, a certain
position; she’s a good deal dazzled by that.”

“That isn’t the biggest factor with her... Shall we go up? You won’t
say anything about this to the others, will you?”

They walked through the hall and up the stairs, arm in arm. Lady Lane
paused outside the door of her room and kissed Eric good-night.

“God bless you and make you happy, Eric,” she whispered.

“Thank you... I met Barbara the other night, mother.”

“Yes?”

“It was at a big dinner. I don’t want to meet her again; it brought
everything back much too vividly.”

“I’m afraid you’re bound to meet her occasionally.”

“I don’t think she’ll try to force a meeting.” Eric passed his hand
over his eyes, and his mother looked at him with concern. He was
beginning to shew her so many familiar danger-marks; and she prayed
that he would make up his mind before his nerves broke down again. “I
may be wrong,” he went on slowly; “it may be my colossal egotism, but I
thought that under all the vitality she was profoundly miserable. It
wasn’t an exhibition of remorse conducted for my benefit. I think she
saw that she’d made a mistake and put all her money on a losing number.
She didn’t trouble to hide it....”

“Well, my dear, she has only herself to thank.”

Eric shivered involuntarily:

“I don’t wish my worst enemy that degree of torture. And I can see no
way out of it for her.”

“And, even if you could, it wouldn’t be your business. She must lead
her life, Eric, and you must lead yours.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER NINE


  A DOUBLE ESCAPE


        “... Love so, then, if thou wilt! Give all thou canst
           Away to the new faces—disentranced,
             (Say it and think it) obdurate no more:
           Re-issue looks and words from the old mint,
           Pass them afresh, no matter whose the print
             Image and superscription once they bore!

           Re-coin thyself and give it them to spend,—
           It all comes to the same thing at the end,
             Since mine thou wast, mine art and mine shalt be,
           Faithful or faithless, sealing up the sum
           Or lavish of my treasure, thou must come
             Back to the heart’s place here I keep for thee!...”
              ROBERT BROWNING: “ANY WIFE TO ANY HUSBAND.”

“I wonder what’s in store for us this time,” mused Deganway, as he
paced up and down the platform at Euston with Carstairs. “Bobbie
Pentyre has a genius for mismanaging a house-party. No technique, no
personality—”

“It’s not for want of experience,” interposed Carstairs gloomily. “It
must be ten years since I first stayed at Croxton, and something has
always gone wrong... The food’s improved, but the wine has
deteriorated. He knows such odd people, too... But that’s his mother’s
fault; she finds good in every one, makes a boast of it. Lord! I don’t
see why we shouldn’t have a Monroe doctrine against _rastaquouères_!”

Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos and Lady Maitland were being wedged into
place by their maids, while their husbands remained on the platform to
finish their cigars. Eric appeared with Ivy and was followed by Amy
Loring and Lady John Carstairs, later by Mrs. O’Rane and her husband.

“I didn’t know _you_ were going to be here!,” cried Amy, as she caught
sight of Eric.

“It’s not too late for me to go back, if you’d prefer it,” he answered
with a smile. “Carstairs and Gerry have decided that it’s going to be a
sticky party.”

“Oh, I should love you to come...” She blew a kiss to Ivy; but a frown
of misgiving settled on her face as she led Eric away from the
carriage-door. “You know John Gaymer’s invited himself? I’m sure it’s
only because he knows he’ll meet Ivy... I do hate rows and intrigues
and scenes and schemings!”

“I don’t think he’ll get much satisfaction from her,” Eric answered
reassuringly.

“I hope to goodness you’re right,” said Amy. “Unfortunately, Johnny’s
had a rebuff recently in another quarter... Some actress, I believe...
Sonia knows the whole story....”

She walked to and fro by the door, gazing anxiously down the platform;
then, on an impulse, she took O’Rane’s arm, whispered in his ear and
led him away from the others.

“Nothing serious, I hope?,” he murmured.

“Then you can hear there’s _something_ wrong!,” she laughed. “I wish
people’s voices told _me_ as much... No, I just wanted you to pull the
party together as much as possible; it’s not _too_ well chosen, and
poor Bobbie isn’t very clever at seeing a squall until he’s run right
into it. Do you remember poor Jim’s last ball at Chepstow on the eve of
the war? I shall never forget how wonderful you were in keeping things
going then. So, if you _do_ feel a storm brewing...?”

O’Rane nodded, and they walked back to rejoin Eric. The last stragglers
were being urged into their places and the doors slammed, when her eyes
opened wider. Looking past her, Eric saw a man in the light-blue
uniform of the Air Force.

“I was hoping they’d be left behind,” murmured Amy, as she got into the
carriage.

“Who’s with him?,” Eric asked.

“Barbara,” she answered shortly.

“Some one told me she’d gone to Ireland,” he said indifferently.

“No. George has only gone for two days on business, and she’s such a
bad sailor that she preferred to stay behind... My dear Babs, you
_nearly_ lost the train!”

A leap, a scramble and the support of anxious hands landed the
last-comers in safety, as the platform slid from under their feet.
Barbara felt her way into a vacant corner and looked round to see who
was in the carriage, nodding easily to Eric when his turn came. She
seemed so radiantly well and happy that he wondered whether she was
trying to make him forget the damning expression of tragedy which he
had seen on her face a week before. The train was not out of the
station before she had focussed all attention on herself, and she kept
the carriage in amused subjection until the journey’s end. Once or
twice Eric stole a glance at Ivy; but, if she felt shock or
embarrassment at being with Gaymer, she concealed it as nonchalantly as
he did and listened with the rest to Barbara’s picturesque story of a
luncheon with Gaymer, the theft of a general’s car, a scheme for flying
to Croxton, the breakdown of the car, the beguilement of a taxi-driver
from his dinner and a breakneck drive to a barren aerodrome and from
the aerodrome to Euston. She told a story as well as ever, he found,
always shewing herself in the absurdest light; and one story followed
another until the train drew in to Croxton.

“I’m so glad Lady Barbara’s here,” said Ivy, as they secured a car to
themselves.

“She always makes a house-party go with a swing,” answered Eric. “I
say, Ivy, if Gaymer gives you any trouble, let me know. I don’t suppose
he will... But, as a matter of fact, does he quite appreciate how he
stands? The last time you and he were together, you were engaged to
him. Have you ever broken off the engagement?”

“Not in words. Except for a moment at Maidenhead, I haven’t spoken or
written to him since that night. And I don’t want to now. I never want
to see him again. If he tried to talk to me—”

“You never told him why you wanted to be married without waiting for
him to be demobilized?”

Ivy’s cheeks flamed, and she turned her head so that he should not see
her face.

“With that woman there, in the next room?,” she cried. “I wasn’t going
to beg for mercy. I left it to his honour... And then I told him he
hadn’t any honour. And he said that, if _that_ was what I thought of
him—”

“Then he still doesn’t know?” Eric persisted. “If he comes and makes a
nuisance of himself, are you going to tell him?”

Ivy shook her head passionately:

“No! D’you think I’d look at him, if he begged me to? He shall see that
I don’t need him...” She turned suddenly with a look of pleading in her
eyes. “Eric, you won’t make me tell him?”

“Of course not! Keep out of his way as much as possible and tell him
that you simply don’t want to talk to him. Don’t make a scene, because
he’s probably more experienced in scene-making than you are.”

Though Gaymer had sat without speaking the whole way from Euston, a
feeling of tension, first experienced in advance by Amy Loring,
gradually spread to Eric and Ivy. In spite of Barbara’s high spirits,
uneasiness developed slowly into an antagonism which was made apparent
to the sensitive hearing of O’Rane less by the words spoken than by the
significant silences. The arrival at Croxton Hall created a temporary
diversion. As Gaymer quickly disappeared into the smoking-room on
learning that he would find whisky and soda there, Eric was spared all
danger of conflict with him. Ivy went at once to her room and only
reappeared under the protection of Amy Loring; Barbara was caught and
retained at the bridge-table until the dressing-gong sounded. Despite
the sombre forebodings of Deganway and Carstairs, Eric began to feel
that the week-end might pass without mishap, though he wished
fervently, as he bathed and dressed, that it was the last night of his
visit instead of the first.

When they went in to dinner, he was so much preoccupied with looking to
see who was on either side of Ivy that he did not notice at first that
he had himself been placed next to Barbara. The discovery that she was
within a foot of him steadied his nerves like the first bomb in an
air-raid. For half of the meal he talked with composure to Lady
Pentyre; then turned and tossed Barbara the shuttlecock of their
conversation, leaving her to shew whether she was content with safe
impersonalities or whether she was still bound to improvize a romantic
drama out of their meeting.

“Lady Pentyre’s just been telling me that my bedroom’s supposed to be
haunted,” he began. “She’s offered me another, without a bathroom, but
I told her that all the ghost-proof rooms in the world aren’t
compensation for the exclusive possession of a bath.”

“I suppose you’ve got my old room,” said Barbara reflectively. “I came
here, the winter before the war, for the Croxton Ball... Lady Pentyre
offered it to me again, but... I thought I’d leave it to some one who
didn’t take quite so many ghosts with him wherever he went...” She
shivered almost imperceptibly as she looked round the room, pretending
an interest in ill-executed portraits of mediocre Pentyres, none of
whom achieved higher rank than that of colonel, commander or dean. “It
was here... I told you the story... the first time you ever dined with
me... as soon as I knew that you were a friend of Jack’s. I had to get
it off my conscience.”

“I don’t think _I’ve_ been here since Bobbie’s coming-of-age,” Eric
answered. “Several of us motored over from Oxford: Deganway, Sinclair,
Raney, Summertown... That loving-cup on the side-table; I believe
you’ll find all our names on it—a joint present from all the other
members of the old Phoenix Club. There are none too many of them left
now,” he added with a sigh. “It doesn’t do to let yourself see
ghosts....”

Barbara was paying as little attention to the history of the loving-cup
as he had paid to her reflections on the haunted room. It was evident
now that she was preparing some kind of dramatic scene; and, though her
talent was hampered by the presence of others, he would not give her a
chance of playing a part that she might continue later in less
publicity. Eric was not likely to forget the first time that he dined
with her: with evenly balanced triumph and consternation she had
described her long and still unended duel with his best friend. Jack
Waring, it seemed, had snubbed her, and she took her revenge by making
him fall in love with her; when he proposed, she refused him because he
was not a Catholic; when he became a Catholic, she refused him again
and then, in superstitious terror that she was imperilling a man’s
soul, swore that she would marry him whenever he asked her again. Eric
was unlikely to forget that dinner because it was almost the first
skirmish in the long campaign by which Barbara set herself to make him
too fall in love with her; and, when she had succeeded only too well,
they discovered that her oath to Jack Waring still kept them apart.

“It doesn’t _do_...!” Barbara echoed. “You can’t always _help_ it... I
think of the last time I was here... and now! When I believed in God, I
often used to think what fun He must be having with me!”

“I can’t think God spends much time making people unhappy,” said Eric.
“They do it so well for themselves. He has only to create a little
egotism....”

Barbara crumbled her bread in silence, waiting to assure herself that
they were not being overheard.

“You still think it was egotism that kept me from marrying you, Eric?
It wasn’t. Fear, if you like; superstition... I _had_ promised Jack, I
was ready to stand all my life barefoot in the snow, waiting for him to
forgive me... I loved you, as I’ve never loved any one before or since;
you know that. But you wouldn’t wait. It would have been a terribly
easy way out... when I _wanted_ to... The night after you said good-bye
I telephoned to Jack, I asked him to come and see me... D’you remember
abusing me because I was _vain_? I hadn’t much vanity then, Eric. As
soon as Jack recognized my voice—it was the first time we’d spoken
alone since his release from Germany, since the war, since that ghastly
night when I swore on the Cross that, if he wanted me, I’d marry him—he
hung up the receiver. And then I knew at last... It may interest you to
hear that my famous pride was still flourishing so vigorously next
morning that I drove round to your flat as soon as I was dressed. They
told me you’d started for Liverpool. I didn’t know your ship, or I’d
have come on board.”

It might be morbid luxury of self-torture—Eric had lived through his
own nights and days of might-have-beens—, or a despairing effort to
recapture him, or a blend of the two, or a connoisseur’s appreciation
of dramatic irony; impulse and calculation, sincerity and
sensationalism were always curiously intermixed with Barbara.

“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” he answered coldly.
“Superstition, if you like... Or vanity... I knew that night that you
put something in life before love. You were _afraid_ of Jack, but you
never pretended to be in love with him... However, I don’t think these
_post mortems_ do any good. Amy Loring tells me that George is in
Ireland. Is it true that he’s selling his place there?”

“He would, if he could find any one to buy it. We haven’t very much
money. You see, I forfeited mine by marrying a Protestant and I don’t
care to go to my family... We may as well have it out, Eric. I married
him—dear God! I’d have married any one who spoke a kind word to me when
you went away... I’m trying to make him happy, I’m trying to make
amends to every one I’ve injured, but it’s rather a long list.”

“I hardly know Ireland at all,” Eric continued in disregard of his
emotional cue. “He invited me to Lake House years ago, but I couldn’t
afford the time....”

Barbara nodded mechanically, by now unconscious that he was trying to
head her off reminiscent dissection, hardly conscious that he had
spoken.

“It’s not quite what I expected of life,” she murmured humbly. “But
you... Are you happy, Eric?”

“Perfectly, thank you.”

“I’m glad. Time’s a wonderful healer. I always told you to go away and
forget me. You said you couldn’t.”

“I haven’t forgotten, but I’ve adjusted some of my values.”

Barbara stole a glance at him and then looked away, with eyes narrowed
in pain, over the head of the man opposite her, over the shoulders of
the footman, blankly and dizzily into the shadows at the end of the
room.

“Until humanity has no value at all...” she whispered. “Ah, Eric... If
I could wipe it all out and draw a sponge over your memory so that we
met as we met that first evening at Margaret Poynter’s, if I could make
you loving, tender—not to me, God knows!—, if I could cure your
bitterness of spirit and teach you not to condemn all women because one
woman once wrecked your life... Eric, if you could see yourself as I
still see you that first night... like a faun, with big startled
eyes...” She found her voice rising and stopped abruptly. “I think Lady
Pentyre told me it was the ghost of a woman who’d been killed in the
Civil War. You’re not afraid of ghosts?”

“Like everything else, they have to be faced boldly.”

There was a moment’s deepening silence, and Lady Pentyre caught the
eyes of the women. It was only when he was free from the tension of
Barbara’s presence that Eric realized her power. No other woman set his
nerves tingling and his blood racing through his veins, and no other
woman responded to him as Barbara did. When she flung her crude
emotionalism at him, he was still never sure of himself; a very little
more would go to his head... He looked round the table, counting the
empty chairs and calculating the dinners that he had still to eat; with
reasonable luck Lady Pentyre would not put him next to her for another
meal.

A hand was laid on his knee, and he found O’Rane trying to speak to
him. Pentyre and Gaymer were arguing with irritating heat about some
trivial and forgotten aspect of the war, and it was difficult for any
one else to make his voice heard.

“Our intrepid airman is becoming the least little bit of a nuisance,”
murmured O’Rane. “I thought he was a bit thick when he got into the
train at Euston, though he didn’t say much. I shall have to take him in
hand; he used to be quite a nice boy.”

Eric’s attention had wandered until he was hardly conscious of his
surroundings.

“I... scarcely know him,” he answered.

“You’ll find him worth cultivating... when you’ve overcome your dislike
of him,” said O’Rane with a softly malicious laugh.

Gaymer’s voice could be heard growing in assertiveness; and, though
Pentyre interrupted from time to time, his resistance gradually
weakened until he faint-heartedly cut his opponent short by suggesting
to General Maitland and Don Pinto that they should all go into the
drawing-room.

“Strategic retreat,” commented Gaymer in thick scorn.

He was flushed and combative, but still master of himself; and, as he
crossed the hall and entered the drawing-room, his manner changed. Eric
watched him being absorbed into a bridge-four with the Maitlands and
Barbara; the rubber ended without unpleasantness, and he began to
wonder whether he had not imagined all the tension which he seemed to
feel from the moment when he caught sight of Barbara and Gaymer
hurrying along the platform. It was difficult to see what either of
them could do; Barbara had already played her scene and had not been
encouraged to repeat it; Gaymer had hardly spoken to Ivy, and he could
see that she was taking pains never to be left alone....

It might be nothing but coincidence that they were all meeting in the
same house, but Eric did not want a single-handed encounter with a man
whose hostility had been latent ever since their first meeting three
years before. When the women went up to bed, he only stayed in the
smoking-room long enough to choose a book. Gaymer threw him an abrupt
but not uncivil “good-night,” and he walked upstairs with vague, tired
relief that he had survived the first evening without altercation.
There was a note on his dressing-table: “_Good-night, beloved. Sleep
well. God bless you. Ivy._” He smiled and began to undress. At the end
of the passage he heard doors shutting; as he got into bed, there was a
slow clatter on the stairs, followed by “Good-night, Pentyre,”
“Good-night, General. You’re sure you’ve everything you want?” There
followed a belated “good-night” in the unmistakable clipped utterance
of Don Pinto de Vasconcellos. Half-an-hour later Eric heard O’Rane and
Gaymer coming up and separating, with suppressed chuckles, outside his
door; their footsteps grew faint, and in another moment the house sank
into silence.

Feeling too tired to begin a new book, Eric turned out the light and
was settling himself comfortably in bed when he saw a square outline of
yellow round the door of the bathroom. He raised himself on his elbow
with a murmur of annoyance, when the door opened slowly and he saw a
tall figure in a loose white wrap. For a startled, uncertain moment he
remembered Lady Pentyre’s warning that the room was haunted and
Barbara’s addition that the visitant was a woman who had been killed in
the Civil War. While he did not believe in ghosts, his hand explored
nervously for the electric-light switch; some one might be playing a
practical joke, but Pentyre was still unable to walk without crutches,
and Gaymer had barely had time to get to his own room. Possibly—he had
forgotten or neglected the geography of the house—some one had mistaken
his door.

“Hullo?”

“Eric!”

It was Barbara’s voice; and his hand trembled as it turned the switch.
Her hair rippled in waves over her shoulders; her eyes shone burningly,
and the fingers that held the wrap together were shaking; with the
other hand she clung for support to the edge of the door. Eric saw that
her face was colourless, that her bosom rose and fell with her quick
breathing; as she took a step forward, he noticed that her feet were
bare and thrust hurriedly into slippers trodden down at the heel; and,
as she moved, the dumb paralysis of surprise left him.

“What on earth are you doing here?,” he cried.

“Hush! Eric... I was afraid one of the others might come in, so I
waited. I thought they’d never go to bed... Eric, you think I’ve done
you a great wrong—I have! I admit it!—But, if I can’t undo the harm
I’ve done....”

Her eyes and voice, her stumbling steps and trembling outstretched arms
shewed that she had forgotten everything but a consuming need of him.
Eric had never before seen a woman lose all control of herself, he had
never imagined that Barbara was capable of such desperation; the
madness in her eyes and the delirium of her mood appalled him.

“My God, what are you thinking of, Barbara?” he whispered. “And what
d’you take me for? Your husband—”

“I’ll leave him and come to you! We’ll go away together! You once
said—d’you remember when I dined with you in an air-raid?—you said
you’d rather a bomb hit the house and killed us both than see me
married to any one else! I’m here... And I’m blind with misery, Eric. I
want to be happy. I want to make you happy. No one need know... Or, if
you like, you can let every one know. I’ve made my mistake, I’ll tell
George, I’ll ask him to forgive me. He won’t want to keep me, when he
knows I don’t love him. We can go away for a time—”

She was creeping inch by inch nearer to him, and Eric suddenly felt the
touch of dry and burning fingers on his wrist.

“Stop this nonsense!,” he cried, shrinking back.

The grating harshness of tone sobered her a little. She did not try to
touch him again, he could see her mentally preparing a retreat, an
escape, a means of saving her face, if he finally repelled her; he
could see, too, that she did not mean to be lightly repelled.

“You usedn’t to call my love ‘nonsense’ in old days,” she answered
quietly.

“Things have changed.”

“Your love has changed.”

“My love is dead.”

“And you used to say that I must marry you, because I’d spoiled all
other women for you.”

Eric nodded slowly. It was so characteristic of her to remember and
quote, even at the most critical moment of her life, a dog’s-eared
phrase of extravagant adulation.

“Yes. And I might add that you’ve spoilt me for all other women. If one
came to me now without blemish, straight from the right hand of the
Creator, I should expect to find treachery or ingratitude... Will you
please go back to your room?”

He was thankful that he had stopped without saying more. In her craving
for new sensations, Barbara had some perverted strain which made her
enjoy being scourged by the tongue of a man who loved her; and in
another moment he would have said something which would enable her to
put him in the wrong; and anything that he said gave her an excuse for
staying....

“I’ve never tried to defend myself, Eric. You were right... You were
always right. Isn’t there room in life for mistakes?”

“There’s sometimes no room to repair them.”

“You’re still thinking of George?”

“It’s time one of us did, Lady Barbara... I try to treat other men’s
wives as I should expect other men to treat mine.”

He reached for his dressing-gown and slipped his arms into the sleeves.
When it was too late, he saw that for a moment he was putting himself
at her mercy; in that moment she sprang forward and pinioned him:

“Eric!”

“Will you kindly let go and will you kindly leave my room?”

“Eric, you’re going to marry that child! You must be mad! You’ll be as
miserable as I am... If you do that, it _will_ be too late... Eric,
don’t struggle, you’re hurting me... Listen! I’ve told you it was a
mistake, but it’s not too late to put it right. We were made for each
other. You wouldn’t be blamed, and I—I should glory in it... Listen!
You _shall_ listen! The other day I was at a party, and a man I don’t
know said, ‘That woman looks as if she’d been through Hell.’ They’ll
say of us that we’re in Heaven. They’ll try to attack us—and they won’t
be able to. We shall be in the clouds, we shall be walking on air.
People who see us will go away hungry and envious. Eric, you remember
what it was like before that awful parting! I lived for you, and you
lived for me. Everything we did and thought... Whenever we were ill or
unhappy... There’s never been a love like ours; and, if I didn’t see
it, I see it now. God punished me to shew me what I was throwing
away... _You_ know what this last year has been, Eric; if _you_ threw
away your chance of happiness—Ah, you’re hurting me!”

He had wrenched himself free of her embrace and sprung out of bed.
Barbara fell forward with her face on the pillow. He listened for the
silence to be broken: though she had never raised her voice above a
whisper, it had vibrated with passion until he fancied that it must
ring and echo through the house. He opened the door, took a step
forward into the warm darkness of the passage and listened. When he
came back, the room seemed to be filled with the keen scent of
carnations. He saw Barbara slowly raising her head and brushing back
the hair which had fallen over her face; she looked distractedly round
the room through half-closed eyes and threw out her arms to him; then
she saw the open door, and her arms dropped to her sides.

“This is a funny way for it to end,” she murmured. Eric said nothing.
“I used to believe you, too. I thought you cared for me....”

His silence daunted her, and she walked out of the room with a sigh and
a half shrug.

Eric locked the door and began filling a pipe. Then he turned on all
the lights and explored bedroom and bathroom on hands and knees. On the
middle of the floor he found a crumpled handkerchief, scented with
carnation; he fingered it irresolutely, then struck a match and tossed
it flaming into the grate. Imagination or reality still scented the
room with carnation, and he threw open the curtains, resting his arms
on the stone sill of the window and leaning out into a starless night.
A heavy dew was rising, and the stone was sticky with moisture. The
scent of carnations changed to a scent of stocks; then the reek of his
own pipe drowned both. He was wakeful but calm, surprised at his own
calmness before and now.

He wondered what Barbara was doing....

He wondered what she would do at their next meeting. Presumably she
would invent a letter from George in the morning, calling her to
Ireland, or recalling her to London, but they would meet later. A man,
after such a misfire, would surely go abroad for a year or two; woman
seemed to lie about these things to others—(“Eric Lane was staying with
the Pentyres. You know he used to be rather in love with me? I’m afraid
he still is, though I should have thought that, when I married, he’d
have faced facts... I wish he’d find some nice girl... Connie
Maitland’s little niece was there, but she’s hardly out of the
nursery...”)—until they could lie about them to themselves; in a few
years Barbara would convince herself that he had broken down the locked
door of her bedroom and entreated her to run away with him. Women could
make themselves believe anything, when they had to save their faces, to
ignore a rebuff and keep up their value in the sex-market. And, as a
matter of fact, a man did not always retire to decent obscurity; he
sometimes came, like John Gaymer, officer and gentleman, and stayed in
the same house as the girl whom he had seduced and deserted. Seemliness
of conduct, seemliness of feeling were dead....

Sleep was impossible; and he remembered with gratitude how Lady Pentyre
had arranged for him to work undisturbed. She had made a literary
picture of a preoccupied, irregular genius who wrote under the attack
of fitful inspiration; breakfast would come when he rang for it: he was
not expected, he was almost forbidden, to shew himself before luncheon;
and, if he wanted to work during the night, there awaited him a
touching equipment of electric stove, spirit-lamp, cocoa, biscuits, and
cold chicken. Eric went into the dressing-room and surveyed with a
smile her solicitous array of stationery; there was paper big and
small, plain and ruled, there were pencils and pens, india-rubber,
paper-fasteners and a chromatic riot of ink and sealing-wax. He
unlocked his despatch-box and glanced at a bundle of manuscript; a
character called Beatrice seemed to be speaking, but he read the name
as Barbara; and the lines that he had given her were overlaid as in a
palimpsest by the words that Barbara had spoken, was still speaking....

He wondered what she was doing....

Work was out of the question until he had thought a little more about
Barbara. However far she fell, there was always a lower depth. He
imagined that she had reached her own limits in marrying George, but
she was prepared to be faithless even to him, she was already faithless
in spirit. Barbara was too young and ardent of soul to exist without
loving and being loved; it was a question of time before she joined the
furtive, unsatisfied band of women who lived in more or less open
infidelity; she would go from one to another, encouraging George to do
the same so that he would have less cause for reproaching her.

And three years earlier she had seemed to walk clothed in a white flame
of purity. Was it another pose, like her extravagant talk of devotion,
gratitude, honour, sacrifice? Her romantic emotions and phrases were
culled from Italian operas and sentimental novels; and she treated them
seriously. He told her once that she lived in “the hall of a thousand
mirrors”, donning and discarding the dress and properties of a
character, watching her reflection, posturing, mouthing her lines—until
the personality of Barbara Neave lost outline and became a lay figure
for the clothes of others. Her own form and stature did not satisfy
her; she must be Isolde, Sarah Curran, Mrs. Blessington, Joan of Arc,
Lady Hamilton and, at a pinch, Messalina; which part she played hardly
mattered to her... She was without a sense of right and wrong... A
sensationalist, as Jim Loring called her while she was playing with
Jack, before she began to play with him... or George... An
emotion-hunter....

The night was paling to a grey-blue, and the dawn brought with it a
chill wind. Eric found his body shivering and his fingers stiff. He
looked lazily at the array of food, too tired to eat or drink; then he
got into bed and once more turned out the light. Was Barbara asleep
yet?... Apart from everything else, what a fool the girl was to run
such risks! If Lady Pentyre had looked into her empty room, if one of
the men had come to finish a cigar on the end of his bed!...

He rang for his tea at noon and looked curiously through his letters.
There were ten loving words from Ivy, who disdained concealment from
the servants, but he sought in vain for any note from Barbara. Perhaps
he was foolish to expect one, for she knew that she could trust him to
hold his tongue. The thorough-paced anarchist always expected the
police to protect him from the violence of an enraged mob....

It was a shock, after he fancied that he had diagnosed her so
exhaustively, to find an unsuspected depth of impudence. When Eric went
into the garden before luncheon, he was astounded to find her reading
under a tree. The others were working or playing golf; but she hailed
him and explained that she had stayed behind with a head-ache. Her
manner was free of challenge or appeal; she did not invite him to play
the accomplice; there seemed nothing to hide, and in all the time that
he had known her he had never understood her less than when she lay in
white skirt and knitted silk coat, bare-headed and bare-armed, smoking
cigarettes and turning the pages of a book which she was too indolent
to cut. Her movements and expression were gently provocative, as though
she were trying to tantalize him.

“I wonder—,” he began and stopped abruptly.

“Yes?”

Eric shrugged his shoulders and turned half away. He was wondering
where and what Barbara would be in five, ten, twenty years’ time,
wondering why he had ever been in love with her, why she still
attracted him and why he could not bear to touch or look at her.

“I was wondering how far it was to the links. I thought I’d go and meet
the others. They must have finished playing by now.”

“I think I shall stay here,” she answered lazily. “It’s cooler.”

Eric sauntered across the lawn and through the garden, stopping for a
moment to speak with Lady Pentyre and Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos, who
were cutting roses. He sauntered into a wood and sat down on a stile
commanding the pathway to the links. There was a sprawling group by the
eighteenth green, and he identified O’Rane, Pentyre and the general.
They were joined by a foursome, and he gradually distinguished Amy
Loring and Ivy, Gaymer and Mrs. O’Rane. The sprawling figures
straightened themselves, O’Rane collected the clubs of the women, and
the party ranged itself in single file and threaded its way along the
foot-path towards the wood. Eric had been thinking so much of Barbara
during the last twelve hours that he had not troubled about Gaymer,
but, as they drew near, he looked closely at Ivy for signs of annoyance
or distress. She was frowning a little, but it might have been a frown
of fatigue, and her face cleared at sight of him.

“How did you all get on?,” he asked.

“Lady Amy and I were beaten at the last hole,” Ivy answered. “Give me a
hand over the stile, Eric; I’ve blistered my foot.”

“All well?,” he asked in a whisper.

“Ye-es,” she answered doubtfully. “I had one bad moment. _He_—you
know—came up and pretended to look for my ball. He told me that he
wanted to have five minutes’ talk with me some time; he said he’d
invited himself here specially for that. I told him as politely as I
could that I never wanted to speak to him again.”

“What happened then?,” asked Eric.

“He said it would take less than five minutes. I said it could do no
good. He said that I couldn’t tell till I knew what he was going to
say... Then I said, ‘_If_ I give you five minutes, will you promise not
to bother me ever again?’”

Eric found his eyebrows involuntarily rising in uneasy wonder. Ivy had
shewn herself so much less valiant with Gaymer than she had boasted
beforehand; she seemed to be cowed by him, so that she bargained and
begged for mercy instead of standing up for herself.

“And then?”

“Well, he wouldn’t promise. He just repeated ‘Will you give me five
minutes?’ I told him I’d think it over. Eric, can’t _you_ explain—?”

He shook his head quickly:

“No, my dear! You can refuse to see him, if you think it’ll upset you;
or you can see him and tell him that everything’s over.”

“Eric, he _frightens_ me!”

“But you’ll have to get over that. Unless you fight him and beat him,
you’ll be troubled whenever he chooses to make a nuisance of himself to
you. When you’ve convinced yourself that he has no more influence over
you, he’ll go away and leave you in peace. You’d better see him, but
you mustn’t let him bully you.”

Ivy sighed and walked in silence to the house. At luncheon Lady Pentyre
began to make suggestions for disposing of her guests: if they did not
all know Melbury Cathedral, she said, they ought to take this
opportunity of seeing it. It was only an hour’s run in the car; they
could have tea there, drive on to Wilmington Abbey and be back in time
for dinner.

“Or, if you want to laze,” she added, “there are the two punts....”

“That sounds more like me,” said Gaymer. “Ivy, what do you say to
exploring?”

She hesitated for a moment, but Eric gave her no lead.

“I don’t mind what I do,” she answered.

“I think I ought to put in a little work,” Eric told Lady Pentyre.

An hour later he watched the party dispersing. Amy Loring had
undertaken to punt O’Rane to Croxton for tea; and, if he still
entertained doubts of Gaymer, he was reassured at feeling that Ivy
would have help within call. General Maitland and Carstairs retired to
their rooms with letters to answer; the others drove away in the car.

“We shall be back for tea,” Ivy announced with an air of summoning
witnesses. “I promised to help Aunt Connie with her letters.”

Eric went to his room and tried to write, but his broken night and the
flooding heat of the afternoon sun made him drowsy. He fell asleep in
his chair and awoke with a start to find Ivy bending over him and
kissing his forehead.

“My dear, there’s nothing wrong, is there?,” he asked.

“No! But you looked so anxious at lunch that I thought I’d come and
tell you everything was all right. What a darling room Lady Pentyre’s
given you to work in! Or sleep in. Were you frightfully tired,
sweetheart, and did I wake you?”

“I was only lazy. Is it tea-time?”

“We’ve had tea. And I’m supposed to be writing letters. Don’t you think
I’ve written them long enough? Don’t you think you might take me on the
river now?”

She held out her hands, and Eric jumped up and caught her in his arms.
He had dreamed of many things, not all of them pleasant; when he felt
the light brush of lips on his forehead, he could have sworn that
Barbara was kissing him; and the sight of Ivy puzzled him, recapturing
for an instant the fleeting cloud-wreath of a fancy that something had
happened to her, that he had lost her....

“You _were_ anxious, Eric?”

“I didn’t want you to be upset; and I didn’t want even a shadow to come
between us.”

“It hasn’t.”

They ran downstairs hand in hand, separating decorously in the hall and
then slipping through a side-door into the garden. Reaction over her
fright, the ever-new sense of security had elated Ivy until she was
happier than at any time since their magical return to London from the
river. In a week their month’s waiting would be over; he was already
beginning to think how the announcement should be made....

“One week more!”

Eric was startled:

“_I_ didn’t say anything!”

“I know you didn’t. I was just thinking—”

“I was thinking, too—of that. Well, Ivy?”

“Bless you, Eric!... As if I didn’t know all along! As if there’d ever
been the faintest shadow of a doubt. But I shan’t marry you unless you
swear to me that you want me. I feel I shall disappoint you so
terribly, Eric; you’re so clever and so _wise_. I never _think_... You
were quite right about Johnnie; I feel much better now that it’s all
over.”

He helped her into the boat and paddled into mid-stream.

“It went off all right?,” he asked. “I don’t want to know what
happened.”

“But I want to tell you, I like telling you everything.” She thought
critically over her story before beginning it. “It was curious. He
seemed to start again as though nothing had happened...” She was
looking dreamily at the nodding blue and orange irises wading a third
of the way across the stream; she did not see Eric’s involuntary
shudder and stiffening. “He began again from the time when I asked him
when we were going to be married; he actually said, ‘You remember that
talk we had one night before I took you to the Vaudeville. You asked me
how long I thought I should take to get demobilized...’ I said ‘Yes’.
Eric.., well, I’ll come to that later. He said he’d had a very
bothering time, because sometimes, when he’s not well, he doesn’t seem
able to make up his mind about anything; and no one in his wretched
ministry seemed to know what anybody wanted to do... He’d thought it
over and he’d decided to come out. You know his uncle, Lord Poynter,
don’t you? Well, Lord Poynter had offered him a job—a very good job, I
imagine—in the Azores Line....”

She paused and regarded the irises with a puzzled frown, still trying
to examine her narrative critically.

“Go on,” said Eric.

“Well, he stopped short there... He was very quiet... He seemed to be
saying that he’d made all arrangements and everything was right and I’d
been rather impatient. I didn’t know what to say... Well, then he said,
‘The last time we were together you seemed to have a pretty low opinion
of me. I told you that I couldn’t marry you then. I can’t marry you
now. I can’t marry you till I’ve got the job and held it. But I’m going
to get it and I’m going to hold it.’”

“Ah!”

Ivy looked up in surprise at the rasping interjection.

“What d’you mean, Eric?”

“It sounds to me very like his original promise. And I think he’s
making it for the same purpose. He’s trying to get you back.” He paused
and then hurried on for fear that prudence might restrain him. “He
wouldn’t have thought of you, if I hadn’t been in the way. It’s a trial
of strength against me. Go on.”

Ivy winced, and the pupils of her eyes dilated.

“I told him that things had changed,” she explained. “I said—it wasn’t
true—I said that I’d always believed in him, but there was a time when
I was frightened... I reminded him of everything—the night when he said
‘If _that’s_ your opinion of me, we’d better call the engagement off.’
I reminded him of the woman I’d seen him driving home with. He said....”

“Well?”

“He said, ‘I’ve never pretended to be a saint. When I was knocked out
in the war, I saw everything differently. Most people would cut me, if
they knew anything of my private life; I drink too much, I do this and
that... I _could_ put up a case, if I thought it worth while, but I
don’t. You knew all this the first night we met. I didn’t pretend to be
better than my neighbour, I daresay I’m a lot worse; I don’t know and I
don’t care. But I’m the same as I was that first night. I loved you
then—and I’ve never loved another woman before or since. I asked you to
marry me then; and I’m in a position—I soon shall be, at least—to make
good.’ Then he sort of left it to me... I’d thought of all kinds of
bitter, horrid things to say, but I didn’t want to. I think he meant
it. I felt the only thing to do was to be cold and dignified. I said,
‘There was a time when I thought I was in love with you. I’ve changed
since then. I thought you’d broken your promise to me, I lost faith in
you. Perhaps I never properly loved you, but, if I lived to be a
thousand, I could never love you or trust you again’... While I said
it, I felt that I might be terribly wrong, but it was—instinct. He
looked at me... Then he looked at his watch... Then he said, ‘We’d
better be getting back, or we shall be late for tea.’ Eric...”

“Yes.”

“_Then_ I felt free. I felt I’d won. I felt you were right and I should
never be troubled again. I’m happy now... Of course, I was happy
before, but, when he flung himself into the carriage at Euston... Eric,
you’ll despise me, but have you ever seen a dog being called simply to
be beaten? It _comes_. It _knows_ it’s going to be beaten. And it
_might_ run away. But it knows it has to come back later. I felt that,
if ever Johnnie... I felt it at lunch, when he suggested that I should
come on the river with him...”

The stream was carrying them two yards down for every yard that Eric
paddled towards home. He bent over the side for a merciful moment of
eclipse and unshipped a pole.

“And now?,” he asked.

“When he said we should be late for tea, if we didn’t get back, I knew
I’d won,” she answered promptly.

A serpentine rivulet of water ran down Eric’s arm; he turned his head
and industriously rolled up his sleeve.

“Good for that,” he commented. “Ivy, if you ever think I’m behaving
like a cold-blooded old man, I should rather like you to suspend
judgement for five seconds. Think of me as a man who might have
kidnapped you, when you were so miserable that you didn’t know whether
you were on your head or on your heels; think that I’m trying to play
fair when perhaps I might play foul and still win... I’ve forgotten
what I was going to say, but, if we don’t get back, we shall be late
for dinner.”

She looked at him fearlessly; and he realized that she had not looked
at him like that before.

“I can think of you as all that—and a lot more,” she answered.

For the second dinner Eric found himself between Lady Maitland and Amy
Loring; he observed that Ivy was between O’Rane and Gaymer, but he felt
no uneasiness. She had emerged morally stronger and with enhanced
personality from her encounter of the afternoon. Gaymer shewed no sign
of disappointment or rebuff, but he was silent and preoccupied. Eric
would have given much to know what was going on inside his head and
what he made of a girl who yielded to him and then refused to marry
him....

Resentment was swamped in curiosity. The fellow might be genuinely in
love with Ivy, though he modelled himself too closely on the
dramatically strong, silent man who bluffly admitted that he was of
flesh and blood like other men, that others must take him as they found
him. Or he might be trying only to re-establish his ascendancy for a
few days or weeks until some other woman came his way. Ivy might boast
that she had won free of him, but at least she half-believed in him, at
least she had let him off without a word of reproach, at least she was
susceptible and even in danger, if he set himself to win her back. Was
this new assurance and elation more than the response of a woman’s
vanity when she found two men equally desirous of marrying her? Eric
looked impatiently on the week which still lay ahead of him. When their
engagement was announced, Gaymer must inevitably take himself off, but
it was possible to compress a great deal of mischief into one week.

After dinner Eric went out of his way to open conversation with his
moody neighbour.

“I understand you’re going to be demobilized shortly,” he began.

“There’s some talk of it,” was the guarded answer.

“What are you thinking of doing?,” Eric persisted, though his companion
put no hint of welcome into his manner.

“I’m looking for a well-paid job with good holidays and short hours. Do
you know of any?”

“I know of several men who started looking for just that job when they
went down from Oxford a dozen years ago. But for the war they’d still
be looking for it.”

“Well, if you hear of anything,” said Gaymer in a tone of dismissal,
“mind you let me know. Or perhaps you wouldn’t care to take the
responsibility of recommending my name? You expressed yourself very
fluently on the one occasion when you honoured me with a visit.”

He was clearly undecided whether to end the conversation or to pick a
quarrel. Eric knew that it would be wisest to turn round and talk to
General Maitland, but Gaymer always employed a contemptuous insolence
of manner which roused any combativeness that his audience might have.

“Did I say anything that wasn’t justified?,” Eric asked with an effort
of memory.

“I suppose it’s a matter of opinion how far any one’s justified in
interfering with other people’s business. But, as that seems to be the
serious occupation of your life, you can’t be too thorough. I
recognized that then, you remember; I begged you to drop in at
cocktail-time whenever your feelings were too much for you. I suppose
you’ve been too busy to come.”

“No. I felt that, whether it was my business or not, you at least had
dropped out of it.”

Gaymer removed his cigar and stared dully at the glowing end.

“Well, you seem to have been very busy with my name behind my back,” he
said.

“I’m not aware of it.”

“Oh? It was an impression I got.”

“Can you remind me what I said?,” asked Eric.

“I haven’t the least idea. You seem to have been doing very efficient
propaganda against me. Weren’t you in the Propaganda Department at one
time?”

“Yes. And my experience there was that the propaganda which you carry
out against a nation never compares with the propaganda which a nation
carries out against itself. One good _Lusitania_ outrage was worth
months of our solemn generalizations; that shewed the world what the
Germans really were.”

Gaymer yawned openly:

“I daresay you’re right. I’m not a good judge of backstabbers.” Eric
smiled and refused to be roused by the word. “I admit that I sometimes
wonder now, as I wondered then, just where you come in.”

“I think I told you that I was a friend of one of the parties.”

“But does that justify you in telling lies about me to the parents of
one of the parties? I only ask for information.”

“I never met or held any communication with either parent until some
days later. Then I said that I did not know you well enough to give an
opinion about you; it was untrue, but I erred on the side of
generosity. All this was months after you had been invited to leave the
house.”

Gaymer turned away without troubling to answer, and for the next two
days they only exchanged formal greetings when they could not avoid
each other; but there was already so much tension in the house that a
little more or less made no difference. Barbara stayed until the end of
the party, talking without embarrassment to Eric and looking him
frankly in the eyes. Amy Loring, who knew as much of their relationship
as any one, betrayed neither surprise nor curiosity. The Maitlands, who
welcomed Eric as cordially as they repelled Gaymer, presented an
attitude of stolid indifference and would have been artistically
astonished if any one had hinted that the two men were fighting a
subterranean duel for Ivy. Madame Pinto de Vasconcellos tried to
compromise every man in turn, and her husband glowered silently at her
frantic failures.

“I think it was so sweet of you all to come,” said Lady Pentyre
complacently each evening. “I do _hope_ you’re enjoying yourselves. I
was thinking that _to-morrow_, perhaps...”

She would then concentrate on the first attentive listener, suggesting
expeditions and ordering cars indefatigably. The prevailing chill of
misgiving had not spared her in the early days of her party, for Mr.
Justice Maitland had begged her not to facilitate meetings between Ivy
and Gaymer at her house; but what could a woman do, she asked herself,
when a man buttonholed her son at the last moment and said that he had
nowhere to go for Whitsuntide? She remembered, too, that years ago,
when there was so much gossip about the O’Ranes, Sonia had run away
from her husband and billeted herself at Croxton; she had invited the
two of them without really being sure that they went about together. As
Bobbie complained or boasted—in his silly way and without trying to
help her—, the smallest Croxton party could be trusted to produce one
catastrophe and three scandals; but, so far as Lady Pentyre could see,
every one was now getting on very happily with every one else; and she
had reached an age when she aimed less at positive success than at the
avoidance of disaster.

At the end of each day Ivy reported to Eric all that she had done.
There was little enough to say, for Gaymer had never tried to be alone
with her since she gave him his dismissal on the river. As the train
drew near London, he did indeed join for a moment in the general
discussion of plans and ask her as a matter of form whether he was
likely to see her again soon.

“I’m very busy at present,” she told him. “I daresay you know that I’m
trying to make myself useful to Mr. Lane while his secretary’s away.”

“I didn’t know you were still doing that,” he answered without interest.

Eric drove with the Maitlands to Eaton Place and took Ivy on in their
car to his flat.

“Thank goodness! _That’s_ over!,” he exclaimed, when they were alone.

“Were you afraid there’d be a scene?,” she asked.

“There were—several, only you were spared them. I suppose it was
inevitable. But in five days’ time—”

“It’s only four and a half now.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER TEN


  THE WANDERING OF ISHMAEL


            “It is not good that the man should be alone...”
                                     GENESIS: II.18.

As Lady Maitland’s car drove away from Euston, Carstairs set himself to
divide the luggage and find seats for the rest of the party. His wife
was sent with Madame Pinto, Amy Loring with Barbara; he himself
arranged to share a taxi with Deganway to the Foreign Office.

“What are you going to do, Gaymer?,” he asked.

“I’m going to have a drink,” was the answer.

“We can drop you in Buckingham Gate,” suggested Mrs. O’Rane.

Gaymer sat moodily on his suit-case, beating his cane against the side
of his leg.

“Do I want to go there?,” he yawned. “Well, I suppose it’s as good a
place as any... I’ll drop you first and take the car on.”

As they headed for Westminster, Mrs. O’Rane reviewed the house-party
with a critical eye, while Gaymer stared out of window and her husband
assembled and sorted such impressions as had come to him from words
which were intended to cover feelings and from voices which broke
through the disguise of words. The men and women who talked to him
still made play with gestures and expressions which he could not see;
they forgot to keep their voices mechanical; and, even without Amy’s
warning that they must be prepared for storms, he could have deduced a
state of tension from half-heard changes of tone, from hesitations and
accelerations, from shrill notes of self-betrayal and unctuous rolls of
insincerity.

“We _must_ make Bobbie Pentyre take a little more trouble before we go
to Croxton again,” cried Mrs. O’Rane. “His parties are such a hideous
jumble. That appalling Pinto woman! I won thirty-five pounds from her
at poker, but I’d pay twice that not to meet her again. And fancy
asking Babs and Eric Lane at the same time!”

“I think that’s all over, Sonia,” said her husband.

A murmur of lowered voices had reached him the first night at dinner;
and, though he could not hear the words, he guessed from Barbara’s tone
that she was testing her strength and that Eric was holding himself
detached. It was safe to assume that there had been a scene of some
kind, for on later days, when they spoke at all, Eric’s voice was
apprehensively frigid and Barbara’s unnaturally composed. No one else
seemed to have noticed anything, and any gossip centred round Eric and
Ivy. O’Rane suspected antagonism here between Gaymer and Eric; however
they spoke when they were alone, there was a frozen politeness of voice
when any one else was present. Gaymer, presumably was in love, for his
tone wakened to warmth when he talked to Ivy; and, presumably, his suit
was not prospering, for, when they returned from the river, he had
hardly spoken at all.

“The Maitland child was working hard,” said Mrs. O’Rane.

“She’s being hunted into it by the family,” said Gaymer, breaking
silence for the first time. “She doesn’t get on with her own
people—small blame to her!—, and Connie Maitland doesn’t want to be
stuck with her for all time; so, when a man with a certain amount of
money comes along—”

“She’ll get him easily enough,” interrupted Mrs. O’Rane. “No man of
thirty-five is proof against innocence and bobbed hair. They think
they’re renewing their youth; and, if they’ve made fools of themselves
already, they imagine a girl of eighteen will be nice and tractable...
And eighteen adores the wisdom of thirty-five and loves to think that
purity and youth have won the day against experience. I had a _succès
fou_ when I was eighteen; nine old men proposed to me in one week, and
seven of them said that I was like a flower with the dew still on me.
The only one I cared for had a wife already; he didn’t call me a
flower, but he knew enough of women to be dangerous. I’m sure Eric Lane
calls the Maitland child a flower; and, when she grows up, she’ll be so
bored that she’ll run away with the first man who knows that women
aren’t flowers....”

O’Rane retired within himself and continued his analysis. Gaymer was
certainly in love; too prudent to betray himself by attacking a rival,
he soothed his own troubled spirit by pretending that Ivy Maitland, if
not in love with him, was at least not in love with any one else.
Sonia—to judge by her voice, though no one saw her stealthily examining
her reflection in the strip of glass opposite her—was just old enough
to be jealous of a girl ten years younger, who was beginning to attract
men by her looks and youth rather than by artifice or qualities of
mind. And, if the Maitlands were indeed forcing Ivy into marriage, no
compulsion was needed on the other side; though Eric had talked to
every one, his voice too became animated only when he was with Ivy....

“Well, here we are,” said Mrs. O’Rane, as the car came to a standstill.
“D’you like to take it on or will you come in for your drink, Johnny?”

Gaymer sat for some moments in silence, as though unable to make up his
mind to do anything.

“Oh, never refuse a good offer,” he answered at length, as he dragged
himself out of the car.

“Help yourself, then. I’m lunching out and I must change my dress.”

In the moment that she took to hurry into the house and glance at her
letters, Gaymer watched her with a new, impersonal interest. His eyes
followed her as she ran upstairs humming to herself. Less than three
years before, it was commonly believed that she had quarrelled with her
husband and run away with another man; tiring of him, apparently, she
had come back. It was curious that women could dart to and fro like
this; in his own experience he had always been the first to tire and he
had never gone back to a woman after passion, drearily cooling, had at
last mercifully died; if his passion for Ivy had cooled, he could not
now return to her, but she had broken away while she still amused him,
while his power over her was strongest, while he had only to rouse her
jealousy in order to make her do whatever he wanted....

A faint fragrance of violets lingered in the hall, provocative as the
broken music of Sonia’s voice when she sang to herself overhead. Though
he had always found her too metallically sure of herself to be
attractive, Gaymer felt resentfully that he was being denied something
that other men had and that ought to be his. O’Rane was waiting for him
in the library, but he was bored with the company of men. Softness of
voice and touch, lightness of step, sweetness of body, yielding
gentleness... A man was incomplete without woman....

He walked into the library and mixed himself a drink. Women were too
near animals to be civilized, but they were pleasantly domesticated.
Pink tulips on every table, great branches of lilac bursting from both
fire-places... And his senses had brought with him that faint fragrance
of violets. Gaymer wondered what O’Rane had done when Sonia ran away
and left him with memories and a ravening hunger. The world was full of
women, but their love was impermanent; you could not buy or steal a
substitute if it was your wife who had left you... Or Ivy, who was as
much your own as a wife....

“A drink for you, O’Rane?,” asked Gaymer.

“No, thanks. I can smell things, but my taste is not what it once
was... I don’t want to seem inhospitable, Gaymer, but you’re drinking
_much_ more than’s good for you. It’s a sound rule only to drink when
you’re at the top of your form; otherwise it’s a waste of good liquor
and ruination of a good constitution.”

Gaymer drained his tumbler and refilled it. The decanter rattled, as he
put it down on the tray, and he transferred it to the table-cloth so
that he could help himself again, if he desired, without attracting his
host’s over-acute attention.

“I can drop it any time I like,” he boasted.

“Then drop it now,” O’Rane suggested. “Apart from health, you aren’t
doing yourself any good. I hear you’re looking out for a job, and it’s
only fair to warn you that you’re getting a bad name with men and
women. D’you like candid advice?”

“I don’t mind it from you.”

“Well, I should clear out of this country. There’s too little work for
you, too much drink and too many women. Your record in the war was too
creditable to fritter away in bars and promenades. Take a couple of
years to steady down and then come home and get married. You’re not fit
to marry till you’ve got your nerve-centres back in place.”

Gaymer refilled his glass and replaced the decanter carefully; the
syphon was a noisy complication, so he dispensed with it.

“I haven’t the least idea what I want to do,” he yawned.

“Well, you want to be a decent member of society.”

“Not in the least! Before the war I wanted to make money and have a
good time; I enjoyed the war because I liked flying... and I liked
killing. There was no ‘thin red line’ about me; I wasn’t risking my
skin for the people here. It was good fun, though and I believe I
killed more French than Germans. Now I want to have a good time again.”

“And what constitutes a good time?,” asked O’Rane.

“Oh, I don’t know. The usual things... Human nature’s constant.”

“And it’s amazing how soon human nature gets tired of wine, women and
song. Short of sudden death, you’ve a long life before you still; you
must aim at something permanent. And the only permanent things you’re
going for at present are cirrhosis of the liver and general
paralysis... Were you in love with this Maitland child?”

Gaymer turned in his chair so quickly that he upset his tumbler; as he
picked it up, he wondered if O’Rane knew that blindness alone saved him
from having the remains of the brandy thrown in his face... After a
moment’s industrious mopping, Gaymer looked up and was bewildered to
find his ill-temper evaporating. Criticism, advice and questions were
jerked out with a naked candour which mysteriously robbed them of
offence.

“She’s—a pretty kid,” he answered carelessly.

“I’ve never seen her, of course. She’s nothing more?” asked O’Rane.

“I was quite fond of her.”

“Nothing more?”

“I’m fond of her still.”

“Nothing more?”

Gaymer impatiently broke three matches before he could light his
cigarette.

“What more d’you _want_?,” he asked petulantly.

“Well, does she or any woman mean enough to you to make you want to be
a decent member of society?... That’s your fourth brandy! Yes, I know
you spilt one... That’s why I said you weren’t fit to marry yet. Would
you knock off drink and give up hanging about with every other woman
you see and start in to earn a decent living?”

A patter of light feet and a rustle of clothes heralded Sonia’s return.
She hurried to the writing-table, kissing her husband on the way,
rummaged among a litter of papers and hurried out again, leaving the
same faint fragrance of violets as a provocative reminder of her
presence.

“I’m rather out of favour at present,” said Gaymer, as he stood up and
began to inspect the room with critical envy.

“There are other women in the world. This one’s much too much of a
child for you.”

“I’m not so sure. I’d do a lot for—for a woman I loved. Oh, I’d be the
complete reformed character,” he added with a laugh that was a
contemptuous antidote to his sincerity of a moment before.

“Well, I’m glad to see that you have one vulnerable spot... It’s time
to pull up.”

Gaymer looked at him for a moment without understanding.

“I wonder what you’re trying to get at..,” he murmured.

Refusing the offer of a seat in Sonia’s car, he strolled towards
Buckingham Gate and arranged to have his luggage collected from the
O’Ranes’ house. There had been no purpose in going there, no purpose in
declining the lift, no purpose in anything. He could not make up his
mind or decide what he wanted to do next. After ordering luncheon at
home because he did not want to meet people at his club, he
countermanded the order and set out aimlessly across the Park. The
government offices were emitting a stream of girl-clerks, and he paused
to watch them with disfavour; other women were curiously unattractive
at this moment... One o’clock... He too must have something to eat....

Instead of walking to his club, Gaymer found himself halting
irresolutely at the corner of Ryder Street. It was in one of these
houses that Ivy worked now; at any moment she might come out, he could
invite her to lunch with him... He waited for half-an-hour and then
turned disgustedly into St. James’ Street. Ivy was not coming out. Eric
Lane had taken possession of her with so much assurance that no one
else was allowed to see her....

An errand-boy swept round the corner on the wrong side of the road and
sent his front wheel over Gaymer’s toes before overbalancing with
basket and bicycle. Gaymer surveyed him dispassionately for a moment
and then broke into such abuse that a crowd began to collect. The
furious rush of foul language eased a pressure which was becoming
unbearable. The boy was scared, the onlookers were cynically amused;
amusement changed to inarticulate sympathy as Gaymer paused, drew
breath and started again; he was still hurling maledictions when boy
and bicycle had disappeared from sight, and the idlers raised a murmur
of sympathy as a white-whiskered admiral intervened in defence of
decency.

“Mind your own blasted business, curse you!,” Gaymer roared in savage
delight at finding a new antagonist.

“Another word, and I give you in charge for using obscene language,”
threatened the admiral.

The crowd, which was beginning to disperse, collected again and raised
a subdued cheer in support of the old man. “Quite right too!,” Gaymer
heard. “Perfectly disgusting... Ashamed of himself...” He filled his
lungs for an annihilating attack on them all; but, before he could
deliver it, Carstairs elbowed his way through the onlookers and
demanded to know what was amiss.

“Swine of a boy runs his bloody machine over my toes...,” Gaymer began.

“Well, don’t make such a row about it! Come to the club and have some
lunch.”

Gaymer directed a last furious look at his muddy boots, then turned
from Carstairs and walked rapidly down Piccadilly. He would have liked
to tell the interfering old admiral what he thought of him; he would
have liked to thrash that damned boy, to thrash any one... Cursing him
was good in its way, but he had been stopped before he attained any
satisfaction....

The desire for food had passed; but Gaymer reached his club in time for
a drink and felt better for it. The desire for a fight remained. In the
open noon of his life as a soldier he had never known this maddening
itch of truculence. To be able to call some one a German!... He prowled
through the smoking-room in search of a victim, but people would only
say “Hullo, Johnny! Coming to join us?”... And he had already been
reported to the committee and forced to apologize “for conduct unworthy
of a gentleman” in the card-room....

At five o’clock he returned to Ryder Street, only remembering when it
was too late that he had not yet looked for Eric Lane’s number in the
directory. Ivy must come out _some_ time!... Unless she spent the night
there... Gaymer checked in his short, loathed beat, for this was a
question that had to be faced and answered. _Imprimis_, all these
writers—and especially the fellows connected with the stage who could
blackmail a girl before they would give her a speaking part—helped
themselves to anything that came their way; they were an immoral lot,
but a man did not need to be a plaster saint in order to feel that some
forms of immorality were worse than others, that the lethal chamber was
the only place for the long-haired gang who pretended to be _above_ the
ordinary rules... Lane did not grow his hair long, he had been taken up
by quite decent people; but what was true of all was true of one. He
posed as a delicate idealist—with the caressing voice of a woman and a
soulful, ‘not-long-for-this-world’ look in his eyes; so familiar was
the pose become that Gaymer had been deceived by it into thinking he
had nothing to fear. The fellow talked “spiritual beauty” to a little
fool like Ivy until he won her, soul and body... And all the time
looking like a parson....

Gaymer rang at the nearest door without looking at the number. He
_might_ have the luck to meet Ivy; failing that, he could always bait
the parson-poet... Somewhere inside, a clock chimed seven, and he flung
away in disgust without waiting for the door to be opened. Two hours!
Ivy was home by now. Two hours walking up and down that forsaken street
because a consumptive-looking Grub Street hack had walked off with the
girl that he wanted... What could she see in him? Gaymer caught sight
of his own sturdy, well-groomed reflection in a shop-window. In the
name of Heaven, what could she see in the fellow?

It was still broad daylight, owing to this accursed “summer time”; and
London was never so intolerable as by day. He walked aimlessly along
Piccadilly and up Regent Street, along Oxford Street and up Tottenham
Court Road. His course would be a zig-zag on the map... Zig-zag...
Everything was zig-zag; purposeless, wearisome... He remembered
suddenly that he had eaten no food all day. Zig-zag... His feet had
strayed out of Tottenham Court Road into a side-street, and he found
himself staring at a newly painted shop-front. Inside, a band was
playing; appetizing savours of hot food floated up from the basement;
and women with arms white and eyes darkly mysterious in the gathering
dusk pattered through the door-way with a half-glance back in universal
invitation.

“What’s this place?,” Gaymer asked the commissionaire.

“Fleur de Lys Dance Club, sir.”

“Well, I want to be a member. Make up a name for me and fix it with the
secretary. Add my subscription to the dinner-bill and keep this for
yourself.”

Without waiting for an answer, Gaymer walked through the hall, threw
his hat on to a counter at the end and mounted to a gallery overlooking
a garish green-and-gold ball-room. Dinner was being served at small
tables round three sides of the gallery; in the fourth was ensconced a
negro band. Gaymer looked and listened, forgetting himself for a moment
in his effort to classify the place and the company. Cheap and tawdry,
he decided, without even the appearance of spontaneous hilarity;
respectable, in all probability... The men looked like clerks earnestly
aping the life of gaiety and wantonness created for them in illustrated
papers and cinematograph theatres. The women, presumably, were typists,
milliners, hotel clerks, mannequins. In cut and material their clothes
were too good to have been bought new; here and there a draggled
flounce or soiled shoe hinted at long service. Gaymer had always
wondered what girls did with their cast-off finery....

It was a new world peopled by an unknown race, and he was uncertain of
the technique for gaining admittance. At the table nearest to him a
girl was sitting alone, and he asked leave to join her.

She did not know whether to be flattered or affronted that he had
addressed her; and Gaymer was confirmed in his contemptuous diagnosis
of the company’s narrow respectability. As she lacked experience and
dignity to assert herself, he decided that she would respond to
treatment which took her for granted. He smiled and sat down with
confident composure.

“I’m waiting for my friend,” the girl answered doubtfully, looking past
him to the door.

Gaymer inspected her critically. She was young, dark and anæmic with
thin arms and a thin back bare to the waist; her extravagantly low-cut
dress was incongruously rich half-covering to the meagre body which it
so generously revealed, but she had abundant hair, warm lips and
restless dark eyes. He looked away for a moment at the other women in
their neighbourhood and decided that he had done well in choosing her;
then he looked towards the door, trying to identify her “friend”.

“You’re not with that bandy-legged Yid, are you?,” he asked with
disfavour, as a man left the door and approached their table.

The girl looked at him in open-mouthed surprise.

“Please not to speak like that about my friend!,” she exclaimed.

“You’ll enjoy yourself much more with me.”

“We—haven’t been introduced... And I can’t give him the go-by,” she
answered uncertainly, impressed in spite of herself by his assurance.

“This is a table for two,” said Gaymer significantly, picking up the
wine-list. “What are you going to drink?... God, what assorted poison!
We’ll try the champagne; if it’s not fit to drink, we can fall back on
an honest brandy and soda. What are you going to eat?”

Calling to a waiter, he began ordering dinner and was still absorbed in
his task when the “friend” touched his shoulder and murmured
deferentially:

“I think you’ve taken my chair, sir.”

Gaymer glanced up for a moment and then turned to his study of the
wine-list.

“I don’t like Jews,” he observed.

“This lady... I had to see about a ticket for her—”

“I don’t like Jews,” Gaymer repeated. “Waiter! Where the devil’s our
waiter gone to? Here, a bottle of forty-three. And ice it properly
first.” Then he looked up again at the man whose chair he had taken.
“I’ve spoken about this before. Will you go away?”

The man stared at him for a moment, flushed and turned to the girl.

“We’ll find another table, Gracie,” he said with a tremble in his voice.

“Gracie’s dining with me,” said Gaymer. “She’s much too good for you.
If you go away at once, there need be no unpleasantness. If you persist
in butting in where you’re not wanted...” He paused to recollect his
encounter with the errand-boy in Piccadilly, the fruitless hours of
patrol in Ryder Street... “I shall send you to Abraham’s bosom at such
a pace that you’ll come out the other side.”

The young Jew hesitated and looked appealingly at the girl.

“I don’t want a scene—” he began.

“You’ll get one unbroken film from here to the nearest mortuary, if
you’ve not gone in fifteen seconds,” said Gaymer, laying his watch on
the table. “One, two, three, four....”

“I’m going to speak to the secretary,” said the young Jew with dignity.
“Bear witness, Gracie! _He_ started it!... Chucked out! That’s what’ll
happen to you, sir!”

As he hurried away, Gaymer breathed luxuriantly.

“It’s a pity there’s not more lynching in England,” he observed, “but
I’m glad I came in time to keep him from molesting you any further.”

“You didn’t ought to have treated him like that,” giggled the girl, who
had enjoyed every moment of the altercation and was now looking
furtively at the door in the hope of seeing her cavalier returning with
the secretary. “He’ll never speak to me again.”

“He certainly won’t while I’m here. And, if I have any trouble, he’ll
never speak to any one this side of the grave... Go to him, if you
prefer it,” he added brusquely. “So far as I know, I’ve never killed a
Jew yet. One ought to, just for the experience.”

“The things you say!,” cried the girl. “I’d—like to stay, only poor Mr.
Lewis... You scared him away, _no_ mistake... Champagne. Shall I go all
funny if I drink it?”

“I hope so,” Gaymer answered, raising his glass cautiously. “God! it’s
like treacle! Waiter, if you’ve any brandy fit to drink, bring it here!”

As his rival did not reappear, Gaymer cast about for other means of
distraction. Once again he had been disappointed of his fight; and
there was no satisfaction in accumulating the spoils of victory without
a struggle. It was something, indeed, that he could “scare away”
another man and win over a woman by a mere word; but the woman was not
worth trouble... and the man was only fit to thrash....

“What’s your other name, Gracie?,” he asked abruptly. “What d’you do
with yourself all day? Tell me all your absorbing life-history.”

Under the influence of the champagne, which he left her to drink by
herself, the girl’s tongue was loosened; and, though he paid little
attention to what she was saying, Gaymer learned before the end of
dinner that she was confidential typist to an export merchant, that she
lived at Tottenham and that she was at that moment supposed to be
spending the night with another girl from the same office and going to
a concert. The young Jew was book-keeper in a neighbouring office and
had long desired to marry her.

“But I keep him at a distance,” she confided. “I want to have a look
round before I settle down. No sprees then,” she added regretfully.

“Married life’s what you make it,” said Gaymer. “Come and dance.”

Dinner had put him in good humour, and he was now less contemptuously
critical. Gracie had a certain elemental charm, holding herself well,
walking well and, as she danced, melting into his arms until she seemed
a part of him. The champagne had brought colour into her cheeks, and
her eyes shone in ecstasy. The crash and jerk, the bleating and rumble
of the band sent a thrill of dancing madness through her nerves, and at
Gaymer’s touch she shivered and became still as though she were a bird
and his hand had closed over her fluttering wings....

After a riot of rag-time the orchestra subsided into a waltz.

“If you—could care—for me,” she hummed, “as I—could care—for you-ou....”

“Don’t!” Gaymer snapped.

She was all right until she opened her mouth; but, when she spoke,
there was commonness without depravity. He doubted whether she was
clever enough to shake off her accent, her phrases, her devastating
gentility. And, if she never spoke, there was little companionship in
the adventure. Already she was giving him a foretaste of what their
relations would be... mechanical, soulless, without intimacy or
tenderness; they danced for ten minutes and then went back to their
table in the gallery for a drink and a cigarette, then danced again.
And, whenever the music stopped, he had to keep her from talking....

“I wonder what’s happened to Mr. Lewis?,” she murmured.

“Don’t bother about him... I say, Gracie, have you had enough of this?
I’m as hot as hell in these thick clothes. Let’s get some air.”

“Where are you going to?,” she asked, as he led her into the hall.

“We’ll talk about that later. Get your cloak.”

The girl stopped short and looked at him, her eyes charged with fear.

“I... I must go home,” she stammered.

“Get your cloak,” Gaymer repeated. “I’ll try to find a taxi.”

They drove down Tottenham Court Road without speaking. Gaymer was
tired, restless and bored, the girl fascinated and terrified. Once she
laid her hand on his wrist and asked with dry lips where he was taking
her.

“Home.”

“I didn’t ought to!... I _mustn’t_,” she cried.

Gaymer put his arm round her thin shoulders and kissed her.

“Don’t you want to?,” he asked.

“I didn’t ought to.”

He withdrew his arm and lay back in his own corner:

“It’s a free country. Don’t come if you don’t like.”

There was a second silence, and the girl turned to him timidly, putting
her hands on his shoulders and looking at him through a mist of tears.

“I’m frightened,” she whispered. “Be nice to me! Do you want me?”

Gaymer kissed her mechanically and with contempt for her cheap
surrender. He had asserted himself against the young Jew and against
this girl, but the proof of power brought him no satisfaction. For a
week or two Gracie might amuse him; then they would grow tired of each
other, there would be recriminations and a scene, he would have to find
some one to take her place. And, while she was with him, she had
nothing but her meagre looks and the servile passion which he had
inspired. They might live together, but he would never deign to share
his life with her....

“Is it far?,” she asked. “I’m so tired.”

Gaymer did not care whether she was tired or not; nothing that she
could say or do would rouse him to tenderness; nothing that could
happen to her would stir him to concern. She was useful, she could
never be essential; a servant to be engaged and replaced. He despised
her because she could give him no companionship; very soon, he knew, he
would loathe her....

“If you’re tired, you’d better go home,” he said.

“You _are_ horrid to me!,” she whimpered.

“Sorry! But it’s all a mistake.” He tapped on the window until the taxi
stopped. “I’m going to get out. You take this on home. Give this to the
man. Kiss me good-bye and part friends! You _have_ enjoyed yourself, I
hope. Good-bye, Gracie.”

He thrust a note into her hand, opened the door and walked rapidly
away. The driver waited and then came to the window for orders; he was
lazily amused to see a girl sitting forward with her cloak on the floor
and her hands locked between her knees, staring in bewilderment at the
vanishing form of her late companion. Her lips were parted, her eyes
strained; she shivered and pulled the cloak over her bare shoulders and
back; the movement seemed to break a spell and she roused to give an
address. As the taxi turned, she took a last look over her shoulder,
then dropped her head between her hands to think; at the same moment
the driver looked around with a leer at her expression of perplexity,
in which a wave of disappointment was succeeded by a wave of
thankfulness and then a second wave of disappointment. She chewed
petulantly at a corner of a crumpled handkerchief, then hid her face
and began to cry.

Gaymer walked south, girding at himself. Nothing that he could do was
right... He was mercifully rid of a woman whom he might well have
strangled before morning. But he was not rid of the maddening
loneliness which had tortured him all day, racking him with an extra
twist every time that he saw a man and girl perambulating arm-in-arm....

At two o’clock he found himself once more in Ryder Street, pacing up
and down for no better reason than that he had already paced up and
down there for so many hours. Ivy could not be there at two o’clock...
He turned into St. James’ Street and crossed the Park to Eaton Place,
led thereto by instinct and well knowing that he would find no
satisfaction in staring at a blind window. It was more than time for
him to be in bed, but he could not muster courage to enter his flat.
Too many reminders of Ivy lingered to haunt him in each derisory void
room. A game thrown away through carelessness... He could have held
her; granted opportunity, he could recapture her as easily as he had
captured the yellow woman with the silly name at the counter-jumpers’
carnival off Tottenham Court Road....

It was a pity to let that young Jew escape without a hiding....

A pity that he had not thrashed that errand-boy....

Gracie was not the girl that he wanted, but she was better than
nothing. And he had let her go....

Three o’clock....

Gaymer walked to Jermyn Street in the grey chill of a summer morning.
He did not greatly want a Turkish bath, but it would be good for him
after the indifferent liquor that he had been consuming all day. And he
could sleep for a few hours. And Jermyn Street was convenient for the
parson-poet’s flat....

Before he began the bath he must remember to look up the fellow’s
address in the directory....

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER ELEVEN


  MIRAGE


          Would I lose you now? would I take you then,
            If I lose you now that my heart has need?
          And come what may after death to men,
            What thing worth this will the dead years breed?
          Lose life, lose all; but at least I know,
          O sweet life’s love, having loved you so,
          Had I reached you on earth, I should lose not again,
            In death nor life, nor in dream or deed.
          ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE: “THE TRIUMPH OF TIME.”

Ivy always appeared so punctually that, on the morning after their
return from Croxton, Eric was first surprised and then disquieted when
nine o’clock, half-past nine and ten struck and there was still no sign
of her. His hand was stretched to the telephone, when she came in
breathless and apologetic.

“I couldn’t get here before. Don’t be angry with me, Eric,” she begged,
as she took off her gloves and hat.

“I was only getting rather anxious,” he answered. “There’s nothing the
matter, is there, Ivy?”

“No. Yes. No... I ran into Johnnie opposite Buckingham Palace, and he
insisted on walking across the Park with me. That’s what made me late.
We sat and talked. I thought it best to thresh the thing out once and
for all and to have done with it.”

The brisk voice and businesslike manner were not wholly convincing; as
she smoothed her hair, Eric saw that she was flushed and still out of
breath.

“What did he say?,” he asked.

“Oh, he told me he could explain everything, and I’d promised to marry
him, and he wanted to marry me, and I’d _got_ to marry him... He was
frightfully in earnest. He said I was the only girl he’d ever cared for
in the least; and I hadn’t been reasonable, wanting to marry when he
hadn’t anything to marry on and then making a quarrel out of it. He
vowed that he’d never have looked at that woman or at any other woman,
if I hadn’t refused to see him. I did, you know; I wanted to punish
him, so I wouldn’t have him near me for a month; it was during that
time that I found out... He said that, after all we’d been to each
other, I _must_ marry him, I couldn’t marry any one else, I was
practically married to him already... I said I couldn’t discuss it with
him. But I wish he didn’t take it so seriously... Let’s get to work,
Eric; I don’t want to think about it.”

She shivered slightly and took her note-book and pencil from a drawer.
Eric turned to his letters without saying anything more. She had grown
suddenly pale, and her hands were trembling; obviously unfit for work,
she was still less fit for sitting still and brooding... Since Gaymer
had clearly contrived this meeting, he meant business; there was
nothing more likely than that he would contrive a second and third.
Eric stopped in the middle of a letter and looked out of the window,
but the street was empty.

“D’you feel you’ve made him see that everything’s over between you?,”
he asked.

“I’ve told him so again and again, but he simply pays no attention,”
she cried tremulously. “He keeps going back to my promise, as though
the only shadow of difference between us was that he was so slow and I
was so impatient. He says he’ll marry me as soon as Lord Poynter’s
offer is confirmed, and I can publish the engagement as soon as I like.
I told him I didn’t _want_ to, I said I wasn’t engaged to him any
longer; then we started again at the beginning... Eric, don’t let’s
talk about it.”

They returned to the letters, and he went on dictating until he
discovered that Ivy was paying no attention to him. One hand supported
her head; with the other she was drawing little patterns on the
blotting paper. Suddenly the pencil slipped from her fingers; he saw
her eyes close and her lips whiten, as she bit them.

“My child—!”

“It’s nothing! I shall be all right in a minute, but I felt so funny
all of a sudden.”

“Are you in pain?”

“I am, rather....”

She bit her lips at a new spasm, and Eric put his fingers on her pulse.
Then he picked her up and carried her into his room, leaving her there
for a moment, while he gave orders for a bed to be made up in his spare
room and telephoned for Dr. Gaisford to come round at once.

“I’m _really_ all right, I just felt funny,” she protested, when he
told her what he had done. “I think meeting Johnnie, you know... I
don’t want a doctor.”

She tried to sit upright, then fell back, covering her face with her
hands. Eric took up his stand half-way between the window and the bed
until he saw a car stopping at the door. The sight of the doctor’s
familiar, burly figure heartened him, and it was only as he ran
downstairs and found himself, white-faced and agitated, being mistaken
for the patient, that he realized how frightened he had been.

“When you’re not ill yourself, you’ll always take some one else’s
illness on your shoulders,” grumbled the doctor. “I’ve never seen such
a fellow! Where is she?”

“In my room.”

“And what’s happened?”

As best he could, Eric described Ivy’s sudden collapse. The doctor
raised his eyebrows once and grunted to himself:

“Right. Then you can go out for a nice long walk. I shan’t have you in
the room and I don’t want you fussing about outside. Come back after
lunch, and I’ll give you a new set of orders then. It’s possible that
we shan’t be able to move her for some time.”

“But is she bad? You haven’t seen her yet!,” Eric cried inconsequently.

“I can make a guess what the trouble _may_ be. Now clear out, my son,
and don’t pull a long face. It’s a thing that may happen to any one—any
one who’s fool enough to be a woman, that is. I don’t propose to let
her die, if I can help it, so you needn’t summon the relations. The
less said to them—and to every one—the better for your young friend.”

He entered the bedroom, leaving Eric mystified and fidgetting with
anxiety in the hall. There was a kindly, gruff, “Well, my dear?” and an
inarticulate answer from Ivy. Eric hovered on tip-toe outside the door,
waiting to be handed prescriptions or sent for brandy. He looked into
the spare room to see whether the bed was yet made. “Miss Maitland’s a
little faint,” he explained easily enough to the servants. Then he
started and turned away, for across the hall and through an open and a
closed door came an unmistakable moan. It was not repeated, and he
lurked uneasily in the hall, trying to distinguish the mutter of
voices. Then he went to his cellar and opened a bottle of brandy.
Gaisford was a fool to keep him out of the room; he could not possibly
know where anything was kept... Eric hurried into the library and
wrote—“_In the cupboard under my wash-hand-stand you’ll find_ sal
volatile, eau-de-cologne _and aspirin. Also bicarbonate of soda and
bismuth. I’ve got brandy here. Let me know if there’s anything else you
want._” He twisted the paper into a thin spill, pushed it under the
door and knocked gently.

Half-an-hour later Dr. Gaisford came into the library with the paper
crumpled in his hand and a smile puckering his eyes and mouth.

“I thought I said something about a nice walk,” he grunted.

“Is it anything serious?,” asked Eric, disregarding the hint.

“‘_Bicarbonate of soda and bismuth_’,” read the doctor. “How old are
you, Eric? Six? Seven? It’s a very ordinary business; and there’ll be
no danger, if we are careful; but I somehow don’t think
_eau-de-cologne_ quite meets the case, my learned colleague. I’m going
to write a note, and you’re going to take it away in a taxi and bring
back a nurse. That child’s not to move for three weeks. She won’t want
to, for a day or two, because she’s in considerable pain; and, after
that, she’ll be very weak. And, after that,—well, you may feel that
Providence has stepped in and solved a good many future difficulties
for you. It’s a curious thing—”

“Is she in danger?,” Eric interrupted, as the doctor’s meaning became
clear to him.

“We-ell, it’s worse than a cut finger and not as bad as a broken back.
Perhaps I may be allowed to point out that you do no good to any one by
getting into a panic. I’ll tell you that she needs careful handling;
and we’ll leave it at that, because that part’s my job. But you’ve to
keep your head and lend me your inventive and dramatic genius. We’ve to
concoct a convincing lie over this. What are we going to say is the
matter with her?”

Eric sat heavily on the arm of a chair, too much numbed to think.

“I leave that to you,” he answered with a helpless shake of the head.

“Then I make it appendicitis. We must study our parts; she must have
been troubled with pains and sickness, and I recommended an immediate
operation... We’ll make a good lie, while we’re about it; I happen to
know that Fitz-William is ill and Greenaway’s fishing in Ireland;
they’re the obvious men, so we’ll say we tried to get them to operate;
when they couldn’t come, I said we daren’t wait and I’d operate myself.
You, meanwhile, tried to telephone to the girl’s mother, but the line
was engaged. I think that holds water... I’ll get hold of a nurse I can
trust and explain to her... Can you pick any holes in that?”

“Is it all right as regards the law?”

“Yes, unless she’s inconsiderate enough to go and die. I don’t put my
name to a false certificate to oblige you or any one, friend Eric; and,
if it were anybody else, I wouldn’t touch the whole business with a
pole. But, if she pulls through—as she’s going to—, we don’t do any
good by telling the truth and we don’t harm any one but ourselves by
telling a good, saving lie. Give me a sheet of paper and a pen. And,
when you’ve got the nurse, go off to this girl’s mother and pitch her
this yarn. She can come and see her for a moment, if she insists, but
you can quote all my degrees and decorations to her and say that I’m
very strongly against it. Now, d’you think that’s clear?”

He dropped into a chair by the writing-table without waiting for an
answer. Eric stood for a moment, trying to remember and understand all
that he had been told; then he fetched a hat and stick and returned for
the letter.

It was six o’clock before he accomplished his last commission and drove
back to Ryder Street. On reaching the Cromwell Road, he was informed
that Ivy’s mother was at the house in Norfolk; he hurried to the Law
Courts and waited for the judge, who wasted half-an-hour before
deciding to do nothing. Then he laid siege to Eaton Place, pursued Lady
Maitland round London by telephone and eventually intercepted her
between two committees in Westminster. She wasted only twenty minutes
in a succession of agitated questions; and by that time Eric had made
his story polished and convincing, so that she accepted the doctor’s
ban without protest, only insisting that she was to be fed with morning
and evening bulletins. The nurse had by this time taken charge;
Gaisford had left and returned; Ivy was in as satisfactory a state as
could be expected.

“I suppose nothing will induce you to let me see her?,” said Eric.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders and smiled grimly:

“Yes, if you won’t excite her. We’ve carried her into your spare room,
away from your infernal telephone contraptions. Don’t try to talk to
her.”

Eric went in and returned swiftly, with a scared face.

“I say, she’s in horrible pain,” he exclaimed.

“I know. I sent you in to cure you of any desire to go back. The best
thing you can do is to keep out of the way and find some work to do;
otherwise you’ll simply fret your nerves to ribbons. It’ll be much
worse than this when you’re married, if that’s any consolation. Go and
get some dinner and find some one to take to a music-hall.”

Eric knew that the doctor was trying to keep his emotional temperature
low, but he winced involuntarily at his inhuman detachment.

“While she’s like that? Thank you, Gaisford,” he answered shortly.

“I’m trying to make a philosopher of you,” the doctor explained.

Eric looked at his watch and walked aimlessly downstairs. He had
forgotten to eat any luncheon, and Gaisford’s suggestion of dinner made
him conscious of a head-ache and a vague feeling of sickness. He was
dawdling irresolutely in the shadowy hall, trying to decide whether it
was better to continue hungry or to face conversation at the club, when
he heard his name called and looked up to find John Gaymer standing in
front of the name-board by the fire-place.

“I was coming to return your call,” he announced.

Eric realized dully that he wanted, above all things, to avoid an
altercation. The head-ache told him that; he shuddered at the thought
of noise and the effort of reining his temper and barbing his tongue
for a wrangle. He had a head-ache, because he was hungry; he was
hungry, because he had been about Ivy’s business all day. And Ivy was
in such pain that he could not bear to stay in her room. Gaymer—and
Gaymer alone—was responsible; he was responsible for her agony of mind
and of body; he would be responsible, if she died. It was hardly the
moment for him to thrust himself into what, for all Gaisford’s bluff
confidence, might at any moment become a house of death; it was hardly
the atmosphere or mood in which to force a gratuitous quarrel.

“I’m afraid I’m going out,” said Eric with an effort to avoid copying
the veiled bellicose tone of his companion. “I didn’t have any lunch,
so I’m dining rather early.”

“Well, don’t let me keep you. Shall I find Ivy upstairs?”

Eric looked thoughtfully at the composed face and powerful frame,
wondering why he took the trouble to study him so carefully and
realizing with a shock that he was gauging his strength for the moment
when they had to fight this out. He wished that he felt less empty and
sick. One well-placed blow over the heart from Gaymer’s ready arm would
probably kill him.

“She’s upstairs,” he answered. “You can’t see her, though.”

“What a slave-driver you are!,” Gaymer laughed. “I only want to speak
to her for a minute.”

“It’s impossible.”

Gaymer raised his eyebrows slightly and felt for his cigarette-case. He
looked vainly for a chair and then hoisted himself on to a table beside
the fire-place:

“I’ll wait till she comes out.”

“Then you’ll have to wait some time. She’s not coming out to-night—or
to-morrow—or the next day.”

“I’m afraid I shall have to go up and see her, then. I quite appreciate
that you don’t want me to disturb her work, but you can’t very well
sequester her person for days on end.” He got slowly off the table with
a swagger of defiance, keeping his eyes on Eric and moving, with his
head turned, towards the stair-case. “There’ll be some one to let me
in, I suppose?”

“There’s a doctor and a nurse to keep you out,” Eric answered without
moving. “Ivy’s very seriously ill, you’ll be interested to hear. She
mustn’t be worried, and I can’t allow any noise of any kind... Perhaps
you’d better come out with me. There are one or two things which I
think you’ve a right to know, because, if that child dies, you’ll have
murdered her as surely as I’m standing here.”

Gaymer’s foot was already on the lowest stair, but he first hesitated
and then came slowly back.

“You mustn’t allow your love of the dramatic to run away with you,” he
sneered. “What’s the matter with her?”

“I’ll tell you outside. Are you coming? I warn you that, if you try to
get into my flat, I’ll send for the police.”

He held open the street-door, and Gaymer passed through it jauntily
after just enough deliberation to shew that he was not yielding to a
threat. Eric walked half a pace ahead of him down St. James’ Street and
into the Park. Once Gaymer broke the silence to ask where he was being
taken; Eric strode on without answering until he found two empty chairs
under a secluded tree.

“I’m glad to have this opportunity of talking to you,” he said. “It
must be understood that I can’t let Ivy be molested by you any longer.
You made a great nuisance of yourself at Croxton and again this
morning—”

Gaymer leaned forward and thrust his face within a foot of Eric’s with
an unspoken challenge to strike if he dared.

“And who under the sun are _you_ to tell me what I may do and what I
_mayn’t_, what you’ll _let_ me do?,” he asked. “There are moments, my
dear Lane, when you make me impatient. _I_ don’t butt into your private
affairs—”

“As I told you once before, Ivy’s a friend of mine,” Eric answered,
tipping his chair back.

“And of mine. You were very much concerned to find out whether we were
engaged to be married; and, though it’s no more your business now than
it was then, I may tell you that we are.”

Eric shook his head slowly:

“She’s been trying to cure you of that delusion for some days. I
understand you did once give her a promise, but that was for your own
ends. And I understand you’ve offered it again, no doubt again for your
own ends. But when a girl’s been seduced and deserted and left with a
baby—”

“You damned liar!”

Gaymer jumped up and stood threateningly over Eric.

“It’s no use getting abusive! Perhaps I ought to have said that she was
_going_ to have a baby, but that now she won’t. She may die, though;
and, in that case, Gaymer, nothing in heaven or earth is going to save
you; I shall honour you with my undivided attention. If she pulls
through, we shall not require to see or hear anything more of you.”

“You damned liar!,” Gaymer repeated; but his voice had fallen to a
whisper, and Eric discovered with nicely blended surprise and rage that
the incredulity was unassumed.

“Don’t go on saying that! These things do happen, you know.”

“But this is the first I’ve heard of it!”

“Well... You know now. I saw Ivy for a moment this afternoon, I saw
what she was going through... You vile little cad!... And I’ve seen her
daily, I’ve seen what she’s had to go through—mentally—for your
pleasure and amusement. The first you’ve heard of it, you swine! Of
course it is! Ivy has too much pluck and too much pride to come and ask
you to marry her out of charity. I shouldn’t be telling you now, if she
wasn’t lying at death’s door—Yes, you beast, I’ve seen her—and if I
didn’t know it’d kill her to have you blustering in and bullying her...
That girl—I met her before you did, and she was as innocent as a child—”

“Hold on a bit!,” Gaymer interrupted.

Eric was out of breath with the vehemence of his attack. He leaned back
panting, dizzy with excitement and hunger. Gaymer was still standing
over him, but no longer menacing; he rocked a little, and his face was
shapeless and flabby. Once, at the onrush of an air-raid, Eric had seen
a drunken man lying helpless in the road; with the bursting crash of
the first maroons he had become sober, drawing himself slowly upright,
while the flush and fire of drink faded out of his cheeks, leaving him
tremulous, unmanned but lucid. Gaymer was no less unmanned now.

“I think that’s all I need tell you,” Eric concluded.

“I’m not altogether there yet... I say, d’you feel inclined to come
round to my rooms for a drink—?”

“I do not.”

“I wish you would.” The truculence which was second self to Gaymer had
left him. “You can call me what you like... Look here, Lane, we’re both
of us a bit on edge; you say you’ve had nothing to eat... Come round
and take pot-luck with me. It doesn’t commit you to anything; you can
go on saying and thinking just whatever you like about me. But I want
to hear about Ivy. On my honour, I never suspected... Did you mean what
you said about her being at death’s door?”

Eric forced back a passionate answer.

“The doctor says he’s going to pull her through,” he said at length. “I
don’t know much about these things. I _saw_ her... We shan’t do any
good by discussing it.”

Gaymer leaned down and picked up his cane.

“Won’t you come round?,” he asked again. “I want to hear the whole
story. You mayn’t believe it, but I’m very fond of Ivy....”

Before he appreciated that he was yielding, Eric found himself being
helped to his feet and led towards Buckingham Gate. Gaymer walked with
an uncertain lurch, bumping into him at rhythmic intervals and saying
nothing till they were seated on the divan in his smoking-room and he
was collecting himself to order dinner. No sooner was his housekeeper
out of the room than he poured himself nearly half a tumbler of brandy
and drank it in two practised gulps.

“That’s better,” he murmured.

“You’ll find yourself laid out with D. T., if you go on like that,”
Eric commented.

“I wonder... I’ve got a head like wood and, ever since I was wounded,
I’ve needed the devil of a lot to keep me going... But I can ride or
run or shoot or swim with any one you like to put up against me...
Well, Lane, it’s not much use my apologizing for anything I may have
said, because I’ve never felt particularly friendly towards you from
the first day we met, which is some years ago now, and I always very
strongly resented your butting in where Ivy was concerned. I enjoyed
riling you. But I do at least see that you had better reason for
butting in than I thought. I honestly _didn’t_ think... I wonder if
you’d mind telling me your version of the business from the beginning.”

Starting sketchily from his first meeting in New York, Eric described
his relations with Ivy from the night when he found her walking home
alone from the Vaudeville. When he came to their Maidenhead expedition,
he paused long in search of a formula.

“She admitted a little; the rest I managed to guess. I said I’d see her
through,” he told Gaymer.

There was a second pause, but Gaymer sat swinging the empty tumbler
between his knees and staring blankly into the empty fire-place. Eric
continued his story to the point where Gaisford came into the library
to explain what was the matter with Ivy.

“That’s all,” he concluded.

The housekeeper came in to announce dinner.

“D’you like a wash?,” asked Gaymer. When they were alone, he leaned his
head against the mantelpiece, idly kicking the fender with his heel.
“You seem to have jumped my claim,” he commented with a note of
surprise in his voice.

“Would you say you had much claim to jump?,” asked Eric tartly.

“_I_ think so... Come in to dinner. I’ll give you my version, and you
can tell me what you think of it.”

While there was a servant intermittently in the room, Gaymer preferred
to talk about his life before the war; and it was not until the end of
the meal that he began to speak of Ivy. He was naturally so
uncommunicative that Eric had been on nodding terms with him for three
years without discovering more about him than that he had been severely
wounded in the first months of the war and relegated to light duty ever
since; it seemed to Gaymer unlikely that any one should want to know
more, and he spoke as though anything that he said might afterwards be
used against him. By the end of dinner he had relaxed his hold on
unimportant scraps of autobiography, and Eric was able to sketch in a
background; Eton and King’s, a father who had died and a mother who had
remarried and gone to live in Italy, a sister who had married and
drifted out of his life; two years of aimless and mildly dissolute life
in London, varied with motor-racing....

“I’d always had rather a turn for mechanics and I used to have a lot of
fun taking out cars and motor-bikes for hill-climbing and reliability
tests,” said Gaymer, lighting one more in a long succession of
cigarettes. He had come into the room smoking and smoked continuously,
sending away one dish after another and drinking brandy and water in
equal quantities. “You don’t get fat on that sort of thing, though, so
I went into a London agency and sold cars on commission to everybody I
knew. ’Made a good thing out of it, too. Then I started flying—did you
know Babs Neave in the days when we swooped down on Salisbury Plain and
broke up the manoeuvres?... I perfected a new aero engine and hoped to
make a good thing out of that. Then came the war... I was smashed up a
few months before we met; d’you remember, you were dining with that
pretentious prig, my aunt Margaret Poynter, at the end of ’15? Barring
one trip to America, when I met you again, of course, I’ve been doing
office work at the Air Ministry ever since, rather wondering what to do
next. My old firm has been making lorries for the War Office these last
four years; they won’t have any cars to sell for eighteen months and
then they can sell without the help of an agent. I waited till I was
quite sure there was nothing for me in the Air Force, then I pulled
strings to get out and went to Poynter for a job. He has all kinds of
interests, and, if I don’t mind going into exile at Rio, he’ll place me
with the Azores Line... Let’s have coffee in the other room; then this
old hag can clear away without disturbing us... Lane, this is a
delicate position for us. I must tell you again that you seem to have
jumped my claim.”

“And I must repeat that you’ve no claim for me to jump. Tell me
honestly: did you ever intend to marry Ivy?”

Gaymer poured out the coffee and rang irritably for liqueur glasses.
Then he offered Eric a cigar, pierced one for himself and rolled it
thoughtfully round and round in his mouth. It was impossible to guess
whether he was deciding how much to tell or simply trying to arrange
his thoughts. Eric sat down at one end of the divan, wondering why he
had come there and what he could add to the few brutal facts which he
had thrown at Gaymer in the Park. He would have fainted, if he had gone
without food any longer, but, apart from the dinner, he had achieved
nothing; there was nothing to achieve. He wondered how Ivy was....

“I—don’t—know,” drawled Gaymer at length, finishing his brandy and
throwing himself into a chair. Drink had restored some of his
assurance. He was no longer dazed, no longer a suppliant, and, if he
had not yet reverted to his old attitude of detached, provocative
superiority, he was growing gradually more combative. “You see, when I
first met her, marriage was out of the question. Later on, when I said
I’d marry her, I was quite ready... if it ever came to that. But I
didn’t start out with that intention. I liked her, and she liked me...
England’s the only country in the world where people think there’s
anything wrong or unusual... And, since the war, girls have altered a
good bit; they don’t see why they shouldn’t have a good time. Ivy had a
thundering good time, the best she’s ever had in all her life. I got
her away from her damned old stick of a father, I took her out and
shewed her round; it was all quite innocent and harmless. Then some one
began to talk, and she cooled off a bit; people were wondering whether
we were engaged, she said. And bit by bit after that she began to put a
pistol to my head. She’d evidently made up her mind to marry me; I
wasn’t a marrying man, I hadn’t the money, but I told her that _when_
things straightened themselves out... There’s no point in being engaged
unless you get some benefit from it... Before she actually came here, I
did say as a matter of form that I’d marry her, but at the time I
doubted whether either of us would want to. You know how these
arrangements end—you have a good time for a month or two; and then the
thing begins to pall; and then, if you’re wise, you kiss and say
good-bye while you’re still friends—without waiting for the usual
dreary scenes and quarrels. After we’d had two or three months of each
other I didn’t think she’d talk about marrying me any more; if she
_had_—after three months—, she’d have been different from the others,
and perhaps this might be the real thing, perhaps we _should_ both want
to go on. In that case I should have to consider ways and means... Even
then, you see, I didn’t think anything would come of it. Well, very
soon after that she brought the question up again, and we had a bit of
a bicker; _she_ went away in a huff, and _I_ waited for her to come to
her senses. The next thing was that she came to see me that night—a
month later,—and we had an up-and-a-downer. She never said a word then;
as I told you, I never suspected till this evening. Well, I went on
waiting for her to come to her senses, but, when she cut all
communications, I saw I should have to take the first step. I was
missing her. Most infernally... So I got myself invited to Croxton and
I meant to find out what the trouble was. If she wasn’t the girl I
thought she was, if she’d developed a conscience or been talked over or
had decided that it wasn’t workable to go on having a good time in the
old way, I’d made up my mind to marry her. That was the first time I
saw it definitely; she suited me very well, she was a nice girl and
very fond of me; it was rather a bore getting married, but I was ready
to do it. I tried to talk to her down there, but she told me without
any beating about the bush that she’d had enough of me. I should have
expected to be a bit put out, but I only admired her for it. I didn’t
know she had it in her to hand me out my marching orders _quite_ like
that. There wasn’t any opportunity of speaking to her again down there,
but I watched out for her this morning and had a word; and, when I met
you this evening, I was coming down to have another word... I never
bother much about defending myself, but, if I didn’t know till a couple
of hours ago, you can’t very well blame me. Now that I _do_ know, I
shall do the right thing.”

He poured himself a second glass of liqueur brandy after his unusual
effort of sustained articulation and waved the decanter towards Eric.

“There’s nothing for you to do except to keep out of the way,” said
Eric. “If Ivy dies,—well, we won’t consider that. If she gets well, she
doesn’t want any help or recognition from you; there’ll be no
consequences for you to fear; she starts fresh, and you may believe her
when she tells you that she never wants to see you again.”

Gaymer shook his head and smiled tolerantly.

“Ah, but I don’t,” he answered.

“She’s told me and she’s told you.”

“I don’t give her up quite as easily as that.”

“I’m not going to let you persecute her.” Eric took out his watch and
got up from the divan. Gaymer was becoming truculent again, and they
could look for nothing but the dreaded, unprofitable wrangle. “I came
here at your request; if there are any questions you like to ask—”

“How soon can I see Ivy?”

“You can’t. She may not live through the night. If she does, I’ll make
it my business to keep you away from her.”

“Are you afraid?”

“Of you?”

“Are you afraid to let me see her, afraid that she may make up her mind
for herself?”

“She’d done that before you got your marching orders at Croxton.”

Eric turned his back and took a step towards the door, but Gaymer only
sank deeper into his chair, with one leg thrown over the other and his
finger-tips pressed together.

“You’d better look at facts, Lane. There was a time within the last
four months when she belonged to me, soul and body; she may belong to
me soul and body again. _May..._ If you try to keep me away—I say
‘try’, because you won’t succeed—, it’s because you’re afraid. You
think you’re going to marry her; I’ll assume you do; I’ll assume she’s
in love with you, if you’ll admit that she must have been tolerably in
love with me not so long ago. As between the two of us, if she’s going
to find that she prefers me, would you sooner she found it out before
you try to marry her or after you’re happily married?”

“She’s decided already.”

“She’s decided on false evidence. When I tell her that it was only
to-night—”

“You won’t have an opportunity of telling her.”

“You haven’t much confidence in yourself.”

“I can’t see why we should either of us submit to being bothered by you
any more. If you’ve nothing more to say, I’ll get back to her. I warn
you very strongly—don’t make any attempt to see her.”

Gaymer looked at him in silence for a moment and then drew himself
slowly out of his chair and walked to the door. Eric picked up his hat
and left the flat with a short, murmured “good-night.” As he hurried
across St. James’ Park he tried to sort his ideas into order and to
escape the oppressive sense of uneasiness which Gaymer’s vague menaces
had brought to life again. The fellow could do nothing—one said that
again and again, to get the problem in perspective and perhaps to rally
one’s courage—; he could not break down doors, Ivy would never consent
to speak to him, to read his letters... Yet, if he came and haunted
them when they were married....

It was this eternal, insoluble question of the hold that a man retained
on the woman whom he had once possessed, the hold of the faithless and
the brutal on those whom they betrayed and ill-treated, the hold which
women confessed and of which some men boasted. Gaymer had almost said
in words that, as Ivy had once fallen to him, in her great first
surrender, she would yield again when he demanded it of her... Eric
found himself leaning against a tree on the Mall, idly watching the
taxis which raced with a jar and rattle towards Buckingham Palace. Here
was a sex difference, for women retained no such hold on their men. And
he had spent half of his life trying to understand and systematize the
psychology of women. If Gaymer fought him for possession of Ivy, it was
anybody’s victory.

The doctor was gone by the time that he reached his flat, but the nurse
reported that all was well and that her patient was out of danger,
almost out of pain. He telephoned reassuringly to Lady Maitland and
asked leave to say good-night to Ivy. When he opened the door, her eyes
were closed, and he felt a hot wave of anger that he should have
submitted to threats from a cad who sat soaking himself with brandy,
that he should still be threatened....

Ivy opened her eyes and beckoned to him, with a smile.

“Don’t look so worried, dearest!,” she whispered. “I know I’m being a
frightful nuisance to you.”

“Are you better?,” he asked, kissing her hand, which was dry and hot.

“I’m all right—honestly. I only feel rather tired. I won’t be a
nuisance to you any more, though.” She turned away with a jerk that set
her short hair tossing. “You can get rid of me now, Eric, if you want
to.”

“If I want to? I thought I’d lost you to-day, Ivy. It wasn’t a very
pleasant feeling.”

“Would you really be sorry...?” She stretched out her hand and caught
his wrist. “Eric, be honest with me! You can get rid of me now—Oh, that
sounds so horribly ungracious! But you know what I mean. Do you want
me, Eric, or were you just sacrificing yourself for me? Tell me
honestly. I can bear it.”

She turned her face to him again; and he saw that her eyes were
narrowed and her lips tightly shut, as though she were nerving herself
to be struck.

“Can I keep you, if I want you?,” he asked.

“You know you can.”

“And is it love—or because you think you ought to? That’s what I’ve
been waiting to find out all these weary weeks.”

“You needn’t have waited, my precious darling! _I_ knew that first day
at Maidenhead.”

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER TWELVE


  NIGHT


“So when morning was come, he goes to them in a surly manner, as
before, and perceiving them to be very sore with the stripes that he
had given them the day before, he told them, that since they were never
like to come out of that place, their only way would be, forthwith to
make an end of themselves, either with knife, halter, or poison: ‘For
why,’ said he, ‘should you choose life, seeing it is attended with so
much bitterness?’”

                                JOHN BUNYAN: “THE PILGRIM’S PROGRESS.”

When the nurse came to turn him out of the room, Eric steadied himself
and tried to walk into the library as though nothing unusual had
happened. Once there, with the morning’s letters still unanswered and
the evening’s unopened, he could not decide what to do. Forgotten
names, from a dream-world that he had forsaken, assailed him with
clamorous insistence; his friends, of course, could not realize that
for days all his interest had been concentrated on Ivy and Gaymer, with
the judge and Gaisford and his own dim family grouped in the middle
distance. Absurd urgency to secure his presence at the opera: “_L’Heure
espagnole_, _it’s being given for the first time_”; letters from
America, informing him that the writers, who would never forget the
pleasure of meeting him in New York, were on their way to England... In
three days their world was as remote from him as Venusburg from the
regenerate Tannhaüser; America was but a country in which he had
thought of finding a sanctuary for his wife. There was no need now for
him to take Ivy abroad; and for three weeks he had worked and schemed
in the expectation of going to America in the autumn for six months or
a year....

Readjustment....

The telephone-bell rang, and a woman’s voice enquired for him:

“It’s Lady John Carstairs speaking. I’m so sorry to hear about poor
Miss Maitland. Amy Loring told me at dinner. How is she? I was
wondering if there was anything I could do. You’ve got all the doctors
and nurses you want, of course, but it must be such an upset for a
bachelor establishment. My husband wanted to know if you’d care for a
bed here; we can give you a little room where you’ll be able to work
undisturbed....”

As he thanked her, Eric smiled wearily to himself at the speed and
thoroughness of Gaisford’s workings. In twenty-four hours it would be
known from one end of his little London to the other that “Connie
Maitland’s niece, who was helping Eric Lane in the absence of his
secretary,” had collapsed unexpectedly with appendicitis. He assisted
the report on its way by cancelling two dinner invitations and an
engagement for the week-end; growing bold in mendacity, he stereotyped
the story, as he had told it to the judge, and despatched it with a
late bulletin to his mother. By this time there was no harm in telling
Lady Maitland that she might come any day, provided that she did not
try to stay more than a moment.

The swift-flying rumour of London dinner-tables was sometimes an
occasion for blessing. In three weeks’ time Ivy could be moved; the
news of their engagement would flash from house to house; ‘romance,’
hard-worked and ill-used, would be pressed into service as
thought-saving description until he might hope to be spared, even in
the echo of a whisper, hearing the name of Barbara Neave or of John
Gaymer. He was too tired to cope with the tumult which their names
conjured up; he tried to forget them....

Yet even now Gaymer could not be left where he was.

“_There is one thing which I must add to our conversation of this
evening_,” Eric wrote. “_Ivy and I are definitely engaged to be
married. I write this in confidence, as the engagement cannot be
announced until I have been through the formality of seeing her father.
This I hope to do immediately. You will probably agree that this is the
most definite answer to the question which you were proposing to
raise._”

He signed the letter and returned to the unexplored pile in front of
him. The invitations stretched far into the summer, but for the future
he must take Ivy into partnership in dealing with them; there were the
customary appeals for money, opinions and advice, the usual requests
for interviews, articles and lectures; a long envelope contained the
draft of the will which he had instructed his solicitors to make for
safeguarding Ivy in the event of his dying suddenly. The necessity had
almost passed; but, as he read through the provisions, he filled in her
name and rang for his two maids to come and witness his signature. From
investments alone they would have rather more than a thousand a year,
which was tolerable even in days of swollen prices; in addition he
could reasonably hope that his plays would not all cease suddenly and
at the same moment to yield him any fees. His income, taken on an
average, was probably far bigger than Mr. Justice Maitland enjoyed from
salary and securities.

Eric became absorbed in his calculations and worked at them until he
was too tired to see any more. Ivy and he would have enough for a flat
in London and a cottage in the country; they could winter abroad and
travel to their hearts’ content; when children came, they could be
given the best upbringing and education, as befitted the beautiful,
dark-haired, grey-eyed children that Ivy would bear. Hitherto he had
never thought of himself as a father; and he fell asleep with a new,
delightful picture of Ivy holding their first child in her arms,
herself but a child still....

Next day a budget of sympathetic enquiries awaited him, and he was kept
busy with pen and telephone. There were presents of flowers and fruit,
offers of personal assistance, general invitations and an embarrassing
procession of callers. Eric debated with himself whether to issue
orders that Captain Gaymer was not to be admitted; he decided that, if
his letter were not enough of a deterrent, there would at least be no
attempt at a forced entry for some days.

Though he kept reassuring himself, it was a shock to receive a letter
in the evening and to trace the straggling, unfamiliar writing down to
the signature “Yours sincerely John Gaymer.” Eric felt his heart
beating more quickly as he turned to the opening words:

“_I have your letter. All that you say may be true, but it doesn’t
affect my point. So far as I know, the facts have never been put before
Ivy. Will you tell her that I should like to see her as soon as she’s
well enough? The issue is quite plain._”

Eric locked the letter away in a despatch-box and walked up and down
the library, trying to compose himself before Gaisford came in from the
sick-room. Even without Gaymer, the last few weeks had been
sufficiently exhausting—first Ivy, then Barbara and the succession of
unnerving encounters with her; and, before that, the shock of her
marriage, the torturing sense of betrayal, the endless nights and days
of inward raving and outward stoicism in which he had travelled and
lectured and written from end to end of America like an effigy of
himself with the spirit torn out and bleeding apart; and, before that,
the two years of illness and madness. It was not surprising if he
sometimes felt that something in his head, just behind the eyes, would
snap; it was unpleasantly surprising to calculate that he had not felt
well for months, that he was half-consciously waiting to hear the snap.

He was sitting with his head bent forward, squeezing his fists against
his temples, when the doctor came in. The door was open, and Eric never
knew how long Gaisford had stood watching him before he looked up; and,
though he rallied at once and asked steadily enough for the evening
report, he felt trapped.

“She’s doing very nicely,” said Gaisford, still looking at him
curiously. “If you don’t let people see her till I give you leave—.”

“You can trust me for that,” Eric interrupted.

“And if I say you’re not to see her yourself?”

“I shouldn’t dream of going near her against your orders!”

The doctor silenced him with a grunt and began digging like an
industrious terrier among the papers on the writing table.

“Tell me where you keep your cigars and don’t become theatrical,” he
advised. “Since when have you started this flattering regard for my
orders?”

“I’ve done everything you’ve told me to.”

“Since yesterday morning. In other days I used to prescribe for you,
I’ve even pulled you out of one or two tight corners for which
posterity is likely to be more grateful to me than you are. Shoo! Shoo!
Shoo! _Seniores priores._ _I’m doing_ the talking. Well, you’ve always
had the sense and justice to admit that you wouldn’t have got into
eighty per cent. of those same tight corners, if you’d followed my
orders earlier. D’you remember the man in Kipling who always prophesied
trouble in the Balkans in the spring? It was a fairly safe shot. I
always seem to prophesy a nervous breakdown in about a fortnight’s time
for you. Before you go to bed this night, I’m going to overhaul you;
and then you’re going away—not for my sake, nor for yours, but for your
young woman’s. You’re no use to her, if you smash up; and you’re going
to smash up, unless you take in sail. What’s the trouble? I left a
message last night to say she was out of danger.”

“And, before that, you sent me off to have a nice, bright dinner... I
tumbled across that swine Gaymer, and you may be amused to hear that we
dined together. Gaymer had never suspected anything till that moment;
he appreciated that there was a certain coolness and he was leaving her
to come to her senses! _Now...._”

Eric jumped up and shut the door, conscious that he was scoring bad
marks against himself by his restlessness but hardly caring to keep up
pretences any longer.

“Well?” said Gaisford.

“I don’t know... He swears he’s in love with her, wants to marry her.
And he’s made up his mind to see her.”

“_I_ shall have something to say about that for the next three weeks.”

“And by then the engagement will be announced. The judge told me he was
going away to-morrow, but as soon as he comes back....”

“What’s troubling you, then?”

Eric continued to pace up and down between the windows and the door,
staring at the carpet, locking and unlocking his fingers behind his
back and trying to find words for the new doubt which Ivy had not
resolved even when she promised herself to him the night before:

“I’m not easy in my mind... I don’t know... Does a woman _ever_ break
her first lover’s spell? I seem uncertain of everything.”

“Then you’d better put it to the test. You’ll be a fool to marry her,
if you think she’ll come at the other man’s whistle. I told you
that—weeks ago, in this very room, when we first discussed it. Let him
see her, let her make up her mind.”

“She’s _made_ it up. If he comes, she’ll send him away again.”

“Then she _has_ broken the spell? I don’t know whether I’m not
following you very well....”

Eric laughed mirthlessly:

“I’m not surprised. Sometimes, Gaisford, you get a feeling which won’t
bear analysis or definition or argument; it’s just there... I left
Gaymer yesterday in a state of panic. I felt that he was the better
man. He was doing prodigies of valour in the war, while I was
collecting rejection papers; and I sometimes wonder whether women care
for anything but the best animal on the market. Fastidiousness in
conduct, super-culture, the ability to ‘see two points in Hamlet’s soul
unseized by the Germans yet’—all that may appeal to some, but they’re
atrophied women, without sex. The war has made our scale of values very
primitive... When I was at school, I wasn’t allowed to play games; and,
if other people despised me in consequence, you bet your life I
despised myself more; I never had a friend, in consequence, till I went
up to Oxford... The war was a fair test whether a man was a man—in
courage, physical endurance, ability to command and to obey,
herd-capacity to protect the female, the young, the home. Well, I
couldn’t survive that test. Better a live crock than a dead hero, you
may think, if you happen to be one of the crocks; but, when I left
Gaymer last night, when I stood leaning against a tree in the Park
picturing the pair of us as two males fighting for one female, I said,
‘You drunken brute, you’re the better man.’ And, if I feel that, a
woman will feel it, too... Ivy loves me; I’m quite sure of that. But
I’ve never imagined she felt any passion for me, you wouldn’t expect it
in her present state. Undoubtedly she once felt passion for Gaymer...
You want to know what’s worrying me. Well, it’s just that.”

“And you’ve lost confidence in yourself so much that, if the girl came
to you every quarter of an hour, protesting that she preferred you and
didn’t want to see the other man, you still wouldn’t believe her. Go
away for a holiday, Eric. If I agreed with your sex-generalizations
about ‘better men’ and ‘finer animals’—I don’t; and I suspect you of
taking your psychology from novels by unmarried women—, I should tell
you you’re becoming relatively worse and worse every day that you
neglect your health. Go right away for a few weeks.”

“I don’t like leaving Ivy at Gaymer’s mercy.”

“Then agree with him that he may come and get his _congé_ from the
girl’s own lips, if he’ll promise not to bother her till she’s well
again. Now I’m going home. And you’d better cut off to bed and stop
thinking about anything.”

The next morning Eric drafted, copied and redrafted a letter to Gaymer:

“_I have not given your message to Ivy_,” he wrote finally, “_because
she is not well enough to be worried even with a hint of such a thing.
I should have thought that she had made her meaning quite clear, but,
if you need to be convinced by hearing it again from her, I will
suggest that she disabuse your mind once and for all. Whether she will
see you or not I cannot say; and, if she refuse, I shall not allow you
to molest her. If she consent, it must be on one condition; you must
not attempt to see her or to communicate with her for a month from now.
If you tell me that you agree, I will put this proposal before her._”

There was no answer to the letter, but, as Eric left his club the
following night, he met Gaymer returning from dinner with the Poynters
in Belgrave Square. They so narrowly avoided a collision that it was
useless for either to pretend that he had not seen the other. Both
stopped short and stood silent; then Eric said:

“Hullo!”

Gaymer half put out his hand, withdrew it and put it out again.

“Hullo!,” he answered with unwonted apparent cordiality. “You going my
way?”

“I’m rather tired. I think I shall take the Tube to Dover Street,” said
Eric, reflecting rapidly that Gaymer could not reach Buckingham Gate by
that route without fetching a wide compass.

“Split the difference and walk with me as far as Lancaster House,”
Gaymer suggested. “I got your letter. I’ll say at once that I accept
the conditions. You’d probably prefer to have it in writing—”

“That’s not necessary, is it?,” Eric interrupted quickly and in
embarrassment.

Gaymer chuckled malevolently. He had hitherto spoken seriously and with
a touch of dignity, hiding any antagonism that he might feel under an
easy but disconcerting friendliness. The dignity and restraint were
shattered by the chuckle.

“You mean that, if I’m going to break my word,” he said, “I shall break
it just the same whether it was in writing or not?”

“No, I meant that, if you gave me your word, I should accept it without
any bonds or witnesses.”

“Devilish good of you...” Gaymer paused and took out his
cigarette-case. “You talk just like your own plays.” He paused again
and fumbled with an automatic lighter. “Babs Neave always used to say
that.”

In his turn Eric paused and began to fill a pipe. They had gone too far
into the Green Park for him to branch off and seek the Down Street
station; he could not turn on his heel and refuse to walk farther with
the fellow; yet Gaymer was steadily and progressively attacking him,
first with common rudeness, then with a sneer at his work, finally with
a depth-charge which he exploded to see what effect the name of Barbara
would produce. Gaymer had known much and suspected all; he had been
present, when Eric and Barbara first met at dinner with Lady Poynter;
he had speculated with the rest of them and had once interrogated
Barbara about her “writer fellow” until she froze his jesting...
Intoxication might explain much, but it provided no motive for the
baiting unless Gaymer wanted the satisfaction of a brawl which would
contribute nothing to the problem of Ivy.

“Even off the stage one accepts a man’s word, until he’s proved that
it’s unworthy of acceptance,” said Eric.

“And you’re satisfied with mine?,” asked Gaymer. “It’s not so long
since you thought I’d broken my word to Ivy.”

He was still obviously exploring for a quarrel, but Eric would not help
him.

“It’s easier, if we confine ourselves to the future,” he said. “You’ve
given me your word and you can see Ivy—if she’ll see you; I’ll ask her
to—as soon as she’s well enough. And you won’t try to get in touch with
her till then, will you? I shan’t do anything to prejudice you. As a
matter of fact, I’m going away for a few weeks, but, until the time
comes, I’ll promise not to queer your pitch, if you’ll promise to wait
till you’re sent for. Is that a bargain? After all, it’s not to the
interest of either of us to injure her health.”

They had reached Lancaster House, and Eric held out his hand. Gaymer
hesitated for a moment and then gripped it.

“I was only ragging you, Lane,” he said with an awkward laugh. “Dining
with Aunt Margaret fairly gets on my nerves: she’s like a gramophone
with all the newest and most expensive “intellectual” records. Turn the
handle, put in a new needle; “The Psychoanalyst’s Ragtime Holiday, as
played by the Freud-Jung syncopated orchestra”... Does she know
_anything_ about _anything_?... And that fellow Poynter riles me. ’Told
me to-night that my job had fallen through and I was to be patient...
He’s simply not trying... I’ll keep the bargain—letter and spirit. In
the meantime you’re not announcing the engagement? I can’t consent to
that, you know; it prejudices my chances, if Ivy has that to explain
away.”

“I’ll wait till she’s seen you, if you like,” said Eric. “Honestly, it
won’t make any difference to you, but I want to play fair. Good-night.
One of us will write to you soon.”

The next day he broke the news to Ivy that he was going to the country.
Her face fell at the prospect of being left alone, but the doctor came
in before the discussion was over and quenched the first smoke of
opposition.

“I think I ought to tell you that I’ve seen something of Gaymer the
last few days,” Eric told her, when he came to say good-bye. “He’s very
anxious to see you. He didn’t know you were ill, he didn’t suspect any
reason why you should be. I don’t quite know what he told you at
Croxton, but he assures me that he regards himself as being still
engaged to you. I reminded him that you’d already given him his answer,
but he persisted that there are new facts. If you don’t want to see
him—”

“I don’t!,” Ivy cried in apprehension. “You must keep him away.”

It was an appeal for protection, but Eric could not protect her against
an attack which had not been launched. It wrung his heart to see Ivy
helpless and pleading, but he was so tired that he would gladly have
dropped into a trance where responsibility and striving were unknown,
where he could rest, where no one could blame him or attack him or
appeal to him....

“He won’t take it from me,” he pointed out—and was hurt to see that Ivy
was disappointed in him for the first time. He wondered how Gaymer
would have spoken and acted, if the positions had been reversed....

“I can’t see him without you!”

“My child, then don’t see him at all. When you feel well enough, send
him a line and tell him that nothing he could ever say or do would make
any difference.”

When Eric reached Lashmar Mill-House, he found that an inaccurate but
serviceable legend had already been woven round Ivy’s illness. For days
and nights, he gathered, he had been nursing her single-handed, which
accounted for a natural look of fatigue on his face; for the operation
his flat had been turned upside down, and he had now been driven out to
make way for a second nurse. It was an explanation which barred all
speculation about his own health and absolved him from confessing that
he was himself in Gaisford’s hands.

“Will you be able to have Ivy down here, when she’s fit to move?,” he
asked.

“Of course,” Lady Lane answered warmly.

“She’ll be convalescent in a fortnight or three weeks. I was thinking
of staying here in the meantime... The country’s looking very
beautiful. I think I shall go for a stroll before dinner.”

He walked through the house and crossed the mill-stream into the woods
by the plank-bridge over the wheel. Unless he prompted her, his mother
would patiently abstain from asking him about Ivy; but there was an
unspoken question in her very silence, she was sharing his anxiety and
his hopes, waiting hungrily to be told that all was well. It was
curious that he felt so much less certain of Ivy since she had promised
to marry him. Gaymer was so sure of himself that he must inevitably
overpower her; people always seemed to win if they were convinced that
they would win....

And, conversely, no man ever won unless he believed in himself. Eric
pulled himself together physically, holding his head up and walking
boldly instead of shambling. He believed in himself and he believed in
Ivy. Unless a woman were dead to honour and gratitude, he had nothing
to fear.

A fallen tree trunk barred his path. He was glad to sit down on it,
because he was too tired to go on walking with any pleasure, and his
train of thought had incapacitated him like a blow at the back of his
knees. Barbara, who admitted always that she loved him, even when it
was too late, had broken down at that test; he had confidently left
everything to her honour and gratitude... Women were not to be
trusted... But he trusted Ivy... Yet _should_ he trust her?

The moment’s pause had not rested him, but he jumped up because it was
harder to brood when he was walking quickly. Besides, this holiday had
to be taken very seriously. He had thought out a scheme which was to
put him in hard physical condition; a plunge into the mill-pool as soon
as he was called, a sensible breakfast instead of the jaded Londoner’s
tea and toast, a glance at his letters and the papers, one pipe (and no
more; no cigarettes, either), a line to Ivy and then a good tramp, wet
or fine, from ten till one, a bath and change of clothes, luncheon,
another pipe, a second walk till tea or, perhaps, dinner, a third pipe
and a book, with bed at half-past ten. That, if anything, would keep
him from worrying and make him sleep. He looked at his watch and almost
decided to begin the treatment then and there with six miles on the
high-road before dinner. If he elected to saunter on through the woods,
it was because he was really too tired to face the glare of the road
and the exertion of hard walking.

It was easier to keep his resolution of going to bed early, though he
made an unpromising start next day. Instead of the usual maid with
letters and hot water, his mother came in unexpectedly with breakfast
on a tray.

“You looked so tired last night that I thought I’d let you have your
sleep out,” she explained. “I waited till eleven and then, thinking I
heard signs of life—My dear boy, how hot you are!” She put down the
tray and laid her hand on his chest. “Your pyjamas are wringing wet!”

“Too many bed-clothes, I expect,” answered Eric, as he inspected the
handwriting on his letters.

“There’s only one blanket. And it wasn’t at all a hot night.”

“Ah, but I can undertake to sweat away about two pounds a night in
mid-winter. I suppose it’s because I kick about in bed so much.”

“But you haven’t any flesh to spare. I wish you weren’t so thin, Eric.”

“You mustn’t worry, mother. It’s beyond the wit of man to make me fat.”

Lady Lane did not pursue the subject, but she continued to look
anxiously at him. To turn her thoughts, he handed her a note from the
nurse reporting that Dr. Gaisford was wholly satisfied with Miss
Maitland’s progress and would in future not need to see her more than
once a day.

“That ought to make you happier, Eric,” said his mother.

“It does. I don’t know what I should do, if I lost Ivy...” His voice
was graver than he had intended, and he decided to go on and to fortify
himself by taking his mother into his confidence. “You remember the
last time we discussed her? You do like her, mother, don’t you? You
do—approve? As soon as she’s well enough, we’re going to get everything
fixed up. Don’t tell the guv’nor yet, because you know he’s
temperamentally incapable of keeping a secret. But you are pleased,
aren’t you?”

Lady Lane bent down and kissed his forehead.

“My blessed boy! It’s time you had a little happiness. And it’s
certainly time you had a wife to look after you.”

What with his letters and the papers, which Sir Francis brought up in
person, Eric narrowly avoided being late for luncheon; and his scheme
of diet and exercise was again postponed by his mother’s suggestion
that he should come out with her in the car. He salved his conscience
in consenting by the reflection that he would at least be in the open
air; when, however, Lady Lane suggested after tea that he should lie
down until dinner, he began to scent a conspiracy.

“You’re looking so wretchedly tired and thin that I want to keep you
from working,” confessed his mother.

“Well, I’ll join the conspiracy,” said Eric.

For a week he spent half the day in bed and the other half motoring or
walking in Lashmar Woods. If he failed to put on any weight, at least
he began to feel less tired. The ghosts that lay in wait for him in
London seemed to have been driven away by the sunshine and scented wind
of the garden. Every day the nurse wrote that Ivy was maintaining
steady progress; he had two reassuring letters from Gaisford and at
last a pencilled note from Ivy herself.

“_I’m almost well and longing to see you. Thank you for all your divine
letters. I’m counting the days till you come here to fetch me away. Do
thank your mother for asking me—and for the flowers. I had a long
letter from J. G. this morning, explaining and arguing and asking when
he might come to see me. He said he’d been expecting to hear from you
and couldn’t make out why you’d not written. I told him it was no good;
in fact, I wrote just what I told you I would._”

Eric tried to remember whether he had received a specific promise that
Gaymer would not write; there had been some phrase about “not
communicating”... Gaymer may have interpreted this to mean personal
communication; or he might be acting on the principle that wise men
give promises and fools accept them.

Ivy’s next letter narrowed the field of choice.

“_J. G. has been here,” she began. “He called with some flowers, and
nurse let him in. Several other people had been, so she never asked me.
I said at once, ‘I can’t see you;’ and I told him that I thought he’d
promised you faithfully not to come here. He said he only meant to come
to the door with the flowers, but that he couldn’t help coming in. He
wasn’t going to argue, he said, but he was responsible for everything
and he must come and ask me to forgive him. I told him I’d forgive him,
if that gave him any pleasure, but he must understand that everything
was over. On the whole, I was rather glad to have it out with him. He
must see now, because at the end he said—horribly bitterly—, ‘Your love
is rather short-lived, Ivy.’ I refused to be drawn. If he likes to
think that, he may, I don’t feel it’s worth having a row with him,
Eric, about coming, because we have cleared the air, however painful it
may have been at the time. And it isn’t pleasant, you know, to have him
thinking that I’m unfaithful to him. I did love him—desperately; I’m
even willing to believe now that he always meant to behave honourably;
but, as I told him, it doesn’t really matter whether there’s any
foundation for a misunderstanding, what matters is the effect it has on
one’s mind. It was no use pretending I hadn’t utterly changed towards
him. He couldn’t see how I could love him once and then stop loving
him, when the reason why I’d ceased to love him had been explained
away. He’s tired me out, dear Eric, and I don’t want to think about
him._”

Her letter reached Lashmar by the evening post, and Eric spent a
sleepless night after reading it. At one moment he decided to return by
the first train to London and mount guard over Ivy’s door; at another
he shuffled and discarded cryptic phrases for a warning telegram to
Gaisford... It was long after daybreak when he fell asleep without
reaching a decision; and, when his breakfast was brought in, he was too
tired to eat it or to read his letters or to begin getting up.

Only when Lady Lane asked leave to send for the doctor did he rouse to
interest.

“Your man here is such a hopeless idiot,” he exclaimed impatiently. “I
think I shall run up and see Gaisford. All I want is a tonic, but he
_does_ know about me. I can’t stand answering a string of questions
from a stranger.”

Lady Lane forbore to oppose him in his new mood of nervous
irritability; she contented herself with making him promise to come
down the following day and asking whether he would care for her to
accompany him. Her obvious anxiety jarred on nerves that were already
raw.

“I’m _really_ all right, mother,” he answered querulously.

“My dear boy, you’re _not_! I _have_ had some experience of you,
remember. You’re shockingly ill. You know I try not to worry you, when
you’re not feeling well, but you frighten me, Eric, when you look like
that. Isn’t there something you haven’t told me? _Can’t_ you tell
me?... People are commenting on it. After church on Sunday the vicar
wanted to know... So, you see, it isn’t just fancy. I have a pretty
handful in your father, as it is,—trying to make him take care of
himself. I can’t have _you_ getting ill... _Isn’t_ there anything,
Eric?”

His mother had come nearer to breaking down than he had ever seen; a
vague stirring of masculine protectiveness steadied Eric.

“I’m feeling used up,” he answered wearily. “It may be this hot
spring... I think it’s the war... and the strain of the last few weeks,
the strain of the last two or three years... It takes something to
drive me into a doctor’s arms, but I’ll get myself thoroughly
overhauled by Gaisford and, what’s more, I’ll tell you what he says and
I’ll carry out his orders to the letter. There’s no need for _you_ to
worry, mother.”

He kissed her with a bluff attempt at reassurance and scrambled out of
bed. It was humiliating that he had to steady himself by gripping the
top of his dressing-table, and, when he began to pour out his
shaving-water, as much slopped on to the wash-hand-stand as went into
his glass. He could only hope that, as she said nothing, his mother had
seen nothing.

It was late afternoon when he reached Waterloo, and, after dining at
his club, he drove to Dr. Gaisford’s house in Wimpole Street. The
butler, who was a friend of many years’ standing, regretted that his
master was not yet returned and invited Eric to come in and wait.

“I suppose you’ve no idea where he is or how long he’ll be?,” asked
Eric.

The butler retired to the consulting-room and returned with an
engagement-pad.

“He dined at home at half after seven, sir,” he announced. “Then he was
going to Sir Marcus Fordyce in Hay Hill, then to Mrs. Grimthorpe in
Upper Brook Street, then to Colonel Somers in Half-Moon Street—and then
to you, sir; to your young lady, I should say. He said he’d be back not
later than twelve.”

“And it’s half-past nine now. I’ll go home and wait for him. If I miss
him, will you tell him, when he comes in, that I called? And will you
ring me up and let me know when I can see him to-morrow? Say I’ve come
up from the country on purpose.”

He reached Ryder Street in time to find the hall lit up and a bowler
hat and stick on the table. The whole flat was sweet and heavy with the
warm scent of flowers. They symbolized Ivy, and he could fancy that he
was already married and returning to their home. It was a new,
electrifying emotion, the sublime epitome of all the moments when he
had waited of a morning to hear her ring. Latterly she had been too
much the patient; until that moment the flat had not drawn its life
from her.

A murmur of voices reached him from the passage leading to her bedroom;
he wrote “Don’t go till you’ve seen me” on the back of an envelope and
dropped it into the hat; then he picked up the evening paper and went
into the library.

At the end of one cigarette he threw away the paper and looked sleepily
at the clock, thanking Heaven that he was not a doctor. At this rate
Gaisford would not be home by midnight; and he must have had a heavy
day to be calling on patients after dinner... The sleepiness dropped
from Eric’s brain as he remembered an early bulletin from the nurse,
telling him that for the future Dr. Gaisford saw no need to come more
than once a day. The most overworked doctor would not be paying his
first visit at a quarter-past ten at night; this was the second visit,
and Ivy had undergone a relapse; or the third, the fourth... If Ivy
were dying, they would have sent for him... Telegrams took long.... But
Lashmar Mill-House was on the telephone... Trunk-calls took long,
too... But he had not left home till after five... Perhaps they had
forgotten, perhaps they had been too busy... But one could add
“perhaps” to “perhaps” like paper bows to the tail of a kite... This
was the discordant jangle of snapping nerves....

He sat long enough to recover self-possession, then strolled
unconcernedly into the hall. The hat and stick were still there, the
note in the hat. He bent down to read his own words and wondered why
Gaisford, of all men, had abandoned his traditional silk hat for a
bowler... A sporting bowler, too with flat brim. He was trying to
remember whether there were any races near London to explain the
unseemly hat and the doctor’s no less unseemly hour for calling, when
he noticed violet-ink initials over the maker’s name.

The doctor was Richard or Robert Gaisford, Eric could not remember
which; certainly not “J.” As he began to be certain that “J. G.” could
only stand for John Gaymer, Eric told himself in an audible whisper
that he had to be very calm; if there were anything in the old,
hysterical premonition of a stand-up fight with Gaymer, it would take
place in less than five minutes.

He inspected the hat carefully, as though it were filled with clues and
secrets, then replaced it on the table, withdrew his note and walked
quietly down the passage to Ivy’s room. The door was ajar, and he could
hear perhaps half Gaymer’s words, when he dropped his voice, and
everything, when he raised it.

“If you admit it, there’s nothing more to be said. D’you like the
prospect of being married for fifty years to one man when you’re in
love with another? Oh, it’s too late now, you’ve admitted it. _I_ never
had any doubt. You’ve got to get out of it; and the sooner the
better... It’s no good denying it, Ivy; we’ve gone through all that.
Look me in the eyes... Ivy, do as I tell you—_now_. You _have_ to do as
I tell you. You’ve never loved him as you loved me. Give me your hand.
You don’t shiver when you touch _him_, you don’t belong to _him_....
Kiss me, Ivy. I said, ‘Kiss me, Ivy’.” There was a laugh of
contemptuous affection. “There!... So valiant we were! So
independent—at a distance! Kiss me again—on my lips... Did you think
I’d let you go so easily? Didn’t you know that, if I stood at the back
of the church when you were being married and just said ‘Ivy, come
here’...? _You_ knew that, and _I_ knew that.”

Eric found himself sitting on a chair half-way down the passage. Ivy
was being bewitched; obviously he must not allow her to be bullied like
this... Somebody ought to go in and stop it....

“I’ve promised Eric,” she was saying quietly.

“And d’you think I care about that? He can’t hold you to your promise,
if you don’t want to marry him. You love _me_, Ivy. Say it again!”

There was no answer.

“Say it again!,” repeated Gaymer.

“I....”

Eric could not hear the next whispered words, but they seemed to
satisfy Gaymer.

“Say ‘I love you more than my life’,” went on the relentless voice.

“I love you more than my life.”

“Say—‘I will marry you and no one else—’”

There was a pause and a sob.

“Oh, Johnnie, don’t make me! It isn’t fair on him!”

“You can’t be fair to us both!,” Gaymer cried.

“He’s been so wonderfully good to me. I should have killed myself, if
it hadn’t been for him. I _told_ him I’d marry him, I said he was the
only person in the world I cared for. He’s done everything for me! We
should have been married by now, but he wanted to give me time to be
quite sure—”

She was interrupted by a harsh, triumphant laugh.

“Well for him he did! And you _are_ quite sure, Ivy! I’m not going
through all this again. ‘I will marry you and no one else.’ Say it.”

“I will marry you and no one else... Johnnie, it’ll break his heart! I
_can’t_ say it!”

“But you have. Do you take it back?”

There was a long silence. Then Eric heard a low but distinct “No.”

The passage had not been noticeably hot before, but the still air
glared like the burning blast from an open furnace-door. Eric found his
face streaming with sweat; and the wooden chair-back was slippery in
his grasp. There seemed to be a murmur of confused voices everywhere—in
the passage on either side of him, in the hall—preeminently in the
hall, where one murmur dominated the other murmurs, and one voice
dominated all.

It was Gaisford’s voice, authoritative and ill-tempered, reprimanding
some one.

“Yes, my girl, but I said my patient was not to be left. You go off
duty when the other nurse comes on—and not a moment before. You’ve left
the patient entirely unattended? ‘Seemed all right’ be hanged! Your
duty is to do precisely what I tell you. When did you go out? Half an
hour! I don’t believe it! I don’t mind telling you that you haven’t
heard the last of this.”

Eric came into the hall, as the nurse hurried away with a scarlet face
and the doctor pulled off his gloves and threw them on to the table,
still muttering angrily to himself.

“Hullo!,” he exclaimed. “I thought I’d sent you away.”

“I came up this evening to consult you,” Eric answered. His voice
seemed small and remote, but the doctor found nothing amiss with it. “I
was feeling rather seedy and I thought I’d ask you to overhaul me. If
you’re not very busy, we might get it over to-night, when you’ve
finished with Ivy. I—I’ve only just come in,” he added hastily. “I went
to your place first. I rather fancy that in the nurse’s absence some
one must have let Gaymer in. I think he’s with Ivy now, though I
haven’t been in to see yet.”

It was all admirably calm. The doctor did not even look at him; but his
frown deepened, and he strode down the passage with threatening
footsteps. Eric was not conscious of having followed; but he found
himself on the threshold, as the door was thrown open. Ivy and Gaymer
had been given time to prepare themselves; she was lying back with half
her face hidden in a bouquet of lilies of the valley, while he stood
with his hands on the back of a chair, as though he were just leaving.
Neither shewed surprise or discomfiture at the doctor’s volcanic entry,
but Ivy could not repress a cry at sight of Eric.

“Now, young man, you can take yourself off!,” Gaisford snapped at
Gaymer, jerking his thumb towards the door.

There was a confusion of four voices speaking at once.

“I just brought some flowers.”

“Eric!”

“A pretty time to call—exciting my patient, when she ought to be
asleep!”

“H-how are you, Ivy? I came up for one night—only decided at
tea-time....”

Eric found himself face to face with Gaymer, who nodded quickly as he
walked to the door. He was as much concerned as a man who finds that he
has left himself too little time to dress before dinner—as much and no
more. He seemed to be murmuring, “’Evening, Lane. No idea it was so
late. ’Couldn’t get round before. Glad to see she’s so much better.”

Thus far for the audience; he retreated in good order; and in another
moment there was a rattle as he picked up his stick from the hall
table. Eric found his jaw moving; but he could say nothing, he did not
even know what he wanted to say. It was no use staring at the blank
door-way, he could not turn without facing Ivy... The authoritative
voice was speaking again, apparently addressing him; the resonant words
defined themselves into “If you’ll run away now, I’ll come and have a
word with you on my way out.”

Eric went to his bedroom and began to undress, because it gave his
hands occupation. They were trembling until he could hardly undo the
buttons of his waistcoat. He looked at his reflection in the mirror and
found himself a little paler than usual; his forehead was still
glistening with the insufferable heat of the passage, but there should
have been something to shew that he had been blown to bits and was held
together by shreds of tattered skin. Lines that he had learned as a boy
at school....

                “_So tight he kept his lips compressed,
                   Scarce any blood came through.
                You looked twice ere you saw his breast
                   Was all but shot in two...._”

And why should he murmur them to the tune of ‘Wenceslaus’?... Was he
delirious?

Gaisford had seen nothing amiss. If it were but possible to carry off
the interview without shewing him anything... After all, Ivy and Gaymer
had not betrayed themselves. “_I will marry you and no one else._” With
lips not yet still from her betrayal of him, she had made a show of
composure. And Gaymer, forsworn and a walking lie, explained coolly
that he had brought some flowers and could not get round before. They
would probably have been no less composed if they knew that he was in
the passage, listening to every word. Did they know? Did they fancy
that he had come in with the doctor?

Did they care?

He could not begin to think about it all until his brain was fit to
work. Gaymer had lied, Ivy had betrayed him; there was room here for
anger, jealousy... He had lost her, when she alone had come to make
life worth living, when she was the prize and symbol of his victory
over fate; room here for shaking his fists at Heaven and cursing God.
To curse God and die... But God was quite equal to keeping him alive.
Room here for thinking of the future and going stark mad. But these
were all parts of a whole too big for him to envisage yet; that at
least he could see....

It was curious that force of habit should set him methodically folding
his clothes and winding his watch... Before committing suicide a man
nearly always shaved himself, without pausing to wonder whether it was
not rather wasted labour....

He put on a dressing-gown and lay on his bed. It was curious that he
and Ivy should be destined to spend this night of all nights within
twenty yards of each other. Curious world... Barbara had once said
something about the fun that God was having with her... Curious how the
light seemed to burn through the back of the eyes into the brain.
Curious that one lacked the energy to stretch a hand to the switch....

Eric was still staring at the ceiling when Gaisford came in. The
doctor’s moment of ill-temper had passed; and this was a pity, because
he would be less preoccupied and more observant.

“Well, my son, and what’s the matter with you?,” he asked.

“I’ve become so extraordinarily limp.” The voice was slow but firm.
“The longer I stayed at Lashmar, the limper I got. I wasn’t trying to
work, but I couldn’t even walk a couple of miles. It occurred to me
that a tonic, perhaps....”

The doctor grunted and fitted the ends of a stethoscope into his ears.
The ritual which followed was very familiar to Eric; chest and back,
long breath, ordinary breathing, holding the breath, tapping... The
stethoscope darted to and fro, as though it were playing a game with
some elusive noise inside him; it finished with the heart and began
chasing the lungs into improbable corners under the collar-bone and
shoulder-blades, dodging back to the heart when it was least expected.

“Lie down. A deep breath,” said Gaisford.

This lying-down portended something serious; or perhaps the doctor was
not yet sure. They were always so uncommunicative; you might have a
tolerably wide experience of these examinations and yet not know what
they were trying to find.

“Anything the matter?,” Eric asked, as the stethoscope was detached and
pocketed.

“You’ve not much flesh on you,” said the doctor, feeling his ribs. “Are
you eating properly?”

“The usual amount. But you know I never _did_ run to fat.”

“Do you perspire much?”

“Like a pig. I gave my poor mother quite a shock when she came in one
morning and found me as if I’d just come out of the mill-stream. I save
pounds on Turkish baths.”

Gaisford nodded and put a number of questions which Eric seemed to
answer adequately. They did not appear to lead anywhere, but some of
them were new to his experience. At the end, the stethoscope was
produced again.

“Anything the matter?,” Eric repeated, for the doctor was frowning. The
examination, too, was unusually long.

“Well, yes. It’s what I’ve feared ever since I’ve known you. We’ve
caught it in time, but you’ll have to be rather careful. There are four
of you, aren’t there? What are your brothers and sisters like? You can
put on that dressing-gown; I don’t want you to catch cold.”

Eric weighed the question as he slipped his arms into the sleeves. God
was enjoying himself....

“Let’s come back to that,” he suggested. “What is it? Heart?”

“That’s been a bit tired for years.”

“Lungs, then?... I see. Well, I’m not a child, Gaisford. How long do
you give me? Six months? A year?”

The doctor changed his spectacles and tipped Eric’s clothes from an
arm-chair. He could be exasperatingly slow when he liked; and he always
liked to be slow, when his patients shewed signs of becoming unnerved.

“Forty, if you do what I tell you,” he announced at length. “If you
don’t, you’ll get rapidly worse. By the way, it’s chiefly in books that
a doctor says you’ve three weeks and two days to live; science isn’t
quite so exact as that, and doctors aren’t such damned fools... No!
I’ll tell you. This might have come at any time, because you’ve been on
the delicate side ever since I’ve known you. Now you’re a little bit
touched. It’s a bore, but it’s nothing to be frightened about. I shan’t
let you live in this country, of course, and I shall cut down your
work; but that doesn’t matter, because you’re indecently rich for your
age. And I can give you a choice of places to live in—California, South
Africa, the Riviera—”

“This is in confidence, of course,” Eric interrupted. “You’re not
telling my people—or Ivy... or any one?”

“No. But I’ll tell _you_ that, if you try to marry that child in your
present state, you’ll deserve to be pulled limb from limb.”

“I don’t propose to.”

“If you’ll wait a couple of years....”

Eric was troubled to keep his brain, now suddenly alert, back to the
doctor’s deliberate pace. The immediate future was clear....

“How soon am I to start?,” he asked.

“Get out of London as soon as possible.”

“And—about Ivy. When will she be well enough to be told?”

“I should tell her at once—to-morrow. She’ll see _something’s_ up; she
wanted to know to-night why you’d suddenly come back without warning...
I find that as a rule it’s best to tell people the truth, however much
of a shock it may be. We’re all of us equal to a certain number of
shocks; and it seldom becomes less of a shock by postponing it and
wrapping it in lies.”

“I’ll tell her to-morrow,” said Eric. “Do you want to do anything more
with me?”

“I’m afraid there’s no doubt of it.”

“Then I may as well turn in.”

Eric threw off the dressing-gown and put on his pyjamas. The doctor, he
knew, was watching him, but he was successfully deliberate and
composed. They shook hands and said good-night without emotion or
straining after heroics. There was a half-heard phrase about “having
another word with” him in the morning. Eric lay for a few moments in
darkness, waiting to hear the doctor’s car drive away; there was no
sound, however, and he was asleep before he had done speculating
whether Gaisford had come on foot or in a car....

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER THIRTEEN


  JOURNEY’S END


“Your distresses in your journey... are proper seasonings for the
greater fatigues and distresses, which you must expect in your travels;
and, if one had a mind to moralize, one might call them the samples of
the accidents, rubs, and difficulties, which everyone meets with in his
journey through life. In this journey, the understanding is the
_voiture_ that must carry you through; and in proportion as that is
stronger or weaker, more or less in repair, your journey will be better
or worse; though, at best you will now and then find some bad roads and
some bad inns....

“My long and frequent letters which I send you, in great doubt of their
success, put me in mind of certain papers which you have very lately,
and I formerly, sent up to kites, along the string, which we call
messengers; some of them the wind used to blow away, others were torn
by the string, and but few of them got up and stuck to the kite....”

                                         LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON.

“Miss Maitland asked me to say she would like to see you as soon as you
are ready.”

Eric thanked the nurse and continued dressing. The night of
unresisting, helpless exhaustion had been tranquil as death; he
wondered whether Ivy had slept... Or had she been rehearsing the speech
in which she would tell him that she could not marry him? Or would she
say nothing, waiting for him to tell her that he had been in the
passage outside her room while she threw him aside for Gaymer?... It
was significant that she asked to see him. An easy conscience must have
told her that he would have come as soon as he was dressed....

He went in to find her tired and nervously excited, but she achieved an
unembarrassed smile of welcome and asked how he was.

“I’ll return the c-compliment,” he said, wondering why he stammered.
“How are _you_, Ivy? You’re the invalid.”

“Oh, I’m much better. I shall be able to come down to Lashmar at the
end of next week.”

Eric turned away and looked for a chair. At times of great mental
exhaustion it was hard to tell whether a thing had happened or whether
he had dreamed it. Ivy was talking as though she had never perjured
herself for Gaymer, as though she had never seen him again—an absurd,
intoxicating child with short black curls and thin white arms, the
immature bud of a woman... Yet there was a table by the bed within
reach of her hand; on the table stood a black Wedgwood bowl; in the
bowl a nodding mass of lilies. Once or twice before, when she was
living with Lady Maitland and dining alone with Gaymer, she had
confessed to inventing fellow-guests to keep her in countenance and to
placate her aunt; she had regarded the lie as amusing and clever,
certainly venial; Eric hoped that she was not going to lie now. Perhaps
he had imagined that nightmare moment in the passage, perhaps the sight
of her frank grey eyes kept his habit of love unbroken; undoubtedly he
loved her still, loved her so desperately that he could not bear to see
her made vile with a lie... But the lilies at least were not
imaginary... Her easy reference to Lashmar shewed that she intended to
confess nothing; she would leave him to find out. One day he would
receive a letter to say that she had run off with Gaymer; in the
meantime she played her double part with outward unconcern, as though
she were already married and had a secret lover....

“At the end of next week,” he repeated.

It was easier to echo her words than to break new ground.

“Are you going back at once? I hope you’re going to stay here,” she
said, beckoning him to a chair.

“I promised my mother to go back to-day.”

“Can’t you telephone? I _do_ so want you to stay... Eric, does your
mother know? I’ve been so afraid she might disapprove of me. Have you
told her?”

He shivered unconsciously; the appealing pose of fidelity was cynical
enough, without her becoming inartistic by overdoing it.

“I gave her a very fair idea of what was in the wind,” he said. “She’s
very fond of you, Ivy. There’d be no difficulty in that quarter.”

“You haven’t seen father yet? When are you going to?”

For a moment Eric was so much disgusted to find himself participating
in this game of make-believe that he did not realize she was asking him
a question and waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he answered at length. “I don’t know whether I _shall_
see him. There are certain rather considerable difficulties... Ivy,
d’you _want_ me to go to him?”

As he spoke, he was conscious that his tone had hardened; there was a
challenge and a warning in it. He waited to see whether she would go on
lying; the hint of menace must shew her that she was underestimating
his knowledge.

A slight frown, a slighter shrug were her only signs of emotion.

“I never _did_ want you to go,” she answered. “My father is nothing in
my life now. I should actually have asked you not to if you hadn’t
frightened me by saying that he might make trouble because I wasn’t of
age.”

Eric nodded and prepared a question which would leave no room for
evasion.

“You’ve thought it over carefully, I hope?,” he said. “You still want
to marry me?”

“Of course.”

She held out her hands to him, but he pretended not to see them. The
last man to kiss her was Gaymer; where he kissed, a fume of liquor and
lasciviousness remained....

“You want to marry me after seeing—him? You’ve satisfied him that it’s
all over?”

Her frown deepened, but there was no indication of embarrassment.

“He still claims that we’re engaged—,” she began.

“Does he still think he’s going to marry you?”

“Yes.”

“You’ve told him you won’t?”

He regretted the question as soon as it was uttered. However
dishonourably Ivy had behaved, there was no pleasure in driving her
inch by inch into a trap; in a world of liars there was never much
satisfaction in convicting any one of a lie.

“Yes, I told him that,” she answered. “I also told him I would... You
won’t understand that, I expect, but I couldn’t help myself. That’s why
I don’t want you to go away and leave me, Eric; that’s why, a month
ago, I didn’t want to wait. I daresay you despise me, but I always feel
he can make me do whatever he wants. I can’t tell you why. That
night... when we came out of a theatre, he said ‘Are you going home, or
are you coming home with me?’ I’d never been home with him so late, I
knew what would happen, I didn’t want it to happen. I was horribly
frightened and I hoped, when he saw I was frightened, that he would
spare me. I should have thought any man would... I couldn’t help
myself; and that’s why I’ve never been as much ashamed as I ought to
be. Even when I thought he’d got tired of me, when I hated him and
could have murdered him, I still felt that he might come back and I
should have to obey him... I don’t want to be left alone, Eric. When
we’re married, it will be all right; I shall have you to protect me.
I’ve been ill—and, before that, I was desperately miserable; perhaps I
haven’t really been accountable for my actions. But, if he’d picked me
up in his arms last night and carried me off, I couldn’t have resisted.
Until we’re married, you mustn’t leave me—”

“And, _when_ we’re married, will it be easier to resist him?”

“He’ll leave me alone. He may go abroad... _Do_ you understand? Or do
you just despise me?”

She smiled wistfully and held out her hands to him again. Though he had
not kissed her on coming into the room, she had not commented on the
omission; perhaps she had not noticed it. Their relationship had been
wholly passionless. When he brought her back from Maidenhead and saw
her for the first time in ecstasy, the glory in her eyes was spiritual;
it was gratitude, admiration, love and a great amazement; if she then
begged him to kiss her, it was because a kiss was her readiest symbol
of love. For Gaymer she had once felt passion; when he ordered her to
kiss him, knowing the degree and source of his power, she obeyed. That
would pass in a few months; the strength of sex was only equalled by
its transience; and they would find nothing to put in its place. While
it was there, it was all-powerful; she could only escape it by running
away, by surrounding herself with a bodyguard, by reminding the flesh
that she owned claims of the spirit also. In so far as Eric could
analyse her mind, she yearned to be with Gaymer; and she resisted the
yearning, because she owed a spiritual debt to some one else. She would
be happier with Gaymer—for a time; no doubt she fancied that she would
always be happier. But she was prepared to sacrifice that for honour,
for gratitude....

“I’m trying to understand,” he answered. “_I_ once thought that I was
utterly helpless in one woman’s hands. There was nothing I wouldn’t
do... But I found it was a thing one could overcome. If I went up in
blue smoke here and now, you’d marry Gaymer? You remember there was a
time when you wouldn’t look at him.”

“I didn’t know everything then.”

“And, if I _don’t_ go up in blue smoke and if he _got_ enough money, if
we stood side by side before you, and you had a perfectly free choice?”

Ivy laughed with a dove’s coo of devotion:

“My darling, I should choose you!”

“And if Gaymer tried to entice you away?”

“But you wouldn’t let me go!”

Eric shook his head sadly:

“Aren’t you strong enough to stand by yourself without wanting a man
always to dominate you?”

The conversation was tiring her, and her voice became faintly petulant:

“When you’re lying in bed like this, all your will-power goes. And I
couldn’t sleep last night. I kept thinking of Johnnie, I was
frightened. You oughtn’t to have left me, Eric. Everything would have
been all right, if you’d stayed here.”

“Gaisford thought I wanted a change,” he reminded her. “And I’m afraid
I shall have to leave you again. He wants me to go abroad.”

“Oh, Eric, why? Are you ill?”

Her eyes were filled with concern; he wondered how much came from
sympathy with him and how much from fear for herself.

“Apparently I am. He wants to rest me and fatten me up.”

“But how long will you be away?”

“A couple of years, I should think.”

Ivy drew herself upright in bed and stared at him, with parted lips:

“Eric, you must explain!”

“There’s nothing much _to_ explain. It’s out of the question for me to
marry at present...” He hesitated and looked away. “It’s not fair to
ask you to wait two years.”

For a moment she did not answer. Then she cried:

“Of course I’ll wait! You know that!”

It was easier to keep his eyes on the ground than to meet hers. The
valiant words were inevitable—at such a time and in such an atmosphere;
the moment’s hesitation was not. And that, more than anything that she
had said or hinted, cleared his mind of doubt.

“Well, we won’t talk about it any more at present,” he suggested.
“Gaisford’s going to examine me again, and then we shall know rather
better where we are. Don’t worry, Ivy. I’ve no intention of dying yet
awhile. I only heard about it last night, so I haven’t had time to
think much about the future.”

In the afternoon Eric returned to Wimpole Street for the further
examination. The second report was fuller, but not materially
different: one lung was affected, and with reasonable care he would be
cured in a year or eighteen months. He again begged the doctor to say
nothing at present to his parents or Ivy.

“There’s a lot to take into consideration,” he explained vaguely.

“I’m sorry about this business, Eric,” said Gaisford. “But I’m telling
you the truth. If you’ll be patient—”

“Everything will come right. _I_ see... D’you think your man would like
to send a message to Lashmar to say I shan’t be down to-night?”

He walked into Oxford Street and through Hyde Park to Piccadilly. Once
before, after bidding Barbara good-bye, he had bade good-bye to London,
wandering from his flat to the theatre, from the theatre to, his club,
almost pinching himself in the effort to remember that he was seeing
them all for the last time. One could never reproduce an emotion in its
first breathless perfection; though he went through the same emotions,
the earlier shock had numbed him protectively against any that might
come later. And, as it proved, it was not the last time. In another two
years he might return to find Ivy married to Gaymer, as he had found
Barbara married to George Oakleigh; he would be two years older, twenty
years more disillusionized, with a bitter heart for women and a dread
of the blank emptiness before him.

Ivy was not to blame for meeting a force too strong for her; she was
ready to risk everything, even what she fancied to be her own
happiness, for loyalty and the honourable observance of her promise. If
he felt sore, it was because he had come to love her; she had made him
forget Barbara and had given him the hope of a new life. But
throughout, from the first night when he discussed her with Gaisford,
he had made her his spiritual anaesthetic; while there was an
opportunity of offering her himself, his money and reputation, his
devotion and care, he had looked with the eyes of a fanatic on this
single act of sacrifice which was to give value and meaning to his
life. In trying to face the future, it was the meaninglessness of life
that appalled him....

He had been trying, ever since their talk in the morning, to banish
himself in imagination to California and to consider what was best for
her. Gaymer would ruin her life; he would be unfaithful after six
months and brutal after a year. And she knew it. Should she be saved
from that? Was it ever worth trying to save man or woman from the woman
or man that they desired? Yet it was a poor proof of love to stand
aside and let her go to certain misery. If he mounted guard over her,
he could still keep her from Gaymer....

And from her phantom of happiness.

He turned into the Green Park and walked in the shade of the trees
towards Lancaster House. A woman bowed to him; he returned the bow
without seeing who she was, but there was a scrape of gravel under her
heel as she stopped, and he heard his name called.

“I _thought_ it was you, but you had your chin so much on your chest...
Thinking out a new play?”

“Mrs. O’Rane? I hope you didn’t think I was trying to cut you! No, I
hardly know what I _was_ thinking about. How’s your husband?”

“If you go on for about a hundred yards, you’ll find him. I have to
rush off to a committee. Good-bye!”

He shaded his eyes and looked down the pathway until he saw a Saint
Bernard asleep with his head on his paws and the paws pressed in gentle
protection against the feet of his master. Eric walked on and greeted
O’Rane.

“That’s—wait a bit! that’s Eric Lane’s voice. Am I right?”

“First shot. You’re marvellous, Raney.”

“It’s patience, you know. And I’ve been thinking about you a lot
lately. How’s the patient? Lady John Carstairs told me of your
troubles. I wanted you to come and have a shake-down with us, but she
said you preferred to stay where you were. I hear the operation went
off all right.”

“Oh, yes. She’s out of danger, I’m glad to say.”

“So Gaymer told me. It all happened within a few hours of our coming up
from Croxton, apparently.”

“Yes.”

Eric wondered when and why O’Rane had been talking to Gaymer, but his
speculation was cut short by a question:

“By the way, is it true...? I heard an interesting piece of news about
you.”

“Oh?”

“I heard you were engaged.”

“Now where did you hear that?”

Eric’s laugh seemed to ring shrilly, but O’Rane did not notice it.

“Tell me first if it’s true,” he said. “I’m the soul of discretion.”

He held out his hand, smiling and eager to congratulate. Eric hesitated
and again laughed nervously.

“That ought to be an easy enough question for me to answer,” he said,
“but, as a matter of fact, I can’t.”

The neglected hand reached out and felt for Eric’s arm.

“I nearly came round to see you,” said O’Rane gently, “but I thought
you’d wonder what business it was of mine. You remember our talk on
board the _Lithuania_... I know a good deal about you, and we’re very
old friends... So I was glad, more than glad, when I heard you were
actually engaged. Then I heard—”

His fingers slacked their grip on Eric’s arm; and his voice died away.

“That I _wasn’t_,” Eric suggested.

“Well, no. I heard—at least, I gathered that it wouldn’t be all plain
sailing. I gathered it from Gaymer himself. D’you remember at Croxton
that I said I thought I should have to take him in hand? He was
drinking too much, he wanted pulling up. He’s been living in my pocket
the last day or two. I can make something of him. But I’m afraid his
interests cuts across yours.”

“Would it bore you to hear the whole story?,” Eric asked.

There was a welcoming nod of encouragement. Eric tried to speak
dispassionately, though he knew that he was appealing for sympathy and
help; and the appeal grew stronger as he saw his companion’s expression
becoming more grave.

“Confidence for confidence,” said O’Rane, when he had done. “Quite soon
after I married, there came a time when it seemed possible that Sonia
and I had made a mistake, a time when I felt that, if I wanted her to
be happy, I should have to say, ‘Think this over carefully; you’ve only
one life and, if you believe you’ll make more of a success of it with
another man, you know I’ll not stop you’... I said that, Eric, and I’ve
always felt it was the right thing to do. I won’t pretend it was easy,
but the right thing seldom is. As it happens, everything’s turned out
well... I believe it’s a question that a great many men ought to put to
their wives, instead of exercising harem-rights over a human creature,
made in God’s image, that they’ve bought or attached to themselves. Do
you want to love a woman or to enjoy a slave?... I tell you this,
because you must give that girl the opportunity of slipping out of your
grasp—”

He stopped at the touch of a hand laid deprecatingly on his knee.

“I can’t keep her, if she wants to go,” said Eric.

“Indeed you can. Use your imagination, man! After all you’ve done for
her, with the knowledge that you’re ill—Put it on the lowest ground;
she wouldn’t dare to have it said of her that she’d thrown over a man
with consumption because she couldn’t wait two years for him to get
well. Probably you agree with me that a man who is a man doesn’t make
capital out of his physical infirmities. You must persuade her that
she’s under no obligation to you; and, if the decision goes against
you, you must accept it with a good grace. You behaved well in coming
to her rescue; you may have an opportunity of behaving even better in
giving up all claim on her.”

Eric sat for some moments digging at the gravel with his stick. Then he
touched O’Rane’s arm and stood up.

“Let’s move on,” he suggested. “It’s—it’s hot here... Raney, I’m not
going to give her up. I don’t see why I should.”

“I hope you won’t have to.”

“No one can compel me, if she says she’ll wait.”

“No one would need to compel you. Dear man, your devotion to her is a
very beautiful thing, it’s a thing you’ve better reason to be proud of
than anything you’ve ever done. You wouldn’t degrade a devotion like
that by keeping her against her will.”

Eric said nothing for several moments, but he laughed to himself, and
O’Rane gripped his arm as though the sneer in the laugh stung him.

“And I wonder what you think would be left for me, if I did give her
up!” he resumed. “It’s no good trying to make me live in too rarified
air. All this business about ‘the right thing’—I’m not cut out for
Cyrano de Bergerac or for Sidney Carton; a good conscience, a glow of
magnanimity—it does me no sort of good, Raney. I know what I want, I
know how badly I want it. I can imagine pretty clearly what the next
two years are going to be like—vegetating on a verandah in Arizona.
She’s all I have left... But if there’s nothing to come back to... I’m
the one that has to go through this and I want you to tell me what’s
left.”

O’Rane laughed and linked arms with him.

“I’ll change lungs, if you’ll change eyes,” he murmured.

“I’m sorry! My outlook’s a bit jaundiced. I expected too much of life,
I’d had a pretty fair hammering in one way or another and I thought it
was going to change, to end.”

O’Rane stopped short and sighed with whimsical regret.

“Like your novels and plays,” he suggested. “Life differs from romance
in that there are no happy endings. And, when you’ve learned that
lesson, you must learn that life has no endings of any kind short of
death. We try to divide our lives into dramatic phases, but you know
that there’s no finality about your first disappointment in love; it
modifies the texture of your spirit and prepares you for something else
just when the dramatist scrawls his ‘Curtain’ and the novelist writes
‘The End.’ Perhaps it prepares you for another and a different love,
perhaps for marriage: no one but a fool would stop his play or novel
with the clash of wedding-bells. It’s not the end of anything except
one stage of an endless development; it’s not the beginning of anything
except the next stage of development. These dramatic and literary forms
destroy our sense of continuity. Hundreds of generations have gone to
the preparation of your personality; you will enrich it in a thousand
ways and hand it on by blood or teaching or example to thousands of
generations unborn. You ask what is left... I should answer: your
personality, your ego. You have that left to build up, fortify,
perfect. I don’t say that the next two years will be particularly
happy, but you can come out of them a deeper, broader, bigger man...
You’ll give this girl her chance?”

Eric walked on without answering. They left the Park and passed along
Cleveland Row to St. James’ Street. The wind was blowing from the
river, and they paused to hear Big Ben strike.

“Seven o’clock. I’d no idea we’d been talking so long,” said O’Rane.
“My wife’s dining out and going to the ballet. I suppose you wouldn’t
care to take pot-luck with me?”

“I should love it, when I’ve been home. Ivy’ll be wondering what’s
happened to me. Raney, what would you do in my place, if you felt
certain that, by giving a woman up, you’d be sentencing her to utter
misery?”

“To begin with, no one can ever be certain of that.”

“Gaymer’s a brute and a cad and a drunkard,” said Eric hotly.

“He’s given up drinking for good. As for the rest, when you see so many
estimable men turning into brutes and cads on marriage, it’s not
unreasonable to hope that a brute and cad may be converted by marriage
into something better. As a matter of fact, Gaymer’s neither. I saw him
when, to use his own phrase, he thought you’d jumped his claim; it was
the time when the girl’s life was in danger. Gaymer’s very fond of her,
too, though he’s English enough to hide it from everybody but a man who
has ears even if he’s no eyes... Gaymer’s no fool. He knows that all
his nervous organism has gone to pieces in the war, he recognizes that
he’s left the rails and that, if he doesn’t pull up, he’ll go downhill
with a run. He wants some one to keep him steady; and this girl—the
only living creature in the world that he cares for—is the only one who
can do it. He’s fighting for her, because she’s his one anchor. He
can’t afford to lose her.”

“I can’t afford to lose her.”

“Perhaps you mayn’t. I only want her to have a free choice.”

“Freedom to marry a blackguard? He _is_ a blackguard, Raney, to have
taken advantage of a girl’s youth and ignorance. He’s a blackguard
right through to the end! He solemnly promised me not to go near her
and then bursts in the moment my back’s turned. He’s a libertine, a
liar—”

“That’s no objection in a woman’s eyes. Every corespondent is all that
and perhaps a good deal more.”

“I’m not going to give her up.”

They turned into Ryder Street and walked up the stairs to Eric’s flat.
O’Rane waited in the hall while Eric went into Ivy’s bedroom. She was
sitting up, writing on her knees, and, as he came in, she laid down her
pencil and handed him the letter. Her eyelids flickered, and he could
see that she spoke with an effort.

“It’s to Johnnie,” she explained. “He called immediately after you’d
gone, but I told the nurse to say I couldn’t see him. He’s just sent me
a note... What did the doctor say, Eric?”

“He didn’t add much to what he told me last night. Do you want me to
read this, Ivy?”

“I think you’d better. I told Johnnie that I didn’t know what I was
saying last night, when I promised to marry him. I’ve begged him not to
worry me—”

Eric fingered the letter without reading it.

“If I told you that the doctor didn’t know if I could marry even in two
years, what would you say?,” he propounded.

“Even!...? What do you mean? Did he say that? Eric, tell me! You
frighten me when you won’t say what’s the matter with you.”

He pulled a chair to the side of the bed and sat down, holding her hand.

“I can’t tell you anything very definite,” he answered. “But I’m trying
to look at all possibilities. I feel responsible for you, Ivy. I want
to think what’s the best for you. If Gaisford says I must never marry,
what will you do?”

She looked at him with frightened eyes, and he saw that her lips were
trembling. Two slow tears rolled down her cheeks and splashed on to his
hand. So she had cried once at the opera, and her tears had melted him.
Now they seemed to eat into his hand like acid.

“I shan’t die, if I can help it, Ivy,” he added. “If I did, or if I
couldn’t marry you, what would you do? Would you marry Gaymer?”

“Oh, Eric, don’t be cruel! Are you doing this just to frighten me?”

“No! I’m thinking of your future. If you married him, do you feel that
you’d both be happy?”

“I should never be happy, if anything happened to you.”

“Darling Ivy, leave me out for a minute! Imagine you’d never met me. Do
you feel that you’d be happy with him?”

“If I’d never met you?... But, Eric—”

“You really love him, Ivy? Do you love him more than me?”

“Don’t torture me! I could never love any one as I love you. Johnnie’s
quite different; I _feel_ quite differently about him... Eric, it isn’t
kind not to tell me.”

She drew her hand back and leaned forward, throwing her arms round his
neck. He kissed her forehead and dried the tear-rivulets on her cheeks.
Then he unlocked her fingers and stood up, turning half away.

“I’ll tell you, Ivy,” he said. “I asked you this morning whether you’d
wait two years—”

“I will! You know I will!”

“I know you will! Bless you! But two years are no good. I hope to be
very much better by then, but I shall never be well enough to marry...
Gaisford t-told me so this afternoon,” he added with deliberation.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




  CHAPTER FOURTEEN


  VIGIL


           “He could not, Himself, make a second self
           To be His mate; as well have made Himself:
           He would not make what He mislikes or slights,
           An eyesore to Him, or not worth His pains:
           But did, in envy, listlessness or sport,
           Make what Himself would fain, in a manner, be—
           Weaker in most points, stronger in a few,
           Worthy, and yet mere playthings all the while,
           Things he admires and mocks too,—that is it.
           Because, so brave, so better though they be,
           It nothing skills if He begin to plague....

           ’Thinketh, such shows nor right nor wrong in Him,
           Nor kind, nor cruel: He is strong and Lord.
           ’Am strong myself compared to yonder crabs
           That march now from the mountain to the sea.
           ’Let twenty pass, and stone the twenty-first,
           Loving not, hating not, just choosing so....”
                 ROBERT BROWNING: “CALIBAN UPON SETEBOS.”

When Eric came back to the hall, he was startled to find O’Rane still
sitting there.

“I’d entirely forgotten about you,” he exclaimed. “Have I been a
frightful time? You must forgive me. I’m becoming appallingly
absent-minded.”

“You haven’t been very long,” answered O’Rane; then he added
inconsequently, “I was beginning to fear she might not be so well.”

“A bit unstrung. I just want to scribble a note to Gaisford; then I
shall be ready for dinner.”

He hurried into the library, tripped over an unseen obstacle and had
almost overbalanced before he discovered that the lights were not
turned on.

“_I have told Ivy that you say I shall never be well enough to marry,_”
he wrote. “_This may surprise you, but you must back me up. I’m going
away as soon as I can get packed and tidied up; I shall be away for at
least your two years. I want you to tell people that it’s not serious,
but I also want you to convince Ivy that it’s all over. I’ll give you
the whole story if you want it; perhaps it’s enough for the present to
say that I want above all things to give her a free hand. After all, if
she’s still unmarried in two years’ time and if I’m a whole man by
then, we can revise our decision. She’s too young to be tied for two
years. You might burn this letter and keep the contents to yourself._”

Ivy had been crying as though her heart would break; and Eric had only
left her room because his presence seemed to excite her to fresh
outbursts, and she was reacting on him. While he wrote his letter, the
long-drawn breathless sobs seemed to fill the library—as they had
filled it once before on the night when he debated with Gaisford
whether he should come to her rescue—; it was imagination, of course,
but he wanted to get away as soon as possible, as far as possible. And
assuredly there must be no question of seeing her again....

He walked to the door and clutched at the handle as he listened. The
sobbing continued, and he wondered how long he would have to hear it.
It was almost too clear to be imaginary; O’Rane must be hearing it,
too... So might a man go on hearing that one accusing sound until he
went mad. He filled his lungs and walked erect into the hall.

“I’m ready now,” he said.

O’Rane felt for his hat and stood up.

“You think it’s all right to leave her?” he asked.

“Why not? The nurse is somewhere about.”

“She seems—rather upset.”

The crying was real, then, and some one else could hear it. O’Rane
spoke caustically, as though _he_ were responsible....

“I’m afraid I shall only make her worse... Shall we start? I’ll give
you a hand, if I may; the stairs are rather tricky. Are we going to
your place, or will you come with me to the club? I don’t want to meet
a lot of people. You said we should be by ourselves?”

One jerky question tumbled on to the heels of another. It was idle for
Eric to pretend that nothing had happened; it was impossible to remain
silent.

“It’ll be only the two of us,” said O’Rane.

“Let’s find a taxi.”

They had driven half-way to O’Rane’s house in Westminster, when Eric
leaned through the window without warning and countermanded the order.

“The club will be better,” he explained. “We may meet my agent,
Grierson, and I want to have a word with him. You don’t mind?”

“Not a bit... I think I’d better take charge, Eric. First of all, have
a cigarette. I don’t carry them myself, I’m afraid. Then don’t try to
talk, if you don’t feel like it; and don’t try to keep up appearances
on my account. I’m blind, to begin with; and I know what you’re going
through. Give me your hand. That’s right... Sorry! I didn’t mean to
hurt you; I suppose I’ve rather a powerful grip. Now, you’ve to make
the hell of a big effort—”

“I’ve made it,” Eric interrupted unsteadily.

“You’re only at the beginning. I take it you gave her free choice?”

“No, I decided for her. I had a moment of revelation and I jumped at
the opportunity. I knew that, if I didn’t take it then, I should go on
struggling until I could never take it. I cut my own throat. I lied to
her and said that I’d been forbidden even to think of marrying—ever.
That letter was to square Gaisford. She’s upset—on my account; but
she’ll forget it the first time she sees Gaymer. That brute... And a
month ago she was begging me to marry her without waiting, because she
was so sure of herself. I’ve taken your advice, Raney, with—interest.
I’ve handed her over without a fight. It’s been a—most valuable
experience,—something to think about when I’m abroad. I feel there’s a
tremendous joke somewhere, only I can’t see it. Shall we telephone to
Gaymer and see if he can help us? And she’s crying because I’ve been so
_good_ to her, she can’t _bear_ to think I’m ill, I must _know_ she’ll
wait till I’m well... _You_ can see the fun of it, can’t you, Raney?
The rollicking farce? If I died, she’d die too; a perfect sentiment.
We’re just by Buckingham Palace now. I was taking her home from the
opera, and Gaymer passed us in a car—on this spot—with another woman.
Gaymer, who’s going to make her happy! And she went and bearded him in
his own rooms; and he turned her out!... Just on this spot... That was
the beginning of everything. She’ll tell you that, when she got home
that night, she prayed that she might die....”

The taxi swerved to the kerb and stopped with a jerk. O’Rane relaxed
his grip on Eric’s hand and opened the door to let out the dog.

“A big effort!,” he whispered.

The lights of the hall and the hum of conversation in the dining-room
steadied Eric, and he discussed the bill of fare with a show of
interest, even stirring himself to nod or wave a hand to his friends,
as they threaded their way among the tables. Once he remembered that he
had done all this before, two nights ere he said good-bye to Barbara
Neave and to England. It would have been better, if he had never come
back; he never meant to come back, but he had been summoned. It was not
his fault; looking back on the past two months, could any one say that
he was to blame for anything? Was he to blame for sacrificing himself
now? Did it matter what any one did, so long as Providence punished
folly and wisdom equally? That was where God came in. Perhaps that was
the secret of this incomparable joke which he felt without
understanding....

“I know now why Adam and Eve were turned out of the Garden of Eden!,”
he exclaimed suddenly.

O’Rane looked up in surprise.

“Is this a new riddle?,” he asked.

“It’s the oldest riddle in the world. _They_ knew the difference
between good and evil; God never did. I sometimes wonder why any of us
try to lead a decent life or to do the right thing. It doesn’t pay in
this world, and I’m sure God only despises you in the next... You’d
like a glass of sherry, wouldn’t you?,” he added, as their waiter came
within ear-shot.

“I hardly ever touch wine, thanks...” O’Rane listened for a moment to
the departing footsteps, then lowered his voice. “If you feel like
that, Eric, you’ve only to go back and say that you want to be married
at once. She’ll do it. If you told her you were going straight to a
sanatorium—for the rest of your life—, you’ve only to ask her and
she’ll go with you. If you play that card, no one in the world can beat
you. And you know it.”

There was a long silence only broken by the drumming of nervous fingers
on the table.

“Yes. I know it,” Eric answered.

“Why don’t you play it?”

“Perhaps I don’t much care about the idea of bringing consumptive
children into the world.”

“She’ll wait till you’re cured... Don’t be a humbug, Eric. You’re going
to spoil everything, if you become bitter. Cynicism is a young man’s
substitute for knowledge. We’re not boys. We can see this
dispassionately; you’ve done the right thing, the only possible thing,
the inevitable thing. It hurts, but I can shew you a way of making it
hurt less. At present you’re seeing nothing but blackness ahead, but,
if you’ll come for a walk with me after dinner, I’ll put something in
place of all you think you’re losing.”

“I shall be interested to see you try.”

“My dear Eric, I shall succeed! I’ve never doubted in all my life. Will
you put yourself in my hands? We won’t discuss it now, because I want
to hear about your immediate plans. You’ll be away for two years? Have
you decided when you start and where you’re going?”

Eric had thought only that he was losing this girl whom he had so
unnecessarily allowed himself to love. He did not want to talk about
the islands of the South Pacific, but O’Rane would not leave him alone.
It was unseemly and brutal, this torrent of questions from a man who
was in no way concerned. O’Rane knew some one who would be only too
pleased to take over the lease of the Ryder Street flat; he knew some
one else who might usefully be employed to spread the news of his
departure through the Press; he knew men at every stopping-place
between Liverpool and the Marquesas, between Southampton and the Cape,
and letters of introduction were to be had for the asking.

“You’re giving me a wonderful funeral,” said Eric.

The words were rudely conceived and rudely spoken. It was a refinement
of cruelty to be whipped with questions, when his brain was too much
numbed to think of anything but Ivy.

“Hardly a funeral. But you’ve closed one chapter, and I want you to
begin the next. It doesn’t do any good to curse your luck. When I had
this accident to my eyes, I walked straight out of hospital into my
next job. Kind friends wanted to drive me in cars or to take my arm,
but I had to start on my own _some_ time. There’s such a lot to be done
in life that we’ve no leisure for thinking what fun it would be to have
three hands or a million pounds a minute. When King David was punished
in the person of his son, he did everything in his power to keep the
boy alive; when once the boy was dead, he rose up and washed his face
and put off all the signs of mourning and started on _his_ next job. If
you don’t begin to-night, it’ll be harder to begin to-morrow.”

“But there’s not very much I _can_ do to-night,” Eric objected wearily.

“I assure you there is. Did you find out whether your agent was in the
club? Well, get hold of him and make your arrangements. I can’t help
there, because I know nothing about the subject, but you and he must
know what you fixed when you went abroad before. In the meantime I’ll
get hold of my tame journalist. I’m going to say simply that you’re
going abroad immediately for the good of your health; I shan’t say
where or how long for. And the news won’t appear till the day after
to-morrow, so you’ll have time to warn your people. Then we’ll meet—is
half an hour long enough for you?—, and I shall have a lot for you to
do. I’m going to find out if Gaymer’s at home—”

“I’m not going to see _him_!” Eric broke in.

O’Rane looked up, with his head on one side, smiling to himself:

“If I convince you that you can contribute in any way to that girl’s
happiness? Dear man, don’t be absurd! I’m assuming that you love her.
That means that you’ll do everything you can for her and that you’ll
rack your brains to think of new things. D’you imagine that you’ve done
your utmost for her by clearing out of Gaymer’s way—with the worst
possible grace—and wishing them both joy of the other? You’re going to
help this thing through. You’re going to set her mind at rest, you’re
going to shake hands with him, you’re going to be the man they can both
turn to... This has to be done with a bit of a gesture, Eric.”

Forty minutes later they were walking towards Buckingham Gate. Eric did
not know what he was expected to say or do, but O’Rane assured him that
everything would be quite easy, and he was too tired to assert himself.
He hoped faintly that Gaymer would be sober and that they would have no
duel of words as on the occasion of his two other visits to the flat.
Perhaps O’Rane would keep the peace....

Gaymer opened the door himself, nodded perfunctorily to Eric and led
the way to his smoking-room. He could not wholly conceal his surprise
at their coming; and he busied himself unduly with chairs, cigars and
offers of drink until one of his visitors should think fit to explain
the purpose of the meeting. Each waited for his neighbour to speak
first; the last tumbler and cigar were distributed, and there was no
pretext for further delay. When the silence became unbearable, O’Rane
turned enquiringly to Eric.

“You were going to make a proposal?,” he began.

“No. I came here, because you asked me to. I don’t in the least know
what you want me to say.”

“I wanted you to explain; Gaymer’s in the dark still. Shall I give him
an outline?... Gaymer, you both of you love Miss Maitland, but you
can’t both of you marry her. I don’t think we need consider rights or
claims, because—quite obviously—neither of you would marry her against
her will—”

“I have every intention of marrying her,” Gaymer interrupted quietly.

“Not against her will. Lane or I have only to say a word to her, and
she’d marry him. I’m not bluffing, Gaymer; that’s quite certain. Lane
doesn’t want to force her hand, he wants her to marry the man who’ll
make her happiest. Don’t you want the same? This is the judgement of
Solomon, you know. Do you put yourself before her? If you do, you don’t
care for her, you don’t deserve her; and, Gaymer, you won’t get her.”

Gaymer kicked his heels on to the edge of a chair and slid lower into
his corner of the sofa:

“If she tries to marry Lane or any one else, I can have her back—in the
heel of my fist—within a week.”

“I can’t agree,” said O’Rane. “There are certain new factors of which
you know nothing. But, if it were all true, would you try to marry her
against her will?”

“No—”

“Come! That’s better.”

“But it’s not against her will. _She_ knows that. Simply looking at
_her_ happiness—”

“You won’t make her very happy in your present state, Gaymer,” said
O’Rane sharply. “It’s more than time for you to steady down and find
some work to do.”

“That’s my business,” murmured Gaymer unamiably.

“No, it’s ours, if you want our help. Lane has seen her this evening;
he’s come to the conclusion that she wants to marry you rather than
him. He’s given way in your favour. It’s not an easy thing to do, it’s
not an easy position for her; she’s torn in two and very unhappy.
Lane’s going abroad—for his health. He’s leaving her on such terms that
she can do what she likes without having any cause to reproach herself;
she can marry you with a good conscience. And you’ve to shew that
you’re worthy of what’s being done for you; she’s being made over to
your care. How long will it take you to find some work?”

Gaymer looked uncomprehendingly from one to the other.

“I don’t know,” he answered stupidly.

O’Rane turned to Eric.

“Have you any money?,” he asked.

“How much do you want?,” said Eric.

“Well, how much can you spare? You want to make a success of this,
don’t you? If there’s a question of their wanting money to marry on,
capital to start in business, you know, you could supply it? You must
have made a great deal the last few years; and you wouldn’t like Miss
Maitland to go short. Can I leave the question in your hands?”

Eric felt an insane impulse to laugh, but O’Rane’s face was serious.

“I hardly feel—,” he began.

“But you’re going to do everything in your power to make it a success!
They must have money, and I understand the judge is rather a screw. By
the way, we shall have to put some pressure on him. He’s got a great
opinion of you, Eric. I met him at dinner the other night, and he was
talking very warmly about you. You will have to do some propaganda for
Gaymer. And then we must find regular work... Can you manage five
hundred a year for a few years?”

As Eric hesitated in bewilderment, Gaymer intervened.

“We needn’t discuss this,” he said.

“If you don’t take it, I’ll see that your wife does,” said O’Rane. “You
could manage that, Eric?”

“I could.”

“Then you will?”

Eric felt himself being hypnotized. A voice that was not under his
control answered:

“I will.”

O’Rane stood up and called his dog.

“Lane has to go abroad for his lungs,” he explained. “He’ll be all
right in a year or two’s time, but he’s told Miss Maitland that he’ll
never be in a condition to marry; you must back up the story. Now
that’s pretty well all. Lane will be busy the next few days, so you’d
better not go near his place. After that, I understand that Miss
Maitland will have to go away to the country for a bit. When she comes
back, you can see her. If she shews any hesitation, you can tell her
that Lane himself provided the money for you to marry her on. That’ll
fix _that_... Now we must be going.”

He walked to the door and felt for the handle. Eric rose wearily and
followed him, hardly troubling to wonder where he was being taken.
Gaymer sat biting his nails and staring at the floor.

“Good-bye,” O’Rane called from the door.

There was an inarticulate grunt from the sofa. Eric was half-way across
the room, but he hesitated and came back to Gaymer.

“I don’t suppose I shall see you again,” he said. “Good-bye. Good luck.”

O’Rane was humming to himself in the hall. Gaymer looked towards the
door; then his eyes swept slowly round on a level with Eric’s waist;
they raised themselves diffidently, and he saw a hand stretched out to
him.

“Good-bye, Lane,” he said.

“Will you shake hands?”

“Why? We’re not friends. And you’ve not given me anything.”

The humming ceased, and O’Rane called out to know whether Eric was
coming.

“I’m too tired to wrangle,” sighed Eric. “Don’t shake hands, if you
don’t want to. Good-bye again.”

“Good-bye.”

Eric’s hand fell to his side, and he walked slowly to the door and
across the hall.

“What d’you want me to do now?,” he asked dully.

“I’ll take you home,” answered O’Rane. “I’m afraid Gaymer hasn’t
learned the art of being gracious; and he’ll be punished for it. I’m
prepared to bet he’s being punished now. Whenever he looks at his wife,
he’ll remember that you behaved well and he didn’t. He’ll try to forget
it; but she won’t let him, she’ll always know that, when you found you
couldn’t marry her yourself, you strained every nerve to get her
happily married to the man she loved better than you. If anything makes
Gaymer run straight, it’ll be that reflection. You’ve behaved
uncommonly well, Eric, if I may say so, though not better than she
deserved; you’re giving up everything to her, but she was ready to give
up everything to you. I’ve not finished with you yet; you’ve still to
give your blessing to the marriage. Tell her quite simply that, as you
can’t marry her yourself—Yes, you must do that... And that’s all you
_can_ do. If they’re coming to grief, you can’t stop them; you’ve
already done what only one man in ten million would do. In
future—you’re funking the future, aren’t you?”

“It seems a little—purposeless,” said Eric.

He wondered whether his voice trembled as much as his lips.

“One gets moments like that. It’s all due to our literary conception of
beginnings and ends. How long have we known each other? Fifteen years?
D’you remember your last Phoenix Club dinner with Sinclair as
president? Jim Loring was there; and George Oakleigh; and Jack Waring.
In those days I’d made up my mind to a great career; I was going to
make pots of money and I was going to be the great democratic leader...
Then the war came, just when I’d made the money and lost it; one was
incapacitated to a certain extent... But, even when I was lying in
hospital, I never said ‘This is the end’... You’re a bit incapacitated,
but this isn’t the end; you’ve just been pulled up by a big obstacle
and you’ve overdone it. I said I’d give you something in place of all
you were losing. Well, haven’t I? You could have kept that girl, but
you’ve done everything—at the heaviest possible cost—to serve her
interests. You’ve that to be proud of. What are the things one has to
overcome before one can attain greatness of spirit? Greed, fear,
selfishness? You’ve done that. Weakness?... I keep on thinking of
Sinclair’s dinner-party. You know that my wife was engaged to Jim
Loring before she married me; and you and Jack Waring were both in love
with Barbara Neave before she married George. ’Curious what havoc one
or two women can make in half a dozen men’s lives! It came near to
beating Jim; I believe it did beat Waring. But are you going to be
beaten and to let your life be spoiled for a woman? You’re bigger than
either of those two; you’ve had ill-health to contend with all your
life and you’ve made a world-wide reputation for yourself in spite of
it. And in those days Woman for us was a girl of eighteen that we
flirted with on the stairs at a dance... We underestimate them at
first, then we exaggerate them enormously, then we get them into
perspective; but Woman is not a man’s chief business in his prime. Did
you plan a wonderful career for yourself at that dinner? I told you
even then that you were the genius among us all.”

Eric looked back with a shudder over the devastation of fifteen years
to his last night as an undergraduate at Oxford.

“I suppose I did... Yes, it was a solemn moment, just when we were
going down. I dreamed that one day I should have the whole world at my
feet. People would whisper who I was when I came into a room... I
suppose I’ve got that. But it’s so small. I’m genuinely surprised when
I find that any one’s heard of me. I’m terrified when people come up
and congratulate me on my plays... If that’s fame... I think it was
when I found how unsatisfying it was that I began to yearn for
something more... You haven’t told me how I’m going to keep myself
amused for the next two years, Raney. I shall be allowed to do very
little work.”

“You won’t be amused. But you may be consoled to think that your soul’s
been in danger and that you’ve saved it by sacrifice. It was
touch-and-go whether you spoiled that girl’s life.”

“And I’ve given her life to Gaymer to spoil.”

“If he must. But you’ve set him an example that he won’t easily forget.
I still believe in sudden conversions; and I expect to find him a
different man from to-night. You must give time for the lesson to sink
in; he’s dazed at present—like you.”

Loathing of Gaymer was a feeling which Eric could not yet repress; he
brought his stick with a crash on to the pavement.

“Not he! You talked about a ‘gesture,’ and he knows it’s that and
nothing more. I’ve given her up because I couldn’t keep her... I don’t
complain. She had her choice of us, and the better man won.”

“It was the better man who made the gesture,” said O’Rane quietly. “Is
this the house? I don’t think I can do any good by coming in. Make her
see that you’re still her devoted friend and that love has no necessary
connection with marriage. You told me you were going to your people
to-morrow? You’ll find that devilish hard, but you mustn’t stand any
sympathy from them, or you’ll begin to pity yourself. Come and see me,
as soon as you’re back in London. I’ll organize a farewell dinner for
you. A bit ironical after your send-off in New York? I thought I’d
discount it by saying it first... Remember you have to go through this
with your head up. Good-night.”

He held out his hand, and Eric gripped it.

“Good-night and thank you. Can you get home all right?”

“I’m not going home. I’m going to do some propaganda with this girl’s
father.”

O’Rane turned with a wave of his hand, slipped his fingers through the
dog’s collar and strode towards St. James’ Street. Eric watched him
melting from sight and then walked upstairs. He tried to make a
picturesque comparison between his own disappearance into the solitude
of California and O’Rane’s eternal solitude of blindness; he wondered
why any one troubled to advise and guide him, why he so tamely
submitted. What was the sum of all this counsel?... He was
inexpressibly tired. And it was ironical that he should be spending
another night so close to Ivy when he had renounced her.

The light was burning in her room, and after some hesitation he put his
head in at the door. She seemed to be sleeping, but awoke as he looked
at her and cried out to know where he had been.

“I was dining with O’Rane,” he said. “I went away, Ivy, because I
couldn’t bear to see you crying. And I was a bit unnerved myself. It’s
done me good, talking to him. He’s so extraordinarily plucky himself
and he’s never in any kind of doubt. He’s cleared my mind of doubt. If
I could marry you without doing you a wrong, there’s nothing I wouldn’t
do to bring it about. You know that, don’t you? I love you more than
any one in the world, you’ll always be my own child, and nothing can
take away my right to love you and try to protect you. But we can’t
marry; so we mustn’t upset each other by thinking about it. I’m going
away to try and get cured, and you must get well yourself and make your
own life just as though we’d never thought of marrying. You remember
that I made a will some weeks ago? I’m arranging for certain money to
be paid you—”

“Eric!”

“Yes. That’ll make you independent. I want to see you happily married.
You told me that, if I were dead or if we’d never met, you’d probably
marry John Gaymer. I want you to pretend that we’ve never met. I hate
to think of giving any one else the right to take care of you, but I
can’t do it from the other side of the Atlantic... You’ve been a
wonderful thing in my life, a little fairy that walked in out of the
street... I shall expect to hear everything that you do and how you’re
getting on. I’m going to get quite well, but a man with weak lungs has
no business to marry. And that’s the long and the short of it. I’m
going down to-morrow to tell my people... If ever you need help, Ivy,
you can call on me; I’ll come back from California, if I can do
anything for you. Now I mustn’t keep you awake, or I shall get into
trouble with Gaisford. Promise me you won’t worry. Promise me you won’t
make yourself miserable... Darling Ivy, you mustn’t cry again; I’m
losing more than you are. Don’t try to talk. Just kiss me good-night.
May God bless you, Ivy, and make you very happy.”

As he untwined her arms and turned out the light, he could hear the
sobs breaking out afresh. They followed him across the hall into his
bedroom. Nearly three years earlier, when he had said good-bye to
Barbara, he had returned home to find the telephone ringing in every
room and he had muffled the bells and thrown himself half-undressed on
his bed, blind and mad with pain. For two years he had wondered what
would have happened, if he had yielded to temptation and spoken to
her....

The sobbing of a heart-broken child pursued him, though he shut his
door and buried his head in the pillows. O’Rane was convinced that he
had only to make his appeal, to trade on his own health and beg her to
come with him....

If she dreaded the appeal, why did she go on crying?

He tried to think of next day’s meeting with his mother. “No danger...
I assure you there’s nothing to worry about! Ask Gaisford, if you don’t
believe me...” And then, as in a careless postscript: “Of course, there
can be no question of marrying. Just as well we found out in time,
wasn’t it?” Would his mother be deceived? He would have to tell her in
that quiet, confidential hour when his father had gone to bed; he would
surely tell her in his father’s drowsy, smoke-laden work-room where he
had already boasted—prematurely enough to set God scheming against
him—that he would make an effort to win, that he _would_ win, that he
had won....

If indeed he had won, it was a secret victory; and Raney alone knew
whom he had met and overcome....

The sobbing still haunted him. If Ivy dreaded the appeal, how _could_
she go on crying?

He threw aside the pillows and walked uncertainly to the door. His
fingers went to the handle and drew back without touching it, went
forward again, tried and turned. The door opened, and he could hear
muffled sobbing, no longer imaginary. He walked on tip-toe half-way
across the hall, then returned and stood listening in the open
door-way. Then he closed the door and locked it.

The sobbing grew fainter and died away.




  THE END

------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Transcriber’s notes

1. Silently corrected typographical errors and inconsistencies;
   retained non-standard spelling.

2. Retained non-standard punctuation and ellipses.

3. Page 270: the left brace was not retained.

4. Italic text in the original is delimited by _underscores_.





End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Secret Victory, by Stephen McKenna

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