"I wasn"t thinking seriously of being down to breakfast in any case," he answered with a yawn.
"Oh, don"t be late. It makes so much extra work for the maids, if they have to serve several breakfasts and can"t get in to do your room."
He smothered an impatient retort and strolled to a table by the fire where Sybil and her father were sipping long tumblers of hot milk, while Geoff gulped home-made lemonade with avid enjoyment.
"Any whiskey?" he asked, raking the tray with critical eye. He did not greatly want it for himself or at that moment, but every night the same plea had to be preferred, there was the same hesitation and hint of inward struggle, the same unspoken protest, as though the shocked stalwarts of temperance were saying: "You can"t want whiskey after claret _and_ port." He was being made to drink for conscience sake. And it was intolerable that Waring, Benyon and Nares should have been sent into the night without a stirrup-cup.
"It"s in the dining-room," said Sybil, walking reproachfully to the door.
"Here! All right! I"ll ring," Eric cried.
"The servants are all in bed," she answered. "Or, if they"re not, they ought to be."
He thanked her suitably on her return, but one discordant, trifling incident coalesced with another, the tepid bath with the whiskey demonstration, to give him a sense of angular discomfort. In a few hours he seemed to spend a month"s nervous energy in battling for things that were not worth winning. The whole week-end would be a failure. . . .
The milk tumblers were returned to their tray; Sir Francis filled his corn-cob for the last time; Geoff ferreted curiously among a pile of library novels in one corner, and Lady Lane walked softly round the room, testing the fastenings of the windows, pushing a top-heavy log into security and turning off unnecessary lights. The hall clock, striking eleven, seemed to rouse and inspire them with a common impulse.
"Don"t burn the mid-night oil too long," said Lady Lane, brushing Eric"s forehead with her lips.
"I simply couldn"t sleep, if I went to bed now," he told her.
"Good-night, mother. Good-night, everybody."
As the house grew silent he brought in his despatch-box from the hall and began to read through the skeleton of a novel which he had promised himself to write as soon as "The Bomb-Sh.e.l.l" was safely launched. In the second week of the war he had spent an afternoon in a recruiting office with men of all ages and physiques, pressing forward for enrolment.
Three over-worked doctors pounded and sounded them, prodding them on to a weighing-machine, measuring their height and chest expansion, testing their eyes. Eric had tried to cheat by memorizing the order of the descending black capitals while he lay on a sofa breathing freely or holding his breath as he was ordered; but the chart was changed before his turn came. When he had dressed, the examining doctor referred him to a row of three weary clerks at a baize-covered table, who informed him that he was rejected. The folio form contained a comment--cardiac something; he could not read the second word. There was no appeal, and, after a moment"s indecision, he recognized that there was nothing to do but to go home.
Outside the office his neighbour in the queue overtook and hailed him with the words: "What luck?"
"They"ve spun me," Eric answered. "There was just a chance that I might slip through in the crowd. . . . What did they say to you?"
"I was spun, too," his companion answered. Then he laughed uneasily and his face was drawn and dazed in the August sunshine. "You wouldn"t think you could have much the matter with you and not know anything about it.
I always thought I was a first-cla.s.s life; I haven"t had a day"s illness in ten years----"
"What did they say?" Eric asked, as the other hesitated in bewilderment.
"They give me anything between three and six months," he answered, moistening two grey lips. "One of the fellows . . . took me on one side, you know . . . asked me a few questions . . ." He broke off and waved to a taxi which was rolling lazily down Whitehall. "I must go and see my own man. Good-bye."
"Good-bye! Good luck!" Eric cried.
As he walked home he wondered how much composure he would shew if a sentence of death were slapped at him like an overdue bill. He wondered, too, what he would do with those testing, supreme three months, if they were all that he was allowed. Stoicism, hedonism, the faith of his childhood, new-fangled mysticisms would join hands and hold revel round his soul for those twelve weeks, those eighty-four days, those two thousand and sixteen hours. . . . The speculation fascinated him until he almost fancied that the sentence had been pa.s.sed on him. Gradually he wove a drama round it; line by line it took shape for a book that was to be subtiler, finer and more sincere than anything that he had ever written. If only he could find time for six months" uninterrupted work!
London had to be not only captured but held; more than ever before, his work was the one thing that mattered. . . .
The clock in the library struck twelve, and he tossed the ma.n.u.script skeleton back into his despatch-box. His mind was vaguely disturbed with a sense of duty undone, until he remembered promising to tell Barbara if he heard any news of Jack Waring. For a moment he thought of writing to her; but in fact there was no news, he would have only himself to blame if he re-established communications with her in obedience to a pa.s.sing whim. She was at Crawleigh, resting and building up her strength; he would be back in full harness within thirty-six hours, and there would be no room for her madcap incursions into his life.
4
The house was very silent when Eric at length mustered resolution to go to bed. The fragrance of many wood fires warmed the pa.s.sages and staircase with a drowsy scent; once a distant window rattled tremulously in the wind, the hall clock gathered itself together and hesitated before striking; all else was deep-brooding peace.
He turned out the lights and mounted to his room on tip-toe. There was a fancied sound of tranquil breathing, as he paused outside each door in the long, low pa.s.sage. He at least was awake; his highly-strung new restlessness would not accord with the placidity of these contented people. Twenty-five years ago, his mother had fetched him from Broadstairs for his first Christmas holidays; and he had been wonderfully glad to see her and to be home again. So it had been every holiday; he started with an afternoon"s preliminary exploration, flinging open doors, sniffing the familiar scent of leather bindings, lavender and pine-logs, critically watchful for change. Now the change had come in himself; Agnes had commented on it, his mother and Sybil had noticed it. . . .
His bedroom was as he had known it from childhood; a hard bra.s.s bed, white painted chest-of-drawers and wash-hand-stand, threadbare green carpet, flowered and festooned pink-and-white wall-paper. (It _must_ have been renewed in twenty-five years, but the pattern was the same.) There was an oak-framed "Light of the World" over the bed, supplemented on the other walls with progressive personal records--eleven podgy, flannelled little boys in quartered chocolate-and-gold caps, guarded and patronized by a flannelled and whiskered master; four lean-faced, stern young school prefects in gowns and white ties; two hundred shivering and draggled young men and girls, pressing together for warmth in the five o"clock chill of a June morning outside the Town Hall of Oxford. There were two shelves of calf-bound, marbled prize books between the windows, a pair of limp, battered racquets over the mantel-piece and a fumed-oak shield with the university and college arms contiguously inclined like the hearts of two lovers.
Eric shed his coat and waist-coat on the bed, lighted a pipe and prowled ruminatively round the room. Somewhere in the shivering ball-group Jack Waring was to be found, marked out by the blue dress-coat of the Bullingdon. Philpot of B.N.C., Trevor of the House, Loring of the House, Crabtree of Magdalen, Flint of Exeter--Eric turned from one blue-coated sign-post to another until he identified Waring with a crumpled shirt front and disordered hair, cross-legged in the front row. It was a smiling, vacuous, uncharacteristic photograph, and he abandoned it for a bulky alb.u.m stamped with his initials.
He retreated to the bed and sprawled over a group of the "Mystics." This was a detached and scornful club, exasperating to outsiders, tiresome to its members; Waring and he had joined it at the same time and taken possession of it; their vague home intimacy had ripened into an interested friendship as they strolled back to college from the weekly meetings, once more refighting the frigidly abstract battles in which they had lately engaged from the depths of arm-chairs with their feet on the table and piled dessert-plates in their laps. Without effort or desire Waring had set a fashion and founded a school of icy fastidiousness. Within the limits of college discipline, which he scrupulously observed, Waring dissociated himself from the life and conventions of the college, the abbreviations and colloquialisms of Oxford speech, the slovenly mode of dress and juvenility of mind. His serenity floated as smoothly over the collective ideas and standards of his fellows as over intercollegiate jealousies; and, as he left the college distantly alone, the college sought him out, elected him to clubs which he seldom attended and to banquets which he overlaid with baffling and frigid aloofness.
When Waring went to the bar, he shared chambers with Eric for four years in Pump Court; and, though they met at most for an hour each day, there resulted an intimacy which neither could replace when Waring moved to the greater comfort of a bedroom at the County Club. For two or three years before the war they hardly met; Eric, disappointed and sore from want of recognition, was shutting himself away from his former friends, while Waring was gathering together a practice and exploring with discrimination the social diversions of London. The war hardly increased the distance between them, and it was only when Jack Waring was reported to be "missing" that Eric realized he had lost his best and oldest friend.
He replaced the alb.u.m in its shelf and went on undressing. So many friends had already been killed in these first fourteen months of war that he had fallen into a "sooner-or-later" frame of mind about all.
Their death ceased to surprise and no longer shocked him as it had once done. Until the war, Jack was always at call. Now, when the war ended, he would _not_ come back. . . . Eric shrugged his shoulders and clambered into bed. The Warings were plucky about it, because every day the suspense must become worse; and all the while people would rush up and ask for news, as he had done with Agnes, instead of leaving her to spread the news as soon as she had any. People thought that they were being sympathetic when they were simply tearing the bandage away from the wound to gratify their own curiosity. He would never have asked the question but for his promise to Barbara. . . .
Why, then, was he not letting her know the result? He reached for his despatch-box and settled himself comfortably against the pillows.
"_I promised to see if I could get any news of our friend Jack Waring_,"
he began, then hesitated to wonder whether her letters reached Barbara uncensored or whether sharp-eyed, subdued Lady Crawleigh would ask tonelessly, "Who"s your letter from, Babs?" Decorum, he decided, should blossom between the lines and shed its waxen petals round each word. . . .
"_His sister was dining with us to-night, and I am sorry to say_ . . ."
"_Did you know him well? He was one of my greatest friends at Oxford.
I remember once_ . . ."
Eric found himself fondly stringing together anecdotes of Jack until he had overshot the limits of a single sheet; it seemed but a moment before he was leaning out of bed to reach a third. "_You must forgive me, if I have rather let myself go about him_," he ended. "_I remember the first weeks of the war, when I had a nervous breakdown. His father"s place is about two miles from here, and he used to come round and sit with me.
I"ve only to shut my eyes to see him standing by the fireplace, with his elbow on the mantel-piece and his cheek on his hand, talking to me. And I"d give a great deal to have him here to-night._
"_But I"m afraid I"m occupying an unfair proportion of your time and strength at a season when you"ve faithfully promised to take care of yourself and to have a proper rest. I hope you didn"t get carried beyond Crawleigh station; it"s been rather on my conscience that I got out at Winchester instead of coming on with you the whole way. Are you aware that you collapsed from sheer exhaustion almost before we were out of Waterloo? I thought you"d fainted and, as you have my only flask of brandy, I had a bad fright. Isn"t it worth while to take a little care of yourself? You"re so intolerably vain that I needn"t remind you that you"re very young, extraordinarily lovely at times, very clever and utterly wasted. However, that"s your affair, and you"re not likely to be much impressed by any advice I give you, nor am I much impressed by my right to give you advice. If I hear any news of Jack, you may be sure that I shall let you know. Now, good-night, good-bye and a speedy recovery._"
In reading through his letter, Eric could not help feeling that, where he had sown decorum, a certain intimacy had shot up. But at three o"clock in the morning he could not bother about that.
5
In the first drowsy moments after waking, Eric realized that he was starting at a disadvantage. It was half-past ten. He had therefore missed breakfast, disorganized the housemaids" programme for the day and made himself too late to accompany his mother to church.
"I seem to have broken all the rules of the place before getting out of bed," he told himself, as he rang for hot water.
Then he laughed as he recalled an old "Punch" drawing of an intoxicated reveller in a Tube lift, who also contrived simultaneously to break all the rules by smoking, by not "standing clear of the gates" and, pre-eminently, by not being beware of pickpockets. The laugh put him in good humour and reminded him that good humour must be his sword and shield, if he hoped to get back to London that night without a struggle.
He sauntered in search of his brother with a razor in one hand and a shaving-brush in the other to ask which night he would like to dine and have his promised box at the Regency.
When he entered the dining-room, a pencilled note in a distantly familiar writing was lying by his plate.
"_Now you MUST admit that my intelligence department is good_," he read in slanting, irregular strokes which hinted at a rec.u.mbent position and a writing-block balanced against the knees. "_You never told me your address. I didn"t know where to look for you in the telephone book, you were utterly lost. Eric, will you believe me? I carried the telephone into bed with me; I said, "Trunks, please," and Trunks Please said "Honk!" (Why do they always say "Honk"? I believe they"re Masons, or else they"ve always just woken up.) Well, I said "Honk!" too, and asked for your number in Ryder Street; and THEN I found out your address in the country. Don"t you think it was rather clever of me? And, dear Eric, don"t you think it was VERY sweet of me? I wanted to thank you for something I expect you"re quite unconscious of. (What a sentence to throw at the head of a rising dramatist!) I mean your gentleness and care for me yesterday. I always know I"m so safe with you, Eric._
"_I"m obeying you to the letter. We"ve got rather an amusing party here; Gerry Deganway and Sally Farwell, my cousin Johnnie Carstairs (perhaps ONE pinch too much Foreign Office), Bobbie Pentyre, who"s on his last leave before going out, his rather tiresome mother, the immaculate George Oakleigh. . . ._" Her pen strayed into mischievous comments and absurd stories about the house-party. "_But this bores you_," she broke off abruptly. "_I felt all this week as if I"d been sharing everything with you so extraordinarily. But no one shall say that I don"t know when I"m becoming tedious! What I wanted to tell you was this; and I was led astray by this mob of people. I"ve washed my hands of them! I"m in bed--bed at 7.15 POST MERIDIEM (is that right?) and I"m staying here.
I"m honestly resting. But--(a new sheet for this)--I"ve GOT to be in London next week--Thursday--for a happy day with the dentist. I shall be all alone, the house will be shut up and everything will be as uncomfortable and depressing as it can be. Don"t you think it"s almost a duty for you to come and dine? I"ll have the dusting-sheets in my room lifted up, and we"ll crawl underneath them and eat hard-boiled eggs in our fingers off the corner of the table. And I"ll play to you; I might even sing to you; in general terms I shall be very sweet to you and, if you don"t come, I shall know it"s because you"re afraid of falling in love with me._"
Eric smiled to himself, as he pocketed the letter and prospected for note-paper and an unoccupied table.
"_Your picnic dinner sounds most attractive_," he wrote. "_I shall be delighted to come. It is so characteristic of you not to mention a time that I hesitate to point out the omission. I shall come at 8.0, unless you tell me to the contrary. And I shall insist on your singing.
Good-bye. Take care of yourself._"
He tossed the letter into the box in the hall, but took it out again immediately. There was too much idle curiosity in the house already. No one would accept his picture of Babs as he saw her; a.s.suredly no one would believe his account of their relationship, if he were in a mood or state to give it. He put on an overcoat and walked, with the confirmed Londoner"s shivering hatred of the country in autumn, to the tumble-down shanty which did duty as general store and post office to the hamlet of Lashmar.