The Education of Eric Lane Part 10

"H'm. She doesn't seem to like my being here. . . . Does _everybody_ call you Eric?"

"You're well placed to answer that. Now, Lady Barbara, remember your promise: no talking!"

The act was played a second time, taking form and life as all warmed to their work. Eric watched with critical narrowed eyes, no longer scattering pencil-marks in the margin of the script, restrained, impa.s.sive and absorbed. Barbara sat with her hands clasped round her ankles and her head resting against his knee. Only when the act was ended did he seem to become aware of her; then he edged away and stood up.

"Better! Very much better! Just turn to the place where----" He rustled back into the middle of the act and had it played through to the curtain.

Half-an-hour later Barbara emerged into suns.h.i.+ne. Eric was tired and rather husky, but pleased and hopeful. His earlier irritability was forgotten save when it obtruded itself reproachfully to remind him that he had been scantly civil to the girl by his side.

"The next thing is a taxi," he murmured, as they came out into Shaftesbury Avenue.

"You wouldn't dream of taking me home and offering me some tea?" she suggested.

"I would not, Lady Barbara," he answered cheerfully. "Your practice of visiting young unmarried men in their rooms should be promptly checked.

But I'll drop you in Berkeley Square, if you like."

"That would be more--respectable. It's curious how you seem to have made up your mind not to do anything I ask you."

"It doesn't seem to make much difference to the result."

She ceased pouting and smiled self-confidently for a moment. Then her a.s.surance left her, and she slipped her arm timidly through his.

"Am I being a nuisance, Eric? You said so, and--oh, it _did_ hurt! I honestly enjoyed myself this afternoon; and I wasn't so very much in the way, was I? Don't you like me to enjoy myself? Don't you like to see me happy? Are you sure you're not a little bit sorry you were so brutal to me?"

"My conscience is quite easy, thanks. Lady Barbara----"

He hesitated and felt himself flus.h.i.+ng.

"Yes?"

"Lady Barbara--, I don't understand you, I don't begin to understand you."

"You won't write a good play till you do," she laughed. "All your women are romantic dolls. We're much better and much worse than you think. But that wasn't what you started to say."

"I know. . . . Well, you oughtn't to have come to my rooms last night.

And you oughtn't to have come to-day, though that wasn't as bad. . . .

What d'you imagine people like Grierson or Manders think? What d'you imagine Mabel Elstree thinks, when you sit with your head against my knee?"

She withdrew her arm and walked for some time without speaking.

"I'm sorry if I'm compromising you with your friends," she said at length.

"And whether you compromise yourself doesn't matter?"

"I suppose I'm used to it," she sighed; then, with one of her April changes, the sigh turned into a provocative laugh. "If _you_ don't mind being compromised by _me_, I'd make you write a _wonderful_ play. My technique's so good. All you have to do is to fall in love with me----"

"I shan't have the opportunity," he interrupted. "We meet to-night at Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's----"

"And we were so _positive_ that we weren't going!" she murmured. "You don't want to see me again?"

Eric hailed a pa.s.sing taxi.

"I like meeting you," he told her frankly enough. "You amuse me--and you interest me enormously. But I've work to do . . . for one thing. . . ."

She seated herself in the taxi and held out her hand through the window.

"You might come and call for me to-night," she suggested.

Eric shook his head. He was shy of entering a house to which he had not been officially admitted, confronting a strange butler, being pushed into a room to wait for her, meeting and explaining himself to Lord Crawleigh or one of the brothers, who would look superciliously at "Babs' latest capture." . . .

"I'll meet you at Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's," he said.

The hand was withdrawn, and he could see her biting her lip.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"There's no need to be."

"I was apologizing to myself--for giving you _another_ opportunity of refusing something I asked you to do for me."

Eric walked back to his flat, puzzled and irritated. The girl was intolerably spoiled; nothing that you did was right, there was altogether too much wear and tear in trying to adapt yourself to her moods. . . .

Even if you wanted to. . . .

3

The rehearsal, despite Barbara, was over in good time, and Eric could lie unhurriedly in his bath without fear of being late for Mrs.

Sh.e.l.ley's dinner. Two days of his holiday had already slipped away, and he had made little mark on the work which he had schemed to do.

To-morrow he would start in earnest. . . .

Barbara. . . . He could not remember what had set him thinking about her. She looked desperately ill, but that was not his fault, nor could he cure her; which disposed of Barbara. . . . What she needed was some one who would pull her up, steady her, master her. . . .

Unfortunately--for her--he could not spare the time; nor was it part of his scheme of life to effect her physical and moral regeneration. . . .

And it was now the moment to begin dressing.

Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley's house lay between Sloane Square and the river; and Eric arrived punctually to find her insipidly grateful to him for coming. A self-conscious Chelsea party was a.s.sembling; there were two war-poets, whose "Trench Songs" and "Emanc.i.p.ation," compensating want of finish with violence of feeling, had made thoughtless critics wonder whether the Great War would engender a new Elizabethan splendour of genius; there was Mrs. Manisty, who claimed young poets as of right and helped them to parturition in the pages of the _Utopia Review_; there was a flamboyant, short-haired young woman who had launched on the world a war-emergency code of s.e.x-morals under the guise of a novel; there were three bashful aliens suspected of being pianists and one self-a.s.sured journalist who told Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley with suitable heartiness that he had not _met_ Mr. Lane, but of course he knew his _work_ and went on to ask Eric if he was engaged on a new "work." The flamboyant woman, Eric observed, talked much of "creation" and its antecedent labour; the trench poets, with professional modesty, referred to their "stuff." A fourth alien entered and was greeted and introduced in halting French, to which he replied in rapid and faultless English.

Eric looked round on a triumph of ill-a.s.sortment. He came here partly out of old friends.h.i.+p for his hostess, but chiefly for fear of seeming to avoid a section of society which at least took itself seriously.

There was no question of a Byronic descent on Chelsea; these people would ever cringe before the face of success and disparage behind its back, as they had always done; they made a suburb and called it a school. For ten years Eric had listened to their theories and discoveries; after ten years he was still waiting for achievement. The very house, with its "art" shades of upholstery, its hammered bra.s.s fenders, its wooden nooks and angles filled with ramshackle bookcases, hard seats and inadequately stuffed cus.h.i.+ons, was artificial; it was make-believe, pretentious, insincere. . . .

"Lady Barbara Neave."

There was a rustle of excitement, the more noticeable against the conscientious effort of several not to seem interested. Eric smiled to himself, as the young journalist, interrupted in his discourse on "the aristocracy of illiterates," watched Barbara's entry and posed himself for being introduced. She looked round with slow a.s.surance, fully conscious of the lull in conversation and of the eyes that were taking stock of her. Eric felt an artistic admiration for her way of silently dominating a room.

"Am I late, dear Marion?" she asked, with the smile of startled recognition which made men and women anxious to throw protecting arms round her thin shoulders. "Eric and I have been rehearsing our play--the new one, I mean, that I'm taking in hand--and I had such a lot to do when I got home." She displayed adequate patience, while Mrs. Sh.e.l.ley completed her introductions, and then crossed to Eric's corner. "Glad to see me again?" she whispered. "I've decided that you're to lunch with us on Sat.u.r.day."

"And I've decided to gladden the hearts of my family by going down to Winchester," he answered.

"But you must go later. I'll come with you, if you'll find a practicable train; I'm going to Crawleigh. Say you'd like to travel down with me."