The Education of Eric Lane Part 32

"From your description, most things were wanting."

"Darling, if you're prosaic, I just shan't talk to you. I discovered that I wanted some one to share it with. If you _knew_ the glorious feeling of standing bare-foot on hot marble! I wanted _you_, Eric! I always want you when I'm happy, because I must share my happiness with some one; and I want you when I'm unhappy, because I'm too proud to shew my unhappiness to any one who doesn't love me. I hate the second-best and I'm so glad to see you again!"

Eric considered her with his head on one side and his hands in his pockets, cautiously and without committing himself.

"Well, Babs, if you _don't_ always have me at hand for all your moods and all your needs----"

"Yes?"

He turned away to knock the ash from his cigarette and to avoid a possible change of expression in her eyes.

"My dear, you'll have only yourself to blame."

"I know. Bless you, dear Eric. Somehow, I was afraid you might have changed. Thinking of you all those miles away, I felt you were too good to be true. Let's go down to dinner. You've only got me, I'm afraid.

Will you be bored?"

"I don't suppose so," he answered, smiling; but, indefinably, he was disappointed.

2

The Crawleighs spent a month in London before repairing to Hamps.h.i.+re for the summer.

"Make the most of me," said Barbara, when her father's decision was made known. "You may never see me again."

"I wonder whether you'd mind," Eric mused. "Don't you sometimes feel that I've served my turn?"

"That's a horrid thing to say! If anything took you out of my life . . .

Say you're sorry this very moment!"

Eric laughingly complied, but he could not easily shake off his disappointment that Barbara had come back after three months without nerving herself to make a decision. Though Jack Waring's name was still never mentioned, he felt that she was increasingly unreasonable in honouring any superst.i.tious obligation to his memory. A vague, resentful impatience ruffled the serenity of their meetings; and, though they plotted to lunch or dine together daily and counted the remaining hours with jealous concern, Eric was shocked to find himself secretly relieved when Barbara said "Only another week."

"I've not seen very much of you," he grumbled inconsistently. "Why don't you dine with me to-morrow?"

Barbara had undergone some transformation in the last six months until she seemed hardly to need him. In the old days she was a slave to be summoned by a clap of the hands; but, since he had healed her spirit, she was a queen to be courted.

"I'll come, if you like," she said. "It means throwing over George Oakleigh. And I haven't seen him since I came back."

"I shouldn't dream of asking you to do that. I've chosen an unfortunate day. I've chosen rather a lot of unfortunate days lately," he added.

"Is that very gracious, Eric? I've said I'll come."

The desire to get his own way and the growing need of her struggled confusedly with the resolve to be patient and the politic determination to court her as a queen.

"No, you keep to your original plan," he advised her; and then, with thinly-veiled taunt, "It's funny to look back on the old days, when you were miserable if twelve hours pa.s.sed without our meeting. D'you remember when you used to say how much you needed me?"

"I need you still," she answered, wondering at his new irritability.

"You got on very comfortably without me at the Cap Martin----"

"I should have been very uncomfortable if I hadn't known that you were thinking of me, waiting for me, loving me, even----"

"And you'll get on very comfortably when you're at Crawleigh Abbey," he persisted. "And to-morrow----"

"I've said I'll come to-morrow. Eric, you're not jealous of my dining with other people? You're talking as if you were trying to pick a quarrel. You were always so sweet. . . ."

"I'm not conscious of having changed," he answered stiffly.

But he was conscious of a change in her. While he was still indifferent, she had prostrated herself before him; when he confessed his love, she gathered up his own cast robes of indifference. It was feminine nature, and her "education" of him was at least ill.u.s.trating the s.e.x-generalizations which a man ought to have learned before leaving his dame's-school.

"Don't let's quarrel, darling!" she begged. "_Whatever_ you ask, I'll do! But, when I give, I want to give everything. Won't you be patient with me?"

Ever since her return to England, Eric's nerves had been strained until he found it first difficult and then impossible to work or sleep. When he met her, there was always some trifling cause of annoyance; when he stayed away, there was hunger and loneliness.

"I wonder how long you'd like me to be patient," he murmured.

"Before I marry you? Is that what you mean? Eric, I promise in the sight of G.o.d that I'll marry you as soon as I can do it with a good conscience. You don't want me to be haunted all my life. And now, when we even speak of it . . . It's my punishment."

"I'm sorry, Barbara. I've made you look quite miserable."

She bent his head forward and kissed him.

"I've never been _really_ miserable since I knew that you loved me," she whispered.

Though the quarrel was composed, the taut nerves were still unrelaxed; and, after two more nights of insomnia, Eric was driven to consult his doctor. The examination, with its attendant annoyances of sounding and questioning, weighing and measuring, was tiresomely thorough; but at the end Gaisford could only suggest change of scene and occupation.

"I'm not a good subject for rest," Eric objected.

"I'm not sending you into a home," said Gaisford. "Why not go out to California for six months? You can scribble there as well as anywhere."

"If I work at all, it ought to be this propaganda job," Eric suggested.

"Then do your propaganda job elsewhere. I want to get you out of London.

Do you want me to speak frankly? You're seeing much too much of an exceedingly attractive young woman. If you're going to marry her, marry her; if not, break away. Flesh and blood can't stand your present life."

Eric left him without giving a pledge, because he felt too tired for the effort of going away from Barbara for six months. Since he had reduced his hours of work, there was no excuse for this everlasting sense of limp fatigue; granted the fatigue, there was no excuse for his not sleeping. The doctor had paid curiously little attention to the insomnia and was childishly interested in making him blow down a tube and register the cubic capacity of his lungs. There had never been a hint of phthisis in the family, but the medical profession could be trusted to recommend six months in California when a man needed only one injection of morphia to secure a night's sleep.

He had forgotten Gaisford and his advice when Barbara came to say good-bye on her last day in London.

"My dear, have you been ill?" she asked with concern. "I've been told to use my influence to get you away for a holiday. What's been the matter?"

"I don't know. And Gaisford shouldn't discuss one patient with another.

He wants me to go to California for six months."

"Then you'll go? You _must_ go!" Barbara's eyes were wide with distress.

"I insist!"

"I'm thinking it over," he answered, a little startled. "I'm not a bit keen to leave you, Babs."