1

As the crow flies, Lashmar Mill-House is but five miles from Winchester. By road, however, there are six miles of tolerable grey flint and rusty gravel on the Winchester and Melton turnpike, followed by three Irish miles of unaided forest track. Half of it lies under water for six months of the year; but in the summer a rutted ride projects from stony sand-pockets framed in velvet moss, with tidal-waves of bracken surging up from the dells at the road-side and low branches meeting to net the sun-shine.

At the end of the three miles Swanley Forest seems to have paused for breath. There is a natural clearing a mile long and three quarters of a mile broad—cherished common-land, where the Lashmar villagers walk many assertive miles of a Sunday to preserve their rights of way; where, too, tethered goats and errant geese make good their eleventh-century claim to free pasturage. At one end of the down-soft clearing, a Methodist chapel, two shops and five cottages constitute the village of Lashmar; at the other lies Lashmar Mill-House, slumbering half-hidden by beech trees to the unchanging murmur of the Bort. The relevant deeds and charters prove beyond a doubt that the lord of Lashmar Mill-House has the right to make Lashmar village grind its corn in his mill, paying him in kind and yielding three days' labour a year to grind his. The ambitions of Sir Francis Lane and of his eldest son, however, were not feudal.

The autumn floods were lapping the road-side as Eric and his sister left the twinkling lights behind and turned, after a crackling six miles of metalled high-way, on to the primÆval ride that bored faint-heartedly through the forest. He was tired and uncommunicative, though his journey from Waterloo had been uneventful; once inside the carriage and tucked warmly into a corner, Barbara had closed her eyes, sighed and dropped asleep. Not until he stirred himself to collect his hat and coat did she open her eyes and look round with a tired smile; as the train steamed out of Winchester, an ungloved hand fluttered into sight for a moment.

It was Eric's first visit to Lashmar since the production of the "Divorce" had made his name known throughout England; and he could not conceal from himself that he was trying to render his return agreeably dramatic. Lady Lane assisted the conspiracy by inviting their few neighbours to meet him; Sybil was awaiting him on the platform with ill-suppressed excitement; and it was entirely appropriate that Agnes Waring should dine at the Mill-House on his first night at home.

"Geoff came home on leave yesterday," said Sybil.

"From Scapa? Oh, good! I haven't seen him for a long time," said Eric.

But for Basil, who was in Salonica, the party would be complete; and Eric felt a moment's compunction at having allowed himself to be so much caught up by the work and distractions of London. When the car stopped at the door of the Mill-House, he looked with affection at its squat, sleepy extent, punctuated with lifeless, dark windows and wrapped in age-long slumber; as the door opened, he saw his mother silhouetted against the golden light of the hall.

"At last, Eric!" she cried.

"It's good to be home again, mother," he answered, jumping out of the car and embracing her.

While his sister drove round to the stables, Eric walked arm-in-arm with his mother into the low, warm hall. For more than thirty years Lady Lane had guarded, counselled and provided for an eccentric husband and a turbulent family, shouldering the cares of all, budgeting, nursing and educating on an income which slipped unrewardingly away until she assumed control. She had learned Greek and Latin to help the boys with their home-work and had trained their characters in an austere school of aggressive Puritanism. If she were a little intolerant, at least she reared her children to a lofty sense of honour, a cold chastity of life and speech and a fierce refusal to compromise where truth or personal reputation was concerned. Thanks to her, three boys and one girl were now able to fend for themselves; Sybil, factotum and amanuensis to her father ever since she had learned to read, could support herself anywhere; Geoff was firmly on his feet in the Navy, Basil had passed into the Civil Service a few weeks before the outbreak of war. Lady Lane was justly content with her children; of Eric, whom she had kept alive when the doctors despaired of him, she was justly proud.

"Come into the drawing-room," she said, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. "I've got a fire there."

"Nothing's changed," said Eric wonderingly.

Lashmar Mill-House, for all its size, contained hardly more than two rooms on the ground-floor; a vast, book-lined study for Sir Francis, an equally vast living-room for the rest of the family and, between them, a furtive, dark rectangle where they hurried through their meals. Eric had begged for years to have the back wall removed from the hall to make an adequate dining-room, but his mother had grown middle-aged in a familiar compass and did not care to be told by him too explicitly how the house should be run and improved. In the moment of arrival Eric was too much pleased with his welcome to be critical.

"You look tired," she said, holding his face to the light. "Tell me what you've been doing all this while. You've become a great celebrity, Eric."

"There's nothing much to tell. I've been doing a lot of work, meeting a lot of people.… It's been rather fun.…"

As soon as she had put away the car, Sybil joined them and stood with her back to the fire and her hands in the pockets of a short tweed skirt, staring idly at her own small feet in their brown stockings and thick brogues and rousing herself with an abrupt jerk of the head when she wanted to intervene with a question.

"You were barely civil, when I rang you up the other night," she interjected, in a pause, with the disconcerting directness of nineteen.

"I was late already, and you were making me later," Eric answered patiently. "That night——? Oh, yes."

He detailed Lady Poynter's dinner to his mother and observed an expression of mixed curiosity and disapproval settling upon his sister's face.

"Mrs. O'Rane? Sonia Dainton that was? H'm," said Sybil. "And Lady Barbara Neave. Are you being taken up by that set now, Ricky?"

"I don't quite know what you mean by 'being taken up.' I met them at dinner.… And I lunched with the Crawleighs to-day," he added without filling in the intervening encounters. "Lady Crawleigh wants me to go down there next week-end, but I'm too busy; and week-ends simply wear me out."

"You have made yourself popular with them all at once!" Sybil commented. "What's Lady Barbara like?"

"Interesting girl," Eric answered, casually.

"Is she anything like what people make her out to be?"

Eric smiled tolerantly.

"I don't know enough of what people make her out to be," he replied. Sybil was smiling mysteriously and exasperatingly to herself.… "Is the guv'nor working?" he asked his mother.

Eric prowled through the hall to his father's big work-room. Sir Francis was sitting bent over a litter of papers, with a green eye-shade clamped to his lined forehead and an ill-smelling corn-cob drooping from beneath his unassertive grey moustache. In an arm-chair before the fire Geoff was contentedly dozing with the bog-mud steaming from his boots and a half-cleaned gun across his knees. By his side an elderly retriever peered reflectively into the flames and from time to time yawned silently.

"'Evening, everybody," said Eric. "I've been sent to hunt you off to dress, father. You asleep, Geoff? If not, how are you?"

Sir Francis pulled off the eye-shade and held out his hand with a wintry smile. The boy in the arm-chair turned on to his other side and dropped asleep again with a disgusted grunt.

"He's got about a year to make up," explained Sir Francis. "The Grand Fleet doesn't do much sleeping. Well, Eric, what news?"

"Everything very much as usual," was the answer.

"Everything's always very much as usual here," said his father, as he turned out the reading-lamp.

He sighed as he said it, and Eric tried to calculate the number of years in which he had come down like this for the week-end—to be met, before the era of motor-cars, by a fat pony and a governess cart, to be greeted by his mother with affection which he never seemed able to repay, to drift into the library and detach his lank, unaging father from his studies. Sir Francis had accepted marriage and the presence of a wife as he would have accepted a new house and strange house-keeper; children had been born; after the publication of his Smaller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary the friend of a friend had recommended him, through a friend's friend, for a knighthood, and he had bestirred himself with wide-eyed, childish surprise for the investiture and a congratulatory dinner at the AthenÆum, returning to Lashmar Mill-House grievously unsettled and discontented for as much as a week. He had talked of running up to London occasionally, of having these fellows down for the week-end; he had complained that he was growing rusty and losing touch with the world. Then the murmur of the mill-stream had drugged his senses, and he had settled to the Century Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon, Volume VII E-G.

After the restlessness of London, Eric could not at once accommodate himself to the leisurely contentment and placidity of Lashmar.

"Wake up, Geoff!" he cried.

The boy yawned and stretched himself like a cat, then became suddenly active and projected himself across the room, turning in the door-way to shout: "Bags I first bath, Ricky!"

"Well, don't take all the hot water," Eric begged. After the ingenious comfort of his flat in Ryder Street, he could not at once accommodate himself to the simplicity of the Mill-House. "Pity you never turned the east room into a bathroom," he said to his father. "You talked about it for years. We need another one."

It was an old controversy and part of Eric's persistent but fruitless campaign against the studiedly Spartan attitude of Lashmar Mill-House.

"It's rather an unnecessary expense. And we seem to struggle on without it," said Sir Francis.

"I avoid unnecessary struggles as much as possible," Eric answered shortly.

"You couldn't get the work done while the war's on," Sir Francis pointed out, rooting himself firmly in the particular.

Eric walked upstairs, reflecting in moody dissatisfaction on unnecessary struggles. No one ever laid out his dress clothes for him at Lashmar. It never had been done when he was a school-boy, carefully protected from pampering. Sporadic attempts were made, whenever he launched an offensive against the domestic economy of the house; but the maids were always changing, Lady Lane believed that all men-servants drank or stole the cigars.… In the last resort, these country-bred girls were so difficult to teach.…

Down the passage came the sound of emptying taps and a voice singing cheerfully in the bath.

"Don't stay there all night, Geoff!" Eric cried, banging on the door. "It's a quarter to eight now."

It was five minutes to eight before the bathroom, sloppy and filled with steam, was surrendered to him. No man could have a hot bath and dress in five minutes; he was particularly anxious to appear at his best for the meeting with Agnes.…

And the water was tepid.…

2

"I have been apologizing for you," said Lady Lane pointedly, as Eric hurried late and ill-humoured into the drawing-room.

He had ready at hand a caustic little speech about inadequate hot-water supply and insufficient bathrooms, but it was intended for domestic consumption and, after one scowl at Geoff, he laid it aside. Family altercations, like family jokes, should be reserved for the family, though no one else emulated his moderation. He wondered whether the servants grew as weary as he did of the story about the cross-country journey from Oxford to Winchester; it was dragged up at his expense whenever any one missed a train—and trains were missed weekly. Servants, of course, could always leave; they always did. Perhaps they made bets which would hear the Oxford-to-Winchester story most often in three months; perhaps they met in sullen conspiracy and pledged themselves to decamp in a body the next time any one heard it.…

That tepid bath had chilled his enjoyment of everything.…

"I'm sorry to be late," he murmured, stiffly impenitent.

Agnes Waring was in the foreground, talking to his father; he shook hands shyly and squeezed past her to Nares, the apologetic, ineffectual vicar, and from Nares to Mrs. Waring, who was talking to a young officer whom she had brought over with her party. Colonel Waring stood by the fire, retailing safe newspaper opinions on the war and representing to Eric's theatre-trained eyes, with their passion for "types," almost too perfect a picture of the younger brother who had passed from twenty years in a cavalry regiment to half-pay retirement and a certain military pretentiousness of daily life. There was no one else. Had their lives depended on it, Lashmar could not yield another man or woman.

"Entertaining here always reminds me of a musical comedy," Eric murmured to Sybil. "Where one goes, all go:

"Song and dance. Curtain. Who's the fellow in uniform?"

"Mr. Benyon. A friend of the Warings," Sybil answered. "You're not going to be patronizing, are you?"

Eric pulled up and banished the ill-humour induced generally by the sleepiness of the country and, in particular, by that tepid bath-water. He had looked forward to the week-end, he proposed to enjoy himself; there was no need even to ask where he had been placed at dinner. Sybil, at nineteen, worshipped every word and movement in Agnes Waring at twenty-eight—her way of laughing and speaking, her phraseology, her mental outlook; every opinion was introduced with the words, "Agnes says——" Two years before, when the infatuation was in its perfervid youth, Sybil had made up her mind that her brother was to marry Agnes; the determination was still so strong that she was uneasy at the presence of young Benyon.

Eric had no strong view either way; Agnes was fair, slight and small-featured with observant grey eyes and a good deal of detached humour. Since the incubation of his first unsuccessful play, he had argued out every character and situation with her; when feminine psychology was in dispute, her ruling was accepted without cavil. More than once, as they splashed conversationally through the Lashmar woods, he had felt that she gave even a self-sufficient bachelor something that he lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room oppressed him, his thoughts drifted to Agnes Waring and a doll's house somewhere on the Eaton estate, with one table, two chairs and an avalanche of green silk cushions in the drawing-room.… He was not in love with her; but, when Sybil telephoned to find whether he was coming to the country for the week-end, he had resolved to retouch his conception of Agnes. For the first time in his life he could not only afford to marry; he could regard marriage from the standpoint of an eligible bachelor. If he was not in love with Agnes, he was in love with love.…

Distant voices wakened him from his reverie, and he found the long, low white-and-gold drawing-room buzzing with congratulations. Benyon had been to the "Divorce" three nights before; old Nares rubbed his hands, coughed and described a proud moment, a very proud moment, when he had been taken behind at the Lyceum and presented to Sir Henry Irving. There followed an ingenuous account of his make-up.… Eric smiled elastically, stroking his chin and letting his gaze wander round the white panelled walls, the gilt sofa and chairs and the gold and white overmantel—the coming of Dionysus to Europe in a chariot drawn by lions. He realized for the first time how much he hated overmantels.

Sybil was now talking to Agnes, but she withdrew discreetly at his approach and gave him an opportunity, as they went in to dinner, for a question about Jack.

"We've heard nothing since the August report that he was missing," said Agnes. "I'm keeping my mind a blank. I couldn't build all sorts of wonderful hopes on his being a prisoner and then, perhaps, have to go through the whole thing again.… Mother's quite certain, of course; but then mothers are like that, bless them.… I'll let you know, if we hear any news, Eric."

"Thanks very much. By the way, can you spare me one of the van Laun photographs of him?"

Agnes thought for a moment and then wrinkled her forehead.

"He was never taken by van Laun."

"But I've seen one."

"Where?"

"He gave one to Lady Barbara Neave."

Her forehead wrinkled in deeper lines of perplexity.

"I didn't know he even knew her.… He never mentioned her name; I suppose he thought I should disapprove."

Eric was tempted to coax an opinion of Barbara; but they had known each other for less than a week, and, if he went round collecting the judgements of all who had ever heard of her, no one would believe that a serene, professional spirit of enquiry prompted his curiosity. While native caution kept him hesitating, the opportunity slipped away; Agnes surrendered to the boisterous advances of Geoff, and he turned to find Mrs. Nares tentatively conversational on his left.

For a quarter of an hour Eric listened with one ear to the parish history of Lashmar. Unknown names married and begot families; unknown names sickened and died or were unexpectedly revived when the copiously described symptoms had rendered recovery an affront to the imagination; a few unknown names joined the army; one man was a prisoner, another wounded; and two more lastingly discredited Lashmar by saying that, when the army wanted them, the army could come and take them. Eric was informed that he would hardly know the dear old village now; he felt that he could support the privation with fortitude and hoped its annals might be closed with that felicitous generalization, but Mrs. Nares had recollected her husband's gallant attempt to be accepted as a chaplain and the Bishop's gracefully worded inability to spare him, with a postscript in his own writing to commend such spirit in a man of sixty-two and to hold him up as an example to his juniors.

Eric made mental notes of Mrs. Nares and memorized some of her more engaging mannerisms. If he could work her up, he could find room for her; but he must also find some one to play her with a breathless, unpunctuated patter; Kitty Walters seemed to have gone to America for good, but Dorothy Martlet could take the part.… The whole dinner, the atmosphere of the place were a satire on life in a remote country-house. He wondered what the party at Crawleigh Abbey was like.…

An unforeseen question rebuked his inattention. Eric disposed of it skilfully; but the thread of thought was snapped, and he looked round the table to see what had been happening since his reverie began. Agnes had been set at liberty by Geoff and was watching Eric as he watched the others. Their eyes met, and both smiled.

"Conscription between your father and Benyon over Sybil's body," he murmured, disentangling the conversations. "Needlework Guild between the guv'nor and Mrs. Nares. Poor old guv'nor.… V.A.D. training between mother and the vicar. 'Naval Occasions' between your mother and Geoff. D'you ever feel you'd like to stir all this up with a pole, Agnes? We're too far from the coast for an air-raid.… And, if you had one, no one would ever talk about anything else for the rest of his life; it would be like the Famine in Ireland or the Wesley descent on Cornwall." A maid, squeezing through the inadequate fairway behind the chairs, bumped Eric's back and made him spill his wine. "This place gets on my nerves!" he added irritably.

Out of the corner of her eye Agnes looked at his mobile, discontented face and crumbled her bread in silence for a moment.

"Don't give up coming here altogether," she pleaded.

Eric sipped his wine thoughtfully and avoided her eyes. Here was an opportunity, had he cared to take it, for opening up a greater intimacy with Agnes; but his mind was unconcentrated and he did not know what he wanted.

"I suppose I shall come down from time to time," he answered vaguely.

"I've been so looking forward to hearing about all you've been doing. We don't make much history in Lashmar."

It was common ground between them that the Warings lacked money for her to live as independently as all Warings felt that every Waring had a right to live. Each generation of younger brothers had been confined within an ever-narrowing circle; and, but for the war, Jack would now be patiently going the North Eastern Circuit, the first Waring to apply his mind to law; but for Jack and the money spent on him at Oxford, Agnes would have gone to Newnham and prepared a career for herself.

"You're too good for this place, you're wasted," Eric broke out after a moment's silent brooding.

"There's not much choice, is there?"

Eric brooded again.

"Are you happy?" he asked.

"Happier than you are, I think," she answered with a smile.

"Why on earth d'you say that?" he asked in surprise.

"You just seem changed to-night," Agnes replied. "Have you been working too hard?"

Over his port—which would not stand comparison with any from the artful little cellar in Ryder Street—Eric tried to settle in his mind how much she had seen and how much she had imagined. There was assuredly this much change in him, that to-night Agnes was not even waking him to dispassionate interest; he had no attention to spare her. And yet it was not that Barbara had captured his mind; she was nothing but an elf of mischief, dancing in the sunshine backwards and forwards across his path, pelting him with flowers, vanishing and reappearing. Restlessness or discontent must have peeped from behind the suave mask. He had meant to be more friendly, far more friendly; they had not met for nine months;—and both were disappointed.

In the drawing-room Agnes kept her chair a few inches behind the circle of the others, watching, listening and reflecting. Eric seemed to think that he was still at one of the tiresome long parties where he was expected to glitter and to be shewn off; he had talked very well at times, but he felt that he had been making voluble conversation in a nervous dread of silence between them. His new life was rather turning him into a public entertainer; he was enigmatic and unapproachable.

3

As Eric, with caution born of experience, lit one of his own cigars and made room for Geoff at his side, an idea came to him so seductive, so simple and so compelling that he wondered why he had never thought of it before. When Geoff asked: "Are you down here for long, or are you going back on Monday?" Eric answered with unsought inspiration:

"I shall go back on Sunday night."

It had never occurred to him before that, by this facile course, he could avoid an early and cold drive into Winchester, a crowded train, a free fight for the last copy of The Times, a late arrival at the department where he composed propaganda for neutral consumption. And he had never felt so urgent a need to escape from the Mill-House.

"I haven't seen your jolly old play yet," said Geoff. "I suppose I can count on you for a box? If you'll give us dinner first, I might collect a few bright lads and give the thing a bit of a fillip. I should think it must be rather a rag, being famous."

"I suppose that depends on your definition of fame—and of a rag," Eric answered.

"Oh, being invited everywhere," said Geoff unhesitatingly. "Having your photograph in all the papers. Girls waiting in a queue for your autograph. A galaxy of beauty prostrating itself at your feet to get an extra line."

"That sounds more like musical comedy," said Eric doubtfully. "I don't fly as high as that."

Geoff was too young to have outgrown the appeal of the stage. He regarded Eric with as much admiration as one brother accords another and with undisguised envy.

"I did enjoy your play," said Benyon, moving into a chair by his side. "Agnes came up to dine with me, and I took her.…"

Eric bowed without listening to the end of the sentence. He was mildly surprised to find Agnes being discussed by her Christian name and wondered why he had not heard of Benyon before. Perhaps it was her fault that they had established no spiritual contact at dinner; she had conceivably lost interest in him, and he wondered whether he was sufficiently interested to make sure.…

"The mater told me you'd another thing on the stocks," Geoff went on.

"It's being produced next month," answered Eric.

He looked impatiently round the cramped dining-room, listening for a moment to an altercation between Waring and Nares on the Dardanelles expedition. It was surely worth while to explore Agnes further and to see what part in her life this young Benyon was playing.…

Fortified by the wise decision to return to London earlier than he had first intended, Eric entered the drawing-room full of toleration and good-humour. Bending over Mrs. Nares' sofa, he atoned for his inattention during dinner with thirty seconds' belated sparkle and a simple epigram which he had already tried with effect on Mrs. Shelley. They were joined by Mrs. Waring, and, as he had hardly spoken to her all the evening, he consented to talk about his forthcoming play—which he enjoyed as little as a superstitious mother might enjoy describing her unborn child—until in a subsequent regrouping she confided to Sybil that she was very much attached to Eric; he was so unspoiled, so charming.…

"Aren't you rather proud of him?" she asked.

"Yes. He's very clever and he's had a big success," Sybil conceded critically. "But, if any one says 'Lane,' the whole world thinks of Eric, while father, who's spent his life——"

She was interrupted by Mr. Nares, who stationed himself at her elbow, coughing apologetically until she gave him an opportunity of asking her to sing. As she went to the piano, Eric moved across the room to Agnes' chair and suggested that they should go out on the terrace.

"It's stifling in here," he grumbled; and, after a quick sidelong glance, Agnes followed him.

They strolled through one of the French windows to a long gravel path, which ran flush with the inky, slow-moving mill-stream. Overhead the trees stretched across the narrow ribbon of water, brushing the back of the house and releasing brittle leaves of copper and dull gold to undulate in the breeze before they settled on the surface and swept gently over the creaking wheel. A crescent moon was reflected unwaveringly in the black water, and the autumn breeze blew a scent of decaying, damp vegetation from the dense woods all around them.

"Remember when we used to have races with paper boats, Agnes?" Eric asked suddenly.

She nodded, wondering why he had reminded her.

"What years ago it seems!"

"Only about five. Though we were both old enough to know better."

"It seems longer," said Agnes, looking at him thoughtfully and wondering whether he had only invited her out there as a demonstration against Sybil for disparaging him to her mother.

"I don't feel a day older."

"You're changed. We were all of us saying that before you came into the drawing-room to-night. Your mother's rather worried about you, Eric."

He lighted a cigarette to shew the steadiness of hand and eyes.

"She needn't bother," he answered easily. "I'm carrying a good deal of sail—but I'm better than I've ever been. Agnes, I don't usually talk about what I'm only thinking of doing, but with you it's different.…"

He slipped her arm through his and walked up and down the gravel path describing his conception of a novel as it had revealed itself to him a week before when he was at an Albert Hall concert. His confidence flattered her into disregarding the egotism which made him remember her only when he wanted to talk about himself; she forgot the sensation that he had outgrown her as much as he had outgrown the paper-boat races on the mill-stream by their side. Once the night wind, blowing on to her unprotected shoulders, sent a shiver through her; but it was Eric who coughed, and she wondered whether he knew why Lady Lane always looked so anxiously at his sunken cheeks and starved body. She wondered, too, whether she would have cared for him so much if he had been robust and tranquil as Geoff.

The music had ended long before he had done talking; tentative cries of "Agnes!" passed unheeded, and she was only recalled to the present by the appearance of Colonel Waring in overcoat and soft hat half-way through the open window.

"Bed-time, Agnes," he called out, sniffing the night air. "If you've been giving that girl of mine a chill, Eric——"

"You're not cold, are you?" Eric asked her.

"Not very," she answered with a tired and rather disappointed smile.

"Oh, but why didn't you tell me?" he protested in a convincing voice of concern, as he led her back into the house and helped her into her cloak. As a chorus of farewell rose and isolated them, he lowered his voice. "You'll let me know when you have any news of Jack, won't you?"

"If," she answered wistfully.

"You mustn't lose heart. I expect he's all right, and there's been some hitch in getting the news through. He's all right, Agnes."

"I hope so."

She shook hands and walked despondently into the night. Eric seemed to have become artificial in the last few months—just when he might have helped her most. He lengthened his face and lowered his voice sympathetically, but he was growing into a social puppet and losing his individuality.… It had not been a very amusing dinner.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Colonel Waring asked her, as they settled into the car.

"Very much, thanks," she answered quietly. "I'm rather tired, though."

Benyon told her that Eric's new play was to be produced within a month and invited her to come with him. She answered uncertainly and lapsed into silence.

As the car bumped over the springy turf of Lashmar Common, Eric stood gazing at the stars and drinking in the thousand mingled scents and sounds of the night. Somewhere hard by, a bonfire was pungently smouldering; there was a sour smell where a flock of geese had been feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it.… The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of an owl.

Eric started—and wondered why he was standing there in the cold. Then he remembered that he had stayed to be by himself and to think something out. There was a change somewhere, and he was trying to locate it. He had come to retouch his memory of Agnes, and he had seen her alone and with others; they had talked the conventional jargon of the dinner-table, their fingers had brushed emotion as they discussed her missing brother, and for half an hour they had marched up and down the terrace arm-in-arm, discussing and arguing on an unwritten book, recapturing an old intimacy which he had shared with no one else. In the light of the drawing-room Agnes' grey eyes were black and mysterious; her lips were parted, and her cheeks warmly flushed; he had never seen her look prettier, he had never been more attracted by her.

The change must be in himself; he demanded of her something more volcanic and inspiring than she could give, something to feed his own languid vitality instead of placidly laying him to rest.…

Shutting the front door, he went back to the drawing-room, where the family was assembled to compare notes and pool information.

"The vicar's starting a class for making bandages.…"

"The Warings haven't heard anything of Jack yet.…"

"That Benyon must be one of the Herefordshire lot, I fancy. An old private bank.…"

Eric hesitated on the threshold, looking from one to another. Sybil was undisguisedly disappointed; she had so desperately set her heart on his marrying her beloved Agnes, and the night's meeting had brought them no nearer. Lady Lane, still anxious, beckoned him into the room and took his face between her hands, turning it to the light and kissing his eyes again, as on his arrival.

"You look tired, Eric. You'd better go to bed, or you'll never be down to breakfast."

"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-Shell" 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-class 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 passed 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 manuscript 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 passing 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 passages 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 passage. 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 brass 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 album 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 album 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 recumbent 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; assuredly 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.

Once nerved to face the wet roads and penetrating chill, Eric decided to acquire merit by walking through the woods and meeting the church party on its return. Lady Lane had already shewn off her "sailor son" to the exiguous congregation; it was the turn of "my eldest son, the author, you know," to submit. He could hear all about Basil and generally popularize himself so that he would be allowed to leave that night without protest.

His mood was so radiant that he achieved his effect before the end of luncheon. As Geoff drove him to the station, he almost seemed to have enjoyed himself and to be leaving with regret.… Winchester, Basingstoke, Vauxhall, the river and the Houses of Parliament gave him successive thrills of pleasure, as though he had been away from England for years. Pride of possession seized him when he entered Ryder Street; as he shut the front door and looked at his black-framed prints and lustre bowls, he felt like a miser locking himself within his treasure-house to feast his eyes on the signs of his material victory over fate. So many people allowed life to control them instead of controlling life. And, when they had failed through their own inertia, they invented an external destiny to save their faces. Man created God to have somewhere to put the blame.…

There was an average pile of letters on his library table. Lady Poynter hoped to get some rather amusing people to lunch on Thursday; could he bear to come again? So sweet of him, if he would. Mrs. O'Rane wrote vaguely of a party which she had in prospect, without apparently knowing very much about it: "a sort of house-warming. I'm not asking you to meet any one in particular, because I don't know who'll be there. It'll be a mob, I warn you. I'm inviting my friends, my husband's inviting his; they'll probably quarrel, and there's sure not to be room for all. Whatever you do, have a good dinner before you come. It doesn't sound attractive, does it? But these things are often nothing like so bad as one fears beforehand. I propose to enjoy MYself."

Eric was amused by her candour and decided to look in for a few minutes.

Lady Maitland, complaining that "Margaret Poynter always ACCAPARER-s my nice young men," invited him to shew his loyalty by coming to dine on Friday. "Babs Neave is coming," she added.

As he had intended to spend Sunday evening in the country, he was absolved from all work and could give undivided attention to the dinner which his cook had improvised. (But he must get an ice-safe capable of holding an adequate week-end supply. Dinner with only a choice of sherry and of gin and bitters, with no opportunity for a cocktail suggested "roughing it" to his mind.) He dined with a book propped against its silver reading-stand leisurely and warm after his bath, comfortable in a soft shirt and wadded smoking jacket.

After dinner he unlocked a branded cedar-wood cabinet, the first that he had ever bought, and looked lovingly at the cigars, rich, dull-brown and ineffably fragrant, bundle pressed shoulder to shoulder with bundle. A new stock of wine had still to be entered in the cellar-book; and he had to find places on his shelves for Hatchard's last consignment. It was not yet easy to realize that, until the success of his play—six thousand pounds sterling in eight calendar months—a new book had been an event.…

For a happy hour he arranged and rearranged. At the end, surveying his handiwork with undisguised pleasure, he thought of the bizarre night when Babs Neave had forced her way in. He could still hardly believe that it had occurred. And yet, without shutting his eyes, he could almost see the child, deadly pale, tired, delighted and wholly unexplained, bending forward with her wonderful white arms outstretched to catch poor Agnes Waring's horse-shoe paper-weight, laughing one moment, crying the next, kissing him the moment after. And how she seemed to be in love with him.…

He took out a foot-rule and measured the space under the windows for two possible new book-cases. He would need them soon; and they would make the room look better filled. It was a beautiful room, a beautiful flat. From every point of view he was leading a very beautiful life.…

The clock struck eleven; and his parlour-maid came in with a syphon, decanter and glasses. He did not drink whiskey once a month, but the tray added a roundness and finish which the Spartans at Lashmar Mill-House were incapable of appreciating. Were they Spartans—or simply people without his instinct for life?

He filled a tumbler with soda-water and subsided into his deepest arm-chair, looking lazily round the room, drawing pleasurably at his cigar and wrapping himself in the softest down of contentment. His diary was within reach, and he thought over his abbreviated week-end. Agnes Waring had dropped out of his life; Barbara had never come into it. There was nothing to record but the names of his mother's guests at dinner.…

"There are few things so exhausting as the quiet of the country."—From the Diary of Eric Lane.