Chapter ONE: An Experiment in Emotion (2)

"I should horsewhip him," Eric resumed jerkily.

She considered him curiously with her head on one side.

"You know, I don't feel afraid of you," she told him. "I could trust you anywhere. You're not old enough to understand that yet, but you will."

"Then for the present it's irrelevant. Come along, Lady Barbara."

He advanced a step, but she only smiled at him without moving. Eric looked angrily round, but the stream of passers-by, though sluggish, shewed no signs of drying up. A clock inside the hall began to chime midnight, and he turned on his heel. As he did so, a taxi turned into the street, and an officer climbed gingerly out and hoisted himself across the pavement on two crutches. Barbara coughed and drew her shawl round her until half her face was hidden.

"But, Eric dear, you can't have _lost_ the key," she expostulated, purposefully clear.

Over the shawl her eyes were gleaming with mischief and triumph.

The officer looked quickly from one to the other.

"Hullo! You locked out?" he enquired sympathetically. "Rotten luck! Here, let me put you out of your misery! Hope you haven't been waiting long?"

"That _is_ sweet of you," said Barbara. "Long? I seem to have been standing here all day. Come on, Eric; I'm frightfully tired; I want to sit down."

She walked into the hall, beckoning him with a jerk of her head. The officer bade them good-night and limped to a ground-floor flat at the end.

"I'm going to my club, Lady Barbara," said Eric with slow distinctness from the door-step.

"Then I shall bang on every door I see until I find your flat," she retorted promptly. "I've told you, I want some soda-water. And, Eric----"

"Yes, Lady Barbara."

"Eric, I always get what I want. Who lives here, do you suppose? We'll try his door first."

Eric came in and walked to the foot of the stairs. Barbara slipped her arm through his, but he shook it away.

"I'm tired," she explained. "I wish you wouldn't be so rough with me."

She replaced her arm, and, rather than engage in a childish brawl, Eric left it there, though the touch of her fingers on his wrist set his blood tingling. They walked slowly, for he was trying to set his racing thoughts in order. This, then, was the true Lady Barbara Neave. He had never believed the fantastic stories about her, but she was now gratuitously shewing him that she was of those who stopped at nothing.

He felt the sudden unpitying disgust of a disappointed idealist. She was very young, with expressions which made her wholly beautiful at times. . . . "Virginal" was the word he was trying to find. . . . He wondered how to rid himself of her without a scene.

"If you'll let go my arm, I'll open the door," he said with stiff patience.

She walked into the small inner hall and looked round her with unaffected interest.

"I've never been in a man's rooms before," she remarked and Eric knew that she was speaking the truth. An extraordinary sense of power came to him, rushing to his head. The tired eyes and wistful mouth, the haggard cheeks, the cloud of fine hair, the white arms and slender hands fed his hungry love of beauty. And he had attracted her until she lay at his mercy. . . .

"I want to see everything, Eric," she said gently.

He hardly heard the words; but her tone was confiding, and she slipped her hand into his. A latent sense of the dramatic came to his rescue.

"You seem to have put yourself pretty completely into my power," he observed, closing the front door behind them.

"I know you so much better than you know me," she answered.

"I don't quite follow."

She laughed gently to herself, then put her arms round his neck and kissed him.

"No. . . . And you won't for years . . . not till I've educated you. . . . Am I right in thinking that you've forgotten all about my soda-water?"

5

Eric led her into the dining-room and gave her a tumbler of soda-water with a hand that trembled.

She had taken him by surprise as much as if she had struck him in the face. Incuriosity and fastidiousness, partly timid, partly romantic, had conspired to let him reach the age of two-and-thirty without ever kissing or being kissed. The act, now that he had experienced it, was nothing. A warm body, yielding in self-surrender, had pressed against him for a moment; two hands had impelled his head forward; he had been blinded for an instant by a scented billow of hair; then his cheeks had been touched as though a leaf had blown against them. That was the temperate analysis of kissing. . . .

"It's a nice room, Eric," she murmured, glancing slowly round over the top of her tumbler at the panelled walls and shining oak table. "And I like your invisible lighting. It's restful, and I hate a glare. What other rooms have you?"

"Kitchen next door," he answered with intentional abruptness; "then the servants' room--you won't make a noise, will you? or you'll wake them up. Bathroom, spare room, my own room, smoking-room. No, the limits of my unconventionality are soon reached; you can finish your soda-water in the smoking-room, and then I'll take you home."

"But I should _like_ to see your room," she answered with the grave persistence of an unreasonable child. "Mine's purple and white in London--purple carpet, purple curtains, purple counterpane--and nothing but white--except the rose-wood, of course--at Crawleigh."

"This is the smoking-room," said Eric, conscientiously firm and unimpressed.

Barbara gave a little gasp of pleasure as he flooded the room with light. Book-cases surrounded three walls, stretching half-way to the ceiling and topped with rose-bowls and bronzes. The fourth was warmed by long _rose Du Barry_ curtains over the two windows; between them stood a Chippendale writing-table. The rest of the room was given up to an irregular circle of sofas and arm-chairs, white-covered and laden with _rose Du Barry_ satin cushions, surrounding a second table.

"I _am_ glad I came!" she cried. "You know how to make yourself comfortable, Eric! Of course, the first cigarette I drop on your adorable grey carpet--you see how it matches my dress?--the first cigarette spoils it for ever. _And_ the roses!" With a characteristically impulsive jerk she dragged the tulle band and artificial flower from her hair, tossed them to Eric and stretched her hand up for a red rose to take their place. "Ah! beloved celibate! not a mirror in the room! I shall _have_ to----"

"Please stay where you are, Lady Barbara."

She crammed the rose carelessly into her hair and dropped on the nearest sofa.

"_Do_ take that coat off and sit down here!" she begged him.

"I'm waiting to take you home."

"But I'm not going home yet. I'm enjoying myself, I'm happy."

"I'm waiting to take you home," he repeated.

She pouted and glanced up at him through half-closed eyes.

"You don't care whether I'm happy or not. You're _soullessly_ selfish!" She looked round and helped herself to a cigarette; then her hand crept invitingly, with the shy daring of a mouse, along the sofa. "I want a match."

Eric took the cigarette and replaced it in its box.

"Bed-time," he said. "This meeting was not of my contriving, Lady Barbara, and, when you've learned the meaning of words, you'll find that it won't affect your _happiness_----"

His flow was arrested by a startling gasp.

"Oh, it's no good!" Barbara cried. "You're hopeless, hopeless."

To his amazement she had sprung to her feet, angry and disfigured, forgetting to break through his guard, tossing her weapon away; no longer teasing, imperious or purposely reckless; and without one of her disarming lapses into simplicity. It was the mingled pain and anger of a flesh-wound clumsily reopened. The next moment she had collapsed on the sofa, stiffly upright, staring at him with hot eyes. Then the set cheeks and compressed lips relaxed like the scattering petals of a blown rose; her mouth drooped, her eyes half-closed, and she began to cry.

Eric looked in consternation at her puckered, pathetic face, suddenly colourless save for dark rings round the big, hollow eyes. Then he sat down and drew her to him, patting her hand and talking to her half as if she were a child, half as though she were capable of understanding his weighty diagnosis.

"Lady Barbara! Lady Barbara! Are you listening to me? You mustn't cry--_really_. . . . It takes away _all_ your prettiness. Now, you were fairly hard on me at dinner, weren't you? But I do possess _some_ intelligence; I didn't need to have Lady Poynter shouting from the house-top that you were ill. You're worn out, you ought to be in bed and you ought to stay there, instead of exciting yourself. Lady Barbara, _please_ stop crying! I don't know what I said, but I'm very humbly sorry. Won't you stop?"

She stiffened herself with a jerk and smiled as abruptly.

"It was my fault. I've not been well and I've been very miserable. Give me a little kiss, Eric, to shew you're not angry with me."

She leaned forward and put her hands on his shoulders again.

"Why should I be angry with you?" he asked with a defensive laugh.

Her hands dropped into her lap.

"You won't kiss me?"

"What difference would it make?"

"I ask you to. What difference would it make to you?"

Eric fumbled industriously with a cigarette.

"It so happens that I've never kissed any one," he said, "except my mother and sister, of course." Then, as she sat hungrily reproachful, he repeated: "What _difference_ would it make?"

"You wouldn't understand . . ." she sighed. "And yet I thought you would. Where did you get that tray from, Eric? You've never been to India, have you?"

"It was given me by an uncle of mine. Lady Barbara--If it will give you any satisfaction. . . ."

He kissed her forehead with shame-faced timidity and became discursively explanatory.

"The candle-sticks were looted during the Commune," he began hurriedly. "I was given them as a house-warming present. The clock . . ."

Barbara was wandering listlessly round the room and paying little attention to what he was saying. She explored the book-cases, ransacked the writing-table and looked curiously at the horse-shoe paper-weight.

"You can give this to me, Eric," she suggested over her shoulder.

"I'm afraid it was a present. Given me on my first night."

"It would still be a present, if you gave it to me. I had one, but I broke it. All my luck's left me since then. Are you superstitious?"

"Not--in--the--_least_! I keep this for associations and a toy. If I _could_ bring out a play on Friday the thirteenth----"

"If you're not superstitious, there's no excuse for not giving it to me."

She tossed the horse-shoe into the air and caught it neatly with her right hand.

"I'll see if I can get you another one," he promised, "but I don't know whether they're made in England."

"It might make all the difference to me," she pleaded, catching the horse-shoe with her left hand. "It's only a toy to you--a child's toy."

Eric shook his head at her. Barbara pouted and threw the horse-shoe a third time into the air, bending forward to catch it behind her back as it dropped. Eric, watching apprehensively, saw a flash of apprehension reflected for an instant in her eyes; then there was a tinkle of broken glass.

"Oh, my _dear_! I wouldn't have done that for the world!" she cried, pressing her hands against her cheeks. "I've destroyed your luck now! What a fool I was! Abject fool!"

"What _does_ it matter?" Eric laughed.

"I wouldn't have done that for the world," she repeated with a white face.

"And you're living in the year of grace nineteen-fifteen? It's only--What did we call it? A child's toy. And, between ourselves, it wasn't a very efficient paper-weight. I can assure you I shan't miss it."

"Perhaps you will some day. And then you'll lift up your hands and curse the hour when you first met me."

Eric looked complacently at the airy room, the crowded book-cases, the soft chairs, the bellying curtains and the neat pile of manuscript on his writing-table:

"Aren't you perhaps exaggerating your potential influence on my life?" he suggested.

Barbara went back to her sofa and helped herself to a cigarette without hurry or fear that this time it would be taken from her; she smiled for a match--and smiled again when it was given her.

"Aren't you perhaps boasting too soon, my self-satisfied young friend? Your education's only just beginning."

Eric lighted a cigarette and sat down beside her. He no longer insisted that, for health or propriety, she must go home at once; and in some forgotten moment he had involuntarily taken off his overcoat.

"I wonder what you think you can teach me," he mused. "I wonder what you know, to start with."

"I know life."

"A considerable subject."

"I've had considerable experience."

The clock on the mantel-piece chimed one. Neither seemed to notice it, for Barbara was becoming autobiographical. Her story was ill-arranged and discursive, with personal characteristics of Lord Crawleigh sandwiched between her life at Government House, Ottawa, and a thwarted romance between her brother and a designing American. She flitted from her four years in India to Viceregal Lodge, Dublin, with a procession of damaging encounters with her father as stepping-stones in the narrative. (From her account it was Lord Crawleigh who sustained most of the damage.) He could never shake off a certain pro-consular manner in private life and had reduced his sons to blundering and untrustworthy _aides-de-camp_ and his wife to a dignified but trembling squaw. Barbara alone resisted him.

"What can he do?" she asked. "He whipped me till I was ten, but I'm too big for that now. He can't very well lock me in my room, because the servants would leave in a body. They adore me. If he'd tried to stop my allowance, I should have gone on the stage--we've settled _that_ point once and for all with Harry Manders, half-way through the stage-door of the Hilarity. Now I've got my own money. Mind you, I _adore_ father, and he adores me; most people adore me; but I must do what I like. _You_ see that now; but I had to shew you, I had to break my way in here by main force."

Eric looked up in time to catch a glint in her eyes. It was unexpected and disconcerting. He had been imagining that she was merely over-indulged; but the glint warned him that Barbara would make a bad enemy, cruel perhaps and unscrupulous certainly. The next moment she was again like a child, grown haggard with fatigue; and he gave her a slice of cake and some milk, which she accepted obediently and with a certain surprised gratitude.

"Where d'you imagine all this is going to end?" he asked her, though the question was addressed more to himself. "You're twenty-two, you've been everywhere, seen everything, met everybody. You're utterly uncontrolled and so sated and restless that, rather than go to bed, you'll compromise yourself by sitting talking to me half the night in a bachelor flat."

"Poor Val Arden used to talk like that. He always called me Lady Lilith, because I was older than good and evil. I'm sorry Val's dead; he was such fun. 'In six years' time--one asks oneself the question. . . .' It wasn't 'rather than go to bed,' not altogether."

"It's a nervous disease," Eric interrupted shortly.

"Because I cried just now? I was very unhappy, Eric."

"My dear Lady Barbara, you live in superlatives. You don't know what happiness or unhappiness means. You were badly overwrought then, so you cried and said you were miserable."

She looked at him and raised her eyebrows without speaking.

"It's wonderful how wrong quite clever people can be," she said at length. "I _was_ miserable, I _wanted_ to be kissed, I was _hungry_ for the smallest crumb of affection. I wanted to be _happy_. . . . And you can only see me as neurotic. D'you feel you're a good judge?"

"Of happiness?"

Eric smiled complacently and again glanced lovingly round the room. Barbara sighed in pity and looked at her watch.

"_I_ seem to have come in the way rather," she interrupted.

"The butterfly that settles on the railway track may be said, I suppose, to come in the way of a train. . . . I'm going to take you home now."

"You're not sorry I came? _I'm_ not."

"It was worth while meeting you," he laughed.

As Eric struggled with the sleeves of his coat, she twined her arms round his neck. The scent of carnations was now faintly blended with the deeper fragrance of the single rose behind her ear.

"And you'd never kissed any one before," she whispered.

It was nearly day-light when they found themselves in the street. Two special constables, striding resonantly home, looked curiously at them; but Barbara had again pulled up her shawl until it covered half her face. Piccadilly was at the mercy of scavengers with glistening black waders and pitiless hoses; otherwise they seemed to have all London to themselves.

With a head aching from fatigue, Eric tried to reconstruct the fantastic evening. Little detached pictures jostled their unconvincing way through his brain--Lady Poynter's formal dining-room and the barren, self-conscious literary discussion; Lord Poynter's wheezing confidences about the wood port which should properly be taken as a liqueur. He saw again the bridge-table with Gaymer, neat, immaculate and repellent, calling in a high nasal voice for Barbara to rejoin them. The drive home was a blank until he was galvanized by her leaning through the window and directing the coachman to Ryder Street. Thereafter facts gave place to emotions, and the other emotions to an incredulous elation that Barbara Neave should have thrown herself at his feet. Perhaps, of course, she was only emotion-hunting. . . . But she had lain at his mercy. . . . Perhaps that, too, was an emotion to be wooed, enjoyed and recorded. Any one less artificial could at least be glad that they were passing out of each other's life, as they had come into it, without expectation or regret.

"You'd better not come any farther," she advised him, as they reached the end of Berkeley Street. "If anybody _should_ be awake and looking out of the window . . ."

He nodded and held out his hand.

"You have your latch-key?"

"Yes, thanks. Good-night, Eric."

"Good-bye, Lady Barbara."

* * * * *

"_Between men on the Stock Exchange it is a platitude that you can
only get a price in selling what some one else wants to buy; between
men and women outside the Stock Exchange this is often considered a
paradox._"--From the diary of Eric Lane.