As the taxi drew up in Belgrave Square, he looked at his watch. Twenty-seven minutes past eight. He handed his hat and cane to a footman and followed the butler upstairs with complete self-possession. As he was asked his name at the door of the drawing-room, however, he stammered:
"Mr. Eric L-lane."
It was intolerable that he could not overcome that stammer, so entirely alien to a new young Byron. …
2
Lady Poynter had finished dressing and was writing in her diary when her maid entered to ask whether Mrs. Shelley might come in. At luncheon the Duchess of Ross had complained that no one would give her a chance of meeting young Eric Lane; Gerald Deganway had murmured, "One poor martyr without a lion"; and, as Deganway was incapable of originating anything, Lady Poynter felt that she was not infringing any copyright in recording the jest against that day when Eleanor Ross tried to steal any more of her young men the moment she had put a polish on them and made them known. …
"Angel Marion!" cried Lady Poynter, throwing down her pen so that it described an inky semi-circle. "The idea of asking!"
She embraced her guest as effusively as she had addressed her. Lady Poynter was forty-eight years of age, daily increasing in bulk, masculine in voice, intellectual through vanity and childless by preference. Her husband was rich, patient, stupid and self-indulgent, bearing with her literary passions and in self-defence displaying that care for household comfort which it was Lady Poynter's pride to neglect. Why, she asked, were men given brains if they made gods of their bellies? Mrs. Shelley was the widow of a well-known free-lance journalist, who in his day had brought her into contact with a sufficient number of authors for her to imitate on austerely simple lines the symposia of wit and learning which Lady Poynter assembled on the strength of her own personality and her husband's cellar. There was a long-standing gentle competition between the two, which they abandoned in common hostility to Lady Maitland, who excelled them both in the ruthlessness and speed of her hunting. At the moment, however, Mrs. Shelley had eclipsed both her rivals by the chance of having known Eric Lane for ten years; to Lady Maitland he was still "Mr. Eric," to Lady Poynter "Mr. Lane."
"You don't mind my coming like this, do you?" she asked timidly, disengaging herself from Lady Poynter's embrace and indicating her commandant's uniform. "I was at the hospital until eight."
"As if I minded what you wore!" her hostess cried. "In war-time, when we haven't a moment to turn round … ! And it isn't as if this were a party."
Mrs. Shelley walked to a mirror and looked thoughtfully at her unassertive reflection. Her hair was a dusty brown, her eyes an unsoftening grey, and her cheeks, which were careworn with exacting, humble ambition, acted at once as frame and background for a thin nose and unrelaxing mouth.
"You always say that, darling," she protested gently, leaning forward to the mirror and dabbing at herself with a powder-puff. "And it means the most delightful——"
"I've got Eric Lane coming," interrupted Lady Poynter, groping for a crumpled half-sheet of paper marked as with the sweeping strokes of a hay-rake in soft mud. "Who else? Sonia O'Rane you know; Max—or did Max say he was dining at his club? It doesn't matter, because I can't pretend that Max contributes much, even though he is my husband; then there's my nephew, Johnnie Gaymer; and Babs Neave——"
"Dear Babs," murmured Mrs. Shelley with conscientious enthusiasm. It was her favourite boast that she sincerely tried to make allowances for all and permitted ill-speaking of none. In the years before the war, when Lady Barbara's friends were wondering whether they really could continue to know her, Mrs. Shelley remained embarrassingly loyal. "I haven't seen her for months."
"She's been nursing at Crawleigh all this time, simply wearing herself out. I've never seen any one so changed. We met in Bond Street this morning; I hadn't meant to invite her, but I felt I must do something. … " Lady Poynter projected herself from the sofa and rustled to the door, murmuring: "I must find out whether Max is dining at home to-night."
Mrs. Shelley made her way downstairs to the drawing-room and stood on the balcony outside one of the French windows, looking down through the warm dusk on Belgrave Square. An open taxi drew up at the door, and she watched Mrs. O'Rane descending daintily and smiling at the driver; a second taxi drove from the opposite corner of the square, and Captain Gaymer, in Flying Corps uniform, jumped out and hurried to the door, looking apprehensively at his watch. Mrs. Shelley left the balcony and shook hands with Lord Poynter who was dutifully dressed in time to receive any guests who might arrive before his wife appeared.
"Two. Four," he counted timidly. "Babs Neave is sure to be late. That leaves only Lane. Does every one know him?"
An indistinct murmur was drowned by Gaymer, who knitted his brows and repeated:
"Lane? Eric Lane? The dramatist fellow? I saw something about him in one of the picture-papers to-day, when I was having my hair cut. Oh, I know! He'd left London, and letters weren't going to be forwarded. Didn't he tell you?" he asked as his aunt crossed the room in concern.
Lady Poynter's jaw fell in affronted indignation. Lady Maitland had already secured Mr. Lane for luncheon, the Duchess of Ross had wired: "Don't know you but must. Have just seen your play. When will you dine?" and Mrs. Shelley had staked out a claim before any one else had heard of the man.
"That is really too abominable," she cried. "He made a note of the time in his book … only two days ago. … And then he hasn't the consideration even to telephone."
She counted the numbers and turned angrily, as the door was thrown open. After pausing on the threshold to see who was present, Lady Barbara Neave entered the room falteringly and with a suggestion that she was belatedly repenting a too venturesome effect in dress. The men, she knew, were only watching her eyes and waiting for the surprised smile of recognition which always made them feel that they had been missed; but Mrs. Shelley, she would wager, was privately noting that a dove-coloured silk dress and a scarlet shawl embroidered with birds in flight made a white face look ashen; Sonia O'Rane was probably wondering why her maid did not tell her that a band of black tulle with a red rose at one side simply emphasized her hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. … She moved listlessly and smiled mysteriously to herself as though unconscious that every one was silent and watchful; then the surprised smile transfigured her, she kissed the other women with childlike abandon, leaving the men to watch and envy.
"Babs, darling, it is sweet of you to come. I've no party for you," said Lady Poynter, forgiving the girl's lateness and forgetting her own discomfiture.
Barbara shook her head and looked round the room with eyes which had lost their momentary colour, as though the light behind them had been doused.
"I've forgotten what it's like to meet people and try to talk intelligently," she laughed with the mirthlessness of physical exhaustion. "Well, Max! And Johnnie! I'm sorry to be late, Margaret, but until the last moment I didn't know that I should feel up to coming."
"If you'd thrown me over, too——" began Lady Poynter. "Give us some light, Max. My dear, you're losing all your looks, and that black thing gives you a face like a sheet of mourning note-paper. You must take proper care of yourself. And you're nothing but skin and bones."
Barbara smiled again, as listlessly as before.
"Yes.