"Life!" she cried. "You've never met men and women. I told George Oakleigh so that night. That's why the public loves your play."
Eric turned to Lady Poynter.
"I have a new play coming out next month," he explained, "and Lady Barbara wants me to hang it up till she's taught me—did you say 'life'?"
"Yes! Margaret, darling, any young man may write one successful bad play——"
There was a gasp of orotund protest from Lady Poynter.
"My dear Babs!"
"Of course it's a bad play! What I don't know about bad plays isn't worth knowing, I've seen so many of them! Have you ever met a woman, Mr. Lane? Have you ever even fancied that you were in love?"
Eric took a cigarette and lighted one for Barbara.
"I thought I knew a lot about life when I was twenty-two," he said, studiedly reflective. "I'd just come down from Oxford."
Her attention seemed to have wandered to her cigarette, for she drew hard at it and then asked for another match.
"Which was your college?" she enquired with neurotic suddenness of transition.
"Trinity."
"Did you know my brother? He must have been up about your time. He was at the House."
"I knew him by sight. Tall, fair-haired man; he was on the Bullingdon. I never met him, though. I didn't know many men at the House."
Barbara thought for a moment.
"I don't believe I know any one who was at Trinity in your time. Did you ever meet a man called Waring?"
"Jack Waring of New College? I've known him all my life. They're neighbours of ours in Hampshire. You know he's missing?"
Barbara nodded quickly.
"So I heard. … I suppose nothing definite's known?"
"I haven't met any of the family since the news was published, but I shall see his sister this week-end."
"Well, if you can find out anything without too much bother——"
"Oh, she's a great friend of mine," Eric explained. "It's no trouble."
Barbara turned to him with a rapid backward cast to her earlier quest.
"Are you in love with her? Oh, but why not?" she demanded querulously. "It would do you so much good—as a man and as a writer. You'll never get rid of your self-satisfaction till then; and you'll never write a good play. It's such a pity, when you've everything except the psychology. Why don't you fall in love with me? I could teach you such a lot, and you'd never regret it." Barbara caught her hostess' eye and picked up her gloves. "You'd write a tolerable play in the middle of it, a work of genius at the end——"
Eric's laugh interrupted her eager outpour.
"I'm quite satisfied to be an observer of life."
"Dear child, you're quite satisfied with everything. You're sunk in soulless contentment; you shirk emotion because it would force you to see below the pink-and-white surface; that's why you write such bad plays. Margaret!" She approached Lady Poynter with outstretched arms. "I've argued myself hoarse trying to persuade Mr. Lane to fall in love with me. Do see what you can do! He shews all the obstinacy of a young, weak man; he won't see how much I should improve him. When he'd learnt life at my hands——"
Lady Poynter threw a crushing arm round the girl's waist.
"Come on, Babs. You're looking better than you did," she said. "I told you you'd fall in love with him," she added, as they walked upstairs.
"There's nothing much the matter with Babs," commented Gaymer meaningly, as he shut the door and settled into a chair beside Lord Poynter.
4
As Barbara's voice faded and died away, an air of guilty quiet settled upon the dining-room. Eric tidied himself a place among her wreckage of crumpled napkin, sloppy finger-bowl, nut-shells and cigarette-ash. For ten minutes he could rest; conversation with either of his companions threatened to be as difficult as it was unnecessary. John Gaymer, in upbringing, intellect, habits of mind and method of speech, belonged to a self-centred world which cheerfully defied subjugation by a brigade of Byrons, reinforced by a division of Wesleys and an army of Rousseaus; for him there was one school and no other, one college and no other, one regiment, club, restaurant, music-hall, tailor, hairdresser and no other. Eric was always meeting John Gaymers and never penetrating below the sleek, well-bred and uninterested exterior; they were politely repellent, as though an intrusion from outside would disturb their serenity and the advantageous bargain which they had struck with life; it might cause them to think, and thought was a synonym of death. The Flying Corps, at first sight, was an unassimilating environment for a John Gaymer, but this one had not gone in alone and he had certainly not been assimilated. A closely knit and self-isolated group had formed itself there, as it could be trusted to form itself in a house-party or under the shadow of the guillotine, genially unapproachable and uncaringly envied.
To shew his fairness and breadth of mind Eric tested the specimen under his hand with politics, the war and a current libel action, only to be rewarded at the third venture. Before surrendering to his desire for silence and rest, he glanced under lowered lids at his host's blue-tinged, loosely-hanging cheeks. Conscientiously silent when his wife wished to discuss literature with her new discoveries, Lord Poynter became dutifully loquacious when exposed defenceless to the task of entertaining them and took refuge in gusty, nervous geniality or odd, sly confidences on matters of no moment.
"Aren't you drinking any port wine?" he demanded of Eric after brooding indecision.
"Thank you, yes. It's a '63, isn't it?" Eric asked, as he helped himself and passed the decanter.
Lord Poynter's discoloured eyes shone with interest for the first time that night.
"Ah, come now! A kindred spirit!" he wheezed welcomingly. "I'll be honest with you; I was in two minds whether to give you that wine to-night. Women don't appreciate it, they're not educated up to it. It was that or the Jubilee Sandeman, and I'm not an admirer of the Jubilee wines. Very delicate, very good," he cooed, "but—well, you'll understand me if I call them all women's wines. Now, if you like port, I've a few bottles of '72 Gould Campbell. … Johnny, your grandfather would have had a fit, if he'd seen you trying to drink port wine with a cigarette in your mouth. Not that it makes much difference, when people have been smoking all the way through dinner; your palate's tainted before you come to your wine. People pretend that it makes a difference whether you approach the tobacco through the wine or the wine through the tobacco. I don't see it, myself. … "
His tongue uncoiled, he soliloquized on wines of the past and present, as the survivor of a dead generation might dwell dotingly on the great men and beautiful women of a long life-time. Empire, devolving its cares upon his shoulders, enabled him—as he explained with sly gusto—to secure that there should be no inharmonious inruption of coffee and liqueurs until the sacred wine had been in reverent circulation for twenty minutes. Half-way through, warming to his new friend, he rang for a bottle of wood port first known to history in 1823, when it was already a middle-aged wine, and fortified from every subsequent vintage.
"I don't say you'll like it, but it's an experience," he told Eric with an air of cunning, respectable conspiracy. "Like a ve-ery dry sherry. If I may advise you, I would say, 'Drink it as a liqueur'; don't waste your time on my brandy, I'm afraid I've none fit to offer you. There was a tragedy about my last bottle of the Waterloo. … "
He diverged into a long