"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?"