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.