He spent the first day in his cabin, unpacking and re-packing, while his steward contrived supplementary cases for his spoils. In the saloon, which he was the last to reach and the first to leave, his seat was between Lady Woodstock, who seemed afraid to speak, and Lady John Carstairs, who retired from sight at the first roll of the boat. The passenger-list was made up almost wholly of soldiers and government officials, for the most part unknown to Eric and too much occupied with consultations and reports to force their company upon a man who was conspicuously avoiding it. John Gaymer, whom he had met at long intervals during three or four years and who had been seconded as an instructor at one of the American aerodromes, made a facetious comment on the Plaza dinner as an overture of friendship before asking him to play poker; and David O’Rane, returning from a campaign of propaganda in the Middle West, tried to persuade Eric to transfer himself to the Chief Engineer’s table. For the rest, he was left in peace until the third day when, on entering the smoke-room in search of matches, he was caught by Carstairs and pressed to join him for a cocktail. At once and with apparent carelessness, four other men attached themselves to the table and conscientiously offered Eric their compliments on his work and their thanks for the opportunity of meeting him. He acknowledged the tribute with a practised show of gratification and submitted to diffident questions on his method of composition and his theories of art. When at last he excused himself and went out on deck, O’Rane overtook him and suggested a stroll before dinner.
“I’ve hardly had a word with you since we came on board, Eric,” he began. “You’ve not been seedy, have you?”
“No, but I’ve reached an age when I can’t move without running across people I know. From one end of America to the other, in Japan, here... On a ship I like to escape my fellow man and have—a rest... I don’t mean you, of course, but the people who feel they must congratulate me on a play that I wish I’d never written....”
“I’m glad you make an exception in my favour, though I tell you frankly that I’m much too old a friend to be shaken off easily. It must be seventeen years since we first met. D’you remember the Phoenix dinners at Oxford? Jim Loring, Summertown, Draycott, Sinclair—they’re all gone; George Oakleigh—married; you, Jack Waring and me—knocked out to a certain extent; Knightrider and Deganway pursuing the noiseless tenour of their way... You can crowd a great deal into seventeen years....”
“I’ve never forgotten the night when you cast our horoscopes for us,” murmured Eric.
“I’ve sometimes tried to forget it... We were only about twenty, I gave every man ten years’ run. It’s been too frightfully true. D’you remember that even in those days I told you we should turn out one genius? I told you to your face who it would be.”
Eric unlinked his arm on the plea of wanting to refill his pipe. What with knocking out the ashes and sacrificing four matches to a head wind, he gave himself time to become collected.
“One man was to achieve some kind of distinction,” he said with an effort of memory. “And one was to make money... Touch wood and all that sort of thing, but in eighteen months I made more than I thought I could make in a life-time.”
“With fame thrown in,” added O’Rane. “That being so, I couldn’t understand your speech at the Plaza.”
They walked the length of the deck before Eric answered.