“Then you’ll succeed...”
“‘A little onward, lend thy guiding hand
To these dark steps, a little further on...’
Find me B Deck, there’s a good fellow. It always takes me about four days to feel my way round a strange ship. You don’t want to talk about this? I thought not... But don’t waste a week of good Atlantic, skulking in a hot stateroom....”
On the following day Eric prospected cautiously among the rest of the passengers. The natural selection common to life on every liner was still in progress: the socially ambitious had struggled to the captain’s table in the saloon; more experienced travellers were making friends with the purser. The government officials, unconsciously jaunty in their tweed caps and life-belts, separated into the corners of the smoking-room and drew up voluminous reports, competing craftily for the services of two overworked and seasick shorthand-writers; the returning soldiers exercised themselves with deck-tennis in the morning and scoured the ship for bridge-players in the afternoon. There were not more than six women on board, and these left Eric alone when they had secured his autograph. A distinction more subtile than that of mere age sent the older men to the feet of Mrs. O’Rane, while the younger ranged themselves round Ivy Maitland. Eric encountered her on the fifth day, looking no more than sixteen in tennis shoes and white stockings, woollen jersey and white Tam-o’-Shanter; she treated him to a friendly “good-morning”, when they met, striding round the deck before breakfast; but her first conversation in New York did not encourage her to make further advances, and there were readier triumphs with Gaymer and the other soldiers of his age.
The three days of deliberate isolation had drawn round Eric a cordon which his fellow-travellers were at first reluctant to penetrate; but, when the coast of Ireland came in sight, the general reserve broke down for a moment: Lady John Carstairs hoped that he would come and see them in London; Sir Matthew Woodstock confessed bluffly to admiration of his plays; and on their last night on board Ivy Maitland, armed with her autograph-book, stalked him to the boat-deck and reminded him of his promise.
“I expect you thought me very forward in New York,” she began brightly. “I did so want to meet you... What are you going to write? Something nice, won’t you?”
“How would ‘Children obey your parents’ do?” asked Eric.
“Oh, I’d rather have nothing than that... You see, you don’t know father, and I do...” She laughed a little impatiently and painted a clever and undutiful picture of their life in the Cromwell Road and her earliest recollection of the overworked junior who returned at half-past eight for a dinner which he persisted in ordering for eight, and of a submissive mother who brewed him cocoa at five o’clock in the morning and was too tired to entertain or be entertained at night. The vacations, consecrated to golf at Brancaster, had enabled the two elder sisters to escape into matrimony with a couple of promising chancery barristers. (The “promise” was largely invented by Mr. Justice Maitland by means of a dilemma which amused his humour and saved his pocket. “If a young man’s worth his salt, he doesn’t want anything from me. If he’s not worth his salt, don’t marry him. Of course, I don’t expect you to listen to anything I say...”). The two brothers had drifted from Cambridge into the army, leaving Ivy to bear the full brunt of her father’s jurisdiction. “It was bad enough before, but I couldn’t go back to it after this.”
“What will you do?,” Eric asked, as he began to write.