“‘If I get killed I get killed, and if he gets killed, I get hung. Don’t seem just somehow...’”
H. G. Wells: “The History of Mr. Polly.”
“We should be so pleased if you could dine with us on Friday,” said Lady John Carstairs on the threshold of the O’Ranes’ house. “I never had an opportunity of thanking you for your kindness in getting us off the boat so early. It will be only a small party, but you’ll meet one or two friends from America. I wanted to ask you before, but we’re only now beginning to get our house straight.”
Eric thought over the invitation in the moment allowed him for consulting his engagement-book. He had intended to begin work on a new play, but his friends and the strange monster of an adoring public that he had conjured into existence refused to leave him in peace. For a week after his return to England the illustrated papers were publishing photographs of him; four reporters called in two days to learn his plans for the future and his impressions of America; by letter and telegram he was begged to write and speak on the fruits of his tour; and, when he had deflected the applicants to the office of his agent, there remained private appeals less easy to shelve or refuse. The dramatic circle of the Thespian Club organized a dinner in his honour; Dr. Gaisford bade him to “a strictly bachelor party” of his friends and admirers; he was asked to take the chair for the Actors’ Pension Fund; and the Penmen’s Club invited him to be the guest of honour at their weekly luncheon.
Mingled with the official invitations, the unofficial rained down upon him. It was a repetition of the personal triumph which he had enjoyed when his first play was produced. Lady Maitland, Mrs. Shelley, Lady Poynter, Mrs. Manisty and a dozen more urged him to lunch or dine with them; war and peace made no difference to them, a man might travel to the end of the world and back to find them still chewing the cud of their sparse culture. If his position in London three years before had been incredible even to him, he was forced to believe now that his absence abroad had mysteriously consolidated it: then the critics had bracketed him with Pinero and Barrie for the excellence of his stagecraft and with Shaw for the wit and virility of his dialogue, in him they saw and blessed the promise of the future; now, though he had written nothing in the interval, they chose to regard the promise as fulfilled. “Among the younger playwrights,” wrote the grudging editor of “Green-room and Studio,” “it is unsafe to predict who will step into the shoes of the men we have named. Always excepting Mr. Eric Lane, whose niche is assured to him...” The public seemed to take its time from the press; the enthusiasm of those who knew him reacted on those who had yet to meet him; and for a month he was whirled from house to house in a sandstorm of adulation.
When he could see and breathe again, Eric discovered gaps in the well-remembered catalogue of names: Lady Crawleigh and Lady Knightrider at least knew too much or suspected too much or had enough consideration not to ask him to their houses; but Lady John Carstairs’ invitation was a test-case. If he accepted, Eric was sure to meet other of Lady Barbara’s relations there; but, even as he wavered, he knew that he dared not surrender to shyness.
“I should love to come,” he answered, as they went forward to shake hands with their hostess.
Mrs. O’Rane was signalizing her return from America by assembling all of her many friends who had resisted the lure of the peace conference or the south of France. During the war Eric had attended sufficient of her parties to recoil from their noise and studied hilarity, but he was by now so much sated with the pompous entertaining of such intellectuals as Lady Poynter that he welcomed the informality of a Bohemian frolic. Here at least he would be screened by the shadow of some later and more modish celebrity. As he came into the long, crowded library, a space was being cleared in the middle; while their leader explored the quality of the floor, a group of dancers with only their heads and ballet slippers protruding from a swathing mass of cloaks and shawls stood whispering in one corner. A tentative chord was struck, the wrappings slid to the ground, and the dancers pattered forward on tip-toe with their arms arched above their heads.
Eric was trying to see who was present when Amy Loring came up with a radiant smile of welcome.
“I’m very glad to see you again!,” she whispered. “Sonia told me you’d crossed by the same boat, and I came here on purpose to meet you. I do hope you’re quite strong again now.”