“It puts your relationship on a different footing,” he suggested. “When a man’s been to your house and eaten your salt, he feels a responsibility to the house. Look at it this way: during the last week, how have you differed in essence from—let me say—a chorus-girl who dines with a man and goes to a dance with him and lets him help her to get taken on at a new theatre? I don’t suggest that there are no differences, but what differences are there for a man like Gaymer to see?”
Ivy looked at him in perplexity which was too strong to allow resentment to creep in.
“I don’t understand,” she said, and both were glad when the taxi was reported to be at the door.
As he read his letters and looked with distaste at the work awaiting him on the morrow, Eric reviewed with morose dissatisfaction the five weeks that had passed since his return to England. He had sighed with boredom at the cultured table of Lady Poynter; and in the conscientiously Bohemian setting of Mrs. O’Rane the boredom had only been complicated by amazement. (He scrawled a blue-pencil “Refuse” across four invitations and tossed them into his secretary’s letter-basket.) He had interested himself for a moment in Ivy Maitland, at least to the extent of giving her some good advice; but her pert assurance was a little tiresome, and he was now only interested to wonder how soon John Gaymer would weary of it. At the Mill-House he had tried to win his way back to a place in his own family, but they had mysteriously stood still and he had wandered into a spiritual wilderness of his own. Even his work no longer promised him a way out of the wilderness, but it might keep him from brooding over the astounding emptiness of life.
He had achieved a dull quiescence of spirit when he read in Christmas week that Mr. and Lady Barbara Oakleigh had returned to London from Ireland and were leaving England for the Riviera after a few days in Hampshire. That night, on his way to Winchester, Eric chose a compartment at the back of the train to avoid all chance of meeting her in the Crawleigh or Southampton coaches. His window commanded two-thirds of the platform, and, five minutes before the train was due to start, he caught sight of Oakleigh and a footman hurrying by, with Barbara half a pace behind him. Valentine Arden had christened her “the haggard Venus”; her big sunken eyes and white cheeks had a morbid fascination of their own, compelling as ever; physical delicacy and nervous vitality still contended for possession of her tall, wasted body; tragedy and defiance alternated in the swift changes of her expression, as she flashed by the window of his compartment. For all his resolution and training, Eric felt his heart stop as it had stopped in Tokio, when he read the news of her marriage; when the red mist lifted from his eyes, he looked at her again from behind the screen of his paper, surprised to see no change: the green morocco travelling-cushion still bore the old “B.N.” in one corner; he recognized her fur-coat, and George was carrying the red leather jewel-case which he had carried for her fifty times. At their first meeting she had criticized his first play, offering to re-write it, telling him that he knew nothing of ‘Life’ and proposing herself as instructor.
“Oh, well... This is Life, I suppose,” Eric whispered to himself.
To have seen her would break the shock of meeting her on her return to England, but he was glad that she was going abroad; the shock would have to be broken by instalments, widely separated, if he was to acquit himself without disgrace. He wondered how much she had ever told her husband. He wondered how much she dared admit to herself... At Winchester he jumped on to the platform, before the train stopped, and ran out of the station, before any curious head could reconnoitre from the windows of the Crawleigh and Southampton coaches.
Finality... Eric turned up his collar and sank lower in the seat of the car. He did not want Sybil to see his face. Christmas Eve... Three years ago to a day he had reached finality; Barbara was falling in love with him, when she had sworn by the Cross to offer herself in reparation to Jack Waring: and in those easy, sane, clear-cut days Eric had decided to end their intimacy before either clouded it with tragedy. And then she had appealed to his compassion and sent for him... perhaps to see if he could continue to resist her. And he had gone back; and his resistance had broken down. A man only paid for his own weakness....
But it was finality to see her running along the platform arm-in-arm with her husband....
“Basil’s home,” said Sybil, as they left the town. “He got back yesterday and demobilized himself this morning.”