Читать книгу The Education of Eric Lane - Stephen McKenna - Страница 14

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Elation battled with annoyance in Eric's mind throughout luncheon. Barbara had sought him out, when a hundred other men—several of them, like George Oakleigh, undisguisedly in love with her—might have been preferred to him; but he was offended by her proprietory attitude towards his work and life. Manders would have the whole story, too, helped out with first-rate mimicry, running through the Thespian Club by dinner-time; it would spread in twenty-fours through all of the London that knew him and half of the London that knew her; and Eric Lane would be quoted as the latest foil or companion in the latest Barbara Neave story. One did not even want the girl to be made a peg for Manders' wit. …

The luncheon, Eric observed morosely, was cheaply successful, for Barbara talked with barely concealed desire to lay Grierson and Manders under her spell. By intuition or accident she gave them what tickled their interest most keenly—intimate stories about herself or her friends, the proved history of what to them had hitherto been but alluring gossip, anecdotes of Government House and the minor secrets and scandals of her father's three terms of office. Eric felt that it was a little below the dignity of a girl, who was after all the daughter of a distinguished former viceroy, to be discussing herself and her friends so freely. …

They had lost count of time when Grierson looked furtively at his watch and jumped apologetically to his feet. As he hurried out of the room Barbara again asked Eric whether he had a rehearsal that day.

"Because I want to come," she explained wheedlingly, with her head on one side.

Her eyes were dark and tired after her overnight excitement; she had exhausted herself with talking; and for a moment Eric forgot to be irritated and only saw her as a child whom it would be ungracious to disappoint. Then he remembered one phase of a rambling story in which her love of getting her own way had caused her cavalier of the day to wait in his car from midnight until six because she had forgotten to leave a message that she had already gone home. In the story Eric could not remember any apology from Barbara. Triumphs came so quickly and easily that she expected everything and valued nothing; a man was sufficiently rewarded by being allowed to fall in love with her. …

"I'm afraid rehearsals aren't open to the public," he told her, brusquely enough to dismiss the appeal, he hoped, but not so brusquely as to hurt her.

She looked at him with the glint of defiance which he had seen once before; then she turned to Manders.

"Please, I want to come to the rehearsal," she begged. "It's your theatre, Mr. Manders."

"It's my play," Eric interrupted.

She turned her head long enough to say:

"I was asking Mr. Manders."

"But it happens that I also——"

Manders intervened with a clucking noise of the tongue.

"Keep the ring, keep the ring!" he cried. "You got out o' bed the wrong side, Eric boy. Don't quarrel, do-ant quarrel! If Lady Barbara wants to come, let her! It's against the rules, but I'll make an exception for her." The girl rewarded him with a glowing smile. "You'll be bored, my dear, I warn you."

"Oh, if I am, I can talk to Eric."

"Look here, Manders, if a rehearsal's worth taking at all, it's worth taking seriously," cried Eric petulantly. "I've plenty of other use for my time."

Manders was faintly amused by the outburst and wholly unmoved. Dire experience of the jealous and irascible had taught him that he could not afford to let other people lose their tempers.

"Lady Barbara will promise not to talk," he prophesied. "We're late, boy."

"I shall talk afterwards," she warned them. "At dinner to-night—Mr. Manders, I can't get Eric to see what bad plays he writes and what good plays he might turn out. He's very funny about it."

"Authors are a rum lot!" said Manders jocosely, slapping Eric's shoulder. "See about a taxi, boy. I don't let my people keep me waiting and I don't want them to wait for me."

It was a defeat for Eric, formally recorded by Barbara with that glint of triumph which was beginning to fill him with misgiving. They drove in silence to a side street off Shaftesbury Avenue and groped their way through the stage-door down a cork-screw staircase and along several short passages which branched disconcertingly to right or left as soon as Barbara fancied that she could walk ahead with impunity. From above came the mechanical runs and flourishes of a piano-organ against the drone of traffic; somewhere below there was a rapid squeak of voices. The corridors and stairs were wrapped in warm darkness, and, after one stumble, Eric felt a hand running down his sleeve and twining round his fingers.

"Are you angry with me?" Barbara whispered. "You were so grumpy in the taxi. And I made such a success of your lunch. Mr. Manders and Mr. Grierson loved me, and I made even you smile."

Eric tried to locate Manders in the velvety darkness before replying.

"You were very amusing," he answered unenthusiastically. "But it's possible to be amusing even when you're making rather a nuisance of yourself to several very busy men."

A sigh fluttered wistfully through the darkness, and he felt her drawing closer to him.

"Aren't you a little bit brutal, Eric?"

"Don't you find every one brutal who doesn't fetch and carry and wait out in the snow for you all night—and give you material for new stories? … Stand still while I find the handle."

He led her through a studded iron door into the twilit auditorium. The stalls were swathed in holland covers, and there was a brooding warm desolation which invited undertones. Barbara looked with growing interest at a sprawling group of two men and three women on the stage. Without make-up they were white and featureless in the glare of the foot-lights; they were jaded and a little impatient, too, but Manders, who seemed to make his personality unyielding and metallic on entering a theatre, galvanized them into alertness. A wooden platform had been built over the middle of the orchestra; and, as soon as he had disposed of Barbara in the stalls, Eric mounted it and seated himself in an arm-chair. Manders cautiously squeezed past him, script in hand, to the stage; there was a preliminary cough, a cry of "Beginners, please!" and the rehearsal opened.

Eric allowed the first act to be played without interruption; at the end he jumped up and entered into whispered conversation with Manders, turning the leaves of the manuscript and tapping them impressively with his pencil. One player after another emerged from the wings and stood listening, nodding and discussing as each point was thrashed out. A few minutes later Manders came down into the stalls and sat by Barbara.

"Just a breather," he explained. "No good nagging your people, particularly when they've been at the job for years and you're a new-comer. … Some of my spoiled darlings find that a little Eric goes a long way. You're sure you're not bored, my dear?"

"I can't see very well," Barbara answered. "If I had a chair on the little platform——"

Manders wasted an unseen wink on her.

"Well, you mustn't talk to Eric, that's all. And, if you see you're making him nervous, you must run away."

He helped her up and accommodated her with a property foot-stool by Eric's chair, leaving her for a moment's resentful scrutiny by a young woman who had been arguing with winsome persuasiveness about a speech which Eric under pressure from Manders had consented to cut.

"Who's that, Eric?" Barbara whispered, as he settled into place.

"Mabel Elstree."

"H'm. She doesn't seem to like my being here. … Does everybody call you Eric?"

"You're well placed to answer that. Now, Lady Barbara, remember your promise: no talking!"

The act was played a second time, taking form and life as all warmed to their work. Eric watched with critical narrowed eyes, no longer scattering pencil-marks in the margin of the script, restrained, impassive and absorbed. Barbara sat with her hands clasped round her ankles and her head resting against his knee. Only when the act was ended did he seem to become aware of her; then he edged away and stood up.

"Better! Very much better! Just turn to the place where——" He rustled back into the middle of the act and had it played through to the curtain.

Half-an-hour later Barbara emerged into sunshine. Eric was tired and rather husky, but pleased and hopeful. His earlier irritability was forgotten save when it obtruded itself reproachfully to remind him that he had been scantly civil to the girl by his side.

"The next thing is a taxi," he murmured, as they came out into Shaftesbury Avenue.

"You wouldn't dream of taking me home and offering me some tea?" she suggested.

"I would not, Lady Barbara," he answered cheerfully. "Your practice of visiting young unmarried men in their rooms should be promptly checked. But I'll drop you in Berkeley Square, if you like."

"That would be more—respectable. It's curious how you seem to have made up your mind not to do anything I ask you."

"It doesn't seem to make much difference to the result."

She ceased pouting and smiled self-confidently for a moment. Then her assurance left her, and she slipped her arm timidly through his.

"Am I being a nuisance, Eric? You said so, and—oh, it did hurt! I honestly enjoyed myself this afternoon; and I wasn't so very much in the way, was I? Don't you like me to enjoy myself? Don't you like to see me happy? Are you sure you're not a little bit sorry you were so brutal to me?"

"My conscience is quite easy, thanks. Lady Barbara——"

He hesitated and felt himself flushing.

"Yes?"

"Lady Barbara—, I don't understand you, I don't begin to understand you."

"You won't write a good play till you do," she laughed. "All your women are romantic dolls. We're much better and much worse than you think. But that wasn't what you started to say."

"I know. … Well, you oughtn't to have come to my rooms last night. And you oughtn't to have come to-day, though that wasn't as bad. … What d'you imagine people like Grierson or Manders think? What d'you imagine Mabel Elstree thinks, when you sit with your head against my knee?"

She withdrew her arm and walked for some time without speaking.

"I'm sorry if I'm compromising you with your friends," she said at length.

"And whether you compromise yourself doesn't matter?"

"I suppose I'm used to it," she sighed; then, with one of her April changes, the sigh turned into a provocative laugh. "If you don't mind being compromised by me, I'd make you write a wonderful play. My technique's so good. All you have to do is to fall in love with me——"

"I shan't have the opportunity," he interrupted. "We meet to-night at Mrs. Shelley's——"

"And we were so positive that we weren't going!" she murmured. "You don't want to see me again?"

Eric hailed a passing taxi.

"I like meeting you," he told her frankly enough. "You amuse me—and you interest me enormously. But I've work to do … for one thing. … "

She seated herself in the taxi and held out her hand through the window.

"You might come and call for me to-night," she suggested.

Eric shook his head. He was shy of entering a house to which he had not been officially admitted, confronting a strange butler, being pushed into a room to wait for her, meeting and explaining himself to Lord Crawleigh or one of the brothers, who would look superciliously at "Babs' latest capture." …

"I'll meet you at Mrs. Shelley's," he said.

The hand was withdrawn, and he could see her biting her lip.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"There's no need to be."

"I was apologizing to myself—for giving you another opportunity of refusing something I asked you to do for me."

Eric walked back to his flat, puzzled and irritated. The girl was intolerably spoiled; nothing that you did was right, there was altogether too much wear and tear in trying to adapt yourself to her moods. …

Even if you wanted to. …