Part 19 (1/2)

Once nerved to face the wet roads and penetrating chill, Eric decided to acquirethe church party on its return Lady Lane had already shewn off her ”sailor son” to the exiguous congregation; it was the turn of ”my eldest son, the author, you know,” to subenerally popularize hiht without protest

His mood was so radiant that he achieved his effect before the end of luncheon As Geoff drove him to the station, he alretWinchester, Basingstoke, Vauxhall, the river and the Houses of Parliah he had been away froland for years Pride of possession seized him when he entered Ryder Street; as he shut the front door and looked at his black-fra hins of his material victory over fate So many people allowed life to control the life And, when they had failed through their own inertia, they invented an external destiny to save their faces Man created God to have soe pile of letters on his library table Lady Poynter hoped to get so people to lunch on Thursday; could he bear to coain? _So_ sweet of hiuely of a party which she had in prospect, without apparently knowing veryyou to meet any one in particular, because I don't knoho'll be there It'll be ahis; they'll probably quarrel, and there's sure not to be rooood dinner before you cos are often nothing like so bad as one fears beforehand I propose to enjoy MYself_”

Eric was amused by her candour and decided to look in for a few aret Poynter always ACCAPARER-sto dine on Friday ”_Babs Neave is co_,” she added

As he had intended to spend Sunday evening in the country, he was absolved froive undivided attention to the dinner which his cook had i an adequate week-end supply Dinner with only a choice of sherry and of gin and bitters, with no opportunity for a cocktail suggested ”roughing it” to his -stand leisurely and warm after his bath, co jacket

After dinner he unlocked a branded cedar-wood cabinet, the first that he had ever bought, and looked lovingly at the cigars, rich, dull-brown and ineffably fragrant, bundle pressed shoulder to shoulder with bundle A new stock of wine had still to be entered in the cellar-book; and he had to find places on his shelves for Hatchard's last consignment It was not yet easy to realize that, until the success of his play--six thousand pounds sterling in eight calendar months--a new book had been an event

For a happy hour he arranged and rearranged At the end, surveying his handiith undisguised pleasure, he thought of the bizarre night when Babs Neave had forced her way in He could still hardly believe that it had occurred And yet, without shutting his eyes, he could alhted and wholly unexplained, bending forith her wonderful white ar's horse-shoe paper-weight, laughing onehim the moment after And how she seemed to be in love with him

He took out a foot-rule and measured the space under the s for two possible new book-cases He would need them soon; and they would make the room look better filled It was a beautiful room, a beautiful flat

Fro a very beautiful life

The clock struck eleven; and his parlour-lasses He did not drink whiskey once a month, but the tray added a roundness and finish which the Spartans at Lash Were they Spartans--or simply people without his instinct for life?

He filled a tumbler with soda-water and subsided into his deepest ar pleasurably at his cigar and wrapping himself in the softest down of contentht over his abbreviated week-end Agnes Waring had dropped out of his life; Barbara had never co to record but the nauests at dinner

”_There are few things so exhausting as the quiet of the country_”--From the Diary of Eric Lane

CHAPTER FOUR

INTERMEZZO

What hadst thou to do being born, Mother, inds were at ease As a flower of the spring-time of corn, A flower of the foam of the seas?

For bitter thou wast from thy birth, Aphrodite, a mother of strife; For before thee some rest was on earth A little respite from tears A little pleasure of life; For life was not then as thou art, But as one that waxeth in years Sweet-spoken, a fruitful wife; Earth had no thorn, and desire No sting, neither death any dart; What hadst thou to do airt with sorrow of heart, Thou sprung of the seed of the seas As an ear from a seed of corn As a brand plucked forth of a pyre, As a ray shed forth of theand a thorn?

What ailed thee then to be born?

SWINBURNE: ”ATALANTA IN CALYDON”

1

Moral delinquency in England, if of sufficiently ancient lineage, grows venial with the years and, if carried out with adequate ruthlessness or at least success, randeur No one boasts of his own illegitimacy, but most men like it to be known that an ancestress, whose reen, once enjoyed royal favour Nostolen food from stolen plate in a stolen house; buta bond of secrecy, that their great-great-grandfathers went to India to seek their fortune and apparently found it ”He that goes out an insignificant boy in a few years returns a great Nabob,” said Burke, without dwelling on the interrandfather reluctantly parted with land to the end that railways ht be built, or that their fathers ran the blockade and supplied the South and the slave-owners, hazardously and romantically, with in in the character and position of Lord Chancellor Crawleigh; and history has dealt faithfully with hiuided supporter of the '15 and left it with sufficient randson William, the second baron and first viscount, who built on sure foundations Common sense and a certain practical alertness in the halcyon days of the Enclosure Acts did nothing to diminish the patrimony of Charles, fourth baron, third viscount and first earl, though the estate caood fellowshi+p of John, the second earl, won hient At a ti faces over a periodical schedule of the Prince's debts, a Garter becahness, with no other ratitude, secured it for his friend with a further step to the coveted rank of marquess Thereafter the public life of the farity; and the Garter, re-bestowed as soon as surrendered, became a habit The second marquess held a sinecure under Lord Aberdeen; another flitted to and fro in shadowy retire the United States for the broadening of his mind, married an American wife

The union infused so , short-lived stock that there seey and success of the heir

Charles, fifth marquess, was a member of parliament in his twenty-second year, an under-secretary when he enty-six and Governor-General of Canada before he was thirty-five Thereafter, having got hiovernments vied with one another to keep him abroad The vice-royalty of India followed almost automatically; he spent two years as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland to oblige his party leaders and was now in the full vigour ofto do The House of Lords offered no opportunity to an incurably bad debater; and the radicals by destroying the constitution, bullying the king and playing with revolution had made it a place of arid ponity every time that he went there

Nevertheless, once a viceroy, always a viceroy, as his daughter soh ruled Berkeley Square and Crawleigh Abbey as though he were still in India, as though, too, he were suppressing the Mutiny single-handed ”Once a mutineer, always a mutineer,” Lady Barbara would occasionally say of herself

This week-end she had irritated her parents by choosing a train convenient neither to faue and by retiring to her bedroo that she would probably stay there Lady Crawleigh felt that prudence, after so long delay,people could be trusted, in dealing with her sentences, to coun; but late hours, exciteacy of her illness had reduced Barbara's strength until Dr Gaisford pronounced that he could not answer for the result if any pressure were put upon her