The Education of Eric Lane. Stephen McKenna
as I tell you! I'm coming to pay you a call."
He disengaged her hands and lay back in his corner.
"It's a little late for you to be calling on me," he said.
With a quick tug and push she had opened the window on her own side before he could stop her.
"Oh, will you drive to 89 Ryder Street first, please," he heard her say. Then she sank back with a pursed-up smile of triumph. "I've no intention of going to bed yet," she explained.
"I've no intention of opening the door till I've taken you home," he rejoined.
She made no answer till the carriage drew up opposite his flat.
"It would be deplorable if you made a scene on the pavement," she observed carelessly.
Then she stepped out and told the driver to go back to Belgrave Square for Mrs. O'Rane.
It was a moon-lit night between half-past eleven and twelve. Ryder Street had roused to life with a widely-spaced but steady stream of men returning to bed from Pall Mall and sparing the fag-end of their attention for the unexpected tall girl who stood wrapped in a long silk shawl in the shadow of a bachelor door-way. The brougham turned round and drove away. Eric lighted another cigarette.
"Am I right in thinking that you're being obstinate?" Barbara enquired after some moments of silence.
"If you want me to take you home, I'll take you home. Otherwise I shall leave you here, go round to the club, explain that I've lost my latch-key and get a bed there."
"You're almost oriental in your hospitality," she laughed.
"I've no hospitality to spare for a girl of twenty-two at this hour of the night."
She stretched out her arm to him. In observing the beauty of her slender, long fingers and the whiteness of her arm against the long fringe of the shawl, Eric forgot his guard. She twitched the cigarette from his lips and laughed like a child, as she blew out a cloud of smoke. Cigarette, shawl and manner suddenly reminded him of Carmen.
"You're so conventional," she sighed.
Eric became suddenly irritable.
"Lady Barbara, you're behaving idiotically!" he cried. "I know you'd do anything for a new sensation, but I'm not going to help. Possibly I'm old-fashioned. If you think——"
"I'm so thirsty," she interrupted. "Have you any soda-water?"
"You're sure to find plenty in Berkeley Square."
"But you're afraid to give me any, afraid of being compromised?"
"I've too many things to be afraid of without bothering about that. Lady Barbara, you've several brothers, I've one sister. If one of your brothers saw fit to invite my sister to a bachelor flat——"
"But you haven't invited me!"
"I should horsewhip him," Eric resumed jerkily.
She considered him curiously with her head on one side.
"You know, I don't feel afraid of you," she told him. "I could trust you anywhere. You're not old enough to understand that yet, but you will."
"Then for the present it's irrelevant. Come along, Lady Barbara."
He advanced a step, but she only smiled at him without moving. Eric looked angrily round, but the stream of passers-by, though sluggish, shewed no signs of drying up. A clock inside the hall began to chime midnight, and he turned on his heel. As he did so, a taxi turned into the street, and an officer climbed gingerly out and hoisted himself across the pavement on two crutches. Barbara coughed and drew her shawl round her until half her face was hidden.
"But, Eric dear, you can't have lost the key," she expostulated, purposefully clear.
Over the shawl her eyes were gleaming with mischief and triumph.
The officer looked quickly from one to the other.
"Hullo! You locked out?" he enquired sympathetically. "Rotten luck! Here, let me put you out of your misery! Hope you haven't been waiting long?"
"That is sweet of you," said Barbara. "Long? I seem to have been standing here all day. Come on, Eric; I'm frightfully tired; I want to sit down."
She walked into the hall, beckoning him with a jerk of her head. The officer bade them good-night and limped to a ground-floor flat at the end.
"I'm going to my club, Lady Barbara," said Eric with slow distinctness from the door-step.
"Then I shall bang on every door I see until I find your flat," she retorted promptly. "I've told you, I want some soda-water. And, Eric——"
"Yes, Lady Barbara."
"Eric, I always get what I want. Who lives here, do you suppose? We'll try his door first."
Eric came in and walked to the foot of the stairs. Barbara slipped her arm through his, but he shook it away.
"I'm tired," she explained. "I wish you wouldn't be so rough with me."
She replaced her arm, and, rather than engage in a childish brawl, Eric left it there, though the touch of her fingers on his wrist set his blood tingling. They walked slowly, for he was trying to set his racing thoughts in order. This, then, was the true Lady Barbara Neave. He had never believed the fantastic stories about her, but she was now gratuitously shewing him that she was of those who stopped at nothing.
He felt the sudden unpitying disgust of a disappointed idealist. She was very young, with expressions which made her wholly beautiful at times. … "Virginal" was the word he was trying to find. … He wondered how to rid himself of her without a scene.
"If you'll let go my arm, I'll open the door," he said with stiff patience.
She walked into the small inner hall and looked round her with unaffected interest.
"I've never been in a man's rooms before," she remarked and Eric knew that she was speaking the truth. An extraordinary sense of power came to him, rushing to his head. The tired eyes and wistful mouth, the haggard cheeks, the cloud of fine hair, the white arms and slender hands fed his hungry love of beauty. And he had attracted her until she lay at his mercy. …
"I want to see everything, Eric," she said gently.
He hardly heard the words; but her tone was confiding, and she slipped her hand into his. A latent sense of the dramatic came to his rescue.
"You seem to have put yourself pretty completely into my power," he observed, closing the front door behind them.
"I know you so much better than you know me," she answered.
"I don't quite follow."
She laughed gently to herself, then put her arms round his neck and kissed him.
"No. … And you won't for years … not till I've educated you. … Am I right in thinking that you've forgotten all about my soda-water?"
5
Eric led her into the dining-room and gave her a tumbler of soda-water with a hand that trembled.
She had taken him by surprise as much as if she had struck him in the face. Incuriosity and fastidiousness, partly timid, partly romantic, had conspired to let him reach the age of two-and-thirty without ever kissing or being kissed. The act, now that he had experienced it, was nothing. A warm body, yielding in self-surrender, had pressed against him for a moment; two hands had impelled his head forward; he had been blinded for an instant by a scented billow of hair; then his cheeks had been touched as though a leaf had blown against them. That was the temperate analysis of kissing. …
"It's