After three months’ desultory wandering he returned to Tokio and booked a passage to China. Already his health was improving; and, if he could lose all touch with English ways of thought, he might begin to lose touch with himself, to shed his personality, almost to change his identity; upcountry it must be possible to find a civilization and scenery so strange that it would absorb him. As he left his hotel for the shipping office, he was handed a cable from his American agent:
“_Following from Lane Lashmar Hampshire England for you care of me despatched fourteenth your father seriously ill think you should return as soon as possible._”
Eric studied the time of despatch and retransmission with stupid deliberation, giving himself time to recover from the shock. This meant, of course, that his father was dying, was perhaps already dead; and it was his duty to be shocked. Lashmar on the fourteenth, New York on the sixteenth, Tokio on the eighteenth;—the war had made cabling a slow business... He was a selfish brute not to have told his mother where he was going instead of leaving her to track him through his American agent and, before that, through his London agent. His father had never been ill since he was a child, but he had overworked for years; this probably meant a stroke....
Eric discovered that he was quite dispassionate; perhaps he was too much numbed to feel. He must of course return immediately; if anything happened, the eldest son must be at hand. Once in England, he must let the future take care of itself.
Three weeks later he landed at San Francisco and arrived in New York two days before the armistice was signed. “Mother’s Son” was still running at the Grafton; he was met unexpectedly at the station, and, before the day was out, two reporters had called at the Majestic and sought an interview. He tried to dine by himself and was instantly caught up by a group of friends who set about organizing a banquet in his honour. A private party of twelve swept within twenty-four hours far beyond the organizer’s control. Half New York had been to one or other of the plays; scores of people had already met him, hundreds more wanted to meet him.
“Look at it this way,” said his agent, Justus Grant, defensively. “Every one knows you’re here. Well, if it gets out that we’ve given you a dinner and cornered you, they’ll all ask why in Hell they weren’t invited. I’ve got to live in New York, and you haven’t. It’s only one speech, whether we’re twelve or twelve hundred. And you’ve only to stand and shake a few more hands.”