"She said, 'Be good with me; I growSo tired for shame's sake, I shall dieIf you say nothing:' ..."A. C. Swinburne:The Leper.
"She said, 'Be good with me; I growSo tired for shame's sake, I shall dieIf you say nothing:' ..."A. C. Swinburne:The Leper.
"She said, 'Be good with me; I growSo tired for shame's sake, I shall dieIf you say nothing:' ..."A. C. Swinburne:The Leper.
"She said, 'Be good with me; I grow
So tired for shame's sake, I shall die
If you say nothing:' ..."
A. C. Swinburne:The Leper.
For a fugitive from justice London is either the best hiding-place in the world, or else the worst; I have never had an opportunity of deciding, and Mrs. O'Rane's experience has not helped me.
She left Milford Square in the first week of December; in the middle of January her husband and friends gleaned their first news of her. So both succeeded and both failed.
She has told me that her first action after leaving Grayle was to enter a tube station and to study a railway map of London. Her knees were trembling violently, and her brain was numbed so that she stared at names without reading them until something inside her head like the ticking of a watch, now silent, now intrusive, as her attention was captured or left free, warned her to concentrate her thoughts; she had to get away, and time was being lost, time was being lost....
The "inner city" wasex hypothesiclosed to her; Chelsea, Kensington and Hampstead each contained a sprinkling of friends; beyond them she spelled out the names of places on the outer fringe through which she had passed on her way north, west or south from London. Willesden—you met Willesden on your way to Holyhead or the west of Scotland; Wimbledon—that was an old friend,encountered every time that you went by the London and South Western to Melton; Croydon—surely Croydon lay on the way to Dover? But nobodylivedthere.... Certainly no woman in her senses journeyed to Croydon and inexplicably put up at an hotel. What was one to do during the day? Invent excuses to get away from the hotel between meals? But one must not stray towards London. For three hours, morning and afternoon, one could walk between interminable rows of villas....
Yet why confine herself to London, when the whole of England lay before her? She had only to drive to King's Cross, Euston, Waterloo, Paddington.... But she stood in a blouse, skirt and fur-coat; and all her other clothes were at "The Sanctuary" or in Milford Square. She could buy others, of course, but her one prayer was to avoid meeting people. They were talking about her, they would stare past her, when they met, or else—worthy souls!—warn her for her good that Colonel Grayle's name was being coupled with hers,—when he had flung her out of the house! An hour before she had her speeches ready; she was nervously anxious, after the long strain of waiting, to defend herself and defy society in the same breath,—but there was now nothing to defend. She had bought her last dress a fortnight ago at Worth's,—and Grayle had accompanied her to the shop....
But the clothes were a trifle—though she would have to start from the beginning, buy a portmanteau, have it sent to—well, to her temporary headquarters, paying for her room in advance,—assuming that the management would take her in—awaiting the brand-new trunk and the succession of parcels and milliners' boxes. There was not very much privacy about such an escape.... And, if yougotyour clothes andgotaway, you were compelled since the war to give your true name wherever you went; anyone who chose to enquire of the police anywhere.... And you could not get even to Ireland without a permit. It was natural enough, but hard on her, when she was so bruised and beaten, when she wanted so desperately to hide....
No weakness or self-pity! Back to the map, though it were but the map of London. All England might lie stretched in a welcoming expanse, but it was lamentably true that one knew very little of England. One had stayed in country houses here, there and everywhere; one had gone to an hotel in Harrogate, an hotel in Brighton, perhaps three more; one had never explored England like a Cook's tourist or a commercial traveller. One's imagination would not venture beyond a familiar ring—Brighton, Harrogate, Oxford or London.
She stared at the map until a furtive young man who had passed and repassed, slily trying to catch sight of her face, asked whether he could be of any assistance. The shock of being addressed by a strange voice and the need of collecting herself to answer it cleared her brain.
"I want to get to—Euston," she said—and was surprised by the ease and assurance of her tone, steady and authoritative.
"You change into the Hampstead Tube at Leicester Square," he told her.
She waited until he had turned his back and then went upstairs to a public telephone and rang up Grayle's house. It was prostitution of her pride to communicate with the house even from a distance, but she had to have clothes. The butler answered the telephone, and, in the same steady, authoritative voice she asked him to send everything to the Grosvenor Hotel. There was no difficulty about engaging a room, if she could say that her luggage was coming later; no difficulty about anything, if she kept her head.... And then she could look round at her leisure, though she would have to change her hotel next day, since she had revealed where she was going.
The next thing? Money. She drove to her bank, drew twenty pounds and enquired the balance. For some weeks she could be easy in her mind on the score of money. Of course, if her father heard anything and thought fit to stop paying her allowance.... The drive from the bank to the hotel was the worst ten minutes of her life. Hitherto shehad only wanted an asylum where she could shelter until she was strong enough to face the world disdainfully; now she knew that she could never face the world and that she must prowl from one hiding-place to another, lingering apprehensively until she was identified and then wearily slinking away into greater seclusion.... Ofcourseher father would hear, everyone would hear. And it would give such pleasure to her enemies when they saw that they could put her out of countenance! Everyone had enemies; the most popular and beloved girl of her acquaintance had been prosecuted for some fraud over the insurance of jewellery, and a chorus of jubilation had gone up from these smooth-faced, false friends. And, when she herself had broken off her engagement with Jim Loring, the vilest things were said; she heard them years later from other friends who wanted to make mischief. Women were contemptible creatures. And there would be a thunder of exultation atherdownfall. They hated her because she told them frankly that women bored her; they were jealous because she was admittedly one of the greatest beauties in London; for years men had been falling in love with her and begging her to marry them; she could have had her choice....
And now she had been turned out of her lover's house! And the world would know it any day. Already her husband's solicitors had written to Grayle, asking for his solicitor's name and address. The letter had been on the Buhl cabinet, and she had opened it in his presence. From the very first she had always opened his letters like that; he had enjoyed it; it had seemed to bring them closer.... But this time he was furious. That was the first of the big scenes which had ended with her leaving the house.... She did not know when the case would be heard, but the story would race round London; and other stories would be reminiscently tacked on to it—her two broken engagements before she married; it would be said that no man could endure her for more than six months.... She found herself shaken with quivering, dry sobs.
In the hall of the hotel a man bowed to her, and shetried not to see him, as though she had no right to be there. And, when the room had been allotted her, she hurried to it and locked herself in; no one could stare at her there, no one could begin to speak and then recollect and break off. She looked at her watch, dreading the descent to the dining-room, though it was not yet four o'clock; and suddenly she remembered that she had promised to dine with Lord Pentyre and go to a play. He was home on short leave, they had met at luncheon two days before, and she had chosen the restaurant and the theatre....
It was a test case. Since leaving "The Sanctuary" she had occasionally dined out with Grayle, occasionally met him by chance at other houses and often dined with him at home; they had also dined separately with their respective friends, trying to reveal no outward change in their lives until it was forced upon them. Soon people would refuse to meet her, for, whatever else the altercation with Grayle had made clear, they were being of a sudden universally discussed. Bobbie Pentyre had said something about bringing his mother, who had come to London for his leave and wanted to see as much of him as possible. If Lady Pentyre refused to come ... if her absence had to be laboriously explained....
The telephone meant questions. She wrote out a telegram and sent it down by the hand of her chambermaid; then she lay down on the bed and tried first to make her mind a blank, but Grayle's voice was echoing in her ears, then to surrender to her headache, but it absorbed only half her attention. If she could explain and cry to someone ... a man.... Staring dully at the clock, she told herself thatnowshe would have been dressing,nowtelling the butler to get her a taxi; now, when her dinner was brought in on a tray, Lord Pentyre would be waiting in the lounge at Claridge's; another moment, and he would have been hurrying forward to shake her hand, order her a cocktail, offer her a cigarette....
The hotel would be filled with people that she knew and wanted to see—not that she cared about them, butbecause there was something friendly about knowing and being known. She loved living in a crowd. In her first season, when she came up from the country and was uncertain of herself, she could have cried with mortification when everyone else was so much at ease and she was left in the cold until she spoke of comparative strangers by their Christian names, like the others, to pretend that she, too, had known them since she was a child. Instead of which.... Shewasextraordinarily attractive, her father never grudged money, her mother worked indefatigably; and—there was no harm in saying it, when it was all over,—she had been taken at her own valuation, socially boomed.... When she was engaged to Jim Loring—she could see it now—what amésalliancethe old marchioness must have thought her beloved boy was making! It was all over now, but, when she dined with Bobby Pentyre, shedidrather like seeing two-thirds of the people bowing to her and knowing that the rest were whispering, "Isn't that Sonia Dainton? Sonia O'Rane, I should say. Who's she with?" In her first season someone would only have said "Pentyre's got a very pretty girl with him."
But it was all over—with that night. And how petty, when you were flung against realities! To-morrow, if Pentyre dined at Claridge's, the idlers would nod to him and say to one another, "Pentyre reminds me. Usen't he to be ratherliéwith Sonia O'Rane? Someone was saying at lunch...." And it would all come out! At least, it wouldn't.... She didn't care adamn, ifanyoneknew thetruth, but, when they whispered and the women pretended not to be listening for fear it was improper—listening all the time till their ears flopped out of their heads ...!
To-morrow—She started guiltily. To-morrow they would be expecting her at ten for the Belgian Refugee Committee. And she was lunching out with someone—her head ached too much to recollect who it was; she had promised to lunch and dine out for a fortnight, as she always did; luncheon was arranged for one o'clock at the Piccadilly Grill Room (so it must be someveryyoung admirer!),because she had to go on to a charity performance at the Alhambra, where she was appearing in atableauwith Lady Sally Farwell and a crowd of other people—something eighteenth-centuryish, but she had never found out precisely what they were supposed to represent.... And the day after she was starting a great housing scheme for the refugees in London, begging for unoccupied houses with one hand and superfluous furniture with the other, bringing the two together.Thatwas the kind of war-work she liked.... Sir Adolphus Erskine had promised her one of his cars, and she was going round to call on house agents in a new green and black hat with broad green ribbons at the back and a silk cloak bordered with Valenciennes lace.... Grayle had sat, beating a stick against his leg, while she chose it....
That was all over, too. A bigger woman, she supposed, would have gone on her way unperturbed, refusing to be frowned out of existence and regally contriving to place everyone else in the wrong—"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" in her rehabilitation. Though that was on the stage, of course; she had never seen it in real life.... Anyway, she could not sit on a committee with Violet Loring and know that she was saying to herself, "I can't make out why Jim didn't see through her." Jim neverhadseen through her, he would have cut off his hand to marry her, cut off both hands when she broke the engagement. But Violet Loring would think that God had stepped in just in time to save him—"You're well out of it, my dear! Rather even poor David than you."
It was a long time since she had concentrated her thoughts on David, but it was too late in the evening to fit him into his place. At least it was only half-past nine, but she was too tired to think. It was not much use going to bed, because she obviously could not sleep, but it would be something to turn the lights out. Undressing slowly, she discovered that she had not begun to unpack; all the things that she did not want would be at the top, and all the things that she wanted at the bottom. It really wasnot worth it.... She climbed into bed, wondering for a moment why the sheets were so warm and discovering that she had not taken off her stockings. As she pulled the pillow into the nape of her neck, a comb pressed hard against her head, and she found that she had not brushed her hair. "I suppose a man's like this, when he goes to bed drunk," she told herself. Then her eyes closed, and she fell asleep.
At two, five and seven she woke suddenly, wondering what the vague menace was that had frightened her. It stabbed her mind; her heart quickened its beat, and she lay panting until gradually she passed into a waking dream. At nine she was roused by the chambermaid, who said that a gentleman had called to know if Mrs. David O'Rane was staying in the hotel. He gave no name of his own, but hers was set out in printed capitals.
"Mrs. David O'Rane," she murmured, taking the paper and trying at once to seem unconcerned and yet to identify the writing of the printed letters. "No, it can't be for me. Who did you say brought it?"
"He didn't give any name, ma'am."
"But what was he like?" she asked, conscious that she was speaking too quickly for perfect composure.
"I didn't see him, ma'am. One of the porters brought it up. I'll enquire, if you like."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," Mrs. O'Rane answered. "I was only wondering.... Mrs. David O'Rane.... It can't be meant for me...."
It was well that she had registered without a Christian name, though she had been compelled to give "The Sanctuary" as her address—she had no other; her unknown visitor had apparently not troubled to carry his investigations so far. It was an escape; it was also the first verbal lie that she had ever told.
Then for the day's engagements.... Perhaps nothing would be known as yet; but to-morrow or the next day itwouldbe known, she would not be expected at her Committee; at least, they would wait wondering whether toexpect her or not.... It was better to telegraph and say that she was slightly indisposed....
The past was closed as she left the telegraph office. She had to dodge back, as she caught sight of Lady Loring and the Dowager walking away from the Cathedral, no doubt going through the Park on foot to kill time before their joint committee meeting. Shemustget far away from all these associations and reminders; and shemustfind something to do. All her life she was so restless, she had tried to do too much, she was always looking for new excitements; motherly souls like Lady Maitland always told her that—and then asked her to sell flags outside the War Office. And with every man who fell in love with her there was a phase in which he implored her tenderly and unselfishly to take better care of herself—and then robbed her of her afternoon rest in order to dine early and go to a play. People were wonderfully selfish at heart, especially those like David and Vincent, who made most parade of their unselfishness and devotion.... Even when she stayed away in the country and was supposed to be doing nothing, she was never happy without some diversion; shecouldnot sit down and read or wander about a garden, or go for aimless, dreary walks; she had always needed the stimulus of something to shew her off, to polish and sharpen her, something rival and competing, an audience....
It was not going to be easy to fill her endless day, her life of endless days. When war first broke out, she found that her world was come to an end, that the men were taking commissions and the women training themselves to nurse. She, too, had tried to nurse—and had given it up because the physical strain was too great. Then after her marriage she had collected these committees and acted and sung for charity, but there were very few things that shecoulddo. And she had not learnt to do anything in the interval. A government office might engage her, if she chose to furnish satisfactory references, on unskilled, mechanical work. She would go unrecommended, without qualification.... No.Thatcould be dismissed. She wasnot going to the Foreign Office, say, to have Gerald Deganway sniggering to his friends about her; or to find herself unexpectedly carrying an armful of papers to Sir Harry Merefield, or Lord John Carstairs, who had been transferred from the Diplomatic. Sheknewpeople in all these offices. Before the war she had met them every night at dances....
Of course, a man like Sir Adolphus Erskine with his spider's web of commercial interests would find her work, but she was not going to takehiminto her confidence; he had known her in her glory, when London was at her feet. If she had been in the mood to discuss herself or ask for sympathy, she would have gone the day before to Crowley Court and braved her mother. She had not gone, she would never go; if she had brought this kind of thing on herself, she would go through with it single-handed.
As soon as the Lorings were safely out of sight, she walked into Ashley Gardens on her way back to the hotel. Opposite the Cathedral a car, driven by a girl in livery, was awaiting its owner. Mrs. O'Rane suddenly decided to go up and speak to her.
"I wonder if you'll give me some information," she began with a smile. "I want to know where you have to go to get taken on for a job like that."
"Can you drive a car?" the girl asked.
"I've driven a Fiat and an Argyle and a Mercedes."
"Repairs?" the girl asked in a business-like voice.
"I took the Mercedes up to Scotland single-handed once. I don't say I could take an engine down, but I'm equal to the ordinary things."
The girl considered.
"The General—I drive for General Calverly, you know—" Mrs. O'Rane nodded and turned apprehensively to see whether the General was in sight. They had met a week before at dinner with the Duchess of Ross. "He was asking me the other day if I could find anyone for a friend of his, some man in the Admiralty. I suppose you know your way about London? If you like to giveme your address, I'll mention it to the General. Or, of course, you can go to the school where I went, get yourself tested and then choose for yourself when someone applies. It's the 'Emergency Motor Drivers' in Long Acre. Aren't you Mrs. O'Rane?"
"I am. How did you know that?"
"I thought you must be," the girl answered with a laugh. "I've seen your photograph in the papers so much. The General will probably want you to come and drive for him."
Mrs. O'Rane tried to seem pleased by the compliment when she was only thankful for the warning.
"I'd better go to the school, I think," she said. "They may say I'm not good enough, and I don't like disappointing people. Thanks most awfully. Good-bye."
She hurried away as a portly figure in uniform clattered down the steps, screwing an eye-glass in place, while his driver stiffened to attention.
On the morning after my council of war with the Oakleighs, I telegraphed to Dainton that I was motoring down and suggested that I should pick him up at Crowley Court and drive him into Melton for an interview with O'Rane. He must have guessed, I should have thought, that my mission overnight had failed, but I could see, when we met, that he and his wife were emptily hoping. Both were waiting at the door when I arrived; both looked past me into the empty car, as I got out.
"You couldn't get her to come?" Dainton enquired anxiously. "Ah!"
He was a flabby, ineffectual little man at the best of times, and the shock had made him pathetically more flabby. God knows! it was not my tragedy, and I cannot boast that I am capable of an unusually brave show under affliction, but I wanted to make Dainton throw out his chest and hold his head up—and do some hard manual work and a fewphysical exercises. I wished, for her elevation, too, that his daughter could see the state to which she had reduced him; she was not sufficiently clever or detached to realise how much his limp indulgence had contributed to her pampered, neurotic wilfulness, but the consequences were there for all to mark. Lady Dainton shewed no sign of weakness. She had not slept much, I dare swear, since her husband returned, but she was collected and equal to every demand.
"I expect we shall find lunch waiting," she said, as I came in. "We can only give you cold comfort, I'm afraid. When we turned the house into a hospital, Roger and I only kept two rooms for ourselves, so, if you find my nurses running in to see me every two minutes, don't you know?... I'm glad you were able to come, because we're spending your money here and I want you to see that we're spending it properly."
A table had been laid for us in a room which from its "Vanity Fair" cartoons, gun-cases, "Badminton Library" and estate-maps, I judged to be Dainton's study. The servants were hardly out of the room before he turned to me.
"What happened?" he demanded anxiously. "Catherine knows everything."
"I'm afraid it's rather more and perhaps rather worse than either of you know," I warned him. "I called at the house, and she wasn't there. They'd had a quarrel, and she'd—left him. I've no idea where she is, though George Oakleigh was going to make all possible enquiries to-day. You've not seen O'Rane since last night?"
He shook his head, turning his face away abruptly so that I should not see it, and seemed unable to speak.
"We thought it better to wait till we'd heard from you," explained Lady Dainton. "She's—left this man, you say? I shall want a moment to consider this."
I only broke a long silence because I observed her husband preparing to speak and knew that he would contribute nothing worth hearing.
"As I see it, Lady Dainton," I said, "there's an element of hope. We can never set things as they were before, butwe may prevent them from growing worse. On the one hand, O'Rane maynowconsent to stop proceedings. I've not seen him since he made up his mind to move, I can't say what decided him, but,ifwe're all agreed that we don't want the scandal of a divorce, you may be able to stop it. On the other hand, I've been thinking this over the whole way down and I'm not sure that a divorce isn't the necessary and the best thing for both of them, however painful it may be at the time. Quite clearly your daughter and O'Rane can never take up their old life; you see, there are no children to keep them together, even in appearance; they're both quite young, and I question whether it's fair on either to condemn them to their present state. O'Rane can't wake up in ten years' time and discover that it would be a good thing for both of them to resume their liberty."
Neither spoke for some time. Then Lady Dainton said—
"It's all come so suddenly, don't you know? that one is quite bewildered and stupid. First a divorce and then an idea of stopping it and now an idea of not stopping it.... All of you have known about it so much longer.... By the way, why did you never tell us, Mr. Stornaway? I'm not reproaching you, of course, but as Sonia's mother——"
"I thought about it a great many times," I answered. "Our lips were really sealed by O'Rane. As long as he hoped to get her back, we wanted to spare you all knowledge of it; we wanted to make it easier for her by keeping down the number of people whodidknow."
"You didn't think that I could help to persuade her?"
Lady Dainton might say that she was not reproaching me, but her voice was the embodiment of reproach directed not only at me or the Oakleighs or O'Rane himself, but at our whole sex for presuming to interfere between mother and daughter. I could see that she was confident of her power to restore peace, if only we had not ignored her until it was too late. My nerves were in tatters, I could feel the blood rushing to my head and in my turn I began to grow impatient with her, not for myself or my sex, but for her daughter. If ever the sins of the fathers were visited onthe children, poor Sonia O'Rane was being punished for the lax indulgence and pretentious ambition of her mother; had she once been checked or chidden, had she been allowed to marry some man in her own walk of life instead of being fed with flattery and encouraged to look for what her mother considered a "good match," I should have been spared many months of worry and my present extremely painful interview.
"With great respect, I don't think anyone could have persuaded her," I said. "She started with a preposterous but sincere belief that her husband was unfaithful to her, their life was fantastically impossible, both had strong wills, O'Rane was culpably trustful and Grayle was a man who had been uniformly successful, as it is called, with women. You had all the ingredients of disaster there, though it's always a big thing for a woman to compound them. Once she'd done it, there was no recalling her. I've seen her twice since, Lady Dainton; no power on earth would have sent her back to her husband, even if she'd wanted to go."
She finished her meal in silence, only shrugging her shoulders gently as if to suggest that, however wrong I might be, there was no profit in discussing the past. Dainton kept asking me what I thought O'Rane would do and what we must insist on his doing; I retaliated each time by asking him whether he wanted a divorce or not; and there was never any answer.
I had warned O'Rane that I was coming, but he stiffened perceptibly when the Daintons came in with me. In a moment, however, he was calm, dispassionate and lifeless as I had always found him since the estrangement began. And then for the third time, with the knowledge that our nerves were raw and quivering, I had to tell him of my visit to Milford Square and my meeting with Bannerman and Grayle. We talked as if we were solicitors attending a consultation with counsel, treating O'Rane, and O'Rane treating himself, as the lay client.
"I saw she wasn't coming back to me," he explained, "so I thought the kindest thing was to let her lead her newlife unembarrassed by ties with me. Icouldhave let her bring the petition, I suppose, but I rather draw the line at that. I didn't see, however much I loved her, why I should get up and lie and say I'd been disloyal to her."
The Daintons looked at me, as though they wanted me to be spokesman, and I reminded O'Rane of his offer to stay proceedings, if his wife and Grayle separated.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled mirthlessly.
"It started as blackmail, I'm afraid. Afterwards Ididwant to spare her, if I could—— I hoped she'd come back to me. When she refused ..."
"I was telling Lady Dainton," I said, "that, if you don't expect her to come back, you probably ought—in the interests of you both—to let the proceedings take their course. I know you don't like the idea of it,—we none of us do—but you wouldn't like the idea of her being tied in any way for the rest of her life. Of course, this isn't a thing that you can decide offhand, but, when you consider it, there's one factor you musn't leave out, and that is Grayle."
O'Rane raised his head slowly.
"He doesn't come in now."
"To this extent he does," I said. "If he's cited as co-respondent at the present time, he'll have to retire from public life. You and Dainton and I know that quite positively——"
"I don'tmuchmindwhoretires from public life," he interrupted with a thin-lipped smile.
"But that man's quite capable of quarrelling with your wife—well, not to put too fine a point on it—to get rid of her, to avoid a scandal, to accept your terms. I believe he'd have accepted them that night. I confess I can't make up my own mind what to do...."
O'Rane's head drooped forward for a moment; then he raised it and faced us.
"I can't decide anything, either," he said. "My brain seems to have gone to pulp."
One glance at him was enough. I got up, and he did the same. The Daintons looked at each other and at me,refusing to move, as though they could force a decision by staying there. I shook my head and opened the door into the Cloisters.
"But—before we go——" began Lady Dainton, half-rising.
"The difficulty is that we don't know what we want," I pointed out.
Sir Roger became stammeringly urgent.
"Wedoknow!" he cried. "We want to avoid a scandal, we want to keep our poor Sonia from—you know, all the talk and the papers——"
"But after that?" I asked.
Lady Dainton slipped her hand through her husband's arm and led him through the door. I said good-bye to O'Rane, but he insisted on accompanying us to my car and, when the Daintons were out of ear-shot, enquired whether the news had been a great blow to them.
"I ask, because I should have thought theymusthave had some suspicion of it," he said. "People here don'tsayanything to me, of course, but I'm sure they know. There's a sort of bed-side manner about them; you notice these things, if you're blind; it's as if you were calling on a fellow in hospital, when he's had his leg off, and you're being awfully bright and not seeing any difference.... Is it being discussed in London?"
"I'm afraid it is."
He walked with his face averted.
"What do they say?" he asked, steadily enough.
"That she's living with Grayle and that you're going to divorce her."
O'Rane's pace slackened.
"H'm. The first part's no longer true, the second part isn't true yet. Stornaway, you've been uncommon kind to me; d'you feel disposed to throw good money after bad and help me a bit more? We've been discussing what's thebestthing to do and how we ought to treat Grayle and that sort of thing, but so far we haven't taken Sonia into account much. I want you to find her for me. Do anythingyou like and, when you've found her, discuss with her whatshewants done. I'll—generally speaking, you may tell her I'll do anything. If I drop the petition now and some time later on she wants to be free again,—I don't like it, but I suppose it can be managed; these things have been done before.... As for Grayle——" He shook his head wearily. "I feel our tariff of punishment in this world is so inadequate. You can hang a man who commits a murder, but you can't hang him twice, when he murders two people. He's broken up our two lives pretty much,—and I dare say we weren't the first; if I could make him suffer as much as I'd suffered through him, we still couldn't cry 'quits.' If he loved Sonia—God in Heaven! we all make mistakes! Think how ridiculouslyfewpeople we have to choose from before we marry! We maythinkit's the real thing and afterwards find we were wrong; I was prepared to think that with them, and if she was going to be happier with him...." He stopped abruptly and gripped my arm with fingers of steel. "Do you honestly think he behaved like this, because he was afraid of having his prospects injured by the scandal?"
"That's Bertrand's view," I answered. "He's a very fair ruffian, you know. He would always have an intrigue with a woman, if he thought there was anything to be got out of it; it doesn't require a great stretch of imagination to assume the converse."
We were approaching Big Gate, and he pulled gently at my arm to stop me.
"If that's true, wecan'tleave it where it is," he sighed. "Grayle can't have it both ways. If he doesn't resign his seat in a week, I shall go on with the proceedings."
"But if you decide to go on in any event?"
"Well, he's no worse off. He'll be in private life then with no political career to bother about."
"And if he refuses and you find you can't enforce the threat? I mean, if your wife asks you not to?"
"I shall find some other way of breaking him. This is not a time for thinking about niceties of law."
"He's not the man to surrender easily," I warned O'Rane.
"I don't know that I am," he answered, and the muscles of his cheeks twitched. "Well, my solicitors are in communication with his——"
"Butifhe refuses to be bluffed?" I persisted.
"We'll try some other means," he repeated. "Will you be kind enough to convey my message—you're sure to see him at the House——"
"We're at some pains to avoid each other," I said.
"But you could meet him for my sake—just to give him the message?" O'Rane begged.
I assented without more reluctance than was unavoidable and said good-bye. We drove in silence to Crowley Court, Sir Roger staring with troubled brown eyes out of one window and Lady Dainton, set and unrevealing, out of the other. At the door she offered me tea, but for a hundred reasons I wanted to get away as soon as possible.
"For the present I suppose we can do nothing," she said, as we shook hands. "I rely on you to tell us when you have any news." For the first time she was unable to keep an expression of physical exhaustion out of her eyes. "I don't know what any of you are doing, of course; what steps are being taken to find Sonia."
"I'm making myself personally responsible," I promised her.
Then I drove back to London and arranged with George to dine with me at the Club. After a restless night he had called at eighteen of the likeliest hotels in the hope of arriving at news of Mrs. O'Rane for the comfort of her husband and parents. Someone of the same surname was staying at the Grosvenor, but it was not Sonia. I described my visits to Crowley Court and Melton, and we concerted a plan for tracking her to her hiding-place.
Two years and a quarter in the government service had made George more of a "handy-man" than I have ever met before or since. He knew the right official in every department for hurrying through the most diverse business for the largest number of friends. If news were required of aprisoner-of-war, if cigars were wanted out of bond for the use of a neutral Legation, if a German governess had to be repatriated, a passport obtained, naturalisation papers taken out, export permits secured, George would triumph in the quickest possible time over the greatest possible obstacles. It was absurd, he told me, to advertise or insert cryptic messages in the "agony" column of the "Times"; absurder still to employ detectives. For what other purpose did Hugh Mannerly and the Alien Control Department exist? He telephoned to the Home Office forthwith, but Mr. Mannerly had praetermitted his control of aliens in the interests of dinner.
"I'll get on to him to-morrow," he promised. "We'll have every hotel and boarding house in London searched for her; and, if she's not in town, we'll go to work in the country. It will take a day or two, but Hugh Mannerly is unfailing and perfectly discreet."
After my tribute to George and his to Mannerly, I am sorry to record that the first three days of the hunt were blank. It was ascertained, indeed, that Mrs. O'Rane had stayed at the Grosvenor for the night, and that her address was fully inscribed in the Visitors' Book. ("Damned fool I was not to call for the book!" George exclaimed. "I felt certain it must be her and then, when they said it wasn't, I felt equally certain that it couldn't be.") Where she had gone from the hotel no one knew.
"She's staying with friends somewhere in town," George decided, "or else she's gone out of London. I'll get Mannerly to work again outside. I've spoken to a friend of mine in the Permit Office, so she can't leave the country, and I've found out from Raney that she banks with Philpott's in Victoria Street. Mannerly's told the manager to watch the account and report all lodgements and drawings; if she deals by post, we may find out whereabouts she is and, if she comes to the bank in person, we can arrange for the manager to keep her there till we arrive."
I confess that, however efficient George might be, I found him a little high-handed.
"I'm the complete bureaucrat," he assented grimly, polishing his pipe on the sleeve of his uniform. "And I may tell you that, when I consider the opportunities for oppression afforded by the public service, I'm amazed at my own moderation. Anyone would start a revolution to-morrow, if he knew the black conspiracy against personal liberty which a few thousand of us are carrying out."
Once again, after being promised the full sinister support of all the conspirators, I feel ungracious in having to record that the utmost efforts of Mr. Hugh Mannerly failed to produce any result. His department, let me say, was admirably organised, and a ridiculously short time passed before I was informed that no one giving the name of Sonia O'Rane or Mrs. David O'Rane was registered in any hotel or licensed lodging-house throughout England, Scotland or Wales. The manager of the Victoria Street branch of Philpott's Bank, with a disregard for the confidential relations between a bank and its customers which would have amazed me in peace-time, stated that Mrs. O'Rane had personally cashed a cheque for twenty pounds three days before, that her balance—unusually large, I imagined, for her—was one hundred and eighty-seven pounds fourteen shillings and five pence, that no lodgements had been made since the beginning of the month, but that he would promptly report all future transactions so long as Mr. Mannerly desired him to do so.
"I telegraphed to Dainton, after I'd been to see Hugh," George told me. "As we haven't struck oil so far, I thought it would be useful to apply a little more pressure. I imagine Sonia must be living now solely on her father's allowance, so I suggested that he should stop it and see what happened when she'd exhausted her present funds. It's funny about Hugh; he's usually so good.... A nuisance, too, because time's so important. You see Lloyd-George is getting out his Ministry? About two-thirds of the offices seem to be allocated with some certainty."
"Have they found a place for Grayle yet?" I asked.
"He's mentioned for all sorts of places," was the answer.
I felt that the Government might not want to include Grayle until he had cleared himself. People were still asking vaguely whether it was true about Grayle, but no one could find flesh wherewith to clothe the bones of the scandal. Grayle himself had not crossed my path since our warm parting in Milford Square; indeed, everyone who button-holed me to discuss appointments or ask my view of the rumour admitted by implication that he had not seen Grayle. Someone—I cannot remember who—told me that he had left London on one of the surprise visits to G.H.Q., which with Grayle played the same part as the old "diplomatic chill" of other days. As the government of the country and the conduct of the war were at a standstill, as members of both houses were flocking back to Westminster from all quarters to join in the scramble for office, I found this explanation unconvincing.
I was soon to find it baseless. In fulfilment of my promise, I sent a note by hand to Grayle's house, asking him to meet me on urgent business at a time and place to be arranged by him. My messenger, who had been instructed to enquire whether Grayle was at home, reported that he had received my note with his own hands and had replied that there was no answer.
As Grayle would not come to see me, I had to go and see Grayle.
I did not want to call in Milford Square unattended,—for Grayle had said in his haste that he would thrash me out of the house with a crop, and I knew that he would only disappoint me from motives of prudence. Had he been accessible, I should have liked to have George at hand to ring the bell and, if necessary, to send for the police; and, if prudence so far triumphed over natural impulse as to allow Grayle to discuss terms, George would once more be a useful witness to balance Bannerman.
Failing George, I was at a loss to know whom to invite, for Bertrand was too old to be embroiled in such an undertaking. Beresford, of course, was in the secret and I was wondering whether he would really conduce to the harmony of debate, when his card was brought in with a request for five minutes' conversation on private business.
"I came to see if you'd had any news of Sonia," he began, as the door closed. "I've been on the look-out so far as my leg would let me. You see, in the old days, when we were together so much, I knew something of her haunts and habits. I haven't found a trace. At least, not of her."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He pulled forward a deed-box and rested his leg on it, smiling grimly to himself.
"Do you remember the first and only time you honoured me with a call?" he asked. "It was to say that the authorities were watching my articles very closely, one night when Sonia came to see me, and younaturallyassumed——"
"Appearances were against you," I said, "and it was criminally foolish, anyway."
"Well, well!" He smiled with sardonic indulgence. "We won't waste time on that. Appearances have been pretty consistently against me beforeandafter, until the night when O'Rane tried to strangle me. Has it ever occurred to you that appearances werefabricatedagainst me? We know that Grayle let you all think—and Sonia, too, but she'd lost her head.... I find that the thing goes much further back. I never told you about my exploits when you were in America, did I?" he went on, nursing his injured leg. "The first time they imprisoned me? There isn't much to tell, but it's illuminating. I'd been writing for weeks in the 'Watchman'—all above board and over my own name. You, no doubt, would call it pernicious stuff—or you would have then; people are coming round to my views a bit more now—I just told the truth...."His eyes suddenly flashed, reviving my sense that I was dealing with a man who might any day be certified insane. "The whole truth and nothing but the truth! The magistrate nearly choked when bits of my articles were read aloud in court.... Well, all copy has to be in by Tuesday morning, we go to press on Thursday, and the paper comes out on Friday. I had my usual two sets of proofs delivered on the Wednesday; I corrected one and sent it back, the other I tore in two and threw into the waste-paper basket. The next day——"
"Where did this take place?" I interrupted.
"At 'The Sanctuary.' Didn't I say that? The next day, when our housekeeper opened the office, he found an assortment of the police with the usual warrants to search the place and confiscate anything that took their fancy. By the time they'd taken our ledgers, our subscribers' register, our letter-books, file copies and the whole of that week's issue, there wasn't much for the delivery vans, when they turned up at nine, and literally nothing at all for the editor and me at half-past ten except two nice, kind gentlemen who put us under immediate arrest. Quick work, wasn't it? You'd have thought that not a soul outside that office could have known for certain that I was even writing that week, still less that I'd written anything stronger than the usual articles. I suspected at the time, but I couldn't bring myself to believe that Grayle would go to that length to get me out of the way; I knew it bored him to see Sonia talking to me, but he had a fair slice of her time, and I didn't think then that he was more than flirting with her. Well, that was the first step."
He paused to beg a cigarette.
"Go on," I said, as I threw over my case.
"Well, that broke down, because I did a hunger-strike, and they had to let me out. There was another misfire about the army——"
"I heard about that," I interrupted.
"About the misfire? I wonder if you did—the early part, I mean. Do you know that I attested in the old voluntarydays? Ah, I thought not. I kept that to myself—for fear of seeming patriotic," he added with a sneer. "Well, when the Derby recruiting scheme came on, there was enough hanky-panky to sicken you. I don't need to tell you that I'm not in love with war or the idea of driving people out like sheep to be slaughtered, but, if you have it, let it hit all classes alike. From the very first, anyone who was strong enough to resist could be sure of getting off. The miners said they'd strike, if anyone tried to conscribethem; the Civil Service decided for itself that no one could get on without it. Well, I thought this wanted shewing up, so I went along to Great Scotland Yard to collect evidence at first hand. I got it right enough. The first men I saw were a hulking lot with a crowd of papers in their hands to declare that they were indispensable to the satisfactory working of their departments—people like that young sot Maitland;—they'd been forbidden even to attest till that day, but the numbers weren't keeping up, so they were turned on to keep things going. (I believe the police and the Merchant Marine were dragged in, too, just to give the thing a fillip.) The doctors hardly troubled to look at me before I was rejected; which was a pity, because I wanted copy about the medical examination; but rejected I was, fair and square, with a certificate and, I suppose, some record on their books. In time the Military Service Bill was passed, and I found myself called up. Now, it may have been an honest blunder.... It's certainly a damned odd coincidence."
As he paused to laugh, I was more than ever struck by his likeness to a grinning skull with a wig on it.
"But the coincidences were only just beginning," he went on. "It was a coincidence that someone should have been nosing round among my papers—I don't know who it was, I hardly ever lock anything, least of all my own front door. But Ithoughtone night that things looked unusual. I have my own taste in untidiness. Then someone let out to O'Rane that I was being watched once more. (If I didn't seem grateful that night, it was because you weredevilishly in the way and weren't telling me anything I didn't know before.) Then came another warrant, another search and another arrest. By one of thesecuriouscoincidences it was all on the day when O'Rane was due back at Melton, the day when, by one last coincidence, Grayle got back from France earlier than he'd been expected." Beresford raised his hand and brought it resoundingly down on the table. "I can prove nothing!" he cried. "I only say that this succession of coincidences—it's queer. And, if I was a nuisance to Grayle in the early days, he found me very useful later on. My God! what would I not do to get level with that man! Thank the Lord! there's no Christian forgiveness about me. I'll leave that to people with more time on their hands. I've a great deal to get through in a very short space and I'd like to do him in once for myself and three times for Sonia. Is O'Rane taking any steps?"
"There are limits tohispowers of forgiveness," I answered reassuringly. "I'm calling on Grayle to-night to suggest that he should retire from the House."
The same light of fanatical hatred came into Beresford's eyes.
"I'd give something to be there!" he cried.
I looked at him and resumed the train of thought which his entrance had interrupted. I knew that he could control himself, if he tried, but I did not know whether he would try.
"I was thinking of asking you, when you came in," I said. "You're in the secret, and I don't want to admit anyone else. You know what happens! Everyone tells everyone else on condition that it doesn't go any farther. But can you be trusted to behave yourself? I want you as a witness, and you may have to call for help, if Grayle tries to fulfil his promise of thrashing me out of the house. But you're not to speak, you're not to attempt any violence, you're not to bring even an umbrella with you. Frankly, you see, I'm not inviting you for your amusement, but for my convenience."
I could see his teeth grating.
"I expect I shall get my amusement out of it," he answered.
"Of course, we may not be able to get into the house, but we'll go together. But you promise not to open your mouth or raise a finger?"
Beresford pushed away the deed-box and held out his hand.
"I promise," he said.
It was a wet, starless night when we arrived in Milford Square at ten o'clock. I dismissed my taxi, rang the bell and waited. There was no answer, and I rang again. It was inconceivable that, to keep me out of the house, Grayle had disconnected the front door bell or given instructions that it was to be disregarded on principle.
"I'm afraid I've brought you on a fool's errand," I said to Beresford, as I rang a third time.
We looked to right and left for a second bell, an area door or any other promise of admission. Two interested maids from a neighbouring house joined our search-party, and a constable flashed his bull's-eye impartially on us all and asked if we had lost anything.
"I'm trying to get into this house," I said, pointing to Grayle's door, "and I can't make anyone hear."
He pondered for a moment and then led us into the Brompton Road.
"There was a light in the studio, when I came on duty. You may be able to get in that way."
We groped through a narrow passage to a wooden door set in a high brick wall. Over our heads I could see the outline of two windows, securely curtained but with a phosphorescent border. There was neither bell nor knocker to the door, but I battered resonantly on the thick, blistered panels with my umbrella. For perhaps two minutes there was no answering sound, and I banged again. This time I was rewarded by the slam of a door, the noise of feet on a stone passage and the rasp of a heavy key. The door opened, and my eyes, which were grown used by nowto the darkness, recognised the massive outlines of Guy Bannerman.
"Hullo? Who are you? What d'you want?" he demanded sharply.
I slipped the end of my umbrella into the doorway.
"Is Grayle at home, Guy?" I asked. "I'm Raymond Stornaway, if you don't recognise my voice. I have to see him on very important business."
There can be few minor humiliations so disconcerting as to slam a door and find that it will not close.
"You'll only ruin a good umbrella, Guy," I said. "Listen to reason, man. You remember our talk the last time I was here? You know that Grayle's by way of being cited as a co-respondent?"
"Take your umbrella out!" Guy whispered angrily, feeling for it with his foot, but not daring to detach either hand from the door.
"I've come with a proposal from O'Rane," I said.
The energetic foot relaxed its industry.
"Grayle's given orders that you're not to be admitted," he said.
"I know. And you're enough in his confidence to say whether he's likely to be interested by hearing O'Rane's proposal. I sent him a note this morning, but he didn't see fit to acknowledge it. If he's going to take the same line now, tell me at once, and I'll go away. If, on the other hand, he'll let us in and behave himself, we'll come. I may tell you, as I've already told Grayle, that I don't come to see him for any morbid pleasure which I may derive from our meetings!"
Discretion and discipline did battle within Guy's spirit, and at length he asked, "Who's 'us'?"
"I have Beresford with me," I said.
"I can't lethimin," was the prompt reply.
"Then we'll go home, Beresford," I said. "Good-night, Guy. Open the door a fraction of an inch so that I can get my umbrella out, there's a good fellow."
He did as I asked him, though guardedly. I pulled at theumbrella, turned my back and started down the passage, followed reluctantly by Beresford. I walked briskly for fear of spoiling the effect, and, before I had gone ten yards, Guy was running heavily after me.
"If you care to leave a message," he began, bringing a massive hand to rest on my shoulder.
"I don't," I interrupted.
"But, look here, Stornaway——!"
I walked on and, omitting certain obvious intermediate stages, found Beresford and myself shortly afterwards ensconced in arm-chairs before the fire in Bannerman's match-boarded, paper-strewn work-room over the garage at the end of Grayle's garden. Our surroundings were serviceable rather than sybaritic. Oil-cloth, a fur hearth-rug and a couple of Japanese mats covered the floor; the walls were concealed, half by stout blue volumes of the Parliamentary Debates, half by a map of Canada, another of British South Africa and a third of the Western Front. A double writing-table stood in the middle of the room with a sloping desk, an oil reading-lamp and three numbered deed-boxes. There was a reek of petrol from a private and probably illegitimate pyramid of leaking tins, which had projected themselves upstairs from the garage.
Guy produced some cigars and left us to take care of ourselves while he reconnoitred the house.
"I've let you in on my own responsibility," he said, as he opened the door leading into the garden. "Whether he'll see you or not I can't tell."
"I think he will see us," I murmured to Beresford, when we were alone.
I for one had satisfied my intellectual cravings for Canadian geography, when we heard steps approaching on the gravel. A moment later Grayle was framed, though he had to stoop for it, in the doorway. He looked at me with a frown which deepened at sight of Beresford.
"Well?" he demanded.
"Good evening, Grayle," I said. "I've come with a message from O'Rane."
"What are you doing here?" he asked Beresford.
The promise was honourably observed, and there was no answer.
"I brought him as a witness in case you shewed any tendency to be violent," I said. "Grayle, O'Rane thinks that, the sooner you give up your seat in the House, the better. For what it's worth, I agree with him."
He was still standing in the doorway with his fingers on the handle. Clearly he expected something more.
"Is that all?" he asked.
"All," I said, as I got up from my chair.
"Then what the hell d'you want to come here for, wasting my time?" he thundered. "You told Bannerman you'd got a proposal to make!"
"O'Rane proposes that you should retire from public life," I explained. "I always think it's better to do a thing voluntarily than under compulsion."
On that he left the doorway and came into the room.
"This is a threat, is it?" he asked, looking down on me with arms akimbo.
"A forecast," I substituted. "I see from the papers that you may be invited to join the Government. You will never join the Government, Grayle, or, if you do, you'll leave it before you have time to find out where your office is. If you retire voluntarily, you may live to an honoured old age; if you force O'Rane to go through with his petition, I'm afraid you'll have a very ugly fall."
Grayle loosened his belt, though with too much deliberate preoccupation to suggest that he was about to use it as an argument in favour of our retirement; then he unbuttoned his tunic, removed a bundle of papers from a woollen khaki waistcoat and transferred them to one of his outside breast-pockets.
"Do you know? your forecast does not strike me as exhaustive," he observed, as he settled his belt in place once more. "As a preliminary, however, does O'Rane propose to go on with the divorce?"
"Frankly, I can't tell you," I said. "He would like toconsult his wife's wishes. I make no bones about telling you, Grayle, that you get very little out of any proposed arrangement. If she wants a divorce, your—fair name, shall we call it?—is smirched, whatever you do; but I fancy, unless you find your parliamentary duties too exacting for your enfeebled health—and that within one week from to-night,—your fair name will be smirched whether she wants a divorce or not. I can't say what's in her mind, of course, but, if you accept defeat at once, there's a fifty per cent. chance that you'll escape a scandal in which, when all's said and done, you don't cut a very gallant figure. By the way, I have to have your answer to-night."
"My answer's 'no.'"
It was given without hesitation and, so far as I could see, without bluff. I have been connected with large commercial enterprises long enough to be a tolerable judge.
"I'll let O'Rane know at once," I said, getting up again and motioning Beresford to do the same. "It will be an unsavoury case, Grayle."
"Which is presumably the reason he's so unwilling to go on with it," Grayle sneered. "But make no mistake who comes out of it worst.Hehasn't bothered to think. Your—proposal I reject with thanks, but I'll make another. You're quite right in thinking that I would sooner not be mixed up in these proceedings any more; if O'Rane will give me a written undertaking to drop themhere—and—nowand never to revive them, we can let it rest at that."
Beresford had not promised to refrain from laughter, and I excused it as the only possible comment on the offer.
"Come along," I said to him. "We're wasting the nation's time; and the nation won't have the benefit of it much longer."
Grayle shrugged his shoulders and led the way to the door on the lane.
"So be it!" he said. "Yet mine was a fairer bargain than yours. There was at least aquid pro quo."
"I'm afraid I don't see it."
"Then I'm afraid your principals haven't instructed youvery thoroughly," he answered impatiently. "From your general tone to me, you evidently think that I've behaved very badly, that it was my fault, that the sympathy of the court will be entirely with O'Rane and his wife. It may be with O'Rane," he added meaningly. "I'll tell you at once that I propose to defend the action and, though it's only guess-work, I shall be very much surprised if O'Rane gets a decree.... If helikeswashing his wife's dirty linen in public, that's his affair, but what seems to have been overlooked is the attitude of Mrs. O'Rane throughout. To begin with, I can call witnesses to prove that O'Rane repeatedly proclaimed that he wouldn't raise a finger to keep his wife, if she preferred to risk her happiness with another man. She used to sayshewouldn't stay with him, if she was unhappy; I can produce witnesses who'll testify to that, too. Any pretence, therefore, that I burst in on a happily married couple and forced them apart is historically untrue. And this will come out in court. But what matters more from the point of view of Mrs. O'Rane's reputation is the evidence—I think you were with me, Stornaway, when she rang me up one night at the House. What you've overlooked in your haste to condemn me, what O'Rane's overlooked in his haste to save his wife's reputation is the part played by his wife. I'll accept full responsibility for my share of whatever's happened, but I'm afraid you'll find it won't ease your position. Mrs. O'Rane's letters to me, which will, of course, be read in court, prove that it was she and she alone——"
It was not difficult to imagine the end of the sentence. Grayle spoke with the bored indifference of a man who has had unwelcome attentions thrust upon him, who has tolerated them as long as he can, but who at last and at the risk of wounding an importunate mistress.... I never heard it, though, because Beresford, unpardonably if excusably forgetting his promise of silence and immobility, had twitched my umbrella from my grasp and whirled it backhanded into Grayle's face with a cry of,
"You cad! you cad! youbloodycad!"
The moment that the blow was struck I felt that lives would be lost before we parted. Beresford had come to the house clamorous for blood, I will admit at once that I had wrapped a taunt round every word that I had spoken, and for weeks Grayle had been in a state only describable as eruptive. I found time, however, with that curious detachment which a brain shews when it is working with twice its usual clarity and speed to reflect what an absurd and incongruous trio we made; Beresford dying of consumption, all skin and bones held together by will-power—lame, shabby, ill-groomed, with two blazing eyes in a parchment-coloured face; Grayle towering over the pair of us, blue-eyed, pink-cheeked—with a thread of blood running from one corner of his mouth,—yellow-haired, like some giant's child in uniform; and, if I could have seen myself, I should have looked on a plump, middle-aged man with, I believe, a benevolent expression, a good many wrinkles on the forehead and round the eyes and a thick crop of prematurely white hair.
Beresford's action was so unexpected and sudden that we—and I include him—were temporarily paralysed. After the brief outburst there followed a silence in which we seemed to be waiting for the end of the world to be proclaimed. Then Grayle put his hand to his face and brought it away wet. I watched him raise his eyebrows at the sight, walk to the door opening on to the garden, turn the key and pocket it. (I suddenly remembered being bullied at Eton.)
"He brought this on himself," he observed quietly to me; and, before I had leisure to guess what he intended or see what he was doing, he had gripped Beresford by the collar, lifted him off his feet and was belabouring him with his stick until the ribs cracked like dry wood in a hot fire. At the end of six swift blows the stick broke in two, and he looked round for another weapon. A round office ruler met our gaze at the same moment, and from opposite sideswe pounced on it simultaneously and simultaneously caught hold of it. I had two hands to his one, however, and with a wrench I contrived to twist it out of his grasp.
"Drop him!" I cried, but Grayle only looked round for means to renew the attack. "I'll break your arm, if you don't."
His grip on Beresford, who was still dangling and writhing in the air with his face purple and his feet rapping out a tattoo on the oil-cloth, never relaxed. I raised the ruler above my head and brought it down on Grayle's forearm with all the strength that I could muster. I had aimed at his wrist, but a plunge by Beresford spoiled my aim. Grayle gave some body-twist, which I was too much preoccupied to see, and an instant later I felt his powerful fingers inside my collar and my head being savagely bumped against Beresford's. Every other time my ear was crushed against his fleshless skull, and the pain was excruciating. I made ineffectual backward sweeps with the ruler, hitting Beresford as often as I hit Grayle; I battered on his fingers and tried to drag them away from his collar, but every effort that I made and every new injury that I inflicted made him the drunker with lust of battle. The side of my head felt bruised to pulp, and, when I put my hand up to protect it, Grayle only laughed like a maniac and changed his hold so that he could avoid the buffer and bang us on our unprotected brows.
Beresford was limp and crowing, I breathless and sweating before it occurred to me to use my feet. Exploring for Grayle's shins with my heel, I made sure of my mark and lashed out and up as hard as I could kick. It is to be presumed that I caught him on his injured knee, for I heard a gasp of pain, we were jerked abruptly backwards, and Grayle slowly subsided, like a wounded bull in the ring, dragging us on top of him. For a moment we lay motionless; then I heard Beresford's struggles for breath beginning again with feverish, rumbling acceleration. He had fallen on the mat in front of the fire, and his face was pressed so close to the bars that the heat must have beenblinding and insupportable. I saw him trying to make a screen of his hands and heard a diabolical laugh from Grayle. The sound gave me new strength, and I tugged at my collar till it burst away from the stud and remained emptily in Grayle's hands while I struggled to my feet.
I had always imagined that, however desperate my plight, I should refrain from some methods of warfare, yet now I struck again and again at the wounded knee, I kicked him in the wind and, if this last had not sent him rolling and gasping on to his side, I believe I might have tried to gouge his eyes out. It was the only time that I had ever had to fight for my life; the instinct to live was stronger and more resourceful than I had imagined.
As Grayle's fingers relaxed, I pulled Beresford away from the fire and set him on his feet with his back to the wall. He was not seriously injured, despite the drubbing from Grayle's stick, and, as soon as he could breathe again, I saw him preparing to meet a fresh attack. My one hope was to escape before Bannerman broke down the locked door and redressed the balance in our numbers, before, too, Grayle had collected enough wind to resume hostilities. Without waiting for my hat and coat, I hurried to the door leading by the stone passage to the lane and flung it open, calling on Beresford to follow me. As I turned on the threshold, he made no sign of moving. I called again, telling him that there was no time to be lost, for Grayle had taken his hands away from the pit of his stomach and was testing his leg before getting up. Beresford also saw that no time was to be lost, but, instead of making for the door, he threw himself on top of his antagonist and dug furiously in the pocket where Grayle had so ostentatiously secreted his bundle of papers.
Though the struggle was resumed with more than all of its old fury, I remember having another interval of lucid detachment. I had intervened before, because Beresford was being murdered, but I had not come there to steal papers which did not belong to me and I could not come to his assistance again.
"Break away!" I roared at them, picking up my ruler again and hitting both impartially.
I might as usefully have expended my energies on beating the floor. Both were too busily engaged to heed me until with a short-arm blow of well-nigh incredible force Grayle lifted his assailant into the air and dropped him again into the fireplace. Then he scrambled on to one knee and faced me.
"Stay where you are, or I'll brain you!" I cried.
He dragged himself forward, and at that I struck. I was more frightened than I have ever been in my life before or since, for, if the phrase have a meaning, there was murder in Grayle's eyes at that moment. The ruler came down on the top of his head with an echoing crack, and his trunk reeled. I hit again, though my first blow was dyeing his hair crimson. This time a hand shot up in defence and grasped the ruler. I pulled until I had dragged him forward on his face, but he only added a second hand and twisted against me, as I had twisted against him three minutes earlier. It was a question of seconds before I was disarmed, and I contrived that, as he possessed himself of the weapon, I could spring to the far side of the writing-table, ready to feint and dodge when he began the attack.