If I could have persuaded anyone else to carry O'Rane's warning to Beresford, I would have done so, but old Bertrand and George had crossed to Ireland for a week's fishing, and, when I called on Mrs. O'Rane in the hope of catching her for ten minutes in a serious mood, it was my ill-luck to choose the night before Pentyre went out to the Front. An impromptu dance was taking its noisy course, and the only satisfaction which I derived from the visit was my discovery that the estrangement was not yet common property. Indeed, Mrs. O'Rane was fortunate in that her behaviour, however outrageous, was judged and condoned by a special standard. "That's so like darling Sonia," Lady Maitland and her like would say. I took the trouble to pump young Deganway, whom I personally dislike, but even his long nose had not scented a scandal. It never seemed to dawn on Sir Roger and Lady Dainton that anything was amiss; they both disapproved of O'Rane, they both felt, without taking the trouble to disguise their feelings, that Sonia had disappointed their ambitions and was wasting her life; but with a curious timidity or survival of self-respect Mrs. O'Rane never let her own relations see that eight months after her marriage she was in effect separated from her husband.
Failing to transfer my burden to other shoulders, I drove one night to Sloane Square and ran Beresford to earth in his rooms at the top of a modest block of service flats. There was no lift, and I was out of breath and temper by the time that I had climbed eight flights of stairs and lost myself in an uncharted maze of stone-flagged passages. At last, with a stitch in my side, I found his name painted on a wall and leaned helplessly against the door, as I looked for the bell. The door yielded unexpectedly, and I found myselfstumbling into an unlighted passage, where a phosphorescent rectangle hinted at a second door. Groping for the handle, I knocked and entered. Beresford was lying in an arm-chair with the injured leg on a coffin-stool and a reading lamp on a rickety oriental table behind him. In semi-darkness the room was youthfully bizarre. There were low cases, filled with paper-labelled books, running round three walls, a window with a divan under it in the fourth, Japanese silk hangings above the book-cases and praying mats insecurely scattered on an over-polished floor. The furniture consisted of a red lacquer cupboard, chest and clock; in one corner a Buddha smiled from behind folding doors with placid and baffling benevolence; a discoloured Moorish lamp hung from the middle of the ceiling with the Hand of Welcome outstretched to support it; a joss-stick in a porcelain vase on the mantel-piece smouldered fragrantly.
At the creak of the door's opening, Beresford raised himself abruptly in his chair and as quickly subsided.
"Oh, it's you," he said.
"I didn't see any bell, so I walked in," I told him. "Are you busy?"
Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the table beside him. There was neither paper nor book to offer plausible protection.
"I didn't look for this honour," he said with a slight sneer. "I was—as a matter of fact—thinking out an article,—thing I've got to finish to-night, you know." I sniffed—disapprovingly, I fear—the close, rather sickly atmosphere and loosened my coat. "It's a few reflections on the anniversary of the 'Lusitania,'" he went on, in a tone of challenge, "pabulum for thoughtful Yanks. Do you want to see me about anything in particular? I—I've got to get this finished to-night."
His theme gave me my cue, and I furnished him with a digest of my conversation with O'Rane. He heard me out, impatiently but without protest.
"I'm sure it's very kind of you both," he said at length, "but I'm afraid it's no use. We should never have had thiswar, if a few other people had done what I'm doing instead of blathering about peace and disarmament in a sixpenny review, like young Oakleigh, and throwing everything to the winds the moment war was declared. I appreciate your coming, all the same——"
He pulled himself upright and limped to the lacquer cupboard, from which he took out a writing-block and pad. I was ready and anxious to leave as soon as I had delivered myself of my message, but—petty as it may seem—I resented his hunting me out of his flat quite so unceremoniously; hitherto I had perched on the arm of a chair; I now lowered myself with an obstinacy unbecoming my age into its depths.
"But surely you can see that it's no good trying to separate fighting dogs when once they've got to work? That's why George brought his paper to an end. You've got to wait for a decision of some kind."
"We reached a decision when the Germans were checked at the Marne," he yawned, pulling back his sleeve to consult the watch on his wrist.
"But that's over and done with. Any peace efforts now only have the effect of weakening our own endurance and making a German victory the one possible decision."
"But you know as well as I do that there's going to be no military decision. If they couldn't break through our line, we can't break through theirs, and I want to stop this hideous slaughter on both sides. I want to make people see that they must get Wilson or the Pope to propose terms of arbitration." The pupils of his eyes suddenly dilated. "And that's what I shall go on saying. I'm not going to be persuaded by you, I can't be intimidated by the militarists, and I won't share your responsibility for future bloodshed, I won't join in this criminal nonsense about crushing Prussian militarism—humiliating Germany until you've made sure of another war in ten years' time. I think I've told you what the next war will be like." His voice had risen almost to a scream; with an effort he controlled himself, snorteddisgustedly and limped to the sofa where I had laid my hat and cane, considerately picking them up for me.
I moved towards the door. As I did so, my ears caught the sound of a low whistle, followed in the ensuing silence by a light step and the rustle of silk clothes from the flagged passage outside the front door. At last I understood why it had been left open, why the industrious Beresford was unoccupied on my arrival, why he had given me so many encouragements to retire. An unexpected sense of male freemasonry made me sorry for him. There was but the one door to the room, and already the rustle had passed from the passage outside and was audible in the dark corridor where I had fumbled for the handle twenty minutes before. Beresford stared before him with tragic eyes and parted lips; he grasped my wrist and let it fall again; then the door opened, and I could hear a double quick intake of breath.
Mrs. O'Rane was standing on the threshold in a black dress with an ermine coat open at the neck, an artificial pink rose in her hair and a cluster of them at her waist. One hand in a white glove circled with a platinum watch-bracelet rested on the finger-plate, and she smiled at Beresford demurely. The smile grew fixed and then faded when she saw who bore Beresford company; with unfeigned admiration I saw her collecting herself and preparing an offensive.
"Are you better?" she asked, coming into the room as though she were paying an afternoon call. "Good evening, Mr. Stornaway. Peter's not been at all well, and I promised to come and talk to him. I hope I'm not interrupting you; I'm rather before my time." She glanced at her watch, laid her hands on Beresford's shoulders and gently impelled him towards his chair. "Darling Peter, how often have I told you that you mustn't stand? Sit down like a good boy, put your foot up and tell me how you got on with the doctor."
She seated herself on the arm of his chair, waved me to another and threw open her coat.
"They took the blood-tests," said Beresford, gallantlytrying to imitate her nonchalance. "I'm to lie up and not to work.... At least, those are the orders."
Bending over him, she touched his forehead with her lips.
"And you're going to obey them," she said.
Beresford shrugged his shoulders sullenly.
"What good will it do?" he demanded.
"It will please me," she answered promptly. "Lady Maitland says that all I want is love, ten thousand a year and my own way. I don't want you to die, Peter mine."
He looked at her and turned his head resignedly away.
"I feel sometimes I've not got a great deal to live for," he sighed.
She jumped up with a show of indignation.
"You dare say that, when I've outraged Colonel Grayle by leaving his party to come and sit with you! Never again, my Peter! If you think so little of having me here——"
"It would be better for him and more seemly for you to drop this kind of thing," I suggested.
She looked at me with her head on one side and then swung slowly round to Beresford.
"I believe he's right, you know, Peter. I come here radiating sunniness, but I only seem to depress you. Shall I give you up, baby?"
"You think that will make me less depressed?" he asked gloomily.
"I feel I'm a bad habit." Her expression lost its smile and became charged with abrupt neurotic irritability. "You've had more of my time, more of my sweetness——"
"Do you think I don't appreciate that?"
"I ought never to have let you fall in love with me. Mr. Stornaway's quite right. It's all my fault, and the sooner I end it the better. Good-bye, Peter. It was a mistake, but I'm not ungrateful. When I was miserable, when I wanted sweetness——"
Beresford jerked himself erect and caught her arm, as she tried to get up.
"You're not going?" he begged.
"Yes. And I'm never coming back."
"God in Heaven! Sonia! Don't say that!"
For perhaps the fourth time that night I picked up my hat and cane. However little I might care for Beresford, common humanity ordained that this kind of game should end.
"This fellow's an invalid," I reminded her. "You're only making him worse by exciting him. You had better let me see you home. Taxis are few and far between, and I took the precaution of telling mine to wait."
She turned her little platinum watch to the light and compared it with the clock on the mantel-piece.
"I can get a train, you know," she told me, losing all her irritability and becoming matter-of-fact. "And I hate going to bed more than anything in the world except getting up. When we had a house in Rutland Gate my first season, Lord John Carstairs who lived next door always used to say that he knew it was time for breakfast when he heard my taxi bringing me home after a ball. So nice to feel that one sometimes really does one's duty to one's neighbour; it justifies the church catechism. He was very grateful about it and, whenever I lost my latch-key, he used to come down and help me in through the fan-light. Then there was a dreadful day when I got stuck on a piece of broken glass—father's bill for fan-lights was so heavy that we couldn't take a moor that year; he always thought it was the suffragettes—and Lord John stood below in the divinest green silk pyjamas and an Austrian military cloak, I lay half-way through the fan-light, we exhausted every possible topic of conversation, including the Academy, and at last he proposed to me. I've never been so angry in my life! If he'd proposed first and talked about the Academy afterwards, nobody could have minded."
Having prattled herself into a good temper, she paused to take a cigarette from a gold case at her wrist. I reminded her that we had lost sight of the particular in the general.
"It is late," I said. "Too late for you to be calling onyoung bachelors and far too late to be left unchaperoned."
Her big brown eyes, usually soft and entreating, gave forth a glint of defiance.
"Dear Mr. Stornaway! If you knew how often I'd been to see Peter——"
"That makes it no better."
"You think I'm not respectable," she exclaimed with the slightest perceptible toss of the head.
"I've other things to think about. If you want to call on Beresford, you can call in the day-time; your only reason for choosing an hour of this kind is that you think there's something rather venturesome and improper about it. It's this sort of behaviour that led me on a famous occasion to tell you that you were second-rate."
Possibly acting on a hint from George Oakleigh, I was beginning to share his experience that Mrs. O'Rane never resented a certain brutal candour of criticism.
"You do hate me, don't you?" she laughed.
"I have no use for the second-rate."
"And that disposes of me!" She leant down and drew Beresford to her until his head was pillowed on her bosom. "Baby, you're in love with a second-rate woman. So are ever so many people more, I'm afraid. It doesn't speak highly for the first-rate intelligence of men, but then I take men as I find them."
"Pardon me, you go out to look for them, Mrs. O'Rane," I said.
"It's the same thing."
"Not for a married woman."
We had bantered hitherto without very much malice, but my reminder seemed to carry a sting.
"I don't regard myself as a married woman," she said very deliberately.
"I cannot remain out of bed to hear stuff of this kind!" I exclaimed. "Melodrama is only excusable when it is convincing."
"Don't you be too sure that you won't be convinced!" she cried, springing up and facing me. The ermine coat,drooping half off her arms and back, fell to the ground and left her bare-shouldered and with heaving breast. The rose in her hair trembled, and two normally pale cheeks were lit each with a single spot of burning colour. The weakness that underlay the softness of her mouth had vanished, and her eyes, grown angry and hot, had lost their beauty. "Will you come and see me, I wonder, when I'm living with Peter?" she asked flauntingly.
"I shall not," I answered. "I may say that this kind of talk——"
"But you wouldn't mind seeing him?" she interrupted. "This is all right in aman. David can go off with that woman——"
"Good-night, Mrs. O'Rane," I said, holding out my hand.
Like everyone else, I sometimes feel intuitively when people are speaking for effect. Mrs. O'Rane spoke purely for effect when she boasted of the times that she had been to call on Beresford; she was still speaking for effect when I warned her against being melodramatic, yet sincerity crept in when she referred to her husband. I hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry. For her to be jealous of Hilda Merryon presupposed that she was not so indifferent to O'Rane as she pretended; even to feign suspicion argued an unbalanced mind.
"Good-night," I repeated, as she stood ostentatiously refusing to take my hand. "You had better let me see you home, though."
"I'm not coming home. I won't be ordered about! You advise me and find fault with me and insult me.... Mr. Stornaway, let me tell you this. You've been—poking your nose into my affairs for some time, so I'm sure you've a right to know everything. You side with David and think everything he does is wonderful, perfect, magnificent. Well, I don't. I know I'm vain; and I'm vain enough to think he's not treating me as I'm entitled to be treated. He'll be coming home in a fortnight. I wrote to him to-day and asked him if he wanted to see me. If he does, he can. If he wants me and not the scourings of the Londonstreets.... If not, if he doesn't love me enough for that, I shall look for someone who does."
I ended my succession of unsuccessful starts and reached the door. Mrs. O'Rane strode after me with arms akimbo.
"You don't believe it!" she cried passionately. "You don't think I dare!"
"My dear young lady, in your present mood you're capable of most things," I said. "But Beresford and I are going to forget what you've been saying to-night, and I think you'll be glad to forget it, too."
One says rhetorically that one will forget a phrase or an episode, but my single glimpse of Mrs. O'Rane's temper had frightened forgetfulness away. I kept on telling myself that it was no business of mine, that my rule for thirty years had been to let the younger generation take care of itself untrammelled; yet, when George Oakleigh telephoned to me from the Admiralty, begging me to cancel other engagements and dine with him, I had to prepare myself for any kind of bad news.
I could see, when he came into the club, that there was something on his mind, but we had no opportunity for private conversation during dinner, as Maurice Maitland attached himself to our table for first-hand news of the Irish rebellion. I had imagined that George, even with an Irish estate, an Irish upbringing and an unmixed Irish ancestry, was too much overlaid with his English associations to feel more than academically on the Irish aspirations. To see him after a holiday in Ireland, where he had gone to fish and had never stirred nearer the county Kerry than Dublin, was to see a hillsman made suddenly mindful of the hills and of his own infancy. Forgotten fires of racial love and antagonism had been blown into life. There was no attempt to be judicial; he had arrived too late for the rebellion (or I dare swear he would have had a hand in it), he was not concerned with the bloodshedwhich it had caused; it was the sight and stories of the repression which made his blood boil and his voice ring.
"So much for Skeffington!" he cried. "And Casement prosecuted by Smith, who threatened exactly the same tactics before the war! My God! I wonder when you English think this will be forgotten! You've seen the sentences? One woman was carted off to penal servitude for life. 'For life' one of her friends kept saying. 'But Ireland was free for three days,' answered the woman. We've a rare palate for phrases in Ireland. How soon do you imagine that phrase will be forgotten? I'm seeing red at this moment. For two pins I'd join our young friend Beresford in any propaganda against this country that he cared to start." Then he caught sight of Maitland's expression of shocked perplexity. "I mean it, General. When the Huns pretend to be amazed that the Belgians don't eat out of their hands, we're righteously disgusted at the hypocrisy of it. On my honour, you English are every bit as dense or hypocritical with us."
"But the trouble is over now, surely?" Maitland unwarily asked.
"It will never be over in your lifetime or mine! Redmond made the old blunder of trusting the English, he promised a united front in Ireland, when the war broke out, instead of holding the government to ransom. And the government responded by scrapping the Home Rule Act. You've lost Ireland, the Nationalist party's dead and damned, henceforth you'll have a swelling Sinn Fein army held down by English troops—as in Poland, as in Alsace-Lorraine, as in north Italy before the liberation. And I don't envy you the job of making things sweet with America."
Dinner was over before our discussion of Ireland, but, when Maitland left us to return to the War Office, the interruption changed the current of George's thoughts. I was not sorry, for I had endured two nights of Irish debate with Grayle, who saw in the rebellion fresh proofof governmental incompetence and new need for a change in which I was to assist him.
"I didn't ask you here to listen to me tub-thumping," George began apologetically, when we were alone. "How lately have you seen anything of the O'Ranes?"
I told him of the meeting in Beresford's flat.
George smiled wanly.
"They'll kill poor old Bertrand between them," he said, "if they keep up this racket much longer. Raney wrote to say that he was coming home as soon as term was over and expected Sonia to be at 'The Sanctuary,' and a couple of days later the Merryon woman arrived with the greater part of the luggage and a box or two of books. She hadn't come to stay, but he'd sent her up to verify a few references in his library for some work he was doing; she was going back to help him finish off his exam-papers and reports, and they were coming up together in about a week's time. This took place yesterday. Now, I'll say at once that Raney's behaved like a psychological ostrich over that woman, and nobody but Raney would have thought it anything but outrageous for a man to let his wife stay in London and calmly accept the services of a secretary—in his wife's place and against her wishes. She'd put her eyes on sticks for him, too, Miss Merryon would; and, if Raney doesn't know it, you bet Sonia does. Well, I think it was partly jealousy; Sonia was furious at the idea of anyone else being near her husband. Partly it was shame; when the girl came in with Raney's belongings, arranging this, ordering that, verifying the other, you may be sure that Sonia knew very well that she was letting someone else do her job. And partly it was because she couldn't get her own way. The combined result was a first-class row, in which she said that the girl was Raney's mistress and told her that she wouldn't have her in the house. It wasn't mere words. She escorted her to the door, where the taxi-man was wrestling with the luggage, slammed it behind her and pulled a chest against it. On the business principle of having everything in black andwhite, she then wrote a descriptive account of it all to Raney, which will no doubt be read aloud to him at breakfast to-morrow by Miss Hilda Merryon."
He mopped his forehead and sent a waiter to fetch him some water.
"And what are you doing?" I asked.
"WhatcanI do? Raney's not going to be told that this woman's his mistress; he'll probably make Sonia apologise to them both—or try to; and he certainly won't let her be turned out. I should think.... I don't know, but I should think that, on the day he comes back, Sonia will try to run away again, and, if he doesn't stop her by main force, by using all the authority he's got and all the brutality he's capable of exhibiting, he'll lose her for good. Sonia's pretty well worked up, too. So am I. These young people are preparing an early grave for me; it's getting on my nerves."
"But her parents—" I began.
My unfinished suggestion was received with a silent smile, which was perhaps the cruellest and most comprehensive criticism ever passed on Sir Roger and Lady Dainton.
I was in the smoking-room at the House the following night, talking to Vincent Grayle, when George's card was brought in, and I went out to see him.
"I've just left 'The Sanctuary,'" he said. "And I thought I'd report progress. Raney got her letter all right and sent very much the reply I should have expected.He'spretty well worked up now. Sonia'sgotto apologise, and heordersher to receive Miss Merryon. It was an ultimatum, if there ever was one. Sonia—she was like I remember her the last time we met before she broke off her engagement with Jim Loring—every nerve tingling. She stalked to the telephone and rang up Beresford, informing me over her shoulder that she would not havethat womanin the house, even if she had to bring friends in to turn her out. Fortunately Beresford was not at home. Then she rang up this place and tried to get hold of Grayle—'Mrs.O'Rane.Mosturgent.' Again, fortunately, the reply came back that Grayle was engaged——"
I looked at my watch and interrupted him to ask when the message had been sent.
"Oh, this moment—half an hour ago. It was just before I left to come here. Well, we're likely to have the pretty scene of Raney driving up to the door and finding himself barricaded out by his own wife. Beresford can't do anything very active, but Grayle——"
"You needn't fear him," I said.
When the telephone message was brought into the Smoking-Room, Grayle glanced at the paper and said that he was engaged. I did not know, of course, who was trying to speak to him, but the messenger repeated that the call was "most urgent." At this Grayle grew impatient and said again and very deliberately, "I—am—engaged." Then we resumed our interrupted conversation; he was crossing to France almost immediately on a visit to General Headquarters and would be away for several days. He had promised to introduce a deputation of his constituents to one of the Ministers and wanted me to act for him in his absence.
"She's gone just too far with him," I said, "and he's lost his temper. But there mustn't be a scene, whatever happens. You'd better tell O'Rane to see you before he goes home; explain the state of mind she's in.... And, George, for the love of Heaven, get hold of Mrs. O'Rane and knock some sense into her head—you say she'll stand a good deal from you. This is becoming frankly intolerable."
Then we left the House; he made his way to "The Sanctuary," while I drove home. Had we changed places, he would have been more successful in his mission, for, as I paid off my driver, Mrs. O'Rane hurried up and engaged him. Whether she recognised me or not I cannot tell; but I had nothing to say to her and I was at pains to avoid an encounter. She was in evening dress, I remember, walking eastwards along Knightsbridge, and I wonderedsuddenly whether she had been calling on Grayle in Milford Square. Then I remembered that Grayle was still at the House, when I left. As the taxi drove away I asked myself, not for the first time, whether I had not enough work and worries of my own without having to play the double part of bland bachelor uncle and private detective.
A week later O'Rane came up to London and called on George at the Admiralty. He was so far amenable to advice that he went alone to "The Sanctuary" and talked for an hour with his wife, though they parted without reaching a compromise and on the reiterated understanding that, if Miss Hilda Merryon set foot in "The Sanctuary," Mrs. O'Rane would leave and never return. I met him myself later in the day at the House and was relieved to find him preoccupied with other cares. He had called on Beresford and been privileged to hear the proofs of that indefatigable pamphleteer's latest composition. It was entitled, I believe, "Lettres de Cachet," and contained a bitter attack on petty tyranny and misuse of authority as practised by the army. O'Rane had tried to get the article withdrawn, but Beresford was inflamed and fanatical with memories of his own treatment in prison and of the attempt to silence his mouth by the exercise of military discipline. I fancy, too, that he was puffed up with his own initial victory and believed that, so far from seeking opportunity for another encounter, the agents of government were rubbing their bruises and keeping out of the way.
"I couldn't move him an inch," O'Rane had to admit. "I'm sorry, for I don't want to see him killed.... And I—I must have been extraordinarily like him when I was a kid of about fifteen, and the whole world was a black dungeon of iniquity and injustice, and I had to keep hold of myself with both hands for fear of murdering someone.... The first time I talked to Beresford I agreed with most of what he said; I could feel myself going white, if you understand me; we got emotionally drunk together. And then I saw that he wasn't going to do any more good than I should have done at fifteen, if I'd yielded to theimpulse of killing a man.... I felt that, if someone could relieve the shadows a bit ... I'm not giving in yet."
We were interrupted by a division bell, and I gave him an arm to the lobby. Then Bertrand carried him off to dinner, and I made my way to the Berkeley, where I had promised to meet George and his cousin, Lady Loring. Arriving a few minutes before my time, I was smoking a cigarette in the hall when I caught sight of Grayle and crossed over to speak to him. He was scowling in an arm-chair facing the door, with his eyes impatiently fixed on his watch and an evening paper on his knees.
"You've not started yet, then," I said. "If you're going to be in London to-morrow, I'll give you back your deputation."
"I leave the first thing in the morning," he answered shortly. "What d'you make the time? Five to eight? On the stroke of eight I leave. I don't waitmorethan half an hour for any woman."
He hesitated for a moment longer; then pulled himself slowly erect and limped with the resolute fixity of ill temper to the cloak-room. I picked up the paper and was beginning to read it, when he limped back with his coat and cap on, buttoning his gloves.
"If Mrs. O'Rane turns up while you're here, give her that, will you?" he said, throwing an open envelope on the table. "You might say that I've gone on."
Protruding from the envelope was a theatre ticket.
"Aren't you dining?" I asked.
"I had a whiskey and soda while I was waiting," he answered. "Can't hang about indefinitely, you know. It's Eric Lane's new play. The thing starts at eight of all ungodly hours, and I want to see some of the show." I thought it unnecessary to remind him that we had met at the identical theatre some ten days before. "If a woman can't have the decency to come in time—Ah!"
He interrupted himself as Mrs. O'Rane came in, stood looking round for a moment and hurried forward, smiling at two or three friends on the way.
"Youwere very nearly late," she said, nodding at his cap. "If I'd had to wait—Well, I suppose Mr. Stornaway would have taken pity on me, however much he hates me. The spectacle of a young distressed female simply fainting for a cocktail—did you remember to order my special cocktail?" she asked Grayle.
"You are late," he observed, without regard to her question.
"I? But that's too abominable! If you're not going to be sweet to me, I shall go straight home and never speak to you again. Late, indeed! I didn't get home till after seven, but I had a hot bathanddressedanddisposed of four people on the telephone, all by seven-thirty——"
"Dinner was ordered for seven-thirty," Grayle interrupted.
Mrs. O'Rane puckered her lips mischievously and laid one finger on them to enjoin silence.
"Are you listening to my story?" she asked. "If you'd just be patient and not pretend you're working out the times for an infantry advance—" She turned to me with a quick smile. "How long would you say it took to get here from 'The Sanctuary,' Mr. Stornaway?"
"That depends how you go," I said. "It's no time in a taxi."
She clapped her hands in delight.
"That's what I always say! When anyone finds fault with Westminster or the Embankment—fancy finding fault with the Embankment! It's like being compromised with the Albert Memorial. But people do, you know; the Embankment, I mean; they say it's not healthy—well, when they find fault, I always say, 'Ah, but it's so central. You can jump into a taxi and get anywhere in no time!' Just what you said, Mr. Stornaway. Well, as dinner was at half-past seven and it took menotime to get here, there was no point in leaving the house before half-past seven, was there?"
Grayle was nodding at each new development in her rather diffuse story, but there were hard, unamiable linesfrom nose to mouth, and I fancied that her smiles and tricks and absurdities were not amusing him. As she paused for want of breath, he took a step backward.
"Don't go away, when I'm talking to you!" she cried, catching him by the sleeve. "It's rude, to begin with,—and you know you're always sorry after you've been rude to me. Oh! the times you've had to call with a taxi full of flowers! I will say this for myself, I'm very forgiving—; and, in the second place, you're missing therealpathos of the story, what the Americans call the sob-stuff. I left home at seven-thirty, as I must have told you before, but you will keep interrupting; I walked to the Houses of Parliament—no taxi—; I persevered down Whitehall—no taxi; fainting with fatigue and weeping from sheer mortification, I dragged one foot after another—for the honour of England, you know—up the Haymarket—no taxi—; and, believe me or believe me not,as—you—like, I never saw a taxi till I got here. Then an angel-creature drove up and said, 'Taxi, miss?' and it was almost more than I could bear. I wanted to jump in and drive round and round the Park to shew people that there was just one taxi left in the world and that I'd got it. Nothing but the thought of thiswretchedplay brought me here at all—the play and the cocktail; you must admit that, if anyone ever deserved a cocktail, it's me. And, if you say you haven't ordered me one or that they're bad for me, I shall go home."
She handed me her gloves and held out a bag to Grayle, as she began to take off her cloak.
"Now, is that the whole story?" he asked.
"That's a synopsis," she said. "I can elaborate it, of course. Some of the people I met on the way——"
"I think we can dispense with that. Dinner was ordered for seven-thirty, and the play begins at eight. I was starting out, as you came in, but I waited to hear if you had anything to say, any explanation to give. Stornaway has your ticket, and the table's that one in the first window. I may see you later."
Mrs. O'Rane looked at him for a moment without understanding; then her mouth opened slowly.
"Oh!" she exclaimed.
"Good-bye."
"Come back thisinstant!"
Grayle turned his back on us with a perfunctory bow and limped away.
"If you don't come back, I'll never speak to you again!" she cried.
Whether he heard her or not made no difference to his steady progress. As he reached the door, Mrs. O'Rane turned nonchalantly to me with a smile and a shrug. A moment later she glanced casually over her shoulder to see if he was coming back. A moment later still, with amazement in her eyes, she was hurrying after him into the street.
When George Oakleigh arrived with his cousin at a quarter past eight, he told me with some concern that he had forgotten to book a table. We were very comfortably accommodated, however, in the first window.
For three weeks I endured an unsought holiday in bed with influenza at the Hyde Park Hotel. In my absence everything seemed to have gone on very much as before, and, when I met O'Rane at the House on the eve of his return to Melton, he told me that he, too, had spent the recess in London with his wife and that Miss Merryon had been packed off to the sea for a change of air. Outwardly all relations were amicable, but Bertrand told me afterwards that Mrs. O'Rane consistently displayed the guarded civility of a wife who had discovered her husband's infidelity, but decides to stay with him rather than create a scandal.
"Are you going back to Melton, then?" I asked O'Rane.
"Yes. I haven't found anything else suitable so far. You see, I feel it must be war-work of some kind; and itmust be paid. I don't seem much nearer solvency than when I came back from France twelve months ago."
I had a vision of "The Sanctuary," as I had seen it at the O'Ranes' house-warming, crammed to overflowing with their friends and his chance acquaintances. I knew something of his prodigal generosity and of his wife's no less prodigal extravagance; and I could form no idea how they kept their heads above water. Bertrand, of course, contributed to the up-keep of the household; O'Rane had his salary as a Member and some trifle from Melton; his wife possessed a few hundreds of her own, eked out with chance gifts from admiring friends. Sir Adolphus Erskine, the great financier, would give her a set of furs or a pearl necklace, Lord Pennington would send her a case of champagne out of some unexpected discovery at an auction, but this hardly helped to appease the tradesmen.
"I don't know what you can expect," I said.
O'Rane frowned in perplexity.
"I made a lot of money and I saved a lot of money before the war," he said, "but I don't seem able to do it now.... When other people ... I know it's impracticable to go out and give a loaf toeveryonewho's hungry, but it's frightfully hard to refuse when you do in fact meet them. I daresay it's mad, but George and everyone will tell you that I've always been tolerably mad, and I'm afraid I've got much madder since the war." He gave one of his whimsical, Puck-like laughs and then added soberly, "Poor Sonia!"
"I hope you're in a state of grace," I said. "You know, a madman can be very cruel."
He looked into my eyes, and I shivered; for, though I knew him to be sightless, he seemed to be looking into my soul.
"Sometimes I feel there's not room for compromise in this life," he said.
"You are—thirty? I'm afraid I'm a quarter of a century older, O'Rane."
"Thank God! there's room for inconsistency," he laughed.
I was at my office the following afternoon when George Oakleigh telephoned to say that his uncle wished to see me at once on a matter of urgency; could I make it convenient to come round immediately? I replied that it was exceedingly inconvenient, but that, if he could play truant from the Admiralty, I could absent myself equally well from my own department.
"Thank God you can come!" he exclaimed with disquieting fervour. "It's a bad business."
I arrived at "The Sanctuary" to find all silent and tense with expectant tragedy. Bertrand sprawled with slackened limbs on a long wicker chair, an untasted drink by his side and an unlighted cigar in his mouth. George was looking bleakly out of the window, with his right hand gripping his left wrist behind his back; the afternoon sun exposed every line and wrinkle of his face, and I found him ten years older, effortless and numbed.
"Tell me what's happened," I said, as I closed the door.
Bertrand looked at me for a moment, though I could see that his attention was wandering, and then turned to his nephew.
"You'd better go back to him," he suggested. "I don't thinkwe'vegot anything more to say to each other."
The second closing of the door was followed by a long silence.
"Tell me what's happened, Bertrand," I repeated.
"Oh, nothing!" He gave a barking cough of mordant bitterness. "ItoldGeorge it wasn't fair to drag you in, when you had in fact been spared it. David came back unexpectedly this afternoon to find his wife in Beresford's arms." He buried his face in tremulous hands. "My God! my God! They've not been married a year! And a blind man!"
When Bertrand is cynical, I find him tiresomely cynical; not content with condoning human depravity, he seems totake personal credit to himself for it. When he is humanly moved, I find him unnerving.
"Tell me the whole story," I said, "before I try to comment on it."
"Comment on it?" Bertrand echoed and sat silent, staring at a picture on the opposite wall.
The story, when it came, was old and simple. The end of the holidays found the O'Ranes as undecided about the future as at the beginning; it had been easier, I presume, not to discuss it, and no word had passed until the evening before. Then O'Rane had announced his approaching return to Melton, and from that the game, encounter, what you will, had developed automatically. His wife begged him not to go, hinted that he had promised to stay in London and after the usual interchange was undecided whether she would keep him company. It depended.... There followed the expected debate on Miss Merryon. O'Rane was taking her to Melton whether his wife came or not, as he needed the services of a typist; Mrs. O'Rane would not go, if "that woman" went, and, if O'Rane went with her alone, he knew the consequences....
"Then I went to bed," said Bertrand, pressing his hands to his head. "I imagine they must have had an unprecedented row, and this morning O'Rane went off to Waterloo, leaving his wife like a spitting cat. I slunk out of the house as soon as possible; I didn't want the quarrel at second-hand. Sometime this afternoon O'Rane came back. When he got to Waterloo, he felt that he couldn't part from his wife for three months on such a note. He came back to make friends, to see if they couldn't arrive at somemodus vivendi.... He felt his way round the library; it was deserted; felt his way round the hall and found her umbrella in the stand; went upstairs. Her door was locked, and he tapped on it, begging her to let him in. She shouted out that he wasn't to come in; and he stood there minute after minute, praying her to remember their love, to forgive him, to be reasonable, generous, to forget their wretched quarrel. Never a sound came from inside theroom. He had worked himself up until he was sweating with emotion. When he stopped, there was utter silence. Then he heard a cough...."
Bertrand paused to sip the drink at his elbow. It was not Sonia's cough; it was the bursting cough of a man who had been trying in a long agony of suffocation to repress it. At the sound something primitive and overmastering took possession of O'Rane. He stepped back and flung himself against the door, but it was old, and the weight of his body only wrung a hollow groan from its solidity; within all was still silent. Again and again he charged the door with his shoulder until one panel split and broke in, and the lock creaked in outrage. Insensible to physical pain which was quickly maddening his brain, he took a last flying leap which wrenched handle and lock from the wood-work and sent him to measure his length on the floor.
The same uncanny silence greeted his entrance. He drew himself upright, rubbing his bruised shoulder, and embarked on what from Bertrand's account was truly the grimmest game of Blind Man's Buff. With the muscles of his back and arms braced to resist an attack, he advanced slowly with arms outstretched and body bent, like a foot-ball player waiting to collar his man. In the first half of the room his groping hands touched only the familiar tables and chairs, but with every yard forward he was uncovering a retreat for the adversary. Retracing his steps, he kicked the door closed, pushed a bed against it and advanced once more towards the window. In the unbroken silence he had to keep stopping suddenly for a half-heard sound of hurried breathing, but his own pulses were hammering so loudly that he could not trust his ears. Nearer and nearer to the window he crept, until an unnamed sense told him that he was within touch of a human body; as he paused, there was a shiver followed by a sharp intake of breath; someone's nerves were breaking under the ordeal. The waving arms swept forward and closed on a woman's shoulders.
"Sonia!" he panted and could say no more.
For a moment longer the silence continued; then from behind her came the foot-shuffle of the man whom she had been shielding. O'Rane's hands dropped, and he sprang beyond her, only to bark his knuckles on the wall, as his unseen quarry doubled and ran; there was an instant's vague chase, the sound of a lame man sparing his injured leg, the squeak of rolling castors, as the bed was dragged back from the door, a scratching for the handle that was no longer there and finally the echoing slam of the door itself. O'Rane sprawled once more on the floor, as his foot met a rucked billow of carpet; the hurried limp grew distant and faded; there followed the slam of a second door, and the house returned to its afternoon silence.
What either found to say to the other neither Bertrand nor I had any means of guessing.
"She's gone," he told me hollowly. "I saw her driving away, as I came back from the House—just before we sent for you. O'Rane was standing in the middle of the library like a—like a man in catalepsy. George came in a moment later, and we had the story as I've given it to you." He paused and breathed deeply. "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing, Stornaway; my—my brain strikes work at a time like this, you must tell me what we've got to do. There'll be murder, if he ever gets his hands on Beresford, and we've got to stop that. I'd murder the fellow myself, if I could, but we can't have David hanging for him. And we must do something for David."
With a quavering hand he picked up the tumbler from the table by his side and sipped its contents mechanically. His eyes were half-closed, and his mind at least was asleep with very exhaustion. My own worked feverishly with utter want of concentration. I told myself that I might have expected this after my surprise meeting in Beresford's flat, that it had been going on for Heaven knows how many weeks; then that none of this was to the point, that O'Rane was in a bath of liquid fire, that something must be done; lastly—yet my first thought and appreciation—that none of us knew what to do, that nothing could be done.
I have no idea how long I stood staring at Bertrand's shrunken face and closed eyes. Death had left his fingerprints on the big, self-indulgent face when the old man had his stroke at the beginning of the war. I remember wondering how many more rounds he would survive.... Yet he had lived fully, powerfully and pleasurably for more than his allotted span; young O'Rane was little more than thirty and he had already undergone what would have broken men of less heroic spirit.
Instinctively I moved towards the door, and at the slight sound Bertrand opened his eyes and asked what I was going to do.
"God knows!" I answered.
Instinctively I found myself walking down the stairs which Beresford and O'Rane had descended so precipitously an hour or two before. The same strained air of expectancy hung over the passages and hall, and, when I pushed aside the curtain and entered the library, George started like a surprised criminal. The room was in twilight, and it took my eyes several moments to grow accustomed to the change from the sunset glow upstairs. Then I caught sight of O'Rane sprawling on the sofa, motionless and silent; his hair was dishevelled, his clothes dusty on one side, and I could see white skin and a stain of blood through a rent in one trouser-knee.
"It's—Stornaway," George explained.
For a moment O'Rane seemed not to have heard; then he said:
"Thanks. Thanks to you both. Later on, perhaps.... Just now I'd rather——"
I exchanged glances with George, who shrugged his shoulders and rose silently to his feet. O'Rane collected himself and walked to the door, fortified by the routine of social convention, as though he were speeding a dinner-guest on his way. I passed by the flame-coloured curtain and turned the handle of the door, looking round to recapture the vision seen one night when O'Rane caught his wife to his heart, while I looked on and envied themsomething that had never been granted to me. There was no response to my pull, but, at the rattle, O'Rane stepped forward with a muttered apology, pulling a cumbrous key from his pocket and feeling for the lock with the fingers of his other hand. George and I passed into the street, the door closed behind us, and I caught the sound of rusty wards turning in an unaccustomed lock. George put his arm through mine and asked if I was going back to the House.
"I shall dine at the Club," I said; and I wondered how either of us could speak so conventionally.
We walked the length of Millbank in silence.
"You'd have thought he had enough to put up with already, wouldn't you?" George asked dispassionately; then, with a tremor in his voice, "God in heaven! it's a smash-up for Raney! I didn't think she was capable of it, I've known her all her life, I'd have sworn she'd have pulled up in time.... Of course, she's alwayshadto have people fluttering round her and paying her compliments, and I wasn't a bit surprised to find a boys' school of young Guardees hanging about the house the moment she'd moved into it. It was the same when she was engaged to Jim Loring—God knows, she knocked a big enough hole in his life, you'd have thought there'd be some reactive effect on her.... But, on my soul, because she'd been doing it so long, I thought she could be trusted. I thought she really loved Raney, I thought he was the only person who could manage her.... Hewouldtreat her like a man. 'No one's ever let up on me. Trust people, and they'll repay your trust....' All that balderdash.... It's succeeded amazingly well with men, he can do what he likes with them. But women must be fundamentally different.... We're both bachelors, of course.... But I always feel there was a lot to be said for Petruchio. Raney loved her most kinds of ways, and she loved him on and off in some fashion for years; he really onlywonher, when he was frankly brutal to her—I had the story from both, so I know; she was caught in Austria, like you, and hesmuggled her back and shewed her pretty clearly who'd got the stronger personality; then she married him after he'd gone blind, when all our emotions were in tatters; and, having once married her, he seemed to think that mere love and trust were enough to keep her. I don't know; I've never had to live with a woman; I can't help feeling, though, that, just as he won her by main force, so he could only hope to keep her by main force. And he didn't even give her the 'mere love and trust' I've been talking about; hetrustedher all right, but I think the kind of practical Christianity that he tried to set up was too much to ask of anyone—let alone a spoilt darling like Sonia.... He's always been so infernally uncompromising, it's his strength and his weakness; it's because he was uncompromising that he's kept alive and it's because he's been uncompromising with her that he's brought this on himself."
We had walked up Whitehall and were waiting for a gap in the traffic by the Admiralty Arch.
"But this is all ancient history, George," I reminded him. "What are we going to do?"
"To soften the blow? Nothing. Wecan'tdo anything. Sonia's cleared out, I suppose she' gone off to join Beresford. Well, Bertrand thinks Raney's equal to murder, but you can trust Beresford to keep out of the way.... I suppose there'll be a divorce.... I honestly don't know what to do about Raney. He's my oldest and dearest friend, but I don't know more than the surface of him.... God! If I had Sonia's throat in my two hands!" He broke off and pulled me roughly off the kerb, gripping my arm until we were half-way down Cockspur Street. "I've never been faced with this kind of thing, Stornaway. I suppose you must have been?"
"Nothing so bad as this," I was able to answer him.
We walked on into Pall Mall without speaking. Then George gripped my arm again.
"That poor devil alone in the dark with this—thisto occupy his thoughts!"
I made no comment. I do not see what comment was possible.
"I feel so hopelessly at sea!" he exclaimed agitatedly. "Stornaway, you've had to pull people out of holes before; cannothingbe done? Can't we get her to go back? Would he receive her back? Of course, we're all of us seeing red now, but somehow every hour that she spends with Beresford makes it harder to get her back; if we could use Raney's love for her——"
"D'you want her to go back?" I interrupted.
"God knowswhatI want!" he sighed.
We had reached the steps of the County Club, and I told George to come in and have some dinner with me. Both of us were already engaged in different parts of London, but we wanted to hold together.
"Come to Hale's," he said, shaking his head. "It's pretty well deserted since the war; everybody's fighting. I can't risk meeting a crowd of people I know and having to pretend nothing's up."
Leaving St. James' Square, we walked through King Street and entered the squat Regency house which had sheltered succeeding generations of London's exquisites for a hundred years. The coffee-room was deserted, and we had a choice of wine, food and service; but I have never eaten a gloomier meal. Every few minutes George would say, "Look here, you know, something's got to be done about this!" and I would reply, "Nothingcanbe done." Then we would attack a new course. Though we had chosen Hale's to be secure from interruption, I am not sure that we were not both a little relieved at the end of dinner when Vincent Grayle limped in with an evening paper under his arm and asked leave to join us for the short remainder of our meal. I can get on with him at a pinch; George cannot; but we shared a common need for diversion.
"I've just this moment got back from France," Grayle said to explain his late arrival. "I've been having a lively week at G.H.Q., watching the professional soldiers losing the war for us." He summoned a waiter and truculentlyordered dinner. "Anything happening in London?" he asked.
"Nothing much," I told him. "What news from the Front?"
"Everybody's very cheery, getting ready for the big push. They all seem quite sure that they're going to break through this time, and there's an amount of ammunition and reserves that really does put you in good heart when you think how the men out there were starving in the first part of the war—thanks to the gang we had running things on this side. Whether we've got the generals is another question; if not, we must make a remarkably big clean sweep, politicians included."
He was evidently preparing one of his usual attacks, and, though I had welcomed the momentary diversion, neither George nor I wanted a political argument at such a time. With a trumped-up apology we went into the morning-room for coffee and liqueurs, leaving Grayle to his opinions and his evening paper.
"We don't seem to have thought out anything very helpful," sighed George, as he threw himself into a chair. "D'you think it's the least good going round to Beresford's place and forcing Sonia to go back?"
"Do you want her to go back, even if you can make her?" I asked once more. "She's been saying for weeks that she regarded her marriage as at an end; now she's proved it. Do you want to send her back on those terms? And does O'Rane want to have her back?"
George covered his face with his hands, shaking his head despairingly from side to side.
"I—don't—know," he groaned. "And this must have bowled poor old Raney over so much that I don't supposeheknows. Ordinarily—but it's absurd to use such a word.... I can only say this; he loved her so much, he loved her for so many years, he believed in her—or in some wonderful idealised conception of her by which he saw every kind of saintly quality where the rest of us only regarded her as a good-natured, but quite heartless, fascinating coquette—he thought of her and dreamed of her, she was somuch a part of his life, the big part, the only thing that mattered...." He paused, out of breath. "You'd have said that it would have been like cutting off his arms and legs, if he'd lost her, if she'd died or married Jim Loring or the other fellow she was engaged to.... But I don't know now. When you've given all that love and trust, when you've idealised anyone, and the whole conception crumbles away.... Stornaway, he's extraordinarily frank; I fancy I know more of him than most people. Well, Idoknow how he loved that strumpet; I don't know, I can't say whether he'd love her still or whether he'd just want to strangle her and then cut his own throat.... But I think it's worth trying. We can at least give him a chance, we can keep his hands off her——" He jumped up, leaving his coffee untasted. "I'm going to have a shot."
"Shall I come with you?" I asked.
He was already half-way to the door.
"I want everyone I can get!" he threw back over his shoulder.
We drove to Sloane Square, and in ten minutes' time I found myself once more mounting the stairs to Beresford's flat. The lower floors were silent and deserted, but, as we climbed higher, I heard voices and the tramp of heavy feet growing louder and more distinct with every yard that we covered. As we rounded the corner of the passage, I stopped with a sickening sense of foreboding, when I found my path blocked by a policeman. For a moment no one spoke, and I fancied that we were being scrutinised with disfavour, even with suspicion. George, however, was too much preoccupied to be daunted.
"Is Mr. Beresford at home, d'you know?" he asked. The constable shook his head. "D'you happen to know where he is? I have to see him on a matter of great urgency. If he's not in, I'll go in and wait till he comes back."
He made a step forward, but the man shewed no sign of yielding.
"Afraid I can't let you by, sir," he said. "No one's allowed in."
I was assailed by a dreadful certainty that we had arrived too late.
"Why not?" I demanded, but my voice quavered too much to be effective.
"Mr. Beresford's been arrested."
"But, in God's name, what for?"
"That's none of my business," was the answer.
George was diving significantly into his trouser-pocket, but I felt that what lay before me was too serious for trifling with half-crowns. I handed the man my card and repeated my request.
"It's not mere curiosity," I said. "If you don't tell me, there are others who will; but I want to save time."
I always have the letters "M.P." printed on my cards to impress government departments, for throughout the public service there is an inherited dread that a question may be asked in the House; the hierarchy from top to bottom makes it the first business of life to avoid such publicity. This instinct of self-preservation, deeply-rooted as a horse's fear of a snake in the grass, led the constable to inform me promptly that Beresford had been arrested for issuing seditious literature; his flat was at the moment being searched.
My own sigh of relief was drowned by a deeper sigh from George.
"When did this take place?" he asked.
"To-day, sir. I can't tell you the time; I've only just come on duty."
"Was there anyone there besides Mr. Beresford? Is there anyone there now?"
"The inspector, sir; and two men."
George thanked him and led me by the arm to the head of the stairs.
"Thank God!" he whispered. "You—you thought so, too; I could see it in your face. Oh, Christ, if they were going to arrest the fellow, why couldn't they have done it sooner?Idon't know what to do now. At least—I must go back to 'The Sanctuary' and see what's happened there." He dragged me down stairs and into our taxi at a pace whichmore than once threatened to break both our necks. "Where the devil canshehave gone to, Stornaway? She'd naturally come here. But, when they arrested him ..."
The shrouded lamp over "The Sanctuary" door was unlighted when we arrived; the door was locked against us, and, though I now remembered hearing the key turn when O'Rane shewed us out, the cherished little piece of his beloved childish symbolism was grown painfully familiar.
"Come round to the other door," said George, and we were admitted and ushered into Bertrand's room. "Any news?" he enquired gently.
Someone had drawn the blinds, someone had brought in a tray of food; otherwise the room was unchanged in aspect, and Bertrand seemed not to have moved since I left him stretched in the long wicker chair three hours earlier.
"News?" he repeated, opening his eyes and blinking at us. "David's gone back to Melton. Ah! this is a bad business! Give me a hand up, George; I'm tired. I sometimes think I've lived too long."