My instinctive sympathy is always with the minority, and I came mildly to Bertrand's support.
"I agree with Oakleigh to this extent," I said. "All of us here are either women or men over military age. We ought to check the easy impulse to makeotherpeople fight to the bitter end."
"You won't hear any peace-talk at the Front,"interposed Maitland. "I've just come back from G.H.Q., you know."
Bertrand gave a snort of impatience.
"You won't find people lighting pipes in high-explosive factories," he answered. "It's against the rules. At the present time the policy of the war is dictated by people who can't conceivably be sent to carry it out. Stornaway's quite right.Wefat old men sit at home and water the fields of Flanders withother people'sblood.Wesay that, iftheydon't go on to the bitter end, there'll be another war in ten years. It's wrong, and we've been wrong every day we've gone on after we shewed the Germans that they couldn't overrun Europe at will.Iwent through the phase of dismembering Germany, deposing the Kaiser, commandeering the Fleet."
There was an unfortunate note of intellectual superiority in his voice, as though he alone had waded through the depths and shallows of folly and was at last (and alone) on dry land. His reward was immediate interruption by a chorus from every quarter of the table at once.
"Perhaps if you'd had a brother in solitary confinement for eight months because he called the guard aSchweinhund, which was the only word they'd given him a chance of learning——" began little Agnes Waring on my left with considerable heat.
"You wouldn't stir a finger to avenge Belgium?" demanded Lady Maitland.
"Oakleigh! Oakleigh!" her husband expostulated. "You're too old to fight yourself; for God's sake don't damp the ardour of those who can, those who'll go on till they've dictated their own peace terms—in—Berlin," he ended proudly.
As the chorus subsided for want of breath, Frank Jellaby, who was now one of the Liberal Whips in the Coalition, allowed his incisive, nasal drawl to rise and dominate the table.
"The trouble about you, Oakleigh, is that you go through so many phases; we poor, benighted folk can't keep upwith you. There was a phase—quite a long one, for you—when any war with Germany was impossible, unthinkable. Didn't you run a paper to prove it? When the war came, someone twitted you in the House, and you made a personal statement—and a pretty complete recantation. You've been wrong here, wrong there.... If I may put it quite brutally, how are we to know you're not just as wrong now, how soon may we expect another personal statement?"
"Have allyourprophecies been right?" Bertrand enquired.
"What prophecies have I made?" was the bland and temporarily safe rejoinder.
It was the one articulate effort which I heard at this time to determine the limits of military effort. It was derided and drowned; and from that—as we had to go on fighting—there was a short and easy road to criticism of present methods.
"We've put our hands to the plough," said Maitland placatingly, when the ladies had left us. "We can't turn back, Oakleigh. And I'm afraid I believe that the biggest trial's still ahead of us."
"And you're satisfied we shall come out of that any better?" Bertrand answered. "Your experience of the war leads you to expect that? God knows, themendon't lack courage or sticking-power, but can you find them generalship?"
"We must go on till we do."
Bertrand smoked for some moments in a reflective silence.
"It's a curious thing," he observed at length, "that a war of this size hasn't thrown up a single soldier of first-rate genius."
Maitland, for all that he had made the cleanest possible job of an Afghan raid and was now counter-initialling minutes in an extension of the War Office, took the criticism as personal.
"That is precisely what the soldiers say of you politicians," he retorted.
"The soldiers' job is to understand warfare and run a war," Bertrand propounded.
"The statesman's job is to govern," Maitland retaliated. "That's just what the Cabinet doesn't do and just what you M.P.'s don't make it do."
In the altercation which followed I listened to Maitland and watched Jellaby. The first acted as a barometer to mark the variations of average, prejudiced, unthinking opinion; it was the business of the second to follow the daily movement of the barometer. I did not need a second look at Jellaby to know that he was worried. He and I had talked in odd half-hours at the House about the possibility of attaining the objects for which we had entered the war; when our prospects were far brighter, Jellaby had been more rationally despondent, and I chose to think that his attack on Bertrand was an inspired attempt to suggest that any consideration of peace was at present out of the question and that a hard-pressed Government had better use for its time and energies than debating-society resolutions. He made no defence or comment, however, when Maitland developed a damaging attack on the Cabinet, and I fancied that he could not speak without indiscretion. Whether the Press reflected the public or the public reflected the Press, there was a widespread feeling that an ungainly cabinet of twenty-two talked incessantly and decided nothing, that countries were overrun and opportunities thrown away, because no one acted in time and that, paralysing as this collective lethargy so often and so tragically proved, it was still no check on the spasmodic and misdirected energy of individual members. Bertrand was one of a school which scented Press intrigue in every political development, but, as Grayle was credited with having said, "A Government which can't down Northcliffe can't down the Germans."
Of Grayle I saw nothing at this time, though a fresh crop of rumours told me that he was engaged once more on thetask which he had begun a year and a half before, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle. Watchful friends discovered him slipping in and out of the houses of Unionist ministers; there were tales of informal gatherings and chance week-end meetings at Brighton or on Shannon Wood golf-course.
"He wants a new coalition under Lloyd-George," Bertrand explained, "but the Tories aren't nibbling. You see, there's no popular cry that they can put up. George is at the War Office; if he and they can't make their will effective, they'd better resign like Carson, they mustn't proclaim their own impotence by whimpering. But they can't resign on the ground that the war's being mismanaged, because they're jointly and severally responsible for the mismanagement. There's no issue."
Later on he talked to me with a mixture of resignation and disappointment.
"If the Government falls, it will be simply because it doesn't know its own strength. It runs away every time anyone shakes a stick at it; it never says, 'Turn us out and be damned!' Meanwhile its authority is being sapped daily.... It's the old complaint I brought against it for eight years before the war. Ministers are so high and mighty that they never remember who it is that keeps 'em in power. 'Never explain, never complain!' It won't do! For months the Press has been urging that something must be done to raise fresh drafts after the Somme slaughter, that food prices must be controlled, that Ireland can't be left where she is. The Government goes about like Caesar's wife.... And everyone thinks it's doing nothing, and where should we be without Lord Northcliffe? And give us a Man! I don't know when or where the break will come, but I hear most ominous cracks."
The break came—unexpectedly, so far as I was concerned—in the first week of December. I say "unexpectedly," because I have yet to discover why the Government did not fall three months earlier or endure until three months later. Bertrand, who took on a new lease of lifewhen the days of crisis approached, told me that the point of cleavage was the question whether more troops should be sent to Salonica. True or false, this was obscured by an ultimatum in which the Secretary of State for War called for a Merovingian War Cabinet in which the Prime Minister was to have no place.
As I walked home from my office, the contents bills bore the legend, "England's Strong Man to Go." George Oakleigh and one or two others were dining with me, and by the time that I was dressed the news was being shouted in the streets that the Government had resigned. I suppose that I am as near to an Independent as the caucuses and the House of Commons will allow, but, though I had opposed the old Liberal administration in fully half of its measures, I felt a sentimental regret that the long rule was over. It closed an epoch to me at a time of life when I did not want to close epochs.
"I had four years of it at the beginning," said George unenthusiastically. "I'm afraid that in my youth and inexperience I hoped more of it than it was capable of giving. And I was rather glad to be out when the war came along. Beresford's quite right, you know; for seven or eight years the fate of this country was in the hands of three or four men who accepted our support and never gave us an inkling where they were taking us. Areallpolitical rank-and-filers treated as cavalierly as we've been? It goes on right to the end. The Coalition came into existence without consulting the Liberal Party and now it's gone out—every bit as much on its own. You and I don't know why; there was no vote, no trial of strength. Nobody can say how many supporters anyone else can claim; there isn't even the usual man who's defeated the Government for the King to send for. Theyhavetreated the party like dirt! Now it remains to be seen whether an alternative Governmentcanbe formed."
That night and for a day or two afterwards London was filled with a greater political excitement than I can ever remember at any other time. Bertrand told me that,in the interests of governmental and national unity, there had been a disposition to accept the terms of the ultimatum, but that a majority had decided that here at least a stand must be made.
"Now you simplymusttell me what's happening!" young Deganway exclaimed when I met him dining late at the Club. "Bonar Law's been sent for, as you know, but I hear he's told the King he can't form a Government. That leaves only George. How much life do you give him? Three weeks? I want you to say three weeks, because I've got a fortnight bet on the other way with a man in the War Office and I'm rather inclined to hedge."
The next day it was announced officially that Mr. Bonar Law was unable to form a Government and that the King had sent for the Secretary of State for War. There was fresh furious speculation how short a time would suffice to shew that he would fail, as his predecessor had failed, but the speculation was incommoded by the intrusion of fact. Bertrand informed me that the Prime Minister-Elect had struck a bargain with Labour, but that the Liberal and Unionist members of the Coalition were refusing to serve under a man who had slain his master. I next heard that the Unionist attitude was modified, that it was felt the King's Government must be carried on, that pressure had been brought....
"Of course, when once the rot sets in!" cried George Oakleigh, when we met by the tape-machine at the Club. He was undisguisedly disappointed, which was interesting. For eight or nine years I had heard from him plain and bitter criticism of the Government, but the old faith in his political idols had survived unexpectedly to make him forget the war and become the most excited of partisans. No terms were too strong to describe the treachery which had laid the Government low; his new-born good-will towards the dead Ministry was only exceeded by his blind antagonism to any alternative. "There was a day when Lloyd George could not get a man near him; then the Tories began to rat and everyone tried to elbow his way in beforehis neighbour.... He'd got the liver in his pocket, everyone was afraid of being left out, the doors of the War Office weren't wide enough to let them all in. This latest development has rather disgusted me with politics. I shouldn't have minded, if it had been an ordinary peace-time political intrigue. I suppose I've been hoping for a higher standard since the war ... gratitude—things of that kind. How are you going to vote, Stornaway? Bertrand keeps saying that he must support thede factoGovernment. Is that your view?"
"I want to see thede factoGovernment first," I said.
"You've an intelligent anticipation here," he answered, handing me a copy of the "Night Gazette." "Sir John Woburn can be relied on to have good stable information."
The first page of the paper contained a streaming headline—"Do It Now" or "Wait and See?" Underneath came an obviously inspired forecast of the new ministry with the old Unionist and Labour members back in place as to some eighty per centum of their numbers; the old Liberal office-holders were collectively abstaining, and their place in the party scale was filled by consequential nobodies and by the leaders of the Liberal "ginger group."
"If they've got rid of the brains, at least they've kept the dead-heads," George observed. "I don't see stability or long life here, Stornaway. Everyone knows that Woburn and the Press Combine turned the Coalition out, and now, before a single name has been submitted to the King, the Press Combine's at work devouring its own child. The new Ministry's too much tarred with the brush of the old, Balfour and Robert Cecil and the less featherbrained are to be pushed out of their offices some time before they get into them. It's going to be a very clean sweep."
I heard later that the attack on the elder Unionist statesmen was abandoned on the day when the Unionist party threatened to withdraw its support from the new Coalition unless newspaper attacks on its members ceased immediately.
"Is Grayle included?" I asked, as George drew an expressive finger down the draft list.
"He gets a new Ministry of Recruiting. At least, when I say that he gets it," George corrected himself, "this is quite unofficial, of course. He's suggested for it."
"I wonder if he'll get it," I said.
In London, more even than in the fabled Indian bazaar, the secret of to-day is the thrice-told tale of to-morrow. The same few thousand men and women migrate so regularly from one to another of the same few hundred houses that, if you let fall a piece of gossip at luncheon in Chesterfield Gardens, it will have taken wing to Portman Square and Hans Place by tea-time and will set tongues wagging over the dinner-tables of Westminster, Pall Mall and Piccadilly. By Saturday night the germ-carriers have spread themselves for a hundred miles to the west, north and south; before the week-end is over, the news may reasonably be expected to have reached Paris and, in these latter days, General Headquarters; and there has probably been more than one sly hint in the personal columns of the Sunday papers. Lady Maitland hears the story that very day at luncheon from the Duchess of Ross, who has met Gerald Deganway the night before at the Opera;hehad been dining with Lady Pentyre, who had spent the week-end at Oxford with the Cutler-Blythes; young Haviland had come over to lunch on Sunday and had brought the story from All Souls'....
Deganway's name appeared most regularly in these lists, but I doubt if he had the wit to invent scandal; he was content to collect and hand it on during the hours when his energies might have been more disastrously employed at the Foreign Office. It was from him that I first publicly heard even a rumour of Mrs. O'Rane's escapade; George Oakleigh and I succeeded in stopping his mouth, and for a few more precarious weeks Milford Square sank back toits former insecure silence. Then the busy tongues got to work again, and within thirty-six hours I had heard six various accounts in as many places, starting with an early morning encounter in Hyde Park with my niece, who observed triumphantly, "NowI know why you haven't been talking about the great Sonia O'Rane the last few months."
"How much do you know, Yolande?" I asked.
"I heard yesterday that she'd run away," was the answer. "I wasn't told who with.... I can't say I was surprised."
At luncheon the name was supplied, unsupported by details, however. I was sitting next to Lady Pentyre, who welcomed me with even greater fervour than our old friendship warranted.
"I've been longing to see you!" she began eagerly. "You know Mrs. O'Rane, don't you? And you know Colonel Grayle. Well, is it true ...?"
"Is what true?" I asked, as she paused delicately.
Her full question was inaudible, but I caught the words "chère amie."
"Ask someone who knows them better," I suggested. "I've hardly seen either for months."
There was less delicacy about Pebbleridge, when I dined with him; less still about Frank Jellaby, when I met him at the Club. To the party organiser moral depravity is of interest only in so far as it contributes to damage a hostile cause.
"Grayle's hardly chosen a fortunate moment for the double event," he observed gleefully.
I made it a rule in these days never to admit knowledge of the facts until I had discovered how much my antagonist knew. The House of Commons on this occasion was better informed than Pont Street, the County Club or Eaton Place.
"Well, you know, he's been living—for months, apparently—with Mrs. O'Rane? I'm told O'Rane is bringing a petition. It will rather cook Grayle's goose, if this all comes out just when he's waiting to be sent for. It'll be apretty bad case, from all accounts. You know O'Rane, don't you? Well, he lost his sight early in the war, which won't get Grayle much sympathy; and he was pretty newly married, which will appeal to the sentimental; and the whole business seems to have been conducted without any regard for human decency. Grayle used to go to the house as a friend, have them to his house, meet O'Rane in the Smoking-Room.... If he goes into the witness box, he'll be broken for all time, but, whether he goes in or not, he's dished himself for the present; even in war-time the Nonconformist Conscience wouldn't swallow a scandal of that kind. It's a bit ironical, isn't it? Like Parnell when he'd got Home Rule in the hollow of his hand. Grayle has done more to bring about this crisis than any six other men—including Northcliffe. He worked the Tories; he could call for anything he liked; and now you and I have only to wait for the story to get round a bit, and you'll find that Grayle's duties at the War Office are so important that he won't have time to attend the House, let alone taking a job." He laughed jubilantly. "Nemesis! Nemesis!"
"Ifthe story is true," I said. "Where did you hear it?"
"Oh, everybody's talking about it! You don't suggest it's untrue?"
"I agree that everybody's talking about it, though that by itself doesn't make it true. Indeed, I've heard so many versions that I'm beginning to get confused. You say that O'Rane is bringing a petition? That's quite well-established? If so, this is the most convincing version that I've heard since lunch, because I don't suppose he would act on mere suspicion."
Jellaby looked up to the ceiling and pinched his chin thoughtfully between thumb and finger.
"I can give you my authority, I think. I was talking to several of the Lobby correspondents—it was that little man Palfrey, the fellow from the 'Night Gazette.' He told me that Grayle had been sent for all right, but not to be sounded for an office. This story was going about, and they wanted to know if it was true. I don't know wherePalfrey got his facts from, but he's usually very well informed. He told me quite definitely that O'Rane was applying for a divorce."
I hardly knew whether to be surprised or not. When I last saw O'Rane he did not seem to have made up his own mind. At first he had told us unmistakably that he would be driven to bring the marriage to an end, unless his wife and Grayle separated; later, when she was for a moment once more in his house, he forgot to threaten and expended himself in pleading, with an appeal to Grayle which I should have been unable to resist, if I had been in his place. Her voice and bodily presence, the memories of the few weeks when they had lived together there seemed to have killed any feeling of resentment and of personal interest; O'Rane was begging the two of them to spare him the necessity of an extreme step. He did not convince them, but, when I left, I was not sure that he had not convinced himself.
Jellaby was about to leave me, when I called him back.
"I want to ask a favour of you," I said. "Don't make party capital out of this—yet awhile, at least. I know all these people; and I should like you to hold your hand for the present. If the story's true, if the case comes into court, it's public property for the world to discuss. But, until then, don't spread a story which may not be true and, true or not, must be tolerably unpleasant for young O'Rane."
"But I'm not spreading it!" Jellaby protested. "Everybody seems to have heard of it except you."
"Everyone's heard of it at about fifteenth hand. Whether it's true or not is very simply tested by events. O'Rane's not likely to let his wife goonliving with Grayle, if that's what she's doing now; if he takes action, you'll know your story's true; if he doesn't—well, for pity's sake don't even repeat such charges against a perfectly innocent woman."
The epithet made Jellaby wag his head at me very knowingly.
"There's no smoke without fire, you know, Stornaway," he said.
I cannot deal with debilitated minds which employ proverbs in place of arguments; Jellaby remained unanswered.
I had hardly got rid of him and ordered myself a glass of port wine, when a page-boy brought me a card and stated that Sir Roger Dainton was waiting in the hall and would like to see me for a moment. Now, I had been on nodding terms with Dainton a dozen years in and out of the House, but we had never attained greater intimacy, as I am temperamentally unable to suffer bores gladly. A call from such a man at nine o'clock in the evening could mean only one thing.
"Ask him, with my compliments, if he will join me in a glass of wine," I said.
Under his usual garb of awkward diffidence and universal apology, I could see that my visitor was perplexed and worried. For several moments I entirely failed to check his flow of regret at disturbing my dinner; when I silenced him with three interruptions and as many invitations to taste his wine and try some of my nuts, he planted his elbows impressively on the table, leaned forward, opened his lips and then flung himself back and swept our corner of the Coffee-Room for eavesdroppers.
"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said.
He planted his elbows in position a second time and abruptly covered his face with his hands.
"It's—incredible," he began. "My little girl—Sonia, you know Sonia? Have you heard about it?"
"I don't know what you're referring to yet," I pointed out.
"Sonia's run away from her husband!" he whispered uncomprehendingly. "She's gone off with another man. They say—they say David's going to divorce her."
He lowered his hands, and the round, child's eyes, harmonising perfectly with the chubby, boyish face, were as full of horror and incredulity as his voice had been. I knew, of course, that Dainton had lost his elder son in thefirst year of the war and I believe that the younger had been wounded at least twice; this was the first time, however, that he had been flung against the sharp rocks of life, and he was as helplessly and bewilderedly scared and resentful as a child who has fallen among the breakers on a rugged coast.
"You had better tell me all about it," I said.
His stammering, self-interrupted narrative added nothing to the three sentences which he had already spoken. The blow had fallen that day at luncheon. Dainton found himself one of a large party which was for the most part unknown to him. Half-way through the meal he caught the sound of his daughter's name with some comment which would have been grotesque, if it had not been uttered with so much assurance. There followed the silence which drives home to a speaker that he has said something unpardonable and that he alone is unaware what it is. Dainton's neighbours rallied simultaneously and doused him with two conflicting jets of conversation, only to find that he was not listening and that, when they paused, he asked in an amazed whisper whether they had heard what was said.
"I may not have caught it right," he explained hopefully.
But both denied that they had heard the words in question.
When luncheon was over, an unknown woman with a scarlet face came up to him and apologised with tears in her eyes. What he must think.... She wouldn't have done such a thing for the world.... Really it was partly their hostess's fault for not introducing them properly. Honestly, she had no idea....
"I asked her to say it again," Dainton told me dully. "It was the very first I'd heard, the first I'dsuspected.... I can't believe itnow—notSonia.... She—she said it was only a rumour, she couldn't vouch for it, but there was a report that David was going to ..."
He paused to raise his glass, spilling the wine generously. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go about asking everyTom, Dick and Harry whethermy daughter—When I got away from the office to-night, I went round to her house to see if I could find out anything from Oakleigh or George—I could talk to them fairly freely.... I remember my wife told me, I forget when it was, that Sonia was away and that George had moved in there to look after his uncle; neither of us everdreamedthen.... They were both out, so I thought I'd come and bother you. I knew you were pretty intimate with them. I—quite frankly I want you to tell me if what that woman said was true."
I did not find it easy to face Dainton's troubled, boyish eyes.
"I'm afraid it is," I said. "She's left O'Rane, shedidgo off with another man. I'm sorry to say that your luncheon-party wasn't the only place where it was being discussed, and several people have told me that the petition's actually been filed."
Dainton picked up a pair of nut-crackers and twisted them nervously open and shut.
"This will kill Catherine," he muttered. "We've both of us always been so proud of her, she was always so wonderful, even when she was a little child.... Stornaway, is this true? Is there no doubt of any kind? You don't know what she is to us!" he cried fiercely, as though I had been responsible for the shipwreck of their pride.
"There seems to be no doubt at all."
"I wonder if I may have another glass of wine," he said absently. "I'm afraid I've spilt most of this."
We must have sat for another hour in the deserted Coffee-Room, now silent as Dainton yielded inch by reluctant inch to the slow penetration of inevitable truth, now discussing explanations and canvassing expedients for retrieving a lost position. Beyond giving Grayle's name and mentioning that I had been present when an attempt was made to obviate divorce proceedings, I volunteered no details and did my best to give patient hearing to schemes which the rest of us had either rejected already or refused to consider. He wouldforceSonia to return to her husband,forceO'Rane to take her back,forceGrayle to give her up....
"There's no kind offorceyou can use," I had to tell him. "We've tried argument and entreaty, and that's failed."
"Her mother can make her!"
"No one can make her!"
Dainton looked at me as though I had contrived the catastrophe and were pluming myself on its completeness.
"But do you mean we've got to stand by and see our Sonia in the Divorce Court, to have her examined and cross-examined—our own child, with reporters scribbling it all down and everybody reading about it next day in the papers? It's unthinkable, Stornaway, it's unthinkable!"
"Tell me any way of avoiding it, and you may count on any help I can give you. By all means see her yourself or get Lady Dainton to see her. Of course, assuming that O'Rane has started proceedings, I don't know that you'll stop him. He's behaved with the greatest love and loyalty, and, if I may say so, your daughter exceeded them when she went back with Grayle after we'd tried to persuade her. But get Lady Dainton to see her. It can do no harm, but I advise you not to build too great hopes on it. Your daughter's last words, pretty well, were that she'd thought it all over beforehand and was prepared to face everything. Conceivable she may be frightened when she's taken at her word, but I'm inclined to think it will only make her set her teeth the harder."
Dainton looked at me dazedly, as though his mind had lagged a sentence and a half behind everything that I was saying and he were trying to overtake me. With marked indecision he raised his glass, lowered it, raised it again and gulped down the last mouthful of wine. Then he rose to his feet and beckoned me to do the same.
"There's not a moment to lose," he said gravely. "I'm going round to see Sonia at once. If you'll shew me where the telephone is——"
I led him to one of the boxes by the porter's office anddawdled in front of the tape-machine while he searched for Grayle's number and awaited his call. There was little news, but numerous prophets were helping the new Prime Minister with a wealth of conflicting suggestions to construct his cabinet. I had not succeeded in finding Grayle's name mentioned more than once when Dainton emerged and led me to a sofa.
"She's not in," he said. "I don't quite know what to do. Imusttell my wife at the earliest possible moment.... My God, if she came up here and had it broken to her as I did to-day.... I should like to catch the 11.10 to-night ... and I could go and see David to-morrow. Poor boy! I'm not blaming him, but he can't understand what he's doing, what this means to us—Sonia! If only Iknewabout it!..." He turned to lay his hand timidly on my knee. "She seemed very determined, when you saw her?"
"Immovable," I answered.
"You think she'd disregard her own father and mother? Stornaway, you don'tknowwhat she is to us!"
His voice gave me the answer, but I saw no way of bringing home to him that he and his wife were less than nothing to her at this moment.
"You can only try," I said. "I've seen her at 'The Sanctuary' with O'Rane and Grayle, I've seen her in Milford Square by herself——"
He looked at his watch and turned to me excitedly.
"Look here, I can't be in two places at once and Imustget down to my wife. Will you—I've no claim on you; I ask it, because I can't help myself—will you go to Sonia,insiston seeing her, tell her of our meeting to-night and beg her—in her mother's name—and mine——"
His faltering sentences lagged and halted until they stopped altogether.
"If you wish me to," I said.
"I can never thank you enough! I pray you'll never be in a similar position, but if you are——"
"Don't build extravagant hopes on it," I warned him again.
When I had seen him into a taxi, I drove to Milford Square with profound and momentarily increasing distaste for my mission. I felt instinctively that it was foredoomed to failure; I knew that, two hours after I had failed, the Daintons would be staring blankly at each other or pacing nervously up and down the room, refusing—despite my repeated warning—to abandon hope until my failure had been confessed. And I knew that I must see Mrs. O'Rane alone—which Grayle would try to prevent—and make an emotional appeal—which I was ill-equipped for doing....
My taxi drew up at the door. I rang and enquired of my old, smooth-faced antagonist whether Mrs. O'Rane was at home. I was told that she was not.
"Then I'll wait for her," I said, squeezing past him into the hall and taking off my coat and gloves. "Is Colonel Grayle in?"
"Not yet, sir; Mr. Bannerman's in the smoking-room."
"I should like to see him," I said, "if he's not engaged."
Guy dragged himself out of an arm-chair with a mixture of surprise and distrust.
"Hullo! what brings you here?" he enquired. "I never expected to see you."
"Well, I never expected to see you," I answered. "I thought you'd been banished."
He looked at me with cautious absence of expression and then applied himself to treading a little mound of cigar-ash into the carpet.
"Grayle ought to be in soon," he volunteered. "He said he wouldn't be late."
"It was Mrs. O'Rane I came to see."
Guy looked at me closely and raised his eyebrows slightly. Then he buried the lower half of his face in a tumbler of whiskey and soda, glanced at me again over the brim, swallowed and set the glass down empty.
"What d'you want with her, if I may ask?" he enquired.
Guy has a dual personality compounded of loyalty to his master and love for humanity at large. The combinationis not an easy one to imagine, but he contrived at once to blend the qualities and yet keep them distinct. I told him frankly and fully of my conversation with Dainton.
"I warned him that he was sending me on a fool's errand," I said. "But how could I refuse? I'd submit to being sent on a dozen fool's errands each day, if I thought I could spare him—and his wife—and O'Rane—and his wife——"
Guy raised his hand to interrupt me.
"Look here, how much do you know?" he asked, as I had been asking every second person that day. "Not the early part; what I mean is, are you up to date?"
"Two or three people have told me that O'Rane's actually filed his petition," I said. "Is that true?"
"I don't know. Is thatallyou know?"
"My dear Guy, the whole of London's discussing the thing, I've heard an approach to the truth and most kinds of variants."
"But is thatallyou know?" he repeated.
"I imagine so," I answered.
Guy shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"Then you're not up to date," he said. "Igot Dainton's enquiry on the telephone and I told him that she wasn't in. It was true—as far as it went. She's gone, Stornaway. I've not the faintest idea what happened, but there was—a big row of some kind—not the first by any means, I may tell you,—and she walked out of the house."
"But where's she gone to?" I asked, as soon as I was sufficiently recovered from my surprise to ask anything.
"I've no idea," he answered.
I wanted to ask so many questions that I hardly knew where to begin, but Guy—with the best possible intentions—was not in a position to tell me anything worth hearing. Mrs. O'Rane, at the end of an hour-long altercation behind closed doors, had come into the hall with a pearly-whiteface, collected a fur-coat and umbrella and walked into the Square.
"She stopped for a moment on the top step and unfastened her latch-key—she used to carry it tied to her bag with a bit of ribbon;—I found it in my hand the next moment, and she was saying good-bye and telling me quite casually that she wasn't coming back. Grayle—he didn't even trouble to come out of the smoking-room. What it was about I can't say, but they must have had an unholy row." Guy looked at me dubiously, weighing my discretion. "I suppose, now that it's all over, there's no harm in saying that rows were the rule rather than the exception.... Right from the earliest days, when she used to come and dine here or he took her out. I don't know how either thought they could possibly live in the same house. Of course, she fascinated him," he conceded with the gusto of a Promenadehabitué, "but she never cared for him. I'm as certain of that as I am of my own existence. She's a curious woman; it used to make me go hot and cold sometimes to see and hear Grayle with her—he was cruel,—but, the more he bullied her, the more she respected him. If he shewed her the sort of deference a man does shew a woman, he seemed to lose his grip. I don't know how much you saw of them before she came here, but she was playing cat and mouse with Grayle. Or trying to. He soon put a stop to that. He's had a good many ordinaryaffaires, but he was really fond of this woman, and, when he found that O'Rane was openly living with someone else——"
"That's well-established, is it?" I interrupted.
"I believe so. Well, he naturally wanted to protect Mrs. O'Rane.Shetreated it as a joke, until he swore he'd never see her again. (He was always saying it, but this time he meant it.) Then she got frightened. First she rang up,—and he ignored her; she wrote,—and he didn't answer her letters; called,—and he refused to see her. The next thing was complete surrender." Guy Bannerman spread out his hands and shrugged his shoulders. "Youcan'tcompound a common life ofthatsort of storm and sunshine. Graylefound that, if he wanted to get his way,—well, he didn't actually take a stick to her, but it was the next best thing."
Guy paused to sigh in perplexity, trying vainly to reconcile his idol's behaviour with his own romantic canons of chivalry.
"Go on," I said.
"Well, he was gradually breaking her spirit, killing all her charm; and then I really think that he began to get tired of her. They were wearing each other out, and you couldn't expect her to be mewed up inside the house, and people were beginning to talk.... I've told you pretty well all I know."
I digested Guy's story in silence until I heard the jingle of a hansom cab outside, followed by a word or two in Grayle's voice. A moment later he was standing in the door-way, scowling in surprise at seeing me there.
"Hast thou found me, oh mine enemy?" he sneered. "I seem to remember your giving it as your considered opinion that you never wanted to see me or speak to me again. I'm honoured by your visit, of course, but you can—just—clear—out!"
He pushed the door open to its widest extent and stood aside as though nothing would give him greater pleasure than to assist my departure with a kick. In his present mood he would have done it without much further provocation, but I am no more of a physical coward than my neighbour and I was not going to let him threaten me.
"I came to see Mrs. O'Rane," I told him without getting up.
"Well, no doubt Bannerman's informed you that she's not here."
"I want to know where she is. I may mention that I've seen her father to-night. He'd heard nothing till lunch-time to-day, and, though it's no affair of his, I thought he was rather upset. He's gone down to Hampshire to break the news to his wife, and I promised to see if I could arrange a meeting with his daughter."
Grayle walked to the sofa, picked up my coat and tossed it to me.
"I don't know where she is," he said shortly. "And I don't care."
My hat followed the coat through the air and dropped on to my knees.
"Dainton wants to stop the divorce," I said. "That must have a certain academic interest for you, Grayle. He's seeing O'Rane to-morrow morning."
I looked in vain for any sign of pleasure, relief or concern.
"I tell you, I don't know where she is," he repeated. "She left this place to-day—and—she's—not coming—back."
"You mean you turned her out," I suggested.
"Oh, I'm sick of this!" He limped to my chair and caught my wrist in one hand, bending it back until I had to get up to prevent his breaking my arm off at the elbow. "As a matter of courtesy I told you she'd gone, and the best thing you can do is to follow her. You've found time to meddle with my affairs for a good many months, but I'm tired of it now; it's got to end. I give you fair warning, Stornaway, that I am instructing my servants not to admit you, if you come here again; and, by God! if you try to force your way in, I'll thrash you out with a crop. Now—march!"
My exit was painless, though I will not pretend that it was dignified. I walked a few yards along the Brompton Road, wondering what to do next. It was futile to speculate where Mrs. O'Rane was gone; she could not return to "The Sanctuary," she could not go home to her parents; after abandoning her husband and being abandoned by her lover within six months, she could hardly—with her pride and temper—ask a friend to take her in. Any grandeur with which she had tried to invest her recklessness and infidelity at our last meeting was sorely draggled. And she was about thirty—a year or two more, a year or two less—in the full bloom and beauty of her life, with somehundreds from her father to pay her hotel bills, debarred by the war even from hiding herself for a few months abroad. I stood still to wonder where she was at that moment, how she was facing the future.
Then I turned down Sloane Street and made for the Underground station. I had meant to go home and, perhaps, to telephone to Dainton, but it could do no good, and I wanted to hold a council of war with the Oakleighs. In Sloane Square I met Beresford hobbling along on a stick and made him turn round and keep me company. In some way I felt that he deserved to be present. Bertrand was in bed when we reached "The Sanctuary," but I found George reading a book with his feet up on a sofa, and, when I told him that my business was urgent, we adjourned upstairs to the scene of more than one early morning session. I told them as shortly as I could of my interviews with Dainton, Bannerman and Grayle and left the facts to sink in. The ensuing silence was broken by Beresford, speaking more to himself than to the room.
"The cad!" he muttered. "Oh, my God! the cad! And you don't know where she is now?"
"No. I've given you all the facts."
After the one outburst Beresford remained quiet, and the other three of us started a rambling debate to decide what we wanted done and what was practicable. Bertrand acted as chairman and put the questions. We agreed that for the sake of O'Rane and the Daintons the proceedings should be stopped, if possible; it was established that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle were unlikely to meet again, and, if we could get back to the terms discussed a few weeks earlier, it was still conceivable that the scandal might be suppressed.
"But O'Rane doesn't know they've parted," I reminded Bertrand. "Someone must tell him. I'll go down, if necessary, as I had the news at first-hand. Of course, if he refuses and says they had their chance and missed it——"
"He won't refuse," said Bertrand. "You'll go? I believe we can stop it even now. He's not particularly vindictive—he shewed that the other night—and he'd sooner spare hiswife than punish Grayle." He grimaced with disfavour. "Stornaway, I've never liked that man, but I didn't think he was capable of this."
"Nor did she, poor soul!"
We had reached our decision, and, if I had to leave for the country by an early train, I wanted to get home to bed. George and his uncle were chewing the cud of my story, and I saw no end to that. I was putting on my coat, when Beresford begged me to stay a moment longer.
"You're notleavingit at this, are you?" he asked, with a white face.
"Have you anything to suggest?" I asked.
"You're going to let Grayle ride off? Merciful Christ! And I thought some of you were Sonia's friends!"
He struggled to his feet and in another moment, bumping past me, was half-way to the door. George sprang from his chair and had one foot planted solidly in the way before Beresford could reach the handle.
"Here, where are you off to?" he demanded.
"Something's got to be done about Grayle," was the reply.
"What do you mean?" I asked, for Beresford had the voice, the eyes and the bearing of homicidal mania.
"I'm going to have a word with him," he answered between clenched teeth. "Let me go!"
There was something pitifully incongruous between the purposeful language and the emaciated, consumptive speaker. Grayle, for all his unsound leg, could pluck him up by the ankles and crush in his head against the wall like the shell of an egg.
"Let's hear some more about it first," I said, taking his arm despite a quiver and jerk of protest. "I know Grayle fairly well, and, if you're going to match yourself against him in physical strength, you might just as well try to knock holes in the side of a battleship with your naked fists."
Beresford wriggled against my grip.
"I can have a go atspoilinghim first," he cried. "After that, I don't mind what happens."
Their motives were different, but I was vividly remindedof the Cockney Huish preparing to advance, vitriol jar in hand, against the unerring rifle of Attwater. I looked over Beresford's head and lifted my eyebrows at Bertrand, who raised himself in bed and called him twice by name.
"You mustn't do anything hasty," he urged, wagging his forefinger with great parade of reasonableness. "Any kind of attack on Grayle is bound to recoil on Sonia, and that's the last thing you want. I assure you that twenty-four hours after you'd gone for him——"
Beresford shook free of my arm and limped menacingly up to the bed.
"Youdon't care a curse for her," he cried, "but you pretend to care for O'Rane. You're going to let Grayle break up O'Rane's life, take away Sonia from him, throw her out of doors——"
Bertrand spread out his hands with a gesture of bland expostulation.
"My dear boy, we can't prevent it. It'sdone, and any act of private vengeance will hit David and Sonia hardest of all. Haven't we been scheming and contriving to prevent the divorce for that very reason? We all know that it would dish Grayle's political career to be cited as a co-respondent at the present time; it would keep him out of the Cabinet or compel him to resign. But I can tell you that it would dish the O'Ranes very much more completely. Dear boy, when we're hoping to close down one scandal, for Heaven's sake don't open up another."
If not impressed, Beresford was at least interested and temporarily checked. He stood reflecting with a scowl on his face and his underlip thrust forward.
"Is that—brute going to be taken into the Government?" he asked.
"According to the papers there's every possibility," Bertrand answered. "No one will ever know, but I choose to believe that he tired of Sonia from the moment when his plans were threatened by the possibility of a scandal."
Beresford looked at him wonderingly and then turned to me.
"Do you bear that out?" he asked. "I don't know enough of public life to say if it's true. Do you mean that, if Grayle went into the Divorce Court, he'd be broken?"
The eagerness of his tone frightened us a little, for we thought that we had talked him out of danger. Bertrand assumed great determination of manner.
"Grayle's not going into the Divorce Court, if we can help it," he said.
"Grayle's going to be broken, if I can work it," was the retort.
"But you can't. No one would support you more readily, if it were possible."
Beresford dropped into his former chair without answering and propped his chin on his fists. Bertrand watched him uneasily; George came back from the door and led me away to the window. Tentatively he asked me how far I thought the threat of proceedings could be used to block Grayle's path of office.
"I don't know how far you can blackmail a man," George admitted. "Particularly a man like Grayle. It's only an idea, I've just thought of it. If we could make him sign an undertaking—something that we could use against him and that he couldn't turn and use against us. It all wants the devil of a lot of thinking out.... If Raney doesn't divorce Sonia now, when the offence is still fresh, I suppose he weakens his position; he may not be able to get a divorce later, and then our barrier's kicked to matchwood. I'm not a lawyer; perhaps Bertrand...."
We walked to the bed, where Bertrand was sitting with his eyes on us. I cannot say whether my friends have been more unfortunate than the generality, but one has bound himself by a similar undertaking not to play cards, two more not to enter certain cities, and four or five to resign certain positions and to live abroad. As a rule, however, a felony was being compounded, or the offence was one against honour wherein there was no statute of limitations.
"It's mere bluff, and he'll beat you at that game," Bertrand said without hesitation. "What Grayle's done is tooutrage public opinion, and the public has a short memory. You could break him now, but in two, three years' time people would say, 'This is very ancient history, we've heardherstory, but not his; probably he wasn't so much to blame as she makes out; she couldn't live with one man, so it's conceivable that she couldn't live with another. But, anyway, it's ancient history.' In three years' time your man of the world would think none the worse of him;—and you can't tell how farshemay have travelled in three years. Time's on his side."
"But this is the opportunity of his political life," George persisted. "In three years' time it may have gone beyond hope of returning."
"But he knows that David wouldn't sacrifice his wife to punish him. Haven't we talked ourselves hoarse to find a way of stopping the proceedings? Grayle's a level-headed fellow——"
"Hardly at this moment," I interrupted.
Bertrand looked at me in some surprise.
"Well, discuss it with David," he said unenthusiastically. "If he agrees, go to Grayle and try your luck. I never like brandishing weapons that I'm not prepared to use.Itell you it's an empty threat and that Grayle will see through it. You know, you're all carried away by some idea of poetic justice, you think you've got a pocket retribution packed up and ready for him; you imagine that people are punished for their crimes in this world. I've outgrown that phase."
The superfluous touch of cynicism flicked us all and Beresford most of all.
"Somebody's going to punish that man," he cried. "I don't know who and I don't know how, but it's going to be done. I'll drop everything else and sacrifice all I've got to it."
Bertrand sighed and lay back on his pillows.
"Grayle's not worth it," he said.
"But Sonia is!" Beresford cried passionately.