"I'll ask him, if I remember. I'm going to Melton next week. Have you any message for him?"
She deliberated with one finger pressed to her lips.
"Tell him—exactly what you think of me," she suggested with dancing eyes. "It'll amuse him much more than a message."
"Are you going down to him this term?"
She shook her head.
"I'm too busy, and he doesn't want me, or he'd have sent for me long ago. Not that I should have gone, of course...." She glanced quickly round to satisfy herself that the others were absorbed in their own conversations; then lowered her voice and laid her hand on my sleeve. "Mr. Stornaway, youdoagree with me that it's absolute rot for him to be there, don't you? Old Mr. Oakleigh's offered him any money he wants—again and again; I've got five hundred a year from father; he could wipe out what he calls his debts and live here with the utmost ease. And he ought to be in London, he ought to be in the House; there are all sorts of jobs that he could get in the City.... If you want a message, tell him that he must choose Melton or me," she went on with a pout and a rising voice. "If he hasn't chucked Melton by Christmas, I shall chuck him. Tell him that I shall elope to Sloane Square—I don't believeanyone's ever eloped to Sloane Square, but it's the handiest place in the world; even the Hounslow and Barking non-stop trains stop there,—so sweet of them, I always think—I shall go there with Peter and live in his flat and star in revue where I shall be an amazing draw, you know; and Colonel Grayle would scowl at me from the stage box, and, darling Lady Maitland, you'd boom me and invite fashionable clergymen to meet me at lunch, and George would have his car at the stage door to take me home—I don't know that Ishallwait till Christmas."
She paused for lack of breath and looked delightedly round the table. My expression, I imagine, was bored, Lady Maitland's perplexed; only poor Beresford's was unaffectedly pained.
"Mr. Stornaway's quite right," Lady Maitland said, when she had collected herself. "You talk a great deal of nonsense."
"I mean it, though."
"Rubbish, my dear."
Yet I believe that both she and I felt a current of discontent running underneath the froth of nonsense. Perhaps we shewed it, perhaps Lady Maitland reconsidered her judgement, for, when Deganway sat down to play rag-time after dinner and Mrs. O'Rane kicked the rugs aside and began dancing with Pentyre, she observed at impressive intervals——
"Darling Sonia is always in such spirits".... "I don't think it's quite the thing for a young man like that—quite good-looking, you know—to be living here; Mr. O'Rane will have a great deal to answer for, if there's any unpleasantness, and you can give him that message fromme." ... "Tell him a husband's place is beside his wife.... But he must make her a home where she can live. I forget whether you were here that night—yes, you were! Well, Lady Dainton's quite right.... Just like the casual-ward of a workhouse...." "Of course, her mother brought her up atrociously".... "I really hope that she's going to have a family; it would just make the difference."
A week later I motored to Melton for the Governors' meeting. Town and school alike had become almost unrecognisable since my last visit three or four years earlier. Leagues of huts, miles of tents, acres of pickets stretched from the outskirts of Melton to the fringe of Swanley Forest; the drowsy cathedral town was alive with thundering lorries, and the billeting officer's handiwork was visible at eight windows out of ten. My car crawled apprehensively through the crowded streets and up the hill to a school which was half as it had been founded three hundred years before, half as it had been converted into a military academy during the last fifteen months. Great Court echoed with the clatter and scrape of hob-nailed boots, as the corps fell in and marched off to parade on the practice-ground; onegroup of signallers on the steps of the headmaster's house waved frantically to another group by the entrance to Great School, and, as I wandered into the Cloisters to kill time before the hour of our meeting, the Green was filled with pigmy recruits, learning their squad-drill from a husky but intensely business-like young sergeant. Only a handful of obvious weaklings wore the old conventional straw hat, grey trousers and dark jacket, and the open door of the Common Room at Big Gate shewed not more than two-thirds of the staff in cap and gown.
"War takes on a new horror and hopelessness, when you know that the schools of France and Germany present the same sight," I said to Dr. Burgess.
Our meeting was over, and he was conducting me round the unaging school buildings which I was thenceforth to hold in joint trust. The company drill on the practice-ground was giving way to a final parade, and we watched four hundred young soldiers from twelve to eighteen march erect and with set faces to the Armoury and from the Armoury to Great School for a lantern lecture on the Dardanelles expedition. A couple of dozen non-commissioned officers had fallen out and were awaiting a course in map-reading with their commanding officer.
"Thank Heaven! it will all be over before most of these boys are old enough to go out and stop bullets," I added.
Dr. Burgess stroked his long beard and shook a mournful head. "Some were yet in our midst when the appointed season came," he said, pointing to an already long Roll thumb-tacked to a wire-covered notice-board. "And they that have returned——" He sighed deeply. "David O'Rane enjoins me to say that he is within."
We shook hands at the door of a bachelor set of chambers in the Cloisters, and Dr. Burgess strode back to his house, murmuring mournfully into his beard. I knocked and entered to find O'Rane seated—as I might have expected to find a man with his physical dislike for chairs—in the middle of the floor with the big, patient head of his Saint Bernard on his knees. Miss Merryon was writing at atable in the window, and a low wicker-work couch by the fire was timidly occupied by a flushed and disputatious malefactor. She welcomed me by name to give the cue before making an excuse to withdraw. I apologised to O'Rane for disturbing him, but he dismissed the boy and turned with a smile and sigh of relief.
"We'd both had enough of it," he confessed. "That young man thought fit to play a practical joke on Miss Merryon, so I've been taking his moral education in hand, appealing to his self-interest."
He felt for a box of cigarettes and threw them to me. "Well?" I said.
"I remember getting held up at Bâle some years ago," he explained. "I was on my way home from Italy and I missed the eleven o'clock connection to Paris. There were crowds of us there—some on our way back from Italy, like me, some from the winter sports in Switzerland—all ages and races, on every kind of business or pleasure. The next train to Paris left the following day, and we had to reconcile ourselves to an uncomfortable night. Well, I've tried so many varieties of discomfort that I'm hardened and philosophical; I imagine most people would call these quarters uncomfortable, but they're nothing like what they were before Sonia took them in hand last summer."
He waved proudly at a pair of massive, discoloured velvet curtains, a bamboo overmantel and occasional table, wicker chairs half-buried in punt cushions and a threadbare carpet tattooed by generations of burning matches. I put up with the same sort of thing at Trinity, but I was then nineteen and I had no wife to accommodate. Mrs. O'Rane, I imagine, was not schooled to discomfort.
"I got a good deal of amusement and interest out of watching the others," he went on. "The French were the worst—voluble, excited, indignant, grabbing the best places and all the food they could lay hands on in the buffet—the way they always behave when they're travelling; the next worse were the Germans—they were ruder and more inconsiderate than the French, but not nearly so efficient. TheAmericans all set themselves to westernise Europe and started getting off protests by cable to Paris, ordering special trains and booking three times the accommodation available at any hotel. The English were bored, aloof, taking themselves and their troubles very seriously and refusing to share them with anyone. Well, when the last bedroom had been snapped up, there were still enough of us benighted to overcrowd the waiting-rooms and buffet, we were all suffering from a sense of grievance, and there wasn't enough food to go round. I got wedged into a corner with a plate of meat and looked on. One of the Englishmen commented loudly on the noise that a German made in eating soup. The comment was understood, so the German laid himself out to shew the sort of noise hecouldmake when he tried. The Englishman wrapped himself in a ferocious dignity, finished his meal and lit a cigar, sending a cloud of smoke in the face of one of the Italians. My attention was then attracted by a brawl in the middle of the buffet; someone had imprudently left his seat to forage for food, and someone else had promptly bagged it. As they bickered and gesticulated and finally pushed each other about and the onlookers took sides and joined in, I said to myself, 'Lord God! this buffet is just like the world, and these fools are behaving just as we all behave, and we should all despise and laugh at ourselves as much as I'm laughing now, if we had any detachment, self-criticism, humour, logic or God's common sense.'"
O'Rane's black eyes lit up at the memory of the scene.
"I was telling that story to our young friend," he continued with his baffling smile. "Chivalry? Nothing doing. Moral sanctions and first causes? Nothing doing.Hedidn't believe in God,hewasn't going to Hell, if he misbehaved himself, so why in the name of reason should he bother?... But I should think I fixed him over my Bâle story.... We had a hideous night (it was too cold to go and sulk outside—which made the symbolism more perfect; you can't sulk outside this world, unless you're prepared to cut your throat); and we might have made it quitetolerable, if only we'd had a little imagination and kindliness, if we'd struck an international bargain and surrendered the privilege of eating soup noisily in return for immunity from cigar smoke in the eyes, if the chairs had only been given to the women and old men, if someone had only lent a hand to a poor boy who was coughing himself sick with asthma...." He whistled reflectively between his teeth for a moment. "Life's like a club, sir; there are rules and conventions and an endless mass of tradition—the things we don't do; but the rules were made so long ago, the conventions only aim at an irreducible minimum. Even so, it's better than treating the world like a company trading for profit, but we must modernise the rules. As you know, I always want to delete 'efficiency' from the English language; efficiency in the Bâle buffet would have meant that an organised party of four, back to back, could have downed the rest, grabbed all the food and cleared the till.
"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore)."Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door."Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how—"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ..."'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot—"Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot."
"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore)."Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door."Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how—"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ..."'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot—"Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot."
"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore)."Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door."Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how—"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ..."'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot—"Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot."
"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).
"Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.
"Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how—
"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'
"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ...
"'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,
"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot—
"Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot."
O'Rane's luminous black eyes were gleaming with mischief. Remembering my first sight of him, when he fought for his life in a Vienna café, I wondered whether any wife, reinforced by any mother, could curb his restless yearning after action, were it blacking the eye of an oppressor or slinging a disabled man on to his shoulders.... For all his cosmopolitan spirit I could not fit him into the Byzantine world in which Lady Dainton had brought up her daughter nor into the Merveilleuse society into which her daughter had gravitated.
"It's—it'sreallyonly a very big club," he murmured.
"Full of most undesirable members," I suggested. The Bâle story, I felt, would be wasted on Vincent Grayle.
"They're not acclimatised yet. Now, you'd open the door for the most undesirable member of the Eclectics, if he had a game leg, yet you laugh at me if I pick up an injured man in the street and carry him home for treatment. God's name! Where's the difference?You'renot acclimatised yet, you see. It's to your interest, too.... How is Beresford, by the way? Sonia's the most undutiful wife in the way of writing; I suppose it's natural enough, really; she doesn't like having her letters to me read by anyone else."
I never forgave the old men who advised and hampered me, pinning me to a career for which I was unsuited and quarrelling with me when I broke away from it. In my turn I have tried to refrain from advising and hampering the younger generation—only to find that the younger generation sometimes makes an astonishing fool of itself and that it is harder and harder to sit silent and unintervening when someone whom I like is on the verge of falling downstairs in the dark or of having his pocket picked. Commenting on the fact that he was at Melton, while his wife was in London, I warned O'Rane that, with their double portion of wilfulness and energy, he was taking unnecessary risks with his married life.
"I've not got much to go on," I admitted, "but that supper-party you brought me to...."
"That was exceptional," he objected. "And they were Sonia's friends. You were the only one I invited."
I reminded him of Beresford, Miss Merryon and perhaps three more obvious recipients of his charity. He coloured slightly and told me that it was an article of faith with him not to refuse help to anyone who asked. Then I could see that he was not being honest with himself, for he shifted his ground, concentrated on Beresford and asserted that his wife liked him to be in the house.
"But do you think he ought to be there?" I asked, following him on to the ground which he had chosen. "They'reboth young, attractive; your wife's a very fascinating and beautiful woman. She can take care of herself, of course.... It was in fact commented on at dinner the other night."
O'Rane wrinkled his nose in dissatisfaction.
"He's company for Sonia," he said weakly.
"You'dbe company for her, if she came here or you went to live in London. Much better company, too," I added.
My tone may have betrayed more than I intended to convey, for O'Rane laughed.
"You don't like her friends?Idon't care a great lot for some of them, but you must remember that she gave up a good deal to marry me—a very full life—and I can't give her much. What I can give her is the freest possible hand. That's why I haven't pressed her to come down here, though, God knows, it's lonely enough without her. By Easter, if not Christmas——"
"Won't you have given this up by Christmas?" I asked.
His face grew tired and perplexed, and he ran his fingers impatiently through his hair.
"I don't know. I owe the devil of a lot of money; and I should be damned body and soul, if I lived on charity when I could earn my own livelihood. We'll discuss it at Christmas. In the meantime, can you stay and dine with me in Common Room?"
His invitation was a reminder that I had already stayed perilously long, if I was to get back to London in time for a dinner engagement.
"See me to my car," I said, as I put on my coat. "Look here, don't think I'm a mere busybody. You and your wife are such a pair of children that you mustn't mind a man twice your age telling you, if he thinks you're behaving foolishly. I strongly advise you to throw this over at Christmas. Now not another word."
O'Rane walked in silence through the Cloisters with one hand on the Saint Bernard's collar. As we came into Great Court, he stopped abruptly.
"Look here, sir; understand one thing," he began. "Ifyou think I mind or that I'm not grateful to you for speaking like this, I shall never forgive you. But you say Sonia's to be trusted to take care of herself. That's enough. If she wasn't——" He shrugged his shoulders—"she wouldn't be worth keeping. If she fell in love with—who shall we say?—Beresford and ran away with him, in God's name d'you think I should want to stop her? I admit I've only been married three months, but to me love's a thing of perfect, implicit trust. This is between ourselves, but last week George Oakleigh came down for Founder's Day and dropped a hint that Sonia was lunching and dining out too much with—well, I suppose there's no harm in saying it—Grayle. As with you, someone had commented on it at dinner. I'm afraid I couldn't pump up the slightest indignation. Grayle's rather in love with her. So's Beresford. So's that squeaky tame-cat, Deganway, of the Foreign Office. So's one of my boys here—George's cousin Laurie, who firmly believes that he brought me up to the scratch and made me propose—rather against my will. So's young Pentyre, so's half the Brigade. If I wanted to be jealous, sir, I'm afraid I shouldn't have time. As it is, I'm so proud of Sonia that I glory in seeing other people proud of her, loving her.... As for stray comments at dinner—I don't say it's right and I don't say it's wrong, but she belongs to a very modern school which goes its own waywithoutregarding stray comments at dinner. But so long as we agree that she's to be trusted——?"
We had reached Big Gate, and he held out his hand to me with the mischievous smile which I was beginning to know so well and which always filled me with a sense of helplessness. As I looked at him with the October wind blowing through his black hair, I reflected that he must think me very old-fashioned to be surprised when a three-month-old wife boasted of the men who were in love with her and her husband derived a reflected happiness from her successes.
Driving back to London I felt that I was escaping mile by mile from a bewildering world of serious make-believe.
My engagement that night was to dine with Harry Merefield and to discuss something which, he said, he could explain better by word of mouth than in a letter. I was intrigued by the invitation, because Merefield at this time was of considerable account in the Foreign Office. We dined at his Club, and, as the only other person present was Barton, who had thrown up his work at Cambridge twelve months before and was now my official chief in the Treasury, I divined that they contemplated a deal in my person. The preliminaries were already settled, and, as we drank our sherry, Merefield confided that the Foreign Office wanted me to go out to America ostensibly to raise money for the War Charities Fund, in reality to carry on a campaign of propaganda; my knowledge of country and people would be invaluable and our relations had reached a point where we could no longer afford to do nothing. Would I think over the proposal?
"If this Press agitation goeson..." he began grimly and lapsed into eloquent silence.
I must confess that I have never been able to understand what function Ministers proposed that the Press should fulfil; they set up a Bureau to control the supply of news and occasionally to restrain editorial comment, but their interest seemed to die when once the War Office had secured that direct military information was not to be disclosed and that discussions and attacks should not take place round the head of this or that commander. Valiantly they feared nothing, despondently they hoped for nothing from a somewhat despised organisation which, despite their contempt, believed in its own power and was capable daily of placing the same view before every man and woman in the country until a vague but obstinate conviction arose that "there must be something in it." The Press with a little diplomatic flattery, might have become the handmaid of the Government; with promptitude and vigour it could have been emasculated to the semblance of an officialbulletin. Instead, Ministers treated it like an intrusive wasp, slapping at it with ineffectual petulance, ducking their heads and running away when it was angered, until Sir John Woburn and half a dozen of his fellows were left to suggest, condemn, support and attack, to push favourite ministers and policies, to be inspired by those same ministers and to indulge in superficial criticism and the promulgation of half-truths which were harder to overtake and refute than a substantial, well-defined lie. Though never a Minister, I am afraid that I must accept my share of responsibility, for, when the House of Commons abrogated its duty of criticism, reform or remedy became possible only by a Press campaign.
"I don't give Woburn credit for excessive modesty," said Merefield, "but it never occurs to him that his vile rags can have any effect abroad. Yet, if you say a thing often enough, it gets repeated. The French and the Russians are now beginning to ask what England's doing, what the Navy's thinking about, and why we don't do more.... Wolff's Bureau itself couldn't have a greater success than Woburn in making the French believe that we're sacrificing them to preserve our own trade. We've given America about as much ragging as she'll stand, and I want you to sweeten things. You do know the country."
I know enough of America to feel that she has always suffered, as Ireland suffers, from the characteristically English belief that because two people speak a similar language they must have an identic soul and that the Americans are a homogeneous Saxon race, estranged indeed from an equally homogeneous parent stock by a certain insolent independence imparted by General Washington to his turbulent followers, but Saxon in orientation and sympathy, essentially sound at heart. When Merefield asked me to go out, I knew that he could have found others better qualified for the work, but at least I was a man who never expected to find unanimity on the issues of European peace and war in New England, purest in Saxon blood and tradition, sensitive to every European repercussion and receptive of everythought-wave borne across the Atlantic; in the Southern States, with their political concentration on the negro within their gates and the Mexican without; in the North-West, watchful of Canadian encroachments; in the Far West, with its eyes set on a Japanese peril; in the Middle West, where the farmer of Illinois and Iowa lives and dies without coming nearer than at a thousand miles' distance to Pacific or Atlantic; in scattered, unassimilated lumps of disaffected Ireland or duly prepared Germany.
"They're getting tired of hearing what 'America' ought to do," Merefield continued. "People here won't see that there is no American people yet, hardly an American idea, only the vaguest groping after an American ideal. They've been snapping and snarling at Wilson over Belgium, over the 'Lusitania', over his notes—as if he had a mixed population of a hundred and ten millions in hispocket! I want you to explain that it's only our fun. After all, they've got their own Woburns; they'll understand."
My American friends were too numerous to allow of my accepting Merefield's facile diagnosis and treatment. I knew then, as I had confirmed later, that the commonest feeling in the American mind was a quiet but affronted indignation at British ingratitude. Of the organisations, the funds and charities, the work of humanity and succour that had begun in America from the first day of war, not a word was said in our press or speeches; over the hardships and inconveniences involved by our blockade, over the sense of grievance occasioned by our censorship of mails and cables, no sympathy was expressed or felt. When Russia was dependent on American munitions, when English credit in America was the hope and salvation of allied finance, we could find no more gracious form of acknowledgement than a sneer at a so-called proud nation which let its sons and daughters drown without protest and shirked the sacrifices of war in order to steal trade, to sell the means of destruction to others and to increase the ever-mounting accumulation of wealth. I am too old and cosmopolitan to have any right to be surprised, yet I always am in fact surprised bymy countrymen's abysmal want of imagination and international courtesy. I approached my mission with the most unfeigned reluctance.
Merefield left me to think over his suggestion undisturbed, and before saying good-night I told him that, if he would give me a few weeks to order my affairs, I would gladly go for as long a time as the Foreign Office chose to keep me. Yolande and her husband had attended to my domestic requirements so admirably during my absence in Austria that I had no hesitation in entrusting them to her again and in surrendering the rest of my house for use as an office. My departmental work was gradually transferred to other shoulders, though at one moment I feared that the department itself was going to be extinguished. After dissipating numberless troops on secondary operations in every corner of the world except the western front, the Government found itself short of reinforcements for the great offensive which was to break the German line in the spring of 1916. The flow of volunteers was drying up, and I heard much excited gossip about an immediate measure of conscription. Grayle, I remembered, was very active and tried to commit me to an organised attack on the Government; as, however, even he admitted that no one but the Prime Minister could carry a compulsory service bill, I told him that he must be content with anything he could get. My department, or the younger section of it, was saved by a comic-opera compromise whereby volunteers were encouraged to enlist on pain of being conscribed, if they held back. To introduce a democratic note and make the figures imposing, all my youngsters were invited to attest; to ensure that the official machine continued in being, it was arranged that no government servant should be called to the colours without the leave of his departmental head. So, after a week's flutter, I was at liberty to go.
There was no secret about the fact of my mission, and Bertrand Oakleigh arranged a little dinner at the House to wish me good-speed. I walked back with him to hisrooms at "The Sanctuary" and looked into the library to see if there was anyone about. George was asleep on a sofa, but otherwise the room was deserted.
"I'm waiting to see Sonia," he yawned, as I came in.
"With any luck she's out at a dance and won't be back till about four. I've induced Beresford to clear out, but I don't want her to be frightened or wonder where he is."
He broke off to yawn again. I asked him how he had contrived the eviction, and the yawn shortened into a smile.
"I didn't put it on the ground that he was falling in love with Sonia," he said, "because I suppose he knows that; I just told him that—a comment had been made.... D'you know, after that dinner, dear Lady Maitland called on me at ten next morning at the Admiralty, telling me to use my influence? And I may say that when Lady Maitland tells me to do a thing I do it. Well, Beresford is in the pulpy state where he'd cut his throat if he could protect Sonia's reputation in any way, little knowing the evergreen hardiness of that same reputation, and he went off to his own flat. Sonia will probably be very indignant with me this evening, but she's made her Peter much too lamb-like to be seriously interested in him any longer. Anyway, if she isn't indignant with me for one thing, she'll be indignant for another. And I seem to survive it comfortably. Sothatdanger's over, though as a matter of fact there never was any danger...." He filled a pipe and lurched wearily round the room in search of matches. "The only danger for Sonia is from a man who'll bully her," he drawled. "When she was engaged to Jim Loring, he behaved like an extra lady's maid; she might still be blowing hot and cold with Raney, if he hadn't shewn her very definitely who had the stronger will. It was at the very beginning of the war, and he was quite ruthless.... Last time he saw her, poor old Raney...."
"You know them both pretty well, don't you?" I asked.
"Yes. And the next question is, why did they marry? I can't answer that. They were in love, but that's more areason than an excuse.... Yes, I've known 'em both for years. And for years I've tried to restrain Sonia's destiny when I saw it going to her head. Oh, by the way, Beresford's by no means my only success. I don't know whether Grayle's a friend of yours, but I dislike him—always did, when I was in the House with him—and the other day I thought it was time to interfere; you couldn't stir a yard without running into them. This time I didn't bother about approaching the man—that would have been too great a waste of time,—but I talked to Sonia until she promised never to have Grayle inside the house again and never to meet him of malice aforethought. Which you will admit is a fairly comprehensive victory."
He looked at his watch and walked impatiently to the writing-table.
"Mrs. O'Rane seems to be a whole-time job," I commented.
"She's all that," he grunted. "Mark you, I'm fond of her in spite of herself.... But I'm fonder of Raney, and the pair of them seem steering for disaster.... I don't know. I may be all wrong. I'm a bachelor and I've never had to humour a woman.... Here, I've finished this. I'll walk with you as far as the club."
As I latched the door behind me, I asked what he thought of the life which O'Rane had decreed for "The Sanctuary." He smiled before answering.
"If you'd known Raney as long as I have, it would be just the thing you'd expect of him—all takenau grand sérieux, too, of course. As for Sonia, she'd consent to sleep in a doss-house, if she were doing it for the first time—a new experience, you know. She was prepared to put up with anything, I fancy, to get away from home and have a house of her own; and she'd have cheerfully accepted half a room in a workman's cottage when she married Raney. After four or five months of it, I should think it's beginning to pall; the caravanserai life wouldn't suit her for twenty-four hours in the day, she likes it foran hour after dinner—for more new experiences. I think, Ithinkyou'll find Raney will have to drop it.... But I don't know.... There are five things that are too hard for me, and the way of a maid with a man is the hardest of them all."
"Vanity induces men, more than reason, to act against inclination."The Duke de La Rochefoucald:Maxims.
"Vanity induces men, more than reason, to act against inclination."The Duke de La Rochefoucald:Maxims.
"Vanity induces men, more than reason, to act against inclination."The Duke de La Rochefoucald:Maxims.
"Vanity induces men, more than reason, to act against inclination."
The Duke de La Rochefoucald:Maxims.
I sailed for America in December, 1915, on perhaps the most difficult mission that I have ever undertaken. It was not expected, of course, that the United States would enter the war against us or upset the diplomatic equilibrium in our favour without provocation and until the result of the elections had been seen. I went, as I have suggested, to counteract the German propaganda, which sought to make all at least equally responsible for the war, and also to remove some part of the bad impression which had been left by our more unbridled journalists and our less imaginative statesmen. The moral approbation of America was too precious an asset to fritter away, and the purchase of material depended on the goodwill of American financiers, the supply of munitions could be stopped as a diplomatic reprisal.
It was perhaps unfortunate that my arrival coincided with an outburst of new interest in the Blockade, ending with the creation of a Blockade Ministry and the appointment of a Blockade Minister. (Harry Merefield used to shake his head over any new interest in the Blockade. "Wealways say that Germany must be defeated in the field, and I'm apprehensive when the soldiers tell me that they're counting on our starving the brutes out.") I was asked, too, at more than one meeting how the Government of Great Britain reconciled its passionate crusade in defence of smallnationalities with its no less passionate refusal to allow the Irish to control their own destinies. The dreary tale of the unchecked Ulster gun-running and the appeal to Germany was rehearsed for my benefit; and my more law-abiding Irish audiences generated considerable heat over the presence of "the rebel Carson" in the Cabinet.
But, if I found the work difficult, it gave me a respite from England, where I felt that I had been watching the machine at too close quarters. Since the day when I helped George Oakleigh to divide the world and secure a lasting peace, our nerves had worn thin; we devoted too much time to seeing that other people went promptly about their duties; and a deadly personal bitterness—embodied for me in Grayle, though I do not single him out for attack—poisoned our confidence in our own leaders. I was glad to feel the icy wind of the Atlantic lashing my face, blowing the cobwebs from my brain and the sour taste from my mouth, as we rounded the last Irish headland.
During the week that I had to myself on board, sailing without lights and zig-zagging out of reach of submarines, I put together the notes for some of my speeches. It was extraordinarily difficult to say anything definite. After eighteen months of hostilities and mid-way through a second winter, there was a confident expectation that the great spring offensive would end the war. The Austrian losses were known to be gigantic, and it was believed that the old emperor was flirting with peace; Germany was starving, and the moral of the German army had notoriously broken. (Our avowedly humorous publications demonstrated that a British soldier had still only to call "Waiter!" or to exhibit a sausage at the end of his bayonet to have a swarm of German prisoners on their knees to him.)
Yet, beneath all our confidence ran a chilling current of doubt. The spring offensive would be launched in Belgium or France, but the clubs and dinner tables, the military correspondents—it was whispered, the Cabinet itself—were divided into "westerners" and "easterners."
"Ifwecould hold up the Huns at Ypres," George hadsaid to me gloomily on my last day in England, "theycan hold us up equally well, when the proportion of fighting strength has been reversed. I hoped in the early days of the Dardanelles that we were going to knock away the buttresses and bring down the whole structure of the Central Empires, detach Turkey and Bulgaria, you know, carve a way into the Hungarian plains. Now I'm by no means comfortable...."
George, with many others, was not destined to think of the Dardanelles with an easy mind until news reached the Eclectic Club one day at luncheon that Gallipoli had been miraculously evacuated, and a sigh of relief rose over London, to be followed by a feeling that, though we had escaped once, our luck might desert us at the second tempting. More and more I was hearing the criticism that there were too many amateur strategists in the Cabinet with no one to check the careless inspiration which led them to fling their armies to Sulva Bay or Salonica, while the thinning reserves on the western front impelled the Government inch by reluctant inch to conscription.
And every time that the Blockade bit deeper into the puffy German flesh, every time that the mark exchange fell, every time that the numbers of enemy killed, wounded, missing and prisoners satisfied our military ready-reckoners that the last reserves were under fire and that the inevitable collapse would ring and echo through the world within so many days or weeks, the enemy retaliated with the wriggle of a Japanese wrestler, flung his adversary away and surmounted him. Servia had been overrun by the effete, vanquished Austrians in October, Montenegro followed in January; we had sent troops to Gallipoli, because the western front was impregnable, we had withdrawn them because the eastern front was no less impregnable. Amateur strategy or political intrigue was now mysteriously dissipating more troops in Greece, and I was required later to square the allied landing in Salonica with the allied resistance to the German incursion into Belgium. To say that King Constantine had defaulted on his treatyobligations to Servia was venturesome but inadequate, for the terms of the treaty were unknown; it was common knowledge, on the other hand, that Great Britain had guaranteed the Greek constitution, by which foreign troops might only land at the invitation of king and parliament.
The public temper in England led me to expect one thing, crystallised by Vincent Grayle in a bet that, if we had not broken the German line by September, the Government and the Higher Command would have passed into ineffectual history.
"It's their last chance," were his parting words to me. "After all, you find a leak in your cistern, you get a plumber; if he can't mend it, God's truth, you get another plumber. You're likely to find considerable changes by the time you get back."
I think it was the taste left in my mouth by Vincent Grayle that I was most glad to have blown away by the north-east Atlantic wind.
I landed in New York to find that I had lost one false perspective of the war to acquire another. In the eastern states there was indeed an "American Rights" party, flamingly incensed that the President had not broken off diplomatic relations on the sinking of the "Lusitania," but as unprepared as I had been on my return to England after a year of war for the resolution and effort, the suffering and bereavement, the social upheaval and snapping nerves which I had met. New England, to my pity, talked of participation and still fancied, as we had once done, that it would be someone else's son or brother, someone of academic interest, who would appear day after day in the casualty lists. Yet what else could I expect? As I walked up and down the unfamiliarly lighted streets to see men still employed on work which was being done by women in England, as I met abundance on every hand and heard of war as an intellectual conception in the middle distance, I had only to shut my eyes and imagine that it was a fantastic nightmare of my own.
For three months I spoke and wrote; for three months,as I was flung from end to end of the continent on journeys of incredible length and intolerable discomfort, interviewers boarded my train and invaded my car. The daily news of the war had long been relegated to some corner of a back page, and my interviewers were clamorous as children to be told a story.
I am content to be judged by results; in the south there were men who responded to my eloquence by crossing the border and enlisting in a Canadian regiment, and the War Charities Fund has its record of the subscriptions which I collected. My audiences reacted on me until I am afraid I came to idealise unpardonably. I remember describing to a Boston audience the spontaneous uprising of England as I had found it after a year abroad; I remember, too, returning to my hotel and finding a handful of letters and a batch of month-old papers.... England was agitated by the question whether a married man, who had volunteered for service, should be taken into the army until an unmarried man, who had not so volunteered, had been coerced. It was not an ennobling controversy for one who had been describing crusades....
"It serves the married men right for calling the single men shirkers," George Oakleigh wrote. "Now that they've screwed themselves up to the point of attesting, they're trying to shirk in their turn.... Psychology is revealing itself curiously. Men who despise a Catholic for surrendering the right of private judgement are praying for the Government to order them about and relieve them of the responsibility of making up their own minds.... A thriving trade is being driven in rejection certificates. Your enterprising patriot with some physical defect gets himself duly turned down for the army; he then personates his more robust friends for a suitable fee, attending at their local recruiting offices under their names and pocketing any solatium that may be handed out at such times. It was hardly this spirit which sent Jim Loring and Raney out.... The whole wrangle is a great opportunity for our friend Beresford, but he is at least honest and intelligible;if conscription comes, he'll refuse to serve and the Government can shoot him. He was committed to a war without being consulted and he's not going to die of malaria in Salonica to please a House of Commons which he helped to return five years ago to carry the Parliament Bill."
I feel that I must have addressed my audiences with less conviction after a letter of this kind, yet it was but the occasional snapping of overstrained human nerves. Yolande, I remember, wrote in great concern to tell me that her husband and George—two of the kindest, mildest and most level-headed men I know—had quarrelled and parted in anger. A successful raid into the German lines was magnified into at least a second-class victory; George in a mood of depression minimised it unduly; Felix thereat raked up his opponent's record of eight years before as a champion of disarmament and international peace, charging him with being a pro-German. "I wanted to bang their heads together, uncle darling," my niece confided. "Will you believe it? They weren't on speaking terms for a week, until I made each apologise to the other. So ridiculous!..."
The unrest and dissatisfaction ran through public and private life equally.
"There's a perfect crop of what my young cousin Laurie calls 'stunt-artists' of late," George wrote a week later. "Every third man in the House feels called on to do a 'stunt' of his own. There's a 'Ginger Stunt,' to keep the Government up to the mark, and an 'Air Stunt' to protect us from Zepps, and a 'Civil Liberties Stunt' to resist conscription, and a 'Conscription Stunt' to resist civil liberties, and a 'Press Stunt' to quash the Press Bureau, and a sort of 'Standing Stunt' to quash Northcliffe. Men of imaginative bent are turning their eyes to Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles, ready to start stunts there at the earliest opportunity and on the smallest provocation. Bertrand says that in all his experience he's never known the House so neurotic and out of hand. The cumulative effect is exceedingly bad. Whether the stunts do any good or not I can't say, butthey destroy confidence in the Government, depress people at home and at the front, not to mention the allies, and ultimately they'll bring the Government down. Now, with the exception of Grayle, that's what no one wants to do. Asquith's the only man who can hold the country together, but he's so anxious—and rightly—to keep his team working harmoniously and to avoid any possibility of a split anywhere that I don't think he asserts himself enough. A party truce can be overdone, and a good many Liberals are saying that they are always sacrificed to conciliate someone else and never the other way about; as with Ireland—but I've no doubt your Irish-Americans have delicately hinted in the same sense.... By the way, I forgot to mention the 'Stop the War Stunt.' Since last I wrote Beresford has been had up and fined; at least he was ordered to pay the fine, but he refused; so they kept him in prison for a bit, and he hunger-struck and now he's at large again...."
George's next letter made no reference to anything of public interest.
"Do you remember saying that Sonia was a whole-time job for a man?" he began. "She's too much for me; I'm going to retire from the fray. When Raney came home for the Christmas holidays, he and Sonia talked things over—Melton and the House and work of various kinds. Bertrand was dragged in to keep the peace and advise generally, and they reached this amount of agreement: Raney consented to throw up his appointment at the school, provided he found work at least equally remunerative to pay his debts and keep the household going and provided that it was work of some public utility. He wasn't prepared simply to make money, if his services could be of any use to anyone for the war. Well, as you know, almost every kind of public work involves the use of your eyes, and it would have taken him some time to find the right kind of job. In fact, he and Bertrand had not begun to discuss it when Sonia went on to the next question with a very definite statement that, if he was going to live at 'TheSanctuary', she claimed equal rights with him to decide who was invited to the house—in other words (and very reasonably, from her point of view) the house was their home and she might just as well be living in the street as in that menagerie. I confess I sympathise. Iknewshe wouldn't stand it for more than a very few weeks. You don't know the place as I do, you've probably never seen anyone but Beresford dossing on a sofa, but Raney with the best intentions in the world sometimes turns that place into a casual ward. Sonia stood it at first, because it was a new experience and she's got a passionate enjoyment of life which would carry her through everything. But, when the novelty had worn off, it must have been singularly uncomfortable; even Raney's friends would only smile pityingly, and you may be sure that all the Dainton influence was thrown into the scale against him. I know for a fact that Lady Dainton's done all the mischief she can in the way of sneering, criticising, setting Sonia against Raney. The important new development was that Sonia was beginning to echo her mother. I happened to drop in about this time. I expect you've noticed that moral undressing is always conducted publicly in that house; I heard Raney defend himself by pointing out that Bertrand's house had been turned into a hospital, that Crowley Court was a hospital and that he was not asking Sonia to do anything very different from what Lady Dainton was doing. 'Ever since I came back from the front,' he told her, 'I've been trying to get this war into perspective. Everyone's doing his best to save this country and all that it stands for, but it's got to stand for a good deal more than it did before the war; we owe it to the fellows who have died and the fellows who are dying now and the numberless fellows who've still got to die, we've got to shew that they died for something that we can look at without shame. It'll be a long time before we can be really proud of this country, but we can make a beginning, and the time to begin is when we've stood sweating with fear and remorse with a halterround our necks and the hangman comes to say we've been reprieved.'
"As you know, my uncle's a tough old cynic, but, when Raney talks with that cold, vibrant passion of his, you have to be very tough not to feel at least a little uncomfortable. I've had to stand it ever since we were at Oxford together. Sonia was about as much impressed as if he'd been talking to a brick wall. He wasn't discouraged, but he turned to Bertrand—'You remember when I got back, sir?' (God! I'm not likely to forget the night when we found he was blind!) 'You were in a furnished flat, and I had awful difficulty in finding you, but I came straight to you, and you and George took me in without a murmur.' (I suppose he thought that after sixteen years we were going to refer him to the nearest Rowton House.) 'That was—symbolical, sir,' he went on. 'D'you remember that you came in very late, when I was in bed, and we had a talk? After you'd gone, I got out of bed and lifted up both hands and swore that I'd not give in, that I'd do what I could with what was left. I swore that, as I'd been taken in—not only by you; a hundred other people had done the same,—I'd try very humbly and patiently never to say "no" to anyone else that wanted to be taken in, anyone else that I could help. That's what I'm trying to do now.' Then he stopped and left them to digest it, with the result which you can imagine when two people take up wholly irreconcilable positions. Sonia said that charity should begin at home, that he talked about not being unkind to anyone, but he was being unkind to his own wife—you can imagine the dialogue. Bertrand raisedhistwo hands that night and swore that he'd clear out into quarters of his own, and Sonia's parting words were that she regarded her marriage as at an end, which is a pretty sentiment after five months."
A week later George wrote again on the same subject.
"How you must enjoy the sight of my hand!" he began. "I'm sorry, but I want to blow off steam. The other night I took Raney out to dinner and talked to him for his soul's good. I saw a good deal of the tragi-comedy when Soniawas engaged to Jim Loring and I told Raney that he was courting disaster by the way he was treating her. He was in one of his most smiling, most obstinate moods—steel and india-rubber. He said he couldn't slam his door in the face of anyone who wanted help. 'Very well!' I said; 'keep it open. You say "yes," she says "no," and there's not a square inch of ground for compromise. One of you has to climb down, and you won't?' 'If you like to put it like that,' says Raney, 'I won't.' 'Then makeher,' I said. 'She'll do it, if you make her; she won't love you any the less and she'll respect you all the more, if you force her to obey you.' Raney was really upset. 'Old man! you mustn't talk to me aboutforcingmy wife to do things!' My dear Stornaway, that's the kind of imbecile we've got to deal with! I warned him that, if he kept his door open against her will, she would walk out of it.
"God knows, I never wanted to be a Cassandra, but I know that child so well! Two days later Raney bumped into a young officer staggering along Victoria Street in an advanced state of intoxication; Raney just had time to find out that the fellow was due to catch the leave-train at about seven next morning, when his new friend collapsed on the steps of the Army and Navy Stores and settled himself to a comfortable slumber. I don't suppose any of us would have left him there with a fair prospect of being robbed or run in or discovered by the Provost-Marshal, to say nothing of losing the train and perhaps being court-martialled. Raney must needs put him in a cab, take him home and expend time, ingenuity and hard-bought experience in making him sober. It must have been a gruesome night, but the fellow caught his train. It was the last straw for Sonia. The next day she wired from Northamptonshire, asking me to tell Raney that she was staying with the Pentyres. That was a week ago; Raney has asked her—asked, mark you—to come back, and she won't budge. I deliberately cadged an invitation from Pentyre last week-end, we spent Sunday with one scene after another, and her final message on Monday morning was that she would come back when heagreed to do what she asked; otherwise she would be compelled to think that he, too, regarded the marriage as over. I spent most of Monday night storming at Raney, and the present position is that neither will yield an inch and Raney won't exercise his authority.
"You are probably sick and tired of them both by now, but you cannot be anything like as sick or tired as I am...."
This was the last letter which I received before my return to England in the spring of 1916. The country, when I landed, reminded me strongly of a theatre before a first night; everyone was waiting for the full deployment of the new armies, everyone expected the summer campaign to be the supreme test; by now, too, almost everyone had son or brother under arms waiting in the line or rehearsing his share in the coming offensive. The tension produced a nervous irritability which manifested itself, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, in a mutinous demand for enlightenment, and one of my earliest duties was to be present, with fine parade of mystery and importance, at the first secret session of the war. The one unvarying rule which I have been able to frame for the House of Commons is that it never fulfils expectations. Though the Press Gallery was conscientiously cleared, we were given neither fact nor figure that was not already in the possession of any well-informed journalist; twenty-four hours later the speeches were common property in every club, and the one thing new was the change in psychology. The show of blind loyalty to the Government had broken down until the Government itself felt that something must be tried to restore confidence. I found that a man of Bertrand's temperamental independence was using Grayle's currency of speech.
"Much good it's done!" he growled, as we left the House together. "It's no use pointing to the number of men you've raised or the output of shells. The country's outgrown thephase of being content with good endeavours, it wantsresults, it's in the mood to say, 'You haven't beaten the Germans, and, if you don't do it pretty quickly, someone must be found who will.' Stroll home with me, if you've nothing better to do."
"You're in your old quarters still?" I asked.
Bertrand laughed and then sighed.
"When David asked me to come here, I accepted on an impulse," he confessed. "It was a phase of the early enthusiasm; I felt we'd got no business to go on living so extravagantly, when the boys out there were going through Hell's agonies and every penny was wanted to carry on this war and to reduce the load of human suffering. I suppose this dog's too old to be taught new tricks. If you find me staying on now, it's only to keep the peace." He stopped to re-light his cigar, and, as he sheltered the match with his hands, I saw that his heavy, powerful face was morose and dissatisfied. "I've got a considerable love for David. He was a fool to marry the girl, of course, but a man doesn't marry or keep a mistress because it'swise, but because he wants to, because he can't help himself.... When she married him, I thought that the war had sobered her down, but thesesoupers fraternelshave made her restive, and she's reverted to type. I'm standing by to break up tête-à-têtes and prevent her doing anything irrevocable before they've patched up their present quarrel and agreed on some possible way of life. If he weren't blind, she'd have left him three months ago. You know they've not met since Christmas?"
"Where are they?" I asked.
"Oh, she's here—with the usual tame cats to carry her off to lunch and dinner. She came back the day after David returned to Melton.... You can see it's a pleasant house to live in!... Before the war I sat on a committee with her mother. Do you remember a phase when young men tried to grow side-whiskers? Well, the drawing-room was always full of these hairy youths, immaculately dressed and simpering round her with boxes of sweets and flowers,which she very graciously accepted. Since the war these fellows have shaved and got into uniform, but it's the same old gang. I used to think nobody was injured; she liked racketing about at restaurants and theatres, they were puffed up to be with her. The only man I drew the line at was Grayle; he's much heavier metal." Bertrand paused to laugh with his old cynical relish. "I'm deuced old, but I've still got a very retentive memory, and everybody's always told me things. Well, I went through the mental rag-bag, I talked to a few people, I made a few enquiries—particularly on the American chapter of his life—and the next time we met I became biographical at his expense. George tried and failed. Friend Grayle hasn't been here since. I tell you, I was getting sick of the business. She'd give a dinner party at eight, and Grayle would be here at half-past seven to talk to her alone, and, by Gad! she'd be dressed and ready for him. I don't know whether they thought I was blindanddeaf.... And it was the same when she dined at his house. I used to hear her coquetting and threatening to be late, if he wasn't 'good'—ugh!—and he'd swear he wouldn't admit her, if she wasn't in time. It was all such poor stuff! I shouldn't have minded so much, if there'd been any red blood in it, but she was obviously just keeping her hand in; that woman would make sheep's eyes at the Shakespeare monument in Leicester Square sooner than nothing.... So I spiked friend Grayle's guns, and she's had to content herself with Beresford. He's pretty harmless, but the devil of it is that she's ready to go wrong with any man, when she loses control of her temper. If she weren't restrained by her husband's blindness ... Good night. I'm going straight to my room."
As I had come to the door, I thought that I could do no harm by going in to see who was about. I found Beresford sitting up on a sofa with a block of paper on his lap. He looked exceedingly ill and perhaps not best pleased to see me.
"You're back again, then?" I said. "How's the knee?"
"I'm only waiting till Sonia comes in," he answered. "Myknee's much the same as it's been all along, very much the same as it always will be. The doctors are going to give me blood-tests or something. Of course, I didn't do it much good when I was in prison; the doctor there was badly scared. He used to examine me each day to see how much longer I could hold out without food, and I used to see him looking grave every time he came to the knee, until I'm prepared to bet he told the authorities he wouldn't take the responsibility of keeping me there any longer. Then they let me out." His grey lips curled into a withering sneer. "God! the authorities in this countrydeserveto lose their precious war! D'you think that in Germany they'd allow me to write the pamphlets I do here? D'you think, if they decided not to shoot me, they'd let me out of prison because they were afraid to force food down my throat? The blessed innocents here said I might go, if I promised to drop my propaganda; they brought in a pen and paper. Well, I'd been without water for four days, and my throat and mouth were so swollen that I couldn't speak. I couldn't write very elegantly, either, but I collected enough strength to scrawl 'I'll see you in Hell first.' And then, if you please, I was let out. And now I'm improving the occasion."
He collected a number of loose sheets and pinned them together.
"As long as you think it does any good," I said, "the Archangel Gabriel wouldn't be able to stop you."
"You don't think it's a good thing to keep people from slaughtering one another? Dear man, d'you appreciate that, if Kitchener and Grey were in Potsdam at this moment with the unconditional surrender of Germany in their pocket, they couldn't get anything to compensate our present losses? There's imbecile talk about security and a 'war-to-end-war,' but you won'thavewar when people understand what it's like. That's what I'm trying to shew them."
He threw himself back on the sofa and began reading what he had written. I got up to leave, only pausing to give him a message for Mrs. O'Rane. As I closed the doorbehind me, a taxi stopped at the corner twenty yards from "The Sanctuary" and a man in uniform stepped out and stretched one hand to somebody inside, holding the door open with the other. His size alone, without the familiar mane of yellow hair, identified him for me as Grayle; a moment later Mrs. O'Rane emerged and stood by him under the street lamp at the corner. Bertrand might keep Grayle as far away as the end of the street, but I felt that he had boasted prematurely.
"You'll come in?" I heard Mrs. O'Rane say, as her companion hesitated by the taxi.
"Not to-night, thanks. It's rather late."
I caught a light ripple of laughter.
"You're not getting suddenly anxious about my reputation, are you?" she asked. "Youusedtolikecoming in and talking to me; and you know how I hate going to bed. Of course, if you don't want to——"
Grayle opened his case and took out a cigarette.
"That cutsnoice, Sonia," he said. "Good-night and thank you for coming. I shall see you to-morrow."
"I don't think I shall come."
"Oh, yes, you will."
"If you're so afraid of being compromised——"
"You are coming to-morrow."
She was silent; and, if it had been day-light, I would have staked my life that she was pouting suitably.
"Youusedto say that to-morrow was a very long way off," she remarked irrelevantly.
Grayle's voice became authoritative.
"You are coming to-morrow, Sonia."
No doubt it was the old small change of flirtation which had exasperated Bertrand, and I had already been made to hear more than I relished. Stepping into the circle of dim light, I bade her good evening and asked Grayle if he had finished with his taxi.
"Hul-lo! I didn't know you were back in England!" she cried. "Have you been calling? I wish I'd known. You've got to come back now."
"I looked in for a moment," I said. "Now I must get home, though."
"I'll give you a lift," Grayle volunteered.
Mrs. O'Rane looked from one to the other of us, and her eyes and mouth hardened in an expression of pique.
"My society seems rather at a discount to-night," she observed.
"You'll find Beresford waiting for you," I said. "I've been talking to him, but I've got to get home now."
She turned to Grayle, and I will swear that she was watching to see if Beresford's name was a challenge.
"I must get home, too," was all that he would say. "I shall see you to-morrow."
"Oh, I meant to tell you. I can't come to-morrow," she answered with easy gravity, as though I had not heard every syllable of her earlier conversation. "Well, if you won't come in, I'll say good-night. Thanks for a most delightful evening."
Grayle and I drove in silence for half of the way. Then he asked me abruptly how I had got on in America.
For some weeks I continued to attend to my own work uninterrupted by the O'Ranes, but towards the end of the Easter term I had to make my way to Melton for the Governors' meeting. A note from O'Rane invited me to call before going back to London, and at the end of our business I invaded his rooms to find him seated, as ever, cross-legged on the floor with his head thrown back, lips parted and eyes seemingly fixed on the ceiling or on something beyond it. The room was crowded with what I can only call a cluster of boys sprawling on chairs and tables or precariously perched with linked arms on the broad mantel-piece. Some were conventionally dressed, some were in flannels, some in uniform; the majority, however, preferred a motley of khaki breeches, puttees and vivid blazers. It was the end of a field day, and a few of O'Rane's friends had dropped in to talk with him. After some moments it occurred to the boy nearest the door to ask if I wished tospeak to Mr. O'Rane, and on that, to my regret, the seminar dissolved.
As the last boy clattered into the Cloisters, O'Rane felt for a box of cigarettes and asked me how I had got on in America.
"George told me you were back," he said. "Have you been round to our place?"
"I went round there almost immediately," I told him. "I say, O'Rane——"
Perhaps he guessed what was coming, for I was not allowed to finish my sentence.
"Was Beresford there?" he asked.
I hesitated for what I should have thought was an imperceptible moment; and O'Rane repeated his question.
"As a matter of fact he was," I said.
"Ah! I wish I'd known that before.... Oh,nowI see why you hesitated!" He gave a buoyant laugh. "I can assure you that Beresford doesn't make me in the least jealous or in the least apprehensive. I'd trust him pretty well as far as I'd trust Sonia; our outlook's so similar, we've got so much in common. Well, the authorities have got their eyes on him, and he'll find himself arrested again, if he isn't careful. And he's only alienating possible sympathisers with the stuff he's writing now. Did you read him on the typhus outbreak at Wittenburg?"
He jumped up and brought me a copy of "The Watchman" from his writing-table. Beresford's article made me very angry. A few days earlier my nephew Felix, dining with me at the Hyde Park Hotel, where I had now taken up my residence, had given me a sickening account of the epidemic in the prisoners' camp; a fuller and yet more sickening account had appeared in the Press, and from end to end of the country there burst a storm of indignation stronger than anything since the outcry against the atrocities in Belgium. At this moment and from this text Beresford, who saw red at the news of the mildest cruelty to man or animal, preached a cynical, superior sermon to prove that, if misguided fools went to war, this was the kind ofthing they must expect. The object of war was to kill, and the only reason why the Germans did not massacre their prisoners was that on balance their own losses might be greater. But in scientific warfare it was unjustifiable to expect German doctors and nurses to risk their lives for the sake of preserving the enemy's. The English might; the English habitually boasted of picking up survivors after a naval engagement, but it was not war.
"God knowsI'mnot in love with war," said O'Rane, as I flung the paper away, "but an article like that infuriates just the decent-minded people he's appealing to. Well, bad taste is not an indictable offence, but I had a hint dropped this week-end that made me think that Beresford had better go warily. We had a man dining in Common Room on Sunday whose job in life is to advise on people like him and the stuff they turn out. We got on to the Wittenburg article, and it came out that I knew the author. Well, there was nothing much the matter with that branch of Intelligence Service; they knew all about Beresford, but they didn't want to give him a free advertisement and make a martyr of him, so they tried to get hold of him under the Military Service Act and stop his mouth that way. He was ordered to join up on a certain day, so he wrote a polite letter to say that he disapproved of war and did not propose to fight. When the day came, he was well and duly put in charge of a guard and marched off to the recruiting office to be presented to the army and turned into a soldier. Before that could be done, though, the doctors had their say. To cut it short, he was rejected rather more completely than anyone's ever been rejected before—heart, lungs, knee.... One doctor told him that if he didn't live in the open air and blow himself out with milk, he'd be dead in six months. That was a week ago. The army's been cheated of its prey, and my friend of Sunday night must find another means of stopping Beresford's mouth. What the fellow must understand is that they intend to catch him this time; their temper's none the better for the little rebuff at the recruiting office. I was meaning to come upand talk to him at the next Leave-Out, but I'm afraid he may put his head in the trap before I can get at him. That's why I asked you to come and see me; I want you to take him in hand."
After the Wittenburg article I was not inclined to raise a finger on Beresford's behalf. And so I told O'Rane.
"But do you want him to die?" he asked. "If they shove him in prison and he hunger-strikes again, you may never see him alive."
"I think I could endure that," I said. "The man's mind is perverted."
"Ah, then, you mustn't treat him as if he were normal," O'Rane put in quickly. "I want you to go to him and tell him to drop the whole business. Lord knows, I've been up against authority in one form or another most of my life, but there's nothing heroic in getting shot, if you don't achieve anything by it. You can get him to see that, surely."
By this time I confess that I had become one of many who found it hard to refuse O'Rane anything; perhaps it was because he never asked for himself.
"I'll try,—as a favour to you," I said. "Though I've no idea why I should want to do you a favour. O'Rane, you're making a considerable mess of your life."
The expression on his face suddenly changed, and he became courteously unapproachable.
"Do you think we shall do any good by discussing it?" he asked.
"Every day that you let slip makes it harder to mend the breach. This term's running out. What are you going to do in the holidays?"
"I'm going home."
"To the sort of doss-house life that you led before?"
"I—suppose so."
I put on my coat and started towards the door.
"Your wife will leave you," I warned him.
"I've told her—and I believe I told you—that I'd never keep her against her will."
"My friend, you are making a great fool of yourself."
O'Rane opened the door for me, and we passed into the Cloisters.
"I didn't think we should do any good by discussing it," he said.