"You wanted to know a few minutes ago why I attacked you," began O'Rane. "I'm going to tell you, but I should like to ask one question first. Are you aware that my wife is no longer here?"
"So Stornaway told me—twice," Beresford answered wearily.
"Do you know she's—left me?"
"I'm not surprised. I'm only surprised she ever came back. I don't know why she ever married you."
O'Rane paused to steady himself.
"I believed until recently that she had left me for you," he went on. "Now you can understand, perhaps, why I behaved as I did last night. I can't offer any apology worth having."
As he stopped speaking, he held out his hand almost timidly. Beresford stared at it contemptuously for a moment; then his cheeks flushed, and he took it.
"You can imagine I don't want this to go any further," said O'Rane in a matter-of-fact voice.
Beresford pulled him close to the couch.
"I—I don't think I'm there yet," he whispered. "Say it all over again, will you? Sonia's left you? She used to say she was going to, but that was only to tease you."
O'Rane's lips were quivering, and his voice trembled.
"I'm afraid it's all grim earnest," he said.
"She's left you? O'Rane, she couldn't! She loved you so much! I—I often thought you didn't treat her properly, you were frightfully unsympathetic sometimes, but there was nothing you could do to force her to this!"
Bertrand roused himself to control the excitement of Beresford's voice, which was beginning to react on O'Rane.
"Deal with realities, young man," he grunted. "The facts are as stated."
Beresford disregarded him and turned to O'Rane.
"But where is she?"
"We don't know."
"You don't know who she's with?" His face became suddenly more hopeful. "You've noproofthat she's with anyone? She went away once before, remember."
A smothered sigh broke from O'Rane.
"I think I may say positively that she's with someone.She's not merely staying with friends. I'm afraid I thought it was you and I must beg you to forgive me."
He tried to smile and again held out his hand.
"You needn't have thought it was me, O'Rane," said Beresford quietly.
"No. But I only heard a lame man hopping away on one leg. And I was seeing red."
"But you could both of you trust me! If there'd been a moment's danger, I'd never have seen Sonia again. I'm not the only lame man in London. You might have picked on Grayle before me, if she hadn't hated him so much."
O'Rane covered his eyes with his hand.
"I thought of you both," he said. "When I heard the man going short on one leg, I felt certain that it must be one of you.... It's extraordinary how quickly you think at a time like that. I remember wondering whether I should be equal to tackling Grayle, if it were him.... Then I knew it couldn't be, because he'd insulted Sonia in some restaurant, and they'd had a row. Besides, he was in France at the time. And so I decided that it must be you. I'm sorry. You couldn't expect me to behave quite—dispassionately, could you? I'm only glad it has been cleared up. I'm afraid you'll have to stay with me again till we've patched up last night's damage. You can understand that for Sonia's sake this mustn't be talked about. When people want to know where she is, I—I usually say she's staying away and I—don't—quite know—when she's coming back...."
At the end of August I contrived a holiday for myself on the north coast of Cornwall, where Lady Pentyre had been good enough to offer me a house. Yolande and her husband accompanied me, and on a passing impulse I pressed O'Rane to join us. We could have given him society and some kind of mental distraction, but the House was still sitting, when I left London, and he made this an excuse for declining. In his place George came for a week,to be followed by several of Yolande's colleagues and friends, whom she invited—I am fairly sure—less for themselves than for the chance of giving an inexpensive holiday to some exceedingly tired women.
It was a fortnight of pure enchantment. We rose at eight and walked over hot, spongy turf to the precipitous cliff-path which led us to our favourite bathing-place in our chosen bay. We bobbed and basked in a sea of liquid sapphire under a blazing sun and only left the water when hunger drove us home. Through long, happy mornings all four of us scrambled like children over the rocks, in and out of unexpected pools, slipping on treacherous bunches of sea-weed and cutting our feet on the cones of a mollusc's shell. We were always so wet and unpresentable by luncheon-time that there was nothing for it but to bathe again and put on dry clothes, which made us late and ravenous, so that we gorged ourselves on dishes which were becoming unprocurable in London and then lay sleeping repletely or glancing at the papers until it was time for another walk among the gorse and heather, a last descent to the foreshore where the Atlantic lay drowsy under the setting sun, creaming and lapping the black and dun rocks.
The papers, when we mustered energy to read them, brought us better news each day. Pressing north and west, the Italian and Russian armies were taking their revenge for the damaging thrust which each had lately sustained, and Austria-Hungary, squeezed simultaneously on two sides, had to adopt the unwelcome and desperate expedient of handing over the eastern troops to German command. The precarious hold on Salonica was strengthened by the safe landing of reinforcements, and, before we left in September, Roumania had thrown in her lot with the Allies.
Even in London, where for two years the soldiers on leave from any front had found individual self-depression and national self-depreciation flourishing most luxuriantly, became infected with brief optimism. In September a report from General Headquarters announced that aninfantry advance had been assisted by a mysterious new mechanism that rolled its uncouth way imperviously through the rain of bullets and shrapnel which poured on to its armoured sides, some land battleship which dropped unconcernedly into craters and climbed as unconcernedly over fortifications and chancedébrisof houses, an invention—the first of British initiative in the war—that bestrode enemy trenches and spattered a hail of death on either hand, a good-humoured steel giant that convulsed the troops until they held their sides and forgot to advance, a something, in fine, that the English soldier with his genius for happy and meaningless nicknames decided to call a "tank."
Old Bertrand, who had a pretentious theory to explain each new set of facts, enunciated a new art of war with the text "MachinesversusMen;" the rifle-man to the savage with a spear in his hand was as the machine-gun to the rifle-man—or the tank to the machine-gun. War had been revolutionised, and our old calculations of effectives and losses must go by the board.
The mood of optimism passed as quickly as it had come. Hardly had we finished triumphing over German machine-guns with our tanks, overcoming the Zeppelin menace with our anti-aircraft guns—there was smart sport in October, amounting almost to a battue,—when the autumn campaign ended and we settled down to count the cost and prepare for a third winter. The figures of our losses made the Somme a Pyrrhic victory, and there was troubled wonder where the new drafts were to be found. Ireland, which had been left in suspect and timid neglect—like a dog which has snapped once and may snap again, but is quiet for the moment—became once more a public interest as a candidate for conscription. And ships were mysteriously scarce. And food prices were exorbitant. And the Government was tired, lethargic, void of initiative....
"Thank God! my duty as a citizen is done when I've paid my taxes!" Bertrand Oakleigh exclaimed one night at the House. "I'm glad I'm not a farmer, I'm glad I'm not mixed up with industry. I should be unpatriotic if I didn'tdouble my output of foodstuffs and unpatriotic if I kept one potential piece of cannon-fodder to grow 'em; I'm a pro-German if I manufacture for export to keep up the foreign exchanges—VictoryversusTrade!—and Lord knows what I am if I don't cheerfully pay taxes on a business I've had to close down. If I lose money, nobody sympathises; if I make any, I'm called a profiteer, and someone takes it away from me.... Curious how a phrase or an abusive nickname dispenses the people of this country from using such wits as a niggardly Providence has given them! You've only to whisper something about a 'hidden hand,' and a crowded meeting of City men will sit and hypnotise themselves into thinking that there's an active service of secret agents—with poor Haldane as Director General—quietly penetrating our social life and paralysing our efforts in the war. Hidden hand! Pacifist—they can't even throw their absurdities into decent English! Profiteer! We're so astonishingly petty as a nation! I wonder if the same thing's being reproduced in all other countries—the old 'Nous sommes trahis' nonsense.... They're all governments of old men, too,—and they're tired—and no one outside knows what they've had to go through—and everybody's nerves are snapping. I'm sometimes surprised that these fellows have lasted so long, but I think their days are numbered. If you throw your mind back, you'll remember a phase when Asquith's worst political enemies said he was indispensable, the only Prime Minister, the one man who could hold the Government and the country together. You don't hear that now; we've outgrown that phase. Now people are openly saying that he's not master in his own house, that we shall never win the war so long as he's in the saddle, that they'll turn him out the moment they can find someone to put in his place.... Lloyd-George would be in power to-day, if his friends in Fleet Street could be sure that he wouldn't hanky-panky with the Army.... To read the papers, you'd think it was the cumulative effect of reverses like Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, the shortage of food, and the fact that we've done nothing to increaseour home production, and our failure to grapple with submarines. It's deeper and blinder than that.... It's because the Governmenthasn't won the warthat it will fail; and any new Prime Minister will fall in exactly the same way, unless he can win it. Results! results! That mountebank Grayle is quite right; he represents average, unthinking, third-rate, violent opinion, and that opinion's becoming articulate. As I've told you before, I don't think a change will do any good, because we set ourselves too big a task, we started on too high a moral plane. I suppose I should be called a 'pacifist' if I suggested that that phase was over and that we'd better moderate our tone before we're compelled to."
The particular non-party War Committee headed by Grayle was waking to activity after its suspended animation during the summer campaign. In his paper, in conversation at the Club and still more in the Smoking Room of the House he was calling for more vigour in administration.... The House of Commons position was curious, he informed me; if he could be sure of a certain number of votes—he would not trouble me with the figures,—we could have a ministry after our own heart. There followed an interval of perhaps five minutes, in which I allowed him to do all the talking. The Unionist members of the Coalition were sick and tired of this eternal "Wait and See;" there would be a secession the moment that a better alternative government had been sketched out; you had only to call a Unionist party meeting and put it to 'em straight. But you didn't want to take an unnecessary toss, you couldn't afford to supply powder and shot to rags like the "Daily News," which were always talking about an intrigue and saying that no government could exist with the Germans in front and back-stabbers behind....
"Nothing's settled yet," he told me after considering academically the offices for which we were both fitted. "But you know the constitutional theory; you're not justified in upsetting a government unless you're prepared to go to Buckingham Palace and take on the job of forminga new administration. Excuse me! I want to have a word with Oakleigh."
The following day I asked Bertrand under what guise the devil had appeared to him, but he had evidently been less patient.
"Grayle went away with a flea in his ear," he grunted. "He's been worrying me so long that I had to stop it once and for all. God knows, I don't care about this ministry; I shouldn't have much faith in any ministry formed out of the present House—the best talent's already on the Treasury Bench—and I don't believe in bringing in your superman from outside—the House of Commons can't be learned in a night, and even a government department needs study. What I object to in Grayle is his picking onmeas one of his fifty or sixty new allies; you can picture him buzzing round with his fellow-conspirators—'Shall we try Oakleigh and Stornaway? They're solid, moderate, old members—highly respected. They don't add anything to the common stock, of course, but they carry more weight than the men who are always talking and playing an active part. We might try them, their names would look well on the prospectus—inspire confidence, you know.'" He chuckled maliciously. "I suppose I'm getting very old, but I can't stand young men's conceit in the way I once did. Grayle's like a boy just down from Oxford, doing everything for the first time and imagining that no one's ever done it before. Does hereallythink this is the first political intrigue in history? I recommended him a course of Disraeli's novels—to improve his technique. Good God! I was playing this game of detaching wobblers and handing out offices that were not in my gift and mobilising the solid, moderate, highly respected old members underGladstone! I toiled and schemed to keep the Liberal Party out of Rosebery's hands; I was making new parties and pigeon-holing possible cabinets all through the Morley-Harcourt days, I was intriguing to keep C.-B. in command when the Liberal Leaguers intrigued to kick him into theLords. I've been through it all; and be hanged if I didn't do it better than Grayle!"
Perhaps my manner was too sympathetic. Certainly I was not to escape so easily as Bertrand had done, for Grayle met me leaving the House and offered to drop me on his way home. I accepted because I was nominally amicable with him, because I did not want a wet walk to my hotel and because I could not decently refuse. He talked persuasively the whole way home and was obviously chagrined when I did not invite him into my rooms. He rang me up at breakfast next day and tried to secure my presence at luncheon; once at my office in St. James' Street, once in my department, and once again, when I was tranquilly dining with the Maitlands, I was called to the telephone with an apologetic but urgent request that I would arrange a time when Grayle could have five minutes' conversation with me.
My position was simple and clear. I would be neither bribed nor bullied into any kind of office, I would give no blank cheque for the future to Grayle or anyone else, but I should no doubt be found voting with him against the Government—or with the Government against him—as I had done in the past, judging every division on its merits. A note on my dressing-table informed me that Colonel Grayle had telephoned from the House at eleven.... I picked up my hat, buttoned my coat again and turned my steps towards Milford Square; a far more patient man might be excused for thinking that Grayle was making a nuisance of himself.
The servant who opened the door informed me that Colonel Grayle was out.
"I'll wait," I said. "I've got to see him."
"But he's out of town, sir. He didn't say where he was going or when he'd be back. He very often goes away like that."
The man was sleek of appearance and glib of speech, well-experienced, I thought, in shutting the door to people whom his master did not wish to see. But I did not fallwithin that category, and Grayle had plagued me sufficiently to justify reprisals.
"When did he go away?" I asked.
"Before dinner, sir."
"Ah, then he must have changed his plans," I said. "He telephoned to me from the House half an hour ago; he's been trying to get hold of me all day, but this is the first opportunity I've had. Is Mr. Bannerman in? If so, I'll talk to him till Colonel Grayle comes in."
"Mr. Bannerman has moved into rooms of his own," the servant told me, yielding ground reluctantly.
I walked into Grayle's smoking-room and left the man to warn him that I was in effective occupation and that he must yield to the inevitable and come down to see me, if he were already at home, or submit to a few minutes of my company when he returned. A moment later I saw that he could not yet have come back from the House, as a pile of letters awaited him on the table and the whiskey and soda set out for his refreshment were untouched. "A model servant," I said to myself, "to have everything ready when you do not expect your master home." I mixed myself a drink and was preparing to light a cigar when I found that I was without matches. On going into the hall, I found my sleek, glib friend mounting guard, as though he expected me to slip out with my pockets full of silver.
He produced a box of matches and struck one for me. As I began to light my cigar, a taxi drove into the square and drew up opposite the house.
"What name shall I tell Colonel Grayle?" asked the servant, as he held open the smoking-room door for me.
Before I had time to answer, I heard a latch-key grating in the lock; the servant moved forward and stopped irresolutely; then the door opened to admit Mrs. O'Rane. Our eyes met for a moment, and for the first time since I had known her I saw her out of countenance. In another moment it was all over, for I had backed into the smoking-room and pushed the door closed. I heard her clear, rather high voice asking whether Colonel Grayle was home yet.The servant murmured something in reply, and I caught the sound of his footsteps growing fainter along the flagged passage. Mrs. O'Rane turned the handle and came in to me, once more self-possessed and in control of herself; there was neither embarrassment nor defiance in her manner; she greeted me as she had once before greeted me, when I first met her at "The Sanctuary."
"I hope you've not been waiting long," she said. "Vincent's usually home by this time. There's not an all-night sitting or anything, is there?"
"Not so far as I know," I answered. "Mrs. O'Rane, I don't think I'll stay any longer."
She looked at my newly lighted cigar and untouched whiskey and soda.
"It's just as you like," she said. "It seems a pity to run away without seeing him, though. I presume you came to see him and not me?"
"I came to see him. I didn't know you were here."
"But I've been here the whole time. Didn't you know that?"
"We didn't."
"But where else was I likely to be?"
"Your husband never suspected that Grayle had any hand in it. I fancy you and Grayle did your best not to enlighten him. You let him think it was another man, and Grayle gave an alibi. I suppose it was all right; I'm not versed in the ethics of the thing."
I made a step towards the door, but Mrs. O'Rane was in my way.
"Yes, I don't know why Vincent said that," she observed reflectively. "Unless he thought that nobody was ever going to know.... But I'm notquiteso abandoned as that. I warned you all, I told you my old married life was over; and I was free to start another. As for not enlightening anybody, it's not my business to correct all the mistakes people choose to make.... Now that you've been here, you can report everything you've seen.I'mnot hiding anything, and you can say I'm not ashamed ofwhat I've done and I'm quite prepared for all the world to know. He can divorce me as soon as he likes."
The discussion did not make me want to stay any longer in the house, and I had to ask her to let me pass.
"You can tell him that," she added carelessly.
"I don't know that he contemplates divorcing you," I said. "He's never mentioned the subject."
"But he'll have to. He can't go on being nominally married to me, when I'm—well ..."
"Are you sure you don't mean that your own position will be a shade less discreditable when Grayle marries you?" I asked. "Frankly, you haven't been thinking of your husband very much, have you?"
She sighed impatiently.
"You will keep on speaking of him as my husband."
"He is."
"Until he divorces me."
"Unless he divorces you," I substituted.
"O knights and lords, it seems but little skillTo talk of well-known things past now and dead.God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,And pray you all forgiveness heartily!Because you must be right, such great lords; stillListen, suppose your time were come to die,And you were quite alone and very weak;Yea, laid a dying while very mightilyThe wind was ruffling up the narrow streakOf river through your broad lands running well;Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak;'One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell,Now choose one cloth for ever; which they be,I will not tell you, you must somehow tellOf your own strength and mightiness; here, see!'* * * * * * *After a shivering half-hour you said;'God help! heaven's colour, the blue'; and he said, 'hell.'Perhaps you would roll upon your bed,And cry to all good men that loved you well,'Ah, Christ! if only I had known, known, known ...'"William Morris:The Defence of Guenevere.
"O knights and lords, it seems but little skillTo talk of well-known things past now and dead.God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,And pray you all forgiveness heartily!Because you must be right, such great lords; stillListen, suppose your time were come to die,And you were quite alone and very weak;Yea, laid a dying while very mightilyThe wind was ruffling up the narrow streakOf river through your broad lands running well;Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak;'One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell,Now choose one cloth for ever; which they be,I will not tell you, you must somehow tellOf your own strength and mightiness; here, see!'* * * * * * *After a shivering half-hour you said;'God help! heaven's colour, the blue'; and he said, 'hell.'Perhaps you would roll upon your bed,And cry to all good men that loved you well,'Ah, Christ! if only I had known, known, known ...'"William Morris:The Defence of Guenevere.
"O knights and lords, it seems but little skillTo talk of well-known things past now and dead.
"O knights and lords, it seems but little skill
To talk of well-known things past now and dead.
God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,And pray you all forgiveness heartily!Because you must be right, such great lords; still
God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,
And pray you all forgiveness heartily!
Because you must be right, such great lords; still
Listen, suppose your time were come to die,And you were quite alone and very weak;Yea, laid a dying while very mightily
Listen, suppose your time were come to die,
And you were quite alone and very weak;
Yea, laid a dying while very mightily
The wind was ruffling up the narrow streakOf river through your broad lands running well;Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak;
The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak
Of river through your broad lands running well;
Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak;
'One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell,Now choose one cloth for ever; which they be,I will not tell you, you must somehow tell
'One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell,
Now choose one cloth for ever; which they be,
I will not tell you, you must somehow tell
Of your own strength and mightiness; here, see!'* * * * * * *
Of your own strength and mightiness; here, see!'
* * * * * * *
After a shivering half-hour you said;'God help! heaven's colour, the blue'; and he said, 'hell.'Perhaps you would roll upon your bed,
After a shivering half-hour you said;
'God help! heaven's colour, the blue'; and he said, 'hell.'
Perhaps you would roll upon your bed,
And cry to all good men that loved you well,'Ah, Christ! if only I had known, known, known ...'"William Morris:The Defence of Guenevere.
And cry to all good men that loved you well,
'Ah, Christ! if only I had known, known, known ...'"
William Morris:The Defence of Guenevere.
When I first met Sir Aylmer Lancing, I was a very young and very impecunious member of the Diplomatic Service; he was in early middle life and a millionaire many times over. It was a time of mental green-sickness with me, when I had an undergraduate's morbid craving for ideas,something of an undergraduate's contempt, too, for those to whom ideas made no appeal. In describing Sir Aylmer as a man without ideas, I am saying something which he would have endorsed and interpreted to mean far more than I intended. He had no ideas outside his business, though within it he shewed a deliberate, dogged objectivity, the sublimation of commonsense, which was staggering and irresistible as a battering-ram. I have met no one with whom the essential was so invariably the obvious. One day, when we were crossing together to America, I asked him what were the qualities which made most for success in any career. He answered, for all the world like the tritest of stage millionaires, "Always know what you want and go for it; always be quite clear about what's going on in your own mind."
Lancing left an estate of over twenty millions; I had made before the war about two hundred thousand pounds; despite the difference I boldly affirm that the first intellectual quality for success is an ability to know what is going on in other people's minds. Bertrand Oakleigh has the quality in a high degree. I made fun of him, indeed, over many years, because he was so oracular. At his house in Princes Gardens, in the Smoking-Room and at the Club he would sit looking up at the ceiling with a long black cigar jutting defiantly from under his heavy walrus moustache, always a little more profound and unhurried than the rest of us, always armed with a general principle, always ready with a philosophic theory, sometimes paradoxical and usually pretentious. But, when he dropped what George once called his "sneers and graces," forgot to be prejudiced or pontifical, he was shrewdly intelligent. Had he been less indolent, less fond of gossip, less detached and content to be the amused spectator, he could have made a considerable political position for himself, for he had a rare faculty of hearing innumerable opinions on the same subject, melting them down, so to say, and producing a prophecy. But, as he grew older, he would nottake the trouble to think for himself or to ascertain what others were thinking.
I went to him for advice on the results of my visit to Grayle's house in Milford Square.
"Well, I take it that the one person we're interested in is David," he said by way of giving me a lead.
The remark was characteristic of his love for O'Rane, but I am afraid it was also indicative of his general aversion from women and of his dislike for Mrs. O'Rane in particular, a dislike which dated back to a time long anterior to her marriage. I was weakly ready to go farther and interest myself in her, too, if only on account of her youth and an obstinate belief that youth has a good title to happiness.
"Well, we're looking for the best solution," I suggested, "not meting out justice. Grayle and Mrs. O'Rane are waiting for O'Rane to file a petition. That was her message. Now, O'Rane's never said whether he'll divorce her or not; probably he hasn't made up his mind, and certainly I don't know his views on divorce. She's in an impossible position—socially—as long as she lives with Grayle without marrying him; and Grayle's position will be very uncomfortable as soon as the story gets about. It's enough to spoil his political career; whereas he'll live it down, if there's a conventional divorce and he lies quiet for a few months. If O'Rane wants to take his revenge, he need only refuse to set her free."
"He's not looking for revenge," said Bertrand oracularly.
"Then you'd say—anyone would say—that the kindest and most generous thing he could do would be to divorce her. I'm only uncertain because I know something of Grayle; I presume he'll marry her, but, when the honeymoon period's over, he'll make her supremely unhappy. Perhaps that's no more than she deserves, but, if O'Rane thought she'd be unhappy by marrying Grayle, conceivably he might exercise his power to prevent it."
"Conceivably he might," Bertrand assented dryly.
"Well, those are the alternatives—to divorce or not to divorce. I'm amazed to find how well the secret's been kept, but it can't be kept indefinitely. It happened to be me last night, but Tom, Dick or Harry might just as well have made the discovery. Any day now you may have a nauseating scandal. We none of us want that, and O'Rane does nothing to stop it."
For a moment Bertrand dropped his omniscient manner and shrugged his shoulders with slow helplessness.
"What do you suggest hecando?" he asked.
"Have the minor scandal of a divorce—I regard that as less bad than the common knowledge that she's been living for weeks, months, years with a man who's not her husband,—get it over quickly and give people a chance of forgetting it. If he won't do that, let him see if he's got any power to keep them from living together. I don't think he has. Grayle has sufficient money, his position's not big enough to make him susceptible to blackmail——"
"You may take it that David's got no power," Bertrand interrupted.
"Well, it's your turn," I said a little impatiently.
Bertrand stroked his moustache and closed his eyes sleepily.
"I'll answer your specific question. You know who she's living with and you can tell David or not, as—you—like. It won't make a pennyworth of difference," he added cheerfully. "You see, there's one thing you're leaving out, Stornaway, the only thing that matters. David wants her back. I could see that on the day itself, when he'd caught them, when she decamped.... Nothing on earth will make him divorce her—for purely selfish reasons, if you like; he can't and won't let her go. But I don't know that you'll do much good by putting a pistol of that kind at her head. I've known that young woman on and off for about ten years. I don't see her knocking at the door and saying, 'Oh, by the way, as I can't live with the man I want to, I've come back.' Your general question what to do I can't answer. At least, we can only go on waiting——"
"And praying that other people won't find out?" I asked.
"They will, I'm afraid. Well, Sonia's utterly reckless, I gather;shedoesn't care who knows. Graylewouldn'thave cared in the old days. When he was living with her predecessor—you know, the wife of the man in the Brazilian Legation;—Grayle's so untidy in his amours; they always overlap—it was common property, they went almost everywhere together, she took the head of his table. Since those happy, careless times Grayle has discovered political ambitions. From the fact that not more than a handful of people know, I judge that Grayle wants to keep the thing quiet; I'm prepared to bet that Grayle would like best of all to be free of the whole tangle and, if he can't do that, he'd like the divorce to come on as quickly as possible. There's another thing you've left out. Do you suppose Grayle had contemplated a scandal, a divorce, the necessity of marrying the woman?"
"I don't suppose anyone in his position sits down and thinks it out in cold blood," I said.
Bertrand opened his left eye and looked at me with a malicious smile; then closed it and opened the right.
"Some do, some don't," he answered. "That's been my experience. I don't much mind your healthy incontinent animal, but I hate your continent calculating man—the creature who regulates his passions by his fears. He's artificial, to start with, and he's dangerous. Now, I sit here like the sailor's parrot. Grayle is becoming the calculating animal, Grayle for the first time in his life feels that he has a reputation to lose, Grayle is combining disreputable tastes with a decorous exterior."
Bertrand paused to chuckle cynically.
"Well?" I said.
"Well? Everybody seems to leave out one thing in his calculations, and Grayle was no exception. I put it to you a moment ago that he never contemplated the position he's in now; I suggest that Grayle saw a very beautiful young woman and decided, as you'd expect of him, that she was fair prey. He studied her carefully. She wasn'tto be bought, because throughout her life she's been receiving everything and giving nothing in return; she wasn't to be drugged, because her head's strong and her nature's cold; she wasn't to be cajoled—Beresford was doing the chivalrous devotion business, and she treated him like a tame cat, which is what he was;—Grayle discovered that the only thing to do was to bully her. He went away, neglected her, snubbed her when they met—enough to mortify her without even suggesting he cared enough totryand hurt her,—shewed her quite plainly that he could get on without her. Down she came with a run and began to make advances to him. He was too busy to waste time on her. She was piqued, she began to throw herself at him until at last he got her into his power.... I don't know who made her think she'd any cause to be jealous of Miss Merryon; it may have been Grayle, she may have evolved it for herself to excuse her leaving her husband; certainly she lashed herself into thinking it was all true, and that was Grayle's opportunity. But, once more, he never thought of anything more than a passing intrigue, which would have been easy enough with the husband away three months at a time. Unfortunately the husband turned up unexpectedly just as the intrigue began, and that lifted everything on to a much higher plane. Grayle cut and ran like a boy caught robbing an orchard—to be followed a couple of hours later by the woman." Once off the subject of O'Rane, Bertrand was enjoying himself prodigiously. "I would have given something to see his face when she arrived. Now, in my experience, there are mighty few crimes and cruelties that the female won't commit to protect the male—the male she's interested in;—she'll lie and thieve—and we've probably both of us seen her fixing the blame on the wrong man, letting him be cited as co-respondent to save her lover. Well, Beresford was sacrificed to protect Grayle; Grayle himself, who'd stayed behind in England to carry out the intrigue, used the excuse of his mission to the Front to cover his tracks. For two months and more he's contrived to keep the thing secret. Do you imaginehe isn't ready—however much infatuated about her he may be or may have been—to get rid of her and start again unembarrassed? When we talk about lifelong devotion, we none of us expect to be taken at our word."
Bertrand opened his eyes to look at me, and I saw that he was shaken with noiseless chuckles of malice. I could not share in his merriment.
"I don't see how this helps," I said. "Shewants a divorce,hewants to get rid of her, and O'Rane—shewon'tcome back to him, and, if she did, I can't conceive of his taking her back."
"Then you don't know David and you've not had much experience of young men in his state of mind," answered Bertrand with assurance. "In the meantime you can do nothing and you'd better wait till the story begins to get round London. It may be weeks or it may be months, but that little scandal is not going to lie hid for ever."
In spite of Bertrand there was one thing that I could do, and I did it when next I met O'Rane. It was intolerable, to my way of thinking, that he should be allowed to meet Grayle in ignorance of the blow which Grayle had dealt him. To do the fellow justice, I had never seen him seeking O'Rane's company either before or after, but I could not stomach the idea that O'Rane might unsuspectingly join him at dinner or even bid him good-night. I broke the news on my autumn visit to Melton. As soon as I approached the subject, O'Rane's face grew rigid; when I had finished, he said, "Oh, that was it? I see. Thank you."
Our brief meeting took place in October, and I do not know whether O'Rane came more than once to London until the Christmas holidays. I did not see him, certainly, and I have never heard whether he ran across Grayle. About a week after our meeting, I happened to be dining with the Maitlands and once more found Grayle among my fellow-guests. Until that moment I had not tried to think what line of conduct I should follow on meeting him; I do not yet know what is the conventional course. WhenLady Maitland went to the drawing-room, however, and he moved unconcernedly into the chair next mine, I had no difficulty in arriving at a decision. Grayle was middle-aged, rich, of unimpaired physique; he had tasted most kinds of enjoyment, his life had been brutishly happy and brutally successful; this last intrigue meant as little to him as a kiss snatched from an unreluctant dairymaid. It meant more to O'Rane.
I waved away the decanter which Maurice Maitland was pressing upon me and asked if he would make my apologies to his wife and allow me to slip away unobserved to finish some work which I had been compelled to take home. A day or two later I entered the House as Grayle was leaving it. He turned back and requested the favour of three minutes' conversation with me.
"I just want to understand," he began with an outward show of reason and an underlying menace. "I knew you knew, of course, but I didn't suspect you of so much melodrama. Am I to take it that you don't want to meet me?"
I am afraid that the threatening high voice left me undaunted.
"Grayle," I said, "you must admit you've been a pitiful, heartless cad over this."
"You don't want to meet me?" he repeated. "I only want to be sure of my ground."
"You remembered, of course, that O'Rane was blind?" I went on.
He dropped the menace and assumed an expression of mild perplexity.
"I'm afraid I don't follow where you come in in all this," he said, running his fingers through his luxuriant flaxen hair. "I'm quite ready to meet O'Rane here or—elsewhere. If helikesto plead blindness as an excuse, he can."
"And you will only plead it as an opportunity," I said. "Frankly, Grayle, I never want to see you or hear of you or speak to you again. And I wish I could find someone less fat and flabby to horsewhip you."
So a forty years' acquaintance ended. We spoke as and when we found ourselves members of the same company, but I was only to meet him once again in private and only to hold private communication with him twice. Perhaps I was too busy to frequent the places where I was likely to see him; perhaps, and more probably, he was living in comparative retirement.
During October and November I was constrained to watch the fulfilment of Bertrand's prophecy. The fact that Mrs. O'Rane was living apart from her husband, if not the fact that she was living with someone else, could not be concealed indefinitely. I had entered their social group so recently that I could not count more than half a dozen or a dozen friends in common, but in the course of those two months I heard many references that indicated suspicion or at least curiosity. Lady Maitland, I remember, shook her massive head and told me that it was a great pity for Colonel Grayle and Mrs. O'Rane to be still going about together so much; she had hoped that all that nonsense was over.... Lady Pentyre had heard that there was some estrangement.... And one night, when I was dining at Bodmin Lodge, young Deganway, who prided himself on the range of his social information, peered knowingly through his eyeglass and asked our host whether the famous Mrs. O'Rane did not hail from his part of the country. I forget what answer Pebbleridge made, but Deganway started talking with fine mystery about a certain member of Parliament who should be nameless.... George Oakleigh interrupted him by asking if he knew her.
"Ido," he added significantly.
"Well, but is it true?" Deganway demanded resiliency.
"I haven't heard the story yet," George answered. "I don't know that I particularly want to."
His tone was not sufficiently discouraging to closure the discussion, and Pebbleridge observed that he had not heard the story either. I felt that it was time to intervene.
"I've heardastory," I said. "If Deganway and I meanthe same thing, there's nothing in it. She used to be rather a friend of yours, usen't she, Deganway?"
"Oh, I've known her for years," he answered imperviously and impenitently.
George and I walked part of the way home together along Knightsbridge.
"It can't go on, you know," he exclaimed. "We had a frontal attack from Lady Dainton to-day. She called at 'The Sanctuary' on her way to Waterloo and was mildly surprised to find me in possession and very fairly staggered when I said Sonia was away and that I didn't know her address. Between us we managed to shut Deganway up to-night, but the story's being circulated by other people as well. I deny it, of course.... And I've seen Sonia with him three times in ten days."
I wondered whether she was trying to force his hand—and her husband's.
"Grayle's probably meeting the story, too," I said. "I wonder how he likes it."
"He must have been through this sort of thing so many times!" George sighed.
"But I doubt if he wants to be the hero of acause célèbreat this moment," I suggested. "The political position is becoming very interesting."
A few days before I had found myself at a political meeting in the City. We were assembled to demand a "ton-for-ton" policy of compensation for the merchant shipping which was being sunk by German submarines, and my seat on the platform was next to Guy Bannerman's.
"Grayle couldn't come, so I'm representing him," he explained. "You may imagine his hands are pretty full at present."
"I can well imagine it," I said, "though I don't go out of my way to meet him nowadays." Guy looked at me enquiringly to see how much I knew. "The last time I was at Milford Square I was told that you'd moved into quarters of your own."
Guy nodded abstractedly.
"You know, I don't think you've heard the whole story," he said.
"I've heard more than I want to," I replied, as I began to consult the programme of the afternoon's proceedings.
"Ah, but only on one side. There was such provocation——"
I laid my hand on Guy's knee.
"That was good enough for her, but it won't do for me," I said. "I've no doubt Grayle worked it up very convincingly, but you're far too clever to be taken in by it and not half clever enough to impose on me. We both of us know that it's impossible to say a single word for either of them. There we'd better leave it. It can't be undone now."
We were interrupted by the chairman's introductory speech, but at the end of the meeting Guy took my arm and walked with me to Cannon Street Station.
"I'mnottrying to defend them," he said. "In a thing like this no outsider can give an opinion worth having. I'm only saying that you might be a bit more lenient, if you'd heard both sides."
"It can't be undone now," I repeated.
As we seated ourselves in the train, he asked me if I had any idea what O'Rane proposed to do.
"Did Grayle tell you to find out?" I enquired.
"Of course he didn't," was the indignant rejoinder.
"But hewouldbe interested to know," I suggested. "Well, I can't help you, Guy. O'Rane has not told me; he has not told anyone, so far as I am aware. Why don't you interview him on the subject?"
Though Guy is a friend, I could not help being a little brutal to him in manner; I have always admired his loyalty to Grayle, but at this moment it was a quality which alienated me from him.
"It's no business of mine," said the faithful squire. "I don't know O'Rane, but I can't imagine any man sitting down under this sort of thing."
"Is Grayle so desperately keen on a divorce?"
"I've never met anyone who went through the Divorce Court forloveof the thing," he answered.
Half-way through November O'Rane returned to London for the mid-term Leave Out. I was apprised of his arrival by a telephone message begging me to cancel any other engagements and dine with him informally at "The Sanctuary."
It was Saturday night, and I stayed in London to meet him. George and Bertrand were his other guests, and we dined at one end of the long refectory table on the dais, with the rest of the room lit up only by the flicker of the two fires, which sent shapeless, indeterminate shadows dancing up and down the panelled walls. It is usually as easy to detect when a woman lives in a house as when a house has been unoccupied for months. The library was perhaps tidier than Mrs. O'Rane used to leave it; otherwise it was unchanged, but it had become indefinably masculine. O'Rane was as quiet and self-possessed as I had always found him, but now without the noticeable effort which I had observed at our last two or three meetings. As might be expected, we talked throughout dinner of the war and of political changes in the House of Commons. Only when we were gathered round one fire with our coffee and cigars did he turn the conversation on to himself.
"I must apologise for spoiling your week-end," he said, addressing himself to me, "I had to take the opportunity of seeing you when I could. All three of you have been amazingly kind and amazingly discreet and sympathetic. It's—my funeral, of course, but I wanted you to be present. George, perhaps you're the best person——"
There was a silence of some moments, while George turned his cigar round in his mouth and stared at his boots.
"I only know what you asked me to do, Raney," hebegan diffidently. And then to us, "O'Rane told me to fix up a meeting with Sonia. I went round to Milford Square last night and told her that he wanted to—discuss the future, I think I said. Grayle was present. She said she'd come, if he came with her; and I arranged for half-past ten to-night."
He stopped with obvious relief. O'Rane was standing with his back to the fire, rocking gently from heel to toe, with his hands in his trouser pockets. I saw him put his watch to his ear, touch the repeater and smile.
"It's not ten yet," he said to Bertrand and me. "If you'd rather be out of it.... I got George to attend as my second and I wanted you two to be—well, to hear what we said and keep us cool. I've been thinking over this business pretty steadily for some months and I feel it can't go on. My idea about marriage—well, to begin with, people mustn't marry unless they feel they can't get on without each other.... If they find they've made a hopeless mistake, nothing to my way of thinking justifies spoiling two lives by keeping them coupled together. Sonia knows that, I've always told her so.... Well, no one could find anything to say for our present position, it's neither one thing nor the other. If Sonia's made her choice——"
He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. Bertrand turned his eyes away from the boy's face and gazed slowly round the long, warm, softly-lighted room. George had discovered a spot of grease on the sleeve of his uniform and was industriously scraping it with the end of a wooden match.
"Go on, O'Rane," I said as gently as I could. "We haven't got much time. She's coming here, and you're going to ask her what she means to do."
He nodded almost gratefully.
"Yes. If she tells me coolly and dispassionately—that's why I've got you men here; I don't want a scene—that she'll be happier with Grayle——" I saw his underlip tremble before he could get out the name—"After all, it's her happiness ... isn't it?"
There was another pause.
"You'll set her free?" I suggested.
"I suppose so," he whispered.
I looked at Bertrand, and he first shrugged his shoulders and then shook his head. The first gesture seemed to mean that he did not mind what was said, the second that he himself did not propose to say it.
"You will divorce her?" I went on to O'Rane. "I only want you to see all sides of the question. It's not—pleasant, but—if she wants it and you're ready to face it on both your accounts.... There will be a big scandal, O'Rane. She's very well known in society. And any Member of Parliament, even if he wasn't as notorious as Grayle.... It will make good copy for the papers, I'm afraid."
"I'd save Sonia from it, if I could," said O'Rane, moistening his lips. "Of course, if Grayle doesn't mind——"
"I should think he'd mind very much," I interrupted. "If he doesn't want to appear in the Divorce Court just now——"
"He should have thought of that before," said O'Rane grimly. Then he held out his hands in entreaty. "You don't suggest I can let it go on any longer? Most people would say it had gone on too long, that if I'd had a spark of pride—I can't. Try to imagine ifyourwife.... Thinking of it night and day, night and day, forgetting for a moment when you're asleep and then waking up fresh to it every morning...." His hands stole up and pressed his temples as though they were bursting. "You lie for a moment wondering what it is that's hanging over you," he whispered, "and then you remember.... And you forget again for a moment when you're working or people are talking to you ... but you always know it's there ... and it comes back—comes back with a stab in the middle of whatever you're doing.... Andtheymustn't see.... God knows, a divorce won't alter things much, but at least it's a definite break, I've given her up, I've got noclaim, no rights.... It can't go on any longer. Have—have all you men got something to smoke?"
He came quickly forward from the fire-place and touched his way to a table behind our chairs. Though his back was turned, I could see out of the corner of one eye that he was furtively wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
"If by any chance they don't want a divorce, will you insist on it?" I went on unsparingly.
"Of course not. Provided they separate. You don't imagine——"
"If they do? If your wife asks you to forgive her and have her back?"
O'Rane had never smoked, I have been told, since his blindness; he could no longer taste the tobacco nor keep it alight. I observed him now putting a cigar in his mouth and chewing the end.
"It's not very likely to arise," he said.
"But if it did?"
"I'll wait till it arises."
He came back to his old place on the hearth-rug, and we remained silent until the clock struck half-past ten. At the sound I could see the others growing tense and expectant, as I was doing. O'Rane had been whistling through his teeth, but he abandoned even this distraction. For myself, uncomfortable as I knew us all to be, I could not help thinking that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle could be hardly free from all feelings of embarrassment. To return to the house, which had been given as a wedding present sixteen months before, accompanied by the lover with whom she had left it, to meet her husband and discuss how he proposed to deal with her infidelity—the bare bones were enough without clothing them in imagination. I pictured Mrs. O'Rane giving the familiar directions to the driver, tapping on the window when he lost himself in trying to take short cuts through the streets of Westminster, stopping him at the door and being helped out by Grayle.... And Grayle, for all his seasoning, had never,I was very sure, been led by the wife into her husband's house and presence....
I scribbled on an envelope and handed it to George:
"Couldn't they have pitched on some other place?"
"I wanted a private room in an hotel—neutral ground," he wrote back. "Raney insisted on this. Moral effect, I suppose."
As I crushed the paper into my pocket, I reflected that O'Rane was taking risks. The sight of the room and of himself might act on his wife like the smell of blood on an animal.
The clock struck again, and I exchanged glances with Bertrand. It was so characteristic of Mrs. O'Rane, even in my short acquaintance with her, that she should be late on such an occasion.
"Youdidsay to-night, didn't you?" O'Rane asked, trying to keep his tone unconcerned.
"I don't suppose they've been able to get a taxi," George answered. "It was raining before dinner."
A moment later we grew tense and expectant once more at the sound of an engine. I heard the slam of a door and Grayle's voice saying, "Will you wait a bit?" Then Bertrand, George and I rose from our chairs, as the flame-coloured curtain was drawn aside and Mrs. O'Rane walked composedly into the room, with Grayle in his staff uniform a pace behind. She narrowed her eyes and then raised her brows almost imperceptibly when she saw who was present.
"I'm sorry if we've kept you all waiting," she said, as she slipped her arms out of her coat and handed it to Grayle.
O'Rane swallowed.
"Won't you sit down?" he murmured.
George and I each pulled an extra chair into the half-circle, and I watched Mrs. O'Rane settling herself. Presumably she must have started the evening pale, for her cheeks were slightly rouged—and I had not observed her to use rouge before. Her eyes, too, looked tired, as I had seen them at our chance meeting in Hyde Park severalmonths before, but she was perfectly controlled, and I could trace no sign of nervousness or embarrassment. As though she were shewing herself off to young Beresford or any other of her admirers, I saw her look down at the pink dress which she was wearing, smooth a crease out of one glove, lift one transparent sleeve higher on to her shoulder and settle the folds of her skirt. Grayle spent some moments laying her coat carefully across the back of a chair; then dropped on to the end of a sofa with his stiff leg rigid in front of him and began peeling off his gloves and tossing them into his cap. He, at least, was not at ease; and, when George picked up the cigar-box and offered it him, he stammered in his refusal.
There was a moment more of silence, and then we turned slowly and with one accord towards O'Rane. As though he felt our eyes upon him, he tossed the cigar behind him into the fire and faced his wife.
"I—George probably told you, Sonia—I'm spending the week-end in London. I thought we might discuss things a bit."
Mrs. O'Rane looked unhurriedly to left and right.
"By all means," she acquiesced. "Do we want—quiteall these——?"
"I should have preferred to meet you alone. As Colonel Grayle said he was coming——"
"He had a right to come. Of course, if you prefer everything dragged up in public...."
She shrugged her shoulders and began to play with the watch on her wrist.
"I think everyone here is acquainted with most of the facts," said O'Rane. "But I'm not proposing to drag up anything that's happened. I asked you to come here because I wanted to talk about the future. I expect everyone will agree that the present position can't continue."
He waited for a sign of assent. Mrs. O'Rane took off one glove and helped herself to a cigarette from the gold case at her wrist.
"I told Mr. Stornaway that you were at liberty todivorce me," she said with a glance in my direction. "I said I was willing to face it. I don't know whether you ever got the message."
I decided to watch Grayle, but he was sitting with his head back, staring at the ceiling and occasionally blowing elongated smoke-rings.
"The Divorce Court is—an unsavoury place," O'Rane observed. "I want you to believe, Sonia, that what I've always said is as true now as when I first said it. I put your happiness higher than anything in the world, I'm trying to leave myself out of this."
Mrs. O'Rane looked once at her husband, and her eyes seemed to harden; then she glanced without apparent purpose at the half of the room which was within her field of vision. I noticed for the first time that the flower-vases were empty; I fancy that she noticed it, too. Her mouth began to purse, and I knew that O'Rane would have done better to hold his meeting elsewhere.
"It's very kind of you," she said stiffly. "Isn't it rather late in the day for you to be thinking of my happiness? When I lived here—— But you said you didn't want to go into what was past. The future's simply in your hands. I've told you I'm willing to face it. I don't believe in this modern business of the man always letting himself be divorced by the woman. I'm—willing—to face it. You've got your witnesses; they'll stand by you, if anybody criticises you."
"But if I don'twantto see you in the Divorce Court, Sonia?"
"I'm afraid that's one of the things you can't help."
O'Rane's chin dropped on to his chest, and he began to pace up and down the ten-foot rug in front of the fire with his hands plunged into his pockets and his fists so tightly clenched that the knuckles of either hand stood out in four sharp lumps against the sides of his trousers. Grayle still sat like a husband reluctantly dragged to hear a dull sermon; Mrs. O'Rane set herself to light a second cigarette from the glowing stump of the first, leaning forward sothat the ash should not scatter over the pink dress. A quarter past eleven struck, and I remember that Bertrand and I gravely consulted our watches and pretended to compare them by the clock on the mantel-piece.
At last O'Rane halted by Grayle's chair.
"You're in this, too, Colonel Grayle," he said. "Once more we need concern ourselves only with the future. I should like to hear your views."
Grayle brought his head forward with a sharp jerk.
"It's her happiness we're considering," he agreed slowly, with his eyes on O'Rane's waist. "I—well, it's for her to say; I obviously can't tell you what will make her happiest, she's the only person who can do that. You've not put forward any case for yourself, I musn't put forward any for myself. She must tell us both whether she's been happy enough these last months to want to go on.... I may say—you haven't attacked me, so perhaps I don't need to defend myself—I may say that, when a woman's unhappily married, I don't regard her as being under any obligation to her husband; she's free to start her life again; and any man is free to share that life, if she sees fit. That—that's mytheory, in case you feel there's any question ofrightsinvolved."
His tone was becoming truculent, but O'Rane nodded gravely.
"Yes. But we agreed to leave the past alone," he said. "I've knocked about a good bit the last thirty years and I can assure you that I never want to be put on my trial foranything. Let's stick to the future. Do you wish—my wife to go through the Divorce Court?"
I looked at Mrs. O'Rane to see if the offending word would rouse her, but she seemed not to have heard it. The hard composure of her entrance had broken down, she seemed ready to faint with fatigue, and the patches of rouge on cheeks that were grown suddenly white gave her an absurd something of a Dutch doll's appearance. I fetched her a tumbler of soda-water, and her smile of thanks was the first human thing that I had seen about herthat night. As she began to sip it, I saw her glance over the brim at Grayle.
"I don'twishit," he said at length. "What—what else is possible?"
"You can say good-bye to her," O'Rane suggested quietly.
Grayle looked up uncomprehendingly; and Mrs. O'Rane's eyes flashed in sympathy.
"Desert her, you mean?"
"It's hardly the word I should have chosen, but we needn't go into that. Colonel Grayle, neither you nor I want a scandal. By the mercy of God, there's only one man outside this room who knows what's been taking place all these months. We've agreed that my wife's happiness is the thing that we're both unselfishly seeking, we won't bandy rights and wrongs or grievances or justifications—we won't even try to put our love for her into a scale. If you give me your word of honour that you'll never see or speak to my wife again, I will take no further steps; I'm not trying to steal her away from you so that I may get her back myself—she must determine her own happiness. You and I can at least spare her the unhappiness, the vulgarity, the morbid, sniggering curiosity of a public scandal. She can live in another part of the house, live away from me, let it be known confidentially that we somehow didn't manage to get on very well together.... Are you prepared to make that sacrifice for her happiness?"
Grayle lit another cigarette, coughed and fetched himself a syphon and tumbler.
"You're begging the question," he said at length. "Youcan't define the conditions of Sonia's happiness."
"I know what will make herunhappy. That's good enough as a negative definition."
Mrs. O'Rane pushed her chair back a few inches and rose to her feet. She looked round for her coat and walked to the chair where Grayle had laid it.
"I've said I'm ready to face everything and everybody,"she said over her shoulder, as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.
"But, please God! you don't know what you're facing!" O'Rane cried with an outburst of emotion which he was no longer able to contain. "Grayle, yousayyou love her! If you care a snap of the fingers for her, if you've any humanity, any decent feeling in the whole of your composition, if you hope for mercy in this world or the next, you've got your opportunity now! The one thing you can do for her abiding happiness is to take my hand and swear you'll never see her again. You know it is! You can walk out of this house and leave her so that no one will dare to say a word against her for fear of being thrashed within an inch of his life. If she doesn't get on well with me, if we part by common consent, that's my fault; everyone will say that I was always eccentric, that she was a fool to marry me, that I've spoiled her life.... Will you do that, Grayle? Will you shew that what you call your love for her means something?"
As he ended, I heard a muffled banging on the front door. George hurried away, and a moment later there came the sound of an engine starting.
"It was only the taximan," he explained, as he came back. "He's got a train to catch at Victoria, so I paid him off. We can telephone for another one when it's wanted."
Mrs. O'Rane looked at her watch and frowned.
"Iwishyou hadn't done that, George," she cried petulantly. "It was pouring when we came, and now we shall probably have to walk home.... I don't see that there's anything more to be said. It's very kind of everyone to take so much trouble about me, but, if I'm prepared to go through with it, that ends the matter."
"But you're talking about something you don't understand, Sonia!' cried O'Rane.
"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she answered. "It's just conceivable that Vincent and I both thought about the consequences beforehand. Good-bye."
She turned to the door, and Grayle followed her. Georgemoved mechanically forward to open it for them. Bertrand and I remained where we were, watching O'Rane smooth back a wisp of black hair that was glued to his forehead.
It was characteristic of O'Rane that he went back to Melton at the end of his leave without hinting to anyone what he was going to do. After his wife and Grayle left "The Sanctuary," I waited for perhaps ten minutes to see whether he wanted my opinion or advice, but he made no reference to the scene at which we had all been present. All that he said to the Oakleighs was, "Well, I'm rather tired. I think I shall go to bed." He disappeared as quietly and suddenly as he had come; perhaps we were to see him back in six weeks' time at the end of term, but even this was uncertain.
The advent of autumn, bringing with it the recognition that there must be another winter in the trenches, roused the country from the uncaring optimism or placid resignation in which the summer had been passed. In the London press, at the Club, in the House and at private dinner tables, I found very general agreement that the war had entered upon a new phase. A timid minority earnestly confided to discreetly chosen audiences that the people who talked about a deadlock and a stale-mate peace were proving right after all. With the exception of Beresford, who thought no opinion worth holding unless he shouted it from the house-tops, the new peace-school was obviously frightened of being called unpatriotic or pro-German. Bertrand would shake his head gloomily and begin sentences half-jocularly with—"I suppose I shall be called the Hidden Hand next, but all I can say is...." Whatever it was, he said it in an undertone and made sure of his man before saying it. Others tried to avert personal attacks by discussing war and peace in the abstract, adducing uncertain historical parallels and wondering academically whether itwas wise to aim at humiliating a great country too much; were we not sowing the seeds of future wars?
The discussion seldom continued to be academic, and the peace school by its furtiveness and timidity invited persecution, as does the mild urchin at school who never stands up for himself and becomes a legitimate target for his fellows' kicks. Early in December there was much talk of the American "peace-kite." President Wilson had been re-elected, his hands were free, and for four years he could mould the policy of the United States without fear of an election. It was said that his patience was nearing its limits, that he was ready to break off diplomatic relations with Germany and that the "peace-kite" was a last attempt to arrive at terms of settlement before deciding to plunge his country into war.
The rumours of peace discussions and possible terms produced an immediate repercussion in London and developed a greater intensity of political feeling than had been known since the war began. There was said to be a peace-party in the Cabinet; the blunders and catastrophes of more than two years were set down to the malevolence of Ministers who had been driven to war against their will and were only anxious for an immediate end, even if such an end meant victory for the enemy; I heard once again Lady Maitland's confident assertion that the Government was in German pay.... There could be little academic discussion in such an atmosphere, and the one public attempt which I heard Bertrand make was literally shouted down.
"All I say," he kept repeating one night at Ross House, "is that I see no reason why we should be successful in 1917, when we've failed in 1916. I may be wrong; I don't pretend to have sufficient data. I only warn you that in six months' time you may have to accept worse terms than you could get now—with a balance of half a million or a million lives the wrong way. That's a big responsibility."
"You'd let Germany keep all she's got," Lady Maitland asked, "as an instalment?"
"Germany's broken, as it is," Bertrand answered. "She can never make good her losses and she'd gladly discuss terms. But, good Heavens! even if we didn't accept the terms, there's surely no harm in discussing them!"
Maitland shook his head sagely.
"When I'm dealing with the burglar who's collared my silver," he said, "I prefer not to argue until he's divested himself of what I believe is called the swag."
"You mayprefernot to. Can you enforce your preference?" Bertrand asked rather curtly.
"Then let's go down fighting," Lady Maitland proposed valiantly.
"With great submission, a live dog's better than a dead lion," said Bertrand. "I've so much faith in the potentialities of my country that I want to preserve her."
Lady Maitland turned on him with unaffected ferocity. "If you make peace now, you'lldisgraceher!" she cried. "We shall never be able to hold up our heads again!"
Young Lady Loring, who was between Bertrand and me, was no less strong.
"Uncle Bertrand, you can't be serious!" she exclaimed. "We should be faithless to those who've died, if we didn't hold on. I—I would sooner have my husband killed asecondtime than go back on the dead!"
Her intensity of feeling caused a stir, followed by an embarrassed pause. Maitland brought it to an end by shaking his head good-humouredly.
"I say, Oakleigh, old man, if I may say so, you oughtn't to talk like that, you know. You're a man in a responsible position, people quote what you say. It produces a devilish bad impression."