There was a second pause, a second silence. With the same movement we looked towards the fireplace, but Beresford was lying huddled and motionless. Grayle once more put his hand to his head, once more raised his eyebrows when he brought it away covered with blood. Dragging a chair by his side and using its back as a prop, he limped to the second door, pushed it closed and locked it.
"Youbrought this onyourself," he whispered in a voice that choked with rage.
In equipment, physical power, training, endurance, even in length of reach, Grayle was my superior. His one weak point was the injured knee, and I concentrated my attack on that before he could reduce the distance between us. Picking up the first of the deed-boxes from the table, I raised it above my head and discharged it at his legs. Itstruck his feet, I believe; certainly he staggered. Either the second was lighter or I was over-anxious not to throw short again, for this time I hit him in the chest and sent him stumbling and cursing until his back met the door. He stooped as though he would return my fire, but evidently saw the wisdom of not replenishing my ammunition. I picked up the third box, waited until he was back in his old position and then let fly with all the strength that I could put into an overhand swing. The missile was too big and swift to avoid easily at so close a range, but Grayle contrived to make a bend in his body, the box flicked his tunic over one hip and slid along the floor until it bumped into its fellows at the door.
"Andnow," said Grayle. "Bannerman's out of ear-shot, and even the fiendish noiseyou've been making won't bring anyone to save you. Before I've done with you, Ithinkyou'll be sorry you interfered quite so much."
He dragged himself and his chair to the edge of the table and leaned upon it with his fists, gripping the ruler. The next moment I had sprung back, as he threw himself forward and aimed a blow at my head with the full reach and swing of his long body and arm behind it. The point of the ruler glanced off the welt of my boot and dented the oil-cloth. Grayle pulled himself back, rested his hands again on the table and waited, eyeing me reflectively. I was coming cautiously back to my place, when he projected himself suddenly to the right; I jumped in the opposite direction, he stopped, and we gradually came back to our old positions. A moment later he dived to the left, but I had hardly to move, for he was throwing his weight on to a leg which would not bear it. The next plunge was to the right, and this time he made a half-circle of the table until each of us was occupying the other's stance. With these tactics I could keep him at bay for as long as I liked; and I have no doubt that he realised it. While he panted and looked round him, I turned my head for an instant to see whether he had left the key in the door. The one table-lamp, however, threw a yellow circle of quaveringlight over the middle of the room and left the extremities in shadow. Whether Grayle divined my thoughts, whether he even noticed or understood my action, I cannot say, but the next moment I received a violent blow on the thighs and was hard put to it to keep my balance, as the table, furiously impelled by him, careered madly towards the door, pinning my legs and holding me, as though I were buried to the waist, to await his attack.
He gave himself a moment to draw breath and enjoy his triumph. The murderous blow which had just missed me never left his intentions in doubt, but in that moment he gave me time to use the last and only weapon left to me. Snatching the big lamp, which flared afresh at my grasp, I raised it aloft and brought it with a crash and tinkle on to his head. For some time I could not understand what had happened, for the room seemed in darkness and yet brighter than before. By the dancing light of the fire I saw that Grayle had disappeared; and the table yielded when I pushed against it. Then a blaze of yellow sprang up in front of me, and I caught sight of him lying on his back with a flood of burning oil spreading over his clothes, lapping the disorder of books and papers which we had tumbled on to the floor and licking the border of the Japanese mats. How much I had injured him with the lamp I could not see; he was clasping his head with one hand and still gripping the ruler with the other.
"Grayle, pull yourself together, man!" I cried, as though by raising my voice I could penetrate his unconsciousness.
In a moment the flames would be pouring over his neck and face; in five minutes, if the petrol cans were reached, the whole lath-and-plaster shanty would be a roaring and crackling furnace. I had to extricate Beresford and Grayle or rouse them to extricate themselves—and I discovered that my body was trembling from the excitement of the duel and that my head was aching savagely. I had hardly found time to think of my injuries until then; to think of anything, indeed, but the next thrust or parry; I had no idea how long the engagement had lasted—and wasastonished to find that less than twelve minutes had passed since Grayle first entered the room.
"Pull yourself together!" I cried again, looking for my overcoat to wrap round him and smother the flames. In the unevenly distributed light I could not see it. The oil was sinking into the closely woven tunic instead of flaring itself out on the surface, and above the pungent smell of hot petroleum rose the more pungent smell of singeing cloth. I caught him by the arm and tried to drag him towards the door, but at my touch the body subconsciously grew rigid. I pulled again, and this time he opened his eyes, frowned uncomprehendingly at me and then stared at his blazing clothes with the stupid wonder of a drunken man trying to remember how he came to his present plight.
"Water!" I roared. "Where shall I find water?"
He looked up at me and the expression of wonder gave place to dawning recollection. In another moment his face was transformed. I was still holding one arm, and he allowed himself to be pulled to a sitting posture. Then leaving the flames to shoot vertically on to his neck and face, he swung the ruler for a last blow on the side of my head. I remember that I saw it coming; one's moods change so quickly that I was aghast to find Grayle still intent on murder when I had forgotten all that nonsense and only wanted to help him. It was so ungrateful.... And it was so incredible! I did not even let go his arm or relax my efforts....
The ruler struck where my head was already soft and bruised from its late banging against Beresford's. I felt my knees slowly bending, my body gently collapsing. Five and thirty years before a party of second-year men had decided that no one's education was complete until he had once at least had experience of intoxication. I was plied with a very great deal of liquor, very scientifically mixed; and I remember watching for the danger-signals of oncoming inebriation. Throughout the evening I could think rationally and speak clearly; I was neither excited nornoisy, neither elated nor depressed. I even played a game of whist, I believe, and won a few shillings from my host. The parting brandy and soda, however, hit me like a battering-ram; I subsided on the ground with every muscle limp and, to my shame, crawled downstairs and across the court on hands and knees. When Grayle's ruler brought me down, the same partial paralysis of brain and body must have taken place. I remember lying on my back with my knees in the air, I remember turning on one side and raising myself on my hands; I remember crawling with vast preoccupation to the door, feeling for the key, turning it and, as I hope to be saved, noticing my skill in going down the short flight of steps on all fours without pitching forward on to my head in the passage.
Outside in the lane I paused to take breath and test my strength. By leaning against the wall I could draw myself upright and follow a stumbling course into the Brompton Road. A girl walking by on a soldier's arm pointed at me and tittered; an elderly woman paused to exclaim "Disgusting!" Otherwise no one took any interest in the absorbing story which I could have told him—the fight, the fire.... I turned round, all but over-balancing, to see whether the wooden work-room was yet burned down; to my amazement there was no sign of a single flame. Was that because you were not allowed to shew lights owing to the war? Therewasa war; someone had told me, or I had dreamed it—or else I was astonishingly drunk.... Was I really trying to crawl home from Mark Goldsworthy's rooms in King's? If so, I must have been drunk for a very long time, for I had been dreaming all sorts of things—dreaming that I had gone down from Cambridge, that I had done this and that, that I was an elderly man.... It had been so vivid, this life-story which I had dreamed in a few seconds, that I could see again the bluest water in the world, which I knew to be the Caribbean Sea, though no one could possibly have told me; and the approach to Colon (what other namecouldit have?) ...
Then I felt overpoweringly sick, but what else was tobe expected when Mark Goldsworthy had laid himself out to make me drunk? It was curious that I should have been dining with him that night, because I knew that he had been killed years later at Omdurman; or would be. Did he know? It was an astounding piece of second-sight, if I knew the name of the battle before it took place.... And how dreadful for poor Mark, who had been at my tutor's! He was going to be killed accidentally, shot in the back by one of his own men who had been wounded. I must never tell him of course.... And how absurd it would all seem when I awoke, but at the moment it was so real that I could not help believing it.... Could I or could I not get on to my feet before I came to the gate? It would look so bad if I were found bestially drunk before I had been a week at Cambridge. Perhaps, if I hailed a taxi and got inside and curled myself up on the floor, we could drive out of college unseen. It was worth trying....
"Take me to the House of Commons, please," I said.
The man stared at me and laughed insolently. I was so tired that I could hardly resent his manner.
"I'll pay you now, if that's what you mean," I said; and, feeling in my pocket, I took out two half-crowns and closed the discussion by entering the cab. He shrugged his shoulders, laughed again and pulled down the flag of his meter; it was the last movement of which I was conscious until he opened the door and jerked out over his shoulder,
"Here's the House of Commons."
We were by the entrance to the yard. I got out and asked him how much the fare was.
"You've paid me once," he answered with a mixture of sympathy, cynical amusement and sluggish concern. "You've been knocking about a bit, you have."
I turned away and walked unsteadily along Millbank. I suppose my brain was about three parts clear by now; I no longer fancied myself to be leaving an undergraduate debauch of thirty-five years before. Somewhere andsomehow that night I had met with severe physical injuries; Grayle was involved in it—and Beresford—and a strong smell of singeing, but my head was aching too much to let me think consecutively. I wanted to lie down and close my eyes, I would have lain down on the pavement but for the rain (and I had lost hat, collar and coat at some point in this nightmare evening) ... but for the rain and the risk of being thought drunk. Anyone but a fool would have turned the head of the taxi and driven home; I knew the hotel—though I could not give it a name, and the number of my room; but I could only think of one thing at a time and I longed before everything else to lie down on one of those long sofas in "The Sanctuary" ... which was so near, too.
Some time later I remember standing with my watch in my hand, trying to strike a match against a wet lamp-post.
Later still George Oakleigh was bending over me and trying to carry me from the door-step into the house. He was in pyjamas, an overcoat and slippers; I cracked some feeble joke about his hair, which was unwontedly disordered; then I saw that I was speaking in atrocious taste, because poor George had been in bed and asleep, and I had unfeelingly disturbed him. I apologised, and he said that it was of no consequence, but I had to apologise again and again, because I could not let him be so magnanimous and, moreover, I was not at all sure that he was accepting the apology.... He told me that I was ill and must not excite myself. To shew him that I was not ill, I struggled to my feet and walked into the house.
"No bones broken," he muttered. "Lie down, while I get you some brandy. Is Matthews still your doctor?"
"I don't want a doctor, George," I said. "I shall be all right when I've rested a bit."
He gave me nearly half a tumbler of neat brandy. As I drank it, I experienced the most curious sensation of my life; as though a thick cloth had been tied round my brain, I now felt it being gently withdrawn. I saw the roomsteadily and could tell George not to look so anxious; I remembered the forgotten chapters of the night, even to the last stumble when I fell on the door-step and beat on the panels with my fists until I became unconscious. Piece by piece my memory reconstructed the changing scene; I wondered what had happened to Grayle and Beresford, whether the fire had been put out, what people were thinking....
I was too warm and drowsy to wonder long, but I remember saying very distinctly and, as I thought, impressively,
"Don't get a doctor to me, George; and don't let anyone know I'm here."
Then I dropped asleep.
George came into the library next morning on his way to the Admiralty. I was awake, because after an hour or two of sleep the physical exhaustion which made it possible gave place to physical discomfort which effectually banished it. My head had a collection of dull, throbbing pains which played for a while, each by itself on its appointed spot, and then joined hands and danced in a ring with an initial kick-off under my swollen right ear; over the forehead they went and under the back of the eyes, scampering to the nape of the neck, drawing breath and toe-ing and heeling it to the starting place once more. I had a basin of water by my sofa and relays of handkerchiefs which I dipped and spread over my temples, but by three o'clock my arms had stiffened until I could not bear to move them, and I spent the remainder of the night turning from side to back and from back to side, trying to find some surface of my body which did not feel as if the bones were running through the flesh.
"I told Bertrand you were here," George said, "and the housekeeper, of course. Butshewon't say anything. How you got yourself into that condition——"
He broke off and smiled at my cuts and bruises. Laterin the day, when I got a chance of looking at myself in a mirror, I could forgive his smile.
"It's a long story, George," I said. "Leave it till my head feels a bit clearer. And, once more, don't tell anyone I'm here. At the present time I don't quite know what my civic status is, whether I'm a fugitive from justice or what. Have you seen the papers? Is there anything that you can fit me into?"
"I only had time to read the war news," he answered. "Look here, I've given orders for a bed to be made up in Raney's room, and we'll shift you, as soon as you feel like moving. Is there anything else you'd care for?"
"The one thing I want is the papers," I said.
They were brought me ten minutes later by Bertrand, who strolled into the library, raised his eye-brows and withdrew his cigar long enough to give a short whistle of surprise.
"You're a pretty sight," he chuckled. "George said you wanted these. I suppose you've been fighting the police and want to see if they're advertising a description of you."
I hunted through the main news sheets, losing myself in columns of officialcommuniquésand unofficial cabinetmaking, before I was rewarded with a four-line paragraph:—
"Accident to Well-known M.P.," I read, and underneath the heading,
"A fire broke out last evening in the house of Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Grayle, M.P., in Milford Square. It is not known how the conflagration originated and, at the time of going to press, it is not possible to gauge the amount of damage done. We regret to say that Colonel Grayle has sustained severe injuries, which might easily have proved fatal. His condition is critical, and it is feared that there may have been actual loss of life."
"A fire broke out last evening in the house of Lieutenant-Colonel Vincent Grayle, M.P., in Milford Square. It is not known how the conflagration originated and, at the time of going to press, it is not possible to gauge the amount of damage done. We regret to say that Colonel Grayle has sustained severe injuries, which might easily have proved fatal. His condition is critical, and it is feared that there may have been actual loss of life."
I put my thumb against the paragraph, handed it to Bertrand and resumed my search. The "Times" and "Morning Post" contained no reference to the fire, but the late London edition of the "Daily Gazette" gave meplentiful reading matter and rich food for reflection. There was a title, sub-title, headings to the paragraphs and a column and three-quarters of close, descriptive print. It opened promisingly with "Tragedy in M.P.'s House" and progressed through "Mystery Fire in Milford Square" to an account which must have been supplied two-thirds by Bannerman and the rest by the constable who had directed me to the studio in the lane. Grayle's physical state or the delicacy of his position had kept him from contributing anything.
The narrative, so far as I remember it, ran on these lines. Mr. Guy Bannerman, who acted as secretary to Colonel Grayle, had been reading in the smoking-room and went upstairs at about eleven o'clock. His bedroom looked on to a strip of garden, and in making the window secure he had observed that the curtains in the wooden loft over the garage were on fire. After telephoning to the fire brigade, he had seized a jug of water, hurried into the garden and tried to force his way into the loft. The door was locked on the inside, however, and he had to run back and round to a second door opening on to a lane at right angles to the Brompton Road. The room, when at last he got into it, was a sea of fire. Some years earlier it had been roughly fitted up as a work-room and was filled with books, loose papers and maps. There was nothing to shew how the fire had started nor how long it had been going on, but the papers on the floor, the table-cloth and curtains, several straw mats and a fur hearth-rug were blazing. However it had started, its destructive course had been materially assisted by the oil from a big lamp which had been overturned and broken. By the door the flames were fortunately less fierce than at the far end of the room, or Bannerman would have been unable to enter. He emptied his jug in front of him, ran down and refilled it from the garage, emptied, filled and emptied it again until the fire had been driven back a few yards. It was now possible for the first time to see through the glare of the flames, and he was horrified to catch sight of Grayle's body lyingmotionless half under the table. Dragging him to the door, he was about to carry him downstairs when he observed a second body on the far side of the fire-place. Then he remembered that two men had called to see Colonel Grayle on business half an hour before; he had assumed that they must have left before the fire broke out, as it was inconceivable that three men should have been unable to conquer the flames at the outset.
After carrying Grayle into the garage, Bannerman returned for the second victim, whom he recognised as a young man named Beresford. Of the third there was no sign in the front half of the room, and he had to go for more water. The wooden walls had now caught fire, the book-cases and chairs were smouldering and the oilcloth had blistered and cracked and was smoking ominously. A very few minutes' work were to shew him that one man armed with one bedroom jug could not even keep the flames from spreading. He ran backwards and forwards drenching the floor with water, but never clearing a path sufficient to allow of his advancing more than a third of the way into the room. When the fire-engines arrived, the flames had eaten through the walls and were licking the wooden gables of the roof; they had licked to so great effect that the first jet of water brought down a cascade of tiles and charred rafters.
While the hoses played, Bannerman looked to the men whom he had succeeded in carrying out. Grayle was alive and breathing faintly, though his clothes fell away in handfuls of black ash at the first touch, and his face and head were shockingly burnt and disfigured. Beresford gave no sign of life. His hair was singed and blackened where he had fallen on his face against the bars of the grate; his clothes were as much charred as Grayle's, but his body was almost unmarked, save for a bruise over the heart, no doubt from contact with the point of the fender. Death was probably due to asphyxiation; this was the unofficial opinion of the doctor, pending the inquest. Partial and temporary asphyxiation, indeed, was the only explanationwhy the three men had not either put out the flames or escaped from the burning room.
There remained the second visitor, and, as soon as the fire had been put out, Bannerman returned to the loft. By the light of a stable lantern, it was possible to make a cautious search. Three-quarters of the roof had disappeared, burnt away or fallen in heaps of broken tiles and blackened timber on the floor or in the garden; the walls on two sides, the floor at one end had disappeared equally. On what remained lay a pile of charred table legs and chair backs, broken glass and blistered deed-boxes, scorched books and odd, unidentified metal fastenings and joints, the whole dripping and lapped with sinister black water. Bannerman explored every inch of the wreckage and returned to the garage empty-handed. At the end, where the ceiling had fallen in, a smaller pile of wreckage reared itself fantastically on a platform of petrol cans. A revolving book-case and a filing cabinet, charred but intact, were half buried under broken tiles and blackened volumes of Parliamentary Debates; a stout table leg and a small safe lay further away; and there was the reeking half of a burnt fur-coat.
My interest in the "Daily Gazette" narrative quickened at this point. Mr. Bannerman had admitted Beresford and another (whose name was not given). They had tried the front door-unsuccessfully, because all the servants were out for the night. A constable had suggested their going round to the door in the lane; they had entered; there was no hint that one had left before the other. No doubt in a few hours negative proof would be forthcoming, but, until that appeared, or until a further examination could be made, it was possible that the second visitor had been a second victim.
"I'm afraid we've seen the last of young Beresford," I said to Bertrand.
"What's happened to him?" he asked.
"You haven't read this yet?" I said. "Well, wait till George comes back at lunch-time, and I'll tell you thewhole story. I rather fancy that a good many people have seen the last of me. I say, Bertrand, have you ever been present at a cremation?"
He looked at me sorrowfully.
"I should have thought you'd had enough trouble for one night," he said.
"I have, I can assure you. But my career of crime is in its infancy—I'll explain all this at lunch;—I want to know what sort of fire it takes to consume a human body so that there's no trace of flesh, blood, hair, bone, clothing——"
"God knows!" he interrupted. "You'd better ring up Brookwood."
"I don't think I'm likely ever to ring up anyone again," I said—rather rashly.
Some while before his usual hour George hurried in with a scared expression and wondering, wide-open eyes. He was carrying the mid-day editions of two or three evening papers, and I saw that I should not have to explain much after all. The only point of interest to me was that Colonel Grayle was not yet in a position to give any account of what had happened.
"And, until he does," I told Bertrand and George, "I propose to keep quiet, too. You see, there's unfortunately no doubt that he and I each tried to kill the other and between us we've succeeded in killing Beresford, though I can't say for certain if it was asphyxiation or the blow on the heart. I'm responsible for that fire. When I see what story Grayle puts up, I shall be better able to decide."
It was not going to be an easy explanation to frame, and the papers were already beginning to wonder how two, and perhaps three, grown men could be imprisoned in a room with two doors, one of them unlocked. If Bannerman could get in some time later, they could have got out some time earlier. I was only wondering why Bannerman had suppressed my name; did Grayle think that he hadtwolives on his conscience?
The evening papers gave a better account of him, thoughhe was still too weak to satisfy the curiosity of the reporters. They also reminded their readers of his political career and the possibility of his being included in the new government.
"Have you thought out your own position?" Bertrand asked me uneasily, throwing aside his paper.
"I don't know that I have," I answered. "I'd sooner leave Grayle to explain."
"H'm. You came here, stayed here—as much knocked about as you please, raving, unconscious. But, when everyone in London's asking how the fire broke out, no one in the house can find a word to say."
"If Grayle's unconscious, I'm unconscious," I answered. "He can invent the explanation of the fire, and I'll stand by what he says."
Bertrand sat heavily on the foot of my bed with an expression of obvious dissatisfaction.
"Every hour you stay here——"
"I don't pretend that it's ideal," I interrupted. "But I shall wait for Grayle."
I was not allowed to wait for Grayle. And, if neither Bertrand nor I were satisfied with my silence, we had no reason to be more satisfied when I broke it. Yet I hardly see how I could help myself and I am sure that on balance I do not regret my action. The morning papers next day added little to the established facts and wide-ranging guess-work of the evening before, though, as a humane man, I was glad to see that Colonel Grayle's progress was as satisfactory as could be expected. There was a brief report of the inquest on Beresford—death by misadventure, with asphyxiation as the immediate cause, unsatisfied wonder on the Coroner's part that such a fire could have taken place, coupled with regret that Colonel Grayle was not well enough to give evidence. Of greater interest to me was an obviously inspired hint that a new department was to be formed for the control of recruiting and that Grayle was likely to be made its head. If the announcement lacked novelty, its setting did not; for the first time Grayle's ownpaper—he subsidised it, if he did not in fact own the controlling majority of the shares—accepted responsibility for the forecast.
I read the announcement about eleven in the morning. I thought over it for perhaps half an hour. Then an idea came to me, which I was powerless to resist. Without considering its effect on him or on myself, without thinking of anything but that I meant to do this, had to do this, I crawled out of bed and made my way painfully downstairs to the library. I was astonishingly weak in body and I have good reason now to think that I was a little light-headed at the time, but I am not looking for excuses. When I had made sure that I had the library to myself, I dragged two very stiff legs to the writing-table at the far end, sat down and asked for Grayle's number on the telephone. It was repeated to me, and I realised for the first time that I had not yet decided what to say. And, before I could collect my thoughts, a woman's voice was exclaiming rather impatiently,
"Hullo! Yes! Hullo!"
"I want to speak to Colonel Grayle," I said.
"I'm sorry to say Colonel Grayle is ill."
"It's essential that I should speak to him. Will you please have me put through to his room?"
There was a perceptible pause, and I chose to fancy that my voice had sounded impressive.
"Er, who shall I say it is?" she asked.
"It will be enough, if you say that it's very urgent."
"I don't know that he's well enough to speak. Are you sure you can't give me a message?"
"If he's well enough to take a message from you, he's well enough to listen to it from me. Please be as quick as you can."
The pause this time was longer, there were mysterious metallic clicks and buzzes; then a man's voice said,
"Hullo?"
"Is that Grayle?" I asked.
"Yes. Who's speaking?"
As he had not recognised my voice, I could leave recognition or avowal to come later.
"It's about this announcement, Grayle," I went on.
"Whoisspeaking?" he asked again with growing irritation.
"Your appointment, I mean. You know what will happen, if you take it; you can't say you haven't been warned. I suggest that, before it's too late——"
Faintly, as though the sound were coming through cotton wool, I heard a muffled cry. I waited, but there was no other sound.
"Grayle?" I began again.
But there was still no sound.
" ... Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel, may I not wash in them, and be clean ...?"II Kings5 : 9-12.
" ... Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood at the door of the house of Elisha.
And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt be clean.
But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper.
Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel, may I not wash in them, and be clean ...?"
II Kings5 : 9-12.
When a man has crossed the water-shed of forty, his power of recuperation is sorrily reduced. Perhaps he succumbs less easily to illness or injury, the bruises may take longer to shew themselves, but they also take far longer to disappear.
I found this literally and metaphorically true during the weeks when I lay at "The Sanctuary." After my one painful descent to the telephone, I returned to bed and stayed there for a month. One part of my body after another swelled and changed colour; I was pitifully weak, and for the first time in my life my nerves seemed to have gone limp. The memory of my fight with Grayle haunted me, I could not concentrate my mind on anything and I lacked the native buoyancy to want to get well. Bertrand and George were obviously anxious, but even to oblige them I could not put forth strength which was not in me; the weeks rolled by, and I remained a listless and, I am afraid, an exacting and irritable invalid.
As my name had not been published, as I could in fact plead serious ill-health at the time of the inquest on Beresford, I saw no purpose in thrusting myself on the public until I knew what explanation Grayle proposed to give. Curious enquirers were simply informed that I had met with an accident. In the early days we used to watch the bulletins of Grayle's health and the formation of the new government in parallel columns; and the second made more rapid progress than the first. The chief offices were allotted, one after another, and the minor positions down to the last Junior Lordship of the Treasury; at the beginning it was occasionally stated that "at one time Colonel Grayle's name was mentioned in connection with" this or that or the other appointment; gradually the references to him became rarer until his own paper wrote his political epitaph and announced with conventional regret that, while the Prime Minister was believed to have been hoping to make use of his services, his present condition of health put the acceptance of any office out of the question.
Bertrand smiled grimly, as he shewed me the paragraph, but I was impatiently waiting until Grayle's condition of health enabled him to give me a lead. It came at last through the medium of Bertrand on a night when he had been dining at the House and had seen Grayle for the first time since the fire. I am a tolerably humane man and, though I had struck upon provocation and in defence of my own life, I regretted the state to which I had reduced my opponent. He now walked with two crutches and a sling for his foot in place of the one stick; his head was generously bandaged, and, though a curious faint down was beginning to appear on the exposed portions of his scalp, he no longer wore a moustache, and his eyebrows were singed out of existence.
A circle of his friends was bombarding him with questions and comments from all sides at once—"You had a near shave," "Were you badly hurt?" And then the inevitable enquiry—"How did it start?"
Grayle began a roaming description of the garage andloft, its tinder-dry wood-work, its equipment of inflammable papers and the like.
"There was a large quantity of petrol there, too," he explained confidentially, "but I don't want this talked about. I had no business to have it there; it was too near the house; the place—as we've amply shewn—was in no sense fire-proof. I should have the County Council or some other damned interfering body on my back, if it came out; I'm not claiming from the insurance company, as it is, for fear of too many questions. They let me down lightly at the inquest, because there was no one who could give evidence. So this is a secret session," he ended with a laugh, as he began to hoist himself away towards a chair.
One or two of his companions followed and relieved him of his crutches, as he sat down.
"But how did it start?" he was asked again.
"The lamp was overturned," Grayle answered promptly. "You see, I got a message that this poor fellow Beresford—he was the deluded fanatic who was always getting locked up for seditious pamphlets, you know—that he wanted to see me on urgent business, so I went off, expecting to find that the fellow was in trouble again—I knew him slightly, you see; we'd met at people's houses—when I got there, we sat and talked a bit. Well, he was lame—like me...."
He paused and pulled at the bandage on his head.
"Where had I got to?" he asked a moment later.
"You sat and talked," Bertrand put in from behind.
Grayle turned round quickly and caught sight of him for the first time.
"You're the very man I've been wanting to see!" he exclaimed; and then to the others, "Excuse me a minute."
Bertrand pulled up a chair, as they withdrew.
"You must be grateful to me for coming when I did," he began. "The story didn't seem to be going with much of a swing."
"You can leave my explanation to take care of itself," Grayle answered shortly.
"I felt I could make it a bit fuller," Bertrand suggested.
Grayle looked at him enquiringly.
"I see. Well, you're at liberty to tell your tale, and I'll tell mine. Or we can both leave it where it is. I admit that some people aren't quite satisfied at present, but I manage to get rid of them,—as you've seen. If you want me even to drop a hint that there was an attempt at——?"
His lips formed the word, but he did not utter it; and the unexpected silence was surprisingly sinister.
"It's no business of mine what lies you tell," Bertrand answered. "Is that all you wanted to say? If so, I'll move along."
In the week before Christmas O'Rane returned from Melton to find me immovably billeted upon him. After the first greetings he sat silent and reflective. I could see that he wanted to talk and did not know how to begin. The room was his wife's, and there were still marks by the lock, where he had burst it from the wood-work. God knows what his thoughts must have been! As I looked at his slight figure, lazily reposing in a long chair, and at his self-possessed, unrevealing face, I found it hard to picture the scene when he broke in the door. And for the thousandth time since that day of tragedy I asked myself what had been left him in life and longed for him to ask at least for sympathy, if he knew that I could give him no more help.
When he spoke, it was to make some comment on the war. The month-old rumour that the cabinet had broken on the question of peace negotiations was still flourishing. Rather than face another winter in the trenches the German Government was alleged to have made an offer to evacuate Belgium and northern France with the alternative of a threat, in the event of the war's continuing, that every neutral and allied ship sailing under whatsoever flag would be sunk at sight without warning. A school that was faint-hearted in asserting itself, even if it were not faint-hearted in the prosecution of the war, whispered that we must not miss our market and—in Bertrand's phrase—refuse terms now that we should have to accept gratefullyand after the loss of another half million men in six months' time. The rival school of stalwarts proclaimed with great show of reason that Germany would talk of peace only at her own convenience—or necessity—and that her needs were our opportunity.
We went on to talk of the new government and its prospect of life. In the week before I was incapacitated political passion in London rose higher than I have ever known it. The old government, tired and indolent, half-hearted and uncaring, was losing the war beyond hopes of recovery. The new government had intrigued its way into place, selling its soul to Lord Northcliffe, as Faust sold his soul to the devil.... As a very independent member I was privileged to hear both opinions in approximately equal numbers and certainly with equal violence of expression. I described to O'Rane two characteristic meetings within five minutes of each other. I had been walking from my office to lunch at the County Club one day, when I stopped to observe an unusual number of cars and a considerable crowd of loafers outside the Reform Club. George Oakleigh came up from behind and asked what I was watching.
"It's the party meeting," he explained. "Aren't you going?"
"Not invited, George," I said. "I'm left out of these pleasant little gatherings. What are they meeting about?"
"To hear a statement from Asquith. There'll be a vote of confidence, I suppose. He's still the leader of the Liberal Party!" he proclaimed with a note of challenge.
"This partisan enthusiasm is new to you," I commented.
Any hint of raillery was lost on him.
"I daresay it is!" he cried. "I was a candid friend in the old '06 parliament, I've voted against them a score of times, but, when I see how they held the country together in the first shock of the war, when I see what they did.... And now to be turned out by a low press conspiracy and a man who owes his political salvation to Asquith, a man who was pulled out of the gutter at the timeof the Marconi scandal ... when the whole party nearly split. My God! talk about gratitude in politics!"
He hurried away still most unwontedly explosive, and I followed more slowly. At the corner of St. James' Square I found Beresford also watching the crowd. (It was our last meeting before he called on me in the afternoon of our tragic expedition.)
"They're broken! Their noses are in the dirt,—and thank God for it!" he cried, pointing excitedly across the road. "Theywere responsible!Theydragged us into the war, it wastheirwar,theirdiplomacy! Asquith, Haldane and Grey. And now they're in the gutter!"
I remember walking on to luncheon with both conceptions to digest as an appetiser.
O'Rane and I talked long of political futures. The Government had resigned without challenge or defeat; we may have felt that we ought to have been consulted, as a compliment to the unfailing support which we had given; we might even dislike the new ministry's mode of birth, but we agreed in thinking that we must give the new management a trial before reverting to those who had failed to keep order in their own home. Suddenly O'Rane interrupted me with a question which shewed that his thoughts had been for some time at a distance from domestic politics.
"Er—Stornaway," he said with noticeable nervousness. "You remember when you came to see me at Melton some weeks ago? You were going to set enquiries on foot to find out where Sonia had got to."
I told him what had been done and how we had failed. There had not been many days for me between giving my promise of help and involving myself in the encounter with Grayle, but George and his sleuth-hound colleague continued to ransack every resource suggested by friendship or professional pique. And at the end of three weeks they were as near finding her as at the beginning.
"She is either staying with friends or hiding away in rooms somewhere," I told O'Rane as my conclusion. "And I can't suggest any way of tracking her down. It's awaste of time to advertise; she's hiding, because she doesn't want to be found. If I may advise you, wouldn't it be wiser to leave her where she is? I take it that you've stopped proceedings?"
"I've stopped proceedings," he answered, and his chin dropped forward on to his chest so that I should not see the movements of his thin face.
"Then there's nothing to discuss with her. If at any time in the future she or you want to regain your liberty, you can start out to get in touch with her then. Any question of stopping her allowance is mere persecution—and I don't even know that it's likely to be successful persecution. She drew a cheque for twenty pounds on the day she left Grayle; and she's not drawn a penny since. It'll take some time to exhaust her balance, and, if she finds that her quarterly cheque isn't being paid regularly, you know even better than I do that she'll starve or beg or work her fingers to the bone before she'll give in."
O'Rane was long without answering. Then he dragged himself out of the chair, shook hands and bade me good-night.
"I must have a look for her myself," he murmured, as though he were thinking aloud.
"O'Rane, she's clearly avoiding you," I pleaded. "Will it do any good?"
"Imustmeet her!" he cried tremulously.
If I said a very brutal thing then, I said it because I thought that in the long run it was kindest.
"Let me tell you one thing before you go," I begged him. "O'Rane, you're not facing realities, you know; you're playing with the idea of reconciliations, you think that it's possible to get your wife back and to live with her again. My dear boy, you must use your imagination. Think of the mental process that took her away, think what her experience has been, think what her mental state must be now. She will never come back to you. And you couldn't live with her, even if she did."O'Rane went out of the room without answering by word or gesture.
On Christmas Day George came into my room after dinner. He betrayed considerable excitement and was carrying a stout red book in one hand.
"I've tracked her down!" he exclaimed almost before the door was closed.
"Tracked who down?" I asked without any great interest.
"Sonia. I caught sight of her at the Savoy—outside the Savoy, rather—after lunch. The Maitlands were giving a party, and, as we came out into the court-yard, Gerald Deganway put up his eye-glass and dug me in the ribs. Then I saw her in some kind of livery or uniform, driving a car. She didn't see me, and I don't think she wanted to be seen, because she was sitting rather hunched up and with her face turned away.... Then an old general stumped out and told her where to go; she said, 'Yes, sir,' turned the head of the car and drove away. I just had time to see the number and I spent a useful hour or two this afternoon finding who it belonged to. Apparently the old boy calls himself Brigadier-General Sir Andrew Lampwood. Now we'll turn him up in 'Who's Who.'"
He dropped into a chair, filled a pipe and began to turn the pages. General Lampwood, I gathered from his fragmentary recital, had been educated at Eton and Sandhurst ... had served in Egypt, India, Egypt again and South Africa ... despatches, medals, clasps ... a widower with two sons ... one house in Wilton Crescent and another in Norfolk ... Naval and Military, Turf, Ranelagh....
"Well, if Raney wants her, he knows where to find her," he ended. "I suppose you've never met this Lampwood? No more have I." He shut the book with a snap and drummed with his knuckles on the binding. "No wonder we couldn't find her; she's probably living in rooms nearby, driving for him all day.... I'm surprised that nobody should have seen her till to-day; she's so well-known, and it's the sort of thing the picture-papers love to get hold of." He sniffed contemptuously. "'Recruit to the Ranks of Society War-Workers!' ... I suppose she can only just have felt that she must do something and have somewhere to live——"
"Do you find people still talking about her?" I interrupted.
"They always have and they always will." He lay back and smoked for a few moments in a reflective silence. "Ever since she came out.... Of course, she's a really beautiful woman—always has been—and she's got a lot of glib society patter and shecanmake herself almost irresistible to most men. As she would say herself, her technique is perfect. And, if you never waste your energy on emotions, I suppose you're left with a tremendous lot for your precious technique. She can be so charming to everyone, when she likes, that she'll make a success of anything from a sticky dinner to a charity bazaar. She was always a success, she knew it, she got temperamentally drunk on it—until I think that the only thing she cared about was being admired, wanted, loved.... And now she's driving a car for a dug-out general...."
"But what are people saying about her?" I persisted.
"Oh, the old scandal's been toned down to almost nothing. She was being seen about with Grayle too much, and Raney put his foot down and said it was to stop." He grinned maliciously. "Lady Pentyre told me at lunch to-day that it was perfectly abominable the way people went aboutinventinglies—and about asweetgirl like that! It came so well from Lady Pentyre."
He smoked in silence until O'Rane came in for the five minutes that he always spared me on his way to bed. George repeated what he had told me and asked if there was anything that he could do.
O'Rane listened without any change of expression and then said that he would write to Lady Dainton.
"There's nothing more you'd like me to do?" George asked again.
There was a moment's hesitation in which O'Rane's unsmiling face became graver.
"Well, I can't do it for myself," he said and paused again. "I—I wonder if it would be possible for you to get a word with Sonia—find out what time she starts in the morning and then intercept her——"
"Well?" George encouraged him.
"I wouldn't bother you, if I could see," O'Rane resumed apologetically. "Tell her that if she wants anything——"
I felt that it was time to interfere.
"She can go to her parents," I said. "O'Rane, we're all of us different men and women every day of our lives, we're always changing, never the same. Some things change us more rapidly than others, marriage, illness, great prosperity or great disaster, the death of a friend—my dear boy, I'm only telling you what you know already. Because your name doesn't change, because you look the same and your hair doesn't turn white from illness or grief, you think thatyou'rethe same. You'renot. Andshe'snot. Since you parted, there have been changes and developments in both your souls which will prevent your ever coming together again. You don't like me to say it, but you'll have to recognise it."
The boy's eyes seemed to shine with reflected pain at every word.
"But isn't there room for something new?" he asked. "A man may love a woman with all his heart and soul, he may marry her, she may die; in time he may marry again—without forgetting her, without transferring the affection he once gave her—leaving her in the place where she's always been since she died, but somehow creating a new love. Don't you think that when two people ... separate, the husks of their love may die ... their old love, I mean, they may even hate the memory of it, but in time, perhaps, a new one may be born ...?"
"Between the same people? My friend, the memory of the separation, the reasons for it, will rise up like ghosts to keep them apart. You want her to come back?"
For the first time a wan smile lit up his thin face.
"Do you wonder?"
"What can you give her that you didn't give her before?" I persisted.
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.
"I shouldn't like to think that a second chance is always thrown away."
"And what inducement can you offer?" I asked him brutally.
He spread out his hands with a shrug.
"What inducement did I offer before? We've been in love with each other so long! At one time she was actually engaged to another man.... But there was something constant and unchanging. She didn't forget him or hate him, but in time she had adjusted herself and come back to the thing that had always been there, hidden and unchanged.... So now, isn't it possible that, when the last six months fall into their proper perspective, when the ghosts no longer rise up——"
"How many people have you known to marry a second time after they've been divorced?"
"But there's no reason why they shouldn't."
"In fact they don't," I said.
I believe that George delivered himself of his message within about three days. I believe, further, that he descended to bribe some smirking kitchen-maid and stood through a downpour of rain to seize the opportunity. Mrs. O'Rane masked any surprise that she felt—I suppose that she must have been taking part in many unexpected meetings,—thanked him for troubling to come and transferred her attention to the wind-screen, as a choleric voice remarked, "Now, young man, when you've quite finished talking to my chauffeur!"
The meeting confirmed my own diagnosis. The play was ended, and, if I concerned myself with wondering whatO'Rane and his wife would do with the remainder of their lives, I felt that this would be a new play, no continuation of the first. The brief scandal had flickered out as abruptly as it had flared up. Lady Maitland—my barometer and sounding-board—announced to Bertrand across the length of a considerable table that she had seen darling Sonia, who had really turned over a new leaf; it was the best thing in the world; she was taking the war seriously at last.
"Do you know, that dear child is never off duty Sundays or week-days, night or day?" she confided. "You try to get her to lunch or dine—she'll tell you frankly that it's not the least use promising, because, if her General wants her, out she has to go and she may be driving for him all night. I don't see how shecankeep it up—not seeing anyone, you know, or doing anything, and after the life shehadbeen leading. Of course, she was really very naughty about the way she did it—all in a night, you know—threw everybody over—I was running an entertainment on behalf of my society, and she simply spoilt one tableau.... But then that's so like darling Sonia."
"She's less of a fool than I thought," was Bertrand's comment to me. "No awkward questions, nobody to meet her and ask them! Can't live at home when she has to be ready with the car at a moment's notice.... I hope General Sir Andrew Lampwood has broad shoulders.... She's snug and secure till the war's over, and God knows when that will be."
I made no answer, for I was thinking of O'Rane. On New Year's Eve he had dined at home with George and Bertrand, and all three came up to my room afterwards. We made a despondent party, for the endlessness of the war daunted us as the third year added month to month with lengthening casualty lists and a growing sense that, when we had already failed so many times and in so many ways, there was no reason why we should not go on failing. Each one of us was far enough from reality to be conscious of helplessness and insufficiency; I could not count the numberof times that Bertrand had growled, "I've done with the House! I'm not going down there any more. Whatgoodcan we do?"—the number of times, too, that he repented and saw the House as the one independent and courageous check on an imbecile and malign government. Stripped of all mental elasticity and enthusiasm, George hated the Admiralty with a savage ferocity that was made no less by the easy youth which he had passed, uncontrolled, undisciplined and effortless. And underneath our nervous depression and irritability lay a despondent sense that the moral grandeur of the war had become obscured.
"I suppose the pace was too hot," George observed gloomily. "But in those first weeks.... They may not have known what they were going out to face, but they went like good 'uns; and the people who stayed behind were ready for any sort of sacrifice of money, comfort, leisure. All the spiritual fervour seems to go now in trying to makeotherpeople do things, keepingotherpeople up to the mark.... God! I'm sick of the press agitations, I'm sick of all this political intrigue, I suppose I'm sick of the war."
O'Rane nodded, but made no answer.
"I don't ask anyone to listen to me," George went on with unwonted bitterness, "because I've been wrong all through. So have you, Bertrand. We were wrong before the war, when we said there couldn't be a war; and we were wrong when we started yapping about a 'war to end war.' We can't even make a clean job of this, we can't make the Hun put up his hands and say he'll go back to thestatus quo, and as for dismembering Germany and deposing the Kaiser—we can't do it! But when I remember my own tom-fool speeches at the beginning——"
"But we couldn't keep out of it, George," O'Rane interjected.
"And precious little good we've done by going in. I suppose wehavestopped Germany from dominating Europe, but, as for our own honour, we offered that up on the altar of necessity when we found that we were fighting a nationthat meant to win if it darned well could. Our later policy's become frankly imperialistic; there's no ethical connection between Belgian neutrality and the partition of Turkey and Austria. I'm afraid I've taken a deuced long time to see it...." He turned to me with a scornful smile. "Do you remember when you first came back to England? When we met outside the Admiralty?"
"I've often thought of that conversation," I said.
"Everything seemed to follow so naturally in those days," he sighed. "Disarmament, nationality, a tribunal to arbitrate between states. Raney, you were one of the most persistent optimists I've had the ill-luck to meet; you're not going to pretend that the entire thing's not the most futile, gigantic waste ... whole peoples in arms hacking themselves to death and not a damned thing gained!Youdon't think we're going to win this war?"
For the first time in six months I saw O'Rane roused to impersonal interest.
"I don't know if anybody's going to win," he answered. "And, what's more, I don't greatly care."
"If you were back in August, '14?" George asked, looking him in the eyes and then quickly turning away.
"I'd go through it again," was the quiet reply.
George got up and began to pace restlessly up and down the room.
"The big thing about this war is quite independent of results," O'Rane explained. "It's the effect on the individual, the effort, the risk, the readiness to make sacrifice. I always hold that there's no room in life for compromise. You know that, don't you, George?" He held out his hand and pulled George on to the arm of his chair. "From the days when we were at Melton together. You and dear old Jim Loring and Tom Dainton—dear God! how this war has killed them off!—you used to thrash me, you brutes, to make me see that I must compromise, but you never won. And always before the war I thought that compromise—what I call moral cowardice and spiritual slovenliness—was the only thing that people minded about. Theydidn'tcare. It wasn't theirbusiness! If the world was cruel and licentious or base-minded, they always asked me to remember that human nature was human nature." He sprang up with a sudden wriggle as though he were jerking an incubus from his shoulders. "As a nation we were contented with the second-rate—compromise, toleration, ease; we were second-rate in life, art, politics, second-rate in humanity, in soul.... And then there came the war—and it was the big moment when we had to decide whether to fight our way through the flames or to stand in distant security and explain to the reporters that there was a child, sure enough, in the top storey, but that it would be suicide to attempt a rescue and what was the fire brigade for, anyway?... We had to decide, we had to make up our minds that there was something big enough to suffer and sacrifice ourselves for.... All of us who went out there thought, rightly or wrongly, that we'd found something that admitted of no compromise.... Even if you went out of bravado, like poor Val Arden, so as not to be thought a funk.... What it was—I don't quite know ..." he went on slowly. "I doubt if any of us know, and we certainly didn't at the time. Perhaps it was for the security of the people at home.... I know I was seeing red, I'd have slit the throats of German women and children at that time—in revenge for what they did in Belgium.... But before that started, before war was declared.... You remember that last week-end of the Saturnia regna, George? When we walked up and down, up and down at Loring Castle, wondering whether there was anything worth saving.... Well, whenever I catch myself feeling as you do now, I recall that about four million men voluntarily decided that there was something in life better than their own lives, something that had to be preserved, something that ruled out all compromise. That's the moral value of war. After all, what is it you do when you run into the flames and rescue the kiddie from the top storey? You save its life, I admit, and that's something, if you value human life, but the child may die a week later of whooping-cough, it maygrow into a drunkard, an imbecile, a criminal. What matters it that you've taken yourself, your own soul, and given it a value?... When this is all over, if we lose, if we're bankrupt and broken, if Germany enchains us like so many tribes of African blacks, it still doesn't matter to the men who refused to compromise, they've made themselves.... Yes, quite deliberately, I'd—go through it—all—again.... And, when the war's over, we can't afford to tolerate anything but the best, we haven't been fighting for the second-rate. And we've got to prepare our own minds for that now, so that the material changes follow automatically. You must start with the individual, yourownrelationship to the world in all its aspects. Hanging for sheep-stealing ceased automatically when the public mind had prepared itself, stirred itself up to say 'This has got tostop!' and the compromisers, the obscurantists, the vested interests daren't raise their heads. You think, perhaps, that I'm not the best person to decry the usefulness of compromise——"
He stopped abruptly, and all the light and colour died out of his big eyes.
Bertrand, whom I thought to be dozing, raised his head for a moment and lowered it again.
"Didn't Saint Paul say something about being all things to all men?" he asked gently. "Saint Paul was a great diplomatist, a great man of the world. You'd say he was a great compromiser, David, but at least he knew how to suit himself to his audiences, to make allowances for poor, despised human nature. And perhaps you'll even admit that he was not altogether unsuccessful and that Christianity would never have spread a hundred miles from Jerusalem but for him. I sometimes think he has been unduly neglected," he continued with a yawn. "Christianity would have been a poor thing without him."
"It would have been a poorer thing without Christ," O'Rane answered. "And there would have been no Christianity at all, if Christ had said that the Scribes and Pharisees were doing their best according to their lights ... or that we must make allowances for Dives because he had agreat many calls on his charity and really couldn't investigate each one personally. Of course, there'd have been no Crucifixion...."
The Christmas holidays passed rapidly, and I remember that O'Rane told me one Sunday night that he would be going back to Melton in another ten days' time. None of us cared to ask him how much longer he proposed to continue this make-shift life, teaching seventeen-year-olds for nine months in the year and learning procedure in the House of Commons during the remainder; it was his means of trying to forget that his wife was in the same city, living within a mile or two of him, driving perhaps within a hundred yards of their house or passing him in the street, elusive and unattainable.
After George's glimpse and single meeting, we heard little of her. George told me that he had met "Sonia's General," as that no doubt gallant soldier came to be called with unflattering disregard of earlier and more varied achievements, that he was an agreeable fellow, that someone was putting him up for the Eclectic Club. They fell into conversation and discussed the prowess of the new driver; the General had been taken completely by surprise.
"If she'd said 'Sonia Dainton,' anyone would have known," he explained. "I'd forgotten she was married. She suits me uncommon well,—if she can stand the strain...."
A day or two later Bertrand made the General's acquaintance and came home with the not very surprising news that Mrs. O'Rane had terminated her engagement.
"I never supposed that phase would last long," he grunted. "Up early, back late, out in all weathers and thankful if you can snatch five minutes to munch a sandwich out of a paper bag. There'd be very little of this boasted 'war-work' done, Stornaway, if people weren't allowed to go about in uniform, and none at all, if the first condition of your employment was that no one was allowedto know that you were doing war-work of any kind.Ican see the offices and hospitals yielding up their social ornaments! Well, Sonia O'Rane's at least honest about it. A week or two with only a livery and no one to admire her——!"
"She's got no excuse now for living anywhere but at home," I commented.
Bertrand grunted scornfully.
"Give her credit for a little more contrivance than that! She leaves her General at the end of the month, by which time her husband will be safely back in the country. But she hopes to take it up again, when she's a bit stronger. I had this from the General; he shewed me her letter. Damned ill-written scrawl," he added with the intolerance which ran away with him whenever his prejudices were aroused. "She'll recuperate by lunching and dining out and dancing and staying up till all hours; and the moment David comes back to London she'll be well enough to go back to her precious work. You see if I'm not right."
This time, however, Bertrand's ingenuity and malice overreached themselves, for we heard from Lady Maitland that Mrs. O'Rane was genuinely ill.
"I used to see her every morning," she told George, "as I went to Harrod's, and nine times out of ten we had just a word together. Then I missed her, then I saw the car being driven by someone else. I hope it's nothing serious."
The conversation took place at a luncheon party where O'Rane was present. George took it upon himself to reassure her, but from the fact that Mrs. O'Rane had disappeared even more completely than after leaving Grayle there was a risk in fabricating good or bad news about her. General Lampwood supplied her address, and one evening when there was nothing better to do George went round to her lodgings. They consisted of a bed-sitting room in a street off Wilton Crescent conveniently near to the garage. She was in bed, and the landlady doubted whether visitors would be very welcome, as she was suffering a good deal of pain.
"That decided me," George told me. "She hadn't actually said she wouldn't see anyone, because I'm pretty sure she didn't think it would be necessary. I gave her the surprise of her life when I marched in; she couldn't imagine how I'd heard she was ill, how I'd found out her address.... She's now suffering from the most awful reaction after the racket of the last year. Nothing that I said or did was right; she was as lonely as a woman could be and at the same time resented my coming, resented my saying she looked rotten and ought to see a doctor...." He frowned and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "She needn't bother. She won't catch me going there a second time."
Yet rather less than ten hours passed before he was caught going there a second time. Indeed he can hardly have left the house before Mrs. O'Rane was writing in contrition—"Darling George, do forgive me if I was snappy and ungracious, but Ididfeel so rotten! It was my own fault that nobody came to see me, because nobody knew where I was, but I felt so horribly neglected, I was so furious with everybody fornotcoming to see me, that when you came into the room I laid myself out to be hateful.... My dear, I did really feel iller than I can tell you, so forgive me! Sonia."
"I suppose if I collect a few flowers ..." George began apologetically next morning. "I shan't be able to stay more than a moment, or I shall be so frightfully late at the office.... I might get my cousin Violet to look her up, of course."
I was never told how he found Mrs. O'Rane on the occasion of his second visit, but in the evening young Lady Loring paid us an unexpected visit. I did not see her, but, when she had gone, George came into my room with an expression of worried perplexity.
"Violet's been sitting most of the day with Sonia," he explained. "I wonder ifyouguessed.... I confess I never thought of it for one moment. Sonia's going to have a child very shortly."
I, too, was taken by surprise and needed a moment to arrange my thoughts.
"You're sure of that?" I asked.
"She told Violet. The question is—what are we going to do with her? She's got to be properly looked after and she's got to be moved out of her present pokey little room.... I suppose it means a nursing home. Violet suggested taking her to Loring House, but that was more generous than practical. I'm afraid there's no doubt Sonia did behave very badly to Jim Loring when she was engaged to him ... and Violet knows it and doesn't forgive her ... and Sonia doesn't forgive her for knowing it.Youknow what women are. Violet's got all the sweetness in the world, shethinksshe doesn't bear a grudge, she can call on Sonia in bed, make a fuss of her ... but it's different to take her into her own house, particularly with the associations that house must have for Sonia. But I needn't labour the point; the suggestion was turned down almost as soon as it was made. Well, she can't go to her mother, because Crowley Court's overflowing with wounded soldiers; and I don't know that she's overwhelmingly anxious to meet her mother. She can't come here, of course."
He stood reflectively rubbing his chin.
"Whose child is it going to be?" I asked.
"Grayle's the father. I suppose that, as Raney's taken up his present attitude——" He left the sentence unfinished and began to fill a pipe. "Ye gods, what a sweet mess people can get themselves into!"
"When's the event expected?"