VI

"Ah God! one sniff of England—To greet our flesh and blood—To hear the hansoms slurringOnce more through London mud!"

"Ah God! one sniff of England—

To greet our flesh and blood—

To hear the hansoms slurring

Once more through London mud!"

He walked to the window and gazed down on the stream of cars, their dark paint gleaming in the lamplight as they glided down Pall Mall from the Carlton and hummed richly up St. James's Street or disappeared into the silence of the Park.

"I'm going to have a long night in a real bed," he announced, "as distinct from either a berth or bare boards in a tent——"

"I can give you all that in Princes Gardens," I interrupted.

"Later, old man, if I may. I've sent my baggage to the Charing Cross Hotel. To-morrow I shall call on Loring, see who else is in town——"

His words brought me face to face with the problem I had been shirking all the evening.

"I wrote you a letter to-night before dinner," I said as we walked down to the hall. "I'll post it so that it reaches you to-morrow morning. Raney, I'm afraid you won't care much about the contents."

He raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Why not give it me now?" he asked.

"You may prefer to digest it alone," I said.

He held out his hand with a determined little smile.

"I'll take it home and read it," he promised. "I can't sleep with unknown perils hanging over me."

I gave him the letter, and we parted on the understanding that he was to call round in Princes Gardens as soon as he was sufficiently rested.

I have no idea how he slept that night. Next morning there was no sign of him, and in the afternoon when I went to make inquiries at the Charing Cross Hotel I was handed a pencil note scrawled on the back of my own envelope to him.

"My apologies to your uncle. Just off to Flushing to complete my rest cure."

When I met Sonia and Loring at dinner the following night, I told them that I had caught a glimpse of O'Rane on his way through London from Mexico to the Continent. They were politely interested.

I have reached an age when some four-fifths of my contemporaries are married. It is a melancholy exercise familiar to all bachelors to count the number of friendships that have closed on one side with a silver cigarette-box and on the other with an invitation to dinner in a very new house. "I want you and my wife to be great friends," Benedict has written. Usually I have wondered what he could see in his common-place partner, and always the little woman has marvelled that Benedict and I have any bond of union. Sometimes I can see him growing wistful in recollection of old times—and this makes her jealous; sometimes marriage obliterates the past, and we both decide, without a word exchanged, to leave our friendship in its grave. The little dinners end early—and yet seem strangely long. We meet perhaps once a year after that, and I affect interest in curiously raw babies; but the Benedicts, man and wife, as a rule become too much absorbed in their family to care for interlopers. Sometimes I give a christening present and make rash promises by the font; and then nothing happens until half a generation later my god-children present themselves for confirmation....

In one or two instances the intimacy has endured by my keeping out of the way in the early years. Anyone who knew Loring or Sonia at all could guess that they would require time and infinite patience to arrive at amodus vivendi; and I knew both so well that I felt sure they wanted no spectators. Two days after the engagement I invited them to dine with me at the Ritz; four months later Lake House was thrown open to them if they cared to come. My services were at their disposal, but I could see from our first meetingthat there was no easy time before them. The pace was too hot, and they both had too much mettle. I recall that my excellently served dinner was of the gloomiest, though the Ritz was newly opened and still amusing at this time. Loring would gaze raptly at Sonia, his soup-spoon half-way to his lips; Sonia for no visible reason would touch his hand, and they would both smile mysteriously. Not till dinner was over, and we were seated in the lounge with our coffee, could I rouse them from their dream.

"The great event?" Loring echoed, when I asked if any date had been fixed. "There you rather have me."

"In about three years," murmured Sonia, with a note of discontent in her voice.

"What are you waiting for?" I asked as I offered him a cigar.

He accepted it and then replaced it in the box, saying he would prefer a cigarette. So many cheap jokes are made at the expense of the newly engaged that I refrained from comment when a confirmed cigar-smoker reformed and wasted his time on cigarettes. The reason was never a moment in doubt, for he was rewarded with a smile as the cigar was returned.

"We neither of us want a long engagement," he explained, and then to Sonia, "Do we, darling?"

"There's no point in it," answered Sonia, whose experience was discouraging to procrastination.

"Well, this is May," Loring reckoned. "Lady Dainton won't have a May marriage. June? The only thing is, there's such a devil of a lot——"

"Jim!"

Loring laughed.

"Sorry! There'ssucha lot to do first. The place at Chepstow's in a fearful state; I must put electric light in the Dower House before my mother can move in. As for the barrack in Roscommon——"

"But we can't live in more than one place at a time," Sonia objected.

"I only want to make them fit for you, darling," he protested.

"I should have thought your agent——" sighed Sonia; then, turning ruefully to me, "and of course I've got to be sent out on approval for everyone to find fault with——"

Loring pressed her hand reassuringly. "Don't you worry aboutthat," he begged.

"But it's you I want to marry, dear!" she answered, putting her face close to his and looking into his eyes.

"It's always done," Loring protested weakly. "We don't want to give offence, do we, sweetheart? And it's only three or four houses——"

Sonia shook her head, unconvinced by his understatement. To be related to half the Catholic families in England has its drawbacks, and it was not easy to shorten the list of unavoidable visits. From Yorkshire and the Fleming-Althorps they would have to go on to the Wrefords of Wreford Abbey, and once in Northumberland there was no excuse for not visiting the Knightriders in Inverness—Lady Knightrider and Lady Loring were sisters—and from Scotland to Ireland and Ireland back to Wales.... It was a formidable tour, and I began to regard Sonia's estimate of three years as not unreasonable. On the principle that one more or less made little difference, Lake House was included in the itineraryen routefor the Hunter-Oakleighs in Dublin. A woman might say that Sonia was not reluctant to drive in triumph to my cousin's door; as a man I have no hesitation in saying that Loring and Violet had been such good friends in the past that he was not in the least anxious to meet her for the present.

Sonia suddenly laid her hand caressingly on his arm.

"Jim, dear," she pleaded, "why can't we be married at once—quite quietly—and then stay with all these people afterwards?"

"I promised your mother we'd have the wedding at the Oratory," he reminded her.

"Yes, but we needn't invite anyone."

"They'll be awfully hurt if they're not asked."

"Oh! what nonsense!" she exclaimed. "Who is there? George, will you be offended if you're not invited?"

"It would be the truest kindness," I said. Byold-fashioned standards her anxiety to get married was hardly decent, but Sonia paid scanty respect to old-fashioned standards.

"What did I tell you, Jim?" she cried triumphantly. "You go to mother and tell her it's all fixed for the first of June and nobody's to be invited."

Two days later I met Lady Dainton at luncheon and asked her what had been decided.

"It'll be some time in June or July," she told me, adding with emphasis, "at the Oratory, as we arranged at first. Jim had an absurd idea of not inviting anyone. So like a man, don't you know? making a hole-and-corner business. Anyone in his position, don't you know?—it's expected of them."

So it was decreed that fitting publicity should be given to the ceremony, but the date was not to be either in June or July. On the sixth of May King Edward died, and England was plunged into mourning.

When the funeral was over, I discussed with Bertrand the desirability of spending the summer in Ireland. The House of Commons had no longer a claim on me, and there would be no London Season. He was strongly opposed to the idea, however, and urged me to stay in town and try to make capital out of the sobered state of the public mind. A eulogistic Press was for ever talking of the late King's diplomacy and peaceful arts; my uncle wished to test the sincerity of the panegyrists and encourage the Government to make some offer of proportional disarmament.

So for three summer months I went back to Bouverie Street and the Committee Room in Princes Gardens. The results of our renewed campaign are a matter of common knowledge: representations were made to Germany, a tortuous diplomatic debate was carried on and a year later, before any conclusion could be reached, the gunboat "Panther" steamed south to Agadir. There were wild stories of a German plan to occupy Northern France, wilder projects of landing British troops on the Belgian coast; a Mansion House speech less euphuistic and platitudinous than most, gossip at the Eclectic Club about an ultimatum.

Bertrand was silent and uncommunicative in these days, but, as the menace of war withdrew, I could see him deriving philosophic satisfaction from the crisis.

"That's twice in three years, George," he observed one night when I was dining with him at the Club. "Ismodern war too big a thing?Arethey all afraid to start it? You remember when Bosnia and Herzegovina were grabbed in 1908? Russia threatened Austria, Germany threatened Russia—and Russia backed down. Diplomacy's like poker, you know, the hands are not played. The same thing's happened now; we've threatened Germany, and she's counted her army corps and battleships and decided she isn't strong enough. Well, George, if the cards are never to be played, why should sane governments go on raising each other? Four aces bear the same relation to two as two to one-why can't we stop this ruinous armament race?"

But the Agadir incident was still a year ahead of us when O'Rane returned from the Continent at the end of July and stayed behind for a last cigar at the end of a Thursday dinner.

"I've been a Breslau merchant the last few months, sir," he told us when my uncle asked for news. "I've been eating, drinking, smoking German——"

"You'll end your days in a fortress, Raney," I observed.

"I think not. That paper of yours, 'Peace,' has a large circulation. All the politicians and most of the Army read it."

"This is fame," I said to Bertrand.

"They regard it as the swan-song of the effete British," said O'Rane. "The merchants and journalists and so on are with you because Germany's so hard-up with all her insane preparations that a tax on capital may come any day. The German government's different: it thinks you're either not equal to the strain or else you're hypnotizing them to drop their weapons before you strike. The German's an odd creature, sir; he thinks everyone's like himself without any of his virtues. King Edward and Grey have made something of a ring-fence round Germany; if Bismarck and the old Emperor had done the same thing, they'd be declaring war now.Ergo, we're going to declare war. I'm afraid it will come, sir. I'vebrought you back some books on Pan-Germanism by a miscreant called Bernhardi: the Bernhardi temperament can only be destroyed by an unsuccessful war or a revolution or State bankruptcy. So far as I can see, our job for the next few years will be to wake up this country and make it prepared for all emergencies."

"How'd you set about it?" I asked.

"I'm going to wander round England and see what people are saying. I'm out of touch with politics here, but some years ago I prophesied a revolution in this peaceful land and I want to see if the temper of the working classes is different from what it was in the old days when I was a manual labourer here. Will you be in Ireland later on, George? I should like to come and see you if I may."

"Fix your own time," I said. "I've got a half-promise from Loring and Sonia, but nothing's decided."

He thought over my words for a few moments and then got up to go.

"After all," he said, as I helped him into his coat, "if they don't mind meeting me, I oughtn't to mind meeting them."

For three months I had had a certain want of sympathy on my conscience.

"Raney!" I began, and then stopped.

"Don't trouble, old man," he answered, reading my thoughts. "That book's closed—for the present, at least. They're not married yet, either."

"Good night, Raney," I said, shaking hands.

He laughed a little sardonically and ran down the steps into the night.

At the beginning of September I received a wire from O'Rane to say that he would be with me on the tenth. Two days later Loring telegraphed from Fishguard Harbour that he and Sonia were actually on their way to Ireland. I should not have deliberately timed their visits to coincide, but Loring's arrangements had been so unsettled that at his request I made my own independently. Twice during August Sonia had fixed a date, twice Loring had written with contrite apology to cancel it and suggest another. It was all his fault,circumstances over which he had no control.... The excuses ran so smoothly that even my mother, most charitable and unsuspicious of women, became convinced that it was not his fault.

I had no one staying with me when they arrived, white and tired after their journey, and Sonia sighed with relief when my mother told her so the first night.

"I'm worn out with trying to keep new people distinct," she said. "As for Jim, his hair's falling out under the strain."

He had shaved off his moustache—as I advised him to do five years before—but otherwise seemed unchanged save for a tired look about the eyes and a slightly subdued manner of speaking.

"Mr. O'Rane's coming the day after to-morrow," said my sister. "It won't be so quiet when he's here."

Sonia made no comment and plunged into a description of the houses they had visited during the last three months.

"Jim's uncle, Lord Deningham, is the next," she said. "Down in Clare. All the clan's being gathered to receive us, and I'm simply petrified at the thought of it. They'll all hate me——"

"Darling!" Jim interposed.

"They will," she repeated obstinately. "That's next Wednesday. Can you stand us for five days, Mrs. Oakleigh?"

"As long as you can stop," said my mother.

When the ladies had left us after dinner I congratulated Loring on the absence of his moustache.

"Sonia didn't like it," he explained. "Port? By all means. I'm as tired as a dog. It's gone off thundering well, and they all loved her, as I knew they would. All the same, a long engagement's a strain."

"It isn't the long engagement," I said. "It's being in love. When you're safely married and don't have to sprinkle 'darlings' like a pepper-pot and can take the best chair and be snappy at breakfast——"

"Oh, you bachelors," he interrupted with a laugh. "A long engagement has its points, though." Quite frequently itprevents marriage, but I saw no object in putting this view before him. "We've been rubbing off the corners, weeding out undesirable friends—— Oh, you're safe, but Sonia rather bars Val Arden, and young Summertown's developing into too much of an Apache for my taste. We're shaking down."

"And how soon will you both be purged of all your sins?" I asked.

He did not hear the question and sat staring thoughtfully at the decanter.

"I'm afraid she finds the religious part rather hard to pick up," he said. "Shewillcall all Catholics 'Papists.'Idon't mind, but some of my people.... And when she first met the Cardinal, she insisted on shaking his hand. Of course, it's a very small point; you musn't think I'm finding fault with her. How did you think she was looking?"

"Very well," I said. "The new pearl-collar suits her."

"It isn't new," he corrected me. "We've had it in the family for some time." His voice became confidential and his manner eager, as with a man mutely asking for sympathy. "Absolutely between ourselves, George, there was rather a row about it. I got the bank to send all our stuff down to House of Steynes, and she insisted on wearing some of it. My poor mother was fearfully shocked—and said she oughtn't to have touched it till she was married. Once again, it's a very small point."

His vigorously defensive tone, adopted to answer criticisms I had not made, led me to think there had been numerous small points for arbitration and diplomacy—as when Sonia wished to modernize the 'Mary Queen of Scots' room at Steynes that had been untouched since the young queen slept there in the second year of her reign.

"You'll shake down," I agreed encouragingly when he made me throw away a half-smoked cigar because the people in the drawing-room would be wondering what had happened to us.

"Oh Lord, yes!" he answered cheerfully over his shoulder as he pulled up a chair and began to talk to my mother.

Sonia was standing by the window looking out over the lake. Presently she walked out on the terrace and called to Loring to join her. For a few minutes I watched themstanding on the lowest terrace in earnest conversation, then they returned to the house and Sonia asked to be allowed to go to bed.

"Tell me when you'd like to turn in yourself," I said to Loring when we were alone in the smoking-room for a last drink.

He walked up and down restlessly, glancing at the pictures and books, and finally coming to anchor opposite my chair.

"Did Beryl say you were expecting Raney here?" he asked, sipping his whiskey and soda and staring rather hard at the floor.

"The day after to-morrow," I said.

"The deuce you are!" He put down his tumbler and resumed his restless walk. "This is devilish awkward, George. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sonia refuses to meet him."

"What's the trouble?" I asked. It would be interesting to hear her reasons as expressed to Loring.

He tramped up and down until I pushed a chair in his way and made him sit down.

"Women are beyond me," he complained. "Idon't know the rights of the case, but she says he was very insulting to her."

"But when was all this?" I asked. "I didn't know she'd seen him."

"Oh, it was years ago—down at Crowley—before he went abroad. Raney's got a very sharp tongue and keeps no sort of check on it, you know."

"Yes, I don't defend what he said on that occasion," I put in.

Loring looked at me in surprise.

"You knew about it?"

"I was in the room," I said, "and anything I didn't hear he came and told me in my bedroom that night."

"Well, what the devil did he say?" he demanded indignantly.

"It's ancient history now, Jim."

"Sonia's kept it pretty fresh in her mind," he retorted.

I might have recalled to them both a dinner-table sceneat House of Steynes thirteen months before when Sonia inquired how Raney was getting on in Mexico and expressed a more than friendly desire to see him on his return. That was, of course, before the engagement to Loring.

"What d'you suggest?" I contented myself with asking.

"Ithink we'd better clear out," he answered, with emphasis on the pronoun.

"To the Deninghams?"

"They can't take us till Wednesday. Sonia talks about going to an hotel, but that's out of the question. I'd better take her back to London——"

"And cut the Deninghams?"

"Oh, I can't do that. He's my mother's only brother, you know."

"Do I understand you're proposing to take her from Kerry to London and back again from London to Clare in five, four days?" He was silent. "What doesshesay, Jim?"

"Refuses point-blank," he answered despairingly.

I walked over to the writing table and took out a telegraph form.

"The simplest thing is to put Raney off for the present," I said.

He made no answer, but, when my tea was brought me next morning, there was a pencilled note lying on the tray, "Thanks, old man.—L."

It was a clear victory for Sonia, but she was sufficiently shame-faced for the remainder of the visit to make me think she was getting little pleasure out of her triumph. From time to time my mother asked me why they did not advance the date of the wedding, but, according to Sonia, a mischievous fairy seemed to be playing tricks with the calendar. For a marriage in Advent Jim would require dispensation; Lady Loring always had to spend the early months of the year abroad; "and his old Pope would excommunicate him," Sonia told me, "if he tried to have the wedding in Lent. And then it would be May, and then some other Royalty would go and die...."

Until my conversation with her I had in my ignorancenever appreciated how strongly the position of the celibate was entrenched.

O'Rane arrived at the end of the following week and asked whether Jim and Sonia were still with me.

"So that was the reason of your wire," he observed, when I told him they had left on the Wednesday. "Which was it?" I asked him whether he had had a good crossing. "Oh, well, I know it wasn't Jim," he said. "'Nous devons adorer Dieu, mon fils, mais c'est un grand mystère de sa providence qu'il ait crée la femme.'"

"Perhaps Jim is thinking that at this moment," I said, and the subject was dropped.

O'Rane's visit gave me my first opportunity of following up the Mexican adventure from the point at which "Mr. James Morris" had left it. The company, I found, had been launched successfully, if not quite at Morris's optimistic valuation; the mysterious new concession—"about the size of Scotland"—was promising well, though the working expenses were unexpectedly heavy. I gathered that the partnership was drawing a profit of 15,000 dollars a year, or, in English money, about fifteen hundred pounds for each partner.

"But that's all in Morris's hands," said O'Rane. "I've cut my connexion and I'm going into English politics. All this time since I met you I've been wandering about, listening and watching. This country is disgustingly rich, George, demoralized by it—from the Government that flings millions about in fancy social reforms to the mill-hand who wastes shillings a week on cinematograph shows and roller-skating rinks. Utterly demoralized! Nobody cares for anything but extravagant pleasures; they are not even interested in the House of Lords fight. And the more that's spent on top the more they want to spend below. That revolution's coming all right."

"I shall believe in it when I see it," I said.

At the end of a week he left me, as ever, without a hint where he was going or what he proposed to do. I stayed at Lake House till the second election of 1910, when Bertrand telegraphed to me to come and help him. Loring dined with me at the Club one night when the election was over, andsuggested that I should accompany his mother, sister, the Daintons and himself to the South of France. The invitation was half-hearted, and I felt I had better wait until the process of rubbing off the corners was nearer completion. They left in January and returned in the first week in March. I was apprised of their presence in London by a special messenger, who pursued me, note in hand, from Princes Gardens to the House, where I had been dining with my uncle, and from the house to the Eclectic Club.

The note was in Loring's writing and begged me to come at once to Curzon Street.

"I suppose they've fixed the date at last," I said to Bertrand as he dropped me on his way home. "Now I shall be stuck with the privilege of being best man."

It was after midnight when I arrived at Loring House. Jim was in the library, walking restlessly up and down and filling the fireplace with half-smoked cigarettes. He was in evening dress, and an overcoat and silk hat lay on the arm of a sofa.

"Come in!" he exclaimed, without interrupting his caged-lion walk. "Sorry to drag you out at this time of night. Have a drink? Have something to smoke. Sit down, won't you?"

He spoke in short, staccato sentences, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the tantalus and cigars. The intensity of his manner was infectious: I pulled up a chair and settled myself to listen.

"Nowthen——" I began, as the door closed.

"It's ... it's come, George!" he stammered. "I'm up to my neck, and you're the only man who can pull me out."

"Drive ahead!" I said.

"Sonia's broken it off!"

It would be affectation for me to pretend I was as much surprised as Loring expected me to be. The engagement had, in my eyes, been singularly unsuitable from the first, and oneor both seemed destined to lead a life of misery; but I half thought that both parties would go through with the marriage out of pride or obstinacy. Loring was as much in love with Sonia as Sonia's mother was in love with his position. Seemingly I had underestimated the havoc wrought in the girl's nerves by her years of crude excitement.

"Tell me as much as you think fit," I said. "I'll do anything I can."

He thought for a moment, as if uncertain where to start.

"It's my fault," he began. "I can see that now. We oughtn't to have made the engagement so long—neither of us could stand the strain. I hurried things on as much as I could, but Sonia ... I don't know, she must have wondered where it was all leading to. I rather sickened her, I'm afraid. You see, I don'tknowmuch about women.... I've met any number, of course, but I haven't had many intimate women friends. They never interested me much till I got engaged to her. Consequently I've never appreciated their likes and dislikes. Case in point, Sonia told me last week that she'd scream if I called her 'darling' again. Now I should have thought.... Well, anyway, it seemed quite harmless and natural to me.... A small point, but it just shows you what a lot of knowing women take.... Got a cigarette on you?"

I threw him my case.

"What was thecasus belli?" I asked, but for the moment he would not be drawn from his generalizations.

"I think it was partly physical, too," he went on. "I tired the poor child out—rushing round and seeing people. She couldn't stand the strain. And she saw too much of me.... I was always there, dogging her steps.... She couldn't get away from me. This last visit to the Riviera was a hopeless mistake from every point of view."

He flung away the cigarette he had just lighted. We seemed to be getting gradually nearer something tangible, and, as he gazed bewilderedly round to see where he had put my case, I asked, "What happened out there?"

"Nothing," he answered. "It was to-night. We got back this afternoon and all went for a farewell dinner to Brown'sHotel. The Daintons are stopping there. Sonia was very quiet all through the dinner and, when my mother and Amy went home and we were left alone to say good-night, she said she'd got something to tell me. I waited, she hummed and hawed a bit and then asked me what the rule in our Church was about the children of mixed marriages. I told her they had to be brought up as Catholics.

"'And what happens if I object?' she asked.

"I told her I couldn't get a dispensation for the marriage at all unless she gave me an undertaking to this effect." He paused in pathetic bewilderment. "I can't understand her raising the question at all at this time of day; I explained the whole position to her before we became engaged, and she didn't object then.

"'Well,' she said, 'I can't consent to have my children brought up in a different faith.'"

Loring passed his hands over his eyes and dropped limply into a chair.

"That was rather a facer for me, George," he went on. "Either we had to marry without a dispensation—and that meant excommunication for me—or we couldn't get married at all. I thought it over very carefully. I'm a precious bad Catholic.... I mean, I've been brought up in the Church, and we all of us alwayshavebeen Catholics, but I don't believe half the doctrines and I don't go to church once in a blue moon. I call myself one, just as you call yourself a member of the Church of England. We're probably both of us 'Nothing-arians,' only we don't recant or make a fuss about it.... I began to wonder if I could tell 'em to excommunicate me and be damned. It would mean an awful wrench. My mother takes it all very seriously, and we English Catholic families all hang together rather, and I'm a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and all that sort of thing. I tell you, I didn't half like doing it, but it seemed the only thing, and eventually I told Sonia I'd lump the dispensation and risk the consequences."

He paused and lit another cigarette.

"I thought that would have ended the trouble," he wenton, with a sigh. "It seemed to be only the beginning. She was awfully good about it at first and said she couldn't make discord between my family and myself. I told her I was very fond of my mother, but that I was fonder of her than of anybody in the world. Then ... I don't know, I couldn't follow her ... she started on another tack altogether and said I should always be a Catholic at heart and that I should try to go back to the Church and take the children with me.... These damned unborn children ...! I told her—as much as I could cram into three sentences—what my whole attitude towards religion boiled down to. And then the row started. We both of us talked together, and neither of us listened to the other or finished our arguments, and at the end of half an hour Sonia began to cry, and I felt a perfect brute, and it ended with her sending me away and saying she could never marry a man who didn't believe in God."

Loring mopped his forehead.

"I feel absolutely done in," he murmured.

I mixed him a generous whisky and soda and asked what he wanted done. His face was haggard, and for a big man he seemed suddenly dried up and shrivelled.

"You must go round and talk to her," he said. "You've known her since she was a kid. Explain that I didn't mean what I said, apologize for me——"

I shook my head.

"It'll do no good," I said. "You're not to blame."

"But my dear fellow——!" he began excitedly, as though I had paid no attention to what he had told me.

"Look it in the face, Jim," I said, shaking my head again. "She's tired of you."

He picked up his tumbler and then put it down untasted.

"I don't believe it," he answered, with sublime simplicity.

"You've got to."

"But—but—but," he stammered. "We've never had a shadow of a disagreement until to-night."

"You didn't see it and you always gave way and smoothed things over."

"There neverwasanything to smooth over. Till this infernal religious question started——"

"It was religion to-day, it'll be the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose to-morrow."

Loring stared at me as though suspicious of an ill-timed humour.

"You're wrong, George, absolutely wrong. Iknowyou're wrong."

I shrugged my shoulders and left it at that.

"I'll do whatever you think best," I said.

"I knew you would!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Well, I've told you. You must go round to-morrow morning——"

"And if she refuses to see me?"

"She won't!"

"If," I persisted.

Loring jumped up excitedly.

"My dear chap, she simply musn't break off the engagement! Leave me out of it, tell her only to consider her own position." He paused in fresh embarrassment. "You remember the trouble over that swine Crabtree?" he went on diffidently. "We can't have a repetition of that! You know as well as I do, a girl who's always breaking off engagements.... Get her to look at it from that point of view!"

I rose up and dusted the ash from my shirt-front.

"She's tired of you," I repeated, with all the brutal directness I could put into my tone.

"Well—and if she is?" The tone no less than the words hinted that he might be beginning to share my opinion.

"You want the engagement renewed on those terms?"

"I don't want the Crabtree business over again?" he answered, fencing with my question.

"I'll call on her to-morrow," I said, "unless you ring me up before ten."

At eleven next morning I called at Brown's Hotel. The porter who sent up my name brought back word that Miss Dainton regretted she was unable to see me. On receipt of my report Loring sent round a letter by the hand of one of his footmen. Lady Dainton drove to Curzon Street betweentwelve and one and was closeted with Loring for half an hour. What took place at the interview I have never inquired. Loring came into the library at the end of it with a sheet of notepaper in his hand. His face was white, and there were dark rings under his eyes.

"Get this into the papers for me, will you?" he said dispassionately. "It's no good, she's immovable. I'm going away for a bit. We'd better not run the risk of meeting for the present. I'm starting at once, by the way, so I'm not likely to see you again before I go. I'm more grateful than I can say for all you've done. Good-bye."

As I drove down to Printing House Square I glanced at the sheet of paper. "The marriage arranged between the Marquess Loring and Miss Sonia Dainton," it ran, "will not take place."

That night I had some difficulty in getting to sleep. The "Maxims" of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld lay on the table by my bed, and I opened the book at random.

"It is commonly the Fault of People in Love," wrote that polished cynic, "that they are not sensible when they cease to be beloved."

"If, drunk with sight of power, we looseWild tongues that have not thee in awe—Such boasting as the Gentiles useOr lesser breeds without the Law—Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,Lest we forget, lest we forget!"Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."

"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not thee in awe—

Such boasting as the Gentiles use

Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget!"

Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."

Le Roy est mort; vive le Roy!

King Edward was mourned a twelvemonth, and in the spring of the following year all sorts and conditions of men gathered to do honour to his successor. Before the first hammer beat on the first Coronation stand, the invasion of London had begun: from Channel to Tweed ran a whisper of social schemings—a daughter's presentation, a ball, a house in town for the Season. Our solid, self-conscious race, never gay for gaiety's sake, reached out and grasped the excuse for innocent dissipation. The last five years had been so charged with political acrimony, the world had worked itself into so great a passion over the Budgets and Second Chambers. Three months respite was a prospect alluring to the straitest Puritan.

My uncle Bertrand had hoped that a year of mourningwould tempt his countrymen to regard politics as a serious study rather than a pretext for vulgar abuse. Seldom have I watched the death of a vainer hope, for the world flung off its black clothes and prepared for carnival. Apaches plotted new raids, strange-tongued provincials rubbed shoulders with American tourists, Colonial Prime Ministers jostled you in the streets or appropriated your favorite table at the restaurants.

For a time I sought refuge in the Club—and found it was no refuge. Members were balloting for seats to view the procession or discussing Adolf Erckmann's prospects in the Coronation Honours List. Erckmann himself was very prominent, and the capture of London, which he largely effected in the next three or four years, started with his acquisition of a title. Perhaps he tried to capture the Eclectic Club—I certainly remember being asked to blackball three of his candidates. If so, he failed; the most mediaeval club in the world was strong to resist the most modern social impresario. And this I regard with satisfaction when I consider, in moments of sombre retrospection, how the tone of England has become modernized in the last half generation. Sir John Woburn and the Press Combine modernized journalism; Vandale, Bendix and Trosser modernized the House of Commons, as anyone will agree who recalls the three scandals associated with their names—squalid, financial scandals, lacking the scale and dignity of Central American corruption; and Erckmann modernized London Society. It was a brilliant, gaudy thing when he left it, yet I almost preferred the old state when the loudest voice and longest purse did not necessarily go the furthest.

From time to time I saw something of his conquering march. My mother and sister came over for the Coronation, and we suffered the season patiently. Of course we gave a ball; equally 'of course,' it was at the Ritz, for the Ritz at this time was an article of faith. If a hostess wanted men, she must entertain there; if a man wanted supper, he must secure an invitation by hook or by crook—or else walk in without it.

"Otherwise you get no food," as my barbarian young cousin, Greville Hunter-Oakleigh, confessed to me one night at the Monagasc Minister's ball in Grosvenor Gardens. He haddanced dutifully with "all the right people," and was now going on with Violet, Summertown and two brother officers in search of supper. Greville and Violet had been invited; Summertown issued invitations to the others on the principle that hostesses were always glad of a few extra men.

"You're so damned William-and-Maryish," he complained, when I refused to come without a card. "If you won't, you won't, but they're frightfully rich and they'll do you awfully well. So long. We shall be back in a couple of hours."

He hurried away, and I set myself to protect my sister Beryl from Lady Ullswater, who was marking her down as a new-comer and angling for the privilege of chaperoning her. Before our ball took place I had an offer of the whole Brigade from John Ashwell, but we thought it would be amusing to make our own arrangements. A number of people strayed in without being asked, but this was in some sense balanced by our being able to refuse invitations to a host of Erckmann's protégés.

Erckmann himself—Sir Adolf, as he became—we were compelled to invite out of compliment to Lady Dainton. For some time her husband had been observable at the Eclectic Club, lunching with Erckmann and consuming an amount of champagne and Corona cigars that argued business discussion. There followed an issue of new companies with the name of Sir Roger Dainton, Bart., M.P., on the prospectus; later I met Erckmann at dinner in Rutland Gate; later still the Daintons took a moor. It was one of those rare business associations in which everyone secured what he wanted. I myself, a mere private in a stage army, was invited to join a party for Ober-Ammergau, and, if I declined to witness a Passion Play in Erckmann's company, my refusal was prompted less by social prejudice than by superstitious scruple.

At first I was mildly surprised to find the Daintons so much in public so soon after Sonia's engagement had been broken off; but the longer I lived in London the more people I found skirmishing to get away from other people and on one occasion in Coronation week, I remember seeing Loring, Crabtree, O'Rane and Sonia under the same roof. Inpractice, however, they kept apart without undue contrivance. Crabtree became engaged at this time to Mrs. Pauncefote, widow of the Staffordshire brewer and a woman some eleven years his senior; he was now in a position to woo the electors of the Brinton Division, and little was seen of him in London. O'Rane, on the rare occasions when I met him hurrying to or from the Continent, diving into the Conservative Central Office or disappearing into the industrial north, maintained an attitude of mystery and would tell me nothing of his movements. He was incessantly restless and as self-absorbed as ever, but the lines of his old, clear-cut scheme of life had lost something of their sharpness. His breach with the past seemed almost complete, marked in black and white—or so I fancied—by a letter I had given him to read twelve months before at the Charing Cross Hotel. At the end of the season he and Sonia met at the Embassy Ball; they bowed and passed on. Then his eyes sought mine as though wondering what were my thoughts. I made some comment on her dress; he made no answering comment at all.

As for Loring, I hardly saw him from the spring of 1911, when he hurried abroad, to the spring of 1914, when he returned. As a matter of form he came back for the Coronation, but did not stay an hour more than was necessary. Summertown, never a veracious chronicler, worked up a picturesque story of the yacht moored by Hungerford Bridge, and its owner changing out of his robes as he drove down the Embankment and dropping his coronet into the river in his haste to get away from England. I have but a confused idea where he went during those three years, and the question is immaterial. The important thing is that he was absent from London at a time when London was almost oppressively full of Sonia Dainton.

She was on the defensive when we first met, as though expecting me to blame her for the broken engagement. When, as was natural, I said nothing, she developed a curious recklessness and gave me to understand that, whosever the fault, she did not care a snap of the fingers for the consequences. It was partly pose, I think, and partly a very modern refusalto allow her feelings to be stirred below the surface, partly also the manner and spirit of her surroundings. I always fancy I saw a change in her from the day when Lady Dainton relaxed her social severity and opened her doors to Erckmann and hiscortège. With her catchwords, her volubility and over-ready laugh, something of hysteria seemed to have crept into her life. Whatever the entertainment, she was among the first to arrive and the last to go, dancing hard, supping heartily, talking incessantly, laughing gustily and smoking with fine abandon. Hourly new excitement, prostration, forgetfulness—that seemed the formula.

"What happens on Sundays, Sonia?" I once asked her, when we met for supper and a discussion of our day's work.

"I take laudanum," was the answer.

It was true in spirit; it may even have been true in fact. I was often reminded of a chorus girl I once saw in undergraduate days at a Covent Garden Ball, whirling through the night—like Sonia—from one till three, and at four o'clock lying asleep in a box with her cheek on her arm, oblivious and—I hope—happy; in any case too weary to dream what the future might hold. Looking back on the four years of carnival that ended with the war, I seem to find in Sonia the embodiment of the age's spirit.

"You know how that sort of thing ends, I suppose?" I took occasion to ask.

"Oh, don't be heavy, George!" she exclaimed impatiently. "We can only die once."

"To some extent we can postpone the date," I suggested.

"Who wants to? A short life and a merry one. Thisisa dull show, you know. How doyoucome to be here?"

"My name was gleaned from an obsolete work of reference," I said, producing a card with 'M.P.' on it. "And you?"

"Oh, I wasn't selected at all. Fatty Webster smuggled me in." She dropped her voice confidentially. "George, this is a deadly secret. Mrs. Marsden, who's responsible for this—this funeral, told mother she wanted to break down the exclusiveness of London Society——"

"Many taunts have been hurled at that indeterminate class,"I observed. "No one ever called it exclusive before."

"It's exclusive if you're from Yorkshire, like her, with a perfectly poisonous taste in dress. Well, all the girls come from Highgate Ponds—Lord Summertown told me so——"

"He ought to know," I said.

"And all the men from Turnham Green. You know, where the buses come from. Fatty Webster heard what it was going to be like, so he and Sam and Lord Summertown went off to Fatty's rooms in Albemarle Street; they've changed into corduroys and red handkerchiefs, and they're pulling up Piccadilly in solid chunks with pickaxes. It's the greatest fun in life. I went to see them half an hour ago. They've got lanterns and ropes and things, and they're doing frightful damage. And the best of it is that it's pouring with rain and none of the cars can get to either door."

"As a law-abiding citizen, I think it's my duty to warn the police," I said.

"Oh, you mustn't! You'll get Sam into a frightful row."

"That I don't mind if Webster spends a night in the cells. Sonia, he's a dreadful young man. Where did you find him?"

"He's a friend of Sir Adolf's. He's rather a sport, really, and enormously rich."

"He was richer a week ago."

"You mean before the breach of promise case? I suppose so. Honestly, if Fatty proposed to me, I should slap his face, but if he had the presumption to back out of it—my word!"

"He's too much like the domestic pig," I objected.

"Oh, he's quite harmless and very useful. He cadged me an invitation for the Embassy Ball. Are you going?"

"I've been invited," I said.

There the subject dropped, for I had promised to go with O'Rane and was not sure how he would take the news that Sonia also was to be present. Still in the enigmatic mood, he shrugged his shoulders and informed me that his acceptance had gone forth, and he proposed to abide by it. I raised no further objection as the ball promised to be amusing. It was a limited liability entertainment, floated by a number of diplomatic underlings, and, as some difficulty was experiencedin securing invitations, there was an orgy of subterfuge, intrigue and bribery on the part of aspirants. One of the Russian attachés confided to me that he could have lunched and dined in four different places every day after the announcement was made in the Press and stayed in six several houses for Goodwood. There was considerable overlapping, and, if some received no invitations, others received many. O'Rane, who had known more Ambassadors before he was five than most men meet in a lifetime, had cards sent him from three Embassies and four Legations. It is perhaps superfluous to mention that of these the Austrian was not one.

If there be any justification for such a ball, it surely lies in a certain brilliancy of stage-management. The Embassy Ball was well stage-managed. As we drove into its neighbourhood, a double line of cars was stretching from end to end of Brook Street, with one tail bending down Park Lane to Hamilton Place and the other forking and losing itself in Hanover Square. The pavements outside Claridge's were thronged with eager, curious spectators, their lean faces white in the blinding glare of strong head-lights. Excited whispers and an occasional half-timid cheer greeted the appearance of figures familiar in politics or on the Turf. It was the night of the Westmoreland House reception, and uniforms, medals and orders flashed in brave rivalry with the aigrettes and blue-white, shimmering diamonds of the women. A warm fragrance of blending perfumes floated through the open portals into the courtyard, and with the slamming of doors, the swish of skirts and the clear high babble of voices came mingling the distant wail of the violins and the dreamy, half-heard cadence of a waltz.

"After the railway strike this is rather refreshing," I said to O'Rane, as we advanced inch by inch towards the doorway where Count Ristori, the doyen of theCorps Diplomatique, was receiving on behalf of his colleagues.

"And instructive," he added.

"Your revolution hasn't come off yet, Raney," I said, in the intervals of catching the eyes of the Daintons and bowing to them.

"Nor my war. Perhaps they'll balance each other and leave us to enjoy—this kind of thing. You know how it ended? Men's demands granted, owners given a free hand to recoup themselves by raising freights. D'you knowwhyit ended?"

"It had gone beyond a joke," I said.

The Daintons had been compelled to cancel a week-end party at Crowley Court owing to the impossibility of assembling their guests.

O'Rane laid his hand confidentially on my shoulder.

"I'm told," he said,—"all my information comes from this Embassy crowd,—I'm told Germany was preparing to strike at France and collar the whole country north of a line to Cherbourg. We couldn't have stood that. But if we'd declared war with the strike on—whew! you couldn't have transported man or gun."

"A pretty story," I commented. "I don't believe it. Do you?"

"Oh, what does it matter what I believe? You think I'm revolution-mad. The threat of war ended the strike, the end of the strike postponed the war.Vive la bagatelle!" He gripped my arm and his voice quickened and rose till our neighbours turned round and smiled in amused surprise. "George, I wonder if it was like this in the last days of the Ancien Régime—a year before the Revolution and six before Napoleon. Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen the first couple, the Court following in beautiful brocaded dresses, with patches and powdered hair, and blue and silver and rose-red coats, and lace cuffs and silk stockings and buckled shoes. Such manners! And such corruption of soul! Peaceful, secure, unheeding. And outside the Palace a line of gilt coaches. And running under the horses' heads for a glimpse of the clothes and jewels—thetiers état." He smiled ironically and shrugged his shoulders. "'En effet, ils sont des hommes.' Was it like this?"

"It was like this again ten years after the Revolution and ten days after Waterloo—when corruption ought to have been purged out of the world."

"But will nothing make these people see thetiers étatat their door?"

"I saw them myself. What is one to do?"

"Mon dieu!"

"That's no answer, Raney," I said.

"The answer was given you nearly two thousand years ago."

A moment later we were bowing over the hand of Count Ristori. Then the queue behind us pressed forward, and we were separated. Several hours elapsed before we met again, though he was rarely out of my sight. Indeed, I followed his movements rather closely and made a discovery. Sonia gave me a dance, and when it was over we sat and watched the scene from two chairs by an open window. There was a formality and decorum about the ball that evidently rather irked her: and from her tone of somewhat pert disparagement I gathered that she did not know many of the people present.

"David's all over the Ambassadors," she remarked, with her eyes on a corner where he was standing with three or four be-ribboned Secretaries.

"That's old Dracopoli," I told her. "He was in command when Raney's father was wounded. The fat little man with the high cheek-bones used to be Russian Minister of Finance."

"I had no idea he was so famous," she drawled, with easy contempt.

"I'm inclined to think Raney's a bigger man than either of us gave him credit for," I said.

And that was my discovery. It cleared my mind of a patronizing friendliness dating from the time when I was a monitor and he a fag at Melton. I always recognized his mental abilities no less than the endurance which had kept him for a dozen years from starving. But he talked so much like any other brilliant Irish boy, he was so exuberant and unstable, that it was the convention not to take him seriously. That night—and under my eyes—he seemed to be coming into his kingdom. It was almost his first public appearance in England since boyhood, and, as old scandals slipped intooblivion, the friends of his father claimed acquaintance as my uncle had done six years before. There are few men who have before their twenty-sixth birthday made all the money they will ever need, few who have travelled in so many countries of the world and met so many people. That was all that the Claridge ball-room knew, but I had lived in close communion with him for several years and could have written many a supplementary chapter.

"He's clever," Sonia admitted, "but he's frightfully selfish."

"Have you met his partner—a man called Morris?" I asked. "He's the man to discuss Raney's shortcomings with you."

"I don't want to discuss them with anyone. Iknow. He's absolutely wrapped up in himself and his precious dreams. George, for some years he and I ..."

"I know," I interrupted. "Once when you dined with me at the House, you promised some day to tell me why you didn't end your ridiculous boy-and-girl engagement."

Sonia put her head on one side and pouted.

"To be quite honest," she said, "I was secretly rather afraid of him."

"But he's the gentlest man on earth, and the most courteous."

"If you do what he wants; otherwise—if you wear green when he'd like you to wear brown——!"

"But all this is hardly a reason forrefusingto break off the engagement."

"I was afraid of him," she repeated.

I know Sonia well enough to say in five cases out of twenty when she is speaking the truth. This was one.

"Afraid ofRaney?" I cried. "Are you afraid of him now?"

"I've not seen him to speak to for years. Until tonight—and then we only bowed——"

"If you want to see him again, you've only to tell him so."

She threw her head up with a rare expression of scorn.

"How kind!" she exclaimed. "But he's far too lifty to know me now, even if I was in the habit——"

"Then I shall never know whether you're still afraid ofhim," I said. "He'll not come till he's sent for—sent for and told he's wanted——"

"Is this a message?" she demanded.

"A reminder," I answered. "Forgive me, but you have not been discussed by us since he came back from the Continent a year ago. I am recalling something I think he told you over at Lake House before he went to Mexico."

"Oh, the Butterfly Life Sermon? He gave me five years to outgrow it, didn't he? Tell him—No." The first bars of a waltz were starting, and the two ball-rooms began to fill. A corpulent, red young man—I knew him by sight as young Webster—walked sheepishly to our window and stood in front of us. Sonia looked round the crowded room with eager, bright eyes, pulled the straps of her dress higher on to the shoulders and rose to her feet. "I'll leave you to make up the message," she told me; and to her partner, "Come Fatty. Let's take the floor before the mob gets in."

In the still empty room they executed a wonderful stage-dance of dips and runs and eccentric twinings. As O'Rane joined me by the open window, I felt there was no need to give him any message.

"Supper or bed?" I asked him as I glanced at my watch.

"Not bed!" he answered, with a touch of the old exultant joy in existence that I had not seen since his early days at Oxford. "I'm having the time of my life, George. I'm dam' good at this sort of thing. First of all I danced with Amy Loring and didn't tear her dress. Then I found a Conservative Whip——"

"Are you really standing?"

"Don't interrupt! I invited Lady Dainton to have supper twice, and she accepted both times. I asked perfect strangers to dance with me on the ground that I'd met their brothers in Hong-Kong. I cadged cigarettes from other perfect strangers, and I carried out a First Secretary's wife in a fainting condition."

"You take a very frivolous view of life," I observed, as I ordered some poached eggs and beer.

"It's all right. I shan't come here again," he answered.

"But I thought you were enjoying yourself?"

He drummed on the table with his fingers and smiled round the room.

"So I am," he said. "If you'd ever been as poor as a rat, you'd know what it feels like to have money to burn!" His black eyes suddenly shone with anger, and his fingers ceased their idle drumming. "If you'd ever had your birth flung in your teeth——"

"Don't you ever forget anything, Raney?" I asked in his sudden, fierce pause.

"Nothing, old man. Not a line of a book I've ever read nor the letter of a word a man's ever said to me. I—I've been taken on my merits here to-night. I don't want to forget anything. After all, if you forget what it's like to go through one or two circles of Hell, you haven't much pity for the souls that are still suffering there."

"Whatareyou going to do?" I asked.

"Follow my destiny," he answered, with his black eyes gazing into the distance.

"So you told me some years ago when the Daintons gave their first ball at the Empire Hotel."

"And haven't I kept my word? I've been finding the means, and you know the twin obsessions of my mind."

"War and a revolution?"

He nodded, and looked round the supper-room.

"There's a lot worth saving, George; it's the greatest country in the world. But there's a lot to be rooted out. People won't recognize that civilization can never be stationary." He waved his hand rhythmically in time with the music. "Backwards or forwards. Backwards or forwards. And coming here after some years abroad, everything I see makes me think we're sliding backwards."

Though O'Rane gave me no more than a couple of veiled hints, he was at this time in train to be adopted as a Conservative candidate. There was a certain irony in the son of the last Lord O'Rane standing in such an interest, but theHouse of Commons has little use for non-party men, and he was now more closely connected with the National Service and Navy Leagues than with any Liberal organization.

The irony would have been completer if the swift changes of politics had not delayed his election. It was not till the early spring of 1914 that he took his seat, and his place by this time was on the Ministerial side. Thevolte-facesounds more abrupt than it really was if it be remembered that he never had more than one object in view at a time. Political gossip in the days of the Agadir incident said that part of the Cabinet was ready for war while another part asserted that our warlike preparations were inadequate. From that moment O'Rane's mind was set on seeing the country put into such training that it would not be found wanting if a similar crisis arose in the future.

When he finally went to the electors of Yateley, the focus of public interest had changed. The surface of diplomacy was unruffled; the Tripoli Campaign and the two Balkan wars had dragged to an end without involving any of the Great Powers, and my uncle's confidence rose from strength to strength at the confirmation of his favourite doctrine that modern war was too vast and complex for a first class power to undertake.

On the other hand, the condition of England was a matter for considerable searching of heart. A spirit of unrest and lawlessness, a neurotic state not to be dissociated from the hectic, long-drawn Carnival that continued from month to month and year to year, may be traced from the summer of the Coronation. It is too early to probe the cause or say how far the staggering ostentation of the wealthy fomented the sullen disaffection of the poor. It is as yet impossible to weigh the merits in any one of the hysterical controversies of the times. Looking back on those four years, I recall the House of Lords dispute and a light reference to blood flowing under Westminster Bridge, railway and coal strikes characterized by equally light breach of agreements, a campaign in favour of female suffrage marked by violence to person and destruction to property, and finally a wrangle over a Home RuleBill that spread far beyond the walls of Westminster and ended in the raising and training of illegal volunteer armies in Ireland. Such a record in an ostensibly law-abiding country gives matter for reflection. Sometimes I think the cause may be found in the sudden industrial recovery after ten years' depression following the South African War. The new money was spent in so much riotous living, and from end to end there settled on the country a mood of fretful, crapulous irritation. 'An unpopular law? Disregard it!' That seemed the rule of life with a people that had no object but successive pleasure and excitement and was fast becoming a law unto itself.

When, therefore, O'Rane went to Yateley, he went in protest against the action of certain officers at the Curragh, who, holding the King's Commission and with some few years of discipline behind them, let it be known that in the event of certain orders being given they did not propose to obey them. Then, if ever, the country was near revolution; I still recall the astonishment and indignation of Radicalism and Labour. On the single question of Parliamentary control of the Army, O'Rane was returned for a constituency that had almost forgotten the sensation of being represented by anyone but a Conservative.

The reason why two and a half years elapsed between our conversation at the Embassy Ball and his election in 1914 has been a secret in the keeping of a few. I see no object in preserving the mystery any longer. In the summer of 1912 Mayhew came home for his annual leave and dining with us one night in Princes Gardens he mentioned that Budapest gossip was growing excited over the possibility of a disturbance in the Balkans. It was a Bourse rumour, and the Czar of Bulgaria was credited with having operated the markets in such a way that a war of any kind would leave him a considerably richer man. I asked O'Rane for confirmation, and he informed me carelessly that some of his diplomatic friends were expecting trouble.

A few weeks later Mayhew invited me to dine and bring O'Rane. We had a small party in Princes Gardens that night,so I told him to join us and sent a note to Raney's flat. Mayhew duly arrived, but I heard nothing from O'Rane.

"War's quite certain," I was told, when we were left to ourselves. "I'm working to get sent out as correspondent for the 'Wicked World' and I wondered if you or Raney would care to come too. You'll get fine copy for that paper of yours, and as he knows that part of the world and speaks the language——"

"It's a pity he couldn't come to-night," I said. "Frankly, Mayhew, I don't see myself as a war correspondent. I don't know how it's done——"

"Everything must have a beginning," he urged. "I don't either."

"But I've not got the physical strength to go campaigning. I should crack up."

"You'll miss a lot if you don't come. You know, a series of articles for 'Peace' on the 'Horrors of Modern War'...."

It was at that point that my uncle, who had been half-listening to our conversation, dropped into a chair by Mayhew's side.

"A very good idea," he observed. "Don't be idle, George. It'll be a valuable experience."

Between them they bore down my opposition, and, while Mayhew secured my passport and subjected it to innumerable consularvisas, Bertrand ordered my kit by telephone and reserved me the unoccupied half of a compartment on thewagon-litsas far as the Bulgarian frontier.

On what followed I prefer not to dwell. We were treated with every mark of courtesy by the Bulgarian General Staff and—locked in an hotel in Sofia with a military guard at the door till the war was over. Mayhew is ordinarily a charming companion, as were no doubt the two or three dozen other war correspondents who shared our fate, but I grew to loathe his presence almost as bitterly as he came to loathe mine. I am told that Sofia is an interesting city, though I had no opportunity of examining it; I am told, too, that our hotel was the best, though I had no standard of comparison whereby to judge it. Happiness came to me for the first time when Imounted the gangway of an Austrian-Lloyd boat at Salonica and coasted unhurriedly round Greece and Dalmatia to Trieste. Our fellow-passengers included specimens of every race in the Levant and one or two outside it. The first night on board a Greek officer wrapped his uniform round a lump of coal and dropped it over the side.

"I can't stand the risk of being recognized," he told me. "You see, we were all forbidden by proclamation to depart from strict neutrality."

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