"I was a baby when my mother died
And father died and left me in the street.
I starved there, God knows how, a year or two
On fig-skins, melon-parings, rinds and stalks,
Refuse and rubbish....
But, mind you, when a boy starves in the streets
Eight years together, as my fortune was,
Watching folk's faces to know who will fling
The bit of half-stripped grape-bunch he desires,
And who will curse and kick him for his pains,--
Which gentleman processional and fine,
Holding a candle to the Sacrament,
Will wink and let him lift a plate and catch
The droppings of the wax to sell again,
Or holla for the Eight and have him whipped,--
How say I?--nay, which dog bites, which lets drop
His bone from the heap of offal in the street,--
Why, soul and sense of him grow sharp alike,
He learns the look of things, and none the less
For admonition from the hunger-pinch."
ROBERT BROWNING: _Fra Lippo Lippi._
1
It was not until I had introduced some little organisation into my work
that I had opportunity or justification for seeing my friends. I have
reached an age when I like to go early to bed between two long days of
work; I never ceased to wonder, therefore, at the nervous vitality of
some of the people whom I was meeting; London was fuller than I had ever
known it, the customary autumn exodus had ended with the war; and, what
with a few hundred officers home on leave and athirst for amusement,
what with a few thousand girls working in hospitals, canteens and
Government offices, anyone who wanted distraction had not to look long
for it. The restlessness which seized London every summer before the war
seemed to have increased and become permanent, with an astounding new
licence which I found hard to understand. I suppose the war broke down
most of the old social conventions, but I sometimes wondered in the
early days whether there was anything which the strictly brought up and
closely chaperoned young girl of other days was now _not_ allowed to
do....
Young O'Rane carried me off to my first war party. After I had looked
for him unsuccessfully for some weeks, we had been dining at the House
and talking business and school politics, for the Governors of Melton
School had lately co-opted me in place of Aylmer Lancing, and I had
heard from George that O'Rane was temporarily on the staff there. At ten
o'clock he told me that he was due home for a house-warming and plunged
into a description of his domestic life with all the eagerness of a
child--which is what he was--shewing a new toy. Old Bertrand Oakleigh
had given them the house as a wedding present; ever since his illness at
the outbreak of war (no one was allowed to call it a stroke) the old man
had needed some little attention; what easier than to set a couple of
rooms aside for him? And the place was so big that you could give a
shakedown to "most anyone"--and a meal. It was what O'Rane had always
wanted to do--as in the Middle Ages (rather vaguely).... I should hardly
_believe_ some of the people he'd had there even in five weeks....
People were such fun; Beresford, for instance ... full of good stuff,
full of white-hot idealism which only needed to be directed. "And he's
fallen in love with my wife, so she's gently taming him."
He threw out his sentences with jerky exuberance, passionately serious
at one moment and laughing at himself and me the next.
And that girl I had met, Hilda Merryon.... A little throb of anger came
into O'Rane's voice; she had led a most awful life for about three
years; some brute had victimised her, and her sanctimonious devil of a
father had turned her out of the house.... Now she was a new woman,
though years must pass before she overcame her bitterness and hatred
towards the world, and, when he went back to Melton, she was coming as a
sort of secretary....
We had reached the house, and he threw open the door and stood aside to
let me in.
"I hardly felt this was a normal household when I was here before," I
said.
In the light of the hall I could see his black eyes gleaming with
laughter.
"You should hear old Oakleigh!" he suggested. "'It's a phase, my dear
boy. You'll grow out of it. You see the devil of a lot of strange
things, if you live to be as old as I am.'" He paused to laugh at his
own exquisite mimicry of Bertrand's disillusionised, pontifical manner
and gruff, disparaging voice. "Well, _he_ wouldn't eat a twelve-course
dinner with a starving man opposite him.... It makes life so much
easier, if nobody thinks you're quite sane. Won't you go in?"
"Does your wife enter into the spirit of it?" I asked, as I looked at
the silk curtains bellying away from the white walls.
He evaded the direct question almost apologetically.
"It's a big change after the life she led before the war," he conceded,
"but then the war itself is a big change."
He had mentioned a party, but I was hardly prepared for the army of
occupation which I found in the library. Every chair at the long table
was filled, and the guests had overflowed and scattered throughout the
room, bearing their plates and tumblers with them. Mrs. O'Rane jumped up
from her place between Beresford and Deganway, making me welcome and
apologising for having missed me before.
"This is such an irregular ménage," she exclaimed in a clear, high voice
that dominated the clear, high voices around her. "David's at the House
so much, and I spend my days serving out clothes to Belgian refugees,
or finding them houses and work, or getting up concerts and things to
raise money for them, but _somebody's_ sure to be at home at _some_ hour
of the night. This is our house-warming, and of course David forgot all
about it." She twisted her arms round her husband's neck and kissed him
with an ecstasy that told me stabbingly of something that had been left
out of my life, "Admit you did, sweetheart, or you won't get any
supper."
"_I_ remembered! I invited Mr. Stornaway," he protested. "And you're
going to look after him while I strum. You seem to have got some people
here, Sonia. And there's a sort of hint that some of them have been
smoking."
The crowd, the heat, the babble of voices and the fog of tobacco smoke
robbed me of resistance and individuality. Before I had been three
minutes in the room, I was eating a meal which I did not need, drinking
hock-cup which I knew disagreed with me and trying to carry on two
conversations and at the same time to see who was already there and who
was arriving. Lady Maitland introduced me volubly to a watchful-eyed,
supercilious boy whose first play, she assured me, had taken London by
storm. Had I seen it? If not, I must go at once; and she refreshed her
memory of its name by reference to the author. When he escaped in bored
embarrassment from his own biography, she explained loudly a second time
that _that_ was Eric Lane, the great coming dramatist, and confided as
loudly that he was desperately in love with Babs, little Babs Neave,
Barbara Neave, Lady Barbara Neave--it was no use my pretending that I
didn't know her--and that Crawleigh was at his wits' end, because it was
quite out of the question for them to marry, but Babs was such an
extraordinary girl that, if you opposed her, you might simply drive her
into his arms.... Lady Maitland shook her vigorous grey head with an air
of concern and at once asked me to meet "both the silly children" at
luncheon, because it would interest me....
Before the end of supper I was beginning to get my bearings and to
resolve the unassimilated party into its elements. O'Rane was at the
piano, surrounded by George Oakleigh, two shy and hero-worshipping
pupils from Melton, Miss Hilda Merryon--still aloof and implacable--and
Beresford. In the middle of the room I deduced from Sir Roger Dainton's
presence a purely family gathering of Mrs. O'Rane's relations; their
tongues were as busy as their eyes, and they looked slightly
bewildered--as well they might--and a trifle disapproving.
On the dais Mrs. O'Rane ruled supreme. Even without the explanation
which George strolled across to drawl into my ear, I placed her by her
surroundings as belonging to a society with which I was very familiar
before the war. Lady Sally Farwell sat on one side of her, giving an
excellent and somewhat ill-natured imitation of Lady Barbara Neave, who
with young Eric Lane was hardly out of ear-shot. Mr. Evelyn Staines, the
romantic hero of half a hundred musical comedies at the Regency, sat on
the other, looking out of humour, surprisingly unkempt and unexpectedly
old. There was a youthful claque of young officers, two or three
actresses, whose appearance the illustrated papers had made known to me,
and a sprinkling of middle-aged nondescripts. Before the war I used to
organise a good many charity bazaars, charity balls and charity
matinées; and Mrs. O'Rane's troupe was always much in evidence. She has
since told me that she and Sally Farwell appeared in three duologues and
two oriental ballets on my behalf, though I am ashamed to say that my
neglect of details left me ignorant of my indebtedness.
There were a dozen smaller groups, thrust into corners or wedged between
the heavier furniture. I threaded my way in and out with a word here and
a bow there, blinded by the smoke and deafened by the noise. All seemed
to be enjoying themselves, however, and I was reasonably amused and
interested. From time to time, when O'Rane began to sing or whistle to
his own accompaniment, there was a rippling hush; from time to time,
again, he would break off with a sudden laugh and plunge into dance
music, whereat most of us flattened ourselves against the walls, while
Mrs. O'Rane and Mr. Evelyn Staines gave an exhibition of highly
technical stage-dancing.
"I don't quite fit your uncle Bertrand into this," I observed to George,
when we found ourselves out of harm's way on the dais.
"He looked in for a moment to offer Raney his blessing and a cheque.
Fortunately he can't hear much from his end of the house," was the
answer.
Mrs. O'Rane ended a perilous series of movements with a more perilous
leap on to her partner's shoulder and was borne breathless and
triumphant to the table for hock-cup.
"George, are we shocking Mr. Stornaway?" she asked across me. "I'm so
sick of the war!"
She jumped down and looked at me, breathing quickly through parted lips.
Her dress was daring, and at this, my first unhurried sight of her at
close quarters, I was as much fascinated as a man of my age had any
right to be. The face was soft, appealing and warm, with long-lashed
brown eyes, flushed cheeks like ripe apricots and a wistful mouth that
drooped at the corners, when she was disappointed, and pouted
over-quickly when she did not at once get what she wanted. It was a
wilful, impatient little face, exacting and rather obstinate, without
very much depth of character, but amazingly mobile and young, capable of
a child's ecstatic abandonment to happiness and of a melting tenderness
when she looked at her husband's unseeing eyes and whimsical,
self-protective smile.
"In some ways it's extraordinarily like some of his omnium-gatherum
parties at Oxford, Sonia," murmured George, as the tireless fingers at
the piano passed from waltz to march and from march to Scandinavian
boating-song half as old as time.
Mrs. O'Rane's big eyes swam.
"As like as we can make it," she whispered tremulously; and I was
conscious of a new fascination. Though I have never seen a woman or man
more perfectly put together, the head on the neck, the neck on the
shoulders, the hands on the wrists or the wrists on the arms, there was
something skin-deep and mechanical in her beauty--not necessarily
reaching to the heart--until that moment.
The softness passed as suddenly as it had come, and she awoke to a sense
of her duties as hostess.
"I want to introduce you to my mother, Lady Dainton," she told me.
Under cover of the presentation she escaped and in another moment was
darting with the movement of a dragon-fly in search of a partner for the
savage Hawaiian dance which her husband had begun to play. This in turn
she abandoned to give extravagant welcome to Sir Adolphus Erskine and to
thank him for a string of pearls which she held out jubilantly for his
admiring inspection.
My next half-hour was more varied and less pleasant. I was introduced to
Lady Dainton, who claimed acquaintance with my brother and insisted that
we had met at one of Aylmer Lancing's parties at Ripley Court; I was
introduced to her daughter-in-law, who had lately lost her husband and
now engaged me in a sullen debate on compulsory service with a view, so
far as I could follow the poor creature's distraught reasoning, to
securing that as many other women as possible should lose their
husbands. I exchanged a few words with Roger Dainton about the state of
parties in the House and, as I fancied that I had exhausted the family,
found myself confronted once more by Lady Dainton, who led me into a
corner, enquired how long I had known O'Rane and begged me to use
whatever influence I possessed to bring this folly to an end. Since my
first sight of her I had watched a storm-cloud of disapproval banking
up, but I could not imagine why its force should be expended on me.
"I'm not narrow-minded, don't you know?" she informed me with majestic
uncontradictability, "but this is the first time I've seen Sonia since
she was married, and this--this bear-garden is what I find."
There was no disputing the definition, but its application was limited,
for she flung out her arm, until I feared it would leave its socket, in
the direction of an arm-chair where Beresford, shabbier than ever by
contrast with the rather rich clothes around him, was holding forth with
combative resonance on the hypocrisy of our fighting for the free
development of the smaller nationalities while we held our Indian Empire
in unrepresentative thraldom.
"It's not what Sonia's accustomed to, it's not what she has a right to
expect!" exclaimed Lady Dainton with rising indignation. "That--that
_creature_ has been mocking the people who've gone out and given their
lives for their country, when half of us in the room are in mourning. As
for the woman----"
"I really don't feel _I_ can interfere," I interrupted diffidently.
She sighed with an attempt at resignation.
"I didn't know how well you knew David," she said. "Of course, he's a
delightful, gallant, generous soul--nobody's fonder of him than I am--,
but he's so terribly impulsive, don't you know? I really hoped that,
when Sonia consented to marry him, she would--well--_tame_ him a little.
Dear David _will_ pretend that everybody's like everybody else; well, I
don't suppose either of us is a snob, Mr. Stornaway, but there _are_
distinctions, don't you know? We should be called old-fashioned, if we
_said_ anything, but some of the people here to-night--of course,
Sonia's a wonderful actress, much cleverer than half the professionals
you see, so she's got into rather a theatrical set--I suppose that's the
modern spirit; Eleanor Ross had a woman lunching with her to-day who six
months ago--well, she wouldn't have dared.... But when it comes to
turning a private house into a sort of mission-room.... One can carry
democracy to excess, don't you know?"
The voice was rising again, and Mrs. O'Rane danced to my side and
snatched me away on the plea that Lady Maitland wanted to fix a day for
my meeting with Barbara Neave.
"Was darling mother being tiresome?" she asked sympathetically. "The
casual-ward stunt, I suppose?"
"What do you feel about it yourself?" I asked her.
"About David's lame ducks? Oh, he has his friends, and I have mine, and
it's no one else's business." She looked round the crowded room and then
seemed to decide that she had been too brusque. "I don't know--yet,
whether it will answer," she went on uncertainly. "David's always been a
freak about money, he'd always give anything to anybody. Now he says
that he'd be dishonoured, if he took with one hand and refused with the
other.... He's rather absurd, poor darling, because he wouldn't need to
take anything from anybody, if he hadn't been so frightfully smashed up
in the war. And if I don't mind.... It's really rather fun, however mad
it may seem. We've all of us gone mad since the War. Except David. You
didn't know him, but he's almost sane compared with what he was before."
She abandoned her pose of affected insincerity and turned to me with
shining eyes. "You do love David, don't you?" she asked.
"My dear lady, I've only met him twice," I said.
"Isn't that more than enough?" Her expression changed restlessly; and I
remembered wondering how long she would retain her looks, if she
continued to live on her nerves like this. "Too many dam' dull Daintons
here, you know. I made certain mother would think this sort of thing too
Bohemian. She'd like me to have a prim and proper little house in one of
the streets about here and entertain the conventional people in the
conventional way--simply wagging my tail if I enticed an Under-Secretary
here. Mother'd go miles for an Under-Secretary. Well, it's much more fun
inviting the amusing people, the people you _like_. I _am_ rather a
Bohemian, I've always led my own life. I do now. Darling David never
tries to make me do anything or stop me doing anything, he never wants
to know what I've been doing.... All the same, David's 'duty to one's
neighbour' stunt.... Thank goodness! he doesn't expect me to share my
clothes with casual visitors!"
She stood with her eyes fixed thoughtfully and without complete
comprehension on her husband's thin, mobile face. His own, black and
arresting for all their sightlessness, were turned to the rafters and
the shadows of the roof, as he sat with head bent back and fingers idly
modulating. Then Lady Dainton came forward and took her leave; the party
broke up rapidly, and, by the time that I left, only Vincent Grayle
remained, talking to his hostess, while Beresford transferred himself to
the other end of the room, ostentatiously turning his back and resting
his injured leg on the edge of O'Rane's piano stool.
2
I left the grotesque party with the feeling that contrary to all
reasonable expectation I had enjoyed myself immoderately. The enthusiasm
survived the night, and at breakfast the following day I informed
Yolande that I proposed to invite the O'Ranes to dine with us. Here,
however, I was met with unforeseen opposition. I have no idea how the
antagonism started, but at some period of their careers Yolande had
decided that Mrs. O'Rane was of those who "do all the things one doesn't
do," while Mrs. O'Rane has been known to dismiss my niece alliteratively
as a "prig, prude and _poseuse_."
"You'll regret it," Yolande told me frankly enough, sagaciously
smoothing back a strand of auburn hair from her forehead. "She's very
fascinating, but I've an instinct about her, and you'll find she's all
superfluity and flashiness. Any number of people have been in love with
her, of course, but she'll grate on you. Ask any woman."
One dinner, I felt, could not commit me very deeply, and it was my own
house, although I was already debating the desirability of moving into
bachelor quarters and giving up my remaining rooms to the Canteen
Executive. Yolande, however, was to be spared in spite of me.
Whether Mrs. O'Rane disapproved of her as strongly as she disapproved of
Mrs. O'Rane, I am incompetent to say, but I was informed in terms of
suitable regret that she was either dining out or having people to dine
with her every night of the week; was it possible, on the other hand,
for me to come on one of the days when they were at home? I had not yet
finished that talk with David about Melton.... The reminder was perhaps
inserted as a reason for not inviting Yolande.
I chose my night and, within five minutes of entering the house, I
should have confessed, had I been honest with myself, that Yolande was
right. An air of tension greeted me, an interrupted controversy was at
once resumed, and I found myself required by my hostess to arbitrate in
a lovers' quarrel. The cause of dispute was the girl Hilda Merryon,
whose career O'Rane had briefly sketched for my benefit; fortunately she
was not present at the time, but with O'Rane composed, pacific and
unyielding in an arm-chair with his big St. Bernard beside him, Mrs.
O'Rane flushed and aggrieved with one foot on the fender and one bare
arm shielding her face from the fire, and Vincent Grayle, my fellow
guest, directing and perhaps stimulating the controversy, I felt that we
had enough disputants.
"I'll put it to Mr. Stornaway!" cried Mrs. O'Rane, as soon as our
greetings were over. "Mr. Stornaway, we were only married in July, it's
now the end of September, and I don't think David ought to go off and
leave me for three months. It isn't necessary, I've asked him not
to----"
O'Rane stroked the dog's head reflectively.
"But you've told me you can't get away, Sonia," he said at length.
"You've got your Belgian refugee work, you've got a string of
engagements and you've got Beresford laid up for months yet. You
admitted, too, you'd simply be at a loose end in Melton."
"I should be with you." She tossed her head back until she was looking
at him through half-closed eye-lids. "Of course, if you don't want me
..."
"But, darling, your work here ...?"
"Anybody can do that!" Mrs. O'Rane interrupted unguardedly. "That's not
the point, though, and you know it isn't. I say you oughtn't to go. It's
like setting a race-horse to pull a removal van."
In the pause that followed, I wondered what opportunities for
propaganda Lady Dainton had enjoyed since our meeting the week before.
"I've _promised_ to resign the _moment_ I've paid back the money I
_owe_," said O'Rane with emphatic reasonableness.
"The money was given you as a present."
"But I can't take presents of that kind so long as I'm fit to work.
Darling Sonia, you don't imagine I want to go away from you for three
months, do you? If you can come down without leaving your work here
undone----"
"Oh, I should be in the way!" she interrupted with another toss of her
head. "You've got your Hilda."
She looked round the room, pointedly inviting us to follow the direction
of her eyes and nodding at the tidy arrangement of books, the
filing-cabinet, the half-hidden safe and neat library card-catalogue. I
could see O'Rane blushing, as I myself began to blush, that such a scene
should be enacted before comparative strangers.
"You mustn't say things like that," he remonstrated gently; then, with
the lightness of affected inspiration, "We'll put it to Mr. Stornaway,
as you suggest! I'm committed, sir, as I think in honour and certainly
by an understanding with the Headmaster, to go back to Melton on
Thursday. You've met Miss Merryon; I'm taking her with me to act as a
sort of secretary. She'll have rooms in the town and will lend me the
use of her eyes in the evenings;--I was frightfully handicapped last
term and had to take advantage of the boys' good-nature. I know it's an
unusual arrangement, but the circumstances are unusual. I got Dr.
Burgess's approval----"
"Did you tell him anything about her past?" Mrs. O'Rane broke in,
tapping a gold slipper with scarlet heel against the fender.
O'Rane smiled dreamily.
"I'm chiefly concerned with her future," he answered. Something in the
voice and smile told me that he was spiritually as far removed from his
wife as the mad from the sane.
There was a long pause which Grayle broke by shrugging his shoulders,
sighing, shaking his head at Mrs. O'Rane with an expression of rueful
sympathy and finally opening his cigarette-case with a muttered request
for permission to smoke.
"Of course, the world will _say_--," he began.
O'Rane laughed to himself.
"I don't know that I've ever paid much attention to what the world says.
But Mr. Stornaway is going to arbitrate."
I looked at one disputant after another. Mrs. O'Rane's expression can
best be described as mulish; O'Rane was smiling, debonair and yet, I
felt,--it was the first time that I had felt it--unshakable. What part
Grayle was playing I could not determine; if he had been invited to
arbitrate before my arrival, he had not been successful, and I wished
that he would leave me to compose the quarrel uninterrupted.
"If you've promised yourself to Dr. Burgess," I told O'Rane after
consideration, "you can't disappoint him at forty-eight hours' notice.
It's out of the question. You tell me that he approves of your taking
Miss Merryon?"
"He'd do anything for me," O'Rane answered easily.
"Even so, if I may put it bluntly, it's an imprudent thing to do. Surely
the simplest and most natural solution, as well as the pleasantest for
both, is for Mrs. O'Rane to accompany you. If you want work found for
Miss Merryon, that ought not to be difficult in these times; I'll pay
any money for a competent shorthand-writer in my own office."
Neither O'Rane nor his wife offered any criticism, but Grayle
considerately supplied the reason which both were hiding.
"That was discussed, I think," he said, "but I gather Mrs. O'Rane has
her hands pretty full with work here."
"But you said anyone could do that," I reminded her. "And, as long as
Bertrand's here, there'll be some one to look after Beresford."
In addition to Bertrand there were two maids and a plenipotent
housekeeper, for Mrs. O'Rane liked to boast of her domestic
incompetence. Mine was the obvious solution, and I could see that she
recognised it. There was a suppressed yawn--and a gain of three seconds.
"If I died, some one would _have_ to do my work," she admitted, "or, it
wouldn't be done.... But, Mr. Stornaway, David's a member of Parliament,
his whole future is in the House; isn't it ridiculous for him to waste
his time teaching a pack of schoolboys?"
As she shifted her ground, I felt that my work was done.
"I haven't got much future of any kind," I said, "but I'm a
begging-letter writer in the morning and a second-class clerk in a
government office the rest of the day. These are not normal times, Mrs.
O'Rane, and he can't leave his chief stranded at the last moment without
anyone to take his place. When he comes back at Christmas, there'll be
an opportunity for reconsideration."
O'Rane said nothing, and I was disappointed. I felt that, as he had got
his own way, it would have been diplomatic and perhaps convincing to
pretend that he was consenting to a compromise. Mrs. O'Rane looked at
him out of the corner of one eye and pouted openly.
"We might just as well not be married, if you don't want me," she said.
"Come, come! Mrs. O'Rane!" I cried.