"Well, he doesn't! The other night we were talking about marriage. Peter
Beresford says that any man who loves a woman may do anything to win
her; it doesn't make any difference whether she's married or not----"
O'Rane leaned forward and resumed his stroking of the dog's head.
"Perhaps it makes a difference to the woman," he suggested.
"Then _David_ said," she went on, regardless of this interruption, "that
men and women weren't justified in spoiling each other's lives by
clinging on when one was tired of the other."
Every word was purposefully clear, and at the end she paused
invitingly. O'Rane sprang up with a ring of laughter and held out his
arms to receive her.
"Sweetheart!"
She made no movement until he had come a pace nearer, then she stepped
unrespondingly aside. O'Rane's hands met on the marble of the
mantelpiece.
"I--missed you," he said with a little breathless laugh.
I could not turn to see Grayle's face, but I was rigid with horror that
such a trick should be played on a blind man. Gradually what she had
done dawned on Mrs. O'Rane, and she threw her arms convulsively round
her husband's neck.
"God forgive me!" she whispered. "Oh, my darling, I'm mad! I don't know
what I've been saying!"
I turned to Grayle and asked him for a cigarette. A moment later I heard
a car stopping at the door, and Beresford was helped into the house
after his drive.
From time to time throughout the meal (whenever, perhaps, Mrs. O'Rane
was trying to make amends), my mind went back to the scene. The O'Ranes'
outlook and temperament were so dissimilar that I could see no common
ground between them. The outsider never knows why any two people marry
and is content to believe in the existence of an affinity hidden from
his view. These two were both so full of vitality, both so good-looking,
and, above all, both so young that I tried hard to resist a feeling of
melancholy and to persuade myself that I had been an inadvertent
eavesdropper at the oldest and most trumpery quarrel in the world rather
than the witness of an inevitable breach. The long windows on either
side of the room were warmly curtained in flame-coloured silk; the two
fires glowed comfortingly on to their half-circles of chairs and sofas.
Mrs. O'Rane, who could make a story out of nothing, poured out an
endless stream of anecdotes against herself. When dinner was over and we
left the dais for a distant view of high-hung chandeliers reflected
softly in the gleaming surface of the long refectory table, I could not
but be reminded of the Grail scene in "Parsifal."
The discordant note, the one persistently discordant note, was struck
by Beresford. Alien in mind from the rest of us, he neither forgave nor
forgot the contemptuous toe which had once searched his body for signs
of breakage; and after dinner he withdrew to a far divan and spent the
evening conversing in whispers with Mrs. O'Rane, who sat by him on a
footstool, while he played with her long amber necklace. The rest of us
reverted to a wholly undergraduate disputation, led by O'Rane on the
theme of my own unexpected fortune and developed by me into a
disquisition on education and the art of healing, though every question
and view was put forward in the hope of making my host expound his own
philosophy.
"You can't get efficiency without organisation," Grayle insisted as we
laid the lessons of the war to heart. "Nothing can hold together without
discipline. Look at Germany."
For myself, I have always regarded German organisation as the
over-advertised co-ordination of the largest number of second-rate
intelligences, but the criticism was taken from me by Beresford, who
interrupted his own conversation to inform the room at large that it was
one thing to teach a man how to shoot and quite another to be sure that
he did not end up by shooting his own officers. Mrs. O'Rane held up one
finger and pursed her lips, only to let them break a moment later into a
smile.
"Efficiency is the gravest menace that the war holds over us," said
O'Rane reflectively. "Whenever I've met it, it means being unkind--with
Government sanction--to some one weaker than yourself; Jesus Christ
would not have been tolerated by the Charity Organisation Society, all
the bourgeois press would have said that He was pampering the
incompetent and maintaining the survival of the unfit. Efficiency
frightens me."
Whether he was speaking seriously or in paradox, he had struck a note of
idealism which jarred on Grayle, who threw away his cigar half-smoked.
"If we don't learn our lesson out of this war, we don't deserve to win
it," he answered, reaching for his stick.
"But what is the lesson?" O'Rane asked, more of himself than of us. "Do
you men find that you think best at night?" he went on reflectively.
"There's less distraction ... and I'm always thinking at night now. I
would say that every man who comes out of this war alive is a reprieved
man and that we don't deserve to win it unless we learn that the only
crime in all the world is cruelty.... If we can't affect others, we can
at least affect ourselves. It's no use waiting for an act of parliament
to make you humane; if you're prepared to jump into the river to save a
child from drowning, you must be prepared to jump through a window to
save it from starving." He shook his head and turned to me. "But how
you're going to teach that, sir, even with your million a year to endow
schools.... The Church has had Peter's keys for nearly two thousand
years, but how many of us would literally pick a man out of the street,
turn on the hot water for him, lend him a razor and a rig-out, keep him
in funds till his ship comes home...." As he paused, I looked beyond him
to the sofa where Beresford lay idly fingering Mrs. O'Rane's amber
beads. "Of course it's all figurative and the gorgeous imagery of the
East and that sort of thing, but I don't know how any man could remain a
professing Christian for two minutes if he didn't believe that Christ
would bathe the feet of the first tramp on the road. That's far more
important to the human race than the Crucifixion. But then Christ was
always poor, and you can't begin to be charitable until you've known
what it means to be poor." His voice sank and grew silent. "I'm boring
you, Grayle!" he exclaimed penitently, as a boot creaked on the polished
floor.
"I must be getting home," was the answer, following hot-foot on an
ill-suppressed yawn. "Boring me, indeed? Enjoyed it all immensely." He
got up and walked towards Mrs. O'Rane, to whom he bade an elaborate
good-bye, while I followed slowly behind, wondering how such a woman
ever came to marry such a man. "I shan't see you this side of Christmas,
I suppose?"
She looked up a little negligently without releasing Beresford's hand.
"But I thought I was dining with you on Friday?"
"I understood you were going to Melton."
Mrs. O'Rane's expression became blank.
"I must think about this," she said. "Yes. I don't know how long it'll
take me to tidy up things here.... Oh, I shall certainly be in London on
Friday. David darling, you understand that I can't possibly get away at
a moment's notice--any more than you can."
Her husband nodded.
"Come whenever it suits you," he said, as he walked on ahead to open the
door for us.
Grayle lingered behind for a moment in the middle of the room.
"You mustn't stay on my account," he said to Mrs. O'Rane. "It won't be a
_party_, you know."
There was a moment's silence; then she laughed provocatively and gave a
mischievous, sideways glance at Beresford, which only Grayle and I saw.
"Jealous?" I heard.
"Not a bit. I shouldn't like you to come, though, if you were simply
going to be bored."
"Oh, if you'd rather I didn't come, I won't."
I passed into the street and out of earshot. As I shook hands with
O'Rane, Grayle joined us, and we walked towards the House on the
look-out for a taxi. He was silent at first and then started to discuss
the evening _communiqué_ from the Front. I could not help wondering
whether he, too, in middle-aged company under the penetrating chill of
an autumn mist realised that it was beneath his dignity to be flirting
with O'Rane's young wife and doubly ridiculous to be taking it seriously
and devoting an evening's ill-humour to the enterprise.
"Do you care about dining on Friday?" he asked me suddenly. "Mrs.
O'Rane will be there, and I'll rope in some more people."
3
Ever since his return from South Africa, Grayle had occupied a small old
house in Milford Square, with a bleak, discouraged garden bounded at the
far end by a private garage. I always wondered how he confined himself
in so small a space, for his turbulent flaxen head seemed to scrape
every ceiling and it was impossible for anyone to pass him on the stairs
or in the doorway or corridor. When Guy Bannerman was required at the
last moment, as now, to fill an unexpected gap, his loose-knit,
centrifugal body seemed to take up every cubic foot of space not already
appropriated to Grayle's use. But as a rule Guy was not allowed to leave
the big work-room over the garage where he covered himself and his
clothes in three different shades of ink and industriously "got up" his
master's subjects and wrote his master's speeches, while Grayle himself
devoted his talents to cultivating personal relationships, or, as his
enemies would say, to intriguing, from a superstition that, if he ever
let slip a conspiracy, it might not return to him again.
The party was small, the dinner perfectly cooked and served. This, at
least, I had learned to expect from Grayle.
Mrs. O'Rane was on one side of me, and I asked how soon she was going to
Melton, as I had shortly to attend my first meeting of the governing
body. To my surprise I heard that she was not going at present.
"You see, there's my Belgian work," she explained, "and Peter can't walk
yet, and I can't very well leave Mr. Oakleigh to the care of the
servants. Besides I've got an awful lot of other things to do." She
nodded across the table at Lady Barbara Neave. "Mr. Lane's written a
duologue, and Babs and I are acting in it at the Regency. And I've got a
stall at the Albert Hall in November, and I'm sure to be wanted for the
Imperial Hospital Fund _tableaux_. They can't get on without us, can
they, Babs darling?" Lady Barbara jerked her fair head quickly and
returned to her conversation with young Lane. "David was quite right,
too; I should be at a loose end at Melton."
Her reasons flowed easily, but they were not consistent with her earlier
attitude.
"I thought you'd fixed it up the other night," I said.
"No. We had another talk after you'd gone. It's only three months, and,
if he really wants me--" She broke off, leaving me to surmise that she
was engaging in a trial of strength with her husband. "This is quite a
pre-war dinner, isn't it? I love dining with Colonel Grayle; he's one of
the few people who hasn't got the war on the brain. I do get so tired of
war-talk, war-economies, war-work. I wish the thing would end, but
Colonel Grayle says it will never end while the present government's in
power; and Peter says there'll be a revolution when it _does_ end, so
it's a cheerful look-out either way. Don't you think Peter's improved
since he fell in love with me?" She turned to look down the table with
the rapid movement of an animal, and the lamps seemed to strike sparks
of gold from her closely coiled brown hair. "It takes people different
ways; Colonel Grayle will hardly speak to me to-night, just because I
invited him to dinner and then forgot all about it."
"Mrs. O'Rane," I said, "may I tell you that you talk a great deal of
nonsense?"
She darted a glance at me and then opened her eyes very wide, drawing
down the corners of her mouth.
"Ah, you're hating me now! And I thought you were surrendering to my
well-known charm. I _have_ got an incredible amount of charm, haven't
I?"
"We were talking about Melton," I reminded her.
"George--our friend George Oakleigh, I mean; he's known me all my
life--," she went on, imperturbably munching salted almonds, "George
says that, as part of his education, every man ought to marry me for
just one month."
"Actually you've been married two and a half, haven't you?" I enquired.
"Perhaps you haven't arrived at the full inwardness of George's
criticism."
She pouted like a child under reproof.
"I suppose you both mean something horrid." Her eyes lit up
mischievously. "I must tell George I've found an ally for him. He's
always rather loved me, but he says quite definitely that he never
wanted to marry me even for a week. He's always telling me so; that's
why we're such friends. I'm afraid you'll never even _rather_ love me;
and I'm ready to take _such_ a lot of trouble with you."
Mrs. O'Rane's voice is faultlessly clear; I noticed a lull in the
conversation and discovered that she and I were performing a duologue
for the diversion of our fellow-guests and the exasperation of our host.
"Has George told you that you think about yourself too much?" I asked,
as a self-conscious murmur rose once more around us.
"Oh, if you want a list of my bad qualities, go to your niece. I'm not
such a success with serious people, and Yolande talks about 'Ministers,'
when she means 'the Government,' and '25 George II,' when she wants to
quote some musty old law; and she considers herself a political hostess
because she once bribed the Committee of the Aborigines Protection
Society to meet the Governor of the Seychelles at dinner. Yolande would
start a salon on one poet and two private secretaries! Oh, I know she's
your niece, but you can't help that." She paused to draw breath. "George
only thinks that I'm second-rate."
"I think that you're deliberately second-rate," I said. "Which is a
pity. If you'd ever got to grips with life, if you'd suffered or been in
love----"
"D'you mean that I'm not in love with David?"
"You're still trying on emotions in a room full of mirrors. By the way,
we went through all this candour and self-absorption in the 'nineties,
and I think people did it better then. If you'll take advice from a
comparative stranger, twice your age, drop all this patter about this
man and that being in love with you."
Mrs. O'Rane became suddenly majestic.
"You mean I'm behaving disloyally to David?" she demanded.
Her majesty was as superficial and unconvincing as everything else about
her.
"My dear young lady, if you must try these airs and graces, don't try
them on me," I begged, watching curiously to see whether there was any
criticism she would resent so long as it was focussed on her.
She turned slowly away with everything of affronted dignity except its
essence, exactly as I had expected her to do. A moment later she turned
to me again, but by that time Lady Maitland, whose vigorous head and
neck always makes me think of a lioness that has been rolling in French
chalk, had first asked me to find a place in my office for her third
boy, who was leaving school at Christmas and seemed too delicate for the
army, though he was exceptionally quick at figures--just the man that
the Treasury wanted--and then enquired what I knew of the young
Beresford who was staying at "The Sanctuary." She would like me to bring
him to see her as soon as he was able to get out. He was a poet, she
understood; very wrong-headed about the war, but a good talker and
interesting to meet.... She had a small party on Thursday; that man
Christie, who had been removed forcibly from the House for calling the
Speaker a liar and refusing to withdraw, a ritualistic clergyman who was
in conflict with the Court of Arches, an obscure traveller who had
proceeded on foot from Loanda to Port Sudan, the managing director of
the Broadway music-hall and a novelist whose name she had forgotten.
(I may here say that I went and was given the opportunity of stroking
all the lions' necks twelve hours before the proletariat caught sight of
them and of trying to explain Lady Maitland to several little knots of
bewildered Scandinavian and Dutch delegates and some self-conscious and
incorruptible Labour Members who had either resigned from the Ministry
or hoped to get into it. What Lady Maitland thought of the lions, they
and we knew at once; what the lions thought of Lady Maitland they had
hardly time to formulate before being hurried away to tea at Ross House,
dinner with old Lady Pentyre and supper at Mrs. Carmichael's. I have
found it easier never to refuse anything to Lady Maitland, but I
hesitate to reckon how many times in a political crisis I have been
persuaded to lead political aspirants to school. When O'Shaunessy was
returned as a Sinn Feiner and refused to take his seat, I, who had met
him in America five and twenty years before, was deputed to bring him to
luncheon and Federal Home Rule with the Carmichaels, dinner and a
united-Ireland-in-the-face-of-the-enemy with the Duchess of Ross. There
was to have been a patient search for compromise at Lady Pentyre's next
day, but O'Shaunessy shook his head at me over the brim of his tumbler
and confided that these people gave you too much talk and too little to
drink.)
"You'd better get Mrs. O'Rane to bring Beresford," I said. "I hardly
know him."
"Someone must get hold of him before it's too late," Lady Maitland
continued gravely, and I could see that he was going to be adopted,
whether he liked it or not. "I hear he's got great ability, and it's all
misdirected."
"I'd never heard of him before," I confessed. "But then I don't read
modern poetry."
"I heard of him from our host--this is between ourselves, of course--;
there was some question of prosecuting him again for one of his
pamphlets." She raised her voice to demand confirmation of Grayle, but
he would only shake his head rather irritably at her want of discretion
and say that it was not in the province of his department. "I must talk
to dear Sonia about him," she went on, "and we'll arrange a little
meeting."
Not only have I led promising statesmen by the hand, I have myself of
late been alternately schooled and courted in a way that was hardly
known to me before the war. It is partly due, I suppose, to the
suspended animation of the Caucus, partly to the increased number of
groups and their social backers. As Lady Maitland convoyed the other
women to the drawing-room, Grayle threw his sound leg across the
shattered knee and told me he was not at all satisfied about our
reinforcements. At that, after but five weeks in England, I knew what
was coming. Guy Bannerman, with the deep, baying voice of a hound,
supplied the dwindling figures of the daily returns, I criticised the
waste of resources in men and ships on secondary fields of war, Grayle
opined that the country would never appreciate that it was at war until
every man was mobilised in the field, the shipyard or the shop, and
Maitland took the safe but irritating and unhelpful line that Kitchener
knew what he was about and that we must leave it to him.
I preferred to move away and talk to young Lane about his new play, but
Grayle quickly recalled me with an exhortation to join him and his
friends in their effort to galvanise the Government to action. It was
the first of a long series of appeals which terminated a year later with
the unblushing bribe of an office which I had as little fitness or right
to receive as Grayle to offer. I was content to take refuge in
Maitland's advice to leave it to the Government (alternatively to "trust
the P. M."; a surprising political retrogression for a man of his
antecedents), only adding that one Government should not have to
shoulder single responsibility for the joint blunders of all the Allies.
"It's something to cut your losses," said Grayle shortly and with an air
of disappointment, "to drop a mistaken policy when it's proved to be
mistaken. That's what I want to see done; and that's what this gang of
yours won't do. You watch out; France and Russia will make a separate
peace, if we don't pull our weight. Let's come up-stairs."
On entering the drawing-room, Guy Bannerman strolled to the fire and
entered into conversation with Lady Barbara Neave. Left with a choice of
Lady Maitland and Mrs. O'Rane, Grayle pulled up a chair beside Lady
Maitland, while Mrs. O'Rane looked at him like a chess-player
considering his opponent's last move and then smilingly made room for me
on the sofa by her side.
"I thought you were never coming up," she said. "I'm going in a minute,
but Lady Maitland tells me she wants to meet Peter, and I waited to find
out if you'd come, too. Any day next week."
"I shall be delighted," I said. "Friday's my only free night."
"Good. It will be just the four of us. Dear Sir Maurice is such a bore,
poor darling; I really _can't_ invite him. Now I must go. Shall we say
somewhere about eight?"
As she got up, I looked at my watch and found that, for all the
excellence of the dinner and the time that we were charged with spending
over our wine, it was not yet ten. The Maitlands gave no hint of
leaving, nor did Mrs. O'Rane vouchsafe a reason for her early departure.
I saw her shaking hands with Grayle and heard him icily asking her to
wait while he telephoned for a cab. With equal polite iciness of tone
she assured him that she would find one in the Brompton Road. I saw her
smiling mischievously to herself, as she walked out of the room;
Grayle's smile, on his return, was mysterious, and I surmised that
another trial of strength was in progress.
As we stood on the door-step an hour later, I asked him if we were
meeting at "The Sanctuary" the following week.
"She said something about it," he answered, "but I shan't go."
"You're too old for this sort of nonsense, Grayle," I told him.
"What sort of nonsense?"
But before I could answer, a taxi crawled invitingly past the door.
4
I have never been able to cope collectedly with a verbal invitation and
I am now too old to acquire the art. Otherwise I should have found an
excuse for leaving my intimacy with Mrs. O'Rane where it was. I had
dined the first time at "The Sanctuary" for the sake of her husband; he
interested me, baffled me, refused to let me get to grips with him, and
I did not intend to be beaten. His wife, I felt, for all her surface
fascination and vitality, was rather a waste of time. And her retinue of
fashionable actresses, elderly men about town and Guards subalterns was
intellectually too exotic for me. I determined that my second dinner
with her should be my last.
The door was unlocked, when I arrived, and Beresford was in undisputed
possession of the long, warm library, though several large boxes of
chocolates, an earthenware jar of expensive cigarettes, a parcel of
books half out of their paper and string and a profusion of hot-house
flowers dispelled any rash assumption that Mrs. O'Rane was being
neglected by her admirers. And, whilst I waited for her, Beresford told
me that the original party of four had multiplied itself by three. After
a pause, in which he tried not to seem self-conscious, he asked whether
I knew the O'Ranes well and rather wistfully volunteered his opinion
that there was no real sympathy between them and that she was unhappy
and unappreciated.
"I sometimes wonder why she married him," he murmured.
"Presumably because they were in love with each other," I said.
He shook his head with judicial gravity and an air of profounder
knowledge than a middle-aged, unsympathetic man like me could hope to
attain.
"I don't think they're happy. I should like to see her happier, she's
made such a difference in my life. Women mean something more to me,
somehow, since I met her ..." he confided, with a boy's curious passion
to discuss his emotional state with anyone who will listen.
"She hasn't yet learned the difference between happiness and pleasure,"
I told him.
The new tempestuous disorder which the room presented in O'Rane's
absence--paper and string and half-opened parcels abandoned when a more
pressing call made itself heard--struck me as being typical of the
woman. And she was late for dinner, which I consider impolite in a
hostess.
Beresford must have seen a hint of disapproval in my face. "Has it
occurred to you that all this racket is _deliberate_, that she wants to
live in the present ...?"
He relapsed into silence and sat supporting his lean, long face with one
hand. I felt Mrs. O'Rane had civilised him to some purpose and that,
unless he lapsed from civilisation within the next quarter of an hour,
Lady Maitland would find that her rebel-hunt had been in vain. I also
felt that the sooner Mrs. O'Rane rejoined her husband, ceased dining
with Grayle, going to the theatre with young Guardsmen and giving
Beresford the idea that she was lonely, the better for all and
especially for her.
Deganway and Pentyre, who evidently knew Mrs. O'Rane's ways better than
I did, arrived ten minutes later. We were still awaiting our hostess,
when Lady Maitland sailed in and, dispensing with introductions, opened
fire at a distance of twenty paces.
"Darling Sonia not dressed yet? But, then, no one's ever known her in
time for anything. How do you do, Mr. Stornaway? I suppose this is Mr.
Beresford? Now, Mr. Beresford, I want to have a long talk with you; I
hear you're a very original young man and I want to know why you're a
pro-German."
Thus encouraged, Beresford roused himself to demonstrate the difference
between sympathy with German atrocities and antagonism to war and the
system of government which made it possible. I, who have heard him for a
moment haranguing street loafers and have myself engaged in ding-dong
argument with him, little thought to see him so completely routed by the
sonorous enquiries of Lady Maitland, who put a question, announced
parenthetically that she was a woman with no nonsense about her and
flung out a second question before he could answer the first. Deganway
stood polishing his eyeglass and murmuring sagaciously "Yes! Yes!
_That's_ what our good pacifists never condescend to explain." Pentyre
lit a cigarette and confessed to hunger. Two more young officers, whose
names I never heard and whom I have never met again, drifted in with a
"Sonia not down yet?" and also lit cigarettes. I was glad when Mrs.
O'Rane arrived to end Beresford's agony.
Without a word of apology for her lateness, she fluttered like a
butterfly into our midst, brushed Lady Maitland's cheek with her lips
and pirouetted slowly on her toes like a ballet-dancer.
"How d'you like my new dress, children?" she enquired. "Say you do or
you don't, but please don't try to find reasons, or you're sure to go
wrong. Peter's the only one here who knows anything about colour, Lady
Maitland, and everything I wear has to meet with his approval."
She stopped her pirouetting in front of his sofa and stood, panting
slightly and with shining eyes, holding her skirt out on either side and
courtesying low. Beresford appraised it slowly, his head on one side,
fingering the stuff and taking in every detail from the gold and silver
band round her hair to the silk stockings and gilt slippers. An
embarrassed maid awaited her opportunity of announcing dinner, Mrs.
O'Rane threw her head back and smiled at me over her shoulder, with
parted lips.
"Someone appreciates me," she laughed. For the first time I realised
what her young and not very sinful vanity must miss by never being able
to hear a word of pride or praise from her husband. Sonia O'Rane always
reminded me of a child who cannot build a castle in the sand without
dragging someone by the wrist to come and admire it. "I don't think you
did that night at Colonel Grayle's," she said to me. "In fact it was
very forgiving of me to ask you. I've never been so found fault with by
anyone except David, and he's given it up since we married. I sometimes
wonder whether it is because he thinks I'm perfect or only not worth
bothering about now he's got me."
"I only recall saying that you talked a great deal of nonsense," I put
in. "I stand by that."
"Well, that's a nice thing to say when I'd refused three invitations
from people who were just dying to hear me talk. However, I suppose I'm
a cultivated taste."
"And you only invited me in the hope of making me retract," I added.
"Let's have some dinner," she suggested, avoiding my challenge.
She spread out two gleaming white arms with the movement of a bird
taking wing and waltzed to the table, calling to us over her shoulder to
sort ourselves anyhow; the order did not matter as there were ten men
and two women. As the others stood back for me to make my choice, I put
myself on her left with Lady Maitland on the other side.
"When do you go to Melton?" I asked conscientiously, as we settled to
our places.
She pointed a finger at Beresford.
"I can't leave my ewe lamb yet," she answered. "D'you know, last night I
was up with him until nearly three, considering which I think I'm
looking remarkably fresh to-night.... Besides, David hasn't _asked_ me
to come...."
Her clear and slightly over-emphatic voice travelled disconcertingly as
far as Lady Maitland, who enquired with some surprise, "Does Mr.
Beresford live here?" She was answered with a mischievous nod. "My dear,
you know I always say right out whatever's in my mind; well, I don't
think you ought to be doing that. With that blessed creature of a
husband here----"
"But he _brought_ Peter here and _kept_ him here and finally _left_ him
here--whether I liked it or not, Peter dear. Besides, darling Lady
Maitland, I have Mr. Oakleigh to chaperon us, and George drops in every
few hours to see that I'm not disgracing his precious David.... George
once said that I atoned for the number of my flirtations by the
excellence of my technique," she went on irrelevantly. "I think he'd
just fallen out of love with me and pretended that he never _had_ been
in love with me and never would be. You think I'm not good enough for
David, don't you?" she demanded of me. "I think he got the wife he
deserved, and he'll tell you that's the finest compliment anyone can pay
him."
"I'll ask him, if I remember. I'm going to Melton next week. Have you
any message for him?"
She deliberated with one finger pressed to her lips.
"Tell him--exactly what you think of me," she suggested with dancing
eyes. "It'll amuse him much more than a message."
"Are you going down to him this term?"
She shook her head.
"I'm too busy, and he doesn't want me, or he'd have sent for me long
ago. Not that I should have gone, of course...." She glanced quickly
round to satisfy herself that the others were absorbed in their own
conversations; then lowered her voice and laid her hand on my sleeve.
"Mr. Stornaway, you _do_ agree with me that it's absolute rot for him to
be there, don't you? Old Mr. Oakleigh's offered him any money he
wants--again and again; I've got five hundred a year from father; he
could wipe out what he calls his debts and live here with the utmost
ease. And he ought to be in London, he ought to be in the House; there
are all sorts of jobs that he could get in the City.... If you want a
message, tell him that he must choose Melton or me," she went on with a
pout and a rising voice. "If he hasn't chucked Melton by Christmas, I
shall chuck him. Tell him that I shall elope to Sloane Square--I don't
believe _any_one's ever eloped to Sloane Square, but it's the handiest
place in the world; even the Hounslow and Barking non-stop trains stop
there,--so sweet of them, I always think--I shall go there with Peter
and live in his flat and star in revue where I shall be an amazing draw,
you know; and Colonel Grayle would scowl at me from the stage box, and,
darling Lady Maitland, you'd boom me and invite fashionable clergymen to
meet me at lunch, and George would have his car at the stage door to
take me home--I don't know that I _shall_ wait till Christmas."
She paused for lack of breath and looked delightedly round the table. My
expression, I imagine, was bored, Lady Maitland's perplexed; only poor
Beresford's was unaffectedly pained.
"Mr. Stornaway's quite right," Lady Maitland said, when she had
collected herself. "You talk a great deal of nonsense."
"I mean it, though."
"Rubbish, my dear."
Yet I believe that both she and I felt a current of discontent running
underneath the froth of nonsense. Perhaps we shewed it, perhaps Lady
Maitland reconsidered her judgement, for, when Deganway sat down to play
rag-time after dinner and Mrs. O'Rane kicked the rugs aside and began
dancing with Pentyre, she observed at impressive intervals----
"Darling Sonia is always in such spirits".... "I don't think it's quite
the thing for a young man like that--quite good-looking, you know--to be
living here; Mr. O'Rane will have a great deal to answer for, if there's
any unpleasantness, and you can give him that message from _me_." ...
"Tell him a husband's place is beside his wife.... But he must make her
a home where she can live. I forget whether you were here that
night--yes, you were! Well, Lady Dainton's quite right.... Just like the
casual-ward of a workhouse...." "Of course, her mother brought her up
atrociously".... "I really hope that she's going to have a family; it
would just make the difference."
A week later I motored to Melton for the Governors' meeting. Town and
school alike had become almost unrecognisable since my last visit three
or four years earlier. Leagues of huts, miles of tents, acres of pickets
stretched from the outskirts of Melton to the fringe of Swanley Forest;
the drowsy cathedral town was alive with thundering lorries, and the
billeting officer's handiwork was visible at eight windows out of ten.
My car crawled apprehensively through the crowded streets and up the
hill to a school which was half as it had been founded three hundred
years before, half as it had been converted into a military academy
during the last fifteen months. Great Court echoed with the clatter and
scrape of hob-nailed boots, as the corps fell in and marched off to
parade on the practice-ground; one group of signallers on the steps of
the headmaster's house waved frantically to another group by the
entrance to Great School, and, as I wandered into the Cloisters to kill
time before the hour of our meeting, the Green was filled with pigmy
recruits, learning their squad-drill from a husky but intensely
business-like young sergeant. Only a handful of obvious weaklings wore
the old conventional straw hat, grey trousers and dark jacket, and the
open door of the Common Room at Big Gate shewed not more than two-thirds
of the staff in cap and gown.
"War takes on a new horror and hopelessness, when you know that the
schools of France and Germany present the same sight," I said to Dr.
Burgess.
Our meeting was over, and he was conducting me round the unaging school
buildings which I was thenceforth to hold in joint trust. The company
drill on the practice-ground was giving way to a final parade, and we
watched four hundred young soldiers from twelve to eighteen march erect
and with set faces to the Armoury and from the Armoury to Great School
for a lantern lecture on the Dardanelles expedition. A couple of dozen
non-commissioned officers had fallen out and were awaiting a course in
map-reading with their commanding officer.
"Thank Heaven! it will all be over before most of these boys are old
enough to go out and stop bullets," I added.
Dr. Burgess stroked his long beard and shook a mournful head. "Some were
yet in our midst when the appointed season came," he said, pointing to
an already long Roll thumb-tacked to a wire-covered notice-board. "And
they that have returned----" He sighed deeply. "David O'Rane enjoins me
to say that he is within."
We shook hands at the door of a bachelor set of chambers in the
Cloisters, and Dr. Burgess strode back to his house, murmuring
mournfully into his beard. I knocked and entered to find O'Rane
seated--as I might have expected to find a man with his physical dislike
for chairs--in the middle of the floor with the big, patient head of his
Saint Bernard on his knees. Miss Merryon was writing at a table in the
window, and a low wicker-work couch by the fire was timidly occupied by
a flushed and disputatious malefactor. She welcomed me by name to give
the cue before making an excuse to withdraw. I apologised to O'Rane for
disturbing him, but he dismissed the boy and turned with a smile and
sigh of relief.
"We'd both had enough of it," he confessed. "That young man thought fit
to play a practical joke on Miss Merryon, so I've been taking his moral
education in hand, appealing to his self-interest."
He felt for a box of cigarettes and threw them to me. "Well?" I said.
"I remember getting held up at Bâle some years ago," he explained. "I
was on my way home from Italy and I missed the eleven o'clock connection
to Paris. There were crowds of us there--some on our way back from
Italy, like me, some from the winter sports in Switzerland--all ages and
races, on every kind of business or pleasure. The next train to Paris
left the following day, and we had to reconcile ourselves to an
uncomfortable night. Well, I've tried so many varieties of discomfort
that I'm hardened and philosophical; I imagine most people would call
these quarters uncomfortable, but they're nothing like what they were
before Sonia took them in hand last summer."
He waved proudly at a pair of massive, discoloured velvet curtains, a
bamboo overmantel and occasional table, wicker chairs half-buried in
punt cushions and a threadbare carpet tattooed by generations of burning
matches. I put up with the same sort of thing at Trinity, but I was then
nineteen and I had no wife to accommodate. Mrs. O'Rane, I imagine, was
not schooled to discomfort.
"I got a good deal of amusement and interest out of watching the
others," he went on. "The French were the worst--voluble, excited,
indignant, grabbing the best places and all the food they could lay
hands on in the buffet--the way they always behave when they're
travelling; the next worse were the Germans--they were ruder and more
inconsiderate than the French, but not nearly so efficient. The
Americans all set themselves to westernise Europe and started getting
off protests by cable to Paris, ordering special trains and booking
three times the accommodation available at any hotel. The English were
bored, aloof, taking themselves and their troubles very seriously and
refusing to share them with anyone. Well, when the last bedroom had been
snapped up, there were still enough of us benighted to overcrowd the
waiting-rooms and buffet, we were all suffering from a sense of
grievance, and there wasn't enough food to go round. I got wedged into a
corner with a plate of meat and looked on. One of the Englishmen
commented loudly on the noise that a German made in eating soup. The
comment was understood, so the German laid himself out to shew the sort
of noise he _could_ make when he tried. The Englishman wrapped himself
in a ferocious dignity, finished his meal and lit a cigar, sending a
cloud of smoke in the face of one of the Italians. My attention was then
attracted by a brawl in the middle of the buffet; someone had
imprudently left his seat to forage for food, and someone else had
promptly bagged it. As they bickered and gesticulated and finally pushed
each other about and the onlookers took sides and joined in, I said to
myself, 'Lord God! this buffet is just like the world, and these fools
are behaving just as we all behave, and we should all despise and laugh
at ourselves as much as I'm laughing now, if we had any detachment,
self-criticism, humour, logic or God's common sense.'"
O'Rane's black eyes lit up at the memory of the scene.
"I was telling that story to our young friend," he continued with his
baffling smile. "Chivalry? Nothing doing. Moral sanctions and first
causes? Nothing doing. _He_ didn't believe in God, _he_ wasn't going to
Hell, if he misbehaved himself, so why in the name of reason should he
bother?... But I should think I fixed him over my Bâle story.... We had
a hideous night (it was too cold to go and sulk outside--which made the
symbolism more perfect; you can't sulk outside this world, unless you're
prepared to cut your throat); and we might have made it quite
tolerable, if only we'd had a little imagination and kindliness, if we'd
struck an international bargain and surrendered the privilege of eating
soup noisily in return for immunity from cigar smoke in the eyes, if the
chairs had only been given to the women and old men, if someone had only
lent a hand to a poor boy who was coughing himself sick with asthma...."
He whistled reflectively between his teeth for a moment. "Life's like a
club, sir; there are rules and conventions and an endless mass of
tradition--the things we don't do; but the rules were made so long ago,
the conventions only aim at an irreducible minimum. Even so, it's better
than treating the world like a company trading for profit, but we must
modernise the rules. As you know, I always want to delete 'efficiency'
from the English language; efficiency in the Bâle buffet would have
meant that an organised party of four, back to back, could have downed
the rest, grabbed all the food and cleared the till.
"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).
"Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.
"Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how--
"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'
"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ...
"'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,
"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot--
"Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot."
O'Rane's luminous black eyes were gleaming with mischief. Remembering my
first sight of him, when he fought for his life in a Vienna café, I
wondered whether any wife, reinforced by any mother, could curb his
restless yearning after action, were it blacking the eye of an oppressor
or slinging a disabled man on to his shoulders.... For all his
cosmopolitan spirit I could not fit him into the Byzantine world in
which Lady Dainton had brought up her daughter nor into the Merveilleuse
society into which her daughter had gravitated.
"It's--it's _really_ only a very big club," he murmured.
"Full of most undesirable members," I suggested. The Bâle story, I
felt, would be wasted on Vincent Grayle.
"They're not acclimatised yet. Now, you'd open the door for the most
undesirable member of the Eclectics, if he had a game leg, yet you laugh
at me if I pick up an injured man in the street and carry him home for
treatment. God's name! Where's the difference? _You're_ not acclimatised
yet, you see. It's to your interest, too.... How is Beresford, by the
way? Sonia's the most undutiful wife in the way of writing; I suppose
it's natural enough, really; she doesn't like having her letters to me
read by anyone else."
I never forgave the old men who advised and hampered me, pinning me to a
career for which I was unsuited and quarrelling with me when I broke
away from it. In my turn I have tried to refrain from advising and
hampering the younger generation--only to find that the younger
generation sometimes makes an astonishing fool of itself and that it is
harder and harder to sit silent and unintervening when someone whom I
like is on the verge of falling downstairs in the dark or of having his
pocket picked. Commenting on the fact that he was at Melton, while his
wife was in London, I warned O'Rane that, with their double portion of
wilfulness and energy, he was taking unnecessary risks with his married
life.
"I've not got much to go on," I admitted, "but that supper-party you
brought me to...."
"That was exceptional," he objected. "And they were Sonia's friends. You
were the only one I invited."
I reminded him of Beresford, Miss Merryon and perhaps three more obvious
recipients of his charity. He coloured slightly and told me that it was
an article of faith with him not to refuse help to anyone who asked.
Then I could see that he was not being honest with himself, for he
shifted his ground, concentrated on Beresford and asserted that his wife
liked him to be in the house.
"But do you think he ought to be there?" I asked, following him on to
the ground which he had chosen. "They're both young, attractive; your
wife's a very fascinating and beautiful woman. She can take care of
herself, of course.... It was in fact commented on at dinner the other
night."
O'Rane wrinkled his nose in dissatisfaction.
"He's company for Sonia," he said weakly.
"_You'd_ be company for her, if she came here or you went to live in
London. Much better company, too," I added.
My tone may have betrayed more than I intended to convey, for O'Rane
laughed.
"You don't like her friends? _I_ don't care a great lot for some of
them, but you must remember that she gave up a good deal to marry me--a
very full life--and I can't give her much. What I can give her is the
freest possible hand. That's why I haven't pressed her to come down
here, though, God knows, it's lonely enough without her. By Easter, if
not Christmas----"
"Won't you have given this up by Christmas?" I asked.
His face grew tired and perplexed, and he ran his fingers impatiently
through his hair.
"I don't know. I owe the devil of a lot of money; and I should be damned
body and soul, if I lived on charity when I could earn my own
livelihood. We'll discuss it at Christmas. In the meantime, can you stay
and dine with me in Common Room?"
His invitation was a reminder that I had already stayed perilously long,
if I was to get back to London in time for a dinner engagement.
"See me to my car," I said, as I put on my coat. "Look here, don't think
I'm a mere busybody. You and your wife are such a pair of children that
you mustn't mind a man twice your age telling you, if he thinks you're
behaving foolishly. I strongly advise you to throw this over at
Christmas. Now not another word."
O'Rane walked in silence through the Cloisters with one hand on the
Saint Bernard's collar. As we came into Great Court, he stopped
abruptly.
"Look here, sir; understand one thing," he began. "If you think I mind
or that I'm not grateful to you for speaking like this, I shall never
forgive you. But you say Sonia's to be trusted to take care of herself.
That's enough. If she wasn't----" He shrugged his shoulders--"she
wouldn't be worth keeping. If she fell in love with--who shall we
say?--Beresford and ran away with him, in God's name d'you think I
should want to stop her? I admit I've only been married three months,
but to me love's a thing of perfect, implicit trust. This is between
ourselves, but last week George Oakleigh came down for Founder's Day and
dropped a hint that Sonia was lunching and dining out too much
with--well, I suppose there's no harm in saying it--Grayle. As with you,
someone had commented on it at dinner. I'm afraid I couldn't pump up the
slightest indignation. Grayle's rather in love with her. So's Beresford.
So's that squeaky tame-cat, Deganway, of the Foreign Office. So's one of
my boys here--George's cousin Laurie, who firmly believes that he
brought me up to the scratch and made me propose--rather against my
will. So's young Pentyre, so's half the Brigade. If I wanted to be
jealous, sir, I'm afraid I shouldn't have time. As it is, I'm so proud
of Sonia that I glory in seeing other people proud of her, loving
her.... As for stray comments at dinner--I don't say it's right and I
don't say it's wrong, but she belongs to a very modern school which goes
its own way _without_ regarding stray comments at dinner. But so long as
we agree that she's to be trusted----?"
We had reached Big Gate, and he held out his hand to me with the
mischievous smile which I was beginning to know so well and which always
filled me with a sense of helplessness. As I looked at him with the
October wind blowing through his black hair, I reflected that he must
think me very old-fashioned to be surprised when a three-month-old wife
boasted of the men who were in love with her and her husband derived a
reflected happiness from her successes.
Driving back to London I felt that I was escaping mile by mile from a
bewildering world of serious make-believe.
5
My engagement that night was to dine with Harry Merefield and to discuss
something which, he said, he could explain better by word of mouth than
in a letter. I was intrigued by the invitation, because Merefield at
this time was of considerable account in the Foreign Office. We dined at
his Club, and, as the only other person present was Barton, who had
thrown up his work at Cambridge twelve months before and was now my
official chief in the Treasury, I divined that they contemplated a deal
in my person. The preliminaries were already settled, and, as we drank
our sherry, Merefield confided that the Foreign Office wanted me to go
out to America ostensibly to raise money for the War Charities Fund, in
reality to carry on a campaign of propaganda; my knowledge of country
and people would be invaluable and our relations had reached a point
where we could no longer afford to do nothing. Would I think over the
proposal?
"If this Press agitation goes _on_ ..." he began grimly and lapsed into
eloquent silence.
I must confess that I have never been able to understand what function
Ministers proposed that the Press should fulfil; they set up a Bureau to
control the supply of news and occasionally to restrain editorial
comment, but their interest seemed to die when once the War Office had
secured that direct military information was not to be disclosed and
that discussions and attacks should not take place round the head of
this or that commander. Valiantly they feared nothing, despondently they
hoped for nothing from a somewhat despised organisation which, despite
their contempt, believed in its own power and was capable daily of
placing the same view before every man and woman in the country until a
vague but obstinate conviction arose that "there must be something in
it." The Press with a little diplomatic flattery, might have become the
handmaid of the Government; with promptitude and vigour it could have
been emasculated to the semblance of an official bulletin. Instead,
Ministers treated it like an intrusive wasp, slapping at it with
ineffectual petulance, ducking their heads and running away when it was
angered, until Sir John Woburn and half a dozen of his fellows were left
to suggest, condemn, support and attack, to push favourite ministers and
policies, to be inspired by those same ministers and to indulge in
superficial criticism and the promulgation of half-truths which were
harder to overtake and refute than a substantial, well-defined lie.
Though never a Minister, I am afraid that I must accept my share of
responsibility, for, when the House of Commons abrogated its duty of
criticism, reform or remedy became possible only by a Press campaign.
"I don't give Woburn credit for excessive modesty," said Merefield, "but
it never occurs to him that his vile rags can have any effect abroad.
Yet, if you say a thing often enough, it gets repeated. The French and
the Russians are now beginning to ask what England's doing, what the
Navy's thinking about, and why we don't do more.... Wolff's Bureau
itself couldn't have a greater success than Woburn in making the French
believe that we're sacrificing them to preserve our own trade. We've
given America about as much ragging as she'll stand, and I want you to
sweeten things. You do know the country."
I know enough of America to feel that she has always suffered, as
Ireland suffers, from the characteristically English belief that because
two people speak a similar language they must have an identic soul and
that the Americans are a homogeneous Saxon race, estranged indeed from
an equally homogeneous parent stock by a certain insolent independence
imparted by General Washington to his turbulent followers, but Saxon in
orientation and sympathy, essentially sound at heart. When Merefield
asked me to go out, I knew that he could have found others better
qualified for the work, but at least I was a man who never expected to
find unanimity on the issues of European peace and war in New England,
purest in Saxon blood and tradition, sensitive to every European
repercussion and receptive of every thought-wave borne across the
Atlantic; in the Southern States, with their political concentration on
the negro within their gates and the Mexican without; in the North-West,
watchful of Canadian encroachments; in the Far West, with its eyes set
on a Japanese peril; in the Middle West, where the farmer of Illinois
and Iowa lives and dies without coming nearer than at a thousand miles'
distance to Pacific or Atlantic; in scattered, unassimilated lumps of
disaffected Ireland or duly prepared Germany.
"They're getting tired of hearing what 'America' ought to do," Merefield
continued. "People here won't see that there is no American people yet,
hardly an American idea, only the vaguest groping after an American
ideal. They've been snapping and snarling at Wilson over Belgium, over
the 'Lusitania', over his notes--as if he had a mixed population of a
hundred and ten millions in his _pocket_! I want you to explain that
it's only our fun. After all, they've got their own Woburns; they'll
understand."
My American friends were too numerous to allow of my accepting
Merefield's facile diagnosis and treatment. I knew then, as I had
confirmed later, that the commonest feeling in the American mind was a
quiet but affronted indignation at British ingratitude. Of the
organisations, the funds and charities, the work of humanity and succour
that had begun in America from the first day of war, not a word was said
in our press or speeches; over the hardships and inconveniences involved
by our blockade, over the sense of grievance occasioned by our
censorship of mails and cables, no sympathy was expressed or felt. When
Russia was dependent on American munitions, when English credit in
America was the hope and salvation of allied finance, we could find no
more gracious form of acknowledgement than a sneer at a so-called proud
nation which let its sons and daughters drown without protest and
shirked the sacrifices of war in order to steal trade, to sell the means
of destruction to others and to increase the ever-mounting accumulation
of wealth. I am too old and cosmopolitan to have any right to be
surprised, yet I always am in fact surprised by my countrymen's abysmal
want of imagination and international courtesy. I approached my mission
with the most unfeigned reluctance.
Merefield left me to think over his suggestion undisturbed, and before
saying good-night I told him that, if he would give me a few weeks to
order my affairs, I would gladly go for as long a time as the Foreign
Office chose to keep me. Yolande and her husband had attended to my
domestic requirements so admirably during my absence in Austria that I
had no hesitation in entrusting them to her again and in surrendering
the rest of my house for use as an office. My departmental work was
gradually transferred to other shoulders, though at one moment I feared
that the department itself was going to be extinguished. After
dissipating numberless troops on secondary operations in every corner of
the world except the western front, the Government found itself short of
reinforcements for the great offensive which was to break the German
line in the spring of 1916. The flow of volunteers was drying up, and I
heard much excited gossip about an immediate measure of conscription.
Grayle, I remembered, was very active and tried to commit me to an
organised attack on the Government; as, however, even he admitted that
no one but the Prime Minister could carry a compulsory service bill, I
told him that he must be content with anything he could get. My
department, or the younger section of it, was saved by a comic-opera
compromise whereby volunteers were encouraged to enlist on pain of being
conscribed, if they held back. To introduce a democratic note and make
the figures imposing, all my youngsters were invited to attest; to
ensure that the official machine continued in being, it was arranged
that no government servant should be called to the colours without the
leave of his departmental head. So, after a week's flutter, I was at
liberty to go.
There was no secret about the fact of my mission, and Bertrand Oakleigh
arranged a little dinner at the House to wish me good-speed. I walked
back with him to his rooms at "The Sanctuary" and looked into the
library to see if there was anyone about. George was asleep on a sofa,
but otherwise the room was deserted.
"I'm waiting to see Sonia," he yawned, as I came in.
"With any luck she's out at a dance and won't be back till about four.
I've induced Beresford to clear out, but I don't want her to be
frightened or wonder where he is."
He broke off to yawn again. I asked him how he had contrived the
eviction, and the yawn shortened into a smile.
"I didn't put it on the ground that he was falling in love with Sonia,"
he said, "because I suppose he knows that; I just told him that--a
comment had been made.... D'you know, after that dinner, dear Lady
Maitland called on me at ten next morning at the Admiralty, telling me
to use my influence? And I may say that when Lady Maitland tells me to
do a thing I do it. Well, Beresford is in the pulpy state where he'd cut
his throat if he could protect Sonia's reputation in any way, little
knowing the evergreen hardiness of that same reputation, and he went off
to his own flat. Sonia will probably be very indignant with me this
evening, but she's made her Peter much too lamb-like to be seriously
interested in him any longer. Anyway, if she isn't indignant with me for
one thing, she'll be indignant for another. And I seem to survive it
comfortably. So _that_ danger's over, though as a matter of fact there
never was any danger...." He filled a pipe and lurched wearily round the
room in search of matches. "The only danger for Sonia is from a man
who'll bully her," he drawled. "When she was engaged to Jim Loring, he
behaved like an extra lady's maid; she might still be blowing hot and
cold with Raney, if he hadn't shewn her very definitely who had the
stronger will. It was at the very beginning of the war, and he was quite
ruthless.... Last time he saw her, poor old Raney...."
"You know them both pretty well, don't you?" I asked.
"Yes. And the next question is, why did they marry? I can't answer that.
They were in love, but that's more a reason than an excuse.... Yes,
I've known 'em both for years. And for years I've tried to restrain
Sonia's destiny when I saw it going to her head. Oh, by the way,
Beresford's by no means my only success. I don't know whether Grayle's a
friend of yours, but I dislike him--always did, when I was in the House
with him--and the other day I thought it was time to interfere; you
couldn't stir a yard without running into them. This time I didn't
bother about approaching the man--that would have been too great a waste
of time,--but I talked to Sonia until she promised never to have Grayle
inside the house again and never to meet him of malice aforethought.
Which you will admit is a fairly comprehensive victory."
He looked at his watch and walked impatiently to the writing-table.
"Mrs. O'Rane seems to be a whole-time job," I commented.
"She's all that," he grunted. "Mark you, I'm fond of her in spite of
herself.... But I'm fonder of Raney, and the pair of them seem steering
for disaster.... I don't know. I may be all wrong. I'm a bachelor and
I've never had to humour a woman.... Here, I've finished this. I'll walk
with you as far as the club."
As I latched the door behind me, I asked what he thought of the life
which O'Rane had decreed for "The Sanctuary." He smiled before
answering.
"If you'd known Raney as long as I have, it would be just the thing
you'd expect of him--all taken _au grand sérieux_, too, of course. As
for Sonia, she'd consent to sleep in a doss-house, if she were doing it
for the first time--a new experience, you know. She was prepared to put
up with anything, I fancy, to get away from home and have a house of her
own; and she'd have cheerfully accepted half a room in a workman's
cottage when she married Raney. After four or five months of it, I
should think it's beginning to pall; the caravanserai life wouldn't suit
her for twenty-four hours in the day, she likes it for an hour after
dinner--for more new experiences. I think, I _think_ you'll find Raney
will have to drop it.... But I don't know.... There are five things that
are too hard for me, and the way of a maid with a man is the hardest of
them all."