"You're not getting suddenly anxious about my reputation, are you?" she
asked. "You _used_ to _like_ coming in and talking to me; and you know
how I hate going to bed. Of course, if you don't want to----"
Grayle opened his case and took out a cigarette.
"That cuts _no_ ice, Sonia," he said. "Good-night and thank you for
coming. I shall see you to-morrow."
"I don't think I shall come."
"Oh, yes, you will."
"If you're so afraid of being compromised----"
"You are coming to-morrow."
She was silent; and, if it had been day-light, I would have staked my
life that she was pouting suitably.
"You _used_ to say that to-morrow was a very long way off," she remarked
irrelevantly.
Grayle's voice became authoritative.
"You are coming to-morrow, Sonia."
No doubt it was the old small change of flirtation which had exasperated
Bertrand, and I had already been made to hear more than I relished.
Stepping into the circle of dim light, I bade her good evening and asked
Grayle if he had finished with his taxi.
"Hul-_lo_! I didn't know you were back in England!" she cried. "Have you
been calling? I wish I'd known. You've got to come back now."
"I looked in for a moment," I said. "Now I must get home, though."
"I'll give you a lift," Grayle volunteered.
Mrs. O'Rane looked from one to the other of us, and her eyes and mouth
hardened in an expression of pique.
"My society seems rather at a discount to-night," she observed.
"You'll find Beresford waiting for you," I said. "I've been talking to
him, but I've got to get home now."
She turned to Grayle, and I will swear that she was watching to see if
Beresford's name was a challenge.
"I must get home, too," was all that he would say. "I shall see you
to-morrow."
"Oh, I meant to tell you. I can't come to-morrow," she answered with
easy gravity, as though I had not heard every syllable of her earlier
conversation. "Well, if you won't come in, I'll say good-night. Thanks
for a most delightful evening."
Grayle and I drove in silence for half of the way. Then he asked me
abruptly how I had got on in America.
For some weeks I continued to attend to my own work uninterrupted by the
O'Ranes, but towards the end of the Easter term I had to make my way to
Melton for the Governors' meeting. A note from O'Rane invited me to call
before going back to London, and at the end of our business I invaded
his rooms to find him seated, as ever, cross-legged on the floor with
his head thrown back, lips parted and eyes seemingly fixed on the
ceiling or on something beyond it. The room was crowded with what I can
only call a cluster of boys sprawling on chairs and tables or
precariously perched with linked arms on the broad mantel-piece. Some
were conventionally dressed, some were in flannels, some in uniform; the
majority, however, preferred a motley of khaki breeches, puttees and
vivid blazers. It was the end of a field day, and a few of O'Rane's
friends had dropped in to talk with him. After some moments it occurred
to the boy nearest the door to ask if I wished to speak to Mr. O'Rane,
and on that, to my regret, the seminar dissolved.
As the last boy clattered into the Cloisters, O'Rane felt for a box of
cigarettes and asked me how I had got on in America.
"George told me you were back," he said. "Have you been round to our
place?"
"I went round there almost immediately," I told him. "I say, O'Rane----"
Perhaps he guessed what was coming, for I was not allowed to finish my
sentence.
"Was Beresford there?" he asked.
I hesitated for what I should have thought was an imperceptible moment;
and O'Rane repeated his question.
"As a matter of fact he was," I said.
"Ah! I wish I'd known that before.... Oh, _now_ I see why you
hesitated!" He gave a buoyant laugh. "I can assure you that Beresford
doesn't make me in the least jealous or in the least apprehensive. I'd
trust him pretty well as far as I'd trust Sonia; our outlook's so
similar, we've got so much in common. Well, the authorities have got
their eyes on him, and he'll find himself arrested again, if he isn't
careful. And he's only alienating possible sympathisers with the stuff
he's writing now. Did you read him on the typhus outbreak at
Wittenburg?"
He jumped up and brought me a copy of "The Watchman" from his
writing-table. Beresford's article made me very angry. A few days
earlier my nephew Felix, dining with me at the Hyde Park Hotel, where I
had now taken up my residence, had given me a sickening account of the
epidemic in the prisoners' camp; a fuller and yet more sickening account
had appeared in the Press, and from end to end of the country there
burst a storm of indignation stronger than anything since the outcry
against the atrocities in Belgium. At this moment and from this text
Beresford, who saw red at the news of the mildest cruelty to man or
animal, preached a cynical, superior sermon to prove that, if misguided
fools went to war, this was the kind of thing they must expect. The
object of war was to kill, and the only reason why the Germans did not
massacre their prisoners was that on balance their own losses might be
greater. But in scientific warfare it was unjustifiable to expect German
doctors and nurses to risk their lives for the sake of preserving the
enemy's. The English might; the English habitually boasted of picking up
survivors after a naval engagement, but it was not war.
"God knows _I'm_ not in love with war," said O'Rane, as I flung the
paper away, "but an article like that infuriates just the decent-minded
people he's appealing to. Well, bad taste is not an indictable offence,
but I had a hint dropped this week-end that made me think that Beresford
had better go warily. We had a man dining in Common Room on Sunday whose
job in life is to advise on people like him and the stuff they turn out.
We got on to the Wittenburg article, and it came out that I knew the
author. Well, there was nothing much the matter with that branch of
Intelligence Service; they knew all about Beresford, but they didn't
want to give him a free advertisement and make a martyr of him, so they
tried to get hold of him under the Military Service Act and stop his
mouth that way. He was ordered to join up on a certain day, so he wrote
a polite letter to say that he disapproved of war and did not propose to
fight. When the day came, he was well and duly put in charge of a guard
and marched off to the recruiting office to be presented to the army and
turned into a soldier. Before that could be done, though, the doctors
had their say. To cut it short, he was rejected rather more completely
than anyone's ever been rejected before--heart, lungs, knee.... One
doctor told him that if he didn't live in the open air and blow himself
out with milk, he'd be dead in six months. That was a week ago. The
army's been cheated of its prey, and my friend of Sunday night must find
another means of stopping Beresford's mouth. What the fellow must
understand is that they intend to catch him this time; their temper's
none the better for the little rebuff at the recruiting office. I was
meaning to come up and talk to him at the next Leave-Out, but I'm
afraid he may put his head in the trap before I can get at him. That's
why I asked you to come and see me; I want you to take him in hand."
After the Wittenburg article I was not inclined to raise a finger on
Beresford's behalf. And so I told O'Rane.
"But do you want him to die?" he asked. "If they shove him in prison and
he hunger-strikes again, you may never see him alive."
"I think I could endure that," I said. "The man's mind is perverted."
"Ah, then, you mustn't treat him as if he were normal," O'Rane put in
quickly. "I want you to go to him and tell him to drop the whole
business. Lord knows, I've been up against authority in one form or
another most of my life, but there's nothing heroic in getting shot, if
you don't achieve anything by it. You can get him to see that, surely."
By this time I confess that I had become one of many who found it hard
to refuse O'Rane anything; perhaps it was because he never asked for
himself.
"I'll try,--as a favour to you," I said. "Though I've no idea why I
should want to do you a favour. O'Rane, you're making a considerable
mess of your life."
The expression on his face suddenly changed, and he became courteously
unapproachable.
"Do you think we shall do any good by discussing it?" he asked.
"Every day that you let slip makes it harder to mend the breach. This
term's running out. What are you going to do in the holidays?"
"I'm going home."
"To the sort of doss-house life that you led before?"
"I--suppose so."