George smiled wanly.
"They'll kill poor old Bertrand between them," he said, "if they keep up
this racket much longer. Raney wrote to say that he was coming home as
soon as term was over and expected Sonia to be at 'The Sanctuary,' and a
couple of days later the Merryon woman arrived with the greater part of
the luggage and a box or two of books. She hadn't come to stay, but he'd
sent her up to verify a few references in his library for some work he
was doing; she was going back to help him finish off his exam-papers and
reports, and they were coming up together in about a week's time. This
took place yesterday. Now, I'll say at once that Raney's behaved like a
psychological ostrich over that woman, and nobody but Raney would have
thought it anything but outrageous for a man to let his wife stay in
London and calmly accept the services of a secretary--in his wife's
place and against her wishes. She'd put her eyes on sticks for him, too,
Miss Merryon would; and, if Raney doesn't know it, you bet Sonia does.
Well, I think it was partly jealousy; Sonia was furious at the idea of
anyone else being near her husband. Partly it was shame; when the girl
came in with Raney's belongings, arranging this, ordering that,
verifying the other, you may be sure that Sonia knew very well that she
was letting someone else do her job. And partly it was because she
couldn't get her own way. The combined result was a first-class row, in
which she said that the girl was Raney's mistress and told her that she
wouldn't have her in the house. It wasn't mere words. She escorted her
to the door, where the taxi-man was wrestling with the luggage, slammed
it behind her and pulled a chest against it. On the business principle
of having everything in black and white, she then wrote a descriptive
account of it all to Raney, which will no doubt be read aloud to him at
breakfast to-morrow by Miss Hilda Merryon."
He mopped his forehead and sent a waiter to fetch him some water.
"And what are you doing?" I asked.
"What _can_ I do? Raney's not going to be told that this woman's his
mistress; he'll probably make Sonia apologise to them both--or try to;
and he certainly won't let her be turned out. I should think.... I don't
know, but I should think that, on the day he comes back, Sonia will try
to run away again, and, if he doesn't stop her by main force, by using
all the authority he's got and all the brutality he's capable of
exhibiting, he'll lose her for good. Sonia's pretty well worked up, too.
So am I. These young people are preparing an early grave for me; it's
getting on my nerves."
"But her parents--" I began.
My unfinished suggestion was received with a silent smile, which was
perhaps the cruellest and most comprehensive criticism ever passed on
Sir Roger and Lady Dainton.
I was in the smoking-room at the House the following night, talking to
Vincent Grayle, when George's card was brought in, and I went out to see
him.
"I've just left 'The Sanctuary,'" he said. "And I thought I'd report
progress. Raney got her letter all right and sent very much the reply I
should have expected. _He's_ pretty well worked up now. Sonia's _got_ to
apologise, and he _orders_ her to receive Miss Merryon. It was an
ultimatum, if there ever was one. Sonia--she was like I remember her the
last time we met before she broke off her engagement with Jim
Loring--every nerve tingling. She stalked to the telephone and rang up
Beresford, informing me over her shoulder that she would not have _that
woman_ in the house, even if she had to bring friends in to turn her
out. Fortunately Beresford was not at home. Then she rang up this place
and tried to get hold of Grayle--'Mrs. O'Rane. _Most_ urgent.' Again,
fortunately, the reply came back that Grayle was engaged----"
I looked at my watch and interrupted him to ask when the message had
been sent.
"Oh, this moment--half an hour ago. It was just before I left to come
here. Well, we're likely to have the pretty scene of Raney driving up to
the door and finding himself barricaded out by his own wife. Beresford
can't do anything very active, but Grayle----"
"You needn't fear him," I said.
When the telephone message was brought into the Smoking-Room, Grayle
glanced at the paper and said that he was engaged. I did not know, of
course, who was trying to speak to him, but the messenger repeated that
the call was "_most urgent_." At this Grayle grew impatient and said
again and very deliberately, "I--am--_engaged_." Then we resumed our
interrupted conversation; he was crossing to France almost immediately
on a visit to General Headquarters and would be away for several days.
He had promised to introduce a deputation of his constituents to one of
the Ministers and wanted me to act for him in his absence.
"She's gone just too far with him," I said, "and he's lost his temper.
But there mustn't be a scene, whatever happens. You'd better tell O'Rane
to see you before he goes home; explain the state of mind she's in....
And, George, for the love of Heaven, get hold of Mrs. O'Rane and knock
some sense into her head--you say she'll stand a good deal from you.
This is becoming frankly intolerable."
Then we left the House; he made his way to "The Sanctuary," while I
drove home. Had we changed places, he would have been more successful in
his mission, for, as I paid off my driver, Mrs. O'Rane hurried up and
engaged him. Whether she recognised me or not I cannot tell; but I had
nothing to say to her and I was at pains to avoid an encounter. She was
in evening dress, I remember, walking eastwards along Knightsbridge, and
I wondered suddenly whether she had been calling on Grayle in Milford
Square. Then I remembered that Grayle was still at the House, when I
left. As the taxi drove away I asked myself, not for the first time,
whether I had not enough work and worries of my own without having to
play the double part of bland bachelor uncle and private detective.
A week later O'Rane came up to London and called on George at the
Admiralty. He was so far amenable to advice that he went alone to "The
Sanctuary" and talked for an hour with his wife, though they parted
without reaching a compromise and on the reiterated understanding that,
if Miss Hilda Merryon set foot in "The Sanctuary," Mrs. O'Rane would
leave and never return. I met him myself later in the day at the House
and was relieved to find him preoccupied with other cares. He had called
on Beresford and been privileged to hear the proofs of that
indefatigable pamphleteer's latest composition. It was entitled, I
believe, "Lettres de Cachet," and contained a bitter attack on petty
tyranny and misuse of authority as practised by the army. O'Rane had
tried to get the article withdrawn, but Beresford was inflamed and
fanatical with memories of his own treatment in prison and of the
attempt to silence his mouth by the exercise of military discipline. I
fancy, too, that he was puffed up with his own initial victory and
believed that, so far from seeking opportunity for another encounter,
the agents of government were rubbing their bruises and keeping out of
the way.
"I couldn't move him an inch," O'Rane had to admit. "I'm sorry, for I
don't want to see him killed.... And I--I must have been extraordinarily
like him when I was a kid of about fifteen, and the whole world was a
black dungeon of iniquity and injustice, and I had to keep hold of
myself with both hands for fear of murdering someone.... The first time
I talked to Beresford I agreed with most of what he said; I could feel
myself going white, if you understand me; we got emotionally drunk
together. And then I saw that he wasn't going to do any more good than I
should have done at fifteen, if I'd yielded to the impulse of killing a
man.... I felt that, if someone could relieve the shadows a bit ... I'm
not giving in yet."
We were interrupted by a division bell, and I gave him an arm to the
lobby. Then Bertrand carried him off to dinner, and I made my way to the
Berkeley, where I had promised to meet George and his cousin, Lady
Loring. Arriving a few minutes before my time, I was smoking a cigarette
in the hall when I caught sight of Grayle and crossed over to speak to
him. He was scowling in an arm-chair facing the door, with his eyes
impatiently fixed on his watch and an evening paper on his knees.
"You've not started yet, then," I said. "If you're going to be in London
to-morrow, I'll give you back your deputation."
"I leave the first thing in the morning," he answered shortly. "What
d'you make the time? Five to eight? On the stroke of eight I leave. I
don't wait _more_ than half an hour for any woman."
He hesitated for a moment longer; then pulled himself slowly erect and
limped with the resolute fixity of ill temper to the cloak-room. I
picked up the paper and was beginning to read it, when he limped back
with his coat and cap on, buttoning his gloves.
"If Mrs. O'Rane turns up while you're here, give her that, will you?" he
said, throwing an open envelope on the table. "You might say that I've
gone on."
Protruding from the envelope was a theatre ticket.
"Aren't you dining?" I asked.
"I had a whiskey and soda while I was waiting," he answered. "Can't hang
about indefinitely, you know. It's Eric Lane's new play. The thing
starts at eight of all ungodly hours, and I want to see some of the
show." I thought it unnecessary to remind him that we had met at the
identical theatre some ten days before. "If a woman can't have the
decency to come in time--Ah!"
He interrupted himself as Mrs. O'Rane came in, stood looking round for a
moment and hurried forward, smiling at two or three friends on the way.
"_You_ were very nearly late," she said, nodding at his cap. "If I'd
had to wait--Well, I suppose Mr. Stornaway would have taken pity on me,
however much he hates me. The spectacle of a young distressed female
simply fainting for a cocktail--did you remember to order my special
cocktail?" she asked Grayle.
"You are late," he observed, without regard to her question.
"I? But that's too abominable! If you're not going to be sweet to me, I
shall go straight home and never speak to you again. Late, indeed! I
didn't get home till after seven, but I had a hot bath _and_ dressed
_and_ disposed of four people on the telephone, all by seven-thirty----"
"Dinner was ordered for seven-thirty," Grayle interrupted.
Mrs. O'Rane puckered her lips mischievously and laid one finger on them
to enjoin silence.
"Are you listening to my story?" she asked. "If you'd just be patient
and not pretend you're working out the times for an infantry advance--"
She turned to me with a quick smile. "How long would you say it took to
get here from 'The Sanctuary,' Mr. Stornaway?"
"That depends how you go," I said. "It's no time in a taxi."
She clapped her hands in delight.
"That's what I always say! When anyone finds fault with Westminster or
the Embankment--fancy finding fault with the Embankment! It's like being
compromised with the Albert Memorial. But people do, you know; the
Embankment, I mean; they say it's not healthy--well, when they find
fault, I always say, 'Ah, but it's so central. You can jump into a taxi
and get anywhere in no time!' Just what you said, Mr. Stornaway. Well,
as dinner was at half-past seven and it took me _no_ time to get here,
there was no point in leaving the house before half-past seven, was
there?"
Grayle was nodding at each new development in her rather diffuse story,
but there were hard, unamiable lines from nose to mouth, and I fancied
that her smiles and tricks and absurdities were not amusing him. As she
paused for want of breath, he took a step backward.
"Don't go away, when I'm talking to you!" she cried, catching him by the
sleeve. "It's rude, to begin with,--and you know you're always sorry
after you've been rude to me. Oh! the times you've had to call with a
taxi full of flowers! I will say this for myself, I'm very forgiving--;
and, in the second place, you're missing the _real_ pathos of the story,
what the Americans call the sob-stuff. I left home at seven-thirty, as I
must have told you before, but you will keep interrupting; I walked to
the Houses of Parliament--no taxi--; I persevered down Whitehall--no
taxi; fainting with fatigue and weeping from sheer mortification, I
dragged one foot after another--for the honour of England, you know--up
the Haymarket--no taxi--; and, believe me or believe me not,
_as_--_you_--_like_, I never saw a taxi till I got here. Then an
angel-creature drove up and said, 'Taxi, miss?' and it was almost more
than I could bear. I wanted to jump in and drive round and round the
Park to shew people that there was just one taxi left in the world and
that I'd got it. Nothing but the thought of this _wretched_ play brought
me here at all--the play and the cocktail; you must admit that, if
anyone ever deserved a cocktail, it's me. And, if you say you haven't
ordered me one or that they're bad for me, I shall go home."
She handed me her gloves and held out a bag to Grayle, as she began to
take off her cloak.
"Now, is that the whole story?" he asked.
"That's a synopsis," she said. "I can elaborate it, of course. Some of
the people I met on the way----"
"I think we can dispense with that. Dinner was ordered for seven-thirty,
and the play begins at eight. I was starting out, as you came in, but I
waited to hear if you had anything to say, any explanation to give.
Stornaway has your ticket, and the table's that one in the first window.
I may see you later."
Mrs. O'Rane looked at him for a moment without understanding; then her
mouth opened slowly.
"Oh!" she exclaimed.
"Good-bye."
"Come back this _instant_!"
Grayle turned his back on us with a perfunctory bow and limped away.
"If you don't come back, I'll never speak to you again!" she cried.
Whether he heard her or not made no difference to his steady progress.
As he reached the door, Mrs. O'Rane turned nonchalantly to me with a
smile and a shrug. A moment later she glanced casually over her shoulder
to see if he was coming back. A moment later still, with amazement in
her eyes, she was hurrying after him into the street.
When George Oakleigh arrived with his cousin at a quarter past eight, he
told me with some concern that he had forgotten to book a table. We were
very comfortably accommodated, however, in the first window.
5
For three weeks I endured an unsought holiday in bed with influenza at
the Hyde Park Hotel. In my absence everything seemed to have gone on
very much as before, and, when I met O'Rane at the House on the eve of
his return to Melton, he told me that he, too, had spent the recess in
London with his wife and that Miss Merryon had been packed off to the
sea for a change of air. Outwardly all relations were amicable, but
Bertrand told me afterwards that Mrs. O'Rane consistently displayed the
guarded civility of a wife who had discovered her husband's infidelity,
but decides to stay with him rather than create a scandal.
"Are you going back to Melton, then?" I asked O'Rane.
"Yes. I haven't found anything else suitable so far. You see, I feel it
must be war-work of some kind; and it must be paid. I don't seem much
nearer solvency than when I came back from France twelve months ago."
I had a vision of "The Sanctuary," as I had seen it at the O'Ranes'
house-warming, crammed to overflowing with their friends and his chance
acquaintances. I knew something of his prodigal generosity and of his
wife's no less prodigal extravagance; and I could form no idea how they
kept their heads above water. Bertrand, of course, contributed to the
up-keep of the household; O'Rane had his salary as a Member and some
trifle from Melton; his wife possessed a few hundreds of her own, eked
out with chance gifts from admiring friends. Sir Adolphus Erskine, the
great financier, would give her a set of furs or a pearl necklace, Lord
Pennington would send her a case of champagne out of some unexpected
discovery at an auction, but this hardly helped to appease the
tradesmen.
"I don't know what you can expect," I said.
O'Rane frowned in perplexity.
"I made a lot of money and I saved a lot of money before the war," he
said, "but I don't seem able to do it now.... When other people ... I
know it's impracticable to go out and give a loaf to _everyone_ who's
hungry, but it's frightfully hard to refuse when you do in fact meet
them. I daresay it's mad, but George and everyone will tell you that
I've always been tolerably mad, and I'm afraid I've got much madder
since the war." He gave one of his whimsical, Puck-like laughs and then
added soberly, "Poor Sonia!"
"I hope you're in a state of grace," I said. "You know, a madman can be
very cruel."
He looked into my eyes, and I shivered; for, though I knew him to be
sightless, he seemed to be looking into my soul.
"Sometimes I feel there's not room for compromise in this life," he
said.
"You are--thirty? I'm afraid I'm a quarter of a century older, O'Rane."
"Thank God! there's room for inconsistency," he laughed.
I was at my office the following afternoon when George Oakleigh
telephoned to say that his uncle wished to see me at once on a matter of
urgency; could I make it convenient to come round immediately? I replied
that it was exceedingly inconvenient, but that, if he could play truant
from the Admiralty, I could absent myself equally well from my own
department.
"Thank God you can come!" he exclaimed with disquieting fervour. "It's a
bad business."
I arrived at "The Sanctuary" to find all silent and tense with expectant
tragedy. Bertrand sprawled with slackened limbs on a long wicker chair,
an untasted drink by his side and an unlighted cigar in his mouth.
George was looking bleakly out of the window, with his right hand
gripping his left wrist behind his back; the afternoon sun exposed every
line and wrinkle of his face, and I found him ten years older,
effortless and numbed.
"Tell me what's happened," I said, as I closed the door.
Bertrand looked at me for a moment, though I could see that his
attention was wandering, and then turned to his nephew.
"You'd better go back to him," he suggested. "I don't think _we've_ got
anything more to say to each other."
The second closing of the door was followed by a long silence.
"Tell me what's happened, Bertrand," I repeated.
"Oh, nothing!" He gave a barking cough of mordant bitterness. "I _told_
George it wasn't fair to drag you in, when you had in fact been spared
it. David came back unexpectedly this afternoon to find his wife in
Beresford's arms." He buried his face in tremulous hands. "My God! my
God! They've not been married a year! And a blind man!"
When Bertrand is cynical, I find him tiresomely cynical; not content
with condoning human depravity, he seems to take personal credit to
himself for it. When he is humanly moved, I find him unnerving.
"Tell me the whole story," I said, "before I try to comment on it."
"Comment on it?" Bertrand echoed and sat silent, staring at a picture on
the opposite wall.
The story, when it came, was old and simple. The end of the holidays
found the O'Ranes as undecided about the future as at the beginning; it
had been easier, I presume, not to discuss it, and no word had passed
until the evening before. Then O'Rane had announced his approaching
return to Melton, and from that the game, encounter, what you will, had
developed automatically. His wife begged him not to go, hinted that he
had promised to stay in London and after the usual interchange was
undecided whether she would keep him company. It depended.... There
followed the expected debate on Miss Merryon. O'Rane was taking her to
Melton whether his wife came or not, as he needed the services of a
typist; Mrs. O'Rane would not go, if "that woman" went, and, if O'Rane
went with her alone, he knew the consequences....
"Then I went to bed," said Bertrand, pressing his hands to his head. "I
imagine they must have had an unprecedented row, and this morning O'Rane
went off to Waterloo, leaving his wife like a spitting cat. I slunk out
of the house as soon as possible; I didn't want the quarrel at
second-hand. Sometime this afternoon O'Rane came back. When he got to
Waterloo, he felt that he couldn't part from his wife for three months
on such a note. He came back to make friends, to see if they couldn't
arrive at some _modus vivendi_.... He felt his way round the library; it
was deserted; felt his way round the hall and found her umbrella in the
stand; went upstairs. Her door was locked, and he tapped on it, begging
her to let him in. She shouted out that he wasn't to come in; and he
stood there minute after minute, praying her to remember their love, to
forgive him, to be reasonable, generous, to forget their wretched
quarrel. Never a sound came from inside the room. He had worked himself
up until he was sweating with emotion. When he stopped, there was utter
silence. Then he heard a cough...."
Bertrand paused to sip the drink at his elbow. It was not Sonia's cough;
it was the bursting cough of a man who had been trying in a long agony
of suffocation to repress it. At the sound something primitive and
overmastering took possession of O'Rane. He stepped back and flung
himself against the door, but it was old, and the weight of his body
only wrung a hollow groan from its solidity; within all was still
silent. Again and again he charged the door with his shoulder until one
panel split and broke in, and the lock creaked in outrage. Insensible to
physical pain which was quickly maddening his brain, he took a last
flying leap which wrenched handle and lock from the wood-work and sent
him to measure his length on the floor.
The same uncanny silence greeted his entrance. He drew himself upright,
rubbing his bruised shoulder, and embarked on what from Bertrand's
account was truly the grimmest game of Blind Man's Buff. With the
muscles of his back and arms braced to resist an attack, he advanced
slowly with arms outstretched and body bent, like a foot-ball player
waiting to collar his man. In the first half of the room his groping
hands touched only the familiar tables and chairs, but with every yard
forward he was uncovering a retreat for the adversary. Retracing his
steps, he kicked the door closed, pushed a bed against it and advanced
once more towards the window. In the unbroken silence he had to keep
stopping suddenly for a half-heard sound of hurried breathing, but his
own pulses were hammering so loudly that he could not trust his ears.
Nearer and nearer to the window he crept, until an unnamed sense told
him that he was within touch of a human body; as he paused, there was a
shiver followed by a sharp intake of breath; someone's nerves were
breaking under the ordeal. The waving arms swept forward and closed on a
woman's shoulders.
"Sonia!" he panted and could say no more.
For a moment longer the silence continued; then from behind her came
the foot-shuffle of the man whom she had been shielding. O'Rane's hands
dropped, and he sprang beyond her, only to bark his knuckles on the
wall, as his unseen quarry doubled and ran; there was an instant's vague
chase, the sound of a lame man sparing his injured leg, the squeak of
rolling castors, as the bed was dragged back from the door, a scratching
for the handle that was no longer there and finally the echoing slam of
the door itself. O'Rane sprawled once more on the floor, as his foot met
a rucked billow of carpet; the hurried limp grew distant and faded;
there followed the slam of a second door, and the house returned to its
afternoon silence.
What either found to say to the other neither Bertrand nor I had any
means of guessing.
"She's gone," he told me hollowly. "I saw her driving away, as I came
back from the House--just before we sent for you. O'Rane was standing in
the middle of the library like a--like a man in catalepsy. George came
in a moment later, and we had the story as I've given it to you." He
paused and breathed deeply. "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing,
Stornaway; my--my brain strikes work at a time like this, you must tell
me what we've got to do. There'll be murder, if he ever gets his hands
on Beresford, and we've got to stop that. I'd murder the fellow myself,
if I could, but we can't have David hanging for him. And we must do
something for David."
With a quavering hand he picked up the tumbler from the table by his
side and sipped its contents mechanically. His eyes were half-closed,
and his mind at least was asleep with very exhaustion. My own worked
feverishly with utter want of concentration. I told myself that I might
have expected this after my surprise meeting in Beresford's flat, that
it had been going on for Heaven knows how many weeks; then that none of
this was to the point, that O'Rane was in a bath of liquid fire, that
something must be done; lastly--yet my first thought and
appreciation--that none of us knew what to do, that nothing could be
done.
I have no idea how long I stood staring at Bertrand's shrunken face and
closed eyes. Death had left his fingerprints on the big, self-indulgent
face when the old man had his stroke at the beginning of the war. I
remember wondering how many more rounds he would survive.... Yet he had
lived fully, powerfully and pleasurably for more than his allotted span;
young O'Rane was little more than thirty and he had already undergone
what would have broken men of less heroic spirit.
Instinctively I moved towards the door, and at the slight sound Bertrand
opened his eyes and asked what I was going to do.
"God knows!" I answered.
Instinctively I found myself walking down the stairs which Beresford and
O'Rane had descended so precipitously an hour or two before. The same
strained air of expectancy hung over the passages and hall, and, when I
pushed aside the curtain and entered the library, George started like a
surprised criminal. The room was in twilight, and it took my eyes
several moments to grow accustomed to the change from the sunset glow
upstairs. Then I caught sight of O'Rane sprawling on the sofa,
motionless and silent; his hair was dishevelled, his clothes dusty on
one side, and I could see white skin and a stain of blood through a rent
in one trouser-knee.
"It's--Stornaway," George explained.
For a moment O'Rane seemed not to have heard; then he said:
"Thanks. Thanks to you both. Later on, perhaps.... Just now I'd
rather----"
I exchanged glances with George, who shrugged his shoulders and rose
silently to his feet. O'Rane collected himself and walked to the door,
fortified by the routine of social convention, as though he were
speeding a dinner-guest on his way. I passed by the flame-coloured
curtain and turned the handle of the door, looking round to recapture
the vision seen one night when O'Rane caught his wife to his heart,
while I looked on and envied them something that had never been granted
to me. There was no response to my pull, but, at the rattle, O'Rane
stepped forward with a muttered apology, pulling a cumbrous key from his
pocket and feeling for the lock with the fingers of his other hand.
George and I passed into the street, the door closed behind us, and I
caught the sound of rusty wards turning in an unaccustomed lock. George
put his arm through mine and asked if I was going back to the House.
"I shall dine at the Club," I said; and I wondered how either of us
could speak so conventionally.
We walked the length of Millbank in silence.
"You'd have thought he had enough to put up with already, wouldn't you?"
George asked dispassionately; then, with a tremor in his voice, "God in
heaven! it's a smash-up for Raney! I didn't think she was capable of it,
I've known her all her life, I'd have sworn she'd have pulled up in
time.... Of course, she's always _had_ to have people fluttering round
her and paying her compliments, and I wasn't a bit surprised to find a
boys' school of young Guardees hanging about the house the moment she'd
moved into it. It was the same when she was engaged to Jim Loring--God
knows, she knocked a big enough hole in his life, you'd have thought
there'd be some reactive effect on her.... But, on my soul, because
she'd been doing it so long, I thought she could be trusted. I thought
she really loved Raney, I thought he was the only person who could
manage her.... He _would_ treat her like a man. 'No one's ever let up on
me. Trust people, and they'll repay your trust....' All that
balderdash.... It's succeeded amazingly well with men, he can do what he
likes with them. But women must be fundamentally different.... We're
both bachelors, of course.... But I always feel there was a lot to be
said for Petruchio. Raney loved her most kinds of ways, and she loved
him on and off in some fashion for years; he really only _won_ her, when
he was frankly brutal to her--I had the story from both, so I know; she
was caught in Austria, like you, and he smuggled her back and shewed
her pretty clearly who'd got the stronger personality; then she married
him after he'd gone blind, when all our emotions were in tatters; and,
having once married her, he seemed to think that mere love and trust
were enough to keep her. I don't know; I've never had to live with a
woman; I can't help feeling, though, that, just as he won her by main
force, so he could only hope to keep her by main force. And he didn't
even give her the 'mere love and trust' I've been talking about; he
_trusted_ her all right, but I think the kind of practical Christianity
that he tried to set up was too much to ask of anyone--let alone a
spoilt darling like Sonia.... He's always been so infernally
uncompromising, it's his strength and his weakness; it's because he was
uncompromising that he's kept alive and it's because he's been
uncompromising with her that he's brought this on himself."
We had walked up Whitehall and were waiting for a gap in the traffic by
the Admiralty Arch.
"But this is all ancient history, George," I reminded him. "What are we
going to do?"
"To soften the blow? Nothing. We _can't_ do anything. Sonia's cleared
out, I suppose she' gone off to join Beresford. Well, Bertrand thinks
Raney's equal to murder, but you can trust Beresford to keep out of the
way.... I suppose there'll be a divorce.... I honestly don't know what
to do about Raney. He's my oldest and dearest friend, but I don't know
more than the surface of him.... God! If I had Sonia's throat in my two
hands!" He broke off and pulled me roughly off the kerb, gripping my arm
until we were half-way down Cockspur Street. "I've never been faced with
this kind of thing, Stornaway. I suppose you must have been?"
"Nothing so bad as this," I was able to answer him.
We walked on into Pall Mall without speaking. Then George gripped my arm
again.
"That poor devil alone in the dark with this--_this_ to occupy his
thoughts!"