"Proprium humani ingenii est, odisse quem laeseris."
TACITUS: _Agricola C. 42._
1
As I write, the war has been in progress for two and a half years, and
it is beyond the wit of man to foretell how much longer it will
continue, though there is the annual feeling that peace will come before
the autumn. In August we shall reach the end of the three years which
Lord Kitchener had in mind when he began his preparations, but I for one
look forward to the summer of 1917 with greater apprehension than ever I
felt a year ago. During 1916 I was the unconscious psychological victim
of men like Grayle who were so convinced of our predestined failure
under the existing régime that they went some way towards convincing me.
In June the field of war was extended by the Bulgarian inroads into
Greece, and, though we talked still of the "Russian steam-roller," it
was not until July that the Austrian counter-drive in Russia and Italy
was checked. The New Army, which had been so grandly raised, went into
action at the Somme and covered itself with immortal renown; we did not
quickly see how much had been spent and how little achieved--"Six
hundred thousand casualties and an unbroken German front," as Grayle
declared to me in the Smoking-Room at the House one night.
Grayle's political sense was good in that from the breakdown of the
Somme offensive he saw that the days of the Government were numbered.
Ministers never recovered the prestige which they had lost in the Irish
rising. The disastrous expedition to the Dardanelles was being
discussed so widely and bitterly that an enquiry had to be instituted;
so with the no less disastrous expedition to Mesopotamia; and, as more
men were frittered away in Salonica, we began to wonder whether we
should not have to hold a third enquiry, indeed an enquiry into every
subsidiary enterprise which every amateur strategist in the Cabinet
undertook in any theatre of war.
There were many who began at this time to swell Grayle's clamour for a
change,--a series of changes, indeed, simultaneously in the Ministry
which was weak enough to embark on this succession of costly failures
and in the soldiers who failed to achieve success with such conditions
of men, material and ammunition as the Germans had never equalled in the
days when the balance tipped highest in their favour. I had, myself,
always simulated rather a superior aloofness, for I felt that, as the
war was a bigger and longer enterprise than my fellows would admit, so
we must be prepared for greater failures in coping with it. Yet I can
see now that I began to listen less impatiently to the critics. The War
Office at this time was in the charge of a distinguished soldier who had
had the vision and courage to prophesy a long war and whose personality
and reputation were of inestimable value in creating the armies which
came to bear his name. Largely on newspaper prompting, the Government
had made Lord Kitchener Secretary of State for War, and the country as a
whole was reassured by the presence of an expert military brain in the
deplorably civilian councils of the cabinet. There was a simple-minded
faith, which expressed itself in Maurice Maitland's phrase, "Leave it to
K."; a volume of work which no single man could accomplish was thereupon
trustingly concentrated in the hands of one who loved to hold as many
strings as possible. Stagnation in the War Office gave way to chaos,
until one function after another--recruiting, equipment and
munitions--were withdrawn from his grasp and confided to others. Later
the Staff control was separated from the political control, and Lord
Kitchener gave no orders that were not countersigned by his Chief of
Staff; later still an effort was made in the cabinet to deprive him of
an office which he had ceased usefully to fill. He was sent to inspect
the Eastern theatre of war; he was sent also to Russia....
I am unlikely to forget a day when I was lunching with Bertrand at the
Eclectic Club. Maitland sat down with a blank face and said, "I've got
some bad news for you men. K's been drowned. He was going out to Russia,
and his ship--the 'Hampshire'--was sunk by a mine or torpedo--they don't
know which, and the North Sea must be full of loose mines after this
Jutland action. The sea was so rough that the escort had to turn back
almost at once...." Some time passed before we could discuss Maitland's
news, for Lord Kitchener had been so imposing an idol, so aloof and
mysterious--until you met him at close quarters, as I had done a few
days before, when a deputation of us waited on him and sought
enlightenment on subjects which we could not discuss openly in the
House--so well-established and unshakable; we never expected him to die
in the middle of the war, certainly we never dreamed of a death so
fortuitous, unnecessary, so much the freak of Providence.
"Yet I'm not sure it's not the best thing for his reputation," Maitland
said. "_Felix opportunitate mortis_, you know. There's a whole crop of
failures to explain, and his prestige must have suffered. Don't you
sometimes feel that we want a clean sweep, Stornaway?... I'm a soldier
myself, but it was a great mistake, whatever people may think, putting a
soldier at the War Office...."
The news was being cried in the streets, as I went back to my
department; half-way through the afternoon a messenger came into my room
to say that all blinds in all government offices were to be drawn; that
night, Yolande told me, was the worst she had known since the tidings
reached her nearly two years before that her brother had been killed in
the retreat from Mons. Wave after wave of men poured from the
leave-trains and surged into her canteen, demanding confirmation of this
story which was being whispered at the coast. And, when she told them or
pointed to the official report, they still, would not believe it. He
was the man under whom they had enlisted....
Yet, when a civilian was once more at the head of the War Office, I
believe that a new embarrassment was substituted for the old. As the
Somme campaign had failed to achieve a decision, men like Grayle openly
resumed the criticism which they had suspended for a few months and
demanded the removal of the responsible Commander in Chief and the Chief
of the General Staff. Thereupon two schools arose in the Press, the
House and, I believe, the Cabinet; the civilian backers of Sir William
Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig pitted themselves against their civilian
detractors; individual commanders were surrounded by social cliques and
supported by individual Ministers and papers. I was told by Grayle and
by the section of the press influenced by him that we wanted a
reconstruction of the Ministry and of the Higher Command; I was told by
the Press Combine that Sir Douglas Haig was the one general of
outstanding genius whom the war had brought to the surface.
Between the two I confess that I lost my temper. Even with South Africa
and the Antwerp expedition to his credit, Grayle was no more fit to
appoint or depose a Chief of Staff than I was to cast a play or select a
_prima donna_. But I found it difficult to say who was better placed
than either of us. Grayle certainly was a pragmatist.
"Results! results!" he would declaim at me. "I want the contract put out
to tender. Can you or can you not break the line? What men and guns do
you want? Here they are; you may have three months, and, if you fail, no
dignified home commands, but the completest breaking a man's ever had.
That's the way Napoleon would have done it; that's the way the Germans
would do it."
Grayle was very active in the summer of 1916. I could see him drawing
together and co-ordinating the scattered groups of disaffected critics,
and my mind went back to George Oakleigh's account of the "Stunt
Artists." There was the Liberal Ginger Group, the Conservative Ginger
Group, the Mesopotamia Group, the Dardanelles Group, all firing
occasional volleys into the arms and legs of the Ministry, none daring
to fire at the head or heart. The apparently strongest man in the House
at this time was Sir Edward Carson. Not content with criticism, he could
force the Government to bring in a bill, modify a bill or drop a bill.
Glad indeed would Grayle have been to consolidate opposition under such
leadership, but at this season unity was regarded as the first
requisite; no one was yet prepared to split the Government or the
country into rival factions.
If not active, I was at least very assiduous in my attendance during
those summer months. I was assiduous, too, at my office and in my
department. The last act of the O'Rane tragedy at which George and I had
assisted hit me as hard as the death of a very dear friend. I had
thought that I had outgrown other people's troubles; I found that I was
younger than I thought. When I met Bertrand or George, I shunned
discussion of the subject; when I went to Melton, I will say frankly
that I avoided a meeting with O'Rane. During May I fancy that the others
joined me in my conspiracy of silence, and we were aided by events. I
read one day that a certain Peter Beresford, described as an author, had
been prosecuted for issuing a pamphlet entitled "Lettres de Cachet,"
which was calculated to undermine the loyalty, discipline, and moral of
the army; the pamphlet was confiscated, and its author sentenced to a
term of three months' imprisonment. Whether he repeated his
hunger-strike or not, I had no means of knowing, as he passed out of my
life on his arrest and only re-entered it many weeks later.
Mrs. O'Rane had disappeared as completely and far more mysteriously. In
the early months of the year, quite apart from deliberate meetings at
her house or Grayle's or Lady Maitland's, I had caught sight of her at
least once a week lunching or dining in a restaurant or chattering to
one or other of her many admirers at a play. After the catastrophe,
though I probably dined and lunched in as many of her favourite
restaurants as before, I never met her. There was a vague assumption
that she was in the country. One night, as I was smoking a cigarette in
the _entr'acte_ at some theatre, Gerald Deganway came up, screwed his
eye-glass in place, squeaked a welcome and asked whether I had seen
Sonia lately. I told him that I had not. He rather understood that she
was staying with her people at Crowley Court.... After consultation with
O'Rane, George transferred himself to Westminster to look after his
uncle and to keep the household in commission. I believe that he
forwarded letters to Melton and I have an idea that there was a second
vague assumption that she was with her husband at the school. The ties
and relationships in social life were so much disorganised by the war
that no one was ever surprised by an unexpected meeting or a failure to
meet; everyone was too much occupied with his own business to care.
I had convincing evidence of this one day when I received a call from
Lady Dainton. She wished to equip Crowley Court as a hospital for
shell-shock cases--anyone could deal with ordinary wounds and
operations; there was no adequate scheme for treating these nervous
derangements, and she felt that her house was unusually well adapted for
the purpose. After we had thrashed out her proposal, I undertook to
recommend my Emergency Fund Committee to make a grant. There our
business ended, and, as I walked with her to the door, she looked at her
watch.
"It's no good," I remember her saying. "I hoped to leave time for a call
on Sonia, but I shall only miss my train, if I try. It's really dreadful
how driven we all are. I never have a moment for anything, don't you
know? This is the first time I've been in London for months, I've seen
nothing of Sonia for I don't know how long--Ah, surely, that taxi's
disengaged? I mustn't miss it. This petrol shortage is really the last
straw. As if we hadn't enough discomfort before, don't you know?"
I returned to my desk with a pusillanimous sense of relief. The
Daintons, then, neither knew nor suspected what had become of their
daughter. The secret was in the keeping of the O'Ranes, the two
Oakleighs, Beresford and myself. Somehow the disaster seemed hardly so
complete while there was no public scandal, and neither the Oakleighs
nor I were likely to add that last touch. For the others I could not
speak; Mrs. O'Rane or Beresford or both might welcome a petition for
divorce; no one knew what was passing in O'Rane's mind.
Before term was a month old, George went to Melton on a roving
commission.
"I would as soon spend a week-end with a well-bred block of ice," he
confided to me on his return. "He was courteous, hospitable--nothing too
much trouble to make me comfortable. We talked by the hour of fellows
who'd been at school with us, things we'd done--you know, endless
ridiculous anecdotes of how somebody's leg had been pulled, how we'd got
into some appalling row together. As a rule I find school 'shop' rather
fun, but Raney might have been reciting the kings of England with their
dates. He was utterly lifeless and mechanical; never a smile.... When we
went into Common Room for dinner, he played up and was a different man;
_they_ chaffed _him_, and _he_ chaffed _them_, and we dug out more
school 'shop' and he threw himself into it heart and soul. It was the
same on Sunday, when a pack of his boys came and talked to him after
evening chapel; he didn't let _them_ see there was anything up. It had
been the same when the enigmatic Miss Merryon came in the morning; the
usual smile.... Of course, he never came within a thousand miles of
mentioning it.... When I left on Monday, I told him that I wanted to
invite myself again before the end of the term, and then we did get to
grips a bit. He shook hands and said, 'Look here, old man, it spoils
your week-end and--I don't want to be ungracious--it doesn't do me any
good. I've got to go through this alone."
From George's sigh I felt that in this he was at one with O'Rane.
But, if not more than six people knew what had happened, there were many
who would be more curious to find out than Lady Dainton had shewn
herself to be. It was easy enough for Bertrand or George or one of the
servants to say that Mrs. O'Rane was away from London and then to hang
up the receiver of the telephone, but it was a different matter as the
weeks went by and as the more pertinacious enquirers called in person. I
could sympathise with George. The only person likely to interrogate me
was Grayle, and from the fact that he never mentioned Mrs. O'Rane's name
I judged that they had quarrelled finally and finally parted on the
night when I was privileged to meet them at the Berkeley. I had enough
psychological curiosity to wonder what had happened when she hurried out
into Piccadilly after him. Grayle had assuredly scored a game when he
asserted himself and made her run after him; but the game had been won
when he was too tired to be desirous of winning it.
My first tidings came to me at the end of May from my niece. She and her
husband were dining with me one night at my hotel, and she asked me
whether I had been at "The Sanctuary" lately.
"I've been very busy," I told her. "And I believe Mrs. O'Rane's away."
"She's not away," Yolande answered: "I saw her at Harrods' yesterday.
That's what made me think of it."
Yolande, then, knew nothing of what had happened.
"I wonder when she got back," I said as unconcernedly as I could. "Did
she tell you?"
"We didn't speak." Yolande's expression became hostile. "I suppose I
dislike her every bit as much as she dislikes me, but so far we've kept
up appearances. I bowed to her yesterday, and she couldn't help seeing
me, but for some reason best known to herself she thought fit to cut
me."
"She couldn't have seen you," I said.
"She couldn't _help_ seeing me," Yolande repeated.
2
Three days later I myself met Mrs. O'Rane in Hyde Park. Remembering
Yolande's experience, I determined that she should not cut me and, as we
had no opportunity of pretending not to have seen each other, I blocked
her path, bowed and held out my hand to her.
"I've not seen you for weeks," she said with a composed smile. "You've
not been to America again, have you?"
"I've been kept very busy at the House and in my department," I
answered. "Have you been away?"
"For week-ends and things." She glanced collectedly round to assure
herself that she was not being overheard. "Why did you button-hole me
like this, Mr. Stornaway?"
I suppose my real reason was that, if there had to be any cutting, it
should not be by her; and I had not made up my mind how to act when we
found ourselves suddenly confronting each other at the park gate.
"When a man meets a woman he knows----" I began.
Mrs. O'Rane laughed with soft, repellent scorn.
"As if you didn't know everything."
"That is, I believe, an attribute of the Almighty," I replied.
For a few moments she was absorbed in the task of digging with the end
of her parasol round the edge of a prominent black pebble. As the dry
earth crumbled, the pebble worked loose, and she was free to hit it away
and look up at me again.
"You know enough."
"For what?" I asked.
She sighed and waved her hand across the dusty, unshaded walk.
"For passing by on the other side."
"Habit is sometimes very strong," I said.
We stood looking at one another reflectively for a few minutes, each
perhaps wondering why the other did not make an excuse to break away. I
found her so self-possessed that it was difficult to believe what I knew
to be the truth. I have met unfaithful wives before, I have seen men and
women living in many kinds of social outlawry, but with none of them did
it seem to make so little difference as with Mrs. O'Rane. She was not
defiant, she was hardly even callous; and her manner was so natural
that I felt the last six months might well have been blotted out of her
life. Once she lowered her eyes to look at the little platinum watch;
then raised them again with a friendly smile. She was dressed with
unostentatious distinction in a blue coat and skirt, with a high collar
to the coat and a tight-fitting amber-coloured waistcoat with round,
pageboy's buttons; there was a high-crowned hat to match the coat, white
gloves, grey stockings and black shoes with a pearl-coloured border.
Though her eyes were tired and her cheeks a little pale, she looked
wonderfully young and carefree.
"You thought I wouldn't do it," she said at length, more to convict me
of bad judgement, I think, than to defend her own conduct. "Men are so
curious.... You all had the clearest warning, only you wouldn't take it.
You wouldn't see that it was the only thing left for me to do."
"And you are still of that mind? You feel it was the right thing?"
"It depends what you mean by right," she answered slowly. "Most people
would say it was wrong, but then most people are fools. And none of them
could possibly know what I had to go through," she added through her
teeth.
"They'll never know that," I said, "because you'll never be able to tell
them. As long as you're happy----"
"I'm very happy," she interrupted.
"And you think you'll continue to be?"
"No one can answer that.... I'm happier than I was. You, of course,
think that I've behaved criminally. I only feel that we made a mistake.
I thought David loved me, and he--didn't. I believe _he_ thought he
loved me.... I made every possible allowance for him, I did everything a
woman could do to make a success of our life, but you must have seen
enough to know that he never gave our marriage a chance. I was ready to
put up with everything until he humiliated me in my own house. Then it
was time to admit we'd made a mistake and to get out of it as soon as
possible." Her parasol was again at work on the hard-baked gravel. "If
he'd hated me, if he'd enjoyed hurting me, he couldn't have done
better. I never knew what men were capable of before."
In my turn I looked at my watch and held out my hand.
"I have not criticised you, Mrs. O'Rane," I said, "so I prefer not to
assist in any criticism of your husband."
Her lips curled into a sneer.
"You haven't criticised me in _words_," she qualified.
"I am trying to suspend judgement till I know the facts. You will admit
that it requires _prima facie_ justification when a young wife leaves a
husband who worships her--I will cut out the offending phrase, if you
like--leaves her _blind_ husband----"
I have only once seen Mrs. O'Rane's beauty of face wholly desert her. At
the word "blind" her cheeks flushed, her eyes grew hot and the line of
her mouth became broken and unsightly. Months before, Bertrand had told
me that her husband's blindness was the one thing restraining her, and,
though she had lashed herself into disregarding it, she evidently could
not forget it. I could see that a passionate retort was maturing, but
she pressed it back and took my hand.
"Good-bye," she said. "Remember, I didn't ask you to speak to me. This
is a matter between David and myself. You needn't think it was an easy
thing to do, but I faced it, I've gone through the worst----"
"Not more than six people in the world know that you're not living with
your husband," I put in.
She hesitated, and I could see her lips compressing.
"I'm ready for that, too," she assured me, valiantly enough.
"Where _are_ you living?" I asked.
"You must excuse me if I don't answer that. Good-bye."
As I walked on towards my office I wondered what use I ought to make of
my chance meeting. Yet how would O'Rane or George be benefited by
knowing that she was living--was _probably_ living in London? And this
was all that I could tell them save that, however great her
provocation, however unheeding the passion which had possessed her and
allowed her to receive a lover in her husband's house to punish her
husband, she was not yet insensible to every twinge of conscience: I had
succeeded in once flicking her on the raw.
Then I blamed myself for wasted opportunities; if I had been less
conventionally suave, less afraid of a noisy scene, I might have put
many more questions even if I received as few answers. Her life with
O'Rane was over, but what was she going to put in its place? He could
divorce her, of course, and she could marry Beresford--when he came out
of prison. I never felt, however, in the days before the catastrophe
that she loved Beresford;--to be adored and admired by him was one
thing, but I never regarded him as more than a diversion, when no one
else was by to flatter her. Even had the passion been there, I could not
imagine her marrying such a man. The blue coat and skirt, the
high-crowned hat and patent-leather shoes did not accord with a rusty
sombrero, Harris tweeds and a loose, orange-coloured tie; I recalled the
bizarre, bachelor rooms of Sloane Square and, in exaggerated contrast,
Mrs. O'Rane's ermine coat, as I had seen it when I surprised them there.
In any day I dare swear that she could not tell whether she had spent
five pounds or five hundred; but, if she did not know how much she
squandered in a year, at least she could be sure that it was far more
than she would ever get from Beresford. And, if she did not propose to
marry him, where and how would she live? Would she try to drag out a few
more months or years as his mistress with the four or five hundred
pounds a year which her father allowed her? Where and how was she living
now?
To a long list of idle questions I added one more and asked myself how I
was to behave, if I met her again. It was not easy to avoid her at the
second encounter when I had forced myself upon her at the first; it was
certainly no easier to continue as O'Rane's friend and to meet his wife
as though nothing had happened.
An unsolved problem spoils my temper, and I was with difficulty even
civil when a messenger came into my room to say that Lady Maitland
wished to see me. She was shewn in and proceeded straight to the point.
Was it true that under this ridiculous Military Service Act all men
under forty were to be dragooned into the army? I must remember how kind
I had been in finding a position for her son in my office. Well, he had
come home the previous evening and told her of a report that _all_ young
men were going to be taken. It made no difference that he had only been
allowed to attest on condition that he could not be called up without
leave of his chief. That was all a _scrap of paper_, apparently. Every
case had to be submitted to the War Office, every man given a
certificate of exemption or packed off with the roughest clerks and
factory hands into the ranks. What was she to do? It was intolerable.
It argues, if not self-control, at least great gratitude for past
hospitality that I did not remind Lady Maitland of the first dinner I
ate on English soil after my release from Austria, when she deafened me
with her denunciations of the young shirkers who stayed at home and
allowed others to die for them. I was finding no fault with her boy, who
might be all that she said; I had seen him twice and pushed him hastily
into a fool-proof room where he read the "Times" and acted as
précis-writer for one of my colleagues; if he were unfit for the army,
there was a chance that he might be rejected, though embittering
experience taught me that it was only a chance. If he were passed as
fit, the first girl in the street could take his place after a day's
instruction, and the office would be rid of a young man who was doing no
good to himself or anyone else with the number of whiskies and soda
which he found time to consume on his way to the office or with the
cigarettes which he smoked all day when he had made his reluctant way
thither.
"Has he been medically examined?" I asked Lady Maitland.
"It would be a waste of time," she answered. "I tell you, that boy is a
mass of nerves."
"Well, send him before a medical board with a letter from your own
doctor," I suggested.
To judge from her expression, my proposal was unexpected and inadequate.
"Isn't the best thing for you to send a letter to the War Office?" she
asked. "Bertie tells me that his work is very technical."
I was grown tired of that word through many a "conscription scare" and I
resented its presence on the lips of Lady Maitland, who had been too
free with her taunts ten months before, too disparaging of the volunteer
army and too easily insistent on the conscription from which she was now
trying to extricate her boy.
"_He_ had to learn it," I reminded her. "And, if he died to-morrow,
somebody'd have to learn it in his place. If you want to move the War
Office, surely your husband's the man to do it."
"I don't like to bother him," she answered.
As she walked to the door, I felt that I had lost a friend. It says much
for her magnanimity that I was invited to the house within a week to be
told that the War Office--without encouragement from Sir Maurice--had
behaved most sensibly, reviewing the junior members of my department _en
bloc_ and granting them all certificates of exemption on the grounds of
indispensability.
"We seem drifting back to the old life very much," said George,
pensively watching the bubbles break on the champagne, when I told him,
with some distaste, of my interview. "Here we are eating and drinking as
usual, I'm always being invited to dances.... We're getting _used_ to
this infernal war, you know, Stornaway, and we shall lose it, if we
can't put up as relatively good a show as the fellows who are being
killed. I suppose we're too far away from the front even with an
occasional air-raid to remind us."
"I was glancing through my diary the other night," I told him. "There's
hardly a reference to the war. The political situation, my own work----"
He laughed a little sadly.
"If I kept a diary, I'm afraid I should find a good deal of it devoted
to Raney and his wife."
"I did," I told him.
He looked up quickly and then lowered his head until his chin rested on
his fists.
"God! that has been a tragedy!" he groaned. "It's the biggest tragedy of
my life, bigger than when Jim Loring was knocked out. Presumably it was
all over with him in a few minutes _or_ hours _or_ days at most.... But
that poor devil Raney--he's some years younger than I am."
"What is he doing?"
"He gives no hint. It's about as much as he can stand--the agony of
it--without trying to analyse it or think what he's going to do next.
Did I tell you I went down there again? Well, I did--in spite of what he
said. I've a convenient young cousin whose people are over in
Ireland--Violet's brother, you met her at dinner with me at the
Berkeley--and I can always legitimately go and see him. It was rather
less of a success than my last visit. The first person I ran into was
Lady Dainton, who asked me to shew her the way to Raney's quarters. She
couldn't make it out, she said, that she'd written to Sonia about a
concert at the hospital, written twice and had had no reply. Obviously
she was away from home, but apparently it was nobody's business to
forward letters." George smiled ruefully. "It was a hit for me, though
she didn't know it. I send all letters to Raney, and Sonia's go in a
special envelope marked 'For filing only'; it was a formula he and I
agreed on, so that Miss Merryon could just chuck them into a box
unopened.... I don't believe even _she_ suspects, though it's bound to
come out.... And she's in love with him, and _that's_ supposed to
sharpen a woman's intuition.... Well, I've no doubt Lady Dainton's
letters were in the box with the rest, but that didn't bring her much
nearer getting them answered. I felt I must really leave Raney to deal
with her, so I said I'd promised to call on the Head and would come back
later.... By the way, Burgess sees there's something up; he'd see there
was something up if you built a brick-wall round it. When I went into
his study, he looked at me for about five minutes, stroking his beard
between his thumb and first finger. 'He is thine own familiar friend,
whom thou lovest,' he began without any beating about the bush. 'I know
the whole story, sir,' I said. 'If I thought for a week, I couldn't
think of anything worse. If I may make a suggestion, sir, the kindest
thing you can do is not to notice anything.' Burgess stroked his beard a
bit more; then he said--'The adder is not more deaf.' But I'm prepared
to bet he's made a very shrewd guess."
"Did you gather how O'Rane disposed of Lady Dainton?" I asked.
George shrugged his shoulders.
"He had to say that Sonia wasn't at 'The Sanctuary' and he had to admit
that he didn't know her address at the moment. Fortunately, Lady Dainton
is so ready to think ill of him and so very unready to think ill of her
darling daughter that she never dreamed or suspected what had happened.
I don't know whether she went further than thinking that Sonia was
staying with friends and that Raney wasn't sufficiently interested in
her to discover her whereabouts; perhaps she did, for she took the
opportunity of saying that it was monstrous for him to desert his wife
like this for three months at a time, but that, on her honour, he didn't
deserve to have a wife, if she was to be condemned to the life he had
led at Melton or in London. Raney was smiling to himself and saying
nothing, when I came in, so she turned her batteries on to me. As a rule
she frightens me into agreeing with anything she says, but this time I
did pluck up courage to tell her that, in my opinion, when two people
married, they must be left to work out their own salvation. There's a
certain irony there, Stornaway,--I was conscious of it at the time--when
you think of the way you and Bertrand and I laboured to keep their boat
from capsizing. She didn't appreciate the irony, though; she only
thought I was being rather rude. That didn't matter so long as I got rid
of her."
He pushed away his plate, sighed and rose from the table.
"Did you have any talk with O'Rane?" I asked, as we went upstairs
together.
"That depends on your definition of talk," he answered with a joyless
smile. "We emitted words at each other. It--I don't mind telling you,
Stornaway,--it hurt like sin to find that I couldn't get near him. I
suppose it was a compliment to our friendship that he didn't try to cut
jokes as he did when I dined with him in Common Room the last time, but
it was an unfilling sort of compliment.... No, to offer him any kind of
sympathy would have been to get myself pitched out of the room. I felt
that. He was in a suit of mail.... I should have thought--but then I've
not been through it and, please God! I never shall. It did hurt, though,
because there hasn't been much that we've kept from each other all these
years."
He laughed a little at his own sensibility. I thought for a moment and
then told him of my meeting that day in Hyde Park. From behind their
rimless glasses, his eyes were fixed unwaveringly on mine, and at the
end he made no comment.
"What line do you propose to take if _you_ meet her?" I asked.
His brows set in a forbidding frown, and, when he spoke, it was between
closed teeth, and his voice trembled.
"I think I told you, my _instinct_ is to get her neck between my two
hands and shake her as a terrier shakes a rat. I suppose that would be
out of place in the more public parts of London, so I shall walk quietly
past her. What induced you, knowing all you did----"
"I have no idea why I did it," I said, quite humbly.
"Are you going to do it again?"
"My dear George, once more, I have no idea. I'm like O'Rane in that I
haven't been in the mood to analyse or make decisions. I've shirked
them. I've deliberately tried to keep my mind occupied with other things
so that I _shouldn't_ have to think about this miserable business. Most
of us are doing that, I fancy."
He was silent for many moments, and I fancied that he was visualising
my meeting in the light of an early summer morning in Hyde Park with
Sonia O'Rane, brown-eyed, red-lipped, redolent--to the senses--of purity
and young freshness.
"As long as that swine's under lock and key," he said at length, "she
can't make a move. And, when he's out, they're bound to hold their hand
till they see what Raney's going to do, whether he's going to face a
divorce--when I say 'face,' it's on her account, of course. He'd stand
anything for himself, but I don't know that he'd let any damned
two-and-one junior put questions to Sonia--I don't know, and he doesn't
know...." He covered his face with his hands. "God in Heaven! Stornaway!
I remember when I was the oldest fourth-year man and he was a freshman
and she was nothing at all--a lovely little slip of a girl who'd been
sent up for Commem. in place of a woman who'd failed us. Raney'd loved
her ever since he'd first set those god-sent eyes of his on her, and
they solemnly got engaged that night--when he was nineteen and she a
baby three years younger...." The rising voice which was beginning to
make our neighbours turn curiously round stopped of a sudden. "Sorry!
I'm apt to break out every time I think of that boy coming back from the
front ... and not letting it make _that_ much difference to him ... and
starting again at the bottom for God-knows-the-how-manyth-time--and
then--_this_.... Well, Raney's not in a state to say whether he'll
divorce her or not, what he will do, what he wants to do. You're quite
right, we're none of us in a position to analyse. By the way, what do
you propose to do, if you run into Beresford?"
"I don't see myself engaging him in conversation," I said.
3
As a false merit seems still to attach to frankness, let me record that,
when I met Beresford some three weeks later, I bowed to him and
subsequently went up and exchanged a few words. This meeting also took
place in Hyde Park, I was again making a slight _détour_ for the sake
of seeing the flowers and once more I turned in at Albert Gate and was
nodding before I saw who had nodded to me. When I recognised Beresford,
there was a moment's impulse to stalk away, but I am glad to say that I
did not yield to it.
He was sitting in a bath-chair, out of the wind and in the sun,
alternately dozing and waking with a start to look at the flowers and
then close his eyes again. I have seen sick men in various parts of the
world, but I doubt if I ever saw one who was still alive and yet looked
nearer death. All flesh had disappeared from his face, until the bones
of jaw, temple and nose threatened to cut through the waxen skin; his
eye-lids were more vermilion than pink, with a permanent dusty-grey
shadow darkening the hollow sockets. One hand lay exposed outside the
rug, so thin that it seemed as if the bones must grate together; the
other pressed painfully to his side whenever he began to cough.
"Why, how do you do?" he exclaimed in a weak whisper, bowing a second
time, as his eye-lids flickered open and he found me watching him.
"You look remarkably ill," was all I could say.
"I'm better than I have been. It was really rather a close shave this
time. They evidently felt it was a point of honour not to be beaten
again and they kept me there just twenty-four hours longer than I could
conveniently stand. I wasn't conscious of anything,--I hadn't been for
some while before and I wasn't to be for some time after--but they had a
bad scare. After doing their best to kill me for five days, they spent
five weeks trying to keep me alive--so like war and peace, you know;
wasteful, irrational and utterly, utterly purposeless. In a few weeks'
time I shall be where I was when last we met; the Government will have
kept me quiet for perhaps two months and will have expended a portion of
a magistrate's time, ditto ditto prosecuting counsel, and six weeks'
bed, board, share of prison staff and really first-rate medical
attention. No one could have been better treated when once they were
afraid they'd killed me."
He tried to laugh, but only succeeded in making himself cough. As he
shook and rocked, growing momentarily pink and then reverting to a
deathlier white, as I watched that bag of tuberculous bones being held
together by a nervous refusal to die, I shared the sense of waste which
O'Rane had once expressed to me. An impulse came to me, and I acted on
it before I could give myself time to be cautious and niggardly.
"If I can get you out to South Africa, will you go?" I asked him.
He tried to speak before he had finished coughing, and the attack
redoubled in violence.
"That would be playing their game _rather_ too much," he said with a
skeleton's grin.
"You're playing their game as quickly and more permanently by staying
here."
"You mean I'm going to die? Now, there you're wrong. Of course, I shall
die _some_ time like everyone else, but I'm actually getting better now.
If you'd seen me a month ago----!" He looked round at the flowers with
eyes that burned feverishly. "I've got so much to do, there's so much to
live for! Don't you feel you _can't_ die, you _won't_ die, when you see
all the new leaves with that shade of green which seems only to last for
a day before it becomes dark, dull, mature, dirty.... And the first
flowers--before we've had time to be sated with them. This is June,
summer.... And long before that, the little pink, sticky buds bursting
everywhere.... And those curious fluffy things which you find on some
shrubs and which seem to serve no purpose in nature.... I shall die in
the autumn, when I _do_ die; I couldn't in the spring, when the whole
world's renewing itself and there's so much to do. God! there is so much
to do!"
He smiled to himself, and his eyes suddenly closed. It was more than
time for me to be on my way, but the scrape of my heel on the gravel
roused him, and he held out his hand.
"It was kind of you--about South Africa, I mean,--but I can't get
away--for reasons which I needn't discuss. And in any event it isn't
necessary; I'm going to get well without that."
I shook hands and turned my steps eastwards. There are few things more
painful than the dying consumptive's belief that he will recover.
Beresford called me back with a cry that brought on another fit of
coughing.
"I'm in my old quarters," he said. "You were rather--disgruntled by your
last visit, I remember, but, if you've got over the shock and can ever
spare a moment to call----"
This time I shook my head without hesitation or compassion. I do not
remember ever being more affronted. A chance encounter in the street
might be excused me; one may be pardoned for not upbraiding one's worst
enemy when he is as near his death-bed as Beresford was; but it was
another thing altogether to condone the past and acquiesce in the
present. It was also what Mrs. O'Rane had virtually challenged me to do,
when she lost her temper in Beresford's flat and asked whether I should
continue to know her when she had come to live with him.
"I shall not call," I said. "Good-bye."
Thereafter I denied myself the walk from Albert Gate to Hyde Park Corner
and went to my office through Belgrave Square and the Green Park.
I kept my own counsel about our meeting and went on with my own work,
trying not to think of the O'Rane tragedy until it was brought to my
notice by a chance encounter with O'Rane himself. I was deliberately not
seeking his company, but I was pleased when he joined me in the Smoking
Room at the House.
"_Your_ voice at least is quite unmistakable," he said with his old
smile. "So is Grayle's. The people who beat me are most of the Irish and
a sprinkling of the Labour men--fellows who don't open their mouths from
one end of the session to the other. And I'm here so little that it's
slow work learning. Still, I'll back myself to be right ninety-five
times out of a hundred, if I've heard a voice more than once. Do you
know whether old Oakleigh is about?"
"I saw him here before dinner," I said.
"I promised to walk home with him. Why don't you come along, too?
There's nothing of any interest on, and you can smoke in greater comfort
at my place. Let's see if we can hunt him out."
Bertrand had sat down late, and we found him finishing his coffee in an
almost deserted dining-room. It was still light, however, when we got
outside, and we strolled at an easy pace along Millbank to "The
Sanctuary." I had not been there since the night nearly three months
before when O'Rane's life was broken in two. As we walked, I thought of
the other night when Grayle and I met him for the first time, when, too,
he had carried Beresford on his own back into the now empty house. He
could not but be thinking of it himself, and I hardly knew whether to
pity or admire him the more for his unembarrassed way of admitting us to
his secret without suffering us to allude to it.
Unlocking the door, he went ahead to turn on the lights, came back to
relieve us of our coats and bade us help ourselves from the side-board,
while he opened a box of cigars. Perhaps from nervousness he talked
rather more than usual and shewed himself unnecessarily solicitous for
our comfort; otherwise we might have been sitting, as we occasionally
sat ten months before, waiting for Mrs. O'Rane to come back from the
theatre.... I confess that I started--I believe we all started--when we
heard a taxi draw nearer and nearer, turn out of Millbank and stop at
the door. Bertrand and I were facing the room, and we both of us gave a
quick glance over our shoulders. O'Rane continued talking unconcernedly,
only stopping when the curtain was pushed aside and George came in.
"It's a great thing to have a place where you can be sure of a drink
after licensed hours," he remarked contentedly. "I've had no dinner and
not much lunch; and I've left the Admiralty this moment. This war's got
beyond the joke some people still think it. Don't mind me, Raney, I'm
going to fend for myself and eat solidly for the next half-hour. What's
the question before the House?"
He seated himself on the arm of my chair with a hunk of bread and
cheese in one hand and a tumbler of whiskey and soda in the other. We
were talking of the way in which our original intervention on behalf of
Belgian neutrality had been overlaid by the nationalist ambitions of
Italy in south Austria, France in Alsace-Lorraine, and by the frankly
imperialist trend of Russia towards Constantinople and of ourselves
towards Mesopotamia and in Africa and the Pacific.
"It may have been wise, it may be necessary," said O'Rane dubiously.
"Perhaps you couldn't bring Italy in without promising Trieste and the
Trentino, perhaps you couldn't keep Russia in without promising
Constantinople."
Bertrand sighed and then yawned.
"I wonder if we've not bitten off more than we can chew," he growled.
"_I_ went through the phase of 'crushing Prussian militarism,' cutting
up the map of Europe with a pair of scissors.... I hope nobody will put
me up against a wall and shoot me, if I now doubt the possibility. I
don't believe we _can_ crush Prussian militarism."
"We--_can't_."
The words, spoken in a familiar, sneering drawl, came from behind me.
Bertrand and I swung round in our chairs to face the door; George leapt
to his feet, letting fall his bread and cheese and discharging a torrent
of whiskey and soda into my lap. If the ghost of Peter Beresford had
walked in to reinforce Bertrand at the point where their doctrines most
nearly touched, he could not have dumbfounded us more. But it was not
Beresford's ghost. The July night was descending so slowly that we were
content with a single lamp in the middle of the room. In the gathering
dusk by the door, standing out against the orange glow of the
door-curtain, I saw Beresford himself, leaning with one hand on a stick
and grasping a shapeless soft hat with the other. He was as waxen of
complexion and almost as cadaverous as when we met in the Park three
weeks before, but he had made a spasmodic effort to seem collected on
entering, and the sneer in his voice was reproduced by a suggestion of
swaggering contempt in his attitude.
I wondered helplessly and almost without anger why he had inflicted
this outrage upon us. Trembling and speechless, Bertrand propelled
himself slowly to his feet; speechless and breathing quickly, George
took two steps forward. We were all too much preoccupied to look behind
and see what O'Rane was doing until I heard what I can only describe as
a rattle in the throat; Beresford's eyes opened wider, and he took a
half-step back; I turned my head in time to see O'Rane spring like an
animal on its prey, both arms outstretched and both feet off the ground.
There was a thud, as the two fell together, a gasp from Beresford, the
noise of boots scuffling on polished boards and then a silence only
modified by laboured breathing.
George was the first to move.
"He'll kill him!" he called back to us. "Help me separate them!"
As quickly as an old and a middle-aged man could move, Bertrand and I
hurried to his assistance. O'Rane was straddling Beresford's body,
pinning both arms to the floor with his knees and gripping his throat
with both hands until the eyes glared in the early stages of
asphyxiation and the mouth fell open, gobbling hideously. The face was
swollen and mulberry-coloured by the time that we could see it, and the
first feeble resistance had given place to the dreadful placidity of
physical exhaustion.
"You fool, you're murdering him!" George roared, slipping both hands
inside O'Rane's collar and putting forth a reserve of strength which
lifted assailant and assailed bodily from the ground. "Pull his hands
away, you men!"
I caught O'Rane's left wrist in both hands, but the polished floor gave
no purchase to my feet, and I might as well have tried to pluck a
propeller from its shaft. His arms were like flexible, warm steel. When
I planted my foot against his shoulder, it was like resting it on
masonry that quivered slipperily, but never yielded.
"Fingers, man, fingers!" George shouted again. "Pull 'em apart, twist
'em, _hurt_ him!"
I take no pride in having followed his advice save in so far as it
saved the boy from the scaffold. Bertrand and I, each with our two
hands, gripped O'Rane's third and fourth fingers, tugged and twisted
until a stifled cry of pain broke from his lips. George was shaking him
like a rat, and at last the grip relaxed and Beresford's head fell with
a second thud on the floor.
"Don't let go!" cried George. "Now, Raney, will you swear on your honour
not to touch him again?"
There was a sullen, long silence varied by the rip of rending clothes
and the clatter of feet, as O'Rane made three unsuccessful plunges
forward.
"You're--hurting my--hand!" he panted at length with the whimper of a
little child.
George shook his head at me passionately.
"Will you swear on your honour, Raney?"
"Let me--_get_ at him!" O'Rane sobbed.
"We'll break your fingers off at the knuckles if you don't swear!"
George returned through clenched teeth.
There was a second silence, a last plunge.
"I won't touch him," sighed O'Rane.
We stepped back, panting and mopping our foreheads; then Bertrand walked
to the nearest chair and subsided into it; I leaned against a sofa;
George stood for a moment, rocking from his late exertion, then pressed
one hand to his heart and hurried into the street, covering his mouth
with a handkerchief. O'Rane stood where we had relaxed our hold on him,
bending and unbending his tortured fingers; Beresford lay motionless and
silent.
George's re-appearance with a request for brandy galvanised us all, but
chiefly O'Rane, who walked up to him with out-thrust lips and cried:
"You can clear out of this, George Oakleigh, and I don't advise you to
come back here."
"Don't be a fool, Raney," George answered wearily.
"If _you_ hadn't put them up to it----"
"That's precisely why I did it. It was the only way of stopping you.
Don't think I enjoyed it, old man." He caught O'Rane's right hand
between his own two and patted it, as if he were caressing a woman. I
learned afterwards that in addition to losing his sight O'Rane had been
wounded in both hands. "Go and get some brandy--or wait, I'll get the
brandy, while you lift Beresford on to a sofa. I've pulled my heart out
of place."
Between us we made a rough bed and tried to bring the unconscious man
round. His heart was fluttering like a captive bird, and for longer than
I cared to count there was no other sign of life. At last the eyes
opened for a moment, and I saw George relax his labours and lead O'Rane
to one side.
"You'd better go to bed, old man," he said. "I'll report progress later,
and we'll get him away as soon as we can. You'll only make things worse,
if you're here when he comes round."
To my surprise, O'Rane allowed himself to be led away, and George
returned to share our vigil. A second and third time the eyes opened;
twice Beresford tried to raise himself and once his lips moved in
soundless speech.
"Don't try to talk," I said, as I gave him some water to drink.
He closed his eyes, and a quarter of an hour passed before they opened
again.
"W--w--why----?" he stammered suddenly.
"Don't--try--to--talk," I said again.
"But _w--why_ did he do that?" Beresford persisted with slow obstinacy.
"Is he m--m--mad?"
George, Bertrand and I stared at him and then at one another.
"Don't try to talk yet," was all that I could find to say.
4
Bertrand allowed himself to be sent to bed at midnight, but George and I
took it in turns to watch by Beresford's side. We had a doctor in, but
the danger was past before he arrived, and his only orders were that we
must report any change. Until dawn we tried sleeping for an hour and
watching for an hour, but, as an opal light came to warm the rafters on
the west side of the room, George sacrificed his turn to sleep and
joined me on the sofa.
We looked at each other for some moments without speaking, both equally
tired, dishevelled, unshaven and perplexed.
"Well?" I said at length.
"Well?" he echoed. "By the way, I promised to report progress to Raney;
and I never did. I don't see what we can say at present. We've got to
clear this up before he comes down."
"What do you _think_?" I asked.
George hesitated.
"The fact of the fellow's coming here at all----" he began slowly.