"I'm prepared to bet that the last time Beresford saw your wife was when
I spoiled their _tête-à-tête_ in his rooms," I said. "He doesn't know
I've told you already and he's in dread that I'm going to. Didn't you
feel that? And it's not that he's afraid of you--I don't think he's
physically afraid of anyone;--he doesn't want you to know that she was
foolish enough to come to his rooms at such an hour."
O'Rane disengaged his arm and rested his elbows on the parapet and his
chin on his hands.
"This was three weeks--before?" he asked.
"I don't believe he's met her since. I don't believe it _was_ him."
He shook his head slowly.
"I couldn't see him, of course; I've told you I didn't get near enough
to touch him, but I heard him going across the room and down the stairs
on one leg. You aren't in a mood then to weigh your suspicions very
judicially.... I taxed Sonia with it. My God! I can't go through it
again, we were both of us out of our minds, I don't know what we said!
But I assumed it was Beresford--I remember I kept on using his name. She
never denied it. If it wasn't Beresford ...?"
"Let's first of all establish whether it was Beresford," I suggested.
He hesitated a moment longer and then pulled himself abruptly erect,
took my arm and walked quickly back to the house. Bertrand and George, a
pair of strangely disreputable figures, were dozing in arm-chairs;
Beresford had his eyes open and fixed on us the moment we were inside
the room.
"You wanted to know a few minutes ago why I attacked you," began O'Rane.
"I'm going to tell you, but I should like to ask one question first. Are
you aware that my wife is no longer here?"
"So Stornaway told me--twice," Beresford answered wearily.
"Do you know she's--left me?"
"I'm not surprised. I'm only surprised she ever came back. I don't know
why she ever married you."
O'Rane paused to steady himself.
"I believed until recently that she had left me for you," he went on.
"Now you can understand, perhaps, why I behaved as I did last night. I
can't offer any apology worth having."
As he stopped speaking, he held out his hand almost timidly. Beresford
stared at it contemptuously for a moment; then his cheeks flushed, and
he took it.
"You can imagine I don't want this to go any further," said O'Rane in a
matter-of-fact voice.
Beresford pulled him close to the couch.
"I--I don't think I'm there yet," he whispered. "Say it all over again,
will you? Sonia's left you? She used to say she was going to, but that
was only to tease you."
O'Rane's lips were quivering, and his voice trembled.
"I'm afraid it's all grim earnest," he said.
"She's left you? O'Rane, she couldn't! She loved you so much! I--I often
thought you didn't treat her properly, you were frightfully
unsympathetic sometimes, but there was nothing you could do to force her
to this!"
Bertrand roused himself to control the excitement of Beresford's voice,
which was beginning to react on O'Rane.
"Deal with realities, young man," he grunted. "The facts are as stated."
Beresford disregarded him and turned to O'Rane.
"But where is she?"
"We don't know."
"You don't know who she's with?" His face became suddenly more hopeful.
"You've no _proof_ that she's with anyone? She went away once before,
remember."
A smothered sigh broke from O'Rane.
"I think I may say positively that she's with someone. She's not merely
staying with friends. I'm afraid I thought it was you and I must beg you
to forgive me."
He tried to smile and again held out his hand.
"You needn't have thought it was me, O'Rane," said Beresford quietly.
"No. But I only heard a lame man hopping away on one leg. And I was
seeing red."
"But you could both of you trust me! If there'd been a moment's danger,
I'd never have seen Sonia again. I'm not the only lame man in London.
You might have picked on Grayle before me, if she hadn't hated him so
much."
O'Rane covered his eyes with his hand.
"I thought of you both," he said. "When I heard the man going short on
one leg, I felt certain that it must be one of you.... It's
extraordinary how quickly you think at a time like that. I remember
wondering whether I should be equal to tackling Grayle, if it were
him.... Then I knew it couldn't be, because he'd insulted Sonia in some
restaurant, and they'd had a row. Besides, he was in France at the time.
And so I decided that it must be you. I'm sorry. You couldn't expect me
to behave quite--dispassionately, could you? I'm only glad it has been
cleared up. I'm afraid you'll have to stay with me again till we've
patched up last night's damage. You can understand that for Sonia's sake
this mustn't be talked about. When people want to know where she is,
I--I usually say she's staying away and I--don't--quite know--when she's
coming back...."
5
At the end of August I contrived a holiday for myself on the north coast
of Cornwall, where Lady Pentyre had been good enough to offer me a
house. Yolande and her husband accompanied me, and on a passing impulse
I pressed O'Rane to join us. We could have given him society and some
kind of mental distraction, but the House was still sitting, when I left
London, and he made this an excuse for declining. In his place George
came for a week, to be followed by several of Yolande's colleagues and
friends, whom she invited--I am fairly sure--less for themselves than
for the chance of giving an inexpensive holiday to some exceedingly
tired women.
It was a fortnight of pure enchantment. We rose at eight and walked over
hot, spongy turf to the precipitous cliff-path which led us to our
favourite bathing-place in our chosen bay. We bobbed and basked in a sea
of liquid sapphire under a blazing sun and only left the water when
hunger drove us home. Through long, happy mornings all four of us
scrambled like children over the rocks, in and out of unexpected pools,
slipping on treacherous bunches of sea-weed and cutting our feet on the
cones of a mollusc's shell. We were always so wet and unpresentable by
luncheon-time that there was nothing for it but to bathe again and put
on dry clothes, which made us late and ravenous, so that we gorged
ourselves on dishes which were becoming unprocurable in London and then
lay sleeping repletely or glancing at the papers until it was time for
another walk among the gorse and heather, a last descent to the
foreshore where the Atlantic lay drowsy under the setting sun, creaming
and lapping the black and dun rocks.
The papers, when we mustered energy to read them, brought us better news
each day. Pressing north and west, the Italian and Russian armies were
taking their revenge for the damaging thrust which each had lately
sustained, and Austria-Hungary, squeezed simultaneously on two sides,
had to adopt the unwelcome and desperate expedient of handing over the
eastern troops to German command. The precarious hold on Salonica was
strengthened by the safe landing of reinforcements, and, before we left
in September, Roumania had thrown in her lot with the Allies.
Even in London, where for two years the soldiers on leave from any front
had found individual self-depression and national self-depreciation
flourishing most luxuriantly, became infected with brief optimism. In
September a report from General Headquarters announced that an infantry
advance had been assisted by a mysterious new mechanism that rolled its
uncouth way imperviously through the rain of bullets and shrapnel which
poured on to its armoured sides, some land battleship which dropped
unconcernedly into craters and climbed as unconcernedly over
fortifications and chance _débris_ of houses, an invention--the first of
British initiative in the war--that bestrode enemy trenches and
spattered a hail of death on either hand, a good-humoured steel giant
that convulsed the troops until they held their sides and forgot to
advance, a something, in fine, that the English soldier with his genius
for happy and meaningless nicknames decided to call a "tank."
Old Bertrand, who had a pretentious theory to explain each new set of
facts, enunciated a new art of war with the text "Machines _versus_
Men;" the rifle-man to the savage with a spear in his hand was as the
machine-gun to the rifle-man--or the tank to the machine-gun. War had
been revolutionised, and our old calculations of effectives and losses
must go by the board.
The mood of optimism passed as quickly as it had come. Hardly had we
finished triumphing over German machine-guns with our tanks, overcoming
the Zeppelin menace with our anti-aircraft guns--there was smart sport
in October, amounting almost to a battue,--when the autumn campaign
ended and we settled down to count the cost and prepare for a third
winter. The figures of our losses made the Somme a Pyrrhic victory, and
there was troubled wonder where the new drafts were to be found.
Ireland, which had been left in suspect and timid neglect--like a dog
which has snapped once and may snap again, but is quiet for the
moment--became once more a public interest as a candidate for
conscription. And ships were mysteriously scarce. And food prices were
exorbitant. And the Government was tired, lethargic, void of
initiative....
"Thank God! my duty as a citizen is done when I've paid my taxes!"
Bertrand Oakleigh exclaimed one night at the House. "I'm glad I'm not a
farmer, I'm glad I'm not mixed up with industry. I should be unpatriotic
if I didn't double my output of foodstuffs and unpatriotic if I kept
one potential piece of cannon-fodder to grow 'em; I'm a pro-German if I
manufacture for export to keep up the foreign exchanges--Victory
_versus_ Trade!--and Lord knows what I am if I don't cheerfully pay
taxes on a business I've had to close down. If I lose money, nobody
sympathises; if I make any, I'm called a profiteer, and someone takes it
away from me.... Curious how a phrase or an abusive nickname dispenses
the people of this country from using such wits as a niggardly
Providence has given them! You've only to whisper something about a
'hidden hand,' and a crowded meeting of City men will sit and hypnotise
themselves into thinking that there's an active service of secret
agents--with poor Haldane as Director General--quietly penetrating our
social life and paralysing our efforts in the war. Hidden hand!
Pacifist--they can't even throw their absurdities into decent English!
Profiteer! We're so astonishingly petty as a nation! I wonder if the
same thing's being reproduced in all other countries--the old '_Nous
sommes trahis_' nonsense.... They're all governments of old men,
too,--and they're tired--and no one outside knows what they've had to go
through--and everybody's nerves are snapping. I'm sometimes surprised
that these fellows have lasted so long, but I think their days are
numbered. If you throw your mind back, you'll remember a phase when
Asquith's worst political enemies said he was indispensable, the only
Prime Minister, the one man who could hold the Government and the
country together. You don't hear that now; we've outgrown that phase.
Now people are openly saying that he's not master in his own house, that
we shall never win the war so long as he's in the saddle, that they'll
turn him out the moment they can find someone to put in his place....
Lloyd-George would be in power to-day, if his friends in Fleet Street
could be sure that he wouldn't hanky-panky with the Army.... To read the
papers, you'd think it was the cumulative effect of reverses like
Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, the shortage of food, and the fact that we've
done nothing to increase our home production, and our failure to
grapple with submarines. It's deeper and blinder than that.... It's
because the Government _hasn't won the war_ that it will fail; and any
new Prime Minister will fall in exactly the same way, unless he can win
it. Results! results! That mountebank Grayle is quite right; he
represents average, unthinking, third-rate, violent opinion, and that
opinion's becoming articulate. As I've told you before, I don't think a
change will do any good, because we set ourselves too big a task, we
started on too high a moral plane. I suppose I should be called a
'_pacifist_' if I suggested that that phase was over and that we'd
better moderate our tone before we're compelled to."
The particular non-party War Committee headed by Grayle was waking to
activity after its suspended animation during the summer campaign. In
his paper, in conversation at the Club and still more in the Smoking
Room of the House he was calling for more vigour in administration....
The House of Commons position was curious, he informed me; if he could
be sure of a certain number of votes--he would not trouble me with the
figures,--we could have a ministry after our own heart. There followed
an interval of perhaps five minutes, in which I allowed him to do all
the talking. The Unionist members of the Coalition were sick and tired
of this eternal "Wait and See;" there would be a secession the moment
that a better alternative government had been sketched out; you had only
to call a Unionist party meeting and put it to 'em straight. But you
didn't want to take an unnecessary toss, you couldn't afford to supply
powder and shot to rags like the "Daily News," which were always talking
about an intrigue and saying that no government could exist with the
Germans in front and back-stabbers behind....
"Nothing's settled yet," he told me after considering academically the
offices for which we were both fitted. "But you know the constitutional
theory; you're not justified in upsetting a government unless you're
prepared to go to Buckingham Palace and take on the job of forming a
new administration. Excuse me! I want to have a word with Oakleigh."
The following day I asked Bertrand under what guise the devil had
appeared to him, but he had evidently been less patient.
"Grayle went away with a flea in his ear," he grunted. "He's been
worrying me so long that I had to stop it once and for all. God knows, I
don't care about this ministry; I shouldn't have much faith in any
ministry formed out of the present House--the best talent's already on
the Treasury Bench--and I don't believe in bringing in your superman
from outside--the House of Commons can't be learned in a night, and even
a government department needs study. What I object to in Grayle is his
picking on _me_ as one of his fifty or sixty new allies; you can picture
him buzzing round with his fellow-conspirators--'Shall we try Oakleigh
and Stornaway? They're solid, moderate, old members--highly respected.
They don't add anything to the common stock, of course, but they carry
more weight than the men who are always talking and playing an active
part. We might try them, their names would look well on the
prospectus--inspire confidence, you know.'" He chuckled maliciously. "I
suppose I'm getting very old, but I can't stand young men's conceit in
the way I once did. Grayle's like a boy just down from Oxford, doing
everything for the first time and imagining that no one's ever done it
before. Does he _really_ think this is the first political intrigue in
history? I recommended him a course of Disraeli's novels--to improve his
technique. Good God! I was playing this game of detaching wobblers and
handing out offices that were not in my gift and mobilising the solid,
moderate, highly respected old members under _Gladstone_! I toiled and
schemed to keep the Liberal Party out of Rosebery's hands; I was making
new parties and pigeon-holing possible cabinets all through the
Morley-Harcourt days, I was intriguing to keep C.-B. in command when the
Liberal Leaguers intrigued to kick him into the Lords. I've been
through it all; and be hanged if I didn't do it better than Grayle!"
Perhaps my manner was too sympathetic. Certainly I was not to escape so
easily as Bertrand had done, for Grayle met me leaving the House and
offered to drop me on his way home. I accepted because I was nominally
amicable with him, because I did not want a wet walk to my hotel and
because I could not decently refuse. He talked persuasively the whole
way home and was obviously chagrined when I did not invite him into my
rooms. He rang me up at breakfast next day and tried to secure my
presence at luncheon; once at my office in St. James' Street, once in my
department, and once again, when I was tranquilly dining with the
Maitlands, I was called to the telephone with an apologetic but urgent
request that I would arrange a time when Grayle could have five minutes'
conversation with me.
My position was simple and clear. I would be neither bribed nor bullied
into any kind of office, I would give no blank cheque for the future to
Grayle or anyone else, but I should no doubt be found voting with him
against the Government--or with the Government against him--as I had
done in the past, judging every division on its merits. A note on my
dressing-table informed me that Colonel Grayle had telephoned from the
House at eleven.... I picked up my hat, buttoned my coat again and
turned my steps towards Milford Square; a far more patient man might be
excused for thinking that Grayle was making a nuisance of himself.
The servant who opened the door informed me that Colonel Grayle was out.
"I'll wait," I said. "I've got to see him."
"But he's out of town, sir. He didn't say where he was going or when
he'd be back. He very often goes away like that."
The man was sleek of appearance and glib of speech, well-experienced, I
thought, in shutting the door to people whom his master did not wish to
see. But I did not fall within that category, and Grayle had plagued me
sufficiently to justify reprisals.
"When did he go away?" I asked.
"Before dinner, sir."
"Ah, then he must have changed his plans," I said. "He telephoned to me
from the House half an hour ago; he's been trying to get hold of me all
day, but this is the first opportunity I've had. Is Mr. Bannerman in? If
so, I'll talk to him till Colonel Grayle comes in."
"Mr. Bannerman has moved into rooms of his own," the servant told me,
yielding ground reluctantly.
I walked into Grayle's smoking-room and left the man to warn him that I
was in effective occupation and that he must yield to the inevitable and
come down to see me, if he were already at home, or submit to a few
minutes of my company when he returned. A moment later I saw that he
could not yet have come back from the House, as a pile of letters
awaited him on the table and the whiskey and soda set out for his
refreshment were untouched. "A model servant," I said to myself, "to
have everything ready when you do not expect your master home." I mixed
myself a drink and was preparing to light a cigar when I found that I
was without matches. On going into the hall, I found my sleek, glib
friend mounting guard, as though he expected me to slip out with my
pockets full of silver.
He produced a box of matches and struck one for me. As I began to light
my cigar, a taxi drove into the square and drew up opposite the house.
"What name shall I tell Colonel Grayle?" asked the servant, as he held
open the smoking-room door for me.
Before I had time to answer, I heard a latch-key grating in the lock;
the servant moved forward and stopped irresolutely; then the door opened
to admit Mrs. O'Rane. Our eyes met for a moment, and for the first time
since I had known her I saw her out of countenance. In another moment it
was all over, for I had backed into the smoking-room and pushed the door
closed. I heard her clear, rather high voice asking whether Colonel
Grayle was home yet. The servant murmured something in reply, and I
caught the sound of his footsteps growing fainter along the flagged
passage. Mrs. O'Rane turned the handle and came in to me, once more
self-possessed and in control of herself; there was neither
embarrassment nor defiance in her manner; she greeted me as she had once
before greeted me, when I first met her at "The Sanctuary."
"I hope you've not been waiting long," she said. "Vincent's usually home
by this time. There's not an all-night sitting or anything, is there?"
"Not so far as I know," I answered. "Mrs. O'Rane, I don't think I'll
stay any longer."
She looked at my newly lighted cigar and untouched whiskey and soda.
"It's just as you like," she said. "It seems a pity to run away without
seeing him, though. I presume you came to see him and not me?"
"I came to see him. I didn't know you were here."
"But I've been here the whole time. Didn't you know that?"
"We didn't."
"But where else was I likely to be?"
"Your husband never suspected that Grayle had any hand in it. I fancy
you and Grayle did your best not to enlighten him. You let him think it
was another man, and Grayle gave an alibi. I suppose it was all right;
I'm not versed in the ethics of the thing."