"O knights and lords, it seems but little skill
To talk of well-known things past now and dead.
God wot I ought to say, I have done ill,
And pray you all forgiveness heartily!
Because you must be right, such great lords; still
Listen, suppose your time were come to die,
And you were quite alone and very weak;
Yea, laid a dying while very mightily
The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak
Of river through your broad lands running well;
Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak;
'One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell,
Now choose one cloth for ever; which they be,
I will not tell you, you must somehow tell
Of your own strength and mightiness; here, see!'
* * * * * * *
After a shivering half-hour you said;
'God help! heaven's colour, the blue'; and he said, 'hell.'
Perhaps you would roll upon your bed,
And cry to all good men that loved you well,
'Ah, Christ! if only I had known, known, known ...'"
WILLIAM MORRIS: _The Defence of Guenevere_.
1
When I first met Sir Aylmer Lancing, I was a very young and very
impecunious member of the Diplomatic Service; he was in early middle
life and a millionaire many times over. It was a time of mental
green-sickness with me, when I had an undergraduate's morbid craving for
ideas, something of an undergraduate's contempt, too, for those to whom
ideas made no appeal. In describing Sir Aylmer as a man without ideas, I
am saying something which he would have endorsed and interpreted to mean
far more than I intended. He had no ideas outside his business, though
within it he shewed a deliberate, dogged objectivity, the sublimation of
commonsense, which was staggering and irresistible as a battering-ram. I
have met no one with whom the essential was so invariably the obvious.
One day, when we were crossing together to America, I asked him what
were the qualities which made most for success in any career. He
answered, for all the world like the tritest of stage millionaires,
"Always know what you want and go for it; always be quite clear about
what's going on in your own mind."
Lancing left an estate of over twenty millions; I had made before the
war about two hundred thousand pounds; despite the difference I boldly
affirm that the first intellectual quality for success is an ability to
know what is going on in other people's minds. Bertrand Oakleigh has the
quality in a high degree. I made fun of him, indeed, over many years,
because he was so oracular. At his house in Princes Gardens, in the
Smoking-Room and at the Club he would sit looking up at the ceiling with
a long black cigar jutting defiantly from under his heavy walrus
moustache, always a little more profound and unhurried than the rest of
us, always armed with a general principle, always ready with a
philosophic theory, sometimes paradoxical and usually pretentious. But,
when he dropped what George once called his "sneers and graces," forgot
to be prejudiced or pontifical, he was shrewdly intelligent. Had he been
less indolent, less fond of gossip, less detached and content to be the
amused spectator, he could have made a considerable political position
for himself, for he had a rare faculty of hearing innumerable opinions
on the same subject, melting them down, so to say, and producing a
prophecy. But, as he grew older, he would not take the trouble to think
for himself or to ascertain what others were thinking.
I went to him for advice on the results of my visit to Grayle's house in
Milford Square.
"Well, I take it that the one person we're interested in is David," he
said by way of giving me a lead.
The remark was characteristic of his love for O'Rane, but I am afraid it
was also indicative of his general aversion from women and of his
dislike for Mrs. O'Rane in particular, a dislike which dated back to a
time long anterior to her marriage. I was weakly ready to go farther and
interest myself in her, too, if only on account of her youth and an
obstinate belief that youth has a good title to happiness.
"Well, we're looking for the best solution," I suggested, "not meting
out justice. Grayle and Mrs. O'Rane are waiting for O'Rane to file a
petition. That was her message. Now, O'Rane's never said whether he'll
divorce her or not; probably he hasn't made up his mind, and certainly I
don't know his views on divorce. She's in an impossible
position--socially--as long as she lives with Grayle without marrying
him; and Grayle's position will be very uncomfortable as soon as the
story gets about. It's enough to spoil his political career; whereas
he'll live it down, if there's a conventional divorce and he lies quiet
for a few months. If O'Rane wants to take his revenge, he need only
refuse to set her free."
"He's not looking for revenge," said Bertrand oracularly.
"Then you'd say--anyone would say--that the kindest and most generous
thing he could do would be to divorce her. I'm only uncertain because I
know something of Grayle; I presume he'll marry her, but, when the
honeymoon period's over, he'll make her supremely unhappy. Perhaps
that's no more than she deserves, but, if O'Rane thought she'd be
unhappy by marrying Grayle, conceivably he might exercise his power to
prevent it."
"Conceivably he might," Bertrand assented dryly.
"Well, those are the alternatives--to divorce or not to divorce. I'm
amazed to find how well the secret's been kept, but it can't be kept
indefinitely. It happened to be me last night, but Tom, Dick or Harry
might just as well have made the discovery. Any day now you may have a
nauseating scandal. We none of us want that, and O'Rane does nothing to
stop it."
For a moment Bertrand dropped his omniscient manner and shrugged his
shoulders with slow helplessness.
"What do you suggest he _can_ do?" he asked.
"Have the minor scandal of a divorce--I regard that as less bad than the
common knowledge that she's been living for weeks, months, years with a
man who's not her husband,--get it over quickly and give people a chance
of forgetting it. If he won't do that, let him see if he's got any power
to keep them from living together. I don't think he has. Grayle has
sufficient money, his position's not big enough to make him susceptible
to blackmail----"
"You may take it that David's got no power," Bertrand interrupted.
"Well, it's your turn," I said a little impatiently.
Bertrand stroked his moustache and closed his eyes sleepily.
"I'll answer your specific question. You know who she's living with and
you can tell David or not, as--you--like. It won't make a pennyworth of
difference," he added cheerfully. "You see, there's one thing you're
leaving out, Stornaway, the only thing that matters. David wants her
back. I could see that on the day itself, when he'd caught them, when
she decamped.... Nothing on earth will make him divorce her--for purely
selfish reasons, if you like; he can't and won't let her go. But I don't
know that you'll do much good by putting a pistol of that kind at her
head. I've known that young woman on and off for about ten years. I
don't see her knocking at the door and saying, 'Oh, by the way, as I
can't live with the man I want to, I've come back.' Your general
question what to do I can't answer. At least, we can only go on
waiting----"
"And praying that other people won't find out?" I asked.
"They will, I'm afraid. Well, Sonia's utterly reckless, I gather; _she_
doesn't care who knows. Grayle _wouldn't_ have cared in the old days.
When he was living with her predecessor--you know, the wife of the man
in the Brazilian Legation;--Grayle's so untidy in his amours; they
always overlap--it was common property, they went almost everywhere
together, she took the head of his table. Since those happy, careless
times Grayle has discovered political ambitions. From the fact that not
more than a handful of people know, I judge that Grayle wants to keep
the thing quiet; I'm prepared to bet that Grayle would like best of all
to be free of the whole tangle and, if he can't do that, he'd like the
divorce to come on as quickly as possible. There's another thing you've
left out. Do you suppose Grayle had contemplated a scandal, a divorce,
the necessity of marrying the woman?"
"I don't suppose anyone in his position sits down and thinks it out in
cold blood," I said.
Bertrand opened his left eye and looked at me with a malicious smile;
then closed it and opened the right.
"Some do, some don't," he answered. "That's been my experience. I don't
much mind your healthy incontinent animal, but I hate your continent
calculating man--the creature who regulates his passions by his fears.
He's artificial, to start with, and he's dangerous. Now, I sit here like
the sailor's parrot. Grayle is becoming the calculating animal, Grayle
for the first time in his life feels that he has a reputation to lose,
Grayle is combining disreputable tastes with a decorous exterior."
Bertrand paused to chuckle cynically.
"Well?" I said.
"Well? Everybody seems to leave out one thing in his calculations, and
Grayle was no exception. I put it to you a moment ago that he never
contemplated the position he's in now; I suggest that Grayle saw a very
beautiful young woman and decided, as you'd expect of him, that she was
fair prey. He studied her carefully. She wasn't to be bought, because
throughout her life she's been receiving everything and giving nothing
in return; she wasn't to be drugged, because her head's strong and her
nature's cold; she wasn't to be cajoled--Beresford was doing the
chivalrous devotion business, and she treated him like a tame cat, which
is what he was;--Grayle discovered that the only thing to do was to
bully her. He went away, neglected her, snubbed her when they
met--enough to mortify her without even suggesting he cared enough to
_try_ and hurt her,--shewed her quite plainly that he could get on
without her. Down she came with a run and began to make advances to him.
He was too busy to waste time on her. She was piqued, she began to throw
herself at him until at last he got her into his power.... I don't know
who made her think she'd any cause to be jealous of Miss Merryon; it may
have been Grayle, she may have evolved it for herself to excuse her
leaving her husband; certainly she lashed herself into thinking it was
all true, and that was Grayle's opportunity. But, once more, he never
thought of anything more than a passing intrigue, which would have been
easy enough with the husband away three months at a time. Unfortunately
the husband turned up unexpectedly just as the intrigue began, and that
lifted everything on to a much higher plane. Grayle cut and ran like a
boy caught robbing an orchard--to be followed a couple of hours later by
the woman." Once off the subject of O'Rane, Bertrand was enjoying
himself prodigiously. "I would have given something to see his face when
she arrived. Now, in my experience, there are mighty few crimes and
cruelties that the female won't commit to protect the male--the male
she's interested in;--she'll lie and thieve--and we've probably both of
us seen her fixing the blame on the wrong man, letting him be cited as
co-respondent to save her lover. Well, Beresford was sacrificed to
protect Grayle; Grayle himself, who'd stayed behind in England to carry
out the intrigue, used the excuse of his mission to the Front to cover
his tracks. For two months and more he's contrived to keep the thing
secret. Do you imagine he isn't ready--however much infatuated about
her he may be or may have been--to get rid of her and start again
unembarrassed? When we talk about lifelong devotion, we none of us
expect to be taken at our word."
Bertrand opened his eyes to look at me, and I saw that he was shaken
with noiseless chuckles of malice. I could not share in his merriment.
"I don't see how this helps," I said. "_She_ wants a divorce, _he_ wants
to get rid of her, and O'Rane--she _won't_ come back to him, and, if she
did, I can't conceive of his taking her back."
"Then you don't know David and you've not had much experience of young
men in his state of mind," answered Bertrand with assurance. "In the
meantime you can do nothing and you'd better wait till the story begins
to get round London. It may be weeks or it may be months, but that
little scandal is not going to lie hid for ever."
In spite of Bertrand there was one thing that I could do, and I did it
when next I met O'Rane. It was intolerable, to my way of thinking, that
he should be allowed to meet Grayle in ignorance of the blow which
Grayle had dealt him. To do the fellow justice, I had never seen him
seeking O'Rane's company either before or after, but I could not stomach
the idea that O'Rane might unsuspectingly join him at dinner or even bid
him good-night. I broke the news on my autumn visit to Melton. As soon
as I approached the subject, O'Rane's face grew rigid; when I had
finished, he said, "Oh, that was it? I see. Thank you."
Our brief meeting took place in October, and I do not know whether
O'Rane came more than once to London until the Christmas holidays. I did
not see him, certainly, and I have never heard whether he ran across
Grayle. About a week after our meeting, I happened to be dining with the
Maitlands and once more found Grayle among my fellow-guests. Until that
moment I had not tried to think what line of conduct I should follow on
meeting him; I do not yet know what is the conventional course. When
Lady Maitland went to the drawing-room, however, and he moved
unconcernedly into the chair next mine, I had no difficulty in arriving
at a decision. Grayle was middle-aged, rich, of unimpaired physique; he
had tasted most kinds of enjoyment, his life had been brutishly happy
and brutally successful; this last intrigue meant as little to him as a
kiss snatched from an unreluctant dairymaid. It meant more to O'Rane.
I waved away the decanter which Maurice Maitland was pressing upon me
and asked if he would make my apologies to his wife and allow me to slip
away unobserved to finish some work which I had been compelled to take
home. A day or two later I entered the House as Grayle was leaving it.
He turned back and requested the favour of three minutes' conversation
with me.
"I just want to understand," he began with an outward show of reason and
an underlying menace. "I knew you knew, of course, but I didn't suspect
you of so much melodrama. Am I to take it that you don't want to meet
me?"