"That was good enough for her, but it won't do for me," I said. "I've no
doubt Grayle worked it up very convincingly, but you're far too clever
to be taken in by it and not half clever enough to impose on me. We both
of us know that it's impossible to say a single word for either of them.
There we'd better leave it. It can't be undone now."
We were interrupted by the chairman's introductory speech, but at the
end of the meeting Guy took my arm and walked with me to Cannon Street
Station.
"I'm _not_ trying to defend them," he said. "In a thing like this no
outsider can give an opinion worth having. I'm only saying that you
might be a bit more lenient, if you'd heard both sides."
"It can't be undone now," I repeated.
As we seated ourselves in the train, he asked me if I had any idea what
O'Rane proposed to do.
"Did Grayle tell you to find out?" I enquired.
"Of course he didn't," was the indignant rejoinder.
"But he _would_ be interested to know," I suggested. "Well, I can't help
you, Guy. O'Rane has not told me; he has not told anyone, so far as I am
aware. Why don't you interview him on the subject?"
Though Guy is a friend, I could not help being a little brutal to him in
manner; I have always admired his loyalty to Grayle, but at this moment
it was a quality which alienated me from him.
"It's no business of mine," said the faithful squire. "I don't know
O'Rane, but I can't imagine any man sitting down under this sort of
thing."
"Is Grayle so desperately keen on a divorce?"
"I've never met anyone who went through the Divorce Court for _love_ of
the thing," he answered.
2
Half-way through November O'Rane returned to London for the mid-term
Leave Out. I was apprised of his arrival by a telephone message begging
me to cancel any other engagements and dine with him informally at "The
Sanctuary."
It was Saturday night, and I stayed in London to meet him. George and
Bertrand were his other guests, and we dined at one end of the long
refectory table on the dais, with the rest of the room lit up only by
the flicker of the two fires, which sent shapeless, indeterminate
shadows dancing up and down the panelled walls. It is usually as easy to
detect when a woman lives in a house as when a house has been unoccupied
for months. The library was perhaps tidier than Mrs. O'Rane used to
leave it; otherwise it was unchanged, but it had become indefinably
masculine. O'Rane was as quiet and self-possessed as I had always found
him, but now without the noticeable effort which I had observed at our
last two or three meetings. As might be expected, we talked throughout
dinner of the war and of political changes in the House of Commons. Only
when we were gathered round one fire with our coffee and cigars did he
turn the conversation on to himself.
"I must apologise for spoiling your week-end," he said, addressing
himself to me, "I had to take the opportunity of seeing you when I
could. All three of you have been amazingly kind and amazingly discreet
and sympathetic. It's--my funeral, of course, but I wanted you to be
present. George, perhaps you're the best person----"
There was a silence of some moments, while George turned his cigar round
in his mouth and stared at his boots.
"I only know what you asked me to do, Raney," he began diffidently. And
then to us, "O'Rane told me to fix up a meeting with Sonia. I went round
to Milford Square last night and told her that he wanted to--discuss the
future, I think I said. Grayle was present. She said she'd come, if he
came with her; and I arranged for half-past ten to-night."
He stopped with obvious relief. O'Rane was standing with his back to the
fire, rocking gently from heel to toe, with his hands in his trouser
pockets. I saw him put his watch to his ear, touch the repeater and
smile.
"It's not ten yet," he said to Bertrand and me. "If you'd rather be out
of it.... I got George to attend as my second and I wanted you two to
be--well, to hear what we said and keep us cool. I've been thinking over
this business pretty steadily for some months and I feel it can't go on.
My idea about marriage--well, to begin with, people mustn't marry unless
they feel they can't get on without each other.... If they find they've
made a hopeless mistake, nothing to my way of thinking justifies
spoiling two lives by keeping them coupled together. Sonia knows that,
I've always told her so.... Well, no one could find anything to say for
our present position, it's neither one thing nor the other. If Sonia's
made her choice----"
He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. Bertrand turned his eyes away
from the boy's face and gazed slowly round the long, warm,
softly-lighted room. George had discovered a spot of grease on the
sleeve of his uniform and was industriously scraping it with the end of
a wooden match.
"Go on, O'Rane," I said as gently as I could. "We haven't got much time.
She's coming here, and you're going to ask her what she means to do."
He nodded almost gratefully.
"Yes. If she tells me coolly and dispassionately--that's why I've got
you men here; I don't want a scene--that she'll be happier with
Grayle----" I saw his underlip tremble before he could get out the
name--"After all, it's her happiness ... isn't it?"
There was another pause.
"You'll set her free?" I suggested.
"I suppose so," he whispered.
I looked at Bertrand, and he first shrugged his shoulders and then shook
his head. The first gesture seemed to mean that he did not mind what was
said, the second that he himself did not propose to say it.
"You will divorce her?" I went on to O'Rane. "I only want you to see all
sides of the question. It's not--pleasant, but--if she wants it and
you're ready to face it on both your accounts.... There will be a big
scandal, O'Rane. She's very well known in society. And any Member of
Parliament, even if he wasn't as notorious as Grayle.... It will make
good copy for the papers, I'm afraid."
"I'd save Sonia from it, if I could," said O'Rane, moistening his lips.
"Of course, if Grayle doesn't mind----"
"I should think he'd mind very much," I interrupted. "If he doesn't want
to appear in the Divorce Court just now----"
"He should have thought of that before," said O'Rane grimly. Then he
held out his hands in entreaty. "You don't suggest I can let it go on
any longer? Most people would say it had gone on too long, that if I'd
had a spark of pride--_I can't_. Try to imagine if _your_ wife....
Thinking of it night and day, night and day, forgetting for a moment
when you're asleep and then waking up fresh to it every morning...." His
hands stole up and pressed his temples as though they were bursting.
"You lie for a moment wondering what it is that's hanging over you," he
whispered, "and then you remember.... And you forget again for a moment
when you're working or people are talking to you ... but you always know
it's there ... and it comes back--comes back with a stab in the middle
of whatever you're doing.... And _they_ mustn't see.... God knows, a
divorce won't alter things much, but at least it's a definite break,
I've given her up, I've got no claim, no rights.... It can't go on any
longer. Have--have all you men got something to smoke?"
He came quickly forward from the fire-place and touched his way to a
table behind our chairs. Though his back was turned, I could see out of
the corner of one eye that he was furtively wiping his forehead with the
back of his hand.
"If by any chance they don't want a divorce, will you insist on it?" I
went on unsparingly.
"Of course not. Provided they separate. You don't imagine----"
"If they do? If your wife asks you to forgive her and have her back?"
O'Rane had never smoked, I have been told, since his blindness; he could
no longer taste the tobacco nor keep it alight. I observed him now
putting a cigar in his mouth and chewing the end.
"It's not very likely to arise," he said.
"But if it did?"
"I'll wait till it arises."
He came back to his old place on the hearth-rug, and we remained silent
until the clock struck half-past ten. At the sound I could see the
others growing tense and expectant, as I was doing. O'Rane had been
whistling through his teeth, but he abandoned even this distraction. For
myself, uncomfortable as I knew us all to be, I could not help thinking
that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle could be hardly free from all feelings of
embarrassment. To return to the house, which had been given as a wedding
present sixteen months before, accompanied by the lover with whom she
had left it, to meet her husband and discuss how he proposed to deal
with her infidelity--the bare bones were enough without clothing them in
imagination. I pictured Mrs. O'Rane giving the familiar directions to
the driver, tapping on the window when he lost himself in trying to take
short cuts through the streets of Westminster, stopping him at the door
and being helped out by Grayle.... And Grayle, for all his seasoning,
had never, I was very sure, been led by the wife into her husband's
house and presence....