"Couldn't they have pitched on some other place?"
"I wanted a private room in an hotel--neutral ground," he wrote back.
"Raney insisted on this. Moral effect, I suppose."
As I crushed the paper into my pocket, I reflected that O'Rane was
taking risks. The sight of the room and of himself might act on his wife
like the smell of blood on an animal.
The clock struck again, and I exchanged glances with Bertrand. It was so
characteristic of Mrs. O'Rane, even in my short acquaintance with her,
that she should be late on such an occasion.
"You _did_ say to-night, didn't you?" O'Rane asked, trying to keep his
tone unconcerned.
"I don't suppose they've been able to get a taxi," George answered. "It
was raining before dinner."
A moment later we grew tense and expectant once more at the sound of an
engine. I heard the slam of a door and Grayle's voice saying, "Will you
wait a bit?" Then Bertrand, George and I rose from our chairs, as the
flame-coloured curtain was drawn aside and Mrs. O'Rane walked composedly
into the room, with Grayle in his staff uniform a pace behind. She
narrowed her eyes and then raised her brows almost imperceptibly when
she saw who was present.
"I'm sorry if we've kept you all waiting," she said, as she slipped her
arms out of her coat and handed it to Grayle.
O'Rane swallowed.
"Won't you sit down?" he murmured.
George and I each pulled an extra chair into the half-circle, and I
watched Mrs. O'Rane settling herself. Presumably she must have started
the evening pale, for her cheeks were slightly rouged--and I had not
observed her to use rouge before. Her eyes, too, looked tired, as I had
seen them at our chance meeting in Hyde Park several months before, but
she was perfectly controlled, and I could trace no sign of nervousness
or embarrassment. As though she were shewing herself off to young
Beresford or any other of her admirers, I saw her look down at the pink
dress which she was wearing, smooth a crease out of one glove, lift one
transparent sleeve higher on to her shoulder and settle the folds of her
skirt. Grayle spent some moments laying her coat carefully across the
back of a chair; then dropped on to the end of a sofa with his stiff leg
rigid in front of him and began peeling off his gloves and tossing them
into his cap. He, at least, was not at ease; and, when George picked up
the cigar-box and offered it him, he stammered in his refusal.
There was a moment more of silence, and then we turned slowly and with
one accord towards O'Rane. As though he felt our eyes upon him, he
tossed the cigar behind him into the fire and faced his wife.
"I--George probably told you, Sonia--I'm spending the week-end in
London. I thought we might discuss things a bit."
Mrs. O'Rane looked unhurriedly to left and right.
"By all means," she acquiesced. "Do we want--_quite_ all these----?"
"I should have preferred to meet you alone. As Colonel Grayle said he
was coming----"
"He had a right to come. Of course, if you prefer everything dragged up
in public...."
She shrugged her shoulders and began to play with the watch on her
wrist.
"I think everyone here is acquainted with most of the facts," said
O'Rane. "But I'm not proposing to drag up anything that's happened. I
asked you to come here because I wanted to talk about the future. I
expect everyone will agree that the present position can't continue."
He waited for a sign of assent. Mrs. O'Rane took off one glove and
helped herself to a cigarette from the gold case at her wrist.
"I told Mr. Stornaway that you were at liberty to divorce me," she said
with a glance in my direction. "I said I was willing to face it. I don't
know whether you ever got the message."
I decided to watch Grayle, but he was sitting with his head back,
staring at the ceiling and occasionally blowing elongated smoke-rings.
"The Divorce Court is--an unsavoury place," O'Rane observed. "I want you
to believe, Sonia, that what I've always said is as true now as when I
first said it. I put your happiness higher than anything in the world,
I'm trying to leave myself out of this."
Mrs. O'Rane looked once at her husband, and her eyes seemed to harden;
then she glanced without apparent purpose at the half of the room which
was within her field of vision. I noticed for the first time that the
flower-vases were empty; I fancy that she noticed it, too. Her mouth
began to purse, and I knew that O'Rane would have done better to hold
his meeting elsewhere.
"It's very kind of you," she said stiffly. "Isn't it rather late in the
day for you to be thinking of my happiness? When I lived here---- But
you said you didn't want to go into what was past. The future's simply
in your hands. I've told you I'm willing to face it. I don't believe in
this modern business of the man always letting himself be divorced by
the woman. I'm--willing--to face it. You've got your witnesses; they'll
stand by you, if anybody criticises you."
"But if I don't _want_ to see you in the Divorce Court, Sonia?"
"I'm afraid that's one of the things you can't help."
O'Rane's chin dropped on to his chest, and he began to pace up and down
the ten-foot rug in front of the fire with his hands plunged into his
pockets and his fists so tightly clenched that the knuckles of either
hand stood out in four sharp lumps against the sides of his trousers.
Grayle still sat like a husband reluctantly dragged to hear a dull
sermon; Mrs. O'Rane set herself to light a second cigarette from the
glowing stump of the first, leaning forward so that the ash should not
scatter over the pink dress. A quarter past eleven struck, and I
remember that Bertrand and I gravely consulted our watches and pretended
to compare them by the clock on the mantel-piece.
At last O'Rane halted by Grayle's chair.
"You're in this, too, Colonel Grayle," he said. "Once more we need
concern ourselves only with the future. I should like to hear your
views."
Grayle brought his head forward with a sharp jerk.
"It's her happiness we're considering," he agreed slowly, with his eyes
on O'Rane's waist. "I--well, it's for her to say; I obviously can't tell
you what will make her happiest, she's the only person who can do that.
You've not put forward any case for yourself, I musn't put forward any
for myself. She must tell us both whether she's been happy enough these
last months to want to go on.... I may say--you haven't attacked me, so
perhaps I don't need to defend myself--I may say that, when a woman's
unhappily married, I don't regard her as being under any obligation to
her husband; she's free to start her life again; and any man is free to
share that life, if she sees fit. That--that's my _theory_, in case you
feel there's any question of _rights_ involved."
His tone was becoming truculent, but O'Rane nodded gravely.
"Yes. But we agreed to leave the past alone," he said. "I've knocked
about a good bit the last thirty years and I can assure you that I never
want to be put on my trial for _any_thing. Let's stick to the future. Do
you wish--my wife to go through the Divorce Court?"
I looked at Mrs. O'Rane to see if the offending word would rouse her,
but she seemed not to have heard it. The hard composure of her entrance
had broken down, she seemed ready to faint with fatigue, and the patches
of rouge on cheeks that were grown suddenly white gave her an absurd
something of a Dutch doll's appearance. I fetched her a tumbler of
soda-water, and her smile of thanks was the first human thing that I had
seen about her that night. As she began to sip it, I saw her glance
over the brim at Grayle.
"I don't _wish_ it," he said at length. "What--what else is possible?"
"You can say good-bye to her," O'Rane suggested quietly.
Grayle looked up uncomprehendingly; and Mrs. O'Rane's eyes flashed in
sympathy.
"Desert her, you mean?"
"It's hardly the word I should have chosen, but we needn't go into that.
Colonel Grayle, neither you nor I want a scandal. By the mercy of God,
there's only one man outside this room who knows what's been taking
place all these months. We've agreed that my wife's happiness is the
thing that we're both unselfishly seeking, we won't bandy rights and
wrongs or grievances or justifications--we won't even try to put our
love for her into a scale. If you give me your word of honour that
you'll never see or speak to my wife again, I will take no further
steps; I'm not trying to steal her away from you so that I may get her
back myself--she must determine her own happiness. You and I can at
least spare her the unhappiness, the vulgarity, the morbid, sniggering
curiosity of a public scandal. She can live in another part of the
house, live away from me, let it be known confidentially that we somehow
didn't manage to get on very well together.... Are you prepared to make
that sacrifice for her happiness?"
Grayle lit another cigarette, coughed and fetched himself a syphon and
tumbler.
"You're begging the question," he said at length. "_You_ can't define
the conditions of Sonia's happiness."
"I know what will make her _un_happy. That's good enough as a negative
definition."
Mrs. O'Rane pushed her chair back a few inches and rose to her feet. She
looked round for her coat and walked to the chair where Grayle had laid
it.
"I've said I'm ready to face everything and everybody," she said over
her shoulder, as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.
"But, please God! you don't know what you're facing!" O'Rane cried with
an outburst of emotion which he was no longer able to contain. "Grayle,
you _say_ you love her! If you care a snap of the fingers for her, if
you've any humanity, any decent feeling in the whole of your
composition, if you hope for mercy in this world or the next, you've got
your opportunity now! The one thing you can do for her abiding happiness
is to take my hand and swear you'll never see her again. You know it is!
You can walk out of this house and leave her so that no one will dare to
say a word against her for fear of being thrashed within an inch of his
life. If she doesn't get on well with me, if we part by common consent,
that's my fault; everyone will say that I was always eccentric, that she
was a fool to marry me, that I've spoiled her life.... Will you do that,
Grayle? Will you shew that what you call your love for her means
something?"
As he ended, I heard a muffled banging on the front door. George hurried
away, and a moment later there came the sound of an engine starting.
"It was only the taximan," he explained, as he came back. "He's got a
train to catch at Victoria, so I paid him off. We can telephone for
another one when it's wanted."
Mrs. O'Rane looked at her watch and frowned.
"I _wish_ you hadn't done that, George," she cried petulantly. "It was
pouring when we came, and now we shall probably have to walk home.... I
don't see that there's anything more to be said. It's very kind of
everyone to take so much trouble about me, but, if I'm prepared to go
through with it, that ends the matter."
"But you're talking about something you don't understand, Sonia!' cried
O'Rane.
"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she answered. "It's just
conceivable that Vincent and I both thought about the consequences
beforehand. Good-bye."
She turned to the door, and Grayle followed her. George moved
mechanically forward to open it for them. Bertrand and I remained where
we were, watching O'Rane smooth back a wisp of black hair that was glued
to his forehead.
3
It was characteristic of O'Rane that he went back to Melton at the end
of his leave without hinting to anyone what he was going to do. After
his wife and Grayle left "The Sanctuary," I waited for perhaps ten
minutes to see whether he wanted my opinion or advice, but he made no
reference to the scene at which we had all been present. All that he
said to the Oakleighs was, "Well, I'm rather tired. I think I shall go
to bed." He disappeared as quietly and suddenly as he had come; perhaps
we were to see him back in six weeks' time at the end of term, but even
this was uncertain.
The advent of autumn, bringing with it the recognition that there must
be another winter in the trenches, roused the country from the uncaring
optimism or placid resignation in which the summer had been passed. In
the London press, at the Club, in the House and at private dinner
tables, I found very general agreement that the war had entered upon a
new phase. A timid minority earnestly confided to discreetly chosen
audiences that the people who talked about a deadlock and a stale-mate
peace were proving right after all. With the exception of Beresford, who
thought no opinion worth holding unless he shouted it from the
house-tops, the new peace-school was obviously frightened of being
called unpatriotic or pro-German. Bertrand would shake his head gloomily
and begin sentences half-jocularly with--"I suppose I shall be called
the Hidden Hand next, but all I can say is...." Whatever it was, he said
it in an undertone and made sure of his man before saying it. Others
tried to avert personal attacks by discussing war and peace in the
abstract, adducing uncertain historical parallels and wondering
academically whether it was wise to aim at humiliating a great country
too much; were we not sowing the seeds of future wars?
The discussion seldom continued to be academic, and the peace school by
its furtiveness and timidity invited persecution, as does the mild
urchin at school who never stands up for himself and becomes a
legitimate target for his fellows' kicks. Early in December there was
much talk of the American "peace-kite." President Wilson had been
re-elected, his hands were free, and for four years he could mould the
policy of the United States without fear of an election. It was said
that his patience was nearing its limits, that he was ready to break off
diplomatic relations with Germany and that the "peace-kite" was a last
attempt to arrive at terms of settlement before deciding to plunge his
country into war.
The rumours of peace discussions and possible terms produced an
immediate repercussion in London and developed a greater intensity of
political feeling than had been known since the war began. There was
said to be a peace-party in the Cabinet; the blunders and catastrophes
of more than two years were set down to the malevolence of Ministers who
had been driven to war against their will and were only anxious for an
immediate end, even if such an end meant victory for the enemy; I heard
once again Lady Maitland's confident assertion that the Government was
in German pay.... There could be little academic discussion in such an
atmosphere, and the one public attempt which I heard Bertrand make was
literally shouted down.
"All I say," he kept repeating one night at Ross House, "is that I see
no reason why we should be successful in 1917, when we've failed in
1916. I may be wrong; I don't pretend to have sufficient data. I only
warn you that in six months' time you may have to accept worse terms
than you could get now--with a balance of half a million or a million
lives the wrong way. That's a big responsibility."
"You'd let Germany keep all she's got," Lady Maitland asked, "as an
instalment?"
"Germany's broken, as it is," Bertrand answered. "She can never make
good her losses and she'd gladly discuss terms. But, good Heavens! even
if we didn't accept the terms, there's surely no harm in discussing
them!"
Maitland shook his head sagely.
"When I'm dealing with the burglar who's collared my silver," he said,
"I prefer not to argue until he's divested himself of what I believe is
called the swag."
"You may _prefer_ not to. Can you enforce your preference?" Bertrand
asked rather curtly.
"Then let's go down fighting," Lady Maitland proposed valiantly.
"With great submission, a live dog's better than a dead lion," said
Bertrand. "I've so much faith in the potentialities of my country that I
want to preserve her."
Lady Maitland turned on him with unaffected ferocity. "If you make peace
now, you'll _disgrace_ her!" she cried. "We shall never be able to hold
up our heads again!"
Young Lady Loring, who was between Bertrand and me, was no less strong.
"Uncle Bertrand, you can't be serious!" she exclaimed. "We should be
faithless to those who've died, if we didn't hold on. I--I would sooner
have my husband killed a _second_ time than go back on the dead!"
Her intensity of feeling caused a stir, followed by an embarrassed
pause. Maitland brought it to an end by shaking his head
good-humouredly.
"I say, Oakleigh, old man, if I may say so, you oughtn't to talk like
that, you know. You're a man in a responsible position, people quote
what you say. It produces a devilish bad impression."
My instinctive sympathy is always with the minority, and I came mildly
to Bertrand's support.
"I agree with Oakleigh to this extent," I said. "All of us here are
either women or men over military age. We ought to check the easy
impulse to make _other_ people fight to the bitter end."
"You won't hear any peace-talk at the Front," interposed Maitland.
"I've just come back from G.H.Q., you know."
Bertrand gave a snort of impatience.
"You won't find people lighting pipes in high-explosive factories," he
answered. "It's against the rules. At the present time the policy of the
war is dictated by people who can't conceivably be sent to carry it out.
Stornaway's quite right. _We_ fat old men sit at home and water the
fields of Flanders with _other people's_ blood. _We_ say that, if _they_
don't go on to the bitter end, there'll be another war in ten years.
It's wrong, and we've been wrong every day we've gone on after we shewed
the Germans that they couldn't overrun Europe at will. _I_ went through
the phase of dismembering Germany, deposing the Kaiser, commandeering
the Fleet."
There was an unfortunate note of intellectual superiority in his voice,
as though he alone had waded through the depths and shallows of folly
and was at last (and alone) on dry land. His reward was immediate
interruption by a chorus from every quarter of the table at once.
"Perhaps if you'd had a brother in solitary confinement for eight months
because he called the guard a _Schweinhund_, which was the only word
they'd given him a chance of learning----" began little Agnes Waring on
my left with considerable heat.
"You wouldn't stir a finger to avenge Belgium?" demanded Lady Maitland.
"Oakleigh! Oakleigh!" her husband expostulated. "You're too old to fight
yourself; for God's sake don't damp the ardour of those who can, those
who'll go on till they've dictated their own peace
terms--_in_--_Berlin_," he ended proudly.
As the chorus subsided for want of breath, Frank Jellaby, who was now
one of the Liberal Whips in the Coalition, allowed his incisive, nasal
drawl to rise and dominate the table.
"The trouble about you, Oakleigh, is that you go through so many phases;
we poor, benighted folk can't keep up with you. There was a
phase--quite a long one, for you--when any war with Germany was
impossible, unthinkable. Didn't you run a paper to prove it? When the
war came, someone twitted you in the House, and you made a personal
statement--and a pretty complete recantation. You've been wrong here,
wrong there.... If I may put it quite brutally, how are we to know
you're not just as wrong now, how soon may we expect another personal
statement?"
"Have all _your_ prophecies been right?" Bertrand enquired.
"What prophecies have I made?" was the bland and temporarily safe
rejoinder.
It was the one articulate effort which I heard at this time to determine
the limits of military effort. It was derided and drowned; and from
that--as we had to go on fighting--there was a short and easy road to
criticism of present methods.
"We've put our hands to the plough," said Maitland placatingly, when the
ladies had left us. "We can't turn back, Oakleigh. And I'm afraid I
believe that the biggest trial's still ahead of us."
"And you're satisfied we shall come out of that any better?" Bertrand
answered. "Your experience of the war leads you to expect that? God
knows, the _men_ don't lack courage or sticking-power, but can you find
them generalship?"
"We must go on till we do."
Bertrand smoked for some moments in a reflective silence.
"It's a curious thing," he observed at length, "that a war of this size
hasn't thrown up a single soldier of first-rate genius."
Maitland, for all that he had made the cleanest possible job of an
Afghan raid and was now counter-initialling minutes in an extension of
the War Office, took the criticism as personal.
"That is precisely what the soldiers say of you politicians," he
retorted.
"The soldiers' job is to understand warfare and run a war," Bertrand
propounded.
"The statesman's job is to govern," Maitland retaliated. "That's just
what the Cabinet doesn't do and just what you M.P.'s don't make it do."
In the altercation which followed I listened to Maitland and watched
Jellaby. The first acted as a barometer to mark the variations of
average, prejudiced, unthinking opinion; it was the business of the
second to follow the daily movement of the barometer. I did not need a
second look at Jellaby to know that he was worried. He and I had talked
in odd half-hours at the House about the possibility of attaining the
objects for which we had entered the war; when our prospects were far
brighter, Jellaby had been more rationally despondent, and I chose to
think that his attack on Bertrand was an inspired attempt to suggest
that any consideration of peace was at present out of the question and
that a hard-pressed Government had better use for its time and energies
than debating-society resolutions. He made no defence or comment,
however, when Maitland developed a damaging attack on the Cabinet, and I
fancied that he could not speak without indiscretion. Whether the Press
reflected the public or the public reflected the Press, there was a
widespread feeling that an ungainly cabinet of twenty-two talked
incessantly and decided nothing, that countries were overrun and
opportunities thrown away, because no one acted in time and that,
paralysing as this collective lethargy so often and so tragically
proved, it was still no check on the spasmodic and misdirected energy of
individual members. Bertrand was one of a school which scented Press
intrigue in every political development, but, as Grayle was credited
with having said, "A Government which can't down Northcliffe can't down
the Germans."
Of Grayle I saw nothing at this time, though a fresh crop of rumours
told me that he was engaged once more on the task which he had begun a
year and a half before, after the battle of Neuve Chapelle. Watchful
friends discovered him slipping in and out of the houses of Unionist
ministers; there were tales of informal gatherings and chance week-end
meetings at Brighton or on Shannon Wood golf-course.
"He wants a new coalition under Lloyd-George," Bertrand explained, "but
the Tories aren't nibbling. You see, there's no popular cry that they
can put up. George is at the War Office; if he and they can't make their
will effective, they'd better resign like Carson, they mustn't proclaim
their own impotence by whimpering. But they can't resign on the ground
that the war's being mismanaged, because they're jointly and severally
responsible for the mismanagement. There's no issue."
Later on he talked to me with a mixture of resignation and
disappointment.
"If the Government falls, it will be simply because it doesn't know its
own strength. It runs away every time anyone shakes a stick at it; it
never says, 'Turn us out and be damned!' Meanwhile its authority is
being sapped daily.... It's the old complaint I brought against it for
eight years before the war. Ministers are so high and mighty that they
never remember who it is that keeps 'em in power. 'Never explain, never
complain!' It won't do! For months the Press has been urging that
something must be done to raise fresh drafts after the Somme slaughter,
that food prices must be controlled, that Ireland can't be left where
she is. The Government goes about like Caesar's wife.... And everyone
thinks it's doing nothing, and where should we be without Lord
Northcliffe? And give us a Man! I don't know when or where the break
will come, but I hear most ominous cracks."
The break came--unexpectedly, so far as I was concerned--in the first
week of December. I say "unexpectedly," because I have yet to discover
why the Government did not fall three months earlier or endure until
three months later. Bertrand, who took on a new lease of life when the
days of crisis approached, told me that the point of cleavage was the
question whether more troops should be sent to Salonica. True or false,
this was obscured by an ultimatum in which the Secretary of State for
War called for a Merovingian War Cabinet in which the Prime Minister was
to have no place.
As I walked home from my office, the contents bills bore the legend,
"England's Strong Man to Go." George Oakleigh and one or two others were
dining with me, and by the time that I was dressed the news was being
shouted in the streets that the Government had resigned. I suppose that
I am as near to an Independent as the caucuses and the House of Commons
will allow, but, though I had opposed the old Liberal administration in
fully half of its measures, I felt a sentimental regret that the long
rule was over. It closed an epoch to me at a time of life when I did not
want to close epochs.
"I had four years of it at the beginning," said George
unenthusiastically. "I'm afraid that in my youth and inexperience I
hoped more of it than it was capable of giving. And I was rather glad to
be out when the war came along. Beresford's quite right, you know; for
seven or eight years the fate of this country was in the hands of three
or four men who accepted our support and never gave us an inkling where
they were taking us. Are _all_ political rank-and-filers treated as
cavalierly as we've been? It goes on right to the end. The Coalition
came into existence without consulting the Liberal Party and now it's
gone out--every bit as much on its own. You and I don't know why; there
was no vote, no trial of strength. Nobody can say how many supporters
anyone else can claim; there isn't even the usual man who's defeated the
Government for the King to send for. They _have_ treated the party like
dirt! Now it remains to be seen whether an alternative Government _can_
be formed."
That night and for a day or two afterwards London was filled with a
greater political excitement than I can ever remember at any other time.
Bertrand told me that, in the interests of governmental and national
unity, there had been a disposition to accept the terms of the
ultimatum, but that a majority had decided that here at least a stand
must be made.
"Now you simply _must_ tell me what's happening!" young Deganway
exclaimed when I met him dining late at the Club. "Bonar Law's been sent
for, as you know, but I hear he's told the King he can't form a
Government. That leaves only George. How much life do you give him?
Three weeks? I want you to say three weeks, because I've got a fortnight
bet on the other way with a man in the War Office and I'm rather
inclined to hedge."
The next day it was announced officially that Mr. Bonar Law was unable
to form a Government and that the King had sent for the Secretary of
State for War. There was fresh furious speculation how short a time
would suffice to shew that he would fail, as his predecessor had failed,
but the speculation was incommoded by the intrusion of fact. Bertrand
informed me that the Prime Minister-Elect had struck a bargain with
Labour, but that the Liberal and Unionist members of the Coalition were
refusing to serve under a man who had slain his master. I next heard
that the Unionist attitude was modified, that it was felt the King's
Government must be carried on, that pressure had been brought....
"Of course, when once the rot sets in!" cried George Oakleigh, when we
met by the tape-machine at the Club. He was undisguisedly disappointed,
which was interesting. For eight or nine years I had heard from him
plain and bitter criticism of the Government, but the old faith in his
political idols had survived unexpectedly to make him forget the war and
become the most excited of partisans. No terms were too strong to
describe the treachery which had laid the Government low; his new-born
good-will towards the dead Ministry was only exceeded by his blind
antagonism to any alternative. "There was a day when Lloyd George could
not get a man near him; then the Tories began to rat and everyone tried
to elbow his way in before his neighbour.... He'd got the liver in his
pocket, everyone was afraid of being left out, the doors of the War
Office weren't wide enough to let them all in. This latest development
has rather disgusted me with politics. I shouldn't have minded, if it
had been an ordinary peace-time political intrigue. I suppose I've been
hoping for a higher standard since the war ... gratitude--things of that
kind. How are you going to vote, Stornaway? Bertrand keeps saying that
he must support the _de facto_ Government. Is that your view?"
"I want to see the _de facto_ Government first," I said.
"You've an intelligent anticipation here," he answered, handing me a
copy of the "Night Gazette." "Sir John Woburn can be relied on to have
good stable information."
The first page of the paper contained a streaming headline--"Do It Now"
or "Wait and See?" Underneath came an obviously inspired forecast of the
new ministry with the old Unionist and Labour members back in place as
to some eighty per centum of their numbers; the old Liberal
office-holders were collectively abstaining, and their place in the
party scale was filled by consequential nobodies and by the leaders of
the Liberal "ginger group."
"If they've got rid of the brains, at least they've kept the
dead-heads," George observed. "I don't see stability or long life here,
Stornaway. Everyone knows that Woburn and the Press Combine turned the
Coalition out, and now, before a single name has been submitted to the
King, the Press Combine's at work devouring its own child. The new
Ministry's too much tarred with the brush of the old, Balfour and Robert
Cecil and the less featherbrained are to be pushed out of their offices
some time before they get into them. It's going to be a very clean
sweep."
I heard later that the attack on the elder Unionist statesmen was
abandoned on the day when the Unionist party threatened to withdraw its
support from the new Coalition unless newspaper attacks on its members
ceased immediately.
"Is Grayle included?" I asked, as George drew an expressive finger down
the draft list.
"He gets a new Ministry of Recruiting. At least, when I say that he gets
it," George corrected himself, "this is quite unofficial, of course.
He's suggested for it."
"I wonder if he'll get it," I said.
4
In London, more even than in the fabled Indian bazaar, the secret of
to-day is the thrice-told tale of to-morrow. The same few thousand men
and women migrate so regularly from one to another of the same few
hundred houses that, if you let fall a piece of gossip at luncheon in
Chesterfield Gardens, it will have taken wing to Portman Square and Hans
Place by tea-time and will set tongues wagging over the dinner-tables of
Westminster, Pall Mall and Piccadilly. By Saturday night the
germ-carriers have spread themselves for a hundred miles to the west,
north and south; before the week-end is over, the news may reasonably be
expected to have reached Paris and, in these latter days, General
Headquarters; and there has probably been more than one sly hint in the
personal columns of the Sunday papers. Lady Maitland hears the story
that very day at luncheon from the Duchess of Ross, who has met Gerald
Deganway the night before at the Opera; _he_ had been dining with Lady
Pentyre, who had spent the week-end at Oxford with the Cutler-Blythes;
young Haviland had come over to lunch on Sunday and had brought the
story from All Souls'....
Deganway's name appeared most regularly in these lists, but I doubt if
he had the wit to invent scandal; he was content to collect and hand it
on during the hours when his energies might have been more disastrously
employed at the Foreign Office. It was from him that I first publicly
heard even a rumour of Mrs. O'Rane's escapade; George Oakleigh and I
succeeded in stopping his mouth, and for a few more precarious weeks
Milford Square sank back to its former insecure silence. Then the busy
tongues got to work again, and within thirty-six hours I had heard six
various accounts in as many places, starting with an early morning
encounter in Hyde Park with my niece, who observed triumphantly, "_Now_
I know why you haven't been talking about the great Sonia O'Rane the
last few months."
"How much do you know, Yolande?" I asked.
"I heard yesterday that she'd run away," was the answer. "I wasn't told
who with.... I can't say I was surprised."
At luncheon the name was supplied, unsupported by details, however. I
was sitting next to Lady Pentyre, who welcomed me with even greater
fervour than our old friendship warranted.
"I've been longing to see you!" she began eagerly. "You know Mrs.
O'Rane, don't you? And you know Colonel Grayle. Well, is it true ...?"
"Is what true?" I asked, as she paused delicately.