"She can go to her parents," I said. "O'Rane, we're all of us different
men and women every day of our lives, we're always changing, never the
same. Some things change us more rapidly than others, marriage, illness,
great prosperity or great disaster, the death of a friend--my dear boy,
I'm only telling you what you know already. Because your name doesn't
change, because you look the same and your hair doesn't turn white from
illness or grief, you think that _you're_ the same. You're _not_. And
_she's_ not. Since you parted, there have been changes and developments
in both your souls which will prevent your ever coming together again.
You don't like me to say it, but you'll have to recognise it."
The boy's eyes seemed to shine with reflected pain at every word.
"But isn't there room for something new?" he asked. "A man may love a
woman with all his heart and soul, he may marry her, she may die; in
time he may marry again--without forgetting her, without transferring
the affection he once gave her--leaving her in the place where she's
always been since she died, but somehow creating a new love. Don't you
think that when two people ... separate, the husks of their love may die
... their old love, I mean, they may even hate the memory of it, but in
time, perhaps, a new one may be born ...?"
"Between the same people? My friend, the memory of the separation, the
reasons for it, will rise up like ghosts to keep them apart. You want
her to come back?"
For the first time a wan smile lit up his thin face.
"Do you wonder?"
"What can you give her that you didn't give her before?" I persisted.
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.
"I shouldn't like to think that a second chance is always thrown away."
"And what inducement can you offer?" I asked him brutally.
He spread out his hands with a shrug.
"What inducement did I offer before? We've been in love with each other
so long! At one time she was actually engaged to another man.... But
there was something constant and unchanging. She didn't forget him or
hate him, but in time she had adjusted herself and come back to the
thing that had always been there, hidden and unchanged.... So now, isn't
it possible that, when the last six months fall into their proper
perspective, when the ghosts no longer rise up----"
"How many people have you known to marry a second time after they've
been divorced?"
"But there's no reason why they shouldn't."
"In fact they don't," I said.
I believe that George delivered himself of his message within about
three days. I believe, further, that he descended to bribe some smirking
kitchen-maid and stood through a downpour of rain to seize the
opportunity. Mrs. O'Rane masked any surprise that she felt--I suppose
that she must have been taking part in many unexpected
meetings,--thanked him for troubling to come and transferred her
attention to the wind-screen, as a choleric voice remarked, "Now, young
man, when you've quite finished talking to my chauffeur!"
The meeting confirmed my own diagnosis. The play was ended, and, if I
concerned myself with wondering what O'Rane and his wife would do with
the remainder of their lives, I felt that this would be a new play, no
continuation of the first. The brief scandal had flickered out as
abruptly as it had flared up. Lady Maitland--my barometer and
sounding-board--announced to Bertrand across the length of a
considerable table that she had seen darling Sonia, who had really
turned over a new leaf; it was the best thing in the world; she was
taking the war seriously at last.
"Do you know, that dear child is never off duty Sundays or week-days,
night or day?" she confided. "You try to get her to lunch or
dine--she'll tell you frankly that it's not the least use promising,
because, if her General wants her, out she has to go and she may be
driving for him all night. I don't see how she _can_ keep it up--not
seeing anyone, you know, or doing anything, and after the life she _had_
been leading. Of course, she was really very naughty about the way she
did it--all in a night, you know--threw everybody over--I was running an
entertainment on behalf of my society, and she simply spoilt one
tableau.... But then that's so like darling Sonia."
"She's less of a fool than I thought," was Bertrand's comment to me. "No
awkward questions, nobody to meet her and ask them! Can't live at home
when she has to be ready with the car at a moment's notice.... I hope
General Sir Andrew Lampwood has broad shoulders.... She's snug and
secure till the war's over, and God knows when that will be."
I made no answer, for I was thinking of O'Rane. On New Year's Eve he had
dined at home with George and Bertrand, and all three came up to my room
afterwards. We made a despondent party, for the endlessness of the war
daunted us as the third year added month to month with lengthening
casualty lists and a growing sense that, when we had already failed so
many times and in so many ways, there was no reason why we should not go
on failing. Each one of us was far enough from reality to be conscious
of helplessness and insufficiency; I could not count the number of
times that Bertrand had growled, "I've done with the House! I'm not
going down there any more. What _good_ can we do?"--the number of times,
too, that he repented and saw the House as the one independent and
courageous check on an imbecile and malign government. Stripped of all
mental elasticity and enthusiasm, George hated the Admiralty with a
savage ferocity that was made no less by the easy youth which he had
passed, uncontrolled, undisciplined and effortless. And underneath our
nervous depression and irritability lay a despondent sense that the
moral grandeur of the war had become obscured.
"I suppose the pace was too hot," George observed gloomily. "But in
those first weeks.... They may not have known what they were going out
to face, but they went like good 'uns; and the people who stayed behind
were ready for any sort of sacrifice of money, comfort, leisure. All the
spiritual fervour seems to go now in trying to make _other_ people do
things, keeping _other_ people up to the mark.... God! I'm sick of the
press agitations, I'm sick of all this political intrigue, I suppose I'm
sick of the war."
O'Rane nodded, but made no answer.
"I don't ask anyone to listen to me," George went on with unwonted
bitterness, "because I've been wrong all through. So have you, Bertrand.
We were wrong before the war, when we said there couldn't be a war; and
we were wrong when we started yapping about a 'war to end war.' We can't
even make a clean job of this, we can't make the Hun put up his hands
and say he'll go back to the _status quo_, and as for dismembering
Germany and deposing the Kaiser--we can't do it! But when I remember my
own tom-fool speeches at the beginning----"
"But we couldn't keep out of it, George," O'Rane interjected.
"And precious little good we've done by going in. I suppose we _have_
stopped Germany from dominating Europe, but, as for our own honour, we
offered that up on the altar of necessity when we found that we were
fighting a nation that meant to win if it darned well could. Our later
policy's become frankly imperialistic; there's no ethical connection
between Belgian neutrality and the partition of Turkey and Austria. I'm
afraid I've taken a deuced long time to see it...." He turned to me with
a scornful smile. "Do you remember when you first came back to England?
When we met outside the Admiralty?"
"I've often thought of that conversation," I said.
"Everything seemed to follow so naturally in those days," he sighed.
"Disarmament, nationality, a tribunal to arbitrate between states.
Raney, you were one of the most persistent optimists I've had the
ill-luck to meet; you're not going to pretend that the entire thing's
not the most futile, gigantic waste ... whole peoples in arms hacking
themselves to death and not a damned thing gained! _You_ don't think
we're going to win this war?"
For the first time in six months I saw O'Rane roused to impersonal
interest.
"I don't know if anybody's going to win," he answered. "And, what's
more, I don't greatly care."
"If you were back in August, '14?" George asked, looking him in the eyes
and then quickly turning away.
"I'd go through it again," was the quiet reply.
George got up and began to pace restlessly up and down the room.
"The big thing about this war is quite independent of results," O'Rane
explained. "It's the effect on the individual, the effort, the risk, the
readiness to make sacrifice. I always hold that there's no room in life
for compromise. You know that, don't you, George?" He held out his hand
and pulled George on to the arm of his chair. "From the days when we
were at Melton together. You and dear old Jim Loring and Tom
Dainton--dear God! how this war has killed them off!--you used to thrash
me, you brutes, to make me see that I must compromise, but you never
won. And always before the war I thought that compromise--what I call
moral cowardice and spiritual slovenliness--was the only thing that
people minded about. They didn't _care_. It wasn't their _business_! If
the world was cruel and licentious or base-minded, they always asked me
to remember that human nature was human nature." He sprang up with a
sudden wriggle as though he were jerking an incubus from his shoulders.
"As a nation we were contented with the second-rate--compromise,
toleration, ease; we were second-rate in life, art, politics,
second-rate in humanity, in soul.... And then there came the war--and it
was the big moment when we had to decide whether to fight our way
through the flames or to stand in distant security and explain to the
reporters that there was a child, sure enough, in the top storey, but
that it would be suicide to attempt a rescue and what was the fire
brigade for, anyway?... We had to decide, we had to make up our minds
that there was something big enough to suffer and sacrifice ourselves
for.... All of us who went out there thought, rightly or wrongly, that
we'd found something that admitted of no compromise.... Even if you went
out of bravado, like poor Val Arden, so as not to be thought a funk....
What it was--I don't quite know ..." he went on slowly. "I doubt if any
of us know, and we certainly didn't at the time. Perhaps it was for the
security of the people at home.... I know I was seeing red, I'd have
slit the throats of German women and children at that time--in revenge
for what they did in Belgium.... But before that started, before war was
declared.... You remember that last week-end of the Saturnia regna,
George? When we walked up and down, up and down at Loring Castle,
wondering whether there was anything worth saving.... Well, whenever I
catch myself feeling as you do now, I recall that about four million men
voluntarily decided that there was something in life better than their
own lives, something that had to be preserved, something that ruled out
all compromise. That's the moral value of war. After all, what is it you
do when you run into the flames and rescue the kiddie from the top
storey? You save its life, I admit, and that's something, if you value
human life, but the child may die a week later of whooping-cough, it
may grow into a drunkard, an imbecile, a criminal. What matters it that
you've taken yourself, your own soul, and given it a value?... When this
is all over, if we lose, if we're bankrupt and broken, if Germany
enchains us like so many tribes of African blacks, it still doesn't
matter to the men who refused to compromise, they've made themselves....
Yes, quite deliberately, I'd--go through it--all--again.... And, when
the war's over, we can't afford to tolerate anything but the best, we
haven't been fighting for the second-rate. And we've got to prepare our
own minds for that now, so that the material changes follow
automatically. You must start with the individual, your _own_
relationship to the world in all its aspects. Hanging for sheep-stealing
ceased automatically when the public mind had prepared itself, stirred
itself up to say 'This has got to _stop_!' and the compromisers, the
obscurantists, the vested interests daren't raise their heads. You
think, perhaps, that I'm not the best person to decry the usefulness of
compromise----"
He stopped abruptly, and all the light and colour died out of his big
eyes.
Bertrand, whom I thought to be dozing, raised his head for a moment and
lowered it again.
"Didn't Saint Paul say something about being all things to all men?" he
asked gently. "Saint Paul was a great diplomatist, a great man of the
world. You'd say he was a great compromiser, David, but at least he knew
how to suit himself to his audiences, to make allowances for poor,
despised human nature. And perhaps you'll even admit that he was not
altogether unsuccessful and that Christianity would never have spread a
hundred miles from Jerusalem but for him. I sometimes think he has been
unduly neglected," he continued with a yawn. "Christianity would have
been a poor thing without him."
"It would have been a poorer thing without Christ," O'Rane answered.
"And there would have been no Christianity at all, if Christ had said
that the Scribes and Pharisees were doing their best according to their
lights ... or that we must make allowances for Dives because he had a
great many calls on his charity and really couldn't investigate each one
personally. Of course, there'd have been no Crucifixion...."
3
The Christmas holidays passed rapidly, and I remember that O'Rane told
me one Sunday night that he would be going back to Melton in another ten
days' time. None of us cared to ask him how much longer he proposed to
continue this make-shift life, teaching seventeen-year-olds for nine
months in the year and learning procedure in the House of Commons during
the remainder; it was his means of trying to forget that his wife was in
the same city, living within a mile or two of him, driving perhaps
within a hundred yards of their house or passing him in the street,
elusive and unattainable.
After George's glimpse and single meeting, we heard little of her.
George told me that he had met "Sonia's General," as that no doubt
gallant soldier came to be called with unflattering disregard of earlier
and more varied achievements, that he was an agreeable fellow, that
someone was putting him up for the Eclectic Club. They fell into
conversation and discussed the prowess of the new driver; the General
had been taken completely by surprise.
"If she'd said 'Sonia Dainton,' anyone would have known," he explained.
"I'd forgotten she was married. She suits me uncommon well,--if she can
stand the strain...."
A day or two later Bertrand made the General's acquaintance and came
home with the not very surprising news that Mrs. O'Rane had terminated
her engagement.
"I never supposed that phase would last long," he grunted. "Up early,
back late, out in all weathers and thankful if you can snatch five
minutes to munch a sandwich out of a paper bag. There'd be very little
of this boasted 'war-work' done, Stornaway, if people weren't allowed to
go about in uniform, and none at all, if the first condition of your
employment was that no one was allowed to know that you were doing
war-work of any kind. _I_ can see the offices and hospitals yielding up
their social ornaments! Well, Sonia O'Rane's at least honest about it. A
week or two with only a livery and no one to admire her----!"
"She's got no excuse now for living anywhere but at home," I commented.
Bertrand grunted scornfully.
"Give her credit for a little more contrivance than that! She leaves her
General at the end of the month, by which time her husband will be
safely back in the country. But she hopes to take it up again, when
she's a bit stronger. I had this from the General; he shewed me her
letter. Damned ill-written scrawl," he added with the intolerance which
ran away with him whenever his prejudices were aroused. "She'll
recuperate by lunching and dining out and dancing and staying up till
all hours; and the moment David comes back to London she'll be well
enough to go back to her precious work. You see if I'm not right."
This time, however, Bertrand's ingenuity and malice overreached
themselves, for we heard from Lady Maitland that Mrs. O'Rane was
genuinely ill.
"I used to see her every morning," she told George, "as I went to
Harrod's, and nine times out of ten we had just a word together. Then I
missed her, then I saw the car being driven by someone else. I hope it's
nothing serious."
The conversation took place at a luncheon party where O'Rane was
present. George took it upon himself to reassure her, but from the fact
that Mrs. O'Rane had disappeared even more completely than after leaving
Grayle there was a risk in fabricating good or bad news about her.
General Lampwood supplied her address, and one evening when there was
nothing better to do George went round to her lodgings. They consisted
of a bed-sitting room in a street off Wilton Crescent conveniently near
to the garage. She was in bed, and the landlady doubted whether visitors
would be very welcome, as she was suffering a good deal of pain.
"That decided me," George told me. "She hadn't actually said she
wouldn't see anyone, because I'm pretty sure she didn't think it would
be necessary. I gave her the surprise of her life when I marched in; she
couldn't imagine how I'd heard she was ill, how I'd found out her
address.... She's now suffering from the most awful reaction after the
racket of the last year. Nothing that I said or did was right; she was
as lonely as a woman could be and at the same time resented my coming,
resented my saying she looked rotten and ought to see a doctor...." He
frowned and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "She needn't bother. She
won't catch me going there a second time."
Yet rather less than ten hours passed before he was caught going there a
second time. Indeed he can hardly have left the house before Mrs. O'Rane
was writing in contrition--"Darling George, do forgive me if I was
snappy and ungracious, but I _did_ feel so rotten! It was my own fault
that nobody came to see me, because nobody knew where I was, but I felt
so horribly neglected, I was so furious with everybody for _not_ coming
to see me, that when you came into the room I laid myself out to be
hateful.... My dear, I did really feel iller than I can tell you, so
forgive me! Sonia."
"I suppose if I collect a few flowers ..." George began apologetically
next morning. "I shan't be able to stay more than a moment, or I shall
be so frightfully late at the office.... I might get my cousin Violet to
look her up, of course."
I was never told how he found Mrs. O'Rane on the occasion of his second
visit, but in the evening young Lady Loring paid us an unexpected visit.
I did not see her, but, when she had gone, George came into my room with
an expression of worried perplexity.
"Violet's been sitting most of the day with Sonia," he explained. "I
wonder if _you_ guessed.... I confess I never thought of it for one
moment. Sonia's going to have a child very shortly."
I, too, was taken by surprise and needed a moment to arrange my
thoughts.
"You're sure of that?" I asked.
"She told Violet. The question is--what are we going to do with her?
She's got to be properly looked after and she's got to be moved out of
her present pokey little room.... I suppose it means a nursing home.
Violet suggested taking her to Loring House, but that was more generous
than practical. I'm afraid there's no doubt Sonia did behave very badly
to Jim Loring when she was engaged to him ... and Violet knows it and
doesn't forgive her ... and Sonia doesn't forgive her for knowing it.
_You_ know what women are. Violet's got all the sweetness in the world,
she _thinks_ she doesn't bear a grudge, she can call on Sonia in bed,
make a fuss of her ... but it's different to take her into her own
house, particularly with the associations that house must have for
Sonia. But I needn't labour the point; the suggestion was turned down
almost as soon as it was made. Well, she can't go to her mother, because
Crowley Court's overflowing with wounded soldiers; and I don't know that
she's overwhelmingly anxious to meet her mother. She can't come here, of
course."
He stood reflectively rubbing his chin.
"Whose child is it going to be?" I asked.
"Grayle's the father. I suppose that, as Raney's taken up his present
attitude----" He left the sentence unfinished and began to fill a pipe.
"Ye gods, what a sweet mess people can get themselves into!"
"When's the event expected?"
"Pretty soon, I fancy. Violet didn't tell me the exact date, but she did
give me to understand very plainly that Sonia mustn't be left by herself
any longer. She was extraordinarily overwrought and hysterical, when I
saw her, but for some reason or other I never imagined.... I say,
Stornaway, if it had been Raney's child, if this had happened a year
ago?"
"Nothing would have saved them," I answered, "though it might have kept
them artificially together, making a hell of each other's lives, when
they'd be far happier apart. O'Rane was more responsible than any man
for the break-up of their life; Grayle was only the instrument. The
tragedy began when they married."
George smiled grimly.
"I suppose even Raney will see it, when his wife gives birth to another
man's child.... And _then_ what? Will he divorce her then? Have we got
to go through all this racket again? In the meantime the nursing-home
problem----"
He stopped guiltily, as the door opened and O'Rane came in to say
good-night to me.
"Who's been to call here?" he asked George. "I met a car driving away."
"It was Violet Loring."
"Oh, I wish I'd known that! When next you see her, you can tell her
she's a rude pig not to have pulled up. She must have seen me."
"She was in rather a hurry," George explained. "As a matter of fact, it
was me she came to see."
I suppose his voice betrayed uneasiness or at least embarrassment, for
O'Rane turned to him with quick sympathy.
"Nothing wrong, I hope?" he asked. "The boy's all right?"
"Oh, it wasn't that." George looked at me almost despairingly, but I
could only shrug my shoulders and leave him to make up his own mind.
"She came in to say that Sonia's a bit seedy," he went on. "I--as a
matter of fact, I saw her for a moment yesterday and, as she was rather
off colour, I thought it would be a friendly act for Vi to look her up.
I don't know if you heard Lady Maitland telling me at lunch the other
day that she was a bit done up."
O'Rane's face became rigid, and his voice was as set as his features.
"I didn't hear anything about it. I--You ought to have told me, George.
What's the matter with her?"
George looked at me again, without winning any more help than before.
"I only saw her for a moment," he answered evasively. "She seemed rather
overdone."
"But who's looking after her?"
"Nobody much at present. That was what Violet came about: she'd been to
see her and thought it would be more comfortable if she were moved into
a nursing home."
Nature must compensate the blind by developing their other qualities.
Though he could not see George's studiedly non-committal face, O'Rane
divined something hidden from him in the easily reassuring voice.
"Old man, I don't think that's the whole story, is it?" he asked with
persuasive gentleness. "The nursing-home rather gives you away. Has
Sonia got to have an operation?"
"There's no suggestion of it! Violet says it's nothing out of the
ordinary."
"Then why a nursing-home?"
"Because she wants rather more attention than she's likely to get in her
present quarters. But there's not the slightest need for you to worry
yourself."
O'Rane began to pace up and down the room, chewing his lips.
"She must come here, of course," he said at length.
This time I looked up at George.
"You won't find that practicable, O'Rane," I said.
"Why not?"
"She won't come."
"Because of me, you mean? I'll clear out, if she prefers it; I should be
clearing out in any event at the end of the week. But it's her home."
"You can't bring her home by force."
O'Rane's eyes lit up with sudden, burning passion.
"If I had my sight, I'd bring her myself! As I haven't, George is going
to bring her for me. Yes, you are, George. You're going to take a car
and have her carried into it and brought here. If she objects, you're
going to make her. I'll leave the house when she tells me to. You don't
understand me, you wouldn't understand me, if you lived to be a
thousand; but I took an oath and I'm going to keep it. I swore in the
sight of God that I would hold her in sickness and in health to love and
to cherish till death parted us. I said it with her hand in mine ... in
Melton chapel ... and I could feel her fingers trembling. It was a
scorching July day, and I could feel the sun coming hot on my face....
I'd never been at a wedding before, for some reason; we'd rehearsed it,
and Sonia'd told me how I had to stand and what I had to say.... And I
kept repeating the words as we came out into the Cloisters--it was cold
as the grave, and I felt her shivering as she leant on my arm. And then
there was a word of command and a rattle as the Corps presented arms....
And we came out into Great Court, and I could feel the sun again. And we
were marched off to Little End, and I heard a lot of yelping, and
something with a cold nose pressed against my hand, and Sonia gave a
little choke and said that Pebbleridge had turned out the hounds in our
honour.... And before we went to Burgess' house--the words were still
running in my head--I whispered 'I will love you, comfort you, honour
and keep you in sickness and in health, forsaking all other.' I swore it
then and I should be damned if I went back on it. This is her first
sickness since we were married, and I'm not going to leave her to go
through it alone until she tells me to."
His voice rang with excitement until the room echoed and Bertrand came
in with eyebrows raised.
"You don't in the least understand, Raney," George began in difficulty
and distress. "You were quite right; I hadn't told you the whole
story----"
"I don't want to hear any more--yet," O'Rane interrupted. "I shouldn't
be asking you to do this, if I could do it myself."
"Was that necessary?" George asked with a touch of stiffness and
impatience. "I'll go whenever you want me to."
"You must go now. Ring up Violet and tell her to meet you there in half
an hour with her car; you'll want a woman to help you. The rest of us
will have our work cut out to get things ready here. Stornaway, I'm
sorry to disturb you, but I shall have to find you a shakedown in some
other part of the house; this is Sonia's room. Don't waste a moment,
George----"
"I suppose you know it's after eleven," George interrupted.
"Move her to-night, if she's fit to move. Let Violet decide that."
George looked from Bertrand to me and turned helplessly to the door.
O'Rane had already rung my bell and was standing in the passage
tattooing the floor with impatient foot and waiting for his housekeeper.
I spread a bath-towel in the middle of the floor and began to pile on it
my exiguous personal effects, while Bertrand seated himself heavily in
an arm-chair and begged for enlightenment. A moment later the front-door
slammed, as George set out.
For an hour we worked hard to make the house ready for Mrs. O'Rane.
Bertrand's one comment, when I explained the new commotion, was, "The
boy's mad! _She_ won't come," and from time to time, when he was being
urged and driven to a fresh task, he would remonstrate gently and warn
O'Rane not to be disappointed. There was never any answer. By midnight
our labours were complete: the bedrooms had been reshuffled and beds
made, food and drink prepared. We met in the library with vague
uncertainty what to do next.
"You must tell me if it looks all right," O'Rane said to Bertrand. "I
want it to look exactly as it was before. She always loved this room,
and I believe it _is_ a beautiful room."
Bertrand glanced perfunctorily round and laid his hand clumsily on the
boy's shoulder.
"I told you before, David; you're going to be terribly disappointed, if
you think she's coming."
"_I_ would have undertaken to bring her!" he cried. "We can trust
George. And I don't suppose he'll even say where he's taking her."
"If she doesn't know where she's coming," I interrupted, "you'd better
keep out of the way till she says she'd like to see you."
"I must welcome her," O'Rane answered.
Bertrand and I exchanged glances and excused ourselves. As we turned at
the door, O'Rane was standing with his watch to his ear. About
three-quarters of an hour later I heard a car slowing down in the street
outside.
George has told me since that his cousin and he found their patient far
less difficult than they had feared. She was plunged in melancholy
bordering on hysteria. Loneliness, pain and neglect had reduced her
pride until she sat up in bed with her face contorted and tears
trickling down her cheeks, reproaching them for never coming to see her
and bitterly proclaiming that she _now_ knew how much trust to put in
people when they said that they were her friends. George took her hand
and explained that he had come to take her away where she would be
tended and made happy. At once there was an indignant outburst; she
would not move, she was quite well; if they would go away instead of
bullying her, worrying her, threatening her, she would be all right in a
moment. He let the storm spend itself and recaptured the hand that she
had snatched away.
"Violet's told me what's the matter with you," he whispered. "Unless
you're very quiet and good, you'll injure yourself. And you are going to
be quiet and good, aren't you?" He was talking to her as though she were
a child and she responded by throwing her arms round his neck and
weeping convulsively. "You're going to be very good, aren't you, Sonia?
And we're all going to take the greatest care of you. Violet's got her
car here, and we're going to wrap you in a cloak and explain to your
landlady that we're not really stealing the blankets, however much
appearances may be against us, and we're going to take you away, and
you're going to be in the midst of friends, and everybody's going to be
kind and sweet to you, and you're going to forget how lonely and
miserable you've been the last few days."
He lifted her into a sitting position, while Lady Loring hunted for
slippers and wrapped a cloak about her.
"I don't deserve it!" Mrs. O'Rane cried with sudden revulsion. "Why do
you come here bothering me? It's my fault, I knew perfectly well what I
was doing; I should never have done it, if he'd treated me properly, if
he'd loved me. It was David's fault, you know it was; and you come here
bothering me when I'm ill...."
George helped her out of bed and supported her across the room. From
time to time she muttered, "Why don't you leave me alone? It was _his_
fault, but he could never do any wrong in your eyes!" like a sobbing
child in the last stages of a tornado of temper. He carried her into the
car, while Lady Loring poured out a hurried explanation to the landlady.
A deep drowsiness descended upon her as she felt herself being packed
into a bed of cushions, while a bearskin rug was wrapped round her, but,
as the engine started, she opened her eyes and enquired sleepily where
she was being taken.
"You're to go to sleep and not ask questions," said George. "Is that a
promise? Say it quite slowly--'I--Sonia O'Rane--promise--that--I--will--
go--to--sleep--_at_--_once_--quite--quietly--and--will--not--ask--
_a n y_--questions.'" She laughed weakly and began to repeat the words,
only stumbling at her own surname. "Once again!" George ordered.
"I--Sonia O'Rane--promise...." She struggled half-way through the
sentence and then dropped asleep with her head pressed against his
shoulder.
She was still sleeping when the car drew up at "The Sanctuary." The door
stood open, George lifted her out and carried her across the pavement
and into the house. The lights in the library were burning, and, as he
carried her in with her head over his shoulder, she looked dully at the
familiar book-cases and panelling, the high, shadowy rafters, the chairs
and sofas and the preparations for a meal on the refectory table. He had
borne her half-way across the room, when she recognised her
surroundings and struggled violently to free herself. George had
perforce to lay her on a sofa before she threw herself out of his arms.
As he did so, O'Rane came up from behind.
"I asked George to bring you here," he explained. "I thought you'd be
more comfortable at home."
She dragged herself to her feet and hurried uncertainly to the door.
"My dear, you can't go out in that state!" said Lady Loring, as she laid
restraining hands on her shoulders.
"Let me go! It was a _trick_! You lied to me!"
O'Rane slipped forward and touched her wrist.
"I thought you'd be more comfortable at home," he repeated. "You won't
find me in the way, I'm going back to Melton. I was only staying to see
that you had everything you wanted."
"Let me go!" she cried again, shaking his fingers off her wrist.
"No, I'm going. But isn't it more comfortable?"
She looked stonily round, and her eyes came to rest on his face.
"Oh, yes. It's more comfortable. Now may I go, please?"
"You had better stay. Let me help you upstairs, and then I'll leave the
house. I was hoping you'd be glad to be back. And I'd waited so long."
He smiled and held out his hands to her. She looked at him for a moment;
then her eyes closed, and she began to sway.
"Take me home!" she whimpered, as George sprang forward to catch her.
"You must stay here to-night."
"I _ask_ you to take me home!"
O'Rane put one arm under her shoulders, and the other under her knees.
"It's too late now, and you're tired, darling," he whispered.
"To-morrow, if you like. I'm just going to carry you up to bed, as I
used to do at Crowley Court when you were twelve and I came over for
the holidays. Do you remember? And then I'll say good-night, and Violet
will put you to bed and take care of you. Don't struggle, Sonia
sweetheart! You can't hate me so much that you can't bear to let me
touch you or carry you up a flight of stairs when you're ill."
4
As I kept deafly and pusillanimously to my room, I am far from sure what
happened during the remainder of the night. O'Rane, I believe, carried
his wife up to bed, left her in charge of Lady Loring and accepted from
the tired butler at Loring House an armchair in the library for his own
accommodation. Bertrand was already in bed, I heard George going to bed
as the car started outside; by two o'clock all was quiet.
I remember that, when I was young enough to play baccarat for high
stakes and impressionable enough to be embarrassed by a scene, I stayed
in a house where certain unpleasantness took place at the card-table.
The dispute and recriminations were bad enough, the night of
reflection--after a dozen final councils adjourned from bedroom to
bedroom--was worse, but worst of all was our uncertain meeting next day,
when we stood whispering by the fire in the dining-room, peevishly
waiting for breakfast and watching the door to see whether the cause of
the unpleasantness would shew himself. Bertrand, George and I stood
whispering next morning with much the same embarrassment; breakfast lay
on the table, and none of us paid any attention to it. The time was
early for me and late for George; I have no idea at what hour Bertrand
usually rose, but I remember he was soothing himself with the first
cigarette I had ever seen him smoke, at intervals forgetting that it was
not a cigar and trying to hold it between his teeth.
Our attitude of vague expectancy was broken up by the arrival of Lady
Loring in a creased, black evening dress with a travelling rug over her
shoulders. Her eye-lids were pink with fatigue and her arms mottled with
cold.
"We look a nice band of conspirators!" she exclaimed. "Now, will
_some_body tell me what it's all about?"
"How's Sonia?" George asked.
"She went to sleep the moment her head touched the pillow and she was
sleeping like a child whenever I looked at her. I think you're all
needlessly alarmed about her, but then you're only men. _I_'ve been
through it all, so I know exactly what it feels like to imagine you're
being neglected. But what does anybody want me to do?"
She beckoned us to the table and sat down rather wearily, looking from
one to another.
"The trouble is, dear lady," Bertrand grunted, "that we don't know. I
suppose you've heard that these two young idiots have had a
disagreement? Does that young woman upstairs know where she is?"
"She'll know the moment she wakes up. Is David here?"
"He said he'd beg a shakedown at your house, Violet," George
interrupted.
Lady Loring hummed dubiously.
"To judge from her condition yesterday," she ventured, "she's hardly
accountable for her actions. It's not to be wondered at, you know, when
you think what she's been through--and the way she's lived on her nerves
for years. If you'll tell me what you want done, of course...."
It was easier to concentrate our attention on breakfast. George soon
hurried away to his office, Bertrand lighted a cigar and went off to a
committee meeting, after stumping the library for half an hour, with the
ends of his walrus moustache pulled into a circle, and murmuring at
five-minute intervals, "What are two fat old men like _us_ doing in this
galley?" A telephone message from O'Rane enquired how his wife was, and
Lady Loring took the opportunity of arranging with her maid for a supply
of clothes to be sent round. The conversation reminded me of her vigil,
and I told her that, if she would lie down until luncheon, I would take
a book, a chafing-dish and a bowl of bread and milk and sit outside Mrs.
O'Rane's door in case she wanted anything. Half-way through the morning
O'Rane tiptoed upstairs for a change of linen; Bertrand relieved guard
while I went down and took a light meal with Lady Loring. It was not
until three or four o'clock that I heard sounds of movement within the
sick-room.
I went in to find Mrs. O'Rane considerably altered since our last
meeting, but more collected than I had anticipated. She asked for food
and, when I had brought her the bowl of bread and milk, begged me to
stay and talk to her. Her first question was who had brought her to "The
Sanctuary," and, when I had told her, she lay back on the pillows with
closed eyes to avoid giving away any points.
"I feel better than I did yesterday," she said at length. "I shall go
back to my own rooms to-day."
"You'll be wiser to stay here."
She smiled rather sneeringly.
"You think it's the simplest thing in the world for me to stay here."
"The wisest," I corrected her. "Your husband's not here, by the way, and
you can be sure of being well looked after."
"Oh, don't say that again! You think it's _easy_ for me to lie here and
be looked after by people who despise me and hate me...."