"... And I have waited long for thee
Before I poured the wine!"
ROBERT BUCHANAN: _The Ballad of Judas Iscariot_.
1
The winter months of 1917 passed sadly for anyone who was condemned to
live in the depression of London. I was well enough to go back to work
in February, but I stayed on at "The Sanctuary," because, with all its
nerve-racking discomfort, I had not the heart to go away when both
Bertrand and George pressed me so warmly to remain. Three, they said,
were less depressing than two, though I came to doubt it. For the tenth
time, we seemed to be entering upon the last decisive phase of the war;
Germany had begun her unrestricted submarine campaign, it was inevitable
that America should abandon her neutrality. (Since the Presidential
election and with every day that brought intervention nearer, our press
became less scornful of the President; it ceased to misquote and
misinterpret phrases about a nation that was too proud to fight or a
peace without victory.) But the race would be hotly contested. The
submarine campaign at sea, a win-through-at-all-costs offensive on land
had to put Germany in a position to dictate terms before the
incalculable weight of American arms was thrown into the scale against
her.
Men wore grave faces in those days. Though few could give accurate
figures of the tonnage which was being sunk daily or of the stocks of
food on which we could depend, everyone knew that prices had soared
until they had to be arbitrarily fixed by the Government; everyone knew
that already certain foods were unprocurable and that the privations
were unlikely to grow less. Meatless days and three-course dinners were
but the beginning, and Bertrand, who was by now almost reconciled to the
continuation of war in the hope that it would discredit the new
Government, shook his head gloomily at me and wondered morosely how long
the proud-stomached people of England would consent to go on short
commons.
And it was not only in food that the shortage was being felt. Omniscient
critics, who had a figure and a date ready for every question, whispered
that, since the Somme campaign, we were short of recruits to the extent
of a hundred thousand men, and the whisper, growing in volume, was the
signal for a campaign, half malicious, half patriotic, and wholly
mischievous. The unessential industries must yield up their young men,
the civil service must be purged of its indispensables, and, that not
even one fish should slip through the meshes of the net, those who had
been exempted, rejected or discharged from the army, were required to
present themselves for re-examination. The campaign evoked one flash of
opposition, not serious in itself, but of interest as a symptom of
turbulent discontent; mass meetings of discharged soldiers, each with
his silver badge, assembled to declare their intention of not being sent
out again until others had done their share.
"The wheel has swung the full circle now," said George one night. "I was
up before a board to-day. The doctors seemed to feel that it was a
personal score for them that my eyes weren't bad enough for me to be
rejected; but, when they came to my heart, they were quite indignant.
They _couldn't_ pass me on that, but it was a personal grievance and I
shouldn't have been a bit surprised if they'd tested me to see if I'd
been chewing cordite.... I suppose it's not to be wondered at; I'm _not_
as keen to go out as I was two and a half years ago; I shouldn't be keen
at all, if it wasn't for the feeling that I'm left, that all my friends
have been killed.... And they must get men from somewhere. This Russian
revolution is a very fine and hopeful thing in itself, but the Russians
are so much absorbed in it that they can't spare time to bother about
the war, and the Germans are withdrawing the best part of their troops
from the East. _I_ don't know where you're going to get men from. The
papers keep yapping about Ireland, but I wonder how many of their
inspired leader-writers know anything about the country."
It was one of many discussions, when George would come home late and
tired from his office, Bertrand later and more tired from the House.
"If Germany threw up the sponge to-morrow!" George began one night,
"what should we have gained? The flower of our manhood's been destroyed,
we're smashed financially, the money market of the world has shifted to
New York, and we shall spend the rest of our days paying the interest on
our debt, trying to repair the damage.... I don't care to think of the
labour troubles we're going to have when we try to get back to
peace-time rates of wages or when the men find that their jobs have been
done as well or better in their absence by women. And what's it all for?
I get most infernally sceptical at times. As poor Beresford used to
prove with chapter and verse, in every war of this kind there's always
been a school of optimists to say that such a scourge will never be seen
again. And it always _is_.... As for social or moral elevation, with the
spirit of lynch-law and the methods of the press-gang.... It'll all be
the same!"
"It can't be quite the same after so universal a shake-up," I objected.
George shook his head wisely.
"In the early days, when men of our class were enlisting as privates,
even lately, when rankers were getting commissions, I used to think that
some of our social angles would be rubbed off, but just you have five
minutes' talk with an Old Army officer about the 'temporary gentlemen'
in his battalion, who've been fighting side by side with him, mark you!
While you're on the desert island, your Admirable Crichton may come to
the top, but once get him back in London with a drawing-room _and_ a
servants' hall!... I agree in theory with people like Raney, who say we
must get value for the lives we're spending, but I can't do it! Nobody
can do it. The men out there who are paying the price want to forget
about the whole thing, they'll come home at the end as they come home
now on leave, to attend to their own affairs, to enjoy themselves, to
make up for lost time and recapture the years they've wasted in the
trenches. And the people who've never been out have forgotten all the
old good resolutions; they're as tired of the war as the soldiers, tired
of drudgery, discomfort, economising; they want to forget it and enjoy
themselves and get back to the old life. Frankly, Stornaway, it still
makes you sick to hear of the way our prisoners are treated and that
sort of thing, but you don't any longer regard this war as a crusade, do
you? There's too much eighteenth-century diplomacy about it, too many
compensations, too much balance of power. It was one thing to send a
forlorn hope to Belgium, one thing to say that the German military
machine must be broken, but when it comes to conscribing men to coerce
Greece or win Constantinople for Russia ... I wonder when the accursed
things _will_ end."
Bertrand roused himself to light a fresh cigar. From the angle at which
he held it in his mouth, no less than from the way that he screwed up
his eyes and peered into the shadows of the rafters, I prepared myself
for a paradoxical and probably pretentious generalisation.
"I sometimes feel that war is the new expression of our national
activity," he began. "Don't the Rolls-Royce people build only for the
Government? Well, that's typical of a gigantic state-socialism which has
grown up in a night; you can't build a house or buy a suit of clothes
until war-needs have been satisfied. Production, transport, distribution
have all been taken over; you've an army of controllers directing the
machine; and in time we shall dress as we're told, eat the quantity of
food we're allowed, move here and there, do this and that, as we're
ordered. At one age we shall be drafted into the army, at another we
shall be knocked on the head to save feeding; there'll be birth-rate
bonuses amounting to state-subsidised polygamy.... Everything that a man
did in the old days for his own benefit or amusement,--his daily task,
his career, his material output, his accumulation of wealth, his
pioneer-work in developing and improving the world, his family-life,
even--will now be directed to feeding the war. I don't complain; we're
united in a labour gang of forty million souls, and our job is to turn
out a better war than Germany. I don't see where it's going to stop and
I don't see who's going to stop it. Not the soldiers, because they're
shot if they disobey an order; not the Government, because they're the
Board of Directors."
"You'll only stop it by a general strike at home," George answered
reflectively.
Bertrand spread out his hands with a gesture of sweet reasonableness.
"And who's going to carry through a general strike? The people with
small fixed incomes can't make themselves heard, and, for all the rise
in prices, your industrial wage-earner has never been so prosperous;
besides, whenever prices become _too_ high, the Government steps in and
controls them, subsidises producers. Again, it's not pleasant to be told
that your sons and brothers are being killed because you won't turn out
shells."
George wriggled his shoulder-blades impatiently.
"But, if you make it plain that you're not going to turn out shells, the
killing stops automatically. If _anyone_ would only come off the high
horse and discuss concrete terms!"
Bertrand shrugged his shoulders and blew a scornful cloud of smoke.
"But people are getting used to the killing," he objected. "Three years
ago--take anyone you like, Jim Loring; he could only die as the result
of illness or an accident; even if there _were_ a war, he wasn't a
soldier. And it came like a sort of icy grip at the heart.... Nowadays a
man becomes a soldier, whether he likes it or not, at eighteen. They
get mown down at twenty instead of dying in their beds at seventy. And,
as we grow accustomed to it, on my soul! George, we cease caring. People
who come back from Paris tell me that there's a sort of hedonistic
fatalism there--the restaurants never so full, money never so prodigally
squandered. And anyone who knows anything knows that French credit in
America is _gone_! So it isn't the calm, undismayed spirit of the
Spartans at Thermopylæ; it's hysteria, carelessness. I've little doubt
that with certain obvious differences you'd find the same thing in
Berlin, assuredly you'd find it in Vienna. And we're getting it as
badly."
It was due to the house in which I lived, but I suddenly realised that
for a twelvemonth my emotions and interests had strayed from
battlefields where thousands of men were daily laying down their lives
for conflicting ideals; they were engrossed in the contemplation of a
middle-aged bachelor, taking advantage of a blind man to carry off his
wife. And Mrs. Tom Dainton, one of the earliest widows in the war, had
married again. And Lady Maitland and her friends were wondering whether
the risk of sudden death would nerve young Pentyre to marry Lady Sally
Farwell.
"You're not very encouraging, Bertrand," I said.
"And yet, if you take a long view, you _can_ see light," he rejoined
unexpectedly. "The same scientific development which gives you
chloroform gives you also poison gas; and, until you can disarm the
world and make one nation of it under a single police, each war becomes
more horrible than the last. At the same time international divisions
and values may be becoming obsolete; the stronghold of Gibraltar may be
the target for long-range Spanish guns; we may all of us thankfully
throw down our weapons before we have to fight under changing
conditions. You remember when war broke out, George? You were going to
stay with Jim Loring, and I went to Paddington with you; we all shook
our heads gravely and said, 'Thank God! We're an island!' Well,
insularity would have been a source of greater weakness than strength,
if the perfection of submarine warfare had gone _pari passu_ with the
development of trench warfare; and we may want to cry 'quits' before the
submarine makes any further progress. Or take aerial transit. With any
luck, George, you'll live to see mail and passenger services through the
air all over the world. Germany can't get to the Far East without the
leave of Russia, she can hardly get to America without sending her
air-ships over someone else's territory. All these international
barriers have changed their values."
George looked at his watch and dragged himself to his feet.
"I think I shall turn in. A discussion of this kind is very purifying
for the soul, no doubt, but it doesn't get you any forrarder. Dear old
Raney could usually be counted on to produce some Mark Tapley
consolation at the end of the evening, but I doubt if even he's got any
superabundance at the present time."
Bertrand emptied his tumbler, and we moved slowly towards the door.
"Have you heard anything of him since he went back?" I asked.
"He's written once or twice on business. I send him a line two or three
times a week to say how Sonia's getting on, and I'm going down there for
the week-end pretty soon. You can't tell much from a dictated letter--or
from _him_, if it comes to that," he added with a sigh.
It must have been two or three days after this night that Lady Loring
came to me with a worried expression and the announcement that Sonia
would have to keep her bed until after her confinement; against this
sentence the doctor allowed no appeal. Thereafter I found myself
spending a considerable portion of the day in the sick-room. Sonia had
overcome her earlier antagonism and after her first unburdening of
spirit was prepared to discuss herself and her history with a frankness
that amazed me until George told me that it was one of her most
unchanging characteristics and one that was not solely stamped upon her
by a desire to talk about herself. At the end of a week I had received
a full and most unflattering account of her girlhood.
"I was frightfully attractive, of course, but I must have been odious,"
she began engagingly. "Every other woman hated me, and I used to take it
as a great compliment, but I don't think I should now. I want to be
liked, I always _did_; but I never took any trouble, I went out of my
way to exasperate men. I don't know why people stood me--people like
George, I mean, who didn't pretend to be in love with me. I must either
have been a first-class flirt, or I must have been a genius, or else I
must really have had qualities that I didn't recognise."
I had a full history of her engagement to Loring, over whom her facile
triumph had exasperated her, so that she picked quarrels day by day
until the engagement was broken off and she made, if not the match, at
least the most widely discussed scandal, of the year.
There was another man called Claypole or Crabtree (as she always alluded
to him as Tony I never entirely discovered his surname) to whom she had
been engaged before Loring came on the scene. I had his history, too,
sandwiched between accounts of the men whom she had not married for one
reason or another, and the rich Jews like Sir Adolphus Erskine, whom she
had fascinated and bled; throughout she talked like an artless child
describing her first ball. On some subjects she was inexorably reticent;
I never heard why she had fallen in love with O'Rane and married him,
and in all the hours that I sat with her she never alluded a second time
to the stages of her estrangement from her husband. An hour daily for a
fortnight told me little, perhaps, about Sonia, but it shed a searching
light on girls of the class to which she belonged.
2
As the days went by I found myself allowed to spend less and less time
with Sonia. She had hypnotised herself into believing, as a matter of
duty and necessity, that she was ill, tired and suffering at a time
when half the amount of persuasion would have made her feel that she had
never been more comfortable in her life. It was hardly cowardice, for
George had told me anecdotes of her endurance in the hunting-field which
shewed that she was capable of supporting pain; but the obsession made
her a difficult patient.
"Only three weeks more," I used to be told; "only a fortnight more."
Then she began to count in days, and I saw her face lengthen and her
eyes dilate, as though the Wild Ass's Skin were shrinking in her hand.
She was morbidly curious to find out from Lady Loring how much
unavoidable pain she would have to feel; the doctor was questioned again
and again until he warned her that she was preparing the gravest
consequences for her child and herself. And it was after he had gone
that she whispered a terrible prayer that the baby might be born dead.
When the conversation was reported to me, I felt that drastic steps
would have to be taken, if she was to be kept from going mad herself and
giving birth to an imbecile. I took George into my confidence and sent
him for his week-end at Melton with a string of rhetorical questions and
a bulletin which brought O'Rane the same night to London, where he
stayed until Sunday evening, while his neglected guest billeted himself
on the Headmaster and accepted the hospitality of the Common Room. I was
by myself, dozing over a book, when the library door was flung open, a
gigantic Saint Bernard ambled in and a drenched and breathless figure
demanded if anyone was there.
"What on earth brings _you_ to London?" I asked.
"Sonia. I gathered from George ... I say, something's got to be done,
you know."
He stood with his eyes open and set on me, his lips parted to shew a
gleam of white, and one hand mopping his coat, more, I think, for
distraction than in any hope of drying it.
"I don't quite know what you think you can do," I said dubiously.
"If she's awake----" he began eagerly.
"You'd frighten her out of her wits," I interrupted. "And you can ask
Lady Loring, if you don't believe me. What you _can_ do--to-morrow
morning,--is to let it be known that you've come up--to lunch with a man
or collect some books--and, if she'd care to see you, she can. But I
think you've rather acted on an impulse, you know."
"I couldn't stay down at Melton, if there was anything I could do by
coming up."
"I'm afraid that you'll find that there isn't."
His underlip curled obstinately.
"We'll see. I took a solemn vow that I'd see her through...."
I said nothing, remembering that he was Irish and a romantic; his
simple-minded talk of oaths and obligations belonged to another age and
another land.
In the morning I asked Lady Loring whether it would be prudent to let
O'Rane see his wife. I was referred to Sonia herself, who received the
news of her husband's presence without visible surprise and hesitated
for what seemed five minutes before answering. Then she picked up a
hand-glass from the table by her bedside, looked long at her reflection
and laid it down with a sigh; there was a second spell of indecision
before she told me she was not well enough to see anyone.
"I think she's gratified by your coming," I told O'Rane, "but she'd
rather not have any visitors at present. It's not hostility to you, but
a woman loses her looks to some extent at a time like this, and I think
she's sensitive about it."
"But she _knows_----" He interrupted himself suddenly, and his voice
became softly wistful. "D'you appreciate that I've never seen my wife
since she _was_ my wife!"
"I don't think _she_ always does," I answered. "But the trouble in her
mind won't be removed by your sitting and talking to her sweetly for
half an hour, when she doesn't want to see you."
O'Rane's normal composure was breaking down, but he recovered himself
with an effort.
"I might have been a rather more civil host to George, at this rate," he
murmured.
At dinner that night we talked of a subject which illness and other work
had driven into the background. The war had shattered many of my fine
boasts of what I would do, if I were a millionaire, and new outlets had
to be found for the Lancing fortune. I had already decided that Ripley
Court could be put to no better use than as a richly endowed haven of
rest for those whom the war had made incapable of ever helping
themselves again. There were men, I knew, concealed mercifully for
themselves and the world from inquisitive or pitying spectators, who had
marched into battle and returned from the operating-theatre blind and
without limbs, mere trunks surmounted by sightless heads, yet--I was
told--glad to be spared even such life as remained to them. They were to
be my first care, and, when the last had died, there would still be
sufficient incurable cripples without the adventitious aid of modern
warfare to keep my hospital full. There was opportunity, too, for
bringing comfort and resignation to the demented, the paralysed and the
blind. As I saw O'Rane's interest quickening, I told him that I wanted
him to be one of my trustees.
He hesitated until I feared that he was going to refuse.
"_One_ of them?" he asked in doubt.
"I shall appoint several, but they must be all young men; I want the
best of their lives."
"If I act," he answered slowly, "I should have to act alone. I'm in the
early thirties still----"
"You would find it more than one man's work."
"Ah, but I could give the whole of my life to it." I started to
interrupt, but he raised his hand. "And, furthermore, I should allow you
to impose no conditions; the money would have to come to me as it came
to you, and you would have to let me play ducks and drakes with it as I
liked----" He paused to laugh wistfully. "You've had admirable
opportunities of observing how satisfactorily I arrange my own affairs;
but I couldn't undertake the responsibility otherwise. You see, you
might try to impose conditions that I didn't like; and then my heart
wouldn't be in the work. Or your conditions might become obsolete with
the changing state of society, as has happened with every trust that has
been in existence for more than a hundred years. But, above all, you
know that, if you want to help your fellow-creatures, you must do it at
discretion and not by looking at a deed to see if you're allowed to. Do
you know the story of Bertrand's fifty-pound note?" "I don't think so."
O'Rane's eyes lit up with laughter.
"Get him to tell you the full saga; I can only give you a synopsis.
Years and years ago some man asked for a loan of five hundred pounds,
and Bertrand, to cut the interview short, said he'd present him with
fifty. The man said he didn't want it as a gift, wouldn't take it as a
gift.
"'Well, please yourself,' said Bertrand; 'you call it a loan, and I'll
call it a bad debt; but I'm very busy, and you won't get any more. Good
morning.'
"The man talked a good deal about impending ruin, hinted at suicide and
told Bertrand that he would be responsible for turning an honest woman
on the streets. Bertrand went on with his writing, and eventually the
fellow pocketed the note and got up.
"'I hope to pay this back within three months,' he said stiffly. 'It's
not what I expected, but I can't afford to refuse it.'
"'Don't pay it back to me,' said Bertrand, who was beginning to feel
rather ashamed of himself. 'Hand it on to someone else who's in a tight
corner, and, when _he's_ ready to pay it back, he can lend it to his
next friend in distress.' Then a little bit of the old Adam peeped out,
and he added, 'Remember it's a loan; you must tell the next man so and
you've no idea how many men and women we shall save from ruin and
suicide.'
"Well, Bertrand never expected to hear another word, but a year or two
later, he received a letter of thanks from a young barrister, whose wife
had had to undergo an operation; then from a doctor in Sunderland who
hadn't known how to pay his rent; then from a girl who'd lost her father
and wanted money to pay for learning shorthand and typing. The fifty
pounds have been in circulation for about eighteen years, and from time
to time Bertrand still gets a letter from some out-of-the-way corner of
the world.... Of course, I'm living on charity now, but, when I was
competing equally with my fellows, an odd fifty pounds might have come
in very handy. That's what I mean by helping people at discretion."
"There's a difference between fifty-pounds and twenty-five million," I
pointed out.
O'Rane smiled to himself and then shook his head.
"Not so much as you might think," he said.
"I wonder how you'd use it."
His face became slowly fixed and grim.
"I wouldn't let any boy go through what I've had to face," he murmured.
"It may be fortifying for the character, but that sort of thing can be
overdone. The Spartan youth who allowed a fox to gnaw his vitals ended
up, I have no doubt, with an immensely fortified character but also with
a grievously impaired set of vitals. You know, a boy without
parents----"
He broke off and began to whistle to himself; then remarked
unexpectedly:
"I wonder whether _this_ will be a boy.... But, boy or girl, it must be
an awful thing to lie waiting for the birth of a child that you hate in
advance, that's got to be hidden----"
He buried his face in his hands and sat without speaking.
"Is that what's happening?" I asked, for Sonia had never consulted me
even in her most expansive moments.
He nodded abruptly.
"She doesn't want anyone to know that she's ill or _why_ she's ill; no
one else does, and we trust all of you. As soon as the child's born,
it's going to be smuggled away.... It will be properly looked after, of
course, and all that sort of thing, but it will never be allowed to know
its own parents. All the arrangements have been made, and I gather that
the doctor has been--most sympathetic and helpful." He smiled with
scornful bitterness and sat for a minute without speaking. "I was
surprised to find a woman like Violet touching the suggestion with the
end of a pole; she was a bit surprised, too, I fancy, because she sort
of excused herself and hoped Sonia would relent later on, but it was
absolutely necessary to humour her in every way at present.... That kind
of thing always sticks in the throat of a man--like a woman who refuses
to have a family at all.... I don't know, I suppose I'm superstitious; I
should feel that, if I brought a child into the world like
that--furtively, shamefacedly, wrapping a blanket round it and carrying
it out of the back door in the dead of night.... Wouldn't you, too,
Stornaway? Wouldn't you feel that you were putting a curse on the poor
little brute? And I can't imagine a woman deliberately doing that to
another woman's child--let alone her own. Picture the child--later
on-growing up.... Even if it never knows the manner of its birth,
wouldn't you rather expect it to learn stealing in a Dickensian slum and
to end up on the scaffold? I suppose it's all very fanciful and
morbid.... But the other seems so infernally unnatural. I thought it
wasn't _done_. I thought a mother would no more treat her own baby like
that, whatever the provocation, than a man would hit a woman in the
breast."
At O'Rane's age I might have thought the same thing.
"Doesn't anybody else know?" I asked.
"George may have told the Daintons; _I_ didn't," he answered, smoothing
the wrinkles out of his forehead. "We shall all have to rack our brains
before the time comes, God knows. Violet says I must make a point of
being in the house in case anything happens. If Sonia--dies, I mean, it
would look funny my not being with her."
"And if other people _have_ to be told?"
O'Rane's nose came down on his upper lip in a withering sneer.
"I suppose it means one or two trusty and competent nurses, and the
child will be kept in another part of the house. And, later on, London
air won't suit it, and it will be sent with a governess to the sea,
educated abroad.... My God! _I_ was educated abroad!" He coughed
apologetically and relieved his feelings by pacing up and down in front
of the fire. "Where had we got to?" he asked absently. "Oh, yes! Well, a
boy like that--I assume for some reason it's going to be a boy--might
owe the whole of his career, his life, his happiness and power of doing
good entirely to a chance meeting with some man who chose to pay three
hundred a year on his account for so many years. But it's the personal
touch, the personal relationship that must be established!" He swung
round in his walk and faced me. "All my life I've wanted to be Prince
Florizel!" he cried. "I wanted to be able to lend a hand to distressed
young Americans who found unexpected dead bodies in their Saratoga
trunks, I wanted to find comfortable and remunerative positions at my
court for the conscience-stricken survivors of the Suicide Club. But
with the untrammelled disposal of your estate----"
"Wouldn't it pall, if you didn't have to make the money before you gave
it away?" I asked.
"I don't think my interest in human beings would ever pall," he
answered. "There's such a devil of a lot of them, and they're all
different. When I got into the House, I stood as a Tory, and George was
rather offended, because he said I was the most revolutionary nihilist
he'd ever met. I could never call myself a democrat, though, because
democrats deal in mobs, and I only see a mob as composed of individuals,
all different, all absorbingly interesting--with bodies to be kicked and
souls to be damned, if your preference lies that way. I can't deal with
people as _types_. I can't classify them; each one is much too real, too
personal. And, if you're like that, you end up as a nihilist, because
all government is based on generalisations, mostly inaccurate and
wholly inadequate. As we're finding out." He put his watch to his ear
and listened. "I must be making my way to the station," he said. "I'm
not taking an active party line at present, but I seem to find a growing
sense that the old governing classes haven't measured up, haven't made
good in their own job. We've had three specimens since the war
started.... I always feel that in universal nihilism I should come to my
own. Now I must fly! Forgive me for talking so much!"
3
George returned to London the following day in a better temper than, I
fear, would have been mine, if I had been invited to the country and
abandoned by my host within an hour of my arrival. Melton week-end
parties have long been famous, for Dr. Burgess has had through his hands
perhaps a fifth of the younger statesmen and barristers, authors,
clergymen and soldiers of the day. Any old Meltonian can claim a bed,
and it will be found for him in his old house, at the Raven or in
lodgings; he dines on Saturday night in Common Room as a matter of
course and lunches with Burgess next day as a matter of right. Strangers
from less fortunate foundations are jealously excluded, but I attended
one dinner as a Governor and found a Law Officer on my right, a silk
from the Commercial Court on my left and a twice-wounded Brigadier
opposite me. The food was tolerable, the wine good; the conversation
indiscreetly well-informed. George told me that, when he was in the
House, he could only find out what was going on by spending a week-end
at his old school.
"I had one bad moment on Sunday afternoon," he confessed, when I asked
for news of O'Rane. "We'd all been lunching with the old man, and he
asked me to stay behind. It was rather reminiscent of certain
regrettable meetings in my extreme youth.... I knew what he was going to
talk about and I knew it would be no good for me to beat about the bush.
The door had hardly closed before he put it to me what was the matter
with Raney. I had to tell him everything, you can't hide things from
Burgess. For that reason I wasn't sorry that Raney had bolted here; he'd
never forgive me, if he guessed I'd given him away."
"But it won't make any difference, will it?" I asked.
"Oh, Burgess has got too much of God's commonsense. But Raney can't
stand being pitied. Burgess will only allude to it, if he convinces
himself that it will do some good. I'm afraid I don't see how it can;
poor old Raney's just got to set his teeth once more and go through it
single-handed...."
A week later Bertrand, George and I were gossiping over a last cigar,
when Lady Loring entered with a grave face. The doctor had that moment
left after his evening visit to Sonia.
"I think it's time we sent for David," she said without preamble.
"You're certain?" I asked. "He's in the middle of term."
"If we're keeping to our plan," she answered unenthusiastically. "Any
moment now----"
Bertrand stumped across the library to a writing-table.
"I'll send him a wire," he said. "Time enough for appearances, if he
turns up in the course of to-morrow. How is she?"
Lady Loring shrugged her shoulders carelessly and then turned quickly
away.
"She's all _right_--physically," she answered. "But if you left a bottle
of prussic acid within reach.... That's what frightens me so much. Until
to-night she was so keen to go on living that she could face almost
anything, but to-night I believe she doesn't care about it any more. She
wants to slip away and end everything, get rid of all her
difficulties...."
4
O'Rane arrived at "The Sanctuary" next day half an hour after I had
finished luncheon. This time his wife consented to see him, but only
after some hesitation.
"_You_ mustn't go away!" she whispered to me. "If you--if you see I'm
getting tired, you know...."
O'Rane came into her room with a smile, kissed her hand and then felt
for a chair, where he sat in silence for perhaps three minutes until
Lady Loring entered to say that it was time for her patient to rest.
"I never asked how you were feeling," he said, as he got up to go.
"I'm all right--at present," Sonia answered. Then a shiver ran through
her, communicating itself to her fingers until I saw his hand tighten
over them.
"It's going to be all right, Sonia," O'Rane whispered.
She lowered her eyes and stared dully across the room.
"It _can't_ be all right."
"I'll make it all right."
The corners of her mouth began to droop miserably.
"Of course, if I die ..." she began with a catch in her breath.
O'Rane dropped on to one knee and drew her two hands into his own.
"It's much more fun living, sweetheart!" he whispered. "And you're going
to live, you're going to make whatever you like of your life. If you
want me, I shall always be at hand, as I am now; and, if you don't want
me, I shall keep away. I owe you so much, my darling; you must give me
the chance of paying you back a little bit. When we married, I didn't
give either of us a fair trial, I forgot the life you were accustomed
to, I forgot that my own life wasn't like everyone else's; I just went
ahead, doing everything that came natural to me, and it never occurred
to me that I was making you unhappy. Forgive me, Sonia!"
She dragged one hand away and covered her eyes.
"I don't know that _I've_ got much to forgive," she murmured, and I
could see her lips curving to a wistful smile.
"I shouldn't have asked you, it I didn't need it. Sonia, you're going to
be brave, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Promise?"
The lines of her throat tightened.
"You know what my promises are worth, David."
"If you promise, I know you'll keep it. And then I shall want another
promise--two more, in fact. I want you to promise not to worry, and you
must promise not to feel any pain. Will you do that, sweetheart? I've
come up all the way from Melton, you know."
She withdrew her hand, and I saw that her face had become suddenly pale
and that her eyes were tightly closed.
"I can't promise that, David."
His voice caressed her, as though he were talking to a child.
"I think you can, darling. Do you remember when you sprained your ankle,
skating at Crowley Court, and you started to cry with the pain and I
said I wouldn't carry you back to the house until you'd promised to stop
crying and not to let the ankle hurt any more? You promised quickly
enough then, and it's much more important now. If you'll promise that
now, I'll do anything you like."
She smiled wistfully a second time, then drew his head down to her own
and whispered something. I heard him say, "You won't. I swear you won't,
Sonia." Then he drew himself upright, waved his hand and walked to the
door.
I sat with him in the library, while he attacked a belated luncheon and
plied me with questions about his wife. Her whispered request, he told
me, was that she might, if possible, be kept from seeing the child when
it was born, and on this he hung a string of questions to find out what
steps we had taken to secure the best doctors and nurses, when the birth
was expected, whether anyone else knew.
"_We've_ told no one," I assured him, "since you asked us not to."
"I told Burgess," he said. There was a long silence. "I--told him
everything.... I mean, one _does_ with Burgess. I found it wasn't news
to him. George had told him--weeks ago.... One _does_ with Burgess," he
repeated, smiling.
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He was rather helpful."
"George told me that he wouldn't trouble to talk to you about it unless
he saw his way to help you," I said.
O'Rane finished his meal and lay back in his chair.
"I went in and told him that I wanted a day or two's leave, if he could
possibly spare me; I told him Sonia was going to have a child.... He
waited for some time and then said, 'The truth, the whole truth and
nothing but the truth?' Said it as if he meant it, too; it was like
trying to get extra leave in the old days; as a rule he'd accept any
excuse, however bad, provided it was given in good faith; I once got an
extra half for the whole school because it was so hot that, as I told
him, we'd much _prefer not_ to be working.... Well, I told him the whole
truth--all about Sonia and myself, all about Grayle...." He paused as
though breathing hurt him, then smiled wearily.
"It may have been good for my humility of spirit, but I can't say it was
very edifying for Burgess.... I told him that Sonia's been dancing in
the shadow of a volcano, that we were always on the verge of an
appalling scandal and that it was more by luck than anything else that
it had been averted. I described to him how we'd smuggled her home and
what we were going to do to keep the child away from her.... Have you
ever told a long story and discovered at some point that it's falling
extraordinarily flat or that someone's shocked? Burgess never _said_
anything, and of course I couldn't see his face, but--I don't know
whether you understand me--the silence seemed to become more intense at
times. I felt that his eyes must be on me and I--not to put too fine a
point on it--I began to feel rather frightened.... If I could have
_seen_.... I knew from his voice when he first spoke that he was sitting
down; and I suddenly remembered a most awful row I'd had with him when I
was about sixteen. He sat there then with his back to the window, and I
stood in front of him arguing and arguing; it was a little matter of
discipline, and he'd decided to fire me out.... Well, I went through
just the same thing this morning. I--I felt I was owning up; and I'd
have given anything in the world to see his face.... You know how you
spin out the explanation ... and rather overdo it ... you're _too_
plausible and you feel the whole time that you're not getting it
across.... I went on and on ... and finally I stopped short; it wasn't
any use, he knew everything--even if George hadn't told him.... I became
stiff and dignified and said once more, 'If you can shift the work round
so that I can be away for a day or two----' Then I heard him scraping
for a light--and sighing--and throwing the matches away.... God! until
you're blind, you've no conception how many things you hear. _You_
wouldn't notice the sound of a wooden match falling in the grate, but
_I_ did; and, though I've given up smoking because I can't taste
tobacco, I felt a little smarting at the back of my nostrils as Burgess
got going with his pipe...."
If ever a man talked to gain time, it was O'Rane at that moment.
"What advice did he give you?" I asked him at length.
"He didn't give me any--_advice_. But, when I'd finished, he said he'd
pull the time-table about and that I could stay away as long as I liked.
I _knew_ he'd say that. Well, in the ordinary course I should have said
'Thank you' and cleared out, but I didn't find it easy to move. Burgess
sat there, sucking at his pipe; I stood there--and I felt a perfect
fool, because I was beginning to blush. And the old man said, 'Well,
David O'Rane?' and I said, 'Well, sir?' And then there was another
silence. And then he said, 'Thou hast no further need of me'--You know
the way he talks? I _did_ thank him then and was starting to the door,
when he called out, 'Thou art at peace in thine own mind?' That rather
stung me, and I told him that, all things considered, I didn't think I
was wholly to blame; and he answered rather enigmatically that, if I
wasn't careful, I _should_ be. I asked him what he meant."
O'Rane left his chair and took up a familiar position at the
fire-place, resting his arm on the high chimney-piece and leaning his
head on the back of his hand.
"Burgess is a curious man," he resumed dispassionately. "I don't think
he ever had any children of his own, but he's got--well, an
extraordinarily human imagination. He began talking about this poor
kiddie--who isn't born yet--and pointing the contrast between _his_ life
and the life of any other boy, who'd have a father and a mother fussing
round him, whenever he had a bit of wind in his poor little tummy, and
playing with him and watching him, as he began to crawl and talk, and
trying to make him understand that it wasn't the end of the world when
he was miserable trying to cut teeth.... The old man didn't spare me,"
said O'Rane with a quivering laugh. "I had about twenty years of the
boy's life compressed into twenty minutes; the way he'd go to school,
frightfully shy and with no one to see him through, no one to give him
half a sovereign at mid-term; and the way he'd get a remove or find
himself in the eleven--with nobody to brag about it to; and the way he'd
go on to a public school and work his way through the green-sickness
period of dirty stories and foul language--without anyone to tell him
that he was becoming rather a pitiable little object.... And the
portentous age, when he'd be head of his house, and the days when he'd
want to ask his father what Oxford used to be like in the prehistoric
days.... After twenty minutes or so I told Burgess that I didn't see it
was _my_ look-out."
"Well?" I said, as O'Rane hesitated.
"I think it was damned unfair," he burst out, but the resentment in his
tone was unconvincing. "Burgess was a friend of my father, he knows all
about me, I've told him every last thing about myself.... I don't
suppose even George knows, but the old man used to invite me to help
tidy up his library, if I wasn't taking Leave-Out, and of course I was
as happy as a clam; and we used to talk, and I told him things that kept
me awake half the night,--but he always seemed to have forgotten them
next day. Well, I suppose after my father died I _did_ have rather
a--crowded youth; and Burgess asked me if I wanted to send my son
through the same mill.
"He's _not_ my son," I said.
"Thy wife's son, laddie," he answered.
O'Rane turned wearily from the fire and began to pace up and down the
room.
"I _told_ him!" he exclaimed. "I said that, if it hadn't been for that,
Sonia and I could have forgotten everything and come together again.
_You_ remember? I was ready--ah, dear God in Heaven! I was ready! And
then I heard that this had come between us, that there was going to be a
permanent reminder, a permanent barrier, a permanent alien _something_
in our lives. That was the first time I saw you were right, the first
time I appreciated we could never forget and go on as if nothing had
happened. My love for Sonia hasn't changed. If--if anything happened to
the child.... But as long as it's there! I told Burgess that, though I
agreed with him in principle, I was very sorry, but I couldn't help it.
It was Grayle's business. He asked me if I thought Grayle was likely to
accept his responsibilities; I told him I saw no indication of it. He
said nothing to that, and I made another bolt for the door. He called me
back and asked what I proposed to do. I said I'd told him already.
"He didn't stop me, and I got back to my rooms in the Cloisters. I began
to pack a few things, but the whole time I was feeling that I hadn't
explained properly and that Burgess rather despised me. I got
extraordinarily excited and angry over it, until at last I left the
packing alone and went back to his house to justify myself. The man
shewed me at once into the library, and it was only when I got inside
that I realised that all this time Burgess ought to have been taking the
Sixth for Tacitus. Instead he was still in his chair, still sucking at
his pipe. I fired away, full of indignation, and went through the whole
weary business from the beginning, just as I'd done before. He never
interrupted me, never said a word till I'd finished. Then he told me
pretty bluntly that he was only indirectly interested in me and that
what he wanted to find out was why the child should be penalised, why I,
who knew something of what it would have to go through, persisted in
making it face the music for no fault of its own. I was pretty well
worked up, but I tried to be reasonable and asked him what he suggested
I should do. He never hesitated a moment this time! He told me it was my
duty to treat the child as if he were my own son, never to let him or
anyone else know what had happened before he was born, but to devote
myself to him as if he were--well, _not_ my own son, _not_ someone for
whom I was _naturally_ responsible, but someone who'd been entrusted to
my _care_. He said, if I didn't--with the experience I'd got to back
me.... Somehow, the way he put it, Stornaway...."
He brought his walk to a conclusion as abruptly as the sentence and
dropped heavily on to a sofa, as though glad that a necessary task was
finished, yet awaiting criticism from me and obviously prepared to argue
as vehemently against me on one side as he had argued against Burgess on
the other.
"In practice, what do you propose to do?" I asked.
"I've been trying to think the whole way up from Melton. I suppose we
shall have to behave as though the whole world knew Sonia was going to
have a baby, it will have to be our child. And I suppose we shall live
like other people who are kept from divorcing each other because of
their children. Nominally we shall share the same house, and I suppose
things can be arranged so as to spare Sonia.... But Burgess has
convinced me. We've no right to think of ourselves or wash our hands of
responsibility or try to score off other people at the expense of the
child. I've promised her that she shall never see it.... I don't know, I
suppose this is one of the things that men and women are temperamentally
incapable of seeing with the same eyes; but, who_ever_ the father was,
what_ever_ the history, I should have imagined that any woman would
fight for her child against all the powers of creation; it was like a
stab when Sonia first said she hoped the child would be born dead, it
was another stab when she begged me--_begged_ me to promise.... I
promised right enough; it was the only thing to do, but I can't let it
rest at that. If she's well enough to talk, I want to make everything
quite plain to her now; otherwise I must explain afterwards...."
As we finished dinner, Lady Loring came down to say that Sonia was
asking for her husband. I was not present, I am glad to say, at their
interview, but it did not last more than five minutes, and at its end
O'Rane looked in for a moment to say that he proposed to walk as far as
the House of Commons for a breath of fresh air. Neither by word nor tone
did he invite anyone to accompany him; and on his return he went
upstairs without coming into the library. I called for a bulletin on my
own account before retiring for the night, and Lady Loring warned me
that I must be prepared for anything at any moment. Sonia had worked
herself from hysteria into something hardly distinguishable from
delirium; forgetting that she had already seen her husband, she had sent
for him a second time and a second time implored him to spare her the
sight of her own child; Lady Loring, who had been on duty all day, was
not allowed to rest, and, as I passed the door, the lights were burning
and I caught the sound of voluble chatter.
For an hour I tried to sleep, but the intermittent hum of voices, the
creak of feet passing rapidly up and down the passage, still more the
indefinable suspense kept me awake. For another hour I tried to read,
but I was always interrupting myself to listen; and at two o'clock I
pulled a dressing-gown over my pyjamas and returned to the library. To
my surprise Bertrand was dozing over a book, while George sat writing
letters on his knee. Both looked up, blinking with dull fatigue, as I
came in.
"I wonder how long this racket's going on," Bertrand growled, as he
walked across to fetch himself a drink. "She'll kill herself at this
rate. And--what--_almighty_ fools--the three of us are--to be here at
all!"
"Has Raney come back yet?" George asked me. "I was told he'd gone for a
walk--like a wise man."
"He was sitting outside her door, as I came down," I answered.
Grumbling inarticulately, Bertrand went back to his book. George looked
at me long enough to see that I was too tired to talk, then began a
fresh letter. I prowled in front of the bookcases, trying to find
something that I had the mental energy to read. It was shortly after
four when O'Rane hurried silently into the room and telephoned for the
doctor.
5
Thirty hours--the fag-end of a broken night, a day and another
night--passed before O'Rane appeared. The painful silence of the house
was violated only by guardedly light steps and hushed voices. Bertrand
and George took their meals at the club; I stayed behind, neglecting my
work and subsisting on tinned tongue, stale bread and cold water, to run
errands, answer telephone calls and carry up trays of food to Lady
Loring. At first I believed that poor Sonia was trying to hypnotise
herself and intensify her own tortures, but in time a new gravity
settled on the faces of the doctor and nurse.
I had never before been in a house where a confinement was taking place;
I do not wish to repeat the experience. Whenever I carried up a meal,
Lady Loring or the trained nurse would say vaguely, "I'm afraid she's
having a bad time," but for the rest I was left to myself in the great
silent library with my senses strained to catch any sound from the
familiar white bedroom where I had spent so many days with Sonia, trying
to distract her thoughts. O'Rane, from the moment when he telephoned for
the doctor, had been with her. There was some ineffectual attempt to
banish him from the room, but Lady Loring afterwards let him stay and
admitted that his personality was keeping Sonia from the surrender which
she sometimes seemed ready to make.
When he came into the library at breakfast-time on the second day, his
clothes were shapeless and dusty, his face unshaven and grey with
fatigue.
"The doctor says it's a boy," he told me hoarsely. "Is there any water
in the room? I've had nothing to eat or drink since first I went up
there; and then I must get some air into my lungs."
He sighed and dropped limply on to a sofa.
"How's Sonia?" I asked him.
"They can't say yet. She's doped. They've given her as much as they
dare, as much as her heart will stand.... My God! I'm glad I'm not a
woman! I can understand their having _one_ child, because they don't
know what's in store for them, but their courage in having a second
...!"