acquaintance was my father-in-law. To him—in common with most of my
conservative friends—public life had been a bad dream from the moment
when Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and his _sansculottes_ usurped power.
Crawleigh was genuinely convinced that all electors, at all times and in
all places, were conservative born and bred; and, to him, a liberal
victory could only come by low cunning. Now that the spell had been
broken, he looked forward to “going on from 1906”; and, in listening to
him, I understood, as Saltash had never made me understand, the
all-conservative movement in the late coalition, the Carlton Club
meeting and the loathing of the party for those who still tried to keep
it in bondage to its old associates. So a Bourbon might have felt
towards a legitimist who took office under Napoleon.
Sir Roger Dainton, when I dined with him on the night after the polling,
was even more outspoken. Some one had taught him the word “impeachment”;
and he was for impeaching the fallen members of the old cabinet as
light-heartedly as his wife, in other days, had consigned “agitators” to
the nearest firing-party.
“You think there are further depths they can still reach?,” I asked. The
brush of a professional moralist would be needed to paint the difference
between this election and the last, between the power of a prime
minister in being and that of the member for Carnarvon Boroughs. “Come
and see the results.”
By its rules the Eclectic Club is constituted a “place of social
intercourse for officers and gentlemen, irrespective of politics”. Any
demonstration, other than occasional groans when a labour victory was
announced, would have been ill-received; but I was struck chiefly by the
absence of all desire to demonstrate except when objects of personal
venom appeared at the bottom of the poll. Dainton thumped my back with
furtive violence when two rich and rather questionable private
secretaries, from his own party, were at last “put out of harm’s way”,
as he expressed it; and Jellaby became almost hysterical as one
coalition-liberal after another was edged into the cold; but it was left
to my father-in-law to express the rapture of his associates in a series
of satisfied grunts. Without looking at the board, I could recognize a
conservative gain by Crawleigh’s long “A-a-ah!”
“The entry of the first French troops into their recovered provinces,” I
murmured to Jellaby.
“And yet . . . they don’t seem as much pleased about it as I should have
expected.”
“Perhaps these fellows feel that it’s the same board, the same problem,
and that it becomes no easier by a shuffle of the pieces. Perhaps
they’re wondering what more they can do than the coalition to prevent a
world-revolution or a new world-war.”
Jellaby looked contemptuously at the lengthening tale of ministerial
successes:
“Perhaps they realize that these results don’t represent the true
strength of parties.”
“You mean it’s a moral victory for you?,” I asked. “I said the same
thing to you when I was beaten at Cranborne in 1910. With respect I
think the feeling of the country is admirably represented in this club
to-night: nobody cares.”
With that I left him. Seven men, I think, said good-night to me as I
crossed the hall; six of them added: “Well, thank God _that’s_ over.”
There was a further spasm of excitement as the new parliament met; and
for me, though I was preoccupied with Barbara’s return, a stab of regret
when the liberal party had to surrender its historic claim to lead the
opposition. Then one of the shortest sessions on record opened and
closed; the foreign secretary set out for Lausanne to find an escape
from the threatened war in the near east; and the country gave its
undivided attention to the most popular murder-trial of the year.
Save for a moment after Bertrand’s memorial service, I had not been
alone with Barbara since our scene in the car. I fancied that she was
hardly less embarrassed than I was, though she talked easily enough of
her plans for being painted by Edmund Wace and of my work on Bertrand’s
papers. We both felt that nothing could be quite the same after that
explosion; but I at least had no idea what she wanted.
“There was a touch of brutality about your uncle,” she said after dinner
the first night, in criticism of my sketch. “I’m not sure that you bring
it out. Any one who disagreed with him was treated with such obvious
contempt.”
“Unless he happened to like the person,” I said. “I can’t imagine a
single point on which he agreed with you or Violet or Amy, but he was
devoted to you all. On the other hand, I’ve heard him trouncing poor
Sonia for holding exactly the same views, simply because he thought her
second-rate.”
“He thought all women second-rate. So do you, George,” she rejoined
without malice.
So sweeping a misstatement I could not allow to pass unchallenged.
“I’ll leave you out for fear of embarrassing you . . .,” I began.
Barbara laughed sadly and turned, with a shrug, to the fire:
“No, my dear, you’re leaving me out because you despise me. Not
_cruelly_, but just in the Oakleigh way: as a tolerant Turk would
despise me. In your eyes, we’ve never grown up; and sometimes you shew
us the tenderness you’d shew to a child. You think we’re creatures
who’ve failed to be men; you don’t imagine that we’ve never tried to be
men. . . . You smile benignly on our little foibles and follies and
frailties just as I smile at a kitten chasing its own tail. ‘Kittens
will be kittens,’ I say; ‘women will be women,’ you murmur to yourself.”
“The trouble is that you speak the same language . . .”
“But we don’t think the same thoughts. D’you remember my telling you I’d
forgotten certain things you’d said?”
As her eyes turned slowly to meet mine, I thought I could see a gentle
new light of friendship.
“I wished at the time you’d said you had forgiven them,” I answered.
“There was nothing to forgive. You were right, from your point of view.
May I speak of it?”
“If it will help us.”
Barbara turned once more to the fire and sat with her cheek resting
against her hand:
“It’s just two years since Eric died. You think I’m not in love with him
and never was. Well, I’m not now, but I was once; and the _whole_ of my
heart went into it, George. Do men ever realize that women can be in
love with them and yet know all the time that it’s a mistake? When he
left me, Eric thought I’d been taking all his love for my own selfish,
greedy enjoyment. I hadn’t. I took it because I couldn’t help myself;
but I always knew it would be a mistake for us to marry. We were too
much alike, too highly-strung. If you can imagine two great musicians
marrying . . . If only I’d been strong enough to refuse his love! I
couldn’t help myself . . . It was wrong of me, by any standard, to do
what I did at Croxton. If I’d told you at the time . . .”
“I should have thought nothing of it, I hope.”
Barbara laughed mirthlessly and crossed to my chair, where she seated
herself on the arm.
“That’s what I feared,” she whispered. “I knew I was wrong, I knew it
would have been hell for us all if Eric had agreed, I’d had the worst
rebuff that can come to a woman, I was still in love with him. All that,
you’d have said, was nothing. A perfect Oakleighism! . . . Yet I wish
now I _had_ told you. Eric’s letter must have been a cruel shock.”
Her hand stole timidly to mine; and I raised it to my lips:
“That’s all over now; but, Babs, I did _not_ spend twelve days wondering
whether you would run away with any one else. What hurt was that you’d
pretended to love me when you didn’t.”
“And that’s what you’ve been urging me to do for the last two years.”
Silence fell between us. Then I said:
“I’ve been hoping that you could love me without pretending. I forgot
those twelve days the moment I set eyes on you.”
“Yes. You were as much in love with me as I was with Eric. But love
didn’t give you much understanding, dear. For two years you’ve been
waiting for me to confess that I did something very wrong: you’d then be
able to commit another Oakleighism by forgiving me. You’ve been waiting
for me to say I’ve outgrown my love for Eric, so that you could tell
me—Oakleigh-fashion—that you’d always known time would cure all
things. Well, I _was_ wrong; and I _have_ outgrown my love. Does it help
you to know that? The difficulty is, George, that I don’t want to be
forgiven. I’m not a child, I’m not an unsuccessful attempt to be a man;
I’m a woman.”
“And being a woman . . .”
Barbara laid her hand over my lips:
“Shall I say it for you? ‘Being a woman, you don’t know what you _do_
want.’ It’s quite true, even though all the Oakleighs in history have
said it. I know you so much better than you know me.”
“And better than you know yourself?”
“I know myself better than I can explain myself. Women feel so much more
and express so much less than men. Words are clumsy. When a man frames a
sentence, he imagines he is shewing a thought to the world; a woman
feels that the thought is being imprisoned, perhaps mutilated.” . . .
“Do you know why you married me?,” I asked.
Before she could answer, Barbara stared long at the fire.
“Yes. But I’ve never put it in words. I couldn’t now. I wasn’t in love
with you, but you gave me something that I needed. . . . Women marry
sometimes because they’re frightened of themselves. Sonia did. And I
remember how my beloved aunts gloated over Jack Waring, as the one man
who could keep me in order. Strange to say, I didn’t want to be kept in
order; and I wasn’t frightened of myself. I’m only frightened of death
and of waste: a wasted life, with all the love and the beauty left out
of it. You gave me the feeling that you had something I needed to keep
my life from being wasted.”
“And do you feel that no longer?”
“Have I needed you these last two years? I’ve ceased to look for
happiness.”
“And you’re not yet thirty!,” I groaned.
Barbara glanced at her watch and stood up:
“It’s time for me to go to bed. I’m afraid I’ve talked a great deal
about myself. It was thinking about Bertrand that started it. The world
is divided into men, women and Oakleighs.”
“I believe you’ll find, as you go on, that every husband begins as a man
and ends as an Oakleigh. That is one of the major tragedies of life.”
For the first time in eighteen months, Barbara bent to kiss my cheek.
“To marry an Oakleigh and find him a man would be the greatest romance
life could offer,” she laughed.
“Then I’m afraid you must look elsewhere for your romance,” I sighed.
“You can only give out what’s in you. I’m sorry our marriage has been a
failure. I’ve honestly done my best.” . . .
Turning at the door, Barbara came slowly back and kissed me again:
“I know you have. And I’ll do mine. I told you the day poor old Bertrand
died that I’d be your wife, I’d bear you children if I could . . .”
In spite of her kisses, in spite of the strange new light in her eyes, I
had to be told in words that our two years’ tragedy was over:
“My dear one, you said we should be dishonoured if we put anything in
the place of love . . .”
I waited to hear that terrible verdict reversed. Barbara looked at me in
amazement and then gave a single tearless sob. She regained her
composure immediately and walked again to the door.
“You have a good memory, George,” she threw back. “Have you saved that
up for two years? Do you want me to say that I’ve suddenly found you
irresistible? The Oakleighs are very true to their own type.”
5
As the door closed, I saw my last chance being shut from me. The house
was in darkness when I went into the hall; there was no answer when I
called to Barbara, though I could see a light in her room. I came
downstairs again to brood of men, women and Oakleighs.
I tried next day to explain, but Barbara refused with cold courtesy to
understand what I was trying to explain. I had been patient, too
patient; in her turn she was trying to meet me. She was ready to give
anything I asked, if she had it to give; and the false sweetness of her
complaisance was a deadlier bar than any refusal.
“I feel I was ungracious,” I said.
“Ungracious? You?,” she mocked. “I must go now, or I shall be late for
Mr. Wace.”
“Shall I see you after the opening of parliament?”
“But of course! For another eternity! Good-bye.”
The rest of that morning I spent in Fetter Lane, reviewing the
achievements of the peace-administration. The only visible traces of the
war, when I walked down to Westminster, were the cenotaph in Whitehall
and the long army of unemployed that was trying to get past it to the
precincts of parliament. While I waited for the crowd to disperse, I
heard a familiar voice asking my neighbour what was happening.
“Raney! Here, you’d better let me see you home,” I said. “There’s an
appalling mob everywhere.”
“Thanks, I’ve had to acquire a sixth sense,” he answered. “What are you
doing here?”
“Looking on and thinking of that week-end in August when the
Anti-Intervention people pursued me down to Loring Castle. I’ve been
wondering if we shouldn’t have done better to keep out of the war at all
costs.”
“We should have been dishonoured if we’d let Belgium down,” he answered.
“If we’d told the Germans we would stop the moment Belgium was
evacuated, the war would have been over in ’14. And we shouldn’t have an
unemployed army marching through London to-day,” I added savagely.
We squeezed our way forward till a sudden thinning of the crowd enabled
us to escape into the park.
“I think we’re individually the better for the sacrifices we all of us
made,” he answered slowly. “For one moment there was a real spirit of
fraternity; and, when the reaction has run its course, I hope to see
that again. I’m recruiting people now, with quite fair success:
reminding them what they did once and asking them to give up everything
for one month or six or a year for the service of their country. I’m
only asking them to do what I’ve done myself. I tell them, as I tell
you, _that’s_ the new idea that we must capture from the war. Fraternity
. . .”
“Your new idea is at least as old as Christ and Buddha,” I objected.
“Will you succeed where they failed?”
“Had they ever such a chance as we have? We’ve seen the quality of
modern war. We know that, if there’s another, it will bury civilization
under a sea of lava. Men, women, sheep, cattle, the very blades of
grass. Another war is synonymous with the end of the world.”
“But how does one set about being fraternal?,” I asked.
O’Rane walked for some distance without answering; and I thought he had
not heard my question. Then he laughed and gave my arm a squeeze:
“By realizing the alternative, as every one’s had every chance of doing
in this war. By seeing that, if we trample on people weaker than
ourselves, there’ll be people stronger than ourselves to trample on us.
When I first saw ‘fraternity’ shining in front of me like Constantine’s
Cross, I was a very small, very young, very miserable boy. I went
through hell till I learnt how to defend myself. And then . . . many
years afterwards . . . I began to think . . . about the poor devils who
couldn’t defend _themselves_. I saw that we must make a world in which
man wasn’t always measuring his strength. Yes, I admit Christ had made
the discovery before me,” he ended with another laugh.
I forebore to ask whether the second discovery was likely to change the
hearts of men more than the first. The rule of force, I pointed out, had
to be repudiated by every one at the same time:
“If we’d been fraternal when the Germans were marching on Calais . . .”
“If we’d been fraternal rather earlier, perhaps they’d never have
marched there. Some one has to make a beginning. That’s one reason I had
to give up this money. Fraternity can’t exist side by side with vast
differences of wealth, among nations or individuals. It’s our sense of
possession, George, that stands between us and our souls.”
“Unfortunately, ever since man appeared on this planet, it’s been the
instinct that keeps soul and body together. Will you be the first to
strip for the plunge?”
“_I’m_ ready.”
“If you take that dive, Raney, your wife and children won’t follow. They
also are a part of humanity, which I think you sometimes forget.”
“‘Who is my mother?’,” he murmured. . . .
CHAPTER TWO
THE TEST
_King Henry_:
The sum of all our answer is but this:
We would not seek a battle, as we are;
Nor, as we are, we say we will not shun it . . .
SHAKESPEARE: _King Henry V._
1
Since the first tragedy cast its shadow on the first man, philosophers
have taught, in the jargon of their choice, that the past is
unalterable, that it is no use crying over spilt milk and that it is a
waste of time to job backwards. Unphilosophic man has then returned to
the twilit dreamland of might-have-beens.
Daily, since the tragedy that darkened my life in the last weeks of
1922, I have asked myself whether I could have done anything to prevent
it. I am sane enough to realize that I contributed nothing by what I
did; the philosopher blandly assures me that questioning comes too late;
and, in spite of all, I continue to wonder what would have happened if I
had made a firm stand here or a graceful surrender there. If only, as I
walked with O’Rane to The Sanctuary after the opening of parliament, I
had thrown my weight into one scale or the other . . . If only, at any
time subsequently, I had shewn myself to be what nature failed to make
me, a man of action, strong and silent, rapping out decisions like
Napoleon disposing an army . . .
2
I had not intended to come into The Sanctuary, but O’Rane insisted that
Sonia would be disappointed if I turned back at the door. We found her
in the nursery, playing with her elder boy, while the baby was packed
protesting to bed in the next room. I had not often been privileged to
catch Sonia in a domestic attitude and was ill-prepared for her
efficiency. This child in her lap was a beautiful creature, in radiant
health and exuberant spirits, with his mother’s brown hair and eyes.
There was a lusty crow of delight when O’Rane came into the room; and,
as I shook hands with Sonia, the child demanded shrilly that the
interrupted tale of the day before should be resumed.
“Will you say good-night to David junior?,” she asked me, as Daniel
surrendered to the spell of O’Rane’s story.
“If he’s not asleep,” I said; and she conducted me into the presence of
a wide-awake and fierce Japanese doll, who gripped two of my fingers and
demanded truculently what I was doing in his nursery.
At three years old, the child had his father’s flashing black eyes and
imperious manner. Sonia added that he had also more than his father’s
indomitable obstinacy.
“Is he equally fearless?,” I asked.
For answer she pointed from a green bruise on the child’s forehead to a
padlocked grille over the window:
“David had a fire-escape fitted the other day. He went down it himself
just to learn the way; and this infant must needs follow. He’d never
been on a ladder in his life, but he climbed cheerfully out of the
window . . .”
“Trusting to the special providence that looks after all O’Ranes,” I put
in.
“By the mercy of heaven a policeman caught him; but if he behaves like
that now . . .”
“He looks like keeping you fully occupied.”
“I can do what I like with him at present,” she answered, “because he
realizes I’m only a woman, and I can get on the soft side of him. When
he’s old enough to see that women can be more easily bullied than men,
more easily hurt . . . I don’t envy his wife. I don’t envy any wife.”
“Yet if all marriages were dissolved by act of parliament . . .,” I
began, as she led me downstairs.
“Should I take David on again? I wonder! He’s the only man I’ve ever
loved. . . . What fools we women are! And what fools men are! They don’t
want a woman to have a will of her own; and, when she echoes their will,
they find her insipid. And what a fool I’ve always been! Once I thought
it would be wonderful to run away . . . as I did. But that was only a
wonderful fit of bad temper,” she added with the candour that she always
employed in discussing herself.
“And one that you’ll never repeat.”
“No. In those days I was so hungry for children that I thought myself
quite immodest: if I’d had my first one earlier, we should never have
had our great tragedy. Now that I’ve got two, you need never be afraid I
shall run away again even if David ties me to the bed and beats me. I
honestly, honestly don’t think of myself any longer except through them.
I want them to have the best chance in life: all that you and Jim and my
brothers had. They must go to the best schools, the best universities;
they must never be driven down the wrong road like so many boys because
they haven’t the money to go by the right one. They must be _secure_.”
. . . Her face darkened; and she turned to the fire. “David won’t
promise me that. My father can’t afford it.” . . .
I believe that, if her husband could have seen Sonia at that moment as I
saw her, he would have compromised with his insurgent conscience. Once
before, when he came back from France, I had seen her, as now, on her
knees; pleading, as now, for the privilege of serving him and, as now,
wholly forgetful of her too insistent self.
“He’s not easy to move when he’s made up his mind,” I said, with
memories of our conversation earlier in the afternoon.
Sonia shook her head ruefully:
“Don’t I know that? You remember when that unemployment deputation came
to see him? We’ve had about three a day ever since. Does that influence
him? The press camps on our doorstep. He’s besieged in his office. This
afternoon that man Griffiths came here again.”
“What did you do with him?”
Her patience suddenly deserted her:
“I sent him to Hampstead. This _is_ a private house, when all’s said and
done. I don’t suppose he got any satisfaction there, but I thought the
walk would be good for him. Odious little creature!”
It was now that I feel I might have done some good by speaking strongly.
Neither Griffiths nor any other grown man deserved to be sent on a
fool’s errand; in cooler moments Sonia would have been ashamed to play
such a trick. Her answer, I suppose, would have been that Griffiths and
her husband were too much for any one’s coolness; and I feared—no
doubt, weakly—that I should lose my slight influence over her if I
sided with her husband. When he came down from the nursery, she was
still indignant enough to retail Griffiths’ visit and to ask O’Rane
whether the deputation had reached Hampstead in time to find him.
“I had to say I could do nothing for them,” he answered a little
wearily. “I’ve given all I can spare of my own money; and I’ve collected
as much as I can from other people. If they come again, you might tell
them that.”
“You must tell them yourself,” Sonia replied stiffly. “_I’m_ not going
to make myself responsible.”
“I only wanted you to save them a useless journey. When you sent them to
me, you gave them some sort of hope; and that makes it so much harder
when I have to turn them down.”
“Perhaps in time you’ll find it so hard . . .” she muttered.
“I can’t go back on what I’ve said. It’s only unkind to give them a long
walk for nothing. Promise me you won’t do it again, Sonia.”
“Let’s hope they won’t come again. If they do, I shall _again_ send them
to you.” Then, without disguise, her temper broke. “I’m not consulted
about what you do with this money, so I wash my hands of it. This is not
your office; and you can’t blame me if you refuse to give them anything
for their trouble.”
“I can only repeat that you make my task more difficult,” O’Rane
answered patiently.
“Before I’ve done, I hope to make it impossible,” Sonia retorted
defiantly, as she hurried out of the library and up the stairs.