perambulations through the lobbies.
"If you choose to call us irresponsible," said Loring, with a shrug of
the shoulders. "I submit there's still room for a long view, a patience,
an aloofness from the heated quarrel of the moment. Tradition should be
represented, sir--as it's represented by college Fellows or
Benchers----"
"The two most reactionary, uncontrolled, mediaeval-minded bodies you
could have chosen," my uncle commented in one hurried breath.
"And aren't you proud of them both, sir?" Loring flashed back. "As they
were and are and always will be? Aren't you proud to be a T.C.D. man and
a member of the Inner Temple?"
"No!" said Bertrand contemptuously.
"Your hand on your heart, sir?" Loring persisted.
My uncle laughed and made no reply.
When the Budget went to the Lords, Loring voted for its rejection. When
the Parliament Bill was presented, he continued his opposition; not even
the threat of five hundred new creations shook his consistency. I
sometimes think his whole life was symbolized by his struggle in the
dwindling ranks of the "Die Hards." His last words--"This is the appeal
I make to your Lordships. It is unlikely that I shall have the honour
again to address your Lordships' House...."--were characteristic of his
refusal to compromise with modernity. When the Parliament Bill secured
its final reading, Loring left the House of Lords for ever.
After the rest of the party was dispersed I stayed on for a couple of
days until Lady Loring and Amy arrived. One of the two days was Loring's
birthday, and I found him in a state of altogether ridiculous depression
when we met after breakfast.
"Twenty-nine!" he exclaimed in acknowledgement of my good wishes. "It's
the devil of an age, George."
"Not for a confirmed pessimist," I said. "Every hour brings release
nearer."
"I shall have to get married, you know," he observed reflectively.
"As one goes _misère_ in Nap?" I inquired.
He was really thinking aloud and quite properly ignored my question.
"I suppose it's the right thing to do," he said. "The Cardinal's my heir
at present, and after him there's no one to succeed. George, it must be
a damned uncomfortable state, in spite of the novelists. Think of having
a woman always living with you----"
"According to the modern novelists," I said, "they always live with
someone else."
"Well, even that seems uncomfortable."
"For you or the other man? It depends on the wife, and in any case I
don't know that you need consider him except on broad humanitarian
principles. Jim, if I may advise you, don't be glamoured by the idea of
being faithful to one woman all your life. You have formed certain
habits----"
"My dear George, don't rub it in! I don't envy the woman who marries me.
But I'm not likely to grow more domesticated by remaining a bachelor."
"Have you anyone in mind?" I asked, as I poured myself out a cup of tea.
"Several," he answered vaguely.
"Then why not leave it at that?" I suggested.
When Amy arrived the following day I found her alone in the morning-room
and asked whether she was responsible for turning her brother's thoughts
into this channel. For answer she frowned slightly and brushed the
curls away from her forehead.
"In other words, you don't approve of her?" I said.
"I approve of anyone Jim marries," she replied, with a touch of loyal
defiance. "That doesn't mean I shan't do all I can to prevent a great
mistake being made."
"It would simplify things enormously," I observed, "if I knew who was
being discussed."
"There are two of them. You must learn to use your eyes, George."
"But till a fortnight ago I hadn't seen Jim for years."
"Well, if you stay here another fortnight---- You're not really going
to-morrow, are you?"
"I'll stay a week to save Jim from bigamy," I said.
"Oh, it isn't that." She walked over to the writing-table and came back
with a sheet of paper containing the names of the following day's party.
"He wants to marry one of them, and I want him to marry the other."
I glanced at the list, and "Miss Hunter-Oakleigh" caught my eye.
"Violet's one," I said. Then I observed another name and handed the
sheet back to Amy. "Thanks. I _have_ seen indications."
Amy fretted the paper with her fingers.
"I haven't a word against Sonia," she said. "If Jim marries her, I--all
of us, mother and I and everybody--shall try to make a success of it."
She stopped, and shook her head with misgiving. "I'm sure it's a
mistake, though. She's got very little heart, and Jim's nothing like
brutal enough to keep her in order. And I'm afraid he'll find she's got
nothing but her looks. That's what's attracted him. Violet's pretty
enough, Heaven knows, but Sonia----" She shrugged her shoulders
helplessly. "I can understand any man being mad about her. And she knows
it, and _expects_ men to go mad about her. I don't think she'll be
content with one man's devotion. Someone will come along.... George, I
hate to talk like this, but a lioness and her cub aren't in it with me
where Jim's concerned. He and mother are all I've got in the world, and
if anyone came along and spoiled his life ... I should be quite capable
of murder."
"Who invited Violet?" I asked. Before leaving London I had dined with
her and her young brother. She had said nothing about coming to
Scotland.
"I did," Amy answered. "I wrote to her from Baden-Baden."
"I suppose she _would_ marry Jim?"
"That's one of the questions you musn't put to a woman," Amy answered,
with a laugh.
The following day brought Violet and the Daintons, as well as a number
of other people in whom I was not so immediately interested.
There was a certain want of ease about our meeting, for I fancy Sir
Roger was as frightened of his host as I was of Lady Dainton. The two of
us withdrew without prearrangement to the smoking-room and exchanged
quiet confidences till it was time to dress for dinner. I sat next to
Sonia at that meal and was sensible of an agreeable change in her
manner. We had not met since her rupture with Crabtree, and I imagine
that two years' retirement had given her leisure for salutary
reflection. She was subdued and polite to people older than
herself--cordial even to members of her own sex; and so little attention
had she received in her exile that she was gracious to quite
inconsequential men whose function in the old days would have been to
hover deferentially around her, awaiting orders.
"I'm so glad its you and not a stranger," she was good enough to tell me
as we went in. "How's everybody and what have you all been doing?"
I dealt with the comprehensive question through three courses, and at
the end she asked with a momentary heightening of colour whether I had
heard anything of O'Rane.
"I'm glad he's doing well," she remarked indifferently, when I had
sketched his career from the Imperial Hapsburg cells by way of Mombasa
to Mexico. "George, I suppose you thought I treated him very badly?"
"Even if I thought so, I shouldn't say so," I answered. "I imagine
there are easier and more restful things in life than to be loved by
Raney. Not that his devotion has aged you noticeably."
"My dear, I'm twenty-two!" She studied her own reflection in the silver
plate before her. "When you see him, tell him to shed a tear over my
remains," she went on mournfully.
"He's twenty-six himself," I said. "And Jim and I are twenty-nine, which
is far more important, though I may say I now look on thirty without a
tremor."
"Oh, age doesn't matter for a man," she answered, with a touch of
impatience. "You've got work to do. When you're simply waiting for
someone to take compassion on you ..."
"There is still hope even at twenty-two," I said.
"But when twenty-two becomes twenty-three, and then twenty-four, and
then twenty-five.... It's rot being a girl, George!" she exclaimed, with
something of the old fire in her brown eyes. "I always think--I'm not a
Suffragette, of course--I always think if we could look forward to any
kind of career----"
"But there are scores," I said.
"Not for--for _us_," she answered. "Talk to mother about it. Girls like
Amy or Violet or me, you understand."
Lady Dainton was sitting on my left, and when opportunity offered I
opened with a platitude on the economic position of woman. It took her a
moment to get her bearings, for she and Loring had been discussing the
misdeeds of the Apaches. A very pretty quarrel in their ranks had been
extensively reported for some months, starting from the night when
Erckmann charged Crabtree's vaunted cousin, Lord Beaumorris, with
cheating at baccarat. Beaumorris, whose bankruptcy discharge had been
suspended in consequence of a technicality concerned with undisclosed
assets, had frankly joined the Apaches for what he could make out of
them. Erckmann felt that rules must be observed even in baccarat, even
as played by Beaumorris. "Ve vos all chentlemens here, yes, no," as
Summertown, who had witnessed the scene, informed me.
Not content with the verbal charge, Erckmann laid indiscreet pen to
paper and was in immediate receipt of a writ for libel. The jury
disagreed, and Beaumorris, venting his feelings in the Press, took
occasion to call Erckmann an Illicit Diamond Buyer. Proceedings were
promptly taken for criminal libel aggravated by attempted blackmail. The
jury again disagreed, and, though both Erckmann and Beaumorris now left
the court with equally tarnished records, nothing would satisfy
Beaumorris but an action for malicious prosecution.
It required the time of one judge sitting six days a week to keep
abreast of Apache litigation. As a taxpayer, I sometimes wondered
whether either reputation was worth five thousand pounds a year of
public money.
"The position of women?" Lady Dainton repeated in answer to my question.
"It depends so much on the woman, don't you think? If a girl's young and
pretty and has a little money and goes about in Society, don't you know?
she usually makes a good match." Her eyes looked past me for a moment
and rested on Sonia. "As for the others...."
I really forget what their fate was to be. No doubt their prospects,
too, depended on the possession of a determined mother. Evil
associations corrupt good manners, and I heard Lady Dainton issue
herself an invitation at Loring's expense in a way Crabtree himself
could not have bettered. We were discussing plans for the winter, and
Loring mentioned the possibility of taking his yacht for a three or four
months' cruise in the Mediterranean. I was invited, but had to refuse,
because a general election was impending; Lady Dainton invited herself
and Sonia, leaving Sir Roger behind to recapture the Melton seat;
despite the superhuman efforts of Amy Loring, my cousin Violet was not
approached.
"That absolutely decides it," Amy said ruefully. "I shan't give in. I
shall go too and do everything in my power to stop it, but I'm afraid
he's caught."
"'There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip,'" I announced, in my
more banal manner.
V
I had occasion to envy Loring and the passengers of the "White Seal"
during the next few months. A second winter election, the false
enthusiasm and cheap victories of the platform, the endless canvass and
cold wet nights and days as my car splashed through the crumbling lanes
of Wiltshire--all would have been a heavy price to pay even had I been
returned. But the shrewd voters of the Cranborne Division were not a
second time to be gulled--at least by me. There was a clear House of
Lords issue: my old opponent, the Honourable Trevor Lawless, fought on
the anti-Home-Rule "ticket," I once again on the sanctity of Free Trade
reinforced by Land Reform. He was elected by a twelve-hundred majority,
and I, in an interview with the spirituous, rain-soaked reporter of the
"Cranborne Progressive and East Wilts Liberal Gazette," claimed a moral
victory for the House of Commons control of finance.
To anyone who knew the 1906 Parliament when there was not room on the
Government side for all the ministerialists, the first 1910 election was
profoundly depressing. My uncle's majority was brought down to
forty-seven, and many a Unionist, returned like Sir Roger Dainton after
four years' absence, could say that the country was perceptibly
returning to its senses.
"There's no victory without its casualty list," I replied to my friend
Jellaby, the Whip, when he telegraphed a message of sympathy. There
seemed nothing amiss with the sentiment, and I consoled myself with the
prospect of wintering at San Remo with my mother.
"Can give you another seat to fight," Jellaby wired back, as my packing
came to an end, and I ordered myself a place in the _train-de-luxe_.
"Must resist casualty habit," I returned and abandoned England for two
months.
April was well advanced by the time I came back to Princes Gardens.
When the bitterness of defeat is past, I know few sensations sweeter
than that of not being in the House of Commons. It was irritating at
first to be debarred from the smoking-room, but, as master of my own
time, with no more interrupted dinners, no autumn sessions and no
deputations to Ministers, I wondered what frenzy of enthusiasm could
have made me for four years the slave of an urbane but vigilant young
man like Jellaby, whose one duty in life was to lay me by the heels if I
tried to leave the House unpaired.
"I said you'd outgrow the phase," my uncle commented one morning at
breakfast. His daily post-bag brought him hundreds of letters; mine,
since I had parted from Westminster, a couple of dozen at the outside.
"I may stand again if I can arrange always to winter on the
Mediterranean," I said, "or if I can get returned unopposed. London in
March and the Great Movement of Men in the Cranborne Division don't
appeal to me, Bertrand, as they once did."
"What are you going to do with yourself?" he asked.
"Enjoy life," I answered appreciatively. "Read books again, dine at the
Club a bit, run over to Normandy in the summer, see my friends.... By
the way, the Lorings are back. He wants me to lunch with him today."
The note of invitation had piqued my curiosity. With his instinctive
fear of giving himself away Loring had written no more than: "Lunch 2
p.m. here. Help me with heavy case of conscience." I sent an acceptance
by telephone, sat half the morning in the Park watching the passers-by
and in due course made my way to Curzon Street. The air was redolent of
spring, and in its fire the whole world seemed to have flung its winter
garment. Light dresses fluttered in the warm breeze, everything was new
and clean and young; the very cart-horses welcomed the advent of May
with shining harness and gay ribbons.
"You don't look as if your conscience were troubling you," I said to
Loring when luncheon was over, and we were sitting alone over our coffee
and cigars. He had come back with a clear eye and bronzed cheek, radiant
with health and good spirits. "Did you have a good time?"
"Wonderful!" His enthusiasm was rare and strange. "Incredibly
wonderful!"
"I forget who was there," I said.
"Oh, a mob of people. The only ones that mattered were Lady Dainton----"
"Who petrifies me," I interrupted.
"And Sonia."
He paused. I knocked the ash from my cigar and said nothing.
"George, Sonia and I are engaged."
I still said nothing.
"For God's sake take _some_ notice!" he exclaimed.
"Is this your case of conscience?" I asked. "You want to get out of it?"
Loring clasped his forehead with both hands in utter despair.
"And you used to be quite intelligent!" he groaned. "I'm serious,
George. Sonia's promised to marry me; Lady Dainton's good enough to make
no objection----"
"She wouldn't," I murmured.
" ... My mother and Amy are simply in love with her...."
Mentally I congratulated Lady Amy on her loyalty.
"And now you want my blessing?" I hazarded. "Well, best of luck to you,
Jim."
"Thanks, old man. I want more than that, though. Something that Amy said
made me think that little Raney had once been rather in love with Sonia.
You know him better than I do: what does it amount to? Whenever _I_'ve
seen them together, they were fighting like cats."
"Amy was referring to something that happened a good time ago," I
answered. In retrospect I am still struck with the diplomacy of my
words.
"Oh, it's ancient history?" Loring looked relieved. "I was afraid--I
mean, short of giving up Sonia, there's nothing in the world I wouldn't
do to avoid hurting the little man's feelings."
"If you'd care for me to write," I began, in off-hand fashion.
"That's what I was going to ask you to do. George, you've never been in
love...."
"For some unaccountable reason, all newly engaged men pay their bachelor
friends that compliment," I said.
"Well, you haven't, or you wouldn't be so damned cold-blooded about it.
Honestly, until last night I didn't know what happiness was----"
"This is all rather _vieux jeu_," I objected.
"It was just as we got into the Channel." The expression in his eyes had
grown dreamy and distant. "We were on deck, she and I----"
"I will _not_ submit to this, Jim!" I said.
He laughed as a drunken man laughs.
"If you won't, somebody else will have to," he said. "I'm--I'm simply
bursting with it. For sheer dullness--on my soul, George, I'll never ask
you to lunch with me again, in this world or the next."
"The veiled compliment is wasted on you," I said.
As I walked home, I took stock of the position. Granted that I had been
dull, I was no actor and could affect little rapture at the prospect of
losing my best friend, however deep his momentary intoxication. And
every word that Amy had said to me at House of Steynes the previous
summer stood as true as when she spoke it, and I added my endorsement.
Sonia had been as entirely charming on that occasion as she had been
exasperating in the same place some years earlier when Crabtree first
proposed to her. If I have suggested corporal punishment for her, it
must be remembered that bachelors are sometimes lacking in the finer
chivalry; but which Sonia Jim was marrying remained, I felt, to be seen.
There would, indeed, be discoveries, on both sides, for Loring at
nine-and-twenty had his share of angularity.
And I was not easy in my mind about the way O'Rane would take the news.
It is true I had never regarded his attachment very seriously from the
time when the undergraduate of twenty became engaged to the temporary
debutante of sixteen; true also that three and a half years abroad had
probably made a very different man of him. At the same time, I recalled
his passionate outburst on the lawn at Crowley Court when Lady Dainton
declined to recognize the engagement; and it did not need a man who knew
him as well as I did to appreciate his curious tenacity of character. I
came to feel that the news would hit him hard.
My letter of explanation was not easy to write. I roughed out one draft
and tore it up; then a second, then a third. Bertrand put his head in at
my door to say he was dining at the House, and I hurriedly changed my
clothes and drove down to the Club. There I made a fourth attempt as
unsatisfactory as the first three, thrust it impatiently into my pocket,
and walked into the hall to read the latest telegrams.
"You said eight o'clock. I'm before my time, but I'll wait out in St.
James's Street if you like."
I spun round at the touch of fingers on my shoulders. Only one voice in
the world held as much music in it--low and vibrant, setting my nerves
a-tingle.
"You are as dramatic as ever, Raney," I said.
"Shall I go and wait outside? You might answer my question."
"And in other respects you don't seemed to have changed." I looked him
up and down and turned him to the light. His fingers as he shook hands
were as hard and strong as steel cable; he was slender and wiry as a
greyhound, with the big eyes, smooth features and bodily grace of a
girl.
"You're trained down pretty fine," I said. "And your hair's as untidy as
ever--my dear fellow! don't touch it! It's one of your charms. You have
also reverted to a hybrid twang reminiscent of twelve years ago in a
certain great public school----"
He handed his hat and coat to a page-boy and pointed to the dining-room
door.
"I've had nothing to eat since breakfast, George."
"Two Hoola-Hoolas, please," I called out to a waiter. "In the strangers'
room. Raney, it's the devil of a long time since I saw you last."
"Did you expect me?" he demanded, with a child's eagerness to find out
whether his little piece of theatricality had succeeded.
"The very cart-horses of London expected you," I said. "I observed them
with ribbons on their tails as I went to lunch with one Loring. 'It is
the first of May,' I said. I suppose you'd like me to order you some
dinner."
"Then you didn't really think I should turn up?" he asked, glancing up
from the bill of fare I had handed him.
"Not wanting to eat two dinners in one night, I forbore to order
anything until I'd seen whether you were alive."
His deep-set black eyes became charged with laughter.
"Alive!" he exclaimed. "I'm not twenty-seven yet, George, and I've done
all my work in life. I've made all kinds of money. _I_ could eat two
dinners every night if I wanted to. I can start seriously now; I'm the
equal of you or Jim or anyone. Not literally, of course; he'd call me a
pauper. It's a matter of degree, but I shall never again be handicapped
by not having money." The waiter arrived with the cocktails: O'Rane
raised his glass and bowed: "Say you're glad to see me, old man."
"I don't think the point was ever seriously challenged," I said.
"Continued prosperity! I don't use the word luck with you."
As we sat down to dinner his eyes were brimming with tears.
Some day I should like to write a series of books about O'Rane. I should
not mind if they were little read, I should not mind if they were read
and disbelieved; they will never come from his pen, and, as he confided
more in me than in anyone else, I feel a responsibility to the
half-dozen of his friends who may survive the war. Midnight was long
past before the tale of his adventures was done--the selected tale of
such adventures as he thought would interest me.
"And now?" I asked, as the smoking-room waiter came in and looked
pointedly at the clock.
"Ah God! one sniff of England--
To greet our flesh and blood--
To hear the hansoms slurring
Once more through London mud!"
He walked to the window and gazed down on the stream of cars, their dark
paint gleaming in the lamplight as they glided down Pall Mall from the
Carlton and hummed richly up St. James's Street or disappeared into the
silence of the Park.
"I'm going to have a long night in a real bed," he announced, "as
distinct from either a berth or bare boards in a tent----"
"I can give you all that in Princes Gardens," I interrupted.
"Later, old man, if I may. I've sent my baggage to the Charing Cross
Hotel. To-morrow I shall call on Loring, see who else is in town----"
His words brought me face to face with the problem I had been shirking
all the evening.
"I wrote you a letter to-night before dinner," I said as we walked down
to the hall. "I'll post it so that it reaches you to-morrow morning.
Raney, I'm afraid you won't care much about the contents."
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Why not give it me now?" he asked.
"You may prefer to digest it alone," I said.
He held out his hand with a determined little smile.
"I'll take it home and read it," he promised. "I can't sleep with
unknown perils hanging over me."
I gave him the letter, and we parted on the understanding that he was to
call round in Princes Gardens as soon as he was sufficiently rested.
I have no idea how he slept that night. Next morning there was no sign
of him, and in the afternoon when I went to make inquiries at the
Charing Cross Hotel I was handed a pencil note scrawled on the back of
my own envelope to him.
"My apologies to your uncle. Just off to Flushing to complete my rest
cure."
When I met Sonia and Loring at dinner the following night, I told them
that I had caught a glimpse of O'Rane on his way through London from
Mexico to the Continent. They were politely interested.
VI
I have reached an age when some four-fifths of my contemporaries are
married. It is a melancholy exercise familiar to all bachelors to count
the number of friendships that have closed on one side with a silver
cigarette-box and on the other with an invitation to dinner in a very
new house. "I want you and my wife to be great friends," Benedict has
written. Usually I have wondered what he could see in his common-place
partner, and always the little woman has marvelled that Benedict and I
have any bond of union. Sometimes I can see him growing wistful in
recollection of old times--and this makes her jealous; sometimes
marriage obliterates the past, and we both decide, without a word
exchanged, to leave our friendship in its grave. The little dinners end
early--and yet seem strangely long. We meet perhaps once a year after
that, and I affect interest in curiously raw babies; but the Benedicts,
man and wife, as a rule become too much absorbed in their family to care
for interlopers. Sometimes I give a christening present and make rash
promises by the font; and then nothing happens until half a generation
later my god-children present themselves for confirmation....
In one or two instances the intimacy has endured by my keeping out of
the way in the early years. Anyone who knew Loring or Sonia at all could
guess that they would require time and infinite patience to arrive at a
_modus vivendi_; and I knew both so well that I felt sure they wanted no
spectators. Two days after the engagement I invited them to dine with me
at the Ritz; four months later Lake House was thrown open to them if
they cared to come. My services were at their disposal, but I could see
from our first meeting that there was no easy time before them. The
pace was too hot, and they both had too much mettle. I recall that my
excellently served dinner was of the gloomiest, though the Ritz was
newly opened and still amusing at this time. Loring would gaze raptly at
Sonia, his soup-spoon half-way to his lips; Sonia for no visible reason
would touch his hand, and they would both smile mysteriously. Not till
dinner was over, and we were seated in the lounge with our coffee, could
I rouse them from their dream.
"The great event?" Loring echoed, when I asked if any date had been
fixed. "There you rather have me."
"In about three years," murmured Sonia, with a note of discontent in her
voice.
"What are you waiting for?" I asked as I offered him a cigar.
He accepted it and then replaced it in the box, saying he would prefer a
cigarette. So many cheap jokes are made at the expense of the newly
engaged that I refrained from comment when a confirmed cigar-smoker
reformed and wasted his time on cigarettes. The reason was never a
moment in doubt, for he was rewarded with a smile as the cigar was
returned.
"We neither of us want a long engagement," he explained, and then to
Sonia, "Do we, darling?"
"There's no point in it," answered Sonia, whose experience was
discouraging to procrastination.
"Well, this is May," Loring reckoned. "Lady Dainton won't have a May
marriage. June? The only thing is, there's such a devil of a lot----"
"Jim!"
Loring laughed.
"Sorry! There's _such_ a lot to do first. The place at Chepstow's in a
fearful state; I must put electric light in the Dower House before my
mother can move in. As for the barrack in Roscommon----"
"But we can't live in more than one place at a time," Sonia objected.
"I only want to make them fit for you, darling," he protested.
"I should have thought your agent----" sighed Sonia; then, turning
ruefully to me, "and of course I've got to be sent out on approval for
everyone to find fault with----"
Loring pressed her hand reassuringly. "Don't you worry about _that_," he
begged.
"But it's you I want to marry, dear!" she answered, putting her face
close to his and looking into his eyes.
"It's always done," Loring protested weakly. "We don't want to give
offence, do we, sweetheart? And it's only three or four houses----"
Sonia shook her head, unconvinced by his understatement. To be related
to half the Catholic families in England has its drawbacks, and it was
not easy to shorten the list of unavoidable visits. From Yorkshire and
the Fleming-Althorps they would have to go on to the Wrefords of Wreford
Abbey, and once in Northumberland there was no excuse for not visiting
the Knightriders in Inverness--Lady Knightrider and Lady Loring were
sisters--and from Scotland to Ireland and Ireland back to Wales.... It
was a formidable tour, and I began to regard Sonia's estimate of three
years as not unreasonable. On the principle that one more or less made
little difference, Lake House was included in the itinerary _en route_
for the Hunter-Oakleighs in Dublin. A woman might say that Sonia was not
reluctant to drive in triumph to my cousin's door; as a man I have no
hesitation in saying that Loring and Violet had been such good friends
in the past that he was not in the least anxious to meet her for the
present.
Sonia suddenly laid her hand caressingly on his arm.
"Jim, dear," she pleaded, "why can't we be married at once--quite
quietly--and then stay with all these people afterwards?"
"I promised your mother we'd have the wedding at the Oratory," he
reminded her.
"Yes, but we needn't invite anyone."
"They'll be awfully hurt if they're not asked."
"Oh! what nonsense!" she exclaimed. "Who is there? George, will you be
offended if you're not invited?"
"It would be the truest kindness," I said. By old-fashioned standards
her anxiety to get married was hardly decent, but Sonia paid scanty
respect to old-fashioned standards.
"What did I tell you, Jim?" she cried triumphantly. "You go to mother
and tell her it's all fixed for the first of June and nobody's to be
invited."
Two days later I met Lady Dainton at luncheon and asked her what had
been decided.
"It'll be some time in June or July," she told me, adding with emphasis,
"at the Oratory, as we arranged at first. Jim had an absurd idea of not
inviting anyone. So like a man, don't you know? making a hole-and-corner
business. Anyone in his position, don't you know?--it's expected of
them."
So it was decreed that fitting publicity should be given to the
ceremony, but the date was not to be either in June or July. On the
sixth of May King Edward died, and England was plunged into mourning.
When the funeral was over, I discussed with Bertrand the desirability of
spending the summer in Ireland. The House of Commons had no longer a
claim on me, and there would be no London Season. He was strongly
opposed to the idea, however, and urged me to stay in town and try to
make capital out of the sobered state of the public mind. A eulogistic
Press was for ever talking of the late King's diplomacy and peaceful
arts; my uncle wished to test the sincerity of the panegyrists and
encourage the Government to make some offer of proportional disarmament.
So for three summer months I went back to Bouverie Street and the
Committee Room in Princes Gardens. The results of our renewed campaign
are a matter of common knowledge: representations were made to Germany,
a tortuous diplomatic debate was carried on and a year later, before any
conclusion could be reached, the gunboat "Panther" steamed south to
Agadir. There were wild stories of a German plan to occupy Northern
France, wilder projects of landing British troops on the Belgian coast;
a Mansion House speech less euphuistic and platitudinous than most,
gossip at the Eclectic Club about an ultimatum.
Bertrand was silent and uncommunicative in these days, but, as the
menace of war withdrew, I could see him deriving philosophic
satisfaction from the crisis.
"That's twice in three years, George," he observed one night when I was
dining with him at the Club. "_Is_ modern war too big a thing? _Are_
they all afraid to start it? You remember when Bosnia and Herzegovina
were grabbed in 1908? Russia threatened Austria, Germany threatened
Russia--and Russia backed down. Diplomacy's like poker, you know, the
hands are not played. The same thing's happened now; we've threatened
Germany, and she's counted her army corps and battleships and decided
she isn't strong enough. Well, George, if the cards are never to be
played, why should sane governments go on raising each other? Four aces
bear the same relation to two as two to one-why can't we stop this
ruinous armament race?"
But the Agadir incident was still a year ahead of us when O'Rane
returned from the Continent at the end of July and stayed behind for a
last cigar at the end of a Thursday dinner.
"I've been a Breslau merchant the last few months, sir," he told us when
my uncle asked for news. "I've been eating, drinking, smoking
German----"
"You'll end your days in a fortress, Raney," I observed.
"I think not. That paper of yours, 'Peace,' has a large circulation. All
the politicians and most of the Army read it."
"This is fame," I said to Bertrand.
"They regard it as the swan-song of the effete British," said O'Rane.
"The merchants and journalists and so on are with you because Germany's
so hard-up with all her insane preparations that a tax on capital may
come any day. The German government's different: it thinks you're either
not equal to the strain or else you're hypnotizing them to drop their
weapons before you strike. The German's an odd creature, sir; he thinks
everyone's like himself without any of his virtues. King Edward and Grey
have made something of a ring-fence round Germany; if Bismarck and the
old Emperor had done the same thing, they'd be declaring war now.
_Ergo_, we're going to declare war. I'm afraid it will come, sir. I've
brought you back some books on Pan-Germanism by a miscreant called
Bernhardi: the Bernhardi temperament can only be destroyed by an
unsuccessful war or a revolution or State bankruptcy. So far as I can
see, our job for the next few years will be to wake up this country and
make it prepared for all emergencies."
"How'd you set about it?" I asked.
"I'm going to wander round England and see what people are saying. I'm
out of touch with politics here, but some years ago I prophesied a
revolution in this peaceful land and I want to see if the temper of the
working classes is different from what it was in the old days when I was
a manual labourer here. Will you be in Ireland later on, George? I
should like to come and see you if I may."
"Fix your own time," I said. "I've got a half-promise from Loring and
Sonia, but nothing's decided."
He thought over my words for a few moments and then got up to go.
"After all," he said, as I helped him into his coat, "if they don't mind
meeting me, I oughtn't to mind meeting them."
For three months I had had a certain want of sympathy on my conscience.
"Raney!" I began, and then stopped.
"Don't trouble, old man," he answered, reading my thoughts. "That book's
closed--for the present, at least. They're not married yet, either."
"Good night, Raney," I said, shaking hands.
He laughed a little sardonically and ran down the steps into the night.
At the beginning of September I received a wire from O'Rane to say that
he would be with me on the tenth. Two days later Loring telegraphed from
Fishguard Harbour that he and Sonia were actually on their way to
Ireland. I should not have deliberately timed their visits to coincide,
but Loring's arrangements had been so unsettled that at his request I
made my own independently. Twice during August Sonia had fixed a date,
twice Loring had written with contrite apology to cancel it and suggest
another. It was all his fault, circumstances over which he had no
control.... The excuses ran so smoothly that even my mother, most
charitable and unsuspicious of women, became convinced that it was not
his fault.
I had no one staying with me when they arrived, white and tired after
their journey, and Sonia sighed with relief when my mother told her so
the first night.
"I'm worn out with trying to keep new people distinct," she said. "As
for Jim, his hair's falling out under the strain."
He had shaved off his moustache--as I advised him to do five years
before--but otherwise seemed unchanged save for a tired look about the
eyes and a slightly subdued manner of speaking.
"Mr. O'Rane's coming the day after to-morrow," said my sister. "It won't
be so quiet when he's here."
Sonia made no comment and plunged into a description of the houses they
had visited during the last three months.
"Jim's uncle, Lord Deningham, is the next," she said. "Down in Clare.
All the clan's being gathered to receive us, and I'm simply petrified at
the thought of it. They'll all hate me----"
"Darling!" Jim interposed.
"They will," she repeated obstinately. "That's next Wednesday. Can you
stand us for five days, Mrs. Oakleigh?"
"As long as you can stop," said my mother.
When the ladies had left us after dinner I congratulated Loring on the
absence of his moustache.
"Sonia didn't like it," he explained. "Port? By all means. I'm as tired
as a dog. It's gone off thundering well, and they all loved her, as I
knew they would. All the same, a long engagement's a strain."
"It isn't the long engagement," I said. "It's being in love. When you're
safely married and don't have to sprinkle 'darlings' like a pepper-pot
and can take the best chair and be snappy at breakfast----"
"Oh, you bachelors," he interrupted with a laugh. "A long engagement has
its points, though." Quite frequently it prevents marriage, but I saw
no object in putting this view before him. "We've been rubbing off the
corners, weeding out undesirable friends---- Oh, you're safe, but Sonia
rather bars Val Arden, and young Summertown's developing into too much
of an Apache for my taste. We're shaking down."
"And how soon will you both be purged of all your sins?" I asked.
He did not hear the question and sat staring thoughtfully at the
decanter.
"I'm afraid she finds the religious part rather hard to pick up," he
said. "She _will_ call all Catholics 'Papists.' _I_ don't mind, but some
of my people.... And when she first met the Cardinal, she insisted on
shaking his hand. Of course, it's a very small point; you musn't think
I'm finding fault with her. How did you think she was looking?"
"Very well," I said. "The new pearl-collar suits her."
"It isn't new," he corrected me. "We've had it in the family for some
time." His voice became confidential and his manner eager, as with a man
mutely asking for sympathy. "Absolutely between ourselves, George, there
was rather a row about it. I got the bank to send all our stuff down to
House of Steynes, and she insisted on wearing some of it. My poor mother
was fearfully shocked--and said she oughtn't to have touched it till she
was married. Once again, it's a very small point."
His vigorously defensive tone, adopted to answer criticisms I had not
made, led me to think there had been numerous small points for
arbitration and diplomacy--as when Sonia wished to modernize the 'Mary
Queen of Scots' room at Steynes that had been untouched since the young
queen slept there in the second year of her reign.
"You'll shake down," I agreed encouragingly when he made me throw away a
half-smoked cigar because the people in the drawing-room would be
wondering what had happened to us.
"Oh Lord, yes!" he answered cheerfully over his shoulder as he pulled up
a chair and began to talk to my mother.
Sonia was standing by the window looking out over the lake. Presently
she walked out on the terrace and called to Loring to join her. For a
few minutes I watched them standing on the lowest terrace in earnest
conversation, then they returned to the house and Sonia asked to be
allowed to go to bed.
"Tell me when you'd like to turn in yourself," I said to Loring when we
were alone in the smoking-room for a last drink.
He walked up and down restlessly, glancing at the pictures and books,
and finally coming to anchor opposite my chair.
"Did Beryl say you were expecting Raney here?" he asked, sipping his
whiskey and soda and staring rather hard at the floor.
"The day after to-morrow," I said.
"The deuce you are!" He put down his tumbler and resumed his restless
walk. "This is devilish awkward, George. Not to put too fine a point on
it, Sonia refuses to meet him."
"What's the trouble?" I asked. It would be interesting to hear her
reasons as expressed to Loring.
He tramped up and down until I pushed a chair in his way and made him
sit down.
"Women are beyond me," he complained. "_I_ don't know the rights of the
case, but she says he was very insulting to her."
"But when was all this?" I asked. "I didn't know she'd seen him."
"Oh, it was years ago--down at Crowley--before he went abroad. Raney's
got a very sharp tongue and keeps no sort of check on it, you know."
"Yes, I don't defend what he said on that occasion," I put in.
Loring looked at me in surprise.
"You knew about it?"
"I was in the room," I said, "and anything I didn't hear he came and
told me in my bedroom that night."
"Well, what the devil did he say?" he demanded indignantly.
"It's ancient history now, Jim."
"Sonia's kept it pretty fresh in her mind," he retorted.
I might have recalled to them both a dinner-table scene at House of
Steynes thirteen months before when Sonia inquired how Raney was getting
on in Mexico and expressed a more than friendly desire to see him on his
return. That was, of course, before the engagement to Loring.
"What d'you suggest?" I contented myself with asking.
"_I_ think we'd better clear out," he answered, with emphasis on the
pronoun.
"To the Deninghams?"
"They can't take us till Wednesday. Sonia talks about going to an hotel,
but that's out of the question. I'd better take her back to London----"
"And cut the Deninghams?"
"Oh, I can't do that. He's my mother's only brother, you know."
"Do I understand you're proposing to take her from Kerry to London and
back again from London to Clare in five, four days?" He was silent.
"What does _she_ say, Jim?"
"Refuses point-blank," he answered despairingly.
I walked over to the writing table and took out a telegraph form.
"The simplest thing is to put Raney off for the present," I said.
He made no answer, but, when my tea was brought me next morning, there
was a pencilled note lying on the tray, "Thanks, old man.--L."
It was a clear victory for Sonia, but she was sufficiently shame-faced
for the remainder of the visit to make me think she was getting little
pleasure out of her triumph. From time to time my mother asked me why
they did not advance the date of the wedding, but, according to Sonia, a
mischievous fairy seemed to be playing tricks with the calendar. For a
marriage in Advent Jim would require dispensation; Lady Loring always
had to spend the early months of the year abroad; "and his old Pope
would excommunicate him," Sonia told me, "if he tried to have the
wedding in Lent. And then it would be May, and then some other Royalty
would go and die...."
Until my conversation with her I had in my ignorance never appreciated
how strongly the position of the celibate was entrenched.
O'Rane arrived at the end of the following week and asked whether Jim
and Sonia were still with me.
"So that was the reason of your wire," he observed, when I told him they
had left on the Wednesday. "Which was it?" I asked him whether he had
had a good crossing. "Oh, well, I know it wasn't Jim," he said. "'Nous
devons adorer Dieu, mon fils, mais c'est un grand mystère de sa
providence qu'il ait crée la femme.'"
"Perhaps Jim is thinking that at this moment," I said, and the subject
was dropped.
O'Rane's visit gave me my first opportunity of following up the Mexican
adventure from the point at which "Mr. James Morris" had left it. The
company, I found, had been launched successfully, if not quite at
Morris's optimistic valuation; the mysterious new concession--"about the
size of Scotland"--was promising well, though the working expenses were
unexpectedly heavy. I gathered that the partnership was drawing a profit
of 15,000 dollars a year, or, in English money, about fifteen hundred
pounds for each partner.
"But that's all in Morris's hands," said O'Rane. "I've cut my connexion
and I'm going into English politics. All this time since I met you I've
been wandering about, listening and watching. This country is
disgustingly rich, George, demoralized by it--from the Government that
flings millions about in fancy social reforms to the mill-hand who
wastes shillings a week on cinematograph shows and roller-skating rinks.
Utterly demoralized! Nobody cares for anything but extravagant
pleasures; they are not even interested in the House of Lords fight. And
the more that's spent on top the more they want to spend below. That
revolution's coming all right."
"I shall believe in it when I see it," I said.
At the end of a week he left me, as ever, without a hint where he was
going or what he proposed to do. I stayed at Lake House till the second
election of 1910, when Bertrand telegraphed to me to come and help him.
Loring dined with me at the Club one night when the election was over,
and suggested that I should accompany his mother, sister, the Daintons
and himself to the South of France. The invitation was half-hearted, and
I felt I had better wait until the process of rubbing off the corners
was nearer completion. They left in January and returned in the first
week in March. I was apprised of their presence in London by a special
messenger, who pursued me, note in hand, from Princes Gardens to the
House, where I had been dining with my uncle, and from the house to the
Eclectic Club.
The note was in Loring's writing and begged me to come at once to Curzon
Street.
"I suppose they've fixed the date at last," I said to Bertrand as he
dropped me on his way home. "Now I shall be stuck with the privilege of
being best man."
VII
It was after midnight when I arrived at Loring House. Jim was in the
library, walking restlessly up and down and filling the fireplace with
half-smoked cigarettes. He was in evening dress, and an overcoat and
silk hat lay on the arm of a sofa.
"Come in!" he exclaimed, without interrupting his caged-lion walk.
"Sorry to drag you out at this time of night. Have a drink? Have
something to smoke. Sit down, won't you?"
He spoke in short, staccato sentences, waving a hand vaguely in the
direction of the tantalus and cigars. The intensity of his manner was
infectious: I pulled up a chair and settled myself to listen.
"_Now_ then----" I began, as the door closed.
"It's ... it's come, George!" he stammered. "I'm up to my neck, and
you're the only man who can pull me out."
"Drive ahead!" I said.
"Sonia's broken it off!"
It would be affectation for me to pretend I was as much surprised as
Loring expected me to be. The engagement had, in my eyes, been
singularly unsuitable from the first, and one or both seemed destined
to lead a life of misery; but I half thought that both parties would go
through with the marriage out of pride or obstinacy. Loring was as much
in love with Sonia as Sonia's mother was in love with his position.
Seemingly I had underestimated the havoc wrought in the girl's nerves by
her years of crude excitement.
"Tell me as much as you think fit," I said. "I'll do anything I can."
He thought for a moment, as if uncertain where to start.
"It's my fault," he began. "I can see that now. We oughtn't to have made
the engagement so long--neither of us could stand the strain. I hurried
things on as much as I could, but Sonia ... I don't know, she must have
wondered where it was all leading to. I rather sickened her, I'm afraid.
You see, I don't _know_ much about women.... I've met any number, of
course, but I haven't had many intimate women friends. They never
interested me much till I got engaged to her. Consequently I've never
appreciated their likes and dislikes. Case in point, Sonia told me last
week that she'd scream if I called her 'darling' again. Now I should
have thought.... Well, anyway, it seemed quite harmless and natural to
me.... A small point, but it just shows you what a lot of knowing women
take.... Got a cigarette on you?"
I threw him my case.
"What was the _casus belli_?" I asked, but for the moment he would not
be drawn from his generalizations.
"I think it was partly physical, too," he went on. "I tired the poor
child out--rushing round and seeing people. She couldn't stand the
strain. And she saw too much of me.... I was always there, dogging her
steps.... She couldn't get away from me. This last visit to the Riviera
was a hopeless mistake from every point of view."
He flung away the cigarette he had just lighted. We seemed to be getting
gradually nearer something tangible, and, as he gazed bewilderedly round
to see where he had put my case, I asked, "What happened out there?"
"Nothing," he answered. "It was to-night. We got back this afternoon and
all went for a farewell dinner to Brown's Hotel. The Daintons are
stopping there. Sonia was very quiet all through the dinner and, when my
mother and Amy went home and we were left alone to say good-night, she
said she'd got something to tell me. I waited, she hummed and hawed a
bit and then asked me what the rule in our Church was about the children
of mixed marriages. I told her they had to be brought up as Catholics.
"'And what happens if I object?' she asked.
"I told her I couldn't get a dispensation for the marriage at all unless
she gave me an undertaking to this effect." He paused in pathetic
bewilderment. "I can't understand her raising the question at all at
this time of day; I explained the whole position to her before we became
engaged, and she didn't object then.
"'Well,' she said, 'I can't consent to have my children brought up in a
different faith.'"
Loring passed his hands over his eyes and dropped limply into a chair.
"That was rather a facer for me, George," he went on. "Either we had to
marry without a dispensation--and that meant excommunication for me--or
we couldn't get married at all. I thought it over very carefully. I'm a
precious bad Catholic.... I mean, I've been brought up in the Church,
and we all of us always _have_ been Catholics, but I don't believe half
the doctrines and I don't go to church once in a blue moon. I call
myself one, just as you call yourself a member of the Church of England.
We're probably both of us 'Nothing-arians,' only we don't recant or make
a fuss about it.... I began to wonder if I could tell 'em to
excommunicate me and be damned. It would mean an awful wrench. My mother
takes it all very seriously, and we English Catholic families all hang
together rather, and I'm a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and all that
sort of thing. I tell you, I didn't half like doing it, but it seemed
the only thing, and eventually I told Sonia I'd lump the dispensation
and risk the consequences."
He paused and lit another cigarette.
"I thought that would have ended the trouble," he went on, with a sigh.
"It seemed to be only the beginning. She was awfully good about it at
first and said she couldn't make discord between my family and myself. I
told her I was very fond of my mother, but that I was fonder of her than
of anybody in the world. Then ... I don't know, I couldn't follow her
... she started on another tack altogether and said I should always be a
Catholic at heart and that I should try to go back to the Church and
take the children with me.... These damned unborn children ...! I told
her--as much as I could cram into three sentences--what my whole
attitude towards religion boiled down to. And then the row started. We
both of us talked together, and neither of us listened to the other or
finished our arguments, and at the end of half an hour Sonia began to
cry, and I felt a perfect brute, and it ended with her sending me away
and saying she could never marry a man who didn't believe in God."
Loring mopped his forehead.
"I feel absolutely done in," he murmured.
I mixed him a generous whisky and soda and asked what he wanted done.
His face was haggard, and for a big man he seemed suddenly dried up and
shrivelled.
"You must go round and talk to her," he said. "You've known her since
she was a kid. Explain that I didn't mean what I said, apologize for
me----"
I shook my head.
"It'll do no good," I said. "You're not to blame."
"But my dear fellow----!" he began excitedly, as though I had paid no
attention to what he had told me.
"Look it in the face, Jim," I said, shaking my head again. "She's tired
of you."
He picked up his tumbler and then put it down untasted.
"I don't believe it," he answered, with sublime simplicity.
"You've got to."
"But--but--but," he stammered. "We've never had a shadow of a
disagreement until to-night."
"You didn't see it and you always gave way and smoothed things over."
"There never _was_ anything to smooth over. Till this infernal
religious question started----"
"It was religion to-day, it'll be the colour of your eyes or the shape
of your nose to-morrow."
Loring stared at me as though suspicious of an ill-timed humour.
"You're wrong, George, absolutely wrong. I _know_ you're wrong."
I shrugged my shoulders and left it at that.
"I'll do whatever you think best," I said.
"I knew you would!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Well, I've told you. You must
go round to-morrow morning----"
"And if she refuses to see me?"
"She won't!"
"_If_," I persisted.
Loring jumped up excitedly.
"My dear chap, she simply musn't break off the engagement! Leave me out
of it, tell her only to consider her own position." He paused in fresh
embarrassment. "You remember the trouble over that swine Crabtree?" he
went on diffidently. "We can't have a repetition of that! You know as
well as I do, a girl who's always breaking off engagements.... Get her
to look at it from that point of view!"
I rose up and dusted the ash from my shirt-front.
"She's tired of you," I repeated, with all the brutal directness I could
put into my tone.
"Well--and if she is?" The tone no less than the words hinted that he
might be beginning to share my opinion.
"You want the engagement renewed on those terms?"
"I don't want the Crabtree business over again?" he answered, fencing
with my question.
"I'll call on her to-morrow," I said, "unless you ring me up before
ten."
At eleven next morning I called at Brown's Hotel. The porter who sent up
my name brought back word that Miss Dainton regretted she was unable to
see me. On receipt of my report Loring sent round a letter by the hand
of one of his footmen. Lady Dainton drove to Curzon Street between
twelve and one and was closeted with Loring for half an hour. What took
place at the interview I have never inquired. Loring came into the
library at the end of it with a sheet of notepaper in his hand. His face
was white, and there were dark rings under his eyes.
"Get this into the papers for me, will you?" he said dispassionately.
"It's no good, she's immovable. I'm going away for a bit. We'd better
not run the risk of meeting for the present. I'm starting at once, by
the way, so I'm not likely to see you again before I go. I'm more
grateful than I can say for all you've done. Good-bye."
As I drove down to Printing House Square I glanced at the sheet of
paper. "The marriage arranged between the Marquess Loring and Miss Sonia
Dainton," it ran, "will not take place."
That night I had some difficulty in getting to sleep. The "Maxims" of
the Duc de la Rochefoucauld lay on the table by my bed, and I opened the
book at random.
"It is commonly the Fault of People in Love," wrote that polished cynic,
"that they are not sensible when they cease to be beloved."