THE YEARS OF CARNIVAL
"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not thee in awe--
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the Law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget, lest we forget!"
RUDYARD KIPLING, "Recessional."
Le Roy est mort; vive le Roy!
King Edward was mourned a twelvemonth, and in the spring of the
following year all sorts and conditions of men gathered to do honour to
his successor. Before the first hammer beat on the first Coronation
stand, the invasion of London had begun: from Channel to Tweed ran a
whisper of social schemings--a daughter's presentation, a ball, a house
in town for the Season. Our solid, self-conscious race, never gay for
gaiety's sake, reached out and grasped the excuse for innocent
dissipation. The last five years had been so charged with political
acrimony, the world had worked itself into so great a passion over the
Budgets and Second Chambers. Three months respite was a prospect
alluring to the straitest Puritan.
My uncle Bertrand had hoped that a year of mourning would tempt his
countrymen to regard politics as a serious study rather than a pretext
for vulgar abuse. Seldom have I watched the death of a vainer hope, for
the world flung off its black clothes and prepared for carnival. Apaches
plotted new raids, strange-tongued provincials rubbed shoulders with
American tourists, Colonial Prime Ministers jostled you in the streets
or appropriated your favorite table at the restaurants.
For a time I sought refuge in the Club--and found it was no refuge.
Members were balloting for seats to view the procession or discussing
Adolf Erckmann's prospects in the Coronation Honours List. Erckmann
himself was very prominent, and the capture of London, which he largely
effected in the next three or four years, started with his acquisition
of a title. Perhaps he tried to capture the Eclectic Club--I certainly
remember being asked to blackball three of his candidates. If so, he
failed; the most mediaeval club in the world was strong to resist the
most modern social impresario. And this I regard with satisfaction when
I consider, in moments of sombre retrospection, how the tone of England
has become modernized in the last half generation. Sir John Woburn and
the Press Combine modernized journalism; Vandale, Bendix and Trosser
modernized the House of Commons, as anyone will agree who recalls the
three scandals associated with their names--squalid, financial scandals,
lacking the scale and dignity of Central American corruption; and
Erckmann modernized London Society. It was a brilliant, gaudy thing when
he left it, yet I almost preferred the old state when the loudest voice
and longest purse did not necessarily go the furthest.
From time to time I saw something of his conquering march. My mother and
sister came over for the Coronation, and we suffered the season
patiently. Of course we gave a ball; equally 'of course,' it was at the
Ritz, for the Ritz at this time was an article of faith. If a hostess
wanted men, she must entertain there; if a man wanted supper, he must
secure an invitation by hook or by crook--or else walk in without it.
"Otherwise you get no food," as my barbarian young cousin, Greville
Hunter-Oakleigh, confessed to me one night at the Monagasc Minister's
ball in Grosvenor Gardens. He had danced dutifully with "all the right
people," and was now going on with Violet, Summertown and two brother
officers in search of supper. Greville and Violet had been invited;
Summertown issued invitations to the others on the principle that
hostesses were always glad of a few extra men.
"You're so damned William-and-Maryish," he complained, when I refused to
come without a card. "If you won't, you won't, but they're frightfully
rich and they'll do you awfully well. So long. We shall be back in a
couple of hours."
He hurried away, and I set myself to protect my sister Beryl from Lady
Ullswater, who was marking her down as a new-comer and angling for the
privilege of chaperoning her. Before our ball took place I had an offer
of the whole Brigade from John Ashwell, but we thought it would be
amusing to make our own arrangements. A number of people strayed in
without being asked, but this was in some sense balanced by our being
able to refuse invitations to a host of Erckmann's protégés.
Erckmann himself--Sir Adolf, as he became--we were compelled to invite
out of compliment to Lady Dainton. For some time her husband had been
observable at the Eclectic Club, lunching with Erckmann and consuming an
amount of champagne and Corona cigars that argued business discussion.
There followed an issue of new companies with the name of Sir Roger
Dainton, Bart., M.P., on the prospectus; later I met Erckmann at dinner
in Rutland Gate; later still the Daintons took a moor. It was one of
those rare business associations in which everyone secured what he
wanted. I myself, a mere private in a stage army, was invited to join a
party for Ober-Ammergau, and, if I declined to witness a Passion Play in
Erckmann's company, my refusal was prompted less by social prejudice
than by superstitious scruple.
At first I was mildly surprised to find the Daintons so much in public
so soon after Sonia's engagement had been broken off; but the longer I
lived in London the more people I found skirmishing to get away from
other people and on one occasion in Coronation week, I remember seeing
Loring, Crabtree, O'Rane and Sonia under the same roof. In practice,
however, they kept apart without undue contrivance. Crabtree became
engaged at this time to Mrs. Pauncefote, widow of the Staffordshire
brewer and a woman some eleven years his senior; he was now in a
position to woo the electors of the Brinton Division, and little was
seen of him in London. O'Rane, on the rare occasions when I met him
hurrying to or from the Continent, diving into the Conservative Central
Office or disappearing into the industrial north, maintained an attitude
of mystery and would tell me nothing of his movements. He was
incessantly restless and as self-absorbed as ever, but the lines of his
old, clear-cut scheme of life had lost something of their sharpness. His
breach with the past seemed almost complete, marked in black and
white--or so I fancied--by a letter I had given him to read twelve
months before at the Charing Cross Hotel. At the end of the season he
and Sonia met at the Embassy Ball; they bowed and passed on. Then his
eyes sought mine as though wondering what were my thoughts. I made some
comment on her dress; he made no answering comment at all.
As for Loring, I hardly saw him from the spring of 1911, when he hurried
abroad, to the spring of 1914, when he returned. As a matter of form he
came back for the Coronation, but did not stay an hour more than was
necessary. Summertown, never a veracious chronicler, worked up a
picturesque story of the yacht moored by Hungerford Bridge, and its
owner changing out of his robes as he drove down the Embankment and
dropping his coronet into the river in his haste to get away from
England. I have but a confused idea where he went during those three
years, and the question is immaterial. The important thing is that he
was absent from London at a time when London was almost oppressively
full of Sonia Dainton.
She was on the defensive when we first met, as though expecting me to
blame her for the broken engagement. When, as was natural, I said
nothing, she developed a curious recklessness and gave me to understand
that, whosever the fault, she did not care a snap of the fingers for the
consequences. It was partly pose, I think, and partly a very modern
refusal to allow her feelings to be stirred below the surface, partly
also the manner and spirit of her surroundings. I always fancy I saw a
change in her from the day when Lady Dainton relaxed her social severity
and opened her doors to Erckmann and his _cortège_. With her catchwords,
her volubility and over-ready laugh, something of hysteria seemed to
have crept into her life. Whatever the entertainment, she was among the
first to arrive and the last to go, dancing hard, supping heartily,
talking incessantly, laughing gustily and smoking with fine abandon.
Hourly new excitement, prostration, forgetfulness--that seemed the
formula.
"What happens on Sundays, Sonia?" I once asked her, when we met for
supper and a discussion of our day's work.
"I take laudanum," was the answer.
It was true in spirit; it may even have been true in fact. I was often
reminded of a chorus girl I once saw in undergraduate days at a Covent
Garden Ball, whirling through the night--like Sonia--from one till
three, and at four o'clock lying asleep in a box with her cheek on her
arm, oblivious and--I hope--happy; in any case too weary to dream what
the future might hold. Looking back on the four years of carnival that
ended with the war, I seem to find in Sonia the embodiment of the age's
spirit.
"You know how that sort of thing ends, I suppose?" I took occasion to
ask.
"Oh, don't be heavy, George!" she exclaimed impatiently. "We can only
die once."
"To some extent we can postpone the date," I suggested.
"Who wants to? A short life and a merry one. This _is_ a dull show, you
know. How do _you_ come to be here?"
"My name was gleaned from an obsolete work of reference," I said,
producing a card with 'M.P.' on it. "And you?"
"Oh, I wasn't selected at all. Fatty Webster smuggled me in." She
dropped her voice confidentially. "George, this is a deadly secret. Mrs.
Marsden, who's responsible for this--this funeral, told mother she
wanted to break down the exclusiveness of London Society----"
"Many taunts have been hurled at that indeterminate class," I observed.
"No one ever called it exclusive before."
"It's exclusive if you're from Yorkshire, like her, with a perfectly
poisonous taste in dress. Well, all the girls come from Highgate
Ponds--Lord Summertown told me so----"
"He ought to know," I said.
"And all the men from Turnham Green. You know, where the buses come
from. Fatty Webster heard what it was going to be like, so he and Sam
and Lord Summertown went off to Fatty's rooms in Albemarle Street;
they've changed into corduroys and red handkerchiefs, and they're
pulling up Piccadilly in solid chunks with pickaxes. It's the greatest
fun in life. I went to see them half an hour ago. They've got lanterns
and ropes and things, and they're doing frightful damage. And the best
of it is that it's pouring with rain and none of the cars can get to
either door."
"As a law-abiding citizen, I think it's my duty to warn the police," I
said.
"Oh, you mustn't! You'll get Sam into a frightful row."
"That I don't mind if Webster spends a night in the cells. Sonia, he's a
dreadful young man. Where did you find him?"
"He's a friend of Sir Adolf's. He's rather a sport, really, and
enormously rich."
"He was richer a week ago."
"You mean before the breach of promise case? I suppose so. Honestly, if
Fatty proposed to me, I should slap his face, but if he had the
presumption to back out of it--my word!"
"He's too much like the domestic pig," I objected.
"Oh, he's quite harmless and very useful. He cadged me an invitation for
the Embassy Ball. Are you going?"
"I've been invited," I said.
There the subject dropped, for I had promised to go with O'Rane and was
not sure how he would take the news that Sonia also was to be present.
Still in the enigmatic mood, he shrugged his shoulders and informed me
that his acceptance had gone forth, and he proposed to abide by it. I
raised no further objection as the ball promised to be amusing. It was a
limited liability entertainment, floated by a number of diplomatic
underlings, and, as some difficulty was experienced in securing
invitations, there was an orgy of subterfuge, intrigue and bribery on
the part of aspirants. One of the Russian attachés confided to me that
he could have lunched and dined in four different places every day after
the announcement was made in the Press and stayed in six several houses
for Goodwood. There was considerable overlapping, and, if some received
no invitations, others received many. O'Rane, who had known more
Ambassadors before he was five than most men meet in a lifetime, had
cards sent him from three Embassies and four Legations. It is perhaps
superfluous to mention that of these the Austrian was not one.
If there be any justification for such a ball, it surely lies in a
certain brilliancy of stage-management. The Embassy Ball was well
stage-managed. As we drove into its neighbourhood, a double line of cars
was stretching from end to end of Brook Street, with one tail bending
down Park Lane to Hamilton Place and the other forking and losing itself
in Hanover Square. The pavements outside Claridge's were thronged with
eager, curious spectators, their lean faces white in the blinding glare
of strong head-lights. Excited whispers and an occasional half-timid
cheer greeted the appearance of figures familiar in politics or on the
Turf. It was the night of the Westmoreland House reception, and
uniforms, medals and orders flashed in brave rivalry with the aigrettes
and blue-white, shimmering diamonds of the women. A warm fragrance of
blending perfumes floated through the open portals into the courtyard,
and with the slamming of doors, the swish of skirts and the clear high
babble of voices came mingling the distant wail of the violins and the
dreamy, half-heard cadence of a waltz.
"After the railway strike this is rather refreshing," I said to O'Rane,
as we advanced inch by inch towards the doorway where Count Ristori, the
doyen of the _Corps Diplomatique_, was receiving on behalf of his
colleagues.
"And instructive," he added.
"Your revolution hasn't come off yet, Raney," I said, in the intervals
of catching the eyes of the Daintons and bowing to them.
"Nor my war. Perhaps they'll balance each other and leave us to
enjoy--this kind of thing. You know how it ended? Men's demands granted,
owners given a free hand to recoup themselves by raising freights. D'you
know _why_ it ended?"
"It had gone beyond a joke," I said.
The Daintons had been compelled to cancel a week-end party at Crowley
Court owing to the impossibility of assembling their guests.
O'Rane laid his hand confidentially on my shoulder.
"I'm told," he said,--"all my information comes from this Embassy
crowd,--I'm told Germany was preparing to strike at France and collar
the whole country north of a line to Cherbourg. We couldn't have stood
that. But if we'd declared war with the strike on--whew! you couldn't
have transported man or gun."
"A pretty story," I commented. "I don't believe it. Do you?"
"Oh, what does it matter what I believe? You think I'm revolution-mad.
The threat of war ended the strike, the end of the strike postponed the
war. _Vive la bagatelle!_" He gripped my arm and his voice quickened and
rose till our neighbours turned round and smiled in amused surprise.
"George, I wonder if it was like this in the last days of the Ancien
Régime--a year before the Revolution and six before Napoleon. Marie
Antoinette and Count Fersen the first couple, the Court following in
beautiful brocaded dresses, with patches and powdered hair, and blue and
silver and rose-red coats, and lace cuffs and silk stockings and buckled
shoes. Such manners! And such corruption of soul! Peaceful, secure,
unheeding. And outside the Palace a line of gilt coaches. And running
under the horses' heads for a glimpse of the clothes and jewels--the
_tiers état_." He smiled ironically and shrugged his shoulders. "'_En
effet, ils sont des hommes._' Was it like this?"
"It was like this again ten years after the Revolution and ten days
after Waterloo--when corruption ought to have been purged out of the
world."
"But will nothing make these people see the _tiers état_ at their
door?"
"I saw them myself. What is one to do?"
"_Mon dieu!_"
"That's no answer, Raney," I said.
"The answer was given you nearly two thousand years ago."
A moment later we were bowing over the hand of Count Ristori. Then the
queue behind us pressed forward, and we were separated. Several hours
elapsed before we met again, though he was rarely out of my sight.
Indeed, I followed his movements rather closely and made a discovery.
Sonia gave me a dance, and when it was over we sat and watched the scene
from two chairs by an open window. There was a formality and decorum
about the ball that evidently rather irked her: and from her tone of
somewhat pert disparagement I gathered that she did not know many of the
people present.
"David's all over the Ambassadors," she remarked, with her eyes on a
corner where he was standing with three or four be-ribboned Secretaries.
"That's old Dracopoli," I told her. "He was in command when Raney's
father was wounded. The fat little man with the high cheek-bones used to
be Russian Minister of Finance."
"I had no idea he was so famous," she drawled, with easy contempt.
"I'm inclined to think Raney's a bigger man than either of us gave him
credit for," I said.
And that was my discovery. It cleared my mind of a patronizing
friendliness dating from the time when I was a monitor and he a fag at
Melton. I always recognized his mental abilities no less than the
endurance which had kept him for a dozen years from starving. But he
talked so much like any other brilliant Irish boy, he was so exuberant
and unstable, that it was the convention not to take him seriously. That
night--and under my eyes--he seemed to be coming into his kingdom. It
was almost his first public appearance in England since boyhood, and, as
old scandals slipped into oblivion, the friends of his father claimed
acquaintance as my uncle had done six years before. There are few men
who have before their twenty-sixth birthday made all the money they will
ever need, few who have travelled in so many countries of the world and
met so many people. That was all that the Claridge ball-room knew, but I
had lived in close communion with him for several years and could have
written many a supplementary chapter.
"He's clever," Sonia admitted, "but he's frightfully selfish."
"Have you met his partner--a man called Morris?" I asked. "He's the man
to discuss Raney's shortcomings with you."
"I don't want to discuss them with anyone. I _know_. He's absolutely
wrapped up in himself and his precious dreams. George, for some years he
and I ..."
"I know," I interrupted. "Once when you dined with me at the House, you
promised some day to tell me why you didn't end your ridiculous
boy-and-girl engagement."
Sonia put her head on one side and pouted.
"To be quite honest," she said, "I was secretly rather afraid of him."
"But he's the gentlest man on earth, and the most courteous."
"If you do what he wants; otherwise--if you wear green when he'd like
you to wear brown----!"
"But all this is hardly a reason for _refusing_ to break off the
engagement."
"I was afraid of him," she repeated.
I know Sonia well enough to say in five cases out of twenty when she is
speaking the truth. This was one.
"Afraid of _Raney_?" I cried. "Are you afraid of him now?"
"I've not seen him to speak to for years. Until tonight--and then we
only bowed----"
"If you want to see him again, you've only to tell him so."
She threw her head up with a rare expression of scorn.
"How kind!" she exclaimed. "But he's far too lifty to know me now, even
if I was in the habit----"
"Then I shall never know whether you're still afraid of him," I said.
"He'll not come till he's sent for--sent for and told he's wanted----"
"Is this a message?" she demanded.
"A reminder," I answered. "Forgive me, but you have not been discussed
by us since he came back from the Continent a year ago. I am recalling
something I think he told you over at Lake House before he went to
Mexico."
"Oh, the Butterfly Life Sermon? He gave me five years to outgrow it,
didn't he? Tell him--No." The first bars of a waltz were starting, and
the two ball-rooms began to fill. A corpulent, red young man--I knew him
by sight as young Webster--walked sheepishly to our window and stood in
front of us. Sonia looked round the crowded room with eager, bright
eyes, pulled the straps of her dress higher on to the shoulders and rose
to her feet. "I'll leave you to make up the message," she told me; and
to her partner, "Come Fatty. Let's take the floor before the mob gets
in."
In the still empty room they executed a wonderful stage-dance of dips
and runs and eccentric twinings. As O'Rane joined me by the open window,
I felt there was no need to give him any message.
"Supper or bed?" I asked him as I glanced at my watch.
"Not bed!" he answered, with a touch of the old exultant joy in
existence that I had not seen since his early days at Oxford. "I'm
having the time of my life, George. I'm dam' good at this sort of thing.
First of all I danced with Amy Loring and didn't tear her dress. Then I
found a Conservative Whip----"
"Are you really standing?"
"Don't interrupt! I invited Lady Dainton to have supper twice, and she
accepted both times. I asked perfect strangers to dance with me on the
ground that I'd met their brothers in Hong-Kong. I cadged cigarettes
from other perfect strangers, and I carried out a First Secretary's wife
in a fainting condition."
"You take a very frivolous view of life," I observed, as I ordered some
poached eggs and beer.
"It's all right. I shan't come here again," he answered.
"But I thought you were enjoying yourself?"
He drummed on the table with his fingers and smiled round the room.
"So I am," he said. "If you'd ever been as poor as a rat, you'd know
what it feels like to have money to burn!" His black eyes suddenly shone
with anger, and his fingers ceased their idle drumming. "If you'd ever
had your birth flung in your teeth----"
"Don't you ever forget anything, Raney?" I asked in his sudden, fierce
pause.
"Nothing, old man. Not a line of a book I've ever read nor the letter of
a word a man's ever said to me. I--I've been taken on my merits here
to-night. I don't want to forget anything. After all, if you forget what
it's like to go through one or two circles of Hell, you haven't much
pity for the souls that are still suffering there."
"What _are_ you going to do?" I asked.
"Follow my destiny," he answered, with his black eyes gazing into the
distance.
"So you told me some years ago when the Daintons gave their first ball
at the Empire Hotel."
"And haven't I kept my word? I've been finding the means, and you know
the twin obsessions of my mind."
"War and a revolution?"
He nodded, and looked round the supper-room.
"There's a lot worth saving, George; it's the greatest country in the
world. But there's a lot to be rooted out. People won't recognize that
civilization can never be stationary." He waved his hand rhythmically in
time with the music. "Backwards or forwards. Backwards or forwards. And
coming here after some years abroad, everything I see makes me think
we're sliding backwards."
II
Though O'Rane gave me no more than a couple of veiled hints, he was at
this time in train to be adopted as a Conservative candidate. There was
a certain irony in the son of the last Lord O'Rane standing in such an
interest, but the House of Commons has little use for non-party men,
and he was now more closely connected with the National Service and Navy
Leagues than with any Liberal organization.
The irony would have been completer if the swift changes of politics had
not delayed his election. It was not till the early spring of 1914 that
he took his seat, and his place by this time was on the Ministerial
side. The _volte-face_ sounds more abrupt than it really was if it be
remembered that he never had more than one object in view at a time.
Political gossip in the days of the Agadir incident said that part of
the Cabinet was ready for war while another part asserted that our
warlike preparations were inadequate. From that moment O'Rane's mind was
set on seeing the country put into such training that it would not be
found wanting if a similar crisis arose in the future.
When he finally went to the electors of Yateley, the focus of public
interest had changed. The surface of diplomacy was unruffled; the
Tripoli Campaign and the two Balkan wars had dragged to an end without
involving any of the Great Powers, and my uncle's confidence rose from
strength to strength at the confirmation of his favourite doctrine that
modern war was too vast and complex for a first class power to
undertake.
On the other hand, the condition of England was a matter for
considerable searching of heart. A spirit of unrest and lawlessness, a
neurotic state not to be dissociated from the hectic, long-drawn
Carnival that continued from month to month and year to year, may be
traced from the summer of the Coronation. It is too early to probe the
cause or say how far the staggering ostentation of the wealthy fomented
the sullen disaffection of the poor. It is as yet impossible to weigh
the merits in any one of the hysterical controversies of the times.
Looking back on those four years, I recall the House of Lords dispute
and a light reference to blood flowing under Westminster Bridge, railway
and coal strikes characterized by equally light breach of agreements, a
campaign in favour of female suffrage marked by violence to person and
destruction to property, and finally a wrangle over a Home Rule Bill
that spread far beyond the walls of Westminster and ended in the raising
and training of illegal volunteer armies in Ireland. Such a record in an
ostensibly law-abiding country gives matter for reflection. Sometimes I
think the cause may be found in the sudden industrial recovery after ten
years' depression following the South African War. The new money was
spent in so much riotous living, and from end to end there settled on
the country a mood of fretful, crapulous irritation. 'An unpopular law?
Disregard it!' That seemed the rule of life with a people that had no
object but successive pleasure and excitement and was fast becoming a
law unto itself.
When, therefore, O'Rane went to Yateley, he went in protest against the
action of certain officers at the Curragh, who, holding the King's
Commission and with some few years of discipline behind them, let it be
known that in the event of certain orders being given they did not
propose to obey them. Then, if ever, the country was near revolution; I
still recall the astonishment and indignation of Radicalism and Labour.
On the single question of Parliamentary control of the Army, O'Rane was
returned for a constituency that had almost forgotten the sensation of
being represented by anyone but a Conservative.
The reason why two and a half years elapsed between our conversation at
the Embassy Ball and his election in 1914 has been a secret in the
keeping of a few. I see no object in preserving the mystery any longer.
In the summer of 1912 Mayhew came home for his annual leave and dining
with us one night in Princes Gardens he mentioned that Budapest gossip
was growing excited over the possibility of a disturbance in the
Balkans. It was a Bourse rumour, and the Czar of Bulgaria was credited
with having operated the markets in such a way that a war of any kind
would leave him a considerably richer man. I asked O'Rane for
confirmation, and he informed me carelessly that some of his diplomatic
friends were expecting trouble.
A few weeks later Mayhew invited me to dine and bring O'Rane. We had a
small party in Princes Gardens that night, so I told him to join us and
sent a note to Raney's flat. Mayhew duly arrived, but I heard nothing
from O'Rane.
"War's quite certain," I was told, when we were left to ourselves. "I'm
working to get sent out as correspondent for the 'Wicked World' and I
wondered if you or Raney would care to come too. You'll get fine copy
for that paper of yours, and as he knows that part of the world and
speaks the language----"
"It's a pity he couldn't come to-night," I said. "Frankly, Mayhew, I
don't see myself as a war correspondent. I don't know how it's done----"
"Everything must have a beginning," he urged. "I don't either."
"But I've not got the physical strength to go campaigning. I should
crack up."
"You'll miss a lot if you don't come. You know, a series of articles for
'Peace' on the 'Horrors of Modern War'...."
It was at that point that my uncle, who had been half-listening to our
conversation, dropped into a chair by Mayhew's side.
"A very good idea," he observed. "Don't be idle, George. It'll be a
valuable experience."
Between them they bore down my opposition, and, while Mayhew secured my
passport and subjected it to innumerable consular _visas_, Bertrand
ordered my kit by telephone and reserved me the unoccupied half of a
compartment on the _wagon-lits_ as far as the Bulgarian frontier.
On what followed I prefer not to dwell. We were treated with every mark
of courtesy by the Bulgarian General Staff and--locked in an hotel in
Sofia with a military guard at the door till the war was over. Mayhew is
ordinarily a charming companion, as were no doubt the two or three dozen
other war correspondents who shared our fate, but I grew to loathe his
presence almost as bitterly as he came to loathe mine. I am told that
Sofia is an interesting city, though I had no opportunity of examining
it; I am told, too, that our hotel was the best, though I had no
standard of comparison whereby to judge it. Happiness came to me for the
first time when I mounted the gangway of an Austrian-Lloyd boat at
Salonica and coasted unhurriedly round Greece and Dalmatia to Trieste.
Our fellow-passengers included specimens of every race in the Levant and
one or two outside it. The first night on board a Greek officer wrapped
his uniform round a lump of coal and dropped it over the side.
"I can't stand the risk of being recognized," he told me. "You see, we
were all forbidden by proclamation to depart from strict neutrality."
"And yet, my dear Raney," I said, as I lit a cigar and walked arm in arm
with him along the deck, "you are the man who chastises us for our want
of discipline."
"I felt I owed myself a smack at Turkey," he answered, gazing over the
sapphire-blue Ægean to the vanishing coastline of Greece. "It must be
kept quiet or you'll get me into rather serious trouble."
And from that day to this I have never asked or answered where O'Rane
went when he left London in the late summer of 1912 and stayed away till
the winter of the following year. It is now too late to harm him by
putting the facts on paper.
Mayhew left us at Trieste and went by way of Vienna to Budapest. O'Rane
and I returned to England, and two days after our arrival in town I
invited him to dine with me. His man told me by telephone that he had
sailed that morning for Mexico, and I gathered was trying to realize his
property before the smouldering disorder there burst into a flame of
civil war. He was absent from England all the summer of 1913, and, when
he returned, it was in company of the so-called James Morris, and the
Mexican oil venture was at an end. I never learned the terms on which
they had sold out, but there was a heavy sacrifice. O'Rane, with
characteristic optimism, expressed satisfaction at getting anything at
all and sent Morris to Galicia and northern Italy to sink his experience
and the proceeds of the sale in fresh oil speculations. In the late
autumn they set up a joint establishment in Gray's Inn, selected, after
due deliberation, as the place where an American citizen who had broken
off diplomatic relations with his family was least likely to be
molested.
After the weariness of my imprisonment in Sofia I felt entitled to
spend the summer of 1913 in seeking relaxation. With O'Rane and Loring
abroad I fell back for companionship on my cousin, Alan Hunter-Oakleigh.
He was home from India on leave, and, as nothing would induce him to
bury himself in Dublin, the family came over and took a flat in town--to
the mortification of his wild young brother Greville, who held the not
uncommon view that a man should not belong to the same club as his
father or inhabit the same capital as his mother. Violet came
protesting, as the conventional delights of the Season were beginning to
pall on her, and the only member of the family who extracted profit from
the change of home was the youngest brother, Laurence, who could now
spend his Leave-out days from Melton in an orgy of dissipation for which
one or other of his relations was privileged to pay.
I always count myself an Irishman until fate flings me into the arms of
my cousins. Then I grow conscious of respectability, middle age and the
solid seriousness of the Anglo-Saxon. A day with one of them was an
adventure; a night with more than one almost invariably a catastrophe.
For the early weeks of the season I shepherded Alan through half a
hundred crowded and entirely blameless British drawing-rooms; we dined
in all the approved restaurants and saw the same revue and musical
comedy under a score of different names. Then he grew restless.
"This is too much like Government House," he complained of an Ascot Week
ball at Bodmin Lodge with Royalty present. "I want a holiday from
knee-breeches and twenty-one gun salutes. Low Life, George! Have you no
Low Life to show me?"
I referred the question to Summertown, who was wandering about with a
cigarette drooping from his lips and an anxious eye on the time.
"Wait just ten minutes," he begged us. "Greville and Fatty Webster have
gone off to cut the electric-light wires."
"But why?" I asked.
"To cheer these lads up a bit," he answered, pointing a disgusted
finger at the stiff, formal ballroom.
"Then I propose to leave at once," I said, making for the staircase.
"Oh, you'd better stay," he called after me. "Why, for all you know, you
may get your pocket picked by a third-class royalty. Not everyone can
say that, you know, and some of to-night's lot look proper Welshers.
Just as you like, though, and, if you'd really rather go, I'll give you
a scrambled egg at the 'Coq d'Or.'"
My cousin brightened visibly at the suggestion, and the three of us
drove to a silent, ill-lit street off Soho Square. An impressive
commissionaire admitted us to a small oak-panelled hall with a cloakroom
on one side and a new mahogany counter on the other. A Visitors' Book
lay open, and Summertown gravely inscribed in it the names of J.
Boswell, Auchinleck; S. Johnson, Litchfield; and R. B. Sheridan, London.
We descended to a glaring white and gold room, as new as everything
else, with tables round the wall, a negro orchestra at one end and in
the middle an open space for dancing. Replace the negroes with
Hungarians, and the room was an exact replica of any cabaret in Budapest
or Vienna.
As cicerone, Summertown enjoyed himself. By dint of addressing the
waiters as 'Gerald,' the ladies as 'Billy' and demanding 'my usual
table,' he secured us kidney omelettes, sweet champagne and the company
of two lightly clad and strangely scented young women, whose serious
occupation in life was twice daily to shuffle on to the Round House
stage by way of a platform through the stalls, to the refrain of "Have
you seen my rag-time ra-ags?" A swarthy Creole hovered within call and
was urged to complete the party.
"_Je suis femme mariée, m'sieur_," she sighed, shaking her head.
"That's all right, old thing," Summertown reassured her. "We're all
married--more or less--and we're only young once. Waitero! Uno chairo
immediato damquick, what what! Well, lads, this is the 'Coq d'Or.' What
about it?"
"It is an impressive scene," I replied.
The room was half empty when we arrived, but filled rapidly during the
next hour. I observed Sir Adolf Erckmann presiding over a large party
and saw numerous rather elderly young men whose lined faces and watchful
eyes were familiar to me from music-hall promenades. A handful of
professionals executed the Tango and Maxixe with much of the
suggestiveness of which those dances are capable, but it was only when
the twanging banjos changed to rag-time that the majority of our
neighbours sheepishly unbent and put forth an assumption of _joie de
vivre_.
"This is It," cried Summertown, jumping up excitedly with arched back
and hunched shoulders. "Come on, Billy!"
In a moment they were locked in each other's arms, swaying slowly and
shuffling down the length of the blazing gold and white room. The Creole
proposed that she and Alan should follow Summertown's example, and, when
he excused himself, made successful overtures to the other Round House
lady whom we had been privileged to entertain.
"The metropolis _is_ waking up," commented Alan as he watched the scene.
Elderly women were being navigated by anxious young men, elderly men
pranced conscientiously with shrill young girls, whom they seemed to
envelop in waves of shirt front and human flesh. Three rather
intoxicated boys, with their hats on, gravely linked hands and circled
unsteadily to a hiccoughed refrain of 'Nuts in May'; girls danced with
girls, and a thin, long-haired man performed a _pas seul_ with the aid
of a banjo purloined from a member of the orchestra who had withdrawn in
search of refreshment.
"There's been rather a boom in night-clubs lately," I explained. "People
were tired of being turned out of the restaurants at half-past twelve."
"Do ladies come here?"
"You see them," I said.
Alan wrinkled his nose and turned his eyes to Sir Adolf Erckmann, who
was dancing with a girl of about sixteen. Her little face with its
powdered nose and painted lips was squeezed against his chest, one great
arm twined round her waist and gripped her body to his own, the other
circled her neck and rested ponderously on her left shoulder. Bald and
scarlet from collar to scalp, Sir Adolf drooped top-heavily over her
head; a cigar extended jauntily from the upper tangles of his beard, and
a pair of rimless eyeglasses flapped at the end of their cord against
the bare back of his partner.
"And who is our friend who has been through hell with his hat off?" Alan
inquired.
I told him.
"They do these things better in Port Said," he observed.
Our evening was not hilariously amusing, and I am afraid Summertown must
have caught us yawning and consulting our watches. Certainly he was as
prompt with apologies as we with speeches of reassurance, and we reached
Oxford Street and a cab rank in so great an odour of amity that Alan and
I found ourselves pledged to dine with him and be introduced to every
night-club of which he was a member.
And on four several occasions we repeated the desolating experience. By
the end of a month I could pose as an authority and recognize the
subtile differences that distinguished one from another. At the
'Azalea,' for example, the hall was oblong; at the 'Long Acre' there was
a Hungarian orchestra; and the conventional white and gold of the others
gave place to white and green at the 'Blue Moon.' For all their variety,
however, there came a day when Alan and I decided that we would not eat
another kidney omelette, nor drink another glass of sweet champagne, nor
watch the gyrations of another free-list chorus girl.
"But you simply _must_ come to the 'Cordon Bleu,'" cried Summertown,
when I broke the news as we dined and played shove-ha'penny with the
King's Guard in St. James's Palace. In his eyes we figured as two
middle-aged converts who were showing a disposition to recant. "It's the
cheeriest spot of all; you'll have no end of a time there."
"Why didn't you take us there before?" I asked, with resentful memory of
my late endurance.
"The police were expected to raid it," he explained. "It's all right,
that's blown over. I'll take you on Tuesday."
Rather than wound his feelings, we passed our word. The 'Cordon Bleu'
was the epitome of all the others, and with Erckmann, Lord Pennington,
Mrs. Welman and a train of little pink and white girls in short tight
skirts, seemed to be weighted with more than a fair share of Apaches.
Wearily we seated ourselves at one of the little tables and watched the
party swelling. It was eighteen strong when we entered, with nine men
who made a business-like supper and nine women who smoked endless
cigarettes, talked in penetrating tones and called each other by
unflattering nicknames. As a new couple came in, one of the girls jumped
up to make way and began to dance. I was too short-sighted to recognize
her at first, but, as she came nearer, our eyes met for a moment, and I
bowed. Not very skilfully she pretended not to see me, but by ill-luck
the music stopped a few minutes later when she was opposite our table.
"Miss Dainton and Fatty Webster of all people!" cried Summertown.
Sonia turned slowly and surveyed the group.
"George! And Captain Hunter-Oakleigh!" she exclaimed, with a fine start
of surprise. "And Lord Summertown! I say, you _are_ going it! I thought
you were much too heavy for a night-club, George!"
"My cousin wanted to see Low Life," I explained, as I brought up a
chair.
"But _this_ isn't low! All the best people come here. Has anybody got a
cig.?"
Alan offered her his case, and she leant back with her hands clasped
behind her head and her eyes half closed, inhaling the smoke and
languidly blowing it out through her nose. For the "Cordon Bleu" her
costume was admirably chosen--a tight-fitting dove-grey skirt slashed
open to the knee on one side and revealing transparent stockings and
satin shoes laced criss-cross up to the shin; the waist was high, and at
the waist the dress stopped short, leaving arms and back bare to the
shoulder blades; she wore no gloves, and the remains of a grey net scarf
protruded from her partner's tail-pocket. Out of the Russian ballet I
hardly remember seeing a girl more sparingly attired.
Webster was in his customary condition of silence and sticky heat. I
sometimes wonder how a man whose utterance was restricted to four words
at a time could have been involved in an action for breach of promise,
yet there has never been any doubt that he paid substantial
compensation. Apoplectically he grunted "Thanks," when Summertown plied
him with champagne, and sat thoughtfully drinking until Sonia expressed
a wish to go on dancing. Without having spent an unduly vicious youth I
knew by a certain glaze over Webster's eyes that he would be imprudent
to undertake such violent exercise. At Sonia's bidding, however, he
clutched the table and rose with an effort to his feet. Only when he
continued to stand there rocking gently from side to side did she turn a
rather scared face to me with the words:
"Fatty's tired. Come and dance, George. It's a waltz; you can manage
that."
Lest a worse thing befall her, I threw myself into the breach and
waltzed to a couple of unoccupied chairs at the far end of the room.
"Are you going to be a sport, George?" she inquired a little uncertainly
as we sat down.
"What exactly does that mean?" I asked.
She looked at me with her head on one side.
"I shan't be popular if you tell mother you've seen me here," she
explained.
"But you said all the best people came here," I reminded her. "Where are
you supposed to be--officially?"
"Surrey House. I'm going back there in a minute. It was frightfully
dull, but we did our best until Mrs. Wemley--it's her ball, you
know--had the cheek to come up and say she didn't like to see the
one-step done. That put the lid on! These old frumps will be going back
to lanciers and barn-dances next. Fatty and I wandered out to smoke a
cig. when a taxi drifted providentially by and brought us here."
I got up and looked at my watch.
"And now I'm going to take you back there," I said.
"I must wait till Fatty's sobered down a bit," she answered, looking
across the room at her somnolent partner. "If the worst comes to the
worst, I can always say that Sir Adolf invited me."
"You're coming now," I said. "It's the price of my silence."
She lay comfortably back in her chair with her legs crossed, swinging
one foot.
"Rot! You wouldn't be such a sneak," she began.
"_Now_, Sonia," I repeated.
She looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and walked up the stairs in
silence. I scribbled a note to Alan, put her in a taxi, and drove to
Surrey House.
"I suppose you're not in a mood for good advice?" I asked, as we drove
along Oxford Street.
"No-p," she answered shortly, and I held my peace. Curiosity, however,
got the better of her, and she inquired whether I imagined she was not
capable of looking after herself.
"I was wondering whether you appreciated what kind of woman frequents a
place like the 'Cordon Bleu'?" I said.
"My dear George, I wasn't born yesterday," she answered.
"But if you dress in the same way, go to the same places, sup with the
same men----"
"The difference is that I know where to stop, George."
"That knowledge is not common with your sex. In any case, the people who
see you there----"
"Oh, _damn_ public opinion!" she interrupted irritably. "People who know
me know I'm all right; people who don't know me don't matter. And that's
all."
"And here's Surrey House," I said, as the taxi slowed down. "I haven't
been invited, so I won't come in. If I were you, I should avoid men who
don't know when they've drunk as much as is good for them."
"Good night, grandpapa!" she answered, as she ran up the steps and
disappeared inside the house.
III
The autumn and winter of 1913 I divided between Ireland and the Riviera.
When I came back to London the following spring, Amy Loring told me that
her brother had returned. Ostensibly his yacht had to be fitted with
new engines, and while in England he was taking the opportunity of
attending to a little business. At the time of our conversation he was
at House of Steynes, and, as soon as the tour of inspection was over,
there would be nothing to keep him.
"Do see if you can knock some sense into him," Amy begged me
despairingly. "It's perfectly ridiculous his wandering about all over
the world like this. Mother feels it frightfully."
"What is he like now?" I asked.
She brushed back the curls from her forehead and made a gesture of
impatience.
"I don't know. He's horribly ironical. Nothing in life is worth doing,
according to him. He smiles politely and sneers politely.... And all the
time, you know, I'm sure he's as lonely and melancholy as can be. That
engagement was an awful business, George. He was very much in love with
her----"
"And she treated him abominably," I said, lighting a cigarette.
"Yes, I think she did," Amy answered deliberately. "It wasn't his fault.
Of course, it's not every woman who could marry him, he's--_difficile_;
but the way he behaved to her was perfectly angelic. Now he's lost faith
in everything.... Do see if you can't do anything for him; he's bored to
the verge of distraction, being by himself all this time."
I promised to do what I could, and on the night of his return to London
we dined together. It was the last evening of the Melton holidays, and I
had organized a small theatre party for my cousin Laurence,--Violet and
Amy were with us,--and, as the ordering of the arrangements was in
Laurence's youthful but self-confident hands, we sat in the deafening
neighbourhood of a powerful coon band and dined incongruously off
unlimited _hors d'oeuvres_, a Nesselrode ice-pudding and--so far as I
can remember--nothing else. Still at his order we drank sparkling
Burgundy, variously described by him as a 'pretty tipple' and by Loring
as 'warm knife-wash.' We spent the evening in a theatre where we were
forbidden to smoke and supped off Strasbourg pie and iced cider-cup in a
restaurant where two persistent dancers whirled their bewildering way in
and out of the tables.
"A pretty useful evening," said my cousin, as we dispatched him to bed;
and I had not the heart to undeceive him.
"Remember me to Burgess, Laurie," said Loring, and turning to Violet, "I
wonder if you keep a little brandy in this flat? My digestion is not
what it once was."
Life is a tangle of incongruities, and at one o'clock in the morning, in
a St. James's Court flat, with Mrs. Hunter-Oakleigh sleeping on one side
of us and Laurence on another, we formally welcomed Loring back to
London over a supplementary meal of bread, cheese and liqueur brandy.
Warming to the work, we summoned O'Rane by telephone from Gray's Inn. It
was half-past three, and dawn was lighting up the sky, when Amy broke up
the party by demanding to be taken home to bed.
"And now you're back in England, you're going to stay here?" Violet
inquired, as she and Loring shook hands.
"I can't get away for a bit," was the answer. "What with this
engine----"
"Will you stay long enough to make your apologies?" she asked, looking
at him through narrowed lids.
"But what have I done?" he inquired anxiously.
"A halfpenny postcard--any time--just to show you were still alive----"
"But I didn't write to anyone----" he protested.
Violet laughed and turned to the door. In the subdued yellow light her
grave beauty was very attractive. Though she smiled still, her eyes were
wistful, and I chose to fancy she had not outgrown her old affection so
quickly as Loring.
"My dear, I'm not jealous!" she said. "As a mark of friendship,
though----"
"Violet, I'm frightfully sorry!" he exclaimed, taking an eager step
towards her. "Will that do?"
"Are you going off again?"
"I shall stay as long as there's anything to stay for."
The direct and obvious route from St. James's Court either to Princes
Gardens or Gray's Inn is perhaps not by Curzon Street, but it was so
long since we had been together that O'Rane and I sat talking in the
library of Loring House until there was barely time for a Turkish bath
before breakfast. The Yately seat was vacant, and Raney proposed to
begin his canvass in two days' time. He was full of rhetoric and
indignation on the condition of Ireland and rehearsed his election
speeches at some length.
"It's as bad as you like," Loring interrupted, "but it won't come to
anything."
"Are you in the Special Reserve?" O'Rane asked suddenly.
"I believe I've got an honorary rank of some kind as a Lord Lieutenant,"
answered Loring, "but I'm not on the active list. What's the Special
Reserve been doing?"
"I hear they received secret preparatory mobilization orders in March,"
said O'Rane. "It's not supposed to be known, but one of the military
attachés told me. This is April. What's it all about?"
"The Government won't mobilize the Regular Army for a row of this kind,"
said Loring contemptuously.
"Well, what are they doing it for, then?"
But O'Rane's question was unanswered for another four months.
Loring accompanied me to the Turkish Baths, and we lay on adjoining
couches sipping coffee and lazily discussing what had taken place during
his absence from England. If ever a man was bored and dissatisfied, that
man was Loring. A certain pride kept him away from the House of Lords,
he had neither the age nor the energy to qualify him for a Governorship
and was yet too old and substantial in mind to be amused by a purely
social life.
"Old Burgess was right, you know, George," he yawned. "I've had a damned
wasted experience. And the Lord knows how it will end. What is there to
do?"
"I should spend a few weeks in town," I suggested. "You've probably had
enough of your own company."
"God! Yes! Only London, you know.... D'you see much of the Daintons?
You can speak quite freely. After all I was engaged to her for nearly a
year, and it's been broken off for three."
I finished my coffee rather deliberately and lit a fresh cigarette.
"She has not improved, Jim," I said.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling.
"I used to think.... You know, George, I've got to an age when I _ought_
to marry."
"So has she," I observed, tucking my towels round me and beginning to
brush my hair. "I'm coming round to Bertrand's view that an unmarried
woman of five-and-twenty is a public danger, particularly when
husband-hunting is conducted with its present healthy absence of
restraint. The spinster is not so much an object of pity as an offence
against nature, and Nature punishes any liberty you take with her. In
the old days we had our convents where superfluous women could retire
with dignity. That at least whited the outside of the sepulchre. The
present London Season is a pathological study. You'll see for yourself."
He rose slowly from the bed and began to get into his clothes.
"I don't think I shall be much in town if I'm going to run into the
Daintons everywhere," he answered.
Only three days later I was able to tell him that this last danger had
been removed. Bertrand and I had arranged to hear "Parsifal" at Covent
Garden, and, as his box was large, he offered a seat to Violet--the one
woman of his family whom he treated with paternal kindness. There was
still room for another, and I invited Loring to join us. Nothing is more
repugnant to my taste than to interfere with the destinies of others,
but when Amy petitioned me in person I could not decently refuse.
"He can't tell one note from another," I expostulated, "and the thing
starts at five. He'll be reduced to tears."
"If he doesn't want to come, he needn't accept," she answered. "All I
ask you to do is to give him the invitation."
"Well, will _you_ invite him--from me?"
"No, I want you to send him a note. The time, and where to meet, and
the arrangements for dinner--and who's to be there."
Without further protest I sat down and wrote as I was bid.
"Tell him not to talk through the Good Friday music," I begged.
"I shan't tell him anything," said Amy. "I don't know anything about the
plan; it's just a thought that's casually occurred to _you_----"
"I knew I should have the blame put on me," I answered resignedly.
When the night arrived there was little blame to apportion, and Loring
thanked me effusively for my invitation. Between the acts we dined at
the Savoy and were returning to our box when I caught sight of Sonia
waiting for her party in the hall. Fortunately the others had gone on
ahead before our, eyes met.
"I haven't seen you for an age," she began pleasantly, in apparent
forgetfulness of a peevish meeting at the 'Cordon Bleu' the previous
summer.
"Are you up for the season?" I asked.
"No, I'm going abroad next week. Sir Adolf's getting up a motor tour
through France and Italy, ending up at Bayreuth in time for the
Festival. Lord Pennington, Mrs. Welman, Sir Adolf, his sister,--the
Baroness, you know,--Fatty Webster and me. I'm with Fatty to-night."
"Are your people in town?" I asked, as I prepared to follow my party.
Webster is a man I do not go out of my way to meet.
"Father is, but mother's tired of London, so I'm staying with Mrs.
Ilkley. She's a model chaperon and all that sort of thing, but she
_will_ live out in the Cromwell Road. It's a fearful bore."
"A most respectable quarter," I commented.
"It's a rotten hole when you've got an hour and a half to dine and dress
and get back here in," she grumbled. "I didn't try. I just changed in
Fatty's flat; that's why he's late. The poor soul's only got one
bedroom, so I monopolized it while he was gorging. By the way, that's
not necessarily for publication, as they say."
"Why on earth did you tell me?" I asked, with the mild exasperation of a
man who resents youthful attempts to shock his sense of propriety.
"I thought you wanted cheering up," Sonia answered airily. "You're so
mid-Victorian."
"You're getting too old for this eternal _ingénue_ business, Sonia," I
said. "And yet not old enough to avoid coming a very complete cropper.
Don't say I didn't warn you?"
When I got back to the box Loring was raking the stalls with his
opera-glass. As Sonia and Webster came in, he gave a slight start and
sat far back in his chair. No one else noticed the movement, but I had
time to scribble, "She is going abroad immediately," on my programme and
hand it to him before the lights were lowered. At supper he announced
without preface that he proposed to spend at least part of the Season in
London.
With the detachment of one who has never taken even social dissipation
with the seriousness it deserves, it flatters my sanity to describe the
condition of England in these years as essentially neurotic. In
retrospect I see stimulus succeeding stimulus, from the Coronation
year--when all expected a dull reaction after the gaiety of King
Edward's reign--to 1912, when an over-excited world feared a reaction
after the Coronation year. This dread of anti-climax caused the carnival
of 1912 to be eclipsed in the following spring, and, when Loring invited
me to assist him in "one last fling before we settle down," we found
that 1914--with its private balls and public masquerades, its Tango Teas
and _Soupers Dansants_, its horseplay and occasional tragedies--was
bidding fair to beat the records of its predecessors.
For three and a half months we seemed hardly to be out of our
dress-clothes. Valentine Arden, as usual, let his flat and took a suite
at the Ritz, from which he descended nightly at the invitation of a
seemingly inexhaustible stream of people with sufficient money to spend
fifteen hundred pounds on a single night's entertainment. Nightly there
came the same horde of pleasure-seekers, some of them girls I had been
meeting regularly for ten years, at first sight no nearer to any settled
purpose in life. I think it is not altogether the fancy of an ageing and
jaundiced eye to see a strain of vulgarity spreading over Society at
this time; for, though Erckmann chanced to be abroad, his flashy
followers had established their footing and remained behind to prove
that money can open every door. Lady Isobel Mayre, daughter of the
Minister of Fine Arts, gave them an entrée to Ministerial society; the
poverty of Lord Roehampton enabled them to add a Marquess's scalp to
their belt, and the old distinction between smartness and respectability
broke down. The prohibited dances and fashions of one year struggled to
become the next year's vogue. To be inconspicuous was to be _démodé_.
"The fact is, we're too old to stay the course," Loring said regretfully
at supper one morning towards the end of June. "George, let me remind
you that you and I are as near thirty-five as makes no odds. Amy, you're
thirty. Violet, you're--well, you look about nineteen."
"Add ten to it," Violet suggested.
"We're all too old; we must give it up. You're all coming to Hurlingham
with me next week, aren't you? And then we'll ring down the curtain and
say good-bye to London."
"One must live somewhere," I said, with an uneasy feeling that his new
way of life might involve my spending the greater part of the year in
County Kerry.
Loring lit a cigarette and gazed with disfavour round the garish room.
"Either I shall marry," he said, "or else go and live abroad."
IV
The Hurlingham Ball at the beginning of July 1914 was the last of its
kind I ever attended--probably the last I shall ever attend. We went a
party of eight, as Loring wanted to offer O'Rane a complimentary dinner
after his election at Yately, and Mayhew conveniently arrived in London
for his summer leave as the tickets were being ordered. To an outsider
we must have presented a curious study in contrasts. Amy Loring had
confided to me her certainty that her brother would propose to Violet
before the evening was out, and four of us were therefore in a state of
watchful anxiety. Of the other four, the two girls spent their time
affecting interest in a heated political discussion in which O'Rane and
Mayhew, with a fine disregard of fitness, were volubly engaged.
"Well, I'll tell you something you _don't_ know," said Mayhew, when we
were by ourselves at the end of dinner and the last of a dozen
preposterous stories had been exploded by O'Rane. "The Archduke Franz
Ferdinand has gone with his wife for a tour through Bosnia----"
"Even I knew that," I said, as I cut my cigar.
"Don't interrupt," Mayhew urged. "I'll lay anybody a hundred to one they
don't come back alive."
There was a suitably dramatic pause as he sat back with hand extended
waiting for his wager to be taken.
"He's the heir, isn't he?" Loring inquired. "Is this some beastly new
riddle?"
"It's the solution of a very old one," said O'Rane gravely. "The
Archduke married a morganatic wife who'll be Queen of Hungary and can't
be Empress of Austria. It'll save a lot of complication if they're put
out of the way. After all, it's only two human lives."
"But--is this known?" I asked Mayhew in astonishment.
"It's being openly discussed in Budapest----"
"And London," O'Rane put in.
"Confound you, Raney," Mayhew cried. "You hear everything."
"It's a pretty story, even if it isn't quite new," said O'Rane. "I
shan't take your bet, though, Mayhew; you're too likely to win. You
see," he went on, turning to us, "the Bosnians simply hate the Archduke,
so it'll look quite plausible if anyone says they've blown him up on
their own initiative. And then Austria will have a wolf-and-lamb excuse
for saying Servia was responsible and annexing her, just as she did with
Bosnia and Herzegovina six years ago. This is the way Powers and
Potentates go to work in our enlightened twentieth century."
The discussion was interrupted by a footman entering to say that the
cars were at the door. It was still daylight when we began to motor
down, but we arrived to find the gardens lit with tiny avenues of fairy
lights and to be greeted with music borne distantly on the warm,
flower-laden breeze. For an hour I danced or wandered under the trees
watching the whirl of bright dresses through the open ballroom windows.
Loring and Violet had disappeared from view and only returned to us at
supper-time so exaggeratedly calm and self-possessed that Amy squeezed
my arm warningly as we entered the Club House.
"George, I've come to the conclusion that we must have one more ball
before we settle down," he said, as we drew our chairs in to the table.
"This is about the last of the season," I warned him.
He waved away the objection.
"I'll give one myself--just to a few friends and neighbours at
Chepstow--some time about the end of the month before everybody's
scattered. I'm giving it in Violet's honour."
We turned to look at her, and the self-possession gradually faded out of
her face.
"Violet, is it true?" Amy asked, jumping up in her excitement.
She nodded, with very bright eyes.
"I will _not_ have a scene!" Loring exclaimed. "Amy, sit down! If you
try to kiss me in public.... Now, do try to look at the thing
reasonably. It might have happened to anyone; it has, in fact, happened
to a number of people. As for speeches and glass-waving.... Look how
well George takes it! No nonsense about being glad to have me as a
cousin, no grousing because he'll have to be best man--oh, we've
arranged all that, my son--he just sits and drains a second bumper of
champagne before anyone else has finished his first.... Amy, I shan't
speak about it again!"
"My dear, I'm so happy," said his sister, subsiding with moist eyes into
her chair.
"We're tolerably satisfied ourselves," Loring admitted. "Aren't we,
Violet?"
But Violet made no reply beyond a quick nod of the head that was not yet
quick enough to hide the trembling of her lips.