Chapter V: Loring (2)

"'No such luck,' I said. 'Dollars.' I mean, to be lagged for that....

"Believe me or not, that man O'Rane sighed with relief.

"'I can manage that,' he said. 'So long.'

"Next morning they let me out. There may have been more surprised men in Mexico City, but, if there were, I didn't meet 'em. How he squared the Syndicate and the officials and the whole durned Criminal Code of Mexico, I don't know. I didn't ask. I had a bath and a shave at his hotel, then he gave me breakfast, then a cigar, and then we put up our feet and talked.

"'You'd better quit Mexico City for a piece,' he began.

"I nodded. The same great thought had occurred to me.

"'I'm out for oil,' he went on, 'd'you care to come?'

"'D'you care about having me?' I suggested.

"'I shouldn't have asked you if I didn't,' he says.

"'I'd look for oil in hell for you,' I said.

"We shook on that.

"'We shall rough it some,' he warned me. 'Better hear the terms first. Item one: I'll never ask you to do a thing I won't do myself.'

"'Done!' I said.

"'Then that's about all,' says he, taking his feet off the table and looking at his watch. 'Half profits for each, and I'm to say when the proposition's worked out.'"

Mr. James Morris, as he chose to call himself, late of Merton (or Corpus Christi) College, Oxford, knocked the ash off his cigar and looked round the library.

"You've not got such a thing as a large scale map of Mexico, have you?" he asked. "Well, it doesn't matter. I guess the places would mostly be only names to you. We started West--Gonsalo way--and we worked some. Living Springs was our first success, and we let the Southern Combine have an option on that so as we could buy plant for the St. Esmond concession, and six months' working of St. Esmond gave us capital to buy out the Gonsalo Development Syndicate and round off our holding. Since then we've struck oil at Pica, Melango and Long Valley."

He paused considerately to let the unfamiliar names sink into my memory.

"In eighteen months we've never looked back," he went on, with rising enthusiasm. "Every dollar we made went back to the business--barring what we needed to live on, and that was mostly bread, meat and tobacco, with an occasional new pair of boots or breeches to keep us decent. And then three months ago we started prospecting in new territory--I can't tell you where it is, 'cos we're still negotiating. I found the oil, and O'Rane did the rest. _He_ thinks it's the richest thing we've ever struck and he's going to collar the proposition. The territory's about the size of Scotland, and the concession will run to anything between one and two million dollars."

He pulled an envelope from his pocket and scribbled some figures on the back.

"We're selling our shirts to get it," he told me. "O'Rane never borrows money, but he's sent me over here to float a company to buy everything we've found or made in the last year and a half. He couldn't come himself: the sweepings of God's universe that we call our labour would be drunk by ten and knifing each other by ten-thirty without him to get a cinch on 'em. If I bring it off, we shall have enough for the concession. Maybe it won't pan out as rich as we hope, and then we start again at the bottom. That's the sort of risk he loves taking. That's--that's just O'Rane. Maybe he's right, and there's oil enough to flood Sahara. Put the concession at a million dollars and the average yield at ten per cent on your capital. A hundred thousand dollars per annum--gross. Take half of that away for working expenses--fifty thousand, net. Half profits on that, twenty-five thousand dollars a year--£5000 for each of us.

"O'Rane says he'll be satisfied with that. When we touch total net profit of fifty thousand dollars, he'll sell out or turn the proposition over to a company. Then he'll come back to England and go into Parliament and cut a dash. And I--well, I'll have to say good-bye to him, I guess."

He stopped abruptly as though there were much more that he would have liked to say. We sat smoking in silence for a few moments. Morris's raw, ill-regulated susceptibilities had made him an easy victim to Raney's personality: perhaps he was already wondering what to do when the strange partnership dissolved, and Raney returned alone--perhaps he recognized his own inability to continue the work single-handed when the inspiration and driving force were removed: perhaps, as his eyes glanced out on the silence and desolation of Knightsbridge, he was weighing the possibility of starting afresh and making a new home for himself in a Western capital.

For myself, I had no other thought than that I should have liked a man to speak of me as Morris had spoken of O'Rane. I should have welcomed a little of his humanity, his singleness of heart and his unshakeable faith in himself. While he worked in shirt and trousers or ventured his last hundreds on an admitted scamp or staked everything he had won on the chance of greater winnings, I was sitting tired and chilled by my late hours at the House, ruling Morris out from my list of desirable acquaintances on the ground that I disliked his manner and appearance, possibly even wondering if he were to be trusted to put down the silver cigar cutter before he left....

"Is there anything I can do for you, Morris?" I asked with a sudden shock of penitence at my own insular prejudice.

He noticed that I had dropped the 'Mister' and seemed gratified.

"Guess not, thanks," he answered, yawning and stretching himself. "I've got the proposition pretty nigh fixed. I'll take any message you like to send O'Rane. He sent love to everybody and would like to hear from you. There's not much time or accommodation for writing out there. Our first camp was two blankets, a packing case and a banjo. When I went down with fever he gave me ragtime back-numbers and stories from the 'Earthly Paradise.' The man could make his pile doing memory stunts at a dime show. God! if I hadn't been so weak I could have laughed some. William Morris in Central America, in a bell tent bunged up with oil samples and quinine bottles." He glanced round the room at the shining mahogany furniture, and his toe tested the thickness of the carpet. "Well, good-bye," he said. "I'm pleased to have met you."

As he stood with outstretched hand, there was little enough of the American about him for all his laboured transatlanticisms.

"Are you and he all alone?" I asked.

"God! no. Not now. We've got the off-scourings of every nation and most of the saloons of Mexico City working for us. They're a dandy lot, but it's pretty to see O'Rane handling them. If ever you lose your faith in human nature, come and see him licking half-castes and Gringoes into shape. They'd string up old man Diaz and make O'Rane president for the asking. Well, I must be going."

"Look here," I said, as we shook hands again, "you must come and dine with me----"

He stopped me with a shake of the head.

"Thanks. I don't show up in the West End by day. I spend my mornings down town--Mincing Lane way--and then I retire up stage. 'Sides, I'm due to sail on Friday if I can get fixed by then."

I walked with him to the front door and watched him appreciatively sniffing the early morning air.

"Good old London!" he exclaimed, and then with a return of his former sneering arrogance, "D'you ever see X----?"

The name he mentioned was borne by a well-known Permanent Under-Secretary in one of the Government offices. He was a regular visitor at my uncle's house.

"And his wife?" Morris pursued. "Well, next time you run across her, just tell her that all's well in the New World. Good-bye."

When I had finished my story, Loring threw away the stump of his cigar and stretched himself.

"As I told you earlier in the evening," he observed, "the little man has been born about three centuries too late."

IV

I always regarded Loring as the possessor of one sterling quality. Selfish he might be, or indolent, or inconsiderate, an old maid in his fussy little rules of everyday existence and an incurable romantic in his attitude to the life of the twentieth century. With it all he was a man of his word. Under blackmail he had pledged himself to entertain my French journalists, and when the time came for fulfilling the pledge he smiled welcome on them in the hall of House of Steynes.

Indeed, so admirable was his manner that I retired unreluctantly from competition. Raney's messenger, the self-styled "James Morris," had called on me in June; the evangelists of Universal Brotherhood arrived in July, and for more sweltering weeks than I like to count, mine was the privilege of giving them tea and speeches on the Terrace, escorting them in unsuitable clothes to Goodwood and more speeches and misinforming them on subjects of historical interest in Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's--a course which afforded them opportunity of correcting me in further speeches, to the sluggish perplexity of the vergers.

In August, the hoarse, limp mass of us repaired to Euston and House of Steynes. Old Lady Loring was, perhaps fortunately, with Amy at Baden-Baden, though four days can be interminably long even in a bachelor party. Our host, however, put his heart into the work; with a grim thoroughness we visited Holyrood and Arthur's Seat, the Highlands and Islands and dismissed our guests fraternally with the clang of Clyde hammers resounding in their ears and an obstinate conviction that they had enjoyed themselves.

"And now," said Loring to my uncle as we walked out of the Waverley Station, "now for an All-British holiday. You can stay another week, sir? No women till my mother comes back--I thought that would appeal to you. You, George? Then the only thing to do is to find a telegraph office and invite everybody we can think of."

Two days later, by persuasion on our part and perjury on theirs, we had snatched a dozen men from the same number of protesting hostesses. Tom Dainton was on his honeymoon--surely the least romantic of its kind for anyone who knew Tom or could imagine an ox-eyed wife yet more silent than himself!--but Sam came up to say good-bye before sailing for India with his regiment, and we had the luck to catch Mayhew on leave from Budapest. Summertown escaped the vigilance of his Colonel for half the time, and Arden telegraphed at some expense: "One resents these short notices but if one can be assured that the Waterloo brandy is not yet finished one may perhaps sacrifice oneself for one's friends but one cannot allow ones' acceptance to be taken as establishing a precedent."

The party was a rare antidote for anyone suffering from too much House of Commons and general propaganda. We bathed and lay about in long chairs and bathed again and enjoyed the delicious, lazy conversation wherein the speakers fall half asleep between the drawling sentences, and nobody makes epigrams or debating points, and nothing matters. Valentine Arden, exquisite, precious and inscrutable as ever, would unbend from time to time and speak as though he no longer feared a charge of enthusiasm. His books were attracting considerable attention with their sparkle and passionless satire, and his talk left the impression on my mind that for all his youth the satire was not wholly cheap effect.

He analysed contemporary literature with the eyes of a man whose profession is to study technique, emphasizing the essentially derivative character of modern writing with its sex psychology borrowed from France, its Pottery School and Dartmoor School imitating Hardy, its intensive vision applied by the admirers of James. His final judgement was depressing, for there was nothing new except Wells and Conrad and little that was good. We were too much obsessed by our environment to produce or care for great books. Nothing was worth achieving or describing, unless it were an invitation to dine with royalty or a treatise on sexual pathology.

The childlike preoccupation of grown men and women in the infinite littleness of social life was an irresistible mark for the satire of a man whose deliberate and effective pose was to exaggerate the fastidious artificiality of his generation. Valentine Arden had a courageous and altogether scornful soul. I have seen him enter the Ritz, thin and white as an Aubrey Beardsley pierrot, in a black coat lined with heliotrope silk. I have watched strong-minded young women humbling themselves before him because they knew his indifference to their charms, and I have marked the haughtiest of nervous hostesses exerting themselves to secure his comfort. In his early days no man of my time was so successful in getting taken at his own valuation. Later when his position was assured, half London was civil in the expectation of appearing in his next book; the other half in hopes of being left out.

Mayhew's riotous fancy was little subdued by twelve months in a foreign capital devoted to special correspondence by day and the study of Austro-Hungary's myriad tongues by night. He was hardly less omniscient than in the old Fleet Street days when he dined with me at the Eclectic and prefaced preposterous stories with "The Prime Minister said to me in the Lobby only this afternoon, 'My dear Mayhew, I don't want this to go any further, but ...'" I remember the late absorption of Bosnia and Herzegovina left him tolerably sagacious.

"I don't think people in this country realize what a near thing it was," he said, with a grave shake of the head. "It's a diplomatic triumph for the old Emperor, but he'd better not try to repeat it. Russia's got a long memory. At present she's recovering slowly from the Japanese War and wasn't equal to taking on Austria and Germany at the same time. Devil of it is, you never know where the thing'll stop. Russia brings in France, France may bring us in.... It's a great pity someone can't hold the Balkans under the sea for five minutes."

I have a fairly long memory, and five years later I quoted Mayhew's words to him. He was honest enough to say that he had forgotten them and that the two Balkan wars had converted him to my own belief that a European war was too big a thing for any power to begin.

House of Steynes was an asylum from the House of Commons, but we could not keep altogether free from politics. No one who remembers the 1909 Session will be surprised. I believe my record for divisions under the famous Budget was equalled by two men and beaten by three. It was the great fight of our time. I had been getting a bad name with the Whips, and observant eyes on the opposite side were already marking me down a possible renegade. That wicked old wire-puller, the Duchess of Ross, on ten minutes' acquaintance at a Foreign Office reception invited me to stay at Herrig Castle to complete the conversion. I would have accepted in a spirit of adventure had it not been for the Budget; but any man with one drop of Radical blood in his veins felt, as I did, that Democracy was fighting for its life.

I shall not revive the old battle that we fought in the House and refought with Loring. I only allude to it because of the change that controversy wrought in his life, a change he was already beginning resignedly to contemplate.

"There is good in all things, even your Budget," he told my uncle ironically. "One irresponsible, hereditary legislator will be able to retire with dignity."

"Our whole democratic development for fifty years is based on the financial monopoly of the Commons," Bertrand answered.

To my mind the saddest effect of political life is the ease with which even considerable intellects come to live by catch-phrases.

"That's little recommendation in my eyes, sir," Loring answered. "Come! Come! Let's die fighting! If we let this through--to the tune of the Land Song--there's nothing you won't be able to pass as a Money Bill. And there's always the chance that the country may support us."

"And you'd make every future Budget fight for its life like this one--against an irresponsible House?"

Not lightly did my uncle forget his all-night sittings and endless 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.