Chapter V: Loring (3)

"Don't trouble, old man," he answered, reading my thoughts. "That book's closed--for the present, at least. They're not married yet, either."

"Good night, Raney," I said, shaking hands.

He laughed a little sardonically and ran down the steps into the night.

At the beginning of September I received a wire from O'Rane to say that he would be with me on the tenth. Two days later Loring telegraphed from Fishguard Harbour that he and Sonia were actually on their way to Ireland. I should not have deliberately timed their visits to coincide, but Loring's arrangements had been so unsettled that at his request I made my own independently. Twice during August Sonia had fixed a date, twice Loring had written with contrite apology to cancel it and suggest another. It was all his fault, circumstances over which he had no control.... The excuses ran so smoothly that even my mother, most charitable and unsuspicious of women, became convinced that it was not his fault.

I had no one staying with me when they arrived, white and tired after their journey, and Sonia sighed with relief when my mother told her so the first night.

"I'm worn out with trying to keep new people distinct," she said. "As for Jim, his hair's falling out under the strain."

He had shaved off his moustache--as I advised him to do five years before--but otherwise seemed unchanged save for a tired look about the eyes and a slightly subdued manner of speaking.

"Mr. O'Rane's coming the day after to-morrow," said my sister. "It won't be so quiet when he's here."

Sonia made no comment and plunged into a description of the houses they had visited during the last three months.

"Jim's uncle, Lord Deningham, is the next," she said. "Down in Clare. All the clan's being gathered to receive us, and I'm simply petrified at the thought of it. They'll all hate me----"

"Darling!" Jim interposed.

"They will," she repeated obstinately. "That's next Wednesday. Can you stand us for five days, Mrs. Oakleigh?"

"As long as you can stop," said my mother.

When the ladies had left us after dinner I congratulated Loring on the absence of his moustache.

"Sonia didn't like it," he explained. "Port? By all means. I'm as tired as a dog. It's gone off thundering well, and they all loved her, as I knew they would. All the same, a long engagement's a strain."

"It isn't the long engagement," I said. "It's being in love. When you're safely married and don't have to sprinkle 'darlings' like a pepper-pot and can take the best chair and be snappy at breakfast----"

"Oh, you bachelors," he interrupted with a laugh. "A long engagement has its points, though." Quite frequently it prevents marriage, but I saw no object in putting this view before him. "We've been rubbing off the corners, weeding out undesirable friends---- Oh, you're safe, but Sonia rather bars Val Arden, and young Summertown's developing into too much of an Apache for my taste. We're shaking down."

"And how soon will you both be purged of all your sins?" I asked.

He did not hear the question and sat staring thoughtfully at the decanter.

"I'm afraid she finds the religious part rather hard to pick up," he said. "She _will_ call all Catholics 'Papists.' _I_ don't mind, but some of my people.... And when she first met the Cardinal, she insisted on shaking his hand. Of course, it's a very small point; you musn't think I'm finding fault with her. How did you think she was looking?"

"Very well," I said. "The new pearl-collar suits her."

"It isn't new," he corrected me. "We've had it in the family for some time." His voice became confidential and his manner eager, as with a man mutely asking for sympathy. "Absolutely between ourselves, George, there was rather a row about it. I got the bank to send all our stuff down to House of Steynes, and she insisted on wearing some of it. My poor mother was fearfully shocked--and said she oughtn't to have touched it till she was married. Once again, it's a very small point."

His vigorously defensive tone, adopted to answer criticisms I had not made, led me to think there had been numerous small points for arbitration and diplomacy--as when Sonia wished to modernize the 'Mary Queen of Scots' room at Steynes that had been untouched since the young queen slept there in the second year of her reign.

"You'll shake down," I agreed encouragingly when he made me throw away a half-smoked cigar because the people in the drawing-room would be wondering what had happened to us.

"Oh Lord, yes!" he answered cheerfully over his shoulder as he pulled up a chair and began to talk to my mother.

Sonia was standing by the window looking out over the lake. Presently she walked out on the terrace and called to Loring to join her. For a few minutes I watched them standing on the lowest terrace in earnest conversation, then they returned to the house and Sonia asked to be allowed to go to bed.

"Tell me when you'd like to turn in yourself," I said to Loring when we were alone in the smoking-room for a last drink.

He walked up and down restlessly, glancing at the pictures and books, and finally coming to anchor opposite my chair.

"Did Beryl say you were expecting Raney here?" he asked, sipping his whiskey and soda and staring rather hard at the floor.

"The day after to-morrow," I said.

"The deuce you are!" He put down his tumbler and resumed his restless walk. "This is devilish awkward, George. Not to put too fine a point on it, Sonia refuses to meet him."

"What's the trouble?" I asked. It would be interesting to hear her reasons as expressed to Loring.

He tramped up and down until I pushed a chair in his way and made him sit down.

"Women are beyond me," he complained. "_I_ don't know the rights of the case, but she says he was very insulting to her."

"But when was all this?" I asked. "I didn't know she'd seen him."

"Oh, it was years ago--down at Crowley--before he went abroad. Raney's got a very sharp tongue and keeps no sort of check on it, you know."

"Yes, I don't defend what he said on that occasion," I put in.

Loring looked at me in surprise.

"You knew about it?"

"I was in the room," I said, "and anything I didn't hear he came and told me in my bedroom that night."

"Well, what the devil did he say?" he demanded indignantly.

"It's ancient history now, Jim."

"Sonia's kept it pretty fresh in her mind," he retorted.

I might have recalled to them both a dinner-table scene at House of Steynes thirteen months before when Sonia inquired how Raney was getting on in Mexico and expressed a more than friendly desire to see him on his return. That was, of course, before the engagement to Loring.

"What d'you suggest?" I contented myself with asking.

"_I_ think we'd better clear out," he answered, with emphasis on the pronoun.

"To the Deninghams?"

"They can't take us till Wednesday. Sonia talks about going to an hotel, but that's out of the question. I'd better take her back to London----"

"And cut the Deninghams?"

"Oh, I can't do that. He's my mother's only brother, you know."

"Do I understand you're proposing to take her from Kerry to London and back again from London to Clare in five, four days?" He was silent. "What does _she_ say, Jim?"

"Refuses point-blank," he answered despairingly.

I walked over to the writing table and took out a telegraph form.

"The simplest thing is to put Raney off for the present," I said.

He made no answer, but, when my tea was brought me next morning, there was a pencilled note lying on the tray, "Thanks, old man.--L."

It was a clear victory for Sonia, but she was sufficiently shame-faced for the remainder of the visit to make me think she was getting little pleasure out of her triumph. From time to time my mother asked me why they did not advance the date of the wedding, but, according to Sonia, a mischievous fairy seemed to be playing tricks with the calendar. For a marriage in Advent Jim would require dispensation; Lady Loring always had to spend the early months of the year abroad; "and his old Pope would excommunicate him," Sonia told me, "if he tried to have the wedding in Lent. And then it would be May, and then some other Royalty would go and die...."

Until my conversation with her I had in my ignorance never appreciated how strongly the position of the celibate was entrenched.

O'Rane arrived at the end of the following week and asked whether Jim and Sonia were still with me.

"So that was the reason of your wire," he observed, when I told him they had left on the Wednesday. "Which was it?" I asked him whether he had had a good crossing. "Oh, well, I know it wasn't Jim," he said. "'Nous devons adorer Dieu, mon fils, mais c'est un grand mystère de sa providence qu'il ait crée la femme.'"

"Perhaps Jim is thinking that at this moment," I said, and the subject was dropped.

O'Rane's visit gave me my first opportunity of following up the Mexican adventure from the point at which "Mr. James Morris" had left it. The company, I found, had been launched successfully, if not quite at Morris's optimistic valuation; the mysterious new concession--"about the size of Scotland"--was promising well, though the working expenses were unexpectedly heavy. I gathered that the partnership was drawing a profit of 15,000 dollars a year, or, in English money, about fifteen hundred pounds for each partner.

"But that's all in Morris's hands," said O'Rane. "I've cut my connexion and I'm going into English politics. All this time since I met you I've been wandering about, listening and watching. This country is disgustingly rich, George, demoralized by it--from the Government that flings millions about in fancy social reforms to the mill-hand who wastes shillings a week on cinematograph shows and roller-skating rinks. Utterly demoralized! Nobody cares for anything but extravagant pleasures; they are not even interested in the House of Lords fight. And the more that's spent on top the more they want to spend below. That revolution's coming all right."

"I shall believe in it when I see it," I said.

At the end of a week he left me, as ever, without a hint where he was going or what he proposed to do. I stayed at Lake House till the second election of 1910, when Bertrand telegraphed to me to come and help him. Loring dined with me at the Club one night when the election was over, and suggested that I should accompany his mother, sister, the Daintons and himself to the South of France. The invitation was half-hearted, and I felt I had better wait until the process of rubbing off the corners was nearer completion. They left in January and returned in the first week in March. I was apprised of their presence in London by a special messenger, who pursued me, note in hand, from Princes Gardens to the House, where I had been dining with my uncle, and from the house to the Eclectic Club.

The note was in Loring's writing and begged me to come at once to Curzon Street.

"I suppose they've fixed the date at last," I said to Bertrand as he dropped me on his way home. "Now I shall be stuck with the privilege of being best man."

VII

It was after midnight when I arrived at Loring House. Jim was in the library, walking restlessly up and down and filling the fireplace with half-smoked cigarettes. He was in evening dress, and an overcoat and silk hat lay on the arm of a sofa.

"Come in!" he exclaimed, without interrupting his caged-lion walk. "Sorry to drag you out at this time of night. Have a drink? Have something to smoke. Sit down, won't you?"

He spoke in short, staccato sentences, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the tantalus and cigars. The intensity of his manner was infectious: I pulled up a chair and settled myself to listen.

"_Now_ then----" I began, as the door closed.

"It's ... it's come, George!" he stammered. "I'm up to my neck, and you're the only man who can pull me out."

"Drive ahead!" I said.

"Sonia's broken it off!"

It would be affectation for me to pretend I was as much surprised as Loring expected me to be. The engagement had, in my eyes, been singularly unsuitable from the first, and one or both seemed destined to lead a life of misery; but I half thought that both parties would go through with the marriage out of pride or obstinacy. Loring was as much in love with Sonia as Sonia's mother was in love with his position. Seemingly I had underestimated the havoc wrought in the girl's nerves by her years of crude excitement.

"Tell me as much as you think fit," I said. "I'll do anything I can."

He thought for a moment, as if uncertain where to start.

"It's my fault," he began. "I can see that now. We oughtn't to have made the engagement so long--neither of us could stand the strain. I hurried things on as much as I could, but Sonia ... I don't know, she must have wondered where it was all leading to. I rather sickened her, I'm afraid. You see, I don't _know_ much about women.... I've met any number, of course, but I haven't had many intimate women friends. They never interested me much till I got engaged to her. Consequently I've never appreciated their likes and dislikes. Case in point, Sonia told me last week that she'd scream if I called her 'darling' again. Now I should have thought.... Well, anyway, it seemed quite harmless and natural to me.... A small point, but it just shows you what a lot of knowing women take.... Got a cigarette on you?"

I threw him my case.

"What was the _casus belli_?" I asked, but for the moment he would not be drawn from his generalizations.

"I think it was partly physical, too," he went on. "I tired the poor child out--rushing round and seeing people. She couldn't stand the strain. And she saw too much of me.... I was always there, dogging her steps.... She couldn't get away from me. This last visit to the Riviera was a hopeless mistake from every point of view."

He flung away the cigarette he had just lighted. We seemed to be getting gradually nearer something tangible, and, as he gazed bewilderedly round to see where he had put my case, I asked, "What happened out there?"

"Nothing," he answered. "It was to-night. We got back this afternoon and all went for a farewell dinner to Brown's Hotel. The Daintons are stopping there. Sonia was very quiet all through the dinner and, when my mother and Amy went home and we were left alone to say good-night, she said she'd got something to tell me. I waited, she hummed and hawed a bit and then asked me what the rule in our Church was about the children of mixed marriages. I told her they had to be brought up as Catholics.

"'And what happens if I object?' she asked.

"I told her I couldn't get a dispensation for the marriage at all unless she gave me an undertaking to this effect." He paused in pathetic bewilderment. "I can't understand her raising the question at all at this time of day; I explained the whole position to her before we became engaged, and she didn't object then.

"'Well,' she said, 'I can't consent to have my children brought up in a different faith.'"

Loring passed his hands over his eyes and dropped limply into a chair.

"That was rather a facer for me, George," he went on. "Either we had to marry without a dispensation--and that meant excommunication for me--or we couldn't get married at all. I thought it over very carefully. I'm a precious bad Catholic.... I mean, I've been brought up in the Church, and we all of us always _have_ been Catholics, but I don't believe half the doctrines and I don't go to church once in a blue moon. I call myself one, just as you call yourself a member of the Church of England. We're probably both of us 'Nothing-arians,' only we don't recant or make a fuss about it.... I began to wonder if I could tell 'em to excommunicate me and be damned. It would mean an awful wrench. My mother takes it all very seriously, and we English Catholic families all hang together rather, and I'm a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and all that sort of thing. I tell you, I didn't half like doing it, but it seemed the only thing, and eventually I told Sonia I'd lump the dispensation and risk the consequences."

He paused and lit another cigarette.

"I thought that would have ended the trouble," he went on, with a sigh. "It seemed to be only the beginning. She was awfully good about it at first and said she couldn't make discord between my family and myself. I told her I was very fond of my mother, but that I was fonder of her than of anybody in the world. Then ... I don't know, I couldn't follow her ... she started on another tack altogether and said I should always be a Catholic at heart and that I should try to go back to the Church and take the children with me.... These damned unborn children ...! I told her--as much as I could cram into three sentences--what my whole attitude towards religion boiled down to. And then the row started. We both of us talked together, and neither of us listened to the other or finished our arguments, and at the end of half an hour Sonia began to cry, and I felt a perfect brute, and it ended with her sending me away and saying she could never marry a man who didn't believe in God."

Loring mopped his forehead.

"I feel absolutely done in," he murmured.

I mixed him a generous whisky and soda and asked what he wanted done. His face was haggard, and for a big man he seemed suddenly dried up and shrivelled.

"You must go round and talk to her," he said. "You've known her since she was a kid. Explain that I didn't mean what I said, apologize for me----"

I shook my head.

"It'll do no good," I said. "You're not to blame."

"But my dear fellow----!" he began excitedly, as though I had paid no attention to what he had told me.

"Look it in the face, Jim," I said, shaking my head again. "She's tired of you."

He picked up his tumbler and then put it down untasted.

"I don't believe it," he answered, with sublime simplicity.

"You've got to."

"But--but--but," he stammered. "We've never had a shadow of a disagreement until to-night."

"You didn't see it and you always gave way and smoothed things over."

"There never _was_ anything to smooth over. Till this infernal religious question started----"

"It was religion to-day, it'll be the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose to-morrow."

Loring stared at me as though suspicious of an ill-timed humour.

"You're wrong, George, absolutely wrong. I _know_ you're wrong."

I shrugged my shoulders and left it at that.

"I'll do whatever you think best," I said.

"I knew you would!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Well, I've told you. You must go round to-morrow morning----"

"And if she refuses to see me?"

"She won't!"

"_If_," I persisted.

Loring jumped up excitedly.

"My dear chap, she simply musn't break off the engagement! Leave me out of it, tell her only to consider her own position." He paused in fresh embarrassment. "You remember the trouble over that swine Crabtree?" he went on diffidently. "We can't have a repetition of that! You know as well as I do, a girl who's always breaking off engagements.... Get her to look at it from that point of view!"

I rose up and dusted the ash from my shirt-front.

"She's tired of you," I repeated, with all the brutal directness I could put into my tone.

"Well--and if she is?" The tone no less than the words hinted that he might be beginning to share my opinion.

"You want the engagement renewed on those terms?"

"I don't want the Crabtree business over again?" he answered, fencing with my question.

"I'll call on her to-morrow," I said, "unless you ring me up before ten."

At eleven next morning I called at Brown's Hotel. The porter who sent up my name brought back word that Miss Dainton regretted she was unable to see me. On receipt of my report Loring sent round a letter by the hand of one of his footmen. Lady Dainton drove to Curzon Street between twelve and one and was closeted with Loring for half an hour. What took place at the interview I have never inquired. Loring came into the library at the end of it with a sheet of notepaper in his hand. His face was white, and there were dark rings under his eyes.

"Get this into the papers for me, will you?" he said dispassionately. "It's no good, she's immovable. I'm going away for a bit. We'd better not run the risk of meeting for the present. I'm starting at once, by the way, so I'm not likely to see you again before I go. I'm more grateful than I can say for all you've done. Good-bye."

As I drove down to Printing House Square I glanced at the sheet of paper. "The marriage arranged between the Marquess Loring and Miss Sonia Dainton," it ran, "will not take place."

That night I had some difficulty in getting to sleep. The "Maxims" of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld lay on the table by my bed, and I opened the book at random.

"It is commonly the Fault of People in Love," wrote that polished cynic, "that they are not sensible when they cease to be beloved."