Chapter SEVEN: The Door Re-Opened (1)

" ... Naaman came with his horses and with his chariot, and stood
at the door of the house of Elisha.

And Elisha sent a messenger unto him, saying, Go and wash in Jordan
seven times, and thy flesh shall come again to thee, and thou shalt
be clean.

But Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought,
He will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of
the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover
the leper.

Are not Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, better than all the
waters of Israel, may I not wash in them, and be clean ...?"
II KINGS 5:9-12.

1

When a man has crossed the water-shed of forty, his power of recuperation is sorrily reduced. Perhaps he succumbs less easily to illness or injury, the bruises may take longer to shew themselves, but they also take far longer to disappear.

I found this literally and metaphorically true during the weeks when I lay at "The Sanctuary." After my one painful descent to the telephone, I returned to bed and stayed there for a month. One part of my body after another swelled and changed colour; I was pitifully weak, and for the first time in my life my nerves seemed to have gone limp. The memory of my fight with Grayle haunted me, I could not concentrate my mind on anything and I lacked the native buoyancy to want to get well. Bertrand and George were obviously anxious, but even to oblige them I could not put forth strength which was not in me; the weeks rolled by, and I remained a listless and, I am afraid, an exacting and irritable invalid.

As my name had not been published, as I could in fact plead serious ill-health at the time of the inquest on Beresford, I saw no purpose in thrusting myself on the public until I knew what explanation Grayle proposed to give. Curious enquirers were simply informed that I had met with an accident. In the early days we used to watch the bulletins of Grayle's health and the formation of the new government in parallel columns; and the second made more rapid progress than the first. The chief offices were allotted, one after another, and the minor positions down to the last Junior Lordship of the Treasury; at the beginning it was occasionally stated that "at one time Colonel Grayle's name was mentioned in connection with" this or that or the other appointment; gradually the references to him became rarer until his own paper wrote his political epitaph and announced with conventional regret that, while the Prime Minister was believed to have been hoping to make use of his services, his present condition of health put the acceptance of any office out of the question.

Bertrand smiled grimly, as he shewed me the paragraph, but I was impatiently waiting until Grayle's condition of health enabled him to give me a lead. It came at last through the medium of Bertrand on a night when he had been dining at the House and had seen Grayle for the first time since the fire. I am a tolerably humane man and, though I had struck upon provocation and in defence of my own life, I regretted the state to which I had reduced my opponent. He now walked with two crutches and a sling for his foot in place of the one stick; his head was generously bandaged, and, though a curious faint down was beginning to appear on the exposed portions of his scalp, he no longer wore a moustache, and his eyebrows were singed out of existence.

A circle of his friends was bombarding him with questions and comments from all sides at once--"You had a near shave," "Were you badly hurt?" And then the inevitable enquiry--"How did it start?"

Grayle began a roaming description of the garage and loft, its tinder-dry wood-work, its equipment of inflammable papers and the like.

"There was a large quantity of petrol there, too," he explained confidentially, "but I don't want this talked about. I had no business to have it there; it was too near the house; the place--as we've amply shewn--was in no sense fire-proof. I should have the County Council or some other damned interfering body on my back, if it came out; I'm not claiming from the insurance company, as it is, for fear of too many questions. They let me down lightly at the inquest, because there was no one who could give evidence. So this is a secret session," he ended with a laugh, as he began to hoist himself away towards a chair.

One or two of his companions followed and relieved him of his crutches, as he sat down.

"But how did it start?" he was asked again.

"The lamp was overturned," Grayle answered promptly. "You see, I got a message that this poor fellow Beresford--he was the deluded fanatic who was always getting locked up for seditious pamphlets, you know--that he wanted to see me on urgent business, so I went off, expecting to find that the fellow was in trouble again--I knew him slightly, you see; we'd met at people's houses--when I got there, we sat and talked a bit. Well, he was lame--like me...."

He paused and pulled at the bandage on his head.

"Where had I got to?" he asked a moment later.

"You sat and talked," Bertrand put in from behind.

Grayle turned round quickly and caught sight of him for the first time.

"You're the very man I've been wanting to see!" he exclaimed; and then to the others, "Excuse me a minute."

Bertrand pulled up a chair, as they withdrew.

"You must be grateful to me for coming when I did," he began. "The story didn't seem to be going with much of a swing."

"You can leave my explanation to take care of itself," Grayle answered shortly.

"I felt I could make it a bit fuller," Bertrand suggested.

Grayle looked at him enquiringly.

"I see. Well, you're at liberty to tell your tale, and I'll tell mine. Or we can both leave it where it is. I admit that some people aren't quite satisfied at present, but I manage to get rid of them,--as you've seen. If you want me even to drop a hint that there was an attempt at----?"

His lips formed the word, but he did not utter it; and the unexpected silence was surprisingly sinister.

"It's no business of mine what lies you tell," Bertrand answered. "Is that all you wanted to say? If so, I'll move along."

In the week before Christmas O'Rane returned from Melton to find me immovably billeted upon him. After the first greetings he sat silent and reflective. I could see that he wanted to talk and did not know how to begin. The room was his wife's, and there were still marks by the lock, where he had burst it from the wood-work. God knows what his thoughts must have been! As I looked at his slight figure, lazily reposing in a long chair, and at his self-possessed, unrevealing face, I found it hard to picture the scene when he broke in the door. And for the thousandth time since that day of tragedy I asked myself what had been left him in life and longed for him to ask at least for sympathy, if he knew that I could give him no more help.

When he spoke, it was to make some comment on the war. The month-old rumour that the cabinet had broken on the question of peace negotiations was still flourishing. Rather than face another winter in the trenches the German Government was alleged to have made an offer to evacuate Belgium and northern France with the alternative of a threat, in the event of the war's continuing, that every neutral and allied ship sailing under whatsoever flag would be sunk at sight without warning. A school that was faint-hearted in asserting itself, even if it were not faint-hearted in the prosecution of the war, whispered that we must not miss our market and--in Bertrand's phrase--refuse terms now that we should have to accept gratefully and after the loss of another half million men in six months' time. The rival school of stalwarts proclaimed with great show of reason that Germany would talk of peace only at her own convenience--or necessity--and that her needs were our opportunity.

We went on to talk of the new government and its prospect of life. In the week before I was incapacitated political passion in London rose higher than I have ever known it. The old government, tired and indolent, half-hearted and uncaring, was losing the war beyond hopes of recovery. The new government had intrigued its way into place, selling its soul to Lord Northcliffe, as Faust sold his soul to the devil.... As a very independent member I was privileged to hear both opinions in approximately equal numbers and certainly with equal violence of expression. I described to O'Rane two characteristic meetings within five minutes of each other. I had been walking from my office to lunch at the County Club one day, when I stopped to observe an unusual number of cars and a considerable crowd of loafers outside the Reform Club. George Oakleigh came up from behind and asked what I was watching.

"It's the party meeting," he explained. "Aren't you going?"

"Not invited, George," I said. "I'm left out of these pleasant little gatherings. What are they meeting about?"

"To hear a statement from Asquith. There'll be a vote of confidence, I suppose. He's still the leader of the Liberal Party!" he proclaimed with a note of challenge.

"This partisan enthusiasm is new to you," I commented.

Any hint of raillery was lost on him.

"I daresay it is!" he cried. "I was a candid friend in the old '06 parliament, I've voted against them a score of times, but, when I see how they held the country together in the first shock of the war, when I see what they did.... And now to be turned out by a low press conspiracy and a man who owes his political salvation to Asquith, a man who was pulled out of the gutter at the time of the Marconi scandal ... when the whole party nearly split. My God! talk about gratitude in politics!"

He hurried away still most unwontedly explosive, and I followed more slowly. At the corner of St. James' Square I found Beresford also watching the crowd. (It was our last meeting before he called on me in the afternoon of our tragic expedition.)

"They're broken! Their noses are in the dirt,--and thank God for it!" he cried, pointing excitedly across the road. "_They_ were responsible! _They_ dragged us into the war, it was _their_ war, _their_ diplomacy! Asquith, Haldane and Grey. And now they're in the gutter!"

I remember walking on to luncheon with both conceptions to digest as an appetiser.

O'Rane and I talked long of political futures. The Government had resigned without challenge or defeat; we may have felt that we ought to have been consulted, as a compliment to the unfailing support which we had given; we might even dislike the new ministry's mode of birth, but we agreed in thinking that we must give the new management a trial before reverting to those who had failed to keep order in their own home. Suddenly O'Rane interrupted me with a question which shewed that his thoughts had been for some time at a distance from domestic politics.

"Er--Stornaway," he said with noticeable nervousness. "You remember when you came to see me at Melton some weeks ago? You were going to set enquiries on foot to find out where Sonia had got to."

I told him what had been done and how we had failed. There had not been many days for me between giving my promise of help and involving myself in the encounter with Grayle, but George and his sleuth-hound colleague continued to ransack every resource suggested by friendship or professional pique. And at the end of three weeks they were as near finding her as at the beginning.

"She is either staying with friends or hiding away in rooms somewhere," I told O'Rane as my conclusion. "And I can't suggest any way of tracking her down. It's a waste of time to advertise; she's hiding, because she doesn't want to be found. If I may advise you, wouldn't it be wiser to leave her where she is? I take it that you've stopped proceedings?"

"I've stopped proceedings," he answered, and his chin dropped forward on to his chest so that I should not see the movements of his thin face.

"Then there's nothing to discuss with her. If at any time in the future she or you want to regain your liberty, you can start out to get in touch with her then. Any question of stopping her allowance is mere persecution--and I don't even know that it's likely to be successful persecution. She drew a cheque for twenty pounds on the day she left Grayle; and she's not drawn a penny since. It'll take some time to exhaust her balance, and, if she finds that her quarterly cheque isn't being paid regularly, you know even better than I do that she'll starve or beg or work her fingers to the bone before she'll give in."

O'Rane was long without answering. Then he dragged himself out of the chair, shook hands and bade me good-night.

"I must have a look for her myself," he murmured, as though he were thinking aloud.

"O'Rane, she's clearly avoiding you," I pleaded. "Will it do any good?"

"I _must_ meet her!" he cried tremulously.

If I said a very brutal thing then, I said it because I thought that in the long run it was kindest.

"Let me tell you one thing before you go," I begged him. "O'Rane, you're not facing realities, you know; you're playing with the idea of reconciliations, you think that it's possible to get your wife back and to live with her again. My dear boy, you must use your imagination. Think of the mental process that took her away, think what her experience has been, think what her mental state must be now. She will never come back to you. And you couldn't live with her, even if she did." O'Rane went out of the room without answering by word or gesture.

2

On Christmas Day George came into my room after dinner. He betrayed considerable excitement and was carrying a stout red book in one hand.

"I've tracked her down!" he exclaimed almost before the door was closed.

"Tracked who down?" I asked without any great interest.

"Sonia. I caught sight of her at the Savoy--outside the Savoy, rather--after lunch. The Maitlands were giving a party, and, as we came out into the court-yard, Gerald Deganway put up his eye-glass and dug me in the ribs. Then I saw her in some kind of livery or uniform, driving a car. She didn't see me, and I don't think she wanted to be seen, because she was sitting rather hunched up and with her face turned away.... Then an old general stumped out and told her where to go; she said, 'Yes, sir,' turned the head of the car and drove away. I just had time to see the number and I spent a useful hour or two this afternoon finding who it belonged to. Apparently the old boy calls himself Brigadier-General Sir Andrew Lampwood. Now we'll turn him up in 'Who's Who.'"

He dropped into a chair, filled a pipe and began to turn the pages. General Lampwood, I gathered from his fragmentary recital, had been educated at Eton and Sandhurst ... had served in Egypt, India, Egypt again and South Africa ... despatches, medals, clasps ... a widower with two sons ... one house in Wilton Crescent and another in Norfolk ... Naval and Military, Turf, Ranelagh....

"Well, if Raney wants her, he knows where to find her," he ended. "I suppose you've never met this Lampwood? No more have I." He shut the book with a snap and drummed with his knuckles on the binding. "No wonder we couldn't find her; she's probably living in rooms near by, driving for him all day.... I'm surprised that nobody should have seen her till to-day; she's so well-known, and it's the sort of thing the picture-papers love to get hold of." He sniffed contemptuously. "'Recruit to the Ranks of Society War-Workers!' ... I suppose she can only just have felt that she must do something and have somewhere to live----"

"Do you find people still talking about her?" I interrupted.

"They always have and they always will." He lay back and smoked for a few moments in a reflective silence. "Ever since she came out.... Of course, she's a really beautiful woman--always has been--and she's got a lot of glib society patter and she _can_ make herself almost irresistible to most men. As she would say herself, her technique is perfect. And, if you never waste your energy on emotions, I suppose you're left with a tremendous lot for your precious technique. She can be so charming to everyone, when she likes, that she'll make a success of anything from a sticky dinner to a charity bazaar. She was always a success, she knew it, she got temperamentally drunk on it--until I think that the only thing she cared about was being admired, wanted, loved.... And now she's driving a car for a dug-out general...."

"But what are people saying about her?" I persisted.

"Oh, the old scandal's been toned down to almost nothing. She was being seen about with Grayle too much, and Raney put his foot down and said it was to stop." He grinned maliciously. "Lady Pentyre told me at lunch to-day that it was perfectly abominable the way people went about _inventing_ lies--and about a _sweet_ girl like that! It came so well from Lady Pentyre."

He smoked in silence until O'Rane came in for the five minutes that he always spared me on his way to bed. George repeated what he had told me and asked if there was anything that he could do.

O'Rane listened without any change of expression and then said that he would write to Lady Dainton.

"There's nothing more you'd like me to do?" George asked again.

There was a moment's hesitation in which O'Rane's unsmiling face became graver.

"Well, I can't do it for myself," he said and paused again. "I--I wonder if it would be possible for you to get a word with Sonia--find out what time she starts in the morning and then intercept her----"

"Well?" George encouraged him.

"I wouldn't bother you, if I could see," O'Rane resumed apologetically. "Tell her that if she wants anything----"

I felt that it was time to interfere.

"She can go to her parents," I said. "O'Rane, we're all of us different men and women every day of our lives, we're always changing, never the same. Some things change us more rapidly than others, marriage, illness, great prosperity or great disaster, the death of a friend--my dear boy, I'm only telling you what you know already. Because your name doesn't change, because you look the same and your hair doesn't turn white from illness or grief, you think that _you're_ the same. You're _not_. And _she's_ not. Since you parted, there have been changes and developments in both your souls which will prevent your ever coming together again. You don't like me to say it, but you'll have to recognise it."

The boy's eyes seemed to shine with reflected pain at every word.

"But isn't there room for something new?" he asked. "A man may love a woman with all his heart and soul, he may marry her, she may die; in time he may marry again--without forgetting her, without transferring the affection he once gave her--leaving her in the place where she's always been since she died, but somehow creating a new love. Don't you think that when two people ... separate, the husks of their love may die ... their old love, I mean, they may even hate the memory of it, but in time, perhaps, a new one may be born ...?"

"Between the same people? My friend, the memory of the separation, the reasons for it, will rise up like ghosts to keep them apart. You want her to come back?"

For the first time a wan smile lit up his thin face.

"Do you wonder?"

"What can you give her that you didn't give her before?" I persisted.

He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed.

"I shouldn't like to think that a second chance is always thrown away."

"And what inducement can you offer?" I asked him brutally.

He spread out his hands with a shrug.

"What inducement did I offer before? We've been in love with each other so long! At one time she was actually engaged to another man.... But there was something constant and unchanging. She didn't forget him or hate him, but in time she had adjusted herself and come back to the thing that had always been there, hidden and unchanged.... So now, isn't it possible that, when the last six months fall into their proper perspective, when the ghosts no longer rise up----"

"How many people have you known to marry a second time after they've been divorced?"

"But there's no reason why they shouldn't."

"In fact they don't," I said.

I believe that George delivered himself of his message within about three days. I believe, further, that he descended to bribe some smirking kitchen-maid and stood through a downpour of rain to seize the opportunity. Mrs. O'Rane masked any surprise that she felt--I suppose that she must have been taking part in many unexpected meetings,--thanked him for troubling to come and transferred her attention to the wind-screen, as a choleric voice remarked, "Now, young man, when you've quite finished talking to my chauffeur!"

The meeting confirmed my own diagnosis. The play was ended, and, if I concerned myself with wondering what O'Rane and his wife would do with the remainder of their lives, I felt that this would be a new play, no continuation of the first. The brief scandal had flickered out as abruptly as it had flared up. Lady Maitland--my barometer and sounding-board--announced to Bertrand across the length of a considerable table that she had seen darling Sonia, who had really turned over a new leaf; it was the best thing in the world; she was taking the war seriously at last.

"Do you know, that dear child is never off duty Sundays or week-days, night or day?" she confided. "You try to get her to lunch or dine--she'll tell you frankly that it's not the least use promising, because, if her General wants her, out she has to go and she may be driving for him all night. I don't see how she _can_ keep it up--not seeing anyone, you know, or doing anything, and after the life she _had_ been leading. Of course, she was really very naughty about the way she did it--all in a night, you know--threw everybody over--I was running an entertainment on behalf of my society, and she simply spoilt one tableau.... But then that's so like darling Sonia."

"She's less of a fool than I thought," was Bertrand's comment to me. "No awkward questions, nobody to meet her and ask them! Can't live at home when she has to be ready with the car at a moment's notice.... I hope General Sir Andrew Lampwood has broad shoulders.... She's snug and secure till the war's over, and God knows when that will be."

I made no answer, for I was thinking of O'Rane. On New Year's Eve he had dined at home with George and Bertrand, and all three came up to my room afterwards. We made a despondent party, for the endlessness of the war daunted us as the third year added month to month with lengthening casualty lists and a growing sense that, when we had already failed so many times and in so many ways, there was no reason why we should not go on failing. Each one of us was far enough from reality to be conscious of helplessness and insufficiency; I could not count the number of times that Bertrand had growled, "I've done with the House! I'm not going down there any more. What _good_ can we do?"--the number of times, too, that he repented and saw the House as the one independent and courageous check on an imbecile and malign government. Stripped of all mental elasticity and enthusiasm, George hated the Admiralty with a savage ferocity that was made no less by the easy youth which he had passed, uncontrolled, undisciplined and effortless. And underneath our nervous depression and irritability lay a despondent sense that the moral grandeur of the war had become obscured.

"I suppose the pace was too hot," George observed gloomily. "But in those first weeks.... They may not have known what they were going out to face, but they went like good 'uns; and the people who stayed behind were ready for any sort of sacrifice of money, comfort, leisure. All the spiritual fervour seems to go now in trying to make _other_ people do things, keeping _other_ people up to the mark.... God! I'm sick of the press agitations, I'm sick of all this political intrigue, I suppose I'm sick of the war."

O'Rane nodded, but made no answer.

"I don't ask anyone to listen to me," George went on with unwonted bitterness, "because I've been wrong all through. So have you, Bertrand. We were wrong before the war, when we said there couldn't be a war; and we were wrong when we started yapping about a 'war to end war.' We can't even make a clean job of this, we can't make the Hun put up his hands and say he'll go back to the _status quo_, and as for dismembering Germany and deposing the Kaiser--we can't do it! But when I remember my own tom-fool speeches at the beginning----"

"But we couldn't keep out of it, George," O'Rane interjected.

"And precious little good we've done by going in. I suppose we _have_ stopped Germany from dominating Europe, but, as for our own honour, we offered that up on the altar of necessity when we found that we were fighting a nation that meant to win if it darned well could. Our later policy's become frankly imperialistic; there's no ethical connection between Belgian neutrality and the partition of Turkey and Austria. I'm afraid I've taken a deuced long time to see it...." He turned to me with a scornful smile. "Do you remember when you first came back to England? When we met outside the Admiralty?"

"I've often thought of that conversation," I said.

"Everything seemed to follow so naturally in those days," he sighed. "Disarmament, nationality, a tribunal to arbitrate between states. Raney, you were one of the most persistent optimists I've had the ill-luck to meet; you're not going to pretend that the entire thing's not the most futile, gigantic waste ... whole peoples in arms hacking themselves to death and not a damned thing gained! _You_ don't think we're going to win this war?"

For the first time in six months I saw O'Rane roused to impersonal interest.

"I don't know if anybody's going to win," he answered. "And, what's more, I don't greatly care."

"If you were back in August, '14?" George asked, looking him in the eyes and then quickly turning away.

"I'd go through it again," was the quiet reply.

George got up and began to pace restlessly up and down the room.

"The big thing about this war is quite independent of results," O'Rane explained. "It's the effect on the individual, the effort, the risk, the readiness to make sacrifice. I always hold that there's no room in life for compromise. You know that, don't you, George?" He held out his hand and pulled George on to the arm of his chair. "From the days when we were at Melton together. You and dear old Jim Loring and Tom Dainton--dear God! how this war has killed them off!--you used to thrash me, you brutes, to make me see that I must compromise, but you never won. And always before the war I thought that compromise--what I call moral cowardice and spiritual slovenliness--was the only thing that people minded about. They didn't _care_. It wasn't their _business_! If the world was cruel and licentious or base-minded, they always asked me to remember that human nature was human nature." He sprang up with a sudden wriggle as though he were jerking an incubus from his shoulders. "As a nation we were contented with the second-rate--compromise, toleration, ease; we were second-rate in life, art, politics, second-rate in humanity, in soul.... And then there came the war--and it was the big moment when we had to decide whether to fight our way through the flames or to stand in distant security and explain to the reporters that there was a child, sure enough, in the top storey, but that it would be suicide to attempt a rescue and what was the fire brigade for, anyway?... We had to decide, we had to make up our minds that there was something big enough to suffer and sacrifice ourselves for.... All of us who went out there thought, rightly or wrongly, that we'd found something that admitted of no compromise.... Even if you went out of bravado, like poor Val Arden, so as not to be thought a funk.... What it was--I don't quite know ..." he went on slowly. "I doubt if any of us know, and we certainly didn't at the time. Perhaps it was for the security of the people at home.... I know I was seeing red, I'd have slit the throats of German women and children at that time--in revenge for what they did in Belgium.... But before that started, before war was declared.... You remember that last week-end of the Saturnia regna, George? When we walked up and down, up and down at Loring Castle, wondering whether there was anything worth saving.... Well, whenever I catch myself feeling as you do now, I recall that about four million men voluntarily decided that there was something in life better than their own lives, something that had to be preserved, something that ruled out all compromise. That's the moral value of war. After all, what is it you do when you run into the flames and rescue the kiddie from the top storey? You save its life, I admit, and that's something, if you value human life, but the child may die a week later of whooping-cough, it may grow into a drunkard, an imbecile, a criminal. What matters it that you've taken yourself, your own soul, and given it a value?... When this is all over, if we lose, if we're bankrupt and broken, if Germany enchains us like so many tribes of African blacks, it still doesn't matter to the men who refused to compromise, they've made themselves.... Yes, quite deliberately, I'd--go through it--all--again.... And, when the war's over, we can't afford to tolerate anything but the best, we haven't been fighting for the second-rate. And we've got to prepare our own minds for that now, so that the material changes follow automatically. You must start with the individual, your _own_ relationship to the world in all its aspects. Hanging for sheep-stealing ceased automatically when the public mind had prepared itself, stirred itself up to say 'This has got to _stop_!' and the compromisers, the obscurantists, the vested interests daren't raise their heads. You think, perhaps, that I'm not the best person to decry the usefulness of compromise----"

He stopped abruptly, and all the light and colour died out of his big eyes.

Bertrand, whom I thought to be dozing, raised his head for a moment and lowered it again.

"Didn't Saint Paul say something about being all things to all men?" he asked gently. "Saint Paul was a great diplomatist, a great man of the world. You'd say he was a great compromiser, David, but at least he knew how to suit himself to his audiences, to make allowances for poor, despised human nature. And perhaps you'll even admit that he was not altogether unsuccessful and that Christianity would never have spread a hundred miles from Jerusalem but for him. I sometimes think he has been unduly neglected," he continued with a yawn. "Christianity would have been a poor thing without him."

"It would have been a poorer thing without Christ," O'Rane answered. "And there would have been no Christianity at all, if Christ had said that the Scribes and Pharisees were doing their best according to their lights ... or that we must make allowances for Dives because he had a great many calls on his charity and really couldn't investigate each one personally. Of course, there'd have been no Crucifixion...."

3

The Christmas holidays passed rapidly, and I remember that O'Rane told me one Sunday night that he would be going back to Melton in another ten days' time. None of us cared to ask him how much longer he proposed to continue this make-shift life, teaching seventeen-year-olds for nine months in the year and learning procedure in the House of Commons during the remainder; it was his means of trying to forget that his wife was in the same city, living within a mile or two of him, driving perhaps within a hundred yards of their house or passing him in the street, elusive and unattainable.

After George's glimpse and single meeting, we heard little of her. George told me that he had met "Sonia's General," as that no doubt gallant soldier came to be called with unflattering disregard of earlier and more varied achievements, that he was an agreeable fellow, that someone was putting him up for the Eclectic Club. They fell into conversation and discussed the prowess of the new driver; the General had been taken completely by surprise.

"If she'd said 'Sonia Dainton,' anyone would have known," he explained. "I'd forgotten she was married. She suits me uncommon well,--if she can stand the strain...."

A day or two later Bertrand made the General's acquaintance and came home with the not very surprising news that Mrs. O'Rane had terminated her engagement.

"I never supposed that phase would last long," he grunted. "Up early, back late, out in all weathers and thankful if you can snatch five minutes to munch a sandwich out of a paper bag. There'd be very little of this boasted 'war-work' done, Stornaway, if people weren't allowed to go about in uniform, and none at all, if the first condition of your employment was that no one was allowed to know that you were doing war-work of any kind. _I_ can see the offices and hospitals yielding up their social ornaments! Well, Sonia O'Rane's at least honest about it. A week or two with only a livery and no one to admire her----!"

"She's got no excuse now for living anywhere but at home," I commented.

Bertrand grunted scornfully.

"Give her credit for a little more contrivance than that! She leaves her General at the end of the month, by which time her husband will be safely back in the country. But she hopes to take it up again, when she's a bit stronger. I had this from the General; he shewed me her letter. Damned ill-written scrawl," he added with the intolerance which ran away with him whenever his prejudices were aroused. "She'll recuperate by lunching and dining out and dancing and staying up till all hours; and the moment David comes back to London she'll be well enough to go back to her precious work. You see if I'm not right."

This time, however, Bertrand's ingenuity and malice overreached themselves, for we heard from Lady Maitland that Mrs. O'Rane was genuinely ill.

"I used to see her every morning," she told George, "as I went to Harrod's, and nine times out of ten we had just a word together. Then I missed her, then I saw the car being driven by someone else. I hope it's nothing serious."

The conversation took place at a luncheon party where O'Rane was present. George took it upon himself to reassure her, but from the fact that Mrs. O'Rane had disappeared even more completely than after leaving Grayle there was a risk in fabricating good or bad news about her. General Lampwood supplied her address, and one evening when there was nothing better to do George went round to her lodgings. They consisted of a bed-sitting room in a street off Wilton Crescent conveniently near to the garage. She was in bed, and the landlady doubted whether visitors would be very welcome, as she was suffering a good deal of pain.

"That decided me," George told me. "She hadn't actually said she wouldn't see anyone, because I'm pretty sure she didn't think it would be necessary. I gave her the surprise of her life when I marched in; she couldn't imagine how I'd heard she was ill, how I'd found out her address.... She's now suffering from the most awful reaction after the racket of the last year. Nothing that I said or did was right; she was as lonely as a woman could be and at the same time resented my coming, resented my saying she looked rotten and ought to see a doctor...." He frowned and shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "She needn't bother. She won't catch me going there a second time."

Yet rather less than ten hours passed before he was caught going there a second time. Indeed he can hardly have left the house before Mrs. O'Rane was writing in contrition--"Darling George, do forgive me if I was snappy and ungracious, but I _did_ feel so rotten! It was my own fault that nobody came to see me, because nobody knew where I was, but I felt so horribly neglected, I was so furious with everybody for _not_ coming to see me, that when you came into the room I laid myself out to be hateful.... My dear, I did really feel iller than I can tell you, so forgive me! Sonia."

"I suppose if I collect a few flowers ..." George began apologetically next morning. "I shan't be able to stay more than a moment, or I shall be so frightfully late at the office.... I might get my cousin Violet to look her up, of course."

I was never told how he found Mrs. O'Rane on the occasion of his second visit, but in the evening young Lady Loring paid us an unexpected visit. I did not see her, but, when she had gone, George came into my room with an expression of worried perplexity.

"Violet's been sitting most of the day with Sonia," he explained. "I wonder if _you_ guessed.... I confess I never thought of it for one moment. Sonia's going to have a child very shortly."

I, too, was taken by surprise and needed a moment to arrange my thoughts.

"You're sure of that?" I asked.

"She told Violet. The question is--what are we going to do with her? She's got to be properly looked after and she's got to be moved out of her present pokey little room.... I suppose it means a nursing home. Violet suggested taking her to Loring House, but that was more generous than practical. I'm afraid there's no doubt Sonia did behave very badly to Jim Loring when she was engaged to him ... and Violet knows it and doesn't forgive her ... and Sonia doesn't forgive her for knowing it. _You_ know what women are. Violet's got all the sweetness in the world, she _thinks_ she doesn't bear a grudge, she can call on Sonia in bed, make a fuss of her ... but it's different to take her into her own house, particularly with the associations that house must have for Sonia. But I needn't labour the point; the suggestion was turned down almost as soon as it was made. Well, she can't go to her mother, because Crowley Court's overflowing with wounded soldiers; and I don't know that she's overwhelmingly anxious to meet her mother. She can't come here, of course."

He stood reflectively rubbing his chin.

"Whose child is it going to be?" I asked.

"Grayle's the father. I suppose that, as Raney's taken up his present attitude----" He left the sentence unfinished and began to fill a pipe. "Ye gods, what a sweet mess people can get themselves into!"

"When's the event expected?"

"Pretty soon, I fancy. Violet didn't tell me the exact date, but she did give me to understand very plainly that Sonia mustn't be left by herself any longer. She was extraordinarily overwrought and hysterical, when I saw her, but for some reason or other I never imagined.... I say, Stornaway, if it had been Raney's child, if this had happened a year ago?"

"Nothing would have saved them," I answered, "though it might have kept them artificially together, making a hell of each other's lives, when they'd be far happier apart. O'Rane was more responsible than any man for the break-up of their life; Grayle was only the instrument. The tragedy began when they married."

George smiled grimly.

"I suppose even Raney will see it, when his wife gives birth to another man's child.... And _then_ what? Will he divorce her then? Have we got to go through all this racket again? In the meantime the nursing-home problem----"

He stopped guiltily, as the door opened and O'Rane came in to say good-night to me.

"Who's been to call here?" he asked George. "I met a car driving away."

"It was Violet Loring."

"Oh, I wish I'd known that! When next you see her, you can tell her she's a rude pig not to have pulled up. She must have seen me."

"She was in rather a hurry," George explained. "As a matter of fact, it was me she came to see."

I suppose his voice betrayed uneasiness or at least embarrassment, for O'Rane turned to him with quick sympathy.

"Nothing wrong, I hope?" he asked. "The boy's all right?"

"Oh, it wasn't that." George looked at me almost despairingly, but I could only shrug my shoulders and leave him to make up his own mind. "She came in to say that Sonia's a bit seedy," he went on. "I--as a matter of fact, I saw her for a moment yesterday and, as she was rather off colour, I thought it would be a friendly act for Vi to look her up. I don't know if you heard Lady Maitland telling me at lunch the other day that she was a bit done up."

O'Rane's face became rigid, and his voice was as set as his features.

"I didn't hear anything about it. I--You ought to have told me, George. What's the matter with her?"

George looked at me again, without winning any more help than before.

"I only saw her for a moment," he answered evasively. "She seemed rather overdone."

"But who's looking after her?"

"Nobody much at present. That was what Violet came about: she'd been to see her and thought it would be more comfortable if she were moved into a nursing home."

Nature must compensate the blind by developing their other qualities. Though he could not see George's studiedly non-committal face, O'Rane divined something hidden from him in the easily reassuring voice.

"Old man, I don't think that's the whole story, is it?" he asked with persuasive gentleness. "The nursing-home rather gives you away. Has Sonia got to have an operation?"

"There's no suggestion of it! Violet says it's nothing out of the ordinary."

"Then why a nursing-home?"

"Because she wants rather more attention than she's likely to get in her present quarters. But there's not the slightest need for you to worry yourself."

O'Rane began to pace up and down the room, chewing his lips.

"She must come here, of course," he said at length.

This time I looked up at George.

"You won't find that practicable, O'Rane," I said.

"Why not?"

"She won't come."

"Because of me, you mean? I'll clear out, if she prefers it; I should be clearing out in any event at the end of the week. But it's her home."

"You can't bring her home by force."

O'Rane's eyes lit up with sudden, burning passion.

"If I had my sight, I'd bring her myself! As I haven't, George is going to bring her for me. Yes, you are, George. You're going to take a car and have her carried into it and brought here. If she objects, you're going to make her. I'll leave the house when she tells me to. You don't understand me, you wouldn't understand me, if you lived to be a thousand; but I took an oath and I'm going to keep it. I swore in the sight of God that I would hold her in sickness and in health to love and to cherish till death parted us. I said it with her hand in mine ... in Melton chapel ... and I could feel her fingers trembling. It was a scorching July day, and I could feel the sun coming hot on my face.... I'd never been at a wedding before, for some reason; we'd rehearsed it, and Sonia'd told me how I had to stand and what I had to say.... And I kept repeating the words as we came out into the Cloisters--it was cold as the grave, and I felt her shivering as she leant on my arm. And then there was a word of command and a rattle as the Corps presented arms.... And we came out into Great Court, and I could feel the sun again. And we were marched off to Little End, and I heard a lot of yelping, and something with a cold nose pressed against my hand, and Sonia gave a little choke and said that Pebbleridge had turned out the hounds in our honour.... And before we went to Burgess' house--the words were still running in my head--I whispered 'I will love you, comfort you, honour and keep you in sickness and in health, forsaking all other.' I swore it then and I should be damned if I went back on it. This is her first sickness since we were married, and I'm not going to leave her to go through it alone until she tells me to."

His voice rang with excitement until the room echoed and Bertrand came in with eyebrows raised.

"You don't in the least understand, Raney," George began in difficulty and distress. "You were quite right; I hadn't told you the whole story----"

"I don't want to hear any more--yet," O'Rane interrupted. "I shouldn't be asking you to do this, if I could do it myself."

"Was that necessary?" George asked with a touch of stiffness and impatience. "I'll go whenever you want me to."

"You must go now. Ring up Violet and tell her to meet you there in half an hour with her car; you'll want a woman to help you. The rest of us will have our work cut out to get things ready here. Stornaway, I'm sorry to disturb you, but I shall have to find you a shakedown in some other part of the house; this is Sonia's room. Don't waste a moment, George----"

"I suppose you know it's after eleven," George interrupted.

"Move her to-night, if she's fit to move. Let Violet decide that."

George looked from Bertrand to me and turned helplessly to the door. O'Rane had already rung my bell and was standing in the passage tattooing the floor with impatient foot and waiting for his housekeeper. I spread a bath-towel in the middle of the floor and began to pile on it my exiguous personal effects, while Bertrand seated himself heavily in an arm-chair and begged for enlightenment. A moment later the front-door slammed, as George set out.

For an hour we worked hard to make the house ready for Mrs. O'Rane. Bertrand's one comment, when I explained the new commotion, was, "The boy's mad! _She_ won't come," and from time to time, when he was being urged and driven to a fresh task, he would remonstrate gently and warn O'Rane not to be disappointed. There was never any answer. By midnight our labours were complete: the bedrooms had been reshuffled and beds made, food and drink prepared. We met in the library with vague uncertainty what to do next.

"You must tell me if it looks all right," O'Rane said to Bertrand. "I want it to look exactly as it was before. She always loved this room, and I believe it _is_ a beautiful room."

Bertrand glanced perfunctorily round and laid his hand clumsily on the boy's shoulder.

"I told you before, David; you're going to be terribly disappointed, if you think she's coming."

"_I_ would have undertaken to bring her!" he cried. "We can trust George. And I don't suppose he'll even say where he's taking her."

"If she doesn't know where she's coming," I interrupted, "you'd better keep out of the way till she says she'd like to see you."

"I must welcome her," O'Rane answered.

Bertrand and I exchanged glances and excused ourselves. As we turned at the door, O'Rane was standing with his watch to his ear. About three-quarters of an hour later I heard a car slowing down in the street outside.

George has told me since that his cousin and he found their patient far less difficult than they had feared. She was plunged in melancholy bordering on hysteria. Loneliness, pain and neglect had reduced her pride until she sat up in bed with her face contorted and tears trickling down her cheeks, reproaching them for never coming to see her and bitterly proclaiming that she _now_ knew how much trust to put in people when they said that they were her friends. George took her hand and explained that he had come to take her away where she would be tended and made happy. At once there was an indignant outburst; she would not move, she was quite well; if they would go away instead of bullying her, worrying her, threatening her, she would be all right in a moment. He let the storm spend itself and recaptured the hand that she had snatched away.

"Violet's told me what's the matter with you," he whispered. "Unless you're very quiet and good, you'll injure yourself. And you are going to be quiet and good, aren't you?" He was talking to her as though she were a child and she responded by throwing her arms round his neck and weeping convulsively. "You're going to be very good, aren't you, Sonia? And we're all going to take the greatest care of you. Violet's got her car here, and we're going to wrap you in a cloak and explain to your landlady that we're not really stealing the blankets, however much appearances may be against us, and we're going to take you away, and you're going to be in the midst of friends, and everybody's going to be kind and sweet to you, and you're going to forget how lonely and miserable you've been the last few days."

He lifted her into a sitting position, while Lady Loring hunted for slippers and wrapped a cloak about her.

"I don't deserve it!" Mrs. O'Rane cried with sudden revulsion. "Why do you come here bothering me? It's my fault, I knew perfectly well what I was doing; I should never have done it, if he'd treated me properly, if he'd loved me. It was David's fault, you know it was; and you come here bothering me when I'm ill...."

George helped her out of bed and supported her across the room. From time to time she muttered, "Why don't you leave me alone? It was _his_ fault, but he could never do any wrong in your eyes!" like a sobbing child in the last stages of a tornado of temper. He carried her into the car, while Lady Loring poured out a hurried explanation to the landlady. A deep drowsiness descended upon her as she felt herself being packed into a bed of cushions, while a bearskin rug was wrapped round her, but, as the engine started, she opened her eyes and enquired sleepily where she was being taken.

"You're to go to sleep and not ask questions," said George. "Is that a promise? Say it quite slowly--'I--Sonia O'Rane--promise--that--I--will-- go--to--sleep--_at_--_once_--quite--quietly--and--will--not--ask-- _a n y_--questions.'" She laughed weakly and began to repeat the words, only stumbling at her own surname. "Once again!" George ordered. "I--Sonia O'Rane--promise...." She struggled half-way through the sentence and then dropped asleep with her head pressed against his shoulder.