Chapter TWO: The Open Door (2)

He relapsed into silence and sat supporting his lean, long face with one hand. I felt Mrs. O'Rane had civilised him to some purpose and that, unless he lapsed from civilisation within the next quarter of an hour, Lady Maitland would find that her rebel-hunt had been in vain. I also felt that the sooner Mrs. O'Rane rejoined her husband, ceased dining with Grayle, going to the theatre with young Guardsmen and giving Beresford the idea that she was lonely, the better for all and especially for her.

Deganway and Pentyre, who evidently knew Mrs. O'Rane's ways better than I did, arrived ten minutes later. We were still awaiting our hostess, when Lady Maitland sailed in and, dispensing with introductions, opened fire at a distance of twenty paces.

"Darling Sonia not dressed yet? But, then, no one's ever known her in time for anything. How do you do, Mr. Stornaway? I suppose this is Mr. Beresford? Now, Mr. Beresford, I want to have a long talk with you; I hear you're a very original young man and I want to know why you're a pro-German."

Thus encouraged, Beresford roused himself to demonstrate the difference between sympathy with German atrocities and antagonism to war and the system of government which made it possible. I, who have heard him for a moment haranguing street loafers and have myself engaged in ding-dong argument with him, little thought to see him so completely routed by the sonorous enquiries of Lady Maitland, who put a question, announced parenthetically that she was a woman with no nonsense about her and flung out a second question before he could answer the first. Deganway stood polishing his eyeglass and murmuring sagaciously "Yes! Yes! _That's_ what our good pacifists never condescend to explain." Pentyre lit a cigarette and confessed to hunger. Two more young officers, whose names I never heard and whom I have never met again, drifted in with a "Sonia not down yet?" and also lit cigarettes. I was glad when Mrs. O'Rane arrived to end Beresford's agony.

Without a word of apology for her lateness, she fluttered like a butterfly into our midst, brushed Lady Maitland's cheek with her lips and pirouetted slowly on her toes like a ballet-dancer.

"How d'you like my new dress, children?" she enquired. "Say you do or you don't, but please don't try to find reasons, or you're sure to go wrong. Peter's the only one here who knows anything about colour, Lady Maitland, and everything I wear has to meet with his approval."

She stopped her pirouetting in front of his sofa and stood, panting slightly and with shining eyes, holding her skirt out on either side and courtesying low. Beresford appraised it slowly, his head on one side, fingering the stuff and taking in every detail from the gold and silver band round her hair to the silk stockings and gilt slippers. An embarrassed maid awaited her opportunity of announcing dinner, Mrs. O'Rane threw her head back and smiled at me over her shoulder, with parted lips.

"Someone appreciates me," she laughed. For the first time I realised what her young and not very sinful vanity must miss by never being able to hear a word of pride or praise from her husband. Sonia O'Rane always reminded me of a child who cannot build a castle in the sand without dragging someone by the wrist to come and admire it. "I don't think you did that night at Colonel Grayle's," she said to me. "In fact it was very forgiving of me to ask you. I've never been so found fault with by anyone except David, and he's given it up since we married. I sometimes wonder whether it is because he thinks I'm perfect or only not worth bothering about now he's got me."

"I only recall saying that you talked a great deal of nonsense," I put in. "I stand by that."

"Well, that's a nice thing to say when I'd refused three invitations from people who were just dying to hear me talk. However, I suppose I'm a cultivated taste."

"And you only invited me in the hope of making me retract," I added.

"Let's have some dinner," she suggested, avoiding my challenge.

She spread out two gleaming white arms with the movement of a bird taking wing and waltzed to the table, calling to us over her shoulder to sort ourselves anyhow; the order did not matter as there were ten men and two women. As the others stood back for me to make my choice, I put myself on her left with Lady Maitland on the other side.

"When do you go to Melton?" I asked conscientiously, as we settled to our places.

She pointed a finger at Beresford.

"I can't leave my ewe lamb yet," she answered. "D'you know, last night I was up with him until nearly three, considering which I think I'm looking remarkably fresh to-night.... Besides, David hasn't _asked_ me to come...."

Her clear and slightly over-emphatic voice travelled disconcertingly as far as Lady Maitland, who enquired with some surprise, "Does Mr. Beresford live here?" She was answered with a mischievous nod. "My dear, you know I always say right out whatever's in my mind; well, I don't think you ought to be doing that. With that blessed creature of a husband here----"

"But he _brought_ Peter here and _kept_ him here and finally _left_ him here--whether I liked it or not, Peter dear. Besides, darling Lady Maitland, I have Mr. Oakleigh to chaperon us, and George drops in every few hours to see that I'm not disgracing his precious David.... George once said that I atoned for the number of my flirtations by the excellence of my technique," she went on irrelevantly. "I think he'd just fallen out of love with me and pretended that he never _had_ been in love with me and never would be. You think I'm not good enough for David, don't you?" she demanded of me. "I think he got the wife he deserved, and he'll tell you that's the finest compliment anyone can pay him."

"I'll ask him, if I remember. I'm going to Melton next week. Have you any message for him?"

She deliberated with one finger pressed to her lips.

"Tell him--exactly what you think of me," she suggested with dancing eyes. "It'll amuse him much more than a message."

"Are you going down to him this term?"

She shook her head.

"I'm too busy, and he doesn't want me, or he'd have sent for me long ago. Not that I should have gone, of course...." She glanced quickly round to satisfy herself that the others were absorbed in their own conversations; then lowered her voice and laid her hand on my sleeve. "Mr. Stornaway, you _do_ agree with me that it's absolute rot for him to be there, don't you? Old Mr. Oakleigh's offered him any money he wants--again and again; I've got five hundred a year from father; he could wipe out what he calls his debts and live here with the utmost ease. And he ought to be in London, he ought to be in the House; there are all sorts of jobs that he could get in the City.... If you want a message, tell him that he must choose Melton or me," she went on with a pout and a rising voice. "If he hasn't chucked Melton by Christmas, I shall chuck him. Tell him that I shall elope to Sloane Square--I don't believe _any_one's ever eloped to Sloane Square, but it's the handiest place in the world; even the Hounslow and Barking non-stop trains stop there,--so sweet of them, I always think--I shall go there with Peter and live in his flat and star in revue where I shall be an amazing draw, you know; and Colonel Grayle would scowl at me from the stage box, and, darling Lady Maitland, you'd boom me and invite fashionable clergymen to meet me at lunch, and George would have his car at the stage door to take me home--I don't know that I _shall_ wait till Christmas."

She paused for lack of breath and looked delightedly round the table. My expression, I imagine, was bored, Lady Maitland's perplexed; only poor Beresford's was unaffectedly pained.

"Mr. Stornaway's quite right," Lady Maitland said, when she had collected herself. "You talk a great deal of nonsense."

"I mean it, though."

"Rubbish, my dear."

Yet I believe that both she and I felt a current of discontent running underneath the froth of nonsense. Perhaps we shewed it, perhaps Lady Maitland reconsidered her judgement, for, when Deganway sat down to play rag-time after dinner and Mrs. O'Rane kicked the rugs aside and began dancing with Pentyre, she observed at impressive intervals----

"Darling Sonia is always in such spirits".... "I don't think it's quite the thing for a young man like that--quite good-looking, you know--to be living here; Mr. O'Rane will have a great deal to answer for, if there's any unpleasantness, and you can give him that message from _me_." ... "Tell him a husband's place is beside his wife.... But he must make her a home where she can live. I forget whether you were here that night--yes, you were! Well, Lady Dainton's quite right.... Just like the casual-ward of a workhouse...." "Of course, her mother brought her up atrociously".... "I really hope that she's going to have a family; it would just make the difference."

A week later I motored to Melton for the Governors' meeting. Town and school alike had become almost unrecognisable since my last visit three or four years earlier. Leagues of huts, miles of tents, acres of pickets stretched from the outskirts of Melton to the fringe of Swanley Forest; the drowsy cathedral town was alive with thundering lorries, and the billeting officer's handiwork was visible at eight windows out of ten. My car crawled apprehensively through the crowded streets and up the hill to a school which was half as it had been founded three hundred years before, half as it had been converted into a military academy during the last fifteen months. Great Court echoed with the clatter and scrape of hob-nailed boots, as the corps fell in and marched off to parade on the practice-ground; one group of signallers on the steps of the headmaster's house waved frantically to another group by the entrance to Great School, and, as I wandered into the Cloisters to kill time before the hour of our meeting, the Green was filled with pigmy recruits, learning their squad-drill from a husky but intensely business-like young sergeant. Only a handful of obvious weaklings wore the old conventional straw hat, grey trousers and dark jacket, and the open door of the Common Room at Big Gate shewed not more than two-thirds of the staff in cap and gown.

"War takes on a new horror and hopelessness, when you know that the schools of France and Germany present the same sight," I said to Dr. Burgess.

Our meeting was over, and he was conducting me round the unaging school buildings which I was thenceforth to hold in joint trust. The company drill on the practice-ground was giving way to a final parade, and we watched four hundred young soldiers from twelve to eighteen march erect and with set faces to the Armoury and from the Armoury to Great School for a lantern lecture on the Dardanelles expedition. A couple of dozen non-commissioned officers had fallen out and were awaiting a course in map-reading with their commanding officer.

"Thank Heaven! it will all be over before most of these boys are old enough to go out and stop bullets," I added.

Dr. Burgess stroked his long beard and shook a mournful head. "Some were yet in our midst when the appointed season came," he said, pointing to an already long Roll thumb-tacked to a wire-covered notice-board. "And they that have returned----" He sighed deeply. "David O'Rane enjoins me to say that he is within."

We shook hands at the door of a bachelor set of chambers in the Cloisters, and Dr. Burgess strode back to his house, murmuring mournfully into his beard. I knocked and entered to find O'Rane seated--as I might have expected to find a man with his physical dislike for chairs--in the middle of the floor with the big, patient head of his Saint Bernard on his knees. Miss Merryon was writing at a table in the window, and a low wicker-work couch by the fire was timidly occupied by a flushed and disputatious malefactor. She welcomed me by name to give the cue before making an excuse to withdraw. I apologised to O'Rane for disturbing him, but he dismissed the boy and turned with a smile and sigh of relief.

"We'd both had enough of it," he confessed. "That young man thought fit to play a practical joke on Miss Merryon, so I've been taking his moral education in hand, appealing to his self-interest."

He felt for a box of cigarettes and threw them to me. "Well?" I said.

"I remember getting held up at Bâle some years ago," he explained. "I was on my way home from Italy and I missed the eleven o'clock connection to Paris. There were crowds of us there--some on our way back from Italy, like me, some from the winter sports in Switzerland--all ages and races, on every kind of business or pleasure. The next train to Paris left the following day, and we had to reconcile ourselves to an uncomfortable night. Well, I've tried so many varieties of discomfort that I'm hardened and philosophical; I imagine most people would call these quarters uncomfortable, but they're nothing like what they were before Sonia took them in hand last summer."

He waved proudly at a pair of massive, discoloured velvet curtains, a bamboo overmantel and occasional table, wicker chairs half-buried in punt cushions and a threadbare carpet tattooed by generations of burning matches. I put up with the same sort of thing at Trinity, but I was then nineteen and I had no wife to accommodate. Mrs. O'Rane, I imagine, was not schooled to discomfort.

"I got a good deal of amusement and interest out of watching the others," he went on. "The French were the worst--voluble, excited, indignant, grabbing the best places and all the food they could lay hands on in the buffet--the way they always behave when they're travelling; the next worse were the Germans--they were ruder and more inconsiderate than the French, but not nearly so efficient. The Americans all set themselves to westernise Europe and started getting off protests by cable to Paris, ordering special trains and booking three times the accommodation available at any hotel. The English were bored, aloof, taking themselves and their troubles very seriously and refusing to share them with anyone. Well, when the last bedroom had been snapped up, there were still enough of us benighted to overcrowd the waiting-rooms and buffet, we were all suffering from a sense of grievance, and there wasn't enough food to go round. I got wedged into a corner with a plate of meat and looked on. One of the Englishmen commented loudly on the noise that a German made in eating soup. The comment was understood, so the German laid himself out to shew the sort of noise he _could_ make when he tried. The Englishman wrapped himself in a ferocious dignity, finished his meal and lit a cigar, sending a cloud of smoke in the face of one of the Italians. My attention was then attracted by a brawl in the middle of the buffet; someone had imprudently left his seat to forage for food, and someone else had promptly bagged it. As they bickered and gesticulated and finally pushed each other about and the onlookers took sides and joined in, I said to myself, 'Lord God! this buffet is just like the world, and these fools are behaving just as we all behave, and we should all despise and laugh at ourselves as much as I'm laughing now, if we had any detachment, self-criticism, humour, logic or God's common sense.'"

O'Rane's black eyes lit up at the memory of the scene.

"I was telling that story to our young friend," he continued with his baffling smile. "Chivalry? Nothing doing. Moral sanctions and first causes? Nothing doing. _He_ didn't believe in God, _he_ wasn't going to Hell, if he misbehaved himself, so why in the name of reason should he bother?... But I should think I fixed him over my Bâle story.... We had a hideous night (it was too cold to go and sulk outside--which made the symbolism more perfect; you can't sulk outside this world, unless you're prepared to cut your throat); and we might have made it quite tolerable, if only we'd had a little imagination and kindliness, if we'd struck an international bargain and surrendered the privilege of eating soup noisily in return for immunity from cigar smoke in the eyes, if the chairs had only been given to the women and old men, if someone had only lent a hand to a poor boy who was coughing himself sick with asthma...." He whistled reflectively between his teeth for a moment. "Life's like a club, sir; there are rules and conventions and an endless mass of tradition--the things we don't do; but the rules were made so long ago, the conventions only aim at an irreducible minimum. Even so, it's better than treating the world like a company trading for profit, but we must modernise the rules. As you know, I always want to delete 'efficiency' from the English language; efficiency in the Bâle buffet would have meant that an organised party of four, back to back, could have downed the rest, grabbed all the food and cleared the till.

"Keep your temper. Never answer (that was why they spat and swore).
"Don't hit first, but move together (there's no hurry) to the door.
"Back to back, and facing outward while the linguist tells 'em how--
"'Nous sommes allong a notre batteau, nous ne voulong pas un row.'
"So the hard, pent rage ate inward, till some idiot went too far ...
"'Let 'em have it!' and they had it, and the same was serious war,
"Fist, umbrella, cane, decanter, lamp and beer-mug, chair and boot--
"Till behind the fleeing legions rose the long, hoarse yell for loot."

O'Rane's luminous black eyes were gleaming with mischief. Remembering my first sight of him, when he fought for his life in a Vienna café, I wondered whether any wife, reinforced by any mother, could curb his restless yearning after action, were it blacking the eye of an oppressor or slinging a disabled man on to his shoulders.... For all his cosmopolitan spirit I could not fit him into the Byzantine world in which Lady Dainton had brought up her daughter nor into the Merveilleuse society into which her daughter had gravitated.

"It's--it's _really_ only a very big club," he murmured.

"Full of most undesirable members," I suggested. The Bâle story, I felt, would be wasted on Vincent Grayle.

"They're not acclimatised yet. Now, you'd open the door for the most undesirable member of the Eclectics, if he had a game leg, yet you laugh at me if I pick up an injured man in the street and carry him home for treatment. God's name! Where's the difference? _You're_ not acclimatised yet, you see. It's to your interest, too.... How is Beresford, by the way? Sonia's the most undutiful wife in the way of writing; I suppose it's natural enough, really; she doesn't like having her letters to me read by anyone else."

I never forgave the old men who advised and hampered me, pinning me to a career for which I was unsuited and quarrelling with me when I broke away from it. In my turn I have tried to refrain from advising and hampering the younger generation--only to find that the younger generation sometimes makes an astonishing fool of itself and that it is harder and harder to sit silent and unintervening when someone whom I like is on the verge of falling downstairs in the dark or of having his pocket picked. Commenting on the fact that he was at Melton, while his wife was in London, I warned O'Rane that, with their double portion of wilfulness and energy, he was taking unnecessary risks with his married life.

"I've not got much to go on," I admitted, "but that supper-party you brought me to...."

"That was exceptional," he objected. "And they were Sonia's friends. You were the only one I invited."

I reminded him of Beresford, Miss Merryon and perhaps three more obvious recipients of his charity. He coloured slightly and told me that it was an article of faith with him not to refuse help to anyone who asked. Then I could see that he was not being honest with himself, for he shifted his ground, concentrated on Beresford and asserted that his wife liked him to be in the house.

"But do you think he ought to be there?" I asked, following him on to the ground which he had chosen. "They're both young, attractive; your wife's a very fascinating and beautiful woman. She can take care of herself, of course.... It was in fact commented on at dinner the other night."

O'Rane wrinkled his nose in dissatisfaction.

"He's company for Sonia," he said weakly.

"_You'd_ be company for her, if she came here or you went to live in London. Much better company, too," I added.

My tone may have betrayed more than I intended to convey, for O'Rane laughed.

"You don't like her friends? _I_ don't care a great lot for some of them, but you must remember that she gave up a good deal to marry me--a very full life--and I can't give her much. What I can give her is the freest possible hand. That's why I haven't pressed her to come down here, though, God knows, it's lonely enough without her. By Easter, if not Christmas----"

"Won't you have given this up by Christmas?" I asked.

His face grew tired and perplexed, and he ran his fingers impatiently through his hair.

"I don't know. I owe the devil of a lot of money; and I should be damned body and soul, if I lived on charity when I could earn my own livelihood. We'll discuss it at Christmas. In the meantime, can you stay and dine with me in Common Room?"

His invitation was a reminder that I had already stayed perilously long, if I was to get back to London in time for a dinner engagement.

"See me to my car," I said, as I put on my coat. "Look here, don't think I'm a mere busybody. You and your wife are such a pair of children that you mustn't mind a man twice your age telling you, if he thinks you're behaving foolishly. I strongly advise you to throw this over at Christmas. Now not another word."

O'Rane walked in silence through the Cloisters with one hand on the Saint Bernard's collar. As we came into Great Court, he stopped abruptly.

"Look here, sir; understand one thing," he began. "If you think I mind or that I'm not grateful to you for speaking like this, I shall never forgive you. But you say Sonia's to be trusted to take care of herself. That's enough. If she wasn't----" He shrugged his shoulders--"she wouldn't be worth keeping. If she fell in love with--who shall we say?--Beresford and ran away with him, in God's name d'you think I should want to stop her? I admit I've only been married three months, but to me love's a thing of perfect, implicit trust. This is between ourselves, but last week George Oakleigh came down for Founder's Day and dropped a hint that Sonia was lunching and dining out too much with--well, I suppose there's no harm in saying it--Grayle. As with you, someone had commented on it at dinner. I'm afraid I couldn't pump up the slightest indignation. Grayle's rather in love with her. So's Beresford. So's that squeaky tame-cat, Deganway, of the Foreign Office. So's one of my boys here--George's cousin Laurie, who firmly believes that he brought me up to the scratch and made me propose--rather against my will. So's young Pentyre, so's half the Brigade. If I wanted to be jealous, sir, I'm afraid I shouldn't have time. As it is, I'm so proud of Sonia that I glory in seeing other people proud of her, loving her.... As for stray comments at dinner--I don't say it's right and I don't say it's wrong, but she belongs to a very modern school which goes its own way _without_ regarding stray comments at dinner. But so long as we agree that she's to be trusted----?"

We had reached Big Gate, and he held out his hand to me with the mischievous smile which I was beginning to know so well and which always filled me with a sense of helplessness. As I looked at him with the October wind blowing through his black hair, I reflected that he must think me very old-fashioned to be surprised when a three-month-old wife boasted of the men who were in love with her and her husband derived a reflected happiness from her successes.

Driving back to London I felt that I was escaping mile by mile from a bewildering world of serious make-believe.

5

My engagement that night was to dine with Harry Merefield and to discuss something which, he said, he could explain better by word of mouth than in a letter. I was intrigued by the invitation, because Merefield at this time was of considerable account in the Foreign Office. We dined at his Club, and, as the only other person present was Barton, who had thrown up his work at Cambridge twelve months before and was now my official chief in the Treasury, I divined that they contemplated a deal in my person. The preliminaries were already settled, and, as we drank our sherry, Merefield confided that the Foreign Office wanted me to go out to America ostensibly to raise money for the War Charities Fund, in reality to carry on a campaign of propaganda; my knowledge of country and people would be invaluable and our relations had reached a point where we could no longer afford to do nothing. Would I think over the proposal?

"If this Press agitation goes _on_ ..." he began grimly and lapsed into eloquent silence.

I must confess that I have never been able to understand what function Ministers proposed that the Press should fulfil; they set up a Bureau to control the supply of news and occasionally to restrain editorial comment, but their interest seemed to die when once the War Office had secured that direct military information was not to be disclosed and that discussions and attacks should not take place round the head of this or that commander. Valiantly they feared nothing, despondently they hoped for nothing from a somewhat despised organisation which, despite their contempt, believed in its own power and was capable daily of placing the same view before every man and woman in the country until a vague but obstinate conviction arose that "there must be something in it." The Press with a little diplomatic flattery, might have become the handmaid of the Government; with promptitude and vigour it could have been emasculated to the semblance of an official bulletin. Instead, Ministers treated it like an intrusive wasp, slapping at it with ineffectual petulance, ducking their heads and running away when it was angered, until Sir John Woburn and half a dozen of his fellows were left to suggest, condemn, support and attack, to push favourite ministers and policies, to be inspired by those same ministers and to indulge in superficial criticism and the promulgation of half-truths which were harder to overtake and refute than a substantial, well-defined lie. Though never a Minister, I am afraid that I must accept my share of responsibility, for, when the House of Commons abrogated its duty of criticism, reform or remedy became possible only by a Press campaign.

"I don't give Woburn credit for excessive modesty," said Merefield, "but it never occurs to him that his vile rags can have any effect abroad. Yet, if you say a thing often enough, it gets repeated. The French and the Russians are now beginning to ask what England's doing, what the Navy's thinking about, and why we don't do more.... Wolff's Bureau itself couldn't have a greater success than Woburn in making the French believe that we're sacrificing them to preserve our own trade. We've given America about as much ragging as she'll stand, and I want you to sweeten things. You do know the country."

I know enough of America to feel that she has always suffered, as Ireland suffers, from the characteristically English belief that because two people speak a similar language they must have an identic soul and that the Americans are a homogeneous Saxon race, estranged indeed from an equally homogeneous parent stock by a certain insolent independence imparted by General Washington to his turbulent followers, but Saxon in orientation and sympathy, essentially sound at heart. When Merefield asked me to go out, I knew that he could have found others better qualified for the work, but at least I was a man who never expected to find unanimity on the issues of European peace and war in New England, purest in Saxon blood and tradition, sensitive to every European repercussion and receptive of every thought-wave borne across the Atlantic; in the Southern States, with their political concentration on the negro within their gates and the Mexican without; in the North-West, watchful of Canadian encroachments; in the Far West, with its eyes set on a Japanese peril; in the Middle West, where the farmer of Illinois and Iowa lives and dies without coming nearer than at a thousand miles' distance to Pacific or Atlantic; in scattered, unassimilated lumps of disaffected Ireland or duly prepared Germany.

"They're getting tired of hearing what 'America' ought to do," Merefield continued. "People here won't see that there is no American people yet, hardly an American idea, only the vaguest groping after an American ideal. They've been snapping and snarling at Wilson over Belgium, over the 'Lusitania', over his notes--as if he had a mixed population of a hundred and ten millions in his _pocket_! I want you to explain that it's only our fun. After all, they've got their own Woburns; they'll understand."

My American friends were too numerous to allow of my accepting Merefield's facile diagnosis and treatment. I knew then, as I had confirmed later, that the commonest feeling in the American mind was a quiet but affronted indignation at British ingratitude. Of the organisations, the funds and charities, the work of humanity and succour that had begun in America from the first day of war, not a word was said in our press or speeches; over the hardships and inconveniences involved by our blockade, over the sense of grievance occasioned by our censorship of mails and cables, no sympathy was expressed or felt. When Russia was dependent on American munitions, when English credit in America was the hope and salvation of allied finance, we could find no more gracious form of acknowledgement than a sneer at a so-called proud nation which let its sons and daughters drown without protest and shirked the sacrifices of war in order to steal trade, to sell the means of destruction to others and to increase the ever-mounting accumulation of wealth. I am too old and cosmopolitan to have any right to be surprised, yet I always am in fact surprised by my countrymen's abysmal want of imagination and international courtesy. I approached my mission with the most unfeigned reluctance.

Merefield left me to think over his suggestion undisturbed, and before saying good-night I told him that, if he would give me a few weeks to order my affairs, I would gladly go for as long a time as the Foreign Office chose to keep me. Yolande and her husband had attended to my domestic requirements so admirably during my absence in Austria that I had no hesitation in entrusting them to her again and in surrendering the rest of my house for use as an office. My departmental work was gradually transferred to other shoulders, though at one moment I feared that the department itself was going to be extinguished. After dissipating numberless troops on secondary operations in every corner of the world except the western front, the Government found itself short of reinforcements for the great offensive which was to break the German line in the spring of 1916. The flow of volunteers was drying up, and I heard much excited gossip about an immediate measure of conscription. Grayle, I remembered, was very active and tried to commit me to an organised attack on the Government; as, however, even he admitted that no one but the Prime Minister could carry a compulsory service bill, I told him that he must be content with anything he could get. My department, or the younger section of it, was saved by a comic-opera compromise whereby volunteers were encouraged to enlist on pain of being conscribed, if they held back. To introduce a democratic note and make the figures imposing, all my youngsters were invited to attest; to ensure that the official machine continued in being, it was arranged that no government servant should be called to the colours without the leave of his departmental head. So, after a week's flutter, I was at liberty to go.

There was no secret about the fact of my mission, and Bertrand Oakleigh arranged a little dinner at the House to wish me good-speed. I walked back with him to his rooms at "The Sanctuary" and looked into the library to see if there was anyone about. George was asleep on a sofa, but otherwise the room was deserted.

"I'm waiting to see Sonia," he yawned, as I came in.

"With any luck she's out at a dance and won't be back till about four. I've induced Beresford to clear out, but I don't want her to be frightened or wonder where he is."

He broke off to yawn again. I asked him how he had contrived the eviction, and the yawn shortened into a smile.

"I didn't put it on the ground that he was falling in love with Sonia," he said, "because I suppose he knows that; I just told him that--a comment had been made.... D'you know, after that dinner, dear Lady Maitland called on me at ten next morning at the Admiralty, telling me to use my influence? And I may say that when Lady Maitland tells me to do a thing I do it. Well, Beresford is in the pulpy state where he'd cut his throat if he could protect Sonia's reputation in any way, little knowing the evergreen hardiness of that same reputation, and he went off to his own flat. Sonia will probably be very indignant with me this evening, but she's made her Peter much too lamb-like to be seriously interested in him any longer. Anyway, if she isn't indignant with me for one thing, she'll be indignant for another. And I seem to survive it comfortably. So _that_ danger's over, though as a matter of fact there never was any danger...." He filled a pipe and lurched wearily round the room in search of matches. "The only danger for Sonia is from a man who'll bully her," he drawled. "When she was engaged to Jim Loring, he behaved like an extra lady's maid; she might still be blowing hot and cold with Raney, if he hadn't shewn her very definitely who had the stronger will. It was at the very beginning of the war, and he was quite ruthless.... Last time he saw her, poor old Raney...."

"You know them both pretty well, don't you?" I asked.

"Yes. And the next question is, why did they marry? I can't answer that. They were in love, but that's more a reason than an excuse.... Yes, I've known 'em both for years. And for years I've tried to restrain Sonia's destiny when I saw it going to her head. Oh, by the way, Beresford's by no means my only success. I don't know whether Grayle's a friend of yours, but I dislike him--always did, when I was in the House with him--and the other day I thought it was time to interfere; you couldn't stir a yard without running into them. This time I didn't bother about approaching the man--that would have been too great a waste of time,--but I talked to Sonia until she promised never to have Grayle inside the house again and never to meet him of malice aforethought. Which you will admit is a fairly comprehensive victory."

He looked at his watch and walked impatiently to the writing-table.

"Mrs. O'Rane seems to be a whole-time job," I commented.

"She's all that," he grunted. "Mark you, I'm fond of her in spite of herself.... But I'm fonder of Raney, and the pair of them seem steering for disaster.... I don't know. I may be all wrong. I'm a bachelor and I've never had to humour a woman.... Here, I've finished this. I'll walk with you as far as the club."

As I latched the door behind me, I asked what he thought of the life which O'Rane had decreed for "The Sanctuary." He smiled before answering.

"If you'd known Raney as long as I have, it would be just the thing you'd expect of him--all taken _au grand sérieux_, too, of course. As for Sonia, she'd consent to sleep in a doss-house, if she were doing it for the first time--a new experience, you know. She was prepared to put up with anything, I fancy, to get away from home and have a house of her own; and she'd have cheerfully accepted half a room in a workman's cottage when she married Raney. After four or five months of it, I should think it's beginning to pall; the caravanserai life wouldn't suit her for twenty-four hours in the day, she likes it for an hour after dinner--for more new experiences. I think, I _think_ you'll find Raney will have to drop it.... But I don't know.... There are five things that are too hard for me, and the way of a maid with a man is the hardest of them all."