Chapter THREE: Sonia O'rane (1)

"Vanity induces men, more than reason, to act against inclination."
THE DUKE DE LA ROCHEFOUCALD: _Maxims_.

1

I sailed for America in December, 1915, on perhaps the most difficult mission that I have ever undertaken. It was not expected, of course, that the United States would enter the war against us or upset the diplomatic equilibrium in our favour without provocation and until the result of the elections had been seen. I went, as I have suggested, to counteract the German propaganda, which sought to make all at least equally responsible for the war, and also to remove some part of the bad impression which had been left by our more unbridled journalists and our less imaginative statesmen. The moral approbation of America was too precious an asset to fritter away, and the purchase of material depended on the goodwill of American financiers, the supply of munitions could be stopped as a diplomatic reprisal.

It was perhaps unfortunate that my arrival coincided with an outburst of new interest in the Blockade, ending with the creation of a Blockade Ministry and the appointment of a Blockade Minister. (Harry Merefield used to shake his head over any new interest in the Blockade. "_We_ always say that Germany must be defeated in the field, and I'm apprehensive when the soldiers tell me that they're counting on our starving the brutes out.") I was asked, too, at more than one meeting how the Government of Great Britain reconciled its passionate crusade in defence of small nationalities with its no less passionate refusal to allow the Irish to control their own destinies. The dreary tale of the unchecked Ulster gun-running and the appeal to Germany was rehearsed for my benefit; and my more law-abiding Irish audiences generated considerable heat over the presence of "the rebel Carson" in the Cabinet.

But, if I found the work difficult, it gave me a respite from England, where I felt that I had been watching the machine at too close quarters. Since the day when I helped George Oakleigh to divide the world and secure a lasting peace, our nerves had worn thin; we devoted too much time to seeing that other people went promptly about their duties; and a deadly personal bitterness--embodied for me in Grayle, though I do not single him out for attack--poisoned our confidence in our own leaders. I was glad to feel the icy wind of the Atlantic lashing my face, blowing the cobwebs from my brain and the sour taste from my mouth, as we rounded the last Irish headland.

During the week that I had to myself on board, sailing without lights and zig-zagging out of reach of submarines, I put together the notes for some of my speeches. It was extraordinarily difficult to say anything definite. After eighteen months of hostilities and mid-way through a second winter, there was a confident expectation that the great spring offensive would end the war. The Austrian losses were known to be gigantic, and it was believed that the old emperor was flirting with peace; Germany was starving, and the moral of the German army had notoriously broken. (Our avowedly humorous publications demonstrated that a British soldier had still only to call "Waiter!" or to exhibit a sausage at the end of his bayonet to have a swarm of German prisoners on their knees to him.)

Yet, beneath all our confidence ran a chilling current of doubt. The spring offensive would be launched in Belgium or France, but the clubs and dinner tables, the military correspondents--it was whispered, the Cabinet itself--were divided into "westerners" and "easterners."

"If _we_ could hold up the Huns at Ypres," George had said to me gloomily on my last day in England, "_they_ can hold us up equally well, when the proportion of fighting strength has been reversed. I hoped in the early days of the Dardanelles that we were going to knock away the buttresses and bring down the whole structure of the Central Empires, detach Turkey and Bulgaria, you know, carve a way into the Hungarian plains. Now I'm by no means comfortable...."

George, with many others, was not destined to think of the Dardanelles with an easy mind until news reached the Eclectic Club one day at luncheon that Gallipoli had been miraculously evacuated, and a sigh of relief rose over London, to be followed by a feeling that, though we had escaped once, our luck might desert us at the second tempting. More and more I was hearing the criticism that there were too many amateur strategists in the Cabinet with no one to check the careless inspiration which led them to fling their armies to Sulva Bay or Salonica, while the thinning reserves on the western front impelled the Government inch by reluctant inch to conscription.

And every time that the Blockade bit deeper into the puffy German flesh, every time that the mark exchange fell, every time that the numbers of enemy killed, wounded, missing and prisoners satisfied our military ready-reckoners that the last reserves were under fire and that the inevitable collapse would ring and echo through the world within so many days or weeks, the enemy retaliated with the wriggle of a Japanese wrestler, flung his adversary away and surmounted him. Servia had been overrun by the effete, vanquished Austrians in October, Montenegro followed in January; we had sent troops to Gallipoli, because the western front was impregnable, we had withdrawn them because the eastern front was no less impregnable. Amateur strategy or political intrigue was now mysteriously dissipating more troops in Greece, and I was required later to square the allied landing in Salonica with the allied resistance to the German incursion into Belgium. To say that King Constantine had defaulted on his treaty obligations to Servia was venturesome but inadequate, for the terms of the treaty were unknown; it was common knowledge, on the other hand, that Great Britain had guaranteed the Greek constitution, by which foreign troops might only land at the invitation of king and parliament.

The public temper in England led me to expect one thing, crystallised by Vincent Grayle in a bet that, if we had not broken the German line by September, the Government and the Higher Command would have passed into ineffectual history.

"It's their last chance," were his parting words to me. "After all, you find a leak in your cistern, you get a plumber; if he can't mend it, God's truth, you get another plumber. You're likely to find considerable changes by the time you get back."

I think it was the taste left in my mouth by Vincent Grayle that I was most glad to have blown away by the north-east Atlantic wind.

I landed in New York to find that I had lost one false perspective of the war to acquire another. In the eastern states there was indeed an "American Rights" party, flamingly incensed that the President had not broken off diplomatic relations on the sinking of the "Lusitania," but as unprepared as I had been on my return to England after a year of war for the resolution and effort, the suffering and bereavement, the social upheaval and snapping nerves which I had met. New England, to my pity, talked of participation and still fancied, as we had once done, that it would be someone else's son or brother, someone of academic interest, who would appear day after day in the casualty lists. Yet what else could I expect? As I walked up and down the unfamiliarly lighted streets to see men still employed on work which was being done by women in England, as I met abundance on every hand and heard of war as an intellectual conception in the middle distance, I had only to shut my eyes and imagine that it was a fantastic nightmare of my own.

For three months I spoke and wrote; for three months, as I was flung from end to end of the continent on journeys of incredible length and intolerable discomfort, interviewers boarded my train and invaded my car. The daily news of the war had long been relegated to some corner of a back page, and my interviewers were clamorous as children to be told a story.

I am content to be judged by results; in the south there were men who responded to my eloquence by crossing the border and enlisting in a Canadian regiment, and the War Charities Fund has its record of the subscriptions which I collected. My audiences reacted on me until I am afraid I came to idealise unpardonably. I remember describing to a Boston audience the spontaneous uprising of England as I had found it after a year abroad; I remember, too, returning to my hotel and finding a handful of letters and a batch of month-old papers.... England was agitated by the question whether a married man, who had volunteered for service, should be taken into the army until an unmarried man, who had not so volunteered, had been coerced. It was not an ennobling controversy for one who had been describing crusades....

"It serves the married men right for calling the single men shirkers," George Oakleigh wrote. "Now that they've screwed themselves up to the point of attesting, they're trying to shirk in their turn.... Psychology is revealing itself curiously. Men who despise a Catholic for surrendering the right of private judgement are praying for the Government to order them about and relieve them of the responsibility of making up their own minds.... A thriving trade is being driven in rejection certificates. Your enterprising patriot with some physical defect gets himself duly turned down for the army; he then personates his more robust friends for a suitable fee, attending at their local recruiting offices under their names and pocketing any solatium that may be handed out at such times. It was hardly this spirit which sent Jim Loring and Raney out.... The whole wrangle is a great opportunity for our friend Beresford, but he is at least honest and intelligible; if conscription comes, he'll refuse to serve and the Government can shoot him. He was committed to a war without being consulted and he's not going to die of malaria in Salonica to please a House of Commons which he helped to return five years ago to carry the Parliament Bill."

I feel that I must have addressed my audiences with less conviction after a letter of this kind, yet it was but the occasional snapping of overstrained human nerves. Yolande, I remember, wrote in great concern to tell me that her husband and George--two of the kindest, mildest and most level-headed men I know--had quarrelled and parted in anger. A successful raid into the German lines was magnified into at least a second-class victory; George in a mood of depression minimised it unduly; Felix thereat raked up his opponent's record of eight years before as a champion of disarmament and international peace, charging him with being a pro-German. "I wanted to bang their heads together, uncle darling," my niece confided. "Will you believe it? They weren't on speaking terms for a week, until I made each apologise to the other. So ridiculous!..."

The unrest and dissatisfaction ran through public and private life equally.

"There's a perfect crop of what my young cousin Laurie calls 'stunt-artists' of late," George wrote a week later. "Every third man in the House feels called on to do a 'stunt' of his own. There's a 'Ginger Stunt,' to keep the Government up to the mark, and an 'Air Stunt' to protect us from Zepps, and a 'Civil Liberties Stunt' to resist conscription, and a 'Conscription Stunt' to resist civil liberties, and a 'Press Stunt' to quash the Press Bureau, and a sort of 'Standing Stunt' to quash Northcliffe. Men of imaginative bent are turning their eyes to Mesopotamia and the Dardanelles, ready to start stunts there at the earliest opportunity and on the smallest provocation. Bertrand says that in all his experience he's never known the House so neurotic and out of hand. The cumulative effect is exceedingly bad. Whether the stunts do any good or not I can't say, but they destroy confidence in the Government, depress people at home and at the front, not to mention the allies, and ultimately they'll bring the Government down. Now, with the exception of Grayle, that's what no one wants to do. Asquith's the only man who can hold the country together, but he's so anxious--and rightly--to keep his team working harmoniously and to avoid any possibility of a split anywhere that I don't think he asserts himself enough. A party truce can be overdone, and a good many Liberals are saying that they are always sacrificed to conciliate someone else and never the other way about; as with Ireland--but I've no doubt your Irish-Americans have delicately hinted in the same sense.... By the way, I forgot to mention the 'Stop the War Stunt.' Since last I wrote Beresford has been had up and fined; at least he was ordered to pay the fine, but he refused; so they kept him in prison for a bit, and he hunger-struck and now he's at large again...."

George's next letter made no reference to anything of public interest.

"Do you remember saying that Sonia was a whole-time job for a man?" he began. "She's too much for me; I'm going to retire from the fray. When Raney came home for the Christmas holidays, he and Sonia talked things over--Melton and the House and work of various kinds. Bertrand was dragged in to keep the peace and advise generally, and they reached this amount of agreement: Raney consented to throw up his appointment at the school, provided he found work at least equally remunerative to pay his debts and keep the household going and provided that it was work of some public utility. He wasn't prepared simply to make money, if his services could be of any use to anyone for the war. Well, as you know, almost every kind of public work involves the use of your eyes, and it would have taken him some time to find the right kind of job. In fact, he and Bertrand had not begun to discuss it when Sonia went on to the next question with a very definite statement that, if he was going to live at 'The Sanctuary', she claimed equal rights with him to decide who was invited to the house--in other words (and very reasonably, from her point of view) the house was their home and she might just as well be living in the street as in that menagerie. I confess I sympathise. I _knew_ she wouldn't stand it for more than a very few weeks. You don't know the place as I do, you've probably never seen anyone but Beresford dossing on a sofa, but Raney with the best intentions in the world sometimes turns that place into a casual ward. Sonia stood it at first, because it was a new experience and she's got a passionate enjoyment of life which would carry her through everything. But, when the novelty had worn off, it must have been singularly uncomfortable; even Raney's friends would only smile pityingly, and you may be sure that all the Dainton influence was thrown into the scale against him. I know for a fact that Lady Dainton's done all the mischief she can in the way of sneering, criticising, setting Sonia against Raney. The important new development was that Sonia was beginning to echo her mother. I happened to drop in about this time. I expect you've noticed that moral undressing is always conducted publicly in that house; I heard Raney defend himself by pointing out that Bertrand's house had been turned into a hospital, that Crowley Court was a hospital and that he was not asking Sonia to do anything very different from what Lady Dainton was doing. 'Ever since I came back from the front,' he told her, 'I've been trying to get this war into perspective. Everyone's doing his best to save this country and all that it stands for, but it's got to stand for a good deal more than it did before the war; we owe it to the fellows who have died and the fellows who are dying now and the numberless fellows who've still got to die, we've got to shew that they died for something that we can look at without shame. It'll be a long time before we can be really proud of this country, but we can make a beginning, and the time to begin is when we've stood sweating with fear and remorse with a halter round our necks and the hangman comes to say we've been reprieved.'

"As you know, my uncle's a tough old cynic, but, when Raney talks with that cold, vibrant passion of his, you have to be very tough not to feel at least a little uncomfortable. I've had to stand it ever since we were at Oxford together. Sonia was about as much impressed as if he'd been talking to a brick wall. He wasn't discouraged, but he turned to Bertrand--'You remember when I got back, sir?' (God! I'm not likely to forget the night when we found he was blind!) 'You were in a furnished flat, and I had awful difficulty in finding you, but I came straight to you, and you and George took me in without a murmur.' (I suppose he thought that after sixteen years we were going to refer him to the nearest Rowton House.) 'That was--symbolical, sir,' he went on. 'D'you remember that you came in very late, when I was in bed, and we had a talk? After you'd gone, I got out of bed and lifted up both hands and swore that I'd not give in, that I'd do what I could with what was left. I swore that, as I'd been taken in--not only by you; a hundred other people had done the same,--I'd try very humbly and patiently never to say "no" to anyone else that wanted to be taken in, anyone else that I could help. That's what I'm trying to do now.' Then he stopped and left them to digest it, with the result which you can imagine when two people take up wholly irreconcilable positions. Sonia said that charity should begin at home, that he talked about not being unkind to anyone, but he was being unkind to his own wife--you can imagine the dialogue. Bertrand raised _his_ two hands that night and swore that he'd clear out into quarters of his own, and Sonia's parting words were that she regarded her marriage as at an end, which is a pretty sentiment after five months."

A week later George wrote again on the same subject.

"How you must enjoy the sight of my hand!" he began. "I'm sorry, but I want to blow off steam. The other night I took Raney out to dinner and talked to him for his soul's good. I saw a good deal of the tragi-comedy when Sonia was engaged to Jim Loring and I told Raney that he was courting disaster by the way he was treating her. He was in one of his most smiling, most obstinate moods--steel and india-rubber. He said he couldn't slam his door in the face of anyone who wanted help. 'Very well!' I said; 'keep it open. You say "yes," she says "no," and there's not a square inch of ground for compromise. One of you has to climb down, and you won't?' 'If you like to put it like that,' says Raney, 'I won't.' 'Then make _her_,' I said. 'She'll do it, if you make her; she won't love you any the less and she'll respect you all the more, if you force her to obey you.' Raney was really upset. 'Old man! you mustn't talk to me about _forcing_ my wife to do things!' My dear Stornaway, that's the kind of imbecile we've got to deal with! I warned him that, if he kept his door open against her will, she would walk out of it.

"God knows, I never wanted to be a Cassandra, but I know that child so well! Two days later Raney bumped into a young officer staggering along Victoria Street in an advanced state of intoxication; Raney just had time to find out that the fellow was due to catch the leave-train at about seven next morning, when his new friend collapsed on the steps of the Army and Navy Stores and settled himself to a comfortable slumber. I don't suppose any of us would have left him there with a fair prospect of being robbed or run in or discovered by the Provost-Marshal, to say nothing of losing the train and perhaps being court-martialled. Raney must needs put him in a cab, take him home and expend time, ingenuity and hard-bought experience in making him sober. It must have been a gruesome night, but the fellow caught his train. It was the last straw for Sonia. The next day she wired from Northamptonshire, asking me to tell Raney that she was staying with the Pentyres. That was a week ago; Raney has asked her--_asked_, mark you--to come back, and she won't budge. I deliberately cadged an invitation from Pentyre last week-end, we spent Sunday with one scene after another, and her final message on Monday morning was that she would come back when he agreed to do what she asked; otherwise she would be compelled to think that he, too, regarded the marriage as over. I spent most of Monday night storming at Raney, and the present position is that neither will yield an inch and Raney won't exercise his authority.

"You are probably sick and tired of them both by now, but you cannot be anything like as sick or tired as I am...."

2

This was the last letter which I received before my return to England in the spring of 1916. The country, when I landed, reminded me strongly of a theatre before a first night; everyone was waiting for the full deployment of the new armies, everyone expected the summer campaign to be the supreme test; by now, too, almost everyone had son or brother under arms waiting in the line or rehearsing his share in the coming offensive. The tension produced a nervous irritability which manifested itself, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, in a mutinous demand for enlightenment, and one of my earliest duties was to be present, with fine parade of mystery and importance, at the first secret session of the war. The one unvarying rule which I have been able to frame for the House of Commons is that it never fulfils expectations. Though the Press Gallery was conscientiously cleared, we were given neither fact nor figure that was not already in the possession of any well-informed journalist; twenty-four hours later the speeches were common property in every club, and the one thing new was the change in psychology. The show of blind loyalty to the Government had broken down until the Government itself felt that something must be tried to restore confidence. I found that a man of Bertrand's temperamental independence was using Grayle's currency of speech.

"Much good it's done!" he growled, as we left the House together. "It's no use pointing to the number of men you've raised or the output of shells. The country's outgrown the phase of being content with good endeavours, it wants _results_, it's in the mood to say, 'You haven't beaten the Germans, and, if you don't do it pretty quickly, someone must be found who will.' Stroll home with me, if you've nothing better to do."

"You're in your old quarters still?" I asked.

Bertrand laughed and then sighed.

"When David asked me to come here, I accepted on an impulse," he confessed. "It was a phase of the early enthusiasm; I felt we'd got no business to go on living so extravagantly, when the boys out there were going through Hell's agonies and every penny was wanted to carry on this war and to reduce the load of human suffering. I suppose this dog's too old to be taught new tricks. If you find me staying on now, it's only to keep the peace." He stopped to re-light his cigar, and, as he sheltered the match with his hands, I saw that his heavy, powerful face was morose and dissatisfied. "I've got a considerable love for David. He was a fool to marry the girl, of course, but a man doesn't marry or keep a mistress because it's _wise_, but because he wants to, because he can't help himself.... When she married him, I thought that the war had sobered her down, but these _soupers fraternels_ have made her restive, and she's reverted to type. I'm standing by to break up tête-à-têtes and prevent her doing anything irrevocable before they've patched up their present quarrel and agreed on some possible way of life. If he weren't blind, she'd have left him three months ago. You know they've not met since Christmas?"

"Where are they?" I asked.

"Oh, she's here--with the usual tame cats to carry her off to lunch and dinner. She came back the day after David returned to Melton.... You can see it's a pleasant house to live in!... Before the war I sat on a committee with her mother. Do you remember a phase when young men tried to grow side-whiskers? Well, the drawing-room was always full of these hairy youths, immaculately dressed and simpering round her with boxes of sweets and flowers, which she very graciously accepted. Since the war these fellows have shaved and got into uniform, but it's the same old gang. I used to think nobody was injured; she liked racketing about at restaurants and theatres, they were puffed up to be with her. The only man I drew the line at was Grayle; he's much heavier metal." Bertrand paused to laugh with his old cynical relish. "I'm deuced old, but I've still got a very retentive memory, and everybody's always told me things. Well, I went through the mental rag-bag, I talked to a few people, I made a few enquiries--particularly on the American chapter of his life--and the next time we met I became biographical at his expense. George tried and failed. Friend Grayle hasn't been here since. I tell you, I was getting sick of the business. She'd give a dinner party at eight, and Grayle would be here at half-past seven to talk to her alone, and, by Gad! she'd be dressed and ready for him. I don't know whether they thought I was blind _and_ deaf.... And it was the same when she dined at his house. I used to hear her coquetting and threatening to be late, if he wasn't 'good'--ugh!--and he'd swear he wouldn't admit her, if she wasn't in time. It was all such poor stuff! I shouldn't have minded so much, if there'd been any red blood in it, but she was obviously just keeping her hand in; that woman would make sheep's eyes at the Shakespeare monument in Leicester Square sooner than nothing.... So I spiked friend Grayle's guns, and she's had to content herself with Beresford. He's pretty harmless, but the devil of it is that she's ready to go wrong with any man, when she loses control of her temper. If she weren't restrained by her husband's blindness ... Good night. I'm going straight to my room."

As I had come to the door, I thought that I could do no harm by going in to see who was about. I found Beresford sitting up on a sofa with a block of paper on his lap. He looked exceedingly ill and perhaps not best pleased to see me.

"You're back again, then?" I said. "How's the knee?"

"I'm only waiting till Sonia comes in," he answered. "My knee's much the same as it's been all along, very much the same as it always will be. The doctors are going to give me blood-tests or something. Of course, I didn't do it much good when I was in prison; the doctor there was badly scared. He used to examine me each day to see how much longer I could hold out without food, and I used to see him looking grave every time he came to the knee, until I'm prepared to bet he told the authorities he wouldn't take the responsibility of keeping me there any longer. Then they let me out." His grey lips curled into a withering sneer. "God! the authorities in this country _deserve_ to lose their precious war! D'you think that in Germany they'd allow me to write the pamphlets I do here? D'you think, if they decided not to shoot me, they'd let me out of prison because they were afraid to force food down my throat? The blessed innocents here said I might go, if I promised to drop my propaganda; they brought in a pen and paper. Well, I'd been without water for four days, and my throat and mouth were so swollen that I couldn't speak. I couldn't write very elegantly, either, but I collected enough strength to scrawl 'I'll see you in Hell first.' And then, if you please, I was let out. And now I'm improving the occasion."

He collected a number of loose sheets and pinned them together.

"As long as you think it does any good," I said, "the Archangel Gabriel wouldn't be able to stop you."

"You don't think it's a good thing to keep people from slaughtering one another? Dear man, d'you appreciate that, if Kitchener and Grey were in Potsdam at this moment with the unconditional surrender of Germany in their pocket, they couldn't get anything to compensate our present losses? There's imbecile talk about security and a 'war-to-end-war,' but you won't _have_ war when people understand what it's like. That's what I'm trying to shew them."

He threw himself back on the sofa and began reading what he had written. I got up to leave, only pausing to give him a message for Mrs. O'Rane. As I closed the door behind me, a taxi stopped at the corner twenty yards from "The Sanctuary" and a man in uniform stepped out and stretched one hand to somebody inside, holding the door open with the other. His size alone, without the familiar mane of yellow hair, identified him for me as Grayle; a moment later Mrs. O'Rane emerged and stood by him under the street lamp at the corner. Bertrand might keep Grayle as far away as the end of the street, but I felt that he had boasted prematurely.

"You'll come in?" I heard Mrs. O'Rane say, as her companion hesitated by the taxi.

"Not to-night, thanks. It's rather late."

I caught a light ripple of laughter.

"You're not getting suddenly anxious about my reputation, are you?" she asked. "You _used_ to _like_ coming in and talking to me; and you know how I hate going to bed. Of course, if you don't want to----"

Grayle opened his case and took out a cigarette.

"That cuts _no_ ice, Sonia," he said. "Good-night and thank you for coming. I shall see you to-morrow."

"I don't think I shall come."

"Oh, yes, you will."

"If you're so afraid of being compromised----"

"You are coming to-morrow."

She was silent; and, if it had been day-light, I would have staked my life that she was pouting suitably.

"You _used_ to say that to-morrow was a very long way off," she remarked irrelevantly.

Grayle's voice became authoritative.

"You are coming to-morrow, Sonia."

No doubt it was the old small change of flirtation which had exasperated Bertrand, and I had already been made to hear more than I relished. Stepping into the circle of dim light, I bade her good evening and asked Grayle if he had finished with his taxi.

"Hul-_lo_! I didn't know you were back in England!" she cried. "Have you been calling? I wish I'd known. You've got to come back now."

"I looked in for a moment," I said. "Now I must get home, though."

"I'll give you a lift," Grayle volunteered.

Mrs. O'Rane looked from one to the other of us, and her eyes and mouth hardened in an expression of pique.

"My society seems rather at a discount to-night," she observed.

"You'll find Beresford waiting for you," I said. "I've been talking to him, but I've got to get home now."

She turned to Grayle, and I will swear that she was watching to see if Beresford's name was a challenge.

"I must get home, too," was all that he would say. "I shall see you to-morrow."

"Oh, I meant to tell you. I can't come to-morrow," she answered with easy gravity, as though I had not heard every syllable of her earlier conversation. "Well, if you won't come in, I'll say good-night. Thanks for a most delightful evening."

Grayle and I drove in silence for half of the way. Then he asked me abruptly how I had got on in America.

For some weeks I continued to attend to my own work uninterrupted by the O'Ranes, but towards the end of the Easter term I had to make my way to Melton for the Governors' meeting. A note from O'Rane invited me to call before going back to London, and at the end of our business I invaded his rooms to find him seated, as ever, cross-legged on the floor with his head thrown back, lips parted and eyes seemingly fixed on the ceiling or on something beyond it. The room was crowded with what I can only call a cluster of boys sprawling on chairs and tables or precariously perched with linked arms on the broad mantel-piece. Some were conventionally dressed, some were in flannels, some in uniform; the majority, however, preferred a motley of khaki breeches, puttees and vivid blazers. It was the end of a field day, and a few of O'Rane's friends had dropped in to talk with him. After some moments it occurred to the boy nearest the door to ask if I wished to speak to Mr. O'Rane, and on that, to my regret, the seminar dissolved.

As the last boy clattered into the Cloisters, O'Rane felt for a box of cigarettes and asked me how I had got on in America.

"George told me you were back," he said. "Have you been round to our place?"

"I went round there almost immediately," I told him. "I say, O'Rane----"

Perhaps he guessed what was coming, for I was not allowed to finish my sentence.

"Was Beresford there?" he asked.

I hesitated for what I should have thought was an imperceptible moment; and O'Rane repeated his question.

"As a matter of fact he was," I said.

"Ah! I wish I'd known that before.... Oh, _now_ I see why you hesitated!" He gave a buoyant laugh. "I can assure you that Beresford doesn't make me in the least jealous or in the least apprehensive. I'd trust him pretty well as far as I'd trust Sonia; our outlook's so similar, we've got so much in common. Well, the authorities have got their eyes on him, and he'll find himself arrested again, if he isn't careful. And he's only alienating possible sympathisers with the stuff he's writing now. Did you read him on the typhus outbreak at Wittenburg?"

He jumped up and brought me a copy of "The Watchman" from his writing-table. Beresford's article made me very angry. A few days earlier my nephew Felix, dining with me at the Hyde Park Hotel, where I had now taken up my residence, had given me a sickening account of the epidemic in the prisoners' camp; a fuller and yet more sickening account had appeared in the Press, and from end to end of the country there burst a storm of indignation stronger than anything since the outcry against the atrocities in Belgium. At this moment and from this text Beresford, who saw red at the news of the mildest cruelty to man or animal, preached a cynical, superior sermon to prove that, if misguided fools went to war, this was the kind of thing they must expect. The object of war was to kill, and the only reason why the Germans did not massacre their prisoners was that on balance their own losses might be greater. But in scientific warfare it was unjustifiable to expect German doctors and nurses to risk their lives for the sake of preserving the enemy's. The English might; the English habitually boasted of picking up survivors after a naval engagement, but it was not war.

"God knows _I'm_ not in love with war," said O'Rane, as I flung the paper away, "but an article like that infuriates just the decent-minded people he's appealing to. Well, bad taste is not an indictable offence, but I had a hint dropped this week-end that made me think that Beresford had better go warily. We had a man dining in Common Room on Sunday whose job in life is to advise on people like him and the stuff they turn out. We got on to the Wittenburg article, and it came out that I knew the author. Well, there was nothing much the matter with that branch of Intelligence Service; they knew all about Beresford, but they didn't want to give him a free advertisement and make a martyr of him, so they tried to get hold of him under the Military Service Act and stop his mouth that way. He was ordered to join up on a certain day, so he wrote a polite letter to say that he disapproved of war and did not propose to fight. When the day came, he was well and duly put in charge of a guard and marched off to the recruiting office to be presented to the army and turned into a soldier. Before that could be done, though, the doctors had their say. To cut it short, he was rejected rather more completely than anyone's ever been rejected before--heart, lungs, knee.... One doctor told him that if he didn't live in the open air and blow himself out with milk, he'd be dead in six months. That was a week ago. The army's been cheated of its prey, and my friend of Sunday night must find another means of stopping Beresford's mouth. What the fellow must understand is that they intend to catch him this time; their temper's none the better for the little rebuff at the recruiting office. I was meaning to come up and talk to him at the next Leave-Out, but I'm afraid he may put his head in the trap before I can get at him. That's why I asked you to come and see me; I want you to take him in hand."

After the Wittenburg article I was not inclined to raise a finger on Beresford's behalf. And so I told O'Rane.

"But do you want him to die?" he asked. "If they shove him in prison and he hunger-strikes again, you may never see him alive."

"I think I could endure that," I said. "The man's mind is perverted."

"Ah, then, you mustn't treat him as if he were normal," O'Rane put in quickly. "I want you to go to him and tell him to drop the whole business. Lord knows, I've been up against authority in one form or another most of my life, but there's nothing heroic in getting shot, if you don't achieve anything by it. You can get him to see that, surely."

By this time I confess that I had become one of many who found it hard to refuse O'Rane anything; perhaps it was because he never asked for himself.

"I'll try,--as a favour to you," I said. "Though I've no idea why I should want to do you a favour. O'Rane, you're making a considerable mess of your life."

The expression on his face suddenly changed, and he became courteously unapproachable.

"Do you think we shall do any good by discussing it?" he asked.

"Every day that you let slip makes it harder to mend the breach. This term's running out. What are you going to do in the holidays?"

"I'm going home."

"To the sort of doss-house life that you led before?"

"I--suppose so."

I put on my coat and started towards the door.

"Your wife will leave you," I warned him.

"I've told her--and I believe I told you--that I'd never keep her against her will."

"My friend, you are making a great fool of yourself."

O'Rane opened the door for me, and we passed into the Cloisters.

"I didn't think we should do any good by discussing it," he said.

3

If I could have persuaded anyone else to carry O'Rane's warning to Beresford, I would have done so, but old Bertrand and George had crossed to Ireland for a week's fishing, and, when I called on Mrs. O'Rane in the hope of catching her for ten minutes in a serious mood, it was my ill-luck to choose the night before Pentyre went out to the Front. An impromptu dance was taking its noisy course, and the only satisfaction which I derived from the visit was my discovery that the estrangement was not yet common property. Indeed, Mrs. O'Rane was fortunate in that her behaviour, however outrageous, was judged and condoned by a special standard. "That's so like darling Sonia," Lady Maitland and her like would say. I took the trouble to pump young Deganway, whom I personally dislike, but even his long nose had not scented a scandal. It never seemed to dawn on Sir Roger and Lady Dainton that anything was amiss; they both disapproved of O'Rane, they both felt, without taking the trouble to disguise their feelings, that Sonia had disappointed their ambitions and was wasting her life; but with a curious timidity or survival of self-respect Mrs. O'Rane never let her own relations see that eight months after her marriage she was in effect separated from her husband.

Failing to transfer my burden to other shoulders, I drove one night to Sloane Square and ran Beresford to earth in his rooms at the top of a modest block of service flats. There was no lift, and I was out of breath and temper by the time that I had climbed eight flights of stairs and lost myself in an uncharted maze of stone-flagged passages. At last, with a stitch in my side, I found his name painted on a wall and leaned helplessly against the door, as I looked for the bell. The door yielded unexpectedly, and I found myself stumbling into an unlighted passage, where a phosphorescent rectangle hinted at a second door. Groping for the handle, I knocked and entered. Beresford was lying in an arm-chair with the injured leg on a coffin-stool and a reading lamp on a rickety oriental table behind him. In semi-darkness the room was youthfully bizarre. There were low cases, filled with paper-labelled books, running round three walls, a window with a divan under it in the fourth, Japanese silk hangings above the book-cases and praying mats insecurely scattered on an over-polished floor. The furniture consisted of a red lacquer cupboard, chest and clock; in one corner a Buddha smiled from behind folding doors with placid and baffling benevolence; a discoloured Moorish lamp hung from the middle of the ceiling with the Hand of Welcome outstretched to support it; a joss-stick in a porcelain vase on the mantel-piece smouldered fragrantly.

At the creak of the door's opening, Beresford raised himself abruptly in his chair and as quickly subsided.

"Oh, it's you," he said.

"I didn't see any bell, so I walked in," I told him. "Are you busy?"

Out of the corner of his eye he glanced at the table beside him. There was neither paper nor book to offer plausible protection.

"I didn't look for this honour," he said with a slight sneer. "I was--as a matter of fact--thinking out an article,--thing I've got to finish to-night, you know." I sniffed--disapprovingly, I fear--the close, rather sickly atmosphere and loosened my coat. "It's a few reflections on the anniversary of the 'Lusitania,'" he went on, in a tone of challenge, "pabulum for thoughtful Yanks. Do you want to see me about anything in particular? I--I've got to get this finished to-night."

His theme gave me my cue, and I furnished him with a digest of my conversation with O'Rane. He heard me out, impatiently but without protest.

"I'm sure it's very kind of you both," he said at length, "but I'm afraid it's no use. We should never have had this war, if a few other people had done what I'm doing instead of blathering about peace and disarmament in a sixpenny review, like young Oakleigh, and throwing everything to the winds the moment war was declared. I appreciate your coming, all the same----"

He pulled himself upright and limped to the lacquer cupboard, from which he took out a writing-block and pad. I was ready and anxious to leave as soon as I had delivered myself of my message, but--petty as it may seem--I resented his hunting me out of his flat quite so unceremoniously; hitherto I had perched on the arm of a chair; I now lowered myself with an obstinacy unbecoming my age into its depths.

"But surely you can see that it's no good trying to separate fighting dogs when once they've got to work? That's why George brought his paper to an end. You've got to wait for a decision of some kind."

"We reached a decision when the Germans were checked at the Marne," he yawned, pulling back his sleeve to consult the watch on his wrist.

"But that's over and done with. Any peace efforts now only have the effect of weakening our own endurance and making a German victory the one possible decision."

"But you know as well as I do that there's going to be no military decision. If they couldn't break through our line, we can't break through theirs, and I want to stop this hideous slaughter on both sides. I want to make people see that they must get Wilson or the Pope to propose terms of arbitration." The pupils of his eyes suddenly dilated. "And that's what I shall go on saying. I'm not going to be persuaded by you, I can't be intimidated by the militarists, and I won't share your responsibility for future bloodshed, I won't join in this criminal nonsense about crushing Prussian militarism--humiliating Germany until you've made sure of another war in ten years' time. I think I've told you what the next war will be like." His voice had risen almost to a scream; with an effort he controlled himself, snorted disgustedly and limped to the sofa where I had laid my hat and cane, considerately picking them up for me.

I moved towards the door. As I did so, my ears caught the sound of a low whistle, followed in the ensuing silence by a light step and the rustle of silk clothes from the flagged passage outside the front door. At last I understood why it had been left open, why the industrious Beresford was unoccupied on my arrival, why he had given me so many encouragements to retire. An unexpected sense of male freemasonry made me sorry for him. There was but the one door to the room, and already the rustle had passed from the passage outside and was audible in the dark corridor where I had fumbled for the handle twenty minutes before. Beresford stared before him with tragic eyes and parted lips; he grasped my wrist and let it fall again; then the door opened, and I could hear a double quick intake of breath.

Mrs. O'Rane was standing on the threshold in a black dress with an ermine coat open at the neck, an artificial pink rose in her hair and a cluster of them at her waist. One hand in a white glove circled with a platinum watch-bracelet rested on the finger-plate, and she smiled at Beresford demurely. The smile grew fixed and then faded when she saw who bore Beresford company; with unfeigned admiration I saw her collecting herself and preparing an offensive.

"Are you better?" she asked, coming into the room as though she were paying an afternoon call. "Good evening, Mr. Stornaway. Peter's not been at all well, and I promised to come and talk to him. I hope I'm not interrupting you; I'm rather before my time." She glanced at her watch, laid her hands on Beresford's shoulders and gently impelled him towards his chair. "Darling Peter, how often have I told you that you mustn't stand? Sit down like a good boy, put your foot up and tell me how you got on with the doctor."

She seated herself on the arm of his chair, waved me to another and threw open her coat.

"They took the blood-tests," said Beresford, gallantly trying to imitate her nonchalance. "I'm to lie up and not to work.... At least, those are the orders."

Bending over him, she touched his forehead with her lips.

"And you're going to obey them," she said.

Beresford shrugged his shoulders sullenly.

"What good will it do?" he demanded.

"It will please me," she answered promptly. "Lady Maitland says that all I want is love, ten thousand a year and my own way. I don't want you to die, Peter mine."

He looked at her and turned his head resignedly away.

"I feel sometimes I've not got a great deal to live for," he sighed.

She jumped up with a show of indignation.

"You dare say that, when I've outraged Colonel Grayle by leaving his party to come and sit with you! Never again, my Peter! If you think so little of having me here----"

"It would be better for him and more seemly for you to drop this kind of thing," I suggested.

She looked at me with her head on one side and then swung slowly round to Beresford.

"I believe he's right, you know, Peter. I come here radiating sunniness, but I only seem to depress you. Shall I give you up, baby?"

"You think that will make me less depressed?" he asked gloomily.

"I feel I'm a bad habit." Her expression lost its smile and became charged with abrupt neurotic irritability. "You've had more of my time, more of my sweetness----"

"Do you think I don't appreciate that?"

"I ought never to have let you fall in love with me. Mr. Stornaway's quite right. It's all my fault, and the sooner I end it the better. Good-bye, Peter. It was a mistake, but I'm not ungrateful. When I was miserable, when I wanted sweetness----"

Beresford jerked himself erect and caught her arm, as she tried to get up.

"You're not going?" he begged.

"Yes. And I'm never coming back."

"God in Heaven! Sonia! Don't say that!"

For perhaps the fourth time that night I picked up my hat and cane. However little I might care for Beresford, common humanity ordained that this kind of game should end.

"This fellow's an invalid," I reminded her. "You're only making him worse by exciting him. You had better let me see you home. Taxis are few and far between, and I took the precaution of telling mine to wait."

She turned her little platinum watch to the light and compared it with the clock on the mantel-piece.

"I can get a train, you know," she told me, losing all her irritability and becoming matter-of-fact. "And I hate going to bed more than anything in the world except getting up. When we had a house in Rutland Gate my first season, Lord John Carstairs who lived next door always used to say that he knew it was time for breakfast when he heard my taxi bringing me home after a ball. So nice to feel that one sometimes really does one's duty to one's neighbour; it justifies the church catechism. He was very grateful about it and, whenever I lost my latch-key, he used to come down and help me in through the fan-light. Then there was a dreadful day when I got stuck on a piece of broken glass--father's bill for fan-lights was so heavy that we couldn't take a moor that year; he always thought it was the suffragettes--and Lord John stood below in the divinest green silk pyjamas and an Austrian military cloak, I lay half-way through the fan-light, we exhausted every possible topic of conversation, including the Academy, and at last he proposed to me. I've never been so angry in my life! If he'd proposed first and talked about the Academy afterwards, nobody could have minded."

Having prattled herself into a good temper, she paused to take a cigarette from a gold case at her wrist. I reminded her that we had lost sight of the particular in the general.

"It is late," I said. "Too late for you to be calling on young bachelors and far too late to be left unchaperoned."

Her big brown eyes, usually soft and entreating, gave forth a glint of defiance.

"Dear Mr. Stornaway! If you knew how often I'd been to see Peter----"

"That makes it no better."

"You think I'm not respectable," she exclaimed with the slightest perceptible toss of the head.