Chapter FOUR: The Door Closed (2)

"You can clear out of this, George Oakleigh, and I don't advise you to come back here."

"Don't be a fool, Raney," George answered wearily.

"If _you_ hadn't put them up to it----"

"That's precisely why I did it. It was the only way of stopping you. Don't think I enjoyed it, old man." He caught O'Rane's right hand between his own two and patted it, as if he were caressing a woman. I learned afterwards that in addition to losing his sight O'Rane had been wounded in both hands. "Go and get some brandy--or wait, I'll get the brandy, while you lift Beresford on to a sofa. I've pulled my heart out of place."

Between us we made a rough bed and tried to bring the unconscious man round. His heart was fluttering like a captive bird, and for longer than I cared to count there was no other sign of life. At last the eyes opened for a moment, and I saw George relax his labours and lead O'Rane to one side.

"You'd better go to bed, old man," he said. "I'll report progress later, and we'll get him away as soon as we can. You'll only make things worse, if you're here when he comes round."

To my surprise, O'Rane allowed himself to be led away, and George returned to share our vigil. A second and third time the eyes opened; twice Beresford tried to raise himself and once his lips moved in soundless speech.

"Don't try to talk," I said, as I gave him some water to drink.

He closed his eyes, and a quarter of an hour passed before they opened again.

"W--w--why----?" he stammered suddenly.

"Don't--try--to--talk," I said again.

"But _w--why_ did he do that?" Beresford persisted with slow obstinacy. "Is he m--m--mad?"

George, Bertrand and I stared at him and then at one another.

"Don't try to talk yet," was all that I could find to say.

4

Bertrand allowed himself to be sent to bed at midnight, but George and I took it in turns to watch by Beresford's side. We had a doctor in, but the danger was past before he arrived, and his only orders were that we must report any change. Until dawn we tried sleeping for an hour and watching for an hour, but, as an opal light came to warm the rafters on the west side of the room, George sacrificed his turn to sleep and joined me on the sofa.

We looked at each other for some moments without speaking, both equally tired, dishevelled, unshaven and perplexed.

"Well?" I said at length.

"Well?" he echoed. "By the way, I promised to report progress to Raney; and I never did. I don't see what we can say at present. We've got to clear this up before he comes down."

"What do you _think_?" I asked.

George hesitated.

"The fact of the fellow's coming here at all----" he began slowly.

I nodded.

"We must wait till we can question him direct," he went on evasively.

"But, _if_ we're right, he mustn't know," I put in.

"Till everyone knows," sighed George.

Beresford stirred restlessly, and the sound of a moan silenced us.

"If--" George began again in a whisper. I nodded. "God above! if we hadn't managed to pull him off in time!"

I put my finger to my lips, as Beresford stirred again.

"He's waking."

We were sitting in a line with his head and outside his field of vision, unless he raised himself on his elbow, which at present he was incapable of doing. We saw his eyes open and close again, open and close again, the opening each time growing brisker than the faint closing, until he was strong enough to stare about him and take in two-thirds of the room. I saw wonder dawning in his face as he found himself unexpectedly in familiar surroundings; he carried his hand to his head in the effort to remember how he had got there; then his fingers mechanically slid down to his throat, and I watched him gingerly exploring certain purple marks. Abruptly his eyes closed for another long quiescence, but he was gaining strength and at the next opening he dragged himself unsteadily to a sitting posture, clapped both hands to his temples and slowly turned his head until he had brought the whole room under observation.

"Where's Sonia?" he demanded abruptly, looking at me with flickering eyelids.

"She's not here at the moment," I answered.

He stared uncomprehendingly until a pain at the bruised back of his head made him wince and despatch one hand to assess the danger.

"How long----" He winced again. "How long have I been here?"

"Since last night," I told him. "You had a fall."

He continued to stare at me without comprehension and then grew suddenly indignant.

"Had a fall?" he repeated. "I _didn't_ have a fall. What d'you mean? It's all coming back to me now. I was dining--I don't know where I was dining, but afterwards I thought I'd come round and see Sonia.... Why did O'Rane attack me like that? Was he mad?"

George's foot pressed lightly against mine.

"What do you mean--'attack' you?" he asked with fine simulation of surprise.

"He attacked me," Beresford persisted doggedly. "He knocked me down." His eyes closed once more. "Where's Sonia?" he asked again.

"She's staying with friends," George answered. "I say, I shouldn't talk too much, if I were you. You're looking rather cheap, and I hear you've been pretty bad."

For the first time Beresford was able to twist his features into a malevolent grin.

"I'm putting on weight again now," he boasted. "You'd look cheap, if you'd gone through what I have."

"How long were you in prison?" I asked.

Beresford sighed and shook his head.

"I don't know. I was unconscious for some days at the end. They arrested me on the third, the trial was on--I forget...." He lowered himself till he was lying full length on the sofa.

"They arrested you on the fourth, you say," I began with a glance at George.

"The third. My birthday," he corrected me, caressing his bruised throat with one hand. "There was a ring at the bell, and I got out of bed and went to the door, expecting to find the postman. Instead of that, there was an inspector with a warrant. He asked whether I was Mr. Peter Beresford, read me the warrant. He wouldn't let me shave, I remember; I suppose he was afraid I might cut my throat; and I was only allowed to have a bath on condition that he was in the room. I don't know which was the more embarrassed...."

He paused to laugh feebly, and I withdrew to the window and checked his date by my engagement book. George raised his eyebrows to me and at my nod tiptoed to the door and made his way to O'Rane's room.

"What _happened_ last night?" Beresford demanded, covering his eyes with the hand that had been feeling his throat and rubbing his bruised head with the other. "Was everyone drunk?"

"I can't quite explain now," I said.

Whether O'Rane had been to bed or not, he was washed and shaved, dressed and booted, when George went into his room at five o'clock. Beresford was reported out of danger, and after some hesitation George asked again to be given the fullest account of O'Rane's unexpected return two months before.

"I'll tell you my reason now," he said, as O'Rane's expression hardened. "I want to make certain--I'm _advocatus diaboli_,--I want your evidence that it was Beresford at all."

"Evidence? I _heard_ him, she admitted it! Who else could it be? And he comes back here----"

"Steady on, Raney, this is no way to conduct a trial. I'm going to get Stornaway up here, if I can, and we're going into this very thoroughly."

Beresford was sleeping so tranquilly that I left him without compunction. Upstairs the court of enquiry had been joined by Bertrand in pyjamas, dressing-gown, and slippers; George was sitting on the bed with a blotter and writing-pad on his knee, O'Rane walked to and fro with the noiseless tread of a cat. We were all grey-faced and haggard in the diamond, five-o'clock-in-the-morning light. I found myself a chair, and the proceedings opened with a repetition of the story which Bertrand had given me as second-hand. It was more temperate and less dramatic, as O'Rane told it two months after the events; it was slightly fuller, but in no respect did it vary substantially from the earlier account.

"I'm not a lawyer." George said at the end, looking up from his notes, "whether you'd get a divorce on that, assuming you wanted one ..." he added quickly, as O'Rane's eyes narrowed. "We haven't finished yet, though. You say Sonia admitted it?"

O'Rane nodded and then seemed to repent his nod.

"She didn't _deny_ it," he said to correct himself. "I say, you fellows don't want me to go into this part of it, do you? It's not very pleasant for me. I'll just tell you that I _assumed_ it was Beresford----"

"Why did you assume it?" I interrupted.

"She was very intimate with him. She used to talk--I thought it was in joke, of course, a silly joke that I didn't like--she used to talk about going off and living with him, if we ever had a disagreement about anything. Besides, I'd heard him hopping out of here and down the stairs on one leg. I naturally assumed.... And she accepted it. I--I _can't_ tell you what we said to each other, but it was never in doubt, it never _has_ been in doubt till this moment."

George pursed up his mouth and shook his head reflectively.

"This is only telling us what the sergeant said," he observed. "However, let's get every shred of evidence before we let Beresford open."

He looked enquiringly at his uncle, who shrugged his shoulders a little impatiently.

"It's not _evidence_," Bertrand began. "I'm old-fashioned, I daresay I attach too much importance to trifles; I can only give you what I've seen and heard."

It was indeed not direct evidence, it was not even circumstantial evidence. Mrs. O'Rane had been very intimate with Beresford; when he was lying ill at "The Sanctuary," she would sit stroking his hand; they sometimes remained together until a very late hour, and she thought nothing of kissing him good-night. On his side Beresford made no secret of his infatuation.

"Neither made any secret of anything!" growled Bertrand, thumping his fist on his knee.... "I suppose it's the modern method.... I don't understand it. That's why I say my evidence is no use. If you get up and tell them they've no business to be kissing, they'll retort that it was all open and above-board, that I was present as often as not.... And it's true. I used to come in late from the House, I used to come in at all hours when I was on Special Constable duty; there they were, billing and cooing and not in the least embarrassed by me. You'd have said they rather liked an audience."

The unhappy O'Rane was wincing at every sneer or word of disapproval. Two months before he would have turned it off with a laugh, as everyone else did, and protested that it was Sonia's way and that we did not know Sonia.... But, if he could have been induced to speak frankly, he would probably have agreed with me that some of his wife's friends and a good deal of his wife's behaviour were meretricious.

"I'd better add my testimony, while we're about it," I said. The boy winced again, and I could see him bracing himself.

I told him how at his request I had called on Beresford to warn him against running his head any further into the trap which was being laid for him. I described his obvious anxiety to get rid of me, the embarrassment of our meeting, when Mrs. O'Rane came in, her light-hearted assurance that I should be _really_ shocked, or something of the kind, if I knew how often she had visited her patient at such an hour. It was not pleasant work, but I spared O'Rane nothing that my memory retained.

At the end George crumpled his notes into a ball and rose from the bed with a yawn of mental and physical exhaustion.

"As I said, I'm not a lawyer," he observed. "If Raney were bringing a petition, there's a hundred-to-one chance in favour of his getting a decree; I suppose there's a six-to-four chance on circumstantial evidence that you could bring the charge of misconduct home to Beresford." He paused to frown in perplexity, unconscious that the word "misconduct" had cut O'Rane like a lash across the face. "If it weren't for last night," he muttered. "It's--almost incomprehensible. Unless he came to make a clean breast of it, to tell Raney to divorce her and be damned...."

O'Rane stopped short in his cat-like prowl and faced us.

"The only thing is to see Beresford," he said. "You'd better come with me. I can tell something from his voice, but of course I can't see him. Watch his mouth, don't look at his eyes; it's the mouth that gives a man away, when he's lying."

The library was stale with cigar-smoke after our long vigil. Beresford was asleep, but the noise of our feet roused him, and he sat up blinking at O'Rane, who was a pace before the rest of us.

"Why did you attack me last night?" he demanded the moment that we were in sight.

O'Rane came to a standstill with his hands in his pockets, swaying slightly from heel to toe.

"We'll go into that in a moment, if you don't mind," was the answer. "What was your motive in coming here?"

I had Beresford under vigilant scrutiny, and his surprise was real or uncommonly well assumed.

"To see Sonia, of course," he replied. "I didn't know you were at home. Do you usually try to _murder_ people who come to see her?" he demanded with weak truculence. "I know, of course, that you neglect her and ill-treat her yourself."

O'Rane rocked contemplatively to and fro, nodding thoughtfully to himself.

"When did you last see my wife?" he asked suddenly.

"I can't tell you."

"You've got to tell me, Beresford."

"I'm afraid I can't. I spent six weeks in prison and I've had another fortnight getting convalescent. It was some time before that."

"You have got to tell me the day, the hour and the place."

Beresford lay back with his mouth obstinately shut.

"Come along!" O'Rane cried.

"I can't and I won't. It was some time shortly before I was arrested. If you want to find out any more, you can ask her."

I refreshed my memory with a glance at my pocket-book.

"You were arrested on the third of May, you told me," I said. "Going back three weeks, I can definitely trace one occasion on which you met Mrs. O'Rane----"

Beresford's pale face suddenly flushed.

"If you're going to drag in your foul-minded suspicions about that," he cried, "have the decency to wait till Sonia's here."

"I told you that Mrs. O'Rane was away," I reminded him. Then I took O'Rane by the arm. "I want to have a word with you."

I was too tired to labour upstairs again, and we could be by ourselves outside. There was a haze over the river, rising almost before my eyes, as the sun climbed higher. A succession of young factory girls hurried along the Embankment on their way to work; one or two early carts rumbled over the cobble-stones in the neighbouring streets, and a chain of three black barges glided noiselessly towards Westminster Bridge. All else was still. I caught sight of my dusty boots, the cigar-ash on my waistcoat and a pair of grimy hands,--the whole desecrating the clean clarity of the summer morning.

"Well?" said O'Rane.

I put my arm through his and walked towards the river.

"I'm prepared to bet that the last time Beresford saw your wife was when I spoiled their _tête-à-tête_ in his rooms," I said. "He doesn't know I've told you already and he's in dread that I'm going to. Didn't you feel that? And it's not that he's afraid of you--I don't think he's physically afraid of anyone;--he doesn't want you to know that she was foolish enough to come to his rooms at such an hour."

O'Rane disengaged his arm and rested his elbows on the parapet and his chin on his hands.

"This was three weeks--before?" he asked.

"I don't believe he's met her since. I don't believe it _was_ him."

He shook his head slowly.

"I couldn't see him, of course; I've told you I didn't get near enough to touch him, but I heard him going across the room and down the stairs on one leg. You aren't in a mood then to weigh your suspicions very judicially.... I taxed Sonia with it. My God! I can't go through it again, we were both of us out of our minds, I don't know what we said! But I assumed it was Beresford--I remember I kept on using his name. She never denied it. If it wasn't Beresford ...?"

"Let's first of all establish whether it was Beresford," I suggested.

He hesitated a moment longer and then pulled himself abruptly erect, took my arm and walked quickly back to the house. Bertrand and George, a pair of strangely disreputable figures, were dozing in arm-chairs; Beresford had his eyes open and fixed on us the moment we were inside the room.

"You wanted to know a few minutes ago why I attacked you," began O'Rane. "I'm going to tell you, but I should like to ask one question first. Are you aware that my wife is no longer here?"

"So Stornaway told me--twice," Beresford answered wearily.

"Do you know she's--left me?"

"I'm not surprised. I'm only surprised she ever came back. I don't know why she ever married you."

O'Rane paused to steady himself.

"I believed until recently that she had left me for you," he went on. "Now you can understand, perhaps, why I behaved as I did last night. I can't offer any apology worth having."

As he stopped speaking, he held out his hand almost timidly. Beresford stared at it contemptuously for a moment; then his cheeks flushed, and he took it.

"You can imagine I don't want this to go any further," said O'Rane in a matter-of-fact voice.

Beresford pulled him close to the couch.

"I--I don't think I'm there yet," he whispered. "Say it all over again, will you? Sonia's left you? She used to say she was going to, but that was only to tease you."

O'Rane's lips were quivering, and his voice trembled.

"I'm afraid it's all grim earnest," he said.

"She's left you? O'Rane, she couldn't! She loved you so much! I--I often thought you didn't treat her properly, you were frightfully unsympathetic sometimes, but there was nothing you could do to force her to this!"

Bertrand roused himself to control the excitement of Beresford's voice, which was beginning to react on O'Rane.

"Deal with realities, young man," he grunted. "The facts are as stated."

Beresford disregarded him and turned to O'Rane.

"But where is she?"

"We don't know."

"You don't know who she's with?" His face became suddenly more hopeful. "You've no _proof_ that she's with anyone? She went away once before, remember."

A smothered sigh broke from O'Rane.

"I think I may say positively that she's with someone. She's not merely staying with friends. I'm afraid I thought it was you and I must beg you to forgive me."

He tried to smile and again held out his hand.

"You needn't have thought it was me, O'Rane," said Beresford quietly.

"No. But I only heard a lame man hopping away on one leg. And I was seeing red."

"But you could both of you trust me! If there'd been a moment's danger, I'd never have seen Sonia again. I'm not the only lame man in London. You might have picked on Grayle before me, if she hadn't hated him so much."

O'Rane covered his eyes with his hand.

"I thought of you both," he said. "When I heard the man going short on one leg, I felt certain that it must be one of you.... It's extraordinary how quickly you think at a time like that. I remember wondering whether I should be equal to tackling Grayle, if it were him.... Then I knew it couldn't be, because he'd insulted Sonia in some restaurant, and they'd had a row. Besides, he was in France at the time. And so I decided that it must be you. I'm sorry. You couldn't expect me to behave quite--dispassionately, could you? I'm only glad it has been cleared up. I'm afraid you'll have to stay with me again till we've patched up last night's damage. You can understand that for Sonia's sake this mustn't be talked about. When people want to know where she is, I--I usually say she's staying away and I--don't--quite know--when she's coming back...."

5

At the end of August I contrived a holiday for myself on the north coast of Cornwall, where Lady Pentyre had been good enough to offer me a house. Yolande and her husband accompanied me, and on a passing impulse I pressed O'Rane to join us. We could have given him society and some kind of mental distraction, but the House was still sitting, when I left London, and he made this an excuse for declining. In his place George came for a week, to be followed by several of Yolande's colleagues and friends, whom she invited--I am fairly sure--less for themselves than for the chance of giving an inexpensive holiday to some exceedingly tired women.

It was a fortnight of pure enchantment. We rose at eight and walked over hot, spongy turf to the precipitous cliff-path which led us to our favourite bathing-place in our chosen bay. We bobbed and basked in a sea of liquid sapphire under a blazing sun and only left the water when hunger drove us home. Through long, happy mornings all four of us scrambled like children over the rocks, in and out of unexpected pools, slipping on treacherous bunches of sea-weed and cutting our feet on the cones of a mollusc's shell. We were always so wet and unpresentable by luncheon-time that there was nothing for it but to bathe again and put on dry clothes, which made us late and ravenous, so that we gorged ourselves on dishes which were becoming unprocurable in London and then lay sleeping repletely or glancing at the papers until it was time for another walk among the gorse and heather, a last descent to the foreshore where the Atlantic lay drowsy under the setting sun, creaming and lapping the black and dun rocks.

The papers, when we mustered energy to read them, brought us better news each day. Pressing north and west, the Italian and Russian armies were taking their revenge for the damaging thrust which each had lately sustained, and Austria-Hungary, squeezed simultaneously on two sides, had to adopt the unwelcome and desperate expedient of handing over the eastern troops to German command. The precarious hold on Salonica was strengthened by the safe landing of reinforcements, and, before we left in September, Roumania had thrown in her lot with the Allies.

Even in London, where for two years the soldiers on leave from any front had found individual self-depression and national self-depreciation flourishing most luxuriantly, became infected with brief optimism. In September a report from General Headquarters announced that an infantry advance had been assisted by a mysterious new mechanism that rolled its uncouth way imperviously through the rain of bullets and shrapnel which poured on to its armoured sides, some land battleship which dropped unconcernedly into craters and climbed as unconcernedly over fortifications and chance _débris_ of houses, an invention--the first of British initiative in the war--that bestrode enemy trenches and spattered a hail of death on either hand, a good-humoured steel giant that convulsed the troops until they held their sides and forgot to advance, a something, in fine, that the English soldier with his genius for happy and meaningless nicknames decided to call a "tank."

Old Bertrand, who had a pretentious theory to explain each new set of facts, enunciated a new art of war with the text "Machines _versus_ Men;" the rifle-man to the savage with a spear in his hand was as the machine-gun to the rifle-man--or the tank to the machine-gun. War had been revolutionised, and our old calculations of effectives and losses must go by the board.

The mood of optimism passed as quickly as it had come. Hardly had we finished triumphing over German machine-guns with our tanks, overcoming the Zeppelin menace with our anti-aircraft guns--there was smart sport in October, amounting almost to a battue,--when the autumn campaign ended and we settled down to count the cost and prepare for a third winter. The figures of our losses made the Somme a Pyrrhic victory, and there was troubled wonder where the new drafts were to be found. Ireland, which had been left in suspect and timid neglect--like a dog which has snapped once and may snap again, but is quiet for the moment--became once more a public interest as a candidate for conscription. And ships were mysteriously scarce. And food prices were exorbitant. And the Government was tired, lethargic, void of initiative....

"Thank God! my duty as a citizen is done when I've paid my taxes!" Bertrand Oakleigh exclaimed one night at the House. "I'm glad I'm not a farmer, I'm glad I'm not mixed up with industry. I should be unpatriotic if I didn't double my output of foodstuffs and unpatriotic if I kept one potential piece of cannon-fodder to grow 'em; I'm a pro-German if I manufacture for export to keep up the foreign exchanges--Victory _versus_ Trade!--and Lord knows what I am if I don't cheerfully pay taxes on a business I've had to close down. If I lose money, nobody sympathises; if I make any, I'm called a profiteer, and someone takes it away from me.... Curious how a phrase or an abusive nickname dispenses the people of this country from using such wits as a niggardly Providence has given them! You've only to whisper something about a 'hidden hand,' and a crowded meeting of City men will sit and hypnotise themselves into thinking that there's an active service of secret agents--with poor Haldane as Director General--quietly penetrating our social life and paralysing our efforts in the war. Hidden hand! Pacifist--they can't even throw their absurdities into decent English! Profiteer! We're so astonishingly petty as a nation! I wonder if the same thing's being reproduced in all other countries--the old '_Nous sommes trahis_' nonsense.... They're all governments of old men, too,--and they're tired--and no one outside knows what they've had to go through--and everybody's nerves are snapping. I'm sometimes surprised that these fellows have lasted so long, but I think their days are numbered. If you throw your mind back, you'll remember a phase when Asquith's worst political enemies said he was indispensable, the only Prime Minister, the one man who could hold the Government and the country together. You don't hear that now; we've outgrown that phase. Now people are openly saying that he's not master in his own house, that we shall never win the war so long as he's in the saddle, that they'll turn him out the moment they can find someone to put in his place.... Lloyd-George would be in power to-day, if his friends in Fleet Street could be sure that he wouldn't hanky-panky with the Army.... To read the papers, you'd think it was the cumulative effect of reverses like Gallipoli and Mesopotamia, the shortage of food, and the fact that we've done nothing to increase our home production, and our failure to grapple with submarines. It's deeper and blinder than that.... It's because the Government _hasn't won the war_ that it will fail; and any new Prime Minister will fall in exactly the same way, unless he can win it. Results! results! That mountebank Grayle is quite right; he represents average, unthinking, third-rate, violent opinion, and that opinion's becoming articulate. As I've told you before, I don't think a change will do any good, because we set ourselves too big a task, we started on too high a moral plane. I suppose I should be called a '_pacifist_' if I suggested that that phase was over and that we'd better moderate our tone before we're compelled to."

The particular non-party War Committee headed by Grayle was waking to activity after its suspended animation during the summer campaign. In his paper, in conversation at the Club and still more in the Smoking Room of the House he was calling for more vigour in administration.... The House of Commons position was curious, he informed me; if he could be sure of a certain number of votes--he would not trouble me with the figures,--we could have a ministry after our own heart. There followed an interval of perhaps five minutes, in which I allowed him to do all the talking. The Unionist members of the Coalition were sick and tired of this eternal "Wait and See;" there would be a secession the moment that a better alternative government had been sketched out; you had only to call a Unionist party meeting and put it to 'em straight. But you didn't want to take an unnecessary toss, you couldn't afford to supply powder and shot to rags like the "Daily News," which were always talking about an intrigue and saying that no government could exist with the Germans in front and back-stabbers behind....

"Nothing's settled yet," he told me after considering academically the offices for which we were both fitted. "But you know the constitutional theory; you're not justified in upsetting a government unless you're prepared to go to Buckingham Palace and take on the job of forming a new administration. Excuse me! I want to have a word with Oakleigh."

The following day I asked Bertrand under what guise the devil had appeared to him, but he had evidently been less patient.

"Grayle went away with a flea in his ear," he grunted. "He's been worrying me so long that I had to stop it once and for all. God knows, I don't care about this ministry; I shouldn't have much faith in any ministry formed out of the present House--the best talent's already on the Treasury Bench--and I don't believe in bringing in your superman from outside--the House of Commons can't be learned in a night, and even a government department needs study. What I object to in Grayle is his picking on _me_ as one of his fifty or sixty new allies; you can picture him buzzing round with his fellow-conspirators--'Shall we try Oakleigh and Stornaway? They're solid, moderate, old members--highly respected. They don't add anything to the common stock, of course, but they carry more weight than the men who are always talking and playing an active part. We might try them, their names would look well on the prospectus--inspire confidence, you know.'" He chuckled maliciously. "I suppose I'm getting very old, but I can't stand young men's conceit in the way I once did. Grayle's like a boy just down from Oxford, doing everything for the first time and imagining that no one's ever done it before. Does he _really_ think this is the first political intrigue in history? I recommended him a course of Disraeli's novels--to improve his technique. Good God! I was playing this game of detaching wobblers and handing out offices that were not in my gift and mobilising the solid, moderate, highly respected old members under _Gladstone_! I toiled and schemed to keep the Liberal Party out of Rosebery's hands; I was making new parties and pigeon-holing possible cabinets all through the Morley-Harcourt days, I was intriguing to keep C.-B. in command when the Liberal Leaguers intrigued to kick him into the Lords. I've been through it all; and be hanged if I didn't do it better than Grayle!"

Perhaps my manner was too sympathetic. Certainly I was not to escape so easily as Bertrand had done, for Grayle met me leaving the House and offered to drop me on his way home. I accepted because I was nominally amicable with him, because I did not want a wet walk to my hotel and because I could not decently refuse. He talked persuasively the whole way home and was obviously chagrined when I did not invite him into my rooms. He rang me up at breakfast next day and tried to secure my presence at luncheon; once at my office in St. James' Street, once in my department, and once again, when I was tranquilly dining with the Maitlands, I was called to the telephone with an apologetic but urgent request that I would arrange a time when Grayle could have five minutes' conversation with me.

My position was simple and clear. I would be neither bribed nor bullied into any kind of office, I would give no blank cheque for the future to Grayle or anyone else, but I should no doubt be found voting with him against the Government--or with the Government against him--as I had done in the past, judging every division on its merits. A note on my dressing-table informed me that Colonel Grayle had telephoned from the House at eleven.... I picked up my hat, buttoned my coat again and turned my steps towards Milford Square; a far more patient man might be excused for thinking that Grayle was making a nuisance of himself.

The servant who opened the door informed me that Colonel Grayle was out.

"I'll wait," I said. "I've got to see him."

"But he's out of town, sir. He didn't say where he was going or when he'd be back. He very often goes away like that."

The man was sleek of appearance and glib of speech, well-experienced, I thought, in shutting the door to people whom his master did not wish to see. But I did not fall within that category, and Grayle had plagued me sufficiently to justify reprisals.

"When did he go away?" I asked.

"Before dinner, sir."

"Ah, then he must have changed his plans," I said. "He telephoned to me from the House half an hour ago; he's been trying to get hold of me all day, but this is the first opportunity I've had. Is Mr. Bannerman in? If so, I'll talk to him till Colonel Grayle comes in."

"Mr. Bannerman has moved into rooms of his own," the servant told me, yielding ground reluctantly.

I walked into Grayle's smoking-room and left the man to warn him that I was in effective occupation and that he must yield to the inevitable and come down to see me, if he were already at home, or submit to a few minutes of my company when he returned. A moment later I saw that he could not yet have come back from the House, as a pile of letters awaited him on the table and the whiskey and soda set out for his refreshment were untouched. "A model servant," I said to myself, "to have everything ready when you do not expect your master home." I mixed myself a drink and was preparing to light a cigar when I found that I was without matches. On going into the hall, I found my sleek, glib friend mounting guard, as though he expected me to slip out with my pockets full of silver.

He produced a box of matches and struck one for me. As I began to light my cigar, a taxi drove into the square and drew up opposite the house.

"What name shall I tell Colonel Grayle?" asked the servant, as he held open the smoking-room door for me.

Before I had time to answer, I heard a latch-key grating in the lock; the servant moved forward and stopped irresolutely; then the door opened to admit Mrs. O'Rane. Our eyes met for a moment, and for the first time since I had known her I saw her out of countenance. In another moment it was all over, for I had backed into the smoking-room and pushed the door closed. I heard her clear, rather high voice asking whether Colonel Grayle was home yet. The servant murmured something in reply, and I caught the sound of his footsteps growing fainter along the flagged passage. Mrs. O'Rane turned the handle and came in to me, once more self-possessed and in control of herself; there was neither embarrassment nor defiance in her manner; she greeted me as she had once before greeted me, when I first met her at "The Sanctuary."

"I hope you've not been waiting long," she said. "Vincent's usually home by this time. There's not an all-night sitting or anything, is there?"

"Not so far as I know," I answered. "Mrs. O'Rane, I don't think I'll stay any longer."

She looked at my newly lighted cigar and untouched whiskey and soda.

"It's just as you like," she said. "It seems a pity to run away without seeing him, though. I presume you came to see him and not me?"

"I came to see him. I didn't know you were here."

"But I've been here the whole time. Didn't you know that?"

"We didn't."

"But where else was I likely to be?"

"Your husband never suspected that Grayle had any hand in it. I fancy you and Grayle did your best not to enlighten him. You let him think it was another man, and Grayle gave an alibi. I suppose it was all right; I'm not versed in the ethics of the thing."

I made a step towards the door, but Mrs. O'Rane was in my way.

"Yes, I don't know why Vincent said that," she observed reflectively. "Unless he thought that nobody was ever going to know.... But I'm not _quite_ so abandoned as that. I warned you all, I told you my old married life was over; and I was free to start another. As for not enlightening anybody, it's not my business to correct all the mistakes people choose to make.... Now that you've been here, you can report everything you've seen. _I'm_ not hiding anything, and you can say I'm not ashamed of what I've done and I'm quite prepared for all the world to know. He can divorce me as soon as he likes."

The discussion did not make me want to stay any longer in the house, and I had to ask her to let me pass.

"You can tell him that," she added carelessly.

"I don't know that he contemplates divorcing you," I said. "He's never mentioned the subject."

"But he'll have to. He can't go on being nominally married to me, when I'm--well ..."

"Are you sure you don't mean that your own position will be a shade less discreditable when Grayle marries you?" I asked. "Frankly, you haven't been thinking of your husband very much, have you?"

She sighed impatiently.

"You will keep on speaking of him as my husband."

"He is."

"Until he divorces me."

"Unless he divorces you," I substituted.