Sonia: Between Two Worlds

by Stephen McKenna

CHAPTER VI THE YEARS OF CARNIVAL

"If, drunk with sight of power, we loose

Wild tongues that have not thee in awe—

Such boasting as the Gentiles use

Or lesser breeds without the Law—

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,

Lest we forget, lest we forget!"

Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."

Le Roy est mort; vive le Roy!

King Edward was mourned a twelvemonth, and in the spring of the following year all sorts and conditions of men gathered to do honour to his successor. Before the first hammer beat on the first Coronation stand, the invasion of London had begun: from Channel to Tweed ran a whisper of social schemings—a daughter's presentation, a ball, a house in town for the Season. Our solid, self-conscious race, never gay for gaiety's sake, reached out and grasped the excuse for innocent dissipation. The last five years had been so charged with political acrimony, the world had worked itself into so great a passion over the Budgets and Second Chambers. Three months respite was a prospect alluring to the straitest Puritan.

My uncle Bertrand had hoped that a year of mourning would tempt his countrymen to regard politics as a serious study rather than a pretext for vulgar abuse. Seldom have I watched the death of a vainer hope, for the world flung off its black clothes and prepared for carnival. Apaches plotted new raids, strange-tongued provincials rubbed shoulders with American tourists, Colonial Prime Ministers jostled you in the streets or appropriated your favorite table at the restaurants.

For a time I sought refuge in the Club—and found it was no refuge. Members were balloting for seats to view the procession or discussing Adolf Erckmann's prospects in the Coronation Honours List. Erckmann himself was very prominent, and the capture of London, which he largely effected in the next three or four years, started with his acquisition of a title. Perhaps he tried to capture the Eclectic Club—I certainly remember being asked to blackball three of his candidates. If so, he failed; the most mediaeval club in the world was strong to resist the most modern social impresario. And this I regard with satisfaction when I consider, in moments of sombre retrospection, how the tone of England has become modernized in the last half generation. Sir John Woburn and the Press Combine modernized journalism; Vandale, Bendix and Trosser modernized the House of Commons, as anyone will agree who recalls the three scandals associated with their names—squalid, financial scandals, lacking the scale and dignity of Central American corruption; and Erckmann modernized London Society. It was a brilliant, gaudy thing when he left it, yet I almost preferred the old state when the loudest voice and longest purse did not necessarily go the furthest.

From time to time I saw something of his conquering march. My mother and sister came over for the Coronation, and we suffered the season patiently. Of course we gave a ball; equally 'of course,' it was at the Ritz, for the Ritz at this time was an article of faith. If a hostess wanted men, she must entertain there; if a man wanted supper, he must secure an invitation by hook or by crook—or else walk in without it.

"Otherwise you get no food," as my barbarian young cousin, Greville Hunter-Oakleigh, confessed to me one night at the Monagasc Minister's ball in Grosvenor Gardens. He had danced dutifully with "all the right people," and was now going on with Violet, Summertown and two brother officers in search of supper. Greville and Violet had been invited; Summertown issued invitations to the others on the principle that hostesses were always glad of a few extra men.

"You're so damned William-and-Maryish," he complained, when I refused to come without a card. "If you won't, you won't, but they're frightfully rich and they'll do you awfully well. So long. We shall be back in a couple of hours."

He hurried away, and I set myself to protect my sister Beryl from Lady Ullswater, who was marking her down as a new-comer and angling for the privilege of chaperoning her. Before our ball took place I had an offer of the whole Brigade from John Ashwell, but we thought it would be amusing to make our own arrangements. A number of people strayed in without being asked, but this was in some sense balanced by our being able to refuse invitations to a host of Erckmann's protégés.

Erckmann himself—Sir Adolf, as he became—we were compelled to invite out of compliment to Lady Dainton. For some time her husband had been observable at the Eclectic Club, lunching with Erckmann and consuming an amount of champagne and Corona cigars that argued business discussion. There followed an issue of new companies with the name of Sir Roger Dainton, Bart., M.P., on the prospectus; later I met Erckmann at dinner in Rutland Gate; later still the Daintons took a moor. It was one of those rare business associations in which everyone secured what he wanted. I myself, a mere private in a stage army, was invited to join a party for Ober-Ammergau, and, if I declined to witness a Passion Play in Erckmann's company, my refusal was prompted less by social prejudice than by superstitious scruple.

At first I was mildly surprised to find the Daintons so much in public so soon after Sonia's engagement had been broken off; but the longer I lived in London the more people I found skirmishing to get away from other people and on one occasion in Coronation week, I remember seeing Loring, Crabtree, O'Rane and Sonia under the same roof. In practice, however, they kept apart without undue contrivance. Crabtree became engaged at this time to Mrs. Pauncefote, widow of the Staffordshire brewer and a woman some eleven years his senior; he was now in a position to woo the electors of the Brinton Division, and little was seen of him in London. O'Rane, on the rare occasions when I met him hurrying to or from the Continent, diving into the Conservative Central Office or disappearing into the industrial north, maintained an attitude of mystery and would tell me nothing of his movements. He was incessantly restless and as self-absorbed as ever, but the lines of his old, clear-cut scheme of life had lost something of their sharpness. His breach with the past seemed almost complete, marked in black and white—or so I fancied—by a letter I had given him to read twelve months before at the Charing Cross Hotel. At the end of the season he and Sonia met at the Embassy Ball; they bowed and passed on. Then his eyes sought mine as though wondering what were my thoughts. I made some comment on her dress; he made no answering comment at all.

As for Loring, I hardly saw him from the spring of 1911, when he hurried abroad, to the spring of 1914, when he returned. As a matter of form he came back for the Coronation, but did not stay an hour more than was necessary. Summertown, never a veracious chronicler, worked up a picturesque story of the yacht moored by Hungerford Bridge, and its owner changing out of his robes as he drove down the Embankment and dropping his coronet into the river in his haste to get away from England. I have but a confused idea where he went during those three years, and the question is immaterial. The important thing is that he was absent from London at a time when London was almost oppressively full of Sonia Dainton.

She was on the defensive when we first met, as though expecting me to blame her for the broken engagement. When, as was natural, I said nothing, she developed a curious recklessness and gave me to understand that, whosever the fault, she did not care a snap of the fingers for the consequences. It was partly pose, I think, and partly a very modern refusal to allow her feelings to be stirred below the surface, partly also the manner and spirit of her surroundings. I always fancy I saw a change in her from the day when Lady Dainton relaxed her social severity and opened her doors to Erckmann and his cortège. With her catchwords, her volubility and over-ready laugh, something of hysteria seemed to have crept into her life. Whatever the entertainment, she was among the first to arrive and the last to go, dancing hard, supping heartily, talking incessantly, laughing gustily and smoking with fine abandon. Hourly new excitement, prostration, forgetfulness—that seemed the formula.

"What happens on Sundays, Sonia?" I once asked her, when we met for supper and a discussion of our day's work.

"I take laudanum," was the answer.

It was true in spirit; it may even have been true in fact. I was often reminded of a chorus girl I once saw in undergraduate days at a Covent Garden Ball, whirling through the night—like Sonia—from one till three, and at four o'clock lying asleep in a box with her cheek on her arm, oblivious and—I hope—happy; in any case too weary to dream what the future might hold. Looking back on the four years of carnival that ended with the war, I seem to find in Sonia the embodiment of the age's spirit.

"You know how that sort of thing ends, I suppose?" I took occasion to ask.

"Oh, don't be heavy, George!" she exclaimed impatiently. "We can only die once."

"To some extent we can postpone the date," I suggested.

"Who wants to? A short life and a merry one. This is a dull show, you know. How do you come to be here?"

"My name was gleaned from an obsolete work of reference," I said, producing a card with 'M.P.' on it. "And you?"

"Oh, I wasn't selected at all. Fatty Webster smuggled me in." She dropped her voice confidentially. "George, this is a deadly secret. Mrs. Marsden, who's responsible for this—this funeral, told mother she wanted to break down the exclusiveness of London Society——"

"Many taunts have been hurled at that indeterminate class," I observed. "No one ever called it exclusive before."

"It's exclusive if you're from Yorkshire, like her, with a perfectly poisonous taste in dress. Well, all the girls come from Highgate Ponds—Lord Summertown told me so——"

"He ought to know," I said.

"And all the men from Turnham Green. You know, where the buses come from. Fatty Webster heard what it was going to be like, so he and Sam and Lord Summertown went off to Fatty's rooms in Albemarle Street; they've changed into corduroys and red handkerchiefs, and they're pulling up Piccadilly in solid chunks with pickaxes. It's the greatest fun in life. I went to see them half an hour ago. They've got lanterns and ropes and things, and they're doing frightful damage. And the best of it is that it's pouring with rain and none of the cars can get to either door."

"As a law-abiding citizen, I think it's my duty to warn the police," I said.

"Oh, you mustn't! You'll get Sam into a frightful row."

"That I don't mind if Webster spends a night in the cells. Sonia, he's a dreadful young man. Where did you find him?"

"He's a friend of Sir Adolf's. He's rather a sport, really, and enormously rich."

"He was richer a week ago."

"You mean before the breach of promise case? I suppose so. Honestly, if Fatty proposed to me, I should slap his face, but if he had the presumption to back out of it—my word!"

"He's too much like the domestic pig," I objected.

"Oh, he's quite harmless and very useful. He cadged me an invitation for the Embassy Ball. Are you going?"

"I've been invited," I said.

There the subject dropped, for I had promised to go with O'Rane and was not sure how he would take the news that Sonia also was to be present. Still in the enigmatic mood, he shrugged his shoulders and informed me that his acceptance had gone forth, and he proposed to abide by it. I raised no further objection as the ball promised to be amusing. It was a limited liability entertainment, floated by a number of diplomatic underlings, and, as some difficulty was experienced in securing invitations, there was an orgy of subterfuge, intrigue and bribery on the part of aspirants. One of the Russian attachés confided to me that he could have lunched and dined in four different places every day after the announcement was made in the Press and stayed in six several houses for Goodwood. There was considerable overlapping, and, if some received no invitations, others received many. O'Rane, who had known more Ambassadors before he was five than most men meet in a lifetime, had cards sent him from three Embassies and four Legations. It is perhaps superfluous to mention that of these the Austrian was not one.

If there be any justification for such a ball, it surely lies in a certain brilliancy of stage-management. The Embassy Ball was well stage-managed. As we drove into its neighbourhood, a double line of cars was stretching from end to end of Brook Street, with one tail bending down Park Lane to Hamilton Place and the other forking and losing itself in Hanover Square. The pavements outside Claridge's were thronged with eager, curious spectators, their lean faces white in the blinding glare of strong head-lights. Excited whispers and an occasional half-timid cheer greeted the appearance of figures familiar in politics or on the Turf. It was the night of the Westmoreland House reception, and uniforms, medals and orders flashed in brave rivalry with the aigrettes and blue-white, shimmering diamonds of the women. A warm fragrance of blending perfumes floated through the open portals into the courtyard, and with the slamming of doors, the swish of skirts and the clear high babble of voices came mingling the distant wail of the violins and the dreamy, half-heard cadence of a waltz.

"After the railway strike this is rather refreshing," I said to O'Rane, as we advanced inch by inch towards the doorway where Count Ristori, the doyen of the Corps Diplomatique, was receiving on behalf of his colleagues.

"And instructive," he added.

"Your revolution hasn't come off yet, Raney," I said, in the intervals of catching the eyes of the Daintons and bowing to them.

"Nor my war. Perhaps they'll balance each other and leave us to enjoy—this kind of thing. You know how it ended? Men's demands granted, owners given a free hand to recoup themselves by raising freights. D'you know why it ended?"

"It had gone beyond a joke," I said.

The Daintons had been compelled to cancel a week-end party at Crowley Court owing to the impossibility of assembling their guests.

O'Rane laid his hand confidentially on my shoulder.

"I'm told," he said,—"all my information comes from this Embassy crowd,—I'm told Germany was preparing to strike at France and collar the whole country north of a line to Cherbourg. We couldn't have stood that. But if we'd declared war with the strike on—whew! you couldn't have transported man or gun."

"A pretty story," I commented. "I don't believe it. Do you?"

"Oh, what does it matter what I believe? You think I'm revolution-mad. The threat of war ended the strike, the end of the strike postponed the war. Vive la bagatelle!" He gripped my arm and his voice quickened and rose till our neighbours turned round and smiled in amused surprise. "George, I wonder if it was like this in the last days of the Ancien Régime—a year before the Revolution and six before Napoleon. Marie Antoinette and Count Fersen the first couple, the Court following in beautiful brocaded dresses, with patches and powdered hair, and blue and silver and rose-red coats, and lace cuffs and silk stockings and buckled shoes. Such manners! And such corruption of soul! Peaceful, secure, unheeding. And outside the Palace a line of gilt coaches. And running under the horses' heads for a glimpse of the clothes and jewels—the tiers état." He smiled ironically and shrugged his shoulders. "'En effet, ils sont des hommes.' Was it like this?"

"It was like this again ten years after the Revolution and ten days after Waterloo—when corruption ought to have been purged out of the world."

"But will nothing make these people see the tiers état at their door?"

"I saw them myself. What is one to do?"

"Mon dieu!"

"That's no answer, Raney," I said.

"The answer was given you nearly two thousand years ago."

A moment later we were bowing over the hand of Count Ristori. Then the queue behind us pressed forward, and we were separated. Several hours elapsed before we met again, though he was rarely out of my sight. Indeed, I followed his movements rather closely and made a discovery. Sonia gave me a dance, and when it was over we sat and watched the scene from two chairs by an open window. There was a formality and decorum about the ball that evidently rather irked her: and from her tone of somewhat pert disparagement I gathered that she did not know many of the people present.

"David's all over the Ambassadors," she remarked, with her eyes on a corner where he was standing with three or four be-ribboned Secretaries.

"That's old Dracopoli," I told her. "He was in command when Raney's father was wounded. The fat little man with the high cheek-bones used to be Russian Minister of Finance."

"I had no idea he was so famous," she drawled, with easy contempt.

"I'm inclined to think Raney's a bigger man than either of us gave him credit for," I said.

And that was my discovery. It cleared my mind of a patronizing friendliness dating from the time when I was a monitor and he a fag at Melton. I always recognized his mental abilities no less than the endurance which had kept him for a dozen years from starving. But he talked so much like any other brilliant Irish boy, he was so exuberant and unstable, that it was the convention not to take him seriously. That night—and under my eyes—he seemed to be coming into his kingdom. It was almost his first public appearance in England since boyhood, and, as old scandals slipped into oblivion, the friends of his father claimed acquaintance as my uncle had done six years before. There are few men who have before their twenty-sixth birthday made all the money they will ever need, few who have travelled in so many countries of the world and met so many people. That was all that the Claridge ball-room knew, but I had lived in close communion with him for several years and could have written many a supplementary chapter.

"He's clever," Sonia admitted, "but he's frightfully selfish."

"Have you met his partner—a man called Morris?" I asked. "He's the man to discuss Raney's shortcomings with you."

"I don't want to discuss them with anyone. I know. He's absolutely wrapped up in himself and his precious dreams. George, for some years he and I ..."

"I know," I interrupted. "Once when you dined with me at the House, you promised some day to tell me why you didn't end your ridiculous boy-and-girl engagement."

Sonia put her head on one side and pouted.

"To be quite honest," she said, "I was secretly rather afraid of him."

"But he's the gentlest man on earth, and the most courteous."

"If you do what he wants; otherwise—if you wear green when he'd like you to wear brown——!"

"But all this is hardly a reason for refusing to break off the engagement."

"I was afraid of him," she repeated.

I know Sonia well enough to say in five cases out of twenty when she is speaking the truth. This was one.

"Afraid of Raney?" I cried. "Are you afraid of him now?"

"I've not seen him to speak to for years. Until tonight—and then we only bowed——"

"If you want to see him again, you've only to tell him so."

She threw her head up with a rare expression of scorn.

"How kind!" she exclaimed. "But he's far too lifty to know me now, even if I was in the habit——"

"Then I shall never know whether you're still afraid of him," I said. "He'll not come till he's sent for—sent for and told he's wanted——"

"Is this a message?" she demanded.

"A reminder," I answered. "Forgive me, but you have not been discussed by us since he came back from the Continent a year ago. I am recalling something I think he told you over at Lake House before he went to Mexico."

"Oh, the Butterfly Life Sermon? He gave me five years to outgrow it, didn't he? Tell him—No." The first bars of a waltz were starting, and the two ball-rooms began to fill. A corpulent, red young man—I knew him by sight as young Webster—walked sheepishly to our window and stood in front of us. Sonia looked round the crowded room with eager, bright eyes, pulled the straps of her dress higher on to the shoulders and rose to her feet. "I'll leave you to make up the message," she told me; and to her partner, "Come Fatty. Let's take the floor before the mob gets in."

In the still empty room they executed a wonderful stage-dance of dips and runs and eccentric twinings. As O'Rane joined me by the open window, I felt there was no need to give him any message.

"Supper or bed?" I asked him as I glanced at my watch.

"Not bed!" he answered, with a touch of the old exultant joy in existence that I had not seen since his early days at Oxford. "I'm having the time of my life, George. I'm dam' good at this sort of thing. First of all I danced with Amy Loring and didn't tear her dress. Then I found a Conservative Whip——"

"Are you really standing?"

"Don't interrupt! I invited Lady Dainton to have supper twice, and she accepted both times. I asked perfect strangers to dance with me on the ground that I'd met their brothers in Hong-Kong. I cadged cigarettes from other perfect strangers, and I carried out a First Secretary's wife in a fainting condition."

"You take a very frivolous view of life," I observed, as I ordered some poached eggs and beer.

"It's all right. I shan't come here again," he answered.

"But I thought you were enjoying yourself?"

He drummed on the table with his fingers and smiled round the room.

"So I am," he said. "If you'd ever been as poor as a rat, you'd know what it feels like to have money to burn!" His black eyes suddenly shone with anger, and his fingers ceased their idle drumming. "If you'd ever had your birth flung in your teeth——"

"Don't you ever forget anything, Raney?" I asked in his sudden, fierce pause.

"Nothing, old man. Not a line of a book I've ever read nor the letter of a word a man's ever said to me. I—I've been taken on my merits here to-night. I don't want to forget anything. After all, if you forget what it's like to go through one or two circles of Hell, you haven't much pity for the souls that are still suffering there."

"What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Follow my destiny," he answered, with his black eyes gazing into the distance.

"So you told me some years ago when the Daintons gave their first ball at the Empire Hotel."

"And haven't I kept my word? I've been finding the means, and you know the twin obsessions of my mind."

"War and a revolution?"

He nodded, and looked round the supper-room.

"There's a lot worth saving, George; it's the greatest country in the world. But there's a lot to be rooted out. People won't recognize that civilization can never be stationary." He waved his hand rhythmically in time with the music. "Backwards or forwards. Backwards or forwards. And coming here after some years abroad, everything I see makes me think we're sliding backwards."