IV
Social amenities make a petty thing of life, and from the loftiness of a time when our souls are supposed to be enlarged by war I look back to find an infinite littleness in the artificial round we trod during my idle early days in London. My uncle, who was ashamed of betraying enthusiasm, took mischievous delight in employing a low scale of values, and at five-and-twenty I fancied that to be cynical was to be mature. I trace a curious inability to distinguish the essentials of existence, and had anyone used such a phrase at that time I am sure I should have demanded rhetorically, "What are the essentials?"
Thus, Lady Dainton's first ball for Sonia was of little enough moment for men associated τοὑ εὑ ζἡν ἑνεχα, [Greek: tou eu zên enecha], and, in my eyes, the greatest of its many surprises was that I induced Bertrand to accompany me and stay out of his bed till after four. There was no merit in my own attendance. Sonia invited me verbally, her mother by means of a card eight inches by six; a week before the night panic descended on the family; they requisitioned their friends' lists, and I received three more cards with three sets of compliments, while on the day itself I was told by telephone that if I knew of one or two additional men I was to bring them punctually. So Bertrand, whose study of the great movement of men had never led him within the Empire Hotel, found himself incontinently deprived of his second cigar and packed into a cab on the stroke of ten-fifteen.
From the moment of our arrival I could prophesy success. Lady Dainton, I know, secured anticipatory and retaliatory invitations for Sonia; Lady Ullswater, who helped her to receive, reckoned up numbers and all they represented in her obscure finances; Ashwell wandered through the long rooms with an air of modest proprietorship, telling marchionesses of the balls he had left and duchesses of the balls he was going to. All the men obtained food, several of the girls obtained partners; and Dainton, who appeared five several persevering times in the supper-room, had the gratification of meeting at least one appreciative guest who observed, in the intervals of filling a capacious cigarette-case, "Dunno the merchant who's runnin' the show, but he does you pretty well, what?"
At ten-thirty the ball's fate lay still on the knees of the gods, but by eleven the rush had set in. I could see Sonia's face brightening, her eyes lighting up like the eyes of a political agent as he shepherds his stalwarts to the poll. Tall and short, dark and fair, stout and lean, they surged forward in an endless black and white stream, as desirable a set of young men as the combined talents of Ashwell and Lady Ullswater could bring together.
"She's launched!" said Bertrand, after an hour of the scene, and we walked upstairs in search of a cigar. By the buffet we found Dainton standing alone and drinking a surreptitious glass of champagne.
"Who does he remind you of?" my uncle asked me as we gained the lounge, and when I hesitated—"Don't you remember your Du Maurier?"
And then, of course, there leapt before my eyes the picture of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns's husband at one of Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns's parties: a jaded but unprotesting figure, leaning against the wall and dully blinking at his lady's social captures; heavy-eyed, drooping-jawed, with bulging shirt-front and necktie askew. One hand stifles a yawn, the other guardedly conceals the watch at which he is glancing with furtive resignation. Mrs. Ponsonby de Tomkyns, meanwhile, is rising from triumph to social triumph; he is paying the bill—and wondering wherein lies the fascination of it all.
As it was too crowded to dance and too early to sup, we took a couple of arm-chairs and ordered coffee. Overheated defaulters joined us from time to time, and Crabtree favoured us with his presence long enough to inquire: (i) how much I thought this touch was costing the old boy, (ii) what he would cut up for, (iii) what sort of place Crowley Court was, and (iv) whether I thought "The Trade" was likely to buck up at all.
"Who is your objectionable fat friend?" Bertrand asked when we were alone again.
"Objectionable—yes. Fat—yes. But no friend," I answered. "His name is Crabtree, and you are the only man in London whom he has not yet told that he is related to the intermittently bankrupt and always disreputable Lord Beaumorris."
"And he's running after this Dainton girl?"
"It's healthy exercise," I said, "and he hasn't run very far as yet."
"Well, well!" He sighed. "Marriage is a race in which the bookmaker invariably bolts with the money."
"What you want is some supper," I said.
"No, I want to watch the people a bit more. Who's the Greek god who just went by?"
"The man who waved?"
"Yes. Face all eyes."
"That was David O'Rane," I said.
My uncle made me repeat the name and then sat silently smoking for fully ten minutes. I thought he was falling asleep, but he suddenly roused himself to ask:
"What O'Rane is he?" and, when I had given a short account of my dealings with him for the last seven years, "Why the devil didn't you tell me you knew him?"
"I never imagined you'd even heard of his existence," I answered in some surprise.
"I hadn't. That's just it. George, I should like to meet the boy. No, no! Not now. When he's disengaged. He'll only think me an old bore, but I'm curious.... He's a very beautiful creature."
"And quite mad," I said. "If you won't accept my kind invitation to supper, I shall go down to find someone who will."
An hour later, with the consciousness that I had done nothing to justify my presence in the hotel, I sought out Sonia. A double line of claimants was closing in round one of the square, white pillars and towering over the shoulders of the rest I caught sight of Crabtree's sleek, black head. While Sonia stood breathless with excitement and bright-eyed with sheer joy of existence, he warded off the crowd like a policeman regulating traffic.
"Now then, Sonia, what about it?" I asked.
"Next but five," she called back, while Crabtree waved a large hand and boomed:
"Move along there, young feller, don't make a crowd!"
"The next is ours, isn't it, Miss Dainton?" inquired a decorous little voice from under my elbow.
"Time you were in bed, young 'un," Crabtree retorted menacingly.
O'Rane wormed his way past me and presented himself. In a moment's hush I heard the sharp tap of the leader's baton; for the last time Crabtree roared his wearisome "Move along there, please," and, as the music began, Sonia glided out on his arm into the middle of the room, barely turning to cry over her shoulder, "Come back later!"
"My duty's done, Raney," I said. "Come upstairs."
"I shall stay here a bit," he answered, following Sonia round the room with his eyes.
"Please yourself. You can't smoke here, and there's some old Green Chartreuse upstairs."
"Damn Green Chartreuse!" he returned.
"You shouldn't say that even in joke," I told him, as I started to elbow my way back to my old corner.
Bertrand I found was at supper, and our retreat had been invaded by a score of men who by rights ought to have been dancing. They were chiefly Tom's gladiatorial friends from Oriel, now scattering to various units of the Army—Penfold to the 17th Lancers, Moray to the Irish Guards and Kent to the Rifle Brigade. Of the others I knew Prendergast of Melton and New College, who was now a clerk in the Foreign Office and a purveyor of cheap mystery, and we were soon joined by Sinclair and Mayhew. Both were combining business with pleasure, for the former was playing for Yorkshire against the M. C. C. at Lord's, and the latter had hurried townwards to negotiate a position on the staff of "The Wicked World" as soon as his last Oxford term was over. Stragglers came and went, but our numbers remained steady and the group was completed by the arrival of Loring.
"This will never do!" he exclaimed. "Why aren't you chasing the hours with flying feet? Why aren't you letting joy be unconfined and all that sort of thing? Chartreuse? I can hardly believe it! Of course, if you insist.... Sinks, go and dance!"
"I've been cut," Sinclair returned contentedly.
"Faint heart never won fair lady. You said Chartreuse, didn't you? I like to make quite sure. You been cut too, George?"
"We've all been cut," I said.
Loring looked round and pointed an accusing finger at an immaculate, pale, fair-haired youth with sensational waistcoat buttons and a white gardenia. I knew him by sight, as the illustrated papers were always publishing his photographs in country-house groups, and the reviews alternated between describing his novels as "impossibly brilliant" and "brilliantly impossible."
"No woman born of woman has ever cut Valentine Arden," he said.
"One had three partners," Arden replied with dreamy detachment. "One could not do justice to them all. 'Solomon in all his wisdom ...' and they had hot red faces. He retired into himself and sat lost in contemplation of a smoke-ring till it wavered and burst.
"You're a contemptible lot," said Loring with scorn. "No more idea of duty ... oh, my Lord! here's Raney! Go and dance, you little beast!"
"I've been cut," O'Rane protested with an air of originality. "If you're so keen on duty...." He pointed to the tray of liqueur glasses. "And it's so fattening. Go and work it off, Jim."
Loring shook his head.
"I'm going home. I sat in that filthy House all the afternoon, dined with my uncle, whose port would disgrace a preaching friar, let alone a cardinal. I then attended a political crush, turned up here, talked to my host, gave my hostess supper, had two dances with my hostess's daughter...."
"You were favored," O'Rane observed.
"I was irresistible. So would any one have been after so much 1900 Perrier Jouet.... However, that's neither here nor there. I enjoyed those two dances, because I was the means of dislodging one Crabtree and seeing him packed off to feed dowagers."
"There's some value in a title yet," I said. "I tried and failed."
"How much of the Perrier Jouet ...? Half a bottle? No man, not even George Oakleigh, was irresistible on a beggarly half-bottle. I think I shall go to bed now; you're dull dogs; I'm doing all the talking. Anyone walk as far as Curzon Street? Good night, everybody."
His departure was the signal for a general break-up, and a moment later O'Rane and I were alone. He was silent and out of humour, and I did not need to be told that his efforts to dance with Sonia had been fruitless. I mentioned casually that my uncle wanted to meet him and suggested he should dine with us before going back to Oxford. This, he told me, was impossible: he was up to his eyes in work and had already wasted more time than he could afford.
"Your Schools aren't for a year," I pointed out.
"No, but I only work during term. In the vac. I see life."
I recalled what Sonia had told me on the subject.
"What's it all for?" I asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. "You must do something."
"Yes, but—messing about at the bottom of a mine? It would be cleaner for you and more amusing for me if you came and stayed with me in Ireland."
"Or with the Daintons in Hampshire. There's quite a run on me. Sonia's frightfully offended because I haven't been near Crowley Court for a year and a half."
Than O'Rane no man was harder to convince that he could ever be in the wrong.
"When people are engaged ..." I began.
Almost fiercely he cut me short.
"And the engagement laughed at, and you threatened with the door and blackguarded for taking advantage of a girl's youth.... And your letters held up; I was forgetting that. God! George, if you'd the pride of a cur ...!" He stopped abruptly, stretched his hand out for the cigarettes and lit one. "I went to Dainton," he continued more calmly, "and asked if he'd let me marry Sonia on a thousand a year—it was like bargaining with a Persian Jew over the price of a camel. He wouldn't commit himself. I told him I'd have the money two years after coming down from Oxford, and he stroked his fat cheeks and told me I didn't know the difficulties of making money.... Difficulties! As though Almighty God hadn't shot 'em down all round us so that we shall have something in life to overcome! And that from a man who inherited a brewery and let it down till he's glad to sell it at two-thirds the valuation of twenty years ago! Yes, the Daintons are washing their hands of—commerce. I told him—all this was in Sonia's presence—that I'd be judged by my own vain boastings. I'd come up in three years' time to show him if I'd made good, and if she'd wait.... Or if she wouldn't.... I left her a free hand...."
"It was only fair," I put in.
"To me, yes."
"To her."
"To me, George. There's not much merit in being faithful to a promise. But when you're not bound in any way, when it's just a matter of your own pride.... Sonia must show if she can make good three years hence. If we both come up true—well, there you are."
He threw his cigarette away, yawned, and sank lower into the chair.
"When did all this happen?" I asked.
"Oh, a year ago. More. It was just after the row."
"Well, what's the trouble to-night?"
O'Rane's eyes, always an interesting study in rapid emotion, became charged with sudden anger.
"She thinks I've cooled off because I don't write," he said. "George, I'm flesh and blood, I can't write—not letters that Lady Dainton would pass—to a girl I want to be my wife."
"Why don't you go and see her occasionally?" I suggested.
"I've got other work."
"I bet you don't get fat on what you earn carting hay in Wiltshire."
"I don't do it for the money. I want to know the lives these fellows are leading. Man's entitled to 'Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,' and there are moments when I begin to doubt if every man the wide world over is getting what I claim he's entitled to. I didn't think I was when I was a kid of fourteen. I don't think sweated labourers, prostitutes, incurables, children with tainted blood—I don't think they're getting all they're entitled to. The average Armenian, the natives of the Belgian Congo—I'm not easy in my mind about them, George. But before I die—my God!" He turned suddenly as a hand came to rest on his shoulder, and a voice behind him remarked:
"You're young to be talking of death, Mr. O'Rane."
"Let me introduce you to my uncle, Raney," I said.
He sprang to attention with the same click of the heels I had observed in Burgess's library some seven years before. As their hands met, Bertrand searched the lean, animated face and looked steadily into the expressive, defiant black eyes.
"I understand you are the late Lord O'Rane's son?" Raney drew himself up to the last inch of his height, for all the world like a rock-python waiting to strike. "Your father was a close personal friend of mine," Bertrand went on; "I am very proud to meet his son."
I set the words down as they were spoken; and, to read, there is little enough in them. Yet, when I heard them uttered, I still recall that my eyes began to smart. Bertrand's manner—half-sneering, half-openly brutal—had taken on a new courtliness towards a boy fifty years his junior. I do not regard myself as a man of undue sensibility: the change of tone was not created by my imagination. O'Rane lowered his eyes, bowed and murmured:
"Thank you, sir."
I have never seen a quicker or completer conquest. Gradually we relaxed our self-consciousness. I brought Bertrand a chair and gave him a cigar to smoke.
"Until two hours ago," he told O'Rane, "I knew no more of your existence than, I expect, you knew of mine."
"Oh, I'd heard a lot about you, sir," Raney answered.
"Lies from George?"
"No, sir. True talk from my father. My first term at Melton I turned you up in 'Whitaker.'"
"The 'London Directory' would have done as well," said Bertrand.
"Is it too late for me to call?"
"By no means. Were you too proud to come before?"
"Too superstitious, sir."
Bertrand leant forward and laid his hand on O'Rane's knee.
"George was talking about you to-night," he said. "I could have offered a helping hand, perhaps."
"Perhaps that was what I was afraid of, sir."
My uncle looked at him with amusement.
"You are—an independent young man," he said.
"I believe in Destiny," said O'Rane, with an answering smile.
"What on earth has that to do with it?" asked Bertrand.
"I wasn't going to lie down and die as long as there was preordained work to do. Destiny meant me to win through."
"She didn't help you much," I said.
"I'm not so sure. I dropped down once on the sidewalk in Chicago, and a woman took me in and nursed me round. Nursed me by day and—earned her living by night. When I went to pay her back and say good-bye before I sailed, she was dead. Just two months in all. And if ever a woman's soul fluttered straight to heaven——"
"What are your plans for the future?" Bertrand interrupted prosaically. He, too, seemingly found O'Rane's intensity of feeling and speech a little disconcerting at first.
Raney woke suddenly from his reverie.
"I'm going back to Oxford to-morrow, sir."
"And after to-morrow?"
"I've got my Schools next year."
"I think George said you'd taken one first. What do you expect in your finals?"
"Commercially, there's no point in an honour school unless you take a first. After that, I have money to make. After that...."
He broke off and shrugged his shoulders.
"It will be Destiny's turn," I suggested.
O'Rane turned to me with a good-humored smile.
"I suppose it's all a wild welter of words to you, George?" he asked.
"No more than any other hypothesis unsupported by evidence," I said. "Your preordained mission...."
"Isn't there one form of work you can do better than all others? Haven't you one supreme aptitude? Form an alliance between aptitude and opportunity...."
"And you get a man of Destiny," I said.
"I leave you the honour of the phrase."
Bertrand glanced at his watch and pushed his chair hurriedly back.
"A quarter to four!" he exclaimed. "I must get home. George, I want you to arrange for David—excuse me, it was your father's name, too—for David to come and dine with us. A Saturday, of course. I hope you will come, David. I'll charge you for your dinner, if you like; and I think you owe me one evening after seven years."
"I'll come any time you ask me, sir."
"I'll leave you in George's hands. By the way, mysticism is too fine and rare a thing to rationalize for youthful sceptics. You will no more make your creed intelligible to George than you will teach me to play chess without a board. Good night, my boy."
"Good night, sir. I—I wish I hadn't waited so long."
"Perhaps it was preordained for the strengthening of your faith," my uncle answered, with a smile.
O'Rane and I returned to the ballroom to take leave of Lady Dainton. Barely six couples remained, and at the end of each dance one or two white, exasperated mothers darted forward, whispering angrily, "You must come now, dear." Even Crabtree had gone, and Sonia was breathlessly battling with her partner, Summertown, to win the even sovereign he had ventured with the leader of the band on a test of endurance. The band eventually won by doubling its pace, whereupon Summertown claimed a foul and stood in the middle of the room shouting, "Ob-jeck-shun!" till Roger Dainton silenced him with an offer of bones and beer.
"Good night, Sonia, and many thanks," I said. "It was the star turn of the season."
"Good night, Bambina," said O'Rane. "See you again some day."
"Good night, dear one," she answered casually; and then, with a show of contrition, "I'm sorry we didn't have that one together."
"So am I, but it can't be helped now."
"There were such crowds of people I had to dance with," she explained.
O'Rane shook hands and came away with me. Perhaps he felt, as I did, that the explanation was in the nature of an anticlimax.