V
I had occasion to envy Loring and the passengers of the "White Seal" during the next few months. A second winter election, the false enthusiasm and cheap victories of the platform, the endless canvass and cold wet nights and days as my car splashed through the crumbling lanes of Wiltshire—all would have been a heavy price to pay even had I been returned. But the shrewd voters of the Cranborne Division were not a second time to be gulled—at least by me. There was a clear House of Lords issue: my old opponent, the Honourable Trevor Lawless, fought on the anti-Home-Rule "ticket," I once again on the sanctity of Free Trade reinforced by Land Reform. He was elected by a twelve-hundred majority, and I, in an interview with the spirituous, rain-soaked reporter of the "Cranborne Progressive and East Wilts Liberal Gazette," claimed a moral victory for the House of Commons control of finance.
To anyone who knew the 1906 Parliament when there was not room on the Government side for all the ministerialists, the first 1910 election was profoundly depressing. My uncle's majority was brought down to forty-seven, and many a Unionist, returned like Sir Roger Dainton after four years' absence, could say that the country was perceptibly returning to its senses.
"There's no victory without its casualty list," I replied to my friend Jellaby, the Whip, when he telegraphed a message of sympathy. There seemed nothing amiss with the sentiment, and I consoled myself with the prospect of wintering at San Remo with my mother.
"Can give you another seat to fight," Jellaby wired back, as my packing came to an end, and I ordered myself a place in the train-de-luxe.
"Must resist casualty habit," I returned and abandoned England for two months.
April was well advanced by the time I came back to Princes Gardens. When the bitterness of defeat is past, I know few sensations sweeter than that of not being in the House of Commons. It was irritating at first to be debarred from the smoking-room, but, as master of my own time, with no more interrupted dinners, no autumn sessions and no deputations to Ministers, I wondered what frenzy of enthusiasm could have made me for four years the slave of an urbane but vigilant young man like Jellaby, whose one duty in life was to lay me by the heels if I tried to leave the House unpaired.
"I said you'd outgrow the phase," my uncle commented one morning at breakfast. His daily post-bag brought him hundreds of letters; mine, since I had parted from Westminster, a couple of dozen at the outside.
"I may stand again if I can arrange always to winter on the Mediterranean," I said, "or if I can get returned unopposed. London in March and the Great Movement of Men in the Cranborne Division don't appeal to me, Bertrand, as they once did."
"What are you going to do with yourself?" he asked.
"Enjoy life," I answered appreciatively. "Read books again, dine at the Club a bit, run over to Normandy in the summer, see my friends.... By the way, the Lorings are back. He wants me to lunch with him today."
The note of invitation had piqued my curiosity. With his instinctive fear of giving himself away Loring had written no more than: "Lunch 2 p.m. here. Help me with heavy case of conscience." I sent an acceptance by telephone, sat half the morning in the Park watching the passers-by and in due course made my way to Curzon Street. The air was redolent of spring, and in its fire the whole world seemed to have flung its winter garment. Light dresses fluttered in the warm breeze, everything was new and clean and young; the very cart-horses welcomed the advent of May with shining harness and gay ribbons.
"You don't look as if your conscience were troubling you," I said to Loring when luncheon was over, and we were sitting alone over our coffee and cigars. He had come back with a clear eye and bronzed cheek, radiant with health and good spirits. "Did you have a good time?"
"Wonderful!" His enthusiasm was rare and strange. "Incredibly wonderful!"
"I forget who was there," I said.
"Oh, a mob of people. The only ones that mattered were Lady Dainton——"
"Who petrifies me," I interrupted.
"And Sonia."
He paused. I knocked the ash from my cigar and said nothing.
"George, Sonia and I are engaged."
I still said nothing.
"For God's sake take some notice!" he exclaimed.
"Is this your case of conscience?" I asked. "You want to get out of it?"
Loring clasped his forehead with both hands in utter despair.
"And you used to be quite intelligent!" he groaned. "I'm serious, George. Sonia's promised to marry me; Lady Dainton's good enough to make no objection——"
"She wouldn't," I murmured.
" ... My mother and Amy are simply in love with her...."
Mentally I congratulated Lady Amy on her loyalty.
"And now you want my blessing?" I hazarded. "Well, best of luck to you, Jim."
"Thanks, old man. I want more than that, though. Something that Amy said made me think that little Raney had once been rather in love with Sonia. You know him better than I do: what does it amount to? Whenever I've seen them together, they were fighting like cats."
"Amy was referring to something that happened a good time ago," I answered. In retrospect I am still struck with the diplomacy of my words.
"Oh, it's ancient history?" Loring looked relieved. "I was afraid—I mean, short of giving up Sonia, there's nothing in the world I wouldn't do to avoid hurting the little man's feelings."
"If you'd care for me to write," I began, in off-hand fashion.
"That's what I was going to ask you to do. George, you've never been in love...."
"For some unaccountable reason, all newly engaged men pay their bachelor friends that compliment," I said.
"Well, you haven't, or you wouldn't be so damned cold-blooded about it. Honestly, until last night I didn't know what happiness was——"
"This is all rather vieux jeu," I objected.
"It was just as we got into the Channel." The expression in his eyes had grown dreamy and distant. "We were on deck, she and I——"
"I will not submit to this, Jim!" I said.
He laughed as a drunken man laughs.
"If you won't, somebody else will have to," he said. "I'm—I'm simply bursting with it. For sheer dullness—on my soul, George, I'll never ask you to lunch with me again, in this world or the next."
"The veiled compliment is wasted on you," I said.
As I walked home, I took stock of the position. Granted that I had been dull, I was no actor and could affect little rapture at the prospect of losing my best friend, however deep his momentary intoxication. And every word that Amy had said to me at House of Steynes the previous summer stood as true as when she spoke it, and I added my endorsement. Sonia had been as entirely charming on that occasion as she had been exasperating in the same place some years earlier when Crabtree first proposed to her. If I have suggested corporal punishment for her, it must be remembered that bachelors are sometimes lacking in the finer chivalry; but which Sonia Jim was marrying remained, I felt, to be seen. There would, indeed, be discoveries, on both sides, for Loring at nine-and-twenty had his share of angularity.
And I was not easy in my mind about the way O'Rane would take the news. It is true I had never regarded his attachment very seriously from the time when the undergraduate of twenty became engaged to the temporary debutante of sixteen; true also that three and a half years abroad had probably made a very different man of him. At the same time, I recalled his passionate outburst on the lawn at Crowley Court when Lady Dainton declined to recognize the engagement; and it did not need a man who knew him as well as I did to appreciate his curious tenacity of character. I came to feel that the news would hit him hard.
My letter of explanation was not easy to write. I roughed out one draft and tore it up; then a second, then a third. Bertrand put his head in at my door to say he was dining at the House, and I hurriedly changed my clothes and drove down to the Club. There I made a fourth attempt as unsatisfactory as the first three, thrust it impatiently into my pocket, and walked into the hall to read the latest telegrams.
"You said eight o'clock. I'm before my time, but I'll wait out in St. James's Street if you like."
I spun round at the touch of fingers on my shoulders. Only one voice in the world held as much music in it—low and vibrant, setting my nerves a-tingle.
"You are as dramatic as ever, Raney," I said.
"Shall I go and wait outside? You might answer my question."
"And in other respects you don't seemed to have changed." I looked him up and down and turned him to the light. His fingers as he shook hands were as hard and strong as steel cable; he was slender and wiry as a greyhound, with the big eyes, smooth features and bodily grace of a girl.
"You're trained down pretty fine," I said. "And your hair's as untidy as ever—my dear fellow! don't touch it! It's one of your charms. You have also reverted to a hybrid twang reminiscent of twelve years ago in a certain great public school——"
He handed his hat and coat to a page-boy and pointed to the dining-room door.
"I've had nothing to eat since breakfast, George."
"Two Hoola-Hoolas, please," I called out to a waiter. "In the strangers' room. Raney, it's the devil of a long time since I saw you last."
"Did you expect me?" he demanded, with a child's eagerness to find out whether his little piece of theatricality had succeeded.
"The very cart-horses of London expected you," I said. "I observed them with ribbons on their tails as I went to lunch with one Loring. 'It is the first of May,' I said. I suppose you'd like me to order you some dinner."
"Then you didn't really think I should turn up?" he asked, glancing up from the bill of fare I had handed him.
"Not wanting to eat two dinners in one night, I forbore to order anything until I'd seen whether you were alive."
His deep-set black eyes became charged with laughter.
"Alive!" he exclaimed. "I'm not twenty-seven yet, George, and I've done all my work in life. I've made all kinds of money. I could eat two dinners every night if I wanted to. I can start seriously now; I'm the equal of you or Jim or anyone. Not literally, of course; he'd call me a pauper. It's a matter of degree, but I shall never again be handicapped by not having money." The waiter arrived with the cocktails: O'Rane raised his glass and bowed: "Say you're glad to see me, old man."
"I don't think the point was ever seriously challenged," I said. "Continued prosperity! I don't use the word luck with you."
As we sat down to dinner his eyes were brimming with tears.
Some day I should like to write a series of books about O'Rane. I should not mind if they were little read, I should not mind if they were read and disbelieved; they will never come from his pen, and, as he confided more in me than in anyone else, I feel a responsibility to the half-dozen of his friends who may survive the war. Midnight was long past before the tale of his adventures was done—the selected tale of such adventures as he thought would interest me.
"And now?" I asked, as the smoking-room waiter came in and looked pointedly at the clock.
"Ah God! one sniff of England—
To greet our flesh and blood—
To hear the hansoms slurring
Once more through London mud!"
He walked to the window and gazed down on the stream of cars, their dark paint gleaming in the lamplight as they glided down Pall Mall from the Carlton and hummed richly up St. James's Street or disappeared into the silence of the Park.
"I'm going to have a long night in a real bed," he announced, "as distinct from either a berth or bare boards in a tent——"
"I can give you all that in Princes Gardens," I interrupted.
"Later, old man, if I may. I've sent my baggage to the Charing Cross Hotel. To-morrow I shall call on Loring, see who else is in town——"
His words brought me face to face with the problem I had been shirking all the evening.
"I wrote you a letter to-night before dinner," I said as we walked down to the hall. "I'll post it so that it reaches you to-morrow morning. Raney, I'm afraid you won't care much about the contents."
He raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Why not give it me now?" he asked.
"You may prefer to digest it alone," I said.
He held out his hand with a determined little smile.
"I'll take it home and read it," he promised. "I can't sleep with unknown perils hanging over me."
I gave him the letter, and we parted on the understanding that he was to call round in Princes Gardens as soon as he was sufficiently rested.
I have no idea how he slept that night. Next morning there was no sign of him, and in the afternoon when I went to make inquiries at the Charing Cross Hotel I was handed a pencil note scrawled on the back of my own envelope to him.
"My apologies to your uncle. Just off to Flushing to complete my rest cure."
When I met Sonia and Loring at dinner the following night, I told them that I had caught a glimpse of O'Rane on his way through London from Mexico to the Continent. They were politely interested.