VII
It was after midnight when I arrived at Loring House. Jim was in the library, walking restlessly up and down and filling the fireplace with half-smoked cigarettes. He was in evening dress, and an overcoat and silk hat lay on the arm of a sofa.
"Come in!" he exclaimed, without interrupting his caged-lion walk. "Sorry to drag you out at this time of night. Have a drink? Have something to smoke. Sit down, won't you?"
He spoke in short, staccato sentences, waving a hand vaguely in the direction of the tantalus and cigars. The intensity of his manner was infectious: I pulled up a chair and settled myself to listen.
"Now then——" I began, as the door closed.
"It's ... it's come, George!" he stammered. "I'm up to my neck, and you're the only man who can pull me out."
"Drive ahead!" I said.
"Sonia's broken it off!"
It would be affectation for me to pretend I was as much surprised as Loring expected me to be. The engagement had, in my eyes, been singularly unsuitable from the first, and one or both seemed destined to lead a life of misery; but I half thought that both parties would go through with the marriage out of pride or obstinacy. Loring was as much in love with Sonia as Sonia's mother was in love with his position. Seemingly I had underestimated the havoc wrought in the girl's nerves by her years of crude excitement.
"Tell me as much as you think fit," I said. "I'll do anything I can."
He thought for a moment, as if uncertain where to start.
"It's my fault," he began. "I can see that now. We oughtn't to have made the engagement so long—neither of us could stand the strain. I hurried things on as much as I could, but Sonia ... I don't know, she must have wondered where it was all leading to. I rather sickened her, I'm afraid. You see, I don't know much about women.... I've met any number, of course, but I haven't had many intimate women friends. They never interested me much till I got engaged to her. Consequently I've never appreciated their likes and dislikes. Case in point, Sonia told me last week that she'd scream if I called her 'darling' again. Now I should have thought.... Well, anyway, it seemed quite harmless and natural to me.... A small point, but it just shows you what a lot of knowing women take.... Got a cigarette on you?"
I threw him my case.
"What was the casus belli?" I asked, but for the moment he would not be drawn from his generalizations.
"I think it was partly physical, too," he went on. "I tired the poor child out—rushing round and seeing people. She couldn't stand the strain. And she saw too much of me.... I was always there, dogging her steps.... She couldn't get away from me. This last visit to the Riviera was a hopeless mistake from every point of view."
He flung away the cigarette he had just lighted. We seemed to be getting gradually nearer something tangible, and, as he gazed bewilderedly round to see where he had put my case, I asked, "What happened out there?"
"Nothing," he answered. "It was to-night. We got back this afternoon and all went for a farewell dinner to Brown's Hotel. The Daintons are stopping there. Sonia was very quiet all through the dinner and, when my mother and Amy went home and we were left alone to say good-night, she said she'd got something to tell me. I waited, she hummed and hawed a bit and then asked me what the rule in our Church was about the children of mixed marriages. I told her they had to be brought up as Catholics.
"'And what happens if I object?' she asked.
"I told her I couldn't get a dispensation for the marriage at all unless she gave me an undertaking to this effect." He paused in pathetic bewilderment. "I can't understand her raising the question at all at this time of day; I explained the whole position to her before we became engaged, and she didn't object then.
"'Well,' she said, 'I can't consent to have my children brought up in a different faith.'"
Loring passed his hands over his eyes and dropped limply into a chair.
"That was rather a facer for me, George," he went on. "Either we had to marry without a dispensation—and that meant excommunication for me—or we couldn't get married at all. I thought it over very carefully. I'm a precious bad Catholic.... I mean, I've been brought up in the Church, and we all of us always have been Catholics, but I don't believe half the doctrines and I don't go to church once in a blue moon. I call myself one, just as you call yourself a member of the Church of England. We're probably both of us 'Nothing-arians,' only we don't recant or make a fuss about it.... I began to wonder if I could tell 'em to excommunicate me and be damned. It would mean an awful wrench. My mother takes it all very seriously, and we English Catholic families all hang together rather, and I'm a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, and all that sort of thing. I tell you, I didn't half like doing it, but it seemed the only thing, and eventually I told Sonia I'd lump the dispensation and risk the consequences."
He paused and lit another cigarette.
"I thought that would have ended the trouble," he went on, with a sigh. "It seemed to be only the beginning. She was awfully good about it at first and said she couldn't make discord between my family and myself. I told her I was very fond of my mother, but that I was fonder of her than of anybody in the world. Then ... I don't know, I couldn't follow her ... she started on another tack altogether and said I should always be a Catholic at heart and that I should try to go back to the Church and take the children with me.... These damned unborn children ...! I told her—as much as I could cram into three sentences—what my whole attitude towards religion boiled down to. And then the row started. We both of us talked together, and neither of us listened to the other or finished our arguments, and at the end of half an hour Sonia began to cry, and I felt a perfect brute, and it ended with her sending me away and saying she could never marry a man who didn't believe in God."
Loring mopped his forehead.
"I feel absolutely done in," he murmured.
I mixed him a generous whisky and soda and asked what he wanted done. His face was haggard, and for a big man he seemed suddenly dried up and shrivelled.
"You must go round and talk to her," he said. "You've known her since she was a kid. Explain that I didn't mean what I said, apologize for me——"
I shook my head.
"It'll do no good," I said. "You're not to blame."
"But my dear fellow——!" he began excitedly, as though I had paid no attention to what he had told me.
"Look it in the face, Jim," I said, shaking my head again. "She's tired of you."
He picked up his tumbler and then put it down untasted.
"I don't believe it," he answered, with sublime simplicity.
"You've got to."
"But—but—but," he stammered. "We've never had a shadow of a disagreement until to-night."
"You didn't see it and you always gave way and smoothed things over."
"There never was anything to smooth over. Till this infernal religious question started——"
"It was religion to-day, it'll be the colour of your eyes or the shape of your nose to-morrow."
Loring stared at me as though suspicious of an ill-timed humour.
"You're wrong, George, absolutely wrong. I know you're wrong."
I shrugged my shoulders and left it at that.
"I'll do whatever you think best," I said.
"I knew you would!" he exclaimed eagerly. "Well, I've told you. You must go round to-morrow morning——"
"And if she refuses to see me?"
"She won't!"
"If," I persisted.
Loring jumped up excitedly.
"My dear chap, she simply musn't break off the engagement! Leave me out of it, tell her only to consider her own position." He paused in fresh embarrassment. "You remember the trouble over that swine Crabtree?" he went on diffidently. "We can't have a repetition of that! You know as well as I do, a girl who's always breaking off engagements.... Get her to look at it from that point of view!"
I rose up and dusted the ash from my shirt-front.
"She's tired of you," I repeated, with all the brutal directness I could put into my tone.
"Well—and if she is?" The tone no less than the words hinted that he might be beginning to share my opinion.
"You want the engagement renewed on those terms?"
"I don't want the Crabtree business over again?" he answered, fencing with my question.
"I'll call on her to-morrow," I said, "unless you ring me up before ten."
At eleven next morning I called at Brown's Hotel. The porter who sent up my name brought back word that Miss Dainton regretted she was unable to see me. On receipt of my report Loring sent round a letter by the hand of one of his footmen. Lady Dainton drove to Curzon Street between twelve and one and was closeted with Loring for half an hour. What took place at the interview I have never inquired. Loring came into the library at the end of it with a sheet of notepaper in his hand. His face was white, and there were dark rings under his eyes.
"Get this into the papers for me, will you?" he said dispassionately. "It's no good, she's immovable. I'm going away for a bit. We'd better not run the risk of meeting for the present. I'm starting at once, by the way, so I'm not likely to see you again before I go. I'm more grateful than I can say for all you've done. Good-bye."
As I drove down to Printing House Square I glanced at the sheet of paper. "The marriage arranged between the Marquess Loring and Miss Sonia Dainton," it ran, "will not take place."
That night I had some difficulty in getting to sleep. The "Maxims" of the Duc de la Rochefoucauld lay on the table by my bed, and I opened the book at random.
"It is commonly the Fault of People in Love," wrote that polished cynic, "that they are not sensible when they cease to be beloved."