1
As I write, the war has been in progress for two and a half years, and it is beyond the wit of man to foretell how much longer it will continue, though there is the annual feeling that peace will come before the autumn. In August we shall reach the end of the three years which Lord Kitchener had in mind when he began his preparations, but I for one look forward to the summer of 1917 with greater apprehension than ever I felt a year ago. During 1916 I was the unconscious psychological victim of men like Grayle who were so convinced of our predestined failure under the existing régime that they went some way towards convincing me. In June the field of war was extended by the Bulgarian inroads into Greece, and, though we talked still of the "Russian steam-roller," it was not until July that the Austrian counter-drive in Russia and Italy was checked. The New Army, which had been so grandly raised, went into action at the Somme and covered itself with immortal renown; we did not quickly see how much had been spent and how little achieved—"Six hundred thousand casualties and an unbroken German front," as Grayle declared to me in the Smoking-Room at the House one night.
Grayle's political sense was good in that from the breakdown of the Somme offensive he saw that the days of the Government were numbered. Ministers never recovered the prestige which they had lost in the Irish rising. The disastrous expedition to the Dardanelles was being discussed so widely and bitterly that an enquiry had to be instituted; so with the no less disastrous expedition to Mesopotamia; and, as more men were frittered away in Salonica, we began to wonder whether we should not have to hold a third enquiry, indeed an enquiry into every subsidiary enterprise which every amateur strategist in the Cabinet undertook in any theatre of war.
There were many who began at this time to swell Grayle's clamour for a change,—a series of changes, indeed, simultaneously in the Ministry which was weak enough to embark on this succession of costly failures and in the soldiers who failed to achieve success with such conditions of men, material and ammunition as the Germans had never equalled in the days when the balance tipped highest in their favour. I had, myself, always simulated rather a superior aloofness, for I felt that, as the war was a bigger and longer enterprise than my fellows would admit, so we must be prepared for greater failures in coping with it. Yet I can see now that I began to listen less impatiently to the critics. The War Office at this time was in the charge of a distinguished soldier who had had the vision and courage to prophesy a long war and whose personality and reputation were of inestimable value in creating the armies which came to bear his name. Largely on newspaper prompting, the Government had made Lord Kitchener Secretary of State for War, and the country as a whole was reassured by the presence of an expert military brain in the deplorably civilian councils of the cabinet. There was a simple-minded faith, which expressed itself in Maurice Maitland's phrase, "Leave it to K."; a volume of work which no single man could accomplish was thereupon trustingly concentrated in the hands of one who loved to hold as many strings as possible. Stagnation in the War Office gave way to chaos, until one function after another—recruiting, equipment and munitions—were withdrawn from his grasp and confided to others. Later the Staff control was separated from the political control, and Lord Kitchener gave no orders that were not countersigned by his Chief of Staff; later still an effort was made in the cabinet to deprive him of an office which he had ceased usefully to fill. He was sent to inspect the Eastern theatre of war; he was sent also to Russia....
I am unlikely to forget a day when I was lunching with Bertrand at the Eclectic Club. Maitland sat down with a blank face and said, "I've got some bad news for you men. K's been drowned. He was going out to Russia, and his ship—the 'Hampshire'—was sunk by a mine or torpedo—they don't know which, and the North Sea must be full of loose mines after this Jutland action. The sea was so rough that the escort had to turn back almost at once...." Some time passed before we could discuss Maitland's news, for Lord Kitchener had been so imposing an idol, so aloof and mysterious—until you met him at close quarters, as I had done a few days before, when a deputation of us waited on him and sought enlightenment on subjects which we could not discuss openly in the House—so well-established and unshakable; we never expected him to die in the middle of the war, certainly we never dreamed of a death so fortuitous, unnecessary, so much the freak of Providence.
"Yet I'm not sure it's not the best thing for his reputation," Maitland said. "Felix opportunitate mortis, you know. There's a whole crop of failures to explain, and his prestige must have suffered. Don't you sometimes feel that we want a clean sweep, Stornaway?... I'm a soldier myself, but it was a great mistake, whatever people may think, putting a soldier at the War Office...."
The news was being cried in the streets, as I went back to my department; half-way through the afternoon a messenger came into my room to say that all blinds in all government offices were to be drawn; that night, Yolande told me, was the worst she had known since the tidings reached her nearly two years before that her brother had been killed in the retreat from Mons. Wave after wave of men poured from the leave-trains and surged into her canteen, demanding confirmation of this story which was being whispered at the coast. And, when she told them or pointed to the official report, they still, would not believe it. He was the man under whom they had enlisted....
Yet, when a civilian was once more at the head of the War Office, I believe that a new embarrassment was substituted for the old. As the Somme campaign had failed to achieve a decision, men like Grayle openly resumed the criticism which they had suspended for a few months and demanded the removal of the responsible Commander in Chief and the Chief of the General Staff. Thereupon two schools arose in the Press, the House and, I believe, the Cabinet; the civilian backers of Sir William Robertson and Sir Douglas Haig pitted themselves against their civilian detractors; individual commanders were surrounded by social cliques and supported by individual Ministers and papers. I was told by Grayle and by the section of the press influenced by him that we wanted a reconstruction of the Ministry and of the Higher Command; I was told by the Press Combine that Sir Douglas Haig was the one general of outstanding genius whom the war had brought to the surface.
Between the two I confess that I lost my temper. Even with South Africa and the Antwerp expedition to his credit, Grayle was no more fit to appoint or depose a Chief of Staff than I was to cast a play or select a prima donna. But I found it difficult to say who was better placed than either of us. Grayle certainly was a pragmatist.
"Results! results!" he would declaim at me. "I want the contract put out to tender. Can you or can you not break the line? What men and guns do you want? Here they are; you may have three months, and, if you fail, no dignified home commands, but the completest breaking a man's ever had. That's the way Napoleon would have done it; that's the way the Germans would do it."
Grayle was very active in the summer of 1916. I could see him drawing together and co-ordinating the scattered groups of disaffected critics, and my mind went back to George Oakleigh's account of the "Stunt Artists." There was the Liberal Ginger Group, the Conservative Ginger Group, the Mesopotamia Group, the Dardanelles Group, all firing occasional volleys into the arms and legs of the Ministry, none daring to fire at the head or heart. The apparently strongest man in the House at this time was Sir Edward Carson. Not content with criticism, he could force the Government to bring in a bill, modify a bill or drop a bill. Glad indeed would Grayle have been to consolidate opposition under such leadership, but at this season unity was regarded as the first requisite; no one was yet prepared to split the Government or the country into rival factions.
If not active, I was at least very assiduous in my attendance during those summer months. I was assiduous, too, at my office and in my department. The last act of the O'Rane tragedy at which George and I had assisted hit me as hard as the death of a very dear friend. I had thought that I had outgrown other people's troubles; I found that I was younger than I thought. When I met Bertrand or George, I shunned discussion of the subject; when I went to Melton, I will say frankly that I avoided a meeting with O'Rane. During May I fancy that the others joined me in my conspiracy of silence, and we were aided by events. I read one day that a certain Peter Beresford, described as an author, had been prosecuted for issuing a pamphlet entitled "Lettres de Cachet," which was calculated to undermine the loyalty, discipline, and moral of the army; the pamphlet was confiscated, and its author sentenced to a term of three months' imprisonment. Whether he repeated his hunger-strike or not, I had no means of knowing, as he passed out of my life on his arrest and only re-entered it many weeks later.
Mrs. O'Rane had disappeared as completely and far more mysteriously. In the early months of the year, quite apart from deliberate meetings at her house or Grayle's or Lady Maitland's, I had caught sight of her at least once a week lunching or dining in a restaurant or chattering to one or other of her many admirers at a play. After the catastrophe, though I probably dined and lunched in as many of her favourite restaurants as before, I never met her. There was a vague assumption that she was in the country. One night, as I was smoking a cigarette in the entr'acte at some theatre, Gerald Deganway came up, screwed his eye-glass in place, squeaked a welcome and asked whether I had seen Sonia lately. I told him that I had not. He rather understood that she was staying with her people at Crowley Court.... After consultation with O'Rane, George transferred himself to Westminster to look after his uncle and to keep the household in commission. I believe that he forwarded letters to Melton and I have an idea that there was a second vague assumption that she was with her husband at the school. The ties and relationships in social life were so much disorganised by the war that no one was ever surprised by an unexpected meeting or a failure to meet; everyone was too much occupied with his own business to care.
I had convincing evidence of this one day when I received a call from Lady Dainton. She wished to equip Crowley Court as a hospital for shell-shock cases—anyone could deal with ordinary wounds and operations; there was no adequate scheme for treating these nervous derangements, and she felt that her house was unusually well adapted for the purpose. After we had thrashed out her proposal, I undertook to recommend my Emergency Fund Committee to make a grant. There our business ended, and, as I walked with her to the door, she looked at her watch.
"It's no good," I remember her saying. "I hoped to leave time for a call on Sonia, but I shall only miss my train, if I try. It's really dreadful how driven we all are. I never have a moment for anything, don't you know? This is the first time I've been in London for months, I've seen nothing of Sonia for I don't know how long—Ah, surely, that taxi's disengaged? I mustn't miss it. This petrol shortage is really the last straw. As if we hadn't enough discomfort before, don't you know?"
I returned to my desk with a pusillanimous sense of relief. The Daintons, then, neither knew nor suspected what had become of their daughter. The secret was in the keeping of the O'Ranes, the two Oakleighs, Beresford and myself. Somehow the disaster seemed hardly so complete while there was no public scandal, and neither the Oakleighs nor I were likely to add that last touch. For the others I could not speak; Mrs. O'Rane or Beresford or both might welcome a petition for divorce; no one knew what was passing in O'Rane's mind.
Before term was a month old, George went to Melton on a roving commission.
"I would as soon spend a week-end with a well-bred block of ice," he confided to me on his return. "He was courteous, hospitable—nothing too much trouble to make me comfortable. We talked by the hour of fellows who'd been at school with us, things we'd done—you know, endless ridiculous anecdotes of how somebody's leg had been pulled, how we'd got into some appalling row together. As a rule I find school 'shop' rather fun, but Raney might have been reciting the kings of England with their dates. He was utterly lifeless and mechanical; never a smile.... When we went into Common Room for dinner, he played up and was a different man; they chaffed him, and he chaffed them, and we dug out more school 'shop' and he threw himself into it heart and soul. It was the same on Sunday, when a pack of his boys came and talked to him after evening chapel; he didn't let them see there was anything up. It had been the same when the enigmatic Miss Merryon came in the morning; the usual smile.... Of course, he never came within a thousand miles of mentioning it.... When I left on Monday, I told him that I wanted to invite myself again before the end of the term, and then we did get to grips a bit. He shook hands and said, 'Look here, old man, it spoils your week-end and—I don't want to be ungracious—it doesn't do me any good. I've got to go through this alone."
From George's sigh I felt that in this he was at one with O'Rane.
But, if not more than six people knew what had happened, there were many who would be more curious to find out than Lady Dainton had shewn herself to be. It was easy enough for Bertrand or George or one of the servants to say that Mrs. O'Rane was away from London and then to hang up the receiver of the telephone, but it was a different matter as the weeks went by and as the more pertinacious enquirers called in person. I could sympathise with George. The only person likely to interrogate me was Grayle, and from the fact that he never mentioned Mrs. O'Rane's name I judged that they had quarrelled finally and finally parted on the night when I was privileged to meet them at the Berkeley. I had enough psychological curiosity to wonder what had happened when she hurried out into Piccadilly after him. Grayle had assuredly scored a game when he asserted himself and made her run after him; but the game had been won when he was too tired to be desirous of winning it.
My first tidings came to me at the end of May from my niece. She and her husband were dining with me one night at my hotel, and she asked me whether I had been at "The Sanctuary" lately.
"I've been very busy," I told her. "And I believe Mrs. O'Rane's away."
"She's not away," Yolande answered: "I saw her at Harrods' yesterday. That's what made me think of it."
Yolande, then, knew nothing of what had happened.
"I wonder when she got back," I said as unconcernedly as I could. "Did she tell you?"
"We didn't speak." Yolande's expression became hostile. "I suppose I dislike her every bit as much as she dislikes me, but so far we've kept up appearances. I bowed to her yesterday, and she couldn't help seeing me, but for some reason best known to herself she thought fit to cut me."
"She couldn't have seen you," I said.
"She couldn't help seeing me," Yolande repeated.