2
This was the last letter which I received before my return to England in the spring of 1916. The country, when I landed, reminded me strongly of a theatre before a first night; everyone was waiting for the full deployment of the new armies, everyone expected the summer campaign to be the supreme test; by now, too, almost everyone had son or brother under arms waiting in the line or rehearsing his share in the coming offensive. The tension produced a nervous irritability which manifested itself, so far as the House of Commons was concerned, in a mutinous demand for enlightenment, and one of my earliest duties was to be present, with fine parade of mystery and importance, at the first secret session of the war. The one unvarying rule which I have been able to frame for the House of Commons is that it never fulfils expectations. Though the Press Gallery was conscientiously cleared, we were given neither fact nor figure that was not already in the possession of any well-informed journalist; twenty-four hours later the speeches were common property in every club, and the one thing new was the change in psychology. The show of blind loyalty to the Government had broken down until the Government itself felt that something must be tried to restore confidence. I found that a man of Bertrand's temperamental independence was using Grayle's currency of speech.
"Much good it's done!" he growled, as we left the House together. "It's no use pointing to the number of men you've raised or the output of shells. The country's outgrown the phase of being content with good endeavours, it wants results, it's in the mood to say, 'You haven't beaten the Germans, and, if you don't do it pretty quickly, someone must be found who will.' Stroll home with me, if you've nothing better to do."
"You're in your old quarters still?" I asked.
Bertrand laughed and then sighed.
"When David asked me to come here, I accepted on an impulse," he confessed. "It was a phase of the early enthusiasm; I felt we'd got no business to go on living so extravagantly, when the boys out there were going through Hell's agonies and every penny was wanted to carry on this war and to reduce the load of human suffering. I suppose this dog's too old to be taught new tricks. If you find me staying on now, it's only to keep the peace." He stopped to re-light his cigar, and, as he sheltered the match with his hands, I saw that his heavy, powerful face was morose and dissatisfied. "I've got a considerable love for David. He was a fool to marry the girl, of course, but a man doesn't marry or keep a mistress because it's wise, but because he wants to, because he can't help himself.... When she married him, I thought that the war had sobered her down, but these soupers fraternels have made her restive, and she's reverted to type. I'm standing by to break up tête-à-têtes and prevent her doing anything irrevocable before they've patched up their present quarrel and agreed on some possible way of life. If he weren't blind, she'd have left him three months ago. You know they've not met since Christmas?"
"Where are they?" I asked.
"Oh, she's here—with the usual tame cats to carry her off to lunch and dinner. She came back the day after David returned to Melton.... You can see it's a pleasant house to live in!... Before the war I sat on a committee with her mother. Do you remember a phase when young men tried to grow side-whiskers? Well, the drawing-room was always full of these hairy youths, immaculately dressed and simpering round her with boxes of sweets and flowers, which she very graciously accepted. Since the war these fellows have shaved and got into uniform, but it's the same old gang. I used to think nobody was injured; she liked racketing about at restaurants and theatres, they were puffed up to be with her. The only man I drew the line at was Grayle; he's much heavier metal." Bertrand paused to laugh with his old cynical relish. "I'm deuced old, but I've still got a very retentive memory, and everybody's always told me things. Well, I went through the mental rag-bag, I talked to a few people, I made a few enquiries—particularly on the American chapter of his life—and the next time we met I became biographical at his expense. George tried and failed. Friend Grayle hasn't been here since. I tell you, I was getting sick of the business. She'd give a dinner party at eight, and Grayle would be here at half-past seven to talk to her alone, and, by Gad! she'd be dressed and ready for him. I don't know whether they thought I was blind and deaf.... And it was the same when she dined at his house. I used to hear her coquetting and threatening to be late, if he wasn't 'good'—ugh!—and he'd swear he wouldn't admit her, if she wasn't in time. It was all such poor stuff! I shouldn't have minded so much, if there'd been any red blood in it, but she was obviously just keeping her hand in; that woman would make sheep's eyes at the Shakespeare monument in Leicester Square sooner than nothing.... So I spiked friend Grayle's guns, and she's had to content herself with Beresford. He's pretty harmless, but the devil of it is that she's ready to go wrong with any man, when she loses control of her temper. If she weren't restrained by her husband's blindness ... Good night. I'm going straight to my room."
As I had come to the door, I thought that I could do no harm by going in to see who was about. I found Beresford sitting up on a sofa with a block of paper on his lap. He looked exceedingly ill and perhaps not best pleased to see me.
"You're back again, then?" I said. "How's the knee?"
"I'm only waiting till Sonia comes in," he answered. "My knee's much the same as it's been all along, very much the same as it always will be. The doctors are going to give me blood-tests or something. Of course, I didn't do it much good when I was in prison; the doctor there was badly scared. He used to examine me each day to see how much longer I could hold out without food, and I used to see him looking grave every time he came to the knee, until I'm prepared to bet he told the authorities he wouldn't take the responsibility of keeping me there any longer. Then they let me out." His grey lips curled into a withering sneer. "God! the authorities in this country deserve to lose their precious war! D'you think that in Germany they'd allow me to write the pamphlets I do here? D'you think, if they decided not to shoot me, they'd let me out of prison because they were afraid to force food down my throat? The blessed innocents here said I might go, if I promised to drop my propaganda; they brought in a pen and paper. Well, I'd been without water for four days, and my throat and mouth were so swollen that I couldn't speak. I couldn't write very elegantly, either, but I collected enough strength to scrawl 'I'll see you in Hell first.' And then, if you please, I was let out. And now I'm improving the occasion."
He collected a number of loose sheets and pinned them together.
"As long as you think it does any good," I said, "the Archangel Gabriel wouldn't be able to stop you."
"You don't think it's a good thing to keep people from slaughtering one another? Dear man, d'you appreciate that, if Kitchener and Grey were in Potsdam at this moment with the unconditional surrender of Germany in their pocket, they couldn't get anything to compensate our present losses? There's imbecile talk about security and a 'war-to-end-war,' but you won't have war when people understand what it's like. That's what I'm trying to shew them."
He threw himself back on the sofa and began reading what he had written. I got up to leave, only pausing to give him a message for Mrs. O'Rane. As I closed the door behind me, a taxi stopped at the corner twenty yards from "The Sanctuary" and a man in uniform stepped out and stretched one hand to somebody inside, holding the door open with the other. His size alone, without the familiar mane of yellow hair, identified him for me as Grayle; a moment later Mrs. O'Rane emerged and stood by him under the street lamp at the corner. Bertrand might keep Grayle as far away as the end of the street, but I felt that he had boasted prematurely.
"You'll come in?" I heard Mrs. O'Rane say, as her companion hesitated by the taxi.
"Not to-night, thanks. It's rather late."
I caught a light ripple of laughter.
"You're not getting suddenly anxious about my reputation, are you?" she asked. "You used to like coming in and talking to me; and you know how I hate going to bed. Of course, if you don't want to——"
Grayle opened his case and took out a cigarette.
"That cuts no ice, Sonia," he said. "Good-night and thank you for coming. I shall see you to-morrow."
"I don't think I shall come."
"Oh, yes, you will."
"If you're so afraid of being compromised——"
"You are coming to-morrow."
She was silent; and, if it had been day-light, I would have staked my life that she was pouting suitably.
"You used to say that to-morrow was a very long way off," she remarked irrelevantly.
Grayle's voice became authoritative.
"You are coming to-morrow, Sonia."
No doubt it was the old small change of flirtation which had exasperated Bertrand, and I had already been made to hear more than I relished. Stepping into the circle of dim light, I bade her good evening and asked Grayle if he had finished with his taxi.
"Hul-lo! I didn't know you were back in England!" she cried. "Have you been calling? I wish I'd known. You've got to come back now."
"I looked in for a moment," I said. "Now I must get home, though."
"I'll give you a lift," Grayle volunteered.
Mrs. O'Rane looked from one to the other of us, and her eyes and mouth hardened in an expression of pique.
"My society seems rather at a discount to-night," she observed.
"You'll find Beresford waiting for you," I said. "I've been talking to him, but I've got to get home now."
She turned to Grayle, and I will swear that she was watching to see if Beresford's name was a challenge.
"I must get home, too," was all that he would say. "I shall see you to-morrow."
"Oh, I meant to tell you. I can't come to-morrow," she answered with easy gravity, as though I had not heard every syllable of her earlier conversation. "Well, if you won't come in, I'll say good-night. Thanks for a most delightful evening."
Grayle and I drove in silence for half of the way. Then he asked me abruptly how I had got on in America.
For some weeks I continued to attend to my own work uninterrupted by the O'Ranes, but towards the end of the Easter term I had to make my way to Melton for the Governors' meeting. A note from O'Rane invited me to call before going back to London, and at the end of our business I invaded his rooms to find him seated, as ever, cross-legged on the floor with his head thrown back, lips parted and eyes seemingly fixed on the ceiling or on something beyond it. The room was crowded with what I can only call a cluster of boys sprawling on chairs and tables or precariously perched with linked arms on the broad mantel-piece. Some were conventionally dressed, some were in flannels, some in uniform; the majority, however, preferred a motley of khaki breeches, puttees and vivid blazers. It was the end of a field day, and a few of O'Rane's friends had dropped in to talk with him. After some moments it occurred to the boy nearest the door to ask if I wished to speak to Mr. O'Rane, and on that, to my regret, the seminar dissolved.
As the last boy clattered into the Cloisters, O'Rane felt for a box of cigarettes and asked me how I had got on in America.
"George told me you were back," he said. "Have you been round to our place?"
"I went round there almost immediately," I told him. "I say, O'Rane——"
Perhaps he guessed what was coming, for I was not allowed to finish my sentence.
"Was Beresford there?" he asked.
I hesitated for what I should have thought was an imperceptible moment; and O'Rane repeated his question.
"As a matter of fact he was," I said.
"Ah! I wish I'd known that before.... Oh, now I see why you hesitated!" He gave a buoyant laugh. "I can assure you that Beresford doesn't make me in the least jealous or in the least apprehensive. I'd trust him pretty well as far as I'd trust Sonia; our outlook's so similar, we've got so much in common. Well, the authorities have got their eyes on him, and he'll find himself arrested again, if he isn't careful. And he's only alienating possible sympathisers with the stuff he's writing now. Did you read him on the typhus outbreak at Wittenburg?"
He jumped up and brought me a copy of "The Watchman" from his writing-table. Beresford's article made me very angry. A few days earlier my nephew Felix, dining with me at the Hyde Park Hotel, where I had now taken up my residence, had given me a sickening account of the epidemic in the prisoners' camp; a fuller and yet more sickening account had appeared in the Press, and from end to end of the country there burst a storm of indignation stronger than anything since the outcry against the atrocities in Belgium. At this moment and from this text Beresford, who saw red at the news of the mildest cruelty to man or animal, preached a cynical, superior sermon to prove that, if misguided fools went to war, this was the kind of thing they must expect. The object of war was to kill, and the only reason why the Germans did not massacre their prisoners was that on balance their own losses might be greater. But in scientific warfare it was unjustifiable to expect German doctors and nurses to risk their lives for the sake of preserving the enemy's. The English might; the English habitually boasted of picking up survivors after a naval engagement, but it was not war.
"God knows I'm not in love with war," said O'Rane, as I flung the paper away, "but an article like that infuriates just the decent-minded people he's appealing to. Well, bad taste is not an indictable offence, but I had a hint dropped this week-end that made me think that Beresford had better go warily. We had a man dining in Common Room on Sunday whose job in life is to advise on people like him and the stuff they turn out. We got on to the Wittenburg article, and it came out that I knew the author. Well, there was nothing much the matter with that branch of Intelligence Service; they knew all about Beresford, but they didn't want to give him a free advertisement and make a martyr of him, so they tried to get hold of him under the Military Service Act and stop his mouth that way. He was ordered to join up on a certain day, so he wrote a polite letter to say that he disapproved of war and did not propose to fight. When the day came, he was well and duly put in charge of a guard and marched off to the recruiting office to be presented to the army and turned into a soldier. Before that could be done, though, the doctors had their say. To cut it short, he was rejected rather more completely than anyone's ever been rejected before—heart, lungs, knee.... One doctor told him that if he didn't live in the open air and blow himself out with milk, he'd be dead in six months. That was a week ago. The army's been cheated of its prey, and my friend of Sunday night must find another means of stopping Beresford's mouth. What the fellow must understand is that they intend to catch him this time; their temper's none the better for the little rebuff at the recruiting office. I was meaning to come up and talk to him at the next Leave-Out, but I'm afraid he may put his head in the trap before I can get at him. That's why I asked you to come and see me; I want you to take him in hand."
After the Wittenburg article I was not inclined to raise a finger on Beresford's behalf. And so I told O'Rane.
"But do you want him to die?" he asked. "If they shove him in prison and he hunger-strikes again, you may never see him alive."
"I think I could endure that," I said. "The man's mind is perverted."
"Ah, then, you mustn't treat him as if he were normal," O'Rane put in quickly. "I want you to go to him and tell him to drop the whole business. Lord knows, I've been up against authority in one form or another most of my life, but there's nothing heroic in getting shot, if you don't achieve anything by it. You can get him to see that, surely."
By this time I confess that I had become one of many who found it hard to refuse O'Rane anything; perhaps it was because he never asked for himself.
"I'll try,—as a favour to you," I said. "Though I've no idea why I should want to do you a favour. O'Rane, you're making a considerable mess of your life."
The expression on his face suddenly changed, and he became courteously unapproachable.
"Do you think we shall do any good by discussing it?" he asked.
"Every day that you let slip makes it harder to mend the breach. This term's running out. What are you going to do in the holidays?"
"I'm going home."
"To the sort of doss-house life that you led before?"
"I—suppose so."
I put on my coat and started towards the door.
"Your wife will leave you," I warned him.
"I've told her—and I believe I told you—that I'd never keep her against her will."
"My friend, you are making a great fool of yourself."
O'Rane opened the door for me, and we passed into the Cloisters.
"I didn't think we should do any good by discussing it," he said.