2
Half-way through November O'Rane returned to London for the mid-term Leave Out. I was apprised of his arrival by a telephone message begging me to cancel any other engagements and dine with him informally at "The Sanctuary."
It was Saturday night, and I stayed in London to meet him. George and Bertrand were his other guests, and we dined at one end of the long refectory table on the dais, with the rest of the room lit up only by the flicker of the two fires, which sent shapeless, indeterminate shadows dancing up and down the panelled walls. It is usually as easy to detect when a woman lives in a house as when a house has been unoccupied for months. The library was perhaps tidier than Mrs. O'Rane used to leave it; otherwise it was unchanged, but it had become indefinably masculine. O'Rane was as quiet and self-possessed as I had always found him, but now without the noticeable effort which I had observed at our last two or three meetings. As might be expected, we talked throughout dinner of the war and of political changes in the House of Commons. Only when we were gathered round one fire with our coffee and cigars did he turn the conversation on to himself.
"I must apologise for spoiling your week-end," he said, addressing himself to me, "I had to take the opportunity of seeing you when I could. All three of you have been amazingly kind and amazingly discreet and sympathetic. It's—my funeral, of course, but I wanted you to be present. George, perhaps you're the best person——"
There was a silence of some moments, while George turned his cigar round in his mouth and stared at his boots.
"I only know what you asked me to do, Raney," he began diffidently. And then to us, "O'Rane told me to fix up a meeting with Sonia. I went round to Milford Square last night and told her that he wanted to—discuss the future, I think I said. Grayle was present. She said she'd come, if he came with her; and I arranged for half-past ten to-night."
He stopped with obvious relief. O'Rane was standing with his back to the fire, rocking gently from heel to toe, with his hands in his trouser pockets. I saw him put his watch to his ear, touch the repeater and smile.
"It's not ten yet," he said to Bertrand and me. "If you'd rather be out of it.... I got George to attend as my second and I wanted you two to be—well, to hear what we said and keep us cool. I've been thinking over this business pretty steadily for some months and I feel it can't go on. My idea about marriage—well, to begin with, people mustn't marry unless they feel they can't get on without each other.... If they find they've made a hopeless mistake, nothing to my way of thinking justifies spoiling two lives by keeping them coupled together. Sonia knows that, I've always told her so.... Well, no one could find anything to say for our present position, it's neither one thing nor the other. If Sonia's made her choice——"
He broke off and shrugged his shoulders. Bertrand turned his eyes away from the boy's face and gazed slowly round the long, warm, softly-lighted room. George had discovered a spot of grease on the sleeve of his uniform and was industriously scraping it with the end of a wooden match.
"Go on, O'Rane," I said as gently as I could. "We haven't got much time. She's coming here, and you're going to ask her what she means to do."
He nodded almost gratefully.
"Yes. If she tells me coolly and dispassionately—that's why I've got you men here; I don't want a scene—that she'll be happier with Grayle——" I saw his underlip tremble before he could get out the name—"After all, it's her happiness ... isn't it?"
There was another pause.
"You'll set her free?" I suggested.
"I suppose so," he whispered.
I looked at Bertrand, and he first shrugged his shoulders and then shook his head. The first gesture seemed to mean that he did not mind what was said, the second that he himself did not propose to say it.
"You will divorce her?" I went on to O'Rane. "I only want you to see all sides of the question. It's not—pleasant, but—if she wants it and you're ready to face it on both your accounts.... There will be a big scandal, O'Rane. She's very well known in society. And any Member of Parliament, even if he wasn't as notorious as Grayle.... It will make good copy for the papers, I'm afraid."
"I'd save Sonia from it, if I could," said O'Rane, moistening his lips. "Of course, if Grayle doesn't mind——"
"I should think he'd mind very much," I interrupted. "If he doesn't want to appear in the Divorce Court just now——"
"He should have thought of that before," said O'Rane grimly. Then he held out his hands in entreaty. "You don't suggest I can let it go on any longer? Most people would say it had gone on too long, that if I'd had a spark of pride—I can't. Try to imagine if your wife.... Thinking of it night and day, night and day, forgetting for a moment when you're asleep and then waking up fresh to it every morning...." His hands stole up and pressed his temples as though they were bursting. "You lie for a moment wondering what it is that's hanging over you," he whispered, "and then you remember.... And you forget again for a moment when you're working or people are talking to you ... but you always know it's there ... and it comes back—comes back with a stab in the middle of whatever you're doing.... And they mustn't see.... God knows, a divorce won't alter things much, but at least it's a definite break, I've given her up, I've got no claim, no rights.... It can't go on any longer. Have—have all you men got something to smoke?"
He came quickly forward from the fire-place and touched his way to a table behind our chairs. Though his back was turned, I could see out of the corner of one eye that he was furtively wiping his forehead with the back of his hand.
"If by any chance they don't want a divorce, will you insist on it?" I went on unsparingly.
"Of course not. Provided they separate. You don't imagine——"
"If they do? If your wife asks you to forgive her and have her back?"
O'Rane had never smoked, I have been told, since his blindness; he could no longer taste the tobacco nor keep it alight. I observed him now putting a cigar in his mouth and chewing the end.
"It's not very likely to arise," he said.
"But if it did?"
"I'll wait till it arises."
He came back to his old place on the hearth-rug, and we remained silent until the clock struck half-past ten. At the sound I could see the others growing tense and expectant, as I was doing. O'Rane had been whistling through his teeth, but he abandoned even this distraction. For myself, uncomfortable as I knew us all to be, I could not help thinking that Mrs. O'Rane and Grayle could be hardly free from all feelings of embarrassment. To return to the house, which had been given as a wedding present sixteen months before, accompanied by the lover with whom she had left it, to meet her husband and discuss how he proposed to deal with her infidelity—the bare bones were enough without clothing them in imagination. I pictured Mrs. O'Rane giving the familiar directions to the driver, tapping on the window when he lost himself in trying to take short cuts through the streets of Westminster, stopping him at the door and being helped out by Grayle.... And Grayle, for all his seasoning, had never, I was very sure, been led by the wife into her husband's house and presence....
I scribbled on an envelope and handed it to George:
"Couldn't they have pitched on some other place?"
"I wanted a private room in an hotel—neutral ground," he wrote back. "Raney insisted on this. Moral effect, I suppose."
As I crushed the paper into my pocket, I reflected that O'Rane was taking risks. The sight of the room and of himself might act on his wife like the smell of blood on an animal.
The clock struck again, and I exchanged glances with Bertrand. It was so characteristic of Mrs. O'Rane, even in my short acquaintance with her, that she should be late on such an occasion.
"You did say to-night, didn't you?" O'Rane asked, trying to keep his tone unconcerned.
"I don't suppose they've been able to get a taxi," George answered. "It was raining before dinner."
A moment later we grew tense and expectant once more at the sound of an engine. I heard the slam of a door and Grayle's voice saying, "Will you wait a bit?" Then Bertrand, George and I rose from our chairs, as the flame-coloured curtain was drawn aside and Mrs. O'Rane walked composedly into the room, with Grayle in his staff uniform a pace behind. She narrowed her eyes and then raised her brows almost imperceptibly when she saw who was present.
"I'm sorry if we've kept you all waiting," she said, as she slipped her arms out of her coat and handed it to Grayle.
O'Rane swallowed.
"Won't you sit down?" he murmured.
George and I each pulled an extra chair into the half-circle, and I watched Mrs. O'Rane settling herself. Presumably she must have started the evening pale, for her cheeks were slightly rouged—and I had not observed her to use rouge before. Her eyes, too, looked tired, as I had seen them at our chance meeting in Hyde Park several months before, but she was perfectly controlled, and I could trace no sign of nervousness or embarrassment. As though she were shewing herself off to young Beresford or any other of her admirers, I saw her look down at the pink dress which she was wearing, smooth a crease out of one glove, lift one transparent sleeve higher on to her shoulder and settle the folds of her skirt. Grayle spent some moments laying her coat carefully across the back of a chair; then dropped on to the end of a sofa with his stiff leg rigid in front of him and began peeling off his gloves and tossing them into his cap. He, at least, was not at ease; and, when George picked up the cigar-box and offered it him, he stammered in his refusal.
There was a moment more of silence, and then we turned slowly and with one accord towards O'Rane. As though he felt our eyes upon him, he tossed the cigar behind him into the fire and faced his wife.
"I—George probably told you, Sonia—I'm spending the week-end in London. I thought we might discuss things a bit."
Mrs. O'Rane looked unhurriedly to left and right.
"By all means," she acquiesced. "Do we want—quite all these——?"
"I should have preferred to meet you alone. As Colonel Grayle said he was coming——"
"He had a right to come. Of course, if you prefer everything dragged up in public...."
She shrugged her shoulders and began to play with the watch on her wrist.
"I think everyone here is acquainted with most of the facts," said O'Rane. "But I'm not proposing to drag up anything that's happened. I asked you to come here because I wanted to talk about the future. I expect everyone will agree that the present position can't continue."
He waited for a sign of assent. Mrs. O'Rane took off one glove and helped herself to a cigarette from the gold case at her wrist.
"I told Mr. Stornaway that you were at liberty to divorce me," she said with a glance in my direction. "I said I was willing to face it. I don't know whether you ever got the message."
I decided to watch Grayle, but he was sitting with his head back, staring at the ceiling and occasionally blowing elongated smoke-rings.
"The Divorce Court is—an unsavoury place," O'Rane observed. "I want you to believe, Sonia, that what I've always said is as true now as when I first said it. I put your happiness higher than anything in the world, I'm trying to leave myself out of this."
Mrs. O'Rane looked once at her husband, and her eyes seemed to harden; then she glanced without apparent purpose at the half of the room which was within her field of vision. I noticed for the first time that the flower-vases were empty; I fancy that she noticed it, too. Her mouth began to purse, and I knew that O'Rane would have done better to hold his meeting elsewhere.
"It's very kind of you," she said stiffly. "Isn't it rather late in the day for you to be thinking of my happiness? When I lived here—— But you said you didn't want to go into what was past. The future's simply in your hands. I've told you I'm willing to face it. I don't believe in this modern business of the man always letting himself be divorced by the woman. I'm—willing—to face it. You've got your witnesses; they'll stand by you, if anybody criticises you."
"But if I don't want to see you in the Divorce Court, Sonia?"
"I'm afraid that's one of the things you can't help."
O'Rane's chin dropped on to his chest, and he began to pace up and down the ten-foot rug in front of the fire with his hands plunged into his pockets and his fists so tightly clenched that the knuckles of either hand stood out in four sharp lumps against the sides of his trousers. Grayle still sat like a husband reluctantly dragged to hear a dull sermon; Mrs. O'Rane set herself to light a second cigarette from the glowing stump of the first, leaning forward so that the ash should not scatter over the pink dress. A quarter past eleven struck, and I remember that Bertrand and I gravely consulted our watches and pretended to compare them by the clock on the mantel-piece.
At last O'Rane halted by Grayle's chair.
"You're in this, too, Colonel Grayle," he said. "Once more we need concern ourselves only with the future. I should like to hear your views."
Grayle brought his head forward with a sharp jerk.
"It's her happiness we're considering," he agreed slowly, with his eyes on O'Rane's waist. "I—well, it's for her to say; I obviously can't tell you what will make her happiest, she's the only person who can do that. You've not put forward any case for yourself, I musn't put forward any for myself. She must tell us both whether she's been happy enough these last months to want to go on.... I may say—you haven't attacked me, so perhaps I don't need to defend myself—I may say that, when a woman's unhappily married, I don't regard her as being under any obligation to her husband; she's free to start her life again; and any man is free to share that life, if she sees fit. That—that's my theory, in case you feel there's any question of rights involved."
His tone was becoming truculent, but O'Rane nodded gravely.
"Yes. But we agreed to leave the past alone," he said. "I've knocked about a good bit the last thirty years and I can assure you that I never want to be put on my trial for anything. Let's stick to the future. Do you wish—my wife to go through the Divorce Court?"
I looked at Mrs. O'Rane to see if the offending word would rouse her, but she seemed not to have heard it. The hard composure of her entrance had broken down, she seemed ready to faint with fatigue, and the patches of rouge on cheeks that were grown suddenly white gave her an absurd something of a Dutch doll's appearance. I fetched her a tumbler of soda-water, and her smile of thanks was the first human thing that I had seen about her that night. As she began to sip it, I saw her glance over the brim at Grayle.
"I don't wish it," he said at length. "What—what else is possible?"
"You can say good-bye to her," O'Rane suggested quietly.
Grayle looked up uncomprehendingly; and Mrs. O'Rane's eyes flashed in sympathy.
"Desert her, you mean?"
"It's hardly the word I should have chosen, but we needn't go into that. Colonel Grayle, neither you nor I want a scandal. By the mercy of God, there's only one man outside this room who knows what's been taking place all these months. We've agreed that my wife's happiness is the thing that we're both unselfishly seeking, we won't bandy rights and wrongs or grievances or justifications—we won't even try to put our love for her into a scale. If you give me your word of honour that you'll never see or speak to my wife again, I will take no further steps; I'm not trying to steal her away from you so that I may get her back myself—she must determine her own happiness. You and I can at least spare her the unhappiness, the vulgarity, the morbid, sniggering curiosity of a public scandal. She can live in another part of the house, live away from me, let it be known confidentially that we somehow didn't manage to get on very well together.... Are you prepared to make that sacrifice for her happiness?"
Grayle lit another cigarette, coughed and fetched himself a syphon and tumbler.
"You're begging the question," he said at length. "You can't define the conditions of Sonia's happiness."
"I know what will make her unhappy. That's good enough as a negative definition."
Mrs. O'Rane pushed her chair back a few inches and rose to her feet. She looked round for her coat and walked to the chair where Grayle had laid it.
"I've said I'm ready to face everything and everybody," she said over her shoulder, as she slipped her arms into the sleeves.
"But, please God! you don't know what you're facing!" O'Rane cried with an outburst of emotion which he was no longer able to contain. "Grayle, you say you love her! If you care a snap of the fingers for her, if you've any humanity, any decent feeling in the whole of your composition, if you hope for mercy in this world or the next, you've got your opportunity now! The one thing you can do for her abiding happiness is to take my hand and swear you'll never see her again. You know it is! You can walk out of this house and leave her so that no one will dare to say a word against her for fear of being thrashed within an inch of his life. If she doesn't get on well with me, if we part by common consent, that's my fault; everyone will say that I was always eccentric, that she was a fool to marry me, that I've spoiled her life.... Will you do that, Grayle? Will you shew that what you call your love for her means something?"
As he ended, I heard a muffled banging on the front door. George hurried away, and a moment later there came the sound of an engine starting.
"It was only the taximan," he explained, as he came back. "He's got a train to catch at Victoria, so I paid him off. We can telephone for another one when it's wanted."
Mrs. O'Rane looked at her watch and frowned.
"I wish you hadn't done that, George," she cried petulantly. "It was pouring when we came, and now we shall probably have to walk home.... I don't see that there's anything more to be said. It's very kind of everyone to take so much trouble about me, but, if I'm prepared to go through with it, that ends the matter."
"But you're talking about something you don't understand, Sonia!' cried O'Rane.
"Perhaps I understand better than you think," she answered. "It's just conceivable that Vincent and I both thought about the consequences beforehand. Good-bye."
She turned to the door, and Grayle followed her. George moved mechanically forward to open it for them. Bertrand and I remained where we were, watching O'Rane smooth back a wisp of black hair that was glued to his forehead.