2
On the morning after my council of war with the Oakleighs, I telegraphed to Dainton that I was motoring down and suggested that I should pick him up at Crowley Court and drive him into Melton for an interview with O'Rane. He must have guessed, I should have thought, that my mission overnight had failed, but I could see, when we met, that he and his wife were emptily hoping. Both were waiting at the door when I arrived; both looked past me into the empty car, as I got out.
"You couldn't get her to come?" Dainton enquired anxiously. "Ah!"
He was a flabby, ineffectual little man at the best of times, and the shock had made him pathetically more flabby. God knows! it was not my tragedy, and I cannot boast that I am capable of an unusually brave show under affliction, but I wanted to make Dainton throw out his chest and hold his head up—and do some hard manual work and a few physical exercises. I wished, for her elevation, too, that his daughter could see the state to which she had reduced him; she was not sufficiently clever or detached to realise how much his limp indulgence had contributed to her pampered, neurotic wilfulness, but the consequences were there for all to mark. Lady Dainton shewed no sign of weakness. She had not slept much, I dare swear, since her husband returned, but she was collected and equal to every demand.
"I expect we shall find lunch waiting," she said, as I came in. "We can only give you cold comfort, I'm afraid. When we turned the house into a hospital, Roger and I only kept two rooms for ourselves, so, if you find my nurses running in to see me every two minutes, don't you know?... I'm glad you were able to come, because we're spending your money here and I want you to see that we're spending it properly."
A table had been laid for us in a room which from its "Vanity Fair" cartoons, gun-cases, "Badminton Library" and estate-maps, I judged to be Dainton's study. The servants were hardly out of the room before he turned to me.
"What happened?" he demanded anxiously. "Catherine knows everything."
"I'm afraid it's rather more and perhaps rather worse than either of you know," I warned him. "I called at the house, and she wasn't there. They'd had a quarrel, and she'd—left him. I've no idea where she is, though George Oakleigh was going to make all possible enquiries to-day. You've not seen O'Rane since last night?"
He shook his head, turning his face away abruptly so that I should not see it, and seemed unable to speak.
"We thought it better to wait till we'd heard from you," explained Lady Dainton. "She's—left this man, you say? I shall want a moment to consider this."
I only broke a long silence because I observed her husband preparing to speak and knew that he would contribute nothing worth hearing.
"As I see it, Lady Dainton," I said, "there's an element of hope. We can never set things as they were before, but we may prevent them from growing worse. On the one hand, O'Rane may now consent to stop proceedings. I've not seen him since he made up his mind to move, I can't say what decided him, but, if we're all agreed that we don't want the scandal of a divorce, you may be able to stop it. On the other hand, I've been thinking this over the whole way down and I'm not sure that a divorce isn't the necessary and the best thing for both of them, however painful it may be at the time. Quite clearly your daughter and O'Rane can never take up their old life; you see, there are no children to keep them together, even in appearance; they're both quite young, and I question whether it's fair on either to condemn them to their present state. O'Rane can't wake up in ten years' time and discover that it would be a good thing for both of them to resume their liberty."
Neither spoke for some time. Then Lady Dainton said—
"It's all come so suddenly, don't you know? that one is quite bewildered and stupid. First a divorce and then an idea of stopping it and now an idea of not stopping it.... All of you have known about it so much longer.... By the way, why did you never tell us, Mr. Stornaway? I'm not reproaching you, of course, but as Sonia's mother——"
"I thought about it a great many times," I answered. "Our lips were really sealed by O'Rane. As long as he hoped to get her back, we wanted to spare you all knowledge of it; we wanted to make it easier for her by keeping down the number of people who did know."
"You didn't think that I could help to persuade her?"
Lady Dainton might say that she was not reproaching me, but her voice was the embodiment of reproach directed not only at me or the Oakleighs or O'Rane himself, but at our whole sex for presuming to interfere between mother and daughter. I could see that she was confident of her power to restore peace, if only we had not ignored her until it was too late. My nerves were in tatters, I could feel the blood rushing to my head and in my turn I began to grow impatient with her, not for myself or my sex, but for her daughter. If ever the sins of the fathers were visited on the children, poor Sonia O'Rane was being punished for the lax indulgence and pretentious ambition of her mother; had she once been checked or chidden, had she been allowed to marry some man in her own walk of life instead of being fed with flattery and encouraged to look for what her mother considered a "good match," I should have been spared many months of worry and my present extremely painful interview.
"With great respect, I don't think anyone could have persuaded her," I said. "She started with a preposterous but sincere belief that her husband was unfaithful to her, their life was fantastically impossible, both had strong wills, O'Rane was culpably trustful and Grayle was a man who had been uniformly successful, as it is called, with women. You had all the ingredients of disaster there, though it's always a big thing for a woman to compound them. Once she'd done it, there was no recalling her. I've seen her twice since, Lady Dainton; no power on earth would have sent her back to her husband, even if she'd wanted to go."
She finished her meal in silence, only shrugging her shoulders gently as if to suggest that, however wrong I might be, there was no profit in discussing the past. Dainton kept asking me what I thought O'Rane would do and what we must insist on his doing; I retaliated each time by asking him whether he wanted a divorce or not; and there was never any answer.
I had warned O'Rane that I was coming, but he stiffened perceptibly when the Daintons came in with me. In a moment, however, he was calm, dispassionate and lifeless as I had always found him since the estrangement began. And then for the third time, with the knowledge that our nerves were raw and quivering, I had to tell him of my visit to Milford Square and my meeting with Bannerman and Grayle. We talked as if we were solicitors attending a consultation with counsel, treating O'Rane, and O'Rane treating himself, as the lay client.
"I saw she wasn't coming back to me," he explained, "so I thought the kindest thing was to let her lead her new life unembarrassed by ties with me. I could have let her bring the petition, I suppose, but I rather draw the line at that. I didn't see, however much I loved her, why I should get up and lie and say I'd been disloyal to her."
The Daintons looked at me, as though they wanted me to be spokesman, and I reminded O'Rane of his offer to stay proceedings, if his wife and Grayle separated.
He shrugged his shoulders and smiled mirthlessly.
"It started as blackmail, I'm afraid. Afterwards I did want to spare her, if I could—— I hoped she'd come back to me. When she refused ..."
"I was telling Lady Dainton," I said, "that, if you don't expect her to come back, you probably ought—in the interests of you both—to let the proceedings take their course. I know you don't like the idea of it,—we none of us do—but you wouldn't like the idea of her being tied in any way for the rest of her life. Of course, this isn't a thing that you can decide offhand, but, when you consider it, there's one factor you musn't leave out, and that is Grayle."
O'Rane raised his head slowly.
"He doesn't come in now."
"To this extent he does," I said. "If he's cited as co-respondent at the present time, he'll have to retire from public life. You and Dainton and I know that quite positively——"
"I don't much mind who retires from public life," he interrupted with a thin-lipped smile.
"But that man's quite capable of quarrelling with your wife—well, not to put too fine a point on it—to get rid of her, to avoid a scandal, to accept your terms. I believe he'd have accepted them that night. I confess I can't make up my own mind what to do...."
O'Rane's head drooped forward for a moment; then he raised it and faced us.
"I can't decide anything, either," he said. "My brain seems to have gone to pulp."
One glance at him was enough. I got up, and he did the same. The Daintons looked at each other and at me, refusing to move, as though they could force a decision by staying there. I shook my head and opened the door into the Cloisters.
"But—before we go——" began Lady Dainton, half-rising.
"The difficulty is that we don't know what we want," I pointed out.
Sir Roger became stammeringly urgent.
"We do know!" he cried. "We want to avoid a scandal, we want to keep our poor Sonia from—you know, all the talk and the papers——"
"But after that?" I asked.
Lady Dainton slipped her hand through her husband's arm and led him through the door. I said good-bye to O'Rane, but he insisted on accompanying us to my car and, when the Daintons were out of ear-shot, enquired whether the news had been a great blow to them.
"I ask, because I should have thought they must have had some suspicion of it," he said. "People here don't say anything to me, of course, but I'm sure they know. There's a sort of bed-side manner about them; you notice these things, if you're blind; it's as if you were calling on a fellow in hospital, when he's had his leg off, and you're being awfully bright and not seeing any difference.... Is it being discussed in London?"
"I'm afraid it is."
He walked with his face averted.
"What do they say?" he asked, steadily enough.
"That she's living with Grayle and that you're going to divorce her."
O'Rane's pace slackened.
"H'm. The first part's no longer true, the second part isn't true yet. Stornaway, you've been uncommon kind to me; d'you feel disposed to throw good money after bad and help me a bit more? We've been discussing what's the best thing to do and how we ought to treat Grayle and that sort of thing, but so far we haven't taken Sonia into account much. I want you to find her for me. Do anything you like and, when you've found her, discuss with her what she wants done. I'll—generally speaking, you may tell her I'll do anything. If I drop the petition now and some time later on she wants to be free again,—I don't like it, but I suppose it can be managed; these things have been done before.... As for Grayle——" He shook his head wearily. "I feel our tariff of punishment in this world is so inadequate. You can hang a man who commits a murder, but you can't hang him twice, when he murders two people. He's broken up our two lives pretty much,—and I dare say we weren't the first; if I could make him suffer as much as I'd suffered through him, we still couldn't cry 'quits.' If he loved Sonia—God in Heaven! we all make mistakes! Think how ridiculously few people we have to choose from before we marry! We may think it's the real thing and afterwards find we were wrong; I was prepared to think that with them, and if she was going to be happier with him...." He stopped abruptly and gripped my arm with fingers of steel. "Do you honestly think he behaved like this, because he was afraid of having his prospects injured by the scandal?"
"That's Bertrand's view," I answered. "He's a very fair ruffian, you know. He would always have an intrigue with a woman, if he thought there was anything to be got out of it; it doesn't require a great stretch of imagination to assume the converse."
We were approaching Big Gate, and he pulled gently at my arm to stop me.
"If that's true, we can't leave it where it is," he sighed. "Grayle can't have it both ways. If he doesn't resign his seat in a week, I shall go on with the proceedings."
"But if you decide to go on in any event?"
"Well, he's no worse off. He'll be in private life then with no political career to bother about."
"And if he refuses and you find you can't enforce the threat? I mean, if your wife asks you not to?"
"I shall find some other way of breaking him. This is not a time for thinking about niceties of law."
"He's not the man to surrender easily," I warned O'Rane.
"I don't know that I am," he answered, and the muscles of his cheeks twitched. "Well, my solicitors are in communication with his——"
"But if he refuses to be bluffed?" I persisted.
"We'll try some other means," he repeated. "Will you be kind enough to convey my message—you're sure to see him at the House——"
"We're at some pains to avoid each other," I said.
"But you could meet him for my sake—just to give him the message?" O'Rane begged.
I assented without more reluctance than was unavoidable and said good-bye. We drove in silence to Crowley Court, Sir Roger staring with troubled brown eyes out of one window and Lady Dainton, set and unrevealing, out of the other. At the door she offered me tea, but for a hundred reasons I wanted to get away as soon as possible.
"For the present I suppose we can do nothing," she said, as we shook hands. "I rely on you to tell us when you have any news." For the first time she was unable to keep an expression of physical exhaustion out of her eyes. "I don't know what any of you are doing, of course; what steps are being taken to find Sonia."
"I'm making myself personally responsible," I promised her.
Then I drove back to London and arranged with George to dine with me at the Club. After a restless night he had called at eighteen of the likeliest hotels in the hope of arriving at news of Mrs. O'Rane for the comfort of her husband and parents. Someone of the same surname was staying at the Grosvenor, but it was not Sonia. I described my visits to Crowley Court and Melton, and we concerted a plan for tracking her to her hiding-place.
Two years and a quarter in the government service had made George more of a "handy-man" than I have ever met before or since. He knew the right official in every department for hurrying through the most diverse business for the largest number of friends. If news were required of a prisoner-of-war, if cigars were wanted out of bond for the use of a neutral Legation, if a German governess had to be repatriated, a passport obtained, naturalisation papers taken out, export permits secured, George would triumph in the quickest possible time over the greatest possible obstacles. It was absurd, he told me, to advertise or insert cryptic messages in the "agony" column of the "Times"; absurder still to employ detectives. For what other purpose did Hugh Mannerly and the Alien Control Department exist? He telephoned to the Home Office forthwith, but Mr. Mannerly had praetermitted his control of aliens in the interests of dinner.
"I'll get on to him to-morrow," he promised. "We'll have every hotel and boarding house in London searched for her; and, if she's not in town, we'll go to work in the country. It will take a day or two, but Hugh Mannerly is unfailing and perfectly discreet."
After my tribute to George and his to Mannerly, I am sorry to record that the first three days of the hunt were blank. It was ascertained, indeed, that Mrs. O'Rane had stayed at the Grosvenor for the night, and that her address was fully inscribed in the Visitors' Book. ("Damned fool I was not to call for the book!" George exclaimed. "I felt certain it must be her and then, when they said it wasn't, I felt equally certain that it couldn't be.") Where she had gone from the hotel no one knew.
"She's staying with friends somewhere in town," George decided, "or else she's gone out of London. I'll get Mannerly to work again outside. I've spoken to a friend of mine in the Permit Office, so she can't leave the country, and I've found out from Raney that she banks with Philpott's in Victoria Street. Mannerly's told the manager to watch the account and report all lodgements and drawings; if she deals by post, we may find out whereabouts she is and, if she comes to the bank in person, we can arrange for the manager to keep her there till we arrive."
I confess that, however efficient George might be, I found him a little high-handed.
"I'm the complete bureaucrat," he assented grimly, polishing his pipe on the sleeve of his uniform. "And I may tell you that, when I consider the opportunities for oppression afforded by the public service, I'm amazed at my own moderation. Anyone would start a revolution to-morrow, if he knew the black conspiracy against personal liberty which a few thousand of us are carrying out."
Once again, after being promised the full sinister support of all the conspirators, I feel ungracious in having to record that the utmost efforts of Mr. Hugh Mannerly failed to produce any result. His department, let me say, was admirably organised, and a ridiculously short time passed before I was informed that no one giving the name of Sonia O'Rane or Mrs. David O'Rane was registered in any hotel or licensed lodging-house throughout England, Scotland or Wales. The manager of the Victoria Street branch of Philpott's Bank, with a disregard for the confidential relations between a bank and its customers which would have amazed me in peace-time, stated that Mrs. O'Rane had personally cashed a cheque for twenty pounds three days before, that her balance—unusually large, I imagined, for her—was one hundred and eighty-seven pounds fourteen shillings and five pence, that no lodgements had been made since the beginning of the month, but that he would promptly report all future transactions so long as Mr. Mannerly desired him to do so.
"I telegraphed to Dainton, after I'd been to see Hugh," George told me. "As we haven't struck oil so far, I thought it would be useful to apply a little more pressure. I imagine Sonia must be living now solely on her father's allowance, so I suggested that he should stop it and see what happened when she'd exhausted her present funds. It's funny about Hugh; he's usually so good.... A nuisance, too, because time's so important. You see Lloyd-George is getting out his Ministry? About two-thirds of the offices seem to be allocated with some certainty."
"Have they found a place for Grayle yet?" I asked.
"He's mentioned for all sorts of places," was the answer.
I felt that the Government might not want to include Grayle until he had cleared himself. People were still asking vaguely whether it was true about Grayle, but no one could find flesh wherewith to clothe the bones of the scandal. Grayle himself had not crossed my path since our warm parting in Milford Square; indeed, everyone who button-holed me to discuss appointments or ask my view of the rumour admitted by implication that he had not seen Grayle. Someone—I cannot remember who—told me that he had left London on one of the surprise visits to G.H.Q., which with Grayle played the same part as the old "diplomatic chill" of other days. As the government of the country and the conduct of the war were at a standstill, as members of both houses were flocking back to Westminster from all quarters to join in the scramble for office, I found this explanation unconvincing.
I was soon to find it baseless. In fulfilment of my promise, I sent a note by hand to Grayle's house, asking him to meet me on urgent business at a time and place to be arranged by him. My messenger, who had been instructed to enquire whether Grayle was at home, reported that he had received my note with his own hands and had replied that there was no answer.