3
George returned to London the following day in a better temper than, I fear, would have been mine, if I had been invited to the country and abandoned by my host within an hour of my arrival. Melton week-end parties have long been famous, for Dr. Burgess has had through his hands perhaps a fifth of the younger statesmen and barristers, authors, clergymen and soldiers of the day. Any old Meltonian can claim a bed, and it will be found for him in his old house, at the Raven or in lodgings; he dines on Saturday night in Common Room as a matter of course and lunches with Burgess next day as a matter of right. Strangers from less fortunate foundations are jealously excluded, but I attended one dinner as a Governor and found a Law Officer on my right, a silk from the Commercial Court on my left and a twice-wounded Brigadier opposite me. The food was tolerable, the wine good; the conversation indiscreetly well-informed. George told me that, when he was in the House, he could only find out what was going on by spending a week-end at his old school.
"I had one bad moment on Sunday afternoon," he confessed, when I asked for news of O'Rane. "We'd all been lunching with the old man, and he asked me to stay behind. It was rather reminiscent of certain regrettable meetings in my extreme youth.... I knew what he was going to talk about and I knew it would be no good for me to beat about the bush. The door had hardly closed before he put it to me what was the matter with Raney. I had to tell him everything, you can't hide things from Burgess. For that reason I wasn't sorry that Raney had bolted here; he'd never forgive me, if he guessed I'd given him away."
"But it won't make any difference, will it?" I asked.
"Oh, Burgess has got too much of God's commonsense. But Raney can't stand being pitied. Burgess will only allude to it, if he convinces himself that it will do some good. I'm afraid I don't see how it can; poor old Raney's just got to set his teeth once more and go through it single-handed...."
A week later Bertrand, George and I were gossiping over a last cigar, when Lady Loring entered with a grave face. The doctor had that moment left after his evening visit to Sonia.
"I think it's time we sent for David," she said without preamble.
"You're certain?" I asked. "He's in the middle of term."
"If we're keeping to our plan," she answered unenthusiastically. "Any moment now——"
Bertrand stumped across the library to a writing-table.
"I'll send him a wire," he said. "Time enough for appearances, if he turns up in the course of to-morrow. How is she?"
Lady Loring shrugged her shoulders carelessly and then turned quickly away.
"She's all right—physically," she answered. "But if you left a bottle of prussic acid within reach.... That's what frightens me so much. Until to-night she was so keen to go on living that she could face almost anything, but to-night I believe she doesn't care about it any more. She wants to slip away and end everything, get rid of all her difficulties...."