4
In London, more even than in the fabled Indian bazaar, the secret of to-day is the thrice-told tale of to-morrow. The same few thousand men and women migrate so regularly from one to another of the same few hundred houses that, if you let fall a piece of gossip at luncheon in Chesterfield Gardens, it will have taken wing to Portman Square and Hans Place by tea-time and will set tongues wagging over the dinner-tables of Westminster, Pall Mall and Piccadilly. By Saturday night the germ-carriers have spread themselves for a hundred miles to the west, north and south; before the week-end is over, the news may reasonably be expected to have reached Paris and, in these latter days, General Headquarters; and there has probably been more than one sly hint in the personal columns of the Sunday papers. Lady Maitland hears the story that very day at luncheon from the Duchess of Ross, who has met Gerald Deganway the night before at the Opera; he had been dining with Lady Pentyre, who had spent the week-end at Oxford with the Cutler-Blythes; young Haviland had come over to lunch on Sunday and had brought the story from All Souls'....
Deganway's name appeared most regularly in these lists, but I doubt if he had the wit to invent scandal; he was content to collect and hand it on during the hours when his energies might have been more disastrously employed at the Foreign Office. It was from him that I first publicly heard even a rumour of Mrs. O'Rane's escapade; George Oakleigh and I succeeded in stopping his mouth, and for a few more precarious weeks Milford Square sank back to its former insecure silence. Then the busy tongues got to work again, and within thirty-six hours I had heard six various accounts in as many places, starting with an early morning encounter in Hyde Park with my niece, who observed triumphantly, "Now I know why you haven't been talking about the great Sonia O'Rane the last few months."
"How much do you know, Yolande?" I asked.
"I heard yesterday that she'd run away," was the answer. "I wasn't told who with.... I can't say I was surprised."
At luncheon the name was supplied, unsupported by details, however. I was sitting next to Lady Pentyre, who welcomed me with even greater fervour than our old friendship warranted.
"I've been longing to see you!" she began eagerly. "You know Mrs. O'Rane, don't you? And you know Colonel Grayle. Well, is it true ...?"
"Is what true?" I asked, as she paused delicately.
Her full question was inaudible, but I caught the words "chère amie."
"Ask someone who knows them better," I suggested. "I've hardly seen either for months."
There was less delicacy about Pebbleridge, when I dined with him; less still about Frank Jellaby, when I met him at the Club. To the party organiser moral depravity is of interest only in so far as it contributes to damage a hostile cause.
"Grayle's hardly chosen a fortunate moment for the double event," he observed gleefully.
I made it a rule in these days never to admit knowledge of the facts until I had discovered how much my antagonist knew. The House of Commons on this occasion was better informed than Pont Street, the County Club or Eaton Place.
"Well, you know, he's been living—for months, apparently—with Mrs. O'Rane? I'm told O'Rane is bringing a petition. It will rather cook Grayle's goose, if this all comes out just when he's waiting to be sent for. It'll be a pretty bad case, from all accounts. You know O'Rane, don't you? Well, he lost his sight early in the war, which won't get Grayle much sympathy; and he was pretty newly married, which will appeal to the sentimental; and the whole business seems to have been conducted without any regard for human decency. Grayle used to go to the house as a friend, have them to his house, meet O'Rane in the Smoking-Room.... If he goes into the witness box, he'll be broken for all time, but, whether he goes in or not, he's dished himself for the present; even in war-time the Nonconformist Conscience wouldn't swallow a scandal of that kind. It's a bit ironical, isn't it? Like Parnell when he'd got Home Rule in the hollow of his hand. Grayle has done more to bring about this crisis than any six other men—including Northcliffe. He worked the Tories; he could call for anything he liked; and now you and I have only to wait for the story to get round a bit, and you'll find that Grayle's duties at the War Office are so important that he won't have time to attend the House, let alone taking a job." He laughed jubilantly. "Nemesis! Nemesis!"
"If the story is true," I said. "Where did you hear it?"
"Oh, everybody's talking about it! You don't suggest it's untrue?"
"I agree that everybody's talking about it, though that by itself doesn't make it true. Indeed, I've heard so many versions that I'm beginning to get confused. You say that O'Rane is bringing a petition? That's quite well-established? If so, this is the most convincing version that I've heard since lunch, because I don't suppose he would act on mere suspicion."
Jellaby looked up to the ceiling and pinched his chin thoughtfully between thumb and finger.
"I can give you my authority, I think. I was talking to several of the Lobby correspondents—it was that little man Palfrey, the fellow from the 'Night Gazette.' He told me that Grayle had been sent for all right, but not to be sounded for an office. This story was going about, and they wanted to know if it was true. I don't know where Palfrey got his facts from, but he's usually very well informed. He told me quite definitely that O'Rane was applying for a divorce."
I hardly knew whether to be surprised or not. When I last saw O'Rane he did not seem to have made up his own mind. At first he had told us unmistakably that he would be driven to bring the marriage to an end, unless his wife and Grayle separated; later, when she was for a moment once more in his house, he forgot to threaten and expended himself in pleading, with an appeal to Grayle which I should have been unable to resist, if I had been in his place. Her voice and bodily presence, the memories of the few weeks when they had lived together there seemed to have killed any feeling of resentment and of personal interest; O'Rane was begging the two of them to spare him the necessity of an extreme step. He did not convince them, but, when I left, I was not sure that he had not convinced himself.
Jellaby was about to leave me, when I called him back.
"I want to ask a favour of you," I said. "Don't make party capital out of this—yet awhile, at least. I know all these people; and I should like you to hold your hand for the present. If the story's true, if the case comes into court, it's public property for the world to discuss. But, until then, don't spread a story which may not be true and, true or not, must be tolerably unpleasant for young O'Rane."
"But I'm not spreading it!" Jellaby protested. "Everybody seems to have heard of it except you."
"Everyone's heard of it at about fifteenth hand. Whether it's true or not is very simply tested by events. O'Rane's not likely to let his wife go on living with Grayle, if that's what she's doing now; if he takes action, you'll know your story's true; if he doesn't—well, for pity's sake don't even repeat such charges against a perfectly innocent woman."
The epithet made Jellaby wag his head at me very knowingly.
"There's no smoke without fire, you know, Stornaway," he said.
I cannot deal with debilitated minds which employ proverbs in place of arguments; Jellaby remained unanswered.
I had hardly got rid of him and ordered myself a glass of port wine, when a page-boy brought me a card and stated that Sir Roger Dainton was waiting in the hall and would like to see me for a moment. Now, I had been on nodding terms with Dainton a dozen years in and out of the House, but we had never attained greater intimacy, as I am temperamentally unable to suffer bores gladly. A call from such a man at nine o'clock in the evening could mean only one thing.
"Ask him, with my compliments, if he will join me in a glass of wine," I said.
Under his usual garb of awkward diffidence and universal apology, I could see that my visitor was perplexed and worried. For several moments I entirely failed to check his flow of regret at disturbing my dinner; when I silenced him with three interruptions and as many invitations to taste his wine and try some of my nuts, he planted his elbows impressively on the table, leaned forward, opened his lips and then flung himself back and swept our corner of the Coffee-Room for eavesdroppers.
"I hope there's nothing wrong," I said.
He planted his elbows in position a second time and abruptly covered his face with his hands.
"It's—incredible," he began. "My little girl—Sonia, you know Sonia? Have you heard about it?"
"I don't know what you're referring to yet," I pointed out.
"Sonia's run away from her husband!" he whispered uncomprehendingly. "She's gone off with another man. They say—they say David's going to divorce her."
He lowered his hands, and the round, child's eyes, harmonising perfectly with the chubby, boyish face, were as full of horror and incredulity as his voice had been. I knew, of course, that Dainton had lost his elder son in the first year of the war and I believe that the younger had been wounded at least twice; this was the first time, however, that he had been flung against the sharp rocks of life, and he was as helplessly and bewilderedly scared and resentful as a child who has fallen among the breakers on a rugged coast.
"You had better tell me all about it," I said.
His stammering, self-interrupted narrative added nothing to the three sentences which he had already spoken. The blow had fallen that day at luncheon. Dainton found himself one of a large party which was for the most part unknown to him. Half-way through the meal he caught the sound of his daughter's name with some comment which would have been grotesque, if it had not been uttered with so much assurance. There followed the silence which drives home to a speaker that he has said something unpardonable and that he alone is unaware what it is. Dainton's neighbours rallied simultaneously and doused him with two conflicting jets of conversation, only to find that he was not listening and that, when they paused, he asked in an amazed whisper whether they had heard what was said.
"I may not have caught it right," he explained hopefully.
But both denied that they had heard the words in question.
When luncheon was over, an unknown woman with a scarlet face came up to him and apologised with tears in her eyes. What he must think.... She wouldn't have done such a thing for the world.... Really it was partly their hostess's fault for not introducing them properly. Honestly, she had no idea....
"I asked her to say it again," Dainton told me dully. "It was the very first I'd heard, the first I'd suspected.... I can't believe it now—not Sonia.... She—she said it was only a rumour, she couldn't vouch for it, but there was a report that David was going to ..."
He paused to raise his glass, spilling the wine generously. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't go about asking every Tom, Dick and Harry whether my daughter—When I got away from the office to-night, I went round to her house to see if I could find out anything from Oakleigh or George—I could talk to them fairly freely.... I remember my wife told me, I forget when it was, that Sonia was away and that George had moved in there to look after his uncle; neither of us ever dreamed then.... They were both out, so I thought I'd come and bother you. I knew you were pretty intimate with them. I—quite frankly I want you to tell me if what that woman said was true."
I did not find it easy to face Dainton's troubled, boyish eyes.
"I'm afraid it is," I said. "She's left O'Rane, she did go off with another man. I'm sorry to say that your luncheon-party wasn't the only place where it was being discussed, and several people have told me that the petition's actually been filed."
Dainton picked up a pair of nut-crackers and twisted them nervously open and shut.
"This will kill Catherine," he muttered. "We've both of us always been so proud of her, she was always so wonderful, even when she was a little child.... Stornaway, is this true? Is there no doubt of any kind? You don't know what she is to us!" he cried fiercely, as though I had been responsible for the shipwreck of their pride.
"There seems to be no doubt at all."
"I wonder if I may have another glass of wine," he said absently. "I'm afraid I've spilt most of this."
We must have sat for another hour in the deserted Coffee-Room, now silent as Dainton yielded inch by reluctant inch to the slow penetration of inevitable truth, now discussing explanations and canvassing expedients for retrieving a lost position. Beyond giving Grayle's name and mentioning that I had been present when an attempt was made to obviate divorce proceedings, I volunteered no details and did my best to give patient hearing to schemes which the rest of us had either rejected already or refused to consider. He would force Sonia to return to her husband, force O'Rane to take her back, force Grayle to give her up....
"There's no kind of force you can use," I had to tell him. "We've tried argument and entreaty, and that's failed."
"Her mother can make her!"
"No one can make her!"
Dainton looked at me as though I had contrived the catastrophe and were pluming myself on its completeness.
"But do you mean we've got to stand by and see our Sonia in the Divorce Court, to have her examined and cross-examined—our own child, with reporters scribbling it all down and everybody reading about it next day in the papers? It's unthinkable, Stornaway, it's unthinkable!"
"Tell me any way of avoiding it, and you may count on any help I can give you. By all means see her yourself or get Lady Dainton to see her. Of course, assuming that O'Rane has started proceedings, I don't know that you'll stop him. He's behaved with the greatest love and loyalty, and, if I may say so, your daughter exceeded them when she went back with Grayle after we'd tried to persuade her. But get Lady Dainton to see her. It can do no harm, but I advise you not to build too great hopes on it. Your daughter's last words, pretty well, were that she'd thought it all over beforehand and was prepared to face everything. Conceivable she may be frightened when she's taken at her word, but I'm inclined to think it will only make her set her teeth the harder."
Dainton looked at me dazedly, as though his mind had lagged a sentence and a half behind everything that I was saying and he were trying to overtake me. With marked indecision he raised his glass, lowered it, raised it again and gulped down the last mouthful of wine. Then he rose to his feet and beckoned me to do the same.
"There's not a moment to lose," he said gravely. "I'm going round to see Sonia at once. If you'll shew me where the telephone is——"
I led him to one of the boxes by the porter's office and dawdled in front of the tape-machine while he searched for Grayle's number and awaited his call. There was little news, but numerous prophets were helping the new Prime Minister with a wealth of conflicting suggestions to construct his cabinet. I had not succeeded in finding Grayle's name mentioned more than once when Dainton emerged and led me to a sofa.
"She's not in," he said. "I don't quite know what to do. I must tell my wife at the earliest possible moment.... My God, if she came up here and had it broken to her as I did to-day.... I should like to catch the 11.10 to-night ... and I could go and see David to-morrow. Poor boy! I'm not blaming him, but he can't understand what he's doing, what this means to us—Sonia! If only I knew about it!..." He turned to lay his hand timidly on my knee. "She seemed very determined, when you saw her?"
"Immovable," I answered.
"You think she'd disregard her own father and mother? Stornaway, you don't know what she is to us!"
His voice gave me the answer, but I saw no way of bringing home to him that he and his wife were less than nothing to her at this moment.
"You can only try," I said. "I've seen her at 'The Sanctuary' with O'Rane and Grayle, I've seen her in Milford Square by herself——"
He looked at his watch and turned to me excitedly.
"Look here, I can't be in two places at once and I must get down to my wife. Will you—I've no claim on you; I ask it, because I can't help myself—will you go to Sonia, insist on seeing her, tell her of our meeting to-night and beg her—in her mother's name—and mine——"
His faltering sentences lagged and halted until they stopped altogether.
"If you wish me to," I said.
"I can never thank you enough! I pray you'll never be in a similar position, but if you are——"
"Don't build extravagant hopes on it," I warned him again.
When I had seen him into a taxi, I drove to Milford Square with profound and momentarily increasing distaste for my mission. I felt instinctively that it was foredoomed to failure; I knew that, two hours after I had failed, the Daintons would be staring blankly at each other or pacing nervously up and down the room, refusing—despite my repeated warning—to abandon hope until my failure had been confessed. And I knew that I must see Mrs. O'Rane alone—which Grayle would try to prevent—and make an emotional appeal—which I was ill-equipped for doing....
My taxi drew up at the door. I rang and enquired of my old, smooth-faced antagonist whether Mrs. O'Rane was at home. I was told that she was not.
"Then I'll wait for her," I said, squeezing past him into the hall and taking off my coat and gloves. "Is Colonel Grayle in?"
"Not yet, sir; Mr. Bannerman's in the smoking-room."
"I should like to see him," I said, "if he's not engaged."
Guy dragged himself out of an arm-chair with a mixture of surprise and distrust.
"Hullo! what brings you here?" he enquired. "I never expected to see you."
"Well, I never expected to see you," I answered. "I thought you'd been banished."
He looked at me with cautious absence of expression and then applied himself to treading a little mound of cigar-ash into the carpet.
"Grayle ought to be in soon," he volunteered. "He said he wouldn't be late."
"It was Mrs. O'Rane I came to see."
Guy looked at me closely and raised his eyebrows slightly. Then he buried the lower half of his face in a tumbler of whiskey and soda, glanced at me again over the brim, swallowed and set the glass down empty.
"What d'you want with her, if I may ask?" he enquired.
Guy has a dual personality compounded of loyalty to his master and love for humanity at large. The combination is not an easy one to imagine, but he contrived at once to blend the qualities and yet keep them distinct. I told him frankly and fully of my conversation with Dainton.
"I warned him that he was sending me on a fool's errand," I said. "But how could I refuse? I'd submit to being sent on a dozen fool's errands each day, if I thought I could spare him—and his wife—and O'Rane—and his wife——"
Guy raised his hand to interrupt me.
"Look here, how much do you know?" he asked, as I had been asking every second person that day. "Not the early part; what I mean is, are you up to date?"
"Two or three people have told me that O'Rane's actually filed his petition," I said. "Is that true?"
"I don't know. Is that all you know?"
"My dear Guy, the whole of London's discussing the thing, I've heard an approach to the truth and most kinds of variants."
"But is that all you know?" he repeated.
"I imagine so," I answered.
Guy shrugged his shoulders helplessly.
"Then you're not up to date," he said. "I got Dainton's enquiry on the telephone and I told him that she wasn't in. It was true—as far as it went. She's gone, Stornaway. I've not the faintest idea what happened, but there was—a big row of some kind—not the first by any means, I may tell you,—and she walked out of the house."
"But where's she gone to?" I asked, as soon as I was sufficiently recovered from my surprise to ask anything.
"I've no idea," he answered.