4
O'Rane arrived at "The Sanctuary" next day half an hour after I had finished luncheon. This time his wife consented to see him, but only after some hesitation.
"You mustn't go away!" she whispered to me. "If you—if you see I'm getting tired, you know...."
O'Rane came into her room with a smile, kissed her hand and then felt for a chair, where he sat in silence for perhaps three minutes until Lady Loring entered to say that it was time for her patient to rest.
"I never asked how you were feeling," he said, as he got up to go.
"I'm all right—at present," Sonia answered. Then a shiver ran through her, communicating itself to her fingers until I saw his hand tighten over them.
"It's going to be all right, Sonia," O'Rane whispered.
She lowered her eyes and stared dully across the room.
"It can't be all right."
"I'll make it all right."
The corners of her mouth began to droop miserably.
"Of course, if I die ..." she began with a catch in her breath.
O'Rane dropped on to one knee and drew her two hands into his own.
"It's much more fun living, sweetheart!" he whispered. "And you're going to live, you're going to make whatever you like of your life. If you want me, I shall always be at hand, as I am now; and, if you don't want me, I shall keep away. I owe you so much, my darling; you must give me the chance of paying you back a little bit. When we married, I didn't give either of us a fair trial, I forgot the life you were accustomed to, I forgot that my own life wasn't like everyone else's; I just went ahead, doing everything that came natural to me, and it never occurred to me that I was making you unhappy. Forgive me, Sonia!"
She dragged one hand away and covered her eyes.
"I don't know that I've got much to forgive," she murmured, and I could see her lips curving to a wistful smile.
"I shouldn't have asked you, it I didn't need it. Sonia, you're going to be brave, aren't you?"
"Yes."
"Promise?"
The lines of her throat tightened.
"You know what my promises are worth, David."
"If you promise, I know you'll keep it. And then I shall want another promise—two more, in fact. I want you to promise not to worry, and you must promise not to feel any pain. Will you do that, sweetheart? I've come up all the way from Melton, you know."
She withdrew her hand, and I saw that her face had become suddenly pale and that her eyes were tightly closed.
"I can't promise that, David."
His voice caressed her, as though he were talking to a child.
"I think you can, darling. Do you remember when you sprained your ankle, skating at Crowley Court, and you started to cry with the pain and I said I wouldn't carry you back to the house until you'd promised to stop crying and not to let the ankle hurt any more? You promised quickly enough then, and it's much more important now. If you'll promise that now, I'll do anything you like."
She smiled wistfully a second time, then drew his head down to her own and whispered something. I heard him say, "You won't. I swear you won't, Sonia." Then he drew himself upright, waved his hand and walked to the door.
I sat with him in the library, while he attacked a belated luncheon and plied me with questions about his wife. Her whispered request, he told me, was that she might, if possible, be kept from seeing the child when it was born, and on this he hung a string of questions to find out what steps we had taken to secure the best doctors and nurses, when the birth was expected, whether anyone else knew.
"We've told no one," I assured him, "since you asked us not to."
"I told Burgess," he said. There was a long silence. "I—told him everything.... I mean, one does with Burgess. I found it wasn't news to him. George had told him—weeks ago.... One does with Burgess," he repeated, smiling.
"What did he say?" I asked.
"He was rather helpful."
"George told me that he wouldn't trouble to talk to you about it unless he saw his way to help you," I said.
O'Rane finished his meal and lay back in his chair.
"I went in and told him that I wanted a day or two's leave, if he could possibly spare me; I told him Sonia was going to have a child.... He waited for some time and then said, 'The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?' Said it as if he meant it, too; it was like trying to get extra leave in the old days; as a rule he'd accept any excuse, however bad, provided it was given in good faith; I once got an extra half for the whole school because it was so hot that, as I told him, we'd much prefer not to be working.... Well, I told him the whole truth—all about Sonia and myself, all about Grayle...." He paused as though breathing hurt him, then smiled wearily.
"It may have been good for my humility of spirit, but I can't say it was very edifying for Burgess.... I told him that Sonia's been dancing in the shadow of a volcano, that we were always on the verge of an appalling scandal and that it was more by luck than anything else that it had been averted. I described to him how we'd smuggled her home and what we were going to do to keep the child away from her.... Have you ever told a long story and discovered at some point that it's falling extraordinarily flat or that someone's shocked? Burgess never said anything, and of course I couldn't see his face, but—I don't know whether you understand me—the silence seemed to become more intense at times. I felt that his eyes must be on me and I—not to put too fine a point on it—I began to feel rather frightened.... If I could have seen.... I knew from his voice when he first spoke that he was sitting down; and I suddenly remembered a most awful row I'd had with him when I was about sixteen. He sat there then with his back to the window, and I stood in front of him arguing and arguing; it was a little matter of discipline, and he'd decided to fire me out.... Well, I went through just the same thing this morning. I—I felt I was owning up; and I'd have given anything in the world to see his face.... You know how you spin out the explanation ... and rather overdo it ... you're too plausible and you feel the whole time that you're not getting it across.... I went on and on ... and finally I stopped short; it wasn't any use, he knew everything—even if George hadn't told him.... I became stiff and dignified and said once more, 'If you can shift the work round so that I can be away for a day or two——' Then I heard him scraping for a light—and sighing—and throwing the matches away.... God! until you're blind, you've no conception how many things you hear. You wouldn't notice the sound of a wooden match falling in the grate, but I did; and, though I've given up smoking because I can't taste tobacco, I felt a little smarting at the back of my nostrils as Burgess got going with his pipe...."
If ever a man talked to gain time, it was O'Rane at that moment.
"What advice did he give you?" I asked him at length.
"He didn't give me any—advice. But, when I'd finished, he said he'd pull the time-table about and that I could stay away as long as I liked. I knew he'd say that. Well, in the ordinary course I should have said 'Thank you' and cleared out, but I didn't find it easy to move. Burgess sat there, sucking at his pipe; I stood there—and I felt a perfect fool, because I was beginning to blush. And the old man said, 'Well, David O'Rane?' and I said, 'Well, sir?' And then there was another silence. And then he said, 'Thou hast no further need of me'—You know the way he talks? I did thank him then and was starting to the door, when he called out, 'Thou art at peace in thine own mind?' That rather stung me, and I told him that, all things considered, I didn't think I was wholly to blame; and he answered rather enigmatically that, if I wasn't careful, I should be. I asked him what he meant."
O'Rane left his chair and took up a familiar position at the fire-place, resting his arm on the high chimney-piece and leaning his head on the back of his hand.
"Burgess is a curious man," he resumed dispassionately. "I don't think he ever had any children of his own, but he's got—well, an extraordinarily human imagination. He began talking about this poor kiddie—who isn't born yet—and pointing the contrast between his life and the life of any other boy, who'd have a father and a mother fussing round him, whenever he had a bit of wind in his poor little tummy, and playing with him and watching him, as he began to crawl and talk, and trying to make him understand that it wasn't the end of the world when he was miserable trying to cut teeth.... The old man didn't spare me," said O'Rane with a quivering laugh. "I had about twenty years of the boy's life compressed into twenty minutes; the way he'd go to school, frightfully shy and with no one to see him through, no one to give him half a sovereign at mid-term; and the way he'd get a remove or find himself in the eleven—with nobody to brag about it to; and the way he'd go on to a public school and work his way through the green-sickness period of dirty stories and foul language—without anyone to tell him that he was becoming rather a pitiable little object.... And the portentous age, when he'd be head of his house, and the days when he'd want to ask his father what Oxford used to be like in the prehistoric days.... After twenty minutes or so I told Burgess that I didn't see it was my look-out."
"Well?" I said, as O'Rane hesitated.
"I think it was damned unfair," he burst out, but the resentment in his tone was unconvincing. "Burgess was a friend of my father, he knows all about me, I've told him every last thing about myself.... I don't suppose even George knows, but the old man used to invite me to help tidy up his library, if I wasn't taking Leave-Out, and of course I was as happy as a clam; and we used to talk, and I told him things that kept me awake half the night,—but he always seemed to have forgotten them next day. Well, I suppose after my father died I did have rather a—crowded youth; and Burgess asked me if I wanted to send my son through the same mill.
"He's not my son," I said.
"Thy wife's son, laddie," he answered.
O'Rane turned wearily from the fire and began to pace up and down the room.
"I told him!" he exclaimed. "I said that, if it hadn't been for that, Sonia and I could have forgotten everything and come together again. You remember? I was ready—ah, dear God in Heaven! I was ready! And then I heard that this had come between us, that there was going to be a permanent reminder, a permanent barrier, a permanent alien something in our lives. That was the first time I saw you were right, the first time I appreciated we could never forget and go on as if nothing had happened. My love for Sonia hasn't changed. If—if anything happened to the child.... But as long as it's there! I told Burgess that, though I agreed with him in principle, I was very sorry, but I couldn't help it. It was Grayle's business. He asked me if I thought Grayle was likely to accept his responsibilities; I told him I saw no indication of it. He said nothing to that, and I made another bolt for the door. He called me back and asked what I proposed to do. I said I'd told him already.
"He didn't stop me, and I got back to my rooms in the Cloisters. I began to pack a few things, but the whole time I was feeling that I hadn't explained properly and that Burgess rather despised me. I got extraordinarily excited and angry over it, until at last I left the packing alone and went back to his house to justify myself. The man shewed me at once into the library, and it was only when I got inside that I realised that all this time Burgess ought to have been taking the Sixth for Tacitus. Instead he was still in his chair, still sucking at his pipe. I fired away, full of indignation, and went through the whole weary business from the beginning, just as I'd done before. He never interrupted me, never said a word till I'd finished. Then he told me pretty bluntly that he was only indirectly interested in me and that what he wanted to find out was why the child should be penalised, why I, who knew something of what it would have to go through, persisted in making it face the music for no fault of its own. I was pretty well worked up, but I tried to be reasonable and asked him what he suggested I should do. He never hesitated a moment this time! He told me it was my duty to treat the child as if he were my own son, never to let him or anyone else know what had happened before he was born, but to devote myself to him as if he were—well, not my own son, not someone for whom I was naturally responsible, but someone who'd been entrusted to my care. He said, if I didn't—with the experience I'd got to back me.... Somehow, the way he put it, Stornaway...."
He brought his walk to a conclusion as abruptly as the sentence and dropped heavily on to a sofa, as though glad that a necessary task was finished, yet awaiting criticism from me and obviously prepared to argue as vehemently against me on one side as he had argued against Burgess on the other.
"In practice, what do you propose to do?" I asked.
"I've been trying to think the whole way up from Melton. I suppose we shall have to behave as though the whole world knew Sonia was going to have a baby, it will have to be our child. And I suppose we shall live like other people who are kept from divorcing each other because of their children. Nominally we shall share the same house, and I suppose things can be arranged so as to spare Sonia.... But Burgess has convinced me. We've no right to think of ourselves or wash our hands of responsibility or try to score off other people at the expense of the child. I've promised her that she shall never see it.... I don't know, I suppose this is one of the things that men and women are temperamentally incapable of seeing with the same eyes; but, whoever the father was, whatever the history, I should have imagined that any woman would fight for her child against all the powers of creation; it was like a stab when Sonia first said she hoped the child would be born dead, it was another stab when she begged me—begged me to promise.... I promised right enough; it was the only thing to do, but I can't let it rest at that. If she's well enough to talk, I want to make everything quite plain to her now; otherwise I must explain afterwards...."
As we finished dinner, Lady Loring came down to say that Sonia was asking for her husband. I was not present, I am glad to say, at their interview, but it did not last more than five minutes, and at its end O'Rane looked in for a moment to say that he proposed to walk as far as the House of Commons for a breath of fresh air. Neither by word nor tone did he invite anyone to accompany him; and on his return he went upstairs without coming into the library. I called for a bulletin on my own account before retiring for the night, and Lady Loring warned me that I must be prepared for anything at any moment. Sonia had worked herself from hysteria into something hardly distinguishable from delirium; forgetting that she had already seen her husband, she had sent for him a second time and a second time implored him to spare her the sight of her own child; Lady Loring, who had been on duty all day, was not allowed to rest, and, as I passed the door, the lights were burning and I caught the sound of voluble chatter.
For an hour I tried to sleep, but the intermittent hum of voices, the creak of feet passing rapidly up and down the passage, still more the indefinable suspense kept me awake. For another hour I tried to read, but I was always interrupting myself to listen; and at two o'clock I pulled a dressing-gown over my pyjamas and returned to the library. To my surprise Bertrand was dozing over a book, while George sat writing letters on his knee. Both looked up, blinking with dull fatigue, as I came in.
"I wonder how long this racket's going on," Bertrand growled, as he walked across to fetch himself a drink. "She'll kill herself at this rate. And—what—almighty fools—the three of us are—to be here at all!"
"Has Raney come back yet?" George asked me. "I was told he'd gone for a walk—like a wise man."
"He was sitting outside her door, as I came down," I answered.
Grumbling inarticulately, Bertrand went back to his book. George looked at me long enough to see that I was too tired to talk, then began a fresh letter. I prowled in front of the bookcases, trying to find something that I had the mental energy to read. It was shortly after four when O'Rane hurried silently into the room and telephoned for the doctor.