1
When I first met Sir Aylmer Lancing, I was a very young and very impecunious member of the Diplomatic Service; he was in early middle life and a millionaire many times over. It was a time of mental green-sickness with me, when I had an undergraduate's morbid craving for ideas, something of an undergraduate's contempt, too, for those to whom ideas made no appeal. In describing Sir Aylmer as a man without ideas, I am saying something which he would have endorsed and interpreted to mean far more than I intended. He had no ideas outside his business, though within it he shewed a deliberate, dogged objectivity, the sublimation of commonsense, which was staggering and irresistible as a battering-ram. I have met no one with whom the essential was so invariably the obvious. One day, when we were crossing together to America, I asked him what were the qualities which made most for success in any career. He answered, for all the world like the tritest of stage millionaires, "Always know what you want and go for it; always be quite clear about what's going on in your own mind."
Lancing left an estate of over twenty millions; I had made before the war about two hundred thousand pounds; despite the difference I boldly affirm that the first intellectual quality for success is an ability to know what is going on in other people's minds. Bertrand Oakleigh has the quality in a high degree. I made fun of him, indeed, over many years, because he was so oracular. At his house in Princes Gardens, in the Smoking-Room and at the Club he would sit looking up at the ceiling with a long black cigar jutting defiantly from under his heavy walrus moustache, always a little more profound and unhurried than the rest of us, always armed with a general principle, always ready with a philosophic theory, sometimes paradoxical and usually pretentious. But, when he dropped what George once called his "sneers and graces," forgot to be prejudiced or pontifical, he was shrewdly intelligent. Had he been less indolent, less fond of gossip, less detached and content to be the amused spectator, he could have made a considerable political position for himself, for he had a rare faculty of hearing innumerable opinions on the same subject, melting them down, so to say, and producing a prophecy. But, as he grew older, he would not take the trouble to think for himself or to ascertain what others were thinking.
I went to him for advice on the results of my visit to Grayle's house in Milford Square.
"Well, I take it that the one person we're interested in is David," he said by way of giving me a lead.
The remark was characteristic of his love for O'Rane, but I am afraid it was also indicative of his general aversion from women and of his dislike for Mrs. O'Rane in particular, a dislike which dated back to a time long anterior to her marriage. I was weakly ready to go farther and interest myself in her, too, if only on account of her youth and an obstinate belief that youth has a good title to happiness.
"Well, we're looking for the best solution," I suggested, "not meting out justice. Grayle and Mrs. O'Rane are waiting for O'Rane to file a petition. That was her message. Now, O'Rane's never said whether he'll divorce her or not; probably he hasn't made up his mind, and certainly I don't know his views on divorce. She's in an impossible position—socially—as long as she lives with Grayle without marrying him; and Grayle's position will be very uncomfortable as soon as the story gets about. It's enough to spoil his political career; whereas he'll live it down, if there's a conventional divorce and he lies quiet for a few months. If O'Rane wants to take his revenge, he need only refuse to set her free."
"He's not looking for revenge," said Bertrand oracularly.
"Then you'd say—anyone would say—that the kindest and most generous thing he could do would be to divorce her. I'm only uncertain because I know something of Grayle; I presume he'll marry her, but, when the honeymoon period's over, he'll make her supremely unhappy. Perhaps that's no more than she deserves, but, if O'Rane thought she'd be unhappy by marrying Grayle, conceivably he might exercise his power to prevent it."
"Conceivably he might," Bertrand assented dryly.