"You'd better go back to him," he suggested. "I don't think we've got anything more to say to each other."
The second closing of the door was followed by a long silence.
"Tell me what's happened, Bertrand," I repeated.
"Oh, nothing!" He gave a barking cough of mordant bitterness. "I told George it wasn't fair to drag you in, when you had in fact been spared it. David came back unexpectedly this afternoon to find his wife in Beresford's arms." He buried his face in tremulous hands. "My God! my God! They've not been married a year! And a blind man!"
When Bertrand is cynical, I find him tiresomely cynical; not content with condoning human depravity, he seems to take personal credit to himself for it. When he is humanly moved, I find him unnerving.
"Tell me the whole story," I said, "before I try to comment on it."
"Comment on it?" Bertrand echoed and sat silent, staring at a picture on the opposite wall.
The story, when it came, was old and simple. The end of the holidays found the O'Ranes as undecided about the future as at the beginning; it had been easier, I presume, not to discuss it, and no word had passed until the evening before. Then O'Rane had announced his approaching return to Melton, and from that the game, encounter, what you will, had developed automatically. His wife begged him not to go, hinted that he had promised to stay in London and after the usual interchange was undecided whether she would keep him company. It depended.... There followed the expected debate on Miss Merryon. O'Rane was taking her to Melton whether his wife came or not, as he needed the services of a typist; Mrs. O'Rane would not go, if "that woman" went, and, if O'Rane went with her alone, he knew the consequences....
"Then I went to bed," said Bertrand, pressing his hands to his head. "I imagine they must have had an unprecedented row, and this morning O'Rane went off to Waterloo, leaving his wife like a spitting cat. I slunk out of the house as soon as possible; I didn't want the quarrel at second-hand. Sometime this afternoon O'Rane came back. When he got to Waterloo, he felt that he couldn't part from his wife for three months on such a note. He came back to make friends, to see if they couldn't arrive at some modus vivendi.... He felt his way round the library; it was deserted; felt his way round the hall and found her umbrella in the stand; went upstairs. Her door was locked, and he tapped on it, begging her to let him in. She shouted out that he wasn't to come in; and he stood there minute after minute, praying her to remember their love, to forgive him, to be reasonable, generous, to forget their wretched quarrel. Never a sound came from inside the room. He had worked himself up until he was sweating with emotion. When he stopped, there was utter silence. Then he heard a cough...."
Bertrand paused to sip the drink at his elbow. It was not Sonia's cough; it was the bursting cough of a man who had been trying in a long agony of suffocation to repress it. At the sound something primitive and overmastering took possession of O'Rane. He stepped back and flung himself against the door, but it was old, and the weight of his body only wrung a hollow groan from its solidity; within all was still silent. Again and again he charged the door with his shoulder until one panel split and broke in, and the lock creaked in outrage. Insensible to physical pain which was quickly maddening his brain, he took a last flying leap which wrenched handle and lock from the wood-work and sent him to measure his length on the floor.