O'Rane

“ Behind O’Rane’s shining eyes, in a stain of shadow between two white sheets of sunshine, I seemed now to see Raymond’s tired face at his luncheon-party on Armistice Day.
“So far,” said O’Rane thoughtfully, “no one’s gone about it in the right way.”
“It was not for want of intelligence. Can it be that the modern world has grown too fast for any one to control it?”
If I had not parted with my little monograph on the war, I should have liked to explore this idea that civilization was bursting like an overripe fruit. ”

“ We had adjourned to Tom Dainton's Spartan study—two uninhabitable chairs and a pair of boxing-gloves—and were still discussing the enormity of O'Rane's offence when a sound of scuffling made itself heard above. Then there came a thud, renewed scuffling, two more thuds, some angry voices, a fourth thud, a sharp cry—and sudden silence.
Loring leapt to his feet with anxiety in his grey eyes. ”

“ O'Rane cried with an outburst of emotion which he was no longer able to contain. "Grayle, you say you love her! If you care a snap of the fingers for her, if you've any humanity, any decent feeling in the whole of your composition, if you hope for mercy in this world or the next, you've got your opportunity now! The one thing you can do for her abiding happiness is to take my hand and swear you'll never see her again. You know it is! You can walk out of this house and leave her so that no one will dare to say a word against her for fear of being thrashed within an inch of his life. ”

“ With sudden decision O'Rane jumped out and walked to the steps of the Cross where Kestrell was standing. Not a man moved, but every eye followed his progress, and in the silence of the crowded square there was no sound but the light tread of his feet. ”

“ Eric said nothing for several moments, but he laughed to himself, and O’Rane gripped his arm as though the sneer in the laugh stung him.
“And I wonder what you think would be left for me, if I did give her up!” he resumed. “It’s no good trying to make me live in too rarified air. All this business about ‘the right thing’—I’m not cut out for Cyrano de Bergerac or for Sidney Carton; a good conscience, a glow of magnanimity—it does me no sort of good, Raney. I know what I want, I know how badly I want it. ”

“ Every group of nations, every nation, almost every man and woman.” . . .
4 After two years I can appreciate O’Rane’s patience better than was possible at the time. I know now that he was distracted by a civil war of his own; but I was too much preoccupied to enquire why Sonia and the children were in Hampshire; I should have been aggrieved if any one else had presumed to be unhappy. ”

“ O’Rane walked for some distance without answering; and I thought he had not heard my question. Then he laughed and gave my arm a squeeze:
“By realizing the alternative, as every one’s had every chance of doing in this war. By seeing that, if we trample on people weaker than ourselves, there’ll be people stronger than ourselves to trample on us. When I first saw ‘fraternity’ shining in front of me like Constantine’s Cross, I was a very small, very young, very miserable boy. I went through hell till I learnt how to defend myself. ”

“ It was unseemly and brutal, this torrent of questions from a man who was in no way concerned. O’Rane knew some one who would be only too pleased to take over the lease of the Ryder Street flat; he knew some one else who might usefully be employed to spread the news of his departure through the Press; he knew men at every stopping-place between Liverpool and the Marquesas, between Southampton and the Cape, and letters of introduction were to be had for the asking.
“You’re giving me a wonderful funeral,” said Eric. ”

“ 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." ”

“ After a year of war O'Rane could have mustered many followers, when he murmured to himself, "I—all of us who were out there—have seen it. We can't forget. The courage, the cold, heart-breaking courage ... and the smile on a dying man's face.... We must never let it be forgotten, we've earned the right. As long as a drunkard kicks his wife, or a child goes hungry, or a woman is driven through shame to disease and death.... Is it a great thing to ask? To demand of England to remember that the criminals and loafers and prostitutes are somebody's children, mothers and sisters? ”

“ O'Rane, who had scrambled along the balcony, appeared at the open window in time to catch the last words.
"The only man who has the right to be depressed," he said, "is the luckless devil who's put his money into Austrian oil."
Loring turned to him swiftly.
"Are you hit, Raney?" ”

“ O'Rane explained. "It's the effect on the individual, the effort, the risk, the readiness to make sacrifice. I always hold that there's no room in life for compromise. You know that, don't you, George?" He held out his hand and pulled George on to the arm of his chair. "From the days when we were at Melton together. You and dear old Jim Loring and Tom Dainton—dear God! how this war has killed them off!—you used to thrash me, you brutes, to make me see that I must compromise, but you never won. ”

“ We had all said then that we must get back to London; we could none of us have said what we expected to do there.
“You’ll wait till Bertrand comes,” I begged.
“Yes. I don’t suppose a day or two more or less will make much difference,” said O’Rane. “After all these years, too . . . It’s a curious thing, George; we’re both of us Irishmen, both of us men of peace; and, most of all, we’re reformers. All our working life we’ve seen the reforms nearest our hearts postponed and postponed by an eruption in Ireland or by a threat of European war. ”

“ I imagine that every man, before he attains wisdom, endures a part or the whole of a walking tour. O'Rane had propounded the idea in the course of our last term, and his eloquence was sufficient to shake even Loring. On leaving Oxford we repaired to House of Steynes, where Raney was awaiting us with a haversack and ash-plant, and without giving our enthusiasm a chance to cool we struck south with no more destination nor time-limit than was implied in the determination to walk until we quarrelled or grew tired of walking. ”

“ O'Rane's performance, however, was too good to be set aside. I have a photograph of the company with Raney seated in the [Pg 107] middle. With his small, sensitive mouth and white teeth, his clean-cut nose and long-lashed, large black eyes, he makes a very attractive girl.
"This is a wonderful place," he said, as we sat down to dinner. "I've been sight-seeing to-day."
"Anything worth seeing?" asked Loring, whose substantially accurate boast it was that he had never been within the walls of a strange college. ”

“ Possibly acting on a hint from George Oakleigh, I was beginning to share his experience that Mrs. O'Rane never resented a certain brutal candour of criticism.
"You do hate me, don't you?" she laughed.
"I have no use for the second-rate."
"And that disposes of me!" She leant down and drew Beresford to her until his head was pillowed on her bosom. "Baby, you're in love with a second-rate woman. So are ever so many people more, I'm afraid. It doesn't speak highly for the first-rate intelligence of men, but then I take men as I find them." ”

“ O’Rane wrote at this time, “when the armistice was proclaimed. If you’d shouted ‘as you were’ from the Woolworth Tower, you couldn’t have scattered people more quickly. ‘As you were before the war’ is the general feeling. I expect it’s been the same in England. We must do better than that.” . . .
“I’m not sure that I know what you mean,” said Violet.
“And I’m not sure that I can put it into words,” I answered. “In general terms, no sacrifice was too great in the war; I want people to feel no sacrifice is too great in peace. ”

“ George encouraged him.
"I wouldn't bother you, if I could see," O'Rane resumed apologetically. "Tell her that if she wants anything——"
I felt that it was time to interfere.
"She can go to her parents," I said. "O'Rane, we're all of us different men and women every day of our lives, we're always changing, never the same. Some things change us more rapidly than others, marriage, illness, great prosperity or great disaster, the death of a friend—my dear boy, I'm only telling you what you know already. ”

“ O’Rane continued, “when you lose your wife and your health on the same day. I’ve been telling him all evening that no woman in the world is big enough to spoil a man’s life, but at the moment he’s in the mood to creep into a corner and die. ”

“ I decided very unworthily that he was a snob and a faithless friend. With equal self-consciousness I determined that O'Rane should never charge me with aloofness or want of cordiality.
We invited no one to meet him. There would be time for that later, and in any case he was likely to be known all over Oxford before the term was out.
"He shall stand on his hind-legs and do his tricks for us alone," said Loring, who pretended to laugh at O'Rane in order to conceal an admiration not far removed from affection. "The wild beast that has been fed into domesticity." ”

“ O'Rane's black eyes lit up at the memory of the scene.
"I was telling that story to our young friend," he continued with his baffling smile. "Chivalry? Nothing doing. Moral sanctions and first causes? Nothing doing. He didn't believe in God, he wasn't going to Hell, if he misbehaved himself, so why in the name of reason should he bother?... But I should think I fixed him over my Bâle story.... We had a hideous night (it was too cold to go and sulk outside—which made the symbolism more perfect; you can't sulk outside this world, unless you're prepared to cut your throat) ”

“ I was making enough clatter with plates and knives to convince the least attentive that my patience was exhausted; but O’Rane lay with his hands clasped behind his head, frowning a little at his own thoughts and wholly unmoved by my demonstration.
“Will divorce make for Barbara’s happiness?,” he asked in a maddening drawl. “You can’t quite wash your hands of a woman you’ve married. You weren’t content, you see, with somebody of your own mould. Your wife had to be brilliant, beautiful, romantic, tragic. ”

“ O'Rane looked through the open window over the placid lake to the smoke-blue mountains beyond.
"You can only reform the world by reforming the men who compose it," he answered. "And you can't do that by Acts of Parliament. You've not found that out yet, George. I have."
"Then why are we to be honoured?" Bertrand inquired.
Raney turned round and faced into the room.
"There are some things the House alone can do, sir. Within the next ten years you're going to have labour troubles as near revolution as makes no odds. I've spied out the land, and there's an ugly temper abroad. ”

“ When at last he excused himself and went out on deck, O’Rane overtook him and suggested a stroll before dinner.
“I’ve hardly had a word with you since we came on board, Eric,” he began. “You’ve not been seedy, have you?”
“No, but I’ve reached an age when I can’t move without running across people I know. From one end of America to the other, in Japan, here... On a ship I like to escape my fellow man and have—a rest... I don’t mean you, of course, but the people who feel they must congratulate me on a play that I wish I’d never written....” ”

“ I made no answer, for I was thinking of O'Rane. On New Year's Eve he had dined at home with George and Bertrand, and all three came up to my room afterwards. We made a despondent party, for the endlessness of the war daunted us as the third year added month to month with lengthening casualty lists and a growing sense that, when we had already failed so many times and in so many ways, there was no reason why we should not go on failing. Each one of us was far enough from reality to be conscious of helplessness and insufficiency ”

“ We were all charged with something of O'Rane's electric personality that night, but at breakfast next morning Bertrand set himself to undo the effects of the Easterly meeting in so far as they concerned O'Rane.
"It's all nonsense, George," he said. "A man of his talents and experience, a born leader of men——"
"I doubt if you shift him," I answered. "He's committed to it—like thousands of others who are burying themselves in the ranks because they can't wait for commissions."
"He must outgrow that phase," said my uncle impatiently. ”

“ For all my wisdom and superiority in discussing the rash engagement with Amy Loring, I was sorry to see it broken off. Two, three years before I had been as anxious as O'Rane to marry and I do not know that a disappointment hurts less at eighteen than later in life. It is true that there was no pecuniary embarrassment in my case, but at that age I refused to regard it as a serious obstacle in O'Rane's path. If anyone wanted money, he either manœuvred himself into a job or put his shoulders to the wheel and made it. ”

“ Raney would not have summoned me for a trifle; if he needed me, there was danger; yet I had told Barbara that I should be as safe with him as if I stayed in Seymour Street. . . .
From Chancery Lane I stumbled to my office at a pace that left no time for morbid fancies. O’Rane was in my room, sitting by the fire and slapping a stick lazily against his boot. I have never seen any one less like a figure of destiny, urging me to an unknown doom. At the vaguest hint, he would have insisted on my going back to Barbara. ”