human
I shall dine at the Club,
gpt
You'd have thought he had enough to put up with already, wouldn't you? George asked dispassionately; then, with a tremor in his voice,
human
God in heaven! it's a smash-up for Raney! I didn't think she was capable of it, I've known her all her life, I'd have sworn she'd have pulled up in time.... Of course, she's always _had_ to have people fluttering round her and paying her compliments, and I wasn't a bit surprised to find a boys' school of young Guardees hanging about the house the moment she'd moved into it. It was the same when she was engaged to Jim Loring--God knows, she knocked a big enough hole in his life, you'd have thought there'd be some reactive effect on her.... But, on my soul, because she'd been doing it so long, I thought she could be trusted. I thought she really loved Raney, I thought he was the only person who could manage her.... He _would_ treat her like a man. 'No one's ever let up on me. Trust people, and they'll repay your trust....' All that balderdash.... It's succeeded amazingly well with men, he can do what he likes with them. But women must be fundamentally different.... We're both bachelors, of course.... But I always feel there was a lot to be said for Petruchio. Raney loved her most kinds of ways, and she loved him on and off in some fashion for years; he really only _won_ her, when he was frankly brutal to her--I had the story from both, so I know; she was caught in Austria, like you, and he smuggled her back and shewed her pretty clearly who'd got the stronger personality; then she married him after he'd gone blind, when all our emotions were in tatters; and, having once married her, he seemed to think that mere love and trust were enough to keep her. I don't know; I've never had to live with a woman; I can't help feeling, though, that, just as he won her by main force, so he could only hope to keep her by main force. And he didn't even give her the 'mere love and trust' I've been talking about; he _trusted_ her all right, but I think the kind of practical Christianity that he tried to set up was too much to ask of anyone--let alone a spoilt darling like Sonia.... He's always been so infernally uncompromising, it's his strength and his weakness; it's because he was uncompromising that he's kept alive and it's because he's been uncompromising with her that he's brought this on himself.
gpt
But this is all ancient history, George, I reminded him.
human
What are we going to do?
gpt
To soften the blow? Nothing. We _can't_ do anything. Sonia's cleared out, I suppose she' gone off to join Beresford. Well, Bertrand thinks Raney's equal to murder, but you can trust Beresford to keep out of the way.... I suppose there'll be a divorce.... I honestly don't know what to do about Raney. He's my oldest and dearest friend, but I don't know more than the surface of him.... God! If I had Sonia's throat in my two hands! He broke off and pulled me roughly off the kerb, gripping my arm until we were half-way down Cockspur Street.
human
I've never been faced with this kind of thing, Stornaway. I suppose you must have been?
gpt
Nothing so bad as this,
human
That poor devil alone in the dark with this--_this_ to occupy his thoughts!
gpt
I feel so hopelessly at sea! he exclaimed agitatedly.
human
Stornaway, you've had to pull people out of holes before; can _nothing_ be done? Can't we get her to go back? Would he receive her back? Of course, we're all of us seeing red now, but somehow every hour that she spends with Beresford makes it harder to get her back; if we could use Raney's love for her----
gpt
D'you want her to go back?
human
God knows _what_ I want!