Sonia Married by Stephen McKenna (1919)

 The thing I want to note about reading McKenna this time is what it feels like. He's a relatively conservative author, writes what would be considered standard narratives, and that of course is conservative and standard for, in this instance, a full century ago. But there is unmistakable uplift in reading him; a feeling of basedness, steadiness and polish which sits well, and somehow nourishes. He has dealt, in all of his work thus far, with the exigencies of the lives of well-heeled people, but in a relatively non-romantic way: the beauties in their environment are incidental; his key concerns are political and in the wrangle of their contested and nagged relationships. There is a feeling of modern guilt in liking these books. But then another instinct kicks in, and tells the reader that the deep-seated feeling of pleasure in reading them is not nothing - he's doing something very well, that is registering, and to be celebrated. This one concerns, as is evident from the title, the next part of the life of Sonia Dainton after that depicted in the wildly successful, eponymous 1918 novel. Her ornery nature means that her marriage to David O'Rane soon descends from its initial heights to mistrust, misunderstanding and potential dissolution on both their parts. She thinks he's carrying on with a secretary, he thinks she's unfair to think so because he isn't, and of course he wouldn't. She jumps off from what she sees as his disloyalty to flirtation and the possibility of an affair of her own. Their relations sour almost completely. Friends try to step in, or, not daring, watch from the sidelines as what they had seems to go down the pan. This one is told from the point of view of a background character in the previous novel, Jim Stornaway. He and one of the leads of Sonia, George Oakleigh, as well as George's bluff father Bertrand, are often depicted waiting in sitting rooms, in libraries, at clubs, and so on, discussing what David and Sonia might do next in the escapade which is this contest of wills. It gets dangerous as Sonia inveigles a bloodish type, Vincent Grayle, into an affair, leaves David, disappears in her usual elusive fashion for a good few months, and is finally discovered as a driver for a general, having found that outlet available as part of the war effort. Almost all of the main male characters apart from David are members of parliament, so there is a good amount of talk, some of it quite revealing of how the period was in its more minute aspect, of the progress of the war, the political machinations which surrounded it, and the ups and downs of how it was seen from an insider perspective. Many of these quotidian elements, which say so much, are now way out of common historical understanding of the period, and thus hugely valuable. It turns out that Sonia is pregnant, and has split up with Grayle violently and finally. She tries to remain aloof from a world she no longer quite trusts, but ends up back in their old home on Millbank as her confinement comes close, deeply conflicted about this child which will remind her of an affair she now regrets, and not at all sure she wants to make up with David in the long run. It ends with the child, a boy, born, some hope of Sonia and David making it up, but, by now, the full knowledge that their natures will probably make whatever comes next the usual bumpy ride. McKenna is not responding to the modernism inherent in his times (yet, anyway) and is limited in the scope of his characters socially, and by their attitudes, which were presumably his. But, of his small slipstream, he's a fine exponent.