"Piracy" : A romantic chronicle of these days

By Michael Arlen

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Title: "Piracy"
A romantic chronicle of these days

Author: Michael Arlen

Release date: June 5, 2024 [eBook #73774]

Language: English

Original publication: London: WS. Collins Sons & Co. Ltd, 1924

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK "PIRACY" ***

“PIRACY”

_The Author wishes it to be clearly understood that all the persons in
this book, except Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Trevor, are entirely of the
imagination._

“PIRACY”

A ROMANTIC CHRONICLE OF
THESE DAYS

_by_

MICHAEL ARLEN

Author of “The Romantic Lady,”
“The London Venture,” etc.

[Illustration]

LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND

First Impression, October, 1922
Second “ November, 1922
Third “ November, 1922
Fourth “ December, 1922
Fifth “ January, 1923
Sixth “ May, 1924
Seventh “ July, 1924
Eighth “ August, 1924

_Manufactured in Great Britain_

TO MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

PAGE

THE DEPRESSION OF IVOR PELHAM MARLAY ON THE
NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF MAY, 1921 1

BOOK THE FIRST

AN IDEAL, SOME DETAILS, AND A LAPSE 17

BOOK THE SECOND

THE FRIENDS 61

BOOK THE THIRD

THE ANTAGONISTS 145

EPILOGUE

THE IMAGE IN THE HEART 305

A typical sentence from an ancient copy-book, unearthed with many
other curious relics of a polite age during recent excavations at
the corner of Pall Mall and Saint James’s Street:--

“_When gentlefolk meet, compliments are exchanged._”

PROLOGUE

THE DEPRESSION OF IVOR PELHAM MARLAY ON THE NIGHT OF THE 1ST OF MAY,
1921

CHAPTER I

On the northern fringe of Soho there lies a not ill-favoured little
street, about which play many grubby children and barrel-organs, and on
whose pathways not even the most distinguished foreigner can look
anything but a mere alien; while the veritable alien looks there, in the
light of day, even more undesirable than in the shadows of the
“night-club” into which, at about midnight, your passing attention might
be beckoned. But you and I, in passing up that street in the failing
light of evening, would be concerned with none of its alien
banalities--except, of course, in so far as a hint of such may lie
behind the wide and well-lit windows of the Hotel and Restaurant Mont
Agel, at the far end of the street.

On the left of these spacious windows, at the head of a few steps, is
the door of the restaurant, pleasantly inviting your pressure, if indeed
it is not widely open to show the elegant interior; and on the right is
the door of the hotel, a door of a very different air to the other, a
sealed and reticent looking door, with a tiny navel through which a
worldly eye may judge of your business: a door, in fact, with the secret
air of having very important business of its own as a door, which indeed
it has. But you and I, concerned only with our dinner--to which, say, I
have invited you, being intimate with the excellence of the
place--plunge up the steps to the restaurant; reading, as we go in, the
small white lettering on the large windows that tell us that therein we
may have Lunch, Tea, and Dinner, and, more importantly, that we can have
them _à toute heure_; which, to our pedantic eye, may seem a rather
optimistic boast to make in face of the law that--even on this 1st of
May, 1921--requires all hotels, cafés, inns, restaurants and
eating-houses, to be closed somewhere about ten-thirty o’clock. But I
shouldn’t wonder if the fact that the boast is written in French allows
us to take it more as one of those _beaux gestes_ that are so frequent
in the language of the race that has most need of them, than as a
braggart defiance.

Within the restaurant you will find all quiet, orderly and clean. In
extent it is only a rather spacious room of uncertain shape (though
there are, of course, possibilities upstairs), but it has not the air of
being confined to that one room. These four walls, it says to you, might
be placed at vastly different and more elegant angles if it wished, but
it does not wish. The room wears, in fact, an air of perfect
satisfaction with itself, and not insolently, but wisely: not as a young
man who thinks he knows everything, but as an old man who knows that it
is not worth while to know any more. It is bounded on the north side, as
our schoolbooks say, by the wide front windows, which are pleasantly
half-curtained with vermilion gauze; on the south side, where the room
tapers to its end, by a much smaller window, which is always heavily
curtained and may or may not look upon the mysteries of the Mont Agel
backyard; on the west by a wall decorated with mirrors, stags’ antlers,
and heads of furry beasts, and broken by a small door which leads into
the hotel, the famous cellars, and the usual offices; and on the east
side by a handsome counter which runs along half the length of the wall,
and across which the young and elegant Madame Stutz, with befitting
seriousness, hands to her husband’s waiters those concoctions,
collations, and confections which have won for the Mont Agel Restaurant
its reputation for conservative excellence.

Wines, too, Madame Stutz there uncorks, very deftly and tenderly; during
which process her husband, the polite and amiable M. Stutz, while
trusting her in this as in all else, cannot resist watching her with a
certain anxiety; for the wines of his cellar are the treasures of his
heart, and now and then, though all too rarely, if it is a special
vintage and a favoured customer, himself will uncork the wine, seeming
with the gesture to broach a secret emotion. ‘Ah, you can hear the
angels singing!’ sighs M. Stutz, hovering about the table. Mellow and
full-blooded wines of Burgundy there are here, to stiffen a man’s heart
against the shyness that defeats desire: glistening Château Yquem, too
sweet and luxurious for any but the sweetest occasions, and many
another: wines, let us say, for beginnings, wines for consummations,
wines for tired endings--sweet, bitter-sweet, and bitter! M. Stutz lacks
not one, neither Liebfraumilch nor Tokay, nor any liqueur that ever
monkery devised with which to tantalise its own asceticism.

This restaurant is no place for a poor man, you understand; unless, of
course, he happen to be with a rich one, as must now and then happen in
even the most luckless life. The very tables are arranged with a rich
sparseness; for they are placed only around the walls, each with its
red-shaded lamp. The centre of the room is thus left unchallenged to a
large brass contrivance from which flow ferns, palm leaves, and all
manner of secondary flowers; on one side of this is a rack for papers;
on its other side is a small table weighted with various and
unseasonable delicacies, artichokes and asparagus, oysters and
strawberries, plovers’ eggs and grouse, caviare and cantaloup. A table
of miracles, indeed! About which the most miraculous thing is that there
are always those who can afford to look over it and choose from it,
fastidious and unperturbed.

Whether the Mont Agel was created for its patrons, or whether patrons
were created for the Mont Agel, will now never be known. Let it suffice
that they become each other very well, even if not quite so well as the
polite and amiable M. Stutz becomes them both. As every civilisation
must produce a M. Stutz, so every M. Stutz must produce a civilisation;
and the atmosphere he has created in this bye-street of Soho is
essentially an atmosphere of civilisation. Not, you understand, that
brazen modernity which Mr. Stephen Mackenna’s almost too social eye
cannot desist from discerning in glittering heaps and serial form all
the way from Berkeley Street to Sloane Square (that happy and horrible
land where all young men have Clubs and all young women Lovers), but an
air of just sensible civilisation. Here, at the Mont Agel, you will find
not the sense of property, about which so much has been written, but
that much finer sense of independence, which has written so much. But
you would have to know the place pretty well before you found in its
customers any sense of anything whatsoever, for this Mont Agel has a
singular dignity of its own, which subtly caresses its patrons and is as
a mystic cloud between them and an alien eye. Stout yeomen from
Wimbledon and honest burghers from Kensington Gore, gallants from
Holland Park and _beaux_ from Golders Green--one and all have some time
or other been lured hither by some wanton friend; and what have they
seen? Rich wines and rare food, delicious to the Battersea palate, made
up the sum of that unexpected for which these worthy adventurers did
timidly search; they have seen nothing for their money, nothing at all!
Or was it, as an afterthought, nothing to have sat and watched the
bearded and significant figure of M. Stutz’s most considerable
patron--an epic figure, that!--and to have wondered whether that silent
detachment betokened a great artist or a great vagabond? And was it
nothing to have been made suddenly aware of the strange things men once
did and suffered for women, of the quests that were followed and the
lances that were broken in the days when there were neither suburbs nor
men to live in them--was it nothing to be reminded of all this, by the
vivid entrance of those tawny-haired women of almost barbaric fairness,
whose faces the men of Putney recognised from the illustrated papers
with a thrill of disapproval? Those young women of patrician and
careless intelligence, whom it is the pet mistake of bishops, diarists,
press-photographers, and Americans, to take as representing the “state”
of modern society (whereas, God knows, they represent nothing but
themselves, and that too rarely), and who, by some law of sympathy, have
found refuge at this Mont Agel from their tedious parentage or tiresome
duties roundabout, say, Grosvenor Square. One especially of these the
men of Notting Hill will often call to mind, she will arise before their
eyes as a rebuke to their passionless lives, as the phantom of the
desire that has never become tangible, as the symbol of the life that
has never been lived--one, alas, who now knows the Mont Agel no more!
And they will be faintly shocked yet strangely stirred, after the manner
of honest men, by the cruel indifference of this lady’s look and the
casual arrogance of her poise, murmuring among themselves that the Lady
Lois--for it was she--is a bit above herself, and insinuating against
her thus and thus, after the manner of honest but common men.... And on
many nights will come the toughs and roughs and bravoes of the town, to
press their ill-favoured noses against the windows of the Mont Agel and
watch the leading beauties toying with their food and their poets.

And through and about this atmosphere of his creation moves always the
polite and amiable M. Stutz: thoughtful here, smiling there, always and
implacably encouraging. No fool ever said a wise thing but that M. Stutz
did not quickly commend it, no wise man ever said a foolish thing but
that M. Stutz did not gently condone it. He is always about your table,
not, you understand, as the servant of his restaurant, but as the
director of its amenities. His interests are wide, his dignity not
stiff, his formality pleasing, his familiarity appropriate; so that
when, with a gesture, he tells you that he is “only a little
_restaurateur_” you will take leave to disbelieve him, vowing that never
was a _restaurateur_ so imperially conceived, nor a gentleman so
politely informed.... Thus, knowing and appreciating him, it were an
offence in you to be surprised at those very rare occasions when M.
Stutz, having been prevailed upon to accept a guest’s hospitality a
little too freely, has betrayed ever so little of that human dross which
his patrons have so often displayed before him.

CHAPTER II

So much has been said of the Mont Agel Restaurant mainly because it had
always had a considerable place in the life and affections of one whose
fortunes this history must closely follow. The polite and amiable M.
Stutz will, of course, occur again, gently and encouragingly, even as he
occurs about the tables of those whom he honours by describing, with an
epic gesture, as “My Customers.”

There, on the evening of the 1st of May, 1921, sat Ivor Pelham Marlay,
at the only table in the place where a man could sit alone without
attracting the notice of his acquaintances to his solitude; for all but
this little table in the shadow of Madame Stutz’s counter were of a size
for four, or on occasions ten, so that a sense of fairness to M. Stutz
allowed little alternative to one in Ivor Marlay’s situation.

The Mont Agel had been a recurrent fact in that young man’s life for now
ten years; between him and it ran that vague current of sympathy which
seeks not to define its roots; and many of his memories of merry
evenings or tragic solitudes were bound to the place. He was sitting now
with his head inclined a little forward and his forehead resting in the
palm of his hand, in a detached and thoughtful attitude. The thick
hair--which was brushed slantwise back from one of those taut English
foreheads that look as though there had just been enough skin to go
round--might have been thought to be black, but was really of a
variously coloured brown, and reflected sunlight a little more
capriciously, some might think (and had thought), than a man’s hair
should.

You would not have called his a handsome face: it was a provocative
face: it looked as though it suffered from silence. Your first
impression of it was that it was an amazingly lean face, and that he was
rather uncomfortable with it; your next that, though it was of the
species dark, it was also, very definitely, of the species English
proconsul--with a quick reservation as to the eyebrows, which in a
previous incarnation he might well have raided from some sardonic
adventurer of the Orient, they were so curiously straight and dark and
immobile. They were eyebrows of the sceptical sort, they were irritating
eyebrows. Then take, as matter for a student of such things, that
thin-fleshed, aquiline nose, mountainous and significant, the nose
historical, obviously recognisable as a Family Nose--but yet,
surprisingly enough, not at all predominant in a face that had doubtless
been conceived in a turbulent moment; and take the eyes, eyes altogether
too dark for really comfortable everyday use, frank yet secret eyes,
rather sulky eyes. Take, in fact, the whole face, lean and firm and
mature--for this, after all, is the young man’s thirty-second year of
maturing--and amazingly, absurdly sulky! Now that sulkiness was
perversely set there, for all the world to see, to testify against his
nature, which is a man’s most secret property, and to be as a witness
against him, most opportune to a feline hand in moments of extreme
stress, such as befall adventurers; for it is pleasant for a woman to
tell a man that he is sulky when he is really angry and she knows it.
That sulkiness seemed to lie all over his face, lurking about the vague
shadows of his nose and in the rich shadows of his dark eyes....

His present thoughts and attitude might well have surprised any of his
acquaintances, such as were now sitting about the tables of the Mont
Agel and respecting his solitude; for Ivor Marlay was considered a
fortunate young man: moneyed, you know, and reasonably accomplished, and
quite personable, and so on. Such thoughts might even have been
considered to have come upon him by surprise. To put it unkindly, one
might have conceived his finger as having been suddenly arrested by some
sticky patch when testing the gloss over his good-fortune. But if, as
some say, thanks are the highest form of thought, Ivor Marlay had always
indulged in a very high level of thinking, in giving thanks for the
chance that had given him freedom from every monetary worry and,
therefore, freedom from much else. But even freedom, divine among
earthly words, can take queer shapes and mean queer things. Freedom,
which we all desire, may sometimes mean that no one desires us. To be
free may sometimes mean that no one wishes to imprison us; and that,
when you come to think of it, is a very terrible thing.

To these grave abstractions must be added the material fact that Ivor
Pelham Marlay had only one arm. For of the many things that a man can
lose in a proper war, Ivor Marlay had lost only his left arm. His left
sleeve, as you saw him at his table at the Mont Agel, hung emptily down
into the left pocket of his jacket--adding to his carriage that strange
elegance peculiar to tall, one-armed men of a foppish habit. And who,
after all, has more right to make the best of his appearance than one
who has been deprived of an essential detail of it?

If he had risen from his table you would have observed that he was a
tall man: he was, in fact, exactly six-feet-two: but if he were asked,
in a friendly way, how tall he was, he would answer, in a friendly way,
that he was just under six-foot-one. That was the only illusion about
himself that he had managed to preserve until the age of thirty-two.

His present state of mind was not due to liver or anything like that. It
was in the nature of a logical climax, and Ivor Marlay, like you and me,
naturally detested anything in the nature of a logical climax.

In earliest youth we have all sometimes had clear brooding seconds of
hopeless vision, when we ever so dimly but acutely foresaw painful hurts
that might come upon us from ourselves in manhood. There was a ghastly
moment when a jolly boy of thirteen fell suddenly to incoherent
brooding: he suddenly mistrusted his future self immensely; and for a
full second he paced awefully up the long avenues of a life that seemed
carpeted only with autumn leaves. And there comes a moment when life
proves that boy to have been unwholesomely right. And though it may be
true that things are never so bad as they seem, they are often a good
deal worse than you thought they might be.

Throughout that day Ivor Marlay had been aware that the evening would
lie heavily upon it. This 1st of May, from its rainy beginning and
throughout its pale fore and afternoon, had borne a dour impress. He had
been unable to write, quite unable to read; in stern determination not
to think, had fiercely wasted many hours in pacing miles of carpet, then
of park, and then again of carpet; and, in the late evening, had slammed
his door behind him and almost violently set out to meet his dinner face
to face, along Brook Street, across Bond Street, through Hanover Square,
along Oxford Street, and round the corner to the sign of the Mont Agel.
He had run away from these thoughts all day because, he knew, they must
take shape as that kind of depression which inexorably dissects one’s
life. And what a portentous business the wretched thing would make of it
all!... As, indeed, it did.

Of all the places he might have chosen for this momentous dinner, his
depression could not have devised a more whole-hearted ally than the
Mont Agel; for that is the worst of all Stutz civilisations, when you
are gay they make you even gayer, but when you are sad you might just as
well be dead. Ivor Marlay had not fully considered his first glass of
wine--alone, because of a deep impatience (of which that sulky look
might be the outward and deceptive sign) that always prevented him from
enjoying others’ company when least he enjoyed his own--before he found
that he had stepped into the ogre’s very arms; that, if anything, the
wretch had increased upon itself, had as it were fattened upon the
associations of the place, and was using now every dead moment of past
gaiety and past sadness as a weapon with which to point its plaguey
insistence. And of such memories, of course, the Mont Agel was full;
even the features of M. Stutz were as though lined with the past
enthusiasms, optimisms, tolerances, and encouragements with which he had
ministered, in that room upstairs, to the gaieties and reverberations of
“My Customers.”

It is absurd to suggest that a man sitting at a table, alone with his
coffee and his God, and goaded on by no matter how stern a desire to
come to some understanding with himself, will anything like
consecutively review the dismal pageant of his life; for even as there
is no rigid sequence in nature, so there is none in our thoughts. Here
and there Ivor Marlay saw pictures, here and there he remembered
thoughts, here and there he reheard voices, here and there he relived
silences, and here and there an illusion shone wan and faded quickly....

At a moment that he happened to raise his head his eyes met the passing
and gentle glance of M. Stutz, who had always treated the young man to
that courtly familiarity which is the hall-mark of a _restaurateur’s_
favour.

“You are deeply engaged to-night, Mr. Marlay,” M. Stutz gravely
remarked, in that deep tone which pleasantly became his classical
address.

The young man made a self-conscious noise which indicated a great
confusion rather than a laugh.

“I’m trying, you know, to find an illusion, M. Stutz. About myself, I
mean.”

M. Stutz took thought upon this for a space.

“Illusions, sir,” he said, “are like flies. There are always as many
alive as dead. Even in the winter, although you do not know it.”

“And the greatest of all illusions,” went on M. Stutz, “is that you have
not got one. It is like a man saying that he knows the answer to every
question, and then being silent when you ask him: ‘What is God?’”

And with that the polite and amiable M. Stutz again left him to his
meditations, himself to indulge in a little wine and conversation at the
far corner table with Mr. Cornelius Fayle, the South African artist, who
had a great reputation for mixing salads and lengthily commenting upon
them and anything else, rather than for his paintings--which, though as
yet unseen by any mortal eye, could not possibly have been more
charming, more instructive, or more tedious than his cherubic self.
Women loved him because they had to take care of him; he was said to
have Charm; and he was peculiarly favoured among “My Customers” by M.
Stutz’s condescension, for that urbane gentleman discerned in Mr. Fayle
a kindred spirit, whose profundities lay in as shallow and untroubled
waters as his own.

The circumstance is plain, then. A young man was sitting at a solitary
table in the Mont Agel Restaurant, towards ten o’clock on the night of
the 1st of May, 1921: a darkly serious young man, with a defiant nose
and a white flower brave upon the silk lapel of his dinner-jacket--for
was he not something of a fop, this one-armed young man? The soft light
of the shaded lamp on his table mellowed the hard whiteness of his
shirt-front, but it added no light to the dark eyes under the straight
eyebrows: eyes that looked like black pits of contemplation, and were
staring into a coffee-cup as into an abyss; and in these eyes was a
brooding something, which was not regret nor remorse nor despair, but
which might be fear or might be anger; for the dark young man was of an
angry habit, and he was thirty-two years old, and he was very lonely.

The history of Ivor Pelham Marlay, until this night, is the history of
England, two loves, and an ideal.

BOOK THE FIRST

AN IDEAL, SOME DETAILS, AND A LAPSE

CHAPTER I

It will, of course, be obvious that Ivor Marlay’s life would have been
quite different if he had gone up to the University of Oxford in the
ordinary way. Those who have been to Oxford, or even to Cambridge, will
realise how very different Ivor Marlay’s life might have been--if indeed
they can retain any interest in him--had his first youth been allowed
the natural and wholesome outlets of mind and body which either of those
mellow places affords in such ripe and enduring abundance to young men
of widely different ambitions. The amazing reason why Ivor Marlay did
not go up to the University of Oxford in the ordinary way was because he
did not want to.

This Oxford matter was discussed between himself and his Aunt Moira on
the very afternoon of his leaving school. It had, of course, been
discussed before, but that afternoon it was discussed from a rather
acute angle. Aunt Moira was seventy-two years old and was apt to discuss
things from a rather acute angle.

The day on which Ivor Marlay left school had, no doubt, a good deal to
do with the acuteness of the discussion, for Ivor Marlay left school
suddenly. Now when a man has stayed at a public school, and at Manton in
particular, until he is eighteen: when a man has become respected,
responsible, and a veteran of that system which will so soon be
producing him to the world as that system’s finest (as they are all the
finest) product--it is surely his plain duty, in fact his only duty, to
hold out to the end and to leave school without a stain on his
character. He should, if possible, avoid being expelled.

Ivor Marlay’s expulsion was of the straightforward “Damn you, sir, get
out!” kind. And the news of his expulsion, and the obvious reason for
it, caused the nearest approach to popular feeling that Manton had ever
entertained for Ivor Marlay. Manton laughed, and then Manton smiled for
weeks. And when, in later days, Manton saw the name of Marlay on the
cover of a book, Manton grinned in memory and bought that book, and
having tried to read it wondered what the devil had happened to the man.
For Manton didn’t know that he had done the thing in any spirit but that
of mischief or adventure, both naturally dear to Manton’s heart. If
Manton had known that he had done it in any spirit but that of mischief
or adventure, it would have thought it all rather odd, and felt a little
uncomfortable. The head master, who knew, thought it very odd and made
Ivor a little uncomfortable.

But, even on the morning it happened, the College Prefects thought it
was not happening quite usually. The College Prefects at Manton have a
sitting-room in the school building, a spacious room adjacent to the
masters’ sitting-room: and here they will pass a minute or two on their
way to and from classes, to which they are allowed to enter a minute or
two after Inferiors. (The difference between a College Prefect--Coll
Pree--and a House Prefect--House Pree--is that a Coll Pree can do what
he likes everywhere, and a House Pree can do what he likes in his House.
Inferiors can do what they like in their studies, more or less. Fags
can’t do what they like anywhere. New boys are _bacilli_, unclean but
invisible.) The Coll Prees, at eleven o’clock that morning, gathered in
force in their room for their minute-or-two. They knew that Marlay, the
third head of their number, was having a little conversation with the
Little Man, and they were waiting to hear about it. And the thing only
began to look a little unusual when one of their number called out:
“Why, he’s not coming! There he is!” And there, through the window, they
saw he was! Walking swiftly down the school steps, across the wide
lawn, and down more steps towards his House....

“I’ll risk it,” cried Transome, and rushed out. (Transome and Marlay had
been the school rackets-pair for the last two years.) He breathlessly
caught Marlay up on the “Senior Turf,” that immaculate turf where Manton
whacks other Mantons at cricket. Marlay turned round at his hail.

“What happened?” asked Transome breathlessly.

“Sack,” said Marlay.

“Of course,” said Transome. “Was the Little Man cross?”

“He’s a jolly nice little man,” Marlay told him. “He chewed my head off
and it didn’t begin to choke him.”

“It nearly choked me, though,” he added.

“Well, what are you going to do now?” asked Transome, interested. It
isn’t every day that the other one of a school rackets-pair is expelled;
and besides, Transome wanted to know what Marlay _was_ going to do--he
hadn’t the faintest idea what he would do if he were sacked, except
avoid his people like the plague.

Ivor dug his hands deep in his pockets.

“I’m going,” he said firmly, “down to the House. I’m going to bribe or
kick the boot-boy into packing my things and dragging them to the
station. I am then going to leap on my motor-bike and shift like hell to
London. On my arrival there I shall be made to stand in a corner for an
hour. And then I shall dress and go to the Empire----”

“Swank!” said Transome.

“And if you’ve got any sense,” Ivor added, with a grin, “you’ll come
with me, Transome. On the carrier. You can come back to-morrow saying
you’ve been to see a corn-specialist, and get the sack in perfect order.
Your father, being a colonel, would appreciate your sense of
discipline.”

“Yes, with his boot. Though I’d come,” Transome thoughtfully admitted,
“only I’m leaving at the end of the term anyway. Might as well
wait----”

“Well, good-bye, old chap!” And Ivor held out his hand.

He looked extraordinarily happy, Transome thought.

“Won’t your people be sick?” he asked.

“They’d vomit,” said Ivor thoughtfully, “if I had any--in particular, I
mean.” And having struck the pathetic note Ivor grinned broadly and
Transome grinned broadly back--and then they parted sharply asunder, the
one to the conquest of the world and the heavens, and the other back to
a routine which was more than usually embittered by an idea that it must
be rather amusing to be an orphan.

The only other persons to whom Ivor said good-bye were the boot-boy,
whom he tipped; the steward, whom he tipped; the two dormitory
housemaids, one of whom he tipped and the other kissed as well, for she
was a nice girl; the matron, who kissed him; and the house-master’s
wife, a kind and comfortable body who was extremely surprised at having
the tips of her fingers very gallantly kissed. Ivor was enjoying himself
like anything, and didn’t mind who knew it; for being expelled is not
bad fun when it isn’t for dirt, and when you have an “Indian”
motor-cycle, T.T. Model, which means that you can do a fabulous amount
of miles per hour in an exceeding uncomfortable position and for no
earthly reason except to lie about it to your friends....

The expulsion came about this way.

At about the middle of that summer term it became obvious to the
intelligence of the meanest _bacillus_ that strange things were
happening at Manton by night. These strange things were not, of course,
defined to _bacilli_, except that they were uncommonly strange.
_Bacilli_ had therefore a lovely feeling that history was being made,
and some one’s history in particular.

There were rumours, new rumours every morning, delightful and
outrageous rumours, so that the lumps in the porridge were swallowed
without comment and the fish-cakes were eaten without contumely. The
masters looked unusually stern, but it was the sternness of thought
rather than of discipline. Coll Prees went about with smiles gravely
repressed and an air of being more than usually responsible for
everything. House Prees and Bloods (indescribable beings, neither
Prefect nor Inferior, amazing centaurs, not divine but certainly not
human--just Bloods) were everywhere to be seen in earnest colloquy. For
the matter was, that there was some sort of night-prowler about the
school grounds. It would have been almost bearable if the night-prowler
had prowled only about the grounds, but he prowled into the Houses, he
prowled actually into the house-masters’ sides of the Houses; he prowled
into their studies, he sat on their chairs, he read their books, he
drank their port, he tested their barley water, he smoked their cigars,
he left a neat little bit of Greek verse on their desks to thank them
for same--and then, as it were for a joke, he bolted the windows from
the inside, locked the doors from the outside, and left the keys in such
an obvious place that no one ever found them until new ones had been
made. And this went on, once or twice a week, for more than a month!
Watch was kept, police were stationed about the grounds (for weeks any
strange face about the school grounds was held to be that of a “plain
clothes man--and jolly plain at that!”) and the Coll Prees were called
upon to keep night-watch over the House where each held dominion....
Then there was a memorable night when the night-prowler was chased. Two
Coll Prees and Mr. Sandys, of the Lower Fifth and the Hampshire Eleven,
were patrolling the borders of the Senior Turf, about which lie the main
Houses of Manton in the form of a horse-shoe. Suddenly, just ahead of
them, was seen a moving dark thing. They leapt. It ran. They chased, but
the dark thing hurled down the slope from the path to the flat darkness
of the Senior Turf. “He’s got running-shorts,” grumbled Mr. Sandys, who
was in a dinner-jacket. “And gym-shoes,” grunted Mr. Sandys. Then came a
laugh behind them, and again they leapt. But the dark thing grew darker
and disappeared into the labyrinth of buildings made by the gymnasium,
the gates, rackets-courts, and House No. 6. “Blast!” said Mr. Sandys,
and gave up. The Coll Prees had given up long before.

Of course the night-prowler was caught in the end, but he need not have
been caught so stupidly. The head-master (the late Canon Sidney
Wentworth Carr), himself prowling about the grounds at three a.m. one
morning, some days after all hope of finding the miscreant had faded,
thought he saw, for a bare second, a smothered cigar-end in the little
overshadowed lane that runs between Houses No. 2 and No. 9. He promptly
scuttled into the garden of No. 9, darted towards a certain point in the
wall, secured an ill-tempered victory over the low branches of the trees
for which Manton is famous, and finally got to the wall. The Canon was a
little man, so he had to stand on his toes; and he looked over the wall.
There was the figure, a yard or so away with his back to him, smoking a
cigar. “Silly ass,” the Little Man thought. “As if he liked it!”

And then he struck a match sharply. The figure started round.

“Got you!” said the head-master.

“Ah,” said the figure indistinctly. Or it might have been “Oh!”

“Come to my study t’morrow morning at ten,” the head-master said
sharply. “Silly ass, Marlay.”

“Yes, sir.”

Thus, it was all over bar the shouting. And there was very little of
that, in the head-master’s study at ten o’clock the next morning.

“Well, what did you do it for?” was fired at Ivor as he came in. Ivor
had the grace to be very white in the face. The head-master, fierce
little man that he was, always fired his questions like that, briskly,
brusquely, indomitably. He always spoke as though he was going to swear,
which indeed he sometimes did; but always just at the right moment and
about the right thing, always knowing when to be a man, when a
head-master, and when a Canon; which made him very efficient and popular
as all three.

“Well, Marlay?”

“If you want the absolute truth, sir----”

“Get on, man.”

“I was frightfully bored, sir,” Ivor said heavily; and never was boredom
more cruelly punished than by its owner’s white face and by the silence
that followed its confession. The Little Man stared at him, and he
tapped the edge of the table with a paper-knife. Then he jumped up.

“You go, of course,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

“To-day.”

“Yes, sir.”

The head-master swung round on him angrily. He had always liked Marlay.

“Look here, Marlay, you’ve spoilt a good thing, and at the last moment!
You’re a damn fool, sir!”

“I know, sir. I’m sorry.” It sounded so lame!

“Don’t lie, Marlay. You are not sorry. You are glad to go.”

Ivor fumbled.

“I’m sorry, sir, to have disappointed you,” he muttered weakly.

The head-master paced the room. Then again, suddenly, he swung round on
him; and, small though he was, he seemed to tower above the boy’s
drooping figure.

“It’s wrong and nasty, this,” he said steadily. “I suppose you know,
Marlay, that there’s nothing fine in what you’ve done, and everything
far from fine in the spirit in which you’ve done it!”

“It’s the spirit that’s damnable, man!” the head-master said. “Can’t you
see? It’s a silly boy’s trick played by a man. The matter with you,
Marlay, is that you think you are a grown man and despise boys, and the
matter with me is that I think you are a grown man and despise you for
not being a boy. That’s why I don’t thrash you, not because you are a
College Prefect....”

The way the Little Man said that! Ivor looked at the ground.

“Bored!” snarled the head-master suddenly. “You have grossly insulted
me, Marlay. And you have insulted Manton.”

“You may go, Marlay,” said the head-master.

Ivor went very quickly; but he had not opened the door before he was
called back by a sharp voice. The Little Man was still standing by the
table, lowering at him. Ivor felt, looked, and was a cur.

“I want to warn you, young man,” the Little Man said. “That boredom of
yours is dangerous--to you. I mean! To every one else it is merely
offensive. I consider, Marlay, that you have been most offensive. So if
I were you I would take steps to cure this boredom of yours. Were you,
may I ask, intending to go up to Oxford?”

“No, sir.”

(Ivor had finally decided that moment.)

“I shouldn’t,” said the head-master. “You are the first Sixth Form man
of mine I have advised not to. It is not a compliment. If you have been
bored here at Manton, you will go mad at Oxford. They take their
pleasures even more traditionally there. I will write to Lady Moira.”

“You may go, Marlay,” he said.

But, as Ivor was again going, a voice snapped from behind him:--

“You don’t believe in tradition, I suppose, Marlay?”

Ivor swung round with a livid face.

“Yes, I do, sir,” he said flatly. “That’s exactly why I was bored--the
tradition here is one of boredom.”

The silence that followed was broken only by a funny noise in the Little
Man’s throat. And Ivor was afraid.

“I--I meant,” he stammered, “that it m-must be pretty--boring for you,
sir--teaching boys and----”

“You had better go, Marlay,” said the head-master.

And this time it was Ivor who turned round from the door and faced the
terrible silence of the room. His face had gone from white to deep red.

“Good-bye, sir,” he said. “And thank you, sir--really.”

The head-master threw the paper-knife on to the table with a clatter,
and Ivor Marlay left school.

(It cost the night-prowler a pretty penny, that joke. For, a few days
after he had prowled his last, the head-master and house-masters of
Manton received each an anonymous box of Coronas. He really hadn’t the
face to return the port in kind.)

Two hours later he was with Aunt Moira, in the house at Palace Green. He
found her alone, erect in a high-backed Queen Anne chair in the bare and
gloomy library in which she was wont to pass her afternoons reading, or
writing letters. That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child
he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the
parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide
and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens.

Aunt Moira watched his approach across the parquet floor, an
uncomfortable kind of floor to traverse under raking eyes, without
remark or sign. Aunt Moira was not given to showing surprise, not even
at her nephew coming home alive in term-time.

That nephew approached, stood, grinned sheepishly, but spoke not: unless
inarticulate mutterings of scarcely human intelligence be speech. It was
Aunt Moira who spoke:--

“That horrible motor-cycle of yours makes a most disturbing noise,
Ivor. I wonder the police let you. You might muffle it with
something....”

(It was some years later that the Home Office bethought itself to pass a
law against the open exhaust.)

And then Ivor explained how it had come about that he had been allowed
to use the “red devil” in term-time. It was an idiotic tale to tell, and
the telling took him some time, for he was very careful, trying to leave
nothing out and to put as little as possible in. Aunt Moira did not
interrupt once, she had always too much to say to interrupt; but she
listened intently, and still more intently, and she tapped a foot on the
floor.

When he had finished she used almost the identical words as the Canon
Sidney Wentworth Carr, who was an old friend of hers--and with more
weight, if that was possible. But Ivor, crushed already that day, was
almost indifferent to this added burden. And though he tried, out of
respect for Aunt Moira, to hide his indifference to the mere logic of
the situation--for was this not, after all, an epoch in his life?--she
must have perceived something of his peculiar nonchalance, for she
suddenly cut short the expression of her deep disappointment with a very
weary:

“You might just not have done it, Ivor!” Dear Aunt Moira!

“Of course,” said Ivor softly, “it rather puts the lid on my going up to
Oxford.” He was so frightfully pleased about not going up to Oxford--he
simply could not have told any one why, it was just a tremendous
bubbling within him of freedom from all sorts of things--that he
couldn’t help playing the fool about it, thus letting Aunt Moira see
exactly how pleased he was. She stared at him--at the young man who had
so suddenly grown out of her reach! And maybe she realised that the
events of that day had somehow released in him something individual
which had been in hiding, something unpleasant but individual.

“Then what will you do?” she put to him sharply. “For you must do
something, you know. In this world, nowadays. I will not have you live
all your life as my nephew....”

“I thought you might go to the Bar,” she said.

“I thought,” said Ivor, “that I might write....”

“Oh dear!” sighed Aunt Moira.

And there was silence. But let it be understood that Aunt Moira had
never intended to force Ivor’s preference about a career. Aunt Moira
never really forced any one’s preference about anything. Liberty was the
one feast to which she commanded her guests--it was only that her
invitations sometimes made liberty just a little unrecognisable.

She had always liked people who wrote sensible things. But it seemed so
vague, this writing.

“But you could write as well,” she suggested, rather brutally. “You must
do something, don’t you see? And though I’ve no doubt you are very
clever, as every one is clever nowadays, you can’t possibly have enough
to write about at your age to take up all your time.”

“But I don’t want it to take up all my time! That’s just the point, Aunt
Moira.”

“Now don’t be clever with me, Ivor. What I want for you, don’t you see,
is a Position in the world, some foothold or other. And a writer, even
quite a nice writer, is nothing at all unless he has written something
that every one has read, while a barrister is something even when no one
has heard of him. He is _something_, I mean. I insist on your being
_something_, Ivor.”

(Naturally one will be “_something_,” Ivor impatiently thought.)

“Of course,” said Aunt Moira, “you are very grown-up for your years. I
don’t like it.”

“I suppose,” she said, “you’ve got ideas.”

Ivor’s eyes had been intent on his shoes, but he now looked up frankly.

“As a matter of fact,” he said pathetically, “I haven’t got one. But
I’ve got a kind of feeling that I may have--you know, Aunt Moira?”

“I know,” said Aunt Moira, not sympathetically--though really very
surprised at Ivor’s candour; it was pleasant to hear a young man who had
just made an idiot of himself saying he had no ideas--a very good
beginning, she thought, for a writer’s career.

It was decided, over tea, that he should stay on with Aunt Moira for a
year or so, studying French and literature--and, added Ivor, sociology.

“Sociology,” snapped Aunt Moira, “is a game that self-educated labourers
play with half-educated gentlemen. What you doubtless mean is politics.”
Ivor let it go at that.

Later on, Ivor could take rooms of his own; and still later on, when he
was of age, he could travel and do what he liked--provided, Aunt Moira
insisted, he did _something_! She relied on him to be _decent_, she
said. If she hated anything in this world, it was slackness, flabbiness,
and shoddiness--μικροπρεπέια, the Little Man would have snapped, for he
never missed a chance of remembering Aristotle against you. If he was
going to write, well, he must write, but seriously.

“There must be no nonsense about that,” said Aunt Moira. “And for
Heaven’s sake don’t begin to write poetry until you have learnt how to
write prose!”

The tea things were removed, and they sat on in silence. Now Aunt
Moira’s silence was a formidable weapon, but to-day it was as though
Ivor did not notice it, his eyes were so intent on the bright prospect
of Kensington Gardens. Through a corner window could be seen a part of
Kensington Palace, bathed in the rich shadow of the evening sun.

“Ivor!” she suddenly called.

The boy jerked his eyes away from that enthralling moon outside the
windows--it is always outside the windows, that eternal and enthralling
moon, or just behind the other person’s right shoulder. He smiled
shadowily at her....

“I was just thinking,” he said.

“There’s so much to do, to think about, Aunt Moira,” he said. “And one
doesn’t know where to begin!”

“That,” said Aunt Moira, “is just what you have to think out. I can’t
help you.” Which, of course, she at once proceeded to do. “I suppose you
are being eaten up with the idea, that you must see things, do things,
live things. When I was young a young man was not happy until he had
travelled--but it’s not enough for you to travel geographically. You
want to travel emotionally. You are not childish enough....”

“It’s a twilight age,” said Aunt Moira.

“These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.”

“Meredith wrote that,” she explained--and somehow made Meredith very
mysterious.

Ivor’s expulsion was never again referred to between them--unless,
perhaps, it was in reference to it that Aunt Moira, as he rose to go
upstairs to change, called him to her and gave him one of those rare
kisses--the last must have been quite three years before--that so
unexpectedly clung to his cheek for a warm second; and then she examined
him so straightly that he began a confused smile.

“You have intolerant eyes, anyway,” she said at last. For Aunt Moira was
one of those who believed in intolerance; not she to advise youth to be
tolerant, indulgent. She would tolerate anything in a nation, but she
would not tolerate in an individual what she would not tolerate in
herself. Always she had wanted her men to be good and great, and with
the passing of the years she had decided that men cannot be good and
great and tolerant in this self-scarred world. “Certainly, there are two
sides to every question; but one of them looks over an abyss.” That is
what Aunt Moira said; for she had looked over an abyss.

CHAPTER II

Aunt Moira was the only relation Ivor had, that he was aware of; and
towards the end of the year after he left school she sickened of a
cancer and was tortured to death. But before she died she told her
nephew an ancient tale.

Ivor had originally been told that his father had died of a sudden
illness, a few weeks before his birth. His natural curiosity on the
subject had elicited the more particular information that his father had
died of a sudden inflammation of the lungs--which Ivor somehow never
realised meant pneumonia until he himself had it--in the thirty-ninth
year of his age, in Italy. Thirty-nine had seemed to young Ivor a
reasonable age at which to die, but he had been curious about Italy, for
Italy had seemed a curious place for his father to have died in. But
nothing on earth could move Aunt Moira to speak of what she did not wish
to speak, and Ivor had to wait until a certain gray October afternoon of
his nineteenth year, when he was much more curious about himself than
about the ghosts that had given him birth, to hear the ancient tale that
Aunt Moira must tell from her bed.

But she, who was commonly so impatient of fantasy, as of all excretions
of inactive minds, must needs begin her tale with the casual statement
that Ivor had never had a father at all! Whereupon Ivor looked very
serious, and said nothing. “Technically speaking, of course,” snapped
Aunt Moira, as though he had made a fool of himself. His real father, he
who had loved and had been loved by his mother, and who had died in
Italy, had been, implied Aunt Moira--_implied_ Aunt Moira!--a vastly
different person from any Mr. Marlay who could possibly have occurred in
any strictly legal relation to his mother. “That,” said Lady Moira,
“accounts to your nose and your Christian names.” For, of course, like
other rebels, Aunt Moira could be a frightful snob when she chose.

But Aunt Moira’s tale came slowly, for that long-hidden cancer was at
last and openly having its way with her, so certain the disease was that
no surgeon’s knife could now avail the proud, tired body but in the one
way itself made inevitable, from day to day of pain. But though, for
press of suffering, her tongue must needs be still every now and then,
her eyes were unmastered, keen and suspicious--for she would have no
nonsense about her tale being misunderstood by this young man who sat
rather too quietly by her bed, looking darker and sulkier than ever in
the dim light of the heavily-curtained bedroom; and, in just such a
silence, her eyes could dare the young man to feel the least atom of
anger against the dead parents who had left him in what she didn’t
hesitate to describe as “this mess.” Though, as she rather cynically
said later, it was a much less careless mess than commonly happens:

“For you will be very well off, Ivor. There was nothing careless,
nothing shoddy, even about your father’s lawlessness; as I hope there
never will be about yours--but remember always that all lawlessness,
like all cruelty, is fundamentally vulgar.” And Aunt Moira, having
successfully contradicted herself, was again subdued by a stress of
pain, and lay a while so still and silent that she might have seemed a
carved figure but for those ever-open indomitable eyes that brooded
suspiciously upon him.

And Ivor stirred restlessly, suddenly uncomfortable in the hard little
chair which Aunt Moira had commanded him to pull up to the bed; Ivor
stirred uneasily and wanted to stretch his legs and do something
sensible with his hands, such as digging them into his pockets, but it
was quite impossible to do any of those natural things, for one somehow
didn’t lounge before Aunt Moira. But soon the discomfort of his body
waned to nothing before the discomfort of his mind, for as she spoke or
was silent he somehow began to feel that he was treating Aunt Moira
unfairly, he felt a little mean for not thinking about it all as Aunt
Moira seemed to expect him to think about it all--dear Aunt Moira, who
was so seriously intent on explaining to him his illegitimacy! And so,
of course, he ought to be serious too; and he had an uncomfortable
feeling that there must be something _beastly_ in him for not taking his
illegitimacy so seriously as it was expected of him, and he wondered if
it was all part of that same beastliness in him that had made him feel
“bored” at school instead of going through with it in the ordinary way.
And suddenly he thought of Transome, just a flash of a grinning thought
behind his serious attention to Aunt Moira--how amazingly affected
Transome would be if it was suddenly sprung on him by an Aunt Moira that
the late Colonel Transome had never had any existence, technically
speaking, and that therefore, he, Transome, was as illegitimate as any
one could be! And the thought of Transome, faced with this news,
persisted, how he would think it was the most important thing that had
ever happened to any one outside of a book, and how he would be bursting
with the tragic news until he simply had to confide in some one, saying:
“I say, old boy, I’ve gone and turned out to be a bastard. Now what
could be fairer than that?” And then Ivor pulled himself together
sharply, feeling frightfully mean and uncomfortable--but the idea still
persisted in him that his illegitimacy wasn’t at all important to him,
not at all disturbing: interesting, of course, but not really important
or disturbing. But, faced by Aunt Moira’s stern eyes--and hurt eyes they
were too, just now and then, as though a sudden memory had hurt them--he
tried his best to think as he was expected to think, just like the
bustling people in Fielding’s _Tom Jones_....

But suddenly he realised that Aunt Moira was speaking of his mother, and
that awoke him vividly, for he remembered his mother dimly, and he
remembered to have loved her, even as he loved the idea of her now, she
was so gentle and serious a ghost. He wanted Aunt Moira to describe her
minutely, her person and character and loveliness, and he wanted to hear
about how she had loved his father. But Aunt Moira could never be
minute, could not even describe in the ordinary way; but, when moved,
would make some gesture of speech, as though to unfold a tapestry that
she had long kept hidden, and then she would hold a torch to that
tapestry, a flaming torch that cast a great light here and a deep shadow
there, and left the listener gaping at so wanton a vagueness cloaked by
so grand a manner.

Aunt Moira did not speak of his mother as his mother, at least she
didn’t seem to, but as something much finer and grander and more
intangible. She created for Ivor not the sad and quiet mother of his
faint memory, but a figure of story; and she seemed, as it were
defiantly, to speak of Ann Marlay as a woman of women, as of a tradition
that is as ancient as song. In fact Aunt Moira, in that large and
reckless way you couldn’t help loving in her, filled in a portrait of a
lady as Gainsborough might have painted it, in the grand and fearless
manner--anyway, his mother seemed very grand and fearless by the time
Aunt Moira had done with her torchlight description; but Ivor could not,
try as he would, see this fine and exquisite lady as his mother. He
could not reconcile this tragic and remote figure of romance with a
dimly acute memory: a memory of an emotion that had quite filled a very
little boy’s heart and eyes with a tremendous thrill, when there had
bent over him a lovely white face and calm, gentle eyes; and these eyes
were so wide and deep and dark with a shining darkness that the little
boy had just let them cover him with a faëry silence. It had been a
marvellous plaything between them, that faëry silence; until, one day,
it had taken bodily shape as death, and then down had swooped Aunt
Moira....

But Ann Marlay’s womanhood, in the historic sense, was only the preface
to Lady Moira’s tale--as such, indeed, has been the preface to many a
tale, that womanhood so exquisitely contrived to serve love and to
destroy ambition. The stuff of the tale, the very heart of all the
alarums of the romance, lay--as Aunt Moira saw it, not unnaturally--with
that fine gentleman, her younger brother and his father: through whom,
of course, for all her gallant talk of his mother, her interest and
affection for himself had descended, as she didn’t now trouble to
conceal. And Ivor was made to see, vividly, how Aunt Moira must have
treasured, inexorably and immensely, that other young man, his
father--and how his father, head of his house at a rebellious age, must
have evaded and combated and rebelled, very mightily and stormily of
course, but always and only to succumb. The sterling intimacy of Aunt
Moira’s life, this between herself and her younger brother had been--and
how likely a one to bring one of them to trouble, as was well proved!

He was tall, of course, this father of his, and with hair as fair and
thick as his own was dark and thick: and, Aunt Moira rather cruelly
said, a rather obvious kind of face--though by “obvious” Ivor later
found she meant the kind of face that leads crusades or smashes things;
and, of course, with that nose piratical and predatory, that mountainous
and ancient nose, brother to her own and father to Ivor’s. Aunt Moira,
with a toss at her idol, suggested that that other young man might have
been all the better for brown eyes instead of blue, for she had very
unconventional views about eyes, saying: “There is something musty and
_expected_ about blue eyes in that kind of face,” and that Ivor’s looks
lost nothing for his mother having given him her dark eyes. “But it is
of no importance,” said Aunt Moira.

Ivor had happened, it appeared, in the tenth year of his parent’s
mating--“a word,” said Aunt Moira, “to be used very rarely”--and so the
months of storm-tossed wonderings that had preceded that love’s
consummation showed Ivor his father as a young man of about eight or
nine-and-twenty, unhappily married five years before. And Ivor
particularly liked to imagine his father during those first months of
strivings this way and that way: this way, a barren and comfortless
marriage--“a girl like a stone,” said Aunt Moira, “but not one of those
stones that seagulls worship”--and that way the dim figure of lovely Ann
Marlay, distracting him to leave quarrying stone and live, just live and
love. And as Ivor thought of those preliminary months of strivings, this
way honour and that way life, he couldn’t help feeling that, from a
certain point of view, a great deal of fuss had been made of an issue,
how confused soever. They seemed to have made tragedies for themselves
where we would make a trunkcall; they seemed, his aunt and his father,
to have debated the thing largely and at large--only in the end to do
what it was quite inevitable that they must do, to yield to the most
secret and compelling of the laws of life, which is the law of
lawlessness. And as Ivor thought of the “girl like a stone,” he saw,
dimly and painfully, what Aunt Moira with her sweeping distaste for
sub-human people could not see, how even a figure of stone can be
absent-mindedly crucified by full-blooded people.

It had been, of course, natural enough for that tempestuous young man to
have at once hurried off his elder sister and dearest friend to see and
love the girl Ann Marlay: to that house on Putney Hill where she lived
with her father, a drowsy old gentleman who collected stamps and books,
but little knowledge of men and none of daughters.

“Miracles cannot be explained,” Aunt Moira said to Ivor, in explaining
this particular one. “For indeed it was a miracle that happened to your
father--to meet, by chance and on the open road, the one woman in the
world who could touch him so that nothing else could ever touch him!”

“They met like birds,” said Aunt Moira, and was silent a while. And in
her eyes was that expression, profound and absorbed, of one who is going
to die.

The actual ingredients of the miracle had been, it seemed, an accident
to his carriage, a maimed dog, and a trembling girl on the curb,
silently rebuking him for his negligence; and then Ivor’s father, least
casual of men and as hurt as the dog, protesting his way with it in his
arms into her father’s house near by, to placate her and comfort the
dog--and to change the whole manner and colour of his life.

And into Aunt Moira’s manner, into the shadows of her fading voice, as
she spoke of those two dear wraiths, there seemed suddenly to have come
the explanation of Ivor’s perplexity at all that debate with which his
father had challenged his house, and, through it, his world: an air, as
absurd and sublime as of a mystic conviction, as of that regicide of
long ago, who, in his defence, is said to have deigned only thus far:
“This thing was not done in a corner.”

But of course it was done in a corner, inevitably, for in this life
there is no sort of adultery that is not done in a corner, not even that
of milk and water.... In this case in a corner of Italy, for ten amazing
years! For there couldn’t then, Aunt Moira sharply pointed out, be any
question of divorce: an Earl then was an Earl, whereas now he might be a
Brazilian and no one know the difference.

It was one of those loves, then, whose purity and greatness appals an
epithet: one of those loves that have something cosmic in their union,
one to the other, down the long toll of centuries; a love immense enough
to have demanded from Ivor’s father a clear alternative, his whole life
or his absolute restraint--and in so completely surrendering, with his
life, his honour, his ambitions and his place in England, he had done,
Aunt Moira magnificently dared to say, very well with his bargain. And
in that lay the great similarity between Ivor’s aunt and Ivor’s father,
this sister and brother, that nothing they did could ever be not worth
while to them to have done. They were so terribly genuine and weathered,
like two trees on a harassed moor, very sombre in sadness, very mighty
in joy. They were a dangerous couple, for some part of the truth was in
them.

That night Ivor went for a long walk about London, and thought and
wondered about what Aunt Moira had told him, about those lovely dead
parents of his. And it was as he strode down the hill of Church Street,
to Kensington, a tall, thin, boyish figure, completely and carelessly
inelegant, that he whispered to himself: “My God, what a marvellous
fluke it must be for two people to understand each other, utterly!...”

Ivor Marlay was already growing up. He was already emerging from that
painful consciousness of himself which is the burden of our boyhood,
into a dim, muddled consciousness of other people, other things, the
world. His thoughts were confusing him mightily. He was becoming
aware--as dully yet definitely, say, as he might become aware of an
approaching headache--of the mad mystery of other people. The years of
his boyhood had passed in a world where everything happened by rote,
where everything happened inevitably. But from now onwards anything
might happen, but anything--to him! The world had gifts to give--and he
was alone, irresponsible, tremendously ready to receive. Love might
happen, even love....

But of course love would happen.

And the first glimmer of an ideal came to him: the first glimmer of the
ideal that comes to all men. But in nearly all men this glimmer dies,
and of it nothing is left. That is called life. And in a few men this
glimmer waxes into a great light, and then it fades, and then it dies.
That, too, is called life.

Ivor Pelham Marlay, in those ensuing days, found his growing awareness
greatly helped by an acute consciousness of his father--with whom, he
comically thought, Aunt Moira had surprised him in a Jack-in-the-box
kind of way. And he found his father marvellously adequate, as a father;
he was glad of him, glad of his racking uncertainties, glad of his
tearing folly; and altogether glad he was that his father had been a
lover.

And thus it was that from the grim lips of Aunt Moira those dead parents
passed wanly but finally into the history of their son’s life; a secret
memory to last for ever--now strengthened and shepherded, as in their
lives, by dear Aunt Moira herself, who died but a few days after telling
Ivor of them. As she had lain for so many days, so she died, towards the
evening of the seventeenth day of October, 1908, in unutterable fear of
God.

_Miserere, Judex meus,_
_Mortis in discrimine_....

And so, because he had not gone up to Oxford, Aunt Moira’s death left
Ivor Pelham Marlay, at the age of nineteen, intolerably alone.

CHAPTER III

Of course there was always Aunt Percy, as there always had been: Aunt
Moira’s old friend and man of affairs, and now Ivor’s trustee and
guardian--Mr. Percy Wyndham Fletcher, senior partner of the firm of
Fletcher, Combe, and Fletcher, Solicitors, of Bloomsbury Square, W.C.
Mr. Fletcher was dead long before it became W.C.I; he would not have
liked the change, but he would have said nothing; for Mr. Fletcher never
grumbled at Progress, though he sometimes had an irritating way of
chuckling at it.

During Ivor’s holidays from school Aunt Percy, as the old gentleman was
commonly known, used often to come to dine with Aunt Moira. Ivor liked
Aunt Percy enormously, and he had an idea that Aunt Percy had once upon
a time liked Aunt Moira enormously. “It’s my belief,” he told young
Transome at school, “that my Aunt Moira has given the bird to more men
than any other woman of modern times.”

“Sounds like prehistoric times to me,” said Transome. (Typical of young
Transome, that kind of remark!)

Why the courtly and so masculine old gentleman was called “Aunt” Percy,
even by Lady Moira, no one seemed to know, or to inquire, for the matter
of that; for there is, somehow, something so inevitable and _right_--as,
say, in an old seal on a mellow parchment--in the very nature of any
sweet absurdity which, from some remote past, has attached itself to the
years of a man’s life and enwrapped itself about his personality, that
it were an offence even to wonder from what ancient quip it sprang.

Now Mr. Fletcher was far from being _gaga_: he was not that tedious old
man who takes complacent pleasure in youthful company: was, in fact,
very grown-up for his years; but, if he hated anything, it was to be
continually reminded of his approaching dotage and dissolution by his
juniors continually addressing him as “sir.” Mr. Fletcher did not feel
at all like “sir”; and the only advantage that Mr. Fletcher could see in
knighthood or baronetcy was that one could then be “How d’you do, Sir
Percy?” instead of having that silly “sir” tacked idiotically on to the
end of every other sentence by youths who, anyway, hadn’t half the guts
he had at his age, he shouldn’t wonder. So, lacking any such aldermanic
distinctions, he made shift as “Aunt” Percy; a straight, tall, stoutish
and courtly old gentleman of what is called “the old school,” with a
great admiration for men of talent and honour, and a special admiration
for Henley the poet and the man, dearest of his dead friends; and a
great reputation, kept greatly alive by the servants at his clubs, for
having been a fast-bowler and a fast liver in the good old days when
fast-bowlers were really devilish fast and so on.

Mr. Fletcher was--quite apart from his special interest in a young man
whose birth had followed on such romantic stirrings and rebellions, to
all of which he had been privy and sympathetic at the time--very fond of
Ivor: fond enough of him to lapse from his usual half-humorous manner
with his juniors and to treat Ivor as a man. But the old gentleman was
perturbed, every now and then, by some gleam of, well, maturity in Ivor,
which seemed to him rather out of place in so young an Englishman and
more befitting to a Latin intelligence; and so he came by a number of
theories about Ivor. One of them was that Ivor had a deep faith in
himself, for all that he was so quiet and well-behaved--too quiet and
well-behaved, thought Mr. Fletcher, for a young man who had been
expelled from Manton: another theory was that Ivor was conceited; and
still another that the conceit would soon be knocked out of him. Not by
Aunt Percy, though! Oh, no! There are, Mr. Fletcher thought, other
women in the world besides Aunt Percy, I shouldn’t wonder. Mr. Fletcher
had a great belief in women; and he suspected Ivor’s rather
angry-looking stillness. “If I were you,” suggested Aunt Percy, “I
wouldn’t think. It seems to make you angry.”

Mr. Fletcher, in the exercise of that unprejudiced good sense to which,
as well as to his social sense, he owed his legal prominence, was not at
all sure that much good would come of Ivor’s explorations as a writer of
prose. Certain stories and essays of his that he had read had seemed to
him, though rather remarkable for their polish, not the stuff of a
writer, as such; but rather of a young man with whom writing was merely
a reflection of his leisure, whereas his main concern hovered about the
business of life--or of love, he shouldn’t wonder! Also, and
particularly in the bravura essays on _The Decline of Humour_ and _The
Function of Daggers_, Mr. Fletcher had been disconcerted by a calm and
detached arrogance which, he thought, was confoundedly irritating in a
young man who couldn’t, possibly, really know anything. “Parlourtricks!”
said Aunt Percy. “Standing on your head! All this theoretical stuff....”

“It’ll run away with you, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mr. Fletcher.

“I wish to God it would!” Ivor suddenly let himself go. “I wouldn’t mind
if it was a Carter Patterson van that ran away with me, so long as
something did.”

“There’s a man in a new book by Arnold Bennett,” Aunt Percy thoughtfully
said, “who was run away with by a Pantechnicon. I don’t remember what
happened.”

“It probably ran away with Arnold Bennett until the end of the book,”
Ivor suggested nastily.

“In that case,” said Mr. Fletcher shortly, “you had better dine with me.
And you might shorten that long face of yours too, young man, for I’ve
no mind to waste my dinner in front of some one who looks like an
epitaph--and me with one foot down with gout and the other in the
grave!”

And so they would dine, about once a fortnight during those two years
following Aunt Moira’s death. And sometimes went on to a play, but more
frequently sat on and talked, in Mr. Fletcher’s celibate house in Green
Street: about dead men, of whom Aunt Percy had known so many, and about
books that never die, about which the _ci-devant_ fast-bowler knew a
good deal more than fast-bowlers are commonly supposed to know.

And throughout that time the old man, with a restraint quite remarkable
in one of his years, directed and advised his young friend as little as
he might; just “letting him be,” as Lady Moira had instructed him, to
find his bent and feet and friends in his own way. Only once did he
visit him in the chambers off Saint James’s Square which he had found
for him, saying that they would “do” for him until he came of age; and
was extremely surprised and almost displeased at the vast amount of
books with which Ivor’s rooms were encumbered. He had known that Ivor
spent a great deal of money on books--“But I didn’t realise,” said Aunt
Percy, “that you went on and on buying them. You’ll have a lot of
knowledge to get rid of, young man....”

Mr. Fletcher came away from his one visit to Ivor’s chambers wondering
what influences would finally take the boy out of his solitude and an
old man’s company. “Those books are not natural for a boy who took such
trouble to get kicked out of school,” thought Mr. Fletcher, as he walked
slowly along Jermyn Street, which was always a favourite street of his:
an unusually tall and upright old gentleman, magnificently hatted, and
easily imaginable as having been a very fast-bowler indeed in his time.

CHAPTER IV

During the first two years after Aunt Moira’s death, then, Ivor’s only
real companion was Aunt Percy: an inadequate one, how sweet and
understanding soever his nature, for that purpose of “talking things
out” which is essential to every young man of an inquiring mind. His
school friendships had been, with one exception, severely temporal; as
such friendships so often unhappily are, despite the charming traditions
that beglamour them with continuous and vivid life; and Ivor Marlay had
come away from Manton with no more (and no less, anyway!) than a fair
taste for classical reading and a pronounced one for rackets--which last
he indulged several hours a week at Prince’s, often with the pro’s and
sometimes with Transome. Dear old Transome!

At school young Transome had been on the “Army Side”--Transome’s people
having a theory, Transome said, that the army was indicated. So Transome
was sent to Sandhurst; and from Sandhurst he would at every opportunity
hurl himself on the heels of a telegram to London. “The idea being,”
Transome said, “to have a lot of fun.” So Ivor and Transome had a lot of
fun immediately--dear old Transome of the short straight nose and
freckled face, so very much liked by every one! Short and slim this
Transome was, of a very elegant habit and an incurious mind, fair hair
that insisted on curling and waving no matter how much he honeyed and
flowered it--see his face, never so relentless as when he was furiously
brushing it!--and blue eyes that had never a thought but for what was in
front of them. “My dam-fool appearance,” grinned Transome, “and the
rugged grandeur of my features indicated the Navy, but they’ve made such
a fuss about its being Silent that I couldn’t risk it.”

Transome, having wired, would invade London and Ivor’s chambers. There
they would dress, and dine somewhere. Ivor, being much wealthier,
naturally paid; and was amazed at Transome. Ivor had always rather
despised Transome’s intelligence, but now he despised his own. For
Transome knew something. Transome, in fact, knew about Women. How he
knew so much about Women, Ivor couldn’t make out. Here was he, Ivor,
living alone in London--“disgustingly free,” Transome envied him--and
knowing nothing at all about Women! He had had a few “passages,” but
they hadn’t been frightfully amusing, and Ivor could only think that
there must be something very wrong with him, considering the fuss every
one made about all “that.” To young Transome he, of course, pretended to
have had great and amazing enjoyments with Women. Ivor felt that
Transome expected that of him, as his partner in the Manton rackets-pair
for three years; and Ivor also felt that Transome really _had_ enjoyed
himself with Women, and was not pretending about it. Transome knew a
bit, obviously; he had a great and grinning knowledge of Women, this gay
Transom; and Ivor thought to learn a thing or two from him.

“I don’t care what you say,” said Transome, “but Women are all right.”
Transome then spoke of Women, thus and thus. Transome was twenty.

It was not long, however, before the superiority of Transome in Ivor’s
mind dwindled to next to nothing and then to nothing. He soon discovered
that Transome might burst with knowledge about Women and still know
nothing of life. Ivor did not know anything of life, either, but he was
sure you couldn’t get at life through Women like that.

“If those are Women,” said Ivor to Transome, “then I can understand the
Bible being angry about fornication. So would I be if I was the Bible.”

“You talk like God as it is,” muttered Transome.

“The nearest you’ll ever get to God, old boy,” Ivor retorted, “is the
top of a bus.”

After night-clubs, on Transome’s occasional visits, the former
rackets-pair had been to Women’s flats. Ivor didn’t want to go from the
first, but Transome said it would be all right; Ivor said he had never
thought it wouldn’t, and went. After a very few visits to these Women’s
flats late at night, Ivor’s opinion was that these Women weren’t Women
at all, but Crashing Bores. Transome rather crossly remarked that that
was jolly superior of him, and what the devil did he want anyway? Ivor
said sulkily that he didn’t know, but he did know that he did not want
to go messing about in a dingy flat near Bow Street with a woman who was
old enough to be his mother or his charwoman.

“My idea of a woman,” said Ivor, “is some one you can talk to
Afterwards.”

But Ivor said nothing of a glimmer of an ideal; it would not have been
unorthodox of him to, for men and boys quite often speak of their
ideals--no matter how dim or foolish-commonplace--to each other,
sometimes thinking to excuse this weakness by loading it with slang, or
thinking to hide it entirely under that conversational garbage which
makes men kin; if he had, Transome might have thought him dotty, or he
might have hailed him as a co-idealist, but he would certainly not have
thought him damned superior. Ivor was miserable: realising that he and
Transome, his only friend, were no earthly use to each other. What a
beastly shame.... They couldn’t really take any pleasure in each other’s
company, Ivor saw, if they were fundamentally out of agreement--and
that’s exactly what they were, fundamentally out of agreement. And Ivor,
turning into Saint James’s Square that night, with Transome walking
silently beside him, brooded over the fact that his only friend was not
a friend at all, but only an acquaintance: and that the next time
Transome came to London he would bring another buck with him and they
would seek fun in their own way, without any one nearby to make superior
remarks about it.

Ivor was right, for his path and Transome’s were to lead in different
directions; and it was years later before they again struck the same
path, and on that path Ivor was maimed and Transome was killed....

During the first two years after Aunt Moira’s death, particularly, of
course, in the latter part of them, there were in Ivor’s mind no words
strong enough to describe what he thought of London; it was a hell, a
wilderness, a prison, a very cruel place: and he was obviously an ass to
live in it. He could, after all, travel to Paris, anywhither--but he
stayed on, miserably unwilling to run away from London; wherein, if
anywhere, he felt but could not have dreamed of saying, lay his destiny.
He had not bargained for this tremendous loneliness, he hadn’t bargained
for anything but that he would “write.” He would collect experiences,
and then he would write. Somehow. How was he to have known that all his
energy was going to be numbed into a kind of listless chaos by his utter
ignorance of life, of London, of writing--of how to begin on those great
ventures! How was he to have known that loneliness, in a nature like
his, discounts all benefits of money and freedom, that it inoculates
every endeavour with a sense of futility? No taskmaster is crueller than
self-pity. Ivor called self-pity “London,” and was furious with London.
And he wandered about London.... And as he wanders about London, from
crooked streets in Canning Town to valleys in the Green Park, as he
stares from an upstairs window of Books’s Club at the bustle up and down
Saint James’s Street and the eternal pageant of the Town--

“The dear old Street of clubs and cribs,
As north and south it stretches,
Still seems to smack of Rolliad squibs,
And Gillray’s fiercer sketches;
The quaint old dress, the grand old style,
The mots, the racy stories;
The wine, the dice, the wit, the bile--
The wit of Whigs and Tories.”

--let us flaunt a homily before that defiant nose which is so defiantly
probing the unfairness of his loneliness. “Solitude,” writes Gibbon in
the grand manner, “is the school of genius.” But there is, for a youth
sensitive to the world about him, no such thing as solitude: its name is
brooding, and--if we are to answer the grand manner with becoming
grandeur--brooding is as certainly the graveyard of endeavour as
solitude is the school of genius.

And yet, when trying to write about that distressful time only a few
years later, Ivor Marlay was surprised to discover in it a certain
splendour. Memories he seemed to find therein, memories unanchored to
any reality of that wretched vagabondage that he had felt at the
time--yet were they almost tangible, these memories of tremendous
arrogances and thinkings. And it somehow seemed to him that in that
past, knowing nothing and nobody, he had seen life as he could never
again see it this side of death, in flashes of frightful clearness; that
he had seen life stark and naked, stripped of everything but its
direction from hell to heaven, like a bare tree against a wintry sky.
And then, as he thought upon the matters of that first youth, it
occurred to him that there must be somewhere a watchful god of
sociability--surely, yes! Say, a not very clean but kindly deity, who
now and then indulges himself in pity. And this god, a day or two after
his twenty-first birthday, when he had almost decided to leave London
and venture Paris, had suddenly and for no clear reason plunged him into
a multitude of people--by way of a chance acquaintance in a bar in the
Haymarket!

There had, of course, been other chance acquaintances during that
vagabondage, even from Limehouse to Hammersmith, but they had died the
deaths of their own torpidity; for Ivor did not as yet know how to be
immediately genial, he was--like so many others--barely sufficient for
the ordinary occasion, and that’s all.

That bar in the Haymarket! Something or other in Fleet Street the man
was, and frothing with geniality. He was a small and seedy man, the
_patina_ of several days was upon his chin and linen, and his name was
Otto Something, Ivor never exactly found out what. He approached Ivor in
no uncertain manner, as they stood side by side at the bar, describing
himself as “well oiled but still rec-ip-ro-ca-tive, ol’ boy.” He also
spoke favourably of Ivor’s appearance, saying that Ivor was the
best-dressed man in London since he had been the last one. And he gave
it as his opinion that Ivor was probably a gentleman.

Very soon they were joined by another, whose name appeared to be Fitz
Something. Otto and Fitz had been boys together, Ivor gathered--though
Fitz was probably ten or more years the younger. Fitz frothed with
geniality in a less aggressive way, and Ivor preferred him to Otto; in
fact, he grew to like Fitz very much in the course of the evening. Otto
was a Jew, and Fitz had on a gray flannel shirt with collar to match and
a deplorable tie. Many drinks were exchanged--between the barmaid and
Ivor’s pocket. If Otto Something and Fitz Something were phenomena in
Ivor’s life, Ivor was even more of a phenomenon in their lives.

“Looks like a proconsul,” said Otto to Fitz, “and drinks like a fish.”

“And _pays_, ol’ boy!” murmured Fitz to Otto.

They somehow lost Otto on emerging from the bar. “He gets like that,”
Fitz explained. He also explained that Otto was not a great friend of
his, but that he, Fitz, was inclined to take a liberal view of him.
Fitz was a very gentle man with a very gentle manner: “ruined,” he told
Ivor, “through the unfettered exercise of my social qualities, which are
considerable.” Whereupon he borrowed a pound from Ivor, and then threw
Ivor into the midst of a great multitude of people.

This multitude of people was heaped together, literally, in a very
small, low, candle-lit flat hidden away in the purlieus that lies
immediately behind the Jermyn Street entrance to the Piccadilly Tube.
The multitude, composed of faces in chairs, on the floor and everywhere
else, received his conductor and deafened Ivor with cries of “Blind
again, Fitz!” Fitz swayed a little and grinned a little--a gentle and
sleepy grin Fitz had--and waved a hand at the tall and dark young
stranger behind him, whose bewildered head the ceiling was incommoding.
“Yes,” said Fitz blandly, “I am indeed blind. I might even go so far as
to say I was tipsy, but nevertheless all my people are Service people.
And here is one of them, just to show you.” And at that moment certain
faces grew hands, and Fitz and Ivor were dragged down into the
multitude. Ivor was delighted with his evening. This, he thought, is
jolly fine. I like these people. And he expanded.

Ivor could not make out what they were at all; and a queerer collection
of people he never met later, not even in his most extravagant
wanderings about the worlds of London. One man, who looked like an
insurance agent, was spoken of as an etcher; and another, who looked
like an etcher, made him an honorary member of a night-club of which he
was the secretary. The women were not described at all, and their
appearance didn’t describe them. But they weren’t Women. They were
rather witty, Ivor thought. Pretty faces here and there, too. Later, he
was to find that they were of that formidable army who live their days
on, say, the heights of Notting Hill, the better to descend by night
into the gay abyss of Bohemian revelry.

Very soon Ivor found himself on a corner of the overcrowded divan:
juggling with a teacupful of whisky and water, and making love to a
fluffy and surprised-looking little woman, who said her name was Myra
Bruce, and then said it wasn’t but would be when she could get a job on
the stage. Could Ivor help her to get a job on the stage? He looked as
though he might be able to, she said. So Ivor lived up to that for a
while.

She was faded and rather dejected, this fluffy little Bruce, as though,
perhaps, she had tried and tried and tried again at life too long. She
was faded, this little Bruce, but she awoke wonderfully, and
glittered--even as her little upturned nose, which was brilliantly
affected by the heated atmosphere and her inability to find her
powder-puff. But at first she glittered shyly, for this different and
dark young man had a way of making her aware of herself--and the little
Bruce had no great opinion of her looks. He was aggressive, she thought;
and not in his speech, in the usual way, but with his understanding,
which seemed to be of a peculiarly bodily kind. “Cynical,” she called
him. “Trying to be clever,” she said. He was making her feverish, and
she glittered shyly.... But, on a moment, she glittered fully, that
little Bruce! for the thing suddenly dropped to a more accustomed plane,
she and the atmosphere were stronger than him: when, in a very tired
moment on that crowded divan, he let his head fall against her
shoulder--and she realised that he was “only a boy!” And suddenly,
hungrily, she smothered the tired boy’s face with kisses ... so that the
multitude was gleeful at the little Bruce’s passion for the dark young
stranger. And that, but an incident among the adventures of vagabondage,
lasted three days and nights: almost violently.

Thus, his first introduction to London; for, following queerly on that
chance meeting in a bar in the Haymarket, Ivor met people upon people;
and so swiftly, so variously, so increasingly, that barely six months
later he realised, with something like a shock, that among the men and
women he was at the moment seeing there was not one whom he had met
through Fitz’s hazy introduction! There had happened, ever so quickly,
the process of selection. And Fitz, he of the gentle manners, he of the
polite thirst--where now was Fitz? And Otto the Jew, frothing with
geniality--where now was Otto? Were they, at this moment, still in the
Haymarket bar, would they to-night be in the little flat in the purlieus
behind Jermyn Street? If he went thither to-night, would he find them?
But Ivor did not go, he was ashamed; he was aware that he was,
shamefully, not of them or like them, he had not their honest geniality;
he had _used_ them--unconsciously, yes, but he had _used_ them. Such,
then, was Ivor.

London is an amazing city--not so much because of the numbers of its
population, which it simply cannot help, but because of its hospitality,
which it can. Take a man without money--say, £800 a year--without
particular wit, without a Lancashire accent, of no stock to speak of and
of less education; let him have a slightly constrained manner, as of one
who simply _can’t_ be ingratiating, and a few other properties of a
gentleman--and, if he be not by nature too vulgarly disposed, if he
steel himself against the lure of the footlight favourite and the guile
of the wanton _bourgeoise_, he will find himself, without particular
effort, among People. He will, anyway, meet People; and whether or not
he gets to know them intimately depends on his charm or his cheek. For
society in London is sociable: its dignity is that of ease; and its
polish is so deeply ingrained that even the offences of its more
boorish juniors can no more than slightly ruffle its surface--to the
annual confusion of our more serious American hostesses, who can never
realise that the most difficult thing to lose in London is a reputation.
Whereas society in Paris is not sociable, as every one knows. There is
in Paris a superstition called the _ancien régime_, and another
superstition called the _haute noblesse_; and these superstitions
(having been almost recklessly encouraged by the late Henry James, who
glossed them with his charm) are supposed to lead exceedingly patrician
lives on nothing a year in very musty _hôtels_ in the Faubourg St.
Germain. The superstitions have riders to the effect that, the _régime_
being so extremely _ancien_ and the _noblesse_ so very _haute_, their
wearers have now no money left and do _not_ entertain. Whereas the
facts, as known to all right-thinking men, are that the _ancien régime_
and the _haute noblesse_, having long since acquired Italian or American
dowries, now live in very rich and modern _hôtels_ about the Avenue du
Bois and the Parc Monceau; that what is the matter with their
hospitality is not that they don’t entertain, but--well, there it
is--that they don’t entertain well enough; and that their hospitality
would be simply charming if it were a little more _ancien_ and a little
less of a _régime_. For how, students of hospitality may well ask, how
the devil can a man be gay at a party on a thimbleful of nasty white
wine or even nastier sweet champagne, which is so cheap that one has
never dared to order it at a restaurant? And the difference between the
hospitality of London and that of Paris (excluding, of course, that part
of it known as Gay) is made significant by the fact that the Frenchmen
who live longest are those accredited to the Court of Saint James’s.

At one-and-twenty, then, Ivor Marlay could touch and taste the fringe of
this London, and it burnt him just a little, pleasantly, like a liqueur
brandy. (Later, it hit him on the head; but that was later.) And he
rolled and wallowed in it, he let life “blood” him. He not only killed
time, but he disinterred it and killed it again and again. In the two
years following the incident of the little Bruce he forgot to write. He
lived vividly but slackly; and his days and nights were confused in an
all too earthy mess. Women happened, with surprisingly little subtlety:
they just seemed to happen, in a swift moment, into his physical life,
and then they would fade away, sometimes gradually and sweetly,
sometimes quickly and noisily. One of them said that he had Magnetism,
and he was frightfully pleased about that, it seemed so funny. Magnetism
indeed! And one or two said they liked him only physically, but that
mentally he was too hard, not tender enough. They didn’t believe him,
they said. When he annoyed them, as he often did, they would say:
“You’re _very_ young, my poor child!” That glimmer of an ideal (which is
given to all young men, but is not treasured by them) unconsciously
helped Ivor to despise quite a number of things: it helped him to
despise quite a number of women, and it is not a bad thing for a young
man to despise a certain number of women, if he knows what he is
despising in them. But Ivor didn’t know: he only thought he knew....

It was at about this time that he was introduced to the Mont Agel....

Gone, then, were his vigils in the Green Park, gone the furious pacings
about galleries and museums, gone the vagabondage about the India Docks,
gone the desiring of glorious women who passed him so lightly in the
sunshine of the streets, gone the whole mad mystery of the passers-by!
He was in it all, now. Life seemed so little worth while as to be quite
enjoyable--for these were the days of “easy cynicism,” you understand.
“Life,” says the king of all paradoxes (as appointed by Mr. Chesterton),
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Ivor was not
twenty-three: this, it was indicated, was life; and so he lived it. He
was a success, in a small way; and the precious gentleman who said that
nothing fails like success knew more than people think.

And Aunt Percy, now confined in Green Street with gout and the sense of
approaching death, was disappointed: holding that a young man with
Ivor’s capacity for theorising might just as well have gone through this
particular phase in theory instead of in practice. But Aunt Percy said
nothing--or rather, he said everything, in shortly telling Ivor one day
that drink was not the only dissipation that one should not carry about
in one’s appearance. Now when Aunt Percy said that kind of thing, which
was very rarely, he had a way of looking at a young man which made that
young man feel a little mean, a little ashamed--as though, maybe, that
young man had not played up to the expectations of his side, and in
particular, up to the expectations of his side’s fast-bowler.

Mr. Fletcher would have been happier about Ivor if he had known of that
glimmer of an ideal, much happier; in fact, it was that lack that lay at
the core of the old man’s growing disappointment, for this young man
seemed to have no ideals, commonplace or fantastic, and his young eyes
were somehow hard when he smiled, and there was somehow a sharpness
about his laughter. So, being kept at arm’s length from the deep places
of Ivor’s heart, Mr. Fletcher, who was now a very lonely old man, could
only tell himself that Ivor must soon get over this present rot, just as
himself and his friends had done. It was a pity, however, Mr. Fletcher
thought, that Lady Moira had not insisted on her first idea of Ivor
being called to the Bar, instead of letting him have his own way about
this writing business, which was no more than philandering and wouldn’t
come to anything much, he shouldn’t wonder. He had too much money,
that’s what it was. And for the first time in his life, at the so lonely
end of it, Mr. Fletcher suspected his old friend of an unwisdom,
thinking that he, after all a man, should have advised her more
definitely about the boy’s upbringing: instead of just tamely letting
her make him promise to “let Ivor be, to find his feet and bent and
friends in his own way.” His way was just like every other young fool’s
way, he shouldn’t wonder. And Aunt Percy died with the nearest approach
to a deep rebuke that Ivor had ever seen in those gallant old-blue eyes,
those eyes that could make a young man feel a little mean, a little
ashamed.

CHAPTER V

The world which Ivor then touched and tasted so carelessly was a vastly
different world from that with which he was surrounded, in his fuller
maturity, on the 1st May, 1921, at the Mont Agel. More than war had
intervened between that past and this present: some people said that an
undue stress of evolution had intervened; and other people said that the
very opposite of evolution had frightfully intervened. But no one really
knew anything about it, not even Mr. Britling. There was, it was plain,
a self-consciousness abroad after the war that had not been before; and,
too, a certain sophistication about things that once used to move us
exceedingly. There was nothing remarkable in the fact that, with the war
and after it, everything was become bigger, even tennis-tournaments,
strikes, prizefights, revolutions, and Cabinets--but it _was_ rather
remarkable that men seemed to have become much smaller. Maybe, it was
suggested, men seemed to have become smaller--in significance,
say--because they were now conscious of their relation to the huge and
cruel mechanism of the universe. Death had lost something of its terror,
and life had gained it. Life had lost something of its value, but death
had not gained it--despite all the pomps of honour and medalry with
which the survivors had belauded it. And if there had still been a
Pythian priestess, and if there had still been any one who believed in
priests to ask of her an oracle, she might well have answered even as
she answered anent the fortunes of a battle in the days of Greece’s
decline: “Conquered shall weep, and conqueror perish there.” But,
failing a Pythian oracle, there was Mr. Shaw, who in 1919 very sharply
pointed out that “the earth is bursting with the dead bodies of the
victors.” ... A very precocious century, this, for it was old and tired
and _blasé_ by its twenty-first birthday; a senile and fumbling century
it was on its twenty-first birthday, that which had been so gay, so
careless, so essentially _new_, but ten or eleven years before!
_New_....

In the world, when Ivor first entered it and it blooded him, there was
abroad a new generation, newer than any generation had ever been before;
and in all things, even beauty, singularly distinguished. Whereupon the
old, instead of growing older in decent contrast, grew young again in a
fury of contemplation. And meanwhile earthquakes shook the social
fabric, but who cared? Hadn’t earthquakes always shaken the social
fabric, and wasn’t the thing called “the social fabric” just so that
earthquakes could shake it? Doctors and other professional men took to
asking, with twinkles in their eyes: “What would happen if _we_ went on
strike?” They asked that every day, with twinkles in their eyes, but no
one among them ever dreamed of answering. The answer was a lemon.

And in the meanwhile, Society shivered a little feverishly, filled now
with the scions of those who had come over with the Jewish and American
Conquests. Escutcheons were becoming valueless, how sinister soever the
blots and clots upon them. And so, among the many Movements of the
day--Movements to Clothe Poor Children beautifully, Movements to bring
Sanity into Art, Movements to call the U.S.A. the Y.M.C.A.--there was
brought to birth a Movement of Laughter among industrial classes at fine
ladies and fine gentlemen, a Movement of Ridicule among artisans at
aristocrats who were not now aristocratic enough whatever they may once
have been.[A]

Every one was very serious, at that distant time, but very careless
about other people’s seriousness. That is the difference between peace
and war.

And, throughout those days, Ivor Pelham Marlay loitered prodigiously. He
was careless with his money and concerned about his person, which had
now acquired those elegant lines peculiar to affected young men who
deliberately owe for their clothes. He was absent-minded at the right
moments. He was a very pretty lover, especially over dinner: after
dinner he would generally suggest dancing. He was audacious at
conventional moments and conventional at adventurous moments. He had
cheek, money, and moments of sincerity. He was apt at a misquotation,
which is, of course, the only amusing part of a quotation. And he had a
sudden smile which made one rather like him just when one had decided he
was an unbearable young cub: he was, in fact, quite unbearable, even to
himself; and exactly ripe, at the age of three-and-twenty, to be brought
sharply to his senses. Magdalen Gray was very good at bringing men to
their senses; but she used her own to do it with.

Magdalen Gray occurred suddenly: like a symbol with a lovely face,
suddenly shaped out to his startled eyes from the shoddy stuff of his
life. And the glimmer waxed into a great light....

BOOK THE SECOND

THE FRIENDS

CHAPTER I

Mrs. Gray occurred suddenly, as has been said, but in accustomed
surroundings: at one of those parties, in fact, that are nightly
scattered about a corner of London, and are, through open first-floor
windows, apt to hit the solitary passer-by of the small hours across the
eyes with the vivid glare and gesticulation of their gaiety. These
parties are much despised (_a_) by the people who go to them; (_b_) by
the people who don’t get the chance; and (_c_) by essayists who begin
their essays with: “I sometimes ask myself what hidden pleasures there
are to be found in Crowds....”

This particular party, in June, 1912, in the Halliday house in Deanery
Street, was quite small; or rather it looked small, for although there
were present about a hundred people they were, as usual at a Halliday
party, so scattered about the various rooms upstairs and downstairs that
there were never more than ten or twelve couples to encourage the band
in the ballroom; so that, if you were a bad dancer, you had no chance to
use the excuse so often effective on a crowded floor, that the art of
dancing is not to dance but to avoid other dancers.

This was an intimate party: no decorations or dowagers. The frequent
Halliday parties of the intimate sort were justly renowned, for
Euphemia, Mrs. Halliday, was expert in achieving that pleasant impromptu
effect which is the result of a lavish and organised hospitality. (The
name must not, by the way, be confused with that of the famous brewers.
The Hallidays, Euphemia said, were, and always had been, bankers and
gentlemen, not brewers and aristocrats.) No one “received” you at these
parties, though they were by no means of that slack order to which
“every one” could go; you just happened on your host, John, or your
hostess, Euphemia--so dark and florid she always was!--as time went on;
and you talked with the one and danced with the other according to the
press of your business elsewhere. You had gone there that night in
response to a casual telephone message from Euphemia’s butler, the
formidable Hebblethwaite, and you left as casually; and you always left
very late, and you always left wondering why you had stayed so long. But
there was one young man, anyway, who on leaving Deanery Street that
night did not wonder why he had stayed so long, and that young man’s
name was Ivor Marlay. He was wondering about something else.

On his entrance, just after midnight, he had happened on Gerald Trevor
descending the stairs alone, to have a peaceful “glass of wine” in the
as yet uncrowded supper-room. From the stairs Trevor’s face lit up with
his quick little smile of pleasure. There was a great deal of
courtliness in the man, but he summarised it all in that jerky little
smile: keeping his speech as free from it as every one else’s, or
nearly.

“Join me,” he said, taking Ivor’s arm, “and we will talk a little.”

Gerald Trevor was inevitable at all such parties, but not nearly so
boring as you might think from that inevitability. No one ever thought
Gerald Trevor boring, not even the women who were tired of him. He was
that rare person who can join two others without interrupting their
conversation. He was in between the generations, neither the old nor the
new, neither too courtly nor too careless; and he looked, with his small
slender figure, his thick fair hair and fair moustache cropped very
close to his lip, his keen and scholarly blue eyes, and the nose which
rather surprisingly stuck out from his face like the peak of a cap and
gave his features a surprising look of keen aggression--he looked
delightfully like a man who has loved a few women and killed a few men.
And he probably had, for he had been through the Boer war and had been
divorced by his wife, though that was by arrangement, as she wanted to
marry some one else; whereupon Gerald Trevor had thought to himself:
“Thou shalt not commit alimony,” and didn’t.

“You and I,” said Trevor, juggling with a macaroon, a cigarette, and a
glass, as they stood at the long table of Hebblethwaite’s kingdom--“You
and I are always meeting at these places, Ivor. And, it seems to me,
we’re meeting in spirit, as well as in fact. Now that’s very strange,
don’t you think, considering----”

Ivor grinned. “You are about to refer,” he said softly, “to the amazing
fact that you are old enough to be my father--yes, you are, Gerald. I
never see you but you say that at least once and would like to say it
twice, and I can’t help thinking that it’s a kind of parlour-game
peculiar to the house of Trevor. I feel I ought to slap you on the
shoulder twice and say “Bo,” and then you’ll tell me where you’ve hidden
something....”

“Ass,” said Trevor.

“Age,” meditated Ivor gravely, “can’t matter in a man. I haven’t as yet
the faintest idea what does matter in a man, but I’m sure age doesn’t.
Consider how many children of ten are their father’s ancestors! Read
Mrs. Besant. Read the late Mrs. Blavatsky. Read the late Mrs. Eddy. Read
what you like....”

“When,” said Trevor gently, “you have finished gloating over your
superficial knowledge of the indoor activities of elderly widows, two of
whom are now quite old enough to know better, you may let me suggest
that the spirit in which you and I meet at these parties is one of
Looking for Something. But the difference is that I know what I’m
looking for and you don’t.”

“I always was a backward boy,” lamented Ivor.

“Not at all!” said Trevor quickly, and took another macaroon; whenever
Gerald Trevor took another macaroon you were warned--run away, or stay
and listen. “It’s I who am the fool! Don’t you see, Ivor? You’ve got a
right to begin, but I’m a fool to repeat things. You are searching for
an enchantment, but I’m waiting for a repetition. Life is empty at the
moment, and I want to fill it again--and the same thing will fill it
again in almost the same way. It always does.”

“I know now,” said Trevor, “so much about women that I know no woman has
ever loved me, nor can ever love me, as I want to be loved. I say that
in no spirit of false modesty, Ivor, but judicially--and the frightfully
funny part of it is that it’s not just a remark over a glass of wine,
it’s true. I’m the legendary man who was born to be the perfect
co-respondent, but has failed to live up to the promise of his
birth....”

People were crowding round about, they flowed to and ebbed from
Hebblethwaite’s kingdom; they sat at the various tables scattered about
the supper-room, and the two men were casually interrupted, but nothing
could distract Gerald Trevor from his rare mood of self-revelation. This
young man, Ivor Marlay, with his attentive eyes under those
sceptical-looking eyebrows, called up a mood of intimacy in the man of
middle years which would have outraged him if applied by some one else
to himself. He admitted, now, the outrageousness of his mood to Ivor,
comically pleading Ivor as his excuse. (Hebblethwaite had placed a
bottle before them, from which they automatically filled their glasses.)

“You’re so outrageous yourself, you see,” Trevor accused him, with that
jerky little smile. “You goad me on! Not with the things you say, of
course, but with the things you understand--or pretend to, anyway.”

“All my life,” Trevor said, “I’ve loathed men. And effeminate men worst
of all, for that’s adding insult to injury. Yes, I’ve loathed men--they
are, mentally, either too hairy or not hairy enough, and physically they
are almost as deplorable as women. Taking, however, a liberal view of
the flaws which are present in even the loveliest of the daughters of
Eve, I have been partial to women, I have loved women. Sacredly, you’d
never believe how sacredly--for one’s manner of speech rather hides the
sacred things in one. Only to realise the other day that the only two
women I’ve ever really loved were both harlots. Mentally, I mean, not
financially....” And Gerald Trevor fell silent.

“That,” said Ivor sincerely, “must have been a great disappointment to
you.” He had to say something.

Trevor emptied his glass. “That’s why I’m rather indecently telling you
about it, Ivor,” he apologised, self-consciously. “They were both, don’t
you see, so fiendishly complicated in their emotions and so direct in
their direction--which, stripped of all the baubles of polite speech,
was from one man’s bed to another. They talked of love, but they only
desired. Damn it, that sounds dramatic....”

“But I like it like that!” cried Ivor.

“It all comes from the progress of science,” said Trevor. “All this easy
infidelity and messing about. One is not protesting against a woman
liking some one else, one is protesting against the chances of her
liking some one else. The chances are so against one....”

“There are too many facilities for getting about,” he said. “A man
nowadays has got very little chance of keeping a woman to himself as
compared to even eighty years ago. She gets more chances of seeing other
men, and comparing and developing and evolving--away from you. In the
old days, if you lived at Wimbledon--well, why not?--your wife never met
a soul without your knowing about it. Infidelity was a lengthy and
ponderous business--it simply isn’t possible to snatch a quiet half-hour
with a young man while your coach and footmen are waiting outside. But
now, motors, undergrounds, telegrams, telephones! All modern life is
directed towards letting your wife or mistress see as many men as she
likes and when she likes. And out of those men how easy to meet one she
likes as much as, and then more than, you. The way women go about
finding Magnetism in impossible men is appalling! So where the devil are
you? There’s no security, Ivor, simply none! A lover is a husband and
then a cuckold before he knows what and where he is. And then people say
the telephone service is too slow!”

“The pleasant thing about you, Gerald,” Ivor suddenly broke in, “is that
you never speak of women as though you had been loved by them, but
always as though you had done all the loving. It’s a very pleasant
fiction, that....”

“The matter is, of course,” said Trevor reasonably, “that one wants
rather too much. One wants a simple and direct love spiced with the
divine and complex subtleties of a Cleopatra--and the two can’t go
together at all. One wants the love and constancy of a dairymaid and the
lust and pride and wit of a great lady....”

It was at that very moment, as Ivor Marlay will always remember, that he
first heard the voice of Magdalen Gray, and was arrested by it. Trevor
and he were still standing at the long table with their backs to the
room and bunches of people, and Trevor was just thoughtfully exploring
the bottle for what it might still contain--when the voice, but a
phantom of a passing voice borne above the clatter of the room by some
peculiarly light quality in it, suddenly caressed Ivor’s ear: like, he
thought, a very sweet unscented breeze from the shadows of a green place
to a sweating road where two men are breaking stones, for Trevor’s
worldly wisdom is made of stones.... He looked round and peered among
the accustomed faces round about, but he couldn’t hit on the face of the
voice, nor the “Rodney” to whom it had been addressed.

“A pleasant voice, that,” he only said to Trevor--so little thinking
that Trevor had also heard it, that he was very surprised when he
returned:--

“Yes, isn’t it! A voice in this wilderness. Did you see her?” And Trevor
looked round the room, keen eyes searching swiftly. Gerald Trevor was
very popular--among men as among women, for all his “hatred”--and many
eyes caught his and beckoned gaily, a voice here and there called
“Gerald!” and a few men wondered what on earth Trevor found to say at
such length to that rather mysterious young man, Marlay. They quite
liked Marlay, he seemed and looked quite all right, but they weren’t,
absurdly enough, quite sure whether he liked them! And that vague doubt
is a most improper one for a young man to instil, no matter how vaguely,
in other men. Thus, throughout his life Ivor was to find that it was to
be made always much easier for him to be unpopular rather than popular.
His was a nature to like a few people and be entirely indifferent to
every one else; and very few people were to matter in his life, but they
were to matter very much. As now, when Gerald Trevor, at five-and-forty,
who was every one’s easy acquaintance and no one’s particular friend,
was surprisingly Ivor’s good friend, and was steadfastly to remain so.
For it is the consolation and distinction of a man whose instinct is to
like very few people to be instinctively liked by those very few.

“She must have just passed through and gone upstairs,” Trevor said at
last. “Anyway, she belongs to a generation that doesn’t loiter in bars,
not even when they’re called buffets....”

“She loiters secretly,” he said mischievously, “and in secret
places--which, after all, is what loitering is for.”

“Who is she, Gerald?”

Trevor regarded the young man severely.

“She,” he said, “is a woman of quality.”

“Oh!” cried the very young man; and Trevor was really surprised into his
jerky little smile by the sudden pleasure of the exclamation.

“Gerald, you have said a marvellous thing--oh, but you have! I never
thought to hear that said about any woman, I’d forgotten that such a
phrase was ever made by fine men for fine women--a woman of quality!
And here you’ve been ranting a lot of worldly-wisdom stuff for the last
half-hour, keeping this pearl of price inside you until the magic of a
voice dragged it out! Pah!...”

“A woman of quality!” And Ivor repeated the words softly, tasting in
them wine finer than champagne and older than Falernian, while Trevor
enjoyed the comedy of his chance phrase. Next time, he comically
thought, it will not happen so accidentally.

Ivor was of an age which can confuse the precious and the beautiful into
one dim, magnificent whole; and that chance, outmoded phrase had somehow
lit a great light, an absurdly great light, within him, it seemed to him
so coloured with forgotten splendours and luxuries of _race_ and
manners. Everything desirable, everything exquisite, everything
damnable, everything that could bewitch his mind and heart, seemed to
lie in and about that phrase. It fired him, it so completely contained
the rarest secrets of _fineness_--for him, anyway! He wouldn’t, he
thought grandly, ever cheapen that phrase. They were words to fit an
ideal. (He was only twenty-three, after all; and he had drunk his share
of a bottle of champagne.)

“Tell me more of ‘this woman of quality’” he begged Gerald Trevor.

“Oh, no!” cried Trevor. “I’m just too old to make theories out of
facts--especially feline facts. Besides, you will soon be meeting her
for yourself----”

“But I haven’t as yet.”

“But you are only very few London years old yet, Ivor! and she is only
just back from two years near Naples.”

“That,” said Ivor, “must be one of those facts you were shy of
theorising about.”

“You would learn more,” Trevor gently warned him, “if you understood
less, young man.”

“She has a husband,” he condescended to add, “who explores Asia. She
explores everything else. He is at present in London, and at this very
party, I think, but she does not cease to explore. And so he will go
away again, because he is that kind of man.”

“And I,” he said, emptying his glass, “will now go upstairs to ask her
to dance with me.”

“Telling her, please,” Ivor seriously detained him, and drew a deep
breath, “that her unknown voice was much appreciated and its absence
deeply regretted, even during a conversation with yourself.”

“Quite,” said Trevor sombrely. “But, on the other hand, the action of
eggs on the liver has given rise to endless discussion.”

It was as Gerald Trevor reached the head of the stairs leading to the
ballroom that he saw Magdalen Gray coming down the flight above, with
Rodney West. Her dress, he thought, is of the colour of crushed orchids:
it would be ... something just a bit rank....

“Magdalen!” he greeted her from below; “the psychological moment has now
come for you and me to take the floor together.”

“And Gerald!” the light voice said gaily; “they’re just beginning a
lovely waltz with a beard on it, to suit and soothe the dignity of your
years....”

And Rodney West, his sharp and legal face more than ever sharp and legal
at this smooth buccaneering and smooth surrendering, continued his now
solitary way down the crowded stairs. Interruptions did not intrude upon
_him_, not even in the most crowded places. He was a man set apart, the
little smile that was crucified on his thin, handsome face set him
apart, and rather grimly. Rodney West was one of those “darkish men with
intelligent gestures” who are attractive to connoisseurs among women. It
was Mrs. Gray who had so described him--and herself.

Dancing, Ivor thought, must be altogether a winter-sport, for it’s
certainly too hot for it now. And eventually, after a glance into the
ballroom, where he could not see Trevor and partner, he came upon the
bunch of young people who centred mainly round Lois Lamprey and Virginia
Tracy: both young and cool and remote, and ever so faintly contemptuous
of those whom their carelessness about things might shock. They were so
untouchable by people to whom they were indifferent--people are “awful,”
they said--that their amorous reputations amazed one. (It amazed them,
too. It was so untrue, really.) Lady Lois Lamprey was in particularly
good looks to-night, in a Byzantine sort of dress of beaten gold that
vividly brought out the sheen of her dark silken hair, coils and coils
of dark silken hair, like a lustrous black decoration for the white oval
of her face and the curiously blue weapons which were given to her for
eyes. And Virginia Tracy, golden-white Virginia, her small face as grave
as a Persian kitten’s--for she was very young and resented things--was
dressed severely in black....

“So that,” she said surprisingly, viciously, to Ivor, who had just come
upon them and remarked upon its dark severity, “I can dance with you,
black Ivor Marlay, if you should happen to ask me.”

That swift, breathless little voice of Virginia’s--so pregnant, somehow!

“Virginia has got a _crise_,” Lois Lamprey commented into some one’s
ear, very softly. Lois always commented on Virginia like that, very
softly, and without emotion. Lois gave it to be clearly understood that
she kept emotion for emotional moments. Watch the Lady Lois! For she
will be a power in the land, in the land where she is already a legend,
by reason of her great beauty, her birth, her wit, her various talents,
and the facility for dexterous publicity which has always been
vouchsafed to the Lamprey women. She will be the contriver of her own
destiny, so watch her, it will be quite interesting. There is no snob
like the well-born snob: Mr. E. F. Benson said that, and he knows about
those things. The Lady Lois will get on, but not obviously, she will
climb to the ultimate pinnacles of the world’s last aristocracy. Men
will call her an _allumeuse_, but men give many different names to their
disappointments. She will have no enemies, but most of her friends will
dislike her. Only two weaknesses has Lady Lois of the silken black hair
and the curious eyes that seem to see things a long way off and to laugh
at things close-to--she is mean with money, and she is partial to a
glass or so of wine between meals. But her complexion can stand that,
for a thing to wonder at is her complexion. “_Ah, ce type anglais!_”
Nothing in the world can beat it, even though it does sometimes dress
atrociously.... Now Virginia was quite, quite different from Lois;
though people didn’t realise that for quite a long time.

There was antagonism between Virginia Tracy and Ivor Marlay. There
always is antagonism between some one and some one else at a party of
the intimate sort. In this case it had something to do with Virginia’s
lack of manners and Ivor’s lack of servility, but how were they to know
that?

“I’ve asked you to dance so often, and so often been snubbed,” Ivor
said, rather too quietly maybe. The formality, the “rightness,” of his
manner always irritated Virginia into an impatient shrug. And, in this
mood of hers, her blue eyes glittered just a little, dangerously.

Now in the furrow of Virginia Tracy’s little chin, and an inconsiderable
little chin it was for a beautiful young lady, lay a tiny brown spot,
which Ivor sometimes found very irritating....

It was as though the room seemed suddenly to be going rotten with
silence. No one quite knew why--and Virginia and Ivor were the most
nonchalant among them. The silence was made more than ever tangible by
one Kerrison saying:--

“But Marlay’s not severe, Virginia! He’s a rakish and raffish young
man.” But, as usual with Mr. Kerrison, the insolence was in the words
rather than the manner, which was ingratiating. Mr. Kerrison was an
intellectual architect of a certain reputation and a remarkably anæmic
exterior. Kerrison just slops about, people said. He disliked Ivor
Marlay because Ivor Marlay had once seen him powdering his nose in a
lavatory, because he knew Lois liked him, and because he suspected
Virginia of being deeper than her antagonisms....

“He’s suffering,” Virginia said quietly, “from silence. The kind of
silence that knows the answer to every question!” Thus were the sayings
of the polite and amiable M. Stutz retailed by “My Customers!”

“In the meanwhile,” Ivor was bored enough to say, “why _don’t_ we dance?
Or are we not talking about that now?” That manner of his, when
irritated, was certainly irritating. You could not like Ivor when he did
not like you. He somehow wouldn’t let you. The more he was in the right
the less you could like him.

Virginia shook her head, as though a little absent, a little bored; and
said something in a low tone to Mr. Kerrison beside her, so that he
laughed.... It really was very stupid, all this. Every one was aware of
that, and of Ivor Marlay. Everything had been so charming and
inconsequent until he had come in--darkly, so as to provoke Virginia, it
seemed!--and now everything was pointed and personal. As everything
always was when those two met in a room--the atmosphere somehow grew a
point, even at the Mont Agel, most difficult of all places in which to
be anything but inconsequent! Any one else but Ivor Marlay would have
answered Virginia’s first remark in some human sort of way, with a jeer
or a laugh or a cry or a grab--but Marlay must go and say the “right”
thing, which any fool might know was the wrong thing to say to
Virginia.

Ivor Marlay, feeling acutely that he was “out of all this,” just waited
for someone to say something. He was damned if _he_ was going to be “put
out” by this sort of childishness. And his eyes faintly appealed to Lois
Lamprey: who liked him--for she had an instinct about people who might
get on--and had watched the little comedy as she watched every comedy,
including her own, with lazy intentness. Lois was twenty-five, two years
older than Virginia, and it was said that she was more _balanced_ than
Virginia.

“Every one is being very typical to-night,” Lois vaguely said, in her
deep, soft voice.

“A ballroom,” she said, “is not the place for dancing in, anyway. One
should only dance in meadows and green places....”

(It was at that time the fashion to make idiotic remarks in a dogmatic
voice. It rather impressed some people.)

“And one should only dance towards the moon and back,” bubbled Pretty
Leyton, who couldn’t dance at all. (Thank God that’s over, Ivor
thought.) Pretty Leyton always bubbled over like that--and, in bubbling,
simply adored you! His business in life was to be an optimist and
celibate, and his pleasure in life was to encourage and edit young men’s
poetry, dead or alive; and in that the war was to give him his wonderful
chance, which he wonderfully took. The poetry Pretty Leyton discovered
was often very good, for his was a delicate and conservative taste; but
it would have been easier to appreciate the good if one could only have
discovered it among the bad, for his was also a delicate and kindly
nature. While as for the young poets, of whom many called and all were
chosen, he was continually begging his women friends, particularly Lois
and Virginia, not to be “_too_ cruel” to them, for they were so
sensitive and worth-while. To see and speak to Pretty Leyton in a
crowded room was really very comforting, sometimes--which was just as
well, since he was always in every room that happened to be crowded,
saying: “Isn’t it a marvellous party?” He was so intensely “happy” to be
everywhere, people were “so wonderful.” ... And, at some hour or other,
in whatever room or company or city you might be in, you would surely
espy coming towards you the high, extended waving hand, the swaying
shoulder, the mobile eyebrows, the restless hindquarters and the dainty
step of Pretty Leyton. And he would be charming, always charming. He
gave all his women friends beautifully bound copies of _Tristram
Shandy_, which he said was _the only_ book.

The rest of the circle, innermost of all the young circles of that time
and symbolic in the best way of them all, comprised that London “of
waiting for the lamps to be lit or of hoping the lamps will never be
lit, of waiting for the sun to rise or of hoping the sun will never
rise,” as Virginia had said once. Little knowing, Virginia, that the sun
was risen so brilliantly on your friends the sooner and more tragically
to set....

It was the London of Whitehall, Chelsea, Mayfair, Cambridge, Bloomsbury,
Downing Street, Oxford, and the Mont Agel--but of course the Mont Agel!
The London of those new young men and women, but mainly young men, who
in those few years before the war suddenly confronted and conquered it
with a new and vivid charm, now never to be forgotten. They, even more
acutely than the Russian Ballet, were the social success of that time,
in a new and brilliant way. They were so immediately likeable, so fine!
A new kind of young men they were entirely, these few from the
Universities, and much less “provincial” than new young men had ever
been before. They, just then beginning life, were much less provincial
than those who were ending life. They were not good Londoners: for they
were good Europeans. They were clean and intricate and pagan, and they
were quick to believe in fine things; and they could both drink and
think. In everything they were a denial of their fathers, for these
young men were sceptical of generalisations: in everything they were a
denial of the catchwords for which they were to fight; and in everything
they were the finest expression of the paralytic civilisation for which
they were to die. Vulgarity of thought was to them the abomination of
abominations; and they died because of it. They were to go out to fight
in a war for chivalry, and they were to die in a morass of spite.

And these young giants were friends to Lois Lamprey and Virginia Tracy,
and often with them--too often, people said. And Lois was conscious of
their beauty and her power over them, but Virginia was conscious only of
liking them immensely. She loved one and then another, seldom alone but
always in a crowd. She was swept magically off her feet, gaily,
profoundly, almost impersonally; for Virginia was very much of them in
spirit and in endeavour, and she, like them, for all the gaiety and
publicity of their lives--for London loved these young men of
destiny--had secret places in her being where she could think and strive
impersonally--with what Lois could decide in one cunning, physical
moment!

Great heights were reached in that swift circle of young people, and
deep abysses plumbed. They were the new soldiers of fortune, Lois and
Virginia and their laughing men. They intoxicated each other into
brilliance, and often into truth. They were much more intoxicating to
each other than was the wine which rumour so abundantly uncorked for
them.

And, on a day seven years or so later, Virginia asked Ivor:--

“Why, just why, have they all gone, so utterly? Of that roomful of
people at the Hallidays’ that night, the last night that I ever saw you
there, there’s nothing left but the scum--except just you, who weren’t
of them at all. There simply isn’t one of them left, Ivor----”

“And not only that,” he said. “But there is nothing _of_ them left. The
war killed them, and then Pretty Leyton and the Press killed them even
more effectually, by making of them idols of prose and poetry and good
looks. And they made idols of them in their own precious image and to
suit their own precious ideals, ‘wonderful’ and ‘inspired.’ What was so
splendid about them was that they were not inspired: they were
thoughtful....”

For the giants had now become little books, a tragic and inevitable fate
that often overtakes giants. They, who had never scattered themselves,
were now scattered everywhere on the wings of their chance verses and
chance letters; and there were Prefaces to bring them near in death who
had been so rarely distant in life.

“It isn’t fair,” Virginia sombrely said, “to judge them by what they
wrote, even if they had wanted to be judged by that. They’ve made
brilliant and gallant poets out of men whose reality was idealism. Their
reality was a fierce and gay idealism, Ivor, and poetry and gallantry
were only afterthoughts with them....”

It was a lazy afternoon in Paris, and they were in the garden of a
studio on the Butte, a garden overlooking Paris from the Mont Valérien
to the Lion de Belfort.

“Youth isn’t made of definite things like prose and poetry,” Virginia
said. “It’s made of everything. It’s a subtle and versatile thing, I do
think, with lovely lapses into carelessness.”

“And besides!” she suddenly said. “Every one forgets the main ingredient
of the souls of fine, eager men. Like the Crusaders, you know. It used
to be called the Holy Ghost, but there’s no name for it now....”

But that was the Virginia and the Ivor Marlay of more than seven years
later, a man and a woman of thirty, who have come intruding into the
Halliday room of that night in 1912: ghosts of serious mien, to relive
again their brutal young intolerances of that time.... For Ivor Marlay,
now too close to reality to separate the chaff from it, was to-night
deciding that “all this” was distasteful to him. The fault was all his,
he felt certain. He admired so much in them, and especially the way in
which all the desires of their fathers were melted into cheap baubles by
the magic of their laughter, which held in it so little superiority and
so much conviction. And, admiring all that, he yet found it all
distasteful, it seemed so, well, gutless and bloodless, it seemed,
somehow, to carry its own rot within it--and as he thought that his eyes
fixed on Mr. Kerrison and Pretty Leyton, the one white-faced and thin
and limp and little-eyed, the other bubbling and fantastic. Ivor could
not see them then as he later grew to see them, that such men are
inevitably part of the wonderful comedy of cities. He saw them, and men
like them, in a devilish light, he loathed them; and he despised those
who suffered them....

Mr. Kerrison was sitting beside Virginia on a window-seat, vigorously
talking. He was answering something she had asked, and through the smoke
Ivor could see the interest on her face. Mr. Kerrison somehow held that
lovely golden creature’s confidence, and Ivor thought: her confidence is
wrapped away in him as in the folds of a jelly-fish. Semiramis was the
first woman to invent eunuchs, and women have had sympathy for them ever
since; for all Kerrisons are eunuchs, large and shining and secretive
eunuchs with minutely clever little minds ... and women can tell them
what they can’t tell other men. And Ivor, suddenly cheered by laughing
at his absurd platitudes, and finding himself by the door, was going
from the room.

“You are stealing away!” a voice from behind caught him sharply in the
doorway.

“But, Virginia, you are always suspecting me of underhand things!”

“That may be because you never seem to be yourself, never genuine,
Ivor,” she said. “You seem always to be straining at a leash, straining
but never springing....”

“The devil!” he laughed at her. “You haven’t given me much chance of
springing one way or the other, Virginia....” But Virginia looked
suddenly very tired indeed.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed childishly. “How trivial we are about trivial
things, aren’t we? instead of being grand and indifferent about them, as
we like to think we are....” And she smiled quickly, and her smile was
like a Red Indian’s, it came and left untouched the gravity of her face.

“You remind me of fire,” said Ivor suddenly, softly. “And fire is a
glorious thing because it devours uncleanness yet remains clean. I read
that in a funny old book about a great actress, but it somehow applies
to you, Virginia....”

She was looking at him gravely, and she said nothing, so that he was
ashamed of his affectation. He wasn’t genuine, she had said....

“Will we be friends, then?” she asked simply, out of the silence. She
was like an earnest child.

“Please, Virginia.”

And she turned and left him swiftly, as was her way. Thus Virginia
always left people and rooms, very suddenly and swiftly, as though she
were moved to do so by a purpose that was almost mystic. For hers was
not a languid queenliness; she walked always as though she were alone
and unwatched and on a hidden quest--and, surely, any quest Virginia
might follow would be a secret one, for Virginia was secret, she never
confided. And she had such queerly little consciousness of her looks
that you could take your fill of staring as she sat or walked, and not
offend. You could admire the little fair face that topped the slim
height of her figure with that quality peculiar to English loveliness.
Her figure and face, you would say, are somehow compact of the same
grace and clean lines, the one goes perfectly with the other, whereas a
Frenchwoman’s figure can give the lie to her face even as her dressmaker
can give the lie to her figure. And, as Virginia so swiftly passed, you
could not but marvel at the slim elegance of her ankles, saying to
yourself that Virginia had no visible means of support. But most of all
you would admire the golden curls which tumbled, not wildly, down each
side of her face, while the golden hair from which they tumbled was
drawn tightly back from her forehead as though grudging itself the waves
that insisted on waving. Those gay and golden curls of Virginia’s! the
merry companions of her face! They were her main interest in her
appearance; she took the rest of herself for granted, as far as any
_soignée_ woman can--but she cared for her curls rigorously, and as
often as she was in her room she combed and curled them: ever so
swiftly, with a very little comb and a very little “iron,” the treasures
of her toilet table. Now these amazing curls on each side of Virginia’s
face were named, and their names were mighty in London. They were called
“Swan and Edgar,” and never referred to by herself or her familiars but
as “Swan and Edgar.” The curls were both alike to the naked eye, in
curliness, in sheen and in goldiness, but the curl on the right was Swan
and the curl on the left was Edgar--“reading from right to left, you
see,” explained Virginia; and he was no familiar of Virginia’s who ever
confounded their exact locality. “Swan and Edgar” were a source of
endless trouble and annoyance to Virginia: sometimes the damp would
affect them, and they would look so limp! and sometimes, damp or no
damp, they would be disorderly, just when Virginia was trying to look
her best, and she would almost cry with mortification. No matter where
she might be, no matter at what party, if “Swan and Edgar” did not
behave themselves Virginia would insist on taking them home--“a car,
please,” she’d say to a young man--where she would very swiftly curl
them anew, with that very little “iron”; and then she would return to
the party, gaily, mysteriously. And oh, she was such a pretty girl!...

And Ivor Marlay, walking slowly down the stairs--that “slowness” of a
man at a party who might or might not be going home--thought of
Virginia Tracy softly; he thought of Virginia in a whisper: how she had
so abruptly stood before him and somehow revealed herself to him and
somehow stripped him of his antagonism and affectation. Virginia, he
thought, was mysteriously adequate to mysterious moments. And, suddenly,
queerly, he was sorry for Virginia, alone in that _galère_--which he
himself would never, never re-enter again. And he was sorry for
Virginia....

And so, thinking of Virginia, he met Magdalen Gray.

She was borne to him, before he realised it, in the hubbub at the foot
of the stairs, on the polished ship of Gerald Trevor’s introduction.

“He writes poetry and his mother makes birds’ nests”--that courtly
gentleman was sketching an imaginary Ivor for her benefit.

“And he also dances,” grinned Ivor, responding to her secret smile--and
plundering Trevor even as Trevor had plundered Rodney West.

Said Gerald Trevor to George Tarlyon, whom he met wandering downwards:--

“George, I ask you to observe that women are odd: if you restrain
yourself, they resent it: and if you don’t restrain yourself, you bore
them. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

“Treat ’em rough, old man. And so to bed,” yawned George Tarlyon,
handsome Tarlyon. Much will come of that young man, it was said. And
much indeed was to come of that young man, in the fullness of war and
peace. He will meet Ivor Marlay; and he will laugh at him. And George
Tarlyon had an eighteenth century kind of laugh: the casual, fearless,
handsome Lord Tarlyon....

CHAPTER II

It was about three o’clock now; the ballroom looked a vast place in
which three couples were entirely surrounded by parquet floor; and the
band was become ecstatic with weariness and repetition. They sang and
yelled and rolled their eyes, they crooned and cooned and beat their
drums.

“Josh--ua! Josh--ua!
Why don’t you call and see mamma?
Josh--ua! Josh--ua!
Nicer than lemon-squash you are!
Yes, by gosh you are!
Josh--u--a--a....”

Ivor and Magdalen Gray danced silently. For several minutes he was not
conscious of her, but only of the pleasure of dancing with her. She was
scarcely there at all, she moved so easily with him. She was so
wonderfully there that she was scarcely there at all--which may sound
silly, but is nevertheless a first principle to be learnt by all women
who would be good dancers.

“I am liking this very much,” he said at last.

“I too!” the light voice said; but so seriously that it surprised him
into looking for the first time at the face beside his shoulder; and he
saw that, if indeed she was liking it, it must be in a very subtle way,
for she looked sad and tired.

“Maybe you’d rather we didn’t dance?” he asked tentatively.

“Oh, no!” and the dark eyes were lifted to his in an almost comic
protest; and they suddenly seemed to introduce herself to him. “I don’t
wish to seem conceited, Mr. Marlay, but there are too many people
waiting to see me home. I would have been safely in my bed an hour ago
but that there were so many people to see me safely into it. But if
_you_ would rather not dance----?”

“But this is my first to-night!” he protested.

“Although, of course,” she mocked him, “you have had your offers?”

“I’ve had one, anyway,” he seriously agreed. “Lovely she was, and a
famous dancer--but I thought, you know, that I would like to begin and
end my night with a woman of quality.” That made her smile a little
smile. Courteous cheek....

They danced on silently, softly. Their feet played tricks to the beat of
the tireless measure, that exquisitely asinine blare which is England’s
punishment for having lost America.... This is the nicest thing that’s
happened to me for a very long time, Ivor thought, taking pleasure in
her movement and her looks. Her hair is trying to look black, he
thought, but it’s really dark blue, like her eyes.

It was thick hair, soft and thick and Latin, and it was coiled softly
about her ears in loose dark masses: a dark setting for her white face,
which wasn’t technically beautiful, like Lois Lamprey’s and Virginia’s,
but had all the inner meaning of beauty. Her mouth was large and very
mobile, a tentative and adventurous mouth.... And all the time he was
conscious that she was abstracted, that she wasn’t thinking of him at
all. And that was pleasant, he felt exceedingly at peace with her. So he
didn’t press her to talk, he made no effort to amuse her; and that is
the most intelligent thing that Ivor Marlay did that night.

As they danced past the large doorway he saw two men standing there, one
dark and the other gray, talking. She had seen the direction of his
eyes, for she said:--

“The distinguished-looking person with the iron-gray hair and the lovely
corporation is my husband. But besides being my husband he is a great
traveller. Not an explorer, mind you, but just a great traveller. He
spends most of his time in travelling about extremely foreign countries,
and the rest of his time he spends in feeling extremely foreign in his
own.” Mrs. Gray had a delightful way, as she said things, of laughing
without laughter, of being intimate without intimacy.

And the other one, Ivor thought, is “Rodney....”

The light voice went on: “And the other one, with the severe expression
peculiar to celibate Englishmen of over forty, is Rodney West, the K.C.,
whom you’ll never really get to know unless you murder or get murdered
by some one....”

And, suddenly, Ivor had an acute feeling that he was “up against” those
two men, standing there in the doorway in all the conviction of middle
years and vast experience. It was the silliest and absurdest feeling he
had ever had, but he felt it acutely, and it made him suddenly look
quite set and grim--and, of course, sulky. They were now in the far
corner of the ballroom, away from the guardians of the door. And
Magdalen Gray wondered at his abrupt stopping of the dance, away in the
corner there, and at the way he looked down at her, so darkly sulky: the
absurd young grimness of this stranger surprised her back into her
gaiety.

“Oh, but you look like a man who has discovered something!” she laughed
at him. “Picture of young gentleman as pirate on sighting fair
merchantman....”

“I want very much,” Ivor said, “to see you again, Mrs. Gray.”

She liked him for refusing to be made ridiculous. It was most unusual in
men....

“But aren’t you bullying me just a little bit--and so early in our
acquaintance?” she asked quietly--keeping all the foolery in her words
and none in her manner, as was her way. “But maybe that’s because you
think it’s going to be difficult to see me?”

“That’s exactly what I was thinking--and the previous thought to that
was that you were worthwhile,” he dared to say. It was those
sceptical-looking eyebrows that helped him to say things like that and
look as though he had meant to say something else....

“But I’m just a little tired of being thought ‘worthwhile’!” she cried,
with a surprisingly deep impatience.

“And I’d like, please, to be allowed to do the thinking first, just for
a change....” And she passed a hand over her eyes and slightly pressed
her fingers against her temples, as though to soothe the sickness of a
headache.

He was nervously conscious that he had made a mistake. He couldn’t know
that the mistake lay in his liking her at all, who was to-night
surfeited with men’s likings.... The band had stopped, and they were
walking now across the bare expanse of floor towards the door. The two
men of middle years had but a second before left it, so obviously as
though she were to come downstairs after them. And Ivor’s eyes
involuntarily followed them through the doorway.

“All the same----” he began sulkily.

“There’s only the telephone-book between us, you know,” she chose to
soothe him.

“Ah, now I know something about you!” he said eagerly. They were out of
the ballroom now; she cast a swift look down the stairs; and she was
going away.

“I know now,” he said very quickly, “what I’ve never known before, for
I’ve never before met a womanly woman. I know that in the beginning you
are profound about superficial things, and that in the end you are
superficial about profound things. And I know too, that when you are
accused of that you will answer, oh so honestly: ‘But isn’t this how
things do end, and is a flower less beautiful because it must die?’”

The wilful arrogance of that moment is quite the best thing in the
extravagances of a cub’s life. Cheek so colossal and so uncalled-for, on
such a very slight acquaintance, becomes something quite else, something
much higher. And Magdalen Gray, following the men of middle years down
the stairs, was gay where she had thought to be miserable--that young
man was laughing at her, he was liking her with laughter! It was most
unusual in men! It was quite pleasant and unusual....

CHAPTER III

In the days that followed, Ivor Marlay brooded upon her a great deal. He
showed his youth, that fantastic youth of a young man’s secret longings,
in the manner and absurdity of his brooding. He came to think of her as
a strange and delicious phenomenon that had somehow happened--and which,
he intensely hoped, would somehow happen again. He lavished on her all
his curiosity; he fingered the texture of her; and then hastily drew
back from this childish dalliance, for his mind seemed suddenly to have
become so gross and the texture of her was so fine. He grew aware that
she would leave him not a shred of vanity if she had her way with
him--not that she would strip him of it, but he would have to strip
himself in face of her. And he felt painfully ill at ease with himself,
which is commonly the feeling of a very young man who is too impressed
by a woman of thirty--and quality.

This deep impression of a first meeting may seem ridiculous to the
superior amateur of sensations, but it was quite logical, really. Never
before, after all, had he been charmed! And it was an exquisite
sensation, to be charmed. Of course, he had often persuaded himself into
being charmed--if you didn’t do that you were bored, and then where were
you?--but never before had he been actually and actively charmed. And so
potent was this enchantment that he had now no stomach for such
relations--oh, quite vague things!--as had hitherto entertained him very
passably.

The matter was not in the least mended by his frequently calling himself
a silly ass; for there was always a secret voice telling him that his
admiration was the outcome of a need--for “that kind of woman!” That
first impression! He was so sure, he didn’t know why nor how, that “that
kind of woman” could arouse a deep emotion without that aftermath of
impurity which--even at three-and-twenty--taints so many of the fine
passages of an adventurous life. And so Ivor longed for her, and
guess-work made strange and lovely arabesques on a background of
enchantment.

More than two weeks passed, and still he did not telephone to Mrs. Gray.
He had made a brave show of determination when with her, but since then
his mind had made her of fine texture, and its _fineness_ appalled him.
And after two weeks he couldn’t, for she would not remember his name, he
would have to remind her of their meeting--oh, no, no! His vanity, his
whole manhood, ran tumultuously away from the thought of her probable
forgetfulness on the telephone! He could hear her answer to his name, he
could hear her saying, softly, thoughtfully, questioningly, vaguely,
“Yes?...” Oh, no! He would wait; he would just wait--but, after all,
what for?

The resolution made on the night of the Halliday party held unusually
firm, and that _galère_ was now part of a past life. _He_ wasn’t going
to “mess about” any more--with a lot of “invertebrates”! So he set
himself to work, seriously and rather angrily, and wrote hard to finish
a flimsy novel which he had begun nearly two years before, and whose
flimsiness, now that he seriously set himself to finish it (and make it
less “invertebrate”) was a humiliating reproach to the waste of the last
two years. It was finally published,[B] after adventures common to first
MSS. in search of a publisher who knows his business, in the spring
before the war, when its author was away from England; a slim and
unpretentious book--“whose charm,” wrote one reviewer, “is difficult to
analyse, but might conceivably lie in the almost senile precocity that
informs Mr. Marlay’s style and fantasy.” Wrote another: “Of all the
books that don’t matter in the least, this is one of the most excellent.
It is one that will appeal to a few, but not necessarily _the_ few.”
Whichever few, thought Mr. Marlay’s publisher, is few enough.

His inability to telephone to Magdalen Gray served him not at all, as
indeed he did not wish it to. For on a night three weeks after he had
met her he was dining with her at her house in Wilton Place. And a
remarkable meal that was, a most remarkable dinner, an immaculate
conception of a dinner, exquisitely ethereal--yet how sternly of the
earth!

One night, as Ivor Marlay was dining alone in one of those underground
grill-rooms for which London is famous among capitals, he was extremely
surprised at the sudden figure of Rodney West, K.C., standing at his
table, with the obvious intention of addressing him. He did not know
Rodney West, nor did Rodney West know him. A smile, as nearly
self-conscious as it could be, hovered about the severely handsome face
of the man of middle years. Ivor half rose in his chair, and sat down
again.

“Mrs. Gray sent me over,” Rodney West told him, “to rebuke you for being
blind, for we’ve been sitting over there for the last hour, and to ask
you to join us over coffee. Is that all right?” Rodney West’s courtesy
had no fringes, it was sharp and direct--there was no froth about _him_,
anyway--and from that moment Ivor liked him very much, in spite of
himself. He said he would like to join them very much; he was shy; but,
a few minutes after the elder man had left him, he followed him to the
table indicated, ... for at least half the distance looking directly
into a levelled pair of eyes, which seemed wonderfully large and
innocent beneath a wide-brimmed black hat. And Ivor suddenly felt
extraordinarily happy and unafraid; and not even the so direct scrutiny
of Magdalen Gray could perturb him. But perhaps she did not intend that
it should.

She greeted him as an old friend. She seemed to be under the surprising
delusion that they were old friends, and not the acquaintances of one
meeting; she did not address him as “Mr. Marlay,” she did not address
him by name at all, but her manner plainly suggested that if she did
address him by name it would not be as “Mr. Marlay.” She was in a gay,
silly mood, embracing them both in the swift turns of her inconsequence.
No one could have guessed that she and Rodney West had dined in silence.
Nor did Rodney West show what he felt at the contrast; he seemed to Ivor
a very amiable though rather detached elderly person. Only when he
occasionally bent his eyes to his coffee cup and gently dropped his
cigar ash therein, would there have been perceptible, to a more detached
intelligence than Ivor’s, an added grimness to the thin face, a wave of
grimness that came and passed; and, surely, a certain grimness is
permissible in a man of middle years who, for the last five of them, has
given his soul to a woman and has now had it given back to him with
maddening gentleness.

The artifice of her intimacy charmed Ivor into ready answer. The gay,
silly mood enveloped him. Her wit was adventurous: it was an exploit to
follow the twist of her sentences, and breathlessly to be with her at
the end.... She told them of the races at somewhere or other, to which
she had been taken that afternoon in an “extremely open car.” She was
not a racing-chap, she wasn’t very actively interested in the
competitive swiftness of horses; but she had not only been to watch them
at it that day, but had lost a deal of money on the slower ones, what’s
more! Whereupon Rodney West gave it as his opinion that it rather served
her right for betting in ignorance.

“But I didn’t, Rodney!” she vividly protested. “Never was a
woman inbetter racing company. No one could have guessed that
all-my-people-weren’t-racing-people. My escort were two in number, minus
in intelligence, full marks for good-looks, and might quite easily have
been called Mr. Beef and Mr. Beer: and they were grimly allied together
for the purposes of being entertained by me and the horses. As they had
field-glasses and champagne-glasses and hard blue eyes, and knew every
horse by sight and reputation, I naturally backed the horse which they
were sure couldn’t lose. And when the wretched horse was finally
arrested for loitering on the course hours after the race was finished,
they told me that at the last moment they’d backed another one--the one
that had happened to win, you know.”

“What awful people one knows!” breathed Rodney West softly.

“Oh, and I was trying _so_ hard not to be personal!” she said.

Rodney West turned amiably to Ivor, who was getting rather left behind.

“Mrs. Gray, you must know, has made an art of friendship,” he explained.
“The art of friendship consists of defending people you’ve met twice by
attacking people you’ve known all your life.”

That light laugh of Magdalen’s! it was like a laugh from a Victorian
novel, so gentle and smoothing and _right_! And, as she laughed, her
eyes, so large and thoughtful in the shadow of her black hat, rested
with ever so passing an intentness on Ivor, secretly. And she seemed to
be saying to him: “This man has certain rights and many grievances, and
it’s all my fault. So we’ll let him be, shall we, for he’s a sweet man,
really.”

And Ivor suddenly felt that all this had happened to him before, to him
and to her, in some ancient place long, long ago; and he felt poignantly
at ease with her, he understood the things she didn’t say--this slim,
soft woman with the soft hair like the night and the wonderfully
friendly, deeply joyous eyes.

He knew nothing, nothing in the world, of men and women; he only knew
that he was very alone and that shadows were all about, shadows that
never flickered, shadows that only stared and smiled, waiting, waiting,
waiting for his full worthiness....

It was as they were at last leaving the place--long after the paid bill
had been whipped away from Rodney West as though it were an indecency
which should never have been committed--and were winding up the stairs
to the exalted atmosphere of Piccadilly by night, that she turned to
await Ivor, who was a few steps behind them, and said:--

“There’s a kind of dinner-party at my house to-morrow night, to which
you are being invited at this moment....”

“The telephone-book,” she said, “is full of little details about my
address.”

Kind, curious woman--by saying things like that she made one think
oneself had spoken, she made one forget that one was dull, dull,
unworthy of the moment....

“Well, good-night, Marlay.”

“Good-night, sir. Thanks so much for letting me join you. Good-night,
Mrs. Gray.”

And so, swiftly, almost brusquely, away, leaving them to the care and
under the shadow of the _commissionaire_, man of legendary height and
fabulous girth, whose huge gallantry cynically suggested that he would
sell not only his own soul but the soul of the taxi and taxi-driver
which he had summoned, if only to please this lady and this gentleman.
But how could the _commissionaire_, so long trained in the observation
of quick infidelities, guess that nothing in the world would please this
obviously sensible gentleman but the love of this lady? whose maddening
answer to his bitter-frantic demand, in that very taxi, was gently to
touch his hand and whisper that it would surely be disloyal to past
loveliness to pretend to things.... Magdalen Gray never, never
pretended; maybe that is what kept her so young-looking.

CHAPTER IV

“Ivor, I’m so glad!” she welcomed him simply, the next night at
half-past eight. She made no mention of the “dinner-party.” He and she
were the dinner-party. Colonel Gray was again on his travels to
“extremely foreign parts,” it seemed.

They were in the drawing-room before dinner, and he was too busy
adjusting himself to her even to notice the pleasures of the room. He
was glad that she was in black, he discovered a particular admiration
for her in black; her dark simplicity was an almost startling decoration
in the pale amber light of the July evening. And he enjoyed her hair,
dark and thick and so soft, coiling about her ears and framing her wide,
intelligent forehead and her mysterious, friendly eyes. So friendly....
And he liked being in her house, he particularly liked her in her own
house--it somehow added solidity to her enchantment. He told her that,
in those first few minutes. She had come to greet him from a far corner
of the room, and he now stood above her in its very middle--dark, and
seemingly self-confident, and not very young: and so compact of
restraint--yes, he seemed very restrained--that she caught her breath
with pleasure in him. It was most unusual in men....

But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance--one shouldn’t
palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said. And now she
made fun of him, insisting on his being intelligently appreciative of
her room of state. “My room, all mine,” she magnificently boasted. And
she took him by the hand, miraculously lifting him to a pinnacle of
comradeship, and twisted him to view the vast and rich expanse of her
kingdom. But not all the craft and elegance of Sheraton and Chippendale,
of Hepplewhite and Adam, had they been in that one room, could have
seduced Ivor’s attention from this wonderful and sudden fact of
friendship. For this between them was going to be friendship, a rich and
immense friendship. He was going to insist on having her friendship, he
wouldn’t let this go....

It was a small house, this in Wilton Place, but this room on the first
floor was its room of state: it knew not the limitations of lowlier
rooms, and stretched its dignity from front to back of the house. Its
appointments were more than worthy of it: the darkish blue of the walls,
a subtle quality of colour that mingled austerity with a sweet feminine
glamour: the gilded craftmanship of the chairs and sofas and footstools
and tables and what-nots, those lovely baubles of Louis Seize days which
seem ever to coquette for your admiration the better to despise your
favour, for they are not very comfortable: and the rich and fading
brocades and velvets that covered them, stuffs of quality whose pride
increases as their colour fades, velvets of worldly wisdom which know
that there’s nothing in the world more assured of respect than velvets
that are caressed by the gloss of respectful usage.... One hand lightly
in his, her other swept round the room.

“There was a gentleman of Virginia, who lived in Kent,” she comically
began; then very gravely: “very old he was, and fierce and contemptuous
and gallant, and very, very odd in the way of his affections. For he
said nothing, and for the ten years that he was my guardian he scarcely
came near me--and then he died and left me all this and much besides!”

“I’ve spent the ‘much besides,’” she said.

“Dinner is served, madam,” a dim voice broke on them from the twilight
of the room.

It is a commonplace that a young man in love is very apt to talk about
himself. It is also a commonplace that the interest of an intelligent
woman will seduce a young man into being exceedingly interested in
himself. And so it wasn’t surprising--except, of course, to Ivor Marlay,
who had always had a vague idea that commonplaces somehow didn’t, and
somehow shouldn’t, apply to him--it wasn’t surprising that he did talk
about himself, and at length, during and after dinner on that night in
July, 1912. He needed some pressing, of course. Mrs. Gray was very good
at pressing.

“For, after all,” she protested, “I know nothing at all about
you--except that you are, well, curiously polished and literate, as
though you had been educated abroad. But I do hope you weren’t!”

“I was five years at a public-school,” said Ivor, “so I’m quite
self-educated.”

She rebuked him, for she was glad of the public-school. She liked her
Englishmen to be English. She herself spoke foreign languages quite well
enough for two, she said.

And then she led him on by her naïve surprise that he was, and intended
to be, a writer. That seemed to her very charming, for he might so
easily have been nothing at all, and with every excuse. (The charming
things your Magdalens say are as nothing to those they suggest. But
there are not many Magdalens.) She had had wide and intimate experience
of writers, dramatists, and all manner of artists, so that she was not
wildly excited at the fact of entertaining yet another. But that this
young man was a writer, interested her happily; for he was so obviously
something else as well, which was most unusual in writers. Magdalen Gray
did not, as a rule, like writers and suchlike (by “suchlike” she, of
course, meant publishers). She only dined with them when there was a
“first-night” to go to, only lunched with them before a “private-view.”
But she was too wise to explain her dislike by a generalisation, she
just mentioned that she didn’t like them very much, especially the
younger ones; and she suggested only that, perhaps, the word “I,” an
enthralling word when sparingly used, occurred too often in their
conversation: “which, on the other hand,” she said, “is very clever of
them, for I can’t think how they can manage to squeeze it in so often.”

“But it’s not,” she said, “the most important thing in the world to be
clever.”

“No,” Ivor agreed, and felt grave.

“But it’s very important to be genuine,” she said.

She led him on to tremendous confidences. She met the sympathetic
figures of his life, Aunt Moira and Aunt Percy, with sincere
understanding; and she told him that she found his life strange and
exciting and adventurous--and Ivor, looking at it with the impulse of
her sympathy, also found it strange and exciting and adventurous.

“It’s odd,” he said, “how one minute’s perfect comradeship can discount
all previous solitudes.”

She brought the truth out of him, he saw that, and how can a woman bring
the truth out of a man except by understanding him? Clearly, then, she
was his friend. It was so wonderful a fact that it almost overwhelmed
him; her wise friendliness revealed her to him as a marvellous gift of a
god, and a much more than fleshly god, too! And his mind so circled
about the _fact_ of this grave and gay Magdalen with the friendly eyes
and deep, dexterous understanding--that he was probably very dull indeed
towards the end of dinner. But Magdalen teased him about that very
gently, for she had always thought that no man was a man who wasn’t
sometimes frightfully dull.

And yet, as the night grew to midnight and past, all was not well with
Ivor Marlay.... They were on the wide divan, a battlefield of a divan,
in the window corner of the “room of state”--now changed into a room
deliciously intimate and secret, with but the one dim light of a very
shaded lamp, near them, to light its rich shadows and make more pregnant
the pregnant silences of two people. And there were several silences, in
the restless passage over midnight. Magdalen lay full length on the
divan, a luxuriously straight figure, her crossed hands supporting the
back of her head against a wide cushion of many colours. A tranquil
figure she looked, lying straightly there, with her eyes peacefully on
him--and yet little peace was there in Magdalen Gray at that moment, or
ever! Now, behind her tranquil poise, she wanted frightfully to mock him
by inquiring, quite casually, how, at his absurd age, he had discovered
that restraint is the highest pleasure of _la volupté_. She wanted to
ask him that, but it was just as well she didn’t, for he wouldn’t have
known what she was talking about, being much more completely
twenty-three than he (or she) thought.

To the cold eye of the philosopher there is nothing more ridiculous than
abandon, except it be restraint: there is nothing more absurd than
temptation, except it be the grander temptation not to yield to it. But
it is notorious that philosophers never allow for other people’s
ideals--which do certainly make the ridiculous even more ridiculous, but
rarely fail to make it sublime. And Ivor Pelham Marlay, now fired at
last out of the lethargy of two years, was become a very rigid and
proper idealist, and very troublesome to himself, which is the way of
idealists.... He was distressed, in that restless passage over midnight.
He wondered, very dimly, if masculine brutalities were peculiar to
essentially feminine woman; years later, he found that they were. She
wanted her way of him, in her own way, now! He saw that, because she
didn’t hide it; she didn’t hide it because she hadn’t that kind of
restraint, she was deplorable. She wanted to “find out.” He had
knowledge of her as a woman without shame and without pride in love. He
called it love, because he was certain that it was love, as far as he
was concerned, anyway. She had no pride, she said. “There is no pride in
love, Ivor. Not really. To be proud in love is the mark of little
people. Pride is for women who go to balls or night-clubs every night,
and who, because they are always tired, bring the worst out of their
men; they need pride. But your great lover is so proud that he takes no
thought of pride.” But, on top of that, she had no shame either--and
that he shamelessly loved! He adored the honest quality of her
shamelessness, its elegance and its clear shades of candour. Thus, every
minute increased his longing for her, every minute increased his feeling
of her nearness; and the slim, soft lines of her body maddeningly
suggested the coil of her limbs--but it couldn’t, it simply couldn’t,
happen like “this”! “This” was all wrong, in this particular instance.
She was too splendid, he wanted her too utterly, to allow it to happen
like “this.” He wanted her--oh, vastly! She was wanton, he knew that. He
felt that, but he could not understand it--she who was so absolutely
right, so sensible! She was amazing. She wanted to be ravished, like a
woman in a dream....

“Ivor!” she said suddenly. “I wish for a peach.”

There was a basket of them on a little table, in the shadows of the
room; and, in the shadows, the peaches that had that morning graced the
Piccadilly windows of Messrs. Solomon’s were changed into lovely
baubles, they looked like Oriental things of beauty and significance:
they looked like the peaches that are found in books, ruddy and ripe and
bejewelled.

“And, if you please,” she said, “I’d like it peeled or skinned, or
whatever the process is called that uncovers a peach.”

He had it on a plate on his knee, and a toy knife and fork. He set to
work on it delicately. But there are peaches and peaches, and some can
be very wayward about being undressed.

“This isn’t the sort of peach I’m used to,” said Ivor at last, in
disgust.

“Are you making a mess of it, Ivor?” her whisper mocked him; for her
head had stealthily left its corner, it was by his shoulder now, and her
body encircled him, her body made a prison around him, and her breath
and hair were warm on his cheek.

“Yes,” he said--and kissed her, lightly. Their first kiss, that light,
flimsy thing! It was his tribute to her enchantment, it wasn’t fired of
passion--it wasn’t the sort of kiss a woman of thirty had the right to
expect from a very young man on such a divan. It was a pathetic kiss. A
begging kiss it was really, that light thing born of a question about a
peach, for Ivor was begging her to understand, to understand his hunger
for the most absolute intimacy, the most perfect friendship, and not
just the mortal thing. But there were depths in Magdalen stronger than
her understanding....

Ivor made a movement to go. And he was going.

“Don’t go!” she said. And her arm swept to his shoulder--and suddenly
fell back again to her side; and she looked up at the man standing
feverishly above her, she looked at him as though she couldn’t see him
for the darkness over her eyes. And suddenly, wantonly, she grimaced at
him, oh so vengefully! Whereat they both fell to such a fit of giggling
that Ivor was gone and Magdalen alone before either had realised the
parting.

Perhaps those two had never been such great friends but for the curious
issue of that remarkable dinner. Perhaps, if it had ended otherwise,
Ivor would have walked away on air, as the saying is, or perhaps he
would have crept away and never returned, for this was a queer moment in
his life, and he might easily have done a caddish thing because of his
foiled desire for a fine one. But if he had returned and enjoyed, this
chronicle could not have been written--for never in the whole history of
the world, neither in folk-tale or legend or romance, has there been a
tale about a merely physical bond. To make a tale there must be a vow,
of marriage, of celibacy, or of friendship; and to make a tale that vow
must be upheld or broken. There are no other tales than those, there are
only experiments.

CHAPTER V

It was difficult for Ivor, at three-and-twenty, to understand Magdalen;
for she was so dangerously simple, so deplorably civilised, so utterly
childish. He had realised her more easily and quickly had he never
before met a woman--for naturally, being a young man of “experience,” he
couldn’t help but apply a bit of it to her, and so went quickly all
awry. He couldn’t help, any more than any one else, applying to her his
almost unconscious knowledge of the petty dishonesties, antagonisms,
hypocrisies, and caddishnesses that are peculiarly evident in women in
love who are normally very gentle and honourable. But with Magdalen he
had to begin right at the beginning; her _quality_, her artistry, her
amazing talent for being articulate about those delicious shades of
feelings that our more self-conscious lips do often fumble for but never
attain--all this, in her, contained an amazing degree of _earth_, just
common, pungent _earth_; which meant that everything she did, of honour
or dishonour, was terrifyingly spontaneous, and, once done, inevitable.

And such understanding of her as he acquired, came to him only much
later, after they had lain becalmed in that Saragossa Sea that is
charted between love and friendship: a sea of shameful doubts and
deceits and desires, a seaweed sea of broken vows and harsh antagonisms,
and one that is very difficult for the tortured voyager to traverse, in
the journey back from love and forward to friendship, for there is no
compass to point the sad direction....

It was in the nature of Magdalen that her love had in it nothing
stationary. She couldn’t help but make everything she loved infinitely
remote and desirable and unattainable. How sweet, thus, was the
attainment! She had loved and been loved so often, yet she had no base
knowledge of love. She was not wise in love, she had no caution. She
never wanted to make use of love, she let love use her. And experience
had robbed her of no pleasures, nor repetition tainted her tenderness:
she was like a fruit-tree to which each ripening season is a fecund joy,
whose fruit is sweet to your mouth yet serious in its sweetness, lest
your easy looting provoke your levity. Magdalen had no politics.

She romanced, with grave unconsciousness. She loved Ivor, and so pursued
him. She couldn’t love him otherwise, she must pursue even a pursuer. To
attain and enjoy him with her full abundance she must first make him
unattainable. Her mind must grow chaotic with helplessness at the
“difficulty” of this man, who seemed to draw back when she
advanced--indeed, she romanced seriously!--who seemed never to give
himself utterly but ever to be holding back something frightfully
essential. Yes, he was holding back something frightfully essential, it
was evident--while she loved him, but how much! And she told him
everything, she made no mystery of a love that seemed to Ivor
exceedingly mysterious. There was no private corner nor secret shadow of
her heart that she didn’t wantonly reveal to him. She simply didn’t
care! She held him very tight and bewildered him with her
love-making--to break off suddenly and swear a mighty oath that he was
far beside the mark if he thought that she was repeating what she had
sometime said to some previous lover: saying that she had a wonderful
talent for love-speeches which hadn’t so far received due recognition,
“or else, Ivor, you would be doing something adequate instead of lying
there like an Eastern emperor listening to the words of your odalisque.”

“All my life,” she said, “I have had love-speeches on my lips and in my
heart, and that’s why I’ve had lovers, for I couldn’t bear to keep them
to myself. I simply had to tell them to some one, even if they turned
out to be very ordinary, which they mostly did.... Yes, Ivor, it was
exactly as I’m telling you. And if you ever put me into a book, which
you probably will, for you will never meet another woman who knows so
much about the things that are not in books, you will say that I was a
kind of love-tailor, forever measuring and fitting men to the things in
my heart; and just like any other tailor I sometimes made misfits, but I
am very persevering, Ivor, and so it always came right in the end. But
never before have I fitted my love-speeches to a man as I’m fitting them
to you--and getting very little for my trouble, I might add. It has
always been the other way about, Ivor, and I’m not sure that I like this
new departure in tailoring. Oh, but you are so secret, my dear! Your
brown eyes are so secret, don’t you know they are? And sometimes I wish
your eyes were pools of water so that I could drown myself in them, and
be done with loving you so much who love me so little.... Oh, Ivor, how
base you and all men are! You suspect the fine phrases of love--yes, you
do, Ivor! If a woman looks at you speechless with love, you believe she
loves you. But if she puts her love to you in sentences, complete with
commas, colons, and full-stops, if she gives you her love dressed in the
purple and fine linen of her heart--you can’t help thinking her rather
odd, can you, dear?...”

Of course this kind of thing didn’t go on every day; it sometimes didn’t
happen for days at a time; and for the rest they were great friends.
Their time together passed wonderfully in the merry practice of
friendship. Magdalen fulfilled every condition of intimacy, wonderfully
unasked. She opened the doors of her life and let him look in, while
she trembled for fear he might find it altogether too bad. He wanted to
know--everything! (He had never known anything before.) Friendship that
held secrecy was a sorry thing, they both agreed. There is no secrecy
between us, they said. There is restraint, but there is no secrecy--that
is more or less what they said. Nor was there! She told him of
enormities of inconstancy--to prove her constancy to him! “This talent
for exploring makes such a mess of life,” she said. But now at last she
had found a friend in love. They were plainly comrades, one to the
other. “Playmates,” she insisted.

“The most wonderful thing about miracles is that they sometimes happen,”
writes that magnificent Catholic, Mr. Chesterton; but one needn’t be a
magnificent Catholic to believe him. Ivor believed him.... She had been
a friend to very many people, she told him, but she herself had had no
friend. Always to give, to give, to give, she said, and nothing ever
given back--to me, waiting for the tender things! “I’ve tried so hard,”
she said. But now Ivor had come, he was her first friend. “I’m virginal
to friendship, anyway,” she told him gravely; and, thereupon, she
emphasised her age, the phenomenal age of one-and-thirty. And,
exercising his friendship, she found him a rare man. Anyway, she said he
was, and gave her reasons for thinking so at considerable length. There
are jealous men, she told him, to whom a woman cannot speak of her past
life; there are foolish men who will love a woman foolishly no matter
what she tells them of herself; there are absurd men who beg, beseech
and implore to be told “everything,” and then make a scene about it;
there are strong and silent men in whom a woman trustfully confides, and
who use the confession against her at the first opportunity; and there
are those rare men who love jealously yet intelligently, to whom a woman
can tell everything and, in having told, forget everything--men who can
understand without softness and be hard without rancour: men whose
dignity is in their hearts and not on their lips, rare men to whom a
woman cannot cheapen herself, for they will not have her cheap, they are
not aware that she can be cheap--and so she is not, great as is the
temptation to cheapness in a woman in love. Anyway, that is what
Magdalen said, and she probably knew.

Of course his writing suffered by neglect. Every kind of work always
does, in contact with accursed women like Magdalen, who enthral men by
enslaving themselves; and who adorn a man’s life by destroying it. But,
though his writing suffered by neglect, how much it gained in knowledge!
For Magdalen was his real education. She knew so much, of the things
that are not in books--“but will be,” she teased him. He learned about
men by listening to her, and about himself not a little by loving her.
She influenced him deeply; her way of speaking influenced not only his,
but also his way of writing: so that when, years later, Rodney West read
his best novel,[C] he rather grimly said that there were two people who
could have written that book in that way and Ivor Marlay was only one of
them. She polished him, and she smoothed down the sharp dogmatisms and
conceits which had so far taken the place of conversation with him. Thus
was Aunt Percy proved right in thinking that there were other women
beside himself, he shouldn’t wonder! Aunt Percy would have liked
Magdalen; he would have invited her to lunch at the Bath Club now and
then, and as they sat down he would have asked her brusquely: “Well, and
how’s that young man of mine? Bit above himself, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Magdalen would have made Aunt Percy laugh.

CHAPTER VI

From that memorable night in July when Ivor first dined with Magdalen he
almost literally saw no one else during the ensuing twelve months and
more--unless Gerald Trevor happened to insist, as he occasionally did.
Ivor simply had no interest in any one else throughout that time; for it
is the way of certain natures to show their consummate interest in one
person by the neglect of all others. And so Ivor missed many exciting
happenings, for the summer of 1913 was a very eventful one in many ways.

The season of 1913 was, as every one remembers, more than usually
brilliant. Mayfair was brilliant, nothing disturbed Mayfair--and Mayfair
disturbed nothing; which curious phenomenon was explained by thinking
men by the rather far-fetched theory that Mayfair does not really matter
in England, that it is not England: that, in fact, Mayfair does not
represent England any more than, say, the Duke of Manchester represents
Manchester. But, all the same, young men make fortunes by writing about
it, Gentlemen with Dusters by reviling it, gallant Colonels by
describing it, and the _London Mail_ circulates tremendously.

Mayfair was the centre of England, America, and Palestine. And it was
observed with pleasure that the young Prince of Wales was the only royal
person since Charles II. who even looked like being “in” Society. It was
the season of very brilliant _débutantes_, daring matrons, and startling
dowagers. Of course suburban people went about saying nasty things about
them, silly things like: “You can’t tell a _débutante_ from a
_déclassée_ nowadays,” and thought they had made an epigram.
Gentlewomen of the middle sort were horrified by the rumours concerning
the immoralities and perversities of the lovely young ladies whose
photographs they breathlessly looked at in the weekly papers; and a
woman had only to be found dead in an elegant flat in Maida Vale for the
Press to report: “Strange Death of Society Woman. Believed to have been
due to Drugs.” It was commonly said that the number of ‘society women’
who took drugs was unbelievable, while as for drink!... One way and
another “society women” began to come in for a lot of contempt.
Chorus-girls despised them, and wanted to know what would happen to
_them_ if _they_ did Such Things. Young men were very cynical that year.

Every one tried to learn the tango that season, and then every one
decided that it wasn’t _really_ a ballroom dance. Young women began to
look like the portraits that the fashionable portrait-painters were
painting of them--lovely but “untemperamental”; and middle-aged men
shook their heads over them, saying that these young women seemed to
have no temperament. But the young women knew better, for whereas their
Victorian mothers had baffled men with reticence, they baffled men with
candour; and every now and then one of them would commit adultery at the
top of her voice. [Whereupon--a divorce has been arranged and will
shortly take place. Letters: “Dear Bubbles” her lawyers write, “why do
you not come back to me? I have always tried to do my duty to you, I
have always tried to make a comfortable home for you, and now that I am
panting to see you, you won’t come near me. Please, Bubbly dear, why are
you so cold to me? Yrs. ever adoring Bunny.” His lawyers passionately
retort: “Nothing will induce me to return to you. I have been thinking
this out carefully, and have decided never to live with you again. We
are too different, temperamentally and financially. Yrs. sincerely,
Derek Maltravers.” Restitution of Conjugal Rights. A rest. Nothing doing
about Restitution of Conjugal Rights. Formal Adultery proved. Decree
nisi. Another rest. Decree absolute. It’s only a trick, of course--but
it needs money. There’s nothing at all to prevent poor people doing
it--except, of course, that it needs money. Mr. Justice Darling might
make a joke about that. He makes such good jokes.] Dancing increased in
popularity and violence, night-clubs became fashionable, and young
ladies were sometimes seen drunk in them. Many Americans settled in
London that season, saying they were crazy about it, but most of them
have gone since, crazier than ever about it. The slits disappeared from
the back of men’s jackets, but top-hats and gent.’s morning-suits were
still worn.

And Lady Lois Lamprey was married to a companionable little earl, a
notable wedding that lit the world from Peru to Samarcand. (Samarcand
was just then becoming fashionable among those who go down to the sea in
poetry). But she was still called Lady Lois. “You have made it so
difficult for people to realise it’s your _maiden_ name,” said her
mother the marchioness severely. And Lady Lois was loved by many young
men, but she loved not one. But they were wonderfully revenged by the
artists who painted portraits of her and the writers who wrote novels
about her, in which poor Lois was always shown as a _femme fatale par
excellence_ with a heart of jade and innumerable lovers. The Hon.
Virginia Tracy became more than ever famous for her beauty, clothes and
witty silences. Also she painted portraits of her women friends in bed,
and made a few trips in a thing called an aeroplane: about which her
mother, Lady Carnal, told the Press that she was very annoyed indeed,
and that Virginia should not do these things, for she had a weak heart;
but there was somehow a misunderstanding about that weak heart, it was
never exactly located, the Northcliffe Press saying it was Lady Carnal’s
and the Rest that it was Virginia’s, and the question was not finally
settled until Lady Carnal’s sudden death a year later. Virginia almost
got married twice, but finally made a brilliant _coup de cœur_ by
marrying an American during a week-end at Bognor. Which, Lois said, is
the kind of thing that might happen to any one who wastes week-ends at
Bognor. He was a millionaire, however, which was more than her little
earl was.... And there was a wonderful party of celebration at the Mont
Agel, one in a chain of many wonderful parties. And then, later, every
one went to Venice....

That is more or less how it all appeared to Ivor in his happy corner.
And every now and then he would dine with Gerald Trevor at the Café
Royal, and he would hear of great dinners and dances and _potins_, of
the hostesses that were made and the hearts that were broken, of the
amazing progress of the legend of Lady Lois and of the recklessness of
Virginia. But it didn’t seem to Ivor that he was missing much; it seemed
to Ivor that he would be missing very much if he hadn’t met Magdalen.

CHAPTER VII

A year had passed, from one July day to its elder brother. And Ivor had
not realised the wonder of that special day in July, he had no head for
dates--until, calling to see her that afternoon, she suddenly held her
date-book-calendar under his nose and very slowly tore off the leaf of
the previous day, when behold! there, below the date of that day, was
writ largely the name “Ivor!”

“Our birthday,” she told him gravely. “Birthday of that night last year
when first you came to dinner....”

“And realised that I’d never, never dined before!”

“Yes, how thin you were, Ivor! But you’ll be much fatter after to-night,
for we will have a wonderful dinner somewhere in the country, because
it’s our birthday. I hate my own so much, but I’m sentimental about
ours....”

Now there was a mood of Magdalen’s which complained of Ivor’s “splendid
isolation,” of his present way of not seeing any one else. Magdalen saw
quite a number of other people: it was very difficult for her not to,
for the world was full of men and women who, on given occasions, seemed
unable to “touch” food unless Magdalen was there to “touch” it with
them. At first she had seemed not to realise Ivor’s present way of life;
and then there had come a time when she made a gesture against it. But
man is not warned by gestures alone, so she had to clothe hers with
words. And even then Ivor would not be brought to see that it mattered
one way or the other, whether he saw people or didn’t. He read a great
deal, he said. And he played rackets.... She teased him with her
disfavour, he mocked her with his love. And then one day she got annoyed
with him, and he with her.

They were at luncheon at his flat, and she asked him what he had done
the evening before. She asked as though she didn’t know the answer, but
that did not deter Ivor from giving it.

“Dinner, bed, book,” he explained. “Charming evening.”

“Its description, however, doesn’t make for much conversation,” said
Magdalen.

“I want to know,” she dangerously said, “why, whenever I can’t dine with
you, much as I’d like to, you must always dine alone. I feel there must
be a reason for that....”

“What Magdalen wins the world must lose!” Ivor mocked humbly.

“That’s all very well,” she protested vividly. “But don’t you see, my
dear, that it’s very unfair, your absurd isolation? (_a_) It’s unfair to
me; (_b_) It’s unfair to yourself; and (_c_) It’s frightfully unfair to
the countless people whom you deprive of the charm of your countenance
and company, to say nothing of your conversation....”

“Besides,” she said plantively, “your idiotic isolation is making me
what’s called a ‘marked’ woman. And if it’s all the same to you, Ivor,
I’d just as soon not be a ‘marked’ woman. I hate being thought of as a
woman who snatches young men from their natural surroundings and keeps
them in close confinement for fear of competition, if any. To please me,
Ivor ...” she suddenly pleaded.

“You’re pretending, Magdalen!” he accused her sulkily. “None of those
things matter and half of them aren’t true, especially about your being
a ‘marked’ woman because of me. Those things are only true of people who
live in restaurants, and you and I have scarcely been in one together
since I saw you with Rodney West that night.” He was very young and
very sulky.

“What is it all about, Magdalen?” he asked miserably. A year had passed,
and this was their first scene--their first scene! No ordinary year,
that....

“But, Ivor, I don’t want you to wake up one morning--to find no Magdalen
and no friends!” She jerked the thing out....

“Why no Magdalen?” he stabbed at her.

“But that’s childish, you sweet!”

His eyes would not meet hers, he looked blackly at the table,
waiting.... If only he would meet her eyes she would make it all right,
he would understand. She knew herself _so_ well ... sometimes. But he
was so young!

“I don’t see why,” he said at last, to his plate.

“There’s a fatality about my kind of love,” Magdalen said softly,
miserably, heroically. “It ends.” And in that moment Magdalen loved Ivor
as she had never before loved him; she was like that.

“Mine doesn’t.”

Silence....

“Stuff!” said Magdalen--and shrieked with laughter! He blushed
furiously.

“Look here,” he snarled, “do you or don’t you love me?”

“I do,” snapped Magdalen. “But I’ve got ideas.”

Ivor leant forward truculently.

“Then if you do,” he said very slowly, “what the devil are you talking
about?”

Magdalen leant forward, so that there was nothing but their breath
between her earnest face and his truculent face.

“I adore you--mark that, Ivor! Maybe I don’t love you as a dairymaid
would love you, but I’m sure that into one month I cram as much love for
you as a dairymaid would give in a lifetime; her way is called
‘simplicity,’ and is supposed to be divine. But I am divine in my own
way. I adore you. If I were an epithet and you were a noun I’d follow
you about on every page of the book of life--until you were oh so tired
of me! But I get ideas....”

“Women have moods,” she whispered. “And let me tell you about these
moods, Ivor, so that you will learn not to madden the women who will
love you. Women have moods every now and then, they can’t help it and no
one can help them. You knew that? You poor lamb, you don’t know anything
really.... These moods, let me tell you, are vast and inexplicable and
untidy and terrible. They devastate everything. Particularly, they
devastate men, these moods. I’ve seen them destroy better men than you,
Ivor. They change a woman’s personality, they give her a new mind for
that short time, a new and unhappy mind, as every one is unhappy who
sees too clearly--but lovers go on being lovers, not understanding
anything but that it’s a damned nuisance, not understanding that this
woman’s mood can change a lover into a man and a man into dross. Women
are much given to wanting to speak the truth in this mood, for hysteria
seems to act that way--but they generally don’t speak it, life being
what it is, and that’s what makes them so evil and bad-tempered to the
men they love, but who insist on loving them at any hour of the day and
night, regardless of sense or sensibility....”

“Of course,” said Ivor reasonably, “if it’s only a mood....”

Now a mood is like a cloud against the sky, it comes and goes and leaves
no mark. But that is a lie, for a mood is like nothing else at all.

The Hallidays went abroad that August, or rather they went to Deauville,
and Euphemia Halliday lent Magdalen her house near Sonning for that
month. In the last few months Euphemia had discovered a surprising
affection for Magdalen, to whom she had always referred to as “poor
little Magdalen! she is so witty, you know!” Euphemia always referred to
women poorer than herself as “poor little----,” and gave it to be
understood that she liked to be kind to people. But she had never before
been “kind” to or about Magdalen, and Magdalen was quite puzzled about
it until she heard that Euphemia had quarrelled with Lois Lamprey, for
Euphemia was full of caddish little enthusiasms about women, and as one
collapsed she must quickly make another. However, Magdalen couldn’t help
being charming to her, and Euphemia gushed over with the gift of her
house near Sonning for August.

“A gift,” Magdalen pathetically told Ivor, “for which she will ask me
twenty to thirty guineas a week when she comes back--and get it, what’s
more! I’m the most easily cheated woman I know, Ivor.”

“That’s just your kind of vanity,” he pointed out. “You’re the vainest
woman in the world, really--but it’s a private vanity, and doesn’t hurt
any one but yourself, for it consists of letting horrible people impose
on you while you just quietly despise them all to yourself.”

“This house we were speaking of,” said Magdalen severely, “is a charming
house. What I mean is that it has every modern comfort and convenience,
and duplicates of each. There is a bathroom to each bedroom and a divan
in each sitting-room, telephones in every corner and servants round
every corner. And it’s just far enough from the river to be out of the
reach of passing footlight-favourites and energetic men wearing Leander
ties. One will be very comfortable there, Ivor.”

“One would prefer a cottage, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “My
husband--with whose tastes you seem to agree so well, Ivor--has always
told me that I could wear a cottage very becomingly.”

“Do you know,” Ivor broke in, “that that man seems to me the nicest man
in the world, from what you always say of him.”

“But indeed he is,” she cried. “He’s a dear, my Tristram. I married him
when I was eighteen, and I still say it, although I’ve been begging him
to divorce me ever since. But he’s too wise to do that, and though he
has offered to let me divorce him, I’m not quite cad enough to do
that--not until he wants to marry some one else, anyway, which I’m
afraid is improbable. And when he comes home he stays at the club and we
dine together, and I have to confess that being married to him has
prevented me from marrying some awful men in my time.... Oh, Ivor!” she
suddenly clapped her hands with an idea, “let’s take a flight of fancy
and imagine you going to see Tristram one day--he would like you, you’re
his sort of man; and let’s suppose you told him what you’ve threatened
to tell him as soon as you see him, that if he divorced me or let me
divorce him you would marry me. Whereupon he would first of all ask you
if you could keep me in the luxury to which I’ve been accustomed. On
your saying rather sulkily that you could, he would further ask you what
grounds you had for thinking you would make me happy. Then you’d look
sulkier than ever, and mutter something about my loving you (which
indeed I do). After a silence of a few seconds, spent by both of you in
emptying the drinks which Tristram had ordered on hearing that a man had
come to see him about his wife--after this short, impressive silence, he
would say, quite gently, ‘But she loved me, too!’ Now he’s much older
than you, Ivor, and your natural deference for age would be fighting a
battle with your stern conviction that the two cases weren’t at all
parallel--but before you could explain that he would add, ever so
genially: ‘Suppose, Marlay, we talk of it in a year from to-day--how
would that do?’ At that you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, especially
if you were sitting in his club; and so you would spend the rest of the
time in asking him about the extremely foreign countries he had visited,
and then you’d both forget all about me and probably lunch together....”

“This house we were speaking of,” said Ivor, “seems to me a charming
house....”

“And it’s called Camelot!” cried Magdalen.

CHAPTER VIII

That August, Ivor Marlay’s car--as swift and handsome a two-seater as
any could be at that primitive time of motoring--became almost an
institution to the little boys along the London road, from Sonning to
London and from London to Sonning, which is by no means the same
distance. The conventions had naturally to be observed in some degree,
but what time he didn’t spend at Camelot was certainly spent in getting
to or away from it. Many people came down to stay with Magdalen, but now
and again there would be a divine _hiatus_ between those who had just
gone and those who were about to come, and it was Ivor’s business to
fill that _hiatus_ as speedily as he might. Magdalen was very good at
arranging the frequent occurrence of these _hiatuses_, but not, she
insisted, half so good as Ivor was in filling them up, for his car
seemed to swing into the drive within a minute of her having telephoned
to London to say: “There is bed and board at Camelot, Ivor....”

But of what happened at Camelot near Sonning during that brilliant
August of 1913 when England really showed the world what it could do in
the way of Augusts: how those days, stolen from Magdalen’s friends, days
of leisure and love and talking--but how they talked, and
seriously!--passed like fantasies of sunlight, so bright and quick: how
they walked through the lush of August nights in the gardens of Camelot,
“towards the moon and back,” and were content in this plenitude of
companionship: and how they would sometimes be sad in passing silences,
each knowing that these hours could have no parallel and that nothing
repeats itself except regret: and how each would sometimes mystify and
torture the other by a shadow over the face.... And how, among others,
came Rodney West, K.C., as calmly genial as ever, and how the great
friendship between him and Magdalen, estranged this past year, was plain
to see: and how people wondered at this perfect attainment of peace with
honour, but Ivor was glad of it: and how they stole nights together
until sunrise, and so wonderfully that even a sunrise by Turner would
have been a colourless thing beside the dawn of their awakening. It was
all very good, this way and that way and every way....

But to tell of what happened at Camelot near Sonning during that
all-too-short month would fill a book. Whereas our way lies, less
lyrically, in the direction of disenchantment and death. There’s a
pinnacle reached (by the adventurous) and life breathlessly surveyed
thence, and found to be but the servant of this moment on this pinnacle;
but then there is the coming down from that high estate, two deities
becoming every moment more mortal, the one suppliant and the other
satiate, or both satiate, which is perhaps even more horrible. Mediæval
words there are to fit the case, full-blooded words like treachery and
betrayal and dishonour, but nowadays a broken vow does not mean a broken
head; it means a headache to the one and a long walk for the other, “to
get rid of all this....”

The climax was at Camelot, it was there they climbed the ultimate
mountain. But the descent took them several months, and the New Year of
1914 was come before the thing was over. And the damnable part of it was
that it was he who seemed to change, and not she!

She remained, as always, his perfect friend; to the naked eye nothing
strange could be seen to be happening in her, there were noticeable
about her not one of those subtle signs that are supposed to mark a
tired woman; and none of the primary emotional stars were seen to stop
in their courses. But Ivor’s eyes were not naked, they were jaundiced
with love, and he saw that something was happening in Magdalen, from
October onwards. He saw it, but of course he didn’t believe it; and he
was unpleasant, in the vague way in which men are unpleasant about vague
suspicions. In fact, of all the mistakes that a man can make in trying
to win back a woman, Ivor neglected to make not one: from suspicion to
bitterness by way of silence, from bitterness to suspicion by way of
indifference, and a lot of other unpleasantries as well. He was going
through hell, and there is nothing more tedious than the company of a
sensitive young man who is going through hell....

But Magdalen, if she thought that, thought it philosophically. It was
most usual in men.... She bore with him patiently, insufferable though
he was. “Waste, waste!” he would say, among other silly things. “To
think that all this has been waste!” She assured him that it wasn’t
waste, that fine things aren’t wasted. He rounded on her about the
“fine” things, and she was quite silent, and then he was ashamed. Poor
Ivor! He was spared nothing, for she would tell him of her great
affection for him, the like of which she had never felt for man or woman
before, it was so great and understanding and unending--the only thing
about me that is unending, she said bitterly. She shouldn’t have told
him of her affection, she should have kept it secret, she should have
pretended to have grown to detest him; so that he could have turned on
her and cursed her and gone his way. Poor Magdalen! She couldn’t
pretend. And it was her avowed fondness that continually gave him hope,
it was the great rock on which he built castle after castle, each to
tumble down at sight of her lustreless eyes in his arms....

Magdalen couldn’t help herself--how could she, she was as she was!--but
she did try to help him. She was the confidante of his misery about her;
she was the great friend to whom he told his griefs about her; and she
it was who tried to soothe him about the imperfections of his mistress.
But she could never convince him that his mistress was worthless, too
used in the traffic of love to be worthy of being so loved; and she
utterly failed to convince him that life was worth living in spite of
the inconstancy of one wretched woman....

An entirely unmoral woman Magdalen was, but she had a firm etiquette of
the heart: and this made her pre-eminent in a man’s regrets, for that
etiquette of the heart is the rarest of all things--unless it is,
however, that it is rarely observable in good women simply because of
the many other commendable qualities that crowd one’s vision of them.
Magdalen was a woman of honour in everything but honour. And Magdalen
grew in Ivor’s mind to symbolise civilised women, in all the grace of
kindness and imperfection, but he was to find that civilised women
aren’t really like that; he was to find that the nicest women grow
vindictive when they are bored (it is understood that men, when they are
bored, just go away, extremely strong and silent); and that their
unwilling constancy is often the cause of innumerable little antagonisms
and caddishness, and that they are seldom dignified in their sudden
dislike of an intimacy. They wish to draw back, that’s what it is. But
Magdalen wished only to go on, “to find out.” And Ivor, to these later
women, would speak of Magdalen, revenging himself on their crudities. He
would not refer to her by name, of course, he would just suggest her
somehow, a nameless and polite figure of his past, or he would rather
bluntly say, “a woman I knew once,” and fix his dark eyes almost
contemptuously on his listener--who perhaps, it was not impossible, knew
that he was speaking of Magdalen Gray; and maybe she pitied him for
being a fool about such a woman, or maybe she vaguely respected him for
she didn’t quite know what. But, anyway, it was after he had known
Magdalen Gray that Ivor grew to be vaguely spoken about as one of those
men who are “nice about” women: a not unpleasing distinction, though of
course vague....

Thus, tiresome though he was throughout that winter, Magdalen bore with
him. It was he who finally could not bear with her.... Had she been
unfaithful to him? He was her friend--that is what she said. But he knew
that he was not her friend--not yet, anyway. He didn’t know how to
be.... Had she been unfaithful to him? “What would you like me to
answer?” she asked him, in the light of the “very shaded” lamp.

“If it will cure you of loving me,” she said thoughtfully, “I will tell
you that I have been unfaithful to you....”

“If it will not cure you but only hurt you,” she said thoughtfully, “I
will tell you that I have not been unfaithful to you....”

“It does not matter, anyway,” she said. “This infidelity business ...
between you and me.”

And then they were silent for a long time, thinking how it didn’t
matter--anyway. But of course it didn’t matter, this “infidelity
business”--it was just a thing of the body, almost an accident, but love
was a thing of the spirit. Love just swept it aside, love was
everything, love took no stock of infidelity at all. Some women simply
couldn’t be bodily faithful, that’s what it was; thank Heavens there
were only a few women like that, but they were splendid in other ways,
divine ways, and love must overlook infidelity. But love simply wouldn’t
soar, it descended into the abyss and consorted with infidelity, and
together they made a maelstrom that whizzed about young Ivor’s head and
sickened him of life and love and himself--particularly of himself. For
his supreme misery was not that Magdalen might have been unfaithful to
him, but that he was unfaithful to himself.

She had wanted to be ravished, like a woman in a dream; and when the
dream faded he found a friend, just a friend....

CHAPTER IX

In January, 1914, Ivor caught a cold in the head. He had always been
remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his
life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia long ago at school. He hadn’t the
faintest idea what to do with a cold in the head, he just took quinine
and continued to blow his nose. One day he produced his cold to
Magdalen, by special request, for he had avoided seeing her for a week;
and Magdalen said that he had caught the thing because he was run down
and that he must go away. She pointed out that he was the luckiest man
in the world, with or without a cold in the head.

“You’re free, Ivor!” she said. “A man with no ties and plenty of
money--my dear, the world’s for you! And here you are, hanging about
London in January, when you might be in all the lovely warm places in
the world, having marvellous adventures in the sun!”

But he couldn’t go away--and she knew, with pathetic impatience, that he
couldn’t. And then, in that bitter loneliness, he was sorry for himself.
And his cold continued.

Now there came a day that January when he had not seen Magdalen for two
weeks. The time was past when he could see Magdalen. He wanted too
much--anyway, it was too much now!--and he couldn’t pretend any more to
put up with a little. January was doing its worst that particular day;
the rain fell icy cold, and every hour or so it would beat down with
feverish fury; and the angry damp seemed to penetrate his flat and
bones, there was little comfort in his blazing fire--even had he been
restful enough to sit before it for any length of time. Outside, Upper
Brook Street was quiet and sodden; every now and then a bare-headed
manservant would scuttle under an umbrella to the pillar-box; and
towards lunch-time several cars--from his window above they looked like
large, fat, wet flies crawling in the glistening dirt--swung along from
Park Lane towards Grosvenor Square, full of people going to eat each
other’s food. And soon they too would be going south, and Magdalen among
them maybe....

Towards a darkened four o’clock he thought it might do him good to go
out and walk a little in the rain; he had a sudden longing to stand
bare-headed in the rain. It would certainly do him good.... There was a
throbbing pain in the back of his head. At least it seemed to be in the
back of his head, or to have its headquarters there, for the whole of
his head was heavy with it. Not a serious pain, but irritating. Every
few minutes he would shake his head as though to shake away the pain,
but it just went on irritating him. This damnable cold in the head....
He crushed and swallowed two aspirins, and went out.

He enjoyed it, this aimless wandering in the rain. It was fun to walk
slackly along while every one else was hurrying by, anxious to get
somewhere. He wasn’t anxious to get anywhere! The men looked awful in
the rain, he thought; they smelt of it, and looked like weeds that in
their hearts suspected as much; but the hurrying little women looked
attractive and pathetic, and oh so serious! There was one, a girl with a
white serious face and downcast eyes, whom he would have liked to speak
to, but she was swallowed up in the crowds that were waiting for buses
at Hyde Park Corner. He walked on, towards Knightsbridge. He wasn’t
going anywhere in particular. Maybe he might go into the Hyde Park Hotel
and have tea; he didn’t generally take tea, but this afternoon he just
might. But somehow he forgot to go as far as the Hyde Park Hotel, and
found himself at Magdalen’s door in Wilton Place. He was in
Knightsbridge, after all, and he might just as well have tea with
Magdalen as alone at the Hyde Park Hotel.

But Magdalen was not in.

“Now that’s very disappointing, Foster,” Ivor said. “And it’s raining,
too!”

“Yes, indeed it is, sir,” the man said sympathetically. “If you would
care to come in I could give you some tea, sir--and it might be that
madam will be in herself soon, though she left no word as to when she
would be coming in.”

“It’s cruelly wet,” Foster said thoughtfully, helping Ivor off with his
overcoat.

The tea question was settled, then--there, in the “room of state!” No
peaches in it now, though! and no Magdalen either! But he was not
waiting for Magdalen. He hadn’t really expected to find her at home. He
had wanted some tea, that’s all--and, after all, he had so often refused
tea in this house that it was only fair to come to it on the one
occasion when he did want tea. And now that he had had it he was just
waiting to finish a cigarette, and away he’d go. But, it was so warm and
pleasant in that “room of state,” he smoked another.... Six o’clock it
was now. Well, he wasn’t waiting for Magdalen, anyway. God knew where
she was! And he had nothing to say to her even if she did come in....
The half-hour struck. And Ivor, in a sudden wild fury, threw away the
cigarette he was about to light, and banged out of the house.

He knew very well where Magdalen was. Of course. Magdalen wasn’t the
sort of woman to hang about just anywhere all the time between lunch and
dinner--like Virginia and Lois and that crowd, who either sat about for
hours in one place or dashed about to a thousand places in an afternoon,
doing nothing at all. Magdalen was not like that, she either had a
purpose or she hadn’t; and if she hadn’t, she sat at home reading a
book. She read a lot of books. Hadn’t Gerald Trevor said of her, so
long ago, that Magdalen didn’t loiter unless there was something to
loiter for? She loiters actively, he had said. And Gerald was always
right about the women he wasn’t in love with, he would always make a
very good husband to the wrong wife.... But he would have liked to have
seen her, if only for a minute. Maybe she would have taken away this
pain in the back of his head, or anyway told him what to do with it.
Extraordinary how helpless he felt without her! But he would go to a
doctor to-morrow, if he wasn’t better. He had never been to a doctor
about anything before, but he would easily find one, they were
everywhere. He would ring up Magdalen and ask her, she knew several.
Maybe if he went back to Wilton Place now, maybe she.... But he strode
on. He had forgotten to button his overcoat on leaving her house, and
the icy wet wind billowed it out round his tall figure, it added to the
confusion of his passage through the dense evening crowds about Hyde
Park Corner. No fun in walking in the rain now! It was horribly ugly,
this sodden darkness. He felt ill and weak, but he couldn’t find a taxi,
he had to jostle through the crowd. Black and furious he looked, and
several people stared round at the tall lowering young man with the
defiant nose, who strode viciously past them in a billowing overcoat....

He dressed with extreme care and pomp that evening. He had a comical
idea that this throbbing pain in the back of his head would respect him
more if he put on a dress-suit. One should always be taut and rigid and
_soigné_, he thought. Magdalen said that too. The homely dinner jacket
wouldn’t impress any pain, there was no dignity in it. It suited
Argentines very well, _le smoking_. But Englishmen were made of sterner
stuff.

It had been his intention to dine at his club, and he was well down the
slope of Saint James’s Street before he sharply changed his mind. He
loathed his club, or any club. Lot of cow-eyed men. So he turned into
Arlington Street and into the Ritz. It was still raining.

In the restaurant he found a corner table, by the windows that face the
Green Park. It was a table for four, and may or may not have been
reserved, but as the young gentleman (who happened to be quite
unconscious of the diabolical frown on his forehead) seemed entirely
oblivious of every protest that was made, the second _maître d’hôtel_
shrugged his shoulders and let him have it. The second _maître d’hôtel_
lost nothing by this complaisance, however, for Ivor ordered
magnificently. There was naturally no question of offering him the
_table d’hôte_; you can’t singly take a table for four and then play
about with a _table d’hôte_. But the second _maître d’hôtel_ found him
every bit as good as four ordinary diners, and much less trouble; and he
ordered his waiters to take an interest in _le pauvre gigolo_....

Ivor also drank magnificently. He had a vague remembrance of some one
having once told him that champagne was the best remedy for any kind of
cold, and so he drank a bottle. And, because he had drunk a bottle, he
also broached a half-bottle. Krug, 1907.

“Coffee, sir?”

“Please. But do take the chill off it.”

And then a few brandies, ... without, he considered, the slightest
effect. It seemed to require a devilish lot of concentration to get
drunk, and concentration was just what he hadn’t got. So he gave up the
attempt, and after having stood on the hotel steps in Arlington Street
for several minutes, he thought to ask George Prest, the
_commissionaire_, if he had any striking and original ideas as to what
to do in London on a rainy night.

“How do chaps go wrong in London, George?”

“Might try the Empire, sir,” said George Prest.

“Taxi!” cried George Prest into the rain. And there was a taxi.

As Ivor was about to climb into it, he thrust his top-hat into the
_commissionaire’s_ hand. He pressed it on him.

“Keep it,” Ivor urged. “It’s quite a good one. My head wants air
to-night and the damn thing keeps on getting between it and air. And I’d
like you to have it, George. You can shove it into the cloak-room if you
like, but if I were you I’d keep it. It’s not a bad hat, as hats go.
You’ll need it when you retire....”

Not so sober as all that, after all! thought Ivor.

The Empire did not hold him for long. He tried, from the promenade, to
see what was happening on the stage, but he found that it hurt his eyes
to look, they were hot and burning. So he walked up and down for a
while, and then sat down on one of the red plush sofas outside the bar.
One should take an interest in human nature, he thought, and so he tried
to take an interest in the passing crowd. But it was not impressive,
that crowd. Of the men, several half-familiar faces nodded to him, and
he decided that he must have known them at school. He watched them, and
saw they hadn’t changed at all. They were a little pinker and less
pimply, that’s all. That’s because pimples grow inwards, he thought. And
they were talking to the women whom it had been their ambition, when at
school, to talk to. Just like Transome. Dear old Transome.... Later on,
when they were a bit more drunk, the women would get money from them,
and there would be fumbling with love. Then the women would get more
money from them. And to-morrow they would say that they had had a
marvellous time--and it would be true, too! But if these harlots,
thought Ivor, had anything even remotely resembling brains, and could
hold a man when he was stone-cold-sober as well as when he was
blind-drunk, they would long ago have been respectably married wives. A
harlot is only interesting when she had won her way to respectability.
All good harlots die in Mayfair, he thought. But these are no good at
their jobs, that’s what it is, and that’s why they’re such crashing
bores.

By a quarter-past ten he was in Leicester Square. And by half-past long
strides had taken him past Hyde Park Corner--again! Yes, he was going to
see Magdalen. He felt awfully ill, not only in his head, but all over, a
burning kind of illness, and he wanted to tell Magdalen exactly how ill
he was. His skin felt like a damp and unclean shirt. It was still
raining, but not much, and it was nice walking bare-headed in the cool
rain. It was the nicest part of this awful day, this quick walk. She
would see how ill he was, and be sorry for him. Besides, he wanted her
to tell him of a doctor; he would have to see a doctor, and to-night,
maybe. Had influenza, probably--or worse. That thought pleased him, for
she would be frightfully sorry for him. He longed for that, for her to
be sorry for him....

Yes, she was in. From the road he could see the dim lights behind the
curtains of the two windows of the “room of state.” Dim lights,
naturally. Magdalen and he had always had dim lights when they were
alone there, on that divan in the corner. Her eyes hated any light
except sunlight, she said. That shaded lamp of hers--that “very shaded
lamp”--gave a soft, sweet light, he could see the soft light of it in
his mind as he stood in the deserted road and looked up at the windows.
Then a taxi jerked round from Knightsbridge and moved him on to the
pavement by the door. Well, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t alone. He
wouldn’t go up, he only wanted to see her for a minute, just to ask her
about a doctor. She would be sure to see him, she had never refused yet,
anyway. If she did, he didn’t know what he would do, maybe he would go
to Saint George’s Hospital nearby, disguised as an accident. The pain
had somehow got to his side now, and hurt him when he breathed.

He rang the bell, and waited for a long time, but no one came to the
door. He rang again, and heard the tinkle of the bell in the basement.
And the third time he rang viciously, keeping his thumb on the
button--and Magdalen stood in the open doorway!

“Ivor, it’s _you_!”

He grinned at her sheepishly. He was afraid.

“Foster must have gone out,” she explained, staring at him wide-eyed....
“What is it, sweet?”

“I just thought----” Ivor mumbled, as he stumbled past her into the
narrow hall.

She closed the door softly behind them; and then she turned to him with
a concerned, business-like air. It was so unlike Ivor, to come thus! He
stood staring at her limply, with his back to the wall, limply. He just
stared at her, with a ridiculous smile. And Magdalen saw the bright pink
patches on the sallow cheeks--and how cadaverous he looked!--and the
dark eyes bright with fever. And her own grew vivid with concern, she
shook him by the shoulder to wake him to his condition, for he was
standing against the wall smiling stupidly at her.

“Ivor, how dare you be out in this state!” she cried vividly. “You look
frightfully ill, you ought to be in bed....” And with the palm of her
hand she lightly brushed his forehead, and the fever of it seemed to
stab her with anxiety. But it was cool to him, a white hand of ice on
his forehead, adorable ice, and he caught this hand by the wrist and
pressed it to his burning skin. He forgot his illness, and the pain in
his side which caught at every breath. He was wonderfully comfortable
with her, luxurious in the scrutiny of her concern. He wasn’t listening
to her quick words, his silly smile bade her to be quiet, ... and, with
her palm still pressed by him to his forehead, he caught her round the
body with one arm and held her to him, raising her off her feet so that
he could kiss her lips. Ice again, ice. He did not look into her eyes,
he was afraid to, for his kisses brought no lustre to them now; and how
dexterous she was now! somehow luring him to her cheek, where lies only
the sulky stuff of love. Magdalen couldn’t pretend, ever. Nervous words
of comfort came from her, a small laugh, a tiny, helpless gesture. Dear
Magdalen! And so he thought to comfort her for the boredom of his
kisses.

“I’m sorry, Magdalen,” he said....

“I’ve had such an awful day, Magdalen,” he said. His eyes were wet....

His illness was quite forgot--but not by her. She was silent, racked by
anxiety as to what to do with him.

“You see, Magdalen,” he whispered dazedly, “life is a most awful mess
without you. It’s caddish of me to make you responsible for all the
beauty in life, but I can’t help it. I must tell you. You’ve got no
right, you know, to be so admirable to a man....”

“And then,” he said suddenly, “to be so admirable to another man.” He
wanted to go on, to say something caddish....

“But I haven’t another friend, Ivor!” But she was thinking only of what
to do with him.

“No?” his eyes searched her face naïvely. “Well, then, I’ll be your
friend, indeed I will. Later on, though. For I somehow can’t yet get
used to not being your lover, it’s stupid of me. But I’ll be your
friend, Magdalen, you can rely on me.”

“Silly Ivor!” she laughed at him nervously, taking his arm. His absurd
seriousness unnerved her. “Why, you’ll have your work cut out to be your
own friend, in the state you are in! You’ve got influenza, that’s what
you’ve got. And you’ll go straight off to bed, please, straight away,
and I’ll send you a doctor. You didn’t think, I suppose, of seeing a
doctor, Ivor?”

“But that’s just what I came to see you about!” he remembered eagerly.

“Stay a moment,” she commanded, and flew quickly up the stairs. Ivor,
with his back to the wall, closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly,
in the hope that the pain in his side was an illusion. Maybe it was ...
but it wasn’t. He opened his eyes; she was coming down again, wrapping
something up in paper.

“Hot-water bottle,” she explained, giving it to him. “I’m sure you
haven’t got one in your flat.”

“The correct procedure is,” she said, “to fill it with boiling water,
then go to bed and lay it on your tummy, and go to sleep. Some people
say it’s better to put it under your feet, but I’ve always inclined to
the tummy school. One sweats.”

“Now, Ivor, no more nonsense!” she almost stamped her foot as he still
made to delay. “And I’ll ring up Dr. Harvey as soon as you’ve gone, to
go and see you. He’ll be with you in a very few minutes.” She almost
pushed him to the door: deciding that she would follow him to his flat
as soon as she had telephoned Dr. Harvey.

He wouldn’t let her open the door, he blocked her way, and his fumbling
with it strained her nerves. But it was open at last. And without a word
he stumbled quickly out.

“You’ve decorated my life, anyway,” he called abruptly back from the
pavement, and strode away. She saw the paper round the hot-water bottle
flutter down to the glistening pavement. Shivering from the damp cold,
she watched the tall figure from the open doorway. Where had he left his
hat, she wondered? She hadn’t realised he had no hat. She began to run
after him to tell him to come back indoors while she tried to find a
taxi, but at that moment she saw him catch one at the Knightsbridge
corner....

Ivor, with his hand on the door-handle of the taxi, suddenly found it
impossible to direct the man to his flat. He suddenly found he couldn’t
bear the loneliness of his flat. And he quite forgot about Magdalen’s
doctor.

“Drive,” he told the man, “to Mr. Trevor’s flat in Savile Row. It’s a
charming flat, on the third floor....”

He’s certain not to know it, Ivor thought, and in that case I’ll go
home. He shifted the responsibility of his intrusion on Gerald on to the
man.

“No. 96, sir,” the man said. “Yes, sir.”

“I used to be Mr. Trevor’s valet once, sir,” the man said.

Well, thought Ivor, taxis are stranger than fiction. He lay back and
closed his eyes. The paper had dropped from the hot-water bottle, and he
hugged the rubber thing to him, smiling at the idea of Magdalen.... God,
how awful he felt! how his head racked him, and his breathing too!

The taxi pulled up, and after a while the driver jumped out to see to
his fare, who seemed to make no movement. He found his fare a heap in
the corner, his eyes closed.

“Mr. Trevor’s flat, sir,” said the man sympathetically. And he touched
his fare’s arm.

“All right, all right!” Ivor impatiently murmured, and managed to
stumble out. The man picked up the hot-water bottle from the pavement
and handed it to him; he was a pleasant man.

“Shall I help you up, sir?” he asked.

“Look here, I’m not drunk,” Ivor found sudden energy to protest. “But
I’ve got pneumonia, if that’s any good to you....”

“All I want to know is,” he said weakly, “whether you think Mr. Trevor’s
in or out? You say you were his valet, so you ought to know.”

The man listened, with head aside.

“I hear a piano, sir. That ’ud be Mr. Trevor....”

It took Ivor a long time to get up to the third floor. He felt worse
every second, it was hell to breathe. Doctors ought to be like
pillar-boxes, he crossly thought, they ought to be at every corner. Most
of them are red enough, but they’re not at every corner. They play
bridge every evening.... Gerald would be annoyed with him, dear Gerald!
But what could he do, he couldn’t be alone any more, he couldn’t bear
it. He ought to be a man, of course.... Trevor’s door swayed before
him, he couldn’t find the bell somehow, and so he banged on it with his
fist. Where the deuce had he left his stick, the one Magdalen had given
him?

“Hallo, Ivor!” Trevor’s voice said genially. He wasn’t annoyed to see
him, then!... And then Trevor caught him. Ivor had crumpled up. Trevor,
silently, almost carried him into his sitting-room. Ivor tried to
explain, but it hurt him so to breathe.... Then he just managed to pull
himself together, and stood up straight, and laughed weakly to see the
hot-water bottle hanging from his hand. He waved it at Trevor.

“See that?...” he said faintly.

“I’m awfully sorry, Gerald, coming like this,” he said. “I’m----”

“You’re in a state, old boy. Take it easy for a moment.” Trevor’s voice
was quiet and kind. He tried to help Ivor to the wide sofa just beside
him, but Ivor still stood swaying.

“Look here,” he tried to explain. “I’m not drunk, not really. I’ve got
pneumonia.”

“But you can’t have pneumonia here!” Trevor cried in horror.

“Oh, can’t I!” said Ivor weakly. And he flopped as he was on to the
sofa, and closed his eyes.

Trevor was very busy the next few minutes. Ivor seemed unconscious, his
breathing came in quick, rasping gasps, and Trevor could feel the fever
of him when he touched him. In a moment he had off the wet shoes and
overcoat, and had him covered up with a rug and an eiderdown from his
bedroom. Ivor still clutched his hot-water bottle.

“Well, I’m damned!” said Trevor softly, beside him; and he stretched out
to the telephone which was on a little table by the divan. Ivor opened
his eyes to stare round him, and then put a hand feebly across them,
for the light hurt them. Trevor switched out the lights, the fire was
light enough. He picked up the telephone again. Ivor stared at him.

“Doctor,” Trevor briefly explained.

“Sorry, Gerald ... let you in for this,” Ivor said faintly.

“That’s all right, old man. Be quiet now. Love to have the honour of
saving your life.”

“I’ve had this before,” Ivor just murmured. “At school. Not so badly,
though.... But they thought I was done, ... and said prayers for me in
the school-chapel.... ‘For one of us who is now at death’s door.’ ...
Everyone was very touched....”

“Pooh, that’s nothing!” Trevor mocked. “People have said prayers for me
when I hadn’t got pneumonia. But look here, Ivor, try to keep quiet
while I get a doctor. There’s a good chap.”

Trevor finally got on to the doctor. He tried to speak as low as he
could, not to disturb Ivor, who again seemed as near sleep as could be.

“Hallo, Harvey! Trevor speaking.... Yes, Gerald. I say, Harvey, I’ve got
a young man here having pneumonia. I’d be glad of a little help....”

Dr. Harvey’s voice came from the other end: “But look here, Mrs. Gray
has just rung up telling me to go round to a flat in Upper Brook Street
where a young man has got influenza....”

“Influenza nothing,” Gerald snorted. “The chap’s here, I tell you. And
on your way here you’d better book a suite at a nursing home, because I
can’t have people having pneumonia all over my flat, there’s no
facilities....”

He put up the receiver and turned to Ivor behind him. He could see, in
the firelight, Ivor’s eyes painfully on him.

“You won’t die yet, Ivor,” he grinned at him--that jerky, pleasant, wise
grin of Trevor’s! He sat beside the sick man, and passed a hand over
the burning forehead.

“Wouldn’t mind,” Ivor whispered. And two big tears crawled out of the
dark eyes and down the cheeks.

Gerald Trevor ate a macaroon, and soon Dr. Harvey came in.

“He’s got it bad,” he whispered to Trevor, having examined him. “Ought
to have been in bed hours ago. But we can move him all right. Get your
man to help. I rang up Mrs. Gray to say I was coming here. She’s coming
on.”

“She can’t help him now,” said Trevor. “Come on.”

The three of them carried Ivor down the stairs to Harvey’s car outside.
He was heavy, for all his thinness. He woke up once, just to say
absurdly: “You’re carrying me.”

“Observant of you!” mocked Gerald.

In the car they had him between them, a large bulky figure in Gerald’s
rug and eiderdown. He was past listening to anything now.

“What on earth has he been up to?” Harvey asked Trevor in a whisper,
across him. “To go about like this! He must have felt it coming on all
day--and yesterday, too!”

“God knows,” Trevor said.

But both men knew well enough, in a sort of way. Dr. Harvey knew London
as well as medicine, and he had known Magdalen Gray for years. He pursed
his lips.

“That woman,” he whispered grimly, “burns whatever she touches. Always.”
(It is a well-known fact that doctors in private life get frightfully
dramatic about women.)

Trevor was silent.

“It’s an irony about her,” Harvey went on. “She’s kind, oh, very kind!
but she always makes a mess of men. This young man, now. She breaks ’em,
in the end. I’ve known a few.”

“Yes, but she makes them first,” Trevor said suddenly. “You’re talking
without your book, Harvey. She makes men, I tell you, out of the
ordinary idiots whom she falls in love with. This one isn’t an absolute
idiot, but he’s young, and that comes to the same thing in this case.
She’s been worth-while to him, and she will always be worth-while to
him. She’s a woman of quality, Harvey.” And Gerald Trevor smiled....

“A little less quality and a little more constancy,” Harvey suggested
grimly, “wouldn’t do her any harm.”

“Even so,” said Trevor satirically, “you would love her to-morrow if you
thought she loved you, and constancy be damned. It’s the function of
women like her to remind men of their littleness and impotence. I’ve
been reminded once or twice. But men like you, old man, hate to be
reminded of their littleness and impotence. You’ve got an idea that you
are worth loving, and Magdalen Gray is in the world to teach you that
there isn’t as much foundation for that idea as there might be.”

“You wait till you have pneumonia ...” Harvey whispered viciously across
the still figure of Ivor.

CHAPTER X

The days of crisis passed. Dr. Harvey confided to Trevor that it was
touch-and-go, but Ivor, in that occasional clarity of intense fever, had
no thought of death. One morning, at last, he really did wake up.
Weakly, he noticed the room. There was a nurse nearby, and she smiled at
him cheerfully, making encouraging noises. He remembered the nurse quite
well, she had been about his bed all the time, doing things, and he had
asked her for things, too. Yes, she had been there all the time, that
nice nurse. And he saw the hot-water bottle hanging from a bed-post at
his feet.... He tried to link his memory of a vague face in that room to
another memory. What did it remind him of? something so vague and dim,
and so long ago.... He remembered Ann Marlay’s face--he never thought of
her as his mother, she was Ann Marlay to him--bending over his
childhood, and sad, gentle eyes. Of course, yes. And now this other
face, so clouded and familiar, hovering about, wide eyes mocking him
tenderly--oh, how divine she was, to mock so sadly and tenderly, so
unlike every one else! And he spent a long time in trying to compare the
two memories, Ann and Magdalen, wondering if they were at all alike,
wondering if they would have liked one another....

But she didn’t come that day. He slept, but when he woke up he felt that
he had been really watching the door all the time, and that she hadn’t
come. He did not ask the nurse about her, he waited. But she did not
come. Trevor came in later, and grinned happily to see him better, and
said things. Ivor didn’t ask him either, he just waited. But Magdalen
never came again.

All the time of his getting gradually better he never asked about
Magdalen. It was an effort. Gerald Trevor came every day, but he said
nothing about her. Gerald was gay of an idea that he and Ivor should go
to South America as soon as he was better. Gerald, it seemed, knew a
chap who had a ranch there. “Sun and open spaces and horses and
_gauchos_, Señor Ivor,” Gerald cried to him, and Ivor said he would love
to go. It was a divine idea, of course he would go, Ivor said.

And Rodney West came once or twice; he had heard he was ill, West
cheerfully said, and so thought to have one more look at him before he
died. He asked Ivor why he had never gone to see him, and he wondered if
Ivor was thinking of selling his car, but Ivor said he was not. So calm
and friendly and practical he was. What a good friend for any man, Ivor
thought--and straightway made him one! Which was Ivor’s naïve way with
the few people he liked, to claim them quickly--and then quietly wait
for them to realise that he had claimed their friendship.

But Magdalen never came, nor news from her. Flowers came every other day
or so, flowers that filled the room and exercised the ingenuity of
nurses to provide vases, but there was no message in them, they were
only flowers. He was indifferent to them, he grew to hate them....

He was convalescent now, well out of weakness, and would very soon be
moving from the nursing-home. He had taken the air once or twice,
gently. And Trevor came to see him one afternoon. Ivor took out the
cards for the game of _picquet_ that they would play.

They cut for deal.

“You know,” Trevor casually said, “Magdalen has gone away.”

“Oh,” said Ivor.

“She’s gone,” Trevor said, “to Spain. For some time, I think. Magdalen
is like that, as you know. When she is in London she stays for years,
but once she is away she stays away for years.”

Ivor had nothing at all to say to that. Somehow he had known all the
time that Magdalen had gone away. She hated a mess. She would make a
wonderful playwright--if plays consisted only of exits! But she might
just have written to him....

“I say, Ivor,” Trevor said quickly. “She wrote to me to tell you that
she had gone away, as soon as you were better. Just that.... You knew,
of course, that she was here all the time you were really ill?”

“Yes,” said Ivor. “Thanks so much, old man....”

“It’s your deal,” Trevor said.

“I’ve booked passages for Buenos Ayres,” he said, “for the tenth day
from to-day. It will be nice for you, I thought, to be convalescent all
over the boat. And I chose the best they had, a nice water-tight
one----”

Ivor suddenly burst into laughter. Giggling, it was really. And he
said:--

“Gerald, what fun we’ll have together in foreign parts!”

“In extremely foreign parts,” he added softly.

And they did. But they had to come back all too soon, hearing there was
a war in Europe.

“I wonder what it’s all about, this war,” Ivor wondered on the boat
coming home. “I don’t know much about war....”

“That,” said Trevor, “is exactly why people go to war. So it’s said....”

“War,” said Trevor dogmatically, “has got something to do with some one
being frightened to death of some one else....”

“War,” he went on dogmatically, “is supposed to have something to do
with the Dignity of People. But by substituting the less pleasing word
Bowels for Dignity the same result of war will be obtained.” And he
turned to Ivor with that jerky little grin of his. “We’ll inquire
further into this here war, Ivor, when we land.”

But Trevor inquired no further; for one thing, he had too much sense to
try to find the sense in any war; and for another, he didn’t have time.
For Gerald Trevor, Colonel Trevor, was killed almost as soon as he set
foot in France, in the slaughter of Neuve Chapelle in the spring of
1915. Dear, gay Gerald! There died a courtly gentleman. He had loved a
few women and killed a few men. There died a gay and kind and courtly
gentleman.... And in the winter of 1916, Ivor Marlay, by then deprived
of almost every sense by the noisome dullness of war, was also deprived
by a shell of his left arm, from the shoulder; whereupon there followed
for Captain Marlay months of hideous and tearing pain.

His left arm, however, was not all he lost through the war.

“That dear old ‘Camelot’ car!” he reminded Magdalen, his first visitor
at the London home to which he had finally been moved--Magdalen whom he
had not seen since that “hot-water bottle” night! “That dear old
‘Camelot’ car, Magdalen! I refused to sell it to Rodney West, and now
some ass has stolen it from the garage, thinking maybe I’d have less use
for it now. Whereas----”

“Whereas, Ivor, you’d like to say, but daren’t, to lose only one’s left
arm is really more of a decoration than a loss. But you can’t pull any
of that ivory stuff on Magdalen....”

Her eyes were alight at seeing him again, she was intensely proud of
him--has it not been said that Magdalen was very, very English? And to
whom, in all this wide world, did Ivor belong, if not to her! And she
could scarcely bear to see the pain that would every now and then twist
the dark young face--and set those eyebrows scowling so sulkily! She
pretended not to notice, he would like that best. Her old friend Ivor!
“The best ever....” And, in the way of her sympathy, she mocked him, for
she knew he loved her mockery, saying that the arm he had left was an
excellent arm anyway, and that the bit of coloured ribbon for which he
had exchanged the other one would look very decorative beneath the pile
of handkerchiefs where it would live out its glorious life. “More than
ever dark and dangerous Ivor!” she cried softly. Her old friend
Ivor!...

BOOK THE THIRD

THE ANTAGONISTS

CHAPTER I

January was clearly a significant month in the life of Ivor Pelham
Marlay.

In the first month of the year 1919, when the world, released at last
from the epidemic of flags, was racked by the epidemic of influenza
(then the most present of the many plagues of peace), Ivor Marlay was
living in a small house by the River Kennet in Berkshire, which he had
bought furnished towards the end of the previous year. The house was a
little beyond the straggling village of Nasyngton, and a little over two
miles from Hungerford Station: a Queen Anne house of sweet reserve and
severity, with an orchard behind that wandered up a slight incline
towards the main road: and, in front, a twisting little drive to the
wooden gates by the bridge, and a wide lawn, not at all immaculate,
which breasted the quiet waters of the Kennet. To the right of the house
and lawn rose the wide stone bridge of Nasyngton, and a mighty bridge it
looked in that quiet and small place, a seared and ancient bridge of
strength and dignity; and over this bridge passed the traffic of the
London-Bath Road, as well it might and as it had done ever since the
days when Bath was the splendid corollary of the metropolis and both as
one beneath the light step of Beau Nash.... Relieved of the bridge, the
main road swept widely to the right, and, skirting the back of Ivor’s
domain, so through the village of Nasyngton towards its immense destiny.
But even this wide road, so arrogantly unrolling its Tarmac through the
quiet places of Berkshire, could be humbled by things greater than
itself; by things not eternal, but magnificently temporal. For how
furtively this London-Bath road swept by the great iron gates of Lady
Hall, two miles Londonwards from the village, the seat of the Earls of
Kare! How meek and shrunken did that haughty Tarmac become as it slunk
by the wide circle of asphalt of the yellow sort, that was loosely
strewn before the great iron gates of Lady Hall as a forerunner of the
consideration that awaited the guests of Rupert, Earl of Kare, whose
fortunes had lately been revived by a Chilian marriage.

His small house by Nasyngton suited Ivor very well. He had bought it
from two spinster sisters, the Misses Cloister-Smiths, and not only
because of its pleasant situation but because its interior and its
simple appointments had instantly pleased his taste. And, keeping his
flat in Upper Brook Street, there he had settled since November: adding
to its comforts only his cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Hope, his man Turner,
and as many books as he had thought to require.

Ivor’s nature, while not at all of a solitary bent in itself, was the
direct cause of his solitude; for though he had surprisingly little of
that self-consciousness which so often gets between a sensitive man and
his power to entertain or be entertained, he was definitely a “rather
difficult person”: in that he was neither easily amusing nor easily
amused--an irritating lack of accommodation which was growing on him
every year, every month almost. People thought him superior. He was,
however, a very concentrated person in his intimacies; and to his
friendships he had always applied himself with steady and undiminished
pleasure, he intensely enjoyed the practices of intimate friendship.
“Let there be restraint, but no secrecy!” Where was secrecy, there Ivor
was not; which was silly of him, for thus he was to a great degree cut
off from that amiable pastime which is called friendship in cities,
those manly and uninquiring companionships that have lasted for years
(since we were boys together, say) and will last till death do us part,
and were among the most charming of the many charming ties that bound
together our public life and body politic until the recent advent of
rude adventurers from the Board schools.

Rodney West, since Trevor’s death, had become Ivor’s most intimate male
friend; but Sir Rodney, as he by now inevitably was, was as a rule too
busy being a foremost K.C. and a rather bad-tempered M.P. of the
outmoded Liberal persuasion, which he and a few other bitter-reasonables
had just succeeded in dragging through the Hang-the-Kaiser Elections of
1918. No one but a half-wit or a non-combatant ever thought the Kaiser
would be hanged, but at the time there was a premium on half-wits, and
Rodney West made himself rather unpopular in the House by pointing that
out at every opportunity. “But some one’s got to do it,” said Rodney
West; and he could afford to, with his income.

As for Magdalen, she had been away from England for the last year, and
maybe she would never return. Magdalen had gone with her husband--to
Peru! Tristram Gray, a keen and gray man of more than fifty (who had
never in his life compromised about anything but his wife, which his
friends considered rather interesting of him, as an instance of the
queer effects love can have on a reasonable man), had surprised Magdalen
and every one else, on being invalided out in 1917, by an absurdly grim
determination to set out on his travels again. Modern England, it
seemed, did not at all please that hardened and decisive gentleman: it
was too confused and too confusing, he pleaded. He was going to Peru,
where he had years ago acquired, in an adventurous way, a kind of minor
castle in the mountains of the interior. “A splendid home,” Colonel Gray
described it, “and, let’s hope, an imposing sepulchre. Mountains, you
know, all over the place, and not toy ones. Things you can get hold of.
You’d better come with me, Magdalen.” That is all he said, and never
before had said as much. And Magdalen, surprising woman, had
straightway answered, “I will!” And had gravely gone with him--to Peru!

Rodney West and Ivor had accompanied them up to Liverpool to see them
off, and there had been a last dinner at the Midland Adelphi Hotel.
Those three men and Magdalen--those two men of more than middle years
(for West was five-and-fifty) and Ivor, just thirty, equalised all in a
quite amazing friendship. A good friendship it was, with a kind of
chivalry about it which was not the less real because it was rather
odd--very odd, some might think. But Magdalen had a way of melting
things and men, a Renaissance way she had of bringing the godlessness
out of a man so that it seemed to him he was a god. She was romantic to
the end, this Magdalen, in her shadowy way, saying to the youngest of
her three friends: “Perhaps one day you will come out to join us, Ivor.
But not until you are very tired, remember, for I hear it’s no place for
a striving person, and you are a striving person, you know. No, you
mustn’t come until you are certain that you don’t want to come back here
again--and oh! I hope that won’t happen! But I don’t think it will, for
you’re not stationary and still absurdly young, and maybe soon the
lovely thing you want will happen to you. And please promise me, Ivor,
never to believe those tiresome people who will tell you with a
plausible air of impatience that there are more important things in this
world than love or who will tell you to stick to one woman and be done
with it. Such people lie in wait for young men with crusading eyes, but
don’t you believe them--go on until you find a woman worth living for
and dying with, for love fills a man’s life while ‘more important
things’ can only occupy it. And that’s the truth I’m telling you,
Ivor....”

Magdalen had looked her age the night of that last dinner, she had
seemed a little strange, a little remote, a little tired, as though she
had already arrived in Peru and the journey had tired her.

During this last year his solitude had, as it were, forced Ivor to an
ambition; for it is in his solitary moments that a man conquers men. He
was reading now, for the first time in his life, with a set and serious
purpose; and as he read he thought, and when he had thought he made
notes, any amount of them; for he was not going to waste what knowledge
he purposed to acquire, he quite definitely wanted to talk and write
about it--especially to talk. There were two things this maddened world
of to-day plainly wanted, special knowledge and fine endeavour; and Ivor
Marlay was trying to discipline himself....

In the wake of many older and wiser men of Europe and America--that
surge of disenchantment, in 1919!--Ivor was realising that “though the
war was over nothing else was over;” and that the world was still
sliding to a queer hell. It wasn’t enough to say that the world was in
an infernal mess and showed no likelihood of getting out of it, the good
old world of progress and respectability. It was in more than the
infernal mess through which it had so often safely plunged: it was
deeply dirtied and befouled with every lawless idiocy of which angry
peoples seem increasingly capable. France was still livid with the
passions of nationality. France had learnt a cruel lesson, and was
intent to profit by it. France was angry, France was patriotic, France
was pathetic, France was sensitive, France was determined not to open
any windows to let the air in. Frenchmen set their shoulders, they had
ceased to shrug their shoulders: other people shrugged their shoulders
at them. _La France, la France_.... The mess of Reparations and
Reconstruction was already foreshadowed; and Mr. Maynard Keynes was
sharpening his pen. Wise men saw, even then, whither the passions of
nationality would lead Europe in the next few years; and while some said
the aggressive instinct of nationality was a fine thing, others pointed
to the mess. Wise men saw, but wise men can do nothing. Wise men cannot
deliver, they can only hail a deliverer.

It was obvious that if ever there was a time to be up and doing things,
in a quite heroic sense, this was the time--this changing, transitional
time! Here, now, was chance for fine endeavour. Whosoever was articulate
could now be heard, ... which was very strange in the life politic, a
quite new departure; for once on a time the Commons held only gentlemen,
but now they let in quite clever fellows--if such could be persuaded to
enter it; so that anything might happen, anything--in this transitional
time! And it was the business of English youth to make things happen, in
the finest way. But the basis of every endeavour must be work and
knowledge; and it was the impulse to the one and the desire for the
other that were now so plainly lacking in the “young men of
opportunity”; which was a favourite phrase of Ivor’s in many talks with
Magdalen and Rodney West.

All men who thought and wrote were at this time thinking and writing
about the conflicting aims and principles of labour and capital. The
calamity of Europe’s tumbling credit did not yet obsess people to the
degree that it very soon did--indeed it had not yet crashed to anywhere
near its lowest depth; but it was crashing. It seemed, then, that
everything would come out smooth and straight if only a sensible
accommodation could be found between the wage-earners and the employers
in each country; but in each country angry men never tired of
passionately crying in capital letters that there can be _no_
accommodation between Principles of Living, that each must have its
day--“or night!” dramatically thought sober men with their eyes on
Russia. For sober men were as like the men in Mr. Beresford’s
_Revolution_ as a fish in the sea is like a fish in an aquarium, and in
them was a growing fear of the spectre of anarchy.

“The best way to beat a real revolution is to lead it; the next best way
is to talk to it; and the worst way of all is to fight it. Just because
some ancient idiot--probably the same Roman idiot who wrote _si vis
pacem, para bellum_, so that other idiots throughout history could take
it for gospel truth simply because it was in Latin--just because some
idiot once said that there’s no use talking to an angry man, no one has
ever tried it until knocking the angry man down has failed. There’s no
use doing anything else but _talk_ to an angry man; and the idea that an
angry man must temporarily be a fool is one of the misconceptions on
which civilisation has been based ever since Saint Peter lost his temper
with the ear of the law....

“You cannot fight and beat revolutions as you can fight and beat
nations. You can kill a man, but you simply can’t kill a rebel. For a
proper rebel has an Ideal of living, while your only ideal is to kill
him so that you may preserve yourself. And the reason why no real
revolution, or religion, has ever been beaten is that rebels die for
something worth dying for, the future, but their enemies die only to
preserve the past: and makers of history are always stronger than the
makers of Empire. It is foolish to fight a revolutionary machine-gun
with a loyalist machine-gun, gun for gun, or a _Soviet_ machine-gun with
a _bourgeois_ machine-gun, gun for gun. You can only fight and beat them
with an Idea, a clean and fearless Idea. And there is only one such
Idea, the oldest in the world, the most blooded in the world, the
aristocratic idea: which really means that you can only keep and
strengthen your own freedom by acknowledging other peoples’. Mainly, it
must mean that....”

Ivor Marlay made notes. He was trying to get somewhere: as, one day much
later, he finally did. But a solitary man becomes very theoretical;
which, maybe, is why all revolutions have been born of solitary men and
all religions have come from the East.

CHAPTER II

He was interrupted.

One very cold and overcast afternoon towards the end of that January, he
was walking up one of the lanes that skirted the parkland of the Kare
estate. The lane led gently up the hill for a long and twisting way, and
the hill led gently down to the Thames valley. Ivor was walking
bareheaded, for his thick dark hair was covering enough on the bitterest
day; and his remaining arm was deep in his trouser pocket. He looked a
curiously still figure, walking thus: walking swiftly but nowhither,
taking thought and air, taking very deep thought: a lonely and defiant
man of affairs. How Aunt Percy would have chuckled to see him now!...
And then a sudden crash to break his thoughts, a rustling crash of angry
leaves and broken boughs, the wintry crash of a raped hedge! Three yards
in front, almost on top of him, a horse pirouetted in the little lane;
it pawed the air and ground, it made gestures towards equilibrium after
its sudden dash through the barrier of Kare Park on to a strolling man.
A sleek and quivering picture, drawn with a fine point against a dour
background. The horse snorted, it quivered, it eyed the astonished Ivor,
and then it pawed the ground with an arrogant air. And a woman laughed.

“Oh, Ivor Marlay!” the woman cried.

Thus Virginia happened--she who had been Virginia Tracy, then Mrs.
Sardon, now Lady Tarlyon. But the years that had passed sat as lightly
on her as pearls about her throat, her years decorated Virginia; and yet
where was the young poet among the many young poets she knew, to take
folly by the horns and sing of her complexion, crying that white samite
was black beside its sheen?

They grinned at each other, she above and he below. Fairly caught they
both were.

“I say, Virginia!” he cried with amazed pleasure.

“That’s me!” she laughed at him. The horse doubtfully came to rest, and
it breathed contemptuously into Ivor’s face.

“After all these years, these long years!” she exclaimed wonderingly,
staring down at him. Her eyes were clear, blue lights in the gloom. “Did
I frighten you, Ivor Marlay?”

“You nearly killed me, that’s all. But I would have died happily,
Virginia, saluting you with my pleasure at seeing you again....”

“You see,” he explained, “I had no idea you were so lovely. Someone
should have told me....”

“Oh, you’ve changed, Ivor Marlay!” Virginia mocked him deftly. “You are
being nice to Virginia. You are not despising Virginia....” That
slightly hoarse, breathless voice of hers--so pregnant somehow!

His happy gesture answered her. They were very pleased with each other.

“So I please you now, do I?” Lady Tarlyon gravely asked him.

She was so fair and straight and cleanly drawn; and there was gallantry
in her poise and in the way she dared his eyes. Was this the sharp,
antagonistic Virginia, this woman ...?

“I simply can’t tell you,” he said, from her stirrup, “how pleased I am
to see you, Virginia. And it’s a heartfelt truth dragged out of me by my
surprise at seeing you, by my pleasure at being nearly killed by
you....”

“That’s all very well, my friend, but it’s up to me to say that kind of
thing to you.” She swayed, and waved an intimidating gauntlet across his
eyes. “I’ll say them too, but later. People talk about you here and
there....”

He was beside her, beneath her. The horse and the lady, a warm picture.
She swayed above him in her saddle, she was exquisite. And there was
that clearness over her small face, that clear, dry sheen of chill air;
and the taut lips, bitten dry by the winter air, hard riding.... The
same Virginia, but how different! The same little white face, so white
and firm-featured, so proudly set and lightly carried; the same tiny
little flesh spot in the furrow of the chin--an inconsiderable little
chin it was, you remember?--the same wide blue eyes, so lazy in look, so
quick to retort, so light and dark, so kind and mocking, so hard and
soft: a soldier’s eyes they were really, but a soldier of fortune. And
“Swan and Edgar,” there they were! Ivor laughed to see them, he asked
after their unruly health--those twin Virginian curls, tumbling down
each cheek in golden-gay cascades from the wide-brimmed, so very rakish,
black felt hat! And how it became her in her severe habit, that wide
anarchist hat set gallantly about her golden hair!

This sudden meeting of the two former antagonists seemed to bring all
the sweetness out of each. It was in their eyes as they smiled at each
other in the January gloom of that little lane, with darkening Kare Park
on their right, on their left the wintry rolling land of Berkshire, and
all about them the pungent smell of sodden earth.

“Do you realise, Ivor, that we’re people of thirty now? Thirty, Ivor!”

“I’m glad enough for you,” he said. She understood. She charmed him by
her quick little smile of understanding. He admired her frankly....

“I say, Virginia,” he said eagerly, “we must talk a good deal. I want to
hear all about your life since we last spoke together at the Hallidays’
that night. I’ve seen you often in the distance since then, but we’ve
somehow never come to grips, it’s just not happened. And whenever I go
to the Mont Agel, M. Stutz always tells me that you were there the
evening before or that you will not be there for a long time for you
are abroad. M. Stutz worships you, Virginia, and quite right he is. But
he never tells me anything about you--and now I’ve found you I want an
official account of your life, for the rumours about you are so
conflicting....” He seemed to plead; and he was really pleading for her
to intrude upon his loneliness.

“You haven’t believed the nasty things, have you, Ivor?” she asked him
very suddenly. Her eyes were very serious on him. Hard eyes they were,
sometimes. Lady Tarlyon knew a lot.

“Oh, stuff!” he smiled at her. “Didn’t we make a pledge, Virginia, the
very last time we met? We’ll be friends, we said. Those were our exact
words. Well then!”

She pointed a finger dramatically down at him. “That pledge,” she said,
“is going to be redeemed. See if it isn’t!”

“I always thought,” he mocked, “that a man and a woman didn’t meet in a
lonely place for nothing.”

And then she thought to ask him how he came to be _there_ anyway, in
that little lane. He told her of his house by the bridge, and of the
Misses Cloister-Smiths, remembering how in the old days Virginia had
been amused by the oddities of names. And as she listened, her first
gaiety at seeing him seemed somehow to leave her, she grew very quiet
and silent, as though a cloud from the bleak sky had sombrely caressed
her; and her eyes, so clear and merry but a moment before, wandered
about the bleak countryside, beyond his shoulder. Virginia’s eyes were
like sentinels, put there to beguile you while Virginia was far away, in
some curious unknown place. Only once she swayed to a sudden step of her
horse: she was quite immobile, a little sad. He watched her.

Then she told him what he had already guessed, that she and her husband
were staying with Rupert Kare for a week or so. No one in the place, she
remarked, had said a word about his living round above.

“I doubt if they know,” Ivor said. “I’m living a frightfully private
life.”

“So you never go up there, then?” she wondered curiously. “Though I seem
to remember your knowing Rupert quite well once upon a time.”

“Oh, yes!” But he might just as well have said, “Oh, no!” for all the
real answer he gave. But he knew that Virginia was peculiarly able to
understand people’s dislikes and distempers, and that she allowed for
them; it used commonly to be her own feeling about a good many people.
Yes, she understood.

“But it isn’t so easy for me--to outlaw myself like that,” she told him
gravely. “For there I am, you see, still in it. Same men, same women,
same places, same baubles. And only dress and dancing changes.... And so
I insisted on escaping this afternoon for an hour or so.”

“You are very wise, Ivor,” she suddenly said, “to have left all that as
suddenly as you did, so long ago. You annoyed us, but then you wanted to
annoy us, and you were wise. And do you know, I’ve always said that you
are very wise. Whenever your name is mentioned, whether it’s about a
book or a woman, I always say I knew you once and that you are very
wise. He knew us all once, I add, but now he is very wise and exclusive.
He is indiscriminately exclusive, I say....”

“It’s only that I’m trying to work,” he earnestly explained, looking up
at her. And she stared down at him, and under the shadow of her hat her
mouth seemed twisted into a queer little smile which puzzled him.

It was darkening; and it was as she was about to leave him that he
suddenly asked her:--

“I say, Virginia, do you remember being made to copy out in your first
copy-book as a child that marvellous sentence: ‘When gentlefolk meet,
compliments are exchanged’? Do you remember, Virginia?”

“That’s us to-day,” he explained.

Her eyes contracted just a little, quizzically. And with her head a
little sideways, she examined him. She was curiously detached, this
Virginia, yet curiously warm....

“Yes, but that’s not _me_, Ivor. It’s not _my_ nature.” And it was as
though she wanted to tell him an ulterior something; but there was no
time, it was quickly darkening; the horse stamped eagerly, and she swung
away with it. “I’m not like that at all, really, Ivor,” she said
swiftly. “It’s you who draw it out of one ... maybe.”

“That’s your particular quality, Ivor,” she cried to him, a woman on a
horse, going away. Strangely come, strangely gone! He stared after her
through the hedge, a swaying figure through the darkening parkland. A
shadow astride a horse ... so fair and gallant! She turned and waved a
hand to him, she cried a word, but he didn’t hear it, it was a lost
word. A sable wraith she was in the parkland, fading away into the
dolorous crypt of winter. She was a symbol for something....

And Ivor thought: “O mystic and sombre Virginia....”

And he wondered if he would see her again. He wondered.... And he didn’t
know. He knew nothing about this Virginia--whom he had thought he had
judged so well! And as he strode homewards through the chill gloom he
mocked the judgments of his early “twenties” a little viciously.
“Christ, how they must have loathed me!” he thought.

CHAPTER III

He sat a while over his port that night. He contemplated Virginia. A
strange woman she is, he thought. Every woman has a legend, there is a
legend to every woman, but what is Virginia’s? She’s so pitiful--yet
why? You see, he explained to himself, she seems to have made a fool of
herself in a deep, secret way. People don’t understand her, and she
despises people, and because she despises people she thinks she despises
life....

Her name and face were familiar--too familiar--to that increasing part
of England that must read its daily and weekly lot of gossip in the
papers. The Romans had gladiators to amuse the mob, Ivor thought, but
England can do it quite cheaply, for the mob has learned to read....
Yet, somehow, Virginia had licensed this interest; maybe she had
licensed it by so whole-heartedly despising it, for there are ways and
ways of despising things. No one could deny that there was a glamour
about her, certainly there was a glamour. But there was a rottenness in
that glamour--now where did that come from? And why? Quite decent men
took faint licence with her name, while lewd men who had never met
Virginia, could never have met her, said that they had touched her, they
chuckled at the mention of her name....

Glamour! Now this glamour is a very remarkable thing, a strange and
indefinable thing, and very rare: for it does not fall on women because
they have many lovers, it does not fall on women because they are
wonderfully constant to one lover, and it certainly does not fall on
women who Do Things. Sometimes it happens on a courtesan, sometimes on
a great lady; but this glamour is no snob, it cares nothing for the
claims of fashion, for it may quite well happen on a dairymaid, so that
a whole countryside grows aware of her and a whole country sorrows for
her death. Philosophers have spun and metaphysicians toiled, yet this
stuff of glamour still evades the mortal coils of definition. And whence
it comes, no one can tell; nor why it comes--nor whither it goes! though
poets do say that they can smell the faint, musty smell of tragedy in
its destiny, and historians can never resist ascribing it to luckless
men and women of high degree. And sometimes you may love a woman
mightily, yet try as you will you cannot find glamour in her, you simply
cannot; she is just a woman, yours to love but not to dream about. Yes,
this glamour is a wayward thing, it just comes and touches a lovely
woman in each generation, and because of it her youth is long remembered
and her middle-age forgiven, if she live so long. It carries something
_fey_ with it, this glamour. It is a mysterious and uncommon thing.
Poetry is written about it, and it is as wan as the poetry that is
written about it....

Virginia’s marriage to the American in 1913 had turned out a sorry
business. He was never known but as “the American”--but how unlike Henry
James’s it only appeared later!--and it was only by an effort of memory
that Ivor remembered his name had been Hector Sardon. He was dead. Ivor
had never met him, but had heard of him as a small, very feverish man,
and handsome of his kind, which was deep-eyed and sardonic; he was said
to speak with charming and vivid gestures of the hands. It had been a
love-match between him and Virginia, people said. Later, it was
whispered that “the American” had turned bad. The fever of his deep-set
eyes and nervous gestures was now explained. Cocaine. But all this
leaked very gradually out, for Virginia was secret, she never confided.
Virginia was always with him, they were silent companions, exquisite
dancers together; other people might whirl round a ballroom--for
exercise?--but Virginia and “the American” danced slowly, softly, in
exquisite certainty of movement. In life they might fumble, but not in
dancing.... And then, in the awful winter of 1915, Hector Sardon died
suddenly.

He died so suddenly that there had to be an inquest; and the question of
drugs was for some time uppermost in the minds of the public, the press,
and the coroner--so intimate did they become with it, indeed, that it
was never called but by its christian name of “dope.” The coroner, Mr.
Odleby Ingle, was inclined to be critical, though of course always just.
The press was also critical. And in warlike minds the question of
“drugs” was found to be inseparable from the question of “aliens.” It
was suggested that this kind of thing was un-English; and the “Huns” got
somehow mixed up with the death by cocaine of an American gentleman. The
_Daily Mail_, in quest of honour, Mr. Asquith’s head, two-million
circulation and as yet uninterned Germans, jousted once again with The
Hidden Hand of the Hun. Fierce gentlemen in Parliament were moved to
denunciation of England’s levity in its treatment of “aliens”; and Mr.
Pemberton Billing got the whole thing frightfully mixed up with the
inadequacy of London’s Air Defences.... The war-fever was at its highest
in 1915. The only person who kept his head, besides the soldiers who
were too busy fighting, was Mr. Bernard Shaw: which was why every one
wanted to punch it for him. It was generally conceded that England was
altogether too kind to aliens. (Before the war only foreigners without
money were called “aliens”; during the war all foreigners were called
aliens. _Bella, horrida bella!_) It was suggested that the march of
civilisation had taken us past the point when gentlemen need be
gentlemen in war-time. “Remember we are at war!” you could say, and at
once forget everything else. Only the police exempted themselves from
this remembering business in their treatment of aliens; for the English
police are the most courtly and the most incorruptible police in the
world--which was why every one said they were inefficient about the
“alien menace.” Soldiers laughed, but among civilians the alien-fever
ran brave and high, and ever braver and higher. “We cannot fight in
Flanders, but we will do our duty here!” cried fierce, and otherwise
quite pleasant, old gentlemen in clubs and trains.

The French civilian, imagined by the English civilian to be so
excitable, managed these things differently; the French civilian, in
fact, did not manage them at all; the French civilian said “_Nous sommes
trahis!_” at least once every day, and then, carelessly leaving the
“alien menace” to the police, set about the bloodshot business of life
in war-time. But the English civilian was made of sterner stuff; and
while young men were dying in the sky and on the land, on the sea and
under the sea, old men waxed worthy of the sons and nephews they had
“given” to England. “We are all pacifists at heart,” they said grimly,
“but war is the test of manhood.”

(It has become the fashion to slang old men in general. It is not a bad
fashion. Superior people despise all fashions; they smile. But it is a
pity that superior women despise all fashions.)

The inquest on Hector Sardon, conducted though it was with every tact
and discretion by Mr. Odleby Ingle, gave the alien agitation yet another
impetus. All this “dope” mess was due to aliens, it was said. No
Englishman took dope, unless he was lured to it by an alien’s fiendish
charm. (The fiendish charm of aliens in war-time, male and female, is of
course notorious. Ladies of title were supposed to fall to it every day,
and policemen had to harden their hearts like anything. Every one had to
harden his or her heart.) Nor did our allies take “dope.” Neither
France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Serbia, Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia,
Japan, Montenegro, Siam, nor the Hedjaz--only neutrals and “alien
enemies.” And it was suspected (shrewdly) that an American citizen would
not so readily have died of “dope” if America had been fighting with us;
the death by cocaine of Hector Sardon was considered to serve President
Wilson jolly well right for being “too proud to fight.”

The inquest was, of course, a very sad business for Virginia. Many
people carried away from the inquest an “indelible” picture of a hard,
white face with tired, defensive eyes; and the illustrated papers had to
pay through the nose for her likenesses from the photographers who had
always made Virginia’s life a burden by clamours for a “sitting.” The
traffic in “dope” was noticeably on the overworked police’s nerves that
year; and common-or-garden policemen were discovering an acute nose for
opium--“It makes you sick, the first pipe,” said people who had friends
who knew--all the way from Dover Street to Chinatown. (Poor little
Chinatown! what a boon thou hast been to Mr. Burke, and what little
profit hast thou had from him!) The dead American, that quiet and
feverish gentleman of the nervous gestures, was made the scapegoat of
the public’s interest and the press’s violence. An overdose of cocaine
was found to be the direct cause of Hector Sardon’s death. And the just
but severe inquisition of Mr. Odleby Ingle, “in probing this matter to
its very core,” unearthed some nasty details about Hector Sardon’s even
more private life. It was a bad look-out for certain gentlemen of his
acquaintance, it seemed. People began to read Petronius. It was only too
evident that Hector Sardon had gone the limit in more ways than one; and
Mr. Bottomley was furious about it, crying: “What shall be done with
these Pests? Shall England never be clean?” A nasty business! Virginia
suffered her ordeal intelligently, but in cold contempt. What had she to
do with this? There was no one but sympathised with her, and even Mr.
Odleby Ingle was noticeably considerate, though just, towards innocence
in so sorry a plight. Every one sympathised with Virginia; it was an
awful shame for her, they said. And yet, somehow, there was in their
voices a suggestion, ever so faint, that it was rather the kind of thing
which just _might_ happen to Virginia rather than to any other woman....

“The American” had left her all his money, and Virginia was thus a very
rich woman, for her mother, a Colter from Yorkshire, had already left
her a considerable income. (Lady Carnal had adored her only child. As
Virginia, before her first marriage, would come in late from a party,
her mother would dart out at her from her bedroom and peck at her.
Virginia hated being pecked at, especially at that time of night, and
her face was a mask. “Pouf! you’ve been drinking!” would cry Lady Carnal
in desperation, and dart back into her bedroom again.) A year after the
American’s death Virginia married George Tarlyon--George Almeric St.
George, sixth Viscount Tarlyon. It was commonly admitted that you
couldn’t do better than marry George Tarlyon, for he was the perfect
thing of his kind. The war lost him nothing, had gained him everything
in an extraordinary degree--Major the Viscount Tarlyon, D.S.O., M.C.,
etc. Foreign countries contributed magnificently to the et ceteras,
while Virginia contributed herself and her fortune; for George Tarlyon,
at thirty-four, had spent everything he had ever had, except his place
in Galway, which was as unsaleable as it was uninhabitable--by him,
anyway. It was said to be a love-match. They had been seen together now
and then during Hector Sardon’s last year, and after his death they were
always together. Natural enough that she should try to forget that
unpleasantness in such gay and gallant and clean companionship. But
their marriage had not been thought quite inevitable, for nothing was
quite inevitable in dealing with people like Virginia and George Almeric
St. George--especially George Almeric St. George. Virginia, for all her
wits and beauty, might not hold Lord Tarlyon, poor though he was. It was
commonly said, and easily believed, that many women had loved him.

They were married in 1916. And there they were, Lord and Lady Tarlyon, a
notable couple everywhere. The only thing George Tarlyon had ever lacked
was money, and now he had as much as he wanted, for Virginia was
indifferent about money, she was generous. They spent magnificently
during his “leaves.” And their lives were open for the world to see, a
straight pair of English people: a gallant pair of the same colour, the
same quality, and the same hazardous blue eyes. Tarlyon’s eyes were of a
slightly frozen blue, a little mocking, very charming. He was an
extraordinarily fair man: weathered brick-dust face generally smiling,
just a little: an easy man to get on with, a very easy man. A remarkably
amusing man, Tarlyon. It was said that he and Virginia were very good
companions for each other.

And pleasant it was to see them together, fair to fair, height to
height, English to English, most perfectly and elegantly paired. A
charming sight for foreigners to see, walking together of a morning from
their house in Belgrave Square: George Tarlyon in the long gray coat of
the Brigade, that extravagant, high-waisted, red-lined gray coat, tall
and straight and with a swing in his walk: and Virginia, his lady,
enwrapped in furs--not, like so many women, smothered in them, for
Virginia was always mistress of what she wore--or better still, on an
autumn morning, in a high-collared black coat lined with green, which
very gallantly became her tall, slim person and imperious head. They
looked what they were, perfectly, people of degree--and how rare that is
nowadays, people said.

Yet Virginia did not lose her glamour, nor did her glamour lose that
queer rot; it was always there, about her, something musty in something
fine. Her father’s friends wondered a little about it. She had always
something in reserve, a vague something, and people took vague licence
with that vague something. That is a way people have. Virginia seemed
not to be quite of the society which she graced so brilliantly; she
seemed to despise it, she passed people swiftly. A queer provocative
indifference there was about her.... Take a drawing-room full of people
at any hour of night, and watch Virginia there, an ornament in the most
brilliant company. Watch now! Watch the pretty lady, the lovely, the
remote, the queerly ungracious Virginia! Suddenly, swiftly, silently,
she leaves the room. She waits for no man. She leaves the house. Just
like that, she leaves it. Maybe this departure offends--Virginia doesn’t
care! And if she cares, she will be forgiven. Now, whither does this
swift and secret passage take her? Sometimes to her house in Belgrave
Square, a mausoleum of a house which Virginia bitterly hates: sometimes
to meet some one in some place: more often to the Mont Agel.

She would enter the Mont Agel at any hour of night by the hotel
entrance, having rung the bell; and she would sit in the deserted and
shuttered restaurant, in the light of a candle stuck in its own grease
on a saucer--it was war-time then, you understand. There she would sit,
with the polite and amiable M. Stutz hovering about, for that urbane
gentleman never went to bed, never. Sometimes M. Stutz would be
encouraged to sit at the table and discuss a glass of Vichy Water with
Lady Tarlyon, for she seldom drank anything but Vichy Water, which just
shows how little mothers know about their daughters. But more often he
would leave her alone, guessing that it was for solitude she had come
hither, this lady of high fashion in all her finery: not hard, nor
brazen, but queerly childish and infinitely remote.

She would write letters, sitting there, and every now and then she would
sip her Vichy Water. Half a glass of Vichy Water would last Virginia a
long time; but cigarettes would fade before her contemplation, a box of
ten cigarettes would fade away. Her doctor would have something to say
about that soon. She never wrote her letters but in pencil, a scrawling
hand. And she would write, maybe, to Mr. Kerrison, in his
semi-demi-quasi-social part of Hampstead, telling him in an ironic way
of what she had done that night, and of the people she had seen; she
would comment on the people she had seen and talked to that evening,
ironically. It wasn’t that she liked Mr. Kerrison, in fact she thought
of him as a very absurd man indeed, but she had somehow got into this
habit of writing letters to him in a particular spirit; and when people
protested about Mr. Kerrison, or any other of her friends, saying that
some of them were really too awful, she would give her slight, hoarse
little laugh, and answer that they were quite inevitable in her life,
quite inevitable; and, having said that, she would laugh a little again,
and the subject of Mr. Kerrison or any one else would be closed for the
time being.... Or she would write letters to a young artist whose work,
person, or “mentality” (oh, useful word!) had made some call on her
sympathy. Her letters from the Mont Agel, addressed in that pencilled
scrawl, would suddenly drop on studios in all parts of London, sometimes
on very poor studios indeed, asking them what they were doing and if
they were working well these days, and if they would care to come to
luncheon with her one day, and naming a day for that luncheon, either at
the Mont Agel, the Café Royal, or Belgrave Square. And sometimes, if it
was a very poor little artist she was writing to, there would be a
cheque tucked away in the letter. But no poor little artist ever
received a cheque twice who was tactless enough to thank her, no matter
how elegantly.

And then, in the early hours of the morning, she would leave the Mont
Agel. Swiftly she would penetrate the black solitudes of Soho in
war-time: a rich and fragile figure braving all the dangers of the city
by night, an almost fearful figure to arise suddenly in an honest man’s
homeward path: so tall and golden and proud of carriage, so marvellously
indifferent to his astonished stare! Sometimes she would have to walk a
long way before she could find a taxi--through Soho to Shaftesbury
Avenue, and up that to Piccadilly Circus. Sometimes men would murmur in
passing, sometimes they would say the coarsest things, and once or twice
a man caught at her arm as she swiftly passed him; and Virginia looked
at him straightly, for a swift second, as though secretly understanding
his desire and mocking it; and then she went on her way as though her
way had been uninterrupted ... homewards to Belgrave Square.

Virginia often capped the most conventional evenings with this swift and
solitary vagabondage of the early hours, homewards from the Mont Agel.

“Virginia has a mind like a cathedral,” said her father, gay Lord Carnal
of the Gardenia.

“Of course every cathedral has its gargoyles,” added my Lord Carnal
wistfully.

Lord Carnal was the ninth baron. It will be remembered by students of
Court history that the first Lord Carnal[D] was so created by the
exceeding love of that charming Stuart king who, however, later again
lost his head about his Grace of Buckingham--the more justly, Puritans
have said, to be deprived of it by Oliver Cromwell. Since when the
Carnals have come to be known for many things, not the least among which
is their quality of sociability and their talent for longevity. “No
Carnal ever dies--but, my God, how well they live!” some one is reported
to have said sometime. And of the baron of the day, whose portrait by
Gainsborough is one of the treasures of Carnal Towers in Hampshire, Lord
George Hell found breath to exclaim: “There’s no fight but a Carnal’s in
it, no bed but a Carnal’s on it, no table but a Carnal’s under it--no
Carnal has ever been seen alone, sir!”

The ninth baron, who never said a careless thing and never condemned a
correct one, looked not at all likely to break the record of the
previous eight’s longevity. There was only one day in the year when Lord
Carnal did not wear a gardenia, and that was on Alexandra Rose Day, when
he wore a carnation.

That and Virginia are the only remarkable things the ninth baron ever
did.

CHAPTER IV

Late in the afternoon of the day following the meeting in the little
lane, as Ivor sat reading over the fire in the sitting-room, Turner
announced: “Lady Tarlyon, sir.” And there was a note akin to surprise in
Turner’s voice.

“’E seemed pleased enough!” Turner said to Mrs. Hope in the kitchen.

“And I should think so indeed!” cried Mrs. Hope indignantly. “After all
this time alone....”

“My movements,” said Virginia, in her slightly hoarse, low voice, “are
cloaked in mystery. I’ve come to see you, Ivor.”

He was delighted to see her....

Virginia swiftly surveyed the comfort of the low-ceilinged room, and
with a sigh of relief threw herself into one of the two deep arm-chairs
on each side of the fire.

“A long and cold and lonely walk it was,” she complained. He gave her a
cigarette.

Her hat, that so black and anarchichal hat, made a loose black stain on
the polished table; and her golden-tawny hair shone bright between the
firelight and the lamp. Lithe and long and slack this Virginia looked,
deliciously at rest in the deep expanse of her chair. And her bright,
yellow silk jumper coloured the room with a sudden luxury and meaning.
Fantasy has come into the room, thought Ivor.

“I’m finding,” he told her, “that this room is not the complete room I
had thought. I have liked the decoration of this room until this
moment----”

“Thank you!” said Virginia.

“---- but now I see that the decoration it really needs, Virginia, is
that yellow silk jumper--how nice it would be if you left it behind with
me, so that I could hang it up on the wall! and every time I saw it I
would think: ‘Virginia came to see me once!’”

Her face was laid sideways against her palm, and her eyes smiled faintly
into the fire; and she held up a very little foot to the fire.

“I walked three miles on a winter day,” she said, “to hear you talk.
That was my great idea for to-day, Ivor. I myself have not been doing
very much talking of late--and, you know, I’m very tired of being with
people whose main purpose in conversation is to massacre syntax and
evade sense.”

“But it’s not quite fair to come to talk to a man who has been alone for
weeks! Maybe you will be washed away in the raw stuff--and there will be
headlines in the papers: Disappearance of famous beauty--thought to have
been washed away in the froth of a hermit’s sudden speech.’ ...”

But she was silent, provoking him. She was yielding up her interest in
him to him, to do as he liked with--on a January afternoon! And in the
nervous stress of that moment he jumped up from his chair and stood by
the fire, and bent to it to light a spill for his cigarette; and he
stared into it, his face sideways to her.

Virginia watched him curiously.

“You told me yesterday that you were working, Ivor. Now I would like to
hear about that--may I? Are you writing a new novel?”

He stood above her on the hearth, she sprawled lazily in the chair
beneath him.

“I’m not writing anything, Virginia--I’m trying to learn how to play a
game. It’s called a ‘game’ anyway--that one which it used to be the
fashion for you and me and all cleverish young people to despise--the
game of trying to understand the country we live in so that we might
help in the working of it. It sounds a pompous business, and so we
despised it.”

“Oh!” And Virginia made a little face, as though a little puzzled and a
little bored. “Do you seriously mean to tell me that you are going to
stand on that hearth and talk politics to me? Oh, Ivor, _must_ you do
that!” She put such pathos into her words that they laughed together.

“Yes, Ivor?” she asked gently.

“But I’m very serious about it, Virginia, so it’s no good your saying,
“Yes, Ivor” at me as though I needed humouring. I’ve got a frightfully
English feeling about me these days,” he explained, “and I can’t bear to
think of the way we’ve all slacked--all we young and youngish people.
Just utterly slacked!”

“But what about losing lives and legs and arms?” she put to him. “How
did you manage to do all that and slack as well?”

“People are getting fat on that remark,” he told her darkly, “and are
going to get still fatter--until one day something pricks them and then
they’ll be all thin and miserable. I beg you not to play the fool with
your lovely slim figure, Virginia. But I’m sure you said that as a way
of sympathising about my arm, which is nice of you, but not an
argument....”

“_I’m_ not arguing,” Virginia said. “I’m being treated like a public
institution. Very queenly I feel....”

He wanted her to understand.

“But you do know, don’t you, that it’s as easy to fight for a country as
for a woman, particularly if they are yours? And that it’s much easier
to fight for a country or a woman than to understand either--or even
want to, for the matter of that! Why, Virginia, they said the war was
going to teach us things, they’ve actually got the cheek to say now that
the war has taught us things, fine things. Well, I’m damned if I see
what the war has taught us except that it’s pretty easy for every sort
of man to die--and now the peace is mobilising to teach us that it’s
jolly difficult for every sort of man to live. That’s a platitude, of
course, but that doesn’t make it less true.” He seemed to be angry about
it.

Virginia nodded. It wasn’t difficult for her to live, if having money is
living, but she understood. This was fairly good sense, anyway, for
politics. Virginia had always thought that politics were only
interesting from a bad-tempered point of view.

“That’s what I meant,” he went on, “when I said all the youngish people
are slacking. They are taking no hand in the work of the country, they
are doing nothing about it and thinking nothing about it. At least our
fathers tried to use what energy and intelligence they had left over
from riding horses and talking about them; they tried to do something as
a matter of course, even if they had to sandwich that something between
a salmon and a grouse, and a pretty fine mess they made of it--but we
don’t even make a mess, we sit and watch other people making a mess for
us.”

The light of argument peeped faintly out of Virginia’s eyes.

“You don’t seem to realise,” she said, “that England expects every young
man not to get in the way of other people doing their duty. So our young
men have simply had to stand aside--or go into the Foreign Office, which
is the same thing--for it’s been so dunned into them that they’re no use
for anything that now they jolly well aren’t. You can’t tell the
public-schools for years and years that they produce nothing but
fatheads and then expect them to turn out geniuses....”

“It’s been made very difficult for us not to slack,” she said.

Ivor made an impatient gesture. He had heard that before.

“It’s got something to do with the will to enjoy,” she went on. “I heard
some one say that....”

“And we did enjoy, too,” she added oddly, “just before the war and
during the war--we and our lovely dead and dying men!”

And that is about the last word Virginia said. For Ivor
talked--tremendously. Talk was seething darkly within him, and it had to
come out--and this woman had asked for it! And so out came the “Ivory”
intolerances and prejudices which Magdalen had used to tease and Rodney
West to encourage, thinking that no man was good for anything if he
wasn’t fierce about something. Here, in this animus of Ivor’s against
the “young men of opportunity,” in that they strove to be so little
worthy of it, spoke the Aunt Moira in him: “Whatever you do, you must do
Something! For Heaven’s sake, Ivor, don’t be slack, don’t be shoddy,
don’t be sodden! You must think Something, do Something!” That Aunt
Moira who, ever mightily contradicting herself, had so efficiently
helped that fine gentleman of promise, her younger brother, to do
nothing at all, nothing but love....

And Ivor made a joke. The occasion, Virginia suggested, called for a
little imagination on his part, so he had better imagine something. So
Ivor imagined a revolution for her--oh, a very imaginary revolution!
There was blood, of course. He told her how one day, with a crash and a
bang and a mighty cry, the people of England rose in one body and hurled
themselves at Whitehall. Of course there was a reason for this, as they
tried to explain to Whitehall. They had come from factories and mills
and mines and all the other places that rebels come from, all with the
one mighty cry, “We’ll larn ’em to be gentlemen!” For this revolution
was one of the people at last utterly sick of government by feeble
gentlemen. A young man from Owens College headed the revolution, but he
died soon after. And at that time the charming but sinister M. Caillaux
was President of France....

“We are the New Gentlemen,” the rebels cried. Men of the lower sort had
everywhere raised their heads, and behold! they had seen England as one
vast knighthood, but what knights were those! Whereupon men made a great
cry that the land of England was being sloppily governed and that
something must be done about it. And of course there was no lack of
agitators to point out, with plausible arguments, that the war had
helped the British Lion to find out the British Ass--which last, the
agitators insisted, was an immaculate man, hitherto known as a
gentleman, with red tabs and gold braid about him, a long tradition
behind him, and a bloody fine mess all round him. “It is up to you,” the
agitators cried, “to put the lid on all that.” Which thing was done, so
that traditions were instantly withered into offal, the mad dream of
Master Jack Cade came true at last, and the hapless middle-class had
more reason than ever to wail, “What shall we do with our sons?” for no
one cared what they did with them so long as they made them work. And
Chivalry, most shy and most beautiful of all the birds that grace the
aviary of human virtues, was found at last with broken wings in the
gutters of Fleet Street, was tenderly nursed back to life and on a
memorable holy-day was released from Hyde Park Corner--a lovely thing to
entrance the eye and stir the heart of Britain, from Cornwall to
Aberdeen and even farther. The king was escorted in exceeding splendid
state to Windsor, the route thither being lined by such a vast concourse
of cheering people as had never before been seen gathered together but
at a football match. And there was instantly begun the building of a
National Opera House, in which Sir Thomas Beecham could conduct for
evermore without breaking his heart or his purse. And there was
organised a massacre of _maîtres d’hôtel_, who have gone so far in
making English youth obsequious. Many of the old order were tried for
their lives before an extraordinary tribunal especially got together to
try people for their lives on the capital charge of whether they had or
had not been gentlemen: of course there was the usual controversy as to
the exact definition of a gentleman, and many suggestions were put
forward, among which that “a gentleman is one who is never
unintentionally rude to any one,” was accorded the most favour; but in
the end Mr. Bernard Shaw’s definition was unanimously adopted, as being
both brief and practical, that “a gentleman is a man who puts more into
life than he takes out.” Good old Shaw, people cried. Mr. Churchill and
some few others were finally acquitted on their disarming plea, that
they belonged to a different age from this, a feudal age, and were
therefore not responsible for their actions in this; it was further
pleaded on behalf of Mr. Churchill that he had been educated without
heed to cost, in that England had spent more than a hundred million
sterling in giving him a thorough working knowledge of geography alone,
particularly as regards Gallipoli, Antwerp, Mesopotamia, and Russia; and
that England could not afford to waste, but must rather reserve for the
highest office, one to whom she had given the most expensive
public-school education obtainable. But there were many who did not
discover so much ingenuity, and were never heard of again. While there
were some who proved their worth by banding themselves together with
warlike cries, to the effect that though they might not have put more
into life than they had taken out, they had taken out of their banks a
good deal more than they had put in, and so did not mind dying. And
these straightway entrenched themselves within Devonshire House and the
Ritz, the last a very stout and solid building in the manner of the old
Bastille, originally conceived, no doubt, with a fearful eye on
class-prejudice. Devonshire House was stormed through a breach on the
Stratton Street side, and many were killed but none taken, but the siege
of the Ritz was long and bloody, as of course it would be. Both sides
were fertile in invention, and Piccadilly was a shambles from Bond
Street to Clarges Street; but both in bravery and invention the
besieged had something of the advantage, for they were led by the men of
White’s, the most gallant of all those who asserted their right to be
gentlemen when and how they pleased: and were, moreover, greatly
assisted by their exact knowledge of every corner of the building, which
was of course known to the New Gentlemen only from passing buses or from
the Green Park on Sunday afternoons. But one night Wimborne House, which
lies behind the Ritz and was valiantly held by my lord Viscount Wimborne
and his men, all veterans of his Irish vice-royalty, was betrayed by a
Hebrew gentleman lately black-balled from the Royal Automobile Club: the
New Gentlemen poured through the breach, and the defenders of the old
order were slain to the last man--and he a gay and handsome man of
stuttering speech and many parlour-tricks, now at last dying formidably
on the steps of the _foyer_ with a great laugh and a cry, “For King and
Cocktail!” And when again the old order raised its head it was only to
be finally crushed at the rout of Kensington, where the flower of Oxford
and Cambridge, marching to the relief of London, was surprised and
overthrown while awaiting the issue of a dog-fight at the corner of
Church Street....

“At what time will you dine, sir?” Turner asked patiently from the door.

“Lord, it’s half-past eight!” Virginia cried.

“Do you think,” she asked shyly, “that I could share your homely kipper!
‘Now I’m here’ sort of thing, you know....”

“Turner,” cried Ivor to the man at the door, “you heard that? What are
you going to do about it?... You see,” he explained, when Turner had
gone out, “you are my first guest in this house.”

“Well, you are an odd man, I do think!” Virginia suddenly attacked him.
“Do you mean to say that you aren’t in the least curious to know what my
host, friends, and husband will think at my not turning up to dinner?”

“But, Virginia, they wouldn’t be your host, friends, and husband if they
were very surprised at a little thing like that, would they? Of course
we can send a message,” he added. “I’ve got a kind of car somewhere
about the house. It’s an American car----”

“Oh, no! To send a man three miles to say I’m not turning up for a
dinner which they’ll have eaten by then--oh, no! They’ll just think I’m
lost, that’s all.”

“And so I am!” she added, with a sudden smile.

She touched her hair, she jumped up and looked into the mirror, and she
made a face at what she saw.

“If you will show me to your bedroom, Ivor,” she turned to him to say,
“I will somehow or other put the fear of God into ‘Swan and Edgar’....”

It was after eleven when they heard the rustle of a car on the little
gravel drive. The rustle stopped.

Ivor grandly waved a hand towards the curtained windows: “Here come the
messengers of Kare and Tarlyon to demand a very fair lady.”

Virginia, again in the depths of her chair after dinner, looked mildly
surprised; but just a little more than mildly when her husband came in
almost on top of Turner. George Tarlyon stood grinning at Virginia from
the doorway, and at Ivor. And Ivor couldn’t help smiling back at the
“clever fellow” expression on the handsome face.

“Here we are, you see!” Tarlyon cried; and the grin was all over his
face, a gay, mocking grin.

“Well, I’m very pleased,” Ivor met him in the middle of the room. They
were of a height, dark and fair, but Tarlyon was much the stronger set
of the two. His extraordinarily fair hair was crisply curly from his
wide, reddish forehead; he looked clean and scrubbed and
weathered--always as though the salt of the sea had just whipped his
face. And so gay, with that attractive smile that never left the
slightly frozen blue eyes....

Virginia vaguely introduced the two men. And she examined her husband,
rather severely.

“This is very odd, I do think,” she said.

Lord Tarlyon turned very frankly to Ivor, appealing to him:--

“I say, you know, I’m awfully sorry to have rushed in on you like this.
But, don’t you see----”

“Will you have a drink?” asked Ivor.

“Certainly. Used to hear about you, you know, from a man in my mess
called Transome. Thought no end of you, he did. I was sorry he went....”
He turned to Virginia, still appealing: “What I mean to say is, my dear,
that I knew you’d be grateful for a lift home in the car, so I brought
the blessed thing along....” He took the glass from Ivor. “Damned good
husband I am, I do think,” he teased Virginia. Splendid he was, standing
there by the table between the two, simply glowing with the pleasure of
the moment, laughing at them, teasing Virginia with that sideways little
grin under his fair, clipped moustache. He mocked Virginia. He toasted
Virginia....

“Yes, but how did you find out I was here?” Virginia asked. “For I left
no word as to where I would be, and my footprints are too small to be
visible to the human eye....”

“Easy, my dear, dead easy! On your not turning up for dinner, with every
excuse, I must say”--he bowed to Ivor--“Kare put inquiries through the
butler to the servants’ hall to find out whether anything had been heard
of any dark, handsome strangers of superior mentality in the
neighbourhood. On the name Marlay being mentioned we all naturally stood
to attention at once. That’s our man, we cried with one voice. Anyway, I
cried and they echoed. And so here I am! Easy, Virginia, dead easy!”

“But it won’t be so easy to get home,” Virginia remarked, “if you have
another drink....”

George Tarlyon leaned against the edge of the table: enjoying himself
immensely, it seemed. So gay, so slack.... Ivor was immensely amused by
him; anyway, he thought he was. He gave him another drink.

But Virginia looked tired, staring into the bright fire. She seemed
suddenly to have lost all interest in the two men in the room.

“I say, I liked that book of yours,” Tarlyon said comfortably to Ivor.
He stretched his legs out a little, towards the fire. “You know, that
one called--something about a courtesan....”

“_The Legend of the Last Courtesan_,” Virginia said into the fire.

“That’s it, Virginia! Splendid book, I thought. I don’t have time to
read as a rule, but I finished that--Virginia saying she knew you once,
you know, and that you were clever.... Just the kind of book I’d like to
write myself if I wasn’t a half-wit....”

“Which half?” asked Virginia softly. “So that I’ll know....”

“There you are, Marlay!” Tarlyon cried; and he laughed with his head
thrown back and his eyes wrinkled up. “Virginia thinks I’m a most
consummate ass, but when I do try talking the clever stuff for which
I’ve a natural aptitude she quickly puts the lid on me.... But,
seriously, Marlay, I did like that book of yours. You got the eighteenth
century uncommonly well, I thought. And I think that word ‘courtesan’ is
a considerate word--what I mean is that it was very decent of you to
trouble to write a long word like ‘courtesan’ time over again, when you
could have used a couple of short but septic ones just as well.
Virginia, are you with me in this?... She yawns at me! Marlay, my wife
yawns at me! All women yawn at the men they love--did Oscar Wilde say
that, Marlay, or have I said a marvellous thing?”

“A marvellous thing, I think,” Ivor just managed to say. “Wilde said
something like ‘All men kill the thing they love....’”

“Oh, that’s just a quibble--they come to the same thing. The man loves,
the woman yawns, and then the man kills her! So I have said a marvellous
thing after all! Are you listening, Virginia?”

Virginia looked very tired indeed. She smiled at him sleepily. George
always made her smile in the end.

“I feel myself getting more brilliant every moment,” Tarlyon said
comfortably. “It’s this room, Marlay, that’s having a witty effect on
me, I think. And I also think it’s pretty clever of you to have a quiet
little house like this, where you can receive the lovely ladies who get
bored with our conversation at Rupert Kare’s....”

“But their husbands can come too,” Ivor pointed out, “if they behave
themselves.”

“Oh, I say!” Tarlyon stared, and laughed.

Virginia suddenly jumped up. In desperation, it seemed. And with a
gesture the black anarchical hat crowned her head, her coat was to hand,
and she was ready to go; and she was gone. Tarlyon followed reluctantly.

As he started off the car, she said to Ivor, in the front doorway:
“We’ve had a lovely talk, Ivor--I’ve loved my evening with you. I’ll try
to come again, only we are due off to the South any day----”

“Come on, Virginia!” came Tarlyon’s voice from the glistening shape of
the car--charming young Charles Rolls’s legacy to England.

“Good-night, Ivor,” she said, and went swiftly.

“Good-night, Marlay, good-night,” came the gay waving voice of George
Tarlyon, as the car curved softly round the drive and away to the London
road. Ivor heard his laugh in the distance. An amusing man. Those two,
out there....

CHAPTER V

Virginia came only once again. Four nights later, a little after ten
o’clock. Ivor, his book laid aside, was pacing the room in the suddenly
restless way which was growing on him, when he heard the soft rustle of
the car on the drive. He stood very still. And then an apparition came
into the room. The apparition came towards him. He smiled at it, but the
apparition was grave of face. Its face looked bleak.

“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France
to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you.” It said that shyly.

She had come alone, driving the open car. Virginia hated closed cars,
she loved air, bitter, chill air; it made her feel ill, for she was very
delicate, but she loved bitter, chill air. And now her face looked
blanched with it, her blue eyes bitten bright with it; and a strand or
two of golden hair played loose about her forehead, for her head had
been uncovered but for that transparent stuff now on the table. She
smiled vaguely, there was no light in her.

“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France
to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you....”

It was a queer moment for him, an upside-down kind of moment. He was
still smiling at the amazing fact of seeing her--amazing because he had
so wanted to!--when those words, intruding at the same moment, quite
upset the equilibrium of his pleased gesture. He felt vividly that he
didn’t want her to go away, but not at all. She stood close by him, in
front of the fire. The little white face.... And all he could say was
plaintively, absurdly: “But I hate your going away, Virginia--suddenly,
like this!”

“It’s the only way to go away,” she said softly to the fire.

She had slipped off her fur-coat on to a chair, and now stood revealed
in her evening-dress: a dress too rich for the ordinary occasion, a
Venetian kind of dress, a deplorably beautiful dress of the kind which,
women said dispassionately, only Virginia could “carry off.” What
Madeleine Vionnet had created as a beautiful joke, Virginia made into a
magnificent illusion. Throat and arms and shoulders exceeding white, her
bosom tight in deep red silk of taffeta--but lo! this deep colour ended
shortly, its coloured richness was but to tease your senses and ensnare
your eyes! For suddenly there billowed from it a filmy white skirt,
filmy and intangible, white upon white subtly flecked with golden-dust:
a wide and waving whiteness which swayed as she walked, which swayed as
she stood, gently, as though it lived a delicious life of its own: and
from the deep red bodice there fell baubles on to the wide white skirt
for a short way, short golden baubles of golden rope in arabesques--the
curious fancy of a crafty designer who surely never thought his dress
would be worn so inconsequently, taken three miles on a chilly night to
a lonely house by a tiny English river....

“Suddenly--like this!” he repeated darkly.

“Well?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide at him; and then she gave
a sharp little laugh at his darkling brows--as though, good Heavens, he
were offended!

“And what’s more,” she added, “we won’t be meeting again for some time.
Maybe we will never meet again, Ivor! For I’m sure _you_ won’t take any
steps about it--just like all these years you have known me and never
tried to see me, never once!”

“You are very exclusive, I do think,” she said wistfully.

There she stood, a head below him, white face up at him, eyes wide and
very grave, amazing and somehow unearthly! and the breasts under that
tight red bodice, little full breasts. And suddenly his one arm took
Virginia bodily, and pressed her to him and her face up to him. He
kissed her lips: and her little tight breasts were hot against him. For
a long time, a long time utterly lost to time in the violent softness of
Virginia’s lips, his arm pressing her to him. So thin she was, tall and
thin and breakable. And she shivered a little, her eyes tight closed,
and her face a white mask: startling white between those twin gold
curls, gay “Swan and Edgar!” She swayed a little, and her skirt rustled,
and when his arm loosed her she seemed to fall right down into the wide
chair behind her. Helpless white mask, carnival dead of carnival! She
opened her eyes and stared up at him, the man darkly up there. But a
crypt was not darker than Virginia’s blue eyes....

“I didn’t mean you to do that,” she whispered.

He fumbled.

“I’m sorry ...” he fumbled. It killed all assurance, that look of hers.
He took a cigarette from the box on the table.

“I didn’t mean to, either,” he said coldly. Then why had he done it? He
loathed fumbling. And suddenly he got furious. What _was_ all this
about, anyway?... “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said bitterly.

And somehow, as she lay there like a broken Venetian toy, his eyes fixed
on her mouth. He had never seen it before, Virginia’s mouth, but now his
eyes desperately found it. A queer mouth it was somehow, queer lips for
a lovely woman to have: there was nothing soft, nothing yielding about
them: beautiful but somehow unwomanly lips, so taut, so dry: the lips of
a woman who liked the wind in her face.... He had never seen Virginia’s
mouth before. And now the touch of it was on his own, hot and dry.
Nothing moist about Virginia. He smiled at her helplessly....

“I didn’t come here for you to do that--I didn’t, Ivor!” she cried up
at him, and her eyes glittered with tears--Virginia in tears!

He wanted to laugh and brush it aside. As though Virginia had never been
kissed before--Virginia! “Forget it,” he wanted to say coarsely. She was
too serious.... But, somehow, he was serious, too. He stood above her in
her chair, a long way above her. He murmured something....

“But you do know that, don’t you? I didn’t come here for you to do
that--that particular kiss....” And she leant back her head and closed
her eyes against him. Ivor played nervously with a match for his
cigarette--one arm makes striking safety-matches rather difficult,
sometimes. He swore a little at the match.

“You see,” whispered the lips of the closed eyes, “your kiss means
something. I knew it would ... I knew years and years ago.”

And she jumped up and faced him pitifully. “That’s why I’m making such a
fuss about it, don’t you see--Ivor, you fool! For your kiss means all
the things I haven’t got left, the lovely things! Oh, I’m not just
trying to make a scene, I want you to understand.... I haven’t got one
left, my dear, not one....”

He couldn’t deny that--he didn’t know anything about it. She was too
serious--but, somehow, nothing light would come from him.

Again she closed her eyes, and her eyebrows contracted, as though with
pain; and she gave her head a sudden shake, backwards.... You _are_ a
pet, he thought.

“That’s why I so wanted you not to make love to me--you, Ivor! Deep down
in my heart I didn’t want you to. For we simply can’t be lovers, you and
I. I thought that years ago. I hated you....”

All this ... talk! Why, he wondered, does a woman always pretend to a
deep and mysterious knowledge of anything to do with love? He knew,
quite clearly, that she had expected him to kiss her--but he also knew,
just as clearly, that she was miserably sincere in not having wanted
him to kiss her--once he had done it! She made him feel a vulgar beast.

Her eyes were searching his face....

“Poor Ivor!” she cried softly, “I am irritating you, aren’t I?”

“Thoroughly,” he admitted; he smiled a little, self-consciously; he
hadn’t wanted to admit it.

“But it’s just as well you should know.” She didn’t heed his gesture.
“It’s just as well you should know that it’s easy for men to make love
to me--‘easy, my dear, dead easy’! Why, Ivor, making love to me has
become a recognised institution, it was the only careless game that the
war didn’t make more expensive. I assure you. And not so very careless
with some, either, for I’m still beautiful. D’you notice, Ivor, that I’m
being funny, so that you can laugh? Poor Ivor.... Didn’t you know, dear,
that Virginia at thirty-one is a perfect mess? You ought to have known,
clever Ivor, you ought indeed--you who write so bravely about women, not
to say courtesans!”

She had said just the things to make him angry. But he only lit another
cigarette; he held the safety-match to the fire this time.

And she stamped her foot at him in a sudden fever. “Don’t you see, you
fool, that I’ve never yet met a man in whom I haven’t brought out the
beastliness? Never once--it’s my fault, I bring it out. Somehow....”

He was quite cold now.

“Virginia,” he said, “you’ve got nerves. And I’m not a cad--I don’t
think so, anyway.” It was her scene entirely--he implied that. And he
wanted to show that the whole thing rather bored him--her attitude.

“I know.” She nodded her head. “That’s why all this. For we wouldn’t
suit each other at all, you and I. I’m no use to you, Ivor....”

And the sudden words on his lips were broken by her peculiar laugh.

“For where you are so wrong is,” she went on reasonably, “that you
think I’m like you. But I’m nothing like you at all. I’m just a little
cad....”

“My telling you all this,” she gravely assured him, “is entirely on your
own head. You shouldn’t have kissed me--like that! It wasn’t fair, Ivor.
And very upsetting.... Oh!...”

“You see, Ivor, I misbehave,” she explained. It was her air of being
reasonable that irritated him most. “Yes, I do! I misbehave frightfully.
People will tell you.... And where you are so wrong is that you think
I’ve been natural when with you, whereas I’ve really been on my very
best behaviour with you--all the time. Even now....”

If she had set herself to anger him to silence she could not have
succeeded more completely.

“Good-bye,” she said abruptly.

He held her furs for her. And she went so swiftly that he could only
follow her to the door. The large shape of the car swallowed her up; and
the car twisted softly round the little drive and away to the London
road. Minutes later he heard its Klaxon, just one sharp keen, like the
harsh cry of a sea-bird....

Now two weeks later Ivor received this telegram from Cimiez: “Please
come to stay with us here if possible. Trains packed, and sleeping cars
unobtainable. Will order car to meet you Ritz, Paris, noon Saturday, to
bring you down. Please wire.”

He fingered it, and he thoughtfully stared out of the window. A February
prospect is not the best prospect to stare at thoughtfully. It provokes
comparisons. The world outside his window was bleak and desolate. The
world within his window was bleak and desolate. He wired, and went.

CHAPTER VI

Virginia was certainly right about the trains from Paris to the south
being packed: there was not a sleeping-car to be had for months to come,
and for an ordinary seat one had to fight; so that the capacity of
French railway officials for being rude and being bribed was being
exercised to the utmost. The _douaniers_ were also charming, and people
remarked on the genial smiles with which the passport officials at the
ports greeted them.... The dawn of peace, the new year of 1919! What
wonder that those who could rushed quickly away from the homes they had
so long and vigorously protected, to the bright Mediterranean coast! The
_Sketch_ and the _Tatler_ said that the Riviera had “at one bound”
regained its pre-war glories of rank, fashion, and riches, and published
photographs in proof of same. Carelessness was upon the world again--in
1919--and life glittered as of old, or even brighter. And what
wonder--in 1919! Spectres there still were, but solaces abounded....

The hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, adorns the background of the
town of Nice; and the hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, was
adorned by Queen Victoria, who stayed there for a period, or two
periods, upon its very crest. That crest is now distinguished by a
statue of her person and a monument to her name--which is no less than
the Hotel Victoria Regina, a very large and white hotel indeed, from
whose windows the prospect of the Mediterranean seems but a little
thing. A huge white palace it is, reigning on the hill of Cimiez, and
quite dominating the smaller white palaces which are scattered about the
slope of the hill, one here and the other there, on each side of the
winding road that takes adventurous quality down to Nice, the pleasaunce
of the mob. The presence of the great queen has left a deep impress on
Cimiez, for what streets are not named directly after her despise any
but the nomenclature of English majesty: whence come the rue Edward
VII., the Avenue de Prince des Galles, the Place Regina, and recently
the Avenue George V. Of course there are no shops on Cimiez. Those white
patches of elegant shape that you see as your car climbs the winding
road from Nice, are villas; and in the villas are rich Greeks from
Egypt, India, and Smyrna; Jews from Egypt, India, Smyrna, and England;
Englishmen from Lancashire; Americans and Grand Dukes from Paris; and
Lord and Lady Tarlyon. And these last in the whitest and most elegant
villa of all (the property of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate) at
the far end of the rue Edward (not Edouard) VII.

This villa was long and low and white, and severe after its manner: for
upon and about it were none of those playful ebullitions of taste, such
as conical towers, domed roofs, embattlements, statues, coloured tiles
and crenellations, such as are dear to architects of villas all the
world over. Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur, sent long in advance of her to
choose a villa not too utterly offensive, for she considered him a man
of discernment, had been instantly pleased by its air of quiet dignity
qualified by a certain bravado: its air of frankly yet discreetly
compromising between a Georgian mansion and a Texas ranch, with both of
which Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur was familiar. One of its main
attractions, and perhaps the one mainly indicative of Texan influences,
was a verandah that ran the length of the house on its front and
southern side. Now this was a real verandah, not one of your merely
decorative ones, a verandah about which men could pace and smoke cigars
and women drop fans to break strained silences: a verandah with a wide
prospect over the distant Mediterranean, for that brilliant blue sheet
was cut short some way without the coast by the trees that cover the
flanks of Cimiez and make Nice invisible to those who would rather live
out of it. It was, in fact, a verandah of chairs and gossip and silence,
to seduce each to the indulgence of his own nature, whether it most
pleased him to look upon his companion or over the sea: to dream, maybe,
of nothing but what lies in that wanton sea, for ever so tenacious of
men’s homage and for ever so reckless of their honour.

On an afternoon that February, Lady Tarlyon’s house-party were sitting
in an uneven group on the verandah. From the verandah were imposing
marble steps--the chauffeur had apologised for those steps--to lead
leisured feet down to a considerable lawn; but the gardeners of Mr.
James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate had rather neglected the lawn during
the war, and it looked a little odd, as a lawn. However, no one needed
to look at it twice, for there was always the Mediterranean, which is a
tidy sea during the season.

George Tarlyon (blue serge jacket, white trousers, a Brigade tie, and
brown-and-white shoes) was there, also a brandy-and-ginger-ale. Virginia
was there. Major Cypress was there--Hugo Cypress, the last of the _beaux
sabreurs_, bless him! Lois was there, and her husband, the companionable
little Earl. And Mrs. Chester was very evidently there, in a chair
beside Tarlyon.

Ann Chester, quiet and soft-moving as was her elegant habit, was always
very evidently everywhere; you couldn’t help but notice her, you
understand, as she came into a room, a restaurant, or a theatre. She was
a woman of thirty-five: which is not very old for a woman nowadays--and
is, as a matter of fact, considered a proper age for a lovely woman, if
only she can stay at it: Mrs. Chester could. She was of a tall and
slightly full figure--only slightly full--and she wore clothes so that
Frenchwomen looked like Englishwomen beside her. Mrs. Chester was
American originally. It was said that she sprang from the F.F.V.,[E] but
it was also said that she had sprung so far that she wouldn’t be able to
get back. Mr. Chester was nonexistent, in that no one had ever met him
or heard of him until the death was reported of an American gentleman,
Mr. Beale Chester, during a week of misunderstandings in Odessa. Ann’s
accent was just faintly American enough to be very attractive--she would
say, “I’m going to Paris, France, to-morrow”--and she was, indubitably,
a lady. She was really very lovely, in quite a classical way, of
feature, complexion, and hair: and always softly smiling, softly. Her
eyes were gray and understanding--the eyes of a dear! which, you know,
she was. The stage had missed a great beauty when Ann Chester had
decided on life as a career: which is such a banal witticism to make
about women that it is sometimes true about a few of them. She attracted
by sheer womanliness of body and mind, and sheer stupidity. And hers was
that mature and exquisitely _soignée_ womanliness which, they say,
drives sensible Jews and newly-created peers to madness and bankruptcy.
If a precious young man were essaying a precious study of her in a
precious magazine, all of which might quite easily happen, he would say,
“Even her soul was manicured,” and he would be utterly wrong--for,
mysterious Mrs. Chester, she could fall in love! It had been remarked
about her, she could fall in love! and not only within the commonplace
limits of a _béguin_ either, which are the only limits that nice women
allow to the passions of women not so nice. She had been known to
sacrifice things, even jewellery. Now a man beloved of Ann Chester
appalled the imagination of other men--of what stuff was he made, what
queer virtue was his? For imagine Ann clinging, clinging, moved at last
out of her softly smiling acquiescence into a fullness of surrender,
beseeching your sincerity in return for hers, that hair of cosmopolitan
gold at last _malsoignée_ with abandon--imagine it!--our Ann clinging in
desire! Oh, it was inconceivable!

The hour of four-thirty is not a lively hour in Southern Europe. Lady
Tarlyon’s guests sat on the terrace lazily, in white becushioned wicker
arm-chairs, talking just enough. Later on they would dress and motor
eastwards, along the higher Route de la Corniche, to Monte Carlo: there
to dine at the Paris and gamble at the inevitable Sporting Club. The
house-party of the villa at the far end of the rue Edward VII. despised
Nice and all its works, but one and a half kilometres below them; they
did not like Nice, it bored them; and so far they had done nothing at
all about Nice except to motor through it.

Lord Tarlyon had a theory about Nice.

“Nice,” said Lord Tarlyon, “is just like Blackpool----”

Lois lodged a complaint.

“He once knew a man who had some picture-postcards of it,” Mrs. Chester
explained. “Yes, George?” and her gray eyes enfolded him, and he grinned
sideways at her. Virginia’s lips were smiling, just a little, at the
sea. George often made her smile.

“Nice,” he said, “is just like Blackpool, except that the air is cleaner
at Blackpool. We are thus led to the unpatriotic conclusion that if
Blackpool were as far from England as Nice is, we would at this very
moment be in Blackpool.”

“I wouldn’t,” Virginia said. She turned in her chair to stare definitely
at her husband. She would sometimes turn that sudden and definite stare
on to a man she knew well, as though recasting a theory about him.
Virginia never uttered her theories about people, so one could never
tell if they were silly or not. He gave her a cigarette.

The flank of the hill of Cimiez, as has been described, did homage to
their prejudice, for the white town of Nice was not visible below them,
there was but the sea and the bending coast towards Cannes. Far on the
right lay the little town of Antibes, a wan little cluster of luxury in
the sunlight: and the hills that hid Grasse waved gently back into the
distance of more serious (and less expensive) France. The sun owned the
day and the sea, and to the sun belonged all that was on the land. The
awning over the terrace was bright in its bravery of red and white
stripes, and through it the sunlight was subtly diffused over their
faces, it was as though the awning extracted the scent from the sun and
sprinkled it over the company below. Good-looking people....

George Tarlyon, at the side of Mrs. Chester, who was lazy in deliciously
silver _crêpe de Chine_, said nothing which couldn’t be sufficiently
answered by her smile. Lois was vaguely reading the _Daily Mail_
(continental edition), which fully reported arrival of self and husband
at Lady Tarlyon’s villa in Cimiez, and threw in a photograph of Virginia
out of sheer exuberance. The companionable little Earl was asleep. Hugo
Cypress was talking to Virginia about, of all things, Forestry! And
maybe Virginia was gaining much knowledge about Forestry, and maybe she
was not, for she seemed to listen with every now and then a quick smile
of understanding, but her eyes wandered vaguely about the horizon, and
they looked like eyes that suffered from expectation.

The villas in the rue Edward VII., so luxurious in every other respect,
do not have carriage drives through their gardens to their doors. Cars
stop without the little white wooden gates, and the company must needs
walk to further luxury, which was a nuisance when it rained, but then it
didn’t often rain. A large and dusty car stopped before Lady Tarlyon’s
gate this February afternoon; there was luggage behind it, a chauffeur
driving it, and a dark man in it--all very dusty. The dark man stepped
out, stretched himself, smiled at the driver, and passed through the
white wooden gate. It was a quite considerable walk from the gate to the
villa, up the narrow path that divided the neglected lawn. And as he was
rather cramped from his very long drive, he walked lazily.

He could not see the people on the terrace, under that awning, but they
saw him; they stared at him. He had taken the alternative path from the
gate, not towards the marble steps, but to the left of the villa, where
he could see a door and open French windows.

“Here comes a dark stranger!” cried Mrs. Chester softly.

Lois screwed up her eyes at the figure coming up the path. Lois always
screwed up her eyes like that when looking at a distance, because she
saw more that way.

“But he’s not such a stranger as all that, either!” she cried. How many
years was it since she had seen Ivor Marlay? And Virginia had told no
one he was coming to the villa--typical of Virginia, that!

“Please, someone, who is he?” begged Mrs. Chester. “He’s so very tall
and black....”

“Marlay, novelist,” explained Hugo Cypress. “But comes of quite good
people--on one side. Missed an earldom by an heir’s breath....”

“Clever,” snapped Lois.

“Only by contrast, dear....”

“Well, I never!” sighed Mrs. Chester. “And is that what makes him so
bad-tempered looking? Tell me, George....” Ivor was bareheaded and
looked rather tousled, that’s all.

Tarlyon grinned at Virginia, but addressed Mrs. Chester. He waved his
hand towards the figure.

“We don’t know yet,” he said. “He is one of our leading authorities on
courtesans.”

“In that case,” Lois turned sharply on him, “he’ll talk less about them
than you do, George.”

“Oh, pretty!” said Hugo Cypress. And lashed out with his foot at the
companionable little Earl--Johnny was his name--who thus woke up just in
time to miss the pleasure of his wife’s wit. Lois could be sharp, very.
But Tarlyon never minded her.

“Hallo, they’re off!” he cried now. For the company on the terrace was
decreased by one. Suddenly, swiftly, silently, Virginia had left them.
Down the steps went her feet, and the others stared after her as she
walked across the grass towards her guest: who, seeing her, stepped from
the path towards her. They met. The lady had no parasol, and the sun
made festival of her hair. The sun shone furiously down on them,
revealing the gold of a woman’s hair and the mystery of a man’s smile,
for all smiles are mysterious from a distance; and Virginia had her back
to the terrace, they could see only Ivor Marlay’s smile of greeting. And
Lois thought: “That same rather courtly smile--how it used to annoy
Virginia years ago! Well, well, even Virginia grows up....”

Virginia said to Ivor with a quick smile:--

“I’m so glad you’ve come, Ivor. I didn’t think you would, really.”

He laughed shyly. Occasions made him shy, not people. He quibbled.

“Yours is a nice car,” he said, “but it’s got no ambition on the hills.
We were delayed a little.” That was their greeting.

They walked towards the house. The chauffeur, a suitcase dependent from
each hand, passed them and went ahead. There was a silence; and then
Virginia said suddenly:--

“You mustn’t mind what George says. My husband, I mean. He’s a child and
adores to annoy--and he’s terribly pleased if he succeeds. You won’t let
him succeed, will you, Ivor?”

He had realised now the battery of eyes from the terrace; it was a
curious feeling, after that long and solitary journey from a solitary
place in answer to a telegram; and he suddenly felt very hot and
bothered.

“My dear, I won’t mind what any one says if you will let me have the
loan of your bathrooms for half an hour or so. I’ve got more than two
days’ worth of French dust sticking to me, and feel monstrous.”

“Septic, George would say,” Virginia laughed.

They were almost at one of the open French windows.

“You will find,” she said, “as many bathrooms as you’ll need, scattered
about the first floor. And then tea on the terrace.... It was nice of
you to come, I do think,” she added in a quick breath.

He went indoors swiftly, without looking at her. Shy, she thought. It
pleased her that he was shy, for he had seemed rather inhuman ... long
ago.

She lingered on her way back to her guests. She took a cigarette from
her little case, which to-day was of lapis lazuli. Virginia had many
cigarette-cases, small ones, they had somehow come her way: of gold, of
platinum, of jade, of tortoise-shell, of crystal, of onyx, and little
boxes of worked silver that had once been snuff-boxes, but she nearly
always used this one of lapis lazuli, for she liked lapis lazuli. She
confined herself to five cigarettes a day, but to-day, somehow, she was
smoking more.

“What have you done with the dark young man?” Ann Chester asked her as
she rejoined them.

“He’s preparing himself for you, Ann,” Virginia answered rather shortly.
Lois glanced at her. A servant came out, wheeling a tea-table through
one of the windows.

“You are a divine hostess, Virginia,” said Johnny suddenly. He had not
said anything for a long time. “You are the only hostess I know who ever
gives one tea at tea-time. They generally offer you a wretched little
cup at about a quarter to six, when it tastes like a warm cocktail....
Would you like me to go on about this, Lois, or shall I shut up now?”

When people said that Lois and Johnny were very happy together, other
people exclaimed, “Well, who couldn’t be happy with Johnny?”

CHAPTER VII

At the last moment only George Tarlyon, Mrs. Chester, and Hugo Cypress
motored to Monte Carlo. Major Cypress, authority on Forestry as he was,
was even more of an authority on all varieties of “dicing”--under which
name, in this particular set, went every game of hazard--and could
always be counted on to go towards a Casino. He was the author of an
unwritten play called _Limejuice Nights_, an unwritten romance called
_The Profligacy of a Pork Butcher_, and of that splendid marching song
of the Grenadine Guards, which begins:--

“There’s no vice in
A bit of dicin’ ...”

but never ends. “For,” said Major Cypress, “it needs genius to finish a
poem like that, and I’m frightfully afraid I’ve only got talent.” And
then he would give that funny, gurgling little chuckle of his, a deep
“cluck, cluck, cluck.” Hugo Cypress was a very useful man in a battle or
a house-party; sometimes he would get drunk before a battle, “just to
appal the enemy,” and sometimes at a house-party, “just to amuse your
guests,” he would explain to his hostess, who generally adored Hugo, the
last of the _beaux sabreurs_. He was an uncommonly agreeable companion
for any man or woman--or for a man and woman.

Virginia and her three remaining guests dined very pleasantly; and
Johnny remarked how glad he was that they hadn’t gone to that “beastly
Monte Carlo, where they shoot pigeons all day and pluck them all
night.”

“Give me home,” said Johnny, “a little conversation, and a
nice-glass-of-wine....”

The conversation, however, was not very “little.” For Lois, his wife,
had charge of it, and Lois had a reputation to keep up. Lois’s
conversation--which, people and papers said, was witty--consisted in
asking rather sharp questions about a given subject, listening
impatiently to your replies, and then saying that that wasn’t what she
had meant and asking another question, beginning: “But don’t you think,
now....” To-night she was talking, or rather asking witty questions
about, publishing. Mr. Worth Butterthorn, the publisher, had recently
offered her five thousand pounds for her memoirs, and so Lois was rather
interested in publishing; so had Mr. Worth Butterthorn been, when Lois
had capped his offer by saying that she would be charmed to write her
memoirs for him or any one else for seven thousand pounds; and Mr.
Butterthorn was thinking about that, probably at that very moment. Lois
was clever about money....

They discussed publishing. Ivor was naturally expected to know something
about it, but didn’t. And as for Johnny, he of course never knew
anything about anything, let alone publishing.

“Who pays who?” he asked. “And why?” (The silliest part of Johnny’s
silly questions was that no one could ever answer them.)

“What I want to know is,” Lois dangerously put to the table, “if, say,
30,000 copies of my memoirs are sold at 18s. 6d. per memoir, and if my
royalty is, say, 22 per cent. per cost price per memoir, will I make
more or less than by selling my rights outright to Mr. Butterthorn for
£7000?”

“What about,” Johnny suggested, “a nice little monograph instead, on
Artists I Have Sat To, Off and On?”

Virginia was then delivered of an idea.

“My idea is,” she said briskly, “that Mr. Ivor Pelham Marlay should tell
us a story on a given theme. We will give him the theme, and he will
tell us the story.... Now won’t that be nice for you, Ivor?” she sweetly
asked him.

“Charming,” he said viciously.

“I know!” cried Lois. “The theme must be the most fatuous theme ever put
to a man. It must be a motto, a moral, or an Oscar Wilde epigram--but it
must be fatuous!” She turned to her husband. “Johnny dear, you’ve said
so many fatuous things in your life, can’t you think of one someone else
has said--just for once, dear?”

“Familiarity Breeds Contempt,” said Johnny modestly.

“Well,” snapped Ivor, “without a little familiarity you can’t breed
anything, can you?”

Johnny sighed, and tried again:--

“Every Good Action Brings Its Own Reward.”

“Oh, splendid, Johnny!” cried Virginia.

But Ivor shook his head helplessly.

“But you must, Ivor!” Virginia insisted seriously. “I shall count up to
five, and if by then you can’t tell us a tale to prove that Every
Good Action Brings Its Own Reward, your reputation will be
for ever blasted--not only as an author, Ivor, but as an
officer-and-a-gentleman.”

“Yes, rather,” Johnny agreed.

Virginia counted steadily: “One ... two ... three ... fo----”

“All right!” Ivor stopped her with a grin. He addressed them all: “Now
this is a story about a comb----”

“Oh, you’ve cribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.

“That’s done it,” sighed Ivor. “I won’t play any more. Let Johnny try.”

“Oh!” said Virginia.

“That’s all right,” said Johnny. “I am not an author, I am a man of
ideas. Watch me. Now this is a story about a comb----”

“You’ve cribbed Ivor’s!” cried Virginia.

“No, but he’ll crib mine,” snapped Johnny.

“Whistler said that,” remarked Ivor.

“This story,” snarled Johnny, “is not only about a comb but about a Mr.
Jones and a Mrs. Jones as well. If you guess that they were man and wife
you will not be wrong. And what’s more, Mr. Jones loved his wife very
dearly, even though he hadn’t enough money to do it with from every
angle. For of all the things Mrs. Jones passionately wanted, besides of
course Mr. Jones, was a tortoise-shell comb; which, she thought, would
become her very well, for her hair was of the colour of a landscape at
sunset, streaked with ochre. So at last Mr. Jones secretly managed to
scrape together as much money as he could find lying about in his
employer’s offices, and bought her a very adequate tortoise-shell
comb----”

“You _have_ cribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.

“---- comb. Mrs. Jones adored it and adored him, and every one was
happy. Now I ask you, how were they to know that the shopkeeper had seen
Mr. Jones coming and had sold him a celluloid imitation comb instead of
a tortoise-shell one? And so one evening, as Mrs. Jones was doing her
hair for Mr. Jones’s arrival, celluloid being very inflammable, it
caught fire, and the fire caught her hair, and Mrs. Jones was utterly
burnt up when Mr. Jones arrived for dinner....”

“And a very good story, too,” said Ivor pleasantly. “I liked the sting
at the end....”

“Johnny,” cried Lois. “Explain yourself.”

“Well, my dear,” said little Johnny humbly, “I’m frightfully sorry, but,
don’t you see, Mr. Jones drew the insurance-money for his wife’s
death....”

They had dined late, and it was nearly midnight when Ivor and Virginia
were at last comfortably stretched on two of the wicker arm-chairs on
the verandah: for, of course, it was perfectly clear from the moment of
his arrival that they must in the next few hours be sitting together on
that verandah. The air was chilly with the chill of a Riviera night in
February, and Virginia, lying deep in her chair, had wrapped her
moleskin coat well about her: for in the year 1919 the moleskin coat was
at its ascendant, whence it has since been driven by barbarians, led by
one Mr. Kolinsky....

There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of
the sky: a black night, and very silent on Cimiez; and a black and
silent prospect from the verandah, intensified rather than broken by the
distant reflection below of the lights of Nice on the velvet void which
was a sea by day.

The hill of Cimiez is always of a silent habit at night, for its world
is either in bed or the Casino, and the rattle of the tram-cars up and
down the hill ceases by ten o’clock. Ivor and Virginia seemed to have
borrowed something of the silence of the Cimiez midnight, for they sat
silent for a long time, for what seemed a long time. And the light from
the long windows opening out on the terrace fell brilliantly on them.

Lois’s voice suddenly called to them from the room behind:--

“I’m going to bed, Virginia. Shall I turn these lights out?”

“Yes, if you like. Good-night, dear.”

Now it was quite dark. Ivor could barely make out her face, a yard away
from him: a dim, white thing above the soft darkness of her coat. It had
not the remotest likeness to flesh, that face. It was made of some thin,
white stuff....

Virginia said suddenly, into the night:--

“Let’s talk about beasts, Ivor.”

“Yes, why not?” he agreed out of his surprise.

“But I wonder if you will understand,” she murmured.

His chair creaked as he moved a leg.

“Have you ever had a beast in your life, Ivor?” And the dim, white
thing grew bigger as she turned her face towards him. “A beast in your
life, right _in_ it, Ivor?” she insisted. “Have you? Think, my dear, for
it’s most important....”

“When I was much younger,” he seriously told her, “I had a beast. I’ve
almost got over it now. The beast in my life was Other People. I
resented them....”

She looked, in the darkness, like a figure made of furs and thought.

“I meant,” she said at last, “a personal beast. A beast, you know, with
a face and arms and legs. A face that’s always there, in one’s life....”

“I suppose,” she said, “that you’ve loved sanely ... knowing more or
less what and why you were loving. Or probably you haven’t loved, you’ve
just liked people very much.”

He didn’t answer that. There was no special answer to make, except that
he hadn’t loved or liked often; and then one would have to qualify
that....

“That’s why, maybe, you have never had a beast in your inner life, Ivor.
You are lucky, I do think....”

Her voice was making no appeal; it was just her voice of daylight
undressed by the virtue in the night. But the way of her words was
intensely pathetic, and he intensely felt the pathos of her in that
moment, a dark moment. That pitifulness again! He seemed to understand
things about this Virginia.... And she went on softly:--

“I’d like to draw a beast for you, Ivor, so that you could understand.
But it’s difficult, so entirely a thing of feelings. You know? It’s just
hell in the fourth dimension, and how can one explain that?”

“I know,” he said.

“But one loved the beast, Ivor! Oh, _yes_, frightfully! That’s why he’s
so real, so awfully there....” He saw the white of her hand as she made
a sudden gesture. “He’s so fine, don’t you see? In a conventional way,
if you like, but still.... The blond beast of devilish philosophies
maybe, Ivor! And he entered one’s life and swept one up, so airily! If
only Ouida had been alive to see his type! He came, you see, as
something quite strange--a man among the weaklings of my life with
Hector Sardon. Oh, I seem to have known so many weaklings! Poor, poor
Hector! Ah, you never saw me all that time, Ivor. It was a terrible
time, terrible--and so _rotten_! But you probably guess.... And the
beast came during the worst of it, when I couldn’t hold out against it
all any more, not alone.... A lovely man the beast was, Ivor, and not at
all the fool he mockingly pretends to be. Oh, no, not a fool at all! And
so fresh and weathered and solid.... With him I felt the earth under my
feet again, good old English earth in all its immense and lovely
solidity. I thought I felt that, anyway, for it was only an illusion
that he gaily mocked into me....”

“They mock one,” Ivor said, “and then one hates oneself. It’s
beastly....”

“Mockery!” There was a soft and remote meaning in the way it dropped
from Virginia’s lips. “Mockery! that soft and sweet mockery of a man in
first love--oh, Ivor, it’s the finest thing--at first.” Her wicker chair
creaked loudly as she suddenly turned towards him, and his accustomed
eyes could see hers through the darkness, wide eyes fashioned out of the
mystery of the night, eyes sombre with query. “Have you ever felt that
in a woman for you, Ivor?”

“Yes,” he said. And he nodded gravely: “but mine wasn’t only at
first--it meant nice things all the time.”

There was a long silence. And then Virginia said:--

“I’d like to be dramatic in my speech just for once--please may I, Ivor?
Though I’ve already been frightfully dramatic with you once, haven’t I?
It’s most unusual in me, I assure you, Ivor.”

“I live alone,” Ivor said grimly, “so I do it quite a lot.”

“Well,” Virginia confessed sweetly, “I feel that there’s nothing so
terrifyingly masculine and magnetic as the feline male. For that’s what
he is, my beast! The perfect thing of his kind.... So very
representative, Ivor, that he’s exceptional! In the dirt of cities,
round about Shaftesbury Avenue maybe, it must be that kind of man, I
suppose, that makes women do queer things for them, walk the streets and
the like. They have a queer effect on women, my kind of beast. My
particular one has made me put up with some odd things, I can tell you,
Ivor! Standing aside and watching him make love. It was awful, awful, at
first.... And then he sort of magnetises one by his perverse
understanding of oneself, he forces one to treat him as he treats
oneself. He judges people by his own beastliness, you see--and he’s so
often right, Ivor! He’s so often been right about me....”

“And then,” she said, “he has queer, soft moments. He sometimes smiles
at me from across a crowded room, in a most sweet and understanding way.
And he seems to say: ‘Only you and I know what you and I are really
like, and we’ll never tell any one--will we, Virginia’?”

“But I am telling someone now,” she said.

“I’m glad,” Ivor murmured.

And her wicker chair broke out in fantastic chorus as her whole body
seemed to turn to him.

“_Are_ you?” she cried comically.

From behind them the noise of a piano suddenly burst on their silence.
It lashed out into the darkness in a furious medley, then softened down
to classical sobriety--then again a furious medley, then a jingling
step, then to something very softly played.

“That’s little Johnny,” Virginia explained.

They listened. For Johnny had the art of seducing attention while he
played; he played perversely, his touch had a delicate and impish
genius, and he mixed up fugues and fox-trots with almost passionate
cheek; he played like a tired genius, and they listened. He stopped
soon....

“He always does that for five minutes before going to bed,” Virginia
told him, “drunk or sober. So if you pass any house anywhere in the
night and hear that noise, you will know that Johnny is about to go to
bed. He says it’s his swan song, and that he likes to repeat his swan
song every night so that he won’t feel it so much on his last on earth.
Nice Johnny....”

Suddenly she stretched out a hand and touched Ivor’s arm, so
unexpectedly that it startled him. There are women who appear incapable
of touching one, and when they do, no matter how lightly, their touch
seems to have a fabulous meaning. He had not looked at her for a long
time, he had been staring into the darkness, but now she startled him
into staring at her.

“You may be thinking,” she said wistfully, “that it’s rather indecent of
me to speak so plainly to you about George. Please don’t think that,
Ivor, for I’m not used to confiding in people; in fact, I’ve never done
it before, and I shall be so easily frightened off.”

“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “And that’s why I wired to you to come
down here. I’m generally supposed to be a secret kind of person, you
know. ‘She never tells,’ people say. But I wired to you because I felt I
couldn’t bear the burden of things alone for another second. It seems
silly....”

“And I thought,” she said shyly, “that telling you all this might
explain a bit of that terrible last night in England....”

Her shyness disturbed him....

“You needn’t explain that,” he said quickly. “One’s always afraid,
somehow....”

He nervously waited for her to speak; and he was puzzled, faintly
irritated, by her silence, for he wanted her just to tell him that she
didn’t now want him to believe that she was a “perfect little cad.” But,
after a while, she only said, dimly:--

“Now that I’ve told you why I asked you to come, I’d like you to tell me
why you did come, please. It’s a very leading question, isn’t it?”

“Well ...” he said, and he stirred in his chair.

“I was lonely,” he said. “And I thought that maybe you were lonely too.
I just thought it. And, Virginia,” he earnestly leaned towards her a
little, “I’m so glad you’ve told me about your personal beast, indeed I
am! But are you quite, quite sure that it’s such a personal beast as all
that--that it isn’t just your, well, distaste of your present life that
you have somehow personified?”

“Oh, no!” It was a cry.

“Anyway,” he went on, “I thought we might help each other somehow....
One has these brilliant ideas....”

“Was it an impertinence to come in that spirit, I wonder?” he asked
suddenly.

She stared at him; and faint memories stirred in her of those very young
days round about Mont Agel and the Hallidays, when she had been so
impatient of this man’s “rightness,” his bursts of defensive formality.
She stared at him. And realised with a start that he was speaking.

“You’ve asked me a question, Virginia, and now I will ask you one--a
baby question. What is it you most want in the world?”

“But, Ivor, remember that I’m thirty!”

“Well?”

“Then there’s only one answer, and that is in one word--understanding!
Just that--understanding! The second childhood of a woman’s dreams lies
in the word, Ivor....”

The night was so dark and still, yet somehow noisy with their
personalities, that Ivor had a feeling that she and he were children....

“We’re like children playing in the dark, Virginia--I feel, do you know,
that nothing we say this moment matters at all! It simply doesn’t
matter, it just belongs to this childish moment....”

“Then I will ask you your question back,” she took him swiftly up. “What
is it _you_ most want in the world, Ivor? Remember,” she added, “you
have said this is a childish moment, so you can be sincere.”

His chair creaked passionately as he sat up to look closely at her.

“I want,” he said firmly, “the loveliness in people. No less. You’ll say
that’s pretty arrogant, and I suppose it is. But I want it all the
same....”

“I’ve had a bit,” he explained, “so I know it’s good--oh, wonderfully
worth having, Virginia! But one can’t keep it--anyway, I couldn’t keep
my little bit. Wasn’t worthy, I suppose. But if you’ve got to wait
quietly until you _are_ worthy of a thing you might wait till the Last
Trump and still not get it. Better to snatch than get left, I think....
One’s best moments draw that loveliness out of people, and then one
loses it. Little demons of prejudice and resentment make one lose
it--that shining loveliness in people, Virginia! And when that’s in them
they have clean eyes--amazing, isn’t it?--but later on their eyes are
not so clean, and one’s own are mirrored in theirs. People say that’s
‘life.’ Everything that gets dirty is called ‘life,’ Virginia.
Everything that dies is called ‘life.’ ...”

He stared towards the sea, over it. The Mediterranean slept profoundly;
and then it seemed to him that the Mediterranean was not asleep, only
pretending; it was a prowling beast, ever prowling about the shores of
Europe and Africa....

“I’d much rather go to Africa now than to bed,” she said suddenly.

A car stopped outside the gates; they saw its lights, and they heard
voices.

“Good-night, Ivor,” Virginia said--rather severely--and was gone.

Thus it was on the first night.

CHAPTER VIII

George Tarlyon entered his wife’s bedroom fairly early the next morning.
There was a door connecting their rooms, but he came in by the ordinary
door; for when they had entered into occupation of the villa the
servants had somehow forgotten to unbolt the door between their master’s
and mistress’s rooms, and no one had thought of doing it since. Lord
Tarlyon was no slacker, and could do with as little sleep as any man;
for no matter at what hour he went to bed, he was generally up and about
by ten: as now, entering his wife’s bedroom, gently, as fresh and clear
of eye as though Casino smoke was balm to his health. Virginia lay very
still, her golden head sideways and deep in the hollow of her pillow,
and he was about to withdraw when she opened her eyes. She looked tired.

“I wasn’t asleep,” she said. And she stared at him as he smiled at her
from the foot of the bed; and through the half-open door she heard the
noisy filling of a bath. She wondered if it was Ivor’s or Hugo’s. Johnny
believed in daylight sleeping.

“Will you draw the blinds, please, George?” she asked him.

He let the sun into the room with a mighty rattle of curtain rings; and
the sunshine kissed Virginia’s hair--especially “Swan and Edgar,” so
unruly in the early hours!--but her eyes would have none of it. She
shaded them with her palm.

“I slept _so_ badly,” she complained softly: but not to him, to the
space about her.

Tarlyon loitered at the foot of the bed, splendid in the light, his
hands in his pockets, frankly admiring her.

“I hope you won’t mind, Virginia, but we brought Julie Gabriel back here
with us last night.”

She looked at him absent-mindedly.

“Oh, dear!” she sighed.

“Couldn’t really help it, in a sort of way,” Tarlyon explained. “She had
quarrelled with her young man, it seemed, and she really looked in
rather a mess, so I asked her down here for a few days--until she gets
over it, you know. Oh, come, Virginia,” he teased her, “have you no
heart?”

Virginia imagined Julie Gabriel “getting over it!” What, on this earth,
had ever “got over” Miss Gabriel?

“I’m sure you’ll quite like her,” Tarlyon assured her. “She’s quite a
nice little thing, really....”

“Yes,” Virginia agreed softly, “at some one else’s table in a
restaurant.” Virginia hated all restaurants--except, of course, the Mont
Agel.

Miss Julie Gabriel had made her name as an actress in the year before
the war, by showing her naked back to the audiences of a London theatre
for ten minutes every night for six months. It was a charming back,
people said. However, she had since retired from the stage, finding, no
doubt, that she could make her fortune more swiftly and with less public
exposure. She had a house in Curzon Street and a palace on the river,
and young Royalty was supposed to have supped with her. People liked
her--she’s common, but so full of life, they said. It was also said that
George Tarlyon was the only man she had ever loved, and it was believed.

“George St. George,” a little voice said from the depths of a pillow to
the ceiling, “you do know some low people, I do think....”

He was at once very considerate; he sat on the edge of the bed; he
appealed to her as a friend.

“Virginia, you don’t really mind, do you? Because, of course, if you do
we can have her thrown away at once....”

Virginia imagined Miss Gabriel being “thrown away” by milord’s orders.

“Oh, no! Now she’s here....”

“Besides,” she said, “haven’t I always said that you could ask any one
you liked?”

And then Virginia had a grim thought about Mrs. Chester. Poor Ann! But
she said:--

“Lois may mind, you know.”

Tarlyon threw back his head and laughed his laugh.

“Oh, our Lois! I’ll fix her all right--besides, it will come in handy
for her Memoirs! _She_ won’t mind.” And he got up from the bed with a
lazy swing.

“Before you go, you might give me the hairbrush and small mirror from
the table,” Virginia asked him.

Virginia and her husband never talked of any subject for more than five
minutes; and never referred to a subject again. That is called “getting
on” with a person.

But Lois did mind. She had a reputation to keep up. But when Lois
minded, she minded secretly. For when George Tarlyon, raiding her
bedroom with little ceremony, told her of the addition to the party, she
instantly cried, “Oh, splendid!” And that very moment decided that the
Riviera was perhaps seen to best advantage from Cannes, to which she and
Johnny would repair that very afternoon. Johnny was informed.

She mentioned their departure to Ivor, without, of course, giving the
reason for it, as they walked about the garden before luncheon. Virginia
had not yet come down. Lois said:--

“Well, Ivor Marlay, I’m glad to have seen you again, if only for a
passing moment. Try not to be a beast, my dear, and come to see me in
London----”

“Why, are you going to-day?” The surprise in his question seemed to her
a little out of proportion to the fact. She glanced at him as they
walked.

“Yes, but not to London direct. Johnny and I are moving to Cannes this
afternoon.”

Ivor stopped in his walk, and looked seriously at her.

“I’m going to ask you such an impertinent question,” he said, “that I
must first light a cigarette. If you will strike a match for me....” His
one arm made striking safety-matches just a bit of business; he traded
on it sometimes.

She struck one, laughing at him.

“You aren’t surely going to ask me not to go, Ivor Marlay! That wouldn’t
come very well from a man who has simply refused to come near me
for--how many years? Seven or eight, I think.”

“That’s exactly what I am going to ask you, Lois,” he said earnestly.
“I’m hoping you will understand. Can’t I really tempt you to stay a few
days longer?” The question was light, but the manner earnest enough. But
that Lois appreciated its earnestness was evident only in her glance,
for she laughed--the laugh with which she turned things away, a gay
laugh, the Lois laugh. (All these people had each their own particular
laugh; thus, it was fun to imitate each other’s.) She understood very
well why the question was “impertinent.” She knew he was asking her what
Virginia, however much she wanted her to stay on, would never ask
her--he was asking her not to leave Virginia stranded. It was certainly
“impertinent.”

As Lois had said she was going, Ivor had had a sudden vision of Virginia
stranded in that _galère_, Virginia deserted by her friend rather
shamefully. But, with these people, where did friendship begin and where
end?

“No, really. I’m so afraid I can’t,” she said sincerely; and added:
“Johnny would be ever so disappointed at putting it off now!”

“Virginia will be disappointed the other way,” Ivor just pointed out,
bluntly.

They continued their leisurely walk in silence. Then Lois turned her
head to him.

“Virginia, you know, makes everything all right by not noticing things.
And she has no need of friends--I assure you, Ivor Marlay! She works
things out for herself and by herself.”

Does she? Ivor grimly wondered to himself.

“And I don’t think,” Lois added secretly, “that she will be altogether
sorry at our going. Not so sorry as all that, I mean....”

Then they talked of other things, and Lord and Lady Lamorna left for
Cannes immediately after lunch, in Virginia’s car. They were great
car-borrowers, Lois and Johnny.

Virginia and Ivor were not alone that day, but he didn’t gather from her
expression that she was in the least put out by her friend’s sudden
departure. She seemed to enjoy her guests that day, and Ivor not less
and not more than the others. And the day and evening passed in a crowd,
to which the voice and person of Miss Gabriel were certainly vivid
additions. Virginia was charming to her, and gayer than Ivor had ever
seen her, except perhaps during those first moments of their sudden
meeting in the lane by Lady Hall. It was a little difficult to imagine
this easy and social Virginia, inattentive to anything for more than a
minute, as the faint and wistful figure of the dark terrace a few hours
before. Not that she glittered in the Lois way, but she was gaily
promiscuous of her attention, she was a woman without preferences....

Tarlyon and Miss Gabriel disappeared for the latter part of the
afternoon in the other car; and Ivor and Virginia spent the hour or so
between Lois’s and Johnny’s departure and tea in walking with Mrs.
Chester, who was rather silent, and Hugo Cypress, who thank God wasn’t,
about the winding lanes that lead about the crest of Cimiez--what part
of that crest is left uncovered by the mammoth luxury of the Hotel
Regina.

The “dicers” stayed at home that evening--Tarlyon and Cypress had both
won a packet at _chemin de fer_ the night before, which was nice for
them. Mrs. Chester did not dice, saying she had no unusual
parlour-tricks. Dinner was therefore something of a festival. And later
on they somehow fell to dancing to the gramophone in the wide
drawing-room: which was apt for that purpose, for it had been fitted
with a parquet floor by the luxurious forethought of Mr. James
Michaelson of Lancaster Gate. A rather strange thing for Lady Tarlyon
and her guests to do, thus to dance, for nowadays they only danced when
they had to, considering that they had already danced enough to last
them their lifetimes. (They adored Fancy Dress Balls, however--oh, let
there be carnival, lovely carnival!) Tarlyon danced with Julie Gabriel,
Major Cypress with Ann, Ivor with Virginia.

It was the first time Ivor had been alone with her that day; but when he
looked down at her face while they danced it was masked by a smile. He
noticed her mouth again, the taut mouth that looked as though it liked
to be whipped by the wind.

“Well, Ivor?” she smiled at his look. They were dancing a very slow
step--“Oh, very patrician,” cried, in passing, George Tarlyon, whose own
dancing was not remarkable.

Ivor suddenly had a desire to force the smile from her face. He would
have liked to take the smile from her face with a sweep of his hand, and
put it in his breast-pocket, and suddenly give it back to her some other
time. He liked her gravity, it was real, but he suddenly felt that this
smile was unreal; she had worn it all day, with its variations, and he
felt now that she had been unreal all day. Didn’t she know that she
needn’t be unreal with him? She had seemed to know last night....

So he suddenly asked her:--

“Did you mind Lois going away--like that?”

She stared up at him, funnily, with lifted eyebrows. “Is this man mad?”
they seemed to ask, those lifted eyebrows.

“Mind!” she echoed, under them. “Oh, no! Why would I?”

“Baby!” he thought. She added, as though they had been discussing the
subject for hours and she was weary of it:--

“She did quite right, you know. Quite right....”

So she kept her smile. They danced a lot more that night.

Thus it was on the second night.

And on the third night it was more or less thus.

On the fourth night Ivor and Virginia were in Avignon.

CHAPTER IX

On that fourth morning, towards noon, Ivor was taking the air on the
rather unkempt lawn. No one else seemed to be about that morning, no one
had as yet come out of the long, low, white villa; though every now and
then, as he passed near an open bedroom window, he heard voices: Julie
Gabriel’s voice, Tarlyon’s laugh, and once the Cypress “cluck, cluck.”

Ivor was taking a little thought about what exactly he was doing as
Virginia’s guest; and as he had very carefully not thought about it
before, he now tried to put it to himself as bluntly as he could. How
long was he going to stay, and what for, anyway? They didn’t wildly
amuse him, these people, nor he them. Oh, yes, of course, Virginia was
the reason, he admitted that. But he didn’t admit anything else; there
was nothing else to admit. (There never is when one is thinking out a
thing “bluntly.”) Virginia had been distant from him these last two
days. He hadn’t felt in the least hurt about that--he didn’t expect
anything. But he could not be rid of an idea that she was just letting
things drift, in a rather helpless but defiant way: but perhaps she was
always letting things drift in a rather helpless but defiant way: just
letting things drift until something happened. Did she expect something
to happen from him?... And he suddenly realised that he wasn’t in the
least treating her as he might some one else. But he wasn’t treating her
in any way at all! He was behaving like a polite old man....

Ivor loathed “fumbling about”--“messing about”; trying, he thought
impatiently, to get at uncertain things uncertainly. There was an
uncleanness in “fumbling about.” ... He wondered what, in particular,
it was that Virginia liked in a man. One generally knew that with women.
They generally told one. It was generally about the first thing a woman
let one know about her, the kind of man she liked; and it was always
interesting to know the kind of man a woman liked. But one couldn’t tell
with Virginia: her men contradicted each other.... And then the figure
of George Tarlyon came into his mind. He had barely spoken a direct word
to Tarlyon since his coming--it hadn’t, he fancied, been expected of
him. Tarlyon didn’t like him, it seemed. “There’s only one thing George
hates in this world,” Virginia had said, “and that is to be disliked. It
doesn’t happen often. But he feels you don’t like him, Ivor.” Well, that
was a pity, because he had wanted to like him. He couldn’t help it. They
always thought the worst, that kind of man; they thought it rather
clever of them to think the worst, and other people thought it rather
clever of them, too. He would never, about anything in the world, have
any explanations to offer George Tarlyon, Ivor thought; he could go on
thinking the worst until he burst. Good God, he had probably thought the
worst that night he came to fetch Virginia at Nasyngton!

And then he thought of Virginia being attracted by Tarlyon, and loving
him, adoring him perhaps, and being held by him even when she had found
him out--odd, that, however attractive the man was! The things women
create in men, for their own hurt generally! Even Virginia, an
intelligent woman! Take a----

“Ivor!”

He spun round, tremendously interrupted. Virginia was ten yards away,
walking towards him with her swift, easy stride. It occurred to him that
this was the first morning he had seen her before luncheon.... Had he
wanted gravity on Virginia’s face? Here was enough now, it was more
evident about her than the golden sheen of the hair that framed it!
Grave indeed Virginia looked, as she came to him. Her calling of his
name from a distance was her only greeting, there was no smile to bear
it company. Virginia looked her age this morning, for the first time.
She came right to him.

“I am going away to-day,” she said quickly, “to Paris, I think. Are you
coming with me, or will you stay here?”

“Of course I won’t stay,” he replied abruptly. “About time I went,
anyway.”

And then she stamped her foot! Her eyes were dark, and she trembled a
little.

“My God, have I always got to be asking _you_ questions!” she cried.
“First I had to ask you to come here, and now I’ve had to ask you to
come away--don’t your lips form questions or what is it, Ivor Marlay?”

“At what time do you intend to go?” he asked her.

She turned her face away from him. The bright sun, on that open lawn
with the windows of the villas glittering full at them, was cruel to her
young face at this moment; it probed its pallor and revealed its
weariness. Her lips were trembling. She said, away from him, very
quietly:--

“Before luncheon, in less than an hour, if possible. By car.”

She turned her face to him again, controlled now.

“When I woke up this morning I decided I couldn’t bear all this another
minute. But are you sure you would like to come?” She asked it as though
they were going to a tiresome function which would weary them both.

“Yes, very much,” he said gravely. He wondered what on earth she had
expected him to say--be enthusiastic? _She_ wasn’t enthusiastic....

“I’d better go and tell some one to pack my things,” he said, but made
no movement.

“I’ve told them,” she said in her suddenly absent way. Where on earth
did Virginia get to when her eyes looked like that? Those sentinels....
He felt flat.

And then she gave a little laugh, and with it something of her manner
returned.

“On the other hand,” she said, “I’d better go and supervise my own
packing. It’s a bit complicated, this hot to-day and cold to-morrow....”

And then she left him, walking quickly towards the villa; but she
wheeled round from a short distance--and he was suddenly amazed by her
smile, a gay smile it was, and it made her face look all golden. She
called to him softly:--

“You’ll be ready then, in less than an hour?”

“I’m ready now,” he cried back to that glorious smile. And standing
there, he watched her all the way to the house, the tall, the fearless,
the mysterious Virginia....

It was the lesser and more comfortable drawing-room; in which, before
lunch or dinner, was always a cocktail for any one who cared to mix one,
or sherry and the like for those with more “old world” tastes. George
Tarlyon was being “old world” this morning, sprawling in a large
arm-chair with a glass of sherry to hand. George Tarlyon’s
white-flannelled legs were stuck straight out, and his blue, slightly
frozen blue eyes were mocking the brown tips of his white shoes with an
almost serious expression; and George Tarlyon’s crisp fair hair shone
with the water of his bath. Handsome, careless, reckless George
Tarlyon.... A Viking, thought Ivor, as he came in at the window. And
George Tarlyon awoke lazily from his contemplation.

“Hallo!” he said quite genially. “Have you been thinking out another
book on courtesans, pacing up and down like that? God, I wish I could
think!...”

“Ah!” said Ivor absently, and took a cigarette from a box on the table.
Tarlyon at once struck a match and held it out to him from his chair.

“Must make striking these awful French matches awkward sometimes,”
Tarlyon referred sympathetically to his arm.

“Not so awkward,” Ivor said, “as it makes a good many other things. As
you can imagine----”

“I’ve no imagination,” Tarlyon complained frankly. “Have a glass-of-wine
instead?” (One referred even to a tankard of ale as “a-glass-of-wine.”)

“Well--perhaps a little later,” Ivor said, leaning against the edge of
the table. “I’m not the man I was at daylight drinking.”

Tarlyon suddenly grinned.

“I don’t know what you mean by a little later,” he said, “for I hear you
are leaving us before lunch.” And he grinned, just a little, directly up
at Ivor. Trying to confuse one, Ivor thought. Well, _he_ wasn’t going to
be confused....

“Yes, that’s it,” he told him. “Lunch at Antibes, I suppose.”

Tarlyon lazily stretched out his hand and took another cigarette: he lit
it.

“And you’ll dine, I suppose, at Avignon,” he suggested. “Romantic old
place, Avignon....” And then he added, first to the brown tips of his
shoes, then directly at him: “By the way, Marlay, there aren’t any other
women you’d like to take away with you from my house, are there?”

Silence....

“That,” said Ivor at last, “was a damn silly insult.”

“I wasn’t trying to be clever, you know,” Tarlyon pointed out. “We can’t
all try....”

“Well,” said Ivor, “if that insult was a sample of your wit, you’d have
to try pretty hard.”

“Ah,” said Tarlyon.

“What I mean is,” said Tarlyon, “that you can’t expect to be patted on
the back when you are trying to play the fool with a man’s wife....”

Silence....

“That, of course,” said Ivor thoughtfully, “is a sound point of view. In
fact it is the only point of view. But it seems to come strangely from
you, Lord Tarlyon.”

“My life is my own business, Marlay.”

“Of course.”

Silence....

“Then why the hell,” asked Lord Tarlyon, “are you mixing yourself up in
it?”

The slightly frozen blue eyes were looking very steadily, very
mockingly, at Ivor. And Ivor suddenly blazed away at them: “I haven’t
given a thought to your life, Tarlyon. And I am so little thinking of
playing the fool with your wife, as you call it, that you are the last
person in the world with whom I would discuss your wife!”

Tarlyon leapt up as though a bullet had ripped his skin----

And then----

“Hallo, Virginia! Ready already!”

And Ivor, whose back was to the door as he half-sat against the edge of
the table, screwed his head round....

“I’ve been ready for some time,” Virginia strangely told her husband,
not coming into the room. Ivor turned his head away.

“It would be nice of you,” she added, in that way she had of saying
things as though she wasn’t there, “to give the man a hand with the
luggage across the garden to the car. I seem to have rather a lot of
luggage. Would you, please?”

“I can do it,” Ivor said quickly: but a hand fell lightly on his maimed
shoulder.

“Don’t you worry, Marlay. I’m the backbone of Pimlico, I am.” And
Tarlyon lounged by Ivor without a glance, an immensely unperturbed man.
Virginia stood aside and let him pass through the doorway, and, without
glancing after him, came swiftly across the room to Ivor, whose back was
still to her. In his slack position against the table her eyes were
level with his.

“You shouldn’t have asked him to do that,” he said furiously.

“I heard,” she told him.

“Well, you shouldn’t have heard,” Ivor said sharply.

She stared thoughtfully at the white face and the furious black eyes....

“Ivor, don’t be too angry,” she pleaded gently. “It’s so unimportant,
that kind of thing!”

She was getting on his nerves, and it was a tremendous effort not to
tell her so. She shouldn’t have heard, she shouldn’t have come in.
Tarlyon and he might have got the thing more or less right, a bit
cleaner anyway. He felt foul, foul. Like a thing from a pest-house. God,
how queerly Virginia chose her men!

“Do you know,” she was saying, “I could have reminded him from the
doorway--I was just outside, by the stairs--that it wasn’t _his_ house,
and that he was my guest, just like you. But I thought that would be
common--wouldn’t it have been, Ivor?”

“Very,” he agreed shortly.

“So I thought I’d punish him by sending him to help with the luggage
instead. I had to end it somehow, don’t you see? That was also common, I
know, but less common--wasn’t it, Ivor?”

She simply _made_ him smile, she was like a schoolgirl. And as he
unwillingly smiled, she began to laugh, right into his sombre eyes, a
long and low laugh of pleasure. He protested with nerves:--

“Look here, Virginia, if you can’t leave a man in peace to be angry with
another man, what _will_ you let him do?”

But she laughed, standing there almost against him, her face close to
his: she laughed right into his sombre eyes....

“Oh, Ivor, you are a funny man, I do think!” she cried softly. “Though
that isn’t why I’m laughing--in fact, I don’t know why! But maybe I’m
laughing because I feel there simply must be something to laugh at in
all this--and your very angry face, Ivor! There’s always something to
laugh at in everything, dear, and if one can’t quite put a finger on
what that something is, one must just pretend. So I’m pretending--and
frightfully well, I do think! Don’t you? Answer me, Ivor?...”

And she laughed at him.

“And also answer me this,” she whispered. “When George was beastly to
you and about me, and you were beastly to him back, weren’t you awfully
glad that you hadn’t made love to me down here? Now weren’t you?... Oh,
Ivor, what fun it must be to be a gentleman whose lawlessness is all
according to rule, precept, and precedence!”

And she laughed at him.

“You are making a butt of me, Virginia,” he complained edgily.

“Indeed I’m not, dear!” She was contrite. “It was George who tried to do
that, and whether he thinks it did or didn’t come off we won’t now have
time to find out....”

“You see, Ivor,” she explained, “George made a small mistake. He has
always laughed at my men--and so have I, for the matter of that!--and he
thought he would have a go at laughing at you. He’s generally found it
very effective. But when he found it didn’t come off with you he got
angry and gave himself away.... It’s really entirely your fault, Ivor,
for not being a laughing matter. You are a damn bad-tempered man, that’s
what’s the matter with you, dear. Whereas all men should on certain
occasions be laughing matters, or else other men will hate them.”

“So he hates me then, does he?” Ivor rather naïvely asked. “Is that, do
you think, because of you or because he just happens to hate me,
anyway?”

“Maybe he thinks you’re dangerous,” Virginia told him seriously. “Or
maybe it’s because he’s not sure of the kind of man you are. George
hates not being sure of people. He also hates not being sure of the
income my trustees allow him as my relation-by-marriage--and a charming
income it is, too, I do think! Anyway it won the First Prize at the
Islington Income Show....”

You could never tell with Virginia in this mood: one moment she was
quite serious, and the next she would say silly things like that.

“And has he any idea,” Ivor began sharply, but he never finished that
question for she did the most surprising thing in the world: she drew a
cross on his forehead with her finger: and she was not smiling.

“I think he has an idea,” she whispered, “that I may be going away for
good....”

“And I have an idea,” she whispered, “that I probably am.”

They went. And as they went no one was visible--except dear Hugo in his
shirt-sleeves at his bedroom window; and he cheerfully waved to them and
they threw farewell gestures to him, for Hugo was really very, very
nice--and always so very aloof from everything! His friends might
quarrel with each other, but they could never quarrel with Hugo Cypress,
the last of the _beaux sabreurs_.

The large touring-car, with chauffeur and maid (known as “the Smith,”
because her name was Mdlle. Louise Madeleine Dupont) in front, and Ivor
and Virginia behind, swiftly approached Antibes, on the road to Cannes.
And it passed Antibes.

“I’m damned if we’ll lunch at Antibes!” Ivor suddenly said: but gave no
reason to Virginia’s, “Is this man mad?” eyebrow-look.

They did dine, however, seven hours later, within the blond ramparts of
Avignon. “Romantic old place, Avignon!”

CHAPTER X

No car, not even such a one as Lady Tarlyon’s, can reach Paris from the
south within a day, or even within two days without particular
preparation; and besides, it is a chilly kind of nuisance to motor at
night over some of the worst roads known to man--especially when one can
stay so very comfortably at that ancient hostelry of modern comforts,
the Hôtel des Cardinaux, just within the blond ramparts of Avignon, as
you enter Avignon through the village of Villeneuve-les-Avignon and
across the broad sweep of the Rhone. The Hôtel des Cardinaux, four
square and stout sides enclosing what the hasty traveller may remember
as a labyrinth of courtyards--in which loiter the queenly ilex-trees and
upon which seems to open every window in the place, a multitude of
small-paned windows--is also blond, a seared and dirty blond reminiscent
of a century when fine ladies did not mind a little dirt so only their
lovers were laced and perfumed. In fact, the only thing in Avignon that
seems not to be of that dirty and delightful blond is the crucifix on
the hill which rises above the centre of that ancient town--that gray
symbol of a great idea, which even the vast and glowing Castle of the
Popes cannot mortify. Stare one way--if you can find any altitude from
which to stare, for this is a stuffy and enclosed town, a town of
crooked side-streets and cramped movements, a town of bustling
_commerçants_--stare one way, and you will see this crucifix upon its
hill; stare another, over the crenellated ramparts that now look so
amazingly useless, and you will see the broad sweep of the Rhone over
which you blissfully hurried into Avignon; and when you have looked at
the Rhone for a few minutes, you will say that it looks a hard and
heartless river, a river of steel. The land of Provence is green and
light in spring, but the Rhone beside Avignon is always of steel, and
the reflection of the sun upon its smooth waters is but an illusion to
placate the romantic stranger. And over it the mistral hurls itself at
you as you stand, say, at your open bedroom window at the Hôtel des
Cardinaux, so that you cry, “My God, I thought it was warm in Provence!”
and you close the window very quickly, and you draw up a chair to the
ugly fireplace in which a fire is struggling smokily with the mistral in
the chimney. And you say gloomily to yourself that Avignon is not a
place in which to be happy in this century: in some past century, maybe
Mr. George Moore’s century, but not in this. For, though you are in the
land of lovers and troubadours, your thoughts are not of romance:
certainly not until you have dined.

Ivor and Virginia dined in a private sitting-room upstairs. Obsequiously
was the door opened for them upon a dark and cumbersome room with high
walls of faded red damask: and so long deprived of youth and light that,
as the light crept in with Ivor and Virginia, the mirrors stirred
sleepily with reflections of ancient candelabras and musty golden
patches of Empire luxury on the background of red damask. They dined
almost in silence: very companionably, but almost in silence.

The day seemed to have tired Virginia, as well it might; and, excusing
her silences, she complained, ever so little, of a pain. It baffled
Virginia to describe this pain but as a sick little pain, something
between a tummy-ache and an ear-ache, and very disturbing in its
frequent comings and goings. And she mocked her pain, saying it was a
busy little pain--and very mysterious too, or else French and English
doctors had been very unintelligent about it. And to deal with it
Virginia always carried about with her some clear, white-looking stuff
in a little bottle--“it’s got opium and mint in it,” she said--and she
would take a drop or two of this in a thimbleful of water, and it would
presently soothe away the sick little pain inside her. And sometimes she
would make her friends try a little of the stuff in which there was
opium and mint, just to see what it was like, and they generally said it
was pretty foul. That is what Ivor sympathetically said to-night, as
they sat after dinner in two frightfully uncomfortable arm-chairs in
front of the smoky fire. There they sat and talked of nothing in
particular, nothing personal. And, quite soon, Virginia said she was
tired and wouldn’t mind going to bed; and Ivor said he was also tired,
and yawned a splendid yawn to prove it.

They had to walk across the corridor from the sitting-room to their
bedrooms, two doors side by side. Virginia let herself into her room;
and swiftly she stretched out her hand and took his, and smiled very
sweetly at him.

“Good-night, dear,” she said.

Once in his room Ivor found he was indeed tired. And when he was tired
his mutilated shoulder hurt him: it often hurt him devilishly, but he
was almost getting used to it. It tired one a good deal more, he
thought, to be driven in a car a long distance than to drive one. He
would ask Virginia to let him drive to-morrow, he had driven quite a lot
with his one arm, and after all there was young David Harley, who drove
splendidly with only one arm and a wooden leg. Then he stopped and
stared at something, quite intently; and as he stared at it he was very
still, scarcely breathing. Of course, he had seen it before, while he
was dressing for dinner, but he had only seen it out of the corner of
his eyes; he hadn’t touched it, he hadn’t the faintest idea if it was
bolted or not.... Then, suddenly, he felt very weary in mind and body;
quickly undressed, and went to bed. It was a wide, low, and very
comfortable bed, with no antique nonsense about it. His shoulder hurt
like hell.

Ivor slept, and had a dream. He dreamed of golden hair falling about his
face and body, creepers of golden hair entwining him. And then a strange
turn happened, strange even in a dream about golden hair, for he was
made to see his mind as a column of marble. And a very tall and shapely
column it looked, too! standing on nothing, directed nowhither, just an
Attic column looking very beautiful with the rare beauty of an
indestructible thing. That column was his mind, in the dream. And he
looked at it for a long time, he was made to examine it very carefully.
“Look, look!” someone seemed to keep on crying in his ear, rather
impatiently, Ivor thought. And then at last he saw what he was intended
to see--there it was, oh so high up on the column! There it was, a naked
creature, a woman, a slight and naked thing, and so dazzling white! She
held on there in a marvellous abandon of fulfilment, white arms and legs
deliciously entwining the column, golden hair wanton about her
shoulders, and lips destroying the marble column with kisses. Ivor
stared at it for a long time, a very long time, and as he stared the
column seemed to come nearer and nearer to him, until he could hear what
the golden woman was whispering as her lips destroyed the column. But
although he could distinctly hear what she was whispering, his mind
couldn’t form what he heard into words, simply couldn’t; and he
miserably racked his brain about it, thinking that it was very important
indeed for him to form her whisperings into words. And when at last he
opened his eyes to the dark room he could still hear the whispering, but
now he could form what the whispering voice was saying; it was saying:
“Oh, Ivor! dear Ivor....” And she wasn’t kissing a silly marble column
at all, that golden woman, she was kissing his lips, and her hair was
falling about his face, tickling just a little. Oh, she wasn’t real, of
course! she was only a legend, a legend of a night in Avignon! And,
stretching out his hand, he touched her body lying across the bed, and
her body under the very thin nightdress was icy cold to his hand.

“You’ll catch a most awful cold,” he murmured to the amazing lips.

“You are so vain, so vain, ...” she whispered.

CHAPTER XI

Naturally, they did not now hurry to Paris: or hurry anywhither, for the
matter of that. They had no plans, there was no hurry, the weather was
perfect; and the world was far too busy enjoying the lack of
killing--the spring of 1919!--to notice or care what two people were
doing. Ivor and Virginia had too much to talk about to discuss such
banalities as destinations. “We are going towards Paris? Very well then,
let’s go towards Paris.” Thus they motored gently towards Paris, staying
at places. _Nach Paris_ is the vaguest and most uncertain destiny in
history, as all men know; and the route these two adventurers took would
have broken the heart of a motoring-map, if they had consulted one. They
somehow got to Chartres, among other places. Chartres has about as much
relation to Paris from Avignon as Canterbury, and they got to it only by
the divine accident of seeing, one evening, the two towers of its
magnificent cathedral from the far distance. Ivor and Virginia never
forgot the catch in their hearts at the sudden beauty of the great
cathedral high against the evening sky. “Oh, it’s somehow like a great
horse!” Virginia whispered in the silence of their wonder at that great
shape high against the sky: for the cathedral of Chartres is built upon
an eminence in the town, and from anywhere on the straight roads that
lead out of Chartres to the four corners of the world you will see its
lofty genius against the sky.... From Chartres to Paris is but a three
hours’ drive at most, but it took them a week: part of which time they
spent at a hotel in the forest of Fontainbleau. A lovely and
indescribable fortnight, this from Avignon to Paris....

Virginia always stayed at the Ritz in Paris: it was just a habit: but
the habit was confined to the rue Cambon side of it, saying it was
quieter there. Ivor, who also stayed on the rue Cambon side, pointed out
that as a matter of fact it was much noisier than the Place Vendôme
side, but that as all hotels were beastly, it didn’t very much matter.
There are certain gentlemen of mean and truculent appearance, who, in
the early hours of every morning, enter the central streets of Paris,
and bang large tin cans against the walls on the thin pretence of
clearing out the dustbins.

Virginia had found a letter awaiting her at the bureau: and she had
looked at the envelope with that vague, far-away look. But when Ivor,
dressed for dinner, came into her room to see if she was ready, which of
course she was not, she gave him the letter with a mischievous laugh:
saying that it was a masterpiece of Tarlyonry, and an instructive essay
for any man on the perfect way to treat a vanished wife and a possibly
vanishing income. “Which, though, he wouldn’t think very much about,”
she conceded, “for no Tarlyon was ever quite penniless.”

“Am I, or am I not, going to like this letter?” Ivor asked her frankly.
“Because if not, I would much rather read it _after_ dinner, if I’ve got
to read it at all....”

Virginia was before her mirror, subduing “Swan and Edgar”; and she
turned to him in her chair, with her face sideways, holding that small
iron toy to Swan. She made a little face at him.

“It’s just an ordinary kind of letter,” she said.

It was addressed from Monte Carlo, and dated five days back. Ivor sat on
the edge of the bed and read:--

“DEAR VIRGINIA,--I hope you won’t mind the liberty I’ve taken with
the villa. I’ve closed it up and scattered the menials, as I
gathered that you won’t be returning to this part of the country
for some time, and being solitary host of a villa like a
wedding-cake isn’t my strongest suit. Hugo and I moved on here, and
haven’t enjoyed it as much as if you’d been here too. The ‘dicing’
hasn’t been going so well as it was--poor old Hugo came a crash the
other night, and has gone clucking back for to be a toy soldier at
Aldershot, saying that ‘dicing’ isn’t what it was in the early
seventies and that he’s going to fight the Bolsheviks instead, for
the only person who took his money with even a pretence of sympathy
was a Grand Duke, who probably needed it himself. I’m leaving for
London to-morrow, but as I’m only passing through Paris, where I
suppose you are--you might have written to me, I do think!--I
shan’t have time to look in on you. I shall stay at Belgrave
Square, and look at London for a period, and then go down to Rupert
Kare’s. In the meanwhile, should you suddenly feel the call of
England in your blood and want to come home, be a dear and send me
a wire to White’s, so that I can meet you with a couple of plovers’
eggs on a plate, it being the season for plovers’ eggs and you
adoring same. Virginia, don’t tell me that you and I aren’t going
to break an egg together at the Mont Agel this year! Remember that
you would never have married me if I hadn’t drugged you with
plovers’ eggs--and will so drug you again, Virginia, or my name
isn’t George St. George, ever your lord but never my own master.”

Ivor folded up the letter, rather slowly and clumsily, with his one
hand. Virginia was ready, radiant with the peculiar glitter of a very
fair woman in a sleeveless black dress, and looking at him with that
mischievous smile of hers. It put him rather on his guard, that smile.

“Odd man!” Ivor said thoughtfully. “Might have been written by a Dago,
parts of that letter--and yet he’s the most gallant man in England.”

“Don’t you see that that is the way of his pride?” she pointed out. “He
has a great deal of pride, and common sense too, but they’ve both
somehow got motheaten in him. And so he writes in that casual and
bantering way, as though nothing in particular had happened----”

“Well, it has,” Ivor said sharply.

“Now don’t be snappy, Ivor,” she begged him mischievously. “You and I
know something _most_ particular has happened, and so does George
really, but he wouldn’t give that away, even to himself, not he! He
thinks and writes about it in that unimportant way just so as to make it
seem unimportant, something not at all serious. You see, he’s always
been quite sure of his hold on me, and he can’t get out of that
conceited habit all at once. Some Englishmen never think their wives can
be unfaithful to them, not because they think so well of their wives but
because they think so well of themselves. And so George simply can’t
help thinking that I am only playing--we must give him a little time to
realise that I’m not playing, Ivor,” she added gently.

“For him to realise that, or for you to realise that?” he asked, and put
the light out of her eyes.

“You’ve got no right to say that!” Virginia cried.

He had meant to hurt, on a sudden impulse to lance a grievance that had
risen within him; and now was shamed by her sincere anger, and would
have pleaded his reason and begged her forgiveness, but she turned her
head from him, and her face was set. And he told her unlistening face
how he had noticed during the last two weeks, and divine weeks they had
been, that she had avoided the subject of what they were going to do,
the definite thing which was essential to people who weren’t babies.
“Every time I wanted to talk about it,” he told her, “you somehow
stopgapped me, and sometimes so cleverly that I forgot what I wanted to
say in admiring you--but all the time I couldn’t help wondering why you
avoided the subject, and feeling you must have some reason for that, a
reason so weak that you didn’t dare let it out, for fear I might just
laugh at you.” He smiled a little. “It’s been an uncomfortable feeling,”
he explained. “Like a cold hot-water bottle.”

But there was no response in her set face. She had sat down with her
back to him, on the chair by the toilet-table, and was playing with the
lid of a little ivory box. Never before had she looked like this; for
the face he saw in the mirror was set in an inexplicable anger, a deep
and almost venomous anger which amazed him; and he had a curious feeling
that this Virginia’s spine was made of steel, it would bend and bend and
bend until one day it snapped up straight and stayed straight, rigid and
unyielding. He felt, as it were psychically that there were wastes in
this Virginia unexplored by man, wastes where she roamed in utter
disregard of human laws, wastes where she could wander untrammelled by
human emotions. Give her an inch of excuse, and she would become a
snake, to swish away with implacable and unfathomable face. American
women were said to get like that when angered, hard. He knew, quite
dearly, that she wasn’t now angry at what he had said, but that her
whole nature had been given a twist to anger at some hidden aspect of
him.

“Well?” he asked softly, from behind her. She had humoured him often,
after all....

She turned her head and looked directly at him.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” she said steadily. “You say that I haven’t
wanted to discuss what we are going to do. Having discovered that I
don’t want to, I’m merely wondering why you are insisting on it--that’s
all.”

He laughed a little at that.

“Don’t try to bully me, Virginia, and I’ll not try to bully you,” he
warned her. “You see, dear, I think we ought to discuss it, whether you
want to or not. It’s really rather important--and you can’t just get out
of it by looking like an angry queen and saying, ‘I have nothing to
say.’ I’m in love with _you_, Virginia, and not with love, so I want us
to be sane about it. There’s a great deal more pleasure in sanity than
people think--for, you know, one doesn’t have to be mad because one is
in love....” And then, from behind, he bent down and gently tilted up
her chin with his hand and kissed her lips; and, surprisingly, they held
to his lips!

“Is that the way sanity takes you?” she asked.

“It was a proposal of marriage,” he said gravely. It was the first time
that word had occurred between them; but it had occurred within them for
now two weeks. Virginia stared at him seriously, and her hand gently
brushed his forehead, a very fond gesture. The curious anger in her had
died as suddenly as it had come.

“That’s what I was being angry about,” she explained. “And that’s why
I’ve made you avoid the subject these glorious two weeks, these lovers’
weeks. I don’t think I want to marry you, Ivor. In fact, I don’t think
any woman has ever wanted to marry you.”

“I’ve only asked one,” he told her darkly. “But I’m afraid you will have
to marry me, Virginia. Things seem to point that way. I am not
philandering with you, I’d have you know. I have finished with
philandering. It doesn’t matter a button to me if we are married or not,
and I’ve no one in the world to consider but you--but marriage seems to
be indicated, for several weighty reasons which I will explain to you if
you’ll cease laughing at me.”

“I was trying to look like a woman yearning for dinner, that’s all.”

“You must yearn,” he said firmly. “We can always dine, but we can’t
always talk sense----”

“Not even now,” she interrupted with a great weariness. “As far as I can
make out you are trying to make an honest woman of me. Well, you can’t
do it. No one can do it. And I want my dinner, please.”

“Damn dinner! It’s no good being funny about this, Virginia, because I’m
frightfully serious. I will not have us slopping about Europe in this
hole-and-corner way. You are too fine and I am too old.”

“So this is ‘slopping about,’ is it?” she asked, ever so quietly.

“Don’t, please, drive me into being disloyal to all this----” he was
begging her impatiently, when she swiftly interrupted him with a
gesture.

“Oh, got you!” she cried, laughing into his astonished eyes. “Don’t you
see, you poor Ivor? No possible or prospective husband could have said
that--only a lover could have said it, in just that particularly idiotic
way! Oh, Ivor, you are too sweet! And that’s why it’s perfectly absurd,
all this talk about our marrying. You simply don’t look or think or talk
like any possible husband; it’s perfectly obvious to the meanest
intelligence that you are a lover and always will be. You simply aren’t
casual enough to be anything else, Ivor. I assure you, dear. You will
never make any woman feel, deep down in her, that you could be anything
so casual as her husband. Anyway, you can’t be mine--oh, please don’t
insist!” she pathetically begged him. “For I will give way, and then we
will look so silly as husband and wife--or rather, feel silly. Oh, my
dear, it’s ever such an impossible relation for Ivor and Virginia!...”

But he insisted that they must be reasonable and responsible people, not
vague drifters on the scum of life.

“It’s just a matter of orderliness,” he explained earnestly, “our
getting married. You are quite right, it is an effort to see myself as
your husband and you as my wife--but we needn’t make the effort once
we’ve committed the fact. When I said that you were too fine and I was
too old to slop about Europe in a hole-and-corner way, I meant that this
disorderly kind of life is unworthy of you, and that I’m not young
enough any more to enjoy doing no work _all_ the time. For, you know,
one never can do any real work unless there’s some stability in the way
of life--one simply must be a responsible person, even a lover must be a
responsible person, if he is ever to get any work done. And the idea
that a man and a woman of your position can live together and say, ‘the
devil take the world’ is bosh, there’s never any conviction about that
‘devil take the world’ remark. I know you don’t care anything about
social position, I know you quite sincerely don’t ever want to do social
things again--but, Virginia, there’s something displeasing and slack,
like two people being in dressing-gowns all day long, in a state about
which people can make remarks--and in which you can get mocking letters
from Tarlyon! I’m talking sense, Virginia, so don’t argue with me
because I want my dinner as much as you do and it’s my turn to be angry
next....”

Her silence was serious, her eyes wide with thought. He waited, close
beside her, staring at her with a crooked little smile. Then, suddenly,
she nodded, just once.

“All right,” she said, almost absently. “George will let me divorce
him--yes, we can manage that. He’s got a lot of common sense hidden away
somewhere....” She got up from her chair with a sudden little shake.
“That’s settled then, Ivor. No more talk about it, please--oh, please!”
she suddenly pleaded in her breathless little voice. “Let’s have our
summer, and then in the autumn we can get down to this business of
arrangement and divorce--down from our mountains, Ivor, right down!” Her
eyes seemed clouded, he had a queer idea that she was going to cry; but
she didn’t, she picked up a tube of lip-salve from the toilet-table and
took it to her lips, and then on a sudden thought held it away again.

“Will you kiss me before or after?” she asked.

And he did whatever it was suitable for him to do.

The corridors of a hotel at the hour of nine-fifteen at night are
consecrated to the activities of _valets de chambre_: it is at that
mysterious hour, when the quality are at dinner or the play, that the
white-aproned _valets_ raid their bedrooms and rudely snatch away their
clothes; and, with jackets and trousers screwed deftly under their arms,
go searching the most noisome holes of the hotel for boot-brushes and
oily rags with which to dust and clean them.

But to-night the last of _messieurs et mesdames_ were late in their
descent. And it was as the _valets_ were waiting in a little group about
a bedroom door, in final gossip before the raid, that there passed them
down the corridor two silent dandies: a very fair lady--“_Ah, ce type
anglais!_”--and a very tall, beak-nosed, clean-shaven man with one arm
and a white flower brave on the silk lapel of his _smoking_. The
white-aproned group stared after _monsieur et milady_; they saw the hand
of the fair lady suddenly laid upon the sleeve of the tall gentleman,
and the way she raised her head to him and spoke words which, they saw,
the dark profile was quite helpless to answer.

“_Elle l’aime, vous savez_,” said the _doyen_ of the _valets_, a wise
man.

“_Elle s’amuse, mon vieux_,” sneered a young Italian with a broken nose;
but his heart had been broken too, several times.

Now these were the sudden words of the fair lady, which her companion
was quite helpless to answer.

“I want a baby,” she said. “I need a son--frightfully!”

“And I think,” she said, “that there’s somewhere a son of yours who
needs _me_--frightfully!”

“_Comedia!_” whispered the young Italian with the broken nose, as the
lift swallowed up the silence of _monsieur et milady_.

CHAPTER XII

The pact was made, then: there was to be no talk of “arrangements” until
the autumn, it was to be a clear summer of--“unreason,” Virginia teased
him. So they had no thought of returning to England that spring or
summer, and did not--except for one reckless night in April, to a masque
at the Albert Hall. Carnival, lovely carnival! And they were so weirdly
and completely disguised--for Virginia was an adept at the art of masque
and fancy-dress--that not one of her thousand acquaintances recognised
her, or him; and they had much fun to watch the cheerful passages of
Lois and many another, including Tarlyon and Hugo Cypress, who had both
adopted the same fancy-dress in the form of an Assyrian beard each: with
which Tarlyon looked quite magnificent and royal, and Hugo quite too
comical. And once, as she passed him, Hugo caught her and insisted on
her complaisance for the dance; but as she danced, she didn’t, of
course, dare utter a word, lest he should recognise her and “cluck” the
news to every one; though even so he might have perceived her had he not
been so tipsy--“entirely to amuse the guests, lovely lady,” he earnestly
assured her choking silence. And then, in the early morning, swift
bathing and changing in Ivor’s flat in Upper Brook Street, and so back
to France by the eight o’clock train. “Unreason,” indeed!...

What had they to do with England, those two, and what had England to do
with them, during those months? They would outlaw themselves until the
autumn....

They were violently happy in each other. They were great lovers, Ivor
and Virginia. And sometimes it was a consuming love, and then again it
would be very gentle: silent now and bubbling then, gay and grave in
changing moods, and sometimes it would be passing sombre--and then again
the thing would burst upon them. “Like a flash of very white teeth,”
Virginia said. But she said many strange things in nearness, for she was
very shameless with him, which was strange in her. (Gerald Trevor used
to say that it was the business of a good mistress to be shameless, and
the business of a good lover to appreciate it. Men can’t afford to be
shameless, they get nasty, he said. Prejudice, of course. Dear Gerald!)
One day she wondered about her shamelessness with him, saying that she
had never been like that before.

“But never, Ivor! Men have wanted me to say things, of course, but one
just wasn’t able to, even if one liked them very much. One just
couldn’t. But now! Oh, you lovely beast, Ivor!...”

Now when Virginia said she had “never” done a thing before, there was no
question of not believing her (the word “never” is really frightfully
difficult to believe), for the amazing thing about Virginia was that she
never told a lie. She had never been known to so far, anyway. And Ivor
accused her of never telling a lie, saying that it was inhuman, and that
he felt rather out of it, having told a-many.

“But that’s where I’m beastly,” she pointed out vividly. “I go silent,
you see. I just sit still and say nothing. It’s much worse than lying,
and much crueller, to be silent--and I’m known, you know, as a very
silent woman. Of course I get a bit chatty with you ...” she suddenly
giggled at his expression. That was how things generally ended with
those two....

One day Virginia cried. Looking up from the page of a book, Ivor saw her
eyes dimmed with tears.

“Oh!” she cried, at his look.

“Well!” he exclaimed, in utter surprise.

She smiled a little, in sudden confusion. And she spitefully dabbed her
eyes with a handkerchief.

“I must be growing up,” she said.

“But, darling, not yet to second childhood!”

Oh, how sad she looked! like a fairy in a sad tale about Midsummer
Night.

“I’m realising, you see, that I haven’t deserved a bit of this--oh, not
a bit of it!” she cried miserably. “Ivor, I’ve deserved it much less
than other people might deserve it. I am too lucky, Ivor, and I’m
afraid....”

“I’ve been such a beastly person,” she said. “You don’t know....”

Vividly the scene of his first kiss that January night in Nasyngton came
back to him. He remembered it against her.

“Don’t, please, Virginia!” he begged her. “I do hate your thinking of
all that....”

She stared at him miserably. There were no tears in her eyes now, they
were intent beyond his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said plaintively. “Only I see men. Suddenly, sitting
here--I see men. You and I are so happy, you think such fine things
about me, and you make me fine--but sometimes I see men! Men who wanted
to be happy with me, you know. I was so easy, Ivor ... and then I was so
cruel.... Some haven’t forgiven me yet. There are a few men in the world
this minute who hate me for a beastly woman, and they are right, for
they’ve never seen me with you. I’ve been awful vicious, Ivor....”

And he remembered the feeling she had once given him of the “wastes”
within her, the lawless wastes where Virginia’s soul wandered in
lawlessness, the bleak wastes of angry indifference; and how he had
seen her, felt her, dropping thither from his love, and how he had
somehow clutched her back, he never knew how--this soft and tender
Virginia, pitiful and so full of pity!

“You are thinking lovely things about me!” she cried in distress. “I see
by your eyes, Ivor.”

And her arm swept round the wide and dim studio in an impotent gesture.

“Why don’t you see that I don’t deserve all this?” she cried.

For all these things came to pass in a studio in the Place du Tertre,
which is a small square lying flat on top of the Butte above Montmartre,
in the white shadow and beneath the white cupolas of the queer church of
Sacré Cœur.

This studio lay behind a shabby little house in the Place du Tertre, and
was built low and wide and elegant to the caprice of an adventurous
artist, one Kay Benson; and with it was a garden of flowers by day and
lanterns by night, a little garden replete with the secret of all lovely
gardens, for a man and a woman could sit in it: thence to stare down at
the mists of the busy city and the thin and lively riband of the Seine,
at the whole pageant and the confusion of mighty Paris, from the Mont
Valérien to the grim old Lion de Belfort.

It was by devious ways and for various reasons that, on that first of
May, Ivor and Virginia climbed from the luxury of the Place Vendôme to
the solitude of the Butte, to the studio over against the queer church
of Sacré Cœur; for is it not queer that men should have climbed so high
and laboured so long to build so ugly a church as Sacré Cœur? which is
thus a fitting ambition for the silly revellers of Montmartre to reach
by dawn, for it is an ugly church even in the dawn and only distance can
make it beautiful.

CHAPTER XIII

Their pact was to outlaw themselves from England and all men, from the
March day when they arrived in Paris until October. But one cannot be
undisturbed in the heart of Paris: which must, of course, be only a
figure of speech, for surely the heart of Paris must lie otherwhere than
about the rue de la Paix, else men would not so easily die for it. And,
too, it was now the chattering Paris of departing armies and approaching
Conference, when Lady Tarlyon could not take a step without being
recognised and hailed: and Ivor had to be continually standing aside and
trying to look as though himself had met her by chance only a moment
before.

So they had left Paris, very shortly after their first arrival, and
again by car. The world was before them, but they had not a wide choice
of direction. Northwards were still soldiers and ruins, westwards were
armaments going to rest, eastwards was never but rather dull--so they
went towards the Pyrenees, staying where they happened. They went to
Hendaye and to St. Jean de Luz--but not to Biarritz!

“Oh no, not Biarritz! We are not feeling at all smart these days!”
Virginia cried in his ear, and jolly nearly bit it; which was a sudden
habit of hers that caused words between them, for she seemed to like
doing it, but it hurt him. “Who has more right to bite your ear than I?”
Virginia cried, and because he remarked that she should have said “me”
instead of “I,” she punished him. “Oh, you beast, Ivor! you like it, you
know you do! And besides your own grammar in your books is rotten....”

But no god known to man can be so absurdly and unreservedly kind to two
people; and so there travelled in the car with Ivor and Virginia, the
chauffeur and the maid (the amiable “Smith”), an invisible but impish
little traveller--none other than that “sick little pain”! It plagued
Virginia increasingly, that sick little pain inside her; and soon its
mark was laid softly upon her face, always clear-white as a white
camellia; but lately it was as though the deity of her father’s
button-hole was becoming the deity of Virginia’s complexion, for a
gardenia was not more wan nor peculiar-white than the disturbing pallor
of her face. Her lips Virginia coloured, but never a touch of _rouge_
touched her cheek, for she said that many Carnal generations had
established her complexion, and who was she to risk breaking the entail
of so precious a property? And Ivor agreed with her, saying that she was
quite right to have the courage of her own complexion....

Now one day it came to pass that the stuff in the little white bottle,
in which there was opium and mint, lost all its soothing properties; and
the bravery of Virginia--it was only a very little pain, after all!--was
of no avail against the solicitude of Ivor, so that Paris saw them again
on an afternoon in April.

“I know of a doctor Lois had once,” Virginia said. But when she came out
of that doctor’s consulting room, Ivor saw that she was impatient.

“The man’s a fool,” Virginia said; and when they were well outside, she
said: “He has the indigestion theory on the brain. He shook his head
over me--such a nasty little man, Ivor! And he said that it might be due
to too many cocktails and irregular habits--me! And so I didn’t even
trouble to tell him that I hadn’t touched anything but Vichy for years,
and not much of that.... _Now_ what are we going to do, Ivor?”

“We are going to find a better doctor,” Ivor said; and found a famous
one the very next day. “This sick little pain,” Ivor said, “has had a
long enough run....”

Le docteur David was a very tall and bearded old gentleman who lived in
a very small and stuffy _apartement_ in the rue Ponthieu, a narrow
street off the Champs Elysées: a famous specialist and a kind and genial
man of the world, with a perfect command of many languages and without a
trace of that aggressive optimism which makes so many Gallic doctors
quite unbearable to their victims. Virginia liked him, saying that he
was a most superior man and that the word indigestion had not dominated
their conversation, but that Dr. David had suggested that X-ray
photographs would be interesting. She was not very communicative about
it, Ivor thought.

They went again to the rue Ponthieu after the X-ray photographs had been
taken. And the first sight Ivor had of le docteur David was when, pacing
up and down the stuffy and overfurnished waiting-room in his
restlessness, a wide double-door opened and there appeared the back of
Virginia and the heavily bearded face of the specialist. Virginia was
saying:--

“Then it will be all right until October? Oh, please say ‘yes,’ doctor!”

“Yes,” smiled the tall, old gentleman. They came into the room, and Ivor
fully saw him as a very courtly, very bearded, and very wise-looking man
of the world. Virginia introduced them, and said quickly to Ivor:--

“It’s a long story. Dr. David says I must be operated on, but that I can
wait until October....”

“So long as you keep quiet,” said Dr. David.

“Oh yes, I will keep quiet!” Virginia breathed softly.

“But when I say quiet, madame, I mean very, very quiet,” Dr. David
insisted gravely; and his eyes smiled gravely down on her, so that she
should understand him well.

“And you say,” Virginia went quickly on, “that it will be quite all
right for me to be cut into little bits in London? For I was once in a
French _maison de santé_ for a few days, and though the nurses were very
kind they were dreadfully inefficient, and looked as though they were or
might be nuns. It was most depressing....”

The old man chuckled in his beard. Unlike most Frenchmen, he stood on
his own and not on France’s dignity.

“But yes, London is easily managed! I have often worked with Ian
Black--but you know him, probably? Who in London does not know Ian
Black?”

“Yes, I know him,” Ivor said, and Dr. David smiled across at him. Ivor
had often met the surgeon, Ian Black, at Rodney West’s house....

“You must come to see me once a week for a while,” the specialist told
Virginia, “to let me know how you are. Thus we will cure you.”

“I will come twice a week,” Virginia cried gaily, liking the old
gentleman more every moment.

“Well, then, once as a patient and once as a friend,” Dr. David smiled
gallantly. “But remember, Lady Tarlyon,” he added gravely, “you must
keep very quiet. I warn you that it will be much, much more comfortable
for you....”

As Virginia passed out he detained Ivor for a moment. He looked
thoughtfully at Ivor.

“If you are a great friend of Lady Tarlyon’s,” said le docteur David,
“you will persuade her to keep quiet for the next few months. You will
help her to keep quiet, perhaps? These things are very difficult, I
know....” And Ivor silently agreed that these things were very difficult
indeed.

“You see,” Virginia began, as the car swallowed up the Champs Elysées
towards the Ritz, “when I first went to see him, he patted me about here
and there, and then he asked me the questions which even the nicest
doctors must ask women. He didn’t seem any more satisfied with my
answers than I am with the facts--for I do get so unnecessarily weak,
sometimes, Ivor! And then he asked if I had ever had a motor accident or
a fall from a horse, and I remembered a fall I had had in the second
year of the war, over a ditch. Not a really bad fall, you know, but just
bad enough to shake me up and keep me in bed for a day or two. And then,
after the X-rays had been taken, he said I was a bit wrenched about
inside--it’s all very technical, dear--and that he could fix it good and
proper with an operation. Not a very serious operation, he said, but not
so very minor either. So that’s why I must keep quiet until October--oh
yes, I insisted on October, so that we can have our summer out!--for
he’s afraid of ever so little a hæmorrhage or something. It would be
very bad for me, he said, Ivor,” she added, in a funny little way.

“We must leave the Ritz at once,” Ivor firmly capped a silence.

“Please!” she agreed. “But where shall we go to, Ivor? I couldn’t bear
one of those dazzling flats in the Avenue Victor Hugo or round about the
Parc Monceau, even if we could find one; and the Latin Quarter is now an
annexe of New York--where _can_ we go, Ivor?”

The car swung round the vast Place de la Concorde....

“I’m thinking,” said Ivor.

He thought and acted to such good advantage that--with the help of wires
to Turner to hunt up old addresses--within twenty-four hours he had
routed up Kay Benson in his studio on the Butte. Ivor had known Kay
Benson in the feverish months of new acquaintance succeeding on his
meeting with Otto and Fitz in 1910: had lent him money--which Kay had
repaid--and had never entirely lost touch with him. Now Ivor liked the
studio at sight, dirty and unkempt as it was; for Kay Benson, having
built and decorated it in a suddenly rich period before the war, had
since fallen from that high estate, and was become again the
impoverished and earnest Kay of old. His absence during the war had not
improved the general ensemble of the place--but still, thought Ivor, a
few days, a few stuffs, a little furniture, and Virginia would put it
splendidly right. And the garden over Paris was a marvellous accident, a
miracle to happen to a lover....

Kay Benson was eager--the poorer he was the more eager he was about
everything, poor Kay!--to go to Tripoli: “and leave this bloody Europe
for good and all,” he said furiously. So the matter of letting the
studio to Ivor, from that very day if Ivor liked, was easily arranged.

But when Virginia saw it in the candle-light of that same night--Kay was
adventuring, earnestly of course, and had given Ivor the key--she cried
out that she simply must have it for her own: it was so divine with its
wide yet dim roominess, its little stairs up to a little gallery at the
end, and its little rooms leading from the little gallery.

“Smith can take care of us and cook for us here,” Virginia cried,
quickly planning. “And there’s a sweet little room for her. And a bigger
little room for Ivor. And the biggest room of all for Virginia, who
will sleep on a bed in the corner of the studio, which bed will be a
lovely divan by day....”

“But will he sell the lease?” she asked anxiously, and Ivor said Kay
Benson would sell anything.

“But _I_ will buy it,” Ivor said. “_I_ found it, and _I_’m going to buy
it. Yah!”

“You might let me, I do think!” Virginia made plaint.

Ivor softened, magnificently:

“Well, we will both buy it--between us!”

“Oh, Ivor, our eyrie! Over Paris, out of ken--our eyrie, Ivor!” And
Virginia’s eyes were brighter than a room of a thousand candles....

Thus it was, then, that Ivor and Virginia came to be in a studio on the
Butte, on the first day of May, 1919; and intended to stay there, until
the business of life should take them to London in October.

CHAPTER XIV

But the “sick little pain” was not to be tamed into regularity so easily
as all that, and it cared nothing for pacts. Virginia’s body was
rebellious of Virginia’s heart. And London saw them long before October;
it saw them approaching from the sky in a wide-winged, colourless thing
which many men had died to make so convenient for Ivor and Virginia.

Maybe Virginia had not been quiet enough. Although she very seldom left
the studio and its little garden over Paris, maybe she had not been
quiet enough. Le docteur David, on every one of her weekly visits,
reminded her--and sometimes Ivor, when he accompanied her--of his urgent
command. But, as Dr. David himself had said, these things are very
difficult. And Ivor and Virginia were in love.

Everything seemed to be going very well until a certain morning in July.
Ivor was leisurely dressing--with one arm one dresses either very
leisurely or very frantically--in his little room off the gallery, when
the Smith came in. She would often come in thus, of a morning or
evening, to help him with his tie or suchlike; for though Ivor was now
very expert in managing his clothes, he was not averse from a little
help from the amiable Smith. But she looked concerned this morning.

“_Milady_ is not well to-day,” she said.

“Why, what’s the matter, Smith?”

“_Milady_ is too pale,” Smith said mysteriously.

And indeed, when in a few minutes he came down into the studio, Virginia
was “too pale.” She lay propped up in the bed--that which was “a lovely
divan by day”--and her face was whiter than the pillows behind her head.

“This bed is not going to be a divan to-day,” she turned her head to him
to say, as he came down the little stairway. And she smiled at his
concern through the loose mass of her hair, for she was brushing it.
Whenever Virginia felt tired and lazy in bed she would brush her hair
for a long time, with a very special and hard brush; and as she brushed
it she would incline her head a little this and that way, peering at you
the while through the golden mesh, which shone gloriously with the
brushing.

“But, Virginia!” he cried, beside her bed: “are you very ill?”

“Not awfully,” said Virginia.

As he stood, his hand gently held aside the spilled golden hair that
almost hid her face.

“But you’ve got no right to look as white as this, my dear! You’ve given
Smith an awful fright.”

“Oh, Smith!” she smiled up at him. “She ought to know better, I do
think--that ever-anxious little Smith!”

“It’s really quite all right,” she assured him. “I’m apt to get like
this now and then--more or less. I’ll just lie about in bed to-day, and
to-morrow I’ll be as well as anything. Especially if you’ll read me out
that new Shaw play Smith brought up from Brentano’s yesterday. But don’t
read the preface, please, for he always gets so angry in his prefaces,
and I couldn’t bear any one to be angry with me to-day.”

Ivor sat down on the edge of the bed. He took her hand, and looked very
miserable.

“I feel a beast,” he said.

Virginia rapped his knuckles sharply with her brush. Virginia was angry.

“Don’t be silly, Ivor! What on earth has it to do with you?” And she
opened her eyes very wide at him, and raised her eyebrows with the “Is
this man mad?” look.

Then Smith came in with breakfast, which they had from a little table
beside the bed. Virginia always took a large glass of milk at breakfast:
to make her strong and fat, she said.

It was half-past nine by Ivor’s watch. He rose. “I will now dash down to
Paris,” he told her sternly, “to have a little speech with Dr. David.
And then Dr. David will dash up here to have a little speech with you.”

Virginia made a quick noise, but Ivor would have none of that.

“You might go in the afternoon!” she pleaded.

“Now _you_ are being silly,” he only said to that; and put on his hat, a
soft gray thing which he was quite unable to wear straight.

“Well, _go_, then!” Virginia cried with feverish venom. She had asked
him to read her a Shaw play, and he was going to fetch a doctor! “Oh,
the fool!” Virginia wildly thought, in the impatient surge of her
weakness.

Ivor paced about the garden while the doctor was within the studio: and
he had no eyes for the glory of the July morning over Paris, they
worried the ground and distance with dark absence.

At last Dr. David came out, and Ivor walked with him to his car: through
a small green door, up a narrow passage between two dingy houses, and
through a wide door on to the pavement of the Place.

“The operation must be next week,” Dr. David told him, as they walked.

“Oh!” said Ivor; then turned frankly to the old man. “Tell me, doctor,
is this operation really serious or not?”

“Well, it is not negligible,” the old man answered. “But it isn’t really
serious--particularly in the hands of Ian Black. It will be painful for
her, you understand--I am afraid Lady Tarlyon will consider that part
of it extremely serious. But I should say as little as possible to her
about the pain, if I were you. I daresay you know all there is to know
about pain....”

“I am writing to Ian Black to-day,” he went on, “to make arrangements
for next Thursday. So you will please cross next Tuesday, a week from
to-day, for she must be well rested.”

Dr. David made a sudden gesture with his hand.

“It is a small nuisance,” he said, “that Lady Tarlyon must have it done
in London, for the jolting in trains and on the boat will do her no
good, you understand. Particularly as everything is so crowded now. Even
an aeroplane would be better, if she had ever been up in one.”

“Oh, but she has--several times, I think!” Ivor cried; and smiled to
remember the press photographs of Virginia Tracy “going up, gone up,
come down and out” in 1913. “And I should think we could easily manage
an aeroplane for next week.” The idea took hold of him. “Oh, yes, why
not?”

“In that case you had better ‘manage’ it with your friends in England,”
said Dr. David, “for the service here is not yet organised, and they
might make difficulties. The Embassy might help, of course....”

“We won’t ask them,” Ivor said quickly. “We can manage one from England,
I’m sure. Lady Tarlyon has aerial connections.” He laughed gaily. “Oh,
splendid, doctor! She will be awfully pleased about that.”

They were now on the dingy pavement of the Place du Tertre, and Dr.
David had his hand on the door of his limousine; but with the other he
suddenly touched Ivor’s shoulder, a charmingly intimate gesture.

“Let me know,” he said, “what you have arranged. I shall be pleased to
hear that Lady Tarlyon is going to have a little pleasure before the
pain. For only thus is life bearable--whether the pleasure comes before
or after the pain. But it generally comes before, I understand....”
Charming old man, who contrived such courtesy out of commonplace!

Merriment and gravity were but the width of an eyelash apart in
Virginia: which was well proved that same night, after dinner, as she
lay in bed and smoked a cigarette. It was understood that Virginia
smoked but four cigarettes a day now--which, of course, it was remarked
by Ivor, always made the fifth so much more enjoyable. He was sitting
now in an arm-chair near her, and hanging from his hand over the arm was
the book of Shaw plays, from which he had been reading to her.

“I suppose you know,” Virginia breathed suddenly into her smoke, “that
I’m not to have my baby after all.”

“I don’t mean,” she explained, “that this operation affects that. It
might and it mightn’t--oh, the beastly mess that women’s bodies are, and
the lovely way that Swinburne wrote of them! Has a doctor ever written a
great poem, I wonder, Ivor? I can’t imagine it.... Dr. David told me
when I first went to see him that I’m not built the way of a
child-bearing woman, and that if I ever had one it would be the kind of
miracle that happens on the last page of a book. And you can’t imagine
how sweetly the old man turned it into a compliment, the way he said:
‘You are the childless woman of the ages, madame.’ Oh, compliments are
divine when they are quite meaningless, which may be why women like
those men who are always thinking of something else. It’s almost worth
while being ill to have met Dr. David....” She took a deep breath of her
cigarette, then crushed it into the ash-tray by her pillow.

“Come near,” she begged him, “and I will tell you something ever so
interesting.”

He sat at the side of the bed, and took her hand and played with it.

“You have made me tell you many stories,” he reminded her. “And now you
tell me one....”

“Ah, but your stories have sharp endings--the way your life will end,
maybe! You tell cruel stories, Ivor. I sometimes think you have a very
cruel mind. And that leads me to think, I don’t know why, that you will
die with a hard collar on, Ivor! But the story I’m going to tell has no
ending at all--the point of my story, dear, is that it has no ending!
Unless you say that a ‘dead-end’ is a proper ending....”

“I’m not going to say anything,” he said. “I am here to listen.”

“Yes, listen,” she begged him. “Years ago, when first you met me, I was
running amok. Lois was, too, and so we ran amok together; and made quite
a pretty little tradition of it, you remember? And every one seemed
awfully pleased about it: the more we ran amok the more most people
admired us and photographed us and said of us the kind of beastly things
that make a woman certain she’s beautiful--except just a few severely
romantic people like you, dear, who brushed us aside for the shoddy
people we were. People said we were newer than any new generation had
ever been before, which was quite true of some of us, but the rest of us
were all the dear old generations wrapped up together and gone rotten.
For, you see, Lois and I were ladies gone rotten--that’s exactly what we
were, Ivor, rotten ladies. The only time Lois has ever lost her temper
was when a man once called her a rotten lady. He _was_ a nice man....
And so running amok was great fun for us, and great fun for our men
too--though I do think that if the finest of them hadn’t died they would
have sickened of us pretty soon; and perhaps they wouldn’t have been so
eager for ‘fun’ if they hadn’t vaguely known that they weren’t long for
this world--which must sound nonsense, I suppose. But perhaps they were
_fey_, Ivor! But the few stern people who cursed us were on the wrong
tack, for they said we were young fools trying to be mighty clever and
thinking ourselves no end of fine people; whereas the one thing we were
all very clear about in our minds was that _we_ were nothing at all in
England, that _we_ didn’t matter one way or the other, that _we_ didn’t
represent anything in particular and had been somehow left behind in a
valley or pushed on ahead into a kind of bog. Quite a nice bog it was,
we thought, but still it was a bog, and we were stranded in it. Yes, it
was just as though people had got together and said to us: ‘Look here,
you dashing young people, push on ahead and see what it’s like out
there’--and ‘out there’ we had found a bog with purple and yellow
funguses all over it, and slimy pools of queer colours, and it looked so
strange and lovely that we stepped right into it; and then people
pointed to us, saying: ‘Just look how depraved they are! They are
covered with verdigris, but they call it wet-white!’ But we weren’t all
that, you know, we were just silly and rather cruel. And all that time I
didn’t like what I was doing a bit. I liked it so little that I used to
write letters to Kerrison about how fatuous life was, and death was, and
love was, and I was, and of course he was. He understood things, you
know, even though you couldn’t bear him. But somehow I went on, there
seemed nothing else to do--and something shoddy and inevitable seemed to
be pushing one on from behind, always and always. Rather like those poor
wretches in Tchekov’s plays, you remember, who go on and on doing things
in a kind of frantic boredom and despair, and talk cleverly about
meaningless things.... Lois was different, she was always more decided
than me; and she did a thing because she liked it and as long as she
liked it, and she stopped when she was bored with it. In her heart Lois
was always ambitious, she wanted to use the ‘Lady Lois’ legend as well
as she could; she wanted to be ‘the famous beauty who is representative
of the best artistic and intellectual qualities of the British
patrician’--though there was never anything patrician about Lois except
her lovely face, for her soul is an innkeeper’s soul; like those of all
patricians who succeed in life, I think, for the real patrician
tradition seems to be carried on in people’s hearts by those who fail,
like Coriolanus--which, maybe, is at the root of snobbery, something
fine at the root of something silly, a kind of spiritual respect for
fine people who fail.... And so she married nice little Johnny, and now
she lets Cabinet ministers and artists make love to her or get drunk and
disorderly in her house so that she can influence their Work, and when
she dies she will be as famous and as respected as Lady Ripon, but not
nearly so nice inside.... But I went on. Or other people went on and
left me behind. I don’t know. I did as I liked, and that’s a lonely
business, for doing as one likes means always to be leaving one thing
and going to another, it means that there are tags and ends of things
and people sticking out all over one’s past life. I slopped about with
such a determined face, Ivor! And all the time I felt I was going to a
‘dead-end,’ that there was a ‘dead-end’ at the end of my life. I
couldn’t think round that ‘dead-end,’ my mind went to a _cul-de-sac_
when I thought about it. And I was right, you know, for a woman of
thirty-one was making for her ‘dead-end’--her ‘dead-end’ was in sight,
it just was, as her horse cleared the hedge into that dark little lane
by Lady Hall--and, behold! you were there, Ivor! Do you remember how gay
I was at seeing you! Oh, I knew, you see, that something marvellous had
happened! I knew that my ‘dead-end’ was beaten as it came--you were
there, Ivor! And then I was a little sad, you remember, wondering
whether you were still the same defensive and antagonistic person you
had been years ago, and hoping you weren’t; for you were the man who had
got in the way of my ‘dead-end,’ and I wanted you....”

And then her lover comforted Virginia, saying that there would be no
“dead-end” for them now. And from some corner of his memory there leapt
out Aunt Moira’s lines from a poem by Meredith, but he did not quote the
lines, he just said: “We will be rapid falcons, Virginia, and we won’t
be caught in any snare, but fly together to very high places. And, oddly
enough, I know what I’m talking about....”

But some fantasy had come to Virginia, for suddenly she sat up in bed in
almost frantic disorder.

“But why don’t you work, Ivor? Why are you so happy with me--why don’t
you work?” That is what she cried; and her eyes glittered piteously with
the perverse fear that comes to people in a fever.

“You are choking me with your happiness--in a lovely way, but you are
choking me, I can’t explain. And you are choking yourself, too. Oh, I
know! You are a striving person, Ivor, but now you are too happy, you
are soaking yourself in happiness. It’s my fault.... This is unnatural
for you, this life of ours, you want to work and strive and think things
as well as to love--and here you are, being softened and choked! Why
don’t I see you miserable, Ivor, why aren’t you wretched at all this
waste? You are losing yourself in love, and as you lose yourself I will
lose you. Oh, yes, it’s like that with us....” She had overtaxed her
strength, and as she lay back she looked as though she might faint, if a
wraith can faint.

And he laughed at her and reminded her of their pact, and of the things
they had said that first evening in Paris....

“Oh, that!” she cried. And his face was so near to her that he kissed
her lips, those taut, dry lips--burning dry now.

“Yes,” she whispered, “it’s been divine--it is divine. But now it’s
ending, Ivor! We are flying back to London next week--you are taking me
back to London! And I’ve got the feeling of the ‘dead-end’ on me again,
for the first time since I met you in that lane--it’s stolen back! For
you’ve become like me, you know, this love has been stronger than you,
and you are going soft and rotten with it--you are drifting with me, my
sweet, instead of my striving with you! That is what’s called being
lovers, and it’s very bad for people. I told you, don’t you remember,
that we shouldn’t be lovers, you and I. Oh, I am so wise sometimes!” ...

“When we are married,” he mocked her, “a slight difference will be
perceptible in our relations. We will be busy lovers, then. There are so
many stars in the sky, Virginia, that there’s no reason for us to stay
on one....”

“Oh, when we are married!” she echoed his mockery very queerly; and she
held up his chin with her hand and looked deep into his eyes. And she
mocked his bewilderment at her mood, whispering, “Poor child!” so that
he was uncomfortable. She was very wise sometimes, she had said.

“How can you say that, Ivor, when you know I may die next week? How do
you know I won’t die--and I wouldn’t care but for you! I’ve got like
that. But what I am thinking now is that maybe it would be better for
you if I did die, much better maybe. You could strive all you wanted
then!” she breathed with a sudden catch, and feverishly pushed his face
from her. “How do you know anything, Ivor, to talk so glibly about our
marrying? You are very arrogant, I do think.... There was a lot of
destiny in Greek plays, and how do you know there isn’t some left for
us--for unanchored people like you and me? Destiny for the undecided....
Perhaps it’s fated that you take me to my death as Iphigenia was taken
to sacrifice. Perhaps you are taking Virginia to sacrifice to the god of
your life, so that the voyage of your life will be helped with
favourable winds! Oh, Ivor, don’t protest, for how can you know
anything? These things are very secret from us....”

“Women have moods,” Magdalen had said. “They can’t help it, and no one
can help them....”

CHAPTER XV

But Virginia didn’t die. Ian Black saw to that. But he told Ivor,
downstairs in the waiting-room of the Wimpole Street nursing-home where
Ivor spent many distressed hours, that his patient wasn’t “resisting”
very, very much.

“I don’t mean that she’s giving way,” Ian Black said, “or that she seems
to want to collapse. But she’s too busy analysing the pain--and
herself--and me, too! Of course the pain is terrible, terrible....”

Ian Black was a chubby little man of very neat appearance and a round,
boyish face, on which an expression of pleased or anxious surprise was
always dominant. But he was the most restful man in the world to be
with, for he had no gestures and made no little fusses with the things
of his body, hands and eyebrows and hair and feet and the like, while he
talked. He stood before you and stared up at you--he always had to look
“up” to every one except when he was operating on them--with round eyes,
his hands clasped on his funny little belly, and said what he had to say
very gently, very gently and convincingly. To see him, it was too
difficult to imagine that he was the most famous surgeon in London: to
listen to him, it was easy.

“I think you might see her for just a minute this morning,” Black
suggested. “Buck her up a bit....”

This was the third morning after the operation, and Ivor had not yet
seen her. He had not asked to. She was in great pain, he was told. She
had asked to see him several times, but it had been thought it might
upset her as yet.

Now, at ten o’clock in the morning, he went into her room. Very dark and
dim it was with its curtains drawn, and about it was that aggressively
clean smell of a very serious sick room. Virginia’s eyes were closed.
The nurse whispered to Ivor that she would go out for a moment, leaving
the door a little ajar....

Ivor stood by the bed, stealthily, wondering what to do. He felt
ashamed, somehow.... Virginia wasn’t asleep, she was in pain. In great
pain. Her face was thin and gray and it was somehow screwed up, and her
eyes were tightly screwed up. Then she opened them and stared at him,
and he saw that her eyes were wet. His were, too. She moistened her lips
with her tongue, staring at him with terribly hurt eyes. He murmured
something.

“It hurts,” she whispered. “Frightful....”

Her forehead, where his lips touched her, was damp and hot. So damp....

And when she tried to speak again she sobbed a little.

“Don’t try,” he begged. “Poor Virginia----”

“I can speak,” she almost boasted. “It’s this pain....”

“There’s things inside me,” she said, with a sob. “Steel things....
They’ve left them in there ... holding things together.... Oh, it hurts,
Ivor....”

She tried to explain how it hurt. She wanted to explain.

“Look,” she whispered, with screwed-up eyes. She tried to lift up the
covering to show him something. He had to help her. “Look,” she said
pitifully. And she lifted up her hands under the clothes, and he saw
that they were tied together with a handkerchief. “That’s to stop me
tearing the things out and killing myself,” she explained with amazing
clarity. “There’s things sticking in underneath....”

“I can’t bear it,” she sobbed dryly. “All the time ... like being
ploughed up inside, Ivor--with a plough.... All the time.... I can’t
bear it.”

And Ivor couldn’t bear it. He had to go out. Oh, my God, how awful!...

He lingered on the way down the stairs, for his eyes were wet and he
didn’t want to look a fool. Ian Black was still in the waiting-room,
drawing on his gloves. He had waited for him, it seemed.

“Well, what d’you think?” Black asked casually. Amazing man! he asked it
as though he could possibly care a damn what Ivor thought about it. But
it was reassuring, that casual question.

“She tried to tell me about her pain,” Ivor said.

“Ah, yes!” Black said thoughtfully. “It interests her....”

“It hurts her,” said Ivor. “Can’t you do anything about it, Black?”

“We do,” Black assured him. “We give her a _piqure_ now and then, and
she sleeps all right. But we can’t give her _piqures_ all the time.” He
stood so still while he talked, like a chubby little image.

“But how long does this pain last?” Ivor asked impatiently. “These
things that she says are sticking inside her?... It seems awful.”

“It is,” Black agreed. “It lasts three more days. Then everything will
be all right. Assure you. 65 per cent. chance now. Only 10 per cent.
chance yesterday. You didn’t know....”

“Well, must be going now,” Black said briskly. “Don’t worry,
Marlay--everything all right except the pain, and that will be. If she
was only delirious, it would help her forget it a bit. But her mind’s
amazingly clear--too clear--she’s got a strong mind, you know. I asked
her this morning if the doctor pulling faces at her would make her
delirious, and she asked me how I could ‘bear my life, inflicting pain
on people?’ I said I preferred golf, and that life was pretty rotten all
ways, now. Can I drop you anywhere? I’m going to St. George’s....”

“I think I’ll walk, you know.... Thanks, Black.”

As they were taking their hats in the hall Ian Black said:--

“Rodney West’s coming to dine to-night. You might come, if you like.
Eight-thirty. He’s getting rather Germanophile in reaction to the
French, and we might drive it out of him. No good reacting from idiocy
to idiocy. And I’ll have some more news for you by then, probably....”
So of course Ivor dined in New Cavendish Street.

He did not see Virginia again for a week. For even when “the things”
were finally out she was in frightful pain. Naturally, for a little
while, the matron said. (Ivor did not like the matron at all: she was a
brisk matron.) The “dressings” were the worst ordeals--which Ian Black
and the doctor paid her the compliment of doing themselves, every
morning at some time between ten and eleven. Ivor knew about
“dressings,” and shuddered. And he felt he couldn’t bear to see her, nor
she him really, and that he could do no good anyway. But he was there
first thing every morning, in the waiting-room, and Ian Black would come
down after the “dressing” and say a word or two. The way Black could get
from his patient to politics and back again was continually amazing
Ivor. “Practice,” Black explained.

Ivor would return in the evening, with flowers or whatever little thing
Virginia had required of the nurse; for he had begged the nurse to
telephone him instantly whatever, no matter how slight or even absurd,
the patient might want, so that it could be produced at once. And
Virginia asked for a special cold-cream, a bright green silk
handkerchief, a bottle of Chablis (which she was allowed to sip), some
grapefruit, a paper fan, another kind of cold-cream, some real Eau de
Cologne (not English stuff), and some coffee-ice-cream; which, Ian
Black and the doctor said, wouldn’t do her any harm, just a very little.
She kept on asking for it, the nurse said.

The operation was to have taken place in great secrecy, for Virginia
didn’t want any one to know. So she had gone straight to the
nursing-home on her arrival at the Croydon landing-station, and had
written to no one. She would have written or telephoned to her father,
only she said he couldn’t help talking and every one would know in a
minute.

But every one did know, in almost a minute. The brisk matron had seen to
that. And what are gossip-columns for, but to report the living, the
dying, and the dead? One cheerful gossip reported Virginia as good as
dead (with photograph), but another quickly brought her to life again
(with photograph). They had ever detail pat, and of course gave the
address of the nursing-home. They commented on Ian Black, what a good
surgeon he was and how popular he was; they spoke of his distinguished
services during the war, wondered about a K.B.E., and made guesses at
his income. They reminded their readers of Virginia’s beauty, her
painting, her aeroplane-trips, the sudden death of her charming mother,
and the extremely sudden death of her first husband. They referred to
her second husband, the gallant and handsome Viscount Tarlyon, said he
had two bars to the D.S.O. and sympathised with him in his anxiety. They
mentioned her recreations (dogs and travelling), and reminded their
readers that her father always wore a gardenia and that he was the last
of a splendid type of Englishman....

So, as the season was not quite over, every one called. Lois, Kerrison,
Euphemia Halliday, Rupert Kare, Pretty Leyton, Hugo Cypress.... Every
one called to leave messages and flowers. The polite and amiable M.
Stutz called and said he would call again; and, having asked whether
Lady Tarlyon needed anything, and having heard that she did not, he sent
her a superb fruit-salad. And of course Lord Carnal called, almost the
first, and more than once. Ivor saw him one morning, from the window of
the waiting-room, as he was emerging from a car, a huge bunch of white
roses under one arm and a small bunch of orchids in his hand: a very
elegant and clean-shaven old gentleman, with nothing at all “old world”
about his clothes, and looking exactly as George Alexander always wanted
to look but never quite could. And of course George Tarlyon called,
several times.

Ivor kept well out of the way when the rush began; when he called at the
home he was, after the first day or two, shown into a secondary and
smaller waiting-room at Ian Black’s request to the matron who, being a
brisk matron, had an objection ready for everything; but, in spite of
her, there Ivor would wait every morning until Virginia was a little
better, for his “word or two” with the doctor or Black....

Now on the morning when the last of “the things” were to be taken out of
Virginia, the maid who answered the door--by one of those criminal
aberrations peculiar to maids and classed by them as “mistakes,” whereas
they are generally catastrophes--ushered into that secondary and most
private waiting-room, George Tarlyon.

“Oh, hallo!” said Tarlyon, rather surprised.

“Hallo!” said Ivor; and thought crossly: something’s very wrong with
that maid, for she’s gone and left the door open now.... There was a
short silence. Tarlyon, with his hands in his pockets, stared absently
out of the window.

“Can one smoke here, I wonder?” he asked.

“I do,” said Ivor: taking out his cigarette-case....

“Rotten business, isn’t it?” Tarlyon said shortly. “Poor child.... Awful
pain, I suppose?”

“Awful.”

“Seen her at all?” Tarlyon turned frankly to him.

“Just once. She was feeling it a bit. Beastly to watch and feel quite
well....”

“A doctor chap once told me,” Tarlyon said thoughtfully, “that women can
bear pain much better than men. He said that there’s scarcely a man
alive who would go through the pain of child-bearing twice, or even
once, while look at women....”

They looked at women for a while, in silence; which was broken by a very
faint cry from somewhere.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Ivor said vaguely. He wanted to close the door, but
somehow didn’t. And he couldn’t help intently listening ... that cry
again, almost a shriek, then a sob, and a jumble of faint, broken
words....

“Lord, man, what’s up!” cried Tarlyon. Ivor’s face was white, then
green.

“That’s Virginia,” he said, with an effort. “Makes me feel sick....
Sorry.... For God’s sake shut that door, Tarlyon!”

Tarlyon closed the door softly. He was very quiet and concerned.

“I say--poor child!” he murmured; and he looked at Ivor puffing a
cigarette with a green face. “I don’t wonder ... didn’t realise myself.”

“Some fool of a nurse must have left her door open for a second,” Ivor
said angrily. He pointed vaguely to his mutilated shoulder. “I’ve had
some, and so I know,” he tried to apologise for his weakness.

“I bet you do ...” Tarlyon softly agreed.

Ian Black came in soon.

“Hallo, Marlay! Ah, Lord Tarlyon!... Well, things are looking up now,
quite all right.” His hands folded across his little port, he stared up
at Ivor with round, surprised eyes. “I say, Marlay, you do look green!
Want brandy?”

“The maid left this door open,” Ivor said darkly, “and you went one
better by leaving your patient’s door open. What do you expect? And I
don’t want brandy....”

“That must have been the nurse coming in and out with the things,” Ian
Black gently explained, and turned to Tarlyon. “Worst part’s over, Lord
Tarlyon. A few days now, and she’ll be out of pain. Fairly long
convalescence, though....”

“Main thing’s to get better,” Tarlyon said; and he lounged briskly
towards the door. “Well, good-bye, Marlay--see you here again, probably.
Good-bye, Mr. Black--take care of my wife, won’t you? Not many lovely
women like that....”

Ivor was by the window, staring sombrely at Wimpole Street. There was a
car just outside: it was a closed car, and the driver sat facing him.
Some one in the back of the car smiled at his face at the window--a
woman--and Ivor vaguely smiled back. Of course, Ann Chester, “pretty
Ann.” ... Good God, what a man!

“Seems a good fellow, Tarlyon,” Black said from behind, “in spite of his
popularity.”

Ivor turned round to him.

“Oh, yes,” he said vaguely. “Charming....”

“You can see her for a moment now, if you like,” Black told him. “Just a
quick moment....”

Ivor appealed to him with a wretched smile.

“I’d rather not, you know. Much rather. And she would talk about the
pain, too----”

“Naturally,” Black murmured absently. “It interests her....”

CHAPTER XVI

But, it later appeared, that was not all that had interested her. “Oh,
one’s been thinking such a lot!” she told Ivor weakly, when he saw her a
few afternoons later.

“Well, such as?” Ivor smiled. The commonplace of treating an ill person
like a child occurred to him vividly. One couldn’t help it.

“About people,” Virginia explained vaguely. “And about clouds....”

“We had a nice lot of clouds downstairs, too,” Ivor told her.

“Poor Ivor,” she said softly.

“My clouds,” she said, “were different. They rolled off people, and I
saw people clearly. They’ll be rolling back again soon, I daresay....”

“Where did I come in?” he asked. And he wanted to know, too. He loved
Virginia.

“You didn’t, Ivor.” She turned her head on her pillow and stared at him
very seriously. How gray and wan she was! “There haven’t been any clouds
on you for ages--we pushed them off together, don’t you remember? We
insisted on that.... You did, anyway. You are the nice man of my life,
Ivor.... I kept on telling myself that I would mention that to the
higher authorities when I was dead.”

“This dying business,” Ivor said almost frantically, “has got on our
nerves, Virginia.”

“I was only telling you,” she said. “But about people--I saw them very
clearly, Ivor. I saw George....”

“So did I. He’s been here several times.”

“I know.” He followed her eyes to the mantelpiece, and there, in a
basket like a nest, were plovers’ eggs cushioned on a pile of the stuff
that plovers’ nests are made of.

“But it’s not the season,” he protested. He felt rather hurt.

“They’re made of sweet stuff,” Virginia explained. “Mr. Selfridge makes
them, and they’re supposed to be eatable....”

“George,” she said, “is an inventive man. He is also an inevitable man.
I mean, he’s always there, somewhere about, and one can’t get rid of
him. One can’t get rid of him, Ivor, because he won’t be got rid of--he
simply won’t take one seriously, don’t you see? And how can one get rid
of a man who doesn’t take one seriously?”

“Men like that,” she said softly, “want nothing. So unlike you,
dear....”

Ivor’s eyes had darkened. So! But she had him at a disadvantage, she was
so gray and wan! So he only said, “Pouf!” and tried to say it easily,
but her little, amused smile penetrated him.

“Oh, Ivor!” she teased him, “I didn’t mean what you thought I meant. You
are so suspicious, Ivor! I didn’t mean that I was going to let George
come back into my life....”

“I was only talking, dear,” she said weakly.

Virginia got stronger very gradually: too gradually, the doctor said,
but still, she got stronger. She did not seem to wish to get strong in
any way but gradually, saying that there was no hurry. “The month of
August,” she said, “demands to be spent in bed. I’ve always thought
so....”

Ivor, however, was not so sure about there being “no hurry”; there was a
great deal to be done, and the sooner the better, now that they were
back in England. That divorce business, now.... But even when Virginia
was much stronger and could sit up in bed and take human meals again, he
was shy of pressing her on that point. It was so inevitable, after all,
so why worry himself about it? Ivor had learnt to be afraid of his
impatience.

Ivor was now very definite about his feelings for Virginia. He had been
definite about them for some months, but from some time before her
illness until now that definiteness had been growing into, and had now
become, the amazing fact of his life; and as such it went about with
him, it was his companion--he didn’t tread on air, he wasn’t that kind
of man any more, but he trod on solid earth with the determination of a
man who has a good tale in his heart. For it wasn’t that that amazing
fact made everything else--the things of life and living, of strife and
thinking--look insignificant, or that everything else was entirely at
its beck and call. It was merely that nothing else was worth while to
him without the company of that amazing fact. With that fact in his life
everything else seemed tremendously worth living for. And there was a
great freedom about it, too, for he didn’t feel he had to be worthy of
it or strive for it or earn money for it; that fact was just part of him
and he was part of it, and work was inconceivable without it; for the
real and jolly thing about love is not when nothing else matters but
love--but when everything else matters because of love. The last is
love, but the first is waste of time. Ivor had always thought that....
More than anything else in the world, he hated being “messed about.” It
was something deep and fundamental in his character, a birth-mark, a
creed, a principle--he hated being “messed about.” A great number of
nuisances went into that phrase, it was a useful phrase: even to think
of being “messed about” made him hot; and it was growing on him.

CHAPTER XVII

Until she was fairly strong Virginia was not allowed to see
people--except, of course, Ivor, who sat with her for a while in the
afternoons, and sometimes in the evenings. But when she was allowed to
see people, few came. For was it not the August of 1919, when money was
plentiful and London “empty”! Here and there some one called and left in
a rush and a clatter, on his or her way to France or Scotland. Ivor, of
course, had no intention of going away; and neither, it appeared, had
George Tarlyon.

When Virginia was stronger Tarlyon called every day at any hour that
happened, often when Ivor was there, and sat with her for a few minutes;
or rather, he lounged about in his splendid way and made a few remarks
about things in general. He pointed out, to Ivor and Virginia, that
August was the month in which to stay in London. “It’s amusing,” he
said, “because as every one thinks every one else has gone away, a good
many every ones stay behind to amuse themselves in the wilderness. There
were eight couples at Claridge’s for lunch to-day, and I’ll swear each
couple had thought the other was at Deauville or Scotland....”

“Funny ...” said Virginia vaguely.

It was curious, Ivor thought, the way Virginia changed when Tarlyon was
about. She became at once more thoughtful, more retired, more secret;
and, watching her one day when Tarlyon was there, he realised with
almost a shock that Virginia’s face wore exactly the same expression as
on that evening when she had sat in his room at Nasyngton and Tarlyon
had come to fetch her: a little tired, a little bored, a little
secret.... But Tarlyon seemed to amuse her, in a rather hidden kind of
way. The idea of him seemed to amuse her. She would laugh a little when
he had gone, vaguely.

“George is getting very considerate,” she said one day as he had just
gone. “I can’t believe he is staying in London just to come and see his
sick and ailing wife--and yet what on earth can he find to do in London
in August?”

“God knows!” shrugged Ivor. Having seen Ann Chester that morning in Bond
Street, he thought God wouldn’t have to be very clever to know.

“Naturally,” Virginia said, “there’s always ‘pretty Ann.’ He can do what
he likes with ‘pretty Ann.’”

Ivor suddenly decided that Tarlyon was bad for Virginia. He fumbled in
his mind as to, exactly, in what way, but didn’t quite get it....

“I was thinking,” he said, “that I like Tarlyon less and less.”

“But why less and less?” Virginia opened her eyes very wide to ask. “You
couldn’t like him less than you’ve always done....” Now that was not
quite fair of Virginia to say that; and she herself had once discovered
a theory that George and Ivor might have been great friends--might have.
“You’d have laughed together,” she said. “You are both braggarts, in an
internal, headachy way....”

“He’s bad for you,” Ivor vaguely but firmly explained.

“What, me! Oh, Ivor, tell me how?” she begged him childishly. “You are
subtle to-day, I do think!”

“He’s got a queer effect on you,” Ivor tried to explain, prowling about
at the foot of the bed. “You somehow go hard, different. I don’t
know....”

“I’m sure I don’t,” said Virginia.

He prowled about; and then he stood by the window, with his back to her.

“Do you remember,” her voice came dimly to him, “one night ages ago when
I told you that I wasn’t really natural with you, that I was always on
my best behaviour with you? And I scarcely knew you then....”

He came darkly beside her.

“The point is,” he said, “that you are only natural with me, and
unnatural with the others. Exactly....”

“Maybe,” she said--and smiled up at him mischievously. And he smiled
too, but the gloom was deep in him to-day. He sat on a chair at the foot
of the bed.

“Virginia,” he appealed, “I don’t like all this.... It’s rotten.”

“What’s rotten?”

“Now don’t be silly, dear! This Tarlyon and Marlay business, of
course--husband and lover--and you in between--and Ann Chester in Bond
Street....”

“Nasty four-sided triangle,” he said.

“But I’m not in between, silly!” she cried sharply. “I’m with you. What
_has_ come over you to-day--you’re getting quite _gaga_, Ivor!”

But he jumped up from his chair with an impatient gesture of his one
arm. He prowled about. Never had Virginia seen him like this! So
dark.... Propped high up on the bed she stared at him wondering; then
she screwed up her eyes a little, examining him.... He turned to her,
trying to look very reasonable.

“What I mean to say is,” he said, “that we ought to settle this once and
for all. I can’t bear these vague positions--his coming to see you, and
me here--both of us hanging round you--and both of us hating each other.
It’s common, Virginia!”

“You are very arrogant, Ivor,” she told him rather mysteriously.

He brushed that away. “It’s common,” he insisted.

“It is, the way you put it,” she remarked. She was very tranquil. “But
the fact is that George only comes out of cussedness and a desire to
annoy. And he seems to be succeeding, with you anyway....”

“Personally,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t get annoyed with George
nowadays. He never wants anything....”

“You’ve said that before,” he said savagely, “and I didn’t like it then.
What does it mean, Virginia?

“Well, _you_ want things, don’t you, Ivor?” she put to him, very softly.
She looked up into his face. “You want everything--don’t you, Ivor?”

Her softness humbled him. He turned away from her and prowled about. And
her voice followed him about the room like a weary little bird.

“And I’ve given you everything, haven’t I, Ivor? I’ve given you more
than I’ve given any man. Ivor, I’ve given you more than I thought I
could give any man ... or god....”

Her eyes were very wide and steady on him, as he stood above her; they
were sentinels put there to delude mankind, while Virginia’s soul was
somewhere else, in some funny, unknown place; dolorous eyes, it occurred
to him. So steady and blue and deep.... And he felt himself sinking into
those eyes, right into her, he felt things snapping in his head, and he
felt that if he lost himself in those eyes now he would be drowned for
ever, he would be lost--and she too! He hardened; he pretended to.

“Have you told Tarlyon about the divorce?”

Still they looked up into his face, those sentinels. And when at last
she closed her eyes he suffered a queer feeling that a great chance had
gone from him, a great chance full of light and blessedness. She pressed
her head back against her pillow, in a very tired way, and her lips
smiled a little. She shook her head very gently.

“But I will,” she whispered; and her lips smiled a little.

He prowled about the room for a long time.

They often played _picquet_: Virginia in bed, Ivor in a chair by the
bed, and between them the back of a copy of _Vogue_, on which they
played. Enormous sums of money were won and lost on that polished and
uncertain surface. Sometimes Ivor would win as much as £5000 at a
sitting, and the next day maybe he would lose all that and some besides.
Slips of paper were exchanged and treasured.

“If,” Virginia said, “you were to look at that slip of paper every
morning and say to yourself it was worth £5000, it soon would be. It’s a
matter of imagination....”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Ivor.

They were merry afternoons, those of her convalescence in August.
Virginia had to stay in bed, very quietly, until her wounds were quite
healed. She was allowed to lie on a sofa in the room for a very few
minutes every day, and that’s all.

“I don’t see much sense in it,” Virginia said to the doctor and Ian
Black, “being moved from a bed to a sofa--and a nursing-home sofa at
that! Why can’t I sit up in a chair?”

“Taking no risks,” said Ian Black, who was going to Scotland that
afternoon. The doctor nodded.

“You are being beastly to me,” Virginia told Ian Black steadily,
“because you have a reputation to keep up. What would have happened to
me, I’d like to know, if I hadn’t happened to be a rich woman and been
able to afford all this care? Suppose I’d been very poor?”

“You’d have died,” said Ian Black. The doctor looked thoughtful.

August rained. It rained, in London, from its beginning until its
middle, and then it hesitated a while. It was during that while that
Virginia was moved to her house in Belgrave Square--“the mausoleum”
which she so hated. But, at the nursing-home, they were glad of the
August rain. “One always really knows,” Virginia said, “that one isn’t
missing anything by not going away. But one likes to be certain.”

The gloom had passed off Ivor quickly. “Nerves,” he had explained to
Virginia, and neither had referred to it since; each secretly feeling
that they had walked into, and a little way up, a strange by-path, and
had then come running out again. But now, as often as not, Virginia told
her nurse to say she was asleep when Tarlyon called.

One day she told Ivor that she was to be moved to the “mausoleum” the
day after next.

“I’m to be allowed to drive for an hour or so every day,” she told him.
“But I mustn’t go out at night just yet, the doctor said, especially as
it’s so damp. We have, however, our own ideas about that....”

“Having stayed in the mausoleum for ten days,” she said, “we will have a
tremendous dinner at the Mont Agel. And then we will go away somewhere
to get fat and strong. At least I will get all that and you will watch
me.”

“And where, Virginia?” Places simply didn’t matter to Ivor: people were
important.

“Well, not at my place, that’s quite certain. Besides, I’ve lent it to
Lois and Johnny. I’d like to go to Galway, Ivor ... but maybe the
journey will be too long for me. We’ll think about it....”

“And then,” she said, “maybe we’ll go back to Paris. Or Morocco--or just
anywhere? What do you think, Ivor?”

“We’ll go back to Paris,” Ivor said, “or just anywhere, while you’re
waiting for your decree _nisi_, Virginia. Or else the King’s Proctor
will be unkind to us. And we ought to get the thing moving before we go
for this present holiday--we’ll begin while you’re at the mausoleum,
shall we? For it’s a long and boring business, this divorcing of
husbands, with or without collusion. You’ve got to write that usual
whining letter asking him to come back ‘and make a home for you,’ and
then he’s got to write to you saying he jolly well won’t, and so on, for
a long time.... It would be much easier, of course, if Tarlyon were
divorcing you. The placards would say, ‘Viscount Divorces Wife,’ and
there you are.”

Virginia laughed.

“He’d never do it, Ivor! And besides, he couldn’t bring it off, for the
King’s Proctor would be on him in a minute, George is so careless. No,
dear, we had better stick to the first scheme, which I’m sure he will
agree to quite comfortably....”

And she suddenly shook her head a little, just a little shake. And she
brightened.

“Oh, Ivor!” she cried. “I am looking forward to our dinner at the Mont
Agel! Are you? We’ll have the room upstairs, and dear Monsieur Stutz
will come and make us drink a very rare wine, saying with _impressement_
and his fingers bunched to his lips: ‘You will hear the angels singing,
Mr. Marlay....’”

“And we will, Virginia, we will!”

“Naturally,” she said.

CHAPTER XVIII

On the morning of the day on which they were to dine at the Mont
Agel--Virginia having said that she would risk it, muffled there and
back in the car--Ivor in Upper Brook Street received a letter by hand.
The letter was addressed in pencil, a pencilled scrawl, and Ivor
fingered it with a smile. He had never before received a letter from
Virginia--what occasion had there been, indeed! And what occasion was
there now? for he had left Virginia at the mausoleum but the night
before, indeed only a very few hours ago. Thoughtfully he weighed the
letter in his hand, and it was a heavy letter. The Smith had brought it,
Turner told him.

Yes, it was a long letter, several sheets scrawled over on both sides,
in Virginia’s careless way. To read it he sat, in his dressing-gown, on
a chair by the window. September was carrying on August’s tradition; it
rained dispassionately.

“I’m writing to you, Ivor, because I can’t talk to you sometimes. I
mean, dear, that I can’t talk of certain things without you getting
very, very dark; and then, you see, I get frightened for us both, of
what will happen--to you and me, Ivor, in those dark moments! You prowl
about so, you know! And so I’m sitting up in bed now, just after you
have left me, to write to you about a most important and tiresome
matter--what the papers so rightly call ‘that much vexed question of
divorce.’ Keep your eyebrows straight, Ivor! Don’t bring your eyebrows
down into the darkness! Keep your eyebrows straight, my darling, and
listen to Virginia. For although you are intelligent and I am not, I am
very wise, Ivor. Sometimes. And this is what I know----”

“Breakfast on the table, sir,” Turner reminded him. Ivor looked up and
stared at Turner for several seconds. “Yes, yes,” he said at last.

“Ever since we spoke of marrying, that first night in Paris, I’ve known
somewhere deep down that I should sometime have to write this letter.
But that doesn’t make it any easier, dear, for you can be very
difficult. Ivor, I can’t marry you. I won’t. And I’ve known that all the
time--and haven’t you known it too? I could have stopped you thinking of
it right at the beginning, by saying that George wouldn’t dream of
divorcing me or letting me divorce him, but I can’t tell little lies,
Ivor, so I told you a big lie. I’ve been pretending, Ivor. Darling, tell
me that you knew I was pretending, just so that we could be happy--and
that it doesn’t now come as a shock to you? I told you, that night, that
I didn’t think any woman would, or could marry you. I don’t know now....
Maybe there is such a woman. Maybe your mother, as you’ve described her
to me, was such a woman. But I don’t think so, for she let your father
quite lose himself in her, she changed him from a man into a lover, and
he was so lost to the world that he might just as well have died ten
years before he did. But you, Ivor, want things both ways, and that’s
why I can’t marry you. We would choke each other. Don’t you see? I’m not
strong enough and you simply aren’t casual enough--you aren’t casual at
all! I’m not trying to make any music-hall comparisons between husbands
and lovers, but there must be some capacity for casualness in a husband,
else people would go mad. I don’t mean that I’d go mad with you--it’s
you who would go mad. I love you. Too much, maybe--oh, yes, Ivor, too
much! And I’ve never loved any one before, except George, and that was a
defiant kind of thing: I’ve just let men touch me, because they so
wanted to. I’m thinking of you in all this, much more than of myself. I
know I’m not strong enough to marry you. You want to do things, you
will not be happy unless you are doing things and writing things. You
think you want to do things, anyway. And in your mind you are never
really at rest, you are always striving about something, sometimes quite
unimportant things. And you say to yourself that you will be able to
strive tremendously when we are married, but I say you will not, and I’m
very wise about some things. For, I tell you, I’m not strong enough
inside to cope with your love and the burden of mine, I just sink under
them and you sink with me--you are not casual enough, Ivor! You don’t
push one back, ever! Why, among your many impatiences, haven’t you got
that of sometimes pushing one away? And if we many we will sink, and you
will never do the work you want to do--have you had a thought about it
all this time, you who despise slackers so much? Just loving a
woman--even me!--isn’t enough for you. You only think it is, dear. Dear
Ivor, I can see you prowling about my life with a smile nailed on your
face, wondering why it is that you can’t do or write anything
‘nowadays.’ Your father must have been a different man to you, I think,
for he just damned everything and lost himself in love and Italy, quite
lost to the world that had hoped such things from him. You are stronger
than your father, and you want to master the world and mould it to your
desire--and me too! and you almost have, but not quite. And that’s why
our marrying can only make us unhappy in the end, for under your
strength lies your father’s weakness of loving too completely--your
ambitions are just added to you, poor Ivor, to make you unhappy! I am
your mistress, and you are my lover. I am your woman and you are my man.
Oh, Ivor, let’s go on like that, let’s go on as we’ve done, free to come
and go, free to love and work--let me be free, Ivor, to keep your love
for me by letting you be free--isn’t that how you once described the
‘patrician idea,’ dear? Well, it’s hitting you back now.... I get weak
in your arms, and so I am writing this to you. I will not marry you,
Ivor. And you will be glad, sometime. But I shall be sorry if you are
angry now.”

Turner had lied about the breakfast, for it was not on the table; he had
kept it warm, but that availed the breakfast not at all, for it was not
eaten.

It had been arranged that Ivor should lunch at Belgrave Square that day;
but he told Turner to ring up and say that he would be unable to lunch,
but would call in the afternoon if he might. Not casual enough, he
thought grimly.... He did not want to go to lunch, not because he was
angry, but because he wanted to think. He wanted to do any amount of
thinking. And he prowled about his flat all the morning, thinking.

September still rained.

One of the greatest mistakes Ivor ever made in his life was not to go to
luncheon with Virginia that day, so that he could “think.” It was, in
fact, the great mistake of his life. For a man of his impatient temper
does not, at certain times, think. He broods. And how far that brooding
can take a man from the reality of a thing! How venomously it colours a
thing or a woman, so that they would be unrecognisable to a clear eye!
What beastliness it unfolds, what lies it verifies, what disloyalties it
makes bitterly reasonable!...

To be “messed about” by Virginia! by, of all the people in the world,
Virginia! “Let’s go on as we have done,” she had written. “But how the
devil can we?” he tried in his mind to answer reasonably. “We can’t go
on, we grown-up people, playing a game of loving in corners, beastly
corners--oh, you want to make this thing a _liaison_, Virginia! and that
I won’t have. I’d rather----” What would he rather? he pulled himself up
to wonder. And because he couldn’t face the words that might come after
that “rather” he suddenly became furious with himself, with Virginia,
with everything. He was being bullied, somehow....

He went out, at last, in the afternoon. He hadn’t, in his flat, noticed
the closeness of the day, but as soon as he was out it met him very
uncomfortably. “Damn!” he said. September had ceased to rain, but soon
would again, it was so close and gray. He walked into Park Lane and down
Hamilton Place. There weren’t many people about, somehow.... The
Bachelor’s, at the corner, was closed for cleaning, and it looked
frightfully closed. And then, at Hyde Park Corner, he had a vision. The
vision held him up as he was about to cross to St. George’s and thus to
Belgrave Square, it held him on the curb staring at the navvies tearing
up the road. The vision was of another young man on another gray
afternoon, but wintry gray. That other afternoon, that other walk, that
other young man! Was it like that again? There the buses were by the
Park Gates, and the people crowding into them; then there had been a
young girl with a very white and serious face, and maybe there was one
now; and it had been raining then, and it had been raining now.... Was
the only difference between that young man and himself that the young
man had had two arms whereas he had only one? Oh, ass.... Whereat he
smiled, and crossed Hyde Park Corner. He felt suddenly quite gay. Oh, it
was so different! He had admired Magdalen, he had admired her with his
heart, as he still did. But he loved Virginia. And he would talk to her
now--dear Virginia!--and make her take it all less, well, dramatically.
That’s just what was wrong, they were both taking it too dramatically.
Lovers are idiots, he thought. He would point out that it was fearful
rot about his ever growing to hate her because she made him slack--“Why,
my dear,” he’d say, “it’s only with you I can conceive doing anything at
all!” And he would tell her again how impossible it was for them to go
on as they had been doing, that they had so far only been on holiday,
and that holidays must end. And then they would easily arrange
something.... And then, to-night, they would dine at the Mont Agel, in
the upstairs room. And how surprised M. Stutz would be to see them
together again, for he hadn’t seen them together since 1912, and then
only in crowds....

“The Smith is rather odd,” Ivor thought. He saw her on the stairs of
“the mausoleum,” as he climbed to the upstairs drawing-room where
Virginia would be. The Smith was on her way out, it seemed. “To the
cleaners, I’ll bet,” thought Ivor, seeing the parcel under her arm.

“Good-afternoon, Smith,” he smiled in passing.

“_Milady vous attend, monsieur_,” she told him seriously; and left him
almost gaping at her as she toddled quickly down the wide stone
stairway.

_Milady_ was playing the piano. She played very seldom, and not at all
well. As she sat at the piano, at the far corner of the room, her back
was to him; she was in a loose, low-cut, crimson gown, not the appalling
crimson of velvet but the soft, enchanting crimson of georgette, and on
its loose folds were strewn large golden squares of cabbalistic import;
and the whiteness of her slender neck above the crimson gown was a more
than human whiteness, it was the legendary whiteness of those Greek boys
who lead Greece astray; and her hair, which had been waved that morning,
was more golden than gold, even on such a dull September day. And his
feet lingered with his eyes, while she played absent-mindedly, as one
who knew she did not play well....

“Oh, Virginia!” he cried from behind her, softly, gaily. Everything
suddenly seemed so easy.... Her fingers hung absently on the notes, they
loitered, they fell; and she turned on the stool, not quickly. She
looked up at him, standing happily there.

“How quietly you came in,” she said. And he was amazed at her looks.
Virginia was startling white to-day--not ill particularly, but just
white, so that her red mouth looked wanton and peculiar, a carmine,
flaunting mouth. It looked quite strange to him, her mouth: she had put
on too much lip-salve, being ill. And her eyes were dark, dead blue,
like inland seas in sultry weather.

“I didn’t come to lunch, dear, because----”

“Oh, yes, yes!” she abruptly stopped him; and abruptly got up from the
stool. She took a cigarette from a box on a little table.

“And I don’t want to hear about that,” she said sharply, right at him.
“So don’t, please, go on about it....”

“But I say, Virginia----” he began out of his surprise, and then had to
stop because of it. He stared at the white face a yard away from him,
and at the eyes. Good God, they were quite livid--with something! He
tried to smile. This was too silly....

“We’ll make it quite all right about that--that letter, you know,” he
assured her, rather lamely. “We’ll find a way out, somehow....”

“Oh, for pity’s sake don’t go on about it!” she cried bitterly. “You’re
always pestering and pestering, Ivor. You never let a thing alone--but
never! You get on my nerves....” Her voice was sharp, and it hurt, like
a silken thread ripped across a finger.

“I’m bored with the whole subject,” she added wearily, turning away.
“And if you’ve read my letter there’s no more to say.”

And then she turned back to him with a queer, strained look. Maybe she
was trying to appear reasonable--in spite of him!

“Now please let us talk of something else, Ivor.”

He wondered at his own calmness. He didn’t feel in the least angry--but
he knew that somewhere in him there was a lot of anger. And he tried,
consciously, to level away even the possibility of anger within him.
“This is where sense comes in,” he thought. He was so surprised--at this
Virginia! She seemed to want to insult. Her whole manner.... Queer! So
she had been thinking, too--and away from him! She hadn’t given him a
chance--writing that letter, and then, because he’d stopped away to
think.... He hadn’t dreamt that her eyes could look at him like this, so
curiously livid. But, of course, she was still weak--after that awful
pain. And she had thought herself into a feverish state. He “got on her
nerves.” ...

Virginia, standing by a little table, was cutting the pages of a French
novel. Often, when her mind was absent, Virginia would cut the pages of
a French novel....

“I believe you buy them only for that purpose,” Ivor suddenly said.

Virginia smiled a little, dimly.

“George rang up,” she said, “to say he would come in for a few minutes
about five.”

“Ah,” said Ivor. It was nearly five now, he saw. He almost said that
this wasn’t perhaps the most opportune moment for Tarlyon to call, but
that would only make things worse.

He didn’t know what to say. Dinner at the Mont Agel, or going away to
Galway, as they had finally arranged, were about the only things he
could talk about now, and they would seem a little forced, he thought.
Nothing would fit this stupid moment.... He didn’t want to make things
worse; and he didn’t want to let her make him angry, certainly not that!
If both of them.... He didn’t understand this Virginia. There’s a queer
caddishness about her that I can’t understand, he thought. He felt
terribly flat.... He stood by the open window and stared out at the
wide, rain-soaked square and the thick plesaunce of trees that shone and
smelled of rain. The leaves looked delicious, in a rich and rather
beastly way, like green velvet shot with bronze. Nice to bury one’s face
in wet leaves.... It was awfully close, and spitting again. He held the
French windows as far open as they would go. The square was very still,
expecting thunder maybe.... She’s thinking away from me, he thought. And
I can’t stop her, somehow. She won’t let me. But I must.... He, no
matter how angry he might be with her, was always thinking towards her.
“Why don’t you ever push one back?” Well, why should he? He knew what he
wanted ... one must live cleanly.... And suddenly he swung round into
the room. She was not looking at him.

“But this is absurd!” he said violently to the bent head, to the golden
hair. He passionately wanted to put this silly thing right--it was so
silly! What right had she to write him that letter and then look _queer_
just because he hadn’t run to agree with her!

As she stood at the little table, her face was bent to it, to the book
her paper-knife was absently cutting; and as she stood, she raised her
face to his cry, and looked at him; she just looked, and her eyes were
quite expressionless, as though she was not there. Oh, that unearthly
look! But he didn’t care: he had suddenly felt his strength.

“This is absurd,” he repeated firmly, but almost gaily; and he took
quick strides towards her. He didn’t know what he was going to do, how
he would force her. But he felt his strength.

And George Tarlyon came in. Ivor stopped in his stride. Virginia turned
her face to the door.

“Hallo!” Tarlyon said, so airily! And he came towards them.

“Better, my dear?” Tarlyon asked, taking Virginia’s hand; and to Ivor:
“Septic weather, Marlay....”

Ivor somehow agreed that it was.

“Will you have tea, George?” Virginia asked, “or does this septic
weather call for a brandy-and-soda?”

“It calls, Virginia. With a lump of ice in it, too.”

Virginia pressed a bell. And she asked him:--

“Are you doing anything this evening?”

Tarlyon laughed, as though she had made a joke.

“Nothing that I couldn’t do just as well some other eveni----”

“Then perhaps you’ll dine with me here?” Virginia cut sharply in. “I
don’t want to go out, and----”

The door slammed to with a crash, and startled Virginia’s hand to her
heart. Tarlyon stared, and then he laughed. He had an eighteenth-century
kind of laugh; and he threw back his head a little, and his eyes
wrinkled up, as he laughed. It really was rather funny, that sudden
exit.... Far below them in the great house, like a cry in the bowels of
the earth, a door slammed massively.

CHAPTER XIX

When, very soon after, Turner received his master’s command to pack
“things,” he did not delay; for though he had seen his master darkly
furious before now, he did not remember ever to have seen him so very
darkly furious.

“We go to Nasyngton by the next train,” Ivor told him shortly.

“It won’t be very tidy, sir,” Turner murmured.

“No matter,” said his master.

“And for how long, sir--for the packing?”

“Oh, for a few days, man! I don’t know....” Ivor impatiently drove him
from the room; then called to him: “Tell Mrs. Hope she needn’t come
down. We can manage.”

Ivor had lost his temper. He wanted now but one thing, and that
violently--to get out of London, out of “all this”! What he would do
then, he had not the faintest idea. He had no other thoughts, there was
a furious jumble in his mind. Now and then he would see a white face, a
very white little face with livid blue eyes. Caddish eyes.... He would
think later, out of London! And his impatience dragged him and Turner to
Paddington a good half-hour before a train was due to leave for Reading,
Newbury, and Hungerford; and when at last it was in, it was passionately
mobbed by the crowds going riverwards in the heat--but who stood a
chance against the tall, one-armed young man with the straight eyebrows
and the defiant nose? Turner breathlessly squeezed in after him,
travelling “first” with a “third” ticket. “Get there somehow,” Turner
muttered.

And thus to Nasyngton village, by The Swan’s Neck dog-cart from
Hungerford: to the house of the Misses Cloister-Smiths beside the
ancient bridge over the River Kennet, towards eight o’clock on a damp
and sultry September evening. Turner had bought some eggs in Hungerford:
having understood that his master had indicated eggs as the only
possible food in such weather.

“Scramble them,” said Ivor, as they reached the house.

Of course, it was a little thing. Just a tiff.... His mind accused
Virginia, but not resentfully: reasonably. Quite reasonably. And he
thought of how he had first been angry when she had said to him, “You
get on my nerves!” Good God, he thought, are there ever two people who
don’t get on each other’s nerves sometimes! It’s an abominable thing,
but it happens--but it’s ever so much more abominable when it’s
expressed, in words! She’s got on my nerves before now, but I haven’t
said anything; one doesn’t. It’s one’s own fault when some one gets on
one’s nerves, and one must just let it pass in silence. One doesn’t tell
the person--it’s one of those commonplace insults that are still the
deepest. No restraint, Virginia dear, no restraint! Nor me, either,
banging the door on you like that!... But that made him angry again,
when he thought of what had driven him to that furious exit. That was
such a grotesque insult.... He had been trying so hard to put the thing
right! And then, suddenly, without a word to him, to turn to Tarlyon and
ask him to dine with her! Of course the dinner didn’t matter, what was a
dinner more or less? But to use _Tarlyon_ as a weapon of her sudden
displeasure with him! Oh, it was childish, grotesque, caddish! Ivor
wanted to laugh when he thought of it, but his slamming of that door on
them got into his ears, and he couldn’t help retasting the fury of that
moment. He tried to tell himself that the situation required a sense of
humour....

The only trace of temper that Turner could find in Ivor in the morning
was a little grimness added to his ordinary manner. Turner had scrambled
eggs again for breakfast, and Ivor pointed out that he hadn’t meant him
to go on doing it all the time.... There was the soft light of a
hesitating sun over the morning.

“This morning,” he said, “we will fish, Turner. We will cast for trout
so that we may catch grayling.” Ivor had acquired more than a mile of
fishing rights with the house; he was not at all a good fisherman, but
one must do something; one generally, however, banged a ball with a
squash-racket against a wall.

“They’re rising pretty well, sir,” said Turner enthusiastically. He
liked going out fishing with his master, for it meant that after a few
impossible casts and a few poor ones his master would mutter something
about arms and say he would try again later: and would spend the rest of
the time prowling up and down while Turner cast for trout--which nearly
always turned out to be grayling. His master’s capacity for pacing up
and down anywhere and everywhere had never ceased to astonish Turner.
Carpet or wet grass, all the same to ’im, thought Turner.

“Must walk miles!” he would tell Mrs. Hope. “Potterin’ up and down like
that, one cigarette after another. And what ’e can find to think about
all that time beats me.”

“Beats ’im too, I s’d think,” said Mrs. Hope sympathetically. “Pore
lamb, the worried way ’is eyebrows get fixed!”

But Ivor was not doing very much thinking this morning as he paced up
and down, just far enough behind the river-bank not to offend the
fishes’ sensitive nerves. Get on _their_ nerves perhaps, he thought. He
had come to a conclusion by the time he had fallen asleep last night;
and his awakening had confirmed it. One quarrels, he thought, almost
naturally, being human; and then, being human, one makes it up. But in a
few days, not straight away! _I know_ what I want in this thing--and
Virginia must get to know what she wants, or else we’re in a blind
alley. There’s no sense in being nasty and then falling on each other’s
necks without having got rid of all the nastiness. She simply must not
be able to look at me like that in that horrible way. Caddish eyes....
And there was something so, well, blasphemous about those “caddish eyes”
that he had to force his mind away from them, else the thought of them
would make him angry again. There are rotten mysteries in us all....

The morning was not very eventful as to fishing. Perhaps there was too
much light, Ivor vaguely suggested. The afternoon, however, very quickly
put that all right, for the hesitating sun was quite obscured by three
o’clock, and a little later it began to spit; and by four it was raining
steadily, a wet and steady drizzle. They had passed to the farther side
of the bridge, where Turner had seen “them rising”; and it was there
that a telegraph boy, a very wet and sulky little boy who might have
been any kind of boy but for the coloured envelope in his hand, found
them. He had tried the house, he said sulkily. Turner quickly tore open
the envelope and handed the wire to Ivor.

“Seen anything?” the boy cheekily asked Turner.

Turner looked sharply at him and then down at the basket. The boy
thoughtfully examined the three grayling in the basket and remarked that
they would be getting wet in the rain.

“No answer,” a voice told him; and the little boy ploughed sulkily back
through the sodden grass to his bicycle against the bridge.

“Getting too wet now,” Ivor remarked; and long strides took him towards
the bridge and the house. Turner followed slowly; he would have liked
another cast or two, but Turner never fished alone, for the unwritten
law of Turner’s fishing was that his master was going to have “another
go in a minute.”

Within the house Ivor had another look at the wire. “Come back.” That’s
all! Dear Virginia! She must have rung up his flat and heard where he
was from Mrs. Hope.

But one either does a thing or one doesn’t. One can’t go dashing about
the country because of whims and wires. It’s no good our being babies
about this, Virginia, he thought. We must get sensible, somehow--find
out what we want and then not mess about with it like this. “Come back.”
Of course he would go back, he had never intended otherwise. But in a
day or two--say the day after to-morrow, when our minds are rested from
the folly of the thing and we’ll never need to speak of it again. Of
course he didn’t want to attach too much importance to childishness--but
still ... those eyes! He couldn’t entirely forgive those strangely livid
eyes, they had startled and hurt him frightfully, and they kept on
coming into his mind. Caddish.... The day after to-morrow, he thought
firmly. Not going back until I’ve forgotten that look.

After dinner he read the _Life of Disraeli_, the third volume. And once,
when he looked up, he caught a vivid glimpse of a lovely grave face
between golden “Swan and Edgar.” And at that very moment he almost went
to London, to run to the heart of that “mausoleum.”

Now Ivor was not fool enough to confound his weakness with his
principles: not entirely. And he had never had any principles in love
but love. And so the next afternoon, as he was prowling about the
river-bank in preparation for “another go in a minute,” he reasoned
between his desire to go to Virginia there and then and the hitch that
kept him back. Firstly and mainly, he candidly thought, it’s hurt pride.
In fact, it’s only that. But it’s not resentment against her that keeps
me from going until to-morrow--it’s just that I want to wipe away all
trace of that hurt pride, so that I can meet her clean. Yes, clean.... I
can’t go with a nasty secret in my heart. And although I want so much to
see her to-day, I shall want to see her so much more to-morrow that the
whole thing, hurt pride included, will bubble away in the rush. Oh, yes,
oh, yes....

For all that, he spilled his after-dinner coffee. He spilled it by
jumping up from his chair as Turner was at his elbow with it. And the
cup broke on the table.

“Oh!” said Turner.

“Going to London to-night, Turner!” Ivor cried gaily. What was a
coffee-cup?

“But there’s no train now, sir!”

And, having looked at the local guide, there was not.

“What about the car?” Ivor asked.

Turner looked very doubtful about the car.

“Well, we might look anyway,” Ivor said briskly. “Get the key and candle
and come along....”

The Misses Cloister-Smiths had not kept a car, but there was a small
shed to the right of the house in which such a “car” as Ivor’s could
quite well be kept. It was a poor looking car, and it gained rather than
lost in the light of the candle that Turner held to it. It was an
American car. After the splendid two-seater, the “dear old Camelot car,”
had been stolen--that epidemic of car stealing!--Ivor had bought this
“off a man”: it was the kind of car that one does buy “off a man.” But
Ivor didn’t care what it looked like, so long as it could “get about”
and was easily driven with one arm. “It’ll do,” he had said with a grin,
when he had first seen it. And it had done, so long as he used it
constantly; but once out of commission for any length of time it seemed
to retire within itself, and then to show a great disinclination ever
to move again. It had now been in the shed for nearly six months, and
looked it.

“Bit damp for it here,” said Turner. They looked at the car. Turner knew
a “bit” about cars, but he hadn’t troubled to know much about this one.
Turner despised this car--compared to that shining two-seater!

“Petrol,” said Ivor. And while Turner emptied a green tin, Ivor fiddled
about with the switchboard--there wasn’t much to fiddle about with on
that switchboard!--and then threw up the bonnet and pressed things
thoughtfully.

Turner thought of the rain outside, and he looked at the car. Won’t get
to London in this, he thought disgustedly.

“Come on, man!” cried Ivor! “It won’t start by staring at it. Give it a
twist.”

Turner gave it several twists, for the American’s starting-handle was
not one of those fierce ones that object to being twisted. Turner
twisted furiously, but only the thinnest of gurgles resulted.

“It’s not going to-night,” Turner said. He was glad.

Ivor pressed the carburettor until it was wet with petrol.

“Let me,” he said; and he twisted furiously.

“There’s something wrong, sir,” said Turner. He was very glad.

And Ivor suddenly laughed. He had suddenly seen a picture of Turner and
himself battling with that absurd and dirty old car in a ramshackle
shed, trying to get to London and Virginia, and he laughed.

“All right,” he comforted Turner. “I’ll go up to-morrow morning by the
nine-fifteen. You can come up later with the things. I won’t be coming
back here for some time, I expect. Not for a long time.”

“I shall walk to Hungerford,” he said, “so call me early....”

CHAPTER XX

But, of course, Turner did not need to call him; and Ivor was striding
along the road to Hungerford by eight o’clock. He had plenty of time in
which to do the just over two miles before the train was due to leave,
but his impatience needed swift movement.

Ivor never could loiter: not even on a fine morning in Berkshire; and
even in his pacings up and down he would sometimes go at a furious rate
and find himself perspiring--about nothing at all! Ivor didn’t,
couldn’t, notice the country when there was anything on his mind: it was
an inability, like that of those tiresome people who can _not_
appreciate poetry unless it’s read to them by some one they like. A
mountain would have to be an enormous mountain before Ivor, with
anything on his mind, could become aware of it; and even then he would
be more aware of it if there was a man on top of it. A landscape would
have to be an amazing landscape before Ivor, with anything on his mind,
could become aware of it; and even then he would feel it more acutely if
there was a figure against the landscape. People were important to Ivor;
that is why he was a solitary, and that is why men become solitaries,
because people are important to them. People could make places beautiful
or ugly for Ivor.... And now he simply tore along the road to Hungerford
as though it had been a street in a slum, and through the fine September
mist as though he hated cigarette smoke. And as he strode along his mind
was gay on life and Virginia, and his hat swung from his hand, and his
thick hair shone black and brown with the water of its brushing.

It was about a mile from Hungerford that, as he turned the corner which
led to a path across the fields directly to the station, he almost
collided with the little telegraph-boy on his bicycle. The boy jumped
off sulkily, and tugged at his pocket.

“Tel’gram,” said the boy.

Ivor read: “Please come back.--Virginia.” And he saw that it had been
sent off at 5.45 the day before.

“Why didn’t I get this last night?” he asked sharply.

“Office closes 6.30,” the boy explained. “Can’t deliver tel’grams
Nasyngton after 6.”

“Ought to live in Hungerford,” the boy said cheekily.

The tall, dark man looked suddenly ferocious.

“If----” he began, and then, to the boy’s amazement, he started to run
away.

Ivor pulled himself up with a kind of fierce laugh. No good running to
catch a train before it’s in a station, he thought. It was the “Please”
in the wire that had set him running--suddenly, the idea of it!
“_Please!_” One was always hearing and saying that word, and yet it had
that amazing and potent meaning! The pity of it, and the generosity in
it! “Please,” she had written. It stabbed his heart, that word. He saw
her lips saying it, those taut and dry and beautiful lips that liked the
rush of a chill wind--he heard them saying it in his ears: “Please,
Ivor!” And all his gaiety was lost in regret for his folly of
yesterday--his folly of “wisdom” in not having gone to her before. He
had let her write “please” to him! God, Virginia and her beastly men!

It was beyond his power to prevent himself walking quickly; and he had a
long wait at Hungerford Station, up and down the far end of the London
platform--it seemed like hours--before any one but a porter or two was
visible. But at last motors began to twist round the slope from
Hungerford and down to the station, and soon the platform was dotted
with people and suitcases. Then the train from London bustled in at the
opposite platform, and soon a boy came round with papers.

Ivor bought _The Times_, and, as an afterthought, _The Daily Mirror_:
thinking to while away the minutes before his train came in, and one arm
not being sufficient to cope with _The Times_ in the open. With that
pressed under his arm he held up the picture-paper at an angle: and
then, with a frown, he held it up straight: as he did so, dropping _The
Times_ from under his arm. He didn’t pick it up: he stared at one of the
several pictures on the front page--a face he knew, looking so strange!
so odd, just there! And he knew the photograph too, it was an old one
and often reproduced, for it was a “stock” photograph and used on the
smallest provocation. They had often laughed at it together, calling it
“Virginia arrogant.” ... It was a little blurred.... But why _there_?
And though he saw the large type above it, though his eyes read it, and
then read it again, he simply could not take it in. Oh, absurd! “Death
of the Viscountess Tarlyon.” Oh, but rot! His hand trembled ever so
little as he held the paper higher to read the small type below
“Virginia arrogant.”

“We regret to announce the sudden death of the beautiful Viscountess
Tarlyon at her house in Belgrave Square towards eight o’clock last
night----” Ivor very consciously, very determinedly, closed his eyes and
then he opened them again. Yes, there was “Virginia arrogant” in front
of him. Then he looked about the platform--it seemed suddenly to be
crowded with people, and they all seemed to be yelling about something.
He turned to the small type again: “Lady Tarlyon, who will perhaps be
better remembered as the Hon. Virginia Tracy and later as Mrs. Hector
Sardon, underwent a serious operation some weeks ago, from which it was
thought she had quite...” he skipped a few words “ ..presumably went
out too soon, walking in the rain of the day before yesterday, and
contracted a chill which, in her weak state of health, only too soon....
Every one will regr---- Viscount Tarly----” He simply couldn’t see any
more of the type, his eyes wouldn’t take it in; and there was a
frightful noise in his ears, every one seemed to be yelling right at
him. People shouting, people pushing, porters.... “LONDON train! Stop at
Newbury and Reading! LONDON TRAIN!” bang into his ear. Doors slammed to,
and then the train seemed to move across his eyes, kept on moving....

“Come on, sir, come _on_!” a voice cried impatiently. Ivor shook his
head at the voice and bent down to pick up _The Times_ at his feet.
Someone had trodden on it.

He left the station very slowly: the way he had come, through the
turnstile into the fields, clutching the papers. Oh, rot.... “In the
rain of the day before yesterday,” it said. He stopped and looked at the
paper again; and, somehow dropping them both on to the path, left them
both there.... But that was the day she had sent him the first wire! How
then?... He couldn’t understand it at all, he couldn’t make head or tail
of the thing. Why, damn it, she’d sent him a wire only yesterday
evening--5.45! And then, quite clearly, he knew that Virginia hadn’t
written that wire herself--she had told little Smith to write it!
Virginia wouldn’t have signed the wire “Virginia”--she would never have
signed a wire to him--she hadn’t signed the wire that had taken him to
Cimiez--she hadn’t signed the first wire. “In the rain of the day before
yesterday.” ... Oh, my God!

He must have been walking at a furious pace, for he had to stop to wipe
his face with his handkerchief. His face was wet, dripping wet.... That
wire, that first wire! “Come back!” He saw it now, all of it,
everything. His thoughts tore round that first wire in a kind of fierce
circle, a clear circle, round and round it, round and round every detail
of it. “In the rain of the day before yesterday!” He saw and heard
Virginia, very white of face. As though he was there now, he saw
Virginia on that day. Just after luncheon. Virginia always called it
luncheon, never lunch. “And where shall we luncheon to-day?” she’d
say.... Drizzling outside. He heard her voice, rather sharp and hard.

“I’m going out, Smith.”

“_Oh, mais il pleut, milady!_” That anxious little Smith! so fearful of
and for her mistress!

“I am going out, Smith. To send a wire.”

And he saw the sharp and dangerous gesture with which Virginia cut short
poor little Smith’s cry that she could send the wire. “_Mais il pleut,
milady!_”

“But I _wish_ to send it myself! No more now. You can come with me if
you like.... No, I can’t wait for the car. And I want to walk. Good God,
why shouldn’t I walk just for once!” The sudden and sweeping impatience!
“_Oh, milady, milady!_”

And he saw Virginia walking. Long swift strides through the drizzle
towards the Post Office in Knightsbridge. She wanted to send it herself!
It was an idea.... Oh, he knew, he knew! He saw everything--he saw
Virginia’s heart! She wanted to send that wire herself! Ivor would
know....

And the anxious little Smith trotting along just behind her,
breathlessly. “_Oh, milady, milady!_” Holding up an umbrella in front of
her, trying to cover Virginia with it, panting a little after those
swift Virginian strides. Never in her life had Virginia walked under an
umbrella, you couldn’t conceive it! Always she had been just ahead of an
umbrella, just outside it, and someone panting, laughing, crying behind
her. Not an umbrella-woman, Virginia.... Striding towards Knightsbridge
with set white face, so determined, heroically set. But she was heroic!
Eyes straight ahead--a soldier’s eyes, fearless eyes! Those curious eyes
that could make molehills out of mountains--Ah, why had he never thought
of that before? And agonised little Smith in her blue waterproof,
panting behind with her umbrella inclined forwards. “_Oh, milady,
milady!_”

And then she had sent that first wire. Those two words: “Come back.”
Everything was in those two words--imperious and humble, ashamed and
forgiving--and so generous! Everything of Virginia and of love was in
those two quick words--and he hadn’t seen it! He hadn’t seen Virginia’s
heart, that lovely and mysterious heart! He had been like a swine before
the two pearls in that wire. He just hadn’t seen! And then she had gone
back home, maybe not so swiftly; and happily--oh, yes, happily! He could
see the light in her eyes as she walked back home, not so swiftly: the
merry light in Virginia’s eyes--trusting Ivor! He would come back
quickly. And little Smith had been glad.... But he hadn’t gone. And when
she had got back to the “mausoleum,” she had shivered a little from the
damp, and was soon in bed with a chill: quite slight at first, “Oh, very
minor!” but quick to feed on Virginia’s so weak health, terribly quick
and wanton in its fierceness: and to her lungs, easily.... And he had
not gone. My God, he had not gone!

And then that second wire--5.45 yesterday! Virginia had waited all day,
growing worse all day. She had waited for him. And at last--at 5.30,
say!--she had commanded Smith to send that wire: “Please....” And she
had commanded Smith on pain of death to say nothing of her being ill.
“Just write ‘Please come back.’” Weaker and weaker every minute, the
chill in her lungs--poor Virginia, brave Virginia! “_Oh, milady,
milady!_” Pitiful at last! Dying ... maybe she knew she was dying when
she told Smith to send that wire, maybe she was at last seeing the
“dead-end” of her fears--and no Ivor in the “dead-end” this time! Ah,
she was _fey_, this Virginia. He had always known.... And how he had
started to run this morning--ages ago! He had known something. “Please,”
she had said. And now in his ears.... And he had wanted everything! He!
“And haven’t I given you everything, Ivor?” she softly asked. He heard
her.... How she would say, “Ivor!” telling him that the name pleased her
heart.... Funny Virginia, she was so mysterious.... Every woman has a
legend, there is a legend to every woman.... His was a terrible crime.
From a silly, trivial thing this crime had been born, but it was a
terrible crime. He had killed Virginia, ... he had closed the reckless
light in Virginia’s eyes. The brave and hazardous eyes ... of white
Virginia! But why did he see her, think of her, as white? And his mind
searched furiously, and at last his mind found a dream in which was a
column of marble.... Oh, yes, that funny dream! and the naked white
figure clinging to that column, so white she looked up there, clinging
to it with white arms and legs, and destroying it with kisses.... That
dream had given him Virginia and him to Virginia. And as he walked
headlong up the roads of Berkshire he dreamed that dream again.

The first shock Turner received that day was on seeing a tall figure
approaching from Hungerford. “Well!” he thought. Turner and luggage were
in the Nasyngton grocer’s cart on their way to the station.

“’Ere, pull up!” he said to the man. “’E’s coming the wrong way.”

“Coming quick, whichever way!” murmured the Nasyngton grocer.

And the figure was coming quick! As he approached them, drawn up at the
side of the road, Turner cried, “I say, sir!” But though he cried “I
say, sir!” twice more, the figure passed them without stopping. The
figure certainly glanced at them, but seemed to see or hear nothing.
“Balmy,” said the Nasyngton grocer. And the figure strode on, his hat
swinging furiously from his one hand. Turner took off his Derby and
scratched his head.

“Right about turn,” he said at last, patiently.

The old nag wheeled slowly round, and ambled after the figure with the
waving right arm.

“’E looks dark,” commented the Nasyngton grocer.

Turner was perturbed.

“Like the Wandering Jew,” he said softly. “No less....” And Turner
whistled softly, patiently.

The Nasyngton grocer’s horse was old and unused to hurrying: it did not
hurry now; and the striding figure of his master was soon lost to
Turner’s solicitous eye round a bend.

But when he reached the house he was offended to find no one there.
“Well!” Turner muttered. Whereupon the Nasyngton grocer thought fit to
ask a question.

“Oh, go ’ome!’ said Turner sharply. Then he waited for a long time. And
he got bored to death; for there was nothing for him to do about the
house, he didn’t know whether they were to stay or go to London.
“’Anging about!” he muttered. Turner, like his master, liked to know
where he _was_; and now he wasn’t anywhere, unless being between
Nasyngton and London and going without lunch was being somewhere.

He waited for hours; it was after two o’clock, and he was hungry; and,
examining the kitchen, he found half a loaf of bread and one egg.
“Scramble it!” he mimicked viciously. He boiled it.... And then Turner
had a curious feeling: he felt that he didn’t belong to this Nasyngton
house to-day, he belonged to Upper Brook Street, where he would have
been this moment but for having said “Right about turn.” And so, having
that curious feeling, Turner stood on the front door steps and smoked a
cigarette. He stared at the Kennet. It was still, placid. “Nothing
rising.” ...

And then he had to throw his cigarette away--for round the corner of the
drive strode a dark figure. Right at him.... Turner was shocked. “Talk
about sweat!” he said later to Mrs. Hope. His master’s face glistened
with it, it dripped from him; if he had been wearing a hard collar it
would have melted; his dark hair was all over the place, and there was a
dry, red rim around his eyes as though he had been in a great wind.
Turner pulled himself together and took a letter out of his pocket. It
was addressed in pencil, and he had great hopes of that letter.

“Letter, sir,” he muttered. “Came just after you left this----”

The dark figure was gone into the house.

In the sitting-room Ivor looked at the letter. That pencilled scrawl, so
careless always--so much more careless on this envelope, so faint! But
how? He stared at it.... Dear God, she had written it in bed yesterday,
just in case he might not come! Fearing.... Forgiving him, humbling
herself. And then, for the first time, he gave a sob. He knew everything
that was in that letter, every word. Her lips were by his ear, telling
him the words of that letter. “I’m sorry to have been a beast, Ivor, I’m
so sorry. Everything is all right, Ivor, everything. I’m so sorry I hurt
you ... only, you see, you aren’t casual enough.... Keep your eyebrows
straight for me, my darling, don’t bring them down into the darkness. Be
a little more casual, Ivor....” Oh! _he_ not casual enough!... And it
was impossible for him to open that thin envelope crushed in his hand.

Turner tiptoed to the door of the sitting-room. He had heard that sob,
and was amazed and afraid. And then Turner saw a strange thing. He saw a
one-armed man without resource in his mind trying to tear across an
unopened envelope. The one-armed man had his knee up to and pressed
against the edge of the table, and under the knee was half the envelope,
and his fingers were childishly tearing at the other half; and at last
the other half came away in his fingers.... Then eyes looked at Turner
at the door; and Turner ran away.

“Like a lot of mad babies crying in a man’s inside,” he tried to explain
that look to Mrs. Hope.

EPILOGUE

THE IMAGE IN THE HEART

CHAPTER I

Towards midnight on the night of the 1st of May, 1921: at the sign of
the Mont Agel: and, at this moment, under the passing glance of the
polite and amiable M. Stutz--who never went to bed, never; but his wife
did, and had.

Ivor Pelham Marlay, looking up at last from the abyss of his coffee-cup,
now a sad looking mess of ashes and ends of many cigarettes, caught M.
Stutz’s eye gently on him: Ivor smiled self-consciously; and he made a
displeased little gesture at the untouched glass of Napoleonic brandy
before him.

“I’m thirsty, M. Stutz,” he whispered.

And he looked round him stealthily, his first look round for ever such a
long time, and saw but three other people in the shuttered restaurant:
Cornelius Fayle, Mr. Kerrison and a young woman with tawny hair, pallid
face, and crimson lips that smiled without meaning: a pathetic rebel....

“What about a whisky-and-soda?” asked Ivor softly.

“At once,” said M. Stutz, very low; and quickly concerned himself with
it behind the counter.

This matter of whisky-and-soda was, you understand, something of a
conspiratorial rite in the establishment of M. Stutz: he disapproved of
whisky-and-soda. “It is an untidy drink,” said M. Stutz. He discouraged
it among “My Customers,” and it was only to the most favoured among them
that he would dream of serving it. To others he would say, rather
stiffly: “I do not serve whisky, sir,” and did not. Thus, the most
favoured must in all decency look carefully round the room before
begging M. Stutz’s complaisance in this particular, lest the less
favoured should be envious and also demand whisky instead of the wine
they were drinking. And that would never do at all, for the wines of M.
Stutz’s cellar were not only the treasures of his heart but also the
columns which supported the formidable edifice of his income.

This matter of the whisky-and-soda must be pursued yet a little further,
before we are finally done with it, the Mont Agel, and M. Stutz; for it
was on its wings, if such will be allowed to so vulgar a drink, that
Ivor finally left the Mont Agel. His way with a whisky-and-soda was
drastic and medicinal: the glass was raised, and lo! the glass was laid
down empty.

Money passed between Ivor and M. Stutz, and Ivor made ready to go.

“It’s raining, just a leetle,” M. Stutz told him. “Shall I send for a
taxi?”

Ivor said he would walk, thanks very much, and was politely preceded by
M. Stutz towards the side-door into the hotel passage--for the
restaurant-door was closed and locked in pursuance of certain
regulations to that effect--and up that narrow passage to the hotel
door: which was pierced, you will remember, by ever such a little
eye-hole....

It was as M. Stutz had his hand on the latch of the door that he turned
to Ivor behind him; and he examined Ivor, for a moment, seriously and
thoughtfully.

“You know, Mr. Marlay,” said M. Stutz softly, “you are a clever man, but
you do not know how to live. I have observed it....”

“I’ve never observed anything else,” returned Ivor, with the shadow of a
smile.

“I fancy,” said M. Stutz, “that you live too much with your emotions,
Mr. Marlay, and not enough with your brains....”

“Ah,” said Ivor vaguely.

“I am only a little _restaurateur_,” said M. Stutz, with his epic
gesture, “but I hear things. They say you are very clever, but that you
are doing nothing now. Of course people are only too ready to say that a
young man who has done something is going to pieces--but I would not
like you to go to pieces, Mr. Marlay.”

“That is very kind of you, M. Stutz,” said Ivor sincerely, “I’ll make a
note of what you say. Good-night, M. Stutz. And thank you.”

The amiable _restaurateur_, from the hotel doorway, meditated a little
on the tall figure that swung swiftly out of sight round the corner into
Oxford Street; and then, carefully and thoughtfully, he closed and
bolted the hotel door, for the Mont Agel would not be “at home” to any
more visitors that night, no matter of what degree. And who, in the
lists of sudden visitors by night, was left to replace Virginia? that
fair and grave figure of the night, that so lovely ornament of the
closed and shuttered Mont Agel! Who now was left, among the gallants of
the London night, who could so perfectly compound complaisance with
quality, silence with speech, ease with distance? who so _soignée_, yet
so understanding of others’ carelessness, as Virginia Tarlyon? Ah, it
was death’s most blood-thirsty joke to kill Virginia--the lady of the
merry golden curls and of the fair, small face in which was something
gay, something sombre. Often, very often, the eyes of M. Stutz, looking
round at the familiar faces of “My Customers,” would acutely miss the
loveliness of that fine lady; and, moved unawares to a considerable
sincerity, he would ache for her. For M. Stutz was a _connoisseur_ of
quality.

M. Stutz was concerned and sympathetic about Ivor not entirely because
he, of course, knew of the love of Ivor and Virginia, and had considered
it a happy fusion. M. Stutz was a snob, in a real and literary sense,
and loved a _grand seigneur_; he loved the thing without a title, he
loved the face and gesture of the thing; and, to his mind, a certain
degree of silence best accorded with features on which was stamped the
tired mark of _race_. It was M. Stutz’s daily business to deal with
people in whom there was much froth, and he dealt with them very
amiably, but he did not like frothiness. Here it was that Virginia had
pleased him, and here Ivor Marlay pleased him--there was no froth in
him, he sought no favour but what was accorded to him in courtesy in
return for courtesy.... And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect
great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early
twenties; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing
the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia--for Virginia, M. Stutz
had thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay,
even though she had seemed to fail so deplorably with Hector Sardon and
Lord Tarlyon. But now! Allowing for the havoc of her death in him, M.
Stutz did not think that a sum of three books, the first of which was
negligible, was worthy of a man who must have turned two-and-thirty. And
M. Stutz was unconsciously echoing a sentence of Aunt Percy’s when he
told himself that perhaps Ivor Marlay was too much given to thinking,
and that thinking made him angry.

But Ivor, striding along Oxford Street, was not thinking about anything
in particular. His mind had suddenly taken a lazy turn--even as he had
left the Mont Agel. It will be remembered that the air on the night of
the 1st of May, 1921--or rather, in the early hours of the 2nd of May,
for it struck half-past twelve as Ivor reached Oxford Circus--was cool
but soft, a first herald of what was to be a summer of “unprecedented
warmth and drought.” The drought, however, as will also be remembered,
was not then so remarkable as it later became; and on this particular
night there was noticeable, to a student of London, a vague kind of
rain in the air (it would naturally not be anywhere else, but on the
other hand it didn’t seem to reach the ground: not quite), which was not
unpleasing: to a student of London, anyway. Such a one was Ivor Marlay
become, for he had long since overcome the bitterness of his loneliness
in London, and now he loved London with what a ladies’ journal would
call a “bitter love.” Of late months he had very often walked about
London by night, and the feel of it had somehow crept into his bones: it
was not a sleek city, like Paris: it was a city of splendid and ordered
carelessness, there were holes and gashes in it where your Parisian
would have had boulevards, there were sharp turns and funny little slums
where any other city would have had an immaculate _Avenue_ leading to a
most immaculate _Place_ full of corrupt taxis and unshaven police....

He was at Oxford Circus, and stood debating there, just by the Tube
station. The rain held, but did not incommode. There were very few
passengers, a figure or two, a woman or two, and taxis hurtling by. Ivor
was wearing, above his dinner-jacket, a black Trilby. Now a short man
wearing a black Trilby looks like nothing on earth--or, say, like
something from South America; but it is quite becoming to a tall man,
and can lend an almost sinister air to the usual convention of faces.
Ivor, as he stood looking across Oxford Circus, with his black Trilby at
the usual angle and a white flower brave upon the lapel of his jacket,
looked just a little sinister. He stared across Oxford Circus. He wanted
to walk, anywhere. Down Regent Street, or across the Circus towards the
Park?... And this last he suddenly did, thinking that the only thing to
do with Oxford Circus was to cross it.

He walked; and this walk, so usual in character, in place, in
circumstance, was yet to chance on so strange a happening that for ever
after Ivor couldn’t help trying to find in it some faint atom of
forewarning--say, in his thoughts! But his thoughts, after having left
the Mont Agel, had taken that lazy turn. The fierce depression of that
day and evening had gone, leaving behind but the usual, half-humorous
gloom of his present nature; for he had acquired--or rather
rediscovered, for it had always been in him--a way of treating things
nonsensically with himself, just as though Virginia was beside him in
that little garden of the studio over Paris, “our eyrie, out of ken!” He
managed, within himself, to twist many things to comic phrases and the
like, so that the mind behind those straight and sulky eyebrows was
often roaring with laughter about something which wouldn’t have seemed
in the least funny when spoken.

He walked. To the Marble Arch, and thence down Park Lane, where was
little movement. The not unpleasing rain still seemed to encounter
certain difficulties in reaching the ground. He chose the Park side of
the road, and walked by the railings. He peered into the darkness of the
Park, and it displeased him. A closed and shuttered Park by night, with
wide and empty roads laid across it like the arms of a sprawling
skeleton, is a most abominable thing; there is no beauty in it thus, no
mystery, and sensitive eyes must reject its dark and dank attractions
through the railings. He walked. “Fight on all occasions.” Now who the
deuce had said that? Ah, yes, d’Artagnan’s father to d’Artagnan. Wise
old man, ... for if you fight on “all occasions” you simply must, by the
laws of chance, win now and then.

He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Piccadilly, and there
stayed a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and
careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the
light of the arc-lamps. Standing here, at the corner of Hamilton Place,
Piccadilly grows wide to the eye and sweeps to far distances: here, by
night, there are palaces all about you, there are spacious places before
you, the Green Park is a mysterious valley, and somewhere in the
spaciousness is a horseman on a horse and a chariot on a triumphal
arch, an arch that is much more impressive by night than in that festive
daylight when under its squat curve pass the automata of royalty. Here,
at the corner of Hamilton Place, Piccadilly ceases to be Piccadilly and
becomes something more than Hyde Park Corner: surely it becomes a wide
and elegant gesture, the magnificent gesture of Babylon towards the
barbaric extremities of its tributaries. Here motor-cars, that but a
moment before looked large and luxurious on the thin spine of
Piccadilly, dwindle to small and flying atoms, hurling themselves
headlong into the fat bosom of Belgrave Square, straight ahead to the
narrow rectitudes of Brompton, or still farther to the very frontiers of
the town, where is said to lie Holland Park and beyond which is
Hammersmith and a great darkness.

He walked. Down the slope of Piccadilly, that slight downward slope of
Piccadilly as it gathers strength to hunch itself up for its onslaught
on the town. And Ivor saw a much younger man, so gay, so careless, in a
swift and shining car--“that Camelot car, Magdalen!”--racing down and up
the switchback of Piccadilly by night, on the wings of love from
Camelot. Ah ... _les tendresses_! Admirable Magdalen! “You have
decorated my life,” he had cried to her--so cheekily! But so she
had--and so Virginia had too, and almost destroyed it as well! While he
had utterly destroyed Virginia....

Down Street. He would walk up Down Street, through Shepherds’ Market,
and so home to Upper Brook Street. And he began the ascent, on the side
opposite to the Tube station. A clock gave one distant knell--one
o’clock of the 2nd of May. The puny rain held.

The Tube station was closed, and shutters were laid across its face. Now
by Down Street Tube Station is a passage-way, no one knows why or
whither; whether or not this passage-way belongs to the Tube station has
never been established, nor if it does for what purpose, nor if it does
not for what purpose; in fact, nothing is known about this passage-way
but that it looks a cavernous place. But now this passage-way was made
remarkable to a passing man by the fact that a woman was standing within
it; there, just within the passage-way, Ivor saw a woman. He saw her as
he passed up on the opposite side: her face and head were in the
darkness of the cavernous place, but the light of the adjacent lamp fell
brightly on the lower part of her cloak; and this cloak looked gray and
soft and shining with a furry shine, it looked like a cloak made of
delicious shillings, and Ivor thought to himself: “If that isn’t
chinchilla I’d like to know what is.”

Beyond that passing glimpse he had, immediately, no other, for he walked
on up Down Street. But the chinchilla coat waved before his mind. “It’s
all very odd,” he thought. “What’s a chinchilla coat doing out alone at
this time of night? It’s not decent.” He had walked far enough to be
able, decently, to turn and look again. The soft gleam of the chinchilla
was still there: more than ever like a delicious shilling wantonly
awaiting a beggar’s grasp. “Give her five minutes,” thought Ivor, “and
if her man hasn’t turned up by then I must see about her. Wandering
about in a chinchilla coat on a night like this! I will offer her my
friendship for five minutes, stressing the word friendship so that she
will know I am a man without casual desires. Ha!” He felt, at this
moment, very gay; lighting a cigarette, he walked slowly as far as
Hertford Street; and slowly back, down the hill of Down Street. The rain
was at last managing to reach the ground. “Let it,” thought Ivor. He
felt gay. The hours of his life stretched before him like a desert, but
he felt gay; the days and years of his life stretched before him like a
wilderness of stones, but he felt gay; and he didn’t know why....

Quickly Ivor approached, on the opposite side, the soft and furry gleam
of the chinchilla coat. He laughed at himself. “What a dog I am!” he
thought. “If,” he thought, “I were a poet, I would write a poem about a
lonely lady in a chinchilla coat. Not being a poet, I will speak to her
instead. Thus.”

And he crossed the road with a swing. He didn’t care.... The face of the
chinchilla was not visible, as he approached. Above the face was a
suggestion of hair. A tall figure, taller than Virginia--very tall. But
he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t care.... And with his one arm he swept off
his hat.

“Can I,” he pleaded, “be of any use at all?”

“You can get me a taxi,” came voice of chinchilla, swift and low.

“Certainly,” said Ivor, and instantly left her, to search for it.
“Autocrat,” he thought. “None of your meek stuff about her.” ...

Piccadilly again. There were taxis on the rank a hundred yards or so up
on the sulky side--nice and polite taxis now that the war was over.

“In Down Street,” he told the first driver, “there’s a Tube station and
a chinchilla coat. Stop by them.”

The driver grunted, and drove. And, as he slowed down by the Tube, the
chinchilla coat stepped out from the cavernous place and was visible as
a tall woman in a chinchilla coat, no more; for over her head was thrown
a kind of motoring veil which obscured what might be golden hair and
suggested what might be a young and lovely face. “But of course,” Ivor
thought, “she’s lovely. A plain woman wouldn’t have the cheek.”

He jumped off the footboard, and opened the door for her.

“You may as well see me to my door now,” came voice of chinchilla
softly.

Suddenly, he couldn’t tell why, the desire for laughter left him.

“Yes,” he only said.

She made a gesture for him to get into the cab first.

“I will direct him,” she said.

There was silence in the cab: the lady seemed to have no desire to
speak; and Ivor, though he wanted to hear her voice again, suddenly
found he had nothing to say at all--to this strange lady! It was like an
occasion out of a book by a young romanticist, yet she was very real,
this woman; he could feel her _clean_ reality, and her voice had had
that low and careless charm of a woman whose feet are on an Aubusson
carpet and whose heart is not subject to sudden impulses. She was calm.
_Calm!_ A delicious state.... He wanted her to speak; and she suddenly
did.

“Tell me,” the voice came with gentle interest, “are other men like you,
or are you exceptional?”

“Well----” Ivor hesitated. “I’m afraid I have been rather
impertinent....”

And he deprecated his presence just a little, towards the dark poise of
her head.

“Yes, you have been impertinent, I suppose,” the voice said softly. “But
I wasn’t thinking of that. I was wondering if it was usual with men to
be gallant....”

“You see,” the voice explained, “I know very little about men. About
young men.”

Then Ivor suddenly had an idea....

“I say,” he almost blurted, “I’m all right, you know. I mean--well, I
don’t want anything. You mustn’t think that I have any--well, ulterior
motive, because I haven’t. I just thought I’d speak to you.... It’s
rather difficult to explain....”

“It seems to be,” the voice suddenly laughed at him. And the taxi
stopped.

Ivor stepped out, with reluctance, for the drive had been short, too
short; and, though he had no “ulterior motive,” he would have liked to
speak to her a while longer. But, even as he stepped out on to the curb,
he murmured softly: “Well, I’m damned!” For he saw that they were in
Hertford Street--and just at that part of Hertford Street which is at
the head of Down Street! and there, a hundred yards or so down the slope
of it, was the Tube station!

The chinchilla coat laughed, a slight wave of a laugh it was, from the
recess of the taxi.

“I live here,” she said. “But I told him to drive round by Hamilton
Place....”

“I thought it would be fun to see your puzzled face,” she said. “I’ve
never had much fun.”

Her sudden plaint from the darkness made him, standing by the door,
frightfully shy; and he said nothing, awkwardly.

He stood aside while she stepped out. And, in the lamplight, he saw her
face for the first time, as she brushed by him: a young and beautiful
profile--curiously sedate, too, it seemed!--passing by his eyes.

“She’s a person,” he couldn’t help thinking.

He remained by the throbbing taxi; he did not follow her to the door of
the house, lest she should think he wanted to follow the occasion
indoors. And he did want to, very much; but he could make no move lest
she should be made uncomfortable at a thought of his insistence.

He watched the tall figure--she was very tall, taller than Virginia--fit
a latchkey in the door; he watched her open the door; and he saw her
turn her head to him. He took off his hat quickly.

“Good-bye, Chinchilla,” he said.

She smiled a little.

“You must be a very dangerous man,” she said thoughtfully, “to be in
such a hurry not to put your restraint to the test....” It was, after
all, very surprising of her to say that, just that.

“You can come in for a moment,” she said. “I would like you to come in
for a moment.”

And Ivor, making a sign to the taxi-driver, followed the chinchilla coat
into No. 78 Hertford Street.

CHAPTER II

Once in the hall of the house she did not look round at him: her steps
rang sharply on the stone flags as she passed to a door at the far end
of the wide and sombre hall of stone--for in it only one lamp was
alight. He threw his hat on a chair and, in following her, had time to
be surprised at the spaciousness about him. For, from the outside, the
house had looked one of those tall and narrow houses common in Mayfair,
where ground-rent is high: there had been no hint of this wide and
spacious hall in which the lightest steps resounded portentously. It was
like the hall of a house in, say, Carlton House Terrace, it was a hall
to hold two butlers--now that footmen have become vulgar--the one to
take your hat and the other your name; and at its extremity, near the
door through which the chinchilla had passed, there swept upwards with a
wide sweep a noble marble stairway, the kind of stairway from the top of
which men may fairly envisage the ascending grace of the women who might
have loved them or the shortcomings of the woman they have married; for
very grievous for a mediocre figure is the ascending of such a gracious
stairway as this.

The house was very still, but it is not unusual for a house to be very
still towards half-past one. And as Ivor followed the tall lady into the
room at the foot of the noble stairway, he wondered why she was doing
this odd thing; but (since men cannot help thinking of such things) he
did not seriously consider the idea that her invitation would finally
include her bed, for any fool can tell a romantic lady from a calm lady,
and she was deliciously calm. Probably she was bored, Ivor thought, and
would amuse herself a while; and so, though he did not feel very amusing
to-night, he would try to be as pleasant as possible.... And he wouldn’t
mind a drink, anyway; but he didn’t get a drink.

Her voice met him as he went into the room: it was a large and wide
room, and it was dim, for she had switched on but a few lights, faint
electric-lights hidden in subtle vases here and there about the expanse
of the room.

“Don’t, please, be shy,” her voice met him, the calm voice, “for I’m
quite shy enough for two. And I asked you in because I want you to talk
to me--just a little.”

He came forward towards her across the rugs that strewed the parquet
floor. There were many things in that room, chairs and footstools and
sofas of quality, but yet it was a room for leisured feet, a room easy
to move in. She stood by the nobly carven fireplace, a figure in
chinchilla, under which was visible a low-cut black dress: and this
shone a little as though it were made of black armour, even as black
sequins do sometimes shine.

“Well, it makes a man shy,” he protested, “to try to live up to the fact
that you’ve let him speak to you.”

The candid eyes of the tall lady examined him; they were gray eyes, wide
and inquiring and amazingly innocent, and now there was a subtle light
of laughter in them, as though she was infinitely but quietly amused
about something. But he did not meet her eyes, for his were suddenly
engrossed in a large portrait on a farther wall, a portrait startling
and remarkable even in that dim light. It was a portrait in oils of a
woman in a green dress sitting in a high-backed chair, and her head was
pressed back against the back of the chair so that her throat was a
clean and white line, and appalling in its suggestion of luxuriance; and
the eyes of the woman in the green dress, as her head leant back
against her chair, had in them the frightening candour of innocence, and
they laughed at you, without mockery, as though she was infinitely but
quietly amused about something; and her hair was golden, and yet only a
fool would have called it golden, for it was of the colour of fallen
leaves on an October afternoon, russet brown and very dull gold shot
with a fantasy of carmine. Anyway, the colour of her hair was more like
that of an October leaf than anything else, and as for her dress, who
shall describe that green dress? For it was a strange and surprising
dress, yet it was not a cheeky dress but witty, and it required from its
wearer more than the virtue of dignity, though even that is a
considerable virtue in young women nowadays. At its foot was just
visible the sweet tip of a cherry shoe--but at its other end, the
queenly end, at that end where a dress must die so that a woman’s flesh
may live for men’s admiration and distress, at that end where a dress
curves in glorious luxury over breasts and dies in a last effort to
reach and clutch a slender throat! What of that queenly end of that
green dress? It was contrived, without detracting an iota from the
elegant formality of its wearer, so that it swept in a thin green strand
from the bosom over one shoulder--and never returned over the other! for
that other shoulder was startling white and naked, it was the kind of
shoulder that men dream about in lonely moments; it was a shoulder
wantonly divorced from the green dress which curved, ever so
luxuriously, over but half one of the breasts of the subtly laughing
woman with the eyes of innocent candour. And Ivor stared at her.

“Ah, yes,” he said, towards the portrait, “I know you now. I know you
well.”

“Oh, but am I so famous then!” the lady cried pathetically, and Ivor
turned to her thoughtfully.

“That portrait is famous,” he said. “It set every one talking, even in
war-time--and it set me longing. Years ago....”

The “Portrait of Pamela Star,” by Augustus John--who, in the autumn of
1916, when it was on exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries, did not hear
of it? Never did portrait create such a stir or leave such an impression
as the portrait of Pamela Star. The _Daily Mail_ at once called her a
“mystery woman,” and the _Evening News_ discovered a theory that the
lovely creature was a Belgian refugee whom Major John had rescued at the
risk of his life; and tried to interview the artist, but failed
deplorably. And though there were not wanting fellow-artists to say that
the portrait was a literary masterpiece rather than a painting, which is
a boring remark and means nothing, and though Mr. George Moore was heard
to say, as he walked away from a long contemplation of the portrait,
that painting had died with Manet--yet it was commonly admitted that
whereas Gainsborough had painted a lady like a landscape, Augustus John
had made a lady into a legend; and what lady, it was asked, would not
rather be a legend than a landscape?

“I was on leave in 1916,” Ivor told her, “and I happened to walk into
the Grosvenor Galleries. And there you were! You were a great help to
me, Pamela Star. You were indeed....”

“And were you as curious about me then as you are courteous now?” she
asked him with a smile. They were standing close together, the room was
an island and they were solitary and close on it; she smiled at him
curiously; and Ivor had a funny feeling that he had never yet met a
woman with such a clean, unveiled smile: absolutely frank. And he
wondered about her age, thinking it must be that mysterious and
intangible age which lies somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.

“Every one was curious about you,” he told her. “People wondered about
you. They knew a little about you, you see, and on that little they
built all kinds of gossip....”

“And didn’t Mr. John ever explain how quiet and harmless his sitter
was?” asked Pamela Star.

“John never speaks about his sitters. If you should ask him a question
about them he wouldn’t hear you. John is an artist, not a
table-decoration....”

“And what kind of things did people wonder about me?” asked Pamela Star.
“I want to know, please. For, you see, I know as little about people as
they know about me. Less even....”

“They wondered,” said Ivor, “if you really want to know, whether you
were a courtesan or a virgin. And that’s a great compliment to you,
Pamela Star, for there’s generally no doubt about it one way or the
other....”

“And you?”

“Oh, I wondered too!”

“And now--are you still wondering?”

“More than ever,” he assured her.

“I’m not wondering,” he explained quickly, “whether you are a courtesan,
for I think I know just enough about them to know that you’re not one.
And you look too wise to be a virgin. I’m just wondering about you,
that’s all.”

“Shall I trust you?” she put to him, ever so suddenly.

“Please,” he said.

“Well----” she began childishly, and hesitated. Her eyes, those candid
eyes, were very full on him, they searched his. She gulped, smiled, and
spoke swiftly:--

“I’m a plumber’s daughter, and yet I own this house and all that’s in it
and very much besides. In fact I’m very, very rich.”

“So, of course,” she said softly, “I’m not a virgin. Of course....”

And suddenly, from the recesses of that curious moment, there crept out
laughter; and they laughed, those two, right at each other, a little
shyly, a little wonderingly, like children uneasy under the burden of a
new friendship. And then she said, very seriously:--

“I wouldn’t have let you speak to me in Down Street, if I hadn’t seen
that you hadn’t the usual number of arms. You could do less damage with
only one arm, I thought....”

“Oh, I can do quite a lot! One’s mind has a thousand arms to hurt with,
after all.”

“I see,” said Pamela Star curiously.

And then that one arm made as though to sweep away some debris. “But how
did we get talking of myself?”

“I was just trying to find out about men,” she confessed sweetly. “I’ve
known so very few....”

“Ah, yes, you were telling me how you came to let me speak to you in
Down Street,” he remembered. “Well, you know, I certainly wouldn’t have
dreamed of speaking to you if I had known who you were. I would have
been frightened....”

“And now--aren’t you frightened?”

“Oh, no! I like you, Pamela Star.”

And again they laughed together, but, suddenly, she became very earnest;
and he wondered at himself for not having observed before that the
candid eyes were sad and that her mouth was just a little sad, as of a
woman who might cry but will not.

“And now I’ll confess to you, since you say you like me,” she told him
without jest, “that I asked you here under false pretences....”

“But you’ve made no pretences at all!” he broke in quickly. “That’s what
is so nice about you....”

“I told you,” she insisted, “that I asked you to come in because I
wanted you to talk to me a little. I lied, my friend. I asked you to
come in because I wanted to make sure if I liked you or not. And if I
did like you I intended to show you something. I’ve simply got to show
it to someone, don’t you see? Something important.”

“In fact,” she said very slowly, “I’m going to show you the most
important--how does one say it?--factor in my life. Come, stranger.”

“I’ll tell you my name if you like,” said Ivor.

She considered his face.

“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “I have known men with names, but
known them no better for them. This will be in the nature of an
experiment....”

“If ever,” she said, “you should see my eyes searching for a word, you
will tell me your name. That will be the word I need.” And she smiled
faintly at his absorbed face, and with a slight shake the chinchilla
coat dropped off her to the floor, soft and shining silver about her
feet, and she was a woman in a black sequin dress cut low about her
throat and severely distant from her arms. Somewhere about the shining
black was a splash of vivid green, maybe it was about its middle: just a
little splash of vivid green on the shining black dress....

“Come,” she said again. And he followed Pamela Star across the room to
double-doors at a far end. She laid her hands on the two knobs, as
though dramatically to swing the doors open; but instead, as she stood
thus against the dark panel of the door, she suddenly threw her head
backwards to him with an adorable gesture, and she said:--

“You are my newest friend--and here is my oldest and my best!”

And Pamela Star threw open the doors to introduce her newest friend to
her oldest, a dead man laid out on a great couch in the serene light of
two tall candles, at its head, in two tall candlesticks of barbaric
design in dull and twisted gold.

“That’s how he wished it,” she whispered.

They stood, the two young people, even as straight as the two
candlesticks of the dead old man’s desire, in the open doorway: Ivor
staring in wonder, and she in deep thoughtfulness, at the still and
bearded figure on the great couch. Her oldest and best friend! And she,
beside him in the doorway, was as still as the dead....

They stood facing one another on each side of the figure on the great
couch, he staring down in wonder and she in thought; and the calm light
of the two candles shone softly on her hair, so that red and gold and
bronze danced on the waves and magic shades chased magic shadows in the
depths.

The couch was low, it did not reach above Ivor’s knees; and it was very
wide, but the old man was not lost in it, for even in death he could
bewilder size and confuse proportion. Patriarchal he looked, that old
man, where he lay with fine head and beard uncovered by the sheet--for
what shame to cover the head, no matter how inert, of Aram Melekian! Of
whom it had been said that he was the only proud gesture that wretched
race has ever made since Jesus died to save the souls of men and to make
a hecatomb of Hayastan, which is Armenia’s true name. A wise old man,
Sir Aram Melekian, but bitter: the friend of man he had surely proved
himself by many charities and endowments, but as surely he despised
mankind; he lent money to it. It was said that he had financed several
little wars, and it was known that, with the great Greek millionaire, he
had helped the Allies considerably in the last war--his idea being, some
people said, that since England and France had befriended Armenia almost
out of existence he was only too pleased to do what he could for them:
which does not show him in a very pleasant light, but is almost
certainly a malicious fabrication of envy, for Sir Aram Melekian had
always let it be known that he yielded to no one in his admiration for
the recent civilisations of the West, saying: “The West is much more
cunning than the East, which is why the East is called cunning, I
suppose.” It was to such fresh and boyish remarks, no doubt, that the
old multi-millionaire owed his amazing popularity among the societies of
Paris, New York and London. Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton, however,
were understood not to like him very much, and the _Morning Post_ had
made several disapproving references to him in connection with Mr. Lloyd
George’s Near Eastern policy--but all this was no doubt due to a
pardonable misunderstanding about Sir Aram Melekian’s nose, which was
what’s called a decidedly Jewish-looking affair; whereas, though
Armenians have frequently been described as very Jewish-looking, the
truth of the matter is that Jews are very Armenian-looking, for the
Armenians are the senior race and have, therefore, a prior right to that
nose which the Jews, perhaps rather indiscreetly, have always claimed as
their own. Sir Aram Melekian, like the late Viscount Northcliffe, had
read the history of Napoleon; but, unlike the late Viscount Northcliffe,
he had forgotten it....

But the death of the great Armenian, on the 1st of May, 1921, is too
recent to deserve particular comment; and, indeed, little could be added
to the biographical details, appreciations and tittle-tattle which
filled the newspapers of the day; for editors, whose hands are nowhere
if not on the pulse of the public, know that, though a multi-millionaire
is but a fable while he is alive, the great heart of the public is at
once touched by his death and deeply interested in the disposition of
his fabulous monies; though in this case that disposition was found to
be of less than usual interest, for the number of words in Sir Aram
Melekian’s will did not exceed the rumoured number of his millions.

Ivor did not need to be told who the old man was. The curiosity about
the “Portrait of Pamela Star” in 1916 had, anyway, ascertained one
certain fact about Pamela Star, that she was in some way connected with
Sir Aram Melekian; and though the old millionaire gained a little
glamour from that connection, whether of love or guardianship no one
knew, it was thought a little “peculiar” of him to keep her, “that
lovely, tall creature,” so severely to himself; for there had been no
chance of meeting her, even those brilliant and energetic hostesses who
were intimate acquaintances of Aram Melekian’s were by him refused the
slightest introduction to Pamela Star. “Later,” he would say; and always
“Later.” They would be seen, however, now and then, side by side in the
tonneau of a car; now and then riding in the Row, a fine pair for all
his age, which must have been well over sixty: “the lovely, tall
creature” and the iron-gray old man with the Assyrian beard and the deep
eyes that only smiled at disconcerting moments: a suspicious man. And so
Pamela Star remained unknown, a legend created by Augustus John and
enjoyed only by an eccentric old man....

It was as Ivor at last raised his eyes from the old man’s face, to see
if Pamela Star really existed, that she spoke. She said, in a very low
voice:--

“He died this evening--at about seven o’clock. Gently--just as he looks.
He expected to die, his heart was like that. And I expected it, too....”

“Dear, dear Aram!” her voice came so softly, so tenderly. “He was so
strong--and so contemptuous--about everything but me!”

Ivor looked down again at the noble head on which age had left a mane of
gray hair, and at the face, which was as though bleached white and taut
with many years, many tempers.

“He looks,” Ivor said thoughtfully, “as I thought no man in the world
could look, the richest man in the world.”

“And I?” Her sharp question startled him; he stared across the couch,
into the gray irises into which the candlelight had dropped spots of
gold. “And I? Do I look like the richest woman in the world?”

He stared; it was somehow appalling, the matter and manner of that swift
question, so brittle and infinitely wretched! And he suddenly felt as
though all his life had been leading to this particular and amazing
point, that he had lived thirty-two years for nothing more--and nothing
less!--than to be asked, across the body of an old man, this
magnificently absurd question. And he tried to be silent, but he said
something, he never knew what....

CHAPTER III

They were back on the other side of the closed folding-doors: almost as
they had been before, standing together as on an island in artificial
twilight. The occasion was not, somehow, one for sitting down.

“I’ve made a great demand on your patience, haven’t I?” she asked him.
“All this mystery....”

“But you’ve made it very easy for me to meet that demand,” he told her
sincerely.

“And now I’ll explain--something, anyway. You’ve a right to know
something--after my strange behaviour.” And she seemed to wait for him
to say something, but he had nothing to say: the thing was too
mysterious.

“Yes?... Well, listen. There, in that room, lies my oldest and dearest
friend--though I don’t know why I put it that way, for I’ve never had
another. But it’s not to be pathetic I’m being so expansive to you. And
it’s not for grief at Aram’s death. I’m being selfish, my friend. I am
thinking only of myself--and there’s a great horror in that word,
myself, when there’s not another to put beside it....”

She stopped, and seemed to consider him; and she made a slight, helpless
movement of her hand, so that a sense of her impotence touched him
closely.

“I’ll understand, whatever you say,” he begged her to believe. “Anyway,
I think I will.”

“If you’ve ever been lonely you will,” said Pamela Star. “Though even so
it may be difficult, for I’ve only been lonely since seven o’clock this
evening. But I am suffering from all the loneliness of my future life, I
don’t see how it can be mended. That’s hysteria, maybe. You have met
many women, I’m sure, and so you may know this for hysteria....”

“I have met many women,” Ivor said, “and I don’t know anything.”

“Listen,” she said again: and spoke impulsively, swiftly. “I’ve been
with Aram Melekian since I was ten. I’m twenty-eight now--eighteen years
in that wise old man’s care, for he was very wise, you know. I was a
grubby little girl playing about in the Fulham Road, the daughter of a
plumber’s foreman and the sister of a little boy who was even grubbier
than me, when Aram saw me on his way to the studio of one of his
_protégées_ in Redcliffe Road. He saw me several times, he said, and was
amazed at my beauty....” She smiled faintly. “I think he has been amazed
at it ever since. And of course I’ve been only too pleased to be able to
return, if only like that, a little of the great debt I owe him.”

“At first,” she said, “he was my guardian. He had arranged things with
my father--who would never receive any help for himself, dear father is
such an independent kind of plumber! And a great success he’s made of
plumbing, too, he and my brother--Snagg & Son, of the Fulham Road. For
my name was Pam Snagg, but Aram changed it to Pamela Star, saying it was
more apt for me....”

“And indeed it is,” said Ivor.

“Yes, Aram had a _flair_,” she agreed. “And, though he was so bitter, he
could make even plain things beautiful by understanding them. That’s
surely very rare....”

“At first he was my guardian,” she repeated, “and then, when I was
twenty, he was my lover. And then, after that, he was my friend. He was
my lover for a year, and he said that that year was the great mistake of
his life--the only mistake of his life, he said. For one day he
cried--Aram cried, hard Aram!--and after that he was my friend. My great
friend.... The great mistake of his life! Well, I don’t know. It’s easy
to judge these things by morality, so easy that morality must be
sometimes wrong. It’s too cocksure.... I’m glad to have been his
mistress. I feel I would have been very--small and little, without that.
You understand? It somehow balances one--the knowledge. And I’m sure you
wouldn’t be here and I talking to you so frankly but that once upon a
time I let Aram love me--oh, yes, it was just that, there’s no excuse
for me at all except that I’m glad of it.”

“But surely that’s just enough!”

“Yes?” she asked softly; and he had a conscious moment of wondering what
she was going to say. “And was it enough excuse, my friend, for him to
leave all his property, _every bit_, to me, to do just as I liked with?
Me, Pamela Star!”

“Well!...” said Ivor in amazement. It was amazing....

“Oh, but it was dreadful!” she suddenly cried.

“Why do you say ‘it was’?,” he asked--sharply.

She stared at him in deep bewilderment.

“Quick you are!” she murmured. She passed a hand across her forehead. “I
don’t know,” she said. “I should have said ‘it is,’ I suppose. But
you’re here, after all--aren’t you?”

That evident fact seemed to astonish him to silence.

“It was dreadful,” Pamela Star insisted. “This evening--all alone here!
The doctor came and went--an impressive man. His patients always have
bulletins about them in the morning paper--a most impressive man. He
pressed my hand most encouragingly as he went away. Then the secretaries
came and went--automata, just automata! They seemed to find a tremendous
lot to do, though I’m sure I don’t know what it was, for I couldn’t find
anything to do at all. One automaton whispered to me that he would see
‘about the Press’--the silly man, as though I cared what he saw about!
And at last he went too, the last automaton, with whispering feet. The
servants seemed more human--Rose, the butler, is a very nice old man,
but the plumber’s daughter wasn’t somehow able to put her head on his
shoulder and say that she was very, very miserable. Then he went to bed
at last, I suppose, and I was left all alone with Aram and all this
money: ... left all alone with to-morrow and all the to-morrows! Don’t
you feel sorry for me, my friend--what shall I do with it all? Must I
sacrifice all my life to that ghastly money--even as he did! Oh, I don’t
despise money, but this is too much, it’s endless! I can’t sign it away,
heap by heap--oh, delicious heaps of gold to give away! ‘Will you take
it, sir, or shall I send it for you?’ But that’s no use, I can’t sign it
away, for he trusted me with his millions to direct them to their best
advantage. He educated me for that purpose, he said I was the one woman
in the world who would be able to do it. Oh God, what a compliment! They
will always be his, I will be their slave! That looks to be my life, my
friend....”

She was deliciously frank with him, she did not try to deprecate her
self-pity.

“But why did he keep you so--well, closed up?” Ivor asked. “It seems
strange of him--not giving you a chance to know people, to make friends,
to know things!”

“Oh, but I know such a lot!” she protested, with a vast, sweet
arrogance. “I know a devil of a lot, sir, about life and things. He
taught me, you see--and he was a most uncommon man, I assure you. And he
didn’t keep me ‘closed up’ at all--I just took his advice, respecting
him as I did. I was lonely sometimes, of course, but I was happy with
him, we laughed together often, and then he would show me the world. I
don’t suppose I’ll ever know a younger man than Aram was really--even
his contempt for people was a young thing, don’t you see! And, as for
me, I never had a desire to keep a _salon_ of my own or decorate some
one else’s. I didn’t want all that. I’m of the people, and I always will
be of the people, money or no money. And Aram always said that if I went
about my face would make a mess of my life--forgive my being candid
about my face, but living with him has made me so--for, he said, my
beauty wasn’t the kind that men are just content to look at, they would
want to touch it, being men. And I couldn’t remain untouchable, he said,
being a woman and warm--that’s what he said, anyway, and he probably
knew for he was once my lover for a year. A man will come, he said, who
will also be your friend. He said that often, he seemed somehow to be
certain about it. But by the time he died this evening no such man had
come at all, not even the shadow of one. And so I wandered about the
house, and then at last I put on this dress, just for something to do;
and then, still for something to do, I crept out of the house and
walked, and at last I stood by the Tube station, wondering if anything
had ever happened to any one in Down Street. At last I decided it
hadn’t--even though, you know, I didn’t expect anything to happen, and I
don’t think I really wanted anything to happen, for I wouldn’t have
known what to do with it if it did....”

“And then,” she said, “you happened, with your one arm. That made things
ever so much easier. Somehow....”

“I just happened,” he said, quite sincerely, “as anyone else might
have.”

“Don’t be silly!” she cried--so suddenly! And she laughed at his
humility, shattering it--and then, shattering her laughter, came a great
noise and thundering through the stone hall, so that they were shocked
into staring silence.

“Good God, what’s that!” Ivor whispered.

They started to the door; and again that thundering through the stone
hall shattered the stillness and marred the dignity of Sir Aram
Melekian’s tomb.

“It’s the front door,” whispered Pamela Star.

A squat and surly shape confronted them in the night.

“I bin ringin’ this ’ere bell for the larst ’our,” explained the shape
with commendable restraint. “And not jest for fun, but to know if you’ve
fergotten me or going to keep me till the next war. Bein’ now parst
four----”

A convulsive giggle came from behind Ivor’s shoulder in the doorway.

“We’d forgotten the taxi!” said the giggle, quite unnecessarily, for the
taxi was very manifest to the eye.

“I’m so sorry,” said Ivor to the driver, and grinned at him. “I quite
forgot you....”

“Oh, I don’t mind, if you don’t!” sneered the taxi-driver....

“Have you got enough change?” she whispered into his ear, still
giggling.

“It’s not a question of _change_,” whispered back Ivor, pulling out
notes.

“Good-night, sir,” said the taxi-driver, with _empressement_. “Sorry to
’ave woken you.”

Ivor stared at him.

“Not at all,” he said.

“Good-night,” said Pamela Star.

The taxi hurled itself down the hill of Hertford Street towards the
blind turning to Shepherd’s Market. It was an astonishing taxi.

“I never been in a taxi before,” said Pamela Star childishly.

As they walked back through the wide and sombre hall of stone Ivor
suddenly stopped; she stopped too. The light of a great idea was in his
eyes.

“Let’s go out,” he said. “For a walk....”

And he swept a sudden gesture round the sombre hall.

“Out of this, Pamela Star....”

CHAPTER IV

They walked. Dawn still lingered, and the night was gray and wan, yet it
was clear with the clarity of scudding gray clouds far above the slower
moving destinies of mankind. The pavements were dry, and the world was
not yet conscious of this 2nd of May.

They walked up Park Lane, and the talk bubbled out of them; and they
laughed at the things each said, for the things they said seemed funny
to them.

They came to the Marble Arch, and their feet crossed the deserted place
unbidden by them; and they stood at the corner where the wide place
stretches out two fingers, one elegant and shapely towards Lancaster
Gate beside the Park, the other lean and ugly up the Edgware Road
towards the north. Every minute was tearing open the envelope of the
night, and the gray clouds scudded frantically over London on their
mystic and purposeless way.

“Our way is obvious!” cried Ivor to her inquiry. “Romance must plant its
feet firmly on reality, for it’s life that makes us beautiful, not we
that beautify life. So we will acknowledge our debt to life by walking
up the ugly Edgware Road rather than towards the fat and horrid squares
of Bayswater. Why, Pamela Star, anything might happen up the Edgware
Road--even Cricklewood might happen, the legendary source of Bus 16!”

“I’ve got an aunt,” said Pamela Star, “who lives in Cricklewood.
Fordwych Road. Aram and I used to go and see her often, and he flirted
with her and she adored him. She’s knitting a muffler for him now. If
she likes you she’ll knit one for you too....”

“No one has ever knitted a muffler for _me_,” said Ivor pathetically.

And, thus and thus, they came to speak of images, such as are not to be
seen in museums. They spoke of images secretly, they spoke
cabbalistically about the facelessness of images in hearts, and how an
image might suddenly grow a face without a by-your-leave, but what they
said about them is of no importance; and they forgot what they had said
as soon as they had said it, which is a peculiarity of all cabbalistic
conversations.

The day was plain as they again neared Hertford Street; and six strokes
of a clock hung loose in the still air as they entered it from the Park
end. The sky overhead was mother-of-pearl, but an absurdly angry cloud
still played darkly among the chimneys of Knightsbridge; and somewhere
out of Whitechapel rose the pale gold of the London dawn. The world was
awake to the 2nd of May, but Mayfair is not the world, and even the
menials of Mayfair lie long abed. As they turned into Hertford Street
they startled a robin from a poet’s head on the barren fountain, and he
fled away with a cameo note. “There!” sighed Pamela Star.

Hertford Street was still as night as the two tall figures, the dark
one-armed man and the woman with the hair that was of the colour of an
October leaf, walked silently down it. Three fingers of her hand were
lightly within his arm: they did not know how they had got there, but
there they stayed, even to the pavement before her house--which stood
where Hertford Street, having run a straight course, slopes suddenly
downwards towards Shepherd’s Market.

They faced each other--their eyes almost level, she was so tall!--and he
took her hand in his.

“I said ‘good-bye, Chinchilla,’ to you years ago,” he said. “But now
I’m only going to say good-night.”

And he saw that her eyes were searching for something.

“My name is Ivor,” he said.

“Ivor!” she cried softly. “Ivor and Pamela.” ...

And there was a rushing and a turbulence in his ears, pierced sharply by
Aunt Moira’s distant voice: “They met like birds, in the open....”

But that was not the only noise in that still moment, there was another,
a great clattering as of tin against glass and glass against wood....

“_Minuet de cœur!_” she whispered.

But it came, they saw at last, from a milk-boy pushing his green
hand-cart smartly up the slope of Hertford Street.

Ivor suddenly passed his hand over his eyes, he pressed his eyes, and
the eyes of Pamela Star were queerly wet as they stared unseeing at the
approaching milk-boy.

“If I don’t go this moment,” said Ivor fiercely, “I’ll never go!” And he
strode away from her, down the slope.

“You’ll come back?” she cried softly, in the sudden fear of a great
gladness.

“In a few hours,” he cried back over his shoulder, and went his way,
determinedly. She watched the tall, striding figure, hat swinging from
one hand, until it disappeared round the corner of the blind end of
Hertford Street.

The clatter of the milk-cart had fallen to a gentle murmur, and Pamela
Star found the milk-boy staring curiously at her.

“I s’pose this’ll be for you, lady,” said the boy politely, offering her
one of those bottles of milk that are stopped with a cardboard disc. “As
I leaves one ’ere, at No. 78, every morning.”

He surprised her.

“Do you mean to say that you’ve brought me my milk all this time and
that I’ve never seen you before!” she cried. “Why, you are one of the
most important people in my life!”

The boy grinned; he was a very clean boy, in a cap, shirt-sleeves and an
apron almost as white as his milk--for was he not born and bred in
Shepherd’s Market, which is the aristocrat of slums?

“Well, it’s a bit early for you to be up as a rule, lady,” he excused
her.

“Or a bit late,” she added softly. “And I’m not a lady anyway--not
really. I had a brother just like you. Not so clean, though.”

The boy didn’t believe any of that. No one but a lady could have so
suddenly pulled the cardboard disc from the bottle of milk and raised it
to her lips, as she was doing now. The boy stared at her; he had seen
her look after the one-armed man, and he was interested. Nothing like
that had ever happened to _him_.

The lady drank deep of the milk. And then she said, with a happy sigh:
“I needed that!” She could feel, and the boy could see, the white dew of
the milk clinging about her mouth. “I’ve forgotten my handkerchief,” she
complained.

The boy tugged at his pocket and pulled out an amazingly crumpled but
amazingly clean handkerchief. He offered it to her shyly.

“Not used it yet,” he said.

She touched her lips with his handkerchief, and she offered him some
milk in return.

“’Ate milk,” said the boy.

She gave him back his handkerchief; and she asked him seriously: “Did
you see that man?” And the plumber’s daughter jerked her head, just like
a plumber’s daughter, in the direction of the man’s going.

The boy nodded.

“And do you know about images?” she asked him.

“Seen some,” he said, “in the Mooseum.”

“Ever seen an image without a face?”

The boy grinned. “Mother ’as got a bust of Queen Victoria without an
’ead,” he said.

“But I had an image without a face,” she told him softly, “until that
man came and put a face to it....”

The boy stared at the door which closed behind the loveliest lady he had
ever seen, and he decided that she was probably mad. But Pamela Star,
alone again in the tomb of Aram Melekian, knew that she was mad and that
the world was mad--the lovely world which could hold the contemptuous
spirit of her stern old friend, those ghastly heaps of gold and the
living image in her heart.

_There will follow this a book--at an as yet uncertain
date--telling of Revolution: and therein, of the strange destinies
of Hamilton Snagg, a plumber of the Fulham Road, London, S.W.: of
Sir Gabriel Silk, Bart., M.P., the brilliant and impassive Jew: and
of Michael Paris, the inspired young fanatic of Marylebone: also,
among other happenings, of the daring and death of Viscount
Tarlyon, the Master of the Legion of Laughter: but more
particularly of the marvellous fortunes and cruel deaths of Ivor
Pelham Marlay and Pamela Star, his lady._

GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO., LTD.

* * * * *

MICHAEL ARLEN

“An Artist in a thousand and with uncanny psychology.”--_Yorkshire
Observer._

6TH IMPRESSION

THE GREEN HAT

_A Romance for a Few People_

7/6 NET

The novel sensation of the year; lavish praise and bitter abuse were
showered upon it. Everyone read it--and still is reading it. A
“best-seller” and a brilliant book.

MICHAEL ARLEN

The Romantic Lady 3/6

_Fourth Printing_ Net

These are airy, cynical, polished inquiries into the actions and
reactions of women’s loves, tickling the reader’s sense of humour and
sense of style from the moment he picks up the book, to find “The
Romantic Lady” glancing down at Noel Anson from her box, to the last
page, where the revolver smoke is veiling from her the husband of Iris
Poole.

_What the Press says_

“For sheer wit and cynicism Mr. Arlen stands alone.”--_Daily
Express._

“Pure coquetry, of course, but what perfect technique.”--_Evening
Standard._

“Has all the ironic flippancy of a Schnitzler.”--_Sunday Times._

These Charming People 7/6

_Fourth Printing_ Net

Being a tapestry, or, if you like, a panorama of the fortune,
misfortunes, and gallanteries of Shelmerdene (that lovely lady), Lord
Tarlyon, Mr. Michael Wagstaffe, Mr. Ralph Wyndham Trevor, and others of
their friends of the lighter sort, written down by Mr. Ralph Wyndham
Trevor and arranged by Mr. Michael Arlen.

_What the Press says_

“Its humour, its wit, its elegant charm....”--ROSE MACAULAY in the
_Daily News_.

“The art of Guy de Maupassant is rare among English storytellers,
but Michael Arlen can reflect glimpses of the great Frenchman’s
genius. He has a story to tell, and he tells it.... Michael Arlen
is a fine literary artist.”--_Sunday Times._

“Belgravia’s best seller.”--_Cassell’s Weekly._

FOOTNOTES:

[A] But all that is changed now. It has lately been observed that the
quality was never before held in such high esteem as it is at present.
Some people say that this is a good sign, as denoting a healthy
reaction against the spirit of Bolshevism that is abroad; but some
people will say anything.

[B] _Fair Ladies of London!_ A Novel by Ivor Pelham Marlay (Heinemann,
1914).

[C] _The Legend of the Last Courtesan._ A Romance by Ivor Pelham
Marlay. Collins 8/6 (October, 1918). Eighth Impression.

[D] The narrative of this favourite’s brilliant life and unhappy end
will be found in that great romance by Miss Mary Johnston, _By Order of
the Company_.

[E] First Families of Virginia.

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