Howard's tale ended, I think, not too soon, for he had already talked too much for his returning strength. He lay back with closed eyes, perhaps he was asleep, as I stealthily left the room.
It so happened that I did not see him again. As I have said, although he was convalescent at that time, he had a relapse, and died about ten days later. I rang up frequently to inquire, but more than a week passed before I had time to call at Beaumont Street. My young brother, for whom I was entirely responsible, had fallen ill in the meanwhile, and my time was anxiously spent, first in helping to nurse him, for nurses were not easy to find, and then in helping to find a nursing-home with a vacant bed, for nursing-homes were full; one had to die and vacate his bed before another could fight the wretched plague in it.
When at last I called at Howard's nursing-home and asked for him, the maid said she would ask the matron. But I said I would go up to see the matron myself, and was going upstairs to her room when I met her descending. As she saw me she shook her head gently and told me that Mr. Wentworth was not allowed to see any one, he was very ill. The crisis had not passed yet.... She was a sweet, white-haired oldwoman, on whose kind face grief had never been disciplined into that geniality which makes matrons sometimes horrible.
"I'm afraid for him...." she added inconclusively, sadly. And then she said: "I have spent most of my life among sick and ailing people, Mr. Arlen, but this has been the saddest time of all. Terribly sad it's been! Only this morning a dear sweet lady, who only came in two days ago.... An English lady married to an Italian, and she was just spending a day in London on her way to Tonbridge where her mother lives, when...." I am almost certain that there were tears, repressed rebellious tears in the kind eyes. "I think her dying has affected me most of all," she added apologetically. "She was such a sweet, beautiful lady!"
As I put up my umbrella against the rain outside I thought to myself that it was like the end of a tale by a sentimentalist, for he had compromised with the angels and brought together in the end, a Juliet unaware of Romeo, the bodies of a man and woman who had loved so unhappily and so incompletely. I heard a tired voice saying bitterly, "I know no more of Fay Richmond."
III: CONSUELO
AS far as I could see in the dim light of the Hallidays' hall, whose house in Cheyne Walk I was just that moment leaving after one of their too crowded and rather tiresome parties, the owner of the voice which had asked me from the stairs if I was walking "Mayfair way" was of about my age, too near fifty, and of a genial and polished air, rare in these days of careless manners and—can one say it?—mannered carelessness; the sort of man who had long since overcome his shyness on meeting strangers, and, at a glance, seemed without that wretched self-consciousness which so gets between a man and his power to entertain; altogether, a cultivated and comfortable person, I thought.
But I am afraid that I was not in the best of tempers that night; for as we walked away from the house I made very little attempt to justify my companion's courteous invitation to share the walk. We had turned into the King's Road on our way Eastward before his talk, which had almost died downin the face of my wretched monosyllables, abruptly began again with:—
"A tragic pity, that Carew business!"
At that I quite woke up.
"What! Did you know her?" I asked, and immediately felt ashamed of my complete boorishness.
"Oh, ever so slightly," he gently waived my question; then turned to me, as though confidingly: "but just well enough to be terribly shocked at the sort of death she chose for herself.... As aimless, foolish, and certainly as useless as you like, she had after all lived a wonderful, perhaps a beautiful life—only to die as any damned bankrupt might die in a 15th floor-flat in a Manhattan block!"
The sudden bitterness in his voice made me look sharply at him, but he was too quick for me, and retrieved himself with a frank and altogether engaging smile which deprecated his involuntary—as he naïvely showed it to have been—seriousness. By this time I had quite recovered from my bad-tempered stupor, and was acutely interested. I just waited.
"Curiously enough," he said, after a short silence, "when I read about her suicide in the paper the other day it was not so much about her that I thought, as about an incidentwhich arose from my acquaintance with her, years ago.... But are you sure I am not being very tedious?"
"Each word you say is shortening this walk," I answered quickly; how seldom can one dress the truth in purple and fine linen!
"Well, then," he went on genially, "in connection with Consuelo's name came to my mind an incident in which an acquaintance, almost a stranger, stood me in better stead than a friend has ever done. I have never seen him since, I have never thanked him—nor cursed him, as I will explain—for his startling help in that really cruel emergency. But I can't give you the incident without its background; for standing alone it means almost nothing, it is just a trick, one of destiny's sleights of hand. It takes its colour from a, well, imperfect passion, its background. And its background is Consuelo Carew, as I knew her twenty years ago.
"I met her just after she had married my friend Tristram Carew. She may have been, at the outside, twenty years old, then, but though there was nothing of the precocious young minx about her, she was more fully developed, more complete, than any other young woman of that age that I am now likely to meet. The only thing that wasclear about her was her complexion. She wasn't what we mean by a 'girl' except in freshness, colouring, and zest—and what an amazing, embracing zest for life that was! She never lost it, she can't ever have lost it, it was her very being. I almost believe that, if we but knew the secret, this last impulsive stupidity of hers might somehow take on the splendour of an enthusiasm—but for what, for what?
"Tristram Carew was of my age, we had been friends at school and had gone up together to Balliol. And we had come down only a very few months before he ran amok and married the local parson's daughter, the beautiful Consuelo Trent. I was living in London at that time, and was too busy—I forget what about—to go down to Wiltshire to stay with him, and so I never saw him or her in the 'engaged couple' state. But I tried to imagine him in the role and drew a good deal of innocent amusement from my imaginings—for Tristram, somehow, very definitely didn't fit into the picture as either fiancé or husband. But though I laughed, I was fond enough of him to be a little anxious—one didn't see how it could turn out happily, come what would! For when I say that Carew ran amok in marrying, I mean that in the ordinary way he was intelligentenough about himself to know that his devil's temper and insane jealousy would ruin the life and sour the love of any young woman who had the misfortune to marry him.
"Though, mind you, no woman could be blamed for being carried away by the man. That presence of his, that shock of auburn hair, those wild eyes, and that infernally fluent tongue—why, the deuce take it, I, his best friend of that time, spent my days in loving him and being jealous of him! And though it sounds a fatuous thing to say about oneself, I haven't an atom of jealousy in my nature—I'm quite proud to say that I've never in my life envied any man his particular luck since that Saturday, down at Tristram Carew's place, on which I first met his young wife Consuelo, on their return from their honeymoon, and envied him his possession of her. But then that probably because I've never met another Consuelo.
"Consuelo wasn't made for a comfortable happiness, you understand. But neither was she strange, nor exotic, nor bizarre, nor Belladonnaish, nor any of those things that make a man think twice before introducing a woman to a superior sister at the Bath Club—but even so no man, unless he were a Tristram Carew, would too easily dare to marry her. I don't know why, but it wasso, for since she divorced Carew she has had the pick of a thousand lovers, but not of many solid husbands. It sounds a cruel thing to say, but I don't mean it cruelly; it is just interesting as an instance of the curiously similar effect which one woman may have on a thousand different, very different men. You just loved her—and if you weren't turned down at the start you were certain to be turned down after a while; and then you went your way, and you knew why Menelaus had made such a nuisance of himself about Helen, for, like him, you had known, and loved, and had been loved by a marvellous woman; but, unlike that persistent Argive, you dimly realised that if she turned you down in the quick end, then that was probably your fault—and, anyway, it is only an indecent sort of man who quibbles about the pain after the pleasure. And for many years after that, long after you had married a steady young woman, you were Consuelo's devoted friend—and, by God, she was your devoted friend too! I never knew a woman break so many hearts and patch up so many quarrels as Consuelo; but it is generally the sort of woman who looks on fidelity and infidelity as moods rather than principles who makes the truest and sincerest friend....
"But I envied my friend Carew overmuch, as even my English denseness about these things found out soon enough. She loved him for six months, and she detested him for years. And she grew to hate him so bitterly that Tristram Carew, the most jealous and unrestrained man I ever knew, was at last persuaded to let her divorce him. For, mind you, that woman was strong. She had personality at the back of her power to charm—and a rare, dangerous kindliness which makes it impossible for one's love for her to be goaded into dislike. There wasn't a drop of affectation in her, she was just an almost perfect type of that 'modern' woman who has held her place in the life and poetry and prose of ages, from the wife of Uriah to Mary Stuart, and onwards to Consuelo; women born with just that mixture of essential breeding and adventurousness which will turn the heads of most normal and decent men, and leave them gaping and grovelling and smiling at their own damn-foolishness in thinking that such a woman could ever have loved them! I said 'normal and decent men' because it seems almost invariably to be the poor oldsahibswho fall in love with this type of woman—while the outsiders step in and take them, and leave them. Anyway, it seems always to be your'manly' man who odes the grovelling and the effeminate man to be the master of women. Just a theory, of course....
"But I've been wandering disgracefully all over the place, for I set out to tell you that, at the end of a few years, Tristram at last realised what a mess she and he had made of it together, and then, dear fellow that he really was, he sat up and swallowed his gruel, and put her in the way of divorcing him, as a gentleman should.
"But all that, of course, happened much later. My life touched theirs, or hers in particular, if you like, only in the first year of their marriage, when I used to see a great deal of them during the season at their house in South Audley Street; and more week-ends than not I spent with them at Carew's place in Wiltshire.... He was a very queer sort of fellow, full of odd enthusiasms and intolerances, un-English in his incessant contempt for the regularities and pretences of life, though English enough in his hearty manner of showing that contempt. He was strange, too arrogantly made to care much whether he was found acceptable or unacceptable by others, and therefore a man without friends, because, poor fool, 'he preferred his own and Consuelo's company'; and even so he didn't love his young wife half as muchas he would have done if he weren't certain that she worshipped him—though that childish contempt for happiness, as it can be called, was well punished in those wretched years later on, when his six foot odd of manhood must have made begging grotesques on the floor while she, perhaps pitying him, was as cruel as only a surfeited woman can be cruel—and, my God, how cruel!... The man's nature, being what it was, then, you can well understand that, quite literally, he had no friends, and that I was about the only man he could rub along with, the only man that he liked, in fact; while, as for myself, although in the ordinary way I couldn't have borne his particular sort of arrogance too long, I would have suffered all the one-eyed giants in the nether-world for the sake of being near that chit of a girl, as she was then; and as, indeed, she always was, except to the men who bored her with too much love.
"Besides, if one has set out to be a cad for once in a way, one may as well do the thing properly—so I had to get on with Tristram, or else no Consuelo! Of course there's nothing in the world to be said for my behaviour, it was rotten-bad. Instead of running away, I hung on, and did all I could to make my friend's wife love me one tenthas much as I loved her. And you will notice that there was no limit to my utter rottenness—I not only tried all I could to snatch the man's wife, but accepted his hospitality as a means to that end. If I ever heard of any son of mine doing the like of that by a friend, I'd send him to the deuce without a penny—and, anyway, the young cub wouldn't have such an excuse, such a marvellous excuse as Consuelo!
"There's a lot of stuff talked about 'unrequited love,' and how men can go on loving a woman even though they get kicked downstairs by the butler every time they mention it; you know what I mean. Most men I suppose, are like you and I, we couldn't go on and on loving a woman who made simply no return for it, who 'repulsed our advances,' as it were. For one is human, after all, and, love or no love, I can't think that any woman ever repulsed a man's advances for long without, in the end, also repulsing him back to his club and his cocktails. All this, of course, is my way of telling you that Consuelo liked me well enough in her way, else I wouldn't have loved her so unwisely. Of course she liked me! What young woman won't like a young man who, without being too repulsive to look at, and with a certain reputation for polo and scholarship(as I had then), pesters her insistently with besotted but cynical attentions, in which there is no pretence of that platonic limitation which is all that any good woman should expect from her husband's best friend?
"'You more than like me,' I suggested to her once, (with that conceit peculiar to gentlemen when they're alone with women who they know won't tell on them to other gentlemen) and she answered that I amused and flattered her, and that she liked my particular way of being in love—though God knows there was nothing 'particular' in it except my contemptible behaviour to Tristram. But that was said later on, for as I told you she stayed in love with her husband for a whole six months, and even then she didn't react violently, but gently—just enough to keep him in his place, and to allow her to sit up and take notice again of other young men. And as I happened to be the only other young man on the spot, in whose eyes, only too obviously to her, lurked more than the pure light of friendship, I—well, damn it, that's prologue enough, isn't it?
"There wasn't the smallest jemmy missing from my burglar's outfit, you see; I had been waiting and watching, and with more cunning than you could believe possible in acommon-or-garden Englishman; until one afternoon, when I was having tea with her in South Audley Street, I grabbed her up and kissed her....
"My cynicism, if it was cynicism, was born of my knowledge of Consuelo, for being in love without idealising, I really knew Consuelo. I knew her very well, what sort of a woman she was and what sort of a man she liked, and under what conditions. I had all her moods and preferences and tendencies tabulated in my mind, together with footnotes, extensions and derivations—but not possible results! Poor, poor Consuelo!
"I knew, you see, exactly what sort of a man Consuelo found dull and dismal—that is, when she was bored at home and had begun to cast her eyes abroad for her amusement; and if there is one man more than another whom a certain sort of woman finds bitterly dull, that is the friend of the husband who loves but dare not love the wife, because he is a friend of the husband—a good and sufficient reason for the likes of you and I, but not for our young woman, who finds the 'beef-and-beer' type of man quite too devastating. Of course only a very few, deplorable, charming women are like that; and we friendship-respecting men wouldn't take much notice of 'em, if theydidn't, cussedly enough, happen to be the most attractive of their sex. Most women, thank the Lord, have a very real respect for men's friendships—but we are not talking of 'most women,' we are talking of Consuelo, who was neither a witch nor a whore, but whose fault and misfortune simply lay in her having no anchor in any sort of code of respectability.
"To get back to the actual point (which is always the most boring part of any story, don't you think?), one somehow didn't get much 'forrarder' with the affair. She just didn't seem to love me that way, and was too much of an artist in life to deceive herself with a forced passion when she had already tasted with Tristram, and might perhaps again taste, the real, the consummate thing. We fenced with foils, then, and she had the thrills without the wounds. But it was a very special game, with very queer rules and restrictions, which I learnt from her gradually as we went along; and so played the game as well as I could, for all my deadly seriousness. But it was an unfair one, there was nothing in its rules to provide for certain contingencies which might leave one of the players helpless and beaten before the game even began; it was unfair, because, like death, it was playedwith loaded dice—she simply didn't love me enough!
"Then again, after those first simple six months of domesticity, something developed in Consuelo and she began to change every day; she began to grow into what she later became in the eyes of an interested public, a 'leading beauty' of the day. Leading beauties are quite common these days, one has only to sit any day in the Ritzfoyerat lunchtime to see a crowd of the slim, oval faced things; though God knows whom they 'lead' nowadays, unless it's photographers and publicans. But thirty or forty years ago, as you know, they were quite rare and wondrous; just three or four of 'em, and by Royal Appointment as it were, and people used to stand upon the chairs along Rotten Row to have a better view of them as they rode or walked by. Well, Consuelo began to grow up like that, and as she only too perfectly looked the part there were only a few disgruntled 'old friends' like myself who complained of the change in her, and how she was being taken from us by a crowd of deplorable women and vapid young men who ought never to have been allowed to leave school. And already, at her ridiculous age, she had a mild reputation for breaking hearts in a casual sort of way....Tristram, of course, wasn't at all of her way of thinking, and tried to hold her back, but she just smiled at him and told him not to be silly; she had not then begun to dislike him, she felt very tenderly about him, as a woman sometimes does feel about aci-devantlover, even if he also happens to be her husband.
"So, in that time of sudden development into 'the beautiful Mrs. Carew,' it wasn't unnatural that our affair remained, well, indefinite, and that from being 'the only other person' I became one of a crowd of crawling young men—and not all so very young either! I may have been a little more favoured than any one else, in fact now that I look back on it I see that I was, but at the time I didn't notice it, and I was bitter.
"Thus and thus, we drifted on for about three months—until I lost my temper. At that time I had rather a good thing in the way of tempers; it didn't explode suddenly and pass away into the lumber room of past follies, but it simmered and waned and waxed and seethed for a dangerous two weeks or more—and when it died, many other things somehow died with it. My extravagant love for Consuelo Carew died with my first and last fit of brooding temper at her indecision. Indecision indeed! Poor foolthat I was, I didn't see that she was undecided because she didn't love enough, and that, being the absolute slave of her emotions, her decision would be born the very same moment as her love—poor, happy devil, whoever he might be, might have been!
"'You can't run a team,' I had said to her bitterly at the opening performance, as it were, of my dangerous state. And, mind you, I thought I had some right to my bad temper, because all this time she had been saying that she loved me—but, but, but the memory of her love for Tristram was so recent, and remembering how utterly she had loved him made her cautious of trusting too blindly to this repetition of that same emotion; 'for it seems quite the same, so I suppose that I must love you,' she said so sweetly that I can't blame Jupiter for withholding his thunderbolt. If I would only wait.... But I had, and wouldn't any more.
"Those two sour weeks contained the last phase of the game. I was fixing her down to that eternal 'something definite,' and I took a real, cruel pleasure in frightening her—for she was fond enough of me to be frightened at my strange lapse from the door-mat, ox-eyed amiability to which I had so far treated her. That was the only time I was ever near to being top-dog in the affair, thosetwo weeks when I had her in a corner and made her gradually realise that it must be 'one thing or the other'; and that, best weapon of all for such a woman, I was past the stage when I would mind very much if it was 'the other.' She knew that I had the bit in my teeth and was going to run away, even if I had to live as a celibate ever after—which, believe me, is what I seriously told her I must become!
"I say that she was frightened at my sudden twist, but I am not at all sure if it was fright; it may have been just a pretty pretence of it, for she was too polished, too 'right,' to let an old friend go without showing him that she would miss him—'so marvellously much, you dear!'
"But, fright or pretence, no regrets at losing me could influence her in the least to yield to what, when the time came with some luckier wretch, she would yield with such whole-hearted abandon that I can quite understand how she sincerely thought, and sometimes said, that each new lover was her last and ultimate fate....
"The strange incident to which I referred at the beginning of my long and tiresome tale happened on the last night of those two weeks, which was also the last night on which I ever mentioned the word 'love' toConsuelo Carew; in fact, I did not see her again until ten or eleven years later.... Tristram, Consuelo, myself, and a crowd of others were staying down at the Portairleys' for a long week-end. During the last ten days in which I had so far retained my loss of temper I had thrown caution to the winds, I had got absolutely reckless in the way I badgered Consuelo—and Tristram for the first time began to suspect that there was more than friendliness in my feelings for his wife. She begged me to take care, for Tristram let loose meant hell for some one, and that some one would not be Tristram, for he was a good head taller than any bad-tempered man has a right to be. He had no more than a faint suspicion, but that faintness was fierce enough to be fanned into manslaughter at the smallest provocation. I'm not a coward, but it really is unwise to play the fool with unreasonable people like Tristram, and so on the Friday and Saturday at the Portairleys' I stepped warily and curbed my dash a good deal. And everything was all right until Sunday night after dinner....
"I don't remember who the others of the party were, except, of course, just the man of the incident; and I'm not even quite certain if the man I have in my mind was thatone in particular, because I had no means of knowing exactly, as I will explain. Anyway, the one I mean was just a vague young man like myself, whom I had never happened to meet before, and would have scarcely noticed then if I hadn't felt that he was in love with Consuelo; not so hopelessly or helplessly, either, as becomes a discreet gentleman.
"I don't know if you know the Portairley's place? The summer house is about two hundred yards west of the house, at the end of a narrow, twisting gravel path which suddenly turns to its very door; and it is almost entirely shut in by shrubbery of sorts, and, at that time in full bloom, caressing its walls and roof were the sprays of lilac trees—how well I remember the scent of 'em that wretched evening!
"On Sunday I woke up in a state of chronic irritation against the young man; and as the day wore on became gradually more reckless again, until, at about ten o'clock at night, I somehow managed to inveigle Consuelo out on to the pretty, pretty lawn—and from there to the summer house wasn't a long way for an immaturely bitter man to drag an unwilling but careless young woman!
"We sat there, and between puffs of my cigar, and quite thoughtfully, I told her exactlywhat I thought of her; all the pent-up emotions of nine damnable months loosed themselves from my mind, and overriding my every decent instinct, found a brutal expression on my lips. Are you too 'sophisticated,' I wonder, to let me suggest that sinful thoughts have their own special punishment? that they react too articulately, they force themselves out in the end in a bitter wash of words—perhaps cleansing? That was my punishment, anyway, tohaveto say those things that night, while she listened and looked horribly sorry. And, you know, shewassorry.... I had it all my own way, and, in my vile state, I must have said all the bitter and beastly things that a man can say to a woman; but she only listened, maddeningly! I can't now imagine why she didn't rise and leave me; and then I may have crawled after her, or I may not—I don't know.
"Then, in the sudden reaction quite common, I believe, in such scenes, I began to take all I could of the worthless, surface things a woman, if she sets her teeth, can give a man; but she didn't even trouble to 'set her teeth,' she seemed more unattainable, more mocking, the more my lips touched her. She somehow made a doll of herself, and let me maul her about as I liked—but so uselessly,for though I ruffled her and myself I simply couldn't ruffle that smile! It was there right through, symbolic of my helplessness, a very sweet and tender smile, but sad, for she was pitying me. And at last she said very quietly: "If ever I had loved you, dear, and perhaps I may have, I wouldn't now be loving you any more. Because, don't you see, you have been doing all you can, you've emptied out all your box of tricks into my unworthy little lap, you've been working away ever so hard at making me love you—and even though the moon is shining through that window, and the scent of the lilac is sweetening this musty little place, I simply can't, my dear, feel romantic enough with you to dream that your kisses are the fairy-tales they should be. They are just kisses, and perhaps very nice in their way, but they don't mean anything. They don't mean rare things. Kisses which aren't fairy-tales never do.... I'm so, so sorry, you know (that cheek is getting worn away, but do try the other one, I'm told it's just as good) because I realise what I'm missing, for you would make a perfect lover, bless you. But, as it is, when your silly heart is mended again, some luckier woman will be grateful to me for having taught you to love properly, and for having broughtout in you that particular mixture of brutality and delicacy which would be so thrilling if only it thrilled me! And after all the nasty things you've been saying to me it's pleasant to imagine some one sometime thinking quite nice thoughts about me....'
"What can one do with that sort of woman! More than twenty years have passed since then, and I suppose I've collected an odd bit of sense here and there, as one does—but in such a circumstance I should be as helpless now as I was then. It would have been easy enough to give up the chase if she had shown a real distaste, physical, mental, any way, for me, but she didn't—there she was, quiescent in my arms, and I, for the first and last time in my life, was as unrestrained as a Dago.... And it was just at that moment, worst moment of all, that we heard steps on the gravel path by which we had come. We heard the steady, crunching sound, and pulled quickly apart, staring at each other. They were coming nearer, there could only be one goal for them, the end of the path—at the open door! Only a few seconds divided those steady steps from us, there was nothing to be done. Consuelo was feverishly trying to tidy her hair. It was impossible to do the one obvious thing, to get up and close thedoor and hope that the intruder would turn at the end of the path—impossible because the door was unhinged and useless, and because, we knew, the intruder could only be Tristram Carew, for whom a closed door would mean certain proof....
"We waited breathlessly. For the first time, I noticed my crumpled, burnt out cigar, and I was going to throw it on the floor when I remembered just in time that the sight of its ruffled, unsmoked state would give the show away. Just beside me was a little window, its glass long since smashed out. The steps were perhaps five yards away now, and I blessed the winding path which hid us from him until he was actually at the very door....
"Consuelo suddenly whispered fiercely, 'We must talk, you fool,' and began talking about something as loudly and as casually as she could. And then, and then, as I lifted my arm to throw my cigar out of the window into the shrubbery, a hand came in from outside, from below, just a hand, and very, very carefully, for between the fingers of that hand was a cigar with a long ash. I didn't think, I hadn't time to be surprised at the amazing fact of it; threw my cigar away and gently took the cigar from the fingers. I knew what it meant—that long undisturbedash! My God, how gentle I was with it, my whole soul went out into the care with which I brought it towards me! I didn't even see the mysterious hand disappear, I hadn't time to think of it....
"Consuelo hadn't stopped talking during that second or so, for the incident was only a matter of that. We were about two feet apart on the bench. I held my cigar as prominently as I could, just above my knee, and prayed that the ash wouldn't drop for just another fraction of a second—and I passed a box of matches to Consuelo, whispering her to strike one. Tristram was just at the last turn of the path to the door, in one more step he would be facing us.
"'Hallo!' I interrupted Consuelo's flow of gibberish. 'I wonder who that is!'
"And as I said it Consuelo struck a match—and the giant of a man filled the doorway! Striking the match was an obvious thing to do, for any one in the doorway had his back to the moonlight and was therefore indistinguishable to us—and besides the light of the match would help the moonlight to show him my excellent cigar-ash! But I was damned frightened—Tristram's face, in that sudden dim light, wasn't angry, his eyes weren't wild, but heavy, sullen. Oh, one can't express these things in words. Hewasn't melodramatic, he was cold, too cold. His eyes were on me, not on her.
"'Hallo, Tristram!' I just managed to say. And then, with a flash of absolute genius, Consuelo backed up with, 'But don't please ask him to join our happy party, for he looks so bad-tempered that he might spoil your cigar-ash just out of spite.'
"And thatwasgenius at that crucial moment. It cut the ground from under Tristram's feet, he looked surprised—and he saw my cigar! The moment was passing. A long cigar-ash and even the shortest love-affair can't go together, even to the most suspicious mind—and Tristram, thank Heavens, had his moments of extraordinary simplicity. I raised my cigar.
"'Oh, damn!' I said. The ash had at last revolted.
"'There you are, I told you he'd spoil it!' Consuelo said quickly.
"'I haven't even touched the thing!' Tristram protested—and we both really breathed for the first time since, two or three minutes before, we had heard the steps on the path....
"Well, that's all there is of it, the incident, and you must forgive me if I've taken a tiresome long time to get to it. Tristram, she, and I sat on in the summer house for anhalf-hour or so, talking rather constrainedly, but, anyway, peacefully. He showed that he had lost his trust in me, that he at last realised our friendship was over; his suspicions weren't more than allayed. But for the time being he simply hadn't anything to work on, for it wasn't so very unnatural that Consuelo, old friend as she was of mine, should sit by me in the summerhouse while I smoked my after-dinner cigar; and I wasn't going to give him another chance, because in that half-hour during which we sat on there I realised that Consuelo really wasn't for me, and that I was only making a fool of myself without advantage to anybody—and I decided with the last bit of strength I had left in me to do what I did the next morning, to run away. And, as I said, I didn't see her again for about ten years, and then very casually....
"As we sat on there for half an hour or so I couldn't of course lay my hands on the young man who had been eavesdropping outside the window and had stood me in such amazingly good stead. But it really was a strange and wonderful thing to do—to have even thought of doing that particular thing! And still more wonderful for such a little cad to have done it, for of course he was a cad to have been there at all. I knew thatit simply couldn't have been any one else but the young man whom I've mentioned as being in love with Consuelo. He must have seen Consuelo and I steal away into the garden, and followed us down to the summer-house, and sat there in the shrubbery under the window, listening to every word we said and calmly smoking his cigar—that priceless cigar! And then, when he heard the steps on the gravel path he had the wit to know that the climatic conditions in the summer-house were about to become unsettled—and, on a noble impulse, did what he did, and then faded away. I didn't see him in the morning, as I left by the earliest train. What could one say, anyway? He was a cad, and a gentleman, that's all."
We had turned into Clarges Street, and were almost at my door. As he finished I took his arm.
"You are wrong about his being a cad," I said, "because he didn't follow you two out to the summer-house at all. He was there a good five minutes before you—not in the summer-house but just behind it, for, poor fool, he was trying to choose the most perfect lilac bloom for the most beautiful and imperfect lady in the world. And when she suddenly turned up with the horrible young man who had been drifting round herall day—well, he just sat down on the ground under the window, cursed life and cursed women, and smoked his cigar. I didn't stay to listen, I was too angry to move, that's all. You see, she had given me an appointment to meet her in the summer-house at ten o'clock that night...."
We were at my door. He smiled, a little self-consciously, through the short silence.
"You will please forgive me," he said, almost nervously. "And for more than accusing you falsely, or for boring you with the yarn at all. For I certainly wouldn't have told it to you so, well, intimately, if, up in the Hallidays' drawing-room I hadn't half recognised you. Very dimly, of course.... One's memory plays one queer tricks sometimes, doesn't it? To retain, however dimly, and vaguely, a face seen twenty years ago! And so I followed you out.... So Consuelo had told you to meet her at the summer-house that night!
"I can almost understand now," he said slowly, "how she died as she did. Life on those lines must have got too complicated.
"Good-night—my friend!" he said.
IV: THE ROMANCE OF IRIS POOLE
I ONCE read, in an essay by a writer whose considerable achievements in contemporary literature seem to warrant a certain knowledge of the craft of tale-telling, that it is only the trained artificiality of writers—their technique, so to say—that enables them to begin their tales from a certain point and go directly on to a certain ending. While the truth of the matter is (he writes), as you can easily verify from the narrative of any peasant in any inn, that the tales that are spun from life cannot be complacently fitted along a straight line of narration, but incline to zigzag unaccountably from one point of memory to another; until the tale fulfilled, or rather, fulfills itself by these deft and disordered touches of the realism of memory. For, to quote the simile that is almostde rigueuras a cap to these grave abstractions, "the figure in the carpet" can be said to have no beginning nor middle, and so on....
The plain fact of the matter is that, in spite of the sternest intentions, I have the greatest difficulty in nailing my mind down to a clear and ordered conception of the sequence that even the most facile publisher will demand from this history: in ever and again wrenching, as it were, my memory from its erratic piracies, and in beguiling it to sit soberly astride the course of events as they occurred or were told to me. Even though they didn't actually and consistently occur, these events—not, I mean, in the usually accepted sense of things "occurring." They were all so deeply consequent on inside things! and most of them happened inside....
Thus, as I try to shape my shadows as truly as I may, my memory is ever and again confronted by a few nights—mainly three, and very bonfires of nights they seem to me, with their high lights and sinister heat colouring all that came before and all that happened after; though, indeed, to two of us there was very little left that could happen after that third, and last, night.... That last night! Of the many things that can be lost in one night, Roger Poole lost as much as any man can lose, Antony Poole lost more than any man should lose, and Iris—and I—but even a tale cannot playspy for ever, it must surely end somewhere. (And yes, it must begin, too).
Then that other night, which I could rightly call the first, for it was the one which very definitely sent the ball rolling down the slope. And, though I should preface that rolling by first describing that slope and that ball, I see that I must let part of this particular bonfire have its way, else they will all get together to hinder and confuse me. That man Antony never did know how to wait, and so I must tell of the night of his return before even the day of his going away. An unfortunate night it was, even apart from his connection with it, because of my heavy and stupid depression about something that time, in all decency, should have persuaded me to face resignedly.
An hour or so after a midnight one late June, I was walking slowly up Piccadilly; in no hurry to reach my destination, whither I would eventually take a taxi—for Regent's Park is always far enough, but even further on a moonless and rain-heavy night that England must have grabbed from one of our less desirable and more stifling colonies. I was walking on the outer edge of the pavement, with my head bent, as shoddily happened when my mind was clouded—when in crossing the end of that little passage thatleads into Albany-courtyard, I was arrested by the stealthy and hurried sound of a scuffle. From first to last the affair took but a few seconds. At the far end of the dim recess two figures were locked together, swaying this way and that and then parting to allow freedom for blows—the which, I could judge, were exchanged with the heartiest ill will; and all in silence, but for quick pantings for breath and the shuffle of feet. There really is an unholy kind of interest in watching two men, presumably of one's own kind if stiff white shirts meant anything at all, fighting in relentless silence, and maybe, in deadly earnest. The slightly smaller one—they were both tall figures—seemed to be getting much the worst of it, but I certainly wouldn't have interfered if I hadn't seen a posse of policemen coming towards us from Vine Street on their usual way to their beats.
"Time!" said I. But it was time enough without my saying so, for one last and not very heavy blow had doubled the smaller against the window of Woodrow's hat-shop; and the other, a giant of a man, picking up his top-hat and ramming it on his head as though it were a Crusader's helmet and without a glance at his crumpled antagonist, briskly walked towards me.
"England's come to a pretty pass when the education of gentlemen has to fall to interested amateurs like myself," he began from a distance. "Eh, Ronnie?"
But I had recognised him without his use of my name, and was staring at him with such bewilderment that he broke out into one of those guffaws I knew so well.
"Antony!" I cried.
"Myself as ever was, old man!" and he clapped me on the shoulder heartily. "I saw you out of the tail of my eye, while I was teaching that young man Spartan history—and, thought I, no luck could be better."
"But when did you get back, and where from?"
"This very afternoon, and from Mexico—where else? And damme," he turned on me to add bitterly, "why the devil should you be so surprised at my coming back to my own country?"
But I could parry that kind of thing from Antony well enough.
"For one reason," said I, "because you yourself told me that you were probably never coming back."
"Never! Well, my friend, isn't two years as good as your 'never'? I'm learning that there's only one bigger lie than 'never,' andthat's 'always'—for instance, I wasnevercoming back to England, and a few of my friends werealwaysgoing to be pleased to see me."
There was a large and full-flavoured kind of bitterness about Antony that seldom quite failed in its appeal to my heart, albeit sourly, and I was about to give the lie to his accusation when he turned his eyes back to the dark passage muttering, "And that was one of 'em." But the luckless wretch had disappeared while we talked, to ponder maybe upon the weight and quality of that word "always," and with a muttered request from me "not to be a fool about his real friends" we walked on towards the Circus. I had been made shy and nervous by Antony's boisterous realisation of his position in England, and now found it difficult to say anything which somehow or other wouldn't remind him of it. Just like the man to be so infernally touchy and talkative about it, I was thinking, when he said:—
"You actually are the very man I want to see, Ronnie. I've got enough questions to ask you to last a day or more, but I dare say a lunch will see them through—though that of course depends on where we lunch ...?" That was ever the way with Antony, he never tried to hide the fact thathe wanted something from one—though, thank Heaven, it was now only a lunch!
"You had better come and lunch at my flat to-morrow," I suggested—with my heart in my mouth lest he should scent a possible insult in that seclusion. But he accepted easily enough.
At Piccadilly Circus, where I called a taxi, he said he must leave me as he had to go down to the Carlton: which thankfully relieved me of any embarrassment as to how to be rid of him at that moment. As he went he called back to me, "Don't tell all London that I'm back, there's a good fellow." A quite unnecessary request, I found it on my lips to answer; for the name of Antony Poole, as himself knew very well, would meet with but a grim welcome in any house in London.
On the surface, and a good deal below the surface, there was nothing at all to be said for Antony. I had often wondered what thoughts about himself must pass through his mind in solitary moments when he viewed his life (for he was not so insensitive but that that necessity could never have come upon him)—just thirty-six years of life,which had four years before that night finally ended its reckless social passage in the utter loss of everything a man holds essential to the self-respect with which he must face the world! Not, however, that any loss could ever intimidate Antony into facing the world with any other manner but that with which some imp had plagued his birth: a blend of blustering indifference, dangerous humours, and a ripe and racy geniality. But even so there must be some moments of terrible reckonings in his soul, I always thought, when he realises his folly in so spoiling the good life his could have been and had looked to be; when, console himself with his "bad luck" as he may, he reaches a point of self-knowledge that tells him, with his own brutality, how there is a degree of failure that simply cannot be condoned by "bad luck."
I had known Antony for so long that my view of him in his manhood was always brightened to his advantage by my school-day memories of him; those of a gay and careless companion, with sufficient head but little inclination for work: ever more rowdy and reckless than his companions, a good sportsman and a good man at most games, and very popular among those whom his fancy had not led him to treat as enemies. It was maturity (or whatever queer developmenttook its place in him) that went to Antony's head, so that he began to run amok as soon as he left Sandhurst; something seemed to grow up in him that spiced his old faults with new outrage, and quite hid what good there was in him. His, I then found to my astonishment, was the most makeshift mechanism that God ever put into a man—for I had never dreamt of such complex weaknesses in my Antony of old! Who would have thought that this man, inches more than six straight feet of him, with his good looks, his loud and easy geniality, and a certain aptitude of mind that expressed itself in an understanding laugh where your clever man would have been puzzled—who would have thought that this man who laughed with the laugh of the middle ages was so shoddily made that his every organ and moral attribute were as though held in place by oddments of string? For never was there a man so consistently and appallingly weak to do battle with himself, to compel himself to a sanity of living and a balance of thought: a weak man, in that wretched word's most wretched and active sense.
But the key to him lay just further than that weakness: that he would have suffered, and indeed did, any torture rather than reveal it—the indetermination and moral cowardiceof those, without exaggeration, giant fibres. This, I grew to realise, was the secret of the contradiction that was Antony—this pose of strength where he himself knew he was weak: the most penalising pose that ever bolstered a man's vanity the more completely to wreck him. For the world might have allowed Antony a certain length of forgiveness if he could have been brought to reveal himself as he actually was, if he could only have bowed his head and revealed the hesitancies of his nature, and his contrition; if he could even for just once have foregone the childish vanities of bluster and bravado with which he thought to carry through every escapade. He thought to outwit punishment, but instead he did the most difficult thing of all, he outwitted sympathy....
And since eventually such a pose as his must make indecency a fact where it had once only been vaguely suggested, so Antony actually became, in the course of time, the rogue and outsider that his crooked vanity had once made him parade as a pose. For, be you ever so arrogant, nature has been proved to have its laws for men as well as for beasts, laws not astral but severely human, that never cease to confound alchemists of every kind to their own hurt; and it is obvious that a man may not play thefool with his soul without covering it with the verdigris of his own folly—that sourness of heart and crookedness that stole gradually on poor Antony, so that in his thirties he was, to stretch a likeness, like a Hyde to the Jekyll of his schooldays.
The advantages of a commission in the Brigade, of a name sufficient to ensure a reasonable amount of credit and consideration, those details which can so warm the cockles of even a philosophic heart on a dull afternoon, and a little more than the usual pittance that falls to the younger brothers of pukka baronets, warranted, surely, a very fair prospect. And yet, in a few years' time, he had finally convinced people beyond a shadow of doubt of what they had so far only disliked to guess, of his complete failure to be either an officer or a gentleman.
No man could be more noticeable in appearance than Antony, nor more adequately fulfil the name by which he was often known, Red Antony; for he was very tall and stoutly built, rather foppishly dressed, and as consistently ginger as any man could well be—moustaches, eyebrows that no brushing could tame into regularity, hair which waved back from his forehead in a most attractive ginger but ordered profusion; and a complexion appropriately coloured, and alwaysso clear and fresh as to seem to give the lie to the certain dissipation of the night before. A very fine looking man, Red Antony, if you liked that kind of looks; but so noticeable that his own appearance, no doubt, took a hand against him, labelling his escapades with its prominence so that once pointed out he was never forgotten; and men and women could cross the street in good time to avoid the difficulty of acknowledging or of cutting him.
It was an accumulation of escapades, many of which had been overlooked but for his manner of braving them, that had led to his final extinction—which was long seen in coming. A thousand little and unpleasant things were known and more than whispered about him. He was a man of red-hot tempers, which there was no restraint in him to keep within bounds; his weren't the rages that burnt inwardly and grew in brooding, but in their sudden heat must burn outwardly, devouring everything with no care nor heed for even primitive restraint. (There have been times when I've been rather afraid of Antony myself.) And so, from his great height of stature and violence, he had outrageously insulted men in return for a fancied slight. He had committed follies, when drunk, which his companions hadhurriedly disavowed. He had, as if by rote, done the one thing a man may still not do and remain this side of Styx, despite all that we hear of the present laxity of etiquette—had been unable to pay his gambling debts, and then paid them with worthless cheques. He had been the centre of innumerable brawls in which, if ever a woman's name was concerned, it was never to Antony's credit; had been twice a corespondent and not once a husband—an apparent failure to act upon his obligations which does no man any good; and from the second (the first had too obviously been the result of carelessness) he had emerged in so discreditable a light that, on top of all his past follies, Antony Poole was no longer a name to be mentioned in any ordinary English company.
That was four years before that night I met him on Piccadilly, when he was thirty-two. He still continued for two years in England, Heaven alone knew why! No one sought him, he was seldom seen—except by me, and later, another. His elder brother, Roger, had not spoken to him for years.
It was about a year before he finally left England that I began to see Antony in his best light; and pretty closely since, in the precarious condition of his affairs and reputation,it was mostly in my flat that he could enjoy that company which presented him in this new and improved light. He was in love, and he was making love: furtively and hopelessly as to manner, for what girl would dream of marrying him! And who ever stood more firmly upon his honour than he who has been proved to have none?... But in his heart there was hope, I am sure there was hope in his heart, else Antony would not have been Antony.
A queer man. For all his appalling rudeness and brutality on a thousand occasions, he could be so very courteous and simple when he was moved to it; could turn a tale, rather candidly it's true, but very amusingly, and had altogether a very diverting way with him in company that didn't offend his absurd feelings or ruffle his dangerous vanity—though even then he couldn't help a, well, cunning satire that might more profitably, for him, have bit into paper.
It is in recalling this time that I feel most uncomfortable, because of the ridiculous position in which my own weakness placed me. During the previous few months I had fallen into the habit of wanting to see Iris Portairley every day—or rather, she had graciously allowed me fall into that habit. And that, indeed, was the only encouragement Ihad from her, the pleasure which she showed that she had from my company; so that, if we had not happened to meet for some days over lunch or dinner at the same table, she very often managed by some contrivance, say of a tame chaperon, to come to see me of an afternoon. Deliciously often though she managed her contrivances, I was always surprised to see her, who had so many more amusing things to do! And with the carelessness of a man ten years my junior I accepted the pleasure of her company without inquiring of myself whither I was being led. The truth was that it depressed me to think of what might come of it, for the back of my mind could never be entirely rid of an ugly high wall at the far end of my meadow....
And yet I chartered ill luck to my suit, or pretence of a suit, by aiding and abetting Red Antony in his quite impossible and absurd pretensions! Though, in justice to the man, he must have realised clearly how very impossible they were.
The excuse for the anomaly was in the queer sympathy (and a very conscious one) that Antony always had the power to raise in me; and particularly at that time, when he was so definitely an outcast, forced to solitary meals in the grill-rooms of thosemaîtres d'hôtelwho still gallantly pretended to believe in his signature at the foot of a bill. I simply couldn't bring myself just then, whether for my own or Iris's good, to deprive him of the solace he found in her occasional company at my flat, generally at some odd hour between three to seven—more often nearer seven, for Antony allowed that I could shake a cocktail very prettily. And though, from a tentative beginning (if that word could ever be applicable to Antony) it became a bare-faced intrusion on my privacy, even so I hadn't the heart to forbid, or definitely to discourage, the apparent coincidence of his visits with hers; "apparent," for Antony at this time never said a word of his admiration, nor gave any other hint of gratitude for my complaisance than in an added pressure of my hand as he left. Antony was a noisy man, but never by any chance did he make a noise about anything one really wanted to hear.
It was a very uncomfortable business—for me, I mean. And, as I had let it go on, quite impossible to cut short; since nothing less drastic than an order for ejection, if even that, would have penetrated the thick skin that Antony could so conveniently wear when he chose—and with no better result than a "misunderstanding" with Iris who,thanks largely to me, had come to have certain views about Antony which materially differed from the world's, and even stronger views about deserting one's friends when they were "down and out." There's no end to difficulties when a woman takes her standpoint on the highest pinnacles of the code that men have arranged between themselves for their own convenience and woman's confusion.
I could only console myself with the ungenerous thought that if my own position with Iris, of "dear Ronnie" and the like, was hopeless, how much more hopeless was Red Antony's, the poor braggart who would now be invisible, be he ever so tall and boisterous, to even the most tarnished of her acquaintance. So let the man have his run, since he could never have his way!...
How he had ever met her at all, in fact, I never clearly found out, and had never the effrontery to ask; probably towards the end of his swift downward passage to those underground grill-rooms (oh, those grill-rooms of broken hearts and broken reputations!) just after Iris had come out. Be that as it may, Iris had known him scarcely but by reputation—about which, since it was glamoured by the disapproval of every one who had ever bored her, she had often asked me;so that, when one day they had happened at the same second at my door, she knew a little more than hearsay about him; and was quick to see the poor man's wretched plight, was quick to encourage his longing to talk to some one decent; giving intimacy with that generous hand that makes gentle women so much more dangerous than vampires, searching for what sweetness there lay in him so wisely and deftly as to leave him unaware of the homage he paid her, so that she could appreciate it at its fullest; and so that, after a few weeks, she grew genuinely fond of the wreck—and one day made me openly swear at my folly by suddenly saying: "I suppose there must be many people who think they have met Napoleons, only to find in the end that they are Antonys—and how very much nicer!"
But there was another reason, quite apart from any far-fetched call of sympathy, for my putting a fairly good face on Antony's falling in love on my premises. I might as well, thought I, be entertained by what I had to suffer—and so there was cast a play, as though for my bewildered entertainment! Though, of course, I never at that time indulgedin any such conceit, it's just the licence of thought that is occasionally apt to flow from one's pen.
For while I watched, perforce, Antony pleading his furtive suit at some hour between three to seven of an afternoon, I could sometimes of an evening watch its parallel contrast in that world which Antony had been at such pains to offend unpardonably. For, of the husbands that had been suggested for Miss Portairley, not one had received more favour than the possibility of Roger Poole; and the idea had been much encouraged of late by the very frequent circumstance of their being of the same company....
Certainly, to that world which finds its pleasure in the sensations of other people's marriages, there was a great deal of apparent fitness about this one; for they were both, in their ways, well-known persons. Iris, of course, trivially, in these days of illustrated journals and the like, a much photographed and commented on "beauty" whose features and "recreations" were so widely known that she looked gradually to become the rumoured subject of any novel that contained the requisite amount of social indecency implied by the "modern society" of publishers' announcements; and Roger Poole, already atthirty-three a personage, "the only young man," I have heard it said, "of this degeneration with any political energy or brilliance": who, in spite of the leisure that his rumoured means might have claimed for him, had actively sat as member for—since he was twenty-six, was now recognised as one of the leaders of the Opposition, and certain, in spite of his youth, of office at the fall of the Liberal ministry. It was after all, so original of him to be so clever and polished and dark and ambitious without being a Jew.
The colouring between the Poole brothers was distributed in some such way as this: Antony, the younger by a year, as red and wantonly extravagant as I have tried to show; and Roger, no less tall than his brother but inclined much more to suppleness both in figure and features—he could sometimes look remarkably like a knife: of a much darker countenance, with dark eyes that were somehow sombre yet witty, and seemed always to be fevered with some secret thought. In fact, there were a great deal too many such "secret" thoughts about Roger to ensure one's real comfort in his company.
But, in spite of this more serious expression, and in contradiction to what one mighthave expected to appeal to a man of his very real abilities and ambitions, Roger was every bit as much of the material world as his brother—but had what Antony never had, the sanity and balance with which to measure his recklessness and indulgences. Roger Poole always knew what he was about; and, to further his ambitions, had never ceased to discipline himself, outwardly anyway, into line with the world's conventions—of which, funnily enough, if he continued his success, he would one day be an arbitrator!
But, rigorously though he disciplined himself (a really splendid dissimulation, which I who had known him so long had always watched with envy), he could not help his inclinations showing in some way—though in a way that reflected to his advantage as a figure, as it would have reflected to Antony's if he hadn't been so foolish. For they were shown in a manner, a certain air, which couldn't be described but by the help of the word "romantic"—a not unpleasing word to be used about one who has name, appearance, and ability. And he was, even to me, a romantic kind of figure. There was nothing, well, stationary about him, as there so often is about one's acquaintance; in fact, more, there was definitely a sense of movement;one somehow thought of him as a man who would always be going on to things, maybe great things. His shadow will find in him an exciting companion, one couldn't help thinking. Among one's acquaintance, each unit of whom one knew to be travelling on a certain road to a more or less certain end, Roger Poole stood out as a refreshing and unexpected person, a kind of adventurer licensed by the world; an appearance clothed in possibilities, whom it was interesting to know....
Besides, there was nothing silly nor banal about his good looks; a thin, long face of such firm lines as to give an impression of hardness, and noticeable, in an Englishman, because of its pallor; attractive, too, because of a certain saturnine quality which seemed to lurk about its expressions: an intangiblesomethingthat made one, in talking to him, inquire within oneself a little fussily—a vastly different state to that into which Red Antony's boisterous ill humour had, in his hey-days, so frequently put one!
And so the discomfort of my position with regard to Antony allowed me to stand in the wings, as it were, and watch the only game in this world that is fairly played with "packed" cards; the two brothers, in everything but age and name as far apart as favourcan well be from its opposite, at their love-making to a woman whom I loved as much as they, perhaps more, but without that visible and reckless ardour that will make a man's love at least significant to the most unloving woman. I suppose that theatricalism, such as is not difficult to find in any one's nature, may have tinged my view of the queer spectacle; but there certainly was something very sad and pitiable about it all, and made the more pitiable, too, by the inevitable course it must pursue—for there is a certain logic to everything, be a woman ever so lovely and remote. And Iris, for all her pride and looks, for all her tawny hair and sometimes too distant eyes, had really as little to say in the matter as Antony or I; for Roger Poole had a reputation to keep up, not so much with the world as with himself, the reputation of a man who always played in luck! Besides, luck or no luck, Iris had straightway fallen in love with him.
She was twenty-two, and had up to that age lived as full and as amusing a life as, one supposes, it was possible for her to live. But there must somehow have been born with her a certaindistanceof mind, which always kept her detached from any surroundings she couldn't wholly and utterlyaccept; a certain quality that, whether she would or would not, kept her intact and untouched, as though destining her never to accept anything which she couldn't wholly accept. Thus she had inevitably to be rejecting much, and always; rejecting, indeed, a great deal more than she was ever given the credit for by even those who knew her very well. At first I naturally took this distance of mind from her surroundings to be yet another of the usual and tedious affectations of the "younger generation," but very soon found that it was as sincere an affectation as any that can trouble a mind and make a heart deeply restless.
It wasn't that she was superior or blasé (of being which she was, of course, commonly accused by those who were disconcerted by her reception of those trivial indecencies that pass for humour among the cultured inane); but simply that she was never lulled into thinking that the life in which she found herself was anything but a phase of her youth, and a makeshift one at that. There would, of course, be other things! And of the men who came her way, the interesting ones were mainly too old—now why is courtesy always so much older than oneself?—the younger ones mainly too foolish, and as little worth loving as theywere able to love. Some day, some day, she once laughed to me, there will be darkish men with intelligent gestures....
Well, there came one, Roger Poole. He at last was vital, giving her what she had been starved for, a sense of achievement, of movement. That expresses it so badly, for it might imply that Iris was a sycophant to success, which she never was—unlike her ridiculous but amiable mother, who thought she had asalonwhereas she only kept a restaurant. Iris had a longing to be allowed to admire, a longing that was a fiercely integral part of her nature. And she was a woman with tangible desires, who would, one thought, lay claim to her man's body and mind with every part of her own, and with no illusions about the spirituality or intelligence of her love. Iris was of the earth divinely, and perhaps that's why she couldn't help obsessing a man's mind....
But for Roger's coming, she might have continued for years being proposed to decently and indecently by the young fops and financiers whose piracies the world so completely licences; not one of whom she would ever like enough, not one of whom could ever lead himself or her to anything but a country-house or to Deauville. So, as I imagine it, as she looked around her life, atthe supposed pageantry and possibilities of it, she must have been in a state of watchful coma, just waiting, with a growing inner sadness, for that "something" to happen; that "something," that fulfilment of a longing, which would bring into actual being the woman in her—that thing compact with elemental passions and fierce desires which had so far only been present in an involuntary stiffening of her body, her spine, when a kiss, and maybe one that had faintly attracted her, had touched her. Her mind might compromise, it often desperately did, but it was as though an unhesitating iron had entered her body, so that it could never be lulled to even a pretence of acceptance. And so, as she was one night surveying the accustomed character of a crowded room, with what relief she must have realised, howsoever dimly at that first moment, that the "something" was at last about to happen, that Roger Poole was crossing the room into her life.
She had met him only once before, four years ago, just after she had come out—and he had only just lately re-entered her world. She had, of course, often heard about him during that time, and not only in political chatter; for Roger, with a certain superciliousness, had withdrawn himself only fromwhat he found dull and boring in life—from which Iris hadn't yet thought it worth while to rebel; unless braving an hysterical scene with her mother for a latchkey was rebellion. But as to the flouting of conventions and the like, it is easy enough to do as one likes; but so very much easier, after all, to know without doing so that the entertainment gained won't be worth while.
Iris, many of whose friends had long since indulged their sense of pleasure as it pleased them, or as it displeased others, had never but given an inquiring side-glance to that life; and had been forced to admit to herself that she must lack some essentialverve, for she had found as little entertainment in, say, an absinthe at the Café Royal in the company of, presumably, artists, as in the noisy dinners that are sometimes given by Argentines and other rich men to women whose jewels, at least, led Iris to suppose that it must be worth their while to attend them. It was at the only one of these dinners that she had ever gone to that an American millionaire, a fussy little man of an engaging candour, had straight away offered to give her a Rolls-Royce, and she had only succeeded in dissuading him from that intention by revealing that her mother already had a quite adequate car. Thus young wasit revealed to Iris that she would make an inefficient kind of cocotte. She was always, she had once told me rather brazenly, conscious of a disturbing sense of laughter which, she was sure, would tiresomely interfere with her enjoyment of any of those indiscretions and adventures in which some of her acquaintance would now and then indulge; and also, had never found any reason to think otherwise of life round about studios and the like than as really a rather tedious affair, of a kind of anæmia and uncleanliness—the kind, you know, that can be cleaner without costing another half-penny—that caused in her no more and no less than a vivid feeling of self-consciousness; about which she bitterly reproached herself, for it was difficult to be rid of an idea that she ought to be a little, well, humble before these young men who were, after all, trying to dosomething. Nor did protracted meals and cigarettes and liqueurs in grimy restaurants round about Soho and Fitzroy Street with young men more or less just down from Oxford "and pretty far down at that," appeal to her as anything but a wearisome duty to that side of her mind which, so some of her friends always urged, "must surely be sick of the boredom and mental inertia of the life she led." ...But she had honestly done her best, had vividly plunged into both alternatives; and, thank Heavens, had emerged unscathed, with but an offer of an "automobile" and several of marriage—not of course from the millionaire, who very genuinely implied that he respected her too really to ask that much, but from the young invertebrates. There seems, she had long since concluded, to be much nonsense talked about the unfair advantages that rich men take, for after all they are prepared to pay very reasonably for one's virginity, whereas those young men have the cheek to ask for one's lifetime in exchange for their devastating passions.