AS I think of that wretched night of the children’s party there will be two pictures that cross my mind. The first, of a group of brightly coloured people, for we were in white flannels and the women in those mad, barbaric colours which fashion, goaded on by Chanel and gallantly led by Captain Molyneux, has lately flung as a challenge to our dark civilisation, around a table lit by the cameo flames rising from eight tall cast candlesticks by Paul Lamarie; and I remember that in the still air of Guy’s great, bare diningroom those cameo flames never flickered even so much, they might have been flowers of light cut out of the stifling heat.
The second picture is of a darkness. A darkness torn here and there by the sudden flame of a match which drove the stars trembling back into the invisible and joined to groping eyes the silky soft blackness of the water. The black night pinned round the world with stars, shouts, laughter, splashings, an empty boat, silence, shrieks, a whisper from the black face of the water, and so home. Total losses: one stocking and one emerald. “I’m so glad, so glad,” she whispered, just before going to sleep against my shoulder, for it wasHugo Cypress who was riding the stork homeward.
But I have said that whilst we were on our way riverwards, and I sitting beside Iris as she hurled us headlong through the still night, we stood at enmity, she and I—for Venice! And yet, so far as I could make out, there was not a soul but myself out of that party, Guy, Napier, Venice, Hugo, Shirley, Iris, who seemed in the least degree uncomfortable. Those people had been, throughout dinner and afterwards, completely and supremely normal. For all you knew, I mean, they might have been having fun. There weren’t any undercurrents. Not even what you would call any undercurrents. Those people were quite calmly themselves, they justbehavedas themselves in that confoundedly unassailable way which is peculiar to the people of this small island: as though, to be sure, they weren’t giving away anything of a personal nature even to themselves. You can’t help seeing why Napoleon found these people so detestable.
And it was all, you couldn’t help feeling, so mean, such a humbug of a thing. I suppose, of course, that I was the only one besides Iris and Napier who knew of their departure together in three days’ time. “I have always wanted,” she had said to me, “to go to Rio, and then across the continent. One can’ttalkin Europe, it’s got so stuffy now. But I always thought I would keep the Americas until my fate should be fulfilled.” Yet, I was quite certain, every one at the table must have known that something was wrong, else why was that fell, beautiful lady there at all? ForGuy, in the ordinary way, wouldn’t, it simply wasn’t in Guy’s nature to be able to, ask Iris Storm to the same dinner with the young wives of his two young friends, hisprotégésalmost, Napier and Hugo. And if he had asked Iris to-night, knowing that she wouldn’t funk coming—though the real reason why she had come was that Iris simply did not attach any importance to such things, “and besides,” she had said, “I want to see dear Hugo again, and as a married man”—it was just because he wanted Iris to realise the scene on which she was intruding so wickedly. It is such catholic cruelty as Guy’s that, by always lopping off the rotten limb, has kept the heritage of so many English houses almost, despite the common talk of the day, unimpaired. To-night he was wanting Iris to see that her old friends, her old playmates, Hugo and Napier, had grown up differently from her—better or worse, that wasn’t Guy’s point, butdifferently—that while she had lived according to her nature they had lived according to their country, they and their young wives, Shirley and Venice. Not the most prejudiced eye, Guy knew, could but see that they made a fine, harmonious, clean four. Youth was there, and simplicity, and friendship, and love, too. And Guy had dared Iris to come to the children’s party merely to say to her, with her eyes: “See, Iris, here are four people, two by two, happily paired, friends and lovers, husbands and wives. See, Iris, and let them be. One of these men you may be able to introduce to the magic mysteries of love more completely than his young wife ever can. But see, Iris, how much you deprive himof, how utterly you deprive her! You have put yourself outside this long ago, you never can be of this again. See, Iris, how happy they are, and young, and clean, and earnest to do right: most earnest to do right, Iris, despite the most damnable enchantments. And as they are so you might have been with Boy Fenwick, but you chose differently. Iris March, the death of Boy Fenwick puts you out of court. See, Iris, and for God’s sake let these children be!”
But that catholic Guy had not seen that beautiful white mask between the tawny formal curls and the two amethysts for eyes. I have told him since that had he seen that mask he would have foreseen the little profit he might expect to derive for his friends from Iris’s presence at that dinner. I have told him how it was in my mind that night that nothing could move Iris, because it was as though in winning Napier she was winning the thirty years’ war of her life. The shameless lady had at last lopped off the limb that was called the shameful lady; and so she had come again out of the darkness to Napier, she had come again as the enchanted voice whispering of better dreams, and not all Guy’s Englishry could hold Napier now from following that enchanted whisper across the seas, that Iris March might at last come to fulfil her fate.
And yet, by the perfection of their normality over dinner, it might have been this person, me, who was being treacherous to his friends by fancying disloyalties among them! Shirley, for instance. Shirley, little sister to George Tarlyon, was of the same age as Venice, they had been at Heathfieldtogether, they had always been together, and where Venice led there Shirley followed, and what Venice saw that Shirley saw, and where Venice raged there Shirley raged. And Venice was raging now. Oh, she must be raging frantically! Yet Shirley never once, as they say, “let on” about her state of mind. She was just Shirley all the time, sweet in a small way, sarcastic in a large way, Shirley of the brown eyes and unbreakable spirit, pretty Shirley. Maybe she was behaving a little better than was her general wont, for Shirley was so well-bred that she never practised what you would call deportment, but that was the only way the strain of that evening seemed to affecther....
Exactly at what point, one wondered that evening, did behaviour become hypocrisy? For instance, Guy. There he sat, that knight of old beliefs, at our head, very gay in white flannels and a brilliant Fair Isle sweater, for all the world as though it was not already stifling enough, for all the world as though two people at his table hadn’t offended him on the one essential point of conduct by which Guy de Travest knew friends from strangers: never to give way to what you want to do, if honour tells you that you may not do it.
And Napier, that love-lost man! Love-lost, that man? Let me tell of a moment after dinner when Venice suddenly, tremendously, helplessly, cried to Iris: “Oh, dear Jesu, aren’t you lovely!” And Napier, at that moment gaiety itself, came suddenly between them, an arm round each of their shoulders. “Why, of course she is, Venice!I tell you, I was particular about my friends when I was young....” It wasn’t, of course, voluntary, he was not thinking, Napier couldn’t think and then be a hypocrite: it was just the natural, normal sort of nonsense that happens. He had, at that moment, forgotten what he would have to tell Venice, to-morrow or the day after, of the love-philtre. And the child Venice! Venice, that very queen of hypocrites! Charming she was to Iris, just the tiniest bit deferential, as a girl of one-and-twenty might well be, but seldom is, to a woman of thirty. And yet Venice, ever since that afternoon in Paris, had been, I knew, eating her heart fretting about Napier, fearful and jealous and racked by what she could not see of his heart, tremulous with terror and suspicion of that legendary playmate, that Iris March of long ago. And how she hated the idea of Iris, I knew well, how she hated the thing she thought Iris was—and wasn’t Iris just that!—with all the uncompromising savagery of her heart! Venice, O Venice! And once, over dinner, she whispered to me: “I like Mrs. Storm.”
I don’t know, of course, but I suppose that in saying nothing one said quite enough to that.
“I do really,” Venice insisted, but not with enough vehemence for one to be able to fix on that as evidence of her insincerity. “She gives you a sense of ... well, completeness, if you see what I mean?”
“Oh, quite,” I said. “Completeness, certainly....”
“Not like Shirley and me, you see,” she said thoughtfully.
“Yes, I can just see that, Venice.”
“Mrs. Storm,” said Venice gravely, “gives one a sense of being a lady from herself, in her own right, if you see what I mean. Whereas Shirley and me——”
“Shirley and I.”
“Shirley and I, dear, and nearly every one we know are ladies just because our mothers were, and that kind of thing. I’d trust Mrs. Storm....”
And so I was to tell Iris that Venice trusted her! And then, according to the Scriptures as written by Venice, Iris would feel such a cad that she wouldn’t after all be able to bring herself to steal away her husband. She would repent, Iris would, on being told that Venice trusted her, and she would go back again into the nasty darkness of outlawry, leaving decent people to the safe enjoyment of their husbands. Dear Venice, I am afraid my telling Iris that wouldn’t have quite that effect, she just wouldn’t notice, Venice, that I had spoken; for such a plot might do exceeding well in a novel, whence you have no doubt derived it, but in life, Venice, your Iris March isn’t to be deterred from her chase of the Blue Bird by being trusted. If only life was a movie, Venice, you would only have to let Iris know that you trusted her, and away she would slink, weeping.
But imagine that Venice, an eagle in her eyrie, desperately beating her wings to hide the sun from the eyes of her mate! Oh, but Venice acted superbly! Not, of course, that there wasn’t provided a very handsome peg on which to hang the acting. The bathing idea came as a boon and ablessing to all the company. You could talk about an idea like that, and no harm done. Guy chivalrously gave me the credit for it, and I was acclaimed by Shirley and Venice as something they have in America called, so Venice swore on oath, a “he-man.” But Shirley thought it was very silly of Guy to go and spoil the whole picnic by insisting on bathing-costumes. Shirley thought that at length. So did Venice.
“I mean, on a hearty picnic like this!” said Shirley helplessly. And Venice said it was absurd to go digging about among bathing-costumes on a nice, warm, pitch-black night. One’s chemise, said Shirley, would do ever so well. One’s chemise, said Venice, had done very well before. And one wouldn’t, said Shirley, indignantly, really need the chemise afterwards, just to come home with. Not in this heat, said Venice, and they appealed to Iris, but Iris protested that she must be neutral, because she was not going to bathe; but she would have thought, she said, that a dry shift was always preferable, when possible.
“Not going to bathe!” cried Venice. “Not going to—Oh, you must bathe! Of course you’re going to bathe! Oi, you’ll spoil the whole party!”
It was after dinner, and Hugo was doing a few card-tricks with champagne-glasses, the idea being, Hugo said, to settle our digestions after one of the best dinners that had ever left him with an appetite.
“Of course she’ll bathe!” said Hugo. “I’ve known the girl all my life, and I’ll answer for her. She’ll bathe. Leave her to me. Silly, not bathing.”
“She’s rather common, your friend,” Shirley sighed to Guy.
“Sickening. Cannot bathe, really, on a night like this.”
“Seems to me,” Napier scowled, “that she will have to bathe. Tell me if I’m wrong. What?”
“Listen,” Iris pleaded.
“Coming here,” said Shirley indignantly, “and not bathing!”
“I am terrified,” said Iris desperately. “Terrified of masses of water. Once, in the Black Sea of all places, I got cramp, and ever since....”
“If you only knew,” sighed Hugo, “how cold all that leaves us! You’ll swim, girl. Good for you. Make your coat shine. Give you back your lost youth.”
“Hugo, don’t be so tactless!” cried Shirley.
“The girl’s right,” Guy closed the discussion. “She’s only been out of bed about a month....”
“But I haven’t been near mine for longer than that!” cried Shirley inevitably, and it was just at that moment, under cover of it, that I touched the ice-cold hand. That was the only sign until we reached the river that Venice’s married life had tumbled like a house of cards about her heart, that and her “trusting” Iris.
Venice was saying: “And didn’t we just have some trouble with you, Mrs. Storm, when you were ill in Paris! Naps white in the face thinking you were going to die, me green in the face thinking my holiday would be spoilt if you did, this he-man here purple in the face telling me to be reasonable....”
“But you were in bed for ages, weren’t you?” said Shirley sympathetically. “What was it? Some foul plague?”
“Ptomaine poisoning,” said Napier, and as I was giving Venice a light with which to torture yet another cigarette my hand happened to touch hers. “In this heat!” said I.
“Shut up, you fool!” she whispered desperately, and then she tried not to smile frantically, whispering: “Darling, darling,darling! My one friend....”
“Venice, they’re never any real good, friends. They can’tdoanything....”
“I know. Oh, I know. Oh God, I know!... Mrs. Storm, what a divine lip-stick! May I see? May I use?”
Baby.
Thus, the children’s party....
Their engines no louder than a whisper through the quiet noises of the night, and swift as arrows with flaming eyes, two touring-cars, a primrose and a blue, passed through the villages riverwards. The good people slept on undisturbed, as why should they not, for a motor-car will disturb the amenities of a village by night less than a wheelbarrow. Maybe through the crack of a blind flashed a startling light on a sleepless pillow. Maybe a distant scream, as of a great sea-bird, stirred a boy to dream of vain, polite, perishable delights. Maybe a cow stared thoughtfully at the strange, swift, whirring insects with the livid eyes and the cruel screams. Here and there the lampsshone on the buttons of a policeman, stock-still in a doorway. There was no air but the wind of our passage, warm, heavy with dust and dry grasses. “Rain, rain!” breathed England in her sleep. And there was no rain, nor breath of rain, nor yet that damp, oppressive foretaste of a thunderstorm to come, only a torment of heat over the land and around the land the unclouded darkness pinned with faint stars. A myriad flies withstood the stork, were appalled, died. Wrapped in silence, armed with light, we fled beneath the suns of the night like battle-chariots rushing to the assault of the stronghold of the gods. Iris had gone mad.
I thought of Mr. Polly disturbed in his sleep, twenty years ago, on a Sussex hay-rick by the roar of a racing-car. Mr. Polly could have slept undisturbed for us. One hundred and twenty horses drew us, shadows of nothing from nothing to nothing beneath the impersonal stare of the stars. Look away from the stars, lovers of the world’s delights, for they are the destroyers of the world’s delights with their dreams of grander things. To listen to great music, to adore God in vast solitudes, to kneel before the face of beauty, to pass through the quiet land like an arrow with flaming eyes, swifter than your thoughts: such and the like, according to each our nature, are the captains of the world’s delights, so keep your eyes from the stars, that destroy our delights with their dreams of grander things.
Silence marches with the thoughts in your mind. Maybe a word or two will drop, hesitate in the wind, fight with the dying hosts of midgets, perishon the road. Small flying things brush by your face, and a dry unsweet scent, as though England is sleeping with her windows closed.
The green hat was somewhere beside me, it fell and rolled about my feet, she murmured: “Leave it.” To the warm wind fell the honour of the dance, and with the tawny cornstalks the wind stepped a wide-flung dance. Why does your hair dance so, Iris March, like a halo possessed of devils? Why this, why that, Iris March?
In the glass of the wind-screen we might now and then see the faint reflection of Guy’s lamps behind us. Nay, once or twice his bonnet nosed up beside Iris, just beside her elbow. But the stork cried hoarsely, flew on.
Again, silent as the rustle of a woman’s dress walking in a dark garden, Guy’s shining bonnet menaced the tail of our eye, and Guy himself, alone in front, yellow-haired, grim, fair herald of a fighting pageant in his brilliant Fair Isle sweater, and now the face of Venice, leaning forward to Guy’s shoulder, excited, exhorting. Venice, for Venice! She would pass the lady of the dancing hair, would Venice. But the stork cried hoarsely, flew on.
We wrestled. Silent as phantoms, we wrestled. One hundred and twenty horses, a winged Mercury and a stork wrestled for the dominion of nothing on the Reading road.
There was a corner, proud and saturnine from many fell triumphs. The stork screamed a taunt, flew on.
“Ho!” gasped Hugo, chattering, from behind. “Steady, girl! Shirley’s frightened....”
“Let him pass, Iris!” cried I. A little scared, a woman driving, you never know, might lose her head, boy’s head, curly head, white and tiger-tawny, but too white, too intent, too infernally reckless....
“Iris, Iris!”
“Can do seventy-five, if you like,” cried the lips of the dancing hair.
“Let him pass, Iris!”
“Pass? Am I mad! As soon let happiness pass! See, the stars are laughing....”
“Iris, Iris!”
“Let him pass, Iris! Damn you, it won’t hold the road!”
“Why, the road’s fainting with joy! Can do seventy-six if you like. But not more....”
A new road, recently laid down to soften the passage of footlight-favourites to the reaches of Taplow and Maidenhead, wide, deserted of houses. Meadows swept each side into the desert darkness. Iris, perhaps remembering Mr. Polly, perhaps thinking Mr. Polly had slept long enough, kicked open the exhaust. That lends another mile an hour to speed. Another sixty horses gave answer behind, then fell snarling back towards London. “Seventy-one, Iris!”
“Ow!” she breathed. “Accelerator burning foot. Ow! Hell!”
“Maidenhead!” screamed Shirley.
“To the right, Iris!”
And so we came into the yard of Quindle’s. Still, sleeping, shuttered, Quindle’s hostelry was a rebuke to the flaming lights which made a festival of the desert scene. Then Guy’s car swung in,poor winged Mercury. Shows one, don’t you know, how much gods are worth....
“Sickening, Iris. You had me properly beat that time.”
“But how my foot burns, Guy!”
“Look!” said Venice. “Hist!”
A man in shirt-sleeves was come out of the hotel. He stared at us, rubbed his eyes, stared at us.
“Ho!” called Major Cypress. “Ho, there! Is that Quindle’s speaking?”
The man in shirt-sleeves came through the flame of the lamps. An amiable man, he looked.
“Now remember,” whispered Shirley at large, “no matter how beastly they are to us, we are going to bathe. Let every one speak at once. That will baffle him.”
“Evening,” said the man in shirt-sleeves. “Bit late, isn’t it?”
“Not one yet,” said Hugo. “I say, we want to bathe.”
“Can’t have no rooms,” said the man in shirt-sleeves. “Hotel’s full.”
“But we don’t want no rooms!” Venice pleaded. “We only want to bathe....”
“Bar’s closed,” said the man in shirt-sleeves.
“Serve you right,” said Hugo. “But we’ll give you a drink if you want one. Here you are. Beer or champagne?”
“I want to bathe,” Shirley pleaded.
“Can’t bathe ’ere,” said the man in shirt-sleeves.
“You don’t know about us,” said Venice severely. “We can bath anywhere.”
“Against the lor, miss.”
“That will be all right about the law.” A sudden voice, a calm voice, a cold, chill murmur. It fell from heights like a douche. The man in shirt-sleeves tried not to have to look up all the way to Guy’s face. Too tall was Guy, in that light. Guy smiled down at the man in shirt-sleeves.
“Hot night,” Guy murmured. “Very hot. My children, all these....”
“Ho,” said the man in shirt-sleeves. “’Ot or cold, it’s against the lor, that’s wot.”
“Don’t you worry your head about the law,” said Guy. “But what you might do, now, would be to get us some towels. We forgot towels....”
“Against the lor, anyhow,” said the man in shirt-sleeves.
“I do wish you’d say something else just once,” snapped Shirley.
Iris, a white face, gardenia-white, mocking hair, a barbaric scarf about her throat, her hat a splash of black against the frail fancy that was her dress, standing a little away, staring at the stars. “A light,” she murmured. “A light!” Then Napier was beside her, lighting her cigarette, lighting also the curious, still smile on his acolyte’s face, an enchanted smile, the smile of a man drowned in a magic pool. The collar of his white shirt was unbuttoned, the dark hair sleek in the glow of the flaming lights....
“Naps, give me a light, too.”
“Here you are, Venice,” said Hugo.
“Oh, it’s gone out! Naps, a light!”
“Sorry, Venice....”
Guy seemed to be shaking hands with the man in shirt-sleeves.
“Get you some towels,” said he, moving off.
Hugo whispered: “One law for the rich, one for the poor. Dear me!”
“Sickening. But we may as well take advantage of what’s left of it. Getting a bit mouldy, that law.”
“Come on, Hugo. God, it’s dark! Which way is it? We must find a boat....”
“Naps, this way! No, down here ... but hang on to my arm! Soon find a boat....”
“You can’t have no boat!” called the man in shirt-sleeves.
“You get those towels,” said Hugo severely. “The way you talk!”
“Please, your arm,” Iris begged me, husky voice. “Foot hurts. And isn’t it dark!”
“Here you are!” came Venice’s clear boy’s voice from the pit of darkness ahead, beneath us.
We faltered, blind as bats, down the slope of a landing-stage.
“Matches, please!” Shirley’s voice. Oh, trust Shirley and Venice to have the affair well in hand! The pit of darkness ahead was bitten by tiny flames. “Oh, look out, Naps! Ow, God damn you!”
“Naps, you might wipe your feet on your own wife, would you?”
There were uncertainties, holes, fissures of splintered wood. The tiny flames in the pit ahead were like lance-points thrusting the darkness deeper into the eyes.
Iris and I marched slowly as the smoke of our cigarettes in the breathless night. She leaned on my arm, completely. “Foot hurts.” I wished she wouldn’t. I almost said, “don’t.” Her touchconfounded, confused. She was tangible, until she touched you. She was finite, until she touched you. She was a woman, until she touched you. Then she became woman, and you water. She became a breath of womanhood clothed in the soft, delicious mystery of the flesh. Touching her, you touched all desire. She was impersonal and infinite, like all desire. She was indifferent to all but her desire, like all desire. She was a breath carved in flesh, like all desire. She was the flower of the plant of all desire. Desire is the name of the plant that Lilith sowed, and every now and then it puts out the flower that in the choir of flowers is the paramour of the mandrake.
“You are very silent, Iris....”
“Yes ... yes? Sometimes.... I don’t know, but it’s as though the stars make me nervous, sometimes. They’re so hopeless. They sneer, I can’t help thinking. But are we going right?”
The darkness ahead stirred with tiny flames and exultant voices. Venice and Shirley!
“I say, lovely boat!” cried Shirley.
“Where, Shirley?” I called.
“Between you and me,” Iris whispered, “I wouldn’t mind sitting. Foot hurts....”
“Come straight on. Don’t go right or left. River.”
“It’s not a boat at all!” cried Venice. “It’s a lovely motor-canoe. Oh, chaps!”
“Ssh!” Guy’s voice.
Who cared? Not Shirley. “And cushions! And steering-wheel! And everything....”
“Naps, this way! Here you are! Isn’t it a beauty?”
“Hope no one gets drowned,” Iris whispered.
“Every one’s cold sober.”
“But weeds and cramps and things....”
“And currents,” came Guy’s murmur from somewhere just above our heads. “But it’s safe as houses as long as we keep in a line between this bank and the other. Had inquiries made to-day.”
“Sensible Guy!”
“Best way to mend things is to stop them, Iris.”
Our eyes pricked by the wicked little match-lights, we could just make out at our feet the shape of a long motor-canoe and, at one end of it, a jumble of figures. They seemed to be fighting, those figures, bent this way and that in heroic attitudes. The canoe twisted and rocked frantically on its moorings. Fierce whispers, wicked words....
“Steady a moment,” said Guy, just beside us. But they weren’t steady any moments, Venice and Shirley and Hugo, whilst Napier helped them by getting in their way. They were up to something, those frantic figures.
“Steady, I said!” said Guy sharply. That learnt them. Some one in the boat lit a match, and the water shone like black silk. I saw Napier’s white face looking towards us, white face, dark eyes. Love-lost, dreaming....
“Now look here,” said Guy gently. “Just leave those sickening ropes alone. You, Venice, you!”
“But, Guy! We must get——”
“Must nothing. It’s not our boat, Venice, and I never break more than one law a night.”
“But—Oh, damn the man!”
“Honest to God, Venice. Now, Shirley, behave yourself! We’ll sit in the wretched boat, but no more. And the river just here is safe....”
“Look here,” said Hugo. “What about this for an idea? The women have one end of the boat and we the other?”
“And no matches to——”
“But where’s Iris?”
“Here,” came her voice, as though from the water. “In the middle of the boat. Very comfortable. Many cushions. I’ll take care of the boat while you swim....”
“Isn’t she kind, our fast friend! I say, no matches to be struck until some one gives the word! My figure’s good, but even Reville doesn’t think it’s perfect....”
“And better hand all your nasty bits of jewellery and watches to Iris.”
“’Ere’s towels,” said a miserable voice.
The canoe rocked beneath us. At our end soft things dropped to our feet, got in the way. Never was so dark and still a night. It was a relief taking off even the white flannels.
“Any swimming to be done,” said Guy, “to be done in a straight line between this and the other bank. First man or woman who disobeys gets a crack on the head (a) from the bridge over there and (b) from me.”
“This wing’s getting a bit crowded,” sighed Hugo. “It’s a blessing we’re not French and haven’t nice warm underclothes as well.”
The glow of her cigarette lit Iris’s mouth and eyes....
“I got one foot in the water,” she said at large.
“Taking the edge off our bathing!” Dear Hugo....
“Now, wot’s all this about bathing?” said a Voice.
“Police! Puss, puss!”
“Didn’t I tell ’em!” panted the man in shirt-sleeves. “Didn’t I! Told ’em it was against the lor.”
“Look here!” cried Venice from the pit of darkness. “Don’t you put that bull’s-eye this way, else God knows what you won’t see!”
“And he’ll never go back to his wife again,” sang Shirley. “I know men.”
“You ain’t allowed to swim here,” said the Voice tremendously. “Are they, Bill? Out of it, now!”
“I do wish,” Hugo said violently, “that perfect strangers wouldn’t force themselves on us like this. Any one would think we were at a Royal Garden Party!”
The canoe rocked frantically. “Damn you, Guy!” said Napier. The constable turned his bull’s-eye to where he thought Guy’s face would be, then flashed it a foot higher.
“About this law,” murmured Guy.
“Now, sir,” said the Voice, rather pathetically I thought. “I don’t want to have no trouble.”
“The very word! I was just going to ask you if it would be troubling you too much to ask you to run up to your house to lend us some towels.It really would be very kind of you. Our friend here hasn’t brought us quite enough....”
Splash!
“Look ’ere,” began the Voice desperately.
“Don’t look, constable! Be strong. Use your will-power. Women are but idle vanities.”
“Oo!” gurgled Venice. “If you only knew how lovely it was! Come on, everybody. Oh, it’s so warm!”
“Now remember, Venice—in a straight line between the banks.”
“That’s right, sir,” said the Voice.
“You and your banks!” sighed Shirley. Splash! “Ow, it’s freezing!”
“An’ it’s not their boat!” pleaded the man in shirt-sleeves. “They got no right in that boat. It’s Lord Lamorna’s, that is.”
“Good Lord, Johnny’s! And he’s kept it hidden from us!” Splash! “Where are you, Venice? Shirley?”
“Napier, be careful!” cried Iris, laughed Iris....
“Are you gentlemen saying as you’re friends of Lord Lamorna’s?” asked the voice.
“Friends!” said Hugo. “I won’t know him. We served together in Romano’s Riflemen, but now he’ll be jolly lucky if we don’t scuttle his boat. Owes me a fiver. Good-bye.”
The river was warm, soft, quiet. Most un-English were the waters of the Thames that night, most Italianate. Never before had one understood the verity of that phrase “on the bosom of the waters.”
From several yards away I could see the longshape of the motor-canoe. How Lamorna’s creditors would like to hear of that canoe! Hugo would blackmail him for his fiver. Dear Hugo. Suddenly the glow of Iris’s cigarette stabbed the darkness, and maybe that was her shadow there, and that the one foot in the water....
“Who’s that?” she gasped.
I was anchored to her ankle. My hand could have gone twice round it.
“Take care of them,” she whispered. “Dear, take care of them. Keep your eyes on that Venice child. She’s reckless. Quick, and catch them up. I rely on you somehow——”
“You mustn’t, Iris. I am enemy to Iris Storm.”
“Oh, friends and enemies! One relies on what people are in themselves, no matter what circumstances may make them feel.”
“And circumstances, Iris—do they make a woman so heartless?”
“Heartless! That’s a large word, rather. Heartless? But maybe I am tired of being unhappy. So maybe I walked into a garden and built a high wall round it. Oh, may be, may be! Dear friend, go after them now. I am nervous, they’re so young. By their voices, they seem to have gone very far....”
But from the water the voices seemed to come from within a foot of one’s ear. They must, I thought, be straight ahead, towards the opposite bank. Swiftly a whisper cut the water near me, past me. “Young slacker!” came Guy’s murmur. But I, not for exercise was I on the bosom of the waters that night. I lazed, listening to the voices ahead, sharp and clear across the water. Dimly,softly, clammy-cold, a weed would brush one. The stars were like the lance-points of a mighty host marching down to the chastisement of the world. But the darkness baffled them, whilst I floated into the heart of it, I loitered.
“Mind your head on this quay here, Venice! Venice! Hello, where’s Venice?”
“Here. I say, what’s this place?”
“Oh, my pretty dears, why isn’t one always in the water! I say, what’s this wooden thing?”
“Looks like a landing-stage to me. What? I say, Hugo, what’s this place? What?”
“Am I a graduate of Maidenhead, asking me? But let’s try the place, anyway.”
“I’ve heard there’s a River-Night-Club arrangement about here. Very exclusive.”
“We know. Excludes all who can’t crowd in. Come on. Me for wine.”
I found them, having almost broken my shins against a wooden affair, lying grouped on what Shirley said was unmistakably “a sweep of velvet sward.” Venice, it seemed, was exploring. You couldn’t see your hand before your face. But you didn’t want to.
“Funny,” sighed Hugo, “if chap, just any chap, probably quite a nice chap, but timid chap, wakes from sleep to see Venice looking in on him. Mermaid theory....”
“Wot’s this?” snapped a voice. “You’re trespassing.”
“What did you think we were doing?” Napier asked mildly. “Playing dominoes?”
“Tell us what this place is,” said Shirley severely, “and perhaps we may let you go.”
“Gawd, don’t you know The River Club!”
“I knew it was,” said Hugo proudly, “as soon as I picked up a bus-ticket scented with Bacardie Rum——”
“But where’s Venice?” cried Shirley sharply, “Venice, Oh!”
The darkness stirred, and from the river-edge Napier called on the name of Venice.
“All right, all right! Here I am.”
“Venice!” cried Guy sharply. “Keep straight ahead towards that canoe.”
“I’ll swear,” said Napier, “her voice came a good way from the left. What?”
“From the right, and what to you,” said Hugo.
“From the left,” said Napier, and there was a faint splash and a faint rustle from the water.
“Now, Shirley,” said Guy, “I’ll drown you if you go playing any fancy tricks. Come along, let’s race back.”
“Naps, found her?”
“Oh, she’s only playing the fool!” came Napier’s voice. “Heard her a moment ago. It’s all right.”
I think that Guy and Hugo and Shirley must have deflected rather to one side, for although I was the poorest swimmer of the four I arrived first at the boat. My sight in the darkness was not helped by bumping my head against the gunwale.
“Iris! Iris?”
“Hello, where’s Iris? What? God, it’s dark....”
“But haven’t you found Venice?”
“Oh, she’s playing the fool! Missed her....” We held on to the gunwale, panting. “God, man, where’s Iris? What? I say, Iris!”
“She must have got out to stretch her legs,” I said.
“Yes—God, look!” panted Napier. “What the devil! What?”
Hugo’s voice, Shirley’s, Guy’s.
Napier and I were in the canoe. Iris’s white dress lay anyhow over the cushions in the middle, over the watches and rings. I stumbled over her shoes.
“Oh!” sobbed Shirley. “Something’s happened!”
“Naps, what is it?” snapped Guy from the water.
“Iris—I say, she must have changed her mind and gone in!”
“Stuff, changed her mind! Gone in after Venice, you mean!”
“Iris! Iris!” Hugo called. We all called.
“But where’s Venice?” Shirley screamed just as Napier plunged in again.
“Iris! Venice! Iris!”
“For God’s sake, Naps, take care!” snapped Guy. “Don’t go under that bridge.”
“Iris! Venice! Venice!”
Shirley was sobbing. In the pitch darkness....
“Hugo,” said Guy, “you and I together, for that bridge. Here, this way.... Naps, Naps! Come back, you fool!”
“Help....”
“God, who’s that! Iris? Venice?”
“Help ... here, to the right....” An exhausted whisper from the pit of the water.
“It’s Iris,” said Guy. “Where are you, Iris? Here, I’m in the water. Hold on.”
“Quick ... tired....”
“But where’s Venice?” screamed Shirley.
“All right, Iris has got her....”
Iris’s whisper: “Call Napier back. Oh, dear....”
“Naps! Naps!”
“All right, coming.”
“Hang on, Hugo!” said Guy from the water. “Iris coming. Pull, you fool. I’ve got Venice.”
“Please, my foot....”
“Hugo, don’t capsize the bloody boat!” sobbed Shirley. “Naps, here they are! Guy, give me Venice at once! Venice!”
“All right, Guy.” Was that Venice’s voice? “I can manage....”
“You’ve managed quite enough, you have!” said Hugo. “You all right, Iris?”
Iris was lying panting somewhere in the canoe. Mostly on our flannels, I thought. But you couldn’t see a thing. We were on the quay, Hugo, Guy, and I. Then Napier came. A silent, phantom presence.
“Don’t strike a match, any one,” Iris whispered. “I’m in my chemise ... what’s left of it....”
A sob, a jumble, a cry: “Oh, God, Oh, God! I’m so glad to be back!”
“Little donkey!” said Guy. “All right now, Venice?”
“Hugo,” Iris called, very huskily, “where’s thatchampagne? Venice would like ... Child, must you breathe your last down my neck?”
“You saved me!” sobbed Venice. “Yes, you did!”
“Ssh!”
“Ow, I was frightened!”
“Like a mouse in the water. Poor Venice....”
“Here’s another towel, Mrs. Storm,” said Shirley brusquely. Shirley would be a little jealous now of Venice liking Iris....
“Listen!” cried Venice into the night. “This woman saved me. Saved my life, she did! ‘Oi!’ said I, and there she was, quick as quick....”
“But, Venice, you’re sitting on my only other stocking, and I’ve only got two!”
“Pop!” said the champagne.
“Have mine, please do! Like barefoot. Jimmy, I got such a bump on the head.”
“How?” Guy asked dangerously.
“Against the bridge, please....”
“That’s only bump (a),” said Hugo kindly. “There’s still bump (b) coming to you, if I heard aright.”
“You did,” said Guy.
“You leave her alone!” snapped Shirley.
“Venice?” Napier’s voice, a white, still voice. He was kneeling, beside me, peering into the canoe. “All right now, Venice?”
“Yes, Naps.” A shy, uncertain voice that was. She was afraid. “You must thank Mrs. Storm for that....”
Napier did not call on Iris’s name. Hugo chattered to cover the silence. I thought I heard Guymutter something between his teeth. During the next few minutes Hugo’s dexterity with the champagne was a great relief. Dear Hugo.
“Venice!” said Guy beside me, chill, queerly harsh. “Your health, Venice! You’ll need a good deal, if you go playing any more tricks like that.”
Shirley was saying: “Here’s another towel, Mrs. Storm. Do have my stockings, please....”
“Oh ... no, it’s quite all right, really. Please, really. But would you mind seeing if my shoes are anywhere there, by the steering-wheel thing?”
Formal, like the voices of women in a drawing-room.
Iris called to me for a cigarette. It was her right hand to which I gave it. It seemed very naked, that right hand. “Your ring, Iris?”
“In the Thames,” she whispered. “Fallen for ever! Not a word....”
Venice was explaining to the darkness, gulping lavishly at her champagne: “Thought I’d go for a swim and not just paddle about. Thought I’d be clever. Thought you were fools. Thought I’d thought right. Thought I’d—anyhow, I caught my head crack (a) on that bridge. And then I didn’t want to let out a yell about nothing and look a silly ass. Heard you calling me, but thought I’d better keep my breath for swimming. Began swimming, and got a weed like a wrestler’s torso round me. Head hurt, like hell it did. Thinks I, now for a yell, but began kicking instead——”
“You would!”
“Wait. And my head hurt. And I was frightened to death. And I prayed like fury. Naps! Where’s Naps? I missed you. And when I wanted to yell all I could let out was a miow. And Mrs. Storm—well, Iris, as she saved my life, cries out: ‘Oi, what’s that? Who? Where?’ And before you could say knife, and just as I was succumbing to a watery grave, she was saving my life, quick as you like. Quick, terse stuff. She could swim all of us off our feet, she could....”
“Get very easily tired,” Iris said.
“Iris!” Napier’s voice, sharp. “You dressed? What? Risky for you, messing about, after your illness.”
“I’m almost ready, Napier.” Impatient, Iris’s voice was, I thought.
“Naps, get a rug from the car. She’s shivering.”
“Please!” Iris whispered, frantically, desperately. “For pity’s sake, please not!”
Silence....
As we collected round the two motor-cars, Guy, fiddling about with his starting-arrangements, seemed, I thought, to be saying something. But he was only swearing.
At the back of the Hispano Iris went to sleep against my shoulder. She spoke in her sleep: “You will find me quite light on you, as I haven’t got a chemise. They say it is very smart, to be chemiseless. Already I feel less of an outlaw from society. She did it on purpose.”
“Iris!”
“She did. Half on purpose. I know she did.The pet! Oh, dear....”
“But, Iris, why?”
“Because, dear. So that I should like her....”
“Oh! Well, do you?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
“Well?”
“I’m sorry if my hair is tickling your face.”
“Well, now you like her, does it make any difference?”
“No. Oh, no.”
“Oh!”
“Good-night.”
NOW as I come to that last night of all, a night that was as though set on a stage by a cunning but reckless craftsman of the drama, and as I look every way I may at the happenings that were staged on the platform of that night, I do sincerely thank my stars that it is no novel I have set my hand to, but a faithful chronicle of events. For it would seem that the novelist, so he is an honest man and loves his craft, must work always under a great disadvantage in his earnest wish to tell of life truthfully; since, as the old, old saying is, he never can dare to be so improbable as life. He may, to be sure, be as dingy as life, according to the mode of the day, or he may even achieve the impossible and be more dingy than life, also according to the mode of the day, but to be as improbable as life will be as far beyond the honest novelist’s courage as it must be against the temper of his craft; for should his characters have to “break out,” should the novelist be so far gallant as to concede something to the profligate melodrama of life, his people may only “break out” along lines which the art of their creator has laid out and made inevitable forthem; whereas you and I know that living men will do queer things which are desperately alien from what we had thought their possibilities—nay, impossibilities—to be, living men will defy the whole art of characterisation in the twinkling of an eye and destroy every canon of art in a throb of a desire: so that we may make no count or chart of the queer, dark sides of our fellows, nor put any limit, of art, psychology, romance or decency, to the impossibilities which are, within the trembling of a leaf, possible to men and women.
It is not often that I see Venice nowadays, for she lives for the most part with her father in the country, but now and again she will ask me to luncheon in her house in Upper Brook Street, or maybe I will call there on a sudden and find her sitting alone with an unopened book. We do not ever talk of that night, nor of the two chief players of that night, but the other day it came about that I found her sitting absorbed in the shadows of a dying fire, and I somehow said: “Waiting, Venice, waiting!”
She was crouched like a child in the gloom of a Dorothy chair, and as I sat in another nearby a friendly flame darted through the twilight and made toys of her eyes. They were looking at me with every appearance of deep reflection, but now it was a woman who was looking out at me from Venice’s eyes, and the woman seemed to smile, and she said: “He is in India, with Bruce’s expedition. He will be coming home soon.”
And then for the first time we spoke of thattempestuous night in July, the night but one after the children’s party. But of course I did not tell Venice all, particularly about the last part, according to the promise sworn between Sir Maurice Harpenden, Hilary and me.
My clock was about to strike nine o’clock, as I very well remember for I had nothing to do but stare at it, when the telephone-bell beat it, may I say, by a short head, and Iris’s voice said:
“Is that you?”
“And who should it be,” I said, “but me? I am so glad you rang up, Iris.”
“Oh, you are lonely!”
They shout on the telephone, people do, so that one cannot always hear them very, very well. But this fell lady’s slightly husky voice was considerate and clear.
“But fancy,” she said, “finding you at home now, and all the world at dinner or the play! Dear, are you, too, a social outcast? I am so sorry you have had to dine alone.”
“Iris, you should have brought up the friends of your childhood to a better understanding of the arts of peace. I was to have dined with Hilary to-night, and because of my engagement with him I did not go to a dinner where I was to sit beside a woman who has studied the Yogi philosophies and was divorced last year in New York with nine co-respondents, the tenth being disqualified on the ground that he was a black man weighing seventeen stone in his boots. And then Ross rings me up at half-past seven to say that Hilary has been called to the country!”
“Yes, I knew you had been put off for dinner. I was so shocked.”
“Thank you. But, Iris, you knew?”
“Oh, I know everything! But listen, I am ringing you up to ask you a plain question, and I would like, please, a plain answer. Does it mean anything to you that I am leaving England to-morrow at dawn?”
“You depress me, Iris Storm.”
“But I, oh I am so gay!”
“Yes, that is what depresses me. My friends are wretched, but you are gay! Iris, we are all of us miserable sinners, but you are a very captain of wickedness. Iris, you are a wrecker of homes, and you say you are gay! I am not being flippant. I have dined alone.”
“Dear, I understand. I do respect your disapproval, you must believe me, or else I would answer that we begin to die when we are born, that all comes from God and goes to the devil, and so what does anything matter? But listen, O father and brother of disapproval, would you like to see me before I leave England to-morrow at dawn?”
“Yes,” I said, “I would.”
“‘See’ me, I said, not ‘murder’ me!”
“But, Iris, I can qualify nothing to-night!”
“My idea is to take you into the country to-night. We goà deux. We go into a darkness. My friend, there is a sun-dial in a certain garden, and it is written that you and I shall stand by that sun-dial before we part to meet nevermore.”
“Iris, your voice is laughing, but you are not laughing. What does that mean?”
“But I am afraid! I am laughing with fear....”
“And we are driving into the country to escape your fear?”
“Oh, but that hurts! I was never before accused of being a coward....”
“Iris, I’m sorry.”
“Sir Maurice Harpenden knows me better than you do, my friend. Ah, he is very clever, is Sir Maurice! But you will see. We are driving into the country, let me tell you, to meet my fear. And when we meet it I shall not mock, nor tremble, nor quail, but I shall be a very Saint George for steadfastness. That is the programme, so far. And you, will you be my esquire?”
“You speak of darkness, of sun-dials, of fear, of Sir Maurice Harpenden, whom I do not know, of Saint George of Cappadocia, whom, alas, one sees only too little of these days. I think that you, too, must have dined alone. And you have gone mad. Else why must we drive into the country?”
“But we go to keep high company to-night, that’s why! Are you afraid ofthat? The captains and the kings of the countryside are our adversaries. Sweet, you and I shall stand arrayed against the warriors of conduct.”
“Not I, Iris! I am for conduct.”
“You lie, dear. You are for love! Oh, why do you lie?”
“Because one must be reasonable, Iris.”
“Oh, because this, because that, because of the persecution of men, the savagery of beasts, the malice of gods! Free me of your becauses! Lies,all lies! One must be truthful, there is no other law, all other laws are lies. We are educated by lies, we live with lies, we worship lies, we fight for lies, we die bearded with lies. God made men out of clay, countries out of mud, and what can the son of a marriage between clay and mud be but Master Lie? Oh, let us have just one look at the Demoiselle Truth!”
“Unfortunately, Iris, that demoiselle shows a different figure to all of us. Now I may like her with a trivial ankle, tawny hair, boyish breasts, but another may like her with golden hair and spacious loins, as Rubens painted women——”
“I will say this for you, that when you insult one you do it with kindness. It is kind of you to have described me as your idea of the demoiselle. I am proud of my breasts, because they are so beautiful. Life is generally so rude to a woman’s breasts, but it has only kissed mine——”
“Iris, you are shocking the girl at the exchange!”
“No, no, Miss Dell has prepared her for anything! But you haven’t yet said if you will be my esquire into the country? Why are you so silent?”
“But, Iris, I don’t understand a word of this!”
“Sweet, do we need to wait on your understanding! Chivalry?”
“Away with that from me to you! You always chose the man’s part.”
“Gallantry?”
“But I shall be gallant to another in being ungallant to you!”
“Friendship?”
“You are driving me very hard, Iris. I do not want to say what is in my mind.”
“Can you stand there with your lips to the receiver, which I hope your servants keep clean for you, and tell me you are not my friend? Can you stand there facing me across Queen Street, Curzon Street, Hertford Street, Hamilton Place, Hyde Park Corner and Knightsbridge, and tell me that you are not my friend? I am sitting here on the edge of the bed, in the next room is Mrs. Oden trying to pretend she is not listening to every word I say, all round me are trunks and boxes, about me is a leather jacket with a collar of a few minks, and on my head is one green hat. Are you not my friend? Answer me! Answer me, I say! Dear, a woman must have one friend! It is usual.”
“But the emerald is gone, Iris. So you are not the Iris I knew. You were Iris Storm, you are Iris March, and I never have met Iris March.”
“The emerald was wise. There’s agalanteriein jewels unknown to men, I see that. So you won’t come for a drive with me? Our last?”
“I never said that, Iris!”
“Ah, I have frightened him! Well, I will come round for you in five minutes. How are you dressed? In black and white? Maybe I would have preferred you in something less formal, in something more——”
“Enough ofpour le sport, Iris! Oh, enough, enough!”
And so we were again, again and for the last time, in that swift motor-car, wrapped in the gentle silences of the night. The oppression of the heat was gone since the rains of yesterday, but even yet London could not quite rouse itself from the stupor of the past tropical week. And to-night the flight of the stork did not torment the hosts of the midgets, “for,” said Iris from the shadow of her green hat, “there is no hurry, no hurry at all.”
A clock in the High Street of Kensington was at a little after half-past nine o’clock. The wide sweep of road towards Olympia was quiet with the gentle traffic of no-man’s-hour, for such is a little after half-past nine o’clock. I said: “I do wish you would tell me what all this is about.”
“It begins a long time ago, it is a long story. Having to do with the loves of babes, the wisdom of sucklings, and the sins of the fathers. And the sins of the fathers. But I will tell you more when we come to Harrod’s.”
“But we passed Harrod’s long ago!”
“There is another. You will see. Patience.” Through Hammersmith and Chiswick, by Ranelagh and Roehampton, we sped into the veiled countryside. The glow of London was a yellow arch in the night behind. We passed the last omnibus on its last journey to a far-flung corner of the town.
“But,” I pleaded, “I don’t even know where we are going to!”
“Why, to Sutton Marle! Didn’t I tell you? It’s not far....”
“But I don’t know Sir Maurice! Really, Iris, how dare you let me in for this?”
“It is all right, dear, you are expected. I said to Hilary, not an hour ago on the telephone: ‘I am not for Sutton Marle unless I may bring my one friend.’”
“Well, I never heard such cheek! And why, Iris, am I your one friend?”
“Because once upon a time you shamed me of my shame. Because you did not hold me cheap. Because romance dies hard in you. Because, dear, I rather like you. And that is why I told Hilary that you were my friend and that I would not dare Sutton Marle without you, adding that as he had put you off for dinner it would be something for you to do.”
“Iris, you are laughing all the time, you who told me you were afraid!”
She glanced at me just then, and that second’s smile is like a wound on my memory. A car screamed and passed us, and she cried through the disordered air: “I am afraid, but of course I am gay, too! Haven’t I waited twelve years for my inheritance!”
The flame of the lights on the road ahead made a wall of blackness on each side of us. I was like a child in this blackness, and it seemed to me that her voice was the voice of the night. I did not know what to say. I said: “Iris, that girl will die without Napier.”
Minutes later, she said: “If people died oflove I must have risen from the dead to be driving this car now!”
“Indeed, Iris, how can I argue about love against your experience!”
“My friend, you can’t shame me! For I am shame itself come to life. Yes, I have lit many small fires to quench one large fire. I have been unsuccessful. Thank God, thank God for that! And now let the one large fire burn, with a boy and a girl of eighteen for fuel. Nothing else matters.”
“My dear, so much else matters! Restraints, nobilities, decencies, sacrifices!”
We passed slowly through a village High Street, hailed and mocked good-naturedly by a group of men emerging from an inn.
She said: “In the ancient love-tales and the songs of the Jongleurs we read of maidens sacrificed on the altar of circumstance. I was a maiden, even I, once upon a time. Dear, I am afraid you must take my word for that. And I, a maid, was sacrificed to the vulgar ambitions of a Sir Maurice. So let us not talk of sacrifice. It makes me sick with anger.”
Not fast, not slow, the Hispano-Suiza swept through Surrey. Then she said sharply: “But if Venice had had a child!”
I could not see her face, for her hat and the darkness were between us. But ever so faintly I could see her mouth, and her lips were parted, as though she was praying. I wondered if she was praying to whom she could be praying. “She has a God,” had said that captain of men.
“And why did you say that so bitterly, Iris?”
“Was I bitter? Oh, that’s a sin, to think of that angel and to be bitter.”
“Angel? Did you say angel?”
“I said angel,” she said, and no other answer had I but from the stork crying dolorously to warn corners of our flight.
“If Venice,” she said reasonably, “had had a child, I would have called to Napier in vain. We can’t know the beginning and end of honour, nor what it is, nor what it will do, nor what will debauch it, nor what will make it unbending as iron. Let us say I have debauched Napier’s honour. Oh, let us say anything! We don’t stand on words on ultimate nights like these. Honour is like a little child, let us say, and like a little child it may be led away by a shining toy, and in this case I am the shining toy. But had Venice had a child I might have shone like Aldebaran and called Napier in vain. And that would have been right and just. We must all give way before children, always, always. Oh, if people had always done that, what miseries wouldn’t the world have been spared! Those whose dreams are clean must give way to children, for babies will carry clean dreams further than the wisest of old men, and slowly the world will rise above the age of smoke and savagery....”
“But it’s absurd, Iris! What chance has the girl had of having a child yet!”
“But I am not pretending to play fair! Or did you think I was? I awoke from my illness, and I awoke suddenly to life. Awaking, I took my chance as it came. And quickly, quickly, forfear of giving Venice a longer chance. And it’s because I haven’t played fair that I am going to Sir Maurice’s house now.”
“Oh!” I said. “Good God! Let me out of this car, Iris! I will walk back to London.”
“Napier doesn’t know. Napier would be frantic if he knew. Napier is dining with Venice to-night. They would both be frantic if they knew I had taken Sir Maurice’s challenge and gone down to Sutton Marle. But I must go, to make unfairness a little less unfair. I must let Sir Maurice have his last joy of me. Besides, there is a fascination in letting men tell the truth to one. There is a fascination in wondering if it will ever be the truth. But look! Oh, look! There is Harrod’s!”
The car had pulled up on the brow of a small hill. The lights searched across the road into an unhedged field. Iris pointed along the flame of light.
“There is Harrod’s,” she said gravely.
“But where is Harrod’s? I see a field and what looks like a giant oak.”
“That is Harrod’s. Not an oak, but an ash. It is very old, and smells of fairies and moonlight.”
There were once two roads that led away from a certain tree.
The tree, a solitary giant of enormous girth, stood perhaps twenty yards from the road. Its trunk dammed the far-flung eyes of the car, and in the light its leaves were made of silver, and you fancied that, had there been a breath of wind, it had spoken from its ancient wisdom, ofwhich this night stood so sorely in need; but never a whisper stirred the countryside.
“Iris, doesn’t that make your passions look ... silly?”
She took my hand, and lifted it, and dropped it. I do not know why she did that. Her face was hidden. It seemed to me that a long time passed before she spoke, and I seemed to think of many things.
“If there was a moon,” she said at last, “a little way behind Harrod’s you would see a small hill, and on the hill you would see a white house. That is where Gerald and I were born. Perhaps Gerald knows why now. That is one of the many things Napier and I have to talk out in the solitudes, why all we men and women are born. There must be a reason. Across the fields this way is Sutton Marle, where Napier was born. We used to play beneath this tree, Gerald, Boy, Napier and I. Boy was older than us, and bossed us. So there was a revolt, and then we made two camps, Boy and Gerald, Napier and I. Sometimes Aunt Eve, who took care of Gerald and me when mother died, would take us all up to London, and we would have tea at Harrod’s. Napier and I loved Harrod’s because we at once got lost there. And so we called this tree Harrod’s, because we were happy here, too. We were twelve then. Later on they discouraged our being together. Aunt Eve didn’t want me to be made miserable when I grew up by not being allowed to marry Napier, for she knew that I didn’t come into Sir Maurice’s plans. Poor Maurice, I’ve crashed into them now, haven’t I! Father gotpoorer, we sold this house, and went to live in Cambridge Square. Napier was not allowed to see me any more, but we managed to meet somehow. Gerald helped, Aunt Eve helped, Boy helped. That was when Boy first loved me, he said later, because of my determination not to lose Napier. But Sir Maurice won. I was stronger than Napier, but I was not so strong as Sir Maurice. He wanted Napier to marry a rich girl, and Iris March was only the daughter of the younger branch of a bankrupt house. One day, when I was eighteen, I got a wire from Napier to meet him here at Harrod’s that afternoon. I borrowed the money for a taxi—bit from Boy, bit from Hilary—and here Napier was, white, desperate. In a general clean-up before going up to Oxford he had promised his father never to see me again. ‘I like Iris,’ Sir Maurice had said, ‘but she comes of rotten stock.’ I don’t think we had ever realised before that we were in love. I suppose I grew up in that one second. But Napier was still a boy of eighteen, while I was suddenly as old as the Queen of Hearts. I told him I loved him. Dear, I have known many men, I have married two, but I have only told one that I loved him, and he was a boy. Poor Napier, so torn, white, distracted. Afraid of my love, which seemed to him almost unholy, afraid of his father, who seemed to him almost holy. England, my England! His father was strong in Napier, and the Harpendens were strong in him. They were stronger than me at eighteen, and they were stronger than the sweet memories of Harrod’s. I said to Napier then, just overthere where the lights fall by that trunk, I said, eighteen to eighteen: ‘Napier, I think I have a body that burns for love. Napier, I shall burn it with love, but I never will say ‘I love you’ to any man but you, because it never will be true.’ And what I said at eighteen is true now at thirty, I have never said I loved him to any man but Napier, for it hasn’t been true. I have given myself, in disdain, in desire, with disgust, with delight, but I have kept to that silly, childish boast of mine. I say that to my shame, but now shame is a weed under my foot. I married because my body was hungry for love and born to love and must love. And I thought I would destroy my body with love’s delight, but all I did was to destroy a good man. Hector Storm went off to Ireland and died because one night in my sleep I whispered Napier’s name. Or perhaps I had whispered it many nights. I told him that he was being jealous of a ghost, but he wouldn’t believe. Now all those things are passed. The nymph unloosened her girdle to desire, and now she has unloosened it to her only love. One grows out of everything, even desire: and then one can love. Look, Harrod’s is smiling, all silver and smiling! Here Sir Maurice sacrificed me twelve years ago. To-night I have to say to him: ‘This is what you have done, Maurice—the unhappiness of Venice, the unhappiness of your son, and twelve years of hell for me. Are you content?’ Oh God, it’s been hell, these twelve years! If you had kissed hell, as I have kissed hell, if you had sacrificed to hell, as I have sacrificed my body to hell, you would know what I mean. Butnow I can’t grudge Maurice the final satisfaction of telling me what he thinks of me. Dear, it matters so little what men like Maurice think of one. They worship all that is despicable, they despise all that is really good. From the beginning of time this world has been wounded by the manliness of fools. Oh, let Maurice have his say to-night! And mighty Guy. And my sweet Hilary! Let them have their say. I can only answer them with love. How could I answer them but with love? But I can silence them with love! Love, love, love! A glorious word, a matchless word! But isn’t it? Love, love! I am in love. I glory in love, I will die in love! Love, my sweet, love, love! To be in love as I am in love is to be in heaven before hell was made. I am in love!”