I agreed with my sister that it was abominably rude of her younger brother to be nearly an hour late to take her out to dinner, especially as she had been ready for at least twenty minutes. She was furious. I said: “There is a new dance place open. I heard about it from a friend of mine, Mr. Cherry-Marvel. You will meet him, he is charming. This new place is calledLa Plume de Ma Tante. It has only been open three nights, so it will be very modish for another two. There is a nightingale there.”
“One cannot dance to a nightingale.”
“But why are you so exclusive?”
“It is cruel and beastly to keep a nightingale caged.”
“Dear, it takes a woman who once had a passion for aigrettes and who loves eating lobsters to be so sensitive. But there is probably baser music to supplement this nightingale. There are, in fact, five lovely niggers. The place is calledLa Plume de Ma Tanteso that English people may know exactly where they stand.”
“You are so funny to-night, but would you mind not polishing your shoes on my dress? This is a very terrible taxi, and I think men are monstrous. If you were taking any woman but your sister out to dinner you would have chosen the taxi with discretion.”
“Rudolf and Raymonde are the dancers. I do not want to go to The Pen of My Aunt, but for your sake I would go anywhere. After dinner.”
She was pleased, loving to dance. We walked up the pavement of the rue Royale to the quiet doors of Larue. She said: “I love Rudolf and Raymonde. I saw them dancing at Monte Carlo, and they say American women give him platinum watches from Cartier and that he was a footman in San Francisco, or was that Rudolf Valentino?”
I said: “I say, do you know anything about septic poisoning?”
“Really, how callous you are! Do I know anything about it! But I had it!”
“No!” One’s sister!
“But of course I had it! It is amazing when one’s own brother is quite unaware that one has been through endless pain and torture.”
“Not pain and torture,” I said. “A little bird told me.”
“But I am not responsible for your feathered friends! I was as good as dead, that’s all I know.”
“But, my dear, that was when you were having a baby! I was in Vienna.”
“So you said. But, of course, it came on after I had a baby. One does not get septic poisoning for nothing. I nearly died, I can tell you.”
“Vestiaire, monsieur?”
“...Oh, I see. A baby. After that....”
“I have never been so hungry in my life,” my sister said, “and you talk to me of septic poisoning. I suppose you think you will destroy my appetite and therefore the bill will be less. I will begin with caviare.”
“Septic poisoning,” I said, “did not kill you,that is the point. You cannot imagine how glad I am. Let us eat caviare.”
La Plume de Ma Tante.Bright green walls splashed with vermilion. A platform at one end, whereon five blackamoors perspired. At the other, a naked woman. She was without hips, according to the fashion for women. Her arms were twined above her head, and raised on the tip of her fingers was a bowl of green malachite from which pink water splashed into a white alabaster basin at her feet. Many English people were present. They would be going to the Riviera, then they would be coming back from the Riviera. Colonel Duck was there, with the quality. Colonel Duck was, no doubt, just returned from some notably swift exploits on the Cresta Run. But he never was so talkative about his outdoor activities. Cherry-Marvel was there, with a great big woman and a nice-looking boy with the hands of a housemaid who was a famous boxer. There was the usual group of Argentines, very well dressed indeed. They talked aboutle polo. All over the room elderly women were dancing with young men of both sexes. Mio Mi Marianne was there, sitting alone, but I might not speak with her because I was with my sister. Ademi-mondainewill feel insulted if you speak with her when you are with your sister. Two years before Mio Mi Marianne had one night tied a silk handkerchief round her wrist, and it became the fashion forwomen to tie silk handkerchiefs round their wrists. Then Mio Mi Marianne tied a silk handkerchief round her throat, and that became the fashion. She thought of these things while smoking opium. She sat alone, staring into a glass of Vichy Water. A young American polo-player called Blister went up to her table, and maybe he asked her to dance, but she just looked at him and he went away again. Her eyes were intent on an opium-dream, and she was very happy in the arms of the infinite. Mio Mi Marianne will be found one day lying on the Aubusson carpet of her drawing-room. There will be a hole in the carpet where her cigarette has died out.
A blackamoor beat a warning roll on his drum, the dancers left the floor, the lights dwindled and awoke again in swaying shadows of blue and carmine. A heavily built young man with the face of a murderer danced a tango with a lovely young girl with short golden curls. Then he threw her on the floor, and picked her up again. Rudolf and Raymonde. He did it beautifully. An American woman called the Duchess of Malvern threw Rudolph a pink carnation. The Baron de Belus said harshly: “That is a white carnation really, but it is blushing at the fuss that women make of Dagoes.” In a cage clamped to the bright green wall near us was a dumb nightingale. It kept pecking at the floor of its cage, looking at nothing and nobody. I left my sister in Cherry-Marvel’s care. I said to her that he could dance, and next day she was furious.
The burning eyes of the Renault made the grim Boulevard Pierre Abel almost hospitable. That was a conscientious man, Conrad Masters. How glad I was of him at that moment! What had he said about Iris? something about his having known her for years, something about “that year at Deauville ... terrible for her.” That would mean, then, that Masters had been there during the Boy Fenwick tragedy. Iris, poor Iris! Such punishments ... for what crimes? What crimes deserved such punishments? Iris, poor Iris! But she wouldn’t mind dying, not she. That was the trouble, Masters had said. But no doubt she knew best....
The Paradis prison was a pit of blackness in the night. The dim lights behind the iron-barred windows were out, and it was impossible not to wonder if they slept up there in their iron cages, the wicked, the foolish, the betrayed. Perhaps the nightingale in its cage did not care. Perhaps those up there did not care, and slept like angels. But the wrongly accused would not sleep, that was certain. Does innocence wrongly-accused profit any one except a very wise man or a very good man, except a man who cares nothing for the opinion of this world or one who cares only for the love of the next? I said to the taxi-driver: “Hell can know no torment like the agony of an innocent in a cage,” and when he had carefully examined his tip he agreed with me.
Gently as I could, I rang the bell, prayingthat the old woman would not be angry with me.
“Aha!” she chuckled. “Aha! Monsieur-toujours-de-l’audace! Mais entrez, monsieur, entrez!The doctor is just this moment arrived. Truly he is a good man, this Dr. Mastaire—but our French doctors, you should see! They come for a moment, they go, and she lives or she dies, what do they care as long as they are paid? But this English doctor, he does not know how to make money easily. Madame his wife was this moment telephoning that he should go home quickly, for they are awaiting him forle bridge.Ah, cet bridge, bridge, bridge!”
“But you see how anxious I am! Have you heard anything since I last saw you?”
“To have heard nothing, young man, is to have heard good news. But sit down, the doctor himself will tell you in one moment—” That demoniac bell! It clanged through the place. Perhaps of all the nations in the world the French alone are capable of fixing the loudest possible bell to a nursing-home. The fat old woman grinned vindictively at me. We had been enemies, now we were allies against the intruder. “Bah!” she said, and opened the door. From where I stood I could not see who was without, but I could hear a voice: low, hesitating, in very correct French, in Foreign Office French....
“Napier!” ...
We stared at each other in the most profound surprise and confusion.Napier, favourite of the gods, shy, sensitive, fine ... just here, just now, facing me in the obscure silence of the Paris night!
“This is funny,” Napier made to smile. “What?”
Napier Harpenden and I had known each other well, as “well” goes, for years, but never before had we been alone together. But once, some years ago, I had seen him in a curious moment. Late one night I was walking down a villainous alley near the East India Docks when through a lighted window I was astonished to see Napier’s white, thin, fine face and those dark fevered eyes. He was talking earnestly to an old man and a very pretty young girl who was crying, and I felt ashamed to have seen him, for that is how Napier affected one, you were hurt at the idea of hurting him. I had wondered often what he could have been doing there, what secret good work he was at. He was a strange, secret, saintly youth, a favourite of the gods who never once relied on the favouritism of gods or men....
He still stood outside, a serious slack shape in a tweed overcoat. He masked, behind that faint, deprecating smile of his, more than the mere confusion of surprise. He would very much rather it had not been me he had met just there. Napier and I were friends only because all our friends were mutual. We hadn’t ever found, tried to find, any common ground for friendship. Sincerely, I was very sorry to be there. Napier had that effect on one.
“Venice is waiting in the taxi,” he said. Whenever Napier and I met he would instantlyspeak of Venice. This was to show me that he knew Venice and I were great friends and that, if he and I weren’t great friends, that must somehow be his fault. How could you help liking a man like that? The courtesy of that favourite of the gods went so much deeper than any one else’s: let it one day go a little deeper, and you felt that it might have gone a little too deep, down, down to self-destruction.
I said I had arrived in Paris only that afternoon, and had heard, by chance, that Mrs. Storm was ill. My presence there seemed, you can see, to require a more definite explanation than any he might think fit to give me. One felt, with Napier, uncomfortably familiar to be asking after Iris in this obscure place at this late hour. He and Iris had been “kids.” Then I thought, comically, of the two scrawled names on the grubby slip of paper. Well, I seemed to have rights too. More rights than Napier, really. Conrad Masters had no instructions to be nice to Napier. Poor Napier....
“But,” he said, slowly, slowly, “surely she’s better by now? I only just called on the off-chance ... really wanted air after the train journey more than anything else. Surely ... what?”
I stared at him. What to say? You see, the sudden, white way he was staring at me made me feel terribly canny of anything I might say. Besides, one treated Napierdifferently.
“Better?” I repeated. “Well....”
“But, look here,” he said, protested.... It was dark, there between the dim lodge and thenight. Why on earth didn’t the man come in? “Venice and I are going south to-morrow, and I just thought I’d inquire—but, look here, I never dreamt that she....”
I at last grasped the fact that he had known she was ill. He was the only one among us who had known she was ill. One kid had known that the other kid was ill ... and had waited until, on his way south, he could conveniently come round and inquire. Well!
“You had better come in, hadn’t you?” I said. I simply couldn’t say slap-out that Iris was ill nearly to death. You couldn’t say things like that to those dark, troubled eyes. You protected Napier from your own impulses, always. A favourite not of the gods alone....
But he still stood there in the darkness, staring at me very strangely and scowling in that funny, attractive way he had. Whenever I think of Napier I can see that Napier scowl and I can hear that involuntary “what?” he would tack on to questions.
“Look here, something’s the matter.” His voice trembled absurdly.... “Something serious. What?”
“She’s very ill,” I think I said.
“Very!” he snapped. “What? You mean ... really ill? What?”
“I think so,” I said. “Yes.”
I looked into the room, avoiding those eyes. The lay sister, a pair of horn spectacles on her nose, and without a sign of interest in us, was mending the heel of a black woollen stocking, one end of which lay coiled in a black tin box. Icouldn’t somehow look at Napier just then. That, you see, was the first hint I had of the thing, and though it was no more than a hint, it tore at one. The look in Napier’s eyes, I mean. The man’s heart was in his eyes....
“Look here,” he said sharply, “I don’t understand this. What? I mean, I’d no idea it was....”
“I don’t know anything,” I said, “except just that she’s ill.” We stared at each other.
“As ill,” I said, “as can be.”
“Oh,” he said. His eyes on me, not seeing me, he pushed past me through the doorway. And when I saw his face again, I was appalled. It was lost, abandoned, terribly unaware of everything but fear, it was enchanted by fear. He simply didn’tcarebut about one thing....
“Haven’t seen her,” he said, and scowled at me. Not that he had, at that moment, the faintest idea who I was.
“Here, a cigarette,” I said.
He stared at it in his fingers. He crushed it....
“Haven’t seen her for nearly a year,” he said in a rush, and stopped abruptly, seemed to realise me, scowled. “I say, what is it? Pneumonia or something? What?”
I fumbled. I wasn’t, I said, certain. Had only seen the doctor for a moment. Something inside, I thought, had gone wrong....
I was immensely lost in all this. He had known she was ill—but not seriously ill, nor of what! I grabbed at one certain point of behaviour for myself. One had to. I was, anyhow, going to make no mischief. Like Guy, I would give no “gratuitous information” of any sort. For better or for worse, I wouldn’t. News of septic poisoning was obviously not for Napier, not for any one—except for the two names on the grubby slip of paper. This septic poisoning seemed to mean only one of two things, a child or not a child. That was most utterly Iris’s business. Iris the desirous—for a child. “To be playmates with.” And I wondered, just then, if it had been another Hector-not-so-proud. “Like to have a winner once....” I kept on hearing that slightly husky voice saying little things.
“What I mean to say is,” Napier said, with sudden astounding calm, “that this is perfectly idiotic. What? You see, I hadn’t the faintest idea....”
But when, deceived by the calm of his voice, I looked at him, I found it better to look away again at the frowsty old lay-sister sewing away at her stocking. It was mean to look at him, he was too naked. I realised how masked we always are, how this is a world of masked men, how we are masked all day long, even on the most trivial occasions. Then I felt his hands suddenly tight around my arm. And tighter. Now what?
“I’m awfully sorry,” I said idiotically.
“Look here—I say, for God’s sake! You see, I don’t understand. What? She wrote to me weeks ago that she was going to be just slightly ill, and now....”
The fingers dropped from my arm. “Hell!” he muttered. “Oh, hell! What?” He hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was saying. I wished to God he had, I didn’t want to listen to him, I hated listening to him, it was like spying on the man. Spying on Tristram wandering in the forest raving with love for Yseult. But what could I do? How leave him like this? How let him return to Venice like this? Good Lord, and Venice waiting in the taxi! If she saw him like this.... Good Lord, was the man mad to have brought Venice with him! Here, to see Iris! The misty impulses of a man of honour ... do nothing behind his wife’s back. After, you know, having done everything. But ... Good Lord, if Venice grew tired of waiting in the taxi and came and found Napier like this, like a demented knight in a story! Venice of the lion’s cub head, the mischievous, loyal eyes, dear Venice! adoring and adorable Venice! Napier’s wife....
And, at that moment, I saw Venice again at the Loyalty, that night ten months ago, happily waiting for Napier, whose wife she would be in three days. “Darling, darling,darling!” That night of Gerald’s death! And then for the first time I remembered the cry of “Iris!” in the night, and the two red rear-lights swerving into South Audley Street, and I understood how it was that Iris in her letter had called me her “destroyer” ... her “destroyer” with love, for no lover could have passed her way that night had I told her about Gerald. And Napier had passed her way, Napier whom she had seen that night for the first time in many years, Napier her ancient friend. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree....” And the two roads had come together in the darkness of that night, in the darkness of cruelly blind chance, and now they had come together again in the darkness of this night, while Venice waited outside....
I couldn’t, you can see, not do anything just then. I couldn’t let this love-lost man be found by Venice in her husband’s shoes. Napier and Venice, the happy lovers.... I was on Venice’s side. For Venice! Always, I was for Venice. One likes so few people, but one likes those few very, very much. This love-lost man must be woken up, mustbehave. Of course he must behave! Venice, for Venice! How dared he have done this to Venice? Marrying her on the third day from that night....
I asked him where he was staying, and when he said “the Meurice,” I told him that if he would go now I could ring him up when I had seen the doctor. “It’s no good waiting here,” I said. “I know the doctor.”
He stared at me with the immense, the devastating, dignity of the utterly careless. I bitterly wanted to wake him up, to make him see the thing he had done, the beastly thing. For Venice! “It’s no good,” I said cruelly, “keeping Venice waiting for ever....”
He scowled at me, or at something just behind my shoulder. “I’m going to see Iris,” he said.
It was quite definite, he was going to see Iris. It would probably, I supposed, do Iris all the good in the world to see Napier on this critical night. Napier and Iris. It might make her care whethershe lived or died ... but why shouldn’t she die? Venice would condemn her to die. Iris was the foe. Why shouldn’t she die? You can’t do things like that, and not die. Stealing like a little thief into the garden of Venice, and stealing away like a little thief ... to bear Napier’s child, unknown to Napier....
“Hell!” he muttered. I stared at him, at those burning, broken eyes.
“Hell!” he said. “Oh, God, what hell! What? If you only knew....”
“I don’t want to know,” I snapped. Well, did one want to know? But he didn’t hear, didn’t care, didn’t see. Being with him, you can see, was exactly like eavesdropping. Why, if Venice came in and saw this love-lost man ... her Napier, her darling, like this, with burning broken eyes. But there are some things that can’t happen! You couldn’t take Napier from Venice. And how quickly, how poignantly, Venice, if she saw him like this, would know the difference between his easy, smiling love for her and this ... damnable madness.
But in the dark taxi she wouldn’t see his face, and I was just about to try again to get him away when he said fiercely: “It’s not as though I don’t know anything about it. Or do you think Iris is a liar? What?”
“Napier, you really must pull yourself together—”
“No, but any one would think I was a most fearful cad. What?”
And he scowled, in that Napier way of his that made one want to forgivehim everything. “I mean, not coming before, seeing she’s so ill ... waiting all this time, and coming just now. Why, she wrote to me four weeks ago, saying she was going to be just slightly ill and have a rest for a week or two, so of course—Oh, look here, here’s the letter, you’ll see for yourself—”
“But I don’t want to see for myself. Steady, man! I quite understand. Of course you couldn’t know....”
“No, but look here, you’ll see....”
Feverishly he began fumbling in his inside-pockets, pulling out papers, a pocket-book, passports....
Venice could be very still. I imagined her in the doorway, looking at Napier in this state. She would be very still, and in her stillness she would be destroyed. Venice was jealous, so jealous and possessive. “Got to be with Napier,” she had pleaded to me once. “You don’t know what he’s thinking about half the time, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing the other half.”
Some of the papers dropped to the floor, and I picked them up and thrust them into his gaping pocket. The old nun smiled at me over her spectacles, and then looked at Napier and tapped her forehead. But you could see she liked the looks of Napier. “Quelle belle silhouette!” she grinned. I don’t believe that Napier to this day knows there was any one but our two selves in that lodge.
He waved a white thing covered with scrawled pencil-marks, and beside it I somehow saw that letter from a draughty house on a hill of strangled olives. But between the two came the vision of Venice destroyed.
“I don’t want to read it, Napier. I quite understand. What on earth does it matter whether you knew or not, so long as you know now?”
“Thinks a lot of you,” he said darkly. “Told me, last time I saw her....”
He passed a hand over his mouth. I said: “But....”
“Beastly,” he said, looking at me with enormous, dark surprise. “That’s what I feel. Beastly. As though my skin was a dirty shirt. Ever get that? I mean, here she’s dying, and I ... God, how one gets to know oneself! What? But I’d like you to see. I mean, since it’s you. She thinks a lot of you, I know she does. Thinks you’re nice. Funny how she says that, ‘nice.’ What? But what’s she want to lie for? Iris never lies. Never. That’s what beats me. I mean, why, to me? What? Go on, you’ll see....”
Crumpled the letter was, but he had, in a sort of way, smoothed it out. I stared at it. I had to, for he was watching me with those ruined, pleading eyes. The greyhound unleashed....
“She’s dying.” I heard his voice from miles away. “You can’t tell me! She’s dying....”
“She won’t die,” I said firmly, glad to look up from the letter. And, you know, I was quite certain at that moment that she wouldn’t die. The beloved of the favourite of the gods wouldn’t die. The favourites of the gods are not let off so easily. Oh, she wouldn’t die! It would be too easy to die. “The Marches are never let off anything....”
I stared at the crumpled-looking thing in my hand. I didn’t read it. The poor devil was only showing me the thing because, at that lost moment, he was starving for understanding, for any one’s understanding, after these ten months of silence, of Venice-Napier-Iris silence....
I couldn’t, merely from the wretched fact of staring at the thing blankly, avoid the first few lines of that schoolgirl scrawl. “Napier, I have to go to a nursing-home for a few weeks’ rest. Napier, dear Napier! I’ve tried not to write, you know I have, just as we promised, but as we are never to meet again I’d like you to pray——”
That is all I read, and there I stood, staring at that crumpled letter like an idiot. “As we are never to meet again....”
Figures moved, I could see them, hear them, their cries, laughter, silences. Their silences. Napier, Venice, Iris. They had come together, blindly, desperately. By chance—but it is written in vinegar that there is no such thing as chance. And I, why, I had been appointed, a silly finger of fate, to make “chance” more sure! They had come together, those three, propelled to each other from darkness for darkness’s sake. The weak to the weak, the strong in chains. Always that is the way of things, and for no reason at all except life’s most damnable unfairness, which is for ever saying: the weak shall be made weaker, the strong shall be destroyed. Venice was strong, strong as gold, in loyalty and love. Incorruptible, golden Venice! Salute to Venice! So, said the Prince of Darkness, she must be destroyed, and to destroy her in the most efficient and painful way Napier must see Iris, unseen since girlhood, a grown-up Napier must see a grown-up Iris, a youth curiously sensible to the pitiful must suddenly see an Iris wrapped in tragedy and scandal,a helpless, hopeless, unhappy woman—the favourite of the gods and the poor shameless, shameful lady! And it was arranged, the destruction of Venice, to begin with a sudden, surprised cry of “Iris!” in the night, and then, behold! two cars would sweep through the silent streets into the heart of the dark forest of London, even to Napier’s small toy house in Brompton Square. Oh, how clearly one could see them, hear them, those friends of long ago. Clear to see they were, fumbling with their lives in the darkness of all life, most emphatically not talking of love, most emphatically being old friends. Clear to see, those two, Napier and Iris, the ancient friends. Maybe, to make chance more sure and flesh more weak, which is a jesting habit of the fallen archangel’s, they had been in love long ago and had been unhappy and had parted. The queer death of Boy Fenwick would have come between a boy and girl love, and across the wide gulf that separates a young man of consequence from a lady of pleasure they would not have seen each other for a long time. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.” And one might hear Napier that night, not this love-lost thing, but the favourite of the gods, happy on the wings of an ancient friendship, pulling at Iris’s arm to persuade her out of her car: “Iris, come in for a moment. Oh, come along, Iris! I know how fond you are of a nice glass of cold water, and I have some of the most superior cold water in London. What? And we’ll never have another chance to talk again....” And Iris, Iris of the lament for a child! Iris had lit a flame and was like to be burnt to death in the coldfires of that flame. Iris had lit a flame, and the flames that Iris lit seemed quenchable only by death. Boy and Iris. Hector and Iris. Napier and Iris. But Napier could not die, favoured of the gods. Iris could not die, “for the Marches are never let off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death.
The lay-sister had gone into the other room, which must have been a sort of kitchen, and Napier had taken her chair. He sat there, shadowed with whiteness, scowling into the black tin box.
“I see,” I said. “Of course....” I made him take the letter back, and suddenly he looked up at me intently. He’d find out something, he would.
“She is dying, isn’t she? You’re certain yourself, aren’t you? What?”
“The doctor should be in in a moment, and you can ask him. No, I don’t think she’s dying. My sister had the same sort of thing, and she’s dancing at the moment—”
“Same sort of—what thing, then? What?”
Agaffe, afaux pas, a bloomer! He scowled up at me, blackly intent....
“Ptomaine poisoning,” I said.
“Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God! What? Poison....”
He stared at the letter which I had put into his hand. He turned it about, and seemed to think profoundly. “You see,” he muttered, “it’s all wrong, this. All wrong. What?”
I wasn’t cast for a moralist. What I said, very uncomfortably, was: “Well....”
“All this messing about,” Napier scowled at the letter. Then he looked at me, darkly, helplessly.
“Get let in for things,” he said.
“Difficult,” I said. “I know....”
“God, isn’t it! Difficult.... What? I mean, when you want to be ... well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to write, never to meet.... Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t, when you come to think of it, any other waytolive....”
“Guy says that....”
“Guy? Yes, but ... need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped out by approach of death.... What? I mean, lonely for her here.... Told me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What? And then I find her in this hole....”
He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping letters ... travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter ... just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died ... suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter. For Venice....
“Napier,” I said.
He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong.
“I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?”
“Napier,” I said, “give me that letter....”
“Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette....”
A tiny smile fluttered round the thin quivering lips. “There’s no end to it,” he whispered, “is there? Once you begin. The nasty precautions....”
He struck a match, and the flame lit the ruin in his dark, fevered eyes. “You can’t,” he said, “have anything cleaner than love. You can’t. This love, anyway. Clean ... clean as the Virgin Mary. And then ... you’re dogged by dirt. You think fine things, fine sacrifices ... and you’re dirty as all Sodom and Gomorrah. All this nastiness round a thing, all this messing about....”
It was as the letter burnt in his hand and fluttered, just like a hurt crow, to the floor, while he watched it with intent seriousness, that I heard a step by the door in the other room. To see Conrad Masters alone, I hurried towards it. There he was, tired, worried-looking, his sharp features sticking like a great bird’s out of that rough brown coat.
“Bad,” he muttered. “Can’t do more. She’s conscious, too. And doesn’t give a damn. Not a damn. I told her you were here, and she said‘Nice’ to that, but didn’t seem to think you were worth living for. Need a miracle now.... ‘Nice!’”
“But, good God,” I said, “we’ve got a miracle here! He’s a bit mad, but miracle is his second name....”
“And what’s his first?” Masters snapped.
“Harpenden....”
“First name, Christian name,” said Masters wearily. “Napier, by any chance?”
“You’re right,” said Masters. A decidedly undecided man? Why, he radiated resolution: and a lean sort of mirth. “Never know your luck,” he said. “Not in this world....” I just managed to catch him by the coat as he plunged towards the other room, in which one could make out the tail of Napier’s coat. “Masters,” I whispered, “I went and told him it was ptomaine poisoning....”
“Good,” said Masters. Those gentle worried eyes with the faintly amused look. “That’s all right,” he smiled. “Young ass.”
There sat Napier, a lost man....
“Come along,” Masters jabbed at him. “Come along, man! Waive introduction. Life and death....”
Napier jumped up. Masters looked almost fresh and boyish beside him. A captain of men, that was Conrad Masters.
“I say,” Napier said....
“Look here,” said Masters, “I’m taking you in to cheer her up. Might make all the difference. Just might....”
Napier tried to smile. Oh, he tried.
“But, doctor,” he said. “Is she ... going?”
“She wants to go, that’s the trouble. Any one would think,” snapped that captain of men, “that I was committing a felony in trying to keep her alive. By the way she looks at me. You’ve got to cheer her up, Mr. eh....”
“Captain Harpenden,” I said.
“You’ve got to make her care whether she lives or dies. That’s your business, Captain Harpenden. I’ll give you five minutes to do it in....” Napier looked from him to me. He scowled immensely.
“I’ll go out to Venice,” I said, but I don’t suppose that Napier, passing me, heard a word. Conrad Masters stayed a second. Gone was the captain of men. He looked terribly worried....
“I say, want to play bridge?”
“Bridge!” I said. “Bridge? Bridge!”
He looked terribly worried....
“Well, my wife wants—Oh, wait till I’m back! I’ll drop you anyway.” And he was off, his brown coat flouncing peevishly. Through the open door I could see Napier, his coat open, everything about him open, standing in what looked like a wide courtyard....
“Mais quelle belle silhouette!” chattered the old nun. “Le vrai type brun anglais. Mais c’est naturel qu’il soit fou avec ces yeux là....”
Napier and Conrad Masters walked across the courtyard towards a tall red-looking building. Its door was pointed like a church door, and windows here and there were alight. Through one of them a nun was looking at me. On the sill outside thelargest window of all, which was not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.
After that chill, stuffy lodge the night was like a kiss. The dark shapes of Masters’s Renault and Napier’s taxi faced each other, their dimmed lamps lighting only the darkness. The chauffeur of the Renault looked to be asleep at the wheel. I hoped Venice was asleep, too. The driver of the taxi was nowhere to be seen, and stealthily I was approaching the dark shape of the taxi, mentally communicating to Venice that it would be only decent of her to be asleep, when the taxi-driver emerged from the malodorous shape of thelavabo. “Elle dorme, je crois,” the fool shouted at the top of his voice, and I bolted into the capacious Renault.
“Sorry to wake you,” came the mutter of Conrad Masters from the open door. “Where are you staying?”
Through the front window I saw the door of the taxi close. Napier would tell Venice he had seen me, and she would be surprised I had not spoken with her. “You were asleep,” Napier would say, but she would still be surprised....
“Look here,” Masters said persuasively, one foot on the footboard, “why not come to my place for a while? Come along, it won’t kill you. A night-hawk like you. My wife has a party of some sort. Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans....”
Dancing, bridge, Parisian-Americans! The end of a perfect day....
“It’s another form of septic poisoning,” I pleaded. “Take me to the Westminster, Masters, and let me sleep. And you’d better get a room there as well and spend the night in peace....”
The taxi in front of us bumped and rattled away. Masters muttered wearily: “Well, I will probably have to take a hand if you don’t. Most of ’em dance, but I left three bridge maniacs stranded to come on here. They stay up to all hours, the blighters....”
Smoothly the Renault picked its way among the pits and chasms of the fearful boulevards of outer Paris. “Their last chance of ever being mended,” Masters muttered, “went when the Germans lost the war....”
“All right,” I said sulkily, “I’ll come. Bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans.... What a monstrous life you lead, Masters. But what about that miracle?”
“Can’t tell,” he muttered. “Can’t tell. Seemed bucked up a bit, of course. Took notice, recognised him, and that’s something. But you can’t tell....”
“She’ll live,” I said.
“I’m glad you’re so certain,” snapped the captain of men. “I’m so little certain that I put that young man on his honour to look round again to-morrow afternoon.”
“On his honour!” I said. “On his honour?”
“What’s the matter with his honour? Looks all right to me....”
“But he’s going South in the morning!”
“He mustn’t go!” snapped Masters. “That’ll be your job. We must give her one more chance ... one morepiqure. It’s essential that he shouldn’t go to-morrow. You must prevent him.”
“I’ll try,” I said “But....”
“But surely he won’twantto go!”
“Oh,hewon’t want to go....”
Masters stared at me thoughtfully. “Um,” he said. “Um.”
“Of course,” I said, “you never know....”
“Well,” said Masters, “now she’s seen him once she’ll expect to see him again. It’s only natural.”
“Of course,” I said. “Naturally....”
Smoothly ran the Renault with the scarlet wheels. The black lion found in us no little Citroën, cowered before us, slunk back into the jungle of nameless boulevards. Montparnasse showed lights to hold us, faces in cafés, singing groups of young men, little flashing women with lots of hair like dyed haloes. Artists. Swiftly we fled through the darkness, the stillness, the deep shadows of the phantom fortress of the Faubourg Saint-Germain, away we went from theancien régime, thehaute noblesse, across the river to thenouveau régime, thenoblesse, down the stately slope of the Avenue Hoche into the sweet valley of the Parc Monceau, where lived the dashing Mrs. Conrad Masters, with bridge, dancing, Parisian-Americans....
“You can’t,” that man muttered, “expect her to be reasonable....”
“No,” I said, “I suppose not....”
“Nice!” snapped Masters “Good God, ‘nice’!”
FAT white clouds hurried over the pale blue roof of the rue de la Paix. Spring, the first day before the first day of spring, the day that is not spring but is a voice of spring crying in the wilderness of the chilly heavens: “Here is spring, and lo! these are the clouds of winter fleeing before her, white as polar bears, and as stupid. Enjoy, enjoyle printemps!” Anxious the fat white clouds seemed, most anxious, hurrying from the vanities of the rue de la Paix towards the Cathedral of Our Lady, that they might pray, the poor clouds who know not that the pagan gods are dead, the poor clouds, who love the winter, against the return of Persephone from the arms of Plutus. The stormy brittle sunlight, eager to play with the pearls and diamonds of Van Cleef, Lacloche and Cartier, aye, and of Tecla also, chided away the fat white clouds, and now the sun would play with one window of the rue de la Paix, now with another, mortifying one, teasing another, but all in a very handsome way.
Early the next morning it was when I found myself looking upon these mighty diversions, but I had so much rather been asleep. My bedroom looked down on these things, but unfortunately not from a great height, for they are not tall, the hotels of Paris; and men are sent round the streetsof Paris first thing in the morning, to the end that people may not fail to be aware of the beauty of shuttered shops, some of these men being directed to push along enormous tin barrels with which to make acarmagnoleof dust, whilst others are placed on ancient taxi-cabs with especially adjusted gears and magnified horn-power. There is no peace in the world, that is what it is. There is no peace in Paris.
I lay in bed, staring through the lace curtains. What had happened, what were the alarums and excursions of that grey day yesterday, which had leapt at me from the darkness as I made to return to England after four months of pleasant wandering? Iris was ill unto death, Napier was enchanted....
Men, some in shirt-sleeves, were taking down the heavy, grey, burglar-proof shutters of the shops opposite. Set in the small windows above the shops, the modistes’ assistants seemed to be talking and talking. Some had hats in their nimble hands, some other things. It is pleasant, maybe it is the only pleasant pastime that does not ever pall, to see and not be seen. And now the shop windows began one and all to glitter in the stormy brittle sunlight which transmuted the pearls and diamonds on yellow velvet into celestial jewels fit to adorn the crown of the wordprintemps, than which there is not a more beautiful word in all the languages of the world. In the great window ofEdouard Apel et Cie., whence in the long ago had come to this person such polite but manly notepaper, stood richly white and coloured papers, boxes of lacquer, ebony, and cedarwood, flaming quills and great cut-glass bottles for ink, and many another devise to make one realise how pleasant writing must be for those who do not have to write. Before a shop not far from Tecla’s which displayed the most charming baubles of all and completely deceived the sun, two short dark Semitic men and a lanky Semitic youth were having some difficulty with their shutters. The shutters did not look new, far from new, but maybe, I thought, a new burglar-proof arrangement has been wrought on them, and that would be causing the difficulty. The traffic had as yet but caressed the rue de la Paix, and through the open window one might hear the rising anger of the two short Semitic men with the lanky Semitic youth, an anger which seemed to call for and to attain a cuneiform language. Then a fourth man, also in shirt-sleeves, came out of the shop, a patriarchal mountain of a man with a great black beard and a mighty nose, who might that very moment have come from a breakfast of dates in a tent over against Ur of the Chaldees, and instantly I knew him for what he was, a millionaire. Many were the race-horses he owned, and often you would see him at Longchamps, talking to a beautiful woman in a deep voice about himself, for that was a vain and terrible man, and the worst of it was that he was always right about everything, whether it was a horse, a jewel, a woman, an antique, or the fall of a card. With one look of his eye he scattered the two short Semites and the lanky Semitic youth, who were his two brothers and his son, who were also millionaires, and in a trice he had those shutters off that window, and lo! there, royally alone against terraces of dingy green velvet, sat a brown Buddha with what looked like the largest emerald in the world in the middle of his forehead, but maybe it was only the second largest. The last time I had been in Paris there had been a golden chair in that window, golden arms and legs and back and sit-piece and all, and so it was no wonder that that man owned race-horses and said “Banquo!” to half-a-million francs while yawning, and rightly, for he always won, as I know to my cost. And one night he had come into the rooms at Cannes with a great ruby on his finger. Only he would, of course, but apart from the ethics of the thing it was an amazing ruby, crimson as blood and clear as a glass of Burgundy. “But what a stone!” cried Billee Ponthéveque, acocottewho sat at the table losing all the money that she earned by breaking every Commandment but one, for she adored her father and mother and never failed to put aside for them as much as she gave in tips to thecroupiers; but she never saw her parents, she would say, because of a funny idea they had that it was bad for her health to take cocaine on an empty stomach. “Yes, it is flawless,” said the deep voice of that terrible man, shouting “Banquo!” as an after-thought to some poor devil who thought he was going to get away unchallenged with fifty thousand francs. “You can have it, child. Here you are.” But Billee Ponthéveque had always a sense of the proprieties, and so, as the saying is among the vulgar, she damned his blasted cheek for offering her sovaluable a present in public, but he said that made no matter, for it was just because the ruby was flawless that it was quite valueless. “If only it had the smallest flaw,” he boomed, “it would be beyond price, for any one can counterfeit a flawless ruby so that no expert can tell it from the original....”
“De la par de Madame Arpenden,” said a voice, and after the passage of curses and catcalls which are peculiar to the telephones of Paris, I heard Venice’s voice.
“Venice! Venice!”
“That will do,” she said. “Oh, that will do from you, thanks very much. Naps told me he saw you last night in that odd place, but did I see you?”
“You were asleep, Venice! But I am so glad to hear your voice after all these months, you wouldn’t believe how glad. Venice, how are you?”
“I can’t tell you now, I have to buy things. Listen, child, will you give me lunch to-day? Naps is busy for lunch. Listen, you must give me lunch to-day. I hate Paris.”
“But Napier told me you were going South to-day!”
“Oh, Naps is mad!” A boyish voice, a very boyish voice Venice had, even on a telephone in Paris. “Not dangerously mad, but just mad. I never knew such a silly, one can’t ever arrange anything beforehand with him. We are going by the evening train now, though we had everything booked for the one this morning. Listen, are you going to give me lunch? Oh that’s a dear. About one, here at the Meurice....”
“Venice!” I called, but she was gone, and I could see her striding intently through the sombre halls of the Meurice, lovely Venice, like sunlight, just like English sunlight. And keeping my mind to sunlight, and avoiding all thoughts of death and dark enchantment, I said to myself that I would stay in Paris now that I was in Paris, rather than return to London, for over London lay a memorable fog, so said the ContinentalDaily Mail, as also it said Hats Off To France, the guileless thing....
“De la par du Docteur Mastaire,” said the telephone this time, and there was that captain of men muttering, as he had promised he would in return for my playing bridge till all hours for his sake, that there was little change in Iris, but what little was for the better rather than for the worse. “But don’t go thinking,” said he sharply enough, “that she’s nearly out of the wood yet, because she isn’t. And, by the way, she seems to want to see you, but remember that you’ll do her the worst turn you can if you let that boy leave Paris to-day.”
“Yes, but,” I said, but I spoke only to the roar of the Parisian scene, and I thought: “Oh, well! He isn’t going till the evening anyhow.” And, still keeping my mind from dwelling on death and dark enchantments, I renewed my decision to stay in Paris a while, no matter how bitterly my sister might inveigh against me for letting her return to England unaccompanied. By now the rue de la Paix was languishing brilliantly in the stormy sunlight, and from my bath I could glimpse the cars lounging up and downand women walking swiftly by, intent on errands of the greatest importance and looking as attractive as only women can look when they are not thinking of men, while Englishmen and Americans walked seriously toward the chairs on the boulevards that they had read about in Nash’s Magazine. Then my sister’s car passed by towards the Place de l’Opera, and she sitting forward with an air of moment, the ferrule of her parasol poised above the shoulder of the chauffeur, poor Mr. Hebblethwaite, who hated the French so! “I will tell her,” I said, “that I am regrettably detained in Paris owing to the call of my art, my Work, for I have just thought of a tale about a man who would not dance with his wife, and would you have me, I will put to her frankly, write a tale like that in a London fog?”
And it was while debating with myself over this silly fancy about a man who would not dance with his wife, for some good reason that I would no doubt hit upon in due course, and while congratulating myself that I had throughout the morning successfully avoided thinking of any of my friends’ troubles, that I passed through the soft-carpeted and sombre halls of the Meurice, towards Venice, towards Venice, where she sat in a deep chair behind a paper, while in deep chairs all around sat people drinking cocktails and talking in low voices. All people talk in low voices when in the Meurice, and that, I dare venture to say, is one of the amenities peculiar to the Meurice among the hotels of all the world; but that is as it may be.
Venice was in high looks that day, Venice was all of a glitter, and that was because, she said at first, of this and that. But we had no sooner passed through the glass doors into the restaurant than she said, she almost cried, that something marvellous had happened just a moment before. “What do you think?” she dared me to guess, and when I said that I thought I would have some oysters she said she was too excited to eat anything, but might she have some ham and a glass of lager beer?
Venice hadn’t met my sister but once or twice, but they had met again that morning in some shop or other, “and I was complaining bitterly,” said Venice, “about Napier, how he made a perfect jumble of everything by never knowing his own mind for two minutes running, and how we couldn’t now find any sleepers in to-night’s train—when she offered to lend us her car to take us to Monte Carlo! She couldn’t bear the sight of it, she said, for another week at least, and that gives us plenty of time to get there and send it back, doesn’t it? Now fancy your having a sister like that!”
“And how is Napier?” I asked. “I only saw him for a moment....”
“I can tell you,” said Venice in a sudden sombre moment, “that I’m not a bit sorry to be leaving Paris as quick as quick. Naps has been working awfully hard lately, and here we come away for a holiday and the first thing he does isto go off the deep end about this old friend of his being ill.”
“Well, she is rather ill,” I said.
“Yes, I’m awfully sorry, really I am. I’ve never met her, but I saw her once, one night at the Loyalty just before my——”
“Yes, I remember, Venice.”
“And I thought she was the most lovely woman I’d ever seen, and rather sad-looking, which made her lovelier than ever. She’d be sad, I suppose, because of her two husbands and the things people say about her; for they do say some things, don’t they?”
“They!They, Venice, will say anything....”
“Yes, of course, but you know what I mean. And Naps, you see, can’t bear any one to be ill and miserable, and I’m sure he’s got an idea that Mrs. Storm is lonely up there, but really, I think, he might consider himself a little, don’t you? And so I ordered the car at three o’clock this afternoon, and off we’ll go. He’ll be surprised when he gets here....”
“Yes,” I said, “I suppose he will.”
“Well,” said Venice, sticking out that Pollen jaw, “there’s no use in hanging about Paris, is there? And so I sent him a message to the Embassy, where he’s been all morning, to come as soon as he could and not worry about getting ‘sleepers.’ And as I’ve already had his things packed we can start off as soon as he’s here, which will be while we’re at coffee, I shouldn’t wonder.” That Pollen jaw! What, I wondered, was Venice thinking of when she stuck out that Pollen jaw like that? Maybe she had been disturbed byNapier’s white-thunder looks when they got back to the hotel last night and was wanting to get him to herself and normal as quickly as she could—and Provence, Oh, Provence! It is not every day that a girl can motor through Provence with her lover. Venice’s love was like a solid marble monument, and I said to myself that one should respect illness but also one should respect love, and so I held my peace.
Napier had not come by the time we had finished luncheon, and as we took two deep chairs in the corner of the lounge, where we would have coffee, Venice asked me if I knew anything about the psychology of men as regards children. When I had picked myself up I said that I would reserve my defence, laughing heartily the while, but now there was a cloud of thought over Venice’s mad-blue eyes, and she was ever so serious, a flat cigarette tortured between her full, pale, dry lips. Venice, you know, said she hated the taste of lip-salve; but, with no idea at all of ever doubting Venice’s word, one had noticed that it was only since her marriage that she had grown to hate it so consistently, and so it might be that Napier had made a face after kissing her one day, for it is the affectation of Englishmen to be tiresome about cosmetics, and if they are not tiresome about cosmetics they cannot be the right sort.
“Sugar?” I asked, and she nodded intently, her mad-blue eyes absorbed on a point of the thick carpet.
“How,” I said, “you will love Provence!”
“Listen,” she said sharply. Wise those eyeswere now, and steady as stars in a cavern, looking into me as though judging me, balancing life.
“Well?” I said, to get it over. But what could she know?
She made herself look unimportant. “Oh, it’s only,” she said, “that I can’t have a baby.” And she looked at me with a frantic smile, and because every second of her twenty-one years seemed to me to be in that frantic smile I did not know what on earth to say, saying: “You have probably been to some silly doctor——”
“I haven’t!” she whispered, so fiercely that an old gentleman nearby almost spilled his coffee.
“Hush, Venice!”
“But I haven’t been to any doctor——”
“Well, then,” said I wisely, “in that case, of course, I don’t see——”
“Oh, you don’t!” she whispered with her fine, savage impatience. “I tell you, my child, that I can’t—I just feel that I can’t, in my bones I feel it, that I’ll never, never, never!” And she put a cloud of smoke between us to make her smile look plausible, but through the smoke her eyes looked as though they were holding back a pain.
“Venice, darling,” I pleaded, “I’m not old enough to deal with an emergency like this. What you need is a man of Hilary’s years to turn you over and smack you and tell you that as long as you’re such a child you don’t deserve to have one——”
“I’m so miserable,” she said.
“But it’s absurd, Venice! I mean, it’s just nerves, you can’t possibly know——”
“Do you actually think,” she grabbed a cigarette fiercely from my case, “that I’ve got to go to some dud doctor and have him poking about all over me before I know what’sme! Of course I can know, and I do know, and it’s a shame, and I daren’t tell Napier....”
“You better hadn’t, on such insufficient evidence. I know what I’d do.”
“Darling, darling,darling! Tell me, do men love children? Really, really, I mean? Would Napier hate it if he knew that I was as barren as that old fig-tree——”
“Venice, how dare you let your nerves get the better of you like this! I’ve only got to be away from England for four months, and I find you in this silly state!”
“Oh, but answer my questions! Why is every one soawfulthese days! You see, I never know what’s going on in Napier’s mind, never! Do you think I would if he loved me?”
“‘If?’”I said. “‘If,’ Venice?” Was I now to defend Napier’s love for Venice? And then I found that she was looking at me with wide-open, motherly, amused eyes.
“You don’t actually think,” she almost laughed, “that I ever thought that Napier loved me?”
“Well, I have thought so,” I bravely admitted. “Certainly I have. It is quite usual.”
“But isn’t my gentleman friend stupid!” she suddenly giggled. “Of course, I know he loves me—as much as he can ever love any one. But that’s all, don’t you see....”
She stared at the wounded end of her poor cigarette, and lit another from my case, as thatwas handy. The number of cigarettes that girl smoked, and how she tortured them!
“You see,” she said, knitting together her golden eyebrows so that I should see, “Napier can’t love like other people—me, for instance, and perhaps you, though I’d have my doubts about you. I suppose people are born like that, and you’ve got to take it or leave it. Napier loves just as much as he can—which means that he’s willing, oh anxious, to do anything in the world for you—but you’re never quite sure what he’s thinking about while he’s doing it. See what I mean?”
“I try hard, Venice.”
“Yes. And so, you see, you’ve always got a feeling that he’s keeping something back in himself, something rather important, if you see what I mean, something you can’t get a grip on but that’s there tobegripped, that Napier would like to be gripped, if you see what I mean——”
“I’ll tell you what I see, Venice. I’ve seen it before, and so I recognise it——”
“But I don’t want to hear about your fancy friends! I want to talk about myself.”
“The matter is, Venice, that any woman in love with a reserved man will pass her spare time in ascribing stormy villainies to his secret nature, whereas generally the poor devil is——”
“Stormy villainies,” said Venice quietly, “is good.”
“Women,” I said largely, cursing myself, “are always making themselves miserable about what they don’t see in a man, as though what they did see wasn’t quite enough.”
The full dry lips ravaged the cigarette for a while. Then they said thoughtfully: “The other night we were dining at Fay Avalon’s, just a very few of us, and when some one said that Mrs. Storm was a nymphomaniac Napier went as white as death——”
“And what did the other guests do, Venice? It’s the least Napier could have done, as she’s an old friend of his.”
“Of course,” said Venice very calmly, looking into her cup as though for more coffee. “I don’t know her, or anything about her, except just what people say. And I’d never have known that Naps even knew her if I hadn’t seen him speak to her that night at the Loyalty. That was the night her brother died, wasn’t it? Napier had never mentioned her name before—nor since, if it comes to that, until last night, when he seemed so upset about her that after a while I upped and said he could go and take a room at the nursing-home if he liked——”
“Wasn’t that rather harsh, Venice? After all, he’s known her a very long time, and it upsets any one to see an old friend very ill.”
“Oh, I know, I know!” she said eagerly. “You mustn’t think I was jealous, but I suppose it just got on my nerves a bit, seeing that he’d never spoken about her before. And that’s why, you see,” she showed all her very white teeth in an utterly insincere smile. “I’m rather wretched about this idea of not having any children. Do listen,pleaselisten! Oh, why is every one so tiresome! I’m not talking about Mrs. Storm now, but about the Mrs. Storms of life. You see,they’ve got a lot more to give a chap than any one like me has—I mean to say, they knowhowto bring everything out of a man, how to make him a lover and all that—a real lover, I mean, a fire-and-ice, pits-and-mountains, sunlight-and-shadows, nice-and-nasty sort of lover, whereas people like Napier and me are just the same with each other as millions of other people, the men being pretty good duds at loving and the women even worse duds at being loved, if you see what I mean. Oh, I know! A man might be a just come-here-girl-oh-darling lover with one woman and then be a marvellous lover with another, just because, you see, she’d know how to make him be. Of course, with their experience....”
I sat there in that deep armchair, subdued by the thought of the awful helplessness of men and women to understand one another, and of the terrible thing it would be for some of them if ever they did understand one another, and how many opportunities the devil is always being given of making plunder out of decent people. Here was Venice groping blindly in the corridors of her love, looking for the one golden key which she couldn’t find among the treasures there displayed. For there were treasures there. Venice was quite certain, marvellously certain she was, that Napier loved her as much as he could ever love any one. Oh, but her love was quite big enough to cope with that nonsense of Napier’s! And, since the love of a good woman for a man is a compliment to all men, maybe I looked at her with understanding, for she gave me a sudden sharp smile, andsaid, quite calmly: “And so, you see, if I don’t have a baby soon I’ll bust.”
“Darling, darling,darling!” a low voice mocked behind us so that we started, and there above our deep chairs stood Napier, and I remember how he gave me one quick clear look, not in the least a conspiratorial look, but just a clear look, as though the last time he had seen me we had both faced a great danger; and between two men there can be no bond so faint and yet so binding as that which is forged of an understanding which is unmentionable between them; you may not like the bond, as I most sincerely did not like it, for it was Venice who was my friend, but there it is, a bond of invisible wire that cuts at the wrists of the mind.
Napier looked composed, but always the fever lurked in the dark eyes, always the dark eyes looked as though they were suffering from what neither you nor he could tell. That greyhound, sensitive and doubtful and poised ... for flight! And he somehow looked queerly festive in that sombre, conventional hall, with his faded I Zingari tie and the brown Shetland waistcoat which was for the most part unbuttoned.
“Oh, Naps, such a wonder!” cried Venice on the instant, and I saw what one is so apt to see after an intimate talk with a woman, that one has only been talking to a mood. Venice was in an instant as I had always seen her with Napier, impetuous, imperious, gay. “What do you think, Naps! I have got a car, a lovely car, swift and shining, and a man called Hebblethwaite for chauffeur. Now what do you think of that?”
“I think,” said Napier gravely, smiling at me, “that it must be an English car. And what do you intend doing about it? Driving in the Bois? What?”
“Driving in the Bois! Am I mad! My child, it’s his sister’s car, and she has lent it to us, and we are going South in it, that is what we are going to do. And I ordered Mr. Hebblethwaite at three, and I’ve had all your things packed, and I’ve settled the bill, so we can go right away.”
Napier stared at her—he was sitting now—and it was as though he had put his hand to his mouth and placed a smile there. It was a very charming, helpless smile. I said something to the effect that I must go now, but no one was taking any notice of me. Venice was saying, in a voice tangled with confusion, impatience, a sort of gaiety: “But, Naps, you don’t mean to say you want to stay still another night in this foul Paris, when we might be in the sun!”
Napier scowled, the smile still on his mouth. “Of course, I don’twant, but——”
“Oh, but, Naps, I’d like to go straight away, right away, as the Yankees say! And I thought we might have tea at Fontainebleau and I’d show you the place where I was at school....”
“Now look here,” Napier scowled, touching her knee with one finger, “I can’t quite do that, Venice. You see, I made a sort of promise to that doctor fellow that I would go and sit with Iris just for a while this afternoon——”
“Oh, I see,” said Venice. “Well, in that case....”
“Give her an idea—that’s what the doctorfellow said—that some of her friends care whether she lives or dies, for any one would be rather lonely up there. What? I went round for a minute this morning just to inquire, but I didn’t see her, as they said that——”
“I thought you were at the Embassy this morning,” Venice said, in a very natural voice: and she crushed out her cigarette on the marble top of the table, and she picked up her vanity-case.
“Yes, so I was,” Napier scowled; “but I just went round there for a minute——”
“Oo, what a long way to go for a minute!” sighed Venice. “When one can always telephone....” And she rose from her chair. Somehow an immense new dignity had suddenly come on Venice. Napier rose, facing her, smiling under his scowl, as though she had made a joke. I rose, saying that I must be going.
“As a matter of fact,” said Venice brightly, “as I knew you were so worried about her I rang up that place this morning, and they told me she wasassez bien, if you see what I mean....”