“And I,” he said, emptying his glass, “will now go upstairs to ask her to dance with me.”
“Telling her, please,” Ivor seriously detained him, and drew a deep breath, “that her unknown voice was much appreciated and its absence deeply regretted, even during a conversation with yourself.”
“Quite,” said Trevor sombrely. “But, on the other hand, the action of eggs on the liver has given rise to endless discussion.”
It was as Gerald Trevor reached the head of the stairs leading to the ballroom that he saw Magdalen Gray coming down the flight above, with Rodney West. Her dress, he thought, is of the colour of crushed orchids: it would be ... something just a bit rank....
“Magdalen!” he greeted her from below; “the psychological moment has now come for you and me to take the floor together.”
“And Gerald!” the light voice said gaily; “they’re just beginning a lovely waltz with a beard on it, to suit and soothe the dignity of your years....”
And Rodney West, his sharp and legal face more than ever sharp and legal at this smooth buccaneering and smooth surrendering, continued his now solitary way down the crowded stairs. Interruptions did not intrude uponhim, not even in the most crowded places. He was a man set apart, the little smile that was crucified on his thin, handsome face set him apart, and rather grimly. Rodney West was one of those “darkish men with intelligent gestures” who are attractive to connoisseurs among women. It was Mrs. Gray who had so described him—and herself.
Dancing, Ivor thought, must be altogether a winter-sport, for it’s certainly too hot for it now. And eventually, after a glance into the ballroom, where he could not see Trevor and partner, he came upon the bunch of young people who centred mainly round Lois Lamprey and Virginia Tracy: both young and cool and remote, and ever so faintly contemptuous of those whom their carelessness about things might shock. They were so untouchable by people to whom they were indifferent—people are “awful,” they said—that their amorous reputations amazed one. (It amazed them, too. It was so untrue, really.) Lady Lois Lamprey was in particularly good looks to-night, in a Byzantine sort of dress of beaten gold that vividly brought out the sheen of her dark silken hair, coils and coils of dark silken hair, like a lustrous black decoration for the white oval of her face and the curiously blue weapons which were given to her for eyes. And Virginia Tracy, golden-white Virginia, her small face as grave as a Persian kitten’s—for she was very young and resented things—was dressed severely in black....
“So that,” she said surprisingly, viciously, to Ivor, who had just come upon them and remarked upon its dark severity, “I can dance with you, black Ivor Marlay, if you should happen to ask me.”
That swift, breathless little voice of Virginia’s—so pregnant, somehow!
“Virginia has got acrise,” Lois Lamprey commented into some one’s ear, very softly. Lois always commented on Virginia like that, very softly, and without emotion. Lois gave it to be clearly understood that she kept emotion for emotional moments. Watch the Lady Lois! For she will be a power in the land, in the land where she is already a legend, by reason of her great beauty, her birth, her wit, her various talents, and the facility for dexterous publicity which has always beenvouchsafed to the Lamprey women. She will be the contriver of her own destiny, so watch her, it will be quite interesting. There is no snob like the well-born snob: Mr. E. F. Benson said that, and he knows about those things. The Lady Lois will get on, but not obviously, she will climb to the ultimate pinnacles of the world’s last aristocracy. Men will call her anallumeuse, but men give many different names to their disappointments. She will have no enemies, but most of her friends will dislike her. Only two weaknesses has Lady Lois of the silken black hair and the curious eyes that seem to see things a long way off and to laugh at things close-to—she is mean with money, and she is partial to a glass or so of wine between meals. But her complexion can stand that, for a thing to wonder at is her complexion. “Ah, ce type anglais!” Nothing in the world can beat it, even though it does sometimes dress atrociously.... Now Virginia was quite, quite different from Lois; though people didn’t realise that for quite a long time.
There was antagonism between Virginia Tracy and Ivor Marlay. There always is antagonism between some one and some one else at a party of the intimate sort. In this case it had something to do with Virginia’s lack of manners and Ivor’s lack of servility, but how were they to know that?
“I’ve asked you to dance so often, and so often been snubbed,” Ivor said, rather too quietly maybe. The formality, the “rightness,” of his manner always irritated Virginia into an impatient shrug. And, in this mood of hers, her blue eyes glittered just a little, dangerously.
Now in the furrow of Virginia Tracy’s little chin, and an inconsiderable little chin it was for a beautiful young lady, lay a tiny brown spot, which Ivor sometimes found very irritating....
It was as though the room seemed suddenly to be going rotten with silence. No one quite knew why—and Virginia and Ivor were the most nonchalant amongthem. The silence was made more than ever tangible by one Kerrison saying:—
“But Marlay’s not severe, Virginia! He’s a rakish and raffish young man.” But, as usual with Mr. Kerrison, the insolence was in the words rather than the manner, which was ingratiating. Mr. Kerrison was an intellectual architect of a certain reputation and a remarkably anæmic exterior. Kerrison just slops about, people said. He disliked Ivor Marlay because Ivor Marlay had once seen him powdering his nose in a lavatory, because he knew Lois liked him, and because he suspected Virginia of being deeper than her antagonisms....
“He’s suffering,” Virginia said quietly, “from silence. The kind of silence that knows the answer to every question!” Thus were the sayings of the polite and amiable M. Stutz retailed by “My Customers!”
“In the meanwhile,” Ivor was bored enough to say, “whydon’twe dance? Or are we not talking about that now?” That manner of his, when irritated, was certainly irritating. You could not like Ivor when he did not like you. He somehow wouldn’t let you. The more he was in the right the less you could like him.
Virginia shook her head, as though a little absent, a little bored; and said something in a low tone to Mr. Kerrison beside her, so that he laughed.... It really was very stupid, all this. Every one was aware of that, and of Ivor Marlay. Everything had been so charming and inconsequent until he had come in—darkly, so as to provoke Virginia, it seemed!—and now everything was pointed and personal. As everything always was when those two met in a room—the atmosphere somehow grew a point, even at the Mont Agel, most difficult of all places in which to be anything but inconsequent! Any one else but Ivor Marlay would have answered Virginia’s first remark in some human sort of way, with a jeer or a laugh or a cry or a grab—but Marlay must go and say the “right” thing, which any fool might know was the wrong thing to say to Virginia.
Ivor Marlay, feeling acutely that he was “out of all this,” just waited for someone to say something. He was damned ifhewas going to be “put out” by this sort of childishness. And his eyes faintly appealed to Lois Lamprey: who liked him—for she had an instinct about people who might get on—and had watched the little comedy as she watched every comedy, including her own, with lazy intentness. Lois was twenty-five, two years older than Virginia, and it was said that she was morebalancedthan Virginia.
“Every one is being very typical to-night,” Lois vaguely said, in her deep, soft voice.
“A ballroom,” she said, “is not the place for dancing in, anyway. One should only dance in meadows and green places....”
(It was at that time the fashion to make idiotic remarks in a dogmatic voice. It rather impressed some people.)
“And one should only dance towards the moon and back,” bubbled Pretty Leyton, who couldn’t dance at all. (Thank God that’s over, Ivor thought.) Pretty Leyton always bubbled over like that—and, in bubbling, simply adored you! His business in life was to be an optimist and celibate, and his pleasure in life was to encourage and edit young men’s poetry, dead or alive; and in that the war was to give him his wonderful chance, which he wonderfully took. The poetry Pretty Leyton discovered was often very good, for his was a delicate and conservative taste; but it would have been easier to appreciate the good if one could only have discovered it among the bad, for his was also a delicate and kindly nature. While as for the young poets, of whom many called and all were chosen, he was continually begging his women friends, particularly Lois and Virginia, not to be “toocruel” to them, for they were so sensitive and worth-while. To see and speak to Pretty Leyton in a crowded room was really very comforting, sometimes—which was just as well, since he was always in every room that happened to becrowded, saying: “Isn’t it a marvellous party?” He was so intensely “happy” to be everywhere, people were “so wonderful.” ... And, at some hour or other, in whatever room or company or city you might be in, you would surely espy coming towards you the high, extended waving hand, the swaying shoulder, the mobile eyebrows, the restless hindquarters and the dainty step of Pretty Leyton. And he would be charming, always charming. He gave all his women friends beautifully bound copies ofTristram Shandy, which he said wasthe onlybook.
The rest of the circle, innermost of all the young circles of that time and symbolic in the best way of them all, comprised that London “of waiting for the lamps to be lit or of hoping the lamps will never be lit, of waiting for the sun to rise or of hoping the sun will never rise,” as Virginia had said once. Little knowing, Virginia, that the sun was risen so brilliantly on your friends the sooner and more tragically to set....
It was the London of Whitehall, Chelsea, Mayfair, Cambridge, Bloomsbury, Downing Street, Oxford, and the Mont Agel—but of course the Mont Agel! The London of those new young men and women, but mainly young men, who in those few years before the war suddenly confronted and conquered it with a new and vivid charm, now never to be forgotten. They, even more acutely than the Russian Ballet, were the social success of that time, in a new and brilliant way. They were so immediately likeable, so fine! A new kind of young men they were entirely, these few from the Universities, and much less “provincial” than new young men had ever been before. They, just then beginning life, were much less provincial than those who were ending life. They were not good Londoners: for they were good Europeans. They were clean and intricate and pagan, and they were quick to believe in fine things; and they could both drink and think. In everything they were a denial of their fathers, for these young men were sceptical of generalisations:in everything they were a denial of the catchwords for which they were to fight; and in everything they were the finest expression of the paralytic civilisation for which they were to die. Vulgarity of thought was to them the abomination of abominations; and they died because of it. They were to go out to fight in a war for chivalry, and they were to die in a morass of spite.
And these young giants were friends to Lois Lamprey and Virginia Tracy, and often with them—too often, people said. And Lois was conscious of their beauty and her power over them, but Virginia was conscious only of liking them immensely. She loved one and then another, seldom alone but always in a crowd. She was swept magically off her feet, gaily, profoundly, almost impersonally; for Virginia was very much of them in spirit and in endeavour, and she, like them, for all the gaiety and publicity of their lives—for London loved these young men of destiny—had secret places in her being where she could think and strive impersonally—with what Lois could decide in one cunning, physical moment!
Great heights were reached in that swift circle of young people, and deep abysses plumbed. They were the new soldiers of fortune, Lois and Virginia and their laughing men. They intoxicated each other into brilliance, and often into truth. They were much more intoxicating to each other than was the wine which rumour so abundantly uncorked for them.
And, on a day seven years or so later, Virginia asked Ivor:—
“Why, just why, have they all gone, so utterly? Of that roomful of people at the Hallidays’ that night, the last night that I ever saw you there, there’s nothing left but the scum—except just you, who weren’t of them at all. There simply isn’t one of them left, Ivor——”
“And not only that,” he said. “But there is nothingofthem left. The war killed them, and thenPretty Leyton and the Press killed them even more effectually, by making of them idols of prose and poetry and good looks. And they made idols of them in their own precious image and to suit their own precious ideals, ‘wonderful’ and ‘inspired.’ What was so splendid about them was that they were not inspired: they were thoughtful....”
For the giants had now become little books, a tragic and inevitable fate that often overtakes giants. They, who had never scattered themselves, were now scattered everywhere on the wings of their chance verses and chance letters; and there were Prefaces to bring them near in death who had been so rarely distant in life.
“It isn’t fair,” Virginia sombrely said, “to judge them by what they wrote, even if they had wanted to be judged by that. They’ve made brilliant and gallant poets out of men whose reality was idealism. Their reality was a fierce and gay idealism, Ivor, and poetry and gallantry were only afterthoughts with them....”
It was a lazy afternoon in Paris, and they were in the garden of a studio on the Butte, a garden overlooking Paris from the Mont Valérien to the Lion de Belfort.
“Youth isn’t made of definite things like prose and poetry,” Virginia said. “It’s made of everything. It’s a subtle and versatile thing, I do think, with lovely lapses into carelessness.”
“And besides!” she suddenly said. “Every one forgets the main ingredient of the souls of fine, eager men. Like the Crusaders, you know. It used to be called the Holy Ghost, but there’s no name for it now....”
But that was the Virginia and the Ivor Marlay of more than seven years later, a man and a woman of thirty, who have come intruding into the Halliday room of that night in 1912: ghosts of serious mien, to relive again their brutal young intolerances of that time.... For Ivor Marlay, now too close to reality to separate the chaff from it, was to-night deciding that “all this” was distasteful to him. The fault was allhis, he felt certain. He admired so much in them, and especially the way in which all the desires of their fathers were melted into cheap baubles by the magic of their laughter, which held in it so little superiority and so much conviction. And, admiring all that, he yet found it all distasteful, it seemed so, well, gutless and bloodless, it seemed, somehow, to carry its own rot within it—and as he thought that his eyes fixed on Mr. Kerrison and Pretty Leyton, the one white-faced and thin and limp and little-eyed, the other bubbling and fantastic. Ivor could not see them then as he later grew to see them, that such men are inevitably part of the wonderful comedy of cities. He saw them, and men like them, in a devilish light, he loathed them; and he despised those who suffered them....
Mr. Kerrison was sitting beside Virginia on a window-seat, vigorously talking. He was answering something she had asked, and through the smoke Ivor could see the interest on her face. Mr. Kerrison somehow held that lovely golden creature’s confidence, and Ivor thought: her confidence is wrapped away in him as in the folds of a jelly-fish. Semiramis was the first woman to invent eunuchs, and women have had sympathy for them ever since; for all Kerrisons are eunuchs, large and shining and secretive eunuchs with minutely clever little minds ... and women can tell them what they can’t tell other men. And Ivor, suddenly cheered by laughing at his absurd platitudes, and finding himself by the door, was going from the room.
“You are stealing away!” a voice from behind caught him sharply in the doorway.
“But, Virginia, you are always suspecting me of underhand things!”
“That may be because you never seem to be yourself, never genuine, Ivor,” she said. “You seem always to be straining at a leash, straining but never springing....”
“The devil!” he laughed at her. “You haven’t given me much chance of springing one way or the other, Virginia....” But Virginia looked suddenly very tired indeed.
“Oh, dear!” she sighed childishly. “How trivial we are about trivial things, aren’t we? instead of being grand and indifferent about them, as we like to think we are....” And she smiled quickly, and her smile was like a Red Indian’s, it came and left untouched the gravity of her face.
“You remind me of fire,” said Ivor suddenly, softly. “And fire is a glorious thing because it devours uncleanness yet remains clean. I read that in a funny old book about a great actress, but it somehow applies to you, Virginia....”
She was looking at him gravely, and she said nothing, so that he was ashamed of his affectation. He wasn’t genuine, she had said....
“Will we be friends, then?” she asked simply, out of the silence. She was like an earnest child.
“Please, Virginia.”
And she turned and left him swiftly, as was her way. Thus Virginia always left people and rooms, very suddenly and swiftly, as though she were moved to do so by a purpose that was almost mystic. For hers was not a languid queenliness; she walked always as though she were alone and unwatched and on a hidden quest—and, surely, any quest Virginia might follow would be a secret one, for Virginia was secret, she never confided. And she had such queerly little consciousness of her looks that you could take your fill of staring as she sat or walked, and not offend. You could admire the little fair face that topped the slim height of her figure with that quality peculiar to English loveliness. Her figure and face, you would say, are somehow compact of the same grace and clean lines, the one goes perfectly with the other, whereas a Frenchwoman’s figure can give the lie to her face even as her dressmaker can give the lie to her figure. And, as Virginia so swiftly passed, you could not but marvel at the slim eleganceof her ankles, saying to yourself that Virginia had no visible means of support. But most of all you would admire the golden curls which tumbled, not wildly, down each side of her face, while the golden hair from which they tumbled was drawn tightly back from her forehead as though grudging itself the waves that insisted on waving. Those gay and golden curls of Virginia’s! the merry companions of her face! They were her main interest in her appearance; she took the rest of herself for granted, as far as anysoignéewoman can—but she cared for her curls rigorously, and as often as she was in her room she combed and curled them: ever so swiftly, with a very little comb and a very little “iron,” the treasures of her toilet table. Now these amazing curls on each side of Virginia’s face were named, and their names were mighty in London. They were called “Swan and Edgar,” and never referred to by herself or her familiars but as “Swan and Edgar.” The curls were both alike to the naked eye, in curliness, in sheen and in goldiness, but the curl on the right was Swan and the curl on the left was Edgar—“reading from right to left, you see,” explained Virginia; and he was no familiar of Virginia’s who ever confounded their exact locality. “Swan and Edgar” were a source of endless trouble and annoyance to Virginia: sometimes the damp would affect them, and they would look so limp! and sometimes, damp or no damp, they would be disorderly, just when Virginia was trying to look her best, and she would almost cry with mortification. No matter where she might be, no matter at what party, if “Swan and Edgar” did not behave themselves Virginia would insist on taking them home—“a car, please,” she’d say to a young man—where she would very swiftly curl them anew, with that very little “iron”; and then she would return to the party, gaily, mysteriously. And oh, she was such a pretty girl!...
And Ivor Marlay, walking slowly down the stairs—that “slowness” of a man at a party who might ormight not be going home—thought of Virginia Tracy softly; he thought of Virginia in a whisper: how she had so abruptly stood before him and somehow revealed herself to him and somehow stripped him of his antagonism and affectation. Virginia, he thought, was mysteriously adequate to mysterious moments. And, suddenly, queerly, he was sorry for Virginia, alone in thatgalère—which he himself would never, never re-enter again. And he was sorry for Virginia....
And so, thinking of Virginia, he met Magdalen Gray.
Shewas borne to him, before he realised it, in the hubbub at the foot of the stairs, on the polished ship of Gerald Trevor’s introduction.
“He writes poetry and his mother makes birds’ nests”—that courtly gentleman was sketching an imaginary Ivor for her benefit.
“And he also dances,” grinned Ivor, responding to her secret smile—and plundering Trevor even as Trevor had plundered Rodney West.
Said Gerald Trevor to George Tarlyon, whom he met wandering downwards:—
“George, I ask you to observe that women are odd: if you restrain yourself, they resent it: and if you don’t restrain yourself, you bore them. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Treat ’em rough, old man. And so to bed,” yawned George Tarlyon, handsome Tarlyon. Much will come of that young man, it was said. And much indeed was to come of that young man, in the fullness of war and peace. He will meet Ivor Marlay; and he will laugh at him. And George Tarlyon had an eighteenth century kind of laugh: the casual, fearless, handsome Lord Tarlyon....
Itwas about three o’clock now; the ballroom looked a vast place in which three couples were entirely surrounded by parquet floor; and the band was become ecstatic with weariness and repetition. They sang and yelled and rolled their eyes, they crooned and cooned and beat their drums.
“Josh—ua! Josh—ua!Why don’t you call and see mamma?Josh—ua! Josh—ua!Nicer than lemon-squash you are!Yes, by gosh you are!Josh—u—a—a....”
“Josh—ua! Josh—ua!Why don’t you call and see mamma?Josh—ua! Josh—ua!Nicer than lemon-squash you are!Yes, by gosh you are!Josh—u—a—a....”
“Josh—ua! Josh—ua!Why don’t you call and see mamma?Josh—ua! Josh—ua!Nicer than lemon-squash you are!Yes, by gosh you are!Josh—u—a—a....”
Ivor and Magdalen Gray danced silently. For several minutes he was not conscious of her, but only of the pleasure of dancing with her. She was scarcely there at all, she moved so easily with him. She was so wonderfully there that she was scarcely there at all—which may sound silly, but is nevertheless a first principle to be learnt by all women who would be good dancers.
“I am liking this very much,” he said at last.
“I too!” the light voice said; but so seriously that it surprised him into looking for the first time at the face beside his shoulder; and he saw that, if indeed she was liking it, it must be in a very subtle way, for she looked sad and tired.
“Maybe you’d rather we didn’t dance?” he asked tentatively.
“Oh, no!” and the dark eyes were lifted to his inan almost comic protest; and they suddenly seemed to introduce herself to him. “I don’t wish to seem conceited, Mr. Marlay, but there are too many people waiting to see me home. I would have been safely in my bed an hour ago but that there were so many people to see me safely into it. But ifyouwould rather not dance——?”
“But this is my first to-night!” he protested.
“Although, of course,” she mocked him, “you have had your offers?”
“I’ve had one, anyway,” he seriously agreed. “Lovely she was, and a famous dancer—but I thought, you know, that I would like to begin and end my night with a woman of quality.” That made her smile a little smile. Courteous cheek....
They danced on silently, softly. Their feet played tricks to the beat of the tireless measure, that exquisitely asinine blare which is England’s punishment for having lost America.... This is the nicest thing that’s happened to me for a very long time, Ivor thought, taking pleasure in her movement and her looks. Her hair is trying to look black, he thought, but it’s really dark blue, like her eyes.
It was thick hair, soft and thick and Latin, and it was coiled softly about her ears in loose dark masses: a dark setting for her white face, which wasn’t technically beautiful, like Lois Lamprey’s and Virginia’s, but had all the inner meaning of beauty. Her mouth was large and very mobile, a tentative and adventurous mouth.... And all the time he was conscious that she was abstracted, that she wasn’t thinking of him at all. And that was pleasant, he felt exceedingly at peace with her. So he didn’t press her to talk, he made no effort to amuse her; and that is the most intelligent thing that Ivor Marlay did that night.
As they danced past the large doorway he saw two men standing there, one dark and the other gray, talking. She had seen the direction of his eyes, for she said:—
“The distinguished-looking person with the iron-gray hair and the lovely corporation is my husband. But besides being my husband he is a great traveller. Not an explorer, mind you, but just a great traveller. He spends most of his time in travelling about extremely foreign countries, and the rest of his time he spends in feeling extremely foreign in his own.” Mrs. Gray had a delightful way, as she said things, of laughing without laughter, of being intimate without intimacy.
And the other one, Ivor thought, is “Rodney....”
The light voice went on: “And the other one, with the severe expression peculiar to celibate Englishmen of over forty, is Rodney West, the K.C., whom you’ll never really get to know unless you murder or get murdered by some one....”
And, suddenly, Ivor had an acute feeling that he was “up against” those two men, standing there in the doorway in all the conviction of middle years and vast experience. It was the silliest and absurdest feeling he had ever had, but he felt it acutely, and it made him suddenly look quite set and grim—and, of course, sulky. They were now in the far corner of the ballroom, away from the guardians of the door. And Magdalen Gray wondered at his abrupt stopping of the dance, away in the corner there, and at the way he looked down at her, so darkly sulky: the absurd young grimness of this stranger surprised her back into her gaiety.
“Oh, but you look like a man who has discovered something!” she laughed at him. “Picture of young gentleman as pirate on sighting fair merchantman....”
“I want very much,” Ivor said, “to see you again, Mrs. Gray.”
She liked him for refusing to be made ridiculous. It was most unusual in men....
“But aren’t you bullying me just a little bit—and so early in our acquaintance?” she asked quietly—keeping all the foolery in her words and none in hermanner, as was her way. “But maybe that’s because you think it’s going to be difficult to see me?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking—and the previous thought to that was that you were worthwhile,” he dared to say. It was those sceptical-looking eyebrows that helped him to say things like that and look as though he had meant to say something else....
“But I’m just a little tired of being thought ‘worthwhile’!” she cried, with a surprisingly deep impatience.
“And I’d like, please, to be allowed to do the thinking first, just for a change....” And she passed a hand over her eyes and slightly pressed her fingers against her temples, as though to soothe the sickness of a headache.
He was nervously conscious that he had made a mistake. He couldn’t know that the mistake lay in his liking her at all, who was to-night surfeited with men’s likings.... The band had stopped, and they were walking now across the bare expanse of floor towards the door. The two men of middle years had but a second before left it, so obviously as though she were to come downstairs after them. And Ivor’s eyes involuntarily followed them through the doorway.
“All the same——” he began sulkily.
“There’s only the telephone-book between us, you know,” she chose to soothe him.
“Ah, now I know something about you!” he said eagerly. They were out of the ballroom now; she cast a swift look down the stairs; and she was going away.
“I know now,” he said very quickly, “what I’ve never known before, for I’ve never before met a womanly woman. I know that in the beginning you are profound about superficial things, and that in the end you are superficial about profound things. And I know too, that when you are accused of that you will answer, oh so honestly: ‘But isn’t this how things do end, and is a flower less beautiful because it must die?’”
The wilful arrogance of that moment is quite thebest thing in the extravagances of a cub’s life. Cheek so colossal and so uncalled-for, on such a very slight acquaintance, becomes something quite else, something much higher. And Magdalen Gray, following the men of middle years down the stairs, was gay where she had thought to be miserable—that young man was laughing at her, he was liking her with laughter! It was most unusual in men! It was quite pleasant and unusual....
Inthe days that followed, Ivor Marlay brooded upon her a great deal. He showed his youth, that fantastic youth of a young man’s secret longings, in the manner and absurdity of his brooding. He came to think of her as a strange and delicious phenomenon that had somehow happened—and which, he intensely hoped, would somehow happen again. He lavished on her all his curiosity; he fingered the texture of her; and then hastily drew back from this childish dalliance, for his mind seemed suddenly to have become so gross and the texture of her was so fine. He grew aware that she would leave him not a shred of vanity if she had her way with him—not that she would strip him of it, but he would have to strip himself in face of her. And he felt painfully ill at ease with himself, which is commonly the feeling of a very young man who is too impressed by a woman of thirty—and quality.
This deep impression of a first meeting may seem ridiculous to the superior amateur of sensations, but it was quite logical, really. Never before, after all, had he been charmed! And it was an exquisite sensation, to be charmed. Of course, he had often persuaded himself into being charmed—if you didn’t do that you were bored, and then where were you?—but never before had he been actually and actively charmed. And so potent was this enchantment that he had now no stomach for such relations—oh, quite vague things!—as had hitherto entertained him very passably.
The matter was not in the least mended by his frequently calling himself a silly ass; for there was always a secret voice telling him that his admirationwas the outcome of a need—for “that kind of woman!” That first impression! He was so sure, he didn’t know why nor how, that “that kind of woman” could arouse a deep emotion without that aftermath of impurity which—even at three-and-twenty—taints so many of the fine passages of an adventurous life. And so Ivor longed for her, and guess-work made strange and lovely arabesques on a background of enchantment.
More than two weeks passed, and still he did not telephone to Mrs. Gray. He had made a brave show of determination when with her, but since then his mind had made her of fine texture, and itsfinenessappalled him. And after two weeks he couldn’t, for she would not remember his name, he would have to remind her of their meeting—oh, no, no! His vanity, his whole manhood, ran tumultuously away from the thought of her probable forgetfulness on the telephone! He could hear her answer to his name, he could hear her saying, softly, thoughtfully, questioningly, vaguely, “Yes?...” Oh, no! He would wait; he would just wait—but, after all, what for?
The resolution made on the night of the Halliday party held unusually firm, and thatgalèrewas now part of a past life.Hewasn’t going to “mess about” any more—with a lot of “invertebrates”! So he set himself to work, seriously and rather angrily, and wrote hard to finish a flimsy novel which he had begun nearly two years before, and whose flimsiness, now that he seriously set himself to finish it (and make it less “invertebrate”) was a humiliating reproach to the waste of the last two years. It was finally published,[B]after adventures common to first MSS. in search of a publisher who knows his business, in the spring before the war, when its author was away from England; a slim and unpretentious book—“whose charm,” wrote one reviewer, “is difficult to analyse, but might conceivably lie in the almost senile precocity that informsMr. Marlay’s style and fantasy.” Wrote another: “Of all the books that don’t matter in the least, this is one of the most excellent. It is one that will appeal to a few, but not necessarilythefew.” Whichever few, thought Mr. Marlay’s publisher, is few enough.
Hisinability to telephone to Magdalen Gray served him not at all, as indeed he did not wish it to. For on a night three weeks after he had met her he was dining with her at her house in Wilton Place. And a remarkable meal that was, a most remarkable dinner, an immaculate conception of a dinner, exquisitely ethereal—yet how sternly of the earth!
One night, as Ivor Marlay was dining alone in one of those underground grill-rooms for which London is famous among capitals, he was extremely surprised at the sudden figure of Rodney West, K.C., standing at his table, with the obvious intention of addressing him. He did not know Rodney West, nor did Rodney West know him. A smile, as nearly self-conscious as it could be, hovered about the severely handsome face of the man of middle years. Ivor half rose in his chair, and sat down again.
“Mrs. Gray sent me over,” Rodney West told him, “to rebuke you for being blind, for we’ve been sitting over there for the last hour, and to ask you to join us over coffee. Is that all right?” Rodney West’s courtesy had no fringes, it was sharp and direct—there was no froth abouthim, anyway—and from that moment Ivor liked him very much, in spite of himself. He said he would like to join them very much; he was shy; but, a few minutes after the elder man had left him, he followed him to the table indicated, ... for at least half the distance looking directly into a levelled pair of eyes, which seemed wonderfully large and innocent beneath a wide-brimmed black hat. AndIvor suddenly felt extraordinarily happy and unafraid; and not even the so direct scrutiny of Magdalen Gray could perturb him. But perhaps she did not intend that it should.
She greeted him as an old friend. She seemed to be under the surprising delusion that they were old friends, and not the acquaintances of one meeting; she did not address him as “Mr. Marlay,” she did not address him by name at all, but her manner plainly suggested that if she did address him by name it would not be as “Mr. Marlay.” She was in a gay, silly mood, embracing them both in the swift turns of her inconsequence. No one could have guessed that she and Rodney West had dined in silence. Nor did Rodney West show what he felt at the contrast; he seemed to Ivor a very amiable though rather detached elderly person. Only when he occasionally bent his eyes to his coffee cup and gently dropped his cigar ash therein, would there have been perceptible, to a more detached intelligence than Ivor’s, an added grimness to the thin face, a wave of grimness that came and passed; and, surely, a certain grimness is permissible in a man of middle years who, for the last five of them, has given his soul to a woman and has now had it given back to him with maddening gentleness.
The artifice of her intimacy charmed Ivor into ready answer. The gay, silly mood enveloped him. Her wit was adventurous: it was an exploit to follow the twist of her sentences, and breathlessly to be with her at the end.... She told them of the races at somewhere or other, to which she had been taken that afternoon in an “extremely open car.” She was not a racing-chap, she wasn’t very actively interested in the competitive swiftness of horses; but she had not only been to watch them at it that day, but had lost a deal of money on the slower ones, what’s more! Whereupon Rodney West gave it as his opinion that it rather served her right for betting in ignorance.
“But I didn’t, Rodney!” she vividly protested. “Never was a woman in better racing company. No one could have guessed that all-my-people-weren’t-racing-people. My escort were two in number, minus in intelligence, full marks for good-looks, and might quite easily have been called Mr. Beef and Mr. Beer: and they were grimly allied together for the purposes of being entertained by me and the horses. As they had field-glasses and champagne-glasses and hard blue eyes, and knew every horse by sight and reputation, I naturally backed the horse which they were sure couldn’t lose. And when the wretched horse was finally arrested for loitering on the course hours after the race was finished, they told me that at the last moment they’d backed another one—the one that had happened to win, you know.”
“What awful people one knows!” breathed Rodney West softly.
“Oh, and I was tryingsohard not to be personal!” she said.
Rodney West turned amiably to Ivor, who was getting rather left behind.
“Mrs. Gray, you must know, has made an art of friendship,” he explained. “The art of friendship consists of defending people you’ve met twice by attacking people you’ve known all your life.”
That light laugh of Magdalen’s! it was like a laugh from a Victorian novel, so gentle and smoothing andright! And, as she laughed, her eyes, so large and thoughtful in the shadow of her black hat, rested with ever so passing an intentness on Ivor, secretly. And she seemed to be saying to him: “This man has certain rights and many grievances, and it’s all my fault. So we’ll let him be, shall we, for he’s a sweet man, really.”
And Ivor suddenly felt that all this had happened to him before, to him and to her, in some ancient place long, long ago; and he felt poignantly at ease with her, he understood the things she didn’t say—this slim, softwoman with the soft hair like the night and the wonderfully friendly, deeply joyous eyes.
He knew nothing, nothing in the world, of men and women; he only knew that he was very alone and that shadows were all about, shadows that never flickered, shadows that only stared and smiled, waiting, waiting, waiting for his full worthiness....
Itwas as they were at last leaving the place—long after the paid bill had been whipped away from Rodney West as though it were an indecency which should never have been committed—and were winding up the stairs to the exalted atmosphere of Piccadilly by night, that she turned to await Ivor, who was a few steps behind them, and said:—
“There’s a kind of dinner-party at my house to-morrow night, to which you are being invited at this moment....”
“The telephone-book,” she said, “is full of little details about my address.”
Kind, curious woman—by saying things like that she made one think oneself had spoken, she made one forget that one was dull, dull, unworthy of the moment....
“Well, good-night, Marlay.”
“Good-night, sir. Thanks so much for letting me join you. Good-night, Mrs. Gray.”
And so, swiftly, almost brusquely, away, leaving them to the care and under the shadow of thecommissionaire, man of legendary height and fabulous girth, whose huge gallantry cynically suggested that he would sell not only his own soul but the soul of the taxi and taxi-driver which he had summoned, if only to please this lady and this gentleman. But how could thecommissionaire, so long trained in the observationof quick infidelities, guess that nothing in the world would please this obviously sensible gentleman but the love of this lady? whose maddening answer to his bitter-frantic demand, in that very taxi, was gently to touch his hand and whisper that it would surely be disloyal to past loveliness to pretend to things.... Magdalen Gray never, never pretended; maybe that is what kept her so young-looking.
“Ivor, I’m so glad!” she welcomed him simply, the next night at half-past eight. She made no mention of the “dinner-party.” He and she were the dinner-party. Colonel Gray was again on his travels to “extremely foreign parts,” it seemed.
They were in the drawing-room before dinner, and he was too busy adjusting himself to her even to notice the pleasures of the room. He was glad that she was in black, he discovered a particular admiration for her in black; her dark simplicity was an almost startling decoration in the pale amber light of the July evening. And he enjoyed her hair, dark and thick and so soft, coiling about her ears and framing her wide, intelligent forehead and her mysterious, friendly eyes. So friendly.... And he liked being in her house, he particularly liked her in her own house—it somehow added solidity to her enchantment. He told her that, in those first few minutes. She had come to greet him from a far corner of the room, and he now stood above her in its very middle—dark, and seemingly self-confident, and not very young: and so compact of restraint—yes, he seemed very restrained—that she caught her breath with pleasure in him. It was most unusual in men....
But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance—one shouldn’t palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said. And now she made fun of him, insisting on his being intelligently appreciative of her room of state. “My room, all mine,” she magnificently boasted. And she took him by the hand, miraculously lifting him to a pinnacle of comradeship,and twisted him to view the vast and rich expanse of her kingdom. But not all the craft and elegance of Sheraton and Chippendale, of Hepplewhite and Adam, had they been in that one room, could have seduced Ivor’s attention from this wonderful and sudden fact of friendship. For this between them was going to be friendship, a rich and immense friendship. He was going to insist on having her friendship, he wouldn’t let this go....
It was a small house, this in Wilton Place, but this room on the first floor was its room of state: it knew not the limitations of lowlier rooms, and stretched its dignity from front to back of the house. Its appointments were more than worthy of it: the darkish blue of the walls, a subtle quality of colour that mingled austerity with a sweet feminine glamour: the gilded craftmanship of the chairs and sofas and footstools and tables and what-nots, those lovely baubles of Louis Seize days which seem ever to coquette for your admiration the better to despise your favour, for they are not very comfortable: and the rich and fading brocades and velvets that covered them, stuffs of quality whose pride increases as their colour fades, velvets of worldly wisdom which know that there’s nothing in the world more assured of respect than velvets that are caressed by the gloss of respectful usage.... One hand lightly in his, her other swept round the room.
“There was a gentleman of Virginia, who lived in Kent,” she comically began; then very gravely: “very old he was, and fierce and contemptuous and gallant, and very, very odd in the way of his affections. For he said nothing, and for the ten years that he was my guardian he scarcely came near me—and then he died and left me all this and much besides!”
“I’ve spent the ‘much besides,’”she said.
“Dinner is served, madam,” a dim voice broke on them from the twilight of the room.
Itis a commonplace that a young man in love is very apt to talk about himself. It is also a commonplace that the interest of an intelligent woman will seduce a young man into being exceedingly interested in himself. And so it wasn’t surprising—except, of course, to Ivor Marlay, who had always had a vague idea that commonplaces somehow didn’t, and somehow shouldn’t, apply to him—it wasn’t surprising that he did talk about himself, and at length, during and after dinner on that night in July, 1912. He needed some pressing, of course. Mrs. Gray was very good at pressing.
“For, after all,” she protested, “I know nothing at all about you—except that you are, well, curiously polished and literate, as though you had been educated abroad. But I do hope you weren’t!”
“I was five years at a public-school,” said Ivor, “so I’m quite self-educated.”
She rebuked him, for she was glad of the public-school. She liked her Englishmen to be English. She herself spoke foreign languages quite well enough for two, she said.
And then she led him on by her naïve surprise that he was, and intended to be, a writer. That seemed to her very charming, for he might so easily have been nothing at all, and with every excuse. (The charming things your Magdalens say are as nothing to those they suggest. But there are not many Magdalens.) She had had wide and intimate experience of writers, dramatists, and all manner of artists, so that she was not wildly excited at the fact of entertaining yet another. But that this young man was a writer, interested her happily; for he was so obviously something else as well, which was most unusual in writers. Magdalen Gray did not, as a rule, like writers and suchlike (by “suchlike” she, of course, meantpublishers). She only dined with them when there was a “first-night” to go to, only lunched with them before a “private-view.” But she was too wise to explain her dislike by a generalisation, she just mentioned that she didn’t like them very much, especially the younger ones; and she suggested only that, perhaps, the word “I,” an enthralling word when sparingly used, occurred too often in their conversation: “which, on the other hand,” she said, “is very clever of them, for I can’t think how they can manage to squeeze it in so often.”
“But it’s not,” she said, “the most important thing in the world to be clever.”
“No,” Ivor agreed, and felt grave.
“But it’s very important to be genuine,” she said.
She led him on to tremendous confidences. She met the sympathetic figures of his life, Aunt Moira and Aunt Percy, with sincere understanding; and she told him that she found his life strange and exciting and adventurous—and Ivor, looking at it with the impulse of her sympathy, also found it strange and exciting and adventurous.
“It’s odd,” he said, “how one minute’s perfect comradeship can discount all previous solitudes.”
She brought the truth out of him, he saw that, and how can a woman bring the truth out of a man except by understanding him? Clearly, then, she was his friend. It was so wonderful a fact that it almost overwhelmed him; her wise friendliness revealed her to him as a marvellous gift of a god, and a much more than fleshly god, too! And his mind so circled about thefactof this grave and gay Magdalen with the friendly eyes and deep, dexterous understanding—that he was probably very dull indeed towards the end of dinner. But Magdalen teased him about that very gently, for she had always thought that no man was a man who wasn’t sometimes frightfully dull.
Andyet, as the night grew to midnight and past, all was not well with Ivor Marlay.... They were on the wide divan, a battlefield of a divan, in the window corner of the “room of state”—now changed into a room deliciously intimate and secret, with but the one dim light of a very shaded lamp, near them, to light its rich shadows and make more pregnant the pregnant silences of two people. And there were several silences, in the restless passage over midnight. Magdalen lay full length on the divan, a luxuriously straight figure, her crossed hands supporting the back of her head against a wide cushion of many colours. A tranquil figure she looked, lying straightly there, with her eyes peacefully on him—and yet little peace was there in Magdalen Gray at that moment, or ever! Now, behind her tranquil poise, she wanted frightfully to mock him by inquiring, quite casually, how, at his absurd age, he had discovered that restraint is the highest pleasure ofla volupté. She wanted to ask him that, but it was just as well she didn’t, for he wouldn’t have known what she was talking about, being much more completely twenty-three than he (or she) thought.
To the cold eye of the philosopher there is nothing more ridiculous than abandon, except it be restraint: there is nothing more absurd than temptation, except it be the grander temptation not to yield to it. But it is notorious that philosophers never allow for other people’s ideals—which do certainly make the ridiculous even more ridiculous, but rarely fail to make it sublime. And Ivor Pelham Marlay, now fired at last out of the lethargy of two years, was become a very rigid and proper idealist, and very troublesome to himself, which is the way of idealists.... He was distressed, in that restless passage over midnight. He wondered, very dimly, if masculine brutalities were peculiar to essentially feminine woman; years later, he found that they were.She wanted her way of him, in her own way, now! He saw that, because she didn’t hide it; she didn’t hide it because she hadn’t that kind of restraint, she was deplorable. She wanted to “find out.” He had knowledge of her as a woman without shame and without pride in love. He called it love, because he was certain that it was love, as far as he was concerned, anyway. She had no pride, she said. “There is no pride in love, Ivor. Not really. To be proud in love is the mark of little people. Pride is for women who go to balls or night-clubs every night, and who, because they are always tired, bring the worst out of their men; they need pride. But your great lover is so proud that he takes no thought of pride.” But, on top of that, she had no shame either—and that he shamelessly loved! He adored the honest quality of her shamelessness, its elegance and its clear shades of candour. Thus, every minute increased his longing for her, every minute increased his feeling of her nearness; and the slim, soft lines of her body maddeningly suggested the coil of her limbs—but it couldn’t, it simply couldn’t, happen like “this”! “This” was all wrong, in this particular instance. She was too splendid, he wanted her too utterly, to allow it to happen like “this.” He wanted her—oh, vastly! She was wanton, he knew that. He felt that, but he could not understand it—she who was so absolutely right, so sensible! She was amazing. She wanted to be ravished, like a woman in a dream....
“Ivor!” she said suddenly. “I wish for a peach.”
There was a basket of them on a little table, in the shadows of the room; and, in the shadows, the peaches that had that morning graced the Piccadilly windows of Messrs. Solomon’s were changed into lovely baubles, they looked like Oriental things of beauty and significance: they looked like the peaches that are found in books, ruddy and ripe and bejewelled.
“And, if you please,” she said, “I’d like it peeledor skinned, or whatever the process is called that uncovers a peach.”
He had it on a plate on his knee, and a toy knife and fork. He set to work on it delicately. But there are peaches and peaches, and some can be very wayward about being undressed.
“This isn’t the sort of peach I’m used to,” said Ivor at last, in disgust.
“Are you making a mess of it, Ivor?” her whisper mocked him; for her head had stealthily left its corner, it was by his shoulder now, and her body encircled him, her body made a prison around him, and her breath and hair were warm on his cheek.
“Yes,” he said—and kissed her, lightly. Their first kiss, that light, flimsy thing! It was his tribute to her enchantment, it wasn’t fired of passion—it wasn’t the sort of kiss a woman of thirty had the right to expect from a very young man on such a divan. It was a pathetic kiss. A begging kiss it was really, that light thing born of a question about a peach, for Ivor was begging her to understand, to understand his hunger for the most absolute intimacy, the most perfect friendship, and not just the mortal thing. But there were depths in Magdalen stronger than her understanding....
Ivor made a movement to go. And he was going.
“Don’t go!” she said. And her arm swept to his shoulder—and suddenly fell back again to her side; and she looked up at the man standing feverishly above her, she looked at him as though she couldn’t see him for the darkness over her eyes. And suddenly, wantonly, she grimaced at him, oh so vengefully! Whereat they both fell to such a fit of giggling that Ivor was gone and Magdalen alone before either had realised the parting.
Perhaps those two had never been such great friends but for the curious issue of that remarkable dinner. Perhaps, if it had ended otherwise, Ivor would have walked away on air, as the saying is, or perhaps hewould have crept away and never returned, for this was a queer moment in his life, and he might easily have done a caddish thing because of his foiled desire for a fine one. But if he had returned and enjoyed, this chronicle could not have been written—for never in the whole history of the world, neither in folk-tale or legend or romance, has there been a tale about a merely physical bond. To make a tale there must be a vow, of marriage, of celibacy, or of friendship; and to make a tale that vow must be upheld or broken. There are no other tales than those, there are only experiments.
Itwas difficult for Ivor, at three-and-twenty, to understand Magdalen; for she was so dangerously simple, so deplorably civilised, so utterly childish. He had realised her more easily and quickly had he never before met a woman—for naturally, being a young man of “experience,” he couldn’t help but apply a bit of it to her, and so went quickly all awry. He couldn’t help, any more than any one else, applying to her his almost unconscious knowledge of the petty dishonesties, antagonisms, hypocrisies, and caddishnesses that are peculiarly evident in women in love who are normally very gentle and honourable. But with Magdalen he had to begin right at the beginning; herquality, her artistry, her amazing talent for being articulate about those delicious shades of feelings that our more self-conscious lips do often fumble for but never attain—all this, in her, contained an amazing degree ofearth, just common, pungentearth; which meant that everything she did, of honour or dishonour, was terrifyingly spontaneous, and, once done, inevitable.
And such understanding of her as he acquired, came to him only much later, after they had lain becalmed in that Saragossa Sea that is charted between love and friendship: a sea of shameful doubts and deceits and desires, a seaweed sea of broken vows and harsh antagonisms, and one that is very difficult for the tortured voyager to traverse, in the journey back from love and forward to friendship, for there is no compass to point the sad direction....
It was in the nature of Magdalen that her love had in it nothing stationary. She couldn’t help but makeeverything she loved infinitely remote and desirable and unattainable. How sweet, thus, was the attainment! She had loved and been loved so often, yet she had no base knowledge of love. She was not wise in love, she had no caution. She never wanted to make use of love, she let love use her. And experience had robbed her of no pleasures, nor repetition tainted her tenderness: she was like a fruit-tree to which each ripening season is a fecund joy, whose fruit is sweet to your mouth yet serious in its sweetness, lest your easy looting provoke your levity. Magdalen had no politics.
She romanced, with grave unconsciousness. She loved Ivor, and so pursued him. She couldn’t love him otherwise, she must pursue even a pursuer. To attain and enjoy him with her full abundance she must first make him unattainable. Her mind must grow chaotic with helplessness at the “difficulty” of this man, who seemed to draw back when she advanced—indeed, she romanced seriously!—who seemed never to give himself utterly but ever to be holding back something frightfully essential. Yes, he was holding back something frightfully essential, it was evident—while she loved him, but how much! And she told him everything, she made no mystery of a love that seemed to Ivor exceedingly mysterious. There was no private corner nor secret shadow of her heart that she didn’t wantonly reveal to him. She simply didn’t care! She held him very tight and bewildered him with her love-making—to break off suddenly and swear a mighty oath that he was far beside the mark if he thought that she was repeating what she had sometime said to some previous lover: saying that she had a wonderful talent for love-speeches which hadn’t so far received due recognition, “or else, Ivor, you would be doing something adequate instead of lying there like an Eastern emperor listening to the words of your odalisque.”
“All my life,” she said, “I have had love-speeches on my lips and in my heart, and that’s why I’ve hadlovers, for I couldn’t bear to keep them to myself. I simply had to tell them to some one, even if they turned out to be very ordinary, which they mostly did.... Yes, Ivor, it was exactly as I’m telling you. And if you ever put me into a book, which you probably will, for you will never meet another woman who knows so much about the things that are not in books, you will say that I was a kind of love-tailor, forever measuring and fitting men to the things in my heart; and just like any other tailor I sometimes made misfits, but I am very persevering, Ivor, and so it always came right in the end. But never before have I fitted my love-speeches to a man as I’m fitting them to you—and getting very little for my trouble, I might add. It has always been the other way about, Ivor, and I’m not sure that I like this new departure in tailoring. Oh, but you are so secret, my dear! Your brown eyes are so secret, don’t you know they are? And sometimes I wish your eyes were pools of water so that I could drown myself in them, and be done with loving you so much who love me so little.... Oh, Ivor, how base you and all men are! You suspect the fine phrases of love—yes, you do, Ivor! If a woman looks at you speechless with love, you believe she loves you. But if she puts her love to you in sentences, complete with commas, colons, and full-stops, if she gives you her love dressed in the purple and fine linen of her heart—you can’t help thinking her rather odd, can you, dear?...”
Ofcourse this kind of thing didn’t go on every day; it sometimes didn’t happen for days at a time; and for the rest they were great friends. Their time together passed wonderfully in the merry practice of friendship. Magdalen fulfilled every condition of intimacy, wonderfully unasked. She opened the doors of her life andlet him look in, while she trembled for fear he might find it altogether too bad. He wanted to know—everything! (He had never known anything before.) Friendship that held secrecy was a sorry thing, they both agreed. There is no secrecy between us, they said. There is restraint, but there is no secrecy—that is more or less what they said. Nor was there! She told him of enormities of inconstancy—to prove her constancy to him! “This talent for exploring makes such a mess of life,” she said. But now at last she had found a friend in love. They were plainly comrades, one to the other. “Playmates,” she insisted.
“The most wonderful thing about miracles is that they sometimes happen,” writes that magnificent Catholic, Mr. Chesterton; but one needn’t be a magnificent Catholic to believe him. Ivor believed him.... She had been a friend to very many people, she told him, but she herself had had no friend. Always to give, to give, to give, she said, and nothing ever given back—to me, waiting for the tender things! “I’ve tried so hard,” she said. But now Ivor had come, he was her first friend. “I’m virginal to friendship, anyway,” she told him gravely; and, thereupon, she emphasised her age, the phenomenal age of one-and-thirty. And, exercising his friendship, she found him a rare man. Anyway, she said he was, and gave her reasons for thinking so at considerable length. There are jealous men, she told him, to whom a woman cannot speak of her past life; there are foolish men who will love a woman foolishly no matter what she tells them of herself; there are absurd men who beg, beseech and implore to be told “everything,” and then make a scene about it; there are strong and silent men in whom a woman trustfully confides, and who use the confession against her at the first opportunity; and there are those rare men who love jealously yet intelligently, to whom a woman can tell everything and, in having told, forget everything—men who can understand without softness and be hard without rancour:men whose dignity is in their hearts and not on their lips, rare men to whom a woman cannot cheapen herself, for they will not have her cheap, they are not aware that she can be cheap—and so she is not, great as is the temptation to cheapness in a woman in love. Anyway, that is what Magdalen said, and she probably knew.
Of course his writing suffered by neglect. Every kind of work always does, in contact with accursed women like Magdalen, who enthral men by enslaving themselves; and who adorn a man’s life by destroying it. But, though his writing suffered by neglect, how much it gained in knowledge! For Magdalen was his real education. She knew so much, of the things that are not in books—“but will be,” she teased him. He learned about men by listening to her, and about himself not a little by loving her. She influenced him deeply; her way of speaking influenced not only his, but also his way of writing: so that when, years later, Rodney West read his best novel,[C]he rather grimly said that there were two people who could have written that book in that way and Ivor Marlay was only one of them. She polished him, and she smoothed down the sharp dogmatisms and conceits which had so far taken the place of conversation with him. Thus was Aunt Percy proved right in thinking that there were other women beside himself, he shouldn’t wonder! Aunt Percy would have liked Magdalen; he would have invited her to lunch at the Bath Club now and then, and as they sat down he would have asked her brusquely: “Well, and how’s that young man of mine? Bit above himself, I shouldn’t wonder.” Magdalen would have made Aunt Percy laugh.