Virginiacame only once again. Four nights later, a little after ten o’clock. Ivor, his book laid aside, was pacing the room in the suddenly restless way which was growing on him, when he heard the soft rustle of the car on the drive. He stood very still. And then an apparition came into the room. The apparition came towards him. He smiled at it, but the apparition was grave of face. Its face looked bleak.
“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you.” It said that shyly.
She had come alone, driving the open car. Virginia hated closed cars, she loved air, bitter, chill air; it made her feel ill, for she was very delicate, but she loved bitter, chill air. And now her face looked blanched with it, her blue eyes bitten bright with it; and a strand or two of golden hair played loose about her forehead, for her head had been uncovered but for that transparent stuff now on the table. She smiled vaguely, there was no light in her.
“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you....”
It was a queer moment for him, an upside-down kind of moment. He was still smiling at the amazing fact of seeing her—amazing because he had so wanted to!—when those words, intruding at the same moment, quite upset the equilibrium of his pleased gesture. He felt vividly that he didn’t want her to go away, but not at all. She stood close by him, in front of the fire. The little white face.... And all he could saywas plaintively, absurdly: “But I hate your going away, Virginia—suddenly, like this!”
“It’s the only way to go away,” she said softly to the fire.
She had slipped off her fur-coat on to a chair, and now stood revealed in her evening-dress: a dress too rich for the ordinary occasion, a Venetian kind of dress, a deplorably beautiful dress of the kind which, women said dispassionately, only Virginia could “carry off.” What Madeleine Vionnet had created as a beautiful joke, Virginia made into a magnificent illusion. Throat and arms and shoulders exceeding white, her bosom tight in deep red silk of taffeta—but lo! this deep colour ended shortly, its coloured richness was but to tease your senses and ensnare your eyes! For suddenly there billowed from it a filmy white skirt, filmy and intangible, white upon white subtly flecked with golden-dust: a wide and waving whiteness which swayed as she walked, which swayed as she stood, gently, as though it lived a delicious life of its own: and from the deep red bodice there fell baubles on to the wide white skirt for a short way, short golden baubles of golden rope in arabesques—the curious fancy of a crafty designer who surely never thought his dress would be worn so inconsequently, taken three miles on a chilly night to a lonely house by a tiny English river....
“Suddenly—like this!” he repeated darkly.
“Well?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide at him; and then she gave a sharp little laugh at his darkling brows—as though, good Heavens, he were offended!
“And what’s more,” she added, “we won’t be meeting again for some time. Maybe we will never meet again, Ivor! For I’m sureyouwon’t take any steps about it—just like all these years you have known me and never tried to see me, never once!”
“You are very exclusive, I do think,” she said wistfully.
There she stood, a head below him, white face upat him, eyes wide and very grave, amazing and somehow unearthly! and the breasts under that tight red bodice, little full breasts. And suddenly his one arm took Virginia bodily, and pressed her to him and her face up to him. He kissed her lips: and her little tight breasts were hot against him. For a long time, a long time utterly lost to time in the violent softness of Virginia’s lips, his arm pressing her to him. So thin she was, tall and thin and breakable. And she shivered a little, her eyes tight closed, and her face a white mask: startling white between those twin gold curls, gay “Swan and Edgar!” She swayed a little, and her skirt rustled, and when his arm loosed her she seemed to fall right down into the wide chair behind her. Helpless white mask, carnival dead of carnival! She opened her eyes and stared up at him, the man darkly up there. But a crypt was not darker than Virginia’s blue eyes....
“I didn’t mean you to do that,” she whispered.
He fumbled.
“I’m sorry ...” he fumbled. It killed all assurance, that look of hers. He took a cigarette from the box on the table.
“I didn’t mean to, either,” he said coldly. Then why had he done it? He loathed fumbling. And suddenly he got furious. Whatwasall this about, anyway?... “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said bitterly.
And somehow, as she lay there like a broken Venetian toy, his eyes fixed on her mouth. He had never seen it before, Virginia’s mouth, but now his eyes desperately found it. A queer mouth it was somehow, queer lips for a lovely woman to have: there was nothing soft, nothing yielding about them: beautiful but somehow unwomanly lips, so taut, so dry: the lips of a woman who liked the wind in her face.... He had never seen Virginia’s mouth before. And now the touch of it was on his own, hot and dry. Nothing moist about Virginia. He smiled at her helplessly....
“I didn’t come here for you to do that—I didn’t,Ivor!” she cried up at him, and her eyes glittered with tears—Virginia in tears!
He wanted to laugh and brush it aside. As though Virginia had never been kissed before—Virginia! “Forget it,” he wanted to say coarsely. She was too serious.... But, somehow, he was serious, too. He stood above her in her chair, a long way above her. He murmured something....
“But you do know that, don’t you? I didn’t come here for you to do that—that particular kiss....” And she leant back her head and closed her eyes against him. Ivor played nervously with a match for his cigarette—one arm makes striking safety-matches rather difficult, sometimes. He swore a little at the match.
“You see,” whispered the lips of the closed eyes, “your kiss means something. I knew it would ... I knew years and years ago.”
And she jumped up and faced him pitifully. “That’s why I’m making such a fuss about it, don’t you see—Ivor, you fool! For your kiss means all the things I haven’t got left, the lovely things! Oh, I’m not just trying to make a scene, I want you to understand.... I haven’t got one left, my dear, not one....”
He couldn’t deny that—he didn’t know anything about it. She was too serious—but, somehow, nothing light would come from him.
Again she closed her eyes, and her eyebrows contracted, as though with pain; and she gave her head a sudden shake, backwards.... Youarea pet, he thought.
“That’s why I so wanted you not to make love to me—you, Ivor! Deep down in my heart I didn’t want you to. For we simply can’t be lovers, you and I. I thought that years ago. I hated you....”
All this ... talk! Why, he wondered, does a woman always pretend to a deep and mysterious knowledge of anything to do with love? He knew, quite clearly, that she had expected him to kiss her—but he also knew, just as clearly, that she was miserablysincere in not having wanted him to kiss her—once he had done it! She made him feel a vulgar beast.
Her eyes were searching his face....
“Poor Ivor!” she cried softly, “I am irritating you, aren’t I?”
“Thoroughly,” he admitted; he smiled a little, self-consciously; he hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“But it’s just as well you should know.” She didn’t heed his gesture. “It’s just as well you should know that it’s easy for men to make love to me—‘easy, my dear, dead easy’! Why, Ivor, making love to me has become a recognised institution, it was the only careless game that the war didn’t make more expensive. I assure you. And not so very careless with some, either, for I’m still beautiful. D’you notice, Ivor, that I’m being funny, so that you can laugh? Poor Ivor.... Didn’t you know, dear, that Virginia at thirty-one is a perfect mess? You ought to have known, clever Ivor, you ought indeed—you who write so bravely about women, not to say courtesans!”
She had said just the things to make him angry. But he only lit another cigarette; he held the safety-match to the fire this time.
And she stamped her foot at him in a sudden fever. “Don’t you see, you fool, that I’ve never yet met a man in whom I haven’t brought out the beastliness? Never once—it’s my fault, I bring it out. Somehow....”
He was quite cold now.
“Virginia,” he said, “you’ve got nerves. And I’m not a cad—I don’t think so, anyway.” It was her scene entirely—he implied that. And he wanted to show that the whole thing rather bored him—her attitude.
“I know.” She nodded her head. “That’s why all this. For we wouldn’t suit each other at all, you and I. I’m no use to you, Ivor....”
And the sudden words on his lips were broken by her peculiar laugh.
“For where you are so wrong is,” she went onreasonably, “that you think I’m like you. But I’m nothing like you at all. I’m just a little cad....”
“My telling you all this,” she gravely assured him, “is entirely on your own head. You shouldn’t have kissed me—like that! It wasn’t fair, Ivor. And very upsetting.... Oh!...”
“You see, Ivor, I misbehave,” she explained. It was her air of being reasonable that irritated him most. “Yes, I do! I misbehave frightfully. People will tell you.... And where you are so wrong is that you think I’ve been natural when with you, whereas I’ve really been on my very best behaviour with you—all the time. Even now....”
If she had set herself to anger him to silence she could not have succeeded more completely.
“Good-bye,” she said abruptly.
He held her furs for her. And she went so swiftly that he could only follow her to the door. The large shape of the car swallowed her up; and the car twisted softly round the little drive and away to the London road. Minutes later he heard its Klaxon, just one sharp keen, like the harsh cry of a sea-bird....
Nowtwo weeks later Ivor received this telegram from Cimiez: “Please come to stay with us here if possible. Trains packed, and sleeping cars unobtainable. Will order car to meet you Ritz, Paris, noon Saturday, to bring you down. Please wire.”
He fingered it, and he thoughtfully stared out of the window. A February prospect is not the best prospect to stare at thoughtfully. It provokes comparisons. The world outside his window was bleak and desolate. The world within his window was bleak and desolate. He wired, and went.
Virginiawas certainly right about the trains from Paris to the south being packed: there was not a sleeping-car to be had for months to come, and for an ordinary seat one had to fight; so that the capacity of French railway officials for being rude and being bribed was being exercised to the utmost. Thedouanierswere also charming, and people remarked on the genial smiles with which the passport officials at the ports greeted them.... The dawn of peace, the new year of 1919! What wonder that those who could rushed quickly away from the homes they had so long and vigorously protected, to the bright Mediterranean coast! TheSketchand theTatlersaid that the Riviera had “at one bound” regained its pre-war glories of rank, fashion, and riches, and published photographs in proof of same. Carelessness was upon the world again—in 1919—and life glittered as of old, or even brighter. And what wonder—in 1919! Spectres there still were, but solaces abounded....
The hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, adorns the background of the town of Nice; and the hill of Cimiez, as all the world knows, was adorned by Queen Victoria, who stayed there for a period, or two periods, upon its very crest. That crest is now distinguished by a statue of her person and a monument to her name—which is no less than the Hotel Victoria Regina, a very large and white hotel indeed, from whose windows the prospect of the Mediterranean seems but a little thing. A huge white palace it is, reigning on the hill of Cimiez, and quite dominating the smaller white palaces which are scattered about the slope of the hill, one here and theother there, on each side of the winding road that takes adventurous quality down to Nice, the pleasaunce of the mob. The presence of the great queen has left a deep impress on Cimiez, for what streets are not named directly after her despise any but the nomenclature of English majesty: whence come the rue Edward VII., the Avenue de Prince des Galles, the Place Regina, and recently the Avenue George V. Of course there are no shops on Cimiez. Those white patches of elegant shape that you see as your car climbs the winding road from Nice, are villas; and in the villas are rich Greeks from Egypt, India, and Smyrna; Jews from Egypt, India, Smyrna, and England; Englishmen from Lancashire; Americans and Grand Dukes from Paris; and Lord and Lady Tarlyon. And these last in the whitest and most elegant villa of all (the property of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate) at the far end of the rue Edward (not Edouard) VII.
This villa was long and low and white, and severe after its manner: for upon and about it were none of those playful ebullitions of taste, such as conical towers, domed roofs, embattlements, statues, coloured tiles and crenellations, such as are dear to architects of villas all the world over. Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur, sent long in advance of her to choose a villa not too utterly offensive, for she considered him a man of discernment, had been instantly pleased by its air of quiet dignity qualified by a certain bravado: its air of frankly yet discreetly compromising between a Georgian mansion and a Texas ranch, with both of which Lady Tarlyon’s chauffeur was familiar. One of its main attractions, and perhaps the one mainly indicative of Texan influences, was a verandah that ran the length of the house on its front and southern side. Now this was a real verandah, not one of your merely decorative ones, a verandah about which men could pace and smoke cigars and women drop fans to break strained silences: a verandah with a wide prospectover the distant Mediterranean, for that brilliant blue sheet was cut short some way without the coast by the trees that cover the flanks of Cimiez and make Nice invisible to those who would rather live out of it. It was, in fact, a verandah of chairs and gossip and silence, to seduce each to the indulgence of his own nature, whether it most pleased him to look upon his companion or over the sea: to dream, maybe, of nothing but what lies in that wanton sea, for ever so tenacious of men’s homage and for ever so reckless of their honour.
Onan afternoon that February, Lady Tarlyon’s house-party were sitting in an uneven group on the verandah. From the verandah were imposing marble steps—the chauffeur had apologised for those steps—to lead leisured feet down to a considerable lawn; but the gardeners of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate had rather neglected the lawn during the war, and it looked a little odd, as a lawn. However, no one needed to look at it twice, for there was always the Mediterranean, which is a tidy sea during the season.
George Tarlyon (blue serge jacket, white trousers, a Brigade tie, and brown-and-white shoes) was there, also a brandy-and-ginger-ale. Virginia was there. Major Cypress was there—Hugo Cypress, the last of thebeaux sabreurs, bless him! Lois was there, and her husband, the companionable little Earl. And Mrs. Chester was very evidently there, in a chair beside Tarlyon.
Ann Chester, quiet and soft-moving as was her elegant habit, was always very evidently everywhere; you couldn’t help but notice her, you understand, as she came into a room, a restaurant, or a theatre. She was a woman of thirty-five: which is not very old for a woman nowadays—and is, as a matter of fact, considered a proper age for a lovely woman, if only she can stay at it: Mrs. Chester could. She was of a tall andslightly full figure—only slightly full—and she wore clothes so that Frenchwomen looked like Englishwomen beside her. Mrs. Chester was American originally. It was said that she sprang from the F.F.V.,[E]but it was also said that she had sprung so far that she wouldn’t be able to get back. Mr. Chester was nonexistent, in that no one had ever met him or heard of him until the death was reported of an American gentleman, Mr. Beale Chester, during a week of misunderstandings in Odessa. Ann’s accent was just faintly American enough to be very attractive—she would say, “I’m going to Paris, France, to-morrow”—and she was, indubitably, a lady. She was really very lovely, in quite a classical way, of feature, complexion, and hair: and always softly smiling, softly. Her eyes were gray and understanding—the eyes of a dear! which, you know, she was. The stage had missed a great beauty when Ann Chester had decided on life as a career: which is such a banal witticism to make about women that it is sometimes true about a few of them. She attracted by sheer womanliness of body and mind, and sheer stupidity. And hers was that mature and exquisitelysoignéewomanliness which, they say, drives sensible Jews and newly-created peers to madness and bankruptcy. If a precious young man were essaying a precious study of her in a precious magazine, all of which might quite easily happen, he would say, “Even her soul was manicured,” and he would be utterly wrong—for, mysterious Mrs. Chester, she could fall in love! It had been remarked about her, she could fall in love! and not only within the commonplace limits of abéguineither, which are the only limits that nice women allow to the passions of women not so nice. She had been known to sacrifice things, even jewellery. Now a man beloved of Ann Chester appalled the imagination of other men—of what stuff was he made, what queer virtue was his? For imagine Ann clinging, clinging, moved at last out of her softly smiling acquiescenceinto a fullness of surrender, beseeching your sincerity in return for hers, that hair of cosmopolitan gold at lastmalsoignéewith abandon—imagine it!—our Ann clinging in desire! Oh, it was inconceivable!
The hour of four-thirty is not a lively hour in Southern Europe. Lady Tarlyon’s guests sat on the terrace lazily, in white becushioned wicker arm-chairs, talking just enough. Later on they would dress and motor eastwards, along the higher Route de la Corniche, to Monte Carlo: there to dine at the Paris and gamble at the inevitable Sporting Club. The house-party of the villa at the far end of the rue Edward VII. despised Nice and all its works, but one and a half kilometres below them; they did not like Nice, it bored them; and so far they had done nothing at all about Nice except to motor through it.
Lord Tarlyon had a theory about Nice.
“Nice,” said Lord Tarlyon, “is just like Blackpool——”
Lois lodged a complaint.
“He once knew a man who had some picture-postcards of it,” Mrs. Chester explained. “Yes, George?” and her gray eyes enfolded him, and he grinned sideways at her. Virginia’s lips were smiling, just a little, at the sea. George often made her smile.
“Nice,” he said, “is just like Blackpool, except that the air is cleaner at Blackpool. We are thus led to the unpatriotic conclusion that if Blackpool were as far from England as Nice is, we would at this very moment be in Blackpool.”
“I wouldn’t,” Virginia said. She turned in her chair to stare definitely at her husband. She would sometimes turn that sudden and definite stare on to a man she knew well, as though recasting a theory about him. Virginia never uttered her theories about people, so one could never tell if they were silly or not. He gave her a cigarette.
The flank of the hill of Cimiez, as has been described, did homage to their prejudice, for the white town ofNice was not visible below them, there was but the sea and the bending coast towards Cannes. Far on the right lay the little town of Antibes, a wan little cluster of luxury in the sunlight: and the hills that hid Grasse waved gently back into the distance of more serious (and less expensive) France. The sun owned the day and the sea, and to the sun belonged all that was on the land. The awning over the terrace was bright in its bravery of red and white stripes, and through it the sunlight was subtly diffused over their faces, it was as though the awning extracted the scent from the sun and sprinkled it over the company below. Good-looking people....
George Tarlyon, at the side of Mrs. Chester, who was lazy in deliciously silvercrêpe de Chine, said nothing which couldn’t be sufficiently answered by her smile. Lois was vaguely reading theDaily Mail(continental edition), which fully reported arrival of self and husband at Lady Tarlyon’s villa in Cimiez, and threw in a photograph of Virginia out of sheer exuberance. The companionable little Earl was asleep. Hugo Cypress was talking to Virginia about, of all things, Forestry! And maybe Virginia was gaining much knowledge about Forestry, and maybe she was not, for she seemed to listen with every now and then a quick smile of understanding, but her eyes wandered vaguely about the horizon, and they looked like eyes that suffered from expectation.
Thevillas in the rue Edward VII., so luxurious in every other respect, do not have carriage drives through their gardens to their doors. Cars stop without the little white wooden gates, and the company must needs walk to further luxury, which was a nuisance when it rained, but then it didn’t often rain. A large and dusty car stopped before Lady Tarlyon’s gate this February afternoon; there was luggage behind it, achauffeur driving it, and a dark man in it—all very dusty. The dark man stepped out, stretched himself, smiled at the driver, and passed through the white wooden gate. It was a quite considerable walk from the gate to the villa, up the narrow path that divided the neglected lawn. And as he was rather cramped from his very long drive, he walked lazily.
He could not see the people on the terrace, under that awning, but they saw him; they stared at him. He had taken the alternative path from the gate, not towards the marble steps, but to the left of the villa, where he could see a door and open French windows.
“Here comes a dark stranger!” cried Mrs. Chester softly.
Lois screwed up her eyes at the figure coming up the path. Lois always screwed up her eyes like that when looking at a distance, because she saw more that way.
“But he’s not such a stranger as all that, either!” she cried. How many years was it since she had seen Ivor Marlay? And Virginia had told no one he was coming to the villa—typical of Virginia, that!
“Please, someone, who is he?” begged Mrs. Chester. “He’s so very tall and black....”
“Marlay, novelist,” explained Hugo Cypress. “But comes of quite good people—on one side. Missed an earldom by an heir’s breath....”
“Clever,” snapped Lois.
“Only by contrast, dear....”
“Well, I never!” sighed Mrs. Chester. “And is that what makes him so bad-tempered looking? Tell me, George....” Ivor was bareheaded and looked rather tousled, that’s all.
Tarlyon grinned at Virginia, but addressed Mrs. Chester. He waved his hand towards the figure.
“We don’t know yet,” he said. “He is one of our leading authorities on courtesans.”
“In that case,” Lois turned sharply on him, “he’ll talk less about them than you do, George.”
“Oh, pretty!” said Hugo Cypress. And lashed outwith his foot at the companionable little Earl—Johnny was his name—who thus woke up just in time to miss the pleasure of his wife’s wit. Lois could be sharp, very. But Tarlyon never minded her.
“Hallo, they’re off!” he cried now. For the company on the terrace was decreased by one. Suddenly, swiftly, silently, Virginia had left them. Down the steps went her feet, and the others stared after her as she walked across the grass towards her guest: who, seeing her, stepped from the path towards her. They met. The lady had no parasol, and the sun made festival of her hair. The sun shone furiously down on them, revealing the gold of a woman’s hair and the mystery of a man’s smile, for all smiles are mysterious from a distance; and Virginia had her back to the terrace, they could see only Ivor Marlay’s smile of greeting. And Lois thought: “That same rather courtly smile—how it used to annoy Virginia years ago! Well, well, even Virginia grows up....”
Virginia said to Ivor with a quick smile:—
“I’m so glad you’ve come, Ivor. I didn’t think you would, really.”
He laughed shyly. Occasions made him shy, not people. He quibbled.
“Yours is a nice car,” he said, “but it’s got no ambition on the hills. We were delayed a little.” That was their greeting.
They walked towards the house. The chauffeur, a suitcase dependent from each hand, passed them and went ahead. There was a silence; and then Virginia said suddenly:—
“You mustn’t mind what George says. My husband, I mean. He’s a child and adores to annoy—and he’s terribly pleased if he succeeds. You won’t let him succeed, will you, Ivor?”
He had realised now the battery of eyes from the terrace; it was a curious feeling, after that long and solitary journey from a solitary place in answer to a telegram; and he suddenly felt very hot and bothered.
“My dear, I won’t mind what any one says if you will let me have the loan of your bathrooms for half an hour or so. I’ve got more than two days’ worth of French dust sticking to me, and feel monstrous.”
“Septic, George would say,” Virginia laughed.
They were almost at one of the open French windows.
“You will find,” she said, “as many bathrooms as you’ll need, scattered about the first floor. And then tea on the terrace.... It was nice of you to come, I do think,” she added in a quick breath.
He went indoors swiftly, without looking at her. Shy, she thought. It pleased her that he was shy, for he had seemed rather inhuman ... long ago.
She lingered on her way back to her guests. She took a cigarette from her little case, which to-day was of lapis lazuli. Virginia had many cigarette-cases, small ones, they had somehow come her way: of gold, of platinum, of jade, of tortoise-shell, of crystal, of onyx, and little boxes of worked silver that had once been snuff-boxes, but she nearly always used this one of lapis lazuli, for she liked lapis lazuli. She confined herself to five cigarettes a day, but to-day, somehow, she was smoking more.
“What have you done with the dark young man?” Ann Chester asked her as she rejoined them.
“He’s preparing himself for you, Ann,” Virginia answered rather shortly. Lois glanced at her. A servant came out, wheeling a tea-table through one of the windows.
“You are a divine hostess, Virginia,” said Johnny suddenly. He had not said anything for a long time. “You are the only hostess I know who ever gives one tea at tea-time. They generally offer you a wretched little cup at about a quarter to six, when it tastes like a warm cocktail.... Would you like me to go on about this, Lois, or shall I shut up now?”
When people said that Lois and Johnny were very happy together, other people exclaimed, “Well, who couldn’t be happy with Johnny?”
Atthe last moment only George Tarlyon, Mrs. Chester, and Hugo Cypress motored to Monte Carlo. Major Cypress, authority on Forestry as he was, was even more of an authority on all varieties of “dicing”—under which name, in this particular set, went every game of hazard—and could always be counted on to go towards a Casino. He was the author of an unwritten play calledLimejuice Nights, an unwritten romance calledThe Profligacy of a Pork Butcher, and of that splendid marching song of the Grenadine Guards, which begins:—
“There’s no vice inA bit of dicin’ ...”
“There’s no vice inA bit of dicin’ ...”
“There’s no vice inA bit of dicin’ ...”
but never ends. “For,” said Major Cypress, “it needs genius to finish a poem like that, and I’m frightfully afraid I’ve only got talent.” And then he would give that funny, gurgling little chuckle of his, a deep “cluck, cluck, cluck.” Hugo Cypress was a very useful man in a battle or a house-party; sometimes he would get drunk before a battle, “just to appal the enemy,” and sometimes at a house-party, “just to amuse your guests,” he would explain to his hostess, who generally adored Hugo, the last of thebeaux sabreurs. He was an uncommonly agreeable companion for any man or woman—or for a man and woman.
Virginia and her three remaining guests dined very pleasantly; and Johnny remarked how glad he was that they hadn’t gone to that “beastly Monte Carlo, where they shoot pigeons all day and pluck them all night.”
“Give me home,” said Johnny, “a little conversation, and a nice-glass-of-wine....”
The conversation, however, was not very “little.” For Lois, his wife, had charge of it, and Lois had a reputation to keep up. Lois’s conversation—which, people and papers said, was witty—consisted in asking rather sharp questions about a given subject, listening impatiently to your replies, and then saying that that wasn’t what she had meant and asking another question, beginning: “But don’t you think, now....” To-night she was talking, or rather asking witty questions about, publishing. Mr. Worth Butterthorn, the publisher, had recently offered her five thousand pounds for her memoirs, and so Lois was rather interested in publishing; so had Mr. Worth Butterthorn been, when Lois had capped his offer by saying that she would be charmed to write her memoirs for him or any one else for seven thousand pounds; and Mr. Butterthorn was thinking about that, probably at that very moment. Lois was clever about money....
They discussed publishing. Ivor was naturally expected to know something about it, but didn’t. And as for Johnny, he of course never knew anything about anything, let alone publishing.
“Who pays who?” he asked. “And why?” (The silliest part of Johnny’s silly questions was that no one could ever answer them.)
“What I want to know is,” Lois dangerously put to the table, “if, say, 30,000 copies of my memoirs are sold at 18s. 6d. per memoir, and if my royalty is, say, 22 per cent. per cost price per memoir, will I make more or less than by selling my rights outright to Mr. Butterthorn for £7000?”
“What about,” Johnny suggested, “a nice little monograph instead, on Artists I Have Sat To, Off and On?”
Virginia was then delivered of an idea.
“My idea is,” she said briskly, “that Mr. Ivor Pelham Marlay should tell us a story on a given theme.We will give him the theme, and he will tell us the story.... Now won’t that be nice for you, Ivor?” she sweetly asked him.
“Charming,” he said viciously.
“I know!” cried Lois. “The theme must be the most fatuous theme ever put to a man. It must be a motto, a moral, or an Oscar Wilde epigram—but it must be fatuous!” She turned to her husband. “Johnny dear, you’ve said so many fatuous things in your life, can’t you think of one someone else has said—just for once, dear?”
“Familiarity Breeds Contempt,” said Johnny modestly.
“Well,” snapped Ivor, “without a little familiarity you can’t breed anything, can you?”
Johnny sighed, and tried again:—
“Every Good Action Brings Its Own Reward.”
“Oh, splendid, Johnny!” cried Virginia.
But Ivor shook his head helplessly.
“But you must, Ivor!” Virginia insisted seriously. “I shall count up to five, and if by then you can’t tell us a tale to prove that Every Good Action Brings Its Own Reward, your reputation will be for ever blasted—not only as an author, Ivor, but as an officer-and-a-gentleman.”
“Yes, rather,” Johnny agreed.
Virginia counted steadily: “One ... two ... three ... fo——”
“All right!” Ivor stopped her with a grin. He addressed them all: “Now this is a story about a comb——”
“Oh, you’ve cribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.
“That’s done it,” sighed Ivor. “I won’t play any more. Let Johnny try.”
“Oh!” said Virginia.
“That’s all right,” said Johnny. “I am not an author, I am a man of ideas. Watch me. Now this is a story about a comb——”
“You’ve cribbed Ivor’s!” cried Virginia.
“No, but he’ll crib mine,” snapped Johnny.
“Whistler said that,” remarked Ivor.
“This story,” snarled Johnny, “is not only about a comb but about a Mr. Jones and a Mrs. Jones as well. If you guess that they were man and wife you will not be wrong. And what’s more, Mr. Jones loved his wife very dearly, even though he hadn’t enough money to do it with from every angle. For of all the things Mrs. Jones passionately wanted, besides of course Mr. Jones, was a tortoise-shell comb; which, she thought, would become her very well, for her hair was of the colour of a landscape at sunset, streaked with ochre. So at last Mr. Jones secretly managed to scrape together as much money as he could find lying about in his employer’s offices, and bought her a very adequate tortoise-shell comb——”
“Youhavecribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.
“—— comb. Mrs. Jones adored it and adored him, and every one was happy. Now I ask you, how were they to know that the shopkeeper had seen Mr. Jones coming and had sold him a celluloid imitation comb instead of a tortoise-shell one? And so one evening, as Mrs. Jones was doing her hair for Mr. Jones’s arrival, celluloid being very inflammable, it caught fire, and the fire caught her hair, and Mrs. Jones was utterly burnt up when Mr. Jones arrived for dinner....”
“And a very good story, too,” said Ivor pleasantly. “I liked the sting at the end....”
“Johnny,” cried Lois. “Explain yourself.”
“Well, my dear,” said little Johnny humbly, “I’m frightfully sorry, but, don’t you see, Mr. Jones drew the insurance-money for his wife’s death....”
Theyhad dined late, and it was nearly midnight when Ivor and Virginia were at last comfortably stretched on two of the wicker arm-chairs on theverandah: for, of course, it was perfectly clear from the moment of his arrival that they must in the next few hours be sitting together on that verandah. The air was chilly with the chill of a Riviera night in February, and Virginia, lying deep in her chair, had wrapped her moleskin coat well about her: for in the year 1919 the moleskin coat was at its ascendant, whence it has since been driven by barbarians, led by one Mr. Kolinsky....
There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of the sky: a black night, and very silent on Cimiez; and a black and silent prospect from the verandah, intensified rather than broken by the distant reflection below of the lights of Nice on the velvet void which was a sea by day.
The hill of Cimiez is always of a silent habit at night, for its world is either in bed or the Casino, and the rattle of the tram-cars up and down the hill ceases by ten o’clock. Ivor and Virginia seemed to have borrowed something of the silence of the Cimiez midnight, for they sat silent for a long time, for what seemed a long time. And the light from the long windows opening out on the terrace fell brilliantly on them.
Lois’s voice suddenly called to them from the room behind:—
“I’m going to bed, Virginia. Shall I turn these lights out?”
“Yes, if you like. Good-night, dear.”
Now it was quite dark. Ivor could barely make out her face, a yard away from him: a dim, white thing above the soft darkness of her coat. It had not the remotest likeness to flesh, that face. It was made of some thin, white stuff....
Virginia said suddenly, into the night:—
“Let’s talk about beasts, Ivor.”
“Yes, why not?” he agreed out of his surprise.
“But I wonder if you will understand,” she murmured.
His chair creaked as he moved a leg.
“Have you ever had a beast in your life, Ivor?” And the dim, white thing grew bigger as she turned her face towards him. “A beast in your life, rightinit, Ivor?” she insisted. “Have you? Think, my dear, for it’s most important....”
“When I was much younger,” he seriously told her, “I had a beast. I’ve almost got over it now. The beast in my life was Other People. I resented them....”
She looked, in the darkness, like a figure made of furs and thought.
“I meant,” she said at last, “a personal beast. A beast, you know, with a face and arms and legs. A face that’s always there, in one’s life....”
“I suppose,” she said, “that you’ve loved sanely ... knowing more or less what and why you were loving. Or probably you haven’t loved, you’ve just liked people very much.”
He didn’t answer that. There was no special answer to make, except that he hadn’t loved or liked often; and then one would have to qualify that....
“That’s why, maybe, you have never had a beast in your inner life, Ivor. You are lucky, I do think....”
Her voice was making no appeal; it was just her voice of daylight undressed by the virtue in the night. But the way of her words was intensely pathetic, and he intensely felt the pathos of her in that moment, a dark moment. That pitifulness again! He seemed to understand things about this Virginia.... And she went on softly:—
“I’d like to draw a beast for you, Ivor, so that you could understand. But it’s difficult, so entirely a thing of feelings. You know? It’s just hell in the fourth dimension, and how can one explain that?”
“I know,” he said.
“But one loved the beast, Ivor! Oh,yes, frightfully! That’s why he’s so real, so awfully there....” He saw the white of her hand as she made a sudden gesture. “He’s so fine, don’t you see? In a conventional way, if you like, but still.... The blond beast of devilish philosophies maybe, Ivor! And he enteredone’s life and swept one up, so airily! If only Ouida had been alive to see his type! He came, you see, as something quite strange—a man among the weaklings of my life with Hector Sardon. Oh, I seem to have known so many weaklings! Poor, poor Hector! Ah, you never saw me all that time, Ivor. It was a terrible time, terrible—and sorotten! But you probably guess.... And the beast came during the worst of it, when I couldn’t hold out against it all any more, not alone.... A lovely man the beast was, Ivor, and not at all the fool he mockingly pretends to be. Oh, no, not a fool at all! And so fresh and weathered and solid.... With him I felt the earth under my feet again, good old English earth in all its immense and lovely solidity. I thought I felt that, anyway, for it was only an illusion that he gaily mocked into me....”
“They mock one,” Ivor said, “and then one hates oneself. It’s beastly....”
“Mockery!” There was a soft and remote meaning in the way it dropped from Virginia’s lips. “Mockery! that soft and sweet mockery of a man in first love—oh, Ivor, it’s the finest thing—at first.” Her wicker chair creaked loudly as she suddenly turned towards him, and his accustomed eyes could see hers through the darkness, wide eyes fashioned out of the mystery of the night, eyes sombre with query. “Have you ever felt that in a woman for you, Ivor?”
“Yes,” he said. And he nodded gravely: “but mine wasn’t only at first—it meant nice things all the time.”
There was a long silence. And then Virginia said:—
“I’d like to be dramatic in my speech just for once—please may I, Ivor? Though I’ve already been frightfully dramatic with you once, haven’t I? It’s most unusual in me, I assure you, Ivor.”
“I live alone,” Ivor said grimly, “so I do it quite a lot.”
“Well,” Virginia confessed sweetly, “I feel thatthere’s nothing so terrifyingly masculine and magnetic as the feline male. For that’s what he is, my beast! The perfect thing of his kind.... So very representative, Ivor, that he’s exceptional! In the dirt of cities, round about Shaftesbury Avenue maybe, it must be that kind of man, I suppose, that makes women do queer things for them, walk the streets and the like. They have a queer effect on women, my kind of beast. My particular one has made me put up with some odd things, I can tell you, Ivor! Standing aside and watching him make love. It was awful, awful, at first.... And then he sort of magnetises one by his perverse understanding of oneself, he forces one to treat him as he treats oneself. He judges people by his own beastliness, you see—and he’s so often right, Ivor! He’s so often been right about me....”
“And then,” she said, “he has queer, soft moments. He sometimes smiles at me from across a crowded room, in a most sweet and understanding way. And he seems to say: ‘Only you and I know what you and I are really like, and we’ll never tell any one—will we, Virginia’?”
“But I am telling someone now,” she said.
“I’m glad,” Ivor murmured.
And her wicker chair broke out in fantastic chorus as her whole body seemed to turn to him.
“Areyou?” she cried comically.
From behind them the noise of a piano suddenly burst on their silence. It lashed out into the darkness in a furious medley, then softened down to classical sobriety—then again a furious medley, then a jingling step, then to something very softly played.
“That’s little Johnny,” Virginia explained.
They listened. For Johnny had the art of seducing attention while he played; he played perversely, his touch had a delicate and impish genius, and he mixed up fugues and fox-trots with almost passionate cheek; he played like a tired genius, and they listened. He stopped soon....
“He always does that for five minutes before going to bed,” Virginia told him, “drunk or sober. So if you pass any house anywhere in the night and hear that noise, you will know that Johnny is about to go to bed. He says it’s his swan song, and that he likes to repeat his swan song every night so that he won’t feel it so much on his last on earth. Nice Johnny....”
Suddenly she stretched out a hand and touched Ivor’s arm, so unexpectedly that it startled him. There are women who appear incapable of touching one, and when they do, no matter how lightly, their touch seems to have a fabulous meaning. He had not looked at her for a long time, he had been staring into the darkness, but now she startled him into staring at her.
“You may be thinking,” she said wistfully, “that it’s rather indecent of me to speak so plainly to you about George. Please don’t think that, Ivor, for I’m not used to confiding in people; in fact, I’ve never done it before, and I shall be so easily frightened off.”
“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “And that’s why I wired to you to come down here. I’m generally supposed to be a secret kind of person, you know. ‘She never tells,’ people say. But I wired to you because I felt I couldn’t bear the burden of things alone for another second. It seems silly....”
“And I thought,” she said shyly, “that telling you all this might explain a bit of that terrible last night in England....”
Her shyness disturbed him....
“You needn’t explain that,” he said quickly. “One’s always afraid, somehow....”
He nervously waited for her to speak; and he was puzzled, faintly irritated, by her silence, for he wanted her just to tell him that she didn’t now want him to believe that she was a “perfect little cad.” But, after a while, she only said, dimly:—
“Now that I’ve told you why I asked you to come, I’d like you to tell me why you did come, please. It’s a very leading question, isn’t it?”
“Well ...” he said, and he stirred in his chair.
“I was lonely,” he said. “And I thought that maybe you were lonely too. I just thought it. And, Virginia,” he earnestly leaned towards her a little, “I’m so glad you’ve told me about your personal beast, indeed I am! But are you quite, quite sure that it’s such a personal beast as all that—that it isn’t just your, well, distaste of your present life that you have somehow personified?”
“Oh, no!” It was a cry.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I thought we might help each other somehow.... One has these brilliant ideas....”
“Was it an impertinence to come in that spirit, I wonder?” he asked suddenly.
She stared at him; and faint memories stirred in her of those very young days round about Mont Agel and the Hallidays, when she had been so impatient of this man’s “rightness,” his bursts of defensive formality. She stared at him. And realised with a start that he was speaking.
“You’ve asked me a question, Virginia, and now I will ask you one—a baby question. What is it you most want in the world?”
“But, Ivor, remember that I’m thirty!”
“Well?”
“Then there’s only one answer, and that is in one word—understanding! Just that—understanding! The second childhood of a woman’s dreams lies in the word, Ivor....”
The night was so dark and still, yet somehow noisy with their personalities, that Ivor had a feeling that she and he were children....
“We’re like children playing in the dark, Virginia—I feel, do you know, that nothing we say this moment matters at all! It simply doesn’t matter, it just belongs to this childish moment....”
“Then I will ask you your question back,” she took him swiftly up. “What is ityoumost want in theworld, Ivor? Remember,” she added, “you have said this is a childish moment, so you can be sincere.”
His chair creaked passionately as he sat up to look closely at her.
“I want,” he said firmly, “the loveliness in people. No less. You’ll say that’s pretty arrogant, and I suppose it is. But I want it all the same....”
“I’ve had a bit,” he explained, “so I know it’s good—oh, wonderfully worth having, Virginia! But one can’t keep it—anyway, I couldn’t keep my little bit. Wasn’t worthy, I suppose. But if you’ve got to wait quietly until youareworthy of a thing you might wait till the Last Trump and still not get it. Better to snatch than get left, I think.... One’s best moments draw that loveliness out of people, and then one loses it. Little demons of prejudice and resentment make one lose it—that shining loveliness in people, Virginia! And when that’s in them they have clean eyes—amazing, isn’t it?—but later on their eyes are not so clean, and one’s own are mirrored in theirs. People say that’s ‘life.’ Everything that gets dirty is called ‘life,’ Virginia. Everything that dies is called ‘life.’ ...”
He stared towards the sea, over it. The Mediterranean slept profoundly; and then it seemed to him that the Mediterranean was not asleep, only pretending; it was a prowling beast, ever prowling about the shores of Europe and Africa....
“I’d much rather go to Africa now than to bed,” she said suddenly.
A car stopped outside the gates; they saw its lights, and they heard voices.
“Good-night, Ivor,” Virginia said—rather severely—and was gone.
Thus it was on the first night.
GeorgeTarlyon entered his wife’s bedroom fairly early the next morning. There was a door connecting their rooms, but he came in by the ordinary door; for when they had entered into occupation of the villa the servants had somehow forgotten to unbolt the door between their master’s and mistress’s rooms, and no one had thought of doing it since. Lord Tarlyon was no slacker, and could do with as little sleep as any man; for no matter at what hour he went to bed, he was generally up and about by ten: as now, entering his wife’s bedroom, gently, as fresh and clear of eye as though Casino smoke was balm to his health. Virginia lay very still, her golden head sideways and deep in the hollow of her pillow, and he was about to withdraw when she opened her eyes. She looked tired.
“I wasn’t asleep,” she said. And she stared at him as he smiled at her from the foot of the bed; and through the half-open door she heard the noisy filling of a bath. She wondered if it was Ivor’s or Hugo’s. Johnny believed in daylight sleeping.
“Will you draw the blinds, please, George?” she asked him.
He let the sun into the room with a mighty rattle of curtain rings; and the sunshine kissed Virginia’s hair—especially “Swan and Edgar,” so unruly in the early hours!—but her eyes would have none of it. She shaded them with her palm.
“I sleptsobadly,” she complained softly: but not to him, to the space about her.
Tarlyon loitered at the foot of the bed, splendid in the light, his hands in his pockets, frankly admiring her.
“I hope you won’t mind, Virginia, but we brought Julie Gabriel back here with us last night.”
She looked at him absent-mindedly.
“Oh, dear!” she sighed.
“Couldn’t really help it, in a sort of way,” Tarlyon explained. “She had quarrelled with her young man, it seemed, and she really looked in rather a mess, so I asked her down here for a few days—until she gets over it, you know. Oh, come, Virginia,” he teased her, “have you no heart?”
Virginia imagined Julie Gabriel “getting over it!” What, on this earth, had ever “got over” Miss Gabriel?
“I’m sure you’ll quite like her,” Tarlyon assured her. “She’s quite a nice little thing, really....”
“Yes,” Virginia agreed softly, “at some one else’s table in a restaurant.” Virginia hated all restaurants—except, of course, the Mont Agel.
Miss Julie Gabriel had made her name as an actress in the year before the war, by showing her naked back to the audiences of a London theatre for ten minutes every night for six months. It was a charming back, people said. However, she had since retired from the stage, finding, no doubt, that she could make her fortune more swiftly and with less public exposure. She had a house in Curzon Street and a palace on the river, and young Royalty was supposed to have supped with her. People liked her—she’s common, but so full of life, they said. It was also said that George Tarlyon was the only man she had ever loved, and it was believed.
“George St. George,” a little voice said from the depths of a pillow to the ceiling, “you do know some low people, I do think....”
He was at once very considerate; he sat on the edge of the bed; he appealed to her as a friend.
“Virginia, you don’t really mind, do you? Because, of course, if you do we can have her thrown away at once....”
Virginia imagined Miss Gabriel being “thrown away” by milord’s orders.
“Oh, no! Now she’s here....”
“Besides,” she said, “haven’t I always said that you could ask any one you liked?”
And then Virginia had a grim thought about Mrs. Chester. Poor Ann! But she said:—
“Lois may mind, you know.”
Tarlyon threw back his head and laughed his laugh.
“Oh, our Lois! I’ll fix her all right—besides, it will come in handy for her Memoirs!Shewon’t mind.” And he got up from the bed with a lazy swing.
“Before you go, you might give me the hairbrush and small mirror from the table,” Virginia asked him.
Virginia and her husband never talked of any subject for more than five minutes; and never referred to a subject again. That is called “getting on” with a person.
ButLois did mind. She had a reputation to keep up. But when Lois minded, she minded secretly. For when George Tarlyon, raiding her bedroom with little ceremony, told her of the addition to the party, she instantly cried, “Oh, splendid!” And that very moment decided that the Riviera was perhaps seen to best advantage from Cannes, to which she and Johnny would repair that very afternoon. Johnny was informed.
She mentioned their departure to Ivor, without, of course, giving the reason for it, as they walked about the garden before luncheon. Virginia had not yet come down. Lois said:—
“Well, Ivor Marlay, I’m glad to have seen you again, if only for a passing moment. Try not to be a beast, my dear, and come to see me in London——”
“Why, are you going to-day?” The surprise in his question seemed to her a little out of proportion to the fact. She glanced at him as they walked.
“Yes, but not to London direct. Johnny and I are moving to Cannes this afternoon.”
Ivor stopped in his walk, and looked seriously at her.
“I’m going to ask you such an impertinent question,” he said, “that I must first light a cigarette. If you will strike a match for me....” His one arm made striking safety-matches just a bit of business; he traded on it sometimes.
She struck one, laughing at him.
“You aren’t surely going to ask me not to go, Ivor Marlay! That wouldn’t come very well from a man who has simply refused to come near me for—how many years? Seven or eight, I think.”
“That’s exactly what I am going to ask you, Lois,” he said earnestly. “I’m hoping you will understand. Can’t I really tempt you to stay a few days longer?” The question was light, but the manner earnest enough. But that Lois appreciated its earnestness was evident only in her glance, for she laughed—the laugh with which she turned things away, a gay laugh, the Lois laugh. (All these people had each their own particular laugh; thus, it was fun to imitate each other’s.) She understood very well why the question was “impertinent.” She knew he was asking her what Virginia, however much she wanted her to stay on, would never ask her—he was asking her not to leave Virginia stranded. It was certainly “impertinent.”
As Lois had said she was going, Ivor had had a sudden vision of Virginia stranded in thatgalère, Virginia deserted by her friend rather shamefully. But, with these people, where did friendship begin and where end?
“No, really. I’m so afraid I can’t,” she said sincerely; and added: “Johnny would be ever so disappointed at putting it off now!”
“Virginia will be disappointed the other way,” Ivor just pointed out, bluntly.
They continued their leisurely walk in silence. Then Lois turned her head to him.
“Virginia, you know, makes everything all right by not noticing things. And she has no need of friends—I assure you, Ivor Marlay! She works things out for herself and by herself.”
Does she? Ivor grimly wondered to himself.
“And I don’t think,” Lois added secretly, “that she will be altogether sorry at our going. Not so sorry as all that, I mean....”
Then they talked of other things, and Lord and Lady Lamorna left for Cannes immediately after lunch, in Virginia’s car. They were great car-borrowers, Lois and Johnny.
Virginia and Ivor were not alone that day, but he didn’t gather from her expression that she was in the least put out by her friend’s sudden departure. She seemed to enjoy her guests that day, and Ivor not less and not more than the others. And the day and evening passed in a crowd, to which the voice and person of Miss Gabriel were certainly vivid additions. Virginia was charming to her, and gayer than Ivor had ever seen her, except perhaps during those first moments of their sudden meeting in the lane by Lady Hall. It was a little difficult to imagine this easy and social Virginia, inattentive to anything for more than a minute, as the faint and wistful figure of the dark terrace a few hours before. Not that she glittered in the Lois way, but she was gaily promiscuous of her attention, she was a woman without preferences....
Tarlyon and Miss Gabriel disappeared for the latter part of the afternoon in the other car; and Ivor and Virginia spent the hour or so between Lois’s and Johnny’s departure and tea in walking with Mrs. Chester, who was rather silent, and Hugo Cypress, who thank God wasn’t, about the winding lanes that lead about the crest of Cimiez—what part of that crest isleft uncovered by the mammoth luxury of the Hotel Regina.
The “dicers” stayed at home that evening—Tarlyon and Cypress had both won a packet atchemin de ferthe night before, which was nice for them. Mrs. Chester did not dice, saying she had no unusual parlour-tricks. Dinner was therefore something of a festival. And later on they somehow fell to dancing to the gramophone in the wide drawing-room: which was apt for that purpose, for it had been fitted with a parquet floor by the luxurious forethought of Mr. James Michaelson of Lancaster Gate. A rather strange thing for Lady Tarlyon and her guests to do, thus to dance, for nowadays they only danced when they had to, considering that they had already danced enough to last them their lifetimes. (They adored Fancy Dress Balls, however—oh, let there be carnival, lovely carnival!) Tarlyon danced with Julie Gabriel, Major Cypress with Ann, Ivor with Virginia.
It was the first time Ivor had been alone with her that day; but when he looked down at her face while they danced it was masked by a smile. He noticed her mouth again, the taut mouth that looked as though it liked to be whipped by the wind.
“Well, Ivor?” she smiled at his look. They were dancing a very slow step—“Oh, very patrician,” cried, in passing, George Tarlyon, whose own dancing was not remarkable.
Ivor suddenly had a desire to force the smile from her face. He would have liked to take the smile from her face with a sweep of his hand, and put it in his breast-pocket, and suddenly give it back to her some other time. He liked her gravity, it was real, but he suddenly felt that this smile was unreal; she had worn it all day, with its variations, and he felt now that she had been unreal all day. Didn’t she know that she needn’t be unreal with him? She had seemed to know last night....
So he suddenly asked her:—
“Did you mind Lois going away—like that?”
She stared up at him, funnily, with lifted eyebrows. “Is this man mad?” they seemed to ask, those lifted eyebrows.
“Mind!” she echoed, under them. “Oh, no! Why would I?”
“Baby!” he thought. She added, as though they had been discussing the subject for hours and she was weary of it:—
“She did quite right, you know. Quite right....”
So she kept her smile. They danced a lot more that night.
Thus it was on the second night.
And on the third night it was more or less thus.
On the fourth night Ivor and Virginia were in Avignon.
Onthat fourth morning, towards noon, Ivor was taking the air on the rather unkempt lawn. No one else seemed to be about that morning, no one had as yet come out of the long, low, white villa; though every now and then, as he passed near an open bedroom window, he heard voices: Julie Gabriel’s voice, Tarlyon’s laugh, and once the Cypress “cluck, cluck.”
Ivor was taking a little thought about what exactly he was doing as Virginia’s guest; and as he had very carefully not thought about it before, he now tried to put it to himself as bluntly as he could. How long was he going to stay, and what for, anyway? They didn’t wildly amuse him, these people, nor he them. Oh, yes, of course, Virginia was the reason, he admitted that. But he didn’t admit anything else; there was nothing else to admit. (There never is when one is thinking out a thing “bluntly.”) Virginia had been distant from him these last two days. He hadn’t felt in the least hurt about that—he didn’t expect anything. But he could not be rid of an idea that she was just letting things drift, in a rather helpless but defiant way: but perhaps she was always letting things drift in a rather helpless but defiant way: just letting things drift until something happened. Did she expect something to happen from him?... And he suddenly realised that he wasn’t in the least treating her as he might some one else. But he wasn’t treating her in any way at all! He was behaving like a polite old man....
Ivor loathed “fumbling about”—“messing about”; trying, he thought impatiently, to get at uncertain things uncertainly. There was anuncleanness in “fumbling about.” ... He wondered what, in particular, it was that Virginia liked in a man. One generally knew that with women. They generally told one. It was generally about the first thing a woman let one know about her, the kind of man she liked; and it was always interesting to know the kind of man a woman liked. But one couldn’t tell with Virginia: her men contradicted each other.... And then the figure of George Tarlyon came into his mind. He had barely spoken a direct word to Tarlyon since his coming—it hadn’t, he fancied, been expected of him. Tarlyon didn’t like him, it seemed. “There’s only one thing George hates in this world,” Virginia had said, “and that is to be disliked. It doesn’t happen often. But he feels you don’t like him, Ivor.” Well, that was a pity, because he had wanted to like him. He couldn’t help it. They always thought the worst, that kind of man; they thought it rather clever of them to think the worst, and other people thought it rather clever of them, too. He would never, about anything in the world, have any explanations to offer George Tarlyon, Ivor thought; he could go on thinking the worst until he burst. Good God, he had probably thought the worst that night he came to fetch Virginia at Nasyngton!
And then he thought of Virginia being attracted by Tarlyon, and loving him, adoring him perhaps, and being held by him even when she had found him out—odd, that, however attractive the man was! The things women create in men, for their own hurt generally! Even Virginia, an intelligent woman! Take a——
“Ivor!”
He spun round, tremendously interrupted. Virginia was ten yards away, walking towards him with her swift, easy stride. It occurred to him that this was the first morning he had seen her before luncheon.... Had he wanted gravity on Virginia’s face? Here was enough now, it was more evident about her than the golden sheen of the hair that framed it! Grave indeedVirginia looked, as she came to him. Her calling of his name from a distance was her only greeting, there was no smile to bear it company. Virginia looked her age this morning, for the first time. She came right to him.
“I am going away to-day,” she said quickly, “to Paris, I think. Are you coming with me, or will you stay here?”
“Of course I won’t stay,” he replied abruptly. “About time I went, anyway.”
And then she stamped her foot! Her eyes were dark, and she trembled a little.
“My God, have I always got to be askingyouquestions!” she cried. “First I had to ask you to come here, and now I’ve had to ask you to come away—don’t your lips form questions or what is it, Ivor Marlay?”
“At what time do you intend to go?” he asked her.
She turned her face away from him. The bright sun, on that open lawn with the windows of the villas glittering full at them, was cruel to her young face at this moment; it probed its pallor and revealed its weariness. Her lips were trembling. She said, away from him, very quietly:—
“Before luncheon, in less than an hour, if possible. By car.”
She turned her face to him again, controlled now.
“When I woke up this morning I decided I couldn’t bear all this another minute. But are you sure you would like to come?” She asked it as though they were going to a tiresome function which would weary them both.
“Yes, very much,” he said gravely. He wondered what on earth she had expected him to say—be enthusiastic?Shewasn’t enthusiastic....