Fromthat memorable night in July when Ivor first dined with Magdalen he almost literally saw no one else during the ensuing twelve months and more—unless Gerald Trevor happened to insist, as he occasionally did. Ivor simply had no interest in any one else throughout that time; for it is the way of certain natures to show their consummate interest in one person by the neglect of all others. And so Ivor missed many exciting happenings, for the summer of 1913 was a very eventful one in many ways.
The season of 1913 was, as every one remembers, more than usually brilliant. Mayfair was brilliant, nothing disturbed Mayfair—and Mayfair disturbed nothing; which curious phenomenon was explained by thinking men by the rather far-fetched theory that Mayfair does not really matter in England, that it is not England: that, in fact, Mayfair does not represent England any more than, say, the Duke of Manchester represents Manchester. But, all the same, young men make fortunes by writing about it, Gentlemen with Dusters by reviling it, gallant Colonels by describing it, and theLondon Mailcirculates tremendously.
Mayfair was the centre of England, America, and Palestine. And it was observed with pleasure that the young Prince of Wales was the only royal person since Charles II. who even looked like being “in” Society. It was the season of very brilliantdébutantes, daring matrons, and startling dowagers. Of course suburban people went about saying nasty things about them, silly things like: “You can’t tell adébutantefrom adéclasséenowadays,” and thought they hadmade an epigram. Gentlewomen of the middle sort were horrified by the rumours concerning the immoralities and perversities of the lovely young ladies whose photographs they breathlessly looked at in the weekly papers; and a woman had only to be found dead in an elegant flat in Maida Vale for the Press to report: “Strange Death of Society Woman. Believed to have been due to Drugs.” It was commonly said that the number of ‘society women’ who took drugs was unbelievable, while as for drink!... One way and another “society women” began to come in for a lot of contempt. Chorus-girls despised them, and wanted to know what would happen tothemiftheydid Such Things. Young men were very cynical that year.
Every one tried to learn the tango that season, and then every one decided that it wasn’treallya ballroom dance. Young women began to look like the portraits that the fashionable portrait-painters were painting of them—lovely but “untemperamental”; and middle-aged men shook their heads over them, saying that these young women seemed to have no temperament. But the young women knew better, for whereas their Victorian mothers had baffled men with reticence, they baffled men with candour; and every now and then one of them would commit adultery at the top of her voice. [Whereupon—a divorce has been arranged and will shortly take place. Letters: “Dear Bubbles” her lawyers write, “why do you not come back to me? I have always tried to do my duty to you, I have always tried to make a comfortable home for you, and now that I am panting to see you, you won’t come near me. Please, Bubbly dear, why are you so cold to me? Yrs. ever adoring Bunny.” His lawyers passionately retort: “Nothing will induce me to return to you. I have been thinking this out carefully, and have decided never to live with you again. We are too different, temperamentally and financially. Yrs. sincerely, Derek Maltravers.” Restitution of Conjugal Rights. A rest. Nothing doing about Restitution of ConjugalRights. Formal Adultery proved. Decree nisi. Another rest. Decree absolute. It’s only a trick, of course—but it needs money. There’s nothing at all to prevent poor people doing it—except, of course, that it needs money. Mr. Justice Darling might make a joke about that. He makes such good jokes.] Dancing increased in popularity and violence, night-clubs became fashionable, and young ladies were sometimes seen drunk in them. Many Americans settled in London that season, saying they were crazy about it, but most of them have gone since, crazier than ever about it. The slits disappeared from the back of men’s jackets, but top-hats and gent.’s morning-suits were still worn.
And Lady Lois Lamprey was married to a companionable little earl, a notable wedding that lit the world from Peru to Samarcand. (Samarcand was just then becoming fashionable among those who go down to the sea in poetry). But she was still called Lady Lois. “You have made it so difficult for people to realise it’s yourmaidenname,” said her mother the marchioness severely. And Lady Lois was loved by many young men, but she loved not one. But they were wonderfully revenged by the artists who painted portraits of her and the writers who wrote novels about her, in which poor Lois was always shown as afemme fatale par excellencewith a heart of jade and innumerable lovers. The Hon. Virginia Tracy became more than ever famous for her beauty, clothes and witty silences. Also she painted portraits of her women friends in bed, and made a few trips in a thing called an aeroplane: about which her mother, Lady Carnal, told the Press that she was very annoyed indeed, and that Virginia should not do these things, for she had a weak heart; but there was somehow a misunderstanding about that weak heart, it was never exactly located, the Northcliffe Press saying it was Lady Carnal’s and the Rest that it was Virginia’s, and the question was not finally settled until Lady Carnal’s sudden death a yearlater. Virginia almost got married twice, but finally made a brilliantcoup de cœurby marrying an American during a week-end at Bognor. Which, Lois said, is the kind of thing that might happen to any one who wastes week-ends at Bognor. He was a millionaire, however, which was more than her little earl was.... And there was a wonderful party of celebration at the Mont Agel, one in a chain of many wonderful parties. And then, later, every one went to Venice....
That is more or less how it all appeared to Ivor in his happy corner. And every now and then he would dine with Gerald Trevor at the Café Royal, and he would hear of great dinners and dances andpotins, of the hostesses that were made and the hearts that were broken, of the amazing progress of the legend of Lady Lois and of the recklessness of Virginia. But it didn’t seem to Ivor that he was missing much; it seemed to Ivor that he would be missing very much if he hadn’t met Magdalen.
A year had passed, from one July day to its elder brother. And Ivor had not realised the wonder of that special day in July, he had no head for dates—until, calling to see her that afternoon, she suddenly held her date-book-calendar under his nose and very slowly tore off the leaf of the previous day, when behold! there, below the date of that day, was writ largely the name “Ivor!”
“Our birthday,” she told him gravely. “Birthday of that night last year when first you came to dinner....”
“And realised that I’d never, never dined before!”
“Yes, how thin you were, Ivor! But you’ll be much fatter after to-night, for we will have a wonderful dinner somewhere in the country, because it’s our birthday. I hate my own so much, but I’m sentimental about ours....”
Now there was a mood of Magdalen’s which complained of Ivor’s “splendid isolation,” of his present way of not seeing any one else. Magdalen saw quite a number of other people: it was very difficult for her not to, for the world was full of men and women who, on given occasions, seemed unable to “touch” food unless Magdalen was there to “touch” it with them. At first she had seemed not to realise Ivor’s present way of life; and then there had come a time when she made a gesture against it. But man is not warned by gestures alone, so she had to clothe hers with words. And even then Ivor would not be brought to see that it mattered one way or the other, whether he saw peopleor didn’t. He read a great deal, he said. And he played rackets.... She teased him with her disfavour, he mocked her with his love. And then one day she got annoyed with him, and he with her.
They were at luncheon at his flat, and she asked him what he had done the evening before. She asked as though she didn’t know the answer, but that did not deter Ivor from giving it.
“Dinner, bed, book,” he explained. “Charming evening.”
“Its description, however, doesn’t make for much conversation,” said Magdalen.
“I want to know,” she dangerously said, “why, whenever I can’t dine with you, much as I’d like to, you must always dine alone. I feel there must be a reason for that....”
“What Magdalen wins the world must lose!” Ivor mocked humbly.
“That’s all very well,” she protested vividly. “But don’t you see, my dear, that it’s very unfair, your absurd isolation? (a) It’s unfair to me; (b) It’s unfair to yourself; and (c) It’s frightfully unfair to the countless people whom you deprive of the charm of your countenance and company, to say nothing of your conversation....”
“Besides,” she said plantively, “your idiotic isolation is making me what’s called a ‘marked’ woman. And if it’s all the same to you, Ivor, I’d just as soon not be a ‘marked’ woman. I hate being thought of as a woman who snatches young men from their natural surroundings and keeps them in close confinement for fear of competition, if any. To please me, Ivor ...” she suddenly pleaded.
“You’re pretending, Magdalen!” he accused her sulkily. “None of those things matter and half of them aren’t true, especially about your being a ‘marked’ woman because of me. Those things are only true of people who live in restaurants, and you and I have scarcely been in one together since I saw you withRodney West that night.” He was very young and very sulky.
“What is it all about, Magdalen?” he asked miserably. A year had passed, and this was their first scene—their first scene! No ordinary year, that....
“But, Ivor, I don’t want you to wake up one morning—to find no Magdalen and no friends!” She jerked the thing out....
“Why no Magdalen?” he stabbed at her.
“But that’s childish, you sweet!”
His eyes would not meet hers, he looked blackly at the table, waiting.... If only he would meet her eyes she would make it all right, he would understand. She knew herselfsowell ... sometimes. But he was so young!
“I don’t see why,” he said at last, to his plate.
“There’s a fatality about my kind of love,” Magdalen said softly, miserably, heroically. “It ends.” And in that moment Magdalen loved Ivor as she had never before loved him; she was like that.
“Mine doesn’t.”
Silence....
“Stuff!” said Magdalen—and shrieked with laughter! He blushed furiously.
“Look here,” he snarled, “do you or don’t you love me?”
“I do,” snapped Magdalen. “But I’ve got ideas.”
Ivor leant forward truculently.
“Then if you do,” he said very slowly, “what the devil are you talking about?”
Magdalen leant forward, so that there was nothing but their breath between her earnest face and his truculent face.
“I adore you—mark that, Ivor! Maybe I don’t love you as a dairymaid would love you, but I’m sure that into one month I cram as much love for you as a dairymaid would give in a lifetime; her way is called ‘simplicity,’ and is supposed to be divine. But I am divine in my own way. I adore you. If I were anepithet and you were a noun I’d follow you about on every page of the book of life—until you were oh so tired of me! But I get ideas....”
“Women have moods,” she whispered. “And let me tell you about these moods, Ivor, so that you will learn not to madden the women who will love you. Women have moods every now and then, they can’t help it and no one can help them. You knew that? You poor lamb, you don’t know anything really.... These moods, let me tell you, are vast and inexplicable and untidy and terrible. They devastate everything. Particularly, they devastate men, these moods. I’ve seen them destroy better men than you, Ivor. They change a woman’s personality, they give her a new mind for that short time, a new and unhappy mind, as every one is unhappy who sees too clearly—but lovers go on being lovers, not understanding anything but that it’s a damned nuisance, not understanding that this woman’s mood can change a lover into a man and a man into dross. Women are much given to wanting to speak the truth in this mood, for hysteria seems to act that way—but they generally don’t speak it, life being what it is, and that’s what makes them so evil and bad-tempered to the men they love, but who insist on loving them at any hour of the day and night, regardless of sense or sensibility....”
“Of course,” said Ivor reasonably, “if it’s only a mood....”
Now a mood is like a cloud against the sky, it comes and goes and leaves no mark. But that is a lie, for a mood is like nothing else at all.
TheHallidays went abroad that August, or rather they went to Deauville, and Euphemia Halliday lent Magdalen her house near Sonning for that month. Inthe last few months Euphemia had discovered a surprising affection for Magdalen, to whom she had always referred to as “poor little Magdalen! she is so witty, you know!” Euphemia always referred to women poorer than herself as “poor little——,” and gave it to be understood that she liked to be kind to people. But she had never before been “kind” to or about Magdalen, and Magdalen was quite puzzled about it until she heard that Euphemia had quarrelled with Lois Lamprey, for Euphemia was full of caddish little enthusiasms about women, and as one collapsed she must quickly make another. However, Magdalen couldn’t help being charming to her, and Euphemia gushed over with the gift of her house near Sonning for August.
“A gift,” Magdalen pathetically told Ivor, “for which she will ask me twenty to thirty guineas a week when she comes back—and get it, what’s more! I’m the most easily cheated woman I know, Ivor.”
“That’s just your kind of vanity,” he pointed out. “You’re the vainest woman in the world, really—but it’s a private vanity, and doesn’t hurt any one but yourself, for it consists of letting horrible people impose on you while you just quietly despise them all to yourself.”
“This house we were speaking of,” said Magdalen severely, “is a charming house. What I mean is that it has every modern comfort and convenience, and duplicates of each. There is a bathroom to each bedroom and a divan in each sitting-room, telephones in every corner and servants round every corner. And it’s just far enough from the river to be out of the reach of passing footlight-favourites and energetic men wearing Leander ties. One will be very comfortable there, Ivor.”
“One would prefer a cottage, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “My husband—with whose tastes you seem to agree so well, Ivor—has always told me that I could wear a cottage very becomingly.”
“Do you know,” Ivor broke in, “that that man seems to me the nicest man in the world, from what you always say of him.”
“But indeed he is,” she cried. “He’s a dear, my Tristram. I married him when I was eighteen, and I still say it, although I’ve been begging him to divorce me ever since. But he’s too wise to do that, and though he has offered to let me divorce him, I’m not quite cad enough to do that—not until he wants to marry some one else, anyway, which I’m afraid is improbable. And when he comes home he stays at the club and we dine together, and I have to confess that being married to him has prevented me from marrying some awful men in my time.... Oh, Ivor!” she suddenly clapped her hands with an idea, “let’s take a flight of fancy and imagine you going to see Tristram one day—he would like you, you’re his sort of man; and let’s suppose you told him what you’ve threatened to tell him as soon as you see him, that if he divorced me or let me divorce him you would marry me. Whereupon he would first of all ask you if you could keep me in the luxury to which I’ve been accustomed. On your saying rather sulkily that you could, he would further ask you what grounds you had for thinking you would make me happy. Then you’d look sulkier than ever, and mutter something about my loving you (which indeed I do). After a silence of a few seconds, spent by both of you in emptying the drinks which Tristram had ordered on hearing that a man had come to see him about his wife—after this short, impressive silence, he would say, quite gently, ‘But she loved me, too!’ Now he’s much older than you, Ivor, and your natural deference for age would be fighting a battle with your stern conviction that the two cases weren’t at all parallel—but before you could explain that he would add, ever so genially: ‘Suppose, Marlay, we talk of it in a year from to-day—how would that do?’ At that you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, especially if you were sitting in hisclub; and so you would spend the rest of the time in asking him about the extremely foreign countries he had visited, and then you’d both forget all about me and probably lunch together....”
“This house we were speaking of,” said Ivor, “seems to me a charming house....”
“And it’s called Camelot!” cried Magdalen.
ThatAugust, Ivor Marlay’s car—as swift and handsome a two-seater as any could be at that primitive time of motoring—became almost an institution to the little boys along the London road, from Sonning to London and from London to Sonning, which is by no means the same distance. The conventions had naturally to be observed in some degree, but what time he didn’t spend at Camelot was certainly spent in getting to or away from it. Many people came down to stay with Magdalen, but now and again there would be a divinehiatusbetween those who had just gone and those who were about to come, and it was Ivor’s business to fill thathiatusas speedily as he might. Magdalen was very good at arranging the frequent occurrence of thesehiatuses, but not, she insisted, half so good as Ivor was in filling them up, for his car seemed to swing into the drive within a minute of her having telephoned to London to say: “There is bed and board at Camelot, Ivor....”
But of what happened at Camelot near Sonning during that brilliant August of 1913 when England really showed the world what it could do in the way of Augusts: how those days, stolen from Magdalen’s friends, days of leisure and love and talking—but how they talked, and seriously!—passed like fantasies of sunlight, so bright and quick: how they walked through the lush of August nights in the gardens of Camelot, “towards the moon and back,” and were content in this plenitude of companionship: and how they would sometimes be sad in passing silences, each knowing that these hours could have no parallel andthat nothing repeats itself except regret: and how each would sometimes mystify and torture the other by a shadow over the face.... And how, among others, came Rodney West, K.C., as calmly genial as ever, and how the great friendship between him and Magdalen, estranged this past year, was plain to see: and how people wondered at this perfect attainment of peace with honour, but Ivor was glad of it: and how they stole nights together until sunrise, and so wonderfully that even a sunrise by Turner would have been a colourless thing beside the dawn of their awakening. It was all very good, this way and that way and every way....
But to tell of what happened at Camelot near Sonning during that all-too-short month would fill a book. Whereas our way lies, less lyrically, in the direction of disenchantment and death. There’s a pinnacle reached (by the adventurous) and life breathlessly surveyed thence, and found to be but the servant of this moment on this pinnacle; but then there is the coming down from that high estate, two deities becoming every moment more mortal, the one suppliant and the other satiate, or both satiate, which is perhaps even more horrible. Mediæval words there are to fit the case, full-blooded words like treachery and betrayal and dishonour, but nowadays a broken vow does not mean a broken head; it means a headache to the one and a long walk for the other, “to get rid of all this....”
Theclimax was at Camelot, it was there they climbed the ultimate mountain. But the descent took them several months, and the New Year of 1914 was come before the thing was over. And the damnable part of it was that it was he who seemed to change, and not she!
She remained, as always, his perfect friend; to the naked eye nothing strange could be seen to be happening in her, there were noticeable about her not one of thosesubtle signs that are supposed to mark a tired woman; and none of the primary emotional stars were seen to stop in their courses. But Ivor’s eyes were not naked, they were jaundiced with love, and he saw that something was happening in Magdalen, from October onwards. He saw it, but of course he didn’t believe it; and he was unpleasant, in the vague way in which men are unpleasant about vague suspicions. In fact, of all the mistakes that a man can make in trying to win back a woman, Ivor neglected to make not one: from suspicion to bitterness by way of silence, from bitterness to suspicion by way of indifference, and a lot of other unpleasantries as well. He was going through hell, and there is nothing more tedious than the company of a sensitive young man who is going through hell....
But Magdalen, if she thought that, thought it philosophically. It was most usual in men.... She bore with him patiently, insufferable though he was. “Waste, waste!” he would say, among other silly things. “To think that all this has been waste!” She assured him that it wasn’t waste, that fine things aren’t wasted. He rounded on her about the “fine” things, and she was quite silent, and then he was ashamed. Poor Ivor! He was spared nothing, for she would tell him of her great affection for him, the like of which she had never felt for man or woman before, it was so great and understanding and unending—the only thing about me that is unending, she said bitterly. She shouldn’t have told him of her affection, she should have kept it secret, she should have pretended to have grown to detest him; so that he could have turned on her and cursed her and gone his way. Poor Magdalen! She couldn’t pretend. And it was her avowed fondness that continually gave him hope, it was the great rock on which he built castle after castle, each to tumble down at sight of her lustreless eyes in his arms....
Magdalen couldn’t help herself—how could she, she was as she was!—but she did try to help him. She was the confidante of his misery about her; she was thegreat friend to whom he told his griefs about her; and she it was who tried to soothe him about the imperfections of his mistress. But she could never convince him that his mistress was worthless, too used in the traffic of love to be worthy of being so loved; and she utterly failed to convince him that life was worth living in spite of the inconstancy of one wretched woman....
An entirely unmoral woman Magdalen was, but she had a firm etiquette of the heart: and this made her pre-eminent in a man’s regrets, for that etiquette of the heart is the rarest of all things—unless it is, however, that it is rarely observable in good women simply because of the many other commendable qualities that crowd one’s vision of them. Magdalen was a woman of honour in everything but honour. And Magdalen grew in Ivor’s mind to symbolise civilised women, in all the grace of kindness and imperfection, but he was to find that civilised women aren’t really like that; he was to find that the nicest women grow vindictive when they are bored (it is understood that men, when they are bored, just go away, extremely strong and silent); and that their unwilling constancy is often the cause of innumerable little antagonisms and caddishness, and that they are seldom dignified in their sudden dislike of an intimacy. They wish to draw back, that’s what it is. But Magdalen wished only to go on, “to find out.” And Ivor, to these later women, would speak of Magdalen, revenging himself on their crudities. He would not refer to her by name, of course, he would just suggest her somehow, a nameless and polite figure of his past, or he would rather bluntly say, “a woman I knew once,” and fix his dark eyes almost contemptuously on his listener—who perhaps, it was not impossible, knew that he was speaking of Magdalen Gray; and maybe she pitied him for being a fool about such a woman, or maybe she vaguely respected him for she didn’t quite know what. But, anyway, it was after he had known Magdalen Graythat Ivor grew to be vaguely spoken about as one of those men who are “nice about” women: a not unpleasing distinction, though of course vague....
Thus, tiresome though he was throughout that winter, Magdalen bore with him. It was he who finally could not bear with her.... Had she been unfaithful to him? He was her friend—that is what she said. But he knew that he was not her friend—not yet, anyway. He didn’t know how to be.... Had she been unfaithful to him? “What would you like me to answer?” she asked him, in the light of the “very shaded” lamp.
“If it will cure you of loving me,” she said thoughtfully, “I will tell you that I have been unfaithful to you....”
“If it will not cure you but only hurt you,” she said thoughtfully, “I will tell you that I have not been unfaithful to you....”
“It does not matter, anyway,” she said. “This infidelity business ... between you and me.”
And then they were silent for a long time, thinking how it didn’t matter—anyway. But of course it didn’t matter, this “infidelity business”—it was just a thing of the body, almost an accident, but love was a thing of the spirit. Love just swept it aside, love was everything, love took no stock of infidelity at all. Some women simply couldn’t be bodily faithful, that’s what it was; thank Heavens there were only a few women like that, but they were splendid in other ways, divine ways, and love must overlook infidelity. But love simply wouldn’t soar, it descended into the abyss and consorted with infidelity, and together they made a maelstrom that whizzed about young Ivor’s head and sickened him of life and love and himself—particularly of himself. For his supreme misery was not that Magdalen might have been unfaithful to him, but that he was unfaithful to himself.
She had wanted to be ravished, like a woman in a dream; and when the dream faded he found a friend, just a friend....
InJanuary, 1914, Ivor caught a cold in the head. He had always been remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia long ago at school. He hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with a cold in the head, he just took quinine and continued to blow his nose. One day he produced his cold to Magdalen, by special request, for he had avoided seeing her for a week; and Magdalen said that he had caught the thing because he was run down and that he must go away. She pointed out that he was the luckiest man in the world, with or without a cold in the head.
“You’re free, Ivor!” she said. “A man with no ties and plenty of money—my dear, the world’s for you! And here you are, hanging about London in January, when you might be in all the lovely warm places in the world, having marvellous adventures in the sun!”
But he couldn’t go away—and she knew, with pathetic impatience, that he couldn’t. And then, in that bitter loneliness, he was sorry for himself. And his cold continued.
Now there came a day that January when he had not seen Magdalen for two weeks. The time was past when he could see Magdalen. He wanted too much—anyway, it was too much now!—and he couldn’t pretend any more to put up with a little. January was doing its worst that particular day; the rain fell icy cold, and every hour or so it would beat down with feverish fury; and the angry damp seemed to penetrate his flat and bones, there was little comfort in his blazing fire—evenhad he been restful enough to sit before it for any length of time. Outside, Upper Brook Street was quiet and sodden; every now and then a bare-headed manservant would scuttle under an umbrella to the pillar-box; and towards lunch-time several cars—from his window above they looked like large, fat, wet flies crawling in the glistening dirt—swung along from Park Lane towards Grosvenor Square, full of people going to eat each other’s food. And soon they too would be going south, and Magdalen among them maybe....
Towards a darkened four o’clock he thought it might do him good to go out and walk a little in the rain; he had a sudden longing to stand bare-headed in the rain. It would certainly do him good.... There was a throbbing pain in the back of his head. At least it seemed to be in the back of his head, or to have its headquarters there, for the whole of his head was heavy with it. Not a serious pain, but irritating. Every few minutes he would shake his head as though to shake away the pain, but it just went on irritating him. This damnable cold in the head.... He crushed and swallowed two aspirins, and went out.
He enjoyed it, this aimless wandering in the rain. It was fun to walk slackly along while every one else was hurrying by, anxious to get somewhere. He wasn’t anxious to get anywhere! The men looked awful in the rain, he thought; they smelt of it, and looked like weeds that in their hearts suspected as much; but the hurrying little women looked attractive and pathetic, and oh so serious! There was one, a girl with a white serious face and downcast eyes, whom he would have liked to speak to, but she was swallowed up in the crowds that were waiting for buses at Hyde Park Corner. He walked on, towards Knightsbridge. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular. Maybe he might go into the Hyde Park Hotel and have tea; he didn’t generally take tea, but this afternoon he just might. But somehow he forgot to go as far as the Hyde Park Hotel, and found himself at Magdalen’s door in WiltonPlace. He was in Knightsbridge, after all, and he might just as well have tea with Magdalen as alone at the Hyde Park Hotel.
But Magdalen was not in.
“Now that’s very disappointing, Foster,” Ivor said. “And it’s raining, too!”
“Yes, indeed it is, sir,” the man said sympathetically. “If you would care to come in I could give you some tea, sir—and it might be that madam will be in herself soon, though she left no word as to when she would be coming in.”
“It’s cruelly wet,” Foster said thoughtfully, helping Ivor off with his overcoat.
The tea question was settled, then—there, in the “room of state!” No peaches in it now, though! and no Magdalen either! But he was not waiting for Magdalen. He hadn’t really expected to find her at home. He had wanted some tea, that’s all—and, after all, he had so often refused tea in this house that it was only fair to come to it on the one occasion when he did want tea. And now that he had had it he was just waiting to finish a cigarette, and away he’d go. But, it was so warm and pleasant in that “room of state,” he smoked another.... Six o’clock it was now. Well, he wasn’t waiting for Magdalen, anyway. God knew where she was! And he had nothing to say to her even if she did come in.... The half-hour struck. And Ivor, in a sudden wild fury, threw away the cigarette he was about to light, and banged out of the house.
He knew very well where Magdalen was. Of course. Magdalen wasn’t the sort of woman to hang about just anywhere all the time between lunch and dinner—like Virginia and Lois and that crowd, who either sat about for hours in one place or dashed about to a thousand places in an afternoon, doing nothing at all. Magdalen was not like that, she either had a purpose or she hadn’t; and if she hadn’t, she sat at home reading a book. She read a lot of books. Hadn’t Gerald Trevor said of her,so long ago, that Magdalen didn’t loiter unless there was something to loiter for? She loiters actively, he had said. And Gerald was always right about the women he wasn’t in love with, he would always make a very good husband to the wrong wife.... But he would have liked to have seen her, if only for a minute. Maybe she would have taken away this pain in the back of his head, or anyway told him what to do with it. Extraordinary how helpless he felt without her! But he would go to a doctor to-morrow, if he wasn’t better. He had never been to a doctor about anything before, but he would easily find one, they were everywhere. He would ring up Magdalen and ask her, she knew several. Maybe if he went back to Wilton Place now, maybe she.... But he strode on. He had forgotten to button his overcoat on leaving her house, and the icy wet wind billowed it out round his tall figure, it added to the confusion of his passage through the dense evening crowds about Hyde Park Corner. No fun in walking in the rain now! It was horribly ugly, this sodden darkness. He felt ill and weak, but he couldn’t find a taxi, he had to jostle through the crowd. Black and furious he looked, and several people stared round at the tall lowering young man with the defiant nose, who strode viciously past them in a billowing overcoat....
Hedressed with extreme care and pomp that evening. He had a comical idea that this throbbing pain in the back of his head would respect him more if he put on a dress-suit. One should always be taut and rigid andsoigné, he thought. Magdalen said that too. The homely dinner jacket wouldn’t impress any pain, there was no dignity in it. It suited Argentines very well,le smoking. But Englishmen were made of sterner stuff.
It had been his intention to dine at his club, and hewas well down the slope of Saint James’s Street before he sharply changed his mind. He loathed his club, or any club. Lot of cow-eyed men. So he turned into Arlington Street and into the Ritz. It was still raining.
In the restaurant he found a corner table, by the windows that face the Green Park. It was a table for four, and may or may not have been reserved, but as the young gentleman (who happened to be quite unconscious of the diabolical frown on his forehead) seemed entirely oblivious of every protest that was made, the secondmaître d’hôtelshrugged his shoulders and let him have it. The secondmaître d’hôtellost nothing by this complaisance, however, for Ivor ordered magnificently. There was naturally no question of offering him thetable d’hôte; you can’t singly take a table for four and then play about with atable d’hôte. But the secondmaître d’hôtelfound him every bit as good as four ordinary diners, and much less trouble; and he ordered his waiters to take an interest inle pauvre gigolo....
Ivor also drank magnificently. He had a vague remembrance of some one having once told him that champagne was the best remedy for any kind of cold, and so he drank a bottle. And, because he had drunk a bottle, he also broached a half-bottle. Krug, 1907.
“Coffee, sir?”
“Please. But do take the chill off it.”
And then a few brandies, ... without, he considered, the slightest effect. It seemed to require a devilish lot of concentration to get drunk, and concentration was just what he hadn’t got. So he gave up the attempt, and after having stood on the hotel steps in Arlington Street for several minutes, he thought to ask George Prest, thecommissionaire, if he had any striking and original ideas as to what to do in London on a rainy night.
“How do chaps go wrong in London, George?”
“Might try the Empire, sir,” said George Prest.
“Taxi!” cried George Prest into the rain. And there was a taxi.
As Ivor was about to climb into it, he thrust his top-hat into thecommissionaire’shand. He pressed it on him.
“Keep it,” Ivor urged. “It’s quite a good one. My head wants air to-night and the damn thing keeps on getting between it and air. And I’d like you to have it, George. You can shove it into the cloak-room if you like, but if I were you I’d keep it. It’s not a bad hat, as hats go. You’ll need it when you retire....”
Not so sober as all that, after all! thought Ivor.
The Empire did not hold him for long. He tried, from the promenade, to see what was happening on the stage, but he found that it hurt his eyes to look, they were hot and burning. So he walked up and down for a while, and then sat down on one of the red plush sofas outside the bar. One should take an interest in human nature, he thought, and so he tried to take an interest in the passing crowd. But it was not impressive, that crowd. Of the men, several half-familiar faces nodded to him, and he decided that he must have known them at school. He watched them, and saw they hadn’t changed at all. They were a little pinker and less pimply, that’s all. That’s because pimples grow inwards, he thought. And they were talking to the women whom it had been their ambition, when at school, to talk to. Just like Transome. Dear old Transome.... Later on, when they were a bit more drunk, the women would get money from them, and there would be fumbling with love. Then the women would get more money from them. And to-morrow they would say that they had had a marvellous time—and it would be true, too! But if these harlots, thought Ivor, had anything even remotely resembling brains, and could hold a man when he was stone-cold-sober as well as when he was blind-drunk, they would long ago have been respectably married wives. A harlot isonly interesting when she had won her way to respectability. All good harlots die in Mayfair, he thought. But these are no good at their jobs, that’s what it is, and that’s why they’re such crashing bores.
By a quarter-past ten he was in Leicester Square. And by half-past long strides had taken him past Hyde Park Corner—again! Yes, he was going to see Magdalen. He felt awfully ill, not only in his head, but all over, a burning kind of illness, and he wanted to tell Magdalen exactly how ill he was. His skin felt like a damp and unclean shirt. It was still raining, but not much, and it was nice walking bare-headed in the cool rain. It was the nicest part of this awful day, this quick walk. She would see how ill he was, and be sorry for him. Besides, he wanted her to tell him of a doctor; he would have to see a doctor, and to-night, maybe. Had influenza, probably—or worse. That thought pleased him, for she would be frightfully sorry for him. He longed for that, for her to be sorry for him....
Yes, she was in. From the road he could see the dim lights behind the curtains of the two windows of the “room of state.” Dim lights, naturally. Magdalen and he had always had dim lights when they were alone there, on that divan in the corner. Her eyes hated any light except sunlight, she said. That shaded lamp of hers—that “very shaded lamp”—gave a soft, sweet light, he could see the soft light of it in his mind as he stood in the deserted road and looked up at the windows. Then a taxi jerked round from Knightsbridge and moved him on to the pavement by the door. Well, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t go up, he only wanted to see her for a minute, just to ask her about a doctor. She would be sure to see him, she had never refused yet, anyway. If she did, he didn’t know what he would do, maybe he would go to Saint George’s Hospital nearby, disguised as an accident. The pain had somehow got to his side now, and hurt him when he breathed.
He rang the bell, and waited for a long time, but noone came to the door. He rang again, and heard the tinkle of the bell in the basement. And the third time he rang viciously, keeping his thumb on the button—and Magdalen stood in the open doorway!
“Ivor, it’syou!”
He grinned at her sheepishly. He was afraid.
“Foster must have gone out,” she explained, staring at him wide-eyed.... “What is it, sweet?”
“I just thought——” Ivor mumbled, as he stumbled past her into the narrow hall.
She closed the door softly behind them; and then she turned to him with a concerned, business-like air. It was so unlike Ivor, to come thus! He stood staring at her limply, with his back to the wall, limply. He just stared at her, with a ridiculous smile. And Magdalen saw the bright pink patches on the sallow cheeks—and how cadaverous he looked!—and the dark eyes bright with fever. And her own grew vivid with concern, she shook him by the shoulder to wake him to his condition, for he was standing against the wall smiling stupidly at her.
“Ivor, how dare you be out in this state!” she cried vividly. “You look frightfully ill, you ought to be in bed....” And with the palm of her hand she lightly brushed his forehead, and the fever of it seemed to stab her with anxiety. But it was cool to him, a white hand of ice on his forehead, adorable ice, and he caught this hand by the wrist and pressed it to his burning skin. He forgot his illness, and the pain in his side which caught at every breath. He was wonderfully comfortable with her, luxurious in the scrutiny of her concern. He wasn’t listening to her quick words, his silly smile bade her to be quiet, ... and, with her palm still pressed by him to his forehead, he caught her round the body with one arm and held her to him, raising her off her feet so that he could kiss her lips. Ice again, ice. He did not look into her eyes, he was afraid to, for his kisses brought no lustre to them now; and how dexterous she was now! somehow luring him to her cheek, wherelies only the sulky stuff of love. Magdalen couldn’t pretend, ever. Nervous words of comfort came from her, a small laugh, a tiny, helpless gesture. Dear Magdalen! And so he thought to comfort her for the boredom of his kisses.
“I’m sorry, Magdalen,” he said....
“I’ve had such an awful day, Magdalen,” he said. His eyes were wet....
His illness was quite forgot—but not by her. She was silent, racked by anxiety as to what to do with him.
“You see, Magdalen,” he whispered dazedly, “life is a most awful mess without you. It’s caddish of me to make you responsible for all the beauty in life, but I can’t help it. I must tell you. You’ve got no right, you know, to be so admirable to a man....”
“And then,” he said suddenly, “to be so admirable to another man.” He wanted to go on, to say something caddish....
“But I haven’t another friend, Ivor!” But she was thinking only of what to do with him.
“No?” his eyes searched her face naïvely. “Well, then, I’ll be your friend, indeed I will. Later on, though. For I somehow can’t yet get used to not being your lover, it’s stupid of me. But I’ll be your friend, Magdalen, you can rely on me.”
“Silly Ivor!” she laughed at him nervously, taking his arm. His absurd seriousness unnerved her. “Why, you’ll have your work cut out to be your own friend, in the state you are in! You’ve got influenza, that’s what you’ve got. And you’ll go straight off to bed, please, straight away, and I’ll send you a doctor. You didn’t think, I suppose, of seeing a doctor, Ivor?”
“But that’s just what I came to see you about!” he remembered eagerly.
“Stay a moment,” she commanded, and flew quickly up the stairs. Ivor, with his back to the wall, closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly,in the hope that the pain in his side was an illusion. Maybe it was ... but it wasn’t. He opened his eyes; she was coming down again, wrapping something up in paper.
“Hot-water bottle,” she explained, giving it to him. “I’m sure you haven’t got one in your flat.”
“The correct procedure is,” she said, “to fill it with boiling water, then go to bed and lay it on your tummy, and go to sleep. Some people say it’s better to put it under your feet, but I’ve always inclined to the tummy school. One sweats.”
“Now, Ivor, no more nonsense!” she almost stamped her foot as he still made to delay. “And I’ll ring up Dr. Harvey as soon as you’ve gone, to go and see you. He’ll be with you in a very few minutes.” She almost pushed him to the door: deciding that she would follow him to his flat as soon as she had telephoned Dr. Harvey.
He wouldn’t let her open the door, he blocked her way, and his fumbling with it strained her nerves. But it was open at last. And without a word he stumbled quickly out.
“You’ve decorated my life, anyway,” he called abruptly back from the pavement, and strode away. She saw the paper round the hot-water bottle flutter down to the glistening pavement. Shivering from the damp cold, she watched the tall figure from the open doorway. Where had he left his hat, she wondered? She hadn’t realised he had no hat. She began to run after him to tell him to come back indoors while she tried to find a taxi, but at that moment she saw him catch one at the Knightsbridge corner....
Ivor, with his hand on the door-handle of the taxi, suddenly found it impossible to direct the man to his flat. He suddenly found he couldn’t bear the loneliness of his flat. And he quite forgot about Magdalen’s doctor.
“Drive,” he told the man, “to Mr. Trevor’s flat in Savile Row. It’s a charming flat, on the third floor....”
He’s certain not to know it, Ivor thought, and inthat case I’ll go home. He shifted the responsibility of his intrusion on Gerald on to the man.
“No. 96, sir,” the man said. “Yes, sir.”
“I used to be Mr. Trevor’s valet once, sir,” the man said.
Well, thought Ivor, taxis are stranger than fiction. He lay back and closed his eyes. The paper had dropped from the hot-water bottle, and he hugged the rubber thing to him, smiling at the idea of Magdalen.... God, how awful he felt! how his head racked him, and his breathing too!
The taxi pulled up, and after a while the driver jumped out to see to his fare, who seemed to make no movement. He found his fare a heap in the corner, his eyes closed.
“Mr. Trevor’s flat, sir,” said the man sympathetically. And he touched his fare’s arm.
“All right, all right!” Ivor impatiently murmured, and managed to stumble out. The man picked up the hot-water bottle from the pavement and handed it to him; he was a pleasant man.
“Shall I help you up, sir?” he asked.
“Look here, I’m not drunk,” Ivor found sudden energy to protest. “But I’ve got pneumonia, if that’s any good to you....”
“All I want to know is,” he said weakly, “whether you think Mr. Trevor’s in or out? You say you were his valet, so you ought to know.”
The man listened, with head aside.
“I hear a piano, sir. That ’ud be Mr. Trevor....”
It took Ivor a long time to get up to the third floor. He felt worse every second, it was hell to breathe. Doctors ought to be like pillar-boxes, he crossly thought, they ought to be at every corner. Most of them are red enough, but they’re not at every corner. They play bridge every evening.... Gerald would be annoyed with him, dear Gerald! But what could he do, he couldn’t be alone any more, he couldn’t bear it. He ought to be a man, of course.... Trevor’s doorswayed before him, he couldn’t find the bell somehow, and so he banged on it with his fist. Where the deuce had he left his stick, the one Magdalen had given him?
“Hallo, Ivor!” Trevor’s voice said genially. He wasn’t annoyed to see him, then!... And then Trevor caught him. Ivor had crumpled up. Trevor, silently, almost carried him into his sitting-room. Ivor tried to explain, but it hurt him so to breathe.... Then he just managed to pull himself together, and stood up straight, and laughed weakly to see the hot-water bottle hanging from his hand. He waved it at Trevor.
“See that?...” he said faintly.
“I’m awfully sorry, Gerald, coming like this,” he said. “I’m——”
“You’re in a state, old boy. Take it easy for a moment.” Trevor’s voice was quiet and kind. He tried to help Ivor to the wide sofa just beside him, but Ivor still stood swaying.
“Look here,” he tried to explain. “I’m not drunk, not really. I’ve got pneumonia.”
“But you can’t have pneumonia here!” Trevor cried in horror.
“Oh, can’t I!” said Ivor weakly. And he flopped as he was on to the sofa, and closed his eyes.
Trevor was very busy the next few minutes. Ivor seemed unconscious, his breathing came in quick, rasping gasps, and Trevor could feel the fever of him when he touched him. In a moment he had off the wet shoes and overcoat, and had him covered up with a rug and an eiderdown from his bedroom. Ivor still clutched his hot-water bottle.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Trevor softly, beside him; and he stretched out to the telephone which was on a little table by the divan. Ivor opened hiseyes to stare round him, and then put a hand feebly across them, for the light hurt them. Trevor switched out the lights, the fire was light enough. He picked up the telephone again. Ivor stared at him.
“Doctor,” Trevor briefly explained.
“Sorry, Gerald ... let you in for this,” Ivor said faintly.
“That’s all right, old man. Be quiet now. Love to have the honour of saving your life.”
“I’ve had this before,” Ivor just murmured. “At school. Not so badly, though.... But they thought I was done, ... and said prayers for me in the school-chapel.... ‘For one of us who is now at death’s door.’ ... Everyone was very touched....”
“Pooh, that’s nothing!” Trevor mocked. “People have said prayers for me when I hadn’t got pneumonia. But look here, Ivor, try to keep quiet while I get a doctor. There’s a good chap.”
Trevor finally got on to the doctor. He tried to speak as low as he could, not to disturb Ivor, who again seemed as near sleep as could be.
“Hallo, Harvey! Trevor speaking.... Yes, Gerald. I say, Harvey, I’ve got a young man here having pneumonia. I’d be glad of a little help....”
Dr. Harvey’s voice came from the other end: “But look here, Mrs. Gray has just rung up telling me to go round to a flat in Upper Brook Street where a young man has got influenza....”
“Influenza nothing,” Gerald snorted. “The chap’s here, I tell you. And on your way here you’d better book a suite at a nursing home, because I can’t have people having pneumonia all over my flat, there’s no facilities....”
He put up the receiver and turned to Ivor behind him. He could see, in the firelight, Ivor’s eyes painfully on him.
“You won’t die yet, Ivor,” he grinned at him—that jerky, pleasant, wise grin of Trevor’s! He sat besidethe sick man, and passed a hand over the burning forehead.
“Wouldn’t mind,” Ivor whispered. And two big tears crawled out of the dark eyes and down the cheeks.
Gerald Trevor ate a macaroon, and soon Dr. Harvey came in.
“He’s got it bad,” he whispered to Trevor, having examined him. “Ought to have been in bed hours ago. But we can move him all right. Get your man to help. I rang up Mrs. Gray to say I was coming here. She’s coming on.”
“She can’t help him now,” said Trevor. “Come on.”
The three of them carried Ivor down the stairs to Harvey’s car outside. He was heavy, for all his thinness. He woke up once, just to say absurdly: “You’re carrying me.”
“Observant of you!” mocked Gerald.
In the car they had him between them, a large bulky figure in Gerald’s rug and eiderdown. He was past listening to anything now.
“What on earth has he been up to?” Harvey asked Trevor in a whisper, across him. “To go about like this! He must have felt it coming on all day—and yesterday, too!”
“God knows,” Trevor said.
But both men knew well enough, in a sort of way. Dr. Harvey knew London as well as medicine, and he had known Magdalen Gray for years. He pursed his lips.
“That woman,” he whispered grimly, “burns whatever she touches. Always.” (It is a well-known fact that doctors in private life get frightfully dramatic about women.)
Trevor was silent.
“It’s an irony about her,” Harvey went on. “She’s kind, oh, very kind! but she always makes a mess of men. This young man, now. She breaks ’em, in the end. I’ve known a few.”
“Yes, but she makes them first,” Trevor said suddenly.“You’re talking without your book, Harvey. She makes men, I tell you, out of the ordinary idiots whom she falls in love with. This one isn’t an absolute idiot, but he’s young, and that comes to the same thing in this case. She’s been worth-while to him, and she will always be worth-while to him. She’s a woman of quality, Harvey.” And Gerald Trevor smiled....
“A little less quality and a little more constancy,” Harvey suggested grimly, “wouldn’t do her any harm.”
“Even so,” said Trevor satirically, “you would love her to-morrow if you thought she loved you, and constancy be damned. It’s the function of women like her to remind men of their littleness and impotence. I’ve been reminded once or twice. But men like you, old man, hate to be reminded of their littleness and impotence. You’ve got an idea that you are worth loving, and Magdalen Gray is in the world to teach you that there isn’t as much foundation for that idea as there might be.”
“You wait till you have pneumonia ...” Harvey whispered viciously across the still figure of Ivor.
Thedays of crisis passed. Dr. Harvey confided to Trevor that it was touch-and-go, but Ivor, in that occasional clarity of intense fever, had no thought of death. One morning, at last, he really did wake up. Weakly, he noticed the room. There was a nurse nearby, and she smiled at him cheerfully, making encouraging noises. He remembered the nurse quite well, she had been about his bed all the time, doing things, and he had asked her for things, too. Yes, she had been there all the time, that nice nurse. And he saw the hot-water bottle hanging from a bed-post at his feet.... He tried to link his memory of a vague face in that room to another memory. What did it remind him of? something so vague and dim, and so long ago.... He remembered Ann Marlay’s face—he never thought of her as his mother, she was Ann Marlay to him—bending over his childhood, and sad, gentle eyes. Of course, yes. And now this other face, so clouded and familiar, hovering about, wide eyes mocking him tenderly—oh, how divine she was, to mock so sadly and tenderly, so unlike every one else! And he spent a long time in trying to compare the two memories, Ann and Magdalen, wondering if they were at all alike, wondering if they would have liked one another....
But she didn’t come that day. He slept, but when he woke up he felt that he had been really watching the door all the time, and that she hadn’t come. He did not ask the nurse about her, he waited. But she did not come. Trevor came in later, and grinned happily to see him better, and said things. Ivor didn’t ask him either, he just waited. But Magdalen never came again.
Allthe time of his getting gradually better he never asked about Magdalen. It was an effort. Gerald Trevor came every day, but he said nothing about her. Gerald was gay of an idea that he and Ivor should go to South America as soon as he was better. Gerald, it seemed, knew a chap who had a ranch there. “Sun and open spaces and horses andgauchos, Señor Ivor,” Gerald cried to him, and Ivor said he would love to go. It was a divine idea, of course he would go, Ivor said.
And Rodney West came once or twice; he had heard he was ill, West cheerfully said, and so thought to have one more look at him before he died. He asked Ivor why he had never gone to see him, and he wondered if Ivor was thinking of selling his car, but Ivor said he was not. So calm and friendly and practical he was. What a good friend for any man, Ivor thought—and straightway made him one! Which was Ivor’s naïve way with the few people he liked, to claim them quickly—and then quietly wait for them to realise that he had claimed their friendship.
But Magdalen never came, nor news from her. Flowers came every other day or so, flowers that filled the room and exercised the ingenuity of nurses to provide vases, but there was no message in them, they were only flowers. He was indifferent to them, he grew to hate them....
He was convalescent now, well out of weakness, and would very soon be moving from the nursing-home. He had taken the air once or twice, gently. And Trevor came to see him one afternoon. Ivor took out the cards for the game ofpicquetthat they would play.
They cut for deal.
“You know,” Trevor casually said, “Magdalen has gone away.”
“Oh,” said Ivor.
“She’s gone,” Trevor said, “to Spain. For some time, I think. Magdalen is like that, as you know. When she is in London she stays for years, but once she is away she stays away for years.”
Ivor had nothing at all to say to that. Somehow he had known all the time that Magdalen had gone away. She hated a mess. She would make a wonderful playwright—if plays consisted only of exits! But she might just have written to him....
“I say, Ivor,” Trevor said quickly. “She wrote to me to tell you that she had gone away, as soon as you were better. Just that.... You knew, of course, that she was here all the time you were really ill?”
“Yes,” said Ivor. “Thanks so much, old man....”
“It’s your deal,” Trevor said.
“I’ve booked passages for Buenos Ayres,” he said, “for the tenth day from to-day. It will be nice for you, I thought, to be convalescent all over the boat. And I chose the best they had, a nice water-tight one——”
Ivor suddenly burst into laughter. Giggling, it was really. And he said:—
“Gerald, what fun we’ll have together in foreign parts!”
“In extremely foreign parts,” he added softly.
And they did. But they had to come back all too soon, hearing there was a war in Europe.
“I wonder what it’s all about, this war,” Ivor wondered on the boat coming home. “I don’t know much about war....”
“That,” said Trevor, “is exactly why people go to war. So it’s said....”
“War,” said Trevor dogmatically, “has got something to do with some one being frightened to death of some one else....”
“War,” he went on dogmatically, “is supposed tohave something to do with the Dignity of People. But by substituting the less pleasing word Bowels for Dignity the same result of war will be obtained.” And he turned to Ivor with that jerky little grin of his. “We’ll inquire further into this here war, Ivor, when we land.”
But Trevor inquired no further; for one thing, he had too much sense to try to find the sense in any war; and for another, he didn’t have time. For Gerald Trevor, Colonel Trevor, was killed almost as soon as he set foot in France, in the slaughter of Neuve Chapelle in the spring of 1915. Dear, gay Gerald! There died a courtly gentleman. He had loved a few women and killed a few men. There died a gay and kind and courtly gentleman.... And in the winter of 1916, Ivor Marlay, by then deprived of almost every sense by the noisome dullness of war, was also deprived by a shell of his left arm, from the shoulder; whereupon there followed for Captain Marlay months of hideous and tearing pain.
His left arm, however, was not all he lost through the war.
“That dear old ‘Camelot’ car!” he reminded Magdalen, his first visitor at the London home to which he had finally been moved—Magdalen whom he had not seen since that “hot-water bottle” night! “That dear old ‘Camelot’ car, Magdalen! I refused to sell it to Rodney West, and now some ass has stolen it from the garage, thinking maybe I’d have less use for it now. Whereas——”
“Whereas, Ivor, you’d like to say, but daren’t, to lose only one’s left arm is really more of a decoration than a loss. But you can’t pull any of that ivory stuff on Magdalen....”
Her eyes were alight at seeing him again, she was intensely proud of him—has it not been said that Magdalen was very, very English? And to whom, in all this wide world, did Ivor belong, if not to her! And she could scarcely bear to see the pain that wouldevery now and then twist the dark young face—and set those eyebrows scowling so sulkily! She pretended not to notice, he would like that best. Her old friend Ivor! “The best ever....” And, in the way of her sympathy, she mocked him, for she knew he loved her mockery, saying that the arm he had left was an excellent arm anyway, and that the bit of coloured ribbon for which he had exchanged the other one would look very decorative beneath the pile of handkerchiefs where it would live out its glorious life. “More than ever dark and dangerous Ivor!” she cried softly. Her old friend Ivor!...