And then her lover comforted Virginia, saying that there would be no “dead-end” for them now. And from some corner of his memory there leapt out Aunt Moira’s lines from a poem by Meredith, but he did not quote the lines, he just said: “We will berapid falcons, Virginia, and we won’t be caught in any snare, but fly together to very high places. And, oddly enough, I know what I’m talking about....”
But some fantasy had come to Virginia, for suddenly she sat up in bed in almost frantic disorder.
“But why don’t you work, Ivor? Why are you so happy with me—why don’t you work?” That is what she cried; and her eyes glittered piteously with the perverse fear that comes to people in a fever.
“You are choking me with your happiness—in a lovely way, but you are choking me, I can’t explain. And you are choking yourself, too. Oh, I know! You are a striving person, Ivor, but now you are too happy, you are soaking yourself in happiness. It’s my fault.... This is unnatural for you, this life of ours, you want to work and strive and think things as well as to love—and here you are, being softened and choked! Why don’t I see you miserable, Ivor, why aren’t you wretched at all this waste? You are losing yourself in love, and as you lose yourself I will lose you. Oh, yes, it’s like that with us....” She had overtaxed her strength, and as she lay back she looked as though she might faint, if a wraith can faint.
And he laughed at her and reminded her of their pact, and of the things they had said that first evening in Paris....
“Oh, that!” she cried. And his face was so near to her that he kissed her lips, those taut, dry lips—burning dry now.
“Yes,” she whispered, “it’s been divine—it is divine. But now it’s ending, Ivor! We are flying back to London next week—you are taking me back to London! And I’ve got the feeling of the ‘dead-end’ on me again, for the first time since I met you in that lane—it’s stolen back! For you’ve become like me, you know, this love has been stronger than you, and you are going soft and rotten with it—you are drifting with me, my sweet, instead of my striving with you! That is what’s called being lovers, and it’s very badfor people. I told you, don’t you remember, that we shouldn’t be lovers, you and I. Oh, I am so wise sometimes!” ...
“When we are married,” he mocked her, “a slight difference will be perceptible in our relations. We will be busy lovers, then. There are so many stars in the sky, Virginia, that there’s no reason for us to stay on one....”
“Oh, when we are married!” she echoed his mockery very queerly; and she held up his chin with her hand and looked deep into his eyes. And she mocked his bewilderment at her mood, whispering, “Poor child!” so that he was uncomfortable. She was very wise sometimes, she had said.
“How can you say that, Ivor, when you know I may die next week? How do you know I won’t die—and I wouldn’t care but for you! I’ve got like that. But what I am thinking now is that maybe it would be better for you if I did die, much better maybe. You could strive all you wanted then!” she breathed with a sudden catch, and feverishly pushed his face from her. “How do you know anything, Ivor, to talk so glibly about our marrying? You are very arrogant, I do think.... There was a lot of destiny in Greek plays, and how do you know there isn’t some left for us—for unanchored people like you and me? Destiny for the undecided.... Perhaps it’s fated that you take me to my death as Iphigenia was taken to sacrifice. Perhaps you are taking Virginia to sacrifice to the god of your life, so that the voyage of your life will be helped with favourable winds! Oh, Ivor, don’t protest, for how can you know anything? These things are very secret from us....”
“Women have moods,” Magdalen had said. “They can’t help it, and no one can help them....”
ButVirginia didn’t die. Ian Black saw to that. But he told Ivor, downstairs in the waiting-room of the Wimpole Street nursing-home where Ivor spent many distressed hours, that his patient wasn’t “resisting” very, very much.
“I don’t mean that she’s giving way,” Ian Black said, “or that she seems to want to collapse. But she’s too busy analysing the pain—and herself—and me, too! Of course the pain is terrible, terrible....”
Ian Black was a chubby little man of very neat appearance and a round, boyish face, on which an expression of pleased or anxious surprise was always dominant. But he was the most restful man in the world to be with, for he had no gestures and made no little fusses with the things of his body, hands and eyebrows and hair and feet and the like, while he talked. He stood before you and stared up at you—he always had to look “up” to every one except when he was operating on them—with round eyes, his hands clasped on his funny little belly, and said what he had to say very gently, very gently and convincingly. To see him, it was too difficult to imagine that he was the most famous surgeon in London: to listen to him, it was easy.
“I think you might see her for just a minute this morning,” Black suggested. “Buck her up a bit....”
This was the third morning after the operation, and Ivor had not yet seen her. He had not asked to. She was in great pain, he was told. She had asked to see him several times, but it had been thought it might upset her as yet.
Now, at ten o’clock in the morning, he went into her room. Very dark and dim it was with its curtains drawn, and about it was that aggressively clean smell of a very serious sick room. Virginia’s eyes were closed. The nurse whispered to Ivor that she would go out for a moment, leaving the door a little ajar....
Ivor stood by the bed, stealthily, wondering what to do. He felt ashamed, somehow.... Virginia wasn’t asleep, she was in pain. In great pain. Her face was thin and gray and it was somehow screwed up, and her eyes were tightly screwed up. Then she opened them and stared at him, and he saw that her eyes were wet. His were, too. She moistened her lips with her tongue, staring at him with terribly hurt eyes. He murmured something.
“It hurts,” she whispered. “Frightful....”
Her forehead, where his lips touched her, was damp and hot. So damp....
And when she tried to speak again she sobbed a little.
“Don’t try,” he begged. “Poor Virginia——”
“I can speak,” she almost boasted. “It’s this pain....”
“There’s things inside me,” she said, with a sob. “Steel things.... They’ve left them in there ... holding things together.... Oh, it hurts, Ivor....”
She tried to explain how it hurt. She wanted to explain.
“Look,” she whispered, with screwed-up eyes. She tried to lift up the covering to show him something. He had to help her. “Look,” she said pitifully. And she lifted up her hands under the clothes, and he saw that they were tied together with a handkerchief. “That’s to stop me tearing the things out and killing myself,” she explained with amazing clarity. “There’s things sticking in underneath....”
“I can’t bear it,” she sobbed dryly. “All the time ... like being ploughed up inside, Ivor—with a plough.... All the time.... I can’t bear it.”
And Ivor couldn’t bear it. He had to go out. Oh, my God, how awful!...
He lingered on the way down the stairs, for his eyes were wet and he didn’t want to look a fool. Ian Black was still in the waiting-room, drawing on his gloves. He had waited for him, it seemed.
“Well, what d’you think?” Black asked casually. Amazing man! he asked it as though he could possibly care a damn what Ivor thought about it. But it was reassuring, that casual question.
“She tried to tell me about her pain,” Ivor said.
“Ah, yes!” Black said thoughtfully. “It interests her....”
“It hurts her,” said Ivor. “Can’t you do anything about it, Black?”
“We do,” Black assured him. “We give her apiqurenow and then, and she sleeps all right. But we can’t give herpiquresall the time.” He stood so still while he talked, like a chubby little image.
“But how long does this pain last?” Ivor asked impatiently. “These things that she says are sticking inside her?... It seems awful.”
“It is,” Black agreed. “It lasts three more days. Then everything will be all right. Assure you. 65 per cent. chance now. Only 10 per cent. chance yesterday. You didn’t know....”
“Well, must be going now,” Black said briskly. “Don’t worry, Marlay—everything all right except the pain, and that will be. If she was only delirious, it would help her forget it a bit. But her mind’s amazingly clear—too clear—she’s got a strong mind, you know. I asked her this morning if the doctor pulling faces at her would make her delirious, and she asked me how I could ‘bear my life, inflicting pain on people?’ I said I preferred golf, and that life was pretty rotten all ways, now. Can I drop you anywhere? I’m going to St. George’s....”
“I think I’ll walk, you know.... Thanks, Black.”
As they were taking their hats in the hall Ian Black said:—
“Rodney West’s coming to dine to-night. You might come, if you like. Eight-thirty. He’s getting rather Germanophile in reaction to the French, and we might drive it out of him. No good reacting from idiocy to idiocy. And I’ll have some more news for you by then, probably....” So of course Ivor dined in New Cavendish Street.
Hedid not see Virginia again for a week. For even when “the things” were finally out she was in frightful pain. Naturally, for a little while, the matron said. (Ivor did not like the matron at all: she was a brisk matron.) The “dressings” were the worst ordeals—which Ian Black and the doctor paid her the compliment of doing themselves, every morning at some time between ten and eleven. Ivor knew about “dressings,” and shuddered. And he felt he couldn’t bear to see her, nor she him really, and that he could do no good anyway. But he was there first thing every morning, in the waiting-room, and Ian Black would come down after the “dressing” and say a word or two. The way Black could get from his patient to politics and back again was continually amazing Ivor. “Practice,” Black explained.
Ivor would return in the evening, with flowers or whatever little thing Virginia had required of the nurse; for he had begged the nurse to telephone him instantly whatever, no matter how slight or even absurd, the patient might want, so that it could be produced at once. And Virginia asked for a special cold-cream, a bright green silk handkerchief, a bottle of Chablis (which she was allowed to sip), some grapefruit, a paper fan, another kind of cold-cream, some real Eau de Cologne (not English stuff), and somecoffee-ice-cream; which, Ian Black and the doctor said, wouldn’t do her any harm, just a very little. She kept on asking for it, the nurse said.
Theoperation was to have taken place in great secrecy, for Virginia didn’t want any one to know. So she had gone straight to the nursing-home on her arrival at the Croydon landing-station, and had written to no one. She would have written or telephoned to her father, only she said he couldn’t help talking and every one would know in a minute.
But every one did know, in almost a minute. The brisk matron had seen to that. And what are gossip-columns for, but to report the living, the dying, and the dead? One cheerful gossip reported Virginia as good as dead (with photograph), but another quickly brought her to life again (with photograph). They had ever detail pat, and of course gave the address of the nursing-home. They commented on Ian Black, what a good surgeon he was and how popular he was; they spoke of his distinguished services during the war, wondered about a K.B.E., and made guesses at his income. They reminded their readers of Virginia’s beauty, her painting, her aeroplane-trips, the sudden death of her charming mother, and the extremely sudden death of her first husband. They referred to her second husband, the gallant and handsome Viscount Tarlyon, said he had two bars to the D.S.O. and sympathised with him in his anxiety. They mentioned her recreations (dogs and travelling), and reminded their readers that her father always wore a gardenia and that he was the last of a splendid type of Englishman....
So, as the season was not quite over, every one called. Lois, Kerrison, Euphemia Halliday, Rupert Kare, Pretty Leyton, Hugo Cypress.... Every one called to leave messages and flowers. The polite and amiableM. Stutz called and said he would call again; and, having asked whether Lady Tarlyon needed anything, and having heard that she did not, he sent her a superb fruit-salad. And of course Lord Carnal called, almost the first, and more than once. Ivor saw him one morning, from the window of the waiting-room, as he was emerging from a car, a huge bunch of white roses under one arm and a small bunch of orchids in his hand: a very elegant and clean-shaven old gentleman, with nothing at all “old world” about his clothes, and looking exactly as George Alexander always wanted to look but never quite could. And of course George Tarlyon called, several times.
Ivor kept well out of the way when the rush began; when he called at the home he was, after the first day or two, shown into a secondary and smaller waiting-room at Ian Black’s request to the matron who, being a brisk matron, had an objection ready for everything; but, in spite of her, there Ivor would wait every morning until Virginia was a little better, for his “word or two” with the doctor or Black....
Now on the morning when the last of “the things” were to be taken out of Virginia, the maid who answered the door—by one of those criminal aberrations peculiar to maids and classed by them as “mistakes,” whereas they are generally catastrophes—ushered into that secondary and most private waiting-room, George Tarlyon.
“Oh, hallo!” said Tarlyon, rather surprised.
“Hallo!” said Ivor; and thought crossly: something’s very wrong with that maid, for she’s gone and left the door open now.... There was a short silence. Tarlyon, with his hands in his pockets, stared absently out of the window.
“Can one smoke here, I wonder?” he asked.
“I do,” said Ivor: taking out his cigarette-case....
“Rotten business, isn’t it?” Tarlyon said shortly. “Poor child.... Awful pain, I suppose?”
“Awful.”
“Seen her at all?” Tarlyon turned frankly to him.
“Just once. She was feeling it a bit. Beastly to watch and feel quite well....”
“A doctor chap once told me,” Tarlyon said thoughtfully, “that women can bear pain much better than men. He said that there’s scarcely a man alive who would go through the pain of child-bearing twice, or even once, while look at women....”
They looked at women for a while, in silence; which was broken by a very faint cry from somewhere.
“Yes, I suppose so,” Ivor said vaguely. He wanted to close the door, but somehow didn’t. And he couldn’t help intently listening ... that cry again, almost a shriek, then a sob, and a jumble of faint, broken words....
“Lord, man, what’s up!” cried Tarlyon. Ivor’s face was white, then green.
“That’s Virginia,” he said, with an effort. “Makes me feel sick.... Sorry.... For God’s sake shut that door, Tarlyon!”
Tarlyon closed the door softly. He was very quiet and concerned.
“I say—poor child!” he murmured; and he looked at Ivor puffing a cigarette with a green face. “I don’t wonder ... didn’t realise myself.”
“Some fool of a nurse must have left her door open for a second,” Ivor said angrily. He pointed vaguely to his mutilated shoulder. “I’ve had some, and so I know,” he tried to apologise for his weakness.
“I bet you do ...” Tarlyon softly agreed.
Ian Black came in soon.
“Hallo, Marlay! Ah, Lord Tarlyon!... Well, things are looking up now, quite all right.” His hands folded across his little port, he stared up at Ivor with round, surprised eyes. “I say, Marlay, you do look green! Want brandy?”
“The maid left this door open,” Ivor said darkly, “and you went one better by leaving your patient’s door open. What do you expect? And I don’t want brandy....”
“That must have been the nurse coming in and out with the things,” Ian Black gently explained, and turned to Tarlyon. “Worst part’s over, Lord Tarlyon. A few days now, and she’ll be out of pain. Fairly long convalescence, though....”
“Main thing’s to get better,” Tarlyon said; and he lounged briskly towards the door. “Well, good-bye, Marlay—see you here again, probably. Good-bye, Mr. Black—take care of my wife, won’t you? Not many lovely women like that....”
Ivor was by the window, staring sombrely at Wimpole Street. There was a car just outside: it was a closed car, and the driver sat facing him. Some one in the back of the car smiled at his face at the window—a woman—and Ivor vaguely smiled back. Of course, Ann Chester, “pretty Ann.” ... Good God, what a man!
“Seems a good fellow, Tarlyon,” Black said from behind, “in spite of his popularity.”
Ivor turned round to him.
“Oh, yes,” he said vaguely. “Charming....”
“You can see her for a moment now, if you like,” Black told him. “Just a quick moment....”
Ivor appealed to him with a wretched smile.
“I’d rather not, you know. Much rather. And she would talk about the pain, too——”
“Naturally,” Black murmured absently. “It interests her....”
But, it later appeared, that was not all that had interested her. “Oh, one’s been thinking such a lot!” she told Ivor weakly, when he saw her a few afternoons later.
“Well, such as?” Ivor smiled. The commonplace of treating an ill person like a child occurred to him vividly. One couldn’t help it.
“About people,” Virginia explained vaguely. “And about clouds....”
“We had a nice lot of clouds downstairs, too,” Ivor told her.
“Poor Ivor,” she said softly.
“My clouds,” she said, “were different. They rolled off people, and I saw people clearly. They’ll be rolling back again soon, I daresay....”
“Where did I come in?” he asked. And he wanted to know, too. He loved Virginia.
“You didn’t, Ivor.” She turned her head on her pillow and stared at him very seriously. How gray and wan she was! “There haven’t been any clouds on you for ages—we pushed them off together, don’t you remember? We insisted on that.... You did, anyway. You are the nice man of my life, Ivor.... I kept on telling myself that I would mention that to the higher authorities when I was dead.”
“This dying business,” Ivor said almost frantically, “has got on our nerves, Virginia.”
“I was only telling you,” she said. “But about people—I saw them very clearly, Ivor. I saw George....”
“So did I. He’s been here several times.”
“I know.” He followed her eyes to the mantelpiece, and there, in a basket like a nest, were plovers’ eggs cushioned on a pile of the stuff that plovers’ nests are made of.
“But it’s not the season,” he protested. He felt rather hurt.
“They’re made of sweet stuff,” Virginia explained. “Mr. Selfridge makes them, and they’re supposed to be eatable....”
“George,” she said, “is an inventive man. He is also an inevitable man. I mean, he’s always there, somewhere about, and one can’t get rid of him. One can’t get rid of him, Ivor, because he won’t be got rid of—he simply won’t take one seriously, don’t you see? And how can one get rid of a man who doesn’t take one seriously?”
“Men like that,” she said softly, “want nothing. So unlike you, dear....”
Ivor’s eyes had darkened. So! But she had him at a disadvantage, she was so gray and wan! So he only said, “Pouf!” and tried to say it easily, but her little, amused smile penetrated him.
“Oh, Ivor!” she teased him, “I didn’t mean what you thought I meant. You are so suspicious, Ivor! I didn’t mean that I was going to let George come back into my life....”
“I was only talking, dear,” she said weakly.
Virginiagot stronger very gradually: too gradually, the doctor said, but still, she got stronger. She did not seem to wish to get strong in any way but gradually, saying that there was no hurry. “The month of August,” she said, “demands to be spent in bed. I’ve always thought so....”
Ivor, however, was not so sure about there being “no hurry”; there was a great deal to be done, andthe sooner the better, now that they were back in England. That divorce business, now.... But even when Virginia was much stronger and could sit up in bed and take human meals again, he was shy of pressing her on that point. It was so inevitable, after all, so why worry himself about it? Ivor had learnt to be afraid of his impatience.
Ivor was now very definite about his feelings for Virginia. He had been definite about them for some months, but from some time before her illness until now that definiteness had been growing into, and had now become, the amazing fact of his life; and as such it went about with him, it was his companion—he didn’t tread on air, he wasn’t that kind of man any more, but he trod on solid earth with the determination of a man who has a good tale in his heart. For it wasn’t that that amazing fact made everything else—the things of life and living, of strife and thinking—look insignificant, or that everything else was entirely at its beck and call. It was merely that nothing else was worth while to him without the company of that amazing fact. With that fact in his life everything else seemed tremendously worth living for. And there was a great freedom about it, too, for he didn’t feel he had to be worthy of it or strive for it or earn money for it; that fact was just part of him and he was part of it, and work was inconceivable without it; for the real and jolly thing about love is not when nothing else matters but love—but when everything else matters because of love. The last is love, but the first is waste of time. Ivor had always thought that.... More than anything else in the world, he hated being “messed about.” It was something deep and fundamental in his character, a birth-mark, a creed, a principle—he hated being “messed about.” A great number of nuisances went into that phrase, it was a useful phrase: even to think of being “messed about” made him hot; and it was growing on him.
Untilshe was fairly strong Virginia was not allowed to see people—except, of course, Ivor, who sat with her for a while in the afternoons, and sometimes in the evenings. But when she was allowed to see people, few came. For was it not the August of 1919, when money was plentiful and London “empty”! Here and there some one called and left in a rush and a clatter, on his or her way to France or Scotland. Ivor, of course, had no intention of going away; and neither, it appeared, had George Tarlyon.
When Virginia was stronger Tarlyon called every day at any hour that happened, often when Ivor was there, and sat with her for a few minutes; or rather, he lounged about in his splendid way and made a few remarks about things in general. He pointed out, to Ivor and Virginia, that August was the month in which to stay in London. “It’s amusing,” he said, “because as every one thinks every one else has gone away, a good many every ones stay behind to amuse themselves in the wilderness. There were eight couples at Claridge’s for lunch to-day, and I’ll swear each couple had thought the other was at Deauville or Scotland....”
“Funny ...” said Virginia vaguely.
It was curious, Ivor thought, the way Virginia changed when Tarlyon was about. She became at once more thoughtful, more retired, more secret; and, watching her one day when Tarlyon was there, he realised with almost a shock that Virginia’s face wore exactly the same expression as on that evening when she had sat in his room at Nasyngton and Tarlyon had come to fetch her: a little tired, a little bored, a littlesecret.... But Tarlyon seemed to amuse her, in a rather hidden kind of way. The idea of him seemed to amuse her. She would laugh a little when he had gone, vaguely.
“George is getting very considerate,” she said one day as he had just gone. “I can’t believe he is staying in London just to come and see his sick and ailing wife—and yet what on earth can he find to do in London in August?”
“God knows!” shrugged Ivor. Having seen Ann Chester that morning in Bond Street, he thought God wouldn’t have to be very clever to know.
“Naturally,” Virginia said, “there’s always ‘pretty Ann.’ He can do what he likes with ‘pretty Ann.’”
Ivor suddenly decided that Tarlyon was bad for Virginia. He fumbled in his mind as to, exactly, in what way, but didn’t quite get it....
“I was thinking,” he said, “that I like Tarlyon less and less.”
“But why less and less?” Virginia opened her eyes very wide to ask. “You couldn’t like him less than you’ve always done....” Now that was not quite fair of Virginia to say that; and she herself had once discovered a theory that George and Ivor might have been great friends—might have. “You’d have laughed together,” she said. “You are both braggarts, in an internal, headachy way....”
“He’s bad for you,” Ivor vaguely but firmly explained.
“What, me! Oh, Ivor, tell me how?” she begged him childishly. “You are subtle to-day, I do think!”
“He’s got a queer effect on you,” Ivor tried to explain, prowling about at the foot of the bed. “You somehow go hard, different. I don’t know....”
“I’m sure I don’t,” said Virginia.
He prowled about; and then he stood by the window, with his back to her.
“Do you remember,” her voice came dimly to him, “one night ages ago when I told you that I wasn’t really natural with you, that I was always on my best behaviour with you? And I scarcely knew you then....”
He came darkly beside her.
“The point is,” he said, “that you are only natural with me, and unnatural with the others. Exactly....”
“Maybe,” she said—and smiled up at him mischievously. And he smiled too, but the gloom was deep in him to-day. He sat on a chair at the foot of the bed.
“Virginia,” he appealed, “I don’t like all this.... It’s rotten.”
“What’s rotten?”
“Now don’t be silly, dear! This Tarlyon and Marlay business, of course—husband and lover—and you in between—and Ann Chester in Bond Street....”
“Nasty four-sided triangle,” he said.
“But I’m not in between, silly!” she cried sharply. “I’m with you. Whathascome over you to-day—you’re getting quitegaga, Ivor!”
But he jumped up from his chair with an impatient gesture of his one arm. He prowled about. Never had Virginia seen him like this! So dark.... Propped high up on the bed she stared at him wondering; then she screwed up her eyes a little, examining him.... He turned to her, trying to look very reasonable.
“What I mean to say is,” he said, “that we ought to settle this once and for all. I can’t bear these vague positions—his coming to see you, and me here—both of us hanging round you—and both of us hating each other. It’s common, Virginia!”
“You are very arrogant, Ivor,” she told him rather mysteriously.
He brushed that away. “It’s common,” he insisted.
“It is, the way you put it,” she remarked. She was very tranquil. “But the fact is that George only comes out of cussedness and a desire to annoy. And he seems to be succeeding, with you anyway....”
“Personally,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t getannoyed with George nowadays. He never wants anything....”
“You’ve said that before,” he said savagely, “and I didn’t like it then. What does it mean, Virginia?
“Well,youwant things, don’t you, Ivor?” she put to him, very softly. She looked up into his face. “You want everything—don’t you, Ivor?”
Her softness humbled him. He turned away from her and prowled about. And her voice followed him about the room like a weary little bird.
“And I’ve given you everything, haven’t I, Ivor? I’ve given you more than I’ve given any man. Ivor, I’ve given you more than I thought I could give any man ... or god....”
Her eyes were very wide and steady on him, as he stood above her; they were sentinels put there to delude mankind, while Virginia’s soul was somewhere else, in some funny, unknown place; dolorous eyes, it occurred to him. So steady and blue and deep.... And he felt himself sinking into those eyes, right into her, he felt things snapping in his head, and he felt that if he lost himself in those eyes now he would be drowned for ever, he would be lost—and she too! He hardened; he pretended to.
“Have you told Tarlyon about the divorce?”
Still they looked up into his face, those sentinels. And when at last she closed her eyes he suffered a queer feeling that a great chance had gone from him, a great chance full of light and blessedness. She pressed her head back against her pillow, in a very tired way, and her lips smiled a little. She shook her head very gently.
“But I will,” she whispered; and her lips smiled a little.
He prowled about the room for a long time.
Theyoften playedpicquet: Virginia in bed, Ivor in a chair by the bed, and between them the back of a copy ofVogue, on which they played. Enormous sums of money were won and lost on that polished and uncertain surface. Sometimes Ivor would win as much as £5000 at a sitting, and the next day maybe he would lose all that and some besides. Slips of paper were exchanged and treasured.
“If,” Virginia said, “you were to look at that slip of paper every morning and say to yourself it was worth £5000, it soon would be. It’s a matter of imagination....”
“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Ivor.
They were merry afternoons, those of her convalescence in August. Virginia had to stay in bed, very quietly, until her wounds were quite healed. She was allowed to lie on a sofa in the room for a very few minutes every day, and that’s all.
“I don’t see much sense in it,” Virginia said to the doctor and Ian Black, “being moved from a bed to a sofa—and a nursing-home sofa at that! Why can’t I sit up in a chair?”
“Taking no risks,” said Ian Black, who was going to Scotland that afternoon. The doctor nodded.
“You are being beastly to me,” Virginia told Ian Black steadily, “because you have a reputation to keep up. What would have happened to me, I’d like to know, if I hadn’t happened to be a rich woman and been able to afford all this care? Suppose I’d been very poor?”
“You’d have died,” said Ian Black. The doctor looked thoughtful.
August rained. It rained, in London, from its beginning until its middle, and then it hesitated a while. It was during that while that Virginia was moved to her house in Belgrave Square—“the mausoleum” which she so hated. But, at the nursing-home, they were glad of the August rain. “One always really knows,” Virginia said, “that one isn’t missing anything by not going away. But one likes to be certain.”
The gloom had passed off Ivor quickly. “Nerves,” he had explained to Virginia, and neither had referred to it since; each secretly feeling that they had walked into, and a little way up, a strange by-path, and had then come running out again. But now, as often as not, Virginia told her nurse to say she was asleep when Tarlyon called.
One day she told Ivor that she was to be moved to the “mausoleum” the day after next.
“I’m to be allowed to drive for an hour or so every day,” she told him. “But I mustn’t go out at night just yet, the doctor said, especially as it’s so damp. We have, however, our own ideas about that....”
“Having stayed in the mausoleum for ten days,” she said, “we will have a tremendous dinner at the Mont Agel. And then we will go away somewhere to get fat and strong. At least I will get all that and you will watch me.”
“And where, Virginia?” Places simply didn’t matter to Ivor: people were important.
“Well, not at my place, that’s quite certain. Besides, I’ve lent it to Lois and Johnny. I’d like to go to Galway, Ivor ... but maybe the journey will be too long for me. We’ll think about it....”
“And then,” she said, “maybe we’ll go back to Paris. Or Morocco—or just anywhere? What do you think, Ivor?”
“We’ll go back to Paris,” Ivor said, “or just anywhere, while you’re waiting for your decreenisi, Virginia. Or else the King’s Proctor will be unkind to us. And we ought to get the thing moving before we go for this present holiday—we’ll begin while you’re at the mausoleum, shall we? For it’s a long and boring business, this divorcing of husbands, with or without collusion. You’ve got to write that usual whiningletter asking him to come back ‘and make a home for you,’ and then he’s got to write to you saying he jolly well won’t, and so on, for a long time.... It would be much easier, of course, if Tarlyon were divorcing you. The placards would say, ‘Viscount Divorces Wife,’ and there you are.”
Virginia laughed.
“He’d never do it, Ivor! And besides, he couldn’t bring it off, for the King’s Proctor would be on him in a minute, George is so careless. No, dear, we had better stick to the first scheme, which I’m sure he will agree to quite comfortably....”
And she suddenly shook her head a little, just a little shake. And she brightened.
“Oh, Ivor!” she cried. “I am looking forward to our dinner at the Mont Agel! Are you? We’ll have the room upstairs, and dear Monsieur Stutz will come and make us drink a very rare wine, saying withimpressementand his fingers bunched to his lips: ‘You will hear the angels singing, Mr. Marlay....’”
“And we will, Virginia, we will!”
“Naturally,” she said.
Onthe morning of the day on which they were to dine at the Mont Agel—Virginia having said that she would risk it, muffled there and back in the car—Ivor in Upper Brook Street received a letter by hand. The letter was addressed in pencil, a pencilled scrawl, and Ivor fingered it with a smile. He had never before received a letter from Virginia—what occasion had there been, indeed! And what occasion was there now? for he had left Virginia at the mausoleum but the night before, indeed only a very few hours ago. Thoughtfully he weighed the letter in his hand, and it was a heavy letter. The Smith had brought it, Turner told him.
Yes, it was a long letter, several sheets scrawled over on both sides, in Virginia’s careless way. To read it he sat, in his dressing-gown, on a chair by the window. September was carrying on August’s tradition; it rained dispassionately.
“I’m writing to you, Ivor, because I can’t talk to you sometimes. I mean, dear, that I can’t talk of certain things without you getting very, very dark; and then, you see, I get frightened for us both, of what will happen—to you and me, Ivor, in those dark moments! You prowl about so, you know! And so I’m sitting up in bed now, just after you have left me, to write to you about a most important and tiresome matter—what the papers so rightly call ‘that much vexed question of divorce.’ Keep your eyebrows straight, Ivor! Don’t bring your eyebrows down into the darkness! Keep your eyebrows straight, my darling, and listen to Virginia. For although you areintelligent and I am not, I am very wise, Ivor. Sometimes. And this is what I know——”
“Breakfast on the table, sir,” Turner reminded him. Ivor looked up and stared at Turner for several seconds. “Yes, yes,” he said at last.
“Ever since we spoke of marrying, that first night in Paris, I’ve known somewhere deep down that I should sometime have to write this letter. But that doesn’t make it any easier, dear, for you can be very difficult. Ivor, I can’t marry you. I won’t. And I’ve known that all the time—and haven’t you known it too? I could have stopped you thinking of it right at the beginning, by saying that George wouldn’t dream of divorcing me or letting me divorce him, but I can’t tell little lies, Ivor, so I told you a big lie. I’ve been pretending, Ivor. Darling, tell me that you knew I was pretending, just so that we could be happy—and that it doesn’t now come as a shock to you? I told you, that night, that I didn’t think any woman would, or could marry you. I don’t know now.... Maybe there is such a woman. Maybe your mother, as you’ve described her to me, was such a woman. But I don’t think so, for she let your father quite lose himself in her, she changed him from a man into a lover, and he was so lost to the world that he might just as well have died ten years before he did. But you, Ivor, want things both ways, and that’s why I can’t marry you. We would choke each other. Don’t you see? I’m not strong enough and you simply aren’t casual enough—you aren’t casual at all! I’m not trying to make any music-hall comparisons between husbands and lovers, but there must be some capacity for casualness in a husband, else people would go mad. I don’t mean that I’d go mad with you—it’s you who would go mad. I love you. Too much, maybe—oh, yes, Ivor, too much! And I’ve never loved any one before, except George, and that was a defiant kind of thing: I’ve just let men touch me, because they so wanted to. I’m thinking of you in all this, much more than of myself. I know I’m notstrong enough to marry you. You want to do things, you will not be happy unless you are doing things and writing things. You think you want to do things, anyway. And in your mind you are never really at rest, you are always striving about something, sometimes quite unimportant things. And you say to yourself that you will be able to strive tremendously when we are married, but I say you will not, and I’m very wise about some things. For, I tell you, I’m not strong enough inside to cope with your love and the burden of mine, I just sink under them and you sink with me—you are not casual enough, Ivor! You don’t push one back, ever! Why, among your many impatiences, haven’t you got that of sometimes pushing one away? And if we many we will sink, and you will never do the work you want to do—have you had a thought about it all this time, you who despise slackers so much? Just loving a woman—even me!—isn’t enough for you. You only think it is, dear. Dear Ivor, I can see you prowling about my life with a smile nailed on your face, wondering why it is that you can’t do or write anything ‘nowadays.’ Your father must have been a different man to you, I think, for he just damned everything and lost himself in love and Italy, quite lost to the world that had hoped such things from him. You are stronger than your father, and you want to master the world and mould it to your desire—and me too! and you almost have, but not quite. And that’s why our marrying can only make us unhappy in the end, for under your strength lies your father’s weakness of loving too completely—your ambitions are just added to you, poor Ivor, to make you unhappy! I am your mistress, and you are my lover. I am your woman and you are my man. Oh, Ivor, let’s go on like that, let’s go on as we’ve done, free to come and go, free to love and work—let me be free, Ivor, to keep your love for me by letting you be free—isn’t that how you once described the ‘patrician idea,’ dear? Well, it’s hitting you back now....I get weak in your arms, and so I am writing this to you. I will not marry you, Ivor. And you will be glad, sometime. But I shall be sorry if you are angry now.”
Turner had lied about the breakfast, for it was not on the table; he had kept it warm, but that availed the breakfast not at all, for it was not eaten.
It had been arranged that Ivor should lunch at Belgrave Square that day; but he told Turner to ring up and say that he would be unable to lunch, but would call in the afternoon if he might. Not casual enough, he thought grimly.... He did not want to go to lunch, not because he was angry, but because he wanted to think. He wanted to do any amount of thinking. And he prowled about his flat all the morning, thinking.
September still rained.
One of the greatest mistakes Ivor ever made in his life was not to go to luncheon with Virginia that day, so that he could “think.” It was, in fact, the great mistake of his life. For a man of his impatient temper does not, at certain times, think. He broods. And how far that brooding can take a man from the reality of a thing! How venomously it colours a thing or a woman, so that they would be unrecognisable to a clear eye! What beastliness it unfolds, what lies it verifies, what disloyalties it makes bitterly reasonable!...
To be “messed about” by Virginia! by, of all the people in the world, Virginia! “Let’s go on as we have done,” she had written. “But how the devil can we?” he tried in his mind to answer reasonably. “We can’t go on, we grown-up people, playing a game of loving in corners, beastly corners—oh, you want to make this thing aliaison, Virginia! and that I won’t have. I’d rather——” What would he rather? he pulled himself up to wonder. And because he couldn’t face the words that might come after that “rather” he suddenly became furious with himself, with Virginia, with everything. He was being bullied, somehow....
Hewent out, at last, in the afternoon. He hadn’t, in his flat, noticed the closeness of the day, but as soon as he was out it met him very uncomfortably. “Damn!” he said. September had ceased to rain, but soon would again, it was so close and gray. He walked into Park Lane and down Hamilton Place. There weren’t many people about, somehow.... The Bachelor’s, at the corner, was closed for cleaning, and it looked frightfully closed. And then, at Hyde Park Corner, he had a vision. The vision held him up as he was about to cross to St. George’s and thus to Belgrave Square, it held him on the curb staring at the navvies tearing up the road. The vision was of another young man on another gray afternoon, but wintry gray. That other afternoon, that other walk, that other young man! Was it like that again? There the buses were by the Park Gates, and the people crowding into them; then there had been a young girl with a very white and serious face, and maybe there was one now; and it had been raining then, and it had been raining now.... Was the only difference between that young man and himself that the young man had had two arms whereas he had only one? Oh, ass.... Whereat he smiled, and crossed Hyde Park Corner. He felt suddenly quite gay. Oh, it was so different! He had admired Magdalen, he had admired her with his heart, as he still did. But he loved Virginia. And he would talk to her now—dear Virginia!—and make her take it all less, well, dramatically. That’s just what was wrong, they were both taking it too dramatically. Lovers are idiots, he thought. He would point out that it was fearful rot about his ever growing to hate her because she made him slack—“Why, my dear,” he’d say, “it’s only with you I can conceive doing anything at all!” And he would tell her again how impossible it was for them to go on as they had been doing, that they had so faronly been on holiday, and that holidays must end. And then they would easily arrange something.... And then, to-night, they would dine at the Mont Agel, in the upstairs room. And how surprised M. Stutz would be to see them together again, for he hadn’t seen them together since 1912, and then only in crowds....
“The Smith is rather odd,” Ivor thought. He saw her on the stairs of “the mausoleum,” as he climbed to the upstairs drawing-room where Virginia would be. The Smith was on her way out, it seemed. “To the cleaners, I’ll bet,” thought Ivor, seeing the parcel under her arm.
“Good-afternoon, Smith,” he smiled in passing.
“Milady vous attend, monsieur,” she told him seriously; and left him almost gaping at her as she toddled quickly down the wide stone stairway.
Miladywas playing the piano. She played very seldom, and not at all well. As she sat at the piano, at the far corner of the room, her back was to him; she was in a loose, low-cut, crimson gown, not the appalling crimson of velvet but the soft, enchanting crimson of georgette, and on its loose folds were strewn large golden squares of cabbalistic import; and the whiteness of her slender neck above the crimson gown was a more than human whiteness, it was the legendary whiteness of those Greek boys who lead Greece astray; and her hair, which had been waved that morning, was more golden than gold, even on such a dull September day. And his feet lingered with his eyes, while she played absent-mindedly, as one who knew she did not play well....
“Oh, Virginia!” he cried from behind her, softly, gaily. Everything suddenly seemed so easy.... Her fingers hung absently on the notes, they loitered, they fell; and she turned on the stool, not quickly. She looked up at him, standing happily there.
“How quietly you came in,” she said. And he was amazed at her looks. Virginia was startling white to-day—not ill particularly, but just white, so that her red mouth looked wanton and peculiar, a carmine, flaunting mouth. It looked quite strange to him, her mouth: she had put on too much lip-salve, being ill. And her eyes were dark, dead blue, like inland seas in sultry weather.
“I didn’t come to lunch, dear, because——”
“Oh, yes, yes!” she abruptly stopped him; and abruptly got up from the stool. She took a cigarette from a box on a little table.
“And I don’t want to hear about that,” she said sharply, right at him. “So don’t, please, go on about it....”
“But I say, Virginia——” he began out of his surprise, and then had to stop because of it. He stared at the white face a yard away from him, and at the eyes. Good God, they were quite livid—with something! He tried to smile. This was too silly....
“We’ll make it quite all right about that—that letter, you know,” he assured her, rather lamely. “We’ll find a way out, somehow....”
“Oh, for pity’s sake don’t go on about it!” she cried bitterly. “You’re always pestering and pestering, Ivor. You never let a thing alone—but never! You get on my nerves....” Her voice was sharp, and it hurt, like a silken thread ripped across a finger.
“I’m bored with the whole subject,” she added wearily, turning away. “And if you’ve read my letter there’s no more to say.”
And then she turned back to him with a queer, strained look. Maybe she was trying to appear reasonable—in spite of him!
“Now please let us talk of something else, Ivor.”
He wondered at his own calmness. He didn’t feel in the least angry—but he knew that somewhere in him there was a lot of anger. And he tried, consciously, to level away even the possibility of anger within him. “This is where sense comes in,” he thought. He was so surprised—at this Virginia! She seemed to want to insult. Her whole manner.... Queer! So she had been thinking, too—and away from him! She hadn’t given him a chance—writing that letter, and then, because he’d stopped away to think.... He hadn’t dreamt that her eyes could look at him like this, so curiously livid. But, of course, she was still weak—after that awful pain. And she had thought herself into a feverish state. He “got on her nerves.” ...
Virginia, standing by a little table, was cutting the pages of a French novel. Often, when her mind was absent, Virginia would cut the pages of a French novel....
“I believe you buy them only for that purpose,” Ivor suddenly said.
Virginia smiled a little, dimly.
“George rang up,” she said, “to say he would come in for a few minutes about five.”
“Ah,” said Ivor. It was nearly five now, he saw. He almost said that this wasn’t perhaps the most opportune moment for Tarlyon to call, but that would only make things worse.
He didn’t know what to say. Dinner at the Mont Agel, or going away to Galway, as they had finally arranged, were about the only things he could talk about now, and they would seem a little forced, he thought. Nothing would fit this stupid moment.... He didn’t want to make things worse; and he didn’t want to let her make him angry, certainly not that! If both of them.... He didn’t understand this Virginia. There’s a queer caddishness about her that I can’t understand, he thought. He felt terribly flat.... He stood by the open window and staredout at the wide, rain-soaked square and the thick plesaunce of trees that shone and smelled of rain. The leaves looked delicious, in a rich and rather beastly way, like green velvet shot with bronze. Nice to bury one’s face in wet leaves.... It was awfully close, and spitting again. He held the French windows as far open as they would go. The square was very still, expecting thunder maybe.... She’s thinking away from me, he thought. And I can’t stop her, somehow. She won’t let me. But I must.... He, no matter how angry he might be with her, was always thinking towards her. “Why don’t you ever push one back?” Well, why should he? He knew what he wanted ... one must live cleanly.... And suddenly he swung round into the room. She was not looking at him.
“But this is absurd!” he said violently to the bent head, to the golden hair. He passionately wanted to put this silly thing right—it was so silly! What right had she to write him that letter and then lookqueerjust because he hadn’t run to agree with her!
As she stood at the little table, her face was bent to it, to the book her paper-knife was absently cutting; and as she stood, she raised her face to his cry, and looked at him; she just looked, and her eyes were quite expressionless, as though she was not there. Oh, that unearthly look! But he didn’t care: he had suddenly felt his strength.
“This is absurd,” he repeated firmly, but almost gaily; and he took quick strides towards her. He didn’t know what he was going to do, how he would force her. But he felt his strength.
And George Tarlyon came in. Ivor stopped in his stride. Virginia turned her face to the door.
“Hallo!” Tarlyon said, so airily! And he came towards them.
“Better, my dear?” Tarlyon asked, taking Virginia’s hand; and to Ivor: “Septic weather, Marlay....”
Ivor somehow agreed that it was.
“Will you have tea, George?” Virginia asked, “ordoes this septic weather call for a brandy-and-soda?”
“It calls, Virginia. With a lump of ice in it, too.”
Virginia pressed a bell. And she asked him:—
“Are you doing anything this evening?”
Tarlyon laughed, as though she had made a joke.
“Nothing that I couldn’t do just as well some other eveni——”
“Then perhaps you’ll dine with me here?” Virginia cut sharply in. “I don’t want to go out, and——”
The door slammed to with a crash, and startled Virginia’s hand to her heart. Tarlyon stared, and then he laughed. He had an eighteenth-century kind of laugh; and he threw back his head a little, and his eyes wrinkled up, as he laughed. It really was rather funny, that sudden exit.... Far below them in the great house, like a cry in the bowels of the earth, a door slammed massively.
When, very soon after, Turner received his master’s command to pack “things,” he did not delay; for though he had seen his master darkly furious before now, he did not remember ever to have seen him so very darkly furious.
“We go to Nasyngton by the next train,” Ivor told him shortly.
“It won’t be very tidy, sir,” Turner murmured.
“No matter,” said his master.
“And for how long, sir—for the packing?”
“Oh, for a few days, man! I don’t know....” Ivor impatiently drove him from the room; then called to him: “Tell Mrs. Hope she needn’t come down. We can manage.”
Ivor had lost his temper. He wanted now but one thing, and that violently—to get out of London, out of “all this”! What he would do then, he had not the faintest idea. He had no other thoughts, there was a furious jumble in his mind. Now and then he would see a white face, a very white little face with livid blue eyes. Caddish eyes.... He would think later, out of London! And his impatience dragged him and Turner to Paddington a good half-hour before a train was due to leave for Reading, Newbury, and Hungerford; and when at last it was in, it was passionately mobbed by the crowds going riverwards in the heat—but who stood a chance against the tall, one-armed young man with the straight eyebrows and the defiant nose? Turner breathlessly squeezed in after him, travelling “first” with a “third” ticket. “Get there somehow,” Turner muttered.
And thus to Nasyngton village, by The Swan’s Neck dog-cart from Hungerford: to the house of the Misses Cloister-Smiths beside the ancient bridge over the River Kennet, towards eight o’clock on a damp and sultry September evening. Turner had bought some eggs in Hungerford: having understood that his master had indicated eggs as the only possible food in such weather.
“Scramble them,” said Ivor, as they reached the house.
Ofcourse, it was a little thing. Just a tiff.... His mind accused Virginia, but not resentfully: reasonably. Quite reasonably. And he thought of how he had first been angry when she had said to him, “You get on my nerves!” Good God, he thought, are there ever two people who don’t get on each other’s nerves sometimes! It’s an abominable thing, but it happens—but it’s ever so much more abominable when it’s expressed, in words! She’s got on my nerves before now, but I haven’t said anything; one doesn’t. It’s one’s own fault when some one gets on one’s nerves, and one must just let it pass in silence. One doesn’t tell the person—it’s one of those commonplace insults that are still the deepest. No restraint, Virginia dear, no restraint! Nor me, either, banging the door on you like that!... But that made him angry again, when he thought of what had driven him to that furious exit. That was such a grotesque insult.... He had been trying so hard to put the thing right! And then, suddenly, without a word to him, to turn to Tarlyon and ask him to dine with her! Of course the dinner didn’t matter, what was a dinner more or less? But to useTarlyonas a weapon of her sudden displeasure with him! Oh, it was childish, grotesque, caddish! Ivor wanted to laugh when he thought of it,but his slamming of that door on them got into his ears, and he couldn’t help retasting the fury of that moment. He tried to tell himself that the situation required a sense of humour....
The only trace of temper that Turner could find in Ivor in the morning was a little grimness added to his ordinary manner. Turner had scrambled eggs again for breakfast, and Ivor pointed out that he hadn’t meant him to go on doing it all the time.... There was the soft light of a hesitating sun over the morning.
“This morning,” he said, “we will fish, Turner. We will cast for trout so that we may catch grayling.” Ivor had acquired more than a mile of fishing rights with the house; he was not at all a good fisherman, but one must do something; one generally, however, banged a ball with a squash-racket against a wall.
“They’re rising pretty well, sir,” said Turner enthusiastically. He liked going out fishing with his master, for it meant that after a few impossible casts and a few poor ones his master would mutter something about arms and say he would try again later: and would spend the rest of the time prowling up and down while Turner cast for trout—which nearly always turned out to be grayling. His master’s capacity for pacing up and down anywhere and everywhere had never ceased to astonish Turner. Carpet or wet grass, all the same to ’im, thought Turner.
“Must walk miles!” he would tell Mrs. Hope. “Potterin’ up and down like that, one cigarette after another. And what ’e can find to think about all that time beats me.”
“Beats ’im too, I s’d think,” said Mrs. Hope sympathetically. “Pore lamb, the worried way ’is eyebrows get fixed!”
But Ivor was not doing very much thinking this morning as he paced up and down, just far enough behind the river-bank not to offend the fishes’ sensitive nerves. Get ontheirnerves perhaps, he thought. He had come to a conclusion by the time he hadfallen asleep last night; and his awakening had confirmed it. One quarrels, he thought, almost naturally, being human; and then, being human, one makes it up. But in a few days, not straight away!I knowwhat I want in this thing—and Virginia must get to know what she wants, or else we’re in a blind alley. There’s no sense in being nasty and then falling on each other’s necks without having got rid of all the nastiness. She simply must not be able to look at me like that in that horrible way. Caddish eyes.... And there was something so, well, blasphemous about those “caddish eyes” that he had to force his mind away from them, else the thought of them would make him angry again. There are rotten mysteries in us all....
The morning was not very eventful as to fishing. Perhaps there was too much light, Ivor vaguely suggested. The afternoon, however, very quickly put that all right, for the hesitating sun was quite obscured by three o’clock, and a little later it began to spit; and by four it was raining steadily, a wet and steady drizzle. They had passed to the farther side of the bridge, where Turner had seen “them rising”; and it was there that a telegraph boy, a very wet and sulky little boy who might have been any kind of boy but for the coloured envelope in his hand, found them. He had tried the house, he said sulkily. Turner quickly tore open the envelope and handed the wire to Ivor.
“Seen anything?” the boy cheekily asked Turner.
Turner looked sharply at him and then down at the basket. The boy thoughtfully examined the three grayling in the basket and remarked that they would be getting wet in the rain.
“No answer,” a voice told him; and the little boy ploughed sulkily back through the sodden grass to his bicycle against the bridge.
“Getting too wet now,” Ivor remarked; and long strides took him towards the bridge and the house. Turner followed slowly; he would have liked another cast or two, but Turner never fished alone, for theunwritten law of Turner’s fishing was that his master was going to have “another go in a minute.”
Within the house Ivor had another look at the wire. “Come back.” That’s all! Dear Virginia! She must have rung up his flat and heard where he was from Mrs. Hope.
But one either does a thing or one doesn’t. One can’t go dashing about the country because of whims and wires. It’s no good our being babies about this, Virginia, he thought. We must get sensible, somehow—find out what we want and then not mess about with it like this. “Come back.” Of course he would go back, he had never intended otherwise. But in a day or two—say the day after to-morrow, when our minds are rested from the folly of the thing and we’ll never need to speak of it again. Of course he didn’t want to attach too much importance to childishness—but still ... those eyes! He couldn’t entirely forgive those strangely livid eyes, they had startled and hurt him frightfully, and they kept on coming into his mind. Caddish.... The day after to-morrow, he thought firmly. Not going back until I’ve forgotten that look.
After dinner he read theLife of Disraeli, the third volume. And once, when he looked up, he caught a vivid glimpse of a lovely grave face between golden “Swan and Edgar.” And at that very moment he almost went to London, to run to the heart of that “mausoleum.”
NowIvor was not fool enough to confound his weakness with his principles: not entirely. And he had never had any principles in love but love. And so the next afternoon, as he was prowling about the river-bank in preparation for “another go in a minute,” he reasoned between his desire to go to Virginia thereand then and the hitch that kept him back. Firstly and mainly, he candidly thought, it’s hurt pride. In fact, it’s only that. But it’s not resentment against her that keeps me from going until to-morrow—it’s just that I want to wipe away all trace of that hurt pride, so that I can meet her clean. Yes, clean.... I can’t go with a nasty secret in my heart. And although I want so much to see her to-day, I shall want to see her so much more to-morrow that the whole thing, hurt pride included, will bubble away in the rush. Oh, yes, oh, yes....
For all that, he spilled his after-dinner coffee. He spilled it by jumping up from his chair as Turner was at his elbow with it. And the cup broke on the table.
“Oh!” said Turner.
“Going to London to-night, Turner!” Ivor cried gaily. What was a coffee-cup?
“But there’s no train now, sir!”
And, having looked at the local guide, there was not.
“What about the car?” Ivor asked.
Turner looked very doubtful about the car.
“Well, we might look anyway,” Ivor said briskly. “Get the key and candle and come along....”
The Misses Cloister-Smiths had not kept a car, but there was a small shed to the right of the house in which such a “car” as Ivor’s could quite well be kept. It was a poor looking car, and it gained rather than lost in the light of the candle that Turner held to it. It was an American car. After the splendid two-seater, the “dear old Camelot car,” had been stolen—that epidemic of car stealing!—Ivor had bought this “off a man”: it was the kind of car that one does buy “off a man.” But Ivor didn’t care what it looked like, so long as it could “get about” and was easily driven with one arm. “It’ll do,” he had said with a grin, when he had first seen it. And it had done, so long as he used it constantly; but once out of commission for any length of time it seemed to retire within itself, and then to show a great disinclination ever tomove again. It had now been in the shed for nearly six months, and looked it.
“Bit damp for it here,” said Turner. They looked at the car. Turner knew a “bit” about cars, but he hadn’t troubled to know much about this one. Turner despised this car—compared to that shining two-seater!
“Petrol,” said Ivor. And while Turner emptied a green tin, Ivor fiddled about with the switchboard—there wasn’t much to fiddle about with on that switchboard!—and then threw up the bonnet and pressed things thoughtfully.
Turner thought of the rain outside, and he looked at the car. Won’t get to London in this, he thought disgustedly.
“Come on, man!” cried Ivor! “It won’t start by staring at it. Give it a twist.”
Turner gave it several twists, for the American’s starting-handle was not one of those fierce ones that object to being twisted. Turner twisted furiously, but only the thinnest of gurgles resulted.
“It’s not going to-night,” Turner said. He was glad.
Ivor pressed the carburettor until it was wet with petrol.
“Let me,” he said; and he twisted furiously.
“There’s something wrong, sir,” said Turner. He was very glad.
And Ivor suddenly laughed. He had suddenly seen a picture of Turner and himself battling with that absurd and dirty old car in a ramshackle shed, trying to get to London and Virginia, and he laughed.
“All right,” he comforted Turner. “I’ll go up to-morrow morning by the nine-fifteen. You can come up later with the things. I won’t be coming back here for some time, I expect. Not for a long time.”
“I shall walk to Hungerford,” he said, “so call me early....”