But, of course, Turner did not need to call him; and Ivor was striding along the road to Hungerford by eight o’clock. He had plenty of time in which to do the just over two miles before the train was due to leave, but his impatience needed swift movement.
Ivor never could loiter: not even on a fine morning in Berkshire; and even in his pacings up and down he would sometimes go at a furious rate and find himself perspiring—about nothing at all! Ivor didn’t, couldn’t, notice the country when there was anything on his mind: it was an inability, like that of those tiresome people who cannotappreciate poetry unless it’s read to them by some one they like. A mountain would have to be an enormous mountain before Ivor, with anything on his mind, could become aware of it; and even then he would be more aware of it if there was a man on top of it. A landscape would have to be an amazing landscape before Ivor, with anything on his mind, could become aware of it; and even then he would feel it more acutely if there was a figure against the landscape. People were important to Ivor; that is why he was a solitary, and that is why men become solitaries, because people are important to them. People could make places beautiful or ugly for Ivor.... And now he simply tore along the road to Hungerford as though it had been a street in a slum, and through the fine September mist as though he hated cigarette smoke. And as he strode along his mind was gay on life and Virginia, and his hat swung from his hand, and his thick hair shone black and brown with the water of its brushing.
It was about a mile from Hungerford that, as he turned the corner which led to a path across the fields directly to the station, he almost collided with the little telegraph-boy on his bicycle. The boy jumped off sulkily, and tugged at his pocket.
“Tel’gram,” said the boy.
Ivor read: “Please come back.—Virginia.” And he saw that it had been sent off at 5.45 the day before.
“Why didn’t I get this last night?” he asked sharply.
“Office closes 6.30,” the boy explained. “Can’t deliver tel’grams Nasyngton after 6.”
“Ought to live in Hungerford,” the boy said cheekily.
The tall, dark man looked suddenly ferocious.
“If——” he began, and then, to the boy’s amazement, he started to run away.
Ivor pulled himself up with a kind of fierce laugh. No good running to catch a train before it’s in a station, he thought. It was the “Please” in the wire that had set him running—suddenly, the idea of it! “Please!” One was always hearing and saying that word, and yet it had that amazing and potent meaning! The pity of it, and the generosity in it! “Please,” she had written. It stabbed his heart, that word. He saw her lips saying it, those taut and dry and beautiful lips that liked the rush of a chill wind—he heard them saying it in his ears: “Please, Ivor!” And all his gaiety was lost in regret for his folly of yesterday—his folly of “wisdom” in not having gone to her before. He had let her write “please” to him! God, Virginia and her beastly men!
It was beyond his power to prevent himself walking quickly; and he had a long wait at Hungerford Station, up and down the far end of the London platform—it seemed like hours—before any one but a porter or two was visible. But at last motors began to twist round the slope from Hungerford and down to the station, and soon the platform was dotted with people and suitcases. Then the train from London bustled in at the opposite platform, and soon a boy came round with papers.
Ivor boughtThe Times, and, as an afterthought,The Daily Mirror: thinking to while away the minutes before his train came in, and one arm not being sufficient to cope withThe Timesin the open. With that pressed under his arm he held up the picture-paper at an angle: and then, with a frown, he held it up straight: as he did so, droppingThe Timesfrom under his arm. He didn’t pick it up: he stared at one of the several pictures on the front page—a face he knew, looking so strange! so odd, just there! And he knew the photograph too, it was an old one and often reproduced, for it was a “stock” photograph and used on the smallest provocation. They had often laughed at it together, calling it “Virginia arrogant.” ... It was a little blurred.... But whythere? And though he saw the large type above it, though his eyes read it, and then read it again, he simply could not take it in. Oh, absurd! “Death of the Viscountess Tarlyon.” Oh, but rot! His hand trembled ever so little as he held the paper higher to read the small type below “Virginia arrogant.”
“We regret to announce the sudden death of the beautiful Viscountess Tarlyon at her house in Belgrave Square towards eight o’clock last night——” Ivor very consciously, very determinedly, closed his eyes and then he opened them again. Yes, there was “Virginia arrogant” in front of him. Then he looked about the platform—it seemed suddenly to be crowded with people, and they all seemed to be yelling about something. He turned to the small type again: “Lady Tarlyon, who will perhaps be better remembered as the Hon. Virginia Tracy and later as Mrs. Hector Sardon, underwent a serious operation some weeks ago, from which it was thought she had quite...” he skipped a few words “ ..presumably went out too soon, walking in the rain of the day before yesterday, and contracted a chill which, in her weak state of health, only too soon.... Every one will regr—— Viscount Tarly——” He simply couldn’t see any more of thetype, his eyes wouldn’t take it in; and there was a frightful noise in his ears, every one seemed to be yelling right at him. People shouting, people pushing, porters.... “Londontrain! Stop at Newbury and Reading!London Train!” bang into his ear. Doors slammed to, and then the train seemed to move across his eyes, kept on moving....
“Come on, sir, comeon!” a voice cried impatiently. Ivor shook his head at the voice and bent down to pick upThe Timesat his feet. Someone had trodden on it.
He left the station very slowly: the way he had come, through the turnstile into the fields, clutching the papers. Oh, rot.... “In the rain of the day before yesterday,” it said. He stopped and looked at the paper again; and, somehow dropping them both on to the path, left them both there.... But that was the day she had sent him the first wire! How then?... He couldn’t understand it at all, he couldn’t make head or tail of the thing. Why, damn it, she’d sent him a wire only yesterday evening—5.45! And then, quite clearly, he knew that Virginia hadn’t written that wire herself—she had told little Smith to write it! Virginia wouldn’t have signed the wire “Virginia”—she would never have signed a wire to him—she hadn’t signed the wire that had taken him to Cimiez—she hadn’t signed the first wire. “In the rain of the day before yesterday.” ... Oh, my God!
He must have been walking at a furious pace, for he had to stop to wipe his face with his handkerchief. His face was wet, dripping wet.... That wire, that first wire! “Come back!” He saw it now, all of it, everything. His thoughts tore round that first wire in a kind of fierce circle, a clear circle, round and round it, round and round every detail of it. “In the rain of the day before yesterday!” He saw and heard Virginia, very white of face. As though he was there now, he saw Virginia on that day. Just after luncheon. Virginia always called it luncheon, never lunch. “And whereshall we luncheon to-day?” she’d say.... Drizzling outside. He heard her voice, rather sharp and hard.
“I’m going out, Smith.”
“Oh, mais il pleut, milady!” That anxious little Smith! so fearful of and for her mistress!
“I am going out, Smith. To send a wire.”
And he saw the sharp and dangerous gesture with which Virginia cut short poor little Smith’s cry that she could send the wire. “Mais il pleut, milady!”
“But Iwishto send it myself! No more now. You can come with me if you like.... No, I can’t wait for the car. And I want to walk. Good God, why shouldn’t I walk just for once!” The sudden and sweeping impatience! “Oh, milady, milady!”
And he saw Virginia walking. Long swift strides through the drizzle towards the Post Office in Knightsbridge. She wanted to send it herself! It was an idea.... Oh, he knew, he knew! He saw everything—he saw Virginia’s heart! She wanted to send that wire herself! Ivor would know....
And the anxious little Smith trotting along just behind her, breathlessly. “Oh, milady, milady!” Holding up an umbrella in front of her, trying to cover Virginia with it, panting a little after those swift Virginian strides. Never in her life had Virginia walked under an umbrella, you couldn’t conceive it! Always she had been just ahead of an umbrella, just outside it, and someone panting, laughing, crying behind her. Not an umbrella-woman, Virginia.... Striding towards Knightsbridge with set white face, so determined, heroically set. But she was heroic! Eyes straight ahead—a soldier’s eyes, fearless eyes! Those curious eyes that could make molehills out of mountains—Ah, why had he never thought of that before? And agonised little Smith in her blue waterproof, panting behind with her umbrella inclined forwards. “Oh, milady, milady!”
And then she had sent that first wire. Those two words: “Come back.” Everything was in those twowords—imperious and humble, ashamed and forgiving—and so generous! Everything of Virginia and of love was in those two quick words—and he hadn’t seen it! He hadn’t seen Virginia’s heart, that lovely and mysterious heart! He had been like a swine before the two pearls in that wire. He just hadn’t seen! And then she had gone back home, maybe not so swiftly; and happily—oh, yes, happily! He could see the light in her eyes as she walked back home, not so swiftly: the merry light in Virginia’s eyes—trusting Ivor! He would come back quickly. And little Smith had been glad.... But he hadn’t gone. And when she had got back to the “mausoleum,” she had shivered a little from the damp, and was soon in bed with a chill: quite slight at first, “Oh, very minor!” but quick to feed on Virginia’s so weak health, terribly quick and wanton in its fierceness: and to her lungs, easily.... And he had not gone. My God, he had not gone!
And then that second wire—5.45 yesterday! Virginia had waited all day, growing worse all day. She had waited for him. And at last—at 5.30, say!—she had commanded Smith to send that wire: “Please....” And she had commanded Smith on pain of death to say nothing of her being ill. “Just write ‘Please come back.’”Weaker and weaker every minute, the chill in her lungs—poor Virginia, brave Virginia! “Oh, milady, milady!” Pitiful at last! Dying ... maybe she knew she was dying when she told Smith to send that wire, maybe she was at last seeing the “dead-end” of her fears—and no Ivor in the “dead-end” this time! Ah, she wasfey, this Virginia. He had always known.... And how he had started to run this morning—ages ago! He had known something. “Please,” she had said. And now in his ears.... And he had wanted everything! He! “And haven’t I given you everything, Ivor?” she softly asked. He heard her.... How she would say, “Ivor!” telling him that the name pleased her heart.... Funny Virginia, she was so mysterious.... Every woman hasa legend, there is a legend to every woman.... His was a terrible crime. From a silly, trivial thing this crime had been born, but it was a terrible crime. He had killed Virginia, ... he had closed the reckless light in Virginia’s eyes. The brave and hazardous eyes ... of white Virginia! But why did he see her, think of her, as white? And his mind searched furiously, and at last his mind found a dream in which was a column of marble.... Oh, yes, that funny dream! and the naked white figure clinging to that column, so white she looked up there, clinging to it with white arms and legs, and destroying it with kisses.... That dream had given him Virginia and him to Virginia. And as he walked headlong up the roads of Berkshire he dreamed that dream again.
Thefirst shock Turner received that day was on seeing a tall figure approaching from Hungerford. “Well!” he thought. Turner and luggage were in the Nasyngton grocer’s cart on their way to the station.
“’Ere, pull up!” he said to the man. “’E’s coming the wrong way.”
“Coming quick, whichever way!” murmured the Nasyngton grocer.
And the figure was coming quick! As he approached them, drawn up at the side of the road, Turner cried, “I say, sir!” But though he cried “I say, sir!” twice more, the figure passed them without stopping. The figure certainly glanced at them, but seemed to see or hear nothing. “Balmy,” said the Nasyngton grocer. And the figure strode on, his hat swinging furiously from his one hand. Turner took off his Derby and scratched his head.
“Right about turn,” he said at last, patiently.
The old nag wheeled slowly round, and ambled after the figure with the waving right arm.
“’E looks dark,” commented the Nasyngton grocer.
Turner was perturbed.
“Like the Wandering Jew,” he said softly. “No less....” And Turner whistled softly, patiently.
The Nasyngton grocer’s horse was old and unused to hurrying: it did not hurry now; and the striding figure of his master was soon lost to Turner’s solicitous eye round a bend.
But when he reached the house he was offended to find no one there. “Well!” Turner muttered. Whereupon the Nasyngton grocer thought fit to ask a question.
“Oh, go ’ome!’ said Turner sharply. Then he waited for a long time. And he got bored to death; for there was nothing for him to do about the house, he didn’t know whether they were to stay or go to London. “’Anging about!” he muttered. Turner, like his master, liked to know where hewas; and now he wasn’t anywhere, unless being between Nasyngton and London and going without lunch was being somewhere.
He waited for hours; it was after two o’clock, and he was hungry; and, examining the kitchen, he found half a loaf of bread and one egg. “Scramble it!” he mimicked viciously. He boiled it.... And then Turner had a curious feeling: he felt that he didn’t belong to this Nasyngton house to-day, he belonged to Upper Brook Street, where he would have been this moment but for having said “Right about turn.” And so, having that curious feeling, Turner stood on the front door steps and smoked a cigarette. He stared at the Kennet. It was still, placid. “Nothing rising.” ...
And then he had to throw his cigarette away—for round the corner of the drive strode a dark figure. Right at him.... Turner was shocked. “Talk about sweat!” he said later to Mrs. Hope. His master’s face glistened with it, it dripped from him; if he had been wearing a hard collar it would have melted; his dark hair was all over the place, and there was a dry, red rim around his eyes as though he had been in a great wind. Turner pulled himself together and took a letterout of his pocket. It was addressed in pencil, and he had great hopes of that letter.
“Letter, sir,” he muttered. “Came just after you left this——”
The dark figure was gone into the house.
Inthe sitting-room Ivor looked at the letter. That pencilled scrawl, so careless always—so much more careless on this envelope, so faint! But how? He stared at it.... Dear God, she had written it in bed yesterday, just in case he might not come! Fearing.... Forgiving him, humbling herself. And then, for the first time, he gave a sob. He knew everything that was in that letter, every word. Her lips were by his ear, telling him the words of that letter. “I’m sorry to have been a beast, Ivor, I’m so sorry. Everything is all right, Ivor, everything. I’m so sorry I hurt you ... only, you see, you aren’t casual enough.... Keep your eyebrows straight for me, my darling, don’t bring them down into the darkness. Be a little more casual, Ivor....” Oh!henot casual enough!... And it was impossible for him to open that thin envelope crushed in his hand.
Turner tiptoed to the door of the sitting-room. He had heard that sob, and was amazed and afraid. And then Turner saw a strange thing. He saw a one-armed man without resource in his mind trying to tear across an unopened envelope. The one-armed man had his knee up to and pressed against the edge of the table, and under the knee was half the envelope, and his fingers were childishly tearing at the other half; and at last the other half came away in his fingers.... Then eyes looked at Turner at the door; and Turner ran away.
“Like a lot of mad babies crying in a man’s inside,” he tried to explain that look to Mrs. Hope.
Towardsmidnight on the night of the 1st of May, 1921: at the sign of the Mont Agel: and, at this moment, under the passing glance of the polite and amiable M. Stutz—who never went to bed, never; but his wife did, and had.
Ivor Pelham Marlay, looking up at last from the abyss of his coffee-cup, now a sad looking mess of ashes and ends of many cigarettes, caught M. Stutz’s eye gently on him: Ivor smiled self-consciously; and he made a displeased little gesture at the untouched glass of Napoleonic brandy before him.
“I’m thirsty, M. Stutz,” he whispered.
And he looked round him stealthily, his first look round for ever such a long time, and saw but three other people in the shuttered restaurant: Cornelius Fayle, Mr. Kerrison and a young woman with tawny hair, pallid face, and crimson lips that smiled without meaning: a pathetic rebel....
“What about a whisky-and-soda?” asked Ivor softly.
“At once,” said M. Stutz, very low; and quickly concerned himself with it behind the counter.
This matter of whisky-and-soda was, you understand, something of a conspiratorial rite in the establishment of M. Stutz: he disapproved of whisky-and-soda. “It is an untidy drink,” said M. Stutz. He discouraged it among “My Customers,” and it was only to the most favoured among them that he would dream of serving it. To others he would say, rather stiffly: “I do not serve whisky, sir,” and did not. Thus, the most favoured must in all decency look carefully roundthe room before begging M. Stutz’s complaisance in this particular, lest the less favoured should be envious and also demand whisky instead of the wine they were drinking. And that would never do at all, for the wines of M. Stutz’s cellar were not only the treasures of his heart but also the columns which supported the formidable edifice of his income.
This matter of the whisky-and-soda must be pursued yet a little further, before we are finally done with it, the Mont Agel, and M. Stutz; for it was on its wings, if such will be allowed to so vulgar a drink, that Ivor finally left the Mont Agel. His way with a whisky-and-soda was drastic and medicinal: the glass was raised, and lo! the glass was laid down empty.
Money passed between Ivor and M. Stutz, and Ivor made ready to go.
“It’s raining, just a leetle,” M. Stutz told him. “Shall I send for a taxi?”
Ivor said he would walk, thanks very much, and was politely preceded by M. Stutz towards the side-door into the hotel passage—for the restaurant-door was closed and locked in pursuance of certain regulations to that effect—and up that narrow passage to the hotel door: which was pierced, you will remember, by ever such a little eye-hole....
It was as M. Stutz had his hand on the latch of the door that he turned to Ivor behind him; and he examined Ivor, for a moment, seriously and thoughtfully.
“You know, Mr. Marlay,” said M. Stutz softly, “you are a clever man, but you do not know how to live. I have observed it....”
“I’ve never observed anything else,” returned Ivor, with the shadow of a smile.
“I fancy,” said M. Stutz, “that you live too much with your emotions, Mr. Marlay, and not enough with your brains....”
“Ah,” said Ivor vaguely.
“I am only a littlerestaurateur,” said M. Stutz, withhis epic gesture, “but I hear things. They say you are very clever, but that you are doing nothing now. Of course people are only too ready to say that a young man who has done something is going to pieces—but I would not like you to go to pieces, Mr. Marlay.”
“That is very kind of you, M. Stutz,” said Ivor sincerely, “I’ll make a note of what you say. Good-night, M. Stutz. And thank you.”
The amiablerestaurateur, from the hotel doorway, meditated a little on the tall figure that swung swiftly out of sight round the corner into Oxford Street; and then, carefully and thoughtfully, he closed and bolted the hotel door, for the Mont Agel would not be “at home” to any more visitors that night, no matter of what degree. And who, in the lists of sudden visitors by night, was left to replace Virginia? that fair and grave figure of the night, that so lovely ornament of the closed and shuttered Mont Agel! Who now was left, among the gallants of the London night, who could so perfectly compound complaisance with quality, silence with speech, ease with distance? who sosoignée, yet so understanding of others’ carelessness, as Virginia Tarlyon? Ah, it was death’s most blood-thirsty joke to kill Virginia—the lady of the merry golden curls and of the fair, small face in which was something gay, something sombre. Often, very often, the eyes of M. Stutz, looking round at the familiar faces of “My Customers,” would acutely miss the loveliness of that fine lady; and, moved unawares to a considerable sincerity, he would ache for her. For M. Stutz was aconnoisseurof quality.
M. Stutz was concerned and sympathetic about Ivor not entirely because he, of course, knew of the love of Ivor and Virginia, and had considered it a happy fusion. M. Stutz was a snob, in a real and literary sense, and loved agrand seigneur; he loved the thing without a title, he loved the face and gesture of the thing; and, to his mind, a certain degree of silence best accorded with features on which was stamped thetired mark ofrace. It was M. Stutz’s daily business to deal with people in whom there was much froth, and he dealt with them very amiably, but he did not like frothiness. Here it was that Virginia had pleased him, and here Ivor Marlay pleased him—there was no froth in him, he sought no favour but what was accorded to him in courtesy in return for courtesy.... And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early twenties; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia—for Virginia, M. Stutz had thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay, even though she had seemed to fail so deplorably with Hector Sardon and Lord Tarlyon. But now! Allowing for the havoc of her death in him, M. Stutz did not think that a sum of three books, the first of which was negligible, was worthy of a man who must have turned two-and-thirty. And M. Stutz was unconsciously echoing a sentence of Aunt Percy’s when he told himself that perhaps Ivor Marlay was too much given to thinking, and that thinking made him angry.
ButIvor, striding along Oxford Street, was not thinking about anything in particular. His mind had suddenly taken a lazy turn—even as he had left the Mont Agel. It will be remembered that the air on the night of the 1st of May, 1921—or rather, in the early hours of the 2nd of May, for it struck half-past twelve as Ivor reached Oxford Circus—was cool but soft, a first herald of what was to be a summer of “unprecedented warmth and drought.” The drought, however, as will also be remembered, was not then so remarkable as it later became; and on this particular night there was noticeable, to a student of London, avague kind of rain in the air (it would naturally not be anywhere else, but on the other hand it didn’t seem to reach the ground: not quite), which was not unpleasing: to a student of London, anyway. Such a one was Ivor Marlay become, for he had long since overcome the bitterness of his loneliness in London, and now he loved London with what a ladies’ journal would call a “bitter love.” Of late months he had very often walked about London by night, and the feel of it had somehow crept into his bones: it was not a sleek city, like Paris: it was a city of splendid and ordered carelessness, there were holes and gashes in it where your Parisian would have had boulevards, there were sharp turns and funny little slums where any other city would have had an immaculateAvenueleading to a most immaculatePlacefull of corrupt taxis and unshaven police....
He was at Oxford Circus, and stood debating there, just by the Tube station. The rain held, but did not incommode. There were very few passengers, a figure or two, a woman or two, and taxis hurtling by. Ivor was wearing, above his dinner-jacket, a black Trilby. Now a short man wearing a black Trilby looks like nothing on earth—or, say, like something from South America; but it is quite becoming to a tall man, and can lend an almost sinister air to the usual convention of faces. Ivor, as he stood looking across Oxford Circus, with his black Trilby at the usual angle and a white flower brave upon the lapel of his jacket, looked just a little sinister. He stared across Oxford Circus. He wanted to walk, anywhere. Down Regent Street, or across the Circus towards the Park?... And this last he suddenly did, thinking that the only thing to do with Oxford Circus was to cross it.
He walked; and this walk, so usual in character, in place, in circumstance, was yet to chance on so strange a happening that for ever after Ivor couldn’t help trying to find in it some faint atom of forewarning—say, in his thoughts! But his thoughts, after having leftthe Mont Agel, had taken that lazy turn. The fierce depression of that day and evening had gone, leaving behind but the usual, half-humorous gloom of his present nature; for he had acquired—or rather rediscovered, for it had always been in him—a way of treating things nonsensically with himself, just as though Virginia was beside him in that little garden of the studio over Paris, “our eyrie, out of ken!” He managed, within himself, to twist many things to comic phrases and the like, so that the mind behind those straight and sulky eyebrows was often roaring with laughter about something which wouldn’t have seemed in the least funny when spoken.
He walked. To the Marble Arch, and thence down Park Lane, where was little movement. The not unpleasing rain still seemed to encounter certain difficulties in reaching the ground. He chose the Park side of the road, and walked by the railings. He peered into the darkness of the Park, and it displeased him. A closed and shuttered Park by night, with wide and empty roads laid across it like the arms of a sprawling skeleton, is a most abominable thing; there is no beauty in it thus, no mystery, and sensitive eyes must reject its dark and dank attractions through the railings. He walked. “Fight on all occasions.” Now who the deuce had said that? Ah, yes, d’Artagnan’s father to d’Artagnan. Wise old man, ... for if you fight on “all occasions” you simply must, by the laws of chance, win now and then.
He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Piccadilly, and there stayed a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps. Standing here, at the corner of Hamilton Place, Piccadilly grows wide to the eye and sweeps to far distances: here, by night, there are palaces all about you, there are spacious places before you, the Green Park is a mysterious valley, and somewhere in the spaciousness is a horseman on a horseand a chariot on a triumphal arch, an arch that is much more impressive by night than in that festive daylight when under its squat curve pass the automata of royalty. Here, at the corner of Hamilton Place, Piccadilly ceases to be Piccadilly and becomes something more than Hyde Park Corner: surely it becomes a wide and elegant gesture, the magnificent gesture of Babylon towards the barbaric extremities of its tributaries. Here motor-cars, that but a moment before looked large and luxurious on the thin spine of Piccadilly, dwindle to small and flying atoms, hurling themselves headlong into the fat bosom of Belgrave Square, straight ahead to the narrow rectitudes of Brompton, or still farther to the very frontiers of the town, where is said to lie Holland Park and beyond which is Hammersmith and a great darkness.
He walked. Down the slope of Piccadilly, that slight downward slope of Piccadilly as it gathers strength to hunch itself up for its onslaught on the town. And Ivor saw a much younger man, so gay, so careless, in a swift and shining car—“that Camelot car, Magdalen!”—racing down and up the switchback of Piccadilly by night, on the wings of love from Camelot. Ah ...les tendresses! Admirable Magdalen! “You have decorated my life,” he had cried to her—so cheekily! But so she had—and so Virginia had too, and almost destroyed it as well! While he had utterly destroyed Virginia....
Down Street. He would walk up Down Street, through Shepherds’ Market, and so home to Upper Brook Street. And he began the ascent, on the side opposite to the Tube station. A clock gave one distant knell—one o’clock of the 2nd of May. The puny rain held.
The Tube station was closed, and shutters were laid across its face. Now by Down Street Tube Station is a passage-way, no one knows why or whither; whether or not this passage-way belongs to the Tube station has never been established, nor if it does forwhat purpose, nor if it does not for what purpose; in fact, nothing is known about this passage-way but that it looks a cavernous place. But now this passage-way was made remarkable to a passing man by the fact that a woman was standing within it; there, just within the passage-way, Ivor saw a woman. He saw her as he passed up on the opposite side: her face and head were in the darkness of the cavernous place, but the light of the adjacent lamp fell brightly on the lower part of her cloak; and this cloak looked gray and soft and shining with a furry shine, it looked like a cloak made of delicious shillings, and Ivor thought to himself: “If that isn’t chinchilla I’d like to know what is.”
Beyond that passing glimpse he had, immediately, no other, for he walked on up Down Street. But the chinchilla coat waved before his mind. “It’s all very odd,” he thought. “What’s a chinchilla coat doing out alone at this time of night? It’s not decent.” He had walked far enough to be able, decently, to turn and look again. The soft gleam of the chinchilla was still there: more than ever like a delicious shilling wantonly awaiting a beggar’s grasp. “Give her five minutes,” thought Ivor, “and if her man hasn’t turned up by then I must see about her. Wandering about in a chinchilla coat on a night like this! I will offer her my friendship for five minutes, stressing the word friendship so that she will know I am a man without casual desires. Ha!” He felt, at this moment, very gay; lighting a cigarette, he walked slowly as far as Hertford Street; and slowly back, down the hill of Down Street. The rain was at last managing to reach the ground. “Let it,” thought Ivor. He felt gay. The hours of his life stretched before him like a desert, but he felt gay; the days and years of his life stretched before him like a wilderness of stones, but he felt gay; and he didn’t know why....
Quickly Ivor approached, on the opposite side, the soft and furry gleam of the chinchilla coat. He laughedat himself. “What a dog I am!” he thought. “If,” he thought, “I were a poet, I would write a poem about a lonely lady in a chinchilla coat. Not being a poet, I will speak to her instead. Thus.”
And he crossed the road with a swing. He didn’t care.... The face of the chinchilla was not visible, as he approached. Above the face was a suggestion of hair. A tall figure, taller than Virginia—very tall. But he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t care.... And with his one arm he swept off his hat.
“Can I,” he pleaded, “be of any use at all?”
“You can get me a taxi,” came voice of chinchilla, swift and low.
“Certainly,” said Ivor, and instantly left her, to search for it. “Autocrat,” he thought. “None of your meek stuff about her.” ...
Piccadilly again. There were taxis on the rank a hundred yards or so up on the sulky side—nice and polite taxis now that the war was over.
“In Down Street,” he told the first driver, “there’s a Tube station and a chinchilla coat. Stop by them.”
The driver grunted, and drove. And, as he slowed down by the Tube, the chinchilla coat stepped out from the cavernous place and was visible as a tall woman in a chinchilla coat, no more; for over her head was thrown a kind of motoring veil which obscured what might be golden hair and suggested what might be a young and lovely face. “But of course,” Ivor thought, “she’s lovely. A plain woman wouldn’t have the cheek.”
He jumped off the footboard, and opened the door for her.
“You may as well see me to my door now,” came voice of chinchilla softly.
Suddenly, he couldn’t tell why, the desire for laughter left him.
“Yes,” he only said.
She made a gesture for him to get into the cab first.
“I will direct him,” she said.
Therewas silence in the cab: the lady seemed to have no desire to speak; and Ivor, though he wanted to hear her voice again, suddenly found he had nothing to say at all—to this strange lady! It was like an occasion out of a book by a young romanticist, yet she was very real, this woman; he could feel hercleanreality, and her voice had had that low and careless charm of a woman whose feet are on an Aubusson carpet and whose heart is not subject to sudden impulses. She was calm.Calm!A delicious state.... He wanted her to speak; and she suddenly did.
“Tell me,” the voice came with gentle interest, “are other men like you, or are you exceptional?”
“Well——” Ivor hesitated. “I’m afraid I have been rather impertinent....”
And he deprecated his presence just a little, towards the dark poise of her head.
“Yes, you have been impertinent, I suppose,” the voice said softly. “But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was wondering if it was usual with men to be gallant....”
“You see,” the voice explained, “I know very little about men. About young men.”
Then Ivor suddenly had an idea....
“I say,” he almost blurted, “I’m all right, you know. I mean—well, I don’t want anything. You mustn’t think that I have any—well, ulterior motive, because I haven’t. I just thought I’d speak to you.... It’s rather difficult to explain....”
“It seems to be,” the voice suddenly laughed at him. And the taxi stopped.
Ivor stepped out, with reluctance, for the drive had been short, too short; and, though he had no “ulterior motive,” he would have liked to speak to her a while longer. But, even as he stepped out on to the curb, he murmured softly: “Well, I’m damned!” Forhe saw that they were in Hertford Street—and just at that part of Hertford Street which is at the head of Down Street! and there, a hundred yards or so down the slope of it, was the Tube station!
The chinchilla coat laughed, a slight wave of a laugh it was, from the recess of the taxi.
“I live here,” she said. “But I told him to drive round by Hamilton Place....”
“I thought it would be fun to see your puzzled face,” she said. “I’ve never had much fun.”
Her sudden plaint from the darkness made him, standing by the door, frightfully shy; and he said nothing, awkwardly.
He stood aside while she stepped out. And, in the lamplight, he saw her face for the first time, as she brushed by him: a young and beautiful profile—curiously sedate, too, it seemed!—passing by his eyes.
“She’s a person,” he couldn’t help thinking.
He remained by the throbbing taxi; he did not follow her to the door of the house, lest she should think he wanted to follow the occasion indoors. And he did want to, very much; but he could make no move lest she should be made uncomfortable at a thought of his insistence.
He watched the tall figure—she was very tall, taller than Virginia—fit a latchkey in the door; he watched her open the door; and he saw her turn her head to him. He took off his hat quickly.
“Good-bye, Chinchilla,” he said.
She smiled a little.
“You must be a very dangerous man,” she said thoughtfully, “to be in such a hurry not to put your restraint to the test....” It was, after all, very surprising of her to say that, just that.
“You can come in for a moment,” she said. “I would like you to come in for a moment.”
And Ivor, making a sign to the taxi-driver, followed the chinchilla coat into No. 78 Hertford Street.
Oncein the hall of the house she did not look round at him: her steps rang sharply on the stone flags as she passed to a door at the far end of the wide and sombre hall of stone—for in it only one lamp was alight. He threw his hat on a chair and, in following her, had time to be surprised at the spaciousness about him. For, from the outside, the house had looked one of those tall and narrow houses common in Mayfair, where ground-rent is high: there had been no hint of this wide and spacious hall in which the lightest steps resounded portentously. It was like the hall of a house in, say, Carlton House Terrace, it was a hall to hold two butlers—now that footmen have become vulgar—the one to take your hat and the other your name; and at its extremity, near the door through which the chinchilla had passed, there swept upwards with a wide sweep a noble marble stairway, the kind of stairway from the top of which men may fairly envisage the ascending grace of the women who might have loved them or the shortcomings of the woman they have married; for very grievous for a mediocre figure is the ascending of such a gracious stairway as this.
The house was very still, but it is not unusual for a house to be very still towards half-past one. And as Ivor followed the tall lady into the room at the foot of the noble stairway, he wondered why she was doing this odd thing; but (since men cannot help thinking of such things) he did not seriously consider the idea that her invitation would finally include her bed, for any fool can tell a romantic lady from a calm lady, and she was deliciously calm. Probably she was bored, Ivorthought, and would amuse herself a while; and so, though he did not feel very amusing to-night, he would try to be as pleasant as possible.... And he wouldn’t mind a drink, anyway; but he didn’t get a drink.
Hervoice met him as he went into the room: it was a large and wide room, and it was dim, for she had switched on but a few lights, faint electric-lights hidden in subtle vases here and there about the expanse of the room.
“Don’t, please, be shy,” her voice met him, the calm voice, “for I’m quite shy enough for two. And I asked you in because I want you to talk to me—just a little.”
He came forward towards her across the rugs that strewed the parquet floor. There were many things in that room, chairs and footstools and sofas of quality, but yet it was a room for leisured feet, a room easy to move in. She stood by the nobly carven fireplace, a figure in chinchilla, under which was visible a low-cut black dress: and this shone a little as though it were made of black armour, even as black sequins do sometimes shine.
“Well, it makes a man shy,” he protested, “to try to live up to the fact that you’ve let him speak to you.”
The candid eyes of the tall lady examined him; they were gray eyes, wide and inquiring and amazingly innocent, and now there was a subtle light of laughter in them, as though she was infinitely but quietly amused about something. But he did not meet her eyes, for his were suddenly engrossed in a large portrait on a farther wall, a portrait startling and remarkable even in that dim light. It was a portrait in oils of a woman in a green dress sitting in a high-backed chair, and her head was pressed back against the back of the chair so that her throat was a clean and white line, and appalling in its suggestion of luxuriance; and the eyes of thewoman in the green dress, as her head leant back against her chair, had in them the frightening candour of innocence, and they laughed at you, without mockery, as though she was infinitely but quietly amused about something; and her hair was golden, and yet only a fool would have called it golden, for it was of the colour of fallen leaves on an October afternoon, russet brown and very dull gold shot with a fantasy of carmine. Anyway, the colour of her hair was more like that of an October leaf than anything else, and as for her dress, who shall describe that green dress? For it was a strange and surprising dress, yet it was not a cheeky dress but witty, and it required from its wearer more than the virtue of dignity, though even that is a considerable virtue in young women nowadays. At its foot was just visible the sweet tip of a cherry shoe—but at its other end, the queenly end, at that end where a dress must die so that a woman’s flesh may live for men’s admiration and distress, at that end where a dress curves in glorious luxury over breasts and dies in a last effort to reach and clutch a slender throat! What of that queenly end of that green dress? It was contrived, without detracting an iota from the elegant formality of its wearer, so that it swept in a thin green strand from the bosom over one shoulder—and never returned over the other! for that other shoulder was startling white and naked, it was the kind of shoulder that men dream about in lonely moments; it was a shoulder wantonly divorced from the green dress which curved, ever so luxuriously, over but half one of the breasts of the subtly laughing woman with the eyes of innocent candour. And Ivor stared at her.
“Ah, yes,” he said, towards the portrait, “I know you now. I know you well.”
“Oh, but am I so famous then!” the lady cried pathetically, and Ivor turned to her thoughtfully.
“That portrait is famous,” he said. “It set every one talking, even in war-time—and it set me longing. Years ago....”
The “Portrait of Pamela Star,” by Augustus John—who, in the autumn of 1916, when it was on exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries, did not hear of it? Never did portrait create such a stir or leave such an impression as the portrait of Pamela Star. TheDaily Mailat once called her a “mystery woman,” and theEvening Newsdiscovered a theory that the lovely creature was a Belgian refugee whom Major John had rescued at the risk of his life; and tried to interview the artist, but failed deplorably. And though there were not wanting fellow-artists to say that the portrait was a literary masterpiece rather than a painting, which is a boring remark and means nothing, and though Mr. George Moore was heard to say, as he walked away from a long contemplation of the portrait, that painting had died with Manet—yet it was commonly admitted that whereas Gainsborough had painted a lady like a landscape, Augustus John had made a lady into a legend; and what lady, it was asked, would not rather be a legend than a landscape?
“I was on leave in 1916,” Ivor told her, “and I happened to walk into the Grosvenor Galleries. And there you were! You were a great help to me, Pamela Star. You were indeed....”
“And were you as curious about me then as you are courteous now?” she asked him with a smile. They were standing close together, the room was an island and they were solitary and close on it; she smiled at him curiously; and Ivor had a funny feeling that he had never yet met a woman with such a clean, unveiled smile: absolutely frank. And he wondered about her age, thinking it must be that mysterious and intangible age which lies somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.
“Every one was curious about you,” he told her. “People wondered about you. They knew a little about you, you see, and on that little they built all kinds of gossip....”
“And didn’t Mr. John ever explain how quiet and harmless his sitter was?” asked Pamela Star.
“John never speaks about his sitters. If you should ask him a question about them he wouldn’t hear you. John is an artist, not a table-decoration....”
“And what kind of things did people wonder about me?” asked Pamela Star. “I want to know, please. For, you see, I know as little about people as they know about me. Less even....”
“They wondered,” said Ivor, “if you really want to know, whether you were a courtesan or a virgin. And that’s a great compliment to you, Pamela Star, for there’s generally no doubt about it one way or the other....”
“And you?”
“Oh, I wondered too!”
“And now—are you still wondering?”
“More than ever,” he assured her.
“I’m not wondering,” he explained quickly, “whether you are a courtesan, for I think I know just enough about them to know that you’re not one. And you look too wise to be a virgin. I’m just wondering about you, that’s all.”
“Shall I trust you?” she put to him, ever so suddenly.
“Please,” he said.
“Well——” she began childishly, and hesitated. Her eyes, those candid eyes, were very full on him, they searched his. She gulped, smiled, and spoke swiftly:—
“I’m a plumber’s daughter, and yet I own this house and all that’s in it and very much besides. In fact I’m very, very rich.”
“So, of course,” she said softly, “I’m not a virgin. Of course....”
And suddenly, from the recesses of that curious moment, there crept out laughter; and they laughed, those two, right at each other, a little shyly, a little wonderingly, like children uneasy under the burden of a new friendship. And then she said, very seriously:—
“I wouldn’t have let you speak to me in DownStreet, if I hadn’t seen that you hadn’t the usual number of arms. You could do less damage with only one arm, I thought....”
“Oh, I can do quite a lot! One’s mind has a thousand arms to hurt with, after all.”
“I see,” said Pamela Star curiously.
And then that one arm made as though to sweep away some debris. “But how did we get talking of myself?”
“I was just trying to find out about men,” she confessed sweetly. “I’ve known so very few....”
“Ah, yes, you were telling me how you came to let me speak to you in Down Street,” he remembered. “Well, you know, I certainly wouldn’t have dreamed of speaking to you if I had known who you were. I would have been frightened....”
“And now—aren’t you frightened?”
“Oh, no! I like you, Pamela Star.”
And again they laughed together, but, suddenly, she became very earnest; and he wondered at himself for not having observed before that the candid eyes were sad and that her mouth was just a little sad, as of a woman who might cry but will not.
“And now I’ll confess to you, since you say you like me,” she told him without jest, “that I asked you here under false pretences....”
“But you’ve made no pretences at all!” he broke in quickly. “That’s what is so nice about you....”
“I told you,” she insisted, “that I asked you to come in because I wanted you to talk to me a little. I lied, my friend. I asked you to come in because I wanted to make sure if I liked you or not. And if I did like you I intended to show you something. I’ve simply got to show it to someone, don’t you see? Something important.”
“In fact,” she said very slowly, “I’m going to show you the most important—how does one say it?—factor in my life. Come, stranger.”
“I’ll tell you my name if you like,” said Ivor.
She considered his face.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “I have known men with names, but known them no better for them. This will be in the nature of an experiment....”
“If ever,” she said, “you should see my eyes searching for a word, you will tell me your name. That will be the word I need.” And she smiled faintly at his absorbed face, and with a slight shake the chinchilla coat dropped off her to the floor, soft and shining silver about her feet, and she was a woman in a black sequin dress cut low about her throat and severely distant from her arms. Somewhere about the shining black was a splash of vivid green, maybe it was about its middle: just a little splash of vivid green on the shining black dress....
“Come,” she said again. And he followed Pamela Star across the room to double-doors at a far end. She laid her hands on the two knobs, as though dramatically to swing the doors open; but instead, as she stood thus against the dark panel of the door, she suddenly threw her head backwards to him with an adorable gesture, and she said:—
“You are my newest friend—and here is my oldest and my best!”
And Pamela Star threw open the doors to introduce her newest friend to her oldest, a dead man laid out on a great couch in the serene light of two tall candles, at its head, in two tall candlesticks of barbaric design in dull and twisted gold.
“That’s how he wished it,” she whispered.
They stood, the two young people, even as straight as the two candlesticks of the dead old man’s desire, in the open doorway: Ivor staring in wonder, and she in deep thoughtfulness, at the still and bearded figure on the great couch. Her oldest and best friend! And she, beside him in the doorway, was as still as the dead....
Theystood facing one another on each side of the figure on the great couch, he staring down in wonder and she in thought; and the calm light of the two candles shone softly on her hair, so that red and gold and bronze danced on the waves and magic shades chased magic shadows in the depths.
The couch was low, it did not reach above Ivor’s knees; and it was very wide, but the old man was not lost in it, for even in death he could bewilder size and confuse proportion. Patriarchal he looked, that old man, where he lay with fine head and beard uncovered by the sheet—for what shame to cover the head, no matter how inert, of Aram Melekian! Of whom it had been said that he was the only proud gesture that wretched race has ever made since Jesus died to save the souls of men and to make a hecatomb of Hayastan, which is Armenia’s true name. A wise old man, Sir Aram Melekian, but bitter: the friend of man he had surely proved himself by many charities and endowments, but as surely he despised mankind; he lent money to it. It was said that he had financed several little wars, and it was known that, with the great Greek millionaire, he had helped the Allies considerably in the last war—his idea being, some people said, that since England and France had befriended Armenia almost out of existence he was only too pleased to do what he could for them: which does not show him in a very pleasant light, but is almost certainly a malicious fabrication of envy, for Sir Aram Melekian had always let it be known that he yielded to no one in his admiration for the recent civilisations of the West, saying: “The West is much more cunning than the East, which is why the East is called cunning, I suppose.” It was to such fresh and boyish remarks, no doubt, that the old multi-millionaire owed his amazing popularity among the societies of Paris, New York and London. Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton,however, were understood not to like him very much, and theMorning Posthad made several disapproving references to him in connection with Mr. Lloyd George’s Near Eastern policy—but all this was no doubt due to a pardonable misunderstanding about Sir Aram Melekian’s nose, which was what’s called a decidedly Jewish-looking affair; whereas, though Armenians have frequently been described as very Jewish-looking, the truth of the matter is that Jews are very Armenian-looking, for the Armenians are the senior race and have, therefore, a prior right to that nose which the Jews, perhaps rather indiscreetly, have always claimed as their own. Sir Aram Melekian, like the late Viscount Northcliffe, had read the history of Napoleon; but, unlike the late Viscount Northcliffe, he had forgotten it....
But the death of the great Armenian, on the 1st of May, 1921, is too recent to deserve particular comment; and, indeed, little could be added to the biographical details, appreciations and tittle-tattle which filled the newspapers of the day; for editors, whose hands are nowhere if not on the pulse of the public, know that, though a multi-millionaire is but a fable while he is alive, the great heart of the public is at once touched by his death and deeply interested in the disposition of his fabulous monies; though in this case that disposition was found to be of less than usual interest, for the number of words in Sir Aram Melekian’s will did not exceed the rumoured number of his millions.
Ivor did not need to be told who the old man was. The curiosity about the “Portrait of Pamela Star” in 1916 had, anyway, ascertained one certain fact about Pamela Star, that she was in some way connected with Sir Aram Melekian; and though the old millionaire gained a little glamour from that connection, whether of love or guardianship no one knew, it was thought a little “peculiar” of him to keep her, “that lovely, tall creature,” so severely to himself; for there had been no chance of meeting her, even those brilliant and energetic hostesses who were intimate acquaintances of AramMelekian’s were by him refused the slightest introduction to Pamela Star. “Later,” he would say; and always “Later.” They would be seen, however, now and then, side by side in the tonneau of a car; now and then riding in the Row, a fine pair for all his age, which must have been well over sixty: “the lovely, tall creature” and the iron-gray old man with the Assyrian beard and the deep eyes that only smiled at disconcerting moments: a suspicious man. And so Pamela Star remained unknown, a legend created by Augustus John and enjoyed only by an eccentric old man....
It was as Ivor at last raised his eyes from the old man’s face, to see if Pamela Star really existed, that she spoke. She said, in a very low voice:—
“He died this evening—at about seven o’clock. Gently—just as he looks. He expected to die, his heart was like that. And I expected it, too....”
“Dear, dear Aram!” her voice came so softly, so tenderly. “He was so strong—and so contemptuous—about everything but me!”
Ivor looked down again at the noble head on which age had left a mane of gray hair, and at the face, which was as though bleached white and taut with many years, many tempers.
“He looks,” Ivor said thoughtfully, “as I thought no man in the world could look, the richest man in the world.”
“And I?” Her sharp question startled him; he stared across the couch, into the gray irises into which the candlelight had dropped spots of gold. “And I? Do I look like the richest woman in the world?”
He stared; it was somehow appalling, the matter and manner of that swift question, so brittle and infinitely wretched! And he suddenly felt as though all his life had been leading to this particular and amazing point, that he had lived thirty-two years for nothing more—and nothing less!—than to be asked, across the body of an old man, this magnificently absurd question. And he tried to be silent, but he said something, he never knew what....
Theywere back on the other side of the closed folding-doors: almost as they had been before, standing together as on an island in artificial twilight. The occasion was not, somehow, one for sitting down.
“I’ve made a great demand on your patience, haven’t I?” she asked him. “All this mystery....”
“But you’ve made it very easy for me to meet that demand,” he told her sincerely.
“And now I’ll explain—something, anyway. You’ve a right to know something—after my strange behaviour.” And she seemed to wait for him to say something, but he had nothing to say: the thing was too mysterious.
“Yes?... Well, listen. There, in that room, lies my oldest and dearest friend—though I don’t know why I put it that way, for I’ve never had another. But it’s not to be pathetic I’m being so expansive to you. And it’s not for grief at Aram’s death. I’m being selfish, my friend. I am thinking only of myself—and there’s a great horror in that word, myself, when there’s not another to put beside it....”
She stopped, and seemed to consider him; and she made a slight, helpless movement of her hand, so that a sense of her impotence touched him closely.
“I’ll understand, whatever you say,” he begged her to believe. “Anyway, I think I will.”
“If you’ve ever been lonely you will,” said Pamela Star. “Though even so it may be difficult, for I’ve only been lonely since seven o’clock this evening. But I am suffering from all the loneliness of my future life, I don’t see how it can be mended. That’s hysteria,maybe. You have met many women, I’m sure, and so you may know this for hysteria....”
“I have met many women,” Ivor said, “and I don’t know anything.”
“Listen,” she said again: and spoke impulsively, swiftly. “I’ve been with Aram Melekian since I was ten. I’m twenty-eight now—eighteen years in that wise old man’s care, for he was very wise, you know. I was a grubby little girl playing about in the Fulham Road, the daughter of a plumber’s foreman and the sister of a little boy who was even grubbier than me, when Aram saw me on his way to the studio of one of hisprotégéesin Redcliffe Road. He saw me several times, he said, and was amazed at my beauty....” She smiled faintly. “I think he has been amazed at it ever since. And of course I’ve been only too pleased to be able to return, if only like that, a little of the great debt I owe him.”
“At first,” she said, “he was my guardian. He had arranged things with my father—who would never receive any help for himself, dear father is such an independent kind of plumber! And a great success he’s made of plumbing, too, he and my brother—Snagg & Son, of the Fulham Road. For my name was Pam Snagg, but Aram changed it to Pamela Star, saying it was more apt for me....”
“And indeed it is,” said Ivor.
“Yes, Aram had aflair,” she agreed. “And, though he was so bitter, he could make even plain things beautiful by understanding them. That’s surely very rare....”
“At first he was my guardian,” she repeated, “and then, when I was twenty, he was my lover. And then, after that, he was my friend. He was my lover for a year, and he said that that year was the great mistake of his life—the only mistake of his life, he said. For one day he cried—Aram cried, hard Aram!—and after that he was my friend. My great friend.... The great mistake of his life! Well, I don’t know. It’s easy to judge these things by morality, so easy that morality must be sometimes wrong. It’s too cocksure.... I’m glad to have been his mistress. I feel I would have been very—small and little, without that. You understand? It somehow balances one—the knowledge. And I’m sure you wouldn’t be here and I talking to you so frankly but that once upon a time I let Aram love me—oh, yes, it was just that, there’s no excuse for me at all except that I’m glad of it.”
“But surely that’s just enough!”
“Yes?” she asked softly; and he had a conscious moment of wondering what she was going to say. “And was it enough excuse, my friend, for him to leave all his property,every bit, to me, to do just as I liked with? Me, Pamela Star!”
“Well!...” said Ivor in amazement. It was amazing....
“Oh, but it was dreadful!” she suddenly cried.
“Why do you say ‘it was’?,” he asked—sharply.
She stared at him in deep bewilderment.
“Quick you are!” she murmured. She passed a hand across her forehead. “I don’t know,” she said. “I should have said ‘it is,’ I suppose. But you’re here, after all—aren’t you?”
That evident fact seemed to astonish him to silence.
“It was dreadful,” Pamela Star insisted. “This evening—all alone here! The doctor came and went—an impressive man. His patients always have bulletins about them in the morning paper—a most impressive man. He pressed my hand most encouragingly as he went away. Then the secretaries came and went—automata, just automata! They seemed to find a tremendous lot to do, though I’m sure I don’t know what it was, for I couldn’t find anything to do at all. One automaton whispered to me that he would see ‘about the Press’—the silly man, as though I cared what he saw about! And at last he went too, the last automaton, with whispering feet. The servants seemed more human—Rose, the butler, is a very nice old man, but theplumber’s daughter wasn’t somehow able to put her head on his shoulder and say that she was very, very miserable. Then he went to bed at last, I suppose, and I was left all alone with Aram and all this money: ... left all alone with to-morrow and all the to-morrows! Don’t you feel sorry for me, my friend—what shall I do with it all? Must I sacrifice all my life to that ghastly money—even as he did! Oh, I don’t despise money, but this is too much, it’s endless! I can’t sign it away, heap by heap—oh, delicious heaps of gold to give away! ‘Will you take it, sir, or shall I send it for you?’ But that’s no use, I can’t sign it away, for he trusted me with his millions to direct them to their best advantage. He educated me for that purpose, he said I was the one woman in the world who would be able to do it. Oh God, what a compliment! They will always be his, I will be their slave! That looks to be my life, my friend....”
She was deliciously frank with him, she did not try to deprecate her self-pity.
“But why did he keep you so—well, closed up?” Ivor asked. “It seems strange of him—not giving you a chance to know people, to make friends, to know things!”
“Oh, but I know such a lot!” she protested, with a vast, sweet arrogance. “I know a devil of a lot, sir, about life and things. He taught me, you see—and he was a most uncommon man, I assure you. And he didn’t keep me ‘closed up’ at all—I just took his advice, respecting him as I did. I was lonely sometimes, of course, but I was happy with him, we laughed together often, and then he would show me the world. I don’t suppose I’ll ever know a younger man than Aram was really—even his contempt for people was a young thing, don’t you see! And, as for me, I never had a desire to keep asalonof my own or decorate some one else’s. I didn’t want all that. I’m of the people, and I always will be of the people, money or no money. And Aram always said that if I went about my facewould make a mess of my life—forgive my being candid about my face, but living with him has made me so—for, he said, my beauty wasn’t the kind that men are just content to look at, they would want to touch it, being men. And I couldn’t remain untouchable, he said, being a woman and warm—that’s what he said, anyway, and he probably knew for he was once my lover for a year. A man will come, he said, who will also be your friend. He said that often, he seemed somehow to be certain about it. But by the time he died this evening no such man had come at all, not even the shadow of one. And so I wandered about the house, and then at last I put on this dress, just for something to do; and then, still for something to do, I crept out of the house and walked, and at last I stood by the Tube station, wondering if anything had ever happened to any one in Down Street. At last I decided it hadn’t—even though, you know, I didn’t expect anything to happen, and I don’t think I really wanted anything to happen, for I wouldn’t have known what to do with it if it did....”
“And then,” she said, “you happened, with your one arm. That made things ever so much easier. Somehow....”
“I just happened,” he said, quite sincerely, “as anyone else might have.”
“Don’t be silly!” she cried—so suddenly! And she laughed at his humility, shattering it—and then, shattering her laughter, came a great noise and thundering through the stone hall, so that they were shocked into staring silence.
“Good God, what’s that!” Ivor whispered.
They started to the door; and again that thundering through the stone hall shattered the stillness and marred the dignity of Sir Aram Melekian’s tomb.
“It’s the front door,” whispered Pamela Star.
A squat and surly shape confronted them in the night.
“I bin ringin’ this ’ere bell for the larst ’our,” explained the shape with commendable restraint. “And not jest for fun, but to know if you’ve fergotten me or going to keep me till the next war. Bein’ now parst four——”
A convulsive giggle came from behind Ivor’s shoulder in the doorway.
“We’d forgotten the taxi!” said the giggle, quite unnecessarily, for the taxi was very manifest to the eye.
“I’m so sorry,” said Ivor to the driver, and grinned at him. “I quite forgot you....”
“Oh, I don’t mind, if you don’t!” sneered the taxi-driver....