told. She was a kind woman, a practical Christian; she would be shocked
and touched; she too would think in terms of sacrifice and she would
admire her son extravagantly. In her heart, too, she would despise Ivy
as a traitor who had sold her sex; she would find a thousand honest
objections to the marriage, she would conscientiously make Ivy
miserable by hinting them to her; she would exhaust every device for
getting her practical Christianity carried out by deputy; and, if she
failed to save her son, he would lose his mother in the very struggle
which she was making on his behalf.
“I see that,” said Eric grimly. “Plenty of obstacles, aren’t there? And
all because she sat in this chair this morning and cried her heart out.”
Gaisford looked at his watch and jumped up with an exclamation of
dismay:
“D’you know it’s two o’clock, Eric? I must get to bed. Understand! I’m
not forbidding the banns, but _promise_ me to think before you do
anything irrevocable; you’re too good to waste on an impulse. Only one
thing more. Why was she crying this morning?”
“You can hardly expect her to be light-hearted. I should think the man
didn’t mince matters with her last night—”
“And she was crying—for _him_. Don’t forget that, my friend. Unless
she’s right-down vicious, he must have fascinated her pretty completely
before she consented to play the fool like this; she was _very_ much in
love with him. For all I know, she may be very much in love with him
still. You’re adding to your troubles, if you’ve to chain her by the
leg to keep her from going back to him.”
“She won’t have much temptation when the blackguard’s deserted her.”
Gaisford put on his hat and coat to the accompaniment of a succession
of grunts:
“Women don’t—have much temptation—to go on living—with men who beat
them.—They still do it, though—even when there are no children,—even
when they could run away... You always underrate the strength of sex in
a woman; I’m afraid you always will. It’s because you’re an
idealist....”
Eric did not go to bed at once. The conversation had excited his brain
too much; and he felt that, if he had to meet Ivy in the morning, he
must first deal honestly with every objection raised by Gaisford and
overcome it or be overcome by it. He started virtuously, as he began to
undress, but quickly tired. There was a trace of powder on his
looking-glass; he could not see his familiar wash-hand-stand without
seeing in imagination Ivy’s slim, black figure bending over it, as she
bathed her eyes. And then he knew that he had only listened to Gaisford
in order to have some idea what difficulties he had to face.
Already his brain was half-unconsciously making plans, as it had not
done since last he had in his life some one who belonged to him,
“somebody to work for and take care of.” As he had lived through the
day with scarcely a thought for Barbara, so now he could think of her
without wincing. He set himself to think of her deliberately, as she
used to come into the library, or sit on the floor in front of the
fire, resting her head against his knee. Her changes of expression were
as familiar as ever; he could conjure up her phrases, her intonation
and laugh; the touch of her hand was still felt in his, but he could
think of her without pain. That was a silent answer to Gaisford’s
questions.
Eric could have put it into words, but he only discovered it when he
was alone, when the flat was empty, when he could shut his eyes without
seeing Barbara’s wan ghost....
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHAPTER SEVEN
A DOUBLE RESCUE
“One marries a girl and lives with a woman. I think I know something
about girls, but I am sure I know nothing about women.”
J. A. SPENDER: “THE COMMENTS OF BAGSHOT.”
Though the sun shone with warm encouragement as Eric swerved and
rattled through the forbidding Sunday calm of Eaton Place, he was
chilled by anxiety, a broken night and a sense of his own amazing
rashness. Though he was still uncommitted in act, his mind had made
itself up so firmly that he could not change it without a breach of
faith. And now he expected to meet with one disappointment after
another: Ivy had proved herself frail and not wholly truthful; he would
find her to be heartless or insipid or commonplace; perhaps she would
reveal a disconcerting streak of vulgarity, he might well have been
mistaken in thinking her even pretty....
“I hope you hadn’t arranged to do anything else to-day,” he said, as
they drove to Paddington.
“I was only going to dine with father and mother,” Ivy answered
listlessly. “The usual Sunday supper.”
“Well, we can get back in time for that.”
“I don’t mind missing it for once. He’s just come back from assizes;
and they always make him so pompous that mother and I can do nothing
with him for weeks afterwards.”
“But he’ll be disappointed,” Eric suggested. Already a blemish! Ivy
always seemed so selfish in her attitude towards her parents that she
might become equally inconsiderate towards her husband. “We’ll
telephone from Maidenhead to say you’re coming, and you can ask if you
may bring me. I don’t mind cadging an invitation, because you remember
I was invited once before and couldn’t go.”
“Oh, they’ll be delighted to see you,” Ivy answered without enthusiasm.
Was it a blemish that she acquiesced so easily? Would it have been a
blemish if she had resisted? Eric told himself that he must cut short
this microscopic search for faults, but he was not disposed to let her
off a meeting with her parents. He would really know very little of Ivy
until he had seen her framed in her own house and flanked by the
formidable judge and his passive consort; a chance encounter in New
York and their few stilted meetings in London revealed only her
insincere social mannerisms, while in their two emotional passages she
had shewn him only the tragic mask.
In the cab and in the train neither was at ease, for Eric did not know
how or when to begin speaking, and Ivy stared blankly out of the window
with watery eyes, accepting his arrangement and disposal of her with
dull thanks from a drooping mouth. Would she always be like this? Must
her vitality always be drawn from him? For months, perhaps for years,
she would mourn her lost lover; Eric would have to bear with
irresponsive apathy... He gave her two papers, which she allowed to
rest on her knees, and tried to forget his discouragement in looking
about him.
The station was crowded with men in flannels and girls in gauzy frocks,
all oppressively high-spirited and resolved to enjoy themselves. Every
seat was taken before the train had been five minutes in the station,
and, when it started, Eric found himself squeezed between Ivy and
another girl in a carriage with six aside and four men standing. He
looked from one to another, contrasting the girls’ faces and bearing.
There was an absurd similarity in hats and dresses, in their very shape
and feature and age. All were wearing grey or white buckskin shoes,
grey or white silk stockings thin as gossamer; all were wearing
spider’s-web hats and low-cut dresses with transparent sleeves. Their
average age was twenty; they were perfectly happy, perfectly
well-pleased with themselves and in perfect health. Like that
stage-army overnight at the opera, life—as a thing of ecstasy or
racking pain—passed them by. Ivy watched him, as he watched them, and
he could feel her arm trembling against his.
“I telephoned for a cab,” said Eric, as the train slowed into
Maidenhead. “And a table. And a punt.” There was no answer; and he
leaned towards her, lowering his voice to a whisper: “Ivy, I’ve been
looking forward to this ever since last night.”
“I hope you won’t be disappointed in me,” she sighed.
“I shall only be disappointed if you don’t enjoy yourself.”
Ivy shivered and hid her face from him; but, as the arrangements for
the day unfolded themselves, she could not help responding to his
solicitude. Nothing had been forgotten, nothing could have been
improved. They drove in comfort through the crowded, narrow streets of
Maidenhead, while others struggled for cabs or resigned themselves to
walking; a table was waiting for them by an open window, and intuition
had warned him that she would want to lunch off lobster and
strawberries. By luck or contrivance they were served by the most
attentive waiter; the most comfortable chairs were ready for them at
the water’s edge, when they came out to the lawn for coffee; and the
sun blazed down on them from a cloudless sky. In the hotel several
people had spoken or nodded to Eric; Grace Pentyre and Lady John
Carstairs detached themselves from their parties to cross the lawn and
compliment Ivy on her dress; she felt her self-respect reviving and
surrendered to the enveloping atmosphere of well-being.
“You _are_ good to me!,” she exclaimed suddenly, when Eric returned to
her after ordering the punt to be made ready.
“Are you happy?,” he asked.
“I’m—enjoying myself.”
“Ah! that’s not enough... I don’t believe I’ve been to Maidenhead since
I was an undergraduate.”
“Too much work? I’ve never had enough in one year to keep me busy for
one day!,” she exclaimed impatiently.
“And I’ve always had more in one day than I could do in a year, ever
since I was a small boy.”
He helped her into the punt and began paddling up stream in search of a
quiet place for mooring. Half-an-hour passed before he noticed that he
was talking only about himself and his boyhood, his family and his
work; then he stopped self-consciously, and Ivy looked up eagerly,
waiting for him to go on.
“I envy you! I’d give anything to be you!,” she exclaimed. “When I
think of _my_ life... and _yours_....”
Eric smiled and headed for the bank, where he made fast to an obtruding
willow-root. Then he stepped into the middle of the punt, rearranged
the cushions at Ivy’s back and sat beside her.
“Comfortable?,” he asked her. “Ivy... I want you to think over what I’m
going to say, take your time and tell me what you make of it when
you’ve thought it over from every point of view for, say, a month.” He
lighted a cigarette and looked straight ahead of him. “I want to know
whether you’ll marry me.” She sat up, rigid with amazement, looking at
him with round eyes. He laid a hand on her shoulder and pressed her
gently back. “I’ve saved a fair amount of money and I’m making a good
income; one hopes it will go on. I would do all I could to make you
happy... Before you decide, you must try to imagine whether I’m the
sort of person that you think you could live with. I’m not a
professional invalid, but I have to lead rather a careful life and I
suppose I’ve as many angles as most bachelors....”
When she tried to speak, he had stopped her; but he found it impossible
to go on cataloguing himself while she sat silent with bitten,
bloodless lips.
“But... I thought you understood!,” Ivy broke in, as he paused. “I’m
not fit... You... or anybody.”
Eric could not trust himself to look at her, but he felt for her hand.
“I’m not asking you to—yet awhile,” he said. “But, when you’ve had time
to think it over... Anything that you’ve told me, I—I’ve forgotten. In
your turn, you’ll have to take me as you find me... I’m a solitary
man... I should like some one to take care of... Will you think this
over, Ivy, very slowly and very carefully? It’s a big risk... If you
say ‘no’—” he hesitated and shrugged his shoulders. The doubts of the
morning had melted like snow beneath a tropic sun; he had recovered the
mood of overnight in which pity fiercer than desire set before his eyes
the picture of Ivy, praying in wild despair, and filled his ears with
the fancied mutter of her prayers. If she said “no,” he would be
tempted to plead and argue against her decision and his own better
judgement; he hoped that he might not be tempted—“if you say ‘no’”—he
hesitated again and moistened his lips—“I can make certain arrangements
that will spare you the worst; if you say ‘yes’, I propose that we get
married very quietly and go abroad for a time. What matters now is that
you should feel comfortable in mind; there’s nothing in the world for
you to worry about.”
He withdrew his hand and shaded his eyes to look at the leisurely
procession of boats converging at the gate of Boulter’s Lock. Now that
he had laid his proposal before her, he seemed cold and repellent where
he had meant to make a single, irresistible gesture of magnanimity; it
was only by giving her everything and by spending himself to give her
more that he could heal the wounds in his own spirit. Ivy’s world must
be the fairy palace of a dream....
As the silence lengthened, he wondered whether he wanted her to say
anything yet... The announcement would create a sensation. Many would
be disappointed, a few pleased by the surface of romance; his mother
would look at the slim, dark, undeveloped child and wonder whether he
had been captivated by her youthful prettiness and whether such
inexperience could possibly make him happy; he wondered in his turn
whether a mother’s uncanny intuition would discover that he was not
marrying for love. Ivy, for that matter, would not be marrying for
love; she would be marrying, at nineteen, for safety. Even if she had
loved him now, in ten years’ time she would be a different woman,
capable of a different love; if she were assailed later by a passion to
which she could not now pretend, he wondered how far gratitude would
restrain her....
“I don’t understand...” Ivy’s voice was quavering. “I’ve been praying
to die, ever since I knew... Why _should_ you...?”
Her voice rose tremulously, broke and died away. Still without looking
at her, Eric gripped her wrist.
“But why not?,” he asked.
“I’m nothing to you, and you’re—It isn’t fair on you.”
“I’m the best judge of that,” he answered with exultant, fierce
excitement that made his voice harsh. “But you’re not to decide
anything for the moment,” he went on more gently. “Just tell me—are you
happy?”
He felt his hand brushed by her lips. Then she dragged her wrist from
his fingers and bent forward, burying her head in her lap.
They both felt exhausted; and neither knew what to do next. The
pitiless publicity of Boulter’s Lock held them in artificial restraint;
there were numberless prosaic arrangements to be contrived, but Eric
shirked the emotional violence of abruptly broaching them. As she
regained composure, Ivy took off her hat and drew herself upright with
her hands clasped round her knees, looking away from him to the line of
punts under the opposite bank. She had pretty feet and ankles, pretty
arms and shoulders, a straight thin back and slender neck; since their
first meeting she had lost something of her looks by suddenly becoming
so thin, but the sharpness of outline added to her charm of youth and
delicacy. Eric suddenly remembered his chill of misgiving as he drove
to Eaton Place, expecting to be disappointed in her; a warm wave of
compassion blinded him, and he asked himself how a man of Gaymer’s
upbringing and traditions could bring himself to commit the social sin
for which there was no pardon; if he had waited till Ivy was married,
an intrigue would have been venial; if he had chosen a girl from a
humbler walk of life, no one would have asked more than that he should
behave liberally to her... That was conventional morality in England....
Perhaps the one impossible thing had been made possible by the war. For
five years there had been whispered rumours of desolating scandals
scotched at the last moment. England was sex-intoxicated; women married
light-heartedly on a few weeks’ acquaintance and married again a few
months later when their husbands had been killed, without prejudicing
their right to acquire three or four lovers in the interval. And those
who remained technically virtuous talked sex by day and dreamed it at
night; there was nothing they did not know, nothing they would not
discuss, and in this welter of short-lived artificial excitement, when
all were overworked and overstimulated, when vague cosmic hungers made
themselves felt and an opportunity became a duty, it was not surprising
that some had lost their heads.
But Ivy looked too fastidious. Her deferential timidity, under the
skin-deep manner of bustle and efficiency which had irritated him in
New York, was no challenge to a man; her youth imposed an obligation on
any one with the wit to see her as an emancipated school-girl; a
libertine, when he had pierced the veneer of assurance, would find her
insipid; and, even if Gaymer was insensible to discrimination and
honourable restraint, Eric could not understand her allowing herself to
fall into his hands. Men and women drifted dizzily without seeing where
they were going or how far they had gone, but Ivy seemed yet enough of
a child to stop herself by sheer ignorant instinct before she began to
drift.
“Eric!”
He turned quickly, for Ivy had never before used his Christian name.
“Yes?”
“Eric...” She hesitated, and he saw that her cheeks were crimson.
“Eric, I want to tell you about Johnnie.”
“My dear, I’ve forgotten that there is such a person.”
After screwing herself up to do her duty, Ivy did not feel entitled to
be relieved of it.
“Perhaps you won’t think as badly of me afterwards,” she faltered.
“But I _don’t_ think badly of you! I want a new life to start from
to-day. If we get married—you mustn’t _dream_ of deciding yet—, I want
to obliterate everything that happened before to-day. So far as our
joint life is concerned, we meet now for the first time. Let’s see all
we can of each other. If we become engaged, we’ll announce it, get
married as soon as possible and go straight out to America. I’ve always
an excuse to go there for as long as I like; we can come back when it
suits us and we can settle down to domestic life in England. It’s very
probable that you’ll meet Gaymer—I’ve found that you can’t avoid
meeting people in London, however much you may want to—, but you’ll
meet him as a mere acquaintance. And, Ivy, the only thing _I_ know of
him is that I’ve run across him for three years in other people’s
houses and have never invited him to my own, because we don’t seem to
have anything in common. Isn’t that enough?”
She made a vague movement with head and shoulders, but he could see
that she was hardly listening to him.
“I—can’t understand,” she faltered. “You must despise me so, and I’ve
nothing to give... It’s like a dream.”
“I’m asking you to give me the whole of yourself for all my life...,”
Eric answered. “Now I’m going to paddle you back.”
Though there had been no rain for several weeks, a strong stream was
flowing, and he punted swiftly to Skindle’s lawn before he found that
it was still too early for tea. Shooting under Maidenhead Bridge, he
crossed to the Berkshire side and drifted until he found another
stretch of shady bank under which they could moor the boat and smoke.
Ivy beckoned him to her side and struck a match for his cigarette.
“Eric, I shall never be able to _do_ anything for you,” she whispered.
“All you say is that _you_ want to make _me_ happy! Long before I met
you, I’d wanted to meet you, because you wrote such wonderful plays. In
New York... If anybody’d told me I was going to marry you, I should
have burst out laughing. You were so big and famous. Coming over on the
boat I hardly dared speak to you. I can’t believe it yet... If I came
to you as I was in New York—I _had_ something to give then—, I couldn’t
believe it. But I never knew you then, I never thought that any man...
out of a book, I mean... Oh, I can _never_ do enough, I can never
_begin_ to repay you!”
Her urgency sent a glow through blood which Eric once thought would
never again be warm. He wanted to see his mother and Gaisford, to say
to them: “You told me to make one more effort, and I’ve made it. You
told me to forget myself. Well, I have; and I’ve won. The biggest
effort... and the biggest victory....”
“Love must be dead long before a man renders a bill, Ivy,” he said.
“I want to pay without waiting for it!”
“But love hasn’t been born yet.”
“Oh, it has, Eric!”
“When?”
“When you promised... You know.”
Eric laughed and took her hand:
“When you thought you were dreaming? You’re dreaming still, Ivy. That’s
why I won’t let you decide till you’ve had time to wake up and think.
Cold, grey, early-morning thinking... Perhaps I’m dreaming too. It
seems so long... And you’re so absurdly young, Ivy; I’m half a
generation older. When I saw you outside Covent Garden last night, I
felt I’d do anything to make you less miserable. Anything in the world.
If we hadn’t been in a public street, I’d have taken you in my arms and
kissed you... I thought and argued all the evening; I wished I had more
to give you. And I was glad for my own selfish sake that you were
unhappy. I wasn’t particularly happy myself; and I suddenly saw that,
if I could give you everything I had, if I could make a new life, a
happy life for you, Ivy, I should be happy myself. You see, I’ve not
been thinking of you very much,” he laughed.
She turned quickly and put her face up to him.
“Kiss me now, Eric,” she begged.
“I will, when you’re sure you’re in love with me,—if you ever are.”
“I am! You know I am! I’d do anything for you. Isn’t that love?”
“You don’t yet feel that I’m essential to you. That’s why you need
time. And, if you knew what love was, you wouldn’t need me to tell you.”
Ivy knitted her brows and looked away.
“I thought I did,” she murmured. “I thought I couldn’t get on without
Johnnie. That was why; he threatened to go away....”
Eric watched her out of the corner of one eye:
“And you find you can get on without him?”
“I had to.” The answer came without hesitation, but she paused at once
to consider it. Eric wondered whether he had heard regret in her voice.
“If he came to see you to-night,” Eric propounded, “if he explained
away whatever happened two nights ago and said that he’d always meant
to marry you and wanted to marry you, if he told you that it was simply
a question of money—”
She interrupted with a vigorous shake of the head:
“You don’t understand! He’s a different man.”
“He _was_ the man you fell in love with, Ivy.”
“No! I’d been mistaken in him.”
“I only want to be sure that you’re not mistaken now.”
“I’m _certain_ now.”
There was no profit in reminding her that she must have felt at least
as certain before she surrendered to Gaymer. Eric concentrated his
attention on the punt, which was making slow progress against the wind
and stream. As they came alongside the lawn of the Guards Club, he saw
Ivy stiffen and look away; there was no apparent reason for her abrupt
movement, as he could only see two wounded officers, playing with a
dog, and the back of a third, who was making his way slowly towards the
club-house. Evidently she did not want to be seen, and Eric felt a
twinge of misgiving when he reflected how little he knew of her.
Whenever a man married, he had to some extent to inherit the relations
and friends, the family bores and family feuds of his wife, with a
greater or less legacy of complications and indiscretions; all that he
knew of Ivy and her world could be written on a single sheet of paper.
Tea was a silent and reflective meal for both of them. It was only when
they had driven to the station and were walking up and down the
platform that he found a reason for her embarrassment. On a bench by
the head of the stairs two officers were playing with a dog; between
them sat Gaymer. Now as before, Ivy saw him first, but this time he saw
her and bowed. Eric would have walked on, but one of the wounded
officers waved a crutch and hailed him by name.
“Hullo, Pentyre! I haven’t seen you to speak to since you were smashed
up,” said Eric.
“No, I came to look you up when I was home about a year and a half ago,
but they told me you were in America. I caught sight of you in the
distance at one of Sonia’s parties... This is a memento of the final
Hun push. You know my brother, don’t you? And Gaymer?”
“Oh, yes!” Eric felt his heart quickening its beat. There was an
adequate nod, Gaymer rose with adequate alacrity and bowed a second
time to Ivy; but there was no glint of resentment over their late
candid meeting in Buckingham Gate, no flicker of curiosity at finding
Ivy in such company and no embarrassment in meeting her at all. “You
know Lord Pentyre, don’t you? Miss Maitland, Mr. Frank Pentyre.”
“Oh, please don’t get up,” Ivy begged, as Pentyre and his brother
reached for their crutches.
Eric was pleased to see that she was composed—as much composed as he
had been when he found himself confronted with George and Barbara at
Covent Garden; he also remembered his own emotions that night and led
her away as soon as he could make an opportunity.
“Well done!” whispered Eric, pressing Ivy’s arm.