“PIRACY”
_The Author wishes it to be clearly understood that all the persons in
this book, except Mr. Fletcher and Mr. Trevor, are entirely of the
imagination._
“PIRACY”
A ROMANTIC CHRONICLE OF
THESE DAYS
_by_
MICHAEL ARLEN
Author of “The Romantic Lady,”
“The London Venture,” etc.
[Illustration]
LONDON: 48 PALL MALL
W. COLLINS SONS & CO. LTD.
GLASGOW MELBOURNE AUCKLAND
Copyright
First Impression, October, 1922
Second “ November, 1922
Third “ November, 1922
Fourth “ December, 1922
Fifth “ January, 1923
Sixth “ May, 1924
Seventh “ July, 1924
Eighth “ August, 1924
_Manufactured in Great Britain_
TO MY MOTHER
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
PAGE
THE DEPRESSION OF IVOR PELHAM MARLAY ON THE
NIGHT OF THE FIRST OF MAY, 1921 1
BOOK THE FIRST
AN IDEAL, SOME DETAILS, AND A LAPSE 17
BOOK THE SECOND
THE FRIENDS 61
BOOK THE THIRD
THE ANTAGONISTS 145
EPILOGUE
THE IMAGE IN THE HEART 305
A typical sentence from an ancient copy-book, unearthed with many
other curious relics of a polite age during recent excavations at
the corner of Pall Mall and Saint James’s Street:--
“_When gentlefolk meet, compliments are exchanged._”
PROLOGUE
THE DEPRESSION OF IVOR PELHAM MARLAY ON THE NIGHT OF THE 1ST OF MAY,
1921
CHAPTER I
1
On the northern fringe of Soho there lies a not ill-favoured little
street, about which play many grubby children and barrel-organs, and on
whose pathways not even the most distinguished foreigner can look
anything but a mere alien; while the veritable alien looks there, in the
light of day, even more undesirable than in the shadows of the
“night-club” into which, at about midnight, your passing attention might
be beckoned. But you and I, in passing up that street in the failing
light of evening, would be concerned with none of its alien
banalities--except, of course, in so far as a hint of such may lie
behind the wide and well-lit windows of the Hotel and Restaurant Mont
Agel, at the far end of the street.
On the left of these spacious windows, at the head of a few steps, is
the door of the restaurant, pleasantly inviting your pressure, if indeed
it is not widely open to show the elegant interior; and on the right is
the door of the hotel, a door of a very different air to the other, a
sealed and reticent looking door, with a tiny navel through which a
worldly eye may judge of your business: a door, in fact, with the secret
air of having very important business of its own as a door, which indeed
it has. But you and I, concerned only with our dinner--to which, say, I
have invited you, being intimate with the excellence of the
place--plunge up the steps to the restaurant; reading, as we go in, the
small white lettering on the large windows that tell us that therein we
may have Lunch, Tea, and Dinner, and, more importantly, that we can have
them _à toute heure_; which, to our pedantic eye, may seem a rather
optimistic boast to make in face of the law that--even on this 1st of
May, 1921--requires all hotels, cafés, inns, restaurants and
eating-houses, to be closed somewhere about ten-thirty o’clock. But I
shouldn’t wonder if the fact that the boast is written in French allows
us to take it more as one of those _beaux gestes_ that are so frequent
in the language of the race that has most need of them, than as a
braggart defiance.
Within the restaurant you will find all quiet, orderly and clean. In
extent it is only a rather spacious room of uncertain shape (though
there are, of course, possibilities upstairs), but it has not the air of
being confined to that one room. These four walls, it says to you, might
be placed at vastly different and more elegant angles if it wished, but
it does not wish. The room wears, in fact, an air of perfect
satisfaction with itself, and not insolently, but wisely: not as a young
man who thinks he knows everything, but as an old man who knows that it
is not worth while to know any more. It is bounded on the north side, as
our schoolbooks say, by the wide front windows, which are pleasantly
half-curtained with vermilion gauze; on the south side, where the room
tapers to its end, by a much smaller window, which is always heavily
curtained and may or may not look upon the mysteries of the Mont Agel
backyard; on the west by a wall decorated with mirrors, stags’ antlers,
and heads of furry beasts, and broken by a small door which leads into
the hotel, the famous cellars, and the usual offices; and on the east
side by a handsome counter which runs along half the length of the wall,
and across which the young and elegant Madame Stutz, with befitting
seriousness, hands to her husband’s waiters those concoctions,
collations, and confections which have won for the Mont Agel Restaurant
its reputation for conservative excellence.
Wines, too, Madame Stutz there uncorks, very deftly and tenderly; during
which process her husband, the polite and amiable M. Stutz, while
trusting her in this as in all else, cannot resist watching her with a
certain anxiety; for the wines of his cellar are the treasures of his
heart, and now and then, though all too rarely, if it is a special
vintage and a favoured customer, himself will uncork the wine, seeming
with the gesture to broach a secret emotion. ‘Ah, you can hear the
angels singing!’ sighs M. Stutz, hovering about the table. Mellow and
full-blooded wines of Burgundy there are here, to stiffen a man’s heart
against the shyness that defeats desire: glistening Château Yquem, too
sweet and luxurious for any but the sweetest occasions, and many
another: wines, let us say, for beginnings, wines for consummations,
wines for tired endings--sweet, bitter-sweet, and bitter! M. Stutz lacks
not one, neither Liebfraumilch nor Tokay, nor any liqueur that ever
monkery devised with which to tantalise its own asceticism.
This restaurant is no place for a poor man, you understand; unless, of
course, he happen to be with a rich one, as must now and then happen in
even the most luckless life. The very tables are arranged with a rich
sparseness; for they are placed only around the walls, each with its
red-shaded lamp. The centre of the room is thus left unchallenged to a
large brass contrivance from which flow ferns, palm leaves, and all
manner of secondary flowers; on one side of this is a rack for papers;
on its other side is a small table weighted with various and
unseasonable delicacies, artichokes and asparagus, oysters and
strawberries, plovers’ eggs and grouse, caviare and cantaloup. A table
of miracles, indeed! About which the most miraculous thing is that there
are always those who can afford to look over it and choose from it,
fastidious and unperturbed.
Whether the Mont Agel was created for its patrons, or whether patrons
were created for the Mont Agel, will now never be known. Let it suffice
that they become each other very well, even if not quite so well as the
polite and amiable M. Stutz becomes them both. As every civilisation
must produce a M. Stutz, so every M. Stutz must produce a civilisation;
and the atmosphere he has created in this bye-street of Soho is
essentially an atmosphere of civilisation. Not, you understand, that
brazen modernity which Mr. Stephen Mackenna’s almost too social eye
cannot desist from discerning in glittering heaps and serial form all
the way from Berkeley Street to Sloane Square (that happy and horrible
land where all young men have Clubs and all young women Lovers), but an
air of just sensible civilisation. Here, at the Mont Agel, you will find
not the sense of property, about which so much has been written, but
that much finer sense of independence, which has written so much. But
you would have to know the place pretty well before you found in its
customers any sense of anything whatsoever, for this Mont Agel has a
singular dignity of its own, which subtly caresses its patrons and is as
a mystic cloud between them and an alien eye. Stout yeomen from
Wimbledon and honest burghers from Kensington Gore, gallants from
Holland Park and _beaux_ from Golders Green--one and all have some time
or other been lured hither by some wanton friend; and what have they
seen? Rich wines and rare food, delicious to the Battersea palate, made
up the sum of that unexpected for which these worthy adventurers did
timidly search; they have seen nothing for their money, nothing at all!
Or was it, as an afterthought, nothing to have sat and watched the
bearded and significant figure of M. Stutz’s most considerable
patron--an epic figure, that!--and to have wondered whether that silent
detachment betokened a great artist or a great vagabond? And was it
nothing to have been made suddenly aware of the strange things men once
did and suffered for women, of the quests that were followed and the
lances that were broken in the days when there were neither suburbs nor
men to live in them--was it nothing to be reminded of all this, by the
vivid entrance of those tawny-haired women of almost barbaric fairness,
whose faces the men of Putney recognised from the illustrated papers
with a thrill of disapproval? Those young women of patrician and
careless intelligence, whom it is the pet mistake of bishops, diarists,
press-photographers, and Americans, to take as representing the “state”
of modern society (whereas, God knows, they represent nothing but
themselves, and that too rarely), and who, by some law of sympathy, have
found refuge at this Mont Agel from their tedious parentage or tiresome
duties roundabout, say, Grosvenor Square. One especially of these the
men of Notting Hill will often call to mind, she will arise before their
eyes as a rebuke to their passionless lives, as the phantom of the
desire that has never become tangible, as the symbol of the life that
has never been lived--one, alas, who now knows the Mont Agel no more!
And they will be faintly shocked yet strangely stirred, after the manner
of honest men, by the cruel indifference of this lady’s look and the
casual arrogance of her poise, murmuring among themselves that the Lady
Lois--for it was she--is a bit above herself, and insinuating against
her thus and thus, after the manner of honest but common men.... And on
many nights will come the toughs and roughs and bravoes of the town, to
press their ill-favoured noses against the windows of the Mont Agel and
watch the leading beauties toying with their food and their poets.
And through and about this atmosphere of his creation moves always the
polite and amiable M. Stutz: thoughtful here, smiling there, always and
implacably encouraging. No fool ever said a wise thing but that M. Stutz
did not quickly commend it, no wise man ever said a foolish thing but
that M. Stutz did not gently condone it. He is always about your table,
not, you understand, as the servant of his restaurant, but as the
director of its amenities. His interests are wide, his dignity not
stiff, his formality pleasing, his familiarity appropriate; so that
when, with a gesture, he tells you that he is “only a little
_restaurateur_” you will take leave to disbelieve him, vowing that never
was a _restaurateur_ so imperially conceived, nor a gentleman so
politely informed.... Thus, knowing and appreciating him, it were an
offence in you to be surprised at those very rare occasions when M.
Stutz, having been prevailed upon to accept a guest’s hospitality a
little too freely, has betrayed ever so little of that human dross which
his patrons have so often displayed before him.
CHAPTER II
1
So much has been said of the Mont Agel Restaurant mainly because it had
always had a considerable place in the life and affections of one whose
fortunes this history must closely follow. The polite and amiable M.
Stutz will, of course, occur again, gently and encouragingly, even as he
occurs about the tables of those whom he honours by describing, with an
epic gesture, as “My Customers.”
There, on the evening of the 1st of May, 1921, sat Ivor Pelham Marlay,
at the only table in the place where a man could sit alone without
attracting the notice of his acquaintances to his solitude; for all but
this little table in the shadow of Madame Stutz’s counter were of a size
for four, or on occasions ten, so that a sense of fairness to M. Stutz
allowed little alternative to one in Ivor Marlay’s situation.
The Mont Agel had been a recurrent fact in that young man’s life for now
ten years; between him and it ran that vague current of sympathy which
seeks not to define its roots; and many of his memories of merry
evenings or tragic solitudes were bound to the place. He was sitting now
with his head inclined a little forward and his forehead resting in the
palm of his hand, in a detached and thoughtful attitude. The thick
hair--which was brushed slantwise back from one of those taut English
foreheads that look as though there had just been enough skin to go
round--might have been thought to be black, but was really of a
variously coloured brown, and reflected sunlight a little more
capriciously, some might think (and had thought), than a man’s hair
should.
You would not have called his a handsome face: it was a provocative
face: it looked as though it suffered from silence. Your first
impression of it was that it was an amazingly lean face, and that he was
rather uncomfortable with it; your next that, though it was of the
species dark, it was also, very definitely, of the species English
proconsul--with a quick reservation as to the eyebrows, which in a
previous incarnation he might well have raided from some sardonic
adventurer of the Orient, they were so curiously straight and dark and
immobile. They were eyebrows of the sceptical sort, they were irritating
eyebrows. Then take, as matter for a student of such things, that
thin-fleshed, aquiline nose, mountainous and significant, the nose
historical, obviously recognisable as a Family Nose--but yet,
surprisingly enough, not at all predominant in a face that had doubtless
been conceived in a turbulent moment; and take the eyes, eyes altogether
too dark for really comfortable everyday use, frank yet secret eyes,
rather sulky eyes. Take, in fact, the whole face, lean and firm and
mature--for this, after all, is the young man’s thirty-second year of
maturing--and amazingly, absurdly sulky! Now that sulkiness was
perversely set there, for all the world to see, to testify against his
nature, which is a man’s most secret property, and to be as a witness
against him, most opportune to a feline hand in moments of extreme
stress, such as befall adventurers; for it is pleasant for a woman to
tell a man that he is sulky when he is really angry and she knows it.
That sulkiness seemed to lie all over his face, lurking about the vague
shadows of his nose and in the rich shadows of his dark eyes....
His present thoughts and attitude might well have surprised any of his
acquaintances, such as were now sitting about the tables of the Mont
Agel and respecting his solitude; for Ivor Marlay was considered a
fortunate young man: moneyed, you know, and reasonably accomplished, and
quite personable, and so on. Such thoughts might even have been
considered to have come upon him by surprise. To put it unkindly, one
might have conceived his finger as having been suddenly arrested by some
sticky patch when testing the gloss over his good-fortune. But if, as
some say, thanks are the highest form of thought, Ivor Marlay had always
indulged in a very high level of thinking, in giving thanks for the
chance that had given him freedom from every monetary worry and,
therefore, freedom from much else. But even freedom, divine among
earthly words, can take queer shapes and mean queer things. Freedom,
which we all desire, may sometimes mean that no one desires us. To be
free may sometimes mean that no one wishes to imprison us; and that,
when you come to think of it, is a very terrible thing.
To these grave abstractions must be added the material fact that Ivor
Pelham Marlay had only one arm. For of the many things that a man can
lose in a proper war, Ivor Marlay had lost only his left arm. His left
sleeve, as you saw him at his table at the Mont Agel, hung emptily down
into the left pocket of his jacket--adding to his carriage that strange
elegance peculiar to tall, one-armed men of a foppish habit. And who,
after all, has more right to make the best of his appearance than one
who has been deprived of an essential detail of it?
If he had risen from his table you would have observed that he was a
tall man: he was, in fact, exactly six-feet-two: but if he were asked,
in a friendly way, how tall he was, he would answer, in a friendly way,
that he was just under six-foot-one. That was the only illusion about
himself that he had managed to preserve until the age of thirty-two.
2
His present state of mind was not due to liver or anything like that. It
was in the nature of a logical climax, and Ivor Marlay, like you and me,
naturally detested anything in the nature of a logical climax.
In earliest youth we have all sometimes had clear brooding seconds of
hopeless vision, when we ever so dimly but acutely foresaw painful hurts
that might come upon us from ourselves in manhood. There was a ghastly
moment when a jolly boy of thirteen fell suddenly to incoherent
brooding: he suddenly mistrusted his future self immensely; and for a
full second he paced awefully up the long avenues of a life that seemed
carpeted only with autumn leaves. And there comes a moment when life
proves that boy to have been unwholesomely right. And though it may be
true that things are never so bad as they seem, they are often a good
deal worse than you thought they might be.
Throughout that day Ivor Marlay had been aware that the evening would
lie heavily upon it. This 1st of May, from its rainy beginning and
throughout its pale fore and afternoon, had borne a dour impress. He had
been unable to write, quite unable to read; in stern determination not
to think, had fiercely wasted many hours in pacing miles of carpet, then
of park, and then again of carpet; and, in the late evening, had slammed
his door behind him and almost violently set out to meet his dinner face
to face, along Brook Street, across Bond Street, through Hanover Square,
along Oxford Street, and round the corner to the sign of the Mont Agel.
He had run away from these thoughts all day because, he knew, they must
take shape as that kind of depression which inexorably dissects one’s
life. And what a portentous business the wretched thing would make of it
all!... As, indeed, it did.
Of all the places he might have chosen for this momentous dinner, his
depression could not have devised a more whole-hearted ally than the
Mont Agel; for that is the worst of all Stutz civilisations, when you
are gay they make you even gayer, but when you are sad you might just as
well be dead. Ivor Marlay had not fully considered his first glass of
wine--alone, because of a deep impatience (of which that sulky look
might be the outward and deceptive sign) that always prevented him from
enjoying others’ company when least he enjoyed his own--before he found
that he had stepped into the ogre’s very arms; that, if anything, the
wretch had increased upon itself, had as it were fattened upon the
associations of the place, and was using now every dead moment of past
gaiety and past sadness as a weapon with which to point its plaguey
insistence. And of such memories, of course, the Mont Agel was full;
even the features of M. Stutz were as though lined with the past
enthusiasms, optimisms, tolerances, and encouragements with which he had
ministered, in that room upstairs, to the gaieties and reverberations of
“My Customers.”
3
It is absurd to suggest that a man sitting at a table, alone with his
coffee and his God, and goaded on by no matter how stern a desire to
come to some understanding with himself, will anything like
consecutively review the dismal pageant of his life; for even as there
is no rigid sequence in nature, so there is none in our thoughts. Here
and there Ivor Marlay saw pictures, here and there he remembered
thoughts, here and there he reheard voices, here and there he relived
silences, and here and there an illusion shone wan and faded quickly....
At a moment that he happened to raise his head his eyes met the passing
and gentle glance of M. Stutz, who had always treated the young man to
that courtly familiarity which is the hall-mark of a _restaurateur’s_
favour.
“You are deeply engaged to-night, Mr. Marlay,” M. Stutz gravely
remarked, in that deep tone which pleasantly became his classical
address.
The young man made a self-conscious noise which indicated a great
confusion rather than a laugh.
“I’m trying, you know, to find an illusion, M. Stutz. About myself, I
mean.”
M. Stutz took thought upon this for a space.
“Illusions, sir,” he said, “are like flies. There are always as many
alive as dead. Even in the winter, although you do not know it.”
“And the greatest of all illusions,” went on M. Stutz, “is that you have
not got one. It is like a man saying that he knows the answer to every
question, and then being silent when you ask him: ‘What is God?’”
And with that the polite and amiable M. Stutz again left him to his
meditations, himself to indulge in a little wine and conversation at the
far corner table with Mr. Cornelius Fayle, the South African artist, who
had a great reputation for mixing salads and lengthily commenting upon
them and anything else, rather than for his paintings--which, though as
yet unseen by any mortal eye, could not possibly have been more
charming, more instructive, or more tedious than his cherubic self.
Women loved him because they had to take care of him; he was said to
have Charm; and he was peculiarly favoured among “My Customers” by M.
Stutz’s condescension, for that urbane gentleman discerned in Mr. Fayle
a kindred spirit, whose profundities lay in as shallow and untroubled
waters as his own.
4
The circumstance is plain, then. A young man was sitting at a solitary
table in the Mont Agel Restaurant, towards ten o’clock on the night of
the 1st of May, 1921: a darkly serious young man, with a defiant nose
and a white flower brave upon the silk lapel of his dinner-jacket--for
was he not something of a fop, this one-armed young man? The soft light
of the shaded lamp on his table mellowed the hard whiteness of his
shirt-front, but it added no light to the dark eyes under the straight
eyebrows: eyes that looked like black pits of contemplation, and were
staring into a coffee-cup as into an abyss; and in these eyes was a
brooding something, which was not regret nor remorse nor despair, but
which might be fear or might be anger; for the dark young man was of an
angry habit, and he was thirty-two years old, and he was very lonely.
The history of Ivor Pelham Marlay, until this night, is the history of
England, two loves, and an ideal.
BOOK THE FIRST
AN IDEAL, SOME DETAILS, AND A LAPSE
CHAPTER I
1
It will, of course, be obvious that Ivor Marlay’s life would have been
quite different if he had gone up to the University of Oxford in the
ordinary way. Those who have been to Oxford, or even to Cambridge, will
realise how very different Ivor Marlay’s life might have been--if indeed
they can retain any interest in him--had his first youth been allowed
the natural and wholesome outlets of mind and body which either of those
mellow places affords in such ripe and enduring abundance to young men
of widely different ambitions. The amazing reason why Ivor Marlay did
not go up to the University of Oxford in the ordinary way was because he
did not want to.
This Oxford matter was discussed between himself and his Aunt Moira on
the very afternoon of his leaving school. It had, of course, been
discussed before, but that afternoon it was discussed from a rather
acute angle. Aunt Moira was seventy-two years old and was apt to discuss
things from a rather acute angle.
The day on which Ivor Marlay left school had, no doubt, a good deal to
do with the acuteness of the discussion, for Ivor Marlay left school
suddenly. Now when a man has stayed at a public school, and at Manton in
particular, until he is eighteen: when a man has become respected,
responsible, and a veteran of that system which will so soon be
producing him to the world as that system’s finest (as they are all the
finest) product--it is surely his plain duty, in fact his only duty, to
hold out to the end and to leave school without a stain on his
character. He should, if possible, avoid being expelled.
Ivor Marlay’s expulsion was of the straightforward “Damn you, sir, get
out!” kind. And the news of his expulsion, and the obvious reason for
it, caused the nearest approach to popular feeling that Manton had ever
entertained for Ivor Marlay. Manton laughed, and then Manton smiled for
weeks. And when, in later days, Manton saw the name of Marlay on the
cover of a book, Manton grinned in memory and bought that book, and
having tried to read it wondered what the devil had happened to the man.
For Manton didn’t know that he had done the thing in any spirit but that
of mischief or adventure, both naturally dear to Manton’s heart. If
Manton had known that he had done it in any spirit but that of mischief
or adventure, it would have thought it all rather odd, and felt a little
uncomfortable. The head master, who knew, thought it very odd and made
Ivor a little uncomfortable.
But, even on the morning it happened, the College Prefects thought it
was not happening quite usually. The College Prefects at Manton have a
sitting-room in the school building, a spacious room adjacent to the
masters’ sitting-room: and here they will pass a minute or two on their
way to and from classes, to which they are allowed to enter a minute or
two after Inferiors. (The difference between a College Prefect--Coll
Pree--and a House Prefect--House Pree--is that a Coll Pree can do what
he likes everywhere, and a House Pree can do what he likes in his House.
Inferiors can do what they like in their studies, more or less. Fags
can’t do what they like anywhere. New boys are _bacilli_, unclean but
invisible.) The Coll Prees, at eleven o’clock that morning, gathered in
force in their room for their minute-or-two. They knew that Marlay, the
third head of their number, was having a little conversation with the
Little Man, and they were waiting to hear about it. And the thing only
began to look a little unusual when one of their number called out:
“Why, he’s not coming! There he is!” And there, through the window, they
saw he was! Walking swiftly down the school steps, across the wide
lawn, and down more steps towards his House....
“I’ll risk it,” cried Transome, and rushed out. (Transome and Marlay had
been the school rackets-pair for the last two years.) He breathlessly
caught Marlay up on the “Senior Turf,” that immaculate turf where Manton
whacks other Mantons at cricket. Marlay turned round at his hail.
“What happened?” asked Transome breathlessly.
“Sack,” said Marlay.
“Of course,” said Transome. “Was the Little Man cross?”
“He’s a jolly nice little man,” Marlay told him. “He chewed my head off
and it didn’t begin to choke him.”
“It nearly choked me, though,” he added.
“Well, what are you going to do now?” asked Transome, interested. It
isn’t every day that the other one of a school rackets-pair is expelled;
and besides, Transome wanted to know what Marlay _was_ going to do--he
hadn’t the faintest idea what he would do if he were sacked, except
avoid his people like the plague.
Ivor dug his hands deep in his pockets.
“I’m going,” he said firmly, “down to the House. I’m going to bribe or
kick the boot-boy into packing my things and dragging them to the
station. I am then going to leap on my motor-bike and shift like hell to
London. On my arrival there I shall be made to stand in a corner for an
hour. And then I shall dress and go to the Empire----”
“Swank!” said Transome.
“And if you’ve got any sense,” Ivor added, with a grin, “you’ll come
with me, Transome. On the carrier. You can come back to-morrow saying
you’ve been to see a corn-specialist, and get the sack in perfect order.
Your father, being a colonel, would appreciate your sense of
discipline.”
“Yes, with his boot. Though I’d come,” Transome thoughtfully admitted,
“only I’m leaving at the end of the term anyway. Might as well
wait----”
“Well, good-bye, old chap!” And Ivor held out his hand.
He looked extraordinarily happy, Transome thought.
“Won’t your people be sick?” he asked.
“They’d vomit,” said Ivor thoughtfully, “if I had any--in particular, I
mean.” And having struck the pathetic note Ivor grinned broadly and
Transome grinned broadly back--and then they parted sharply asunder, the
one to the conquest of the world and the heavens, and the other back to
a routine which was more than usually embittered by an idea that it must
be rather amusing to be an orphan.
The only other persons to whom Ivor said good-bye were the boot-boy,
whom he tipped; the steward, whom he tipped; the two dormitory
housemaids, one of whom he tipped and the other kissed as well, for she
was a nice girl; the matron, who kissed him; and the house-master’s
wife, a kind and comfortable body who was extremely surprised at having
the tips of her fingers very gallantly kissed. Ivor was enjoying himself
like anything, and didn’t mind who knew it; for being expelled is not
bad fun when it isn’t for dirt, and when you have an “Indian”
motor-cycle, T.T. Model, which means that you can do a fabulous amount
of miles per hour in an exceeding uncomfortable position and for no
earthly reason except to lie about it to your friends....
2
The expulsion came about this way.
At about the middle of that summer term it became obvious to the
intelligence of the meanest _bacillus_ that strange things were
happening at Manton by night. These strange things were not, of course,
defined to _bacilli_, except that they were uncommonly strange.
_Bacilli_ had therefore a lovely feeling that history was being made,
and some one’s history in particular.
There were rumours, new rumours every morning, delightful and
outrageous rumours, so that the lumps in the porridge were swallowed
without comment and the fish-cakes were eaten without contumely. The
masters looked unusually stern, but it was the sternness of thought
rather than of discipline. Coll Prees went about with smiles gravely
repressed and an air of being more than usually responsible for
everything. House Prees and Bloods (indescribable beings, neither
Prefect nor Inferior, amazing centaurs, not divine but certainly not
human--just Bloods) were everywhere to be seen in earnest colloquy. For
the matter was, that there was some sort of night-prowler about the
school grounds. It would have been almost bearable if the night-prowler
had prowled only about the grounds, but he prowled into the Houses, he
prowled actually into the house-masters’ sides of the Houses; he prowled
into their studies, he sat on their chairs, he read their books, he
drank their port, he tested their barley water, he smoked their cigars,
he left a neat little bit of Greek verse on their desks to thank them
for same--and then, as it were for a joke, he bolted the windows from
the inside, locked the doors from the outside, and left the keys in such
an obvious place that no one ever found them until new ones had been
made. And this went on, once or twice a week, for more than a month!
Watch was kept, police were stationed about the grounds (for weeks any
strange face about the school grounds was held to be that of a “plain
clothes man--and jolly plain at that!”) and the Coll Prees were called
upon to keep night-watch over the House where each held dominion....
Then there was a memorable night when the night-prowler was chased. Two
Coll Prees and Mr. Sandys, of the Lower Fifth and the Hampshire Eleven,
were patrolling the borders of the Senior Turf, about which lie the main
Houses of Manton in the form of a horse-shoe. Suddenly, just ahead of
them, was seen a moving dark thing. They leapt. It ran. They chased, but
the dark thing hurled down the slope from the path to the flat darkness
of the Senior Turf. “He’s got running-shorts,” grumbled Mr. Sandys, who
was in a dinner-jacket. “And gym-shoes,” grunted Mr. Sandys. Then came a
laugh behind them, and again they leapt. But the dark thing grew darker
and disappeared into the labyrinth of buildings made by the gymnasium,
the gates, rackets-courts, and House No. 6. “Blast!” said Mr. Sandys,
and gave up. The Coll Prees had given up long before.
Of course the night-prowler was caught in the end, but he need not have
been caught so stupidly. The head-master (the late Canon Sidney
Wentworth Carr), himself prowling about the grounds at three a.m. one
morning, some days after all hope of finding the miscreant had faded,
thought he saw, for a bare second, a smothered cigar-end in the little
overshadowed lane that runs between Houses No. 2 and No. 9. He promptly
scuttled into the garden of No. 9, darted towards a certain point in the
wall, secured an ill-tempered victory over the low branches of the trees
for which Manton is famous, and finally got to the wall. The Canon was a
little man, so he had to stand on his toes; and he looked over the wall.
There was the figure, a yard or so away with his back to him, smoking a
cigar. “Silly ass,” the Little Man thought. “As if he liked it!”
And then he struck a match sharply. The figure started round.
“Got you!” said the head-master.
“Ah,” said the figure indistinctly. Or it might have been “Oh!”
“Come to my study t’morrow morning at ten,” the head-master said
sharply. “Silly ass, Marlay.”
“Yes, sir.”
Thus, it was all over bar the shouting. And there was very little of
that, in the head-master’s study at ten o’clock the next morning.
“Well, what did you do it for?” was fired at Ivor as he came in. Ivor
had the grace to be very white in the face. The head-master, fierce
little man that he was, always fired his questions like that, briskly,
brusquely, indomitably. He always spoke as though he was going to swear,
which indeed he sometimes did; but always just at the right moment and
about the right thing, always knowing when to be a man, when a
head-master, and when a Canon; which made him very efficient and popular
as all three.
“Well, Marlay?”
“If you want the absolute truth, sir----”
“Get on, man.”
“I was frightfully bored, sir,” Ivor said heavily; and never was boredom
more cruelly punished than by its owner’s white face and by the silence
that followed its confession. The Little Man stared at him, and he
tapped the edge of the table with a paper-knife. Then he jumped up.
“You go, of course,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
“To-day.”
“Yes, sir.”
The head-master swung round on him angrily. He had always liked Marlay.
“Look here, Marlay, you’ve spoilt a good thing, and at the last moment!
You’re a damn fool, sir!”
“I know, sir. I’m sorry.” It sounded so lame!
“Don’t lie, Marlay. You are not sorry. You are glad to go.”
Ivor fumbled.
“I’m sorry, sir, to have disappointed you,” he muttered weakly.
The head-master paced the room. Then again, suddenly, he swung round on
him; and, small though he was, he seemed to tower above the boy’s
drooping figure.
“It’s wrong and nasty, this,” he said steadily. “I suppose you know,
Marlay, that there’s nothing fine in what you’ve done, and everything
far from fine in the spirit in which you’ve done it!”
“It’s the spirit that’s damnable, man!” the head-master said. “Can’t you
see? It’s a silly boy’s trick played by a man. The matter with you,
Marlay, is that you think you are a grown man and despise boys, and the
matter with me is that I think you are a grown man and despise you for
not being a boy. That’s why I don’t thrash you, not because you are a
College Prefect....”
The way the Little Man said that! Ivor looked at the ground.
“Bored!” snarled the head-master suddenly. “You have grossly insulted
me, Marlay. And you have insulted Manton.”
“You may go, Marlay,” said the head-master.
Ivor went very quickly; but he had not opened the door before he was
called back by a sharp voice. The Little Man was still standing by the
table, lowering at him. Ivor felt, looked, and was a cur.
“I want to warn you, young man,” the Little Man said. “That boredom of
yours is dangerous--to you. I mean! To every one else it is merely
offensive. I consider, Marlay, that you have been most offensive. So if
I were you I would take steps to cure this boredom of yours. Were you,
may I ask, intending to go up to Oxford?”
“No, sir.”
(Ivor had finally decided that moment.)
“I shouldn’t,” said the head-master. “You are the first Sixth Form man
of mine I have advised not to. It is not a compliment. If you have been
bored here at Manton, you will go mad at Oxford. They take their
pleasures even more traditionally there. I will write to Lady Moira.”
“You may go, Marlay,” he said.
But, as Ivor was again going, a voice snapped from behind him:--
“You don’t believe in tradition, I suppose, Marlay?”
Ivor swung round with a livid face.
“Yes, I do, sir,” he said flatly. “That’s exactly why I was bored--the
tradition here is one of boredom.”
The silence that followed was broken only by a funny noise in the Little
Man’s throat. And Ivor was afraid.
“I--I meant,” he stammered, “that it m-must be pretty--boring for you,
sir--teaching boys and----”
“You had better go, Marlay,” said the head-master.
And this time it was Ivor who turned round from the door and faced the
terrible silence of the room. His face had gone from white to deep red.
“Good-bye, sir,” he said. “And thank you, sir--really.”
The head-master threw the paper-knife on to the table with a clatter,
and Ivor Marlay left school.
(It cost the night-prowler a pretty penny, that joke. For, a few days
after he had prowled his last, the head-master and house-masters of
Manton received each an anonymous box of Coronas. He really hadn’t the
face to return the port in kind.)
3
Two hours later he was with Aunt Moira, in the house at Palace Green. He
found her alone, erect in a high-backed Queen Anne chair in the bare and
gloomy library in which she was wont to pass her afternoons reading, or
writing letters. That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child
he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the
parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide
and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens.
Aunt Moira watched his approach across the parquet floor, an
uncomfortable kind of floor to traverse under raking eyes, without
remark or sign. Aunt Moira was not given to showing surprise, not even
at her nephew coming home alive in term-time.
That nephew approached, stood, grinned sheepishly, but spoke not: unless
inarticulate mutterings of scarcely human intelligence be speech. It was
Aunt Moira who spoke:--
“That horrible motor-cycle of yours makes a most disturbing noise,
Ivor. I wonder the police let you. You might muffle it with
something....”
(It was some years later that the Home Office bethought itself to pass a
law against the open exhaust.)
And then Ivor explained how it had come about that he had been allowed
to use the “red devil” in term-time. It was an idiotic tale to tell, and
the telling took him some time, for he was very careful, trying to leave
nothing out and to put as little as possible in. Aunt Moira did not
interrupt once, she had always too much to say to interrupt; but she
listened intently, and still more intently, and she tapped a foot on the
floor.
When he had finished she used almost the identical words as the Canon
Sidney Wentworth Carr, who was an old friend of hers--and with more
weight, if that was possible. But Ivor, crushed already that day, was
almost indifferent to this added burden. And though he tried, out of
respect for Aunt Moira, to hide his indifference to the mere logic of
the situation--for was this not, after all, an epoch in his life?--she
must have perceived something of his peculiar nonchalance, for she
suddenly cut short the expression of her deep disappointment with a very
weary:
“You might just not have done it, Ivor!” Dear Aunt Moira!
“Of course,” said Ivor softly, “it rather puts the lid on my going up to
Oxford.” He was so frightfully pleased about not going up to Oxford--he
simply could not have told any one why, it was just a tremendous
bubbling within him of freedom from all sorts of things--that he
couldn’t help playing the fool about it, thus letting Aunt Moira see
exactly how pleased he was. She stared at him--at the young man who had
so suddenly grown out of her reach! And maybe she realised that the
events of that day had somehow released in him something individual
which had been in hiding, something unpleasant but individual.
“Then what will you do?” she put to him sharply. “For you must do
something, you know. In this world, nowadays. I will not have you live
all your life as my nephew....”
“I thought you might go to the Bar,” she said.
“I thought,” said Ivor, “that I might write....”
“Oh dear!” sighed Aunt Moira.
And there was silence. But let it be understood that Aunt Moira had
never intended to force Ivor’s preference about a career. Aunt Moira
never really forced any one’s preference about anything. Liberty was the
one feast to which she commanded her guests--it was only that her
invitations sometimes made liberty just a little unrecognisable.
She had always liked people who wrote sensible things. But it seemed so
vague, this writing.
“But you could write as well,” she suggested, rather brutally. “You must
do something, don’t you see? And though I’ve no doubt you are very
clever, as every one is clever nowadays, you can’t possibly have enough
to write about at your age to take up all your time.”
“But I don’t want it to take up all my time! That’s just the point, Aunt
Moira.”
“Now don’t be clever with me, Ivor. What I want for you, don’t you see,
is a Position in the world, some foothold or other. And a writer, even
quite a nice writer, is nothing at all unless he has written something
that every one has read, while a barrister is something even when no one
has heard of him. He is _something_, I mean. I insist on your being
_something_, Ivor.”
(Naturally one will be “_something_,” Ivor impatiently thought.)
“Of course,” said Aunt Moira, “you are very grown-up for your years. I
don’t like it.”
“I suppose,” she said, “you’ve got ideas.”
Ivor’s eyes had been intent on his shoes, but he now looked up frankly.
“As a matter of fact,” he said pathetically, “I haven’t got one. But
I’ve got a kind of feeling that I may have--you know, Aunt Moira?”
“I know,” said Aunt Moira, not sympathetically--though really very
surprised at Ivor’s candour; it was pleasant to hear a young man who had
just made an idiot of himself saying he had no ideas--a very good
beginning, she thought, for a writer’s career.
It was decided, over tea, that he should stay on with Aunt Moira for a
year or so, studying French and literature--and, added Ivor, sociology.
“Sociology,” snapped Aunt Moira, “is a game that self-educated labourers
play with half-educated gentlemen. What you doubtless mean is politics.”
Ivor let it go at that.
Later on, Ivor could take rooms of his own; and still later on, when he
was of age, he could travel and do what he liked--provided, Aunt Moira
insisted, he did _something_! She relied on him to be _decent_, she
said. If she hated anything in this world, it was slackness, flabbiness,
and shoddiness--μικροπρεπέια, the Little Man would have snapped, for he
never missed a chance of remembering Aristotle against you. If he was
going to write, well, he must write, but seriously.
“There must be no nonsense about that,” said Aunt Moira. “And for
Heaven’s sake don’t begin to write poetry until you have learnt how to
write prose!”
The tea things were removed, and they sat on in silence. Now Aunt
Moira’s silence was a formidable weapon, but to-day it was as though
Ivor did not notice it, his eyes were so intent on the bright prospect
of Kensington Gardens. Through a corner window could be seen a part of
Kensington Palace, bathed in the rich shadow of the evening sun.
“Ivor!” she suddenly called.
The boy jerked his eyes away from that enthralling moon outside the
windows--it is always outside the windows, that eternal and enthralling
moon, or just behind the other person’s right shoulder. He smiled
shadowily at her....
“I was just thinking,” he said.
“There’s so much to do, to think about, Aunt Moira,” he said. “And one
doesn’t know where to begin!”
“That,” said Aunt Moira, “is just what you have to think out. I can’t
help you.” Which, of course, she at once proceeded to do. “I suppose you
are being eaten up with the idea, that you must see things, do things,
live things. When I was young a young man was not happy until he had
travelled--but it’s not enough for you to travel geographically. You
want to travel emotionally. You are not childish enough....”
“It’s a twilight age,” said Aunt Moira.
“These two were rapid falcons in a snare,
Condemned to do the flitting of the bat.”
“Meredith wrote that,” she explained--and somehow made Meredith very
mysterious.
Ivor’s expulsion was never again referred to between them--unless,
perhaps, it was in reference to it that Aunt Moira, as he rose to go
upstairs to change, called him to her and gave him one of those rare
kisses--the last must have been quite three years before--that so
unexpectedly clung to his cheek for a warm second; and then she examined
him so straightly that he began a confused smile.
“You have intolerant eyes, anyway,” she said at last. For Aunt Moira was
one of those who believed in intolerance; not she to advise youth to be
tolerant, indulgent. She would tolerate anything in a nation, but she
would not tolerate in an individual what she would not tolerate in
herself. Always she had wanted her men to be good and great, and with
the passing of the years she had decided that men cannot be good and
great and tolerant in this self-scarred world. “Certainly, there are two
sides to every question; but one of them looks over an abyss.” That is
what Aunt Moira said; for she had looked over an abyss.
CHAPTER II
1
Aunt Moira was the only relation Ivor had, that he was aware of; and
towards the end of the year after he left school she sickened of a
cancer and was tortured to death. But before she died she told her
nephew an ancient tale.
Ivor had originally been told that his father had died of a sudden
illness, a few weeks before his birth. His natural curiosity on the
subject had elicited the more particular information that his father had
died of a sudden inflammation of the lungs--which Ivor somehow never
realised meant pneumonia until he himself had it--in the thirty-ninth
year of his age, in Italy. Thirty-nine had seemed to young Ivor a
reasonable age at which to die, but he had been curious about Italy, for
Italy had seemed a curious place for his father to have died in. But
nothing on earth could move Aunt Moira to speak of what she did not wish
to speak, and Ivor had to wait until a certain gray October afternoon of
his nineteenth year, when he was much more curious about himself than
about the ghosts that had given him birth, to hear the ancient tale that
Aunt Moira must tell from her bed.
But she, who was commonly so impatient of fantasy, as of all excretions
of inactive minds, must needs begin her tale with the casual statement
that Ivor had never had a father at all! Whereupon Ivor looked very
serious, and said nothing. “Technically speaking, of course,” snapped
Aunt Moira, as though he had made a fool of himself. His real father, he
who had loved and had been loved by his mother, and who had died in
Italy, had been, implied Aunt Moira--_implied_ Aunt Moira!--a vastly
different person from any Mr. Marlay who could possibly have occurred in
any strictly legal relation to his mother. “That,” said Lady Moira,
“accounts to your nose and your Christian names.” For, of course, like
other rebels, Aunt Moira could be a frightful snob when she chose.
But Aunt Moira’s tale came slowly, for that long-hidden cancer was at
last and openly having its way with her, so certain the disease was that
no surgeon’s knife could now avail the proud, tired body but in the one
way itself made inevitable, from day to day of pain. But though, for
press of suffering, her tongue must needs be still every now and then,
her eyes were unmastered, keen and suspicious--for she would have no
nonsense about her tale being misunderstood by this young man who sat
rather too quietly by her bed, looking darker and sulkier than ever in
the dim light of the heavily-curtained bedroom; and, in just such a
silence, her eyes could dare the young man to feel the least atom of
anger against the dead parents who had left him in what she didn’t
hesitate to describe as “this mess.” Though, as she rather cynically
said later, it was a much less careless mess than commonly happens:
“For you will be very well off, Ivor. There was nothing careless,
nothing shoddy, even about your father’s lawlessness; as I hope there
never will be about yours--but remember always that all lawlessness,
like all cruelty, is fundamentally vulgar.” And Aunt Moira, having
successfully contradicted herself, was again subdued by a stress of
pain, and lay a while so still and silent that she might have seemed a
carved figure but for those ever-open indomitable eyes that brooded
suspiciously upon him.
And Ivor stirred restlessly, suddenly uncomfortable in the hard little
chair which Aunt Moira had commanded him to pull up to the bed; Ivor
stirred uneasily and wanted to stretch his legs and do something
sensible with his hands, such as digging them into his pockets, but it
was quite impossible to do any of those natural things, for one somehow
didn’t lounge before Aunt Moira. But soon the discomfort of his body
waned to nothing before the discomfort of his mind, for as she spoke or
was silent he somehow began to feel that he was treating Aunt Moira
unfairly, he felt a little mean for not thinking about it all as Aunt
Moira seemed to expect him to think about it all--dear Aunt Moira, who
was so seriously intent on explaining to him his illegitimacy! And so,
of course, he ought to be serious too; and he had an uncomfortable
feeling that there must be something _beastly_ in him for not taking his
illegitimacy so seriously as it was expected of him, and he wondered if
it was all part of that same beastliness in him that had made him feel
“bored” at school instead of going through with it in the ordinary way.
And suddenly he thought of Transome, just a flash of a grinning thought
behind his serious attention to Aunt Moira--how amazingly affected
Transome would be if it was suddenly sprung on him by an Aunt Moira that
the late Colonel Transome had never had any existence, technically
speaking, and that therefore, he, Transome, was as illegitimate as any
one could be! And the thought of Transome, faced with this news,
persisted, how he would think it was the most important thing that had
ever happened to any one outside of a book, and how he would be bursting
with the tragic news until he simply had to confide in some one, saying:
“I say, old boy, I’ve gone and turned out to be a bastard. Now what
could be fairer than that?” And then Ivor pulled himself together
sharply, feeling frightfully mean and uncomfortable--but the idea still
persisted in him that his illegitimacy wasn’t at all important to him,
not at all disturbing: interesting, of course, but not really important
or disturbing. But, faced by Aunt Moira’s stern eyes--and hurt eyes they
were too, just now and then, as though a sudden memory had hurt them--he
tried his best to think as he was expected to think, just like the
bustling people in Fielding’s _Tom Jones_....
But suddenly he realised that Aunt Moira was speaking of his mother, and
that awoke him vividly, for he remembered his mother dimly, and he
remembered to have loved her, even as he loved the idea of her now, she
was so gentle and serious a ghost. He wanted Aunt Moira to describe her
minutely, her person and character and loveliness, and he wanted to hear
about how she had loved his father. But Aunt Moira could never be
minute, could not even describe in the ordinary way; but, when moved,
would make some gesture of speech, as though to unfold a tapestry that
she had long kept hidden, and then she would hold a torch to that
tapestry, a flaming torch that cast a great light here and a deep shadow
there, and left the listener gaping at so wanton a vagueness cloaked by
so grand a manner.
Aunt Moira did not speak of his mother as his mother, at least she
didn’t seem to, but as something much finer and grander and more
intangible. She created for Ivor not the sad and quiet mother of his
faint memory, but a figure of story; and she seemed, as it were
defiantly, to speak of Ann Marlay as a woman of women, as of a tradition
that is as ancient as song. In fact Aunt Moira, in that large and
reckless way you couldn’t help loving in her, filled in a portrait of a
lady as Gainsborough might have painted it, in the grand and fearless
manner--anyway, his mother seemed very grand and fearless by the time
Aunt Moira had done with her torchlight description; but Ivor could not,
try as he would, see this fine and exquisite lady as his mother. He
could not reconcile this tragic and remote figure of romance with a
dimly acute memory: a memory of an emotion that had quite filled a very
little boy’s heart and eyes with a tremendous thrill, when there had
bent over him a lovely white face and calm, gentle eyes; and these eyes
were so wide and deep and dark with a shining darkness that the little
boy had just let them cover him with a faëry silence. It had been a
marvellous plaything between them, that faëry silence; until, one day,
it had taken bodily shape as death, and then down had swooped Aunt
Moira....
2
But Ann Marlay’s womanhood, in the historic sense, was only the preface
to Lady Moira’s tale--as such, indeed, has been the preface to many a
tale, that womanhood so exquisitely contrived to serve love and to
destroy ambition. The stuff of the tale, the very heart of all the
alarums of the romance, lay--as Aunt Moira saw it, not unnaturally--with
that fine gentleman, her younger brother and his father: through whom,
of course, for all her gallant talk of his mother, her interest and
affection for himself had descended, as she didn’t now trouble to
conceal. And Ivor was made to see, vividly, how Aunt Moira must have
treasured, inexorably and immensely, that other young man, his
father--and how his father, head of his house at a rebellious age, must
have evaded and combated and rebelled, very mightily and stormily of
course, but always and only to succumb. The sterling intimacy of Aunt
Moira’s life, this between herself and her younger brother had been--and
how likely a one to bring one of them to trouble, as was well proved!
He was tall, of course, this father of his, and with hair as fair and
thick as his own was dark and thick: and, Aunt Moira rather cruelly
said, a rather obvious kind of face--though by “obvious” Ivor later
found she meant the kind of face that leads crusades or smashes things;
and, of course, with that nose piratical and predatory, that mountainous
and ancient nose, brother to her own and father to Ivor’s. Aunt Moira,
with a toss at her idol, suggested that that other young man might have
been all the better for brown eyes instead of blue, for she had very
unconventional views about eyes, saying: “There is something musty and
_expected_ about blue eyes in that kind of face,” and that Ivor’s looks
lost nothing for his mother having given him her dark eyes. “But it is
of no importance,” said Aunt Moira.
Ivor had happened, it appeared, in the tenth year of his parent’s
mating--“a word,” said Aunt Moira, “to be used very rarely”--and so the
months of storm-tossed wonderings that had preceded that love’s
consummation showed Ivor his father as a young man of about eight or
nine-and-twenty, unhappily married five years before. And Ivor
particularly liked to imagine his father during those first months of
strivings this way and that way: this way, a barren and comfortless
marriage--“a girl like a stone,” said Aunt Moira, “but not one of those
stones that seagulls worship”--and that way the dim figure of lovely Ann
Marlay, distracting him to leave quarrying stone and live, just live and
love. And as Ivor thought of those preliminary months of strivings, this
way honour and that way life, he couldn’t help feeling that, from a
certain point of view, a great deal of fuss had been made of an issue,
how confused soever. They seemed to have made tragedies for themselves
where we would make a trunkcall; they seemed, his aunt and his father,
to have debated the thing largely and at large--only in the end to do
what it was quite inevitable that they must do, to yield to the most
secret and compelling of the laws of life, which is the law of
lawlessness. And as Ivor thought of the “girl like a stone,” he saw,
dimly and painfully, what Aunt Moira with her sweeping distaste for
sub-human people could not see, how even a figure of stone can be
absent-mindedly crucified by full-blooded people.
It had been, of course, natural enough for that tempestuous young man to
have at once hurried off his elder sister and dearest friend to see and
love the girl Ann Marlay: to that house on Putney Hill where she lived
with her father, a drowsy old gentleman who collected stamps and books,
but little knowledge of men and none of daughters.
“Miracles cannot be explained,” Aunt Moira said to Ivor, in explaining
this particular one. “For indeed it was a miracle that happened to your
father--to meet, by chance and on the open road, the one woman in the
world who could touch him so that nothing else could ever touch him!”
“They met like birds,” said Aunt Moira, and was silent a while. And in
her eyes was that expression, profound and absorbed, of one who is going
to die.
The actual ingredients of the miracle had been, it seemed, an accident
to his carriage, a maimed dog, and a trembling girl on the curb,
silently rebuking him for his negligence; and then Ivor’s father, least
casual of men and as hurt as the dog, protesting his way with it in his
arms into her father’s house near by, to placate her and comfort the
dog--and to change the whole manner and colour of his life.
And into Aunt Moira’s manner, into the shadows of her fading voice, as
she spoke of those two dear wraiths, there seemed suddenly to have come
the explanation of Ivor’s perplexity at all that debate with which his
father had challenged his house, and, through it, his world: an air, as
absurd and sublime as of a mystic conviction, as of that regicide of
long ago, who, in his defence, is said to have deigned only thus far:
“This thing was not done in a corner.”
But of course it was done in a corner, inevitably, for in this life
there is no sort of adultery that is not done in a corner, not even that
of milk and water.... In this case in a corner of Italy, for ten amazing
years! For there couldn’t then, Aunt Moira sharply pointed out, be any
question of divorce: an Earl then was an Earl, whereas now he might be a
Brazilian and no one know the difference.
It was one of those loves, then, whose purity and greatness appals an
epithet: one of those loves that have something cosmic in their union,
one to the other, down the long toll of centuries; a love immense enough
to have demanded from Ivor’s father a clear alternative, his whole life
or his absolute restraint--and in so completely surrendering, with his
life, his honour, his ambitions and his place in England, he had done,
Aunt Moira magnificently dared to say, very well with his bargain. And
in that lay the great similarity between Ivor’s aunt and Ivor’s father,
this sister and brother, that nothing they did could ever be not worth
while to them to have done. They were so terribly genuine and weathered,
like two trees on a harassed moor, very sombre in sadness, very mighty
in joy. They were a dangerous couple, for some part of the truth was in
them.
3
That night Ivor went for a long walk about London, and thought and
wondered about what Aunt Moira had told him, about those lovely dead
parents of his. And it was as he strode down the hill of Church Street,
to Kensington, a tall, thin, boyish figure, completely and carelessly
inelegant, that he whispered to himself: “My God, what a marvellous
fluke it must be for two people to understand each other, utterly!...”
Ivor Marlay was already growing up. He was already emerging from that
painful consciousness of himself which is the burden of our boyhood,
into a dim, muddled consciousness of other people, other things, the
world. His thoughts were confusing him mightily. He was becoming
aware--as dully yet definitely, say, as he might become aware of an
approaching headache--of the mad mystery of other people. The years of
his boyhood had passed in a world where everything happened by rote,
where everything happened inevitably. But from now onwards anything
might happen, but anything--to him! The world had gifts to give--and he
was alone, irresponsible, tremendously ready to receive. Love might
happen, even love....
But of course love would happen.
And the first glimmer of an ideal came to him: the first glimmer of the
ideal that comes to all men. But in nearly all men this glimmer dies,
and of it nothing is left. That is called life. And in a few men this
glimmer waxes into a great light, and then it fades, and then it dies.
That, too, is called life.
Ivor Pelham Marlay, in those ensuing days, found his growing awareness
greatly helped by an acute consciousness of his father--with whom, he
comically thought, Aunt Moira had surprised him in a Jack-in-the-box
kind of way. And he found his father marvellously adequate, as a father;
he was glad of him, glad of his racking uncertainties, glad of his
tearing folly; and altogether glad he was that his father had been a
lover.
And thus it was that from the grim lips of Aunt Moira those dead parents
passed wanly but finally into the history of their son’s life; a secret
memory to last for ever--now strengthened and shepherded, as in their
lives, by dear Aunt Moira herself, who died but a few days after telling
Ivor of them. As she had lain for so many days, so she died, towards the
evening of the seventeenth day of October, 1908, in unutterable fear of
God.
_Miserere, Judex meus,_
_Mortis in discrimine_....
And so, because he had not gone up to Oxford, Aunt Moira’s death left
Ivor Pelham Marlay, at the age of nineteen, intolerably alone.
CHAPTER III
1
Of course there was always Aunt Percy, as there always had been: Aunt
Moira’s old friend and man of affairs, and now Ivor’s trustee and
guardian--Mr. Percy Wyndham Fletcher, senior partner of the firm of
Fletcher, Combe, and Fletcher, Solicitors, of Bloomsbury Square, W.C.
Mr. Fletcher was dead long before it became W.C.I; he would not have
liked the change, but he would have said nothing; for Mr. Fletcher never
grumbled at Progress, though he sometimes had an irritating way of
chuckling at it.
During Ivor’s holidays from school Aunt Percy, as the old gentleman was
commonly known, used often to come to dine with Aunt Moira. Ivor liked
Aunt Percy enormously, and he had an idea that Aunt Percy had once upon
a time liked Aunt Moira enormously. “It’s my belief,” he told young
Transome at school, “that my Aunt Moira has given the bird to more men
than any other woman of modern times.”
“Sounds like prehistoric times to me,” said Transome. (Typical of young
Transome, that kind of remark!)
Why the courtly and so masculine old gentleman was called “Aunt” Percy,
even by Lady Moira, no one seemed to know, or to inquire, for the matter
of that; for there is, somehow, something so inevitable and _right_--as,
say, in an old seal on a mellow parchment--in the very nature of any
sweet absurdity which, from some remote past, has attached itself to the
years of a man’s life and enwrapped itself about his personality, that
it were an offence even to wonder from what ancient quip it sprang.
Now Mr. Fletcher was far from being _gaga_: he was not that tedious old
man who takes complacent pleasure in youthful company: was, in fact,
very grown-up for his years; but, if he hated anything, it was to be
continually reminded of his approaching dotage and dissolution by his
juniors continually addressing him as “sir.” Mr. Fletcher did not feel
at all like “sir”; and the only advantage that Mr. Fletcher could see in
knighthood or baronetcy was that one could then be “How d’you do, Sir
Percy?” instead of having that silly “sir” tacked idiotically on to the
end of every other sentence by youths who, anyway, hadn’t half the guts
he had at his age, he shouldn’t wonder. So, lacking any such aldermanic
distinctions, he made shift as “Aunt” Percy; a straight, tall, stoutish
and courtly old gentleman of what is called “the old school,” with a
great admiration for men of talent and honour, and a special admiration
for Henley the poet and the man, dearest of his dead friends; and a
great reputation, kept greatly alive by the servants at his clubs, for
having been a fast-bowler and a fast liver in the good old days when
fast-bowlers were really devilish fast and so on.
Mr. Fletcher was--quite apart from his special interest in a young man
whose birth had followed on such romantic stirrings and rebellions, to
all of which he had been privy and sympathetic at the time--very fond of
Ivor: fond enough of him to lapse from his usual half-humorous manner
with his juniors and to treat Ivor as a man. But the old gentleman was
perturbed, every now and then, by some gleam of, well, maturity in Ivor,
which seemed to him rather out of place in so young an Englishman and
more befitting to a Latin intelligence; and so he came by a number of
theories about Ivor. One of them was that Ivor had a deep faith in
himself, for all that he was so quiet and well-behaved--too quiet and
well-behaved, thought Mr. Fletcher, for a young man who had been
expelled from Manton: another theory was that Ivor was conceited; and
still another that the conceit would soon be knocked out of him. Not by
Aunt Percy, though! Oh, no! There are, Mr. Fletcher thought, other
women in the world besides Aunt Percy, I shouldn’t wonder. Mr. Fletcher
had a great belief in women; and he suspected Ivor’s rather
angry-looking stillness. “If I were you,” suggested Aunt Percy, “I
wouldn’t think. It seems to make you angry.”
Mr. Fletcher, in the exercise of that unprejudiced good sense to which,
as well as to his social sense, he owed his legal prominence, was not at
all sure that much good would come of Ivor’s explorations as a writer of
prose. Certain stories and essays of his that he had read had seemed to
him, though rather remarkable for their polish, not the stuff of a
writer, as such; but rather of a young man with whom writing was merely
a reflection of his leisure, whereas his main concern hovered about the
business of life--or of love, he shouldn’t wonder! Also, and
particularly in the bravura essays on _The Decline of Humour_ and _The
Function of Daggers_, Mr. Fletcher had been disconcerted by a calm and
detached arrogance which, he thought, was confoundedly irritating in a
young man who couldn’t, possibly, really know anything. “Parlourtricks!”
said Aunt Percy. “Standing on your head! All this theoretical stuff....”
“It’ll run away with you, I shouldn’t wonder,” said Mr. Fletcher.
“I wish to God it would!” Ivor suddenly let himself go. “I wouldn’t mind
if it was a Carter Patterson van that ran away with me, so long as
something did.”
“There’s a man in a new book by Arnold Bennett,” Aunt Percy thoughtfully
said, “who was run away with by a Pantechnicon. I don’t remember what
happened.”
“It probably ran away with Arnold Bennett until the end of the book,”
Ivor suggested nastily.
“In that case,” said Mr. Fletcher shortly, “you had better dine with me.
And you might shorten that long face of yours too, young man, for I’ve
no mind to waste my dinner in front of some one who looks like an
epitaph--and me with one foot down with gout and the other in the
grave!”
And so they would dine, about once a fortnight during those two years
following Aunt Moira’s death. And sometimes went on to a play, but more
frequently sat on and talked, in Mr. Fletcher’s celibate house in Green
Street: about dead men, of whom Aunt Percy had known so many, and about
books that never die, about which the _ci-devant_ fast-bowler knew a
good deal more than fast-bowlers are commonly supposed to know.
And throughout that time the old man, with a restraint quite remarkable
in one of his years, directed and advised his young friend as little as
he might; just “letting him be,” as Lady Moira had instructed him, to
find his bent and feet and friends in his own way. Only once did he
visit him in the chambers off Saint James’s Square which he had found
for him, saying that they would “do” for him until he came of age; and
was extremely surprised and almost displeased at the vast amount of
books with which Ivor’s rooms were encumbered. He had known that Ivor
spent a great deal of money on books--“But I didn’t realise,” said Aunt
Percy, “that you went on and on buying them. You’ll have a lot of
knowledge to get rid of, young man....”
Mr. Fletcher came away from his one visit to Ivor’s chambers wondering
what influences would finally take the boy out of his solitude and an
old man’s company. “Those books are not natural for a boy who took such
trouble to get kicked out of school,” thought Mr. Fletcher, as he walked
slowly along Jermyn Street, which was always a favourite street of his:
an unusually tall and upright old gentleman, magnificently hatted, and
easily imaginable as having been a very fast-bowler indeed in his time.
CHAPTER IV
1
During the first two years after Aunt Moira’s death, then, Ivor’s only
real companion was Aunt Percy: an inadequate one, how sweet and
understanding soever his nature, for that purpose of “talking things
out” which is essential to every young man of an inquiring mind. His
school friendships had been, with one exception, severely temporal; as
such friendships so often unhappily are, despite the charming traditions
that beglamour them with continuous and vivid life; and Ivor Marlay had
come away from Manton with no more (and no less, anyway!) than a fair
taste for classical reading and a pronounced one for rackets--which last
he indulged several hours a week at Prince’s, often with the pro’s and
sometimes with Transome. Dear old Transome!
At school young Transome had been on the “Army Side”--Transome’s people
having a theory, Transome said, that the army was indicated. So Transome
was sent to Sandhurst; and from Sandhurst he would at every opportunity
hurl himself on the heels of a telegram to London. “The idea being,”
Transome said, “to have a lot of fun.” So Ivor and Transome had a lot of
fun immediately--dear old Transome of the short straight nose and
freckled face, so very much liked by every one! Short and slim this
Transome was, of a very elegant habit and an incurious mind, fair hair
that insisted on curling and waving no matter how much he honeyed and
flowered it--see his face, never so relentless as when he was furiously
brushing it!--and blue eyes that had never a thought but for what was in
front of them. “My dam-fool appearance,” grinned Transome, “and the
rugged grandeur of my features indicated the Navy, but they’ve made such
a fuss about its being Silent that I couldn’t risk it.”
Transome, having wired, would invade London and Ivor’s chambers. There
they would dress, and dine somewhere. Ivor, being much wealthier,
naturally paid; and was amazed at Transome. Ivor had always rather
despised Transome’s intelligence, but now he despised his own. For
Transome knew something. Transome, in fact, knew about Women. How he
knew so much about Women, Ivor couldn’t make out. Here was he, Ivor,
living alone in London--“disgustingly free,” Transome envied him--and
knowing nothing at all about Women! He had had a few “passages,” but
they hadn’t been frightfully amusing, and Ivor could only think that
there must be something very wrong with him, considering the fuss every
one made about all “that.” To young Transome he, of course, pretended to
have had great and amazing enjoyments with Women. Ivor felt that
Transome expected that of him, as his partner in the Manton rackets-pair
for three years; and Ivor also felt that Transome really _had_ enjoyed
himself with Women, and was not pretending about it. Transome knew a
bit, obviously; he had a great and grinning knowledge of Women, this gay
Transom; and Ivor thought to learn a thing or two from him.
“I don’t care what you say,” said Transome, “but Women are all right.”
Transome then spoke of Women, thus and thus. Transome was twenty.
It was not long, however, before the superiority of Transome in Ivor’s
mind dwindled to next to nothing and then to nothing. He soon discovered
that Transome might burst with knowledge about Women and still know
nothing of life. Ivor did not know anything of life, either, but he was
sure you couldn’t get at life through Women like that.
“If those are Women,” said Ivor to Transome, “then I can understand the
Bible being angry about fornication. So would I be if I was the Bible.”
“You talk like God as it is,” muttered Transome.
“The nearest you’ll ever get to God, old boy,” Ivor retorted, “is the
top of a bus.”
After night-clubs, on Transome’s occasional visits, the former
rackets-pair had been to Women’s flats. Ivor didn’t want to go from the
first, but Transome said it would be all right; Ivor said he had never
thought it wouldn’t, and went. After a very few visits to these Women’s
flats late at night, Ivor’s opinion was that these Women weren’t Women
at all, but Crashing Bores. Transome rather crossly remarked that that
was jolly superior of him, and what the devil did he want anyway? Ivor
said sulkily that he didn’t know, but he did know that he did not want
to go messing about in a dingy flat near Bow Street with a woman who was
old enough to be his mother or his charwoman.
“My idea of a woman,” said Ivor, “is some one you can talk to
Afterwards.”
But Ivor said nothing of a glimmer of an ideal; it would not have been
unorthodox of him to, for men and boys quite often speak of their
ideals--no matter how dim or foolish-commonplace--to each other,
sometimes thinking to excuse this weakness by loading it with slang, or
thinking to hide it entirely under that conversational garbage which
makes men kin; if he had, Transome might have thought him dotty, or he
might have hailed him as a co-idealist, but he would certainly not have
thought him damned superior. Ivor was miserable: realising that he and
Transome, his only friend, were no earthly use to each other. What a
beastly shame.... They couldn’t really take any pleasure in each other’s
company, Ivor saw, if they were fundamentally out of agreement--and
that’s exactly what they were, fundamentally out of agreement. And Ivor,
turning into Saint James’s Square that night, with Transome walking
silently beside him, brooded over the fact that his only friend was not
a friend at all, but only an acquaintance: and that the next time
Transome came to London he would bring another buck with him and they
would seek fun in their own way, without any one nearby to make superior
remarks about it.
Ivor was right, for his path and Transome’s were to lead in different
directions; and it was years later before they again struck the same
path, and on that path Ivor was maimed and Transome was killed....
2
During the first two years after Aunt Moira’s death, particularly, of
course, in the latter part of them, there were in Ivor’s mind no words
strong enough to describe what he thought of London; it was a hell, a
wilderness, a prison, a very cruel place: and he was obviously an ass to
live in it. He could, after all, travel to Paris, anywhither--but he
stayed on, miserably unwilling to run away from London; wherein, if
anywhere, he felt but could not have dreamed of saying, lay his destiny.
He had not bargained for this tremendous loneliness, he hadn’t bargained
for anything but that he would “write.” He would collect experiences,
and then he would write. Somehow. How was he to have known that all his
energy was going to be numbed into a kind of listless chaos by his utter
ignorance of life, of London, of writing--of how to begin on those great
ventures! How was he to have known that loneliness, in a nature like
his, discounts all benefits of money and freedom, that it inoculates
every endeavour with a sense of futility? No taskmaster is crueller than
self-pity. Ivor called self-pity “London,” and was furious with London.
And he wandered about London.... And as he wanders about London, from
crooked streets in Canning Town to valleys in the Green Park, as he
stares from an upstairs window of Books’s Club at the bustle up and down
Saint James’s Street and the eternal pageant of the Town--
“The dear old Street of clubs and cribs,
As north and south it stretches,
Still seems to smack of Rolliad squibs,
And Gillray’s fiercer sketches;
The quaint old dress, the grand old style,
The mots, the racy stories;
The wine, the dice, the wit, the bile--
The wit of Whigs and Tories.”
--let us flaunt a homily before that defiant nose which is so defiantly
probing the unfairness of his loneliness. “Solitude,” writes Gibbon in
the grand manner, “is the school of genius.” But there is, for a youth
sensitive to the world about him, no such thing as solitude: its name is
brooding, and--if we are to answer the grand manner with becoming
grandeur--brooding is as certainly the graveyard of endeavour as
solitude is the school of genius.
And yet, when trying to write about that distressful time only a few
years later, Ivor Marlay was surprised to discover in it a certain
splendour. Memories he seemed to find therein, memories unanchored to
any reality of that wretched vagabondage that he had felt at the
time--yet were they almost tangible, these memories of tremendous
arrogances and thinkings. And it somehow seemed to him that in that
past, knowing nothing and nobody, he had seen life as he could never
again see it this side of death, in flashes of frightful clearness; that
he had seen life stark and naked, stripped of everything but its
direction from hell to heaven, like a bare tree against a wintry sky.
And then, as he thought upon the matters of that first youth, it
occurred to him that there must be somewhere a watchful god of
sociability--surely, yes! Say, a not very clean but kindly deity, who
now and then indulges himself in pity. And this god, a day or two after
his twenty-first birthday, when he had almost decided to leave London
and venture Paris, had suddenly and for no clear reason plunged him into
a multitude of people--by way of a chance acquaintance in a bar in the
Haymarket!
There had, of course, been other chance acquaintances during that
vagabondage, even from Limehouse to Hammersmith, but they had died the
deaths of their own torpidity; for Ivor did not as yet know how to be
immediately genial, he was--like so many others--barely sufficient for
the ordinary occasion, and that’s all.
That bar in the Haymarket! Something or other in Fleet Street the man
was, and frothing with geniality. He was a small and seedy man, the
_patina_ of several days was upon his chin and linen, and his name was
Otto Something, Ivor never exactly found out what. He approached Ivor in
no uncertain manner, as they stood side by side at the bar, describing
himself as “well oiled but still rec-ip-ro-ca-tive, ol’ boy.” He also
spoke favourably of Ivor’s appearance, saying that Ivor was the
best-dressed man in London since he had been the last one. And he gave
it as his opinion that Ivor was probably a gentleman.
Very soon they were joined by another, whose name appeared to be Fitz
Something. Otto and Fitz had been boys together, Ivor gathered--though
Fitz was probably ten or more years the younger. Fitz frothed with
geniality in a less aggressive way, and Ivor preferred him to Otto; in
fact, he grew to like Fitz very much in the course of the evening. Otto
was a Jew, and Fitz had on a gray flannel shirt with collar to match and
a deplorable tie. Many drinks were exchanged--between the barmaid and
Ivor’s pocket. If Otto Something and Fitz Something were phenomena in
Ivor’s life, Ivor was even more of a phenomenon in their lives.
“Looks like a proconsul,” said Otto to Fitz, “and drinks like a fish.”
“And _pays_, ol’ boy!” murmured Fitz to Otto.
They somehow lost Otto on emerging from the bar. “He gets like that,”
Fitz explained. He also explained that Otto was not a great friend of
his, but that he, Fitz, was inclined to take a liberal view of him.
Fitz was a very gentle man with a very gentle manner: “ruined,” he told
Ivor, “through the unfettered exercise of my social qualities, which are
considerable.” Whereupon he borrowed a pound from Ivor, and then threw
Ivor into the midst of a great multitude of people.
This multitude of people was heaped together, literally, in a very
small, low, candle-lit flat hidden away in the purlieus that lies
immediately behind the Jermyn Street entrance to the Piccadilly Tube.
The multitude, composed of faces in chairs, on the floor and everywhere
else, received his conductor and deafened Ivor with cries of “Blind
again, Fitz!” Fitz swayed a little and grinned a little--a gentle and
sleepy grin Fitz had--and waved a hand at the tall and dark young
stranger behind him, whose bewildered head the ceiling was incommoding.
“Yes,” said Fitz blandly, “I am indeed blind. I might even go so far as
to say I was tipsy, but nevertheless all my people are Service people.
And here is one of them, just to show you.” And at that moment certain
faces grew hands, and Fitz and Ivor were dragged down into the
multitude. Ivor was delighted with his evening. This, he thought, is
jolly fine. I like these people. And he expanded.
Ivor could not make out what they were at all; and a queerer collection
of people he never met later, not even in his most extravagant
wanderings about the worlds of London. One man, who looked like an
insurance agent, was spoken of as an etcher; and another, who looked
like an etcher, made him an honorary member of a night-club of which he
was the secretary. The women were not described at all, and their
appearance didn’t describe them. But they weren’t Women. They were
rather witty, Ivor thought. Pretty faces here and there, too. Later, he
was to find that they were of that formidable army who live their days
on, say, the heights of Notting Hill, the better to descend by night
into the gay abyss of Bohemian revelry.
Very soon Ivor found himself on a corner of the overcrowded divan:
juggling with a teacupful of whisky and water, and making love to a
fluffy and surprised-looking little woman, who said her name was Myra
Bruce, and then said it wasn’t but would be when she could get a job on
the stage. Could Ivor help her to get a job on the stage? He looked as
though he might be able to, she said. So Ivor lived up to that for a
while.
She was faded and rather dejected, this fluffy little Bruce, as though,
perhaps, she had tried and tried and tried again at life too long. She
was faded, this little Bruce, but she awoke wonderfully, and
glittered--even as her little upturned nose, which was brilliantly
affected by the heated atmosphere and her inability to find her
powder-puff. But at first she glittered shyly, for this different and
dark young man had a way of making her aware of herself--and the little
Bruce had no great opinion of her looks. He was aggressive, she thought;
and not in his speech, in the usual way, but with his understanding,
which seemed to be of a peculiarly bodily kind. “Cynical,” she called
him. “Trying to be clever,” she said. He was making her feverish, and
she glittered shyly.... But, on a moment, she glittered fully, that
little Bruce! for the thing suddenly dropped to a more accustomed plane,
she and the atmosphere were stronger than him: when, in a very tired
moment on that crowded divan, he let his head fall against her
shoulder--and she realised that he was “only a boy!” And suddenly,
hungrily, she smothered the tired boy’s face with kisses ... so that the
multitude was gleeful at the little Bruce’s passion for the dark young
stranger. And that, but an incident among the adventures of vagabondage,
lasted three days and nights: almost violently.
3
Thus, his first introduction to London; for, following queerly on that
chance meeting in a bar in the Haymarket, Ivor met people upon people;
and so swiftly, so variously, so increasingly, that barely six months
later he realised, with something like a shock, that among the men and
women he was at the moment seeing there was not one whom he had met
through Fitz’s hazy introduction! There had happened, ever so quickly,
the process of selection. And Fitz, he of the gentle manners, he of the
polite thirst--where now was Fitz? And Otto the Jew, frothing with
geniality--where now was Otto? Were they, at this moment, still in the
Haymarket bar, would they to-night be in the little flat in the purlieus
behind Jermyn Street? If he went thither to-night, would he find them?
But Ivor did not go, he was ashamed; he was aware that he was,
shamefully, not of them or like them, he had not their honest geniality;
he had _used_ them--unconsciously, yes, but he had _used_ them. Such,
then, was Ivor.
London is an amazing city--not so much because of the numbers of its
population, which it simply cannot help, but because of its hospitality,
which it can. Take a man without money--say, £800 a year--without
particular wit, without a Lancashire accent, of no stock to speak of and
of less education; let him have a slightly constrained manner, as of one
who simply _can’t_ be ingratiating, and a few other properties of a
gentleman--and, if he be not by nature too vulgarly disposed, if he
steel himself against the lure of the footlight favourite and the guile
of the wanton _bourgeoise_, he will find himself, without particular
effort, among People. He will, anyway, meet People; and whether or not
he gets to know them intimately depends on his charm or his cheek. For
society in London is sociable: its dignity is that of ease; and its
polish is so deeply ingrained that even the offences of its more
boorish juniors can no more than slightly ruffle its surface--to the
annual confusion of our more serious American hostesses, who can never
realise that the most difficult thing to lose in London is a reputation.
Whereas society in Paris is not sociable, as every one knows. There is
in Paris a superstition called the _ancien régime_, and another
superstition called the _haute noblesse_; and these superstitions
(having been almost recklessly encouraged by the late Henry James, who
glossed them with his charm) are supposed to lead exceedingly patrician
lives on nothing a year in very musty _hôtels_ in the Faubourg St.
Germain. The superstitions have riders to the effect that, the _régime_
being so extremely _ancien_ and the _noblesse_ so very _haute_, their
wearers have now no money left and do _not_ entertain. Whereas the
facts, as known to all right-thinking men, are that the _ancien régime_
and the _haute noblesse_, having long since acquired Italian or American
dowries, now live in very rich and modern _hôtels_ about the Avenue du
Bois and the Parc Monceau; that what is the matter with their
hospitality is not that they don’t entertain, but--well, there it
is--that they don’t entertain well enough; and that their hospitality
would be simply charming if it were a little more _ancien_ and a little
less of a _régime_. For how, students of hospitality may well ask, how
the devil can a man be gay at a party on a thimbleful of nasty white
wine or even nastier sweet champagne, which is so cheap that one has
never dared to order it at a restaurant? And the difference between the
hospitality of London and that of Paris (excluding, of course, that part
of it known as Gay) is made significant by the fact that the Frenchmen
who live longest are those accredited to the Court of Saint James’s.
4
At one-and-twenty, then, Ivor Marlay could touch and taste the fringe of
this London, and it burnt him just a little, pleasantly, like a liqueur
brandy. (Later, it hit him on the head; but that was later.) And he
rolled and wallowed in it, he let life “blood” him. He not only killed
time, but he disinterred it and killed it again and again. In the two
years following the incident of the little Bruce he forgot to write. He
lived vividly but slackly; and his days and nights were confused in an
all too earthy mess. Women happened, with surprisingly little subtlety:
they just seemed to happen, in a swift moment, into his physical life,
and then they would fade away, sometimes gradually and sweetly,
sometimes quickly and noisily. One of them said that he had Magnetism,
and he was frightfully pleased about that, it seemed so funny. Magnetism
indeed! And one or two said they liked him only physically, but that
mentally he was too hard, not tender enough. They didn’t believe him,
they said. When he annoyed them, as he often did, they would say:
“You’re _very_ young, my poor child!” That glimmer of an ideal (which is
given to all young men, but is not treasured by them) unconsciously
helped Ivor to despise quite a number of things: it helped him to
despise quite a number of women, and it is not a bad thing for a young
man to despise a certain number of women, if he knows what he is
despising in them. But Ivor didn’t know: he only thought he knew....
It was at about this time that he was introduced to the Mont Agel....
Gone, then, were his vigils in the Green Park, gone the furious pacings
about galleries and museums, gone the vagabondage about the India Docks,
gone the desiring of glorious women who passed him so lightly in the
sunshine of the streets, gone the whole mad mystery of the passers-by!
He was in it all, now. Life seemed so little worth while as to be quite
enjoyable--for these were the days of “easy cynicism,” you understand.
“Life,” says the king of all paradoxes (as appointed by Mr. Chesterton),
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” Ivor was not
twenty-three: this, it was indicated, was life; and so he lived it. He
was a success, in a small way; and the precious gentleman who said that
nothing fails like success knew more than people think.
And Aunt Percy, now confined in Green Street with gout and the sense of
approaching death, was disappointed: holding that a young man with
Ivor’s capacity for theorising might just as well have gone through this
particular phase in theory instead of in practice. But Aunt Percy said
nothing--or rather, he said everything, in shortly telling Ivor one day
that drink was not the only dissipation that one should not carry about
in one’s appearance. Now when Aunt Percy said that kind of thing, which
was very rarely, he had a way of looking at a young man which made that
young man feel a little mean, a little ashamed--as though, maybe, that
young man had not played up to the expectations of his side, and in
particular, up to the expectations of his side’s fast-bowler.
Mr. Fletcher would have been happier about Ivor if he had known of that
glimmer of an ideal, much happier; in fact, it was that lack that lay at
the core of the old man’s growing disappointment, for this young man
seemed to have no ideals, commonplace or fantastic, and his young eyes
were somehow hard when he smiled, and there was somehow a sharpness
about his laughter. So, being kept at arm’s length from the deep places
of Ivor’s heart, Mr. Fletcher, who was now a very lonely old man, could
only tell himself that Ivor must soon get over this present rot, just as
himself and his friends had done. It was a pity, however, Mr. Fletcher
thought, that Lady Moira had not insisted on her first idea of Ivor
being called to the Bar, instead of letting him have his own way about
this writing business, which was no more than philandering and wouldn’t
come to anything much, he shouldn’t wonder. He had too much money,
that’s what it was. And for the first time in his life, at the so lonely
end of it, Mr. Fletcher suspected his old friend of an unwisdom,
thinking that he, after all a man, should have advised her more
definitely about the boy’s upbringing: instead of just tamely letting
her make him promise to “let Ivor be, to find his feet and bent and
friends in his own way.” His way was just like every other young fool’s
way, he shouldn’t wonder. And Aunt Percy died with the nearest approach
to a deep rebuke that Ivor had ever seen in those gallant old-blue eyes,
those eyes that could make a young man feel a little mean, a little
ashamed.
CHAPTER V
1
The world which Ivor then touched and tasted so carelessly was a vastly
different world from that with which he was surrounded, in his fuller
maturity, on the 1st May, 1921, at the Mont Agel. More than war had
intervened between that past and this present: some people said that an
undue stress of evolution had intervened; and other people said that the
very opposite of evolution had frightfully intervened. But no one really
knew anything about it, not even Mr. Britling. There was, it was plain,
a self-consciousness abroad after the war that had not been before; and,
too, a certain sophistication about things that once used to move us
exceedingly. There was nothing remarkable in the fact that, with the war
and after it, everything was become bigger, even tennis-tournaments,
strikes, prizefights, revolutions, and Cabinets--but it _was_ rather
remarkable that men seemed to have become much smaller. Maybe, it was
suggested, men seemed to have become smaller--in significance,
say--because they were now conscious of their relation to the huge and
cruel mechanism of the universe. Death had lost something of its terror,
and life had gained it. Life had lost something of its value, but death
had not gained it--despite all the pomps of honour and medalry with
which the survivors had belauded it. And if there had still been a
Pythian priestess, and if there had still been any one who believed in
priests to ask of her an oracle, she might well have answered even as
she answered anent the fortunes of a battle in the days of Greece’s
decline: “Conquered shall weep, and conqueror perish there.” But,
failing a Pythian oracle, there was Mr. Shaw, who in 1919 very sharply
pointed out that “the earth is bursting with the dead bodies of the
victors.” ... A very precocious century, this, for it was old and tired
and _blasé_ by its twenty-first birthday; a senile and fumbling century
it was on its twenty-first birthday, that which had been so gay, so
careless, so essentially _new_, but ten or eleven years before!
_New_....
In the world, when Ivor first entered it and it blooded him, there was
abroad a new generation, newer than any generation had ever been before;
and in all things, even beauty, singularly distinguished. Whereupon the
old, instead of growing older in decent contrast, grew young again in a
fury of contemplation. And meanwhile earthquakes shook the social
fabric, but who cared? Hadn’t earthquakes always shaken the social
fabric, and wasn’t the thing called “the social fabric” just so that
earthquakes could shake it? Doctors and other professional men took to
asking, with twinkles in their eyes: “What would happen if _we_ went on
strike?” They asked that every day, with twinkles in their eyes, but no
one among them ever dreamed of answering. The answer was a lemon.
And in the meanwhile, Society shivered a little feverishly, filled now
with the scions of those who had come over with the Jewish and American
Conquests. Escutcheons were becoming valueless, how sinister soever the
blots and clots upon them. And so, among the many Movements of the
day--Movements to Clothe Poor Children beautifully, Movements to bring
Sanity into Art, Movements to call the U.S.A. the Y.M.C.A.--there was
brought to birth a Movement of Laughter among industrial classes at fine
ladies and fine gentlemen, a Movement of Ridicule among artisans at
aristocrats who were not now aristocratic enough whatever they may once
have been.[A]
Every one was very serious, at that distant time, but very careless
about other people’s seriousness. That is the difference between peace
and war.
And, throughout those days, Ivor Pelham Marlay loitered prodigiously. He
was careless with his money and concerned about his person, which had
now acquired those elegant lines peculiar to affected young men who
deliberately owe for their clothes. He was absent-minded at the right
moments. He was a very pretty lover, especially over dinner: after
dinner he would generally suggest dancing. He was audacious at
conventional moments and conventional at adventurous moments. He had
cheek, money, and moments of sincerity. He was apt at a misquotation,
which is, of course, the only amusing part of a quotation. And he had a
sudden smile which made one rather like him just when one had decided he
was an unbearable young cub: he was, in fact, quite unbearable, even to
himself; and exactly ripe, at the age of three-and-twenty, to be brought
sharply to his senses. Magdalen Gray was very good at bringing men to
their senses; but she used her own to do it with.
Magdalen Gray occurred suddenly: like a symbol with a lovely face,
suddenly shaped out to his startled eyes from the shoddy stuff of his
life. And the glimmer waxed into a great light....
BOOK THE SECOND
THE FRIENDS
CHAPTER I
1
Mrs. Gray occurred suddenly, as has been said, but in accustomed
surroundings: at one of those parties, in fact, that are nightly
scattered about a corner of London, and are, through open first-floor
windows, apt to hit the solitary passer-by of the small hours across the
eyes with the vivid glare and gesticulation of their gaiety. These
parties are much despised (_a_) by the people who go to them; (_b_) by
the people who don’t get the chance; and (_c_) by essayists who begin
their essays with: “I sometimes ask myself what hidden pleasures there
are to be found in Crowds....”
This particular party, in June, 1912, in the Halliday house in Deanery
Street, was quite small; or rather it looked small, for although there
were present about a hundred people they were, as usual at a Halliday
party, so scattered about the various rooms upstairs and downstairs that
there were never more than ten or twelve couples to encourage the band
in the ballroom; so that, if you were a bad dancer, you had no chance to
use the excuse so often effective on a crowded floor, that the art of
dancing is not to dance but to avoid other dancers.
This was an intimate party: no decorations or dowagers. The frequent
Halliday parties of the intimate sort were justly renowned, for
Euphemia, Mrs. Halliday, was expert in achieving that pleasant impromptu
effect which is the result of a lavish and organised hospitality. (The
name must not, by the way, be confused with that of the famous brewers.
The Hallidays, Euphemia said, were, and always had been, bankers and
gentlemen, not brewers and aristocrats.) No one “received” you at these
parties, though they were by no means of that slack order to which
“every one” could go; you just happened on your host, John, or your
hostess, Euphemia--so dark and florid she always was!--as time went on;
and you talked with the one and danced with the other according to the
press of your business elsewhere. You had gone there that night in
response to a casual telephone message from Euphemia’s butler, the
formidable Hebblethwaite, and you left as casually; and you always left
very late, and you always left wondering why you had stayed so long. But
there was one young man, anyway, who on leaving Deanery Street that
night did not wonder why he had stayed so long, and that young man’s
name was Ivor Marlay. He was wondering about something else.
On his entrance, just after midnight, he had happened on Gerald Trevor
descending the stairs alone, to have a peaceful “glass of wine” in the
as yet uncrowded supper-room. From the stairs Trevor’s face lit up with
his quick little smile of pleasure. There was a great deal of
courtliness in the man, but he summarised it all in that jerky little
smile: keeping his speech as free from it as every one else’s, or
nearly.
“Join me,” he said, taking Ivor’s arm, “and we will talk a little.”
Gerald Trevor was inevitable at all such parties, but not nearly so
boring as you might think from that inevitability. No one ever thought
Gerald Trevor boring, not even the women who were tired of him. He was
that rare person who can join two others without interrupting their
conversation. He was in between the generations, neither the old nor the
new, neither too courtly nor too careless; and he looked, with his small
slender figure, his thick fair hair and fair moustache cropped very
close to his lip, his keen and scholarly blue eyes, and the nose which
rather surprisingly stuck out from his face like the peak of a cap and
gave his features a surprising look of keen aggression--he looked
delightfully like a man who has loved a few women and killed a few men.
And he probably had, for he had been through the Boer war and had been
divorced by his wife, though that was by arrangement, as she wanted to
marry some one else; whereupon Gerald Trevor had thought to himself:
“Thou shalt not commit alimony,” and didn’t.
“You and I,” said Trevor, juggling with a macaroon, a cigarette, and a
glass, as they stood at the long table of Hebblethwaite’s kingdom--“You
and I are always meeting at these places, Ivor. And, it seems to me,
we’re meeting in spirit, as well as in fact. Now that’s very strange,
don’t you think, considering----”
Ivor grinned. “You are about to refer,” he said softly, “to the amazing
fact that you are old enough to be my father--yes, you are, Gerald. I
never see you but you say that at least once and would like to say it
twice, and I can’t help thinking that it’s a kind of parlour-game
peculiar to the house of Trevor. I feel I ought to slap you on the
shoulder twice and say “Bo,” and then you’ll tell me where you’ve hidden
something....”
“Ass,” said Trevor.
“Age,” meditated Ivor gravely, “can’t matter in a man. I haven’t as yet
the faintest idea what does matter in a man, but I’m sure age doesn’t.
Consider how many children of ten are their father’s ancestors! Read
Mrs. Besant. Read the late Mrs. Blavatsky. Read the late Mrs. Eddy. Read
what you like....”
“When,” said Trevor gently, “you have finished gloating over your
superficial knowledge of the indoor activities of elderly widows, two of
whom are now quite old enough to know better, you may let me suggest
that the spirit in which you and I meet at these parties is one of
Looking for Something. But the difference is that I know what I’m
looking for and you don’t.”
“I always was a backward boy,” lamented Ivor.
“Not at all!” said Trevor quickly, and took another macaroon; whenever
Gerald Trevor took another macaroon you were warned--run away, or stay
and listen. “It’s I who am the fool! Don’t you see, Ivor? You’ve got a
right to begin, but I’m a fool to repeat things. You are searching for
an enchantment, but I’m waiting for a repetition. Life is empty at the
moment, and I want to fill it again--and the same thing will fill it
again in almost the same way. It always does.”
“I know now,” said Trevor, “so much about women that I know no woman has
ever loved me, nor can ever love me, as I want to be loved. I say that
in no spirit of false modesty, Ivor, but judicially--and the frightfully
funny part of it is that it’s not just a remark over a glass of wine,
it’s true. I’m the legendary man who was born to be the perfect
co-respondent, but has failed to live up to the promise of his
birth....”
People were crowding round about, they flowed to and ebbed from
Hebblethwaite’s kingdom; they sat at the various tables scattered about
the supper-room, and the two men were casually interrupted, but nothing
could distract Gerald Trevor from his rare mood of self-revelation. This
young man, Ivor Marlay, with his attentive eyes under those
sceptical-looking eyebrows, called up a mood of intimacy in the man of
middle years which would have outraged him if applied by some one else
to himself. He admitted, now, the outrageousness of his mood to Ivor,
comically pleading Ivor as his excuse. (Hebblethwaite had placed a
bottle before them, from which they automatically filled their glasses.)
“You’re so outrageous yourself, you see,” Trevor accused him, with that
jerky little smile. “You goad me on! Not with the things you say, of
course, but with the things you understand--or pretend to, anyway.”
“All my life,” Trevor said, “I’ve loathed men. And effeminate men worst
of all, for that’s adding insult to injury. Yes, I’ve loathed men--they
are, mentally, either too hairy or not hairy enough, and physically they
are almost as deplorable as women. Taking, however, a liberal view of
the flaws which are present in even the loveliest of the daughters of
Eve, I have been partial to women, I have loved women. Sacredly, you’d
never believe how sacredly--for one’s manner of speech rather hides the
sacred things in one. Only to realise the other day that the only two
women I’ve ever really loved were both harlots. Mentally, I mean, not
financially....” And Gerald Trevor fell silent.
“That,” said Ivor sincerely, “must have been a great disappointment to
you.” He had to say something.
Trevor emptied his glass. “That’s why I’m rather indecently telling you
about it, Ivor,” he apologised, self-consciously. “They were both, don’t
you see, so fiendishly complicated in their emotions and so direct in
their direction--which, stripped of all the baubles of polite speech,
was from one man’s bed to another. They talked of love, but they only
desired. Damn it, that sounds dramatic....”
“But I like it like that!” cried Ivor.
“It all comes from the progress of science,” said Trevor. “All this easy
infidelity and messing about. One is not protesting against a woman
liking some one else, one is protesting against the chances of her
liking some one else. The chances are so against one....”
“There are too many facilities for getting about,” he said. “A man
nowadays has got very little chance of keeping a woman to himself as
compared to even eighty years ago. She gets more chances of seeing other
men, and comparing and developing and evolving--away from you. In the
old days, if you lived at Wimbledon--well, why not?--your wife never met
a soul without your knowing about it. Infidelity was a lengthy and
ponderous business--it simply isn’t possible to snatch a quiet half-hour
with a young man while your coach and footmen are waiting outside. But
now, motors, undergrounds, telegrams, telephones! All modern life is
directed towards letting your wife or mistress see as many men as she
likes and when she likes. And out of those men how easy to meet one she
likes as much as, and then more than, you. The way women go about
finding Magnetism in impossible men is appalling! So where the devil are
you? There’s no security, Ivor, simply none! A lover is a husband and
then a cuckold before he knows what and where he is. And then people say
the telephone service is too slow!”
“The pleasant thing about you, Gerald,” Ivor suddenly broke in, “is that
you never speak of women as though you had been loved by them, but
always as though you had done all the loving. It’s a very pleasant
fiction, that....”
“The matter is, of course,” said Trevor reasonably, “that one wants
rather too much. One wants a simple and direct love spiced with the
divine and complex subtleties of a Cleopatra--and the two can’t go
together at all. One wants the love and constancy of a dairymaid and the
lust and pride and wit of a great lady....”
It was at that very moment, as Ivor Marlay will always remember, that he
first heard the voice of Magdalen Gray, and was arrested by it. Trevor
and he were still standing at the long table with their backs to the
room and bunches of people, and Trevor was just thoughtfully exploring
the bottle for what it might still contain--when the voice, but a
phantom of a passing voice borne above the clatter of the room by some
peculiarly light quality in it, suddenly caressed Ivor’s ear: like, he
thought, a very sweet unscented breeze from the shadows of a green place
to a sweating road where two men are breaking stones, for Trevor’s
worldly wisdom is made of stones.... He looked round and peered among
the accustomed faces round about, but he couldn’t hit on the face of the
voice, nor the “Rodney” to whom it had been addressed.
“A pleasant voice, that,” he only said to Trevor--so little thinking
that Trevor had also heard it, that he was very surprised when he
returned:--
“Yes, isn’t it! A voice in this wilderness. Did you see her?” And Trevor
looked round the room, keen eyes searching swiftly. Gerald Trevor was
very popular--among men as among women, for all his “hatred”--and many
eyes caught his and beckoned gaily, a voice here and there called
“Gerald!” and a few men wondered what on earth Trevor found to say at
such length to that rather mysterious young man, Marlay. They quite
liked Marlay, he seemed and looked quite all right, but they weren’t,
absurdly enough, quite sure whether he liked them! And that vague doubt
is a most improper one for a young man to instil, no matter how vaguely,
in other men. Thus, throughout his life Ivor was to find that it was to
be made always much easier for him to be unpopular rather than popular.
His was a nature to like a few people and be entirely indifferent to
every one else; and very few people were to matter in his life, but they
were to matter very much. As now, when Gerald Trevor, at five-and-forty,
who was every one’s easy acquaintance and no one’s particular friend,
was surprisingly Ivor’s good friend, and was steadfastly to remain so.
For it is the consolation and distinction of a man whose instinct is to
like very few people to be instinctively liked by those very few.
“She must have just passed through and gone upstairs,” Trevor said at
last. “Anyway, she belongs to a generation that doesn’t loiter in bars,
not even when they’re called buffets....”
“She loiters secretly,” he said mischievously, “and in secret
places--which, after all, is what loitering is for.”
“Who is she, Gerald?”
Trevor regarded the young man severely.
“She,” he said, “is a woman of quality.”
“Oh!” cried the very young man; and Trevor was really surprised into his
jerky little smile by the sudden pleasure of the exclamation.
“Gerald, you have said a marvellous thing--oh, but you have! I never
thought to hear that said about any woman, I’d forgotten that such a
phrase was ever made by fine men for fine women--a woman of quality!
And here you’ve been ranting a lot of worldly-wisdom stuff for the last
half-hour, keeping this pearl of price inside you until the magic of a
voice dragged it out! Pah!...”
“A woman of quality!” And Ivor repeated the words softly, tasting in
them wine finer than champagne and older than Falernian, while Trevor
enjoyed the comedy of his chance phrase. Next time, he comically
thought, it will not happen so accidentally.
Ivor was of an age which can confuse the precious and the beautiful into
one dim, magnificent whole; and that chance, outmoded phrase had somehow
lit a great light, an absurdly great light, within him, it seemed to him
so coloured with forgotten splendours and luxuries of _race_ and
manners. Everything desirable, everything exquisite, everything
damnable, everything that could bewitch his mind and heart, seemed to
lie in and about that phrase. It fired him, it so completely contained
the rarest secrets of _fineness_--for him, anyway! He wouldn’t, he
thought grandly, ever cheapen that phrase. They were words to fit an
ideal. (He was only twenty-three, after all; and he had drunk his share
of a bottle of champagne.)
“Tell me more of ‘this woman of quality’” he begged Gerald Trevor.
“Oh, no!” cried Trevor. “I’m just too old to make theories out of
facts--especially feline facts. Besides, you will soon be meeting her
for yourself----”
“But I haven’t as yet.”
“But you are only very few London years old yet, Ivor! and she is only
just back from two years near Naples.”
“That,” said Ivor, “must be one of those facts you were shy of
theorising about.”
“You would learn more,” Trevor gently warned him, “if you understood
less, young man.”
“She has a husband,” he condescended to add, “who explores Asia. She
explores everything else. He is at present in London, and at this very
party, I think, but she does not cease to explore. And so he will go
away again, because he is that kind of man.”
“And I,” he said, emptying his glass, “will now go upstairs to ask her
to dance with me.”
“Telling her, please,” Ivor seriously detained him, and drew a deep
breath, “that her unknown voice was much appreciated and its absence
deeply regretted, even during a conversation with yourself.”
“Quite,” said Trevor sombrely. “But, on the other hand, the action of
eggs on the liver has given rise to endless discussion.”
It was as Gerald Trevor reached the head of the stairs leading to the
ballroom that he saw Magdalen Gray coming down the flight above, with
Rodney West. Her dress, he thought, is of the colour of crushed orchids:
it would be ... something just a bit rank....
“Magdalen!” he greeted her from below; “the psychological moment has now
come for you and me to take the floor together.”
“And Gerald!” the light voice said gaily; “they’re just beginning a
lovely waltz with a beard on it, to suit and soothe the dignity of your
years....”
And Rodney West, his sharp and legal face more than ever sharp and legal
at this smooth buccaneering and smooth surrendering, continued his now
solitary way down the crowded stairs. Interruptions did not intrude upon
_him_, not even in the most crowded places. He was a man set apart, the
little smile that was crucified on his thin, handsome face set him
apart, and rather grimly. Rodney West was one of those “darkish men with
intelligent gestures” who are attractive to connoisseurs among women. It
was Mrs. Gray who had so described him--and herself.
2
Dancing, Ivor thought, must be altogether a winter-sport, for it’s
certainly too hot for it now. And eventually, after a glance into the
ballroom, where he could not see Trevor and partner, he came upon the
bunch of young people who centred mainly round Lois Lamprey and Virginia
Tracy: both young and cool and remote, and ever so faintly contemptuous
of those whom their carelessness about things might shock. They were so
untouchable by people to whom they were indifferent--people are “awful,”
they said--that their amorous reputations amazed one. (It amazed them,
too. It was so untrue, really.) Lady Lois Lamprey was in particularly
good looks to-night, in a Byzantine sort of dress of beaten gold that
vividly brought out the sheen of her dark silken hair, coils and coils
of dark silken hair, like a lustrous black decoration for the white oval
of her face and the curiously blue weapons which were given to her for
eyes. And Virginia Tracy, golden-white Virginia, her small face as grave
as a Persian kitten’s--for she was very young and resented things--was
dressed severely in black....
“So that,” she said surprisingly, viciously, to Ivor, who had just come
upon them and remarked upon its dark severity, “I can dance with you,
black Ivor Marlay, if you should happen to ask me.”
That swift, breathless little voice of Virginia’s--so pregnant, somehow!
“Virginia has got a _crise_,” Lois Lamprey commented into some one’s
ear, very softly. Lois always commented on Virginia like that, very
softly, and without emotion. Lois gave it to be clearly understood that
she kept emotion for emotional moments. Watch the Lady Lois! For she
will be a power in the land, in the land where she is already a legend,
by reason of her great beauty, her birth, her wit, her various talents,
and the facility for dexterous publicity which has always been
vouchsafed to the Lamprey women. She will be the contriver of her own
destiny, so watch her, it will be quite interesting. There is no snob
like the well-born snob: Mr. E. F. Benson said that, and he knows about
those things. The Lady Lois will get on, but not obviously, she will
climb to the ultimate pinnacles of the world’s last aristocracy. Men
will call her an _allumeuse_, but men give many different names to their
disappointments. She will have no enemies, but most of her friends will
dislike her. Only two weaknesses has Lady Lois of the silken black hair
and the curious eyes that seem to see things a long way off and to laugh
at things close-to--she is mean with money, and she is partial to a
glass or so of wine between meals. But her complexion can stand that,
for a thing to wonder at is her complexion. “_Ah, ce type anglais!_”
Nothing in the world can beat it, even though it does sometimes dress
atrociously.... Now Virginia was quite, quite different from Lois;
though people didn’t realise that for quite a long time.
There was antagonism between Virginia Tracy and Ivor Marlay. There
always is antagonism between some one and some one else at a party of
the intimate sort. In this case it had something to do with Virginia’s
lack of manners and Ivor’s lack of servility, but how were they to know
that?
“I’ve asked you to dance so often, and so often been snubbed,” Ivor
said, rather too quietly maybe. The formality, the “rightness,” of his
manner always irritated Virginia into an impatient shrug. And, in this
mood of hers, her blue eyes glittered just a little, dangerously.
Now in the furrow of Virginia Tracy’s little chin, and an inconsiderable
little chin it was for a beautiful young lady, lay a tiny brown spot,
which Ivor sometimes found very irritating....
It was as though the room seemed suddenly to be going rotten with
silence. No one quite knew why--and Virginia and Ivor were the most
nonchalant among them. The silence was made more than ever tangible by
one Kerrison saying:--
“But Marlay’s not severe, Virginia! He’s a rakish and raffish young
man.” But, as usual with Mr. Kerrison, the insolence was in the words
rather than the manner, which was ingratiating. Mr. Kerrison was an
intellectual architect of a certain reputation and a remarkably anæmic
exterior. Kerrison just slops about, people said. He disliked Ivor
Marlay because Ivor Marlay had once seen him powdering his nose in a
lavatory, because he knew Lois liked him, and because he suspected
Virginia of being deeper than her antagonisms....
“He’s suffering,” Virginia said quietly, “from silence. The kind of
silence that knows the answer to every question!” Thus were the sayings
of the polite and amiable M. Stutz retailed by “My Customers!”
“In the meanwhile,” Ivor was bored enough to say, “why _don’t_ we dance?
Or are we not talking about that now?” That manner of his, when
irritated, was certainly irritating. You could not like Ivor when he did
not like you. He somehow wouldn’t let you. The more he was in the right
the less you could like him.
Virginia shook her head, as though a little absent, a little bored; and
said something in a low tone to Mr. Kerrison beside her, so that he
laughed.... It really was very stupid, all this. Every one was aware of
that, and of Ivor Marlay. Everything had been so charming and
inconsequent until he had come in--darkly, so as to provoke Virginia, it
seemed!--and now everything was pointed and personal. As everything
always was when those two met in a room--the atmosphere somehow grew a
point, even at the Mont Agel, most difficult of all places in which to
be anything but inconsequent! Any one else but Ivor Marlay would have
answered Virginia’s first remark in some human sort of way, with a jeer
or a laugh or a cry or a grab--but Marlay must go and say the “right”
thing, which any fool might know was the wrong thing to say to
Virginia.
Ivor Marlay, feeling acutely that he was “out of all this,” just waited
for someone to say something. He was damned if _he_ was going to be “put
out” by this sort of childishness. And his eyes faintly appealed to Lois
Lamprey: who liked him--for she had an instinct about people who might
get on--and had watched the little comedy as she watched every comedy,
including her own, with lazy intentness. Lois was twenty-five, two years
older than Virginia, and it was said that she was more _balanced_ than
Virginia.
“Every one is being very typical to-night,” Lois vaguely said, in her
deep, soft voice.
“A ballroom,” she said, “is not the place for dancing in, anyway. One
should only dance in meadows and green places....”
(It was at that time the fashion to make idiotic remarks in a dogmatic
voice. It rather impressed some people.)
“And one should only dance towards the moon and back,” bubbled Pretty
Leyton, who couldn’t dance at all. (Thank God that’s over, Ivor
thought.) Pretty Leyton always bubbled over like that--and, in bubbling,
simply adored you! His business in life was to be an optimist and
celibate, and his pleasure in life was to encourage and edit young men’s
poetry, dead or alive; and in that the war was to give him his wonderful
chance, which he wonderfully took. The poetry Pretty Leyton discovered
was often very good, for his was a delicate and conservative taste; but
it would have been easier to appreciate the good if one could only have
discovered it among the bad, for his was also a delicate and kindly
nature. While as for the young poets, of whom many called and all were
chosen, he was continually begging his women friends, particularly Lois
and Virginia, not to be “_too_ cruel” to them, for they were so
sensitive and worth-while. To see and speak to Pretty Leyton in a
crowded room was really very comforting, sometimes--which was just as
well, since he was always in every room that happened to be crowded,
saying: “Isn’t it a marvellous party?” He was so intensely “happy” to be
everywhere, people were “so wonderful.” ... And, at some hour or other,
in whatever room or company or city you might be in, you would surely
espy coming towards you the high, extended waving hand, the swaying
shoulder, the mobile eyebrows, the restless hindquarters and the dainty
step of Pretty Leyton. And he would be charming, always charming. He
gave all his women friends beautifully bound copies of _Tristram
Shandy_, which he said was _the only_ book.
The rest of the circle, innermost of all the young circles of that time
and symbolic in the best way of them all, comprised that London “of
waiting for the lamps to be lit or of hoping the lamps will never be
lit, of waiting for the sun to rise or of hoping the sun will never
rise,” as Virginia had said once. Little knowing, Virginia, that the sun
was risen so brilliantly on your friends the sooner and more tragically
to set....
It was the London of Whitehall, Chelsea, Mayfair, Cambridge, Bloomsbury,
Downing Street, Oxford, and the Mont Agel--but of course the Mont Agel!
The London of those new young men and women, but mainly young men, who
in those few years before the war suddenly confronted and conquered it
with a new and vivid charm, now never to be forgotten. They, even more
acutely than the Russian Ballet, were the social success of that time,
in a new and brilliant way. They were so immediately likeable, so fine!
A new kind of young men they were entirely, these few from the
Universities, and much less “provincial” than new young men had ever
been before. They, just then beginning life, were much less provincial
than those who were ending life. They were not good Londoners: for they
were good Europeans. They were clean and intricate and pagan, and they
were quick to believe in fine things; and they could both drink and
think. In everything they were a denial of their fathers, for these
young men were sceptical of generalisations: in everything they were a
denial of the catchwords for which they were to fight; and in everything
they were the finest expression of the paralytic civilisation for which
they were to die. Vulgarity of thought was to them the abomination of
abominations; and they died because of it. They were to go out to fight
in a war for chivalry, and they were to die in a morass of spite.
And these young giants were friends to Lois Lamprey and Virginia Tracy,
and often with them--too often, people said. And Lois was conscious of
their beauty and her power over them, but Virginia was conscious only of
liking them immensely. She loved one and then another, seldom alone but
always in a crowd. She was swept magically off her feet, gaily,
profoundly, almost impersonally; for Virginia was very much of them in
spirit and in endeavour, and she, like them, for all the gaiety and
publicity of their lives--for London loved these young men of
destiny--had secret places in her being where she could think and strive
impersonally--with what Lois could decide in one cunning, physical
moment!
Great heights were reached in that swift circle of young people, and
deep abysses plumbed. They were the new soldiers of fortune, Lois and
Virginia and their laughing men. They intoxicated each other into
brilliance, and often into truth. They were much more intoxicating to
each other than was the wine which rumour so abundantly uncorked for
them.
And, on a day seven years or so later, Virginia asked Ivor:--
“Why, just why, have they all gone, so utterly? Of that roomful of
people at the Hallidays’ that night, the last night that I ever saw you
there, there’s nothing left but the scum--except just you, who weren’t
of them at all. There simply isn’t one of them left, Ivor----”
“And not only that,” he said. “But there is nothing _of_ them left. The
war killed them, and then Pretty Leyton and the Press killed them even
more effectually, by making of them idols of prose and poetry and good
looks. And they made idols of them in their own precious image and to
suit their own precious ideals, ‘wonderful’ and ‘inspired.’ What was so
splendid about them was that they were not inspired: they were
thoughtful....”
For the giants had now become little books, a tragic and inevitable fate
that often overtakes giants. They, who had never scattered themselves,
were now scattered everywhere on the wings of their chance verses and
chance letters; and there were Prefaces to bring them near in death who
had been so rarely distant in life.
“It isn’t fair,” Virginia sombrely said, “to judge them by what they
wrote, even if they had wanted to be judged by that. They’ve made
brilliant and gallant poets out of men whose reality was idealism. Their
reality was a fierce and gay idealism, Ivor, and poetry and gallantry
were only afterthoughts with them....”
It was a lazy afternoon in Paris, and they were in the garden of a
studio on the Butte, a garden overlooking Paris from the Mont Valérien
to the Lion de Belfort.
“Youth isn’t made of definite things like prose and poetry,” Virginia
said. “It’s made of everything. It’s a subtle and versatile thing, I do
think, with lovely lapses into carelessness.”
“And besides!” she suddenly said. “Every one forgets the main ingredient
of the souls of fine, eager men. Like the Crusaders, you know. It used
to be called the Holy Ghost, but there’s no name for it now....”
But that was the Virginia and the Ivor Marlay of more than seven years
later, a man and a woman of thirty, who have come intruding into the
Halliday room of that night in 1912: ghosts of serious mien, to relive
again their brutal young intolerances of that time.... For Ivor Marlay,
now too close to reality to separate the chaff from it, was to-night
deciding that “all this” was distasteful to him. The fault was all his,
he felt certain. He admired so much in them, and especially the way in
which all the desires of their fathers were melted into cheap baubles by
the magic of their laughter, which held in it so little superiority and
so much conviction. And, admiring all that, he yet found it all
distasteful, it seemed so, well, gutless and bloodless, it seemed,
somehow, to carry its own rot within it--and as he thought that his eyes
fixed on Mr. Kerrison and Pretty Leyton, the one white-faced and thin
and limp and little-eyed, the other bubbling and fantastic. Ivor could
not see them then as he later grew to see them, that such men are
inevitably part of the wonderful comedy of cities. He saw them, and men
like them, in a devilish light, he loathed them; and he despised those
who suffered them....
Mr. Kerrison was sitting beside Virginia on a window-seat, vigorously
talking. He was answering something she had asked, and through the smoke
Ivor could see the interest on her face. Mr. Kerrison somehow held that
lovely golden creature’s confidence, and Ivor thought: her confidence is
wrapped away in him as in the folds of a jelly-fish. Semiramis was the
first woman to invent eunuchs, and women have had sympathy for them ever
since; for all Kerrisons are eunuchs, large and shining and secretive
eunuchs with minutely clever little minds ... and women can tell them
what they can’t tell other men. And Ivor, suddenly cheered by laughing
at his absurd platitudes, and finding himself by the door, was going
from the room.
“You are stealing away!” a voice from behind caught him sharply in the
doorway.
“But, Virginia, you are always suspecting me of underhand things!”
“That may be because you never seem to be yourself, never genuine,
Ivor,” she said. “You seem always to be straining at a leash, straining
but never springing....”
“The devil!” he laughed at her. “You haven’t given me much chance of
springing one way or the other, Virginia....” But Virginia looked
suddenly very tired indeed.
“Oh, dear!” she sighed childishly. “How trivial we are about trivial
things, aren’t we? instead of being grand and indifferent about them, as
we like to think we are....” And she smiled quickly, and her smile was
like a Red Indian’s, it came and left untouched the gravity of her face.
“You remind me of fire,” said Ivor suddenly, softly. “And fire is a
glorious thing because it devours uncleanness yet remains clean. I read
that in a funny old book about a great actress, but it somehow applies
to you, Virginia....”
She was looking at him gravely, and she said nothing, so that he was
ashamed of his affectation. He wasn’t genuine, she had said....
“Will we be friends, then?” she asked simply, out of the silence. She
was like an earnest child.
“Please, Virginia.”
And she turned and left him swiftly, as was her way. Thus Virginia
always left people and rooms, very suddenly and swiftly, as though she
were moved to do so by a purpose that was almost mystic. For hers was
not a languid queenliness; she walked always as though she were alone
and unwatched and on a hidden quest--and, surely, any quest Virginia
might follow would be a secret one, for Virginia was secret, she never
confided. And she had such queerly little consciousness of her looks
that you could take your fill of staring as she sat or walked, and not
offend. You could admire the little fair face that topped the slim
height of her figure with that quality peculiar to English loveliness.
Her figure and face, you would say, are somehow compact of the same
grace and clean lines, the one goes perfectly with the other, whereas a
Frenchwoman’s figure can give the lie to her face even as her dressmaker
can give the lie to her figure. And, as Virginia so swiftly passed, you
could not but marvel at the slim elegance of her ankles, saying to
yourself that Virginia had no visible means of support. But most of all
you would admire the golden curls which tumbled, not wildly, down each
side of her face, while the golden hair from which they tumbled was
drawn tightly back from her forehead as though grudging itself the waves
that insisted on waving. Those gay and golden curls of Virginia’s! the
merry companions of her face! They were her main interest in her
appearance; she took the rest of herself for granted, as far as any
_soignée_ woman can--but she cared for her curls rigorously, and as
often as she was in her room she combed and curled them: ever so
swiftly, with a very little comb and a very little “iron,” the treasures
of her toilet table. Now these amazing curls on each side of Virginia’s
face were named, and their names were mighty in London. They were called
“Swan and Edgar,” and never referred to by herself or her familiars but
as “Swan and Edgar.” The curls were both alike to the naked eye, in
curliness, in sheen and in goldiness, but the curl on the right was Swan
and the curl on the left was Edgar--“reading from right to left, you
see,” explained Virginia; and he was no familiar of Virginia’s who ever
confounded their exact locality. “Swan and Edgar” were a source of
endless trouble and annoyance to Virginia: sometimes the damp would
affect them, and they would look so limp! and sometimes, damp or no
damp, they would be disorderly, just when Virginia was trying to look
her best, and she would almost cry with mortification. No matter where
she might be, no matter at what party, if “Swan and Edgar” did not
behave themselves Virginia would insist on taking them home--“a car,
please,” she’d say to a young man--where she would very swiftly curl
them anew, with that very little “iron”; and then she would return to
the party, gaily, mysteriously. And oh, she was such a pretty girl!...
And Ivor Marlay, walking slowly down the stairs--that “slowness” of a
man at a party who might or might not be going home--thought of
Virginia Tracy softly; he thought of Virginia in a whisper: how she had
so abruptly stood before him and somehow revealed herself to him and
somehow stripped him of his antagonism and affectation. Virginia, he
thought, was mysteriously adequate to mysterious moments. And, suddenly,
queerly, he was sorry for Virginia, alone in that _galère_--which he
himself would never, never re-enter again. And he was sorry for
Virginia....
And so, thinking of Virginia, he met Magdalen Gray.
3
She was borne to him, before he realised it, in the hubbub at the foot
of the stairs, on the polished ship of Gerald Trevor’s introduction.
“He writes poetry and his mother makes birds’ nests”--that courtly
gentleman was sketching an imaginary Ivor for her benefit.
“And he also dances,” grinned Ivor, responding to her secret smile--and
plundering Trevor even as Trevor had plundered Rodney West.
Said Gerald Trevor to George Tarlyon, whom he met wandering downwards:--
“George, I ask you to observe that women are odd: if you restrain
yourself, they resent it: and if you don’t restrain yourself, you bore
them. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Treat ’em rough, old man. And so to bed,” yawned George Tarlyon,
handsome Tarlyon. Much will come of that young man, it was said. And
much indeed was to come of that young man, in the fullness of war and
peace. He will meet Ivor Marlay; and he will laugh at him. And George
Tarlyon had an eighteenth century kind of laugh: the casual, fearless,
handsome Lord Tarlyon....
CHAPTER II
1
It was about three o’clock now; the ballroom looked a vast place in
which three couples were entirely surrounded by parquet floor; and the
band was become ecstatic with weariness and repetition. They sang and
yelled and rolled their eyes, they crooned and cooned and beat their
drums.
“Josh--ua! Josh--ua!
Why don’t you call and see mamma?
Josh--ua! Josh--ua!
Nicer than lemon-squash you are!
Yes, by gosh you are!
Josh--u--a--a....”
Ivor and Magdalen Gray danced silently. For several minutes he was not
conscious of her, but only of the pleasure of dancing with her. She was
scarcely there at all, she moved so easily with him. She was so
wonderfully there that she was scarcely there at all--which may sound
silly, but is nevertheless a first principle to be learnt by all women
who would be good dancers.
“I am liking this very much,” he said at last.
“I too!” the light voice said; but so seriously that it surprised him
into looking for the first time at the face beside his shoulder; and he
saw that, if indeed she was liking it, it must be in a very subtle way,
for she looked sad and tired.
“Maybe you’d rather we didn’t dance?” he asked tentatively.
“Oh, no!” and the dark eyes were lifted to his in an almost comic
protest; and they suddenly seemed to introduce herself to him. “I don’t
wish to seem conceited, Mr. Marlay, but there are too many people
waiting to see me home. I would have been safely in my bed an hour ago
but that there were so many people to see me safely into it. But if
_you_ would rather not dance----?”
“But this is my first to-night!” he protested.
“Although, of course,” she mocked him, “you have had your offers?”
“I’ve had one, anyway,” he seriously agreed. “Lovely she was, and a
famous dancer--but I thought, you know, that I would like to begin and
end my night with a woman of quality.” That made her smile a little
smile. Courteous cheek....
They danced on silently, softly. Their feet played tricks to the beat of
the tireless measure, that exquisitely asinine blare which is England’s
punishment for having lost America.... This is the nicest thing that’s
happened to me for a very long time, Ivor thought, taking pleasure in
her movement and her looks. Her hair is trying to look black, he
thought, but it’s really dark blue, like her eyes.
It was thick hair, soft and thick and Latin, and it was coiled softly
about her ears in loose dark masses: a dark setting for her white face,
which wasn’t technically beautiful, like Lois Lamprey’s and Virginia’s,
but had all the inner meaning of beauty. Her mouth was large and very
mobile, a tentative and adventurous mouth.... And all the time he was
conscious that she was abstracted, that she wasn’t thinking of him at
all. And that was pleasant, he felt exceedingly at peace with her. So he
didn’t press her to talk, he made no effort to amuse her; and that is
the most intelligent thing that Ivor Marlay did that night.
As they danced past the large doorway he saw two men standing there, one
dark and the other gray, talking. She had seen the direction of his
eyes, for she said:--
“The distinguished-looking person with the iron-gray hair and the lovely
corporation is my husband. But besides being my husband he is a great
traveller. Not an explorer, mind you, but just a great traveller. He
spends most of his time in travelling about extremely foreign countries,
and the rest of his time he spends in feeling extremely foreign in his
own.” Mrs. Gray had a delightful way, as she said things, of laughing
without laughter, of being intimate without intimacy.
And the other one, Ivor thought, is “Rodney....”
The light voice went on: “And the other one, with the severe expression
peculiar to celibate Englishmen of over forty, is Rodney West, the K.C.,
whom you’ll never really get to know unless you murder or get murdered
by some one....”
And, suddenly, Ivor had an acute feeling that he was “up against” those
two men, standing there in the doorway in all the conviction of middle
years and vast experience. It was the silliest and absurdest feeling he
had ever had, but he felt it acutely, and it made him suddenly look
quite set and grim--and, of course, sulky. They were now in the far
corner of the ballroom, away from the guardians of the door. And
Magdalen Gray wondered at his abrupt stopping of the dance, away in the
corner there, and at the way he looked down at her, so darkly sulky: the
absurd young grimness of this stranger surprised her back into her
gaiety.
“Oh, but you look like a man who has discovered something!” she laughed
at him. “Picture of young gentleman as pirate on sighting fair
merchantman....”
“I want very much,” Ivor said, “to see you again, Mrs. Gray.”
She liked him for refusing to be made ridiculous. It was most unusual in
men....
“But aren’t you bullying me just a little bit--and so early in our
acquaintance?” she asked quietly--keeping all the foolery in her words
and none in her manner, as was her way. “But maybe that’s because you
think it’s going to be difficult to see me?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking--and the previous thought to that
was that you were worthwhile,” he dared to say. It was those
sceptical-looking eyebrows that helped him to say things like that and
look as though he had meant to say something else....
“But I’m just a little tired of being thought ‘worthwhile’!” she cried,
with a surprisingly deep impatience.
“And I’d like, please, to be allowed to do the thinking first, just for
a change....” And she passed a hand over her eyes and slightly pressed
her fingers against her temples, as though to soothe the sickness of a
headache.
He was nervously conscious that he had made a mistake. He couldn’t know
that the mistake lay in his liking her at all, who was to-night
surfeited with men’s likings.... The band had stopped, and they were
walking now across the bare expanse of floor towards the door. The two
men of middle years had but a second before left it, so obviously as
though she were to come downstairs after them. And Ivor’s eyes
involuntarily followed them through the doorway.
“All the same----” he began sulkily.
“There’s only the telephone-book between us, you know,” she chose to
soothe him.
“Ah, now I know something about you!” he said eagerly. They were out of
the ballroom now; she cast a swift look down the stairs; and she was
going away.
“I know now,” he said very quickly, “what I’ve never known before, for
I’ve never before met a womanly woman. I know that in the beginning you
are profound about superficial things, and that in the end you are
superficial about profound things. And I know too, that when you are
accused of that you will answer, oh so honestly: ‘But isn’t this how
things do end, and is a flower less beautiful because it must die?’”
The wilful arrogance of that moment is quite the best thing in the
extravagances of a cub’s life. Cheek so colossal and so uncalled-for, on
such a very slight acquaintance, becomes something quite else, something
much higher. And Magdalen Gray, following the men of middle years down
the stairs, was gay where she had thought to be miserable--that young
man was laughing at her, he was liking her with laughter! It was most
unusual in men! It was quite pleasant and unusual....
CHAPTER III
1
In the days that followed, Ivor Marlay brooded upon her a great deal. He
showed his youth, that fantastic youth of a young man’s secret longings,
in the manner and absurdity of his brooding. He came to think of her as
a strange and delicious phenomenon that had somehow happened--and which,
he intensely hoped, would somehow happen again. He lavished on her all
his curiosity; he fingered the texture of her; and then hastily drew
back from this childish dalliance, for his mind seemed suddenly to have
become so gross and the texture of her was so fine. He grew aware that
she would leave him not a shred of vanity if she had her way with
him--not that she would strip him of it, but he would have to strip
himself in face of her. And he felt painfully ill at ease with himself,
which is commonly the feeling of a very young man who is too impressed
by a woman of thirty--and quality.
This deep impression of a first meeting may seem ridiculous to the
superior amateur of sensations, but it was quite logical, really. Never
before, after all, had he been charmed! And it was an exquisite
sensation, to be charmed. Of course, he had often persuaded himself into
being charmed--if you didn’t do that you were bored, and then where were
you?--but never before had he been actually and actively charmed. And so
potent was this enchantment that he had now no stomach for such
relations--oh, quite vague things!--as had hitherto entertained him very
passably.
The matter was not in the least mended by his frequently calling himself
a silly ass; for there was always a secret voice telling him that his
admiration was the outcome of a need--for “that kind of woman!” That
first impression! He was so sure, he didn’t know why nor how, that “that
kind of woman” could arouse a deep emotion without that aftermath of
impurity which--even at three-and-twenty--taints so many of the fine
passages of an adventurous life. And so Ivor longed for her, and
guess-work made strange and lovely arabesques on a background of
enchantment.
More than two weeks passed, and still he did not telephone to Mrs. Gray.
He had made a brave show of determination when with her, but since then
his mind had made her of fine texture, and its _fineness_ appalled him.
And after two weeks he couldn’t, for she would not remember his name, he
would have to remind her of their meeting--oh, no, no! His vanity, his
whole manhood, ran tumultuously away from the thought of her probable
forgetfulness on the telephone! He could hear her answer to his name, he
could hear her saying, softly, thoughtfully, questioningly, vaguely,
“Yes?...” Oh, no! He would wait; he would just wait--but, after all,
what for?
The resolution made on the night of the Halliday party held unusually
firm, and that _galère_ was now part of a past life. _He_ wasn’t going
to “mess about” any more--with a lot of “invertebrates”! So he set
himself to work, seriously and rather angrily, and wrote hard to finish
a flimsy novel which he had begun nearly two years before, and whose
flimsiness, now that he seriously set himself to finish it (and make it
less “invertebrate”) was a humiliating reproach to the waste of the last
two years. It was finally published,[B] after adventures common to first
MSS. in search of a publisher who knows his business, in the spring
before the war, when its author was away from England; a slim and
unpretentious book--“whose charm,” wrote one reviewer, “is difficult to
analyse, but might conceivably lie in the almost senile precocity that
informs Mr. Marlay’s style and fantasy.” Wrote another: “Of all the
books that don’t matter in the least, this is one of the most excellent.
It is one that will appeal to a few, but not necessarily _the_ few.”
Whichever few, thought Mr. Marlay’s publisher, is few enough.
2
His inability to telephone to Magdalen Gray served him not at all, as
indeed he did not wish it to. For on a night three weeks after he had
met her he was dining with her at her house in Wilton Place. And a
remarkable meal that was, a most remarkable dinner, an immaculate
conception of a dinner, exquisitely ethereal--yet how sternly of the
earth!
One night, as Ivor Marlay was dining alone in one of those underground
grill-rooms for which London is famous among capitals, he was extremely
surprised at the sudden figure of Rodney West, K.C., standing at his
table, with the obvious intention of addressing him. He did not know
Rodney West, nor did Rodney West know him. A smile, as nearly
self-conscious as it could be, hovered about the severely handsome face
of the man of middle years. Ivor half rose in his chair, and sat down
again.
“Mrs. Gray sent me over,” Rodney West told him, “to rebuke you for being
blind, for we’ve been sitting over there for the last hour, and to ask
you to join us over coffee. Is that all right?” Rodney West’s courtesy
had no fringes, it was sharp and direct--there was no froth about _him_,
anyway--and from that moment Ivor liked him very much, in spite of
himself. He said he would like to join them very much; he was shy; but,
a few minutes after the elder man had left him, he followed him to the
table indicated, ... for at least half the distance looking directly
into a levelled pair of eyes, which seemed wonderfully large and
innocent beneath a wide-brimmed black hat. And Ivor suddenly felt
extraordinarily happy and unafraid; and not even the so direct scrutiny
of Magdalen Gray could perturb him. But perhaps she did not intend that
it should.
She greeted him as an old friend. She seemed to be under the surprising
delusion that they were old friends, and not the acquaintances of one
meeting; she did not address him as “Mr. Marlay,” she did not address
him by name at all, but her manner plainly suggested that if she did
address him by name it would not be as “Mr. Marlay.” She was in a gay,
silly mood, embracing them both in the swift turns of her inconsequence.
No one could have guessed that she and Rodney West had dined in silence.
Nor did Rodney West show what he felt at the contrast; he seemed to Ivor
a very amiable though rather detached elderly person. Only when he
occasionally bent his eyes to his coffee cup and gently dropped his
cigar ash therein, would there have been perceptible, to a more detached
intelligence than Ivor’s, an added grimness to the thin face, a wave of
grimness that came and passed; and, surely, a certain grimness is
permissible in a man of middle years who, for the last five of them, has
given his soul to a woman and has now had it given back to him with
maddening gentleness.
The artifice of her intimacy charmed Ivor into ready answer. The gay,
silly mood enveloped him. Her wit was adventurous: it was an exploit to
follow the twist of her sentences, and breathlessly to be with her at
the end.... She told them of the races at somewhere or other, to which
she had been taken that afternoon in an “extremely open car.” She was
not a racing-chap, she wasn’t very actively interested in the
competitive swiftness of horses; but she had not only been to watch them
at it that day, but had lost a deal of money on the slower ones, what’s
more! Whereupon Rodney West gave it as his opinion that it rather served
her right for betting in ignorance.
“But I didn’t, Rodney!” she vividly protested. “Never was a
woman inbetter racing company. No one could have guessed that
all-my-people-weren’t-racing-people. My escort were two in number, minus
in intelligence, full marks for good-looks, and might quite easily have
been called Mr. Beef and Mr. Beer: and they were grimly allied together
for the purposes of being entertained by me and the horses. As they had
field-glasses and champagne-glasses and hard blue eyes, and knew every
horse by sight and reputation, I naturally backed the horse which they
were sure couldn’t lose. And when the wretched horse was finally
arrested for loitering on the course hours after the race was finished,
they told me that at the last moment they’d backed another one--the one
that had happened to win, you know.”
“What awful people one knows!” breathed Rodney West softly.
“Oh, and I was trying _so_ hard not to be personal!” she said.
Rodney West turned amiably to Ivor, who was getting rather left behind.
“Mrs. Gray, you must know, has made an art of friendship,” he explained.
“The art of friendship consists of defending people you’ve met twice by
attacking people you’ve known all your life.”
That light laugh of Magdalen’s! it was like a laugh from a Victorian
novel, so gentle and smoothing and _right_! And, as she laughed, her
eyes, so large and thoughtful in the shadow of her black hat, rested
with ever so passing an intentness on Ivor, secretly. And she seemed to
be saying to him: “This man has certain rights and many grievances, and
it’s all my fault. So we’ll let him be, shall we, for he’s a sweet man,
really.”
And Ivor suddenly felt that all this had happened to him before, to him
and to her, in some ancient place long, long ago; and he felt poignantly
at ease with her, he understood the things she didn’t say--this slim,
soft woman with the soft hair like the night and the wonderfully
friendly, deeply joyous eyes.
He knew nothing, nothing in the world, of men and women; he only knew
that he was very alone and that shadows were all about, shadows that
never flickered, shadows that only stared and smiled, waiting, waiting,
waiting for his full worthiness....
3
It was as they were at last leaving the place--long after the paid bill
had been whipped away from Rodney West as though it were an indecency
which should never have been committed--and were winding up the stairs
to the exalted atmosphere of Piccadilly by night, that she turned to
await Ivor, who was a few steps behind them, and said:--
“There’s a kind of dinner-party at my house to-morrow night, to which
you are being invited at this moment....”
“The telephone-book,” she said, “is full of little details about my
address.”
Kind, curious woman--by saying things like that she made one think
oneself had spoken, she made one forget that one was dull, dull,
unworthy of the moment....
“Well, good-night, Marlay.”
“Good-night, sir. Thanks so much for letting me join you. Good-night,
Mrs. Gray.”
And so, swiftly, almost brusquely, away, leaving them to the care and
under the shadow of the _commissionaire_, man of legendary height and
fabulous girth, whose huge gallantry cynically suggested that he would
sell not only his own soul but the soul of the taxi and taxi-driver
which he had summoned, if only to please this lady and this gentleman.
But how could the _commissionaire_, so long trained in the observation
of quick infidelities, guess that nothing in the world would please this
obviously sensible gentleman but the love of this lady? whose maddening
answer to his bitter-frantic demand, in that very taxi, was gently to
touch his hand and whisper that it would surely be disloyal to past
loveliness to pretend to things.... Magdalen Gray never, never
pretended; maybe that is what kept her so young-looking.
CHAPTER IV
1
“Ivor, I’m so glad!” she welcomed him simply, the next night at
half-past eight. She made no mention of the “dinner-party.” He and she
were the dinner-party. Colonel Gray was again on his travels to
“extremely foreign parts,” it seemed.
They were in the drawing-room before dinner, and he was too busy
adjusting himself to her even to notice the pleasures of the room. He
was glad that she was in black, he discovered a particular admiration
for her in black; her dark simplicity was an almost startling decoration
in the pale amber light of the July evening. And he enjoyed her hair,
dark and thick and so soft, coiling about her ears and framing her wide,
intelligent forehead and her mysterious, friendly eyes. So friendly....
And he liked being in her house, he particularly liked her in her own
house--it somehow added solidity to her enchantment. He told her that,
in those first few minutes. She had come to greet him from a far corner
of the room, and he now stood above her in its very middle--dark, and
seemingly self-confident, and not very young: and so compact of
restraint--yes, he seemed very restrained--that she caught her breath
with pleasure in him. It was most unusual in men....
But, with a gesture, she put a period to this dalliance--one shouldn’t
palter so on an empty stomach, she might almost have said. And now she
made fun of him, insisting on his being intelligently appreciative of
her room of state. “My room, all mine,” she magnificently boasted. And
she took him by the hand, miraculously lifting him to a pinnacle of
comradeship, and twisted him to view the vast and rich expanse of her
kingdom. But not all the craft and elegance of Sheraton and Chippendale,
of Hepplewhite and Adam, had they been in that one room, could have
seduced Ivor’s attention from this wonderful and sudden fact of
friendship. For this between them was going to be friendship, a rich and
immense friendship. He was going to insist on having her friendship, he
wouldn’t let this go....
It was a small house, this in Wilton Place, but this room on the first
floor was its room of state: it knew not the limitations of lowlier
rooms, and stretched its dignity from front to back of the house. Its
appointments were more than worthy of it: the darkish blue of the walls,
a subtle quality of colour that mingled austerity with a sweet feminine
glamour: the gilded craftmanship of the chairs and sofas and footstools
and tables and what-nots, those lovely baubles of Louis Seize days which
seem ever to coquette for your admiration the better to despise your
favour, for they are not very comfortable: and the rich and fading
brocades and velvets that covered them, stuffs of quality whose pride
increases as their colour fades, velvets of worldly wisdom which know
that there’s nothing in the world more assured of respect than velvets
that are caressed by the gloss of respectful usage.... One hand lightly
in his, her other swept round the room.
“There was a gentleman of Virginia, who lived in Kent,” she comically
began; then very gravely: “very old he was, and fierce and contemptuous
and gallant, and very, very odd in the way of his affections. For he
said nothing, and for the ten years that he was my guardian he scarcely
came near me--and then he died and left me all this and much besides!”
“I’ve spent the ‘much besides,’” she said.
“Dinner is served, madam,” a dim voice broke on them from the twilight
of the room.
2
It is a commonplace that a young man in love is very apt to talk about
himself. It is also a commonplace that the interest of an intelligent
woman will seduce a young man into being exceedingly interested in
himself. And so it wasn’t surprising--except, of course, to Ivor Marlay,
who had always had a vague idea that commonplaces somehow didn’t, and
somehow shouldn’t, apply to him--it wasn’t surprising that he did talk
about himself, and at length, during and after dinner on that night in
July, 1912. He needed some pressing, of course. Mrs. Gray was very good
at pressing.
“For, after all,” she protested, “I know nothing at all about
you--except that you are, well, curiously polished and literate, as
though you had been educated abroad. But I do hope you weren’t!”
“I was five years at a public-school,” said Ivor, “so I’m quite
self-educated.”
She rebuked him, for she was glad of the public-school. She liked her
Englishmen to be English. She herself spoke foreign languages quite well
enough for two, she said.
And then she led him on by her naïve surprise that he was, and intended
to be, a writer. That seemed to her very charming, for he might so
easily have been nothing at all, and with every excuse. (The charming
things your Magdalens say are as nothing to those they suggest. But
there are not many Magdalens.) She had had wide and intimate experience
of writers, dramatists, and all manner of artists, so that she was not
wildly excited at the fact of entertaining yet another. But that this
young man was a writer, interested her happily; for he was so obviously
something else as well, which was most unusual in writers. Magdalen Gray
did not, as a rule, like writers and suchlike (by “suchlike” she, of
course, meant publishers). She only dined with them when there was a
“first-night” to go to, only lunched with them before a “private-view.”
But she was too wise to explain her dislike by a generalisation, she
just mentioned that she didn’t like them very much, especially the
younger ones; and she suggested only that, perhaps, the word “I,” an
enthralling word when sparingly used, occurred too often in their
conversation: “which, on the other hand,” she said, “is very clever of
them, for I can’t think how they can manage to squeeze it in so often.”
“But it’s not,” she said, “the most important thing in the world to be
clever.”
“No,” Ivor agreed, and felt grave.
“But it’s very important to be genuine,” she said.
She led him on to tremendous confidences. She met the sympathetic
figures of his life, Aunt Moira and Aunt Percy, with sincere
understanding; and she told him that she found his life strange and
exciting and adventurous--and Ivor, looking at it with the impulse of
her sympathy, also found it strange and exciting and adventurous.
“It’s odd,” he said, “how one minute’s perfect comradeship can discount
all previous solitudes.”
She brought the truth out of him, he saw that, and how can a woman bring
the truth out of a man except by understanding him? Clearly, then, she
was his friend. It was so wonderful a fact that it almost overwhelmed
him; her wise friendliness revealed her to him as a marvellous gift of a
god, and a much more than fleshly god, too! And his mind so circled
about the _fact_ of this grave and gay Magdalen with the friendly eyes
and deep, dexterous understanding--that he was probably very dull indeed
towards the end of dinner. But Magdalen teased him about that very
gently, for she had always thought that no man was a man who wasn’t
sometimes frightfully dull.
3
And yet, as the night grew to midnight and past, all was not well with
Ivor Marlay.... They were on the wide divan, a battlefield of a divan,
in the window corner of the “room of state”--now changed into a room
deliciously intimate and secret, with but the one dim light of a very
shaded lamp, near them, to light its rich shadows and make more pregnant
the pregnant silences of two people. And there were several silences, in
the restless passage over midnight. Magdalen lay full length on the
divan, a luxuriously straight figure, her crossed hands supporting the
back of her head against a wide cushion of many colours. A tranquil
figure she looked, lying straightly there, with her eyes peacefully on
him--and yet little peace was there in Magdalen Gray at that moment, or
ever! Now, behind her tranquil poise, she wanted frightfully to mock him
by inquiring, quite casually, how, at his absurd age, he had discovered
that restraint is the highest pleasure of _la volupté_. She wanted to
ask him that, but it was just as well she didn’t, for he wouldn’t have
known what she was talking about, being much more completely
twenty-three than he (or she) thought.
To the cold eye of the philosopher there is nothing more ridiculous than
abandon, except it be restraint: there is nothing more absurd than
temptation, except it be the grander temptation not to yield to it. But
it is notorious that philosophers never allow for other people’s
ideals--which do certainly make the ridiculous even more ridiculous, but
rarely fail to make it sublime. And Ivor Pelham Marlay, now fired at
last out of the lethargy of two years, was become a very rigid and
proper idealist, and very troublesome to himself, which is the way of
idealists.... He was distressed, in that restless passage over midnight.
He wondered, very dimly, if masculine brutalities were peculiar to
essentially feminine woman; years later, he found that they were. She
wanted her way of him, in her own way, now! He saw that, because she
didn’t hide it; she didn’t hide it because she hadn’t that kind of
restraint, she was deplorable. She wanted to “find out.” He had
knowledge of her as a woman without shame and without pride in love. He
called it love, because he was certain that it was love, as far as he
was concerned, anyway. She had no pride, she said. “There is no pride in
love, Ivor. Not really. To be proud in love is the mark of little
people. Pride is for women who go to balls or night-clubs every night,
and who, because they are always tired, bring the worst out of their
men; they need pride. But your great lover is so proud that he takes no
thought of pride.” But, on top of that, she had no shame either--and
that he shamelessly loved! He adored the honest quality of her
shamelessness, its elegance and its clear shades of candour. Thus, every
minute increased his longing for her, every minute increased his feeling
of her nearness; and the slim, soft lines of her body maddeningly
suggested the coil of her limbs--but it couldn’t, it simply couldn’t,
happen like “this”! “This” was all wrong, in this particular instance.
She was too splendid, he wanted her too utterly, to allow it to happen
like “this.” He wanted her--oh, vastly! She was wanton, he knew that. He
felt that, but he could not understand it--she who was so absolutely
right, so sensible! She was amazing. She wanted to be ravished, like a
woman in a dream....
“Ivor!” she said suddenly. “I wish for a peach.”
There was a basket of them on a little table, in the shadows of the
room; and, in the shadows, the peaches that had that morning graced the
Piccadilly windows of Messrs. Solomon’s were changed into lovely
baubles, they looked like Oriental things of beauty and significance:
they looked like the peaches that are found in books, ruddy and ripe and
bejewelled.
“And, if you please,” she said, “I’d like it peeled or skinned, or
whatever the process is called that uncovers a peach.”
He had it on a plate on his knee, and a toy knife and fork. He set to
work on it delicately. But there are peaches and peaches, and some can
be very wayward about being undressed.
“This isn’t the sort of peach I’m used to,” said Ivor at last, in
disgust.
“Are you making a mess of it, Ivor?” her whisper mocked him; for her
head had stealthily left its corner, it was by his shoulder now, and her
body encircled him, her body made a prison around him, and her breath
and hair were warm on his cheek.
“Yes,” he said--and kissed her, lightly. Their first kiss, that light,
flimsy thing! It was his tribute to her enchantment, it wasn’t fired of
passion--it wasn’t the sort of kiss a woman of thirty had the right to
expect from a very young man on such a divan. It was a pathetic kiss. A
begging kiss it was really, that light thing born of a question about a
peach, for Ivor was begging her to understand, to understand his hunger
for the most absolute intimacy, the most perfect friendship, and not
just the mortal thing. But there were depths in Magdalen stronger than
her understanding....
Ivor made a movement to go. And he was going.
“Don’t go!” she said. And her arm swept to his shoulder--and suddenly
fell back again to her side; and she looked up at the man standing
feverishly above her, she looked at him as though she couldn’t see him
for the darkness over her eyes. And suddenly, wantonly, she grimaced at
him, oh so vengefully! Whereat they both fell to such a fit of giggling
that Ivor was gone and Magdalen alone before either had realised the
parting.
Perhaps those two had never been such great friends but for the curious
issue of that remarkable dinner. Perhaps, if it had ended otherwise,
Ivor would have walked away on air, as the saying is, or perhaps he
would have crept away and never returned, for this was a queer moment in
his life, and he might easily have done a caddish thing because of his
foiled desire for a fine one. But if he had returned and enjoyed, this
chronicle could not have been written--for never in the whole history of
the world, neither in folk-tale or legend or romance, has there been a
tale about a merely physical bond. To make a tale there must be a vow,
of marriage, of celibacy, or of friendship; and to make a tale that vow
must be upheld or broken. There are no other tales than those, there are
only experiments.
CHAPTER V
1
It was difficult for Ivor, at three-and-twenty, to understand Magdalen;
for she was so dangerously simple, so deplorably civilised, so utterly
childish. He had realised her more easily and quickly had he never
before met a woman--for naturally, being a young man of “experience,” he
couldn’t help but apply a bit of it to her, and so went quickly all
awry. He couldn’t help, any more than any one else, applying to her his
almost unconscious knowledge of the petty dishonesties, antagonisms,
hypocrisies, and caddishnesses that are peculiarly evident in women in
love who are normally very gentle and honourable. But with Magdalen he
had to begin right at the beginning; her _quality_, her artistry, her
amazing talent for being articulate about those delicious shades of
feelings that our more self-conscious lips do often fumble for but never
attain--all this, in her, contained an amazing degree of _earth_, just
common, pungent _earth_; which meant that everything she did, of honour
or dishonour, was terrifyingly spontaneous, and, once done, inevitable.
And such understanding of her as he acquired, came to him only much
later, after they had lain becalmed in that Saragossa Sea that is
charted between love and friendship: a sea of shameful doubts and
deceits and desires, a seaweed sea of broken vows and harsh antagonisms,
and one that is very difficult for the tortured voyager to traverse, in
the journey back from love and forward to friendship, for there is no
compass to point the sad direction....
It was in the nature of Magdalen that her love had in it nothing
stationary. She couldn’t help but make everything she loved infinitely
remote and desirable and unattainable. How sweet, thus, was the
attainment! She had loved and been loved so often, yet she had no base
knowledge of love. She was not wise in love, she had no caution. She
never wanted to make use of love, she let love use her. And experience
had robbed her of no pleasures, nor repetition tainted her tenderness:
she was like a fruit-tree to which each ripening season is a fecund joy,
whose fruit is sweet to your mouth yet serious in its sweetness, lest
your easy looting provoke your levity. Magdalen had no politics.
She romanced, with grave unconsciousness. She loved Ivor, and so pursued
him. She couldn’t love him otherwise, she must pursue even a pursuer. To
attain and enjoy him with her full abundance she must first make him
unattainable. Her mind must grow chaotic with helplessness at the
“difficulty” of this man, who seemed to draw back when she
advanced--indeed, she romanced seriously!--who seemed never to give
himself utterly but ever to be holding back something frightfully
essential. Yes, he was holding back something frightfully essential, it
was evident--while she loved him, but how much! And she told him
everything, she made no mystery of a love that seemed to Ivor
exceedingly mysterious. There was no private corner nor secret shadow of
her heart that she didn’t wantonly reveal to him. She simply didn’t
care! She held him very tight and bewildered him with her
love-making--to break off suddenly and swear a mighty oath that he was
far beside the mark if he thought that she was repeating what she had
sometime said to some previous lover: saying that she had a wonderful
talent for love-speeches which hadn’t so far received due recognition,
“or else, Ivor, you would be doing something adequate instead of lying
there like an Eastern emperor listening to the words of your odalisque.”
“All my life,” she said, “I have had love-speeches on my lips and in my
heart, and that’s why I’ve had lovers, for I couldn’t bear to keep them
to myself. I simply had to tell them to some one, even if they turned
out to be very ordinary, which they mostly did.... Yes, Ivor, it was
exactly as I’m telling you. And if you ever put me into a book, which
you probably will, for you will never meet another woman who knows so
much about the things that are not in books, you will say that I was a
kind of love-tailor, forever measuring and fitting men to the things in
my heart; and just like any other tailor I sometimes made misfits, but I
am very persevering, Ivor, and so it always came right in the end. But
never before have I fitted my love-speeches to a man as I’m fitting them
to you--and getting very little for my trouble, I might add. It has
always been the other way about, Ivor, and I’m not sure that I like this
new departure in tailoring. Oh, but you are so secret, my dear! Your
brown eyes are so secret, don’t you know they are? And sometimes I wish
your eyes were pools of water so that I could drown myself in them, and
be done with loving you so much who love me so little.... Oh, Ivor, how
base you and all men are! You suspect the fine phrases of love--yes, you
do, Ivor! If a woman looks at you speechless with love, you believe she
loves you. But if she puts her love to you in sentences, complete with
commas, colons, and full-stops, if she gives you her love dressed in the
purple and fine linen of her heart--you can’t help thinking her rather
odd, can you, dear?...”
2
Of course this kind of thing didn’t go on every day; it sometimes didn’t
happen for days at a time; and for the rest they were great friends.
Their time together passed wonderfully in the merry practice of
friendship. Magdalen fulfilled every condition of intimacy, wonderfully
unasked. She opened the doors of her life and let him look in, while
she trembled for fear he might find it altogether too bad. He wanted to
know--everything! (He had never known anything before.) Friendship that
held secrecy was a sorry thing, they both agreed. There is no secrecy
between us, they said. There is restraint, but there is no secrecy--that
is more or less what they said. Nor was there! She told him of
enormities of inconstancy--to prove her constancy to him! “This talent
for exploring makes such a mess of life,” she said. But now at last she
had found a friend in love. They were plainly comrades, one to the
other. “Playmates,” she insisted.
“The most wonderful thing about miracles is that they sometimes happen,”
writes that magnificent Catholic, Mr. Chesterton; but one needn’t be a
magnificent Catholic to believe him. Ivor believed him.... She had been
a friend to very many people, she told him, but she herself had had no
friend. Always to give, to give, to give, she said, and nothing ever
given back--to me, waiting for the tender things! “I’ve tried so hard,”
she said. But now Ivor had come, he was her first friend. “I’m virginal
to friendship, anyway,” she told him gravely; and, thereupon, she
emphasised her age, the phenomenal age of one-and-thirty. And,
exercising his friendship, she found him a rare man. Anyway, she said he
was, and gave her reasons for thinking so at considerable length. There
are jealous men, she told him, to whom a woman cannot speak of her past
life; there are foolish men who will love a woman foolishly no matter
what she tells them of herself; there are absurd men who beg, beseech
and implore to be told “everything,” and then make a scene about it;
there are strong and silent men in whom a woman trustfully confides, and
who use the confession against her at the first opportunity; and there
are those rare men who love jealously yet intelligently, to whom a woman
can tell everything and, in having told, forget everything--men who can
understand without softness and be hard without rancour: men whose
dignity is in their hearts and not on their lips, rare men to whom a
woman cannot cheapen herself, for they will not have her cheap, they are
not aware that she can be cheap--and so she is not, great as is the
temptation to cheapness in a woman in love. Anyway, that is what
Magdalen said, and she probably knew.
Of course his writing suffered by neglect. Every kind of work always
does, in contact with accursed women like Magdalen, who enthral men by
enslaving themselves; and who adorn a man’s life by destroying it. But,
though his writing suffered by neglect, how much it gained in knowledge!
For Magdalen was his real education. She knew so much, of the things
that are not in books--“but will be,” she teased him. He learned about
men by listening to her, and about himself not a little by loving her.
She influenced him deeply; her way of speaking influenced not only his,
but also his way of writing: so that when, years later, Rodney West read
his best novel,[C] he rather grimly said that there were two people who
could have written that book in that way and Ivor Marlay was only one of
them. She polished him, and she smoothed down the sharp dogmatisms and
conceits which had so far taken the place of conversation with him. Thus
was Aunt Percy proved right in thinking that there were other women
beside himself, he shouldn’t wonder! Aunt Percy would have liked
Magdalen; he would have invited her to lunch at the Bath Club now and
then, and as they sat down he would have asked her brusquely: “Well, and
how’s that young man of mine? Bit above himself, I shouldn’t wonder.”
Magdalen would have made Aunt Percy laugh.
CHAPTER VI
1
From that memorable night in July when Ivor first dined with Magdalen he
almost literally saw no one else during the ensuing twelve months and
more--unless Gerald Trevor happened to insist, as he occasionally did.
Ivor simply had no interest in any one else throughout that time; for it
is the way of certain natures to show their consummate interest in one
person by the neglect of all others. And so Ivor missed many exciting
happenings, for the summer of 1913 was a very eventful one in many ways.
The season of 1913 was, as every one remembers, more than usually
brilliant. Mayfair was brilliant, nothing disturbed Mayfair--and Mayfair
disturbed nothing; which curious phenomenon was explained by thinking
men by the rather far-fetched theory that Mayfair does not really matter
in England, that it is not England: that, in fact, Mayfair does not
represent England any more than, say, the Duke of Manchester represents
Manchester. But, all the same, young men make fortunes by writing about
it, Gentlemen with Dusters by reviling it, gallant Colonels by
describing it, and the _London Mail_ circulates tremendously.
Mayfair was the centre of England, America, and Palestine. And it was
observed with pleasure that the young Prince of Wales was the only royal
person since Charles II. who even looked like being “in” Society. It was
the season of very brilliant _débutantes_, daring matrons, and startling
dowagers. Of course suburban people went about saying nasty things about
them, silly things like: “You can’t tell a _débutante_ from a
_déclassée_ nowadays,” and thought they had made an epigram.
Gentlewomen of the middle sort were horrified by the rumours concerning
the immoralities and perversities of the lovely young ladies whose
photographs they breathlessly looked at in the weekly papers; and a
woman had only to be found dead in an elegant flat in Maida Vale for the
Press to report: “Strange Death of Society Woman. Believed to have been
due to Drugs.” It was commonly said that the number of ‘society women’
who took drugs was unbelievable, while as for drink!... One way and
another “society women” began to come in for a lot of contempt.
Chorus-girls despised them, and wanted to know what would happen to
_them_ if _they_ did Such Things. Young men were very cynical that year.
Every one tried to learn the tango that season, and then every one
decided that it wasn’t _really_ a ballroom dance. Young women began to
look like the portraits that the fashionable portrait-painters were
painting of them--lovely but “untemperamental”; and middle-aged men
shook their heads over them, saying that these young women seemed to
have no temperament. But the young women knew better, for whereas their
Victorian mothers had baffled men with reticence, they baffled men with
candour; and every now and then one of them would commit adultery at the
top of her voice. [Whereupon--a divorce has been arranged and will
shortly take place. Letters: “Dear Bubbles” her lawyers write, “why do
you not come back to me? I have always tried to do my duty to you, I
have always tried to make a comfortable home for you, and now that I am
panting to see you, you won’t come near me. Please, Bubbly dear, why are
you so cold to me? Yrs. ever adoring Bunny.” His lawyers passionately
retort: “Nothing will induce me to return to you. I have been thinking
this out carefully, and have decided never to live with you again. We
are too different, temperamentally and financially. Yrs. sincerely,
Derek Maltravers.” Restitution of Conjugal Rights. A rest. Nothing doing
about Restitution of Conjugal Rights. Formal Adultery proved. Decree
nisi. Another rest. Decree absolute. It’s only a trick, of course--but
it needs money. There’s nothing at all to prevent poor people doing
it--except, of course, that it needs money. Mr. Justice Darling might
make a joke about that. He makes such good jokes.] Dancing increased in
popularity and violence, night-clubs became fashionable, and young
ladies were sometimes seen drunk in them. Many Americans settled in
London that season, saying they were crazy about it, but most of them
have gone since, crazier than ever about it. The slits disappeared from
the back of men’s jackets, but top-hats and gent.’s morning-suits were
still worn.
And Lady Lois Lamprey was married to a companionable little earl, a
notable wedding that lit the world from Peru to Samarcand. (Samarcand
was just then becoming fashionable among those who go down to the sea in
poetry). But she was still called Lady Lois. “You have made it so
difficult for people to realise it’s your _maiden_ name,” said her
mother the marchioness severely. And Lady Lois was loved by many young
men, but she loved not one. But they were wonderfully revenged by the
artists who painted portraits of her and the writers who wrote novels
about her, in which poor Lois was always shown as a _femme fatale par
excellence_ with a heart of jade and innumerable lovers. The Hon.
Virginia Tracy became more than ever famous for her beauty, clothes and
witty silences. Also she painted portraits of her women friends in bed,
and made a few trips in a thing called an aeroplane: about which her
mother, Lady Carnal, told the Press that she was very annoyed indeed,
and that Virginia should not do these things, for she had a weak heart;
but there was somehow a misunderstanding about that weak heart, it was
never exactly located, the Northcliffe Press saying it was Lady Carnal’s
and the Rest that it was Virginia’s, and the question was not finally
settled until Lady Carnal’s sudden death a year later. Virginia almost
got married twice, but finally made a brilliant _coup de cœur_ by
marrying an American during a week-end at Bognor. Which, Lois said, is
the kind of thing that might happen to any one who wastes week-ends at
Bognor. He was a millionaire, however, which was more than her little
earl was.... And there was a wonderful party of celebration at the Mont
Agel, one in a chain of many wonderful parties. And then, later, every
one went to Venice....
That is more or less how it all appeared to Ivor in his happy corner.
And every now and then he would dine with Gerald Trevor at the Café
Royal, and he would hear of great dinners and dances and _potins_, of
the hostesses that were made and the hearts that were broken, of the
amazing progress of the legend of Lady Lois and of the recklessness of
Virginia. But it didn’t seem to Ivor that he was missing much; it seemed
to Ivor that he would be missing very much if he hadn’t met Magdalen.
CHAPTER VII
1
A year had passed, from one July day to its elder brother. And Ivor had
not realised the wonder of that special day in July, he had no head for
dates--until, calling to see her that afternoon, she suddenly held her
date-book-calendar under his nose and very slowly tore off the leaf of
the previous day, when behold! there, below the date of that day, was
writ largely the name “Ivor!”
“Our birthday,” she told him gravely. “Birthday of that night last year
when first you came to dinner....”
“And realised that I’d never, never dined before!”
“Yes, how thin you were, Ivor! But you’ll be much fatter after to-night,
for we will have a wonderful dinner somewhere in the country, because
it’s our birthday. I hate my own so much, but I’m sentimental about
ours....”
Now there was a mood of Magdalen’s which complained of Ivor’s “splendid
isolation,” of his present way of not seeing any one else. Magdalen saw
quite a number of other people: it was very difficult for her not to,
for the world was full of men and women who, on given occasions, seemed
unable to “touch” food unless Magdalen was there to “touch” it with
them. At first she had seemed not to realise Ivor’s present way of life;
and then there had come a time when she made a gesture against it. But
man is not warned by gestures alone, so she had to clothe hers with
words. And even then Ivor would not be brought to see that it mattered
one way or the other, whether he saw people or didn’t. He read a great
deal, he said. And he played rackets.... She teased him with her
disfavour, he mocked her with his love. And then one day she got annoyed
with him, and he with her.
They were at luncheon at his flat, and she asked him what he had done
the evening before. She asked as though she didn’t know the answer, but
that did not deter Ivor from giving it.
“Dinner, bed, book,” he explained. “Charming evening.”
“Its description, however, doesn’t make for much conversation,” said
Magdalen.
“I want to know,” she dangerously said, “why, whenever I can’t dine with
you, much as I’d like to, you must always dine alone. I feel there must
be a reason for that....”
“What Magdalen wins the world must lose!” Ivor mocked humbly.
“That’s all very well,” she protested vividly. “But don’t you see, my
dear, that it’s very unfair, your absurd isolation? (_a_) It’s unfair to
me; (_b_) It’s unfair to yourself; and (_c_) It’s frightfully unfair to
the countless people whom you deprive of the charm of your countenance
and company, to say nothing of your conversation....”
“Besides,” she said plantively, “your idiotic isolation is making me
what’s called a ‘marked’ woman. And if it’s all the same to you, Ivor,
I’d just as soon not be a ‘marked’ woman. I hate being thought of as a
woman who snatches young men from their natural surroundings and keeps
them in close confinement for fear of competition, if any. To please me,
Ivor ...” she suddenly pleaded.
“You’re pretending, Magdalen!” he accused her sulkily. “None of those
things matter and half of them aren’t true, especially about your being
a ‘marked’ woman because of me. Those things are only true of people who
live in restaurants, and you and I have scarcely been in one together
since I saw you with Rodney West that night.” He was very young and
very sulky.
“What is it all about, Magdalen?” he asked miserably. A year had passed,
and this was their first scene--their first scene! No ordinary year,
that....
“But, Ivor, I don’t want you to wake up one morning--to find no Magdalen
and no friends!” She jerked the thing out....
“Why no Magdalen?” he stabbed at her.
“But that’s childish, you sweet!”
His eyes would not meet hers, he looked blackly at the table,
waiting.... If only he would meet her eyes she would make it all right,
he would understand. She knew herself _so_ well ... sometimes. But he
was so young!
“I don’t see why,” he said at last, to his plate.
“There’s a fatality about my kind of love,” Magdalen said softly,
miserably, heroically. “It ends.” And in that moment Magdalen loved Ivor
as she had never before loved him; she was like that.
“Mine doesn’t.”
Silence....
“Stuff!” said Magdalen--and shrieked with laughter! He blushed
furiously.
“Look here,” he snarled, “do you or don’t you love me?”
“I do,” snapped Magdalen. “But I’ve got ideas.”
Ivor leant forward truculently.
“Then if you do,” he said very slowly, “what the devil are you talking
about?”
Magdalen leant forward, so that there was nothing but their breath
between her earnest face and his truculent face.
“I adore you--mark that, Ivor! Maybe I don’t love you as a dairymaid
would love you, but I’m sure that into one month I cram as much love for
you as a dairymaid would give in a lifetime; her way is called
‘simplicity,’ and is supposed to be divine. But I am divine in my own
way. I adore you. If I were an epithet and you were a noun I’d follow
you about on every page of the book of life--until you were oh so tired
of me! But I get ideas....”
“Women have moods,” she whispered. “And let me tell you about these
moods, Ivor, so that you will learn not to madden the women who will
love you. Women have moods every now and then, they can’t help it and no
one can help them. You knew that? You poor lamb, you don’t know anything
really.... These moods, let me tell you, are vast and inexplicable and
untidy and terrible. They devastate everything. Particularly, they
devastate men, these moods. I’ve seen them destroy better men than you,
Ivor. They change a woman’s personality, they give her a new mind for
that short time, a new and unhappy mind, as every one is unhappy who
sees too clearly--but lovers go on being lovers, not understanding
anything but that it’s a damned nuisance, not understanding that this
woman’s mood can change a lover into a man and a man into dross. Women
are much given to wanting to speak the truth in this mood, for hysteria
seems to act that way--but they generally don’t speak it, life being
what it is, and that’s what makes them so evil and bad-tempered to the
men they love, but who insist on loving them at any hour of the day and
night, regardless of sense or sensibility....”
“Of course,” said Ivor reasonably, “if it’s only a mood....”
Now a mood is like a cloud against the sky, it comes and goes and leaves
no mark. But that is a lie, for a mood is like nothing else at all.
2
The Hallidays went abroad that August, or rather they went to Deauville,
and Euphemia Halliday lent Magdalen her house near Sonning for that
month. In the last few months Euphemia had discovered a surprising
affection for Magdalen, to whom she had always referred to as “poor
little Magdalen! she is so witty, you know!” Euphemia always referred to
women poorer than herself as “poor little----,” and gave it to be
understood that she liked to be kind to people. But she had never before
been “kind” to or about Magdalen, and Magdalen was quite puzzled about
it until she heard that Euphemia had quarrelled with Lois Lamprey, for
Euphemia was full of caddish little enthusiasms about women, and as one
collapsed she must quickly make another. However, Magdalen couldn’t help
being charming to her, and Euphemia gushed over with the gift of her
house near Sonning for August.
“A gift,” Magdalen pathetically told Ivor, “for which she will ask me
twenty to thirty guineas a week when she comes back--and get it, what’s
more! I’m the most easily cheated woman I know, Ivor.”
“That’s just your kind of vanity,” he pointed out. “You’re the vainest
woman in the world, really--but it’s a private vanity, and doesn’t hurt
any one but yourself, for it consists of letting horrible people impose
on you while you just quietly despise them all to yourself.”
“This house we were speaking of,” said Magdalen severely, “is a charming
house. What I mean is that it has every modern comfort and convenience,
and duplicates of each. There is a bathroom to each bedroom and a divan
in each sitting-room, telephones in every corner and servants round
every corner. And it’s just far enough from the river to be out of the
reach of passing footlight-favourites and energetic men wearing Leander
ties. One will be very comfortable there, Ivor.”
“One would prefer a cottage, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “My
husband--with whose tastes you seem to agree so well, Ivor--has always
told me that I could wear a cottage very becomingly.”
“Do you know,” Ivor broke in, “that that man seems to me the nicest man
in the world, from what you always say of him.”
“But indeed he is,” she cried. “He’s a dear, my Tristram. I married him
when I was eighteen, and I still say it, although I’ve been begging him
to divorce me ever since. But he’s too wise to do that, and though he
has offered to let me divorce him, I’m not quite cad enough to do
that--not until he wants to marry some one else, anyway, which I’m
afraid is improbable. And when he comes home he stays at the club and we
dine together, and I have to confess that being married to him has
prevented me from marrying some awful men in my time.... Oh, Ivor!” she
suddenly clapped her hands with an idea, “let’s take a flight of fancy
and imagine you going to see Tristram one day--he would like you, you’re
his sort of man; and let’s suppose you told him what you’ve threatened
to tell him as soon as you see him, that if he divorced me or let me
divorce him you would marry me. Whereupon he would first of all ask you
if you could keep me in the luxury to which I’ve been accustomed. On
your saying rather sulkily that you could, he would further ask you what
grounds you had for thinking you would make me happy. Then you’d look
sulkier than ever, and mutter something about my loving you (which
indeed I do). After a silence of a few seconds, spent by both of you in
emptying the drinks which Tristram had ordered on hearing that a man had
come to see him about his wife--after this short, impressive silence, he
would say, quite gently, ‘But she loved me, too!’ Now he’s much older
than you, Ivor, and your natural deference for age would be fighting a
battle with your stern conviction that the two cases weren’t at all
parallel--but before you could explain that he would add, ever so
genially: ‘Suppose, Marlay, we talk of it in a year from to-day--how
would that do?’ At that you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, especially
if you were sitting in his club; and so you would spend the rest of the
time in asking him about the extremely foreign countries he had visited,
and then you’d both forget all about me and probably lunch together....”
“This house we were speaking of,” said Ivor, “seems to me a charming
house....”
“And it’s called Camelot!” cried Magdalen.
CHAPTER VIII
1
That August, Ivor Marlay’s car--as swift and handsome a two-seater as
any could be at that primitive time of motoring--became almost an
institution to the little boys along the London road, from Sonning to
London and from London to Sonning, which is by no means the same
distance. The conventions had naturally to be observed in some degree,
but what time he didn’t spend at Camelot was certainly spent in getting
to or away from it. Many people came down to stay with Magdalen, but now
and again there would be a divine _hiatus_ between those who had just
gone and those who were about to come, and it was Ivor’s business to
fill that _hiatus_ as speedily as he might. Magdalen was very good at
arranging the frequent occurrence of these _hiatuses_, but not, she
insisted, half so good as Ivor was in filling them up, for his car
seemed to swing into the drive within a minute of her having telephoned
to London to say: “There is bed and board at Camelot, Ivor....”
But of what happened at Camelot near Sonning during that brilliant
August of 1913 when England really showed the world what it could do in
the way of Augusts: how those days, stolen from Magdalen’s friends, days
of leisure and love and talking--but how they talked, and
seriously!--passed like fantasies of sunlight, so bright and quick: how
they walked through the lush of August nights in the gardens of Camelot,
“towards the moon and back,” and were content in this plenitude of
companionship: and how they would sometimes be sad in passing silences,
each knowing that these hours could have no parallel and that nothing
repeats itself except regret: and how each would sometimes mystify and
torture the other by a shadow over the face.... And how, among others,
came Rodney West, K.C., as calmly genial as ever, and how the great
friendship between him and Magdalen, estranged this past year, was plain
to see: and how people wondered at this perfect attainment of peace with
honour, but Ivor was glad of it: and how they stole nights together
until sunrise, and so wonderfully that even a sunrise by Turner would
have been a colourless thing beside the dawn of their awakening. It was
all very good, this way and that way and every way....
But to tell of what happened at Camelot near Sonning during that
all-too-short month would fill a book. Whereas our way lies, less
lyrically, in the direction of disenchantment and death. There’s a
pinnacle reached (by the adventurous) and life breathlessly surveyed
thence, and found to be but the servant of this moment on this pinnacle;
but then there is the coming down from that high estate, two deities
becoming every moment more mortal, the one suppliant and the other
satiate, or both satiate, which is perhaps even more horrible. Mediæval
words there are to fit the case, full-blooded words like treachery and
betrayal and dishonour, but nowadays a broken vow does not mean a broken
head; it means a headache to the one and a long walk for the other, “to
get rid of all this....”
2
The climax was at Camelot, it was there they climbed the ultimate
mountain. But the descent took them several months, and the New Year of
1914 was come before the thing was over. And the damnable part of it was
that it was he who seemed to change, and not she!
She remained, as always, his perfect friend; to the naked eye nothing
strange could be seen to be happening in her, there were noticeable
about her not one of those subtle signs that are supposed to mark a
tired woman; and none of the primary emotional stars were seen to stop
in their courses. But Ivor’s eyes were not naked, they were jaundiced
with love, and he saw that something was happening in Magdalen, from
October onwards. He saw it, but of course he didn’t believe it; and he
was unpleasant, in the vague way in which men are unpleasant about vague
suspicions. In fact, of all the mistakes that a man can make in trying
to win back a woman, Ivor neglected to make not one: from suspicion to
bitterness by way of silence, from bitterness to suspicion by way of
indifference, and a lot of other unpleasantries as well. He was going
through hell, and there is nothing more tedious than the company of a
sensitive young man who is going through hell....
But Magdalen, if she thought that, thought it philosophically. It was
most usual in men.... She bore with him patiently, insufferable though
he was. “Waste, waste!” he would say, among other silly things. “To
think that all this has been waste!” She assured him that it wasn’t
waste, that fine things aren’t wasted. He rounded on her about the
“fine” things, and she was quite silent, and then he was ashamed. Poor
Ivor! He was spared nothing, for she would tell him of her great
affection for him, the like of which she had never felt for man or woman
before, it was so great and understanding and unending--the only thing
about me that is unending, she said bitterly. She shouldn’t have told
him of her affection, she should have kept it secret, she should have
pretended to have grown to detest him; so that he could have turned on
her and cursed her and gone his way. Poor Magdalen! She couldn’t
pretend. And it was her avowed fondness that continually gave him hope,
it was the great rock on which he built castle after castle, each to
tumble down at sight of her lustreless eyes in his arms....
Magdalen couldn’t help herself--how could she, she was as she was!--but
she did try to help him. She was the confidante of his misery about her;
she was the great friend to whom he told his griefs about her; and she
it was who tried to soothe him about the imperfections of his mistress.
But she could never convince him that his mistress was worthless, too
used in the traffic of love to be worthy of being so loved; and she
utterly failed to convince him that life was worth living in spite of
the inconstancy of one wretched woman....
An entirely unmoral woman Magdalen was, but she had a firm etiquette of
the heart: and this made her pre-eminent in a man’s regrets, for that
etiquette of the heart is the rarest of all things--unless it is,
however, that it is rarely observable in good women simply because of
the many other commendable qualities that crowd one’s vision of them.
Magdalen was a woman of honour in everything but honour. And Magdalen
grew in Ivor’s mind to symbolise civilised women, in all the grace of
kindness and imperfection, but he was to find that civilised women
aren’t really like that; he was to find that the nicest women grow
vindictive when they are bored (it is understood that men, when they are
bored, just go away, extremely strong and silent); and that their
unwilling constancy is often the cause of innumerable little antagonisms
and caddishness, and that they are seldom dignified in their sudden
dislike of an intimacy. They wish to draw back, that’s what it is. But
Magdalen wished only to go on, “to find out.” And Ivor, to these later
women, would speak of Magdalen, revenging himself on their crudities. He
would not refer to her by name, of course, he would just suggest her
somehow, a nameless and polite figure of his past, or he would rather
bluntly say, “a woman I knew once,” and fix his dark eyes almost
contemptuously on his listener--who perhaps, it was not impossible, knew
that he was speaking of Magdalen Gray; and maybe she pitied him for
being a fool about such a woman, or maybe she vaguely respected him for
she didn’t quite know what. But, anyway, it was after he had known
Magdalen Gray that Ivor grew to be vaguely spoken about as one of those
men who are “nice about” women: a not unpleasing distinction, though of
course vague....
Thus, tiresome though he was throughout that winter, Magdalen bore with
him. It was he who finally could not bear with her.... Had she been
unfaithful to him? He was her friend--that is what she said. But he knew
that he was not her friend--not yet, anyway. He didn’t know how to
be.... Had she been unfaithful to him? “What would you like me to
answer?” she asked him, in the light of the “very shaded” lamp.
“If it will cure you of loving me,” she said thoughtfully, “I will tell
you that I have been unfaithful to you....”
“If it will not cure you but only hurt you,” she said thoughtfully, “I
will tell you that I have not been unfaithful to you....”
“It does not matter, anyway,” she said. “This infidelity business ...
between you and me.”
And then they were silent for a long time, thinking how it didn’t
matter--anyway. But of course it didn’t matter, this “infidelity
business”--it was just a thing of the body, almost an accident, but love
was a thing of the spirit. Love just swept it aside, love was
everything, love took no stock of infidelity at all. Some women simply
couldn’t be bodily faithful, that’s what it was; thank Heavens there
were only a few women like that, but they were splendid in other ways,
divine ways, and love must overlook infidelity. But love simply wouldn’t
soar, it descended into the abyss and consorted with infidelity, and
together they made a maelstrom that whizzed about young Ivor’s head and
sickened him of life and love and himself--particularly of himself. For
his supreme misery was not that Magdalen might have been unfaithful to
him, but that he was unfaithful to himself.
She had wanted to be ravished, like a woman in a dream; and when the
dream faded he found a friend, just a friend....
CHAPTER IX
1
In January, 1914, Ivor caught a cold in the head. He had always been
remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his
life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia long ago at school. He hadn’t the
faintest idea what to do with a cold in the head, he just took quinine
and continued to blow his nose. One day he produced his cold to
Magdalen, by special request, for he had avoided seeing her for a week;
and Magdalen said that he had caught the thing because he was run down
and that he must go away. She pointed out that he was the luckiest man
in the world, with or without a cold in the head.
“You’re free, Ivor!” she said. “A man with no ties and plenty of
money--my dear, the world’s for you! And here you are, hanging about
London in January, when you might be in all the lovely warm places in
the world, having marvellous adventures in the sun!”
But he couldn’t go away--and she knew, with pathetic impatience, that he
couldn’t. And then, in that bitter loneliness, he was sorry for himself.
And his cold continued.
Now there came a day that January when he had not seen Magdalen for two
weeks. The time was past when he could see Magdalen. He wanted too
much--anyway, it was too much now!--and he couldn’t pretend any more to
put up with a little. January was doing its worst that particular day;
the rain fell icy cold, and every hour or so it would beat down with
feverish fury; and the angry damp seemed to penetrate his flat and
bones, there was little comfort in his blazing fire--even had he been
restful enough to sit before it for any length of time. Outside, Upper
Brook Street was quiet and sodden; every now and then a bare-headed
manservant would scuttle under an umbrella to the pillar-box; and
towards lunch-time several cars--from his window above they looked like
large, fat, wet flies crawling in the glistening dirt--swung along from
Park Lane towards Grosvenor Square, full of people going to eat each
other’s food. And soon they too would be going south, and Magdalen among
them maybe....
Towards a darkened four o’clock he thought it might do him good to go
out and walk a little in the rain; he had a sudden longing to stand
bare-headed in the rain. It would certainly do him good.... There was a
throbbing pain in the back of his head. At least it seemed to be in the
back of his head, or to have its headquarters there, for the whole of
his head was heavy with it. Not a serious pain, but irritating. Every
few minutes he would shake his head as though to shake away the pain,
but it just went on irritating him. This damnable cold in the head....
He crushed and swallowed two aspirins, and went out.
He enjoyed it, this aimless wandering in the rain. It was fun to walk
slackly along while every one else was hurrying by, anxious to get
somewhere. He wasn’t anxious to get anywhere! The men looked awful in
the rain, he thought; they smelt of it, and looked like weeds that in
their hearts suspected as much; but the hurrying little women looked
attractive and pathetic, and oh so serious! There was one, a girl with a
white serious face and downcast eyes, whom he would have liked to speak
to, but she was swallowed up in the crowds that were waiting for buses
at Hyde Park Corner. He walked on, towards Knightsbridge. He wasn’t
going anywhere in particular. Maybe he might go into the Hyde Park Hotel
and have tea; he didn’t generally take tea, but this afternoon he just
might. But somehow he forgot to go as far as the Hyde Park Hotel, and
found himself at Magdalen’s door in Wilton Place. He was in
Knightsbridge, after all, and he might just as well have tea with
Magdalen as alone at the Hyde Park Hotel.
But Magdalen was not in.
“Now that’s very disappointing, Foster,” Ivor said. “And it’s raining,
too!”
“Yes, indeed it is, sir,” the man said sympathetically. “If you would
care to come in I could give you some tea, sir--and it might be that
madam will be in herself soon, though she left no word as to when she
would be coming in.”
“It’s cruelly wet,” Foster said thoughtfully, helping Ivor off with his
overcoat.
The tea question was settled, then--there, in the “room of state!” No
peaches in it now, though! and no Magdalen either! But he was not
waiting for Magdalen. He hadn’t really expected to find her at home. He
had wanted some tea, that’s all--and, after all, he had so often refused
tea in this house that it was only fair to come to it on the one
occasion when he did want tea. And now that he had had it he was just
waiting to finish a cigarette, and away he’d go. But, it was so warm and
pleasant in that “room of state,” he smoked another.... Six o’clock it
was now. Well, he wasn’t waiting for Magdalen, anyway. God knew where
she was! And he had nothing to say to her even if she did come in....
The half-hour struck. And Ivor, in a sudden wild fury, threw away the
cigarette he was about to light, and banged out of the house.
He knew very well where Magdalen was. Of course. Magdalen wasn’t the
sort of woman to hang about just anywhere all the time between lunch and
dinner--like Virginia and Lois and that crowd, who either sat about for
hours in one place or dashed about to a thousand places in an afternoon,
doing nothing at all. Magdalen was not like that, she either had a
purpose or she hadn’t; and if she hadn’t, she sat at home reading a
book. She read a lot of books. Hadn’t Gerald Trevor said of her, so
long ago, that Magdalen didn’t loiter unless there was something to
loiter for? She loiters actively, he had said. And Gerald was always
right about the women he wasn’t in love with, he would always make a
very good husband to the wrong wife.... But he would have liked to have
seen her, if only for a minute. Maybe she would have taken away this
pain in the back of his head, or anyway told him what to do with it.
Extraordinary how helpless he felt without her! But he would go to a
doctor to-morrow, if he wasn’t better. He had never been to a doctor
about anything before, but he would easily find one, they were
everywhere. He would ring up Magdalen and ask her, she knew several.
Maybe if he went back to Wilton Place now, maybe she.... But he strode
on. He had forgotten to button his overcoat on leaving her house, and
the icy wet wind billowed it out round his tall figure, it added to the
confusion of his passage through the dense evening crowds about Hyde
Park Corner. No fun in walking in the rain now! It was horribly ugly,
this sodden darkness. He felt ill and weak, but he couldn’t find a taxi,
he had to jostle through the crowd. Black and furious he looked, and
several people stared round at the tall lowering young man with the
defiant nose, who strode viciously past them in a billowing overcoat....
2
He dressed with extreme care and pomp that evening. He had a comical
idea that this throbbing pain in the back of his head would respect him
more if he put on a dress-suit. One should always be taut and rigid and
_soigné_, he thought. Magdalen said that too. The homely dinner jacket
wouldn’t impress any pain, there was no dignity in it. It suited
Argentines very well, _le smoking_. But Englishmen were made of sterner
stuff.
It had been his intention to dine at his club, and he was well down the
slope of Saint James’s Street before he sharply changed his mind. He
loathed his club, or any club. Lot of cow-eyed men. So he turned into
Arlington Street and into the Ritz. It was still raining.
In the restaurant he found a corner table, by the windows that face the
Green Park. It was a table for four, and may or may not have been
reserved, but as the young gentleman (who happened to be quite
unconscious of the diabolical frown on his forehead) seemed entirely
oblivious of every protest that was made, the second _maître d’hôtel_
shrugged his shoulders and let him have it. The second _maître d’hôtel_
lost nothing by this complaisance, however, for Ivor ordered
magnificently. There was naturally no question of offering him the
_table d’hôte_; you can’t singly take a table for four and then play
about with a _table d’hôte_. But the second _maître d’hôtel_ found him
every bit as good as four ordinary diners, and much less trouble; and he
ordered his waiters to take an interest in _le pauvre gigolo_....
Ivor also drank magnificently. He had a vague remembrance of some one
having once told him that champagne was the best remedy for any kind of
cold, and so he drank a bottle. And, because he had drunk a bottle, he
also broached a half-bottle. Krug, 1907.
“Coffee, sir?”
“Please. But do take the chill off it.”
And then a few brandies, ... without, he considered, the slightest
effect. It seemed to require a devilish lot of concentration to get
drunk, and concentration was just what he hadn’t got. So he gave up the
attempt, and after having stood on the hotel steps in Arlington Street
for several minutes, he thought to ask George Prest, the
_commissionaire_, if he had any striking and original ideas as to what
to do in London on a rainy night.
“How do chaps go wrong in London, George?”
“Might try the Empire, sir,” said George Prest.
“Taxi!” cried George Prest into the rain. And there was a taxi.
As Ivor was about to climb into it, he thrust his top-hat into the
_commissionaire’s_ hand. He pressed it on him.
“Keep it,” Ivor urged. “It’s quite a good one. My head wants air
to-night and the damn thing keeps on getting between it and air. And I’d
like you to have it, George. You can shove it into the cloak-room if you
like, but if I were you I’d keep it. It’s not a bad hat, as hats go.
You’ll need it when you retire....”
Not so sober as all that, after all! thought Ivor.
The Empire did not hold him for long. He tried, from the promenade, to
see what was happening on the stage, but he found that it hurt his eyes
to look, they were hot and burning. So he walked up and down for a
while, and then sat down on one of the red plush sofas outside the bar.
One should take an interest in human nature, he thought, and so he tried
to take an interest in the passing crowd. But it was not impressive,
that crowd. Of the men, several half-familiar faces nodded to him, and
he decided that he must have known them at school. He watched them, and
saw they hadn’t changed at all. They were a little pinker and less
pimply, that’s all. That’s because pimples grow inwards, he thought. And
they were talking to the women whom it had been their ambition, when at
school, to talk to. Just like Transome. Dear old Transome.... Later on,
when they were a bit more drunk, the women would get money from them,
and there would be fumbling with love. Then the women would get more
money from them. And to-morrow they would say that they had had a
marvellous time--and it would be true, too! But if these harlots,
thought Ivor, had anything even remotely resembling brains, and could
hold a man when he was stone-cold-sober as well as when he was
blind-drunk, they would long ago have been respectably married wives. A
harlot is only interesting when she had won her way to respectability.
All good harlots die in Mayfair, he thought. But these are no good at
their jobs, that’s what it is, and that’s why they’re such crashing
bores.
By a quarter-past ten he was in Leicester Square. And by half-past long
strides had taken him past Hyde Park Corner--again! Yes, he was going to
see Magdalen. He felt awfully ill, not only in his head, but all over, a
burning kind of illness, and he wanted to tell Magdalen exactly how ill
he was. His skin felt like a damp and unclean shirt. It was still
raining, but not much, and it was nice walking bare-headed in the cool
rain. It was the nicest part of this awful day, this quick walk. She
would see how ill he was, and be sorry for him. Besides, he wanted her
to tell him of a doctor; he would have to see a doctor, and to-night,
maybe. Had influenza, probably--or worse. That thought pleased him, for
she would be frightfully sorry for him. He longed for that, for her to
be sorry for him....
Yes, she was in. From the road he could see the dim lights behind the
curtains of the two windows of the “room of state.” Dim lights,
naturally. Magdalen and he had always had dim lights when they were
alone there, on that divan in the corner. Her eyes hated any light
except sunlight, she said. That shaded lamp of hers--that “very shaded
lamp”--gave a soft, sweet light, he could see the soft light of it in
his mind as he stood in the deserted road and looked up at the windows.
Then a taxi jerked round from Knightsbridge and moved him on to the
pavement by the door. Well, it didn’t matter if she wasn’t alone. He
wouldn’t go up, he only wanted to see her for a minute, just to ask her
about a doctor. She would be sure to see him, she had never refused yet,
anyway. If she did, he didn’t know what he would do, maybe he would go
to Saint George’s Hospital nearby, disguised as an accident. The pain
had somehow got to his side now, and hurt him when he breathed.
He rang the bell, and waited for a long time, but no one came to the
door. He rang again, and heard the tinkle of the bell in the basement.
And the third time he rang viciously, keeping his thumb on the
button--and Magdalen stood in the open doorway!
“Ivor, it’s _you_!”
He grinned at her sheepishly. He was afraid.
“Foster must have gone out,” she explained, staring at him wide-eyed....
“What is it, sweet?”
“I just thought----” Ivor mumbled, as he stumbled past her into the
narrow hall.
She closed the door softly behind them; and then she turned to him with
a concerned, business-like air. It was so unlike Ivor, to come thus! He
stood staring at her limply, with his back to the wall, limply. He just
stared at her, with a ridiculous smile. And Magdalen saw the bright pink
patches on the sallow cheeks--and how cadaverous he looked!--and the
dark eyes bright with fever. And her own grew vivid with concern, she
shook him by the shoulder to wake him to his condition, for he was
standing against the wall smiling stupidly at her.
“Ivor, how dare you be out in this state!” she cried vividly. “You look
frightfully ill, you ought to be in bed....” And with the palm of her
hand she lightly brushed his forehead, and the fever of it seemed to
stab her with anxiety. But it was cool to him, a white hand of ice on
his forehead, adorable ice, and he caught this hand by the wrist and
pressed it to his burning skin. He forgot his illness, and the pain in
his side which caught at every breath. He was wonderfully comfortable
with her, luxurious in the scrutiny of her concern. He wasn’t listening
to her quick words, his silly smile bade her to be quiet, ... and, with
her palm still pressed by him to his forehead, he caught her round the
body with one arm and held her to him, raising her off her feet so that
he could kiss her lips. Ice again, ice. He did not look into her eyes,
he was afraid to, for his kisses brought no lustre to them now; and how
dexterous she was now! somehow luring him to her cheek, where lies only
the sulky stuff of love. Magdalen couldn’t pretend, ever. Nervous words
of comfort came from her, a small laugh, a tiny, helpless gesture. Dear
Magdalen! And so he thought to comfort her for the boredom of his
kisses.
“I’m sorry, Magdalen,” he said....
“I’ve had such an awful day, Magdalen,” he said. His eyes were wet....
His illness was quite forgot--but not by her. She was silent, racked by
anxiety as to what to do with him.
“You see, Magdalen,” he whispered dazedly, “life is a most awful mess
without you. It’s caddish of me to make you responsible for all the
beauty in life, but I can’t help it. I must tell you. You’ve got no
right, you know, to be so admirable to a man....”
“And then,” he said suddenly, “to be so admirable to another man.” He
wanted to go on, to say something caddish....
“But I haven’t another friend, Ivor!” But she was thinking only of what
to do with him.
“No?” his eyes searched her face naïvely. “Well, then, I’ll be your
friend, indeed I will. Later on, though. For I somehow can’t yet get
used to not being your lover, it’s stupid of me. But I’ll be your
friend, Magdalen, you can rely on me.”
“Silly Ivor!” she laughed at him nervously, taking his arm. His absurd
seriousness unnerved her. “Why, you’ll have your work cut out to be your
own friend, in the state you are in! You’ve got influenza, that’s what
you’ve got. And you’ll go straight off to bed, please, straight away,
and I’ll send you a doctor. You didn’t think, I suppose, of seeing a
doctor, Ivor?”
“But that’s just what I came to see you about!” he remembered eagerly.
“Stay a moment,” she commanded, and flew quickly up the stairs. Ivor,
with his back to the wall, closed his eyes and tried to breathe evenly,
in the hope that the pain in his side was an illusion. Maybe it was ...
but it wasn’t. He opened his eyes; she was coming down again, wrapping
something up in paper.
“Hot-water bottle,” she explained, giving it to him. “I’m sure you
haven’t got one in your flat.”
“The correct procedure is,” she said, “to fill it with boiling water,
then go to bed and lay it on your tummy, and go to sleep. Some people
say it’s better to put it under your feet, but I’ve always inclined to
the tummy school. One sweats.”
“Now, Ivor, no more nonsense!” she almost stamped her foot as he still
made to delay. “And I’ll ring up Dr. Harvey as soon as you’ve gone, to
go and see you. He’ll be with you in a very few minutes.” She almost
pushed him to the door: deciding that she would follow him to his flat
as soon as she had telephoned Dr. Harvey.
He wouldn’t let her open the door, he blocked her way, and his fumbling
with it strained her nerves. But it was open at last. And without a word
he stumbled quickly out.
“You’ve decorated my life, anyway,” he called abruptly back from the
pavement, and strode away. She saw the paper round the hot-water bottle
flutter down to the glistening pavement. Shivering from the damp cold,
she watched the tall figure from the open doorway. Where had he left his
hat, she wondered? She hadn’t realised he had no hat. She began to run
after him to tell him to come back indoors while she tried to find a
taxi, but at that moment she saw him catch one at the Knightsbridge
corner....
Ivor, with his hand on the door-handle of the taxi, suddenly found it
impossible to direct the man to his flat. He suddenly found he couldn’t
bear the loneliness of his flat. And he quite forgot about Magdalen’s
doctor.
“Drive,” he told the man, “to Mr. Trevor’s flat in Savile Row. It’s a
charming flat, on the third floor....”
He’s certain not to know it, Ivor thought, and in that case I’ll go
home. He shifted the responsibility of his intrusion on Gerald on to the
man.
“No. 96, sir,” the man said. “Yes, sir.”
“I used to be Mr. Trevor’s valet once, sir,” the man said.
Well, thought Ivor, taxis are stranger than fiction. He lay back and
closed his eyes. The paper had dropped from the hot-water bottle, and he
hugged the rubber thing to him, smiling at the idea of Magdalen.... God,
how awful he felt! how his head racked him, and his breathing too!
The taxi pulled up, and after a while the driver jumped out to see to
his fare, who seemed to make no movement. He found his fare a heap in
the corner, his eyes closed.
“Mr. Trevor’s flat, sir,” said the man sympathetically. And he touched
his fare’s arm.
“All right, all right!” Ivor impatiently murmured, and managed to
stumble out. The man picked up the hot-water bottle from the pavement
and handed it to him; he was a pleasant man.
“Shall I help you up, sir?” he asked.
“Look here, I’m not drunk,” Ivor found sudden energy to protest. “But
I’ve got pneumonia, if that’s any good to you....”
“All I want to know is,” he said weakly, “whether you think Mr. Trevor’s
in or out? You say you were his valet, so you ought to know.”
The man listened, with head aside.
“I hear a piano, sir. That ’ud be Mr. Trevor....”
It took Ivor a long time to get up to the third floor. He felt worse
every second, it was hell to breathe. Doctors ought to be like
pillar-boxes, he crossly thought, they ought to be at every corner. Most
of them are red enough, but they’re not at every corner. They play
bridge every evening.... Gerald would be annoyed with him, dear Gerald!
But what could he do, he couldn’t be alone any more, he couldn’t bear
it. He ought to be a man, of course.... Trevor’s door swayed before
him, he couldn’t find the bell somehow, and so he banged on it with his
fist. Where the deuce had he left his stick, the one Magdalen had given
him?
3
“Hallo, Ivor!” Trevor’s voice said genially. He wasn’t annoyed to see
him, then!... And then Trevor caught him. Ivor had crumpled up. Trevor,
silently, almost carried him into his sitting-room. Ivor tried to
explain, but it hurt him so to breathe.... Then he just managed to pull
himself together, and stood up straight, and laughed weakly to see the
hot-water bottle hanging from his hand. He waved it at Trevor.
“See that?...” he said faintly.
“I’m awfully sorry, Gerald, coming like this,” he said. “I’m----”
“You’re in a state, old boy. Take it easy for a moment.” Trevor’s voice
was quiet and kind. He tried to help Ivor to the wide sofa just beside
him, but Ivor still stood swaying.
“Look here,” he tried to explain. “I’m not drunk, not really. I’ve got
pneumonia.”
“But you can’t have pneumonia here!” Trevor cried in horror.
“Oh, can’t I!” said Ivor weakly. And he flopped as he was on to the
sofa, and closed his eyes.
Trevor was very busy the next few minutes. Ivor seemed unconscious, his
breathing came in quick, rasping gasps, and Trevor could feel the fever
of him when he touched him. In a moment he had off the wet shoes and
overcoat, and had him covered up with a rug and an eiderdown from his
bedroom. Ivor still clutched his hot-water bottle.
“Well, I’m damned!” said Trevor softly, beside him; and he stretched out
to the telephone which was on a little table by the divan. Ivor opened
his eyes to stare round him, and then put a hand feebly across them,
for the light hurt them. Trevor switched out the lights, the fire was
light enough. He picked up the telephone again. Ivor stared at him.
“Doctor,” Trevor briefly explained.
“Sorry, Gerald ... let you in for this,” Ivor said faintly.
“That’s all right, old man. Be quiet now. Love to have the honour of
saving your life.”
“I’ve had this before,” Ivor just murmured. “At school. Not so badly,
though.... But they thought I was done, ... and said prayers for me in
the school-chapel.... ‘For one of us who is now at death’s door.’ ...
Everyone was very touched....”
“Pooh, that’s nothing!” Trevor mocked. “People have said prayers for me
when I hadn’t got pneumonia. But look here, Ivor, try to keep quiet
while I get a doctor. There’s a good chap.”
Trevor finally got on to the doctor. He tried to speak as low as he
could, not to disturb Ivor, who again seemed as near sleep as could be.
“Hallo, Harvey! Trevor speaking.... Yes, Gerald. I say, Harvey, I’ve got
a young man here having pneumonia. I’d be glad of a little help....”
Dr. Harvey’s voice came from the other end: “But look here, Mrs. Gray
has just rung up telling me to go round to a flat in Upper Brook Street
where a young man has got influenza....”
“Influenza nothing,” Gerald snorted. “The chap’s here, I tell you. And
on your way here you’d better book a suite at a nursing home, because I
can’t have people having pneumonia all over my flat, there’s no
facilities....”
He put up the receiver and turned to Ivor behind him. He could see, in
the firelight, Ivor’s eyes painfully on him.
“You won’t die yet, Ivor,” he grinned at him--that jerky, pleasant, wise
grin of Trevor’s! He sat beside the sick man, and passed a hand over
the burning forehead.
“Wouldn’t mind,” Ivor whispered. And two big tears crawled out of the
dark eyes and down the cheeks.
Gerald Trevor ate a macaroon, and soon Dr. Harvey came in.
“He’s got it bad,” he whispered to Trevor, having examined him. “Ought
to have been in bed hours ago. But we can move him all right. Get your
man to help. I rang up Mrs. Gray to say I was coming here. She’s coming
on.”
“She can’t help him now,” said Trevor. “Come on.”
The three of them carried Ivor down the stairs to Harvey’s car outside.
He was heavy, for all his thinness. He woke up once, just to say
absurdly: “You’re carrying me.”
“Observant of you!” mocked Gerald.
In the car they had him between them, a large bulky figure in Gerald’s
rug and eiderdown. He was past listening to anything now.
“What on earth has he been up to?” Harvey asked Trevor in a whisper,
across him. “To go about like this! He must have felt it coming on all
day--and yesterday, too!”
“God knows,” Trevor said.
But both men knew well enough, in a sort of way. Dr. Harvey knew London
as well as medicine, and he had known Magdalen Gray for years. He pursed
his lips.
“That woman,” he whispered grimly, “burns whatever she touches. Always.”
(It is a well-known fact that doctors in private life get frightfully
dramatic about women.)
Trevor was silent.
“It’s an irony about her,” Harvey went on. “She’s kind, oh, very kind!
but she always makes a mess of men. This young man, now. She breaks ’em,
in the end. I’ve known a few.”
“Yes, but she makes them first,” Trevor said suddenly. “You’re talking
without your book, Harvey. She makes men, I tell you, out of the
ordinary idiots whom she falls in love with. This one isn’t an absolute
idiot, but he’s young, and that comes to the same thing in this case.
She’s been worth-while to him, and she will always be worth-while to
him. She’s a woman of quality, Harvey.” And Gerald Trevor smiled....
“A little less quality and a little more constancy,” Harvey suggested
grimly, “wouldn’t do her any harm.”
“Even so,” said Trevor satirically, “you would love her to-morrow if you
thought she loved you, and constancy be damned. It’s the function of
women like her to remind men of their littleness and impotence. I’ve
been reminded once or twice. But men like you, old man, hate to be
reminded of their littleness and impotence. You’ve got an idea that you
are worth loving, and Magdalen Gray is in the world to teach you that
there isn’t as much foundation for that idea as there might be.”
“You wait till you have pneumonia ...” Harvey whispered viciously across
the still figure of Ivor.
CHAPTER X
1
The days of crisis passed. Dr. Harvey confided to Trevor that it was
touch-and-go, but Ivor, in that occasional clarity of intense fever, had
no thought of death. One morning, at last, he really did wake up.
Weakly, he noticed the room. There was a nurse nearby, and she smiled at
him cheerfully, making encouraging noises. He remembered the nurse quite
well, she had been about his bed all the time, doing things, and he had
asked her for things, too. Yes, she had been there all the time, that
nice nurse. And he saw the hot-water bottle hanging from a bed-post at
his feet.... He tried to link his memory of a vague face in that room to
another memory. What did it remind him of? something so vague and dim,
and so long ago.... He remembered Ann Marlay’s face--he never thought of
her as his mother, she was Ann Marlay to him--bending over his
childhood, and sad, gentle eyes. Of course, yes. And now this other
face, so clouded and familiar, hovering about, wide eyes mocking him
tenderly--oh, how divine she was, to mock so sadly and tenderly, so
unlike every one else! And he spent a long time in trying to compare the
two memories, Ann and Magdalen, wondering if they were at all alike,
wondering if they would have liked one another....
But she didn’t come that day. He slept, but when he woke up he felt that
he had been really watching the door all the time, and that she hadn’t
come. He did not ask the nurse about her, he waited. But she did not
come. Trevor came in later, and grinned happily to see him better, and
said things. Ivor didn’t ask him either, he just waited. But Magdalen
never came again.
2
All the time of his getting gradually better he never asked about
Magdalen. It was an effort. Gerald Trevor came every day, but he said
nothing about her. Gerald was gay of an idea that he and Ivor should go
to South America as soon as he was better. Gerald, it seemed, knew a
chap who had a ranch there. “Sun and open spaces and horses and
_gauchos_, Señor Ivor,” Gerald cried to him, and Ivor said he would love
to go. It was a divine idea, of course he would go, Ivor said.
And Rodney West came once or twice; he had heard he was ill, West
cheerfully said, and so thought to have one more look at him before he
died. He asked Ivor why he had never gone to see him, and he wondered if
Ivor was thinking of selling his car, but Ivor said he was not. So calm
and friendly and practical he was. What a good friend for any man, Ivor
thought--and straightway made him one! Which was Ivor’s naïve way with
the few people he liked, to claim them quickly--and then quietly wait
for them to realise that he had claimed their friendship.
But Magdalen never came, nor news from her. Flowers came every other day
or so, flowers that filled the room and exercised the ingenuity of
nurses to provide vases, but there was no message in them, they were
only flowers. He was indifferent to them, he grew to hate them....
He was convalescent now, well out of weakness, and would very soon be
moving from the nursing-home. He had taken the air once or twice,
gently. And Trevor came to see him one afternoon. Ivor took out the
cards for the game of _picquet_ that they would play.
They cut for deal.
“You know,” Trevor casually said, “Magdalen has gone away.”
“Oh,” said Ivor.
“She’s gone,” Trevor said, “to Spain. For some time, I think. Magdalen
is like that, as you know. When she is in London she stays for years,
but once she is away she stays away for years.”
Ivor had nothing at all to say to that. Somehow he had known all the
time that Magdalen had gone away. She hated a mess. She would make a
wonderful playwright--if plays consisted only of exits! But she might
just have written to him....
“I say, Ivor,” Trevor said quickly. “She wrote to me to tell you that
she had gone away, as soon as you were better. Just that.... You knew,
of course, that she was here all the time you were really ill?”
“Yes,” said Ivor. “Thanks so much, old man....”
“It’s your deal,” Trevor said.
“I’ve booked passages for Buenos Ayres,” he said, “for the tenth day
from to-day. It will be nice for you, I thought, to be convalescent all
over the boat. And I chose the best they had, a nice water-tight
one----”
Ivor suddenly burst into laughter. Giggling, it was really. And he
said:--
“Gerald, what fun we’ll have together in foreign parts!”
“In extremely foreign parts,” he added softly.
And they did. But they had to come back all too soon, hearing there was
a war in Europe.
“I wonder what it’s all about, this war,” Ivor wondered on the boat
coming home. “I don’t know much about war....”
“That,” said Trevor, “is exactly why people go to war. So it’s said....”
“War,” said Trevor dogmatically, “has got something to do with some one
being frightened to death of some one else....”
“War,” he went on dogmatically, “is supposed to have something to do
with the Dignity of People. But by substituting the less pleasing word
Bowels for Dignity the same result of war will be obtained.” And he
turned to Ivor with that jerky little grin of his. “We’ll inquire
further into this here war, Ivor, when we land.”
But Trevor inquired no further; for one thing, he had too much sense to
try to find the sense in any war; and for another, he didn’t have time.
For Gerald Trevor, Colonel Trevor, was killed almost as soon as he set
foot in France, in the slaughter of Neuve Chapelle in the spring of
1915. Dear, gay Gerald! There died a courtly gentleman. He had loved a
few women and killed a few men. There died a gay and kind and courtly
gentleman.... And in the winter of 1916, Ivor Marlay, by then deprived
of almost every sense by the noisome dullness of war, was also deprived
by a shell of his left arm, from the shoulder; whereupon there followed
for Captain Marlay months of hideous and tearing pain.
His left arm, however, was not all he lost through the war.
“That dear old ‘Camelot’ car!” he reminded Magdalen, his first visitor
at the London home to which he had finally been moved--Magdalen whom he
had not seen since that “hot-water bottle” night! “That dear old
‘Camelot’ car, Magdalen! I refused to sell it to Rodney West, and now
some ass has stolen it from the garage, thinking maybe I’d have less use
for it now. Whereas----”
“Whereas, Ivor, you’d like to say, but daren’t, to lose only one’s left
arm is really more of a decoration than a loss. But you can’t pull any
of that ivory stuff on Magdalen....”
Her eyes were alight at seeing him again, she was intensely proud of
him--has it not been said that Magdalen was very, very English? And to
whom, in all this wide world, did Ivor belong, if not to her! And she
could scarcely bear to see the pain that would every now and then twist
the dark young face--and set those eyebrows scowling so sulkily! She
pretended not to notice, he would like that best. Her old friend Ivor!
“The best ever....” And, in the way of her sympathy, she mocked him, for
she knew he loved her mockery, saying that the arm he had left was an
excellent arm anyway, and that the bit of coloured ribbon for which he
had exchanged the other one would look very decorative beneath the pile
of handkerchiefs where it would live out its glorious life. “More than
ever dark and dangerous Ivor!” she cried softly. Her old friend
Ivor!...
BOOK THE THIRD
THE ANTAGONISTS
CHAPTER I
1
January was clearly a significant month in the life of Ivor Pelham
Marlay.
In the first month of the year 1919, when the world, released at last
from the epidemic of flags, was racked by the epidemic of influenza
(then the most present of the many plagues of peace), Ivor Marlay was
living in a small house by the River Kennet in Berkshire, which he had
bought furnished towards the end of the previous year. The house was a
little beyond the straggling village of Nasyngton, and a little over two
miles from Hungerford Station: a Queen Anne house of sweet reserve and
severity, with an orchard behind that wandered up a slight incline
towards the main road: and, in front, a twisting little drive to the
wooden gates by the bridge, and a wide lawn, not at all immaculate,
which breasted the quiet waters of the Kennet. To the right of the house
and lawn rose the wide stone bridge of Nasyngton, and a mighty bridge it
looked in that quiet and small place, a seared and ancient bridge of
strength and dignity; and over this bridge passed the traffic of the
London-Bath Road, as well it might and as it had done ever since the
days when Bath was the splendid corollary of the metropolis and both as
one beneath the light step of Beau Nash.... Relieved of the bridge, the
main road swept widely to the right, and, skirting the back of Ivor’s
domain, so through the village of Nasyngton towards its immense destiny.
But even this wide road, so arrogantly unrolling its Tarmac through the
quiet places of Berkshire, could be humbled by things greater than
itself; by things not eternal, but magnificently temporal. For how
furtively this London-Bath road swept by the great iron gates of Lady
Hall, two miles Londonwards from the village, the seat of the Earls of
Kare! How meek and shrunken did that haughty Tarmac become as it slunk
by the wide circle of asphalt of the yellow sort, that was loosely
strewn before the great iron gates of Lady Hall as a forerunner of the
consideration that awaited the guests of Rupert, Earl of Kare, whose
fortunes had lately been revived by a Chilian marriage.
His small house by Nasyngton suited Ivor very well. He had bought it
from two spinster sisters, the Misses Cloister-Smiths, and not only
because of its pleasant situation but because its interior and its
simple appointments had instantly pleased his taste. And, keeping his
flat in Upper Brook Street, there he had settled since November: adding
to its comforts only his cook-housekeeper, Mrs. Hope, his man Turner,
and as many books as he had thought to require.
Ivor’s nature, while not at all of a solitary bent in itself, was the
direct cause of his solitude; for though he had surprisingly little of
that self-consciousness which so often gets between a sensitive man and
his power to entertain or be entertained, he was definitely a “rather
difficult person”: in that he was neither easily amusing nor easily
amused--an irritating lack of accommodation which was growing on him
every year, every month almost. People thought him superior. He was,
however, a very concentrated person in his intimacies; and to his
friendships he had always applied himself with steady and undiminished
pleasure, he intensely enjoyed the practices of intimate friendship.
“Let there be restraint, but no secrecy!” Where was secrecy, there Ivor
was not; which was silly of him, for thus he was to a great degree cut
off from that amiable pastime which is called friendship in cities,
those manly and uninquiring companionships that have lasted for years
(since we were boys together, say) and will last till death do us part,
and were among the most charming of the many charming ties that bound
together our public life and body politic until the recent advent of
rude adventurers from the Board schools.
Rodney West, since Trevor’s death, had become Ivor’s most intimate male
friend; but Sir Rodney, as he by now inevitably was, was as a rule too
busy being a foremost K.C. and a rather bad-tempered M.P. of the
outmoded Liberal persuasion, which he and a few other bitter-reasonables
had just succeeded in dragging through the Hang-the-Kaiser Elections of
1918. No one but a half-wit or a non-combatant ever thought the Kaiser
would be hanged, but at the time there was a premium on half-wits, and
Rodney West made himself rather unpopular in the House by pointing that
out at every opportunity. “But some one’s got to do it,” said Rodney
West; and he could afford to, with his income.
As for Magdalen, she had been away from England for the last year, and
maybe she would never return. Magdalen had gone with her husband--to
Peru! Tristram Gray, a keen and gray man of more than fifty (who had
never in his life compromised about anything but his wife, which his
friends considered rather interesting of him, as an instance of the
queer effects love can have on a reasonable man), had surprised Magdalen
and every one else, on being invalided out in 1917, by an absurdly grim
determination to set out on his travels again. Modern England, it
seemed, did not at all please that hardened and decisive gentleman: it
was too confused and too confusing, he pleaded. He was going to Peru,
where he had years ago acquired, in an adventurous way, a kind of minor
castle in the mountains of the interior. “A splendid home,” Colonel Gray
described it, “and, let’s hope, an imposing sepulchre. Mountains, you
know, all over the place, and not toy ones. Things you can get hold of.
You’d better come with me, Magdalen.” That is all he said, and never
before had said as much. And Magdalen, surprising woman, had
straightway answered, “I will!” And had gravely gone with him--to Peru!
Rodney West and Ivor had accompanied them up to Liverpool to see them
off, and there had been a last dinner at the Midland Adelphi Hotel.
Those three men and Magdalen--those two men of more than middle years
(for West was five-and-fifty) and Ivor, just thirty, equalised all in a
quite amazing friendship. A good friendship it was, with a kind of
chivalry about it which was not the less real because it was rather
odd--very odd, some might think. But Magdalen had a way of melting
things and men, a Renaissance way she had of bringing the godlessness
out of a man so that it seemed to him he was a god. She was romantic to
the end, this Magdalen, in her shadowy way, saying to the youngest of
her three friends: “Perhaps one day you will come out to join us, Ivor.
But not until you are very tired, remember, for I hear it’s no place for
a striving person, and you are a striving person, you know. No, you
mustn’t come until you are certain that you don’t want to come back here
again--and oh! I hope that won’t happen! But I don’t think it will, for
you’re not stationary and still absurdly young, and maybe soon the
lovely thing you want will happen to you. And please promise me, Ivor,
never to believe those tiresome people who will tell you with a
plausible air of impatience that there are more important things in this
world than love or who will tell you to stick to one woman and be done
with it. Such people lie in wait for young men with crusading eyes, but
don’t you believe them--go on until you find a woman worth living for
and dying with, for love fills a man’s life while ‘more important
things’ can only occupy it. And that’s the truth I’m telling you,
Ivor....”
Magdalen had looked her age the night of that last dinner, she had
seemed a little strange, a little remote, a little tired, as though she
had already arrived in Peru and the journey had tired her.
2
During this last year his solitude had, as it were, forced Ivor to an
ambition; for it is in his solitary moments that a man conquers men. He
was reading now, for the first time in his life, with a set and serious
purpose; and as he read he thought, and when he had thought he made
notes, any amount of them; for he was not going to waste what knowledge
he purposed to acquire, he quite definitely wanted to talk and write
about it--especially to talk. There were two things this maddened world
of to-day plainly wanted, special knowledge and fine endeavour; and Ivor
Marlay was trying to discipline himself....
In the wake of many older and wiser men of Europe and America--that
surge of disenchantment, in 1919!--Ivor was realising that “though the
war was over nothing else was over;” and that the world was still
sliding to a queer hell. It wasn’t enough to say that the world was in
an infernal mess and showed no likelihood of getting out of it, the good
old world of progress and respectability. It was in more than the
infernal mess through which it had so often safely plunged: it was
deeply dirtied and befouled with every lawless idiocy of which angry
peoples seem increasingly capable. France was still livid with the
passions of nationality. France had learnt a cruel lesson, and was
intent to profit by it. France was angry, France was patriotic, France
was pathetic, France was sensitive, France was determined not to open
any windows to let the air in. Frenchmen set their shoulders, they had
ceased to shrug their shoulders: other people shrugged their shoulders
at them. _La France, la France_.... The mess of Reparations and
Reconstruction was already foreshadowed; and Mr. Maynard Keynes was
sharpening his pen. Wise men saw, even then, whither the passions of
nationality would lead Europe in the next few years; and while some said
the aggressive instinct of nationality was a fine thing, others pointed
to the mess. Wise men saw, but wise men can do nothing. Wise men cannot
deliver, they can only hail a deliverer.
It was obvious that if ever there was a time to be up and doing things,
in a quite heroic sense, this was the time--this changing, transitional
time! Here, now, was chance for fine endeavour. Whosoever was articulate
could now be heard, ... which was very strange in the life politic, a
quite new departure; for once on a time the Commons held only gentlemen,
but now they let in quite clever fellows--if such could be persuaded to
enter it; so that anything might happen, anything--in this transitional
time! And it was the business of English youth to make things happen, in
the finest way. But the basis of every endeavour must be work and
knowledge; and it was the impulse to the one and the desire for the
other that were now so plainly lacking in the “young men of
opportunity”; which was a favourite phrase of Ivor’s in many talks with
Magdalen and Rodney West.
All men who thought and wrote were at this time thinking and writing
about the conflicting aims and principles of labour and capital. The
calamity of Europe’s tumbling credit did not yet obsess people to the
degree that it very soon did--indeed it had not yet crashed to anywhere
near its lowest depth; but it was crashing. It seemed, then, that
everything would come out smooth and straight if only a sensible
accommodation could be found between the wage-earners and the employers
in each country; but in each country angry men never tired of
passionately crying in capital letters that there can be _no_
accommodation between Principles of Living, that each must have its
day--“or night!” dramatically thought sober men with their eyes on
Russia. For sober men were as like the men in Mr. Beresford’s
_Revolution_ as a fish in the sea is like a fish in an aquarium, and in
them was a growing fear of the spectre of anarchy.
“The best way to beat a real revolution is to lead it; the next best way
is to talk to it; and the worst way of all is to fight it. Just because
some ancient idiot--probably the same Roman idiot who wrote _si vis
pacem, para bellum_, so that other idiots throughout history could take
it for gospel truth simply because it was in Latin--just because some
idiot once said that there’s no use talking to an angry man, no one has
ever tried it until knocking the angry man down has failed. There’s no
use doing anything else but _talk_ to an angry man; and the idea that an
angry man must temporarily be a fool is one of the misconceptions on
which civilisation has been based ever since Saint Peter lost his temper
with the ear of the law....
“You cannot fight and beat revolutions as you can fight and beat
nations. You can kill a man, but you simply can’t kill a rebel. For a
proper rebel has an Ideal of living, while your only ideal is to kill
him so that you may preserve yourself. And the reason why no real
revolution, or religion, has ever been beaten is that rebels die for
something worth dying for, the future, but their enemies die only to
preserve the past: and makers of history are always stronger than the
makers of Empire. It is foolish to fight a revolutionary machine-gun
with a loyalist machine-gun, gun for gun, or a _Soviet_ machine-gun with
a _bourgeois_ machine-gun, gun for gun. You can only fight and beat them
with an Idea, a clean and fearless Idea. And there is only one such
Idea, the oldest in the world, the most blooded in the world, the
aristocratic idea: which really means that you can only keep and
strengthen your own freedom by acknowledging other peoples’. Mainly, it
must mean that....”
Ivor Marlay made notes. He was trying to get somewhere: as, one day much
later, he finally did. But a solitary man becomes very theoretical;
which, maybe, is why all revolutions have been born of solitary men and
all religions have come from the East.