1
He sat a while over his port that night. He contemplated Virginia. A
strange woman she is, he thought. Every woman has a legend, there is a
legend to every woman, but what is Virginia’s? She’s so pitiful--yet
why? You see, he explained to himself, she seems to have made a fool of
herself in a deep, secret way. People don’t understand her, and she
despises people, and because she despises people she thinks she despises
life....
Her name and face were familiar--too familiar--to that increasing part
of England that must read its daily and weekly lot of gossip in the
papers. The Romans had gladiators to amuse the mob, Ivor thought, but
England can do it quite cheaply, for the mob has learned to read....
Yet, somehow, Virginia had licensed this interest; maybe she had
licensed it by so whole-heartedly despising it, for there are ways and
ways of despising things. No one could deny that there was a glamour
about her, certainly there was a glamour. But there was a rottenness in
that glamour--now where did that come from? And why? Quite decent men
took faint licence with her name, while lewd men who had never met
Virginia, could never have met her, said that they had touched her, they
chuckled at the mention of her name....
Glamour! Now this glamour is a very remarkable thing, a strange and
indefinable thing, and very rare: for it does not fall on women because
they have many lovers, it does not fall on women because they are
wonderfully constant to one lover, and it certainly does not fall on
women who Do Things. Sometimes it happens on a courtesan, sometimes on
a great lady; but this glamour is no snob, it cares nothing for the
claims of fashion, for it may quite well happen on a dairymaid, so that
a whole countryside grows aware of her and a whole country sorrows for
her death. Philosophers have spun and metaphysicians toiled, yet this
stuff of glamour still evades the mortal coils of definition. And whence
it comes, no one can tell; nor why it comes--nor whither it goes! though
poets do say that they can smell the faint, musty smell of tragedy in
its destiny, and historians can never resist ascribing it to luckless
men and women of high degree. And sometimes you may love a woman
mightily, yet try as you will you cannot find glamour in her, you simply
cannot; she is just a woman, yours to love but not to dream about. Yes,
this glamour is a wayward thing, it just comes and touches a lovely
woman in each generation, and because of it her youth is long remembered
and her middle-age forgiven, if she live so long. It carries something
_fey_ with it, this glamour. It is a mysterious and uncommon thing.
Poetry is written about it, and it is as wan as the poetry that is
written about it....
2
Virginia’s marriage to the American in 1913 had turned out a sorry
business. He was never known but as “the American”--but how unlike Henry
James’s it only appeared later!--and it was only by an effort of memory
that Ivor remembered his name had been Hector Sardon. He was dead. Ivor
had never met him, but had heard of him as a small, very feverish man,
and handsome of his kind, which was deep-eyed and sardonic; he was said
to speak with charming and vivid gestures of the hands. It had been a
love-match between him and Virginia, people said. Later, it was
whispered that “the American” had turned bad. The fever of his deep-set
eyes and nervous gestures was now explained. Cocaine. But all this
leaked very gradually out, for Virginia was secret, she never confided.
Virginia was always with him, they were silent companions, exquisite
dancers together; other people might whirl round a ballroom--for
exercise?--but Virginia and “the American” danced slowly, softly, in
exquisite certainty of movement. In life they might fumble, but not in
dancing.... And then, in the awful winter of 1915, Hector Sardon died
suddenly.
He died so suddenly that there had to be an inquest; and the question of
drugs was for some time uppermost in the minds of the public, the press,
and the coroner--so intimate did they become with it, indeed, that it
was never called but by its christian name of “dope.” The coroner, Mr.
Odleby Ingle, was inclined to be critical, though of course always just.
The press was also critical. And in warlike minds the question of
“drugs” was found to be inseparable from the question of “aliens.” It
was suggested that this kind of thing was un-English; and the “Huns” got
somehow mixed up with the death by cocaine of an American gentleman. The
_Daily Mail_, in quest of honour, Mr. Asquith’s head, two-million
circulation and as yet uninterned Germans, jousted once again with The
Hidden Hand of the Hun. Fierce gentlemen in Parliament were moved to
denunciation of England’s levity in its treatment of “aliens”; and Mr.
Pemberton Billing got the whole thing frightfully mixed up with the
inadequacy of London’s Air Defences.... The war-fever was at its highest
in 1915. The only person who kept his head, besides the soldiers who
were too busy fighting, was Mr. Bernard Shaw: which was why every one
wanted to punch it for him. It was generally conceded that England was
altogether too kind to aliens. (Before the war only foreigners without
money were called “aliens”; during the war all foreigners were called
aliens. _Bella, horrida bella!_) It was suggested that the march of
civilisation had taken us past the point when gentlemen need be
gentlemen in war-time. “Remember we are at war!” you could say, and at
once forget everything else. Only the police exempted themselves from
this remembering business in their treatment of aliens; for the English
police are the most courtly and the most incorruptible police in the
world--which was why every one said they were inefficient about the
“alien menace.” Soldiers laughed, but among civilians the alien-fever
ran brave and high, and ever braver and higher. “We cannot fight in
Flanders, but we will do our duty here!” cried fierce, and otherwise
quite pleasant, old gentlemen in clubs and trains.
The French civilian, imagined by the English civilian to be so
excitable, managed these things differently; the French civilian, in
fact, did not manage them at all; the French civilian said “_Nous sommes
trahis!_” at least once every day, and then, carelessly leaving the
“alien menace” to the police, set about the bloodshot business of life
in war-time. But the English civilian was made of sterner stuff; and
while young men were dying in the sky and on the land, on the sea and
under the sea, old men waxed worthy of the sons and nephews they had
“given” to England. “We are all pacifists at heart,” they said grimly,
“but war is the test of manhood.”
(It has become the fashion to slang old men in general. It is not a bad
fashion. Superior people despise all fashions; they smile. But it is a
pity that superior women despise all fashions.)
The inquest on Hector Sardon, conducted though it was with every tact
and discretion by Mr. Odleby Ingle, gave the alien agitation yet another
impetus. All this “dope” mess was due to aliens, it was said. No
Englishman took dope, unless he was lured to it by an alien’s fiendish
charm. (The fiendish charm of aliens in war-time, male and female, is of
course notorious. Ladies of title were supposed to fall to it every day,
and policemen had to harden their hearts like anything. Every one had to
harden his or her heart.) Nor did our allies take “dope.” Neither
France, Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Serbia, Roumania, Czecho-Slovakia,
Japan, Montenegro, Siam, nor the Hedjaz--only neutrals and “alien
enemies.” And it was suspected (shrewdly) that an American citizen would
not so readily have died of “dope” if America had been fighting with us;
the death by cocaine of Hector Sardon was considered to serve President
Wilson jolly well right for being “too proud to fight.”
The inquest was, of course, a very sad business for Virginia. Many
people carried away from the inquest an “indelible” picture of a hard,
white face with tired, defensive eyes; and the illustrated papers had to
pay through the nose for her likenesses from the photographers who had
always made Virginia’s life a burden by clamours for a “sitting.” The
traffic in “dope” was noticeably on the overworked police’s nerves that
year; and common-or-garden policemen were discovering an acute nose for
opium--“It makes you sick, the first pipe,” said people who had friends
who knew--all the way from Dover Street to Chinatown. (Poor little
Chinatown! what a boon thou hast been to Mr. Burke, and what little
profit hast thou had from him!) The dead American, that quiet and
feverish gentleman of the nervous gestures, was made the scapegoat of
the public’s interest and the press’s violence. An overdose of cocaine
was found to be the direct cause of Hector Sardon’s death. And the just
but severe inquisition of Mr. Odleby Ingle, “in probing this matter to
its very core,” unearthed some nasty details about Hector Sardon’s even
more private life. It was a bad look-out for certain gentlemen of his
acquaintance, it seemed. People began to read Petronius. It was only too
evident that Hector Sardon had gone the limit in more ways than one; and
Mr. Bottomley was furious about it, crying: “What shall be done with
these Pests? Shall England never be clean?” A nasty business! Virginia
suffered her ordeal intelligently, but in cold contempt. What had she to
do with this? There was no one but sympathised with her, and even Mr.
Odleby Ingle was noticeably considerate, though just, towards innocence
in so sorry a plight. Every one sympathised with Virginia; it was an
awful shame for her, they said. And yet, somehow, there was in their
voices a suggestion, ever so faint, that it was rather the kind of thing
which just _might_ happen to Virginia rather than to any other woman....
3
“The American” had left her all his money, and Virginia was thus a very
rich woman, for her mother, a Colter from Yorkshire, had already left
her a considerable income. (Lady Carnal had adored her only child. As
Virginia, before her first marriage, would come in late from a party,
her mother would dart out at her from her bedroom and peck at her.
Virginia hated being pecked at, especially at that time of night, and
her face was a mask. “Pouf! you’ve been drinking!” would cry Lady Carnal
in desperation, and dart back into her bedroom again.) A year after the
American’s death Virginia married George Tarlyon--George Almeric St.
George, sixth Viscount Tarlyon. It was commonly admitted that you
couldn’t do better than marry George Tarlyon, for he was the perfect
thing of his kind. The war lost him nothing, had gained him everything
in an extraordinary degree--Major the Viscount Tarlyon, D.S.O., M.C.,
etc. Foreign countries contributed magnificently to the et ceteras,
while Virginia contributed herself and her fortune; for George Tarlyon,
at thirty-four, had spent everything he had ever had, except his place
in Galway, which was as unsaleable as it was uninhabitable--by him,
anyway. It was said to be a love-match. They had been seen together now
and then during Hector Sardon’s last year, and after his death they were
always together. Natural enough that she should try to forget that
unpleasantness in such gay and gallant and clean companionship. But
their marriage had not been thought quite inevitable, for nothing was
quite inevitable in dealing with people like Virginia and George Almeric
St. George--especially George Almeric St. George. Virginia, for all her
wits and beauty, might not hold Lord Tarlyon, poor though he was. It was
commonly said, and easily believed, that many women had loved him.
They were married in 1916. And there they were, Lord and Lady Tarlyon, a
notable couple everywhere. The only thing George Tarlyon had ever lacked
was money, and now he had as much as he wanted, for Virginia was
indifferent about money, she was generous. They spent magnificently
during his “leaves.” And their lives were open for the world to see, a
straight pair of English people: a gallant pair of the same colour, the
same quality, and the same hazardous blue eyes. Tarlyon’s eyes were of a
slightly frozen blue, a little mocking, very charming. He was an
extraordinarily fair man: weathered brick-dust face generally smiling,
just a little: an easy man to get on with, a very easy man. A remarkably
amusing man, Tarlyon. It was said that he and Virginia were very good
companions for each other.
And pleasant it was to see them together, fair to fair, height to
height, English to English, most perfectly and elegantly paired. A
charming sight for foreigners to see, walking together of a morning from
their house in Belgrave Square: George Tarlyon in the long gray coat of
the Brigade, that extravagant, high-waisted, red-lined gray coat, tall
and straight and with a swing in his walk: and Virginia, his lady,
enwrapped in furs--not, like so many women, smothered in them, for
Virginia was always mistress of what she wore--or better still, on an
autumn morning, in a high-collared black coat lined with green, which
very gallantly became her tall, slim person and imperious head. They
looked what they were, perfectly, people of degree--and how rare that is
nowadays, people said.
Yet Virginia did not lose her glamour, nor did her glamour lose that
queer rot; it was always there, about her, something musty in something
fine. Her father’s friends wondered a little about it. She had always
something in reserve, a vague something, and people took vague licence
with that vague something. That is a way people have. Virginia seemed
not to be quite of the society which she graced so brilliantly; she
seemed to despise it, she passed people swiftly. A queer provocative
indifference there was about her.... Take a drawing-room full of people
at any hour of night, and watch Virginia there, an ornament in the most
brilliant company. Watch now! Watch the pretty lady, the lovely, the
remote, the queerly ungracious Virginia! Suddenly, swiftly, silently,
she leaves the room. She waits for no man. She leaves the house. Just
like that, she leaves it. Maybe this departure offends--Virginia doesn’t
care! And if she cares, she will be forgiven. Now, whither does this
swift and secret passage take her? Sometimes to her house in Belgrave
Square, a mausoleum of a house which Virginia bitterly hates: sometimes
to meet some one in some place: more often to the Mont Agel.
She would enter the Mont Agel at any hour of night by the hotel
entrance, having rung the bell; and she would sit in the deserted and
shuttered restaurant, in the light of a candle stuck in its own grease
on a saucer--it was war-time then, you understand. There she would sit,
with the polite and amiable M. Stutz hovering about, for that urbane
gentleman never went to bed, never. Sometimes M. Stutz would be
encouraged to sit at the table and discuss a glass of Vichy Water with
Lady Tarlyon, for she seldom drank anything but Vichy Water, which just
shows how little mothers know about their daughters. But more often he
would leave her alone, guessing that it was for solitude she had come
hither, this lady of high fashion in all her finery: not hard, nor
brazen, but queerly childish and infinitely remote.
She would write letters, sitting there, and every now and then she would
sip her Vichy Water. Half a glass of Vichy Water would last Virginia a
long time; but cigarettes would fade before her contemplation, a box of
ten cigarettes would fade away. Her doctor would have something to say
about that soon. She never wrote her letters but in pencil, a scrawling
hand. And she would write, maybe, to Mr. Kerrison, in his
semi-demi-quasi-social part of Hampstead, telling him in an ironic way
of what she had done that night, and of the people she had seen; she
would comment on the people she had seen and talked to that evening,
ironically. It wasn’t that she liked Mr. Kerrison, in fact she thought
of him as a very absurd man indeed, but she had somehow got into this
habit of writing letters to him in a particular spirit; and when people
protested about Mr. Kerrison, or any other of her friends, saying that
some of them were really too awful, she would give her slight, hoarse
little laugh, and answer that they were quite inevitable in her life,
quite inevitable; and, having said that, she would laugh a little again,
and the subject of Mr. Kerrison or any one else would be closed for the
time being.... Or she would write letters to a young artist whose work,
person, or “mentality” (oh, useful word!) had made some call on her
sympathy. Her letters from the Mont Agel, addressed in that pencilled
scrawl, would suddenly drop on studios in all parts of London, sometimes
on very poor studios indeed, asking them what they were doing and if
they were working well these days, and if they would care to come to
luncheon with her one day, and naming a day for that luncheon, either at
the Mont Agel, the Café Royal, or Belgrave Square. And sometimes, if it
was a very poor little artist she was writing to, there would be a
cheque tucked away in the letter. But no poor little artist ever
received a cheque twice who was tactless enough to thank her, no matter
how elegantly.
And then, in the early hours of the morning, she would leave the Mont
Agel. Swiftly she would penetrate the black solitudes of Soho in
war-time: a rich and fragile figure braving all the dangers of the city
by night, an almost fearful figure to arise suddenly in an honest man’s
homeward path: so tall and golden and proud of carriage, so marvellously
indifferent to his astonished stare! Sometimes she would have to walk a
long way before she could find a taxi--through Soho to Shaftesbury
Avenue, and up that to Piccadilly Circus. Sometimes men would murmur in
passing, sometimes they would say the coarsest things, and once or twice
a man caught at her arm as she swiftly passed him; and Virginia looked
at him straightly, for a swift second, as though secretly understanding
his desire and mocking it; and then she went on her way as though her
way had been uninterrupted ... homewards to Belgrave Square.
Virginia often capped the most conventional evenings with this swift and
solitary vagabondage of the early hours, homewards from the Mont Agel.
4
“Virginia has a mind like a cathedral,” said her father, gay Lord Carnal
of the Gardenia.
“Of course every cathedral has its gargoyles,” added my Lord Carnal
wistfully.
Lord Carnal was the ninth baron. It will be remembered by students of
Court history that the first Lord Carnal[D] was so created by the
exceeding love of that charming Stuart king who, however, later again
lost his head about his Grace of Buckingham--the more justly, Puritans
have said, to be deprived of it by Oliver Cromwell. Since when the
Carnals have come to be known for many things, not the least among which
is their quality of sociability and their talent for longevity. “No
Carnal ever dies--but, my God, how well they live!” some one is reported
to have said sometime. And of the baron of the day, whose portrait by
Gainsborough is one of the treasures of Carnal Towers in Hampshire, Lord
George Hell found breath to exclaim: “There’s no fight but a Carnal’s in
it, no bed but a Carnal’s on it, no table but a Carnal’s under it--no
Carnal has ever been seen alone, sir!”
The ninth baron, who never said a careless thing and never condemned a
correct one, looked not at all likely to break the record of the
previous eight’s longevity. There was only one day in the year when Lord
Carnal did not wear a gardenia, and that was on Alexandra Rose Day, when
he wore a carnation.
That and Virginia are the only remarkable things the ninth baron ever
did.