1
Virginia came only once again. Four nights later, a little after ten
o’clock. Ivor, his book laid aside, was pacing the room in the suddenly
restless way which was growing on him, when he heard the soft rustle of
the car on the drive. He stood very still. And then an apparition came
into the room. The apparition came towards him. He smiled at it, but the
apparition was grave of face. Its face looked bleak.
“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France
to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you.” It said that shyly.
She had come alone, driving the open car. Virginia hated closed cars,
she loved air, bitter, chill air; it made her feel ill, for she was very
delicate, but she loved bitter, chill air. And now her face looked
blanched with it, her blue eyes bitten bright with it; and a strand or
two of golden hair played loose about her forehead, for her head had
been uncovered but for that transparent stuff now on the table. She
smiled vaguely, there was no light in her.
“Oh, Ivor, I’ve come to tell you we are going to the south of France
to-morrow. I just thought I’d tell you....”
It was a queer moment for him, an upside-down kind of moment. He was
still smiling at the amazing fact of seeing her--amazing because he had
so wanted to!--when those words, intruding at the same moment, quite
upset the equilibrium of his pleased gesture. He felt vividly that he
didn’t want her to go away, but not at all. She stood close by him, in
front of the fire. The little white face.... And all he could say was
plaintively, absurdly: “But I hate your going away, Virginia--suddenly,
like this!”
“It’s the only way to go away,” she said softly to the fire.
She had slipped off her fur-coat on to a chair, and now stood revealed
in her evening-dress: a dress too rich for the ordinary occasion, a
Venetian kind of dress, a deplorably beautiful dress of the kind which,
women said dispassionately, only Virginia could “carry off.” What
Madeleine Vionnet had created as a beautiful joke, Virginia made into a
magnificent illusion. Throat and arms and shoulders exceeding white, her
bosom tight in deep red silk of taffeta--but lo! this deep colour ended
shortly, its coloured richness was but to tease your senses and ensnare
your eyes! For suddenly there billowed from it a filmy white skirt,
filmy and intangible, white upon white subtly flecked with golden-dust:
a wide and waving whiteness which swayed as she walked, which swayed as
she stood, gently, as though it lived a delicious life of its own: and
from the deep red bodice there fell baubles on to the wide white skirt
for a short way, short golden baubles of golden rope in arabesques--the
curious fancy of a crafty designer who surely never thought his dress
would be worn so inconsequently, taken three miles on a chilly night to
a lonely house by a tiny English river....
“Suddenly--like this!” he repeated darkly.
“Well?” she asked, opening her eyes very wide at him; and then she gave
a sharp little laugh at his darkling brows--as though, good Heavens, he
were offended!
“And what’s more,” she added, “we won’t be meeting again for some time.
Maybe we will never meet again, Ivor! For I’m sure _you_ won’t take any
steps about it--just like all these years you have known me and never
tried to see me, never once!”
“You are very exclusive, I do think,” she said wistfully.
There she stood, a head below him, white face up at him, eyes wide and
very grave, amazing and somehow unearthly! and the breasts under that
tight red bodice, little full breasts. And suddenly his one arm took
Virginia bodily, and pressed her to him and her face up to him. He
kissed her lips: and her little tight breasts were hot against him. For
a long time, a long time utterly lost to time in the violent softness of
Virginia’s lips, his arm pressing her to him. So thin she was, tall and
thin and breakable. And she shivered a little, her eyes tight closed,
and her face a white mask: startling white between those twin gold
curls, gay “Swan and Edgar!” She swayed a little, and her skirt rustled,
and when his arm loosed her she seemed to fall right down into the wide
chair behind her. Helpless white mask, carnival dead of carnival! She
opened her eyes and stared up at him, the man darkly up there. But a
crypt was not darker than Virginia’s blue eyes....
“I didn’t mean you to do that,” she whispered.
He fumbled.
“I’m sorry ...” he fumbled. It killed all assurance, that look of hers.
He took a cigarette from the box on the table.
“I didn’t mean to, either,” he said coldly. Then why had he done it? He
loathed fumbling. And suddenly he got furious. What _was_ all this
about, anyway?... “You shouldn’t have come here,” he said bitterly.
And somehow, as she lay there like a broken Venetian toy, his eyes fixed
on her mouth. He had never seen it before, Virginia’s mouth, but now his
eyes desperately found it. A queer mouth it was somehow, queer lips for
a lovely woman to have: there was nothing soft, nothing yielding about
them: beautiful but somehow unwomanly lips, so taut, so dry: the lips of
a woman who liked the wind in her face.... He had never seen Virginia’s
mouth before. And now the touch of it was on his own, hot and dry.
Nothing moist about Virginia. He smiled at her helplessly....
“I didn’t come here for you to do that--I didn’t, Ivor!” she cried up
at him, and her eyes glittered with tears--Virginia in tears!
He wanted to laugh and brush it aside. As though Virginia had never been
kissed before--Virginia! “Forget it,” he wanted to say coarsely. She was
too serious.... But, somehow, he was serious, too. He stood above her in
her chair, a long way above her. He murmured something....
“But you do know that, don’t you? I didn’t come here for you to do
that--that particular kiss....” And she leant back her head and closed
her eyes against him. Ivor played nervously with a match for his
cigarette--one arm makes striking safety-matches rather difficult,
sometimes. He swore a little at the match.
“You see,” whispered the lips of the closed eyes, “your kiss means
something. I knew it would ... I knew years and years ago.”
And she jumped up and faced him pitifully. “That’s why I’m making such a
fuss about it, don’t you see--Ivor, you fool! For your kiss means all
the things I haven’t got left, the lovely things! Oh, I’m not just
trying to make a scene, I want you to understand.... I haven’t got one
left, my dear, not one....”
He couldn’t deny that--he didn’t know anything about it. She was too
serious--but, somehow, nothing light would come from him.
Again she closed her eyes, and her eyebrows contracted, as though with
pain; and she gave her head a sudden shake, backwards.... You _are_ a
pet, he thought.
“That’s why I so wanted you not to make love to me--you, Ivor! Deep down
in my heart I didn’t want you to. For we simply can’t be lovers, you and
I. I thought that years ago. I hated you....”
All this ... talk! Why, he wondered, does a woman always pretend to a
deep and mysterious knowledge of anything to do with love? He knew,
quite clearly, that she had expected him to kiss her--but he also knew,
just as clearly, that she was miserably sincere in not having wanted
him to kiss her--once he had done it! She made him feel a vulgar beast.
Her eyes were searching his face....
“Poor Ivor!” she cried softly, “I am irritating you, aren’t I?”
“Thoroughly,” he admitted; he smiled a little, self-consciously; he
hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“But it’s just as well you should know.” She didn’t heed his gesture.
“It’s just as well you should know that it’s easy for men to make love
to me--‘easy, my dear, dead easy’! Why, Ivor, making love to me has
become a recognised institution, it was the only careless game that the
war didn’t make more expensive. I assure you. And not so very careless
with some, either, for I’m still beautiful. D’you notice, Ivor, that I’m
being funny, so that you can laugh? Poor Ivor.... Didn’t you know, dear,
that Virginia at thirty-one is a perfect mess? You ought to have known,
clever Ivor, you ought indeed--you who write so bravely about women, not
to say courtesans!”
She had said just the things to make him angry. But he only lit another
cigarette; he held the safety-match to the fire this time.
And she stamped her foot at him in a sudden fever. “Don’t you see, you
fool, that I’ve never yet met a man in whom I haven’t brought out the
beastliness? Never once--it’s my fault, I bring it out. Somehow....”
He was quite cold now.
“Virginia,” he said, “you’ve got nerves. And I’m not a cad--I don’t
think so, anyway.” It was her scene entirely--he implied that. And he
wanted to show that the whole thing rather bored him--her attitude.
“I know.” She nodded her head. “That’s why all this. For we wouldn’t
suit each other at all, you and I. I’m no use to you, Ivor....”
And the sudden words on his lips were broken by her peculiar laugh.
“For where you are so wrong is,” she went on reasonably, “that you
think I’m like you. But I’m nothing like you at all. I’m just a little
cad....”
“My telling you all this,” she gravely assured him, “is entirely on your
own head. You shouldn’t have kissed me--like that! It wasn’t fair, Ivor.
And very upsetting.... Oh!...”
“You see, Ivor, I misbehave,” she explained. It was her air of being
reasonable that irritated him most. “Yes, I do! I misbehave frightfully.
People will tell you.... And where you are so wrong is that you think
I’ve been natural when with you, whereas I’ve really been on my very
best behaviour with you--all the time. Even now....”
If she had set herself to anger him to silence she could not have
succeeded more completely.
“Good-bye,” she said abruptly.
He held her furs for her. And she went so swiftly that he could only
follow her to the door. The large shape of the car swallowed her up; and
the car twisted softly round the little drive and away to the London
road. Minutes later he heard its Klaxon, just one sharp keen, like the
harsh cry of a sea-bird....
2
Now two weeks later Ivor received this telegram from Cimiez: “Please
come to stay with us here if possible. Trains packed, and sleeping cars
unobtainable. Will order car to meet you Ritz, Paris, noon Saturday, to
bring you down. Please wire.”
He fingered it, and he thoughtfully stared out of the window. A February
prospect is not the best prospect to stare at thoughtfully. It provokes
comparisons. The world outside his window was bleak and desolate. The
world within his window was bleak and desolate. He wired, and went.