1
At the last moment only George Tarlyon, Mrs. Chester, and Hugo Cypress
motored to Monte Carlo. Major Cypress, authority on Forestry as he was,
was even more of an authority on all varieties of “dicing”--under which
name, in this particular set, went every game of hazard--and could
always be counted on to go towards a Casino. He was the author of an
unwritten play called _Limejuice Nights_, an unwritten romance called
_The Profligacy of a Pork Butcher_, and of that splendid marching song
of the Grenadine Guards, which begins:--
“There’s no vice in
A bit of dicin’ ...”
but never ends. “For,” said Major Cypress, “it needs genius to finish a
poem like that, and I’m frightfully afraid I’ve only got talent.” And
then he would give that funny, gurgling little chuckle of his, a deep
“cluck, cluck, cluck.” Hugo Cypress was a very useful man in a battle or
a house-party; sometimes he would get drunk before a battle, “just to
appal the enemy,” and sometimes at a house-party, “just to amuse your
guests,” he would explain to his hostess, who generally adored Hugo, the
last of the _beaux sabreurs_. He was an uncommonly agreeable companion
for any man or woman--or for a man and woman.
Virginia and her three remaining guests dined very pleasantly; and
Johnny remarked how glad he was that they hadn’t gone to that “beastly
Monte Carlo, where they shoot pigeons all day and pluck them all
night.”
“Give me home,” said Johnny, “a little conversation, and a
nice-glass-of-wine....”
The conversation, however, was not very “little.” For Lois, his wife,
had charge of it, and Lois had a reputation to keep up. Lois’s
conversation--which, people and papers said, was witty--consisted in
asking rather sharp questions about a given subject, listening
impatiently to your replies, and then saying that that wasn’t what she
had meant and asking another question, beginning: “But don’t you think,
now....” To-night she was talking, or rather asking witty questions
about, publishing. Mr. Worth Butterthorn, the publisher, had recently
offered her five thousand pounds for her memoirs, and so Lois was rather
interested in publishing; so had Mr. Worth Butterthorn been, when Lois
had capped his offer by saying that she would be charmed to write her
memoirs for him or any one else for seven thousand pounds; and Mr.
Butterthorn was thinking about that, probably at that very moment. Lois
was clever about money....
They discussed publishing. Ivor was naturally expected to know something
about it, but didn’t. And as for Johnny, he of course never knew
anything about anything, let alone publishing.
“Who pays who?” he asked. “And why?” (The silliest part of Johnny’s
silly questions was that no one could ever answer them.)
“What I want to know is,” Lois dangerously put to the table, “if, say,
30,000 copies of my memoirs are sold at 18s. 6d. per memoir, and if my
royalty is, say, 22 per cent. per cost price per memoir, will I make
more or less than by selling my rights outright to Mr. Butterthorn for
£7000?”
“What about,” Johnny suggested, “a nice little monograph instead, on
Artists I Have Sat To, Off and On?”
Virginia was then delivered of an idea.
“My idea is,” she said briskly, “that Mr. Ivor Pelham Marlay should tell
us a story on a given theme. We will give him the theme, and he will
tell us the story.... Now won’t that be nice for you, Ivor?” she sweetly
asked him.
“Charming,” he said viciously.
“I know!” cried Lois. “The theme must be the most fatuous theme ever put
to a man. It must be a motto, a moral, or an Oscar Wilde epigram--but it
must be fatuous!” She turned to her husband. “Johnny dear, you’ve said
so many fatuous things in your life, can’t you think of one someone else
has said--just for once, dear?”
“Familiarity Breeds Contempt,” said Johnny modestly.
“Well,” snapped Ivor, “without a little familiarity you can’t breed
anything, can you?”
Johnny sighed, and tried again:--
“Every Good Action Brings Its Own Reward.”
“Oh, splendid, Johnny!” cried Virginia.
But Ivor shook his head helplessly.
“But you must, Ivor!” Virginia insisted seriously. “I shall count up to
five, and if by then you can’t tell us a tale to prove that Every
Good Action Brings Its Own Reward, your reputation will be
for ever blasted--not only as an author, Ivor, but as an
officer-and-a-gentleman.”
“Yes, rather,” Johnny agreed.
Virginia counted steadily: “One ... two ... three ... fo----”
“All right!” Ivor stopped her with a grin. He addressed them all: “Now
this is a story about a comb----”
“Oh, you’ve cribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.
“That’s done it,” sighed Ivor. “I won’t play any more. Let Johnny try.”
“Oh!” said Virginia.
“That’s all right,” said Johnny. “I am not an author, I am a man of
ideas. Watch me. Now this is a story about a comb----”
“You’ve cribbed Ivor’s!” cried Virginia.
“No, but he’ll crib mine,” snapped Johnny.
“Whistler said that,” remarked Ivor.
“This story,” snarled Johnny, “is not only about a comb but about a Mr.
Jones and a Mrs. Jones as well. If you guess that they were man and wife
you will not be wrong. And what’s more, Mr. Jones loved his wife very
dearly, even though he hadn’t enough money to do it with from every
angle. For of all the things Mrs. Jones passionately wanted, besides of
course Mr. Jones, was a tortoise-shell comb; which, she thought, would
become her very well, for her hair was of the colour of a landscape at
sunset, streaked with ochre. So at last Mr. Jones secretly managed to
scrape together as much money as he could find lying about in his
employer’s offices, and bought her a very adequate tortoise-shell
comb----”
“You _have_ cribbed O. Henry’s!” cried Lois.
“---- comb. Mrs. Jones adored it and adored him, and every one was
happy. Now I ask you, how were they to know that the shopkeeper had seen
Mr. Jones coming and had sold him a celluloid imitation comb instead of
a tortoise-shell one? And so one evening, as Mrs. Jones was doing her
hair for Mr. Jones’s arrival, celluloid being very inflammable, it
caught fire, and the fire caught her hair, and Mrs. Jones was utterly
burnt up when Mr. Jones arrived for dinner....”
“And a very good story, too,” said Ivor pleasantly. “I liked the sting
at the end....”
“Johnny,” cried Lois. “Explain yourself.”
“Well, my dear,” said little Johnny humbly, “I’m frightfully sorry, but,
don’t you see, Mr. Jones drew the insurance-money for his wife’s
death....”
2
They had dined late, and it was nearly midnight when Ivor and Virginia
were at last comfortably stretched on two of the wicker arm-chairs on
the verandah: for, of course, it was perfectly clear from the moment of
his arrival that they must in the next few hours be sitting together on
that verandah. The air was chilly with the chill of a Riviera night in
February, and Virginia, lying deep in her chair, had wrapped her
moleskin coat well about her: for in the year 1919 the moleskin coat was
at its ascendant, whence it has since been driven by barbarians, led by
one Mr. Kolinsky....
There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of
the sky: a black night, and very silent on Cimiez; and a black and
silent prospect from the verandah, intensified rather than broken by the
distant reflection below of the lights of Nice on the velvet void which
was a sea by day.
The hill of Cimiez is always of a silent habit at night, for its world
is either in bed or the Casino, and the rattle of the tram-cars up and
down the hill ceases by ten o’clock. Ivor and Virginia seemed to have
borrowed something of the silence of the Cimiez midnight, for they sat
silent for a long time, for what seemed a long time. And the light from
the long windows opening out on the terrace fell brilliantly on them.
Lois’s voice suddenly called to them from the room behind:--
“I’m going to bed, Virginia. Shall I turn these lights out?”
“Yes, if you like. Good-night, dear.”
Now it was quite dark. Ivor could barely make out her face, a yard away
from him: a dim, white thing above the soft darkness of her coat. It had
not the remotest likeness to flesh, that face. It was made of some thin,
white stuff....
Virginia said suddenly, into the night:--
“Let’s talk about beasts, Ivor.”
“Yes, why not?” he agreed out of his surprise.
“But I wonder if you will understand,” she murmured.
His chair creaked as he moved a leg.
“Have you ever had a beast in your life, Ivor?” And the dim, white
thing grew bigger as she turned her face towards him. “A beast in your
life, right _in_ it, Ivor?” she insisted. “Have you? Think, my dear, for
it’s most important....”
“When I was much younger,” he seriously told her, “I had a beast. I’ve
almost got over it now. The beast in my life was Other People. I
resented them....”
She looked, in the darkness, like a figure made of furs and thought.
“I meant,” she said at last, “a personal beast. A beast, you know, with
a face and arms and legs. A face that’s always there, in one’s life....”
“I suppose,” she said, “that you’ve loved sanely ... knowing more or
less what and why you were loving. Or probably you haven’t loved, you’ve
just liked people very much.”
He didn’t answer that. There was no special answer to make, except that
he hadn’t loved or liked often; and then one would have to qualify
that....
“That’s why, maybe, you have never had a beast in your inner life, Ivor.
You are lucky, I do think....”
Her voice was making no appeal; it was just her voice of daylight
undressed by the virtue in the night. But the way of her words was
intensely pathetic, and he intensely felt the pathos of her in that
moment, a dark moment. That pitifulness again! He seemed to understand
things about this Virginia.... And she went on softly:--
“I’d like to draw a beast for you, Ivor, so that you could understand.
But it’s difficult, so entirely a thing of feelings. You know? It’s just
hell in the fourth dimension, and how can one explain that?”
“I know,” he said.
“But one loved the beast, Ivor! Oh, _yes_, frightfully! That’s why he’s
so real, so awfully there....” He saw the white of her hand as she made
a sudden gesture. “He’s so fine, don’t you see? In a conventional way,
if you like, but still.... The blond beast of devilish philosophies
maybe, Ivor! And he entered one’s life and swept one up, so airily! If
only Ouida had been alive to see his type! He came, you see, as
something quite strange--a man among the weaklings of my life with
Hector Sardon. Oh, I seem to have known so many weaklings! Poor, poor
Hector! Ah, you never saw me all that time, Ivor. It was a terrible
time, terrible--and so _rotten_! But you probably guess.... And the
beast came during the worst of it, when I couldn’t hold out against it
all any more, not alone.... A lovely man the beast was, Ivor, and not at
all the fool he mockingly pretends to be. Oh, no, not a fool at all! And
so fresh and weathered and solid.... With him I felt the earth under my
feet again, good old English earth in all its immense and lovely
solidity. I thought I felt that, anyway, for it was only an illusion
that he gaily mocked into me....”
“They mock one,” Ivor said, “and then one hates oneself. It’s
beastly....”
“Mockery!” There was a soft and remote meaning in the way it dropped
from Virginia’s lips. “Mockery! that soft and sweet mockery of a man in
first love--oh, Ivor, it’s the finest thing--at first.” Her wicker chair
creaked loudly as she suddenly turned towards him, and his accustomed
eyes could see hers through the darkness, wide eyes fashioned out of the
mystery of the night, eyes sombre with query. “Have you ever felt that
in a woman for you, Ivor?”
“Yes,” he said. And he nodded gravely: “but mine wasn’t only at
first--it meant nice things all the time.”
There was a long silence. And then Virginia said:--
“I’d like to be dramatic in my speech just for once--please may I, Ivor?
Though I’ve already been frightfully dramatic with you once, haven’t I?
It’s most unusual in me, I assure you, Ivor.”
“I live alone,” Ivor said grimly, “so I do it quite a lot.”
“Well,” Virginia confessed sweetly, “I feel that there’s nothing so
terrifyingly masculine and magnetic as the feline male. For that’s what
he is, my beast! The perfect thing of his kind.... So very
representative, Ivor, that he’s exceptional! In the dirt of cities,
round about Shaftesbury Avenue maybe, it must be that kind of man, I
suppose, that makes women do queer things for them, walk the streets and
the like. They have a queer effect on women, my kind of beast. My
particular one has made me put up with some odd things, I can tell you,
Ivor! Standing aside and watching him make love. It was awful, awful, at
first.... And then he sort of magnetises one by his perverse
understanding of oneself, he forces one to treat him as he treats
oneself. He judges people by his own beastliness, you see--and he’s so
often right, Ivor! He’s so often been right about me....”
“And then,” she said, “he has queer, soft moments. He sometimes smiles
at me from across a crowded room, in a most sweet and understanding way.
And he seems to say: ‘Only you and I know what you and I are really
like, and we’ll never tell any one--will we, Virginia’?”
“But I am telling someone now,” she said.
“I’m glad,” Ivor murmured.
And her wicker chair broke out in fantastic chorus as her whole body
seemed to turn to him.
“_Are_ you?” she cried comically.
From behind them the noise of a piano suddenly burst on their silence.
It lashed out into the darkness in a furious medley, then softened down
to classical sobriety--then again a furious medley, then a jingling
step, then to something very softly played.
“That’s little Johnny,” Virginia explained.
They listened. For Johnny had the art of seducing attention while he
played; he played perversely, his touch had a delicate and impish
genius, and he mixed up fugues and fox-trots with almost passionate
cheek; he played like a tired genius, and they listened. He stopped
soon....
“He always does that for five minutes before going to bed,” Virginia
told him, “drunk or sober. So if you pass any house anywhere in the
night and hear that noise, you will know that Johnny is about to go to
bed. He says it’s his swan song, and that he likes to repeat his swan
song every night so that he won’t feel it so much on his last on earth.
Nice Johnny....”
Suddenly she stretched out a hand and touched Ivor’s arm, so
unexpectedly that it startled him. There are women who appear incapable
of touching one, and when they do, no matter how lightly, their touch
seems to have a fabulous meaning. He had not looked at her for a long
time, he had been staring into the darkness, but now she startled him
into staring at her.
“You may be thinking,” she said wistfully, “that it’s rather indecent of
me to speak so plainly to you about George. Please don’t think that,
Ivor, for I’m not used to confiding in people; in fact, I’ve never done
it before, and I shall be so easily frightened off.”
“I wanted to tell you,” she said. “And that’s why I wired to you to come
down here. I’m generally supposed to be a secret kind of person, you
know. ‘She never tells,’ people say. But I wired to you because I felt I
couldn’t bear the burden of things alone for another second. It seems
silly....”
“And I thought,” she said shyly, “that telling you all this might
explain a bit of that terrible last night in England....”
Her shyness disturbed him....
“You needn’t explain that,” he said quickly. “One’s always afraid,
somehow....”
He nervously waited for her to speak; and he was puzzled, faintly
irritated, by her silence, for he wanted her just to tell him that she
didn’t now want him to believe that she was a “perfect little cad.” But,
after a while, she only said, dimly:--
“Now that I’ve told you why I asked you to come, I’d like you to tell me
why you did come, please. It’s a very leading question, isn’t it?”
“Well ...” he said, and he stirred in his chair.
“I was lonely,” he said. “And I thought that maybe you were lonely too.
I just thought it. And, Virginia,” he earnestly leaned towards her a
little, “I’m so glad you’ve told me about your personal beast, indeed I
am! But are you quite, quite sure that it’s such a personal beast as all
that--that it isn’t just your, well, distaste of your present life that
you have somehow personified?”
“Oh, no!” It was a cry.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I thought we might help each other somehow....
One has these brilliant ideas....”
“Was it an impertinence to come in that spirit, I wonder?” he asked
suddenly.
She stared at him; and faint memories stirred in her of those very young
days round about Mont Agel and the Hallidays, when she had been so
impatient of this man’s “rightness,” his bursts of defensive formality.
She stared at him. And realised with a start that he was speaking.
“You’ve asked me a question, Virginia, and now I will ask you one--a
baby question. What is it you most want in the world?”
“But, Ivor, remember that I’m thirty!”
“Well?”
“Then there’s only one answer, and that is in one word--understanding!
Just that--understanding! The second childhood of a woman’s dreams lies
in the word, Ivor....”
The night was so dark and still, yet somehow noisy with their
personalities, that Ivor had a feeling that she and he were children....
“We’re like children playing in the dark, Virginia--I feel, do you know,
that nothing we say this moment matters at all! It simply doesn’t
matter, it just belongs to this childish moment....”
“Then I will ask you your question back,” she took him swiftly up. “What
is it _you_ most want in the world, Ivor? Remember,” she added, “you
have said this is a childish moment, so you can be sincere.”
His chair creaked passionately as he sat up to look closely at her.
“I want,” he said firmly, “the loveliness in people. No less. You’ll say
that’s pretty arrogant, and I suppose it is. But I want it all the
same....”
“I’ve had a bit,” he explained, “so I know it’s good--oh, wonderfully
worth having, Virginia! But one can’t keep it--anyway, I couldn’t keep
my little bit. Wasn’t worthy, I suppose. But if you’ve got to wait
quietly until you _are_ worthy of a thing you might wait till the Last
Trump and still not get it. Better to snatch than get left, I think....
One’s best moments draw that loveliness out of people, and then one
loses it. Little demons of prejudice and resentment make one lose
it--that shining loveliness in people, Virginia! And when that’s in them
they have clean eyes--amazing, isn’t it?--but later on their eyes are
not so clean, and one’s own are mirrored in theirs. People say that’s
‘life.’ Everything that gets dirty is called ‘life,’ Virginia.
Everything that dies is called ‘life.’ ...”
He stared towards the sea, over it. The Mediterranean slept profoundly;
and then it seemed to him that the Mediterranean was not asleep, only
pretending; it was a prowling beast, ever prowling about the shores of
Europe and Africa....
“I’d much rather go to Africa now than to bed,” she said suddenly.
A car stopped outside the gates; they saw its lights, and they heard
voices.
“Good-night, Ivor,” Virginia said--rather severely--and was gone.
Thus it was on the first night.