1
George Tarlyon entered his wife’s bedroom fairly early the next morning.
There was a door connecting their rooms, but he came in by the ordinary
door; for when they had entered into occupation of the villa the
servants had somehow forgotten to unbolt the door between their master’s
and mistress’s rooms, and no one had thought of doing it since. Lord
Tarlyon was no slacker, and could do with as little sleep as any man;
for no matter at what hour he went to bed, he was generally up and about
by ten: as now, entering his wife’s bedroom, gently, as fresh and clear
of eye as though Casino smoke was balm to his health. Virginia lay very
still, her golden head sideways and deep in the hollow of her pillow,
and he was about to withdraw when she opened her eyes. She looked tired.
“I wasn’t asleep,” she said. And she stared at him as he smiled at her
from the foot of the bed; and through the half-open door she heard the
noisy filling of a bath. She wondered if it was Ivor’s or Hugo’s. Johnny
believed in daylight sleeping.
“Will you draw the blinds, please, George?” she asked him.
He let the sun into the room with a mighty rattle of curtain rings; and
the sunshine kissed Virginia’s hair--especially “Swan and Edgar,” so
unruly in the early hours!--but her eyes would have none of it. She
shaded them with her palm.
“I slept _so_ badly,” she complained softly: but not to him, to the
space about her.
Tarlyon loitered at the foot of the bed, splendid in the light, his
hands in his pockets, frankly admiring her.
“I hope you won’t mind, Virginia, but we brought Julie Gabriel back here
with us last night.”
She looked at him absent-mindedly.
“Oh, dear!” she sighed.
“Couldn’t really help it, in a sort of way,” Tarlyon explained. “She had
quarrelled with her young man, it seemed, and she really looked in
rather a mess, so I asked her down here for a few days--until she gets
over it, you know. Oh, come, Virginia,” he teased her, “have you no
heart?”
Virginia imagined Julie Gabriel “getting over it!” What, on this earth,
had ever “got over” Miss Gabriel?
“I’m sure you’ll quite like her,” Tarlyon assured her. “She’s quite a
nice little thing, really....”
“Yes,” Virginia agreed softly, “at some one else’s table in a
restaurant.” Virginia hated all restaurants--except, of course, the Mont
Agel.
Miss Julie Gabriel had made her name as an actress in the year before
the war, by showing her naked back to the audiences of a London theatre
for ten minutes every night for six months. It was a charming back,
people said. However, she had since retired from the stage, finding, no
doubt, that she could make her fortune more swiftly and with less public
exposure. She had a house in Curzon Street and a palace on the river,
and young Royalty was supposed to have supped with her. People liked
her--she’s common, but so full of life, they said. It was also said that
George Tarlyon was the only man she had ever loved, and it was believed.
“George St. George,” a little voice said from the depths of a pillow to
the ceiling, “you do know some low people, I do think....”
He was at once very considerate; he sat on the edge of the bed; he
appealed to her as a friend.
“Virginia, you don’t really mind, do you? Because, of course, if you do
we can have her thrown away at once....”
Virginia imagined Miss Gabriel being “thrown away” by milord’s orders.
“Oh, no! Now she’s here....”
“Besides,” she said, “haven’t I always said that you could ask any one
you liked?”
And then Virginia had a grim thought about Mrs. Chester. Poor Ann! But
she said:--
“Lois may mind, you know.”
Tarlyon threw back his head and laughed his laugh.
“Oh, our Lois! I’ll fix her all right--besides, it will come in handy
for her Memoirs! _She_ won’t mind.” And he got up from the bed with a
lazy swing.
“Before you go, you might give me the hairbrush and small mirror from
the table,” Virginia asked him.
Virginia and her husband never talked of any subject for more than five
minutes; and never referred to a subject again. That is called “getting
on” with a person.
2
But Lois did mind. She had a reputation to keep up. But when Lois
minded, she minded secretly. For when George Tarlyon, raiding her
bedroom with little ceremony, told her of the addition to the party, she
instantly cried, “Oh, splendid!” And that very moment decided that the
Riviera was perhaps seen to best advantage from Cannes, to which she and
Johnny would repair that very afternoon. Johnny was informed.
She mentioned their departure to Ivor, without, of course, giving the
reason for it, as they walked about the garden before luncheon. Virginia
had not yet come down. Lois said:--
“Well, Ivor Marlay, I’m glad to have seen you again, if only for a
passing moment. Try not to be a beast, my dear, and come to see me in
London----”
“Why, are you going to-day?” The surprise in his question seemed to her
a little out of proportion to the fact. She glanced at him as they
walked.
“Yes, but not to London direct. Johnny and I are moving to Cannes this
afternoon.”
Ivor stopped in his walk, and looked seriously at her.
“I’m going to ask you such an impertinent question,” he said, “that I
must first light a cigarette. If you will strike a match for me....” His
one arm made striking safety-matches just a bit of business; he traded
on it sometimes.
She struck one, laughing at him.
“You aren’t surely going to ask me not to go, Ivor Marlay! That wouldn’t
come very well from a man who has simply refused to come near me
for--how many years? Seven or eight, I think.”
“That’s exactly what I am going to ask you, Lois,” he said earnestly.
“I’m hoping you will understand. Can’t I really tempt you to stay a few
days longer?” The question was light, but the manner earnest enough. But
that Lois appreciated its earnestness was evident only in her glance,
for she laughed--the laugh with which she turned things away, a gay
laugh, the Lois laugh. (All these people had each their own particular
laugh; thus, it was fun to imitate each other’s.) She understood very
well why the question was “impertinent.” She knew he was asking her what
Virginia, however much she wanted her to stay on, would never ask
her--he was asking her not to leave Virginia stranded. It was certainly
“impertinent.”
As Lois had said she was going, Ivor had had a sudden vision of Virginia
stranded in that _galère_, Virginia deserted by her friend rather
shamefully. But, with these people, where did friendship begin and where
end?
“No, really. I’m so afraid I can’t,” she said sincerely; and added:
“Johnny would be ever so disappointed at putting it off now!”
“Virginia will be disappointed the other way,” Ivor just pointed out,
bluntly.
They continued their leisurely walk in silence. Then Lois turned her
head to him.
“Virginia, you know, makes everything all right by not noticing things.
And she has no need of friends--I assure you, Ivor Marlay! She works
things out for herself and by herself.”
Does she? Ivor grimly wondered to himself.
“And I don’t think,” Lois added secretly, “that she will be altogether
sorry at our going. Not so sorry as all that, I mean....”
Then they talked of other things, and Lord and Lady Lamorna left for
Cannes immediately after lunch, in Virginia’s car. They were great
car-borrowers, Lois and Johnny.
Virginia and Ivor were not alone that day, but he didn’t gather from her
expression that she was in the least put out by her friend’s sudden
departure. She seemed to enjoy her guests that day, and Ivor not less
and not more than the others. And the day and evening passed in a crowd,
to which the voice and person of Miss Gabriel were certainly vivid
additions. Virginia was charming to her, and gayer than Ivor had ever
seen her, except perhaps during those first moments of their sudden
meeting in the lane by Lady Hall. It was a little difficult to imagine
this easy and social Virginia, inattentive to anything for more than a
minute, as the faint and wistful figure of the dark terrace a few hours
before. Not that she glittered in the Lois way, but she was gaily
promiscuous of her attention, she was a woman without preferences....
Tarlyon and Miss Gabriel disappeared for the latter part of the
afternoon in the other car; and Ivor and Virginia spent the hour or so
between Lois’s and Johnny’s departure and tea in walking with Mrs.
Chester, who was rather silent, and Hugo Cypress, who thank God wasn’t,
about the winding lanes that lead about the crest of Cimiez--what part
of that crest is left uncovered by the mammoth luxury of the Hotel
Regina.
The “dicers” stayed at home that evening--Tarlyon and Cypress had both
won a packet at _chemin de fer_ the night before, which was nice for
them. Mrs. Chester did not dice, saying she had no unusual
parlour-tricks. Dinner was therefore something of a festival. And later
on they somehow fell to dancing to the gramophone in the wide
drawing-room: which was apt for that purpose, for it had been fitted
with a parquet floor by the luxurious forethought of Mr. James
Michaelson of Lancaster Gate. A rather strange thing for Lady Tarlyon
and her guests to do, thus to dance, for nowadays they only danced when
they had to, considering that they had already danced enough to last
them their lifetimes. (They adored Fancy Dress Balls, however--oh, let
there be carnival, lovely carnival!) Tarlyon danced with Julie Gabriel,
Major Cypress with Ann, Ivor with Virginia.
It was the first time Ivor had been alone with her that day; but when he
looked down at her face while they danced it was masked by a smile. He
noticed her mouth again, the taut mouth that looked as though it liked
to be whipped by the wind.
“Well, Ivor?” she smiled at his look. They were dancing a very slow
step--“Oh, very patrician,” cried, in passing, George Tarlyon, whose own
dancing was not remarkable.
Ivor suddenly had a desire to force the smile from her face. He would
have liked to take the smile from her face with a sweep of his hand, and
put it in his breast-pocket, and suddenly give it back to her some other
time. He liked her gravity, it was real, but he suddenly felt that this
smile was unreal; she had worn it all day, with its variations, and he
felt now that she had been unreal all day. Didn’t she know that she
needn’t be unreal with him? She had seemed to know last night....
So he suddenly asked her:--
“Did you mind Lois going away--like that?”
She stared up at him, funnily, with lifted eyebrows. “Is this man mad?”
they seemed to ask, those lifted eyebrows.
“Mind!” she echoed, under them. “Oh, no! Why would I?”
“Baby!” he thought. She added, as though they had been discussing the
subject for hours and she was weary of it:--
“She did quite right, you know. Quite right....”
So she kept her smile. They danced a lot more that night.
Thus it was on the second night.
And on the third night it was more or less thus.
On the fourth night Ivor and Virginia were in Avignon.