1
Their pact was to outlaw themselves from England and all men, from the
March day when they arrived in Paris until October. But one cannot be
undisturbed in the heart of Paris: which must, of course, be only a
figure of speech, for surely the heart of Paris must lie otherwhere than
about the rue de la Paix, else men would not so easily die for it. And,
too, it was now the chattering Paris of departing armies and approaching
Conference, when Lady Tarlyon could not take a step without being
recognised and hailed: and Ivor had to be continually standing aside and
trying to look as though himself had met her by chance only a moment
before.
So they had left Paris, very shortly after their first arrival, and
again by car. The world was before them, but they had not a wide choice
of direction. Northwards were still soldiers and ruins, westwards were
armaments going to rest, eastwards was never but rather dull--so they
went towards the Pyrenees, staying where they happened. They went to
Hendaye and to St. Jean de Luz--but not to Biarritz!
“Oh no, not Biarritz! We are not feeling at all smart these days!”
Virginia cried in his ear, and jolly nearly bit it; which was a sudden
habit of hers that caused words between them, for she seemed to like
doing it, but it hurt him. “Who has more right to bite your ear than I?”
Virginia cried, and because he remarked that she should have said “me”
instead of “I,” she punished him. “Oh, you beast, Ivor! you like it, you
know you do! And besides your own grammar in your books is rotten....”
But no god known to man can be so absurdly and unreservedly kind to two
people; and so there travelled in the car with Ivor and Virginia, the
chauffeur and the maid (the amiable “Smith”), an invisible but impish
little traveller--none other than that “sick little pain”! It plagued
Virginia increasingly, that sick little pain inside her; and soon its
mark was laid softly upon her face, always clear-white as a white
camellia; but lately it was as though the deity of her father’s
button-hole was becoming the deity of Virginia’s complexion, for a
gardenia was not more wan nor peculiar-white than the disturbing pallor
of her face. Her lips Virginia coloured, but never a touch of _rouge_
touched her cheek, for she said that many Carnal generations had
established her complexion, and who was she to risk breaking the entail
of so precious a property? And Ivor agreed with her, saying that she was
quite right to have the courage of her own complexion....
Now one day it came to pass that the stuff in the little white bottle,
in which there was opium and mint, lost all its soothing properties; and
the bravery of Virginia--it was only a very little pain, after all!--was
of no avail against the solicitude of Ivor, so that Paris saw them again
on an afternoon in April.
2
“I know of a doctor Lois had once,” Virginia said. But when she came out
of that doctor’s consulting room, Ivor saw that she was impatient.
“The man’s a fool,” Virginia said; and when they were well outside, she
said: “He has the indigestion theory on the brain. He shook his head
over me--such a nasty little man, Ivor! And he said that it might be due
to too many cocktails and irregular habits--me! And so I didn’t even
trouble to tell him that I hadn’t touched anything but Vichy for years,
and not much of that.... _Now_ what are we going to do, Ivor?”
“We are going to find a better doctor,” Ivor said; and found a famous
one the very next day. “This sick little pain,” Ivor said, “has had a
long enough run....”
Le docteur David was a very tall and bearded old gentleman who lived in
a very small and stuffy _apartement_ in the rue Ponthieu, a narrow
street off the Champs Elysées: a famous specialist and a kind and genial
man of the world, with a perfect command of many languages and without a
trace of that aggressive optimism which makes so many Gallic doctors
quite unbearable to their victims. Virginia liked him, saying that he
was a most superior man and that the word indigestion had not dominated
their conversation, but that Dr. David had suggested that X-ray
photographs would be interesting. She was not very communicative about
it, Ivor thought.
They went again to the rue Ponthieu after the X-ray photographs had been
taken. And the first sight Ivor had of le docteur David was when, pacing
up and down the stuffy and overfurnished waiting-room in his
restlessness, a wide double-door opened and there appeared the back of
Virginia and the heavily bearded face of the specialist. Virginia was
saying:--
“Then it will be all right until October? Oh, please say ‘yes,’ doctor!”
“Yes,” smiled the tall, old gentleman. They came into the room, and Ivor
fully saw him as a very courtly, very bearded, and very wise-looking man
of the world. Virginia introduced them, and said quickly to Ivor:--
“It’s a long story. Dr. David says I must be operated on, but that I can
wait until October....”
“So long as you keep quiet,” said Dr. David.
“Oh yes, I will keep quiet!” Virginia breathed softly.
“But when I say quiet, madame, I mean very, very quiet,” Dr. David
insisted gravely; and his eyes smiled gravely down on her, so that she
should understand him well.
“And you say,” Virginia went quickly on, “that it will be quite all
right for me to be cut into little bits in London? For I was once in a
French _maison de santé_ for a few days, and though the nurses were very
kind they were dreadfully inefficient, and looked as though they were or
might be nuns. It was most depressing....”
The old man chuckled in his beard. Unlike most Frenchmen, he stood on
his own and not on France’s dignity.
“But yes, London is easily managed! I have often worked with Ian
Black--but you know him, probably? Who in London does not know Ian
Black?”
“Yes, I know him,” Ivor said, and Dr. David smiled across at him. Ivor
had often met the surgeon, Ian Black, at Rodney West’s house....
“You must come to see me once a week for a while,” the specialist told
Virginia, “to let me know how you are. Thus we will cure you.”
“I will come twice a week,” Virginia cried gaily, liking the old
gentleman more every moment.
“Well, then, once as a patient and once as a friend,” Dr. David smiled
gallantly. “But remember, Lady Tarlyon,” he added gravely, “you must
keep very quiet. I warn you that it will be much, much more comfortable
for you....”
As Virginia passed out he detained Ivor for a moment. He looked
thoughtfully at Ivor.
“If you are a great friend of Lady Tarlyon’s,” said le docteur David,
“you will persuade her to keep quiet for the next few months. You will
help her to keep quiet, perhaps? These things are very difficult, I
know....” And Ivor silently agreed that these things were very difficult
indeed.
3
“You see,” Virginia began, as the car swallowed up the Champs Elysées
towards the Ritz, “when I first went to see him, he patted me about here
and there, and then he asked me the questions which even the nicest
doctors must ask women. He didn’t seem any more satisfied with my
answers than I am with the facts--for I do get so unnecessarily weak,
sometimes, Ivor! And then he asked if I had ever had a motor accident or
a fall from a horse, and I remembered a fall I had had in the second
year of the war, over a ditch. Not a really bad fall, you know, but just
bad enough to shake me up and keep me in bed for a day or two. And then,
after the X-rays had been taken, he said I was a bit wrenched about
inside--it’s all very technical, dear--and that he could fix it good and
proper with an operation. Not a very serious operation, he said, but not
so very minor either. So that’s why I must keep quiet until October--oh
yes, I insisted on October, so that we can have our summer out!--for
he’s afraid of ever so little a hæmorrhage or something. It would be
very bad for me, he said, Ivor,” she added, in a funny little way.
“We must leave the Ritz at once,” Ivor firmly capped a silence.
“Please!” she agreed. “But where shall we go to, Ivor? I couldn’t bear
one of those dazzling flats in the Avenue Victor Hugo or round about the
Parc Monceau, even if we could find one; and the Latin Quarter is now an
annexe of New York--where _can_ we go, Ivor?”
The car swung round the vast Place de la Concorde....
“I’m thinking,” said Ivor.
4
He thought and acted to such good advantage that--with the help of wires
to Turner to hunt up old addresses--within twenty-four hours he had
routed up Kay Benson in his studio on the Butte. Ivor had known Kay
Benson in the feverish months of new acquaintance succeeding on his
meeting with Otto and Fitz in 1910: had lent him money--which Kay had
repaid--and had never entirely lost touch with him. Now Ivor liked the
studio at sight, dirty and unkempt as it was; for Kay Benson, having
built and decorated it in a suddenly rich period before the war, had
since fallen from that high estate, and was become again the
impoverished and earnest Kay of old. His absence during the war had not
improved the general ensemble of the place--but still, thought Ivor, a
few days, a few stuffs, a little furniture, and Virginia would put it
splendidly right. And the garden over Paris was a marvellous accident, a
miracle to happen to a lover....
Kay Benson was eager--the poorer he was the more eager he was about
everything, poor Kay!--to go to Tripoli: “and leave this bloody Europe
for good and all,” he said furiously. So the matter of letting the
studio to Ivor, from that very day if Ivor liked, was easily arranged.
But when Virginia saw it in the candle-light of that same night--Kay was
adventuring, earnestly of course, and had given Ivor the key--she cried
out that she simply must have it for her own: it was so divine with its
wide yet dim roominess, its little stairs up to a little gallery at the
end, and its little rooms leading from the little gallery.
“Smith can take care of us and cook for us here,” Virginia cried,
quickly planning. “And there’s a sweet little room for her. And a bigger
little room for Ivor. And the biggest room of all for Virginia, who
will sleep on a bed in the corner of the studio, which bed will be a
lovely divan by day....”
“But will he sell the lease?” she asked anxiously, and Ivor said Kay
Benson would sell anything.
“But _I_ will buy it,” Ivor said. “_I_ found it, and _I_’m going to buy
it. Yah!”
“You might let me, I do think!” Virginia made plaint.
Ivor softened, magnificently:
“Well, we will both buy it--between us!”
“Oh, Ivor, our eyrie! Over Paris, out of ken--our eyrie, Ivor!” And
Virginia’s eyes were brighter than a room of a thousand candles....
Thus it was, then, that Ivor and Virginia came to be in a studio on the
Butte, on the first day of May, 1919; and intended to stay there, until
the business of life should take them to London in October.