1
But the “sick little pain” was not to be tamed into regularity so easily
as all that, and it cared nothing for pacts. Virginia’s body was
rebellious of Virginia’s heart. And London saw them long before October;
it saw them approaching from the sky in a wide-winged, colourless thing
which many men had died to make so convenient for Ivor and Virginia.
Maybe Virginia had not been quiet enough. Although she very seldom left
the studio and its little garden over Paris, maybe she had not been
quiet enough. Le docteur David, on every one of her weekly visits,
reminded her--and sometimes Ivor, when he accompanied her--of his urgent
command. But, as Dr. David himself had said, these things are very
difficult. And Ivor and Virginia were in love.
Everything seemed to be going very well until a certain morning in July.
Ivor was leisurely dressing--with one arm one dresses either very
leisurely or very frantically--in his little room off the gallery, when
the Smith came in. She would often come in thus, of a morning or
evening, to help him with his tie or suchlike; for though Ivor was now
very expert in managing his clothes, he was not averse from a little
help from the amiable Smith. But she looked concerned this morning.
“_Milady_ is not well to-day,” she said.
“Why, what’s the matter, Smith?”
“_Milady_ is too pale,” Smith said mysteriously.
And indeed, when in a few minutes he came down into the studio, Virginia
was “too pale.” She lay propped up in the bed--that which was “a lovely
divan by day”--and her face was whiter than the pillows behind her head.
“This bed is not going to be a divan to-day,” she turned her head to him
to say, as he came down the little stairway. And she smiled at his
concern through the loose mass of her hair, for she was brushing it.
Whenever Virginia felt tired and lazy in bed she would brush her hair
for a long time, with a very special and hard brush; and as she brushed
it she would incline her head a little this and that way, peering at you
the while through the golden mesh, which shone gloriously with the
brushing.
“But, Virginia!” he cried, beside her bed: “are you very ill?”
“Not awfully,” said Virginia.
As he stood, his hand gently held aside the spilled golden hair that
almost hid her face.
“But you’ve got no right to look as white as this, my dear! You’ve given
Smith an awful fright.”
“Oh, Smith!” she smiled up at him. “She ought to know better, I do
think--that ever-anxious little Smith!”
“It’s really quite all right,” she assured him. “I’m apt to get like
this now and then--more or less. I’ll just lie about in bed to-day, and
to-morrow I’ll be as well as anything. Especially if you’ll read me out
that new Shaw play Smith brought up from Brentano’s yesterday. But don’t
read the preface, please, for he always gets so angry in his prefaces,
and I couldn’t bear any one to be angry with me to-day.”
Ivor sat down on the edge of the bed. He took her hand, and looked very
miserable.
“I feel a beast,” he said.
Virginia rapped his knuckles sharply with her brush. Virginia was angry.
“Don’t be silly, Ivor! What on earth has it to do with you?” And she
opened her eyes very wide at him, and raised her eyebrows with the “Is
this man mad?” look.
Then Smith came in with breakfast, which they had from a little table
beside the bed. Virginia always took a large glass of milk at breakfast:
to make her strong and fat, she said.
It was half-past nine by Ivor’s watch. He rose. “I will now dash down to
Paris,” he told her sternly, “to have a little speech with Dr. David.
And then Dr. David will dash up here to have a little speech with you.”
Virginia made a quick noise, but Ivor would have none of that.
“You might go in the afternoon!” she pleaded.
“Now _you_ are being silly,” he only said to that; and put on his hat, a
soft gray thing which he was quite unable to wear straight.
“Well, _go_, then!” Virginia cried with feverish venom. She had asked
him to read her a Shaw play, and he was going to fetch a doctor! “Oh,
the fool!” Virginia wildly thought, in the impatient surge of her
weakness.
2
Ivor paced about the garden while the doctor was within the studio: and
he had no eyes for the glory of the July morning over Paris, they
worried the ground and distance with dark absence.
At last Dr. David came out, and Ivor walked with him to his car: through
a small green door, up a narrow passage between two dingy houses, and
through a wide door on to the pavement of the Place.
“The operation must be next week,” Dr. David told him, as they walked.
“Oh!” said Ivor; then turned frankly to the old man. “Tell me, doctor,
is this operation really serious or not?”
“Well, it is not negligible,” the old man answered. “But it isn’t really
serious--particularly in the hands of Ian Black. It will be painful for
her, you understand--I am afraid Lady Tarlyon will consider that part
of it extremely serious. But I should say as little as possible to her
about the pain, if I were you. I daresay you know all there is to know
about pain....”
“I am writing to Ian Black to-day,” he went on, “to make arrangements
for next Thursday. So you will please cross next Tuesday, a week from
to-day, for she must be well rested.”
Dr. David made a sudden gesture with his hand.
“It is a small nuisance,” he said, “that Lady Tarlyon must have it done
in London, for the jolting in trains and on the boat will do her no
good, you understand. Particularly as everything is so crowded now. Even
an aeroplane would be better, if she had ever been up in one.”
“Oh, but she has--several times, I think!” Ivor cried; and smiled to
remember the press photographs of Virginia Tracy “going up, gone up,
come down and out” in 1913. “And I should think we could easily manage
an aeroplane for next week.” The idea took hold of him. “Oh, yes, why
not?”
“In that case you had better ‘manage’ it with your friends in England,”
said Dr. David, “for the service here is not yet organised, and they
might make difficulties. The Embassy might help, of course....”
“We won’t ask them,” Ivor said quickly. “We can manage one from England,
I’m sure. Lady Tarlyon has aerial connections.” He laughed gaily. “Oh,
splendid, doctor! She will be awfully pleased about that.”
They were now on the dingy pavement of the Place du Tertre, and Dr.
David had his hand on the door of his limousine; but with the other he
suddenly touched Ivor’s shoulder, a charmingly intimate gesture.
“Let me know,” he said, “what you have arranged. I shall be pleased to
hear that Lady Tarlyon is going to have a little pleasure before the
pain. For only thus is life bearable--whether the pleasure comes before
or after the pain. But it generally comes before, I understand....”
Charming old man, who contrived such courtesy out of commonplace!
3
Merriment and gravity were but the width of an eyelash apart in
Virginia: which was well proved that same night, after dinner, as she
lay in bed and smoked a cigarette. It was understood that Virginia
smoked but four cigarettes a day now--which, of course, it was remarked
by Ivor, always made the fifth so much more enjoyable. He was sitting
now in an arm-chair near her, and hanging from his hand over the arm was
the book of Shaw plays, from which he had been reading to her.
“I suppose you know,” Virginia breathed suddenly into her smoke, “that
I’m not to have my baby after all.”
“I don’t mean,” she explained, “that this operation affects that. It
might and it mightn’t--oh, the beastly mess that women’s bodies are, and
the lovely way that Swinburne wrote of them! Has a doctor ever written a
great poem, I wonder, Ivor? I can’t imagine it.... Dr. David told me
when I first went to see him that I’m not built the way of a
child-bearing woman, and that if I ever had one it would be the kind of
miracle that happens on the last page of a book. And you can’t imagine
how sweetly the old man turned it into a compliment, the way he said:
‘You are the childless woman of the ages, madame.’ Oh, compliments are
divine when they are quite meaningless, which may be why women like
those men who are always thinking of something else. It’s almost worth
while being ill to have met Dr. David....” She took a deep breath of her
cigarette, then crushed it into the ash-tray by her pillow.
“Come near,” she begged him, “and I will tell you something ever so
interesting.”
He sat at the side of the bed, and took her hand and played with it.
“You have made me tell you many stories,” he reminded her. “And now you
tell me one....”
“Ah, but your stories have sharp endings--the way your life will end,
maybe! You tell cruel stories, Ivor. I sometimes think you have a very
cruel mind. And that leads me to think, I don’t know why, that you will
die with a hard collar on, Ivor! But the story I’m going to tell has no
ending at all--the point of my story, dear, is that it has no ending!
Unless you say that a ‘dead-end’ is a proper ending....”
“I’m not going to say anything,” he said. “I am here to listen.”
“Yes, listen,” she begged him. “Years ago, when first you met me, I was
running amok. Lois was, too, and so we ran amok together; and made quite
a pretty little tradition of it, you remember? And every one seemed
awfully pleased about it: the more we ran amok the more most people
admired us and photographed us and said of us the kind of beastly things
that make a woman certain she’s beautiful--except just a few severely
romantic people like you, dear, who brushed us aside for the shoddy
people we were. People said we were newer than any new generation had
ever been before, which was quite true of some of us, but the rest of us
were all the dear old generations wrapped up together and gone rotten.
For, you see, Lois and I were ladies gone rotten--that’s exactly what we
were, Ivor, rotten ladies. The only time Lois has ever lost her temper
was when a man once called her a rotten lady. He _was_ a nice man....
And so running amok was great fun for us, and great fun for our men
too--though I do think that if the finest of them hadn’t died they would
have sickened of us pretty soon; and perhaps they wouldn’t have been so
eager for ‘fun’ if they hadn’t vaguely known that they weren’t long for
this world--which must sound nonsense, I suppose. But perhaps they were
_fey_, Ivor! But the few stern people who cursed us were on the wrong
tack, for they said we were young fools trying to be mighty clever and
thinking ourselves no end of fine people; whereas the one thing we were
all very clear about in our minds was that _we_ were nothing at all in
England, that _we_ didn’t matter one way or the other, that _we_ didn’t
represent anything in particular and had been somehow left behind in a
valley or pushed on ahead into a kind of bog. Quite a nice bog it was,
we thought, but still it was a bog, and we were stranded in it. Yes, it
was just as though people had got together and said to us: ‘Look here,
you dashing young people, push on ahead and see what it’s like out
there’--and ‘out there’ we had found a bog with purple and yellow
funguses all over it, and slimy pools of queer colours, and it looked so
strange and lovely that we stepped right into it; and then people
pointed to us, saying: ‘Just look how depraved they are! They are
covered with verdigris, but they call it wet-white!’ But we weren’t all
that, you know, we were just silly and rather cruel. And all that time I
didn’t like what I was doing a bit. I liked it so little that I used to
write letters to Kerrison about how fatuous life was, and death was, and
love was, and I was, and of course he was. He understood things, you
know, even though you couldn’t bear him. But somehow I went on, there
seemed nothing else to do--and something shoddy and inevitable seemed to
be pushing one on from behind, always and always. Rather like those poor
wretches in Tchekov’s plays, you remember, who go on and on doing things
in a kind of frantic boredom and despair, and talk cleverly about
meaningless things.... Lois was different, she was always more decided
than me; and she did a thing because she liked it and as long as she
liked it, and she stopped when she was bored with it. In her heart Lois
was always ambitious, she wanted to use the ‘Lady Lois’ legend as well
as she could; she wanted to be ‘the famous beauty who is representative
of the best artistic and intellectual qualities of the British
patrician’--though there was never anything patrician about Lois except
her lovely face, for her soul is an innkeeper’s soul; like those of all
patricians who succeed in life, I think, for the real patrician
tradition seems to be carried on in people’s hearts by those who fail,
like Coriolanus--which, maybe, is at the root of snobbery, something
fine at the root of something silly, a kind of spiritual respect for
fine people who fail.... And so she married nice little Johnny, and now
she lets Cabinet ministers and artists make love to her or get drunk and
disorderly in her house so that she can influence their Work, and when
she dies she will be as famous and as respected as Lady Ripon, but not
nearly so nice inside.... But I went on. Or other people went on and
left me behind. I don’t know. I did as I liked, and that’s a lonely
business, for doing as one likes means always to be leaving one thing
and going to another, it means that there are tags and ends of things
and people sticking out all over one’s past life. I slopped about with
such a determined face, Ivor! And all the time I felt I was going to a
‘dead-end,’ that there was a ‘dead-end’ at the end of my life. I
couldn’t think round that ‘dead-end,’ my mind went to a _cul-de-sac_
when I thought about it. And I was right, you know, for a woman of
thirty-one was making for her ‘dead-end’--her ‘dead-end’ was in sight,
it just was, as her horse cleared the hedge into that dark little lane
by Lady Hall--and, behold! you were there, Ivor! Do you remember how gay
I was at seeing you! Oh, I knew, you see, that something marvellous had
happened! I knew that my ‘dead-end’ was beaten as it came--you were
there, Ivor! And then I was a little sad, you remember, wondering
whether you were still the same defensive and antagonistic person you
had been years ago, and hoping you weren’t; for you were the man who had
got in the way of my ‘dead-end,’ and I wanted you....”
And then her lover comforted Virginia, saying that there would be no
“dead-end” for them now. And from some corner of his memory there leapt
out Aunt Moira’s lines from a poem by Meredith, but he did not quote the
lines, he just said: “We will be rapid falcons, Virginia, and we won’t
be caught in any snare, but fly together to very high places. And, oddly
enough, I know what I’m talking about....”
But some fantasy had come to Virginia, for suddenly she sat up in bed in
almost frantic disorder.
“But why don’t you work, Ivor? Why are you so happy with me--why don’t
you work?” That is what she cried; and her eyes glittered piteously with
the perverse fear that comes to people in a fever.
“You are choking me with your happiness--in a lovely way, but you are
choking me, I can’t explain. And you are choking yourself, too. Oh, I
know! You are a striving person, Ivor, but now you are too happy, you
are soaking yourself in happiness. It’s my fault.... This is unnatural
for you, this life of ours, you want to work and strive and think things
as well as to love--and here you are, being softened and choked! Why
don’t I see you miserable, Ivor, why aren’t you wretched at all this
waste? You are losing yourself in love, and as you lose yourself I will
lose you. Oh, yes, it’s like that with us....” She had overtaxed her
strength, and as she lay back she looked as though she might faint, if a
wraith can faint.
And he laughed at her and reminded her of their pact, and of the things
they had said that first evening in Paris....
“Oh, that!” she cried. And his face was so near to her that he kissed
her lips, those taut, dry lips--burning dry now.
“Yes,” she whispered, “it’s been divine--it is divine. But now it’s
ending, Ivor! We are flying back to London next week--you are taking me
back to London! And I’ve got the feeling of the ‘dead-end’ on me again,
for the first time since I met you in that lane--it’s stolen back! For
you’ve become like me, you know, this love has been stronger than you,
and you are going soft and rotten with it--you are drifting with me, my
sweet, instead of my striving with you! That is what’s called being
lovers, and it’s very bad for people. I told you, don’t you remember,
that we shouldn’t be lovers, you and I. Oh, I am so wise sometimes!” ...
“When we are married,” he mocked her, “a slight difference will be
perceptible in our relations. We will be busy lovers, then. There are so
many stars in the sky, Virginia, that there’s no reason for us to stay
on one....”
“Oh, when we are married!” she echoed his mockery very queerly; and she
held up his chin with her hand and looked deep into his eyes. And she
mocked his bewilderment at her mood, whispering, “Poor child!” so that
he was uncomfortable. She was very wise sometimes, she had said.
“How can you say that, Ivor, when you know I may die next week? How do
you know I won’t die--and I wouldn’t care but for you! I’ve got like
that. But what I am thinking now is that maybe it would be better for
you if I did die, much better maybe. You could strive all you wanted
then!” she breathed with a sudden catch, and feverishly pushed his face
from her. “How do you know anything, Ivor, to talk so glibly about our
marrying? You are very arrogant, I do think.... There was a lot of
destiny in Greek plays, and how do you know there isn’t some left for
us--for unanchored people like you and me? Destiny for the undecided....
Perhaps it’s fated that you take me to my death as Iphigenia was taken
to sacrifice. Perhaps you are taking Virginia to sacrifice to the god of
your life, so that the voyage of your life will be helped with
favourable winds! Oh, Ivor, don’t protest, for how can you know
anything? These things are very secret from us....”
“Women have moods,” Magdalen had said. “They can’t help it, and no one
can help them....”