1
But, of course, Turner did not need to call him; and Ivor was striding
along the road to Hungerford by eight o’clock. He had plenty of time in
which to do the just over two miles before the train was due to leave,
but his impatience needed swift movement.
Ivor never could loiter: not even on a fine morning in Berkshire; and
even in his pacings up and down he would sometimes go at a furious rate
and find himself perspiring--about nothing at all! Ivor didn’t,
couldn’t, notice the country when there was anything on his mind: it was
an inability, like that of those tiresome people who can _not_
appreciate poetry unless it’s read to them by some one they like. A
mountain would have to be an enormous mountain before Ivor, with
anything on his mind, could become aware of it; and even then he would
be more aware of it if there was a man on top of it. A landscape would
have to be an amazing landscape before Ivor, with anything on his mind,
could become aware of it; and even then he would feel it more acutely if
there was a figure against the landscape. People were important to Ivor;
that is why he was a solitary, and that is why men become solitaries,
because people are important to them. People could make places beautiful
or ugly for Ivor.... And now he simply tore along the road to Hungerford
as though it had been a street in a slum, and through the fine September
mist as though he hated cigarette smoke. And as he strode along his mind
was gay on life and Virginia, and his hat swung from his hand, and his
thick hair shone black and brown with the water of its brushing.
It was about a mile from Hungerford that, as he turned the corner which
led to a path across the fields directly to the station, he almost
collided with the little telegraph-boy on his bicycle. The boy jumped
off sulkily, and tugged at his pocket.
“Tel’gram,” said the boy.
Ivor read: “Please come back.--Virginia.” And he saw that it had been
sent off at 5.45 the day before.
“Why didn’t I get this last night?” he asked sharply.
“Office closes 6.30,” the boy explained. “Can’t deliver tel’grams
Nasyngton after 6.”
“Ought to live in Hungerford,” the boy said cheekily.
The tall, dark man looked suddenly ferocious.
“If----” he began, and then, to the boy’s amazement, he started to run
away.
Ivor pulled himself up with a kind of fierce laugh. No good running to
catch a train before it’s in a station, he thought. It was the “Please”
in the wire that had set him running--suddenly, the idea of it!
“_Please!_” One was always hearing and saying that word, and yet it had
that amazing and potent meaning! The pity of it, and the generosity in
it! “Please,” she had written. It stabbed his heart, that word. He saw
her lips saying it, those taut and dry and beautiful lips that liked the
rush of a chill wind--he heard them saying it in his ears: “Please,
Ivor!” And all his gaiety was lost in regret for his folly of
yesterday--his folly of “wisdom” in not having gone to her before. He
had let her write “please” to him! God, Virginia and her beastly men!
It was beyond his power to prevent himself walking quickly; and he had a
long wait at Hungerford Station, up and down the far end of the London
platform--it seemed like hours--before any one but a porter or two was
visible. But at last motors began to twist round the slope from
Hungerford and down to the station, and soon the platform was dotted
with people and suitcases. Then the train from London bustled in at the
opposite platform, and soon a boy came round with papers.
Ivor bought _The Times_, and, as an afterthought, _The Daily Mirror_:
thinking to while away the minutes before his train came in, and one arm
not being sufficient to cope with _The Times_ in the open. With that
pressed under his arm he held up the picture-paper at an angle: and
then, with a frown, he held it up straight: as he did so, dropping _The
Times_ from under his arm. He didn’t pick it up: he stared at one of the
several pictures on the front page--a face he knew, looking so strange!
so odd, just there! And he knew the photograph too, it was an old one
and often reproduced, for it was a “stock” photograph and used on the
smallest provocation. They had often laughed at it together, calling it
“Virginia arrogant.” ... It was a little blurred.... But why _there_?
And though he saw the large type above it, though his eyes read it, and
then read it again, he simply could not take it in. Oh, absurd! “Death
of the Viscountess Tarlyon.” Oh, but rot! His hand trembled ever so
little as he held the paper higher to read the small type below
“Virginia arrogant.”
“We regret to announce the sudden death of the beautiful Viscountess
Tarlyon at her house in Belgrave Square towards eight o’clock last
night----” Ivor very consciously, very determinedly, closed his eyes and
then he opened them again. Yes, there was “Virginia arrogant” in front
of him. Then he looked about the platform--it seemed suddenly to be
crowded with people, and they all seemed to be yelling about something.
He turned to the small type again: “Lady Tarlyon, who will perhaps be
better remembered as the Hon. Virginia Tracy and later as Mrs. Hector
Sardon, underwent a serious operation some weeks ago, from which it was
thought she had quite...” he skipped a few words “ ..presumably went
out too soon, walking in the rain of the day before yesterday, and
contracted a chill which, in her weak state of health, only too soon....
Every one will regr---- Viscount Tarly----” He simply couldn’t see any
more of the type, his eyes wouldn’t take it in; and there was a
frightful noise in his ears, every one seemed to be yelling right at
him. People shouting, people pushing, porters.... “LONDON train! Stop at
Newbury and Reading! LONDON TRAIN!” bang into his ear. Doors slammed to,
and then the train seemed to move across his eyes, kept on moving....
“Come on, sir, come _on_!” a voice cried impatiently. Ivor shook his
head at the voice and bent down to pick up _The Times_ at his feet.
Someone had trodden on it.
He left the station very slowly: the way he had come, through the
turnstile into the fields, clutching the papers. Oh, rot.... “In the
rain of the day before yesterday,” it said. He stopped and looked at the
paper again; and, somehow dropping them both on to the path, left them
both there.... But that was the day she had sent him the first wire! How
then?... He couldn’t understand it at all, he couldn’t make head or tail
of the thing. Why, damn it, she’d sent him a wire only yesterday
evening--5.45! And then, quite clearly, he knew that Virginia hadn’t
written that wire herself--she had told little Smith to write it!
Virginia wouldn’t have signed the wire “Virginia”--she would never have
signed a wire to him--she hadn’t signed the wire that had taken him to
Cimiez--she hadn’t signed the first wire. “In the rain of the day before
yesterday.” ... Oh, my God!
He must have been walking at a furious pace, for he had to stop to wipe
his face with his handkerchief. His face was wet, dripping wet.... That
wire, that first wire! “Come back!” He saw it now, all of it,
everything. His thoughts tore round that first wire in a kind of fierce
circle, a clear circle, round and round it, round and round every detail
of it. “In the rain of the day before yesterday!” He saw and heard
Virginia, very white of face. As though he was there now, he saw
Virginia on that day. Just after luncheon. Virginia always called it
luncheon, never lunch. “And where shall we luncheon to-day?” she’d
say.... Drizzling outside. He heard her voice, rather sharp and hard.
“I’m going out, Smith.”
“_Oh, mais il pleut, milady!_” That anxious little Smith! so fearful of
and for her mistress!
“I am going out, Smith. To send a wire.”
And he saw the sharp and dangerous gesture with which Virginia cut short
poor little Smith’s cry that she could send the wire. “_Mais il pleut,
milady!_”
“But I _wish_ to send it myself! No more now. You can come with me if
you like.... No, I can’t wait for the car. And I want to walk. Good God,
why shouldn’t I walk just for once!” The sudden and sweeping impatience!
“_Oh, milady, milady!_”
And he saw Virginia walking. Long swift strides through the drizzle
towards the Post Office in Knightsbridge. She wanted to send it herself!
It was an idea.... Oh, he knew, he knew! He saw everything--he saw
Virginia’s heart! She wanted to send that wire herself! Ivor would
know....
And the anxious little Smith trotting along just behind her,
breathlessly. “_Oh, milady, milady!_” Holding up an umbrella in front of
her, trying to cover Virginia with it, panting a little after those
swift Virginian strides. Never in her life had Virginia walked under an
umbrella, you couldn’t conceive it! Always she had been just ahead of an
umbrella, just outside it, and someone panting, laughing, crying behind
her. Not an umbrella-woman, Virginia.... Striding towards Knightsbridge
with set white face, so determined, heroically set. But she was heroic!
Eyes straight ahead--a soldier’s eyes, fearless eyes! Those curious eyes
that could make molehills out of mountains--Ah, why had he never thought
of that before? And agonised little Smith in her blue waterproof,
panting behind with her umbrella inclined forwards. “_Oh, milady,
milady!_”
And then she had sent that first wire. Those two words: “Come back.”
Everything was in those two words--imperious and humble, ashamed and
forgiving--and so generous! Everything of Virginia and of love was in
those two quick words--and he hadn’t seen it! He hadn’t seen Virginia’s
heart, that lovely and mysterious heart! He had been like a swine before
the two pearls in that wire. He just hadn’t seen! And then she had gone
back home, maybe not so swiftly; and happily--oh, yes, happily! He could
see the light in her eyes as she walked back home, not so swiftly: the
merry light in Virginia’s eyes--trusting Ivor! He would come back
quickly. And little Smith had been glad.... But he hadn’t gone. And when
she had got back to the “mausoleum,” she had shivered a little from the
damp, and was soon in bed with a chill: quite slight at first, “Oh, very
minor!” but quick to feed on Virginia’s so weak health, terribly quick
and wanton in its fierceness: and to her lungs, easily.... And he had
not gone. My God, he had not gone!
And then that second wire--5.45 yesterday! Virginia had waited all day,
growing worse all day. She had waited for him. And at last--at 5.30,
say!--she had commanded Smith to send that wire: “Please....” And she
had commanded Smith on pain of death to say nothing of her being ill.
“Just write ‘Please come back.’” Weaker and weaker every minute, the
chill in her lungs--poor Virginia, brave Virginia! “_Oh, milady,
milady!_” Pitiful at last! Dying ... maybe she knew she was dying when
she told Smith to send that wire, maybe she was at last seeing the
“dead-end” of her fears--and no Ivor in the “dead-end” this time! Ah,
she was _fey_, this Virginia. He had always known.... And how he had
started to run this morning--ages ago! He had known something. “Please,”
she had said. And now in his ears.... And he had wanted everything! He!
“And haven’t I given you everything, Ivor?” she softly asked. He heard
her.... How she would say, “Ivor!” telling him that the name pleased her
heart.... Funny Virginia, she was so mysterious.... Every woman has a
legend, there is a legend to every woman.... His was a terrible crime.
From a silly, trivial thing this crime had been born, but it was a
terrible crime. He had killed Virginia, ... he had closed the reckless
light in Virginia’s eyes. The brave and hazardous eyes ... of white
Virginia! But why did he see her, think of her, as white? And his mind
searched furiously, and at last his mind found a dream in which was a
column of marble.... Oh, yes, that funny dream! and the naked white
figure clinging to that column, so white she looked up there, clinging
to it with white arms and legs, and destroying it with kisses.... That
dream had given him Virginia and him to Virginia. And as he walked
headlong up the roads of Berkshire he dreamed that dream again.
2
The first shock Turner received that day was on seeing a tall figure
approaching from Hungerford. “Well!” he thought. Turner and luggage were
in the Nasyngton grocer’s cart on their way to the station.
“’Ere, pull up!” he said to the man. “’E’s coming the wrong way.”
“Coming quick, whichever way!” murmured the Nasyngton grocer.
And the figure was coming quick! As he approached them, drawn up at the
side of the road, Turner cried, “I say, sir!” But though he cried “I
say, sir!” twice more, the figure passed them without stopping. The
figure certainly glanced at them, but seemed to see or hear nothing.
“Balmy,” said the Nasyngton grocer. And the figure strode on, his hat
swinging furiously from his one hand. Turner took off his Derby and
scratched his head.
“Right about turn,” he said at last, patiently.
The old nag wheeled slowly round, and ambled after the figure with the
waving right arm.
“’E looks dark,” commented the Nasyngton grocer.
Turner was perturbed.
“Like the Wandering Jew,” he said softly. “No less....” And Turner
whistled softly, patiently.
The Nasyngton grocer’s horse was old and unused to hurrying: it did not
hurry now; and the striding figure of his master was soon lost to
Turner’s solicitous eye round a bend.
But when he reached the house he was offended to find no one there.
“Well!” Turner muttered. Whereupon the Nasyngton grocer thought fit to
ask a question.
“Oh, go ’ome!’ said Turner sharply. Then he waited for a long time. And
he got bored to death; for there was nothing for him to do about the
house, he didn’t know whether they were to stay or go to London.
“’Anging about!” he muttered. Turner, like his master, liked to know
where he _was_; and now he wasn’t anywhere, unless being between
Nasyngton and London and going without lunch was being somewhere.
He waited for hours; it was after two o’clock, and he was hungry; and,
examining the kitchen, he found half a loaf of bread and one egg.
“Scramble it!” he mimicked viciously. He boiled it.... And then Turner
had a curious feeling: he felt that he didn’t belong to this Nasyngton
house to-day, he belonged to Upper Brook Street, where he would have
been this moment but for having said “Right about turn.” And so, having
that curious feeling, Turner stood on the front door steps and smoked a
cigarette. He stared at the Kennet. It was still, placid. “Nothing
rising.” ...
And then he had to throw his cigarette away--for round the corner of the
drive strode a dark figure. Right at him.... Turner was shocked. “Talk
about sweat!” he said later to Mrs. Hope. His master’s face glistened
with it, it dripped from him; if he had been wearing a hard collar it
would have melted; his dark hair was all over the place, and there was a
dry, red rim around his eyes as though he had been in a great wind.
Turner pulled himself together and took a letter out of his pocket. It
was addressed in pencil, and he had great hopes of that letter.
“Letter, sir,” he muttered. “Came just after you left this----”
The dark figure was gone into the house.
3
In the sitting-room Ivor looked at the letter. That pencilled scrawl, so
careless always--so much more careless on this envelope, so faint! But
how? He stared at it.... Dear God, she had written it in bed yesterday,
just in case he might not come! Fearing.... Forgiving him, humbling
herself. And then, for the first time, he gave a sob. He knew everything
that was in that letter, every word. Her lips were by his ear, telling
him the words of that letter. “I’m sorry to have been a beast, Ivor, I’m
so sorry. Everything is all right, Ivor, everything. I’m so sorry I hurt
you ... only, you see, you aren’t casual enough.... Keep your eyebrows
straight for me, my darling, don’t bring them down into the darkness. Be
a little more casual, Ivor....” Oh! _he_ not casual enough!... And it
was impossible for him to open that thin envelope crushed in his hand.
Turner tiptoed to the door of the sitting-room. He had heard that sob,
and was amazed and afraid. And then Turner saw a strange thing. He saw a
one-armed man without resource in his mind trying to tear across an
unopened envelope. The one-armed man had his knee up to and pressed
against the edge of the table, and under the knee was half the envelope,
and his fingers were childishly tearing at the other half; and at last
the other half came away in his fingers.... Then eyes looked at Turner
at the door; and Turner ran away.
“Like a lot of mad babies crying in a man’s inside,” he tried to explain
that look to Mrs. Hope.
EPILOGUE
THE IMAGE IN THE HEART
CHAPTER I
1
Towards midnight on the night of the 1st of May, 1921: at the sign of
the Mont Agel: and, at this moment, under the passing glance of the
polite and amiable M. Stutz--who never went to bed, never; but his wife
did, and had.
Ivor Pelham Marlay, looking up at last from the abyss of his coffee-cup,
now a sad looking mess of ashes and ends of many cigarettes, caught M.
Stutz’s eye gently on him: Ivor smiled self-consciously; and he made a
displeased little gesture at the untouched glass of Napoleonic brandy
before him.
“I’m thirsty, M. Stutz,” he whispered.
And he looked round him stealthily, his first look round for ever such a
long time, and saw but three other people in the shuttered restaurant:
Cornelius Fayle, Mr. Kerrison and a young woman with tawny hair, pallid
face, and crimson lips that smiled without meaning: a pathetic rebel....
“What about a whisky-and-soda?” asked Ivor softly.
“At once,” said M. Stutz, very low; and quickly concerned himself with
it behind the counter.
This matter of whisky-and-soda was, you understand, something of a
conspiratorial rite in the establishment of M. Stutz: he disapproved of
whisky-and-soda. “It is an untidy drink,” said M. Stutz. He discouraged
it among “My Customers,” and it was only to the most favoured among them
that he would dream of serving it. To others he would say, rather
stiffly: “I do not serve whisky, sir,” and did not. Thus, the most
favoured must in all decency look carefully round the room before
begging M. Stutz’s complaisance in this particular, lest the less
favoured should be envious and also demand whisky instead of the wine
they were drinking. And that would never do at all, for the wines of M.
Stutz’s cellar were not only the treasures of his heart but also the
columns which supported the formidable edifice of his income.
This matter of the whisky-and-soda must be pursued yet a little further,
before we are finally done with it, the Mont Agel, and M. Stutz; for it
was on its wings, if such will be allowed to so vulgar a drink, that
Ivor finally left the Mont Agel. His way with a whisky-and-soda was
drastic and medicinal: the glass was raised, and lo! the glass was laid
down empty.
Money passed between Ivor and M. Stutz, and Ivor made ready to go.
“It’s raining, just a leetle,” M. Stutz told him. “Shall I send for a
taxi?”
Ivor said he would walk, thanks very much, and was politely preceded by
M. Stutz towards the side-door into the hotel passage--for the
restaurant-door was closed and locked in pursuance of certain
regulations to that effect--and up that narrow passage to the hotel
door: which was pierced, you will remember, by ever such a little
eye-hole....
It was as M. Stutz had his hand on the latch of the door that he turned
to Ivor behind him; and he examined Ivor, for a moment, seriously and
thoughtfully.
“You know, Mr. Marlay,” said M. Stutz softly, “you are a clever man, but
you do not know how to live. I have observed it....”
“I’ve never observed anything else,” returned Ivor, with the shadow of a
smile.
“I fancy,” said M. Stutz, “that you live too much with your emotions,
Mr. Marlay, and not enough with your brains....”
“Ah,” said Ivor vaguely.
“I am only a little _restaurateur_,” said M. Stutz, with his epic
gesture, “but I hear things. They say you are very clever, but that you
are doing nothing now. Of course people are only too ready to say that a
young man who has done something is going to pieces--but I would not
like you to go to pieces, Mr. Marlay.”
“That is very kind of you, M. Stutz,” said Ivor sincerely, “I’ll make a
note of what you say. Good-night, M. Stutz. And thank you.”
The amiable _restaurateur_, from the hotel doorway, meditated a little
on the tall figure that swung swiftly out of sight round the corner into
Oxford Street; and then, carefully and thoughtfully, he closed and
bolted the hotel door, for the Mont Agel would not be “at home” to any
more visitors that night, no matter of what degree. And who, in the
lists of sudden visitors by night, was left to replace Virginia? that
fair and grave figure of the night, that so lovely ornament of the
closed and shuttered Mont Agel! Who now was left, among the gallants of
the London night, who could so perfectly compound complaisance with
quality, silence with speech, ease with distance? who so _soignée_, yet
so understanding of others’ carelessness, as Virginia Tarlyon? Ah, it
was death’s most blood-thirsty joke to kill Virginia--the lady of the
merry golden curls and of the fair, small face in which was something
gay, something sombre. Often, very often, the eyes of M. Stutz, looking
round at the familiar faces of “My Customers,” would acutely miss the
loveliness of that fine lady; and, moved unawares to a considerable
sincerity, he would ache for her. For M. Stutz was a _connoisseur_ of
quality.
M. Stutz was concerned and sympathetic about Ivor not entirely because
he, of course, knew of the love of Ivor and Virginia, and had considered
it a happy fusion. M. Stutz was a snob, in a real and literary sense,
and loved a _grand seigneur_; he loved the thing without a title, he
loved the face and gesture of the thing; and, to his mind, a certain
degree of silence best accorded with features on which was stamped the
tired mark of _race_. It was M. Stutz’s daily business to deal with
people in whom there was much froth, and he dealt with them very
amiably, but he did not like frothiness. Here it was that Virginia had
pleased him, and here Ivor Marlay pleased him--there was no froth in
him, he sought no favour but what was accorded to him in courtesy in
return for courtesy.... And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect
great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early
twenties; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing
the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia--for Virginia, M. Stutz
had thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay,
even though she had seemed to fail so deplorably with Hector Sardon and
Lord Tarlyon. But now! Allowing for the havoc of her death in him, M.
Stutz did not think that a sum of three books, the first of which was
negligible, was worthy of a man who must have turned two-and-thirty. And
M. Stutz was unconsciously echoing a sentence of Aunt Percy’s when he
told himself that perhaps Ivor Marlay was too much given to thinking,
and that thinking made him angry.
2
But Ivor, striding along Oxford Street, was not thinking about anything
in particular. His mind had suddenly taken a lazy turn--even as he had
left the Mont Agel. It will be remembered that the air on the night of
the 1st of May, 1921--or rather, in the early hours of the 2nd of May,
for it struck half-past twelve as Ivor reached Oxford Circus--was cool
but soft, a first herald of what was to be a summer of “unprecedented
warmth and drought.” The drought, however, as will also be remembered,
was not then so remarkable as it later became; and on this particular
night there was noticeable, to a student of London, a vague kind of
rain in the air (it would naturally not be anywhere else, but on the
other hand it didn’t seem to reach the ground: not quite), which was not
unpleasing: to a student of London, anyway. Such a one was Ivor Marlay
become, for he had long since overcome the bitterness of his loneliness
in London, and now he loved London with what a ladies’ journal would
call a “bitter love.” Of late months he had very often walked about
London by night, and the feel of it had somehow crept into his bones: it
was not a sleek city, like Paris: it was a city of splendid and ordered
carelessness, there were holes and gashes in it where your Parisian
would have had boulevards, there were sharp turns and funny little slums
where any other city would have had an immaculate _Avenue_ leading to a
most immaculate _Place_ full of corrupt taxis and unshaven police....
He was at Oxford Circus, and stood debating there, just by the Tube
station. The rain held, but did not incommode. There were very few
passengers, a figure or two, a woman or two, and taxis hurtling by. Ivor
was wearing, above his dinner-jacket, a black Trilby. Now a short man
wearing a black Trilby looks like nothing on earth--or, say, like
something from South America; but it is quite becoming to a tall man,
and can lend an almost sinister air to the usual convention of faces.
Ivor, as he stood looking across Oxford Circus, with his black Trilby at
the usual angle and a white flower brave upon the lapel of his jacket,
looked just a little sinister. He stared across Oxford Circus. He wanted
to walk, anywhere. Down Regent Street, or across the Circus towards the
Park?... And this last he suddenly did, thinking that the only thing to
do with Oxford Circus was to cross it.
He walked; and this walk, so usual in character, in place, in
circumstance, was yet to chance on so strange a happening that for ever
after Ivor couldn’t help trying to find in it some faint atom of
forewarning--say, in his thoughts! But his thoughts, after having left
the Mont Agel, had taken that lazy turn. The fierce depression of that
day and evening had gone, leaving behind but the usual, half-humorous
gloom of his present nature; for he had acquired--or rather
rediscovered, for it had always been in him--a way of treating things
nonsensically with himself, just as though Virginia was beside him in
that little garden of the studio over Paris, “our eyrie, out of ken!” He
managed, within himself, to twist many things to comic phrases and the
like, so that the mind behind those straight and sulky eyebrows was
often roaring with laughter about something which wouldn’t have seemed
in the least funny when spoken.
He walked. To the Marble Arch, and thence down Park Lane, where was
little movement. The not unpleasing rain still seemed to encounter
certain difficulties in reaching the ground. He chose the Park side of
the road, and walked by the railings. He peered into the darkness of the
Park, and it displeased him. A closed and shuttered Park by night, with
wide and empty roads laid across it like the arms of a sprawling
skeleton, is a most abominable thing; there is no beauty in it thus, no
mystery, and sensitive eyes must reject its dark and dank attractions
through the railings. He walked. “Fight on all occasions.” Now who the
deuce had said that? Ah, yes, d’Artagnan’s father to d’Artagnan. Wise
old man, ... for if you fight on “all occasions” you simply must, by the
laws of chance, win now and then.
He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Piccadilly, and there
stayed a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and
careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the
light of the arc-lamps. Standing here, at the corner of Hamilton Place,
Piccadilly grows wide to the eye and sweeps to far distances: here, by
night, there are palaces all about you, there are spacious places before
you, the Green Park is a mysterious valley, and somewhere in the
spaciousness is a horseman on a horse and a chariot on a triumphal
arch, an arch that is much more impressive by night than in that festive
daylight when under its squat curve pass the automata of royalty. Here,
at the corner of Hamilton Place, Piccadilly ceases to be Piccadilly and
becomes something more than Hyde Park Corner: surely it becomes a wide
and elegant gesture, the magnificent gesture of Babylon towards the
barbaric extremities of its tributaries. Here motor-cars, that but a
moment before looked large and luxurious on the thin spine of
Piccadilly, dwindle to small and flying atoms, hurling themselves
headlong into the fat bosom of Belgrave Square, straight ahead to the
narrow rectitudes of Brompton, or still farther to the very frontiers of
the town, where is said to lie Holland Park and beyond which is
Hammersmith and a great darkness.
He walked. Down the slope of Piccadilly, that slight downward slope of
Piccadilly as it gathers strength to hunch itself up for its onslaught
on the town. And Ivor saw a much younger man, so gay, so careless, in a
swift and shining car--“that Camelot car, Magdalen!”--racing down and up
the switchback of Piccadilly by night, on the wings of love from
Camelot. Ah ... _les tendresses_! Admirable Magdalen! “You have
decorated my life,” he had cried to her--so cheekily! But so she
had--and so Virginia had too, and almost destroyed it as well! While he
had utterly destroyed Virginia....
Down Street. He would walk up Down Street, through Shepherds’ Market,
and so home to Upper Brook Street. And he began the ascent, on the side
opposite to the Tube station. A clock gave one distant knell--one
o’clock of the 2nd of May. The puny rain held.
The Tube station was closed, and shutters were laid across its face. Now
by Down Street Tube Station is a passage-way, no one knows why or
whither; whether or not this passage-way belongs to the Tube station has
never been established, nor if it does for what purpose, nor if it does
not for what purpose; in fact, nothing is known about this passage-way
but that it looks a cavernous place. But now this passage-way was made
remarkable to a passing man by the fact that a woman was standing within
it; there, just within the passage-way, Ivor saw a woman. He saw her as
he passed up on the opposite side: her face and head were in the
darkness of the cavernous place, but the light of the adjacent lamp fell
brightly on the lower part of her cloak; and this cloak looked gray and
soft and shining with a furry shine, it looked like a cloak made of
delicious shillings, and Ivor thought to himself: “If that isn’t
chinchilla I’d like to know what is.”
Beyond that passing glimpse he had, immediately, no other, for he walked
on up Down Street. But the chinchilla coat waved before his mind. “It’s
all very odd,” he thought. “What’s a chinchilla coat doing out alone at
this time of night? It’s not decent.” He had walked far enough to be
able, decently, to turn and look again. The soft gleam of the chinchilla
was still there: more than ever like a delicious shilling wantonly
awaiting a beggar’s grasp. “Give her five minutes,” thought Ivor, “and
if her man hasn’t turned up by then I must see about her. Wandering
about in a chinchilla coat on a night like this! I will offer her my
friendship for five minutes, stressing the word friendship so that she
will know I am a man without casual desires. Ha!” He felt, at this
moment, very gay; lighting a cigarette, he walked slowly as far as
Hertford Street; and slowly back, down the hill of Down Street. The rain
was at last managing to reach the ground. “Let it,” thought Ivor. He
felt gay. The hours of his life stretched before him like a desert, but
he felt gay; the days and years of his life stretched before him like a
wilderness of stones, but he felt gay; and he didn’t know why....
Quickly Ivor approached, on the opposite side, the soft and furry gleam
of the chinchilla coat. He laughed at himself. “What a dog I am!” he
thought. “If,” he thought, “I were a poet, I would write a poem about a
lonely lady in a chinchilla coat. Not being a poet, I will speak to her
instead. Thus.”
And he crossed the road with a swing. He didn’t care.... The face of the
chinchilla was not visible, as he approached. Above the face was a
suggestion of hair. A tall figure, taller than Virginia--very tall. But
he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t care.... And with his one arm he swept off
his hat.
“Can I,” he pleaded, “be of any use at all?”
“You can get me a taxi,” came voice of chinchilla, swift and low.
“Certainly,” said Ivor, and instantly left her, to search for it.
“Autocrat,” he thought. “None of your meek stuff about her.” ...
Piccadilly again. There were taxis on the rank a hundred yards or so up
on the sulky side--nice and polite taxis now that the war was over.
“In Down Street,” he told the first driver, “there’s a Tube station and
a chinchilla coat. Stop by them.”
The driver grunted, and drove. And, as he slowed down by the Tube, the
chinchilla coat stepped out from the cavernous place and was visible as
a tall woman in a chinchilla coat, no more; for over her head was thrown
a kind of motoring veil which obscured what might be golden hair and
suggested what might be a young and lovely face. “But of course,” Ivor
thought, “she’s lovely. A plain woman wouldn’t have the cheek.”
He jumped off the footboard, and opened the door for her.
“You may as well see me to my door now,” came voice of chinchilla
softly.
Suddenly, he couldn’t tell why, the desire for laughter left him.
“Yes,” he only said.
She made a gesture for him to get into the cab first.
“I will direct him,” she said.
3
There was silence in the cab: the lady seemed to have no desire to
speak; and Ivor, though he wanted to hear her voice again, suddenly
found he had nothing to say at all--to this strange lady! It was like an
occasion out of a book by a young romanticist, yet she was very real,
this woman; he could feel her _clean_ reality, and her voice had had
that low and careless charm of a woman whose feet are on an Aubusson
carpet and whose heart is not subject to sudden impulses. She was calm.
_Calm!_ A delicious state.... He wanted her to speak; and she suddenly
did.
“Tell me,” the voice came with gentle interest, “are other men like you,
or are you exceptional?”
“Well----” Ivor hesitated. “I’m afraid I have been rather
impertinent....”
And he deprecated his presence just a little, towards the dark poise of
her head.
“Yes, you have been impertinent, I suppose,” the voice said softly. “But
I wasn’t thinking of that. I was wondering if it was usual with men to
be gallant....”
“You see,” the voice explained, “I know very little about men. About
young men.”
Then Ivor suddenly had an idea....
“I say,” he almost blurted, “I’m all right, you know. I mean--well, I
don’t want anything. You mustn’t think that I have any--well, ulterior
motive, because I haven’t. I just thought I’d speak to you.... It’s
rather difficult to explain....”
“It seems to be,” the voice suddenly laughed at him. And the taxi
stopped.
Ivor stepped out, with reluctance, for the drive had been short, too
short; and, though he had no “ulterior motive,” he would have liked to
speak to her a while longer. But, even as he stepped out on to the curb,
he murmured softly: “Well, I’m damned!” For he saw that they were in
Hertford Street--and just at that part of Hertford Street which is at
the head of Down Street! and there, a hundred yards or so down the slope
of it, was the Tube station!
The chinchilla coat laughed, a slight wave of a laugh it was, from the
recess of the taxi.
“I live here,” she said. “But I told him to drive round by Hamilton
Place....”
“I thought it would be fun to see your puzzled face,” she said. “I’ve
never had much fun.”
Her sudden plaint from the darkness made him, standing by the door,
frightfully shy; and he said nothing, awkwardly.
He stood aside while she stepped out. And, in the lamplight, he saw her
face for the first time, as she brushed by him: a young and beautiful
profile--curiously sedate, too, it seemed!--passing by his eyes.
“She’s a person,” he couldn’t help thinking.
He remained by the throbbing taxi; he did not follow her to the door of
the house, lest she should think he wanted to follow the occasion
indoors. And he did want to, very much; but he could make no move lest
she should be made uncomfortable at a thought of his insistence.
He watched the tall figure--she was very tall, taller than Virginia--fit
a latchkey in the door; he watched her open the door; and he saw her
turn her head to him. He took off his hat quickly.
“Good-bye, Chinchilla,” he said.
She smiled a little.
“You must be a very dangerous man,” she said thoughtfully, “to be in
such a hurry not to put your restraint to the test....” It was, after
all, very surprising of her to say that, just that.
“You can come in for a moment,” she said. “I would like you to come in
for a moment.”
And Ivor, making a sign to the taxi-driver, followed the chinchilla coat
into No. 78 Hertford Street.
CHAPTER II
1
Once in the hall of the house she did not look round at him: her steps
rang sharply on the stone flags as she passed to a door at the far end
of the wide and sombre hall of stone--for in it only one lamp was
alight. He threw his hat on a chair and, in following her, had time to
be surprised at the spaciousness about him. For, from the outside, the
house had looked one of those tall and narrow houses common in Mayfair,
where ground-rent is high: there had been no hint of this wide and
spacious hall in which the lightest steps resounded portentously. It was
like the hall of a house in, say, Carlton House Terrace, it was a hall
to hold two butlers--now that footmen have become vulgar--the one to
take your hat and the other your name; and at its extremity, near the
door through which the chinchilla had passed, there swept upwards with a
wide sweep a noble marble stairway, the kind of stairway from the top of
which men may fairly envisage the ascending grace of the women who might
have loved them or the shortcomings of the woman they have married; for
very grievous for a mediocre figure is the ascending of such a gracious
stairway as this.
The house was very still, but it is not unusual for a house to be very
still towards half-past one. And as Ivor followed the tall lady into the
room at the foot of the noble stairway, he wondered why she was doing
this odd thing; but (since men cannot help thinking of such things) he
did not seriously consider the idea that her invitation would finally
include her bed, for any fool can tell a romantic lady from a calm lady,
and she was deliciously calm. Probably she was bored, Ivor thought, and
would amuse herself a while; and so, though he did not feel very amusing
to-night, he would try to be as pleasant as possible.... And he wouldn’t
mind a drink, anyway; but he didn’t get a drink.
2
Her voice met him as he went into the room: it was a large and wide
room, and it was dim, for she had switched on but a few lights, faint
electric-lights hidden in subtle vases here and there about the expanse
of the room.
“Don’t, please, be shy,” her voice met him, the calm voice, “for I’m
quite shy enough for two. And I asked you in because I want you to talk
to me--just a little.”
He came forward towards her across the rugs that strewed the parquet
floor. There were many things in that room, chairs and footstools and
sofas of quality, but yet it was a room for leisured feet, a room easy
to move in. She stood by the nobly carven fireplace, a figure in
chinchilla, under which was visible a low-cut black dress: and this
shone a little as though it were made of black armour, even as black
sequins do sometimes shine.
“Well, it makes a man shy,” he protested, “to try to live up to the fact
that you’ve let him speak to you.”
The candid eyes of the tall lady examined him; they were gray eyes, wide
and inquiring and amazingly innocent, and now there was a subtle light
of laughter in them, as though she was infinitely but quietly amused
about something. But he did not meet her eyes, for his were suddenly
engrossed in a large portrait on a farther wall, a portrait startling
and remarkable even in that dim light. It was a portrait in oils of a
woman in a green dress sitting in a high-backed chair, and her head was
pressed back against the back of the chair so that her throat was a
clean and white line, and appalling in its suggestion of luxuriance; and
the eyes of the woman in the green dress, as her head leant back
against her chair, had in them the frightening candour of innocence, and
they laughed at you, without mockery, as though she was infinitely but
quietly amused about something; and her hair was golden, and yet only a
fool would have called it golden, for it was of the colour of fallen
leaves on an October afternoon, russet brown and very dull gold shot
with a fantasy of carmine. Anyway, the colour of her hair was more like
that of an October leaf than anything else, and as for her dress, who
shall describe that green dress? For it was a strange and surprising
dress, yet it was not a cheeky dress but witty, and it required from its
wearer more than the virtue of dignity, though even that is a
considerable virtue in young women nowadays. At its foot was just
visible the sweet tip of a cherry shoe--but at its other end, the
queenly end, at that end where a dress must die so that a woman’s flesh
may live for men’s admiration and distress, at that end where a dress
curves in glorious luxury over breasts and dies in a last effort to
reach and clutch a slender throat! What of that queenly end of that
green dress? It was contrived, without detracting an iota from the
elegant formality of its wearer, so that it swept in a thin green strand
from the bosom over one shoulder--and never returned over the other! for
that other shoulder was startling white and naked, it was the kind of
shoulder that men dream about in lonely moments; it was a shoulder
wantonly divorced from the green dress which curved, ever so
luxuriously, over but half one of the breasts of the subtly laughing
woman with the eyes of innocent candour. And Ivor stared at her.
“Ah, yes,” he said, towards the portrait, “I know you now. I know you
well.”
“Oh, but am I so famous then!” the lady cried pathetically, and Ivor
turned to her thoughtfully.
“That portrait is famous,” he said. “It set every one talking, even in
war-time--and it set me longing. Years ago....”
The “Portrait of Pamela Star,” by Augustus John--who, in the autumn of
1916, when it was on exhibition at the Grosvenor Galleries, did not hear
of it? Never did portrait create such a stir or leave such an impression
as the portrait of Pamela Star. The _Daily Mail_ at once called her a
“mystery woman,” and the _Evening News_ discovered a theory that the
lovely creature was a Belgian refugee whom Major John had rescued at the
risk of his life; and tried to interview the artist, but failed
deplorably. And though there were not wanting fellow-artists to say that
the portrait was a literary masterpiece rather than a painting, which is
a boring remark and means nothing, and though Mr. George Moore was heard
to say, as he walked away from a long contemplation of the portrait,
that painting had died with Manet--yet it was commonly admitted that
whereas Gainsborough had painted a lady like a landscape, Augustus John
had made a lady into a legend; and what lady, it was asked, would not
rather be a legend than a landscape?
“I was on leave in 1916,” Ivor told her, “and I happened to walk into
the Grosvenor Galleries. And there you were! You were a great help to
me, Pamela Star. You were indeed....”
“And were you as curious about me then as you are courteous now?” she
asked him with a smile. They were standing close together, the room was
an island and they were solitary and close on it; she smiled at him
curiously; and Ivor had a funny feeling that he had never yet met a
woman with such a clean, unveiled smile: absolutely frank. And he
wondered about her age, thinking it must be that mysterious and
intangible age which lies somewhere between twenty-five and thirty.
“Every one was curious about you,” he told her. “People wondered about
you. They knew a little about you, you see, and on that little they
built all kinds of gossip....”
“And didn’t Mr. John ever explain how quiet and harmless his sitter
was?” asked Pamela Star.
“John never speaks about his sitters. If you should ask him a question
about them he wouldn’t hear you. John is an artist, not a
table-decoration....”
“And what kind of things did people wonder about me?” asked Pamela Star.
“I want to know, please. For, you see, I know as little about people as
they know about me. Less even....”
“They wondered,” said Ivor, “if you really want to know, whether you
were a courtesan or a virgin. And that’s a great compliment to you,
Pamela Star, for there’s generally no doubt about it one way or the
other....”
“And you?”
“Oh, I wondered too!”
“And now--are you still wondering?”
“More than ever,” he assured her.
“I’m not wondering,” he explained quickly, “whether you are a courtesan,
for I think I know just enough about them to know that you’re not one.
And you look too wise to be a virgin. I’m just wondering about you,
that’s all.”
“Shall I trust you?” she put to him, ever so suddenly.
“Please,” he said.
“Well----” she began childishly, and hesitated. Her eyes, those candid
eyes, were very full on him, they searched his. She gulped, smiled, and
spoke swiftly:--
“I’m a plumber’s daughter, and yet I own this house and all that’s in it
and very much besides. In fact I’m very, very rich.”
“So, of course,” she said softly, “I’m not a virgin. Of course....”
And suddenly, from the recesses of that curious moment, there crept out
laughter; and they laughed, those two, right at each other, a little
shyly, a little wonderingly, like children uneasy under the burden of a
new friendship. And then she said, very seriously:--
“I wouldn’t have let you speak to me in Down Street, if I hadn’t seen
that you hadn’t the usual number of arms. You could do less damage with
only one arm, I thought....”
“Oh, I can do quite a lot! One’s mind has a thousand arms to hurt with,
after all.”
“I see,” said Pamela Star curiously.
And then that one arm made as though to sweep away some debris. “But how
did we get talking of myself?”
“I was just trying to find out about men,” she confessed sweetly. “I’ve
known so very few....”
“Ah, yes, you were telling me how you came to let me speak to you in
Down Street,” he remembered. “Well, you know, I certainly wouldn’t have
dreamed of speaking to you if I had known who you were. I would have
been frightened....”
“And now--aren’t you frightened?”
“Oh, no! I like you, Pamela Star.”
And again they laughed together, but, suddenly, she became very earnest;
and he wondered at himself for not having observed before that the
candid eyes were sad and that her mouth was just a little sad, as of a
woman who might cry but will not.
“And now I’ll confess to you, since you say you like me,” she told him
without jest, “that I asked you here under false pretences....”
“But you’ve made no pretences at all!” he broke in quickly. “That’s what
is so nice about you....”
“I told you,” she insisted, “that I asked you to come in because I
wanted you to talk to me a little. I lied, my friend. I asked you to
come in because I wanted to make sure if I liked you or not. And if I
did like you I intended to show you something. I’ve simply got to show
it to someone, don’t you see? Something important.”
“In fact,” she said very slowly, “I’m going to show you the most
important--how does one say it?--factor in my life. Come, stranger.”
“I’ll tell you my name if you like,” said Ivor.
She considered his face.
“It doesn’t matter,” she told him. “I have known men with names, but
known them no better for them. This will be in the nature of an
experiment....”
“If ever,” she said, “you should see my eyes searching for a word, you
will tell me your name. That will be the word I need.” And she smiled
faintly at his absorbed face, and with a slight shake the chinchilla
coat dropped off her to the floor, soft and shining silver about her
feet, and she was a woman in a black sequin dress cut low about her
throat and severely distant from her arms. Somewhere about the shining
black was a splash of vivid green, maybe it was about its middle: just a
little splash of vivid green on the shining black dress....
“Come,” she said again. And he followed Pamela Star across the room to
double-doors at a far end. She laid her hands on the two knobs, as
though dramatically to swing the doors open; but instead, as she stood
thus against the dark panel of the door, she suddenly threw her head
backwards to him with an adorable gesture, and she said:--
“You are my newest friend--and here is my oldest and my best!”
And Pamela Star threw open the doors to introduce her newest friend to
her oldest, a dead man laid out on a great couch in the serene light of
two tall candles, at its head, in two tall candlesticks of barbaric
design in dull and twisted gold.
“That’s how he wished it,” she whispered.
They stood, the two young people, even as straight as the two
candlesticks of the dead old man’s desire, in the open doorway: Ivor
staring in wonder, and she in deep thoughtfulness, at the still and
bearded figure on the great couch. Her oldest and best friend! And she,
beside him in the doorway, was as still as the dead....
3
They stood facing one another on each side of the figure on the great
couch, he staring down in wonder and she in thought; and the calm light
of the two candles shone softly on her hair, so that red and gold and
bronze danced on the waves and magic shades chased magic shadows in the
depths.
The couch was low, it did not reach above Ivor’s knees; and it was very
wide, but the old man was not lost in it, for even in death he could
bewilder size and confuse proportion. Patriarchal he looked, that old
man, where he lay with fine head and beard uncovered by the sheet--for
what shame to cover the head, no matter how inert, of Aram Melekian! Of
whom it had been said that he was the only proud gesture that wretched
race has ever made since Jesus died to save the souls of men and to make
a hecatomb of Hayastan, which is Armenia’s true name. A wise old man,
Sir Aram Melekian, but bitter: the friend of man he had surely proved
himself by many charities and endowments, but as surely he despised
mankind; he lent money to it. It was said that he had financed several
little wars, and it was known that, with the great Greek millionaire, he
had helped the Allies considerably in the last war--his idea being, some
people said, that since England and France had befriended Armenia almost
out of existence he was only too pleased to do what he could for them:
which does not show him in a very pleasant light, but is almost
certainly a malicious fabrication of envy, for Sir Aram Melekian had
always let it be known that he yielded to no one in his admiration for
the recent civilisations of the West, saying: “The West is much more
cunning than the East, which is why the East is called cunning, I
suppose.” It was to such fresh and boyish remarks, no doubt, that the
old multi-millionaire owed his amazing popularity among the societies of
Paris, New York and London. Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton, however,
were understood not to like him very much, and the _Morning Post_ had
made several disapproving references to him in connection with Mr. Lloyd
George’s Near Eastern policy--but all this was no doubt due to a
pardonable misunderstanding about Sir Aram Melekian’s nose, which was
what’s called a decidedly Jewish-looking affair; whereas, though
Armenians have frequently been described as very Jewish-looking, the
truth of the matter is that Jews are very Armenian-looking, for the
Armenians are the senior race and have, therefore, a prior right to that
nose which the Jews, perhaps rather indiscreetly, have always claimed as
their own. Sir Aram Melekian, like the late Viscount Northcliffe, had
read the history of Napoleon; but, unlike the late Viscount Northcliffe,
he had forgotten it....
But the death of the great Armenian, on the 1st of May, 1921, is too
recent to deserve particular comment; and, indeed, little could be added
to the biographical details, appreciations and tittle-tattle which
filled the newspapers of the day; for editors, whose hands are nowhere
if not on the pulse of the public, know that, though a multi-millionaire
is but a fable while he is alive, the great heart of the public is at
once touched by his death and deeply interested in the disposition of
his fabulous monies; though in this case that disposition was found to
be of less than usual interest, for the number of words in Sir Aram
Melekian’s will did not exceed the rumoured number of his millions.
Ivor did not need to be told who the old man was. The curiosity about
the “Portrait of Pamela Star” in 1916 had, anyway, ascertained one
certain fact about Pamela Star, that she was in some way connected with
Sir Aram Melekian; and though the old millionaire gained a little
glamour from that connection, whether of love or guardianship no one
knew, it was thought a little “peculiar” of him to keep her, “that
lovely, tall creature,” so severely to himself; for there had been no
chance of meeting her, even those brilliant and energetic hostesses who
were intimate acquaintances of Aram Melekian’s were by him refused the
slightest introduction to Pamela Star. “Later,” he would say; and always
“Later.” They would be seen, however, now and then, side by side in the
tonneau of a car; now and then riding in the Row, a fine pair for all
his age, which must have been well over sixty: “the lovely, tall
creature” and the iron-gray old man with the Assyrian beard and the deep
eyes that only smiled at disconcerting moments: a suspicious man. And so
Pamela Star remained unknown, a legend created by Augustus John and
enjoyed only by an eccentric old man....
It was as Ivor at last raised his eyes from the old man’s face, to see
if Pamela Star really existed, that she spoke. She said, in a very low
voice:--
“He died this evening--at about seven o’clock. Gently--just as he looks.
He expected to die, his heart was like that. And I expected it, too....”
“Dear, dear Aram!” her voice came so softly, so tenderly. “He was so
strong--and so contemptuous--about everything but me!”
Ivor looked down again at the noble head on which age had left a mane of
gray hair, and at the face, which was as though bleached white and taut
with many years, many tempers.
“He looks,” Ivor said thoughtfully, “as I thought no man in the world
could look, the richest man in the world.”
“And I?” Her sharp question startled him; he stared across the couch,
into the gray irises into which the candlelight had dropped spots of
gold. “And I? Do I look like the richest woman in the world?”
He stared; it was somehow appalling, the matter and manner of that swift
question, so brittle and infinitely wretched! And he suddenly felt as
though all his life had been leading to this particular and amazing
point, that he had lived thirty-two years for nothing more--and nothing
less!--than to be asked, across the body of an old man, this
magnificently absurd question. And he tried to be silent, but he said
something, he never knew what....
CHAPTER III
1
They were back on the other side of the closed folding-doors: almost as
they had been before, standing together as on an island in artificial
twilight. The occasion was not, somehow, one for sitting down.
“I’ve made a great demand on your patience, haven’t I?” she asked him.
“All this mystery....”
“But you’ve made it very easy for me to meet that demand,” he told her
sincerely.
“And now I’ll explain--something, anyway. You’ve a right to know
something--after my strange behaviour.” And she seemed to wait for him
to say something, but he had nothing to say: the thing was too
mysterious.
“Yes?... Well, listen. There, in that room, lies my oldest and dearest
friend--though I don’t know why I put it that way, for I’ve never had
another. But it’s not to be pathetic I’m being so expansive to you. And
it’s not for grief at Aram’s death. I’m being selfish, my friend. I am
thinking only of myself--and there’s a great horror in that word,
myself, when there’s not another to put beside it....”
She stopped, and seemed to consider him; and she made a slight, helpless
movement of her hand, so that a sense of her impotence touched him
closely.
“I’ll understand, whatever you say,” he begged her to believe. “Anyway,
I think I will.”
“If you’ve ever been lonely you will,” said Pamela Star. “Though even so
it may be difficult, for I’ve only been lonely since seven o’clock this
evening. But I am suffering from all the loneliness of my future life, I
don’t see how it can be mended. That’s hysteria, maybe. You have met
many women, I’m sure, and so you may know this for hysteria....”
“I have met many women,” Ivor said, “and I don’t know anything.”
“Listen,” she said again: and spoke impulsively, swiftly. “I’ve been
with Aram Melekian since I was ten. I’m twenty-eight now--eighteen years
in that wise old man’s care, for he was very wise, you know. I was a
grubby little girl playing about in the Fulham Road, the daughter of a
plumber’s foreman and the sister of a little boy who was even grubbier
than me, when Aram saw me on his way to the studio of one of his
_protégées_ in Redcliffe Road. He saw me several times, he said, and was
amazed at my beauty....” She smiled faintly. “I think he has been amazed
at it ever since. And of course I’ve been only too pleased to be able to
return, if only like that, a little of the great debt I owe him.”
“At first,” she said, “he was my guardian. He had arranged things with
my father--who would never receive any help for himself, dear father is
such an independent kind of plumber! And a great success he’s made of
plumbing, too, he and my brother--Snagg & Son, of the Fulham Road. For
my name was Pam Snagg, but Aram changed it to Pamela Star, saying it was
more apt for me....”
“And indeed it is,” said Ivor.
“Yes, Aram had a _flair_,” she agreed. “And, though he was so bitter, he
could make even plain things beautiful by understanding them. That’s
surely very rare....”
“At first he was my guardian,” she repeated, “and then, when I was
twenty, he was my lover. And then, after that, he was my friend. He was
my lover for a year, and he said that that year was the great mistake of
his life--the only mistake of his life, he said. For one day he
cried--Aram cried, hard Aram!--and after that he was my friend. My great
friend.... The great mistake of his life! Well, I don’t know. It’s easy
to judge these things by morality, so easy that morality must be
sometimes wrong. It’s too cocksure.... I’m glad to have been his
mistress. I feel I would have been very--small and little, without that.
You understand? It somehow balances one--the knowledge. And I’m sure you
wouldn’t be here and I talking to you so frankly but that once upon a
time I let Aram love me--oh, yes, it was just that, there’s no excuse
for me at all except that I’m glad of it.”
“But surely that’s just enough!”
“Yes?” she asked softly; and he had a conscious moment of wondering what
she was going to say. “And was it enough excuse, my friend, for him to
leave all his property, _every bit_, to me, to do just as I liked with?
Me, Pamela Star!”
“Well!...” said Ivor in amazement. It was amazing....
“Oh, but it was dreadful!” she suddenly cried.
“Why do you say ‘it was’?,” he asked--sharply.
She stared at him in deep bewilderment.
“Quick you are!” she murmured. She passed a hand across her forehead. “I
don’t know,” she said. “I should have said ‘it is,’ I suppose. But
you’re here, after all--aren’t you?”
That evident fact seemed to astonish him to silence.
“It was dreadful,” Pamela Star insisted. “This evening--all alone here!
The doctor came and went--an impressive man. His patients always have
bulletins about them in the morning paper--a most impressive man. He
pressed my hand most encouragingly as he went away. Then the secretaries
came and went--automata, just automata! They seemed to find a tremendous
lot to do, though I’m sure I don’t know what it was, for I couldn’t find
anything to do at all. One automaton whispered to me that he would see
‘about the Press’--the silly man, as though I cared what he saw about!
And at last he went too, the last automaton, with whispering feet. The
servants seemed more human--Rose, the butler, is a very nice old man,
but the plumber’s daughter wasn’t somehow able to put her head on his
shoulder and say that she was very, very miserable. Then he went to bed
at last, I suppose, and I was left all alone with Aram and all this
money: ... left all alone with to-morrow and all the to-morrows! Don’t
you feel sorry for me, my friend--what shall I do with it all? Must I
sacrifice all my life to that ghastly money--even as he did! Oh, I don’t
despise money, but this is too much, it’s endless! I can’t sign it away,
heap by heap--oh, delicious heaps of gold to give away! ‘Will you take
it, sir, or shall I send it for you?’ But that’s no use, I can’t sign it
away, for he trusted me with his millions to direct them to their best
advantage. He educated me for that purpose, he said I was the one woman
in the world who would be able to do it. Oh God, what a compliment! They
will always be his, I will be their slave! That looks to be my life, my
friend....”
She was deliciously frank with him, she did not try to deprecate her
self-pity.
“But why did he keep you so--well, closed up?” Ivor asked. “It seems
strange of him--not giving you a chance to know people, to make friends,
to know things!”
“Oh, but I know such a lot!” she protested, with a vast, sweet
arrogance. “I know a devil of a lot, sir, about life and things. He
taught me, you see--and he was a most uncommon man, I assure you. And he
didn’t keep me ‘closed up’ at all--I just took his advice, respecting
him as I did. I was lonely sometimes, of course, but I was happy with
him, we laughed together often, and then he would show me the world. I
don’t suppose I’ll ever know a younger man than Aram was really--even
his contempt for people was a young thing, don’t you see! And, as for
me, I never had a desire to keep a _salon_ of my own or decorate some
one else’s. I didn’t want all that. I’m of the people, and I always will
be of the people, money or no money. And Aram always said that if I went
about my face would make a mess of my life--forgive my being candid
about my face, but living with him has made me so--for, he said, my
beauty wasn’t the kind that men are just content to look at, they would
want to touch it, being men. And I couldn’t remain untouchable, he said,
being a woman and warm--that’s what he said, anyway, and he probably
knew for he was once my lover for a year. A man will come, he said, who
will also be your friend. He said that often, he seemed somehow to be
certain about it. But by the time he died this evening no such man had
come at all, not even the shadow of one. And so I wandered about the
house, and then at last I put on this dress, just for something to do;
and then, still for something to do, I crept out of the house and
walked, and at last I stood by the Tube station, wondering if anything
had ever happened to any one in Down Street. At last I decided it
hadn’t--even though, you know, I didn’t expect anything to happen, and I
don’t think I really wanted anything to happen, for I wouldn’t have
known what to do with it if it did....”
“And then,” she said, “you happened, with your one arm. That made things
ever so much easier. Somehow....”
“I just happened,” he said, quite sincerely, “as anyone else might
have.”
“Don’t be silly!” she cried--so suddenly! And she laughed at his
humility, shattering it--and then, shattering her laughter, came a great
noise and thundering through the stone hall, so that they were shocked
into staring silence.
“Good God, what’s that!” Ivor whispered.
They started to the door; and again that thundering through the stone
hall shattered the stillness and marred the dignity of Sir Aram
Melekian’s tomb.
“It’s the front door,” whispered Pamela Star.
2
A squat and surly shape confronted them in the night.
“I bin ringin’ this ’ere bell for the larst ’our,” explained the shape
with commendable restraint. “And not jest for fun, but to know if you’ve
fergotten me or going to keep me till the next war. Bein’ now parst
four----”
A convulsive giggle came from behind Ivor’s shoulder in the doorway.
“We’d forgotten the taxi!” said the giggle, quite unnecessarily, for the
taxi was very manifest to the eye.
“I’m so sorry,” said Ivor to the driver, and grinned at him. “I quite
forgot you....”
“Oh, I don’t mind, if you don’t!” sneered the taxi-driver....
“Have you got enough change?” she whispered into his ear, still
giggling.
“It’s not a question of _change_,” whispered back Ivor, pulling out
notes.
“Good-night, sir,” said the taxi-driver, with _empressement_. “Sorry to
’ave woken you.”
Ivor stared at him.
“Not at all,” he said.
“Good-night,” said Pamela Star.
The taxi hurled itself down the hill of Hertford Street towards the
blind turning to Shepherd’s Market. It was an astonishing taxi.
“I never been in a taxi before,” said Pamela Star childishly.
As they walked back through the wide and sombre hall of stone Ivor
suddenly stopped; she stopped too. The light of a great idea was in his
eyes.
“Let’s go out,” he said. “For a walk....”
And he swept a sudden gesture round the sombre hall.
“Out of this, Pamela Star....”
CHAPTER IV
1
They walked. Dawn still lingered, and the night was gray and wan, yet it
was clear with the clarity of scudding gray clouds far above the slower
moving destinies of mankind. The pavements were dry, and the world was
not yet conscious of this 2nd of May.
They walked up Park Lane, and the talk bubbled out of them; and they
laughed at the things each said, for the things they said seemed funny
to them.
They came to the Marble Arch, and their feet crossed the deserted place
unbidden by them; and they stood at the corner where the wide place
stretches out two fingers, one elegant and shapely towards Lancaster
Gate beside the Park, the other lean and ugly up the Edgware Road
towards the north. Every minute was tearing open the envelope of the
night, and the gray clouds scudded frantically over London on their
mystic and purposeless way.
“Our way is obvious!” cried Ivor to her inquiry. “Romance must plant its
feet firmly on reality, for it’s life that makes us beautiful, not we
that beautify life. So we will acknowledge our debt to life by walking
up the ugly Edgware Road rather than towards the fat and horrid squares
of Bayswater. Why, Pamela Star, anything might happen up the Edgware
Road--even Cricklewood might happen, the legendary source of Bus 16!”
“I’ve got an aunt,” said Pamela Star, “who lives in Cricklewood.
Fordwych Road. Aram and I used to go and see her often, and he flirted
with her and she adored him. She’s knitting a muffler for him now. If
she likes you she’ll knit one for you too....”
“No one has ever knitted a muffler for _me_,” said Ivor pathetically.
And, thus and thus, they came to speak of images, such as are not to be
seen in museums. They spoke of images secretly, they spoke
cabbalistically about the facelessness of images in hearts, and how an
image might suddenly grow a face without a by-your-leave, but what they
said about them is of no importance; and they forgot what they had said
as soon as they had said it, which is a peculiarity of all cabbalistic
conversations.
2
The day was plain as they again neared Hertford Street; and six strokes
of a clock hung loose in the still air as they entered it from the Park
end. The sky overhead was mother-of-pearl, but an absurdly angry cloud
still played darkly among the chimneys of Knightsbridge; and somewhere
out of Whitechapel rose the pale gold of the London dawn. The world was
awake to the 2nd of May, but Mayfair is not the world, and even the
menials of Mayfair lie long abed. As they turned into Hertford Street
they startled a robin from a poet’s head on the barren fountain, and he
fled away with a cameo note. “There!” sighed Pamela Star.
Hertford Street was still as night as the two tall figures, the dark
one-armed man and the woman with the hair that was of the colour of an
October leaf, walked silently down it. Three fingers of her hand were
lightly within his arm: they did not know how they had got there, but
there they stayed, even to the pavement before her house--which stood
where Hertford Street, having run a straight course, slopes suddenly
downwards towards Shepherd’s Market.
They faced each other--their eyes almost level, she was so tall!--and he
took her hand in his.
“I said ‘good-bye, Chinchilla,’ to you years ago,” he said. “But now
I’m only going to say good-night.”
And he saw that her eyes were searching for something.
“My name is Ivor,” he said.
“Ivor!” she cried softly. “Ivor and Pamela.” ...
And there was a rushing and a turbulence in his ears, pierced sharply by
Aunt Moira’s distant voice: “They met like birds, in the open....”
But that was not the only noise in that still moment, there was another,
a great clattering as of tin against glass and glass against wood....
“_Minuet de cœur!_” she whispered.
But it came, they saw at last, from a milk-boy pushing his green
hand-cart smartly up the slope of Hertford Street.
Ivor suddenly passed his hand over his eyes, he pressed his eyes, and
the eyes of Pamela Star were queerly wet as they stared unseeing at the
approaching milk-boy.
“If I don’t go this moment,” said Ivor fiercely, “I’ll never go!” And he
strode away from her, down the slope.
“You’ll come back?” she cried softly, in the sudden fear of a great
gladness.
“In a few hours,” he cried back over his shoulder, and went his way,
determinedly. She watched the tall, striding figure, hat swinging from
one hand, until it disappeared round the corner of the blind end of
Hertford Street.
The clatter of the milk-cart had fallen to a gentle murmur, and Pamela
Star found the milk-boy staring curiously at her.
“I s’pose this’ll be for you, lady,” said the boy politely, offering her
one of those bottles of milk that are stopped with a cardboard disc. “As
I leaves one ’ere, at No. 78, every morning.”
He surprised her.
“Do you mean to say that you’ve brought me my milk all this time and
that I’ve never seen you before!” she cried. “Why, you are one of the
most important people in my life!”
The boy grinned; he was a very clean boy, in a cap, shirt-sleeves and an
apron almost as white as his milk--for was he not born and bred in
Shepherd’s Market, which is the aristocrat of slums?
“Well, it’s a bit early for you to be up as a rule, lady,” he excused
her.
“Or a bit late,” she added softly. “And I’m not a lady anyway--not
really. I had a brother just like you. Not so clean, though.”
The boy didn’t believe any of that. No one but a lady could have so
suddenly pulled the cardboard disc from the bottle of milk and raised it
to her lips, as she was doing now. The boy stared at her; he had seen
her look after the one-armed man, and he was interested. Nothing like
that had ever happened to _him_.
The lady drank deep of the milk. And then she said, with a happy sigh:
“I needed that!” She could feel, and the boy could see, the white dew of
the milk clinging about her mouth. “I’ve forgotten my handkerchief,” she
complained.
The boy tugged at his pocket and pulled out an amazingly crumpled but
amazingly clean handkerchief. He offered it to her shyly.
“Not used it yet,” he said.
She touched her lips with his handkerchief, and she offered him some
milk in return.
“’Ate milk,” said the boy.
She gave him back his handkerchief; and she asked him seriously: “Did
you see that man?” And the plumber’s daughter jerked her head, just like
a plumber’s daughter, in the direction of the man’s going.
The boy nodded.
“And do you know about images?” she asked him.
“Seen some,” he said, “in the Mooseum.”
“Ever seen an image without a face?”
The boy grinned. “Mother ’as got a bust of Queen Victoria without an
’ead,” he said.
“But I had an image without a face,” she told him softly, “until that
man came and put a face to it....”
The boy stared at the door which closed behind the loveliest lady he had
ever seen, and he decided that she was probably mad. But Pamela Star,
alone again in the tomb of Aram Melekian, knew that she was mad and that
the world was mad--the lovely world which could hold the contemptuous
spirit of her stern old friend, those ghastly heaps of gold and the
living image in her heart.
_There will follow this a book--at an as yet uncertain
date--telling of Revolution: and therein, of the strange destinies
of Hamilton Snagg, a plumber of the Fulham Road, London, S.W.: of
Sir Gabriel Silk, Bart., M.P., the brilliant and impassive Jew: and
of Michael Paris, the inspired young fanatic of Marylebone: also,
among other happenings, of the daring and death of Viscount
Tarlyon, the Master of the Legion of Laughter: but more
particularly of the marvellous fortunes and cruel deaths of Ivor
Pelham Marlay and Pamela Star, his lady._
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO., LTD.
* * * * *
MICHAEL ARLEN
“An Artist in a thousand and with uncanny psychology.”--_Yorkshire
Observer._
6TH IMPRESSION
THE GREEN HAT
_A Romance for a Few People_
7/6 NET
The novel sensation of the year; lavish praise and bitter abuse were
showered upon it. Everyone read it--and still is reading it. A
“best-seller” and a brilliant book.
MICHAEL ARLEN
The Romantic Lady 3/6
_Fourth Printing_ Net
These are airy, cynical, polished inquiries into the actions and
reactions of women’s loves, tickling the reader’s sense of humour and
sense of style from the moment he picks up the book, to find “The
Romantic Lady” glancing down at Noel Anson from her box, to the last
page, where the revolver smoke is veiling from her the husband of Iris
Poole.
_What the Press says_
“For sheer wit and cynicism Mr. Arlen stands alone.”--_Daily
Express._
“Pure coquetry, of course, but what perfect technique.”--_Evening
Standard._
“Has all the ironic flippancy of a Schnitzler.”--_Sunday Times._
These Charming People 7/6
_Fourth Printing_ Net
Being a tapestry, or, if you like, a panorama of the fortune,
misfortunes, and gallanteries of Shelmerdene (that lovely lady), Lord
Tarlyon, Mr. Michael Wagstaffe, Mr. Ralph Wyndham Trevor, and others of
their friends of the lighter sort, written down by Mr. Ralph Wyndham
Trevor and arranged by Mr. Michael Arlen.
_What the Press says_
“Its humour, its wit, its elegant charm....”--ROSE MACAULAY in the
_Daily News_.
“The art of Guy de Maupassant is rare among English storytellers,
but Michael Arlen can reflect glimpses of the great Frenchman’s
genius. He has a story to tell, and he tells it.... Michael Arlen
is a fine literary artist.”--_Sunday Times._
“Belgravia’s best seller.”--_Cassell’s Weekly._
FOOTNOTES:
[A] But all that is changed now. It has lately been observed that the
quality was never before held in such high esteem as it is at present.
Some people say that this is a good sign, as denoting a healthy
reaction against the spirit of Bolshevism that is abroad; but some
people will say anything.
[B] _Fair Ladies of London!_ A Novel by Ivor Pelham Marlay (Heinemann,
1914).
[C] _The Legend of the Last Courtesan._ A Romance by Ivor Pelham
Marlay. Collins 8/6 (October, 1918). Eighth Impression.
[D] The narrative of this favourite’s brilliant life and unhappy end
will be found in that great romance by Miss Mary Johnston, _By Order of
the Company_.
[E] First Families of Virginia.