II

“Do you know if Mr. March is in?” asked the voice of the green hat. But

I could not see her face for the shadow of the brim, for it was a

piratical brim, such as might very possibly defy the burning suns of El

Dorado.

I said I was not sure. I was very surprised--a caller for Gerald March!

“If we look up,” I said, “we can see by his lights if he is in.” And I

stepped out into the lane, and the green hat and I stared up at the

topmost windows of the grubby little house.

“There’s no light _there_,” she said. “I suppose the light below is

yours....”

“There is,” I said, “but it’s very faint. He’s in all right.”

Still she looked up, thoughtfully. She was tall, not very tall, but as

tall as becomes a woman. Her hair, in the shadow of her hat, may have

been any colour, but I dared swear that there was a tawny whisper to it.

And it seemed to dance, from beneath her hat, a very formal dance on her

cheeks. One had, with her, a sense of the conventions; and that she had

just been playing six sets of tennis.

“If I look surprised,” I said, “that is because you are the first caller

Gerald March has ever had.”

She seemed to smile, faintly, as one might in the way of politeness.

Otherwise she did not seem to be given to smiling.

“He’s my brother,” she said, as though explaining herself, the hour,

everything. “It’s very nice of you to have opened the door....”

I was listening, oh, intently! One had to, to make out what she was

saying. Then the voice suddenly expired and one was left standing there,

listening to nothing, unprepared to say anything. It was, you can see,

rather silly; but one got used to it.

“Oh,” I said, “Gerald wouldn’t open a door! He never opens doors....”

She looked vaguely about our lane. I was proud of our lane at that

moment, for it set off the colour of her hat so well. There was no

doubt but that she was tired. Seven sets, possibly. Her eyes seemed at

last to find the car of the flying silver stork.

“That car ... I suppose it will be all right there?”

She seemed to me to lack a proper pride in her car. I said I thought it

would be quite all right there, as though a Hispano-Suiza was a usual

sight near my door; and I suggested that maybe I had better see her

upstairs to her brother’s flat, as it was the top flat and there were no

lights on the stairs. But she appeared to be in no hurry. Thoughtful she

was. She said dimly: “You are very kind....”

One somehow gathered from her voice that her face was very small.

“I’ve often wanted,” she murmured, looking about, “to live in this

place. You know, vaguely....”

“Of course, vaguely,” I said.

She looked at me, seemed to see me for the first time, seemed faintly

surprised to find herself talking to me. I was surprised, too. Maybe it

was the way her hair danced formally on her cheeks that made it look

such a small face, but it seemed to me no larger than a small size in

ladies’ handkerchiefs. That was why I was surprised. She stood

carelessly, like the women in Georges Barbier’s almanacks, _Falbalas et

Fanfreluches_, who know how to stand carelessly. Her hands were thrust

into the pockets of a light brown leather jacket--_pour le sport_--which

shone quite definitely in the lamplight: it was wide open at the

throat, and had a high collar of the fur of a few minks. I once had a

friend who was a taxidermist, and that was how I knew that. One small

red elephant marched across what I could see of her dress, which was

dark and not _pour le sport_.

“Perhaps you are right,” she admitted doubtfully. Not that I had the

faintest idea what she was talking about.

I went before her up the dark narrow stairs, sideways, lighting and

dropping matches, after the custom of six years. There were three floors

in the little house, but the first was untenanted except by mice. I

wondered whether it would interest her if I told her I was leaving

to-morrow, but I did not see why it should. She, after all, had probably

just come back from foreign parts. About her, it was perfectly obvious,

was the aura of many adventures. But I was looking on her in brotherly

sort, interested in her because she was Gerald March’s sister. For that

was a most deficient man in every other respect. Fancy, I thought. She

said: “Oo, isn’t it dark!”

“Of course,” I said, striking yet another match against the wall, “I

knew Gerald _had_ a sister, but I had a vague idea, I don’t know why,

that she was still at school....”

“I don’t suppose,” she said helpfully--stumbled slightly, I helped

her--“that any one knows _everything_. Is that mice downstairs? Rats?

Oo, really.... Gerald and I showed, once upon a time, a strong tendency

to be twins, though there was a good hour between us, so I was told. I

was at the tail end of the hour.” Slowly struggling up those dim,

narrow, musty stairs, her green hat now and then flaming in the

matchlight, she gave one worthless information in a slightly husky,

impersonal voice. As we came up to my landing I asked her if she had

seen Gerald lately.

“Not,” she said, whispered, “for years and years. Nearly ten, I think.

Do you think that comes, perhaps, of having been almost twins once upon

a time?”

I did not say anything for I was thinking hard. Now I was Gerald’s

friend. This lady of the green hat was Gerald’s sister, nay, his twin

sister. Fancy, I thought. Where, I asked myself, did one stand? It was a

matter for thought, for deep thought, and so I treated it, as she did

not appear to be in any great hurry.

Now while these things were passing, the lady and I were standing on my

landing, which was four foot by three; she with one foot on the stair

below, one leather shoulder against the wall. And one had again, with

her, a sense of the conventions.

“You are thinking,” she accused me. “I wonder what about....”

The light that plunged through my half-open sitting-room door fought a

great fight with the shadow of her green hat and lit her face

mysteriously. She was fair. As they would say it in the England of long

ago--she was fair. And she was grave, so grave. That is a sad lady, I

thought. To be fair, to be sad ... why, was she intelligent, too? And

white she was, very white, and her painted mouth was purple in the dim

light, and her eyes, which seemed set very wide apart, were cool,

impersonal, sensible, and they were blazing blue. Even in that light

they were blazing blue, like two spoonfuls of the Mediterranean in the

early morning of a brilliant day. The sirens had eyes like that, without

a doubt, when they sang of better dreams. But no siren, she! That was a

sad lady, most grave. And always her hair would be dancing a tawny,

formal dance about the small white cheeks.

She smiled, when it occurred to her that she was looking at me.

“I know what you are thinking,” she said.

“I wonder!”

“Yes. You like Gerald, don’t you?” She thought about that. “Well, what

you are thinking is, whether it is fair to him to take me up there in

case he is drunk....”

“If only it was ‘in case,’” I said. “You see?”

She closed her eyes.

“Poor Gerald!” she whispered. “Isn’t it a shame!”

“I’m afraid,” I said, “there’s nothing to be done....”

“Oh, I know!” Oh, she seemed to know that from her heart. And I wondered

why they had not seen each other for ten years. I couldn’t imagine her

disliking Gerald--childish, furious Gerald! Probably, I thought, he was

to blame, and I wondered if there was anything in Gerald’s life for

which he was not to blame. Poor Gerald.

“You see,” the slightly husky voice was saying, “I just came to-night on

an Impulse. I am scarcely ever in England....” The voice expired. We

waited, and she acknowledged my patience with a jewel of a smile. “And I

suddenly thought I would like to see Gerald to-night. Please,” she

suddenly begged, so seriously, “won’t you let me? I’d like just to _see_

him ... but if you think ...?”

“Oh,” I said, “come on.”

She laughed, a little nervously, abruptly. Gerald’s door was at the head

of the next flight of stairs, and it was, as usual, wide open. She moved

one step forward into the room, she stopped, her eyes on the ceiling, as

fixed as lamps. Yes, those were very sensible eyes. She didn’t look at

Gerald.

“What is it?” she asked dimly.

“Whisky,” I said. It was so obvious.

“But more than that! There’s certainly whisky, but....”

“Wet shoes....”

“But that’s too literary! Oh, of course! Old women in alms-houses....”

She was talking, it was so easy to see, against her eyes. Now she was

here she didn’t want to see Gerald. She was trying to put off the moment

when her eyes must rest on Gerald. Still just within the dingy room, she

looked everywhere but at Gerald.

“Lot of books,” she said.

I made to go, but the slightest hint of a start detained me. She

suggested her gestures. That was a very quiet lady. She didn’t, if you

please, intrude her womanhood on the occasion. Women do that

unconsciously. But she didn’t do it, unconsciously. She met a man on his

own ground. That was a gallant lady.

“Oh!” she said. “Oh!”

“Might just as well come away,” I muttered. I was used to Gerald, but at

the moment, at her sudden whisper, I would have liked to murder him.

Here for sixteen months not a soul had come to see him--and now, before

his sister, and his twin sister too, he was in this vile state. But she

had insisted on seeing him. What could I do? I promised Gerald a pretty

speech on the morrow. He would be more or less human to-morrow, for

Gerald had those phenomenal recuperative powers that are peculiar to

lean drunkards.

“The illness,” I told her, “goes in periods of three days. On the first

day he is thoughtful, on the second he is thoughtless, and on the third

speechless.”

I could not see her face, her back was to me. The leather jacket, the

brave green hat, the thoughtful poise. But I heard her whisper the name

of the inert thing sprawling half on a broken Windsor chair and half

across the littered table, and it was as though there was a smile in the

whisper, and I thought to myself that these twins must have been great

playmates once upon a time. “Gerald!” she whispered. “Gerald! Gerald!”

“Oh, go to hell!” muttered Gerald, and, without looking up, without

waking up, twitched his head feverishly to one side, upsetting a tea-cup

half-full of whisky.

“He thinks it’s me,” I explained from the door, and suddenly I found her

looking at me over her shoulder, so thoughtfully. I can see her now, the

way she suddenly looked at me, half over her leather shoulder, thinking

I knew not what, and her right hand spread out on her brother’s arm.

There was a striking emerald on the third finger of her right hand,

livid against the dark thing that was Gerald March.

“Only twenty-nine,” she told me gravely, “Gerald and me....”

“Oh,” I said. What could one say?

“Bad luck, I do think,” she murmured. I wondered, you know, whom she was

talking to. Certainly not to me.

“He’s a very good fellow,” I said.

“Heredity, you see,” she suddenly explained. “Father almost died of it.

Brandy, though. He liked brandy, Barty did. They said he would die if he

had more than half-a-bottle a day, but he had a bottle to make sure, and

then he died of pneumonia.”

Then, in her silence, she was so still that I grew very uncomfortable.

What was she thinking about? She was staring down at the sprawling thing

that was her twin brother, the emerald still livid against his arm.

“He wrote a very good book once,” I said, to say something.

“Yes. About Boy....”

“Boy?” Gerald, you see, was no talker. He just swore, but automatically;

it meant nothing.

“Didn’t you know?” She looked at me again, but her eyes seemed to me

masked. I was to know later why her eyes were masked just then. I said I

knew nothing at all about Gerald.

She passed a finger over one of her eyebrows, and looked at it. “Dirty,”

she said.

“Years ago,” she said, “before the war, Gerald had a very great friend.

Gerald, you see, is a hero-worshipper. In spite of his air and

everything, that is what Gerald is, a hero-worshipper. And no hero, no

Gerald. And so, when his hero died, Gerald died too. Funny, life is,

isn’t it? Then the war, and that, of course, buried him. And now....”

Those absorbed, blazing blue eyes! The sea was in them, and the whisper

of all open places: the magic of the sea was in her eyes, whipped with

salt and winds.

“No friends?” she asked dimly. “No women? Nothing?”

And just at that moment I had, for the first time, that feeling of

incapacity with her. I was to have it again, profoundly, but I remember

vividly that it came for the first time just then, in poor, furious

Gerald’s room. Dingy--that is what I felt before this quiet, thoughtful

woman with the absorbed eyes. Dingy. I felt, I suppose, the immense

dinginess of being a human being, for there is an immense, unalterable

dinginess in being human, in the limitation of being human. But why I

should feel that particularly with her I did not know then. She, too,

was human, quiet, gentle, very unaware. But, later, I was to know why.

It was with an effort that I told her about Gerald. That feeling of

self-dinginess came somehow to a point in just feeling common. For I was

what Gerald was not, what she obviously was not. I could somehow “cope

with” my time and generation, while they were of the breed destined to

failure. I was of the race that is surviving the England of Horatio

Bottomley, the England of lies, vulgarity, and unclean savagery; while

they of the imperious nerves had failed, they had died that slow white

death which is reserved for privilege in defeat.

Gerald, I told her, was a more solitary man than I had ever known or

thought to know. I supposed he had a small income, for he seemed to

manage to live. He was very shy, absurdly shy, tortured shy. She nodded

gravely, and I went on to say that shyness was a cruel disease with

Gerald: it was a shyness, to strangers, without charm, for he never

could show his shyness, he must show everything but his shyness. And so

it was that he couldn’t get on with people, and now he had ceased to

try, he just had drinks. Every Sunday afternoon he went to tea with his

aunt, Lady Eve Chalice, in Mount Street.

“It was Eve who really created my impulse,” she told me, then: “Oh,

here!” and I found I had an empty cigarette-case in my hand and that she

was offering me hers. It was an oblong white-jade case, and chained to

it by a double chain of gold was a hectagonal black onyx box which may

or may not have held powder. One corner of the hectagonal black onyx was

initialed in minute diamond letters: I.S.

“Iris,” she said. “Iris Storm.” And she smiled, childishly, formally,

saying: “You have been so nice, I had forgotten we didn’t know each

other.” I told her my name, in that embarrassed way one always does tell

any one one’s name, and we smoked a while in silence. She inhaled her

smoke with a faint hiss, and her teeth were a regiment of even bits of

rice-paper standing at attention, very smart and sharp. Teeth always

give one ideas. These were imperious, dangerous teeth. On a middle one

was wedged a small string of tobacco: it lay coiled there like a brown

maggot, and when I told her about that she removed it with the nail of

her small finger, and regarded it. She had a great talent for looking at

nothing in particular, and that was the only likeness I could see

between the twins: thoughtful they both were. Suddenly, from the tousled

dark head on the table came a jumble of inarticulate words. She listened

intently. Gerald shivered, but his face remained buried in his crossed

arms.

“He’s dreaming,” I said. She looked at me, and I thought there were

tears in her eyes. But as they never fell, I am not sure. Thoughtful she

was, smoking....

“Why does God do these things?” she asked in a suddenly strong, clear

voice, a most surprising voice; but I said nothing, knowing nothing of

God.

“Let us go,” she said.

“Shall I tell him you came?”

She thought about that, looking at me. “Yes,” she said, “will you?

Please. Just that I came. You see, Gerald doesn’t ... well,” she smiled

somewhere in those eyes, “let us say he is against me....”

We were in the doorway of the soiled room of the drunkard. I was going

to switch out the light. Often I would come upstairs and switch out

Gerald’s light.

“Gerald,” she said suddenly, in that strong voice, and I thought of a

prefect’s voice at school, down the corridor of a dormitory. “Good-bye

to Gerald.”

“You see,” she said to me, “Gerald and I are the last Marches, and we

ought to stand together. Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, you ought,” I said gravely. One hand, the hand of the great

emerald, hung against her leather jacket. “Certainly you ought,” I said,

and raised the hand to my lips. Her hand smelt dimly of petrol and

cigarettes, and a scent whose name I shall now never know.

“These defiant courtesies,” she said thoughtfully. “They’re very nice, I

always say....”