I have gone too far ahead in the tale of the last March, letting myself
be beguiled from a narrator’s duties by the reckless flight of the
silver stork through the quiet countryside. But from the night of the
children’s party I can only go back by saying that she was wearing that
night not her silver turban but a green hat, yea, a green hat, of a sort
of felt, and bravely worn; and who but I had bought that green hat for
her that very day, she having said to me after luncheon that she needed
a green hat _pour le sport_. I understood that the _sport_ would be
under even warmer skies than ours, for in three days’ time, she said,
she would be on board ship for Rio di Janeiro, and she did not need to
tell me that she would not be voyaging unaccompanied. That was a fell
lady for whom I bought a green hat that day.
Nothing easier than a green hat, it appears, can well be bought. Like a
flash of summer lightning, that is how a green hat is bought. Says the
lady to the shop: “Greeting, sir. I will have a green hat _pour le
sport_, similar in every way to the green hats I have bought here every
year since the death of Dr. Crippen.”
“Very good, madam. That will be so much, madam. On your account, madam?”
“Oh, no! My friend will pay. Farewell.”
We spoke very little over the luncheon we took together. It was a
stifling day, and what, anyhow, was there to say? Very far from my
business was it to speak of broken promises unless spoken to, and very
far from her thoughts did any question of broken promises seem. Oh, but
that was a fell lady who luncheoned with me on that sweltering day!
We sat picking at green olives and salads and bits of toast, we drank
those long iced drinks full of vegetable matter which, apparently, one
must drink so that one may feel the heat more poignantly than before, we
had nothing in particular to say. Early that morning she had rung me up,
a calm, happy voice, demanding from me not the smallest expression of
surprise at her presence in London; although, of course, one did make a
show of being surprised, for she couldn’t possibly know that I had seen
her in that cab, and, I thought, she never would know. The Marches would
be let off that, anyhow.
But Iris, over that luncheon, did not appear to remark that I had
nothing in particular to say. And, what with the heat and with that, I
suppose I grew more and more annoyed, for there isn’t, I suppose,
anything in the world more irritating than to be angry with a woman and
she not notice it at all. Of course many women will appear not to notice
it, but you can see that that is put on; but this Iris just, I’ll swear
it, did not notice anything.
Nor, I thought, did she have a very healthy appetite for one not long
since recovered from a serious illness, the way she picked at bits of
things here and there; but she excused herself to Charles, who came up
to protest against the dishonour she did his food, on the ground that
she never did eat with her meals.
And then there was a moment when I asked, from a large silence which
seemed to her maddeningly natural, I just asked paternally, since it is
always easier to be paternal than to be fraternal: “Happy, Iris?”
She was buttering a piece of _toast Melba_ about half an inch square. My
question stayed her knife. She stared intently towards the doors of the
restaurant for a long second, and then she said, frankly, gravely,
calmly, not at all intensely but with unutterable conviction:
“Unbearably.” Then she went on buttering her piece of _toast Melba_, and
I could do what I liked about it.
Now I must say this for the Iris who sat with her profile to me that
day, that she was a more lovely Iris even than the one I had known. But
as to how she was more lovely, that I do not know; nor, if I knew, could
I describe it but by using the word “ethereal,” to be immediately
followed by the word “unearthly,” for it is a convention not to be
broken lightly that a woman who has not long since recovered from a
long illness must look “ethereal” and “unearthly.” But she didn’t, I
think, look either of those two things. She seemed, I mean to say, more
lovely than ever just because she was more earthy. She looked, I fancy I
mean, in love--her skin, that is to say, looked as though she who wore
it was in love. Yes, her skin did. I fancy it must have been that. A
beautiful woman in love and loved seems, in however unaware a moment, to
glow with an earthy beauty. When writers say that “Gloria was looking
very spiritual that morning” what they really mean--of course, this is
all theory--is that Gloria was looking more earthy that morning, that in
her eyes there was the afterglow of love’s delight. A beautiful woman
neglected or unloved appeals, of course, more to the chivalrous sense in
men, for men will stand more of a chance of a sad woman being interested
in them; but the very skin of a woman who is coiled in love seems to
have a jewel-like quality, and her mind is like a temptation one wants
to touch.
“And,” I said, fascinated for some reason by the faint, faint golden
down on her arm, “you’re quite well and strong now?”
“Of course,” she said, “not as strong as all that. But strong
enough....”
“Oh, dear! Strong enough for what, Iris?”
“Everything,” she said, shrouding a boiled cherry in whipped cream.
“Must get fat,” she explained as an afterthought.
Now there were two red camellias painted on the left side of the crown
of her hat--women at that time didn’t wear bowler hats, or, as they
prefer to call them, _cloche_ hats--which was of the same colour as the
sun, of straw, and with a narrow stiff brim. The two red camellias
looked just as waxen and artificial as two real red camellias would
look, and so it must have cost a power of money, that hat. She would
have flown like the wind to Reboux in Paris, saying to herself: “I am in
love. I must have a hat,” and so she had bought that hat. As for her
dress that stifling day, you would have called it blue if you hadn’t
seen that no colour made by hands could compare with the blue of those
grave eyes, and it was of that fine texture which is finer than the
texture of silk of China, if such a thing can be, and here and there
upon its lower parts were worked large white arabesques in what looked
to an uninformed eye like wool, but surely it could not be the fleece of
the lamb that Iris was wearing that day?
“And did Guy,” she asked, “say anything when you three saw me in that
cab last night?”
“Oh!” I said.
She had very suddenly turned to me, so that at last I must look full
into the eyes that blazed so incredibly blue from the shadow of the
yellow hat ... and I, I could not meet those eyes! I stared instead at
the emerald on the third finger of her right hand, and how white and
frail that hand looked, so weak, so frail, when you thought of it as
belonging to those deep, compelling, unscrupulous eyes.
“Well?” It was her voice, faint, slightly husky; yet it rose above the
roar of London and was lost in the clouds that pass over a strange,
unknown land.
“Personally,” I said, “I liked your silver turban very much.”
“Dear, that was not a turban!”
“Turban is a pretty word, Iris. And suitable, too....”
“Turkey, polygamy?”
“Just a boyish fancy.”
“And Guy? You haven’t told me?”
“But, Iris, he never, as you know, gives away gratuitous information. He
just asked me to ask you to dine to-night, as I have done. ‘My idea,
tell her,’ he said. In fact, he repeated that. And you’re coming?”
“Why, of course!” she said absently, so absently.
“But why do you ask about Guy, Iris? I fancied you didn’t care what any
one thought.”
Throughout that passage her face had been turned to mine, but only now
could I master the courage to raise my eyes from the third finger of her
right hand, to see that her face was as though turned to a mask of white
stone with two amethysts for eyes. It was a mask, that face, and those
were the eyes of a mask. Yet it was far from a mask of concealment, it
was the mask of herself, of her very self, of the self that was, in some
remote part of her being, really herself. And again I couldn’t help
thinking of her as of some one who had strayed into our world from a
strange land unknown to us, a land where lived a race of men and women
who were calmly awaiting their inheritance of our world when we should
have annihilated one another in our endless squabbles about honour,
morality, nationality. Strong were the people of that land, stronger
than the gold they despised but used, deterred by not qualm nor fear,
strong and undefeatable. And just like that was the white mask of this
beautiful woman, strong and undefeatable. It knew not truth nor lying,
not honour nor dishonour, not loyalty nor treachery, not good nor evil:
it was profoundly itself, a mask of the morning of this world when men
needed not to confuse their minds with laws with which to confuse their
neighbours, a mask of the evening of this world when men shall have at
last made passions their servants and can enter into their full
inheritance....
“I don’t,” she said at last from a remote distance, the amethysts
absorbed in the air between us. “I don’t.” And then she smiled faintly,
but even so much was enough to change the amethysts into eyes. “I
don’t,” she said very huskily. “But I just asked....”
“Iris,” I said, my mind charged with that mask, “you have us all at a
great disadvantage....”
Slowly, thoughtfully, she made a circle of air with a small golden tube
that had a crimson tongue, and then she passed the golden tube through
the circle’s heart. She was thinking.