Chapter III

1

In the days that followed, Ivor Marlay brooded upon her a great deal. He showed his youth, that fantastic youth of a young man’s secret longings, in the manner and absurdity of his brooding. He came to think of her as a strange and delicious phenomenon that had somehow happened--and which, he intensely hoped, would somehow happen again. He lavished on her all his curiosity; he fingered the texture of her; and then hastily drew back from this childish dalliance, for his mind seemed suddenly to have become so gross and the texture of her was so fine. He grew aware that she would leave him not a shred of vanity if she had her way with him--not that she would strip him of it, but he would have to strip himself in face of her. And he felt painfully ill at ease with himself, which is commonly the feeling of a very young man who is too impressed by a woman of thirty--and quality.

This deep impression of a first meeting may seem ridiculous to the superior amateur of sensations, but it was quite logical, really. Never before, after all, had he been charmed! And it was an exquisite sensation, to be charmed. Of course, he had often persuaded himself into being charmed--if you didn’t do that you were bored, and then where were you?--but never before had he been actually and actively charmed. And so potent was this enchantment that he had now no stomach for such relations--oh, quite vague things!--as had hitherto entertained him very passably.

The matter was not in the least mended by his frequently calling himself a silly ass; for there was always a secret voice telling him that his admiration was the outcome of a need--for “that kind of woman!” That first impression! He was so sure, he didn’t know why nor how, that “that kind of woman” could arouse a deep emotion without that aftermath of impurity which--even at three-and-twenty--taints so many of the fine passages of an adventurous life. And so Ivor longed for her, and guess-work made strange and lovely arabesques on a background of enchantment.

More than two weeks passed, and still he did not telephone to Mrs. Gray. He had made a brave show of determination when with her, but since then his mind had made her of fine texture, and its _fineness_ appalled him. And after two weeks he couldn’t, for she would not remember his name, he would have to remind her of their meeting--oh, no, no! His vanity, his whole manhood, ran tumultuously away from the thought of her probable forgetfulness on the telephone! He could hear her answer to his name, he could hear her saying, softly, thoughtfully, questioningly, vaguely, “Yes?...” Oh, no! He would wait; he would just wait--but, after all, what for?

The resolution made on the night of the Halliday party held unusually firm, and that _galère_ was now part of a past life. _He_ wasn’t going to “mess about” any more--with a lot of “invertebrates”! So he set himself to work, seriously and rather angrily, and wrote hard to finish a flimsy novel which he had begun nearly two years before, and whose flimsiness, now that he seriously set himself to finish it (and make it less “invertebrate”) was a humiliating reproach to the waste of the last two years. It was finally published,[B] after adventures common to first MSS. in search of a publisher who knows his business, in the spring before the war, when its author was away from England; a slim and unpretentious book--“whose charm,” wrote one reviewer, “is difficult to analyse, but might conceivably lie in the almost senile precocity that informs Mr. Marlay’s style and fantasy.” Wrote another: “Of all the books that don’t matter in the least, this is one of the most excellent. It is one that will appeal to a few, but not necessarily _the_ few.” Whichever few, thought Mr. Marlay’s publisher, is few enough.

2

His inability to telephone to Magdalen Gray served him not at all, as indeed he did not wish it to. For on a night three weeks after he had met her he was dining with her at her house in Wilton Place. And a remarkable meal that was, a most remarkable dinner, an immaculate conception of a dinner, exquisitely ethereal--yet how sternly of the earth!

One night, as Ivor Marlay was dining alone in one of those underground grill-rooms for which London is famous among capitals, he was extremely surprised at the sudden figure of Rodney West, K.C., standing at his table, with the obvious intention of addressing him. He did not know Rodney West, nor did Rodney West know him. A smile, as nearly self-conscious as it could be, hovered about the severely handsome face of the man of middle years. Ivor half rose in his chair, and sat down again.

“Mrs. Gray sent me over,” Rodney West told him, “to rebuke you for being blind, for we’ve been sitting over there for the last hour, and to ask you to join us over coffee. Is that all right?” Rodney West’s courtesy had no fringes, it was sharp and direct--there was no froth about _him_, anyway--and from that moment Ivor liked him very much, in spite of himself. He said he would like to join them very much; he was shy; but, a few minutes after the elder man had left him, he followed him to the table indicated, ... for at least half the distance looking directly into a levelled pair of eyes, which seemed wonderfully large and innocent beneath a wide-brimmed black hat. And Ivor suddenly felt extraordinarily happy and unafraid; and not even the so direct scrutiny of Magdalen Gray could perturb him. But perhaps she did not intend that it should.

She greeted him as an old friend. She seemed to be under the surprising delusion that they were old friends, and not the acquaintances of one meeting; she did not address him as “Mr. Marlay,” she did not address him by name at all, but her manner plainly suggested that if she did address him by name it would not be as “Mr. Marlay.” She was in a gay, silly mood, embracing them both in the swift turns of her inconsequence. No one could have guessed that she and Rodney West had dined in silence. Nor did Rodney West show what he felt at the contrast; he seemed to Ivor a very amiable though rather detached elderly person. Only when he occasionally bent his eyes to his coffee cup and gently dropped his cigar ash therein, would there have been perceptible, to a more detached intelligence than Ivor’s, an added grimness to the thin face, a wave of grimness that came and passed; and, surely, a certain grimness is permissible in a man of middle years who, for the last five of them, has given his soul to a woman and has now had it given back to him with maddening gentleness.

The artifice of her intimacy charmed Ivor into ready answer. The gay, silly mood enveloped him. Her wit was adventurous: it was an exploit to follow the twist of her sentences, and breathlessly to be with her at the end.... She told them of the races at somewhere or other, to which she had been taken that afternoon in an “extremely open car.” She was not a racing-chap, she wasn’t very actively interested in the competitive swiftness of horses; but she had not only been to watch them at it that day, but had lost a deal of money on the slower ones, what’s more! Whereupon Rodney West gave it as his opinion that it rather served her right for betting in ignorance.

“But I didn’t, Rodney!” she vividly protested. “Never was a woman inbetter racing company. No one could have guessed that all-my-people-weren’t-racing-people. My escort were two in number, minus in intelligence, full marks for good-looks, and might quite easily have been called Mr. Beef and Mr. Beer: and they were grimly allied together for the purposes of being entertained by me and the horses. As they had field-glasses and champagne-glasses and hard blue eyes, and knew every horse by sight and reputation, I naturally backed the horse which they were sure couldn’t lose. And when the wretched horse was finally arrested for loitering on the course hours after the race was finished, they told me that at the last moment they’d backed another one--the one that had happened to win, you know.”

“What awful people one knows!” breathed Rodney West softly.

“Oh, and I was trying _so_ hard not to be personal!” she said.

Rodney West turned amiably to Ivor, who was getting rather left behind.

“Mrs. Gray, you must know, has made an art of friendship,” he explained. “The art of friendship consists of defending people you’ve met twice by attacking people you’ve known all your life.”

That light laugh of Magdalen’s! it was like a laugh from a Victorian novel, so gentle and smoothing and _right_! And, as she laughed, her eyes, so large and thoughtful in the shadow of her black hat, rested with ever so passing an intentness on Ivor, secretly. And she seemed to be saying to him: “This man has certain rights and many grievances, and it’s all my fault. So we’ll let him be, shall we, for he’s a sweet man, really.”

And Ivor suddenly felt that all this had happened to him before, to him and to her, in some ancient place long, long ago; and he felt poignantly at ease with her, he understood the things she didn’t say--this slim, soft woman with the soft hair like the night and the wonderfully friendly, deeply joyous eyes.

He knew nothing, nothing in the world, of men and women; he only knew that he was very alone and that shadows were all about, shadows that never flickered, shadows that only stared and smiled, waiting, waiting, waiting for his full worthiness....

3

It was as they were at last leaving the place--long after the paid bill had been whipped away from Rodney West as though it were an indecency which should never have been committed--and were winding up the stairs to the exalted atmosphere of Piccadilly by night, that she turned to await Ivor, who was a few steps behind them, and said:--

“There’s a kind of dinner-party at my house to-morrow night, to which you are being invited at this moment....”

“The telephone-book,” she said, “is full of little details about my address.”

Kind, curious woman--by saying things like that she made one think oneself had spoken, she made one forget that one was dull, dull, unworthy of the moment....

“Well, good-night, Marlay.”

“Good-night, sir. Thanks so much for letting me join you. Good-night, Mrs. Gray.”

And so, swiftly, almost brusquely, away, leaving them to the care and under the shadow of the _commissionaire_, man of legendary height and fabulous girth, whose huge gallantry cynically suggested that he would sell not only his own soul but the soul of the taxi and taxi-driver which he had summoned, if only to please this lady and this gentleman. But how could the _commissionaire_, so long trained in the observation of quick infidelities, guess that nothing in the world would please this obviously sensible gentleman but the love of this lady? whose maddening answer to his bitter-frantic demand, in that very taxi, was gently to touch his hand and whisper that it would surely be disloyal to past loveliness to pretend to things.... Magdalen Gray never, never pretended; maybe that is what kept her so young-looking.