Chapter VII

1

A year had passed, from one July day to its elder brother. And Ivor had not realised the wonder of that special day in July, he had no head for dates--until, calling to see her that afternoon, she suddenly held her date-book-calendar under his nose and very slowly tore off the leaf of the previous day, when behold! there, below the date of that day, was writ largely the name “Ivor!”

“Our birthday,” she told him gravely. “Birthday of that night last year when first you came to dinner....”

“And realised that I’d never, never dined before!”

“Yes, how thin you were, Ivor! But you’ll be much fatter after to-night, for we will have a wonderful dinner somewhere in the country, because it’s our birthday. I hate my own so much, but I’m sentimental about ours....”

Now there was a mood of Magdalen’s which complained of Ivor’s “splendid isolation,” of his present way of not seeing any one else. Magdalen saw quite a number of other people: it was very difficult for her not to, for the world was full of men and women who, on given occasions, seemed unable to “touch” food unless Magdalen was there to “touch” it with them. At first she had seemed not to realise Ivor’s present way of life; and then there had come a time when she made a gesture against it. But man is not warned by gestures alone, so she had to clothe hers with words. And even then Ivor would not be brought to see that it mattered one way or the other, whether he saw people or didn’t. He read a great deal, he said. And he played rackets.... She teased him with her disfavour, he mocked her with his love. And then one day she got annoyed with him, and he with her.

They were at luncheon at his flat, and she asked him what he had done the evening before. She asked as though she didn’t know the answer, but that did not deter Ivor from giving it.

“Dinner, bed, book,” he explained. “Charming evening.”

“Its description, however, doesn’t make for much conversation,” said Magdalen.

“I want to know,” she dangerously said, “why, whenever I can’t dine with you, much as I’d like to, you must always dine alone. I feel there must be a reason for that....”

“What Magdalen wins the world must lose!” Ivor mocked humbly.

“That’s all very well,” she protested vividly. “But don’t you see, my dear, that it’s very unfair, your absurd isolation? (_a_) It’s unfair to me; (_b_) It’s unfair to yourself; and (_c_) It’s frightfully unfair to the countless people whom you deprive of the charm of your countenance and company, to say nothing of your conversation....”

“Besides,” she said plantively, “your idiotic isolation is making me what’s called a ‘marked’ woman. And if it’s all the same to you, Ivor, I’d just as soon not be a ‘marked’ woman. I hate being thought of as a woman who snatches young men from their natural surroundings and keeps them in close confinement for fear of competition, if any. To please me, Ivor ...” she suddenly pleaded.

“You’re pretending, Magdalen!” he accused her sulkily. “None of those things matter and half of them aren’t true, especially about your being a ‘marked’ woman because of me. Those things are only true of people who live in restaurants, and you and I have scarcely been in one together since I saw you with Rodney West that night.” He was very young and very sulky.

“What is it all about, Magdalen?” he asked miserably. A year had passed, and this was their first scene--their first scene! No ordinary year, that....

“But, Ivor, I don’t want you to wake up one morning--to find no Magdalen and no friends!” She jerked the thing out....

“Why no Magdalen?” he stabbed at her.

“But that’s childish, you sweet!”

His eyes would not meet hers, he looked blackly at the table, waiting.... If only he would meet her eyes she would make it all right, he would understand. She knew herself _so_ well ... sometimes. But he was so young!

“I don’t see why,” he said at last, to his plate.

“There’s a fatality about my kind of love,” Magdalen said softly, miserably, heroically. “It ends.” And in that moment Magdalen loved Ivor as she had never before loved him; she was like that.

“Mine doesn’t.”

Silence....

“Stuff!” said Magdalen--and shrieked with laughter! He blushed furiously.

“Look here,” he snarled, “do you or don’t you love me?”

“I do,” snapped Magdalen. “But I’ve got ideas.”

Ivor leant forward truculently.

“Then if you do,” he said very slowly, “what the devil are you talking about?”

Magdalen leant forward, so that there was nothing but their breath between her earnest face and his truculent face.

“I adore you--mark that, Ivor! Maybe I don’t love you as a dairymaid would love you, but I’m sure that into one month I cram as much love for you as a dairymaid would give in a lifetime; her way is called ‘simplicity,’ and is supposed to be divine. But I am divine in my own way. I adore you. If I were an epithet and you were a noun I’d follow you about on every page of the book of life--until you were oh so tired of me! But I get ideas....”

“Women have moods,” she whispered. “And let me tell you about these moods, Ivor, so that you will learn not to madden the women who will love you. Women have moods every now and then, they can’t help it and no one can help them. You knew that? You poor lamb, you don’t know anything really.... These moods, let me tell you, are vast and inexplicable and untidy and terrible. They devastate everything. Particularly, they devastate men, these moods. I’ve seen them destroy better men than you, Ivor. They change a woman’s personality, they give her a new mind for that short time, a new and unhappy mind, as every one is unhappy who sees too clearly--but lovers go on being lovers, not understanding anything but that it’s a damned nuisance, not understanding that this woman’s mood can change a lover into a man and a man into dross. Women are much given to wanting to speak the truth in this mood, for hysteria seems to act that way--but they generally don’t speak it, life being what it is, and that’s what makes them so evil and bad-tempered to the men they love, but who insist on loving them at any hour of the day and night, regardless of sense or sensibility....”

“Of course,” said Ivor reasonably, “if it’s only a mood....”

Now a mood is like a cloud against the sky, it comes and goes and leaves no mark. But that is a lie, for a mood is like nothing else at all.

2

The Hallidays went abroad that August, or rather they went to Deauville, and Euphemia Halliday lent Magdalen her house near Sonning for that month. In the last few months Euphemia had discovered a surprising affection for Magdalen, to whom she had always referred to as “poor little Magdalen! she is so witty, you know!” Euphemia always referred to women poorer than herself as “poor little----,” and gave it to be understood that she liked to be kind to people. But she had never before been “kind” to or about Magdalen, and Magdalen was quite puzzled about it until she heard that Euphemia had quarrelled with Lois Lamprey, for Euphemia was full of caddish little enthusiasms about women, and as one collapsed she must quickly make another. However, Magdalen couldn’t help being charming to her, and Euphemia gushed over with the gift of her house near Sonning for August.

“A gift,” Magdalen pathetically told Ivor, “for which she will ask me twenty to thirty guineas a week when she comes back--and get it, what’s more! I’m the most easily cheated woman I know, Ivor.”

“That’s just your kind of vanity,” he pointed out. “You’re the vainest woman in the world, really--but it’s a private vanity, and doesn’t hurt any one but yourself, for it consists of letting horrible people impose on you while you just quietly despise them all to yourself.”

“This house we were speaking of,” said Magdalen severely, “is a charming house. What I mean is that it has every modern comfort and convenience, and duplicates of each. There is a bathroom to each bedroom and a divan in each sitting-room, telephones in every corner and servants round every corner. And it’s just far enough from the river to be out of the reach of passing footlight-favourites and energetic men wearing Leander ties. One will be very comfortable there, Ivor.”

“One would prefer a cottage, maybe,” she said thoughtfully. “My husband--with whose tastes you seem to agree so well, Ivor--has always told me that I could wear a cottage very becomingly.”

“Do you know,” Ivor broke in, “that that man seems to me the nicest man in the world, from what you always say of him.”

“But indeed he is,” she cried. “He’s a dear, my Tristram. I married him when I was eighteen, and I still say it, although I’ve been begging him to divorce me ever since. But he’s too wise to do that, and though he has offered to let me divorce him, I’m not quite cad enough to do that--not until he wants to marry some one else, anyway, which I’m afraid is improbable. And when he comes home he stays at the club and we dine together, and I have to confess that being married to him has prevented me from marrying some awful men in my time.... Oh, Ivor!” she suddenly clapped her hands with an idea, “let’s take a flight of fancy and imagine you going to see Tristram one day--he would like you, you’re his sort of man; and let’s suppose you told him what you’ve threatened to tell him as soon as you see him, that if he divorced me or let me divorce him you would marry me. Whereupon he would first of all ask you if you could keep me in the luxury to which I’ve been accustomed. On your saying rather sulkily that you could, he would further ask you what grounds you had for thinking you would make me happy. Then you’d look sulkier than ever, and mutter something about my loving you (which indeed I do). After a silence of a few seconds, spent by both of you in emptying the drinks which Tristram had ordered on hearing that a man had come to see him about his wife--after this short, impressive silence, he would say, quite gently, ‘But she loved me, too!’ Now he’s much older than you, Ivor, and your natural deference for age would be fighting a battle with your stern conviction that the two cases weren’t at all parallel--but before you could explain that he would add, ever so genially: ‘Suppose, Marlay, we talk of it in a year from to-day--how would that do?’ At that you wouldn’t have a leg to stand on, especially if you were sitting in his club; and so you would spend the rest of the time in asking him about the extremely foreign countries he had visited, and then you’d both forget all about me and probably lunch together....”

“This house we were speaking of,” said Ivor, “seems to me a charming house....”

“And it’s called Camelot!” cried Magdalen.