Chapter IX

1

On that fourth morning, towards noon, Ivor was taking the air on the rather unkempt lawn. No one else seemed to be about that morning, no one had as yet come out of the long, low, white villa; though every now and then, as he passed near an open bedroom window, he heard voices: Julie Gabriel’s voice, Tarlyon’s laugh, and once the Cypress “cluck, cluck.”

Ivor was taking a little thought about what exactly he was doing as Virginia’s guest; and as he had very carefully not thought about it before, he now tried to put it to himself as bluntly as he could. How long was he going to stay, and what for, anyway? They didn’t wildly amuse him, these people, nor he them. Oh, yes, of course, Virginia was the reason, he admitted that. But he didn’t admit anything else; there was nothing else to admit. (There never is when one is thinking out a thing “bluntly.”) Virginia had been distant from him these last two days. He hadn’t felt in the least hurt about that--he didn’t expect anything. But he could not be rid of an idea that she was just letting things drift, in a rather helpless but defiant way: but perhaps she was always letting things drift in a rather helpless but defiant way: just letting things drift until something happened. Did she expect something to happen from him?... And he suddenly realised that he wasn’t in the least treating her as he might some one else. But he wasn’t treating her in any way at all! He was behaving like a polite old man....

Ivor loathed “fumbling about”--“messing about”; trying, he thought impatiently, to get at uncertain things uncertainly. There was an uncleanness in “fumbling about.” ... He wondered what, in particular, it was that Virginia liked in a man. One generally knew that with women. They generally told one. It was generally about the first thing a woman let one know about her, the kind of man she liked; and it was always interesting to know the kind of man a woman liked. But one couldn’t tell with Virginia: her men contradicted each other.... And then the figure of George Tarlyon came into his mind. He had barely spoken a direct word to Tarlyon since his coming--it hadn’t, he fancied, been expected of him. Tarlyon didn’t like him, it seemed. “There’s only one thing George hates in this world,” Virginia had said, “and that is to be disliked. It doesn’t happen often. But he feels you don’t like him, Ivor.” Well, that was a pity, because he had wanted to like him. He couldn’t help it. They always thought the worst, that kind of man; they thought it rather clever of them to think the worst, and other people thought it rather clever of them, too. He would never, about anything in the world, have any explanations to offer George Tarlyon, Ivor thought; he could go on thinking the worst until he burst. Good God, he had probably thought the worst that night he came to fetch Virginia at Nasyngton!

And then he thought of Virginia being attracted by Tarlyon, and loving him, adoring him perhaps, and being held by him even when she had found him out--odd, that, however attractive the man was! The things women create in men, for their own hurt generally! Even Virginia, an intelligent woman! Take a----

“Ivor!”

He spun round, tremendously interrupted. Virginia was ten yards away, walking towards him with her swift, easy stride. It occurred to him that this was the first morning he had seen her before luncheon.... Had he wanted gravity on Virginia’s face? Here was enough now, it was more evident about her than the golden sheen of the hair that framed it! Grave indeed Virginia looked, as she came to him. Her calling of his name from a distance was her only greeting, there was no smile to bear it company. Virginia looked her age this morning, for the first time. She came right to him.

“I am going away to-day,” she said quickly, “to Paris, I think. Are you coming with me, or will you stay here?”

“Of course I won’t stay,” he replied abruptly. “About time I went, anyway.”

And then she stamped her foot! Her eyes were dark, and she trembled a little.

“My God, have I always got to be asking _you_ questions!” she cried. “First I had to ask you to come here, and now I’ve had to ask you to come away--don’t your lips form questions or what is it, Ivor Marlay?”

“At what time do you intend to go?” he asked her.

She turned her face away from him. The bright sun, on that open lawn with the windows of the villas glittering full at them, was cruel to her young face at this moment; it probed its pallor and revealed its weariness. Her lips were trembling. She said, away from him, very quietly:--

“Before luncheon, in less than an hour, if possible. By car.”

She turned her face to him again, controlled now.

“When I woke up this morning I decided I couldn’t bear all this another minute. But are you sure you would like to come?” She asked it as though they were going to a tiresome function which would weary them both.

“Yes, very much,” he said gravely. He wondered what on earth she had expected him to say--be enthusiastic? _She_ wasn’t enthusiastic....

“I’d better go and tell some one to pack my things,” he said, but made no movement.

“I’ve told them,” she said in her suddenly absent way. Where on earth did Virginia get to when her eyes looked like that? Those sentinels.... He felt flat.

And then she gave a little laugh, and with it something of her manner returned.

“On the other hand,” she said, “I’d better go and supervise my own packing. It’s a bit complicated, this hot to-day and cold to-morrow....”

And then she left him, walking quickly towards the villa; but she wheeled round from a short distance--and he was suddenly amazed by her smile, a gay smile it was, and it made her face look all golden. She called to him softly:--

“You’ll be ready then, in less than an hour?”

“I’m ready now,” he cried back to that glorious smile. And standing there, he watched her all the way to the house, the tall, the fearless, the mysterious Virginia....

2

It was the lesser and more comfortable drawing-room; in which, before lunch or dinner, was always a cocktail for any one who cared to mix one, or sherry and the like for those with more “old world” tastes. George Tarlyon was being “old world” this morning, sprawling in a large arm-chair with a glass of sherry to hand. George Tarlyon’s white-flannelled legs were stuck straight out, and his blue, slightly frozen blue eyes were mocking the brown tips of his white shoes with an almost serious expression; and George Tarlyon’s crisp fair hair shone with the water of his bath. Handsome, careless, reckless George Tarlyon.... A Viking, thought Ivor, as he came in at the window. And George Tarlyon awoke lazily from his contemplation.

“Hallo!” he said quite genially. “Have you been thinking out another book on courtesans, pacing up and down like that? God, I wish I could think!...”

“Ah!” said Ivor absently, and took a cigarette from a box on the table. Tarlyon at once struck a match and held it out to him from his chair.

“Must make striking these awful French matches awkward sometimes,” Tarlyon referred sympathetically to his arm.

“Not so awkward,” Ivor said, “as it makes a good many other things. As you can imagine----”

“I’ve no imagination,” Tarlyon complained frankly. “Have a glass-of-wine instead?” (One referred even to a tankard of ale as “a-glass-of-wine.”)

“Well--perhaps a little later,” Ivor said, leaning against the edge of the table. “I’m not the man I was at daylight drinking.”

Tarlyon suddenly grinned.

“I don’t know what you mean by a little later,” he said, “for I hear you are leaving us before lunch.” And he grinned, just a little, directly up at Ivor. Trying to confuse one, Ivor thought. Well, _he_ wasn’t going to be confused....

“Yes, that’s it,” he told him. “Lunch at Antibes, I suppose.”

Tarlyon lazily stretched out his hand and took another cigarette: he lit it.

“And you’ll dine, I suppose, at Avignon,” he suggested. “Romantic old place, Avignon....” And then he added, first to the brown tips of his shoes, then directly at him: “By the way, Marlay, there aren’t any other women you’d like to take away with you from my house, are there?”

Silence....

“That,” said Ivor at last, “was a damn silly insult.”

“I wasn’t trying to be clever, you know,” Tarlyon pointed out. “We can’t all try....”

“Well,” said Ivor, “if that insult was a sample of your wit, you’d have to try pretty hard.”

“Ah,” said Tarlyon.

“What I mean is,” said Tarlyon, “that you can’t expect to be patted on the back when you are trying to play the fool with a man’s wife....”

Silence....

“That, of course,” said Ivor thoughtfully, “is a sound point of view. In fact it is the only point of view. But it seems to come strangely from you, Lord Tarlyon.”

“My life is my own business, Marlay.”

“Of course.”

Silence....

“Then why the hell,” asked Lord Tarlyon, “are you mixing yourself up in it?”

The slightly frozen blue eyes were looking very steadily, very mockingly, at Ivor. And Ivor suddenly blazed away at them: “I haven’t given a thought to your life, Tarlyon. And I am so little thinking of playing the fool with your wife, as you call it, that you are the last person in the world with whom I would discuss your wife!”

Tarlyon leapt up as though a bullet had ripped his skin----

And then----

“Hallo, Virginia! Ready already!”

And Ivor, whose back was to the door as he half-sat against the edge of the table, screwed his head round....

“I’ve been ready for some time,” Virginia strangely told her husband, not coming into the room. Ivor turned his head away.

“It would be nice of you,” she added, in that way she had of saying things as though she wasn’t there, “to give the man a hand with the luggage across the garden to the car. I seem to have rather a lot of luggage. Would you, please?”

“I can do it,” Ivor said quickly: but a hand fell lightly on his maimed shoulder.

“Don’t you worry, Marlay. I’m the backbone of Pimlico, I am.” And Tarlyon lounged by Ivor without a glance, an immensely unperturbed man. Virginia stood aside and let him pass through the doorway, and, without glancing after him, came swiftly across the room to Ivor, whose back was still to her. In his slack position against the table her eyes were level with his.

“You shouldn’t have asked him to do that,” he said furiously.

“I heard,” she told him.

“Well, you shouldn’t have heard,” Ivor said sharply.

She stared thoughtfully at the white face and the furious black eyes....

“Ivor, don’t be too angry,” she pleaded gently. “It’s so unimportant, that kind of thing!”

She was getting on his nerves, and it was a tremendous effort not to tell her so. She shouldn’t have heard, she shouldn’t have come in. Tarlyon and he might have got the thing more or less right, a bit cleaner anyway. He felt foul, foul. Like a thing from a pest-house. God, how queerly Virginia chose her men!

“Do you know,” she was saying, “I could have reminded him from the doorway--I was just outside, by the stairs--that it wasn’t _his_ house, and that he was my guest, just like you. But I thought that would be common--wouldn’t it have been, Ivor?”

“Very,” he agreed shortly.

“So I thought I’d punish him by sending him to help with the luggage instead. I had to end it somehow, don’t you see? That was also common, I know, but less common--wasn’t it, Ivor?”

She simply _made_ him smile, she was like a schoolgirl. And as he unwillingly smiled, she began to laugh, right into his sombre eyes, a long and low laugh of pleasure. He protested with nerves:--

“Look here, Virginia, if you can’t leave a man in peace to be angry with another man, what _will_ you let him do?”

But she laughed, standing there almost against him, her face close to his: she laughed right into his sombre eyes....

“Oh, Ivor, you are a funny man, I do think!” she cried softly. “Though that isn’t why I’m laughing--in fact, I don’t know why! But maybe I’m laughing because I feel there simply must be something to laugh at in all this--and your very angry face, Ivor! There’s always something to laugh at in everything, dear, and if one can’t quite put a finger on what that something is, one must just pretend. So I’m pretending--and frightfully well, I do think! Don’t you? Answer me, Ivor?...”

And she laughed at him.

“And also answer me this,” she whispered. “When George was beastly to you and about me, and you were beastly to him back, weren’t you awfully glad that you hadn’t made love to me down here? Now weren’t you?... Oh, Ivor, what fun it must be to be a gentleman whose lawlessness is all according to rule, precept, and precedence!”

And she laughed at him.

“You are making a butt of me, Virginia,” he complained edgily.

“Indeed I’m not, dear!” She was contrite. “It was George who tried to do that, and whether he thinks it did or didn’t come off we won’t now have time to find out....”

“You see, Ivor,” she explained, “George made a small mistake. He has always laughed at my men--and so have I, for the matter of that!--and he thought he would have a go at laughing at you. He’s generally found it very effective. But when he found it didn’t come off with you he got angry and gave himself away.... It’s really entirely your fault, Ivor, for not being a laughing matter. You are a damn bad-tempered man, that’s what’s the matter with you, dear. Whereas all men should on certain occasions be laughing matters, or else other men will hate them.”

“So he hates me then, does he?” Ivor rather naïvely asked. “Is that, do you think, because of you or because he just happens to hate me, anyway?”

“Maybe he thinks you’re dangerous,” Virginia told him seriously. “Or maybe it’s because he’s not sure of the kind of man you are. George hates not being sure of people. He also hates not being sure of the income my trustees allow him as my relation-by-marriage--and a charming income it is, too, I do think! Anyway it won the First Prize at the Islington Income Show....”

You could never tell with Virginia in this mood: one moment she was quite serious, and the next she would say silly things like that.

“And has he any idea,” Ivor began sharply, but he never finished that question for she did the most surprising thing in the world: she drew a cross on his forehead with her finger: and she was not smiling.

“I think he has an idea,” she whispered, “that I may be going away for good....”

“And I have an idea,” she whispered, “that I probably am.”

4

They went. And as they went no one was visible--except dear Hugo in his shirt-sleeves at his bedroom window; and he cheerfully waved to them and they threw farewell gestures to him, for Hugo was really very, very nice--and always so very aloof from everything! His friends might quarrel with each other, but they could never quarrel with Hugo Cypress, the last of the _beaux sabreurs_.

The large touring-car, with chauffeur and maid (known as “the Smith,” because her name was Mdlle. Louise Madeleine Dupont) in front, and Ivor and Virginia behind, swiftly approached Antibes, on the road to Cannes. And it passed Antibes.

“I’m damned if we’ll lunch at Antibes!” Ivor suddenly said: but gave no reason to Virginia’s, “Is this man mad?” eyebrow-look.

They did dine, however, seven hours later, within the blond ramparts of Avignon. “Romantic old place, Avignon!”