Chapter XI

1

Naturally, they did not now hurry to Paris: or hurry anywhither, for the matter of that. They had no plans, there was no hurry, the weather was perfect; and the world was far too busy enjoying the lack of killing--the spring of 1919!--to notice or care what two people were doing. Ivor and Virginia had too much to talk about to discuss such banalities as destinations. “We are going towards Paris? Very well then, let’s go towards Paris.” Thus they motored gently towards Paris, staying at places. _Nach Paris_ is the vaguest and most uncertain destiny in history, as all men know; and the route these two adventurers took would have broken the heart of a motoring-map, if they had consulted one. They somehow got to Chartres, among other places. Chartres has about as much relation to Paris from Avignon as Canterbury, and they got to it only by the divine accident of seeing, one evening, the two towers of its magnificent cathedral from the far distance. Ivor and Virginia never forgot the catch in their hearts at the sudden beauty of the great cathedral high against the evening sky. “Oh, it’s somehow like a great horse!” Virginia whispered in the silence of their wonder at that great shape high against the sky: for the cathedral of Chartres is built upon an eminence in the town, and from anywhere on the straight roads that lead out of Chartres to the four corners of the world you will see its lofty genius against the sky.... From Chartres to Paris is but a three hours’ drive at most, but it took them a week: part of which time they spent at a hotel in the forest of Fontainbleau. A lovely and indescribable fortnight, this from Avignon to Paris....

2

Virginia always stayed at the Ritz in Paris: it was just a habit: but the habit was confined to the rue Cambon side of it, saying it was quieter there. Ivor, who also stayed on the rue Cambon side, pointed out that as a matter of fact it was much noisier than the Place Vendôme side, but that as all hotels were beastly, it didn’t very much matter. There are certain gentlemen of mean and truculent appearance, who, in the early hours of every morning, enter the central streets of Paris, and bang large tin cans against the walls on the thin pretence of clearing out the dustbins.

Virginia had found a letter awaiting her at the bureau: and she had looked at the envelope with that vague, far-away look. But when Ivor, dressed for dinner, came into her room to see if she was ready, which of course she was not, she gave him the letter with a mischievous laugh: saying that it was a masterpiece of Tarlyonry, and an instructive essay for any man on the perfect way to treat a vanished wife and a possibly vanishing income. “Which, though, he wouldn’t think very much about,” she conceded, “for no Tarlyon was ever quite penniless.”

“Am I, or am I not, going to like this letter?” Ivor asked her frankly. “Because if not, I would much rather read it _after_ dinner, if I’ve got to read it at all....”

Virginia was before her mirror, subduing “Swan and Edgar”; and she turned to him in her chair, with her face sideways, holding that small iron toy to Swan. She made a little face at him.

“It’s just an ordinary kind of letter,” she said.

It was addressed from Monte Carlo, and dated five days back. Ivor sat on the edge of the bed and read:--

“DEAR VIRGINIA,--I hope you won’t mind the liberty I’ve taken with
the villa. I’ve closed it up and scattered the menials, as I
gathered that you won’t be returning to this part of the country
for some time, and being solitary host of a villa like a
wedding-cake isn’t my strongest suit. Hugo and I moved on here, and
haven’t enjoyed it as much as if you’d been here too. The ‘dicing’
hasn’t been going so well as it was--poor old Hugo came a crash the
other night, and has gone clucking back for to be a toy soldier at
Aldershot, saying that ‘dicing’ isn’t what it was in the early
seventies and that he’s going to fight the Bolsheviks instead, for
the only person who took his money with even a pretence of sympathy
was a Grand Duke, who probably needed it himself. I’m leaving for
London to-morrow, but as I’m only passing through Paris, where I
suppose you are--you might have written to me, I do think!--I
shan’t have time to look in on you. I shall stay at Belgrave
Square, and look at London for a period, and then go down to Rupert
Kare’s. In the meanwhile, should you suddenly feel the call of
England in your blood and want to come home, be a dear and send me
a wire to White’s, so that I can meet you with a couple of plovers’
eggs on a plate, it being the season for plovers’ eggs and you
adoring same. Virginia, don’t tell me that you and I aren’t going
to break an egg together at the Mont Agel this year! Remember that
you would never have married me if I hadn’t drugged you with
plovers’ eggs--and will so drug you again, Virginia, or my name
isn’t George St. George, ever your lord but never my own master.”

Ivor folded up the letter, rather slowly and clumsily, with his one hand. Virginia was ready, radiant with the peculiar glitter of a very fair woman in a sleeveless black dress, and looking at him with that mischievous smile of hers. It put him rather on his guard, that smile.

“Odd man!” Ivor said thoughtfully. “Might have been written by a Dago, parts of that letter--and yet he’s the most gallant man in England.”

“Don’t you see that that is the way of his pride?” she pointed out. “He has a great deal of pride, and common sense too, but they’ve both somehow got motheaten in him. And so he writes in that casual and bantering way, as though nothing in particular had happened----”

“Well, it has,” Ivor said sharply.

“Now don’t be snappy, Ivor,” she begged him mischievously. “You and I know something _most_ particular has happened, and so does George really, but he wouldn’t give that away, even to himself, not he! He thinks and writes about it in that unimportant way just so as to make it seem unimportant, something not at all serious. You see, he’s always been quite sure of his hold on me, and he can’t get out of that conceited habit all at once. Some Englishmen never think their wives can be unfaithful to them, not because they think so well of their wives but because they think so well of themselves. And so George simply can’t help thinking that I am only playing--we must give him a little time to realise that I’m not playing, Ivor,” she added gently.

“For him to realise that, or for you to realise that?” he asked, and put the light out of her eyes.

“You’ve got no right to say that!” Virginia cried.

He had meant to hurt, on a sudden impulse to lance a grievance that had risen within him; and now was shamed by her sincere anger, and would have pleaded his reason and begged her forgiveness, but she turned her head from him, and her face was set. And he told her unlistening face how he had noticed during the last two weeks, and divine weeks they had been, that she had avoided the subject of what they were going to do, the definite thing which was essential to people who weren’t babies. “Every time I wanted to talk about it,” he told her, “you somehow stopgapped me, and sometimes so cleverly that I forgot what I wanted to say in admiring you--but all the time I couldn’t help wondering why you avoided the subject, and feeling you must have some reason for that, a reason so weak that you didn’t dare let it out, for fear I might just laugh at you.” He smiled a little. “It’s been an uncomfortable feeling,” he explained. “Like a cold hot-water bottle.”

But there was no response in her set face. She had sat down with her back to him, on the chair by the toilet-table, and was playing with the lid of a little ivory box. Never before had she looked like this; for the face he saw in the mirror was set in an inexplicable anger, a deep and almost venomous anger which amazed him; and he had a curious feeling that this Virginia’s spine was made of steel, it would bend and bend and bend until one day it snapped up straight and stayed straight, rigid and unyielding. He felt, as it were psychically that there were wastes in this Virginia unexplored by man, wastes where she roamed in utter disregard of human laws, wastes where she could wander untrammelled by human emotions. Give her an inch of excuse, and she would become a snake, to swish away with implacable and unfathomable face. American women were said to get like that when angered, hard. He knew, quite dearly, that she wasn’t now angry at what he had said, but that her whole nature had been given a twist to anger at some hidden aspect of him.

“Well?” he asked softly, from behind her. She had humoured him often, after all....

She turned her head and looked directly at him.

“I’ve got nothing to say,” she said steadily. “You say that I haven’t wanted to discuss what we are going to do. Having discovered that I don’t want to, I’m merely wondering why you are insisting on it--that’s all.”

He laughed a little at that.

“Don’t try to bully me, Virginia, and I’ll not try to bully you,” he warned her. “You see, dear, I think we ought to discuss it, whether you want to or not. It’s really rather important--and you can’t just get out of it by looking like an angry queen and saying, ‘I have nothing to say.’ I’m in love with _you_, Virginia, and not with love, so I want us to be sane about it. There’s a great deal more pleasure in sanity than people think--for, you know, one doesn’t have to be mad because one is in love....” And then, from behind, he bent down and gently tilted up her chin with his hand and kissed her lips; and, surprisingly, they held to his lips!

“Is that the way sanity takes you?” she asked.

“It was a proposal of marriage,” he said gravely. It was the first time that word had occurred between them; but it had occurred within them for now two weeks. Virginia stared at him seriously, and her hand gently brushed his forehead, a very fond gesture. The curious anger in her had died as suddenly as it had come.

“That’s what I was being angry about,” she explained. “And that’s why I’ve made you avoid the subject these glorious two weeks, these lovers’ weeks. I don’t think I want to marry you, Ivor. In fact, I don’t think any woman has ever wanted to marry you.”

“I’ve only asked one,” he told her darkly. “But I’m afraid you will have to marry me, Virginia. Things seem to point that way. I am not philandering with you, I’d have you know. I have finished with philandering. It doesn’t matter a button to me if we are married or not, and I’ve no one in the world to consider but you--but marriage seems to be indicated, for several weighty reasons which I will explain to you if you’ll cease laughing at me.”

“I was trying to look like a woman yearning for dinner, that’s all.”

“You must yearn,” he said firmly. “We can always dine, but we can’t always talk sense----”

“Not even now,” she interrupted with a great weariness. “As far as I can make out you are trying to make an honest woman of me. Well, you can’t do it. No one can do it. And I want my dinner, please.”

“Damn dinner! It’s no good being funny about this, Virginia, because I’m frightfully serious. I will not have us slopping about Europe in this hole-and-corner way. You are too fine and I am too old.”

“So this is ‘slopping about,’ is it?” she asked, ever so quietly.

“Don’t, please, drive me into being disloyal to all this----” he was begging her impatiently, when she swiftly interrupted him with a gesture.

“Oh, got you!” she cried, laughing into his astonished eyes. “Don’t you see, you poor Ivor? No possible or prospective husband could have said that--only a lover could have said it, in just that particularly idiotic way! Oh, Ivor, you are too sweet! And that’s why it’s perfectly absurd, all this talk about our marrying. You simply don’t look or think or talk like any possible husband; it’s perfectly obvious to the meanest intelligence that you are a lover and always will be. You simply aren’t casual enough to be anything else, Ivor. I assure you, dear. You will never make any woman feel, deep down in her, that you could be anything so casual as her husband. Anyway, you can’t be mine--oh, please don’t insist!” she pathetically begged him. “For I will give way, and then we will look so silly as husband and wife--or rather, feel silly. Oh, my dear, it’s ever such an impossible relation for Ivor and Virginia!...”

But he insisted that they must be reasonable and responsible people, not vague drifters on the scum of life.

“It’s just a matter of orderliness,” he explained earnestly, “our getting married. You are quite right, it is an effort to see myself as your husband and you as my wife--but we needn’t make the effort once we’ve committed the fact. When I said that you were too fine and I was too old to slop about Europe in a hole-and-corner way, I meant that this disorderly kind of life is unworthy of you, and that I’m not young enough any more to enjoy doing no work _all_ the time. For, you know, one never can do any real work unless there’s some stability in the way of life--one simply must be a responsible person, even a lover must be a responsible person, if he is ever to get any work done. And the idea that a man and a woman of your position can live together and say, ‘the devil take the world’ is bosh, there’s never any conviction about that ‘devil take the world’ remark. I know you don’t care anything about social position, I know you quite sincerely don’t ever want to do social things again--but, Virginia, there’s something displeasing and slack, like two people being in dressing-gowns all day long, in a state about which people can make remarks--and in which you can get mocking letters from Tarlyon! I’m talking sense, Virginia, so don’t argue with me because I want my dinner as much as you do and it’s my turn to be angry next....”

Her silence was serious, her eyes wide with thought. He waited, close beside her, staring at her with a crooked little smile. Then, suddenly, she nodded, just once.

“All right,” she said, almost absently. “George will let me divorce him--yes, we can manage that. He’s got a lot of common sense hidden away somewhere....” She got up from her chair with a sudden little shake. “That’s settled then, Ivor. No more talk about it, please--oh, please!” she suddenly pleaded in her breathless little voice. “Let’s have our summer, and then in the autumn we can get down to this business of arrangement and divorce--down from our mountains, Ivor, right down!” Her eyes seemed clouded, he had a queer idea that she was going to cry; but she didn’t, she picked up a tube of lip-salve from the toilet-table and took it to her lips, and then on a sudden thought held it away again.

“Will you kiss me before or after?” she asked.

And he did whatever it was suitable for him to do.

3

The corridors of a hotel at the hour of nine-fifteen at night are consecrated to the activities of _valets de chambre_: it is at that mysterious hour, when the quality are at dinner or the play, that the white-aproned _valets_ raid their bedrooms and rudely snatch away their clothes; and, with jackets and trousers screwed deftly under their arms, go searching the most noisome holes of the hotel for boot-brushes and oily rags with which to dust and clean them.

But to-night the last of _messieurs et mesdames_ were late in their descent. And it was as the _valets_ were waiting in a little group about a bedroom door, in final gossip before the raid, that there passed them down the corridor two silent dandies: a very fair lady--“_Ah, ce type anglais!_”--and a very tall, beak-nosed, clean-shaven man with one arm and a white flower brave on the silk lapel of his _smoking_. The white-aproned group stared after _monsieur et milady_; they saw the hand of the fair lady suddenly laid upon the sleeve of the tall gentleman, and the way she raised her head to him and spoke words which, they saw, the dark profile was quite helpless to answer.

“_Elle l’aime, vous savez_,” said the _doyen_ of the _valets_, a wise man.

“_Elle s’amuse, mon vieux_,” sneered a young Italian with a broken nose; but his heart had been broken too, several times.

Now these were the sudden words of the fair lady, which her companion was quite helpless to answer.

“I want a baby,” she said. “I need a son--frightfully!”

“And I think,” she said, “that there’s somewhere a son of yours who needs _me_--frightfully!”

“_Comedia!_” whispered the young Italian with the broken nose, as the lift swallowed up the silence of _monsieur et milady_.