Chapter XII

1

The pact was made, then: there was to be no talk of “arrangements” until the autumn, it was to be a clear summer of--“unreason,” Virginia teased him. So they had no thought of returning to England that spring or summer, and did not--except for one reckless night in April, to a masque at the Albert Hall. Carnival, lovely carnival! And they were so weirdly and completely disguised--for Virginia was an adept at the art of masque and fancy-dress--that not one of her thousand acquaintances recognised her, or him; and they had much fun to watch the cheerful passages of Lois and many another, including Tarlyon and Hugo Cypress, who had both adopted the same fancy-dress in the form of an Assyrian beard each: with which Tarlyon looked quite magnificent and royal, and Hugo quite too comical. And once, as she passed him, Hugo caught her and insisted on her complaisance for the dance; but as she danced, she didn’t, of course, dare utter a word, lest he should recognise her and “cluck” the news to every one; though even so he might have perceived her had he not been so tipsy--“entirely to amuse the guests, lovely lady,” he earnestly assured her choking silence. And then, in the early morning, swift bathing and changing in Ivor’s flat in Upper Brook Street, and so back to France by the eight o’clock train. “Unreason,” indeed!...

What had they to do with England, those two, and what had England to do with them, during those months? They would outlaw themselves until the autumn....

They were violently happy in each other. They were great lovers, Ivor and Virginia. And sometimes it was a consuming love, and then again it would be very gentle: silent now and bubbling then, gay and grave in changing moods, and sometimes it would be passing sombre--and then again the thing would burst upon them. “Like a flash of very white teeth,” Virginia said. But she said many strange things in nearness, for she was very shameless with him, which was strange in her. (Gerald Trevor used to say that it was the business of a good mistress to be shameless, and the business of a good lover to appreciate it. Men can’t afford to be shameless, they get nasty, he said. Prejudice, of course. Dear Gerald!) One day she wondered about her shamelessness with him, saying that she had never been like that before.

“But never, Ivor! Men have wanted me to say things, of course, but one just wasn’t able to, even if one liked them very much. One just couldn’t. But now! Oh, you lovely beast, Ivor!...”

Now when Virginia said she had “never” done a thing before, there was no question of not believing her (the word “never” is really frightfully difficult to believe), for the amazing thing about Virginia was that she never told a lie. She had never been known to so far, anyway. And Ivor accused her of never telling a lie, saying that it was inhuman, and that he felt rather out of it, having told a-many.

“But that’s where I’m beastly,” she pointed out vividly. “I go silent, you see. I just sit still and say nothing. It’s much worse than lying, and much crueller, to be silent--and I’m known, you know, as a very silent woman. Of course I get a bit chatty with you ...” she suddenly giggled at his expression. That was how things generally ended with those two....

2

One day Virginia cried. Looking up from the page of a book, Ivor saw her eyes dimmed with tears.

“Oh!” she cried, at his look.

“Well!” he exclaimed, in utter surprise.

She smiled a little, in sudden confusion. And she spitefully dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief.

“I must be growing up,” she said.

“But, darling, not yet to second childhood!”

Oh, how sad she looked! like a fairy in a sad tale about Midsummer Night.

“I’m realising, you see, that I haven’t deserved a bit of this--oh, not a bit of it!” she cried miserably. “Ivor, I’ve deserved it much less than other people might deserve it. I am too lucky, Ivor, and I’m afraid....”

“I’ve been such a beastly person,” she said. “You don’t know....”

Vividly the scene of his first kiss that January night in Nasyngton came back to him. He remembered it against her.

“Don’t, please, Virginia!” he begged her. “I do hate your thinking of all that....”

She stared at him miserably. There were no tears in her eyes now, they were intent beyond his shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she said plaintively. “Only I see men. Suddenly, sitting here--I see men. You and I are so happy, you think such fine things about me, and you make me fine--but sometimes I see men! Men who wanted to be happy with me, you know. I was so easy, Ivor ... and then I was so cruel.... Some haven’t forgiven me yet. There are a few men in the world this minute who hate me for a beastly woman, and they are right, for they’ve never seen me with you. I’ve been awful vicious, Ivor....”

And he remembered the feeling she had once given him of the “wastes” within her, the lawless wastes where Virginia’s soul wandered in lawlessness, the bleak wastes of angry indifference; and how he had seen her, felt her, dropping thither from his love, and how he had somehow clutched her back, he never knew how--this soft and tender Virginia, pitiful and so full of pity!

“You are thinking lovely things about me!” she cried in distress. “I see by your eyes, Ivor.”

And her arm swept round the wide and dim studio in an impotent gesture.

“Why don’t you see that I don’t deserve all this?” she cried.

3

For all these things came to pass in a studio in the Place du Tertre, which is a small square lying flat on top of the Butte above Montmartre, in the white shadow and beneath the white cupolas of the queer church of Sacré Cœur.

This studio lay behind a shabby little house in the Place du Tertre, and was built low and wide and elegant to the caprice of an adventurous artist, one Kay Benson; and with it was a garden of flowers by day and lanterns by night, a little garden replete with the secret of all lovely gardens, for a man and a woman could sit in it: thence to stare down at the mists of the busy city and the thin and lively riband of the Seine, at the whole pageant and the confusion of mighty Paris, from the Mont Valérien to the grim old Lion de Belfort.

It was by devious ways and for various reasons that, on that first of May, Ivor and Virginia climbed from the luxury of the Place Vendôme to the solitude of the Butte, to the studio over against the queer church of Sacré Cœur; for is it not queer that men should have climbed so high and laboured so long to build so ugly a church as Sacré Cœur? which is thus a fitting ambition for the silly revellers of Montmartre to reach by dawn, for it is an ugly church even in the dawn and only distance can make it beautiful.