Chapter XV

1

But Virginia didn’t die. Ian Black saw to that. But he told Ivor, downstairs in the waiting-room of the Wimpole Street nursing-home where Ivor spent many distressed hours, that his patient wasn’t “resisting” very, very much.

“I don’t mean that she’s giving way,” Ian Black said, “or that she seems to want to collapse. But she’s too busy analysing the pain--and herself--and me, too! Of course the pain is terrible, terrible....”

Ian Black was a chubby little man of very neat appearance and a round, boyish face, on which an expression of pleased or anxious surprise was always dominant. But he was the most restful man in the world to be with, for he had no gestures and made no little fusses with the things of his body, hands and eyebrows and hair and feet and the like, while he talked. He stood before you and stared up at you--he always had to look “up” to every one except when he was operating on them--with round eyes, his hands clasped on his funny little belly, and said what he had to say very gently, very gently and convincingly. To see him, it was too difficult to imagine that he was the most famous surgeon in London: to listen to him, it was easy.

“I think you might see her for just a minute this morning,” Black suggested. “Buck her up a bit....”

This was the third morning after the operation, and Ivor had not yet seen her. He had not asked to. She was in great pain, he was told. She had asked to see him several times, but it had been thought it might upset her as yet.

Now, at ten o’clock in the morning, he went into her room. Very dark and dim it was with its curtains drawn, and about it was that aggressively clean smell of a very serious sick room. Virginia’s eyes were closed. The nurse whispered to Ivor that she would go out for a moment, leaving the door a little ajar....

Ivor stood by the bed, stealthily, wondering what to do. He felt ashamed, somehow.... Virginia wasn’t asleep, she was in pain. In great pain. Her face was thin and gray and it was somehow screwed up, and her eyes were tightly screwed up. Then she opened them and stared at him, and he saw that her eyes were wet. His were, too. She moistened her lips with her tongue, staring at him with terribly hurt eyes. He murmured something.

“It hurts,” she whispered. “Frightful....”

Her forehead, where his lips touched her, was damp and hot. So damp....

And when she tried to speak again she sobbed a little.

“Don’t try,” he begged. “Poor Virginia----”

“I can speak,” she almost boasted. “It’s this pain....”

“There’s things inside me,” she said, with a sob. “Steel things.... They’ve left them in there ... holding things together.... Oh, it hurts, Ivor....”

She tried to explain how it hurt. She wanted to explain.

“Look,” she whispered, with screwed-up eyes. She tried to lift up the covering to show him something. He had to help her. “Look,” she said pitifully. And she lifted up her hands under the clothes, and he saw that they were tied together with a handkerchief. “That’s to stop me tearing the things out and killing myself,” she explained with amazing clarity. “There’s things sticking in underneath....”

“I can’t bear it,” she sobbed dryly. “All the time ... like being ploughed up inside, Ivor--with a plough.... All the time.... I can’t bear it.”

And Ivor couldn’t bear it. He had to go out. Oh, my God, how awful!...

He lingered on the way down the stairs, for his eyes were wet and he didn’t want to look a fool. Ian Black was still in the waiting-room, drawing on his gloves. He had waited for him, it seemed.

“Well, what d’you think?” Black asked casually. Amazing man! he asked it as though he could possibly care a damn what Ivor thought about it. But it was reassuring, that casual question.

“She tried to tell me about her pain,” Ivor said.

“Ah, yes!” Black said thoughtfully. “It interests her....”

“It hurts her,” said Ivor. “Can’t you do anything about it, Black?”

“We do,” Black assured him. “We give her a _piqure_ now and then, and she sleeps all right. But we can’t give her _piqures_ all the time.” He stood so still while he talked, like a chubby little image.

“But how long does this pain last?” Ivor asked impatiently. “These things that she says are sticking inside her?... It seems awful.”

“It is,” Black agreed. “It lasts three more days. Then everything will be all right. Assure you. 65 per cent. chance now. Only 10 per cent. chance yesterday. You didn’t know....”

“Well, must be going now,” Black said briskly. “Don’t worry, Marlay--everything all right except the pain, and that will be. If she was only delirious, it would help her forget it a bit. But her mind’s amazingly clear--too clear--she’s got a strong mind, you know. I asked her this morning if the doctor pulling faces at her would make her delirious, and she asked me how I could ‘bear my life, inflicting pain on people?’ I said I preferred golf, and that life was pretty rotten all ways, now. Can I drop you anywhere? I’m going to St. George’s....”

“I think I’ll walk, you know.... Thanks, Black.”

As they were taking their hats in the hall Ian Black said:--

“Rodney West’s coming to dine to-night. You might come, if you like. Eight-thirty. He’s getting rather Germanophile in reaction to the French, and we might drive it out of him. No good reacting from idiocy to idiocy. And I’ll have some more news for you by then, probably....” So of course Ivor dined in New Cavendish Street.

2

He did not see Virginia again for a week. For even when “the things” were finally out she was in frightful pain. Naturally, for a little while, the matron said. (Ivor did not like the matron at all: she was a brisk matron.) The “dressings” were the worst ordeals--which Ian Black and the doctor paid her the compliment of doing themselves, every morning at some time between ten and eleven. Ivor knew about “dressings,” and shuddered. And he felt he couldn’t bear to see her, nor she him really, and that he could do no good anyway. But he was there first thing every morning, in the waiting-room, and Ian Black would come down after the “dressing” and say a word or two. The way Black could get from his patient to politics and back again was continually amazing Ivor. “Practice,” Black explained.

Ivor would return in the evening, with flowers or whatever little thing Virginia had required of the nurse; for he had begged the nurse to telephone him instantly whatever, no matter how slight or even absurd, the patient might want, so that it could be produced at once. And Virginia asked for a special cold-cream, a bright green silk handkerchief, a bottle of Chablis (which she was allowed to sip), some grapefruit, a paper fan, another kind of cold-cream, some real Eau de Cologne (not English stuff), and some coffee-ice-cream; which, Ian Black and the doctor said, wouldn’t do her any harm, just a very little. She kept on asking for it, the nurse said.

3

The operation was to have taken place in great secrecy, for Virginia didn’t want any one to know. So she had gone straight to the nursing-home on her arrival at the Croydon landing-station, and had written to no one. She would have written or telephoned to her father, only she said he couldn’t help talking and every one would know in a minute.

But every one did know, in almost a minute. The brisk matron had seen to that. And what are gossip-columns for, but to report the living, the dying, and the dead? One cheerful gossip reported Virginia as good as dead (with photograph), but another quickly brought her to life again (with photograph). They had ever detail pat, and of course gave the address of the nursing-home. They commented on Ian Black, what a good surgeon he was and how popular he was; they spoke of his distinguished services during the war, wondered about a K.B.E., and made guesses at his income. They reminded their readers of Virginia’s beauty, her painting, her aeroplane-trips, the sudden death of her charming mother, and the extremely sudden death of her first husband. They referred to her second husband, the gallant and handsome Viscount Tarlyon, said he had two bars to the D.S.O. and sympathised with him in his anxiety. They mentioned her recreations (dogs and travelling), and reminded their readers that her father always wore a gardenia and that he was the last of a splendid type of Englishman....

So, as the season was not quite over, every one called. Lois, Kerrison, Euphemia Halliday, Rupert Kare, Pretty Leyton, Hugo Cypress.... Every one called to leave messages and flowers. The polite and amiable M. Stutz called and said he would call again; and, having asked whether Lady Tarlyon needed anything, and having heard that she did not, he sent her a superb fruit-salad. And of course Lord Carnal called, almost the first, and more than once. Ivor saw him one morning, from the window of the waiting-room, as he was emerging from a car, a huge bunch of white roses under one arm and a small bunch of orchids in his hand: a very elegant and clean-shaven old gentleman, with nothing at all “old world” about his clothes, and looking exactly as George Alexander always wanted to look but never quite could. And of course George Tarlyon called, several times.

Ivor kept well out of the way when the rush began; when he called at the home he was, after the first day or two, shown into a secondary and smaller waiting-room at Ian Black’s request to the matron who, being a brisk matron, had an objection ready for everything; but, in spite of her, there Ivor would wait every morning until Virginia was a little better, for his “word or two” with the doctor or Black....

Now on the morning when the last of “the things” were to be taken out of Virginia, the maid who answered the door--by one of those criminal aberrations peculiar to maids and classed by them as “mistakes,” whereas they are generally catastrophes--ushered into that secondary and most private waiting-room, George Tarlyon.

“Oh, hallo!” said Tarlyon, rather surprised.

“Hallo!” said Ivor; and thought crossly: something’s very wrong with that maid, for she’s gone and left the door open now.... There was a short silence. Tarlyon, with his hands in his pockets, stared absently out of the window.

“Can one smoke here, I wonder?” he asked.

“I do,” said Ivor: taking out his cigarette-case....

“Rotten business, isn’t it?” Tarlyon said shortly. “Poor child.... Awful pain, I suppose?”

“Awful.”

“Seen her at all?” Tarlyon turned frankly to him.

“Just once. She was feeling it a bit. Beastly to watch and feel quite well....”

“A doctor chap once told me,” Tarlyon said thoughtfully, “that women can bear pain much better than men. He said that there’s scarcely a man alive who would go through the pain of child-bearing twice, or even once, while look at women....”

They looked at women for a while, in silence; which was broken by a very faint cry from somewhere.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Ivor said vaguely. He wanted to close the door, but somehow didn’t. And he couldn’t help intently listening ... that cry again, almost a shriek, then a sob, and a jumble of faint, broken words....

“Lord, man, what’s up!” cried Tarlyon. Ivor’s face was white, then green.

“That’s Virginia,” he said, with an effort. “Makes me feel sick.... Sorry.... For God’s sake shut that door, Tarlyon!”

Tarlyon closed the door softly. He was very quiet and concerned.

“I say--poor child!” he murmured; and he looked at Ivor puffing a cigarette with a green face. “I don’t wonder ... didn’t realise myself.”

“Some fool of a nurse must have left her door open for a second,” Ivor said angrily. He pointed vaguely to his mutilated shoulder. “I’ve had some, and so I know,” he tried to apologise for his weakness.

“I bet you do ...” Tarlyon softly agreed.

Ian Black came in soon.

“Hallo, Marlay! Ah, Lord Tarlyon!... Well, things are looking up now, quite all right.” His hands folded across his little port, he stared up at Ivor with round, surprised eyes. “I say, Marlay, you do look green! Want brandy?”

“The maid left this door open,” Ivor said darkly, “and you went one better by leaving your patient’s door open. What do you expect? And I don’t want brandy....”

“That must have been the nurse coming in and out with the things,” Ian Black gently explained, and turned to Tarlyon. “Worst part’s over, Lord Tarlyon. A few days now, and she’ll be out of pain. Fairly long convalescence, though....”

“Main thing’s to get better,” Tarlyon said; and he lounged briskly towards the door. “Well, good-bye, Marlay--see you here again, probably. Good-bye, Mr. Black--take care of my wife, won’t you? Not many lovely women like that....”

Ivor was by the window, staring sombrely at Wimpole Street. There was a car just outside: it was a closed car, and the driver sat facing him. Some one in the back of the car smiled at his face at the window--a woman--and Ivor vaguely smiled back. Of course, Ann Chester, “pretty Ann.” ... Good God, what a man!

“Seems a good fellow, Tarlyon,” Black said from behind, “in spite of his popularity.”

Ivor turned round to him.

“Oh, yes,” he said vaguely. “Charming....”

“You can see her for a moment now, if you like,” Black told him. “Just a quick moment....”

Ivor appealed to him with a wretched smile.

“I’d rather not, you know. Much rather. And she would talk about the pain, too----”

“Naturally,” Black murmured absently. “It interests her....”