Chapter XVI

1

But, it later appeared, that was not all that had interested her. “Oh, one’s been thinking such a lot!” she told Ivor weakly, when he saw her a few afternoons later.

“Well, such as?” Ivor smiled. The commonplace of treating an ill person like a child occurred to him vividly. One couldn’t help it.

“About people,” Virginia explained vaguely. “And about clouds....”

“We had a nice lot of clouds downstairs, too,” Ivor told her.

“Poor Ivor,” she said softly.

“My clouds,” she said, “were different. They rolled off people, and I saw people clearly. They’ll be rolling back again soon, I daresay....”

“Where did I come in?” he asked. And he wanted to know, too. He loved Virginia.

“You didn’t, Ivor.” She turned her head on her pillow and stared at him very seriously. How gray and wan she was! “There haven’t been any clouds on you for ages--we pushed them off together, don’t you remember? We insisted on that.... You did, anyway. You are the nice man of my life, Ivor.... I kept on telling myself that I would mention that to the higher authorities when I was dead.”

“This dying business,” Ivor said almost frantically, “has got on our nerves, Virginia.”

“I was only telling you,” she said. “But about people--I saw them very clearly, Ivor. I saw George....”

“So did I. He’s been here several times.”

“I know.” He followed her eyes to the mantelpiece, and there, in a basket like a nest, were plovers’ eggs cushioned on a pile of the stuff that plovers’ nests are made of.

“But it’s not the season,” he protested. He felt rather hurt.

“They’re made of sweet stuff,” Virginia explained. “Mr. Selfridge makes them, and they’re supposed to be eatable....”

“George,” she said, “is an inventive man. He is also an inevitable man. I mean, he’s always there, somewhere about, and one can’t get rid of him. One can’t get rid of him, Ivor, because he won’t be got rid of--he simply won’t take one seriously, don’t you see? And how can one get rid of a man who doesn’t take one seriously?”

“Men like that,” she said softly, “want nothing. So unlike you, dear....”

Ivor’s eyes had darkened. So! But she had him at a disadvantage, she was so gray and wan! So he only said, “Pouf!” and tried to say it easily, but her little, amused smile penetrated him.

“Oh, Ivor!” she teased him, “I didn’t mean what you thought I meant. You are so suspicious, Ivor! I didn’t mean that I was going to let George come back into my life....”

“I was only talking, dear,” she said weakly.

2

Virginia got stronger very gradually: too gradually, the doctor said, but still, she got stronger. She did not seem to wish to get strong in any way but gradually, saying that there was no hurry. “The month of August,” she said, “demands to be spent in bed. I’ve always thought so....”

Ivor, however, was not so sure about there being “no hurry”; there was a great deal to be done, and the sooner the better, now that they were back in England. That divorce business, now.... But even when Virginia was much stronger and could sit up in bed and take human meals again, he was shy of pressing her on that point. It was so inevitable, after all, so why worry himself about it? Ivor had learnt to be afraid of his impatience.

Ivor was now very definite about his feelings for Virginia. He had been definite about them for some months, but from some time before her illness until now that definiteness had been growing into, and had now become, the amazing fact of his life; and as such it went about with him, it was his companion--he didn’t tread on air, he wasn’t that kind of man any more, but he trod on solid earth with the determination of a man who has a good tale in his heart. For it wasn’t that that amazing fact made everything else--the things of life and living, of strife and thinking--look insignificant, or that everything else was entirely at its beck and call. It was merely that nothing else was worth while to him without the company of that amazing fact. With that fact in his life everything else seemed tremendously worth living for. And there was a great freedom about it, too, for he didn’t feel he had to be worthy of it or strive for it or earn money for it; that fact was just part of him and he was part of it, and work was inconceivable without it; for the real and jolly thing about love is not when nothing else matters but love--but when everything else matters because of love. The last is love, but the first is waste of time. Ivor had always thought that.... More than anything else in the world, he hated being “messed about.” It was something deep and fundamental in his character, a birth-mark, a creed, a principle--he hated being “messed about.” A great number of nuisances went into that phrase, it was a useful phrase: even to think of being “messed about” made him hot; and it was growing on him.