Chapter XVII

1

Until she was fairly strong Virginia was not allowed to see people--except, of course, Ivor, who sat with her for a while in the afternoons, and sometimes in the evenings. But when she was allowed to see people, few came. For was it not the August of 1919, when money was plentiful and London “empty”! Here and there some one called and left in a rush and a clatter, on his or her way to France or Scotland. Ivor, of course, had no intention of going away; and neither, it appeared, had George Tarlyon.

When Virginia was stronger Tarlyon called every day at any hour that happened, often when Ivor was there, and sat with her for a few minutes; or rather, he lounged about in his splendid way and made a few remarks about things in general. He pointed out, to Ivor and Virginia, that August was the month in which to stay in London. “It’s amusing,” he said, “because as every one thinks every one else has gone away, a good many every ones stay behind to amuse themselves in the wilderness. There were eight couples at Claridge’s for lunch to-day, and I’ll swear each couple had thought the other was at Deauville or Scotland....”

“Funny ...” said Virginia vaguely.

It was curious, Ivor thought, the way Virginia changed when Tarlyon was about. She became at once more thoughtful, more retired, more secret; and, watching her one day when Tarlyon was there, he realised with almost a shock that Virginia’s face wore exactly the same expression as on that evening when she had sat in his room at Nasyngton and Tarlyon had come to fetch her: a little tired, a little bored, a little secret.... But Tarlyon seemed to amuse her, in a rather hidden kind of way. The idea of him seemed to amuse her. She would laugh a little when he had gone, vaguely.

“George is getting very considerate,” she said one day as he had just gone. “I can’t believe he is staying in London just to come and see his sick and ailing wife--and yet what on earth can he find to do in London in August?”

“God knows!” shrugged Ivor. Having seen Ann Chester that morning in Bond Street, he thought God wouldn’t have to be very clever to know.

“Naturally,” Virginia said, “there’s always ‘pretty Ann.’ He can do what he likes with ‘pretty Ann.’”

Ivor suddenly decided that Tarlyon was bad for Virginia. He fumbled in his mind as to, exactly, in what way, but didn’t quite get it....

“I was thinking,” he said, “that I like Tarlyon less and less.”

“But why less and less?” Virginia opened her eyes very wide to ask. “You couldn’t like him less than you’ve always done....” Now that was not quite fair of Virginia to say that; and she herself had once discovered a theory that George and Ivor might have been great friends--might have. “You’d have laughed together,” she said. “You are both braggarts, in an internal, headachy way....”

“He’s bad for you,” Ivor vaguely but firmly explained.

“What, me! Oh, Ivor, tell me how?” she begged him childishly. “You are subtle to-day, I do think!”

“He’s got a queer effect on you,” Ivor tried to explain, prowling about at the foot of the bed. “You somehow go hard, different. I don’t know....”

“I’m sure I don’t,” said Virginia.

He prowled about; and then he stood by the window, with his back to her.

“Do you remember,” her voice came dimly to him, “one night ages ago when I told you that I wasn’t really natural with you, that I was always on my best behaviour with you? And I scarcely knew you then....”

He came darkly beside her.

“The point is,” he said, “that you are only natural with me, and unnatural with the others. Exactly....”

“Maybe,” she said--and smiled up at him mischievously. And he smiled too, but the gloom was deep in him to-day. He sat on a chair at the foot of the bed.

“Virginia,” he appealed, “I don’t like all this.... It’s rotten.”

“What’s rotten?”

“Now don’t be silly, dear! This Tarlyon and Marlay business, of course--husband and lover--and you in between--and Ann Chester in Bond Street....”

“Nasty four-sided triangle,” he said.

“But I’m not in between, silly!” she cried sharply. “I’m with you. What _has_ come over you to-day--you’re getting quite _gaga_, Ivor!”

But he jumped up from his chair with an impatient gesture of his one arm. He prowled about. Never had Virginia seen him like this! So dark.... Propped high up on the bed she stared at him wondering; then she screwed up her eyes a little, examining him.... He turned to her, trying to look very reasonable.

“What I mean to say is,” he said, “that we ought to settle this once and for all. I can’t bear these vague positions--his coming to see you, and me here--both of us hanging round you--and both of us hating each other. It’s common, Virginia!”

“You are very arrogant, Ivor,” she told him rather mysteriously.

He brushed that away. “It’s common,” he insisted.

“It is, the way you put it,” she remarked. She was very tranquil. “But the fact is that George only comes out of cussedness and a desire to annoy. And he seems to be succeeding, with you anyway....”

“Personally,” she said thoughtfully, “I don’t get annoyed with George nowadays. He never wants anything....”

“You’ve said that before,” he said savagely, “and I didn’t like it then. What does it mean, Virginia?

“Well, _you_ want things, don’t you, Ivor?” she put to him, very softly. She looked up into his face. “You want everything--don’t you, Ivor?”

Her softness humbled him. He turned away from her and prowled about. And her voice followed him about the room like a weary little bird.

“And I’ve given you everything, haven’t I, Ivor? I’ve given you more than I’ve given any man. Ivor, I’ve given you more than I thought I could give any man ... or god....”

Her eyes were very wide and steady on him, as he stood above her; they were sentinels put there to delude mankind, while Virginia’s soul was somewhere else, in some funny, unknown place; dolorous eyes, it occurred to him. So steady and blue and deep.... And he felt himself sinking into those eyes, right into her, he felt things snapping in his head, and he felt that if he lost himself in those eyes now he would be drowned for ever, he would be lost--and she too! He hardened; he pretended to.

“Have you told Tarlyon about the divorce?”

Still they looked up into his face, those sentinels. And when at last she closed her eyes he suffered a queer feeling that a great chance had gone from him, a great chance full of light and blessedness. She pressed her head back against her pillow, in a very tired way, and her lips smiled a little. She shook her head very gently.

“But I will,” she whispered; and her lips smiled a little.

He prowled about the room for a long time.

2

They often played _picquet_: Virginia in bed, Ivor in a chair by the bed, and between them the back of a copy of _Vogue_, on which they played. Enormous sums of money were won and lost on that polished and uncertain surface. Sometimes Ivor would win as much as £5000 at a sitting, and the next day maybe he would lose all that and some besides. Slips of paper were exchanged and treasured.

“If,” Virginia said, “you were to look at that slip of paper every morning and say to yourself it was worth £5000, it soon would be. It’s a matter of imagination....”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” said Ivor.

They were merry afternoons, those of her convalescence in August. Virginia had to stay in bed, very quietly, until her wounds were quite healed. She was allowed to lie on a sofa in the room for a very few minutes every day, and that’s all.

“I don’t see much sense in it,” Virginia said to the doctor and Ian Black, “being moved from a bed to a sofa--and a nursing-home sofa at that! Why can’t I sit up in a chair?”

“Taking no risks,” said Ian Black, who was going to Scotland that afternoon. The doctor nodded.

“You are being beastly to me,” Virginia told Ian Black steadily, “because you have a reputation to keep up. What would have happened to me, I’d like to know, if I hadn’t happened to be a rich woman and been able to afford all this care? Suppose I’d been very poor?”

“You’d have died,” said Ian Black. The doctor looked thoughtful.

August rained. It rained, in London, from its beginning until its middle, and then it hesitated a while. It was during that while that Virginia was moved to her house in Belgrave Square--“the mausoleum” which she so hated. But, at the nursing-home, they were glad of the August rain. “One always really knows,” Virginia said, “that one isn’t missing anything by not going away. But one likes to be certain.”

The gloom had passed off Ivor quickly. “Nerves,” he had explained to Virginia, and neither had referred to it since; each secretly feeling that they had walked into, and a little way up, a strange by-path, and had then come running out again. But now, as often as not, Virginia told her nurse to say she was asleep when Tarlyon called.

One day she told Ivor that she was to be moved to the “mausoleum” the day after next.

“I’m to be allowed to drive for an hour or so every day,” she told him. “But I mustn’t go out at night just yet, the doctor said, especially as it’s so damp. We have, however, our own ideas about that....”

“Having stayed in the mausoleum for ten days,” she said, “we will have a tremendous dinner at the Mont Agel. And then we will go away somewhere to get fat and strong. At least I will get all that and you will watch me.”

“And where, Virginia?” Places simply didn’t matter to Ivor: people were important.

“Well, not at my place, that’s quite certain. Besides, I’ve lent it to Lois and Johnny. I’d like to go to Galway, Ivor ... but maybe the journey will be too long for me. We’ll think about it....”

“And then,” she said, “maybe we’ll go back to Paris. Or Morocco--or just anywhere? What do you think, Ivor?”

“We’ll go back to Paris,” Ivor said, “or just anywhere, while you’re waiting for your decree _nisi_, Virginia. Or else the King’s Proctor will be unkind to us. And we ought to get the thing moving before we go for this present holiday--we’ll begin while you’re at the mausoleum, shall we? For it’s a long and boring business, this divorcing of husbands, with or without collusion. You’ve got to write that usual whining letter asking him to come back ‘and make a home for you,’ and then he’s got to write to you saying he jolly well won’t, and so on, for a long time.... It would be much easier, of course, if Tarlyon were divorcing you. The placards would say, ‘Viscount Divorces Wife,’ and there you are.”

Virginia laughed.

“He’d never do it, Ivor! And besides, he couldn’t bring it off, for the King’s Proctor would be on him in a minute, George is so careless. No, dear, we had better stick to the first scheme, which I’m sure he will agree to quite comfortably....”

And she suddenly shook her head a little, just a little shake. And she brightened.

“Oh, Ivor!” she cried. “I am looking forward to our dinner at the Mont Agel! Are you? We’ll have the room upstairs, and dear Monsieur Stutz will come and make us drink a very rare wine, saying with _impressement_ and his fingers bunched to his lips: ‘You will hear the angels singing, Mr. Marlay....’”

“And we will, Virginia, we will!”

“Naturally,” she said.