Chapter I

1

Towards midnight on the night of the 1st of May, 1921: at the sign of the Mont Agel: and, at this moment, under the passing glance of the polite and amiable M. Stutz--who never went to bed, never; but his wife did, and had.

Ivor Pelham Marlay, looking up at last from the abyss of his coffee-cup, now a sad looking mess of ashes and ends of many cigarettes, caught M. Stutz’s eye gently on him: Ivor smiled self-consciously; and he made a displeased little gesture at the untouched glass of Napoleonic brandy before him.

“I’m thirsty, M. Stutz,” he whispered.

And he looked round him stealthily, his first look round for ever such a long time, and saw but three other people in the shuttered restaurant: Cornelius Fayle, Mr. Kerrison and a young woman with tawny hair, pallid face, and crimson lips that smiled without meaning: a pathetic rebel....

“What about a whisky-and-soda?” asked Ivor softly.

“At once,” said M. Stutz, very low; and quickly concerned himself with it behind the counter.

This matter of whisky-and-soda was, you understand, something of a conspiratorial rite in the establishment of M. Stutz: he disapproved of whisky-and-soda. “It is an untidy drink,” said M. Stutz. He discouraged it among “My Customers,” and it was only to the most favoured among them that he would dream of serving it. To others he would say, rather stiffly: “I do not serve whisky, sir,” and did not. Thus, the most favoured must in all decency look carefully round the room before begging M. Stutz’s complaisance in this particular, lest the less favoured should be envious and also demand whisky instead of the wine they were drinking. And that would never do at all, for the wines of M. Stutz’s cellar were not only the treasures of his heart but also the columns which supported the formidable edifice of his income.

This matter of the whisky-and-soda must be pursued yet a little further, before we are finally done with it, the Mont Agel, and M. Stutz; for it was on its wings, if such will be allowed to so vulgar a drink, that Ivor finally left the Mont Agel. His way with a whisky-and-soda was drastic and medicinal: the glass was raised, and lo! the glass was laid down empty.

Money passed between Ivor and M. Stutz, and Ivor made ready to go.

“It’s raining, just a leetle,” M. Stutz told him. “Shall I send for a taxi?”

Ivor said he would walk, thanks very much, and was politely preceded by M. Stutz towards the side-door into the hotel passage--for the restaurant-door was closed and locked in pursuance of certain regulations to that effect--and up that narrow passage to the hotel door: which was pierced, you will remember, by ever such a little eye-hole....

It was as M. Stutz had his hand on the latch of the door that he turned to Ivor behind him; and he examined Ivor, for a moment, seriously and thoughtfully.

“You know, Mr. Marlay,” said M. Stutz softly, “you are a clever man, but you do not know how to live. I have observed it....”

“I’ve never observed anything else,” returned Ivor, with the shadow of a smile.

“I fancy,” said M. Stutz, “that you live too much with your emotions, Mr. Marlay, and not enough with your brains....”

“Ah,” said Ivor vaguely.

“I am only a little _restaurateur_,” said M. Stutz, with his epic gesture, “but I hear things. They say you are very clever, but that you are doing nothing now. Of course people are only too ready to say that a young man who has done something is going to pieces--but I would not like you to go to pieces, Mr. Marlay.”

“That is very kind of you, M. Stutz,” said Ivor sincerely, “I’ll make a note of what you say. Good-night, M. Stutz. And thank you.”

The amiable _restaurateur_, from the hotel doorway, meditated a little on the tall figure that swung swiftly out of sight round the corner into Oxford Street; and then, carefully and thoughtfully, he closed and bolted the hotel door, for the Mont Agel would not be “at home” to any more visitors that night, no matter of what degree. And who, in the lists of sudden visitors by night, was left to replace Virginia? that fair and grave figure of the night, that so lovely ornament of the closed and shuttered Mont Agel! Who now was left, among the gallants of the London night, who could so perfectly compound complaisance with quality, silence with speech, ease with distance? who so _soignée_, yet so understanding of others’ carelessness, as Virginia Tarlyon? Ah, it was death’s most blood-thirsty joke to kill Virginia--the lady of the merry golden curls and of the fair, small face in which was something gay, something sombre. Often, very often, the eyes of M. Stutz, looking round at the familiar faces of “My Customers,” would acutely miss the loveliness of that fine lady; and, moved unawares to a considerable sincerity, he would ache for her. For M. Stutz was a _connoisseur_ of quality.

M. Stutz was concerned and sympathetic about Ivor not entirely because he, of course, knew of the love of Ivor and Virginia, and had considered it a happy fusion. M. Stutz was a snob, in a real and literary sense, and loved a _grand seigneur_; he loved the thing without a title, he loved the face and gesture of the thing; and, to his mind, a certain degree of silence best accorded with features on which was stamped the tired mark of _race_. It was M. Stutz’s daily business to deal with people in whom there was much froth, and he dealt with them very amiably, but he did not like frothiness. Here it was that Virginia had pleased him, and here Ivor Marlay pleased him--there was no froth in him, he sought no favour but what was accorded to him in courtesy in return for courtesy.... And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early twenties; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia--for Virginia, M. Stutz had thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay, even though she had seemed to fail so deplorably with Hector Sardon and Lord Tarlyon. But now! Allowing for the havoc of her death in him, M. Stutz did not think that a sum of three books, the first of which was negligible, was worthy of a man who must have turned two-and-thirty. And M. Stutz was unconsciously echoing a sentence of Aunt Percy’s when he told himself that perhaps Ivor Marlay was too much given to thinking, and that thinking made him angry.

2

But Ivor, striding along Oxford Street, was not thinking about anything in particular. His mind had suddenly taken a lazy turn--even as he had left the Mont Agel. It will be remembered that the air on the night of the 1st of May, 1921--or rather, in the early hours of the 2nd of May, for it struck half-past twelve as Ivor reached Oxford Circus--was cool but soft, a first herald of what was to be a summer of “unprecedented warmth and drought.” The drought, however, as will also be remembered, was not then so remarkable as it later became; and on this particular night there was noticeable, to a student of London, a vague kind of rain in the air (it would naturally not be anywhere else, but on the other hand it didn’t seem to reach the ground: not quite), which was not unpleasing: to a student of London, anyway. Such a one was Ivor Marlay become, for he had long since overcome the bitterness of his loneliness in London, and now he loved London with what a ladies’ journal would call a “bitter love.” Of late months he had very often walked about London by night, and the feel of it had somehow crept into his bones: it was not a sleek city, like Paris: it was a city of splendid and ordered carelessness, there were holes and gashes in it where your Parisian would have had boulevards, there were sharp turns and funny little slums where any other city would have had an immaculate _Avenue_ leading to a most immaculate _Place_ full of corrupt taxis and unshaven police....

He was at Oxford Circus, and stood debating there, just by the Tube station. The rain held, but did not incommode. There were very few passengers, a figure or two, a woman or two, and taxis hurtling by. Ivor was wearing, above his dinner-jacket, a black Trilby. Now a short man wearing a black Trilby looks like nothing on earth--or, say, like something from South America; but it is quite becoming to a tall man, and can lend an almost sinister air to the usual convention of faces. Ivor, as he stood looking across Oxford Circus, with his black Trilby at the usual angle and a white flower brave upon the lapel of his jacket, looked just a little sinister. He stared across Oxford Circus. He wanted to walk, anywhere. Down Regent Street, or across the Circus towards the Park?... And this last he suddenly did, thinking that the only thing to do with Oxford Circus was to cross it.

He walked; and this walk, so usual in character, in place, in circumstance, was yet to chance on so strange a happening that for ever after Ivor couldn’t help trying to find in it some faint atom of forewarning--say, in his thoughts! But his thoughts, after having left the Mont Agel, had taken that lazy turn. The fierce depression of that day and evening had gone, leaving behind but the usual, half-humorous gloom of his present nature; for he had acquired--or rather rediscovered, for it had always been in him--a way of treating things nonsensically with himself, just as though Virginia was beside him in that little garden of the studio over Paris, “our eyrie, out of ken!” He managed, within himself, to twist many things to comic phrases and the like, so that the mind behind those straight and sulky eyebrows was often roaring with laughter about something which wouldn’t have seemed in the least funny when spoken.

He walked. To the Marble Arch, and thence down Park Lane, where was little movement. The not unpleasing rain still seemed to encounter certain difficulties in reaching the ground. He chose the Park side of the road, and walked by the railings. He peered into the darkness of the Park, and it displeased him. A closed and shuttered Park by night, with wide and empty roads laid across it like the arms of a sprawling skeleton, is a most abominable thing; there is no beauty in it thus, no mystery, and sensitive eyes must reject its dark and dank attractions through the railings. He walked. “Fight on all occasions.” Now who the deuce had said that? Ah, yes, d’Artagnan’s father to d’Artagnan. Wise old man, ... for if you fight on “all occasions” you simply must, by the laws of chance, win now and then.

He walked. To the corner of Hamilton Place and Piccadilly, and there stayed a while, for it is a romantic station by night. The vague and careless rain looked like threads of gossamer silver passing across the light of the arc-lamps. Standing here, at the corner of Hamilton Place, Piccadilly grows wide to the eye and sweeps to far distances: here, by night, there are palaces all about you, there are spacious places before you, the Green Park is a mysterious valley, and somewhere in the spaciousness is a horseman on a horse and a chariot on a triumphal arch, an arch that is much more impressive by night than in that festive daylight when under its squat curve pass the automata of royalty. Here, at the corner of Hamilton Place, Piccadilly ceases to be Piccadilly and becomes something more than Hyde Park Corner: surely it becomes a wide and elegant gesture, the magnificent gesture of Babylon towards the barbaric extremities of its tributaries. Here motor-cars, that but a moment before looked large and luxurious on the thin spine of Piccadilly, dwindle to small and flying atoms, hurling themselves headlong into the fat bosom of Belgrave Square, straight ahead to the narrow rectitudes of Brompton, or still farther to the very frontiers of the town, where is said to lie Holland Park and beyond which is Hammersmith and a great darkness.

He walked. Down the slope of Piccadilly, that slight downward slope of Piccadilly as it gathers strength to hunch itself up for its onslaught on the town. And Ivor saw a much younger man, so gay, so careless, in a swift and shining car--“that Camelot car, Magdalen!”--racing down and up the switchback of Piccadilly by night, on the wings of love from Camelot. Ah ... _les tendresses_! Admirable Magdalen! “You have decorated my life,” he had cried to her--so cheekily! But so she had--and so Virginia had too, and almost destroyed it as well! While he had utterly destroyed Virginia....

Down Street. He would walk up Down Street, through Shepherds’ Market, and so home to Upper Brook Street. And he began the ascent, on the side opposite to the Tube station. A clock gave one distant knell--one o’clock of the 2nd of May. The puny rain held.

The Tube station was closed, and shutters were laid across its face. Now by Down Street Tube Station is a passage-way, no one knows why or whither; whether or not this passage-way belongs to the Tube station has never been established, nor if it does for what purpose, nor if it does not for what purpose; in fact, nothing is known about this passage-way but that it looks a cavernous place. But now this passage-way was made remarkable to a passing man by the fact that a woman was standing within it; there, just within the passage-way, Ivor saw a woman. He saw her as he passed up on the opposite side: her face and head were in the darkness of the cavernous place, but the light of the adjacent lamp fell brightly on the lower part of her cloak; and this cloak looked gray and soft and shining with a furry shine, it looked like a cloak made of delicious shillings, and Ivor thought to himself: “If that isn’t chinchilla I’d like to know what is.”

Beyond that passing glimpse he had, immediately, no other, for he walked on up Down Street. But the chinchilla coat waved before his mind. “It’s all very odd,” he thought. “What’s a chinchilla coat doing out alone at this time of night? It’s not decent.” He had walked far enough to be able, decently, to turn and look again. The soft gleam of the chinchilla was still there: more than ever like a delicious shilling wantonly awaiting a beggar’s grasp. “Give her five minutes,” thought Ivor, “and if her man hasn’t turned up by then I must see about her. Wandering about in a chinchilla coat on a night like this! I will offer her my friendship for five minutes, stressing the word friendship so that she will know I am a man without casual desires. Ha!” He felt, at this moment, very gay; lighting a cigarette, he walked slowly as far as Hertford Street; and slowly back, down the hill of Down Street. The rain was at last managing to reach the ground. “Let it,” thought Ivor. He felt gay. The hours of his life stretched before him like a desert, but he felt gay; the days and years of his life stretched before him like a wilderness of stones, but he felt gay; and he didn’t know why....

Quickly Ivor approached, on the opposite side, the soft and furry gleam of the chinchilla coat. He laughed at himself. “What a dog I am!” he thought. “If,” he thought, “I were a poet, I would write a poem about a lonely lady in a chinchilla coat. Not being a poet, I will speak to her instead. Thus.”

And he crossed the road with a swing. He didn’t care.... The face of the chinchilla was not visible, as he approached. Above the face was a suggestion of hair. A tall figure, taller than Virginia--very tall. But he wasn’t afraid. He didn’t care.... And with his one arm he swept off his hat.

“Can I,” he pleaded, “be of any use at all?”

“You can get me a taxi,” came voice of chinchilla, swift and low.

“Certainly,” said Ivor, and instantly left her, to search for it. “Autocrat,” he thought. “None of your meek stuff about her.” ...

Piccadilly again. There were taxis on the rank a hundred yards or so up on the sulky side--nice and polite taxis now that the war was over.

“In Down Street,” he told the first driver, “there’s a Tube station and a chinchilla coat. Stop by them.”

The driver grunted, and drove. And, as he slowed down by the Tube, the chinchilla coat stepped out from the cavernous place and was visible as a tall woman in a chinchilla coat, no more; for over her head was thrown a kind of motoring veil which obscured what might be golden hair and suggested what might be a young and lovely face. “But of course,” Ivor thought, “she’s lovely. A plain woman wouldn’t have the cheek.”

He jumped off the footboard, and opened the door for her.

“You may as well see me to my door now,” came voice of chinchilla softly.

Suddenly, he couldn’t tell why, the desire for laughter left him.

“Yes,” he only said.

She made a gesture for him to get into the cab first.

“I will direct him,” she said.

3

There was silence in the cab: the lady seemed to have no desire to speak; and Ivor, though he wanted to hear her voice again, suddenly found he had nothing to say at all--to this strange lady! It was like an occasion out of a book by a young romanticist, yet she was very real, this woman; he could feel her _clean_ reality, and her voice had had that low and careless charm of a woman whose feet are on an Aubusson carpet and whose heart is not subject to sudden impulses. She was calm. _Calm!_ A delicious state.... He wanted her to speak; and she suddenly did.

“Tell me,” the voice came with gentle interest, “are other men like you, or are you exceptional?”

“Well----” Ivor hesitated. “I’m afraid I have been rather impertinent....”

And he deprecated his presence just a little, towards the dark poise of her head.

“Yes, you have been impertinent, I suppose,” the voice said softly. “But I wasn’t thinking of that. I was wondering if it was usual with men to be gallant....”

“You see,” the voice explained, “I know very little about men. About young men.”

Then Ivor suddenly had an idea....

“I say,” he almost blurted, “I’m all right, you know. I mean--well, I don’t want anything. You mustn’t think that I have any--well, ulterior motive, because I haven’t. I just thought I’d speak to you.... It’s rather difficult to explain....”

“It seems to be,” the voice suddenly laughed at him. And the taxi stopped.

Ivor stepped out, with reluctance, for the drive had been short, too short; and, though he had no “ulterior motive,” he would have liked to speak to her a while longer. But, even as he stepped out on to the curb, he murmured softly: “Well, I’m damned!” For he saw that they were in Hertford Street--and just at that part of Hertford Street which is at the head of Down Street! and there, a hundred yards or so down the slope of it, was the Tube station!

The chinchilla coat laughed, a slight wave of a laugh it was, from the recess of the taxi.

“I live here,” she said. “But I told him to drive round by Hamilton Place....”

“I thought it would be fun to see your puzzled face,” she said. “I’ve never had much fun.”

Her sudden plaint from the darkness made him, standing by the door, frightfully shy; and he said nothing, awkwardly.

He stood aside while she stepped out. And, in the lamplight, he saw her face for the first time, as she brushed by him: a young and beautiful profile--curiously sedate, too, it seemed!--passing by his eyes.

“She’s a person,” he couldn’t help thinking.

He remained by the throbbing taxi; he did not follow her to the door of the house, lest she should think he wanted to follow the occasion indoors. And he did want to, very much; but he could make no move lest she should be made uncomfortable at a thought of his insistence.

He watched the tall figure--she was very tall, taller than Virginia--fit a latchkey in the door; he watched her open the door; and he saw her turn her head to him. He took off his hat quickly.

“Good-bye, Chinchilla,” he said.

She smiled a little.

“You must be a very dangerous man,” she said thoughtfully, “to be in such a hurry not to put your restraint to the test....” It was, after all, very surprising of her to say that, just that.

“You can come in for a moment,” she said. “I would like you to come in for a moment.”

And Ivor, making a sign to the taxi-driver, followed the chinchilla coat into No. 78 Hertford Street.