The green hat

“Venice, that was kind!” Napier smiled with his whole thin, fine face, and I thought how glad I was that he didn’t know what had caused Iris’s illness, for would he then have smiled gratefully at Venice for inquiring after her? And he said, as though happy in her understanding: “I mean, we can start off first thing in the morning, can’t we? What? It’s rotten luck, cutting in on your holiday like this, but—well, friendship has duties....”

“But of course I understand, Naps!” And Venice turned at me, smiling as though to show me what sort of a man that Napier was. As though she didn’t understand! As though she didn’t know the duties of friendship! She said to Napier, with a fine air of business settled: “Well, I’ll just go upstairs now and tell Mary to unpack some things again. And I do so hope, Naps,” she said with a fine large smile, “that your friend won’t die, for then how will I manage a man who has nothing left to live for?” And Venice turned to me, and her hand was in mine, and we were saying good-bye, when Napier said briskly:

“Come on, then. We’ll go now. Might as well, now the car’s there....”

“But, Naps!” Venice turned on him, stared wide at him....

“Oh, come on,” said Napier, as though eaten by impatience.

“But!” she pleaded desperately. “But, Naps, I don’t really want to go now a bit if you would rather stay until to-morrow....”

“I don’t want to stay,” said Napier, quite reasonably, but he turned away as he spoke. One saw the set white profile. “Come along, Venice. There’s been enough talk about this already....”

“But, Naps,” said Venice bitterly, “it’s wrong of you to go now, if she needs you. You know it’s wrong and naughty, what you’re doing. Naps dear, I’d very much rather not go now if you don’t mind——”

“Well, you’ll jolly well have to go now, if at all,” Napier tore at her so sharply that she stared at him dumbly for a full second, and then she made a white smile, half to him, half to me. “Silly baby,” she said. “Such a silly baby....” And she was again about to say good-bye to the unwilling spectator when Napier broke in, to me, beginning with astonishing grimness and ending quite conversationally: “I say, if you should happen to see Iris in the course of the next few days, you might tell her I couldn’t stop, and”—here the grimness suddenly ended—“say good-bye from me. Will you? What?”

I said of course I would, and then he took Venice’s arm to lead her away. But Venice dragged, her eyes intent on the carpet, and when she suddenly looked round at me I saw that her eyes were brimming with tears.

“Men!” she smiled. “Men!”

“Men!” mocked Napier, but he smiled, too. “What?”

“But don’t you think it’s a shame!” she bitterly appealed to me. “There’s Mrs. Storm very ill and expecting to see Napier, all lonely up there, and here Naps puts me in the beastly position of a wife who——”

But I was thinking that the shame of it lay in the disadvantage at which a woman always is with a man whom she loves more than she feels he loves her, the disadvantage of never knowing how far she may use an artificial pride, for there is no real pride in a heart in love, without upsetting the apple-cart.

“Nonsense, Venice,” Napier was saying, and it was his mildness, his calmness, that was so astonishing now. It was as though the man had suddenly found peace: as though love-lost Tristram raving in the wilderness had, in a sudden flash, realised that he was trying God too far....

“Nonsense, Venice,” he scowled, still holding her arm. “She isn’t beginning to expect me and she never did. I just turned up by chance....” He turned to me with that clear, not conspiratorial, look in his eyes. “You will say good-bye from me, won’t you?”

“Of course,” I said. “I may be seeing her to-day.”

“Yes, just say good-bye,” said Napier, and as he and I shook hands Venice laughed nervously: “Dear, how serious! I can’t bear good-byes....” And so she shook my hand without saying good-bye, saying instead: “You have been a darling to let me bore you with my nonsense, and I hope you’ll pray that it keeps fine for us in your sister’s car. See you in London soon....”

And away they went, Napier and Venice, he still holding her arm just above the elbow, she still appearing to drag a little, across the now deserted and darkening lounge to the glass doors, which a small boy opened to them. But the small boy must hold it open, for they stood in the doorway a short while, as it might be they were arguing, and through the gloom of the afternoon I could see Napier’s set white profile, drawn in ivory it might have been, and the way he seemed to be smiling grimly into Venice’s upturned face, and I could see the way Venice’s face suddenly lit right up with a smile, just like a garden with the sun after rain. Now what could he have said to make her smile so, or had he said just any little thing, which her love, most princely alchemist, had straightway transmuted into a golden word?

He has said farewell to his love, I said to myself, and now, if love has left any honour at all in him, he must convince himself that there never was any love to say adieu to, for even so much would be a disloyalty to Venice. He has renounced his love, I thought to myself, as a man of honour should do, but he knows that a man of honour is not worthy the name unless he can also convince himself that there never was any love to renounce, for that would make him feel martyred for his wife’s sake, and that would be a treachery to Venice....

And, smoking one more cigarette in the calm security of the darkening, deserted lounge, while a waiter or two began laying the small tables roundabout for tea, I seemed to understand Napier as he were myself, and he the most different man from me that could well be found. Looking at the thing full and square, you might say that Napier had done a caddish thing; in fact, that was what you had to say, looking at the thing full and square; but it is a mistake to look at everything full and square, and it is too easy to dismiss people’s actions as “caddish” and the like, for such are no more than words coined to save people from wearying their minds with undue thinking, and tiresome people will go on and on using them with a great show of conviction in the very same way that they will put down a book by Mr. Shaw or Maître Anatole France and say: “Look at Dickens!”

Now Napier had suddenly come upon a queer sort of peace following on a second’s cruel decision not to go and see Iris again, a very cruel decision, I thought, and she no doubt expecting every moment to see his face in the clouds all about her. “How like a man,” I could hear a feminine voice, “first to stain what he thinks his ‘honour’ by taking a mistress, and then to retrieve his idiotic ‘honour’ by hurting his mistress!” But, maybe, how could one tell? maybe Napier had suddenly realised, in the very moment that Venice spoke, that if he went to sit with Iris even once more he might fall right down into the pit of dark enchantment and he might send all life but that which he found in Iris to the deuce and nevermore return to Venice, to whom he was held by every one of those principles that are born in the blood of a Napier, a Hilary, a Guy de Travest. And I wondered what I would have done had my life been so weighted and tangled with people’s emotions as Napier’s must always have been, and what, I wondered, would I have done had I, in Napier’s place, been as unaware of myself until a fiercely revealing moment three nights before my marriage to my betrothed? The answer to that was very easy, and it was by the measure of the ease with which it came that I could judge of Napier’s struggle with himself to keep his pledge to Venice, for never were two men so different as Napier and me. I, I would have broken my troth, that is what I would have done, and I would have broken away from any other thing that stood in the way of my passion, I would have fled father, friends, career, honour, everything, at the call of the enchanted voice whispering of better dreams. There are better dreams! For so I remembered a phrase in a book telling of the love of a lady of the sea for a mortal man: There are better dreams....

A waiter, no doubt wishing for something to do, asked me if I would take tea, but I thanked him, saying I would rather not, for it was not yet half-past three, and saying to myself: “In every man there is always unfolding a dream of things that never were and never can be, since life will always be what it is and men and women will always be what they are, and so we will always go on, men of high fancies and low flights, and the higher the fancy is the lower the flight will be, as it is written in the Scriptures concerning vanity. And maybe Napier had had his dream when he was very young, and then the world came along and told him that his dream was very silly, and so he did not dream any more, until one night he was appalled to hear calling him a playmate’s voice, but a playmate’s voice torn with the wonder of life and the sadness of living, whispering to him: There are better dreams. And he listened, and he was lost, and then he found himself again in renunciation, as so many Englishmen will always be doing, for it is as true as any generalisation can be to say of Englishmen that they will often only find themselves when they have lost themselves.”

I could see Napier during those two days and two nights before his marriage, I could see him casting his mind this way and that way, to find that each way lay dishonour, on Venice’s side dishonour with cruelty, and on Iris’s side dishonour with whatever happiness can go with dishonour to a man such as Napier; and that, I thought, would be very little, for can a man of honour embark on any dishonourable adventure without first of all taking every care and precaution that neither he nor his companion shall enjoy the fruits of it? But that, I thought to myself, is a woman’s thought, surely I am not becoming effeminate!

And you could see Napier scowling as he beat his mind to know what a man should do, for you might be sure that Iris had not tried to persuade him, she would have loved him and left him, putting the seal of her kiss on his lips and the seal of her voice on his ears, telling him only to do what he thought was right. So Napier would be beating his mind, always driving from him the phantom of a compromise, a fair enough phantom, that: how he would go to Venice and tell her that it had happened to him, born vile, to do thus and thus, and would she please forget him, for forgive him she could not? But that was just what Venice would do, proudly and imperiously she would forgive him, and then he would have to confess the real truth, which was not that he had held Iris in his arms, but that he loved Iris with his body and soul as he never could love Venice, that he loved Iris and Iris loved him as though they had drunk a love-philtre together, and in that way he did not love Venice ... but Venice, unfortunately, did love him in that very same way, and you could see Napier just quailing before the cruelty of telling Venice that, after all, he did not love her. And you could see him marrying Venice, thinking the while that maybe the best could be made of a wretched business if Iris and he kept to the promise they had sworn together, never to meet again. And they had kept to it very stoutly, the Iris who had plucked the device For Purity from her heart had kept to her promise, and Napier would have kept to his promise for ever and a day but for the chance of illness in the obscure silence of the Paris night; and so it had come to pass that he must see Iris yet once again, and Iris maybe thinking that she was seeing her lover in a dream, she who had nothing to live for and did not care one farthing if she lived or died. But that dream, said Conrad Masters later, saved her life, that dream was the angel appointed to save Iris from death, for that time. How wise was Iris, how wise, she who knew that the Marches were never let off anything. For even the angels were against her.

But it was to Conrad Masters that I had first to break the news of Napier’s—well, from Masters’ point of view, desertion while on duty. And very whole-heartedly did that man swear, the telephone simply throbbing with his pregnant mutter; but I, thinking there could be little profit in arguing at this time of day that the whole thing wasn’t and never had been any of my business, merely suggested: would it be any sort of idea for me to see her for a minute?

“You!”

“But your instructions!” I pointed out. “Whereas, if I may say so, you have so far been so ‘nice’ to me that I have lost five hundred francs at bridge on your behalf.” That is what I was driven to saying, but I doubt if he heard me, the telephones of Paris being very well adapted for selective hearing, for all he said was that he was due at the Boulevard Pierre Abel in half an hour, and he would pick me up on the way if I liked. If I liked! As though, Heavens above, there was one single thing in all this wretched business about which one might say, with any hope of being attended to, “If I liked, this,” or “If I liked, that....”

Chapter Eight: PIQURE DU CŒUR

“She wished it,” said Conrad Masters sharply. “She has a God.”

And thereupon he left me, to see another patient he had there, but I had not waited more than a few minutes in the waiting-room, which had that intangible odour of old cloth and illness, when I was called upstairs by an old stern nun, hard and silent as a rock, and I remember wondering: “Good my God, if this should be Iris’s day-nurse. Oh, poor Iris!”

The stairway we ascended was handsome and wide, of polished oak, the most dignified stairway you could well imagine in a nursing-home. It swept in a noble curve to a broad passage, also of oak, as, no doubt, was only fit and proper in a nursing-home patronised by une clientèle européenne la plus chic. But maybe it was a little too dignified, I thought, it was sombre; and the old stern nun who was my guide did not seek to relieve the atmosphere, giving me a massive black shoulder and to my question no more than a stern whisper which was no more and no less than a shout of disapproval: “Assez bien, monsieur, assez bien. Nous nous confions en Dieu.”

The chill, the gloom, the nun, the air of religious prostration, to which I am lamentably ill-accustomed, had quite killed my spirit, else, as I did my best quietly to follow her up the long, dark, uncarpeted passage, I had put it to her that to trust in God is very well but must He be trusted at such little expense, for in these oaken passages they had no more than a jet or two of gas-light, and wasn’t it also reasonable to suppose that the patients behind the doors, each inscribed with a Saint’s name, would lie the more comfortably for a strip of carpet along the passages? From below, as though from the bowels of the earth in labour, one might still faintly hear the murmurings of a religious nature and the woman’s manlike voice raised, no doubt, in exhortation; but I supposed the patients would not be minding that for they would be Catholics, and I wondered if Iris was a Catholic, but nowadays that is the last thing one ever learns about anybody, whether they are Catholic, Anglican, Jew, or what they are....

As we came by a certain door, not far from which a gas-jet flamed an ailing yellow, it was opened from within and I saw before me the sweetest face that I ever saw in my life, and I knew that her God had been good to Iris.

“Sœur Virginie,” said the stern old nun, and I am glad to say I never saw her again. Sister Virginie, looking up at me with a grave smile, for she was very little, greeted me by my name, and do you know that I said: “Sister Virginie, had I only met you last night I would have slept much better than I did.”

She had altogether such a neat and tidy look, an inner look as well as an outer look, that you must be sceptical indeed not to believe at once that if ever there was a nurse to soothe away death here she was before you, her hands folded over her wooden crucifix, smiling up at you as though you were a gentle friend. Her face was oval and so white, but white in a different way, a soft clear way, and it was only when I came to think back on this sweet lady that I realised that of course this would be so because Sister Virginie never had used powder and such things, and that must also be why she had the lips of a girl, although what I could see of the dark brown eyes under the nun’s coif showed the understanding of more than forty years.

“You see, I know your name,” she said. She did not need to whisper. “Madame has a great regard for you, I must tell you. Now, you must not talk when you go in. She will look, look. But you must not say one word. She will see you are there, and it will make her content that her friend has thought of her.”

The oak door behind her was just ajar, and within I could see a faint pink glow, as it might be of a deeply-shaded light far in the room. Across the door, just above Sister Virginie’s coif, for she was very little, was painted in faded black lettering the name of a Saint, but what the Saint was I could not make out, and the only other time I called there I forgot to look.

“Now, remember,” Sister Virginie was saying, “you must not say one word in there. She will look, that is all. But how she looks, as though she is listening to the choir of angels!”

“Sister Virginie,” I said, “do you promise me that she will not die?”

And Sister Virginie smiled up at me with a gaiety that I have only seen on the still faces of women in old French books.

“To-day we have thought she will not die,” she said, “for last night we gave her a piqure du cœur....”

II

I wish I could describe that room in which I saw Iris lying, for it was such a strange room to find in a nursing-home, and you would not have been surprised to find the like in one of the hotels in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. But the truth is that I never yet was sure of the appointments of any room I might find myself in, except maybe that it was large or small, that it was panelled or papered or distempered, and whether or not you walked on a carpet, a strip of oil-cloth or a parquet floor.

It seemed to me that I must walk a long way to the bed near the window. It was a great four-poster bed, and it had a very tall head, of carved oak. There seemed to be but dark wood in that strange sick-room, and the perfume of wood. Beneath my careful feet was a narrow strip of drugget slanting from the door across to the bed, but on all sides of this strip the floor shone vast and brown in the dim light of a shaded lamp that stood on the heavy oak mantelpiece.

Never was one so little conscious of the odours of a sick-room, but, although I wouldn’t swear to it, there might have been the faint tang of furniture-polish, and maybe, as I stole nearby the great wide bed by the large window, that was the scent of Napier’s roses, which spread their heads from a carafe on a small table near the foot of the bed. Sitting against the carafe was a large white doll with her head asleep among Napier’s roses and a red silk handkerchief tied around her wrist. Ah, Mio Mi Marianne, unrepentant Magdalen, even the toys of your sisters heed your dominion! It was dark by the bed, for the light from the lamp did not reach nearly so far. The blind was not more than half-lowered down the large window, and across the courtyard I could just see the light within the lodge and, on the sill outside, the shape of a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.

The tall oak panel at the head cast a black shadow over the darkness of the bed, and at first I could no more than make out the shape of Iris’s head. I could hear the faint hush of her breathing. Boy’s head, curly head, white and tiger-tawny. But gone now the tawny pride of the tiger, gone the curls. Very tidily brushed her hair was, tidily swept back from the forehead, tidily lying on each cheek. It would be damp, I thought, to lie so flat. Her head lay like a dark flower on the pillow.

She was asleep, I thought, and I was going away, very well content to have heard the faint but regular hush of her breathing. She had fallen asleep, I thought, even as Sister Virginie had left her, and could there be better news than that she was asleep, breathing like a child? Then how frightened I was, just as I was about to steal away, to see her eyes wide open, staring up at me. Dark as her hair were her eyes, and almost as big as her head. I was in terror, real damp terror, lest she should be taking me for Napier. I did not know what to do, and her great dark eyes staring up at me. It would be like a stab from the mists about her to be thinking it was her lover who had come and to realise that it was me. Then I was happy to see that there was understanding in the dark, still eyes, she was not taking me for Napier, she was not dreaming. She was hurt, her eyes said. And, because I might not speak, I just touched her cheek with my hand, and the hair on her cheek was chill and damp. But her eyes seemed to wish to be saying something. She was hurt, her eyes said, but more than that I could not understand, and so I bent down nearer to her face. The skin was like thin grey paper over her shoulder-blades, her lips were chapped, and they drooped.

“Dying....”

I shook my head sternly. Her lips were so dry and rough, and now I saw through a mist what I had not seen before, that her eyes were stricken with fear. That is what her eyes had wished me to understand, that now she was terrified of dying. That was what her dream had done, that was what last night’s piqure du cœur had done. I turned to go away. But her eyes, dark and stricken, seemed to flutter, then they seemed to look at the roses on the small table. What is it, I thought, what is it she wants, and her eyes fluttering like that? Besides the white skirts of the doll whose head was asleep among Napier’s roses lay the great emerald and a small tortoise-shell comb. I thought of the tawny formal curls trembling like voiceless bells before the looking-glass in my flat above the mean lane, and when I took up the small comb there might have been a smile on the tiny grey face, like the shadow of a candle’s flicker. I passed the small comb through her hair, and it passed so easily through the straight damp hair, and then at last her eyes were closed and I went away as quickly as I could. Sister Virginie stood a little way up the passage, but for reasons of my own I did not wait for her to approach where I stood under the ailing yellow flame of the gas-jet, but went towards the darkness where she was.

“Were you good?” she asked me, and I think I said that I had tried to be good. “But, Sister Virginie, she is afraid! She is terrified!”

“Then she is being good, too,” the nun smiled. “She has been too little afraid of dying, and then it was we who were afraid.” She looked at me very seriously and seemed to purse her lips. I knew what she was going to ask, and I did not know where to look. “Do you know, monsieur, if we will be allowed to give her another piqure du cœur? Madame has been very unhappy, and it is good to have happy dreams....”

I do not remember what I said, but Sister Virginie said magnificently: “Then I will lie to her for the time being,” and when she had gone I stood at the head of the oaken stairway, thinking how I would like to be very alone for a minute or two. Now and then a nun would pass softly but quickly along the passage behind me, she would seem to be sliding along, and then there came a firmer step, and out of the tail of my eye I saw that man’s great brown coat ballooning towards me.

“Well as can be expected,” he muttered gloomily. I looked at him. “Better, really,” he muttered gloomily. “Ready?”

We went down the oaken stairway, treading on our toes. There was a sickly whisper of incense in the air, and I found that I had a headache.

“But I wish to blazes,” growled that man, “that you hadn’t let that boy go. You could have stopped him....”

“No,” I said, “I couldn’t. Besides, I didn’t want to.”

“Mm. Well, how did you find her? Wasted, isn’t she?”

“Masters,” I said, “she is lying there terrified!” For that was all I could think about, that and the feel on my fingers of the damp, chill hair that had no waves in it now.

Masters said: “And a very good thing for her she is terrified. Keep her bucked up, that will. But I wish to blazes....”

“Yes, I heard you,” I said, fumbling with the latch of the great doors.

“Women!” snapped Masters. “Here, let me.”

“I don’t suppose,” I said, “that there are many worse sights than a helpless woman afraid....”

“You get used to it,” said Masters gloomily, but I was thinking that Napier would not have been at all used to it, and that he had been very wise in his good-bye, for as sure as anything I was that Venice could not have afforded to let Iris have even one more piqure du cœur....

“You don’t look so well yourself,” said Masters.

“Growing-pains, Masters. One is always growing up, at other people’s expense....”

III

I was not to see her again for a while. That man said: “You did her no good the other day. The reverse. She has something on her mind she wants to say to you, and she can’t, and it worries her. Naturally....”

“Your instructions,” I said. “She will be angry with you, Masters.”

“When she is well,” snapped that captain of men, “she may burst, if I may say so. And so I’ll tell her. But in the meanwhile you will have to wait ten days. Or more.”

It was more, quite a while more, and when I went again into the oak-room of the Saint whose name I forgot to look at Iris met me with accusing eyes. She did not turn her head, she just gave me a sideways, accusing look. Turnings of head were discouraged, she must lie very still, oh for a long time, for that, it seems, is the way of sceptic poisoning. And Masters had said to me in the passage outside: “If she as much as moves a finger, God help you!”

“You should not be in Paris,” she whispered, not without vehemence. “And why are you laughing, please?”

“Why, at your voice! I do believe, Iris, that it’s stronger than you at last.”

“Yes, but you should not be in Paris, that I’m sure of. You have waited to see me,” she complained bitterly, but I protested that never was such nonsense, for why in the name of commonsense would I wait to see her? “But, Iris, the very night I arrived in Paris I had an idea for a tale, and I thought I would stay in Paris to write it.”

“You must tell it to me. Oh, at once. Oh, please....” And the voice expired. And we waited. “I can’t laugh,” she said bitterly, “because it hurts. Everything hurts....”

“Iris,” I said, “I am so sorry....”

“Yes.” She gave me a long sideways look.

“Yes,” she said. “But please to tell me your tale. What is it about? What is it called?”

“No, Iris, I mustn’t tell it to you. It was indiscreet of me to mention it, and you only just returned from the valley of death. It is a terrible story. Every one dies. It is about a man who would not dance with his wife.”

“Yes, but ... Oh, why wouldn’t he dance with his wife? What a silly man! You do get some beastly ideas, I do think....”

“Please, Iris, be still and good! That man said he would fire me out for two pins.” So grey she looked, frail beyond frailty, in the gay afternoon light. It was the fifteenth afternoon of February, as I remember well.

Never moving her head, only her eyes vivid with restless insurgent life, she whispered defiantly: “As long as I lie quiet like this no one can do anything to me or ... fire you out or anything. You just ... stay where you are. Be brave, child....”

Now there were queer, funny things in the great eyes of the still head. They were childish, too, and I laughed at them, but she would not laugh, because it hurt her.

We sat in silence, not to tire her. She lay flat on her back, her head on a pillow which was so low as to be only a pillow by courtesy. Her eyes would be fixed on the ceiling, and then she would look sideways at me, and that was when I seemed to see queer, funny things in her eyes. They were as though glistening with bits of things ... fear, pride, a sort of childish glee, a sort of childish naughtiness, a sort of childish shamefacedness. It was as though she was terrified of her new toy, and very proud of it, too—her returning life. And then the shamefacedness, an almost guilty look, as though she had just cheated some one out of something in a funny way. Not that she hadn’t been very clever either, her look seemed to say. And somehow I was made a fellow-conspirator in all this ... in the terror, pride, glee, mischief, shamefacedness with which she was deliciously playing with her new toy, returning life.

She said suddenly, in an enormous voice which she had obviously been husbanding for the purpose: “No one wants me....” And I think, but I am not sure, that she would have giggled if she could.

“Iris, you’ll have Masters in here if you go shouting like that.”

“He didn’t want me, even....”

“Who didn’t? Masters didn’t?”

“No. God.”

“Oh, I see,” I said.

She panted breathlessly, eager to be talking: “I made my application, all ... all in order. Forms all filled in and everything. But ... Oh, they weren’t impressed. Not a bit, they weren’t——”

“Oi, you’re talking too much, Iris!”

“Oi to you. Listen.... The old man said to me: ‘Well, young woman, and what do you want?’ I wasn’t afraid, not a bit. Had all my forms ready and everything.... ‘What do I want, Father?’ says I. ‘Why, I’m as good as dead, that’s what I am. Doctor’s face all of a blur, nurse’s face all of a blur, temperature 106—why, I am dead, if it comes to that!’ ‘Nonsense,’ says God. ‘Never saw a woman more alive in all my life. Ho, Gabriel! Expel this woman!’ ‘Yes, but!’ I said, ‘I want to die, I do, I do!’ ‘In that case,’ says He, ‘death will be a great disappointment to you. We want none of your sort here, young woman. Ho, Michael, Gabriel! Eject this sinner. She’s still alive....’”

After a long pause I found those great eyes looking at me very seriously. She whispered: “Owe it to you. I mean, life. Thank you.”

“Iris, to me! My dear, what rot!”

“Not rot at all. If you hadn’t been kind enough to come round again that night to ... inquire, he’d have called and found only that old nun there and she would have said ... assez bien, and away he’d have gone. And me, too.... See?

“And,” she said, “that ptomaine poisoning. You dear, you dear! Oh, how I like you when you’re not looking! Genius, I call that. And when ... Masters told me, I laughed so they had to give me morphia. Darling, these piqures! I got holes all over me....”

“Piqure du cœur,” I let slip.

“Piqure du what?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“You’re laughing at me,” she whispered, “that’s what you’re doing. I’m going to close my eyes now for five minutes. But don’t go. Don’t go....”

It was the fifteenth afternoon of February, as I remember well, and Mademoiselle Printemps was dancing in the sunlight that fell in a shower of gold on the window-sill, on which now stood three nectarines and a large pear on a plate. But the blind was drawn so that she could dance only in a bright splash across the little mountain which, I ventured to suppose, was made by Iris’s toes. In the shade of the room stood the small table, and on the small table the doll with the red silk handkerchief round her wrist sat sleeping beneath tall sprays of mimosa, sprays of bright yellow powdered with fresh gold....

“Yes,” I heard her voice, faint, faint, and when I looked round from the mimosa to her I saw that her eyes had followed mine to a garden in the South.

“Iris, I was to say good-bye....”

“I know,” she said gravely; and she smiled. “I heard him....”

“You heard him, Iris?”

“Dreams, clouds, mists. Faces, phantoms, fates, words. Yes, I heard him....” And she smiled, with every bit of her eyes, as though to reassure me. “That’s quite all right,” she said.

“Iris, I’m so sorry,” I said. “Do you ... promise that that’s quite all right?”

She was looking at me with a smile....

“Promise,” she suddenly sobbed, and her eyes were streaming with tears. I was terrified.

“Lie here,” she sobbed, “like a mummy ... no inside left, nothing left ... thinking and thinking and thinking ... trying to lie to myself right and left, north and south ... can’t have what I want, so must make up stories ... and you sit there stiff as a pole saying ‘Promise’ ... call yourself a friend.... You don’t know how ill I’ve been!”

“I do, I do, Iris! For pity’s sake! If that man comes in and finds you like th——”

“And you think I’m awful,” she whispered helplessly. She stared at me. “You think I’m awful,” she said quite calmly.

“Iris,” I said, “I like you. Of course, if I didn’t....”

“Of course,” she said, “he doesn’t know....”

“Of course,” I said.

“And he’ll never know....”

“Good,” I said.

“As for me,” she whispered ...

On her forehead there were little beads of wet. I wiped them off with my handkerchief, and she said: “My nose, too, please. Had my hair waved ... but it never stays when you’re not well. Got to be well to have curly hair....”

“And, Iris, if you don’t have it cut soon it will be as long as a woman’s hair.”

“As for me,” she whispered, “all this effort wasted ... no playmate, no nothing. Masters warned me, too.... Dead as dead, the poor darling was....” Slowly, slowly, tears were crawling down the tiny grey cheeks. Hastily I wiped them away, hearing a step outside. “Nothing, nothing ...” she kept on whispering with closed eyes, and I barely had time to whisk away a tear from her eyelash as the door opened.

“Well?” that man muttered. “Killed her yet?”

“I think she’s asleep,” I whispered. “Ssh.”

“Stuff!” snapped Masters. “She’s been crying. Out you go.”

Suddenly Iris said in that enormous, preserved voice: “I have not been crying.”

Masters, whose great brown coat filled the whole side of the bed, so that I was nowhere, looked down at her like a worried bird....

“I’d like,” she pleaded, “to say good-bye ... to this gentleman, if you would kindly ... get out of the way for a minute....” And when I bent over the wasted hand, from which the emerald ring now hung like a hoop, she said: “Ah, that defiant courtesy! Thank you, my dear. And good-bye for ever as ever is, for I don’t suppose I shall ever come back to England again ... nevermore, nevermore. And,” she whispered, “I will keep my promise....”

Chapter Nine: TALKING OF HATS

It was towards eleven o’clock, and Hilary, Guy and I, having sat long over dinner upstairs at the Café Royal, were returning towards our homes down Piccadilly, walking as slowly as we might for the prodigious heat. We had, however, barely touched the corner of Saint James’s Street when Guy ceased even to pretend that he was walking, and said: “Just a moment, will you, while I go into White’s to see if Napier’s there, to remind him about dinner to-morrow night.” But Guy never in his life looked less like running, and Hilary said: “The idea of eating in this weather! Hm. And what is this party, Guy?”

“Children’s party,” said Guy, whose frozen blue eyes might conceivably have made one feel cool had one only been tall enough to be able to look into them ... and just at that moment, as Guy turned away, and the three of us facing down towards the Palace, Napier came swiftly down the steps of White’s, about ten yards down. At the curb a taxi was waiting, its door swung open.

“Naps! Napier!” Guy called, thinking to catch him with as little exertion as possible in that stifling heat. But Napier, swift as a shadow, that greyhound of a Napier, was already in the taxi, the door was slammed-to, and round it swept by the Devonshire Club to turn northwards up the slope of Piccadilly.

“Drat the boy!” said Guy, as we made to cross the road. “Catch him on the rebound as we cross....” But when, as the three of us stood by the island under the arch-lamp, the taxi rushed past us with screaming gears, he made no effort to hail Napier.

“Well?” Hilary grinned, as the taxi tore up Albemarle Street.

“Oh, ring him up,” said Guy shortly, and in silence we walked towards Hyde Park Corner.

I only knew from Guy’s look that he had seen her in the light that fell through the open window of the passing cab. She had seemed to be in a black dress and her head wrapped in a tight silver turban, and I had almost gasped not only with the surprise of seeing her at all, but the small face in that second of light had seemed so dazzling. “Naturally,” I thought. “She’s happy....”

Hilary hadn’t, of course, seen her, for he was always at his most thoughtful when crossing the street. Nor had those two in the cab seen us, I was certain: they were talking too eagerly. Guy, Hilary and I walked on in silence, as slowly as we might for the heat. Maybe, I thought, Guy did not know I had seen her. As for himself, he never gave away gratuitous information about other people. And Guy loved Napier like his younger brother.

We were passing by the great gates of Devonshire House that now more becomingly adorn the Green Park when Hilary muttered “Bed-time” and left us, crossing towards Half-Moon Street. I found myself walking on with Guy, despite the economy in walking I might have made by going with Hilary, for my flat also lay in that direction. But I might cut up Down Street. Guy said, as though for some minutes past he had been giving his whole mind to the matter: “Not bad weather, really, if one was dressed for it....”

“If!” I said.

“Of course,” said Guy, “these infernal stiff shirts....”

“Quite,” I said.

“Although,” said Guy, “I think they’re cooler than those sickening soft things....”

“I’m wearing one,” I said.

“I said what I said,” said Guy.

Once upon a time, as he had stood at the foot of her bed in a dim room, Iris had called him by a name that was not his name. “But Guy would defend a secret not only against the angels of God but also against himself.” Yes, Iris, yes ... but was it necessary, Iris, to remind him of it? For Napier was Guy de Travest’s friend, and as dear to him as a younger brother.

“To swim,” Guy murmured from deep reflection, “would be very pleasant just now. Very pleasant indeed.”

“Yes. But where? I’m not for the Loyalty, in water debauched by face-powder....”

“I thought,” Guy murmured, “that I would swim at the Bath Club this afternoon. I get ideas, quick as you like. But every one else had also been thinking on the same lines, so you can imagine the crowd. A man there told me that the best way to get in was to pick on the fattest man in the water and as he came out slip into the hole he’d made. But I couldn’t even see the water....”

Tall as a tree, his hat swinging lazily in his hand near his thigh, he lounged on....

“Sickening,” he murmured.

Bus after bus, laden with the people from the theatres, thundered past us and up and down the switchback, embracing us with waves of heat so that one’s very skin felt like a sticky garment....

“Yes,” I said.

“London’s all right,” said Guy thoughtfully, “as London....”

“Of course,” I said, “as London....”

The wide sweep of Hyde Park Corner lay ahead of us like a bright handkerchief in the night. The buses trumpeted across it and around it and down it and up it, but one and all looked as snails beside Bus No. 16, which is beyond compare the fastest bus in London, making the voyage from Grosvenor Place to Hamilton Place and back again at a speed to astonish the eye of man.

The din that night makes in closing its doors on London was as though muted by the still, stifling air, and I envied the lofty calm of the Duke of Wellington where he rides for ever amid his pleasaunce of small trees. The lights or Constitution Hill glowed like fire-flies between the leafy valley of the Green Park and the dark gardens of His Majesty the King.

“Trouble about London is,” said Guy thoughtfully, “that people are always expecting it to be Paris or Rome or some other place. Always wanting something else, people are....”

“Anything,” I agreed, “so long as it’s not their own....”

“That’s about it,” Guy murmured. “Sickening....”

We thought about that for a while.

“Guy, one almost might go down to some part of the river. Near Maidenhead. Now. And swim.”

“Haven’t been to Maidenhead,” Guy reflected deeply, “well, it must be ten years. Difficult, isn’t it, to realise it’s almost ten years since that war started? I haven’t been—let me see—not since the night that poor boy got himself drowned....”

“Only an hour or so by car,” I said, “and you can relive your youth.”

A smile flickered across the stern, small profile. “A long time to waste to relive a wasted youth. What about a game of squash instead? Makes us enjoy a drink. Come along.”

And so it came to pass that we bathed quite differently than in the river by playing squash-racquets by electric-light. Guy has a court in the basement of his house, and when he beats you, which is always, he says: “Sickening.”

“Where,” I asked, when we had bathed sufficiently and were enjoying long tumblers of the stuff that such good jokes are made from, whilst from upstairs came the faint notes of a piano and a thing they call a saxophone, for Lady de Travest was “throwing” a small party; “where are we dining to-morrow night? And, now I come to think of it, why this sudden children’s party?”

Guy had happened on Venice playing tennis the other day, when she had said she was feeling perhaps a little depressed. “The heat,” she had said....

“Whereupon,” said Guy, imitating Cherry-Marvel, “it came to me as not a bad idea if we had a party for the child. Real good girl, Venice. Hope that young man of mine will find some one only half so good....”

“Yes,” I said.

“Be a sort of family party, I thought. Hugo and Shirley, Napier and Venice, some clean and wholesome young woman I’ll find for you, while I, thank the Lord, will be odd man out. But as to where we should dine....”

“In this heat....”

“God, yes, too hot for dancing. Just listen to them upstairs! Even the ceiling’s sweating....”

The faint, slow lilt of the tango, pleasantest of all dances but one that is so seldom danced in London because nobody in London can dance it, which seems a pity....

“Might almost dine here,” Guy murmured, “if Moira doesn’t want the place. And we might, now you’ve suggested it, and if it’s still so hot, go and bathe somewhere afterwards instead of sitting up in some stuffy place till all hours. See how we feel about it, and if Venice would enjoy that....”

“Imagine Venice not enjoying that!”

“Well, we’ll see,” said Guy, but more seriously now. “If we do, it will mean no cocktails before dinner, no more than a glass of wine apiece over dinner, and not a thimbleful after. I’m not going to have that river play any more tricks on my friends, I can tell you.”

“And decency, Guy, will be more than served, for there’s no moon and the nights are pitch-black....”

“That’s right,” said Guy thoughtfully, and then, as he saw me to the door, he said thoughtfully: “By the way, you any idea if Venice has ever met Iris?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “But I’m not sure....”

There is never any harm in saying one isn’t sure. One should never be sure, conversationally.

“I just had an idea,” Guy murmured, looking out over the heavy trees of the great square, “that Iris might conceivably be passing through London, as I heard from Eve Chalice to-day that old Portairley was lying near death. The last Portairley, dear, dear.”

“Gerald won’t be sorry to have missed his turn, I’ve no doubt.”

“Poor young devil! But what I was thinking of was, just in case Iris is in London, that we might get her for the third woman to-morrow night....”

“Oh,” I said. “I see....”

“You’d quite like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Oh, I’d like it!”

“Just had an idea,” Guy murmured vaguely, “that she and Venice might meet, if they haven’t already met, and see how they like each other. That is, if Iris is in London. Different types ... you never know. Tell Iris, if by any chance you hear anything of her to-morrow. My idea, tell her....”

“All right, if she should give me a ring. Good-night, Guy.”

“Good-night, boy. Sorry about the squash. Sickening. My idea, tell her.”

As I looked back from that wide corner of Belgrave Square which sweeps suavely up to Hyde Park Corner, I could see the very tall figure of the friend of his friends still framed against the lighted doorway. Across the four open windows above him figures passed slowly.

But what, what in the world, could suddenly have happened to Iris, she whom I had last seen, whom I had last heard, saying she would nevermore return to England, promising ...? And one realised, in wondering that with so deep a bewilderment, how very literally one would take Iris’s word, how completely one had believed in her promise, as one would have believed in any promise made by that Iris March who, as Hilary had reluctantly to confess, did not lie. But now ... nevermore, nevermore!

And as I let myself into my flat, I found myself picturing Guy de Travest and Iris face to face in a place where no people were, Guy and Iris completely alone with each other and God. And it was Guy whom I heard speaking, Guy’s low cold voice telling Iris of certain things, how he had been shocked that dim morning to hear her whisper a name like a kiss, a name that was already pledged to another, and how, when he had long since forgotten her whispering of that name, he had chanced on a night to see her no further than the span of that name apart from him who bore it, and how he couldn’t but think that she was committing the one unpardonable crime of stealing a man from his wife, like a mean little thief in the night. And I could imagine Iris in her tight silver turban, like a star it would be in that lonely place where she faced Guy, and her tiger-tawny curls dancing formally on each small check, and all about her that dazzling brilliance which will suddenly enwrap a very fair woman in a black dress, whilst the blood would be clean emptied from her small grave face as she listened to the judgment of the slender giant with the cold eyes and the quiet, so quiet, savage voice. They were of the same people, Guy and Iris, of the same blood, of the same landscape, and you couldn’t help but wonder how she would face his judgment, she who had for so long outlawed herself, she who so profoundly impressed you as not caring the tremor of an eyelash for the laws of her fathers. Would she, faced by the warrior of conduct, still not care, or would she be ashamed and afraid, would she be as though seeing England, her England, the very soil of her England, turning from her in contempt? I simply could not tell what she would feel, so little did I know of the nature of that shameless, shameful lady. And that was again the thought that came to me the very next night to the one I am telling of, whilst I sat beside her in her car, and we in the van of the children’s party’s raid on the river. A torment of heat lay over England that July night, but that is not why we who sped through the countryside will remember it.

She was driving, and when I dropped a word into the silence of our drive, for Iris and I were at enmity now—for Venice!—a curious smile seemed to devour the white profile, to devour it quite: a very witch of a smile that was, I thought, and more than adequate to meet my word, for the word I had dropped was what the raven quoth: “Nevermore!”

But as she smiled so, she drove that menacing bonnet ever more furiously along the road to Maidenhead, so that corners perished like midgets before our head-lights and Hugo and Shirley, who sat behind, murmured against her driving, saying that it would be bad for their reputation as a happily-married couple to be found dead on the road to Maidenhead. “A friend of mine,” yelled Hugo, “was asked to resign from Buck’s for being found dead on the Maidenhead road....”

But Iris drove faster and ever faster, and suddenly I realised that the rare devouring smile that was like my enemy on her face was new to me who had never before seen Iris smile happily.

II

I have gone too far ahead in the tale of the last March, letting myself be beguiled from a narrator’s duties by the reckless flight of the silver stork through the quiet countryside. But from the night of the children’s party I can only go back by saying that she was wearing that night not her silver turban but a green hat, yea, a green hat, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn; and who but I had bought that green hat for her that very day, she having said to me after luncheon that she needed a green hat pour le sport. I understood that the sport would be under even warmer skies than ours, for in three days’ time, she said, she would be on board ship for Rio di Janeiro, and she did not need to tell me that she would not be voyaging unaccompanied. That was a fell lady for whom I bought a green hat that day.

Nothing easier than a green hat, it appears, can well be bought. Like a flash of summer lightning, that is how a green hat is bought. Says the lady to the shop: “Greeting, sir. I will have a green hat pour le sport, similar in every way to the green hats I have bought here every year since the death of Dr. Crippen.”

“Very good, madam. That will be so much, madam. On your account, madam?”

“Oh, no! My friend will pay. Farewell.”

We spoke very little over the luncheon we took together. It was a stifling day, and what, anyhow, was there to say? Very far from my business was it to speak of broken promises unless spoken to, and very far from her thoughts did any question of broken promises seem. Oh, but that was a fell lady who luncheoned with me on that sweltering day!

We sat picking at green olives and salads and bits of toast, we drank those long iced drinks full of vegetable matter which, apparently, one must drink so that one may feel the heat more poignantly than before, we had nothing in particular to say. Early that morning she had rung me up, a calm, happy voice, demanding from me not the smallest expression of surprise at her presence in London; although, of course, one did make a show of being surprised, for she couldn’t possibly know that I had seen her in that cab, and, I thought, she never would know. The Marches would be let off that, anyhow.

But Iris, over that luncheon, did not appear to remark that I had nothing in particular to say. And, what with the heat and with that, I suppose I grew more and more annoyed, for there isn’t, I suppose, anything in the world more irritating than to be angry with a woman and she not notice it at all. Of course many women will appear not to notice it, but you can see that that is put on; but this Iris just, I’ll swear it, did not notice anything.

Nor, I thought, did she have a very healthy appetite for one not long since recovered from a serious illness, the way she picked at bits of things here and there; but she excused herself to Charles, who came up to protest against the dishonour she did his food, on the ground that she never did eat with her meals.

And then there was a moment when I asked, from a large silence which seemed to her maddeningly natural, I just asked paternally, since it is always easier to be paternal than to be fraternal: “Happy, Iris?”

She was buttering a piece of toast Melba about half an inch square. My question stayed her knife. She stared intently towards the doors of the restaurant for a long second, and then she said, frankly, gravely, calmly, not at all intensely but with unutterable conviction: “Unbearably.” Then she went on buttering her piece of toast Melba, and I could do what I liked about it.

Now I must say this for the Iris who sat with her profile to me that day, that she was a more lovely Iris even than the one I had known. But as to how she was more lovely, that I do not know; nor, if I knew, could I describe it but by using the word “ethereal,” to be immediately followed by the word “unearthly,” for it is a convention not to be broken lightly that a woman who has not long since recovered from a long illness must look “ethereal” and “unearthly.” But she didn’t, I think, look either of those two things. She seemed, I mean to say, more lovely than ever just because she was more earthy. She looked, I fancy I mean, in love—her skin, that is to say, looked as though she who wore it was in love. Yes, her skin did. I fancy it must have been that. A beautiful woman in love and loved seems, in however unaware a moment, to glow with an earthy beauty. When writers say that “Gloria was looking very spiritual that morning” what they really mean—of course, this is all theory—is that Gloria was looking more earthy that morning, that in her eyes there was the afterglow of love’s delight. A beautiful woman neglected or unloved appeals, of course, more to the chivalrous sense in men, for men will stand more of a chance of a sad woman being interested in them; but the very skin of a woman who is coiled in love seems to have a jewel-like quality, and her mind is like a temptation one wants to touch.

“And,” I said, fascinated for some reason by the faint, faint golden down on her arm, “you’re quite well and strong now?”

“Of course,” she said, “not as strong as all that. But strong enough....”

“Oh, dear! Strong enough for what, Iris?”

“Everything,” she said, shrouding a boiled cherry in whipped cream. “Must get fat,” she explained as an afterthought.

Now there were two red camellias painted on the left side of the crown of her hat—women at that time didn’t wear bowler hats, or, as they prefer to call them, cloche hats—which was of the same colour as the sun, of straw, and with a narrow stiff brim. The two red camellias looked just as waxen and artificial as two real red camellias would look, and so it must have cost a power of money, that hat. She would have flown like the wind to Reboux in Paris, saying to herself: “I am in love. I must have a hat,” and so she had bought that hat. As for her dress that stifling day, you would have called it blue if you hadn’t seen that no colour made by hands could compare with the blue of those grave eyes, and it was of that fine texture which is finer than the texture of silk of China, if such a thing can be, and here and there upon its lower parts were worked large white arabesques in what looked to an uninformed eye like wool, but surely it could not be the fleece of the lamb that Iris was wearing that day?

“And did Guy,” she asked, “say anything when you three saw me in that cab last night?”

“Oh!” I said.

She had very suddenly turned to me, so that at last I must look full into the eyes that blazed so incredibly blue from the shadow of the yellow hat ... and I, I could not meet those eyes! I stared instead at the emerald on the third finger of her right hand, and how white and frail that hand looked, so weak, so frail, when you thought of it as belonging to those deep, compelling, unscrupulous eyes.

“Well?” It was her voice, faint, slightly husky; yet it rose above the roar of London and was lost in the clouds that pass over a strange, unknown land.

“Personally,” I said, “I liked your silver turban very much.”

“Dear, that was not a turban!”

“Turban is a pretty word, Iris. And suitable, too....”

“Turkey, polygamy?”

“Just a boyish fancy.”

“And Guy? You haven’t told me?”

“But, Iris, he never, as you know, gives away gratuitous information. He just asked me to ask you to dine to-night, as I have done. ‘My idea, tell her,’ he said. In fact, he repeated that. And you’re coming?”

“Why, of course!” she said absently, so absently.

“But why do you ask about Guy, Iris? I fancied you didn’t care what any one thought.”

Throughout that passage her face had been turned to mine, but only now could I master the courage to raise my eyes from the third finger of her right hand, to see that her face was as though turned to a mask of white stone with two amethysts for eyes. It was a mask, that face, and those were the eyes of a mask. Yet it was far from a mask of concealment, it was the mask of herself, of her very self, of the self that was, in some remote part of her being, really herself. And again I couldn’t help thinking of her as of some one who had strayed into our world from a strange land unknown to us, a land where lived a race of men and women who were calmly awaiting their inheritance of our world when we should have annihilated one another in our endless squabbles about honour, morality, nationality. Strong were the people of that land, stronger than the gold they despised but used, deterred by not qualm nor fear, strong and undefeatable. And just like that was the white mask of this beautiful woman, strong and undefeatable. It knew not truth nor lying, not honour nor dishonour, not loyalty nor treachery, not good nor evil: it was profoundly itself, a mask of the morning of this world when men needed not to confuse their minds with laws with which to confuse their neighbours, a mask of the evening of this world when men shall have at last made passions their servants and can enter into their full inheritance....

“I don’t,” she said at last from a remote distance, the amethysts absorbed in the air between us. “I don’t.” And then she smiled faintly, but even so much was enough to change the amethysts into eyes. “I don’t,” she said very huskily. “But I just asked....”

“Iris,” I said, my mind charged with that mask, “you have us all at a great disadvantage....”

Slowly, thoughtfully, she made a circle of air with a small golden tube that had a crimson tongue, and then she passed the golden tube through the circle’s heart. She was thinking.