IX
Talking of Hats
I
That was on the fifteenth afternoon of February, as I remember well.
Now those who are sensitive to any extreme condition of our climate will not have forgotten that towards the end of July of the year 1923 there was a week or ten days when the heat in London was so oppressive that frequent complaints were made at the confectioners and Soda Fountains on the ground that their ices were warm; nor were the nights less uncomfortable—“uncomfortable,” that is, to quote from a gentleman who wrote to The Times about it, “in a country so unprepared for any extreme of temperature that, if I do not seem too fanciful, on a cold winter’s day there is nothing warm but the drinking-water and on a hot summer’s day nothing cool but the sun.” Of course he did seem too fanciful, but, however that may be, the nights were certainly stifling, and one in particular I remember very well.
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 tomorrow 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 “Bedtime” 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 everyone 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 forever amid his pleasaunce of small trees. The lights or Constitution Hill glowed like fireflies 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 tomorrow 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 someone 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 today 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 tomorrow 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 tomorrow. 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 headlights 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 tonight, 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 anyone 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 someone 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.