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.