The Story of Ivy · Chapter 3 (1/2)

III

“Do look at Mrs. Lexton! Isn’t she absolutely lovely, Miles?”

“Yes, Bella⁠—and as good as she is pretty, I really do believe,” was the half-joking answer.

Look at her? Rushworth had done very little else since Ivy had come out of her stateroom this morning.

The two speakers were standing on the deck of the Dark Lady, and three yards away Ivy Lexton, lying back in a deck-chair, was talking animatedly to one of her fellow-guests, a good-looking young man named Quirk, who after having done well in the war, had been very nearly down and out by 1921, when he had been found and succoured by Rushworth. He now had his own plane, his air-taxi as he called it, and, thanks again to Rushworth, he never lacked good customers.

It was true that Mrs. Lexton looked lovely today. All the lovelier because she was thoroughly enjoying her new role, that of a perfectly turned out yachtswoman.

But Miles Rushworth had already told himself more than once, in the last hour, that he would be cool, detached, impartial, when considering this special guest.

“I suppose you couldn’t say a word to her, just pointing out that she’s quite pretty enough to do without lipstick and rouge? I wish you’d tell her they don’t look, somehow, the right thing on a yacht.”

Bella Dale smiled and shook her head. “If you want me to make friends with her, that would be a very poor beginning⁠—”

He said suddenly, “I am afraid Lady Dale doesn’t care for Mrs. Lexton?”

The colour deepened in his companion’s cheeks, and she looked embarrassed.

“Mother hasn’t had much of a chance of talking to her yet.”

Bella Dale was uncomfortably aware that her mother had taken an instant dislike to Ivy Lexton on the evening they had first met at the Savoy; and she knew that Lady Dale’s feeling had increased, rather than lessened, since the Lextons had joined Miles Rushworth’s yacht, for she had exclaimed to her daughter in the privacy of their stateroom: “It’s foolish to be too good-natured, Bella. That young woman is a regular little minx!”

But Bella Dale, at this time of her life, saw everything through Miles Rushworth’s eyes. She liked what he liked, admired what he admired, and at any rate tried to believe good what he believed good. He had asked her earnestly to make friends with Mrs. Lexton, and he had told her something of the struggle the poor, pretty, little thing had gone through. Also he had let her see how great was his contempt for Ivy’s worthless, extravagant, idle husband.⁠ ⁠…

Rushworth had always had from childhood a passion for the sea. His had been an old-fashioned home, and everything had been done by his parents to promote what they thought was for his happiness from the day he was born; but not once had he been asked what he wished to do in life. His path had been marked out for him almost, it may be said, before his birth. His father would have been surprised as well as dismayed to learn that, both as a child and as a youth, his great wish had been to enter the Navy. During the war he had given to naval charities what would have crippled a lesser fortune than his own.

His fine yacht was his one personal extravagance, and on the Dark Lady he spent by far the happiest hours of his life. But he had deliberately so arranged the accommodation that it was impossible for him to have a really big party aboard. Eight to ten, including himself, was his limit, and the same people were generally asked by him each year. Lady Dale and her daughter, together with an old-fashioned couple belonging to a rather older generation than himself, who looked forward the whole year through to this August yachting fortnight, always came. To these he had added this summer the flying man, the latter’s bride, and the Lextons.

Acting as hostess was a middle-aged spinster cousin of his mother’s, who, like himself, had a passion for the sea. Charlotte Chattle was a pleasant woman of the world, speaking both French and Italian well, and clever in organising expeditions for those of his guests who cared for land jaunts. But the only people who counted in Rushworth’s mind on this summer cruise were Lady Dale and her daughter, and Ivy Lexton and Ivy Lexton’s husband.

Ivy’s half-presentiment at the Savoy had been perhaps a case of thought transference, for Miles Rushworth, just about that time, had been thinking seriously of marrying Bella Dale. Indeed, had that meeting with the Lextons not taken place, he would almost certainly have been engaged by now to Bella, and he still so far deceived himself as to wish that the girl he thought he loved, and whom he intended to become Mrs. Miles Rushworth, should make friends with Ivy Lexton.

Bella Dale had done her best in the last three days to fall in with his wishes, but she found it difficult to get further than a mild acquaintanceship with Miles Rushworth’s beautiful guest. She knew nothing of the night club, dancing, racing life, which was all that both the Lextons knew and thought worth living for. And Ivy, on her side, was entirely ignorant of, and would have despised, had she known of them, the manifold social and general interests which filled the life of even so quiet a girl as Bella Dale. Also Bella, who was no fool, realised with some discomfort that Mrs. Lexton had very quickly become aware that Lady Dale did not like or approve of her.

And Ivy herself? Ivy was counting the hours⁠—to her intense relief they had now become hours instead of days⁠—to the time when Lady Dale and her daughter would leave the yacht at Dieppe.

During the three weeks that had elapsed since their memorable meeting at the Savoy, Ivy Lexton and Miles Rushworth had been constantly together. It had all been very much above board⁠—indeed, quite as often as not, Jervis Lexton had been of the company when the two lunched or dined, went to the play, or, pleasanter still, motored down to Ranelagh to spend an enchanting evening.

But Rushworth had a definite philosophy of life. To pursue a woman who, whatever the undercurrents to her life might be, appeared happily married, would have seemed to him a despicable, as well as a cruel and unmanly thing to do. Also, he prided himself on being able, when he chose to do so, to resist temptation, and he felt convinced he could handle what might become a delicate situation not only with sense, but even with comfort to himself. This was made the easier to him because he put Ivy Lexton on a pedestal. God alone knew how he idealised her, how completely he believed her soul matched her delicately perfect, ethereal-looking body.

While Ivy was chatting gaily to her companion, she was yet almost painfully aware of the two who stood talking together in so earnest and intimate a way. She was feeling what she had never felt in her life of twenty-six years: that is, bitterly, angrily jealous of a girl whom she thought stupid, dull, and unattractive.

Miles Rushworth’s attitude to herself disconcerted her. She could not, to use her own jargon, get the hang of him. It was so strange, in a sense so disturbing, that he never made love to her. Then, now and again, she would remember Mrs. Thrawn, and Mrs. Thrawn’s predictions.

She had followed the fortune-teller’s advice with regard to Roger Gretorex. She had insisted that it would be better for them both neither to see nor to write to each other till she came back to London in September; and he had had perforce to agree to her conditions.

The yacht made Dieppe the next morning, and at breakfast there rose a discussion as to how the party could spend their time on shore to the best advantage. Rushworth at once observed that he would not be able to take part in any expedition ashore. He had received important business telegrams, and he had a number of letters to dictate to a stenographer whose services he had already secured.

Miss Chattle, who knew he would value a quiet working day, suggested a motor expedition to a celebrated shrine a hundred kilometres inland from Dieppe. She declared that if they started at once they could be back in comfortable time for dinner.

And then it was that Ivy, as in a lightning flash, made up her mind as to how she would spend today.

“I get so tired motoring, so I’d rather stay behind.” She turned to her host, “While you’re doing your work, I can take a walk in the town. Though I’ve been to Paris two or three times, I’ve never been anywhere else in France.”

“That’s a good idea! We might meet at the Hotel Royal about one o’clock, and have lunch together.”

Half an hour later Miss Chattle shepherded the rest of the party into two roomy cars, while Rushworth escorted Lady Dale and her daughter on to the quay, where a carriage was waiting for them.

Lady Dale went forward to speak to the driver, and Rushworth turned to the girl he still intended should be his wife.

“If we don’t meet again before the end of September, I do want just to say one thing to you, Bella.”

He spoke in so peculiar, and in so very earnest, a tone, that Bella’s heart began to beat.

“What is it you want to say?” she asked, her voice sinking almost to a whisper.

“I’ve said it before, and now I want to say it again⁠—”

Bella looked at him fixedly. Thank God, she hadn’t betrayed herself. But what was this he was saying?

“I do want you to make real friends with Mrs. Lexton⁠—I mean, of course, after you and Lady Dale are back at Hampton Court, when Jervis Lexton will have begun work in my London office. His wife, poor little soul, hasn’t any real friends, from what I can make out.”

“Yet she seems to know a good many people, Miles. When we were looking through those picture papers yesterday, she seemed to know almost everyone who had been snapshotted at Goodwood!”

“I was thinking of real friends⁠—not of those stupid gadabouts who are here, there, and everywhere,” he said with a touch of irritation.

And then they heard Lady Dale’s voice.

“I think we ought to be off, Bella. It’s nearly half-past ten, and you know they lunch early at the château.”

Rushworth wrung Bella’s hand. “I’m sorry you’ve had to leave the yacht so soon.”

But his voice had become perceptibly colder. He was disappointed, even a little hurt. He had always thought his friend Bella not only kind, but full of sympathy and understanding. Yet she had spoken of his new friend with a curious lack even of liking, let alone sympathy.

When Miles Rushworth came back from seeing the Dales off, he found Ivy Lexton sitting on the now deserted deck. There was a pile of newspapers on the little table which had been brought up close to her deck-chair, and she was pretending to read the Paris New York Herald. Convinced that Miles Rushworth intended to be with her the whole of the long sunny morning, she was not only surprised, but also very disappointed, when he said cheerfully:

“Well, lovely lady, I’ve a hard mornin’s work before me, for there’s a whole pile of letters and telegrams waiting to be answered. Cook’s man has found me an excellent shorthand writer, so I hope to be through in a couple of hours.”

Her face suddenly became overcast, and he felt tempted, for a moment, to throw aside his work. But he resisted the temptation.

“Would you rather laze about here or take a walk and meet me at the Royal?”

“I’ll go into the town. There are one or two little things I want to buy. What time shall I be at the hotel?”

He hadn’t meant to meet her till one o’clock. But for once the old Adam triumphed.

“Let me see? It’s half-past ten now, let’s meet at twelve-thirty. We’ll have an early French lunch, and then we’ll go for a motor drive, or do anything else that you feel like doing. From what I can make out, the others can’t be back till seven, if then.”

Ivy waited till she had seen him disappear into the stateroom which was the one retreat on the yacht where Rushworth never asked any of his guests to join him, and about which they all felt a certain curiosity. Then she put down the paper she still held in her hand, and, closing her eyes, she began to think.

What manner of man was this new friend of hers? He must “like” her surely? “Like” was the ambiguous term Ivy Lexton used to herself when she meant something very different from “liking.” Yet he had never said to her the sort of thing that the men she met almost always did say, and on the shortest acquaintance. Stranger still, he had never asked anything of her in exchange for what had become considerable and frequent benefactions. True, Rushworth’s gifts had almost always been useful gifts. He had never, so to speak, “said it with flowers.” That had puzzled her a little, made her sometimes wonder as to what his real feelings could be. Never once⁠—she had made a note of it in her own mind⁠—had he mentioned Bella Dale during the three weeks when they had been so much together in London.

So it had been a disagreeable shock to find Lady Dale and her daughter already established on the yacht, and on the happiest terms of old friendship with everyone on board. Again and again during the week’s cruise, Ivy had asked herself anxiously whether Miles Rushworth could really “like” such a dowdy, matter-of-fact girl as was Miss Dale? Yet now and again when she saw them together, talking in an intimate, happy way, and when she heard them alluding to events which had happened long before she knew Rushworth, there would come over her a tremor of icy fear, for well she knew that, from her point of view, a man friend married was a man friend marred.

It was to her a new experience to be in close touch with such a real worker as was Miles Rushworth. There was nothing in common between him and the idle, often vicious, and for the most part mindless young men who drifted in and out of the spendthrift world in which she and Jervis had both been so popular as long as their money had lasted.

She got up at last, and went into her luxurious stateroom to fetch a parasol. It was a charming costly trifle, matching the blue coat and skirt she was wearing, but large enough to shelter her face from the sun. Her quaint little sailor hat, a throwback to a mode of long ago, while very becoming, was quite useless from that point of view.

She walked slowly along the deck, hoping against hope that Rushworth would see her and, leaving his work, join her; but as she passed his stateroom she heard his voice dictating.

The French of all ages and both sexes are lovers of beauty, so in a small way Ivy Lexton’s progress through the picturesque old town of Dieppe was a triumphal progress. Most of the people she passed turned and looked after her with unaffected admiration and one man⁠—she felt instinctively that he was some important person⁠—followed her for quite a long way. But it was very hot, and in time she grew weary of the crowded streets. Taking as her guides a couple who were carrying their bathing costumes and towels, she went after them up a shady byway and so through the old gateway leading to the wide lawns along the seafront, which are the great charm of Dieppe.

What an amusing, lively, delightful place! Against the deep blue sky rose the white Casino, and the parking place was crowded with serried rows of motors. Along the front groups of Frenchwomen, for the most part wearing white coats and skirts, strolled about with their attendant cavaliers.

Her spirits bounded up; she felt herself to be once more what she had not felt herself to be at all on Rushworth’s yacht, in her own natural atmosphere again. And, to add to her satisfaction, she soon spied out the Hotel Royal, brilliant with flowers and blue and white sun-blinds.

The Angelus chimes rang out from one of the old churches, and the gay crowd began to move slowly towards the villas and hotels which form the seafront side of the incongruously-named Boulevard de Verdun.

Ivy walked into the cool hall of the hotel, and sat down in an easy chair with a sigh of pleasure.