The Green Hat · IV · Chapter 4 2 (2/2)

There was a group of tall young men at the entrance, maybe waiting for their women from the Cloakroom, maybe waiting for sirens to come to them from the night, maybe waiting for taxicabs, maybe only waiting for the next minute, as young men will. Admirably formal they looked, admirably toned to the dress-coats of Davies, the trousers of Anderson and Sheppard, the hats of Lock, the waistcoats of Hawes and Curtis, the ties of Budd. Handkerchiefs by Edouard and Butler. The glory to God. They looked furtively at Iris in the way that decent men will at a woman who is said to have had lovers, like cows at a bull. One of them said gloomily: “Might go to the Albert Hall Ball.”

Pall Mall seemed wrought of stately marble palaces, and Iris said that the reason why so many English people seemed to prefer Paris to London was that English people saw Paris mostly at night, while if they could see enough of London by night they would never leave it. “And the people!” she said. “All these years I’ve spent abroad, and never met any people so good, so decent, as the English. Couldn’t you sometimes kill people for the quality of their admiration? Oh, I’ve committed so many murders in foreign streets.⁠ ⁠…”

“But, if you like England⁠ ⁠… why are you going away? You’re free.⁠ ⁠…”

“Ah,” she mocked, and, as we walked, a hand darted out from her white cloak and touched my sleeve, and startled me very much. “Wait till you’re so free that you just daren’t do what you like. Wait till you’re so free that you can be here one minute and there another. Wait till you’re so free that you can see the four walls of your freedom and the iron-barred door that will let you out into the open air of slavery, if only there was someone to open it. Ah, yes, freedom.⁠ ⁠…”

Then up the street of ghostly dandies we flew behind the silver stork, and the wind rushed down from Hampstead Heath and the wind ran out of Jermyn Street and jumped like a drunken man on the tawny cornstalks that were her hair, and waved them about and danced with them. But not she to notice, she who seemed to have a great talent for just not noticing things! She was silent, serious, intent. The light of an arc-lamp kissed the long slender legs into silver.

Once she turned to me, smiled, and looked away again. I wondered if she meant me to see that our friendship was in that smile. I hated her, I think, because she made me feel so incapable, unwise. As the stork, with scarcely a rustle of its wings, flew towards the Christian Science Chapel at the head of Half-Moon Street, she said: “I’m tired. All day seeing lawyers and trustees, and then taking sweet old Eve all round and round Selfridge’s because she had never been there before and someone had told her she could find everything she wanted there. And she was quite upset at being unfaithful to Harrod’s.⁠ ⁠… And Gerald! Oh, but why couldn’t they let Gerald alone! Just because, I suppose, the Marches are never let off anything.⁠ ⁠…”

“Here we are,” I said, and she pulled up beneath the lamp by The Leather Butler in East Chapel Street. From the footboard a lane of low houses and shops stretched in a vague, squalid line towards the open Market Place at one end and the darkness of the mews at the other; somehow like an etching in a clouded light by an uncertain hand. Bits of newspapers and torn placards, the nameless odours of yesterday’s economies. The wind that came from Hampstead Heath could find no way into Shepherd’s Market, and it lay still as a tramp sleeping. Cats watched us intently from the middle distance, and a striped cat leapt with a scream from the shadow of the door of my old house. Gerald’s light was on. “What’s that mean?” Iris whispered. She seemed to be frightened, and she said sharply: “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“I was just thinking,” I told her, “that if one could judge by appearances, which of course one must never do, in that white cloak in this mean lane you look as nearly an angel as this world could ever see.”

“Don’t let’s mock the angels. What does it mean, Gerald’s light being on?”

“Only what it has always meant, that I must turn it out.”

“Ah, you’ve been very good to Gerald.⁠ ⁠…”

And I am glad that, just then, I said that I was very fond of Gerald.

Then we were on the narrow landing of my old flat, in the darkness. The musty stillness of that little old house brought six years of nights into my mind, and I wondered how people ever regretted their first youth, those intolerable uncertainties and enthusiasms that stare at you from the dead past like condemned gargoyles. The incapability of youth goes on long enough, Heaven knows, if not so long as the savagery of childishness. In the darkness I could feel the soft ermine of her cloak against me, and that faint dry scent whose name I shall now never know. She was very, very still, and I could not even hear her breathing.

“It is very kind of you to come with me,” she said suddenly, seriously. We were very still on that landing, and I drew back my arm where it touched her cloak. It was very soft, that cloak. “I have thought of you, and decided that if you ever thought of me you had a right to think with dislike.⁠ ⁠…” She was talking smoothly, calmly, when suddenly her voice completely broke, into little bits. “Oh!” she whispered. I was silent. She said quickly: “To me there’s something terribly indecent about humanity, all humanity. It’s as though, in the whole lovely universe, humanity was cooped in this musty little house, talking vaguely of dislike, eternally talking of like and dislike, love and unlove, of doings and undoings, purposeless yet striving and savage. The other night I was motoring alone from Paris to Calais, and it seemed to me that no law was strong enough, no crime was big enough, not even disloyalty, to stop us, when we had the chance of rising above the beastly limitation of living as we were born to live. Because we humans are not born to live, we are born to die.⁠ ⁠…”

“Something has happened to you tonight,” I said. She was a faint white shape in the darkness, and it seemed to me that that was as much of her as I should ever see; and I was right.

“No, nothing at all. Just a dream. But, oh, failing the dream, how I would like a child!”

“A dream-child!”

“Ah, I’ve had those, a many! No, a real one. To be playmates with.⁠ ⁠…”

I said: “I will go up first tonight and see how Gerald is. Will you wait here?”

“I’m tired and frightened,” she said faintly. “Don’t be long.”

I don’t think I stayed up there more than a few seconds. I don’t know. I switched out the light, and as I went down the dark narrow stairs I did not strike a match.

“Well?” she whispered from the darkness.

I don’t know what I said. I suppose I must have said that he was in the same state as when she had seen him before. Then I pretended I had no matches left, and said I had better go down first while she held on to my shoulder. “Then if you fall, I’ll fall,” she complained, but I said I would not fall.

Stair by stair we slowly descended in the darkness. I wanted particularly to see Guy. There were certain things to be done, I supposed. My mind was vacant as a plate on which was drawn a confused picture that would, on looking closely, mean something horrible. There had been a stain on the wall, a great jagged dripping stain, and bits of hair sticking to it.

“Oh, God, this drink!” she said frantically; then almost sobbed: “What’s that!” But it was only the telephone-bell from the hall downstairs, queerly strident and unrestrained in that still, musty little house. Brrr! Brrr! Brrr!⁠ ⁠… “I never knew a telephone could be so shrill! Will it be someone for Gerald?”

“It will ring forever if I don’t answer it,” I said, opening the door into the lane. “I’ll follow you to the car.” I hoped it was Guy ringing up on the chance of catching us.

“Well?” his cold murmur came through the night. He said he would meet me at my door in ten minutes’ time. “What are you doing about Iris?” he asked me and I think I said: “Nothing. What can I do?”

Iris was waiting by her car under the lamp. The car was like a great yellow beast with shining scales, and Iris, tall and gentle and white, the lovely princess of the tale who has enslaved the beast. Far above them towered the pile of Sunderland House, enchanted almost into dignity by the darkness. She looked at me gravely as I came, she seemed to crouch like a tired fairy into her white cloak.

“You look very white,” she said.

“Now, Lady Pynte!” I made to mock her, and I suppose we laughed. Then she was at the wheel, sunk into the low seat, staring up at the darkness of the faint London stars. “I’m tired,” she said again, and again I thought, what could I do? Then she did something to the dashboard with her left hand, and the engine hummed. I was on the curb, above her. Nearby a policeman was flashing his lamp on a door. I supposed one told the police.⁠ ⁠…

“Will you see Gerald in the morning?” the slightly husky voice just reached me. “And tell him to follow me to Paris? I shall be at number⁠—Avenue du Bois for a week or so, and then⁠ ⁠… Goodbye,” she said sharply, as though impatient with herself. “Goodbye, dear. You’ve been very kind⁠—to the twin Marches. Goodbye⁠ ⁠… perhaps for a long time. You have your work in England, and I’m the slave of freedom. Goodbye, my friend.”

I could not tell her just then. She lay aslant in the driving seat, and her tawny curls flamed in the light, and she looked sad and tired. I could not tell her, and as she took her hand from mine the great car leapt down the fat little slope of East Chapel Street to the end, turned in a blaze of light and colour, rushed up the parallel little street to Curzon Street.

I was at the corner where I had last seen Gerald putting his shoulder against the saloon-door of The Leather Butler; and as Iris’s car turned into Curzon Street a two-seater passed me swiftly, going the same way. I thought I heard a cry of “Iris!” above the rustle of the two engines, and I thought I heard Iris’s surprised voice, and the rear-lights of the two cars seemed to draw together, but I was not sure.

I crossed towards Queen Street, sure only that I wished to see Guy. From Jolley’s corner I saw, far up, two red rear-lights twisting into South Audley Street, and then, from afar, came the scream of a Klaxon, the growl of a horn. I wondered who was in the two-seater, but at that moment the tall figure of Guy came towards me from my door, where a taxi had just dropped him. “Sorry,” he murmured. “Poor young devil. Only hope the other side won’t disappoint him as much.”

“I couldn’t tell her,” I said.

Guy smoked thoughtfully, looking over my head. “I’ll tell her,” he said, “in the morning. Had an idea he might blow his brains out.”