The Green Hat · VI · Chapter 6 4 (1/2)

IV

The burning eyes of the Renault made the grim Boulevard Pierre Abel almost hospitable. That was a conscientious man, Conrad Masters. How glad I was of him at that moment! What had he said about Iris? something about his having known her for years, something about “that year at Deauville⁠ ⁠… terrible for her.” That would mean, then, that Masters had been there during the Boy Fenwick tragedy. Iris, poor Iris! Such punishments⁠ ⁠… for what crimes? What crimes deserved such punishments? Iris, poor Iris! But she wouldn’t mind dying, not she. That was the trouble, Masters had said. But no doubt she knew best.⁠ ⁠…

The Paradis prison was a pit of blackness in the night. The dim lights behind the iron-barred windows were out, and it was impossible not to wonder if they slept up there in their iron cages, the wicked, the foolish, the betrayed. Perhaps the nightingale in its cage did not care. Perhaps those up there did not care, and slept like angels. But the wrongly accused would not sleep, that was certain. Does innocence wrongly-accused profit anyone except a very wise man or a very good man, except a man who cares nothing for the opinion of this world or one who cares only for the love of the next? I said to the taxi-driver: “Hell can know no torment like the agony of an innocent in a cage,” and when he had carefully examined his tip he agreed with me.

Gently as I could, I rang the bell, praying that the old woman would not be angry with me.

“Aha!” she chuckled. “Aha! Monsieur-toujours-de-l’audace! Mais entrez, monsieur, entrez! The doctor is just this moment arrived. Truly he is a good man, this Dr. Mastaire⁠—but our French doctors, you should see! They come for a moment, they go, and she lives or she dies, what do they care as long as they are paid? But this English doctor, he does not know how to make money easily. Madame his wife was this moment telephoning that he should go home quickly, for they are awaiting him for le bridge. Ah, cet bridge, bridge, bridge!”

“But you see how anxious I am! Have you heard anything since I last saw you?”

“To have heard nothing, young man, is to have heard good news. But sit down, the doctor himself will tell you in one moment⁠—” That demoniac bell! It clanged through the place. Perhaps of all the nations in the world the French alone are capable of fixing the loudest possible bell to a nursing-home. The fat old woman grinned vindictively at me. We had been enemies, now we were allies against the intruder. “Bah!” she said, and opened the door. From where I stood I could not see who was without, but I could hear a voice: low, hesitating, in very correct French, in Foreign Office French.⁠ ⁠…

“Napier!”⁠ ⁠…

We stared at each other in the most profound surprise and confusion. Napier, favourite of the gods, shy, sensitive, fine⁠ ⁠… just here, just now, facing me in the obscure silence of the Paris night!

“This is funny,” Napier made to smile. “What?”

Napier Harpenden and I had known each other well, as “well” goes, for years, but never before had we been alone together. But once, some years ago, I had seen him in a curious moment. Late one night I was walking down a villainous alley near the East India Docks when through a lighted window I was astonished to see Napier’s white, thin, fine face and those dark fevered eyes. He was talking earnestly to an old man and a very pretty young girl who was crying, and I felt ashamed to have seen him, for that is how Napier affected one, you were hurt at the idea of hurting him. I had wondered often what he could have been doing there, what secret good work he was at. He was a strange, secret, saintly youth, a favourite of the gods who never once relied on the favouritism of gods or men.⁠ ⁠…

He still stood outside, a serious slack shape in a tweed overcoat. He masked, behind that faint, deprecating smile of his, more than the mere confusion of surprise. He would very much rather it had not been me he had met just there. Napier and I were friends only because all our friends were mutual. We hadn’t ever found, tried to find, any common ground for friendship. Sincerely, I was very sorry to be there. Napier had that effect on one.

“Venice is waiting in the taxi,” he said. Whenever Napier and I met he would instantly speak of Venice. This was to show me that he knew Venice and I were great friends and that, if he and I weren’t great friends, that must somehow be his fault. How could you help liking a man like that? The courtesy of that favourite of the gods went so much deeper than anyone else’s: let it one day go a little deeper, and you felt that it might have gone a little too deep, down, down to self-destruction.

I said I had arrived in Paris only that afternoon, and had heard, by chance, that Mrs. Storm was ill. My presence there seemed, you can see, to require a more definite explanation than any he might think fit to give me. One felt, with Napier, uncomfortably familiar to be asking after Iris in this obscure place at this late hour. He and Iris had been “kids.” Then I thought, comically, of the two scrawled names on the grubby slip of paper. Well, I seemed to have rights too. More rights than Napier, really. Conrad Masters had no instructions to be nice to Napier. Poor Napier.⁠ ⁠…

“But,” he said, slowly, slowly, “surely she’s better by now? I only just called on the off-chance⁠ ⁠… really wanted air after the train journey more than anything else. Surely⁠ ⁠… what?”

I stared at him. What to say? You see, the sudden, white way he was staring at me made me feel terribly canny of anything I might say. Besides, one treated Napier differently.

“Better?” I repeated. “Well.⁠ ⁠…”

“But, look here,” he said, protested.⁠ ⁠… It was dark, there between the dim lodge and the night. Why on earth didn’t the man come in? “Venice and I are going south tomorrow, and I just thought I’d inquire⁠—but, look here, I never dreamt that she.⁠ ⁠…”

I at last grasped the fact that he had known she was ill. He was the only one among us who had known she was ill. One kid had known that the other kid was ill⁠ ⁠… and had waited until, on his way south, he could conveniently come round and inquire. Well!

“You had better come in, hadn’t you?” I said. I simply couldn’t say slap-out that Iris was ill nearly to death. You couldn’t say things like that to those dark, troubled eyes. You protected Napier from your own impulses, always. A favourite not of the gods alone.⁠ ⁠…

But he still stood there in the darkness, staring at me very strangely and scowling in that funny, attractive way he had. Whenever I think of Napier I can see that Napier scowl and I can hear that involuntary “what?” he would tack on to questions.

“Look here, something’s the matter.” His voice trembled absurdly.⁠ ⁠… “Something serious. What?”

“She’s very ill,” I think I said.

“Very!” he snapped. “What? You mean⁠ ⁠… really ill? What?”

“I think so,” I said. “Yes.”

I looked into the room, avoiding those eyes. The lay sister, a pair of horn spectacles on her nose, and without a sign of interest in us, was mending the heel of a black woollen stocking, one end of which lay coiled in a black tin box. I couldn’t somehow look at Napier just then. That, you see, was the first hint I had of the thing, and though it was no more than a hint, it tore at one. The look in Napier’s eyes, I mean. The man’s heart was in his eyes.⁠ ⁠…

“Look here,” he said sharply, “I don’t understand this. What? I mean, I’d no idea it was.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t know anything,” I said, “except just that she’s ill.” We stared at each other.

“As ill,” I said, “as can be.”

“Oh,” he said. His eyes on me, not seeing me, he pushed past me through the doorway. And when I saw his face again, I was appalled. It was lost, abandoned, terribly unaware of everything but fear, it was enchanted by fear. He simply didn’t care but about one thing.⁠ ⁠…

“Haven’t seen her,” he said, and scowled at me. Not that he had, at that moment, the faintest idea who I was.

“Here, a cigarette,” I said.

He stared at it in his fingers. He crushed it.⁠ ⁠…

“Haven’t seen her for nearly a year,” he said in a rush, and stopped abruptly, seemed to realise me, scowled. “I say, what is it? Pneumonia or something? What?”

I fumbled. I wasn’t, I said, certain. Had only seen the doctor for a moment. Something inside, I thought, had gone wrong.⁠ ⁠…

I was immensely lost in all this. He had known she was ill⁠—but not seriously ill, nor of what! I grabbed at one certain point of behaviour for myself. One had to. I was, anyhow, going to make no mischief. Like Guy, I would give no “gratuitous information” of any sort. For better or for worse, I wouldn’t. News of septic poisoning was obviously not for Napier, not for anyone⁠—except for the two names on the grubby slip of paper. This septic poisoning seemed to mean only one of two things, a child or not a child. That was most utterly Iris’s business. Iris the desirous⁠—for a child. “To be playmates with.” And I wondered, just then, if it had been another Hector-not-so-proud. “Like to have a winner once.⁠ ⁠…” I kept on hearing that slightly husky voice saying little things.

“What I mean to say is,” Napier said, with sudden astounding calm, “that this is perfectly idiotic. What? You see, I hadn’t the faintest idea.⁠ ⁠…”

But when, deceived by the calm of his voice, I looked at him, I found it better to look away again at the frowsty old lay-sister sewing away at her stocking. It was mean to look at him, he was too naked. I realised how masked we always are, how this is a world of masked men, how we are masked all day long, even on the most trivial occasions. Then I felt his hands suddenly tight around my arm. And tighter. Now what?

“I’m awfully sorry,” I said idiotically.

“Look here⁠—I say, for God’s sake! You see, I don’t understand. What? She wrote to me weeks ago that she was going to be just slightly ill, and now.⁠ ⁠…”

The fingers dropped from my arm. “Hell!” he muttered. “Oh, hell! What?” He hadn’t the faintest idea of what he was saying. I wished to God he had, I didn’t want to listen to him, I hated listening to him, it was like spying on the man. Spying on Tristram wandering in the forest raving with love for Yseult. But what could I do? How leave him like this? How let him return to Venice like this? Good Lord, and Venice waiting in the taxi! If she saw him like this.⁠ ⁠… Good Lord, was the man mad to have brought Venice with him! Here, to see Iris! The misty impulses of a man of honour⁠ ⁠… do nothing behind his wife’s back. After, you know, having done everything. But⁠ ⁠… Good Lord, if Venice grew tired of waiting in the taxi and came and found Napier like this, like a demented knight in a story! Venice of the lion’s cub head, the mischievous, loyal eyes, dear Venice! adoring and adorable Venice! Napier’s wife.⁠ ⁠…

And, at that moment, I saw Venice again at the Loyalty, that night ten months ago, happily waiting for Napier, whose wife she would be in three days. “Darling, darling, darling!” That night of Gerald’s death! And then for the first time I remembered the cry of “Iris!” in the night, and the two red rear-lights swerving into South Audley Street, and I understood how it was that Iris in her letter had called me her “destroyer”⁠ ⁠… her “destroyer” with love, for no lover could have passed her way that night had I told her about Gerald. And Napier had passed her way, Napier whom she had seen that night for the first time in many years, Napier her ancient friend. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.⁠ ⁠…” And the two roads had come together in the darkness of that night, in the darkness of cruelly blind chance, and now they had come together again in the darkness of this night, while Venice waited outside.⁠ ⁠…

I couldn’t, you can see, not do anything just then. I couldn’t let this love-lost man be found by Venice in her husband’s shoes. Napier and Venice, the happy lovers.⁠ ⁠… I was on Venice’s side. For Venice! Always, I was for Venice. One likes so few people, but one likes those few very, very much. This love-lost man must be woken up, must behave. Of course he must behave! Venice, for Venice! How dared he have done this to Venice? Marrying her on the third day from that night.⁠ ⁠…

I asked him where he was staying, and when he said “the Meurice,” I told him that if he would go now I could ring him up when I had seen the doctor. “It’s no good waiting here,” I said. “I know the doctor.”

He stared at me with the immense, the devastating, dignity of the utterly careless. I bitterly wanted to wake him up, to make him see the thing he had done, the beastly thing. For Venice! “It’s no good,” I said cruelly, “keeping Venice waiting forever.⁠ ⁠…”

He scowled at me, or at something just behind my shoulder. “I’m going to see Iris,” he said.

It was quite definite, he was going to see Iris. It would probably, I supposed, do Iris all the good in the world to see Napier on this critical night. Napier and Iris. It might make her care whether she lived or died⁠ ⁠… but why shouldn’t she die? Venice would condemn her to die. Iris was the foe. Why shouldn’t she die? You can’t do things like that, and not die. Stealing like a little thief into the garden of Venice, and stealing away like a little thief⁠ ⁠… to bear Napier’s child, unknown to Napier.⁠ ⁠…

“Hell!” he muttered. I stared at him, at those burning, broken eyes.

“Hell!” he said. “Oh, God, what hell! What? If you only knew.⁠ ⁠…”

“I don’t want to know,” I snapped. Well, did one want to know? But he didn’t hear, didn’t care, didn’t see. Being with him, you can see, was exactly like eavesdropping. Why, if Venice came in and saw this love-lost man⁠ ⁠… her Napier, her darling, like this, with burning broken eyes. But there are some things that can’t happen! You couldn’t take Napier from Venice. And how quickly, how poignantly, Venice, if she saw him like this, would know the difference between his easy, smiling love for her and this⁠ ⁠… damnable madness.

But in the dark taxi she wouldn’t see his face, and I was just about to try again to get him away when he said fiercely: “It’s not as though I don’t know anything about it. Or do you think Iris is a liar? What?”

“Napier, you really must pull yourself together⁠—”

“No, but anyone would think I was a most fearful cad. What?”

And he scowled, in that Napier way of his that made one want to forgive him everything. “I mean, not coming before, seeing she’s so ill⁠ ⁠… waiting all this time, and coming just now. Why, she wrote to me four weeks ago, saying she was going to be just slightly ill and have a rest for a week or two, so of course⁠—Oh, look here, here’s the letter, you’ll see for yourself⁠—”

“But I don’t want to see for myself. Steady, man! I quite understand. Of course you couldn’t know.⁠ ⁠…”

“No, but look here, you’ll see.⁠ ⁠…”

Feverishly he began fumbling in his inside-pockets, pulling out papers, a pocketbook, passports.⁠ ⁠…

Venice could be very still. I imagined her in the doorway, looking at Napier in this state. She would be very still, and in her stillness she would be destroyed. Venice was jealous, so jealous and possessive. “Got to be with Napier,” she had pleaded to me once. “You don’t know what he’s thinking about half the time, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing the other half.”

Some of the papers dropped to the floor, and I picked them up and thrust them into his gaping pocket. The old nun smiled at me over her spectacles, and then looked at Napier and tapped her forehead. But you could see she liked the looks of Napier. “Quelle belle silhouette!” she grinned. I don’t believe that Napier to this day knows there was anyone but our two selves in that lodge.

He waved a white thing covered with scrawled pencil-marks, and beside it I somehow saw that letter from a draughty house on a hill of strangled olives. But between the two came the vision of Venice destroyed.