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

“I don’t want to read it, Napier. I quite understand. What on earth does it matter whether you knew or not, so long as you know now?”

“Thinks a lot of you,” he said darkly. “Told me, last time I saw her.⁠ ⁠…”

He passed a hand over his mouth. I said: “But.⁠ ⁠…”

“Beastly,” he said, looking at me with enormous, dark surprise. “That’s what I feel. Beastly. As though my skin was a dirty shirt. Ever get that? I mean, here she’s dying, and I⁠ ⁠… God, how one gets to know oneself! What? But I’d like you to see. I mean, since it’s you. She thinks a lot of you, I know she does. Thinks you’re nice. Funny how she says that, ‘nice.’ What? But what’s she want to lie for? Iris never lies. Never. That’s what beats me. I mean, why, to me? What? Go on, you’ll see.⁠ ⁠…”

Crumpled the letter was, but he had, in a sort of way, smoothed it out. I stared at it. I had to, for he was watching me with those ruined, pleading eyes. The greyhound unleashed.⁠ ⁠…

“She’s dying.” I heard his voice from miles away. “You can’t tell me! She’s dying.⁠ ⁠…”

“She won’t die,” I said firmly, glad to look up from the letter. And, you know, I was quite certain at that moment that she wouldn’t die. The beloved of the favourite of the gods wouldn’t die. The favourites of the gods are not let off so easily. Oh, she wouldn’t die! It would be too easy to die. “The Marches are never let off anything.⁠ ⁠…”

I stared at the crumpled-looking thing in my hand. I didn’t read it. The poor devil was only showing me the thing because, at that lost moment, he was starving for understanding, for anyone’s understanding, after these ten months of silence, of Venice-Napier-Iris silence.⁠ ⁠…

I couldn’t, merely from the wretched fact of staring at the thing blankly, avoid the first few lines of that schoolgirl scrawl. “Napier, I have to go to a nursing-home for a few weeks’ rest. Napier, dear Napier! I’ve tried not to write, you know I have, just as we promised, but as we are never to meet again I’d like you to pray⁠—”

That is all I read, and there I stood, staring at that crumpled letter like an idiot. “As we are never to meet again.⁠ ⁠…”

Figures moved, I could see them, hear them, their cries, laughter, silences. Their silences. Napier, Venice, Iris. They had come together, blindly, desperately. By chance⁠—but it is written in vinegar that there is no such thing as chance. And I, why, I had been appointed, a silly finger of fate, to make “chance” more sure! They had come together, those three, propelled to each other from darkness for darkness’s sake. The weak to the weak, the strong in chains. Always that is the way of things, and for no reason at all except life’s most damnable unfairness, which is forever saying: the weak shall be made weaker, the strong shall be destroyed. Venice was strong, strong as gold, in loyalty and love. Incorruptible, golden Venice! Salute to Venice! So, said the Prince of Darkness, she must be destroyed, and to destroy her in the most efficient and painful way Napier must see Iris, unseen since girlhood, a grown-up Napier must see a grown-up Iris, a youth curiously sensible to the pitiful must suddenly see an Iris wrapped in tragedy and scandal, a helpless, hopeless, unhappy woman⁠—the favourite of the gods and the poor shameless, shameful lady! And it was arranged, the destruction of Venice, to begin with a sudden, surprised cry of “Iris!” in the night, and then, behold! two cars would sweep through the silent streets into the heart of the dark forest of London, even to Napier’s small toy house in Brompton Square. Oh, how clearly one could see them, hear them, those friends of long ago. Clear to see they were, fumbling with their lives in the darkness of all life, most emphatically not talking of love, most emphatically being old friends. Clear to see, those two, Napier and Iris, the ancient friends. Maybe, to make chance more sure and flesh more weak, which is a jesting habit of the fallen archangel’s, they had been in love long ago and had been unhappy and had parted. The queer death of Boy Fenwick would have come between a boy and girl love, and across the wide gulf that separates a young man of consequence from a lady of pleasure they would not have seen each other for a long time. “There were two roads leading from a certain tree.” And one might hear Napier that night, not this love-lost thing, but the favourite of the gods, happy on the wings of an ancient friendship, pulling at Iris’s arm to persuade her out of her car: “Iris, come in for a moment. Oh, come along, Iris! I know how fond you are of a nice glass of cold water, and I have some of the most superior cold water in London. What? And we’ll never have another chance to talk again.⁠ ⁠…” And Iris, Iris of the lament for a child! Iris had lit a flame and was like to be burnt to death in the cold fires of that flame. Iris had lit a flame, and the flames that Iris lit seemed quenchable only by death. Boy and Iris. Hector and Iris. Napier and Iris. But Napier could not die, favoured of the gods. Iris could not die, “for the Marches are never let off anything,” and so it would be the younger brother of Hector-not-so-proud who must die, who must have died, thoughtfully trying to tempt his mother into the carelessness of death.

The lay-sister had gone into the other room, which must have been a sort of kitchen, and Napier had taken her chair. He sat there, shadowed with whiteness, scowling into the black tin box.

“I see,” I said. “Of course.⁠ ⁠…” I made him take the letter back, and suddenly he looked up at me intently. He’d find out something, he would.

“She is dying, isn’t she? You’re certain yourself, aren’t you? What?”

“The doctor should be in in a moment, and you can ask him. No, I don’t think she’s dying. My sister had the same sort of thing, and she’s dancing at the moment⁠—”

“Same sort of⁠—what thing, then? What?”

A gaffe, a faux pas, a bloomer! He scowled up at me, blackly intent.⁠ ⁠…

“Ptomaine poisoning,” I said.

“Oh, God!” he said. “Oh, God! What? Poison.⁠ ⁠…”

He stared at the letter which I had put into his hand. He turned it about, and seemed to think profoundly. “You see,” he muttered, “it’s all wrong, this. All wrong. What?”

I wasn’t cast for a moralist. What I said, very uncomfortably, was: “Well.⁠ ⁠…”

“All this messing about,” Napier scowled at the letter. Then he looked at me, darkly, helplessly.

“Get let in for things,” he said.

“Difficult,” I said. “I know.⁠ ⁠…”

“God, isn’t it! Difficult.⁠ ⁠… What? I mean, when you want to be⁠ ⁠… well, when you want to live clean. We promised, oh God, yes! not to write, never to meet.⁠ ⁠… Must live clean, you see. What? There isn’t, when you come to think of it, any other way to live.⁠ ⁠…”

“Guy says that.⁠ ⁠…”

“Guy? Yes, but⁠ ⁠… need guts like Guy’s, don’t you? What? Look here,” he suddenly waved the letter at me, “will you go out and keep Venice company for a moment? I mean, see what she’s doing? And I’ll see the doctor fellow and make him let me see Iris for a moment. Promise wiped out by approach of death.⁠ ⁠… What? I mean, lonely for her here.⁠ ⁠… Told me, last time I saw her that she was lonely. Hurts, loneliness. What? And then I find her in this hole.⁠ ⁠…”

He thrust the letter into his gaping coat-pocket. I could see it there, that pencilled scrawl. Letters, letters, letters like radium-bombs, left lying about for years, then bursting. What fools men were, keeping letters⁠ ⁠… travelling about with them, sticking them into their coat-pockets. Suppose Venice saw that letter⁠ ⁠… just a few lines of it. Whether Iris lived or died⁠ ⁠… suppose Venice saw just a few lines of that letter. For Venice.⁠ ⁠…

“Napier,” I said.

He stared at me, extraordinarily handsome at that moment, and I remember thinking just then of what is always said, that women are not very attracted by good-looking men. But what is always said must be wrong.

“I say,” he said, “got a cigarette? What?”

“Napier,” I said, “give me that letter.⁠ ⁠…”

“Or,” I said, “have two matches to your cigarette.⁠ ⁠…”

A tiny smile fluttered round the thin quivering lips. “There’s no end to it,” he whispered, “is there? Once you begin. The nasty precautions.⁠ ⁠…”

He struck a match, and the flame lit the ruin in his dark, fevered eyes. “You can’t,” he said, “have anything cleaner than love. You can’t. This love, anyway. Clean⁠ ⁠… clean as the Virgin Mary. And then⁠ ⁠… you’re dogged by dirt. You think fine things, fine sacrifices⁠ ⁠… and you’re dirty as all Sodom and Gomorrah. All this nastiness round a thing, all this messing about.⁠ ⁠…”

It was as the letter burnt in his hand and fluttered, just like a hurt crow, to the floor, while he watched it with intent seriousness, that I heard a step by the door in the other room. To see Conrad Masters alone, I hurried towards it. There he was, tired, worried-looking, his sharp features sticking like a great bird’s out of that rough brown coat.

“Bad,” he muttered. “Can’t do more. She’s conscious, too. And doesn’t give a damn. Not a damn. I told her you were here, and she said ‘Nice’ to that, but didn’t seem to think you were worth living for. Need a miracle now.⁠ ⁠… ‘Nice!’ ”

“But, good God,” I said, “we’ve got a miracle here! He’s a bit mad, but miracle is his second name.⁠ ⁠…”

“And what’s his first?” Masters snapped.

“Harpenden.⁠ ⁠…”

“First name, Christian name,” said Masters wearily. “Napier, by any chance?”

“You’re right,” said Masters. A decidedly undecided man? Why, he radiated resolution: and a lean sort of mirth. “Never know your luck,” he said. “Not in this world.⁠ ⁠…” I just managed to catch him by the coat as he plunged towards the other room, in which one could make out the tail of Napier’s coat. “Masters,” I whispered, “I went and told him it was ptomaine poisoning.⁠ ⁠…”

“Good,” said Masters. Those gentle worried eyes with the faintly amused look. “That’s all right,” he smiled. “Young ass.”

There sat Napier, a lost man.⁠ ⁠…

“Come along,” Masters jabbed at him. “Come along, man! Waive introduction. Life and death.⁠ ⁠…”

Napier jumped up. Masters looked almost fresh and boyish beside him. A captain of men, that was Conrad Masters.

“I say,” Napier said.⁠ ⁠…

“Look here,” said Masters, “I’m taking you in to cheer her up. Might make all the difference. Just might.⁠ ⁠…”

Napier tried to smile. Oh, he tried.

“But, doctor,” he said. “Is she⁠ ⁠… going?”

“She wants to go, that’s the trouble. Anyone would think,” snapped that captain of men, “that I was committing a felony in trying to keep her alive. By the way she looks at me. You’ve got to cheer her up, Mr. eh.⁠ ⁠…”

“Captain Harpenden,” I said.

“You’ve got to make her care whether she lives or dies. That’s your business, Captain Harpenden. I’ll give you five minutes to do it in.⁠ ⁠…” Napier looked from him to me. He scowled immensely.

“I’ll go out to Venice,” I said, but I don’t suppose that Napier, passing me, heard a word. Conrad Masters stayed a second. Gone was the captain of men. He looked terribly worried.⁠ ⁠…

“I say, want to play bridge?”

“Bridge!” I said. “Bridge? Bridge!”

He looked terribly worried.⁠ ⁠…

“Well, my wife wants⁠—Oh, wait till I’m back! I’ll drop you anyway.” And he was off, his brown coat flouncing peevishly. Through the open door I could see Napier, his coat open, everything about him open, standing in what looked like a wide courtyard.⁠ ⁠…

“Mais quelle belle silhouette!” chattered the old nun. “Le vrai type brun anglais. Mais c’est naturel qu’il soit fou avec ces yeux là.⁠ ⁠…”

Napier and Conrad Masters walked across the courtyard towards a tall red-looking building. Its door was pointed like a church door, and windows here and there were alight. Through one of them a nun was looking at me. On the sill outside the largest window of all, which was not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.