The Green Hat · VII · Chapter 7 2 (1/2)

II

Venice was in high looks that day, Venice was all of a glitter, and that was because, she said at first, of this and that. But we had no sooner passed through the glass doors into the restaurant than she said, she almost cried, that something marvellous had happened just a moment before. “What do you think?” she dared me to guess, and when I said that I thought I would have some oysters she said she was too excited to eat anything, but might she have some ham and a glass of lager beer?

Venice hadn’t met my sister but once or twice, but they had met again that morning in some shop or other, “and I was complaining bitterly,” said Venice, “about Napier, how he made a perfect jumble of everything by never knowing his own mind for two minutes running, and how we couldn’t now find any sleepers in tonight’s train⁠—when she offered to lend us her car to take us to Monte Carlo! She couldn’t bear the sight of it, she said, for another week at least, and that gives us plenty of time to get there and send it back, doesn’t it? Now fancy your having a sister like that!”

“And how is Napier?” I asked. “I only saw him for a moment.⁠ ⁠…”

“I can tell you,” said Venice in a sudden sombre moment, “that I’m not a bit sorry to be leaving Paris as quick as quick. Naps has been working awfully hard lately, and here we come away for a holiday and the first thing he does is to go off the deep end about this old friend of his being ill.”

“Well, she is rather ill,” I said.

“Yes, I’m awfully sorry, really I am. I’ve never met her, but I saw her once, one night at the Loyalty just before my⁠—”

“Yes, I remember, Venice.”

“And I thought she was the most lovely woman I’d ever seen, and rather sad-looking, which made her lovelier than ever. She’d be sad, I suppose, because of her two husbands and the things people say about her; for they do say some things, don’t they?”

“They! They, Venice, will say anything.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, of course, but you know what I mean. And Naps, you see, can’t bear anyone to be ill and miserable, and I’m sure he’s got an idea that Mrs. Storm is lonely up there, but really, I think, he might consider himself a little, don’t you? And so I ordered the car at three o’clock this afternoon, and off we’ll go. He’ll be surprised when he gets here.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes,” I said, “I suppose he will.”

“Well,” said Venice, sticking out that Pollen jaw, “there’s no use in hanging about Paris, is there? And so I sent him a message to the Embassy, where he’s been all morning, to come as soon as he could and not worry about getting ‘sleepers.’ And as I’ve already had his things packed we can start off as soon as he’s here, which will be while we’re at coffee, I shouldn’t wonder.” That Pollen jaw! What, I wondered, was Venice thinking of when she stuck out that Pollen jaw like that? Maybe she had been disturbed by Napier’s white-thunder looks when they got back to the hotel last night and was wanting to get him to herself and normal as quickly as she could⁠—and Provence, Oh, Provence! It is not every day that a girl can motor through Provence with her lover. Venice’s love was like a solid marble monument, and I said to myself that one should respect illness but also one should respect love, and so I held my peace.

Napier had not come by the time we had finished luncheon, and as we took two deep chairs in the corner of the lounge, where we would have coffee, Venice asked me if I knew anything about the psychology of men as regards children. When I had picked myself up I said that I would reserve my defence, laughing heartily the while, but now there was a cloud of thought over Venice’s mad-blue eyes, and she was ever so serious, a flat cigarette tortured between her full, pale, dry lips. Venice, you know, said she hated the taste of lip-salve; but, with no idea at all of ever doubting Venice’s word, one had noticed that it was only since her marriage that she had grown to hate it so consistently, and so it might be that Napier had made a face after kissing her one day, for it is the affectation of Englishmen to be tiresome about cosmetics, and if they are not tiresome about cosmetics they cannot be the right sort.

“Sugar?” I asked, and she nodded intently, her mad-blue eyes absorbed on a point of the thick carpet.

“How,” I said, “you will love Provence!”

“Listen,” she said sharply. Wise those eyes were now, and steady as stars in a cavern, looking into me as though judging me, balancing life.

“Well?” I said, to get it over. But what could she know?

She made herself look unimportant. “Oh, it’s only,” she said, “that I can’t have a baby.” And she looked at me with a frantic smile, and because every second of her twenty-one years seemed to me to be in that frantic smile I did not know what on earth to say, saying: “You have probably been to some silly doctor⁠—”

“I haven’t!” she whispered, so fiercely that an old gentleman nearby almost spilled his coffee.

“Hush, Venice!”

“But I haven’t been to any doctor⁠—”

“Well, then,” said I wisely, “in that case, of course, I don’t see⁠—”

“Oh, you don’t!” she whispered with her fine, savage impatience. “I tell you, my child, that I can’t⁠—I just feel that I can’t, in my bones I feel it, that I’ll never, never, never!” And she put a cloud of smoke between us to make her smile look plausible, but through the smoke her eyes looked as though they were holding back a pain.

“Venice, darling,” I pleaded, “I’m not old enough to deal with an emergency like this. What you need is a man of Hilary’s years to turn you over and smack you and tell you that as long as you’re such a child you don’t deserve to have one⁠—”

“I’m so miserable,” she said.

“But it’s absurd, Venice! I mean, it’s just nerves, you can’t possibly know⁠—”

“Do you actually think,” she grabbed a cigarette fiercely from my case, “that I’ve got to go to some dud doctor and have him poking about all over me before I know what’s me! Of course I can know, and I do know, and it’s a shame, and I daren’t tell Napier.⁠ ⁠…”

“You better hadn’t, on such insufficient evidence. I know what I’d do.”

“Darling, darling, darling! Tell me, do men love children? Really, really, I mean? Would Napier hate it if he knew that I was as barren as that old fig-tree⁠—”

“Venice, how dare you let your nerves get the better of you like this! I’ve only got to be away from England for four months, and I find you in this silly state!”

“Oh, but answer my questions! Why is everyone so awful these days! You see, I never know what’s going on in Napier’s mind, never! Do you think I would if he loved me?”

“ ‘If?’ ” I said. “ ‘If,’ Venice?” Was I now to defend Napier’s love for Venice? And then I found that she was looking at me with wide-open, motherly, amused eyes.

“You don’t actually think,” she almost laughed, “that I ever thought that Napier loved me?”

“Well, I have thought so,” I bravely admitted. “Certainly I have. It is quite usual.”

“But isn’t my gentleman friend stupid!” she suddenly giggled. “Of course, I know he loves me⁠—as much as he can ever love anyone. But that’s all, don’t you see.⁠ ⁠…”

She stared at the wounded end of her poor cigarette, and lit another from my case, as that was handy. The number of cigarettes that girl smoked, and how she tortured them!

“You see,” she said, knitting together her golden eyebrows so that I should see, “Napier can’t love like other people⁠—me, for instance, and perhaps you, though I’d have my doubts about you. I suppose people are born like that, and you’ve got to take it or leave it. Napier loves just as much as he can⁠—which means that he’s willing, oh anxious, to do anything in the world for you⁠—but you’re never quite sure what he’s thinking about while he’s doing it. See what I mean?”

“I try hard, Venice.”

“Yes. And so, you see, you’ve always got a feeling that he’s keeping something back in himself, something rather important, if you see what I mean, something you can’t get a grip on but that’s there to be gripped, that Napier would like to be gripped, if you see what I mean⁠—”

“I’ll tell you what I see, Venice. I’ve seen it before, and so I recognise it⁠—”

“But I don’t want to hear about your fancy friends! I want to talk about myself.”

“The matter is, Venice, that any woman in love with a reserved man will pass her spare time in ascribing stormy villainies to his secret nature, whereas generally the poor devil is⁠—”

“Stormy villainies,” said Venice quietly, “is good.”

“Women,” I said largely, cursing myself, “are always making themselves miserable about what they don’t see in a man, as though what they did see wasn’t quite enough.”

The full dry lips ravaged the cigarette for a while. Then they said thoughtfully: “The other night we were dining at Fay Avalon’s, just a very few of us, and when someone said that Mrs. Storm was a nymphomaniac Napier went as white as death⁠—”

“And what did the other guests do, Venice? It’s the least Napier could have done, as she’s an old friend of his.”

“Of course,” said Venice very calmly, looking into her cup as though for more coffee. “I don’t know her, or anything about her, except just what people say. And I’d never have known that Naps even knew her if I hadn’t seen him speak to her that night at the Loyalty. That was the night her brother died, wasn’t it? Napier had never mentioned her name before⁠—nor since, if it comes to that, until last night, when he seemed so upset about her that after a while I upped and said he could go and take a room at the nursing-home if he liked⁠—”

“Wasn’t that rather harsh, Venice? After all, he’s known her a very long time, and it upsets anyone to see an old friend very ill.”

“Oh, I know, I know!” she said eagerly. “You mustn’t think I was jealous, but I suppose it just got on my nerves a bit, seeing that he’d never spoken about her before. And that’s why, you see,” she showed all her very white teeth in an utterly insincere smile. “I’m rather wretched about this idea of not having any children. Do listen, please listen! Oh, why is everyone so tiresome! I’m not talking about Mrs. Storm now, but about the Mrs. Storms of life. You see, they’ve got a lot more to give a chap than anyone like me has⁠—I mean to say, they know how to bring everything out of a man, how to make him a lover and all that⁠—a real lover, I mean, a fire-and-ice, pits-and-mountains, sunlight-and-shadows, nice-and-nasty sort of lover, whereas people like Napier and me are just the same with each other as millions of other people, the men being pretty good duds at loving and the women even worse duds at being loved, if you see what I mean. Oh, I know! A man might be a just come-here-girl-oh-darling lover with one woman and then be a marvellous lover with another, just because, you see, she’d know how to make him be. Of course, with their experience.⁠ ⁠…”

I sat there in that deep armchair, subdued by the thought of the awful helplessness of men and women to understand one another, and of the terrible thing it would be for some of them if ever they did understand one another, and how many opportunities the devil is always being given of making plunder out of decent people. Here was Venice groping blindly in the corridors of her love, looking for the one golden key which she couldn’t find among the treasures there displayed. For there were treasures there. Venice was quite certain, marvellously certain she was, that Napier loved her as much as he could ever love anyone. Oh, but her love was quite big enough to cope with that nonsense of Napier’s! And, since the love of a good woman for a man is a compliment to all men, maybe I looked at her with understanding, for she gave me a sudden sharp smile, and said, quite calmly: “And so, you see, if I don’t have a baby soon I’ll bust.”

“Darling, darling, darling!” a low voice mocked behind us so that we started, and there above our deep chairs stood Napier, and I remember how he gave me one quick clear look, not in the least a conspiratorial look, but just a clear look, as though the last time he had seen me we had both faced a great danger; and between two men there can be no bond so faint and yet so binding as that which is forged of an understanding which is unmentionable between them; you may not like the bond, as I most sincerely did not like it, for it was Venice who was my friend, but there it is, a bond of invisible wire that cuts at the wrists of the mind.

Napier looked composed, but always the fever lurked in the dark eyes, always the dark eyes looked as though they were suffering from what neither you nor he could tell. That greyhound, sensitive and doubtful and poised⁠ ⁠… for flight! And he somehow looked queerly festive in that sombre, conventional hall, with his faded I Zingari tie and the brown Shetland waistcoat which was for the most part unbuttoned.

“Oh, Naps, such a wonder!” cried Venice on the instant, and I saw what one is so apt to see after an intimate talk with a woman, that one has only been talking to a mood. Venice was in an instant as I had always seen her with Napier, impetuous, imperious, gay. “What do you think, Naps! I have got a car, a lovely car, swift and shining, and a man called Hebblethwaite for chauffeur. Now what do you think of that?”

“I think,” said Napier gravely, smiling at me, “that it must be an English car. And what do you intend doing about it? Driving in the Bois? What?”

“Driving in the Bois! Am I mad! My child, it’s his sister’s car, and she has lent it to us, and we are going South in it, that is what we are going to do. And I ordered Mr. Hebblethwaite at three, and I’ve had all your things packed, and I’ve settled the bill, so we can go right away.”

Napier stared at her⁠—he was sitting now⁠—and it was as though he had put his hand to his mouth and placed a smile there. It was a very charming, helpless smile. I said something to the effect that I must go now, but no one was taking any notice of me. Venice was saying, in a voice tangled with confusion, impatience, a sort of gaiety: “But, Naps, you don’t mean to say you want to stay still another night in this foul Paris, when we might be in the sun!”

Napier scowled, the smile still on his mouth. “Of course, I don’t want, but⁠—”

“Oh, but, Naps, I’d like to go straight away, right away, as the Yankees say! And I thought we might have tea at Fontainebleau and I’d show you the place where I was at school.⁠ ⁠…”

“Now look here,” Napier scowled, touching her knee with one finger, “I can’t quite do that, Venice. You see, I made a sort of promise to that doctor fellow that I would go and sit with Iris just for a while this afternoon⁠—”

“Oh, I see,” said Venice. “Well, in that case.⁠ ⁠…”

“Give her an idea⁠—that’s what the doctor fellow said⁠—that some of her friends care whether she lives or dies, for anyone would be rather lonely up there. What? I went round for a minute this morning just to inquire, but I didn’t see her, as they said that⁠—”

“I thought you were at the Embassy this morning,” Venice said, in a very natural voice: and she crushed out her cigarette on the marble top of the table, and she picked up her vanity-case.

“Yes, so I was,” Napier scowled; “but I just went round there for a minute⁠—”

“Oo, what a long way to go for a minute!” sighed Venice. “When one can always telephone.⁠ ⁠…” And she rose from her chair. Somehow an immense new dignity had suddenly come on Venice. Napier rose, facing her, smiling under his scowl, as though she had made a joke. I rose, saying that I must be going.

“As a matter of fact,” said Venice brightly, “as I knew you were so worried about her I rang up that place this morning, and they told me she was assez bien, if you see what I mean.⁠ ⁠…”