The Green Hat · XI · Chapter 11 3 (1/3)

III

Sir Maurice received me very kindly. I had thought, seeing him at the card-table, that he was a tall man; but he was small, slight, taut; very ready to smile. He offered me a cigar, which I was very pleased to take. Iris said she would not smoke just yet. No one sat down, but everyone seemed at his ease. It was as though Iris and I were paying an evening call. Hilary apologised to me about dinner. I forgave him. Somehow, suddenly, I found myself absorbed by Guy and Hilary. I found that Iris was alone. It was as though her green hat stamped her aloneness with a light. How bright that green hat looked in that scholarly room, like a green flower, like a green flame! Iris stood by the card-table, on which the cards were scattered face-upwards.

“Good of you to come, Iris,” the General said. He smiled very easily. He was one of those young old men who are very old when you look close. He was charming.

Iris looked up from the cards across the room to Hilary. Her eyes were untroubled and clear, she was very still, and her lips were silken red. She said: “Hilary asked me. So I came.”

“It was my idea, Iris,” Sir Maurice said, and he smiled. He was fidgeting with a black ebony paper-knife. “My idea entirely. Hilary was against it. Very glad you brought our young friend. Sit down, Iris. We are all of the world here, we are civilised people. Let’s talk about this like civilised people.”

Iris did not sit down. Maybe someone sat down, but I don’t remember. Iris picked up the ace of clubs from the table and looked at it thoughtfully.

“That was really why I came, Maurice. Because it must have been your idea. You are a very clever man. It was thoughtful of you to give me a chance of saying goodbye to Truble.” She looked up from the ace of clubs to Guy with her untroubled eyes. She had not once looked at Sir Maurice. “Guy, what have you to say to me? I think you have wanted to say something to me for a long time. It would have been cowardly to leave England for good without giving you the chance.”

“Iris,” said Hilary sharply, “Guy has always been very kind about you. Hm. Much kinder than I’ve been.”

“Yes, dear,” she smiled so suddenly at Hilary. That was a surprising, complete smile. It excluded us all, it excluded even Iris and Hilary, it excluded everyone but the friend of childhood and a long little thing, all brown stockings and blue eyes. That was a true smile. “Hm,” said Hilary.

Sir Maurice put a whisky-and-soda into my hand, but I do not remember tasting it. The slight, poised old gentleman’s smile troubled me. His was too fine a face to smile like that. He had clever, darting eyes. I felt that Iris was making an effort to keep her eyes from him. And I felt that the two enemies were each terrified of the other.

Guy spoke for the first time, he murmured: “It was brave of you to come, Iris. I don’t know much about using words, but I think it was noble of you to come. I don’t know any other woman who would have even thought of accepting Maurice’s invitation. But we, your friends, have never compared you to other women. In some things to their disadvantage. We have always admired your pluck. But we have admired your candour and honesty even more. That is why this sickening business baffles us so. Maurice and I just thought it might be fair both to us and to you if we were to try to clear it up a little.” And then Guy snapped: “I’m damned if I want to hate you, Iris.”

Iris broke the back of the ace of clubs and dropped it among the others on the green cloth, where it lay cruelly curled.

“Steady, Iris, steady!” said Sir Maurice. And he tried with the black ebony paper-knife to straighten out the ace of clubs. And he smiled. But Iris looked at Guy, and she seemed very tall.

“Iris,” Hilary said gently, “we loved you too much as a child not to be able to hate the woman who has gone out of her way to kill every memory of that child.⁠ ⁠…”

“That’s it, Iris,” Guy murmured, restrained, amiable. “You see, as a child and as a girl you were very much in our hearts. Much more than any other child and girl has ever been. I don’t know why. And in spite of all things you’ve done we’ve always⁠ ⁠… well, we’ve always kept one side of us which was yours for the asking. I mean, Iris, we couldn’t believe in you as a⁠ ⁠… well, as a decent woman, but we’ve just stayed fond of you. Even when we’ve had to hear your name being pitched about by vile women and ghastly cads. Until now. But now.⁠ ⁠…”

“A moment, Guy!” The clever, darting eyes, the neat figure, the iron-grey hair, waving just a little. He smiled. He waved the black ebony paper-knife at Iris as though she was a naughty girl. He knew Iris inside-out, did Sir Maurice. She wasn’t all bad, not she. Iris looked at him for the first time, and the clear untroubled look seemed now to be fixed stonily. I wondered if she was afraid. The General spoke quickly, brittle-bright: “Guy has just said, Iris, that we’ve known you all your life. But there’s more than that, much more. That’s why I wanted you to come here tonight. I wanted to show you us, Iris. This isn’t an ordinary elopement, Napier’s and yours. It’s a stab in the back⁠—”

“Maurice, am I stabbing you in the back by coming here?”

“You were always a strange, unfrightened girl, Iris. But the stab in the back is made. It’s stabbing us, your people, in the back. Venice’s people aren’t in this as we are. But that isn’t what I want to tell you. Is it, Guy? And I’ve no intention of trying to beg Napier from you. I’m not even yet old enough to beg favours from a woman. No, it seems settled about you and Napier, as he told me this morning. And I tell you, Iris, it wasn’t my son who spoke to me this morning. It was an enchanted boy⁠—”

“We are both of us enchanted, Maurice.” And Iris smiled. Her lips looked very red, silken red.

“Very good, very good! Well, you go tomorrow. That’s fixed. But I just wanted to show you us, Iris. I think you have forgotten us on your travels. You are of us. I think you have forgotten that. And you are stabbing us in the back. I’m not talking of Napier now as my son, my only son. Am I, Guy? Hilary? I’ve taken great pride in the boy’s career, I haven’t married again for his sake⁠—but let all that go. I’m talking of Napier now just as one of us here, the us that you belong to, of the England that we stand for. We, Iris⁠—you and us⁠—we aren’t made only of flesh-and-blood. There’s a little devil of slackness who stands waiting for any of us who thinks he or she is only made of flesh-and-blood. We are made of air, too⁠—this air, Iris, that we are breathing now. We are made of this air, you and us. We were born in it, our fathers and mothers were born in it. Guy, Hilary, I, you, Napier, we were all of us born within a hundred miles of this room, Guy at Mace, Hilary at Magralt, Napier and I here at Sutton Marie, and you not two miles away across the fields. We are of this soil, Iris, of this air, of this England which is still our England. My God, we haven’t much left, but we still have this. That is all I have to say, Iris. I just wanted to show you us, because I thought you must have forgotten us. You have decided, Iris, that you will break into our lives, and break up our lives. Why, Iris? What sort of hell is your ambition in the next world? Tell me that.”

“No, Maurice!” said Hilary sharply. “Keep to this world.”

Cold as stones were Iris’s eyes on Sir Maurice. She hated him beyond words or looks. “Don’t let’s talk of hell, Maurice,” she whispered. “It would shock even you if I were to tell you how much I know about it. I am leaving hell behind at last. And do you know, Maurice, that hell looks at me with your face? But I am leaving it behind now.”

“Listen, Iris. Just this one question.” Those clever, darting eyes were curiously, strangely kind. I could not understand Sir Maurice. It was as though he loved, feared, hated, indulged, Iris. He waved the black ebony paper-knife at her. “Now I am a man of the world, Iris. Unlike Napier, as you know. And what sort of a woman are you? Tell me that. I have known many bad women. I have liked some. I have liked you, Iris. You know that. But this isn’t badness. Damn it, girl, this is evil! There aren’t any words in English to describe what we think of a woman who comes wantonly between a man and his wife, a man and his career. I’m not saying anything of your having come between Napier and me. He looked at me this morning as though he hated me. But leave me out. You are smashing a man’s career and you have stolen a man from his wife. What sort of a woman are you, Iris? Tell us that.”

“Maurice!” And Iris smiled, and those very white teeth bit the moment into two pieces with their smile and dropped the pieces into limbo. “You are a baby sometimes, Maurice. You never dream of asking a woman ‘what sort of a woman are you?’ so long as she keeps to the laws made by men. But the first time you see a woman being a woman, you are surprised.”

“But what we don’t understand,” Guy murmured amiably, “is how you’ve come by an entirely different set of ideas from ours. I mean⁠ ⁠… well, ideas about loyalty and treachery and things like that. You see, Iris, we’ve suddenly found today that we simply don’t begin to understand you. Isn’t that so, Hilary? I mean, we just don’t seem to think in the same sickening language.”

“Exactly,” Sir Maurice rapped out, with the black ebony paper-knife. “That’s it exactly, Iris. You see, this isn’t just your business and Napier’s business. This concerns us. This stabs at the roots of our life, Iris. But you and I don’t seem to think in the same language. I think in English.”

Iris whispered, with eyes of stone: “Unfortunately, I think in English, too.⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, come, Iris!” Guy murmured.

“If she didn’t think in English,” I said, “would she be here?”

Sir Maurice started. I was surprised, too.

“That’s true,” said he. “Quite true, boy. Yes.” And he smiled. I wished he wouldn’t smile.

“In that case,” Guy murmured, “all I can say is, Iris, that yours must be a very odd dialect of English. I mean, in yours there doesn’t seem to be any distinction between words which⁠—well, they mean rather a lot to us. We’ve never even learned how to spell most of them, they’re so inevitably part of our lives, or should be. I’m not sure to this day if there’s an s in ‘decency.’ One’s born knowing them.⁠ ⁠…”

“Guy, I’ve had twelve years’ unhappiness. You talk to me of those words we are born knowing. I have had twelve years’ unhappiness through not being able to forget those words.”

“Unhappiness!” Sir Maurice rapped out. “Oh, come, child! You seem to have done exactly as you pleased all these years. I’m not saying you haven’t had bad luck⁠—we’re all sorry about that. But if you have been unhappy can you blame anyone but yourself?”

Iris’s face was very stern as she looked at Sir Maurice. I could not have thought that a beautiful woman could look so stern. And she made not one gesture of womanhood. She could have made but one, and asserted her right to live according to her womanhood. But that would have seemed to her to be playing not fair. She must meet men on their own ground always, always, and she must keep herself on their own ground without showing the effort she made. She would advantage herself neither with her womanhood nor her beauty. She seemed to look for a long time at Sir Maurice. Her lips were silken red, and I thought just then that to kiss them would be to kiss the infinite.

“Yes, Maurice. I can put the blame on three words.”

The General threw the paper-knife on to a small table, where it fell with a crash. “Weakness? Wickedness? Wantonness?”

“The three words I was thinking of make Sir Maurice Harpenden.”

Then, curiously, Sir Maurice darted a look at Hilary, as though to see how he stood with Hilary. Hilary was white. He said: “I’ve told you, Maurice, that you’re not free from blame. You’ve been too damned imperious with these children.”

“All this,” Guy murmured, “has got me beat, I’m afraid.”

“It hasn’t got you beat at all, Guy,” snapped Hilary. White he was. “Maurice, years ago, didn’t realise that in our time we are not our children’s masters. Their ideas are not ours, their ambitions are not ours. And there’s no reason why they should be, since ours have sent all Europe to the devil.”

Then Iris’s voice slashed the room like a sharp knife: “Maurice, did you understand what I said? I am here tonight that you should understand what you have done.”

“My dear Iris!” said Sir Maurice, again picking up the paper-knife. One saw why he had been so successful a soldier. He could evade any issue. “Boy and girl love!” he said helplessly to Guy. He looked at me. “Boy and girl love!” he said helplessly.

“You mustn’t despise it, Maurice,” Iris suddenly smiled, and I had a fancy that her smile was one of protecting a child from a man’s good-sense. “It won’t do to despise that boy and girl love, Maurice. It has lasted nearly all my life so far. And it will last me until I die.” She looked at Guy, and as soon as she looked away from the General the clear, untroubled, boyish look came back into those enormous eyes. “Napier and I were in love at eighteen, Guy. Napier and I have always been in love. But Sir Maurice had other ideas for Napier, and this is the result of them. I am sorry, Guy, but I am also human.”

“Love!” rapped out Sir Maurice. He was not smiling now.

“Love!” Iris whispered. “Love, Maurice! You daren’t look into my eyes and say you doubt my love for Napier. You daren’t say that my love is not the only thing in this room that is made in the image of God. You talk to me of your England. I despise your England, I despise the us that is us. We are shams with patrician faces and peasant minds. We are built of lies, Maurice, and we toil for the rewards of worms. You would have Napier toil for a worm’s reward, you are sorry I have broken Napier’s career in the Foreign Office. Maurice, I am glad. To you, it seems a worthy thing for a good man to make a success in the nasty arena of national strifes and international jealousies. To me, a world which thinks of itself in terms of puny, squalid, bickering little nations and not as one glorious field for the crusade of mankind is a world in which to succeed is the highest indignity that can befall a good man, it is a world in which good men are shut up like gods in a lavatory. Maurice, there are better things, nobler things, cleaner things, than can be found in any career that will glorify a man’s name or nationality. You thought to bully me with our traditions. You are right, they are mine as well as yours. May God forgive you the sins committed in their name! And may He forgive me forever having believed in them.⁠ ⁠…”

With one darting stride Sir Maurice had his hand sharply on her shoulder, that leather shoulder. And at that moment, when she had seemed at her strongest, her eyes seemed to flutter from his unsmiling face. Her eyes were flooded with gentleness, and they seemed to flutter, to want to fly from that stern, handsome face. Yet Sir Maurice’s eyes were curiously kind. Perhaps that was why she had suddenly wilted. She hated him so, and his eyes were curiously kind. That was a clever man, Sir Maurice. Then, in a second, with an effort she superbly hid from our eyes, she was calm again. Always she must meet a man on his own ground.

“Iris,” Sir Maurice said quietly, his hand on her shoulder, “I am sorry I caused you unhappiness when you were a child. I admit I wanted a different alliance for Napier. And you must admit, child, that the March blood is not a very encouraging prospect for a father. But I am sincerely sorry I was unkind to you. But you must see, Iris, that yours was an unusual case. You were mature at eighteen, but I could realise neither that nor the depth of your feelings. Really, child, you mustn’t blame me too much. We can’t always tell when a boy and girl friendship is serious⁠—”