The Green Hat · XI · Chapter 11 3 (2/3)

“Maurice, why do you lie? I didn’t think you would lie tonight. You knew very well that it was serious. That was why you made Napier promise never to see me again. And your son kept his promise.”

“But why didn’t you come and tell me about it frankly, Iris? I had other plans for Napier, yes, but apart from that I was always your friend. You should have come and told me about it⁠—”

“Oh, I was proud then! As I am not proud now.⁠ ⁠…”

“What!” We started at the odd snap in Guy’s voice. “What, Iris?” And he laughed, desperately, helplessly. Guy! “Iris, that’s the first lie I’ve ever known pass your lips. Why, you’re as proud as an archangel!” We stared at him, somehow staggered by him, as he suddenly strode forward, the fair, slender giant. “Just a moment, Maurice,” said he, and bent down and kissed Iris’s cheek.

“Oh!”

This moment I can hear that despairing cry. “Oh!”

And then she tried to catch back her cry, she sobbed: “Judas!”

Guy had caught her as she started back from him like a frightened animal. “Judas nothing,” he murmured. Her face streamed with tears. Guy held her, his eyes strangely sad. “Judas nothing, my Iris,” he murmured. “You’ve won, girl. Go away and play at your lovely game of love. You’ve got me again, as you had when you were a child. I must say I like someone who really loves and really hates. I’m proud of you, Iris.”

Somehow, somehow, as Guy held her, Iris’s eyes looked through the mist towards me, and I moved my lips to make two words: Saint George. Somewhere in the mist she smiled.⁠ ⁠…

She whispered: “Unfair, unfair, unfair! Guy, to kiss me like that, sweet, forgiving Guy! Oh, unfair, unfair, unfair! And I was so sure I wouldn’t cry tonight.⁠ ⁠…”

Sir Maurice was fidgeting with the black ebony paper-knife. Hilary said “hm” and blew his nose. It was very funny now that it was Sir Maurice who seemed to be alone. I was glad. Iris had at last been forced to retreat from that proud battlefield on which she met men on their own ground. She had made her one gesture of womanhood; and now it was Sir Maurice who stood alone. Clever Guy. He was looking towards the General, smiling.⁠ ⁠…

“Maurice,” he smiled, “the girl’s right. You were rather a sickening ass.⁠ ⁠…”

“My dear Guy,” said the General with a tremendous helplessness; and he smiled. “How on earth was I to know then that a boy and gir⁠—”

“Oh, phut!” Guy smiled like a boy. “You don’t catch me interfering with any of my boy’s friendships, I can tell you. Not that I’ve ever really thought about these things before. One just goes driving along never giving these things a thought until one day we all go off the deep end just because we never have given them a thought. I fancy Hilary’s right about this father and child business. I mean, people have been having sons, I suppose, since the year one, and the relation between them is still a mess. In this century, for instance, all we people have been bucking no end about being brotherly with our sons, as though being a fatheaded brother was any good if you don’t understand what the cub is driving at. I just thought of that this very moment. For instance, my boy told me the other day that Kipling wrote true-blue miracles calculated to increase the blood-pressure in men who were too old to fight. I gave him a thrashing with the gloves for his infernal cheek, especially as he must have got it out of some book, for the boy hasn’t what you could call a brain, which is just as well, for it will keep him from going over to Labour. But, after all, our cubs can’t make more of a mess of everything than we and our fathers have done. That’s the point to hang on to.”

“Good God, man!” snapped Hilary. “I’ve been saying that to you for twenty years, and you’ve⁠—”

“That’s right, Hilary,” Guy grinned. “But you’ve got a way of saying things.⁠ ⁠…”

Iris was looking from one to the other of us. It was as though she was in a dream, looking at faces in a dream. Soft she was now, soft and white and small. And her eyes were clouds of blue mist. She stared at Sir Maurice, who stood fidgeting with the paper-knife. “Maurice,” she whispered, “goodbye.”

Sharply he looked up from the paper-knife. He flipped the paper-knife on to the card-table. Then I saw that Sir Maurice hated his ancient enemy.

“Goodbye, Iris,” he said. “But you must not expect me to wish you happiness. You have taken from me my only son.”

“Maurice,” she said desperately, “isn’t that special pleading? Haven’t you any pity, any understanding, of what I have been through?”

“Understanding! Yes, I have understanding, Iris. But I can’t let it stretch across the wide gulf that should separate you from my son.”

“But you made the gulf, Maurice! You, you!” She seemed passionately to want his understanding now!

“I!” cried Sir Maurice. “Good God, woman, I merely parted a boy and a girl. But you could have found each other again⁠—if you hadn’t been you! I made the gulf! Iris, did I murder Boy Fenwick!”

“Maurice, you take that back!”

“Hilary, never mind.” It was a faint, husky whisper. “Just don’t mind, Hilary.” She was staring at Sir Maurice as at a snake. She was calm. “Did you say murder, Sir Maurice? Murder?”

Sir Maurice made the most helpless gesture. He looked very old. “I apologise, Iris, I apologise! I take it back completely. I was carried away. I apologise, child. Of course, murder was much too strong⁠—”

“Too strong?” Guy echoed softly. “If you ask me, sir, it was so damned strong that it’s a wonder to me that it hasn’t blown us all out of the house.”

“I have apologised, Guy!” snapped Sir Maurice.

Iris was looking at me. She seemed lost in some thought, she was very still. Her lips said: “Dear, take me away.”

Sir Maurice darted for his paper-knife, fumbled among the cards for it, got it, rapped out: “Just one moment, Iris. I didn’t mean to say that. You must see that. I apologise sincerely.”

“I cannot hear your apology, Maurice. Because of that gulf.”

“I never thought of saying that,” Guy murmured. “Damn!”

“Just a moment, just a moment!” the General waved the paper-knife fretfully. “Ever since Napier came to see me this morning I have been thinking of these things. I saw Venice this afternoon. She is mad, I think, or enchanted. She believes in your love for Napier. I can only see the helpless ruin you have made of my son. And you say you love him! Let’s forget if we can all the other men you have ‘loved.’ Just take this one fact. Not two years after parting from Napier for good, which you say broke your heart, you marry Boy Fenwick. And when Boy Fenwick died you yourself said he had died ‘for purity.’ What did that mean if not that even before you married him⁠ ⁠… you yourself, I say, said that he had died ‘for purity’!”

“For hell, sir! That was why Boy Fenwick died!”

“Napier!” There was a long, long silence. “Napier!” Iris whispered frantically. “My darling, why are you here!”

“To get you.⁠ ⁠…” Napier’s voice trembled pitifully. He controlled it by whispering. “To get you from these⁠ ⁠… men!”

“Steady, Naps!” Guy murmured. “We began the evening by bucking about being civilised.”

Again, as in the obscure silence of the Paris night, the white face, the lost eyes⁠ ⁠… facing us from the middle French-window.

“Napier!” Iris pleaded. She seemed to be pleading against something which only she could see in those two dark ruins of eyes. And they made ruins of all, those eyes, but saw only one of us. And behind his shoulder, in the garden, pale, wide-eyed, steady as a judgment, stood Venice.⁠ ⁠…

“Good God, man!” Sir Maurice rapped out. “Why bring Venice into this!”

“He didn’t. I came.” And Venice smiled in a sort of way.

Napier said in a scarcely audible voice: “Let Venice alone. I think she is my only friend.” As he stepped into the room Iris made a step towards him, two, three. Her eyes were dilated, beseeching. But never once, since the shock of his first words had turned us to the windows, had he taken his eyes from his father. The dark, fevered, lost eyes. He was passing Iris. She snatched at his arm, pulled at him. “Napier, don’t, don’t. Napier, please, my sweet! Venice, for pity’s sake stop him. You don’t know what he’s going to say!”

The thin white fingers of the so naked right hand were buried round the black-covered arm, holding him in his stride; but still Napier looked only at his father. His face was so white that we all looked red and swollen. But Sir Maurice was not put out by his son’s fixed stare. He had his black ebony paper-knife.

“Well, Naps? What does this mean?”

Iris cried: “Napier!” Then she turned passionately to Venice. “Don’t you see, Venice! He doesn’t know what he’s saying!”

“It means, sir,” Napier said quietly, “that if you weren’t my father I would call you a cad.”

“Don’t!” Hilary snapped. “Hm. Run away now, all of you. Together or separate. Just run away.”

Iris pulled at Napier’s arm. He did not see her. He said very quietly, his voice imperceptibly trembling: “Venice and I called after dinner at Montpellier Square. Venice wished to say goodbye to Iris. What is between Iris and Venice is their business. They make me feel a lout, they make you look like.⁠ ⁠… We found Mrs. Oden upset. She said Iris had come here, and.⁠ ⁠…” His voice broke, and he passed a hand over his mouth as though to steady it. He scowled.

Venice, still by the window, was wearing a leathercoat like Iris’s, but it looked much newer and lighter. She had her hands dug deep into the pockets. Iris cried: “Venice, for pity’s sake help me make Napier come away! Oh, you don’t understand! He’s no idea what he’s saying!”

For the first time Napier took his eyes from his father. His mouth twitched funnily, and he scowled. “Yes, I have, Iris. But I want to clear up this business once and for all. It’s gone on long enough, this⁠—this Boy Fenwick business. What?”

“But, Napier, you promised!”

He scowled. “I don’t care, Iris. I’m awfully tired of all these pretences. It can’t⁠ ⁠… it can’t go on, this slandering of you. It can’t. I can’t bear it. And the first thing I hear as I come into this room is my father chucking that slime at you⁠—”

“Napier, don’t you see that it’s me you hurt, not them! You hurt me deeply, Napier. Listen to me, my dear, listen!”

But Napier seemed able to hear nothing, to see no one but his father. Again he put his hand to his mouth to stop it twitching. Venice, a flame in a leather jacket, suddenly threw an arm round Iris. “Darling, darling, darling! How dared you come here! But how dared you! Oh!” she stamped her foot, “these beasts of men, these beasts, beasts!”

“Venice,” Guy murmured, “take these two children of yours away at once. Go along now.”

Napier started at Guy’s voice. He had admired and worshipped Guy always. Guy smiled faintly, helplessly, was about to say something when Napier said bitterly: “Guy, I know it wasn’t your idea to bring Iris down here and throw that mud at her. I know that⁠—”

“It was mine,” Sir Maurice rapped out with the paper-knife. “And it’s over now. You may go, Napier. I am asking you to go, boy! And you, Iris March. You and I, Napier, must part from tonight. For some time, at least. You will prefer that, too. You have every right to be angry with me, according to your lights. I gambled⁠—for your future, boy⁠—and I have lost. I am not sorry to have tried. I am sorry to have lost. Now you may be as angry as you like⁠—but go!”

Napier’s voice trembled: “Before I go, sir, I’d like to say⁠—”

“Naps, enough of this!” Guy snapped. “The more we talk the worse we make it. Go along, for God’s sake.”

Napier shouted: “I will not go!”

And in the deep, startled silence that must always follow a shout in an English house, he said, livid quiet, to his father: “I’ve ceased to be a boy of eighteen, sir. And I’ve ceased to want to be any of the things you seem to admire. This last year it has seemed to me that not one of the things that have made my life as you directed it have any reality. You’ve only got to think once and the whole ghastly pretence of a life like mine drops to the ground. And I’ve been trying lately to understand the point of view that makes men admirable in your eyes, sir⁠—and I can’t get near it. It seems to mean sacrificing all the things that are worth while to all the things that aren’t worth while. You sacrificed Iris for what you call my future, my career. Weigh Iris on one side and on the other my future, my career, now that I am thirty! You sacrificed my happiness to the ghastly vanity of making our name something in this world. You call that ‘working for my future,’ sir. And I call it the cruel sort of humbug which has dragged God knows how many decent people into a beastly, futile unhappiness. Here I am at thirty, a nothing without even the excuse of being a happy nothing, a nothing liked by other nothings and successful among other nothings, a nothing wrapped round by the putrefying little rules of the gentlemanly tradition. And, my God, they are putrefying, and I bless the England that has at last found us out. And if they hadn’t been putrefying, sir, and if we hadn’t been going rotten with them, you couldn’t have taken advantage of the fact that Iris never funked anything in her life to bring her down here and drag her through the slime⁠—”

“Napier, you must allow me at least the quality of patience. My one desire, boy, was to protect your happiness. I do not take what you say in the least seriously, for it isn’t you speaking but Iris with your voice. You are enchanted⁠—”

“And I should jolly well think he was enchanted!” cried the boy that was Venice, her arm round Iris. A warrior was Venice then, and her leather jacket like a shining breastplate. “And I’m enchanted, too⁠—and if you really want to know what’s the matter with the whole lot of you, you’re all enchanted⁠—by the love of Napier and Iris. I’d stuff all our marriage-laws down a drainpipe rather than keep them apart for another minute. And I think you must be mad and bad not to see the loveliness of a love like Iris’s⁠—and after all this time she’s beaten you all in the end, and I’m so glad, so glad, so glad!”

“Maurice,” said Hilary gravely, “you are getting more like God every moment. You’re in a minority of one.”

Napier stood in the middle of the room, looking from one to the other of us, scowling, seeing no one, hearing nothing. He was a man lost in an obsession, trying to find his way out. His back was to Iris. Some great man, Balzac, maybe, has said that women do not love with their eyes, but there was a blinding love in her eyes, and her lips trembled, tried to smile at the lost thing that Napier was. Only she seemed to know the obsession in which Napier wandered, and she just managed to say: “Come, Napier. Come.⁠ ⁠…”

Napier turned to her vaguely, seemed about to go with her, then pulled himself round to his father again: “Before I go, sir, I’d like to tell you⁠—I’d like to say that⁠—that it was a foul thing to do to throw Fenwick at Iris⁠—”

“Napier,” Sir Maurice said quietly, “I have apologised for that⁠—”

“But have you apologised for us all, sir?” Napier seemed at last to awake from his obsession. He looked happy at that moment. “Have you apologised for the opinion we’ve all had of Iris for ten years? Because all these slanders about her go back to⁠—”

“Napier, my Napier, you please mustn’t!”

“Iris, I must put this right! You’ve never had enough respect for yourself⁠—”

“But I have now, dear! Let me⁠ ⁠… keep it.⁠ ⁠…”

Napier seemed to appeal to Guy. There was a curious understanding in Guy’s look. He said: “Go on, Naps, let’s have it all now. What’s this about Fenwick?”

“Guy, don’t encourage him!” Iris cried passionately. Venice held her tight. Iris looked at me once just then, and I think that is the last time she ever saw me.