And as Guy spoke I saw Gerald glancing at the evening-paper on the curb of Curzon Street, and I saw him suddenly throw back his head and laugh at the heavens. …
Gerald, Gerald! The despiser of the world caught by the meanest trap of the world’s unrest. The worshipper of the hero who had died “for purity” figuring in the filthy columns of the cheap Sunday Press as another peer’s nephew gone wrong. Gerald, starved of life, Gerald who knew no woman, Gerald who wrote the tale of a man who had lived “for purity” … and he had sat down beside a woman called Spirit on a bench in Hyde Park. Those nightmare women who rave in the minds of lonely men, soft women marvellously acquiescent, possible, the woman Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, silent as marble, but acquiescent … and Aphrodite had dwindled into Mrs. Spirit, who was sitting waiting for her brother in Hyde Park, and the law lurking nearby to give the Sunday papers “copy.” And I saw Mr. Auk in an angle of the little tunnel, telling a friend of his something funny about Gerald. …
“It makes one just sick, Guy. Sick. …”
“Now look here,” Guy murmured, tapping my shoulder with one finger. “Don’t you waste any time being sick just now, but go round and see the young devil—”
“I’m going straight away.”
“Bright boy. And just … Oh, tell him it’s all right and not to be an ass all his life. Tell him we’re all on his side, and if there’s going to be any being sick that we’re all going to be sick together and in one corporate body, or words to that effect. Poor young devil. And I know he’ll be feeling this, because I had a sort of eye on him in France, and he seemed as sensitive as a violin string—”
“And drink’s made him worse now. He’s almost certain to be nearly speechless tonight. But I’ll see.”
“Lord, O Lord, what a mess Barty left behind him! But you see what I mean? All you’ve got to tell young Gerald is not to make a mountain of this in his mind, as it’s the sort of thing that might happen to anyone who is ass enough to go into the Park at night without an escort, and you never know but they mightn’t one night arrest the Bishop of London himself for saying ‘How do’ to his aunt. …”
Now I have read in books about people “sailing” into places, and I suppose Iris came into the deserted Bar like that. Hilary must have been just behind her, for I heard his voice, but I only saw Iris, and I remember how she seemed to hold the white ermine round her with one clenched hand, and how the great emerald shone like a green fly on the soft, soft white. And the tawny curls danced their formal dance on her cheeks as she came towards us, swiftly, oh swiftly, saying, in that suddenly strong, clear voice: “Oh, Guy … and friend of Gerald! Will you help me, dear friend? I want to go round to see Gerald, and Hilary says you still have the key of the house. I went hours ago, but I could get no answer at the door. I wonder, would you come with me?”
“Iris,” said Guy sternly, and I remember the way she threw back her head to look at him, and I thought again of the queer, unconscious way she had of always meeting men on their own ground. “Why don’t you ever look up your old friends when you’re in London, Iris? Or aren’t we your old friends? Or is that fine representative English gentleman, Colonel Duck, your old friend? Answer me yes or no.”
“Oh, Guy!” she said softly, sadly. “I wouldn’t have you be a humbug. I wouldn’t have you and Hilary be humbugs—you two, out of all the world.”
“But, honest, Iris, I’d like to see you. Ask Hilary. ‘Where’s that girl got to?’ I asks, and he says ‘hm,’ says he, if you see what I mean.”
“Whereas I, Guy, have learnt not to regret old friends. I’ve become an old woman on my travels, and one of the first things an old woman must learn is that the best way to keep old friends is not to see them, for then you can at least keep the illusion that they are friends … which is, perhaps, a little different from being ‘old friends.’ …”
“Iris, don’t be so bitter!” snapped Hilary. That, I thought, came rather well from Hilary. Just at that moment a woman screamed from the swimming-bath, there was a resounding splash. Guy was saying: “You’d better take Gerald away for a while, Iris.”
“If he’ll only come,” she said, “that’s what I want to do. …”
I remember thinking just then that I mustn’t forget to thank her for that beautiful notepaper, and also to ask her what was that last word in her note.
“I’ve got an idea,” Hilary was saying, in the
