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
