The Green Hat

life will always be what it is and men and women will always be what they are, and so we will always go on, men of high fancies and low flights, and the higher the fancy is the lower the flight will be, as it is written in the Scriptures concerning vanity. And maybe Napier had had his dream when he was very young, and then the world came along and told him that his dream was very silly, and so he did not dream any more, until one night he was appalled to hear calling him a playmate’s voice, but a playmate’s voice torn with the wonder of life and the sadness of living, whispering to him: There are better dreams. And he listened, and he was lost, and then he found himself again in renunciation, as so many Englishmen will always be doing, for it is as true as any generalisation can be to say of Englishmen that they will often only find themselves when they have lost themselves.”

I could see Napier during those two days and two nights before his marriage, I could see him casting his mind this way and that way, to find that each way lay dishonour, on Venice’s side dishonour with cruelty, and on Iris’s side dishonour with whatever happiness can go with dishonour to a man such as Napier; and that, I thought, would be very little, for can a man of honour embark on any dishonourable adventure without first of all taking every care and precaution that neither he nor his companion shall enjoy the fruits of it? But that, I thought to myself, is a woman’s thought, surely I am not becoming effeminate!

And you could see Napier scowling as he beat his mind to know what a man should do, for you might be sure that Iris had not tried to persuade him, she would have loved him and left him, putting the seal of her kiss on his lips and the seal of her voice on his ears, telling him only to do what he thought was right. So Napier would be beating his mind, always driving from him the phantom of a compromise, a fair enough phantom, that: how he would go to Venice and tell her that it had happened to him, born vile, to do thus and thus, and would she please forget him, for forgive him she could not? But that was just what Venice would do, proudly and imperiously she would forgive him, and then he would have to confess the real truth, which was not that he had held Iris in his arms, but that he loved Iris with his body and soul as he never could love Venice, that he loved Iris and Iris loved him as though they had drunk a love-philtre together, and in that way he did not love Venice⁠ ⁠… but Venice, unfortunately, did love him in that very same way, and you could see Napier just quailing before the cruelty of telling Venice that, after all, he did not love her. And you could see him marrying Venice, thinking the while that maybe the best could be made of a wretched business if Iris and he kept to the promise they had sworn together, never to meet again. And they had kept to it very stoutly, the Iris who had plucked the device “for purity” from her heart had kept to her promise, and Napier would have kept to his promise forever and a day but for the chance of illness in the obscure silence of the Paris night; and so it had come to pass that he must see Iris yet once again, and Iris maybe thinking that she was seeing her lover in a dream, she who had nothing to live for and did not care one farthing if she lived or died. But that dream, said Conrad Masters later, saved her life, that dream was the angel appointed to save Iris from death, for that time. How wise was Iris, how wise, she who knew that the Marches were never let off anything. For even the angels were against her.

But it was to Conrad Masters that I had first to break the news of Napier’s⁠—well, from Masters’ point of view, desertion while on duty. And very wholeheartedly did that man swear, the telephone simply throbbing with his pregnant mutter; but I, thinking there could be little profit in arguing at this time of day that the whole thing wasn’t and never had been any of my business, merely suggested: would it be any sort of idea for me to see her for a minute?

“You!”

“But your instructions!” I pointed out. “Whereas, if I may say so, you have so far been so ‘nice’ to me that I have lost five hundred francs at bridge on your behalf.” That is what I was driven to saying, but I doubt if he heard me, the telephones of Paris being very well adapted for selective hearing, for all he said was that he was due at the Boulevard Pierre Abel in half an hour, and he would pick me up on the way if I liked. If I liked! As though, Heavens above, there was one single thing in all this wretched business about which one might say, with any hope of being attended to, “If I liked, this,” or “If I liked, that.⁠ ⁠…”

VIII

Piqûre du cœur

I

Twilight was spreading her cloak as we passed from the lodge into the flagged yard. Several windows of the tall red building were already alight, and on the sill outside the largest window of all, which was not alight, stood a pineapple and some grapes on a plate.

Within, the feet fell chill on the chequered flags of the hall; and this, by its size, should have been a spacious-seeming hall, but that was not the way it impressed one. There was