And as I let myself into my flat, I found myself picturing Guy de Travest and Iris face to face in a place where no people were, Guy and Iris completely alone with each other and God. And it was Guy whom I heard speaking, Guy’s low cold voice telling Iris of certain things, how he had been shocked that dim morning to hear her whisper a name like a kiss, a name that was already pledged to another, and how, when he had long since forgotten her whispering of that name, he had chanced on a night to see her no further than the span of that name apart from him who bore it, and how he couldn’t but think that she was committing the one unpardonable crime of stealing a man from his wife, like a mean little thief in the night. And I could imagine Iris in her tight silver turban, like a star it would be in that lonely place where she faced Guy, and her tiger-tawny curls dancing formally on each small check, and all about her that dazzling brilliance which will suddenly enwrap a very fair woman in a black dress, whilst the blood would be clean emptied from her small grave face as she listened to the judgment of the slender giant with the cold eyes and the quiet, so quiet, savage voice. They were of the same people, Guy and Iris, of the same blood, of the same landscape, and you couldn’t help but wonder how she would face his judgment, she who had for so long outlawed herself, she who so profoundly impressed you as not caring the tremor of an eyelash for the laws of her fathers. Would she, faced by the warrior of conduct, still not care, or would she be ashamed and afraid, would she be as though seeing England, her England, the very soil of her England, turning from her in contempt? I simply could not tell what she would feel, so little did I know of the nature of that shameless, shameful lady. And that was again the thought that came to me the very next night to the one I am telling of, whilst I sat beside her in her car, and we in the van of the children’s party’s raid on the river. A torment of heat lay over England that July night, but that is not why we who sped through the countryside will remember it.
She was driving, and when I dropped a word into the silence of our drive, for Iris and I were at enmity now—for Venice!—a curious smile seemed to devour the white profile, to devour it quite: a very witch of a smile that was, I thought, and more than adequate to meet my word, for the word I had dropped was what the raven quoth: “Nevermore!”
But as she smiled so, she drove that menacing bonnet ever more furiously along the road to Maidenhead, so that corners perished like midgets before our headlights and Hugo and Shirley, who sat behind, murmured against her driving, saying that it would be bad for their reputation as a happily-married couple to be found dead on the road to Maidenhead. “A friend of mine,” yelled Hugo, “was asked to resign from Buck’s for being found dead on the Maidenhead road. …”
But Iris drove faster and ever faster, and suddenly I realised that the rare devouring smile that was like my enemy on her face was new to me who had never before seen Iris smile happily.
II
I have gone too far ahead in the tale of the last March, letting myself be beguiled from a narrator’s duties by the reckless flight of the silver stork through the quiet countryside. But from the night of the children’s party I can only go back by saying that she was wearing that night not her silver turban but a green hat, yea, a green hat, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn; and who but I had bought that green hat for her that very day, she having said to me after luncheon that she needed a green hat pour le sport. I understood that the sport would be under even warmer skies than ours, for in three days’ time, she said, she would be on board ship for Rio di Janeiro, and she did not need to tell me that she would not be voyaging unaccompanied. That was a fell lady for whom I bought a green hat that day.
Nothing easier than a green hat, it appears, can well be bought. Like a flash of summer lightning, that is how a green hat is bought. Says the lady to the shop: “Greeting, sir. I will have a green hat pour le sport, similar in every way to the green hats I have bought here every year since the death of Dr. Crippen.”
“Very good, madam. That will be so much, madam. On your account, madam?”
“Oh, no! My friend will pay. Farewell.”
We spoke very little over the luncheon we took together. It was a stifling day, and what, anyhow, was there to say? Very far from my business was it to speak of broken promises unless spoken to, and very far from her thoughts did any question of broken promises seem. Oh, but that was a fell lady who luncheoned with me on that sweltering day!
We sat picking at green olives and salads and bits of toast, we
