“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
