Chapter TEN: The Fall of the Emerald (3)

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 sacrificing all the things that are worth while to all the things that aren’t worth while. You sacrificed Iris for what you call my future, my career. Weigh Iris on one side and on the other my future, my career, now that I am thirty! You sacrificed my happiness to the ghastly vanity of making our name something in this world. You call that ‘working for my future,’ sir. And I call it the cruel sort of humbug which has dragged God knows how many decent people into a beastly, futile unhappiness. Here I am at thirty, a nothing without even the excuse of being a happy nothing, a nothing liked by other nothings and successful among other nothings, a nothing wrapped round by the putrefying little rules of the gentlemanly tradition. And, my God, they are putrefying, and I bless the England that has at last found us out. And if they hadn’t been putrefying, sir, and if we hadn’t been going rotten with them, you couldn’t have taken advantage of the fact that Iris never funked anything in her life to bring her down here and drag her through the slime----”

“Napier, you must allow me at least the quality of patience. My one desire, boy, was to protect your happiness. I do not take what you say in the least seriously, for it isn’t you speaking but Iris with your voice. You are enchanted----”

“And I should jolly well think he was enchanted!” cried the boy that was Venice, her arm round Iris. A warrior was Venice then, and her leather jacket like a shining breastplate. “And I’m enchanted, too--and if you really want to know what’s the matter with the whole lot of you, you’re all enchanted--by the love of Napier and Iris. I’d stuff all our marriage-laws down a drain-pipe rather than keep them apart for another minute. And I think you must be mad and bad not to see the loveliness of a love like Iris’s--and after all this time she’s beaten you all in the end, and I’m so glad, so glad, so glad!”

“Maurice,” said Hilary gravely, “you are getting more like God every moment. You’re in a minority of one.”

Napier stood in the middle of the room, looking from one to the other of us, scowling, seeing no one, hearing nothing. He was a man lost in an obsession, trying to find his way out. His back was to Iris. Some great man, Balzac, maybe, has said that women do not love with their eyes, but there was a blinding love in her eyes, and her lips trembled, tried to smile at the lost thing that Napier was. Only she seemed to know the obsession in which Napier wandered, and she just managed to say: “Come, Napier. Come....”

Napier turned to her vaguely, seemed about to go with her, then pulled himself round to his father again: “Before I go, sir, I’d like to tell you--I’d like to say that--that it was a foul thing to do to throw Fenwick at Iris----”

“Napier,” Sir Maurice said quietly, “I have apologised for that----”

“But have you apologised for us all, sir?” Napier seemed at last to awake from his obsession. He looked happy at that moment. “Have you apologised for the opinion we’ve all had of Iris for ten years? Because all these slanders about her go back to----”

“Napier, my Napier, you please mustn’t!”

“Iris, I must put this right! You’ve never had enough respect for yourself----”

“But I have now, dear! Let me ... keep it....”

Napier seemed to appeal to Guy. There was a curious understanding in Guy’s look. He said: “Go on, Naps, let’s have it all now. What’s this about Fenwick?”

“Guy, don’t encourage him!” Iris cried passionately. Venice held her tight. Iris looked at me once just then, and I think that is the last time she ever saw me.

Napier seemed to appeal to Guy: “Iris has always put her friends before herself. And the only time in her life she ever told a lie we all rushed to believe her. And that’s why Iris and I never saw each other after Fenwick’s death until three nights before I married Venice. I wasn’t to know then that I was marrying an angel, and so I couldn’t tell her what had happened to me and Iris. Iris told me about Fenwick that night. I made her. You see, until then I’d never wanted to see her, because the Iris that Boy had killed himself for wasn’t the Iris I’d loved as a boy----”

“But she is now, Napier,” Iris whispered bitterly. “Why can’t you let be, why can’t you!”

“Because,” Napier flashed, “I love you, and I’m damn well going to have these people respect you as I do.... That lie Iris spread about the reason for Boy’s death was because she didn’t care what happened to her. She just didn’t care. But she wanted people to think as well of Boy as people can of a suicide. She wanted Gerald to keep his little tin-god hero. And she had it all her own way because the doctor at the hotel in Deauville was a friend of hers and let nothing out. She just didn’t care what people thought of her, and so she said that Boy had died ‘for purity.’ That might mean anything, and so of course we all took it to mean the worst thing as regards Iris. Oh, she knew we would. Well, so Boy did die ‘for purity.’ He was mad with love for Iris, and from the moment she had to give me up he pestered her to marry him. Then one day she surprised him by saying she would. I suppose she surprised him by giving way in the end, and instead of the cad saying he couldn’t, he took her while he had the chance. He----”

“Napier!”

“He had syphilis when he married her, and went mad when he realised what he had done. That’s all. There’s your Boy Fenwick. There’s Iris, that’s Iris!” He turned to her blindly. She was staring, so thoughtfully, at the carpet. “Come, Iris. We’ll go now. And we’ll begin again from the time you and I said good-bye under Harrod’s.”

“You’ve taken from me,” the husky voice whispered to the carpet, “the only gracious thing I ever did in my life. Yes, let’s go.”

They were going in silence. Iris had one foot in the garden when across the silence darted the neat figure of Sir Maurice. He touched her shoulder. “Iris,” he said. She looked round at him with huge, sleep-walking eyes.

“Iris,” Sir Maurice said. He was holding out his hand.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I’ve hated you so bitterly, so long. I can’t. Maurice, please don’t ask me.”

“I do ask you, Iris. I beg it from you. You are good.”

Iris’s eyes were as though transfixed over the taut old gentleman’s shoulder. Iris’s eyes were on Venice. Napier had touched Venice’s hand, and somehow as he had made to kiss her cheek she had started back frantically ... and had instantly smiled ... brightly. Iris’s eyes seemed to dilate. Then she took Sir Maurice’s hand. “Thank you, Maurice. But it is Venice who is good. Venice is good. Good-bye.”

They went silently. For a second the green hat flamed in the mist of the light that fell on the lawn, and then the green hat was gone. I stared out into the garden.

I remember a “hm” just at the very moment when behind me there was a thud of some one falling, and Guy’s murmur: “Hand me that brandy, Maurice.”

Venice sat very erect in a great leather armchair. Her eyes were closed.

Sir Maurice darted about. He waved at me that black ebony paper-knife. He smiled that ancient smile. “Boy, we shouldn’t make hard-and-fast rules for any one but ourselves. And not even for ourselves. Leads to no good....”

“She’s all right,” Guy murmured to Hilary. De Travest was one of those men who always know how to deal with any physical emergency. He knew tricks....

“Poor child, poor child!” sighed Sir Maurice.

“She’s all right now,” said Hilary. He was very white and young-looking, Hilary. Oh, the hm’s that dropped from Hilary that night!

It was Guy’s face that Venice saw when she opened her eyes. Suddenly, she was crimson.

“Your first words should be,” Guy smiled, “‘Where am I?’ I may or may not tell you.”

“Guy, where am I?” She was crimson, like a child found out.

“With your friends, Venice, who love you. And Napier has gone.

“But he hasn’t!” she screamed, and caught her scream to her mouth with the palm of her hand. We followed her terrified eyes to see Napier where we had first seen him that night. He stared at Venice. And just at that moment the silence was shattered by the roar of the Hispano. That shattering roar held us all still, bewildered. From beneath the trees of Sutton Marle it swept on us like the roar of a thousand rifles.

“That car’s gone mad!” rose to my lips.

I saw Venice bite the back of her hand, staring at Napier. The roar of the car had held him at the open window. As he came in Guy spoke savagely. “Napier, what the hell does this mean? Can’t you see what you’re doing to Venice?”

Napier said wearily, and he tried to smile, his eyes on Venice: “All right, Guy. I thought Venice was my friend. I was wrong----”

“Naps,” rapped out Sir Maurice, “what does this mean!”

As Napier approached near to Venice she jumped up from her chair and started away from him.

“Napier, I don’t understand!” she tried not to sob. “Why have you come back? Napier!”

He said wearily: “Why didn’t you tell me, Venice? I can’t understand. God knows I’ve no opinion of myself left, but I’m not such a pitiful blackguard as----”

“But what is it, Naps!” And she bit the back of her hand. “I don’t know what you’re talking about! Why are you looking at me like that?” “You told Iris, but not me, in case it might interfere with my happiness! My God, Venice, what do you think I am, not to have told me! Do you think I can leave you when you are with a child of mine! Iris said she had promised you not to tell me, but she broke down at the last moment----”

“But it’s a lie!” Venice screamed. “It’s a bloody lie! I never told her anything! It’s not true! Oh, God, it’s not true!”

What was said then, what was done, how they looked, I can’t remember. I remember only that as Venice sobbed the roar of the car seemed to lessen. The stork had passed from under the trees of Sutton Marle. I think Napier was holding Venice, she was sobbing as though with a breaking heart. “She’s sent you back,” she sobbed. “The beast, the beast! She’s sent you back to show she loved you more than I do....”

Sir Maurice darted across at me, rapped me on the shoulder with the paper-knife.

“Boy, what was that you said about that car going mad?”

I stared at him. I hadn’t the faintest idea what I had meant. The distant roar still filled the room like a menace. “I don’t know,” I said. “Sounds mad....”

“Come along,” the old gentleman rapped out, and darted through the window. I have a confused picture of Guy towering over Napier and Venice with a brimming glass in his hand, of Hilary staring whitely after us. Like a young lover, I see Hilary at that moment. I caught the General up as he was starting-off Guy’s car.

“After her, boy. After her. Feel sick, her going like that. Feel sick.”

“Can’t catch her in this car, sir.”

“We’ll see. Try, anyway. Must catch her. Must beg her forgiveness.” He looked at me as the car started off. He was smiling. Those clever darting eyes were wet. Then Hilary, hatless like ourselves, jumped on to the footboard and into the back.

“What’s this, Maurice?”

“After her, man. Iris suddenly thrown her hand in. Listen to that hell’s own racket!”

Sir Maurice rushed that ancient Rolls breakneck up the winding drive. From the distance came that menacing roar. “Can do seventy-six if you like,” I heard the husky whisper above the roar, I saw the dancing tawny curls through the darkness, boy’s head, curly head, white and tiger-tawny....

“Can’t catch her in this,” I cried again.

Hilary was leaning forward from behind, his chin by my shoulder. He whispered through the rushing air: “Afraid of her happiness in the end. You beat her, Maurice. You beat her, you and your mouldy old England. And your son wasn’t worthy of her love. Good God, he cared whether we respected her or not! She wasn’t enough for him as she was. Maurice, it’s on your head, all this. She’ll be in despair. You’ve got to catch her.”

We swept headlong round a corner. We were on the crown of the several small slopes that I remembered ascending from Harrod’s to Sutton Marle.

“There!” yelled Sir Maurice. And he laughed like an excited boy. “We’ll catch her yet.”

Far down the slope, winding, killing the darkness, rushed the lights of the Hispano. Sir Maurice kept his thumb on the button of the electric-horn, and we drove headlong down that slope with a wild cry of warning to Iris.

“She can’t hear!” I yelled.

“Go on, let her know we’re here!” yelled Hilary.

The General’s silver hair waved frantically in the wind. He was driving like a madman. He was smiling. The two great lights ahead lit the countryside. Then they seemed to shorten, and Harrod’s stood like a pillar of light against the darkness. The silver leaves, the giant trunk ... in the lights of Iris’s car. The stork screamed hoarsely, once, twice, thrice....

“Iris!” Hilary sobbed. “Stop her, man! Stop her! Not that----”

“Iris, not that!” Sir Maurice whispered. “Child, not that!”

I was blind, sick. There was a tearing crash, a tongue of fire among the leaves of Harrod’s. Our car had stopped. “Iris!” Sir Maurice whispered. “Iris!” Once again the great tree was lit by a shivering light, then from the darkness there came a grinding, moaning noise as of a great beast in pain. I stood beside Sir Maurice on the road. At the angle at which we had stopped our lights did not fall on the throbbing wreck. He was staring into the darkness.

“But that death!” Hilary stammered. “That death!”

My foot touched something on the grass beside the road, and I picked up the green hat.

Sir Maurice said hoarsely: ‘Chose the only way to make it look like an accident to those two children....”

“Here’s her hat.” I muttered, and as Sir Maurice turned to it his face was puckered like a child’s.

Suddenly the moaning of the wrecked car ceased, and in the silence Hilary walked into the darkness about the great tree.

THE END OF THE ROMANCE CALLED
_The Green Hat_

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

and an absymal bitterness=> and an abysmal bitterness {pg 73}

l’aristocratic internationale=> l’aristocratie internationale {pg 152}

fissues of splintered wood=> fissures of splintered wood {pg 285}