Michael Arlen

“ To be free may sometimes mean that no one wishes to imprison us; and that, when you come to think of it, is a very terrible thing.
To these grave abstractions must be added the material fact that Ivor Pelham Marlay had only one arm. For of the many things that a man can lose in a proper war, Ivor Marlay had lost only his left arm. His left sleeve, as you saw him at his table at the Mont Agel, hung emptily down into the left pocket of his jacket—adding to his carriage that strange elegance peculiar to tall, one-armed men of a foppish habit. ”

“ The air was chilly with the chill of a Riviera night in February, and Virginia, lying deep in her chair, had wrapped her moleskin coat well about her: for in the year 1919 the moleskin coat was at its ascendant, whence it has since been driven by barbarians, led by one Mr. Kolinsky....
There was no moon, only stars set brilliantly in the soft black onyx of the sky: a black night, and very silent on Cimiez; and a black and silent prospect from the verandah, intensified rather than broken by the distant reflection below of the lights of Nice on the velvet void which was a sea by day. ”

“ Rodney West turned amiably to Ivor, who was getting rather left behind.
“Mrs. Gray, you must know, has made an art of friendship,” he explained. “The art of friendship consists of defending people you’ve met twice by attacking people you’ve known all your life.”
That light laugh of Magdalen’s! it was like a laugh from a Victorian novel, so gentle and smoothing and right! And, as she laughed, her eyes, so large and thoughtful in the shadow of her black hat, rested with ever so passing an intentness on Ivor, secretly. ”

“ She had no pride, she said. “There is no pride in love, Ivor. Not really. To be proud in love is the mark of little people. Pride is for women who go to balls or night-clubs every night, and who, because they are always tired, bring the worst out of their men; they need pride. But your great lover is so proud that he takes no thought of pride.” But, on top of that, she had no shame either—and that he shamelessly loved! He adored the honest quality of her shamelessness, its elegance and its clear shades of candour. ”

“ One of the greatest mistakes Ivor ever made in his life was not to go to luncheon with Virginia that day, so that he could “think.” It was, in fact, the great mistake of his life. For a man of his impatient temper does not, at certain times, think. He broods. And how far that brooding can take a man from the reality of a thing! How venomously it colours a thing or a woman, so that they would be unrecognisable to a clear eye! What beastliness it unfolds, what lies it verifies, what disloyalties it makes bitterly reasonable!... ”

“ You are stronger than your father, and you want to master the world and mould it to your desire—and me too! and you almost have, but not quite. And that’s why our marrying can only make us unhappy in the end, for under your strength lies your father’s weakness of loving too completely—your ambitions are just added to you, poor Ivor, to make you unhappy! I am your mistress, and you are my lover. I am your woman and you are my man. ”

“ And so it had always pleased M. Stutz to expect great things from the dark young man whom he had first seen in his early twenties; and his expectations had waxed rather than waned on hearing the faint bruit of the love of Ivor and Virginia—for Virginia, M. Stutz had thought, would bring fineness to a point in a man like Ivor Marlay, even though she had seemed to fail so deplorably with Hector Sardon and Lord Tarlyon. ”

“ That large room had always awed Ivor: even as a child he had never wanted to play in it, for all that it was so limitless, the parquet floor so vast and shiny and unencumbered, the windows so wide and light with the fairy expanse of Kensington Gardens.
Aunt Moira watched his approach across the parquet floor, an uncomfortable kind of floor to traverse under raking eyes, without remark or sign. Aunt Moira was not given to showing surprise, not even at her nephew coming home alive in term-time. ”

“ To the cold eye of the philosopher there is nothing more ridiculous than abandon, except it be restraint: there is nothing more absurd than temptation, except it be the grander temptation not to yield to it. But it is notorious that philosophers never allow for other people’s ideals—which do certainly make the ridiculous even more ridiculous, but rarely fail to make it sublime. And Ivor Pelham Marlay, now fired at last out of the lethargy of two years, was become a very rigid and proper idealist, and very troublesome to himself, which is the way of idealists.... ”

“ The Lady Lois will get on, but not obviously, she will climb to the ultimate pinnacles of the world’s last aristocracy. Men will call her an allumeuse, but men give many different names to their disappointments. She will have no enemies, but most of her friends will dislike her. Only two weaknesses has Lady Lois of the silken black hair and the curious eyes that seem to see things a long way off and to laugh at things close-to—she is mean with money, and she is partial to a glass or so of wine between meals. ”

“ Were they, at this moment, still in the Haymarket bar, would they to-night be in the little flat in the purlieus behind Jermyn Street? If he went thither to-night, would he find them? But Ivor did not go, he was ashamed; he was aware that he was, shamefully, not of them or like them, he had not their honest geniality; he had used them—unconsciously, yes, but he had used them. Such, then, was Ivor.
London is an amazing city—not so much because of the numbers of its population, which it simply cannot help, but because of its hospitality, which it can. ”

“ Magdalen was a woman of honour in everything but honour. And Magdalen grew in Ivor’s mind to symbolise civilised women, in all the grace of kindness and imperfection, but he was to find that civilised women aren’t really like that; he was to find that the nicest women grow vindictive when they are bored (it is understood that men, when they are bored, just go away, extremely strong and silent) ; and that their unwilling constancy is often the cause of innumerable little antagonisms and caddishness, and that they are seldom dignified in their sudden dislike of an intimacy. ”

“ And then he sort of magnetises one by his perverse understanding of oneself, he forces one to treat him as he treats oneself. He judges people by his own beastliness, you see—and he’s so often right, Ivor! He’s so often been right about me....”
“And then,” she said, “he has queer, soft moments. He sometimes smiles at me from across a crowded room, in a most sweet and understanding way. And he seems to say: ‘Only you and I know what you and I are really like, and we’ll never tell any one—will we, Virginia’?” ”

“ Nor did Rodney West show what he felt at the contrast; he seemed to Ivor a very amiable though rather detached elderly person. Only when he occasionally bent his eyes to his coffee cup and gently dropped his cigar ash therein, would there have been perceptible, to a more detached intelligence than Ivor’s, an added grimness to the thin face, a wave of grimness that came and passed; and, surely, a certain grimness is permissible in a man of middle years who, for the last five of them, has given his soul to a woman and has now had it given back to him with maddening gentleness. ”

“ Kerrison was sitting beside Virginia on a window-seat, vigorously talking. He was answering something she had asked, and through the smoke Ivor could see the interest on her face. Mr. Kerrison somehow held that lovely golden creature’s confidence, and Ivor thought: her confidence is wrapped away in him as in the folds of a jelly-fish. Semiramis was the first woman to invent eunuchs, and women have had sympathy for them ever since; for all Kerrisons are eunuchs, large and shining and secretive eunuchs with minutely clever little minds ... and women can tell them what they can’t tell other men. ”

“ Philosophers have spun and metaphysicians toiled, yet this stuff of glamour still evades the mortal coils of definition. And whence it comes, no one can tell; nor why it comes—nor whither it goes! though poets do say that they can smell the faint, musty smell of tragedy in its destiny, and historians can never resist ascribing it to luckless men and women of high degree. And sometimes you may love a woman mightily, yet try as you will you cannot find glamour in her, you simply cannot; she is just a woman, yours to love but not to dream about. ”

“ Oh, Ivor, how base you and all men are! You suspect the fine phrases of love—yes, you do, Ivor! If a woman looks at you speechless with love, you believe she loves you. But if she puts her love to you in sentences, complete with commas, colons, and full-stops, if she gives you her love dressed in the purple and fine linen of her heart—you can’t help thinking her rather odd, can you, dear?... ”

“ Fletcher, in the exercise of that unprejudiced good sense to which, as well as to his social sense, he owed his legal prominence, was not at all sure that much good would come of Ivor’s explorations as a writer of prose. Certain stories and essays of his that he had read had seemed to him, though rather remarkable for their polish, not the stuff of a writer, as such; but rather of a young man with whom writing was merely a reflection of his leisure, whereas his main concern hovered about the business of life—or of love, he shouldn’t wonder! ”

“ He would never, about anything in the world, have any explanations to offer George Tarlyon, Ivor thought; he could go on thinking the worst until he burst. Good God, he had probably thought the worst that night he came to fetch Virginia at Nasyngton!
And then he thought of Virginia being attracted by Tarlyon, and loving him, adoring him perhaps, and being held by him even when she had found him out—odd, that, however attractive the man was! The things women create in men, for their own hurt generally! Even Virginia, an intelligent woman! ”

“ You’ve got no right, you know, to be so admirable to a man....”
“And then,” he said suddenly, “to be so admirable to another man.” He wanted to go on, to say something caddish....
“But I haven’t another friend, Ivor!” But she was thinking only of what to do with him.
“No?” his eyes searched her face naïvely. “Well, then, I’ll be your friend, indeed I will. Later on, though. For I somehow can’t yet get used to not being your lover, it’s stupid of me. But I’ll be your friend, Magdalen, you can rely on me.”
“Silly Ivor!” she laughed at him nervously, taking his arm. ”

“ One day he produced his cold to Magdalen, by special request, for he had avoided seeing her for a week; and Magdalen said that he had caught the thing because he was run down and that he must go away. She pointed out that he was the luckiest man in the world, with or without a cold in the head.
“You’re free, Ivor!” she said. “A man with no ties and plenty of money—my dear, the world’s for you! And here you are, hanging about London in January, when you might be in all the lovely warm places in the world, having marvellous adventures in the sun!” ”

“ And please promise me, Ivor, never to believe those tiresome people who will tell you with a plausible air of impatience that there are more important things in this world than love or who will tell you to stick to one woman and be done with it. Such people lie in wait for young men with crusading eyes, but don’t you believe them—go on until you find a woman worth living for and dying with, for love fills a man’s life while ‘more important things’ can only occupy it. And that’s the truth I’m telling you, Ivor.... ”

“ You are a striving person, Ivor, but now you are too happy, you are soaking yourself in happiness. It’s my fault.... This is unnatural for you, this life of ours, you want to work and strive and think things as well as to love—and here you are, being softened and choked! Why don’t I see you miserable, Ivor, why aren’t you wretched at all this waste? You are losing yourself in love, and as you lose yourself I will lose you. ”

“ He was so sure, he didn’t know why nor how, that “that kind of woman” could arouse a deep emotion without that aftermath of impurity which—even at three-and-twenty—taints so many of the fine passages of an adventurous life. And so Ivor longed for her, and guess-work made strange and lovely arabesques on a background of enchantment.
More than two weeks passed, and still he did not telephone to Mrs. Gray. He had made a brave show of determination when with her, but since then his mind had made her of fine texture, and its fineness appalled him. ”

“ Said Gerald Trevor to George Tarlyon, whom he met wandering downwards:—
“George, I ask you to observe that women are odd: if you restrain yourself, they resent it: and if you don’t restrain yourself, you bore them. That’s all I’ve got to say.”
“Treat ’em rough, old man. And so to bed,” yawned George Tarlyon, handsome Tarlyon. Much will come of that young man, it was said. And much indeed was to come of that young man, in the fullness of war and peace. He will meet Ivor Marlay; and he will laugh at him. ”

“ Every minute was tearing open the envelope of the night, and the gray clouds scudded frantically over London on their mystic and purposeless way.
“Our way is obvious!” cried Ivor to her inquiry. “Romance must plant its feet firmly on reality, for it’s life that makes us beautiful, not we that beautify life. So we will acknowledge our debt to life by walking up the ugly Edgware Road rather than towards the fat and horrid squares of Bayswater. Why, Pamela Star, anything might happen up the Edgware Road—even Cricklewood might happen, the legendary source of Bus 16!” ”

“ She didn’t heed his gesture. “It’s just as well you should know that it’s easy for men to make love to me—‘easy, my dear, dead easy’! Why, Ivor, making love to me has become a recognised institution, it was the only careless game that the war didn’t make more expensive. I assure you. And not so very careless with some, either, for I’m still beautiful. D’you notice, Ivor, that I’m being funny, so that you can laugh? Poor Ivor.... Didn’t you know, dear, that Virginia at thirty-one is a perfect mess? ”

“ Some women simply couldn’t be bodily faithful, that’s what it was; thank Heavens there were only a few women like that, but they were splendid in other ways, divine ways, and love must overlook infidelity. But love simply wouldn’t soar, it descended into the abyss and consorted with infidelity, and together they made a maelstrom that whizzed about young Ivor’s head and sickened him of life and love and himself—particularly of himself. For his supreme misery was not that Magdalen might have been unfaithful to him, but that he was unfaithful to himself. ”

“ I never see you but you say that at least once and would like to say it twice, and I can’t help thinking that it’s a kind of parlour-game peculiar to the house of Trevor. I feel I ought to slap you on the shoulder twice and say “Bo,” and then you’ll tell me where you’ve hidden something....”
“Ass,” said Trevor.
“Age,” meditated Ivor gravely, “can’t matter in a man. I haven’t as yet the faintest idea what does matter in a man, but I’m sure age doesn’t. Consider how many children of ten are their father’s ancestors! ”

“ One night, as Ivor Marlay was dining alone in one of those underground grill-rooms for which London is famous among capitals, he was extremely surprised at the sudden figure of Rodney West, K.C., standing at his table, with the obvious intention of addressing him. He did not know Rodney West, nor did Rodney West know him. A smile, as nearly self-conscious as it could be, hovered about the severely handsome face of the man of middle years. ”

“ Though, as she rather cynically said later, it was a much less careless mess than commonly happens:
“For you will be very well off, Ivor. There was nothing careless, nothing shoddy, even about your father’s lawlessness; as I hope there never will be about yours—but remember always that all lawlessness, like all cruelty, is fundamentally vulgar.” And Aunt Moira, having successfully contradicted herself, was again subdued by a stress of pain, and lay a while so still and silent that she might have seemed a carved figure but for those ever-open indomitable eyes that brooded suspiciously upon him. ”

“ Virginia stared at him seriously, and her hand gently brushed his forehead, a very fond gesture. The curious anger in her had died as suddenly as it had come.
“That’s what I was being angry about,” she explained. “And that’s why I’ve made you avoid the subject these glorious two weeks, these lovers’ weeks. I don’t think I want to marry you, Ivor. In fact, I don’t think any woman has ever wanted to marry you.”
“I’ve only asked one,” he told her darkly. “But I’m afraid you will have to marry me, Virginia. Things seem to point that way. ”

“ But Ivor’s eyes were not naked, they were jaundiced with love, and he saw that something was happening in Magdalen, from October onwards. He saw it, but of course he didn’t believe it; and he was unpleasant, in the vague way in which men are unpleasant about vague suspicions. In fact, of all the mistakes that a man can make in trying to win back a woman, Ivor neglected to make not one: from suspicion to bitterness by way of silence, from bitterness to suspicion by way of indifference, and a lot of other unpleasantries as well. ”

“ It is foolish to fight a revolutionary machine-gun with a loyalist machine-gun, gun for gun, or a Soviet machine-gun with a bourgeois machine-gun, gun for gun. You can only fight and beat them with an Idea, a clean and fearless Idea. And there is only one such Idea, the oldest in the world, the most blooded in the world, the aristocratic idea: which really means that you can only keep and strengthen your own freedom by acknowledging other peoples’. Mainly, it must mean that....”
Ivor Marlay made notes. ”