Ivor

“ So it was this memory that made Phadric and Ivor smile. Suddenly Ivor began, with a long rising and falling cadence, an old Gaelic rune of the Faring of the Tide:
“Athair, A mhic, A Spioraid Naoimh,
Biodh an Tri-aon leinn, a la’s a dh’ oidhche;
S’ air chul nan tonn, no air thaobh nam beann!”
“O Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
Be the Three-in-One with us day and night,
On the crested wave, when waves run high!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ And Rodney West came once or twice; he had heard he was ill, West cheerfully said, and so thought to have one more look at him before he died. He asked Ivor why he had never gone to see him, and he wondered if Ivor was thinking of selling his car, but Ivor said he was not. So calm and friendly and practical he was. What a good friend for any man, Ivor thought—and straightway made him one! Which was Ivor’s naïve way with the few people he liked, to claim them quickly—and then quietly wait for them to realise that he had claimed their friendship. ”

“ Both Ivor and Rob were men of calm nerve and quick decision.
While traversing the arête, no thinking about Beatrice could be allowed himself by Ivor; and he was hardly conscious of the scenery. Nothing but close and exclusive regard to each successive planting of the feet ensures safety, as, steadying himself with his ice-axe, a climber moves slowly upward and onward, till the summit is gained. ”

“ In the world, when Ivor first entered it and it blooded him, there was abroad a new generation, newer than any generation had ever been before; and in all things, even beauty, singularly distinguished. Whereupon the old, instead of growing older in decent contrast, grew young again in a fury of contemplation. ”

“ Jack was silent—thinking.
“And there is that French girl—whom Roy is so fond of—always with them as one of themselves—always near Captain Ivor.”
“But trust him still, Polly dear,” urged Jack. “I cannot know, neither can you, how things are yet awhile; only I do truly believe that Ivor is no man to change, or to be fickle in his likings. Whether you write or do not write, trust him still.” ”

“ People could make places beautiful or ugly for Ivor.... And now he simply tore along the road to Hungerford as though it had been a street in a slum, and through the fine September mist as though he hated cigarette smoke. And as he strode along his mind was gay on life and Virginia, and his hat swung from his hand, and his thick hair shone black and brown with the water of its brushing.{296}
It was about a mile from Hungerford that, as he turned the corner which led to a path across the fields directly to the station, he almost collided with the little telegraph-boy on his bicycle. ”

“ Don’t you see, Ivor? You’ve got a right to begin, but I’m a fool to repeat things. You are searching for an enchantment, but I’m waiting for a repetition. Life is empty at the moment, and I want to fill it again—and the same thing will fill it again in almost the same way. It always does.”
“I know now,” said Trevor, “so much about women that I know no woman has ever loved me, nor can ever love me, as I want to be loved. I say that in no spirit of false modesty, Ivor, but judicially—and the frightfully funny part of it is that it’s not just a remark over a glass of wine, it’s true. ”

“ He knew more about Sir Ferdinando's household expenses than about his own.
The outdoor party, enrolled under Ivor's banner, consisted of Anne, Mary, Denis, and, rather unexpectedly, Jenny. Outside it was warm and dark; there was no moon. They walked up and down the terrace, and Ivor sang a Neapolitan song: "Stretti, stretti"--close, close--with something about the little Spanish girl to follow. The atmosphere began to palpitate. Ivor put his arm round Anne's waist, dropped his head sideways onto her shoulder, and in that position walked on, singing as he walked. ”

“ Ivor has risen higher and higher on the wave of success. He holds a foremost place in the Imperial Councils, he is esteemed and feared in the Chancellerie, bowed down to and fawned upon at Court. Only within the privacy of his own household is his true character known; only there does he lay aside the mask of hypocrisy, and let loose the passions of cruelty and oppression ”

“ Virginia confessed sweetly, “I feel that{205} there’s nothing so terrifyingly masculine and magnetic as the feline male. For that’s what he is, my beast! The perfect thing of his kind.... So very representative, Ivor, that he’s exceptional! In the dirt of cities, round about Shaftesbury Avenue maybe, it must be that kind of man, I suppose, that makes women do queer things for them, walk the streets and the like. They have a queer effect on women, my kind of beast. My particular one has made me put up with some odd things, I can tell you, Ivor! Standing aside and watching him make love. ”

“ Ivor looked steadily at the sharp features and cold glittering eyes, not unconscious of the cynical tolerant contempt expressed in the thin, tight-drawn lips, and was quite sure.
Perhaps, after all, he was having better luck at the game of life than he had hoped or deserved; perhaps, after all, she had picked him out of the gutter, though she would not risk the slightest splash on her own white raiment to save him. Perhaps. His head went round dizzily as he walked blindly from the usurer's house, trying to realize what this meant for both of them. She had set him free ”

“ And that is about the last word Virginia said. For Ivor talked—tremendously. Talk was seething darkly within him, and it had to come out—and this woman had asked for it! And so out came the “Ivory” intolerances and prejudices which Magdalen had used to tease and Rodney West to encourage, thinking that no man was good for anything if he wasn’t fierce about something. Here, in this animus of Ivor’s against the “young men of opportunity,” in that they strove to be so little worthy of it, spoke the Aunt Moira in him: “Whatever you do, you must do Something! ”

“ Ivor is the hero of much absurd fiction. Dafydd ap Gwilym is said to have fallen in love with his daughter, who was sent to a nunnery in Anglesey in order to prevent an alliance, while Dafydd was still retained in Ivor's household as family bard and land steward. ”

“ That glimmer of an ideal (which is given to all young men, but is not treasured by them) unconsciously helped Ivor to despise quite a number of things: it helped him to despise quite a number of women, and it is not a bad thing for a young man to despise a certain number of women, if he knows what he is despising in them. But Ivor didn’t know: he only thought he knew....
It was at about this time that he was introduced to the Mont Agel.... ”

“ Ivor indeed felt so secure, as he plunged his foot into one deep step after another made by his friend, that he a little relaxed his watchful caution, and allowed his attention to wander, indulging in speculations whether he and Rob would find the two girls still at the Hut. But for that unfortunate remark overheard the evening before, he would have wished that it might be so. He would have liked nothing better than to see Bee Major again. He might never reach the point of actually falling in love with her; yet she was undoubtedly a very sweet and taking girl. ”

“ And Aunt Percy died with the nearest approach to a deep rebuke that Ivor had ever seen in those gallant old-blue eyes, those eyes that could make a young man feel a little mean, a little ashamed.{58}
CHAPTER V 1 The world which Ivor then touched and tasted so carelessly was a vastly different world from that with which he was surrounded, in his fuller maturity, on the 1st May, 1921, at the Mont Agel. More than war had intervened between that past and this present: some people said that an undue stress of evolution had intervened ”

“ Magdalen would have made Aunt Percy laugh.{108}
CHAPTER VI 1 From that memorable night in July when Ivor first dined with Magdalen he almost literally saw no one else during the ensuing twelve months and more—unless Gerald Trevor happened to insist, as he occasionally did. Ivor simply had no interest in any one else throughout that time; for it is the way of certain natures to show their consummate interest in one person by the neglect of all others. And so Ivor missed many exciting happenings, for the summer of 1913 was a very eventful one in many ways. ”

“ She wrote to the friend, putting the matter before him, frankly stating her own belief that Ivor was in point of fact slowly dying of captivity, and entreating him, in memory of old days, to interest himself in the matter, and if possible to get permission for Ivor's return to England.
The friend—whose name Lucille did not mention to Jack—had answered her letter. He had written kindly, cordially,—promising to take an opportunity, sooner or later, to lay the matter before the Emperor. He might or might not meet with success; but at least Mademoiselle de St. ”

“ No one, Ivor, no one, in all our great machinery, but has his double, whose duty it is to report to us every action, word, or occupation. A traitor would find short mercy, he might think himself fortunate had he time for a pater or an ave, or a cry to our Lady of Kazan. I need say no more, your warning will be remembered and acted upon."
Ivor bowed again in silence and turned back to his desk, but before he reached it Patouchki stopped him.
"I shall not require you longer, Tolskoi," he said, in his usual quiet voice, "you had better get an hour or two of rest now ”

“ It was one of those loves, then, whose purity and greatness appals an epithet: one of those loves that have something cosmic in their union, one to the other, down the long toll of centuries; a love immense enough to have demanded from Ivor’s father a clear alternative,{39} his whole life or his absolute restraint—and in so completely surrendering, with his life, his honour, his ambitions and his place in England, he had done, Aunt Moira magnificently dared to say, very well with his bargain. ”

“ The sailor-man a-wooing usually conducts his financial affairs with an open-handed generosity calculated to make a ministering angel pensive. In consequence, Ivor, who could not afford to back his protestations by invitations to the Hippodrome, whelk-suppers, and the like, dropped by degrees more and more out of the running. At first the girl gave him encouragement—not the vague, nebulous coquetry Mayfair recognises as such, but an intimate familiarity extended to slaps on the nose (boko) , and once a dash of swipes down the back of his neck as Ivor stooped to recover a broken pipe. ”

“ Ivor's insinuations, therefore, coming as they did, disturbed her more than she cared to realise, and awoke at once that latent suspicion and distrust that forms so pronounced a factor in the Russian character, and caused her to accept his words as positive and final evidence of Vladimir's perfidy and deceit. She never stopped to weigh his actions against Ivor's words ”

“ But Ivor was not doing very much thinking this morning as he paced up and down, just far enough behind the river-bank not to offend the fishes’ sensitive nerves. Get on their nerves perhaps, he thought. He had come to a conclusion by the time he had{291} fallen asleep last night; and his awakening had confirmed it. One quarrels, he thought, almost naturally, being human; and then, being human, one makes it up. But in a few days, not straight away! I know what I want in this thing—and Virginia must get to know what she wants, or else we’re in a blind alley. ”

“ They were rather witty, Ivor thought. Pretty faces here and there, too. Later, he was to find that they were of that formidable army who live their days on, say, the heights of Notting Hill, the better to descend by night into the gay abyss of Bohemian revelry.
Very soon Ivor found himself on a corner of the{52} overcrowded divan: juggling with a teacupful of whisky and water, and making love to a fluffy and surprised-looking little woman, who said her name was Myra Bruce, and then said it wasn’t but would be when she could get a job on the stage. Could Ivor help her to get a job on the stage? ”

“ Vachell was having him on and never cared twopence for what he said. If he could know that I love him he might see that his rattle isn’t broken at all. After all, we were happy—. Ivor doesn’t seem to mind very much whether he is approved of or not. Evan wouldn’t find his ‘moulding’ made much difference in a year or two’s time, and Father says Ivor is all right; he is not afraid of things and tells the truth ”

“ But, anyway, it was after he had known Magdalen Gray{123} that Ivor grew to be vaguely spoken about as one of those men who are “nice about” women: a not unpleasing distinction, though of course vague.... ”

“ Oh, well, ’tis easy to see—he’s one of the military. A soldier home from the wars.” Then she turned to Ivor with her welcome. “Mr. Bryce is away, I’m sorry to say, but doubtless you can await his return, and Mr. Baron will be in this minute.”
Ivor had some difficulty in recognising his friend Roy under this designation. Polly was casting half-shy glances at him. Something in the outline of his figure, dim though the light was, brought Denham to her mind, but it was not until he spoke that her colour changed fast from pink to white and from white to pink. ”