M'Iver

“ She flushed ever so little at the remembrance, and threw a stray curl back from her temples with an impatient toss of her fingers. "And so much of the dandy too!" put in M'Iver, himself perjink enough about his apparel. "I'll wager there's a girl in the business." He laughed low, looked from one to the other of us, yet his meaning escaped, or seemed to escape, the lady. "Elrigmore is none of the kind," she said, as if to protect a child. "He has too many serious affairs of life in hand to be in the humour for gallivanting." ”

“ And I'll swear that a man of your fate may have her if he wants her. I'll give ye my notion of wooing; it's that with the woman free and the man with some style and boldness, he may have whoever he will." "I would be sorry to think it," said I; "for that might apply to suitors at home in Inneraora as well as me." M'Iver laughed at the sally, and "Well, well," said he, "we are not going to be debating the chance of love on Leven-side, with days and nights of slinking in the heather and the fern between us and our home." ”

“ M’Iver was just, perhaps, carrying his humour at my cost a little too far for my temper, which was never readily stirred, but flamed fast enough when set properly alowe, and Betty—here too your true woman wit—saw it sooner than he did himself, quick enough in the uptake though he was. He had returned again to his banter about the supposititious girl I was trysted with up the glen, and my face showed my annoyance.
“You think all men like yourself,” said the girl to him, “and all women the same—like the common soldier you are.” ”

“ He was waiting for Iver; no man could be so silent unless he had something important to say or to leave unsaid. And Iver was not even smoking the cigar which he always smoked after tea. Neeld could bear it no longer; he got up and was about to move away.
"Stop, Neeld. Do you mind sitting down again for a moment?"
Neeld could do nothing but comply. The review fell on the ground by him and he ceased to struggle with the elephants.
"I want to ask your opinion——" [Pg 149]
"My dear Iver, my opinion! Oh, I'm not a business man, and——"
"It's not business. You know Major Duplay? ”

“ M’Iver smiled on me very warm-heartedly, yet cunningly too.
“Colin, Colin,” he cried. “Do I not know you from boot to bonnet? You think the spring seasons are never so fond and magic as when a man is courting a girl; you are minding of some spring day of your own and a night of twinkling stars. I’ll not deny but there was a girl in my case in the parlour of Pomerania’s cousin at Regenwalde ”

“ For the love of a man for a maid is the one story of all lands, of all ages, trick it as we may, and my good people, telling their old ancient histories round the lire, found, although they never knew it, a young man's quivering heart a score of times a night. Still at times, by day and night—ay! in the very midmost watches of the stars-I walked, in my musing, as I thought, upon the causeyed street, where perhaps I had been sooner in the actual fact if M'Iver's departure had not been delayed. ”

“ A WANDERING POWDER-PUFF “That’s Iver! Oh! no distance, nor trench, could prevent my recognizing him.”
The cry of rapt identification came from Iver Davenport’s seventeen-year-old sister, Sara.
“Yes, one can single out his shoulders at a glance--an inch higher than those of any other man in his company--Lieutenant O. Pips!” ”

“ Mr Neeld can't help me," she answered. "Uncle has chosen to say he can prove these things. Let him try." She drew herself up with a prim prudish air. "I don't think it's desirable to mix myself up in such very peculiar questions at all, and I don't think it's nice of men to come and cross-question me about them." [Pg 192]
"Oh, we're not in a girls' school," said Iver, with a touch of irritation hardly suppressed. "We come as men of the world to a sensible woman."
"Anybody will tell you I'm not that," interrupted the Imp. ”

“ Happily, in the smoking-room the talk shifted to less embarrassing subjects. Iver told of his life and doings, and Neeld found himself drawn to the man: he listened with interest and appreciation; he seemed brought into touch with life; he caught himself sighing over the retired inactive nature of his own occupations. He forgave Iver the hoardings about the streets; he could not forgive himself the revenge he had taken for them. Iver and Southend spoke of big schemes in which they had been or were engaged together—legitimate enterprises, good for the nation as well as for themselves. ”

“ Ivor's vocabulary was rich, but a little erratic. "I'm not late for dinner, am I?" He hoisted himself up on to the balustrade, and sat there, kicking his heels. With one arm he embraced a large stone flower-pot, leaning his head sideways against its hard and lichenous flanks in an attitude of trustful affection. He had brown, wavy hair, and his eyes were of a very brilliant, pale, improbable blue. His head was narrow, his face thin and rather long, his nose aquiline. In old age-- though it was difficult to imagine Ivor old--he might grow to have an Iron Ducal grimness. ”

“ But after we had met in the hall of the hotel, and Ivor had seemed confused, and wouldn’t give up his mysterious engagement, or say what it was, though Lisa chaffed him and he must have known what I thought, I suddenly forgot the slight he had put upon me. Instead of being angry with him, I was afraid for him, I couldn’t have explained why, unless it was the look on his face when he turned away from me.
No man would look like that who was going of his own free will to a woman with whom he was in love, that same queer something whispered in my ear. ”

“ Iver, keen at a bargain, hard in business hours (had not Mina Zabriska discovered that?) , confident that nobody would care to incur his enmity—he was powerful—by forestalling him, had refused Masters his price; the old gentleman would have to come down. But some young men stepped in, with the rashness of their youth, and acquired an option of purchase from Masters. Iver smiled in a vexed fashion, but was not dismayed. He let it be known that anybody who advanced money to the young men—Sloyd, Sloyd, and Gurney was the firm—would be his enemies; then he waited for the young men to approach him. ”

“ But gradually the sombreness of a storm was created within her; though when she thought of the inventor she experienced little of the chagrin of a woman whom a lover has deserted. Rather, what she felt was a surprised resentment of soul. Emil St. Ives was ordained to understand her, and behold he had forsaken her! With eyes as clear as a child's, though shadowed by indefinable emotions, she often watched from the window the pigeons circling on pointed wings over the house-tops, and they seemed to her like a flurry of white letters tossed by a derisive hand through the sky. ”

“ I wondered if that girl had been broken-hearted because he wouldn’t let her tie round his arm the white scarf that might have saved him.
It is strange how one’s mood can change in a moment—but perhaps it is like that only with women. A minute before I’d been trying to despise Ivor, and to argue, just as if I’d been a match-making mamma, to myself that it would be a very good thing if I could make up my mind to marry Lord Bob; that it would be rather nice being a Duchess some day; and that besides, perhaps Ivor would be sorry when he heard that I was engaged to somebody else. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A vessel filled with water was brought in, and Hjorvard poured water upon the child, and said in a loud voice, so that the people should hear him: “Ivar shall the boy be named after his grandfather; he will of Odin’s family the foremost man be called; he will fight many battles, and be much like his mother, and be called his father’s son, for he will wage war from early age, and wander far and wide.” After this ceremony, the life of Ivar, like that of all other men, was sacred; his father had not the power to expose him or to take his life, and if he did it would be murder. ”

“ I am deep in St. Ives which, I believe, will be the next novel done. But it is to be clearly understood that I promise nothing, and may throw in your face the very last thing you expect—or I expect. St. Ives will (to my mind) not be wholly bad. It is written in rather a funny style; a little stilted and left-handed; the style of St. Ives; also, to some extent, the style of R. L. S. dictating. St. Ives is unintellectual and except as an adventure novel, dull. But the adventures seem to me sound and pretty probable; and it is a love story. Speed his wings!
Sunday night. ”

“ Ivar was all to her, and for him she was willing to sacrifice even her life. Love was her own. O Skuld, how kind thou art to hide from man the decrees of the Nornir, who have shaped our lives from our birth! We came into the world through no will of our own, and we know not in the beginning of the day what fate will bring forth before night. ”

“ The Imp thought of crying—not for her uncle—which would be hopeless—but for Iver. She concluded it would be hopeless there too; Iver would not heed tears in business hours, however tender-hearted he might be in private life. So she laughed again instead. But the laugh was a failure, and Iver was sharp enough to see it.
"In this country people aren't allowed to play fast and loose in this fashion," he remarked. "I'll tell you one way in which we can make you speak. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What is he thinking of? What are you thinking of? Don't you see? How can I face the world—with all my invitations—when the man I'm engaged to is—in jail?"
Evie's hands flew up in a still more eloquent gesture, while the blue eyes, usually so soft and veiled, were wide with flaming interrogation.
"I knew that—in some ways—it might be hard for you—"
Evie laughed, a little silvery mirthless ripple of scorn.
"I must say, Miriam, you choose your words skilfully. But you're wrong, do you see? There's no way in which it can be hard for me, because there's no way in which it's possible." ”

“ Whilst her hands were engaged she craved for leisure in which to think; when unemployed, the ferment within rendered idleness intolerable.
When the work of the house was accomplished, she went to the fountain where she had been drawn by Iver, and there saw again the glowing brown of his eyes fixed on her, and reheard the tones of his voice addressing her. Then she would start as though stung by a wasp and go along the track up the Punch-Bowl, recalling every detail of her walk with Iver, and feeling again his kiss upon her lips. She tried to forget him ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ives, timid, valiant creature, was incapable of not loving. For her first-born she entertained an affection purely maternal; for Emil, however, she harboured a feeling almost worshipful. The fact that she had borne him was to her a miracle ever new. He woke heaven in her heart and his love opened her soul as the sun's ray opens the flower. Neither husband nor elder son ever suspected the exquisite quality of her nature.
Edgar was a lad of fifteen when Emil was born. ”