2
He did not see Virginia again for a week. For even when “the things” were finally out she was in frightful pain. Naturally, for a little while, the matron said. (Ivor did not like the matron at all: she was a brisk matron.) The “dressings” were the worst ordeals—which Ian Black and the doctor paid her the compliment of doing themselves, every morning at some time between ten and eleven. Ivor knew about “dressings,” and shuddered. And he felt he couldn’t bear to see her, nor she him really, and that he could do no good anyway. But he was there first thing every morning, in the waiting-room, and Ian Black would come down after the “dressing” and say a word or two. The way Black could get from his patient to politics and back again was continually amazing Ivor. “Practice,” Black explained.
Ivor would return in the evening, with flowers or whatever little thing Virginia had required of the nurse; for he had begged the nurse to telephone him instantly whatever, no matter how slight or even absurd, the patient might want, so that it could be produced at once. And Virginia asked for a special cold-cream, a bright green silk handkerchief, a bottle of Chablis (which she was allowed to sip), some grapefruit, a paper fan, another kind of cold-cream, some real Eau de Cologne (not English stuff), and some coffee-ice-cream; which, Ian Black and the doctor said, wouldn’t do her any harm, just a very little. She kept on asking for it, the nurse said.
3
The operation was to have taken place in great secrecy, for Virginia didn’t want any one to know. So she had gone straight to the nursing-home on her arrival at the Croydon landing-station, and had written to no one. She would have written or telephoned to her father, only she said he couldn’t help talking and every one would know in a minute.
But every one did know, in almost a minute. The brisk matron had seen to that. And what are gossip-columns for, but to report the living, the dying, and the dead? One cheerful gossip reported Virginia as good as dead (with photograph), but another quickly brought her to life again (with photograph). They had ever detail pat, and of course gave the address of the nursing-home. They commented on Ian Black, what a good surgeon he was and how popular he was; they spoke of his distinguished services during the war, wondered about a K.B.E., and made guesses at his income. They reminded their readers of Virginia’s beauty, her painting, her aeroplane-trips, the sudden death of her charming mother, and the extremely sudden death of her first husband. They referred to her second husband, the gallant and handsome Viscount Tarlyon, said he had two bars to the D.S.O. and sympathised with him in his anxiety. They mentioned her recreations (dogs and travelling), and reminded their readers that her father always wore a gardenia and that he was the last of a splendid type of Englishman....
So, as the season was not quite over, every one called. Lois, Kerrison, Euphemia Halliday, Rupert Kare, Pretty Leyton, Hugo Cypress.... Every one called to leave messages and flowers. The polite and amiable M. Stutz called and said he would call again; and, having asked whether Lady Tarlyon needed anything, and having heard that she did not, he sent her a superb fruit-salad. And of course Lord Carnal called, almost the first, and more than once. Ivor saw him one morning, from the window of the waiting-room, as he was emerging from a car, a huge bunch of white roses under one arm and a small bunch of orchids in his hand: a very elegant and clean-shaven old gentleman, with nothing at all “old world” about his clothes, and looking exactly as George Alexander always wanted to look but never quite could. And of course George Tarlyon called, several times.
Ivor kept well out of the way when the rush began; when he called at the home he was, after the first day or two, shown into a secondary and smaller waiting-room at Ian Black’s request to the matron who, being a brisk matron, had an objection ready for everything; but, in spite of her, there Ivor would wait every morning until Virginia was a little better, for his “word or two” with the doctor or Black....
Now on the morning when the last of “the things” were to be taken out of Virginia, the maid who answered the door—by one of those criminal aberrations peculiar to maids and classed by them as “mistakes,” whereas they are generally catastrophes—ushered into that secondary and most private waiting-room, George Tarlyon.
“Oh, hallo!” said Tarlyon, rather surprised.