2
Virginia got stronger very gradually: too gradually, the doctor said, but still, she got stronger. She did not seem to wish to get strong in any way but gradually, saying that there was no hurry. “The month of August,” she said, “demands to be spent in bed. I’ve always thought so....”
Ivor, however, was not so sure about there being “no hurry”; there was a great deal to be done, and the sooner the better, now that they were back in England. That divorce business, now.... But even when Virginia was much stronger and could sit up in bed and take human meals again, he was shy of pressing her on that point. It was so inevitable, after all, so why worry himself about it? Ivor had learnt to be afraid of his impatience.
Ivor was now very definite about his feelings for Virginia. He had been definite about them for some months, but from some time before her illness until now that definiteness had been growing into, and had now become, the amazing fact of his life; and as such it went about with him, it was his companion—he didn’t tread on air, he wasn’t that kind of man any more, but he trod on solid earth with the determination of a man who has a good tale in his heart. For it wasn’t that that amazing fact made everything else—the things of life and living, of strife and thinking—look insignificant, or that everything else was entirely at its beck and call. It was merely that nothing else was worth while to him without the company of that amazing fact. With that fact in his life everything else seemed tremendously worth living for. And there was a great freedom about it, too, for he didn’t feel he had to be worthy of it or strive for it or earn money for it; that fact was just part of him and he was part of it, and work was inconceivable without it; for the real and jolly thing about love is not when nothing else matters but love—but when everything else matters because of love. The last is love, but the first is waste of time. Ivor had always thought that.... More than anything else in the world, he hated being “messed about.” It was something deep and fundamental in his character, a birth-mark, a creed, a principle—he hated being “messed about.” A great number of nuisances went into that phrase, it was a useful phrase: even to think of being “messed about” made him hot; and it was growing on him.
CHAPTER XVII
1
Until she was fairly strong Virginia was not allowed to see people—except, of course, Ivor, who sat with her for a while in the afternoons, and sometimes in the evenings. But when she was allowed to see people, few came. For was it not the August of 1919, when money was plentiful and London “empty”! Here and there some one called and left in a rush and a clatter, on his or her way to France or Scotland. Ivor, of course, had no intention of going away; and neither, it appeared, had George Tarlyon.
When Virginia was stronger Tarlyon called every day at any hour that happened, often when Ivor was there, and sat with her for a few minutes; or rather, he lounged about in his splendid way and made a few remarks about things in general. He pointed out, to Ivor and Virginia, that August was the month in which to stay in London. “It’s amusing,” he said, “because as every one thinks every one else has gone away, a good many every ones stay behind to amuse themselves in the wilderness. There were eight couples at Claridge’s for lunch to-day, and I’ll swear each couple had thought the other was at Deauville or Scotland....”
“Funny ...” said Virginia vaguely.
It was curious, Ivor thought, the way Virginia changed when Tarlyon was about. She became at once more thoughtful, more retired, more secret; and, watching her one day when Tarlyon was there, he realised with almost a shock that Virginia’s face wore exactly the same expression as on that evening when she had sat in his room at Nasyngton and Tarlyon had come to fetch her: a little tired, a little bored, a little secret.... But Tarlyon seemed to amuse her, in a rather hidden kind of way. The idea of him seemed to amuse her. She would laugh a little when he had gone, vaguely.