And into Aunt Moira’s manner, into the shadows of her fading voice, as she spoke of those two dear wraiths, there seemed suddenly to have come the explanation of Ivor’s perplexity at all that debate with which his father had challenged his house, and, through it, his world: an air, as absurd and sublime as of a mystic conviction, as of that regicide of long ago, who, in his defence, is said to have deigned only thus far: “This thing was not done in a corner.”

But of course it was done in a corner, inevitably, for in this life there is no sort of adultery that is not done in a corner, not even that of milk and water.... In this case in a corner of Italy, for ten amazing years! For there couldn’t then, Aunt Moira sharply pointed out, be any question of divorce: an Earl then was an Earl, whereas now he might be a Brazilian and no one know the difference.

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, 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. And in that lay the great similarity between Ivor’s aunt and Ivor’s father, this sister and brother, that nothing they did could ever be not worth while to them to have done. They were so terribly genuine and weathered, like two trees on a harassed moor, very sombre in sadness, very mighty in joy. They were a dangerous couple, for some part of the truth was in them.

3

That night Ivor went for a long walk about London, and thought and wondered about what Aunt Moira had told him, about those lovely dead parents of his. And it was as he strode down the hill of Church Street, to Kensington, a tall, thin, boyish figure, completely and carelessly inelegant, that he whispered to himself: “My God, what a marvellous fluke it must be for two people to understand each other, utterly!...”

Ivor Marlay was already growing up. He was already emerging from that painful consciousness of himself which is the burden of our boyhood, into a dim, muddled consciousness of other people, other things, the world. His thoughts were confusing him mightily. He was becoming aware—as dully yet definitely, say, as he might become aware of an approaching headache—of the mad mystery of other people. The years of his boyhood had passed in a world where everything happened by rote, where everything happened inevitably. But from now onwards anything might happen, but anything—to him! The world had gifts to give—and he was alone, irresponsible, tremendously ready to receive. Love might happen, even love....

But of course love would happen.

And the first glimmer of an ideal came to him: the first glimmer of the ideal that comes to all men. But in nearly all men this glimmer dies, and of it nothing is left. That is called life. And in a few men this glimmer waxes into a great light, and then it fades, and then it dies. That, too, is called life.

Ivor Pelham Marlay, in those ensuing days, found his growing awareness greatly helped by an acute consciousness of his father—with whom, he comically thought, Aunt Moira had surprised him in a Jack-in-the-box kind of way. And he found his father marvellously adequate, as a father; he was glad of him, glad of his racking uncertainties, glad of his tearing folly; and altogether glad he was that his father had been a lover.

And thus it was that from the grim lips of Aunt Moira those dead parents passed wanly but finally into the history of their son’s life; a secret memory to last for ever—now strengthened and shepherded, as in their lives, by dear Aunt Moira herself, who died but a few days after telling Ivor of them. As she had lain for so many days, so she died, towards the evening of the seventeenth day of October, 1908, in unutterable fear of God.