“Office closes 6.30,” the boy explained. “Can’t deliver tel’grams Nasyngton after 6.”
“Ought to live in Hungerford,” the boy said cheekily.
The tall, dark man looked suddenly ferocious.
“If——” he began, and then, to the boy’s amazement, he started to run away.
Ivor pulled himself up with a kind of fierce laugh. No good running to catch a train before it’s in a station, he thought. It was the “Please” in the wire that had set him running—suddenly, the idea of it! “Please!” One was always hearing and saying that word, and yet it had that amazing and potent meaning! The pity of it, and the generosity in it! “Please,” she had written. It stabbed his heart, that word. He saw her lips saying it, those taut and dry and beautiful lips that liked the rush of a chill wind—he heard them saying it in his ears: “Please, Ivor!” And all his gaiety was lost in regret for his folly of yesterday—his folly of “wisdom” in not having gone to her before. He had let her write “please” to him! God, Virginia and her beastly men!
It was beyond his power to prevent himself walking quickly; and he had a long wait at Hungerford Station, up and down the far end of the London platform—it seemed like hours—before any one but a porter or two was visible. But at last motors began to twist round the slope from Hungerford and down to the station, and soon the platform was dotted with people and suitcases. Then the train from London bustled in at the opposite platform, and soon a boy came round with papers.
Ivor bought The Times, and, as an afterthought, The Daily Mirror: thinking to while away the minutes before his train came in, and one arm not being sufficient to cope with The Times in the open. With that pressed under his arm he held up the picture-paper at an angle: and then, with a frown, he held it up straight: as he did so, dropping The Times from under his arm. He didn’t pick it up: he stared at one of the several pictures on the front page—a face he knew, looking so strange! so odd, just there! And he knew the photograph too, it was an old one and often reproduced, for it was a “stock” photograph and used on the smallest provocation. They had often laughed at it together, calling it “Virginia arrogant.” ... It was a little blurred.... But why there? And though he saw the large type above it, though his eyes read it, and then read it again, he simply could not take it in. Oh, absurd! “Death of the Viscountess Tarlyon.” Oh, but rot! His hand trembled ever so little as he held the paper higher to read the small type below “Virginia arrogant.”
“We regret to announce the sudden death of the beautiful Viscountess Tarlyon at her house in Belgrave Square towards eight o’clock last night——” Ivor very consciously, very determinedly, closed his eyes and then he opened them again. Yes, there was “Virginia arrogant” in front of him. Then he looked about the platform—it seemed suddenly to be crowded with people, and they all seemed to be yelling about something. He turned to the small type again: “Lady Tarlyon, who will perhaps be better remembered as the Hon. Virginia Tracy and later as Mrs. Hector Sardon, underwent a serious operation some weeks ago, from which it was thought she had quite...” he skipped a few words “ ..presumably went out too soon, walking in the rain of the day before yesterday, and contracted a chill which, in her weak state of health, only too soon.... Every one will regr—— Viscount Tarly——” He simply couldn’t see any more of the type, his eyes wouldn’t take it in; and there was a frightful noise in his ears, every one seemed to be yelling right at him. People shouting, people pushing, porters.... “London train! Stop at Newbury and Reading! London Train!” bang into his ear. Doors slammed to, and then the train seemed to move across his eyes, kept on moving....
“Come on, sir, come on!” a voice cried impatiently. Ivor shook his head at the voice and bent down to pick up The Times at his feet. Someone had trodden on it.
He left the station very slowly: the way he had come, through the turnstile into the fields, clutching the papers. Oh, rot.... “In the rain of the day before yesterday,” it said. He stopped and looked at the paper again; and, somehow dropping them both on to the path, left them both there.... But that was the day she had sent him the first wire! How then?... He couldn’t understand it at all, he couldn’t make head or tail of the thing. Why, damn it, she’d sent him a wire only yesterday evening—5.45! And then, quite clearly, he knew that Virginia hadn’t written that wire herself—she had told little Smith to write it! Virginia wouldn’t have signed the wire “Virginia”—she would never have signed a wire to him—she hadn’t signed the wire that had taken him to Cimiez—she hadn’t signed the first wire. “In the rain of the day before yesterday.” ... Oh, my God!