She was restless. Was that his fault? If he had been Wilfrid—would she be restless? ‘Yes,’ he thought stoutly, ‘Wilfrid’s restless, too.’ They were all restless—all the people he knew. At least all the young ones—in life and in letters. Look at their novels! Hardly one in twenty had any repose, any of that quality which made one turn back to a book as a corner of refuge. They dashed and sputtered and skidded and rushed by like motor cycles—violent, oh! and clever. How tired he was of cleverness! Sometimes he would take a manuscript home to Fleur for her opinion. He remembered her saying once: “This is exactly like life, Michael, it just rushes—it doesn’t dwell on anything long enough to mean anything anywhere. Of course the author didn’t mean it for satire, but if you publish it, I advise you to put: ‘This awful satire on modern life’ outside the cover.” And they had. At least, they had put: “This wonderful satire on modern life.” Fleur WAS like that! She could see the hurry, but, like the author of the wonderful satire, she didn’t know that she herself veered and hurried, or—did she know? Was she conscious of kicking at life, like a flame at air?
He had reached Piccadilly, and suddenly he remembered that he had not called on her aunt for ages. That was a possible draw. He bent his steps towards Green Street.
“Mrs. Dartie at home?”
“Yes, sir.”
Michael moved his nostrils. Fleur used—but he could catch no scent, except incense. Winifred burnt joss-sticks when she remembered what a distinguished atmosphere they produced.
“What name?”
“Mr. Mont. My wife’s not here, I suppose?”
“No, sir. Only Mrs. Val Dartie.”
Mrs. Val Dartie! Yes, he remembered, nice woman—but not a substitute for Fleur! Committed, however, he followed the maid.
In the drawing-room Michael found three people, one of them his father-inlaw, who had a grey and brooding aspect, and, from an Empire chair, was staring at blue Australian butterflies’ wings under glass on a round scarlet table. Winifred had jazzed the Empire foundations of her room with a superstructure more suitable to the age. She greeted Michael with fashionable warmth. It was good of him to come when he was so busy with all these young poets. “I thought ‘Copper Coin,’” she said—“what a NICE title! – such an intriguing little book. I do think Mr. Desert is clever! What is he doing now?”
Michael said: “I don’t know,” and dropped on to a settee beside Mrs. Val. Ignorant of the Forsyte family feud, he was unable to appreciate the relief he had brought in with him. Soames said something about the French, got up, and went to the window; Winifred joined him—their voices sounded confidential.
“How is Fleur?” said Michael’s neighbour.
“Thanks, awfully well.”
“Do you like your house?”
“Oh, fearfully. Won’t you come and see it?”
“I don’t know whether Fleur would—?”
“Why not?”
“Oh! Well!”
“She’s frightfully accessible.”
She seemed to be looking at him with more interest than he deserved, to be trying to make something out from his face, and he added:
“You’re a relation—by blood as well as marriage, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then what’s the skeleton?”
“Oh! nothing. I’ll certainly come. Only—she has so many friends.”
Michael thought: ‘I like this woman!’ “As a matter of fact,” he said, “I came here this afternoon thinking I might find Fleur. I should like her to know you. With all the jazz there is about, she’d appreciate somebody restful.”
“Thank you.”
“You’ve never lived in London?”
“Not since I was six.”
“I wish she could get a rest—pity there isn’t a d-desert handy.” He had stuttered; the word was not pronounced the same—still! He glanced, disconcerted, at the butterflies. “I’ve just been talking to a little Cockney whose S. O. S. is ‘Central Austrylia.’ But what do you say—Have we got souls to save?”
“I used to think so, but now I’m not so sure—something’s struck me lately.”
“What was that?”
“Well, I notice that any one at all out of proportion, or whose nose is on one side, or whose eyes jut out, or even have a special shining look, always believes in the soul; people who are in proportion, and have no prominent physical features, don’t seem to be really interested.”
Michael’s ears moved.
“By Jove!” he said; “some thought! Fleur’s beautifully proportioned—SHE doesn’t seem to worry. I’m not—and I certainly do. The people in Covent Garden must have lots of soul. You think ‘the soul’s’ the result of loose-gearing in the organism—sort of special consciousness from not working in one piece.”
“Yes, rather like that—what’s called psychic power is, I’m almost sure.”
“I say, is your life safe? According to your theory, though, we’re in a mighty soulful era. I must think over my family. How about yours?”
“The Forsytes! Oh, they’re quite too well-proportioned.”
“I agree, they haven’t any special juts so far as I’ve seen. The French, too, are awfully close-knit. It really is an idea, only, of course, most people see it the other way. They’d say the soul produces the disproportion, makes the eyes shine, bends the nose, and all that; where the soul is small, it’s not trying to get out of the body, whence the barber’s block. I’ll think about it. Thanks for the tip. Well, do come and see us. Good-bye! I don’t think I’ll disturb them in the window. Would you mind saying I had to scoot?” Squeezing a slim, gloved hand, receiving and returning a smiling look, he slid out, thinking: ‘Dash the soul, where’s her body?’
Chapter IV.
FLEUR’S BODY
Fleur’s body, indeed, was at the moment in one of those difficult positions which continually threaten the spirit of compromise. It was in fact in Wilfrid’s arms; sufficiently, at least, to make her say:
“No, Wilfrid—you promised to be good.”
It was a really remarkable tribute to her powers of skating on thin ice that the word ‘good’ should still have significance. For eleven weeks exactly this young man had danced on the edge of fulfilment, and was even now divided from her by two clenched hands pressed firmly against his chest, and the word ‘good’; and this after not having seen her for a fortnight.
When she said it, he let her go, with a sort of violence, and sat down on a piece of junk. Only the sense of damnable iteration prevented him from saying: “It can’t go on, Fleur.” She knew that! And yet it did! This was what perpetually amazed him. How a poor brute could hang on week after week saying to her and to himself: “Now or never!” when it wasn’t either. Subconsciousness, that, until the word ‘now’ had been reached, Fleur would not know her own mind, alone had kept him dancing. His own feelings were so intense that he almost hated her for indecision. And he was unjust. It was not exactly indecision. Fleur wanted the added richness and excitement which Wilfrid’s affection gave to life, but without danger and without loss. How natural! His frightful passionateness was making all the trouble. Neither by her wish, nor through her fault, was he passionate! And yet—it was both nice and proper to inspire passion; and, of course, she had the lurking sense that she was not ‘in the mode’ to cavil at a lover, especially since life owed her one.
Released, she smoothed herself and said: “Talk of something sensible; what have you been writing?”
“This.”
Fleur read. Flushing and biting her lips, she said:
“It’s frightfully bitter.”
“It’s frightfully true. Does HE ever ask you now whether you see me?”
“Never.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“What would you answer if he did?”
Fleur shrugged her shoulders.
Desert said quietly: “Yes, that’s your attitude. It can’t last, Fleur.” He was standing by the windo
w. She put the sheets down on his desk and moved towards him. Poor Wilfrid! Now that he was quiet she was sorry.
He said suddenly: “Stop! Don’t move! HE’S down there in the street.”
Recoiling, she gasped: “Michael! Oh! But how—how could he have known?”
Desert said grimly: “Do you only know him as little as that? Do you suppose he’d be there if he knew you were here?”
Fleur winced.
“Why IS he there, then?”
“He probably wants to see me. He looks as if he couldn’t make up his mind. Don’t get the wind up, he won’t be let in.”
Fleur sat down; she felt weak in the legs. The ice seemed suddenly of an appalling thinness—the water appallingly cold.
“Has he seen you?” she said.
“No.”
The thought flashed through him: ‘If I were a blackguard, I could force her hand, by moving one step and crooking my finger.’ Pity one wasn’t a blackguard—at all events, not to that point—things would be so much simpler!
“Where is he now?” asked Fleur.
“Going away.”
In profound relief, she sighed out:
“But it’s queer, isn’t it, Wilfrid?”
“You don’t suppose he’s easy in his mind, do you?”
Fleur bit her lips. He was jeering, because she didn’t or couldn’t really love either of them. It was unjust. She COULD have loved—she HAD loved! Wilfrid and Michael—they might go to the deuce!
“I wish I had never come here,” she said suddenly: “and I’ll never come again!”
He went to the door, and held it open.
“You are right.”
Fleur stood quite still, her chin on the collar of her fur, her clear-glancing eyes fixed on his face, her lips set and mutinous.
“You think I’m a heartless beast,” she said slowly. “So I am—now. Good-bye!”
He neither took her hand nor spoke, he only bowed. His eyes were very tragic. Trembling with mortification, Fleur went out. She heard the door closed, while she was going down the stairs. At the bottom she stood uncertain. Suppose Michael had come back! Almost opposite was that gallery where she had first met him and—Jon. Slip across in there! If he were still hovering round the entrance of the little street, she could tell him with a good conscience where she had been. She peeped. Not in sight! Swiftly she slid across into the doorway opposite. They would be closing in a minute—just on four o’clock! She put down a shilling and slipped in. She must see—in case! She stood revolving—one-man show, the man—Claud Brains! She put down another shilling for a catalogue, and read as she went out. “No. 7. Woman getting the wind up.” It told her everything; and with a lighter heart she skimmed along, and took a taxi. Get home before Michael! She felt relieved, almost exhilarated. So much for skating on thin ice! It wasn’t good enough. Wilfrid must go. Poor Wilfrid! Well, he shouldn’t have sneered—what did he know of her? Nobody knew anything of her! She was alone in the world. She slipped her latch-key into the hall door. No Michael. She sat down in the drawing-room before the fire, and took up Walter Nazing’s last. She read a page three times. It meant no more with every reading—it meant less; he was the kind of author who must be read at a gallop, and given away lest a first impression of wind in the hair be lost in a sensation of wind lower down; but Wilfrid’s eyes came between her and the words. Pity! Nobody pitied her; why, then, should she pity them? Besides, pity was ‘pop,’ as Amabel would say. The situation demanded cast-iron sense. But Wilfrid’s eyes! Well—she wouldn’t be seeing them again! Beautiful eyes when they smiled or when—so much more often—they looked at her with longing, as now between her and the sentence: “Solemnly and with a delicious egoism he more than awfully desired her who snug and rosy in the pink shell of her involuted and so petulant social periphrasis—” Poor Wilfrid! Pity was ‘pop,’ but there was pride! Did she choose that he should go away thinking that she had ‘played him up’ just out of vanity, as Walter Nazing said American women did? Did she? Would it not be more in the mode, really dramatic—if one ‘went over the deep end,’ as they said, just once? Would that not be something they could both look back on—he in the East he was always talking of, she in this West? The proposition had a momentary popularity in that organism called Fleur too finely proportioned for a soul according to the theory which Michael was thinking over. Like all popularities, it did not last. First: Would she like it? She did not think she would; one man, without love, was quite enough. Then there was the danger of passing into Wilfrid’s power. He was a gentleman, but he was passionate; the cup once sipped, would he consent to put it down? But more than all was a physical doubt of the last two or three weeks which awaited verification, and which made her feel solemn. She stood up and passed her hands all over her, with a definite recoil from the thought of Wilfrid’s hands doing the same. No! To have his friendship, his admiration, but not at that price. She viewed him, suddenly, as a bomb set on her copper floor; and in fancy ran and seized and flung him out into the Square—poor Wilfrid! Pity was ‘pop!’ But one might be sorry for ONESELF, losing him; losing too that ideal of modern womanhood expounded to her one evening by Marjorie Ferrar, pet of the ‘panjoys,’ whose red-gold hair excited so much admiration: “My ambition—old thing—is to be the perfect wife of one man, the perfect mistress of another, and the perfect mother of a third, all at once. It’s perfectly possible—they do it in France.”
But was it really so perfectly possible—even if pity WAS posh? How be perfect to Michael, when the slightest slip might reveal to him that she was being perfect to Wilfrid; how be perfect to Wilfrid, when every time she was perfect to Michael would be a dagger in Wilfrid’s heart? And if—if her physical doubt should mature into certainty, how be perfect mother to the certainty, when she was either torturing two men, or lying to them like a trooperess? Not so perfectly possible as all that! ‘If only I were all French!’ thought Fleur…
The clicking door startled her—the reason that she was not all French was coming in. He looked very grey, as if he had been thinking too much. He kissed her, and sat down moodily before the fire.
“Have you come for the night, Dad?”
“If I may,” murmured Soames. “Business.”
“Anything unpleasant, ducky?”
Soames looked up as if startled.
“Unpleasant? Why should it be unpleasant?”
“I only thought from your face.”
Soames grunted. “This Ruhr!” he said. “I’ve brought you a picture. Chinese!”
“Oh, Dad! How jolly!”
“It isn’t,” said Soames; “it’s a monkey eating fruit.”
“But that’s perfect! Where is it—in the hall?”
Soames nodded.
Stripping the coverings off the picture, Fleur brought it in, and setting it up on the jade-green settee, stood away and looked at it. The large white monkey with its brown haunting eyes, as if she had suddenly wrested its interest from the orange-like fruit in its crisped paw, the grey background, the empty rinds all round—bright splashes in a general ghostliness of colour, impressed her at once.
“But, Dad, it’s a masterpiece—I’m sure it’s of a frightfully good period.”
“I don’t know,” said Soames. “I must look up the Chinese.”
“But you oughtn’t to give it to me, it must be worth any amount. You ought to have it in your collection.”
“They didn’t know its value,” said Soames, and a faint smile illumined his features. “I gave three hundred for it. It’ll be safer here.”
“Of course it’ll be safe. Only why safer?”
Soames turned towards the picture.
“I can’t tell. Anything may come of this.”
“Of what, dear?”
“Is ‘old Mont’ coming in to-night?”
“No, he’s at Lippinghall still.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter—he’s no good.”
Fleur took his hand and gave it a squeeze.
“Tell
me!”
Soames’ tickled heart quivered. Fancy her wanting to know what was troubling him! But his sense of the becoming, and his fear of giving away his own alarm, forbade response.
“Nothing you’d understand,” he said. “Where are you going to hang it?”
“There, I think; but we must wait for Michael.”
Soames grumbled out:
“I saw him just now at your aunt’s. Is that the way he attends to business?”
‘Perhaps,’ thought Fleur, ‘he was only on his way back to the office. Cork Street IS more or less between! If he passed the end of it, he would think of Wilfrid, he might have been wanting to see him about books.’
“Oh, here’s Ting! Well, darling!”
The Chinese dog, let in, as it were, by Providence, seeing Soames, sat down suddenly with snub upturned and eyes brilliant. “The expression of your face,” he seemed to say, “pleases me. We belong to the past and could sing hymns together, old man.”
“Funny little chap,” said Soames; “he always knows me.”
Fleur lifted him. “Come and see the new monkey, ducky.”
“Don’t let him lick it.”
Held rather firmly by his jade-green collar and confronted by an inexplicable piece of silk smelling of the past, Ting-a-ling raised his head higher and higher to correspond with the action of his nostrils, and his little tongue appeared, tentatively savouring the emanation of his country.
“It’s a nice monkey, isn’t it, darling?”
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